MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Instant Reaction: UFC 261 Results: Kamaru Usman vs. Jorge Masvidal 2 | Rose Namajunas vs. Weili Zhang

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

At UFC 261, UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman will defend his title against Jorge Masvidal. Also on the main card are bouts with UFC strawweight champion Zhang Weili faces former titlist Rose Namajunas and UFC flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko faces off with Jessica Andrade. We'll also address the results from Chris Weidman vs. Uriah Hall and Anthony Smith vs. Jimmy Crute. --------------------------- '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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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we are live. Let me make sure everything, yeah, the audio's working. So that's nice. That's always good to see when the audio's working. Hello, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas.

I'm from CBS Sports and Showtime. And this is the, and this is my UFC 261 post-fight show right here on the Morning Combat YouTube channel. First things first, I'm going to put this on. Yeah? Please give the video a thumbs up. Please subscribe. If you're new here, we would love for you to subscribe. The podcast is three days a week.

We do stuff like this for the big fights. We do a podcast, as I mentioned, three times a week. There's a live chat. There's tons of interviews. Please consider subscribing. It makes a huge difference for us when you do. If you've been sticking around for a while, you've not subscribed, you know, now's the time. Okay, we're going to get into all of the UFC 261 results, which just ended moments ago. I would imagine if you're here, you don't want spoilers, but just as a matter of courtesy, if you don't want spoilers, now is your time to get out of here. Okay?

So, three, two, one. All right. Without further ado, let's get going, shall we? All right. And as I mentioned, of course, please, thumbs up, hit subscribe. So for today's video, we will go over the results of all, I'll probably do most of the main card, not a whole lot else, with most of the attention being focused on the three title fights. Obviously, when my co-host, Brian Campbell, joins me on Monday, we will get all of his reactions. And also, my reactions can change from now until

Monday. These are just my immediate thoughts in the aftermath of the fights being over right away. Okay? All right. And with that, I'm getting some... Okay. All right. Let me turn off the subscribe button so we can push that out of the way. And let's pull up these results. Boy, what a card. If you missed it, as from a viewing experience, at least at home, you missed the wrong one. This was not the one to skip. I mean, you knew that on paper that this was not the one to skip.

But even after the fact, it's definitely not the one to skip. Here, let me pull this over so I don't get distracted. Okay. All right. Here we go. UFC 261 in the books. This took place at the ViStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. Of course, it was the first one back with fans, for better or for worse. We'll have a discussion about that at a different time. This show will be about the results, so let's dig into them. Your main event, Kamaru Usman defeats Jorge Masvidal via KO. And actually, it's not, they got it wrong, although it's kind of funny. I'm looking on Wikipedia. They have the reason as jab from hell, but it wasn't a jab. It was a right hand. Still, the timing on

this 102 of the second round, all the fights on the main card got stopped. Now, the Smith versus Crute one was a doctor stoppage that finished the first round. They just couldn't get out of the first in between rounds. But okay, let's focus on that. Kamaru Usman. Boy. No one's ever done that to Jorge Masvidal. No one. In fact, the nature of his rebuilding narrative, which, by the way, was largely true. I don't think it's like a totally manufactured thing at all. Part of it was based on the idea, backed by evidence and just the reality of things,

that when he had lost, for the most part, these were either close, in many cases controversial, that the elite guys didn't put a lap on him. They didn't have a huge distance between themselves and Jorge. Like you go back and look at Jorge's title fight against Gilbert Melendez in Strike Force. You know, Melendez won the contest, but it was close all the way through. You go back and look at some of his other losses here. Let's take a look at some of his losses here. We'll just go through, you know, today's loss notwithstanding. He got decision by Usman last time. That was not a blowout.

The Wonderboy fight I thought was maybe one of his worst ones, but that was the one that led to the rebirth. The Demian-Maya fight was a split decision. Lorenz Larkin split. Benson Henderson split. Al Iaquinta split. I was there for that fight. I thought he won it.

Rustam Habilov, it was a very competitive fight. I mean, Rustam won it, but it was competitive. Gilbert Melendez, same thing. Paul Daly back in shark fights. He was winning that one until Daly put it on him late. Luis Palomino, now we're in the G-Force in 2010 fights, split. Toby Yamada, okay, that was bad, but that was a submission, and that was all the way back at Bellator 5. We just had Bellator, what, 250, 267, 257,

something like that. He got finished by an upside down inverted triangle at Bellator 5. In terms of putting hands on him, they just don't do this. I think he does have one loss all the way back in the day, yeah, to Rodrigo Dam. Now, Rodrigo Dam was a good fighter, and this was at Sengoku back in 2008, happened in the second round, but he was still coming into his own at that time, and certainly since he's been in Strikeforce, or let's say with Zufa-backed promotions, fighters just don't do this to him. They don't ever find ways to land on him like this, and also Jorge has been hit with some hard shots. He's been dropped a number of times. You recall, for example, if you're new to Jorge Masvidal, the Darren Till fight, he got dropped, but what did he do? He recovered, he got his wits back

under him, and he put it on Darren Till and then got back to business. He's been dropped actually a few times, but it's never really cost him to get just shut out like that where you fall limp. And he was kind of there for a second, then the hammer fists totally put him out. No one ever really has done that to Jorge Masvidal. Certainly not at the best stage of his career or really even the Zufa-backed era of his career. So if this was his 50th fight, he went into the UFC with 30 fights. So that means for the last 20 fights, they never even got close to this. How did he do it? I'll have to go back and look at how Kamaru Usman did it. But a big part of it, a big part of it, I do believe, is that one, Kamaru's range is deceptive.

You know, if I just stick my hand out, you might think that's my range. But then if I dip my shoulder into it, I've now extended my range. And if I step and dip and turn my trunk, you can really extend the range of a punch. I think partly that had to do with it. I think a bigger factor was probably that you saw Kamaru Usman jabbing to the body early. And so I wonder if Jorge may have thought it was going to go lower as a target and would just eat it so he could counter. Because you saw him try to whip back for the check hook.

It didn't land, obviously. But you could see he was in the beginning stages of trying to put that punch together. And I think a part of it was just, it was perfectly chambered for Komaru. By the way, I have bad allergies, so if I sniffle a little bit, I apologize. I'm fine, but I have allergies,

because pollen in the nation's capital here is just out of control. But, you know, so I think these are the reasons. I think the range is kind of deceptive for Kamaru. The punch was perfectly executed. I think he doubled up on the jab a little bit, so he actually kind of cheated the space too. I think the fact that he had done so much body work with the jab kind of brought the guard down. And probably you heard Jorge say it himself. We'll have to get some further clarification in the coming days. But he was saying, like, I didn't really respect his power. I commend Jorge for being honest about it.

Didn't feel his power in 25 minutes. Didn't think he had it. Got overconfident. I think he even used that word literally, overconfident. Not so much maybe about the power per se, but about Kamaru's chances or whatever. And he paid for it. He paid for it quite dearly. Kamaru Usman, to me, man, at this point, you know, I was having a back and forth, a little bit of a tiny one with someone on Twitter. It was just a minor disagreement.

And they were saying that previously I said he was light years from being George St. Pierre. Well, I do think that is true. I mean, to do what St. Pierre has done, you know, it's going to take a lot more wins. But he's about the closest we've seen since him. Robbie Lawler was not as decorated and has proven a welterweight champion as Kamaru. Tyron Woodley, I think, also deserves to be considered among the great welterweight champions. And Kamaru, I think, has lapped him.

Johnny Hendricks, certainly, I think Kamaru has done a lot better. Anyone who has held the title since then has been an elite fighter, has been a very respectable fighter, and has got some phenomenal wins on their ledger. But the best one since St. Pierre, it's got to be Kamaru, right? It's got to be. And it's got to be Kamaru by a considerable distance. I mean, what this guy has done is just extraordinary. This is his UFC resume. You guys ready for this? Haider Hassan, Leon Edwards,

Alexander Yakovlev, Varley Alves, Sean Strickland, Sergio Marais, Emil Weber-Meck, Demian Maya, Rafael Dos Anjos, which by the way, he became only the second fighter ever in UFC history, along with Cain Velasquez, in that fight against R RDA to land both 10 takedowns and a hundred significant strikes. Okay. And just, you know, other worldly levels of offense. Um, then he beat Tyron Woodley, captured the title. Then he TKO'd Colby. He beat Jorge the first time, TKO'd Gilbert Burns, and then went back on Jorge. Two fights in a row, he's won via striking. Now his striking, as you all know, everyone puts out these pieces.

I did my own turn of them. CBS Sports asked me to, basically. Which is why I wrote that article on Friday. And I talked to all those coaches. And one of the things that they had really gone over, and you saw this, Eric Nixick made this comment in particular, is, you know, his striking has gotten obviously quite good. You can see the development in it. But it's still a little bit fundamental.

It's still a little bit, rudimentary is not the right word. Fundamental is not the same as rudimentary. But, you know, it's not super flashy, right? It's not super intricate. He's not doing all the kind of stuff that Stylebender is doing. But as you've seen, you don't necessarily have to do that stuff to be quite effective, especially if you're a guy like Kamaru Usman, and you're able to incorporate all those level changes and fakes and faints with them at the same time.

So guys just don't know exactly when you're shooting, when you're not shooting. The hands are going down, the hands are coming up. That could be another part of it. Again, I have to go back and check the tape a little bit. This is my live reaction. But the hands of Masvidal, they're never exactly here. He's not ever peering over his hands. But I do wonder if they were a little bit down by virtue of the fact that if you're fighting Kamaru, you kind of have to be. He establishes that threat all the time. So if you just keep your hands here, he'll just go for the takedown. And as you can see, he's very, very good at getting it. And at a bare minimum, you saw this in the first round. Although I thought Jorge did about as good of a job as you could. Going to full guard, feet on the hips, using that to sort of inch your way,

shrimp your way back to the fence, get to the fence, and then create separation. Because even if Kamaru can't hold you down, he's good about just keeping a C grip, keeping a Gable grip, keeping some kind of a grip on you around the waist to continue to control that exchange. And you saw a little bit of that, although Jorge, as I mentioned, was able to separate. That's one of the best resumes I've ever seen for a UFC fighter. It's one of the best ones. I'm not saying it's the best. I think there's some work to do to become the best, but that's pretty ridiculous. He's been fighting in the UFC since 2015, six years, and he started at five and one. He's now 19 and one.

Boy, that is pretty goddamn spectacular. And you could see, man, Trevor Whitman might be coach of the year. Trevor Whitman might be coach of the year. I tweeted about this earlier. Listen, Jorge made a claim after this fight, and I didn't think that it was a very bad claim, which is, look is look man whatever you want to say about the training it wasn't a great camp it wasn't a full camp it wasn't even really a camp camp and then you have to come in there on for the first time they fought a UFC 251 on whatever it was six days notice or something and a week or whatever and he had to cut all that weight and he really wasn't himself he if you look at his numbers, he emptied the tank basically in the first,

and there's a sort of steady decline, so that by the fourth and the fifth, he couldn't really do anything. He didn't want to do that this time. He wanted to apportion his offense more carefully, but also he wanted to just have a better gas tank. Folks, I want to be very clear about this. I have no doubt that that is true, that he had a better camp, that he was prepared.

50 fights in, he is a professional, he made weight no problem. I suspect he was much more ready this time than he was the last time. But the problem is, however much he benefited from having a full camp relative to the last time, that's just not nearly as much as Kamaru Usman has benefited from three camps now with Trevor Whitman. And I don't want to take anything away from Henry Hooft. Henry Hooft and Kamaru built a championship fighter. I mean, they really did. They built a championship fighter.

But it looks to me that what you see happening now is that Trevor Whitman and Kamaru Usman are building a championship reign. And he needed, listen, you can go from Henry Hooft and go to Trevor Whitman and you can level up. But I want to be clear, there's going to be cases probably in the future where you see someone go from Trevor Whitman to Sanford MMA and Henry Hooft and watch them level up. Sometimes you just reach the end of a road in terms of how much you can get out of a relationship. It doesn't mean it was bad. It doesn't mean it ended poorly. It doesn't mean that you should have been somewhere else all along. It just means that sometimes two people can come to a conclusion about how much more they can get out

of this experience by doing what they've been doing all this time and they they elect to go other places I think it's not controversial you even heard Kamaru talking about the fact that he still has a relationship enough with Henry where they were texting back and forth and getting some you know uh assessments but it can't it just can't be denied that Kamaru is a different fighter than the one who went against Tyron Woodley. I still think he had the skills, just based on who that was, to beat Jorge. But he didn't have the skills, if you ask me, to beat Jorge the way he did tonight. I think that really is the key.

The way in which he was able to beat Jorge tonight is, to me, a product of, yes, all of the things he built up with Henry Hooft. You cannot lose sight of that. It is so critical to understanding who he is and his development. But then you add the Trevor Whitman experience on top, and I think that has given him so many new tools. To me, when you watch him jab, it wasn't just location and setting everything up and blending and then building in the level changes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. On top of that, dude, have you seen how many good angles he works with now and how he jabs in a V?

If you were watching Kamaru from a bird's eye view, he doesn't jab like this anymore. He jabs like this. He goes at an angle. He enters at an angle and then leaves at a different angle. Not every time because he switches it up. You don't want to be predictable. You can see it a lot. Or he'll double step over to one side. He's got some stance switching going on in there. Dude, he is a threat now everywhere. Maybe he's not a crazy submission threat, although I bet if you want to work on that or display what he's got, there's probably

more to the story there. But in terms of standing or in terms of the ground, he is a credible threat there either way, and now a much more dangerous one. A much more dangerous one. And the only weakness I can see from him, not that he's a perfect fighter, but what's going to beat this guy at this point. Colby, to me, is a really interesting test because you would think, what was George's, George St. Pierre's, one of his claims to fame was that he didn't just beat all those guys, he beat them at the place where they were the best. That's not quite true for the Nick Diaz fight, but a lot of times it was. Somebody who could go in there and make Kamaru work at a defensive wrestling position. Somebody who could put a jab in his face, kind of bully him backwards, that kind of a thing. The best chance for that is probably going to be with Colby. Remember,

those scorecards from Colby and Kamaru heading into the fifth, 3-1 Colby, 3-1 Kamaru, 2-2. Obviously, Kamaru was winning that fifth round pretty handily, but still, I'm just pointing out the kind of work that Colby was able to do. But listen, I know that Jorge was the one that blew up to fame, and the crowd was behind him, and they clearly like him better, even after losing tonight. But, you know, it's like, dude, what does Kamaru Usman have to do to not get booed by shitheads in Jacksonville i you know it's like dude what does kamaru usman have to do to not get booed by shitheads in jacksonville you know it's like at some point don't you like fighters for

um that really yeah for who they represent and um you know for the communities they come from and for maybe some of the things that they say, and all that kind of stuff, we just hope on some level, maybe not tonight, maybe in the future, maybe not ever though, so the fact you have to consider, if and when MMA fans, I think less so pundits, sometimes media and fans are in lockstep, sometimes they're not. But at some point, dude, are they going to come around on this guy a little bit? Here's the reality, folks. This is a fact, okay?

Kamaru Usman, this is somewhat debatable. He might be the second best welterweight ever. Whether you want to put him above Hughes or not, you know, you can have that debate. At worst, he's probably third. He might be second best. You can like that fact or you can hate that fact. But that's the reality you're working with.

And if that guy is still your champion, with, to me, not even showing signs of like, oh, well, he's winning despite signs of drop off. No, motherfucker. He's winning despite opponents getting second chances. And when they get those second chances, he's dusting them off quicker than he did the first time. You know, it is just an absolute shocking level of ability. Shocking level. And frankly, I didn't know that he had this gear in him.

You always imagine that a guy like Trevor Whitman or any other coach who really has a lot to offer somebody, let's say somebody had like a wrestling deficiency and they could really get right with them by virtue of having them trained, you know, that sort of a thing. You always imagine like, oh, they could really benefit from that. But even I didn't know that this gear was really possible. I mean, the amount of potential that they're unlocking from this guy

because, you know, what he really has, we understand Kamar Usman, he's got a lot of patience. He's got a lot of, obviously, physical tools. I don't think you can ignore that. But dude, we got to say it out loud here a little bit. His fight IQ is good. It's really good. It's not fight IQ brilliant in the sense of like, he's making these amazing computational reads that are, you know, performed with acrobatic skill at the same time. It's a lot of, as I mentioned before, not rudimentary, but fundamental work. But dude, Kamaru doesn't make

a lot of mistakes. When was the last time, aside from in a fight to him, where he was making an error and someone took advantage of that, You almost never see that from him. So it's going to take a special fighter to show us that. Maybe Colby will be that. We'll have to see. But you've got to respect the guy, man. Listen, I don't give a fuck as a media guy anymore who you like, who you don't like. What are you going to do? You're going to police people's fandom? Like who you like for the most part. For the most part, like who you like. If you like Jorge Masvidal, like Jorge Masvidal. There's nothing wrong with that. It's fine. And there's nothing wrong with disliking Kamaru if you don't like Kamaru. But folks, on some level, if you're

a real fight fan, you like really good fighters showing you really awesome shit. What do you call that? I mean, if you like elite fighters stunting on people, you know, and I know it sucks if it happens to your favorite fighter. Okay. All right. That's fine. And yeah, you know, that whole 30% comment he made after the Maya fight or whatever it was, it didn't do him any favors. All right. You know, fine. I gather. But at this point, at this point from the championship run, beating Tyron, TKO and Colby, beating Jorge, not the greatest fight, whatever, stopping Gilbert with strikes, and then stopping Jorge Masvidal after 50 fights.

Maybe. I have to go back and watch the Rodrigo Dom fight. Even that one didn't end like this, where you just stole on the guy and he kind of crumbles. Even that is first time for everything. And there's another factor here, by the way, real quickly, as I'm kind of meandering back and forth, I apologize, but it just comes to mind with Jorge.

36 years old, man, that's a hard place to be as a welterweight. Not by any stretch out of it in terms of winnable fights or things he can do, but the clock is ticking. The clock is ticking on him big time. I don't think that this loss exactly exacerbates that. I don't know what kind of role that will play. But it's going to be hard to win against elite welterweights consistently when you're 36, 37, if you get to it, 38 years old.

It sucks that a guy gets to 36 and he's at the peak of his earning potential. And I think tonight was a big event for him. He'll make a shitload of cash, which I'm happy for. But how many more of these there are, it remains to be seen. I don't know about for Kamaru either. I'd be curious to see some of the numbers on this. There's not that many. Let me see if I can see some here for this fight.

Kamaru Usman. Let's see what the numbers tell us here today. These are from Fightmetric. Kamaru. Yeah, Jorge technically outlanded him in the first, numerically, what I mean to say, 23-14. I'd have to go back and look and see exactly how. I think some of those were when he was taken down and he was hitting him with the back of his elbow.

Because I thought Kamaru did, for the most part, the better striking work in the first. Jorge got taken down and then got back up and then after he got back up I thought he did really well with some leg kicks and then that that jump knee. I thought that was okay but in general I thought Kamaru did the better work but by round two it just didn't matter. Yeah Kamaru seven shots to the head he landed. How many to the body in round two? Zero. How many in the body in round one? Let's see. In round one, Kamaru went to the body five of seven times. To the head, just eight.

So that's the, I'm telling you, I think as I started this conversation, the amount of jabs that he did to the body, to the body, to the body, to the chest, to the body, to the body, to the chest, and then to come upstairs like that the way he did, I think played a big role in why he was able to land. Wow, man. That was crazy. Part of a crazy ass night. How could the main event have been anything other than crazy, I suppose, given how just ridiculous that card was leading into it. So yeah, so you might imagine what's next, as we said, Usman-Colby 2. I'm guessing until the rest of the country reopens, and God only knows when that is going to happen, UFC is going to return. There's no way they don't put that in Florida, right? You still have another Florida guy transplant,

but you have another Florida guy. You could do that. And you could, I don't know if they want to put that in Miami because Miami crowds have typically been a little bit, UFC's not had always the best, I should say that. And for boxing, they're fine. But UFC has not always had the most luck with crowds in Miami. I think UFC 40 was one of those that was like not that great.

It's a long time ago, but there's been a bit of a reputational stain there inside MMA circles. Anyway, you could bring it back to Florida and you could do huge numbers with it. And there, would most people root for Colby? Probably. I mean, this crowd, they were booing Jean Wiley. Like, how the fuck do you boo? I mean, what is wrong with you? You know, what?

Okay, I mean, you know, it's Jacksonville. What are you going to do? All right, we'll come back to this. If you have any questions, I put up a Twitter thread about it. Hit me up on the Twitter thread and then we'll get back to it because there's just a lot to get to here. I want to make sure that I do.

Make sure everything is looking pretty good here. Yeah, it looks okay. All right. Okay, let's go to that co-main. We'll come back to the main here in just a few. Let's go to that co-main if we can. Rose Namajunas defeating Zhang Wai Li via head kick 118 of the first round

boy not a lot to say about this one not a lot to say about this one if you look closely the kick from Rose you could see you'll see Zhang Wai Li kind of lean forward and then bring her leg back because she's trying to get out of the way

from what she thought was a leg kick coming her way and instead scooped her right up top. And she didn't have to switch stands to throw it. It was just from the lead leg side. So she just kind of flicked it up there a little bit, which made it look real. She stepped in, and I think that was the thing that confused Zhong Wai Li. But in either case, it landed. It landed with authority. She protested the stoppage, which you can understand a competitor doing, even though it was totally clean. She showed her back after getting dropped the way she did, and her head did the old testifying in church bit as well. So, totally clean stoppage. No issue with it whatsoever. Rose Namajunas becomes the first

woman in UFC history to reclaim a belt she had lost. Can you believe that? Ronda Rousey couldn't do it. I think Holly Holm couldn't do it. Rose Namajunas did it. She won't be the last, but to be the first, boy, it tells you a lot about that hot potato of a belt that is the strawweight title. It tells you a lot about her career. Dude, to be the first woman to do that, numerically, her career is so interesting because she's sitting at, what, 10-4. She didn't even have double-digit wins before this contest. This is only her 10th win. A 10-4 record, in many ways, is not supposed to be impressive, and yet hers breaks all the rules because when she

needed to fight the very best um basically she was able to get it done and especially of late especially since 2017 she's just been a completely different fighter for the most part okay she had that one hiccup against just gone drage she got that one back i know that it got dicey a little bit late in the rematch but still she got it back and then she goes in here and just runs over zhang wiley one of the things that comes mind, and there's just no way to know if this is true right now, but it's something people have brought up before, it's worth mentioning now, which is, you know, Zhong Wai Li's fight with Ioanni and Jay Cech, she may have won that contest, but in some sense, in terms of leaving a part of themselves in the octagon, dude, both of

them lost that contest. You're just not going to be the same from situations like that. And so, how much of that did she carry into this contest? I mean, the reality is she got outsmarted and that's why the head kick landed. so for those reasons i think um the overwhelming bulk of the credit for the win needs to just be on the fight acumen of rose nama unis i'm not mincing words about that at all however you i just don't think you can come let me just say this way completely eliminate from the conversation the extent to which a fight like that can have lasting impact. Particularly when, you know, she didn't go from that to tune-up. It's not boxing where she went from that to like, oh, I'm going to go defend my IBF mandatory.

You know, like Canelo did against the, I can't remember his name anymore, the Turkish fighter. You know, I just blew the fucking doors off of him. And then you can get back to, you know, you don't get any of that. She had a long layoff, but okay. By the way, how much did that play a role? How much did the long layoff play a role? It's hard to know. But in any case, she also got outsmarted. And you can't deny that either. She also got outsmarted. What a triumphant moment for her. And she was crying in there and then Joe Rogan started crying. I didn't quite get the feels in that sense, but

to go on the journey that she's been on with the sport and then to do something that no other woman to date in this organization has been able to do and only a handful of less than a handful really have even gotten the opportunity to do that and you finally did it and then you did it uh with absolute devastation and force and frankly ninja-like accuracy it's remarkable dude we you know I still wonder what would have happened. Because this is what the fight was going to break. When we were breaking down this fight ahead of time, the way I had handicapped it was to say, I think Jean-Marie Lee is going to get tuned up early.

We know Rose is a strong starter. We know she has a good jab. We know, like Usman, she can work off angles. Trevor Whitman trained. By the way, Trevor Whitman crowning two champions tonight. I mean, I realize Usman was the champion before, but I always treat it like when you walk into the cage, it's no one's title and you have to claim it again

if you want to be the champion. So, you know, putting up two championship-winning performances, I should say, in the same night. But I lost my train of thought. Sorry, that happens when I keep going on like this. Talking about Rose's journey, yeah, it's pretty remarkable, man. It's just really, she's a special talent.

She's a super special talent. Look at the numbers on that. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there because I just keep going and going. I don't take any notes for these on purpose. I tried taking notes once and I got worse results out of it. But as a consequence, sometimes you can stumble a little bit. If I look at the, yeah, there's not many of the four strikes landed for Rose in the whole fight. Four. Four strikes. Zheng Wai Li landed six leg kicks.

And... Six other strikes. Head strikes. That's it. Man, that's incredible. Just incredible. Rose Damianis technically only threw to the head in this, or I should say only landed on the head.

But anyway, so I think that's what I was going to say. You knew she was going to, sorry, I'm handicapping this fight. You knew Rose was going to start strong, but the question was if Zhong Wai Li can hang on long enough, right? So if she can lose a round, lose two rounds, maybe even lose three rounds, because she doesn't have the best head movement and she kind of eats a lot of punches, you thought, okay, if she can get through that storm, what happens when that gear begins to shift? And that's where I thought the fight was going to get interesting if it lasted that long.

But Rose just simply would not let it. It could be true that Rose is not merely the best strawweight. I mean, at this point, she is the best strawweight on the planet, but what I mean to say is that, you know, in some ways, Zhong Wai Li is more well-rounded in some ways, but I think Rose, to me, you can convince me, however much you want to say it's luck that she landed, which I don't really think that it is. Rose might just be a really bad matchup for her.

Not just strong starter versus someone with poor head movement, but the craftiness, I thought, of what Rose was doing was sort of levels above. I mean, dude, the ones who can set traps, the ones who can change the terms of the exchanges because you're changing angles or distance or timing, the ones who just make you look X and then you go Y, and then the ways in which they develop those systems and put those weapons together, they're always going to be the ones who are going to have a step ahead. And Rose, particularly early, is a significant threat there. I don't think you can just discard what happened in the third round

of the second Andrade fight. You can't just throw it away. But you also can't ignore the first round where she was just absolutely annihilating Jessica Andrade, tuning her up too. But when it shifted later, obviously there was a bit of a different outcome. So I think they might run this one back. Not immediately. There's no case to be... By the way, obviously with two losses for Jorge, they wouldn't run it back. I don't want to hear any... Listen, I thought the boo of jean was reprehensible and only possible if you're just

an absolute shithead of a human being but i also recognize i'm not one of these guys it's like oh well she was the champ and the greatest woman's fight ever like someone like that deserves a rematch no they don't not right now you lose like that you lose your belt like that you got to get in the back of the line a little bit you got to work your way up you got to do what robert whittaker did which i realized he got passed over which is just ridiculous also but you know that effort to me he's put in that's you know you just that's the real effort that's the kind of thing you want to see because not only did they earn it like they beat enough people to get back up there but through those victories ostensibly and certainly

in the case of whittaker this is true and for true and for Jean Wiley it may end up being true they re-inspire confidence about what kind of chances they have at winning this was one of the problems for Jorge Masvidal you're just going to run it right back for that's that's you know the same guy two times in a row it's like you know how much can you really change in that time especially if you're a much more senior fighter experientially in the way that Jorge Masvidal is. 50 fights versus Kamaru's, what is he, 20 fights in, something like that? Where's Kamaru with all of his fights? Kamaru is, let's see.

Kamaru is sitting at a total of, yeah, 20 fights exactly, 19 in one. Dude, Jorge's had 20 UFC fights. You know what I mean? He had 30 fights before all that. 30. 30. So, just keep that in mind. Again, you got questions for it, put it on Twitter. We'll come back to it here just a little bit. This is filling up. Let's see here. Okay, let's get back to this port. Let me see something. Okay, let's get to this other title fight if we can here. Man, that thing was just ridiculous. Valentina Shevchenko defeating Jessica Andrade, TKO elbows from crucifix. She becomes the first fighter ever in UFC history to have two wins via mounted crucifix having a 319 of the second round dude who is gonna beat that person um i don't know

the answer to that they are gonna give lauren murphy i believe a title shot because she's earned it but she's and i she would probably agree with this sentiment uh she's got her work cut out for her um jessica andrage i i even tweeted about this i thought this was going to be a little bit like She would probably agree with this sentiment. She's got her work cut out for her. Jessica Andrade, I even tweeted about this. I thought this was going to be a little bit like, you know, maybe a little like Thanos versus Hulk. You didn't want to say it was going to come down to like, that's an exaggeration, obviously, and a silly comparison.

But here's what I mean in reality. Like, you knew brainsins versus Braun was a very simplistic way to put it because the physicality of Shevchenko was underrated and the development to the game of Andrade needs to be respected as well. But it didn't matter. There wasn't enough happening for Andrade for that to be relevant at all. Shevchenko's a master of range. She was landing at range, finding her way to double underhooks through entries, using body lock takedowns and whipping around and using momentum to constantly put her back down.

Again, keeping the C or the gable through the whole process so she couldn't get separation. And then on top, you know, I love her body lock takedowns because she often ends up in side control. Right? So you don't have to have, you know, it's not, sometimes it happens, but it's not a whole lot. I mean, in the Jennifer Maya fight she did. But a lot of times she ends up in that side control, which is great because now I don't have to go from full guard and trying to pass the side and then from side to then go do the whatever the stuff with the mount that she wants to do, Mount of Crucifix. I'm already kind of where I need to be. But that Mount of Crucifix, folks, I can't explain to you how hard that is because you have to sag your weight both in a way to keep your weight low and to be on top of them, right? And you have to keep your profile low because if

a part of it comes up, an arm can get out, your weight can get unbalanced, they can push it through. So you have to keep your weight flat and down. And yet at the same time, you have to generate gravitational force with your punches and your strikes, which can be hard to do. So it really takes a lot of feel and mastery and setup and you can see man she has got it down to a science including controlling the far leg with a far arm with your legs we went over this what fight was that the Brendan Allen fight I forget which fight it was where I mentioned this I don't remember or maybe it was Randy Brown whatever the case the fighters who can it was Brendan Allen

fight who can wrestle with their legs, wrestle with their legs. If you can grapple with your legs, right, you can use them as, you know, a third and fourth arm, it's going to be a big differentiator in talent. I don't really care. Most of these ladies and men, for the most part, have good doubles and singles and whatnot. But the ones who, from their back to their guard, can wrestle and use their feet and knees and shins and everything as a kind of makeshift appendage to pull and push and hold, those are going to be the better ones. Or on top, as the way you saw Brendan Allen do it to Karl Roberson, leg lacing all the way through.

Not in the wrestling kind of sense of leg laces for points, but controlling over the top and then squeezing. It's a little bit more of a static hold when it comes to the crucifix, but it still is one where you positionally need to be locked up tight enough and balanced right enough so that the person can't kind of buck and then escape and squeeze an elbow out or push a hand through or whatever. It requires real, as I mentioned balance patience isometric control good breathing and then you just really have to know how to open up and then she started landing with those elbows

and it was over dude that fight wasn't competitive at all that fight was not there wasn't there wasn't a 10 second period in that fight where you thought andrage was in control not one 10 second period i'm not sure if there was a fucking five-second period in that fight where Shevchenko was, he was either at best neutral or Shevchenko was in total control. Either one. That's it.

That's all you got from that. You know. Dude, they're going to have to make another Amanda Nunes fight. Who the fuck is she supposed to fight? And the argument was here that, oh, well, maybe if Zhong Wai Li goes up and wins uh or you know i'm sorry wins against rose well then you could have her jump up a weight class and and maybe shevchenko smokes zhong wai lee but it would be kind of a you know interesting champ champ fight for the women's side and maybe you could do it uh-uh you can't do that now and

remember rose and valentina are buddies and train together on occasion. They're actually pretty tight, so they're not going to do that shit. So who's she going to fight? Who's she going to fight, dude? Who's she going to fight? She better fight Amanda Nunes. I don't know who else you can fight in this world right now. That was awesome.

I tend to think that sometimes the fans get a little bit too exuberant about Shevchenko. She's had more than a couple of duds in her time, and not by accident, and part is because of the way she fights, which is okay. You're allowed to have those in your resume. But I mean, sometimes you'll see the community overemphasize someone's reputation when that happens, and then underrepresent it sometimes when it happens more than it should. But after a performance like this.

Where you know. She didn't wait back and let Jessica come to her. She took the fight to her. She was the one who was the bully. Right away. A technical bully. But a bully just the same. So yeah.

I think Lauren Murphy is probably next. This is going to be great exposure for Nami Yunus, great exposure for Shevchenko being on this card the way that they are. I think this will, you know, giving those performances on this stage, you know, it's going to be great for their brand, great for their popularity. Very happy for them. I hope they get paid a lot of money tonight.

They delivered. Times 1,000 they delivered. Amazing. they delivered times a thousand they delivered amazing real quickly on these last two fights on the main card Uriah Hall and Chris Weidman Chris Weidman losing 17 seconds into the fight with the same shin injury that derailed the career and then

the second fight between Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva dude Hollywood would reject a script if you wrote that in because it would be just too impossible for the audience to believe. They're going to believe a talking raccoon flies a spaceship in the MCU, before they believed that Chris Weidman would lose a fight the exact same way that Anderson Silva lost to him. Both of which are, generally speaking, freak accidents. So first of all, let me say that I just find that insanely bizarre. And part of the reason why I keep watching MMA, dude, you think you have seen it all.

You haven't seen shit. Guys, I've been watching this shit since 1994, you know, off and on, but since 1994, you think every time there's an event, what could I possibly see new? And then you see shit like this and you're like, yeah, the depths of strangeness never ever ever leave you they never leave you um also and certainly much more importantly i really hope chris wyman's okay um i'm sure he will be i'm sure he's going to get good medical care tonight and tomorrow i'm told he's going to get surgery i'm sure he's on a ton of painkillers right now, and he's going to be okay. But you've got to understand something about Chris Weidman.

How old was he in this fight? 36. He'll be 37 in June. He'll be 38 or so by the time he ever gets back to action. It's going to be really late and really kind of old. And he was kind of old already. He had a ton of miles on him. And even before this, he had a lot of injuries. Certainly, you can only wish the best for him in a terrible circumstance like this.

But it is not unfair, however much we don't want to get to it. It is not unfair to wonder about his future in the sport and whether there is one. I had the same kind of concerns for Anderson Silva and he came back a little bit quicker than I thought. And you could say he was on a decline even before that. So, you know, any kind of decline he had after that is just part of the same trajectory, but I tend to think it hastened it. I don't think you can come back. A bone in some ways can be easier to heal than a, um, sometimes ligament tears that, you know, and, and other kinds of soft tissue, but or connective tissue anyway, but to break your leg like that at that stage, when you were already suffering some of those other kinds of challenges is really going to be a very difficult thing for him. And so I hope that our worst fears are not true.

I hope that our worst fears are not true. I respect the way Uriah Hall handled it. Kept his cool, didn't celebrate, showed respect, said, wherever you are when you come back, I owe you one. So I take my hat off to Uriah Hall for a very, very classy moment. And then last but not least, Anthony Smith beating Jimmy Crute via TKO doctor stoppage. Basically, it was the thing you've seen a million times.

It was Michael Chandler, Brent Primus all over again. Or, you know, pick whatever fight this has happened in where he gets kicked in the sort of, it wasn't quite the calf. It was like basically where the leg bends. But it had the same effect basically the perineal nerve went numb he can't walk on it he's doing all kinds of stuff that looks like a brand new baby deer after the round is over physicians trying to get him to walk to him he can barely do it even though he's trying and uh they call it there but the thing is sm Smith was pumping that jab over and over and over again. Listen, there's a lot of folks, and I don't understand this shit at all,

who constantly want to bag on Anthony Smith as like somebody who's some kind of pretender. I've never understood that. I've never. I've never. Like, why would you be that way? Listen, he couldn't get it done against Jon Jones. Okay. So far, basically, no one has been able to, you know't get it done against Jon Jones. Okay, so far basically no one has been able to, you know, in terms of the official record anyway. Rakic, to me, is probably

going to be a future title holder, at a bare minimum a title contender. And Teixeira is literally fighting for the title coming up here pretty soon. Okay, so maybe against the championship level, or presumed, in the case of Rakic, championship level, maybe that's a little bit too much for him. But the dude's wins, other than that, people think that he's been surfing on this Shogun win and this Rashad Evans win forever. Okay, he did have those wins,

and they were big in terms of the name value that they represented. But y'all know he's been putting hands on folks since then in many other cases i mean this guy sent uh gustafson packing beating uh uzdemir the way that he did you know finishing off both of them and here i thought crew might have had the advantage on the feet nope not at all and smith didn't spend a ton of time underneath when he got you know taken down he kind of you'll see sometimes get in a kneeling position and kind of bend over and hold himself and then have two-on-one control and he's kind of safe there the the the position doesn't get too much worse for him but he doesn't really you know he doesn't move from there but this time he

moved from there and he got back up and he was driving that piston of a jab into the grill of Jimmy Crute over and over and over and over and over again. He looked good. He looked good. Guys, there are going to be some people that figure out fighting what works for them, how they want to do it. They're going to figure it out quicker than others. And the ones who figured out quicker than others will And the ones who figure it out quicker than others will, by and large, go on to do bigger and better things than the ones who don't. But there is going to be a portion of fighters

who, through longevity and trial and error, it takes them a lot longer, but they eventually get to it. Not that Jimmy Smith, excuse me, Jimmy Smith, not that Anthony Smith is old. He's only 32, but he's got, you know, a 35 and 16 record. He took a lot of fights when he shouldn't have. He had, you know, probably an approach to fighting back then that he wouldn't even recognize anymore. He has slowly gotten better and better and better and better and better and better. So is he a perfect fighter? No. Is he a flawless fighter? Far from it. Is he going to have another loss probably in 2021? Yeah, probably. He probably will, you know, but he's going to beat

good fighters and he's going to beat a lot of them. It's time to respect that. It's time to acknowledge that. All right. If you've got questions, I will take a look. Just as I remember here, to remember. Thumbs up, hit the subs, the whole nine yards, okay? All right, let's do some of this. All right. How does Prime GS Prime GSP deal with Usman? I suspect he would try to take him down,

put a jab in his face, for sure. Make him go backwards, tie him up, clinch, that kind of a thing. Fuck. There we go. Would beating Colby in a rematch and a successful... I'll turn this off. Would beating Colby in a rematch and a successful title defense against Leon Edwards solidify Ousmane as the greatest welterweight of all time. At that point, you would begin to need to make, I don't think so. No, I don't think so.

But the debate and the difference between he and GSP at that point would be, I'm not going to say negligible, but I think if and when he beats Colby, we're going to have to have some real conversations about how the resumes of Usman and St. Pierre stack up. Immediate rematch in Wiley's case. Why the fuck would she get an immediate rematch? Why? And booing her because she's from China,

those Jacksonville pricks made me sick, but you know. Like, on what planet does she deserve a rematch? No. Who's more deserving, Colby or Edward? I'll say Colby. Do you think Nick Diaz is coming back? Maybe. Is Trevor Whitman in the running for coach of the year after those two performances? It was long before these two performances, but yeah. He's on your frontrunner list, for sure. It looked to me like Usman was lunging a bit with his punches. In the end, it didn't matter.

But are you surprised Jorge didn't try and counter a bit more? Was he not too aggressive? That's interesting. There's probably a couple times... Listen, here's the thing. You don't want to overcorrect... Excuse me. You don't want to overattack Usman because he can transition to a wrestling takedown pretty quickly.

Especially in close quarters, he can just get a grip and then find something. So I think he may have been wanting to be a little bit more selective about it. But that's part of Usman's threat where I can't really open up with some of the things that I might ordinarily do if it was pure striking. Because there's this kind of boogeyman threat hanging over everything where I have to be kind of minding my P's and Q's in a way I ordinarily would not necessarily have to. We experienced one of the greatest cards in an already historic year for UFC.

How dominant has Kamaru, Usman, and Valentin Yurchenko been compared to other dominant champions in the past? I mean, they are certainly doing the kinds of things that the ones we saw in previous generations do as well. I'm not going to say it's anything... I'm not feeling anything like I've never seen this before.

I guess is what I'm trying to say. But do I feel the echoes of this relative to what I saw from Silva or St. Pierre or... John Jones is somewhat unique. But even then, parts of his run, yes, they do feel very similar. Where a lot of times people, you know, there was a stage in St. Pierre's career, like the back half of his welterweight title run, or title campaign, where he got more risk averse, which you can understand. So we haven't seen that side of Kamaru yet, if it goes on long enough.

But yes, I mean mean these things are not wholly different from what I've seen but that they remind you of these other greats should tell you a lot as well how do you think Kamaru and Colby matchup goes given the fact that Usman has been more active and is getting better on the feet, which is where their first fight mostly took place. I think there's going to be a lot of wrestling in the second fight. I'm sure that Colby has gotten a lot better in terms of his striking, but I also feel like he's going to want to press the action in that department, the wrestling department, clinching up, pressing him against the fence, putting him in the back foot. I mean, just think about it. All the things everyone has tried with Usman haven't worked.

And no one's really been able to try effectively pressure wrestling because that takes a special kind of person to do it. But Colby's pretty well situated to give it a try. What happens if you actually can control Usman or press him against the fence or take him down or whatever the series of attacks may be, things we have just not seen? He seems well situated to give us at least a test of that theory. Rose versus Valentina.

Do you think it could happen? I don't think so. Not right away. Rogan has stated he doesn't want to interview fighters after they've been KO'd. Tonight he interviewed both in the main and co-main. Why do you think he doesn't want to interview fighters after they've been KO'd. Tonight he interviewed both in the main and co-main. Why do you think he's changed his stance? I don't know if he's changed his stance or he got a production order. There's a lot of things I don't, like I, you know, for folks who, on this one I can more or less do whatever I want. I'm in my own house.

My family's upstairs sleeping, right? I can sort of do whatever I want, but you know, when Showtime has the camera or CBS has the camera or you name it, you know, they begin to call the tune a little bit in terms of things that they want. I have some principles about things I will or won't do, but you know, if they, if I

didn't want to, you know, I bet he was talked into it, but I'm guessing it was a production decision that UFC made. I doubt he was like, eh, I just changed my mind. I bet he want to, you know, I bet he was talked into it, but I'm guessing it was a production decision that UFC made. I doubt he was like, eh, I just changed my mind. I bet he was like, you know, let's find a way to live with it if we can, and they did. Will outside low calf kicks be reconsidered and inside leg kicks be more favored due to the incident with Weidman? No, because you can still get your shit checked that way too. If you have opposite stance fighters, Southpaw Orthodox or Orthodox Southpaw,

and someone from the rear of their leg, the rear leg whips all the way around for an inside kick into the front, it is very easy to shift your knee to the inside and do that. And you can get your shit completely shattered that way. It doesn't make a difference inside or out in that sense. So keep that in mind. You know, it's kind of funny. It's like we've seen more catastrophic injuries with checking of kicks, two of these now, right, than we've ever seen with the stomp oblique kick. This is why, to me, I really don't accept the arguments about the oblique kick being, like, uniquely different. Show me the data on how many people have had injuries, any kind of permanent ones as well, as a function of the oblique kick.

Listen, understand something. It is a weapon used in MMA fights. You're going to get people injured with it on occasion. But to me, I've never seen any data at all that supports the idea that that particular strike and the way it's been applied through our collective data, all of these events is more dangerous for you than fucking checking a kick. Now, I'm not actually here to make the argument that I fully believe that checking a kick is somehow more dangerous than an oblique kick.

It's not even really about that. But it's like, dude, if you're going to ban something, make the argument what it is. You just don't like the principle of the strike because you feel like in principle, it's just designed to damage and not do anything else. Then make that argument. But the argument that like it's uniquely more dangerous,

no, it is not. And there is no evidence to support that claim whatsoever. You can make the argument about the intent of the strike you can make the argument about the um and and how that to you is a qualified difference okay and we can debate that whether that's a good idea or a bad thing upon which to ban strikes that's fine but at least that's a that's a real argument you can make the idea like oh we have to do it because it's a threat to fighters in a way that all the other things we allow are not is a fantasy. It is not true.

I don't care what fighter says it. I don't care when they say it. There is no data to support that claim. Here we go. Hold on. Oh, here we go. This is from my guy, Michael Carroll from Fightmetric. Here are the shortest five fight pay-per-view. It's two in the morning. Here are the shortest five-fight UFC pay-per-views of all time. Pick your favorite. Coming in at 19 minutes and 10 seconds, UFC 29.

19 minutes and 23 seconds. I guess that means like a full fighting time. UFC 91, Couture versus Lesnar. UFC 261, 20 minutes and 56 seconds UFC 55, 21 minutes and 19 seconds UFC 146 I'd go Couture-Lesnar No, I might go this one, then Couture-Lesnar

What was UFC 55? Was that Tito? What was that? Arlovsky-Buentelo Yeah, that one sucked Oh, and that was when Brandon Lee Hinkle beat Sean Gannon Sean Gannon was the guy that beat Kimbo Slice What was that? Arlovsky-Buentello. Yeah, that one sucked. Oh, and that was when Brandon Lee Hinkle beat Sean Gannon. Sean Gannon was the guy that beat Kimbo Slice in that backyard fight.

But then was like super fucked up for the rest of his life from it. Yeah, I'd put that probably last. And then UFC 146 Dos Santos versus Mir. Yeah, what was 29? I forgot that one too. 29 was... Tito versus Yuki Kondo. Pat Melletich versus Kenichi Yamamoto and then Matt Lillin versus Yoji Anjo. You know what's so funny about Yuki Kondo? You ever seen his fight? It was Yuki Kondo versus, oh God, what the fuck was his, Trevor Prangley. They fought in Bodog.

Trevor Prangley is white. Okay, Yuki Kondo's from Japan. But Trevor Prangley's from South Africa. But he's white. Crowd doesn't know this. I think it was like Jersey or some shit, maybe Philly. And they fought, and the crowd was like, USA, USA.

It's like, well, got some bad news for you. You're cheering for the white guy just because he's white because he's not American. That's interesting. Yeah, short, to the point, fucking awesome. All right, let me go back to this if I can. My Twitter is fucking so low today. I don't know what's happening. Here we go. All right, let's get back to your questions here. I'll go a little bit longer. Are we done letting promotion sell us rematches where the first fight was dominant one way and the loser hasn't fought since? Probably not. Because this one sold like a motherfucker.

People are, you know, the biggest fan base in MMA is the casual one. That breaks my heart to say, but it's the reality. You just think about who's got the most amount of people. There aren't that many hardcore fans who can be like, okay, I hate this fight, but do we need to see it again? Versus the cash donks who are like, oh my God, I need to see this again. They don't know shit. Woos aside, which I loathe too,

how did the feel of the event change with the fans? First of all, you're going to have fans. This was a good one to have them back with in terms of just the excitement and just the chaos of everything. I mean, look, this is how it goes, right? It didn't affect the judging because we didn't have any fights. I mean, yes, there was some crazy judging on the main card, excuse me, on the prelim card. There were no judging snafus on the main card because they were not in business tonight. They were not needed. So that was great.

And, you know, I think some fighters probably benefit from having the fans either cheer or boo, depending on the situation. I wonder if it fuels Kamaru to be quite candid with you. I don't know that it does, but curious about that. Because remember, we had Justin Gaethje say in this arena when he fought Tony Ferguson that he felt like he was, if the fans had been there and been cheering, he would have kind of gotten a little bit too loose. He was actually able to stay poised and in command by virtue of their absence.

So I don't think it was super relevant in a competitive sense. If you like the fans being there and you feel like it adds a lot then congratulations you know I tend to think that it doesn't I tend to think it actually takes away a lot but you know people who feel like I feel can't convince the opposite and vice versa

but I'm also you know listen a lot of people are just watching fights to sit back relax and enjoy chaos and they love the yelling atmospherics and the big noise But I'm also, you know, listen, a lot of people are just watching fights to sit back, relax, and enjoy chaos. And they love the yelling atmospherics and the big noise and everything. In which case, yeah, it's a great live event experience. I think, you know, you probably would get a lot out of it. But I'm not watching fights for those reasons.

I'm watching fights because I like the science of it. And all of that other shit detracts from that. I should say distracts from that. So for what I'm watching fights for, it doesn't meaningfully add to my experience. But, you know, obviously mileage is going to vary on that one. What's the biggest super fight available for the three champs tonight? I mean, I would have thought that if Jorge won, you know, you couldn't discount a Conor versus Jorge fight.

Shit. They're not putting Conor in front of Kamaru Usman ever. Ever. They're not making that fight. I mean, unless you want Conor to get seriously hurt. They're not making that fight. You could do maybe Kamaru going upperweight class to middleweight, although I don't think he wants to. I think Shevchenko and Nunes is really the biggest one you can do. Chinese fighters went 0-4. Something to be said for the trip to the States.

Probably. Probably. When the card sold out in seconds, I thought all the hardcores bought most of the tickets. Folks, I gotta tell you, if there are 15,000 fans in the attendance, less than 500 are hardcore. Not even that many.

A couple hundred, maybe. The rest are all cash. I hate to admit it, it was a painful lesson for me to learn as well, but it's true. Something on Jorge's post-fight speech was censored or preempted by the UFC? I guess I didn't hear that part. Someone writes, nice of Usman to come to Masvidal's baptism. Well, y'all are being shitheads. What do you think Askren is thinking right now? Now that Masvidal has a meme that may replace Askren's

Nah, that won't I mean, he made it out of the first round That was a bad one, but I doubt he's getting memed like that You know what? Actually, let me take that back He won't get memed as bad as Askren did Was that performance by Usman enough to entice GSP to come back? He don't want that smoke He liked the Habib fight

Because Habib is yes At 155 The man among men but there was a size disparity there even if they had been the same weight I think Saint Pierre would have been a stronger version of them as strong as Habib is I think he liked the fact that he was a bigger dude he ain't coming back for Usman and Usman doesn't have the same sales ability either. Will you admit the MK curse is real? Do you guys not understand this shit at all? On the fucking resume review we did, we told you it was likely he was going to lose. He was the biggest underdog on the fucking resume review we did, we told you it was likely he was going to lose.

He was the biggest underdog on the fucking card. Like, the fact that he lost the way he did was bad. Okay, fine. That he lost is not some kind of fucking scandal. Or, oh, it's a curse. Folks, folks, this will pain you to admit. I know, I know. In the cockles of your heart, you hate to admit this.

None of you believe in the curses, and none of you actually operate your life in a way where you believe in curses. Life would look dramatically different across the world if people actually believed in them. It's a fun thing to say. It is kind of hilarious that I think we're five at this point, six i don't know and yeah they've lost yeah it's funny it's funny it's interesting it's cool it's oh it makes fun talking point you want to leave it at that you can leave it at that there is no such thing as a curse it doesn't exist there's no mechanism by which it exists it's not real i've lived through a world where the Red Sox could not sniff a World Series forever curse of the Bambino and a Yankees fans were shitheads about it for decades

and then it fell apart I lived in DC and I watched season after season after season I've not just collapsed within the Caps organization but around sports in general and then one year the Nationals win the World Series and then the the Caps win one. Even the fucking Mystics got a title. I don't really care, but okay, they're part of the story there too. Dude, there's no curse. It's just hard to, in general, achieve in sports, and when we do these narratives, we're talking about people. We were going to do Usman.

We decided to not do Usman this time because his journey is still evolving. We'll probably do one on Usman by the time he's ready to lose because we're in these spaces where they have to really be at very pivotal moments in their career. They have to be usually the one who's more popular of the two in a fight, although that is also not necessarily true. But no, no. There's no mechanism of a curse, no nothing. Out of five fighters, we've picked three who were underdogs. This was the biggest betting underdog of them all. That he lost is absolutely in no way, shape, or form not a surprise.

We even told you on the episode it was going to happen. The point of the resume review is a guy like Jorge lost tonight, but I hope, I hope that you don't focus on stupid ass jokes that 13 year olds find funny and the ones who are, you know, not the biggest book readers in their classes either. That's who finds this shit funny. What I'm hoping, I'm hoping that you guys get out of it is that when BC and I go through their resume, you learn something new. You understand their journey. You have a better appreciation for their bio and their background and their struggles and everything else.

The idea is whether they win or lose or not on Saturday, it's almost irrelevant. Not totally, obviously. The major point is what they have done, their body of work to that point. And it's a moment to celebrate it and understand it better. And I think, my hope is that after you watch those, you can come away with that.

Can Covington beat Usman? Yes. How likely it is, I don't know. But can he beat, yes, he's a real threat. This card was insane. Yes, it was. Let's see. One of the craziest main cards ever UFC Was it 166? That was a crazy one too

Did you like Anthony Smith being happy about the crowd? If Anthony Smith is happy, great I don't give a shit about the crowd Boom Jesus, that right hand is... Someone's put it in here. Where does Masvidal go from here? With it highly unlikely he will fight for a title again,

would the Diaz rematch be a fight that makes sense after Nate's fight with Leon, of course? I think if Leon loses, yeah, you could run that one back. Although the BMF thing has kind of been... kind of lost its luster a little bit. You know, if you lose like the way he lost at UFC 251 you know there's no real BMF issue but you lose like this you know um not the not the greatest all right uh if you have an email for me email me lukethomasnews at gmail.com I'll say it one more time I'll do it right here

Thumbs up on the video Thank you for watching Thank you for subscribing Morning Combat back Monday 11am Me, BC, you Have you seen this shit? Your questions We'll put a follow Morning Combat on Instagram

We'll have a post up there tomorrow Where we solicit your questions for DMs from donks Put those in there If you want to ask me one separately LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. By the way, I ran into a dude named Andre. My man was working security this morning at Harris Teeter in Washington, D.C. I had a mask on because obviously you have to have one to get in Harris Teeter. And I was coming up the stairs, and he shouted me out,

and I took a picture with him. So shouts to Andre from Harris Teeter. We were talking about he was so amped for the fights tonight. And it's cool, man. I don't get to meet a lot of fight fans in the city. Most of the fight fans are boxing fans. And he was a big-time MMA fan. So, shouts to Andre.

It was nice meeting you today, man, because I know you're going to watch this. He told me he was going to watch it later. Okay. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. What a crazy night. I'll see you on Monday, 11 AM until then.