MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Instant Reaction: UFC on ABC 1: Max Holloway def. Calvin Kattar

Episode Date: January 17, 2021

At UFC on ABC 1, featherweights Max Holloway and Calvin Kattar fought in the main event on Fight Island while welterweights Carlos Condit and Matt Brown took care of business in the co-main event. Who won? What did we learn? Luke Thomas gives us his instant reaction to the first UFC event of 2021. ---------------------------- '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. Hi everybody, Luke Thomas here. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everybody. Luke Thomas here. I'm one half of the Morning Combat Duo. Brian Campbell, of course, will be joining me on Monday. Or I'll be joining him. We'll be together on Monday to go over all the results from UFC on ABC1.

But I wanted to give you some instant reaction to today's main event and then the co-main event. Now, first, please give the video a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button. As I mentioned, a much fuller, a much more complete review we'll do on Monday. But what did I think about what happened in the main event and the co-main event? If you don't want spoilers, now's the time to go. Okay, let's take a look. Wow, Max Holloway. Holy Jesus. Scores, 50-43, 50-43, and 50-42. Folks, I don't think I've ever seen a 50-42, certainly not in the UFC. That might be the first 50-42 in the UFC that I'm aware of. I mean, I will have to talk to Fightmetric or some of the historians to find out, but certainly that is exceedingly rare. Max Holloway looked incredible tonight, winning a unanimous decision in a fight that frankly should have been stopped. We'll talk about that in just a second, but let's talk about the winner first. Max Holloway, man, you want to talk about making a statement. You

want to talk about letting everyone know he is not done with his business at featherweight. You want to talk about just letting everybody in the industry, if they forgot, realize he is very much still, well, Volkanovski's the man because he's got the belt around his waist at 145 pounds. But the days of Max Holloway not being able to contest for that title, they are not over, not by a long shot. In many ways, this might even be his best performance. I mean, I know he lost the two Volkanovski fights. And when I say lost, every time I say it, people are like,

oh no, he didn't lose. Yes, if you scored it differently, we've talked about this a million times, I don't want to re-litigate it. But what the record shows is that he lost those two. Whatever you feel about that, it does appear to me pretty clear that he learned from those experiences, not just about Volkanovski and what he has to do to do better against him, but more about himself, how to train better, where he performs more ably, and how to get the best out of himself, how to win rounds the way he wants to win, how to approach different problems. And more to the point, Volkanovski is going to be a very hard target to hit.

Anyone compared to him is going to be a much more hittable target. When you fought Volkanovski for 10 rounds, and then you go to Calvin Cater, who was a very good fighter, a legitimately talented, you know, he earned this opportunity. And there's no denying it. No one was mad when they made this fight saying, well, Calvin Cater didn't earn the opportunity to face someone like Max Holloway. I think we were all pretty excited about it. And fair play to him. He earned the opportunity when it was all said and done. Holy fuck. Wow, man. Max Holloway just looked possessed.

They kept talking about it. These are unofficial stats, as best I understand it. So I want to pull up what we know right here as I record this from Fightmetric. These are his numbers from tonight. He, oh my God, he landed 361 significant strikes and attempted 602. That is far and away the most ever. That's even more than against Brian Ortega,

where he only landed only 290. To Ortega, where he only landed only 290 to Ortega's 110. So Calvin Cater actually landed less than Ortega. And that fight was stopped in the fourth, by the way, I didn't even see the fifth, I guess by that time, he would have maybe, maybe Holloway would have passed it at that point. But either way, Calvin Cater landed less over the course of five rounds and got hit more. Just an incredible performance by Max Holloway. So how did he do it? Obviously, I have to review the tape to see exactly what happened, but some of my early reads were you saw a lot of this defense from Calvin Cater, a bit of a sort of a cover-up shell.

When people do that, it's very good at blocking shots. By the way, a lot of the shots that Holloway landed, C to his credit. He was able to roll with some of them, or they didn't land with full authority, or a lot of them just bounced off the arms or whatever he was doing. But obviously, a tremendous amount got through. But the point being is this. When you cover up like this, and you especially do this it a leaves open the body and it leaves open the head and it kind of blinds you so what you saw from Holloway a lot was getting this kind of reaction maybe he would jab or double jab out at range and then he would come in and to the body and then hook hook and then change you know angle a little bit and then slip a shot and then come

over so it was early on it was getting uh some of the blinding up from Cater. It was putting multiple combinations together to take advantage of the space and time in which that is up. Over time, it became a little bit less about that. You saw some new weapons from him. You saw he's thrown it before, but not with the same amount or ability. The spinning back kick or the turning back kick, I should say. He threw a lot of those, some of those to great effect. He had a bit of like a stance changing like horse stomp

as a way to stop, I think, the rear leg teep of Cater. Again, I got to review the tape, but it would enable him to close distance, change angles, sometimes change stances, and from there, you from there unload on him. Holloway is huge about this, about steering opposition. So he would force Cater back and then throw punches from his left to get Cater to go this way. And then, I can't do it because my shoulders are all jacked, but then he would throw the elbow slashing over the top. He was just a man on fire.

A man on fire in Abu Dhabi today. Almost everything he wanted to throw landed. Everything, I think, from a strategy standpoint that they wanted to try worked. To the point where in the fifth round, you have Max Holloway literally talking to the commentators, telling them he's the best boxer in MMA, looking at them, and then Cater's throwing punches, and Max is doing the whole Matrix bit with Agent Smith. I mean, it was a shocking display of dominance and prowess. And you've got to remember, Max Holloway is only 29 years old.

Like, he's not, you know, he's not some 34, 35-year-old guy who had his run and now age. And then the rest of the division, from an age standpoint, has passed him by. Cater was older than he is, or I should say is older, 32 to 29. He's actually the younger of the two. And, I mean, this was a master class and a total reminder of exactly the ability that Max Holloway has, his place in the division, what he's capable of. Now, he did eat some shots, but, you know, this is something we know about Max Holloway. If you look at his differential, his output is extremely high, and he does tend to take a little bit more abuse. In fact, if you look at his overall strikes landed per minute and then strikes absorbed per minute,

strikes landed per minute, 6.47. That is very, very high. Strikes absorbed per minute, previously strikes landed. Strikes absorbed, 4.52. Folks, I got to tell you, if you look at the numbers on a lot of fighters, that's really, really high. For example, if you look at, let's say, John Jones' fight metric, in your mind, what would you think that his strikes absorbed per minute is? Because he has five-round fights a lot, too. His strikes absorbed per minute is 2.22. Strikes landed per minute, 4.3. What would you say about Nurmagomedov?

Now, granted, a lot of the fights stay on the ground. So you're probably going to get a very low amount absorbed. He absorbed 1.75. Strikes landed 4.1. Let's try Deveson Figueredo. What does he have for his stats? Strikes absorbed per minute, 3.35. And then he's barely above that for landed,

3.38. So he's almost identical. But even then, look how much lower that is at three and a hook versus four and a half. He takes a fair amount of damage, but dude, Max Holloway's chin is absurd. So for Calvin Cater, there were times where he landed a decent elbow. He had a couple of good, real hard right hands that stung him a little bit. The jab for Cater never really got going. He tried leg kicks early, but as Max pressured him and moved him backwards, I don't think he was really able to set his feet in that way. He has a susceptibility, which you saw in the Moicano, and even the Ige fight to an extent, which was leg kicks, sorry, the Stevens fight, which was eating leg kicks. It wasn't so much of a thing here for Max.

He doesn't really throw a lot of those. That wasn't really all that relevant. So, you know, there were some moments where Cater was able to do what he wanted to. The biggest one was not what he wanted to, but sort of impressive, was in that fourth round, which I thought the fight should have been stopped there. Third or the fourth. I think it was the fourth. Where, you I thought the fight should have been stopped there. Third or the fourth, I think it was the fourth, where he looks like he's almost done.

Max Holloway is slashing him like a samurai trying to cut down a rival clan leader in, what is it, 16th century Japan or something. And over and over, just yack, yack, just slashing, slashing, and going to the body. I mean, the body work from Max Holloway. I can't believe I haven't even talked about the body work. Brilliant body work. Body work that set up the head.

Body work that just accumulated on either side and in the middle, so like jabs to the body, hooks to the liver, hooks to the other side. He just really completely wore him out. That guy's, I mean, Calvacator's going to be pissing blood for a week, probably. It's going to be a real long recovery for him. But fucking Calvin Cater hung on, didn't he? And just started throwing, I mean, just putting his head down and just throwing like he was fighting for his life out there.

I said this on Twitter, man, whatever they paid Calvin Cater, I don't even know what they paid him. Here's what I do know. It wasn't enough. I mean, let's be honest about what happened. That dude's career might've been shortened tonight. I don't know that. We always have to see. But when you have a five-round beating, a literal historic featherweight beating, 50-43, 50-43, 50-42 on the judges, that is a historic beating. 360 significant strikes you absorbed. Not everyone comes out of that normal. Not everyone can just shake that off like it's a thing. I mean, that is a car crash.

And Max Holloway was, you know, he was the driver of the semi truck. I do worry about that a little bit. So in terms of more of the details about what Max did and how brilliant he looked and on fire and possessed, by the way, not just a high volume of output, but just like a real offensive urgency from him, which was interesting to see. So we'll see what that will mean in the future. So what's next? We know Volkanovski, it's supposed to be UFC 260 that he's going to fight Brian Ortega. We'll see what the winner of that is. My hunch is it's going to be Volkanovski. And then you have another fight with Max Holloway you got to make. Holloway offering to fill in in case McGregor or Poirier fill out,

which is amazing. One note about that, by the way, about Max. Obviously, Cater is incredibly tough, and I don't want that to get lost. But between that fight and what you saw against Poirier, I come away with two, among others, two takeaways. One, Max Holloway has an elite chin, right? Because he can take some big shots from Cater and then super big shots from Poirier. Poirier, a known power puncher up a division. But the other part was, no way do I think that Max Holloway

can't put people away with strikes. He quite obviously can. He put Aldo away twice, both times inside 15 minutes. I mean, my dude will land on you with authority, but I'm not sure that his power would carry effectively to 155 pounds. The real way to know that would be to be a much larger sample size at 155 pounds and to see if he filled out up there. I mean, we're talking about one real fight against

a guy who was a devastating puncher, and he went the full distance with him, but he couldn't really, and he hurt Dustin Poirier too. So, you know, when I say doesn't carry, I mean, like, he doesn't, like, he can't do anything with it, but, like, how potent a weapon would it be up a weight class? I wonder. I wonder. Between these two fights, I certainly think it's something to think about. No way to know without more information. But tonight, it doesn't matter. Forget about lightweight. Featherweight right now is still very much a division where Max Holloway can do incredible things, including but not limited to maybe regaining his title. We'll have to see.

But that is one of the best, if not the best, performances from Max I've ever seen. Now, let's talk about that lack of a stoppage for a second. To me, the fight should have been stopped right around the moment where he was getting battered Cater along the fence line. And yes, he was able to fire back a little bit and even land somewhat afterwards. But here's why I think the fight should have been stopped. It's not that Cater was out on his feet or he was just being held up by punches like Phil Barone versus Dave Manet or something, or that he wasn't even, I mean, he would even land the occasional punch with intention. That's not the issue either. The issue was it wasn't having hardly any effect on

Max, number one. You had seen nearly 20 minutes of it at that point. And more to the point, he had at that stage of the fight already absorbed an extraordinary, medically dangerous, and potentially career-altering amount of damage. Now, we don't know. We'll have to see what happens going forward. But it's like, at that point, why are you sending him back out for a fifth? Do you really think he's got much of a chance? And here's what everyone's going to say. They're going to say that his team are idiots. They're not idiots. I know a lot of the folks in that team, that his manager slash cornerman,

I think it's his manager, Tyson, is it Chartier? Chartier, I always mispronounce it. But he's some kind of bad guy. He's a former fighter himself. He's not a bad guy. You have to stop saying that the guys who don't throw the towel are bad people because I actually don't think that they are. I think they've got bad ideas, but I don't think that they're bad people. I don't think they're moral

degenerates or whatever. Here's what I do think. People in MMA are simply not going to make a change about getting out in front of fights, preserving fighters over the long haul until somebody dies. That's it. Because what is the consequence for what they did? They won't know until subsequent fights if there's been career altering damage here. Any kind of real brain damage they won't really get a sense of until the career is over. The commission won't sanction them. The UFC won't do get a sense of until the career is over. The commission won't sanction them. The UFC won't do anything about it. Even if they, what would they do?

I mean, as the promoter, what would you do? You know, have a word with the guy? I mean, they can't get in there and stop the fights anyway. I don't think it's something you can really blame UFC for. So, you know, and the ref didn't stop it either. So I think Herb Dean probably has some questions to ask as well. But the reality is, what's the consequence for not doing it? In the short to even medium run, nothing.

I mean, you may get blasted in the media, but so what? That doesn't mean anything. And most of the media don't want to say anything full-throatedly anyway. So there really is no consequence. It is until there are consequences for these kinds of choices um they will just continue so you can bang your fist down on the formica and demand to see the manager and be angry about it i'm not saying you shouldn't be i i don't understand how people can look at this and just send people back out there but suffice to say that they do because they are committed to

the idea that if there is an ounce of fighting ability left anything you just never really know meanwhile every indication tells you that they're probably going to just take an extraordinary amount of damage that they don't need to their chances of winning are grossly overestimated but what is almost guaranteed to happen is that they're going to get absolutely walloped and that is exactly happened. He got absolutely walloped in that fifth round for no apparent reason. Even parts of the fourth that didn't need to happen for no apparent reason. It did not meanfully contribute to any kind of victory at all. Again, 50-43, 50-43, 50-42. So we're just waiting on someone to die. It sounds overly dramatic. It sounds weird, but it's just the reality.

That's what we're waiting on. Quickly, let's talk about the co-main event. Matt Brown loses to Carlos Conant via unanimous decision. I think it was 30-27s in there. I think it was across the board, 30-27. Matt Brown didn't like that, which I can understand. I thought it was 29-28. I did see some people saying in the first round,

did Carlos win by doing better striking and sort of resisting underneath? Perfectly reasonable debate. So I think if you scored at 30-27, that's not a big deal. I think it was just upsetting for him. Let me pull up the scores here just to be sure. Yeah, it was 30-27s across the board. So I think Matt's point is I didn't get around on a judge's scorecard, really. So I understand both perspectives.

I thought Matt, you know, early looked pretty good. Sort of an urgency. The takedown he had was nice. He was staying in guard. He wasn't trying to pass, which I thought was a little bit curious, but he was able to do some damage under there. So I thought he had kind of won the first round. Again, you could say that the sort of the playing with the base that Carlos Condit was doing with the butterfly hooks and striking underneath, if you had it the other way,

that's okay too. But you know, Matt Brown certainly didn't look like overmatched or anything. It was, you know, toss up-ish Eileen Brown, It was, you know, toss-up-ish. Eileen Brown, but okay, you know, we've been over it. But by the second and third rounds, he kind of faded a little bit. I mean, he had a moment in the third where he was able to reverse a couple of times. But, you know, Carlos Condit was tricky. I thought that... I didn't think the fight was going to take place that much on the ground as it did. But, you know, he just seemed to have...

He seemed to be a little bit more creative on the ground as it did. But, you know, he just seemed to have, he seemed to be a little bit more creative on the feet, a little bit more spry athletically, and then I just think had more offensive weapons to go to more readily in those second and third rounds. You know, taking the back I thought was pretty big, you know, winning real key positional battles when it mattered, hitting the switch when he did, which was kind of important as well. Stuffing a bunch of takedowns. Let me look up some of the stats for that one, if I may here.

Let's see. So for that one, yeah, not a ton of activity on the feet. 39 of 88 for Condit, 28 of 37 for Matt Brown. But total attempted by Condit, 209. Two of four takedowns. He scored one of just six for Matt Brown. So, you know, just doing a little bit better of a job, I think, all the way around in terms of just scoring meaningful offense. If you're asking, like, what the implication of the win is, well, again, talking about five-round beatings. Now, this was a back- a back and forth but it was kind of a war that kind of it was a dramatic war I've I've firmly believed and I think the evidence bears this out and I said it at the time I don't I don't think that Robbie Lawler or Carlos Condit were ever the same after that Ward they had with

one another um they had some nice moments afterward, but never really, they didn't get back to the level they were at. So you're asking like, where does he go from here? Well, what I would say is two wins in a row over Court McGee and now Matt Brown. Now in both cases, neither he nor his opponent were ranked. So Court McGee might've been 15th or something, but I don't think so. I mean, certainly in the case of Matt Brown, neither he nor his opponent were ranked. So he's not on a contender track. I mean, to get back to the top 15 and then the top 10 and then the top five, I mean, these are huge. These are mirages in the desert, I think at this point, very far away. But what I think you can say

is certainly this is the best he's looked in a long time. More to the point, Matt Brown is a perfectly good UFC fighter. And so if you can beat Matt Brown and you can beat Court McGee and do so, you know, 30-27, not quite the stoppage territory that he used to be in, but if you can, you know, have a pretty good, pretty clear performance in the way that he did in terms of winning, you know, you deserve to be at this level. You deserve to be in this organization. So, you know, I think they have to matchmake him appropriately. I think that if you're a huge hardcore fan of who Carlos Condit was at his peak, it probably will serve your interests to have managed expectations, and that's okay. But I would caution people that, like, this is the beginning of, you know of a march towards elite contendership.

I truly think that those days have passed, and that's okay. Father Time is creeping up on everyone. Matt Brown was 40 in this fight, for crying out loud, although he looked to be in impeccable shape for the most part, for someone 40, certainly in any way. And Carlos is a little bit younger, but long in the tooth in terms of damage. So, solid win good performance

looked like he was thinking through everything didn't look hurried or rushed or overwhelmed even when he was in bad spots he was fighting through them like he showed real signs of life as a competitor he got a nice win in the UFC he deserves to be here and so let's see what he can do from this

point forward and I think that's being able to win in the UFC. He deserves to be here. And so let's see what he can do from this point forward. And I think that's, you know, being able to win the UFC, that is not nothing, folks. You should never take that for granted. Think about it. The overwhelming majority of fighters cannot. So something to consider. Okay. Well, we'll have a full analysis of everything on Monday about what the wins mean for the rest of the card, where

Max goes from here, expectations now for the next weekend. By the way, what did you think of the fans in attendance? What else? We could talk about that unbelievably stupid Habib announcement. I warned you guys on Friday not to give any attention to that shit, but okay. People learn the hard way. We'll talk about all that on Monday. So, wanted to give you an instant reaction.

Max Holloway looking incredible. Carlos Condit, two in a row. But there's a lot more to the story for both of them and the rest of the card. So please, join us, 11 a.m. live on Monday, Morning Combat. Me, Brian Campbell, and you. Thumbs up, hit subscribe,

and see y'all next time.