MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Holloway-Yair, Mayweather-Paul, McGregor-Poirier 3 | Luke Thomas' Live Chat, ep. 77

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Today on the podcast, we'll discuss Max Holloway's upcoming fight with Yair Rodriguez, Floyd Mayweather's weird exhibition 'fight' with Logan Paul, the challenges and benefits of lifting weights, ranking UFC champions in terms of beatability, Nate Diaz vs. Leon Edwards, Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier 3, what happens if Derrick Lewis beats Francis Ngannou, Tony Ferguson's decline, Diego Sanchez splitting from Joshua Fabia and much more. 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everybody, how are you? It is the 27th of May, God, it's the 27th of May already. 2021, and my name is Luke Thomas and this is episode 77, I believe, of the Luke Thomas Live Chat. Thank you so much for joining me, I greatly appreciate it. We will go for about an hour and some change today as we normally do. We'll get into whatever you want to talk about. There's not a whole lot in combat sports this weekend.

There's just the Devin Haney fight, but I don't think anybody in this chat particularly cares about that. So whatever else is on your mind, we can get to it. Questions always go up the day or the thread for questions always goes up the day before on the community tab right here on the YouTube channel for Morning Combat, and then people fill it up and I answer it. Okay? All right.

So without further ado, let's get this party started. All right. Alright. Alright. So, let's go pull up these questions. If we can. Alright. 258. Pretty good. Pretty good. More than I can usually get to.

Jesus. First of all, let's put this subscribe off. There we go. Alright, so, thumbs up, hit subscribe. Appreciate everybody. This is the first comment. It's left three hours ago. I don't know if it's truth, but if it is It's terrible

I just found out last night My cousin was one of the victims In the San Jose VTA transit yard shooting 29 years old Left behind a two year old son Just wanted to shout out all the families Of the victims If that is true, I'm not saying it's not.

I just have no way of verifying it. But assuming that it's true, that is beyond terrible, and I am incredibly sorry to hear that. All right, this person asks, what professions do you think the narrative of you can't say anything unless you've done it holds the most weight? Boy, that's a great question. Well, I'm not sure there's any job where you can't say anything about someone else's performance, even if you've never done it.

I mean, the President of the United States, it's literally one person at a time can have it. There's been less than 50 of them, and they get roundly criticized, perhaps unfairly in many ways, depending on who's holding office or what they've done, but none of them are perfect. I think that's a pretty fair statement. So I wouldn't say that the rarity of it... What conditions would be there where you would at least temper your criticism, where you'd be like, you know what, let's think about this a little bit. I would say

one, the difficulty of the job, right? Especially if like it comes at a great personal sacrifice to the person who's engaging in it, that would limit what you might say a little bit. Like what kind of criticism should we make of fire departments? There might be plenty you could make or firefighters individually. I'm sure that within fire departments, people are evaluated for their performance. But from the outside looking in, you might want to temper that a little bit, just a little bit, given the difficulty of the job. I think that's one. However, if the abuses or the failures are egregious, that will not, you know, there's nothing that could prevent you from saying something in that particular regard.

Did you guys see the story here? You may have not. It was a big local story here in DC. They caught two cops, I'm not joking, on duty in squad cars, drag racing on the street. And lo and behold, they fucking crashed. They have dash cam footage of the whole thing. It's like, let me get this straight. On taxpayer money in cars you don't own, you took to public streets to race your work vehicle? Wow. Okay. Right? I mean, I don't know what it's like to be a cop, but I know that that's pretty fucking irresponsible. So that might change the equation a little bit. So I would say, one, to the extent that the job is limited in scope, which is to say, like, there's one of them, there's only 10 of them, that should probably temper some enthusiasm. I think, two, the very difficulty of that job, again, it wouldn't eliminate criticism, but it might temper it a little bit. I think,

um, you know, perhaps the nobility of the pursuit of the job might limit some criticism in some ways. But honestly, I struggle to think of a job where like, listen, if you were to run a university and you were to hire a physics professor to teach introductory physics to freshmen, you're not so much worried about the high-end string theory craziness, but perhaps, you know, 101, 201 level classes, not tenure track. I don't know that you have to know the ins and outs of teaching physics or physics itself to have other measurements that can be obtained that let you know whether or not someone is doing a good job, whether it's peer review, whether it's student review, whether it's to what extent students go on to pursue

graduate studies in that line of work, whatever the metrics are. So I struggle to think of any job where you can say that. It just is that if there's not many people doing something like it, if there's not many different roles, there's only one of it. And again, if they've held it for a short amount of time, it's another one where it. And again, they've held it for a short amount of time. It's another one where it's a lot easier to criticize a congressman who's been in Congress 60 years versus,

I'm making something up, but let's say 16 years versus six months. So the length of time of a job opens it up a little bit more. So all those factors can affect how much criticism, but frankly, I don't think there's a single one where you can't, where you have to do it

in order to say something about it. It's just that, obviously, expertise in that particular line of work gives you more credibility or, you know, all the various factors therein. With you going to Miami, I think an interview with you and the Dan Lebitard crew would be interesting and a good listen. I would like to talk to him, I suppose.

Do you have any Showtime contacts to make that happen? No. No. No, I don't. I found Dan's radio shows maybe the best in all of sports. I'll give him that. I found his MMA opinions early on to be very much ahead of the curve. I find them now to be a little bit behind, which is fine. Not everyone needs to be an MMA fan or have the most enlightened takes on all of things combat sports or MMA in particular. I don't say it super pejoratively. In fact, he could do competent, in fact, interesting talk on virtually most things in sports and I would enjoy it. I've not loved so much some of the... I found some of his recent opinions about what the violence inside MMA means as part of our complicity. Frankly, to be a little bit glib. But, you know, on most things in sports, he's far ahead of the curve.

So it's a little bit regrettable that his MMA opinions are that way, but it's still the best show maybe in all, well, I mean, it's odd, hiatus or transitioning, whatever you want to call it. But when it's running, or I guess he's still in Miami. I don't know how that works. But, you know, his ESPN radio show was very much ahead of its time. There's a whole new generation of MMA fans out there who probably had no idea what Two Girls, One Cup is. Yeah, maybe.

Maybe. Lots of things that you sort of take for granted as cultural. Yes, artifact, but an enduring one. They become much more artifact than enduring artifact. All right. Well, this isn't, it's not altogether insulting, just mostly. No, half-half. Luke, what do you, and I'll read it. You know what? Because if you don't read it, it only makes it worse. So I will read it. Luke, what do you think of people calling you the human embodiment of Brian from Family Guy? Yeah, let's think about that for a second. Not the worst thing I've been called.

Not the best. You know, there's... What am I going to tell you? There's not some overlap there. There's probably some overlap. You know, probably on the less kind part of the spectrum. He's a poorly read fraud. That hurts.

I'd like to think I read a little bit more than he does relative to his views. But, you know, all right. You got to let the insult fly. What's on the good side? Well, he's somewhat the more sensible creature in the family. He is, I think, has a good heart, a little bit monotone, her suit. So, you know, do I like every aspect of that? No, I guess I don't, but I'll let you guys decide.

My fraternity brothers think I'm more Kenny Powers, which is also insulting in certain ways. But again, you present a certain product to the world. Maybe they don't understand you fully, but they understand what you gave them. All right, if Derek Lewis beats Francis, do you think John will suddenly be ready to fight a heavyweight right away? No, I think with Richard Schaefer, if you guys don't know him, Richard Schaefer is a guy who, uh, most of my, or in fact, really all my only exposure was I had covered a few golden boy

fights. Um, I had covered Lamont Peterson, Uri Khan. I'd covered certain Canelo fights when he was with Golden Boy. And so I had seen Richard Schaefer do work and do media interviews at the time. He's clearly a very bright guy, really understands the boxing industry. My hunch is that if he's been kept abreast of the situation between John and UFC, he probably at this point is, you know what? The well's a little bit poisoned. You're stuck in your contract. Let's take a break. Let's quit beating this dead horse, which is kind of what it is at this point. They have reached an impasse. And if you really feel like, I tend to think that the claim that John had made about

getting too heavyweight and I could wait another year and it doesn't really serve my interest to go in there right now and it serves all of theirs. I tend to think there's probably some truth to that and that may come from the guidance of Richard Schaefer. But I also think that's just a way to look at the situation such that when they come back, A, they can kind of approach it from a fresh angle, whatever that angle may be. And then B, you know, John can say, okay, I'm really ready for this now. I'm fully prepped. I've done this the right way.

Who knows where Francis might be in the pecking order at that time? Who knows what the division might look like? But if Francis goes through and dusts Derek Lewis, which I don't know how likely it is, but it's not the craziest thought, and then if he goes through and he beats Stipe for, well, it'd be the second win, but third fight, there might be some, like, Cyril Ghosn is kind of moving up the ranks, so maybe he'll be ready by then. But John, at that point, or if Stipe wins, whatever, John might have some better options at that point. I just think mostly what it boils down to is less about

really getting ready for the weight class or whatever permutation might be down the road that probably factors in some. I think rather what it points to is this individual effort of negotiating through media and then talking to Hunter Campbell behind the scenes. It's not going to go any further without some kind of exterior change being imposed upon whatever discussions may take place. And I think stepping back is probably the right call, actually. That or just fight out your contract. I mean, I wonder how many fights John has left. If it's something like seven, I can understand his reticence. If it's something like three, you know, I might try and just fight that thing out, right?

See what you can do at that point. But who knows? All right, out of three potential likely women's MMA matchups, which excites you the most and why? Amanda Valentina, three. Amanda Kayla. And then Valentina Tatiana Suarez. Boy, I'm not going to. Okay, so it's definitely not Amanda Valentina three, Amanda, Kayla, and then Valentina Tatiana Suarez. Boy, I'm not going to. Okay. So it's definitely not Amanda Valentina three that has enormous stakes, but I saw the first fight wasn't bad. Second fight was terrible. Yes. Technical, you know, not mad at either of them

for playing the game the way that they played it, but it was not a very experience everyone was berating amanda nunez at the time if you might you guys forget this for um what fight she had pulled out from because she had sinus sinusitis and everyone called her like oh i've had the sniffles before and it's like you know amanda will beat the fuck out of you clowns but um you know there was she wasn't operating in that space as the fan favorite that she kind of has become at this point. So it was a weird vibe. I thought Shevchenko won it, but it was very, very close. Do I really want to see that a third time? Yes, of course I want to see it for what it means and what the results could tell us.

But I don't have a burning desire to see the fight on fight terms. That is less interesting to me. Amanda Kayla is very interesting to me. I think Kayla Harrison, with a focused game plan that really caters to her strengths. Amanda's no slouch on the ground, but I tend to think that Kayla could potentially be really interesting in terms of giving her problems. And then Valentina Tatiana Suarez, now as you guys know, she moved up, or at least indicated a desire to move up from 115 to 125. That, yes, I would very much like to see that,

but that really, really, really depends on the health of her neck. Now, I know she's taken a long time to heal it. I hope it is healed. When she's out there and she's at her best, there wasn't anyone at 115 who I thought could stop her. I thought she had championship material written all over her. At 125, we'll see what the situation is like, about to what extent her wrestling is still dominant,

how she fits into the weight class, what's the deal with her neck. So of the three, because of some of those other factors, I'd personally go Amanda Kayla. But I recognize the biggest of the three is Amanda, Valentina 3. What does your wife think of the representation slash portrayal of Pablo Escobar in Narcos?

She hated it. She hated it. She thought Wagner Moura, the Brazilian actor who played Pablo Escobar, was a very good actor. And Iar, was a very good actor. And I think he is a very good actor. It wasn't that he had done a poor acting performance. But in many ways, you know, so you got to understand, every country has something like this.

But regionally, you know, the Medellin, the people from that area call themselves Paisas. And I'm told that Escobar had a very classic Paisa accent. And if you listen to Wagner Mora, even I could hear it. I could hear the sort of Brazilian Portuguese influence in his Spanish. It was noticeable. Less noticeable if he was speaking in smaller, kind of whispery tones, but when the character would get enraged, you've got, I mean, I hate to say iconic in the sense that he is a nefarious person, but certainly is iconic. You have this iconic Colombian villain with a Brazilian accent, you know, it was a turnoff, as I understand it, for many Spanish speakers, even if they recognized that Escobar, or rather that Wagner Mora, you know, certainly a talented performer. or I never heard a ton of complaints in that direction,

but I did see a lot of people complaining that, you know, if you're going to get somebody that unique, but also that representative of a certain kind of people, they should have a similar kind of accent. And it might sound like, oh, that's like, you know, splitting hairs. But can you imagine, I don't know, somebody portraying John Wayne and they sound like they're from Brooklyn? You know, like Bensonhurst, Brooklyn?

You'd be like, that doesn't sound like fucking John Wayne at all. Like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? It would be kind of weird, right? Or, you know, I don't know, like Martin Luther King sounding like a teenage girl from the valley in California or something. It just wouldn't add up. And certainly Martin Luther King is an exalted figure and Pablo Escobar is not. But again, to the extent that they represent a larger people in their way they speak, you can see that big differences even within a nationality can change how you view someone. So I heard a ton of complaints about that.

All right. Very silly question. I was wondering why... Okay. Hold on. Let's see. Let me see something here. All right. Let me see something here. Alright.

Got more silly questions. You guys are full of them. Have you ever considered posting more experimental videos on your personal channel? Stuff like film, book reviews, politics, strength sports, whatever. Explore your interests outside of combat experimental videos on your personal channel? Stuff like film, book reviews, politics, strength, sports, whatever. Explore your interests outside of combat sports realm on your personal channel. Yeah, I've given it tons of thought. I don't know what I would put up though. If you put up something on your channel, you can experiment a little bit.

But in part one, people come to your channel for a certain kind of expertise. Or a certain kind of expertise or a certain kind of focus and a sort of an area of discipline. And you can play with that if there's enough personal identity built into the brand, which obviously there is a little bit with me. But even then, to the extent, it's not even like people hated other things that I put up there. That's not quite true. It was just that they didn't, there wasn't a lot of traffic for it. There was just, there was a sort of a collective shrug from the existing audience. So I could do like another channel, but that's a lot of work.

I'm trying to build MK. You know, I'm never opposed to these sorts of things in theory, especially the strength sports part. I really want to find a way to do more with that. But it's not as easy as it might look when you brand a channel in your identity. And the last 15 years, my occupation has been strictly this kind of a thing. So that's what people come to you for. You got to be a little bit, a little bit, you know, sometimes I'll skip all the politics questions. Sometimes I don't, obviously, because I want it to have some latitude. But at the same time, you've got to kind of narrow the focus for what you're going to share on a particular platform. That's an interesting question.

If you had the time and youthful vigor, of which I have neither, which combat sport would you train for fun? Jiu-jitsu for fun, for sure. For fitness, honestly, any of them. You can get fit doing any of them, dude. Which combat sport would you train for fun? Jiu-Jitsu for fun, for sure. For fitness, honestly, any of them. You can get fit doing any of them, dude. You can get fit doing Jiu-Jitsu. You can get fit doing wrestling. You can get fit doing Sambo. You can get fit doing Muay Thai or just regular.

You can get boxing. Dude, you get in great shape fucking boxing. Like, really, when it comes to fitness, you know, if you follow any kind of, if you go to the gym four days a week, maybe more, but let's say four days a week, and you're following what the instructor says, and you're just showing up, and you're doing your thing, and you don't eat like a total asshole, you're going to lose weight. I mean, it's just the way it's going to be. You're going to do intense workouts. You're going to be doing them consistently. Again, assuming you're not injured and assuming you don't leave there and go right to Burger King or something like that. Chances are it's just going to come right off.

And then, especially if you start locking in your diet, you'll see amazing transformations. So for fitness, honestly, I'm not going to say that they're all equally good. They might have some modalities might be better than others for certain kinds of people. But in general, I tend to think you can get fit with all of them. Jiu-jitsu might be a little bit harder to get fit. I actually found that if I didn't lift weights while doing it, I would get atrophy in certain parts of my body that were bad for my overall quality of life. So understand that too.

But for fun fun for pure fun for sure jujitsu for sure jujitsu if you're not injured and you can do it consistently it's a lot of fun um but as you get older that that shit becomes a lot less of both all right i think i've answered this one a million times. Is there something else? Luke, the most regrettable thing you've done since being in MMA media. I've answered this one a few times. I get it every few years. The short story is I'd interviewed Bryan Stan,

and I had hired someone to transcribe the interviews, and they had fucked it all up, and I never double-checked it, and I posted it under my name, and he got really mad. Now, we, and it was the nature of the way I framed the headline, too, about would he fight his teammates. We really buried the hatchet years and years ago, and I apologize profusely because it really was my fuck-up,

and it sounds like, oh, you're blaming the guy who transcribed. No, I'm not. Yes, I mean, that person should not have transcribed in the way that they did, but if you post it, and especially if it's got your name on it, 1,000%, you are responsible. And then on top of that, I was the one framing certain things a certain way. I care less about the framing and more the accuracy. I mean, you're going to say someone said something. It needs to be accurate.

I mean, that was a total disaster that I'd fuck that up. I'll tell you something I've thought about differently, which is, look, I'm in a very privileged and unique position where I've been able to do, I've done most cool jobs in this industry. Again, there's a few things that have eluded me, but for someone starting out from nothing, I had no connections,

I've been lucky enough to do a lot of different things. But while I'm glad I experimented, and maybe if you get an opportunity to do something in your line of work, or even this one, where you get a chance to experiment, there is a value to it. But I have to say, you also need to know, like, there were times I took jobs where I knew I was not a strong candidate, and I did it because I thought I could, I could grow into the role. And maybe it was a combination of self-consciousness, not being good at the job, plus an inability to just focus on the skills acquisitions I needed to get better.

But I could not really force myself to meaningfully improve here or there. I could do it. And so I would say that if you're thinking, and again, this won't be advice for everyone or this isn't exactly error per se, but looking back, I definitely would have turned down a few jobs that I should have gone to somebody else that, and again, most of them I didn't do very long, so it wasn't like I was keeping people out or something forever, but I used to watch, here's the truth. When I first got really, when I first began to develop Bloody Elbow and it was getting bigger each month and bigger and bigger until the point where I was attracting real numbers

and SB Nation took notice of it and it became a big thing month and bigger and bigger until the point where I was attracting real numbers. And SB Nation took notice of it, and it became a big thing. I remember I would look around the industry, and I saw all these people who had jobs that I really wanted. And it's a little bit of jealousy, of course, professionally. I'll just be honest. But a lot of it was like, dude, they were not good at it. They were not good at it. And I kept wondering how the fuck they get hired.

What you find is that they find ways to get hired because they have connections but eventually when they're not good enough they just they just they stop getting opportunities and the connections stop mattering and then there's nothing else to hold on to a lot of them never developed their own audiences they kind of relied on the big the big outlets to give them an audience and they never developed a relationship with the audience directly. And I was like, what the fuck? So then what you saw is over time,

a lot of them lost those jobs and that better people got them. And then I watched myself become part of that where I had jobs I did not really, should not have taken um and and then the industry kind of realizing that that was not a good fit for you and then moving on to something else um into someone else and i'm glad that they did i remember dude when i got when glory decided to not hire me i was so fucking i never happened to me ever i was relieved. I was so relieved and not because

the job sucked. The job was great. Dude, they flew me to Croatia. I got to watch Crow Cop in fucking Zagreb, you know, fight, you know, Remy Boniansky. I got to see, I got to see the last man standing tournament in LA. I got to see tons of cool shit. They took care of me. No, no denying it. Um, they were late on a couple of paychecks, but that wasn't, that was an old regime, not the current group. It's the whole thing. But I was, I just could never even, I couldn't even convince myself I could do the job well. And when they were like, Oh, we're going to move in a different direction. I was like, thank God. Thank God. Thank God that they stopped asking me because that job should go to somebody else.

What happens to Conor in his UFC career if he loses the trilogy to Dustin? Well, you're seeing some seeds planted about like Kamaru Usman. You know, he was asked by somebody, I forget who it was, you know, talking about Conor. And he had said, Conor's kind of just like a regular guy now. Like, that whole aura and all the stuff he had done, that's an old Conor. This version ain't like that.

He's just a regular dude. Now, that could be incredibly dismissive and wrong. Conor could go in there and absolutely reclaim everything that he has lost, at least from a perception standpoint. But you're asking the opposite. So what happens if all this... So those seeds being planted, they're going to bear some fruit. And there's going to be a big narrative switch about this guy that 205 was his peak,

the UFC 205. He could still win here or there, but Conor as a title contender, top of the division guy, he's just not that guy anymore. In other words, it will make Kamaru Usman look prescient because they're leading with it a little bit. Now, maybe they're leading with it based off what the evidence, what they think the evidence tells them. We'll need to see a third time to really have a better clear sense of things.

And by the way, I'm not even sure that that would be wrong, that if Conor loses to Dustin, it's less about what's the narrative about him. That does matter because that can, sort of a way of dictating how life is then viewed. But also just ask yourself, like, whatever everyone else is saying, what would you say?

What would you say if you lost to Poirier a third time? Right? We know from trilogies in MMA, the person who wins the second one more often than not wins the third one. There are some exceptions to that, but commonly that's the way it goes, especially if there's a gap between the first and second one. I mean, classic examples would go a thousand different directions, but Couture Liddell really reminded me of that. So we're going to see. But if he loses, I'm not sure that what Kamara you know, regular fighter sounds a little dismissive. But the idea that, I mean,

there's still this kind of lingering hope, right? That Conor, maybe he can't get exactly what he was at 145, bulldozing through that division in the way that he was, but that he can still hover at the top of the division on the right night. He can beat just about anybody, maybe not named Habib, but Habib's gone. So hey, by the way, he also has a win over Dustin, as we all know the story. There's a lot of different ways to

look at this, I think, from either perspective. But just ask yourself, what would you say about Conor with all those breaks, losing to Mayweather, the Cerrone fight being of lone exception of goodness since that time, since 205 really, paychecks notwithstanding. And then, you know, the lost party and whatnot. You know, you wouldn't, and Habib, you wouldn't necessarily have a view as this is the guy in that division who's either going to run it or be even next to the guy who runs it. He might be one or two or three steps behind at this point. Like where are all his Ws coming from in life?

The paychecks from like he sold whatever his stake was in his whiskey company. Dude, he got fucking paid off of that. Now, some of the numbers were a little bit exaggerated. But in general, he made really good money off of that. He got really good money off the Mayweather fight and everything else. He's made some real coin, some super real coin. That's where the wins are coming from. I tend to think that's where his interests are.

I tend to think that's the way that life is guiding him. I don't expect him to beat Dustin, quite frankly. I don't know that. We'll have to see what happens. But I don't think he'll beat Dustin. So this is a real situation that we're going to have to face. Plus, the question is also, if Conor loses, was it knockdown dragout? Was it pretty close?

Was, you know, what kind of moral victory can he take from that? And then to that end, to what extent does that want to make him continue fighting somebody else? Okay, he doesn't beat someone in the top five, but he fights a dos anjos. They run that back and he ices them inside of a minute. You know, that'd be pretty good for his brand. So, like, there are ways in which it's not a total loss, like a car accident, right? You ever wrecked your car, had a car accident? Some lady hit me right in front of the Australian embassy, right in front of that bitch.

And if anyone knows where that is, there's a roundabout there. I come around the roundabout and she fucking creamed me, dude, drilled me total loss on the car. Uh, you know, but not every time it's a total loss. Like is the loss to Dustin a total loss if he never fights again? You know, it's, that would be devastating. would be like you know totally it passed him by and then he hung it up like part of what Ronda Rousey did was you know her situation is very very unique you know the first real UFC superstar that was a woman pioneering in so many ways her style was unique there's so many ways that you can do that but like you can you can understand her and why she's so special but the way in which she ended her fighting career was so bad and so sudden and

so abrupt she limited the damage by not having a third or fourth or subsequent loss okay but the loss to holly was so matter of fact the fallout so terrible not talking to the media before amanda nunez fight and then amanda absolutely gluing her with punches to the octagon, and then she just, she's out. That, I think, affected people's judgment of what was there all along, or what was certainly there at that point, or what there ever could be. The abruptness of her exit, I I think brought that into stark relief so we'll see how he handles it if we get to that but if he goes up there and he knocks out Dustin in 30 seconds which he's capable of doing

the whole thing shifts how much of Tony's decline can be attributed to him splitting up with his long time corner like Eddie Bravo I don't know. I tend to think that whatever ailed him is less a function of Eddie not being there to guide him around it. Certainly, Eddie has been a very, very successful coach and proprietor of jiu-jitsu.

I think that's pretty fair. I think that he probably did some wonders for Eddie. And maybe that relationship, we talked about it before. It's like, dude, Kamaru Usman and Henry Hooft together produced a championship run. That's a real thing you can say about them, but maybe it came to an end and so someone else had to fill in that gap. It doesn't mean that what they had was bad. It just means it came to a close. Maybe that's what happened with Eddie. It just wasn't bad. I don't really view that it was bad or that he was necessarily the guy to fix it, but maybe it ran its course. I tend to think the issues are much bigger. Dean Thomas, I think, had articulated him,

these sort of unusual style guys. They can kind of plow through when they're young, but when the game catches up and then they get a little bit older, all those things begin to kind of unravel for them a little bit. I think that's probably a big part of it. I think the age is a big part of it. No one really talks about it. I won't say no one, but I don't think it gets as much discussion as I think it's relevant. I think that beating from Gaethje,

I don't think you come back from beatings like that all the way. I really don't. Even for someone as mentally tough as Tony Ferguson, who might be the most mentally tough guy I've ever seen, even a guy like that, no one is immune from just taking a beating like that and being like, well, you know, I'll just come back same tomorrow. I mean, it looks like a video game to you and us, man.

Those are real fucking things. Can you imagine someone doing that to you and how it would affect you? You have to have a steel trap of a mind to not feel that. And Tony's got about one of the better ones I've seen. I mean, I'm not sure who's better. And, you know, look, I think even he is suffering some of the ill effects, which would be understandable. Could you fucking blame him?

I certainly couldn't. Thoughts on the Sanchez-Fabio split? I think we talked about this in Morning Combat. I don't think I have anything meaningfully to add. If Fury and Joshua were MMA fighters in UFC, would we have seen that fight by now? Yes, but it probably wouldn't be nearly as big.

Ooh, July 17th, Holloway versus Rodriguez. Your thoughts on why this fight was made and how it will go. By the way, you guys want to know something? In learning Spanish, I think I've told you guys this before, maybe not.

This word, Rodriguez, gives me a hard time. So if you grew up speaking English and you see this word, the way you would pronounce it is Rodriguez. Right? Most people. Rodriguez. R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E-Z.

Rodriguez. But the way it was taught to me in Espanol is Rodriguez. It's R-O-D-R, that's one, then D-R-I, then G-U-E-Z. And it's a little hard for me to say that conversationally. Rodriguez, I have a hard time. I can do it if I take my time, but my tongue is not so nimble. Neither here nor there. I'm just bringing up some bullshit you don't care about.

This fight is awesome, but I think Max is going to give him some real problems. I mean, Yair's been out for a while. You know, the St. Jeremy Stevens, obviously we've seen what Yair can do when he's out there experimenting and flowing and, you know, to do what he did to the Korean zombie, just the most one in a million shot you've ever seen. You can't look past him. Fair. But Max, I think, has an amazing ability to absorb damage. I think he's a master of range. I think he's a master of pressure, angles. Dude, I keep saying it.

His team, they don't get nearly enough credit. Those guys at Gracie Technics, Ivan Flores. Shouts to Ivan Flores. He's given me a couple of interviews. I find him to be brilliant. And no one talks about it, man. Those guys over there. And go back and look at my Eugene Behrman interview after the second fight between Volkanovski and Behrman.

Behrman is effusive with praise towards the game planning and the thought process that went into Holloway's game plan. Dude, when even Bearman is like, okay, that's impressive. You know you're dealing with somebody extraordinary. Those guys are very, very good. And to me, Rodriguez, I think that unorthodox style that he has, very athletic, very dangerous,

that's going to give a lot of people at a certain level of the game a lot of problems. I don't think Holloway is one of those guys, but I'll tell you this much. If Rodriguez beats Holloway, a signature win of his career by far, like not even close, he might catapult to a title shot. I don't know how, from what I understand, Mexico's a bit of a mess with the COVID situation, so I don't think you could put it there. But as things open up stateside, there might be some markets that could be cultivated

to get more of a Latin audience, right? I mean, the possibilities about what you could do with Jair if he beats Max is extraordinary. And for Holloway, you know, I got to say, hard for me to look at this and think that the UFC is trying to do Yair a favor. They're kind of sending, it looks to me, I don't know this, but it looks to me like,

you know, they've had an acrimonious relationship, he's had some time off. It looks to me like they're sending Holloway out there to be like, oh, okay. You want to do whatever it is that we don't like you for doing? Great. You want to fight Max Holloway on July 17th? Like, they're sending Max out there to terminate him, you know? Schwarzenegger style, that's what I mean.

I get a real vibe on that. So if Yair can play spoiler, tell you what, man, huge win for him. And also for Max, he's got to wait out this whole Volkanovski-Ortega thing. I'm glad he's not just sitting around and waiting for, you know, to see what happens later on. And God knows someone's taking his spot or whatever. Staying active. I think this is a very winnable opponent.

Still a dangerous fight. A fun fight people want to see. This is, you know, I think a very tough fight for Yair Rodriguez. Rodriguez. But it's a fun one Hard to dislike if you're a fan Very hard to dislike Luke we hear so many great things about your wife

Yes would you ever incorporate her into the podcast show Same for BC Or documentary at home behind the scenes BC You know I do three shows with him a week. I don't need to do any more. But with my wife, would I ever incorporate her into the podcast or show? She'll probably make an appearance.

I can show you a picture. You guys want to see her on my wedding day? But you know, she looked amazing. Let's see. I'll show you my wife on my wedding day. I think. It's my brother's wedding.

Oh, you know what? I got one here, I think. No. Oh, my God. Dude, look at this picture of me on my wedding day. I mean... Bro, could I have... I'm so washed now.

Look at this. You know, listen. I'm not saying I was Luke Rockhold back in the day. I'm not saying I was Luke Rockhold back in the day. But this is a hell of a lot better than this shit. I look terrible. Terrible. I look terrible. I don't know what happened.

I just look like, as we say in the Marine Corps, a bag of smashed assholes. I look just repugnant. I don't know what happened to me. Ugh, I'm the worst. I was going to show you a picture of my wife. I didn't want to show you a picture of me and lamenting my own existence. I'll show you one of her later. I actually don't have them all on this phone.

Can we get a color-coded background whenever it changes to boxing for the opportunity to fast-forward past BC's dismal attempt at making boxing relevant again? That's a little mean. That's a little mean. Listen, tell you what boxing and mma together keeps me and bc in business so if you guys want us to be in business then you gotta just live with boxing

a little bit it's a fucking great sport you don't have to like it as much as mma i guess you don't have to like it at all but do you have to hate it i mean what is it is it like coming home and banging your mom and like you know out, grabbing a sandwich from the fridge and not saying hi? Relax a little bit. Looking what happened to Cody against Rob Font, do you think Corey Sandhagen versus TJ Dillashaw will be similar where we see a slower TJ and Corey piecing up TJ for five rounds? I tend to think

man, who knows. No, I don't think you're going to see something quite like that. First of all, if it goes five rounds, I tend to think it's because either side or at least one side, but what I'll say is there'll be a sufficient amount of wrestling to make it go that way. If it's just on the feet the whole time, I tend to think one of them might beat the other. They're pretty good about setting traps, identifying angles, switching up timing, rhythm changes, location changes to land pretty clean. So no, for five rounds, not like that. Not like that.

I tend to think that that fight is going to have a definitive conclusion. Someone's going to just finish off the other one. I tend to think it's probably going to be Sanhagen who gets his hand raised. But really what Cody was up against there was if you go back and you watch the fight, obviously the jab of Rob Font was a big deal. He couldn't really get around it. And Rob really had taken away some of the flurrying, hooking power of Cody Garbrandt.

You know, didn't do anything with the takedowns, really. Didn't make him count. And then had a high amount of volume. He could never really find the second gear. He got kind of trapped in a first gear. I tend to think TJ has got a few different levels at which he could at least access

to make the fight. If it's not going one direction, make it perhaps go another. Still think that Cody gets his hand raised. Corey, excuse me. Corey gets his hand raised. But I don't think it'll look exactly like someone's stuck and then they just keep that same level of stuckness, so to speak between them

for the duration of the bout when is bc going to do a reaction video to two girls one cup after seeing this post i actually looked it up and just watched it for the first time brian needs to do a reaction video it's pretty gross but i expected worse jesus what were you expecting it's pretty gross, but I expected worse. Jesus, what were you expecting? It's pretty bad. I mean, at least, you know, if it's what we think it is, it's pretty bad. It's really bad. Yes. Could someone question UFC standard contract in court due to it being draconian? Could someone try to question specific clauses that are so draconian that they are illegal or unfair? Yes, of course. All this time they could do it. But the problem is you're going to sit in a courtroom for a long time.

It's why, you know, if you've seen Eric McGracken, the combat lawyer, he has been steadily preaching that if St. Pierre, St. Pierre's in the best position because he's got the money to fund the lawsuit. He's got time. He's really kind of retired, and what he would do is try to sign a deal with Triller and then say that he is protected under the Ali Act for boxing,

which would make a court review whether or not UFC has the ability to then be their sole promoter or the Ali Act would actually protect them from doing that and then have a court decide. Now, they could lose, but they could also win. But the point being is, which I know is obvious, they could lose or win.

I'm just saying, even if they won, it would be years down the road. It wouldn't be really to their benefit. It would be to everyone else's benefit. It was like, to what extent does someone like a George St. Pierre want to invest his own money to protect other fighters? You can understand why he might be a little bit reluctant to do something like that just to give away money.

But yeah, these things are wide open for at least some kind of challenge. Now again, maybe you challenge it and the court decides, no, they can actually do that. The Ali Act, for whatever reason, wouldn't apply in these circumstances. Yeah, there are some ways that this could backfire. But the big one is the people who are best situated to do and affect change don't have much of a desire to do it. Or, frankly, a strong incentive for others.

Now that Diego has left Fabia, are you interested in interviewing either of them separately? No. No, I'm not. I don't need to get to the bottom of this. There's like a lot of people who are like, I got to get to the bottom of this. Listen, Diego's got some attorney. We don't know shit about him, but it sounds like maybe he's a good person.

That attorney will figure out what money Diego is owed, how attainable it is, and they'll come up with a plan. But like, am I interested in the nuances and details of Diego Sanchez's relationship, professional, personal, whatever it may have been? When I say personal, I just mean friendship. No, I don't give a fuck. What does knowing more about that situation, how does that enhance my life or your understanding of what matters in MMA? It seems to me total minutiae that we've gotten most of the details on. And frankly, whatever other details are there, unless they are really game-changing in some kind of way, I feel like this issue has been mined as much as it needs to be mined. And probably more than that.

Piggybacking on last week's question about UFC buying another promotion, how likely would it be for Bellator to do that? Well, see, Bellator, I don't think they have the money for that, number one. And number two, they could benefit from it. If Bellator and One was one organization, or I should say this, if Bellator purchased One or PFL or something like that, and they were able to get their contracts, they could keep who they wanted, they could let go who they wanted. That would be really big for them. Imagine Bellator, imagine if you could combine into one organization

all the best fighters from one, Bellator and PFL. You wouldn't exactly have a UFC competitor in that sense, but you would have a much stronger number two. You would have something closer to what Strikeforce was back in the day, 2011 before they were acquired, 2010. You would have something kind of like that.

So they could really benefit from it, but none of those promotions have the liquid to do that. Liquidity. Will BC meet Abuela when he comes to DC? Yeah, sure. She's a nice person. Hello from Italy. Hello from Italy. Do you think the rise of Marvin Vittori can be a catalyst for more Italian fighters to break into UFC?

Italy has always had good kickboxers. Petrosian, he's also Armenian. Can you see Vittori being what Bisping was for the UK? Yes. Yes, I can. Now, I'm too far away from Italy, and frankly, I don't know of a ton of MMA media types in Italy. We are very much relying on secondhand information here. But the second-hand information I've been given, take that for what it's worth, is that there is hope that Italy could become something of a hotbed for combat sports,

partly with some traditions, obviously in kickboxing. If you guys didn't see the Calcio, or however you pronounce the word, Calcio Storio, thing on Netflixflix is fucking bananas but um yes we have seen that what people really respond to is some kind of national hero who is seen on a big stage who then takes what is already kind of uh you know burgeoning, moving through the process, and hitting it into overdrive. I'm told Vittori has, from a metric standpoint in Italy, some of the capabilities of doing this. That remains to be seen whether he can win, and it remains to be seen to what kind of extent a market can be cultivated.

You have to be there to cultivate. You have to put shows there. You have to get gyms that will work there. You have to find other fighters there. It's a whole operation in place that has to go. I mean, a country is a big thing. So one guy by itself can't transform it, but one guy can act, to your question, as a catalyst for other forms of change. Given what we know about UFC fighter pay as a percentage of annual revenue,

is it possible that Jon Jones' contract negotiations would be more successful toward the end of the year? Given that Conor is fighting at least twice this year, I wonder if UFC would be more willing to meet Jon Jones' demands after they are more confident in their 2021 revenue totals. Certainly that plays a, absolutely that plays a role. But again, here's what would have to happen for some kind of real adjustment to be made. They'd have to look at what was on the potential radar for 2022 and then they'd have to be short enough

where Jon could meaningfully provide a bridge to where they want to get. Now, to be clear, if he worked for them and he fought, he would be a key player in that building process. But because they have such a stranglehold on all the divisions of MMA, I mean, maybe you could argue Bellator's 205 division rivals it, but short of that, they've got, like, who's got the best women's flyweight division?

Who's got the best welterweight division? Who's got the best bantamweight division? Like, UFC's got all of them, right? For the most part. And maybe exclusively. So as long as that is in place and they don't have terrible injuries or people retiring en masse or something, for the most part, they're going to have other pieces of their business to lean on, plus through contracted revenue from just the amount of shows they put on,

to inoculate themselves from any kind of leverage that a fighter can provide. So the answer is certainly, when they want to factor in what kind of they can rely on you or not is a big deal, what kind of fights they can put together, all of that matters. But I would say that the extent to which

that was usable for leverage in contract negotiation I think has dramatically shifted in the last few years. Luke, can MMA be considered the less technically stagnant of modern slash popular sports? I believe this to come from discipline, diversity, and the shortness of its rules. Yes, but those are not the biggest factors. The biggest factor is that it is new.

American baseball has been around well over a century. Boxing, well over a century. American football continues to change, but has been around decades. American basketball has a 19th century origin. We're talking about sports where the best practices had year after year, decade after decade, frankly, in many ways, generation after generation to progress.

We're still, what, 25, 30 years deep into this? Granted, their composite martial arts had a long time to develop but as they interplay we now realize that there are some differences between what works what doesn't what's helpful what isn't and how it should be applied and even if it works how it needs to be adjusted for these new realities these are we're still trying to figure this out i i'm not saying there's going to come a point where there's no more technique evolution. There will always be evolution. But because of that newness, you're seeing these broad leaps that are made very quickly. That will go away.

There will be adjustments. There will be changes. There will be things people focus on. There will be improvements. But the pace of that will slow dramatically. Not sure when. Could be a generation or two. But it won't always be like this.

So yes, do I think that the discipline diversity and how there's very few constraints on it create all these imaginative possibilities? No doubt about it. But also, it's like, we haven't been doing this very long. We're still trying to figure out what works.

Olympic sports you're going to pay most attention to. Well, I don't know if they're going to have an Olympics, folks. Did you guys see this? 83% of Japanese, 83, more than four and five don't want the Olympics, period. Now you've got the Asahi, is it Shimbun, which is the second biggest newspaper in Japan, a circulation of five million people, I'm told, came out and said explicitly there should be none. There's tons of groups,

advocacy groups in Japan pushing against it. I don't know what effect it will have, but like, you know, gun to my head, is there going to be a summer Olympics? Yeah,

I think there will be. But, you know, gun to my head, is there going to be a Summer Olympics? Yeah, I think there will be. But, you know, could I guarantee it? I could not guarantee it. I think we should, the story should pay attention to. I don't know what the vaccination situation is like in Japan. I'm surprised that they've not moved along quicker with this. Because basically it turns out, did you guys see all these South Asian countries

that had no COVID forever? Now we're having like insane outbreaks, Thailand, Vietnam, places like that. It turns out really the only way to beat this shit is with vaccines. You can't get people for a sustained enough amount of time unless you are walled off from the world like Australia and New Zealand. You can't beat it without some kind of vaccine

to eradicate the disease, essentially. But you're asking about which one I'm gonna pay attention to. Obviously wrestling, judo's big, but mostly I'm focused on this, if they have it this time, for sure weightlifting. For sure. You got Lashetel Hadzi out of Georgia.

He is the greatest super heavyweight of all time, and he is barreling down the door of hitting a 500 kilo total between his snatch and his clean and jerk, which is a mythical fucking number that no one thought possible. I think he's only five kilos off, at least from training footage. He's only five kilos off. So you're talking about the guy who's already the best, maybe the best for super heavyweights,

maybe the best snatcher of all time. Everyone in Tokyo is going to be fighting for second on him the only question is how much is he gonna win first by and he's gonna try and do the 500 kilos I tend to think he won't because he gets money every time he breaks a record so you want to break wrecked by the Georgian government so you want to break whatever those records are incrementally so you can keep getting money. So I don't know that he's going to go for the 500 kilo total, but he's going to get pretty close,

and that is absolutely... If you're talking about one of the strongest humans to ever live, yeah, I'm going to watch what he's up to. Also, the Americans have some good lifters. Harrison Morris is good. C.J. Cummings is good. Yeah, there's a lot of good lifters. Who's the best grappler or jiu-jitsu player you've had the opportunity to train with?

I mean, I've trained with some decent ones for dumb, you know, dumb rolls for five minutes where you just get absolutely worked over. I've said this before, the hardest arm bar I ever suffered was a guy who, I think he was brown belt in jujitsu, black belt in judo. He was a member of the Olympic judo team out of Mongolia. And this dude hit me with an arm bar. It was the tightest arm bar i'd ever felt like by far not even i couldn't even begin to think about what a close second would have been and the reason i really remember is because when he tried if you guys don't know there's a lot of parts of the arm bar that make it work but you really want to bring your knees as close to your rear end as you can right so you're really bending the knees, engaging the hamstrings.

You're pinching your own knees together. And I remember as he was trying to close his hamstrings, he healed me right in my face on my lip and then busted it, and it was bleeding everywhere. And it fucking hurt, man. That arm bar was tight. And you can imagine, Jujikatami, you've seen all the judo cuz they're all good at it that arm bar it came out of nowhere and that was like I don't know how to explain it it felt like if you know what a normal

arm bar feels like and then you feel that one it like, and he was not heavy, but it felt like someone several weight classes above me doing it. That's what it felt like. It felt like I was going up against the, imagine the mountain had like, you know, amazing arm bars. It felt like getting arm bar by that. I mean, it was powerful, man. That dude had, he was strong so strong Luke can fans local to Miami come out and hang with you in BC after the event? I don't know. If we go out, I'll tell everyone there could be a tweet up. How about that?

I have lifted weights for a while, but kind of go into the gym and do random things. You should not do that. I have no idea how to program my weightlifting routine. Any programs you recommend that I follow? Okay. First of all, fellas, even ladies, if you're watching this, you have no idea how good you have it. When I started heavily lifting weights in a little bit in 95, but then stopped in the 97. So I did two years there. But the real lifting weights I did in 98, 99, and so forth, up until about 2003 or 4. Okay. At the time, if you wanted information on lifting, there was basically only three places you were going to go. One, the Arnold Schwarzenegger Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding.

Two, Flex Magazine. Maybe Muscle and Fitness. Maybe Maxim if you were a real turd, but Flex Magazine. There were some online forums, but they were kind of shit. And then the third one was, did you know someone who lifted weights? You know that health coach who taught PE, or maybe he was like the quarterbacks? See, I grew up in the South where everything revolves around the football programs, and we always had these coaches. They'd be like, oh, the quarterback's coach, wide receiver's

coach, defensive line coach, and the state has to employ them. This has changed, I think, since then, but at the time, if you worked as a coach in an athletic department at a high school, you also had to teach some kind of class. So they'd have them teach the most remedial fucking shit. Those guys were teaching people how to bench. Those guys were teaching people how to do deadlifts. That's how you learned, man. You just learned from some meathead or some coach who was supposed to teach you sex ed. That's how you learn

dude today i can't overstate there is no reason no reason whatsoever why you can't program a workout effectively for for two big reasons one you can just pay a motherfucker to give you one dude jeff nippard or nard, however you pronounce his name, Jeff Cavalier, you know, all these guys, Omar Isaf, all these YouTube guys, they've all got workouts you can have. Plus, there's a million guys on Instagram, Knees Over Toes Guy. There's another one you could do if you're really working on your knees, or whatever. There's a million different fitness personalities, men or women,

who will just sell you a program that works for anywhere from six weeks to six months. There's a book you can buy from Renaissance Periodization called The Scientific Principles of Strength Training that will teach you everything you need to know to the point where you could even use that for pro bodybuilding programming. That's not what you're talking about, but that's how much knowledge is in that book. The basic way to understand it, and you should absolutely not take anything I say here as gospel. You should go and verify it. But you can either go buy a program. You can go all over YouTube. They teach you all about Perlipin's Table,

all the different ways in which you can do programming, conjugate method, the whole nine yards. And it's all free, every part of it. So you can pay to have someone just do it for you. You can watch all this knowledge. You can read all these books, and you can develop it yourself. But if you just want to start while you're acquiring that, very simple. Okay, here we go. Pick one to two compound movements. You will do those first in your workouts.

Again, if you are an experienced lifter, you will realize that's not necessarily true, but for beginners and even intermediate, start with your heaviest compound lift. So that's a bench, overhead press, squat, or dead. Program that light sets, or I should say light reps, five or less for sets of three or four. And then from there, you build accessory work. So the way it works is you can have one compound lift and four accessory lifts. You can do two compound lifts and three accessory lifts and start there. Now, again, anybody who knows anything about lifting will know that there's tons of variation you can incorporate in there, but start there. For each day, focus on one compound lift and then accessory lifts around that. I don't recommend bro splits, which are like back day and

leg day. I recommend a much more scientific way of breaking it up because you can get better volume and better intensity over time. But to start, as a very basic way to start, here's a very easy way to do it. So you program overhead press one day. You start with your overhead press and work on your mechanics there. You do four sets, light work in terms of reps, but good strain on your central nervous system. Then you go on, you can do lateral raise.

You can do, after that, you could do face pulls. After that, you could do shrugs. After that, you could do upright rows. After that, you could do front raises. After that, you could grab open barbells and you could pull it behind you like this on the weight itself to work the rear delts. I mean, you could just go on and on with it. Then the next day, you could do deadlifts. And then after that, you could do, for accessory work, you could do dumbbell rows. You could do pull-ups. You could do, Jesus, what's some other

good back work you could do? You could do any kind of different cable pulling exercises that target various muscles in the back. You could do different kinds of shrugs backwards. You can do different kinds of pulling from elbow. I mean, it's just endless. So pick a compound movement or two per day. Start with those. Make sure you're doing the right rep ranges and the right intensity.

Put three or four accessory lifts behind it and then go. But you need to go and educate yourself and read and take it from people who can guide you in a much more direct and educated path. It's either a personal trainer, get on YouTube, read a book, or just pay someone to give you, pay someone. You can do online coaching. You record yourself filming. You send it to your coach. They critique your form so they make sure you're not fucking yourself up. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, there has never been a better time to get into the weight room for whatever your purposes are, body composition, strength, hormone regulation, whatever. Now is the information. Most of it free. Okay, I think we have reached. last one how come you don't talk and discuss philosophy you commonly discuss politics as you clearly enjoy it i was wondering why this does not extend to your philosophical thoughts

because largely these conversations around philosophy most people around philosophy think that like philosophy is philosophy is discussing ethical questions like if God is all good and omnipotent, why is there evil in the world? Or what are the ethics of abortion? Or things like that. But when you actually think about it, those are philosophies applied to more central questions to the human experience or the understanding of human knowledge.

They're not actually philosophy as such. And what you find is that when you actually get into philosophical arguments about what is true, the nature of truth, how we come to understand things, or whatever claims or precepts underwrite that particular form of philosophical thinking, you get into pretty esoteric debates that aren't really all that satisfying to have

without it applying to some kind of context. I don't think you can have ethical reasoning if you haven't really all that satisfying to have without it applying to some kind of context. I don't think you can have ethical reasoning if you haven't really thought it through and then decide what principles matter to you and why and where those paths lead you in terms of what things you can support and not. If you've never thought about what really is the point of existence, is it human flourishing? How does one produce that? Who is responsible for that? These are really important questions to have, and I do think that the study of philosophy can help you get closer to it. But for the most part, the bigger questions are not that.

The questions are, at least for day-to-day people, how does this practically apply to questions of our individual or collective existences in this space in which we are living in it now. Someone's asking here what to do about homeless people. The question is a public policy solution underwritten by some kind of ethical orientation about what a government owes people. Why does it owe that?

And you can get into those kinds of conversations as well. But I tend to think that the more... It's not that the philosophical underpinnings aren't good or important or frankly you can't really get to the next step until you've done that work. That's true. But in terms of like on a live chat, I find them to be, they come off sounding very, very academic. And I think people have the wrong impression about what the study of philosophy actually looks like. It's like how do we answer big, tough questions? Yes, it can be that. You can have it. I had a teacher where we talked, it was just about the ethics of death. I took a class called death. That's it.

And it was all the various ethical implications of what death means, how we find it, what does it mean that certain people experience it in the ways that they do and others not, like children versus adults. And this brings up other broader questions. It's kind of interesting. But the answer is, if you're really to have a question

about the epistemic worldview of the logical positivists, it gets to a pretty narrow, inaccessible form of discussion versus practical application. All right, that is it for this Thursday. A bit of a quiet one. I appreciate everyone who watched. Here we go.

Thumbs up on this. Hit subscribe. So here's the deal. Show tomorrow, 11 a.m., me and BC and you, we will be there. Email us morningcombat at gmail.com for any particular dead wrong. Then on top of it,

I don't know what plans we have for the weekend for programming. Monday we're off, but we'll have the mailbag episode, and then we travel on Wednesday. So, should be interesting. Okay? All right.

Thank you guys so much for watching.