MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Instant Reaction: Mike Tyson vs. Roy Jones Jr. + Jake Paul vs. Nate Robinson

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Brian Campbell is here with an instant reaction to Mike Tyson vs. Roy Jones Jr.. BC discusses Roy jones vs. Mike Tyson. Jake Paul vs. Nate Robinson 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

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Well, how are you there? It is Saturday night, late night, instant analysis time for all things Mike Tyson versus Roy Jones Jr. A combined 105 years old. We did the celebrity pay-per-view thing, and you know what? It's pretty damn good in the end. Nobody got hurt. It was entertaining enough. Let's break that thing down.

Of course, my name is the big beige one, BBC. The Brian Campbell, one half of your morning combat tri-weekly duo, along with the great Luke Thomas. BC hitting you up right now, though, with the IA, the only way the MK-eth knoweth how, if you wheel MK all day, nearly every day. So please like the video right there. Subscribe to this because once, I mean, come on, the rocket ship is, it's almost, it's deep in space.

Okay. It's almost there. So get on board now. We can get to 75K, 100K. You're not going to believe what will happen next. But enough of us selling you stuff like MK merch on store.show.com, uh, cyber Monday deals still going to apply. If you do that, uh, let's talk Tyson Jones. Let's talk Turkey. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving weekend. There were so many ways straight up that this fight, this promotion, this pay-per-view,

this everything could have been an absolute shit show. It could have been a waste of your time, a waste of your money, and even worse, and let's not overlook this because it was a giant narrative coming in thanks to the nervous hand-holding by the California State Athletic Commission. This could have ended horribly bad health-wise for both fighters. In the end, we had a real fun night out of the office okay you know and i want to hit up a couple categories here from the fight itself to the broadcast itself let's get a couple things out of the way up front it's one of the worst

promoted fights kevin i only put the tweet out there from yahoo and he was right uh in the history of this sport okay uh all these last minute changes and add ons, poorly written press releases, inconsistent attempts at this being just a sparring match, just entertainment, and yet the fighters, the promoters being like, no, this is going to be the real thing. We're going to bang. And there was, again, a lot of reasons why this could have gone wrong for as shitty as the promotion was. This broadcast was fun as heck.

Shout out to Triller. Shout out to what the promoters locally did with the Staples Center in L.A. with no fans yet turned it into this fun soundstage entertainment backdrop thing. And they put together a fun broadcast with a random-ass announcing crew that could have gone horribly. More Ranallo filling in for Al Bernstein at the last second. You had Israel Adesanya. You had Sugar Ray Leonard, who can be hit or miss in this spot and then you had the real mvp who was snoop dog and you had music

performances you had all these things including an undercard filled with names that of fighters that were not household names even to boxing fans yet the action was great the matchmaking delivered uh the the production was fantastic. And I'm not even a big, you know, I'm certainly not a big live performance guy when it comes to fight sports. Different promotions in MMA and boxing. Roc Nation and boxing has tried it. It's never worked.

I didn't particularly love for my style of music the artist choice for this one. Yet for how many times we've seen some crappy ass rapping performances of hip-hop artists walking with fighters to the ring this turned out to be the complete opposite of that these were fun performances Wiz Khalifa's firing up a fat joint Snoop Dogg's got a blunt I mean it was just it was like throwing all this shit against the wall and look the announce team wasn't perfect but I really liked Adesanya in that role I really enjoyed you know the good and the bad at the same time they threw everything against the wall and it overachieved and it was kind of really fun to the point where i'm like is is treanor doing things that regular boxing promoters don't do anymore i mean look i didn't know some of these

guys in these undercard fights that they were well matched and they went after it even in that badu jack one-sided fight blake mccernan was willing to go through hell uh to to be in that fight so let me give you that foundation this pay-per-view i don't know how it was that good but it was i hope it sold well well i hope everybody makes a lot of money it got a lot of crossover interest rightfully so because the main hook in this at the end of the day was 54 year old mike tyson 15 years removed from a pro fight was going to be back and in some ways in this weird 2020 it seemed like it was one of the more normal things that could happen in this wacky year yet when they came out after a fun undercard with the entertainment that actually works somehow and they touch gloves

it was like the first time this whole build since the fight was announced and all the ups and downs with the commission that i got oddly really nostalgic and exciting now granted i was excited for the potential of the war a brawl we didn't see that in the end and i'm not going to act like the fight was perfect more on the fight to come but the surreal quality of seeing Mike Tyson at 54 in shape going in there and fight like it surprised me at how special that moment felt how odd how how you know just weird in a good way it was like a video game it was like a you know the rocky balboa the whole the whole thing about him watching tv and seeing the simulated fight against uh you know antonio tarver's character and what would it look like well what would it look like if roy jones and

tyson actually fought we actually to a degree got to see that and again it could have been really bad they somehow walked that tightrope stayed in the strike zone and it turned out to be a fun night for mall so the mvp is here uh somehow triller and again a shit or shitty is the pr and the marketing and the promotion was uh fun ass show snoop dog is by far hilarious your mvp not that we didn't already know this ufc had uh you know effed around with him on commentary in the past for like an alternate commentary team with Faber and uh but he was just off the charts hilarious but the ever the real MVP on this night in so many ways was was Mike Tyson and I am like the biggest I wasn't the biggest Mike Tyson fan like as like he's my guy you know going back to the 80s but like anybody else who lived the Tyson era he he was just like, you,

you're protective of it because you lived it when he was bigger than Jordan, bigger than Bo Jackson, bigger than anybody in those in that late eighties stretch of, of the most popular athletes. So then you live the crash and the comeback post jail and the crash again. So, you know, it's easy to become protective of Mike, but also at the same time openly and very critical of the missteps he's had to see him have a cathartic sort of full circle

moment with this performance and this whole thing and it may like seem like whatever but him wanting to donate the check to charity and him afterwards talking up humanitarian stuff like you could see the humility and joy in his face. That felt good. Like, consider this. Even though Tyson's had many comebacks since retiring in his personal life, turning it around, becoming a movie star to a degree, you know, with the hangovers and the one-man show and all that, what he left behind boxing-wise was disappointing.

Yes, he's a Hall of Famer. Yes, that first third of his career, no one can ever take from him. Yes, the second third of his career when he was just a record-breaking, massive post-jail pay-per-view star, no one can take that side of it away from him. But as we know, the second half was a shit show from the bite fight to the many times he quit or fouled or didn't show up and all that. To see him get out of this what it was clear he was trying to get out of this not the money maybe not necessarily the thrill once again which i'm

sure that was part of it there was a motivating factor to compete again to have the thrill i think he wanted to do something right publicly with associated with boxing and you know you can show up and be an ambassador which he's become a great ambassador for this sport whether he shows up for mma or boxing whatever like you know he's become that sort of like in ali's death the new sort of mascot for old boxing but it's different when you can entertain the fans again and actually get back in there and walk that ridiculously narrow tightrope to be able to pull off what he did on this night this is a win for mike tyson a huge win in that regard but if that means nothing to you you're not a die you know die hard mike if you don't care about mike then i get that

fight wise also a win for mike you didn't get your trademark mike knockout or big moment there. The reason why you didn't though is because Roy F 51 is a capable opponent. I picked right to win. I thought what was going to happen was Roy was going to survive the storm. He'd been a pro up to two years ago. We know this. He'd gone 12 and one in his last 13 fighting bums, but come on. Like he's capable. I thought for sure.

Mike's going to come on, throw the big haymakers. The fight will get crappier as the rounds go on. And then when we get to round six, seven and eight, Roy's going to be all over him and tattoo him. I did not expect exactly what happened, which is the reason why Tyson was the betting favorite as the bigger puncher, that his power specifically to the body in a very smart game plan for this

weird fight with two minute rounds and larger gloves and all that, that Mike gonna that this would work i mean he had roy well roy wasn't in a1 shape but he was you could you could tell he got there right he was ready the power of mike tyson completely affected roy it was a competitive fight to a degree but roy was in survival mode throughout. And you have to give Mike credit for that, for slowing him down to the body, hurting him to the body. And then because of that, mixing in when he was able to, big power shots upstairs. Roy had a bite down and take some big shots. He looked hurt three to four times, never where he was about to go down, but one big punch away from it for sure.

But the most important part was Mike landed enough power to slip Roy into defensive safety mode, constantly clinching him, constantly circling away, and never letting Roy go on the offensive. You could tell from Roy's posture early on. Let me survive this storm, then the tide will turn in the second half, I'll be the fresher fighter, and I'll do Roy Jones things. There were no Roy Jones things. And that's the biggest shock of the fight that Mike at 54, 15 years removed from a pro fight,

14 years removed from that ridiculous, stupid sparring pay-per-view with Corey Sanders. Mike was in phenomenal shape. And as they said on the broadcast, it's true. There's different kinds of really good shape. There's a really good shape that looks good in front of a camera, but that's different from the, we're going to go eight rounds,

even at two minute rounds. That's different from that. Mike Ward, Roy down to where Mike was the fresher fighter and he finished strong. And maybe for people watching the post-fight interview who bought this pay-per-view for the hopes of just a three minute shit show power punches, maybe that's not a consolation prize, but to see the joy in mike's face to be like people didn't think i can outbox him for eight rounds he outboxed him for eight rounds he had better

stamina he was landing the bigger shots to to force roy into a defensive posture it for as much as we can actually focus on the matchup and it was hard to with everything else going on both in the build to this and even during the show it's pretty good performance from mike given the limitations from both and given the fact that we knew at the end of the day despite what annie foster was saying they were going to go in there and throw big punches and try it roy never got to throw big punches because he was constantly circling you got to give mike credit he never he never shot his load so to speak okay it's gross to say it's a boxing term at the end of the day. He never did. He was the fresher guy. That was shocking. Now, the decision on the other end is, it was brutal. WBC having three ex-fighters, Christy Martin, Chad Dawson, and Vinny Pazienza as ceremonial and official judges who were scoring from home 10-9 system. I know there's a lot of weirdness and CSAC saying coming in, those scores aren't going to matter.

Well, look, it's an exhibition, so the scores don't matter. But at the end of the day, it's an exhibition in which they're still trying to win and knock each other out. So there is a competitive aspect. And again, I'll echo credit to this fight for staying competitive. It was competitive. I mean, look, they were sloppy. They were getting old as the fight went on.

There was a lot of clenching. I'm not going to sit here and say this was a classic, a masterpiece. I'm not even going to sit here and say we need a rematch. I don't need a rematch, okay? But Tyson won that fight. So by what his eyes tell you. And when guys are going to compete at this level, you got to have a winner. So I was upset that the scoring wasn't even announced in a real way.

It was announced by Jim Gray afterwards. It was kind of a shit show in the ring. It was clear the California Commission didn't want it announced in the ring so it wouldn't look like it was official. But even in the grounds of unofficial, this draw was lame. And the reason why we had a split draw, there's a couple culprits here. One of the two judges, I don't remember if it was Christy Martin or Chad Dawson, scored it even, straight up. Okay.

And then the problem was Vinny Paz. Now, Vinny Paz, he ends up the former champion. You probably have seen the movie about his career. What was it? Live for this? Bleed for this miles teller i forgot i haven't even seen it but shout out to peter quillen for being in it uh i believe he played roger mayweather uh bleed for this was that what it was you can look that up after or find me on friday on dead wrong on morning combat um the point is that vinny Paz was overly scoring for Roy Jones. Maybe that's because he famously fought him and lost,

and you often see that. A guy wants a guy who beat him to be considered greater all the time, so they look better for having fought and lost. I get that, but he was doing 10-10 rounds. I mean, it was a crap show, right? For all the talk when we hate judges, and we should hate a lot of judges, by the way, but all the talk is we should have a fighter in there, an ex-fighter.

Yeah, we should have a trained ex-fighter who's trained in judging to do it, not necessarily just an ex-fighter. I mean, have you seen Carl Froch's scorecards on English boxing broadcasts? There's 10-10s up the wazoo when it doesn't make sense. Okay. Tyson didn't lose this, this scrimmage at the end of the day. He looked really good and I'll give him a lot of credit again,

not saying it was a great fight, but it exceeded expectation. Well, it depends on your expectations. Let me say that. If you bought this thinking you're going to get a Mike knockout in the round and a half, then no,

it wasn't. But so many of us in the media who live the eight, nine months of this crappy promotion were forced to lower our expectations so deathly low that anything above an absolute shit show was going to be a success. This went pretty decently above that. It was a competitive fight. You didn't know if Roy was going to last. You didn't know if Mike was going to gas. I thought Roy could get finished at certain points. Like I said, he won big punch away maybe in those moments. I didn't expect Mike to look this good. They talked afterwards about maybe doing it again. I don't think they should. It didn't seem like Roy actually wanted to. He sort of saved face. Roy was hurt. Rightfully so. He got

banged to the body. Mike had a really really smart game plan so the whole kind of next question is like is there a market for this i don't think tyson's legends only legal work i chair for tyson of course and then he ventures in but it's that's very ambitious that we're just going to get a bunch of old athletes and have them compete in their sport i mean okay did a tiger phil mickelson one-off golf pay-per-view almost work maybe i know remember when Dr. J and Kareem played one-on-one basketball when they were retired, and it was awful. It was a pay-per-view, and it was garbage. I mean, is there a market for old tennis people to play against each other?

Maybe. But let's look at what Bellator MMA did back in five, six years ago when this was their major calling card for ratings, and they got great ratings. They did hashtag old guy fights, right? Kimbo Shamrock, uh, Gracie Shamrock, you know what I mean? Like Tito was fighting a lot. Bonner, they brought back, you know, the, the, they did it. And it's, it's a, again, it's a small strike zone. You're going to hit and miss.

You're going to probably get good ratings out of it, but you're going to have to be prepared that somebody could almost have a heart attack and die in the cage. Thank you.ada 5000 3000 dada 150 didn't um but you got to take a chance remember when bonner fought tito in bellator was like the worst fight ever you're gonna get shitty fights and you're gonna take the chance that somebody can get hurt but you also could have kimbo shamrock and have something fun if tyson wants to fight holyfield the third time and do it under this umbrella, it could work. It might be a fun pay-per-view. It might be a fun, you know, like whatever, but I'm going to tell you here that it's not going to last long, the market for this, and eventually it's going to end badly. Okay. Like we're going to be bored of it. You're going to

see a really shitty fight. The novelty will wear off or somebody get hurt and we won't do it anymore anyway. But did this fight perform well enough entertainment wise to warrant at least trying it? Yes. And I've been saying a little bit tongue in cheek, but a little bit for real for years that I was going to start a hashtag old guy fights boxing promotion because there's still something in us that wants to see these our old heroes go back one more time and empty it that's why oscar de la joy at 47 talking about fighting again now he's misguided for saying i'm gonna fight triple g or fight whoever

but you know like how much oscar die hard at the end of the day not oscar the man although i've raised the glass with him and had some laughs but you know i mean oscar the man will let you down but oscar the fighter i love that guy if he wants to fight corte in a rematch of course i'm there for it i'd pay my own money to see that i think there's there's a market there for a short season of that so shout out to these guys for doing it thank you that nobody got hurt i think the california commission was way too overboard and not realizing what this was at the end of the day. But I also think the fighters missed out when they complained about the two-minute rounds.

In the end, the two-minute rounds were on the list. Who's the MVP on this night? Tyson, number one. Snoop Dogg, number two. Triller, oddly enough, number three. Maybe the two-minute rounds were number four in the MVP voting on this night. Two-minute rounds is perfect for all-guy, larger gloves, maybe not 16 ounce balloon gloves,

but you know, the larger gloves is a better idea. I think there's a middle ground between the California commission going overboard and the whole raw, you know, cavalier nature of X fighters being like, I don't need any two minute rounds for women. They should make me a sandwich. I need, there should be a middle ground. California went went too far these fights should not be real fights and they should not be on the record but we should have a winner and we should realize that if you're going to put guys out there with gloves and no headgear and just go for it somebody might get knocked out and you got to go for the knockout because that's what this sport is right you're not going to say let's do a you know you know mbas are not NBA, the three ball thing,

the three on three that it's like, it's like senior NBA, right? It's not like, you know, they don't go well we can't dunk because it's not fair to all the guys that can't know. It's like basketball. There's no, like, you know, I know it's a modified rules. It's a half court thing. There's a four point shot, but it's still basketball. Let's not, let's, let's let this be fights at the end of the day. Okay. So California went overboard, but the middle ground is some of these rules. still basketball let's not let's let's let this be fights at the end of the day okay so california

went overboard but the middle ground is some of these rules and i know vitor belfort's been trying to get a mma legends league for years and at the end is it smart no it's not smart to have old guys fight but old guy but fighters are risk takers they'll always be if there's a modified way you can do it and if a lot of these fights are gonna can somehow end up in the first time somebody's in trouble you wave it off you know a cut or a knockdown like i don't think we're gonna be upset about that if tyson goes out there and him and holyfield just let the hands go and whoever goes down first you know you give them a short window to get up but you know if it looks like they're not there in the fight we're not gonna be pissed at that we're gonna be like oh man that was fun is there anybody a katayushin fight too i mean look there's a there's a small strike zone we can make this happen i don't want people to get

hurt let's find a middle ground on it if we are going to do it again you need the right people obviously all that but uh fun night at the fights uh violent ending for the uh for jake paul against nate robbins it felt bad for nate uh I didn't realize how little he had actually trained for it until I was debating Brent Brookhouse of CBS Sports on who might win. And he's like, dude, I got Paul the way he actually boxes. Nate just put on the gloves for the first time. Nate's just throwing himself into oncoming traffic. He got sent to the hell.

Maybe it's payback because he didn't deserve at least two of those three slam dunk championships. I'm an old school slam dunk championship head. So I don't like how the manipulation of the rules over the years, including fan voting in the finals, have made some unpopular winners. But Nate went out on his shield. He got hammered. That was violent.

So here's my final take, and it's on Jake Ball. I know he wants Conor and Dylan Dennis. There might be a market there. I know he wants Conor and Dylan Danis. There might be a market there. I know he weighs 190, though. Conor's like 155, so let's chill out on that. But there might be a middle ground there. The Pauls make you want to watch them get their ass kicked. I'm not going to defend them.

They're whatever, right? But they respect the game. People don't want to hear that. They do. They respect the game. Look, celebrity boxing is gross historically. The Paul brothers kind of respect the game people don't want to hear that they do they respect the game look celebrity boxing is is is gross historically the paul brothers kind of respect the game right like screech versus willis from different strokes like you know manute ball against rich refrigerator prairie we've seen crappy celebrity boxing the paul brothers whether whether they're fighting ksi or whatever like they

they they take it seriously this wasn't i mean there's a lot of clinching in Paul, Nate Robinson, just like there was a lot of clinching in Tyson Jones. Because again, we're not talking about real in their prime professional guys. But I'm in on the Paul brothers fighting. I'm not in on necessarily on what Dazon was doing with like mixing it with real fights. I think it's a separate thing. That's what I would prefer. That it's a separate thing that's what i would prefer that it be a separate thing that a whole card would include you know whether it's old guys or

youtube guys but it's a separate thing that could work and the paul guys uh they take it serious and you know jake paul would kind of good if you're looking at that as a celebrity fight and not a real fight he's not going to go contend for a cruiserweight or light heavyweight title okay but if he wants to fight other celebrities who are capable, of course we're here for him. Okay? That's my take at the end of the day. A lot more to come on Monday's Morning Combat

when Luke Thomas and myself, Brian Campbell, mix up all these takes. All right? We'll review Tyson Jones. We'll look back at UFC Fight Night. A lot of stuff to talk about. Joe Joyce, Daniel Dubois. A lot of good stuff to talk about. So all that and then some tall, pale, and handsome.

It is your boy, BC. I hope you've checked out our Morning Combat donkey-mentary, The Return to the Studio. A lot of fun and games there. Our bonus Q&A episode from Black Friday. And that's about it, you know? Yeah, that's just me. I'm just this random guy in his basement, all right? I'm half Lithuanian, half French-Canadian. What are you going to do about it. I'm just this random guy

in his basement. I'm half Lithuanian, half French-Canadian. What are you going to do about it? I'm BC. What do you want from me? I got weird clothes. That's the night on this night. For Luke

Thomas, he's not here, but I am Brian Campbell and I am the sauce of morning combat, and I am signing off. Like, subscribe, spread the word, okay? Remember in college when you used to spread chlamydia and Lydia's phone number like it was going out of style? Spread MK the same way, okay? Close your legs, though. Don't spread those.

I got two words for you. We out.