MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Jake Paul | Transgender Fighter | Yoel Romero | DWCS Recap | Quick Hitters | EP 203

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

On Episode 203 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian discuss Jake Paul's most recent comments about his fighting future. Next up the guys discuss Alana McLaughlin's debut. Yoel Romero makes his Bellator debut this weekend at Bellator 266. They guys also recap Dana White's contender Series and do some quick hitters before ending the show with Wheel of Death and Fan Submissions. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing.

Reveille, Reveille, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. It is the 15th of September, halfway through the ninth month of the year.

Can you believe it? It is time, everyone, for your midweek Morning Combat. Hello, my name is Luke Thomas. I'm from CBS Sports, as well as Showtime on occasion. And I'm joined by a man who, when he's not hawking t-shirts, he's dyeing his hair all kinds of colors of the rainbow. He's the king of Connecticut. He can do that kind of thing. It's Brian Campbell.

What's up, BC? I'm pretty gray at the moment, Luke. Not, you know, emotionally, just hair-wise. Although my wife did drop a nice Just For Men on my bathroom sink yesterday. I'm like, are you trying to tell me something? You know what I mean? Say it to my face, right? You know what I mean? So we'll see if I start showing up somewhere between this and that shoe polish black Elvis 68 comeback special that your boy pulled out in Las Vegas in error. Okay, as's glad to be here. Damn glad to be here. And fired up because there's a lot of good stuff going on

in this MK universe right now, Luke, that I think the people are going to enjoy. They're going to like the way it feels on them. They're going to catch the feels, so to speak. More on a lot of that to come. But what a time, Luke. What a time. Like Elvis, how close to dying on the toilet did you come

during that Vegas trip? You know, we've had our moments on the road, Luke, okay? Let's just say that. But got a big liver doctor's appointment tomorrow that was rescheduled a few times. So I'll have a better handle on Friday's show, Luke, whether we break up simply because we secretly hate each other or whether my health takes me out for good, Luke. Okay, we'll see.

We'll see what happens. Well, hopefully it comes to neither of those things. Today is actually my nine-year wedding anniversary. I would wish my wife a happy anniversary, but, you know, there's zero chance she's watching. So I'll just do that for you, dogs. Luke, best nine years of your life, though. Best nine, right? For sure.

For sure. And some of the most impactful as well. Okay, we have a lot to get to today there's some jake paul news we finally have to talk about this transgender fighter who is sort of making the rounds in combate global and a ton of other stuff including fan subs the wheel of death is back today so we have a lot to get to thumbs up on the video no matter who you are and if you're freeloading we're not asking for much give us a free subscription just click a button for us. Hit the notification

bell. It's all you gotta do. You ain't gotta spend a dime. Just that. Here you can see all the good stuff. You're not gonna get text messages or emails if you don't want them, folks. Okay? You know what I'm saying? Just click subscribe. Join the club, right? Just free content. That's it. Just free content. It's all we're asking for. It's not like that time

those prominent national boxing writers that we all know accidentally hit like on the Twitter porn video. It's not like that time those prominent national boxing writers that we all know accidentally hit like on the Twitter porn video. It's not like that where then the whole world sees what you're into. This can be a private transaction. That's right. Exactly correct. So beyond that, if you want to try Showtime, which, of course, Bellator returns to their airwaves on Saturday with Yoel Romero taking on Phil Davis. You can get a 30-day free trial by going to Showtime.com.

If you like it, you can keep it. If not, go do something else with your life. BC, why don't you tell the folks what the, and it's written onto the rundown, which will be a nice test to see if you have it open. Why don't you tell the folks what the merch update is? Well, look, we said it's going to be for a limited

time, and it was. The BC to the BDE Puerto Rican influenced Hawaiian shirt. I don't know how that works, Luke, with the cross-pollination of the island communities there. That shit sold out. That shit sold out quickly, right? Yeah. So here's the deal.

If you missed out for now, you missed out. Your boy BC has been pressuring the folks who run MorningCombat.store due to the outrageous demand for this piece of fabric to see if we can bring it back. They said, hey, BC, you know, this was a limited time addition, so stay tuned. Maybe we can work something out in the future, but for now, you're SOL. The good news is, though, if you go to morningcombat.store, I'll keep pushing them to get the Hawaiian shirt back, but we got plenty of new stuff, plenty of great stuff on there, okay?

You want to wear a tie-dyed dad hat that says MK on it? You want to have the combat camper mug for your little, you know, I know you like coffee and you like tea, but to be able to enter a final plea, you can pick up all this stuff at morningcombat.store, okay? So please do that. We got the good shit there. Thank you very much. And, you know, Luke, we'll see if we can get a couple more specials out there. Maybe get

your face on a piece of clothing. Maybe get this shirt out there in the ethosphere as they say, Luke, right? That's right. There is much more to come. We have lots of cards up our sleeve. We're just slowly dealing. I feel like we're getting better with the merch. Yesterday was better. We got

it's smoothening out a little bit. You want to shout out our new guy, RJ Grundlemaker? I mean, he's made a big difference in a short period of time. I don't think that's his actual last name, but we can call him that if you want. And then last but not least, BC, week one might be over, but the season, the NFL season, is just getting started over at DraftKings Sportsbook.

DraftKMK getting together. And, of course, DraftKings Sportsbook is an official sports betting partner of the NFL to kick off week two. DraftKings is giving new customers $200 in free bets instantly when they bet $1 on any football game. This is something, of course, you're not going to want to miss BC.

No, it is. It is a great relationship right now. MK, BK, DK, you know what I'm talking about right there with all those initials and look, putting a little action on the action. As we've said multiple times, right now mkvk dk you know what i'm talking about right there with all those initials and uh look

putting a little action on the action as we've said multiple times it's about as fun as watching sports can get so whether you're watching the ufc whether you're watching bellator this weekend whether you're going to get geared up for the big fights coming next week or just how about nfl week two uh why don't you do that because two hundred dollars for one dollar to enter for new customers great deal right there and of course luke if, if the DraftKings Sportsbook is not applicable in your state due to betting laws, there's plenty of daily fantasy you can get into on DraftKings. Also, a chance to enter that $1 million prize pool. So why don't you join the good folks over there at DK because MK's moving in, okay?

We're going to consummate this relationship, so to speak, Luke. It's going to be like Megan Fox in MGK, so don't be Conor McGregor and try to get a selfie on that red carpet. We're not letting you in, okay? Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now. Use the promo code COMBAT, that's COMBAT with a K, so K-O-M-B-A-T, to receive $200 in free bets when you place a $1 bet on any football game.

Promo code COMBAT this week at DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NFL. And as everybody knows, if you want to put the bet there to get the $200 on the NFL and then use that $200 to go and make some boxing and some MMA bets, you certainly may do that as well. All is yours to play with there. All right, BC, you ready to get this started? Before we is yours to play with there all right we see you ready to get this started before we do real quickly there are some irish fans who said hey maybe uh bc and lt oh conair i'm not talking about that fine fantastic 90s movie with nick cage conair mcgregor a an apology luke for the fact that mgk now admits he pushed mcgregor away

first because he felt intimidated luke uh I'd like to apologize to no one. And look, if you're a pro fighter and some white guy rapper pushes you, I don't know if you've got to throw a drink at him, okay? Can you retain yourself a little bit? But Luke, are you trying to fill in the salty details and wonder, did he ask Jay, no, not Jay. Did he ask Megan Fox for a photo? And did MGK get a little, you know, little, you know, did he feel the presence of the BDE?

And he said, no, no, no, I'm a Poirier guy. Why don't you step back? Is that kind of what happened, Luke? I don't know. I wasn't there. And I don't care. You want to get this started? Yeah, all right.

All right, Luke. Let's do it. Topic number one. It's, well, it's a topic that some of you guys don You want to get this started? Yeah, all right. All right. Okay, that's good. Let's do it. Topic number one. It's, well, it's a topic that some of you guys don't want to get into, but there is a little bit on it that deserves some recognition. Namely, Jake Paul has spoken to a couple of media outlets. I know he spoke to MMA Fightings or Ariel Hawane. I think he did ESPN as well.

And there was a few pieces of news that came out about it. First of all, they both passed their fight night drug test, which is to say they both passed their fight night IQ tests, for whatever that is worth to folks. Doesn't mean a lot to me. Okay. He did say it was a urine test. Once you heard it was a urine test, you're like,

oh, they ain't failing that one, Luke, okay? I mean, and also, if it was a blood test and they knew it was coming on fight night, I mean, it doesn't do much. But okay, neither here nor there. Where we are is next opponent, and that part is, to me fight night. I mean, it doesn't do much. But okay, neither here nor there. Where we are is next opponent. And that part is to me a little bit interesting, BC. So what he basically said was that he used the fact that Tyron has not gotten the tattoo

as a pretext for the reasons why he does not need to give him another fight, that he's moving on is the words that he would use from Tyron Woodley. I tend to think that he realizes that there's not much upside in a rematch given what you could get in some other directions. But there are estimates it sold about 500K pay-per-views. I don't know what the internal projections are. To me, BC, we've talked about this a million times. Folks think you either sell a million or you don't,

and that's good or it's bad. It's not true. A million, of course, is the benchmark for truly elite pay-per-view sellers. But if you're selling 400,000 or500,000, that's good money. That's very good money. Very few headliners can do it. And, BC, that would be 2x the most we've ever seen from any Tyron Woodley-headlined UFC pay-per-view.

So he actually doubled what he would normally be able to do. What are your reactions to him moving on from Woodley, especially given how well it had done? Yeah, look, Jake Paul's handled so much of this boxing crossover very well. He's proven that he's a draw. Obviously, we didn't know what to believe on those initial Triller pay-per-view numbers when he beat Askren,

and I haven't seen an official number for this one. No one at Showtime is telling us anything, so you always have to have a grain of salt on what the exact number is. But the projections are showing you that this experiment is working, Luke. And I love the way that Jake has handled himself media-wise. Now, what I'm about to say, it's not that you can't pick through his words and try to read his exact sentiments, and I have no problem sort of calling him out on those, but the way he navigates what are your thoughts on this guy or this guy, it's very savvy.

It plays up the intelligence factor that we are talking about in the fact that, look, he's not a real fighter so three four fights into this he's not going to go fight some up-and-coming unbeaten guy in real boxing or some or some title challenger he's going to be creative but he's also going to try to stilt the tilt the deck in his favor and i think that's what we saw in his reactions now luke here's the deal when asked by ariel specifically about fighting Anderson Silva or Vitor Belfort, his general sort of take on that was, I want to fight guys my own age. I don't want to be fighting these old guys where I'm not going to get the credit for knocking them out.

And while in some ways that's refreshing because it's going away from that sort of Evander Holyfield stain in last week's trailer card that we're dealing with the hangover of that, but in another way, Luke, these guys are his size or bigger so it is a somewhat of a savvy way to say these are dangerous fights that I'm not sure it's worth it for the money you could say he's trying to duck he's also trying to maneuver here and put himself in chances to win these fights but he did say it's not that I'm against the Anderson one. He is one of the people that we're talking to. It would really just come down to, you know, the money in this case.

And Luke, I think we can make the argument here that Anderson is probably the toughest fight he could sign up for in this bubble. It would be one of the biggest potentially pay-per-view draw-wise and all that. But I also think that's a horrible fight for him. So I do question how serious he really is on his

intentions of that same reason he said look I don't have any interest in Belfort he's too old he's a steroid head but if the guys at Triller aren't lying about this if you can send me a proof of a bank statement that you really do have 30 million in there okay yeah sure I'd consider it Luke when talking about all the opponents he said there's four people in particular that they're talking to. He didn't want to give it up, although when Ariel did kind of say, you know, is Nate Diaz one of them, he kind of bit his tongue and didn't answer. But it's clear to me from Jake's words that Jorge Masvidal is the one he wants the most, the one that he's targeting.

And, Luke, I think it's really smart from this standpoint. Jake would probably be a betting underdog against either Belfort or Silva. These guys are his size. The key to sort of the smoke and mirrors, which Kimbo Slice did as well to this type of matchmaking as Jake learns on the job and each camp gets a little bit better is trying to keep it in your favor. I mean,

look, it's Floyd did that when he was the A side. A lot of fighters have done that in that regard. And I think Masvidal potentially, although there's a major hurdle and a major roadblock, which he got into. But Luke, you could say that's potentially, all things considered, the best matchup he could make financially, the perceived threat by the public that he could lose, even though he's by far the naturally bigger fighter.

Luke, I love the double down and triple down pressure he's putting on by saying, hey, Jorge, go call your daddy, Dana White, and try to make this happen. And how he's saying, I've been knocking out all your ex-UFC heroes, Dana. Now put me in there with somebody still close enough to his prime that I can beat. Luke, is this a moot point? And do you agree with me that if there was a way to make this happen, if Dana White said, I'm gonna get in

in this business with you that this would sell the most pay-per-views of anybody he could fight right now short of Conor which isn't happening yeah I do think it would be monumental I think Jake Paul versus Jorge Masvidal right now would be especially if the UFC machine kind of got behind it you know like obviously for folks who remember Mayweather-McGregor, and I don't know that it would come to this, but just as an example, we all lived through it, and that was the Showtime machine plus the UFC machine together, plus the worlds colliding.

It was so many dominant forces in the marketplace that the amount of promotion for that fight was, you know, insane. If you could get something like that again for this, because Jorge is under contract, because he is still relatively close to his prime, I think you would do gangbusters. It just doesn't seem like Dana White is in that kind of business. And in fact, Dana White was asked about it last night following the Contender Series, and he was saying like, Anderson's not under contract with us. Like, you know, you want a guy who's not under contract with us, there's a great guy to pick up.

I mean, the funny thing about the charges of him ducking Anderson, it's quite obviously true. Like, he is obviously doesn't want any part of Anderson or Vitor. But, like, it's, I almost, I understand the criticisms and I think that they're real. But at the same time, like, I don't even care because it's like, dude, the entire thing he's doing where he's going outside of the normal boxing space he's not working his way up towards a real ladder of contenders to something towards championship boxing this is totally separate from that the whole thing is ducking it's ducking completely away from like i mean it's supposed to be it's supposed to be that you don't get those huge paydays and the big limelights until you really work your way up the food chain to get are we being fair are we being fair to him because there's people that are

going to watch and say oh you guys are the showtime guys you guys shut on triller but you're not on showtime once again different presentations i think you can see the difference between you know the the last jake paul pay-per-view and the trailer card we saw the other day but we're saying straight up we know jake's ducking these guys he's being savvy about it this is yeah this is what it's about you you want to you either want to see Jake Paul fight or you don't this idea that like oh he's avoiding Anderson like quite clearly he doesn't want and dude I if I was advising Jake I would tell him not to take the Anderson fight because that would go very poorly for him but at the same time the entire thing he's doing is I'm going to carve out my own lane separate

from all of these other pressures, separate from all of these ladders that everyone else has erected that I'm supposed to climb up. I'm going to just do my own thing. Well, fine. If you're going to do that, then you can pick and choose who you like. Your only consequence would be how long can you keep this going basically

and convince people that's something you want to watch. I tend to think that Tommy Fury is probably the top of that list. He's young. He's got a name. We've talked about it before. You could put that fight in the UK. It would sell a ton. I do think though there is a trade-off between Jake Paul versus Anderson Silva as an overall

pay-per-view event versus Jake Paul versus Tommy Fury as a pay-per-view event. I think both do well but I do think it would not do as well if Anderson Silva, or I should say, would do better if he was out there as the B-side or the A-side, whatever. Well, Jake was asked if he would come back this year,

and he said, you know, it may depend on Showtime's layout schedule in terms of what pay-per-views they're trying to do, but he'd like to come back pretty soon. Look, Tommy Fury just makes a lot of sense, especially if you're trying to quiet the people that are saying, okay, you're only looking at old MMA fighters. And again, Horry Moswell's like, you know, 36. So it's not like this guy's a spring chicken either.

This could calm down some of that because you'd be fighting a, quote unquote, real boxer in Tommy Fury. Although, obviously, and we saw on that on that show, the Showtime pay-per-view, unless Tommy Fury was doing a great job of playing possum. He's just not you know, he may have intentions of a real fighter and say the right things and have the Fury name but he's not there yet, he's raw and unpolished so this is a winnable fight for Jake even though it's somebody much more his size but I think what you just talked about, the potential

of bringing this to England I don't know if that would be in the plans for Jake Paul or Showtime pay-per-view or whomever but that could really raise the buzz around this event. If you could put that in a stadium, get people involved, get the Fury family, including Tyson and Big John, as part of the build-up, that might be the next step to continue to raise the brand and draw up the dollar price and all that. I'm not here yet, Luke, because we're still four or five fights into it to say, no,

Jake, enough. Cash yourself out. Go figure out how great you can be. Because he's not trying to tell people, you know, I'm going to be champion soon. In fact, you know, he sort of outlined a dream when talking to Ariel and saying, you know, maybe one day at the end of the road, if I could get a chance to fight for a title and win it, then I

just throw the title to the ground pro wrestling style and be like, you know, F you all. He doesn't care about that. He's obvious about that. So either you, like you said, either you care about this soap opera or you don't. If you do, he's going to have the control right now. Doesn't mean he can't make fights where he could lose or couldn't be exciting. So it's going to be interesting how he navigates what he has here, because like we said, at one misstep, if it's a big misstep, it could, it could blow up the bubble. So it's going to be interesting to see to see but Luke he touched on a few other things that I thought were very interesting including his business ambitions is he a Robin Hood for you know boxers and MMA fighters

that aren't getting paid bringing attention to it you could argue that but now he's saying his promotional company MVP uh productions or whatever he's calling that thing is getting into the Amanda Serrano business in terms of co-promotion along with Lou DiBella her current promoter and that they are talking to Eddie Hearn to try to make this Amanda Serrano Katie Taylor lightweight undisputed championship fight a reality that's interesting Luke that's an interesting sort of pivot here I actually tend to think if he wants a future in boxing that's a real one that that's one where he you know obviously we're very early stages of whatever that might be as well but listen if you took it what did you take away from the cleveland experience i'll tell you what i took away from that it's quite obviously this kid is you know we've talked

about before for a celebrity he can box for a boxer he's just a celebrity that's that's always what it's going to be no matter no matter what for the most part. But he does have a, he's a very capable self-promoter, one. And two, do you realize he was in charge of 50% of everything you saw from the night of the broadcast to the workouts to the presser? That was his company, MVP, staging those events, then Showtime essentially acting as a broadcast partner. This dude has his hands in a lot of different parts of the fight game. It does seem to me, BC, and we'll see how things go with the Serrano and Katie Taylor negotiations with Eddie Hearn, but let's say he can help bring that to fruition. You want a place in the game.

It seems to me that that might actually be a route that you can take um I tend to think that that seems like it potentially potentially fortuitous possibilities there yeah no question about it uh Luke I want to I always like to close rapid style and get your opinion on here um what would it take to get Dana involved would it be two three more knockouts and doubling your pay-per-view audience what would it take to get Dana to say okay Nate Diaz's contract is coming to a close soon I'll get in on this with you I don't know the thing about it was Mayweather and Conor was so huge it moved mountains I don't know if there is any permutation that gets that done which is not to say there's

not a gazillion matchups you couldn't think of Conor, Jorge, Nate Diaz whatever in the boxing side of things that would make killer money maybe even two million in pay-per-view buys like I think it could do that but is there anything that gets you above three or four which is the territory for Mayweather and McGregor actually well well above four. I don't think so. I don't think that exists. And so for that reason, I tend to think that they're just sort of putting it out there. But I will say this. It's, dude, Dana White cannot do any kind of scrum with the media without someone,

several media members, bringing up Jake Paul constantly. It's the biggest thorn in his side, short of fighter pay, and those two are related there. Yeah, that's why if you're like, hey, guys, enough on freaking Jake Paul. Dude, he's on the front. He's on the tip of the tongue of both sides of the line right now because he draws. It is what it is. But I think to your point there, 2017 was a different area.

That was Conor's gone away, Rousey's done, UFC needs some money, pre-ESPN deal, so that was a different time, so to speak. You're not going to see that again unless something major changes. And also, Luke, how many more fights do you think before you and I start to go, okay, Jake, now you got to face the guys your size with better experience. I mean, how much longer on the, hey, he's a celebrity. He's calling the shots. How much rope are you going to give him before you're like, all right, F this now.

You got to fight Vitor or somebody like that he's a little bit trapped because if he goes out there and he beats tommy fury in let's say you know dominant fashion or something the calls for him to fight somebody who is considered a much more credible threat to him will intensify and at that point you begin to trade off what you could generate by virtue of not meeting fan demand. On the other hand, if it's relatively ho-hum but he gets a win, he doesn't face necessarily some of those pressures, but you're not really giving the fans the kind of return that they need, I think, over time anyway to sustain this effort. So probably a little while longer I think it can go this way,

but I do think ultimately this is going to come to some kind of conclusion based on either Peter's out one way or he loses badly in the bubble bursts. I don't know how else this can go on for so long. I'm Chavez Jr., Luke. I'm getting up in the bullpen. There may be one more payday for me at the end of this rainbow.

I mean, what is he doing? That dude probably woke up with like Dorito crumbs on his chest after he passed out in the bed, you know, watching Family Guy reruns. I don't know what he's doing with his life. Okay, let's go to topic number two. So this is one that we didn't want to get to on Monday because we had other things to get to and we kind of like thought, well, you know, let's get to this when we need to

get to this. And we probably don't need to get to it today, but I do think it's worth having a conversation about. Namely, there is a transgender fighter who transitioned from male to female. Her name is Alana McLaughlin. McLaughlin? I think it's like McLaughlin, yes. Like the McLaughlin group. And she competes in Combate Global and won her last bout not too long ago. I have the article up here from ESPN. This was in, yeah, 11th of September. So this is just last week. Okay.

So there's a lot of discussion about this BC. I've did a fair amount of research for this topic, BC, but I'm curious. I'm not even sure where to start with this one, but I guess the basic question I would ask is one, have you reviewed at least any of her fights? And two, what is your takeaway about to what extent combat sports should carve out a place for fighters like this? Yeah, look, this is a topic that certainly has legs in much further directions. You see that a lot, debates on the high school level, Luke, when males transition to females and then dominate,

and is that costing kids scholarship opportunities? You see that a lot in different areas. Combat sports can certainly be a little different because of the danger involved my knee-jerk reaction is somewhat in line with a lot of the fighter reaction that we're seeing just saying look like this doesn't seem to be fair at the end of the day someone in this case alana who's got the you know the the military background and the you know they show you show the before an actor video and your your knee-jerk reaction is to have fear for the females that she could potentially fight and obviously in this case you know for combate they found an opponent who was willing it took them a while but but you know

kudos and it was on that point it's on you know more or less even terms of if both fighters agree but i do think luke even though right now I'm against it from the standpoint of fighter safety, something's eventually going to have to be done across all sports, Luke, because we are going into more inclusive times in just about every category that are so different socially and culturally from even where we were 5, 10, 15 years ago. I mean, Luke, think about the jokes that used to be considered okay to make in public in your office that are now horribly insensitive. And you're like, why would I just seven years ago think that that was okay to do publicly? And I'm wondering, Luke, if this leads to a removal of genders as it pertains to sports down the line. Does sports one day become gender free with,

with the continued inclusion in so many aspects of life where it's just sort of like at the highest levels, it's just sort of open. It's not male or female. It's just sort of in that case, Luke, it's just sort of like people would be like, okay, go for it. You know, if you're a fighter who has transitioned already and you feel you can compete in that go, but we're not there yet, Luke. And we don't seem to be anywhere close to that yet. So I don't know what the right answer is within this specific rounds,

because as males and females, as we know today, there is a major difference in, in, in power. That's the fear, you know, bone structure, size, power, all of that. There's no, there's no overlooking that. And as that pertains right now to, to pro fighting or even in high school basketball, if the, if this, you know, or high school wrestling, if the size difference was that much, it's an unfair potential advantage. And when you have a sport that it could cause legitimate danger and it's already dangerous enough, I'm sort of stuck at this point where I do agree with a lot of the fighters.

You know, not in a hateful way, but in a way that as of right now, this isn't fair. Will it one day be fair? Could one fighter come along that changes our thoughts and perceptions on this? I do think one day we'll get there. I mean, the evolution of so many things positive have happened quick in this modern day. But, Luke, i don't know how you can sign off on that now though the way things are set up right now yeah so i'm more or less in agreement with you i i want to say a couple things about it first it's number one whenever you have some kind of issue like this in combat sports you naturally bear witness to what can only be described as

the ugliest version of it. And not just from small corners on YouTube comments, but from fighters as well. Listen, if you can't make an argument about the science, then you can't make an argument about this. This is not an argument about whether or not people should be transgender, whether they shouldn't, whether it's a good thing, whether it's a bad thing. This is not really the argument. The argument is now that they are here, to what extent do they deserve inclusion in these protected categories, male versus female, right? And we call it protected for a reason, because if you didn't have categories the way you were indicating, BC, let's imagine we didn't have weight classes. You know, Khabib's never going to be a champion if

there are no weight classes, right? You have to have certain kinds of protected classes. And in combat sports, weight is one of them. Gender is another. Then the whole point about fairness of sport kind of goes out the window. But there are a lot of people who like to parade insanely retrograde, absolutely horrific views about other human beings under the guise that what they're doing is making an argument about fairness in sports because at their heart, BC, they're just so concerned about the state of women's sports. No, these are bigots who just want you to know that they're bigots and they want to use something like this as a cudgel and as a Trojan horse to get into the conversation.

Well, to me, they don't belong in any capacity whatsoever. And I won't tolerate it for five seconds. It's no different than people using politics or religion to cover up a certain level of hate over a certain topic. It's sad. Of course. So to the extent that those opinions are out there, I don't give a fuck.

And I got to tell you, after the pandemic, there's a lot of people in MMA, fighters, managers, promoters, some media included, you have surrendered the right to have a serious opinion based on the idiocy with which you have tackled everything through this point let me put that out there first now the first thing I came to was here like how am I even possibly going to adjudicate this in any way Fallon Fox was weird for me because we had this situation and we didn't really have any research to understand better what it means to have someone in her particular situation, which was full-grown adult male who then transitioned later in adult life. This is something similar to that case with

Alana McLaughlin. So I looked up and I've been following this guy for a long time. We don't agree on a lot of issues, especially related to doping, but there's a science of sport professor named Dr. Ross Tucker. He has done incredible research. In fact, he has been instrumental in helping world rugby cope with the situation. Like, what do you do with males who have transitioned to females who want to play on rugby teams? To what extent should that be allowed? And he, of course, makes the argument very clearly up front. This has nothing, nothing to do with trying to police people's life choices.

And to the extent that that gets brought in at all, these people don't have a role in this debate. You are not relevant. You have an ax to grind that is no place here. But there was a study done in Sweden recently, and a lot of this information is recent, that found they did, now it's a smaller study, and they did not include, let's say, highest level athletes. So there are some problems with the study. More research is needed. But what they looked into was, what are some of the major things that are done

when you have this transition from male to female? The biggest one that they offer as evidence that the advantages are essentially removed is this hormone suppression, testosterone repression. And what they basically found was that, for example, in weightlifting, males tend to have a 30% to 40% advantage in pure strength at the elite level over the women. That's why they're, again, protected classes. What they found was that even after a year of testosterone, essentially, and hormone suppression, the amount that it made in terms of things like, for example, hemoglobin concentration,

which would be red blood cell concentration in your body, that did go down to female levels pretty quickly. But a lot of other things, including strength, lean muscle mass, muscle retention, whatnot, that we had less than a 5% change after a year. And what that basically says, Combate Global is not the highest level of sport, but that transitioning from male to female, you are going to carry an X amount of advantage. Even with the hormone suppression, it only reduces that advantage by a slight amount. Now, as they indicated, this research is fairly new. There is more that is required, but the idea that hormone suppression, testosterone repression by itself

and getting it to a level that would be on par with their female counterparts, that that is evidence enough of reducing the advantage is simply not true. In other words, what does the research currently say? that that is evidence enough of reducing the advantage is simply not true. In other words, what does the research currently say? It currently says that probably allowing transgender fighters who have transitioned after getting all of the benefits through puberty that testosterone provides is not going to confer fair advantages. That's what the existing research says. But I will tell you, BC, and I think you raised a great point. Listen, man, you can have, I think right now, you can have inclusion or you can have fairness in sports. I don't think you can have both.

But I also don't think that that is sustainable over the long run. Forget about combat sports, which, you know, this becomes much more immediate given safety concerns. We had Laurel Hubbard, the weightlifter who was from New Zealand, tried to compete. She totally bombed out at the Olympics. I'm just pointing out, they're not going away. There's going to be more and more of these situations. So more research is done. And I am open to the idea that subsequent research could tell us things that our existing research does not, and we're going to have to change our opinion. I don't think this is an issue we can just forget about. But I do think in all fairness, if we're trying to evaluate the best evidence that we have, the best evidence

indicates this is not something that currently should be allowed. Yeah, that's fair. And I, and you have to ask, okay, what, what can a promotion do moving forward? What can combate do if they want to continue to promote Alana? Do you have to make fights exhibition or have it, you know? I mean, you certainly have to find willing opponents. And if you do, again, then, you know, fair play. But even then, even if you find a willing opponent, that, again, dude, either women's sports as a category matter or they don't, right? And if we're going to have that as a category matter or they don't, right?

And if we're going to have that as a protected class, which you should, then, again, if you watch her fight, she's not very good. She's okay. She's enough to get on that level, and she won her last fight, although she got rocked a little bit and had to come back. And it's not like I want to deny these people every opportunity they are owed. They face enough – I mean, can you imagine, like, the kinds of messages this person gets from the hateful members? I mean, it must be an endless stream of it.

I don't wish that upon anyone. I mean, do you remember? I mean, just look back at the crap Cyborg got from Rousey and Dana. I mean, like, it's, you know, we're not that far removed from that, Luke, you know? And that's not even a comparative. And we're not even dealing with the same issue there. We're just dealing with somebody who had. No, that's not even a comparative. And we're not even dealing with the same issue there. We're just dealing with somebody who had. No, that's not even an apples to apples situation. It just shows you the knee jerk sort of like ignorant response that is still so prevalent.

But I just feel like, I'll recommend, I'll tweet out some links for some folks after the show if they want to go and hear what Ross Tucker, the professor and the world authority on this, has to say. I really recommend that. I don't love the idea of just saying no to people, like go find something else and we don't have something else for them. But at the same time, if what we actually really care about is making sure that women have the utmost amount of fairness, I don't know what research you can point to to say that this is a thing that should be allowed, even if we can recognize that,

is she going to beat the world's best women? No, she's not going to beat the world's best women, but that doesn't mean she's not retaining advantages relative to the baseline that was previously there given the competition change. And it doesn't mean we won't see positive step forward, which is if you find enough transition fighters from male to female that want to compete at the highest level they can for a promotion to, like I sort of teased, create a division, you know, for that. And does that lead to the eventual down the road removal of gender classifications in fight sports?

You have to it'd be it'd be ignorant to say it never would, Luke. Eventually it would. But we seem to be a very far, you know, far away from that. This you know, this just talking like this, even on this show, is obviously a positive step in the right direction to sort of figure out how to be inclusive without without being dangerous. And the science is going to the research will have to be a lot in that, as you said. And, you know, it's also takes time for people in decision making-making situations to want to open up these doors as well. But it's tough, Luke. It's tough for somebody just like it was tough before Title IX for women that wanted to play sports at a higher level and couldn't.

You know, you're going to have to have pioneers along the way that push boundaries. It just seems to be very early in that regard where you're going to find a lot of people willing to say yes for the right reasons. Right. And I often see like, oh, there's not really a whole lot of them. Aren't there other things we could be doing to promote women's sports? Yes. Ignoring the transgender issue for a moment. Are there other things that could be done to make women's sports better, safer, whatever?

Of course there are. But that doesn't really change the immediacy of this issue. And great. It's not team sports where, for example, if you're a transgender player and you play in a team sports, the amount of other players you come into contact with on opposing teams, that becomes a lot of people over time versus MMA. It's just one at a time. So the scale problem isn't there either in the same way it might be for other kinds of sports. I recognize. I feel like there's a lot more examination of this that has to happen in BC.

What if someone transitions for whatever reason prior to puberty? What does that do to the debate? There's just a lot we just don't know. But I'm basing what my opinion is on what the experts are telling me in this field, and they're telling me that the current way in which we are managing the situation does not reduce meaningfully the overwhelming advantages that come from a protected class to another and i think that has to matter at some point you have to wonder though luke are we 10 years away from the first transition transgender fighter fighting

in the ufc at the highest level you know will the ufc still be at the highest level at that point it it's going to be interesting how history evolves and by the way no one really cares about the other way where women go to men and we've seen a boxer do that go from a female to male and actually win um but you know obviously it's not the same kind of moral dilemma that this one brings up last thing i'll say in this we've seen people like vitor go to you know 2013 and just have more testosterone than any human has ever had at one point luke you know and look at those results right in the end the authorities will make the decisions based on the best, I hope the best available science that exists, whatever time that may be in whatever condition that may be. And we'll leave it at that. But I want to be clear one more time. The, the overwhelming

amount of discussion I have seen about this issue is people bringing in their priors about how they don't like transgender people and then using this issue as a way to paste their hateful world ideology on top of it you can take that shit to another sucker because it has no place at all in this conversation and i really will i will tell none of it miss me with that hate and miss me with bc's attempt at the vitor belfort mohawk joke even though i think it hit pretty good luke okay yes okay topic number three. The Mohawk joke was okay. Topic number three, BC. We kind of got to it on Monday, but I want to revisit it.

And BC, I have a very simple question for you. We're talking about Yoel Romero, who headlined Saturday against Phil Davis at the SAP Center on Showtime for Bellator. BC, let me ask you a question. Why hasn't there been any interviews with Yoel this week on any media outlet that I can find it's a fair question Luke you got good questions this week about Bellator was Phil Davis the right matchup for him which I thought was an interesting one on Monday I have also looked for research for

this show today knowing we're going to talk about Yoel again, because this is a fight we both really want to see a lot of unanswered questions. I don't know. And Luke, I don't think we investigated a lot after Yoel fell out of the Rumble-Johnson fight with the eye injury. How much is this going to damage his future? Bellator was quick to say, don't worry, he'll be back soon making his debut. And it is relatively soon, although obviously we all lament the Rumble-Romero matchup and the fact that it was part of the tournament to kick it off.

I mean, that would have been, there was some rightful just buzz around that. I'm hoping, Luke, it's much ado about nothing. And we're staying quiet for a good reason. And you well can come out there pass medicals get into this fight and show us what he has in this portion this chapter of his career moving back up to light heavyweight still has the star value still has the expectations of violence and knockouts but can he fight at the elite level here in bellator um are you fearful luke of of something medical here something's just a little off for me I don't really know what it is

and maybe it's just an unusual confluence of events BC where there really is no story there there is no there there I don't know I I legitimately do not know which end of the spectrum this belongs in but this is what occurs to me I didn't see any interviews for him I'm like dude for for his like there's no way he's not getting requests. He's just not fielding them. And that by itself is not uncommon either. But you know, we saw him for that Bellator media day. He couldn't have been more jovial. So why wouldn't he want to do media? I don't know. Fighters have their reasons, but that is a little bit unusual, especially for the guy who's a little bit more of the gregarious sort, number one. Now, obviously, he will do some media as part of Fight Week this week,

so maybe that all goes away, but I did find it curious, enough to the point where I texted his manager, Monkey Kyle, I'm like, bro, where are all these interviews? You know, he didn't know either. He wasn't exactly sure what the reason is. I find that to be a little bit off. I think it plays into the larger thing here, Luke, that the Rumble Romero buzz was just naturally euphoric.

It was like, what the hell is this freak show of all-time great knockout artists gonna look like? You know, it's just gonna be a beautiful disaster of everything. Nobody, it seems, is talking enough about, you know, the challenge at stake here for Romero, the fact that this is a very interesting technical matchup, and just, you know, what's at stake from the standpoint of if Romero wins and looks great and this ends up looking like a great free agent signing,

what can he bring to the promotion in terms of legit title contention mixed with star value and must see quality? It's very interesting. I hope it picks up the next few days, but Luke, this fight freaking rules, and it ain't easy under any stretch of the imagination for Romero to make his debut with.

Yeah, and then the other part was I looked on his Instagram page, BC, and some of these photos are old, and whatever problem he had, that there might be physical differences in the eyes, doesn't necessarily mean a lot. But if you look, the eyes have a different posture in the eyes doesn't necessarily mean a lot. But if you look, the eyes have a different posture in the face. One eye is consistently more open and sort of more alert than the other. What does that mean? I'm not a medical doctor. I don't know. But I'll just say this. Between those

sort of factors, how relevant they may be or not, and this other reality where, dude, he came out of the signing of the news that he was moving to Bellator with a ton of heat. Imagine that we have a situation where there's just not a lot of media. We don't know the state of his eyes. Enough to pass a commission test, that's fine. But long term, how much is there? You go and you fight Phil Davis, and let's say it's close, but he just sort of loses a relatively ho-hum decision. BC, does that pop the balloon in all of the grandeur that was Yoel going to Bellator,

especially when you add on top of that, he's reaching, he's close to his mid-40s at this point. I realize he's different, but there is that factor. That is, that's in play. That is legitimately in play. And that's why I wanted to sort of ask you today, Luke, about not just mentality, but strategy in here. Look, we know Romero's situation. Hasn't fought since right before the pandemic when he dropped that close split decision to Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight title. He'll be going back to light heavyweight for the first time since 2011 under the Strikeforce banner on Showtime when he lost to, what was it,

Rafael Cavalcanti? Hasn't fought at 205. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Haven't fought at 205 since then. So, Luke, considering that he's in this weird predicament where he's lost three of his last four fights, of course, but all three were against supremely elite competition. I'm sorry, four of his last five.

So he's lost four of last five coming in. All four against the super elite in this game, and all four, you could make an argument that he did enough to win. Is it time for Yoel to go YOLO at 205 now? Different setup, different situation. He is still a freak of nature, so maybe at the higher weight, his speed and he's a great boxer will come into play. But Luke, you can't have what you just mentioned. You can't have another boring performance and again, it's hard to look good against Phil Davis, but you can't have what you just mentioned. You can't have another boring performance. And again, it's hard to look good against Phil Davis. But you can't have another performance in which you lose a close decision and you say into the microphone afterwards, well, I thought I won.

And you have hipster media guys like me going, hey, still don't think I've ever seen Yoel lose at this level. I mean, you have to change that narrative. And the way to do that, Luke, is to fight reckless and risky. And the thing about Yoel at this age is even though he's a freak of nature and his body is a wonderland and there's really no one else like him, it's hard to fight five full minutes of every round at that breakneck pace. Now, he did it against Paulo Costa in one of those just all-time great

put-it-on-fight pass and just let it roll fights. Can he do that again? Can he be that fighter at this level? Or can he be an adjustment to that due to age where he fights in quick bursts and then has to rest? Luke, how do you see? How would you advise him if you're in your corner? Because I just don't think he's going to wrestle and take that chance of gassing out. He hasn't been a wrestler for forever in the MMA cage. He's a puncher. He's a counter striker, but you can't have another Adesanya fight.

You just can't have it. If you're Romero, you got to win and you got to turn heads because you're either in this game to compete for the light heavyweight championship, which is why you entered that tournament or you're not. And the only way you're going to be Nemcoff rumble and all these bait or all these killers is by being that knockout threat and also the other part about is is i mean for me what i'm focusing on is like these weird confluence of pre-fight events and

like what happens to the yoel romero hype and the belief he has in any kind of you know medium-term future if everything doesn't go his way conversely if he's you mentioned you know phil davis is a hard guy to look good against that's a fact let's say romero does in fact look good against him and get some kind of sensational win dude he's on i mean cloud number nine to the nth degree would be enormous enormous for him and i agree like the part about him being not being a wrestler it's sort of true it's mostly true it's not entirely true like for example he did wrestle to an extent robert whittaker but like dude fucking phil davis is a lot bigger probably a shitload stronger probably as pure wrestling goes a lot better than robert whittaker maybe that's a little bit debatable but at a bare minimum dude he's a huge person well muscled that's no joke

if you had trouble you know you can take yourel's good at getting the takedown, but not good at keeping them there. How are you going to do that with a guy like Phil fucking Davis? Like, good luck with that. So to me, I think you're right, BC. There is a fucking metric ton of pressure on Yoel. How good are you still? Can you be good against the world's best, which I still count Phil Davis in, even if he's not necessarily the world's most exciting fighter on a main event, up a weight class. that's the one thing here that I still think has gotten his benefit. He might be able to do a little bit more, BC, and give a little bit more, because he's not cutting so much to get down to 185. He's going to stay at 205, where he is just

as strong as he needs to be, but not as drained. But to your point, dude, the onus is going to be, who is the responsibility on to make this fight something other than what it's you know what inertia would would ordinarily take it it's on your well yeah it's on your well because if phil wants to sit behind the jab and the cross and l step his way around the whole time he will and he will win doing that it's on your well you're this is what happens so two bad things happen to old fighters luke one their chin goes and that's just the deal right your reflex is slow and your chin goes and your punch resistance goes your well's not there yet the other thing that goes is the failure

to to launch now it's woodley's failure to launch to close his ufc career was a little bit different it seemed to be there was more mind mental blocks. Yoel has a failure to launch at times because sometimes you get too selective in waiting for the perfect moment to open up. That perfect counter strike opportunity when your opponent makes a mistake. But at the super, super elite level, Luke, you're not going to have a lot of those moments

like Romero did to Weidman to shut off the lights or even against Rockhold. So if you're going to wait around for a guy like Phil Davis, it's just not going to be there. He's more than willing to take you down the boring decision route. So I hope Yoel feels that understanding of pressure and knows that what is there for him by looking good.

And Luke, you can argue just the same here. He could lose but look really good and exciting and still benefit from this in terms of future opportunities. Yes. In fact, there's a way to win nobly and then just blame Phil for however much you can blame him if the fight doesn't go his way. Oh, he was protecting himself and he wasn't doing this, that, and the other.

There is a way. I just mean, I think this is like a real crossroads fight for Yoel Romero. It doesn't necessarily have to be, but there are ways in which it very much could be, both depending on how he performs, what the outcome is, and what it says that he's been noticeably absent for a guy who is very much the life of the party. That stands out to me. I think it matters. How it matters and what ways, we won't know until saturday but it's definitely on the front of my mind is part of you

hoping that you know phil davis slips on a banana peel and we get like yoel versus melvin manhoof and it's just buckle up luke is part of you hoping for that i hope not well i mean here like this is what i mean here is the benefit of fighting a guy like Phil it's that if you beat him dude no one can take that from you Phil for whatever else you want to say about him is a physical specimen he has not taken a ton of damage he is well trained he is very experienced at this point he's one of the best in the world if you can beat him dude you are capable of doing many many incredible things and I think the future would be as bright you know as it possibly could be given the circumstances the problem this is why I asked you about it on Monday the problem with this booking to me this is I'm not gonna

say it's up there with Fader versus Tim Johnson in terms of head scratching I don't think it's that but it is a real risk because you could also have a situation right equally possible at least in theory where you well goes out there can't do shit to a guy who's very hard to do anything against, throws his hands up in frustration, the fans get bored, and they say, wow, here's another fight that didn't necessarily have to be this way that Bellator booked, and now you've kind of soured the beginning of the run for Yoel Romero when he's already out of the tournament. Why did you give him a guy who was a dark horse to win it, who, by the way, is kind of boring? There's a lot of ways this could blow up in everyone's face, too, and I think we all have to recognize that. That's the risk-reward. I mean, the reward, you come out there and you look fantastic.

You might get a title shot. Now, that title shot will have to wait. We're going to see the semifinals of this tournament on October 16th. We're going to see the finals probably first quarter, right, of the next year. But you go out there and finish phil davis you're probably gonna get that title shot so uh risk reward to me if you see no one's talking about it big fucking stakes on saturday big yeah all right let's go to topic number four

if we can last night was a tuesday night contender series by the way lauren senko michael bisping and dan helly great trio did a great job with it They have a new ring announcer Justin, I forget his last name But he did a great job as well They finally made Laura and I have to do all the roles there BC, there's a lot of names we could go through here I don't know if you want to go through all of them I certainly don't

But there were a couple that stood out to me That were just unbelievable For me, like the star of the show last night How about this kid Albert D doryev doryev oh my god dude here was a guy uh they explained basically he's been ufc ready for years he had a contract dispute with acb slash aca there was the pandemic he's just been on ice for a while this guy has been ufc ready quite literally four years he took Betancourt to the effing woodshed and did it with ease in every position and then BC you heard it called out Adesanya called out or not

Adesanya excuse me or maybe Adesanya forget who any time he called out all the top 185ers Vittori Cannoneer he basically called out all the heavy hitters and he trains with Sean Strickland so he's more than ready for for that type of smoke but I mean he basically called out all the heavy hitters and he trains with Sean Strickland, so he's more than ready for that type of smoke, but I mean, he's asking for all the smoke. Look, he's asking for Stack 5, Jerry Stackhouse, your boy over there who plays the basketball. He's asking for that level of smoke, alright?

How was he your top star standout last night? No, the guy in the main event from Brazil, the light heavyweight, Almeida. You know, the name is spelled Jailton, but what is it hylton i mean you know i'm gonna butcher this luke right you know yeah ronaldo uh look almeida comes in there and he's going up there against nastrudin nastrudinov who it was interesting how they set up the video packages to open up this was going to be the featured fight the main event yet you had almeida

the brazilian saying i'm the guy who fights the Habib style if I need to. I can do everything. And Nastradinov going, bro, I'm from the Shmesh factory. You're going to get this. No, Luke. The Brazilian Almeida made this fight easy. Luke, did you see that double leg that he shot right in the beginning? It was sort of next level.

His body's ready. Mindset-wise, he seems to be ready. And his technique to be able to scramble out of these positions he got hit with some hard punches here from Nostradinov but was always able to flip the script back and then got that second round takedown takes them back you see the choke right there look this was dominant I think look this was a six fight card Dana gave out five contracts afterwards to five of the six winners. We'll get to a second and the guy who didn't get the contract. But I thought Almeida was the one who looked most UFC ready today

and looked the most dominant, and there was an emotional reaction from him. Luke, this was leveling up where I'm like, put him on a card tomorrow. I'm ready for this. He was. His musculature was, dare I I say Yoel Romero like I mean I could not believe how fucking I mean look at this dude he is out of control muscular and to your point he made smart decisions he he wasn't just a built guy who like oh it looks good on a poster no no he uses all of that very, very effectively.

I agree. I had Dariah as my number one and then Almeida as my number two, but I can't really argue with it. Almeida. The key is you're in there against a wrestler who's coming in, known for that wrestling, telling you what he's going to do, yet you're the one with the creative trips to constantly take him down. And any time his opponent got the better position,

it was like Almeida instantly could reverse it. This guy is a thinker in there, Luke. And it looks great in a Speedo, I'm sure, even if that's your cup of tea. He's a beast. Luke, I want to hit that co-main because the only guy that didn't get the contract, you could argue coming in, had the best record and reputation and sort of prospect status, and that was the Bantamweight Mo Miller. He gets a three-run unanimous decision over a tough Brandon Lewis.

Luke, I feel like Dana and company may have erred unless they're trying to send a message to Mo Miller, as they tend to do on this series. Brendan Loughnan, anyone? That if you're not going for the finish 24-7, reckless video game spaz style. We don't want you. I don't think Miller fought overly safe.

I thought he just was effective and controlled the action on the ground, had that advantage, stuck with it, was professional in getting the win, talked a good game afterwards, said, I can do better, but I knew I had the control. To see him not get the contract, when they threw a contract at that heavyweight winner luca breschi i don't know if he sleeps with the fishes luke but this guy looked okay he didn't even look like he had the body of a heavyweight he was yeah i agree with you he didn't look okay let me let me pitch to you what i think they were thinking about mo miller see what you

think about this i think part of it was that it wasn't as dominant as you might have imagined it to be reputationally this guy came in with a big reputation all-american he was obviously stupid athletic I mean crazy athletic ability but and I will say Brandon Lewis you know fighting from guard underneath constantly going for triangles constantly putting the feet and hips he didn't make it easy but the takeaway that I had was one, there wasn't necessarily that ability to go to a final gear to really push the fight to finishing territory. And two, it probably came from the fact that he's still a little green. He's still a little green. Very, very good. If you put him in the UFC, BC, could he win fights? Yes. But if you waited a

little bit longer and he seasoned up a little bit more, how much further could he go by that point if he then went to the UFC? My hunch is it's the combination of the two. That's fair. That is fair. And maybe it plays into that Gable-Stevenson conversation we had the other day where Dana's like, we don't think you're ready. And by the way, Gable talked to Ariel again and, by the way, said that he had made the decision in his mind long before that

that he was going back to school. So maybe there's something where the UFC sensed that, that he wasn't as serious as maybe he was putting out there publicly. But they're of the idea that, you know, when you're ready, that's when we'll sign you. Or if you fight like an animal, we'll sign you today. That's the quickest way to date in his heart, Luke. We know that.

And by the way, I forgot your boy Dariah, the guy you were the most impressed with, I did like afterwards. It's an overused play after you get the win to go up to the fence and talk to Dana. I mean, it's basically like you have to do it now. But when he goes up there and is like, I smash all of them. Are you listening, Dana? Do you hear me, Dana? I smash everybody.

I'm just like, hey, yeah, yeah, right, bro. Do you think I could last an hour in the smash factory? I'm not even talking about on the mat why was i why was derai of scottish with your accent you know i i i do i i do have a scottish last name and when you take the french canadian lithuanian interest it's a smorgasbord of uh of love and art in there luke but uh i did like that power move um did were you moved at all by jack della maddalena that's a mouthful mid fight but uh here was a jacked welterweight with good tough boxing that was a good ass win he had

there against uh the sparring partner of kamaru usman a few years back yeah that was a great fight good testing ground it went to the decision but i thought you know obviously you got a little bit close there i think it was the second round Almost got hit with the head and arm triangle. But showed well-rounded ability. Constantly pursued the fight. Good on the feet. That was the other problem with Mo Miller. It's like, you could tell he was always looking for the takedown.

It wasn't really doing a lot on the feet to maybe advance his cause as much as he could have. Not the case with Della Maddalena. I mean, he was out there going for it. And also, Jasmine Jazdavisius, however you pronounce her name, she was about it, about it, too. Pretty goddamn impressive. The heavyweight one we haven't talked about. Hold on.

We're an hour into the show. We've got to keep this moving. Well, I mean, I'm not going anywhere, Luke. What do you got to do? That's the problem. What, do you got another job? I mean, come on. No, but we've got to move this shit along.

I thought that Polish chick put it on her a little bit in the third round, Luke. I thought there was a couple holes she showed. But she's late to the game at age 32, so that was interesting. Luke, final bit on DWCS. The show rules. I said it last week. From an entertainment standpoint, it's really freaking good, and I didn't expect it to be this good.

From the video packages to the presentation, this is really good TV. I'm down. I'm down. I'm down. I love it. I think they do a great job. I love how similar it looks, yet how different it feels. Everything about it's cool. The only thing I'd say is, however you pronounce this Polish kid's name,

Brzezinski, whatever it was, he didn't actually get a tap. They credited him with a third round near-naked choke. Dylan Potter didn't really tap, but he was well on his way to losing this fight, so it's unfortunate that it ended the way that it did. But he fought a late-minute replacement. He didn't look great. I don't even think he's physically a heavyweight. I think he's a light heavyweight.

It was baffling that he got the contract. He looked like a homeless man's Yuri Prohotska, right? I mean, he had the taste and feel of a killer, but I didn't see it, you know? My feeling was was bc that they were grading him on a heavyweight curve so take that for what it is you know all right take that and rewind it back and get mo miller a contract if i'm bellator pfl anybody if i'm shot tree and john nash is wondering where where he got that 400 million from i'm calling mo miller tomorrow all right? Fair enough. All right, some quick hitters here before we call it a day on this particular portion of the show. BC, Jan Blachowicz says he would fight Yuri Prochocka, dot, dot, dot,

but only in Europe, not in the United States. Quote, Jan said to MMA Fighting, yeah, great run for him, talking about Prochocka. He's a crazy fighter, but in a good way, crazy wild style, but he knows how to use it. But I believe that I will fight Glover and then maybe cover Deshera. And then maybe in the future with Yuri, I will fight, but somewhere in Europe. If I have to fight with Yuri, we have to do this in Poland or somewhere in Europe because all of Europe would like to come and see this fight live. I hope he's right because that would be awesome.

It would be. And it's not likely. Or, you know, maybe the compromise is, okay, we'll put in a London. But, Luke, you know, they don't like to do that. You know, they'll put in an Abu Dhabi because the money's so good. They don't like to do that. It would be great for the crowds. But I like that. I like a fighter pushing back a little,

trying to figure out what their leverage is, what their value is. I mean, did you check Luke Rockhold with Ariel,ke and and how much he was just talking shit about venom and just kind of doing what fighters don't seem to do anymore just run their mouth right about what do you say about venom yeah oh he was like he was like you you fucking telling me uh i gotta wear this these shorts has a snake face on it like what the fuck he was just going off dropping f-bombs it almost made him likable again luke i'm sure the ufc brass loved that oh i'm sure that you know i'm sure nothing will change right because it's just him and he's on his way out more or less but uh yeah i didn't see that same uh i didn't see that same energy when uh the millionaire matchmaker called him although i didn't see that same energy coming back you know fair when patty when patty

was like listen you player you player, right? Patty Stanger, remember? Yeah, and called him a hottie patottie. Remember that? Oh, yeah. She got underneath the jab on that one. BC, Nate Diaz has responded to a call-out from Vicente Luque. Now, to the producers back in the Orchids of Combat,

or whatever the hell we're calling that thing, you guys have this tweet, right uh from Vicente Luque or the video anyway where he mentions why he would be a great candidate for the Nate Diaz sweepstakes and as they pulled us up I will tell you BC his logic to me is pretty unassailable what he basically says is yeah I'm not going to win this like talking I don't think I'm that guy but if you want an action fight i'll be your huckleberry do we have that or no sound like no nate is a fighter and fighters fight and i'm the kind of fighter that man i'm gonna put on an exciting fight no matter who it is so nate wants a big fight i'm not gonna sell it by talking but i'm definitely gonna sell

it by fighting he knows and everybody knows i'm gonna step in there and i'm not gonna sell it by talking but i'm definitely gonna sell it by fighting he knows and everybody knows i'm gonna step in there and i'm gonna try to take his head off even if he tries to take my head off i'm gonna keep on pushing so if the ufc wants an exciting fight if nate wants to be in an exciting fight i'm the name i'm the guy you know and and i'm with bc is he is he in any way, shape, or form wrong? Doesn't seem like he is to me. No. No, he's not wrong.

I just don't know what Nate gets from this fight and why he would be interested. I have a theory. So, well, is your theory linked to the idea that Nate has, what are we hearing, two or three fights left on the deal? That Nate's deal could be be that Nate's just like, let me do this deal as quick as I possibly can so I can get that boxing money. Is that your thoughts on this? And let me at least put myself in there with bangers,

so I'm not going to get, you know, I don't know. Could be part of it. But to me, it says a lot that, one, he's not calling out a lightweight opponent, or not calling out, but he's not entertaining, it seems, a lightweight opponent. He's entertaining a welterweight opponent. And we went over this. We're like, why the hell is he fighting Leon Edwards and blah, blah, blah? Well, his team basically, this is an oversimplification, but I think there's a lot of people on his

team that felt like if you're going to fight a welterweight and you can get a win over Leon Edwards, which at least in theory was winnable on some level, that would put you right for the title sweepstakes or at the very, very front of the pack. I think they're trying to go back to the well again on that same logic. Vicente Luque, I think, is going to do bad things to Nate Diaz personally. But if you had to pick someone in that top five space, probably the best you could come up with for Nate Diaz having a chance

is against Vicente Luque because while he dishes out punishment BC, he does tend to take some, and we know how durable and whatnot Nate Diaz can be. I don't know. I feel like Nate's best— Do you know how many fights he has left? Do you actually know? I don't, no. I wish this was all public info at all times.

It would really help being a pundit and breaking the shit down. But you do hear that it's up next year. So I wonder if he's thinking, okay, my big money fight is the trilogy with Conor. So let me stay busy against bangers. Let me try to stay active. Let me get out of this deal and put the leverage back in my situation. And maybe he gets that Conor comeback fight in early next year. And I would like to see late 30s Nate

with a little more leverage in whether it's getting a Jake Paul or whether it's something different, Luke. I'd like to see what he can do with that. Because I don't think, I mean, outside of the Conor trilogy, I don't know, Luke. I don't see the Poirier title fight for Nate at 155 happening. Also, just going to your head. Who wins?

BC, I think you've cut me off every single sentence today. Who do you favor in a Nate Diaz versus Vicente Luque fight? You gotta favor Luque at this size, but to your point, he is a little bit

one note in that he's coming forward. He's coming at you. So if you're Nate and you're going to try to take this guy into deep waters and see if he's a real or if he's really about that. You know he's coming at you, but can he take this level of give and take?

There's a win. Nate can win this fight, but I think any elite guy, it'd be hard to fate and it'd be hard to favor nate over any elite at lightweight or weltsway at this point luke you can give him the veteran soldier respect as the b-side in any of them but it really would be hard to favor him i think that's right all right bc well rains are yours good sir do you care luke about teofimo lopez jr that last friday's espn card he said after this cambosos fight which is monday october 4th and by the way triller raised

their pay-per-view price from 20 now to 50 for that luke and triller also you you sent me the link to the kevin aioli column triller's got a new uh what's the guy's name thurston meyer something like that the guy you guys respected in boxing circles. He's like their new matchmaker. He says, Triller now looking to get out of the exhibition, old guy business and go good fights only. We'll see if that happens. But Tao says, I'm done at 135. I don't need to offer Lomachenko a rematch. It does nothing for me. You know, I want to move up to 140 and fight Josh Taylor for all four belts. So while I think we like the latter half of that equation, if that's what Tao feels, So while I think we like the latter half of that equation, if that's what Tao feels,

Luke, I don't like the specific quotes he gave the ESPN broadcast where he said, I did everything at 135. Luke, I hate calling out Tao because you know I love this guy and I've been interviewing him since like day one, before day one-ish. Dude, all the young stars right now are at lightweight. I'm not saying the fights are easy to make.

You did everything. You didn't fight Gervonta. You didn't fight Ryan Garcia. You didn't fight Devin Haney. So, like, you beat Lomachenko in a great fight, but a close fight. It just so happened that Loma had all the belts, not counting Devin Haney's WBC, all the shenanigans with the super champion. I don't like that statement.

I don't know if this is money and coolness and public leveraging and public negotiation and swagger. But come on, Tao, get back on the right side of the war here, right? The one thing I would say is when he says if he lost to Lomachenko, he would not be afforded a rematch. That sounds right to me. No? I don't know. He's a growing brand for top rank. I think if he had lost to Lomachenko in that first fight

and looked good in defeat, I think they'd go out of their way to push Loma back into it. And if Loma had beat him, unless it was a situation where Loma beat him by the skin of his teeth after multiple knockdowns, you would think Loma would look around and say, that's probably my biggest money fight in terms of what's easiest to make in-house i think he would have gotten it i don't like this stance so much you know what i'm saying

it's one thing to say i'm the a side against all these other guys you want to do that posturing that's fine but to just be like oh i've already accomplished everything here i'm moving up not yeah that's wrong that's that yeah that's objectively not true yeah right so yeah fair enough okay sir uh take it away it's been a long time since we've rock and rolled but you know the premise some wednesdays we do this sometimes luke doesn't want to answer certain questions but he doesn't want certain topics in the run town because he's an old bitch but luke we've created a segment in which i have a wheel and I've got 10 categories. And it's five spins, five good faith responses to decently faith questions. We call this the Wheel of Death.

Wheel of D-Bags. Yes. Luke, it's time to spin the black circle. Are you ready for your 10 categories? Yeah. Here we go. Really, there's like five categories since the other ones are just made up and I never get to go to them.

Look, you get what you get. If you land on them, you get them, okay? There's no bait and switch here. There's no three-card Monty. I got ten ready for you. Here's your categories this week. Swipe right for straw weights. You know I'd like to.

You're in luck. Heels for feels. PF Chang AF. Oh, God. Taller than Rogan. Crosby Stills in BDE. Hoppa's prenup. My favorite Olsen twin.

TRT Lorenzo style. And finally, Luke, Libyan nationalists. And no, I'm not talking about CBS Sports HQ's Hakeem Dermish Luke the first Libyan born North African to ever host Sports Center by the way just a heads up on that little history maker right there good to know alright spin that shit Luke

let's do this we're back we're back baby this is gonna suck yeah yeah for you yeah of course I mean This is going to suck. Yeah, yeah, for you, yeah. Of course, I mean, let me guess, some dumbass question about Ariel you want me to answer? Wow, wow. What does heels for feels have anything to do with Ariel, Luke?

Disney calling himself Heel Wani or something like that? Oh, he is, you're right, you're right. All right, well, let's see what we got here. I'll tell you straight up, Luke, you're not going to gonna like this question mostly because you hate pro wrestling and whether it's surprising to you or not i respect that but you don't respect that at all because every five years or so i too end up hating pro wrestling and i go away for a little bit and then it pulls me back in because i'm infected with the drug luke okay well let's get back to it but to act like there isn't a shit ton of wwe and pro wrestling influence in the way dana white and ufc have so brilliantly marketed and promoted mma over the last 20 years luke it would be a blatant

lie correct yes fans simply care more about fights when they have an emotional investment and a reason to watch sometimes the substance of that emotional investment can be secretly manufactured by creating a hero and a villain. Half the time, given human nature, those roles develop naturally. Other times, Dana and company, you know, they shape

them based on if a fighter's marketable or not. Sometimes fighters are savvy enough, Luke, to play their own character and cultivate this, but either way, it's there. It's Pro Wrestling 101, and everyone from Ali to Floyd to Conor and Brock have done so effectively, playing the heel, which is a bad guy in pro wrestling, or playing the baby face, the good guy. So, given that unavoidable reality, Luke, name for me the top five ufc fighters who currently play the best role in modern mma of both the good guy the baby face and the bad guy the heel and how they carry themselves

how they self-promote themselves and how they are presented in terms of the fighter of fans clicking by on the pay-per-views luke who are the best good guys and the best bad guys in MMA promotion today? Now, when you say good guys, help me understand something. There are guys who play the good guy role, and people still don't care about them. And then there are guys who play the good guy role, and because they play the good guy role in the way that they do that, they sell more.

That's the argument, right? Yeah, but you could put good guys on there who don't sell. Basically, who's the best at playing the quote unquote wrestling good guy in terms of promotion and who's the best bad guys today good guys obviously you gotta start with Wonderboy I think that's easy

I think over time it has become a case where Dustin Poirier would be one of your good guys good call there yes you know with all the charity stuff and the Good Fight Foundation being just so part of what he does and, like, you know, making everything about character, that's a big one. You know, Valentina Shevchenko to an extent, I think.

Oh, I like that, yes. Now, even though he's retired, would you sayc has has evolved from a heel at some at one point in his career to being one of the biggest baby faces in this in this era same with michael bisping both of them went from a place where they were initially kind of despised to beloved so i think that plays a role um so those will be some names on that side i'm sure there's many more you could pick d-pay bro steepay is the other answer you're looking for. Stipe is a great answer, totally. On the other side, it's easy.

I mean, you could start with Colby. You could argue how effective it is, but it's just so obvious. Conor, I think, has moved into that role, candidly. Yep. Let's see, who else? Jon Jones, for sure. Yes, yes. Now, Luke, would you argue that both Diaz brothers are in that sort of stone-cold gray area

where they act like heels, but they're praised as babyfaces? Yes. 10,000. Total antiheroes. I mean, you couldn't pick two better guys for that role. I'm trying to think. Who else has, like, really made themselves? I mean, Josh Koshtik back in the day was loathed

to a pretty strong degree. Sean Strickland is trying to be a heel here. Sean Strickland's getting into that a little bit as well. Chael played both sides at times, depending on who the audience was. Ioana? Ioana's a heel to the other girls, right? The other females?

Yeah. Yeah, not so much to the fan base, though. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, you can count her. See, Luke, that was a pro wrestling question that was painless right painless is a strong word the word painless is doing a lot of work there in that sentence okay okay luke this is what the people came to hear luke okay pf chang as fuck here we go luke i know two things about the last few weeks in mma media wars one we all felt helpless watching the steady beef play out between Ariel Hawani and Brendan Schaub.

And two, it puts you personally in a precarious spot. Doesn't do shit to me. Because you are friends and sometimes colleagues with both and fans expect you to pick a side and talk about it publicly and declare a winner, but that's just not your style. And again, Luke,

I respect that. So I'm not going to put you in that type of awkward position, but I will use this to transition to something we can't ignore. Whether it's your repairing your beef with independent Heelwani or Brendan cooking up the sirloin for his own good, MMA fans care about the soap opera side of this bullshit. And Luke, they care a lot. In fact, everything from your live chat a couple weeks ago to Ariel's retooled MMA hour

to Ariel's appearance on Pat McAfee's show to even below the bell, if you check the headlines, it seems like people have been capitalizing on this of late, this beef, and people wanted to hear about it and putting it in the headlines and all these videos, they're firing up right now, okay? In the case of Ariel and Brendan, a ton of it is largely overblown, mostly because there's no payoff at the end of this program. It's great that they're going back and forth, Luke, but they ain't meeting in the octagon

or inside a triller boxing ring any time soon to settle their grudge. But considering how much people care, imagine a scenario in which Showtime Digital came to you and they said, look, we're going to be as shameless as anyone in this game. We want to take advantage of the clicks. People care about journalist beefs or fighter and journalist beefs or promoter and journalist and fighter beefs. And they said, Luke, we need you to brainstorm ways in which these type of things can be monetized and publicized while also declaring a winner in the end. What's your incentive? We will double your salary for the remainder of your contract if you

can help make this a winner. So, Luke, that seems to be enough to get you off of your, you know, soapbox. And let's say after a brainstorm session to create a name for this spinoff show, you and I decide it's going to be called Hot Beef Injection. Showtime also lets you know they have major sponsorships lined up. So everyone involved has a chance to benefit from this. So congratulations, Luke, you're the executive producer of Hot Beef Injection, and I'm the host, and we will both make twice the money we've been talking about.

And whether it's merely a televised debate or some kind of crazy family double dare meets American gladiators, pitch to me a creative way in which beasts of this kind involving journalists, promoters, or fighters can be settled that will satisfy the gossip-loving fans who provide the big ratings and get us all filthy rich without anyone getting physical? I don't fucking know, and I don't care.

Luke, they offered you a chance to double your salary. You're the executive producer of Hot Beef Injection. First of all, I'm not working on any show called Hot Beef Injection, okay? Number one. Are you, Luke? I bet you you got a price for the million dollar man, okay? I bet you you do, all right? I probably do.

It's not one that Showtime's going to pay or CBS Sports is going to pay, for sure. Dude, I don't give a fuck about any of this stuff. This stuff about, like, beefs and, like, using it. Dude, this is what, I know YouTube is built around this, for example. Like, all these fitness influencers, fitness influencers going after each other. Vegan Gains goes after people all the time and vice versa. Then they have debates and they use it for raising their profile. Dude, I'm not even interested in that even at all.

That's so not what I want to do with my life. I would fucking quit before I did anything like this. No chance. Okay, well, Luke, let's say you couldn't. Let's say you had to pay the bills you you needed this money okay let's say you had a pending lawsuit and a big fine to pay for something back in the day that came to light okay okay okay coach okay uh i don't know i'd have i'd have brendan and ariel take turns farting in your c-pap machine at night until you vomited in it i don't know i don't know what would we do how do we settle these beefs that can't be settled the

old-fashioned way luke fighting or fucking that's what we do i don't know i'm not answering this i don't like you're asking me like you know look how many angels do fit on the head of a pin i don't i this is a nonsensical question that I couldn't possibly offer an answer to. I mean, bets, physical challenges, bang each other's wives. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, but I don't care. Okay, wow.

So I guess this is a bad faith response to a moderately faith question. It's not even moderately good faith. It's just idiotic. I think we're leaving money on the table. I mean, look, you've got hot ones, the wing eating competition. That's a great, you know, we could do something in that vein if you want, Luke. We can get Poirier's hot sauce

as a sponsor and make Ariel and Brendan just go wing for wing. Bubba, you into this? And what does that settle? It gets clicks, Luke. That's the point. You want to double your salary or not? I don't care about that shit. You covered Jake Paul. You don't have a soul anymore. Okay? At all. Wow. That's a punt, folks. It was not i don't care about that you covered jake paul you don't have a soul anymore okay all right all

wow that's a that's a punt folks okay it was it was yeah listen listen not every down is a touchdown sometimes you're fourth and one on your side of the field too but nope that's a punt okay it seemed more like third and 30 and i just said fuck it let's go ah well the people know the people know let's see look maybe maybe you'll give up the rest of these three spins. Let's see what we got here. God, that question was so long. It was so good, though, right? It really made you think.

Not really. Oh, hey, Luke. Hey, Luke, from Cream to Blind Faith, CSNY and the Traveling Wilburys, to Monsters of Folk. Hey, hold on. Time out for just a second. Could my family talk louder during my show?

I wonder. People can't hear your neighbor doing the lawn, Luke, so no use getting so mad at him. He don't care about MK. All right? All right. Go ahead. Sorry.

You know, from Monsters of Folk to Audioslave, Luke, I've always been obsessed by rock and roll supergroups, including everything from their chemistry, considering the alpha personalities merging together to the content they create. In a sense, Luke, you can argue that you and I at MK are a supergroup of combat sports personalities who are paired together for this experiment.

And right now it's working. We'll see if it lasts after today, though. Even though I've always been upfront that I secretly pushed the show toward being more sitcom than fight talk show, I've always been up front that I secretly push the show toward being more sitcom than fight talk show, I've also at times thought of us in terms of being an actual rock band. The live shows we

do three times a week are like our concerts, Luke. The few times a year that we travel on location and do live shows in front of the people, that's like headlining a festival. And the documentaries we put out quarterly, they're the closest thing to a new album luke you get what i'm saying here so using that as a reference point by imagining for a

minute that mk is not a show it's a band answer these questions the best you can to make the comparison work question one luke which instruments would each of us and the various members of our extended mk team play in this band based on our styles and personalities? So what would I play? What would you play? Who else is in the band? You know, we got Gaff and Jay Aaron. You know, we got Maniche.

We got. All right. So Showtime's our record label. Yeah, for sure. I'd play bass. For sure. Okay, but look. Wait, we're probably co-songwriters, right?

We're like Lennon McCartney of this. Yeah, that's probably fine. You're going to be bass? You know, a little more like Flea, where it's up front, and the bass plays a prominent role. But yeah, bass. Okay. I think you're probably playing the cowbell i think i'm the front well

look first of all i'm the front man let's be honest here okay you're definitely not the front i mean you could be eddie van halen or or or you know whomever you want but i'll be i was gonna give you i was gonna give you lead guitar that's what i was gonna give you like you're the guy jams i'll take that shit luke okay all right see i'm being fair i'm being fair um drums not jay because he would just miss it and then blame everybody i could see gaff i could see gaff just you know gaff on drums works uh cory would be on like you know keyboard i feel like he's got keyboard in him you know yep he'd be doing our soulful ballads for the teens yeah they'd be loving that shit they'd

be getting sappy and uh what's matt snyder doing he's our uh he's our manager right he's the guy like he's he's tom hanks from that thing you do right you know what i'm saying and what is and jay is our what is jr groupie so is jay is jay gonna be a like our alternate singer like our rhythm guitarist slash sometimes singer or is he like no dude he's the roadie who just hauls the boxes okay okay uh question two luke how would we collectively dress on stage what would be our image oh um you would wear something where your crotch would be set on fire on purpose who was the guy who had like the buzzsaw cup on his crotch would be set on fire on purpose.

Who was the guy who had the buzzsaw cup on his crotch? Do you remember that? It was somebody from Kiss or something? Probably. Oh, who had the sparklers coming out of their dongs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's you. That's you, because you can't go five seconds

without being like, dick and balls. You'd probably be wearing a metal shirt with your giant-ass evil base, like the black one with the devil horns on the bottom yeah and the bass itself would also look fucking cool as shit you know um i don't know what style of music would be though luke we'd have to be some type of hard rock fusion 90s rock okay i'll do i'll do alt rock i'll do hard rock is that what you i feel like you could bring in you could bring in a lot of other elements with 90s rock you go a lot of different directions with it and we can you know we could play the levels this is a heck of a super group and luke what's our um you know cover the

rolling stone moment in terms of this show in real life have we hit it yet you know what's our sort of mountaintop moment are we there yet have we yet to hit it yet for this band we call morning oh no we're not even close okay good because i was you know my final question was going to be sort of mountaintop moment. Are we there yet? Have we yet to hit it yet for this band we call Morning Coven? Oh, no, we're not even close. Okay, good. Because my final question was going to be how close are you to your first solo record

and the inevitable breakup of the super group, Luke? Not close enough, but, you know. Pretty close if you check your solo channel. Yeah, we're there. We're there. All right, Luke, another failed question. We got two more.

Maybe we'll never see this segment again. Some of that's on me. A lot of that's on you. It works in person. You should have saved it for next week, but what are you going to do? All right. Spin. Two left, Luke.

We'll see what happens here. God, it's taking forever. So good, though, right? So good. Ugh. Jeez. Piss luck. Hey.

Okay. Hey, Luke, the state of current PD use within combat sports is only made more difficult to understand by the frustrating state of drug testing, which spans the gamut of incomplete, incompetent, and even ignoramus, if you will. I'm sure you will. The users and designers are often smarter than the testers, and in many cases, entire testing programs appear to be nothing more than insurance at best or window dressing at worst. It's theater of the highest and grossest regard. But what if I told you I've created a proprietary and sophisticated technology which allows you to simply scan my new PED radar gun in front of your TV screen during any fight of your choice and it can list down to the type of sugar

that was used in their coffee, exactly what's in their bloodstream at the time of the fight, and what remnants or picograms remain from what they used during training camp. So to satisfy your curiosity, Luke, regarding PED use, I will loan you this accurate

yet potentially dangerous firearm. Maybe we can call it the love weapon. Shout out to that band that died. And Luke, while watching any boxing or MMA fight of your choice throughout history, you can point the love weapon at the screen and get the

truth. The only catch is that because the gun is potentially dangerous and liable, yet insanely accurate, you only get three pulls of the trigger before it self-destructs and erases all the results. Which three fights across boxing or MMA history would you be most interested in knowing the truth of exactly what both fighters were on or weren't on i'd be curious to go back to the ufc golden age so to speak you know uh post tough pre 2010 so like everything from after tough to uh ufc 100 basically so like for example anderson silva versus dan henderson for the ufc middleweight title right or how about saint pierre versus hughes too right there's another one where i would just love to know what the answer is there because i have a feeling that you know who the

hell knows what the truth is to your point i have a feeling that most of what made the ufc golden age not most of it but a big part of it, was that people who we lionized as heroes were probably on something the whole time. But, of course, I don't know that, and I cannot prove that. And, of course, it could be proof that, in fact, I'm totally wrong, that my theory about the Golden Age is, you know, there might be some truth to what happened in Pride, and even UFC to a degree, but somewhat overstated. So I go that direction. I do Lesnar versus Carwin.

I mean, you got to be kidding me. I can already give you the answers to that, Luke. It's Stanislaw. I would be curious to know, like, exactly, right? And then what's a boxing match? I'll tell you what one I'd like to see, because this is the first time where, this is one of, not the first, one of many times where Floyd just blew me away.

36-year-old Floyd against Canelo in 2013. Sure, why not? I'd just like to make sure, Luke, okay? Sure, both of them, sure. That'd be cool. Yeah, that's a great call. I love that call. And while it's interesting, and I agree with you that you'd like to take it back in time,

you only get three pulls of the love gun, by the way. But, you know, while I'd like to take it back in time you'll get three three three pulls of the love gun by the way but you know it's while i'd like to take it back in time and even go back to like the 80s and see you know are we are we naive to what was happening i just as much like to do it today when there is so-called established drug testing and just be sure luke that some of our suspicions are real i just got a tweet from someone saying please end this now just Luke it's probably one you know one oddball fan it's probably who is it the snarky ginger Luke

no some dude named Dave alright Dave well Dave we get one more okay alright one more spin oh boy you know you try to do something nice for the community you know you try to improve the show and this is what happened. Oh, this ought to be terrible.

No, Luke. Libyan nationalist is not a category about your dad's day job when you were a child. It's a reference to the men who provided the plutonium in Back to the Future, which allowed Marty and Doc Brown to travel back to 1955 and change the course of history forever in the lives of them and everyone they know by setting up a scenario in which George McFly could go from zero to hero by rescuing that drunk floozy Lorraine Baines from the arms of Biff Tannen we don't need a documentary from Jay Aaron to know what happened next in many ways Luke we all wish we could go back to the key moments in our past

and maybe have said something or maybe had done something different that might make our life today easier or in some cases wealthier, Luke, right? Forget for a moment about Jay Aaron. I already mentioned that. Also forget that Michael J. Fox was like 5'3 and never would have had a chance at banging Prime Elizabeth's shoe, okay? That's a debate for another day, of course. This question allows you a fictional chance to go back to one of three key points in your

life, either the first day of your senior year in high school, the last day of your college life when you graduated, or the day you got married nine years ago today offering in each case seven days of living in your old life but with the knowledge you have today in an attempt to hopefully change one aspect or situation in your life that would positively change the way you live today. Please keep in mind that every change has a ripple effect that could be positive or negative, Luke, depending on how extreme. The only rules are that you couldn't use any of the knowledge

to make any bets or stock plays. Could I go back to the beginning of the show and then take this segment out? And after the seven days, Luke, you'd return to your life now and all changes will have been retroactively done. Luke, which of those three moments would you travel back and what would

you do in that week to change? Well, I probably do the beginning of senior year of high school because if there's been one problem that plagued me, not anymore, but for a long time it was my cutting of corners in life so for example I ended up doing things that I wanted to by and large but I ended up having a much harder time getting there than it needed to be

because like for example in high school i decided oh i don't i mean i didn't have bad grades by any stretch of the imagination but i did not have exemplary grades i just did not do homework and you know just kind of winged it a lot except when it came time for tests and then i would do really really well on tests and be like oh this should carry me through all of my various opportunities but two things happened one there were some doors that were slammed in my face as a consequence of that that I did not expect that ended up having a pretty profound effect. And the other part was it just, it made me have a lot of bad habits for a really long time. Not even just about academic work, but about anything. Oh, I don't need to do X because I can cut the corner with Y. I don't

have to go and face this kind of a challenge because I can do something a little bit different and I can more or less get there. And listen, we all want to work smarter and not harder. That part is obvious. But there are some times in life when the way to fix a problem is not to go around or under or on top of the fire. It is to go right through it. And you have to kind of face that reality a little bit, depending what the circumstance may be getting to go back to the beginning of senior year and understanding what may have been necessary for buckling down academically and then putting all of those practices into play for the senior year through college through the beginning of my life after that I wouldn't change any one thing like I'm going to flip this knob or that one but i really regret not getting

a hold of that earlier in life look that's the most boring answer unexciting speaking of it's actually something i think about all the time speaking of knobs you had seven days to go back on uh after 30 years of 25 years of thinking about chicks you could have banged that you that you were too afraid of or you said the wrong thing or you didn't realize at the time they were into you i'm giving you a seven day hall pass at like age 18 you're like well i'd like to fix my study habits luke this this segment can't work anymore because of you okay i mean yeah i mean what are we doing here you want me to be serious for a moment i'll be serious for a moment and i'm not serious for a moment. And I'm not doing a bit. Are there, BC, are you asking me, are there times in my life where I've been, I mean, fourth and inches, not even, you know, like right there at the goal line.

And all I had to do was a quarterback sneak. And I got stopped at the goal line because I fumbled. Buddy, I can't tell you how many times that has happened in ways that would be like comically embarrassed mind-nubbing yes I've had my number to the point where you would mercilessly mock me the rest of my life my red zone offense Luke is is is Washington football team like it was the worst it's the worst but if you're if I'm being if I'm being serious with you and I'm honestly trying to you want a good faith answer that is something that has haunted me a little bit. Like truly, I mean, it has haunted me that I like doing homework is not about doing homework.

It's about developing good practices in life that you can then apply to other things. And I was always mentally looking to cut corners until I learned that that's not the way to live. And dude, I lost out on a lot of shit that could have gone my way. And I really regret it. I really, truly, meaningfully regret it, and I wish I could fix that. All right, that was decently good faith, Luke.

But yes, have there been a couple times where it was like a layup, and I was just like, hi, I'm a fucking idiot. Yes, I have, I mean, a million of those. Yeah, there you go, there you go. Well, Luke, we'll see what the people say. If Super Dave on Twitter thinks this segment sucks because you're uninterested, then maybe it does, Luke, okay?

Jason Hartley is a great man, and he is from MMA on Point, and he says, screw that Dave guy. I enjoy the segment. But then there's another guy, Admiral Anthony, who is waiting for you to finish this segment. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. Maybe we'll get a BC spin-off solo show where it's just a wheel of fans or something yeah maybe we'll get a bc let's do fan solo show where it's

just you know wheel of fans or something look maybe we'll satisfy all those hey look speaking of fans and and art right have you heard anything about doc five coming together because i've been in talks with uh less than jake our documentarian and you and i could be seeing a rough draft of this doc five by the end of this week, which means early next week, Doc 5 is ready to launch. I've spent more time thinking about where I'm going to defecate after the show than I have Doc 5. Luke, I've been told that this is our most serious,

introspective, hardest-hitting doc. How much of my personal life do you prostitute for clicks? I've been prepared that this could get difficult for me watching it back. So we'll see what they did with that footage. There's a zinger I have in there that I'm going to bring you to your fucking knees with that one. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. You'll see. All right. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. Yeah.

You'll see. All right. That's that shit for this week. Morning combat at gmail.com. Of course, as your trusty, please folks, you got fan subs.

If you've got dead wrongs, don't, don't DM me them. Send them to this email address. Mikey Morms will handle it efficiently. And that's the email address to send your shit. And every Wednesday at this time, we've got mail. Let's do it.

As my daughter yells in the room over. All right, Dino. That's Luke's nickname, right? Dino E. sliding in. Yes, that's true. They used to call me that in jujitsu. That's true. What's up, bubba's?

Been a fan since Luke was just a guest on the MMA beat. Anyway, the merch is some high-quality stuff. I'm really picky about workout clothes, and he's rocking a Merch 1.0 shirt. This is soft and comfortable, truly Negflix merch. If you don't have them already, go buy some. And it helped me gadouche a PR snatch. Axe J, keep up the good work on Morning Combat. Huge Brendan Schaub fan, this guy Dino.

Luke, how's his form? Can we blow this up, please? It's pretty good. I mean, he's no Olympic lifter, but it's pretty good. Is it Don Jr. level? No, no, no, no, no. Dude, the snatch is maybe the most difficult lift from a technical perspective. Let's see.

Doesn't get a whole lot of contact with the hips to get uh under the bar but other than that it's pretty good pretty good is it do you have to fear honest question do you have to fear shitting your pants on that movement when you when it when it all falls back on you and you're squeezing tight dude i don't know who hurt you and damaged your brain to the point where it's only capable of processing life through dick and all and we're watching a we're watching a grown man do something called the snatch and you're getting on me for asking a legitimate question really oh is that a legitimate question hey how many times you gotta shit when you do this that that's is that your is that your legitimate question

but at 12 46 luke's gonna be like i gotta i gotta to shit, guys. I got to go. I got to go. Listen, you know how you avoid having to take a dump in the snatch? Just take a dump before you work out. You know how you avoid having to ruin our show by having to take a dump, Luke? Take a dump right beforehand, all right? Oh, wait, you do that too. Great stuff. All right, Daniel K. sliding in.

Hey, fellas, my best bud and housemate, Sean, on the right, and fellow donk, purchased possibly the greatest gift a man could want for my birthday. I just started a new job in insurance sales, so this mug will be my mecca. Amazing content, been watching since the beat. Also, I love Cannibal Corpse, so get your tits out for the lads, Mr. Thomas. Love from Danny and Sean in Ireland. And P.S., my dogan wanted in the picture he wants some dog mk merch can we zoom in on these two heterosexual males here boy i mean look at these two apex predators wow first of all love the support uh is it they playing fortnite in

the back or is that they're uh is that i don't know no are they watching fucking darcy and stacy on whatever paramount not paramount is it paramount plus i don't know can we go back into this there's a lot to look at here from these guys uh first of all the guy on the left i think is danny yes he's the guy that sent it in daniel k look what do you think of his tat on his wrist there who is that hard to see i can't really make much of it uh he definitely wow look at this guy. I love the beard, right? That beard is solid. And the guy on the right, I can't quite tell.

This almost looks like a Peruvian jersey or something. I don't even know what that is. I think the guy on the right Fs a little bit, right? Probably a little bit. He's got like a Danny Segura vibe. He kind of cleans up. He's not full-on Uncle Pepper. Listen, the guy on the left, if someone was like,

what do you think, if you could find a guy who's ever been arrested for masturbating in an arby's drive-thru what would he look like wow wow shout out to our boy daniel love that dog by the way uh norman so big big fan and it looks like the guy on the right was like maybe his friend riding shotgun who was like trying to talk him out of it but just went along with it. I'm sure Daniel might have set up the camera for Sean there on his first sexual experience. It's possible, Luke. It's possible.

All right. Also, I got to say, the lime green socks. First of all, that dog is awesome. Let's just be honest about the dog. Yes. But the lime green socks. This is automatic. A woman hasn't been here signal.

Like nothing else is. I don't know. I think poor man's Ronaldo over there gets it done. I'm telling you. He's got that look in his eyes. That unnatural confidence that only Latin men have, Luke. Or Spanish men, actually. Spanish men have that.

Luke, let's keep rolling. You could have had that, by the way, first day of high school. If you took my plutonium and then get it for the good of the world. Ben S. sliding in. Hey, fellas, you're packing some serious heat here. Ben says, hopefully. This show just devolves into gay pornography. I don't understand. He says, hopefully this isn't too raunchy for the show.

It's close. Look, it's pretty damn close, okay? We do tip to tip on Fridays, not Wednesdays. Oh, my God. Dude, you are entirely responsible for this. I mean, if it was under the auspices of kickboxing, would you be okay with it, Luke? I don't know.

These guys look like they're straight out of the YMCA, Luke. This is wonderful. Yeah, which is fine, but I just don't understand how this became the symbol of the show. Although we got some tight buns. Look at that. You're like, the trade-off might be worth it. You know, it might be worth it.

All right, this one's from atcap underscore YouTube, whatever that means. Hey, fellas, Day1MK listener here. My hobby is creating characters in video games. Last year, I created Luke and BC in UFC 3 from EA Sports. This is the first pick for a refresher in what I did last year. BC acknowledged my creation of him

on Twitter. He also featured my LT creation on episode 69 of MK in a video where I matched him up versus Ariel Helwani created fight. I remember that, Luke. You knocked him out. I've got a fresh fan submission for you guys today. Seeing that BC is such a huge pro wrestling fan, I

thought it would be fitting to insert him into that world. So here is my BC creator wrestler from WWEK 2020 2K 2020 complete with the MK themed attire forever. Luke, how good? It's not easy to do this on

these video games to make it look good. How good is this, Luke? Everything is good except for your face, which looks like it's melting. Can we zoom in again, please, Maniche? Just stay zoomed in, bro. We gotta check this out. So the crotch logo of the Rising Sun is brilliant. The

tip-to-tip fingers. On the elbow pads, too. Yes, yes. The tip-to-tip fingers. Correct me elbow pads, too. Yes, yes. The tip-to-tip fingers. Correct me if I'm wrong, BC, but are you wearing weightlifting gloves? It looks like you are. Yeah. I mean, they got the build pretty much right on. The frame, Luke, the shoulders and the chest and the back.

No, they did a little. They helped you out a little bit. They helped you out a little bit. But it's okay. Actually, I think it's very well done, candidly, the Michelangelo and everything, but the Sistine Chapel,

but the face, man. Dude, it looks like you got hit with a frying pan too many times. They did straighten my nose out, so shout out to that, Luke.

Good stuff right there. I don't know if he's got the wandering low pan eye, but we'll see. We'll see. This one's from Matthew. Am I crazy or did Luke pull

a Dustin Poirier and make his own hot sauce? Thanks for all you do, Matthew. By the way, I'm being dead wrong live on air. Someone was telling me the guy with the jersey that had the red striper cross was a River Plate, which is one of the big teams out of Argentina. Them and Boca Juniors. Oh, and that means that guy definitely gets it done, Luke.

All right, let's blow this up. Handmade batches. Hoff sauce. Who was Hoff? definitely definitely gets it done luke all right let's blow this up batches hoff sauce who was hoff i don't know but that is somewhat pre-gray luke thomas right there right a little bit i look like peter parker's boss yes yes i would try that hoff sauce right sure all right uh matthew said he hopes to see me tonight in newark for aew unfortunately Unfortunately, I had to cancel. I won't be going there in the third row, Luke. I'm going to be missing out.

Why? Why'd you cancel? I got a lot of family stuff at home. I got a lot of things I got to take care of. You and I are going to be in Jersey City next week. Originally, it was going to be this week, but a lot of good shit coming. So, Matthew, enjoy the show. I'll be watching at home.

Believe that. All right. Let's keep it going. This one's from Jason Allen. What's going on, BC and LT? Jay from Boston, back for the fourth time this week i'm paying my respects to some of the funny shit you guys said last week first we have the mk crew in the rundown starring the rock and sean william scott last week when you both were talking about the rock

and gable transitioning from wwe to other ventures ventures luke then brought up rundown and how he thought it actually wasn't that bad. I put LT as the rock because he's been hitting the weights hard. BC, on the other hand, a cardio boxing class a couple times a week couldn't hurt. Wow. That's not true. BC, I feel like BC's been doing hard work that no one sees.

Yeah. I'm not going as hard as i did the first month but uh i'm doing i'm doing the slow and steady thing luke i'm just gonna get on steroids honestly i really i mean i should just tell you that it's about because listen man i have been absolutely i i'm having a moment of frustration if i can be honest with you i have been fucking murdering myself in the gym and i'm trying to get as much recovery and everything as possible the amount of work I've put in if I was 20 years ago I'd be fucking bricked up by now and at 42 people can't even tell that I fucking go to the gym it's the most frustrating shit you need a Molotov cocktail of stanozol windstraw I'm tired of this dude I'm ready to just kiss my hair goodbye all the way

and then just get on the fucking sauce. Because this shit is hard work, and I'm not getting much from it. You know who you should actually talk to? Because he's been there. Lorenzo Fertitta. That's who you should talk to. Yeah, I'll ring him. All right.

All right. Jason Allen also has a second one. Continuing with the Gable Stevenson talk next week we have BC as another Olympic wrestling gold medalist from WWE Kurt Angle, Luke please save the dirty joke you're probably thinking of

and give respect to the art of Milko Mania which is one of the greatest segments of the WWF attitude era which is a true fact this is why I don't watch pro wrestling sometimes it's hard to defend most times it's hard to defend Luke the WWF Attitude Era, which is a true fact. See, this is why I don't watch pro wrestling. Sometimes it's hard to defend. Most times it's hard to defend, Luke, but, I mean, it's art, just the same.

All right? All right, fair enough. All right, last but not least from Jason Allen, we have LTS Miss Cleo. Last week, Luke caught some heat from some clowns because he predicted that something bad could happen to Evander Holyfield in the boxing ring. On Thursday's live chat, you addressed this and said, I'm not Miss Cleo. Well, LT, turns out your bold prediction was correct. And we all saw how the real deal fared. Thank you both.

MK all day, every motherfucking day. Did it not, maybe surprise is the wrong word. What did you make? You know what? Let me ask you this, BC. What did you make of the people pre-fight who were like, dude, Holyfield's going to smoke them? Like, how fucking dumb do you have to be where that is your take? Yeah, I think people thought he was going to defensively be tight,

which, you know, and hide behind the guard and then land big counter shots. But, dude, it's, I mean, look, Bernard Hopkins is one of the, I mean, one of the, count them on your hand, people who at 50 could have, like, a credible boxing performance. At 58 against somebody with Vitor's history who's only 44, no chance, Luke, no chance. No chance. I was blown away by that. I mean, just no chance luke no chance no chance i was blown away by that i mean just no chance

it was gonna end badly and this was a hey please don't sue us here's your money type of deal you know no no all right matt s slides in says bc hosting fridays shows which is really what people look out for all week let's see what he's got is that gaff number two that does look like gaff number two and then and then luke thomas number one yeah that's pretty accurate luke i think the people i've spoken though in terms of which host they prefer okay just my uh editorial this week thank you matt s for doing that shout out to gaff by the way is this guy no gaff i don't know i don't know does he know you i've been saying for a long time that we need to get gaff and maniche as you know playable characters in the mk universe like a like jay erin but i don't know if they're hesitant luke i mean we didn't ruin Jay Aaron's career no Jay is just

you know Jay's got problems he's unique Gaff doesn't know this guy apparently Gaff doesn't know this guy final one from at heavy riff magnet hey there fella alpha fellow alpha

donks thanks for featuring my MK dying fetus logo on MK200. Congrats, blah, blah, blah. And as promised, here's a super 90s band logo for our man from the Clinton era, JMMA's biggest fan, a surprisingly thoughtful boxing journalist when he needs to be

Brian Campbell. If you've got some shit, I always want to see it. Luke, that looks very 90s. Super 90s. Yeah, I to see it. Luke, that looks very 90s. Super 90s. Yeah, I actually like that. It's got the... Luke, by the way, I can be a very thoughtful analyst when I need to be. Do I need to be?

I know. I've never said otherwise. In fact, I think you underperform relative to that, given how good you are. Oh, thank you for that. Wow. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don't know if I need to be, though, Luke. You mean during the time in which we're requiring your services

with that particular skill set? Yes. I mean, it seems like a very good time to do that. I like that logo. Luke, just so the people know, next week, you and I, we're going to be doing a bunch of live shows from the bunker. That's right, and tons of other stuff as well. So we are going to be back together.

I'm very much looking forward to it. Of course, next week is UFC 266. It is also Anthony Joshua, Alexander Usyk, heavyweight championship fight week. So we're going to have a lot to preview. We got a lot, as you mentioned, some bonus stuff that you're really going to like out there that we're going to be putting together.

So I'm excited to get back with the team. Luke, we are just a better show in person i mean there's not you know i think you know sometimes when we go too long you and i are both like i don't know if i want to do this show with this person anymore but then we get back together and we're like you know you know the relationship sucks but the i like doing this show i didn't like today's wheel but maybe next week's wheel will be better. And I love doing the shows in person. That's where the magic happens. Yeah, that's where it happens.

All right. Luke, you got any ad reads or anything? Just a reminder. So for Saturday, of course, Showtime. You want to watch the return of Yoel Romero to mixed martial arts. One place to do it. Showtime is your place. You can go to Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, do whatever

it is you want to do with the life, but you can watch. It should be a lot of fun. As BC indicated, morningcombat at gmail.com for Fridays dead wrong or for fan subs either way, or to reach out to the show. Just let us know when we got wrong or what you want to send over. That'd be fine. Like the video, hit subscribe. We're all all over social morning combat's name is the same everywhere but bc and i as you can see there have slightly different names between twitter and instagram and then don't forget folks you got to go download the draft king sportsbook app right now use the promo code combat to receive 200 in free bets when you place a one dollar bet on any football game promo code is combat with a k k-o-m-b-a-t this week at DraftKings Sportsbook an official sports betting partner of the NFL speaking of the uh mkdk bukkake uh unit unifying uh plan right here Thursday night football NFL

normally I would say take that 200 and put it on whomever the Washington Redskins are playing. I'm sorry, WFT is playing. Luke, your team this Thursday night is at home against the New York Giants, the largely hapless New York Giants. You know, I don't have the official DK line at the moment, but I think last time I checked, the Redskins are about a three-point favorite at home here. What do you suggest that people do given, you know how bad your team is,

but you know how worse those giants are. What should they do with their $200 here Thursday night? I tend to think that the Washington football team is a sorry ass excuse for a team that every year the media somehow convinces everyone locally that everything has changed and really nothing ever really changes. But I will say that I think their defensive line this year is going to be better than it has been in a long time, actually pretty good. I think, dude, the New York Giants look bad. They look really fucking bad. So I don't think that Dub FT can beat a whole lot of teams are gonna go what

seven and nine this season maybe something like that but one of those seven is going to be the new york giants i do believe that wow a man that does not like to make predictions is telling you take that 200 large on the draft kings app put it on wft at home i'm sorry i said the old name i'm not i'm not uh you know i'm not institutionalized yet yet, Luke, in the new way of doing things, but I will be soon. I typically don't talk about your team much, but this should be interesting Thursday night, just the same. Okay, you probably got to go crap.

That's it. That's it. That's it. All right, for Brian Campbell as well as the King of Connecticut as well as Malka Showtime and CBS Sports, live chat tomorrow at 3, show on Friday at 11 a.m. We'll be there, you be there and we'll all be there together

until then, may all of your gains be loyal