MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - McGregor-Ferguson TUF | Alex Pereira | Aljamain Sterling vs. Henry Cejudo | Beterbeiv-Yarde | Ep 402

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

On Episode 402 of Morning Kombat Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell discuss who they would like to see Alex Pereira face next. Would they rather see Pereira at middleweight or light heavyweight? The guys also discuss the report that Aljamain Sterling vs. Henry Cejudo is being targeted for UFC 287. They preview Artur Beterbiev vs. Anthony Yarde and discuss some recent fight news before closing out the show with dead wrong. (00:12:00) - Conor McGregor vs. Tony Ferguson on TUF (00:28:00) - Alex Pereira (00:50:15) - Aljamain Sterling vs. Henry Cejudo (00:50:30) - Recent Fight News (01:03:15) - Artur Beterbiev vs. Anthony Yarde (01:15:00) - Quick Hitters (01:27:00) - Dead Wrong Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Reveille, reveille, dogs 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 Oh yeah, right? You feel it baby? I can too, you know what I'm saying right now

You're looking at us Friday January 27th The kings of combat in the year 2023 London calling folks A little bit more than a week away This is morning combat You stumbled into the American Alpha right here The BBC with that bde brian

campbell i bring the art on fridays i host the show which you could argue from the beginning was probably the best course of action but here we are and i'm here to tee up the best fight analyst in the game of people who've never fought luke thomas of people who don't know shit. This guy knows a little. Hi, Brian Campbell. Thank you for that very generous intro. And by generous, I mean,

backhanded and yet somehow finding another way to determine that you are the a side of this, even if that's not even really a point of conversation whatsoever. Yeah. We, you know, we had a nice London planning show and you were like, you interrupt me.

I'm like, BC, you are not the A side of this operation alright but the thing is there it's not that there is or there isn't it's just that like we don't have to insert it into every idea that we have that's fair that's fair Luke it takes

two to make a thing go right and we've done it well here award winning style we got a great Friday show that's going to set the stage for like the lone combat fight of note this weekend when Archer Betterbeef defends his trio of light heavyweight world titles against mandatory challenger Anthony Yard in London. We've got a lot of big time MMA news involving everyone from Connor, Tony. How about Poiton? You know what I'm saying?

We got some big things to talk about today. We'll get the dead wrongs. We'll keep ourselves accountable because that's what we do. Mikey Mormile of CBS Sports on the ones and twos this Friday. Luke Thomas, look, people may be sick of us saying this, but Wednesday, February 8th, something big is going to happen, and we're going to be in the center of it. You know what I'm talking about?

Oh, I know what you're talking about. February 8th, we're going to be live in London, England. By the way, BC, we haven't really talked about this. It's something like as Americans, we don't really get to the heart of. London has, I think, an argument for best sports city in the world. Wow. Well, think about it. Baseball teams go there.

NFL teams go there. They don't have hockey or anything like that. But they get, obviously, world-class rugby. They get, I mean, the soccer. Just forget about it. EPL, baby mean, the soccer, just forget about it. EPL, baby. Yeah. Also, big tennis matches happen there.

It goes on and on. If you think of cricket, obviously. I mean, if you think about it, London turns into a worldwide popular sports and how they accommodate it. London's got a claim. So we're going to be there February 8th. All right, Luke, you're a world traveler. I'm largely not.

You know, the majority of my world travel has been to all inclusive resorts where we probably take advantage of the local hardworking fair just to enjoy our unlimited Mai Tais. But I will tell you this, Luke, LA still my favorite city. I think New York is the best city in the world of the ones I've visited, but you've got much more exposure as London in London, in that conversation with New York city for best cities in the world. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Very much. Very much very much i mean they're different cities but in terms of like if you just think about the biggest world-class cities the easiest answer on that is going to be tokyo it's going to be london it's going to be paris and probably new york city

those are going to be like your biggest ones there's some debate about that but you know it's something like that dude london is as world-class a city as it gets. I mean, it's the cream of the crop. MK, in the UK, it's going to go down at King's Place, the music venue right there in the King's Court section of London, and you still have time. I know we've been sort of haunting you with this idea that if you wait until the last minute, that minute's going to be up, and that is looking to be true, but there are still some left.

If you want to make the journey, you may have to take off work. You may need a hotel room based on where you're coming from, but this could be the only time the outlaw Dan Hardy at the moment, our, our, our, our chief third here, our main guest on what's going to be a 90 minute variety show that you won't soon forget a reminder. If you can't make it live, we're going to air that broadcast two days later in our Friday, February 10th regular

slot edition of morning combat 11 a.m on the east coast time but if you can't see it live please folks uh luke i just got my you know my outfit for the evening luke okay okay all right by the way ladies and gentlemen i saw it i saw the outfit. It's something. I believe your comment was, so you're going to be a gringo wherever you go. That was your comment. So we'll leave it at that. Okay, there you go. There it is right there. You can also subscribe to Showtime, the label that pays us, showtime.com.

Get your 30 days free now. We're talking about Bellator MMA. Obviously, we're building toward Bellator on CBS February 4th. But the regular slate of Bellator, Showtime, championship're building toward Bellator on CBS February 4th, but the regular slate of Bellator Showtime Championship Boxing. We got some dates already. I know there's a big announcement on the horizon and Showbox, the new generation with your boy

BC coming back February 17th in Topeka, Kansas, baby. All right, we got MK fans out there. You can get 30 days to try it out right now. Great documentaries, great series that you can't miss. Luke, how about this Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf documentary that's coming to Showtime very shortly called Stand.

Was that one of your NBA guys in the 90s? I was a little bit more of a Sharif Abdul-Rahim kind of guy because he grew up in my hometown. Marietta, baby. Yeah, Marietta, Georgia. But I remember when this guy did it. At the time, athletes weren't spoken out like this. And the backlash was insane.

Insane backlash. So I'm very curious to see how this one looks. Yeah, Showtime's been doing some good docs in this basketball space for sure. If you haven't seen NYC Point Guides, check that out. Get your 30 days free. All that good stuff. Luke, the other point of action I wanted to throw to was, I mean, one of our favorite sponsors and really, if we're going to be honest, Luke, life partners. Okay. All right. You know, not, not, not, not an editorial co-hosting sense,

but our next product, our next thing, I mean, it's athletic greens, AG1. I use it every single day. I take a one scoop of the magic green powder. I mix it with the water, and suddenly it tastes great. It's healthy. I feel great. And I'm absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole foods, superfoods, whole source superfoods, probiotics, adaptogens, all the words I can't pronounce to start my day the right way. Bitch. That's right. You're getting gut health out of that.

You're getting nervous system help out of that you're getting immune system help energy recovery focus even a little bit of work to reduce some of the effects of aging athletic greens can do all of that bc as well as be travel friendly so you can take it on live stream days when you're on the road in topeka kansas by the way for showbox you ever been there luke is that a nation's capital you've entered uh topeka kansas i don't think I've been there. I don't think I've been there. All right. I'm going to have a full report. I'm going to have a full report, but I'm going to bring my travel packs with me

because it's travel-friendly, AG1, also lifestyle-friendly. You may be doing the keto thing, the paleo lifestyle, the vegan, the dairy-free, the gluten-free, maybe a seafood diet, if you know what I mean, but you can change that because this contains less than one gram of sugar, no GMOs, no nasty chemicals. You know, don't ask me though. Okay. Don't even listen to me. Listen to those 7,000 people who gave five-star reviews. Listen to Gervais, listen to Ferris, Rogan, Campbell, Dr. Joyce brothers, right? The experts. I don't know if Rogan is part of that or not, but at a bare minimum, what I can tell you is, BC, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into the flu and cold season, which is really already here.

My kid is sick again, by the way, so give it a week. I'm going to be sick again. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health, Brian Campbell. And to make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you the one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D drops and the five free travel packs with your first order. But you've got to go to the website, athleticgreens.com slash morningcombat.

Let them know MK sent you there and give it a test run. And, Luke, I'm going to openly question whether you take it day to day for how much you get sick because i don't and i've been fighting the good fight all right yeah you don't you don't have a three-year-old at home i mean let's just let's see how everyone looks when you live with the tukester and she comes home and sneezes right in your face oh you know there's only so much you can do i really get that that is true all right all right uh luke earlier you know we mentioned uh our another one of our sponsors uh you know the private the private internet folks there the

vpn job you know it's like the catchphrase should probably be stay private while you're looking at them right right you know what i mean like i mean i'm definitely using incognito on my chrome browser i can tell you that yeah Yeah, there you go. There you go. Do you not do that trick? I don't know what you speak of, to be fair. To be fair, we'll have to talk offline on that. So when you're on the road and you're watching pornography on your phone.

Luke, we live different lives, okay? Okay, plus I got a lot of material banked. All right, enough of this conversation, Luke. Let's continue it on. Anything else you want to say? Cause we're about to hit the pavement hard on this Friday. We're about to absolutely bring it because that's what we do. Yes. And also this is kind of for us, the last quiet weekend for a while.

I mean, some of the weekends are busier than others, but dude, February, dude, February, we have to do the MK show on Monday. Then we fly out red eye that night. Then we have like all that's the have to do the MK show on Monday then we fly out red eye that night then we have like all that's the stuff to do on Tuesday interviews blah blah blah more interviews Wednesday then the live show then more interviews on Thursday plus we have to shoot stuff for the doc then we fly back on Friday then that Saturday my kid has two birthday parties plus we're calling the prelims plus it's UFC 28c 284 then we have sunday to catch a little bit of a breath before we're back at it again for mk on monday dude pack a fucking lunch

yeah i just want you to know this is the life we chose luke okay this is why i'm not i'm not complaining you lift them weights in the offseason you know stiff upper stiff upper lip young man it's time to get to work you know it's time to put that hard head on because we're two hard men, Luke, and we're bringing that spirit to the U.K. And that libido to the U.K. There was something else I wanted to tell you very briefly, Luke, and I think I forgot it. Did you see a movie?

Did you listen to an album? What did you do? Yo, I took my son to the movies. We saw Missing. Have you seen this, Luke? No. How is it? It's really good. It's not great, it it's really good it's not great but it's really good it's it's here's the equivalent do you remember how uh

blair witch project was shot all with what they call found footage you know like to make it look like it was like home movie and it was real the entire movie here was shot through uh so made it look like it was shot either through cell phones through uh laptop cams or through any app you would use social media or whatever so it's got that you know that next level social media like kind of hook up there and feel but good movie um nia long in it luke of boston celtics fame nia long about to be rich out of divorce court fame too yeah yeah yeah indeed indeed so i saw that that wasn't my point of reference. What was I going to tell you? It was going to be great.

Oh, Luke, I know now. You probably don't care, but I did make another appearance because there were people in this industry we like, and Mike Heck is one of them, by the way. I went on his MMA fighting show. What is it called? BTL. And I went head-to-head in their game show format with one Jed Meshew.

And, Luke, I got to say this. Jed Meshew is one of the biggest dirtbags in this space, but you know, I, I see a lot of, I see a lot of young BC in him, you know, and he's got his own flavor. Uh, would you ever compete against that man in that space? Cause he, he really put me on the ropes. I had to fight out of that to win. I, you know, I know there's history between companies there, but I thought I told him I'd make an honest recruitment pitch to you. Yeah. I mean, I'd be happy to go on i'm just imagining that there either is a ban of me being there or in the event that i get booked that a ban would suddenly materialize i could be wrong but i'd be happy

to go okay all right it's an ekc light in production which we support so shout out to those guys if you haven't checked that out very talented very talented and thank you all as always for liking subscribing for getting on board and following us on this journey especially those who are going to come to the damn live show folks we love you we appreciate you let's get down to business though we got a bunch of relevant topics in the news and a big one on topic number one to kick things off on this friday uh the past couple days things have been coming up mcgregor based on the teases that he's not only coming back this spring, we're going to guess, but he's going to coach the ultimate fighter. We've thrown around the ideas from Chandler to, you know,

Nate and even Patty on the ideas that who should be Conor McGregor's dance partner on this long awaited return for the first time since getting stopped and getting injured against Dustin Poirier in their trilogy in the summer of 2021. Luke Thomas, first,'s go to Connor's post here that I believe we have that in there that got people riled up to begin with the idea that he's coming back. And, you know, Luke, he looks back at his initial time

hosting the Tough House and what that did for his career and his brand at that point. Do we have the Instagram post? And I know that Tony followed up on Twitter. Well, here's the follow-up. Let's go to it. Tony Ferguson has answered that call on social media, and it seems to be, although there's no UFC confirmation

and I don't see anyone else reporting it outside of this, Tony Ferguson has announced to the world that he's going to be opposite Conor McGregor in an Ultimate Fighter build to the Notorious' eventual return. Luke Thomas, of all the options, we knew this was one of them. But if this is true, what do you think on this level of matchmaking mixed with the tough outreach to really put Conor back in the headlines? I have to tell you that I basically hate how much sense this fight makes um because it does make sense right you can really very easily see it from all the parties involvements here right so

let's start with connor why would connor want it well the ultimate fighter i don't know that he would love it but to the point that he made it's immersion it's reality tv connor's good for that right uh i think he might like being back in a teaching role just kind of back in the flow of things other than the day-to-day stuff that he just can coordinate for himself back in a team environment back in this the sweat and the grind of the gym and being around these sort of like you know hungry guys i'm sure he'll get paid to be on there as well it sets up a big fight it up a return. It's obvious why he would want to be on. Conversely, if you're Tony, it's the same kind of thing, right? Tony can look, probably would love to be in this environment. I'm sure the check would help,

but on top of it, getting the fight, like, listen, I don't think that if you're Tony, you're, you've got a lot of opportunities left to make big money in on a fight. In fact, this would be easily far and away the biggest one you could even imagine at least under a UFC contract and probably even outside of one this is the biggest one that he could get and so for Conor there's the reality show and then Tony is a very beatable opponent I didn't mention that but let's sort of get to that as well right it's a very you could very I would imagine Conor is going to be the favorite when the odds come out, if and when this is declared. For Tony, it's not really all that winnable, but the check is enormous.

He doesn't have many of those left. And if you're the UFC, need I say more? Conor McGregor on a reality show, opposite, you know, very independent spirit, let's say. Tony Ferguson, plus in the end, Tony is beloved. The fight would, in some ways, almost make sense, given Conor's departure and needing a soft landing the only thing that the reason i said i hated it bc was that not that it didn't make sense

i just on the it just seems like there's a very natural tendency and i'm guilty of it and you're guilty of it of being like oh let's just give connor much softer fights in a lot of different circumstances than we ordinarily would by virtue of the very particular nature of his popularity and what that means for the company. If this was boxing, this fight would make even more sense. This is exactly what a premier boxer would do coming back to get himself started all over again, whatever that would mean. And so I understand it. I, if, if this is what the fans want and what the UFC wants and for all the other reasons we already articulated, I sort of get it, but I don't know. It's like just leading Tony out to slaughter for a big check is something weird.

It makes me feel about that. I don't know if it's because we just saw Tony last minute against Nate. And it's not that he fought disastrously bad. And it's not that him getting stopped was any kind of like, oh, crap, he shouldn't be fighting at all anymore. Not necessarily that, but maybe that just added to the level of like, well, we have seen this recently already on the Tony side. Right. Yes, this is the perfect replacement to have a Cowboy Cerrone type challenge for Conor. And to your point, almost nobody gets preferred treatment, right? We even argue sometimes that with these young, hot prospects, you know, Patty included to a certain degree that maybe they should get better preferred treatment on the buildup so that you avoid a sage

Northcutt type situation. You know, Conor's one of the rare guys who on the comeback, because he takes such long time off, and obviously the star power, it is what it is, right? And, you know, it would almost be promotional malpractice to steal Luke Thomas' phrase to not make this fight here. It's why I was saying, even though the Michael Chandler fight, I love, love, love. I mean, it's just a microwave special for you of action and drama.

Conor's probably going to get knocked out in that. But Luke, I will say this because of what we talked about when the news hit and the accusations that are currently against Conor McGregor that are involving assault. And if you, if you really read deeply on the accusation, you know, possibly even rape and, and kidnapping and all the awful stuff that's been, you know, and we'll find out what happens, how it plays out. It's really gnarly and nasty been, you know, and we'll find out what happens, how it plays out. It's really gnarly and nasty that, you know, this has been a total theme on the second half of Conor's career that it's just like, I don't even think we can talk ourselves into the,

he's got one more win thing left in him, that whole idea anymore. One more big win, right? If he puts it all back together, because I just don't see the evidence against me wanting him to put it back all together because it's been some of the most fun time as a fan and journalist I've had with this guy on top. I'm not even sure like he should win this. I would predict him to win it. Big Luke Ferguson is at a level of washiness in terms of punch resistance, especially where this is the type of matchup where Connor could light him up. But do you think there's a scenario here

if Connor is worse off physically and mentally after yet another long layoff and the injuries and all the drama outside the cage? Let's say Connor comes back and he's worse than we expect. Is this a trap fight in any form to you because of Tony's submission ability? Because even though we don't look at him as having good strike resistance anymore he he went head-to-head with Chandler and kind of lit him up for a round before things fell apart there's no poor man's Diaz McGregor

one set up here where like kind of could gas out and just get stopped or or subbed right I mean this does feel like Cerrone all over again well if he can't beat this version of tony i don't know what to tell you right i mean if you can't it's not to say that anyone could beat tony at this point but tony is i just don't think this is unfair to say he has taken a lot of damage and he is at the very end of his career pretty close to it and um you know he he is far from his prime at this point that's just the reality of it if connor can't beat a tony who is well outside of his prime perhaps that's the that's the more accurate way to describe it he he doesn't have much of a future in the sport then i mean that's that's the that's the reality of this so your point might be a little

bit different like let's say he gets the win but kind of looks languid that he's on borrowed time anyway. I mean, the whole point of this is I'm really of the belief that Connor may or may not even look close to what he looked like before, but that there's really no reason that whatever state Connor is in, unless it's like super compromised, which does not seem to be on the table at all, unless it's that, he should not lose this fight. He should not lose this fight.

This is very much a fight to promote his return to promote something else to get him going and everything else in there that's that's the sole purpose of this contest so if you can't look right in that i mean you're asking if it's a trap fight i think if connor has done what he has supposed to do if he is basically recovered and he basically trained the way that, you know, more or less a high-level pro should, he's going to win one way or the other. It would take, to answer the question in the shortest way possible, I would say this. It would take a serious problem or an epic collapse, which I guess is on the table, but unlikely. Yeah, I mean, he's still going to have to answer to the lengthy time off to the injury which was severe and to all that was

lost in this evolution for him which never really happened he showed certain signs of a potential evolution against Cerrone but again it's too quick of a sample to really know how much of that was fool's gold I mean it looked great I wanted to believe but let's clean up some of the issues surround this we do have the tweet from from Tony Ferguson, which is essentially the info that we're going off of that this fight is happening. Here's what Tony said on Twitter. I've been asked to coach on tough against old fathead or any one of my choosing if that cake-eating

sumbish wouldn't show. Mac, what a V. Always ready anytime, anywhere. Choose you, McNacker. A lot of other emoji-type things there from Tony. So that is that, Luke. Let's go to the tough factor. Now, full disclosure, you don't care about tough at all. I don't care unless there's a major gimmick pulling me back in. Those gimmicks

at times have included heavyweights with Kimbo, which was a really fun season. You had Rashad in Rampage. I came back for the straw weights because specifically the angle was we may have a new Rousey here with Nama Eunice. It's a new division, a new class of people. I watched that one, Luke. I may have come back for an episode or two when they put the title on the line, when the flyweight men were there. But, you know, I'm pretty much like I'm over this. Not that I'm, you know, picketing and saying the UFC should. If Dana thinks that this is just a legacy thing and he wants to fight to keep it going, go for it. ESPN Plus is the perfect home for that. But I'm not going to lie. The idea of inserting McGregor back into this reality

cocoon that they go into, this reality show cocoon in the house and the gym, I'm kind of interested, Luke, because his mind is seemingly all over the place based on the accusations and the incidents that keep popping up. He's going to do exactly what he's expected to do, I believe, which is not resurrect, but give that show a shot in the arm for casual fans to want to go, oh, shit, McGregor's back. Let's tune in. Let's see this. And I think because he's been so all

over the place since that last Poirier fight in terms of the glimpses he gives us publicly, I think that fuels a few things. My interest on an almost morbid level of watching it mixed with the idea of can inserting him back into the fight world on this immersive level, where there's going to be trash talk, where there's going to be, be like you said coaching and some like the real fighter in him is going to be challenged and come out again i wonder if that's exactly what he needs to create whatever is the best available version of him left at this point with all the miles injuries and everything added on so i actually don't hate that luke do you think it'll actually make a dent ratings wise though i think i think it. How could it not?

It's not like Conor has his own weekly show. It'll make a dent. It'll make a dent. Conor McGregor. And it's on ESPN Plus, so whatever the metric is in terms of how they measure views and whatnot. Yes, of course, adding McGregor and adding Tony probably will help a little bit, too. And then the combination of them together. Yes, that's fine.

I mean, there's just a 0% chance I'm going to watch. And it's not even like a protest or like i'm not like it's power slap it's just it is boring i don't care i it doesn't do anything for me i have 24 hours in a day i just cannot imagine from what my priorities are spending any time watching that but yes it certainly i mean there's just no denying and if you want to watch it out there by all means watch it i'm not going to get in the way. I'm not going to do a power slap thing or say you shouldn't watch it. But it is not for me. I couldn't imagine sitting down to watch.

I think the only miss is that any feel of like a real rivalry between them. It's going to feel a little forced. I feel like, right. Like, you know, Tony might get into it. Especially from Tony, right? Like, especially from Tony, where it's like all the things he threatens to do in a fight it's like yeah i do think he'll be able to do some of that but it's not like the guy from 2016 or something 2017 whatever i'm about to go back and look at his peak year but um you know when he was out there just absolutely dominating and

crushing people we're we're past that now and so I think some of that might get in the way. But honestly, if you're a Tony fan or you're a Conor fan, you'll probably be really, really happy to see this. So, yeah, I think this will be certainly on the ESPN Plus there. I don't know how many they've done on that, maybe one season. This one will do a lot better than the last one. Of that, I can be quite confident. Yeah, I agree.

In terms of, you know, look, you give Conor this close-up, I think it means UFC believes, and you give them this level of matchmaking. I think it believes UFC believes that they want to still do monster things with them and they believe he can at least pull it off to show up to the dance. of Nate Trilogy, Jorge Cash out, or is he going the other way, which is them using a highlight reel finish potentially mixed with the idea of Conor's just a big enough star and a two-division champion. Hey, we could cut a lot of people in the line of the title pass in multiple divisions and just blow shit up. I mean, look, is there fear in your eyes that he blows away Tony in round one and then he's being groomed to fight Islam Mahachat for the welterweight title? Sure. Sure.

I mean, fear would not be the right way to describe how I feel about it. Inevitability might be a better one. You know what I mean? Like, if Thanos gets the Infinity Stones, he's going to snap. I mean, that's sort of how i look at it right like if he gets a dominant crazy win cowboy ask or something some kind of spectacular ko there's simply no denying they're probably going to give him either a welterweight shot or a lightweight shot whatever one makes the most sense at that point absolutely not a doubt in my mind that's what they do luke that's what they do and you know what it just it

works just go ahead and get ready for it. You know what I mean? Like, don't act surprised. If you don't like it, you can say as much. That's fine. I'm going to be honest. What do you mean? I'm going to be more upset if Edwards beats Usman

and then they're grooming Jorge for that title shot. I'd be more upset than that, than even Conor going for a third title against Mahajev. I really would. I'm serious. I really would. Yeah, I would actually be much more upset than that than even connor going for a third title against mahjab i really would i'm serious i really would yeah i would actually be much more upset with that but um but yes like just just get ready because if he goes in there and blows and again if they make the fight i'll blah blah but if he gets to that point they're 100 gonna fast track them like inevitable luke my

buddy over there at mmi mma analytics on twitter who's putting out that multi-part series on uh mma management and the connection to ufc fighters and the connection to dana and all that that's been very eye-opening uh you know looking at both uh the the contender series set up uh jason house and and now on to onto the regional promotions that have landed on fight pass i i you know push anyone to check that out but lu Luke, Tony and Conor getting joined up for this and getting the reality show treatment. These are two Paradigm products. Am I right or wrong on that? This is a big win for Audiotar and company, right?

I thought, is Tony both with Paradigm? I thought Tony was with Gary Vee. Am I wrong about that? Oh, I was checking in with you on that. I don't follow those relationships. I mean, that's something like I care about this whole manager connection now based on certain things it could mean in the larger picture, but I tend not to get as hyped up in terms of who's repping who, Luke,

unless they've joined one of the super teams. No, he left Paradigm to join with Ballonji in 2019. So that certainly removes that from the discussion. But, you know, way it's it's it's gonna hit big man um is that an international fight week main event is that what we're doing here it's conor mcgregor bro do i need to tell you that okay it's conor mcgregor thank you thank you very much all right look that's topic one in the books of uh some coming attractions uh how about some potential other coming attractions on topic to surrounding one of the most dangerous men in the game today?

Alex Pereira, Potan, as they call him, Luke. OK, he's your middleweight champion after stopping Israel Adesanya in round five. I don't know. Are we building to that or what? Alex talked to MMA Fighting about a potential May return. And here are the quotes. May would be perfect. I see these two guys. Adesanya was a dominant champion, so he has the preference to be competing for the belt again, but if he doesn't want that, it will be Whitaker. I don't think they'll put someone else in other than Whitaker. He already said his game doesn't match well with Adesanya, but would be a good fight with me. So I'll be ready for both. I won't do anything to hurt out of Sonia's plans and avoid

this fight. If that's what he wants, we'll fight. If for some reason he doesn't want to fight me, that makes no difference to me. It'll be Whitaker instead. And if Whitaker doesn't want it, there are several others that do end quote. Now, Luke, on the idea of several others, we'll get to Jamal Hill in a second, but in terms of Poiton coming back and making that first title defense, do you believe the UFC owes Adesanya that right of first refusal on the immediate rematch because of the reign he had, the history between them, or is it better business practice to let Izzy recover on his own time and you have an all-time great

under your roster and Robert Whitaker, who just as well could be champion if they do this yeah i would say it depends on a couple of things one is what they like what what kind of vision do they have for the future of this division and who do they see on top of it what kind of market do they want to massage do they want to massage the australian oceanic market and therefore give robert whittaker a chance again or whatever like there's lots of ways they could be looking at that and i'll say this no one like automatically deserves a rematch there's no rules around this like deserving is you know uh which once you reach some kind of threshold and now they're obligated they're not obligated to izzy but what i would say is to the extent that anyone has a case he does right we're talking about a guy who

was a long-reigning champion who in that that weight class, that was his first defeat, quite literally. He was winning that fight handily up until he just wasn't. He was, you know, they have history together. He'd be ready, like he doesn't need time off. If anyone, if anyone is deserving of that opportunity, it is most certainly him. I don't know whether he wants it. I've not most certainly him. I don't know whether he wants it. I've not spoken to him.

I don't know where his head is at. It seems like he probably would. And the UFC is in a great position because if he doesn't, they can go right to Whitaker. And I think that's a much, stylistically, stylistically, that's a tougher fight for Pareda. So it's a lot of fun in either direction. It really, you know, the case for Izzy is not hard to make.

It's just a question of what everybody wants here. And that part remains to be seen. Doesn't it outside of Izzy? And I don't know his attitude, but if I'm going to guess, I know Izzy's attitude. He'll be right back in wanting this fight. I thought he said the right things after the loss, particularly to Ariel Hawane in MMA fighting.

Even if some people thought he sounded delusional, you know, I get that label, but I think overall, I got where he's at. I think he's in a good place. So does this not come down to what the UFC believes could be the bigger payoff in the long run immediately, which is potentially either a fourth fight here between Adesanya or if you do the Whitaker fight, which would be big enough, Whitaker the Whitaker fight which would be big enough Whitaker versus the champion right now would be big enough but if Whitaker wins that now you're making the idea of Adesanya versus Whitaker three which as we speak right now Luke it's not neat it's not

like overly necessary I you know I wouldn't hate it I'm a big Whitaker guy I love it there's still a lot of history at stake between them the second one was competitive and if not even disputed to some level on the scoring. But if that's done with Whitaker as the champion, do that trilogy is like legendary and massive and all those things. How much is the UFC thinking about exactly that equation? Like the idea that Poiton versus Adesanya three, four, five, it's always going to be there anyway. So do we F around and try to see if Whitaker can capitalize right now and make that fight even bigger than any fight involving Pereira could be? Don't know. I don't know how big that fight would be from a pay-per-view perspective.

The truth of how big it would be would be only to put it somewhere in Australia or New Zealand and to see how big it does at the gate or what kind of hold it has on that particular market. It would do well in pay-per-view, obviously. And I realize what you're talking about is something a little bit more significant, which is middleweight history, trilogy history, you know, that sort of a thing. And yeah, there would be something lost there. I don't think that they're really, I don't know that they're thinking of it in these kinds of terms you're right that they have options either way so if izzy takes it and win or lose rob gets the winner of that which means you can get rob versus alex fresh matchup or you can get

the trilogy after that point which is kind of interesting or you can do yeah but it wouldn't mean as much if robert doesn't have the bell it would mean a lot more if he did that's the distinction there look you know yes it would be it would be different in that way that now the roles would be reversed. And, you know, there's a lot that could be said for that. That's true. But you're asking if they're like trying to coordinate or, you know, kind of steer a little bit and see what happens, but kind of steer in that direction. I don't know that they're steering in that direction and i tend to think that like again i don't know what the champion's thinking but just having seen the decisions he's made previously i would imagine he would want to fight peretta next whether it's for the title or not like that is just the guy that the you know

you could say what you want about izzy he didn't run from any contender dude no he wants to smoke any he wants it all he always wants the smoke and so for that reason i think that in the end they're just going to put it up there and then we'll see what happens from there look the only thing you could ever say about adesanya that's largely negative and i think even that is subjective is the whole idea of once he's got somebody figured out he may not go for the finish as willingly or recklessly as the the mainstream hardcore fan would want him to okay and that's not even fully true and i know but i'm saying even if that is true in your eyes based on your belief set you're still like so what that says nothing about you know his toughness his willingness to fight the best all that it doesn't it really does it's

also it's also this like having now seen some fighters retire and see what they do afterwards yes let me just tell you something izzy's style is going to age very well when he's done fighting it looks to me like he's going to have most of his faculties intact and then you're going to see it's like wow he won all those titles he made all that money he beat all those guys and he still has his brain health like the full judgment of how he fights can't even be rendered until he is 45 and then 55 let's see how he looks then and i've got a feeling he's going to look a lot better than people who fought in a style that maybe the fans of today loved much more but they're not going to have shit to show for it like he is when he's at

that age so i just want to point that out there looks like take that attitude of power slap where it belongs uh look quickly before we bring in the Jamal Hill side of this, some things are connected right now. That Brazil card, which was the return first time in three years, UFC 283, wasn't packed. We find out because of the inflated ticket prices. Then we saw that play out in real time when the upcoming UFC London pay-per-view tickets were released. And apparently, Luke, it's reported that the worst seat in the house is, what was it, like $497 American or something like that?

Something, you know, almost $500, you know, with the ringside seats being like the $7,000, $8,000. Now, look, in terms of the highest end of boxing, they do that all the time. That's why the biggest fights in the game in boxing in particular end up in Vegas because they can charge exorbitant prices, almost Superbowl level prices. So I'm not making, I'm not pointing the finger in that regard, but I'm trying to frame this news in a larger sense. We all agree. And John Nash and those types of guys have done great at kind of teaching us if we didn't know better that the ESPN deal changed the UFC's true mission when it comes to booking fights, not so much about the big pay-per-view or consistently

big pay-per-views, but more about filling out the requirements of the ridiculous contract to get, you know, their, their main operating money from ESPN and just being consistent across the board. But how much is the local gate, the idea? So when we did talk about that, well, hey, that's, you know, to be fair, Pereira against Adesanya or Whitaker is big for the oceanic region if they decided to go there. How much do you think the focus is now, because it's been taking off, building up pay-per-views to extreme levels, is focused more on like the city? And, you know, going to london and doing monster gates and now charging a shit ton maybe this is more the direction on how they maximize their profits even more aggressively right i mean that seems to be it booking you know booking guys

at home like volkanovski against mahachev and perth right go you know really trying to commit to that do you see any correlation there? Maybe some, I think partly they wanted to get out of the United States now that some of the travel restrictions post pandemic or whatever state we're in have been largely dropped. I think that's a big part of it, especially in markets that have not been nurtured as well as they would have hoped in the last couple of years. But I just think in terms of their overall revenue, you know, even if they were even in these exorbitant prices, the gate is not a huge chunk of it.

I don't really think like, oh, let's just see if we can maximize money from the gate because this is – not that it's not important. It's very important. But as like a major chief revenue driver, I don't think it does that. I just think ticketing prices in general, whether it's sporting or music events have gone through the roof and they can sell at these prices and then they yes they they squeeze out a lot of like the true dyed in the wool fight fans but if people are going to pay for it why is the ufc not

going to charge it they're going to charge it now to your point in brazil it didn't so much work let's see what happens in london you know if they people listen if they can charge asshole prices and then assholes pay for it i don't know what to tell you like we get squeezed out but that's the business world and that's and look ufc is very good at business and endeavor you know driving the ship as well so they're gonna they've already shown they are going to and you know try to max out every single category and get everything possible but man i don't know what that does long term. I guess we'll have to wait and see. But, you know, you don't love it for the common fan, but that's business, Luke, at the end of the day.

And, all right, well, here's potential big business. Before we get to the quotes here, Luke, I do want to throw to the video. So let's set the stage here. UFC 283, Glover Teixeira loses to Jamal Hill. We're set up to do the announcements. It's the end of the fight. And Poiton's in the corner, of course, of Pajeda, sorry, of Glover. And here's a little look at the stare down and the up and down full profile look that Pereira gave to him, which, you know, Luke, in some ways that's just two tough alphas

in the cage at the same time it's bound to happen. But, you know, there is connections here with Glover, who's like a father figure to Pereira, a coach, all that. Here's what Poetan said commenting on Jamal Hill's Instagram. I heard Prochazka is injured. What about knocking me out? So Hill's response on Ariel Helwani's show was, shit, what's popping? Like, we can get that Kraken if he wants to come on up and try his luck with that shit. Come on me. I'm not scared of nobody. I take the challenge very seriously. It gives me incentive to fuck you up.

I think that's what he was mentioning. It was an old clip. I think I was with James Lynch and I was asked about a fight between us. And I said. I think that's what he was mentioning. It was an old clip. I think I was with James Lynch and I was asked about a fight between us. And I said, I think I'd knock him out. You know what I mean? And I do. I mean, I ain't like, I didn't say that shit. I said that shit.

If you feel some type of way about it, then show me. I'm in the show me business. Now, Luke Poiton has two all-time great middleweights in front of him that he has to fight. But there is a storyline connection. They just eyed each other. We got quotes back and forth now. Is there any way this is actually in conversation to do yet another champion versus champion one, but one that would be all action

and one that I think you could talk yourself into, right? You could talk yourself into it. I don't know. I think people are somewhat. I mean, here's the thing about Alex Pineda. Like, he beat Izzy, and that was pretty incredible because no other middleweight could do it without multiple tries. So you can't take it away from him. But he does have a very underdeveloped MMA game, number one.

Like, the idea that he's just going to go up there. Maybe he could beat Jamal Hill because of the particular style matchup. I'll talk about that in just a second. But this idea that, like, he's going to hold the belt at middleweight, I'm sorry, if he fought Robert Whitaker, I'm picking Whitaker. I mean, I guess we'll see what happens. But at light heavyweight, I think there's plenty of guys who would beat him as well.

The other part, too, is BC. It's like, dude, don't forget, Izzy stung him in their, was it the second fight, really badly. He got the eight count. And then in the third fight he rocked him in the first round remember that he had two big shots and he had him like he almost stopped it's like dude i gotta tell you like the izzy is a very uh he does have good power he's got great accuracy and amazing timing but he's not like a huge power punching guy jamal hill has

very good power i you know it's, it's like, again, I, it's not to say that I don't think Alex Pereira could beat him. I think he could, I think that's on the table BC, but if he's getting rocked by Izzy at one 85, Jamal Hill would rock his shit just as bad, if not up 20 pounds. So like the idea that like, Oh, because he's such a great striker from glory that would translate up a division against this in another sport. Yes. He's going to do well. Listen against this in another sport yes he's going to do well listen to what i'm saying he's going to do

well no matter what but i would not be nearly as confident in his chances as i think as some of his other boosters might right and the knee-jerk response would be well he was a two-division champion in glory including light heavyweight and yes he is about that life and the potential issues that he would have particularly when it comes to wrestling wouldn't really factor too much into this matchup anyway even though in theory against bigger guys it's going to be a problem no matter what against bigger guys but yeah i don't know it's like you could just here's the here's the thing though i don't think you can justify it in the middleweight title picture was my main point and seeing it up to you but could you justify it in the light heavyweight title picture which is already a mess we're already not

really sure who should be next Prohaska can't come back until at least like August in a best case scenario so could you justify it at 205 if this happened it would have to be a very unusual set of circumstances like the thing about this is, if you're going to do these champion-champion fights, you need some kind of reason for it. And when I mean some kind, I mean it can really vary widely in need or timing. One, the two guys have a huge rivalry, and for some reason it would make sense, especially with whatever the state of their respective divisions are in. There's not an obvious contender or something. That's one. Number two, it would do enormous business, right?

Like, oh my God, we put these two guys together. It would just blow up into something even bigger than what it ordinarily would be. Three, you need to do it for pound for pound consideration like we have with Volkanovski and Makachev. All of those reasons would be pretty good reasons to do them. Not one of them applies to Jamal Hill versus Alex Pereira. The fight itself would be great, but how many champion versus champion fights could you make that would suck

not many not a whole lot like all of them are going to be pretty i mean they're fucking champions for crying out loud well we're talking about a guy just won the title both guys just won the title they just won the title there's an obvious contender at 185 two obvious contenders at 185 it just doesn't make it's a fine fight i'm not saying otherwise and potato could win it there's just no need for it i i only really like it because of the juicy glover angle and then have glover as the coach right back in there i mean look i fall for that pro wrestling bullshit that's why even the idea of connor versus no that's why even the idea of connor versus islam with habib in the corner i'm like okay there is part of me that's why even the idea of Conor versus Islam with Habib in the corner,

I'm like, okay, there is part of me. That's going to be into that. They're just, yeah. How about, how about this? I mean, this guy through 10 fights, imagine if they made it next, right. For whatever reason, they just made it next. This guy through 10 fights would be a champ champ in the UFC,

having beaten his long-term kickboxing rival, and then gone up a weight class to avenge his MMA guru slash leader guy or whatever like you know his trainer his coach his mentor really is really the guy you could say his mentor uh to do all that in 10 fights that's one of the most absurd things I've ever heard you know or roughly 10 fights I have to go double check what it would be something insane well look if we end up with you know the idea of Jamal Hill and his first defense against a returning prohotska that's probably what works best for everybody i'm willing to wait to the summer i think though mikey do we have the video response which we referenced on wednesday show but didn't have it coiled up if

you remember prohotska was in the woods after jamal hills went and said i'm coming he was very aggressively coming oh we don't have the video response, but Luke Jamal Hills, a comeback was, was, was two shows. You've brought that up now. I'm, I'm all for two on having the videos, but that's okay. That's my fault.

I didn't prepare properly. Luke, let's go to topic three. Speaking of another person who stumbled into champ champ opportunities, and we argued whether it was too much too soon. How about this report? April 8th, UFC two 87 in Brooklyn,

Al Jermaine Sterling reportedly could be headed toward a title defense with Henry Cejudo, which has been talked about for a long time now. But Ali Abdelaziz, of course, the manager of Henry Cejudo, did tweet out against the report that it was fake news. Do we remember the source of this report, Luke? Do you remember? No, I'll double check here though um i you know wasn't i mean it wasn't like you know brett directly from from you know dana or anything or ariel you know i think it was a little bit on the uh periphery of the

of the mma galaxy fighting no no no oh no that's that's okay that's from the the the actual uh horse's mouth all right luke mma fighting there it is uh so i can tell you that like they they double checked that probably before they reported it so it's probably pretty good so we know this is inevitable but if you line this up in april and brooklyn and you consider uh you know that march card with john jones coming back in valentina and oh by the way i don't think that newness aldana fight it might end up happening on that card that seems to still be up in fight might end up happening on that card. That seems to still be up in the air. But that's a monster card.

We got London coming up. You know, things are coming together. Aren't they talking about Raquel Pennington fighting Aldana in San Antonio for a five-round main event? Yes, they are, Luke. Yes, they are. I don't know. So that original report was wrong, it seems.

But Luke, Sterling Cejudo, if that's your April close-up in New York City and Brooklyn there, how fired up are you? Love it. Okay, love it is the answer, right? Like, this is the fight I wanted to see the most. I have been very much against the idea, very conditionally, about Cejudo fighting Volkanovski because he's been gone for a while. The last one was over Dominic Cruz.

The division has certainly changed a lot, even since he was last actively competing. Let's see what he's got now at 135. Let's actually see what he's got in this division. And then if he looks as good as he says he is, fine. After that, you can go fight whoever the hell you want. If Volkanovski loses to Makachev, but Cejudo looks amazing against Sterling I'll be the first

one to say let's make that fight I would love to do that fine but I want to see where he's at the only thing I really I just don't understand about all of this is Sterling was very clear that he was going to take some time off to heal some long-term injuries that he's had that have been difficult to heal and he just he needed to do it and he And the time frame was he could be back around June or later, and now we're talking about a significantly expedited timeline relative to that. Did he get pressured into it? Is he still going to push off the injury healing? Did he heal faster?

There's some sort of parts of this that I don't really have a good answer to because I'm going to say this. If he's going to take this fight in a compromised state, man, I don't know what the right answer is. Do you take it for whatever reasons the UFC might've offered you? Like here's the other part too, 287, I think was originally supposed to be in Florida. And now they're talking about Brooklyn,

which means this is probably as close to a hometown fight as Sterling is going to get, which is a big deal. I like that the UFC is going to guys' hometowns more. They're going to Leon Edwards' hometown. They're going to go to the home country anyway of Alex Volkkanovsky now they could be putting another champ in his hometown or certainly very close i'm telling you they're going after that live gate luke they want to max out the live they do i think you're right that they do want to maximize it but i don't think that's like a substantive way in which in the overall portfolio of how they generate revenue it's not a major

driver i think you're right about that but perhaps for slightly different reasons like that money might be allocated for different expenses not as like hey we can really change our fortunes this way in any case i love the fight bc but it gives me some concern about the health and readiness of the champion and that gives me a lot of concern because if he's not ready for this one, I don't want to hear anything after the fact about what might've slowed him down. Conversely, that doesn't necessarily give us the best read possible on how Cejudo could look and the implications of a win or a loss here are significant. So that part to me gives me a little bit of pause. Okay.

Well, I have a larger question on the division and the direction here. So we already know that Chito is going to fight Sanhagen coming up and marab is going to fight uh who was he announced against luke peter yan peter yan so those are the major players not counting sean o'malley we don't have a fight for him at the moment right no not that i'm aware of so i i thought the recent news of uh like look i thought you could have gone o'malley versus Cheeto too, and even put some kind of interim unnecessary labor on label on it. And they didn't go that way. So I thought that was opening the doors for either O'Malley versus Al

Jermaine straight up or even O'Malley versus Cejudo for an interim title. What does this tell you about what we're doing here? Maybe that's why Ali said it's fake news, Luke. Maybe it is fake news. Okay. for an interim title. What does this tell you about what we're doing here? Maybe that's why Ali said it's fake news, Luke. Maybe it is fake news, okay? Maybe we just wasted some time, all right? I don't know. I don't think so. I think if MMA Fighting reported it,

it didn't say that it was a done deal. It said it's being targeted. Yeah, that's, yeah. It means they're working towards it, and that's an active suggestion, and they want to see if they can make it happen. I would believe the MMA Fighting report over a manager's denial, personally.

Yeah, I mean, there's a track record in general there. Yeah, all right. Hey, Luke, topic number four on this Friday. We got some other recent fight news, some good ones here. Hey, Benil Darius, here we go. He says UFC is trying to book him versus Charles Oliveira in May, and we have a video here to accompany this thing I've been having with Charles the UFC originally was like hey what do you think about fighting him in Brazil

which was like a couple of weeks ago I think or it was last week I don't know and I was like uh can I get a little bit more time it turns out my MCL was torn I didn't know it was that bad from the fight with Gamron? It was before the fight. But it wasn't like super bad. I just had to wear a knee brace and I was like, hey, I got it checked out. It's actually torn so I'd like to just start my camp fresh. Can I have a little

bit extra time? So can we do February? And they said, okay, yeah, we'll do February. February turned into March. March turned into April and now they're talking about May. That is the schmo providing that content. Luke, first of all, old Benny is just going with like the full on trickier. I kind of look washed, don't I think when we all know he's entering, you know, the peak moment of his career here. I love that he's just given up with the gray there.

I mean, it's very Luke Thomas. Like, you know, noble it's very noble Luke you know us that don't have that same level of self-confidence end up looking like we got into a fight with a box of shoe polish yeah and but I didn't lose it I'll tell you that I won that fight uh Luke uh what do you what do you think here I mean this is the best thing they could give Darius that's not a title shot in my mind I got asked this yesterday about whether or not he should take this fight and usually under circumstances like this where guys are not getting the timeline that they want either it's too slow or it's too fast and you know you're already done a lot do you really want to risk it against someone else kind of big a lot of times I

would say don't risk it in this case I'm going to say risk it right in this case I think he has to it you know if we have Conor McGregor coming back to potentially then we don't know he could fight at 170 it's all up in the air but I mean there's sort of two factors here that stand to me number one Conor McGregor could be coming back to 155 and if he beats Tony I'm sorry but Neil it doesn't even matter it almost doesn't matter who you beat at that point. They're not going to give you a title shot next. It's just not the way that it's going to go. Now you might be saying, well, that would be incentive to not take the fight, but I actually feel like if this is the second part, if you're going to take the John Fitch road to a title shot,

you have to understand you have to do something really spectacular in the cage to get that. And by the way, there's downsides to it because once you get it, they're not going to give you another one again. And it's not really fair to say that he's a John Fitch guy because John Fitch's fights weren't necessarily always that exciting, but Neil's are reliably pretty good in that way. However, what we're talking about here

is no promotion basically outside of it, not trying to base your fortunes in any way on an identity that the fan base can rally around and then buoy you to more prestigious assignments or potential fights or opportunities you have to do everything in the cage dude you if you want a title shot and you're benil daryush and you want to leave it to as little chance as possible you have to do something spectacular you have to do something very very high in achievement you have to beat charles olivera or something pretty approximate to it there's not many other names you can put next to his that would be of

similar value and it's high risk high reward i get it i understand bc but i don't think if you're benil darius you can like wait around and see how no you go you have your time they gave you a chance to you know to come to the party well you know you with, you, with the cool kids, like you got it, you got to take your swing. You got to go for it. And I said, it's the best thing he could get outside of a title shot really outside of like a McGregor or Masvidal or Nate type of like crossover action fight.

Yeah. Separate from anything of that in the critical sense and what it seems like he's really all about, which is finding out how great he can be. I have a lot of respect for Darius and how he carries himself and, and, and how he gets himself amped up for these fights. You've got to take this fight, and I think he will, and I think that's what he's all about. So let's find out, Luke.

I mean, Bilal Muhammad is almost in a spot in a different division where it's like, okay, let's find out if you're in this group. Let's find out how great you are. Let's do it. What are the odds going to be when they announce that fight if they make it? At the open. It's Oliveira minus 215. It's a little high.

It's a little high. You think it should be closer? I think it's like Oliveira minus 180, like plus 120-ish. Well, did you see, not that this factors into that, but didn't you see the quotes from Charlie? It might have been to Ariel where he says, you see, not that this factors into that, but didn't you see the quotes from Charlie? I might've been to Ariel where he says, you know, like people are over being too harsh about the one-sided nature of that performance. It's basically 10 bad minutes he had. And, you know, look at the run he was on.

I mean, I guess this plays in more into a question to you. Do you see like, was the run Charles Oliveira on, which needed some levels of, I don't want to say luck because he made his own luck, but it needed some levels of like, I'm taking big risks here, right? Like hopefully it goes my way. And it did. The run was incredible. You can fall off a cliff though, after a run that intense, could he maintain this Luke on this level? I mean, he's always a finishing threat, but you know, what are your expectations for a returning Oliveira in that regard i expect him to still be very good and i expect him to still get some big wins whether he

beats dory you sure not i'd have to think about it more again i would favor him to win but it'd be very close and competitive and yeah he had 10 bad minutes against islam he had 10 bad minutes because islam made him have 10 bad minutes that's why you know i mean let's just go back to everything he said pre-fight leading up to that one about his readiness and having his team there. And the champion has a name. Like he went into that one full of confidence. He had his own balloon inflated and Islam went on there with a needle and popped it. Let's just be very clear about that. He had 10 bad minutes because another guy made him have 10 bad minutes. He didn't have an off night mentally. He didn't have all these guys

have injuries but no nothing really substantial that we're aware of limiting him he just got beat by a better guy benil doryush maybe he's not islam makachev okay fair enough but he is damn good and the idea of him winning is would be in no way surprising no no not at all not at all um and you know what is charles olive's going to be exactly who he is like full on danger. I don't think he's going to change his style. I just wonder if he can keep up that level of spectacular things going his way. Uh, how about this for a fight? Alexander Romanov, who we thought, you know, from, especially from a ground game sense could be this new, interesting heavyweight on the rise rise then he gassed out and took that l dude deep end of the pool alert march 11th ufc vegas 71 alexander romanoff is going to welcome

alexander volkoff uh wow luke we're going to find some things out here like this is we're going to find out which alexander is truly great and the dad joke uh bingo if you had that one you win but uh you know wow lu, Luke, right? You like this? I like it because I like Romanov, although he's got some issues to work on. But it's a little bit surprising that they're giving him someone in the top ten, like, I'm just surprised, right?

Let me verify something here. Let me look at something. I mean, you know what? I guess i understand why they gave him the fast track on this one a little bit even though he got look the tibera just beat romanoff and he's yeah so it wasn't a stoppage it was a majority decision loss to martin tabura but that showed us that romanoff was not yet ready for prime time and now we got a better matchup,

not better in terms of chances of winning, but like a more prestigious, higher ranking. Like I think of Volkanov as sort of the first guy in that upper group, right? He's that guy you got to get past. Yes, and I'm just pointing out like Tybura just beat him and now they're going to give him Blagojevinov, who's sitting at 15. Romanov is sitting at 13, who just lost.

And they're going to give him Volkov at eight I was like I don't hate the fight please don't misunderstand me and by the way Romanov could very well win that one it's like these guys are all there's a level of parity there despite what the ranking position might be but I guess they're just like yeah we know you lost guy but uh we still have some hopes for you Tybura we kind of know what we have we're just going to move on past him. I don't know how else you explain it. Luke, quickly, I agree with you.

That upcoming Piotr Jan fight is going to be in Vegas, but not at the Apex. That's a fight night main event and a great one, by the way. But that's going to be at the Virgin Hotels, the old Hard Rock there. Is there anything there in that announcement in terms of how often in your eyes UFC is going to be looking to get out of the apex, you know, which is kind of what we want them to for the, for the crowd experience and how, what that does to the fights. It's obviously in some ways a more efficient investment to do it from the apex,

but then you lose the live gate. So what do you think this means? Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Stop sitting on your Aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now, you can save up to 25% in AeroPlan points

when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com. Conditions apply. I don't exactly

know. So they used to go to Hard Rock all the time when they had WEC on Versus. Many, many of those took place at the Hard Rock, which to your point is off, or what was then the Hard Rock, which is off strip. I've not been to this particular. Or the Palms, Luke. The Palms had like the same size venue.

They go to either one yeah they're the pearl at the palms which was also pretty small as well and they would use that i don't quite understand the i'd have to look into it more the math on why they sometimes go to these and sometimes don't um and what what are the what are the what are the reasons why they would elect to go into another place in their own hometown when they have the apex versus not but you know it's it's interesting that's yon against uh devolish wheelie is the fight i can't wait to see that uh luke how about this interesting uh twitter breakdown yesterday or breakout uh gilbert burns put out a tweet that essentially teased a monster announcement is coming and then

jorge masvidal did the same exact thing. One of them particularly tailoring the announcement to London and that upcoming pay-per-view. So Luke, when I saw that, I thought, oh crap, are they going to fight each other on like the co-main of, uh, of Leon Edwards, Usman three. And in theory, you know, the winner of that could be next. Uh, then I thought maybe it was Masvidal with, with McGregor and the tough house but that if that if tony ferguson is right on does this mean gilbert burns and horny masvidal are fighting each other because as much as i think gilbert versus colby is a great one to do if masvidal is really in this title picture mostly because he has a connection to leon edwards then damn right i'd love to see him have to fight gilbert burns first to really earn that spot uh i could be really down for this really i could be down for two also it gives the ufc the excuse

of saying hey we'll put gilbert versus jorge on this london card and if for whatever reason we need a backup for the main event uh for whatever happens we can just slot jorge right on in there you know it's just an emergency circumstance right something like that and then and then you might have missed his weight by seven pounds and we're like how did we get here what happened yeah exactly but i'm saying you could get the three piece in the soda replay you know you get that again um so it seems to me that like there's a little bit of that going on okay if that goes down does that tell you colby versus hamza is imminent or no could could hamza be going to middleweight again my understanding is hamza's

next fight is going to be a middleweight that's not a hundred percent but that is my understanding so i just don't know how to count him right now that's the part that's just unclear for me because remember we're all like oh gilbert versus colby's the fight to make well three months ago it was Hamzat versus Colby that was the fight to make I don't know if he's going back to Walter White next let's see what he's up to and then we can guess figure out from there maybe Dana will be like hey Colby if you want to fight again I got a guy for you his name is Shavkat Rachmanov I'm sorry but that's the only way you know like that's that's the only fight we have for you sorry so yeah good luck with that either way yeah yeah oh by the way what do you think because because i was surprised that gilbert was such like a minus 550 or whatever it was favored against neil magni

turns out i was wrong in terms of the potential of a one-sided smart uh you know smash like that uh what do you think the onset of gilbert versus versus Jorge would bring odds wise minus three ish for Gilbert I mean do you give what level of a chance do you give Masvidal based on what's left and you know what you saw against Colby uh not much not much I think he could survive but in a three-round contest in particular Gilbert would just Gilbert's a better wrestler I think and a much better grappler although jorge is good in both places but i think gilbert's a little bit ahead of him and would just kind of be all over him in a way that you know our demi and maya was or something you could just play that one back again you know you're not wrong luke let's go to

topic five as we continue look very efficient show out of us today right i think it's pretty good too i see that i see that i think it's pretty good, too. I see that. I see that. I think it's pretty good, too. Hey, Topic 5, we got a real fight card. It's a quiet weekend, a calm before the monster storms ahead. But this Saturday, London, how about a 3 p.m. Eastern main card start on ESPN Plus? And it's Archer Betterbeave, one of the 10 or 12 or wherever you have them, you know, five or six best fighters in the land today.

The 38-year-old, unbeaten, unified, three of four belts at 175 pounds. This could be the final step toward an undisputed championship out against Dimitri Bivol, which would be one of the biggest fights you can make in the sport this year. But, Luke, we know Betterbeave be 18 and 0 18 fricking KOs. Anthony yard comes in as a big underdog. He's a puncher. You know, he, he fought for a title before and pushed Sergey Kovalev later, a wash Sergey

Kovalev ahead of that Canelo match. And, uh, and he got stopped late. He's largely one sense then, but you know, we're not expecting a ton, but he's got a punch he's largely won since then but you know we're not expecting a ton but he's got a puncher's chance what are your expectations here for better be in this mandatory showdown i honestly think that the really the i did some tape study for this one because i'm actually pretty excited about this fight only in the sense that i like uh better be or better be of i just love watching him fight he's not the the cleanest, but he is one. He is one. And obviously a ridiculous athlete and a dynamic puncher boxer.

Really just quite spectacular in that way. And as you mentioned, 100% finishing rate. The only champion in boxing who is that way. So to me, this is like very much appointment viewing. Listen, man, he's 38 years old. And at some point, father time has to catch up with him. But from what we've seen of him in recent fights which have not been all that recent but you know recent ish he's looked

great he's looked really great he's been he's been dropped a couple of times but then he rallied i don't think in any fight where better be has been dropped it's gone past the fourth he stopped it after that like he's just that much of a punishing force and the reality is this yard is a big puncher but he's mechanically a little stiff his footwork is a little bit all over the place he doesn't have great movement or slipping or defense and for a guy like better be who's just people sort of call him a come forward brawler that's not really true he definitely puts pressure on you but he actually works a little better countering and I just think yard is going to be like listen I'm a big puncher uh any fight yard has had that's gone past the 10th round he's

lost keep that in mind uh better be power does not drop off it carries late into fights it just seems to me that if you're yard you're going to try and win this one in the first six rounds and he might catch better be with a couple of good shots here or there i'm not in any way excluding that he's gonna make it a war he's gonna make it a war but it's not gonna be enough the the the canadian the chechen canadian is gonna whoop up on him past six so yard since that 2019 title loss to sergey kovalev is six and one overall with six knockouts the only loss was to unbeaten lyndon arthur it was a split decision over 12 rounds so you know could could you know something wacky happen yards got the got the the output to potentially do that

but better be too good too tough a, a lot of things. And dude, I was looking a little bit deeper. I wrote a feature on better beef on CBS sports this week, essentially saying like, look, you know, this, this year we know he's 38, but like this year could be his everything year in terms of becoming a star in terms of undisputed champion. I mean, he really is one of boxing's best kept secrets, not talked about outside of the hardcore circles, really not seriously. Luke, I think you've done some of the great, the best parading of sort of like, holy shit, everybody else, you know, check this guy out, but that's almost by design in terms of who he is.

Like, but he does have a chance this year if he beats yard. And then if we can build that B-ball fight quickly, like it's in conversation to be the pound for pound King. If he comes out of that as your undisputed champion, and imagine if he keeps that knockout street going, it's like, I think there's, there's no shortage of four fights that we could see in 2023. That could produce the next pound for pound King, meaning in a ways, my, my pound for pound King right now,

I got no issue if you've got either Spence Crawford, some people have Fury or, or Usyk, and you can even talk into that too. You know what I mean? But like, that's really the core crew Canelo in the midst of that as well. But how about Usyk versus Fury? How about Inouye versus Fulton? This fight, Betterbeave versus B-Vol. And then obviously Spence Crawford, if we see it, you know, there's a chance for any, for the best look, you know, the best finish out of that. Right. But Luke, like what if Archer better be like finishes the course? Like, I don't know how long he actually wants to fight. He gives almost nothing in interviews to almost a comical level where I wrote about it this week. There was a great story I share with you that a British

journalist wrote that like, he's almost comically stoic. He speaks English. He's well-spoken even though there is a bit of a language gap, but he, he knows what he's doing comically stoic he speaks english he's well spoken even though there is a bit of a language gap but he he knows what he's doing but like he gives you nothing to deal with he uh you know the stories of him never traveling with a team just on his own never never looks excited i mean he is about business but what if he goes in there and fights pound for pound rank dimitri bivol if he wins this fight on Saturday what if he knocks him out and what if he just goes you know I'm 19 and 0 with 19 KOs I'm the undisputed light heavyweight champion peace good luck dealing with my with my legacy like what like what do we do with that right like holy shit you know I don't know what you do with that I mean I don't know what you do with a career that short but that dominant and you could say like well who

did he beat before this that had a big name he's had he's had a couple big names but there's not a ton of them but if you beat bivol and at that point he has so correct me if i'm wrong bc better be have has three of the titles bivol has one so that means he would unify 175 and then call it a day and in this theoretical way world you have constructed not only would he be the unified champ he would have knocked out everyone on the way to doing that i don't know what you do with that and that's just that's just pissing excellence i don't know what you do so here's the reason ultimately why he's 38 and hasn't had like the biggest fight of his career yet so he had a really good amateur career like on the international world level but he did lose in some of the biggest moments he lost at light heavyweight

to alexander usic who obviously now the heavyweight champion uh in the world championships gold medal match and then he also got eliminated in the olympics uh by alexander usic but you know he didn't turn pro till 28 then he had to sit out almost two years to get out of his original uh promotional deal with yvonne michelle he did a one fight deal with eddie hearn and that didn't work out then he went to top rank and then he missed you know almost a year and a half during the during the pandemic as well so you know he doesn't fight all the time but i think he has enough names you know not to catapult him to some stupid you know where is he on your all-time list but i just mean like is he an all-time great i mean he's knocked out viciously the contenders on the way up.

He should have like a divorce cloud, a Gabriel Campeo, like veteran guys. But when he got into his core key opponents in acquiring titles, Callum Johnson was unbeaten when Betterbeef, you know, knocked him out. Alexander Vosdick was an unbeaten champion and, you know, Betterbeef retired him in that stoppage loss. And, you know, he's faced good, good, tough matchups in both Marcus Brown and then Joe Smith Jr., the last one in which he unified the titles the second time. And he's knocked those guys the hell out, Luke. He's certainly a bigger puncher than he is a boxer. But the real key here is he's a completely well-rounded fighter. And he can do, you know, not technically perfect, but can win by boxing if he has to is, you know, dirt tough. And to your point, gotten up off the canvas before when he's had to.

And, you know, the only time it was like that comeback from COVID, I was against Adam Dinas. He looked human there. And I was like, okay, is he getting old? Go watch the Marcus Brown and the Joe Smith fights. He's not getting old. So I do wonder if he just is going to get to a point where he's like, did everything I came here to do. Luke, they did ask him this week if he would ever fight Usyk based on the amateur losses at heavyweight.

And he said, no, Usyk's too big. So he just, you know, he knows his playground. He knows he's got a chance here to be the best, but he's got to get through yard to get there. It's just so cool how, I mean, he's like stereotypical, like foreign bad guy in a movie. That's exactly, you know, he's not a bad guy. He's just probably exactly you know he's not a bad guy he's probably you know i don't know if he's a bad guy i don't know anything about this guy he doesn't

open up that cupboard door he's got very fedor like in that regard very fatal well he's chechen so kadirov is sort of close to him although you know it's in his case he moved to canada and he's become a canadian citizen and he's friends with george saint pierre for folks who may not know that him and saint pierre are tight they've trained together many times and uh you know you wonder how much he can't get away from that uh because he has Chechen roots and he probably has family back there so I don't know what that's all about but as a person beyond that he just seems to be as focused and monastic as anyone you've ever seen in the fight game. I saw the weigh-in pictures with him in Yard. Yard is well-muscled, and at 38, he's 31,

at 38, Baterbiev, or Beterbiev, just looked, I mean, diced to the socks. So he looks like he's taking great care. I mean, the guy, has he ever had a sip of alcohol? Probably not, you know? I don't know. Party till 3 in the morning? Probably not. Probably not. He doesn't seem to be about that life. He's just about, I mean, the guys, has he ever had a sip of alcohol? Probably not, you know? I don't know. Party till three in the morning? Probably not. Probably not. He doesn't seem to be about that life.

He's just about, I mean, the interviews are, like, they're comical. You know, I almost got him for morning combat, Luke. It's maybe a good thing I didn't because it would have been, it would have been like you and Fedor. I mean, really, it would have been. Luke, you tried. Dude, you tried. You definitely, you know, you tried.

I know you're bitter about that, but you shouldn't be because your interview would have been no better, just so you know. Well, you know, Luke, I've been known to pull some things out of things. But I will obviously YouTube dot com slash morning combat. We need to plug our own stuff more. The fate or a million ankle resume review is live. So if you haven't checked that out, please do so as a labor of love for Luke and I and our team. Mikey Morns behind the scenes, our extended team over there, Malka.

They people worked hard on this and and I enjoyed it because, you know's behind the scenes, our extended team over there, Malka, people worked hard on this, and I enjoyed it because I didn't live the pride life fight by fight. I was more of a distant UFC fan at that time. Dude, I got to live this in order, and that was as fun doing research as we've ever done in this segment

because, man, I miss those days, Luke, and I didn't even live it live. Dude, to watch, I mean, if I said to you, oh, well, Fed miss those days, Luke, and I didn't even live it live, you know? Dude, to watch, I mean, you just, I mean, if I said to you, oh, well, Fedor has, you know, physically lost a step, a significant one since his pride days, you'd be like, yeah, of course.

But then when you go back and you watch him in his physical prime, you're like, holy shit. You forget just how much of a, I mean, incredible athletic presence, and frankly, how much of his game at that time relied on athleticism. I kind of was reminded of a, I mean, incredible athletic presence. And frankly, how much of his game at that time relied on athleticism. I kind of was reminded of that. But, dude, he was such a terrifying force.

That was a lot of fun. Go watch it. You can also check out my interview with one championship, Sage Northcutt, who's back almost a four-year break. We talk about life growing up, all that stuff. What a polite gentleman luke i mean really what else you're gonna say i mean he's almost awkwardly polite he's he's a very nice guy and i wish him well coming back uh may 5th and when one championship what do you think

his browser history is like i don't know if i can judge him on that level luke right you know i don't know i mean it's such a nice he's married's married now, too. So congratulations out to him. But anyway, Better Beave versus Yard, Saturday, 3 p.m. Eastern on ESPN+. You can check that out from London. Better Beave, about a minus 900 betting favorite in most that you see here. Yard's going to, he's probably going to go out on a shield, Luke. So we'll see it. We'll see it right there. Hey, Luke, real quick.

I got a bonus topic six here of some quick hitters. Look, we've been very critical of, uh, Dana White's power slap league in a lot of ways. And look, tried to tell you, tell you from our heart, our true beliefs, but we're also here to report the news and episode two of the road to power slap sort of tough model brought to this new sport did air on TBS last night. And it appears the, the overnight ratings have episode two up 40 percent uh from the first episode which you wondered if the first episode would get a big number out of morbid curiosity or if this controversy had either killed it or fueled it luke how do you explain the the

big time turnaround here in week two i'm told there was a difference in lead-in programming or that next week will be different as well. I don't quite understand the differences in the taxonomy of pro wrestling shows. I'll just say, let's see how it goes. Again, from the beginning, I was kind of skeptical that it could work, but agnostic because it's just hard to tell about fan preferences. There might be an audience for it. It's the dumbest fucking audience on planet Earth, but there might be one. So, you know, I guess we'll have to see but i've you know what else is there to say like we've told everyone we can tell about how moronic and bad it is yeah yeah we don't need to

beat that drum again i mean at this point the choice is yours folks but i did want to report that that is a uh encouraging number not a great number but 40 percent turn from from a rough first week especially with the big lead-in of aew so lu there's no UFC card this week they'll be back with a fight night card the following week I believe with Derek Lewis and Spivak on top but so we're not going to get a name card start on the east coast 1am oh yeah that's vicious so we're not going to get like Dana at the Wednesday scrum or Saturday post fight and obviously he didn't go to Brazil I kind of feel like if the power slap league is going to survive by actually finding its audience and creating it,

Dana talking less publicly actually supports this of happening because it keeps, it keeps more negativity out of the headlines. There's already a negative angle, rightfully so, you know, accompanying this in a lot of different ways. And we got one that we're going to get to in a second,

but in terms of like, will this succeed or not on its own merits? Dude, Dana staying out of the public headline space helps, definitely helps. Yes. And also, Power Slap is just like this black hole of press where it's like Skip Bayless. Say something nice about him, he loves it. Say something terrible about him, he loves it. Just as long as you're talking about him, that's all he really cares. Power slap has sort of become that a little bit.

All right, here's where the main issue, though, that we've shared at length, don't need to share it again, is not just the grossness of the sport and the bad message, it seems, but I've said it, dude. The thing that's going to trigger me is going after UFC fighters, you know, X or even current that are on the way out. You shared that tweet, and we talked about it Wednesday show. Uh, it was Eric Spicely, the ex UFC fighter who was offered two and two to join that. Um, our friend, Mike Owens media out there in Liverpool, Luke, who is working for, um,

what's the, we'll, we'll see the attribution there. Uh, what was that? The middle easy Luke he's doing his interview series on. He caught up with Eric Nixick, friend of the program and Extreme Couture head coach. Let's throw to those comments right now regarding the slap lead. You as the fighter have to understand that the risk-reward. You know, we were offered – Taylor Gordado was offered a spot on this,

and when they told me what the pay was, I'm like, this makes zero sense. Zero sense for me to put this girl in this position. offered a spot on this and when they told me what the pay was I'm like this makes zero cents zero cents for me to put this girl in this position now if it was 15 and 15 and she was at a time in her career where she could she can use the money and and I would I would present that to her but the moment they told me that too it was two and two for her and I was like I was like Mick like I'm not I'm not putting my girl in this in this and he actually like he agreed with me because I know I understand but I'm like it makes zero sense for me to even ask her if she wants to go do this, right. To possibly get knocked out. And what does it do to your future of your brain health? And,

and, and, you know, where does that put you? How far does it put you behind with concussions? It just makes zero sense to me, you know? And it's, and, and to me, it's like, it's not hypocritical by any means when it comes to mma because you have the option and ability to block and slip and roll and catch and counter whereas this you don't have that option you're holding your hands behind your back and you're just waiting to get hit in the fucking head it doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever okay i love nixick who i respect basically saying i'm not even going to offer that to my fight i don't even want them to accept that but look the recruitment thing seems real, male and female here. They're going after anybody they can find.

Also, they're using UFC matchmakers to do it. That's the part that made me want to throw up in my mouth. Mick Maynard's calling you from the UFC saying, we've got a power slap slot for your fighter. Luke, where is Taylor Guardado fought? PFL, a couple other places? Yeah, and she is out of Extreme Couture obviously in Las Vegas so she's you know an unnamed-ish fighter uh that's currently not with the UFC but like yeah Luke that's who they're going after to round this out and I don't know dude if you caught some of the characters that they're promoting I

saw it because the UFC account still puts them out there's like some guy named one-eyed something that they're you know that they're selling asass. Then there's other guy who calls himself slap Jesus. I mean, it's just like, it's what you would expect. Luke is really what you would expect, but Hey dude, I'm happy that there are people like, like Eric Nix to kind of holding the line at least and saying like, what really, what are we doing here? But Luke, that's the news week two, big, big turnaround for Dana White and company. And also, Luke, it's official. We knew Jake Paul was was wanting to go in the direction here of a boxing return before the signed PFL MMA debut and take on Tommy Fury in England, February 25th. Here's what we found out. Yes, it will be airing on ESPN plus pay-per-view. But to take that even further, here's the somewhat surprising part.

Jake Paul and MVP Promotions have agreed to sort of a co-promotional deal here with Bob Arum's top rank. So this will be on ESPN Plus pay-per-view, which in theory is going to be where Jake Paul's MMA pay-per-views are going to be under the PFL banner as he helps launch their Super Fight pay-per-view league.

Luke, how surprising are you that bob arum of all people has now taken part um well top rank is i don't quite understand the top rank connection what are they servicing here that makes bob arum a part of this they're they have a co-promotional deal i mean top, Top Rank is the house promoter for ESPN, but it seems based on the way this was presented that they're going to use that same PR vehicle and all that that goes with putting on that fight. I bet he would never have done it initially,

but then you saw what Jake was able to do on Showtime pay-per-view, and you can tell that it looks like a real pay-per-view. Obviously, it was a real pay-per-view, but I'm saying like it had the feel it wasn't like a affliction where it's like i don't know if it's going to be here tomorrow like it's a relatively for now professional looking buttoned up scalable thing just again how far you can scale it is somewhat debatable but that you can go further with it at least for the time being is quite real so i think that's a big part of it tommy fury is associated with, obviously, Tyson Fury,

so there's probably something of a connection there. It's a boxing match. He's not boxing an MMA guy, which I think maybe Bob probably would be somewhat loath to do. The more interesting part to me is that they're going to do it in Saudi Arabia, right? So he just wants some big cash, it looks like. Yeah. He wants some oil money.

I mean, that's just what he wants some he wants some oil money i mean that's jake officially leaving showtime obviously now going to espn but the co-promotional thing with top rank i'm surprised really but i wonder if it's a larger look at like disney and espn collectively saying okay who's out there that's disrupting that's legitimately making headlines and views and you know reaches that younger market it It is Jake Paul, but there is a, you know, somewhat of a danger here in terms of the level of the partnership. These are going to be afternoon pay-per-views on the East coast. You know, will that sell on the same level?

But now that MVP and Jake are all in with PFL to the level of like equity, I do wonder Luke, if this was just a larger get together of all the relevant parties, Disney included, who's just like, look, let's just put this guy completely under our banner and we can go hard in pushing it at those, you know, at the younger age groups that he does bring into this. That feels like a collective power move by everybody involved.

It does. It's interesting that they would go this direction. Also, though, it could just be more of couldn't it right couldn't it be somewhat ceremonial that like you know we're gonna put top rank in a co-promotion role with mvp and it's somewhat ceremonial like we're gonna give our name but really like the bulk of the like top rank's not gonna do a lot to help like it'll actually just be whatever i don't know let's see if they have an under do they fill out the undercard do they handle you know everything of the you the on-site promotional duties? I don't know.

I mean, we'll see. It is interesting, though. But Luke, what's also interesting. Like when Jake shows on Showtime, like the press conference, that was an MVP production. Yes. When he did the media day with the horse, that was Jake's show. Like Showtime Digital aired it, but that was his show.

So he had to do all of that heavy lifting. I would imagine like top ranks going to do that for him. I don't, I don't, I'll just be curious to see what role they actually play. I wonder, you know, and I don't know the details of the, of the length of the deal. Is this just a one-off because top rank has close connection to the Fury family. So it just makes sense. And you can have, you know, think about it. Think about this from the top rank ESPN side.

You're going to want to sell probably after this fury versus usic you can have tyson fury there on the broadcast in the corner with the espn announcer you know i mean like it's all it all comes together to kind of like say hey by the way young boxing fan if you came in here just for jake this guy fury's brothers in a real fight you know like there's there's that, too. For sure, that's a good point. In the planning. Luke, we're talking about people that jump through our screens. Sometimes that's Jake Paul.

But how about when we're talking about it on the level of a hammer, particularly from our friends over there at Moneyline? We're getting closer to the end of the month, and obviously that means it's time to select the third Moneylion Hammer of the Month. For those that have missed or been under a rock, yeah, we're looking at spotlighting undercard fighters, those early in the main card. Basically, who's coming on in your preferred promotion and combat sport? This month, Luke, we've already identified a bunch of them from Royman Villa and the Showtime Boxing Pay-Per-View

to the likes of Umar Nurmagomedov, Gilton Almeida, Bruno Fajeda. Luke, who was the one you were pushing hard? Ismael Bonfim. Yes, yeah, both Bonfims had a Bash Brothers debut. There's a lot to pick from. You can have your say right now by going to moneyline.com slash morningcombat. You can check out the rules and the details there,

or you can scan that QR code. But when you're watching the fights, as always, it's at money line on Twitter at money line, Inc. On Instagram. You can use that hashtag hammer of the month, holy hammer,

whatever you want to do, but it gets our attention and you get to vote right along with us. Luke, let's see who gets it. Ilya Teporia in month two, Aaron Blanchfield got the inaugural one in person. Look, I get that. Where, where is our shipping team? I got to find out.

Does Teporia have his hands around the shaft right now, Luke? So I actually am in contact with his management. I'm about to fix this problem. Okay, okay. We need it. We need to see that the hammer got into his airspace there. Love it. So three days left to vote. Go to MoneyLion.com slash Morning Combat know his his airspace there uh love it so uh three days left to vote go to morning morning excuse me

go to moneylion.com slash morning combat uh for more information it's hammer time yes you think a boxer will ever win that hammer luke there's too many great mma guys at the moment you know i think eventually it's gonna take something special though yeah uh luke sometimes we f up though on the show and i'm sorry about that okay OK, but I'm like your other. I don't think you're really all that. Sorry. I'm like your other favorite shows that I know you're still watching. We are we do a segment every Friday where you give we give you a chance to put us on trial. OK, for us on high court. Morning Combat at Gmail dot com is the email address to find Mikey on the end of that tunnel and tell him that something BC or LT did was stupid.

And on top of that, it was dead wrong. All right, Luke, here's Bo sliding in. He says on episode 309, Luke talks about the Woodstock 99 documentary and states that after Korn played and figuratively lit the place on fire, Bush had to follow them up and they seemingly calmed the crowd. Well, that is dead wrong. Bush had to follow Limp Bizkit and then Korn followed Bush. And that's when things literally and figuratively got all lit on fire. I would expect a couple of washed up freaks on a leash to get this right, but you probably just did it all for the nookie god that's hilarious damn that's such a lame dad some dad jokes yeah fair enough i mean they had to go out after like a crazy scenario

luke you're no stranger to um to you know what's that term when someone's funny but not you know they didn't try to be it's just who they are you're kind of laughing at them or no like uh what's the term what's the damn term it's you know when you when you when something or anyway um you're you're um yeah there you go no one cares nobody cares that's a great story you know i think i just had an aneurysm right there look there you go there you go all right it was probably about right. It was probably about Woodstock. It was probably awesome. Oh, yeah, Luke.

The one time in this life that you didn't do your hair before MK and you were feeling like a POS and we filmed that episode that time and you put on a red Yankees hat like you were. It wasn't red. It wasn't red. It was black. Yeah, but it had like the different cut. Like, it was definitely one of those that like the equivalent was a black. It was dude. I only have one Yankees hat.

It's black on black. That's it. Yeah, but it's not the official Yankees hat. It's like the Limp Bizkit doctor version, like the Fred Durst original, right? It's like, I don't know what that means. I bought it at the hat store, so I don't, you know. All right. It was great.

It was great. Let's go from here. Go over to Harry. He says about 90 minutes into the Jan 23 episode, Luke read a question from a Liam and said that the name Liam is one of those things Americans just don't do. Another thing we apparently don't do is research. Liam has been a top five most common baby name in the U S for 11 straight

years, including consecutive at number one luke is hanging around the top 50 but not nearly as popular as his friends lucas and your fucking life have you met a liam who was from the united states from the united states yeah because my kids age you know there's a lot of liams around luke i'm not kidding so i've looked at my kids uh elementary school which goes through fifth grade there's not one fucking liam in there not one sorry don't believe that don't buy it at all you got it from like you got it from like nanny's closet.com yeah you go to us at all she goes to a spanish-speaking school liam's don't speak spanish okay come on the majority

of the kids are english-speaking white kids like what are you talking about this is the language of the school is different but the kids are there there's black kids and there's asian kids not one is named liam there's i'm telling you there's like five americans named liam and this is a fucking lie i don't believe that i think the stats tell you differently they said the name brian had a solid top 10 run every year from 1967 to 78 luke which happens to be the year i was born but much like some people's liver functioning the name has seen a gradual decline since and is now in the 300s yes there's too many bryans out there anyway who are right around washed uh time zone themselves uh let's go over

to leave these stats i just want to be very clear about that wow luke guess who just uh dead wrong does hey luke in bc it's liverpool's mike owens right here mike owens media on monday's episode at the 44 50 mark luke asks what year was it when glover beat prohotska as you'll recall glover beat blachowicz to win the belt yes you know what i'm losing it to yuri last year an honest mistake but a mistake nonetheless hope to talk to you soon it's mike owens media love that guy yeah all right finally luke we got john who's gonna wow they're coming after you notice luke i don't think i got i got tagged in any of these this no today i some just listen some days it's even and some days you take the beating but today i mean i'm taking the beating in our in our in our

okay bet uh showdown right now i'm taking a shellacking all right by the way we didn't we didn't get to like last week's results we have to talk about that you fucking got every one of them wrong yo i was close man right lord murphy killed me i mean you're killing me lord murphy this whole time i've been like i don't know if it's a good idea for us to do a betting show like we're not better as we don't we don't do this kind of shit and everyone on the show is like yo just do it quit being a fucking bitch and just do it. So we did it. And it turns out, first of all, I'm not good at it.

Like, I did okay. I got two out of five in the last week. I got four or five the first one. So I'm averaging, you know, an okay number. Fucking BC hasn't gotten one right yet. No, I did get one right. I did get one. You got one right?

Yeah, I think I'm like one in nine or something like that. The totality of the the overall like you know our records together not distinguished in this regard yeah you know i'm bad with gambling that's why i don't do it i i i get emotional look i follow my heart and it leads me down some uh some dark places but i was close on a lot of these i just got screwed over in the end but i got a long time to come back luke before i have to show up at some stupid dark metal show i'm gonna make a i'm gonna make a turnaround here you're gonna see it okay so i'm talking maybe i'll tell you you know what i think the worst thing for you because you're like low-key a little racist is i'm gonna take you to a

i said low-key not even true not even close go ahead i mean this happened yes this happened luke it happened i'm gonna take you to like uh like something like super fucking uh artsy fartsy in spanish like the worst possible thing i could get for you all right i got a translator named tuki that's fine i'll be fine all right we got one more dead wrong from john here i submit my formal request to expose one of you for being dead wrong at 5106 of episode 401 our favorite non-fighting fighting commenter luke references that dan hooker is fighting jalen turner at ufc 285 on march 4th luke stated that this will obviously be in australia or perth. That is indeed dead wrong. While in fact, Hooker Turner will be going down at UFC 285,

it is located in the fight capital of the world, Las Vegas, not Australia Perth. Sorry, I missed up the dates. Yes, fair enough. The card Luke is thinking of must be 284, which is happening February 11th. Did you make an assumption that hooker was taking another ill-advised, highly profitable, short notice fight? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Sit on that L Luke. Wow. Oh my God. This is another dead wrong. That is

fucking stupid because I didn't say, okay. They're like Luke said at one 41 of whatever episode it was that, uh, I hope no young will. A Southern man doesn't need him around anyhow. It's from Sweet Home Alabama, not Freebird. I didn't say it was from Freebird. I said it was from the band Alabama, and then I liked that line. I'm not under the assumption. It's like, dude, it's a whole new young man. Hold on.

A Southern man don't need him around anyhow. Literally the next words are Sweet Home Alabamaabama alabama what am i saying lynyrd skynyrd the band there's also a country band called alabama sorry they have a lot of number one hits the you get what i'm trying to point out here i know it's from that song i know you're stepping in dead wrong bear traps left and right as you try to explain this but because i try to make it worse but that was a bonus uh dead wrong from one more a bunch of people wrote in i had corrected myself on air but for folks who wanted to know, we had talked about whose tattoo was it?

Someone who had the Japanese tattoo, had the big Hanya mask. Yeah, that was Artur Spilka. Spilka, yeah. And then I was like, oh, he had the marijuana leaf. Then I corrected it. It was the maple leaf in real time. Yes, there was other people who wrote in that it was a Japanese maple leaf. I have this book.

I have not finished it yet, as you can well tell. My research is done from this. The Japanese maple leaf, BC, has a very special name. Let me read it to you. I think not finished it yet, as you can well tell. My research is done from this. The Japanese Maple Leaf BC has a very special name. Let me read it to you. I think it's called like Maji. It starts with an M. It actually has the same letter. It is known as a, oh, sorry, no, a Momiji, which is the maple leaf.

So there. If you want more to study, like I need to study, you can get Japanese tattoos, which is by Yori Moriarty. Moriarty. Luke, I wouldn't go near that book okay it's really good like the history there's just a lot of ass cheeks i can tell already in that book it's just a lot of uh it's a lot of uh anyway the stuff that i'm going to get on my sleeve which is all the way i've already booked uh i don't have any of that i don't want any of that so that's why i didn't know about it so there you go okay thank you everybody for the dead wrongs uh morning combat at gmail.com is the email address same for wednesday's fan subs which will be making a comeback uh of course you guys just have to

dig in a little we'll see what happens just stop putting explicit pornography dude i don't know i think i think that one under question i think it deserves the light of day we'll find out i wondered there was one that they pulled that I thought was borderline, but I'm just saying, like, can we just... Do you know that was a tandem effort? That was Appy and Jay Paquette teaming up, our co-donks of the year, Luke. They teamed up for that.

I thought it was... I don't know. Can we air that at the London show? I would like to. We'd have to talk to our team, because I think both of those gentlemen will be in attendance. The boss lady as well, Dawn Paquette, will be there as well. We'll see. We have questions for Dawn about Jay.

Does he work, Luke? I think he works on this show. Who will be more excited to see us in London? Who will be more excited about our London trip? Jay and his wife or anyone in my family? What do you think? You can get your tickets right now for pod live Wednesday, February 8th at the King's place music hall there in the King's court section

of London, a 90 minute live show, the pod live festival, Dan Hardy with Dan Hardy brought to you by the sports podcast group. They named us best MMA show of 2022 and best sports podcast that's because you folks because you folks are crazy but if you want to get even crazier and show up at our live show or even if you can't make it but you want to be there in spirit right now our london collection is available on our merch house morningcombat.store we have three new shirts two of them london related particularly to our uh mk in the uk live show which look it's funny that mk in the uk live show has the time on it or in the date

but it's listed you know us style of the day i got a note about that as well so they wanted it to be i guess day year and then american style is month, day, year. Whatever. I mean, whatever. But I will say great shirts in our GTA one. I'm telling you it's going to be our number one shirt by the end of the run, Luke. I'm telling you. I think it's going to pass the morning hub, that gross piece of filth fabric that you're all wearing around like your kid's soccer

match. Every time I wear that to the grocery store, people are always like, the fuck? I don't want to be associated with what you do on the dark web luke after we stop hanging out after you try to touch my own vpn yeah and a vape as well look although congratulations on that habit okay there you go hey morning combat can i confess i smoked a little bit this morning oh dude are you serious you've worked so hard i know i know but i just i don't have it on me i I'm not smoking at the desk,

but I had a little bit this morning. I was feeling it. What were you feeling? Like, low rent? Is that what you were feeling? I need to put nicotine in my lungs. All right, all right. Well, we all have our own habits, Luke, but you can continue your merch habit there. RJ

Dunklecracker, Luke, he's been doing some good stuff uh he's not going to be in london but we're going to have a good team with us luke we're also going to have jake von amsterdam recording filming producing right right in the moment our donkey menory number eight uh this this is going to be a good one i don't know if you're ever going to beat doc seven luke it was 45 minutes of just joy right i don't even remember which one doc is doc seven the last one yeah it's like the whole year and then at the end there's the live show with the margaritas yeah where malcolm made

it all about them is that what they did is that the one well they didn't they didn't make you look like too much of a monster they were actually very soft in their handling of you they were soft what i'm saying is they changed the way which we had initially pitched what the episodes should be about and they made it much more about like Malka's involvement. I thought that was kind of funny. Oh, like a video they can run at the end of the year of like, look at all the great things we've done through these gentlemen.

Well, you know, that happens in this game. Anything else you want to promote, Luke? No, I think that's it. We're not doing anything for the boxing match this weekend. We'll be back on Monday. Just check out the Fedor resume review, as BC indicated. Check out his Sage Northcutt interview,

and then great stuff next week. Yeah, that's what we do here, and I'm excited about it. I'm really excited about our future, the future of our listeners, Luke. It's going to be a joyful party come February 8th, okay? It's what we do, Luke, okay? Maybe this is the start of the world tour.

Maybe one day we go back to your to where your journey started new delhi luke okay no no bc i was born on american territory no luke you were born in india and you need to embrace that if we ever can do mk in the mumbai that would be fantastic luke right uh but i'm not from mumbai i wasn't born in mumbai i was yeah but it doesn't rhyme yeah it doesn't it's not the same thing uh thanks to mikey morms pressing the buttons behind the scenes and our great extended teams uh what a time right thank you for everything enjoy the fade our fade or uh resume thing um i don't know i'm stumbling out the finish line here luke you got anything else that's it that's it that's it bro oh yeah we're out we're out of here yeah