MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - MK WINS! | Gilbert Burns Speaks | Spence & Charlo | Fan Questions | Ep. 284

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

On Episode 284 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian open the show by celebrating their award for "Best Sports Podcast" at the Sports Podcast awards. What does that mean for the show? Next up the guys revisit the Gilbert Burns and Derrick James interviews. Who are these secret russian fighters training with Gilbert? Could Errol Spence Jr. really fight Jermell Charlo? The guys answer a few fan questions and close out the show with Dead wrong and a homework review of Encanto. (12:00) - MK Wins! (26:30) - Gilbert Burns Speaks (47:40) - Derrick James (74:00) - Fan Questions Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

oh yeah yeah fridays are for the art welcome in you're looking at it right here the best damn sports podcast in the world today it's april 1st, 2021, and no, this ain't no joke. Morning Combat, yes, wow. I am your co-host, Brian Campbell, the BBC with that BDE, that beige bastard. And my co-host is Fred Durst, and he did it all for the nookie. Luke, of any episode to wear a hat for the first time in your life, what the hell, Luke Thomas, are you doing?

Ready? Here we go. How do you do, fellow kids? Let's face it, Luke. Could I look? Yeah, I know. Could we look, and especially me, could I look more washed and pathetic than I do today? I mean, it's just, I'm the worst person in America, basically.

They can laud us with awards from here to eternity, but we won't stop being who we are, Luke, and that's washed. All right, this is Morning Combat, as we mentioned. The best damn combat sports show, period, but according to the sports podcast group, the inaugural award show yesterday thank you very much uh we are also the best i don't look i don't even dude i don't even know what the hell to do with this we're gonna get into it uh to start off the show but um i mean luke

what do you what do you even say i say thanks to everyone who sent a nice note. I say thanks to, well, obviously everyone who voted, for sure. You know, we are as surprised as you people are, to be honest with you. Maybe not so much about the combat sports one that we won, but for folks who missed it, we not only won combat sports, but then they surprised us and told us we had won the overall sports category as well. That was the one that really, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Dude, I don't know, man.

The train keeps moving. We're going to get into the criteria and all that in a second, but off the top, off the start here, obviously thank you to Showtime, CBS Sports, Malka, our incredible staff, Gaff, Corey, Long Island Luke, Mikey Morms, Matt Snyder, Corey. I mean, I could go on and on, Sally, and I would, Luke. But, dude, we're not even a pimple on a gross ash cheek without this rabid fan base that keeps going to bat for us, Luke. One day they'll turn on us. I know it, Luke. It's inevitable. The Stray Cats one day will be fed up with the milk

we keep putting out for them. But for right now, they've done something very, very, very special for us. And I think all you can say is thank you. So thank you, Morning Combat Universe. Wow. Wow, Luke. I mean, wow.

Salute. This one's for them. We got a weird show for you today. Why? I mean, look, what a weird show if anyone's watching us for the first time going, oh, you think you're the best sports podcast in the world? Let me watch right now and give you one minute to prove it. We're not going to prove that today.

Today's a weird episode. It's maybe the most dead week in combat sports for the year before the big storm that's coming. But we're going to have some fun. We're going to look at the biggest headlines in boxing and MMA. We're going to play a little morning combat homework to close the show on all things, Disney's and Kanto. I mean, the timing couldn't be worse in this regard, but we're going to do that. We're going to have some fun in between. We're going to play your video questions for the first time. It's a video DMs from Donk edition. So very excited to do all that. I'm grateful, humbled, seriously. I mean, like Luke said in documentary six, like

fucking thank you. I mean, I mean, I mean, look like, you know, we've argued and said these awards are like only as big as you make it. I mean, you know, that's arbitrary. It's whatever, but damn Luke. I mean, it's going to, this might allow us to not get fired for a while. Like this may give us a buffer period, which is nice with our employers. But but. God bless all of you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that's all you see. Was it a big reaction among your family members? I can assure you if in my neck of the woods, it was not it was not met with a ton of enthusiasm from from loved ones. It was mixed. There were highs, there were lows,

but happy for all of it just the same. And obviously all the people that poured out love to us, all, you know, our brethren in the business too, Luke, those that took that step and said, we appreciate what you guys are doing. We watch it. We love you too. So thank you.

Well, I gotta say, I mean, the Chuck Mendenhall's, yes. The Aaron Bronstetter's, yes. The Submission Radio's, yes. Like, these are people that are confident, doing their own thing, and they're really helpful. But, you know, yes, I'm certainly of the belief that a lot of people in the industry probably just don't care one way or the other about MK, and that's fine. That's the way life goes.

But, BC, you know as well as I do, there's a couple. Knowing how petty the jealousy is among boxing and MMA media, I am very confident there were some folks who knew and it fucking irked them that we won and they didn't want to say anything about it. So shouts to those folks. I'm glad we were able to make your day just a little bit more miserable. Well, I'm not going to drink their tears and mix it with my AG1, Luke, but thank you to everybody, haters or lovers, just the same. Even that podcast that accuses us of stealing all their jokes, they even came out with Guns Blaze. I don't even know their name, but look,

if you did Encanto Karaoke before we did, then I guess we'll pay you royalty. But Luke, speaking of those labels that pay us, of course, Showtime, you can get 30 days free right now by going to Showtime.com. And of course, what a fertile time. Showtime Championship Boxing is heating up. Bellator is going to have some of their biggest shows, not just the two-night Hawaii Festcom. And of course, what a fertile time. Showtime Championship. Boxing is heating up. Bellator is going to have some of their biggest shows,

not just the two-night Hawaii Fest at the end of April, but April 15th. Good Lord. Pitbull, McKee, Part 2, and the finals of the World Grand Prix at Light Heavyweight. You're not going to want to miss that. Movies, documentaries, and all that. Get your 30 free days now.

It's worth it, right? BC on Showbox, it's worth it. Pound the sand at the end. That's up to you. Luke, we talk about our partners. We talk about the people we love. How about Athletic Greens, brother? It's easy to just read a script and tell people, like this thing because they're paying us, but dude, I really like this thing and they're also paying us and I can't stop drinking it every single morning. Luke, here's the best way I could tell people why, okay? They say you can't cut corners

on your diet, on your exercise, on that kind of stuff. And for the most part, the spirit of that is true. But Luke, you know, me, I take decent care of myself. Never good. Never great. I don't eat a lot of greens. If I can do something to cut that corner and supplement the vitamins, the nutrients one scoop a day, bro, that's it. Are you kidding me? Yeah. That's the thing. Athletic greens. First of all, I've used even before they sponsored us which is a true fact but more to the point bc it's not they're not asking a lot from you they're not asking a lot one tablespoon in a glass of water and you're done and you get 75 vitamins and minerals and nutrients and probiotic stuff and all that all the stuff you need for your gut health and everything else.

And it's simple. You get a glass of water and a scoop of powder and it's over in out done. Doesn't taste that bad. It all actually tastes pretty good. I mean, what's not to like, I really don't know. I mean, it's got a tropical taste, but it's got a clean taste. And I keep saying that, but it's true. If it didn't, I wouldn't drink it. Right.

I love the taste of it. I drink it before my coffee on non-show days and it, it makes me feel good to start. You can travel with it. And Luke, lifestyle-friendly too. So some people are taking much better care of themselves because they have to. Keto, paleo, vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, whatever your diet is, this contains just less than one gram of sugar,

no GMOs, no nasty chemicals, no MSG, I'm sure, or artificial anything. Yet it still tastes pretty damn good. BC, it's going to cost you less than $3 a day. You're investing in your health and it's cheaper than your cold brew habit. Yeah, we know about habits on this show. And also, Luke, small micro habit with big benefits. And I think that's a big key. So one thing you can do every single day to take great care of yourself. And Luke, when we talk about who else uses it, who else likes it, how about 7,000 five-star reviews for Athletic Greens, including leading trusted health experts like Tim Ferriss and Michael Gervais.

All right, right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into flu and cold season. 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. And just how about a little call to action there? Athletic Greens is going to give you a one year free supply of immune supporting vitamin D.

You're also going to get the five free travel packs, which I use myself on the road with your first purchase. All you have to do go to athletic greens.com slash morning combat. And of course, combat with a K that is athletic greens.com slash morning combat to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. And finally, if you like our merch, you can see this shirt, this hat right here.

We don't sell Luke's off-brand Yankees hat, but I'm sure you can find it on the street corner of major UF cities. But we got a spring cleaning sale going on, morningcombat.store. Get our merch, okay? It's an award-winning show 20 off until monday evening that's so uh you got a little bit of time april 4th but now's your time to take a little cheddar

off the top of that mug the baby bib the onesie whatever you're into we got that rj dunkel johnson i mean he's fantastic luke what a guy what a guy right what uh yes rj dunkelfucker has been unbelievable in his role as merch guy all right uh luke um we're gonna open the show by by uh barry wrestlemania weekend barry horowitzing ourselves and patting ourselves on the back but it's really a pat on the back as we mentioned to our viewers to our staff to really just the world of combat sports, Luke, that there could be an opening for a show like this to fit in, work, grow, be what it is and be accepted. Yes, we said it off the top. We won the best MMA programming, of course, from the World MMA Award.

Shout out to them in December. But Luke, the sports podcasting group out of England had their inaugural award show and it was yesterday. And if you don't know about these folks, it's a pretty big deal. Their board of advisories are all executives from leading companies like Sky Sports, Facebook, big-time names in terms of who's doing this. And how this worked is they put together a group of podcast host experts to nominate for each category. We got nominated for Best Combat Sports Podcast.

They put it to a fan vote. All of our people ran in there. They logged in and they voted for us. We were up against Ariel Hawane. We were up against Chris Jericho. Boxing stories with Trish Dixon. A lot of big names, especially in the UK scene. And Luke, let's go to the videotape here

from Thursday's award ceremony. Colleen Wolfe of the NFL Network is the talent that dealt with us. We won the damn award. Let's watch the reaction. So the winner of the best combat sports podcast is Morning Combat. Make way for the winners, Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell. Well done, gentlemen. Well, it is a very nice award. So thank you to everyone who voted for us and thank you for the nomination as well. And we're very grateful.

So you guys have a lot of different guests that come on the show, but which is your favorite? Who provides the best content? Is it fighters, promoters, fans? Yeah, who is it? You know, what happens is, I don't plan it this way,

but a lot of fighters end up getting really mad at me and hanging up and threatening me or telling me off. So my favorite guests are Mike Perry and all of the rest of those that are willing to say, look, look, a-hole. Okay. Look, look, because the thing at the end of the day is we want to be transparent and that may be transparent ridiculousness, but we want to be transparent. So sometimes you ask those hard questions. When you guys first started the show, though, did you have any any idea that it would be this successful? Were there any doubts? Like what? How was the beginning phase of this show? I'd say there's some doubts. I mean, look at look at this. Look at this gorilla. Yeah. Would you partner with you? Would you entangle your finances with him? I did.

You know, I think you struggle with something new. So they'll have to change. I knew the show could be this good, but I'm, I'm again, humbled by the fan support, the corporational support from Showtime, CBS, Malka, who have really been, you know, had our backs at every step. I don't know what the show ceiling is. And I mean, look, one day this might not even be about combat sports. It might be about relationships because we have an

editorial marriage. It's non-physical but it's intense as shit, okay? And I'm just trying to keep this marriage bed happy, okay? And clean. Well, wash your dishes. Okay. You mentioned fan support. So before I let you guys go, is there

anything that you want to say to your amazing fans? BC? Thank you. It's a weird fraternity, as much as I hate fraternities. Let's call it a family then, okay? Because fraternities really just organize gangs of people that aren't strong enough

to stand on their own. I mean, for two washed 42-year-old dads who are dead inside, you have livened us up again. You got the paddles out and brought some life into this whole thing. So thank you for everyone's support. We don't take a single bit of it for granted.

And not only have they been supportive, but they've been really good about word of mouth. I can't tell you how many people have been acolytes for the show without us even asking them to. They just did it on their own. So for everyone who has been a part of that process, we are especially grateful to you.

But thanks to everyone who even just watches at all, anything. And you just gained one more listener in myself. So congratulations on that. And obviously the award as well. You guys are doing amazing work. So thank you again. Thank you. She was lying about watching the show, right? Like she never watched. She ain't a subscriber we got

proof of that no i'm kidding uh shout out to colleen wolf that was very very nice to me or luke we'll get into the other word in a second but um i i'm gonna be honest with you our producer mikey more mile who i got to give a lot of credit from cbs sports he pushed us to push the fans about this he pushed us to record a sizzle reel to send in a video, you know, all that stuff. And he goes, you know, you guys, we're going to film in the studio for a couple of days. This that acceptance speech was filmed a couple of weeks ago. But we said, look, he said, look, before you get in the cars and go back home, you're going to have to, you know, do a Zoom with these folks. Luke, I had no idea who these people are, what this organ.

I mean, I really didn't look into it. You know, I flew in that morning, Luke, on Delta and I sat in the exit row in uh you know row eight i think in um i i i regret that that little uh bit we did because i don't feel like i could show that to everybody you know what i mean luke yeah they edited out a lot of the things that were significantly worse than that but in the end i think that part is that part i think we can show that wasn't so bad and it came out pretty good in the end so and luke as we told our our listeners who who did the leg work for us to win this best combat sports in 2021 you guys had a vote you guys had a login i don't think you had to give your credit card number or sign up for a loan or anything but you had to go the extra mile for us we said said, our bosses at CBS Sports,

they want to send us International Fight Week, UFC Vegas this year. We don't know the fights, but I think it's July 2nd, 3rd, 4th that weekend. And they want to do a live show. They want to make it for the people. You know, we drank out of shoes last time. We did live DMs from donks.

We can do a lot more ridiculousness. Luke, my DMs last night, this is why I love our people. Like these are the same people again that will one day eat our flesh, and this is why I love our people. These are the same people, again, that will one day eat our flesh and show up at our house. But for now, Luke, in this honeymoon period, they're like, just book the flight to Vegas for July. Luke, it's a thing. It's happening. They did their work. Now it's up to us to deliver. Are they really going to give us a show?

I kind of thought halfway that that wouldn't actually happen. You think it'll happen now? I'm told it's happening, Luke. I'm told that we we're going to be scouting locations that we're going for it big time guests i mean this is going to be a deal so look you've been there for international fight week you already know it's sort of like a mma fans vacation with the fan fest and the fights and the hall of fame and all that dude i want to be i want mk to be a major attraction that week okay i think we will i think we will i think we'll definitely be there so um i'm mostly doing a bit but yes i'm confident we'll be there in yeah we don't know any of the details yet but come july whenever that international

fight week weekend will be we will have a lot for you guys to be excited for i'm pretty confident about that so here was the other surprise you guys just found this out yesterday we found have a lot for you guys to be excited for. I'm pretty confident about that. So here was the other surprise. You guys just found this out yesterday. We found out a couple of weeks ago and had to sit on it, but Luke and I didn't even know this was a thing. This is the first year of the sports podcast awards in the, in the group in England that put it together. What they do is they take all of the sport award winners and Luke,

there were many categories. If you watch the show from best lifestyle sports podcast to encourage me, mean across the board health and fitness and every single sport soccer american football fantasy sports all that they took all the winners then they let their board of advisory or advisory board excuse me vote on a single winner of 2021 spotty award which stands for sports podcast of the year luke true or false you and i were taking the microphones and and air plugs out ready to get in our cars and walk away and they're like hold on we got one more thing to tell you yes here's the videotape guys this we learned about it just as you did here i mean this is wild we have to announce the overall sports podcast of the year

yes so out of all of the winners you heard from today our superstar advisory board got together to crown the overall winner the winner's winner the best of the best it gives us great pleasure to announce the sports podcast of the year morning combat oh yeah let's chat with the winners. Guys, I have a little bit of news for you. It's actually breaking news, so a little surprise here. Morning Combat has won

Sports Podcast of the Year. Wait. Congratulations. Sports Podcast? Sports Podcast of the Year. Are you serious? What? Wait, who? Yeah. We were not prepared for this.

I was very unprepared for this. Well, to everyone who stuffed the ballot box with fake votes, you are. Ow. We are, we are. You know what? For as dark as your heart is naturally, this has to open your eyes that not only are we coming on,

but that there's good left in this world. There is some good left in this world. And for some reason, a little bit of it ended up on our doorstep. I cannot believe, I am legitimately, I don't know what to say. That is, boy, you got lucky knowing me. How about that? We took over the sports world. Next is lifestyle.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. I honestly cannot believe this. I'm like, I, I don't,

we get paid to talk and here I am fumbling for words. Thank you so much. I'm shocked. Yeah. You got the, you nailed the spotty. It's the most prestigious award of the entire night. And you've been officially crowned.

The sky's the limit guys. That's crazy. That's legitimately crazy. We were not expecting this. No one tipped us off to this at all. My next contract negotiation is going to be awesome. Dude, we're going to lord this over our bosses. You're going to pay for us.

How about that? Are you guys going to take each other out to lunch? I mean, what will you do now? I've got my eyes on a new vape pen for this man who deserves it. You know what I mean? He deserves it my eyes on a new vape pen for this man who deserves it, okay? You know what I mean? He deserves it. Gold-plated vape pen.

I'm going to find a folded-up newspaper on the ground and go sleep. I haven't slept in like three days, so my way to celebrate will be to get slumber so I don't die. Mommy, why is Daddy always eating gummies? I don't understand it. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, go take a nap and go get your special new vape pen.

Maybe you can get it engraved, who knows. Yes, yes. But congratulations again. I cannot believe this. You guys are the kings. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much.

We did not expect it. I swear I had no idea and I'm over the moon, really, truly. For it to be in this position and for everyone who voted, thank you so much. Seriously. Luke, I don't know how to quantify what that means. Look, I'm not going to try to act like we just won an Oscar and got slapped by Will Smith. I mean, these awards, again, they're

only as big as you make it in your own mind. But this was a panel of experts that saw something. I think what helped us, Luke, is we found out that the combat sports category was the most voted category in this entire podcast awards. But dude, we've been out

like Stu Gatz's NFL podcast and everything on the ringer. Dude, like, what do you say, Luke? How do you even, I mean, wow. I don i don't know i mean that's the thing too it's like all the fans voted for us to get the combat sports one which is great you know but this one to get the sports one that was that small panel of all of the industry media figures from facebook and sky and everything else and then they all voted among all of the sports winners and decided that we were the ones that should win. That's like, yeah, man. I'm used to most of the projects in my life being widely ignored

by audiences whose attention I covet, including but not limited to members of my family. But I don't know. MK works, dude. MK works. It just works. It works the way it's supposed to i don't have to fight for the things that i want they just come a lot more naturally and so um i'm pretty grateful for it man i am happy they edited out the part where she said how do you plan to reveal this to your audience and i was like full frontal nudity, hopefully. And she was like. BC literally told this woman full frontal nudity. I was just like, I mean, I don't know what we're doing.

I didn't even know who she was at that moment. I feel bad in hindsight. But thank you to the Sports Podcast Award group. Thank you to everyone. Thank you. We don't need to belabor this. We can only, you know, we can only Marilyn Manson ourselves. I do want to make a point because I couldn't. For so i couldn't i couldn't leave on a south uh on a high note if

it was my job i have to leave on a sour note so i posted those two stories on my instagram feed yesterday the one of the uh winning the first one and the one of the the one that the uh donks made for us uh at mulca for the two awards, right? And I posted both of them. You can see who saw your stories. So I looked. Not only did my brother and sister and dad see all three of them and not say anything to me, I wanted to point out,

you can actually see now who likes your stories. They give a heart or whatever. The row of hearts stops, and then the first three names are my family oh boy family members they saw it i didn't i didn't even get i didn't get a call or text i didn't even get the heart emoji so i really have to think i really have to thank you and the audience because i'm dead serious if it wasn't for you guys no one in my life would really care dad i want to take you for granted.

You know, I mean, sorry, Luke, but I'll say this. Look, MK is your family now. And wow. Thank you, folks. That was topic one. But we're not going to live this down anytime soon. Our arrogance, our big headedness. It's only getting bigger, Luke.

But hopefully we can give back even more to the fans, more opportunities, more access. It's growing. It's growing. Dude, you know luke if you're coming on right we are bro we are although i'll say this we'll see exactly how big this award is when it comes time to renegotiate that's when we'll really know that's when we'll get to see the real value you know yeah they're like sports podcast awards never heard of it congratulations though guys all right uh luke topic number two on this weird barren day in terms of combat sports news is also

a pat on our own back in a way, but there's some news to react to. As many people know, in fact, I think 120,000 of them, Luke, we visited Gilbert Doreno Burns last week outside of Fort Lauderdale there at Sanford MMA. It's going to be April 9th, a little bit more than a week from today when he takes on Hamzat Chemaev at UFC 273. But Luke, there are a few different categories that made that interview so compelling. Obviously, it was Gilbert's ability to be so real with us and raw, but there's some interesting things that he's doing and talking about ahead of this fight

with Hamzat and Luke as we know for both guys there's a high risk high reward here there is a a a catapult right back into the top of the line of the title picture with a win most likely for both maybe you can argue Chamayev goes directly there given how high his hype is but Gilbert Burns off the loss to Chamayev uh I'm Burns off the loss to Kamaru Usman and then coming back and beating Wonderboy Thompson. Look, he's going to be 36 soon. He's trying to double down. Dare to be great.

Get back there. Luke, before we throw to some sound, I want to ask you this, though, okay? Because we brought up Kamaru Usman, and I think a great part of that interview, which we're going to throw to soon, is him talking about the loss and all that. But then he goes, oh, yeah up Kamaru Usman. And I think a great part of that interview, which we're going to throw to soon, is him talking about the loss and all that. But then he goes, oh yeah, Kamaru,

he was here earlier today. And our staff at CBS Sports got some great video of the two of them sparring. And I think that made a lot of people go, oh really? Like they're still former teammates, but still good friends. And Kamaru's still doing it.

Luke, is there any cynical side of you that's saying okay i'm sure kamaru is a great guy i'm sure he likes to help out his boy but maybe he wants to train up his boy gilbert to beat this this irresistible force that's hamza chamayev so that maybe he doesn't have to meet him at the end of the day do you subscribe at all to that i mean maybe a little bit maybe a little bit I think it would make yes it would obviously make uh Kamaru's job in life a little bit easier if Gilbert did the dirty work for him probably does I mean humans have a selfish motivation no matter how altruistic they try to be at times and so that probably does play a role. But I also think that like what might like here's what you have to ask yourself.

If Gilbert was fighting somebody who wasn't a threat to Kamaru, would Kamaru still help? And I have a feeling that he would. I have a feeling that what really is driving this is maybe a little bit of like help me out here. Scratch my back. I'll scratch yours. But also that I think he probably wanted to make sure that he and Gilbert were, if not back to what they were before, back to a better place than what they were when they fought as adversaries.

Having some kind of normalcy there. I think, you know, certainly Gilbert 35 is a little bit older than Kamara. I'm not sure how old Kamara was, 33, 34, something like that. But, you know, both of them are in pretty similar life positions. They're not too far apart and so i i genuinely believe that he wanted to not write a wrong but get back a little of what the relationship had before fighting got in the way of it so maybe a little column a little column b but not strictly column a all right i want to go backwards before we go forward so head up

heads up to long island luke i want to throw to the kamaru video first if that's possible but we sat down with gilbert and a big part of him being so real was us asking us what went wrong in the kamaru fight and what he learned about that that could help fuel this turnaround which started with wonder boy thompson and now comes directly into hamza chamayev let's hear what he had to say what happened in your eyes yeah walk us through in your mind what went right, what went wrong. I was very emotional going to the fight, to be honest, in the first thing. That was the first mistake. Like you wanted to get at Kamaru, or you were like,

you didn't know how you were going to feel about it? I didn't know how I was going to feel it, how I was going to feel about it. But he said something on the pre-fight that got to my head a little bit. And then I was so mad that he got to my head. What was it? Can you tell us? Yeah, he said something like, I think Brett Okamoto asking, hey, so you guys trained together so many times.

So the coach saw that training, the training partner saw that training. They know who's going to win. And then he said, yeah that training. They know who's going to win. And then he said, yeah, for sure they know who's going to win. And then I was like, oh, you'll see who's going to win. And that, on the beginning, that put a fire on me that I thought was good, but wasn't good. That motivation comes from the anger, comes from the other place. A lot of people say anger is good. good yeah it's good whenever you control it but whenever the first start i want

to get to him you know and then i did but whenever i got and i landed that hand most of the times i'm very comfortable throwing seeing you going down thinking next one maybe one step back and keep that combination. Whenever I throw the right-handed, I saw the other hand was just, I saw was a lot of angry on it. And I felt that, oh, shit, I'm like, I got to calm down. But then I was, the anger just kind of took over a little bit. And then I was very emotional. Look, that's an honest, wise reaction to something right there.

Incredibly wise wise incredibly honest and i thought i i had i think we walked away that interview being like wow dude gilbert was like super introspective but the truth of it is to get to the place that he wants to go right because he went and tasted the top and he fell short he had a couple moments of excitement but he did fall short he was not going to get back there again or defeat anyone of that level unless he understood what had gone wrong the first time. And that sounds kind of obvious, but it's the process of figuring out

what went wrong and why it went wrong. It's not so much what happened in the training room, as you can see, although certainly getting better overall will improve his chances, but getting a mindset through sports psychology, through therapy, quite honestly, that was a... Remember how Burns broke down into tears after that loss in the cage?

Clearly, that was a devastating moment in his professional life, but that bleeds over into your personal life as well. And so I think he had to find a way to get right, make peace with it, and allow himself the space and the launch pad he needs to go once more into the breach. We'll see what happens at UFC 273, but at least in terms of doing the leg work, it appears like he's done it. Yeah. He went on to break down, like you mentioned, getting the sports psychologist and really going after it there. And Luke, it's like, he's so humble, so real, but yet, you know, he's a savage in the cage. He's the real deal. But I just love the,

the, the, the honesty and the maturity to, to go, you know, I'm not done, but something was off there. Let me dig deep. I mean, look, look, I go to therapy. It's not easy. It's not easy to dig in and figure out, you know, what you did wrong. And it's like, damn, he came so close in that first round to, to, you know, putting it on Kamara and he dropped him and he hurt him. But, but like he said, it was fueled off the wrong emotion. He wants to be in that state of flow, obviously, where he can be level-headed and relaxed. And he wasn't in there in that. So to be able to identify that early enough, where you still have a window in your career to, to make another run is so smart. But look, you know, I heard a little bit of your live chat yesterday and you had a good little breakdown of breakdown of how people miss out a lot when trying to characterize a fighter's

true prime. And sometimes, you know, they categorize it too early or too late. And I think, you know, we tend to think of a fighter's physical prime as usually somewhere around 26 to 27 through like, let's say 33 to 34. But Luke, I think Gilbert Burns is in a different kind of prime right now, where is he the same at 35 and a half or three quarters physically as he was earlier? No, but you're seeing the wisdom and the job experience and the trial and error and everything that comes with, you know, juggling wins and losses. And this is obviously something that works in the fight game, but it's also a mirror image of how we navigate our lives and the lessons that if you

don't learn them, you're going to keep repeating them. I have so much respect for who he is right now. I think sometimes fighters get to this point, 35, 36, where, okay, maybe they're only 70% physically of what they were, but that increase of knowledge and experience and efficiency can make them even more dangerous than before yes it's very possible that there's a trade-off between athletic potential given age but the trade-off comes with the sort of sage understanding of themselves of the process of the opponent of all the things that are demanded of them so it's a it's a loss of some athletic ability but it's a net gain overall in fighting ability by virtue of some of those other things and he might be in a similar kind of place i mean it's one thing about therapy

i've been in you know this will come as no surprise to the audience i've had various moments in my life where i'm not in therapy now but i have for other periods. And it's not just that you want to confront what has gone wrong in your life. By itself, that is one step, and frankly, a very important step of that process. But you would not believe how many times people, fighters, whoever is engaged in some kind of reflective journey will misdiagnose the problem. That's why you want to talk to an expert. That's why you want to have someone to bounce your ideas about what had gone wrong off of them and to get some better guidance. And sometimes that guidance, and I will say this, BC, wouldn't you agree, Burns didn't tell us everything that the sports psychologist told him.

Why would he? However, he did seem to indicate that at several times that it was very uncomfortable to hear and very difficult for him to accept. And it took him a little while to accept that whatever was told to him about the truth was something that he had to listen to. But it sounds like he came around and he did. And again, does that mean he'll beat Hamzat? I don't know. But what it does mean is that he has put himself in the best position to do so and to not fall completely apart in the event that he goes poorly

or to get too far out in front of his skis in the event that it goes right. It's a very middle ground approach that I think is very grounded in a clear understanding of reality. It was refreshing to hear him share that. I saw some people respond and go, oh, this means he's going to lose. He's, he's, you know, he's not as solid as he needs to be. No, I think he's showing you that, that it's a journey. It's a constant journey. And, and I think he's mentally at least where he needs to be to put his best foot forward. So I give him that credit and Luke, a lot of people liked that refreshing nature of it.

And, uh, you know, look, did we set him up to do that? Maybe you could say that, but we also got very lucky that he was willing. We are in a combat sports journalism era where it's click, man. It's click. It's people trying to entrap fighters into saying things that will move product. And, you know, while that's not our upfront goal, like some of our compatriots in this game, Luke, you and I are still going in there trying to get the soundbite that people are going to go, oh shit, you know,

and they're going to click on it and we're all going to benefit from it. I don't, you know, we're lucky this is getting big traffic, maybe because it was well shot and so real. But even if, you know, 1000 people watch this, even if we got boxing traffic on this video, Luke, I would be very happy that we got what we got because you don't hear this enough. I think, I think a lot of these athletes and I'm not trying to call

them these athletes as if I'm, you know, saying they're doing it wrong. They are in a position, Luke, of, of, of, of being criticized of, of in such a dangerous job where the, where the mental stress is so high and, and, you know, but a lot of them are protecting what's really going on on the inside, have those answers ready to go that they give to every interview. I mean, it's hard to break through that crust here. Maybe it was right place, right time with Gilbert, but I think it's someone who's also willing to show that there's a real person underneath that. And I hope we see more like this, Luke, whether it's us doing the interviewing or whether it's anyone else,

I hope we see more honesty like this. Yeah. And I'll say this too. If Hamza Shamayev beats this version of Gilbert, you know, you got to take your hat off to that guy because this dude is going to be ready. He's going to be prepared.

He's going to understand what least, you know, his tasks are. And he is in a very good position to to get them to uh be made real i saw by the way the odds are only increasing in hamzat's favor he's up to abc ready for this he's up to a minus 600 and again i don't know what's going to happen at ufc 273 but i'll just say this dude i feel like that's a little bit off at least a little bit and again if hamzat can beat version of Gilbert Burns you you know yes you absolutely can give him a title shot because this

will be as thorough a test as any contender could pass and now like like you always hedge and say and it's right you know sometimes these odds can be this wide because they're trying to bring in money on the other side and maybe all the early money was you know right in the buzz of Hamza it's probably true obviously Gilbert has a much better chance realistically than those odds say, but Luke next week, we're going to break down X's and O's go a little bit deeper on the storylines. But one of those storylines that got talked about a couple other media sites wrote about it. And we asked Gilbert about it. It's how Gilbert is preparing to deal with that unique skill set that Hamzat brings. We don't know how good or great Hamzat could be, but what we've seen in that short sample

is incredible. And it's grapple heavy. It's submissions. It's aggressiveness. It's so much. Here's a little secret on the inside to how Gilbert Burns is preparing to deal with that. False. You're bringing in some super top secret Russian grapplers

and you're not disclosing the names. They might be here. They might be hiding behind the pads over there. That was at their request, correct? They requested to remain anonymous. So what is not in your game completely that you're hoping this add to this training camp does to prepare you to defeat Shumaya?

A couple of things that they put on my game, especially the cage control. And a lot of things too, the way I see is I need to get a long guy A couple things that they put on my game, especially the cage control. And another thing, too, the way I see it is I need to get a long guy, a wrestler, like not a wrestler, not an American wrestler, but a Russian wrestler with a Russian system, like trying to take me down, hold on to my legs, control, long. So the way I see it, I need to be in that position a couple times to get comfortable even if it's a bad position but I need to feel that. Many times in my training

camp and then start getting the answers. Sometimes first time I didn't get the answer like man I feel very uncomfortable and then I was kind of getting better into that, seeing, visualizing, seeing the position, studying and that's what I need for these guys. Like, especially nowadays, you know, I sport many times. I did, I grapple many times. So now what I want to see when I do have a fight coming up, I want to get as close as I can to what I'm facing. If I'm facing freaking Neil Magny, I'm going to bring a tall,

if we don't have him here, Sample, I'm going to bring a tall guy, lanky, moving good, good boxing, good takedowns. If I'm fighting Sean Brady, I want to bring a small guy, very strong, like trying to control me. A lot of tattoos.

Luke, let's get into this. why is this so secretive i i like the idea of okay hamzat is doing something a little bit different a little bit new maybe not new but but you know he's executing his grappling at a such a high level that gilbert trying to counter train that is very smart why are we not finding out who these guys are? I think there's probably, well, I'm going to guess because he wouldn't even tell us. We asked even off the record and when there was no answer to be had. So I don't know. My guess is going to be one. If you know who those people are, they might have a more famous system that could also be picked up on.

In other words, oh, I hired this coach. Everyone knows what it means to hire this coach, what kinds of things you're going to be working on. So in that sense, it takes a little bit of the mystery out of what he's referencing. So that could be one. The other one could be, and I saw someone else introduce this, so it's not my idea, but I didn't think of it at first, and then I saw it, and I was like, oh, it could be. Hamzat Shemayev is Chechen. And it looks like Ramzan Kadyrov, who is involved with this Russian invasion into Ukraine,

along with Vladimir Putin's forces, it looks like he had a bit of a falling out with Habib or is no longer interested in him and is very interested in Hamzat Shumayev. And again, these are all relative things. I don't really know. And I don't know exactly to what extent it's mutual between Shumayev and Kadyrov. He might just be going along with it because he has to, I have no idea. But the point I'm trying to make here is, um, I wonder if those guys live in Russia, might be concerned about their safety, helping a Brazilian to beat the favored son uh not favorite son but a a fighter who was well admired by a basically a warlord and more than that a dictator um could be for

self-preservation reasons on top of it that sounds conspiratorial but look at the political status of where we're at and also let's not forget when chamayev uh had that long break with back-to-back covid he publicly came out and kind of retired because he didn't think he would physically recover and it was could die could how am i saying it could be right kadirov who came out was like no no no he's not he's he's fine you'll be back like remember that luke he was just like just dismissed anything physical and was like, so it made you believe if you're going to go the conspiracy route that there's a lot of money tied into Jemai of success.

True or false, right? Yes, true. So I wonder if it's more non-Chechen Russian based guys, like you say, who don't want the PR issue or worse. I mean, Luke, I don't know. We don't know who it is. To speculate would just be speculation. I do know Shavkat Rachmaninoff is in that camp.

I do know Khabib has the same agent as, you know, manager as Burns. You know, I jokingly said, hey, maybe it was Khabib and Fedor. Luke, I don't know who it is. You can connect any dots you want, but he has an opportunity, meaning Gilbert Burns, if he made the right two calls to these two guys to get people that really know what they're doing on the ground, does that change your idea of what Gilbert Burns' chances are if, let's say, and let's just say, who knows, if he's training with Habib right now for this? I don't know, but what if, Luke? Yeah, again, could be.

It could be Habib and Islam for all we know. I mean, I don't know. But I'll say this. I actually think it improves Gilbert's chances to a degree. I mean, the level of specificity to get a certain kind of system with a certain kind of athlete that even mirrors the body type of Chermayev, it's hard to look at that and think that can only benefit his chances. How much is certainly debatable, but it doesn't, yeah,

that's got to help. It probably got to help a lot. The one thing I think that is still working against Burns is that Chermayev has big power, big power, and we know his knockout power carries up to middleweight. Gilbert is not a lightweight anymore. He told us he could still make 155. Like if he was doing bodybuilding or something, he could make it, hit the scale, and then rehydrate. But he couldn't fight on it anymore. So there is a real difference in ability there. That's one thing that Habib, not that he had no power in terms of his ground-to-pound.

But Hamzat appears to be able to thump in a way that is a little bit different. So what I would say is, in terms of the positions and the method and mode and progression of ground attacks, I do think that's going to help Burns a ton. The thing that he's still up against is a guy who is a hammer, who has knockout power, a weight class above gilbert has even fought that threat is very much undiminished absolutely and just so people don't dead wrong me i obviously understand rakmanov the name i mentioned is from uzbekistan but i also know people no i think he's kazakh i think he's kazakhstan right but he was born in uzbekistan but i get that people loop in all

former russian territory sometimes as russians That's why I'm just opening up the full spectrum of possibility. But hey, great chat with Gilbert. If you haven't checked it out yet, we encourage you to do that. YouTube.com slash Morning Combat. So much more if you're new to our show beyond our three live shows every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11 a.m. Eastern here on YouTube. We got interviews. We got breakdowns. We got Luke's extra credit. We've got post-fight live analysis after the big ones as well. So check that out. Luke, one more interview I want to throw, too.

Look, I don't expect this to get a ton of traffic giving our fan base, and it won't. But I think it was important. Derek James is one of the top boxing trainers in the world today. He's a former pro fighter. Which interview did better, the Gilbert interview or the Derek James interview? Yeah, you had a lot of fun over text with me. I like Derek James. It's a good interview.

It's a good interview. It is, and he's very, very well spoken into the craft with the mindset because he was a former fighter himself, didn't have a large decorated career, but he gets it, and Luke, he's got Errol Spence Jr. and Jermell Charlo, two of the top 15, 20 pound-for-pound fighters in the world that are both going to have big-time unification and or undisputed championship bouts coming up. So I encourage people to check it out just to talk with,

just to hear from Derek about Errol Spence coming back from retina surgery ahead of this or your Dennis Ugas Showtime pay-per-view. It's going to be April 16th, Arlington, Texas. Luke, you and I will be there. Can't wait for that. And then obviously not too long after, May 14th, Carson, California. Yes. The old hub, StubHub Center, Dignity Health Sports Park.

It's going to be the rematch of Jermell Charlo versus Brian Castagno for all four junior middleweight titles. Luke, I hope you and I end up there as well. By the way, I've got to say very quickly, there's a couple of venues that are like big boxing venues that are not necessarily MMA venues. That's one of them, and I've actually never been to that one. So for me, a bit of a bucket list to go to that event

and see some good boxing there. So if Laurel Ranallo calls it the Punch Bowl, Ray Flores always called it the War Grounds. If you don't know about this, it's a, it's in Carson, California. So it's right next to the soccer stadium, right? Where the LA galaxy play. And it's, it's a tennis arena dug into the ground and it used, it's been called the home Depot center. It's been called many things, StubHub center, but there was a stretch in the two thousands in the decade that followed that just it's one action fight after another, there's something in the water there or in the air.

It's the Mexican-American fan base that loves fighting, but all the fans are sitting up in this tennis arena looking down at the ring. And dude, from Marquez versus Vasquez two and three to Provodnikov versus Tim Bradley to, you could, you know, Matisse versus, versus what's his name? John Molina. I mean, look, there's been war after war there. I expect this rematch to be a war because by the way,

Brian Castaño now saying they robbed me the first time I'm going to knock Jermel out and leave no doubt. So excited for both. Why am I throwing to Derek James today? Two quickies here, Luke. Um, Jermel Charlo has long said he would never fight Errol Spence. Spence at 147, right? Charlo at 154 because they're teammates. They're brothers. Spence in the last month came out in a BoxingScene.com story and said, you know, I'd fight Charlo if the money was right, right?

Well, I said, look, let's ask the coach himself. So let's go to Derek James on that topic. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy, consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. You train them both.

Iron sharpens iron. But then I go on boxing scene and Errol Spencer's like, you know, no, I would fight Jermell if the money was right. Jermell had previously said they'd never fight their brothers. When you hear this soap opera-ness, and I know headlines sometimes can change the meaning,

how do you react to seeing that? I mean, this is like my first time hearing that. So, I mean, I don't know about it. I mean, listen, fighters fight. It's like this. What is the issue with best friends or good friends? You're making money together. You know, so that's the thing about it.

This is funny about boxing, right? When you fight somebody, they're your co-worker. Because you can't make the money you make without the opponents you're fighting against. So, when you fight somebody, that're your co-worker. Because you can't make the money you make without the opponents you're fighting against. So, when you fight somebody, that's your co-worker anyway. So, being a guy you know, I don't know how that works when two stablemates fight each other. But, you're just co-workers anyway. I mean, I'm trying to figure out, can you get two paychecks that night? Or do they have to pick which one wants you more?

I mean, there's always some of that element that you don't want to go down if you don't have to as a coach. I don't want to even think about it. Yeah, we don't need to talk about that. That's why I asked the question as a co-worker. I didn't. Luke, that could be a moot point because Jermell Charlo probably going to move up to middleweight eventually I do think Spence eventually goes to 154 though he's long talked about wanting to fight

Canelo one day at a catchweight um we see that a lot in MMA where guys in the same super camp have to fight each other and okay Kamaru and Gilbert are still friends John and Rashad weren't for a while right you know we've, we've seen this happen many times. It's interesting, though. If they became, you know, top three or four pound for pound and they were still in the same weight category and it was one of the biggest fights to make, I mean, they are businessmen, Luke.

You are fighting for legacy. Yeah, I will say something he said kind of stood out to me as interesting, which was, you know, they're basically your co-worker. You can't make the money you're making without this other person. Now, that's not really true for a lot of boxers in a lot of scenarios, but the ones he's talking about, your Charlos and your Spences or whoever, yes, it is very true for them. You just don't ever hear MMA fighters talk like that, ever.

You don't ever hear them have that show of solidarity that we're actually in this together a little bit. I don't know if that's just cultural. I don't know in terms of the boxing versus MMA. I don't know if that's a function of the rules that open up A-level boxers to make a lot more money than it is for MMA fighters. So I can't quite pinpoint the difference. Your guess would be as good as mine, but I can say,

I don't know if I've ever heard an MMA coach or an MMA fighter say what Derek James says in that clip. And that speaks volumes about what it's debatable. Yeah. You don't see this often in boxing. Cause there's not as many like super teams, like there is an MMA. So it doesn't come up. I remember when Freddie Roach started training Miguel Cotto uh him Miguel and Pacquiao kind of all shot down the idea of Pacquiao and Cotto rematching because they're all in the same family although Luke just a couple years ago Danny Jacobs and Machi Silecki uh were

in the same camp and they fought each other and and uh and the trainer uh Andre Rozier stayed with Jacobs who's his who's his nephew for that one fight. And they got it. So it happens, but it's, it's, it's an interesting topic, uh, to tease upon nonetheless. Um, yeah, I mean, if the, if the money was right, would they do it? I don't know. Probably it'd be a great fight though. Uh, Luke, one more thing with Derek James, and there's much more legitimate things to hear about if you want to check out that interview, but, uh, Luke, there's things that I James, and there's much more legitimate things to hear about if you want to check out that interview. But, Luke, there's things that I get stuck on. We all do.

And I bring it up in interviews all the time because I want to know the truth. And sometimes as media members, we get a little caught up on the he said, she said, or who kissed who. And maybe we're not supposed to know about it, right? Like, who really won that Paulie Malignaggi-Conor McGregor sparring match, Luke? Will we ever know? I don't know, right? Yeah. But here's what happened.

Here's what I know. When Errol Spence first turned pro, 2012, kind of unknown, although he had a big amateur career, he was brought in by Floyd Mayweather in the Miguel Cotto fight camp in Las Vegas to spar. Not many reports came out of that from people that were there, but there was always sort of that rumor that I think Spence did very good as a young fighter against Floyd. And some people always said, well, maybe that's why Floyd at the end

of his career avoided any talk of fighting Spence. And from the very beginning came out, put his arm around him, was like, Spence is going to be the next big thing. But Luke, I didn't want to let sleeping dogs lie because I once heard an interview with Kenny Porter, the trainer and father of Sean Porter, who was in the gym that day. It was about five years ago. And he tells a story of young Spence being told by Floyd after the sparring got a little bit too heated to get out of the ring. And Spence is like, no, I'm not getting out of the ring.

I'm staying here. And Luke, I heard that they went at it. Now I've interviewed Errol Spence, you know, 15 times in the last six, seven years. I ask him every interview and he don't give much. So I thought, hey, here's Derek James. He's close. Maybe he'll tell me. Let's see what he said. That didn't go on his pro ledger that i always try to ask him for extra details about nobody wants to talk about the sparring session with floyd mayweather from 2012 when a young arrow went in there ahead of that koto fight and may or may not have put it on floyd sean porter never tells me the truth kenny porter always kind of sniffs around do you know the story that it did a did an early Errol stand in there and say,

no, Floyd, I'm not leaving this ring. Let's do this thing. Well, I won't. Because I can only go by what was told to me by other people. And they just said, you know, he stood his ground and he did what he was supposed to do. I mean, he's a gentleman's sport. And from a gentleman's perspective,

gentlemen don't talk about what happened behind closed doors. Luke, you may ask yourself, BC, why does that matter? Who cares? It's sparring. But you gotta understand, Floyd was unbeaten, right? 50-0. Largely untouched in these fights. And Floyd

always had to deal with the fact that there was this sparring video around 2001, 2002, when he took on former champion Paul Spadafora, who was in shape, ready for a fight. Floyd wasn't. They sparred. The video leaked out. And you could argue after watching that Spadafora kind of got the better of Floyd. And for years, we always made jokes where Floyd's unbeaten, except for that sparring matchup with Spadafora look I just hear enough smoke here from this well I think there's fire I think young Spence put it on him you don't care do you I don't know I actually I think it's kind of interesting and the fact that people talk about the way that they do rather than just dismissing it outright is tells you all you probably need to know the only thing that I would caution is is it possible that Errol Spence won the sparring session? Not a doubt in my mind. Does that mean at that time he was a better boxer than

Floyd? No, it doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't mean anything like that. So yes, you can win in sparring, but I got to be clear about this. The point of sparring is not necessarily to win. So like when you go and you spar with someone, if're like oh i won the sparring session it's like bitch i wasn't trying to win i was trying to work on parts of my game that i need to work on to develop to get to the next place i want to go which means in many cases you could end up doing poorly but that doesn't mean you would end up doing poorly in the fight because maybe you're trying things that you wouldn't necessarily try you have a focus on a certain amount of attacks you wouldn't necessarily do in a fight you You just want it for the sparring. There's lots of ways.

It doesn't mean a whole lot. Other than do I think that Errol Spence may have won that sparring session? Yes, but you're not supposed to win sparring. Maybe I'll end up like Geraldo and I'll do a special on Al Capone's vault and it'll be empty, Luke. But one day I'm going to get down to the truth on that one. And real quick, Luke, speaking of teammates fighting each other or family, do you remember when De La Hoya fought Mayweather in 2007, my wedding night, the, at the time, the biggest pay-per-view of all time. Don't forget that Oscar's trainer at that time was Floyd

Mayweather senior and him and Floyd were button heads. He wanted to train Oscar to beat his son, but Oscar's like, this is too weird. I got to bring in Freddie Roach. That I don't think we would have ever seen something like that at the highest level where a dad is training against his son and they don't like each other like that would have been wild right that is yeah that is truly bizarre i mean and every time everyone's like oh i'd love to see brother versus brother dude i saw brother versus brother with phoenix jones and carlos ford or it's terrible no i don't want any part of that no that floyd and floyd senior and oscar thing would be kind of like if your dad started tweeting out like mma hour links right

oh come on you could laugh at that don't don't do that i'm laughing what do you want me to do don't hassle off me again come on all right i'm laughing i'm i'm laughing all right two quick ones to go here uh luke last night there was actually a pretty big boxing press conference taking place in Australia, also in Los Angeles. So here's the deal. The lightweight undisputed championship fight is set. We know George Kambosis Jr., who has three of the four belts, something four of the four belts given boxing chicanery.

After upsetting Teofimo Lopez, he's going fight devin haney the wbc champion they announced at the press conference yesterday luke it's going to be saturday night july 4th that's of course july 5th in australia and it's going to air live on espn from marvel stadium and they're going to try to beat the boxing australian record there that jeff horn and manny pacquiao did about five years ago when they did 50,000 spectators. So this is a big event and let's not forget the details. Devin Haney claims he took less money, like I told you the other day, Shakur Stevenson for the Oscar Valdez fight, took less money just to get this opportunity. They signed a two fight deal. If Haney wins, there's an automatic rematch and there's rumors that there's an option for the winner to face Lomachenko on pay-per-view.

Shout out to Lou DiBella and Bob Arum, rival promoters, coming together to sign Haney and make this happen. Here's a little sound from it getting a little chippy yesterday at the Lou DiBella press conference. I'm not a kid, so you can stop calling me a kid. I'm a man, and I will show him that in the ring. Respect me as a man. And if he doesn't want to respect me as a man, I'll gain the respect in the ring. And second of all, he could say that he chose me,

but that's not the truth. He was forced into this fight. He did not want to fight me. And up until today, he did not want to sign a contract up until today. So he can say what he want to say. He did not choose me. He was forced into it. You were chosen, boy.

You were chosen. Can you repeat the question for me again? No, I wasn't chosen. You were chosen. He was forced. You were forced. You didn't want this fight. You didn't want this fight.

I'll take the same deal as Lama does. I'll take the same deal as Lama.. I'll take the same deal as Lama. Yeah, you're on a different broadcast. And what did I do? You're on a different broadcast. You're on a different broadcast. And what did I do? That's right.

Exactly. That's right. Exactly, because I knew. Because I knew I could beat you. Show me June 5th. I trusted my skills so much that I knew. No matter what, I'd fight you anywhere, wherever. I'd fight you in your backyard if I had to,

because I know that I'm going to beat you. And you'll see June 5th. I'll be waiting. June 5th. Okay, Luke, this fires me the hell up. It's a huge fight. It's an important one. Dude, we have to realize that for as broken as the boxing system is, we're seeing one undisputed

championship fight after another i mean these guys cross the street to make this happen haney taking less money this is what we need in this sort of still broken political structural error era excuse me um dude campos has got big nuts for a guy that's going to be a massive underdog in this fight dude i gotta tell you you i mean if you we we poo-pooed any chance cambosis had of winning then he goes out there and wins it was a tough fight in the end but he gets it done cleanly then he does everything you want from him to do like to absolutely took advantage of that one moment in time to broadcast himself to the boxing world got himself a big fight in Australia and did not take his foot off the gas even a little bit took belts from Lopez and now is looking to take them all the rest of them anyway from from Devin Haney dude you I mean okay you know yes the fights in his home territory, but he fucking earned it by everything he did.

And it wasn't like he punked out and looked for some bullshit fight. Now with this newfound fame, he went right back into the fire. And maybe you like his chances to beat Haney, maybe you don't, but anybody is going to respect Haney's opportunity here, Haney's chances, Haney's skill himself.

In fact, I might even favor Haney, but I'm just pointing out dude you have got to love everything about George Kambosis and how he has conducted himself you get a very narrow window BC and you know this for that lightning to strike and that dude to borrow the term has been riding the lightning since he won against uh against Teofimo Lopez good for him dude really good for him I haven't seen early odds but but I'm going to guess that Haney's going to be a big favorite because at least on paper, the boxing ability... Big favorite boxing-wise or big favorite MMA odds-wise?

When you say big favorite, what do you mean? I think... Look, this is a great fight on paper. We can't forget that Haney against Jorge Linares was dominating that fight and then got hurt and then was going in the other direction, right? So there is an opening for George Kambosis to once again upset the apple cart by just being aggressive and being a badass. And everything you said about him is true. He's not looking

to defend against nobodies and make money. He went to every big name, Tank, Ryan Garcia, Loma, now Haney and said, you know, what's my biggest opportunity? I want to defend these belts. So shout out to him. But I think given Devin Haney's completely well-rounded skill set, do we have some questions about his chin? Some, as I just mentioned, he's going to be a big favorite, Luke. I think he's going to be minus 500 even. But I think it's going to,

has the potential to be a close fight if Kambosis can do the same things he did against Teofimo, which is not be afraid to take on damage and get inside and make it a fight. I can't wait for this. I mean, Australia is going to be rocking, Luke. They're going to have the pots of coffee on.

They're going to be going nuts. I think even our Aussie MMA fans are going to be tuned into this one. Yeah, dude, if you're an Aussie MMA fan, how do you not tune into this? I mean, I don't know exactly what kind of fight is going to be like. Kambosis is probably going to be a little bit more of a bite down on the mouthpiece type than Haney is. So that could make it interesting. But one of your countrymen just absolutely seized boxing by the back of the neck and asserted himself onto the world stage and then brought a big fight

home. Yeah. You got to watch that just out of respect for what he's doing and to say nothing of the fact that it's relevant and high level and could be very exciting at times as well. So yeah, you please Australia support your guy. I know we're going to on this side of the ocean.

Luke, I just want to close and say um i don't like what i'm seeing out of teofimo lopez i don't know if you've seen the recent interviews he's done but he's still talking about this as a conspiracy i know he felt that he won the decision against cambosis even though it was close i don't think he did i don't think you know a lot of people did and it's fine if you come out of a fight thinking you did better than everybody else thought you did. But he's still out here saying this was a conspiracy from DAZN. Remember who ended up winning the purse bid after Triller forfeited on it? And that can't be true. Because if DAZN somehow executed a conspiracy against him to lose the belt so that Haney could get a chance to fight

for him then this fight would be on DAZN with Eddie Hearn promoting it's not Haney left both DAZN and Eddie Hearn to take this opportunity so Luke to see somebody who I respect and love so much in Teofimo Lopez and I know that that you've enjoyed chatting with him as well and you obviously know his talent dude like this is a bad look look to keep doubling and tripling down on this. Just take the L, rebound, and come back stronger. And do what, though? If you were exactly advising the process, what would you advise as the next step?

I'm not saying you have to go out here and say, yes, he beat me, but it's obvious you could have certain built-in excuses in this fight. He had a legitimate whatever medical condition that was that he had to go to the hospital after. And look, there was a lot of mental circumstances. This fight was delayed multiple times. There was a lot of bad PR with it. Just take the L and said, I had a horrible night at the office.

Maybe I still thought I won, but shout out to Cambosis. I'll give him his respect. Maybe I'll see him down the road if he's still the champion. Enough with this, you know I I'm still unbeaten and they robbed me and it was a it was a network that paid off like come on enough with that bullshit yeah that's again again contrast that contrast that with what Gilbert Burns says about his losses right contrast that and that's maturity it's crazy and like we always we always pumped up Tao for being so mature at a young age and he

was in certain elements, but you're also seeing, you know, that he's not. And, and, you know, I know he's had some, you know, he talked about suicide, talked about a lot of things and I want him to come back and be better. And I think 140 is a better spot for him, but damn, you got to just like Gilbert said about Conor McGregor, get off social media, media get off the whiskey go in the gym and start making it happen and then when you come back let your performance speak right that's that's it that's it luke that's it that's it right there that's the only thing that matters in this world luke the only other topic i want to mention quickly because we forgot and a lot of our fans want us to chat about it what do you think about this fight ufc's putting together Sean Strickland taking on a massive test Alex Pereira um dude I they're

fast tracking him they're fast tracking him which honestly is the right thing to do I want to say something we were defending like people were like oh you should fast track Patty because he's popular I'm like why would you put him on the Alex Pereira track because Alex Pereira is 34 as you know he doesn't have any hardly any time left in to to be able to physically fight the very best. And has this dedicated, amazing background in kickboxing. It doesn't make sense to slow roll him. Either he can do it or he can't. Not time to find out.

Like Mike Chandler. Mike Chandler joined the UFC when he was 34. Time to find out what it's going to be because the clock is basically running out. And Mike knew that as well. So Patty is very much in a different spot, I thought, like slow roll him. And people are like, oh, what you're advocating for is padding of his record. Well, sort of. I mean, I'll be honest.

It's a little bit of that. It's not entirely untrue. But the point being is this. When you slow roll a guy, what you're doing is you're banking on one of two things happening. One, the slow roll process will work. And so by the time they get to the upper tier fighters, there's no hiding available anymore. Or two, they actually can't progress there and you figured it out. Either way, you get your answer, but it's not a forever promise of not fighting difficult guys. It's just a short window where you're not fighting the most difficult fight right away.

Now, to this point about Alex Pereira and Sean Strickland, yeah, they're fast-tracking Pereira. They're fast-tracking him, and that's what they need to do. I mean, Sean Strickland's a very interesting test, right? Because he's pretty battle-tested. He's been in main events. He's been in five-round fights. He's most commonly a striker. He's got really good takedown defense. He doesn't have the same body type in terms of frame or reach that a guy like Pereira does. And he has a very different game too, a little bit more, we'll see what kind of game he employs. I have a feeling he's going to be a little bit more inside box heavy, boxing heavy. So we'll have to see how that goes. But yeah, dude, if you beat, if you're Pereira and

you beat a guy like Strickland, which is, I'm going to say not an easy fight, but relative to, let's say Jack Hermanson, a more winnable fight, right? Because Hermansen is not the striker that Sean Strickland is, but he's definitely a much better grappler who I think, well, he's a much more attentive grappler because obviously Sean Strickland can defend takedowns. What I mean to say is that kind of game against Alex Pereira could prove a little bit more troubling, but you can't say if he beats Sean Strickland, BC, that it's not a quality win. It's a very quality win. It's a super quality win. So they're fast tracking him, but I like it. I don't mind it at all. They're targeting it for July 30th. That'll be UFC two 77, two pay-per-views

in the same month here to start and close for the UFC. And Luke, the best fight odds early line is a minus one seven five for Pereira or potato, how at Pereira, however you want to say it, Luke, plus 150 Strickland as the underdog. Luke, I want to ask you this because originally we had heard that maybe we're going to get out of Sonia Kananir International Fight Week. Then we were talking to our colleague,

CBS Sports' Brandon White. She's like, no, I'm thinking that could be end of July. Luke, this might be, if we're going to put Strickland Pereira on that card, it would make sense that Adesanya Kananir was the main event, not just for the fact that you could fill in someone last minute if it falls apart, but that

you may be showcasing the winner of that fight as the next or a soon Adesanya opponent, right? Yeah, UFC doesn't always like to have, or hardly at all, ever like to have the winner of a fight face off against someone else in the cage after the whole you know gsp i'm not impressed with your performance and then whatever else other issues they've had george george nice george yeah but

but putting them on the same card to your point would be you know it sends a similar kind of message about who's next and who's up and who's down so it'll just be weird though if cannonier wins and then perera wins and it's like perera's down. So it'll just be weird though, if Cannoneer wins and then Pereira wins and it's like Pereira versus Cannoneer for the middleweight title, you kind of miss out on that other opportunity. But that's the other point too, BC, is, you know, listen,

whether it's a tournament, like I remember when Strikeforce did the heavyweight grand prix and they kind of put Fedor and Overeem a little bit far apart so that they would meet further down in the tournament. And then you're like, dude, just make the fucking fight

because you don't know if they're going to get to that point. Sure enough, through injury and everything else they weren't able to losses they weren't able to make that fight you were like do you lost out on the fight at the time that everyone wanted so while they're not just going ahead and just giving Pereira a title shot giving him Sean Strickland is something kind of in that vein and so for those reasons I think it's actually the right call all All right, those are our five topics. Luke, before we transition into our debut here

of DM from Dong's video edition, forgot to say earlier in regards to us winning the best sports podcast overall from the Sports Podcast Award Group, I can't even, but Luke, again, how do you even frame this, right? Today, one spot in London, one spot in Liverpool,

they're putting your boys, BC and LT and MK, on a billboard in two major locations. So here's the information for today. And I believe we're going to put this out on social media as well. Today in London at the M4 on the Chiswick Roundabout. So it's a highway with a video billboard. We're going to be up there between 12 noon, which is now and 1 p.m. And also later between 12 noon our time? No, 12 noon their time.

I think. We're well past that. Oh, okay. Then I could be watching this. Who knows here, Luke? And then between 1400 hours and 1600 hours, the other location is in Liverpool at the M62 near the broad green train station. We'll be up there between 14 and 1500 hours, 19 and 2000 hours. And then also between 21 and 22. Luke, there's a lot of math involved in trying to figure that out. But if our donks,

and we know we got some voracious ones up there in the UK, aggressive as shit, if you guys can take a picture of it, if you guys can do something for us, I don't know, maybe we send them merch, maybe something, Luke, but your boys are going big in the UK, and I'm telling you, Luke, when we do our live show in front of 5,000 fans, it's going to be a shit show. It's going to be great.

We'll give the people who take pictures in front of the billboard the same thing we did for all those five-star reviews that we promised fifty dollars to that we never did oh boy wait can we do that please all right luke i didn't read the questions i didn't watch the videos neither did you but we put a call to action single one yeah we've got some time to fill we normally do dms from donks on monday but we said hey why don't you dm us a video question we'll go a little brendan shob with you right best brains yeah let's be clear we're flatly stealing the idea of this like the yeah you know i hope we're stealing it from that other podcast that claims you took that joke from them too i'd love to steal more from them too right

luke i'd love to because i use the word v you know oh i've never seen someone use the word v other than me it's like well that's because you don't get out very much yeah yeah right uh so here we go it's uh video dms from donks are i don't know if we have an intro or anything like that but there you go hee haw all right yeah we've got mail uh this first one is from a bloke named colin let's see what he's got what's up guys colin here uh so I have two questions for you, which I assume shouldn't be a problem considering this episode is probably mostly just dead air with there being no fights on. Uh, my first one is I wanted to know what you guys' top three to five favorite comedy films are. And then the second one, uh, I'm actually seeing my very first UFC event live when I'm seeing UFC 273.

So I wanted to know if you guys had any recommendations for things to do in Jacksonville, Florida, other than get killed by meth heads or make friends with January 6th Capitol Stormers. Thanks, guys. First of all, Colin, please don't stream and drive. Okay. Thank you very much. But, uh, uh, Luke, let's, let's hit the second one first. I haven't spent much time in Jacksonville. I've driven through, I've driven to Florida a million times. My grandparents used to live in Daytona beach. My parents live there now. So I've, I've made that drive a ton. Uh, Jacksonville, massive city, very pretty. It's still Florida, though, Luke. He wants to know what he should do there.

I don't know, Luke. Well, I'll just use my Florida experience more generally to then say what you should do. Well, here's what I've seen what Floridians like. They love, and not just COVID, but any kind of sexually trans, they love disease down there. So you can go get a communicable disease. That's a big thing you can get. The other thing you can do is floridians i've noticed love to get into american

muscle cars and then speed out onto long highways inadvisably between red lights and then drag race um bc could he go drag racing in his american muscle car in jackson probably it's very probable dude jacksonville is a mass it's actually land-wise, it's a massive city and it is pretty, but I haven't spent a lot of time. You can go to Daily's place that the Khans own that, right? Tony Khan of AEW and

Sean Khan of the Jaguars. Oh, you could also allegedly assault a UFC fighter and then be put on stage by the governor of the state, so that's a thing you could do. That's a fair point. Luke, the spirit of it. Shout out to Colin. Hopefully you'll enjoy yourself at this incredible UFC pay-per-view. You know Dana loves him from Florida.

Dude, if you're Tachi Palace right now, you're like, bro, I think you owe us something right here. We're going to Tachi Palace. Word. Yeah, we're going to be going there a lot. We ain't going back there at all. Lucas, he wants to know our top three to five comedy films. yeah we're gonna be going there a lot we ain't going we ain't going back there at all uh lucas he wants to know our top three to five comedy films so um i'll i'll go first here i think the

funniest movie of all time is half-baked with dave chappelle jim brewer it is the most referenced by me probably only the most referenced by me is the my number two comedy flick which is tommy boy it's the most rewatchable movie of all time, David Spade, Chris Farley. It's got the best one-liners, but Luke, half-baked. Dude, I mean, I cried in the theater. I mean, I was half-baked. I was full-baked watching it.

But I mean, Luke, like howling, crying. I went back to the theater like three, four times to see that, and I never do that. I bought the VHS and probably watched it every single day for like two years luke that's up there obviously you got a classic like caddyshack um i don't really have modern dude it got overplayed but tell me the first time you saw the first austin powers you weren't pissing your pants no i was not pissing my pants oh see we can't hang out we're not alike we can't

hang out i mean my my choice would be for the one that I've gotten the most amount of mileage on over the years is Dumb and Dumber. Dumb and Dumber to me has just been an exquisite work of art, the likes of which has seldom been reproduced. So I'll say Dumb and Dumber is probably my number one. After that, it's a little bit difficult. There's a bunch of good choices, BC. I don't have a... To stay in the Jim Carrey thing, the first Ace Ventura was pretty good, too.

Do you like the Farrelly Brothers movies? Because I got to say, Kingpin might be the most underrated Farrelly Brothers movie of all time. So underrated. So freaking underrated. Love that one. Hey, boy, can you get sick drinking piss

even if it's your own um i mentioned booty call being a sleeper from the 90s i love that one i you know i don't have like a lot of modern comedy classics though luke you know where are you we'll see where are you on like hangover and shit like that i was just gonna say like that's the one that point or old school wedding crap Like those are good, but they're not really my, you know, my window of course is largely the, the early nineties SNL cast breaking out. Right. Like, like Mike Myers is, uh, uh, so I married an ax murderer, Luke. It's not laugh out loud, but it's just so damn like, like smart and crafty, you know,

pants new. Yeah. Head head down. Yeah. Yeah. down yeah yeah um definitely okay billy madison dude probably sucks fuck off and it doesn't hold up well no it first of all it doesn't blow so you can back the hell off it doesn't hold up well now but dude i saw that so many times in the theater in high school and that was everything to me. Happy Gilmore was insane. That says a lot about where you ended up immediately following high school. Happy Gilmore was great.

Dude, you know what? Mr. Deeds is really good. No one wants to talk about that, though, from the Sandler Collection. Big Daddy is an apple. Whoa, what was it? Echo. Also, CB4. CB4 from back in the day.

One of my favorites. Dude, that's a good one. That's a good one. We're all 90s-centric, obviously, here here Luke um I'm probably missing a modern comedy classic but I don't think I've seen modern comedy classic bro Big Daddy Big Daddy's okay Big Daddy's okay I like that Maniche Maniche can they hear you they can hear you right they can hear me man oh yeah dude Big Daddy's good but but it's more of like that's the Sandler movie you can show your girlfriend because they're not going to laugh at Billy Madison, right?

It's not like laugh out loud funny the whole time. It's just a classic movie. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on that. Look, it's very rare that you can get something where you're crying watching it. Like, you're laughing out loud the entire time. I'm telling you, the first Austin Powers was that, Luke. I know it got way lame and got played out, but... Maybe we're just different people looking.

That's fine. Okay. All right. But I'm sure. What are we? Corey, you're younger than us. What are we missing? That's a modern comedy classic.

I don't know, man. We're just talking about it in here. I don't have like, yeah, the hangover. Like Mikey saying the hangover that comes to mind. You said wedding crashers. Oh, stepbrothers. Stepbrothers is pretty good. Stepbrothers is hilarious hilarious the first time.

I mean, it's still hilarious. Luke was saying the other guys, which I haven't seen, but I've heard that's very funny. Wait, no, no. You've got to tell the audience. That's Australian slash Long Island Luke, not me. Australian slash Long Island Luke. Yeah, yeah, please.

Luke Thomas is certainly not like the other guys. Yeah, L-I-L, Long Island Luke. Don't confuse him with the real LT there. And you know, Luke, something that was awesome the movie night, there's something about Mary. Amazing in the theater. Now I cringe looking back. I don't want to see that movie again. You know what I mean?

We have a few of these. Let's move along. Sorry, Luke. I know you've got many things to do. Jobs, awards. This one's from Evan. Let's see what we got here. Hello, Luke and BC huge fan of the show. I'm a donk from Missouri, but I work in Oklahoma. It's terrible. And no, I didn't storm the Capitol on January 6th. My question is if you had to pick one lightweight at any point in history to beat Khabib, who would it be and why thank you there's only one answer to that question

there's only one answer to that question the only person from like a previous you know I guess you could say yeah very the BJ who fought Diego Sanchez that dude that dude when he was with the Marinovich brothers he was in his prime he was at the max of his

physical capability and And even then, I don't know if that guy beats him. Probably not. But, uh, that's, that's the only answer I could even remotely think of. Right.

I'll get to that in a second. You have an aggressive beard. That guy, Evan red beard there. That's a, that's a fucking reckless beard. No, no,

no. See, that's a beard where you're on the run from the law beard. I'm just, I'm on the run from scissors. He's on the run from the popo. All right. Look, it's tough because certainly there's an argument to make of Habib even being the greatest fighter of all time, although you would have, in hindsight, liked to have seen him fight everyone in his era. It just didn't work out that way but yeah prime bj is going to be a problem with the takedown defense i think bj striking still would hold up today um is there someone luke because you know we we tried to hipster argument well hey charles olivera's got some holes but he goes for the finish so aggressively what would that have looked like if it happened in habib's

last fight you know what what do you say about islam mahachev um oh you mean like islam being the best one to potentially defeat habib yeah because it's spider-man meme right and he might have striking sort of but the problem is i think habib is a little bit better a little bit meaner i don't think islam's quite as mean of a of a punisher as habib is and the other part is like habib probably i mean i'm sure they know each other's game but i bet habib knows the inside and outside of islam's game and could neutralize it so for that reason i have a hard time picking him but i know what you're saying like in that sense maybe you know he's the closest okay okay um who are we missing in that era between bj and Habib holding the belt?

There was a time when a lot of people thought Takanori Gomi was the best lightweight in the world. After beating Jens Pulver, and he fucking punished Jens Pulver, there was a time where he was given that nod. Also, back when he was competing as low as 160 or so, Elite XC times, Nick Diaz kind of flirted with that a little bit. Now, I don't think he's the guy to beat. No, he's not. And I think we've learned that prime Tony Ferguson wasn't that guy. But we thought, I thought he was. I thought he was for a while.

Tony Ferguson is another one that's sort of in the end of that list. But, dude, if you didn't live through BJ Penn's prime, I know that like the sadness tour he's been on since then has been a little bit hard to understand and like square with the reality but i can't explain to you that is the first that is the only that was the first time watching a guy where i was like he's the best i've ever seen and you know look i've mismanaged my fluid intake give me like third give me like 45 seconds here this never happened mid-show luke okay can you tell the people something just can you just hold the

court let me just tell you what it was as you have to go pee says we've taken too long on the show fucker so hurry up but if you want to know what would make bj penn a special combination was one he was you know a natural born fighter he was a very good athlete when he was training with the marinoviches they had unusual systems and i don't know if any of them scientifically have held up, but they, whatever they were doing that put BJ in the best physical space, because this guy, when he was headed towards the GSP rematch, and I'm not kidding, or was it, no, it was the Matt Hughes rematch. Excuse me. The Matt Hughes rematch. Remember he had dusted him off the first time he goes, Oh, I'm going to train for the second one just by surfing i'm not doing a

bit all he did was surf for that fight barely trained at all nearly won but didn't um so you know when he was with the marinovich's he was on a regimented program he was eating right he was training right he had the he was the first guy who was basically by his peers for a long while you could not take him down fitch eventually eventually did it, but I was at 170. And he punched like a fucking hammer. He had a great jab. He was training with Freddie Roach with his jab. And for a while in his career,

he would even get hit with big shots and wouldn't get marked up. So run through the list here. He was in shape, natural born fighter, great jab, good striking overall, unbelievable takedown defense, world champion black belt jiu-jitsu, and just had everything was lined up in time. I'll say this, where does he rank all time among lightweights? Separate debate. But at the time when he fought Diego

Sanchez, there was not a doubt, and still remains zero doubt in my mind. There was not another one 55 or at that time, at that moment in time who even came close, not one, not even remotely close. That dude at that moment was unbeatable in that weight class. And there are not many people at any weight class at any time of their life where you look at them and you're like, dad, there's no one who can beat him in this weight class um that's how b that's how good bj was at that time he was unstoppable by any other lightweight but all that fell apart is bc back yeah sorry for that luke you know sometimes that happens you've had explosive diarrhea the second our our show has turned let's move this along dude let's move this along so look again'm really sorry to upset you, but let's go to the next video.

Dude, if you have to take bathroom breaks, we're taking too long. Come on. Wow. This one's from Zelko, Luke. Hey, guys. Z here. Big fan of the show. I have a question for BC.

BC, what's the closest you've ever gotten to being in a fist fight at pickup basketball? Thank you. And Luke, don't you dare make fun of my appearance in any way shape or form thank you old zelko's like luke i'll kill you okay throw that throw that video back up you don't have to give us audio i just want to show or just take a screenshot real quick and throw it back i want to make a point here real quick i won't make fun of his appearance i won't hey could you put more headroom above your head when you shoot a video guy can we see more of your wall for no particular reason thank you this guy's ed he's great zelko

uh unfortunately i have many stories of getting really close to getting in fistfights on the basketball court because the problem is luke and i'm an intense competitor the problem is that i subscribe to the theory that what happens between the lines stays between the lines and not everybody always agrees with that theory but i'd say the closest and here's why i get close to it okay luke okay because i don't let shit go in the midst of competition and conflict but i do it because i've long when i when i got heavy into basketball i think like high school age, like I was behind, I started late. So I was the Rodman guy, the rebounder, the pick setter,

just trying to hang on the court with guys that are better than me. So look, I found a cheat code to do that, but it's a dick move. It's mental warfare. It's, you know, think of, think of what Rod, what Rodman was doing on the bulls against like Carl Malone and Alonzo Mourning, just getting in their head, making them want to throw punches at him. I was that guy, unfortunately. And Luke, sometimes that guy still resurfaces. And two years ago in the adult league I'm in, 35 and over, whatever it is,

a guy I love and I still play with today. You know, Lukeke that code that creed of respecting the call you've played pickup ball right of course yeah i played intramural teams all through all through college dude we always respect the call even if you don't agree look you can respect the call and still clown a guy for a bad foul call right you could be like look i'm gonna give you that call but just know you bailed yourself out and i blocked that clean well there was an out-of-bounds play it off the guy. I saw it went off his shirt as you, and the dude's just like, no, it didn't go off me. And the whole game just went to the other side of the floor as if I

didn't just call it out of bounds. And I'm like, no, you got to respect this call. And the guy's like, no. So Luke, I kind of wouldn't let it go. Even might have stopped the next play, and was just chirping. Why, Luke? Was I offended that I wasn't being respected? Yes. But was I trying to plant mental seeds to try to get a guy who's better than me off of his game? 1,000%.

It ended with him yelling in my face and saying, if your son wasn't here and my son was there watching, he's like, I'd punch you right in the face right now what does that guy do for a living what does he do uh he's a uh he's a judge in court i love that guy by the way i just played with him the other night and he would have kicked my ass like there's no question about it but like like dude that's the thing like when i go against bigger stronger guys they expect that you're just going to yield to them physically. But I go after them physically, and I'll flop. I'll flop to try to get a mental edge.

So sometimes people come at me, Luke. It's a character flaw, but that's my war. That's my battleground, okay? You don't see me slapping people and running, right? I'm nonviolent. But between those lines, Luke, I'll take out your soul. Okay, next one. You know what I always say when it's game point? I always say, guys, don't be afraid to test friendships

because it's between the lines, dude, right? When we're between the lines. For the love of Jesus, we get it. Can you go to the next point? All right, we'll do a BC Live chat after the show, and maybe that'll make you happy, Luke. I mean, we can get divorced right out of our mountaintop right here we don't need to get divorced we just need to move along that's it i'm hoping this is by my boy nooch enoch i'm hoping this is my guy from north carolina

let's throw it if he has long hair it's him let's see it hello luke and brian my name is enoch i'm 20 years old i'm a big fan of the show about to give you guys some love and say that you know that you do have at least one young member of your audience who enjoys the content you guys put out. My question is a bit of a two-parter. The first one is that I find it interesting that a lot of young people my age still aren't huge fans of mixed martial arts or the UFC. I was wondering what your thoughts on why you might think that is. And the second one is if you could give out one fight for someone to watch

that would make them a UFC fan, what fight would you choose? I know that's really broad, but I'm trying to get some more of my friends to watch MMA, so I could really appreciate the help on that. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hey, shout out to Enoch there. That wasn't my boy enoch from north carolina but that's that's another a new one luke why aren't there more younger ufc fans right now well one thing that i talked about actually on yesterday's chat that i had to have a little bit of a uh a awakening about was that i you got you know i was never against the youtube boxing thing

as like some people came out like, this is bad for boxing. And I was like, nah, it's not bad, but I don't think it's that good either. It'll be good for the events that they're on, and then that's it. There'll be no carryover. Turns out there's actually been a fair amount of carryover. Now, it's not clear exactly how far the carryover goes, but broadly speaking, boxing has added more younger fans than MMA in the last five years by a considerable margin,

according to some estimates and some studies that have done. John Nash has been aggressively sharing them. And so it's worth reflecting on what that has meant. And you have to also ask, why would the young people go into boxing? Well, it is a little bit easier to train in terms of the single focus of it. And it's not so hard on the body relative to MMA, also that you know you can control your own destiny it's very very hard to do that with MMA it's very hard to have any kind of um uh control over your own affairs um and so I just think they like that it's a little bit more open spaced in that way but the thing I would say is I used to be that guy who's like oh I'm going to get my friends to watch MMA and then I eventually realized that like I don't care if they like MMA um it did I didn't need that that experience from them now everyone will be different BC but I I would caution people like

at some point you know make an effort try but if it doesn't take that's okay dude you don't your your fandom is your fandom it's nice to share it with people but as you know bc the only thing i share in my life is uh um awards awards yes pain is uh pain really is the only thing i have to share so there you go you offer me your vape pen a lot and i turn you down but that's very nice of you that's true that's true look what fight would you tell this from also from enoch what fight would you tell someone to watch to get into mma luke what do you think about this choice john Jon Jones, Alexander Gustafson won because high skill, back and forth action, title at stake, the best fighter of all time. What do you think about that? I think those are good choices.

I would even go with maybe the Edgar Maynard trilogy a little bit, you know, because how different it kind of looks each time, but how similar it kind of looks each time and how the fight outcome kind of changed over time with Frankie getting better and whatnot. That's a good one to go with. You know, any vicious knockout is great too. I kind of got into it in a different way. I got into it when it was like,

hey, have you seen what this Brazilian guy is doing to all of these other people? And I was like, huh? And then, you know, you go to Blockbuster and got into it when it was like hey have you seen what this brazilian guy is doing to all of these other people i was like huh and then you know you want you go to blockbuster and you rent it you're like so that is such a new or that is such an old experience relative to how new mma has become so i don't really know how to get people through the train that i got in on but that was definitely what it did for me. If they are a fan of violence already, I'd give him Robbie Lala, Roy McDonald. You're damn right.

I would. Okay. That's what I do. These are vicious fights, man. Those are really vicious. Well, that's what the sport is.

It's vicious as shit. Let's go to Mitch. Let's see what he has to say. Mitch. Tom, it's Brian Campbell. Morning combat. Day one fan here.

Uh, my question is, Luke, can you unblock me on Twitter? Is that CM Punk, Luke? That looks a little like Phil Brooks, right? Yeah, yeah. Slightly poor man's version. Yes, I'll unblock him. The producers just send

me his name and I'll unblock him today. Alright, Mitch, It's a victory. Score one for the good guys. This has got to be a segment. It's got to become a segment. Yeah, but in the future, God won't be so magnanimous. I want a little bit of an explanation about what you did, that you understand your crimes.

Yeah. Let's hear from Andy. God bless this american is this legal boys oh my lord horizon let's talk about important things music Lorna Shores into the hellfire is unequivocally the upper bound limits of rock and death metal music of 2021 the way it builds to that final gut-wrenching breakdown at the end is just epic Tell me why I'm dead wrong. And Luke, finally,

a final piece of life advice to share with you. Is that a joke? Is that a joke that the last piece of advice went silent? Oh, that's good. Luke, that's good shit right there. That's a technical difficulties thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I got to say. Yeah. No, never mind. That's fine. Yes, it's fine. It's fine.

It's a very good joke. BC, I've never heard of Lorna Shore, and I'm sure that this man is so high that he might be inventing a band that doesn't even exist. Luke, would you believe me if i told you this guy drives a school bus for a living i love that type of irony like it's got to be true right no you know what all of the school bus drivers i've ever had you want to talk about people that would fail every moral test on earth every time i saw a kid get jumped right off the bus you know what the bus drivers did? La la la la.

I don't see anything. I don't see anything. I'm just going to keep going. Indeed. All right. Two more, Luke. Two more. We don't want to upset you. And thank you, Andy, for that. You live an extraordinary life. Here's Gil. Hey, what's up, Luke and Brian?

This is Gil from New York City. Long time listener. My question is for Luke. It has been well established your love for BBLs. Just wondering if while you're in college, you ever attended mixers with Latin sororities? And if so, was that where your love for BBL started? Or was it due to Edie's check on? Let me know uh it's a great question no i have to tell you that uh i think it was always something that what i always but you know definitely definitely through high school and then the early part of college i thought what i really wanted were southern bells that's what i thought i wanted and then I began to date a few of them and I was like, Oh no, this ain't what I want at all. No, it's funny. He's from New York city because it was actually after college, I moved to New York city and it was like, you know, it was a complete baptism, a change of scenery from Williamsburg, Virginia to Manhattan, New York, where I was like, oh, oh, I've been missing out all this time.

And then you begin to go down to that process. And that was a much more rewarding and enjoyable one. I can't believe you're doing the whole, like, can I be candid with you? Upper bound limits analysis of. He's asking where it came from. All the sororities at william and mary were just full of white people i mean that's all it is right you know so no there was no there was no there was no cross pollination that way it was it wasn't

until after college where i was like you know uh wuga that that sort of thing our guy gill doesn't look like a player luke but i guarantee he crushes a lot, definitely. He does. Did you see how well manicured his beard was? Yes. My man is super slick. I guarantee it. Respect on that.

Do you have a hierarchy of nations in the BBL game, Luke? A little bit, actually, yes. Would you share that or no? Yeah, I'll share that. I would put... I'm going to put as like a top, like your Mount Rushmore. I'll put Colombia, Venezuela.

Don't sleep on Puerto Rico. Don't sleep on Puerto Rico, okay? Puerto Rico's in there as well. And probably Mexico I'd put as your top four. No Cuba there. No Cuba. I don't know enough about... The first Latin girl I ever dated was Cuban.

But I don't know enough about... I just don't have enough exposure to them. So I don't know anything about them that well. But in my experience, all I can have... I'd put tier two... See, Brazil might be tier one as well. I may have to put Brazil in there, but in terms of Spanish-speaking countries,

then after that I'd put Argentina, Costa Rica, something like that, somewhere in that range. I don't know about Ecuador at all or Bolivia. I just prefer like Russia, Ireland, Poland. No,

no. You know what you like? You're like, okay. You're like South Dakota, Mississippi. You look, we all have our things, Luke.

Okay. One more for you. This is Jason. Let's do it. What's going on? L T and B C. My boxer dog, Lennox Lewis. he's sitting here waiting for his bone like a good boy right in front of him i had a quick question about the ufc hall of fame you guys talk about it all the time and i just want to know what are your hardline credentials

what does a fighter have to do a b c and d to get into the u Hall of Fame? Does the accumulation stats like most knockouts, most wins, how many guys you fought on your resume, does that stuff really matter? Or is it just about winning championships and getting title defenses? But all in all, my question is, what are your hard line credentials to be in the UFC Hall of Fame? MK all day, every day. Yo, my favorite part is the dog was about to lick his balls and ass in the middle of that question.

First of all, shout out to Jason's dog, Lennox Lewis, wearing that shirt. He looks like a badass. I love that. That dog was the real MVP of that. Okay, so he didn't specify the actual UFC Hall of Fame or what we would hope a UFC Hall of Fame's credentials would be. If it's the actual Hall of Fame, I think all you've ever had to done is win a championship or be best friends with Dana.

I mean, look, I don't mean to kick Matt Serra when he's down, but he went 11-7, Luke. I mean, come on. But if this was the standards of the baseball and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, being a champion does not, in my mind, if this was the standards of the baseball and the pro football hall of fame, being a champion does not in my mind automatically get you in, but it can definitely like Michael Bisping sway a conversation. I personally think Bisping falls just short. We debated it back and forth, but you get what I'm saying. You said you're not sure if Glover to share is, I think if you look up and down Glover's

resume, I mean, he's got a better argument than, uh, than Bisping for sure. But what's the true Mendoza line here, Luke? on glover's resume i mean he's got a better argument than uh than biz pink for sure but what's the true mendoza line here luke what is the things that separate the haves from the have nots being a champion question you have to ask yourself is being a champion a and i don't mean getting in with like oh he was part of this fight or pioneer i mean like for your achievements as a fighter right that's what we're talking about here do you have to be a champion to get in um not exclusively right because look at somebody like dustin poirier although he was an interim champion if he never wins the big one dude the resume's sick right so it's a different situation yeah so i would say that you don't have to be a champion

i would not make it an a you know either you have this or you don't but I would say first things first if you're not a champion you have to have something very special about what you did number one number two even if you are a champion you know if you don't have any title defenses I don't know if that automatically entitles you entry either so it's obvious it's like strength of schedule if you're a champion for how long how many title defenses against two how many times in foreign territory or whatever um you know how many times in foreign territory or whatever. You know, how many times did you get a finish against the top tier ranked opponent? How many of those names are still relevant later on in your career?

Like, you know, a lot of times guys get wins and then all those dudes bounce out and they're no longer there. It's all those things, really. Does longevity matter for you? I say that because I tend to criticize sometimes guys that I think are compilers and I sometimes hold their longevity almost against them and say, okay, we're only talking about them because they're still here and semi-relevant, but hey, they were never elite. To me, Luke, you have to be almost like an MVP candidate. You have to have had years in which you were in the top five discussion for fighter of the year, which is basically fighting's MVP, right? Like if it's not enough to just be pretty damn

good and maybe you won a title once and lost it in the first defense, you have to have names on that resume. Where do you think longevity fits into that? Because I mean, you know, Habib's got holes in longevity, but God, he accomplished a ton. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. You could knock how much of Habib lacks some of the longer resumes that are available. So longevity matters. But as long as it's not garbage time. So this is the problem with Kirk Cousins, right? He can do okay things in a game.

He's not great. He's not terrible. He's just kind of okay. But his stats, at least when he played here in D.C., his stats would always improve by virtue of the fact that in the fourth quarter when they've already lost the game, he'd march the team down the field. And so he'd be like, you know, oh, he doesn't throw that many picks. And he threw for over 300 yards, but it's like never when it really mattered.

So, yes, we want to avoid the Kirk Cousins situations. Again, it's going to go back to one, frequency of competition late, but also who did you beat? Were they ranked? Were they not ranked? Were they stylistic nightmares? Were they not? So it's not like I want to take away what Jim Miller is doing is doing right now right for example like what is jim miller doing

he is showing you longevity that longevity against the guys he's showing is very admirable and it of course your entire resume counts when we're assessing these questions of hall of fame or not but i would say that the opponents he's beating now, while what he's doing is very admirable, these would not be at the top of the list of things I would put if I wanted to make a case for Jim Miller's entry. It's interesting, it's noteworthy, and it's certainly commendable. It's not really Hall of Fame fuel. What is your take on sales and popularity? Because on the boxing side, when both Mike Tyson and Arturo Gatti separately went into the Boxing Hall of Fame, there was some kickback. Now, I personally think

what Mike Tyson accomplished in that short window of his prime in the 1980s before Buster Douglas, mixed with the fact that he came out of jail and at least won a piece of the title again before his career falling apart, to me, he's a Hall a hall of famer but obviously him getting in is a lot with the popularity and the force of nature and then arturo gatti even though he won you know a title here and there dude that's action fight that's like critical popularity you know what i'm saying because he because he brought a certain style do you think in the ufc hall of fame a guy could get bumped up because he was either a big pay-per-view seller or he was just a all blood and guts type of guy only if that blood and guts led to actual achievement like i don't mind if they went up and down but if the blood and guts at least at times propelled them

to greatness yeah you could make like for an rda like an rda rda doesn't have a blood and gut style all the time but he has fought so many good guys, even when it was not even advisable for him to do so, that I will discount some of the losses a little bit, a little bit. I don't think you can look at his resume and be like, he's got all these losses. We shouldn't even count them. It's like, dude, what he even attempted was borderline impossible. So you start from that and then you work your way down.

I get your question slightly different because you're talking about like popularity versus that but i would say for popularity i'm a little bit less moved but strength of schedule to me counts a lot and losses are not as prohibitive for those reasons as they otherwise might be in a different sport all right let's speed through this one uh we give you that that platform oh by the way thank you to all of our people sending in luke do you think yeah thank you very much i enjoy doing this i like this part okay thank you for those dms oh let's go to dead wrong this will be quick and pain less maybe but morningcombat.gmail.com you tell us what we got wrong and we stand the test of time and we stand up to that l let's do it you like my screwdriver bc i don't see it luke Do it.

You like my screwdriver, BC? I don't see it, Luke. What do you got there? I got a pink one here. You like that at all, Luke? My wife. I had to do this to change out cameras. I had to.

Yeah, the screws on my mic stand fall apart constantly, so I got this backup screwdriver just always ready. Luke from Joe, at around 5524 of episode 281, Luke states something is a little bit unique something can't be a bit unique it's either unique or it isn't just like you can't be a bit pregnant you either are you're not i wouldn't usually be such a pedant pedant but when it's to call out the king of pedantry i couldn't resist shout out from leeds england a factory town with a great football team. Love the show.

It's Joe. Luke, are you going to take that unique? No, that is such a ridiculous point. There are obviously shades of uniqueness. What an absurd thing to say. No, that's not an L at all. Okay. Well, you are pretty pedantic, Luke.

I'll give you that. Yes, that part is true. That accusation has a ton of merit, but the one about unique, I mean, I understand what he he's saying that it's a contradiction in terms to put it that way but that's not quite true the uniqueness can have a variety of applications and significances that's it's not even remotely true all right this is sam i think the worst one we've ever had that's that's a little bad for you that's a shit stain uh this from sam in relation to josh warrington having lost his title due to politics he he didn't lose the belt. He gave it up as he didn't want to fight the mandatories and he wanted bigger, exciting fights.

Then the pandemic hit so he didn't get the fights he wanted. So instead, he fought Lara and he got KO'd. If Warrington fights Lee Wood, it would be an amazing atmosphere and better than AJ and Fury as it will be full of boxing, passionate and football fans supporting their team and local man while AJ and Fury gets it will be full of boxing, passionate and football fans supporting

their team and local man while AJ and Fury gets more casual. So not as panicked. I stand by what he's saying. He's basically, I don't think we were wrong. Cause you know, I mentioned that Warrington got stripped of his belt in the pandemic due to politics, but I guess he's right saying Warrington wanted bigger fights and didn't want to do the mandatories. We've seen that before, but you know, you can either play the ABC title game or you can kick the titles to the dirt and and get big paydays so let's keep it going this is from danger mouse luke who designed our our mk hub t-shirt uh sorry luke but you're dead wrong in this week's extra credit on three occasions you said the fight between dj and rod tang was fought using kickboxing rules when in fact it was muay Thai. Yes, he's right. That's fair. There is a difference

and sometimes I interchangeably use them in the same way, but I shouldn't do that because the rules between different forms of like Western kickboxing and Muay Thai, especially as it relates to the clinch, can be quite different. So that's a fair, I'll take that L. That's a fair L. I'll take it. All right, finally, and I like this L because I'm going to take it. I was wrong. This is Jordan from Hawaii saying, hey, Donks, on episode 283, during Truth or Trivia, Luke was asked to name all eight fill-in co-hosts

during MK history. BC himself forgot to put Kieran Mulvaney as another MK co-host. I was on vacation and Kieran filled in on episode 233 with Luke to preview what was that unification fight between Fulton and Figueroa. Great content, as always.

Love the Gilbert Burns interview. Apologies. You know I love Kiernan Mulvaney going way back. I had forgotten that, too, Luke. I did the show with him. Sorry, Kiernan. That's funny that you accidentally called him Kiernan because we've been making fun of him to his face for years because one time Mulv co-hosted a press conference with A.C. Slater

and A.C. Slater called him Kiernan like 10 times during it and just just yes I often get them confused Kiernan Kiernan uh Karen Mulvaney one half of course of the Showtime boxing podcast with Eric Raskin great listen check that out thank you for the L's we'll take a few of them and finally luke this will be a shortened version of it but i think it's important and conto's become a massive part of your life love it or hate it so we did a short notice mk homework of all things colombian cartoons and life-changing messages this is your mk homework assignment. Luke, I watched it. I like how you and I both collectively only know the names of three of our segments.

Yeah, right. Exactly. I watched it this morning. This movie came out, what, last year? It just won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. And Luke, hey, shout out to your guy, I was going to say Juan Manuel Marquez, Lin-Manuel Miranda for writing the songs on here, right? Yeah, most of them, I think, yeah.

I think he sings the last one during the closing credits as well. All right, Luke, why don't you set the stage on this, how you got into it, whether you like it or not, and then we'll get my review of it. Well, I'd rather hear your review first, but the way I got into it was pretty obvious. My family got wind that Disney was making a movie called Encanto and it was going to be set in Colombia. And for folks who don't know, there is this term. It comes from one of Colombia's most famous writers,

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is called Gaba, which is called magical realism, which sounds inherently contradictory, but it's not. It's this sort of heady mix of the sort of the terrors of the real world, but with all of these sort of supernatural properties. And it's much more complicated than that. I'm giving you almost a Disney version of it. But it's a big literary movement in there. He wasn't the only one behind him. He was sort of the main driving force. And this movie picks up on essentially that magical realism of Gabo that um has been such a part of colombian literature

and frankly like fiction works um and because of that we were like highly intrigued now the first time i saw it i didn't like it i like i liked it i liked it the big one in our house that was big before incanto was coco have you ever seen coco, BC? No. Would you say on the surface that Coco and this movie are like a Latin turn to try to recreate the Frozen pandemic that happened where everyone and their mother lived for that movie? Maybe. Maybe. The thing is that Coco is inherently Mexican

and picks up on a lot of things that are, I mean, if you've never been to Mexico and, or you don't know anything about Mexican and I, I'm shamefully, I didn't really know a whole lot about it until even relatively recently in my life. God, Mexico is so rich in culture and tradition.

You just cannot believe all the things that they, that is, that's part of that world. One of them of course is Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. And so Coco takes place in that. And Coco for us us, was like the gold standard. Now, that's a Pixar movie, which, of course, Disney owns, but it's a separate studio. Encanto was not. So when I first saw it, I did feel like that they faithfully represented elements of Colombian culture. Now, the weird

thing is that Encanto is kind of just a mix of all different parts of Colombia. This may not seem like real to you or it's hard to understand. But for a country like that in South America, everyone associates it with one thing or the other. But Colombia is hugely diverse. I mean, it has deserts, mountains, beaches, and everything in between. And the languages spoke between them are and the accents are different the food is different the dance is different i mean everything about a place to place is wildly different and this movie kind of smashes it all together it's sort of reminiscent of a place called like vijay where it's like a what is what is like an old colonial town look like it feels a little bit like that um so i thought they did a pretty good job of trying to

faithfully represent Colombian culture. I did not like the part of the movie where there was no real identifiable villain. That to me was something of a miss. But in subsequently watching it, what you may not appreciate is, and we'll get into your review here in a second, what you may not appreciate is, and I've told the story before, you go to Columbia now, you know, you got to be a very savvy traveler, but in general, it's, you know, if you're not a dumbass, it's quite safe and it's a beautiful thing to see. It's just such a place of wonder. But back when my wife grew up there, obviously that was really not the case. And I've told you this before, but it really bears repeating. I have met all of her friends from high school and college that she has introduced me to, obviously, and many of them, 20 or more, and every single one of them, every single one of them has something happen in their life from either one of their parents was captured by the guerrillas, their brother was shot in a crossfire between narco traffickers or something. Some part of the dysfunction of the 80s and 90s

bled into every one of their lives. One of her best friends we had dinner with recently, his dad is missing. I told you this before. His dad is missing his leg from the knee down because he was in a movie theater. He saw a bomb and he kicked it. And he managed to live. But this is just all of them. All of them are like this. And I've told you guys this before. My wife's father was murdered and they believe he was not involved. The police don't think. But he was in the wrong place, wrong time. When a bunch of narco people thought he was somebody that he wasn't. He was actually accidentally murdered.

This goes all the way down. So what they tried to do was find a villain that didn't have a name. That sort of encapsulated how much damage it's done and how much it's scarred right colombian society by virtue of these people that pushed abuela out and she got this miracle right that's what they were trying to go for and i thought with that they did about as best they could in subsequent watches bc i've really enjoyed it even more than i did i still don't think it's yeah hold on i'll say this last thing i'll say is i don't think it's quite as good as coco coco is just super special but i really do think that um people got to see a happier side of colombian life and that's been

long overdue yeah and if you're new to our show and you're like what the hell is a fight show reviewing an animated disney film well when we need to fill time or on off weeks it's we've done homework like this in the past for songs books books, whatever, you know, movies, but Luke, this, you know, you have a young daughter and this, this is a movie is a phenomenon. So this became a big part of your life. And I also respect Luke. What I don't know about cultures being suburban factory town, white kid. Right. And so I liked, I like like this what i got from that so here's my foundation here i've never been an animation guy when everybody else's kids luke was like living their life based on the lion king and you know uh whatever the the one with the mermaid i

don't know luke i never watched that stuff but when forced to watch this kind of stuff obviously these are good these are redeemable i have kids that were 14 now but when they were young we went and saw cars we went and saw planes like you know i i know what's going on here i reluctantly watched this with that same like look in the first five minutes i'm like really luke's making me watch this movie about a family of colombian sorcerers who happen to just use their superpowers for good but like you you get to realize that like you're saying upon multiple rewatches that it's it's a strong accurate representation of a culture that you know is certainly overlooked for average americans and i get what you're saying now basically from your

preamble about you know spoiler alert that the father of this madrigal family is you know accidentally murdered or whatever but as a result the family inherits sort of this magic candle that saved them and each family member receives their special power at the age of five but then uses that special power to help their community obviously feel good family message in the long run musical and all that um but i got a deeper message as i'm watching it so it's interesting that you say something that's true there's no like obvious villain there's no cruella de villain here there's obviously the villains that took away abuelo but the villains i think are fear prejudice based on

fear meaning prejudice from the grandma abuela of of certain things and and people also just the personal journey of trying to discover your own, they're calling it superpowers, but really your own purpose in life, your own self-identity. Luke, that's a walk that we all go through. And sometimes we go through it multiple times based on the different seasons of our life. That's a relatable message that any parent can get if you're forced to watch this for your kids or if you happen to like this type of cinema. I like that. But as I'm digging deeper, Luke, I know you're going to make fun of me. I know you're going to think I'm trying to do a bit.

Dude, I can't believe I'm saying this. Encanto is the story of morning combat. What? I'm serious. Okay, so here's the deal. What's the main character's name? Maribel? Mirabel.

So that's you, Luke. I know this is going to sound like Billy Madison, the puppy that lost his way, society. But here's the thing, Luke. Yes, I'm also loathed by my family members, yes. So Maribel is the only, she's like 14 or 15 she's the only member of this family that wasn't given a superpower at age five long reason as to why and like a lot of us luke whether we're 15 or 35 or whatever she's sort of like what do i have to give to society what's my you know i haven't figured out my passion my job my skill my whatever luke ifuela, who was the one that was sort of against her granddaughter in a weird way, Abuela is MMA.

Okay? You are Maribel. You're born into this family of combat sports. Not Maribel, Mirabel. Mirabel. You're born into this family of combat sports. Yeah, you have some moments, but you never felt like you got your do or your push or your purpose or your whatever. And then there's other people around you.

Like, you know who Ariel Hawani is? Louisa? Isabella. No, Louisa is Gabby Garcia, Luke. Okay, Louisa is clearly Gabby Garcia. Okay, all right. All right. So here's the deal, Luke.

You know what it took for you to finally break through and get happy some would say the birth of your daughter but luke this mk journey that we've been on that i'm not saying is because of me i'm saying a lot of cosmic factors came together look it's changed you as a person right just like marty bell realizing her true calling and power but how did she get there how did she get there we're not supposed to talk about Bruno, and that family didn't. Bruno is Maribel's uncle, and his gift was seeing the future. The family didn't like it or really recognize it because he had a vision for Maribel that was scary and people didn't believe in it. So he had to go in hiding in his own sort of tower behind a painting.

So, Luke, within the space of combat sports i was kind of in hiding in fact you could argue that uncle bruno is fairly unkept with his facial hair and hair like me at times and also the rats he's living with the rats and doing plays with them i was covering pro wrestling at a voracious level before you and i got together that's more or less the same thing and i know you don't want me to say that it looks like uh uncle bruno is wearing a drug rug because it's not you tell me it's a ruana right that's right it's a ruana yeah it's a traditional colombian and i respect that but if you did a side by side with me and the mk drug rug so here's the deal luke you are you are this girl who didn't find her way until she found her purpose by meeting this

scraggly old uncle who revealed it to her that's you and i coming together the casita is morning combat and luke think of some of the quotes that were said i don't think you make bad things happen sometimes family weirdos just get a bad rap that's me that's bruno the family weirdo but then when we got together luke as maddie bell found out and I'll say this to you, as Bruno said to her, Luke, you're exactly what this family needs. You just have to see it. Luke, you were meant for big things in this space all along, despite the ups and downs, the times you thought you were, you know, put to the side and said, no, you don't have that special power. You really do Luke. And it took you meeting this weird guy who lives in his own room with rats, me to Brit, to pull that together. And Luke, in some ways, Abuela, she represents, like I said, MMA, but she also kind of represents

Vox because Maudie Bell told Abuela, I will never be good enough for you. No matter how hard I try. That's kind of where you were at with Vox. It's kind of where I was at with ESPN. It's like, they're giving me opportunities. They're not going to pay me though, right, Luke? So as they said in this, the miracle is not some magic that you've got. The miracle is you. Luke, you've been a miracle all along in this space.

And maybe you're just realizing it now with these awards and this money and this platform and this opportunity. But you ran into an old drug rug wizard like myself who was living in the closet covering pro wrestling. And what we've built together your superpower came out luke it was there all along what a beautiful love story i gotta tell you that is a better review than i ever thought you were going to give i'm not sure how accurate it is if we really hold it up to scrutiny but i do like the way in which you have thought about it and i gotta tell you i'm a little bit moved by it bc that was um i mean look like great it was great mary bell always

compared herself to her sister isabella by the way how many times are you gonna mispronounce this name it's not mary bell it's mirabelle m-i-r-a mirabelle mirabelle always compared herself to isabella who was like the pretty one and got all the opportunities and was engaged in all this stuff, Luke, right? I mean, like we've all looked around and said, man, that guy's getting everything. What about me, Luke? It's time. It's our moment right now. I watched this movie the day after we just won the best damn podcast award.

OK, that's fair. It's happening. It's here, Luke. And we are using our powers for good, just like the Madrigals' family's history. The Madrigals, they're MK, Luke. Okay, that casita, that's our village that we've built. Thank you. That's my tip-off.

I love that review. I don't have anything to add to that. I love that review. I'm going to let that be what it is. I thank you for that, BC. That was really, that was great. That was really great. Obviously, this is, I think the songs are good.

I think it's very well, it's computer animated, but it very well shows the flashy colors, the culture, the spirit. What do you give this as an actual movie, 1 to 10? Now, it might be a jaded review because you've probably watched it 4,000 times because of your daughter, but how do you look at this? Score, 1 to 10. Solid 4 out of 5. Solid 4 out of 5.

It's by no means a bad movie. I'm a little bit hesitant to call it an exceptional movie, even though there are parts of it that are pretty exceptional. And I will say, by the way, did you see that one scene where they were throwing the Tejos early on? So that was a part of it. Also, like, even little details, like that one scene where they want Mariano to propose to Isabella at the table

after the Bruno song. If you look at the food they're passing out, they're passing out very traditional Colombian food called Ajiaco. So I really appreciate what they put into it. It falls a little bit short for some of the reasons I've articulated. I'll give it four out of five skulls or whatever stars. Okay. What about,

we usually do up to 10, right? We've given some movies. In that case, a solid eight and a half eight and a half eight and a half out of half wow all right i'm gonna give it a six out of ten i liked it better than i thought i would just that that's a little low i just don't like that format dude i'm just not an animated guy and even though i told you i've watched some of them and i've enjoyed them i'm not gonna go back and rewatch it's just me it's me luke okay it is who i am all right it is what it is but in this genre i think it's a pretty damn

strong flick luke so um anyone out there that had to watch it because their kids are they're thinking about it you can get that on disney plus and check that shit by the way your favorite song from it is we don't talk about we don't talk about bruno by the way past let it go from frozen is like the biggest disney song which i found surprising really yeah really it's big yeah and that's but i gotta say mine is Dos Oruguitas from Sebastian Yatra. Which character sings that? Which character? Dos Oruguitas, no one sings.

That's the scene where the house falls apart, then Abuela and Mirabel meet in the river, and then that song plays with the butterflies. Dos Oruguitas, two caterpillars is what it means. And Sebastian Yatra is like, he's like a famous colombian singer and he actually performed i think at the at the uh oscars before will smith was doing all the slapping and shit but there you go did you guys see meg the stallion performed we don't talk about bruno at the oscars no i didn't see that at all terrible uh i didn't watch the whole thing but i'm a i mean

i'm a fan of megastallion so shout out oh yeah i did see that i'm not really a big fan of oscar raps sorry i don't care how popular she is yeah yeah she's a lady i've seen i've seen her i've seen her she's there she has like all of her fans are called hotties and she has the popeyes sandwich thing and yeah i know she is i don't have nothing against her but when you're rapping about the oscars when you're at the Oscars, you can time out. I'm done. So did you do it better than Meg Thee Stallion, Luke? I did it better than everyone except the family Madhuri Gala. Respect. Look, I'll give you credit because you did it without music because we couldn't play the song copyright.

Right. I had to just do it in my head. And you were like, yo, BC, how long does it have to be? Like a minute? And then we couldn't get you off the stage at the end of it Alright BC, I do have to get ready for other things, we've been doing this for two hours plus. Alright, today

was a weird but interesting and fun episode thank you to all our great listeners, thank you to our team Corey, Long Island Luke for putting this shit together, Mikey and the crew thank you to everybody, award winning but really just a weird fraternity and family as we like to say of people who get us, Luke. I don't know what we've created here in this weird soup, but they're drinking it.

So we'll continue to do that. Like us. Follow us below. There's our social handles, of course, 30 days free of Showtime at Showtime dot com. You know what you're getting to that. Shout out to our folks at Athletic Greens as well. You can go to Athletic Greens dot com slash morning combat. We got some specials there. You get that one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D. You get the five free travel packs with your first purchase. It's going to be worth it. I guarantee it. So Luke Thomas, you want to send us out of here for the great Brian Campbell, the viceroy of Connecticut. I'm Luke Thomas in

Washington, DC. Thanks to Malka. Thanks to CBS sports. Thanks to Showtime. Thanks to all of you until next time. May all of your gains be loyal.