MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Francis Ngannou Shocks the World, Tyson Fury Wins | DMs From Donks | HYSTS | Morning Kombat Ep 508

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

On Episode 509 of Morning Kombat Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell react to Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou. The guys discuss the fallout from this fight. How high is Francis' stock now? What happens to the Oleksandr Usyk fight for Fury? Who are the biggest winners and loser from this event? as always we close out monday's episode with Dm's from Donks and HYSTS. (00:00:00) - Intro (00:14:50) - Fury vs. Ngannou (00:53:30) - Is Ngannou a star? (01:13:25) - Tyson Fury's Stock (01:22:40) - UFC vs. Francis Ngannou (01:43:00) - Takeaways from the Event (01:53:00) - Dm's from Donks (02:02:00) - HYSTS Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts 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

oh it's almost Halloween almost time for Brian Campbell to turn on his sprinklers and curse the pagans. Hi everybody. We're not at Halloween yet, but we are coming off a pretty spectacular, spooktacular weekend. Oh my Lord. Well, we're not in Halloween yet. We're coming off of a combat sports earthquake, BC. Truly no less than that. A combat sports earthquake

as Tyson Fury does get the split decision victory over Francis Ngannou, but there is so much to get to on this 30th day of October. Luke Thomas from Estados Unidos, that man right there, the captain of Connecticut. He's very salty this morning.

Brian Campbell, everybody. Brian Campbell, how are you Campbell. How are you doing? How are you doing, salty dog? What made me salty, Luke? You accusing me of not being aware what time it was, even though I was up early this morning writing columns about the Fury fight. Listen, I know you were up early. I know you get up early.

I'm not even saying that. I just, here's the thing. So we usually have to sign on to the pre-show call. We were supposed to be on 30 minutes before, but it's a loose 30 minutes. You can get on a little bit later. And Brian Campbell usually likes to sign on early because if you don't know,

the first 30 minutes of the 10, 30 to 11 hour, that's the Brian Campbell show right there, folks. He's asking RJ. I work out some early material. Yes, he's working out material. He's checking in to see if Showtime still cares about us. He's asking the merch guy, how's the merch moving? He was gone.

He was nowhere to be found. I'm like, this does not sound like the Brian Campbell that I know. And then I'm asking him about it. He got a little bit salty with me over text. Our great producer, Mikey Mormile, gave me a personal pre-show call around 10, 20 states. He did. He called me as well, yes. Then I realized I needed to voice some mad reads, Luke, because we're looking, like the

UFC, Luke, we're looking to gouge our fans every possible red cent on cameo.com slash Brian Campbell, okay? But here's the deal, folks. I'm back, recharged, ready. I'm dressing up today for Halloween as a cool guy in my hometown hence the drug rug here yeah and also i'm a walking talking morning combat billboard this morning thank you bc i should have worn this you know at the top of the show but sometimes you're not always inspired when you need to be how about this one ready wow el diablo El Diablo, Luke. Hold on.

Here we go. Wow. Yes. How about this? Yes. Is that what you look like when the women in your house open the door during a disgusting dump, Luke? You're like, I told you to leave. Let me have my time here.

No, but you remember in the documentary where they came to my house and I was like, sir, you very much have the wrong address. This was my face at that time. Oh, yeah. That guy was like, I cannot wait to steal this man's car in a few months. There's no question about that. I'm going to lift his weights with him and then steal his Mazda. No, Luke, I'm so happy to be here because you mentioned it. It was a category, you know, richter scale type landing for inganu and his pro boxing debut and in so many so many freaking different ways it took everything we thought we knew about this game

it flipped it upside down and boy is there a lot of fallout to get into how about two hours worth of fallout luke how much time you got because there are so many winners and losers from this fight i never ever ever thought we'd be here nope we went we went into saturdays by the way for everyone who we had a record number i think for one of our live broadcasts are pretty close to it anyway with our peak numbers on the live broadcast so for everyone who tuned in on saturday thank you we really appreciate that and you know cards on the table we all So for everyone who tuned in on Saturday, thank you. We really appreciate that. And, you know, cards on the table, we all thought that Francis was going to lose last week. And so we went into Saturday's broadcast, BC,

you know, kind of halfway joking. We did it really hardcore, joking off the Misfits broadcast. We didn't think it was going to be much more than that. And it was silly. The Saudi stuff and the presentation was way crazy and over the top. But something big happened in a very surprising way so we got a lot to get to including you have re-watched the fight re-scored and this is important because the audience was they were bitter at both of us

but they were especially bitter at you they thought your scoring was way off and that you were real better I'd like like bitter beyond sir, you have taken the opposite stance of something I care about. So now I must berate you almost on the level of we're not sure that you still are the same person we got behind when we started watching this show. I mean, like heartbreaking bitterness that I would eschew the possibility of this upset in light of protecting my gross, ridiculous sport. Now, I'll protect my gross, ridiculous sport every day of the week, but I rescored that fight. Seemed pretty clear to me. More news at 11.

Okay, very good. We're going to get into BC's, by the way, top five winners and losers. DMs from donks, have you seen this shit? So thumbs up on the broadcast if you haven't already subscribed. Boys, there he is. I was just going to gonna say there is the social tag there for us you can shout out to Malka Luke this is a Long Island Luke Gaffney Pierre production today it is it is not many of these left so I gotta enjoy them while they're here all right so thanks to those boys and thanks for that I'd pimp showtime but uh you know they've been nice to us but there's really not much reason for you to sign up yeah why not go get your 30-day free trial are they gonna be they got they got 60

more days left uh might as well see what you can get having that for free i don't think we should dance on anyone's grave here luke okay check out showtime pay-per-view november 25th that's true for sure that's true showtime pay-per-view for november 25th uh okay let's see the merch store though that's alive and pumping morningcombat.store yeah did you talk to to big ray over there rj uncle no i did not talk to god to uh captain gangbang he was in our pre-show meeting i thought maybe all that time you spent bullying me over text you would get an update from him bullying you oh my lord that word has no meaning now uh and then last but not least i don't know yeah what else should i pimp oh yeah morningcomment at gmail.com to reach how about all our great

content at youtube.com slash morning combat luke you've done fantastic work of late with some nice bonuses you can re-watch our live uh companion to the fury and ghanu fight as luke mentioned uh so many important interesting interviews with the likes of Kareem Zidane, Ryan Garcia, Oscar De La Hoya. Check out all this stuff. It might surprise you, in fact. You may come out of there thinking, wow, I thought I knew these guys.

Turns out they're bigger pieces of shit than I even expected. You know what I mean? It's great, yeah. By the way, what is your family setup for Halloween? Do you guys get a lot of kids? We don't in our neighborhood. I don't know why, but we'll be ready to hand out the damn candy to whoever wants it.

Okay, Luke? If you need some Roy Rogers coupons, I'm sure there's some out there that my dad left around. By the way, guess who came up as a suggested friend on Facebook to me? My dad? Yes, a man who's not even a friend to you but your dad i'm thinking about clicking that button luke and then please leave my family alone well here's the thing i could probably pose as a as an internet scam and get real information out of your dad that i can use on this show luke for comedic purposes but maybe i'll draw the line somewhere yeah i would

be not happy with you if you did okay i mean i, I don't mind if you scam someone I don't know to get information about me. Just don't get bad info on me and in the process scam my father. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I got you. All right, BC, before we get going on topic number one, we got to remind folks that we got a great sponsor on this show.

You guys know what time it is. It's AG1. I see BC's already got his one going this morning right there. BC, you know me. I've had digestive problems in the past, but that is just that. It's a thing of the past. Took AG1 for a long time, months and months and months, and I have not had a single issue for a single day truly since then, BC.

And, of course, there's other things but yeah if you're a long-time listener you know we've been drinking ag1 now for years and on the digestive front two thumbs up from this guy yeah look i'm with you too luke i got my own issues i got a black liver i've really been trying to turn my health around by starting my each day each day like the right way starting it healthy filling in the gaps of the areas where I come up empty in my general diet. And the reason why AG1 works is because it's a foundational nutrient supplement that supports your body's universal needs like gut optimization, stress management, and immune support. It really does all work together.

And, you know, a couple of years now, I've been using AG11 but ag1 has been around since 2010 and ag1 has led the future of foundational nutrition continuously refining their formula to create a smarter better way to elevate your baseline health and oh by the way a fantastically subtle tropical taste luke if you if you know what i'm talking about uh that is absolutely true in bc i've absolutely recommended it to my wife who has started taking it as well we have one of these a day it sets us up for the whole day sometimes I take it at night it really depends but she's kind of like you she's a bit of an every morning person and she talks about how much more energetic it makes her feel how her the cravings are gone in the middle of the day

and she hasn't been sick in quite some time unlike your boy who still kind of gets sick time to time but yeah you should use the product more you know i know all of the things that they say they they can offer you uh it's worked well for my wife that is a fact so folks members of my family have started drinking ag1 luke and what they always tell me is hey i feel like it's supporting my gut health i feel like it's helping my stress levels but even more importantly, I just feel healthier, right? Like they're getting nutrients in their body that they crave that they didn't

know they needed. That's my experience. That's theirs. And Oh, by the way, folks, that could be yours. So here's the deal.

AG one is the supplement that my family trusts to provide the support our bodies need daily. And that's why I've become a partner with AG1 through this show for so long. I'm not just a hair club client, Luke. I'm also the president here, okay? And if you want to take ownership over your health, it's time you get on board. First, on AG2 with Amanda Guerra of CBS Sports. A fantastic follow, by the way, Luke.

But even more importantly, how about try AG1? Indeed, try AG1. You can get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Just go to drinkag1.com slash morningcombat. That's drinkag1.com slash morningcombat. Check it out. All right, BC.

We have quite a bit to get to it was as we mentioned frankly a combat sports earthquake that happened over the weekend it surprised seemingly virtually everyone in mma and virtually everyone in boxing for better or worse can i stop you there normally it's like one side had it right and one side had it wrong. And that one side can now glow. And we go back and forth with a debate. This inevitably still is MMA versus boxing, whether that's actually still a rivalry or not. It is right.

It is. It fits within that yet. Both MMA and boxing, instead of doing some level of victory lap are all like, what just happened? Did we miss that train coming that desperately? We didn't know that this was possible at all. At all, Luke.

It's redefining really the foundational structures of what we hold dear in combat sports that yes inevitably the mma fighter is going to cash out their name at the peak of their prime for the check that they can't get maybe they deserve under normal circumstances but they're going to get their ass kicked not this time nope not this time at all time at all so uh wow i don't know what to do with that information luke like seriously we're all as a combat sports world going yeah we're debating did and gone who really

deserve the nod blah blah blah all that stuff but i think all of us 48 hours later are still like what how did that happen how did it freaking happen luke don't know. So let's get into it. All right. So topic number one, there's so much to unpack about all of this. This is a genuinely serious question, and this is something we see that we discussed to an extent on the watch-along on Saturday. I'm going to ask the question this way. We are going to get into your scorecard in a minute, but let's start with this basic framing of this question where does francis and ganu's performance

against tyson fury and i'm asking this genuinely rank among all-time combat sports accomplishments all right uh i'll start off first by just saying in boxing only i don't think we have a perfect comparison to this this guy literally walked off the street more or less yeah he's had some some level of boxing training and a dream that originally got him out of the salt mines of cameroon and we know his story all too well but look we don't have a compare a comparison for a 37 year old man regardless of what other other combat discipline he had walking into a fight on the highest level of the sport against the unbeaten pound for pound ranked heavyweight champion who was teetering toward like historic all time great level status and not only fought him on even terms, he knocked him down. created the ending of Rocky one and did literally the impossible where we are arguing over two days later, whether he actually deserved to have one. Have we seen that before in boxing? No. Have we seen that before in combat sports? The only thing I can compare this to, and, and with respect to,

uh, to the great Alex Pineda, former UFC light heavyweight champion who made such an incredible transition from kickboxing at the highest level to MMA in short time and is now set up to try to win a title in a second weight class. I think the only thing you can compare this to is Brock Lesnar with some form of a combat background with

NCAA Division I National Championship in Wrestling. Obviously an athletic background in what he did at the highest levels of WWE and what he did in a NFL tryout getting to the final level of Cuts with the Vikings. What Lesnar did in two pro fights, debuting in the UFC and fighting Frank Mir, a former champion, on even terms before losing, and what he did two fights later by knocking out Randy Couture

to become the UFC heavyweight champion while still in a somewhat infantile state of the larger sport, maybe that's the only comparison to what Ngannou did on Saturday. Because, like, yeah, we've seen before Olympic gold medalist Pete Rademacher fight for a world title against Floyd Patterson in his pro debut, but at least that guy's coming from boxing. Ngannou's coming from cage fighting. Yes, he's maybe the scariest one-punch, one-strike striker we've ever seen. Maybe. He's in that discussion.

But, Luke, he didn't do what he did in this fight solely because of that puncher's chance or that next level power. If that was all he brought to the table, he would have gotten danced around, beat up, and whether he finished the fight on his feet or not, it would have been the equation we all thought we knew it would be coming in. What Ngannou did on the first night of his pro boxing career against a historically great fighter who was still close enough to the peak of his mental and physical prime is without comparison. Maybe Lesnar and UFC, maybe not. But either way, he should not have been this poised.

He should not have been this good and versatile defensively, technique-wise. And he certainly shouldn't have had the stamina for a guy who's fought 34 pro MMA rounds at 37 coming off a two-year layoff to then fight 10 boxing rounds at the highest level against the reigning and defending champion now you'd get shot down if this was a movie script but it's for real so excuse me for being so you know theatrical in my opening statement here luke but what the hell else are you going to compare to what just happened there a movie script would have been denied for being too rocky like too ridiculous and over the top only it was real life that's the biggest takeaway i have we have no words for this because

we've largely never seen this before we've definitely never seen this before the the lesnar comparison is interesting though bc because the common denominator there is heavyweight i bring that up to say the following no matter what and gana will be the first but if these crossover fights keep happening in different ways where guys are fighting in different weight classes different times in their career right there all kinds of things we'll learn more about how well MMA fighters cross over into boxing and of course they're always going to be at some kind of disadvantage but the question is are there certain weight classes where the fighters over perform are there certain age ranges where it becomes much more competitive? Blah, blah, blah. We saw, by the way, positionally, Francis was very strong in that clinch. That was

a weaponized position to him that it wasn't for Fury. He clearly looked like legitimately no questions about it, much better there. So it could end up being the case, BC, that down the line, we discover, oh, in fact, some of the early sample size that we had with MMA boxing crossovers we actually overstated how much of a gap there was in terms of boxing Francis was the first to show us that that's not really the case or or it could be that it is the case but things get a little bit uneven at heavyweight where a guy with big power, good patience, and good defense can do a lot in his boxing debut. I don't know how that's going to go. It may not happen at all, BC.

It could also just be the case. Literally, this could be true. That what we did think about MMA versus boxing crossovers and how much of a disadvantage MMA fighters are in that case Francis is just the exception that proves the rule Francis is just the guy that can get us out from that space and I don't know the answer to that but I do wonder BC do you do you it's not even a matter of agreement is your hunch the same as mine that uh I mean there's no question what Francis did is absolutely one of the most special things i think we've ever seen on the other hand is there something to the idea that this was

more doable at heavyweight than it's doable at 147 pounds okay on the surface yes heavyweight allows you what to linger later in your age and career where when for all the debate it's steeply too old to face John coming off a two years layoff. I'm still like, hey, it's heavyweight, right? It is what it is. It's a different rule set. Could that have allowed something like this

a greater chance to happen? Sure. But again, this fight wasn't won on one punch or even necessarily the threat of Ngannou's power, although the threat of it played a large role in doing what turned out to be the most surprising part of this. Well, separate from Ngannou's conditioning level, by the way, which was shockingly surprising that he was able to hold it together. But the most thing I'm dumbfounded about was that separate from whatever shape fury was in and i do think now in hindsight that's part of the discussion fury not ready for prime time in this fight

no not at all not ready not physically ready not mentally ready not preparation wise with nothing nothing about it yes he's been able to carry himself he took francis lightly he did yes and yes he's been able to have love handles and a fat stomach before and still show us great stamina but he was not ready for prime time in this fight but still even with that I'm dumbfounded that Ngannou was able to force Francis a I'm sorry force Fury a into survival mode at times but be completely disarm him force him to box from the outside and force him essentially to do just enough to get the nod. That's shocking, beyond belief, shocking. So there are elements to this that, okay, yes, I guess heavyweight allowed it in ways that welterweight, super welterweight,

right? Thinkcgregor against mayweather we're going to have much harder times to do but again let's not forget one thing especially when we're talking about mcgregor versus mayweather which is always going to be the big picture comparison for any crossover fight like this that fight was constructed under terms that we normally understand for these crossover fights meaning there has to be some level of built-in advantage for the less experienced fighter to sustain a level of belief that that less experienced fighter really has a chance to produce the commensurate amount of pay-per-view buys to justify a big fight like that now in this case i understand there's so much saudi money that it was going to be what it was going to be, you know, regardless. This fight wasn't sitting here needing pay-per-view buys to pay everyone's salary.

But that almost doesn't matter in this case, because what Ngannou was able to do, like, he did it because this is a special, unique story that I just don't think there's a comparison to in combat sports history. It's like, when we were trying to play up Luke ahead of this fight, not in Ngannou's chances, because we we were trying to play up Luke ahead of this fight, not in Ghana's chances. Cause we were being realistic to the level that we knew, but in all those other fights may,

whether McGregor kick as part of it, McGregor's the younger, bigger fighter fighting the retired old grade. Who's coming back. That in theory is going to level some of the playing field. This fight had no leveling of the failure playing field. The title wasn't even at stake, right?

It was 10 rounds. Like there were all these things that all played against Ngannou heavily in doing exactly what he did. Yet he came out and did exactly what he did and never got reckless, never lost his poise. Like what he was able to do, to answer your question fully,

was it helped by the heavyweight understanding that one punch can change the toll of a fight? Yes. But he was also going against a prime Fury who actually deserves coming in his spot among the top five pound for pound in the world. A very, very rare spot that you'd ever find a heavyweight in. Or if not top five, maybe top seven or eight. Because Fury's lack of high level opponents of late sometimes can push back his true pound for pound level meaning. And that's understandable, right? He's not, he hasn't been

challenging himself on a regular basis against the biggest names. He had the third Chisora fight, which is unnecessary. He's waffled a lot of this year, filming his reality show, not caring about what's in front of him, but like he's pound for pound ranked which adds even more craziness and even takes away to some degree the effect of the heavyweight element in this ultimately luke the best thing i can say to you about why that does include the fact that fury was under under prepared and not focused was only this could have happened with francis and ganu because you not only need somebody who has stupid levels of irrational belief mixed with at least the power and delivery system to land one punch, right? But would we ever have guessed?

I'm still blown away that Silva, Anderson Silva, had enough true boxing skill in his base that he was able to adjust and defeat a well past his prime Chavez Jr. who was a bit of a joke in boxing circles nowadays this is so different from that right I'm so glad you said that like it's ridiculous dudes again I don't want to take anything away from Anderson Silva what he did to Chavez Jr. is legitimately impressive like as happy as we were for him when he fought in Mexico that day nothing about that should change. But to BC's point, do I think that that was the most prepared Tyson Fury that he either could have been or that we've seen? Not even close.

But even with all of that said, you're not talking about just a champion. You're talking about a guy on the pound for pound list. And he got dropped fair and square. I've gone back and watched that fury went back to the well he was trying that one two constantly and what basically what francis was doing the whole time was pressuring pressuring but stopping and then stopping just enough where he was trying to get fury to open up and then counter him he was doing this the whole time that was really the central game plan let me just say this i want to i want to stay right there for a second i want to speak about just just wrap up i'm going to wrap up with one sentence

the fact that under all these things you're talking about the fact that he made it competitive with a pound for pound guy the way you started the show was perfect it is without fucking precedent in combat sports and maybe all of sports in general it is and it's i want to focus just quickly on a couple of things that Francis did that may have been subtle, that may help explain, okay, how did this happen? One of it is because Francis had an adjustment to a new sport that was almost unnatural, right? The poise, the ability to switch stances.

And some of this happened, too, because Fury was just not mentally and physically ready. And I think that, Luke, that plays into if Fury Fury has a negative reputation despite being considered, you know, a future all-time great in weighting, he does play up or down to the level of his competition. The performance he put on in 2015 against Vladimir Klitschko blew our mind as boxing fans. We thought he was a lazy, fat, non-powerful, tall heavyweight

who was never going to win a big fight, and he shocked us. Since then, we have seen him dip if he's facing lesser competition that can lure him into something think Otto Wallin then suddenly he's a different fighter Steve Cunningham dropped him early and we're like whoa like we've seen it a few times but again even that doesn't explain it I think what helps explain it are a couple things one i actually think even though mma striking is considered well behind pure boxing striking in terms of the defense the technical application there are certain things i believe that are becoming standard in mma striking that aren't fully standard in boxing one of those is the fluidity of switching stances and even though

i was critical of francis during our live stream when he first went to the southpaw stance because i didn't think defensively he was aligned right and he was getting tagged a bit by crosses from fury that constantly gave fury a different look that he was uneasy dealing with i think you mix with that in mma striking you see much more of an active guard with feints as sort of part of the default package of how his guys operate where in boxing that is not always the case in fact Fury's very active guard was a big reason why he was able to sort of like neutralize Deontay Wilder in their series a lot of times taking away Wilder's jab by constant movement keeping him guessing Fury tried those same tricks

against Ngannu and probably assumed that they would easily work to bring up openings in in ghanu's game to counter i think the problem is in ghanu is detailed and poised in his mma fighting history enough that constant feints he's got no issue with switching stances on the fly he largely had no issue with beyond my fears of how that would would hurt him and then you mix in something you picked out during the live broadcast that was key, the physicality on the inside. What has Tyson Fury shown you in his career when times do get hard? He showed you that at the end of the day, he is what he says he is, a fighting man who

figures out ways to win. Sometimes, as he proved against Otto Wallin, that's finding literally the most desperate thing you can do. And that fight with his bad cut, for the first time you saw Fury lean on opponents, use his frame to wear them down, be the bigger man, fight a little dirty on the inside. Luke, anytime

Fury tried anything in terms of a clinch or trying to be the bigger man, Ngannou would not only push him off with a stronger frame, he'd mix in uppercuts, he'd give him a receipt on the way out. That to say it was as easy as his power discipline Fury wouldn't tell the true story because Fury's taken Deontay Wilder's best shots and gotten up four times over three fights. I think, yes, Ngannou's power is different.

That look on Fury's face when he got knocked down. He made the Curtis Stevens against Triple G face that like, whoa,'s power is different that look on fury's face when he got knocked down he made the curtis stevens against triple g face that like whoa this power is like different different that matters but how key in your eyes with everything i just said in ghanu's subtle ability to not only not get flustered where he's going to overreact and put himself off balance to be countered dude he was so dialed in and ready for any trick Fury had that it was as if Nganou was the smarter more technically brilliant fighter who was watching everything coming from Fury and already knew how to counter it do you know what I'm saying Luke that knowledge from Dewey Cooper and Nixick was miles ahead of where it should have been re-watch the fight this

morning just before the show just to refresh myself again i'll just say it plainly and ghanu won on the inside he won on the inside i mean i went and did a breakdown for the i think the third wilder fight and you'll see uh here he used this long jab and then what he does is he turns the jab and you turn your hand over on the jab right and then he uses that to come around the corner and then wrap or he'll do high elbow and then come over the top and almost kind of like guillotine a guy like that he was constantly doing stuff like that to wilder and to wilder who by the way is a strong guy while there's not some pipsqueak like he's a strong dude but you know he's hovering in the two teens yeah francis and ganu weighed in at 272 his back is so muscular it looks like a turtle shell so you have to call him what he is he's a physical freak and then the part that you're saying is

right yeah obviously francis can rain down dude when francis wants to lower the boom on you it's curtains right it's armageddon when he balls up the fist but the framing moving his feet not letting Fury hang on him Fury had no real place to rest on the inside in this contest because Francis didn't let him Francis cleanly beat him in those inside spaces even if there was a couple times uh Fury got through BC right there's a couple times he was able to get clinches you know and hold him and whatever he never got offense from there dude one of the knockdowns that fury scored on wilder came from the clinch remember that when he came around the corner that way he was nowhere close to doing that to to to nganu nowhere close francis didn't let him his mma background i don't think there's any denial because of the

way he would move his feet BC when beginners begin to learn how to frame in the clinch you'll notice they don't move their feet very much if they have to think kind of upper body or lower body it's hard to think both ways but if you notice Francis's feet are always underneath him when he frames out pulling and the directions that he wants to go because it's muscle memory for him he doesn't have to be taught how to do that he already knows how to do that you're right and so this is where i give a lot of credit okay i don't know the level that mike tyson really had as trainer it seemed ceremonial did he teach francis some things that he helped him maybe but let's give so much credit to dewey cooper and his staff which does include eric nixick who was there and we love him

a lot but dewey cooper ex kickbox-pro boxer, experienced striking trainer in all of combat sports, they found, they basically looked at Francis, figured out what were the most adaptable strengths to boxing, and figured out how to not just be adaptable to be successful, but most importantly, Luke, any area that Tyson Fury is used to having an advantage over his opponents, whether that advantage be based upon size alone or through speed or what have you, Ngannou closed the door.

And I think the biggest point I can say to hammer this home is Fury's a physical freak. He's six foot nine with long arms. He can switch stances and he has the speed of a middleweight that's one of the biggest reasons why maybe before this fight he had an opportunity if he keeps beating

everybody in his era which would include by the way Usyk and AJ who he hasn't fought yet that would allow him potentially to catapult to like top 10 status all time a big part of that though is that when you have length stupid length, 85 inch reach,

right? Longer than John Jones, stupid reach. And you have that speed and cunning knowledge. Do you know what Fury's amazing at? Being able to stay in the pocket in the line of danger, but being able to be so quick, long and smart that he can sidestep punches coming in,

counter land, big shots and be seen as this sort of large, long wizard. Ngannou's reach was 83 inches, meaning only two inches shorter. Luke, I think all of the built-in advantages that Fury is used to having and that he thought in his mind, if this fight gets hairier than it should be, we all thought without question that if Fury starts jabbing from the outside, switching stances, controlling it with length, he's got this, even if it's boring because that built-in advantage is so huge. Dude, Ngannou closed that advantage to the level that he largely even took away the jab of Fury because the speed in which he was countering with his left hand was not only so quick that the technique made it such a short shot, but the power seemingly had a bigger impact than even punches from the great Deontay Wilder.

And, Luke, I don't think we can avoid that point right there. As much as I don't want to make it all about the power, winning Ghanu has all these other things like the delivery system, the stance, the IQ, the defensive responsibility. The timing. The timing on that counter. And then you add that power in, dude. That's why we're suddenly going, could he actually win the real heavyweight championship? Like in his next fight? Like, is he really there already?

I can't believe he's really there already. I can't believe it. I want to bring that up. So like there was, I asked a question on Twitter and of course, the dumbest people on Twitter were like, well, the answer's obvious. You had the WBC champion versus a guy who'd never boxed before. How did everyone get it wrong? You were right.

It wasn't like MMA got it wrong and boxing got it right or vice versa. We all got it wrong to varying degrees, but we all got it wrong. And you and I got it pretty wrong thinking Francis had no shot in hell. But in the end, it was actually pretty competitive. So I think it's worth reflecting on exactly what we got wrong about all of that. Here's something that I saw people explaining why we got it wrong that I did think was a thoughtful explanation. Francis has always been a really big puncher.

That's true. That's been true from day one. And physically strong and all that stuff. But he was never necessarily a very clever puncher. Not until very late. But I'll tell you what I did, BC. I went back and I watched the second Miocic fight, the rematch. And I wanted to see, I was like, I want to remember,

how dominant was Francis in this fight? Dude, Francis fucking barbecued him. Yeah. Absolutely washed him. I mean, if Stipe landed anything other than a couple of calf kicks and maybe a single punch it it barely stood out this was one-way traffic from beginning to end then francis obviously polished him off right in to the second round like this was not competitive at all francis fucked him up and i began to notice the timing on francis's punches

were better the location was better the setups were better. The location was better. The setups were better. Like, you could tell he was thinking. I bring this all up to say, one, we had no way of knowing because, obviously, it was two years since the last time we saw him. He had the banged-up knee. He mostly wrestled gone in the end. He just didn't get a great look, right? Can we talk about how much of a natural talent and how quick of a learner francis and gone okay that's

what's lesnar like right that's the most lesnar like comparison there is right because it gets another and again heavyweight as well right where you know an athletic advantage over the rest of some of these guys can really play out in very unusual ways dude again there were times for example like francis would get hit and he would want to counter over the top with his left and so so he would throw BC and if you could put the camera on me for just a second, so I can show he would throw. And what he would do is he would lean back when he throws. But if, if my arm is out here and I lean back, you can see it brings my fist into camera, into, into view because I'm actually pulling it out of the way when I do that, right? Rather than rolling under and then attacking. So you can tell there are still plenty of things that he hasn't picked up on yet that are actually pretty

consequential to winning. However, however, the fact that he's got all of those other things seemingly ironed out, or I should say many other things in a workable way that makes you believe he can win is astounding bc yes it is astounding think about how many guys who were like good division one football players the seth mitchells of the world right who went into boxing these are good athletes these are not scrub athletes these are good athletes and they don't really you know they can't really do a whole lot with and i'm, this is one fight for Manganu and one he technically didn't win. But the fact that he put up

that kind of a fight, Seth Mitchell in his best day couldn't have done that to an unprepared Tyson Fury. And Francis did! It is shocking how quick he can learn, even at age 35 slash 37. Dude, do you think, I was having an interesting conversation with otl burbridge of dead and company big fan of this show who was just he said he was moved to

tears after after watching this performance from francis and anyone that's followed francis's life story on the level that you know we have on this show and that many ufc fans that's a necessary and understandable reaction because it was so mind-blowing. But Luke, whether people think it's all bullshit or not, I have talked at length about what I felt was the Mayweather, I'm sorry, the McGregor magic, the idea that this man believed in himself so much that he rode this wave, right? Similar to the wave that Masvidal rode in 2019, where suddenly everything or anything seemed possible.

I always reference that with the runs from Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin, which were so outsized, meaning the Linsanity run of two weeks of, you know, dropping 40 on Kobe, hitting buzzer beaters, and the Tim Tebow run to the playoff win, which were both improbable. They were both unable to be repeated, right? They were just sort of like, that's the greatest stretch that individual athlete can have. And it's so unlikely and magical that it almost feels like it's God-produced

and spirit-led because it's so outsized, right? It's ridiculous. Do you consider the Francis story somewhat on on that level not just in the hard to explain how we got here and how he's doing this but that there's some larger story that he's walking out luke i i mean i'm i don't mean to make it you know biblical here or francis is connection to to you know his own spiritual connection but his dream from the beginning on his heart that got him out of the salt mines of Cameroon through a Spanish prison for two months for trespassing to

homeless on the streets of Paris, stumbling into an MMA gym. And Oh, by the way, eight years later, effing around and becoming UFC heavyweight champion. It's so ridiculously unlikely that maybe that's the only way I can justify it and say,

it's almost cosmically something that's like Jeremy Lin Tebow like like Luke is this performance sustainable or did he find the perfect version of Fury that had his eye off the ball and he also executed at a level that we never thought possible or is there hands on this that that that can't be touched Luke McGregor walked in and knocked out Jose Aldo with one punch in 12 seconds. We all saw it. We all didn't think it was possible. There was levels of McGregor magic that carried that through. Do you, hardened of hearts, Luke Thomas,

agree that there's something funky going on here, supernaturally, because this just doesn't make any freaking sense. Supernatural, no but um historically unusual yeah you're looking at a historic figure i mean i'm not even joking like francis and ghanu is a historic figure in combat sports and mixed martial arts and now boxing but bc we're going to dig into this in the second question i don't want to belabor the point anymore but i do think it's important when we talk about this fight to do this exercise here. You got beat up, as we mentioned, by the fans a little bit for scoring me too, but mostly you.

And so BC was like, all right, let me rewatch this one and see what scoring I can come up with. You have rewatched the fight. You have scored it round by round. I did as well. What's your score? How'd you score this fight? Yeah, I scored it the second time with the volume down. And I just want to preempt this by saying when we live scored during a fight and it's not the only thing we are focused on, right?

Like the judges, they're on Twitter. They're not have headsets on. They're watching the action, scoring each round, handing it in. I do want to say that we always reserve the right to watch it again with no sound on or whatever, because Luke, we were doing a live companion, trying to come up with jokes, analysis. I'm scoring the rounds for CBS Sports HQ. We're also watching it on a tiny screen on our computer. So Luke, yes, I did wonder after I got mountains of,

I wouldn't say hate, but just people going, BC, I expected more from you. You discounted Francis' chances from the beginning. And then even during the fight, you looked so in shock that it's pretty obvious you were protecting boxing's name by scoring all those rounds for Fury in almost downplaying what Francis was doing. So Luke, I did. I went back to the well, no sound. Let me look at this and let me start to try to give Francis every benefit of the doubt to win these rounds and what I've come up to was this Luke I changed one round and that's round two I give that now to Francis who opened up a cut with a left hook over Fury's forehead and seemed to show in that round higher level of activity and landed some big shots

but I still score this fight seven rounds to three. Yes. With the docked point from Fury for getting knocked down in round two. And I'm here to tell you folks that this is more of a boxing thing than it's anything else. It's not BC being biased. It's not being me being an idiot who can't score. Although I welcome any disagreements people have with the way I look at or way any of any of Luke and I look at certain fights and how we scored it. It's good debate interpretation. But this is a pretty clear seven. You're 96, 93, 96, 91, seven rounds to three and Fury loses a point. So here's where I want to explain this to folks, because I understandably get that if you're not a boxing fan regularly and you're casually scoring this fight what's your biggest takeaway that fury was supposed to win and dominate and that he didn't and that the only

fun rounds of note were largely three and eight in which in ghanu landed the bigger power shots knocked fury down i also gave uh in ghanu round three because around two excuse me for that left hook re-watchatching round 10, which I gave to Ngannou in real time, I actually took that back and gave it to Fury. But here's the larger explanation why. I understand that the only one that scored punches of any significance, it seemed, was Ngannou.

So why does he not win the fight overall? Because boxing scoring is in fact a different critical interpretation than MMA scoring. And it's based on the letter of the law criteria. Let me explain. In MMA, although it's a gray area and we debate it weekly, especially how much we're going to give in a fight that didn't have a lot of striking to like control and wrestling.

And that is a gray area and a big debate. But at the bottom, at the end of the day, the bottom line for scoring MMA, as far as we understand it on the elite level is damage trumps all. If you land one big punch that forces me to, you know, stagger and backpedal and your opponent took you down once, landed a couple of jabs and a couple of calf kicks, it almost doesn't matter what your opponent did because you scored in the criteria that matters most and above all else because you scored in the criteria that matters most and above all else. You did the only thing that mattered. You landed the big punch that staggered them. The old Max Kellerman, who would you rather be, right? An idea that I never fully

supported in boxing because it doesn't always tell the story. And I'm about to tell you why, but who would you rather be? Good Lord, you'd rather be Ngannou in this fight. But when there's not a knockdown, I'm sorry, a knockout, fights are scored on a 10-9 must system in boxing and the criteria is different. Yes, damage in the end does trump all when everything's even, right? But in boxing, you're looking at five points of criteria, almost even across the board of clean and effective punching, of defense, of ring generalship, which can matter in close fights. And that essentially means who's dictating the

terms of the fight. If I'm walking you down with an active jab and you're not throwing much in return, which is how most of the non-Inganu heavy rounds went, you're not winning the fight. In MMA, we would discount altogether you walking me down with an active jab if you're not hurting me and showing me damage, right? But in boxing, when the damage is relatively even, the other criterias get much more elevated. Defense, who's the guy pushing forward? Who's the one making his opponent fight a style or under terms that he's not comfortable with? All of that matters. So while I'm here to tell you that this was because of Ngannou's success,

a largely weird plotting and at times boring fight in and around the more dramatic larger moments, it's also not that different to Wilder Fury 1, which I think a lot of people got wrong in thinking that it should have been what the result was, which was a draw. There was some prominent boxing journalist ringside who I think just misinterpreted that the wrong way, overscored the effect Wilder was having when in reality, Wilder knocked down Fury in two separate rounds in that fight, but really didn't do much else in other rounds because Fury was the cleaner boxer. It's not a perfect comparison to what we saw in Fury and Ghanu, but it still tells kind of the same story. Yes,

the rounds that Ganu won, he won them by a lot. They were clear. They were the highlights of the fight. But boxing is the judges are taught to score each round as if it's its own fight, as if it's separate. There's no storyline that carries over from round to round. Each one is separate. And when you're looking at the five points of criteria in judging a boxing match and you are given much of those rounds that happen. Let me use round nine as a great example. So round eight was Ngannou's other really big round. They had toe to toe striking.

Ngannou got the better of it. Fury was wobbled a little bit. We go into round nine thinking, oh shit, what's going to happen here? Ngannou lands a two-punch combination, which ends with an overhand left to open round nine. Clean, big score. He does nothing the remainder of the two minutes and 50 seconds of that round.

Over the course of that round, Fury's jabbing to the body. He's jabbing up top. He's just the busier fighter, forcing Ngannou to cover up, forcing Ngannou to miss counter shots. It was a largely stupid, boring round, the body he's jabbing up top he's just the busier fighter forcing in gandu to cover up forcing in gandu to miss counter shots it was a largely stupid boring round but you can't just necessarily give in gandu the round because he landed two punches in the opening two seconds what fury did

the rest of the way was be the ring general control it land more shots land the cleaner shots it wasn't pretty but in boxing that's how it's scored. That's how you win. If you can't get a knockout, it comes down to a math equation. And Luke, when this comes down to a non-emotional math equation, Fury won this fight. I'm sorry. Fury won.

Fury won this fight. In real time, it's impossible when we're doing jokes and we're on the eighth row of Delta to score a fight accurately. I wasn't really trying i i you know whatever it felt like you know we knew francis was overperforming but what the mathematical score was i don't know so i re i rewatched i judged it i got 95 94 fury i got 95 94 fury but i also understand the 96 scorecard for fury or the 95 scorecard for francis there are some i think the the best rounds for Francis were the third round, the second round, the fourth round, and the eighth round.

Those are the ones that you could reasonably find a way to give him. Beyond that, it starts to get a little bit harder. But, you know, again, BC, the fact that Fury won the boxing contest, motherfucker, he should have. He's the champion, like he's supposed to. Well, look, would you agree on this one point that although we give Ngannou a lot of credit for showing us 10 round stamina on his pro debut against the best heavyweight in the world, maybe.

His ability to disarm Fury and lower his output, while it helped him get to the distance and it helped him stay competitive he didn't have enough output of his own to guarantee winning these these rounds and when you're the boxer who's backing up not throwing in a counter punching position but not throwing you can't be awarded rounds that's just what it is like it's just it's how this game works boxing judging is different than MMA judging. If you MMA judge it, I can understand, even on, you know, 10-9 or whatever. If you MMA judge it, I can understand why you think Francis won. I do.

I think it becomes much more Francis' fight if you judge it like an MMA fight. If you judge it like a boxing fight, that's not really the case. But, BC, to your point, these are total punches landed per round, right? I'm just going to go through the rounds here. I do want to spin it forward, but it's worth pointing out. These are the amount of punches total that Francis landed each round. Six, six, seven, eight, six, five, five, ten. That's round eight, which we gave to him.

Two in round nine, four in round ten. Now, Tyson Fury Fury in certain ways wasn't much better eleven seven one six nine nine five nine eight six neither of them had great output if you have low output it's your judging is going to get all different kinds of ways you just it doesn't work that well isn't that crazy I mentioned the two punches that Ngannou landed to open round nine and those were the only punches he landed the whole round so body language in close rounds matters and when you have rounds in which both guys almost every round did not go above 10 landed punches then sometimes the currency that the

judges are using to read is the body language. And the body language showed Fury with his jab hand extended, trying to get up and down and inside and out. And Ngannou just staying in the middle, cocked and ready. And look, he outlanded him, meaning Fury over Ngannou. I think in eight of the 12 rounds, one was a tie. And then the other three, Ngannou landed more. I think all three, he deserved to have won. But after that, it's going to be hard when you're landing in the single digits

and you're getting outlanded and outthrown. It is in boxing scoring standards. It's hard to win that separate from the whole romantic storyline that we all played into here. All right, fair enough. Let's spin it forward. By the way, I just got a text from Dewey Cooper. He wants to do an interview.

I asked him if he was interested. He said yes. Oh, God, let's get Dewey Cooper on the horn, please. Yeah, here here we go all right uh let's go to topic number two bc let's spin this one forward and i mean this question sincerely as well these these questions they sound a little odd but i don't really think they're odd anymore all right bc two-parter number one is francis and ganu a boxing or mma star second part was this night good or bad for boxing? But let's start with the first one. What is Francis, MMA or boxing star?

You know, you made sort of an argument that he could be the face of combat sports right now. I do think if I'm going to call him both, we are throwing a lot of eggs in his basket after one performance. Now, the performance was eye-opening. The performance was huge for Francis performance was eye-opening. The performance was huge for Francis' future financial gain or growth because you make more in one-off boxing events.

And if this is true, what we saw, the competitiveness that he showed against the best in the world in Fury, then the idea of him being on even more even terms against Joshua, Wilder, Ruiz, you know, Zhe Li Zhang, insert other heavyweights name, is huge now. So it wouldn't be wrong to say, well, both. He's a combat sports star because I do think that's true. One, because he is in a perfect spot of sort of free agent wiggleness where he's not a free agent in MMA.

He's yet to debut in PFL, but he purposely never signed with a boxing network or promoter, which gives him great, you know, ability to kind of bounce around and fight in any circumstance with any promoter he wants. But I do want to question calling him a boxing star. Now,

even with the performance he did against Fury until we kind of see whether he can do that again. Meaning, could this have been his absolute greatest night at the office mixed with the absolute worst night at the office for Fury? It's possible. But with that pedantic dead wrongness aside, Luke, if you want to say both, you're probably going to turn out to be right because I have to believe that one of the greatest benefactors of this result is boxing's heavyweight division, meaning now there's another

money player in there who you can make big fights, has this connection to Saudi Arabia, where there's a pipeline of cash coming through. Yeah, I guess you could kind of say he's a star of both right now, because I think the story of his life, of his human story is the best untold story in all of sports and really potentially in all of like crossover pop culture. Because if you talk about the kind of life stories that are perfect for a movie script, the one Francis had before Saturday was already the best untold story across all of mainstream sports. And now you added this boxing event to it yeah he's a star of whatever circle he wants to stand in luke after this yeah he well i mean here's the

thing we're gonna just talk about what might be next because that will tell you if he's an mma or boxing star and obviously bc as we said on saturday night he's always going to be an mma star no matter what because that's where he really made his name first but okay going forward what is he dude he's a boxing star and people being like this was a bad night for boxing I'm not so sure I'm really not I gotta tell you I think if the next fight that Francis has is Wilder or a Fury rematch or Joshua or anybody that anybody wants to see him against who's got a big name and it was unbelievable to watch on Saturday night someone interviewed Eddie Hearn and Eddie Hearn who's the head of matchroom boxing was like I can't believe what I'm about to say and then sort of

said what we had all said before and then said you know it'd be a great fight as Anthony Joshua versus Francis Ngannou that's Joshua's promoter right I mean Joshua's promoter is out there being like it'd be great if he fought Francis Ngannou like what what am I living in the twilight zone I know if those are the kind of fights that can get made there is no doubt in my mind he's a boxing star absolutely matter of fact this remember Jake Paul is chasing Canelo and we're all like I mean you, it's almost certainly never going to happen. Who would care? Whatever. No. Right now, Joshua, one of the biggest stars in the heavyweight division, former champ, his promoter is actively saying this would be great,

and they would probably make it if they got the opportunity to. And if that's really the reality that he has next, no doubt about it. You're adding mega fights, not only to the heavyweight division, of course, but you're adding it to the boxing side of the ledger i do think though that it does bruise boxing's image when they were constantly just you know stunting on mma fighters and the conditions under which they were and then here comes this guy along and really shakes it all up it shakes the foundation of how much is really possible from MMA fighting over to boxing, and I do think there was a leveling out there.

But do I think it's bad for the boxing business if Francis gets big fights over there, BC? Not at all. Not at all. No, it's not. It's great for the boxing business. Look, the reason why I just sort of made a comment, it could look like a dickish comment, but to say, look, let's kind of see this a second time, because if he proves in a second boxing fight that he is even close to the elite nature that he appeared against

fury then that tells me that he's good enough to fight every single big name heavyweight is going to make a ton of money and might even win a heavyweight championship which would not only make him a boxing star now but would actually question this, Luke, should he even bother with the PFL or going back to it? If at 37, he showed enough day one ability right there that like, look, there's going to be a lot of bot. Like why would Hearn be this excited? Because I think if you're looking at this fight, you are questioning what I just asked. Is this an aberration? Was this the perfect storm? What about if my guy, if I'm a promoter, goes in there against Francis,

but he's got perfect stamina? Can he rely on technique and defense to outbox this big man and we can all make a lot of money? I wonder if people are looking at that in AJ and her in the same way. But if Francis can prove that it's not an aberration, dude, he may have access to enough consistent funds.

Look at how rich Deontay Wilder is, by the way, right now, after like four or five pay-per-view fights. Heavyweight money is different. Fighting Fury is different. The potential of fighting Joshua, you know, Usyk, anyone in a stadium

going to China to fight Jaleh Zhang. Like, there's next-level money opportunities that I'm going to ask you the toughest question, Luke, not will Francis fight for PFL in 2024? Because I think knowing his character after making the headlines he did and fighting for the change that he did to become on the advisory board, the fighter representative, a chairman for PFL Africa, there's a lot at stake here for Francis. So I think he will. The question is should francis be going back to mma in the pfl after this fight or should he consider a full-time career change to cash in and maybe give himself a chance to literally fulfill

his dream of becoming boxing heavyweight champ i think he should go to i'm not gonna say explicitly the highest bidder because i don't know if that's exactly what i mean but like for example let's say he gets offered a fury rematch i don't imagine that will be likely right away fury has business with usic we'll talk about that in a minute but let's just say he does what's going to be the guarantee on a fight like that fuck the pay-per-view points like what's the guarantee 20 million 25 30 million some some absurd number right it's that would be really high yeah after this it's gonna be it's gonna be bonkers right it's gonna be huge and also keep that because we're talking about saudi arabia it's gonna be extra high right i mean it's gonna be stupidly high let's just say conservatively 25 million i don't think that's in any way crazy

right it would be foolish to turn that down just as a life choice that would not you mean you were Let's just say conservatively $25 million. I don't think that's in any way crazy. Right? It would be foolish to turn that down just as a life choice. You were competitive with him once. You got 10 rounds with him. They're going to give you absurd money. Yeah, take that fight. What the fuck? However, I will say something. And we're going to get into this more.

We have a whole question about the UFC angle to the story, which to me, BC, we did not get much to on Saturday. It's a fascinating side of the story. And I'm going to make this case later in the show. But if I'm Francis Ngannou, I think you come out and you say, listen, I'll fight Tyson Fury. But if the UFC wants to play ball and co-promote, I know what everyone's going to say. They're not going to camp remote. Wait, wait. 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. I participate in McDonald's in Canada. A fight with Jon Jones, co-promoted under the right conditions, I think would also yield Francis Ngannou extraordinary money, right? Maybe not

25 million, but a shit ton. So I would be in favor of him doing something like that. So what I'm going to say is you got to kind of weigh relevancy and what the buyout is on this one. Because part of this was, you know, getting the money while he can get it. This is his window, right? He has created an unbelievable window. Now is the time to go cash in I don't think that's exclusively boxing is my point BC although yeah it may end up going in that direction just based on the way things are so like have we seen Francis in his last MMA fight I don't think so BC but it's very possible well this is why i i i thought pfl should have a lot tried to lock him and maybe they did i don't know the details but tried to lock up francis's boxing

side to begin with under their contract and essentially say you want to box we'll give you a pfl pay-per-view main event boxing match against anybody we can make it right because that there is there was that possibility that if this fight went in some level of a positive way and it went in an overwhelmingly positive way, that it could create more business opportunities. I just wonder, Luke, given the character of who he is and all that went into him crawling through that Shawshank Tunnel of UFC,

you know, sunset claws through the knee injury to get this PFL deal, does he owe them right does he owe them an appearance in 2024 do you think he will fulfill that i think he will i think he will i don't think he owes anybody a goddamn thing i don't think i think the world uh i think the world owes him something i mean we talked about it before we're asking if he's a boxing or mma star this guy should have been the face of mma a long time ago and everyone says this dumb shit like oh he didn't sell that much on pay-per-view first of all you have no idea those numbers are not released the reporting on that is sketchy to put it mildly number two you're talking about being a perhaps

lesser name in a brand that does promote guys but promotes them under certain limits that was at odds with him publicly and privately for long stretches of time please be fucking serious that you got the idea that he was a maxima maximized talent what nonsense please quit saying this dumb shit to me like you think it's convincing it's not convincing he doesn't want to challenge himself luke that's why i left the ufc he wanted easier fights for bigger money but but yeah he wanted easier fights for bigger money he takes on the greatest arguably one of the greatest heavyweights we've ever seen certainly of this era and he kind of fucked him up you see it by the way did you see the face of fury the next day yeah his face was dude francis looking clean it looked like he

was in a fight he was he was in a fight francis looked like he just got you know got out of bed you mentioned something i said i said i put a pin in it let's undo it before we go to the tyson fury future because his stock took a fucking tumble but before we get there you were asking if it was supernatural i will say this dude let me just think about this for just a moment right francis is from this place in Cameroon. We talked about it before. Like, I'm not trying to make this anything other than what it is, but Cameroon was a country that was broken by other folks long before Francis ever got there.

So he grew up in this incredibly broken, heavily impoverished environment. And BC, I want to say something too, man. Like, you know, you see poverty. If you live from the United States or you're from like a Western country, you've seen poverty, but you got to go to places in like Latin America or Africa to see like real poverty.

You're talking, I'm talking hand to mouth poverty. Places where if you've ever seen children living homeless by themselves at a bus stop, that's poverty, right? If you've ever seen kids without diapers living in huts, rummaging through acres of trash for things to play with and or eat, that's poverty.

That's the kind of poverty, or at least relatively close, that someone like Francis comes through to say nothing of the political dimensions and the broken government and everything, gets out of that, crosses this incredible desert, has to go through all the series of jails and homelessness, and then finds this activity where you literally have to fight for a living,

shows promise at it, tries to come over here, has some success, has to reset, leave all that, comes here, wins the championship, battles the dominant promoter to win his contractual freedom to test his value, does that, and then overperforms in the biggest contest ever. Dude, this is not supposed to happen. Think about how much underdeveloped, undiscovered talent there are in all of the poorest places all over the world. People who you never get to see access to their physical gifts or their mental gifts or their creative gifts. You never get to see it because it's absolutely crushed under the weight of poverty. He comes out of this place and does this. It is impossible. It is impossible. Think about

how many millions of people have tried similar journeys to him and just because life is so insanely difficult they don't make it out of the jail they don't make it out of the desert they don't make it out of homelessness they don't make it out of the poverty and he did he has done something bc quite literally when i say this you may not see in your lifetime again yeah he is one of one in the rarest of ways and we are extremely lucky to be living in the francis and ganu timeline take it while you can i agree with you and and while i think there is a spiritual conversation linked with this he's a devout man of faith this is such a large incredible journey for him it's consistent throughout his life yes we'll never see it again but like man is he just a

unicorn to be able to he's a unicorn to do it to pull it off i mean it's like it's not just potentially a spiritual conversation look i think it's a it's a it's a conversation about self-confidence and it's a conversation about goals and like this man obviously has a drive to push through pain and perseverance and critical people push him you know the critics push back look he didn't even go two months of free agency without before everyone declared that he fumbled the bag right like it was just it was it's just crazy very few of us will ever have the resolve that this man has uncovered yet i think there's a really big life lesson to learn from him that believing in what's possible having hope in the face of of the exact opposite

there's power in that if you don't believe it then then i don't think you understand what we just watched with francis and gandu there is power in the words you speak to yourself the level of belief you hold in what's capable and what's possible or what's practical in your life. Any dream worth achieving is impractical. That's why it's so hard. That's why it takes dedication and will and focus and vision. It just so happens that Ngannou is a unicorn who has seemingly next level status in all these categories. Yet I hope a lot of people watching this wake up today and go, that hill that I deemed unclimbable, is it really? Luke, what could you do with your life if you had Ngannou-like levels of belief?

I got to tell you, I mean i i don't want to um i don't want to downplay that right i do believe that like there's a lot to be learned from watching a guy um navigate this in the way that he has and i think self-belief is absolutely critical that's to that story but bc there's a part of it that's not that's not really i think fully appreciated that it should be you know we often talk about this with people who don't speak English as their first language, right? Francis does speak English, but it's a little bit, you know, it's clearly not his dominant language, and it's clearly, you know, a bit of a work in progress for him. And, you know, that's a fine thing. That's okay. But I think if you've never heard someone speak and talk

in their native language, you don't really understand them. You really don't, especially if their second language is not as good as their first. You don't understand their personality. And I want to say it this way, BC, you know, he comes off as this big kind of, I'm not going to say oaf, but this physical presence who just kind of beats down the competition. He's like this big, strong guy. Yeah, he's a big, strong guy. He was 272 of raw muscle. But BC, think about just in the last couple of years, forget the 35 that came before that, which this would also apply to, but just in the last two, think about how many decisions day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to to month that Francis Ngannou had to get right

when he came to a fork in the road and he had a difficult, complex choice to figure out and he made his choice. Think about how many of those he had to get right to get here. Yes, it absolutely is a testament to the power of human will it is also a testament to how fucking smart francis and ghanu is that motherfucker is smart dude he didn't get here by accident it was meticulously planned down to small things bc uh the fumbling the bag thing he had this week or putting out the footage that didn't show him doing all that much to tampen down expectations and then the big picture stuff about wanting to get his freedom and how he was going to navigate that and how to do press and and when to release it and what he

was looking for dude he got all that shit right all that shit that by itself dude even if someone had all of life's advantages to get that many decisions day to day, week to week, month to month, big picture, small picture, to get all those right. Do you know how fucking smart you have to be? Don't let this dude speaking in a second language fool you at all. Francis Ngannou is clever as shit, and he outsmarted everybody along the way including you and me well definitely didn't have a chance to win but definitely dana white and the ufc and i know there's a separate

narrative there that of you know that dana has put out and that a lot of ufc fans have adopted and i'm not telling people they can't believe elements of that narrative but how smart was he to get out of that deal to take the chances he did to put himself in this position to get fury when this fight really never should have been scheduled with the usic fight right around the corner you're right him his team eric nixx hairline uh markel martin all the guys across the board you know snapchat randy his media his marketing guy and social media guy i mean these these guys have shown that they've stayed the course, stuck with their belief of how this was going to go,

and never wavered. Even when Dato wouldn't jump in and put the belt around his waist, Luke, after he'd be gone. Even when they've been shitting on his name, legacy, what he believes in, every step of the way. This guy held the same, kept the same energy. And by the way, even though him and his team are rightfully taking certain levels of their victory lap, they could be sticking it in everyone's face if they wanted to right now.

But instead, they're just like, I'm happy with just sit here and I kind of, I told you so. If they wanted to be petty with this, they could do a lot crazier things than they're doing. We'll get to the UFC angle in just a second. Last question before we do. Let's go to topic number three if we can. So we talked the fight and we talked Francis. We've got to have a conversation very quickly about Tyson Fury, BC.

Tyson Fury had a bad night. He had a bad night. He won the contest. Okay. It wasn't as big of a disaster as it could have been, but it was bad. Here's my question for you, or rather a statement. True or false? Tyson.

True or false? Tyson Fury's performance against Francis Ngannou did serious damage to his stock, and in particular about his stock as a potential all-time great heavyweight status that he was craving. True or false? Okay. Short term, yes. Absolutely. And it goes into a pattern of late,

which has surrounded sort of the character of Tyson Fury, or let's just say the character he portrays on camera. I have not enjoyed this calendar year when talking about a fighter I love in terms of his fight ability his backbone what he's you know some of the things he stands for mental health his comeback all of that yet I've had to spend this whole year being like even though I don't believe he doesn't want the Usyk fight his constant flip-flopping his constant questionable decision making the lean this year of putting sort of greed and certain things above other things yeah i've already felt like he's been playing with his reputation and the house

money he's built up a little bit too liberally of late so in the short term does this dud performance and a fight that like i mean what was our attitude to start dude i rewatch rewatched our reaction to that knockdown. And it looks like you're just like, oh my God. And it looks like I'm sitting there like shit in my pants, not understanding where to go next. That's because that's where it was. Because it was so absurdly, ridiculously shocking as if like, what am I missing here? Is Fury taking the money?

Did he not train at all? Like, what am I missing here? Is Fury taking the money? Did he not train at all? Like, what am I missing? Yes, this goes very negatively in the short term to Fury's reputation. And there was a lot of people who maybe haven't bought into the idea of what Fury's upper bound limits truly were in terms of all time ranking. What I mean by that is no. Fury's resume is not complete in terms of the amount of names you would have wanted him to face, especially in this Renaissance era. He's taken large amounts

of time off, either due to drug addiction and depression in that long period or just other unexplained, like most of this calendar year, unexplained absences, right? He's fought at times some really subpar competition and excessive comeback fights. But when he's at his best against Klitschko, three times against Wilder, against Dillian White, against the bigger contemporary names of his era. Dude, he's so far ahead of everybody not named Alexander Usyk that it's crazy that with the idea of him being 6'9 and a monster headache matchup for anybody historically in the mythical matchup idea, it started to get to the point where we're like, I don't know what his end game is. If he cleans out his error, which means if he beats Usyk to become undisputed champion, if he gets a fight, at least one against Joshua and beats him cleanly, it would start to

become hard to keep him out of some level of like top 10 heavyweight discussion for all of the things I just mentioned. But this past year of being flip, very flip flop on the mic in terms of what his intentions are mixed with this very red flag raising performance here where just was not in any form of shape. So did Ngannou succeed in tricking all of us with those videos? Damn right he did. He straight up tricked Fury and I don't think you can convince me otherwise. And for anyone who's like, well, how good is Fury really if he's able

to get tricked? Fury's always towed the line at the top level between having it together and not having it together. That's why he kind of has always echoed what Volkanovsky saying lately that like, I don't know who I am when I'm not fighting. Keep me busy, keep me on schedule and you'll see the best of me. And I do think that's true, but short term until he fixes it. Yeah, this is, this is serious damage to his reputation, serious damage to his historical longtime relevancy because of what I talked about. He does not have enough big names on his resume for the amount of time that he spent on top over this era, which is eight straight years,

right? But half of that, he's 400 pounds in at home. He hasn't caught up yet with the amount of names he should have. Could he, and could he fix this issue? Yes. Could he rematch Ngannou in shape and do all of the things we thought he would the first fight? I think he could. I don't know what this rematch looks like if Fury is completely dialed in, because a completely dialed in Fury is a historically great, scary heavyweight who always figures out ways to win. That guy wasn't there on Saturday in Saudi Arabia. And if that guy's not there again in a big fight, yeah, he's not going to be able to fulfill the large expectations he has. Right now, still fulfillable, but damage control needs to take order.

Let me ask another question because I don't have much to add because I feel like this is a boxing conversation. Here's what I saw on boxing Twitter on Saturday. They felt like not only did this make boxing look bad, but there was a real clear sense of, oh, it wasn't just that boxing had a bad night. It was no Tyson. You made boxing look bad tonight. It was almost like personal.

Yes. What am I picking up on there? You know what's part of that? And that people aren't talking about. It's fueled by this other thing. think because so many people watched this fight and didn't actually score it round by round by the rules that we talked about earlier that it becomes very easy to go how the hell did you rob this outsider is that the toll he has to pay in boxing this corrupt sport he's got to come in he clearly beats fury and then he gets robbed on the scorecards and even in ganu and i don't hold it against him is playing into that with his very nice way of saying, I won the fight.

The system didn't want me to win the fight and all of that. I think that is also playing in negatively because not only people are like, damn F Fury, he couldn't hold up his end of the bargain to protect the sports reputation. But on top of that, he needed the sports corrupt side to bail him out. Now, I fully disagree with that statement and think that even though he looked horrible and fought just about as bad, I do think Fury won this fight over 10 rounds. But I do think that's part of why people are like, man, you really fucked up and you might not be the guy that we thought you were.

And I think that's the most disappointing thing. And Luke, tell me if I'm wrong. That's the same emotional state I've been in this whole year when I've been screaming into this microphone that if you don't handle your business and make the Usyk fight while it's available, it's going to be held against you historically. So I think all of that matters right now when this happens and people are like, man, you let that guy, that cage fighter into our sandbox and you damn near almost lost. Like, Luke Luke tell me. Here's the best question I can ask of you. For everyone out there that actually does think.

Ngannou won and got robbed. And close enough fight that I'm not here to tell you. You know. To go jump off of. You know. I'm here to tell you. You saw what you saw. But I don't think it's right.

But Luke Thomas. All those people that saw that. Like. In their eyes. Is it F this sport? Because like. our guy got in there and he couldn't and he pulled it off and they still robbed him right i mean like that's still like the the feeling right there that is the feeling the feeling i think you're right there's a just a feeling however fair or unfair it is that fury not only looked like shit but partly that francis made him look

like shit uh but also that the architecture of boxing to the word you point i think it's exactly correct bailed him out it's like the only reason you fucking won is because you just got lucky by being the the house guy so to speak oh so if you thought if you thought in ghanu won luke here's my real question should you be pissed then about what i was pissed about during the build-up to the fight that if you're gonna do this fight do it with the title on the line so that it matters they chose not to they chose not to yeah no doubt about it fury would still be the champion given how it all played out but uh yes that would have made a big difference it was just really weird

it wasn't like they were like no you know what our first our guy our guy fury really tried everybody on twitter like you know one guy who i love i love ludabella ludabella was like who the fuck is this guy like everyone was like fury fought like shit he let us down like what the fuck was this like no one no one in boxing was sticking up for fury when that was over other than maybe the scorecard to the point that you've done that. But I didn't see anybody rally to Fury's defense inside the boxing world. And I think that speaks absolute volumes about how frustrated that community is

with their champion. That's what I picked up on. You're damn right. And that's been this whole calendar year. And it's a bad trend. And because Fury does play down to the levels competition if he f's around anymore and isn't in top shape and isn't carrying his end of the bargain that comes with the job he's going to suffer losses that he doesn't expect and he's not going to reach his full end Luke that's just the

reality of it this has to be a monster wake-up call for it we shall see we shall see all right let's get to this part of it bc topic number four let's talk about the ufc angle here and there's a lot to get to i've been waiting for this one all day and since yesterday i'll start with you though and ask this question bc and i'm going to ask it in an open-ended way. What does this entire episode show us about the UFC's decision to basically let Francis Ngannou go and then ultimately get a little bit scorched earth with him as well? What lesson should we infer from this entire episode with respect, excuse me, to the UFC?

I'm not sure everyone's ready to hear this, or maybe they think it's more ad nauseum of you two just hate Dana, but here's my biggest takeaway. Dana White in 2023 has now proved that for as great as he has been historically for this brand, that all of his success has now gotten in the way tangibly of what the company should be at after this great moment. Here's what I mean by that. Okay. This, when I tweeted out, you know, spoiler alert, it turns out Dana has fumbled the

bag. I get all, wow. I get a lot of people coming back at me, pro UFC going, Hey BC, first of all, STFU, you piece of crap. But second of all, how do you even know this pay-per-view would have done well or did do well? This is all about Saudi money. And number two, Dana's made far more money for this to actually be true and blah, blah, blah. Guys, I'm not actually talking about the financial realities of how Dana's decision to be petty with Francis. And please stop with the idea, well, Francis wanted more than they could ever give him on the on the you know side of unionization all that no francis wanted to to have a seat at the table and to open up the doors of conversations that they kicked back in by refusing to renegotiate with him okay number one but number two here dana is no

longer making the best decisions for the company in certain situations and it's playing into his ego in other areas because this isn't just the fact that we should have already had Jones versus in Ghana at Allegiant stadium, maybe a rematch at the damn sphere, or how about a trilogy in some open stadium, you know, Jerry world or something in front of 90,000 people. This isn't even the fact that in Ghana just tripled his potential star value

with that performance. How about this? What is Dana spent most of this calendar year, wasting his time, pouring money and attention into? Power slap. Something that's huge in your native country, power slap, which should be, should be a direct slap in the face of every MMA fighter since this thing so shamelessly promotes violent, defenseless violence, right? So shamelessly promotes head trauma and all these things we're trying to stay away from do you know what power slap should have been it should have been zufa

boxing which is really what dana's heart is based on an ex-boxing fan who teamed with the furtivas to take this troubled sport of mma and build it up basically following the model of what boxing's not doing to build up the success that we know today. But Dana's in the way of these decisions because Francis Ngannou has arguably the best damn story in not only all of combat sports, but all of sports right now. One fit for a movie script that wouldn't even be believable. And this should have been told through the UFC's lens, not just at the end of the day in terms of the actual film that inevitably will be made, but to the idea that they could have, there was a window where they could have made Zufa boxing happen.

This crossover. Paul brother led boxing bubble. Has included so many MMA stars who want to box. Francis could have been. The legit facing. The face of Zufa boxing. Not just to launch a successful promotion. That could benefit on aging UFC names.

Who still feel like they have something left in the tank. How about just the idea of what Francis just did, taking the current pound for pound title level establishment in boxing and flipping it upside down, suddenly making himself arguably the hottest free agent in all of boxing after this. Like this could have been a UFC slash Zufa boxing armed production they could have been the co-promoter for this fight do you realize how big Jones versus Ngannou could now be if the UFC would lay down their arms and actually consider the one thing they've never done on this level which is co-promote the one thing that they told Fedor in that secret meeting in the islands when they did finally sit down to try to make the fight with Couture they said okay we'll

make it and we'll give you the money but we ain't co-promoting with M1 and Vadami over there Luke the impossible happened somebody left the UFC system used the clout that they got there did something separate that's even bigger

and it could have been UFC's all along I know we can always quickly connor and say yeah well isn't francis 37 and he's got knee problems blah blah he just almost beat the heavyweight champion of the world in every single category except like output which is ultimately what lost him the fight you tell me what ufc is missing right here they've been openly shitting on the best person in combat sports, the best personal story I've seen maybe ever, short of people who have beaten cancer and gotten back in there,

or how many great human spirit stories have we seen of big upsets? Once in a while, none like this. They dropped the ball. They fumbled the bag. And your biggest question again is why? Because this man, Francis Ngannouano and his agent markel martin decided to not do what all the other managers and agents do which is take the 12 and 12 that the ufc asked them to and do all that because they actually tried to stand up with the leverage they had to try to make for a better fight game for the future

that's why we won't put the title around their waist when they score maybe the most improbable victory ever against gone on one knee. That's when we're just going to say to everyone out there that like, oh yeah, come on. Not only is this guy not want big fights, but we don't do those gimmick fights here. And oh, by the way, when you announce your fight, we're going to drop big UFC news on that same day

to try to drown you out rather than embrace you. Because Francis Ngannou isn't actually going to hold a grudge against UFC and Dana for life. That'll be like, F you, I'll never do business with you. He just wanted respect at the end of the day. He couldn't be bought with money. And because of that, there's actually a debate among MMA fans, whether like he ever did fumble a bag.

No, Francis Ngannou is the richest man in the world right now. And it has nothing to do with money. And if you're only going to keep score by finances, then Dana White and the UFC are the most successful thing we've ever seen in combat sports. Congratulations guys. But you missed right out right here. What is one of the greatest homegrown stories we've ever seen. it happened right through your own league and promotion and you're the one downplaying it dude just think about this they didn't just get a guy and let him let they didn't just let their heavyweight champion walk right they did they did do that but what they also did was they let a guy who is maybe the face of the sport, probably should have been the face of the sport, or certainly heavily promoted, much more than he ever was, getting sideways with him should have never happened.

They did all of that to a guy who had a historical moment in combat sports that not only, to BC's point, they could have been a part of, they let him go for free. For free. Can you believe that? They let him go for free. For free. Can you believe that? They let him go for free. Rather than doing a deal with him and getting a part of it, they rather said, we just let you go for free. Guys, what does that tell you? What does that tell you?

What tells you is what is most important. I mean, when you're willing to cut off your nose to spot your face that badly, where you're letting maybe a historically significant fighter go for free. You let him go for free. When you do that, that tells you one thing and one thing only, that what is most important to what they see as their not only current business, but the stability of the business, is to make sure that they're up here and that the fighters are down here now of course the bigger ones make money i'm not telling everyone's in the poorhouse that's not my point but the point is that they want to retain control and if they can't retain control over a guy they'd rather just not have him that's literally the choice

that they're making not just not have him it's let's let's brand him as a malcontent which is what they did by the way after he didn't win the title from Stipe on a two-month turnaround the first time. When they told everybody he's the next Mike Tyson and they lost the fight, they then ruined his name and shit on him for his performance against Lewis, saying that money's gone to his head, that he's not even training, which was a lie. Let's not forget, Luke, not just not put the belt around his waist. How about when they kept him inactive for as long as they could when he was willing to fight like every month on the build back to his second title shot?

How about when he wins the title back against Stipe in the rematch but can't turn around on three months' notice? They float an interim title out there. Dude, every single time they've been like, F you, you're not bigger than the brand. Tried to make him all about money, which he wasn't, and then tried to stuff Bolshul's fill of cash down his throat to get him to shut up when he was talking about the things that actually matter.

Yes, and then, by the way, after he left, the industry is controlled in such a way that they were able, not even consciously, I don't think, I don't think that they engineered it, but they were able then, by virtue of the messages that they were sending, essentially keeping everyone else in line. You heard the fans attacking him with this. And then these other promoters from BKFC and One coming out, this guy's pricing himself out.

No, no, no, no. He's pricing himself out of what you can afford. You can't afford him. He didn't price himself out of shit. But I want to point out something about what this control means. I have said this before earlier in the show and I'll say it again here one of the biggest fights the UFC can make tomorrow if they want I know that John's injured he has some kind of obligation probably with Stipe although there's probably contractually a way around that as well and of course that might

screw Stipe in the end but I just want to point out there's nothing preventing them from making a fight with John Jones and Francis Ngannou to co-promote nothing they could make that fight if they wanted to tomorrow and for now PFL is on the same network and I really want to have this point made and I hope everyone is listening when you tell me that the UFC has no incentive to co-promote with anyone else you are telling me that you have lost the fucking plot. Guys, of course, look at boxing where people do have to co-promote, but they don't really want to, right? It is true that a promoter, any promoter, and their natural instinct is going to be, we want to have our guys first. We don't want to cross over unless we really kind of have to, or there's a big enough

win or something like that. And those fights do get made, especially in 2023, you saw a bunch of them get made. But of course, there is a lot of friction to get that done. It's not an easy process, even in a sport like boxing, which relatively speaking, does it much more than you see ever in MMA, which is basically at the top, not at all. But they don't like it. They do it, but they don't like it. Okay, fair enough. I understand that. But they still have to do it to get the biggest fights made. They still ultimately agree. If what you are telling me confidently as like a sign of strength and a good thing is that one firm has such dominant control that they don't ever have to do that. And in fact, by not doing that they're gonna punt on some of the biggest fights

that literally can be made in the sports fucking history what are you doing as a fan cheerleading that you are acknowledging that the system is utterly broken if we have gone that far down the rabbit hole where a firm literally does not need to ever work with anyone else that's not good that's not how it should be going that's not at all what you want and the proof is in the pudding because literally the biggest heavyweight fight that can be made and i'm sorry john jones now versus francis and ganu is much bigger than john jones versus steve miyoshits please be 10 times bigger 10 times bigger they're literally not going to make that fight just to spite anyone i don't want to make this point to bc if i may which is people be like oh well it would blow up the pfl's profile guys probably it

would a little bit right this would be a one-off blockbuster event. There'd be a shitload of money made. UFC would, like, make money. Like, I'm not saying they'd do this and they don't get anything in reward. They would be rewarded handsomely here, no doubt about it. I want to be clear.

If PFL and UFC do a deal, charge $100 for that. I'll pay it. I don't care at all. I will happily pay that to get that kind of a fight. But the point I want to make here is there is nothing the PFL could do to compete with UFC. It's not possible. The fighter contracts control and retain UFC talent long enough for them to not really ever

to be able to test the kind of free agency that you saw Francis Ngannou have to have the kind of overlap to legitimize the full roster of PFL, which is what you would need. Francis is not going to be around forever. So it doesn't even matter how successful in a UFC and PFL crossover event, which already is going to be profitable for UFC. It would blow up PFL a little bit. Never in any kind of way that would ever challenge them in the marketplace. It's literally not possible. Again, going back to this uneven sense of how the market is controlled.

And BC, last thing, even if you're a UFC fan, you're like, I kind of like how much control they have for whatever reason. Surely it's okay for you to say, I still want to see UFC and PFL work together. BC, would the UFC fans be mad at the UFC for making a Jon Jones, Francis Ngannou fight co-promotion with PFL? Would they reject it? And so it shows you all of this shit about why they can't do it.

All you're telling me is why the market is broken and why you have Stockholm Syndrome. You're not telling me one time what is best for mma i want exactly what is best for mma when all when everyone defends the ufc's decision making lately on stuff and says well i'd just rather have mma every week and you know i trust the brand it doesn't matter who's fighting all that stuff you're you're playing a part in the watering down of the sport you love like let's look at this calendar year in which ufc has had an unavoidable and unexplainable dip in matchmaking strength across

the board weaker cards unless it's in abu dhabi not a big rush to replace with with big price names to save the day this is the same year that boxing has had an incredible, maybe the best year in decades where different networks are actually working together. And this is also the same year where a competitor is rising. And I'm not saying PFL is going to, you know, win this battle or take a big chunk off of UFC. But UFC, despite being firmly in the number one chair

with the most amount of money they've ever seen coming in and finding more ways each day, seemingly create new you know financial openings putting people's names on the octagon like just raising ticket prices to what we've never seen before yet openly allowing competition literally in your own backyard on espn by taking your eye off the ball and saying you know what francis we don't need you and if PFL picks you up and makes you the face of their pay-per-view launch, we don't really need you. We don't consider that a threat. But boxing is also your competitor in the pay-per-view market. And you've sort of taken your foot off the gas to allow them to have the best year ever.

At what point, Luke, does Dana's decision-making, when it's in like bitterness and, and grudge holding, does that get in the way of business? Because say what you will about Vince McMahon. And I know we're getting a lot of Vince and Dana comparison lately because both have been quoted talking about their checkered history. And now obviously they're aligned with TKO, but the number one thing you can say about Vince McMahon through all his ridiculous decision-making and all of that

is he always does good business I look you could name the one person throughout the history of like where you're like oh that person will never come back and take the WWE money and make up and yet whether it's Bret Hart whether it's Bruno Sammartino Hulk Hogan like anyone who Ultimate Warrior who's ever been so far on the outs in real life of that company. Inevitably, Vince opens up the door when the fan interest is big enough for them to come back, does big business, and everybody goes away happy. Is Dana going to continue to stand in the way of business on the level that even Vince McMahon knew to get out of the way of when you're allowing all of your competitors to have their best years ever. And really at this moment, the most talked about MMA star who just got to that level by what he did in the boxing ring is also one half of the best fight you can make in MMA and you're actively avoiding trying to

make it. So here's my question to you, Luke. We have seen before that the Disney and ESPN output deal means so much to the UFC's bottom line that they have, one, gone to extreme lengths throughout COVID to put cards on no matter what to fulfill the minimum requirement of that $750 million annual deal. Two, pushed so hard and aggressively on the Taichi Palace situation before MMA was sanctioned mid-COVID in every state with state commissions and tried to launch the show on Native American ground that actually got to the point of the head of Disney calling up UFC to stand down. What else in your

mind would Ngannou have to accomplish before that same head of Disney calls up Dana and goes, let me get this straight. You and the PFL both have contracts with us and we could make the biggest MMA pay-per-view since Conor versus Habib and maybe one of the biggest of all time and we're not going to do it. Tell me again why? Does that phone call happen now or do we need to see Nganou go in there and beat Deontay Wilder or look good in a rematch with Fury?

What has to, how much bigger does Nganou have to get before even Disney's like, hey, hold on. This is our money here. Why are we not doing this? Well, this is what I try to warn people again. I mean, it's just amazing to me that we see MMA fans cheerleading warped outcomes from a massively warped market and treating that like that's the normal outcome for things yeah hey these people don't have any incentive to co-promote because they control so much of the industry they don't need to give any of it back or work with any other partner uh at all including punting on some of the biggest fights that could

ever be made as a consequence to the point they're still going to, I mean, listen, they're still going to do ostensibly John Jones versus Stipe. I'm not high on that fight. You like it. Most people seem to like it. I acknowledge it's not a bad fight. It's not a bad fight, but it's nothing compared to Jones versus Francis. It's not even close in terms of how competitive and interesting and frankly, now how big it is. Francis is a much bigger star than steep. And they're just going to punt on this in all likelihood, uh,

because they can, cause they can give you a lesser version of that with much more consistency. They can meet all of Disney's demands, I suspect, and never have to feel it. And people's reaction is, Oh, that all of Disney's demands, I suspect, and never have to feel it. And people's reaction is, oh, that must be because they're great. Yes, there are many great things about the UFC, but their ability to do that is not a great feature about them. That's a warning sign about how lopsided the market is and how you don't get the best out of the market

when it is that way. You are literally not going to get the biggest heavyweight fight they could arguably ever make. That's not even an exaggeration because they don't have to because of how warped everything has become. Noodle that for a second before you begin to lecture anybody about how great that situation is. Yeah, normally it's like, well, you can have the stance of, I don't care about fighter pay.

I really don't care about the fighters. I care about watching fights. So if that's getting in the way of watching fights i'll get upset this is literally getting in the way of you watching the fights that you deserve and would want and that's the thing um i did have a spin-off point here luke but uh you know i probably forgot it but it was probably a really good one too all right with that in mind though you do have some winners and you have some losers so let's go to topic number five BC I'm curious to see this now remember we said that Francis not winning but doing really well was a earthquake I mean this truly is going to reshape the dynamics frankly of both sports to

some degree by virtue of what he has accomplished here so BC one of the biggest winners is Francis one of the biggest losers might Francis. One of the biggest losers might just be Oleksandr Usyk. I don't know how you want to handle this. Go winners first, losers first, or vice versa. But give me the movers and shakers. Who experienced a stock rise, a stock drop, and why? Why don't I, I'll start off here with the biggest losers and I'll count them down. This coincides with a story I'm writing today on CBSSports.com, but I do want to get your reaction, Luke, to how I frame this. Look, if we can throw to the multimedia here my five biggest losers from Fury and Gano. Number five, Luke, to me it's Jon Jones, and it's mostly from an MMA standpoint.

Every all-time great needs another equal sort of all-time great to push them to the next level and become their Huckleberry historically. Jones had that at light heavyweight with Daniel Cormier. He should have that right now with Francis Ngannou to the tune of like a three-fight series. The point I was going to make before that I forgot, I want to say it now, Luke, there's going to be an arms race to see who debuts at the Sphere in Las Vegas from a fight standpoint. If you saw the production value in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, the big show they had, we've never seen anything like that, but they had screens behind it that were very similar to the sphere. Someone's going to go in there and kick that door in.

Oscar De La Hoya wants it to be Ryan Garcia versus Teofimo, by the way. Jon Jones versus Ngannou is the only fight under the UFC that actually fits this description perfectly of what's the one fight that should open a stupidly ridiculous setup like that dude isn't it jones and gano again they could still make it but i understand your point about why john might go on this list for the reasons and he sat out you know again whether they were personal reasons or not he did sit out a long stretch of in ghanous but just three years of participation this is also on you john there are blood there some blood on your hands, even though you had to wait

until Ngannou left before the UFC would offer you the type of money that would make moving up to heavyweight make sense. But number four, Luke, this is the central focus of this list. Alexander Usyk is a big loser here. They're not going to do this fight, Usyk versus Fury for all four belts, the first four-belt undisputed championship fight in heavyweight history between two unbeaten all-time great champions on December 23rd, because Fury has swelling below his left eye, a cut on his forehead, and he got knocked down and, you know, possibly even concussed slightly from those shots. Frank Warren, the co-promoter of Fury, has said they are going to look to push that. Even Usyk said, hey, look, you got to push that to February, you know, January, February, whatever.

I'll be ready. I'm there. But Luke, he loses big here because him versus Fury, you could make the argument is like the biggest fight in boxing. Like, I mean, is it bigger than Spence Crawford or Mayweather Pacquiao? Not in terms of maybe commercially. It's probably bigger than Spence Crawford commercially, but it's, dude, it's so historic and necessary

and should be this thing, this thing that we're, you know, building toward for almost, you know, six months to a year. And instead, do you know what the conversations will be from now until when that fight happens? Did Ngannou really win? Should Ngannou be in this fight?

Why wasn't the title at stake the first time? And is Fury the same fighter as the old and washed? All that does is take away from Usyk what this fight is worth, what it might do on pay-per-view. And what has Usyk done, Luke? Nothing but become undisputed cruiserweight champion, then move up, beat Anthony Joshua twice,

and be on the verge of becoming undisputed heavyweight champion. So this really sucks from a boxing standpoint for him. You'd have to say that. beat Anthony Joshua twice and be on the verge of becoming undisputed heavyweight champion so this really sucks from a boxing standpoint for him you'd have to say that one of the biggest losers of the night no question about it I do think there's a way he can recover a little bit from it but didn't help his cause or case or situation at all all right number three is boxing in general it's more from what we talked, whatever's left of this MMA versus boxing debate. It's just a bad night for the sport

when a novice can walk in and basically almost beat your best guy. Never a good point, no matter how much of a unicorn that novice is. Number two, Luke, Fury's reputation. We talked about it. It's repairable, but right now, when you mix with how he's avoided Usyk this year

in order to fit this fight in, boy, does he look really bad. But Luke, answer me this. Does anyone look worse than Dana White? Is this just you and I being petty or are we just spitting facts right here that it can't be a happy mood around the endeavor in UFC offices on Monday morning after this exact event? I will be very curious to see what they have to say because they did everything to let you know that it was a disaster that he was doing this and that he was doing this for all the wrong reasons and for all the ways that would cause him to fail. And literally none of it has been true.

I don't know what they're going to say, but certainly to also to your point, Fury's reputation, massive hit, massive. All right. So number one, there is Dana White,

whether you like that or not let's go quickly to our top five who who's the biggest winners here luke and this can be arguable but number five i'm gonna go with the sport of mma but especially the pfl i think francis will fight in some form in the smart cage next year to kick off their pay-per-view division i'm not sure the level of opponent or what they're going to get out of that but pfl has now one of the hottest brands in all of combat sports along with PFL has now one of the hottest brands in all of combat sports, along with Jake Paul, one of the hottest brands of all in combat sports. Will it work? I don't know, but there's a big win for the sport in general, how this went down.

No question about it. Luke, I want to throw a number for Markel Martin there, the former CAA agent slash manager of Francis, where things got so toxic in the buildup to the Cyril Ghosn fight that Francis had to publicly distance himself from Martin because he was the only manager apparently that was challenging the UFC to get a you know better financial outcome for their fighter and I'm not and I don't want to forget those racist and hateful texts he received from a Las Vegas number during fight week there in Francis's final UFC fight. Maybe this is a representation of Francis's entire team, but they come out looking at like geniuses after this. And I hope they get the respect they deserve. Unbelievable. Again,

we were talking about how smart Francis is, but his team is smart too. They helped guide him. Think about how many times they've been vindicated over and over and over and over again. A bunch of smart guys on that team. Yeah. Number three, Luke, how about Ngannou's unborn grandchildren? We are talking about generational wealth here. We're talking about, we talked about him securing the bag one time. No, this opens the door probably for three to four more like major heavyweight boxing matches, probably pay-per-view main events.

You add in the Saudi Arabia connection, he could become the face of that. That's a big win for Francis's finances and his extended family going back to everyone he's associated with. But number two, Luke, we didn't mention enough of this. Saudi Arabia wins big. We got to see, and we questioned you and I all the crazy fanfare that they rolled out for this one fight as the sort of crown jewel of Riyadh season they flew out every ex-fighter who mattered they got Cristiano Ronaldo Eminem Kanye I mean it was you know Vince McMahon ringside and they put on a show that we found out was put together by people who have experience doing super bowl halftimes and olympic opening ceremonies and it was to that level i mean that

would have been a sellout vegas show with the floor opening and the ring rising they chose this fight to be their billboard to the rest of the combat sports that we've been here before but if we put all of our resources into it like we did here this is a show unlike anything you've ever seen luke they got the right fight and the right post fight buzz to really further this discussion yeah it is uh unfortunate considering that they have done nothing but make a life a living hell even worse over the years as they've undergone this um sports washing tour but it's working it is working there's no doubt they have the boxing heavyweight division on lockdown right now they do they do they do again fury and usic is going to be right back there and i'm sure that

won't be the only one in 2024 so yeah all right making moves number one is what i think is most important here the biggest winner is irrational self-belief aka the vibes luke sometimes you can it seems win an event he didn't win the fight but he won the night he won the event he won the war with your straight up vibes if you've ever believed in yourself to the level where you are a crazy person and you're constructing this wooden arc two by two with every animal luke so that god can flush off all the eagle people evil people down the drain i'm sure that man was looked at as irrational i'm gonna start believing irrationally about things in my life luke can i get jacked can i get abs wait you're gonna start being irrational

dude you've been believing irrational shit since the day I met you. You know what? You want to know why? Because I've lived a life of irrational miracles breaking out left and right around me, Luke. And it's about time even I wake up and realize that. Listen, you and I, you and I, this is the one thing I will say for you and I. You and I, we're not even a pimple on the ass of a guy like Francis Ngannou, right? We're just not.

Very ordinary people. But it's also true, we wouldn't be able to have a show like this if we listened to everyone who told us we were never going to amount to shit. Yeah. Right? We would not.

We would not. I cannot tell you how many people have told me I was never going to amount to anything. And if you just let them have their day, then they'll be right. But you don't have to let them have their day you can do things so yeah when i have my francis moment coming up in my life and career luke because i know i mean you know i'm gonna be as irrational as i've ever been times 10 after this like he's inspired the shit francis you have inspired the living shit out of me i want

you to know that i am going to celebrate by posing exactly like Ngannou did in that Demetrius Johnson picture, Luke, in those white linen pants when he brought Rocco Soffredi with him and stuffed him in his pocket. That's the way I'm going to celebrate to the world, Luke. Yeah, Captain Frozen Steak in the dungeon.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. BC, very briefly, we've had a long show. I just want to touch on it very quickly. You mentioned that the Saudis were a big winner. I agree. We've kind of been over the sports-washing angle a lot. I don't want to belabor the point.

I just want to remind folks that there is clear reporting that as they do more of these enormous events, that they are actually making the rights of people harder and harder and harder and harder to come by. They're actually tamping down on it. I guess most people don't care. I understand. I will say this, though.

On the production side, it was big. It was grand. It was garish. I noticed a lot of complaints. Not just the pacing, but it was like, as basic as it was, the pacing was terrible. But what I wanted to say was, as high level as the production was,

I there, you can reach a point where there's too much production. Yeah. They were trying to make everything so big. It took forever. Look, I didn't need a 90 minute halftime multimedia show. Was it impressive?

Yes. But like, I didn't need all the, the same thing about Triller. If you can get Metallica, that's cool, but I don't need them, Luke.

I don't need Bieber. I need fights. Okay, please. All right. Yeah. Um, that's cool, but I don't need them, Luke. I don't need Bieber. I need fights, okay? Please. We'll have more of this discussion on every angle, but that's our top five right there. BC, I think that's the longest top five we've ever had. With that in mind, it's time for the

donks to ask us questions. It's time for DMs from donks. Yeah, hee-haw. Alright. Okay, first up bc from incredible jkl i guess jk rowling 19 what do y'all think about the wbc chairman who was the charlotte city's talking about mauricio sulamon saying that francis will be placed in the top 10 in the rankings bc what do you think i mean it's crazy because 48 hours before the fight we were assured it was an exhibition right dude by the way i think public perception forced them

to make this a real fight that's my opinion i think they were hoping it was could be an exhibition the whole way yeah but it was a real fight and francis really knocked fury down and forced them to hang on to win a debatable decision. If this was Jake Paul for defeating Tommy Fury, let's say he had, and this was like suddenly he's a top 10 cruiserweight, yeah, I'd tell you this is the type of bullshit that we deal with in boxing. But I kind of want to see if what Francis just did

is for real, Luke, and if it is for real, this is somehow not ridiculous in my eyes. If Francis is as good of a heavyweight boxer as he showed on Saturday, and this wasn't just Fury shit his pants and then covered up and barely hung on. Like, if he really is this good, he might be. I'll say this, BC. Might be. Mauricio Suleiman is an opportunist.

Yes. He's an opportunist. So I can understand the skepticism. But based on what subsequent performances might tell us, it may not be that crazy. It may not be that crazy to put him there. I think it's very different from Jake Paul fucking getting ranked from fighting Tommy Fury.

All right, number two, BC. Kickboxer Dad asks, does Fury and Ganu legitimize MMA fighters from striking backgrounds more or hurt boxing's reputation more? I think a little bit more the former than the latter, BC. Yeah, here's what's going to happen. It's going to create copycats.

It's going to create elite MMA guys who are like, you know what, I'm not insert this prior MMA person who took a big paycheck, but then, like even Conor. Conor outperformed our expectations, but you know, hasn't transitioned into full-time boxing after that for a reason. I think it's going to lead to people thinking they can recreate this Luke. And for now,

at least I think they're going to be sorely misled because I do think this was a unicorn performance by a unicorn of a man who has a unicorn of a Corey Luke Luke I think but uh that's neither here nor there although it's probably there it's probably there to be fair um but I do think over time MMA striking is going to catch up yes it will and again at heavyweight I think a lot of this gets it's a different thing than I mean mean, again, he's probably going to go to 154, but who's the champion at 147? It's Bud Crawford. Dude, I love Max.

I love Pitbull. I love Volkanovski. They ain't beating Bud Crawford, bro. And again, you could say, what about Errol Spence? They ain't beating Errol Spence. I bet my fucking life on that. It's just not the same ballgame. Heavyweight's different.

It's different. Heavyweight's different. Nevertheless, again, not shitting on Francis. Francis did the impossible. All right, BC. different heavyweight's different uh nevertheless again not shitting on francis francis did the impossible all right bc uh from javier lc7 or javier dlc7 what do you think of dana constantly saying kamaru is the best welterweight ever totally erasing gsp and hughes's achievements i don't know where this question comes from but kamaru is definitely better than hughes i don't think that's really all that debatable i saw both of of their careers. Kamaru's better, but he's not better than GSP.

Yeah, and the problem here is that Dana will say these things very matter-of-fact. He said that about Usman to help promote the fight against Hamzat and also afterwards to say really nice things about Usman and why he can get any fight he wants next because they're just so happy that he came in and saved the day. But yeah, Luke, he's one of the all-time greats usman is no question gsp is on another level gsp is he is and that's not disrespectful they probably should say that more often but you know luke they said the other day that that other guy was the first cameroonian

fighter in ufc history they were wrong about that right i remember that i forget who it was but yes they did say that. Remember that? That's crazy. It's like, yeah, I wonder why the industry has a negative impression of him and maybe weren't as enthusiastic about his rise as they otherwise could have been. Guys, I just can't figure it out. Yeah.

I was talking to someone on Twitter about this, being like, you think people, like, organically came to that impression? You think you just woke up one day and, like, really considered, should I like or not like Francis Ngannou? Or, like most people, are you just receptive to what the machine of the industry spits out? I mean, please be fucking serious, people. All right, number four.

I work for my machine. DJ Roxwells. Whose life story would make the less less or I should say the least believable Hollywood movie plot or yeah less believable I guess in this case Fury or Inganu dude Inganu's story makes Furies look ordinary

Fury does have a great story when you consider born one pound premature like all that is incredible to grow to be kind of six foot nine probably more six and a half but yeah yeah i mean they're they're two incredible stories that will be told and should be but i again give me a sports story over the over over this modern history that's on the level of this a sports story so yeah i mean a sports story would just be bo jackson you know bo jackson to me watching him play the way he played.

I've never seen a better athlete than Bo Jackson. Pure athlete, I've never seen one. He's the best athlete I've ever seen. But shit, dude. I mean, the other part, too, we didn't even talk about, BC, is not just all the adversity that Francis got, but athletically the late start. You know,

25 years old. You didn't, he didn't get to start training in the gym as a teen. Could you imagine how fucking good he'd be? It's just, it's wild to imagine, you know? All right.

Last but not least BC from a favorite of the show. Tell them to keep Papa. Good question here. Actually favorite scary movie. What do you think BC favorite favorite scary i mean we've done this a lot each halloween i always tell you that i think saw one is my outside of the original halloween which is a sort of in its own category because of the you know the barriers that changed and created the new landscape for a different kind of subtle horror built upon suspense rather than gore but i will say saw one luke is is my favorite scary movie

of all time i still think for as many times as they've had sequels which have watered down the product over time that first one's so freaking brilliant okay love it brilliance a strong word but i think i enjoyed it i enjoyed it uh for me i think i've said this before as well i'll hear my oh hurt myself for a second i was gonna say the to say, what's the movie where the lady saws her own head off with piano wire? That's a spoiler alert, Luke. I haven't seen that one. Hereditary, I think it's called. Hereditary.

I don't get scared with the really scary movies, BC. Yeah. Like, I saw that new scary movie, Talk to Me. It was pretty good. But I don't get scared. I get, like, like disturbed you know what i mean like oh my god like i get a little bit disturbed and when this lady is sawing her own head off with piano wire you're like oh right that's real bad that i didn't sleep well that

night hereditary i'm sure there's way deeper and better answers but i don't really chase this genre anymore you know i did at certain times in my life luke now more or less okay i've never seen the blair witch project because i was always doing marine corps duty during the summers when the big movies came out like from the like the late 90s to the middle 2000s so any big blockbuster movie in the summer i just always missed those so i've never seen blair i love that i love the brilliant i still think what the how they marketed that movie and how they sort of tricked people into thinking it was real and all that was just brilliant for 1997 or whenever it was. I mean, I saw them in theater three separate times because I bought so into like the, what they were trying to accomplish as a film, right?

Not necessarily, some people thought like it was lame once they watched the whole thing and it wasn't as scary as, you know, there's a lot of threats of being scared, but then you don't get a lot of payoff. But I think that was the brilliance of it luke that was also another brilliant scary movie but i mean what do you think about like the silence of the lambs which was kind of a horror movie but also an academy award winner that's busy that's also like a thriller yeah it's a little bit different you know okay i'm with all right all right bc time for your feces yeah what a show we're giving the people today. Probably the best two and a half hours of their week,

but still time to scour the globe on the internet for the highs and lows, the good, the bad, the ugly, and in between in combat sports and beyond. We call this BC's Feces, or have you seen this shit? Thank you. Have you? No. No?

No? Oh, God. Luke, let's go over to Riyadh for all things Fury and Ganu. This was the round six MMA lead elbow that Tyson Fury landed on in Ganu. And Luke, I do think he kind of did this out of frustration, but on purpose. Your thoughts? Yeah, I think so as well. I think he did of did this out of frustration but on purpose your thoughts yeah i think so as well i think he did it on purpose you see christian because look francis doesn't move his head he keeps his head right on the line so a lot of people say how did he get away with it referee

michael griffin just didn't see it probably because francis's arm was up like this in the in griffin's on this side of his guard but But, yeah, that should have been docked. No doubt about it. It did look intentional, too. But Fury's been accused of before, Luke. Remember the loose gloves against Wilder? He has been accused of. Yeah, when he looked like he was trying to flick a booger.

Yeah. Here is Usyk, who was seated ringside. This is his reaction to the big knockdown in round three. Yeah, him and all of us, Luke. Why? Yeah, you know what? I'm not like, bro, me too. Yeah.

He's like a lot of money going down the drain here. I'm not even mad at him. It's like us too, bro. We were like, what? You know, us too. Let's go to round 10 luke this was the superman punch attempt from francis which got the mma world smiling it did not connect though it did not connect didn't even get close but uh shouts to francis man he made us look he made us

look good for once god bless him and now this felt awkward to do after fury basically put an aldana and gone sized egg in the center of the ring but they did do the face-off afterwards it won't be december 23rd but here's your four bell undisputed championship look dude fury looks guilty look let's be fair they canceled the post-fight press conference they canceled it that tells you how embarrassing this result was and honestly i tell you what, like the media that both guys did the next day, as we said before, Fury looking much worse.

But beyond that, Fury, you know, he didn't talk shit. He didn't call anyone a dosser or a sausage or any of that shit. He was like, yeah, fair play to him. You know, he did kind of say, well, except for the one punch that knocked me down, he didn't get a whole lot else. But that's belied by the fact that his face looks like some lady

hit him in the face with a frying pan. Dude, he ran out of options. He ran out of options against Francis Ngannou in his pro boxing debut. He did. It's impossible to explain correctly. It's just not supposed to happen. If Francis had better cardio, and by the way, he showed incredible cardio to go 10 rounds in his pro debut against tyson fury but if francis had a little bit better cardio

luke he probably wins this fight pretty easily because he would have flicked the jab more he would have pushed the pace a little more probably went to the body right like francis has obviously got to be excited about his future prospects of boxing but i think he also can raise his game a lot but that's not the question i want to ask you after that face-off. Do you feel like it's more likely when we do get Fury Usyk that Fury continues a getting older slide that's been subtle or that he gets in top shape and brings it against Usyk like we always thought he would?

Dude, I thought he was going to beat Usyk. I don't even know anymore. I don't even know anymore. I don't even know anymore. I'm telling you, it's not like I think he's a bum or something or that his wins are fraudulent. I'm not going through his wiki being like, oh, that was crap. That was crap. I don't mean that. But who he is and what he is able to muster against Usyk, I don't know anymore.

I really don't. Let's go to this undercard. There were moments. So David Adelaide, he got stopped against Fabio Wardley, but he was so upset about the finish. Look what he does to the ref right here. You're going to get a big fine for that. Body shot. Ref took it nicely.

He did. By the way, I don't even know what the hell commission they're using in Saudi Arabia. I think they used the British Board of Boxing Control. I think they did. All right. Be careful what you ask for. Simon Keene calling former world champion Joseph Parker forward.

He got what he asked for, Luke. Oh, he ducked right into it. Yeah. Oh, that was sick. You big white bag of bones. don't do that shit against a former champion look at that morning combo logo all over the ring you gotta love that battle of the baddest so luke remember this name aren't arslan beck makhmadov arslan beck masmad makhmadov he's a 34 year old from russia he's 18 and 0 with 17 ko's dude this highlight here

stands out for a couple reasons he's all business all destruction all the time i don't know if he's got cardio i don't know much about him but he put it on this fella here wow dude but he's russian guys with the beards man does he have the chin strap beard he's got the full joint oh my god yeah yeah yeah wave that shit yeah he goes by the nickname the beast and i will now be watching every one of his fights yeah you got me interested another hammer to put in the old bag there uh there was so much real recognizing real in saudi luke since they flew in every famous person ever, including Cristiano Ronaldo, as they say in Brazil, meeting up with Izzy Adesanya. Your thoughts?

There they are. Two sporting legends, one with 600 million followers, and BC thinks he's not very popular. BC looks at this and is like, Izzy is way more popular than Ronaldo. Way more. Yeah. Luke luke this next picture i got two words for you no spears oh wait sorry that was the wrong pick no just kidding yeah that's the right pick luke all all it's an all-white affair can you i mean between these two here's a serious question between these two have they done less than or more than drugs uh of uh what's his face from the rolling stones um uh keith richards the guitarist what the fuck's his name keith richards keith richards yes keith richards have they done more or less drugs than keith once said

there's no more drugs left you already did them all we have to wait for you to die and smoke your ashes um i think they might find blood in his drug stream. Yeah, there's no question. Let's keep this going here, Luke. Manny Pacquiao's got a great idea for a fight. Not sure if you've ever heard this idea before. Let's listen. Any possibility that you would go back in the ring and fight someone like a Tank Davis? If he wants

and if he comes up to 147, then we can fight. He can't meet you at 140? 145, maybe. Not a problem for me. I'm an experienced fighter, so. Yeah, I'm good. No thanks. You have never wanted this thing that inevitably will be here one day,

and you know it will, Luke. It's coming. You know it's coming. You desperately want Pacquiao to fight a relevant name, and I don't. I don't. No, a smaller relevant name looking to use that stamp on his continued climb toward greatness yeah how about this fight luke we didn't get it in the ring in 2023 as dimitri b-ball hasn't fought at all but there it is the two best light heavyweights in

the world can we just get what the can we have nice things please can they make i mean i'm a heterosexual man bc but for a fight like this, my pants are around my ankles, if you know what I'm saying. Dude, B-Vol looks like a James Bond knockoff right there. This is one of the best fights to make in boxing, period. B-Vol versus Better B. That's the one right there. All right, Luke, it can be tough to light a cigarette on a rainy or windy day, but watch this guy try to pull this off.

Put them titties together slick absolute i mean oh yeah that's friend another friend helping another friend i mean smoking gives you cancer smoking your unshowered friend's chest hair gives you aids 100 okay congratulations sir you now have hiv uh luke it's time to rate that tat did you ever see my really cool uh tupac socks that i always wear luke i think i have seen those yeah it's tupac and chewy it's a little racist it's a little racist about it about it well keep that in mind for this first tattoo i would get this one you think it's racist i'll say this it's a well done tattoo although his fingers look a little weird um

there's the stencil which is how this works then they put it on and then they tattoo you that looks pretty good right i will say this If you can show a picture one more time, the picture, if you look at his fingers, they look like they've been twisted through like a gate. Yeah. So that part's not great, but everything else looks pretty clean. All right. I know you love tats on the ass, Luke. Tatting up that ass. You like a good tattoo on titty.

What about the old armpit? Raise that tat luke so the tattoo is superb that's what you call neo-traditional and that is an absolutely first-rate tattoo to get that i have been told by folks who've got armpit tattoos that it is extremely painful to get it there so this gentleman gentleman is a hoss, although he has a nipple ring, which probably means he either has pet spiders or snakes and has absolutely touched himself inappropriately in an Arby's bathroom. So there you go. One of the odds that this man also volunteers at the local Renaissance Fair. Where if you go in the commodes, they perform or have performed abortions.

You can just look in there and see it. Okay, okay. It's really the grossest thing on earth. How bad would would that hurt luke how bad would it hurt in your pit so people have asked me like which ones of these hurt the most to be 100 honest with you i had one of my ribs that hurt pretty bad because when you get one on your ribs you have to hold your hands behind you like this on the chair the whole time so it can take a long time but honestly this piece on the wrist that was spicy that was liquid fire that one hurt yeah um but the rest of them not so bad yeah all right our final tattoo combines two of jay erin's biggest passions luke this is called a dick fish do you like it? I don't.

Okay. I don't really like humorously ironic tattoos that much. It's a well-done tattoo. It's well done. It looks nice. All the line work is clean. Shading is pretty clean. Bright.

It pops. But I don't know if I want to get tattooed dick fish on my body you know what i'm saying well that'll end the tattoo rating of the day but we'll keep it rolling here luke you don't want to do anything for our stupid jeopardy segment that people seem to like in terms of putting stakes on it but how about we look at canelo here warming up what about the loser next time has to do this on camera lu Luke. What do you think? Yeah, the old neck exercises. Yeah, shirtless in boy shorts on camera upside down. You into it?

Man, I want to make a joke. And I don't know if I can without getting fired. Yeah, probably should hold off on that. Probably should hold off on that one, yeah. We'll put it on our Only Pipes account later. All right, let's go to the Zone Boxing, Luke. They made history Saturday in Orlando. The first women's title match using the 12-round, 3-minute round system

as Amanda Serrano and Danilo Ramos. Unified featherweight titles. A good friend of the program, Dan Canobio, was on the announce call for DAZN. Luke, happy to see Serrano get this opportunity and to shine so well in it. I did not watch the fight. Was there any noticeable decline in output or anything,

or was it just a good fight? No, it was more fun. There was more opportunities to hurt a fighter in a round. It was better. It's better, okay? And the referee is wearing glasses from 2007, the Google Glass. Yeah, they have cameras on it, yeah. But I'll say this, Luke.

This is what Katie Taylor, who's almost too good for this format, should have been doing. It's like watching a great basketball player play in, like, This is what Katie Taylor, who's almost too good for this format, should have been doing. It's like watching a great basketball player play in a tiny elementary school court. Let's stretch it out here, okay? Let's stretch that. Yeah, let's use those words as well. Okay, let's not use the stretch word. Luke, UFC 5, the video game, is out, and people are really excited,

especially because one of the downloadable characters in that universe is hasbula magomedov if you select are you shitting me if you select islam mahachev then they have hasbula as part of his walkout your thoughts luke i mean they put money into this and they don't have all the top 15 guys really well they got has they got hasby okay so ray flores is i, it looks pretty cool. It does. It does look pretty cool. I've never played a UFC video game ever. Not once.

Luke, they're so good, dude. Come on. They're so good. My favorite thing is to sit in the eighth row, create a fighter. I always make him look like he's a country bumpkin from Omaha. But then each fight that he wins, Luke, he's allowed to get three tattoos.

So by the end of his career, when he's like 10 and 10, he's like fat tattoos all over his face and stuff. Look at the, I turned basically him into a cannibal corpse fan by the end of it. It's great. It's, it's a fun tournament to post Malone.

Yes. Hey, let's go to Walmart. I don't normally post these type of like stunt videos here but this gimmick is so hilarious here's a man dressing up as michael myers and smoking a bong in walmart well this man is a hero and just putting machetes in people's car and so this is what's funny bc i bought this identical jumpsuit yes i have this i was so jumpsuit Yes By the way that was the mask I tried on and it was too

Small for my big ass dome And I have my old combat boots From the Marine Corps I'm going to wear And I have the machete I couldn't fit that fucking thing on So this guy goes in there and starts hitting the bong in Walmart Would you bring that Beaker chemistry set looking bong with you? First of all If that man runs for office in any town I ever live in,

he's earned my vote. I'm going to be very clear about that. All right. Well, Luke, we need to transition from there to the old birthday cake set up here. Let's listen in on this celebration. Bobby, happy birthday to you Oh my gosh

Ew That looks a little staged But I still popped for it big I like how he braced himself on the table First Rather than like running for the bushes He was hold on, let me get my hands here to stabilize myself so I can projectile vomit all over your delicious sweets. Look, I tried to explain to my kids over the weekend how impactful the Jerky Boys were on my life from 1993 to 1995. They were a main player in my life before caller ID prank calling

was the best. Let's listen in here. Luke, you ever watch a show called the Washington Journal? At times, yes. Okay. Here's Michael from Kansas. Don't C-span, right? Taking my call.

So, you know, I agree with what Monica Lewinsky has been saying. Cyber bullying is definitely a problem, but there's a solution. And, you know, kids these days are kind of soft i feel like maybe they could just close their laptops or even block the person and you know in elementary school i would get bullied all the time i would just tell them hey look buster you're talking to the guy with the biggest cock on the playground we're going to move on to michael i don't know why that's never not going to move on to Michael. I don't know why that's never not going to be hilarious. People do it like that.

Okay. So for folks who don't know, they don't use what they have and what we have in something radio called the dump button. Basically radio will run at a five to 10 to almost sometimes even more than that ahead of what you're actually hearing when you're listening to it. And then if someone says something like, yeah, my balls was hot and you don't want it to go to sometimes even more than that ahead of what you're actually hearing when you're listening to it and then if someone says something like yeah my balls was hot and you don't want to go to air you can actually hit the dump button and it will erase like the last five seconds of air before it ever hits the airwaves but they don't have a dump button so whoever you pass through if you even if you've screened them you don't know what they're going to do they can just get

up there and say my balls is hot, and it's going to air. It's going to air. I miss those days. I used to always call in the local cable access live shows on the weekends at night when you're real drunk coming back from the bar, Luke, and just say ridiculous things until they hang up on me. Is that not a rite of passage in this country? People just don't know the glory of making collect calls to your ball sack

when you hit zero on the phone. They don't know what these things mean. I've done that that i've asked the operator to connect me to my ball sack before when i was like nine or something let's go to the soccer pitch luke look at the creativity of the of the fans putting together these signs you know deriding the other team i can't see oh i was trying to read the spanish so this is this is uh boca boca juniors right i don't know this is the bombonera bombonero bomboneros yeah they play it against the uh irrebutes uh because they got their toe spacers luke i don't know where you're going with this but that was pretty funny you know i'm wearing my toe spacer right now yeah you are t-shirt of the week time luke let's tip this brings new meaning to tip to tip not florida man but florida woman out here celebrating her

seminoles um your thoughts on well this is uh clearly a lady of class and sophistication yeah which they only breed in Florida. So circumcised Florida. Serious question. When was the last time this lady read anything other than... Her Miranda rights? Yeah, her Miranda rights. Actually, those were read to her.

Yeah, those were read to her. Even those were read to her, exactly. She's the kind of person that does the tomahawk chop even when they're not doing the tomahawk chop. She'll walk past Native Americans and be like, yeah, I still believe in this. You mean even when she's watching Risen, she's doing the tomahawk chop? Yeah, exactly.

That's the kind of lady right there. All right. This is from MKFan. True or false? I was like, show her picture one more time if you can. Show her picture one more time. Serious question, BC. True or false?

She's done meth in the last seven days. True or false? Are you saying she once got busy in a Burger King bathroom with some whippets behind the arm? This is somebody who's, this person has done meth. Yes, yes, of course. Opinion. Well, she may have been like the cooker, the assistant cooker. I read a great feature in the 90s in Rolling Stone about how some people get so high in the meth trade over just cooking not using luke that they begin to feel like almost

like a godlike presence yeah heisenberg walter white yeah all right this is from mk fan bo schrader who was at the when we were young music festival and he caught this t-shirt in the wild luke two girls one cup was art that's so despicably disgusting you know what i'm saying uh you know listen if this guy ever came home with tuki i would uh i just go to jail for murder you know oh wow okay well he does he is wearing an ecw hat so you know what luke i think he might be a little bit like me you know got that dog in him in fact maybe i should know he's got those stds in him i mean that guy's just walking around with gonorrhea fact well luke i'm thinking of getting this shirt just the same i got that dog in me. The Costco dollar 50, baby.

Yeah. Yeah, dude. If you got that one, I would be very happy with it. I'd be very happy. All right, Luke. Nothing makes you more happy than seeing men suffer at gender reveals. So watch this gentleman in the blue shirt closely. I think we did this one, didn't we? No, they just all look alike in the end, think then again maybe it was no because they can't get it and then it floats

away and then he chases it like a bitch yeah we haven't had this one but maybe you've seen it maybe you've seen this shit okay so yeah then it floats away and then they're like oh fuck and then he tries to chase it and the bitch is just gone. It's like, dude, oh, and then he just breaks his ass. The least athletic thing I've ever seen. Look at all of these whites who can't clear a fence. Unbelievable. And there goes the balloon. Let me spoil the result.

Let me spoil the result for anybody who hasn't seen this clip, and I'll tell you what's about to happen. That is what should happen. The only thing that should happen at gender reveals are injuries. That's it. Okay. What about opening up the back of an 18-wheeler, Luke? That can be an injurious job, like this young fellow on his first day.

Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Oh. You know what? Pack season that's a real that's a real that's a grind dude you know what those guys told me i talked to one guy who did i don't know if it was fedex or ups i don't remember but he was saying that like okay so let's say you have like 20 deliveries that day you might have more than that but let's just say you have 20

like so you from the moment you clock in until you do that delivery uh however long that takes they time it between that house to the next house to the next house to the next house damn and then they look at your numbers like how long it took you to go from house to house distance to distance how long it took you to like to actually deliver and not and then grade you based on that of course the more time you have the more time time they're going to fuck with you. That's a tough job, bro. That's a real tough job. They make a lot of money at the high end. They can, but not for cheap.

That's hard work. Well, I went to high school with a couple of kids who have been there now 26 or 27 years, and they are doing insanely well as drivers. I mean, insanely well. Yeah, they should be, dude. Like I said, man, that ain't easy easy work that is not easy work at all they get up early that's where i would be luke if this ever fall fell apart people like what would you do if you found out

tomorrow you lost your job i'll be on the i'll be out in the docks of the ups luke okay all right yeah i'd like to find it out porn uh you know i'll be finding out what brown could do for me right there all right a couple left here luke you have said that wearing a patriotic usa shirt is actually sacrilegious to the flag correct it's super sacrilegious yes okay what about this patriotic move with this man's beard that will work that will work that man's look that that man's a patriot right there that man is a patriot and i have to say that's actually buddy that's just redneck ingenuity ain't nothing wrong with that that's nothing that that's just good living right there i got one more video for you luke um i we talked about Eric.

Did you say Eric Nixick went and got the hairline surgery? In Turkey, yeah. I could see the lines they put, and he looked very handsome. I wish him the best atop his head, as I wish you, Luke, because you don't want to end up being this guy. No matter how bad your trim may be right now be happy it's not like this so oh is that pandev pandev used to play for uh galata sarai which is a team i like out of turkey yeah pandev my man has just been balding like a motherfucker he don't give a fuck dude look at the shape look at the

shape of his uh balding luke It looks like a, doesn't it? Yeah, it looks like a ball sack and then a shaft. Yeah, yeah, it does, in fact. Yeah. Yeah, Pandav doesn't care, bro. Pandav is, he's over this shit. I think he's got like five kids. And he's always been like a good soccer player,

but never like a big standout star. So he probably makes like good money, but not great, you know? So, you know, he's got stresses, bro. He looks like a real dickhead to me, probably makes like good money but not great you know so you know he looks like a real stress yeah yeah all right that's all the shit i got this week what an episode hope you guys have enjoyed it okay oh man we have a lot going on so i'm gonna try and get this interview locked up with dewey cooper probably not today but probably for tomorrow uh bcu youtube.com slash morning combatbat for everything. One more time, BC. Let's thank the fans who showed up and watched Saturday's show.

Record number, I think, if not the record, pretty close to it for a live show. Yeah, I want to say this. We've done this only, what, three times before. We did the UFC Canelo night where we got the haircuts and the doc cameras were there. We did the DAZN BS Misfits thing and now we've done this I don't know yet what our we haven't hit our stride on this we're just effing around right but I don't know if we need to be funnier more serious you know everyone could complain about what they want we're trying to figure out the tone on these but Luke do you think there's something here I think like this is what the people want.

If the people want Jones and Ganu, it's Dana's job to make it happen. The people want you and I to do this for a lot of fights. And it's not easy to pull off because we have other responsibilities. But what do you think about what we did on Saturday? First of all, we got lucky. Because, again, let's just be honest. We were tuning in for hilarity and hijinks. And we got something much bigger than that in the end. So, partly, it was just great luck.

But, at the same time, there did seem to be something there. So, again, morningcombat at gmail.com, folks. Morningcombat at gmail.com. You've got to vote with your dollars. You. You gotta vote with your dollars, you gotta vote with your attention dollars, and you gotta vote with what you want. If you wanna see more stuff like that, if that's a thing that works for you, great.

In an ideal world, BC, we'd be able to do those consistently and also still have a good instant reaction show. I don't want one to cannibalize the other. I wanna be able to do both. I think you can if you do it the right way. So we're still trying to figure things out but listen as as mk heads into its all cbs phase we're taking on all new ideas as well like whatever folks want right bc like if that's what they want we'll find a way to make it work right if you want to see our butt no

that's if we get fired if you want to see our buttholes that's that's only if we get fired no we're gonna take we're gonna look we're gonna take the resources available to us and we're gonna try to make the best shows we can week to week but the offer is always there you got ideas send it to morningcombat at gmail.com you like this but you hate this send it in there mikey will read them all right all right that's what we offer to you a chance to let your voice be heard oh by the way bill from bill and jen's rv they've settled again in in uh in pennsylvania and they seem very happy they they i i called out for a wellness check and they responded now when you say uh they're doing well there are they in a brick

and mortar home are they still in the rv they are they are traditionally living now as opposed to tanking on the world and there are bc if you had to commit suicide what state would you do it in okay i don't i you're trying to get us fired here luke i i don't i don't support this direction of conversation okay i can't decide if you do it in a state of great despair or in a state of like a great beachfront view you know yeah what would make the most sense i just want to go out doing what i love luke which would be on instagram checking up on the best 115 pound fighters in the world you know i mean i'm kidding i'm kidding it's not uh you can follow us there i also love 125ers too okay yeah let's be fair let's be fair you gotta you kind of call it a day when they get

a little heavy set at 135 but 125 and down is all right. Mikey just said, yes, Mikey, by resources with CBS, I mean Mikey Mormyle. That's who I mean. Yeah, Mikey's like, what resources? And we're like, Mikey, you. You, every inch of you, okay? We're going to need all of it.

You know, it's like when they kill, people are like, yo, I go hunting, but I use the entire animal. Yeah, yeah. When Mike, we use all of mikey to run the show yeah we use his physical labor we use his mental uh acuities we use his soul we use uh his hopes and dreams and we just ruin it all his his rising thc levels look we use it all okay yeah all right and then morningcombat.store right for that merch You can go get all that merch there and keep the show afloat and in business. And, yeah, that's about it.

Any final message, BC? No, just, you know, watch that fight with an open mind. Understand I'm not a hater here. I actually, I was wrong. Does Francis, does he deserve an apology? You're damn right he does, Francis. What you did on saturday they'll never take it away from you whether he doesn't whether he never wins a boxing match luke he literally

just had rocky one play out like he just it just it just happened i just don't like you do have to stop every once in a while and just take stock of you know because everything has to be the third greatest thing that's ever happened that's what we do in this podcast game. But what happened on Saturday? I'm humbled. Dude, I'm freaking humbled, man. Like, good. Good one out. He didn't even win the fight, but good one out.

All right? That feels good every once in a while. It mostly never works for guys like that. It mostly falls apart. You mostly never hear it. It mostly just is what it is. And then somebody who can defy all of the forces that are supposed to derail and undermine you. Someone comes along and shows you that that doesn't always happen. Celebrate it while it's here.

It's a very rare and special thing. All right. MK, not rare, but special. We'll be back on Wednesday to get you ready for some of the fights coming up this weekend and everything else. Thank you so much for watching. We appreciate it. That's Brian Campbell. I'm Luke Thomas. We're out. And until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.