MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨Jake Paul vs. Nate Diaz Instant Reaction

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Brian Campbell has you covered with an instant reaction to Jake Paul vs. Nate Diaz. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher 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:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. Oh yeah, get some of this, right? Late night, Saturday night. And it just went down in Dallas. Jake Paul versus Nate Diaz, the pro boxing debut for the UFC legend Stockton, California, the 209. How about a little morning combat instant analysis to help digest it here? My name is Brian Campbell, one half of this award-winning combat sports series.

A series so good, they can't stop nominating it for awards. Thank you for your service in that regard. Luke Thomas, he's off right now. It's that man's 44th birthday. Shoot him up, shout him out. No, shout him out. Do not shoot him up. Thank you very much.

If you're here and you're expecting me to give you a spoiler alert, you must have recently had a massive head injury either way to zone pay-per-view was the site hey i purchased mine you know i'm gonna expense that through uh espn plus but let's be honest about something because we do that in this show i wasn't into this fight coming in and it wasn't you know it wasn't some oh we're not working the fight for showtime so let's flip the switch and hate I felt it was a little bit past due I felt the shenanigans leading up were forced it just didn't feel like Nate Diaz wanted to be there or cared so I shared my opinion you know what I'm happy to be wrong right here because Jake Paul versus Nate Diaz which goes down at the end of the day, a unanimous decision win for Jake Paul over 10

rounds. It was fun. Everybody won in the end. Jake Paul, did he make massive strides and changes to approve as a boxer? Yeah, it showed. Nate Diaz, did he entertain? Yeah, yeah, he did. Did he at least, you know, able to keep his respect and his reputation with a tough ass performance? He did. In fact, he almost had moments where it looked like if Jake Paul could be pushed a little bit harder, maybe he could fall victim to to a late fade, as it was Nate Diaz and his team that argued that push on the negotiation table to get this from eight rounds to 10 rounds. But you know, I'm kind of happy. The air is coming out of the balloon on the crossover circus influencer sort of bubble period we've had here in boxing, where especially during the pandemic when the big fights weren't getting made, look, Jake Paul sliding in and becoming a legit attraction.

It kind of mattered. The narrative of him taking out former UFC champions on this Robin Hood, like Ron of trying to bring attention to fighters and fighter pay and all that. It kind of was interesting right now. Boxing doesn't necessarily need these crossover fights with how good 2023 was, but I, you know, I love to be wrong in this spot. This was a fun fight to watch.

It was some, you know, some there was some cringiness going around connected to it, as you might expect with this type of matchup. But first and foremost, what did we learn in a fight that goes down? As I mentioned, unanimous decision. The judges scores 97, 92, 98, 91 and 98 and 98 91 for Jake Paul how did I have it 97 91 for Jake Paul so not like any of those three but one number off in every possible direction and how did I score that specifically giving Nate Diaz round four his best round of the fight. I also gave Nate round eight and round nine as it looked like he was potentially potentially causing Jake to bend and possibly break there with those late flurries. But let's talk about what we learned. First and foremost, number one, Jake Paul was faced with a task with a challenge here coming off of that last fight. Split decision loss to Tommy Fury.

Yes, Jake scored a final round, eighth round knockdown, but he faded a bit. He finally met, quote unquote, a real boxer, although obviously we take that with a grain of salt. But Tommy Fury came out to fight. He was big that night. And we saw some of the deficiencies, the limits in Jake's game. This was a different opponent, obviously, in 39-year-old Nate Diaz, but all the talks that we had, and particularly me, about the size difference didn't really seem a big part of it in the end. So Nate, even though he fought at 170 for the biggest fights in his

MMA career, looked really good here at 185 physically. But the evolution of Jake Paul's boxing game was the lead story here. And I always pause people of saying, you know, well, when are you going to fight a real fighter or when are you going to, you know, climb the ladder and do what you say you will in some of these interviews, which you want to be a world champion. I've always slowed the, slowed the right there, slowed the pace on there, slow down. Jake's very good for a novice,

very good for a celebrity crossover fighter because he takes it very seriously and I love the reinvention of what he did going back to his team changing it up it doesn't look like BJ Flores is there anymore unless I'm wrong Jalen Love is still there Shane Mosley played a big role during training camp although he wasn't in the corner and there was some new head trainer whose name is mistaking me in the moment, but I hadn't seen before. That was, as you can see, really preaching during this fight, the fundamentals. So Jake went back to the drawing board, refocused on fundamentals, brought in Coach Larry Wade, who is one of the top strength and conditioning coaches in boxing, works with all the big PBC stars. And you saw that physical difference. So while I'm surprised

that Nate ultimately looked about the same size, the main difference was the thickness in Jake and the muscularity, and that didn't play negatively into his game plan. He had enough gas in the moments where he might have broken against Nate Diaz because Nate did fight like a sly fox out there. But Jake's evolution, he always did well working behind the jab, but there were little breakdowns in his game. You know, Luke Thomas did a lengthy dissected on this ahead of one of Jake's big fights,

where you really could pick out, obviously, for a guy that had five or six pro fights coming in, some breakdowns in his delivery. He tightened up a lot of that. I loved how he circled away at times when Nate was bringing on flurries. I liked the physicality Jake showed in the clinch as Nate was really trying to lean on him and wear him out. But most importantly, it was the offensive shot selection. That lead sort of looping left hook from Jake was perfect. That's the shot that routinely hurt Nate Diaz. It looked like Nate could have gone at the end of the first. I saw Dan Rayfield on Twitter scoring that one in 10-8. You certainly could have as Nate was knocked around the ring. And even though Nate showed us that Nate Diaz toughness and got back in and played possum a few times, when there was real danger and thinking that fourth round when Nate

for the first time in the fight stopped just pitter-patting with the little slap punches and got inside, waited to the end of the round when Jake started to slow down a bit and then did what we hoped he would have done, which was put on those flurries and make it difficult. How did got inside, waited to the end of the round when Jake started to slow down a bit and then did what we hoped he would have done, which was put on those flurries and make it difficult. How did Jake respond to that? He responded incredibly well. Round five was his best round of the fight. He knocked Nate down hard, falling face first under the ropes there with that lead left hand, the combinations of power punching, the commitment to the body, the good footwork. Again, not comparing it to professional boxers. I'm not saying Jake is a professional, but you get my point in terms of legitimate rising prospects. But for who Jake is and the type

of competition he faces, which may include, by the way, eventually a rematch with Tommy Fury, who's going to be fighting KSI. I'm sure there's big money in another fight with KSI and on and on down the line there. As long as Jake stays in this lane of retired MMA fighter crossover guys in that general, in general speaking there, he's better than them. He's more committed. He's younger, he's stronger, he's faster. And in around this 185 catch weight point, which has been of late his landing spot, Jake's a hard out to beat. So lead story number one was Jake's evolution. But number two, Nate avoided the worst case scenario in here, which was destruction.

And it looked in the first round like he was going out and he was going down. And his ability to adjust to the power of the larger gloves in comparison to the four-ounce ones. And maybe, you know, they talked on the broadcast, maybe there's some of that false sense of, you know, of feeling like the bigger gloves can't hurt you as much, but they did get hurt in that first round. And I felt like it would have been disastrous, disastrous. We would have talked more about the age had he fallen apart there,

but his ability to weather that storm. Yeah. I thought he was clowning around a little bit too much but it also looked like he was finally having fun with this but he was having fun with this with a strategy that nearly worked so that's the difference and i came around quick because i did have a few different people texting me in the first couple rounds going is nate high like he just looks like he's floating around not caring yeah he's doing some of those baiting traps where he's pretending to turn his head away from the action to bring Paul into counter. But that fourth round really woke you up to the idea that no, he came to fight. He came prepared. He came conditioned because it was that strategic change. I just talked about a minute ago, waiting until the end of the round, Jake looked good in the beginning of that fourth

round, landing the jabs, you know, really working on that footwork setting up his shots well Nate waited till he had tired out a bit and really started to come on it was the same flurrying he had tried in the first three rounds the difference was though the commitment to the power and once he started landing those sort of lunging left crosses and the one twos he was suddenly in this fight so Jake Paul's adjustment in the fifth round to drop him was huge, but Nate showing us that toughness, being able in the end to go the distance over 10 rounds and bouncing back, particularly, like I said, in rounds eight and nine, getting on top of Jake and really testing the want in that gas tank, but doing it in smart ways, switching stances, even though Nate's on top of you and there to be hit. And he is, there is some subtle sort of maneuvering and swiveling with Nate that

makes it difficult. He's a sly Fox out there. And if Jake hadn't made the adjustments after that fury loss, I feel like this would have been the albatross moment. I feel like this would have been the point where Jake would have fallen apart late and Nate could have finished him. You saw that in the way that Jake finished strong there in both rounds eight and nine. But there were interesting conversations between rounds throughout. A couple of them that I took notice. Nate's lead trainer was Richard Perez, his longtime boxing trainer, in terms of his extended group there in the NDA.

And Richard seemed really disappointed with Nate between rounds nine and 10 entering the final round there. I'd given Nate the final previous two rounds. And even though Richard was rightfully so saying, Nate, you need a KO in the final round. It was very fatherly when he was like, you're not doing a lot of the shit we were supposed to do. And finally, Nate was just sort of like, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was it was an interesting sort of knee that he took there. Nate tried to entertain. He tried to lure Jake in the final round. But Jake's ability around 10 when it mattered most, when we were going to have the biggest questions of his cardio for him to come out and clear that up and win it. Yeah, they had a little bit of a sloppy brawl in the final 30 seconds back and forth.

It was fun. Nate was trying to draw him in, do anything to bring him in. But I meant it when I said that everybody kind of won, meaning Jake shows improvement and goes to the next level. And now we can talk about this MMA rematch. Nate in his first fight outside of the UFC shows that, no, he's not getting better with age, but that combination of experience and toughness and his ability and want to entertain you. And I didn't expect him by the way, to come out and be that entertainer expected him to kind of get overwhelmed for him to have maybe a couple moments with single shots, but for ultimately him to say at the end, you know, well, I landed the better shots, but I lost the decision or maybe he would have gotten stopped, but no, he retained face in

the best Nate Diaz way possible short of knocking down Jake and winning the fight and I do think this was an uphill battle when you really looked at it and all that experience from Nate including legitimate experience in the boxing gyms and having a boxing style that was going to be hard to make up quickly over a guy like Jake who had like I said had been so active and had been taking it so seriously and is younger, more explosive, able to bounce back physically quick. You've got to give Jake that credit. He is tough. If he was a fraud, he would have gassed out and lost already or gotten knocked out already. And I know he did lose to Tommy Fury, but we were at that point entering that fight where we thought Fury was a clown and a bum and the recent tape i'm sorry it showed that tommy fury still though on paper is the bigger fighter and does have you know the the

roots of legitimate boxing so i don't think you hold that loss against him as long as you're not like i mentioned keeping into this idea that he's going to be fighting for a wbc cruiserweight title sooner that he should be in any form jake Paul's an entertainer, and in entertainment fights, this may have been the most fun one. I thought the best build for Jake up to this point was the promotion that obviously Showtime Sports played a big part in ahead of the first Woodley fight. They got you interested. The trash talk felt real. There were legitimate doubts. Even though I did not like the build and I was vocal about it for this one. The fight may have been the best fight in this Jake Paul series in this run. You know, it's not like there's a ton of competition because Jake had early knockouts

against people that shouldn't have been in there, like a Nate Robinson or a Ben Askren, and had somewhat interesting fights with Tyron Woodley where he looked good at times, especially on that knockout. But let's not forget before the knockout and that rematch, Jake didn't look good as Woodley frustrated him. This was the most competitive, most entertaining one. And I've always said, sure, Jake has to win pretty consistently for this bubble to stay on, but he's got to be in fun fights that he has a chance of losing. The reason why I'm so colorfully saying this was a winning night for everybody involved was that Nate put on just enough pressure and key moments to give you that.

I don't want to say illusion, but that tease that a breakthrough when it's possible, just like he did, by the way, against Leon Edwards, even in a fight where we, we, you know,

assumed he would be very outgunned in that moment. This is what crossover bubble fights need. They need this kind of competition. They need this kind of feeling like it could go either way. It's a wide decision in the end. Jake largely dominated the big moments, but you can't count out Nate from being tough as freaking nails. And that, like I said, nearly gave him some big moments in there.

And how Nate never got cut is beyond me. That big left hook in round one that hurt him seemed to swell his eye pretty badly on the right side. And remarkable as well, if that didn't end up closing, I felt like there could have been a lot of ways that Nate looked old here or was stopped on a cut. And it just felt like a very incomplete fight kind of like the first bmf fight i know that jorge did largely dominate him but it did feel incomplete when it ended because you knew nate had more fight left in him but you didn't want his whole face to be cut open and broke open there um i don't know how much this window this bubble has though

in terms of staying power if you're in it for the influencers, the idea now of Logan Paul, who, you know, did something that's, that's pretty damn cool to win a big match at SummerSlam and then hop on the private jet and fly from what Detroit to, to Dallas. That's not bad. That does remind me of, wasn't that, that time on that, on that May 5th weekend, Tom Brady was like at the Kentucky Derby, then gotten the, gotten the airplane to go to Mayweather Pacquiao or Mayweather McGregor, one of those two.

If you're into just the influencer side of it, Logan's coming back on that doubleheader where KSI's fighting Tommy Fury. There's a round-robin setup of rematches between all of those guys and the Paul brothers right there. I don't think that's huge sustainability. I think Jake's going to continue to need fights like this. Going to continue to need big names who we can kind of talk ourselves into some level or idea of them being competitive. You're going to be slim picking soon, though.

But the pivot to mma is interesting i didn't think i cared at all about sort of a shameless exhibition of sorts of a rematch here and the 10 million dollar offer which seems to be legit that if jake paul won which we assumed here in this boxing match that they would on the table do a mma rematch PFL. I largely wanted nothing to do with that. I don't know. Tonight, like, tonight didn't suck. And it didn't suck to the level that I'm not against them doing this carnival MMA match, you know? And I get that Jake was a high school wrestler,

but I don't even think he was as dedicated or accomplished as Logan was. I even liked Jake's very baby face post-fight speech in which he talked about, you know, don't let anybody take away your dreams and you got to believe the power of belief and all that. I mean, that, I think that's a fantastic message to send out and it is true in terms of his arc, his moonlighting slide into boxing has been remarkable. It has been surprising i just think that as much as he's been the face and the power of putting the air in the balloon

there's got to be some pivot coming up or some new opening of opponents for it to carry on maybe it is going to mma because i wouldn't have given a damn about what what can only be a one-sided fight if he does fight Nate in MMA. But I don't know if it's just the ghoul sort of like side-of-the-road accident, I got to see it. After this, it was cringe on the build-up, but it kind of worked in the ring. I don't know. It's interesting.

I want to see what Nate does, and I'm interested in hearing Luke Thomas' reaction on Morning Combat this week. I'll be on vacation, family vacation this week. So you won't hear from me. So I might as well tell you now, but, um, it does come down in my opinion to, to what UFC can offer Nate, because if they believe that Conor McGregor can, can get back in there and cash out a few times, right. Chandler, you know, I'm not even against, uh, if you want to do one more with Tony and it had to be Connor at this point, my, my opinion of Connor's current stock is so bad

that I actually wouldn't hate that either. But the idea, if they feel like they can do Connor versus Nate three, there is buzz. There is money in that. Does Nate want to potentially piss off and potentially get blackballed by UFC two? If this offer is real for $10 million for a fight that, I mean, how could he lose just by coming out and calf kicking? He'd probably be, you know what I mean? Like how, how could he lose that? It would draw a lot of interest. It would be a big sort of, you know, shot in the chamber for PFL to use, to try to get that big attend. Next year's make or break for PFL.

They put a lot of money into Francis and Jake and this pay-per-view super fight division. And they're going to, you know, they're going to get weird. They're going to have to. They're going to get a little weird and try some crazy matchups. They just signed Amanda Serrano to Moonlight again in MMA. This would work, but I guess it comes down to what can UFC offer Nate? Can they offer him a multi-fight deal

in which each fight you know the guarantee is multi-millions where they're saying we know you can take that name elsewhere but we want this connor fight so here's a here's a three fight deal make some fun fights for us and we'll get the number you know to where to where it would have been for that jake fight um that's going to be interesting to see I I want to see how like do I have confidence that PFL is going to slide in and like legitimately compete with UFC no no but they're gonna they're gonna make their mark they're gonna make their stay and they're gonna you know carve off some levels of attention will UFC counter promote that counter program that uh I think we're gonna find out here right if nate you know what i mean and i guess part of it too is nate telling jake i'll only do it if my promotion is

co-promoting in it i'm sure the pfl could work that out i think it really does come down to the ufc and what they could offer in response interesting but for a influencer fight that I didn't think we needed at all, maybe I'll. It worked. It worked. It worked. Let's see what we got next. Let's see if they can continue it. Jake is getting better.

But unless you can get that boxer, like if you're getting to the point where you're running out of these MMA names and these type of scenarios. And I think the problem, the problem almost is, is that Jake got too good too fast. Like, cause at some points we were talking about like Bisping coming out of retirement with one eye and boxing him. You know what I mean? At some point we're, you can't, I can't believe that Jake did escalate so quickly that by the time the Nate fight was made, we were just sort of like, oh, Nate's going to get dominated. He has no chance. But you gotta have the opponents for this to matter.

So unless Jake can find some Chavez Jr. types, right? Like what's the perfect pivot if you're running out of MMA guys and you're looking to keep doing these boxing matches? It's the Tommy Fury types. It's the guys who have either the name or have had success like a Chavez Jr. in the past, but are damaged brands that you could potentially take advantage of. I mean, Anderson Silva went in there and outboxed Chavez Jr. I'm not saying there's a big push or want for suddenly Jake Paul against Chavez Jr.,

but that type of opponent is probably the right continued escalation. Because if Jake, who's now, what, six and one, you know, tried the real stamp of approval fight and fought a, you know, equal record prospect, I mean, he'd get handled. And I think the Tommy Fury fight showed us that. But there is a market here for Jake. I give him that credit. He did it. We'll see what happens on this rematch. I mean, it's like, it's hard like i want i roughly give jake a lot of praise he is evolving i just gave him a lot of praise there um

but how much will the allure of money and mma and his role with pfl now which which really hasn't you haven't seen much physical results of that this year. It seems like everything for PFL, again, is pointing to next year. What will that mean for Jake's boxing? Will this be a hard full-time pivot? I mean, we've seen before in MMA how you can do creative matchmaking, think how Kimbo Slice first came. I mean, look, Jake's been doing, we've compared it to Kimbo slice in the beginning.

Jake's been doing Kimbo slice type matchmaking and boxing. What if they find the right people and he pivots there and, and, and that becomes another lane for him or, or, or what if that is eventually WWE, wherever he goes, people around them,

they seem to be smart enough. They can get our attention. And Jake's an interesting athlete. He turned out a lot better than we thought he would. Seriously, he turned out. And he's got heart. And he gets after it. And it was enough to beat 39-year-old Nate Diaz.

So in this world, in this realm, once again, Jake Paul is king. He is welcoming the Tommy Fury rematch. So does that mean anything in the larger Jake arc? Do we really care? Is it more just about one night entertainments without a big arc connecting the pieces to future fights? Maybe tonight wasn't that bad, but you know what? I got to go to vacation.

I got to go on vacation. Like right now, like the second, the second I hit the space bar here, I'm on vacation. Okay. I mean, I'm wearing this, this jacket jacket i just got off of cbs sports hq but you know i had to do my mea culpa video here right i had to tell the people i was wrong you know this fight didn't blow didn't blow you know what i mean it was a weird broadcast team in the end though it was it was interesting the way that worked out e40 was in the house as well uh a lot of luminaries actually showed up.

I got to give them credit. That's a big NBA arena. It looked decently full. I know there was some shading, darkening of the arena, but it looked really, the crowd pops were huge out of the main event. This turned out to be a success, even if I felt that it was very cringy on the road to get to this point. What do I know?

Thank you for watching Morning Combat's instant analysis of this tremendous boxing fight. Mikey Mormyle is my producer, one of the nicest people on this planet. Thank you for your support. And, you know, I'm going to recharge for a week. Don't get mad at us because we've gone on vacation. People are like, oh, it's your 17th vacation.

It's my second, okay? All right, I got to keep the other people in this house happy too. You know, I'd work every day and, uh, yeah. And ruin my life, you know? Yeah. All right. I'll take this deep rooted introspection to the bed now. Thank you very much. My name is Brian Campbell. We win big awards here, whether we deserve it or not. But at the end of the day, I just want you to feel something, right? You know, not from me, right? I'm talking about more consensual feels, you know? Yeah. All right. Let's go. Mikey, please. I don't know if they're my employee. I don't know. That's