MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Khamzat Chimaev Retires | McGregor-Poirier 3 This Summer? | Israel Adesanya | Ep. 125

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

The boys are here to breakdown all the latest and biggest MMA news and there this a lot. Khamzat Chimaev says he is retiring due to post COVID-19 health issues, but Dana White doesn't think so. What do we believe? Dustin Poirier says he and Conor both want the trilogy fight and it could come early this summer. Is this the right move? Also, ahead of UFC 259, Israel Adesanya says he is going to go back down to 185 and keep the division moving. Is a Jon Jones fight still in play? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Reveille, reveille, donks. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell.

This is Morning Combat. It is Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021, and it is time, ladies and gentlemen, for Morning Combat. Hello, everyone. How are you doing? My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo. I am joined by the man who currently is doing a better job of representing Latin America than I am. He is my friend and yours. We are both from CBS Sports. It's Brian Campbell. Hi, Brian Campbell. Luke, I'm here. I'm ready. I'm fired up. It's hump day. No J Wednesday. We're going to spin the wheel of death. We got a lot of fun to talk about, even though I'm not allowed under quarantine rules to experience the beauty of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Luke, I'm still taking in as much as they'll let me, okay? And I love it, bro. Love it. Do you have the COVID? What were your test results? I've taken many tests since I've gotten here. Up to this point, no COVID for your boy, BC,

which is very, very good, Luke. But I'm trying to channel that Latin passion, that thunder, Luke. They have a passion on this island for the box, the boxeo. I want to channel that passion through my orifice to the screen for Morning Combat, for Ring City USA, Thursday night, NBC Sports, 9 p.m. Eastern, and whoever else will pay me to go on camera. Luke, I'm ready. I'm excited. Let's do it. All right, well, we've got a ton of stuff to get to. We have, let's see, on the docket today, we got to get to some Kamzat Shemaev news. We've got some matchups to discuss, both in MMA and boxing. We're also going to lean into UFC 259's main event today. If you didn't see,

BC and I yesterday put out a resume review for Israel Adesanya heading into UFC 259. We actually really like doing those. We're going to keep doing them. You guys seem to like them. So if you've checked it out, thank you. If not, give that a look if you don't mind. And we also have content coming tomorrow, BC. I have my live chat at 3 p.m. East Coast time.

And the documentary, I believe, comes out tomorrow as well. I know we have a trailer. Would you like to set this up? Yes. So Luke, not only should people check out our ring resume with, with out of Sonia, as you mentioned, and yes, there,

I guess there's audio issues. People say, Luke, my voice was too powerful for, for one stream to handle here under this McDonald's wifi. But please also check out my sit down with Megan Anderson, who of course is in the UFC two 59 cool main event against Amanda Nunes on Saturday.

And, Luke, along with your live chat being bumped to B-side on Thursday, we need to welcome in a giant piece of art. And that is the great work done by the folks at Malka Showtime to capture a moment in time, a spirit, an essence of what you and I bring to the table with Morning Combat. The adversarial tendencies between us. A bring to the table with Morning Combat, the adversarial tendencies between us, a lot to get into with this. We have a trailer. This will debut on Thursday. Let's hit it. It's the Morning Combat documentary 2.0. We're back, BC. I've got to carry the second documentary to try to create content. Can I be funny enough to carry for both of us?

Because Luke doesn't care about this shit. I'm trying to eat in peace, bro. I'm trying to eat in motherfucking peace. You know what I'm saying? This is either going to be a good doc or it's not. I'll tell you what, I'm going to perform. You think I care about 100,000 subscribers? If he likes saying this dumb shit.

I am an artist. Because it makes him feel better? You know, we're going to do the best talk show. It's not a fucking talk show. I'm sorry, Luke. I might be using you. No, I am using you. I just want him to know through this process that life's not as rich.

Are you saying more dumb shit? guess a bunch of dumb shit just business Yeah BC it is The kind of content you love is it not what can you say? I watched it this morning I thought it was good, but you are the one who is effusive with praise and God you're so you're such a buzzkill I get a text from you doc was good. Oh, yeah, that's thanks Luke It's only our life our heart and soul our relationship everything being put to the test on the line close-up many marriages Look if we're really being honest have have not survived the reality treatment, right? The Hogans, Hulk and Linda went down pretty hard. The Liches, Jessica and Nick took a hard L.

I'm hoping this marriage doesn't get there. But, man, what a weekend to have had the Doc Crews following us. Conor McGregor's big fight with Dustin Poirier. The true story of what went on with Jay and his status with Morning Combat. A lot to get into there. Luke, I'm certainly not here to spoil anything, but do you have anything other to say beyond good? It was good?

It was okay? I think it's light years ahead of the first one. Shout out to our documentarian, Less Than Jake. It drags a little. It drags a little. Could have used a little bit of a shorter edit, but it is very well done. Such an a-hole. You know what you're really trying to say without saying it, Luke?

It's BC heavy. That's what you're trying to say, but I think there's a reason why. It could be 100% you. You have this thing where you think I want to take part in this. I only do it to accommodate you. I don't care if I'm in there for five minutes or five seconds. It doesn't mean anything to me. That's clear for

all the viewers of The Second Doc, but Thursday he'll get the full treatment. Hope you enjoy that. Then you can jump on Luke's live chat to talk about it with him. Good stuff. Good stuff. Thank you to the folks It is very well made, and the guys who have worked on it, ladies too, but the people who have worked on it, they have

put a lot of effort into it, and it's very well made. I can absolutely say there's craft put into this, you know what I'm saying? So, no doubt about it. By the way, if you want to follow and subscribe us all over social media, it's Morning Combat consistently, the same name everywhere, but as you can see, BC and I are a little bit different in names between

Instagram and Twitter, so take a screenshot, give us a follow there if you so are inclined. If you'd like to try Showtime, you certainly may, showtime.com. 30-day free trial, you'd like it, you can keep it, if not, pound sand. Of course, $4.99 for the first six months if you sign up for the Bellator experience, which comes, by the way, April 2nd. Not too far from now.

And, yeah, what else, BC? Oh, the merch. Store.show. That's S-H-O dot com for Morning Combat gear. We do have more stuff coming, but if you've got a hankering for the good stuff we already have, you can go right there. Okay? Look, any of your family members wear any of it i they couldn't name the show if their life depended on it no no no you know i can't name people who work who work on the show that's how my family feels about my existence i i i understand the thomases they couldn't give a

flying frick but does abuela wear the green hoodie? Anything here? My wife will wear some stuff, and you know what? My wife obviously could name the show. Abuela, I think, knows enough about the show as well. They're pretty supportive. They're not MMA fans, but they're pretty supportive people. I love them, Luke. I love them all. Thank you. You'll see when you come down here.

Hospitality is not a joke. Alright, let's get started. If we can't be be seen we have a lot to get to today but of course you know being the lookout for content tomorrow and friday and blah blah blah all right first up uh this i think happened on i want to say monday night maybe it was tuesday i gotta i can't recall exactly but ufc welterweight slash ufc light I should say middleweight, depending on what weight class he's fighting in. Hamzat Shumayev took to Instagram to say that he was done. He was retiring and he essentially wanted to just move on. Here's what he, I don't have his quote directly in front of me.

I'll, you know, we've got some other ones we'll get to in just a second, BC. But the point being is that was highly surprising. We knew he was dealing with a pretty bad case of COVID. You'll recall the UFC had flown him from where he was to get some private doctors, I think, out in Las Vegas. And we didn't hear anything after that. Then this comes out. There was also photos, BC, that he posted, Dramayev did, on Instagram where he was coughing up blood, seemingly. He appears to have an incredibly terrible, terrible case of COVID,

especially for a young athlete. But Dana White says he's not retired. I'll throw it to you. Let me just read this quote very quickly. When he got here, the doctors took care of him. They put him on prednisone, which is a nasty effing steroid, Dana White told MMA Junkie. So he's on prednisone, and he's supposed to be taking this thing and chilling, relaxing,

and letting himself recover. He went in and effing trained today and felt like shit and got super emotional and posted that. He's not supposed to be training, but you know, the guy's a savage. He wants to fight like every effing weekend and now he can't even train. So he just got emotional and posted that, but he ain't quitting. BC, who do you believe? Chermayev? Dana? Something in between? Where are we? Well, we've got even more to talk about on this topic in a moment when we throw to the comments from your boy, your Chechen governor there, the leader of

the free world, Luke. So as it pertains to Dana, look, when you immediately hear this, it's very easy, Luke, to have a couple emotions. One of them is, you're telling me, headline, Dana White says Russian fighter who claims he's retired isn't actually retired. That's not a new thing, Luke. We've heard that before. So your initial knee-jerk response here is to be like, are we pushing under the rug how serious this could actually be? Obviously, COVID hit us hard in the past year. Never had something like that in this modern times. And for all those willing to open up their doors, Mississippi and Texas, I'm looking at you, 100% no masks. Let's go for it. Let's turn it into South Florida. For everyone willing to do that, on the flip side, you've still got some very serious realities of

this illness. And this is a young prime athlete, as you mentioned, who can't seem to get right, Luke. And it scares me because of how little we actually really seem to know about this. And number two, Luke, you know, I had about, I may have had the COVID 18 and a half early model that time, Luke, but you know, I was hospitalized for it. I literally couldn't breathe. This is pretty serious stuff. And it's been a while for this guy. So I certainly tend to lean on the whole idea of like, can we just be like hella safe and not knee jerk reaction and be like, he's going to be fine. He's going to be back in there. He's going to be fine. But Luke, I have to kind of hedge that just a bit specifically because Dana mentions this nasty fucking steroid prednisone. Luke, have you been on prednisone? Let me ask you

this. I think I was on, I think I've been on prednisone? Let me ask you this. I think I've been on prednisone before. Why do you ask? Well, it's one of those drugs that we don't think of it as something too hard because it gets prescribed to us for very small things, yet people have wildly different results on it. My son, who when he was, I think, three years old, got put on it and he was waking up in the middle of the night trying to scratch his eyeballs out because that steroid kind of put him on tilt mentally.

Found out from the doctors that can happen. Later in life, Luke, I had this thing where I would weed whack and get poison ivy pretty viciously and it would spread all over my body because I'm not so handy and stuff. Luke, maybe I, you know, trampled into the wrong areas and they would put me on prednisone and that would be the only thing that could like kill it quick because, you know, I've got a front facing camera job. I don't need poison ivy crawling up my face. The problem with the speed of it, Luke, is that prednisone also made me fairly crazy to the point of like having alternate hours of crying and then being ridiculously happy and then being ridiculously angry and not knowing where the emotions were coming from. Luke, I actually, this turned out to be an odd turning point of my career in 2016 at the peak of my, hey ESPN, you're not paying me

or using me up to my full abilities and I'm now sick of it. I sent a Jerry Maguire-like email in the middle of the night to the head of ESPN.com, Luke, about that subject. And it actually led to a meeting the next day and really a big turn in my career, all thanks to Prednisone. The point, I don't want to side with Dana ultimately, but people can make really knee-jerk emotional decisions on this drug if you're one of those people that affects negatively. So a lot of layers to think about, Luke Luke one certainly being the COVID safety and another maybe Hamzat did sort of jump the gun and be like holy crap I can't get over this thing I'm never fighting again I gotta tell you um I have mixed feelings about this as well which is to say we this before, BC, not comes out with COVID or something, obviously not, but fighters with some kind of thing that happened to them, you know, obviously

it's regrettable, but it has happened, where they've lost a loved one, a son or a daughter or a spouse or something, and that kind of derails their career. Or we've seen it with injuries too. 2015, Khabib Nurmagomedov had a rib injury and he just outwardly said, I don't know if I'm coming back after this. It was a little bit more hedging than Komsat was, but still, it's a pretty similar kind of thing. And then later on, when they feel better, they realize, okay, I was acting out of haste. We talked about it the night Dan Hooker lost because he put his gloves in the octagon. BC, you had noted that. I'm like, did he really retire? Well, in that moment, he might've felt like he was retiring and then he felt a little bit better about it and he decided to

come back obviously okay so where are we with chamayev we are somewhere in that spectrum of i don't think kovid's going to derail him just by virtue of the numbers and the population that he occupies even if this is a really bad one but if this is a really bad one. But if this is a really bad case, there could be long-term damage to his lungs. There could just be he'll get over it. But the timeline of how he recovers could be, you know, it's very unpredictable with some of this kind of stuff. So my thought is, could he come back? Yes, of course. It is entirely possible. But for the time being, let's not put pressure on him. Dana was saying, you know, he's still on track to come back in June. How about we just push that aside for just a second and say, we'll make arrangements about when you're coming back based on the evaluation you give us in terms of how you're doing, your recovery,

and nothing less and nothing more. Could it be June? Yeah. Could it be July, August? I mean, this is the thing. A little less professional pressure right now, I believe is totally warranted. And more to the point, BC, it's like people were, Dana White obviously occupies an incredibly important position in mixed martial arts by virtue of him essentially being the promoter for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It's very, very powerful. But he has used that position to say a lot of things that were evidently quite true, to break news. All of it is true. I'm not telling you you can't believe it, but the guy has the financial incentive for Kamzat to just be miraculously recovered. The idea that he's got his...

Last thing on this. I'm sorry, I know I'm going along, but the last thing I'll say is I realize that he might very well be telling the truth, but he also has said enough of things in similar situations that did not ultimately pan out. Very much a wait and see approach, I think, is a prudent one.

Yeah, I mean, look, I laid out both sides of the tale on what Dana may be thinking here and what may be the reality. So it's hard to judge, although he obviously has a poor track record in this area. I think obviously the easy answer for everyone is just give this guy time, let him figure it out. There's no reason to rush, even though he was on the verge, it seemed, Luke, of making a ridiculous leap had he taken and won that Leon Edwards fight and seemed fast-tracked for glory.

I've got a little bit more problem with the, how do you say the fellow's name from Chechnya, Luke? Ramzan Kadyrov. The Kadyrov, I mean, look, I know that many people have a lot of issues with Kadyrov. His quote that he put out, I had more issue with. Luke, it seems like it's too long to read, but what he really challenged Chimaev, and he told of his discussion with him, was all about, you know, thrilling the millions of Russian fans around the world. And Luke, some of these direct quotes kind of made it seem like Kadyrov was just sort of like, bro, suck it up.

You have a responsibility for this region, this country. I mean, it almost made it feel like he was on the payroll or something like, you know, we have prepared you for this. You need to fulfill your obligation. Screw this illness. Get back out there. That's what this entire message screamed, Luke. All right.

What happened to your camera there? You all right? I'm still alive, but I just had a little remodeling going on there. That's what this entire message screamed, Luke. What happened to your camera there? You alright? I'm still alive, but I just had a little remodeling going on there. I see. BC, you ever watch have you seen what is the Quentin Tarantino movie with the French and Germans at the movie theater and they kill all the

Nazis by shooting them from an elevated position? What is the name of that movie? Inside the movie theater, they set it on fire fire i have not seen that one luke sorry anyway the german dude at the beginning of it plays a nazi soldier now i'm not here to compare or not compare ramzan kadirov to you know nazi officers but one of the things that makes that performance so good and so memorable and so evil which of course is the intent if you're playing a Nazi, is how pushy they were. They're always making people in these ordinary scenes do things, mundane even, that they don't want to do. Oh, here, have this slice of pie. No thanks. No, seriously, have the slice of pie. If you read Ramzan Kadyrov's Instagram post that he put out

about it or whatever it was, the language is so pushy. You have a responsibility to the people of Chechnya. You said you're sick, but the will of the people will lift you, won't it? It's really just, God, this guy's under enormous amounts of pressure. No wonder he's out there training when he's not supposed to be. Yes, I'm sure internally he wants to also train. I have no doubt about it that he has agency in these matters as well. But let's not forget at at the same time it's weird to be in the position that he's in whether he welcomes it or he doesn't in terms of just how many powerful forces are bearing down on him and my thing messed up hang on talk without dude. My thing is jacked. Sorry. All right.

You got this. My thing is jacked up. Hang on. Somehow BC's carrying the good end of the stick. Luke, we can't hear you. The people can't hear you. Sorry for my little camera mishap here in Puerto Rico. Can you hear me now?

Yeah, we got you now, Luke. All right. Very good. Sorry about that. My earbuds quit on me for a second. I don't know what that was. I apologize. Any final thoughts about the comms out situation? Let's just take our time here, Luke. Let's just take our time and let's also realize

sometimes these drugs can mess with people the wrong way, Luke. They certainly can. I tend to think he probably will come back, but leave the guy alone. Leave Brittany alone is what I'm saying. All right. Topic number two, BC.

Dustin Poirier is targeting the McGregor trilogy, it appears, around June or July, but still expects to fight Nate Diaz at 170 in the future. This is what he told Joe Rogan recently. Connor wants the trilogy, and I do too. We're just trying to get the right deal structure. This is going to be a big fight. He knocked me out. I knocked him out.

The trilogy, for sure, one of the biggest fights of this year, maybe of all time. So I think the trilogy makes a lot of sense and a lot of money. So we're just trying to get the right deal structure and see what the time frame is. Because for a guy like Conor, you want the fans in there, even if it's limited. BC, your reaction to what Poirier told joe rogan in a way luke i'm not surprised mother effers in a lot of ways that the ufc would go in this direction and look even poirier now this doesn't tell his true thoughts right does he feel snubbed by the organization that he's not wearing the ufc's welterweight title right i'm sorry lightweight

title right now and that we're still carrying on this charade, by the way, that Khabib's coming back, even though Khabib just had another public interview in the past 24 hours in which he was like, I need to focus on things other than fighting in my life. Like, I'm just like, how many more times could the dude double down? But if you asked me, Luke, is there actually more value financially, leverage wise for him to get this trilogy fight with Conor which you know to his credit could be one of the bigger pay-per-views in modern history compared to let's say already being the champion and fighting Michael Chandler next yeah he probably gets more out of this opportunity with Conor but it doesn't make me sleep better at night Luke I know the titles

are titles UFC does a better job at protecting the integrity of a championship and what it means, certainly comparative to boxing, which is ridiculous. And there's belts coming out of people's ear holes, Luke. Okay. But some of that is romanticized, but I kind of like that romanticism. I'm not going to be happy with Dana White. If Poirier, let's say he loses this fight and never gets back to the top and essentially never gets a chance, Luke, to have what I feel like he already accomplished. Because Habib stepped away, Poirier stepped in and proved he's the best of the best right now in this still historically deep and talented and all-killer, no-filler, lightweight division. I know he's already held the interim belt once. I know that, again, if he's being offered a stack of money and fame

from a Conor trilogy up against wearing the title, he may still take that first category, Luke, and not think twice because these guys are businessmen too at the end of the day. But if we're going to stay at least partially romanticized on the idea of a title and what it means to a fighter's legacy and career, I think it's absolute BS that we're carrying forward with Dustin Poirier fighting again for not the full championship, even though he's fresh off of becoming the first man to knock Conor McGregor out. And oh, by the way,

he went five rounds of hell against Dan Hooker when he was essentially on the verge of a title shot himself. So this is really what we're doing here, Luke. I guess we just have to settle in and understand that and be fine with it. I guess we just have to settle in and understand that and be fine with it. I certainly love this trilogy just from the standpoint of an event and a fight that has history and is interesting, but kind of doesn't deserve it right now.

Not where things stand in this division. If you are anyone else from Charles Oliveira to Michael Chandler, you would certainly get what's happening, but it's not right, Luke. It doesn't make it all okay. I hope they financially make Dustin happy enough to keep going in this direction,

but this is not how we do things normally in the promotion of belts and champions. What the hell's going on inside those UFC offices, Luke? It is weird that they could say, oh, we'll make it up to Dustin by putting the title up for grabs for this one, which, by the way, they still may not even do that. They may go a different direction altogether. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that they do that. But then Conor could win that one.

Like, I'm not ready to count Conor out of that one. He lost spectacularly in the second one, but who the hell knows? Who the hell knows about the third one? And so he could have had a layoff, essentially, lost, and then won, and then been champion again. That is entirely possible. That's a plausible scenario. So that wouldn't be fair. I guess the one thing, BC, that gives me a little bit of calm is not that any one fighter, even if McGregor had won and wanted to have a third fight or whatever, call a shot after that,

even in that position, their leverage is going to be limited. But Dustin has earned himself a little bit for it. Because the UFC now, what's the biggest McGregor fight you could make? Probably maybe the Diaz trilogy or maybe the Poirier trilogy. They're probably on par with one another, relatively close. Conor wants this one a lot more. Dustin's been a good and loyal partner to the brand for a long time.

He's got a little bit of leverage to say, okay, come up off your pockets a little bit more. You can put the belt on the line. You can not put it on the line. I would like to get compensated more than maybe I had been. And this is a good moment for him to, I think, demand it if he can.

He beat them fair and square. Pay that man his money. You know, all night long, check, check, check. Yeah, he goes on to say, by the way, June, July, Poirier gave us a timeline for a return. I will if I get the call, and it's time to go to work. I will lock myself in a training camp, but I'm still not right now ready to go back to Florida a month removed from my last fight and then locked down for another 10 weeks or whatever it is.

So we'll see. If they call, I will do it, but I'd rather it be a bit further. Let me enjoy my life back home in Louisiana before I go right back out to Florida again. They'll work out the rules. He has alligator blood, and I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I want to. By the way, we didn't...

Before we move on to the next topic, do you like the idea... I like the idea of Diaz versus Poirier. That's a no-brainer. Do you like it at 170? I mean, I like it as a fun one-off, a pay-per-view main event, a sort of celebrity-ish super fight. But again, are we going to continue to F over Dustin Poirier's lightweight title chances?

What are we doing here? I mean, is it going to come down to Luke where if Poirier wrecks Dana's plans again by beating Conor a second time in a row, that they will just hand him the belt and say, okay, we were fooling around. Habib's not really fighting again. Like, what are we doing, Luke? I don't know. I honestly

don't know. Can we throw, though, to that Conor tweet, Luke? I want to know if you saw this tweet from one Conor McGregor. Can we hit it here? The checking of the leg kick? Yeah. What does this mean? I know what it means, but what is Connor really saying with this? Well, the check, I mean,

correct me if I'm wrong, you can probably spell it this way, depending on where you're from, in this particular context, but I believe it's a bit of a play on words. I'm going to check as in, like, you know, money check the leg kick. So it sort of works as a bit of a play on words. I'm going to check as in like, you know, money check the leg kick. So it sort of works as a double entendre kind of thing. Okay. I didn't know if it was some weird Gaelic, uh, Wazin. Remember that guy who DM'd us last week? His

name was Wazin. They're telling us it's pronounced Ushin. Luke, what the hell's going on over there in Gaelicville? I mean, come on. Can we do. We can't call the guys Sean? Shaheen? El Shadi? I mean, what are we doing? By the way, have you been to the UK? Or, I mean, obviously Ireland's not in the UK, but have you been there at all? I have not, Luke. I'm a man of very close culture, usually within the boundaries of a factory. Well, they, over there,

they'll call that language, they'll call it Irish. Like, do you speak Irish? They don't necessarily say Gaelic. Straight up, do you speak Irish? So don't necessarily say Gaelic. Straight up, do you speak Irish? So, kind of interesting to know. All right. Let's go to topic number three. This is really interesting, BC. Israel Adesanya, obviously, is headlining this weekend at 205, trying to go for his second title. If he does it, he'll be the first undefeated champ champ. We go over a lot of this on the resume review, so please check that out. BC and I did. But he said after he wins this, because obviously he intends to win it,

he plans to go back down to 185 pounds. Quote, I'll definitely go back down to 185. I have something else in my head that I might interest me after, but definitely going back down to 185 is my goal. I want to keep my division moving. Now, BC, we know if you're Amanda Nunes and you've got a 135-pound division you cleaned out and 145 barely exists, it is pretty easy to maintain two belts. But for every other champ champ, they basically had to make a choice and let one go. Do you advocate that for Israel Adesanya in the event that he wins? Or do you believe, because we saw him do like, what fights in the calendar year that he is situated for that kind of defense across two-way classes I mean look that's the only way it seems like it makes sense Nunes' situation has an asterisk because the divisions are so depleted

but the only way you're going to pull this off in a modern era with two divisions that have you know stock talent is by being ridiculously active. Now, could he do that in theory? Maybe, but Luke, it doesn't tend to happen when you get to a certain level of stardom. That's why you and I have spent weeks kind of praising Canelo Alvarez for saying, I want to fight four times, you know, and I want to, and he just fresh off a fight two months ago. So, you know, I don't know if it, the damage you take, especially fighting at light heavyweight, he may win some of these fights, but have to take a certain level of you know compromising physical toll for that that could keep him from being as active i think what the key part of that sentence luke that would

decide whether he actually would ever go back down to middleweight following a victory over if it happens was uh specifically that thing he said i have something else in my head that might interest me after. We have a separate tweet and quote Luke, which may explain that. And it's no surprise what we're talking about here, the threat or the promise of a potential Jon Jones fight. I think the specific quote Israel had about that was, unfortunately, it might not be summer or July, but there's still December. There's still December 2021. It could still happen then. All I know is that this fight, Jon Jones, needs a crowd. I can't do that in an empty arena. Well, number one, Luke, the

comment I made earlier about Texas and Mississippi opening up its doors 100% to all businesses, there actually is a combat sports sort of hook on that. We've already seen, you know, big pay-per-view boxing matches in Texas inside the domes to 15,000 fans. That announcement from the governor of Texas made us seem like we're pretty close to filling up full arenas or stadiums, Luke, which it would be interesting to see if the UFC jumped on that. But I think his return to middleweight, should he defeat Blahowitz and do it without taking a ton of damage, is really, it's dependent upon whether the UFC wants to go in this direction of Jon Jones. And I don't know how you would do it in December, Luke, timeline-wise, unless Jon was going to fight the winner of Francis Ngannou against Stipe Miocic Part 2

on a somewhat quick turnaround. Like, if they're going to fight this summer, Jon Jones taking on the winner of that, then timeline-wise, could a two-division champion Adesanya take on a heavyweight division champion Jones if everybody wins in what I'm calling right now on paper the biggest fight in UFC history? Yeah, I guess it could happen, but I think he'd be more likely, Adesanya, to go in the direction of Jones, Luke, then go back down to a division where he's already beaten everybody. Look, I want to see the rematch with Robert Whitaker. I want to find out whether that was a hiccup, an aberration, and all that.

And I think it does big business too, especially in the oceanic realm. But I don't think we see that, Luke, if Jon Jones is available, and especially if the man's wearing the heavyweight championship. Yeah, here is where it all comes down to. A lot of things need to happen in one direction for what you're talking about to happen for the Jones fight to line up by 2021 um you know as you indicated yes Texas has opened but there's still a question of like um you know how much people are going to be how much businesses are going to accommodate the law right there's gonna be some businesses that say okay uh we can allow everyone back in.

Like, normal, we will do that. I tend to think that these sports venues, for example, they're probably going to let some people back in, but I don't imagine they're going to see full arenas to watch the Houston Rockets play, in part because the team sucks, but also because I don't think the Rockets want that kind of, not reputation per se, but to be harbingers of bad public health.

They want to be stewards of this. So the UFC is going to be under similar kinds of pressure. But as we saw, you could do the thing in Florida where it's outside, you know, and you could have 15,000. I mean, they had that bitch rocking for the Canelo fight. That wasn't even a very good fight. So there are ways to get that done. But it all just sort of points, obviously, I'm just saying, John has to win, Izzy has to win, the calendar has to be right for both of them, the desire has to be there, the UFC has to pay the right amount of money,

because remember, John's still playing a little bit of hardball with him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It could happen, it feels to me unlikely, so I actually think that, you know, that's not all that likely. I also don't think going back down to 185 is that likely. I tend to think he might stay at 205, BC, just for the lack of weight cutting, which that was never the biggest issue, but I don't know, BC, which one keeps him more visible? The guy who moved up a weight class and is just fighting well above his weight in championship contests, or rematches at middleweight? The answer might be rematches at at middleweight on occasion but i tend to think the larger narrative might be a little bit better in some some cases right and then like you know you could make a case for entertaining

rematches with everyone from whitaker to vittori to costa like there's no question about that but uh it's not going to be worth it physically i don't think if he has the type of success at 205 that he could have, Luke. Again, it comes down. He may beat Blahowitz, Luke, but take some kind of damage where it's like, you know, I don't know if I can take this every fight. And to be honest, as much as I've already anointed the John Jones, the heavyweight champion in waiting, he's got that same test to pass himself, Luke, at heavyweight, whether he could take on this type of potential power and all that in his direction. So yeah, a lot to figure out. But if things go well for Adesanya at 205, I don't see it being worth it.

You don't want to fluctuate an F with your weight. I mean, who's been able to do that consistently? You know what I mean? It's usually a desperation move or a one-fight move that you would move down in weight later in your career for something. You know, flip-flopping has never been a good idea. So we'll see how this plays out but luke speaking of costa uh cabernet solven bohan china uh we do have some izzy response hold on hold on before you get to that let me just ask you a question because it's relevant to this and we can move into that i want to ask you this yeah shoot the shoot it luke let

me shoot it which is this where are you in the debate about izzy versus john in terms of john saying hey izzy move up is he saying you're not going to flip you're not going to mayweather where are you in the debate about Izzy versus John in terms of John saying, Hey, Izzy move up. Is he saying you're not going to flip? You're not going to Mayweather Canelo me on this where Canelo, you know, got selected a little bit before he was ready and lost.

And then people saying, Oh, well, is he ducked him? And now he's moving up to two Oh five. Where are you in that whole conversation? I don't know, Luke.

I don't know because you know, when you're the bigger star or whatever, you do tend to get that little sort of leverage and extra treatment. And when you have a shitty road camera set up, you do tend to bump into it a lot, Luke. So bear with me here in the PR. Not the PR's fault. More like Jay Aaron's fault. More on that to come.

Luke, you know, I'm not... It's such a bigger fight if both are champions, right? There's no question about that. It'd be a monstrous event. And if it is that, then it should be done at heavyweight, obviously, to put more on the line. Yeah, but do you think anyone's ducking the other one? Not necessarily, Luke. I think that there were fights that needed to be done.

There's advantageous things that needed to happen. John needed to commit to heavyweight to get his body ready. So it was either, you know, you're going to fight Izzy right now, or you can keep in this direction going up to heavyweight and make the fight a little bit bigger. I don't, up to this point, I'm not ready to put blame on either side. I think it's still crazy, Luke, that we are potentially this close to it even happening, but I think we're going to see it. And I, up to this point, I want to see it at heavyweight. I do. Unless John loses in his heavyweight debut

and comes back down to 205 chasing his old title, Luke, let's do it at heavyweight. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with it at heavyweight. I'm fine with it at light heavyweight. I'm not very sympathetic to the argument that Izzy was ducking him. Yes, it is true that when John said come up, he didn't. Then John leaves and he goes up. That seems like, in many cases, textbook ducking him. Yes, it is true that when Jon said come up, he didn't. Then Jon leaves and he goes up. That seems like, in many cases, textbook ducking. And even Adesanya was kind of open,

like, you're not going to get me to come up before I'm ready. So, you know, hold your horses there. People being like, oh, you're admitting he would win. Well, to me, it's a little bit more complicated than that. Like, when you fight someone matters. When Bisping fought Rockhold the first time, he never got close at all. By the time he fought him the second time around, they were different fighters. It actually does matter at what point in your trajectory versus theirs that you guys intersect. It has a significant chance or impact on your chances one way or the other. So understanding that is kind of important to career maturation. More to the point, I went back and I looked at how many times

John was calling out Cain Velasquez or vice versa, and then six months later would say it's not happening. Dude, it goes all the way back to 2013. Since 2013, he's been being like, I'm definitely going up to heavyweight, then I'm not doing it. I'm definitely going to heavyweight, then not doing it. And over and over and over. And every year, except for the one he was out for a while because of the indiscretions or whatever, it's just this constant theme. And it's like, well, dude, if Velasquez had really Velasquez was like, yeah, I'd fight him.

But if Velasquez had really put his foot down and said, John, come up. Granted, it was a different era, BC, because weight class movement wasn't the same as it is now. It wasn't nearly as fluid. The champ champ thing wasn't as big a deal. But John benefited from the fact that he teased going up, never did.

And Velasquez said he would take the fight. They kind of had a bit of a back and forth in that way. But never, like, taunted John to get him to come up that way. It's like, the guy, you promised it for eight years. It took you eight years to do it. And fine, he doesn't have to do it.

He's the best light heavyweight we've ever seen, maybe the best fighter. I'm just saying it's like the things you're trying to accuse Izzy of, you benefited by not having to ever deal with any of those pressures. That's fair. That's fair. If you want to angle a little bit toward Izzy in this debate, that's fair. It's not going to matter once they finally touch him up, Luke. Let's see this. Your point about Costa

drank wine the night before. Izzy mocked that in the episode two of Embedded. I don't know if you saw it or not. Do you want to tell the folks what he said? Yeah, well, he also talked to MMA Junkie this week and he says, that's just funny.

There's certain things I've done before some of my fights in the past where I learned from my mistakes, but I went in and got my job done. Some people aren't cut out for that lifestyle. I'll tell you one thing. The best thing to do in this position is accept the fact that he lost. He got his ass whooped.

The fact that he keeps trying to make excuses, it's only going to do him worse in the long run. He's making excuses because his ego can't handle the fact that the skinny clown whooped his ass badly, then double-tapped him twice. Just swallow your ego. You got your ass whooped. Get back to the drawing board and reassess your whole game. He went on to say some more disparaging stuff. He's actually right on, though, Luke. This could be an SJW right now.

He's right on. He's 100% right on. I mean, this is a textbook case in how to make a loss look a bad loss look even worse uh how do you take a moment that is you know professionally not especially rewarding and then set that on fire and not get the insurance money well this is how you do it this every piece of the path he has followed is your roadmap to a terrible destination. And I'm not going to underscore what Costa may have been feeling from the standpoint of lingering leg pain

or being unable to fall asleep before the biggest fight of his life. I just wonder, you know, we questioned IQ a bit with this revelation and this decision to drink, again, a full bottle of wine just hours before waking up for your biggest fight. I do wonder, though, if we should also take from this that the moment was too big for Costa in this spot. And it doesn't mean it will be forever. He's going to have an opportunity to rebuild his career and bounce back. But it's funny, Luke, I was talking to Joel Diaz, the great boxing trainer who, of course, was in the corner of Avni Yildirim during that Canelo Alvarez fight last week, the mandatory.

And, you know, we did talk about how, you know, he's here in Puerto Rico. He's training a couple of the fighters on the NBC SportsCard tomorrow night. And, you know, he just said, look, I think he froze. I think Yildirim, we had a great game plan. It was to, you know, view the fight for a round, see what Canelo's got, and then start executing. And he's like, he never executed. He was frozen deer in headlights, and that's why I had to stop the fight for a round, see what Canelo's got, and then start executing. And he's like, he never executed. He was frozen deer in headlights, and that's why I had to stop the fight. And, you know, he said, from the beginning,

I can look back and see certain signs during training camp that told me this guy wasn't ready for this level of platform and the lights to be this bright. And, Luke, I'm not, you know, that could be the case here for Costa. This could be all part of that, you know, where sometimes you get to get to that moment you know Cerrone said it for the McGregor fight he got in there and he just didn't want to be there anymore and he froze and it can happen Luke it certainly can uh all right so topic number four BC this is kind of interesting one Dan Hardy who has turned into one of a hell of an analyst and commentator for the UFC, has been looking for an opponent, it feels like, forever. To the point now where he is saying,

Matt Brown has a fight coming up, he's booked. Sorry, I think he was looking at that one, but that's not available. So now he calls out Nick Diaz. He says, so now that Matt Brown is matched, I suppose I'll jump to the next name on my list. Where's Nicholas Diaz at? Any rules, any promotion, any arena? Back to fighting for respect again.

My happy place. Dan Hardy wrote. What is your level of interest in Dan Hardy versus Nick Diaz? You know, pretty high, Luke. And it's more of a spectacle interest because both guys have been out for so long. But I love that Hardy ended that with my happy place, because it seems, Luke, that he's coming back on his own terms for the right reasons, just because he misses it.

He wants to kind of have a better ending than the one he had, where he kind of came out of nowhere and made a run and was a legitimate freaking title contender going as far as fighting GSP. And then not soon after, Luke, he was gone. So love the work he does as an analyst. He's one of the best in the game, as you mentioned. I follow him on IG, Luke. He's got a very sneaky side project going on.

Cahoots to that, Luke. Shout out. Much love on that one. And this is a perfect fight with two guys who would have a lot of questions. It's like a hashtag old guy fight. I think it's great matchmaking. Let's make it. All right. I'd be's great matchmaking. Let's make it.

All right. I'd be interested in seeing it as well. I don't know where Nick Diaz is honestly at anymore. Same for Dan Hardy. We're talking about two guys who have been out for at least what? At a bare minimum, six, seven years. I think much longer for that for Dan Hardy. They both like to strike.

Obviously, Nick has a better pedigree on the ground, but who the hell knows where they're at at this point. So, yeah, I'd be actually kind of curious to see that one. That one, that's where you get old guy fights, but you're not necessarily worried. You'd have to evaluate what they show you in this contest to say if you would do it again, but for at least a one-off BC, I'm not sure that I understand what the issue might be.

Again, your mileage may vary on the particular matchup interest level. Would you encourage him to bring the Mohawk back, Luke? i don't know i mean if you're close to 40 should you be wearing a mohawk you know i don't think so i think shaved head is cool you know at some point man you just like every day i wake up with a you know a greater and greater albatross around my neck about you know not that i was ever cool i don't make any claims about it, but I may have at least at one point in my life been somewhat a cool adjacent, you know, not, not terribly far from it, but not too close either. And now BC, the crushing, the despair that I feel knowing that it's as far away as it ever has been,

and it's not going to get any closer. It is a sobering reality. Contrary to popular belief, Luke, there is such a thing as a second act in the American life, and I'd like to see you find that. Maybe it's through a fitness and fashion turnaround. Maybe consider dying those gray locks. Get out of the realm of salt and pepper, Luke. I think there's a second chapter in Luke Thomas' prime, which has really been fueled by your job success in recent years, Luke.

You are at the top of your game professionally. Maybe it's time, personally, that you meet that, Luke. I mean, I shouldn't be the guy telling you that. I'm a gas station-eating piece of crap, Luke. But sometimes you look in the mirror, and the mirror talks back. All right, brother? Hashtag self-care, BC. Hashtag self-care.

Speaking of self-care, Luke Rockhold also spoke out BC saying, the UFC has been reaching out, talking, just keeping tabs on my situation, letting me know that they're interested. Rockhold told Submission Radio. As am I when the time's right, when something really kind of appeals to me. It's sexy. I want to come back for something that gets me excited. And I want to come back when I'm

ready, when my body's ready. And I think early late summer would be ideal. It's just matching up with the right person and the right thing that's going to put me where I want I'm not looking to just play around I want to go straight to the gut of this division and most likely 185 not rolling out 205 but I really just got to push my body to get in shape and see where it wants to go right now I'm light I'm like 205 208 pounds and I think that legitimately it's going to be looking like I'm back to middleweight but we will see something pops up you never know if a you never know. If a fight falls apart like many injuries do in COVID and everything happens, I could be ready sooner than later.

Your response? I'm torn. My response is torn because my relationship as a fan of Luke Rockhold has been very torn. I mean, certainly as a journalist, it's one thing. But, you know, as a fan of the guy, Luke, I mean, let's not forget heading into 199 at the peak of Rockhold's, you know, stardom, Luke, he had recovered greatly from the hiccup of fighting TRT Mohawk to Vitor Belfort and had gone on such a run where, you know, he was legitimate number three pound for pound, I think at that point entering that fight with a chance

to really become a star. And then, you know, he lost it all to Bisping in upset fashion. And I think since then, Luke, it's been a lot of up and down and he lost it all to biz ping in upset fashion and i think since then luke it's been a lot of up and down and he can't seem to get it straight he's lost fights in which he sort of arrogantly got knocked out and you know he hasn't been active so when he says i want the guts of the division i want to you know that tells me he wants to go right back into contendership and chase the top. I question that, Luke. It's not that he's too old or that he's too damaged or what have you, but I don't know if he has that same heart to do what it takes, Luke.

If he wants to come back in more of a celebrity... You got me, Luke? Now I do. Go ahead. All right. What I was essentially saying, Luke, not how much, don't know how much you heard, but if he wants to come back in more, a late career Rich Franklin, bounce between two divisions,

celebrity fighter, take on last minute main events. Yeah, yeah, I can hear. BC is going to fix the situation and come back. I'll tell you where I'm at on this one while we work on Mr. Campbell's McDonald's Wi-Fi. I will tell you that I don't know how much I love the idea of him coming back, but I will say a couple things in his defense. One, it's been a while since he got knocked out by Jan Blachowicz.

He has taken the requisite time to step away and reevaluate if it's something he really wants to do. And he's not rushing back in. If you're going to come back, I'm glad it's under at least those kinds of circumstances where you're taking your sweet time to get things right. You know what I mean? To do things the right way. Second of all, I would say that if he's going to come back,

he needs to come back at 185. That, to me, is much more important. If you actually look, it may have either been the first or second dissect that I did for Morning Combat when we very first launched in July of 2019. I did a piece called What's Ailing Luke Rockhold, and I went back and I looked between the two, I think the two Bisping fights, but certainly between the first Bisping fight and then the Rockhold versus Blachowicz fight. And the reason why that was important is because what you notice about Luke Rockhold's defense is he doesn't do a lot of short slipping and rolling, and he doesn't have quick movement like that.

He's very athletic, but that's not how he defends himself. He defends himself by maintaining long range. As you guys know, he's got a pretty good kicking game. And then more to the point, he's got a lot of a lean. He does a lot of leaning out of the way and then also moving his feet. So between maintaining range, doing a little bit of leaning out of the way, and then using his feet to step out of the range of kicks or whatever's coming his way, that's how he defends himself.

And then when he is in command and he is doing those things the way he's supposed to, he's very successfully, he's good at it. He's quite successful at it. That is the thing that really shows up in a lot of the tape in the fights where he dominated and did well. But what's the key to that? It's hard to do when you, I mean, go back and look at his musculature at 205 pounds against Blachowicz. You know, he looked huge. He looked absolutely massive.

You could screen a goddamn movie on his back. So at 185, I realized it's a lot harder for him to get down there and that cannot be easy. But at 185, he is light. He has fleet of foot. He has the kind of size where he can still nimbly move around the octagon to get out of the way to maintain that defensive style that he built his game around. I mean, here's the reality. Yes, you can change things up. You can work on other forms of defense. You can work on other parts of your game so that you're not necessarily limited in some of your options. But there can be times where you see guys build game plans and skills through those game plans around a certain weight or a certain athletic reality.

You know, like Uriah Faber, when the other athletes tended to catch up with him from a technique standpoint, that'd be one good thing. But when his athleticism fell off a little bit, it had a big impact because as good as he was, his style was predicated around a lot of explosion, a lot of just quick movement. To the extent that that is compromised, his game is compromised. I believe we have Brian Campbell back, do we not? Or is he on there for everyone in a minute? We're working on it. We're working on it. So for me and Luke Rockhold, if he's going to come back and take his time, good. If he's going to come back at 185, obviously everyone

wants the weight cut to be healthy. But the way to go for me, for sure, for Luke Rockhold is his game is built around being light on his feet. That is what he needs. He was flat footed and frankly, a little bit slow at 205 pounds. That is absolutely super far from optimum for this kind of a thing. All right, Maneesh, give me an update because I can't just read the chat the whole time. What do we have here? Is he ready? No, not yet. We're working on it. Hi, everybody. I see BC in the window there. He's waving at me on Zoom. But as you guys know, we have a two-tiered system here that we do this show with. And we're trying to get him back on. Yo, that McDonald's Wi-Fi. You know what? Actually, with BC doing this, I'll tell you about something that I'm thinking about doing. I'm thinking about moving to the country of Colombia for a month.

And I'm being dead serious about that. What I would do is I would rent office space down there and do the show from Colombia for a month. We're thinking about going to Cartagena. And I would set up in a WeWork down there. They don't have WeWorks, but they have pretty equivalent things. And then Monday, Wednesday, Friday, just go do the show from there and then just live on the beach. Maybe even take a week vacation while I'm down there. But we could enroll my kid in daycare. We don't necessarily need to be here in DC. We'd have good internet and we'd be living on the beach. And by the way, you know,

the dollar is butt strong relative to the, uh, Colombian peso. Uh, so we would be living high off the hog down there. Can't wait to get BC's impressions. We're thinking about doing it in August. We'll see. Look, can you hear me now? Luke? I can hear you. Can the audience hear you? Is it a shocker that the J. Aaron conspired setup here continually just falls apart and fails, Luke? No. I mean, everything falls apart and then I get to try and put it back together.

Luke, are you really moving to Columbia? I might for a month. I might with the wife and the kid, yeah. Wow. Alright. I guess remote shows in our future, Luke. So much for the bomb shelter, right? Well, it would just be for one month. I mean, how many times have we been to the bomb shelter in a year?

Twice? You know, not that often. Okay. All right. Let's move on to the next topic if we can, BC. Sorry, I've got to try to juggle a thousand things. Last but not least, the boxing matchups. So I know you were thrilled, particularly BC, by the announcement that for pay-per-view, which I don't comprehend,

Andy Ruiz Jr. is going to box Chris Areola. I wish I had more hands so I could give this fight four thumbs down. What's going on? This is not good for boxing. So here's the deal. Mike Coppinger, the athletic, was all over this report, Lukeke it is not yet formally announced but we're looking towards an april fox pay-per-view that had already been on the calendar and budgeted for needs to come off originally i believe there were hopes of getting dionte wilder on that card maybe against charles martin the former champion and then having ruiz and areola as a co-main event having having other heavyweights on the card, and really trying to, you know, set the stage and build toward a Wilder-Ruiz fight, which Luke, I think, is, you know, pretty pay-per-view worthy. I mean, Deontay Wilder and Andy Ruiz is an interesting fight. We're not getting that here, though.

Chris Areola is a multi-time title challenger. He's pushing 40. And Luke, you know, on a washed equivalency scale to MMA, it's like if tomorrow UFC announced that Stipe was taking on Roy Nelson. You know, it's just sort of like, what? What are we doing here? So, you know, Andy Ruiz hasn't fought since the second Anthony Joshua fight. He took more than a year off. And to his credit, Luke, you want to talk about the fountain of youth that everybody's finding joining forces with Eddie Reynoso, the trainer and co-manager of Canelo Alvarez. We talked about the tattoo,

but you know, even further, what he's doing, Reynoso with Ryan Garcia, with Oscar Valdez, you know, I mean, he's on pace to be your trainer of the year. Could he turn Andy Ruiz around? He's already coming in pretty thin. We're seeing from the photos. That's an interesting topic of conversation. Well, Luke, that ain't a pay-per-view, bro. All right. Not any day of the week. So, um, yeah, let's see how this one plays out. Even if we get some really good supporting bouts with that, uh, yikes. How fast is Ruiz going to win that? Yeah, I mean, it depends on a lot.

In Areola, he makes fun fights at the very least. You know, he had that absolute war with Kovnatsky a couple years back, but this ain't a pay per view, bro. This ain't it. This ain't it. So if we could just stop talking about it, Luke, before I get really angry, that would be great. Can we talk about a fight that may happen luke we we wanted i wanted i needed ryan garcia and manny pacquiao for so many reasons i wrote a story about it i told you about it

ad nauseum we need this fight baby we can make it it's aroads. It's everything we need. Luke's like, yeah, well, I'll get excited when I see it. Well, Luke, your pessimism has paid off. Can we throw that tweet up there? Everyone dislikes my pessimism until it shows up as being true. And then they won't give me credit for it because they'll just call me a fucking, you know, angry asshole. I'm an angry asshole. Right. Luke's goal one day is that we all find out

there is no heaven or hell, and he's standing there with his arms crossed saying I was right all along, donks. Yeah, basically. Can you run that photo of an interview here that we had Ryan Garcia basically said that? They're saying if you can just read it, they don't have the tweet.

All right, anyway, Ryan Garcia was interviewed, Luke, and he said, I received an offer. It was on the table. We were close to doing it. And then essentially that Pacquiao's team wanted to go in another direction, so we couldn't make the fight. So that's the bad news, Luke. The somewhat okay news is that Mikey Garcia, the three-division champion, only won defeat in his career to Errol Spence when he moved up to welterweight. He did a weird car interview with a young lady, and in that interview, he basically said,

I'm getting Pacquiao next. It could be in May. It would be a pay-per-view. It would be a big deal. Luke, I don't love it as a replacement gift, and yes, this fight had been sort of rumored for two years. At this point, would you be moved at all by Manny Pacquiao and Mikey Garcia on pay-per-view?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I like that fight a lot better than Ryan Garcia, to tell you the truth. What? What? I have a high opinion of Mikey Garcia. I think Ryan Garcia is good, but unproven. That's what I think. All right. All right, brah.

So yeah, I'd be interested in that but we'll see what happens with it last but not least BC set the table for this one I know boxing heads are buzzing about Jose Ramirez taking on Josh Taylor what is it about this fight and why is the boxing world kind of

hearts aflutter for this contest yeah GFF great fucking fight, bro. Okay, May 22nd in Las Vegas. It's going to be on regular ESPN. Both unbeaten, both guys have two of the four titles at 140 pounds. This is one of those fights that we've been sort of mapping out for a couple years now.

Jose Ramirez, the unbeaten Mexican-American, trained by Robert Garcia-Luke. He is a credit to his community in the Central Valley in California and really a credit to the boxing community in terms of he just goes in there and he grinds and he comes at you and he tries to outwork you. And he's going up against the Tartan Tornado, Josh Taylor, who really made a big name for himself by winning the World Boxing Super series tournament they had at 140 pounds through that tournament he beat regis progray in that absolute thriller of a fight of the year contender and now you have both guys unbeaten both with two titles coming together to fight each other to have an undisputed champion at 140 pounds this fight matters and this fight is going to kick a

ton of ass because what taylor showed us in that pro gray fight, Luke, is that, uh, you know, he can be pretty as the big South Paul with the boxing and keep you at the end of his jab, but he can bite down and he can brawl if he has to. And Ramirez is going to make him brawl. Let's add a little pepper onto the steak by saying this was the fight that Teofimo Lopez, your undisputed lightweight champion had sort of called out and said, I'm going to be watching this one closely to maybe essentially face the winner. And look, this is almost some potential Adesanya, McGregor, Cejudo-type opportunism being showed by Lopez. He says he's going to stay at 135 for now, but what if the door opened for him to fight the winner of Ramirez-Taylor

and go from unifying all four belts at 35 to trying to do it in one fight in the next division above, I think that's the kind of dare to be great, crazy, big power movement that we sort of need more of in boxing to bring over the crossover fans. So who knows if we get there, but we are getting Ramirez Taylor. And you talk about two hungry guys luke who are on the the fringe of top 10 pound for pound the hardcore boxing fans know these guys maybe the casuals don't fully this will be a great introduction well i can't wait for it you certainly have me sold and

i remember when pro gray fought taylor i thought for sure pro gray would win and uh made a strong account of himself to be sure but it was uh eye-opening for me to see how good Taylor was, so this fight should be hella interesting. All right, real quickly before we move on to the next segment, Morning Combat listeners, I wanted to let you know about Paramount+. You've probably seen the journey to Mount Paramount spots featuring Bill Cowher, James Corden, Patrick Stewart, Beavis and Butthead. Yeah, quite a squad, but Paramount+, is live sports,

breaking news, and a mountain of entertainment. You can go straight from game day to movie night with Paramount Plus, stream iconic movies like The Godfather, Indiana Jones, and Mission Impossible, and then new episodes of critically acclaimed original series like Star Trek Picard, The Good Fight, and The Stand. And get this, it's where you can dive into live sports from us, CBS Sports, including NFL, March Madness, The Masters, and my favorite, Champions League Soccer. Plus, stream hit shows from CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Smithsonian Channel, and Comedy Central. Live sports, breaking news, and a mountain of entertainment.

Paramount Plus, streaming March 4th. That is tomorrow. BC, do we get free Paramount Plus accounts because, A, we're shills, and, B, we actually work for the company? We better. We better, bro. I feel like we should get a free one. By the way, didn't get a free Showtime sub.

I pay for that out of pocket. You should. Actually, through CBS, we have availability to a free Showtime sub. So hopefully, Luke, this company can make you feel like you work for them and you can spoil in all the riches. Maybe one day you'll get Bellator merch that I so often parade around in, Luke. Maybe we'll find that out. Probably not, BC.

We all know how that story goes. Give me my red stapler. Okay, we now turn the show over to you, good sir. Take it away. Yes, each and every Wednesday when applicable, we make a little roundup of the greatest and the weirdest social media beefs between top fighters we call it social justice Wednesday Bop bada bop bop bop bop

Let me bring in the Honorable Judge Luke Bader Ginsburg to rule in on today's beasts Luke We start with I don't know maybe the greatest rivalry in mixed martial arts history. No, not Chuck versus Tito, not Dana versus Tito, and not Dana versus the media, which has really made a great run of late. I'm talking Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier. Luke, DC posted, ESPN MMA posted this tweet where Daniel Cormier said this, Jon Jones will not knock out anybody at heavyweight. He doesn't hit hard enough. If he couldn't knock these dudes

out at 206, he's not knocking these heavyweights out. So the 206 was a reference to light heavyweight. When you come in there at non-championship weight, I think that was supposed to be 205. Yeah, it's 205. Who the hell wrote 206 on it? Good God. Anyway, Luke, that

came from a show called DC and the Canadian, which apparently is a lot like this one on ESPN. Pretty good show, though. You know, I'm a big fan of that guy. DC. So, Luke, John Jones responded to this. He saw this tweet. And here's what he said.

He posted the video of DC crying after the loss at UFC 214 and he said, hope you like this quick little edit I threw together for you, DC. Are we able to play this or no? I don't know, man. I thought the fight was going well. I don't even know what happened. I got kicked in the head.

Oh, man. That's so disappointing. I don't think it's a good idea to interview fighters after they've been knocked out, but I really wanted to give you a chance. Jon Jones will not knock out anybody. He doesn't hit hard. If he could knock these dudes out of 205, he's not knocking these heavyweights out. I mean, he looks big.

You see that video of him? It doesn't matter if you put on weight. It's still. it's good yeah that's bad I don't know who did that soundtrack for that tweet it kind of sounds like like maniche lonely angelus you ever preview that that stuff no not into not into white guy fun sorry all right well who well uh uh boo boo wild thing responded and dc came back luke there is a difference punch versus kick.

You're still as dumb as you've always been. You'll never surprise me. Dance for me. I can always make you move. And lastly, this fight didn't count if you forgot there was an issue. Remember, the issue, of course, being USADA. Luke, given the weight of USADA in this debate, and given the fact that Jones beat this guy twice, who wins this little dust-up?

Yeah, I mean, listen, there's always, for John, I was thinking about this. Imagine you were trying to explain John Jones to someone who had no idea about him, like literally nothing. And you were trying to explain to him the position that he holds. How would you tell the story? I feel like you'd have to say, okay, well, here's all the good news. The good news is he is, you know, basically undefeated. He's beaten all these donks for a long time, all these records, blah, blah, blah. The bad news is there's just this specter of performance-enhancing drug use surrounding his career. And it frankly kind of always will. And

it will just come down to what side is more convincing at the moment, what argument carries more currency, you know, at the moment, what argument carries more currency at the moment in which it is made. I tend to think that his achievements, whatever else one's opinion of them might be, will tend to win out that conversation. But there's always just going to be that nagging component. He cannot shed it. So in that sense, I think that John's point is a little bit more devastating.

But you could not altogether dismiss Cormier. I side with the defendant here, I guess I would say, noting that the plaintiff has cause. Okay, okay. Is that fair? That is fair. As you guys know, I don't give a fuck if he took anything. And I'm still apparently the only MMA fan left who wants to see this fight a third time at heavyweight, Luke.

What is wrong with people? You really done with people you really you're really done with this rivalry you guys really done with this you don't want to see John win the title no I am now I wasn't before but now that he's gone yeah you really would not get jazzed up if John beat Stipe or Francis and then DC was like you know what I'm gonna get up in thepen. I got one more to decide my career. Because, Luke, let's be honest. When DC beat Stipe in their first fight, he sort of made a leap to the upper table of the goats. And, you know, a lot of us wrote in our columns afterwards

that, like, that was the only way to fill the Jon Jones-sized hole in his incredible legacy and resume, right? You couldn't beat Jon Jones, but you went up and did something Jon didn't do, win two championships. But then, Luke, I think the back-to-back losses to Stipe still keep DC a legend, but brought him maybe down to the second tier, brought him back down to Earth. This is sort of one of those double downs where it's like I could be immortal if I go out there and beat

Jon Jones to win the heavyweight championship and in some ways sort of win our rivalry. That doesn't get you jazzed up. What is wrong with you, Luke? Nothing. That fight's expiration date has passed. People often wonder Luke? Nothing. Nothing. That fight its expiration date has passed. You know

people often wonder there's two competing sides to BC's personality right? There's the Lithuanian there's the very aggressive yet I'll still kiss my father on the lips French Canadian side. I often wonder in your breakdown which side is the curmudgeon? Which side is taking

over and robbing you of the life and fun that is out there luke should i blame it on the armenians again it comes from a narrow conception of what actually constitutes fun there's a lot of other fights i would much rather see with john jones at this point than that one yes okay all right let's roll on hey we got another online battle here between vasily lomachenko who of course lost his trio of titles at 135 to Teofimo Lopez and Devin Haney the unbeaten Rising stud who has that WBC belt after Teofimo was named the super champ all that okay Loma comes out first says at real Devin Haney I'm here I'm

waiting for you cowards to decide on a real fight and not on a twitter fight as he as he starts a twitter fight true haney responds waiting is not your best bet i would have think you would learn that from the tail fight oh yes as okay okay playing the dozens okay loma didn't really start throwing punches till round seven loma responded back with, waiting is your favorite action because you still haven't fought with anyone. Okay. Haney comes back. I was definitely waiting to fight you when I was your mandatory and you petitioned for the franchise title. Hmm. Loma closes it out with, you know perfectly well, it was not my decision. Basically blaming the WBC here for being

ridiculous shout out to loma for that but you shouldn't complain about it because after that they sent you the belt by mail so the the crux of this luke is that devin haney is the champion without really beating anyone the wbc made that cornball boxing business decision to make loma the franchise champion which teo now is, which means it opens up a second belt, which is the last thing we need in one weight class from one promotional outfit. As far as the back and forth here, Luke, who wins? I got to say Haney.

I feel like Haney got it done. I mean, Loma, he's been acting, man, I got to tell you, that loss to Teofimo Lopez really sent him on a tailspin because he didn't perform in half of it. Obviously, he made the back half very, very competitive. Okay, fine. But Lopez, as we discussed, turned it on in the 12th. To me, he was the rightful winner. Certainly did more to try to win, it seemed like.

Then afterwards, Lomachenko's making the slew of excuses. Then goes silent for a while then makes a highlight reel of all of the punches he landed in the Lopez fight while like ignoring okay fine you can make what you want to make but it's just a really weird way to think about that fight um given what it meant and everything it did to you and now he's doing this thing where he's like poking the bear of contemporaries, which I bet is urging from his management or something. Or someone's in his ear about trying to use social media to kickstart a conversation about getting a big fight.

And then he's losing that because you're trying to play with people who are much better at this kind of... It's just his behavior since losing has felt very much on the back foot. He's just still trying to trying to catch himself from slipping and it's just not working yeah i mean you might as well just go out there and blame mark breland for spiking your drink at this point luke but uh i didn't like loma blaming the referee the judges all that take the l like like he did against salido by the way in his second pro fight fighting for a world title and look how he bounced back

luke obviously i think we would all want to see lomachenko haney that's a heck of a sort of crossroads battle it's a little problematic because one is uh haney fights for eddie hearn on the zone and tail and i'm sorry loma fights on top rank but uh uh you know who knows luke i'm not going to try to get you excited about a fight you don't think you're seeing so is that why you're laughing or did you shit your pants my dad just sent me an absolutely hater text and it was kind of appropriate for the moment uh i won't tell you what it is but uh okay that's very funny all right was it like very funny i'm unhappy that you were ever born is that what he said uh not not in those words uh but pretty close hater mick skater rob thomas

love it okay luke let's get into uh to the very unpredictable segment uh it kind of died on the vine last week but people wanted it back so we'll do it one more time luke we spin the black circle in the wheel here's the problem i feel like i should be able to spin it and i don't have any say so i don't i don't mind having no say over the topics or the questions but i don't have enough agency over control of the wheel i feel like i don't know how we'll do that technologically especially with you in columbia for a month luke but if they can figure it out i'll give you uh a crank that you can you know you can pull that's the thing is just an idea i haven't even done anything the premise is easy here folks these are uh 10 categories five

questions five spins of the wheel you get what you get luke has to give a good faith effort these are typically questions probably luke wouldn't want to answer or maybe some interesting ones that he might let's look at our categories for the week luke here we go pantsless ig stalking cruise control division by subtraction rectum i just met him motivation monday small booty latinas killing me softly ink swapped big racks and unnecessarily snarky gingers. Luke, you get what you get. Spin that shit. Let's spin it. Cruise control.

Luke, this is about your favorite Texan. No, just kidding. Luke, this one about your favorite Texan. No, just kidding. Luke, this one's about the old Dominator, who is yet another big name. Luke, are you with me? I don't know where you are. I'm looking at the screen. I'm with you. Oh, okay.

Sorry. Dom Cruz, yet another big name returning on Saturday's loaded UFC 259 card when he faces Bantamweight prospect and Megan Anderson denier, excuse me,y kenny luke cruz has a unique style built upon speed and footwork patterns to freeze and confuse his opponents he's also 35 now and in his twilight so we'll see if he can bounce back but luke speaking of his style in some ways the dominator was a bit of an innovator at the beginning of his run with the WEC. Yet we rarely see anybody, maybe outside of a little bit of TJ Dillashaw, emulating his style.

Luke, for somebody that's so unique and different from other fighters around him, why have we not seen more copycats or emulators of the great Dominic Cruz's fighting style? Well, I do think that you have seen influence of some of the broader concepts that he has championed. There's a couple of reasons why you haven't seen direct style emulation or something like that. The first is that it's hard to do. You know, it took him a lot of years to really get a pattern down. And when I say a pattern, he's got a million patterns, but I mean a system, a system in place that he could go to, right? So that's hard to learn. It takes time. Second of all, if you had to ask from just a skills standpoint,

if you take out footwork, what would you say Dominic Cruz is good at? Okay, he's got a high fight IQ, but does he have like the best jiu-jitsu? No. Does he have the best ground and pound? No. Does he have the heaviest punches? No. does he have the best ground and pound no does he have the heaviest punches no does he have the best you know uh jab no like what really brings his game to life is the movement which starts from the feet but in general all of the looks and the angles

and the timing that is his ace in the hole that makes what he's good at another level now he is probably a pretty good wrestler he's got a double leg, but he sets everything up behind the good timing. If you already have some of those other features of your game that are good, why do you need Dominic Cruz's style? His style is so predicated on movement, not because he is bad at those other things, but those things absent the movement, they're just not nearly as powerful. I think a lot of these guys might feel like, hey, I like my jab, or I like my jiu--jitsu or whatever the case may be. So you don't need to impart all of it. But I do think that this idea of taking your game to the next level, making it hard to read, shutting down opposition through angles, through footwork, through problem solving

as it relates to positioning, I do think that has grown exponentially across MMA. And Cruz had a unique system in doing that, but he was one of the early guys to show you don't have to be Francis Ngannou if you can learn movement and feinting and angles and timing in such a way. It just takes your weapons to the next level. It did for him in the most sincere way.

So I do think he's been an influence, just not taking his style and then trying to wear it as your own kind of thing. Luke, that was a very detailed, thought-out answer deserving of this topic and a good preview for the Thursday live chat. If people aren't regulars on there, you'll get more of that shit. Luke, are you kind of saying without saying that maybe dom cruz had some of those championship intangibles like work ethic toughness all that stuff iq but he had to use this style to reach his full potential because maybe he was lacking in power or an out threat on the ground well Well, I just think Cruz probably did what a lot of the ones who do

that are ahead of their time. They take a look at themselves, what they're good at, what they like, what they don't like, blah, blah, blah. They have an accurate assessment about what their strengths and weaknesses are. And then they problem solve. How do I get ahead of what the others are doing? And there's always, depending on where MMA is at the time, what your division looks like, whatever, those will all influence the answer. But I think Cruz kind of saw people aren't really playing with this in the way that they should be. They're not playing with position. They're not playing with angles and timing. And he does what's called darting, so you're going through a series of positions on an angle.

They just weren't doing a whole lot of that. So it was an easy way, not easy, but it was obvious what a way was to get around that in terms of strategic thinking. He just slowly built in all the tactical elements to do that. But I've talked about like, you know, you make fun of me for it, but it's really true. There's a guy from City Kickboxing, Adesanya being the most prominent example of this, but you see Volkanovski, to the extent that he is part of that group as well as well does does this too heavy fainting those guys were telling me he's like dude the Americans and the Europeans they just don't do a lot of it we do a lot of it and it freezes and it gives us a little extra ability to get ahead because we're filling a technical gap that the

sport hasn't caught up to yet but as you're seeing now everyone is slowly putting that together you know i wonder it's tough i mean it's tough to see the second half of cruises career obviously luke because he's fought like you know four or five times in 10 years since that first ridiculous injury breakdown in 2011 uh but you know he has kind of in a basketball equivalent one of those alan iverson type games where the the end date can come sooner because he's so reliant upon speed and that's something that physically you just can't keep up over the longest time compared to power or or whatever as your strongest attribute um do you see like like

a slow ending here for him at 35 like maybe he maybe he could beat Casey Kenney. I'm interested in this fight, for sure. Dom's still got some things at a very high level, but you can't be this style at age 40, you know? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I didn't mention that also probably goes into Cruz's style, not being as emulated as much, is, and this was not known when he was first doing it, but eventually became something over time.

You know, he told me once there's an interview i did with him where there was a period in his life and i don't know if this is still true bc but it definitely was true at the time he was having to botox the bottom of his feet and the reason why was because they were so worn out they were so stretched and damaged and just overused that he would get plantar fasciitis. I think that's how you say it. I could be mispronouncing it. I've had it before.

You get this incredible pain in the arch of your foot. It's debilitating and it's quite painful. And so he would have to Botox his goddamn feet to get around it. Dude, it's taxing on his body. I wonder if some of those knee injuries, who knows, but I wonder if some of those are from this. It just feels like it's a it's a lot of work to replicate that so take pieces of what he does adapt it for yourself take some of those core

principles adapt it for yourself I do think he has had an influence on the game through that and I love the guy I chair for him look I think he's a very good analyst and I think he's one of the more inspirational interviews the way that he looks at life and setbacks outside of blaming keith peterson for smelling like booze and bitches and uh and he doesn't he's curmudgeonly like me he doesn't suffer fools gladly like me that is true he's very intense all right look spin number two coming your way let's do it all right let's see what we got here come on give me some booty give me some booty i Give me some booty. I swear to God, if I showed you this text from my dad, you would die laughing. Division by subtraction.

Luke, the UFC currently promotes 12 different weight divisions combined across its men and female and female rosters. If I told you tomorrow, Luke, you were being exiled to a desert island for the rest of your life with a television, a subscription to UFC Fight Pass, and a catch. The catch being, Luke, you can watch UFC for the rest of your life, but you can only have access to watching three divisions. As the rosters stand today, which three UFC divisions would you pick for the rest of your life? It could double as your favorite or it could just double as looking at the future. Which three do you think you'd be most entertained by moving forward? See, so I'm trying to future-proof the decisions here.

I don't know how wise that is because it's just hard to know what's going to be in the future. So I'll go men's lightweight. I will go men's bantamweight. And I will go women's strawweight. I think that would give me good quality. I think it would give me good diversity. A lot of different looks of the game. It would give me submissions, knockouts, ones that go the distance.

It would give me premier athletes. And it would give me good entertainment. I feel like you could go a lot of different packages, but women's strawweight, men's bantam, men's lightweight, I think is the way to go for me. What about you? Look, you can't argue with those choices. I mean, anyone can sub in heavyweight just because it's such an exciting division

and there is a ton of star power at the moment. But think about it. Most heavyweight fights kind of blow. I mean, they're not that good. And you don't consistently have deep rosters. And all the names we have now, for the most part, are aging names, fights kind of blow i mean they're not they do and you don't consistently have deep rosters and all the names we have now for the most part are aging names even though obviously heavyweight is a cupboard you can age in just fine but uh yeah you i mean you could you could have answered

welterweight or middleweight out of so here's the thing let me explain my reasoning just a second on that bc i'm not necessarily suggesting to you that like You have to think that because I picked straw weight and I didn't pick let's say walter weight Then i'm saying straw weight is better than walter weight. It's not exactly what i'm saying What i'm saying is if I had a desert island and I only have three divisions to pick from I kind of want three that give me something a little bit different The 135 is just so deep the action is so dynamic That's future-proofing because you feel like that division is headed towards even better places

than it's at today, which is saying a lot. 155, I feel like you get those guys. These guys in the offseason, they're close to 200 pounds. They're huge. Big power, been a marquee division, some big names. You could sub that one out for 170 if you wanted to go that direction, depending on your preferences. You could even go 145, I feel like, and get great stuff, including a future generation of big talent. So I'm not saying that 155 necessarily is better than 145 or 170,

depending on your preferences. I'm just saying if you pick 155, you don't also need to pick 140 or 170. Pick one of them, and then get a look from a different side of the game, which is the best women's side of the game. I feel like that diversity would really keep things,

for the most part, as fresh as they could be. I like what you said. You're trying to get a little bit of everything out of all three divisions and there's no lack of TNA in one of those three, Luke. So I know that's secretly part

of where you're going there. Hey, spin number three coming your way right now. All right, here we go come on booties oh hey motivation monday let's bring in tony robbins here to break it down for us luke i'm sure you're no different than me you get a lot of dm emails dms from all the donks hoping to carve out a similar career path to ours. Maybe your LinkedIn email box is overflowing with Luke. How do I do exactly what you do? I'm 18 years old and I'm really hungry and I want to be Luke Thomas, right? Luke, I'm sure like me, it's hard to give tangible advice because of the ever-changing media game and you know you can't follow a set

plan to get here in fact luke you and i both have a long history of eating a lot of shit to get to where we are now so long long suffering they should have called this show two shit eaters because that's what long suffering is probably the greatest skill you actually need but luke with all that in mind and by the way on on this topic, to plug the Megan Anderson interview I did last night for Morning Combat that's available now, I really love her breakdowns on the journey for her to get here and never giving up. Check that out. So Luke, with all this in mind, what's the best piece of career advice you have ever received that still rings true today in your mind as a source of daily motivation or weekly whenever you hit hiccups

when it comes to the job and you're visioning for the future what's the best piece of damn advice you ever received and was it from Craig Carton uh no but Craig Carton has been incredibly helpful in my career um so I'm always quite grateful for you for what he's done for me. But I would say that the best piece of career advice I've received has been that it's really important for a lot of different reasons to set goals. We talked about that on the show before. And then to yourself, set the goal, I want to have this kind of job by this year. I want to make this kind of money or whatever your goals might be. I want to produce this kind of content. And then to have a rough idea of a plan about how you're going to get there. And the reason why

that's important, and not only to write it down as a motivational thing, but that's not really the issue. You actually kind of want to sketch out what it might look like to get there. And by the way, you might have to make changes to this plan in accordance with your values or you may get new information about this is a better way to do things. You're always constantly trying to improve and streamline that process. But the reason why you want to write it out is because once you've actually got a plan and you actually have concrete steps about what you need to do, maybe you go to an interview and they say, you know what? You're really good.

You're really talented. But we need you to have a portfolio of 30 articles and a couple of videos you've done and blah, blah, blah. So you now have to make things that you can present to an employer, let's say, to convince them to hire you, because it could be many other things. But if the concrete steps are listed and you know what the work entails, you then realize in order to get to where you want to go, you have to do the work. It doesn't matter if you feel like it that day. If I'm trying to get hired and I have to do the work. It doesn't matter if you feel like it that day. If I'm trying to get hired and I have to produce a certain amount of writing and a certain amount of content or whatever the case may be,

if there's a Friday and I get asked to go hang out with friends, assuming the pandemic is over or something, you want to go to happy hour, but instead I really need to do this work, you just do the work. It doesn't matter what your friends want to do. I know that sounds kind of cold and harsh I'm not saying you can't play uh you know the levels and have a social life or whatever I'm just trying to tell you in accordance with your goals sketch out the path to get there and then realize you need to do that work and not rely on whether you feel like it or not you do that work because that's the step that day, and that's the end of the conversation.

You don't want to rely on this idea of what moves you to do things. What you want to build are habits around just the fact that it needs to get done, and no one's going to do it but you, and it doesn't matter whether you feel like it that day. You just fucking do it. And once you begin to develop that reflex where you just do the work even if you don't feel like it that's when over time i think you begin to get good at things you can then meet the next step in your goal and it just creates a series of habits about understanding i think the ingredients for long-term success i think that's's well said, Luke. I think there's some Marine influence in that as well of just stick-to-itiveness and just

fucking go after it, bro. All right? Don't you feel like a lot of people are like, I want something that moves me? I do too. I'm a fan of MMA. It moves me in that way. But BC, you know this. You know this.

If you just relied on how you feel that day, you're not going to do the right amount of work. What you have to rely on is the commitment, whether you feel like it or not. Yeah, and, you know, the long-suffering thing was a joke, but it was also the idea of, like, you've got to understand it's a freaking process. And that doesn't mean people can't come out of college and do this a year later. There are special, you know, opportunities or, you know, relationships that can open doors for you. But it's a process.

And while I typically tier my advice, Luke, to people more to look inside themselves, right, to build up certain levels of confidence and stick-to-itiveness that will carry them long-term, that's more tangible than I can give on any practical advice, I do say the best advice I've ever heard was there's no substitute for reps so you know maybe you want to be on your own morning combat but you can't get there until you've sat in front of a camera and even if that camera is yours posting it straight to youtube every single day until you really figure out who you are in front of that camera people ask me how do i get started on youtube and i always tell them just start just start making videos and they they're going to be bad they're going to be bad

just start you know i've made a million errors with tech gear over the year because i didn't dude i i was just a guy who had opinions about everything i didn't know about it i still don't know anything but obviously i knew a lot i know a lot more now than I once did. I didn't know what codecs were or fucking f-stops on cameras or shutter speeds or streaming APIs. I didn't know anything. And I made all my errors in front of everyone. But over time,

I just got a little bit better at it. Just go do it. Put in the work and don't rely on motivation to get you there. Rely on this is what has to get done today in order to be ready and situated for tomorrow. Well said. Well said, Luke. You got two more spins to go.

All right, let's do it. Wow, I like the motivation here on Monday. Who knows? We could be into booties next. Let's see what we got here. Knowing my luck, it's like, talk about the time you had your most embarrassing sexual encounter. Oh, almost got big racks, Luke. Killing me softly one time.

Luke, we've all done some stupid shit in our lives and dodged a few proverbial, maybe if not actual, literal bullets in our journey from reckless youth to responsible adulthood. Besides that infamous night, Luke, with the gallstones at a lonely hospital in Norwich, Connecticut, of which I was a part of, when was the closest you think you actually came to dying thus far in your life? And what were the circumstances? Do you have a freaking scary-as as balls moment where you're like i could have died that night um i've had some injuries that you know really were like that were bad i

had two of them i had one where i tore three discs in my back all at once. And I think I told you this story. I couldn't answer the door. I couldn't get up off the floor. I immediately fell to the floor because I was trying to stretch for something and I was not doing it correctly. And you could just hear a pop, pop, pop. And the three discs tore in my lower back.

And the pain was beyond excruciating to the point where, this is true, my wife was gone. This was before my kid was around. My wife was gone. I couldn't sit up. I could only lay on the ground and I obviously could not stand. And I had to, for a whole day, get myself around the house

because I told myself I wasn't going to go to the hospital. So I had to literally, like a snake, wither across the floor and the only food we had that I could reach, I couldn't going to go to the hospital. So I had to literally like a snake wither across the floor. And the only food we had that I could reach, I couldn't open a fridge, was Halloween candy. So I had to eat Halloween candy for like a day, slithering around the house. It was the worst fucking thing I'd ever experienced up to that point. And then the next day I was able to sit up and I got a little better from there. So that was bad.

Doesn't sound like you were actually close to dying though, Luke. No, it was scary because when you can't really move, you begin to really – your mind will play tricks on you. You don't realize – your mind will tell you that it's worse than it is, but it's just bad in the moment. The only one where I would say I came a little bit close to dying was actually when I was at boot camp. You know, I was scared shitless the first, not the first week, but the first week once you get introduced to your drill instructors, and I didn't drink any water for like, I don't know, two days or something. And this was, you know, this is July in South Carolina. Sorry, this is June in South Carolina. And we had to go do a PFT that day, a physical fitness test. And I remember I did well on the test,

but I remember as soon as the run was over, you know how you're running kind of fast and the world kind of bounces a little bit when you're running fast or you're sprinting? I finished the sprint, and I'm trying to catch my breath or whatever and go get to the canteen, and the world didn't stop moving. It just kept shaking even as I stood still, and I collapsed because I couldn't see straight

and I had to get stretchered out. And what they basically told me was, and my heart was like beating, like I thought I was going to pop out and I got nauseous. It was terrible. They told me that I probably had not a heat stroke, but heat exhaustion. And what they said was, they just sat me under the shower and just said, sit here, don't move. Cold water poured on me for like two hours as they brought me stuff to just kind of like bring me

back a little bit and uh what they told me was the good news is you're fine you're gonna be okay your blood pressure's okay blah blah blah but they said once you kind of like for lack of a better description bc pop the cherry so to speak once you've done this to your body it's easy to get heat exhaustion again. And I actually got it in Lebanon, and I got really, really sick when I was there visiting for the same reason. So it's a lifelong thing now. Yeah, that sounds close to death.

Luke, that's more close to death than I expected. Wow. Yeah, that sucked. That sucked. Everyone who's ever had that, it's uncomfortable. Wow. I mean, we've lost football players during spring NFL practices to stuff like this. Dude, a handful of high school players die every year from that in playing football. It's crazy.

Yeah. All right, Luke. One more spin. Here we go. You get what you get. All right. Let's go. Questions about most humiliating sexual experience. Ink swap. All right, Luke, we have heard enough from you in recent weeks shitting on the quality of tattoos in combat sports from everyone from Amanda Hibbert's loving... I shit on one tattoo, guys. ...and doting father to even Canelo's trainer, Eddie Reynoso...

It's fine. ...and the decision-making and all that. But, Luke, although I do smell a future segment there, maybe where we can shit on all of our donks' shitty tattoos, let's flip the script for a second. If you were forced to snap your fingers and switch

complete body ink with one current UFC fighter for the rest of your life, which one would you choose? That's easy. TJ Dillashaw. TJ Dillashaw. Bang Bang did his tattoos.

He's a famous tattoo artist. And his tattoos, you'll even see, there's a segment by Inked Magazine on YouTube where they go through celebrity tattoos, you know, like Colin Kaepernick's and blah, blah, blah. And several of the artists explicitly note T.J. Dillashaw was done by Bang Bang and his black and gray sleeve is outrageously good super super high quality I don't consider him in the in the Josh Emmett Michael Chiesa Dustin Poirier category what does does that mean? But maybe I'm wrong. Of some of the best tats in the game, Luke. Oh, no, dude. He's got...

He maybe has the best in all of MMA. He's got excellent, excellent work. His whole sleeve, I think, was done by Bang Bang. Okay. Maybe you're more into the quality of the art than what is actually

on the canvas, Luke. Because I looked at it quick, it didn't move me. But I trust you, you're more of an expert. What would you rather have? Like bad tattoos that you sort of like or really good tattoos that you don't necessarily feel one way about? I'd rather just have really good tattoos. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd rather just not put needles in my body, Luke. Okay? You absolute filth banger all right uh luke one more segment to go in this show it's what we do every week when we open up the email account morning combat at gmail.com also my dms are open on twitter at b campbell to field your submissions for the week you've got mail all right all right lu, let's hope we get, we got

a better quality control here this week. Francisco are hitting us up. Wanted to share my pint collection and beer snack from the frozen hell that is Houston, Texas. Thanks for the laughs. Yes. There you go. I've never tried these, but I bet they're good. Dude, you can go to just about any medium-sized city in America or more, and you can get very good local beer, man. It really is true. It used to be five, six, seven, eight, nine years ago where there were pockets, obviously, where they were doing shit better than everyone else.

But the quality across the board is raised so freaking high. There's still obviously areas that are just next, next, next level. But yeah, I bet you those beers are delicious. And they probably taste better, Luke, in that morning combat glass. Dude, true or false, at this point, if you travel to a new place, let's say someplace you've never been or hadn't been in a while, I don't know, Maine or certainly for the Pacific Northwest, it doesn't even matter, like Tennessee or something.

If I'm in a place that's reasonably, you know, halfway big, I'm asking what are your local beers and I'm trying them. Like, that's how good it's gotten. Yeah. Francisco R has a second photo, Luke. I have no description of it. Let's see what it is. Oh, shit.

Oh, nice. Look at that. Next to the glasses and steins. Well done there, Franciscoisco i love the way that sounds coming off i love saying that luke francisco all right uh luke at l heffa not jeffy i think says a little worried of all the food in the set she thought she would eat straight yellow mustard is culinary art art also i, I have a Luke Thomas story. My wife, who also watches the show,

and I flew into Vegas on fight day for UFC 209, Woodley versus Wonderboy 2, and we headed straight to the signature at the MGM Grand to check in. Taxi doors open, and standing just outside the hotel doors is that handsome devil himself, Luke Thomas, staring at his phone. I say more out of surprise than intent, holy shit, it's Luke Thomas. Luke looked up with what looked a look of dread, thinking, oh no, what is this degenerate donk going to want?

I figured he was on his way to T-Mobile because he had what looked like a laptop bag, so I didn't hold him up. We grabbed our bags out of the taxi. We headed inside. I was going to ask him for a pic. He asked if we were there for the fight. We said we were, and he said, sorry about your co-main.

That was the infamous Nurmagomedov being pulled on weigh-in day for medical reasons. He just wants to say what he should have said then, Luke. He's a big fan of your work on the various platforms over the years. Huge fan of MK right now and my reintroduction to BC. We tell all the combat sports fans we know about

the show. Hopefully, we've gotten you a few subscribers. Having seen Luke in person, Nate Diaz's cut to lightweight must be incredible. Sounds like a very good... That's what I always say, dude. Online fans are... That's what I always say, dude. Online fans are... Let's be real, BC.

They're awful. They're the worst people in the world. But in person, I feel like I always have a really good interaction with fight fans. I always feel like that's the way to do it. Look, this guy could be your bald brother. So he's got the beard.

He's got the MK shirt. And look at his tat on his right bicep. It's got an eagle's claw there, similar to what you're rocking now. Yeah, yeah. It's not too dissimilar. A little higher up. He's also got a daughter, you know, some Spanish in his life. El Jefe, not Jefe.

He also loves Brian Campbell. Yeah, he's great. Love this guy. All right. Thank you, Heffin Jeffer. Colin Q sliding in. He says, guys, roses are red. Your success is more than look but you guys

guessed it this guy definitely fucks keep up the good work fellas you guys make my transportation job 100 times more enjoyable mk all day nearly every day ps get an mk rash card guard going luke your thoughts yeah for what I mean there's anyone in our audience trained there's like two people who trained that's fine well look at this absolute heterosexual though he's uh did you see how he have you seen how he stuffed his pants look at his crotch we see you we see you is that a MK hat he's got on and he's got an old-school look at the the TV screen Luke the the short-lived but

very well critically received luke thomas's piss show i'll never forget that yeah i'll never forget that either i was like wow people love it it's like well then why aren't you watching it we could have used that at the time could have used that all right hey ben c is here luke he says i would love to hear luke's opinion on my brother's tattoo. Hey, how about this, Luke? I'd have to see it in person to get a better look. Oh, boy. I will say this. A lot of people get them, BC.

I'm not into the... There's a couple things I'm not into as a personal thing. I'm not into the peacock tattoos. I'm not into, like, cranes. I'm not into, like, koi fish. But people seem to love them. How about those old people at casinos who wear sweatshirts with wolves painted on them? Yeah, what is that? What is it about middle America and their love of wolves and cigarettes, Luke? Why?

No, I'm down with this peacock tat. It wouldn't be for me, but it looks artistically sound. Ben's brother's okay. It's done traditional style, I think. I'm not a big fan of the green, but again, that's not saying it's good or it's bad. That's just a personal preference. Do you think Ben's brother got that before or after he was married? Ooh, now that's a good question.

Can you get chicks with that? I don't know. Dude, have you seen Gathering of the Juggalos? I mean, you know, you're not exactly picking out Rhodes Scholars over there. As I shame the Faygo drinkers. Let's move on here, Luke. We got a listener named Lachlan Inwood. He sent this nice pic of his child on the floor while he's tuning in on the big screen to MK. Luke, well done here, Luke. We got a listener named Lachlan Inwood. He sent this nice pic of his child on the floor

while he's tuning in on the big screen to MK. Luke, well done there, sir. Yes, get them early, we always say. Yes, yes. We will pollute the minds of your youth early. Thank you. I have no description, folks, for number seven. What do we got here?

Oh, Jesus, fuck. What did you do? Dude, what did you do? Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. That's from Scott M. Rizzo.

I know who that's from. One of our regulars. Yeah, you got to turn off the mic. There you go. Luke, you've been jaybirded, apparently. So shout out to that. For a second, I was like, did this idiot really just share his porn with the phone? We've already showed Gina Carano topless on this show.

And we showed a guy die the other day falling off of a pool building. But all right. Hey, Chris E. has the next one, Luke. A quiet place. That's hilarious. That's awesome. Luke, what was with the audio issues on yesterday's video? I don't fucking know.

What do you want me to say? I don't know. I don't know. All right. Hey, Webscream, we haven't heard from this legend in a while. He slid one in the other week. I forgot to put it up. How it started, Luke, versus how it's going.

Very true. Very true. Yeah, yeah. Certainly there was a little bit of that vibe, but now it's sort of, you know, pandemic lazy is how I would describe the vibe these days um can i give a shout out to the greek god of all things war thunder and graphics uh him and his lovely wife are expecting luke their first child so well done extreme shout out to you folks over there in italy you greek god uh we love you thank you buddy uh do we have a number 10 here i

have nothing on my sheet. What are we doing here? Hello? All right, we'll skip to number 11. Jonah L. says, just going to leave this here. Is that Ariel? That is Ariel. Oh, God, Luke. is that that is uh ariel that is uh ariel oh god luke is that supposed to be as palpatine oh because we were doing the star wars things is that what that is ariel as palpatine luke i mean will you folks lighten up well you just you know causing trouble lighten up francis yeah yeah well i mean if the if the if the robe fits no I'm just kidding Luke

I'm just kidding we're having fun everyone relax please everyone chill out he's definitely more Kylo all right let's keep it going here uh the next one Luke is from Ethan H he says you're welcome donkey farm uh okay all right Luke that movie was funny farm. Huge disappointment. Some people like that movie from Chevy Chase. I didn't love it. All right. Okay. All right.

Thanks. Okay. Hey, Jack says, Hey boys, Jack from Melbourne, Melbourne here. I saw this somewhere. Thought it would be great for the show. Not sure whether any of you have come across it. Someone did this because Rogan is always riding in Ghanu's dick. Stay frosty guys.

That is funny. I think I saw this the first time they fought. Something like that. It's kind of an old one, but it is pretty good. All right, Matt S. says, Enjoy this edit of BC painting. Also, this submission comes with an MMA trivia question. Luke in BC, who am I?

I won the Ultimate Fighter, had one fight in the UFC, and then retired undefeated. Who am I? Can we play the video? Or is this the still? Is this it? Thank you, Maniche. It's just a photo, Luke, of the tip-on-tip guys

painted. Luke, do you have an answer to... I'm a photo, Luke, of the Tip on Tip guys painted. Who won the Ultimate Fighter and then retired? My memory is not serving me. The answer is Chris Holdsworth. Ah, that's right, Kali. Jesus, that is true. Fuck. Yeah, the concussion issues.

Winding down here, Tyler M. says, Being a hip-hop fan myself with similar taste besides Cumberland Farms, I had to put together a quick mix based off their favorite hip-hop albums from a few months back. Oh Luke, hope you enjoy. From Purple Haze. Time for morning combat. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Did we lose it?

Yes. That's a hell of a donk right there. Did we lose it? Yes. That's a hell of a donk right there. Yeah, that is, buddy, that is next level awesome. That is, obviously you can hear the song. That's Kill a Cam from the Purple Haze album. That is amazing.

That is super, super well done. Can that person send us the audio track playing, like, not just from the video? I don't know, but he looks great in that black hoodless MK sweatshirt. Well done there, Tyler. Alan W. Luke has four of them. Oh, who let four of them in? Here we go, Luke. Luke and Brian's Excellent Adventure.

Okay, fair enough. I never saw the new reboot of it. I heard it was good. Either have I. I may watch it tonight in my hotel quarantine, Luke. Number two, Luke as the Terminator. Let's see. Yeah, okay. Alright, I'll take it.

You know, certainly not a bad thing. Brian the Menace is up next. Oh, fuck yeah. Oh, that's so you. You and the dog looking like shit. And bricked up a front yard gym meme to close here from Alan. Let's see. Bro, you're bricked up. Beat it, donk.

Yes. Can we go full screen on that, Maneech? Let's see. Dude, that's what those dudes who are on heroin do in New York City. You ever see them stand like that? They don't quite fall over, you know? Oh, God. You remember those donks?

Yeah, I've seen them. I've seen them, Luke. We got one more for you from Matt S. He says, BC channeling his inner Steven Tyler while Ronnie Lawrence shellacks Vince Caccero is what morning combat is all about. Not pictured, Abuela downstairs tapping her foot and nodding her head. Do we have video here? Yeah, that was the ending one here, I believe.

Good God. Ragdoll. Yeah. Now they're in a movie. Hot tramp. Daddy's little cutie. Ragdoll. Luke, I didn't hear that audio, but it looked like it was well done.

Yes, I'll assume it was well put together and it has the deal with it meme at the end there, so it's even better. There it is. There it is, Luke. Another week in the life of the MK. Thank you all right uh let's remind everybody and set the table for what's happening tomorrow as we as you note live chat documentary i'm not sure the documentary is coming out probably before the live chat but nevertheless

be on the lookout for those two items tomorrow we have a friday show to get ready for ufc 259 and a whole lot more so please give the video a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel right now if you haven't. And by the way, I will be going live Saturday right after the fights for a live post-fight show right here. So stick around for that as well. If you want to try Showtime, you certainly can. Showtime.com. 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it.

If not, pound sand. We are, of of course all over social media you've seen the stuff blah blah blah if you got any submissions for fan submissions on wednesday or dead wrong on friday morningcombat at gmail.com is going to be the place to be and yeah merch store.show.com for hats m mugs, shirts, cupped eggs, fucking whatever else BC is going to be eating. Sorry to interrupt, Luke. My lunch was here. In this hotel quarantine, it's a lot like prison, Luke.

You wait for that knock on the door for the food to be there, and it's usually two hours later than you had planned eating. So by the time it comes, you're raging. You're like real estate agent Al Iacquinto. You're just ready to just bear down on it, all right? Probably a fair amount of dolphin flogging going on in there. Yeah, but look, I do want to shout out, again, the donkey memory. It's art.

I mean, it's fucking art, bro. There's so much art in that shit, Luke. I can't wait for the people to see it. There's some moments, Luke. There's some memeable moments in there so um yeah uh well so is piss christ uh okay with that in mind we are out of here for today that's brian campbell from cbs sports i'm luke thomas from cbs sports thanks to them showtime mocha thanks to all of you who watched back tomorrow back friday back saturday don't go anywhere andcha. Thanks to all of you who watched. Back tomorrow, back Friday, back Saturday. Don't go anywhere. And until next time, may all of your gains be loyal. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time. you