MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - GSP vs. Khabib? | State Of UFC's Lightweight Division | Calvin Kattar | Ep. 114

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

MK is back and the boys aren breaking down the latest combat sports news and notes, including a report that UFC legend George St-Pierre is preparing to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov in an epic comeback bout (06:30). Plus, they dive into the state of the UFC's lightweight division. Charles Oliveira vs. Michael Chandler was almost booked for UFC 258. Is that the fight to make? And Dustin Porier feels disrespected, is a matchup vs. Nate Diaz next (23:00)? Also, Calvin Kattar's coach discusses the non-stoppage vs. Max Holloway (43:00) and PFL unveils their 2021 roster (51:50). ---------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You hear that? Ugh, paid. And done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month.

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

I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Oh, what? We can go Luke. It is Wednesday, not Friday there, team. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. It is, let's see, the 3rd of February, 2021, and it's time for Morning Combat. Hello, everyone. Hope you are doing well. I am joined on the other side of the screen by the Q to my non, the conspiracy to my theory, the K to my low. That's an inside joke.

It's your friend and mine from CBS Sports. It's Brian Campbell. Hi, BC. Hello, Luke. Hello, Luke. As you can see by my incredible headwear, I am California dreaming, in fact, on such a winter's day. There's feet, feet of snow outside outside luke do you have any idea how much roof raking shoveling snow blowing i mean look welcome to new england been here my whole

life i signed up for it but uh yeah yeah baby what's the damage how many how many feet you got like officially i mean i don't really measure things i'm not really you know not really uh we look in the factory they're not worried about math, right, too often. But let's just say I had a snowblow five times. That's a lot in two days, all right, snow. So, yeah, a lot of work out there. Very beautiful, though, Luke, okay? All right, like this show, right?

A lot of work, very beautiful. You and I making it look easy in the end. But I'm doing well. Can people drive on the roads where you're at? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, they plow and shoot. See, here's the difference, Luke. I mean, I'm not trying to say we're like minnesota or maine or vermont where like they don't cancel school and you go out in your snowblower but this ain't maryland where like a half inch of snow people are driving into each other like demolition derby and panicking all

right luke we're real up here okay you know what i'm saying well like here's like j-lo right people people get it wrong because i lived for a time in Georgia. There, a half inch of snow, people will panic. Here's when they panic here at right around four to five inches. That's when they're like, uh-oh, uh-oh, big stuff's coming. Weatherman lied to us because we're in that stage, that mid-Atlantic stage is where you don't know if you're going to get two inches or 12, which is really a strange way to describe it.

But you know what I'm saying? You don't know if it's going to be a nor'easter or just a little sprinkling. So you also have to kind of be on edge a little bit. It's a fair, it's a fair point, Luke. Okay. You know, one day though, I will retire somewhere nice and warm. Hopefully that comes sooner than later. Yeah.

So we're back at it with Wednesday here, Luke. Hump day. No J Wednesday. Should be a fun one. Luke, I am in good-ass spirits. Did you sleep well last night? How do you feel? Great.

My twin celebrated their 13th birthday yesterday. I'm a dad of teenagers, all right? Hey, there you go. All right, there's a lot of Fortnite going on. I put together all these gifts yesterday. Look, what a time to be alive. So hope everyone else out there doing well. I know it's crazy times, but keep your head in check, okay?

You know what I'm saying? Look, Luke, all works good and Ard works fine, right? But first, take care of Ed. You know what I'm talking about, right? I don't know what you're saying, but it's okay. We have a fair bit to get to, some news and notes, and then Friday's show, we're going

to really lean into the upcoming UFC show that we sort of started the week out on. Here we'll just sort of hit up the other things happening in the world of combat sports. First things first, though, of course, thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe. If you're new here, welcome. In addition to that, I want to say we have some work out there. The Storytime with Rashad, great work. People seem to love it. We have an interview out with Dustin Poirier.

If you've not seen it, please go check it out. That's here on the YouTube channel. Also, if you want to try Showtime, you can see BC's got the shirt there. You can go to Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can go about your merry day and go do something the fuck else. If you want to buy some merch, which I think you could probably get that Showtime shirt on the store. We're talking about some MK merch merch store.show.com that's the place you can go you get mk hats beanies mugs tumblers the whole nine yards um and i think that's it for the preamble

bc anything i'm missing no i'm you're no sell of my sublime reference earlier really painting me remember we used to have a 90s counter remember the show show used to be fun? What happened, Luke? Corporate got in the way? What happened here? Your 90s references, you dropped off a cliff on those things. Alright, alright. That, you know, that was the one redeeming quality of the great Jay, right? That guy was on the button with that shit, alright? Maniche, step your game up.

Where's Gaff? Step your game up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Maniche, was he even born in the 90s? Like, what, he was born when we graduated high school or something? I don't know, but that honky has some soul. I mean, go out there and Google Lonely Angelus when you have some time, people. Okay, thank you. Enough shilling for the people we love and enjoy.

All right, Luke, can we get to combat sports? That's why people are here, okay? All right, so as much as things might change, they remain the same, BC. As I understand it, Kenny Florian was on his podcast i believe this is the anik and florian podcast if i'm not mistaken i'm pulling it up here just to be sure yes we got the sound look we've got some sound why don't we give some shine to those fellas all right so we got the sound let's let me let me set let me set let me set the clip up whoa whoa wait wait wait let me set the clip up which is is that you've got Kenny Florian apparently talking about a fight that he thinks is now not merely relevant, but in many ways almost imminent between GSB and Habib.

Let's roll the clip. You know, I heard some pretty crazy news over the weekend. where it's from, but it's from a well-known coach who apparently is aware of a fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and a legend in the UFC, a former two-time champion, George St. Pierre. So supposedly that is a fight that I don't know if it's confirmed, but it is a fight that George might be getting ready for and is preparing for. I don't think he would be getting ready for that or be telling people that he's going to be getting ready for a big fight unless it was actually happening. And for me, I think the only fight that Habib Nurmagomedov would come back for would be against a legend of that kind of

stature, a guy who did many of the similar things that he did. And you can kind of bill it as a fight between two of the biggest takedown monsters in UFC history, George St-Pierre and Khabib Nurmagomedov. And whether that would be for a 155-pound belt or not, I don't know. Whether that is actually confirmed or not, I don't know. This is not from George St-Pierre himself so i i want to say that first but uh the rumor is that this fight uh you know that they're it's definitely in the works so um that is fascinating to me and i would assume that would probably be some kind of a catch weight between those two but i don't know all right so let's sort of pick up the pieces here

you know florian and i'm just guessing here, like he was doing, I'm going to put up my caveats as well. I'm guessing that that coach is Faraz Zahabi. One, Faraz obviously has a relationship with George, and Kenny Florian also has a relationship with Faraz Zahabi. They used to train together for a time in the later stage of his career. Okay, with that out of the way, BC, I have to tell you, I don't give a fuck if they ever fight. I will tell you, not that I'd be against it if they did. It'd be huge if they did. It'd be enormous. It'd be the best thing ever.

Our lives would change. It would be manna from heaven, cats and dogs living together without the mass hysteria. I'm just pointing out, I've seen this song and dance a million times. The only thing that gets me to wonder if things might be different now is twofold. One, Khabib, you know, didn't really, I mean, Michael Chandler was impressive, but none of us really feel like Chandler versus Khabib is the fight to make, right? And so you have basically Khabib on ice, and now you have McGregor losing basically back-to-back fights. Well, that's not quite true. He won the Cowboy one, but he's done a lot of losing recently. Let's put it that way.

So the idea here is you have a pay-per-view star who might be absent or gone and a pay-per-view star who could be in decline, and those are maybe your two biggest ones. You might have to go to the old back of the playbook, the old Statue of Liberty flea flicker play there, BC. Is that what's happening here? Yeah, look, first of all, Kenny Florian with the sauces, right? Shout out to that guy. And you know I love me some John Anik.

I've been on that podcast many times. Big fans of those guys. I hope this is real. You want to know why? Because it feels like a bonus sort of gift. Like it feels like an Irish coffee. You know what I mean luke you go out to dinner you have for a fancy event or a holiday you have dessert and you're sitting

around you're holding your belly you got friends and family having a great time you think you're done the bill's in front of you and then they're like would you like a coffee too you know here i'll put some of this alcohol it's like it's a bonus because we already went through this habib soap opera and drama. You know, is it going to come back? Is Dana lying? Blah, blah, blah. Well, Connor lost.

So the real reason why we kept this hope alive seems to be gone. But this now would feel to me like something I don't think we need, but something that we would want if we got. And we would be overjoyed. It'd be a giant cherry on top of the sundae. And I think in recent interviews with GSP in the past month, he has gone on record and said, 155, it's just not realistic. You know, I'm old. I've never fought there, blah, blah, blah. Look, in some ways, if Habib has any want to actually fulfill the dad's wishes

and do the 30-0 while juggling the fact that he would not be fulfilling his mom's wishes. Look, he's got to deal with all that family stuff, not me. The GSP thing would actually make a ton of sense because it's a fight that Habib has actually wanted all this time. And I think without a title, putting it more as just a big gift to people, a great way to walk off of your career, face your idol, face a legend. And oh, by the way, you can be really sneaky sneaky with the marketing as we've talked about in the past and kind of make the case that the winner's the greatest of all time even though you know that may not be legit

but you can do that i love this i love this to the point now where you know um i almost want to talk about what this fight would look like um it sounds sort of contradicting to be all in on this when we just went on record you know the last few weeks and be like what is dana talking about this guy's not coming back come on i don't know luke it's not that i changed my stance on believing against habib's conviction i just feel like if it had to be anybody it would be gsp because that's something habib actually wanted and you know at the end of the day this would be a super ass fun big pay-per-view that would sell and I'm

not sure you know deep in your heart of hearts Luke exactly what this fight would look like yeah but to me that's all irrelevant I mean we've been over what it might look like and what it all might mean you know I don't know we need to play that song and dance again the question I'd be having for you is do you buy it like

do you buy that? A, the UFC looked around after two 57 and said, shit, we, cause remember Dana before that was like, yeah, the GSP things that happen. It's the Connor Habib rematch.

That's the one they're really hunting. And now that that's gone, it not only puts Connor on ice, not on ice, but like, you know, in a difference, we got to figure out what the hell we're going to do next with him.

He's not, that's, he's not part of the Habib conversation. pretty fair to say and then habib he didn't see anything that really got him going they they said you know what we weren't interested in that before maybe now we are do you buy that it's it's a stretch again because we're the two guys who are saying look this guy habib's not fighting like he's got conviction but i say it's there's a chance and i say that there's a hopeful optimism here. Not just because that's the only fight

that Habib has sort of wanted, but I don't know. If we're hearing all the smoke, GSP's not somebody that lies, right? There's very few fighters in this game full of lies who don't lie, who tell the actual truth, who are not trying to deceive and sell you something, not trying to deceive and talk themselves into something

and hoping that you catch on too. The two guys with the most conviction, seemingly enough, in this game have long been Habib and GSP. So if this talk is not going away, and now that we know that Dana can't get the burger he wanted to put at the end of his hard-on on top and balance it, which was the Khabib-Connor two-fight to break all the records, I could buy a conspiracy theory that Dana goes,

all right, we can't get that, but I would like to cash in one more time with this guy Khabib. So why don't we go back and give him what he actually wants, which is GSP, the fight that for years I've been stiff-arming. Why? You know, we've been up and down this. He didn't want to reward GSP, give him a chance chance to win another title only to walk away and vacate it but if there's no title at stake then suddenly there's no pressure it's just a fun ass attraction fight if this meant like if there's rumors coming out of GSP's camp that he's training for this fight you know I don't know Luke like I don't think this guy's gonna F around and leak things

I don't think he's trying to leverage Habib contractually right now by leaking this out. It would lead me to believe there's something here only because I know in the conviction of Habib, which is real, he did really want this fight. He never wanted anything to do with Conor. I was talking myself into that because of the ridiculous business at stake. Because there is a certain point when someone offers you the world financially where you go, maybe I'll take that. talking i was talking myself into that because of the ridiculous business at stake because you know there is a certain point when someone offers you the world financially where you go yeah maybe i'll take that i mean where else am i going to make that maybe i'll take that this is different he seemed to actually want this so i don't know i don't know if kenny florian's sources are correct

i don't know if this is a bunch of do about nothing but i would believe that dana would now be pushing it hard to get a big event out of this, and I could believe that Habib told Dana, if you can get me the GSP thing, let's talk about it. If not, leave me alone. I'll believe that. My general rule on this is going to be the same thing. Again, I don't know who told Kenny Florian what my hunch is. It's Faraz

a hobby, and if it is, there might be some real validity to it, but just as a matter of precaution sitting in the media space, I'm going to use the same rule that I'm going to use the same rule that I've been using all this time, which is I'll believe it when I hear either St. Pierre himself say it or Habib say it, because to your point, when they say it, that to me makes it, that's when you're like, okay, there might be something here to it.

Again, there might be already. I'm not saying that there's not. I'm just, that's my, that's when I have enough reason to really go all in on it. But there's a bigger point here that's worth making. I think everyone's been pining over this fight. And to be clear about it too, would this fight suck? I don't think so. I tend to think it might be a little bit less competitive than folks might imagine, but I don't know that. That's just a guess. I could be totally wrong about that. But the bigger point to me is I see a lot of times folks really obsess over certain kinds of fights. Oh, we got to get this one see a lot of times folks really obsess over certain kinds

of fights. Oh, we got to get this one or we got to get that one. And to be clear, if you're a promoter or a fight fan, delivering on some of those is actually a necessity. But delivering on all of them is not. And I have to say, as an MMA fan, if you watch as much MMA as I do, and there are people who watch more than me, but I watch a fair amount, obviously, I'm pretty fulfilled. I don't feel like I wake up every day being like, geez, man, we're just missing out

on so much. I will tell you, as a boxing observer, I feel that much more on that side of the fence, at least with the current state of things, obviously not in the way that it used to be. This idea that if you watch enough mma i i don't know where the hole in your heart is where you have to wake up every day obsessing over this one theoretical possibility versus all the actuality and how good that is week after week after week after week do they deliver

just i mean i told you this i went to the Cannibal Corpse show, right, to give you a bit of an example here. That was one of the most brutal shows I've ever been to, in part, dude, because they don't do a lot of crowd work. Song ends, and they go, hey, we're Cannibal Corpse. Here's our new song. You know, fuck your mother or whatever. And then it's pound, pound, pound.

It's like waves crashing into the shore, and they go right to it with the next one and the next one. And each song is just a brutal fucking onslaught. So my point is, dude, UFC delivers on the vast majority of the fights they intend to deliver on. There are some noteworthy examples. Habib versus Tony. Okay, fair enough. All right.

There's some other ones along the way, too, they fucked up on. Okay, I'm not saying that. But I don't understand this desire to wake up every day pining over a theoretical fight when you got 29 other habib fights to enjoy yeah uh professor salt and pepper let me answer that for you uh this is a boxing type fight that's why what do i mean by that this is the type of super fight we don't often see in the ufc in which we are richly spoiled as fans and journalists. Why? Because Dana White and company have the control.

We're the best, have to face the best, and they always seem to do that. So we're always getting the best-ass fights all the time. Why, though, was there so much hullabaloo on Twitter for the ideal of a Jon Jones-Adesanya fight or this ideal of GSP and Khabib when it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Jones and Adesanya went back and forth. Habib and GSP don't go back and forth. Well, let me answer you.

Here's the answer, Luke. Because it's something that in this UFC space we don't normally get. So what I mean by it's a boxing fight. Boxing, you don't typically get the best fighting the best at the time they should. But you do seem to get these sort of random crossroad fights, right? Like, it's why I have such a boner right now at the idea of Ryan Garcia and Pacquiao. Like, when De La Hoya fought Pacquiao or whatever.

You do sometimes get these sort of crossroad, old guy, young guy, sort of weird situations, super fights where two stars are looking at across from each other. Kind of like, to be honest with you, Nate Diaz, Conor McGregor, which came together under the guise of necessity because RDA fell out, but turned in to be this creative super

fight in another division with two separate guys. We actually don't get a lot of that MMA because we get the real fight. So I think there's a pining for that. Also, look, GSP is one of the most beloved fighters of all time. And Habib's walking away at the peak of his frickin' prime and powers. Yeah, you're just telling me why this is an interesting and fun fight.

No, no, no, let me finish. You're not telling me why if you're an MMA fan and you consume MMA as is delivered to you on a regular pace, why you would obsess over this one. I'm not hearing anything to that effect. I just told you, Luke, because it's like like why are people going to go to the theater and see Godzilla against, uh, who the hell is he fighting in that movie? Uh, the movie. What's the damn movie,

Luke? Uh, King Kong. Godzilla versus Kong. Because it's two guys, two superpowers from separate entities that have a chance to come together and collide, just like John Jones and Adesanya, just like Habib and GSP. You know, things that don't normally happen. It's a boxing-type fight.

That's why there's a beloved hole in the heart that people want this, Luke. But back real quickly to the idea of, like, doesn't this go against the principles of each person? Again, Habib's dad wanted it. Habib seemed to want it. And one more thing about GSP, he had always said along the line, remember when he retired, had the big public statement a couple years ago, year and a half ago?

He said, I only want to fight if there's historic challenges in front of me. Obviously, a third title in a third division would be that kind of third challenge. Even though that's gone, Luke, he could be the only man to ever beat Habib. Like, GSP, no shit. He recognizes that Habib has

put himself in that goat territory, maybe even ahead of GSP to some people in terms of who is who in that goat territory. He has a chance to go head-to-head with another one of those goats, leapfrog him, give him the first defeat of his career. Look, that's history-making right there, and do it as an old guy. So, look, I don't see how you could be like, I don't know why the fans would be this into it

it's Godzilla and King Kong I didn't say why are the fans into it I understand why the fans into it what I said was week after week month after month people can only talk about this and I understand it I get it but to me the people who are doing the majority

of the talking are just casual fans my point is if you're a hardcore MMA fan you would want it I want to see it I hope they make it if this news is real from Kenny Florian of the talking are just casual fans. My point is, if you're a hardcore MMA fan, you would want it. I want to see it. I hope they make it. If this news is real from Kenny Florian, fucking A, sweet.

And to your point, there's a lot of things to like about it. What I'm trying to tell you is, every week, not every week is UFC 200 or something like that in terms of the stackness of the card, but week in, week out, if you watch this as a regular part of your life, dude, they fulfill an enormous amount of your wants and needs not all of them and again some noteworthy misses along the way you know you sound like you sound like a dad who's telling your daughter i've given you every toy you could ever want can you stop fucking asking me about the pony

already luke she wants a freaking pony she wants to dream big it's not really the pony already? Luke, she wants a freaking pony. She wants to dream big. It's not really the pony, though. This is not what it is. You're like, I've given you everything. I've given you everything you could want. Why the fucking pony? It's not that I don't understand the idea of it being an attractive fight, a uniquely attractive fight.

What I'm talking about is how can people spend months talking about something that can people spend months talking about something that seems fairly unlikely to happen amidst this cavalcade of incredible content that by the way should satiate you at least for a little while that that imbalance is the thing that i just don't get is the imbalance the same reason why when de niiro and pacino got together to make heat we ran to the theaters luke we freaking ran the same reason when people heard campbell and thomas together in a show good god let me take my thing out this is incredible i gotta watch morning combat right

except except it was real heat was heat went to the movie theater you can actually go see that uh this show is on three times a week you can watch we're just fucking masturbating about an idea it's like dude when it's here let me know until then we got fights to watch that's you know how many ideas i've masturbated about my life i mean get the hell out of here bro you're doing it right now you're doing it literally right now uh okay with that in mind we'll see what happens with the future hopefully kenny's right if not you know it'll be just what it'd be what it is uh with that in mind, we'll see what happens in the future. Hopefully, Kenny's right. If not, you know, it'll be just what it is. With that in mind, we go to point number two here.

Speaking of that lightweight division, let's put St. Pierre to the side here, and to an extent, Habib. A couple things I want to get to. There was a report that came out, I think from, I forget the source of it. I actually brought it up with Dustin Poirier when I spoke to him, but you saw it as well as I did, BC, that there was this report that came out suggesting that they wanted Chandler, the UFC wanted Chandler to fight Oliveira,

which would be, I don't know if anyone's first choice, but a pretty good one. But they wanted it next week at UFC 258, and the report indicated that Oliveira was like, no, that is way too early. Now, let's assume for the sake of conversation that is true. Well, Luke, I want to jump in and say Chandler confirmed it on the Ariel show that the UFC did offer it to him, bro.

Okay, well, there you go. So let's assume that now we can affirm that it is true. Given that, what does that tell you about the UFC's matchmaking priorities here yeah so this is sort of a uh you know a uh trying to play psychologist to the UFC matchmakers and figure this out it's interesting because right when I heard that you realize that 258 as you mentioned is just a week week plus away and it's it's it's speaking a week it's kind of a weak pay-per-view card you do get Usman Gilbert Burns a fight we love and need but, but there's not a bunch of good appetizers around that main course, Luke.

They sort of needed another bang. When I saw that, though, my first thought was, oh my God, does that mean Conor gets the trilogy next against Poirier for the damn belt? What the hell is going on here? Just as quickly, though, others can tell you, well, maybe that means you're putting Chandler and Oliveira on a quick turnaround to try to create Poirier's next title opponent because he wants to push it off a little. So a lot of things going around the skull right there. I think, you know, most importantly, they're looking to save the damn card and give you another reason to buy it while keeping this hot, red-hot, lightweight division in discussion moving forward. Luke, which of those halves do you think was more true though?

Let's rather than trying to pick which one's more deserving than Poirier for Poirier. We put both these guys together right now, or let's occupy both these guys and let's make the, let's make money. We can't do Habib Connor too. So let's do Dustin Connor three right now. Do you believe it's either or in the,

in the, in the minds of the matchmakers? No, I think they have options. I mean, I think you would agree with that too. The thing I don't get is, I get that if you look at the 258 card, you're right. If you're a hardcore fan of that main event, nothing but sensational. You got to feel great for Gilbert Burns. He might be your new champion, by the way.

I guess we'll see. To me, it's a very competitive fight. But, you know, you look down the card, there's nothing on there that's going to really pop out at you and be like, oh, this is going to sell a million buys. So you want to add something to it. Okay. But if you added it this late with that, I mean, you're building off the 257 momentum with Chandler, fair enough, and then the win by Oliveira over Ferguson, but you didn't have a chance to really promote it you know because it's going to happen in 10 days or something so you'd lose a little bit of that window to properly to juice it so to speak it's a fine fight I'd love to see it but the I gotta

tell you I don't quite get why it's so rushed other than they're trying to accommodate a schedule where they can figure out the winner of that fight, and then the winner of that fight will face the winner of Dustin versus somebody next. Is it Dustin versus Nate Diaz, which he said we'll talk about in a second, he would do, but it wouldn't make much sense? Would it be Dustin versus Conor three? That seems like probably your clubhouse leader at this point, and they want to do it on a certain schedule within the year, rather than have this kind of thing delayed, know you're coming off of one of the best-selling pay-per-views in company history not the number one but certainly top three top four i mean that's

a great that's a time to to toast champagne glasses and be quite happy you don't have to juice the next pay-per-view right behind it if you don't want to so to me it's about accommodating a schedule what was the number on the pay-per-view the two one six damn yeah it's pretty good i mean i'm not surprised obviously because of the name power but damn yeah all right yeah look that's huge money man like they killed on that i mean i guess it all comes down to to what their goals and plans are for Poirier do they want to build around him now do they see him as the class of this division or are they still in love with the idea of trying to put that belt back on Connor again so if you're in love with him then you're trying to create opponents for him then rushing this matchup it doesn't seem to make

a ton of sense even in a loaded division here Luke again, that's why I'm a little bit mystified by it. Dustin didn't take a ton of damage, and while McGregor did get KO'd or TKO'd, I guess, officially, not, you know, not, I mean, we talked about how fast it happened. It was like 12 seconds from the moment that they turned positions on the fence and then Poirier unloaded on him. That's not the kind of thing that's going to keep you out forever. You know, you could get back to action by summer with a loss like that if you wanted to, and I think he wants to take some time to maybe retool some things. But point being is you could make that in quick succession if you wanted to.

My hunch is that they're looking at their pay-per-view calendar and be seeing, they're like, okay, we got Jones coming back here, Adesanya, if he wins in March, we want him right back here for blah, blah, blah. They've mapped it out and they realize, where the hell are we going to fit Conor next, Diaz, blah, blah, blah? And on their sheet of continuity for pay-per-views, they probably wanted to turn this around very quickly. But, you know, dude, asking two guys to do this, I mean, Chandler might be able to do

it, because his fight was so short, and he's in peak shape. But Oliveira, who the hell knows what kind of shape he's in right now I'm sure he could you know make a strong account of himself but not the kind of fight Mike Chandler on that performance so I understand why they turned it down completely it's just I I the the the urgency of it I didn't quite get yeah and I actually sort of tipped the cap at Doe Bronx being like you know that's sort's sort of a, you don't need that. You don't really need that fight. Unless, you know, unless the explicit written consent. I don't know. I'm caught in my own words here, Luke.

My whole point was, unless UFC's telling him, hey, Oliveira, you're kind of behind Conor and Nate, you know, so you're going to have to beat Chandler to get that title shot. If that was the case, it might be different. But, Luke, you talked to Poirier. I want to hear about this, bro. Yeah, so I did. The video is up on the site.

Shocker that my... That's the last time I'm using this. I am... Let me tell you something as a side note, BC. You have an iPhone and a Mac. What's your phone computer setup? MacBook. I got a MacBook.

Okay, so I have everything. I have a PC tower. I have a Mac laptop. I have a MacBook Pro. I have an iPad. I have an iPhone. And I have my old Android phone. I will say this.

I think that Apple products are bad. I don't like them. And I have used them now pretty extensively in all their various forms. This is my first iPhone. Dude, they're underperforming pieces of shit. They don't do what, and I have used them now pretty extensively in all their various forms. This is my first iPhone. Dude, they're underperforming pieces of shit. They don't do what they're supposed to do. And I also have a bit of a wake-up call. If you've only ever used Google products on your iPhone, you have no idea how good they work.

They hamstring them on your iPhone to make them not as good as they could be, which I find to be infuriating because I'm so used to using Google products because, oh, by the way, they're superior. But that being said, the last time I used my fucking Mac for an interview, the point being is we spoke about a lot of things, obviously on the smaller end, his hot sauce business, but also about the controversy around the stance, how he felt about the fight and looking back on it, some of the things you might imagine. One of the things that was kind of interesting was in conversations about Conor saying he had time off and that was a factor,

and then the stance, he really felt disrespected, that people are constantly finding reasons to anoint others and not him. And I have to tell you, I find that argument very convincing. Now, I do think there is something to be said, BC, for the title, excuse me, for the stance alteration, but a lot of it is, we talked about on this show,

a lot of it is circumstantial. It's Southpaw versus Orthodox versus Southpaw versus Southpaw. You know, it's a lot of sort of the things that Poirier had done, the check-right hook, the takedown, the pressing against the fence. All those things add up to kind of what you got for the most part. And here's the other point, and he's right about this.

Early in a fighter's career sometimes, or midway through, the media will just hop on a guy. And sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. Usually with some kind of reason there. And they will just anoint him something. He'll become a media darling. It was almost impossible for Conor to not become one. with some kind of reason there, and they will just anoint him something. He'll become a media darling. It was almost impossible for Conor to not become one. But Poirier had just enough setbacks where he became respected, but not anointed by the media, and therefore the fans and everybody else.

And he had to go through piece by piece and then dismantle every obstacle in front of him before he could be anointed the guy. And here he gets to the point where, you know, six years later, we said there's no excuses on either side. He goes and does the damn thing, and I can understand his perspective. They're still finding reasons to say, well, you know. We're still finding reasons. You and I.

You and I are still finding reasons. I mean, is it because Conor makes for great content and it's easier to obsess over his things for traffic and the fact that there's so much material to work with because he's been the star push in our face but yeah i think there's obviously a lot to what poirier is saying here it's understandable the the the headline should have been not just oh by the way that fight happened because poirier is great but let's keep breaking down while he's great rather than having that as the headline and then

subhead all the way down as mcgregor mcgregor mcgregor but luke you know that's what happens i mean look you know that's that's why you know the stars get the spoil it is what it is and so yeah but it got me to thinking and i wrote this on twitter and i saw some a bunch of fighters retweet it which was if you're a fighter i have noticed this bc it's not a it's not a it's not a hardcore rule it's not like one-to-one every time. It's not what I'm saying. But I have noticed a trend. The fighters who are able to kind of tune out media, tune out fans, tune out the public discussion,

whether they're right or they're wrong, and they'll be both, the ones who are able to just not let it affect them, not pay too much attention to it, kind of be aware of it but not really, you know, I'm scanning fucking headlines, that kind of a thing. They're the ones who are on average able to get the most out of themselves, I think, fight to fight, and usually retain the greatest degree of happiness. I find the ones that obsess over what the media says, or what the fans say, both of them, because it can be similar or, you know part of the same collective they're the ones that they can still do well but there's a degree of like unhappiness because obviously you can't really force that conversation the way you'd want to have you noticed that as well

yeah yeah no doubt that's why you know it's a it's a bit surprising even though Poirier's right even though that's also the way the system works here's a guy who part of the fuel of what has led this great turnaround is the fact, Luke, that he stopped caring about this stuff. So, you know, if I was him, I'd stay on that road. I mean, you know, it was John Wooden who said, you know, both criticism and praise, they're both sort of a crutch and unnecessary. You know what I mean? Stay in the middle and don't get seduced by either one and it you know it makes a lot of sense it's certainly

not easy luke okay you've hit that block button many a time it's certainly not easy but uh yeah i i would encourage him to just uh just keep winning just keep doing it um anthony peders told me the same thing anthony pesto when he got social media off of his phone he was never happier i believe that you don't need to hear what everyone is saying about you. No, definitely not, especially when you get to a certain point of celebrity and in the public light, you know, a point where I'm not at, Luke. I may never get there, and that's probably preferred. But if I do, remind me to turn off my mentions, all right?

Last thing about the Dustin interview, he was open to fighting Nate. That was not a thing he turned down. Now, he acknowledged up front it made no sense of the division because he's kind of looking for a title next. You know, he shouldn't have one now. Don't we have sound on this, Luke? I don't know. Do we?

Maneach? Big Meech? Larry Hoover? Gaff? Anyone? Dude, they're out. They're just partying. How do we not have sound? Where's Mikey Mormy more mal i'm gonna be all up in his grill how do we not have sound on this this is our interview we own it we should be promoting it good

god anyway luke i do want to talk about the nate ds thing what what were his thoughts on the idea of an ads fight he's okay with it he would do it but he acknowledges it's weird because you know he should be title fight next uncrowned champion and nate's just gonna jump the line but they were supposed to fight previously and the whole thing fell apart nate called for it obviously ufc would probably be pretty warm to it at this point would you be okay with it and i'm gonna stay in two scenarios with title without title so here's the deal it's gonna be interesting this is again very sort of hypocritical in a lot of ways but i think nate changes the the hypocrite side of it but uh i don't think poirier should fight next without a title like 1000 what else would you have to do to earn it

unless they're like the only thing left is to fight habib again to earn it right which is not going to happen so you know it's poirier title or nothing um diaz is not not not has not earned this title shot but at the same time this is not foreign out of the UFC playbook to to give a big star an opportunity like this where you know regardless of whether they're coming off a win or a loss and we hate to see it normally even the King of Rio Jose Aldo when he got a title shot off two defeats, we were sort of like, it doesn't really make a ton of sense. Even when Holly Holm got the GDR fight for a title off of two defeats, we're just sort of like, really? So from that regard, Luke, it's like Dan Hendo,

Biz Ping 2 all over again in a lot of ways. Yet because it's Nate, tell me if I'm wrong. I don't think you could find a fan hardcore or not who's gonna have too much of an issue if we do poirier diaz next for the damn title and i think it's split one is because it's nate right he's the counterculture guy who never really cared about the titles and was always on the outside and the other part is sort of the stuff we just set up no one's more deserving than poirier. Who's going to tell him that shouldn't be for a title?

I know the division's historically stacked. I know this is kind of ridiculous, but let's also lay the land. McGregor, Gaethje, and Ferguson all coming off defeats. It could just as easily be Chandler right now, and I think in a lot of ways that or Oliveira is certainly more fair and makes more sense but if you're telling me those guys have to fight each other next and this is going to open up Poirier to fight Nate for the pay-per-view element of it for the money for the reward to Dustin like here's a fight that you know you'd be favored you'd probably win it'd be a big payday you can't get Conor yet right now because you just beat him so let's give you the biggest payday we can right now, right?

Luke, I'd be all for it, even though I'll admit it's wrong. It's not right. But like, you know, didn't Whitney say it a few times? It's not right, but it's okay. You know, I'm going to make it anyway, Luke. And I think Dana may end up making it anyway. I mean, please, you're typically a harvester of sorrow when it comes to standing up to things that are wrong with the ufc would you be okay with this because of

everything i just said it's a tough one it's a tough one you know i here's here's just what i think about less about what i care about and what i prefer because that doesn't really matter in this particular equation but just think about something in this for equation. But just think about something for a second. Seriously. Nate Diaz, UFC lightweight champion. Can you imagine? I mean, what's one thing neither Diaz brother has achieved? Neither has been a UFC champion despite being headliners and cult favorites and now much more than that, celebrated figures in the wider sporting public. That's really what they are.

They're massive celebrities. Certainly Nate after the Conor fight. That's really what they are. They're massive celebrities, certainly Nate after the Conor fight. But they've never had that. Now, you could say, okay, Nick was supposed to have beaten Carlos Condit. He got robbed, blah, blah, blah. But even then, that was the interim title, if I recall correctly. And so, you know, it was never really that close anyway. Can you imagine they put it up for grabs and Nate Diaz claims the fucking UFC title?

It would be, I mean, the guy who was the class clown exactly, but you know, the kid quite literally too cool for school coming in there and grabbing the valedictorian prize or some shit. It's the most amazing thing to consider. I don't know if that's the reason to make the fight, but it certainly makes it intriguing more to the point. You can tell, dude, I've had conversations with Nate's people over the years. They liked that fight for Nate. Now, I'm not sure if I agree with that at this point, but they seem to think that's a fight that is very, very tough. They certainly respect Dustin Poirier. There's no hate there, but they believe that's quite winnable. They picked Anthony

Pettis for a reason. They probably bit off more than they could chew against Jorge Masvidal, but they like their chances, as it stands, against Dustin Poirier. And so, you know, you just think to yourself, Dustin likes it. You know, Nate wants it. You could put a title on there and it would be absolutely fucking huge no matter really who wins there. You know, there's, this is my point, BC. Doesn't matter what I think. The momentum behind something like that is so obvious and so huge. It's like, Luke, do you like that this tidal wave is coming? It doesn't matter whether I like the tidal wave.

It's going to crash into the fucking shore. It's like, could two guys, Poirier and Diaz, better represent the UFC fan base? It's like the hardworking, almost factory town type mentality of a Poirier mixed with everything we just said about Nate like Luke we talked about this when you and I did the Conor resume review show and in the I think the charm in that show was sort of reliving the emotions we felt coming into those fights and when the result happened in the aftermath and like I can't stress this enough I was in the media room at the MGM Grand, as I said on that video, for UFC 196, which is right next to the arena.

I still to this day think that's the largest roar I ever heard when Nate rallied back even before the submission happened. And, you know, the building just going nuts, the uproar, and, of course, the explosion when Conor tapped out. But when Nate specifically yelled into the microphone, I'm not surprised, motherfuckers. It was a sound that was just, like, unique to any crowd in a fight I've ever heard. You know, it wasn't as loud as the finish, but it was just like a, yeah, yeah, you tell them. It was as if everybody in the crowd in that home was like, one of us finally did it. We stuck it to the man. You know what I mean?

He beat UFC's corporate poster boy. The C in UFC stood for Conor connor you know like all that and i think if this happened it would be a lot dear like if dan hendo had beaten bisping in the rematch and by the way he almost did let's not forget that right he was 46 i think that would have been more about um the perfect end to hendo's career he'd done everything but win a UFC title, right? And had he retired right then, it would have been like this great moment, even though he didn't deserve the fight

and it doesn't make a lot of sense in title lineage history. Nate Diaz winning right now would probably make less sense, but I think it would be much more celebrated, Luke, because it's us, dude. You know what I mean? Yeah, come on, 209. Where is he? This stay motivated guy right here.

Yes, Luke, yes. Okay, let's do this. Stay motivated versus stay hydrated. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know, I just talked myself into it, Luke. Okay, I might have to change my pants. I'm fired up here. It would make no sense.

It would make no sense, and we can both agree it would make no sense, but the question is how much sense does it have to make, really, is the issue. Let's go to point number three here, if we can, BC. This is an interesting one. So, Calvacators coach Tyson Chartier, who I spoke to briefly through Instagram, like a day after the fight. I reached out to him and wanted to check in and see how things were. And he was very nice. He was very down, obviously, but he was very friendly. And he finally did a formal interview. He spoke to, I believe, Mike Heck over at MMA Fighting about the reason why he did not stop the fight between Calvin Cater and Max Holloway.

And what he says is, this is more or less what he told me, he was close. He was close. Several times it was like, okay, it's time to do it and then he would stop. Let me read two quotes very quickly if I can, BC. Quote,

it definitely did get close to us stopping it. I'm sitting in the corner and every time things were getting really bad, Calvin's back was to us and we see Max and we see Herb. There was a couple times when we were like, F, is he going to stop it? And I was hoping Herb would stop it. And then all of a sudden, we saw he wasn't going to stop it. We were like, should we

throw the towel? And then I'm thinking we're going to throw the towel, but then Calvin would crack him. Then he would get off the fence and start landing shots. Damn it. The only way to describe is I was looking for a reason to stop it. And every time I was just about to, he would give us a reason not to. It's a tough spot to be in because you have to make a judgment call in real time based on the facts that you're presented. And yeah, there were a couple of times I thought Herb was going to stop it, but he's looking Calvinvin in the eye i'm behind calvin so it's like herb has a better view than we do and calvin is fighting back he's landing good shots what do you make of his response i think it aligns with everything i said in my side of that big debate we had which

you know i think we were a lot closer in some ways than the than the volume of our debate but i think at the end of the day luke again again, it wasn't a title fight, but it was a very big fight in terms of rankings. And more or less, this is the title fight of Cater's career in a lot of ways. Cater took that away from his corner and from the referee with everything Cater's coach just said. Every time it looked like, now let's do it, he would land a shot. He would have a moment. He would have a moment.

He would defend himself responsibly. And it does not take away from everything you said in your side of the debate, which is long-term, this is going to fuck him up. And, you know, it will. But this sport is that. And this was his chance. This was his moment. They gave him every chance.

You know, that's why I was on that side is, you know, I don't think, you know, I wouldn why I was, that's why I was saw on that side is, you know, I don't think, you know, I wouldn't want this for, for most fights. I wouldn't, you know, but, but in that moment, like that's his shot. Give him a shot. He he's accepting it. Give him his damn shot. At the end of the day, I'm going to applaud his corner. It's not an easy call.

It's never an easy call. And you know, it never, but, um, that's the one fight you let it happen. Not at all, Luke, for the honor of one day saying, I went five rounds and didn't get stopped by Holloway. No, not for that. Not for that. Just for the fact that this was the biggest fight of his career, give him that chance. So that's not hiding and not looking the other eye from the price he's going to pay

for not having stopped it. But, Luke, again, it's gray. It's a gray. Gray is my favorite color, right? I felt so symbolic yesterday. It's a gray freaking area, and it was still within the grounds of that gray. So good answer from him.

This is not the Rocky Pennington situation with Nunes. This is nothing like that. This was okay. So here's the thing. It's like I understand it might be hard to stop it, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. There's a couple things that stand out to me about this, and I want to be clear. I agree with you. It's not, dude, anyone who's like, you know, it's an easy call. Well, at home, when you're, you know, just drinking a beer and you're either by yourself or

you're with your buddy and you can tell that Calvin Cater is just getting mauled, yeah, it seems, you know, relatively easy from that vantage point. But when you're with your buddy and you can tell that Calvin Cater is just getting mauled, yeah, it seems relatively easy from that vantage point. But when you're Tyson Chartier and you know Calvin, and he is kind of throwing back at times, which we can all agree that he was doing, it becomes a much more difficult call. But to me, there's a lot more that's involved here. One, he didn't seem to know what he was looking for.

I mean, two things. There's a sort of paralysis that happens between these institutions that are supposed to look over something where I don't think Herb was looking at the corner. But in this particular case, you had the corner looking at Herb being like, are you going to do something? Am I going to do something? And so in the end, nothing ever happens. Whereas the question is not whether what Herb is or is not doing.

What are you looking for from signs from your fighter? Now, throwing back is what you're looking for, you know, there's almost never going to be a reason to intervene in any kind of close contest. I think that's the problem. The question you have to ask yourself is, we talked about it before, you know, you have a guy in Max Holloway, literally maybe the best chin in UFC history. 24 fights, they can't even sit him on his rear end, right? I mean, that is an incredible chin.

And your guy has taken an absolute mountain of abuse. Even if you don't stop it in the middle of the fourth, and he's swinging after that, you stop it at the end of it. This is a historic beating. Literally historic. I mean, this is without precedent in certain ways. And then you say, live to fight another day. Because there's the point you make, Brian.

The one part I really disagree with, which is like, this is his day. Let me explain something to you. I've had coaches on my radio show after very controversial calls where they didn't step in or whatever the case, and every time they find a new way to tell me it's their fighter's most special moment. It was their UFC debut. It was the first time inside the top ten. This was a rematch they really wanted.

In certain cases, of course, it's a title fight where I think we can agree some latitude is probably warranted. This was probably a number one contenders fight. Okay, pretty close, but not a title fight. My point being is every time a coach doesn't pull the trigger, which by the way is much more common than not, they tell me that that particular fight is always the reason to not do it when there really is no uniform underlying condition to any of the fights if I measure them across all the different ones that are happening. What I'm saying to you is I understand your point about it being great. I agree with it being great. It's not easy. It's very, very difficult and Tyson Chartier is not a bad guy. He's a good guy. I just think he's working with incomplete information and incomplete incomplete training my point being is they

always side on not doing something that is the one common denominator it does not matter what the circumstances tell you whether they were as clear as this one or other ones where guys are taking horrible beatings and they don't intervene every time the logic is the same i know that guy i love that guy i care about that. I know what he's capable of. This was a big opportunity. Rinse and repeat every fucking time. This is just a new version of it. But there's typically a moment where you have that chance.

Again, I didn't see that moment in this, and I felt if that moment arised at any point in round five, the fight would have been stopped. The moment never happens. So whenever there is a bad injury boxing obviously it happens exclusively compared to mma right we don't have deaths in mma or too many you know catastrophic things happening thankfully up to this point but whenever that does happen you look back at the fight and say what did we miss what should

we have seen and sometimes there are moments when the fighter just doesn't want to be there or, again, he's not throwing back or whatever. You know, Cater didn't give us that, and that doesn't mean Luke. I grant you that this is definitely a harder case in some ways than other ones I've seen. I'm just trying to tell you, you could take what Tyson is saying and plug in, instead of referee Herb Dean, plug in Jason Herzog or your referee of choice. And then the circumstances of their fight.

And it's the exact same reason to never intervene. Never. It's all just a way of saying, I didn't want to do it. And what I'm trying to point out to you is, every circumstance is different. There is no underlying commonality with all the times the guys didn't intervene, including in cases where I've seen horrible beatings, really, really, really bad ones, and they did not intervene.

My point is, their instinct is to not do anything. And maybe in balance, that probably is the instinct worth preserving. What I'm saying is, some training is in order to kind of undo a little bit of that instinct for the fighter's preservation. If not, in this case, BC, other ones where the exact same logic is deployed.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in the relationship between the trainer and the fighter, I think that's where it's most key. You have to know what you're looking for in a lot of ways. You know, when the fighter's just getting by on instinct and not strategically trying to win and just trying to survive, again, that's your moment. But, you know, when you don't give any moments, though,

final statement on this, like Cater didn't give any moments to stop it, again, that doesn't mean there's no price to pay, right? But you can't, you can only sanitize this game so much where it's no longer going to be this game. And that's still the allure to so many people. It's the wild freaking west of sports, right? The combat sports. It's the high stakes, high risk, high reward.

And I don't think there's only so much you can clean it up, Luke. There really is. There's only so much. All right. With that in mind, we shall move along to some of the smaller news but worth putting out there pfl announced their lightweight and their i think featherweight rosters for their upcoming season let me read you some of these names akhmed aliev who's 19 and 6 former ufc lightweight olivier aubin mercier uh this is this is lightweight you got to frame it better luke this This is the lightweight bracket. I said lightweight first, then featherweight.

Lightweight, then featherweight. You were very generic to me. I didn't, you know, this is lightweight here. Yeah, okay, so this is lightweight. You're a boxing hero of 2020, Clay Collard. 18-8 is his record. Johnny Case, another former UFC guy, 27-7. Marcin Held, who weirdly had a great run in Bellator,

then a terrible run in UFC, 26-7. Marcin Held, who weirdly had a great run in Bellator, then a terrible run in UFC. 26-7. Jolten Lutenbach. Mikhail Odentsov. And then Anthony Pettis. And then, I think, Loic Radzabov. And Nathan Schulte. At featherweight, very quickly, Tyler Diamond.

Bubba Jenkins is back. That's amazing to see him back. Movelid Kaibulayev excuse me for my pronunciation Brendan Loughnan or Loughnan, Shaman Marais, another UFC guy by the way, Brendan there, Brendan Loughnan or Loughnan, however you pronounce it properly

that was the one that won on Contender Series but because he went for a takedown, Dana was like piss off, which was just bizarre Lance Palmer, who's won I mean, talk about a guy who has in the shadows just made bank in ufc jason sores uh sung bin joe and that's it all right bc a bunch of names you don't know but some names you do sort of the point right yeah look i'm gonna i'm gonna tip the cap here but i'm tipping the cap to pfl from from in some ways a a casual stance but for a reason

um look pfl product obviously it's not bad i mean it's good when you get into it either you know from in some ways a casual stance, but for a reason. Look, PFL product, obviously, it's not bad. I mean, it's good when you get into it, but it's been hard at times to fully get into it because there's so much out there in the market and all that. I really like specifically this lightweight bracket, and it might be from more of a casual standpoint because I'm saying, wow, I know more of these guys' names than I typically do when I look at a PFL bracket.

All that, like you said, Marcin Held, oh, yeah, you know, Anthony Pettis, good guy, the damn boxer. There's a nice mix here. I mean, look, this is an allure. If you've been on the fence or you've been critical of PFL or you've been like, look, it's probably fine, I just don't have the time or the care, this is kind of pulling me back into the care a little bit.

I want to see if Anthony P pettis is you know strategic transition to take the money and kind of be pushed here as a face works out because in pfl it's still tournament season format so even if you are a face you still have to go through the same gauntlet everybody else does so it's going to be very interesting to actually see how pettis mixes with this group of uh retreads we, younger guys looking to make their name. Luke, I have to say for PFL, I'm typically critical. I'll tip the damn cap, right? I like this.

I do like it. These names that I'm reading out, people are like, oh, they must suck. Dude, how many times have you seen these names from these smaller organizations? Sometimes they'll have like, you know, three losses, four losses, five losses, right? Because they're still working things out and they come in there and they can upset no names. If you watch PFL, and this was true when Bellator did the, strictly the tournament system under Bjorn Rebney, that was a organization where underdogs came to ruin everybody's surprise. Constantly, you would see a known name and a good name go up against somebody who, you know, didn't quite have the same following or visibility,

and they would go in there and just start wrecking shop. And it happened in every weight class, in virtually every tournament, every single time. It was just a steady way to understand what happened. Sometimes guys go in there and just blow through the tournament as well, which you can expect either of those things. So this is what I like about this one. You got guys like Anthony Pettis. You know, you think he might be the clubhouse leader, but there's some names that are going to give him

very, very, very tough fights. Remember, Pettis lost to Carlos De Gea Fajeda, sort of a top 10 guy in the UFC without much controversy. That guy just ran over him. I think there's, you know, do I think that Pettis can win this tournament? Of course. Do I think he necessarily will? I don't know. Plus Lance Palmer, not the most exciting style of the world, sort of a top game wrestling kind of guy. He's pulled out $2 million in prize money among everything else he's done over in World Series of Fighting and now PFL. By virtue of the victories he's been in, this guy has never been in the big show, never been in Bellator, never been, I don't believe anyway, and certainly never been in UFC, and yet has made a lot more than many of his contemporaries by virtue of taking place in this tournament. Now you got some other names in there that could make things kind of interesting.

So, yeah, I think there's absolutely a reason to watch. And I'm curious to see exactly what some of these older vets might still have left. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, we talk we have this debate sometimes in the pro wrestling world, even though I'm largely removing myself from that world these days, about the idea of this revolution what if in pro wrestling right like new japan and and you know ring of honor and all these other sort of side groups could come together and form one giant entity and i thought that would be what aew would become and to certain degrees they have with this whole idea of what if you

took everybody in the world that wasn't in WWE put them together and competed against WWE could you have a real competition could it be the Monday Night Wars could it be WCW versus WWF all over again or UFC versus Pride in the early 2000s all over again so Luke what if there was a world in MMA where that could happen right now and all all of these organizations pull their best talent and interest in network deals and all that. Could this be a legitimate threat to UFC? It's not going to happen. This is a completely mythical discussion. But if Bellator, PFL, One, you know, whomever, all got together and said, let's co-promote let's let's let's let's

push this thing out let's put our fighters against your fighters and let's make this happen would it make a giant dent could it be constant constant uh real legitimate competition or is it still all secondary to you well it would be great if there was more crossover, certainly, I think, is my attitude. But my view on the way things work is, in terms of cross-promotion, and even just inside of organizations, it's like the matchmaking model and the way things are done, it's like democracy, right? It's the worst form of matchmaking except for all the others you know i understand all the criticisms about favorability and why crossover you know you get more of these matchups you thought were impossible and you can get rid of you can sort of undo some of the favoritism that a matchmaker might have individually and yeah all that is true to the

extent that it happens you usually get some great stuff like when Bellator does crossovers with Ryzen, you have the Horiguchi win over the wrestler from NC State, Darren Caldwell. So you have great stuff like that. You can really do fun, interesting things, and I'm all in favor. I wish there was more of it. But in general, I don't feel... I tend to think you get some of that itch scratched by virtue of what they're doing. Here's what I would say.

If there was just a little bit more parity among the organizations, I feel like you wouldn't have to have formal crossovers. You'd get enough of this coming and going between the organizations to get better answers to these questions. In fact, PFL's sort of, I won't say surge in popularity, but sort of steady rise in popularity. And now Pettis and these guys being like, I'm at the end of my career. I want to make some big cash.

This seems like a great way to try and do it. I like that. I like that it offers that. I like that Michael Chandler's able to go over to UFC. I feel like we're getting that itch scratched just enough to be satiated, personally. That's fair. That's fair, Luke. Okay.

And then last but not least, we go to boxing, our viewer's favorite topic. Sort of like a potpourri here very quickly, BC. You and I got sent this. BBC did a documentary. I think they have a show or a series called panorama and as part of that they looked into Daniel Kinahan who owns MTK or was part of anyway the initial founder of MTK global which is this managerial company slash gym to an extent as well and it turns out according to law enforcement, Daniel Kinahan is a violent narco trafficker.

And he also, while he has claimed to have cut ties with MTK Global, appears to still be pulling strings behind the scenes while he lives in Dubai. To the point where this documentary, the revelation about it was not that he was essentially accused of many things or believed to be involved in a series of crimes, but that having stepped away from bad publicity from the boxing business, the report from BBC is that he hasn't done that really at all, that he is just as much a part of everyday affairs, if not on the books, certainly in reality. BBC, or should I say the resident BBC, what do you make of all this? It's interesting because the fans and journalists in Europe are all over this story. I want to give a shout out to someone like Alan

Dawson, the guy from Business Insider, a growing combat sports reporter. He's done a lot of great work in reporting on this. And the whole standpoint from that side is how are you American fans and journalists not up in arms about this? And if you're saying up in arms and what it's it's the idea that a growing powerful stable in boxing from a managerial standpoint with much influence on a promotional standpoint with the likes of eddie hearn and metrum sport and with the likes of bob arum and top rank because you know mtK does a sort of lower level series on ESPN Plus and they manage a lot of the fighters, you know, Carl Frampton and Tyson Fury who do big business with Bob Arum and ESPN.

Why would we not be all up on this story that they may or may not be completely financially fueled by, you know, organized crime and drug money and this, you know, crime and drug money and this you know shadowy figure daniel kinahan and look there's a longer extended story that the bbc did a great job both in documentary and in longer form writing about how there was a a shooting a couple years back at a boxing weigh-in that kinahan was involved in and and you know it's it's interesting should we care more on this side i would certainly. I mean, this is not like this is some ho-hum, who cares, no big deal. But I can't lie to the fact that there's also a half of me as a boxing purist

that still has that ho-hum, who cares, no big deal attitude. Why? Because boxing is notoriously full of shit and has history of this kind of bullshit. Going back to when the mob completely ran and owned the sport in the 40s and 50s luke through people like don king who you know went to jail for something you can't understand luke how he could just kill not just one man but like two of them and screw over every fighter he promoted and be sued by every single one and just be a you know sort of a shadowy character,

sort of sometimes openly. Those are the players in play in boxing then and to some degree now. So, you know, in the States here, we don't touch this as much, right? Most of the fighters in Kinahan's stable are, you know, Europe-based, you know, Irish, UK, all that. But it's not that it's not a big deal. I mean, Tyson Fury is, you know, arguably one of the two or three biggest stars in this game. And here's a guy who put that social media video out last year for 45 seconds praising that he got off the phone with Kinahan and he's the guy making this Anthony Joshua fight happen. So you're going to probably hear a lot more of this, Luke, as we get closer to Fury Joshua.

Because if this is true, if all these rumors and all this, you know, believe stuff, even though Kinahan's not been convicted of all this stuff, you know, and some people think he's on the run living in Dubai or whatever, UAE. Look, I don't know all the details. All I know is you're probably going to hear more about it as we get closer to this Fury Joshua fights that have been put out there. It sounds shady, Luke. And, dude, I hate to sit back and go, that's boxing.

But, Luke, that's fucking boxing, bro. And that's always been boxing. I think that's a little bit glib, a little bit underselling it. I mean, I understand your point. You're right. You've got murderers up there, former felons, you know, child abusers, wife abusers. I've said it before. If you can't fight in a cage or a ring in this country,

I'm not sure what you can do. So you're going to get that. And I understand that. Certainly, I think that part is well taken. You know, if you've been covering this business long enough, you're like, yeah, there's a narco trafficker involved. Okay, well, what is on the zone this weekend? You know, I sort of get it. I really do. Well, just

time out. Pride we we all believe it was run by the yakuza right you know what i mean i've not run by yes heavy ties to it yes okay even ufc i'm not i'm not telling you here that dana and the fortitas are gangsters but like you know it's run by like these casino magnets who who legally set this up and you know it's still vegas desert casino money look all i'm saying is you look close enough in combat sports you're gonna find some shit luke okay so so that that part is certainly true i mean here's here's what stands out to me about the story is that uh and again apparently in 2021 you can't make a comparison between things unless it is totalizing

in every way unless every element of one example meets every part of another example. People are like, but these things are different. Yes. What I'm about to say to you is not a totalizing comparison, but it does remind me. BC, I'll bring it up again.

Have you seen the 30 for 30 documentary called The Two Escobars? The Colombian one? Yes. So you remember in that doc, which is by the way, a fantastic documentary. It's the best, the best one they ever did.

By far the best one. It's tremendous. They go through and they show how Pablo Escobar and other drug kingpins as well would use various soccer clubs, the medical, the Cali or, you know, uh,

Medellin independent or independent. I forgot how you say it, but anyway, um, the Medellin, uh, team and they would use it to be like, oh, we'll just use this sort of sports business to smuggle in

and essentially launder all the drug money. And they did for a really long time. And so part of what this BBC documentary alleges, and again, it should be an allegation, should be noted, is that that MTK Global company, it's like, where's all this money for 200 guys and blah, blah, blah coming from? They suggest that there's a reason to believe that it's coming from this greater narco-trafficking business. Again, these are all things that would have to be much more vetted out and proven in a court of law if it ever comes to that kind of a thing.

But it does ring some similarities between them, if in fact it is true. This is the point, though, that I wanted to make. It's that one of the reasons why I kind of like my own little cubbyhole in combat sports, my own little desk, and you're always trying to pull me out of it, trying to get me to reach into the big companies and pull me out of my cave and get me to do bigger things, which I appreciate because I think that's something I needed. You asshole, you're always trying to help me with my career. Yeah, well, OK, but here's the problem with that is that in that's a problem. But the reality of combat sports and you know, this as well as I do, B.C.

And we're lucky enough that so far I haven't encountered that with my current employer, but in the general sphere of combat sports, there are people in high places who just normalize the most abhorrent, unbelievable behavior. That's true in MMA. It's true in boxing. And it's hard to know if you can get to the center of these things, because that's a goal that anyone might have, without being part of it and glad-handing these people. To that point, BC, in the documentary, they know Bob Arum and Eddie Hearn, happy to do business. Well, Daniel Kinahan, no problem.

It's like, my friend was asking me, he's like, does no one ever ring alarm bells? I'm like, dude, it's not like Bob Arum is part of some heroin ring or something. He's just a dude promoting fights. But in the desire to promote fights, these people will do business with just about anybody and in the course of being an MMA fighter you have managers out there

who have you know or on MMA and boxing who are utterly despicable characters who have no business being involved in the sport and they are everywhere what I'm saying to you is there are people who do really bad things in boxing. The thing that bothers me along the way is that many steps below them, there are all kinds of folks who just normalize it like it's no big deal. To the point where it gets to our shores,

as media folks, and we're asked what we make of it, it's like, dude, Kinahan might be a bad guy. I don't know. We'll have to see what the courts have to say about it. It seems like he's at bare minimum a shady character, BC, which of course you would agree with, but all the way down are going to be people at every stage of the business who make excuses for the guy. I was on Billy Joe Saunders, his Twitter account, you know, going after everyone who had a bad word to say about Daniel Kinahan. And of course, Saunders has tied up with him in a number of ways. That to me

is the tragedy of combat sports is that if you want to work in this business on some level, you have to either be okay with or glad hand with folks who are absolutely repugnant characters. And that's why I like my little YouTube cubbyhole, BC, because for the most part, I can isolate myself from that. Yeah, and you're right. It's certainly a gray area. You're right.

It toes the line of of hypocritical but uh you know eddie hearn just brought that big anthony joshua ruiz rematch a year and a half ago to saudi arabia right where they took money from people who were knowingly doing really bad human rights things look it's so it's it you report it you say it's out there look i believe it's out there but what is my job in this i'm i'm not a a sort of investigative news reporter right our our job is a little bit more over into fight previewing and analyzing and even entertainment to some degree um there are people who that's more of their role to investigate this and this sort of crosses even beyond sports writing right into now actual reporting you know if kinnahan's if all this connection to organized crime is real and

i don't want to be like well that's not my job i'm here for the fights but like you said we also know our sort of role in this larger picture um yeah luke if we if we check the closets on a lot of our families and i mean that from a corporate standpoint. I mean that from a whatever. You're going to find what you're looking for at the end of the day, Luke, where there's big money, okay? Dude, bad people who are also rich people

love combat sports. They love it. You know what's funny, BC? I was going through my Fandango trying to find some new movies to watch the other day, and it was amazing. I was constantly finding a martial arts movie. I think that's how I narrowed the search or something.

And all of the searches revealed movies that were like, you know, a lot of the cliches, guy is old and broken, has to come back for one more, that kind of thing. But it's always in some seedy fucking casino. It's always for some gangsteredy fucking casino it's always for some gangsters you know delight it's always with these rich weird people in the underbelly of society it's always involving that and of course they do it in a comical over-the-top hollywood way but it really is true man you want here's here's my lesson for anyone who wants to get involved in

mma or combat sports boxing too you want to work in this industry, you're going to work with bad people, legitimately fucked up, horrible, bad people. So ask yourself to what extent you have appetite for that. Or ask yourself why you're in it, right? You and I love fights. You know, there's an art form in it. We love it. And that's why we're in it. It doesn't mean I'm not cheering for the, you know, the authorities to figure this whole situation out you know what i mean is it my should i be writing a column saying bob arum you should not be doing business with this man okay you can argue that here uh bob bob arum hopefully you've done your due diligence to figure this out but that's also your decision at the end of the day luke and and it doesn't mean

i'm going to boycott watching a fight okay yeah that's the other part too it's like well how much of this you know at some point two guys are going to get in there. It's licensed by the state. It's going to happen, you know, at some point just let it go. And I understand that like this is people ask me like, well, how can you stay in there and induce and do this?

Well, one, I'm a fucking hypocrite, but like, and the reality of things is I try to distance myself from all of it to the best that I can. Number one. But the other part is like,

dude, you know, and this is selfish and this is just the reality. I try to say as much about it as I can when there is reason to do so. But the other part is like, dude, you know, and this is selfish and this is just the reality. I try to say as much about it as I can when there is reason to do so. But the other part is like, you know, for me, you know, I had all those other jobs where I could have done something that I was pretty good at, but I was unfulfilled. It was so bad for me that, you know, I told, I've told BC this, like I, my hair was falling out. My fingernails were falling out. I had blood tests and the doctor was like, dude, you are in terrible condition.

You can't do this to yourself. It was, you know, as like I was working in politics. I want to get into fight sports because I thought it was cleaner and it was better for me. And in many ways it actually is. In fact, I feel a lot better. So part of it is, you know, I was just in a horrible place in my life because of how morally compromised I felt doing that work. And the other part is, BC, it's like, this is the only thing I've ever been really good at. I've never been good at hardly anything in my life.

And so, you know, I'm going to give that up for Daniel Kinahan. No, the fuck I am not. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm just going to try and keep my hands as clean as possible, you know. But, yeah, but again, shout out to those who are doing that. Just like shout out to the people, Luke, and we've talked about this before, who are deeply investigating where UFC's money is going and all that. Look, that's a battle to go down those roads. And I tip of the cap, and I think it's important work,

and I think the results of those works, we should talk about it. And we do talk about it, the percentage of fighter pay, the whole should there be an Ali. All that stuff is important important but they're doing that work we're doing our work a couple other notes here from the world of boxing bcf you could speak to it it'd be great so what the hell is happening with this ryan garcia pacquiao fight it's on it's off it's an exhibition it's not now golden boy is saying no we don't know what you're talking about what is the current status of this fight, non-fight, this thing?

Yeah, look, the current status is we don't know. So let me update you the best I can on everything. And by the way, you don't have to look any further than CBS Sports' boxing page to see a column I wrote this week on how much I freaking love this fight and think it's needed this year in the sport because of how fun and unique and creative it is. Last time

Ryan Garcia talked publicly, which was about two and a half days ago, he says, I want it, I need it, my 2021, if I can map it out. And let's not forget, he did fight Luke Campbell in January of this year to open the year, would be to fight Manny Pacquiao next in the spring and close the year against Gervonta Davis. Good God, Luke, where do we sign up

for a kid that wants to dare to be great at age 22 right now? The problem is his promoters golden boy which is run by oscar de la joya and eric gomez have said not so fast my friend and a story published uh on espn from espn deportes um it seems like eric gomez told them no we've heard from pacquiao's representative team but this is not a fight we are entertaining at the moment this is not a fight we are entertaining at the moment. This is not a fight we need or want. In fact, we think a much better fight for Ryan Garcia is Teofimo Lopez Jr. Now, this is where it gets really interesting, Luke. First of all, Ryan Garcia, as we always talk about, is one of these five kings or whatever you want to talk about. These five young guys

all around 135 pounds who are going to take over the sport next. Do I want to see him against Devin Haney, Teofimo, Gervonta, Shakur Stevenson, all those guys, right? Loma, all those freaking guys. Of course I do. But if he's going to dare to be great and want to fight Manny Pacquiao next and make it one of the biggest fights we can see this year and double and triple his star value and all that,

my advice is get out of the fricking way and let it happen. Here's an interesting picture. Manish, can you put up the Instagram shot that Eric Gomez put out there of golden boy, a sit down between Gomez, Oscar de La Hoya and Bob Arum of top rank, which was interesting that this happened and interesting that Gomez would

promote it Arum of course of top rank which has the deal with ESPN Golden Boy is still firmly entrenched with the zone now if that meeting is about making a Garcia Teofimo fight again like that's amazing that like that like I got a hard-on from here to Hanover Luke Luke. It's incredible. But if Ryan Garcia is going publicly and saying, that's not what I want. I want Manny. Um, history has a way of repeating itself. And what I mean by that is Luke Canelo eventually broke ties with golden boy just recently because he didn't feel like they were, they were trustworthy and they were doing what he wanted to. Ryan Garcia is not only trained, he's co-managed by the Canelo camp. He's entrenched in that camp.

Canelo is his mentor. Ryan Garcia just got a big deal a year and a half ago from Golden Boy. He re-upped after kind of taking a stand and saying, I built my audience of 8.4 million Instagram followers, not you. I know my value. I deserve more.

To Golden Boy's credit, Luke, they ponied up. They gave him the money. We don't know the figures, but the press really said record-breaking contract to a young fighter. If I'm Oscar De La Hoya and Eric Gomez, Luke, I know they have him under contract, but I'm not letting history repeat itself. Ryan Garcia wants to be the next big thing right now. Wouldn't you want to get on board with that? Wouldn't you see the potential? And again, I don't know the numbers. Maybe Manny's team sent a number of a purse that they didn't like.

Or maybe this is part of a larger negotiation ploy. Who knows? But wouldn't you want to put him in a fight with Pacquiao, which is the biggest fight you can make for him? And depending on which side you lean you could argue he has a chance to win Luke the betting odds just came out on this fight boxingscene.com had a story Manny opened as a like a minus 110 favorite Ryan Garcia as a plus 140 underdog I mean this is a close-ass fight on paper in a lot of ways even if my initial feeling is hey right guy

like be careful you can get flatlined by this bigger older you know stronger uh legendary fighter look isn't there more danger trying to push him in there against teofimo who's you know like young at the peak of his prime and just out dueled loma and also it's like if you lose to manny you could say, well, you overreached and it would ruin a lot of things. Certainly. Two weight divisions. Yeah. Yeah.

He would have to move up to weight divisions to do it. So, you know, you already have the, the, the grace there. Right. So you could say,

well, you know, he, he, you know, Icarus tried to fly a little too close to the sun, but there's still plenty of room back, you know,

at 135 pounds for him where he really belongs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, blah, blah. Hey, he tried to dare to be great. It was a little too far, but no harm, no foul. But you lose to Lopez. And by the way, I think Lopez would beat the fucking brakes off that kid.

I mean, you got a guy, Lopez, who hits hard, is athletic and moves, and Garcia's a little flat-footed. I think Lopez would destroy him. So you got that. If that goes down, where do you go from there? You have to really start to, then, then, then, you know, what happens is BC, all the tune-up fights and all the fights, like, you know, why is he fighting pre-diabetic gas station attendants on DAZN again? Oh, right. Because they tried to make the Lopez fight. I mean, I want the fight to be made,

but to me, it's like in the pecking order, Lopez is your king. And so if you did Ryan Garcia versus Devin Haney, that to me is a lot better. I like that fight much more. Even Tank Davis to an extent. I think Tank would win, but I can understand it. To me, Lopez is a level or two above him. We're just rushing into that fight right now. I want all the guys to fight each other,

but I want to have it make some sense. Just going about it at the moment seems a little unnecessary. Right, exactly. And I think, you know, when you take risks promotionally, you do it for great reward while minimizing the risks as best as possible. And I think this Pacquiao fight is the best balance of that. Luke Garcia, although we'd have to move up two weight divisions, don't you agree that long-term you see this kid as more of a welterweight?

Like he has the frame where you think he can put it on, and he'd still have a 4.5-inch height advantage over Manny. I'm not talking myself into the belief that he could beat Manny, although there'd be obvious questions with Manny being 42 and pushing closer to a two-year layoff at this point. And oh, by the way, just so people know, the WBA just turned Manny into the champion in recess because he hasn't fought since the summer of 2019. They elevated Jordanus Ugas to now the WBA regular, you know, the real champion. So you very much could see Errol Spence against Jordanus Ugas in a unification fight coming up since they're both from PBC. I don't hate that fight but you know we obviously want bigger for spence but um luke i don't know dude it just the teo fumo doesn't make sense even if you're not getting the money you want to fight manny the risk reward of garcia getting the attention of

fighting manny freaking pacquiao oh and if he beat him the same way that manny pacquiao himself in 2008 moved up two weight divisions to fight Oscar De La Hoya in a fight that people didn't think Manny could win, that people weren't even talking about until suddenly it was announced. Just like this one, look what it did to Manny's career. He already had built a great career in the small weight classes. He became an overnight freaking sensation, pay-per-view superstar. I don't get that i do want to urge golden boy to be careful here because ragai is something for real and you do have to please your fighter at the end of the day um luke couple more boxing headlines here i wanted to point it back at you and say uh

yeah the the whole the whole logan paul floyd thing we were right in our suspicion are we doing this are we doing jake paul my new shit again are we doing that shit? Hold on, Luke. Logan Paul against Floyd has officially been postponed to a later date. Thank God. Do you buy what they're saying? And what they are saying in a press release which had quotes from Logan Paul is that they're kind of waiting for COVID to lessen up so they can do it in front of a large crowd. But don't you worry.

This has nothing to do of lack of interest it set records they say although they're not using anything to back up those records for interest level on a pay-per-view and early buys so i will talk about this from a business perspective everything else i don't give a fuck about so for the business side i will say you can imagine that a Paul fan base, the gathering of the Juggalos, and Floyd Mayweather could produce, if they could have a full stadium, let's say,

or not a stadium, but a full arena, that could be a significant driver of revenue at the gate. You could imagine that. Plus, Floyd has always been somebody who, as you know, if you buy a hot dog at a Floyd Mayweather fight, he gets a cut of it. You buy a t-shirt, he gets a cut. You buy a beer, he gets a cut. You buy a closed circuit, he gets a cut. You buy a pay-per-view, he gets a cut. He's probably going to want as many sources of revenue as possible if passed as prologue. So that part, I can at least say is a semi-reasonable concern with a vaccine rollout. Who the hell knows? By

the way, during the course of the show, BC, I just got great news. My dad concern with a vaccine rollout who the hell knows by the way during the course of the show bc i just got great news my dad is getting a vaccine tomorrow i am super super haven't seen my i haven't seen my father in months uh missed his 80th birthday miss christmas and miss thanksgiving he's getting a vaccine tomorrow i'm i hope i'm not stepping over boundaries but given the lack of time between you two and the the scariness of the current era if you straight up kiss the man on the lips to show your love for him i would not as a french canadian i would not be upset about that all right you weirdo you unbelievable weirdo uh so i'm really happy about that but to that point if other people get like that not so much 80 year olds but other folks like that you know that would be really tremendous.

So yes, here's my thought on this, and it's a hunch. I don't know this. This is not fact. I'm not reporting anything. But my feeling is they tried that interesting pay-per-view model where basically, in short, the earlier you bought it, the cheaper that it was, they were probably still looking for early returns on that BC enough to then use that to fund the fight itself, right? Like where is the money to pay Floyd and to pay Logan Paul coming from? Somebody has to front that. And my thought was they were probably trying to use early sales to front that. And then whatever sales they get on fight night, they'd get a cut of that or whatever front that. And then whatever sales they get on fight night, they'd get a cut of that or whatever the case. And that early enough sales simply weren't there.

So there's probably a reality that if you could sell out an arena, a Staples Center, you could make a shit ton of money. They probably want that, but they probably also want that because they're not sure how much they're going to get on the pay-per-view end. That is my hunch. Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption at the very least. They're not sure how much they're going to get on the pay-per-view end. That is my hunch. Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption at the very least. I think either way, whether it was underselling or whatever, to rush it out, as we look at the, what, it'd be 17 days from now?

I mean, there's been no promotion. There's been nothing. If you're going to do this fight, Luke, you're going to do it to do stupid numbers right to like be one of those stupid carnival events like mayweather mcgregor which again they did it so well it didn't turn out to be all that stupid come fight night we were like i'm actually kind of ready for this right you do that to do that you do press tours you do shit right you get logan paul out there talking shit in floyd's face you do wackiness there's been no nothing there's been no attempts at wackiness. So if you're going to do this, do it right. I don't really want it.

Whatever, but do it right. Okay, Luke? That's not the only Paul news, though, we have for the week, Luke. And so you don't shit on this and roll this under the rug because this is not a part of your life. No, I'm not going to show you Askren's wife's response to Jake Paul for calling her thick.

But I am going to show you this picture posted by former two-time WBC super middleweight champion Anthony the Dog Durrell, who put out a pic from the gym he was training with Jake Paul, and he said, legit, Jake Paul's legit. He's a tough dude. He's a hard worker. He gave him a glowing recommendation in the subhead. Luke, are you at the very least

impressed by the people that jake paul is going to no no this is what they would say about a kid you know uh who was you know disabled who was trying to work hard or something like that which is fine i'm not here to mock them i'm simply saying the rule applies everywhere equally, BC. I will take you seriously when you do something worth being taken serious. Fighting Ben Askren in boxing, which he's not good at and you're not good at at any kind of reasonable, respectable level, is not a thing to give a fuck about. You want to take a real fight against a real guy at a real level? Okay, I will absolutely change my tune. I will pull up my glasses of inspection, of salt and peppery, and I will take a good look, and I will say,

and if he does well, hey, maybe this kid's got a future. This bullshit is all a fucking circus. Anthony Durrell just wants a little bit of rub, which obviously this guy can give. Same for Jorge Masvidal, and I get it. That's the game that they're in. It's not the game that we're in. It's the game that i'm in i don't give a fuck all right which statement made by jake paul is more untrue in your eyes

amy askren is thick or d devlin is a four uh they're both shithead statements which of course is what he is capable of uh d devlin is not a four. She seems like a very nice person, and I think that is underrating. While we are off the rails here, I just got one more for you. Would you smash Casey Kenney? The dude? That was a joke, Luke. All right. Remember he got into trouble saying that about...

Right. All right, we can skip all this bullshit. Anyway, Luke, two more quick boxing headlines. I got two more for you. No, no one cares. No one cares. No, I do. Brandon Marshall, the former all-pro NFL wide receiver,

who, oh, by the way, Luke, is 6'5". He is 6'5", and a damn pro athlete. He wants to get into boxing now, and Luke, he don't want to fight a Paul brother. Gaff, can we throw to this video? I got to get luke's reaction this is a sweet video that we're not showing here we go what did you think when you heard that and and when when are we going to see you in the ring well well well can't compare me to

deontay wilder i'm not deontay wilder deontay wilder obviously we know him for his power um i mean he's a freak athlete uh uh but what i would say is i would challenge deontay wilder to to to dive a little deeper into the sweet science and that's where i think i separate my myself from a lot of these these heavyweights is the sweet science. I've been boxing since I was five years old, since I was a baby. No, you haven't seen me on pay-per-view. No, I don't have a win under my belt or a loss or a knockout. But at the end of the day, I know how to fight.

I know how to box. I know the sweet science. So I appreciate the champ. That's my guy. He's taught me a lot as well over the years. But, you know, Deontay Wilder, I'm going to outbox him, I'm going to retire. I'm retiring from boxing. I'm retiring before I even step foot in the ring. So if it doesn't happen, then I'm just going to move on to other things because I'm tired of chasing these guys. Luke, this is part of maybe a new segment, Weird and Wacky Wednesday,

where I ask you things you don't want to talk about. Oh, wait, we have that on Wednesday. It's called The Wheel of Death. Sorry, Luke. This was a bonus. Luke, he's not trying to fight a Paul brother. He's trying to fight Deontay Wilder, and he says he'll retire if he doesn't get it. Retire, did he?

I don't care. I don't care. Is there any part of you, because of how ridiculously bold this is that wants to see it because no no i don't give a fuck i mean look this is crazy no it's not no it's not there's nothing crazy about it this is jake paul calling out conor mcgregor only a little bit different because marshall's a sick athlete but i don't know what the fuck he knows about boxing de Deontay Wilder would absolutely annihilate him. This is a stupid conversation, and we should move on.

I have to take a COVID test in 45 minutes, so we need to do this. All right, got one more stupid conversation. Are you into Friday night's boxing pay-per-view? Barstool Sports giving us rough and rowdy in the main event, 56-year-old Jose Canseco against Barstool's 22-year-old Billy Football. Are you going to be in on this? I think it's like $20 to pay for it. I don't know.

First of all, is Canseco still on the juice? And also, what does Billy Football look like? Oh, hell yeah, Luke. Yes. I mean, he's not ridiculously ripped and cut, but he's a big dude, you know? Let's see. Billy Football. Billy No Way Jose.

Billy Hot Takes. Is that his name? Yeah. I don't know much about Billy's on-air persona in Barstool. I don't really frequent them too much, but I'm not against it. He looks like a big kid, though. I saw the tail of the tape. 22, like big dude.

Yeah, all right, maybe. You might watch it? No, I would not watch it, but I don't hate it. This is different. This is what it is. This is just donks, donking it up. Nothing wrong with that. Hopefully it makes it into have you seen this shit on Monday.

Hey, Luke, do you have any information about a big game coming up? A big game? Yeah, maybe the biggest sporting spectacle of the year. Oh, yes. So I want to remind everyone the biggest sporting spectacle of the year is nearly upon us. We know everyone loves making their picks, no matter if you're a diehard fan or just tuning in for the big game. So we think you'll love this opportunity. Enter the CBS Sports Football Props game for your chance to compete for the $1 million jackpot. That's right, $1 million if you correctly answer all the

questions and a guaranteed $50,000 to the winner. And you can win all that money without risking anything. Football Props is free to play. Just visit cbssports.com slash props or download the CBS Sports app to enter. Not an ad read at all. Very smooth transition there, Luke. That was me speaking extemporaneously, BC. Hey, why don't i take over the show here since you got to get covid tested soon uh this is what we do every wednesday

we ask luke questions he doesn't want to answer so we force him to spin the wheel to get there yeah and by the way i don't get to spin y'all automate the spin i just have to be subject to questions i don't want to talk about. And I want to be full disclosure here on a few things. One, we did have some technical errors last week that led people to believe this is a rig segment. Luke does not know which categories or questions are coming. It's a

legitimate spin of the wheel and we see what happens. I got 10 categories. Your categories this week Luke in the hot seat as we spin the black circle are Eagle Eye Cherry, Columbian Exports, Platinum Parenting, Only Fans Ant, P.F. Chang's, We Wanna Yoana, Chicks with Sticks, The Cosell of MMA, 49 Fucking Times, and BMFU. Luke, spin the damn wheel. You spelled Colombian correctly. Very good.

Yes, yes. Please, spin the wheel of death. Let's do this fun game, Luke. All right, here we go. the shitty ass band all right yeah i remember that you know speaking of the eagle what was it is it stay tonight fight the break yeah fight the break of dongo you know there's a 100 chance jay probably has a cover of that song on youtube right yeah is he singing tone deaf the entire time yeah probably uh luke the eagle in this case is one habib namagaov. Let's say he sticks to his word and never fights again, Luke, after a 29 and 0 run in MMA. Let's take a closer look at what he left behind. When taking into account the betting odds coming in, where his opponents were ranked, and the actual performances in his

fights, what do you believe is the cherry on top of the sundae of the Eagles' great career? Which is my way of saying, what do you think has been Habib's best and most important victory to date? Ooh. And support your answer, please. When you say best, do you mean like most impressive? Most impressive, you know know it's the performance mixed with the danger whether we thought he was going to win the importance of the fight everything together right i mean it's hard it's hard it's hard to not pick the mcgregor fight for those

reasons but i actually would say the gaethje fight to me is a little bit more impressive because gaethje was this bruiser but then he lost, in ways that Conor probably would not have, or maybe he would have. But in any case, Conor, you know, he was sort of on this weird stage of his career at that time, if you want to believe that. Not to an extent that I do, but you couldn't make that argument with Justin. Justin, in fact, was the opposite.

He had completely retooled his game and then gone on this blitzing, absolutely amazing streak. And, you know, to your point, BC, which I know you ride or die with, he was hurting Habib a little bit with those leg kicks. But then for him to just get at... I mean, people have... Here's the thing. Other people have choked out Conor before.

No one had done to Justin what Habib did. No one had thoroughly dismantled him in that way, in the way that Habib did. And the other guys have beaten Justin on the feet. First of all, not in this new version. We'll have to see how he goes against Poirier if they make that fight a second time. But on the ground, no one was able to get close with that. And Khabib did it with absolute ease after this guy was at his peak of powers,

after he had totally earned the opportunity. And Khabib, you know, leg kicks here or there notwithstanding which i get they mattered but he dismantled him to me that is and did it without his father in his camp after his father died in the lead-up to it i mean yes habib nimrika made of is a special athlete and did it when he came in with being sick and having had a broken toe or whatever he's a special character and you know i picked i picked uh picked Justin to beat him, and he probably was one more big kick away from being in peril. All things considered, Luke, I agree with you.

I think that's his best win. I think it's more obvious when you're talking about a Conor McGregor to say, oh, Jose Aldo. That's the best win of his career, right? I think with Habib it was a little more difficult, but I think Justin hits all the boxes well done. Spin the damn wheel, number two, coming up. All right, here we go.

Let's see. What did you, what did you, how did you stack the deck against me this time? Hey, it's chance. It's a game of chance here, Luke. Platinum parenting, Luke. Yes. Oh, God.

All right. Hey, Luke, I don't know if you saw it, but one Mike Perry took to Twitter on Tuesday to denounce once and for all, or to announce. I'm sorry that he has done ever saying the N word again. He apologized to anyone he ever offended. As we know, he claims to be 2% African-American.

But now he's saying the reason why. Here's the quote from his tweet. This is for my son and me as a son to be different than my father. Also, this is for Black History Month. End quote. Luke also this is for black history month end quote uh luke this is uh this is ocean's daddy getting it right after a time where he was he was dead wrong so luke now it's your turn lt you know for black history month i'm going to stop calling black people the n-word you're welcome luke uh is there anything that you have done or said professionally that in retrospect, now that you're also a first-time father,

you wish to publicly take back and apologize for right now? What's your biggest professional regret here? Well, I've already apologized for it. In fact, I worked it out years ago. But the biggest mistake that I made, and I've talked about this before, and again, many years have passed since we totally buried the hatchet and we're totally fine. Years and years ago, when Brian Stan trained at Jackson's, I did an interview with him on my radio show,

and that was at the time when there was kind of a lot of interesting light heavyweights there, and I was like, would you fight this guy? Would you fight that guy? I think it was Rashad, and it was maybe, I don't know if it was John Jones, but it lot of interesting light heavyweights there. And I was like, would you fight this guy? Would you fight that guy? I think it was Rashad. And it was maybe, I don't know if it was Jon Jones, but it was maybe another light heavyweight. It was Keith Jardine or something at the time. And I remember his answers being like, you know, I'm certainly not top of mind.

I would have to discuss it with them. I forget exactly what he said. But I had hired a guy to do transcription. And then I didn't a guy to do transcription. And then I didn't even look over the transcription and sent it over to the people, I was editor in chief of Bloody Elbow at the time, and I sent it over to them to just publish. And I realized the transcription guy,

like A, got half of it wrong, and B, just made shit up. Like he must have been doing it from memory. I fired the guy after this. And in it, Brian Stan, according to what those had been published, was like, it was like a half truths. I mean, guy after this. And in it, you know, Brian Stan, according to what those had been published was like, it was like a half truths. I mean, it wasn't like an outright lie, but it wasn't, it wasn't what he said. I'll put it that way. And he got super fucking mad at me and he had every right. He had every right to get mad at me. So I ended up firing that guy and ended up sort of saying, I did, I did the J thing BC where like, it's like, I didn't mess up the

transcription. Therefore I'm not responsible. But then you realize it's like I didn't mess up the transcription therefore I'm not responsible but then you realize it's like dude you had your name on it like it doesn't matter if you did the transcription or not you're responsible so I found a way to meet with him privately and explain the situation I apologize profusely and I learned from that day on if you put your name on something it doesn't matter whether you did x part or Y part. You need to look over every part and make sure you are okay with it. And I fucked that up royally, and I took that back. But we're good. Luke, that's a great story. I respect that lesson you learned, that you took the L the right way and all that.

That's well done. I have a long story kind of similar to that that I'll maybe share one day that taught me a lot early on as well. Well done, Luke, to both you and Ocean's Daddy. All right, Luke, let's spin it. Number three, here we go. You never know what you're going to get. You got to answer it. Sorry.

That's how we play the game here. Platinum parenting. Congratulations, black folks. I'm not going to call you N-words anymore. I want to be a good example. No, Luke, these are not men who dress as women i'm not i'm not here to judge anybody luke chicks with sticks means women's fighters with sticks they can punch great women's fighters in fact luke who do you think is the best female fighter

in ufc history to never have won a UFC title. Boy, that is something. So let's go through some of the better ones. Because all the good ones had it, basically, right? Sarah McMahon's got to be on that list somewhere. You know? Remember she fought Rousey and then she fell to a liver shot? You were like, are you serious? Really?

Marlos Kunin. Marlos Kunin. Marlos Kunin. Yeah, certainly she'd be on that list as well. Remember she fought Rousey and then she fell to a liver shot? You were like, are you serious? Really? Marlos Kunin. Marlos Kunin. Marlos Kunin. Yeah, certainly she'd be on that list as well. Although, did she fight in UFC or Strikeforce the whole time? I can't even remember. I thought she fought in UFC as well. I'll double check that.

But you could say Zufa, right? Because at that time it's Zufa. Megumi Fujii never fought in Zufa, but she was one that never won a UFC title. So there's that. Who's the fighter who lost to Rousey early and then went to PFL and lost to Kayla, tried to try to fight Kayla Harrison? I don't know. Kaufman, right?

Oh, Sarah Kaufman. But she had a Strikeforce title. So she technically had a Zufa title. So, but she, yeah, certainly she,, yeah, certainly she would be on the list. It might be Sarah McMahon because I'm trying to think of like a straw weight who you could put on that list, but Andrade won it. The problem is on all the good weight classes, they've played hot potato with the belt.

You know, I might offer Claudia Godilla as a potential option here, Luke. Yeah, you could throw that one in there as well. And we'll see what happens with, you know, we'll see what happens with Megan Anderson. You know, she may make a strong account of herself and then you could say, well, you know, it's that and the other. But like, here's the problem.

Like, anyway, it went to Rousey, then Holm, then Tate, then Nunes. And, you know, and then with Strawweight, it was, it was, it was Ioana. Then it was Nama Yunus. Then it was Andrade. then it was Whaley. Like, they've passed it around a little bit, so it's hard to say somebody who was really, really good didn't have it.

So I'm going to go with Sarah McMahon or some of the names you mentioned probably as ones who got pretty close but not close enough. Yeah, Nico Montano not eligible for this question, Luke. She won the title. She won the title. Inaugural women's flyweight champion. All right, spin number four. Let's do it, Luke. Yeah, we got to do won the title. Inaugural Women's Flyweight Champion. All right, spin number four. Let's do it, Luke.

Yeah, we got to do this, bro. We're running out of time here. All right, let's see. 49 fucking times. Yes! I can't believe this became a thing, but it became a thing, so let's do it. With the exception of the rematch

between alexander volkanovsky and max holloway which we all know you decided to set a world record for individual fuel or views in order to fuel your once beloved dissected segment which oh by the way has died a slower death than jay's producing career and jonah vark combined uh luke which fight in mma history simply from a fan standpoint, would you estimate having watched the most amount of times? Well, probably that one. But the idea is that one notwithstanding. That one you did for the purpose of a video for your job, Luke.

As a fan, which one have I watched the most? When we're bored, we put on fight pass. We all sometimes have like a, you know, a favorite we go to. Is there one? Yeah, I've talked about it a number of times. I did a video on it, as a matter of fact, too. This is a, it's a deep cut, and it was really fun to go down memory lane, but it's one of my favorite fights, Diego Sanchez versus Carl Parisian.

And this is Diego when he was absolutely beginning to burn through contenders dude i love that fight yeah it is such a sick fight really really and i go back and i was interesting because when uh carl and diego would get taken down the the new game is to fire an underhook and then stand but back then it was just play your guard and so you would see the guard games of the two and carl had a sick guard really really impressive aside from just a throw so you know a bit of a different time in mma when there was a different way to fight um but that one was you know you were like carl you knew was legit i mean he was very proven at that point and diego had done well but you didn't know how good he was going to be.

And that fight was back and forth. But, you know, Carl got his tooth knocked out and he threw Diego on his head a few times. It was a lot of fun. Rashad and I on the old CBS podcast once did a fun segment where we counted down from five to one, Luke, our favorite fighters to watch on Fight Pass. Meaning, like, which fighters do you end up watching the most? Because you just like Carl Parisian was like right outside my top five. Luke, he's got some really fun ass fights, whether it's those early ones where he was

fooling people with the judo throws or like this fight or the Nick Diaz fight. I mean, he was in some freaking fun wars in that early UFC run. Luke, there's no denying it. There's a lot of those guys man who you know and if you talk about them now with fans who came around two three four five years ago they missed all of that but those times for a lot of those dudes in the position you're talking about they had fun moments climbing the ladder and to be a part of that journey as it happened surprising you many times along the way like I remember when um I I remember when Rashad beat Sean Salmon

and kicked him in the face and the dude did this number backwards. I was like, dude, Rashad is a bad motherfucker. That was a great moment too. I remember where I was. I was in Alexandria, Virginia. I had just moved into, I had bought my home, but I had to live in an apartment for a month

because the house wasn't renovated. And I was living in this, I had to pay mortgage and rent at the same time. I had no money. And I was living in this... I had to pay mortgage and rent at the same time. I had no money. So I was living in this absolute dump off Exit 5 on 395 for folks who are in the area. And I was watching my little ass

TV that I had in there and I remember I screamed when Rashad head kicked him because I was just so blown away. So great moment. Great stuff Luke. Let's close with this one more spin. Let's see what we get here. Come on. Something saucy.

Come on. No butt stuff this week, Luke. Dude, you never pick the categories that I like ever. Luke, you spin it, dude. I don't pick what you pick. You get what you get, bro, and that's what it is. Bullshit. From now on, I should be able to pick them.

You pick them ahead of time. I think that's bullshit. All right. All right. We can always recalibrate, although I love the random chance here. Luke, BMFU. Yes. Remember that time Uncle Dana, Luke, approved the creation of a baddest motherfucker title

and then we never heard about it again? Let's say you were made UFC president for a day. Like my town, Luke, Naugatuck, Connecticut, my hometown, there's always, like, Lithuanian mayor for a day, right? Irish mayor for a day, and you get to, like, wear the sashay around and, like, pretend you can do anything. Luke, let's say you won that, right? Armenian matchmaker of the day for UFC,

and you were allowed to lean heavily into the BMF gimmick. And they said to you, Mick Maynard sat you down and said, Luke, construct for us a four-fight main card for a special UFC BMF pay-per-view that would have to include Jorge Masvidal in the main event defending the BMF title against a fighter of your choice and three other badass three-round fights around it with all fighters worthy of the BMF name.

Construct your pay-per-view for us, Luke. All right, so that's your headliner, right? Yeah, who's he fighting, though? I would say, no, I would have Jorge versus Nate, too. You have to run it back. You have to run it back. Okay, okay. All right, so that's first.

Then I'd have Justin Gaethje and Michael Chandler as your co-main. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. Two animals. Two animals getting after it. Then I would do... You got to go heavier weight class. I would do Jon Jones and Francis, right?

I would say Jon Jones, Stipe, but it's a little too cerebral. You need something a little bit more animalistic. You know, I wouldn't have thought of this as BMF, but it kind of fits. It really does fit. It fits a little bit, right? Yeah. And then you've got to go women's fight, I feel like. You've got to go women's fight.

I feel like you don't have one on there. You're doing the game a disservice. So I would say andrage you gotta have andrage right well here's the thing the real one to make for bmf on the women's side is the third fight between valentina and amanda but it wouldn't be a fun fight we know that already yeah it'd be technical yeah it'd be technical so you couldn't go that direction um how about claudia you wanna three claudia you wanna three i wouldn't really you wanna two no i would do yeah i would do rose versus uh zhang on that one oh god that dude that's going to end up a war it just is that is you imagine a card with those fights on it and i guess you know what

i guess i would move john jones and uh to the co-main and i put uh your opener actually your opener i would be gaethje and uh chandler because you know it just fucking tear the the the wrapping off the present right away kind of thing uh you made a glitzier card than i expected i was expecting like cowboy matt brown or some shit but this is really good luke okay i think this will work in fact i'm trying to pick elite fighters who are known dogs when they need to be you know or elite fighter who could get the dog brought out of them by the by the matchup or something like that and i feel like you'd get that with these matchups all right luke let's speed through it here to get through your covid test uh we got some fan submissions this week and as everyone knows morning combat at gmail.com is the email or you can dm me your artwork you know the

deal all right at river kitty ransom love this guy on instagram big cat lover luke he's wearing a mk t-shirt and he's standing under a buffalo head that's a big ass fucking animal jesus that's that is just massive, Lou. He might be, I was going to say, how big do you think that thing shits? Probably River Kitty Ransom size, right? Where are you on the idea of bison burgers? I've never had one.

Is it worth it? Does it change your life? Yeah, they're slightly, it's slightly, and when I say slightly, I do mean slightly, slightly gamier than than cows it tastes tastes good it's not a radical difference i i hope one day luke that you and i are in japan not not to see risen but for some big giant ufc event and we get to eat an ex-racehorse champion you know just get a get a nice big ass horse steak i will be well that'd be great it's gonna

be great luke all right we gotta we gotta keep going here uh ben s coming in he says hey guys i've attached a pic of my dinner enjoying some omegang brewery out of cooperstown new york their neon rainbows ipa he's got some wings with the dust in the diamond hot sauce he says i'm no hot sauce expert like luke just kidding luke haha but it's an enjoyable saturday night you guys are the best thank you no ben thank you brother thank you well by the way and i could be wrong about this but i was told and i'm going to say that with a disclaimer i was told it's pronounced omegong have you whatever it's pronounced gang or gong have you had their beer before yeah their beer is fantastic it's right on the water there yeah if you ever go to cooperstown new york by the way for the hall of fame and that

that cute little village right on the water the brewery it ever go to Cooperstown, New York, by the way, for the Hall of Fame and that cute little village right on the water of the brewery, it's a great trip if you're nearby to do that. So thank you, Ben, for supporting us. Did I tell you this? Heartbeat Hot Sauce Company, the company that makes this hot sauce, they liked my review so much they sent me a gift package. Did I tell you this? Oh, no, that's awesome.

They sent me one of everything that they make plus a t-shirt so badass dude i love free shit uh shout out to them and also poirier is going to be on uh uh hot ones yes today oh tomorrow tomorrow yes excellent all right uh nema f says hi morning combat team i am in the non-air-conditioned basement of hell enjoying your show's branding stolen and printed on my birthday card. Not my fault you cannot send jack shit outside of the U.S. Keep up the good work. I've managed to get my girlfriend, who previously was terrified of MMA, to tune into your show time to time.

Cheers, guys. Luke, did his girlfriend make a birthday card out of our... out of our MK documentary picture? Out of our stupid fat faces, yes. Can you believe that? Dude, that's a 10 out of 10 move by the girlfriend, huh? Dude, hey, Nima F., a little bit of advice here, pro tip. Put it on her.

Put it on her, okay? Please, bro. Okay, get it done. Get that thing done, okay? Is his hand through the fly? Is that a tip on tip I didn't notice that but I think you're right dude this one legend buddy if you don't marry her I don't know what you're doing with your life legend all right speaking of legends Luke Bill and Jen RV adventures they're back this week they visited the La Brea

Tar Pits in Los Angeles look at old Bill Luke's going to wear that MK shirt until it disintegrates and just falls off of him. We got to get their address. Wait, they don't have an address. We got to find out where their RV is parked and send them some fresh merch, Luke. Dude, these people are living. People always talk about living my best life on Twitter. No, this is an actual example of it.

What legends these two are and their continued uh billboard support for the show by wearing our merch everywhere is you gotta support bill here because he's worn that shirt 49 fucking times i mean it's incredible i love it at least all right philly d on instagram coming in luke he's a tattooist an artist and he wanted you to critique this head tat of a dragon that he recently did on some crazy bloke's head. Well, I can't see the picture very well from the Zoom link I'm looking at, but if you send it to me later, I can better take a look. It looks okay, but again, my picture is very blurry, so I don't want to say. Jeff, can we full screen that or no?

Let's see if you can blow it up a little bit here. Oh, yeah, you need the full picture. All right, well, Philly D, thank you for your artwork. Just the same, Luke. I'd let that guy operate on my head. Jesus, fuck. Hey, Leo Selker. Leo Selker.

Luke, this is a great dude. He moved to Connecticut. He lives nearby me. But he lived in Abu Dhabi for the last seven or eight years. He sent me this pic to show you. This is in the backwoods of Abu Dhabi, out in the country of UA uae and there's a dude with a damn camel in the back of the truck look bro i one time when my grandma died we couldn't land in texas in oklahoma but for whatever reason we could only fly to texas then we had to drive to oklahoma and we i forget where we landed but we drove

across the border and we drove in these places that I later found out were owned by rich oil barons. And if you do, you'll just be driving from Texas to Oklahoma, and there'll be camels and antelope all on the side of the road, fenced in, but you just see them right there. And it turns out these rich oil barons, they just fly in exotic animals to live on their property, and you would see shit like this for, dude, for miles. You would see camels. It was the craziest thing.

That is bizarre, but I love it. I love it. I think they got the rope around his hump to hold him down. Hey, Philip D sent us a message. He said, what's up, Donks? I hope you enjoy all the memes. As well as my bullseye axe throw. Had my wonderful wife record me when she asked what

MK all day, near everyday meant. I simply told her, quote, it's called art. You wouldn't understand. Yes. Love you both. Love the show. Keep up the good work. Luke, I will support any man wearing an MK sweatshirt hitting a bullseye on a damn axe throw.

Come on. Yes, except he's at the bare minimum distance he's supposed to be. Why don't you do that juvenile and back that ass up and try it from further away, guy? Brother, that is some art right there, okay? Hopefully you shared the sauce with the lady afterwards. No, of course. It's amazing. I appreciate it. Philip D also sent in this

meme from Room Service Diaries. I haven't seen this yet. Let's see what we got here. Can we go full screen, Gaff? Yeah, we cannot see that. Here we go. No comment. this yet let's see what we got here can we go full screen gif yeah we cannot see that there we go no comment no comment to that philip thank you very much uh luke harry underscore gds on instagram uh sent me a nice little uh note here can we blow it up he's got a message though deep inside he's like bc i love your art all right i, I love you. I love MK, too. But can you please ask Luke to unblock me on Instagram?

Luke, we've teased this in the past. You have blocked so many people from so many years back who tell me, guy, I didn't do anything wrong. All I said was this or that. They all say that. They all say that. Now they want to be part of our family. Is there anything they could do?

I don't know buy merch something what could they do that one by one we could get you to unblock them on the show by the way every time someone is like i didn't do anything yes you did you absolutely did and i decided to block you as a consequence number one number two usually if you're on suspension for you know a little while i i and i i the brakes on this, I'll let him off. He can write me and plead his case. But if the argument is you did nothing wrong, you're wasting your time. All right, I'd like you to create something they could do.

Donate to your charity something for me to advocate on their behalf. Yeah, you want to do that? You want to donate to a food bank in the city of Washington, D.C.? I'll unblock you. There you go. Send receipts. I don't hate that. Yeah, I.C., I'll unblock you. There you go. Send the receipts. I don't hate that. Yeah, I don't hate that at all.

All right. Jonah G. Or you know what, BC? They could just Venmo me 50 bucks. How about that? Well, I don't know. I don't trust where that's going. Jonah G. says, a dedication to the MK tradition of Luke completely no-selling BC and his,

quote, unique brand of humor. Hey, listen. Listen. no selling BC and his quote unique brand of humor hey listen sometimes you just gotta you gotta move on past the frivolity keep the show going you know what I'm saying you wouldn't know art if I poured the whole bottle of sauce over your head alright so let's just move on anyway Matt S in the house

he says Luke and Brian after Brian gets Luke into the band weather report let's see dude we are fucking dork ass losers shit look at this zooming yes Luke yes we saw the bulls kick in yes all right Oh, shit. Oh, look at this zooming. Yes, Luke. Yes.

We suck. As the edibles kick in. Yes. All right. Axtrax on Twitter gave us some MK art this week. Axtrax blows me up all the damn time. Luke, we couldn't play all of Axtrax hits this week, but what do you think of this art putting our faces upon some famous works?

Wow. think of this art putting our faces upon some famous works wow once again there's artwork with my face and my hog at the same time which is disturbing is that my fucking hog yeah we are going tips right there so i'll shout out to yeah not bad it's interesting all right steve b is back he wants to know which one we would choose. Ooh, what do we got here, Steve? Indeed. Indeed. John Jones would agree, right? That is America right there. Yep.

Boo Boo Wild Thing is calling, John. I think you would agree with me. All right. Luke Henry K. says, 23 and me has confirmed it. Luke and Brian are a family. Oh boy. Luke, that is of course the AEW wrestling picture of Jake Hager and MJF and they are touching dongs indeed.

All right. That's disturbing. Henry K's not done. He says Luke is always nitpicking how certain Spanish or Portuguese names should be pronounced, but pronouncing Van Gogh properly is asking way too much of old Ronaldo Thomas. Kay's not done. He says, Luke is always nitpicking how certain Spanish or Portuguese names should be pronounced. But pronouncing Van Gogh properly is asking way too much of old Ronaldo Thomas. Yes. Yeah.

But here's the thing. Again, just we are surrounded by people who have no listening comprehension skills whatsoever. Remember what I said? BC, when we grew up in high school or elementary school, whatever, what did we always say? Vincent Van Gogh, right? That was how it was taught to us. Vincent Van Gogh cut his ear off blah blah blah what i said was when i went to the vincent van gogh museum and i put on the headphones for the tour they were saying vincent van gogh and i which i'm sure i'm saying wrong but that's closer to yeah exactly it sounded like that that's that was the only point that i make i don't have any fucking idea how to

pronounce the fucking Dutch here so again a stupid meme by someone who doesn't listen but what can you do we're in Brazil as they would say Vincent Van Ronaldo thank you very much Tyler K slides in with the dongsons I can't read what it says

can we blow that up, please, Kev? Pound sand, nerds. That is awesome. Are you going to wet your pants? Yeah, not bad, Tyler. I already have. Not bad, Tyler K. Jonah L. has a BC and LT meme.

Let's see what we got here, Jonah. Full screen, please. what we got here jonah full screen please i would put i would blow this up and put this on my wall yes this is this is a poster this is a poster that represents my life hey art bombs on instagram says hello boys thanks for the content much love i did an illustration for the show hope you guys like it cheers luke he calls us the picasso's of mma i love this right here well it's weird because he actually made me more handsome than i actually am and he made you more scary than you actually are yeah i look like a cross between sloth from goonies and marvin vittori right here this is great but i'll take it luke all right this is this is uh this is uh well done on the artwork there i like that appreciate that uh we gotta keep

going here eduardo romero m says life of brian honk if you love brian is this supposed to be like uh a take on the monty python thing yes yes it is. Your thoughts? Who's the third man there? Is that Jay? Yes, yes, it is. Yes, it is. Talk if you love Brian on the bottom. All right. Well, hey, Luke, Mu Hamer is back. Remember he sent you to hell over the Ronaldo thing last week?

He says, hello, I want to hereby apologize to Luke and end the Ronaldo saga. After all, he says he owns three Ronaldo jerseys, He says, hello, I want to hereby apologize to Luke and end the Ronaldo saga. After all, he says he owns three Ronaldo jerseys, so I assume he knows how to pronounce it. This is how I imagine his Marine Corps room must have looked during his time there. Kind regards, Muhammad. It's spelled like Muhammad, he says, just with an R at the end. I don't have posters like a girl who reads Tiger Beat magazine.

But yes, I do. I miss the man. What can I say? He is now playing in Italy and my team is in shambles. What are you going to do? Yes, yes. Luke, you look young and confused in this picture, but that's fine. That sounds about right.

Kevin L slides in. We got a couple more for you with a Luke meme. See what this is So true Luke So true yes That is the greatest thing I've ever seen That is the greatest thing I've ever seen I've ever seen Alright Paul G says that is the greatest thing i'm ever seeing i've ever seen all right tough to follow that paul g

says hey guys i kept waiting for someone else to do this but when no one else did i was forced to put my own terrible photoshop skills to work beige versus brown the battle of luke's heart yes by the way you have a greater reach than big Brown, but you weigh one pound less. You buy that? No, no, no. I'm not nearly as thick as that guy. Come on. I'm getting thin these days, Luke. Okay.

All right. Shout out to the big one there, the brown guy. All right. Paul G., well done there for the battle of Luke's heart. Alan W. is going to close us out with three of them, Luke. Here's the first one. BC at a museum. Can we zoom in?

Is David R. or Hot Dogs R? us out with three of them luke here's the first one bc at a museum can we zoom in is david our our hot dogs are what is our are we are meanwhile he's teabagging you indeed indeed uh second one up is uh brian two beers campbell here this must be a room service diary entry. By the way, this is a real thing. This is a real thing. When BC used to say it, he'd be like, oh, I'm not really good for more than two beers. Now, he can do more than that. But here's the reality about him I've found. He will have situations where he'll have literally two, at most three beers. And he will be fucking wrecked the next day.

It's the weirdest shit I've ever seen. It is. It's a curse. It's not fun, Luke. All right. Alan's got one more to end it here. Last is a Luke meme or the album cover. Not so sure.

What's it say? Alpacino's bootyoty Sweat Energy Drink. Booty Sweat Energy Drink. Wow. Listen, these people know me, BC. This is my life. They do. Well done, folks. MorningCombat at gmail.com.

Luke, we did a two-hour freaking show. Who would have thought, Luke? I know. On a Wednesday, no less. On a Wednesday. Good stuff. By the way, for folks who want to send us stuff for fan submissions, we love it when

you do. This stuff today was really good, as a matter of fact. By the way, you can just be a picture of you wearing MK merch wherever you live or something. You don't have to be a Photoshop wizard. Morningcombat at gmail.com. You see it right there. That's the place to get them all in. You can also DM your dick pics to Brian on Instagram.

He tends to love those, as my daughter has an absolute rage meltdown. It should have been my daughter versus Godzilla versus Kong during my podcast hours. During my podcast hours, she could beat the fuck out of those two at any point by virtue of the meltdowns that she has. It's great. I love my two favorite things about your house during our podcast is when Abuela lets your daughter get too close to the door and doesn't step in. And when your wife just walks through with a bathrobe on just walks right through luke yeah well we had a conversation about that i had to have a little conversation with her uh okay so let's do the standard disclaimer here bc and i are on social media of course mk is as well you can see it's mk

everywhere morning combat at gmail youtube.com slash morning combat morning combat on twitter morning combat on insta for brian and i the names differ a little bit between Instagram and Twitter, so take a look there. Give us a follow if you're so inclined. And we mentioned, of course, already the email address. If you want to try Showtime free for 30 days, you certainly can. Showtime.com is the place to go. If you like it, you can keep it.

If not, you can go watch your merry day and go get COVID tests like I'm about to have. And then if you want to get some merch like BC has on his head there. For the winner, highly appropriate to get one of these beanies. You can go to store.show.com and you can get them. Live chat tomorrow, 3 p.m. in the East. Friday, we will preview all the UFC fights. BC, any final thoughts? Please, people, check out a great interview with Luke and Dustin Poirier.

A lot of in-depth stuff. And also, people liking, as you mentioned off the top, me and sugar Rashad Evans going story time. We focus on his UFC 73 draw with Tito Ortiz, lots of gold in that shout to Rashad for being so candid. Please continue to support all of our bonus material. It is MK all day,

nearly every day. You got a hole. We'll fill it. There you have it. All right. Thank you to Malka, to CBS Sports, and to Showtime. I'll talk with you all at 3 p.m. tomorrow. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal. We'll be right back. you