MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Instant Reaction: UFC 260 Results: Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou 2

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

At UFC 260, Stipe Miocic fights Francis Ngannou for the UFC heavyweight title in the main event on pay-per-view. In the co-main event, welterweights Tyron Woodley and Vicente Luque lock horns plus Sean O'Malley faces off with fellow bantamweight Thomas Almeida. ---------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. That's better. Hi everyone, my name is Luke Thomas. It is 12.31 in the morning on East Coast time, and this is the UFC 260 post-fight show.

As I mentioned, my name is Luke Thomas. I'm one half of the hosting duo of Morning Combat, which will be back, of course, Monday at 11 a.m., which is our regularly scheduled time. But tonight, we have UFC 260 results to get to. Please give the video a thumbs up. If you are new here, please consider subscribing because you get shows like this. You get the three a week Morning Combat, so you get more live chat and everything else in between. BC's a gazillion interviews and a whole lot more. Okay? All right.

So, if you don't want spoilers, now is your time to go. If not, let's get this party started. Oops. There we go. And we're back. Okay. Let's put this up a little bit. There we go. And we're back. Okay, let's put this up a little bit. There we go. Okay.

We have a lot to get to, although we'll probably go for about 45 minutes to an hour or so today. Let's turn this off. There we go. All right. UFC 260 in the books. As I mentioned, if you didn't want spoilers, your chance to leave is gone. Let's get to the results.

Of course, this event took place at the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. We'll start with the main event. We have a new UFC heavyweight champion, folks. Francis Ngannou defeats Stipe Miocic via KO at 52 seconds of round number two. All right, let's break it down. What is the biggest takeaway from Francis beating Stipe tonight in the way that he did? Obviously, the biggest takeaway for me is going to be that Stipe, excuse me, that Francis has dramatically improved, right? You knew he was putting in the work. This was a big question on morning combat all week. You knew he had put in the work. You

knew he was training hard, but could he deliver under pressure? Could Stipe find ways to trip him up? Would the moment be too big? Did he get good enough, quite frankly, for all of that power to be married with something a little bit more than just, yes, it is quite ferocious, his power, but if you can marry it with the other things, patience, shot selection, takedown defense, good cardio, good judgment, it becomes a whole lot more potent. Because one thing we actually have never seen from Francis, in the sense that the power is so good early you didn't know if the power would carry now early into the second round is an example

isn't the best example I should say of like power carrying late into the fourth or fifth but you know could he could he execute with each new iteration of challenge or round or whatever he looked awesome he was clearly the better fighter of the two. There was a single leg attempt. It looked like, I mean, it was a high crotch to a single. I have to go back and look that Stipe had tried to set up and Francis shoved the head in between, dropped his hips by, and he also grabbed across the waist and drove his hips down, put his feet behind him and was able to then not only stop the takedown and get Stipe to get his hands released, he was able to then cut the corner, come around

the back, although he missed a certain spot about protecting the back arm that you're spinning into, but whatever, his weight was on there enough where Stipe was clearly concerned about it. He was able to transition to the back and then unload shots and then not get overwhelmed there. I mean, these are bigger than they look like. It sounds like, oh, well, we see these kinds of things against foundational fighters do from their third fight on or fourth fight on. When you're just coming up, you should know some of these things. And part of that is true, but here's the big deal. The question is, could Francis execute against a guy the level of Stipe?

Could he do it against a champion? Could he execute not merely these skills, but these skills in the kind of requisite plays we had put him in, or just the kind that he had earned? And the answer was, you know, listen, I feel like if you're stuffing takedowns and then you're successfully transitioning to offense, even if it's not perfect, that denotes a level of skill that is not merely more than what he had before.

Quite obviously, it is more than what he had before, but that is altogether a new level. You know, a lot of times you'll see fighters who are learning through takedown defense, and they can actually stuff the shot and then back away but to stuff it and now you're the one on offense you are keeping the fight in that particular dimension because you have confidence you can control it under those terms and you could do damage there that's not automatic people think it's automatic but if you can do both at you know not exactly the same time but in the same kind of sequence that's a a big deal. That's what I saw from Francis tonight. You knew he had power.

Okay, big deal. It's certainly no revelation that that was going to be a factor, but that he was able to land those shots, that he didn't go crazy on them, but they were still impactful. That was a big deal. He was cage cutting. He wasn't backing up. He was being the bigger brother of the two. He was firing underhooks in the clinch. He was just doing the things that you're supposed to do, and he was doing them successfully against a fighter who had a belter on his waist when he, you know, walked into the cage that night. That's a big

deal, man. That is a huge deal. That is operating at a championship level. And then some. It wasn't close. I need to go see what the stats were from, what would the stats be from Stipe for this fight? Do they have him up? They're going to credit Francis with two knockdowns, both happening in the second. Yeah, Jesus. They gave Stipe a total of 12 punches landed over two rounds. Eight in the first round, just four in the second. Meanwhile, Francis got off 23 of 37 in the first and 13 of 19 in the second. He stuffed one of two takedowns. He went for a takedown of his own. Sorry, Francis got one of the takedowns.

Stipe was credited with zero of them. Man, that's crazy. When have you seen a stat line from Stipe where he landed eight punches in a round where either he or the opponent didn't get finished? I don't know if I've ever seen him muted that much. The leg kicks were working for Francis. Like 23 strikes out of 37 landed in a round. That's when they're throwing fairly consistently, just enough to keep the opponent guessing if there's a gap between what they're doing or the second fighter's kind of hesitant for a little bit. It's just enough to keep a steady drip of Chinese water torture. That's

the kind of activity where if you're accurate and you're mixing it up and you can land, it's not overwhelming. It's not some gigantic show of force. He's not landing 40 and attempting 60 or something like that. That would be pretty crazy. But landing 20-ish and throwing high 30s is just that perfect kind of clip to stay busy, be impactful, and not overly tax yourself. So this is the other thing you saw from Francis. It wasn't just that in the wrestling department he could transition from a defense to offense and do so successfully without

having any of his other perceived liabilities come to play, right? Like when he was going for strikes, he didn't get overwhelmed or positionally thrown forward or whatever. Like he was able to basically, you know, control through that. But more than that, just really good decision making. Think about the ending sequence there where he's standing like this and he throws, I think, a cross, a right cross, and then use that to throw like an up jab as he's coming, which Stipe just doesn't anticipate, doesn't see, doesn't get a chance to roll with it. He ate a big right, Stipe did in the first, but he rolled with it just a little bit. I bet that took a little bit of the sting off. Couldn't roll with this one. Eats

it, and then you see Francis take an angle, and then a punch comes between them, and he throws an uppercut around it, which was just an excellent shot. Now he does overcommit there, and he eats a punch, but then he has Stipe intercepting. He throws a short

check hook, which is a good, another choice, because it's a short punch. It's a powerful punch. If you can land it, and he puts his lights out. Like, dude, he didn't fling some wild shot. He threw a short check hook and got him, and got him with it. Like, pretty good decision making in these spaces to use an appropriate punch for the appropriate situation, whether it's range or angle or what the opponent is doing, what they can see, what they can't. He was thinking through it and he was making really good calls. Again, he overcommitted and he did eat one for it. Okay, fair enough. It wasn't perfect, but that's pretty good. That's pretty good shot.

When people talk about like, what does shot selection mean? What punch do you throw? Or what strikes do you throw? What are you attempting to use in what moment for what reason? And not every punch is going to work the same or every strike is going to work the same in these kinds of situations. There are best practices at play here. What would go better for what you're trying to do? And he was thinking through it pretty well for the most part. He had just the right amount of volume. He had great defense. He showed the ability to go from defense to offense through wrestling. He had the ability to, you know, as I mentioned, cage cut, corner, back up, leg kicking, jabbing if he needed it.

You know, some of this stuff was missing and it was a little bit wide, but we weren't expecting a perfect performance from him. I mean, this was the thing that I thought got lost a little bit from the discussion of the first fight. People talked about how dominant it was. It was the first fight for Stipe. And again, the first round was a little bit touch and go, but from there on out, it was basically all Stipe in a pretty dramatic way but we never talk about

the fact that it went 25 minutes what do I mean by that it's like well let me get this straight Francis gassed after the first he had poor shot selection didn't know what he was doing, could barely wrestle, and Stipe, at basically the peak of his powers, beat him up real bad but couldn't put him away. Now, I thought that might have lasting psychological effects, and they showed up in the Derek Lewis fight, but he was able to work through them for the most part, and he finds himself back here for this one. Well, why do I think that's so relevant? It's like, dude, if this guy had no skills and he was able to go 25 minutes, if he just adds some, as just beastly a human as he is,

and you didn't get finished the first time, you're going to be in this fight probably for a while where you're just going to have more opportunities. Now, they came a lot quicker than I kind of thought that they might. I thought he was going to have to work through it a little bit, maybe third, fourth round kind of thing. But if you have no skills and they can't put you away, I mean, again, I'm exaggerating when I say no,

but if you don't have very many of them and you can still go the distance, dude, when you have some, you're going to be a nightmare for them. You're going to be a nightmare. and that's exactly what you saw. There was the lesson a little bit from that first fight, which was that, dude, it's not just that offensively Francis hits hard or something like that. I mean, obviously that's true, but physically he is beastly. He is hard to hurt. He's hard to maneuver. He's hard to control. It can be done. You've seen it done.

It's not impossible. But as he adds skills to these dimensions, those windows to execute these kinds of things, they're going to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And he's going to bring already considerable physical size and ability to bear now with smarts and with know-how and with just, it's going to be, everything is going to complement everything else with this guy. So you have a new heavyweight champion. 92 significant strike percentage. I had tweeted just before the show that I really wonder what is going to happen with Stipe next because he might want a trilogy and they may want to do that. I don't know what's going to happen with Jon Jones. We'll talk about that in just a second. But while I wouldn't mind seeing a trilogy, I wouldn't mind seeing it next. A, there's Jon out there. I think that deserves to at least be tried. And then B, this fight wasn't close.

Francis won it 10-9, no problem in the first. And then he viciously KO'd him with a check hook basically in the second, within 52 seconds. It wasn't, like there's not a, you know, even, well, he got, I guess the one punch he overcommitted on is kind of like some of the big punches that Poirier took from McGregor. So maybe they'll do that. Maybe they'll go back that way.

But if they can come to a deal with... I'll just sort of get to it. John's in a really interesting position because the way he was tweeting was like, he's waiting for UFC to show him a new deal to get more money to fight at heavyweight. And he's actually got a little bit of pull, obviously one, because he's John Jones, but more than that, part of the issue is I suspect Stipe is going to want another crack at this, right? Well, um, one a piece and more to that point. Um, he's going to be a lot cheaper maybe than John or, you know, won't do the same kind of business, but they could play them off of each other to get whatever they're most looking for in that circumstance.

They really played up the John Jones thing tonight on the broadcast. So that might be their first choice by country mile, but, um, it is worth sort of paying attention to. Like, John's going to be able to, I think, if they really want him, he's got a little bit of leeway with, potentially, Stipe bringing his cause. And then the UFC management trying to figure out what to do about it. Beyond the numbers here, I'm trying to look at, like, placement. Yeah, Francis, 16% to the leg was his targeting. I'm going to guess that's fairly high, comparatively speaking.

He doesn't throw a ton of those the entire time. We had Rashad on Morning Combat on Friday, and we did a couple of CBS Sports HQ hits together, and he was a big believer that the Miles from the Cormier Wars showed up, and maybe even some of his other fights as well. And I tend to think that's a pretty big factor, but on the other hand,

I don't know if he doesn't, whatever damage Stipe accumulated in the trilogy with Cormier, I guess my thought is, I take that as real, but at the same time, even if he didn't have it, would tonight have gone differently? Maybe that check hook wouldn't have knocked him out, but like, I don't know. I, I tend to think that like, it doesn't really matter. Like

if Francis lands on you in the way in which he's throwing punches with the power that he has, I don't think, um, you know, slightly less damage. I don't want to say slightly, but you know, whatever damage he took in the Cormier Wars, I don't know that would have saved him tonight. Maybe a little bit. But let's say he got wobbled and fell over and he didn't quite have that direct collapse that he had. Francis would have polished him off quick.

He would have annihilated him. And in many ways, Stipe rolling with the shots in the first round and not getting finished in that ground volley was impressive by itself. So I'm happy to look at that as a contributing factor, but not really the most explanatory one. And let me get to one that I know I think the MK fans are going to bring up. They're going to say, oh, you guys, you're constantly doing it now. It's official. I saw I think the MK fans are going to bring up. They're going to say, oh, you guys, you're constantly doing it now. It's official. I saw BC tweeting about it because, you know, he loves to feed into that bullshit.

But I don't, which is if you want to say it for fun, yeah, you can say it for fun. Because it is kind of funny. But let me just explain this. Guys, there's no such thing as a jinx. They don't exist. Oh, Luke, you're jinxing it now. No, I'm not. They don't exist. There's no evidence for jinxes. There's no real world application. If you believe in them, that's great, but I don't believe in magic. Magic is not what they, there's a real explanation for what is happening. It is funny that the three, the four actually,

because we did one with a mini review for Tyrant and every one we've ever tried to do one for has lost. That is certainly an interesting kind of thing to point out. You're like, oh, that's obviously a jinx. Jinxes are not real. Here's what I do think is happening. One, it's a little bit of a timing issue in terms of just luck or bad luck I

should say in this case but the other one is a different kind of timing issue which is namely by the time someone is on our actually it says a lot about MMA too but what you're seeing is by the time someone is on our radar where they're a good candidate for resume review, which is typically a title fight. And then inside of that title campaign, a particularly pivotal moment or chapter. So this is Conor McGregor was not in a title fight, but was in a hugely consequential fight about the future of lightweight. One for him, he'd been off for a year. This was a big rematch. You know, that sort of a thing. You go to Adesanya, title fight. He's moving up a weight class.

It's this big thing. Stipe, it's this moment of, you know. Part of the reason why tonight was so important for Stipe is that if you're the champion, certainly the Sterling case in bantamweight makes things a little bit unusual. But in general, I don't think it is controversial to say that if you are a champion, you are the dominant figure in that division. But what makes the fight against Francis before tonight, what made it so interesting,

is not merely that Francis is very, very difficult to beat or that he earned it by beating those guys. It's sort of the latter. But what I mean to say is Stipe had to beat another dominant figure in that division. It wasn't just a guy who earned it. And it wasn't just the guy, you know, oh, this is a rematch of sorts, and it's later. Yes, those are some interesting reasons,

and those are important ones. But, like, dude, to have another guy who's, like, killing the group a little bit and you got to kill that one it's it's quite another one there's like parody and the belt's always changing hands or guys will get it and defend it once and then they lose it you know that tells you there's not really even a dominant figure what sometimes in in heavy uh in mma you can get a case where there are two dominant figures, even three dominant figures in one division, and those three have to sort it out among themselves.

And obviously the case would be, you know, well, Rich Franklin wasn't so dominant in that way. But there was a time when it was like John Fitch and GSP, and dude, Fitch was killing everybody. He was killing everybody. And then he had to fight St. Pierre, and then you see that there's these differences. So in the case of Francis, you had another dominant figure who had found a way back to the title by maintaining that dominance.

But this dominance was through growth. It was through challenge. And yes, those fights ended quickly. But it's pretty clear that as he leveled up, the challenges did as well. And he was still able to meet all the tests and exceed beyond them. So I think taking on like a really dominant figure like that, it's very, very difficult to do, which is why I think the second time around you couldn't do it. Here's why I go back to this thing about the curse with it. There's no such thing as curses.

There's no such thing as jinxes. But it tells you a lot about MMA that by the time someone arrives in a position where they're in a huge bout of consequence, one, they're clearly unpredictable from a general betting perspective. But two, this is what happens to power structures in MMA. There is constant kings being killed all the time in this business.

It is very, very, very, very hard to maintain dominance. To me, it's actually maybe even not that surprising that the guys we pick for resume review keep losing because by the time you have ascended to these questions of major greatness, chances are, fight over fight, they're just not going to go your way especially if you're in cases where we got him a little bit later here we have stipe close to 40 i think connor close to 35 i could be wrong about that but i think that's right um poirier the same i think he's like 32 33 out of sonia a little bit younger but that was just so obvious because he was moving up a weight class you have these pivotal moments in a fighter's career, and then they can sometimes falter

in those moments because the power structures in MMA are unpredictable and unforgiving. And this kind of toppling of, you know, celebrated figures or Jan 1. So in that case, it would be, celebrated figure. Or in the case of where a division gets turned over at the top, just that. But yeah, to me, it's not surprising at all. I have to flesh out a little bit more how I feel about that. Because I feel like there's more to that story. But just to be clear, it's fine if you want to be like... If you're a kid who was in the movie The sandlot it's fine to believe in jinxes they're

kind of funny they're kind of cute they're kind of hokey but they're not real so the question is why would fighters selected at this juncture consistently four of them anyway three and a half why would they lose every time you do it it's because i i tend to think you keep finding these fighters in these positions where they're looking to live on maintain or elevate their level of dominance and that is at a very very super super difficult juncture that's gonna result in a lot of heartbreak not every time okay eventually someone's gonna win but you know to me that should that to me in retrospect it was surprising at first.

And now that I think about it, it's like, oh, right. There's just massive turnover. These, we're asking them to do these incredibly difficult things. It's not going to be, it's not going to be easy. All right, let me see here. There we go. Okay. I'll come back to this. Let's go to um topic number two boy this was a tough one huh um oh we haven't talked about a Francis versus um John Jones fight let me do that first real quick

how might that look if they make that? Well, now, you know, Francis has the skills. The question is how long can he keep that up? Um, people ask you about the cage. I'll come back to that at the end, but just those two, two figures themselves. Um,

I'm of two minds about John Jones and I haven't really figured out which one I think is true yet. Maybe we won't even know until he fights. And I can see either picture being true, quite frankly. One is that he was either bored at light heavyweight or he realized he just wasn't getting the results that he used to. He was still winning, obviously. But I did not think that there was a really coherent case for saying Tiago Santos beat him.

But it was pretty clear that, and this is what I've argued, and we argued, you know, and by the way, we're going to do a resume review on him, so I guess if you're a John Jones fan and you really believe in jinxes, you know, you got to sort how you want to feel about that, but the pack that he, the lead he had on the pack has shrunk relative to what it used to be, right, at a bare minimum. It's shrunk pretty significantly. And so you have sort of a couple of reads on that. One is he goes to heavyweight because he knows he can still be really competitive there. He can win a title there.

He could meaningfully add to his legacy because he feels like, maybe I'm slipping a little bit in this division, but up at heavyweight, if I do my weight the right way, I can really do very well up there, given who's up there and given what I'm good at. He just really liked his chances to compete, and it was a new, fresh challenge.

There's another way to look at that, which is to say the lead on the pack at light heavyweight is not what it once was, and that going up to heavyweight is a chance to, like, maintain dominance because you think you can let your, you can go further in your career by going up to an easier division where whatever trade-offs you've made or whatever declines you've suffered in athleticism and the damage, they just won't be as noticeable and punishing at heavyweight, right? You stay there, those kinds of things will eventually cost you, but up at heavyweight, you won't. The question is, did he miscalculate that or not? Like at some point you have to decide, is he going to go to heavyweight

and then just dominate those folks? Because that's where he picked up off at light heavyweight. It's like, dude, he was kind of, I mean, to say he was struggling as the champion at light heavyweight, it's a gross oversimplification. But I thought outright Dominic Reyes beat him. And I thought he deserved to beat him. I thought he would beat him in the first three rounds. I thought the second two were 10-8s. You know, you got a little dicey with maybe the fifth.

You could have maybe taken a draw, but I thought Dominic Reyes took more rounds from him. And that's the only fight I've ever scored against Jon Jones. But that one seemed pretty clear to me. And the whole lesson there to me at heavyweight was like, there was a bit of a decline happening. Can he offset that at heavyweight? Or is he going to go up there and then those same kinds of problems are going to follow him?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. To me, I will say the reason why I even bring those questions up is because to me, there are people who are like talking about what Jon Jones is going to do at heavyweight based on the reputation of what he was doing to people in 2011 or 12 or something like that. And it's like, dude, he hasn't, I mean, the Gustafson win was nice, but Gustafson's been a bit of a weird fighter in the last few years. You have to count it, the Cormier win was good in 2017, but like of late, I don't know. I just, from the Smith fight to the Santos fight to the Reyes fight,

does that tell you he's going to go dominate at heavyweight? Or does that tell you that any kind of days of domination are not ahead of him and he can't offset whatever decline there is by going up a weight class? I do not know what the answer is. And because we know that Francis can do the kind of work to put himself in a position to win, you like his chances, but how long can he keep that up? When the heat gets turned on, someone really figures him out a little bit, what's he going to do? If he gets taken down, can he get back up? Some of these things, they're just still very much up in the air about. I got to tell you, I can't wait to

see that. I really, really, really, really hope they can make that. All right, let's talk about the co-main event for just a second. Vicente Luque defeats Tyron Woodley. They got him, they call it with a brabo choke. Yeah, that's where you're, if they're on their back, or they're all four, excuse me, and your left

would go behind their right and then you come around. Okay. 356 of round one. Well, Jesus. In some ways, this is the easiest fight to discuss. In some ways, it's the hardest, huh? All right, let's start with the bad. I think Tyron Woodley should probably retire. I don't say this very lightly. It's not for me to advise him. You know, he doesn't take my phone call. Let me tell you, I'll put the, you know,

he's not going to listen to what I have to say, and I understand that. I'm not saying it out of a place of criticism. I'm not saying it out of a place of like, or I don't say criticism. I mean like, you know, scathing, I don't like you kind, trying to be professional about it. That's four losses in a row. That's 16 rounds consecutively where he's turned in a losing performance. So five from the Usman fight, five from the Burns fight, four rounds from Colby he lost. And then that fifth,

he got finished in, it was an injury, but he got finished. And then this one he got finished in that same first round. So that's 16 rounds of turning into a losing performance, and it's the first time in his career where he lost back-to-back with finishes. This is trending in the wrong direction, and it's trending in the wrong direction fast because Luque is a very good fighter. this is trending in the wrong direction, and it's trending in the wrong direction fast. Because Luque is a very good fighter. He is worthy of tremendous respect.

But one of his issues before this fight was that every time he had stepped up to that next level, that Leon Edwards level, he had fallen a little bit short. He can beat people below that you knew quite comfortably. But could he really raise himself? Tyron, in that three-fight losing skid he had suffered had only ever lost to people who had held titles or fought in title bouts in the 170-pound weight class. Now he has lost to somebody who has not, and he's getting finished quicker than ever. Part of the reason he was able to hang on to those other fights is because he wasn't doing a whole hell of a lot.

In this fight, the bell rings, and he comes charging across the cage, throwing punches. They eventually clinch up, and Luque has to control him against the fence for long periods. Eventually, though,

they trade, and Luque gets rocked, but Tyron doesn't really follow up. And Luque then drills him. I was shocked that Tyron was able to stay up. He fought back quite bravely. I think in fact, BC had tweeted that like, you know, Tyron went out on his shield and he did. That is very true. You could tell he was trying anything, something to just get it going, to get something out of himself, to get a better result, to, to just, you couldn't keep going back to what you were doing. I mean, that was clearly a path to nowhere. So just trying to do something more. And he tried, man. He tried. He went out there and he slung it. But he gets eventually dropped.

And then, you know, Luque has really good anacondas and bravos. Sets one up, sits for it, and then gets the tap. And you can see Woodley take a huge, huge breath at the end of it once it was released, again, at 356. This is probably the end for Tyron Woodley. I mean, I don't know that it is. I would imagine UFC is going to part ways with him at this point for any number of reasons, for the acrimony that previously existed between the parties.

Perhaps his paycheck is hefty. You know, I don't know how much of a future there is in fighting for him. I mean, he could probably go to another organization. But, you know, this was not exactly the best way to leave. Yes, he showed significantly more. You know, listen, I'll take the effort he put in today over the other three fights any day of the week. It wasn't a very, you know, the other ones were a little more patient and tactical,

and again, to a fault. This one was reckless to a fault. And ordinarily, you know, it's funny, if you had a, like, Tyron Woodley just coming up the ranks and he wanted to fight the way he fought tonight, you would caution him against it. You'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to fight recklessly. You want to fight smart. You want to fight careful. You fought tonight, you would caution him against it. You'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't want to fight recklessly. You want to fight smart. You want to fight careful.

You want to take your time. But he had found himself in such a hole of decline and listlessness that, in fact, recklessness, it was obviously not the winning formula, but I can understand trying to get that. Look, he is trying, as an athlete, it seems uh from afar i do not know but it seems you know he's trying to just manufacture the will he is trying to just bend his existence to his needs to his desires and he is doing it at a time in his athletic life where it is

at for this organization at a bare minimum, probably his career. But certainly for this organization, it is too late. It is too late. Dude, 38-39 next month, when's his birthday? So today is what, the 28th, now that it's Sunday? Tyron's birthday is April 17th. So like in two and a half, three weeks, something like that, he's going to be 39, right? 39 years of age. Let me double check that. Yeah, he's 38 now. He's going to be 39.

Dude, that's two years younger than me. And you're out there fighting Vicente Luque. That's late in the day, man. I've always believed Tyron to be very skilled, but I think a lot of that skill was foundationally based in a lot of athletic ability, and he's still, for 38, is quite the athlete. But he's not the athlete he once was, which is really all that matters. And so now there's not enough of a skill gap on the rest of that division for him to make up for the decline in the athleticism is.

All of it has sort of suffered a loss together, essentially a decline together. And so he finds himself here. I mean, the reason why I say retirement, I think, is really important to consider is because if you're out there losing fights the way he lost the first two, like Kamaru and...

You know, it certainly wasn't great to lose to Burns the way he did. But it wasn't too devastating. I mean, you got, it certainly wasn't great to lose to Burns the way he did. But it wasn't too devastating. I mean, you got a cut in one. You got taken down. But it's like all the things that Tyron had built up, it's all coming apart now. Right? That stellar takedown defensive rate.

And then Gilbert goes and takes you down. You know, no one in the UFC had stopped him. Marquardt had stopped him at 170 with that vicious combination along the fence line. But no one in UFC, right? I could be wrong about that. I don't think anyone in UFC had ever stopped him. He lost, obviously. Am I just forgetting something before I do a dead wrong here?

Let me go back and look. McDonald decisioned him. Shield split. Yeah, that's it. No one else had stopped him before. Then Colby stops him. So now you're getting stopped. That's never happened, again, in UFC.

And now you're getting stopped quickly. Quickly. And by a fighter who is very, very good, but had never fought in a title bout in UFC history, or in his UFC history. Every metric is heading in the wrong direction. They're all headed in the wrong direction. It's like,

you know, cause could you imagine if something, like if something you love, someone's like, you just can't do it anymore. But dude, it's one thing if you're out there just losing decision fights or getting cut a little bit,

you know, and it's not that big a deal, you know, um, now you're getting these TKO losses due to injury, but still there's a bit of frailty that's showing up. He nearly got finished with strikes in this one. You know, Woodley's chin, fairly dynamic to be able to last up against some of those shots from Luque.

And then you're getting put out, you know, or pretty close to it, it's only, if you keep doing it, I say you, like I'm talking to him, but I'm not, I'm just saying for the audience's sake, if someone does, keeps doing this, it's going to get worse, it's going to get worse, and who wants to see that? His kids don't want to see that, I'm sure he doesn't want to see that. His family doesn't want to see that. His fans don't want to see that. Maybe his enemies or something, but certainly I don't have any, I don't have any desire to watch another fight with, and before the fight, he says, you know, he is quite bright. And I think these are the internal messages he is giving himself to, again, just bend reality to his will, but it is not working. And it is not only not

working, it is unraveling at record speed. If he keeps going, there's going to be a disastrous result. And I don't think, you know, that, that, that can be, that can still be avoided here. You know, at 39 years old, taking big punches like that at a 170-pound weight class. You know, that is, I don't recommend it. I do not recommend it. As for Luque, the story is quite the opposite. He finally does get a win. Granted, it's quite on the decline, Tyron Woodley.

But still, Luque gets a win over a guy who held a title. Woodley is one of the five best welterweights ever. I don't think that's a crazy statement to make when you consider who the very best welterweights were. He's one of them. He did it with his signature weapons that you know he has. Some mistakes he made too, although you're dealing with a beast in Tyron, even at 38 years of age, he's still going to be a force to be reckoned with. But he showed good composure. The call out to Nate Diaz, I don't think he's going to get what he needs out of that one, but, you know,

clearly Luke, a, his only losses were to what Leon and what wonder boy, right? When he stepped up in weight, I think. So what am I saying? Stepped up and wait since the Michael Graves fight.

Yes. Which he did lose that one since that he's only lost to Leon Edwards. He did have a middleweight bout. Yes, sorry. I knew that. That's what I meant. Okay. But yeah, and then Wonderboy Thompson back in 2019, fight of the night for UFC 244. But since then, he's won three straight. Nico Price, Randy Brown, and Tyron Woodley. And he's won all three of those via stoppage. TKO, KO, and now a submission. He's going to climb the rankings here in a pretty significant way. Where do they have him now? They've got Vicente sitting at 10. They had Tyron sitting at 7. They got Chiesa sitting at 6.

I got to tell you, Chiesa versus Luque, if they did that, that would be pretty interesting. They may not go that direction. But Luque is right back there knocking on the door. Wonderboy sitting at five. So he is one win away from the top five. That's the kind of boost that a guy like Vicente Luque got himself tonight. And he's, what, 29 years of age? 29 years of age, Vicente Luque? himself tonight. And he's what, 29 years of age? 29 years of age, Vicente Luque?

Let's see. Yep, 29. He won't be 30 until November. There's a guy who's got a little bit of miles on him. You do need to watch that. But here's a guy where, let's see, he lost the Michael Graves fight back in July of 2015. So what has Michael Graves done since then?

So Michael Graves beat Vicente Luque, beat Randy Brown. That was pretty nice. Then lost to, or had a draw with Bojan Velikovic. Lost to, I guess left the UFC or something. I'm not sure what happened after that. Lost to some dude named Nikolai Alekshin. Alekshin.

Oh, is that the dong from What's His Face? Murat Kasanov. And now he's fighting in Titan FC, and he has a record of 9-1-2. He does have a win in 2020 over Yuri Vilafor. But not nearly the same kind of thing that a guy like Vicente Luque is. I mean, five, six years now,

that's a huge amount. So if it was six years ago, he was what, 23 years old? I mean, we went over this with Marvin Vittori. You had a sense of who Vittori was when he was 23. You add in four years, and dude, they're just radically different fighters.

Luque's climb has been a little bit more incremental. he's had big explosions of movement and then some setbacks so it's not quite been this um linear progression but at the same time it's been uh you know the trend line is clear and now he puts himself in a pretty interesting space in that division to see where he can go all All right, last but not least, let's see what we have here. Okay, good. Last but not least, we got to talk about Sean O'Malley. What a weird-ass fight this was. Sean O'Malley defeats Thomas Almeida at 352 of the third round. He wins via KO punch. What a shot it was, too. People said they saw Sean O'Malley take calf kicks and then walk gingerly on things. I mean, I sort of saw that a little bit.

He would get hit with a shot, and then sometimes it hurts for a second, and you don't move exactly like you did before, but it didn't really have any meaningful impact on the fight. That's sort of how I look at it. Maybe you could make the case that they stung him a little bit, but they didn't really alter what he was able to do the best I could tell. When he gets to moving, he is incredible. He is in, he is out, he is changing of looks, he has stances, his fakes. You know what you'll notice about O'Malley a lot? He gets opponents to look one way and then he goes the other.

Now, a lot of fighters, most fighters, attempt that. They faint and wonder one thing to get you to do one thing and then they try another in the hopes that you don't see it. But he really gets him like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, man. I mean, he gets them holding the bag. He'll have them looking down big time, and then he goes up. Or he'll have them looking this way, and then he comes the other.

He gets really big-looking reactions out of his opponents all the time. Doesn't act on all of them, so not all of them end up being calamitous or something. But he's really good at getting commitment. So that's why you see that head kick land from Alameda. He's convinced that something is coming upstairs and he needs to get down underneath it. Clank, right? Or Eddie Wineland looking down. Clank.

He gets hit with what was sort of like a shovel punch uppercut kind of thing. Right? He's very good at that. He really gets him. He had this one where he was looking back behind him, whipping his head back to the right to get a reaction like he was going to spin for a kick and then throwing a knee up the middle. He is just in and out. I said he was dancing out there. It looks like he's dancing. He's in, he's out, he's switching. He's just pot-shotting and really good about splitting timing, really good about overwhelming position,

good about, again, splitting timing, especially off of someone else's punches. He's really good at the end of someone's punches and coming around and then landing one of his own because they're really quite vulnerable there. His accuracy is good. His accuracy is good. His timing is good. You know, did he answer all the questions about his durability? I don't know.

Probably not. But he certainly didn't put them back out on front street. It was a solid win over a respected competitor. Thomas Almeida, I don't know what you want to say about him. It's like when he's out there throwing his old style blood and guts, just getting after it, he takes a lot of damage and sometimes he wins those, but they're quite costly. But at least he's exacting a toll on his opponent. And when he fights the way he fights now, he still takes abuse and just doesn't throw as much. It's like, okay, you're more careful about engaging in firefights.

That's probably better. But he hasn't found a new gear of offense. It gives you a new respect for Alistair Overeem, who had kind of like an inside overwhelming kickboxing style and then became something of an outside fighter, but a potent outside fighter. I just don't feel like Almeida's been able to make that switch to a new gear of, let's slow things down, let's figure it out, and let's go from there. He still has a kind of a

hands up, in your face, walk you down. Not exactly walk you down, but kind of put pressure on you style. And it just doesn't work in the frankly watered down version that it looks like now. And it was no match for O'Malley, because O'Malley was never forced to really react with it. A couple of the ground exchanges didn't really do a whole lot. Yeah, dude, O'Malley was able to get the distance he wanted, and he was just, you know, he was throwing almost whatever he wanted

and landing almost whatever he wanted, you know, for the most part. What are the numbers on this? Unless I'm forgetting something. Let's see, let's see. They're going to credit O'Malley with two knockdowns, one in the first, one in the third. Wow, Jesus.

I mean, look at these numbers. Almeida landed eight punches in the first, 12 in the third. Wow, Jesus. I mean, look at these numbers. Almeida landed eight punches in the first, 12 in the second. 12 is low, but better. And then he landed five in the third, and he got stopped at 352. Not great, Bob. Not great. He did get one takedown in the first he attempted two um only had a control time of 22 seconds that's it not much at all yeah you just had much better volume you had angles you had timing you had misdirection you had him leading Almeida into traps with his directional movement and then intercepting him with it over and over again. So I think you saw from O'Malley that at distance, if you don't get that guy cornered or limit him in some kind of way, and he's able to move and time and change and set up,

dude, he's going to light you on fire. You cannot give him that space. You really have to take that away. Or you have to be very, very, very far away yourself. Because he can operate at a long, long range and then he's able to get inside through his various fakes and feints and it's over. Anyway,

so part of the controversy is in the first round I actually didn't mind that the referee let it go, but you had O'Malley thinking he had a walk-off KO and it shouldn't have been, so they let it go, but you had O'Malley thinking he had a walk-off KO, and it shouldn't have been, so they let it go. And then you had another case where O'Malley thinks he has a second walk-off KO in the third, and that one was a little bit closer, but Almeida was still moving a little bit, so O'Malley landed one kind of nail-in-the-coffin shot with his right hand,

and that was it. step back left that he landed by the way was similar to the step back right that Gaethje landed on Cerrone but the final right hand that he landed um O'Malley just I mean you know it was unnecessary in the sense that Almeida didn't need to take that because he wasn't going to win but part of the way that the rules are structured is that like do you want to call that intelligent defense to an extent he certainly was conscious he was moving he was trying to come to a more

combat ready position I can sort of understand letting it go it's just the problem is you almost stop a fight twice when the guy who's winning thinks it should have been stopped twice. You don't intervene. And so by the second time he is faced

with the same situation of the fight not being stopped when you thought it should be, he goes and then absolutely drives an ice pick into the heart of the guy. And that got a little ugly and a little gratuitous. But at least it was final. And at least it was official. And at least it was, you know, is there any dispute about who won or who deserved to win?

You know, at least you don't have that. You got everything else. So, um, so O'Malley, I think, really did himself... I don't know how much you learned, but you are reminded of why there's a strong belief in him. You are reminded about why he is to be taken seriously. I think he showed a lot of composure when he didn't get the fight stopped in the first and then kind of had to rejigger things a little bit in the second. And then the third round came out looking amazing. Uh,

that shows a lot of maturity and poise and bearing in a difficult circumstance. I think that's very important for Alameda. You know, I, I have, I have not seen hardly anything since his return to fighting that has given me a lot of hope for for him unfortunately um i just haven't seen anything particularly special uh i think o'malley didn't undo all the damage from how the vera fight was handled but he definitely did himself a big favor in getting to a position where he can do that. To get back to the question about the small cage, by the way, I did not think Rogan

and, by the way, Rogan telling the story of Francis and how he got here and living in a garage and getting dumped in the Sahara and taking 14 months to get to Europe. I mean, this guy's story is out of control. Rogan's recitation of it was moving. I really enjoyed that. I think a lot of people did. And I didn't find that he and DC were too chummy. I thought they were much better about calling the action this time. I didn't see nearly as many complaints on social media. So there was that, I think that deserved to be noted. Yeah. Oh, the small cage.

I definitely think it helped the game plan of Francis definitely turn the heat on. I don't think it made much of a difference at all in the co-main. Not much of a difference at all in the feature fight between O'Malley and Almeida. Maverick and Robertson, I don't think so. Malarkey and Worthy didn't go long enough. I think that, I mean,

there's just no denying that there is some evidence that the smaller cage has an impact, but it's not continuous. It's not the same kind of impact across all fights. It really depends on the particular kind of fights and strategies that were employed by the individual combatants. In this case, I did not see it as hugely influential overall. However, I do think it played a significant factor. I don't know. A modest but relevant factor in the main event is how I would describe it.

And by the way, these are my immediate thoughts. Sometimes they can change from now until Monday as I reconsider and rethink things. I should have said that at the top. I wanted to put that as a disclaimer. But sometimes I'll have a strong view of something, and then two days later I'm like, eh, do I really feel that way? Maybe not. So this is how I feel on this evening

that that could easily change. But you got a new heavyweight champion, folks. Can you believe it? You got a new heavyweight champion. Francis Ngannou. Let's see. Let me get any questions. Someone says,

It seems quite obvious that the best way to beat Francis from the interest of John's point of view is to stay safe and outpoint the more powerful man. Yes. Do you agree that a Jones fight might be a very slow chess match and not a banger that some fans might expect? I expect him to try for a takedown. But if it gets stuffed really bad, then it's for sure going to be boring. You saw in the Tiago Santos fight that he was concerned about what kind of up-the-middle attacks that Santos was going to throw if he attempted some kind of takedown.

And so there was a lot of not doing anything as a consequence. Someone says Jones is going to get low-balled and we're going to get Francis Derrick in three months. Yeah, we might. Someone's like, Luke, I just tried to see what John had tweeted and was reminded I was blocked. I guess he's not a fan of either of us.

For some reason, he hasn't blocked me. I never know what to make of that. Okay. Let's see. How long have I been broadcasting? Oh, perfect. About an hour or so.

All right. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to call that a show. If you have an email for me, shoot me one. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. I would love to hear what you have to say. I still have the Blachowicz breakdown I have to get out. It's almost done.

Thank God. I will do one for this card, although I'm not sure where. And it's probably going to be out on Monday because I want to spend time with my daughter because I have to travel early next week. Okay. All right. So I appreciate everyone watching thumbs up. Let's see. Hit subscribe. Y'all had the worst day ever. I had to drive from DC to Richmond and back. It's a two hour drive to get there to Richmond. Took me four hours on the way down and three on the way back. And I was in Richmond for 45 minutes. I wanted to die. Terrible amount of traffic.

Okay. All right. Thumbs up. Subscribe. Love y'all. Thank you so much for watching. Until next time.