MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Here's Why MMA is Better Than EVER | Extra Credit EP. 5

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Luke Thomas is back with episode 5 of Morning Kombat Extra, an extended look at the weekend of fights. (1:40) - Usman Nurmagomedov vs. Patrik Pietila (5:30) - Grant Dawson vs. Rick Glenn (11:20) - Jessica-Rose Clark vs. Joselyne Edwards (17:50) - Mason Jones vs. David Onama (23:30) - Jonathan Martinez vs. Zviad Lazishvili 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:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only. At participating McDonald's in Canada. 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. Hey, everybody. Hey everybody, it's the 25th of October 2021 and my name is Luke Thomas.

Hi there, this is MK Extra Credit. This is Morning Combat Extra Credit. This is the little podcast we do that we put out in addition to the big Morning Combat. Of course, Morning Combat, a regular show, the hero show, hosted by me and my co-host, Brian Campbell. That is already up. You can go check that out on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever you may get this show. But this is the podcast where we discuss all the fights we couldn't get to on regular MK. So first things first, give a thumbs up to this video, hit subscribe. One word of note before we get into a whole lot of things just want to point out something last week in the video i asked you guys did you want me to like run through all of the fights basically from the weekend quite quickly or target a handful well the jury is in and you guys were pretty adamant target a handful was what you wanted so we're going to do that today we're going to look at two different cards we'll look very briefly at

one fight we did not get to from bellator 269 and then we're going to lean at two different cards. We'll look very briefly at one fight we did not get to from Bellator 269. And then we're going to lean into some of the fights from the UFC Fight Night. Yes, so that's what we're going to do today. We'll go about 30 minutes as we normally do. And I'm actually pretty excited about today's slate of fights. If I missed anything, of course, and you have other questions, you can just email me. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. One more time with the graphic, Mikey, if you could,

the social graphic anyway. You can throw that up there. Of course, you can give me a follow. You can give Brian Campbell a follow. You can give the show a follow. Morning Combat name is consistent everywhere. BC and I, though, have slightly separate names depending on where you find us.

Okay? All right. With that out of the way, let's start things first. Just one fight we did not get to on regular MK for Bellator 269. That, of course, is going to be Usman Nurmagomedov defeating Patrick Paitela. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing his name. I think he was Finnish or something like that. But he was no match for Nurmagomedov at all. This was a bit of a squash match.

I think Nurmagomedov knew it because, personally, I thought his approach to the fight told you how he viewed it. He can strike super well. He is a very, very good striker, which isn't to say that his opponent would offer no resistance in that way, but he decided to take the fight to the ground, which is also something he can do quite easily. He's a very good wrestler. He has good grappling.

He doesn't have that same kind of positional tone setting strength that habib does but he is he understands position flow and where things are going how to set how to put those kinds of attacks into sequence together and and you know he's got a really good strong command of the ground i don't think it's that tone setting strength but i mean just the fact that he took it there right away and didn't offer the heaviest ground and pound to me, this is just my personal opinion. I don't know this for a fact, but to me, it felt like he was doing that to take it easy on his opponent. So he wouldn't have to give him quite the beat down. I've seen it before, actually. I think that's what we got here. In any case, Paitelo offered not much resistance. Took maybe Nurmagomedov a little bit longer on the ground

again because it wasn't a super thrashing. It was more just really outstanding positional control and good hand fighting. The way he set up the final choke, or he was switching sides and then using space to whip in the final one. He tried to get it over the jaw the first time. Shouts to Drew Weatherhead. Drew Weatherhead is a guy who is a great black belt, a Canadian black belt, although he's touring America right now. But he just put out a video on choking the jaw and how you can, not just a crank, but how to actually choke through the jaw.

And the answer is sort of two ways. One is you come under and then back with the jaw in grip. And then the other one would be almost like a bow and arrow choke. You kind of yank to the elbow side of the choking arm to kind of turn it over the jaw itself, which is the kind Maya used on, I think, Rick's story. In any case, he didn't get to it here. He didn't finish it that way.

He was able to switch sides a couple times, and then he got it fully under the throat, and that was all she wrote. But I'll tell you what. We all knew he was going to win this fight. I think he took a merciful approach to this, and he could have won this fight on the feet to me just as easily, probably even quicker.

You can go ahead and mark me down as Usman Nurmagomedov, future Bellator lightweight champ. I don't see any way, I'll put it this way, as long as he's healthy and competing and able to travel to a reasonable degree, he's going to be the champion. I don't know anyone at lightweight in Bellator who can hang with him. I'd be very surprised if we ever see that.

Or I should say, see that in 2022. I think he'll be the champion before too long. He is an enormous, enormous talent. And when you can beat an opponent, I can take it easy on you and still get you out in less than a round. You're talking about somebody who is quite special. So if you're looking at more on how to choke through the jaw, check out Drew Weatherhead on Instagram.

He just put out a great video about it showing how to do it. Takes some feel, takes some practice. Obviously, go train if you want to learn and whatnot. But check him out and shout out to Drew Weatherhead. What a great guy, right? Okay, so let's talk about the other card. I know there was Ryzen over the weekend. I know there was some KSW as well. I only saw a few fights from the Risen or Ryzen card, and I only saw the main event for KSW. I apologize, but I did see all of the UFC card, and I thought there were several really interesting fights on this one. Here you can see the full one. I'm going to pick four. I'm going to pick

four from this list. They may not be your four. They may be a different four. You may have thought that there could have been another way to go, but these are the four I'm going to pick. So I'm actually going to start with the co-main event, Grant Dawson. This was a 155 bout with Ricky Glenn. An interesting contest. I think they ruled this one a majority draw. So I think one judge had it for Dawson, and then two had it 28-28 across the board. Because here's basically what happened. Dawson was all over Glenn like white on rice for the first two rounds,

but it was really a positional control battle. And even then, there were fairly long stretches of each round where Dawson didn't have control. But there were stretches in both of those where he had side control. In the first round, he had a long stretch where he had the back using a body triangle. But there was no heavy presence of ground and pound. There was virtually almost no striking on the feet,

relatively speaking, anyway. And in the third round, what ended up happening was Dawson was... I mean, this... Well, here's one of the things. Dawson is a very, very talented athlete, you can tell. And I love his determination in the third round because what you saw him do was he tries to shoot. Didn't really

set it up he just kind of kept shooting he was it was at an appropriate distance but there was no setup for it and he would get kind of close to it but by the third round he was pretty tired Glenn sprawled and then what you see is Dawson pull guard after the failed takedown which I love that's one of the I really enjoy that move because it's not some lazy concession if you went to pull guard. You don't just hold them and then you take a second and you catch a breath and you've got double underhooks and you don't know. That can be lazy, but that's

not what he was doing. In fact, it looked to me like he was trying to pull it to butterfly and then for butterfly to shoot underneath. I could be wrong about the butterfly part. I have to go back and check. But he pulls it and then eventually you can see tries to sit underneath for a sweep, maybe even deep half. He gets stopped at an awkward spot, so it wasn't totally clear what he was trying.

But at a bare minimum, what do you want to do in jiu-jitsu? There's a lot of things you want to do. But if you're underneath, you want to get up under the opponent to lift them, because if you can lift them, you can turn them. You can sweep them. You can take their back. If you can lift them and elevate them, that's really what it's all kind of about and he was trying to get to that point and glenn stopped him when glenn stopped him that's when he began to pour on ground and pound and then

locked up i believe it was a darce at the end almost finished it so the so the fight and the third round ends glenn stands and looks over and dawson he's awake but he can you can tell he's loopy and then he falls back and he reaches for his mouthpiece but he doesn't get off the canvas and you can see the referee just looking at him being like where's this dude going with this and then eventually he does kind of sit up uh and Dawson's corner man James Krause comes and picks him up and then there's no controversy. But he almost went out in that third. And so I guess they gave Glenn like a 10-8 in that round.

I'm not sure. I haven't seen the actual scoring. But suffice to say, I mean, here's what I would say about this fight. It's like, dude, Grant Dawson is clearly super talented. And again, dude, I love his in-your-face tone-setting approach. I thought his fence wrestling was pretty good. He had one foot sweep, I think, in the second round where he was digging for a takedown and looking and looking and looking. And dude, Glenn had clearly prepped well for down-blocking

and firing under hooks and spreading his base when he was against the fence. And so you could see the traditional body and hip entries that Dawson was trying to get at in that sequence. They weren't working, but he was good at keeping his hands locked and doing some body lock. There's a lot of mat returns in this fight. And so he then turns him in a circle and then trips him

and then sends him back over the trip. It was just a beautiful foot sweep. There's almost nothing quite as elegant as a well-executed foot sweep in MMA. The kid's got skills for sure, but here's my point. You're nearly 20 fights into your career, and there were several instances where he would fire into takedowns with no setup. Obviously, Glenn is a resisting opponent,

and he was able to get dominant positions on him. Dawson was, but there wasn't enough ground and pound to really make those positions fully count. In fact, by the time the third round happened, he was the one that was tired from all of that wrestling. All I'm pointing out is, if you want to tell me to give Dawson great marks on his wrestling track, done. Easy. Give him good marks on poise and tenacity. No problem. I can give him positive remarks all day, but I think if you're 20 fights into your career and you really have

designs on title contendership, there needs to be a greater development of offense in the other phases of the game. And there just wasn't. So he has to go to this one track, and because he has to go to that one track and because he has to go that one track that can work but it was largely a positional control track which is not really

going to deter super elite fighters very well you could see the problem as it develops so like dude there's in that in a couple of phases of the game you know I don't have anything really negative to say but I really feel like a guy that talented, that athletic, and that much tenacity, if he can combine that with some better ground and pound, if he can combine that with a really sharp, punishing, well-timed jab, A, all it's going to do is make the existing parts of his game even better, and then B, it's just going to give him a couple of extra things to lean on

and a couple of other things to lean on and a couple of other branches of offensive development to explore that I think would only serve his interests here so a fun fight but um a vexing one in certain other ways as well which takes us one fight down the car Jessica Rose Clark defeating Jocelyn Edwards. Now, at distance, especially like boxing range, or what they would call mid-range, Edwards' hand speed and combinations and accuracy were giving the Aussie some problems as she closed distance. But once she was able to close distance,

this was big bank take little bank. Eddie Foley was in candy paint. It was not a whole lot to it at that point. Jessica Rose Clark putting out a statement later on saying she was really working on her wrestling. It showed. I thought her takedowns from the body lock with one leg wrapped were fantastic

because not only did she get it down, she used the two-way kind of pressure that you need. Then on top of that, she would find herself an advantageous position once she was on the ground. I really enjoyed that. By the way, I think Mount is a lost art in mixed martial arts. And then she spent a considerable amount of time not only finding the Mount,

but doing, I thought, good work from Mount, even if you're not landing heavy ground upon. Which, again, there is a case to be made for that. I want to get to that because Michael Bisping, Michael Bisping was a little too critical of her performance. Holding the back, you can drain someone that way. Just because you have Mount doesn't mean you aren't draining them, but I do believe there can

be more ways, personally speaking. That's not quite true. I wouldn't say that either. In any case, I thought she was doing enough work from Mount to also tire out her opponent and whatnot. So it was great. Again, closing the distance, I thought there were some issues for Clark. I thought she was getting hit a little bit, but once she got it, the body lock was overwhelming. The wrestling knowledge against the fence, there were times when Edwards was really good about getting to her side and you can see Clark reset the position by flattening her

against the fence and then using that to either grab underneath or then pulling her off and then using that empty space to search for the takedown. She just knew where to find the angles, how to reset positions, how to keep positions going over and over again. It was a great demonstration. I think a lot of the work she's put in for however long was roughly two years almost that she had been away. So that part was just really positive. Now there was the, the commentary crew I thought was interesting here. This is not a critique of them because a, I think MMA commentary is quite difficult. And B with the point I wanted to make here is the following. They were saying that like, you know, yes, when it comes to positional control,

there was just, it was so dominant and so overwhelming by Clark that she could not be denied the fact that from that standpoint, she was doing a great job, but that they thought that if you're, you know, there's another gear to go to with the ground and pound. The point I just made about Grant Dawson for that to happen. Here's the thing. I think they were a little bit hard on Clark for two reasons. One, Dawson's best position was from the back, but he never really got close to any sub from there. Moreover, most of his dominant positions were either from some version of a body lock or from side control.

Clark, I thought, had a little bit better in terms like getting to mount and things like that where they're just a little bit more offensively ready or um I I felt like that there was a huge difference in the positions that they reached but Clark didn't have to struggle as much to get them and so you might say that's a case to put more ground and pound on. But in many cases, like if I'm comfortable enough knowing I can get here, why do I need to risk opening this up? Now you could say, well, because you could also get them out of there faster. Right. Here's what I'm trying to drive at.

I think we need to be very, very accommodating of athletes who come back from any kind of layoff, whether it was injury or bad luck or whatever the circumstance may be, visa issues, who the hell knows? Well, I do think they are right to say that she could have had more ground and pound. I also think it's fair to say she may have been denying herself that to A, flex some of the new muscles, like let's put these skills I've been working on into actual context in a live session. And, hey, I've been out of the octagon for a while.

I might need as much mat time as I can get. If I've got this much of a lead on my competitor, why not just keep riding that thing out and gain as much of this experience as I can since I'm not really in any danger? It's actually kind of a counterintuitive argument. With Dawson, the threat is different. If he didn't get the ground and pound in, it was going to come back to bite him in any danger. It's actually kind of a counterintuitive argument. With Dawson, the threat is different. If he didn't get the ground and pound in, it was going to come back to bite him in the third. There was no case where that was really going to happen between Clark and Edwards by virtue of the difference.

But with Grant and Glenn, it was actually a lot closer. And so for that reason, it sounds totally counterintuitive. It's like, well, if you can finish them off, yes. If Clark had fought three months ago, I would have thought that was an unimpeachable argument. But because it had been such a layoff, you got to give them a set. Some things are going to be better about them. Some things are going to be worse. It's going to be a different mixture than what you're expecting. And so for those reasons, I thought they were a little bit harsh. The one thing I will say, though, is Michael Bisping is a great commentator, and I thought he did a great job. He always does a good job. Paul Felder as well.

But Bisping is bringing his personal sensibilities about what fights should be and how they should be kind of valued and viewed. And he's going to have a lot of views that are the consensus in many ways. He's going to have some that people think are crazy. He's going to have some that people think are super smart and everything in between. But he's going to have his own, every guy's style of commentary and the ideas that underpin them about what kinds of things should be respected and valued and pushed in mixed martial arts. It's going to be like a fingerprint. It's going to be all kind of their own. And so I think he's bringing some of that to bear. You can agree with it. You could not agree

with it entirely up to you, but just be cognizant that everyone who sits in that role dc paul feld or michael bisping if i sat there i'm also going in this podcast i'm going to give you the things that i think should be counted a little bit more or less depending on the circumstance so um all of that is a factor in the way that that fight was adjudicated but um a good win just the same And I understand that she might have wanted as much experience as possible if it was that much of a gap on her. But if that happened again, where she had that much of a gap grappling on her opponent and she has been in regular rotation,

then I think you go back to the original argument that Bisping and Felder were making, which is a little bit more here on the violence end could have helped them. We talked very briefly about cassaris and sung woo choy i don't want to get to that we're going to skip down if we can to mason jones and david onama david onama came into this contest um on super late notice i just want to say something about this fight that i really believe deserves to get noticed, not just for this contest, but for the state of MMA. I hear a lot of people bitching about the state of MMA fights,

like how they're boring to them. And I just don't know what the fuck they're looking at, to be honest with you. I mean, here's the thing. MMA burnout is real. Okay. I've experienced it many times. You might've experienced it at certain intervals of your career or your fandom. Maybe you haven't experienced it yet, but if you keep going, you're probably going to. MMA burns so intensely in people that it burns out, right? People kind of get overloaded with it, and then they begin to get rejections. And that's utterly fine, first thing I'd say. Second thing I'd say is, if you want to make the argument that MMA has become a little bit more homogenous as everyone tries to sort of key in on the things that everyone else is good at, that's not an unfair argument either.

But what I wanted to point out about this one is, well, this is on the prelims, I believe, yes? Yes, I think that's right. This fight between Jones and Onama at 155 was on the prelims. And, I mean, 10 years ago, you didn't see quality of fights like that with skill that good in UFC main events. You still don't in certain times.

Dude, Mason Jones and David Onama can fight. Now, neither is perfect. Onama took this fight on short notice. He had some grappling issues pretty consistently. Maybe not been in the best shape because he took it on late notice. Normally he fights at 145. He took this at 155. Fair.

Mason Jones, big problem here was defense. He didn't move his head nearly enough, either offensively or defensively, although it was funny. It was early in the fight. He hit a roll underneath the hook, which you don't see a lot of MMA fighters do with their boxing was great boxing but was backing up straight at times and just was with a head on the center line was consistently there to be hit and boy Onama found the target over and over again but what Jones did have was phenomenal composure

great takedowns great Matt returns himself great control on the ground great understanding of where everything is going the ability to mix up his strikes on his feet from a variety of stances and ranges against all the defensive issues were happening but i was blown away at like the positional understanding the technical acumen overall for a fight between a guy who's not even a regular 155 or and another guy both of them top prospects but on the fucking prelims on the prelims when people tell me that you know mma is like oh it used to be more exciting i'm like dude when when if you're at a particular stage of burnout fine i'm not here to regulate the fandom you can't make an it's not possible

to make an argument that generally speaking the level of skill which doesn't always translate into almost excitement i understand that argument too but in general i would also argue the greater level of skill and the better the matchmaking and here you have two top prospects in different divisions but in this meeting facing off against one another and the latter guy nearly pulled it off, it's hard for me to accept the argument that what you're really watching is not nearly as exciting MMA. That

to me was a thrilling contest, a back and forth, and even small stuff to me, the little details that were great. For example, Jones had a consistent ability to get to a body lock behind Onama, could make Onama lean to the point where he was wrestling on his hands.

By the time he was wrestling on his hands, he would now find ways to break him down, find the back and whatnot. But Onama was pretty consistently good about creating asymmetry between his back and the chest of Jones so he could get this way and then come around and come back on top. You have to create some asymmetry and then spin. was very good at that but jones was never caught sitting he knew what was always about to happen when he was about to lose the position and you can watch him put in under hooks and then various shields with his legs so he could stand and create

separation but control the position and not let it get out of control as he knew it was time to bail. Guys, that is high-level decision-making. That's high-level skill, even if you could say, well, higher-level skill would be controlling the back. All right, not so easy to control guys who are just, you know, who may have a great understanding of that position and be great athletes on top of it and understand timing. That can be hard to control.

Anthony Pettis doesn't have the world's best jiu-jitsu, but it's hard to keep control of his back. His escape to rotate on top is very, very, very good, and he's used it over and over again. I really want folks to reflect a little bit when they say, oh, MMA is more boring. There is something to the argument about homogeneity. There is something to the argument about,

very much something to the argument about burnout. And. There is something to the argument about, very much something to the argument about burnout. And the argument that just because they're better doesn't necessarily translate into better fights is 1,000% true. It's clearly a true statement. But over time, in general, the better fighters get at fighting, it's extremely difficult for me to think

this is a reduction, what we should, this is a lesser version of what we normally enjoyed also if you just watch a wider array of different types of mma where you're not just watching ufc or ufc and bellator but you're watching some lfa you watch some ksw on occasion stuff that happens in japan some one whatever you vary it up from weight classes to countries to rule sets and and the like you're going to get very different experiences along the way and they tend to find one or another that's going to be something more fitting to your needs especially needs at that time okay um how many have we done

i think we've done i have one more to do right oh yes the jonathan martinez zavia lazish vili guy now this guy's the via lazis vili lazish vili natively out of georgia now trains at kaizen mma sort of out of the dc area he's a great fighter he was coming on short notice on this one as well he was the lfa bantamweight champion so it made when i watched this fight two things stood out to me one he is quite ready for this level he has his overall level of skills his understanding of how to pursue different strategies and positions he is plenty right once you become like a champion at lfa you're you're you know you're over qualified for entry at a very minimum to the ufc but i think the

other thing i learned here was of course coming in on short notice how how prep what were you know how much how ready was he is a different question. I would say Martinez's takedown defense, both along the fence line and in open space, both of them, it got way better. I thought Lazashvili, I was a little surprised. There were times he was trying to

hook the back leg and he couldn't get his leg over it. I was surprised he didn't go to some of the other counters there where you can step in front rotate him kick out the front leg you can uh what James Krause calls crashing into the hip and then you can step behind him that way he just kind of gave up on the position a little bit so maybe he's trying to preserve his cardio could be but the biggest thing I noticed was fainting he did faint in the fight but they didn't ever seem to confuse Martinez.

Martinez never really bit too hard on them. He never really adjusted too much off of them. And Lazesvili, as a consequence, had trouble with range. He couldn't ever fake his way into getting to a spot where he was able to have most effective use of the range or where he could set the tone from the range. It was actually Martinez who was able to do that, both by stopping the wrestling and then being also a little bit first, but also he wasn't tricked by anything that Lazashvili was doing to establish better range for himself. Some of the feints and some of the things.

Obviously, when you feint, you're not just setting up other shots, but you can set up angle changes. You can cheat the distance with them. And he was just constantly getting his timing split and getting caught at the end of them because they just weren't very convincing, which what, what lesson can you infer there? Well, fainting is a skill. Fainting is not just a thing that you do. You have to, and I'm sure, listen, I'm not saying lots of, lots of Shvely doesn't understand this.

He and his team understand this quite well. I just mean to say for the audience's sake, it's something you have to perfect people get people how well can you trick someone by how good you are at faking or fainting those take time to develop you have to practice fainting i know guys who when they shadow box they don't just shadow box combinations or look for speed or whatever they shadow box faints and then they'll do nothing but literally shadowboxing feinting. They'll do like 10 three-minute rounds of just feinting, just all feinting.

And they do this all the time. And it has really, you can see the ones who are convincing with it, you can see the opponent's bite or back up or hands come up or whatever. There's just a lot of that you can see. So there you go quick note i thought very i won't really focus on it but the suza and marcus fight suza you know i thought she was going to take over ufc and it just has been a bit of a failure to launch since she got here uh comma worthy and jai herbert i'm seeing a lot of problems for guys defending like this

in mma especially in the warning track and herbert's combinations and hand speed ability to push worthy into the warning track and then to take advantage of some defensive opportunities i thought was um tremendous there were some great knockouts along the way uh negu mariano was a weird fight against ike uh villanueva or villanva, especially with the shots to the back of the head. A lot to say about a lot of these other fights, but those are the ones I focused on in for today. What was your favorite fight from the weekend and what did you think about it? Leave a comment below. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. Yeah, what else do you want to see from the podcast? Let us know. Give us an update give us

some feedback tell us what you like tell us what you don't like let's see if we can get this right okay thank you guys so much for watching and until next time enjoy the fights