MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Lemos Stops Rodriguez | Magny Subs Rodriguez | Bivol Defeats Ramirez | Ep 371

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

On Episode 371 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian recap UFC Fight Night: Rodriguez vs. Lemos. What was the biggest takeaway from Lemos' win? Neal Magny defeated Daniel Rodriguez, What does this loss say about Rodriguez? Plus much more on the UFC card. The guys also discuss Dmitry Bivol's win over Gilberto Ramirez and David Morrell Jr.'s win. They close out the show with HYSTS. (12:20) - Amanda Lemos (29:20) - Neil Magny (47:20) - Minner Injury & Betting Line (59:30) - Bivol vs. Ramirez (76:00) - Morrell vs. Yerbossynuly Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Reveley, reveveille, dogs! Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Hey, it's the 7th of November and welcome to the Morning Combat Podcast.

Hi everyone, I am one half of your hosting duo. My name is Luke Thomas. I join you from the capital of Estados Unidos right here in Washington, D.C. Joined by my editorial life mate, my friend and yours. He is the king of Connecticut. It's Brian Campbell. Hello, BC. How are you doing today?

Hi, Luke. I'm pretty fired up. I don't know if you heard, but today is Monday, and this week is UFC 281 Fight Week, right? MSG, baby. MK on the ground in Jersey City. Honey. Sorry about that.

I got a little too excited, But I'm really excited, Luke. Well, you sound like it. Sound like you've had like five Xanax before the show. This will be great. All right, everyone. You know the drill. If you're watching on YouTube, two thumbs up. Hit subscribe if this is a new venture for you.

By the way, as BC indicated, I'm going to be in Jersey starting tomorrow morning. We have a lot of fun stuff planned for you. Some stuff we can announce, some stuff we cannot. The fun stuff that we cannot announce, I think you're going to really like it. I think you're going to really like it. So be on the lookout for some cool stuff coming tomorrow and then every day thereafter from Jersey City.

Also, if you listen to this on your favorite podcast platform, do leave us a nice review. We appreciate that when you do. BC, everyone knows the order today. Real quickly, we're going to get to some UFC stuff. We have some controversy, some serious controversy, as a matter of fact, in that Derek Minner fight. We'll talk about that plus the main and co-main event. Dimitri Bivol out there looking like an absolute stud.

And then, of course, David Morel Jr. Now, there is some controversy. Well, not controversy. There's some sad news report about that fight. But just in terms of the way he looked, he looked great. So a full slate of stuff to get to. What were you going to say? I'm sorry to cut you off.

I was going to say, Luke, that we covered the balls out of that Jake Paul Anderson Silva fight. And maybe it wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but you can expect that same coverage for all things 281 this week. In fact, when you are an award-winning podcast, the pressure mounts on your shoulders to out cover your competition. And Luke, every single event this week, we will be there to react. So many special guests, so many bonuses coming your way. I want the people to realize, get your shit done this week early and then get ready to ride with MK all

frigging week long, because this is the big time. And this is a major look. This is like the U S opens or Open or some shit here for UFC, and I'm going to bring my best, all right? I'm going to be doing tape study. I'm going to be trying to work in some new material. Luke, it's going to be a huge week, all right?

All right, let's just make sure we have the appropriate tone for the appropriate venue this time. Let's see, BC. If folks want some merch, you can get some, morningcombat.store. I don't think we... Oh, yeah, BC's got the hat on. Got the hat on there.

Yeah, I'm always represented. That's right. Morning combat dot store. Morning combat at Gmail dot com is your place for, you know, if you want to send the let's see. By the way, we move DMs from donks to Friday. So I think we're still going to use Instagram for that. But of course, for dead wrongs and then for fan subs, you can use that.

Showtime dot com is the label that pays. Of course, there's going to be... By the way, we're not far from the best Bellator show of the year. Not this Friday, but the following. So that'll be a lot of fun. Showtime.com is the best place to get that, of course. And you can get a 30-day free trial if you like it. You can keep it.

If not, you can bounce. BC, I want to tell folks, though, about first person. We all want to turn back the clock and relive those glory days. And for me, I would love to wake up every morning with zero brain fog, a clear mind, and be as energized as I was when I was younger. And thanks to first person, I can take a more active role in my brain's overall health. Yeah, finally, you can start feeling like yourself again, Luke. Why?

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motivation and focus. My goal, of course, is to be more productive and attentive throughout a very long day. Well, Luke, you might as well try it, right? You might as well start right now. If you want to start improving your brain health and cognition, you better get with first person. In fact, you can get 15% off on your first order today by going to getfirstperson.com and then using our code, combat, with a K. Again, that's G-E-T-F-I-R-S-T-P-E-R-S-O-N.com, code combat, for 15% off your first order. Getfirstperson.com. Code combat. All right. No, it's time for you to do it, okay? You can't waste the day when the night brings a hearse.

You know what I'm talking about, right? All right? So make your move, right? We got to get on with the topics, right? Yeah, plead the fifth. We're not going to let you plead the fifth. You're doing some down rodeo there from Ridge Against the Machine? Oh, wow.

Look at that pull. I mean, we don't see the 90s counter anymore. I don't know what happened to it. We had a good run with that. Dude, again, I saw it was a bit of like, you know, dad's night out energy in terms of how old the crowd was, but I saw them here before they canceled the tour with Killer Mike and LP, Run the Jewels.

Dude, Rage was good. They were good. I'm not going to lie. They were pretty good. Did they evolve as a live outfit, Luke, in terms of like jamming and and just you know no it sounded like they were recording an album like so it wasn't quite the live thing in that sense but how clean their sound was their sound was impeccable it was impeccable all right there you go all right a lot like the history of a lot like the history of morning combat i'm sorry impeccable sound there we go let's do it

let's bang. Exactly right. All right, let's kick things off here with some UFC discussion. Topic number one. Boy, I got to say, how about Friday's guest, Dean Thomas, calling this one perfectly, even against me and BC's snickering objections. We couldn't believe he was saying it, but turns out he was right. Mendelemos polishes off Marina Rodriguez in the third of their main event at UFC

Vegas 64 BC. Dean Thomas was absolutely right about her power. Is that your biggest takeaway from this fight? Yeah, that she's absolutely for real in this division. And I didn't think she was looking. I got to give her a lot of credit. And obviously you look at Amandou Lemos' stretch now, it's seven wins in eight fights. Only that loss at submission lost to Jessica Andrade. But, you know, we had sort of picked apart the resume. You know, had she fought enough elite fighters? Had those fights been clean and clear rather than, you know, split her majority decision? But at the end of the day, it didn't matter.

She got her opportunity by winning to get to this point. And she punched a hole through somebody in Marina Rodriguez, let's not forget just three four days ago we were debating whether she should have even taken this fight and whether she had already potentially locked up a title shot because of how good that four fight win streak was but nothing's guaranteed in this sport at the end of the day we praise Marina for staying busy and giving herself the best opportunity to stamp a title shot. Well, she got stamped in the end. So let's talk about Amanda Lemos. She came out there with big power, but she was also very poised. That was a throwaway first round in which both of them felt each other out.

But I think you've got to give Lemos credit for taking that fight to the ground there in round two, beginning to establish herself as a physical force, and then staying true to her game plan. And when the moment was there on the feet she hurt Rodriguez she swooped in and look this is why you this is why we play the game this is why we fight the fights at the end of the day you can't win them on paper Lemos won it in the ring she didn't need any judges and we got to wake up and realize that we've got a hungry aggressive contender right now in this deep and great division. Yeah, I really echo that.

Again, I want to give credit to Dean right up front, as we already have. But just to reiterate it one more time, it's not that I didn't believe she had big power. I just wasn't sure how exactly decisive it would be as a factor. Turns out, very decisive is the answer. But the truth is, it's more than just that. Her big power definitely played a role. And the first round was close. You could maybe give it to Rodriguez.

In fact, I think she probably did. I didn't see the judges' scorecards, but I think more people than not thought she had won, although it was close. Second round, very much a Lamos round, getting control from the takedown from the clinch, riding out the back, threatening with a submission that was, you know,

certainly very serious for at least a moment in time. And then the third round, stopping her. But what you noticed about it was she had hit her with that same shot previously where Rodriguez was charging in, Lemos would slide back, and then pop her with a counter shot. She had landed that before, and this time she landed it to just much better effect. What you see in the fight is that at distance, you know, they were kind of pot-shotting each other with kicks,

but Rodriguez's game could not get going from distance. So she had to shorten it a little bit. And that's when all the problems started because obviously she has big power, Lemos does. She was obviously able to intercept her coming in. And then in the clinch on the ground, she was better as well. The reality is basically, this isn't 100% true,

but it's largely true that Lamos was better everywhere so the power was a decisive factor the anticipation as your opponent closes distance was a factor obviously her patience to a degree was a factor good back control good submissions did have that one error in the first round when she ended up on bottom from a failed throw but short of that man this was just the amanda lamos show from beginning to. So to your point, I give credit to Dean Thomas for that. I give credit to Lemos for showing, I think, I won't say new wrinkles, but the full breadth of her game, all the different things that she can do. And I agree, it's a tough loss for Rodriguez. It really sets her back. But for Lemos, we have a new and outstanding contender here. Now, BC, we got to talk about the stoppage though,

because that was a real big topic of controversy online. Now, having reviewed it in real time, it's one thing reviewing it's another having reviewed it after the fact, how do you feel about it? I was fine with it. I was fine with it. Then I'm fine with it. Now I get the fact that once the stoppage happened, you saw Marina come to life and complain in that moment, but I think, was it DC who was doing the highlights, or was voicing over the replays, Luke? Was DC on this

broadcast? I don't remember. Or did I just make that up? You know, it's amazing how little I can remember, Luke, at times. But here's the deal. I think whoever was voicing over the highlights was pointing it out. I think she was out on her feet from that first big shot that backed her up. I thought she got worn down for much of that second round on the ground. It kind of got a little bit of the will taken out of her. I watched the replay. I'm completely fine with it. She was

getting lit up with clean shots. She was attempting to defend herself, but wasn't firing back and was really, you know, on her way to getting knocked out. It seemed knocked out clean, potentially. I don't know where the outrage in this specific case is. So there will be two complaints that you could make about it. And in general, I don't really have a problem with it. I think Jason Herzog is an outstanding referee. And whether you think this is his best call or not his best call it's still not a bad call just to be very clear about that it's not a bad call at all the question is was it a little

early so the two ways you could assess that is one if this were a prelim card fight you could be like oh I understand it more because the stakes aren't as high it's not a five rounder the competitors typically are not as senior and so you get a little bit earlier on the interventions than if it's a main event. And there's a lot more at stake with a lot more senior competitors. That's the one claim you can make. The other claim is, and this one's a little hard to prove with any kind of data, but there does seem to be something to it, BC. What do you make of the idea, whether or not this fight serves as an example of it but what do you make of the idea that we do see women's fights stopped earlier when there's some brutality involved that if these were men and men had

reacted very similarly similarly excuse me that we would have gotten the exact same result from the referee do you buy that or do you think it's a bunch of nonsense no i think it's a bunch of nonsense there were times and even in the last couple of years, I tried to throw that sort of devil's advocate counter theory out there that are we still not subconsciously fully adjusted to the idea of women fighting on this level. And that sounds crazy to even voice, but don't forget that when the UFC did, through the launch or the stardom of Ronda Rousey, activate this in the beginning.

There were a few, you know, credible names, media members, a lot of people who were like, you know what? I just don't know if I like watching that. I think we're so far past that. And I think, you know, I was cage side for Ioana versus Wei Li part one. And even though that fight, let's say, didn't have sequences like this where somebody looked that close to be ready to go, that was a fight where in the fifth round I'm kind of watching through my fingers going, this is as brutal as it gets, and it kept going. Now, that's a title fight on a pay-per-view.

This is also a main event with key title implications. But look, when you're getting lit up in boxing or MMA, when you're getting lit up with big shots and you're not firing back and your posture is partially defensive but also partially you could be out on your feet, I don't see where the argument against that in this case is because Rodriguez looked out on her feet. Or if she wasn't, she looked like she wasn't competently defending herself despite her hands being up so no i i don't in this case i don't buy that i mean you know look we did get to the point of this you know suffrage is a real thing can we get past any any uh any gender bias here luke i don't think it's a thing anymore it's it's not okay well here's what i would say just pointing out that it didn't happen in other kinds of crazy fights involving women wouldn't disprove it it wouldn't the the argument would not be that it happens all the time every time in very direct and uh identical ways the argument would be is there a trend

such as the larger data can show that these fights are being a little bit stopped early so again i don't know that there's a ton of good evidence collected in this particular case it's a little harder to make that argument well if there's a trend last thing on this last thing last thing i would be curious to see if someone could assemble data because again in individual circumstances don't prove or disprove anything it's the wider set of information yeah so you're saying hey richard man get me some stats that's what you're saying stats bro data that's what you need get me some data well you know it would be too i mean i used to edit richard man stuff at espn luke he said you know he's a veteran in this game but it would

be too easy to if he needed a nickname to be like dick guy or dick boy i mean he needs a real nickname right dick man dick man that's a little bit too i'm gonna work on that okay i'm gonna work on that but um look i think if there's any trend lately in both sports it is stopping things quicker when somebody seems concussed on their feet would you agree with that and i don't think that's a negative trend because it can lead it can certainly lead to situations where you're going to argue too soon but you know we've got in the showtime boxing main event which we're going to argue too soon. But, you know, we've got in the Showtime Boxing Main Event, which we're going to get to shortly, somebody who was induced into a medical coma

because of the accumulated damage. So in the moments where someone's dominating and looks like they're on their way, and the key word, the key thing that the referees are looking for, in my eyes, is it's not just competent defense, it's are they attempting to throw back? You know, I think we're only going historically closer to a direction where you're going to see more stoppages like this. And, you know, there's always going to be the purest in us

who loves the big comeback in a fight where someone's taking intense damage. But this just isn't one of those in my eyes. But I'd love to hear a counter-argument, Luke, as to why, you know why this should have kept going. I didn't see it. Yeah, again, this is not – you can – any debate – or excuse me, any stoppage is in some ways up for debate. I mean, short of someone just going completely out. And so this is not a bad stoppage.

It's just a question of was it a little bit early given the circumstances I think you're right though are we seeing a trend where people get rocked on the feet and then what you're looking for in this particular case it seems to me from Herzog is when he's looking down at Rodriguez you know I remember for example when Ken Shamrock fought Kimo he hit him with a knee from the clinch Kimo fell and then just turned his back and looked away and the referee I think later was asked about or something like that where they had said yeah like once he showed his back it was pretty clear he didn't want anymore he was he was literally avoiding the fight in this particular case it wasn't exactly that but it looked like she had been hit with the shot and was turning away and not really consciously reacting right so it's

okay to get hit with punches depending on how you react to them. But if you're just kind of absorbing and hands are out and there's not any kind of more intelligent approach to mitigating the problem in front of you, they're going to intervene. So Jason Herzog is a fantastic referee. Just want to make sure we went over the details. Okay, BC, last thing on this.

A, who would you like to see Lemos fight next? And B, here's my question about Rodriguez. Excuse me, Rodriguez. I'm sorry. Was this something of a loss where it doesn't just hurt her stock because she lost to someone else who was really good? That sets her back in the divisional rankings. That's obvious.

But what I mean to say is, this show that like whatever long-term upside she's got you've already seen it like there this is this is the final product and if she can't get any better which it seems like she cannot this is all that there really is yeah look the onus is on her to to when she does come back to come back with a big statement now it's easy to say okay this is a monumental loss because it looked like she was on the footstep of a title shot, and I think that's fair, but let's just look back two fights ago when Lemos was riding a five-fight winning streak at that point and got submitted by Andrade, and look at her. She got another opportunity. She won her next fight, but then she gets back in this one and gets a huge stoppage in a main event. More often than not,

it's about timing in the big moment. Marina Rodriguez has had two moments that seem to snuff out some real momentum that she put together. One was the stoppage loss to Esparza that launched Carla to the direction of a title opportunity. And now this one, but she's 35.

In fact, both fighters in the main and co-main on Saturday, they're all 35. It just happened to work out that way. The window is closing. The one question mark we had about Marina coming in was that lack of sort of top-end power or finishing ability or submission threat. She's a very tough fighter. She's hard to look great against.

If you're not complete and you're not of that ilk, she's going to expose you. This does take her down a notch and really puts the onus on her to try to make one more big run and and try to do the kind of thing she hasn't to separate herself from this level of competition i think you look back on this and you know because of what we talked about she went backward in the rankings she said herself and in the media day you know i don't really understand this matchmaking was there part of her that just subconsciously or naturally wasn't as well prepared or didn't respect lamos up to this level uh that could be part of it there you know fighters are humans at the end of the day so i don't write her off completely but is it is is night drawing near yes i think for this fighter who's got to look in the mirror and say is there another gear i can find if not i may have just missed my window with

this defeat it may have worked out that way, but let's give her another chance to get back in this. For the rankings in Lemos, I agree with your answer on Rodriguez. Again, we don't have the updated rankings, but so as they were before the fight took place, Rodriguez was sitting at three in the rankings. You had Lemos sitting at seven.

I don't know if Lemos will take the number three spot, but if she does, you would sort of wonder who the other fights could be. You could maybe do an Andrade rematch, but I don't know if there's a lot of like demand for that, given how kind of it all ended very quickly for, uh, well for Andrade getting the, uh, the standing head and arm triangle. What about the idea of Lamos versus Rose? Do you like that idea? It's a fresh match. I certainly love that idea, but what you really have to ask yourself is, if you're

going to make that matchup, and Lamos just fought, and I know she's opportunistic, she's 35 as well, she's trying to maximize, so she said in her post-fight interview, please Dana, I'll be the backup for the MSG title shot, and I like that Chandler-esque spirit. But I think if you were doing

Rose versus Lamos, then again, it's like, okay, who's going to fight for the title next? Luke, I think Rose is just too big of a celebrity, two-time former champion. And although it's largely her fault, she just lost that title belt. The UFC can make a trilogy with her against either winner of Saturday's fight.

So to me, Luke, knowing business, knowing history, especially if it's Whaley who wins you're going right there into the trilogy and Lemos under that setting would need one more victory to truly put herself in that number one contender spot so what's my answer to that if Rose is on the UFC's plans for next how about Jan Schaunan who just bounced back nicely against Mackenzie Dern in a close fight is that an acceptable matchup for you for Lemos moving forward it would be but that's a if I'm Dern that's a tough fight that's a tough fight Shonan versus Lemos I'm talking about not Dern Dern lost to Jan Shonan that's what I'm talking about yeah well even then it would be a question

of like where Lemos ends up because if they put her – one possibility is they could bump Andrade up because Andrade has a relatively recent win over her, and they could put Lemos at four. No, no, Luke, I'm going to interrupt you. Andrade has a fight at 125. She has switch paths. There were two roads emerged in the woods. She's gone back and forth.

She took the less travel back to 125, okay? So she's there for now. She's out of this conversation. I understand, but you never know if she could just jump right back in. But if you take her out of the equation, it does make the matchmaking a little bit easier. Frankly, either of those fights I think you could get away with and make. The Yon-Shan-An one, to your point, would be a little bit more interesting

and better since they both are coming off of big wins. But, yeah, she is now in that space where whatever she gets next, that could be her fight for a title, no doubt about it. Because you're only going to be fighting either Rose, Zhong Weili, Carla, Andrade. If she comes back, Yan Xiaonan or Dern. And Dern would be the lowest ranked opponent she would fight in that case. And that would be a pretty great run. You know what you forgot to do, though?

You forgot to counter me and say, hey, BC, great idea on Rose. But if Carla goes out there and wins a decision, let's say, against Wei Li, you're supposed to tell me, BC, there's no chance the UFC does Carla Rose 3 after that shit cake they both produced last time. That's what you're supposed to say. I got to tell you, yeah, that's probably not high on anyone's priority list at this point. So fair point. All right, let's go to at this point. So, um, fair point.

All right, let's go to the co-main event BC. How about old Neil Magny, old fucking Neil Magny out there still getting it done. By the way, we were wrong on this one too. BC submitted Daniel Rodriguez in the third round of their co-main event. BC,

let me just ask you this. And I want to ask you in this context, how impressive was the victory? Because I think if you're a jaded POS, it's very easy to like yeah it's a nice win it's a win over guy in the top 15 blah blah blah but I want to talk about the Neil Magny factor here right we'll talk about him breaking that win streak about GSP in just a second or you can bring it up if you want we can get right into it but the point I want to make was there needs to be a place in the conversations we have around fighters and how good they are.

And I've said this a million times, but it really is worth reiterating here on Magni, that don't revolve around, well, are they in the Hall of Fame and as individual entrants? Do they have a title? Whatever. There's all kinds of ways to not be as certainly as prestigious as that, to still turn in very commendable efforts. And it seems to me like one of the real things you get from Neil Magny is, is he the best guy at welterweight? No,

the evidence doesn't necessarily tell us that, but the evidence does tell us he is consistently very, very good. He came off a terrible loss against Shafkat Rachmanov and had to deal with adversity in this contest and still got it done. He's been doing that kind of thing for a very long time against very good opposition. Surely we have something nice to say about that beyond good job.

Well, we got a lot of nice things to say, but I think you're breaking glass in case of emergency here. You're trying to nominate Neil Magny for the Hall of Fame. I mean, you said he's a very good fighter and he's been very good a long time. I'm not in any way trying to nominate him

for the Hall of Fame. In no way am I suggesting that. All right, I didn't know where you were going. I'm like, Hall of very good. Yeah, very good a long time. I agree. I'm not in any way trying to nominate him for the Hall of Fame. In no way am I suggesting that. All right. I didn't know where you were going. I'm like, Hall of very good. Yeah. Very good fighter. I mean, look, what did we say coming in?

Neil Magny exposes you if you're not real. And nobody wants to be called a journeyman. And Neil Magny's been at a very high level for a long time. And I'm not calling him a journeyman or a gatekeeper here. He's got the most wins in welterweight history. Thumbs up. He always has an ability when we think we know which direction he's going to not necessarily reinvent himself, but come through a hellacious camp and come in there and do exactly that. But as great of a win

as this is for Neal, and it was, hell yeah it was. He took big shots from D-Rod. Is this more of an indictment that maybe D-Rod is not of the elite ilk, so this result proved to us who Daniel Rodriguez is more than necessarily proving us to who Neil Magny is? This is who Neil Magny always is, Luke. We both picked D-Rod. We both had maybe higher hopes for that. At the end of the day, Neil was the better fighter in this fight, and he deserves, you know, like he does anytime he puts together three and four fight win streaks in between big step-up losses. He deserves another big opportunity off of this, but it kind of was what it was in terms of its potential. If D-Rod wasn't going to show us a complete game or take one aspect of his game and take it to the next level, he was going to have the opportunity for this to happen.

Now, did I think, you know, Neal was going to get a finish here? No. But, you know, once D-Rod started slipping punches and getting a body lock, but then showing us he was unable to do anything with that, unable to throw Magny against the cage and land big strikes, unable to take him down, suddenly the openings were there for Neal Magny, and let's take it, let's give him credit. He's very good. He's never been great.

He's very good. He's never been great. He's very good. To me, this was more of a referendum on exactly where D-Rod is coming off a fight where a lot of us thought he lost anyway, Luke. And that's not a backhanded compliment at Neil. I'm not trying to say that you're trying to say that he's getting minted now for his Hall of Fame suit, because no one's trying to say that. But this is a great win and a big spot in a co-main event. I'll give Neil Magny that credit. Look, across the board, he was on point in this fight. I agree with half of that.

Definitely half of that. I think the difference maker in the end, here's where I think we agree. I definitely agree that on the feet, this is the part where we were right, on the feet, Rodriguez was better. He was lighting up Neil Magny, and Neil Magny just didn't have a great answer on the feet at all. And I think that's what we thought was going to basically be the entire terms of the fight, and that's why Rodriguez would win.

So in that sense, I do agree that what Neil showed was that, yes, Rodriguez is very, very good on the feet, but the other parts of his game need to come along a little bit further if he wants to be able to beat opposition of this quality. So I do think it was, referendum's a strong word, but any kind of loss always shows potential weak points in any fighter. No fighter is perfect. They're all going to have them. In this particular case, it did put up a magnifying glass to some of those things.

But I do think you're being a little bit unfair to Neal. And the reason why I say that is because you're right we're looking at just ultimate achievement he has done some he's had some great wins but he's never been like consistently excellent that kind of thing he doesn't have any he never held a title never fought for a title never been a number one contender um you know there's been some limits to how well he's done but just I want to point out this he's made his UFC debut in 2013. Here he is now in 2022, and he is still beating guys of this quality and this late in his run in the UFC.

That is very difficult to do. To be this consistently, not raising what your ultimate level was, but to make sure that you're putting in enough work that you can stay at least level or above the vast majority of the competition, not the ones inside the top 10 space necessarily, but certainly everyone else in that organization to do that consistently as long as he has, that is not easy. In fact,

it's kind of, I'm not gonna say it's easier, but we would be wowed by someone who had five years of a burst of inspiration and then five years of disaster we would still talk about them more i'm not saying that higher level achievement shouldn't be rewarded as such it should well all i'm pointing out is to maintain a consistently very high level throughout the years despite getting older despite the game changing and everything else to be to show a consistent level of this kind of ability that that is highly commendable. It's not easy to do. It's very difficult, in fact.

And I just feel like being like, well, he still doesn't have an A-plus win. Okay, but he's got a lot of B-plus, A-minus wins. Those are worth something. I mean, if you can really pick through it, you can identify some of those wins as guys were past their stretch. But he's got wins over Hendricks, Lull, or Condon I mean there's there's a strong handful of guys he's beaten I love the call out for Neil After by the way to say hey look Gilbert Burns like I'll go to Brazil I'll be you know I'll

be that guy for you let's go do that that is the kind of win he needs and you could argue has lacked but I don't even think he got let's say one-sided on the feet like you kind of mentioned did did d-rod lance and big strikes particularly in that second round yes but you know magny's jab was on point and he bloodied rodriguez's nose early and true true i mean look look it's great it was a it's a great win it really was a great win and to get the finish on top of that and to have that type of dominance on the ground that he had. But what's my biggest takeaway? I already knew Neil Magny could do this. I did expect more from D-Rod.

And Luke, like I mentioned, to reiterate that, you know, he just didn't have anything for us on the ground. And you're going to have to be a dual threat to win at this level. And I don't know if there's still time for him. I love his striking, his demeanor, his cool factor. I love everything about D-Rod. He's a fantastic fighter, but he showed us that he's not on Neil Magny's level here. So now Neil gets to put his head above water again

and take on an elite potentially. And let's see what we've got, Luke. He's been around a long time, as you mentioned. He hasn't gotten worse. He's been steady. He's getting better. And this is a big opportunity. But I'm not getting the yellow jacket framed for him yet i don't even understand what you're trying to say anyways i've never even suggested that the hall i don't even

get what you were saying though that's the thing maybe i'm just an ignorant fool okay fine but then let me explain it i'm not suggesting he should be nominated for the hall of fame rather when we have conversations about how we praise fighters for what they've done in the cage we do it either we only do it on the terms of extraordinary achievement which of course makes sense the thing i'm trying to point out to you is to me there is still something highly commendable about consistency highly commendable about consistency to me the rodriguez win by itself is good it's nice but it's in the larger totality of the body of work and what that body of work says about the kinds of things neil does neil does in the training room and how he's able to consistently apply it

uh in the course of his competitions not against the upper end and i we if we're only going to have conversations about fighters who become champions we're going to miss a lot about what makes fighting great okay it's just a reality if you only ever talk about champions if you only ever talk about who's in the hall of fame you are missing a wide swath of very good fighters who will teach you about the fight game will teach you about life's lessons will teach you about humility will teach you about achievement and everything else in between and also about the ins and outs of MMA I just want to make sure our conversations aren't completely segregated around just hall of fame guys just championship level guys there's another space that deserves to be praised and I think Neil Magny leads the pack in terms of that space

yeah no for sure in that large the larger end of that space you're talking about we have seen guys like Jim Miller Matt Brown get a lot of end of career love you're talking about, we have seen guys like Jim Miller, Matt Brown, get a lot of end-of-career love for being at a level for a long time. You know, Magny, as you can argue, is even at a little bit higher level than that because he's beating ranked guys, and now he's setting himself up for a big fight. So, Luke, if it's not Gilbert Burns, and God, I love that call-out, what could Maneel Magny be looking for? Because this is a co-main event opportunity off a guy coming off a big win even if it was disputed I mean there's a level there's a line

in the sand if you're below that line Neil Magny beats you I want to see if he could beat somebody above that Luke so the names around him that might make sense would be potentially I don't think Brady would take this fight because they're boys Sean Brady is friends with Neil Magny, I don't think Brady would take this fight because they're boys. Sean Brady is friends with Neil Magny, so I don't think he would take it. Then it takes you to Vicente Luque. That'd be a hell of a fight. Rachmaninoff already fought him and beat him. Masvidal probably won't take that fight. I don't suspect that'd be a fight he wants.

You could do the Chiesa rematch. I don't know how much interest there is around that. You could do Michelle Pareda. Any of those, I think. You could do Luque, Chiesa, or Pereira. It looks like the obvious ones. Any of those interest you? Yeah, most of them.

If not all of them, but we did get a... You could do Wonderboy, I guess. Normally, the live comments that come in during our... Doesn't Wonderboy have a fight? I forget who he's fighting coming up. I'll look that up. We normally have comments coming in that we avoid on the YouTube live chat because it's usually just barbarically grotesque.

Kevin Holland. Excuse me. Kevin Holland is Wonderboy fighting. But VT is in our chat saying, hey, forget about Magny for a second. How about D-Rod versus Sean Brady? Two big names, exciting guys coming off defeats you like that Luke you like VT's suggestion I mean can't believe Tyson gave that girl VT right you know what I'm saying he sure did he gave her Virginia Tech um I don't know because it's like

you're gonna give Sean you're gonna give D-Rod a wrestler who's a good grappler right away. That seems like he doesn't have time to really work on his game. And conversely, if you're Sean, yes, the stand-up could prove difficult given what we saw against Bilal. But just being the sort of low-to-the-ground wrestler grappler that he is, I don't know if you're going to get a whole lot out of that contest. You could do it. I wouldn't hate it, but I don't know if that's the best choice.

You know that thing on the side of Frank Beamer's face luke speaking of vt yeah yeah it was big it was big yeah it was big that's all i got that's all i got for you yeah it was any thoughts about neil breaking uh gsp's record now even i got to give credit to neil even neil in the post fight um-down with the media, the scrum was like, listen, I know my record's not GSP's record. I know my wins are not GSP's wins. I know. I know that. But to me, this is sort of going back to it. It's like, dude, the guy broke a very difficult record to break. They're not equivalent. He will be the first to admit it. But just to be in that kind of company, this is that consistency I'm talking about, BC. Even if you're beating lesser than competition than what GSP was tasked with,

to be able to do it this consistently long to break a record like that, even if they don't mean equivalent things, still pretty goddamn commendable if you ask me. Oh, hell yeah. At the highest level without being cut or sent away, look, he's been able to avoid the kind of pitfalls that end careers early, which is having things fall apart. Only when he loses, he tends to come back with two, three,

four consecutive wins. And you stay at that pattern a long time. That means that you are constantly grinding, evolving, getting better, not taking, you know, six months off because you went through a divorce and your career falls apart. I mean, look, this guy's been at it. I mean, Luke, it's like, you know, there's, there's, there's grinders in other sports too. I mean, if, this guy's been at it. I mean, Luke, it's like, you know, there's grinders in other sports, too. I mean, if you're a baseball, if you're a starting third baseman

and you hit.285 with 17 home runs and, you know, 82 RBIs, but you do it for like 12 straight seasons, they might not be putting you in Cooperstown, but you're going to make a lot of money and get a lot of respect. So if the whole point of your speech here is, by the time we put some damn respect on Neil Mag magny's name then hell to the yeah luke he's a he's a gentleman he's a strong representation of this sport in this division's history and uh he's been here he's fought everybody and he's still going so let's give him that and luke again i'll echo it i hope

he gets gilbert burns although i know gilbert wants money fights i know he wants you know colby and jorge he wants them. He wants that money. He does. Just as one more last reminder on Neil Magny, and then we'll move along. The Haitian Sensation himself, 27-9 record. I mean, is anyone out here really going to say that this dude hasn't tried to fight tough guys?

All he's ever done is fight tough guys. Just the last 10 of them. Rodriguez, Rachmanov, Max Griffin, Jeff Neal, Michael Chiesa, Robbie Lawler, Anthony Rocco Martin, ever done is fight tough guys just the last like 10 of them rodriguez rock monoff max griffin jeff neal michael chiesa robbie lawler anthony rocco martin the leech santiago panzanibio carlos condit rda johnny hendrix lorenz larkin hector lombard kelvin gastelum demi and maya the stun gun and on and on and on it goes the dude never takes an easy night never takes his foot off the gas always looks for the smoke broke an interesting record had the humility to recognize okay there are some differences there and then

asks for one of the toughest guys in the division what is there not to like i really don't know all right maybe you should call out gsp for a boxing match luke we'll do it on showtime pay-per-view okay we'll get yes we'll get the donald to be the referee all right come on you can bite them both that'd be great uh bc i want you to know, MMA fans, we've got an unreal match going head-to-head this week. Tune in to UFC 281 this Saturday to watch the action unfold between, of course, Israel Adesanya and Alex Pareda.

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COMBAT with a K if you're listening online. Bet $5 on either fighter to win before the fight starts, and you get an additional $200 in free bets if your bet wins. Guse, what do they need to know? I mean, could you pick all the wins successfully on this card? No, that's difficult to do. But I'm sure there's one fight that you've just got a hunch about. Hey, put $5 on that fight.

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and that's DraftKings. DK, MK, meet me on the D. BC. If you're into that. If we're gonna do okay so imagine I had to tell you you can only bet one direction for all of them so you're either gonna bet all of them lose

or all of them win does CKB get your losing bet all four in a parlay lose or all four win so of course to remind you that'd be Carlos Allberg taking on Nikolai Negu Morano that's one the second one of course would be brad riddell taking on hanato moicano then dan hooker's got a fight and then is he in the main event what do you think i bet they'll

all be on ariel's show i bet that but i'll also bet luke can i bet a parlay that carlos olberg will win by stoppage and then win by stoppage after the fight, if you know what I mean, Luke. I'll take on that parlay. Hang loose, Carlos, okay? Please. All right. Let's get back to UFC here if we can. So this was one hell of a story. Let's talk about it now.

So I'm going to try and read this gentleman's name, and I'm sure I'm going to fuck this up, so please forgive me. But there was a controversy and a pretty serious one in the feature fight on the main card between Shia Laan, please forgive me for mispronouncing this, Nur Danbieke against Derek Minner. So about a few hours before the fight, shortly before the fight, the betting lines had suspicious movement

where Minner became much more of an underdog, and I'm just going to say Shy Alon because his last name is a little difficult to pronounce, became a much more pronounced favorite. Then the fight starts, and Derek Minner throws a left leg kick, or excuse me, a left leg to the body around kick, and it clearly hurts him. Then he throws it again, kind of collapses, and then he gets stopped with elbows so the fight was flagged a report came to sbc from mark ramundi and david perdum from espn and this is what it says the the betting on this fight is being investigated

by a u.s-based betting integrity firm after several sportsbook and multiple states reported suspicious wagering on the bout. This is what they say. The odds on Shailan defeating underdog Minner moved dramatically in the hours leading up to the fight. Bettors were convinced that not only would Shailan win, but he would do so in the first round. Money poured in on the favor to win by knockout in the first round and for the fight to last fewer than two and a half rounds, prompting some sportsbooks to take the fight off the board, according to an analysis conducted by U.S. Integrity, a Las Vegas-based firm that works with sportsbooks and state gaming regulators to monitor the betting market, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN. Now, there's two theories, BC, and I'll pitch this to you.

Well, actually, three. One is that this is all a coincidence two is that nothing nefarious happened between the fighters but somebody knew something and the word got out and betting happened or three and again i want to be clear we don't have any direct evidence of this we are not suggesting this is true we're merely articulating possibilities that could explain what happened you can decide for yourself whether or not this is true but a third theory could be that actually these fighters or at least one of them or somehow were in on it and a fight was thrown now again i don't want to speculate that that is what happened i suggest that's true without any evidence but this is a bad situation how do you unpack this

yeah and there's a lot of you know typical twitter speculation people are like isn't james cross's coach doesn't he bed on his podcast it's like okay derrick minner trains with james cross for what it's yeah so it's like hold the phone on that look i i would largely say either much ado about nothing coincidental or what you mentioned there about okay well news leaked about the injury and he went through with the fight anyway and people had a hunch but i gotta say luke well i'm not here to go all full conspiracy on you i watched this fight after i found out about what happened is it weird at all that derrick minner threw a kick with his left leg was visibly hurt by it landing to the high hip area of his opponent and then went right back to the well with that

same kick and then collapsed covered his face didn't attempt to fight back and you know both his opponent and the referee were kind of like uh what are we doing should we stay yeah yeah let's stop it i gotta say that whole sequence you know it doesn't light up you know me coming on saying you know building seven or anything but it does make me go, OK, yeah, let's investigate this. And I know the UFC has made a statement about their own, you know, internal investigator that they use for this type of situation. Look, look, this is exactly why Dana White came out a few weeks ago and was like, you know what? Moving forward, let's ban all fighters from betting. I mean, look, you know, you weaker up in the 80s and 90s when this, like, you weren't even allowed on, you know, sports broadcasts to mention betting. I mean, yeah, we had Jimmy the Greek on CBS talking NFL and kind of code word, but there's a reason why this.

I was kind of waiting. You know, we lived through Donahue. I was kind of waiting for something to happen with how aggressively in sports today or all sports i mean we're putting on the ufc screen updates on big bettors we're you know throwing out draft king parlay potentials with the odds um i don't have the answer here but i re-watched that sequence a couple times from minner something was off about that right something something smells weird there i definitely i they they contacted his manager and then another source and they the word was that he went into that fight pretty badly injured which would not be in any way surprising i think that would make a lot of sense that he

you know we see it all the time right people go into fights sometimes more injured than they should be but just injured just the same fine that. That I can believe. And I think the best, or I would say this, the least nefarious, well, the least nefarious would be that it's all coincidental, but of the two more nefarious ones, the one that's not as bad was if word got out and then people were betting on it. But you can see why the UFC, you were absolutely right,

why they got out in front of this as quick as they did, or maybe a little bit delayed, but certainly before this incident took place about preventing fighters from you know betting on anything related to ufc or themselves as a matter of like sort of covering their ass which again i understand what i would say is um this should be taken seriously this should be investigated as thoroughly as possible um you know this is why fighters going into fights injured now takes on a new wrinkle because two things can happen, right?

If they're injured enough. One, someone can find out about it and it can fuck up the betting and now it's almost like insider trading in a way. Or the other one is that they actually do a really good job of concealing it, but people are betting on basically a fraud. I won't say that a betting on a fucked up product that can't actually

function. And either way, the fans aren't making a bet on something reasonable. They're not working with a reasonable amount of information with which we would either too much transparency or not enough. So I don't know what's going to happen here. I tend to think this is going to happen. I won't say all the time,

but perhaps more and more. It definitely looks sketchy, and I agree with you too. Again, I don't know what happened. I don't have any evidence. I've not looked into this. I don't have anybody's text messages. I don't have emails. I don't have any phone conversations.

But is it weird that he threw a kick, and he clearly winced in pain quite visibly, and then threw another one right behind it? It's strange. The best I right behind it. It's strange. The best I can say is that it's strange. It could be random and coincidental, but I think that is enough of a way for them to really go deep and investigate this like they should because, you know,

it's not crazy dissimilar to the argument we had about TJ Dillashaw. Now, it's different in the sense that what Minner did with those consecutive kicks is weird. But is there a larger conversation related to the TJ Dillashaw incident that we've, you know, gone back and forth a few times on that there needs to? Because I saw a lot of people going, OK, why are we throwing the blame at TJ for that situation with the injury? When, you know, when one second in, it seemed like he wasn't fit to compete. Shouldn't there be more strenuous medical testing and commission efforts to really make sure these fighters aren't just fighting past certain health safeguards from the standpoint of they need the money or they're just,

that's how they are. That's how they're wired. No matter what is physically stopping them, they're going to go through. With the potential of this much money changing hands and gambling being not just legalized but again on the broadcast they're telling you they're giving you ideas of what parlays you can do you know under the under the the DraftKings graphics on the podcast I would like to see similar to the TJ situation and now this if Minner knew that he was physically compromised that heavily affects the way people are going to bet. It heavily affects the importance of these fights and what the opponent is going to face. I mean, can it be done, Luke?

Is there a way commissions can test even deeper physically to make sure? I mean, I don't know, Luke. I mean, you know, I'm sure that you can hide injuries just the same way you can hide PEDs, it seems these days. But you're going to have a major scandal that's going to eventually make us ask key questions unless some of these safeguards that are potentially getting exposed here are all leveled in, leveled out and ironed out. Because we've never existed in this type of environment where where betting is just so really forcibly shut and pushed in your face. We just ran an ad. We just ran an ad for betting, right?

I mean, it's in your face. They got to be on the ball. So I think banning the fighters and, and did that ban on the fighters go to the team members as well, Luke? Because it is clear that they've got inside information. I mean,

you can argue media members end up with inside information through our connections to teams through being around the fighters you know i mean if you're out of fight week and you're interviewing fighters all week you can see certain things that can sway you either way i i do um it can go sideways anytime there's a lot of money to be made look you, you know this in life, okay? So let's just be careful here. Combat sports has to be very careful about its, and this is true for boxing, MMA, anything combat sports. They always have to be very careful about what kind of image they send to the world. Because, yes, you talk about the Donahue scandal in basketball,

but the reality is basketball doesn't have as much natural suspicion about it as combat sports do. Combat sports people always think any kind of decision they don't like, ah, the fix is in, the fix is in. And Bellator got into a little bit of trouble with this, not with fixing necessarily, but when you put old guys together, they were one of the first people

that were first promotions in a major way to do this, and you just get these weird results because not that there's anything above board, but older guys fight they don't respond to trauma or violence the same way as your younger selves would and the bottom drops out much quicker they make more errors and so it looks a little weird relative to what you might be accustomed to and so you run some of these risks the the major stakeholders in combat sports now that betting is this centrally featured into sports, and by the way, I think on balance, it's quite a good thing. Most people seem to enjoy it.

Most people are able to use it, no problem. But to the point you raised, it does mean that there might be a case for additional safeguards in place to make sure that the appearance, anyway, of impropriety is tamped down. What could you do from a medical screening process? I've said this before, dude. If you go to your doctor and you tell him or her nothing is wrong, what are they going to do?

They can take your blood work and if there's something alarming in there or whatever, but they're not going to just make you pay for an x-ray if they don't have a need to. They're not going to just make you like, hey, where are we going to get an MRI today? Let's try the right knee. And actually, it's your left shoulder that's messed up. They're not going to just make you like, hey, where are we going to get an MRI today? Let's try the right knee. And actually, it's your left shoulder that's messed up. They're not going to do that.

It requires a degree of transparency. So I don't have any easy answers. But there needs to be, I think, a little more thought about this with all the major players. How do we make sure that we do the very best thing we can by putting better standards in place to have as much of this product be as above board, as transparent as we possibly can

i think the ufc has made a good effort i think drafting's obviously made a good effort but when stuff like this happens it just goes on it just it's wildfire it just takes off and look seeing that it was flagged early that books took it off the board i mean that's the right move for you know these sports books to be able to cover themselves but i think uh to our to your point, to your point on my point as well, UFC has got to, got to really make sure there aren't any potential gaping holes here because I mean, they're going to have to interview everybody. Look, there's gonna have to be an absolutely legitimate investigation there because I mean, look, people are saying, you know, there there's a pruder film of Anderson Silva. Was he really hit? Dude, he was really hit. We were, we were there. Okay. He was really hit by Jake Paul,

but to your point, every fight's fixed in the eyes of somebody who lost a bet or their favorite fighter didn't win, so eesh. This wasn't good though. Dude, this wasn't good. There's nothing about this that looked good. Yeah. It just looks strange. Everything about it was strange, and so I'm glad

that there is some investigation about it. Hopefully they can reveal to the public what they find in the end. All right, BC, let's talk a little boxing because holy jebus, did Dimitri Bivol look amazing. How about this for a stat, BC? Zerto Ramirez missed on 88% of his punches.

88%. He missed nearly nine out of every 10 he threw threw Dimitri Bivol may have given him a couple of rounds maybe a few at most if you're being generous but holy shit dude he looked like an absolute hammer BC is it now time to make the fight with better be if I know he's got to fight Anthony Yard in the first quarter but just give me your impressions how much did biv all prove here a lot he is a great great fighter a pound for pound top 10 ranked fighter already before this but you want to talk about let's talk about what he did in there against a bigger stronger in theory in terms of coming in, you know, a more powerful opponent. And Luke, you mentioned the 88% that he made Zerto miss.

If it had been the Dimitri Bivol of old, when he originally won his world title, who was, again, I'll echo it, was never afraid to fight boring and box in the outside and control you that way if that was the best plan of attack. If you told me before I watched this fight, I box in the outside and control you that way if that was the best plan of attack if you told me before i watched this fight i've seen the future he's gonna he's gonna prevent 88 of punches i go okay b-ball must have really controlled from the outside with the jab and just box circles and never made it a real fight like we said ramirez would have to do to win this fight look that's not what played out this This fight was exciting as heck, despite it being, you know, largely one-sided. Why? Because like the Canelo fight where we said coming in, when I picked the B-ball upset, I said, look, he's going to have to be the power punch or something he normally doesn't do. And he was, he was the bigger man in that matchup. And he stood

in there and he delivered with that right hand and landed the telling blows. So the judges had no reason to go in the direction of Canelo. Well, what happened in this fight? He fought a bigger, stronger, more dangerous opponent, and he was still the bigger puncher and acted the role of the bigger man. How? By dominating that middle distance in front of Zerto, yet still not being able to be hit clean. He was hit here and there, and B-Bivol's showing us more and more that he does have a pretty damn good chin as well. But Luke, what am I most impressed with here? Dimitri Bivol stood in the pocket

against a taller and longer fighter with a bigger history of knockouts and being a finisher, and was almost untouched when you talk about, from the standpoint of power shots, swiveled, avoided. His defense is among.

I mean, look, already you said it coming in. CompuBox-wise, statistically, B-Ball's at another level compared to everyone else in boxing. But that defense statistic looks a certain way when you fight defensive. He wasn't fighting defensive on Saturday. He was right in front of Zerto, and any time there was a moment where Zerto could potentially put together some momentum, what did Bivol do? He stepped forward, planted his feet, and lit him up with power shots. This is a fighter who's better than we thought he was, who when the stakes get larger, the lights get brighter, like against Canelo and now against Zerto, he elevates his game to

another level where not only do I need to see him against unbeaten Archer Betterbeave next year for all four 175 pound titles. Look, I'm going to end up favoring B-Ball coming into that because he can do it all. No, he's not a one punch knockout guy, but he consistently back Zerto up. He hurt him repeatedly with that right hand where Ramirez, who I give a lot of credit, he never stopped trying to win this fight, but every single avenue was closed. Luke, I want to

identify two key moments here that jumped out at me. At the end of that first round, Bivol dug in and landed about five or six huge power shots in the closing ten seconds, and then, uncharacteristically, got in Zerto's face, didn't taunt him, but just looked him in the eye 10 seconds, and then uncharacteristically got in Zerto's face, didn't taunt him, but just looked him in the eye. They bumped shoulders and chest against one

another. And it was like B-Ball's way of telling him, you're not going to do what you think you're going to do, which is overpower me and wear me down. I'm going to stand in here and take it. And then when I want to fast forward to the ninth round, it was probably the best setup for Zerto to do what he does. He had Bivol cornered against the ropes. He was letting off big power shots. Bivol's defense was there, but Bivol spun out of that position, back Zerto up, and you can argue had his best stretch of clean power shots. This guy is an absolute technician who's now willing to be an offensive force when he needs to be to once again take away the plan A of his

opponent. Not only is this guy deserving among the 10 best fighters in the world at this moment, I think he's your 2022 fighter of the year in this sport after what he did. Let's put it up there. He beat the pound for pound King Canelo Alvarez, who was daring to be great, and he beat him cleanly. And then he went in against a 44-0 bigger opponent who was game as heck. And he knocked him around the ring. I mean, you want to talk about eye-opening performances? Dimitri Bivol has shown us he's that dude. And hey, Artur Beterbiv, who is one of the most thorough, well-rounded destroyers in this game. There's somebody who's coming who's quicker than you, more accurate than you, and has proven now he's got a backbone to potentially

stand in with you. Mark your calendars next year. Whenever we see this, if Betterbeef gets by Anthony Yard, which he should in January, this is going to be one of the best fights you can make in this entire sport. I want Fury U usic i want spenson crawford those are the sexy matchups between big you know big stars unbeaten guys all that this might be a better fight dimitri b of all versus archer better be okay get ready because b ball is coming on he's here i never thought he was this good he is luke damn you see i can tell you it's this is a gross oversimplification but there is a little something to it, which is that we need to see the Beterbiev fight with Bivol

because with Beterbiev as a world champion, 100% finishing rate, 100% finishing rate, versus a guy who has some of the best defense in all of boxing. It's elite defense meets elite offense. We absolutely must see it. Now, I know Beterbiev has a fight coming up with Anthony Yard, I believe, in January, something like that, first quarter of 2023. So I guess we'll see how that goes.

But I don't have much to add to what you said. I thought you said it quite perfectly. But I would just add, BC, it wasn't like even – here's what it seems to me. It's not that Bivol didn't fight defensively. The numbers speak to it that he did. And this is why I always say defense wins championships. But the key to understanding it is that he was able to maintain defense without really having a clear and noticeable trade-off on his offense.

Some people can do that, right? Where they're like, okay, I can be much more defensively sound, but it's going to come at the cost of what I need to get my offense going. They might be a volume striker or whatever the case may be. And so they can be better, but then there's, you got to make a choice about how much offense you're going to have. He didn't have to make that. He never had to make a trade-off calculation. It seemed like once in this fight,

maybe there's again, two, three rounds, maybe at most you could give Ramirez. That's it. That's it. So what Bivol is now showing is not any kind of letting his foot off the gas with his defense. Now he's able to juggle them in proportion to make him a goddamn nightmare for anybody who

fights at 175 pounds. He's hard to hurt. He's hard to land on. He's hard to find. He's hard to deter. And now he can find you. He can land on you. He is creative.

He knows all your openings. He disrupts your rhythm while you can barely land a glove on the guy. Boy, good fucking luck fighting him. You gonna need it and it's what's interesting look is there's other truly elite fighters who can do some of this meaning like let's give canelo gervonta davis credit they can stand fairly close to you they can use head and trunk movement and pivot but what they're typically looking to do is land one big counter shot to either disarm you or dissuade you. B-Ball was at that same range, only he's working the defense in real time and then coming back

with clean counter. Look, we were sending each other GIFs of some of these highlight packages that Dazon was running after the rounds, where he would corner Ramirezirez again, a bigger puncher, never lost and just lighting him up with, with one clean punch after another. Dude, this is a guy who like, how many times do we see really in both combat sports, you'll see somebody who's so gifted technically, and that translates to defense. But we say, man, if they only had that, that, that next level gear or that willingness to put themselves in danger, I've really, I've never seen someone be able to put themselves in this kind of danger and not have it fail on them.

You know what I'm saying? Like, he was never in any kind of trouble. Any shot he was hit with, he took it well and he rotated. He was right in front of Zerto the entire night. Dude, like, you know, there were a lot of scenarios in which B-Vol could have boxed, won, a clean 12-round decision where it would have been like, okay, skills win fights.

This wasn't about just skill. This was as complete as it comes. This is in... Look, I think he's the fighter of the year, and to some degree this has been a weird year where a lot of the big stars only fought once. You know, Spence, Stephen Fulton Jr., who seemed to be somebody who was going to enter in there. Haney, yes, he had the two wins over Kambosis and he traveled to do it.

Maybe this is the perfect storm where we don't have somebody with like a slam dunk case so it makes sense for B-ball. But you can't ask for any better competition that he's been facing. And you can't ask for two more impressive performances. He's coming out of his shell when it matters and showing us how great he can be look he's not a marketer's dream you know he could speak english he's got a nice smile but he's a good dude but his game is speaking volumes right now damn by the way did he look to be in slightly better shape to you than he was against canelo yeah yeah he looked to looked he looked to me like that whatever strength and conditioning he did for this one was a little bit better um not that he was in like bad shape

or anything for Canelo but he looked to me like he was even even sturdier this time around which makes sense fighting a guy yes he was coming up a weight class as well previously uh not this time around but you know it made sense to kind of bulk up in that way versus against Canelo maybe not but he looked he looked amazing so then BC if you can in your mind crystal ball a little bit with the right with the right and the reservation I should say to change your answer later if you so choose but as you're feeling right now what does a Bivol better be a fight look like well here's what's interesting is is Bivol is a small light heavyweight I mean you saw the size difference between them there. In fact, he's always gone on record, if you talk to him long enough,

in saying, I can make 68 if I really had to. And there was a time when he really wanted Canelo before Canelo came back up again to light heavyweight where he was willing to make that. Yet then he comes out with these two performances. Okay, well, maybe you're supposed to do that against a smaller guy in Canelo. Although, with Canelo's skill set, Bivol had to show all the tools to win that the way he did but now that he did this against somebody Ramirez's size who brings that level of danger Ramirez is not as good as Betterbeave I'm not

trying to say that but he's evolving his identity to the point where I tease it off my original thought process dude you might actually favor him coming in. His hand speed was well ahead of Ramirez's. The one thing about Better Beave that is a negative is he's getting older. He's 37, probably 38 by the time, you know, they probably fight next year. He hasn't really looked like he slowed down, although that one comeback fight he had after the long layoff, he looked kind of human. He didn't look human against Joe Smith Jr. He took care of matters. What would this fight look like? Do I expect Bivol to dig in and fight the same style that he did against Ramirez, considering that Betterbeave has some of the most crushing power in this game?

He's 18-0 with 18 KOs. Not necessarily. But look, I didn't necessarily believe that he was going to be able to stand that close to Ramirez and just not get hit either. His defense is at another level. I don't know what it would look like. Can he win this fight from the outside if he has to? Can he dig in? I mean, he's going to have to land clean shots and make it's going to really come down to his chin, which has something we never really talk about with him because he hasn't put himself in bad situations. He is going to have to get close to that fire against Betterbeave, but then also show that he won't be deterred if he

gets hit clean. Easier said than done, but this is going to be a fight at a very high level because let's not forget, Archer Betterbeave can box like a son of a gun as well. But when this fight opens up, if B-Vol's chin is also at this extreme elite level, dude, I'm telling you, we're looking at a guy, I mean, it's stiff competition right now for pound-for-pound kingship, right? You might like Inoue, you might like Spencer Crawford, Canelo is on the way in the other direction, but he was just there, Usyk is in this conversation as well. Dude, if B-Ball goes out there and beats Better Beef, he might be your pound-for-pound king. That's the type of skill we're talking about.

So what does this fight look like? Does B-Ball have another gear on top of what we just saw? I don't know, Luke, but I might favor him entering this because his speed is better than I thought it was at this level. And he's got enough pop because of how cleanly he throws and how he squares himself up in the right moments and just lights you up. This could be a problem for Betterbeave. It really can be. And you've got to do that for 12 rounds against Artur. And by the way, nobody's gone the distance against Betterbeave up to this

point. But Bevo has a chance to be historically great here. I mean, seriously. If he gets a win here over Betterbeave and becomes the undisputed champion, he has a chance to do something huge. He's showing us that he's willing to take on the danger to do it what does this fight look like i don't know but i can't wait to see it look let's do it next year okay anthony yard's gonna have his say but how hard is the fight to make right because uh better be have is on with top rank on espn

bival's over here on the zone is that fight really doable how how likely is it that it gets made obviously there's a ton of interest but how real world doable is it it's a great question it's a great question sometimes people are more willing to work together when you know there's the potential for history and either fighter has no other option of great note. Could you argue that in this case? Is there, you know, would Eddie Hearn, who's the B-Balls promoter under the DAZN banner, and Bob Arum with top-ranking ESPN, is there a way they can work out a trade or do a two-network deal or just, you know, given the stakes and the circumstances?

I don't know, Luke. I hope cooler heads can prevail. Sometimes it's harder to make these type of fights when you have bigger stars because they demand more. For these two fighters, better be even B-Ball. This is their Super Bowl. This is as big as it gets. Obviously, B-Ball fighting Canelo was bigger from the standpoint of commercial, but you know, and you're fighting the pound for pound king, but this is the career defining fight for both. I'm going to put on my optimism hat and hope that cooler heads can prevail here.

Sometimes it's harder, as we're finding out in Crawford Spence, when you have two A-sides in this case. You know what I'm saying? There may not be that factor in this when people do sit down and try to make it work and try to be reasonable. Let's give him a chance to make it. But Anthony Yard in January is going to have his shot, Luke.

He's not the fighter of Better Reefs class. He should get stopped, to make it. But Anthony Yard in January is going to have his shot, Luke. He's not the fighter of Better Reeves' class. He should get stopped, to be fair. But, uh, lots to look forward to. Hey, next year, you know, the end of 2022 has been a little bit of a, you know, turd in the side pocket there, Luke, for boxing, okay? Maybe a little bit more

than a little bit, because we thought, you know, we thought at one point we could go, Crawford Spence, Usyk Fury, Tank, Ryguy to close the year, which would have been like, you know, getting your Christmas presents on Thanksgiving, right? It would have been incredible. Next year. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

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all right never forget the boxing cannon will break your heart and your wallet but sometimes sometimes you know sometimes you get what you need right sometimes it's magic you know what i mean you know what i'm saying you know what i mean i need this shit luke okay this this keeps me alive it's a drug for you it's a drug we'll see what happens all right let's move to point number five bc to wrap up our top five here now i want to be very careful about you know the situation so the question is this david morel jr shined against idos your boss senile who we called your bossy newly unfortunately on our broadcast we didn't know how it was pronounced so we apologize but. But Eidos Yerbaucinili, he eventually stopped him in the 12th round.

Now, my question is about whether or not he's a threat at 168. First things first, Dan Raphael last night reporting that Yerbaucinili was put into a medically induced coma. BC, first things, let's discuss that off the top. Now, I'll be honest. Yes, he looked to be in bad shape after the stoppage when he was trying to get to his feet and he couldn't. You actually see David Murrell Jr. try and help him. And so that was nice. I'll be candid.

I did see some people saying, oh, it should have been stopped after the six. I did not feel in real time like I was watching any warning signs and it was a veteran referee as well. Your reaction to the news that, quite unfortunately, and we obviously hope for the best, that Yerba Sinley is in a medically induced coma yeah it's scary my prayers could not be more in his direction i think all the all of boxing is is essentially under that same thought process that should be i did look i'll be look i was i was ringside in was it 2013 when um when magomed abdusov

the unbeaten heavyweight fought mike Mike Perez and ended up in a coma. And today, his career is over and he's got some very serious physical ailments from that. And he's lucky to be alive. I do remember in that fight feeling like, man, why are we still doing this? Stop it. This fight didn't have that same feeling, although it ended up being kind of a worst-case scenario for Yerba Sinily. Where it looked early, like when Morel was lighting him up, like, you know, we're headed toward a stoppage here. For whatever reason, for maybe the toughness of Yerba Sinhali,

it just didn't happen. Give Morel credit for how he finished it, but no, there wasn't points in that where I thought, hey, man, you know, we're getting into some dangerous territory, even though you could see the wariness and the toll of staying in a fight that late against somebody like Morel was taking on Yerba Sinhala. And it's the fights that you don't get finished early but take big punishment that are the most dangerous. But we do have a bit of an updated reporting here from Jake Donovan of BoxingScene.com just in the last hour where he caught up with Suleyman Promotions, which represents Eidos Yerba Sinoli.

And they confirmed that, yes, the fighter is in a medically induced coma inside the hospital in Minneapolis, but they dismissed the claims that he's in critical condition as misinformation, which is great to hear if that's the case. The promotion insists that the doctors have informed his condition to be not life-threatening. They expect a full recovery. He'll remain under observation for at least two weeks. The doctors have informed his condition to be not life-threatening. They expect a full recovery. He'll remain under observation for at least two weeks. Luke, this is this game.

It's combat sports in general, but boxing with maybe the lighter gloves and the sustained head damage, it happens. And there's never the right words to say afterwards. If your boss similarly can recover from this, as his promotion seems to be putting out there is the direction he seems to be heading then then you know this is great news but um this is the reality of this sport and and we love it for the brutality and the courage that it shows but you know it can create these same type of situations but that little bit of breaking news there it helps to a certain degree and we we certainly are with uh your boss in his battle until he can get back on his feet here no doubt about it i'm glad to hear that's

that's a very encouraging sign and um let's just hope for the best and we'll see how it goes day by day but certainly everyone on this show sends their uh their prayers to your vicinity now bc in a respectful way i would like to talk about the performance of David Morel Jr. For as much as there is some concern about Yerba Sinley, a fight did take place. There is something to be said for what Morel was able to achieve. And again, I want to be understanding of Yerba Sinley's situation. But BC, it looked to me like David Morel Jr., wow, man, I was sleeping on his defense. It was on point.

Dude, we all were. Yeah. We've all been sleeping on this guy. Let me just ask you this way. Is he a threat at 168 right now? He is. He's what? 7-0 with six?

Is it 8-0 now with seven KOs? Here's the deal with David Murrell Jr., who's only 24 years old. Lord, he wants all the smoke. We know this. He's had this secondary title for a few fights now. He's always calling out Benavidez and Canelo. He is leveling up on a fight by fight basis and the leap he made here. Okay. Look, mandatory opponent. Yes. Hand speeded in foot speed advantage that proved to be the major part of him having success. Yes. But Luke,

you mentioned the defense. When he first started getting legitimate push, it happened a few times on some PBC on Fox cards. I think a lot of us in the boxing game were like, okay, but you know, does his, what he's, does what he's doing in the ring really match sort of the push he's getting, featured placement he's getting the opportunity at that secondary title now you're seeing full bloom what i mentioned last week his longtime manager manager promoter here louis de cubis jr who works hand in hand with al hayman at pbc when he told me look that i've never seen a cuban prospect like this and i've seen or represented them all i think luke this was the performance that really backs up that kind of statement the head and truck movement defensively yes the the quickness and the variety of his power punching

and shot selection the showmanship with the you know the the ali shuffle and stuff and i do see a lot of people saying look this was a maybe a matchup skills wise at the end of the day he should do this can he do that type of dancing against truly elite foes? Should he do that type of dancing? He's going to have to show us that. Probably not, right? He's going to have to be on point. But he showed you enough of that next-level magic there

that at 24 years old, his ceiling is much larger than it originally appeared to be. He's fixed up a lot of those defensive holes. He is dynamic offensively to get off shots, to put together sort of, you know, combinations you don't see coming, unnatural sort of combinations. I mean, Luke, I am very impressed at what he can do in this division and things could not be heating up in a better way at the moment of what we talked about last week. Plant versus Benavidez on the way. Canelo's coming back from injury next summer-ish and has all four titles and just as well could come back and try to defend them.

Jamal Charlo could be moving up. David Murrell Jr. is now firmly in the midst of that entire larger conversation. You love to see it. You love to see when a fighter adds experience, adds maturity, and leaps through your screen. He's only 24. He's a southpaw. He's got a bit of a sort of unique home court advantage there in his second home of Minneapolis. Yeah, the hype's starting to make sense now.

It really is. I got to tell you i i said it on the prelims which by the way all the mk fans who tuned in thank you so much bc and i we truly we we love when you turn in tune in no matter what but for those we really appreciate when you guys make the effort especially if you're an mma fan you're slow to convert to boxing so thank you if you're watching uh i had thought that we were i knew we were going to see dynamic offense which we did. I just wasn't sure about the defensive end of things.

Jesus, that proved to be totally wrong. He looked so good in every department in every way. There was, you know, a couple moments where your boss was able to offensively stifle him or whatever. But in general, this was really the David Murrell Jr. show. And BC, one thing you're pointing out, when he would go to the body and then lean over and get the inside uppercut. Oh my, I mean, it was just, and it was so fast and so clean and so crisp. He can do it all. He just looked like he was an all-star performance out there,

really in every kind of way. Where he will go against more senior or difficult opposition certainly remains to be seen. But I get the hype on the kid. Now I was a little bit slow with it before. Not anymore. Like you, I finally had the wake up moment,

the Eureka moment. Let's say in this contest, he is for real. We still have to see obviously bigger questions and bigger tests ahead, but like, what is he bad at at this point? Where's the obvious place where he, you just know he can't go.

I'm not sure we've discovered that yet. I'm not sure it exists. And look, your boss certainly was tough as nails and for him to hang around for you know into the 12th round was really incredible but i don't know if morel can can look this virtuoso against you know better hand speed across from him he's gonna have to prove that but i do wonder when we look back at some of the early fights in his rise he only has eight pro fights just a reminder, folks. You know, you could really now look at, and he's putting this together in real time. You know what I mean?

And he could not ask for a more experienced team. He's got the great Ronnie Shields of Houston as his main trainer, who's coached everybody. He's got Bob Santos as his cut man, who's becoming one of the brightest minds in the game. And oh, by the way, I didn't even realize this heading into the fight Andre Durrell Luke and I called the fight in the featured prelim main event on Saturday where 39 year old Andre Durrell came back against Uniesky Gonzalez we didn't know if Durrell was going to get knocked the hell out or whatever he came back ready to fight and he looked great Bob Santos in his corner this is a trainer who's making big moves this is Morell's cut man right now.

I mean, look, you know, we've seen it before, right? Popachenko, Lomachenko's trainer, they added Russ Anber as their cut man, a longtime trainer with great knowledge. This corner is an incubator right now for David Morell, who has great physical gifts here, to now add the mental ones and the variety to his game where let's watch out let's watch out moving forward yeah and i was just going to say too um well i'll save it here for a minute that that does it for our top five here bc i want to remind everyone the best time to prepare for growth is before the opportunity arrives especially bc for online businesses oh when you're saying

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we don't have to feel overwhelmed and play catch up and can feel reassured our customers are receiving their orders on time. Yeah, and there's no more limiting your business to one store. ShipStation integrates with every platform you already use. I'm talking about Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shopify, etc. It makes it easy to manage all your shipping from one simple dashboard. This helps to maximize your sales really with minimal effort. It's a smart way to do it. Save time with consolidated order management and automated shipping updates for your customers. Easily compare carriers, rates, and delivery times to get the most out of every send yeah you're right and get the same discounted shipping rates that fortune 500 companies use

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The holidays are coming, folks. Again, that's two months free. Visit ShipStation.com, click on that microphone at the top, and then in our code morning combat two words put them together morning combat with a k do that shit and ship it with ship station yeah you see before we get to your feces let's talk quickly about the hammer of the month nominees so we're going to pick one for like you know somebody who was ascending and really making a name for themselves. Not so much in the main or co-main event role, but somebody else who may be a little bit unheralded for Hammer of the Month.

So you can, of course, use the hashtag Hammer of the Month. If you want to, you can use the hashtag Holy Hammer. Really up to you. Of course, you want to make sure you follow Moneylion on Instagram at Moneylion Inc. or on Twitter at Moneylion. Make sure you tag them. Make sure you follow them. Make sure you have the hashtag there.

BC, you could put Andre Durrell in that list. We thought he looked really good, all things considered. By the way, famed MMA trainer Phil Daru trained Andre Durrell for this contest. He might be the trainer you know for Dustin Poirier and many other ones as well. He was training Durrell for this one, so he's got good company in his corner, so to speak, as well, BC.

Whoa, he had Bob Santos as his main main guy was daru working throughout the entire camp in florida yeah yeah in florida that's right he was his guy so you know you can tell man phil gets these guys ready to go man he really does so shouts to phil daru but dude another name i don't know if you saw the cage warriors main event paul hughes dude if you guys haven't seen this, this kid, Paul Hughes, Cage Warriors has an interesting relationship to the American market because they're very best stuff, which is to me on par with virtually any other organization outside of the UFC. It's specifically designed for a European audience, which there's nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is. And then you see their American stuff and it's definitely good, but they're not, it doesn't have the same footprint here that it does in Europe.

But if you watch this, it was a rematch. It was for a title unification. Paul Hughes, let me say that one more time. If you guys don't know who Paul Hughes is out of Ireland, you better get hip to it quickly. Holy shit. This guy looks incredible. You couldn't believe he was a prospect with less than 10 pro MMA fights on his record.

He had a tough fight in the main event. The other kid's name, I'm going to mispronounce it, Vidovich. I'm not sure how you pronounce it exactly. I'll have to watch the fight on mute because I was putting my daughter to sleep. But dude, he can strike. He can grapple. He was at ease in the pocket. Made good decisions throughout the course of it.

Went the full distance. Bloodied this guy up. He was at ease in the pocket, made good decisions throughout the course of it, went the full distance, bloodied this guy up. He was everywhere. He needed to be offensively sound, defensively responsible, and just look like his level of skill. I mean, there's just no doubt he's headed to the big show. Zero whatsoever. Pay attention to Paul Hughes.

He would be my personal nominee, BC. Oh, wow. You said, holy shit shit how about hashtag holy hammer on that don't forget you can help try to nominate it every month all right money lion pairing with morning combat we're going to give out the physical hammer at the end so send your nominations by tagging at money lion on twitter at money lion inc inc on instagram make sure you get that hashtag Hammer of the Month. There's a few on this UFC card, Luke, this past Saturday. We're going to see and have you seen this shit that,

hey, Pollyanna Vianna, Luke. I know a lot of people are tweeting about her and Colby lately, but she had a Hammer Time moment. In fact, you can't touch this, so there you go. All right. BC, it's time for your feces. All right. Luke, I scoured the globe yesterday as i do every sunday for the highs and lows the good the bad the ugly and combat sports of course but

also beyond right middle america white folks all folks luke okay i call this shit have you seen it that's what it's called well you really just bumbled that intro like a fucking buffoon, didn't you? Have you, people? Have you seen this shit? All right. I want to see some. I'm going to see some elder abuse today. I'm letting you know.

A lot of people are sending me child abuse lately. I'm kind of done with that. You know, I'm not really into that anymore. A lot of people are sending animal abuse. I don't do that either, folks. Not into child or animal abuse. I'm into loser abuse and elderly abuse. There we go.

Let's start off at UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas. Luke, Amanda Lemos had a heck of a KO3 there against Rodriguez. But how about this celebration? Pure emotion, pure jubilation. It was good to see. I was happy for her. This is you when the place you buy Delta-8s gets restocked. No comment. But that's what I'm talking about, Amanda. this is you when the place you buy Delta A's gets restocked.

No comment, but that's what I'm talking about, Amanda. Get it done. Luke, at the weigh-in. That's me after I blow up the commode at Malka. Yeah, exactly. I've been there, too, after that time we got Mediterranean. Don't do that again. Wow.

All right. Luke, there was a record-tying amount of weight misses on Friday. Shayna Young, who lost a wide decision to Miranda Maverick, had to cut off her hair in order to make 126 pounds. Your thoughts? I always hate it when they have to do it. I've seen it work where they make the weight. But, man, you got to cut off your hair to make weight. You might have a tough-ass fight ahead in front of you. You probably drained as shit to get down there you know remember that time paulie malnagy had to have his his like dreads cut off in the middle of the fight because they were getting in his vision

vaguely when was that it's like 2008 ish it was it was a fight on uh versus remember that back i think he fought love more and do and uh it was in europe because they were building toward a paulie ricky hatton fight and yeah all right by the way did you see uh i'll talk about that later okay luke also in the ufc this is this is this your hand after you've manscaped no comment but that lawnmower uh 4.0 there that's a heck of a bag right there. All right. Luke, did you see the sick standing guillotine from flyweight Tagir Ulan-Bekov against Nate Maness? Maness, I think. No, it's Maness. You should start watching with the volume on, Luke. You'll learn how to say people's names.

But Nate Maness. I'm sure I will. Yeah. Ooh. If John Anik's around, you will. What do you think? I love standing guillotines. It's one of those things, Luke, that just pops me all right yeah you're not supposed to get submitted with them

but if they get um because the defense is technically easier in the sense that if you notice that the hips are not being controlled but if you can latch that fucker on quick enough man you can just you can force it and uh if you notice the choking go if we'll watch it one more time pay attention to the right elbow see how the right elbow is let's see if in the southern yeah see how it's tucked below the shoulder of maness or manis that tells you that that fucking shit was deep manis had gone three no at bantamweight but moved down to flyweight for this fight luke but it did not get out of the first round big win for tagir ulan beckoff and also, speaking of hashtag holy hammer, how about Pollyanna Vianna? First round against Jin Yu Fry.

Not only do we get a thunderous finish, but as Bill Raftery would say afterwards, with a kiss! Right? She gets a little smooch. Yep, there it is. Yep, there it is. Luke, we don't see that in this division that often, right?

I mean, this was thunderous. Yeah, you don't see a lot of bop bop bop drop them like and then hammer fist them out like that ko's but god bless it's a dynamic division you know with that type of celebration too hashtag holy hammer indeed luke we're gonna have to remember this name moving forward this month okay she'd be a good candidate as well absolutely speaking of hammers how about bantamweight tamaris vidal winning the ufc debut with a first round stoppage of ramona pasquale with a flying knee damn that is beautiful oh man and i don't mind the stoppage there either dunzo dunzo that was great damn look at this flying knee right to the right to the midsection and then the finish there it's a liver shot she throws the right but then it actually is the

left that comes through let's see it one more time here let's see yeah it's the left that's like a bread basket slash liver shot there depending on how it landed exactly that's that's nice really nice uh showtime boxing was at the armory in minnesota luke we mentioned morel's defense has improved incrementally let's take a little highlight of that yeah boy this is where i was like yeah i might have been underrating his defense just a tad i mean he didn't even show he didn't even show this defense last fight against cal Henderson. I mean, this is... He's...

Damn. He's so good. There it is right there. Let's go to the co-main event. So, Yoelvis Gomez was supposed to take on Jason Rosario Banana, the former unified champion who moved up to middleweight. Last-minute replacement Brian Mendoza came up from the undercard. Luke, he kicked the shit out

of banana look at this finish via uppercut damn brother dude uppercuts don't come much cleaner than that that is about as i mean that's not as good as the uppercut that gervonta hit on leo santa cruz right that one's a little bit better because that one sent him packing like completely unconscious he hit him so fucking clean and if you notice you can't quite see unless you slow the tape down he flashes just a little bit and then retracts and then fires the uppercut right behind it so when he flashes you'll see resort excuse me yeah you'll see rosario bring his hands up and kind of crouch which means he he was leaning into it. And if you watch catch the timing, he catches him as he's stepping. So like everything about that uppercut is fucking perfect. What a shot.

He had dropped banana to the body earlier. And then Luke afterwards, he pulled the Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 30 by saying, thank you, Mississippi. Do you hear that? Yeah. I don't think you probably had the volume down.

Cause that's what you do all right it's hard because sometimes i gotta watch these with my kid and sometimes i you know i gotta watch them solo so i don't always have the volume on okay that's fine luke that's how you live your life you miss out on a lot that way okay there's a lot of bullshit commentary on some cards but you know you miss out on the info hey let's go elsewhere in boxing let's go down under let's pour one out for mark hunt in his retirement bout he took on unbeaten pro boxer sonny sonny boy williams who's a former rugby league star luke he took care of him early here damn yeah dude that right hand he hit him with just sent him packing dude sonny bill williams was uh a player for the all blacks and like a

good one too so that if you don't know who that is that's rug that's new zealand's premier rugby team uh the national i said rugby league there's a difference right between rugby and rugby union uh i don't really know okay it's not my i think he played both but to be clear sunny bill williams was a fantastic member of the All Blacks he's a very very good athlete and old Hunto here just kablam with that right hand look at that shit and I think he retired afterwards dude it's a serious question is Mark Hunt the official king of the walk-off KO I think he is yeah I think so I think so Paul we're the last thing to go what's it's still there, okay?

Let's get a little highlight of some of B-Vol's handiwork. Here's some of that pinpoint power punching we talked about against Zerto in Abu Dhabi. Dude, he had Zerto just not knowing where the fuck to even look. And every punch is clean and hard. I mean, look at that. And, dude, you've got to give Zerto credit. Zerto was not irresponsible, Luke. You know, he tried his best, but damn.

It just wasn't enough against a guy like this who can do this. And then, again, remember, what you're watching is a guy in Bivol who made Zerto miss or blocked 88% of his punches. Think about that for a second. Yeah, there you go. Luke, on the undercard on DAZN, 21-year-old Campbell Hatton, son of Ricky, improved to 9-0. He doesn't have a lot of pop, just two knockouts coming in, but he gets the KO1 via body shot here. Oh, that was a nice shot, too. So the day of the fight, somebody tweeted at Gervonta and was like,

hey, we should make Gervonta versus Campbell Hatton. Gervonta quote tweeted in a now-deleted tweet saying, if we make that fight tomorrow, he'll be having breakfast with his father drinking out of a straw. So there you go, Luke. I mean, you're not wrong, necessarily. Yeah, but hey, congratulations, Campbell Hatton. Good to see you right there.

Hey, let's go to BKFC32 from Orlando. Luke, there was a DQ in this fight. I don't even know who's fighting. But gentlemen, we're on live television here. Shades of Strikeforce Nashville. Where's Gus Johnson when you need him? Oh, he gives him the finger. Oh.

Oh, snap. where's Gus Johnson when you need him oh he gives him the finger oh snap bare knuckle bonanza balls bonanza hey listen are bras legal in BKFC I hope bras you can take it off too are you shitting me OnlyFans is their main sponsor

on the canvas that is fucking awesome so david feldman actually tackled that fighter right there you can see him he put him in a headlock and then tackle them to to keep the fight from happening i say just let him go afterwards right i mean it's a bare knuckle fight for crap's sake it's not like listen it's it's overtime rules just brawl yeah exactly all right hey luke a lot of people in combat sports took part in Halloween, you know, one of your favorite holidays. How about this for a crossover? L.A. Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner and his wife

dressed up as Canelo and his wife. They didn't get the tattoo of the eyeballs. Canelo really let himself go. No eyeball tattoos on his arm, but are you impressed by his performance here? Yeah, not really. Could you tie those fucking things worse i mean what's up with the laces there my guy okay then well luke uh the new power couple in boxing oscar de la jolla and holly saunders dressed up as lucy and r, your thoughts? I don't know how to make a comment about this without being unbelievably mean. Yeah. Whoa, whoa.

Okay, there you go. There it is. Okay. Yep. That's it. That's the shit. Wow. Okay.

Anyone listening at home and not watching, that's you, Aaron Bronstetter. You may need to see this. Okay. And finally, Luke, maybe combat sports is most prominent pop power couple of the moment jake paul and julia rose dressing up as uh is this avatar i didn't see that flick so i don't know yeah oh yeah this this is avatar uh i gotta tell you man this is a lot of energy just to be like, hey, people have a good costume. I just wouldn't.

I mean, that's a full body painting. And also, Avatar sucked. That's what I hear, Luke. Okay, that's what I hear. I didn't see it. But hey, Julia follows me on Twitter, so there's always that, right? At the end of the day. Have you slid into the DMs yet?

No. No, Luke, I'm a very happily married man. Thank you very much. Speaking of the Paul family, Luke, what a weekend for them in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was WWE crown jewel, and love him or hate him, apparently Logan Paul's really freaking good at this thing. Against Roman Reigns for the WWE championship, he took out a selfie and then leaped from the top rope.

Yeah, I got to tell you, I don't watch pro wrestling, and I'm not about to start, but everyone I know who does watch this rubbish tells me that Logan Paul is very good at it, and I got to tell you, this, well done. This is well done. You can shit on pro wrestling if you're like me, but that is very well done this is well done you got i mean you can shit on pro wrestling if you like if you're like me but that is very well done uh logan would go on to hit this frog splash off the top rope

here against roman we've got footage and luke i gotta tell you as a former pro wrestling fan and journalist that's about as good as it gets right there damn right jesus dude fucking i gotta say this old logan paul's pretty athletic huh he is but luke there you do get a receipt if you if you if you play in this game that that aggressively logan paul diagnosed afterwards with a torn meniscus a torn acl and a damaged mcl so uh he's going to be out a while but luke logan had his moment but so so did Jake Paul, who ran interference against the Usos during that main event to break it up. Here's the footage.

Yeah, no me gusta, no me gusta. Now, he's got to work on his working punch, as they call it, Luke. Not realistic here, right? It's pro wrestling, bro. Not much of it. Well, what I'm saying is some people thought that punch on silva was fake that was real this is fake luke this is this is fake right here okay he's got to work on that a little more you know you gotta just fake it's just it's you gotta lay that in i mean you gotta lay that shit in a little bit you know it's like if you're 13 i get watching

this but for everyone else like what are you doing well look backstage in riyadh real did recognize real for a moment. What do you think these two talked about? Oh, Brock Lesnar in Saudi Arabia. Wow. You know, probably not how much they love Nancy Pelosi. I'm going to guess that. Okay. Okay. There you guess that, you know?

Okay. Okay. There you go. There you go. Uh, Luke, uh, we often read manscaped ads that give you advice on how to deal with your

filthy, disgusting genitals. How about some shower advice from Sean Strickland? I'm going to give you guys some advice. Showering with your AK is the most fucking American thing you can do. It's not fucking weird. Um, showering with your ak luke have you it's not effing weird at all it's the most american thing you can do how is showering with a russian uh rifle american yeah good point good point also ak-47 is an interesting weapon people don't realize this like when i was in the military we used the m16a2 and uh the ak is better because

you can put like in certain ways anyway because you can put dirt all in that bitch and it still fires it is so fucking inaccurate it is a very inaccurate weapon relatively speaking anyway it's like you can't take any dirt can't take any dirt but uh it's a very inaccurate weapon relatively speaking anyway it's like your fight can't take any dirt can't take any dirt but uh it's a little better for anything past 300 yards you know what's more accurate than that me picking uh till versus woodley bevol versus canelo francis versus wrestling monoroll versus wrestling yeah uh luke remember that scene in half-baked where where uh where uh john what's his name was like you ever see son of a woman you ever watch son of a woman on weed hey luke you ever get front row tickets to a concert before one time you ever get you ever

get front row tickets to a concert on weed wow look at that yeah that's great right there okay she healed by benny hen what happened there oh yeah hey that that healed uh holy fields heart luke okay please all right my favorite was when benny hen would be healing people and then he couldn't heal enough of them like whoever would be in attendance because it'd be like tens of thousands of people so that motherfucker would take off his jacket and then start whipping people. And as he would whip them in the face with his fucking sport coat, he'd be healing them. I'm going to start doing that to everyone. When I walk around on fire, you just start to fucking slap people in the face with my jacket.

I'm healing you, heathen. I mean, to be fair, Luke, I've seen it. I believe in healing, but I don't know if I believe in Benny Hinn, though. At the end of the day, that guy was not the most reliable in a lot of those categories. Luke, Brian Ortega does incredible things behind the scenes that we don't get to see. Here's one of them, Luke. Check this out.

What the fuck? Look at that flying triangle from T-City. Okay, that's cool. Yep, that is cool. It's a little pro- pro wrestling e but it's that's fucking cool boy could could could uh henner wind up on that punch more look at look at the punch just don't pay attention to brian just look at the punch i mean look at you telegraphed it my guy you telegraphed it yeah yeah like jake paul against the usos indeed all right darwin award winner of the week let's let's go to middle america here yeah yeah you ever see mouth fireworks before oh

i think he lived though i think he lives so shout out to him that's uh that is awesome just torch this zero stupid ass face yeah why don't you roll around the act when agony is some more fucko I think he lived, though. I think he lived, so shout out to him. Oh, that is awesome. Just torch this Zero's stupid-ass face. Yeah, why don't you roll around in agony some more, fucko? MMA fighters in the wild time, Luke. I mean, what if they are just like one of us? Here's Robbie Lawler warming up. Are you impressed? Damn!

Pretty impressed. Pretty impressed. Hugely impressed. Is this like a Dorf on golf thing where he's really standing behind that table? Okay, so you're going to get mad at me for saying this. Damn! Pretty impressed. Pretty impressed. Hugely impressed. Is this like a Dorf on golf thing where he's really standing behind that table? You're going to get mad at me for saying this. It is impressive. Oh, Luke, could you do it? No, I could not. No, I could not even get very close. But I don't think

that's as impressive because if you look at his knees, that means his feet are pointed up, BC. When you get the real split is when the insides of their feet touch the ground. This is like Phil Simms all over again. A 60-year-old man's doing like 100 push-ups, and Luke's like, yeah, but those aren't real pull-ups.

No, he was doing pull-ups, and he was strong, but if you don't go and lock out, I don't give a shit what anybody says. It doesn't count. It's zero. It's easier if you don't achieve lockout to go and do it. It's just by definition easier. Well, Luke, I caught a world record of ads on Twitter yesterday because one half of the world's most dangerous female duo

posted a picture with the hashtag Connecticut. Antonina's in my state, Luke. Where is this? I'm surprised we're down by the river and I don't see vans. All right, we'll just leave this and keep going. But welcome, Antonina. You're welcome anytime here. Okay.

Let's go over to Yoel Romero. We always knew he was a freak of nature, but here's him doing hammer throws with hammers, Luke. Hashtag holy hammer. Damn. My man's grip strength is probably next you think this dude's ever had trouble opening a fucking pickle jar in his life you know what i'm saying he could just pop that off with a single they used to say by the way i

think this is true again it probably isn't like who the fuck knows but at least someone told me that george washington was strong enough that he could crack a walnut in his hand you ever heard that yeah then he chopped down a tree luke because he didn't he could never lie to his dad yeah i mean they told lots of myths about the the founding fathers but here's no myth old fucking look at look at this guy this guy is nearing 50 and he's out here working out like he's training for the purge. Yeah. Hammer of the month candidate just for this scene right here is Yoel Romero. But this isn't the greatest feat of strength of the week.

Let's go over to former strawweight champion Zheng Weili who will have a chance this Saturday to regain her title against Carla Esparza. Luke, that's Frances Ngannou, and that's with ease. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not a huge range of motion, but she is clearly strong as fucking shit. There's no denying that.

Don't forget, Mystic Dean Thomas, who predicted Lamos by knockout, also said that she would take Carla's head off, Luke. Yeah, yeah. He thinks that there's basically no way Esparza wins. I tend to think that he's probably right, but, you know, can't get too confident in this game. Were you upset at that YouTuber's comment

that Dean is the first Thomas member to watch or join this show in your history? I thought that was way out of bounds, Luke. Say again? They commented that, you know, it was great to see Dean. It's the first time for Luke that a member of the Thomas have, you know, watched or decided to join this show. You know, it was a big breakthrough moment for you. Hey, listen, you got to find your family members where you can.

You know what I'm saying? All right. All right. Hey, Luke, how about this hero? You know, they say no good deed goes unpunished. How about this heroism from this inline skater to avoid this child right oh there goes my hero oh watch him as he goes yeah wow okay that is fucking great yeah that is just you know what

like did we really need this guy to procreate? Probably not. Right. We lose out on the cure for cancer because of this. I don't think we did. No, no. Hey, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but big week for dildos. Luke, let's go to this elementary school.

This poor janitor had a heck of a time, right? Look at Mrs. Robinson there from third third grade here's obviously what happened some kid in elementary school is way too fucking smart and funny for his own good and he put a giant fucking is that the dong from the horse of aaron pico i don't know but it certainly looks familiar and uh and now this fucking janitor or teacher has the unenviable job to you know to play pinata with this fucking dong and the other teacher's like don't record this this is this is unfair no this is hilarious shouts of that kid he should be president of the united states anyone from my town watching luke knows full well that this is not a bit of

my ninth grade rec basketball team todd speranzini used to regularly in the elementary school that we practiced in, take out adult magazines, cut out the most explicit pictures, and tape them up all over the gym in areas that aren't obvious so that potentially the kids could run into them. And my coach did nothing to stop him, Luke. It was anarchy. Well, your coach sounds like he's probably a horrific person yeah yeah i would reveal his name though yeah big week hey speaking of dildos luke does this

give new meaning to the term shuttlecock speaking of lawn games people that just have giant dildos all in their fucking house we We've got female viewers apparently here, Luke. This is great content. The best part is, you know not a single woman sent anything like this ever in. It's always the dudes.

Luke, what was that guy, John McCain, what did he once call the UFC? Human cockfighting. Well, the folks at Comedy Central have gotten quite literal. Let's go to the videotape here. Float like a butterfly, sting like a penis.

That's the long and short of it. I'm Max Riley, and I run the Human Cockfighting League. The game is simple. It's the best of five rounds. The fighter with the most hits wins. But the fans are really here to see it. And the winner is... Chubb Norris!

Chubb has been the re is... Chub Norris! Chub has been the reigning... That's one more tool belt for the trophy, Gaze. He's gotten so good, the other fighters still have a choice but to play dirty. Cock fighting isn't just some kind of pissy contest.

It's an acceptance of one's full humanity, exposing our most private parts and enduring excruciating pain. Most men are insecure about the size of their schlong, but here at HCFL, we celebrate all shapes and sizes. So we created four different weight classes. Nob, cock, dong, and choden.

No matter what size you are, if you want to battle with the pros, you got to train like a pro. Practice how you play, no. Okay. sport it's a community a community of people who are cut above the rest okay uh tell me tell me tell me you wouldn't have more you would if dana had a press conference this friday instead of the slap league for this you'd go to this right oh yeah if he doesn't bring in rocco to just test out the product luke speak softly but carry a big stick indeed this is uh where's lex the impaler when you need them yeah all right uh hey luke what a creative way to to to combine halloween with you know your everyday backyard squirrel feeder your thoughts on this scream

inspired invention someone put it in a dong oh i mean it seems a bit much to do to wild animals but uh do you like scary movies okay you know i've never seen scream beginning to end scream one i've never seen any of the screams uh in totality and certainly not even all right i stand by the first two i think it got a little wonky after that um but i know what you did last summer's better with hotter chicks come on everyone knows that i've not seen that either i saw that in theater four times four times wait how many times how many times sober or with your pants on wow hey luke we have gone to the future we got together some gigawatts and we found footage of you 30 years from now

30 years how about 30 minutes this is this is my entire instagram feed all right uh luke i know you're not gonna to like this, but we're going to close with this. It's time for an intervention about your filthy-ass white trash vape habit. This is what Luke Thomas thinks he looks like vaping. Let's see. I wish I had that much hair. This guy's an artist. Look him oh my lord look at this man by the hammer of the month right here oh my lord okay there you go well done this while he's still going

potential hammer of the month here this guy but. But Luke, this is what Luke Thomas actually looks like vaping on air. My lord, she is hideous. I mean, Luke, come on. It's about time. It's about time you clean this up. Come on.

Wait, let me see if I can do that. Ready? Here we go. Do you have the ability to do those next level tricks like that first gentleman god i wish i would if i had tricks with the vape i would do it but no i'm just shuffling nicotine into my lungs like a fucking idiot so yeah yeah yeah it's been good it's perfect it's created good content for our show from the likes of jp and others but uh it has it's been good for the memes It's been good for the memes.

It's been good for the memes. I'll give them that. Morning Combat at gmail.com. Excuse me, Luke, is the email address for Wednesday's fan subs. Friday's dead wrong. So thank you, folks, for, you know, thank you. There you go. I want to remind everyone, I'm going to be in Jersey starting tomorrow.

BC will be there starting Wednesday. So wednesday and friday shows in studio we have a bunch of other stuff planned for in studio i don't want to give it all away yet it hasn't happened but we got some stuff planned for you guys and then of course saturday i believe we're going to do a companion for the main card at ufc 281 as well as directly after that a post fight show so we have an absolute shitload of content coming your way starting as early as tomorrow go ahead bc yeah i mean it ain't gonna be kyle bassis it'll be jersey city style but luke i want to reiterate ain't nobody gonna cover this fight week better than you and i will we got special guests we got special friends stopping by it is going to be a

full-on in your face ufc 281 we're not competing with a Canelo fight we're not competing with anything if something happens we'll be on there instantly to react you're going to love our bonuses remember this as always youtube.com slash morning combat and at all Luke we had Dean Thomas on Friday you can rewatch that if you missed it to sort of

set the stage with some storylines but today this afternoon your boy BC catching up with Carla Esparza ahead of her co-main if you missed it to sort of set the stage with some storylines but today this afternoon your boy bc catching up with carla esparza ahead of her co-main event title opportunity she's going to look back on you know that rose second fight whether that kind of robbed her of her big moment and all that interesting chat there but the names are only going to escalate from there as will the content so uh the jake paul's behind us there ain't no canelo here this is about 281 potato izzy carla the other people on the card

poirier chandler um there's probably somebody else fighting on there that we like too yeah hooker dan hooker's on the card. Yeah, Frankie Edgar. We haven't talked about it. That Brad Riddell, Hanato Moikano fight is fucking fire. Oh, that's going to be, dude, that Holy Hammer to whoever comes out of that one. Believe me on that one, okay? No doubt about it.

And reminder, for your vote, Hammer of the Month, Holy Hammer, please vote. Remember to follow our friends at Moneyline. They do take care of the show, so let's make sure we take care of them give them a follow on twitter or on instagram at money lion inc use the hashtag let them know who you thought my answer for this week bc would be paul hughes i'm so impressed by that young man he looked tremendous but honestly andre durell looked incredible there's plenty of other ones you could have picked who did you think who did you think out there was the best let the folks at money lion know if you thought it was a guy in human cock fighting i mean he had a pretty big hammer uh you know go for that but uh you know check that out

enjoy that well so when's this dana slapdick press conference is that friday friday yeah friday i mean i'm just going to utterly ignore it we should do an an instant reaction to it, Luke. Oh, really? We should give that some more publicity, really? Yeah. We'll roast it. We'll just roast it. We shall see. All right.

Thank you to everyone who watched today. BC gave you all the places to go and find us for more information. Carla Esparza interview, I think, should be out later today. I've got a fun one set up for you guys tomorrow, so be on the lookout for that. And then from Wednesday on, it's off to the races. So we're excited about UFC 281 Fight Week. We're excited for you guys to join us, and we can't wait to deliver for you.

BC, before we go, are you feeling okay for this fight week? You were a little bit down for the count for the Jake Paul Fight Week. You made it through. You certainly pushed like a pro. How are you feeling for 281, bro? It's a bit of a home game. I'm hoping hoping the belly aching isn't too much into store for us look anyone who's in our game and they've traveled

to the west coast for a big fight you know you get there wednesday or earlier we got there what tuesday evening it'll take a bite out of you i was traveling the week before for showbox but luke no excuse i'm back i'm rested i healthy. We are going to be in Jersey City all week, ready to bang. Okay. Let's do this this week. Let's give the people what they really come here for, which is everything that has to do with mixed martial arts at the highest level. Okay. Yeah. There's a one card this week. There's probably a boxing fight that I'll be watching, but Luke, it's about 281 this week. Okay. You always say, why can't these guys just preview and review every single fight

on the card? You want that? You're about to get it. Okay. There you have it. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We'll talk to you very soon. So for, for Malka, for Showtime, for Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas, as well as CBS Sports. We're out for today. We'll see you soon. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.