MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Jon Jones vs. Ciryl Gane News | UFC Results: Sean Strickland vs. Nassourdine Imavov

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

At UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs. Imavov, middleweights Sean Strickland and Nassourdine Imavov face off in the main event for top rankings placement. Also on this card is Dan Ige vs. Damon Jackson, Ketlen Vieira vs. Raquel Pennington, Javid Basharat vs. Matheus Mendoca and much more. (00:00:00) - Intro (00:00:30) - UFC Vegas 67 Results (00:45:50) - Jon Jones vs. Ciryl Gane News 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. You hear that? Ugh. Paid.

And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMimo 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 bimo eclipse rise visa card terms and conditions apply hey how Hey, how are you everybody? Hi, it is, let's see, it's the 14th of January, 2023. My name is Luke Thomas. This is, I guess, the official post-fight show, instant reaction for UFC Vegas 67. As I mentioned, I'm Luke Thomas, one half of the hosting duo for Morning Combat. Brian Campbell is off tonight. It'll just be me here with you for a little bit.

We'll do some results. We'll do some analysis of this card. It'll just be me here with you for a little bit. We'll do some results. We'll do some analysis of this card. It was not a great card. We knew it wasn't a great card, and it was at the apex. And I think a lot of folks were like, is this really the way the UFC is kicking off its year? I sort of view it as a soft opening, right? I sort of view it as like this is obviously not the biggest event the UFC could have done to kick off the year.

But, you know, it got the ball rolling and they can work out whatever they have to work out before they get to one of the bigger events that will be in the subsequent weeks and by the way there are some standout performances that are worth talking about from today's card so we'll do that so thumbs up on the video if you're watching hit subscribe you know what for years I've been doing the because I've been posting this uh and getting feedback. They're like, oh, you know, why are you putting spoilers in this? And it's like, well, it's the Post Fight Show. Like, by definition, there are spoilers in it, but okay. And then they're like, well, it's just the title. But then it turns out it's actually not just the title of the video. It's actually the content and

the audio. People still get bitter about it, but I just don't care anymore. So if you're here, you're here. That's the end of it, right? So let's do this thing, shall we? Yes. And we're back. Okay, okay. We are not going to go super long. Usually for these, we do them after pay-per-views, and they go for about an hour and some change. I don't think we're going to go that long today. I don't think there's much of a need or, frankly, a demand that we go that long here tonight. But we will go just the same to get things started. Usually what I'll do is I talk about the main, the co-main, then a little bit of the rest of the card. Because this is not a typical pay-per-view, I'm going to go a little bit differently. I will do main and co-main because I think those are important. I'll do most of the

main card overall, but there's a couple other folks on the prelim card that I want to shout out as well that I thought had pretty important and very good results. So we'll get to that. All right, let me pull up the notes here and then we shall get this started. All right. So, UFC Vegas 67. This was also known as UFC Fight Night. Let's see, Strickland versus Imavov. I hope I am saying that correctly. I'm going to make an effort at it. Of course, it's at the Apex, which is the UFC's private facility in Las Vegas. So, here are the results. Sean Strickland defeated Nasurdin Imavov, excuse me, Imavov, 49-46 on two of the judges' scorecards, 48-47. Now this is a fight where I really want to go to the stats right away. I was not really scoring this one real time.

I just kind of felt like by the end of the third, Imolov was a little bit, I'll tell you what, man, when guys are exchanging and they're having some success, like there he definitely landed some good shots, but it's not sustained. The opponent is able to push back on it, and then what you see them do is resort to, frankly frankly kind of gimmicky stuff where they're like throw i mean it's someone like yair rodriguez it's not gimmicky for him but when they start going to spinning attacks and they're like you know they're widely missing and then like

you know on box spinning back elbows and they're not even really coming close imalvov had some nice elbows but they were from direct contact in the clinch. They were not from at range. And so when you're just throwing these wild things, it's like, I wouldn't mind that in the last minute or the last couple of minutes of the fifth round, but he was starting those, I think, much earlier, even as early as the third, certainly within the fourth. And they were going nowhere. And as soon as you start seeing that, you're like, they're out of ideas. They're out of ideas. That generally is what that tells you. That doesn't mean that they can't win. It doesn't mean that they won't win. But when you start seeing stuff like that, that usually is a signal to the audience that

they are a little bit not sure what to do, quite frankly. Maybe frustrated, maybe not, but just confused or I've tried everything and I've got what I've gotten and now I'm just going to start going to this stuff. I don't like it. And it might work on lesser opponents, you know, in sparring or on the regional scene. But when you get to main event levels, even for, you know, this is going to be one of the lower level UFC events that you'll see this year.

But even for that, Sean Strickland is a, you know, what is he up to? How many fights does Sean Strickland have? What is he up to? Nearly 30 fights? What's his record? Yes, 26 and 5. So he's got more than 30 pro fights. You know, this is a very experienced, decorated competitor. That kind of shit is just, for the most part, never going to work. It's never going to work. So when you see that, that's like red flag city. But okay, the story of the fight. The story of the fight, as best I can tell, was that Sean Strickland basically took time to get his style going, but then once he did, it was basically, Imhovov just didn't really know how to counteract it. It was funny. On my personal channel, I did a live chat recently. And someone asked me, like, you know, Sean Strickland, if you just look from like a technical boxing perspective, he makes a fair amount of what you would call like very foundational errors. Like rear hand parrying, backing up straight, standing very tall, and you know, all kinds of stuff that gets him in trouble. And it's not like those things are not necessarily true.

But like, and yes, he's been stopped by pareda and other things but like why you know why is he able to have success as i mentioned 26 and 5 he won this one on what you know insanely short notice and he had just fought the last ufc fight on the last card of the year and then picked this one up like and i think he had to bump up weight class. To light heavyweight. To take it. But by virtue of how late notice it all was. But how. How was he able to get away with stuff. It turns out.

Like there's a couple things. That I had mentioned. Which was the quick. He does have quick reactions. Even if it is a rear hand period. Which by the way. Is not always the worst idea. But it's quick.

And he kind of leans very quickly. He has very quick reactions. To kind of get it. And then he stays right back in position. And then there's the forward pressure that comes behind it. But the other part too that you really have to admire. It's not like Cormier which was much more direct wrestling to striking transitions. It was much more intentional with the particular grabbing.

But his hand fighting or at least his bare minimum of his hand obstruction in all of this is kind of amazing. What he basically does is he bears down on opponents through pressure. He does a lot of boxing combinations to the head. He doesn't have much body work. How much did he target to the body? So he only targeted 22% to the body. He targeted 71% to the head. In fact, I'd like to go back and look at the last couple of fights against Jared Cannoneer.

How much did he target the body? He targeted it just 15%. Now, the Pareda fight doesn't really count because it didn't go very far. How about Hermansen? How many did he target to the body there? He targeted just 15%. So he went slightly more to the body this time, but the vast majority is to the head. And he keeps this close range, and he bears down on you. He kind of puts

hands in your face. It almost is like your natural reaction is to reach back out, to put the hands up and then to fire in that same range as well. But then he's hand fighting or parrying or just blocking or framing, or he's outright grabbing wrists. He just does a ton to both pull you into the fight in that range and then obstruct it. It's almost like you think you're close enough to just hit him. He just gets out of the way. He kind of blocks. He kind of shelters. He frames a little bit. He'll grab a wrist. He'll grab an inside tie and move out of the way or whatever. And it's all quick. But it's this constant weaving of that style of pressure and offense. And it pulls guys into it. I would love to see for Imhovov.

Now, he targeted the body 32%. Let's look at some of his previous wins and the amount he targeted. How much did he target the body against Buckley? So we're talking about against Strickland, he targeted 32. 32 to the body this time. How much did he target? And then this is different, too, because this was two extra rounds. But against Buckley, he only did 17%.

Interesting. This was on the ground, so this was not going to count against Shabazzian. Yeah, he only targeted 9%, but that wouldn't count because I think he had Mounted Crucifix. Ian Hynash, let's see about him. Let's see, 17%, a little bit higher. So he went even more to the body here this time, although I think some of that was kicking. I'd have to go back and double check. But nevertheless, what do we have here per round?

I'd have to go back and look at some of these numbers. The numbers don't really bear out this theory a little bit, unfortunately. But it does feel like there was a lot of, how about this? There was a lot of effort, I think, paid to that space at a bare minimum. It just occupies a lot of the attention of the opponent, whether or not the direct targeting really leads up to that. And so you end up having just this constant battle where, again, Cormier was much more direct about grabbing the wrists, pulling them down, yanking them, keeping his hands up constantly in a much more

direct way. This is a little bit more subtle because Strickland's back here with this, right? He's got one, he's got his one hand up by his ear, one hand across the midsection. He's not as Cormier where he's just almost on an upright wrestling stance. It's a little bit more boxing centric in that way. And so he does roll with stuff too. But part of it is, I do believe this is to be quite true, just the amount of hand fighting he does really makes it difficult. I think the other part, too, was he's really changed his style up. Early on in his career, he was doing a lot more leg kicking. You saw some return to that a

little bit, a little bit here, but more I thought the front teeps were really the things that has become the dominant weapon of his below the waist, so to speak, in terms of like what kind of kicking or stomping or, you know, whatever kind of game he would employ. There's been a big switch there. But really, the answer for me is that Imalval was getting pressured backwards. He had a hard time landing in terms of setting his feet and getting the right distance he wanted. He was kind of getting just inched into and overwhelmed. There was the hand fighting that I thought constantly forces resetting. How about this? Strickland, when he needed to, especially in the later rounds, especially in that fifth, maybe it was the fourth or the fifth round,

clinching. Clinching and then pressing Imavov into the fence and doing it with double underhooks, like very strong positions. Never really got much of it. I think he got one takedown, Sean Strickland, in the second round. He held it for a little while. But in general, most of those didn't lead to much. They didn't lead to much offense. In fact, sometimes that was where Imhovov was able to get the elbow over the top. But nevertheless, we're talking about what makes Sean Strickland very effective when he is very effective the volume is one, the stance

that he kind of the distance that he employs again the hand fighting and everything the pressuring, all of that is part of it and I think just sort of another key to it is he just constantly frustrates rhythm, he constantly disrupts people he constantly forces

guys to start from zero and then all over again. There's really just a lot of that going on. And of course, I think overall, with Pineda fighting a couple of the ones notwithstanding, he's hard to hit cleanly to most of these guys. I also think that Imolov just wasn't ready in terms of five round cardio. And when they were telling, his corner was telling Imalvov, I think after the third round you have to take him down. I was like, good luck.

It's true that if you look at Imalvov's record, the two finishes that he has in the UFC, they both come by way of a fight that went to the ground, the Shabazzian fight, and I forget the other one. But they took place on, the finish itself took place on the ground. But dude, Charles Strickland's got a very good takedown defense. Right? That doesn't seem like a great idea

midway, or I should say past the midway point of a fight. Now you're like, oh, let's just go take him down. Uh-uh. That's not going to be available. Really just, you couldn't, Imatov couldn't mount an offensive identity. Typically in winning performances, typically. And this could obviously have a million different caveats that

you can think of. But over the course of a five round decision, typically a winning performance has some kind of identity around it. The winning fighter was able to pick up on one, two, three, four things, whatever it was, meaningfully land offense in a consistent and kind of reliable way, which leads to then other kinds of offense, which sets up other kinds of problems and blah, blah, blah. But you can kind of paint

a picture. What was this person trying to do? What was successful? What did they noodle through? What can we infer from that? There's a substance there to it. With Imhovov, there was no real offensive identity he was able to produce. Strickland's identity, which the commentators were speaking to, was very much noticeable. It was easy to detect. It was a Sean Strickland fight by and large. He was a little bit more aggressive this time. I know there were a lot of complaints after the Cannoneer fight.

I thought this was a better fight for him than the Cannoneer fight. I thought this was a more entertaining fight. Now, the Cannoneer fight was more technical in either direction. I think that is probably fair to say. But Strickland, I think, you know, trying to go for it a little bit more. His right hook early was big. He would get Imhovov moving to his own right, and he would meet him with the hook. And what you would notice that was Imovov would not roll

underneath. He would just kind of shell up and move into it. And he was getting greedy with it constantly. I thought that was pretty great from Sean Strickland. There was a little bit more emphasis this time from him, a little bit more intentionality. Some of the numbers here for Strickland. Okay, so these are, again, quantitative totals, not qualitative, but overall significant strikes. Strickland won. Let me refresh this to make sure it's the most...

Oh, here we go. This is better. Yes, thank you. The most up-to-date numbers. I just refreshed it and Fightmetric updated it, 182 for Strickland, 123 for Imovov. So first round, second round, these are the updated numbers. 24 to 19, Strickland to Imovov. 22, 22, big round three for Strickland.

47 to 24, big round four. 57 to 23, and then round five, 32 to Imovov's 35 so he got a lead in one of them and they were tied numerically not qualitatively in the second round but in that second round Strickland also got the takedown

with 1 minute 49 seconds of control time for whatever that is worth let's look at the place where they targeted in terms of the body and the head. Strickland went to the head 16 times in round one, 13 times in round two, 31 times in round three, 47 in round four, and 27 in round five. To the body, just five, eight, 12, eight, and then five again. He was headhunting big time in that fifth round. But they were just kind of wildly exchanging. Again, part of the story there for Strickland in terms of more effort.

Let's see how he looked against Cannoneer in that fight. Let me look at the numbers there. So much lower output, 152. So we have 30 more significant strikes that landed. He attempted 410 in that fight. Strickland attempted 420. So he attempted about the same, but much more. How about this?

Much more accurate. Much more accurate. Just was able to land significantly more. That's going to be due to probably a lot of the skill difference between Imovov and Kananir. But nevertheless, he was able to do that. Again, so he landed 182 on Imovov. Against Kananir, just 152. And then per round, let's see the numbers here, 16, 13, 25, 28. This is always the case for Strickland. Low level round one, he might get the lead, he might not. Very close in round two. And then in round three,

the number begins to pick up substantially, 35, 33 and then 43 um for him over down the stretch he probably feels like he won the last three interesting yeah that's cannon air very very much reading very much kind of laying back right here and then when you and then when he wants to throw he's throwing and then he waits and then the hands are up and he's grabbing and it's just disruptive it's just disruptive. It's just disruptive. It's very, very disruptive to play that guy's game in that range. Dean Thomas talking about how he just kind of forces guys to play on that game. If guys don't have the footwork, if they don't have the ability to get someone like Strickland off of them by jabbing in their face or front kicking on their own way or just whatever way to intercept them with wrestling pressure,

make them not want to pressure into them, is really the kind of key. Somebody who can negate that or minimize that, who can mitigate that pressure, that influence, those are going to be the kind of guys that can beat Sean Strickland. But if they're going to be victims of it, if they don't really have a meaningful way of getting the person off of them, other than, oh, I'll just fight him in the middle. I'll fight him in the clinch. He can, then he'll tie you up and then he'll, you know,

he'll have his hands up wrapping yours or whatever. And then he'll double underhook you and press you into the fence and then they'll force the reset. And then he's back to pressuring again. It's just a very, it's a very overwhelming way to fight if you don't have some of the other requisite ways of what are ways to repel a pressure fighter in that way. I think much more attacks to the body have to be there. I think much more attacks to the leg. You have to have great jab. You have to have good footwork. You have to be able to put pressure on them. And Imolvov just couldn't get much of that in conjunction working together. All right.

Some of the other results here. By the way, so where does he go in terms of the rankings? So let's pull up the rankings as it stands today at this moment. So at this moment, they're doing power slap ads on UFC.com slash rankings. Yeah, great. Thank you. All good. For middleweight,

so they have Sean Strickland at 7, and Imalvov at 12. This won't do much for him in the rankings. Ahead of him is Costa, Brunson, Vittori, Cannoneer, Whitaker, and old Izzy. So I guess

a fight against, and Vittoria is now training at Extreme Couture, so that's interesting. So I guess you would have to do, I think Brunson has a fight coming up. Brunson's fighting who? The Lidze, something like that? Yeah, something like that.

Who is Derek Brunson fighting? Let me see. Now that I brought it up, let's see. Derek Brunson is fighting excuse me he is fighting no Drikus Duplicy Drikus Duplicy that's interesting where's Drikus ranked 10 so yeah I guess

he's going to have a tough time I guess they could maybe do Costa if that's a thing they can do we'll have to see but it's a lot of guys probably below him because I don't know if he's a thing they can do. We'll have to see. But it's a lot of guys probably below him. Because I don't know if he's going to get... It also depends what they do with Pineda. It's really hard to say.

Vittori, maybe? Maybe? I really don't know. All right. Let's see. Your next fight on the card. How about this one? This was great.

At Featherweight, Dan Ige defeating Damon Jackson via KO. 4-13 of round number two. This is another one that was kind of like that now in the sec in the sense that one guy was was much more defining the terms of the fight than the other guy now damon jackson at the beginning of the second round came out quite well but dan iga what you noticed from dan iga was i thought he had the edge and punching power even though he's a smaller guy in terms of frame. He seemed to be maybe the more physical of the two. Damon Jackson was having to rotate on the outside. There were times he was blitzing to get in. Obviously, there were times he wanted to get the takedown, although Ige got the takedown at the end of the first, which was nice and authoritative.

But really what you saw there from Ige was he kind of had to follow the guy. He was changing stances. He was mixing up looks for entries and whatnot. But really what you saw was he was at times able to catch Jackson rotating on the outside. But the better guys are the ones who have good shot selection and good accuracy, great combination from him. How did he do it? Jackson decided to close the distance on him. And as he did, he kind of double jabbed, then smothered himself a little bit. So you actually saw Ige go right to the body and then left upstairs. But the reason why it landed first was partly, well, partly it landed authoritatively.

One, because if I go right to the body and I pull my left shoulder back, when I come over the top, it's going to land like a sledgehammer, which is exactly what you saw. So you're essentially, you could just be here and then load up like that or whatever. Or you can greet him with a jab. He decided to greet him with a body hook to load up the left so he could come over the top. But the other part was he beat him on the timing. If you watch carefully, Ige threw and landed the right just prior to fully Damon Jackson

being able to set his feet and throw. And because he had thrown the right and then he was going to be first coming with his left, he was actually on the inside of the punch of Jackson. So he got to the target just quicker. But if you notice, he was kind of having a head down like this. And Jackson was about to throw a rear hand uppercut. But he just got beat because the timing, Ige was just a little bit ahead of him in the timing. And was selling it by kind of looking down. He wasn't waiting for it and then just kind of touching to the body. So he could obviously meet him up there. He was looking like, I'm going to go to the body.

Like almost he was going to stay down there. Keeping his head down. Which drew the uppercut. But that's what drew the end of the fight. That's just great work from Danny. Great work. And you know, you heard him, that very, very emotional post-fight sort of interview speech that he gave, where he is detailing how hard it's been to lose and then to get up day after day after day to find purpose to find belief that you can actually get back out there and you can do this and you can win it's been very difficult for him and setting the example for his son man i can believe all that i can believe all that that was a sensational win now i don't know what that does for him in terms of the rankings the story of this fight we had talked about it on morning combat was

dan egan was a guy who in the last couple of years, really kind of, you know, wanted to see what he was made of. Like, he really made a push through the top of that division and kind of came up short against the ones who were the very, very best, the cream of the crop there. Gave some of them very good fights, but in the end, you know, a little bit short. But he obviously is very skilled, very powerful, you know, and he black belt in jiu-jitsu, trains in a good team, really works on his craft. It's a guy you should take seriously. And he couldn't beat the very best guys at the top of that division, but he wasn't done. He's still young. There's time to get better, make a second push at it, see what you can do.

And this was part of maintaining that belief that here's a guy who, on the right night, with some work on his craft and everything else, he can beat good fighters. And Damon Jackson is a guy who washed out of the UFC and had a long journey back and then had really come to life, not through this style of fighting. He's much more hands-on, grapple, get on top, transition, that kind of thing. He's a little bit more of that style of fighting he's much more hands-on grapple get on top transition you know that kind of thing he's a little more that that style of fighter but um you know he really wanted he wanted to

get the push that Ige had had he wanted that he was like I want my shot at that he both both of these guys had experienced redemption Jackson was sort of still on that tour And they kind of met at a moment where it was like Who's coming or going here That was a great win for Dan Ige to like I think You know remind folks What he's capable of Remind them that I think it'd be very foolish to say

Well we saw him against the top and that's that He is let me see how old Dan Ige is Dan Ige is 31. He's 31. Now, of course, he's had some tough fights, right? He lost consecutively to Chan Sung Jung, Josh Emmett, and Movsar Evloev.

Like those are, you know, and by the way, and Calvin Cater, we talked about this in Morning Combat as well. None of those guys could finish him, right? So he lost all those via decision. And I just want to point this out. Loses to Cater, fights Gavin Tucker, KO, round one. Loses those three fights, fights Damon Jackson, KO, round two.

Clearly, he's better than a certain level of featherweight. Now, there's a big question about how far he can actually go. And this first major crack at it, it didn't go well. Um, but 31 years of age, you look at all the improvement he's made already. You just look at some of the physical tools that he's got. Some of the other pieces of the puzzle that I've mentioned, there's good reason to believe in him. There's good reason to believe, you know, again, how far can he go? I don't know. My only point is we shouldn't be slamming the door shut on him. How far he goes is really up to him. This is very much unwritten,

but I like his game. I like some of the specificity of the things he can do. I like his accuracy. I like his subterfuge in terms of how he sets things up, selling it with the eyes and just the real pinpoint timing of it. That's nice, man. That's good work. That's high-level stuff. Putting more of that together I think would do him a lot of favors. There also is a question about at 145 how he physically matches up with the Caters, the Emmets.

There is a bit of a question long-term. Those guys do seem to be physically ahead of him in ways. I don't know how much of that gap can be bridged. But skill for skill, he's not done. He's not done at all. That was a nice win. And a walk-off KO, too. I know some folks are like, oh, he wasn't done. He's not done at all. That was a nice win. And a walk-off KO, too. I know some folks are like, oh, he wasn't done. Guys, he was done.

You didn't see him protest. And, like, the rule is not knocking somebody unconscious. Like, that obviously is a very clean and forthright way to do it. That's obviously great if you can do that. You don't have to do that. That's not a rule. right way to do it you that's obviously great if you can do that you don't have to do that that's not a rule the rule is not they're done when they are no longer you know when it looks like they're on anesthesia it doesn't that that is that's not how this works what works is that he he kind of

fell back and didn't really motion to cover or to roll he just kind of laid there right and so yeah he's breathing and he's like there in the sense that he's awake, but he's not in any kind of combat ready position after getting physically dropped, but he's done. He's done. He's just, he's just, he's laying there, you know? That's an easy call. That was a good call. I don't have any issue with that call whatsoever. All right. I didn't really go to the stats on that fight because I don't really care. Okay. Going down the line here, because I want to get to some of these other ones. How about Roman Kopylov defeating Punaheli Soriano at 319 of the second round?

It would be a body kick, some punches. Dude, Kopylov's jab was firing like a piston in that first round. I couldn't believe it. He was getting hit with some big shots. It wasn't like he wasn't, but in general, he was just pumping that jab over and over and over again he's landing some good leg kicks he was landing some good body kicks but the big real key to it is how does he stop him in the end by the second round he discovers he can land to the body with hard body kicks and and soriano must be i mean otherworldly tough because he sat there and ate those like they were not a big deal.

And I know that they must have been a big deal. And he fought on for a little bit. Then he ate more of it. And there's only so much a human being can take. But what's the sort of key to the story with Roman Kapilov here? This is a middleweight fight. You know, he's jabbing, he's jabbing, he's jabbing, he's jabbing. And Soriano is not like a slip encounter guy soriano's like a

high guard kind of get in range with my heart high guard and then kind of you know bruise forward with punches sometimes switching stance to cover distance right but it's a high guard type i'm going to sit behind this i'm going to catch punches on the edge of the forearms or whatever and so copulov was like sweet great two south paws no problem, right? I'm going to eat this guy alive. His liver is actually closer to me. So you can get more power when it's open stance, but if it's this way or this way, it's closer to you. So, yeah, tore him up with it.

Tore him to pieces with a liver kick that he just could only handle so many times. But what set it up was the guard comes up, which transfers defense. Now there's no defense below my elbows. It's not like he's moving. He's kind of stationary with his feet. So, boom. There it is. Again, there's nothing really right.

Excuse me. There's a lot of things right. There's nothing really wrong with a lot of different ways to defend a strike. People always ask like, what's the, you know, this guy does X, or this guy does Y, is that right or that wrong? Well, it's all, in many ways, I should say, not all, but in many ways, it's very context dependent. You know, slipping punches is, I think, very, very valuable. In many ways, probably a little bit more valuable than just having a guard up. But just having a guard up can be hugely valuable, can be hugely effective,

both as a way to catch punches and as a way to cheat your way into range like Alexander Volkanovsky does. There's not a right or wrong answer. So when we're talking about like, oh, Soriano had defense like this, well, catching punches that way is fine. It's just that you would like to see that

combined with other forms. Like he's got to be on his feet a little bit more. I do think slipping should be a little bit more. In the main event, you know what's funny? Last week, you saw Gervonta Davis against Hector Luis Garcia, him and Jerron Ennis. Here come the punches. They would turn, and then the punches would kind of go by like that when they would turn. You saw a little bit of that from Imavov tonight. A little bit of that. A little bit of that. You know, he wasn't obviously as slick as a pro boxer would be. But my point being is the more you can begin to incorporate all of these other elements, the more it gives you choices about how to build a game plan or what tool you might need for any individual opponent or any individual context.

When you have a sort of a more singular style of defense, and there's nothing wrong with having, you know, like things you prefer to do than others, no matter almost the context, I think even that is okay. But if you've got a guy who's been going to the bot, let's look at the Kapilov. I'm not sure what the tape says on him, actually. That'd be interesting to see that. Let's take a look at that. So, Kapilov in this fight, how much did, yeah, I mean, look at this. Soriano targeted the head, excuse me, 89%. 89. Head hunting, you know. How about this for, that's interesting. Kapilov, they don't have the targeting broken down by round. That part kills me because they only have Kopylov as going 17% to the body, 14% to the legs, 68% to the head.

In round two, yeah, here we go. How about this? Okay, to the body in round one copula of four of four uh in the body round two 10 of 11 the only difference is that he went to the head a fair amount uh 34 of 52 in round two and then he went to the leg three of three he went to the leg nine of nine so active with the leg kicks copula was in the first round dialed it back and then used those to go more that's that's all the part of it too right it's not just that i'm putting this in your face and then the guard comes up. He was mixing in kicks, so it's hard to tell. You didn't know they were going to come to the body because they never really did before.

I mean, a few of them did, right? But some of those were punches, whatever. I'm just pointing out you're mixing in all these other things, giving them something else to think about. Now it's leg kicks, and then you dial it back and then raise the elevation. They don't know what's coming. Boom, it hits them right in the midsection. It's nasty.

It's nasty. That is good work. Good work from Roman Coppola. Let me see. His breakdown was head, body, leg, 68, 17, 14. 68, 17, 14. So against Alessio Di Carrico, what was it? Yeah, interesting.

74-15-10. Not too much of a radical departure. And then against Albert Duraio, he lost that fight. What was it to him for that? Again, 71-16-11. Not too dissimilar. And then against Karl Roberson, same thing. What was it for him?

Way different. 51-40-8. I'd have to go back and revisit that fight to remember Roman Coppola versus Karl Roberson, but nevertheless good win by him. Okay, moving down the card here. This was a big one. Raquel Pennington defeating Ketlyn Vieira via split

decision. 29-28. This was a very, very closely contested fight. Early in the first round, like Vieira's round to me, her jab was on point, and you just saw like, Pennington had a hard time closing the distance. A hard time.

Just couldn't find her. And you saw her switch dancing her way in. It just wasn't there for her. Not in the first round. And then when they locked up, it just looked to me like Vieira was a little bit stronger. So I was like, man, the physicality is there.

Like the jab is there. It's going to be a long night for Pantin, but by round two, different story. And she was able to find her way in there. And part of it was leg kicking. She was able to do part of it was body punching. Let's pull up some of the numbers for her. If we can get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian superstore with PC express shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started.

Stop sitting on your Aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now you can save up to 25% in Aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one.

Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at AirCanada.com. Conditions apply. But by round two, and especially by round three, you saw that Vieira began to get flat-footed. That was the big key. Vieira got flat-footed. And when she got flat-footed, because remember, Vieira is not a slipper as well. She's very much the hands come up. She does not move her head hardly at all.

So she is relying upon trunk movement, catching, or her feet to get out of it. And there's not a whole lot else she can do, right? She wasn't using her feet. And so Pennington was able to just get right into range. That opened up her boxing. That opened up her drive to the clinch. Even when she was kind of out-muscled in the clinch, I thought she was like craftier in the clinch.

She was the one doing better damage, even though she was kind of being corralled and controlled. She was just much better. She was just much better in that particular space. So overall striking differences, 81 to 64. Again, these are quantitative, not qualitative totals. Pennington going 45, 39, 14 in terms of head, body, leg, breakdown. Let me see here overall.

First round, she landed more. Second round, she landed more. Pennington, third round, she numerically outstruck her in all three rounds. But again, the difference there with the quality of them in the first round in particular, I thought made a big difference. In terms of the placement of her strikes, yeah, this is interesting. She landed nine to the body in round one, 11 in round two, 12 in round three. So she went more and more to the body. I think some of that was from those clinch positions, right? For your clinch, yeah, 27% of her offense was in the clinch, nearly 30%. So more than one out of every four here, obviously.

Four, Raquel Pennington, in terms of where she landed, where she did some of her best work. Yeah, a lot of it was to the head. But you know what? This is the interesting part. Vieira's offense kind of fell off a little bit. In the first round, 15. Second round, 10.

No, it picked back up in the third. That's not quite right, actually. Actually, it was Pennington who dropped off in the third. Excuse me, I misread the numbers there. It was actually, she began to headhunt a little bit more. But in general, in general, just stayed a little bit busier. A little bit, just a little bit busier. And let me go to the leg here for Raquel Pennington. She landed four or five leg kicks in round one, four leg kicks in round two,

four or four leg kicks in round three. Now, Vieira landed more, nine of nine in round two. But nevertheless, it seemed like it had more of a pronounced effect on Vieira. She just wasn't moving. Dude, if she's moving and she's slipping, if she could move and punch and slip, man, she would be terrifying. But she's got to make trade-offs the way she punches and the way she carries her stance.

And once she became stationary, Pennington was off to the races. By the way, this is what I mean about Pennington, dude. This is who Pennington has fought in the UFC, man. Roxanne Modaferri, excuse me. Jessica Andrade. Ashley Evans-Smith. Holly Holm. Jessica Andrade.

She fought Jessica Andrade fucking twice. And then subbed her out one time. It's just insane. Betch Gohea. Elizabeth Phillips. Misha Tate. Amanda Nunes. Jermaine Durand-Ami.

Irene Aldana. Holly Holm. Marion Reneau. Panny Keon-Zod. Macy Chaston, I think is how you say it. Fuck me if I keep getting that one wrong. Aspen Ladd and then Ketlyn Vieira. Dude, she has fought a fucking murderer's row.

Where was the Amanda Nunes fight? Did I even mention that at some point? I think I did. You know, a murderer's row with tough fights and injuries and everything else. She has seen all different kinds of looks from all different kinds of opponents in all different times of a fight. She's just going to know how to... She's going to steal rounds from you, man. She's going to steal...

If you let her be busier, if you have a stand-up clinch fight with Raquel Pennington and you let her numerically outstrike you, like just let her be a little bit busier, let her find a few more opportunities to score, she's going to steal the rounds. She's going to steal the rounds. She's just clever enough to know exactly what she needs to win and to push the fight just far enough to get it.

And that's exactly what you saw. Clever, clever, clever. She knew she had to get it in close, beat him up a little bit, slow him down a little bit, make him work a little bit. And then once you did take over from there, that's really nice work from her. I mean, I don't know what else to say about this dude. Umar Nurmagomedov defeating Hayoni Barcellos via KO at 440 of round four. Ladies and gentlemen, Umar Nurmagomedov is a fucking hammer. He's a hammer. He's a hammer and a half. I mean, wow. I don't even have the numbers on this fight.

Let me just say this about him. How did he do this? Boy, he's crafty. So what he ends up doing is he's got all these different looks that he gives you. And he goes leg kicks to the inside, leg kicks to the outside. And then that almost kind of looks like his side kick, but not quite. They're kind of set up a little bit, which almost kind of looks like his side kick but not quite they're kind of set up a little bit which almost kind of looks like his body kick which is a little bit different and then by the way he has a front kick and did you notice something he starts it to the body and

then it goes a little bit higher as the fight goes on so he begins to relocate it and every time he's throwing it what reaction is he getting did he get exactly the right distance? What did he learn about this exchange? And he begins to put it all together, right? So, okay, I can throw this one into this context, and that works here. When he moves this way, whatever he's looking for, he begins to realize what the reactions are to the various similar-looking strikes that he throws are.

And then he'll weave a punch in there and see what happens, right? And he'll do it when he switched stances too, a little bit, which is how he got him on this one. He switched stance, and then the punch came behind it, and he tried to throw something else, and it didn't even matter at that point. But here's what I'm trying to point out.

When he's throwing all those kicks, then he began to weave the punch. Once he begins to weave in the patterns, right, where once he's landed the inside leg kick, the outside, the body kick, the location of the front kick is going higher.

Once he begins to put those together in a pattern, it's all downhill from there. When he's throwing them single strikes, or maybe one, two, he's just testing. He's just gathering. I mean, if those land, great, but he's not expecting them to, not cleanly anywayly anyway right he wants to keep you honest with him but they're not those

are not the home runs he's looking for but once he starts putting those together where he's disguising one then it comes from this angle and then he'll put another strike behind it and then another strike behind that or you know whatever the case, all the different permutations of what he can do. When he begins to stack those on top of each other in succession through combination, often through distance, the fight went downhill immediately. Immediately, Barcelos was, we had nothing for him. And the fact that he could do it that quickly, by the way, Barcelos has how many fights? Barcelos is 35 years old and has more than 20 pro fights. And he got dissected. He got diagnosed and then dissected and finished off in under a round.

Shit. Shit. Feel sorry for the guy who has to fight him next. Feel sorry for you already, bro. I don't even know who you are, but I feel terrible for you. Because you're not going to win. Almost certainly not going to win. That fucking guy is good.

Let me look at his numbers, man. I've actually never looked up his overall stats. I bet they're sick. Let's see what old Umar Nurmagomedov has for us, man. I've actually never looked up his overall stats. I bet they're sick. Let's see what old Umar Nurmagomedov has for us, man. Let's see. Fuck me. Are you shitting me? Good lord.

Listen to this. Strikes landed per minute, 4.35. Let me tell you, that is above average. Okay? That is well above average. Strikes of Soar per minute, 4.35. Let me tell you, that is above average. That is well above average. Strikes of soar per minute, 0.37. This dude's positive differential

is nearly 4. I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that. I've seen a positive differential when it's 4, when it was like Justin Gaethje and it was like, you know, crazy amount landing, but also taking crazy damage. This is landing at a high clip and taking virtually nothing. Striking accuracy, 70%.

That's high. That's usually around 40, high 40s. Between 45 and 50. Striking defense, 85%. Yeah, he's hard to hit. Take down average per 15 minutes. You ready for this? Five.

Shit. Takedown accuracy is always low because they're just chaining it together. You'll miss on half of them, but it doesn't matter. It says takedown defense is zero. I don't quite understand that. No one's ever taken him down, so wouldn it says takedown defense is zero. I don't quite understand that. No one's ever taken him down, so wouldn't his takedown defense be 100%? He's never been taken down,

so I'm going to say it's 100%. I don't quite understand how they have zero there. And then submission average. Dude, that is one of the most insane stat lines you're going to see. Oh, and by the way, undefeated. If that, I mean, that dude is just a problem. Good Lord.

I mean, that is nuts. And listen to how well he mixes it. This is his targeting, right? 55% to the head, 33% to the body, 11% to the legs, right? So he's touching you everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Now he's got places he likes more than others, So he's touching you everywhere. Everywhere. Now he's got places he likes more than others, but he's hitting you in every side to side, up, down, and then when he begins to put the combinations together, when he begins to weave two, two, three things together,

three, four things together, it's a wrap, homie. It's over for you. It's over for you. Good God, he is talented. Anyway, he switched stance through combination. I think he fake tied and switched stance. And I think he hit him with a left or right hook.

I can't remember. Hit him with the hook. The follow-up didn't even need to be there. He went and tried to finish him off with a hammer fist. I think out of instinct. And then realizing that the guy was done. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. That is a stat line and a half.

That dude, is he ranked? If he's not ranked, they are completely fucking up these rankings. So this was Bantawait. Oh, he's ranked. He's ranked number 11. Yeah, dude. So here's who's ahead of him. Ricky Simone?

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Pedro Munoz? Okay. Song Yedong? Sure. Dominic Cruz at seven? Rob Font? Yeah.

Dude, any of these. Any of these. But if they wanted to do Simone or, you know, like who's the guy to beat Marab? Yo, Umar is. Umar is. Marab is a very tough guy to fight. Like you sawar is. Umar is. Marab is a very tough guy to fight. Like you saw what he did to Aldo. Give him

Umar. See what happens. That's a bad fight for Marab. That's a good fight for Umar. Dude. He's fighting for gold. If not this year, then next. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. That dude is fighting for a title.

Relatively soon. Like, he's stupid talented. Okay. If you have any questions, I'll get to them. I don't know if there's any. I don't know if there are. We'll see. Just a few.

Just a few Someone's saying there was weird betting Before the flick fight I haven't heard anything What about Jones vs. Gone? Did you guys see this? So an ad went up The T-Mobile arena has this giant screen outside of it There was an ad for UFC 285

John Jones vs. Cyril Gone And apparently according to Steve Morocco MMA Fighting That that was premature And the deal's not done But then John Jones versus Cyril Ghosn. And apparently, according to Steve Morocco MMA Fighting, that that was premature and the deal's not done. But then John Jones has a video on Henry Cejudo's channel where he basically announces that this is happening. Or at least says it's happening. He doesn't really announce it. And he says it's serial gain.

Like he doesn't even say the guy's name right. So it seems like it's happening. And an old... Who was giving me shit? Michael old, who was giving me shit? Michael Chiesa was giving me shit on Twitter. Because I was like, listen, I'm being purely speculative here. Like 100% speculative. But, you know, we have documented numerous times on the record.

This is a fact. We know that the UFC has at times, for reasons you can only ask them, released news to the public about a fight being official when it never was official in order to put pressure on the folks to sign to fight it like that's a thing that has happened multiple times documented with evidence so is it that crazy to think that that was released in some kind of way and then all of this by the way the tweet that he put out by zero gone like does the ufc ask certain guys to do that? Again, I don't know about this particular case, but have I heard that in the past? Yes, of course I have, you know, to put pressure on guys. So is it part of a pressure

campaign against Francis Ngannou? Only time will tell. But if the consolation prize is Cyril Ghosn and Jon Jones, I'll take that. I'll take that. Oh, Dana just announced that the post-fight presser. Well, all that's up in smoke then. Fine. There you go. That's a sick fight. That's a sick fight. We'll talk more about that later.

I'll make a separate video for that later, I suppose. But yeah, that's great. I mean, we don't really know what to make of Jon Jones. Anyway, I stand by that it's unfair to be speculative although in this case the speculation turns out is unwarranted ultimately but nevertheless if they're going to make that fight if that is actually official now then I guess we have to ask what happened with Francis I guess we have to ask I'd have to

hear what Dana had to say. I don't have enough information to really make a sound opinion about it. If Jones vs. Gunn is actually for the Undisputed Heavyweight title, what happens with Francis? I really don't know. I guess they stripped him? I don't know.

I don't have any... I'm working with very limited information here. Who did the most to raise their stock after tonight's fights? Umar Nurmagomedov. Okay, Dana just said that Francis is a free agent. Okay, and was... Oh, Jesus. Okay, now I have more information.

Dana just said Francis is a free agent and was stripped of his title. How damaging is that for the UFC brand? Isn't it crazy that the heavyweight and light heavyweight belts are both vacant at the moment? Wow. Boy, that is a lot to take in. So Francis is going to play the free agent market, huh? Wow, that's big. Let me see if anyone texted me about this news, because usually they do.

Sorry, I know I'm live on air. Okay, let's think about that for a second. So, on the Jon Jones side, it would have been better to see him fight Francis, this overwhelming, terrifying force who had beaten Cyril Ghosn in his last fight, although he'd been out for some time with MCL or I should say ACL injury. Yet Jon Jones has been off for a huge amount of time. That is now gone. They have stripped him, and he is no longer. So there's a big question of, like, would he go to PFL?

Would he go to Bellator? Is he going to try and box Deontay Wilder? Is he going to try and box Andy Ruiz? Is he going to try and box Tyson Fury? What is going to happen with that? Is it a bad look that they stripped him? Well, in some sense, yes. You would always want that title handing over process to be more linear. And to just lose your champ like this to free agency is not great in the sense that I think fans will be disappointed. But at the same time, if the overall balance of how many of the bigger names they control hasn't shifted, then I don't know how much long-term consequence

there will be. That said, if Francis were to join the PFL and get 50% of his revenue and they could find an opponent where they could actually sell this and he could make a reasonable amount of money, then yeah, you could do something with that, I suppose. That would actually be big for him. On the one hand, there's something great potential here. There is this potentially great return of Jon Jones

and could he be something special at heavyweight? There's obviously that as part of it. On the other side, there is another sort of different kind of greatness where if Francis has left the UFC and is going to fight either boxers that he's not good enough to beat or PFL guys he's way better than but can make big money doing that in what other other way, that does begin to reset the market a little bit. It's all of these things, Nate Diaz doing it, Francis doing it, bigger names using leverage from contracts that were possible only because of the collective lawsuit that is happening

from former fighters, forcing the UFC to then put these provisions in their contract. Now you're beginning to see those provisions bearing fruit. With big stars who still have pay-per-view names leaving the company. Can they get enough of that to matter? Can those guys actually find a lucrative afterlife therein? Can enough of them do it where this really begins to change the market? No one really knows. We really have to see.

That's really what this is all about. Those are the two things I'd be paying attention to. Well, the three things I'd be paying attention to. The third being, can Cyril gone? What would it say if he were to beat Jon Jones? If this is the Jon Jones redemption story, or the Jon Jones second or third act, or however you want to talk about this, really the Jon Jones story, he comes back and adds another chapter.

That's one way to look at it. The other way would be, what if it's really Cyril's story and he goes in there and he beats Jon Jones and Jon is not who we think he is at heavyweight and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the other part of it. But this is huge. Man, I'm reacting in real time,

so this is a lot for me to take in. Man, you're asking how damaging is that for the UFC brand it's only really damaging in a long-term sense if Francis actually makes good on the departure and enough guys follow his lead because I've seen big names in previous years with different contracts, mind you. So meaning different scenarios leave UFC for other endeavors. And it never necessarily meant a whole lot in the end. It didn't lead to much. We're talking about, you know.

Remember, there was this big fighter lawsuit that happened almost 10 years ago. At this point, it's eight years. And it still hasn't fully even gotten close to being finished but the ufc had to react to it and one of the things they did was they put in the earlier sunset clauses like the five-year clauses and some other things as well these first names you're seeing that happened around 2016 2017 i think so add in five years here we are you're beginning to see some of that now bear fruit um but how far would it really go i don't i don't i don't know we're gonna have to see i am skeptical because i've always seen people try and beat the ufc at their own game and lose i've seen it over and over

and over and over again but we shall But we shall see. We shall see. Someone's saying thoughts on Jones versus Gahn. The defensive wrestling of Gahn to me seems like a very important question here. I was hoping that Gahn wouldn't take the Tui Vasa fight but instead would fight Curtis Blades. Now you might say well Gahn can keep it at range the whole time.

I'm skeptical he can keep it at range the whole time. I think he can keep it at range for long portions of the fight. I think he's got good takedown defense. I don't know. And, God, who only knows about John's wrestling at this point. It fell off a cliff at the end of light heavyweight. But, again, was that those fights?

Was that John in the moment that he was in? How do you – was it burnout? Was it none. Was it. None of that will matter. At heavyweight anyway. Like there's all these. Unknowable pieces of information. Upon which we're.

We're forced to make. Generalizations from. It's just too difficult. This won't tell us. But if John still has. Good wrestling ability. Let's just say that. Something approximating.

What he had. And some of his better days. At light heavyweight. That might be a problem for gone. That might be a problem for Gon. That might be a problem. Is Strickland the new Bisping? Dog, tough to put away, great cardio, good boxing, but not really a great knockout threat.

Yeah, but Bisping actually was able to, he took more damage. I think his fights were a little bit more back and forth. How does... Can I answer that one already? What about the eye poke situation in the Ige fight? Didn't look like a eye poke to me. They're talking about it being a rub over the top,

but I didn't see a ton of evidence for that. Strickland thanking the UFC for the big payday, saying he's a company man. Then following that up by saying fans need to support fighters after their careers because they will likely be broke teaching karate kickboxing. Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense. Didn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, someone goes, F that card.

Talk Jones versus Gahn and Gaethje versus Fazeev. I think Gaethje Fazeev is one of the 286 London card, if memory serves. Yeah, man. Jones versus Gahn. That, man. Jones versus gone. That is huge. That is huge. We'll probably have to carve out a piece of this and make a separate video out of it. All right.

I have gone longer than I'm supposed to, and I think I need to go do something else now because I'm being summoned by the people in charge. Thank you guys so much for watching. I know this was all... I haven't done one of these in a little while. It was a little rusty, but I appreciate you guys tuning in. Thank you so much. We'll be back soon with a full live show to react to everything.

And yeah, that's it for right now. So thank you guys for tuning in. And until next time, enjoy the fights.