MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - How Good Is Sean O'Malley? | Extra Credit Ep. 10

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Luke Thomas is back with Episode 10 of Morning Kombat Extra Credit. Luke breaks down a couple fights from UFC 269 that he didn't get to on episode 240 of Morning Kombat. (1:30) - Kai Kara-France vs. Cody Garbrandt (9:45) - Sean O'Malley vs. Raulian Paiva (16:15) - Dominick Cruz vs. Pedro Munhoz (24:25) - Andre Muniz vs. Eryk Anders (29:30) - Erin Blanchfield vs. Miranda Maverick (34:20) - Honorable Mentions 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

Stop sitting on your Aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now you can save up to 25% in Aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180 plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com. Conditions apply. Oh, this should be a good one. This should be a good one. Welcome, everyone. This is episode 10 of Morning Combat. Extra credit. This is the podcast within the podcast. This is where I go over some of the bigger fights of the weekend that we never even

got a chance to really talk about on regular MK with Brian Campbell. So first things first, thumbs up on the video. If you are watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe. If you are watching this on YouTube, if you're listening on a podcast player, we appreciate that too. Give us a nice review in whatever format you are streaming this on, whether it's Spotify, Stitcher, you get the whole thing. Okay, back from Vegas, huh? How about that? A ton of fun.

We got into it on regular morning combat. I won't get into it here again, but we are coming off of UFC 269. I mean, I could do the entire card, honestly, for today. In the interest of time, we're going to pick, as we usually do, about five fights and a couple of honorable mentions. So let's throw the card up here on the screen. The ones highlighted in yellow, that's what we'll get to here for today. For folks, again, listening on the audio podcast,

that means Kaikara France versus Cody Garbrandt. Sean O'Malley taking on Howley and Paiva. Dominic Cruz, what a win he had, huh? Taking on Pedro Munoz. Andre Muniz taking on Eric Anders. And then last, certainly not least, Aaron Blanchfield's win over Miranda Maverick. I'll throw out a couple of honorable mentions along the way when we get to the end here as well. But I want to talk about these 10, or these 5, I should say, episode 10, here to start.

Okay? All right. Let's get into it if we can. Kaikoura France defeating Cody Garbrandt, 321 of the first round. We talked I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the argument that maybe the durability issues are costing him. Again, to go back, people were like, oh, it's his chin and that's really the difference here and blah, blah, blah. And to be clear, it is a problem. I can acknowledge it much. And I did on Saturday night. But I thought it was also worth repeating, and I maintain this,

that part of his issues is, for our European listeners, you may not understand this, but I talked about this. Actually, I just did a podcast with the Schmo. I've made this comparison a few times, but it's worth repeating at least once more, which is we have the NFL, right, the National Football League. One of the hardest things to do, if you watch quarterbacks in college, they actually don't start what's called under center, which is right behind the center of the guy who hikes the ball to the quarterback. You'll note that they often stand what's called in shotgun, which means a

little bit further back, five, sometimes even more yards than that. So it gives them a big, a big survey of the target, but it also creates a little bit of lag time before the defenders can get to them. Why do I bring all of this up? Because by the time you get to the NFL, they do some shotgun formations, but a lot of it is under center, and the quarterback at the highest level

is expected to go to the line of scrimmage and look at how the defense has lined up. How many are they rushing? Are they loaded on one side? What are they looking for? You have to be able to read that. And then once the ball is in play, to make according decisions based on how much that follows up or what it changes or blah, blah, blah.

And you can imagine that those reads of the line of scrimmage, they have a huge impact on ultimately what throw the quarterback decides to make and whether it's in double coverage or whether they're open, blah, blah, blah. But your best quarterbacks, your Aaron Rodgers is your, your, uh, Tom Brady's. These are the guys who had the line of scrimmage can look around and go, okay, I know what I'm up against. Tony Romo got in trouble as a commentator because he was at the line of scrimmage as a commentator and then calling out what plays were coming next. That's an important skill to have. I bring all of it up because it just seems to me like Cody's got a bit of an issue there. He has a hard time, it appears to me, making reads about what is coming

at him and therefore as a consequence effectively either blocking, being absent, or just slipping off to the side and getting out of the way. We know he's got good athleticism, not really much of an issue. We know he can hit hard, not really much of an issue. He looked to me like he was moving pretty well at flyweight. We never really got a chance to see that tested, but that double jab entry and then the location of it, it just completely fooled Cody. Now, understand, fighters get fooled all the time by what they see,

and then something lands, and sometimes it can be catastrophic, but a lot of times it, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. It seems like everything he gets hit by has this, like, you know, either catastrophic or nearly catastrophic response. To me, this is a couple of things. I will acknowledge probably a little bit more than I should have on Saturday that I do think that the durability issues, they are quite real. I don't know how you fix them. You could go back to 135, certainly, but that by itself wouldn't erase the problem. And we also don't know to what extent he had those problems exacerbated by being at 125. Still, that's a problem. And the other problem is if you just don't know what's coming at you and you have a hard time making reads and adjustments about it, you're going to get hit a lot cleaner than normal you're

going to take the full brunt of them because you literally don't see them if you can see punches coming and then kind of roll with it and block and it kind of deflects a little bit none of that is great per se but that will keep you in the ball game a lot longer than just getting stole on constantly and it just looks to me like when these guys land Cody just doesn't see it coming you look at the case of this fight I said he was stationary on Saturday night that's not quite true it's somewhat true he didn't have both feet on the ground he wasn't moving laterally or forward that there was none of that that's why he got hit but what happened was the jab from Kaikara France fooled Cody and Cody decided aha he's he's going to throw this jab.

I'm going to stuff it or make it deter him. Um, by leg kicking him is you go back and watch, like, you know, you, you can kick out the inside leg that they're stepping on quite heavy as a way to deter the jab or a few other things.

And he's going for that. But that first jab was just a decoy. He sets another one behind it. And then the right hand comes and then just completely sets him down he just he he bit on a fake and that by itself is no scandal um but when you combine the fact that you know um you know he's biting on stuff pretty early in rounds and getting hit with things the stuff that's landing is never landing like in a halfway manner it's always like crashing into him and there's the durability issues aforementioned

it's a huge problem they asked us on dms with donks do you see cody being able to fight at a high level and it's really strange like offensively yeah i do think he can fight at a high level it's just that if you've got if you've got issues making reads at the line of scrimmage and there's durability issues, that's a tough problem to deal with. It's a tough problem to deal with, and I don't really know what the answer is going to be for him, candidly. I don't have a good response. But it's a nice win by Kaikoura France.

You should note that. It's the, frankly, the win of his career. He got it relatively easily. He looked good. People were noting, by the way, with Garbrandt, that he was doing a lot of moving and whatnot and then trying to intercept Kaikara France as he was finding his moments to get closer,

which is true. But here's the problem. It's like, on the one hand, he was doing a lot of moving. He was staying way outside of range. It's like, dude, the first time he tried to throw a kick to counteract what he thought was the jab, he got drilled with a monster right hand. It's like, it's fine to be on the outside, you know,

and I'm going to pick my spots and whatnot. But it's like, dude, the first time there was like real contact in in punching range and by the way there's another question about like cody's determination of range here now kai car france cheated it a little bit and i'm not saying like the rules i'm saying like the position with the double jab because part of what the double jab allows you to do is close distance effectively so just cody just not you know just making an early read I thought probably not best for him it's not like kicking that leg out is wrong per se to counteract the jab but early in a fight if what you're really trying to do is maintain that outside space and a guy is jabbing like that you know not that I'm like some kind of coach I I I I I I'm not in

a position to tell them what to do other than to say what they did didn't work pretty clearly. And if you're really worried about that much contact, you've got to start that round with the kinds of responses physically that keep you perhaps a little bit further away. But that would require, again, judgment issues about distance and timing and appears to be a problem. It appears to be a problem. I certainly don't envy the unfortunate situation that cody has found himself in but kai car france looked great he has he has looked remember he had a stint in ufc and then was bounced right if i get that right uh no i guess once he started he never looked back but he was on the ultimate fighter and uh started out kind of up and he had some good wins but he had the Ultimate Fighter and started out kind of up in... He had some good wins, but he had the Howley and Pival when he only won via split.

He had the win over Mark De La Rosa. And then the two times he kind of stepped up against Brandon Royville and Brandon Moreno didn't really go all that well for him. But this was a solid one. Two wins in a row via stoppage. He's looking pretty good. Kaikara France is only 28 years old. He is one to certainly keep an eye on.

He looks to be pretty good. Okay, we go to the second fight. How about this one? This is, to me, just insanely impressive. Did he win a performance bonus? Yes, he did. Sean O'Malley defeating Howley and Piva at 442 of the first round. Boy, let me tell you something about Sean O'Malley. He was impressive in this fight. I want you guys to go and watch something for me. are you don't see as much of this in mma as you do in boxing where again this is not like oh boxing's better but because boxing has different rules and different incentive structures you're going to get different capabilities as a consequence and what i mean to say is you know if you can just really focus your game on striking, you can add certain dimensions that you don't see a whole lot of in MMA. You do see some of it, of course, but only with the very special guys. Sean O'Malley's rhythm change. I really want you

to go and pay attention to that. This was on strong display recently, for example, when the boxer Sean Porter fought Bud Crawford. And what you'll see Sean Porter doing is actually kind of similar to what Sean O'Malley was doing here a little bit. There are times when you see him either in Southpaw or Orthodox. Folks focus on his stance switching, which is important because he does a lot of it. But also pay attention to his rhythm change. So there are times when he is doing a lot of this where if you're listening on an audio podcast, I'm head fainting like I'm about to lunge forward for a second and he'll hit faint

and do other kinds of faints but he'll get low and he'll be in this and he might even rotate but he kind of stays in a crouched wide position where he's faking and fainting behind it then he'll switch it up and get kind of tall and then bounce in and out of range and that's when he's looking for you to chase him so he can pop you, pull, and then pop you again, right? He's very, very good at that. So understand what he's doing. He's got great rhythm change. He's low, he's high, he's bouncing, he's stationary. He's switching stances on you, southpaw, orthodox, in combination, before it, at the end of it, you name it. And then of course, he's got a wide diversity of strikes that he's playing with as well.

He does good work to the body. A little bit of a headhunter in this fight, but not too badly. And, in fact, that's how he set up the beginning of the end. In fact, from orthodox, he throws a right hand, right, that just catches Paiva clean. He doesn't see it coming at all, doesn't anticipate it. I think there was a quick feint before. I know Sean O'Malley, I think, he set it up with a jab,

and it looked like he was going to the body, and said he came over the head to the top, expecting, I think, a reaction at the end of the punch from Paiva. So he just drills him with his right hand. Then to follow it up, switch to southpaw to finish him off against the fence. I don't know if that was purposely. If I heard him from orthodox, I'm going to finish him off from southpaw. I tend to think it probably wasn't.

I tend to think what he was doing there was instinctual in many ways, but it just goes to show you what kind of command of striking Sean O'Malley has. He has this ability to incorporate dimensions to his striking that even at the championship level, you just don't see a lot of. You see people changing their timing where they do the same kind of thing, either slower or faster or not at all. But it's very different to have one kind of posture in a fight where you can move in a bunch of different directions,

and then you completely change up the look you are giving your opponent with stance changes combined into it in a very different way that offers a series of different complicating factors. If I'm stationary but I'm in your face, right? That's a different kind of weapon that you are incorporating, a series of weapons that you are incorporating. I have to assess if you're up on your feet and bouncing. Well, now I have to worry about the blitz. I don't really have to worry about the blitz if you're low, right? But now if you're standing like Whitaker and you're up on the balls of your feet, I got to worry about the blitz. I got to worry about your hands being around

your hips if you're standing and bouncing versus when you're low and stationary, their hands are here. So again, there's challenges that come with either of them, but now I'm switching them up. I'm incorporating them into a wider array of dimensions. Dude, I don't see a lot of guys change up rhythm the way O'Malley does. Not the UFC level. It's pretty rare. Now, some of you might be saying, oh, am I arguing that O'Malley because he does things a lot of other striking focused fighters don't that this must mean he's automatically better than them that doesn't mean that I mean there are many ways you can lose and get tested in this game he talked about the fact that another rib injury I mean the guy appears to

be potentially injury prone Sean O'Malley does we We'll have to see. And also, you know, to what extent is he durable and to what extent can he deal with a wrestler? Like there's a bunch of questions about who he can actually beat in mixed martial arts that about like this doesn't really answer. But what I can tell you is on the feet against the likes of Howley and Paiva, he was completely styling on him. I guess the round was pretty close to being over at 442. But, dude, he looked fantastic. And if you missed one in combat, I'll repeat one of the points here quickly about what I had said about Sean O'Malley, which is, you know, back in Strikeforce, what they would do for guys is they would matchmake them

almost like boxers, where they would give you, you know, obviously if you were a high-level fighter in terms of the top of that division or a champion, you had tough fights you had to win. But what Strikeforce would do a lot with prospects is give them fights that were winnable for a long time, more so than other promoters in the space. Or this title defense is tough, and then the next one's a little bit made for you to look good. That kind of a thing. And it worked, dude.

That model built up a lot of guys who ended up being not just UFC champions, but they were more popular than they otherwise would have been by virtue of that matchmaking. Sean O'Malley, by turning down ranked competitors until he gets more, I don't know if he's going to, I don't know if he'll figure out a way to get the UFC to pay him. But in terms of making himself look good, dude, these are memorable performances. These are highlight reel knockouts. He validated his place on the main card with the way he fought like this and delivered like this to open the main card. He is strike forcing himself.

I mean, it's an amazing thing to watch whether it will result in the pay he wants. I don't know, but in terms of the acclaim and all the other rewards that come with the way this style of fighting works and everything else, he is utterly maximizing his position in time. And that should be pretty acknowledged as well. Very, very, very impressive by Sean O'Malley. Pay attention. Go back and watch.

Watch how his rhythm changes. He goes from low stance, jagged in and out, head fakes and feints, and foot feints and step feints, and then gets up high and then uses that bouncing stuff to go and then do blitzes or other kinds of things. You have to fight a lot of different kinds of strikers all at once when you fight Sean O'Malley. Very, very impressive. Great job by him.

We move now to the preliminary card. How about Dominic Cruz? Dominic Cruz getting a win over Pedro Munoz, 29-28 across the board. Now, he got dropped in the first round, but then he came back and won the second and the third pretty cleanly in my book. Pedro Munoz was not really in those rounds, especially not the third, but really not even the second either. He was in the first. What happened in the first? Let's talk about that for just a second. There is one particular stance switch that Cruz does, and he

likes to do a lot of stuff with it. It looked to me, and I have to talk to him about it, it looked to me like he misjudged the distance. What I mean by that is, let me see if I can draw something on my hand or a piece of paper or something so you guys can see here.

Yeah, I'm going to draw on this. Okay. If this is Pedro Munoz right here and then this is Cruz right here. Okay. So I'm going to say Pedro Munoz is the plus. Dominic Cruz is. Let's do this. Look at that for a second for me.

Can you see that? See that at all? A little easier to see. Okay, the X's are Pedro Munoz's feet. The sort of V here is Dominic Cruz, right? And if you're listening on the audio podcast, I'll make this as explainable as I can. But I just want you to notice something.

Dominic Cruz started out, if you can look at this, he started out on this side. He started out Orthodox versus Orthodox and then jumped to this other side, excuse me, right here, jumped to this other side to Southpaw. So he just jumped from Orthodox to Southpaw. Now you might be inclined to think that if you jump, one more time here, if you jump from orthodox to southpaw you didn't really change your distance to the other fighter you just kind of switch stance in front of them that can happen depending on how you switch stance but the way he did it created a problem because i'm going to show you the matchup that he lost when he jumped one more time see if i can see you guys see this one

more time there we go right when he jumped this side, pay attention to this one right here. Cruz has the one more time. Cruz has the outside foot position here. Right. So that means his left straight is right down the middle. But the problem is Munoz saw it coming. So while he has, well, he doesn't, excuse me, have the inside foot position. Cruz has the outside, excuse me, one more time. Cruz has the outside, one more time, outside foot position. But Munoz, while Cruz is to the outside, he is standing here ready to jab.

The shortest possible punch, once Cruz goes from orthodox to southpaw, the closest punch is that jab from Munoz. It's right in front of him. He has the inside foot. Remember how they all talk about how southpaws versus orthodox, that lead foot position really matters. The reason why they say that is because if I can take my lead foot outside, I create a lane for my dominant hand, right? So it lines up my dominant punch. But what they don't tell you is if you actually keep your foot to the inside, while the other person has lined up their dominant punch hand, you have the shortest punch to land with the jab. So in the middle of hopping from orthodox to southpaw, what he ends up doing is just lining himself up in transition for the shortest punch possible between the two of them, which is the Munoz jab to the face of Cruz. Well, what Munoz

did was, A, make a great read and do it so quick quick he was able to catch it as Cruz is coming into that southpaw position normally what he likes to do is hop from southpaw to orthodox not just a switch but like a literal hop over and because from there he can then level change he can then weave underneath the punch and then throw one on top it's actually a pretty handy stance which for him he must have misjudged the distance because he did set up the lead outside left to go straight down the middle but he wasn't quick enough and then centered himself for a jab to the face uh from Munoz before he could do anything and that's what sat him down that's what caused all those problems for him in the first so it was a great great job by Munoz

to catch him like that bit of a misjudgment and a miscalculation on the part of Cruz. But that aside, A, he ended the first round, I would say, quite strong, strongly. And then the second, third round, they were all his. I'll boil it down to this. Go back and watch in the second and third round. You'll see Cruz switch stances in the way I'm talking about where he jumps from Orthodox to Southpaw, but he is much further back this time. So it actually made that stance switch not all that valuable because he didn't want to repeat the mistake. So he like overcompensated on the distance versus this time where he just kind of, he may have like,

when you jump from Orthodox to Southpaw, what ends up happening is you think what you're doing is on the right line. But if the other person takes a half step or you misjudge and you actually went forward a little bit, now your distance is all off and you can get cracked, which is what happened. So that's the story there. But the real story of the fight is in the second and third round. It's a two-part issue for me. One, Cruz made it this way. And B, Pedro Munoz didn't have an answer

for it but Pedro Munoz just gave him way too much space like way too much space like way way way way too much space we talked about it on Friday dude to the extent Cruz has move a room to move he's going to light you on fire if he he has room to set up weaving, stance switching, blitzes, stance switching through combination from far away, and then he can launch into a thousand strikes through this long process. Dude, it's going to be hard to beat him that way. There were some of the leg kicks I saw from Munoz in the first round that went away after that. He was just waiting around too long. Of course, you can credit Dominic Cruz for much of that, right? For giving him so many looks, for being on his horse the whole time and moving and ducking and dodging and throwing his own strikes. And by

the way, another great thing that Dominic Cruz did was go back and look at how many combinations he threw. He wasn't trying to pitter-patter Pedro Munoz. He knew Pedro Munoz was probably going to be stationary as he got out of the way, or at least his feet would be planted. So if he could, let's say, circle around him or get him moving backwards or get him to slip, and then you stay in position so he'll slip and then come back to where he was, and then you can keep firing. So it was just a great job by Dominic Cruz in creating the conditions under which he can thrive. Not some great reads from Pedro Munoz outside of that first round. First round, he did a great job. Second and third, not so much.

And, you know, the misjudgment by Cruz cost him in the first, but it didn't cost him the fight. Dude, for him to get a win over a guy as good as Pedro Munoz at this stage of his career is extremely validating. And then, you know, to do it after getting dropped he's a tough out Dominic Cruz is still a tough I thought he was kind of on his way out maybe after the Cejudo loss that was very premature of me to even assume as much not true he is he is still a very difficult difficult fighter but again I'm going to go back to it like dude an MMA the octagon gives these guys

so much room to breathe it's not like the 90-degree angles that come with the square of the boxing ring. They have so much open space. A big key component is a lot of guys need that space to get their creativity flowing. The bad part is if they have it, they're going to be really hard to beat. But the good news, albeit the tough news, is that you have got to, got to, got to limit their movement. Dominic Cruz forced to be in a phone booth fight. Not saying he can't win, but that's going to be a very different fight anyway than when he has room to move. So great job by Cruz. Some decent things from Pedro Munoz for sure, but not enough to get the W in the end.

All right, let's talk about a couple more of these that I want to give some attention to. The first of them was the main event of the Fight Pass portion of the card. How about Andre Muniz defeating Eric Anders? He just seems like a beast at middleweight. Muniz is a huge middleweight. He is very much in control. I mean, look, how old is this guy?

I have actually not paid a whole lot of attention to him. 31. He's got a little bit going on for him in terms of age. He has four losses, but they came from 2016 and before. Some of them from 2012 and

even further back. But since 2017 he is basically undefeated. He's undefeated in the UFC. He had two wins on the Contender Series. Bruno Assis, Taylor Johnson, Antonio Arroyo. Then he beat Barstow's Fabinski. Then he submitted, well, actually he submitted Fabinski, then submitted Jacare, and then submitted Eric Anders as well.

How did he do it? This one is so nice. First of all, how did he get him down? There's a couple ways he was like creating space behind Eric Anders and then kicking his feet out as he pulled him back into the negative space but the real one he did was you guys have seen this a million times where they'll get to the side of an opponent and then weave one leg over the near side and then behind the other one 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.

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It's designed to spin them down to the ground. I think Danaher was the first one I ever saw. Maybe Henzo, but of course it's the same family system there. It's actually a very effective takedown in the right hands. The people who know how to do it, it's quite nice to get. He gets to the back and then eventually what you see is

Anders is going to get to his base and stand. Now not fully stand. His hands will be on the mat and his feet will be on the mat and he will have his rear end in the air. What Muniz does is he has the back at this point. So what he decides to do is he decides to as as the weight comes up the back from Anders, he actually sags his own weight forward and then behind the right arm. The hand of Anders is now planted on the mat. So what he does is he actually reaches behind it and now clamps it to himself, right?

He comes, actually, actually you'll watch it. He comes underneath the arm almost. And then around on that same side with his own right arm, he actually grabs the back of the leg of Eric Anders and then pulls and drives his own hips. Watch him go get his hips stiff, drives in that direction. Why is that important that important because one it takes Anders off of his feet first of all holding that leg almost serves as a cradle once they get now he has to eventually let it go but it almost serves as like a cradle where the person can't quite get on their base because you're pulling out that near side leg from under them but more importantly he locks up the arm behind him then goes for the leg to pull it.

So by the time he decides to then twist his hips underneath to go for the arm bar, the arm is already tucked behind him. Understand something. With the arm bar, you can have it with two hands close to you. A lot of people grab it with the crook of their elbow and then try to wrench it or even with the center part of the forearm to hold it to their chest. One of the most vicious ways is to actually tuck their hand behind your armpit

and then to wrench. It gives it that much more torque. What I'm trying to point out to you is he's able to A, lock up the arm behind him and B, cause Anders to be pulled off of his base so that he can then go Muniz into the arm bar position all with one fell swoop with his leg excuse me with his arm reaching out behind clamping that arm to his side and then getting behind the of the leg in front and then behind the leg on the right side of Anders all to pull him out and he gets him on his side and then he just twists

underneath the arm bar understands that if you get if you try and like get to the back right and then i'm going to work on my choke you might get your choke especially if you're charles olivera fighting dustin poirier but for most people in a lot of cases if you try to go for a choke once you get to that position it's going to be harder right like if i'm in mount and i have i'm i'm mounted on someone and their arms are here and granted mma could open up with punches but and I'm mounted on someone and their arms are here, and granted MMA could open up with punches, but with jiu-jitsu, if their arms are already here, you know, I have to now create separation from their arms away from their body. That's another task I have to do. What Muniz did is I'm going to set up my arm bar finish before I even start

the arm bar. I haven't even got to the position where I can apply the arm bar, but what I'm going to do first is I'm going to lock up the arm. Then I'm going to take him off of his base. And then I'm going to move into arm bar position. I want to go for the arm bar when his arm is already fucked before I even try that way. When he goes belly down and drives into it, dude, it's that, that shit was going to get broken or Anders was going to tap, period, period. That is clever. Very solid, solid jiu-jitsu. If you wait to attack once you get to the position, you might get it, but your chances go way up if you can lock up certain features of it before you get to it, and then you can do some real damage. Great. Great job. By Andre Muniz. And then last. But certainly not least of this.

Whoops. Hang on. We will go to a fight that caught me by surprise. And I will give her credit. Because it was so thorough. There's nothing else I can say. Pay attention to Erin Blanchfield. She defeated Miranda Maverick.

You guys know I've been high on Miranda Maverick. I will remain high on Miranda Maverick. I actually think she's quite talented, but she got worked over in this fight. There's just no two ways about it. Erin Blanchfield, how old is this young lady? She is 22. 22 out of Henzo and then Silver Fox BJJ.

Silver Fox BJJ, shouts to Silver Fox. That dude has some of the best guillotine stuff I've ever seen in the sport. Really good guillotines over from that dude. Her nickname is Cold Blooded. I can see why, bro. She is a fucking handful. Jesus, she was born after I graduated high school. I am old as fuck.

She does have one loss to Tracy Cortez via split decision back in 2019 in invicta but since coming to the ufc in two fights she's defeated sarah alper and then miranda maverick a bit of some finishing issues at least at this level she only has three yeah three stoppages out of nine fights which is okay but not great but but where she excels is her takedowns i mean this is so amazing right let me pull up the numbers on this if i can um just to give you a sense of things so aaron blanchfield in this fight scored seven of eight takedowns she got four in in the first, three in the second, and then one in the third, but in the third, she held it for three minutes and 38 seconds control time. She had overall 12 minutes of control time in this fight, and what was kind of interesting was she obviously did a

lot about striking. On the first round, they didn't do a lot either, six to eight Maverick to Blanchfield in terms of significant strikes, but in the second round, Blanchfield had 24, Maverick eight. And the third round, 14, Maverick just seven. Here's what was so impressive about this. It was that once she got to the floor, her control was overwhelming. Maverick simply could not do anything to create the kind of space or move the balance of Blanchfield in a way to attack it ever. And what was more impressive than even that was not that she got seven of eight takedowns. They might be, this is probably not quite true, but there might be five or six different types of takedowns that she got those seven with.

She might have gone back to the well on one or two of them but dude she was using them for what I'm trying to point out is she not only had take that like if I have like a great double leg and my singles like okay and whatever and we wrestle my double leg could be so good that in a wrestling match I could get 10 take downs and you'd be like wow his wrestling was dominant but like what if for example I go up against the next person and my double gets stuffed but they have a weakness the single legs but my single leg's not that great right the point i'm trying to make is if you can dominate someone in the wrestling department and you can do it with a variety of different takedowns it means that like like without

question your wrestling was way better add in the the 12 minutes, 12 minutes of control time. Plus there was a sub attempt that she got credited for Blanchfield in the second round. I don't know if how many passes that they credit with her or to what extent that they match that or look for that. But dude, this was big bank take little bank. Maverick is still a talented fighter. I wouldn't lose sight of that at all. But at 22 years of age,

obviously we have to slow our roll here a little bit. There are some pieces of her game that need legitimate work, and even the parts that are great could always be better, and all of it could become a more cohesive whole. But Blanchfield, dude, that was, she ran the table on Miranda Maverick, at least in this one department of the game, and made it look, you know, effortless is not the right word,

but that hopeless is the one I would use for Maverick. By the middle of the third round, you're like, okay, yeah, this is completely hopeless. She can't extract herself. This other person's ability is just so far beyond. You're going to get what you're going to get. So I don't know exactly where she goes. Maverick is now an 0-2 after starting the UFC auspiciously,

so she's got some work to do for sure. But Blanchfield, I was sleeping on her before. I can readily admit I did not think a whole lot one way or the other, but she caught my attention certainly with this win, one of the most impressive. This whole card, by the way i mean i could just go up and down this thing it's not very difficult there's a lot of fights that were great uh jillian robertson getting a nice rear naked choke win tony kelly uh beating randy costa

the way he did costa just looked out of it for a while bruno silva's great win over uh jordan how about tai tuivasa blowing the doors off aug Sakai? There's a lot you could point to. I'm going to give honorable mention to two more fighters. The first one, I guess, I will give to Ryan Hall defeating Derek Minner, 30-27 on two of the judges' scorecards, 29-27. I tweeted about this being like I didn't know how the judges would look at it because there wasn't necessarily an overwhelming amount of ground and pound from Ryan Hall in certain positions, but clearly enough to get the job done. The thing that was so impressive was he changed up some coaching things, which, you know, I guess I'll leave to him because certainly he's going to know his career better than we will. Seemed to work, by the way, to obviously this is very small sample size, but it looked pretty good. But he didn't look like,

in the Teporia fight, I just didn't understand. I'd have to speak to him, but I didn't quite understand what some of the roles were trying to achieve. And obviously they didn't do what they were supposed to do in the end because he got finished off with strikes. But in the Minter fight, you saw a little bit more conventionality, I thought, of some of his games. Like I mean that in a good way. He's still going to have the, you know reverse daily heva back take kind of uh things that most people in mma don't um but in this particular case you know he he was conventional in like the right adjustment and then the other thing i really stood out to me was like in that third round dude like minner didn't do anything and ryan hall held

mount for three or almost the entirety of to pull up the numbers here about how long he had a, what they're awarding for control time. According to Fight Metric, he had, yeah, five minutes and 37 seconds of control time. But in that third round, he had three minutes and 43 seconds. So he had a bunch in that round. What I would say is, you know, it's kind of amazing to me. Like, there's a lot of people who get to mount.

Even Blanchfield against Maverick, they would get to mount. And you would see that, like, they'd throw a lot of heavy punches from there, either because they feel like they can get the opponent out of there or because they know they're not going to hold that position for very long. So bomb on them while you can. Ryan Hall had the exact opposite calculation. His control of Mount was so good that he didn't have to have this do or die ground and pound to get the results he wanted.

He was able to control the guy, and he had, I would say, moderate to good ground and pound, but nothing super savage. He didn't need it. He was landing punches, he was scoring damage, and he was controlling a dominant position from which he could do those things almost effortlessly. There was no way Minner was getting out of that. Ryan Hall is surprisingly strong. Like Oliveira, those skinny, wiry guys have a little bit of squeeze on them. I've rolled with Ryan a number of times. I can tell you about it. His squeeze is actually very, very good. Anyway, you get the idea there. you don't see a lot of guys who either look to mount or can hold mount and then on top of it um can keep it for long periods of time while doing ground and pound like they can make different choices about their offense because their control position

is so good uh and then last but not least there was a hell of a fight between dan e gay and josh emma this was the main event of the prelims. A really, really, really great fight. A strong one. There was a 30-27 scorecard, though, for Josh Emmett that I didn't understand. I leaned ever so slightly towards Ige. I had him losing the first, winning the second, but then there was definitely a better effort

from Emmett in the third. And him winning is not in any way scandalous. That third round was tough to score. So it was fine if Josh Emmitt won, but the idea that he won the first after getting, you know, or rather that he won the second, there was a couple times where he got buzzed with big punches, like hurt with them.

It's like I don't quite get that. But it's a nice win for Josh Emmett being back after, what, 18 months, something like that, almost two years. And it's a tough loss for Dan Ige. But, dude, Dan Ige has been fighting nothing but hammers. And he still is getting better, and that was a winnable one. So, you know, I feel bad for Dan Ige, but it's a nice win for Josh Emmett. And that's the way the fight game goes. So there you have it. Um, great wins. What a great card, man. And

I could go on and on about a lot of these fights for a little while. The only one that didn't really interest me was the Jeff Neal Ponce Nibio fight. Um, but even then there was something to take away from it. Right. So what did you guys like? What was your fight of the card outside of the main and the co-main? Let me know in the comments. And who was like your standout fighter of the card? I would love to know that as well. Obviously Juliana Payne is going to win a lot of that.

Oliveira too. But I mean, you know, main and non-main event edition. Who really impressed you up and down that fight card? Let me know in the comments. So there you have it. Alright? Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. Give us a follow anywhere. Or I should say, give us a nice review if you're listening to this on the audio portion

of the podcast. Episode 10, ladies and gentlemen. It is in the books. I'll be back for episode 11 next week. And until then, enjoy the fights.