MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Kevin Holland Score Crucial Win | Morning Kombat Extra Credit Ep. 15

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Luke Thomas is back with Episode 15 of Morning Kombat Extra Credit. Luke breaks down a couple fights from UFC 272 that he didn't get to on episode 273 of Morning Kombat. (1:00) - Kevin Holland vs. Alex Oliveira (6:10) - Sergey Spivak vs. Greg Hardy (13:30) - Jalin Turner vs. Jamie Mullarkey (19:10) - Marina Rodriguez vs. Yan Xiaonan (23:30) - Tim Elliott vs. Tagir Ulanbekov (28:25) - Honorable Mentions 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: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 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.

A UFC 272 might be in the books but we haven't gotten to everything just yet welcome folks to the podcast after the podcast this is morning combat extra credit episode 15 a UFC 272 edition my name of course is Luke Thomas I am one half of the morning combat duo that is our main podcast this is where we get to some of those fights that just don't make the cut for the big show, but we don't want to leave them out. Okay, so first things first, give this video a thumbs up if you are watching on YouTube. Please hit subscribe if you are watching on YouTube, and if you're listening on podcast, be so kind as to give us a nice review. We greatly appreciate that. Okay, as I mentioned, UFC 272 is the name of the game. We talked about the top three fights from the main card,

but there are five, really six more to get to. Here is what we're going to talk about today. We'll talk Kevin Holland versus Alex Oliveira, Sergei Spivak taking on Greg Hardy, Jalen Turner versus Jamie Malarkey, Marina Rodriguez versus Jan Schaunan. We'll also talk about Tim Elliott versus Tagir Ulan-Bakov, and then folks did want to talk about Umar Nurmagomedov, Brian Kelleher. We'll also talk about Tim Elliott versus Tagir Ulan-Bakov. And then folks

did want to talk about Umar Nurmagomedov, Brian Kelleher. We'll add that to the honorable mention section. I will have some thoughts on that. I'll share as well. Okay. All right. So without further ado, let's begin the show. First things first, we start with Kevin Holland defeating Alex Oliveira in the second round, 38 seconds via TKO. This was a bit of a slower start to Kevin Holland. He wasn't exactly slow-ish. He wasn't really himself. Now, of course, you notice he wasn't talking at all, really, in that first round. It was a couple of times he may have physically gestured like, come on, bring it or whatever, but he wasn't talking, which I thought was right. Remember, keep in mind something, which is the greater context here. Kevin Holland hadn't won since 2020. Now, the no contest against Kyle

Daukus is not a loss, and no one really holds it against him. I'm just saying he hadn't got his hand raised in the octagon since 2020, December of 2020. So about a year and not quite a half, but getting there since that's happened. So he really, I think, was probably feeling it a little bit. He mentioned he was trying to feel out the weight class with his comments after the fact. And in that first round, though, if you go back and you watch, it wasn't like he was doing terrible or anything. He just seemed, if it was the weight class where he was feeling it out,

then that's what it was. It also just seemed like maybe the warm-up was a little bit different. It looked like Alex Oliveira was more fight ready from the opening bell in terms of a mental competitive posture than Kevin Holland. Fair enough. Alex Oliveira is an experienced competitor as well. Hello. He's a professional fighter.

He's going to try to do things. But what I thought was interesting was the corner advice. I wish I could play it for you here between rounds was just some of the most coherent, properly delivered corner advice you I wish I could play it for you here between rounds, was just some of the most coherent, properly delivered corner advice you'll ever see. Namely, you're a little bit flat. I need you to, you're getting countered with your kick. So I need you to set those up first, you know, and I need you to sort of regroup and listen to me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he was sort of talking about all the very specific things. And then he goes in and implements it right away. And it was what the problem for Kevin Holland in the first round. And

again, in addition to sort of not having like, wasn't fully dialed in at the moment was from a tactical perspective, he was kind of following a little bit what Olivera was doing. He was letting him, I guess, Kevin was waiting to see what he would show him. And that's not necessarily wrong. It just put him on the back foot in the first round from a scoring perspective. So obviously I had gone all three, he would have had to win the next two, but he did do a couple of things, right? That one right hand that bopped Olivera's head back. I think Olivera was surprised at his range with that. Now he got him back right away. Some of the low kicks were working pretty well for Kevin Holland. So the first round was not some disaster or anything. He just didn't seem like he was flowing. He didn't seem like he was really in a groove. And then he gets that corner advice.

He comes back out and you can see immediately he's setting weapons. And in fact, in the second round, while it was Kevin Holland who was getting countered with the kicks, with punches, right? Someone kicks you on your left side, you fire your right hand. It was actually him doing that to Oliveira. And then Oliveira tries to close again. Kevin Holland shows the high hand. He stutter steps, and Oliveira moves to Oliveira's. Actually, I should do it this way. Oliveira moves to his own left to get out of the way,

which is the right side of Kevin Holland. Holland intercepts him with a right hand that is fully planned. You can see Holland pivot into it and you can watch his eyes. He is following exactly where Oliveira is going the entire time, hits him, follows up with the ground and pound. I did see some folks say, well, the elbows were not all of them were getting through, which is true because Oliveira was covering up like, you know, the, in the sort of the most fetal head over the hands over the head kind of position. And that the technically speaking, the elbows

were being blocked, but you can't lay there and fetal just covered up for more than like a really, really beat a brief moment in professional MMA before the referee from a body language perspective just decides to intervene. So I gather that, you know, was he necessarily putting out a completely done opponent? I guess not in that sense, but I don't really have any issue with the stoppage. And I got to say, you saw how rangy Kevin Holland was for this weight class that is going to serve him well, as he gets, um, you know, some more reps here. I thought some of his defensive wrestling was actually pretty good. None of it's perfect, but I did think he had some moments. He was good about wrist control. He was good about turning into Oliveira when he needed to for the wrestling

scrambles. Again, he had the leg kicks in the first round. I thought he looked super lean. He didn't have an ounce of fat on him. So he is going to be somebody, if you can really keep working, keep going. We already knew Kevin Holland was good. This is so obviously the right weight class for him. Whatever the jitters were, whatever it was for the first round, he got over pretty quickly. He got great corner advice. You couldn't ask for a whole lot more for somebody who hadn't had a win since December of 2020, had to change weight classes, has changed his training environment a lot. This was good. This was good by him. He should be very proud. All right, at heavyweight, Sergei Spivak defeating Greg Hardy at 216 of the first round. Now, I'm not going to belabor all of the points that I went over on Saturday night. I rewatched the fight to see if I could pick up on a couple more things. A lot of it stands. Hardy frames, and when he frames, his elbow position rises,

and from there, Spivak fires an underhook. Spivak, I think he may have thrown one punch the entire time he was on the outside with Greg in that first round. He was just waiting to get underneath one or throw one and then get underneath one. He was really not at all concerned about trading with him.

Greg Hardy does have fast hands. We talked about his... I'm not going to call him overweight in the fat shaming sense I think he's competitively overweight but even with that he's still quite nimble he's still pretty quick and his hands are pretty fast and Spivak didn't seem to want really any part of that so what ends up happening is he fires the underhook off the crossface frame. And then from there, this is what I talked about on Saturday. It does pay repeating one more time here. If someone has a weight advantage on another person by 40 or 50 pounds, and the smaller person with one underhook is able to manipulate them and move

them around and change directions and ultimately throw them. The point I made on Saturday night was like that. I cannot overemphasize. In order to physically move them in that coordinated way, there has to be a massive gap in skill. And there is. There's just a gigantic, gigantic difference. This wasn't blue versus purple this was something more like you know white versus brown or or even white versus black belt like i mean this was a huge huge difference and um so he throws him nearly gets him with a head and arm triangle he threatens it hardy scoots to the fence so he has to let it go and is getting his posture broken down. But really, Spivak can't do a whole lot with it, so he kind of lets it go. And Hardy's able to stand briefly before Spivak is able to pick him up and drop him, pick him up and drop him.

And then it's the second time he does it where Hardy puts his left knee up and Spivak sits it and pulls on it for a ride while having body control. Do you remember how he put Greg Hardy back on the mat? He literally just took his arm and kind of almost half Nelsoned it from the front, weaves it in front of Hardy's other arm. So he's catching the arm with his own arm and then puts his hand behind the head and just muscles him over. Did you guys notice that? Pay attention in this fight. I can tell you that the gap is enormous, but here's one way to understand it. Pay attention to how many times and how badly Spivak is able to move Greg Hardy's elbows away from his body. When your

elbows are away from your body and your limbs can be isolated and that inside space occupied and controlled. You are in deep trouble. You are in deep trouble. That's what underhooks are for. That's what when you work from the back, one over the top, one over the neck, one underneath the armpit. I mean, how many times do I have to tell you? How about all these Kimuras you see? How do people set up Kimura from side control?

You have to isolate the arm away from the body. That's how it's done. There's a big, there's a long video on the importance of keeping elbows scooped and off the mat by Braulio Estima. He talks about this. I think he did a seminar at Marcelo Garcia's once, and it was really eye-opening for me. This was however many years ago. About, you know, obviously limb control and limb isolation is a big part of Jiu-Jitsu. But when you really think about it, it's, you know, obviously limb control and limb isolation is a big part of jujitsu, but when you really think about it as get, you know, separating and again, understanding where

the human body works, if your elbows are in tight, right. And everything is squeezed and control. That's a very strong position as your elbows move out and you get isolated. That is a relatively weak position. So if you can occupy that space, once they're here, they're in a mechanically weak position. Notice how many times that Spivak gets between the space of the Greg Hardy's elbow and Greg Hardy's ribs. He occupies it with his body. He uses it for underhooks. He uses it for underhooks to throw. He uses it for underhooks to off-balance. He uses it as, again, that sort of front half Nelson to drive him back down. He used it to threaten a submission. I mean, he was getting in between the elbows and the body of Greg Hardy

in virtually every phase that that fight. No, in fact, he did. In every phase. Obviously, if they're standing far apart, you can't do it. But to the extent that occupying that space is even possible, he did it in every single possible phase. Folks, that only happens. That kind of control where you just get literally run over from a front half Nelson,

that only happens when the gap between them in that skill level and that particular department is the Grand Canyon. Greg Hardy could probably train the rest of his life and not get close to that in terms of that particular grappling skill set. I don't think that's in any way an exaggeration. I mean, that gap is almost uncrossable. So you saw the results of it. You saw what happened there. It was a great job by Sergei Spivak.

And on that underhook, once he fires it off the crossface early on, he tries for a throw into plant, and Greg Hardy whips around, which is the natural counter, which is exactly what Spivak wanted him to do. He was baiting that counter so he could whip him the other way, the opposite direction, and then take him over with the underhook all in one go by putting up a tripping mechanism in there. So he faked a throw to get Hardy to move and then moves him again, but this time does it on the opposite direction and then with a blocking mechanism to make him trip over and fall.

Hardy never had a chance. Given that, again, with the punching, I guess he always has a chance, but in terms of once they started grappling, that was not a winnable fight. It's like asking me to sub Marcelo Garcia. It's just not. It's like short of him being hit by a car, it's just not really possible. I don't think the gap is quite as big between me and Marcelo as it is between Spivak and Hardy. That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea of what I'm talking about here.

That is, and this is when I go back to Hardy's development. I mean, I'll say this one more time. So many people want him gone because of his domestic abuse past, and I'm not here to get in the way of that at all. Like, if they cut him, great. If they don't, great. Like, whatever. But it would be him, great. If they don't, great. Like whatever. But it would be a little bit unfair to say like there are other UFC heavyweights who deserve a spot over him.

Yes, there are some obviously. But what I mean to say is there are definitely some worse ones. There are definitely some worse ones. I guess that's a better way of putting it. Sorry. But you get what I'm trying to say. He is only been fighting professionally for four years and he's only 33. There are reasons to think he could get better.

But I think the idea of him becoming somebody who can win in this division at the elite level, I don't think that is really possible. And I had an MMA coach retweet one of my tweets about it, and he was saying it's just very hard for a guy to get good at this level. You need more regional fights to really get the best out of yourself before you go to the UFC. He didn't really have a lot of those. He got fast-tracked, and now I think he's paying for it. All right, those are two fights that are on the main card. Here we are on the prelim card. Jalen Turner at lightweight taking on Jamie Malarkey ends at 46 seconds of round

number two. Now, I did look at the numbers on this because in real time, he looked fantastic, and I have nothing but nice things to say about Jalen Turner, but it does, again, no fighter is perfect. No fight goes perfectly. Even Conor McGregor got hit in the face when he knocked out Jose Aldo, right? It wasn't a completely flawless performance

in a technical sense. But here is the thing you should understand about Jalen Turner that I do think bears a little bit of examination. Okay, here is the thing you should understand about Jalen Turner that I do think bears a little bit of examination okay here is the good news strikes landed per minute 6.51 extremely high very very very very high and you saw that he is so good about throwing long range linear punches you don't see even his hooks are short right they? They don't come wide. It doesn't have like some of those fade or sort of Russian hooking style where everything is coming out as wide

as possible. Even those have like a real narrow bent on them. And he keeps people and his opponents at the end of his strikes. That's why that number is so high. He's accurate. He's active. And he makes good choices about which punches to throw. He makes adjustments. That number is not high by accident. My only real criticism, such as one can make one, would be that the strikes absorb per minute, 4.34. That is high. That is also high.

You tend to see this with a lot of very talented striker-based younger guys where they'll have both of those numbers really high. A lot of times, over time, you'll see some of those numbers begin to more readily even out, where some of the strikes landed per minute will come down just a little bit, but the strikes absorbed per minute will come down significantly more. I think that would be something he, you know, listen, how he wants to get better and how he should get better is up to him and his coaches. I'm just going to say there were several times in this fight, Malarkey landed a lot and not necessarily with great setup either. Jalen

Turner, I think is one of these guys where his offense is clearly dialed in. The defense is still a little bit behind. Again, we talk about this a lot with these younger guys. Who were we talking about recently? Ignacio Bahamondes. The offense is there. Just got to bring in some more defensive sensibilities. Jalen Turner is really in that same boat. When he's dealing, he's dealing. Accurate, good use of range, 77-inch reach,

and it feels like he uses it. I cannot tell you how many times in the older generations of MMA, how many times we saw long, tall, rangy guys not use it effectively to their advantage. He, I think, uses it often to his advantage. However, there were times where he would, you know, throw a punch, not necessarily set it up with a feint or some other kind of disguise. More like he would read it and then just kind of leap in and tag him. Those don't need to happen. You know what I mean?

Like that's not like a cost of doing business the way he would prefer to do business. There are ways to tighten up what he's existingly doing. And again, that's up to him and his coaches. He doesn't have to change much. Just got to be a little bit more precise, a little bit more careful, a little bit more with, um, thoughtful with the setups. And that may dial back his offense just a tad, but I think that is a trade worth making if it substantially lowers the amount of damage he takes, both in terms of his long-term potential. The kid is only 26 years old. And also in terms of just making sure he's around for the big fights that could be his if he keeps going in the right

direction. This dude is dealing. I'm telling you, this dude is dealing. When he's offensively out there doing what he does best, it's very hard for these guys. Here's another thing he uses really well. We talk about Dan Hooker being sort of tall, not as tall, but he is kind of rangy. He has long limbs for the weight class, especially when he was at 145. He was good with those knees. Jalen Turner finished him off with the right hook, and it was super accurate, but it was actually a knee as malarkey came forward drove it into his body and again that's not necessarily a height issue per se but i like the taller rangier guys having a variety of knee attacks and you saw that on clinch breaks you saw that when malarkey was pressing into him he was just really on it with that and i i love to see guys use their

physical dimensions in ways that are best suited for them. And Jalen Turner already has good sensibilities about it. So this was a great performance by him. Again, he should be very proud. It's just when we talk about these guys in their early, mid, you know, 26 is, you know, obviously getting towards the late 20s. But even in that same space, we're still talking about guys who are, who I know in certain times they look the part, and he will be there. But I want to make sure everybody is careful for the Baja Mondeses of the world, for the Turners of the world, for guys who are clearly the brightest prospects

we have in the UFC. That's who we're talking about. We're talking about the brightest prospects. We've got to be a little bit careful with them. We've got to give them a little bit of breathing room, and it's a short-term sacrifice in terms of not rushing them. It's a long-term gain, I think, for the consumer, because you get a better fighter who can be around longer.

It's better for the fighter because, again, they don't take as much damage, relatively speaking, and they can obviously produce maximum skill to get the most out of their opportunities. Let's pump the brakes. A tough fight for Jamie Malarkey. He did have the good takedown at the end of the first, didn't do a whole lot with it, but he was trying. He was just at the end of everything. He had real trouble negotiating that distance. And while Jalen Turner still doesn't make head movement, his biggest priority, everything he was doing

was way too much for Jamie Malarkey, who, by the way, is a good fighter. And that's Udo Schmedisch and now Jamie Malarkey back-to-back those are two really good wins by Jalen Turner so obviously he's on the right path let's just see if he can keep going and I'm sure he will uh we go now to a fight this one should have been on the main card I don't care what anybody says Marina Rodriguez at Women's Strawway taking on Yan Xiaonan she wins via split 29 28 28 29 29 28 I know there was a lot of people upset about it I did re-watch. In real time, I remember thinking to myself, I had scored it for Jan Schaunan,

but I guess the second round was close, and so I sort of understood, even though I didn't agree, is that something I could sort of see? Yes. Here's what I think happened in this fight. First round, obviously Jan Schaunan. Second round was Rodriguez. Oh, excuse meaunan. Second round was Rodriguez.

Oh, excuse me, third round. Third round was clearly Rodriguez. The second round, what I noticed was it was relatively even-ish with Jan doing better work early. There was a lot of jockeying along the fence line about midway to semi the end. And then when they started jockeying

towards the end of that, Marina Rodriguez had a really good offense. And there was one moment where Jan seemed to trip and fall to the mat, but like face first. So it looked like it was off this clinch break. So it was, she didn't get exactly thrown more. It's just,

it looked like this really, it was very demonstrative and it sounds like, wow, that matters for a judge. Yeah, dude, they don't have access to stats. They don't have access to anything other than what their eyesight tells them sometimes they have instant or uh they have a small monitor they

do in vegas but they often don't use it so it can what things look like actually matters how many times have we talked about guys who kind of throw a lot of volume and a lot of it misses but because they're so active a kind of stifles the other person but be the judges have a hard time differentiating exactly what's landing and what's kind of like bouncing off or whatever um what i think happened for hadriguez's favor is that her best offense came late right as the round was ending you know with about a minute and a half left and again the middle part of that round was a little stalemate-ish and she had the most like memorable offense in that round i still think yon shunan did the overall better work, but can I really complain about it?

Not really. I can't. In that sense, to me, it's a credible win. Jan Schaunan getting two of four takedowns, no one getting a knockdown. Volume was pretty high in this one. 207 attempted for Rodriguez, 143 attempted for Jan Schaunan. Her hand speed at first was great.

Her lateral movement, her inside out movement was really great. And Rodriguez doesn't have really any head movement to speak of. And so she was having a hard time blocking and then countering because Shonan would put a bunch on her and then get out at an angle without sticking around. So she's not there very long. She's occupying your hands. And then she's out at an angle. That was very difficult for her for long periods. Rodriguez was trying to pressure her and did some pretty good cage cutting. But it was in the second round

where she was able to build offense from the clinch. And then in the third round, when Shaunan was really slowing down, I think some of the body work had begun to affect her. Rodriguez targeting the body 25% of the time. That's not nothing. That's actually, for example, Jan Schaunan only targeted at 12. So, Rodriguez was going to the body twice as often.

I think some of that was playing a bit of a role, especially from the clinch. She was getting pulled. She was actually doing a lot of work just moving around. And then, much more offense was coming from the clinch. Plus, Rodriguez at that point could put hand combinations together better. And she was able to read some of the forward motion of Shaonan better here's how close this fight was okay Shaonan had 24 to 18 landed significant strikes in round one she wins in round three Rodriguez had 40 to Shaonan's 18 easy calls on both those rounds in round two, they both landed 14 significant strikes each.

And there's only a difference of, it sounds like a lot attempted 34 to 45, uh, in favor of Rodriguez. So they landed the exact same amount and Rodriguez did slightly more effort. I think that may have played a role. Can't, can't say with any certainty, but that seems

reasonable to me. And now, Rodriguez, if you just look at her run at this point, she has, since losing to Carla Esparza, she's defeated Amanda Hibas via TKO and then decision consecutively Watterson, Dern, and Jan Schaunan. Outside of Esparza, who is next for the champ, that's the best run in that division by a country mile, so she should get the winner. And then, let's see, finally we move to the last fight on the card here. Well, excuse me, that's not quite right. We'll still have to get to the Umar one. We go to Tim Elliott taking on Tagir Ulan-Bekov. Tim Elliott wins 29-28 across the board. Probably right. He dropped Ulan Bacov in the first.

Let me look at the stats on this one. He kind of got out-hustled in the third with Ulan Bacov ending the third in a body triangle and kind of looking for a rear naked choke. From the looks of it, they appear to be roughly equal on significant strikes. And the numbers to that are, yeah, about 80 to 90. So that's about right. They both ever did about the same. 227 for Tim Elliott, 212 for Tagir Ulan-Bakof. Tagir gets two takedowns, Tim Elliott getting three. I think that surprised a lot of people that played a role in this one for sure. And Tim Elliott's targeting, listen to this, 37% to the head. That's low. 18% to the body, 43% to the leg. He was dialing that in constantly. Plus, one of the big things was he was doing

really well in scrambles, especially in that second and third. You saw Ulan Bacov, he had good position on takedowns, but Elliott was squirmy and knew how to distribute and sag his weight. And so you could see Ulan Bacov kind of muscle the very last parts of that takedown. Not the entire part, just that very last part he needed to get it over the edge. But because you do that, sometimes you can give up the real, actual, sturdy control you need for that. And as a consequence, it left just enough room. And obviously, Elliott has just enough sensibilities in terms of these scrambles and wrestling positions, some of the funk stuff that he does to roll through them or roll out on top and get high hips and high head.

And you saw that constantly in this fight. He did a really good job of that. Again, he stuffed six of nine. Excuse me. He stuffed eight of 10. What am I saying? He stuffed eight of 10. That's pretty good that's

really good as a matter of fact now the one kind of knock on this fight is that elliot blatantly grabbed the inside of um ulan bakov's glove why is that relevant there's actually a moment i think in the first round between jaylen turner and jamie malarkey where turner actually legally grabs the glove the hand over the top of the glove of malarkey and doesn't let him go and then proceeds to like body him with it. It's really quite interesting. This was the opposite. You can hold the top of someone's glove, not your fingers inside, but like, you know, just standard wrist control. You can do that and you can grab it. You just can't grab the small digits, the fingers, theitos all right you can't grab those um but you can grab the hand you can grab the wrist

and the like you can also grab the inside of your own glove but you can't grab the inside of someone else's glove so he did that he had two knees that were a little dicey in terms of legality i think they were okay in the end, but they were pretty close. And he was sticking his fingers out. And, dude, Habib was in Ulamakov's corner losing his mind over the glove grabbing. He did it a little bit later, I think in round three again. Now, there's a question. Were those intentional or not?

I don't know. If you commit a lot of fouls, it's not as easy to give someone the benefit of the doubt. But at the same time, it's really hard to say. I can't. I'm not in someone's head. It's trying to discern motive from here seems like a very difficult exercise. So I won't weigh in on that. What I can say is, at least in theory, this fight or any other fight, you see how often a point is never taken.

It is not irrational. I'm not saying Elliot did this, but somebody else might. And so it's worth considering if you know, the, the, the ref is unlikely to like, there should be some data, like how often it does a, what are the tendencies of certain referees to call stoppages, you know, take points away for finger pokes or whatever. If you have some kind of knowledge about that, whether it's, you know, collected data or just a sort of a keen sense of things, and you know that guy is your referee, you can probably get away with, again, we've talked about this before. What makes a law a law is the enforcement of it.

If you don't enforce it, what is the thing that actually makes it legal? Nothing. So if they're not going to enforce the? Nothing. So if they're not going to enforce the eye pokes, if they're not going to enforce glove grabs, why wouldn't you? Oh, well, that's not a way that anyone would want to win. I don't believe that actually. I believe there are probably a lot of guys who wouldn't mind necessarily winning that way. Now you don't have to like that. You can hate that. You can love that. Again, we're not saying Elliot did or didn't do it. I have no clue whether he, again, purposely did them or not.

But in the future, you should think about the possibility that certain referees are soft-handed when it comes to calls, and then fighters who are clever might use that to their advantage. That seems not at all controversial, if you ask me, especially if they just don't call shit, right? Like, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? And then last but not least, we'll do the honorable mention here. Umar Nurmagomedov defeating Brian Kelleher.

Submission, rear naked choke, 315. This was a, okay, so this was like a weird performance for Brian Kelleher. You know, he was on the MMA beat. I love Brian Kelleher. He's a great guy. I didn't understand his performance a little bit. I thought his takedown defense was phenomenal. He was quite ready for that.

He was whizzering really well. He was getting his hips to face the mat. He was making sure he wasn't positionally overwhelmed too much along the fence line in open space. Like, dude, he clearly had prepped that. But then when there was one moment where Nurmagomedov was able to get double underhooks and press him up against the fence and then begin that whole Nurmagomedov process,

Kelleher gives up back control. And I went and I looked again. I was like, how exactly did Umar Nurmagomedov lock up that choke, the bicep rear naked choke? How did he lock that up? He was looking to fight the hands, left hand over the

top shoulder, right hand underneath the armpit. And I was waiting to see, like last week we talked about Terrence McKinney having this awesome hand sequence where he was waiting for Fares Ziam to go two on one so he could grab the wrist. He was waiting for it. I was waiting to see was there an elaborate hand fight here? And there really wasn't. In fact, Kelleher wasn't really hand fighting at all. He was kind of rubbing his nose. I wonder if it broke and distracted him.

I don't, I don't know. But he just kind of lets go. And Nurmagomedov just goes, oh, you know, like, well, okay. You know, I'm left-handed, so I can't do it that way. But he just, he just wraps it up. He just wraps it up like that, you know I'm left-handed so I can't do it that way but he just he just wraps it up he just wraps it up like that you know and so um he gets the choke I don't know what else to say about it he that kick he landed over the top they talked about it where he just flicks it at the end was amazing but again Kelleher didn't get beat up too bad um he only landed one significant strike which was not great.

Although Nurmagomedov only landed 18. So there was only 19 significant strikes landed between the two of them. Not a lot. And Nurmagomedov whiffed on four or five takedowns. That's good work. I mean, that's good work defensive wrestling-wise from Kelleher. Something fell apart with the hand fighting at the end. I don't really know.

I don't know if he got hit with something. I didn't see it. Again, I'm going a bit off of memory here. And then the one time I don't really know. I don't know if he got hit with something. I didn't see it. Again, I'm going a bit off of memory here, and then the one time I reviewed it, and I don't remember seeing something like that, but perhaps you did. If you did, leave a comment below to see what I missed. It's solid work for Nurmagomedov. He did everything that was expected

of him. It was just Kelleher had super sturdy takedown defense, but then the hand fighting, it looked to me like it wasn't there. It just wasn't there. So credits to all the winners and the losers have a chance to redemption next time, right?

Certainly we hope. All right. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. If you love stuff like this, there's plenty more coming. We have a lot more content tomorrow, a show on Wednesday, a show on Friday, not to miss plus all the work we do on Saturday. I haven't had a day off in forever.

Not looking for one. I'm looking to give you guys free content i hope you appreciate it okay so for everyone here at morning combat thank you guys so much for watching until next time enjoy the fights