MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Munguia Stops Ryder | Jon Anik Speaks | UFC 300 Update | One Championship | Morning Kombat Ep 539

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

On episode 539 of Morning Kombat Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell recap Jaime Mungia's win over John Ryder. Does this mean boxing math tells us Munguia beats Canelo? Let's talk about Jon Anik. What's the best way to understand his comments last week, how they were received and what his apology meant. Vince McMahon resigned over the weekend from the TKO board and all WWE operations. What does this mean for TKO and, if anything, the UFC? The guys also give a quick update to the UFC 300 card. As always we close out Monday's with Dm's from Donks and HYSTS. (00:07:30) - Jaime Mungia Stops John Ryder (00:28:30) - Jon Anik (00:43:30) - Vince Mcmahon  (00:54:20) - UFC 300 Update (01:19:10) - One Championship (01:31:40) - Dm's from Donks (01:49:00) - HYSTS Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Reveley, reveley, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. oh like a red stapler in the basement. Morning Combat is still here. How you doing, everybody? It's the 29th of January, 2024, and it's time for episode whatever the number is, 539 of Morning Combat. I join you from the capital of Estados Unidos. My name is Luke Thomas. I am joined, I'm Washington, D.C., joined by my friend over there.

He goes by many nicknames, none of them accurate, but he goes with them just the same. It's Brian Campbell. Hello, Brian Campbell, how are you? Oh, Luke Thomas. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on this show in which my name is also atop the marquee, but I'll say this, Luke kind of feels like a historic episode, if you will, an end of an era and maybe the start of a new one, just maybe. That's right. Yeah, there you go. Let's remind folks very quickly. So we are going to have a regular show today we're going to talk about some UFC 300 news we'll get to some of that John Anik controversy that happened last week as well we also know there was a one championship

event it was in Tokyo Japan won 165 we'll get to some of the bigger stories there as well as Jaime Munguia defeating John Ryder in the ninth round over on DAZN on Saturday night. Plus, of course, DMs from Donks. I am told there is an epic batch of Have You Seen This Shit? So I look forward to that as well. But of course, BC, as you alluded to, this show is special in the sense that it's the last one we're going to do before the reset planned for March, right? So I want to be clear about something. The regular MK episodes

after this one will stop for a little while, right? About six weeks or so, give or take, something like that. But we are not disappearing, BC. Folks don't seem to understand that. We're not going away. We'll still have special parts of coverage. February's got some big fights. We'll be there for those. It's just the regular episodes we're going to park for just a little bit. Yes? Yeah. YouTube.com slash Morning Combat will still be your home to the VOD that we will continue to put out interviews, previews, and reviews

ahead of the big events, as Luke mentioned. But for now, about a month-long pause as we continue to reorg, re-up, reload, and ready to come back with an absolute bang. Luke, I could not be more excited about this. Announcements to come in the next couple weeks when we can about exactly what this next phase will look like. So everyone out there who's worried that you won't see us again or that we went broken because we went woke or anything like that, Luke, We're going to come out of that corner between rounds

and come out firing. Get ready. Get your ass ready. Okay? In fact, if you've got a chat. Get your ass ready. Very good. You know what I mean?

You can get ready with some of this. Yeah. Okay, great. There you go. By the way, you can get some of that hand cream, and they can obviously be used in a lot of other ways, I suppose.combat.store bc you can also get this average joe art merch there you see that very good uh you have the hat on you got the mug or sorry the pint glass glass that you can put your ag1 in as i did right there luke you can go over to morningcombat.store you know you're

allowed to mix the ag1 with the water they don't have to be separate like a science experiment about density i filled it about an hour ago and then left it here at my little at my workstation so yes luke it has uh it has uh leveled up but so will we though soon so how's that for transition but quickly on the merch uh we talked to rj dunkel gag ball banger and uh not only is that man excited about the future but he he said, look, I love the morning combat customers out there. I love the fan base. How about 10% off one more time for old time's sake,

go to morning combat. Store. Use our code live 10 L I V E one zero live 10. And you can get 10% off anything on that fantastic site from average Joe to factory town, MMA, and maybe a dead Luke in between. Don't miss out what

we got going on right there hey look at this hat it may does this hat make me look thinner luke um but the problem is you got a dumb fat head like i yeah that's you know what i mean that's true you know it's like when i was getting hit with those barrage of comments from strickland's fans uh last week luke everything was shut up you fat pos and i just kept wanting to respond to each one like hey guys i'm committed to losing weight and getting in shape say anything else you want about me but outside of my head not fat anymore okay that's true that's very true you're wearing those medium t-shirts now i see that as well very good oh yeah uh all right and then of course um you still can email the show morningcombat at gmail.com and

let's for one more uh we'll do this at the end of the oops there we go losing autofocus there hang on something's happening with the camera there a little bit um i'll have to fix that in just a second here go to go there it is got it okay very good the social graphic if you would mikey we are still going to be on social everywhere that you normally get your stuff. So Morning Combat on IG, Morning Combat on Twitter, Morning Combat on TikTok, and of course, Luke Thomas News on IG, L Thomas News on Twitter. And then for Brian, it's Brian C. Campbell, if it's not confusing enough, on Instagram, and then B. Campbell on the old Twitter X machine. Look, I keep getting all these influencers that DM me on IG,

and they're like, we can help you take your thing to the next level. And it's like, kind of happy at the level it's at, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The bigger my social media following gets, the more annoyed I become because of the amount of stuff it just brings with it. Like you think, Oh, more will be better. It's better for like getting your content seen. That's for sure. But I don't know how much better it is for your daily life. You know, a lot of pollution. A lot of saying a lot of like public enemy once said my lethal weapons my mind so i got to protect that luke okay i've got to keep that away from uh negative social media comments thank you uh and just just just just diving into the pornography

is really bc's release isn't that right no can we move on from this type of crass humor luke that has unfortunately come to define this show? I mean, you know, when we take a month off and clean up, right, sweep up, I think that's one of the things we should. So, yes, I will be unfollowing half of the UFC roster on Instagram. Thank you very much. Very good. All right. With that in mind, let's get to topic number one as we start here, this program, episode 539.

So we'll start with a bit of a weekend review before we get into some of the bigger topics that really captured the imagination of the fan base and the sport last week in mixed martial arts. So first things first, Jaime Munguia gets a stoppage over John Ryder in the ninth round, and BC, obviously, as we know, when Canelo fought Ryder, he was dominant and he won very easily, knocking him down, breaking his nose nose but he went to a decision so let me ask the question is there any kind of boxing math here that tells us about how Munguia would fare against Canelo by virtue of their common opponent is there is there any high hint of truth to that I think there's enough of a hint of truth in the boxing math in this situation to get you potentially excited if and that that's a big question, if the biggest star in this sport, the Mexican icon, Canelo Alvarez, decides he wants to go the direction of Munguia in May.

Because really, that's what this fight was all about. Munguia, of course, had fought some decent names at 154, moved up to 160, but since moving up to super middleweight and you combine that tail end run at 160, he just hasn't fought elite competition. Yes, in the last fight, he fought an aging Sergei Derevyanchenko, which really came down on his resume to arguably being his best win, but on paper, going against a John Ryder, who let me just amend one thing you said. He went the distance in a one-sided loss to Canelo, but he did come on late and rally and sort of make Canelo look human enough in that Mexican homecoming. We remember entering last fall's Charlo fight for Canelo. We had those questions about whether he had met sort of the, you know, a shift, a decline after that. So Ryder on paper did represent, right, an opportunity at either a

trap fight for Amanguia, or if he could run through him easier than Canelo did, what did that say? Well, look, in this situation for Jaime Amanguia, whether you like him or not, whether you saw him go 42 and 0 or whatever he was, and still question what he has in there, he made a statement in this fight. He made it a mature leap forward in his first fight under Freddie Roach. He had been trained by fellow Hall of Famer Eric Morales. Morales wants to focus now on running for mayor in Tijuana. So Freddie Roach comes in, and I think right away you saw a step up. You saw Jaime Munguia, who wasn't just walking in, head down, looking to brawl on the inside. He was using distance well, setting up his punches

from range, going to the body consistently to try to hold Ryder off. But look, it was the breakthrough in the delivery system of the power that ultimately was the most impressive. Canelo goes the distance against a gutsy John Ryder who took tremendous punishment in that fight. But what did Munguia do? Knocked him down four times to the point where the corner finally threw in the towel, although the referee at first wasn't able to see that due to the way he was standing this was a breakthrough performance so MMA math says look he just knocked out a guy and possibly even retired right John Ryder was talking about

retiring coming in at age 35 if he couldn't get over this hill uh I think he made a major splash it would be enough in terms of impressiveness to potentially get that call for Canelo. But Luke, the question really comes down to what is Canelo and by proxy, the PBC and Al Heyman, because Canelo enters fight two of his current three fight deal. What are their plans for May 4th? Is it Jamal Charlo? Could it be David Benavidez? Could it be Terrence Crawford?

There's a lot to talk about moving forward with Munguia not being on that side of the street. It certainly doesn't help him. But if you wanted an all Mexican showdown for Alvarez to appeal to that fan base, you've got an unbeaten kid here who's growing into a man at age 27. And I think for the first time, Luke, I don't go, oh, Munguia looked good, but that but is gone. Munguia looked good on saturday tell me i'm wrong here luke this was a step forward and this is what we wanted to see yeah i mean so there is the question was about boxing math if munguia does better against rider than canelo does in the sense that he was able to stop him obviously they both knocked him down but as you indicated you had

in the case of munguia doing it four times really looked dominant beginning to end and the other part that was interesting is this was an open stance fight so you can really see some of the tactical battles that that munguia was trying to win working behind his jab going through combination especially against the ropes as you indicated going to the body and then switching it up and coming over the top like even in the fifth round he didn't get a knockdown but he had ryder pressed up against the fence and he'd been going to the body with his backhand and then excuse me with his jab jab then backhand and then he went over the top and it scored beautifully like it was really uh you could see he was setting stuff up he was applying a game plan and BC even when Ryder who did get good corner advice about uppercut right hooks you know doing things to getting off at an angle

some of that stuff did work but then Munguia had an answer for that offense too. When he was forced to counter fight on the back foot, he actually did that. In fact, one of his best knockdowns, I think in round four came from that, right? So he actually showed several new interesting gears or at a bare minimum BC, uh, more ability in those gears. One thing I do want to say though, in defense of Canelo is one, you just can't play boxing math that closely. And two, I looked at the numbers BC. Now, obviously the fight went the distance with Canelo, but in that fight, Ryder averaged about 6.6 strikes or punches landed per round, right? Give or take clean punches rounded according to CompuBox stats. It was 8.5 against Munguia. In fact, several of of those rounds he had double digits he only had

double digits against Canelo one time and so there was also something to be said about Munguia fighting a much more I should say a much less risk averse style that facilitated Ryder's ability to land a little bit more but all of that tells me still at as you indicated at 27 he still has massive room for improvement. It was a step up. And hey, he's freaking exciting. He goes for it. He takes a little more risk.

Nothing wrong with that. No, but you love the add-on and the wrinkles to his craft. Because, Luke, even though he was always exciting and that record is glossy, even if we were trying to pick it apart the last five or six years, he's not just walking into oncoming traffic, which means it's going to slow down the idea that for as exciting and fun and even dangerous at times as he is against a certain level of competition, we all assumed when he gets in there with the elites that Munguia is going to become a punching bag, that he's going to get lit up and outcrafted and outskilled. This was that performance to show you that he's still young enough and adaptable enough that look at what he did in one camp under Freddie Roach. We know Freddie Roach as the ultimate offensive coach who

basically takes what you already do well in that category and makes you more dangerous, makes you more of a potential knockout threat. That was what he needed to be. He needed to really lean on his craft more, add to it, grow to it, because that will only enhance the elements that made him dangerous. He's got good punching power. He's got a great chin. He'll walk you downhill and really start to put you in deep waters when the momentum shifts his way. But when he's fighting with this level of craft, I mean, it could be a different ball game. So, um, yeah, you're right on MMA math. Let's also add in that that was a fight in which Canelo was doing a Mexican homecoming. There's a lot of added pressure in that regard when you do that. And also he still had that nag, that nagging left

wrist or left hand injury that he ultimately got surgery afterwards. And remember the storyline coming into the Charlo fight was that what does a finally healthy full camp Canelo look like in comparison to the last few fights. So styles are always going to make fights and they're going to look different. But if this fight was all about Munguia just passing a test and offering himself as a viable candidate for May 4th, dude, he passed the test with flying colors. So Luke, it comes down to Canelo now.

So I want you to get inside the mind of Big Red. We all know that the PBC is launching on Amazon Prime. They're going to have their first card March 30th, a pay-per-view with keith thurman in the main event against tim zoo and a pretty damn good card below that although i've heard the some people in boxing not being so happy with the with the card you could argue a lot of things on there but canelo may 4th is going to be a big circle on the pbc calendar what do you if you could get inside their mind what do you think they're going to do here

man i don't uh there was a time momentarily where even when he was taking mandatories against like avni yildirim right i think that he took that fight in miami he was still going for it he was still trying to unify at 168, for example, right? Taking on like the exactly the guys you wanted him to take on. You were like, man, Canelo wants the smoke. He's going for it. He dialed that back a little bit last year. I think it's fair to say, obviously he had the Caleb plant fight, which was what 2021, 2022, something like that. But I think in 2023, he dialed it back a little bit and so there's a question of now where it goes from here I I'll say this I don't think there's any way that we just waltz into a Canelo versus David Benavidez

fight it's the only fight that to me counts but Canelo being Canelo has options including the other Charlo brother which I don't want to see that fight really I don't have a significant amount of interest in that one there's now Munguia as well, and there's a couple of other choices he could go and try and get. But I will tell you, I think the Munguia one is interesting, BC. I know there are some questions about whether or not Canelo wants to compete against other Mexican fighters, given other alternatives.

But the Charlo brand, I think, there's a lot of questions about it, with both brothers for a lot of different, but also kind of similar reasons, too. I don't know if it's the same value questions about it with both brothers for a lot of different, but also kind of similar reasons too. I don't know if it's the same value proposition as it once was. Benavidez, I think, is too much smoke for what he's looking for. Munguia might be just right, where it is an action fight, but he is beatable. He hasn't really fully entered his prime. It would be a gigantic event between two Mexicans,

celebrated Mexican fighters of different generations, essentially, even though their age gap is not significant in different places in the fight game. I don't know if I would call it so much BC, the leading candidate. And I pitch it back to you to sort of tell me what you think the leading candidate would be. But I actually feel like Munguia's chances of getting this not,

yes, he had a great performance, but some of the other places occupied in the options they're interesting options but you might also mention Terrence Crawford Canelo seemed like he might want it wasn't it wasn't super enthusiastic about it didn't deny it I don't know Munguia seems like he might be sitting in a decent position yeah a decent position maybe again as I mentioned earlier having the hardest potential road of getting it because he's on another network with another promoter but in this case considering that if you're oscar de la jolla and team munguia like this is your super bowl a canelo fight like times

the thousand right in terms of money exposure breakthrough opportunity to legitimately become one of the best fighters in the game if you can go in there and do that so i don't think it would be a problem in making the fight but it would would be the most difficult. With the rumors we have heard and with how easy it would be to make a Jermall-Charlo fight, and let's not forget that was the original idea for Canelo's first PBC fight until Jermall wasn't ready. Brother Jermall slid in and unfortunately had a very disappointing performance. I would have to believe that's the leader just on the rumors we've heard, but I have to echo you as much as i think there is there are some elements to that fight that is interesting doing it right after the performance that jermell put in i don't think you're going to be able to maximize commercially

what you could i'd also like to see jermall come in there and get a bigger comeback win than the very impressive one he had against jose benavidez jr but not a true 168 or and that fight was you know close 168 not the right type of setup after a long layup for canelo fight so luke it comes down to this munguia actually would be perfect if you believe this other theory to be true the the general theory inside of boxing that canelo's not afraid to fight anybody but that if he's going to fight benavidez which i think he knows is inevitable because canelo has all four belts he's not going up not afraid to fight anybody, but that if he's going to fight Benavidez, which I think he knows is inevitable because Canelo has all four belts. He's not going up to 75 to fight B-ball, right?

B-ball's going to be fighting Baturbiev as far as we're concerned with Saudi Arabia behind it in the spring. So there's no other fight beyond Crawford, and I'll get to that, that could kind of lure him. But it seems like people in the business believe that Canelo wants that for September.

You'd have more time to build it up both could potentially have another interim fight although there's an argument built in there that hey Canelo if you're going to fight Benavidez you should want to fight him earlier than later because this guy's getting better leaps and bounds it's too late it's too late for that so I don't think because of his track record that he's going to duck benavidez under any circumstance but as much as you could make the argument that if this fight's here right now benavidez versus canelo why are we even talking about munguia just do it in may that's a great argument i don't have a argument against it unless the whole idea is let's make this a potential

you know blockbuster look of the available huge fights you can actually make in boxing, what is this fight? Benavidez Canelo, no worse than two? It's literally as great a fight as you can make. So if they want to just make it bigger, that's fine. But if it comes down to you start going, okay, not this guy, not this guy, not this guy. What about Terrence Crawford, Luke?

What about Terrence Crawford? If he's not going to rematch Spence right now isn't this the perfect fight where like it's somewhat lower stakes because Canelo is expected to win due to the size difference but I think it would legitimately be a pay-per-view home run like legitimately people have to see it and it still doesn't like ruin unless I guess Canelo lost there what could happen with him and Benavidez that it's a sort of fun super fight out of nowhere that may be perfect for this Amazon launch if you're a PBC and you really want to make a statement what would be the argument against Crawford right now that's really what I have to ask you if you're Canelo it's not that I

here's what I think the Canelo team worldview is. I don't really believe that he'll never fight David Benavidez. I actually do think he will. The question I cannot get an answer to, and no one can, and it's really certainly, obviously, my speculation is no better than yours, but I do think he's going to eventually fight him. But what I think that they probably realize is that fight is inevitable. We don't want to suffer a loss until we kind of have to, until there's really no other options exhausted. The Munguia fight is inevitable. We don't want to suffer a loss until we kind of have to, until there's really no other options exhausted.

The Munguia fight is an action one. People would be accepting of it. It would do well commercially, and it would be enough of an action fight where people would be complimentary, probably, of the performance, and it's a very achievable win, I think, relatively speaking, for Canelo. There might be another one they can squeeze in before a showdown with David Benavidez is inevitable.

I think that's really what the direction is that they're headed. So it's not outright ducking in the sense that we're just not going to fucking fight this guy. It is, we don't have a whole lot of time on our side before the decline is fully in force, and we'd rather suffer a loss when that is in play rather than now when there's still this sort of prestige associated with his name as a ranked pound-for-pound talent. When you say you say that the way you said it it makes me want to peel through your words and be like

then that means Canelo would be cashing himself out with the Benavidez fight I don't think Canelo thinks like that I don't think he thinks like oh my window's getting small I think he thinks like how do I maximize opportunity but I also think while not fully ducking he does seem to be purposefully pushing the benavides fight off however you want to describe it you can just look at the way he fights the guy manages risk he's not uh he's not a bull in a china shop trying to show you that risk doesn't matter to him in the way that benavides is benavides is in a stage in his career where he just wants to i mean take out the axe and just start swinging.

That's really not the place Canelo was in. And I don't know why it'd be crazy to assume that he and his team, and he has very smart, capable advisors, wouldn't be thinking about a candid way to manage decline such that it arrives at your door at a bare minimum delay decline, either as a box office attraction or anything else. The Munguia fight gets you to that place then you can fight benavidez at a later date i don't see why you would go around i mean listen i would take a world where canelo's like i want all the smoke benavidez next yes great this conversation in the garbage i just don't find that very likely okay so in the crawford sense okay but here's the Crawford thing listen it it's almost if you could find a way to where that loss wouldn't or win wouldn't go on the record as just an exhibition I think it'd be kind of a fun thing to try but if you're Canelo your brand is not necessarily

your brand is not really put the put the put the it's a real fight what are we doing exhibitions what is this floyd versus i'm not i'm not recommend i'm not recommend i'm not recommending it it's not i'm not claiming it's a thing that i want to see what i'm trying to get you understand is the the value proposition for canelo is questionable it is very very high for for for terrence excuse me that part is clear i don't really need to explain it and it's not to say that there's no value in canelo beating terrence Crawford, but if the risk, of course, is significantly greater, I think,

than among the other available options, it would be quite bad for a guy moving up with how many weight classes at this point, right? I mean, three, four, depending on where you want to start the whole count. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you start by 140, it's even more. And the point I'm trying to make here is if you're Canelo, you beat a guy,

they are going to say – imagine it ends up being like one-sided where he drops them a couple times gonna be like oh well what the fuck was the point of that you don't want to have someone ask why did we even put this together oh that's the only risk but if canelo washed crawford although yes you would have some people going like oh wow turns out that was one not that fun one side in the end i don't think anyone's going to be like this fight shouldn't happen because it's it's sort of the intrigue of wanting to see the greatest of right now crawford against the one of the greatest of all time and canelo and see if he can do it on such a ridiculous weight leap that if it goes that way it goes that way i guess i'm asking you with a hidden slant, would Canelo not take Crawford out of fear of losing to him and then ruining a Benavidez fight?

That's the real question I'm trying to ask you right now. They would still make a Benavidez fight, although to your point, how much would it damage it in the end if something like that happened? Probably significantly or certainly noticeably. Again, I want to be clear. I'm not advocating or I'm not here listing things that appeal the most to me I'm just trying to put myself in team Canelo's shoes I think the way in which he is fighting and the way in which he is approaching matchmaking kind of tells us about his values right now and what matters to him and what he's looking for and kind of out there fights

or very risky fights when you have a Munguia, which is not without risk, but more manageable risk and still significant reward. I just feel like that makes it a much likelier candidate for what is possible. But dude, if Terrence Crawford and Canelo gets announced for Amazon Prime, I mean, it's Christmas came early. I don't even know what else to say. Put me in my place with being excited about the potential commerciality of that fight very few fights in this modern illegal streaming era can legitimately do 1 million pay-per-view buys tank versus ryan did because of the unique nature of both having very large fan bases that were largely separate from one another could canelo versus crawford

do 1 million buys in today's market? I don't know about one million, but it would do well. It would do very, very well. It would do really well. Terrence Crawford, I think, has blown up. I think he's blown up since the Errol Spence win. Obviously, Canelo, one of the biggest brands, if not the biggest brand in all of boxing, certainly a crossover star in sports. Yeah, it would be huge.

Again, dude, I would love to see it. And that does certainly make it more likely than it otherwise would be. But I still think it's a tricky fight. That's a trap fight. You love to call out trap fights. That one's got landmine written all over it. Oh, yeah. I need to see how great Terrence Crawford is.

These were some things that we asked of Floyd. And I'm not trying, again, to throw darts at Floyd. I mean, Floyd ended up fighting everybody, so I can F off. And he told me that. Luke, and I was setting him up to tell me that in Miami when we talked to him. But there was a time where we were like, Floyd is so great at 47 and 154 when he would go up the three times that it was like, damn, could he win a middleweight title? Could he fight Andre Ward at 68, which is stupid, but like, that's the thing. Kevin Aioli actually wrote a column about that at one point, Floyd having to move up

to 68 to fight Ward. If he really wants to show his greatness. My point is when you get someone that's so great that you don't know where their ceiling is, the natural fan in you wants to just max out, see how far you can go. We got to see that with Pacquiao, but it's rare to be in that spot to make that happen. You wonder with Crawford, who is bigger for the division than Floyd was because he was naturally smaller. Could he put on that weight and do something this crazy, which is forget when just compete head to head with Canelo on these terms? Damn.

But with all that said, Luke, I do think Munguia is second behind Charlo right now. From what we know, and we're just doing basement math, I think Munguia has the second best chance to get Canelo in May. And I think that's all you could ask for after a performance that great, because it was great against Ryder.

It was certainly very great. Again, I hope Munguia gets it over Charlo. I don't really know what PBC is going to do. There's also the indication of, like, would Canelo even want to work with De La Hoya again if he doesn't have to that's we didn't even get to that that's obviously going to play a significant role but we'll see how that goes BC all right let's switch gears here a little bit if we can and talk about what happened with John Anik last week so we have the context we're going to set it up here we have some of the video and then his written apology that came afterwards but basically he was on his podcast the Anakin Florian podcast and he made

some comments that he really he indicated he was really kind of upset with a portion of the fan base for the way in which they had attacked him for his perceived integrity let's roll the clip because even if you and I both thought Drake is Duplessy won the fight, we try to present that information respectfully. And when I go on to X or I go to our YouTube comments, it seems like a lot of these fans are just in attack mode. And I don't know if these fans are casual fans or not, right? But I appreciate the passion, but I'm getting to a point at 45 years of age where I don't know how much time

I have left in this MMA space, because if I go do pro football, like I'm not necessarily going to be dealing with this lowest common denominator all the time. And I don't know, man, I just feel like there's a lot of malice and disrespect from the fan base and we can disagree. Like, don't take it from me. Demetrius Johnson and Kenny Florian thought DDP won the fight. I don't know. I've just been very off-put with the negativity that has permeated my feed since Saturday night, and I'm just not sure how much longer I have in this space, honestly.

Yeah, listen, man. Okay, and so there was enormous reactions in all different directions. And then let's put up the graphic. He put out an apology a couple of days later. He writes, quote, Last week on my podcast, I was in a heightened emotional state following myriad allegations of bias at UFC 297, and I made some regrettable comments relating to the MMA fan base.

While I was surprised at the extent to which my comments were repurposed and sensationalized, I need to be more responsible on an open microphone. So much work goes into the execution of just one UFC pay-per-view. It can be tough when my integrity on the broadcast is called into question. That doesn't excuse my retort. I am just a fiery, passionate, flawed, empathetic guy, and sometimes my emotions lead the dance. To those MMA fans whom I've offended, I'm sorry.

That was not my intention. For 12 years, I've prided myself on being accessible to the fan base, and that will continue. I've learned a lot over the last 48 hours. On to Anaheim, of course, indicating UFC 298 there. BC, pitch it to you. What is the best way to understand his comments, the reaction, the apology, and everything in between?

Well, I think you also have to add in there that in the timeline that between Anik's message on his podcast and the response apology, you did have a lot of fighters coming to his side, like overwhelming amount, but you also did have Sean Strickland come out on, on X and basically say like, you know, uh, these fans are the same ones that are paying your salary. So when John came up with the apology, it did, uh, you know, look, I haven't talked to John, although I definitely consider him in this business, you know, a friend, someone I respect a lot. Um, it felt like, you know, was was he asked that was my first response too well did they force him to do

this um look here's what i want to say about it or what was the true nature of your question right there what what what should we have learned from this yeah like what what lesson do you take what's the best way to understand what happened look i don't you know if john felt he needed to come out to apologize to clear the air if he felt that certain elements of his message were getting sort of framed in ways that weren't true. Like Luke, when I came out and said Strickland's comments that time I thought were gross and it made me feel the sport was getting gross. Everyone attacked me, mostly under the guise of fighting against the political message he had when it wasn't really about that. It was about decor so in this case if john wants to apologize because maybe there were you know based on the fallout of it there were fans that that that didn't get or fully understand

his message and didn't like it i could understand that but what i loved about john saying that on his podcast and being so raw and vulnerable was that he did have something to lose meaning that he's the voice of this company. And he was somebody from that side of the line who was actually willing to stand up and say, all things considered, like there's a change going on here that is not great. And you know what I mean? It might not be MMA fueled, right? Like, you know what I mean? You can go to, you can look at Twitter slash X and say since elon joined has that kind of really gotten grosser you know really gone downhill in those ways and maybe does that speak to a vocal minority

fan base that doesn't represent the full mma ufc fan base it might we may get too caught up in that but things have gotten gross from things that fighters have said to lack of decision-making in certain aspects from UFC and trying to control some things and to see one of their own come forward and say, Hey guys, like I know it was real, but it wasn't, it wasn't based in what Strickland said. It was based in people, mostly Strickland fans. I would assume feeling that John, because he may have scored it the other way or whatever was, you know, was biased, which wasn't the case, but Luke it's, it's the cesspool has gotten as dirty as ever. So is that just social media or is that just the client climate we're in separate from MMA or is it just within the UFC right now? Either way,

I was happy John actually spoke up and at the very least put out a, you know, an other side of that argument. And, and that wasn't going out of his way to throw darts at that side, but to just say like, look, like what's going on? Maybe we should, you know, look at this from a larger point of view and sort of restructure how we act in our decorum, because that is becoming the image of the sport. And that's why it's dangerous. That's why I harp on, well, if UFC is not going to police their own, not just on political message, but anything, you're going to have a lawless, you know, ruthless area where anything can happen.

So, um, I was happy John spoke up. I hope that the apology wasn't forced and that it was him just wanting to speak to fans that were upset that maybe he wasn't really, you know, pointing towards, maybe he was really just focusing on the negativity from the scoring and the whole idea of every close fight isn't a robbery it just means the judges preferred one direction so with all that said i didn't i didn't love that he felt that that he had to come out and do that but i i'd like to know more info and the origins on it because i'm just happy somebody spoke up and and was you know this is not something that gets talked about it gets shut down quick so i'm happy on that side

that somebody actually raised their hand and said something luke and then i know like the response will be the pussification of mma media in this mma space guys it's cage fighting i know that but it's like it's wild i don't even get that argument it's like dude i've seen cage fighting without this it's it's fine like you don't like this is the secret sauce or something there's just some invention that people have come up with i mean i had a few reactions to this again there is some sort of internet speculation about whether or not the apology was forced i we would just be speculating based on no information i have no idea if it is i would agree with you that if it if it was and again that's an if well then that would tell you everything you need to know but

who knows i don't really know i did text anik uh a message he responded and it was obviously very cordial and polite and cool so i just put that on the record but we didn't have a back and forth it was really one in one out and then i called it a day um but there's been a couple of weird reactions to this one it goes back to the whole thing before about like free speech and when we know that's really not what this is about it's just about worldview implementation so like here's the first thing that i i reaction that i did not understand bc where one is like people will complain that the toxicity both on social media and then in the larger mma on at least on the online fan base because i actually find this to be not nearly as true in person which should tell you that some of this is just a little bit you know media

navel gazing but being like oh it's actually not any worse you guys are making it up it's like it's like guys do you know how fucking stupid that is right here's how fucking stupid that is we are living at a time where mma fans when no political figure of any electoral or federal consequence was at an event they were not in attendance and the fans of their own volition multiple times got chants going about f the current prime minister and then on top of it f uh basically our current president which is fine they can do that but they did it unsolicited because there's no one they're trolling in the audience and they're in canada we're talking about people who lead with culture wars as the first part of their personality right the kind of person who shows up at a party and their friend introduces them to everyone else like oh that's my buddy

steve and then steve goes hey everybody i'm steve let's go brandon am i right and then everyone at the party's like okay this fucking guy is here all right like what are we gonna do about this golly man now it's gonna be one of those nights that's that's who this is and then they want us to pretend we don't notice that dude we fucking notice that like how do you not notice it is quite obvious and it is quite intentional please stop trying to gaslight everybody into saying that there's not actually a difference that there's not actually an increase that there's not any of this belligerence that we quite obviously detect because part of that belligerence is like the obligation of that culture war like to to to make that a leading part of your personality to lead with it and to be simply unapologetic of it i mean we talked about sean

strickland's comments at 297 before he even got asked a question as he walked up excuse me as he walked up to the stage he started talking about all these political things unsolicited, unsolicited. So it's not part of anybody's imagination. Number one, let's just get that please. No, it just used to be handled. Luke, it used to be handled to keep it out, which is the same argument. A lot of people had about keeping that stuff out of the NBA and NFL. So yet I, you know, a donk, I forgot the guy's name. I wish I wrote it down sent me a hey BC you should probably mention on the show remember that time and it turns out remember that time Yoel Romero was talking about Jesus and there was a you know there was a controversy and Dana

specifically yes yes it was like America doesn't want to hear that they don't want to hear your thoughts on Jesus it's like so what is it you know what what has well listen I'm not I'm not I think for the time being I'm not advocating any particular I don't know what what has well listen i'm not i'm not i think for the time being i'm not advocating any particular i don't know what the right answer is in terms of how to police any of this what i am trying to argue for though is again one more week where i'm asking for some honesty please stop trying to tell us it's not different it is quite obviously different because of what you can visibly detect it in any number of ways and then on top of it part of what's happening here is troll culture the reason why people like John Anik are getting upset is this combination between

culture war identification as a substitute for personality. And then on top of it, troll culture where everything is about maximal agitation. This is what is happening. And as people observe it, then there is the common response that we'll quit crying about it. Guys, if we're going to have this sort of notion about we're allowed to speak our mind, that works in both directions. Just kind of understand that. And particularly if you're trying to elicit a response from people by being maximally cultured out and maximally trolled out, this is what's going to naturally happen. Just kind of accept a little bit more that it's part of the process. But to that end, BC, I don't imagine that we're going to naturally happen. Just kind of accept a little bit more that it's part of the process. But to that,

to that end, BC, I don't imagine that we're going to convince anyone to abandon their views. I'm just asking people to like, look in the mirror here. You're doing it on purpose for the folks he's complaining about. It is done intentionally.

Please quit trying to say that this is something that we're just happening to be more sensitive about over time. It is quite obviously nonsensical. Very well. Yeah. I just look, look i just feel like because you know you don't hear anyone having that opinion when dana said like unequivocally talking specifically about strickland's comments remember he said oh there were two you know gay fighters on the stage next to him mentioning rocky pennington and uh uh my era bueno silva and remember he said you know ad nauseum that they're fine with it and then i don't did you see that interview that i that i shot you a link to to

when um aaron bronstetter interviewed uh pennington it was after she won the championship at 297 and he essentially asked her and she said that like it was dana who took them into another room and like made sure they were okay with everything strickland said and wanted to make you know and like ask them if they still wanted to to come out to the press conference and they were okay with everything Strickland said and wanted to make, you know, and like ask them if they still wanted to, to come out to the press conference. And they were, they, you know,

said they'll be fine. They'll go. But they also were like, this is absolute bullshit. And, and, and to hear Pennington's heartfelt thoughts about why someone so openly just offering those types of opinions out and how hurtful that can be.

I mean, this is a company that has championed for rights in a lot of these areas luke so to see that used to yeah to see that go so quickly to like this lawless reality that's really what we're talking about like what you know like is is this what everybody wants the ufc to be as fan as journalist as fighter as whatever if this is what you want then it's going to be that it looks like it but don't be upset when there's fallout essentially is really what's coming on so i'm happy that john did speak up in the first place i am that that at least uh there's some voices out there luke you know yeah yeah i mean there's a lot of good points there it's just kind of a weird place i mean like we'll circle back and close it here which is just the way i opened it to people being like oh

it's cage fighting get over it guys all of this stuff is a choice. All of it, all of it. It doesn't have to be any one direction or the other. And you might like different ones than we like. And all of that is fine. But this idea that like these ideas currently going around, again, I'm going to be very clear about this. Ideas circa 1967.

I mean, just totally discredited nonsense being recirculated because a new generation decided it was worth entertaining one more time um we we like we're not going to look upon this necessarily favorably and you really have to understand that this is not also anything that's intrinsically tied to the sport all of that is just an artificial decision to implement it one way or the other so when we push back on it, again, people are going to disagree, and I understand that, but you really have to wrap your mind around it. None of these things are intrinsically part of the activity, and we have to decide what kind of culture collectively we would like to welcome. I have a hard time believing that this kind of exclusionary nonsense is going to make us best over the long term. Exactly. And you could just

frame everything Luke just said as two angry MMA journalists who are getting marginalized in their careers, which actually might be true to some degree, but that's not the fuel right here. If you do want to drive out the media, and I've seen some good tweets in this area, including a nice tweet from Alexander K Lee, Luke about, you know, what the media's job actually is and should be. They all said it right. Alex Bohunian had a great tweet about it too. Like it's not PR, guys. It's journalism.

It's trying to find answers to certain questions or maybe speaking up on things that aren't being spoken upon. Like that's the job. If you prefer people that are PR for the UFC, then you know their channels and they are very popular. And that's great. But Luke, like people are always like, man, you guys are just jealous of Nina Drama. It's like, congrats on her success.

But she also put out a post-fight video where she was crying, saying, I'm just happy that people finally got to see who the real Sean Strickland is. So, dude, we don't have the same audience. I'm not losing any audience because she's gaining. We don't have the same audience. So, yeah, we did see who the real Sean Strickland was.

Yeah, apparently. All right. Very good. BC, let's go to happier topics. Hey, how about Vince McMahon? All right, so, Jesus Christ, how do I even say this? Vince McMahon, over the weekend, is hit with a lawsuit, and many things are alleged, including but not limited to,

sexual trafficking the allegations as i understand it bc if i get any part of this story wrong please correct it but the allegations as i understand it are so heinous that it forced multiple sponsors including very long-standing preeminent sponsors of the wwe to immediately begin to sever relationships to the WWE. Once that got moving downhill, he resigned Vince McMahon from all operations, anything related to WWE, as well as resigning from the TKO, the parent company board, effective immediately. Nick Khan made the announcement over the weekend. BC, what does this mean for Vince, for TKO, and if anything,

and I don't know that it does, but if anything, for the UFC? Stop sitting on your aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now, you can save up to 25% in aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com.

Conditions apply. This is, first of all, like, it was already monumental news, especially for those who come from the wrestling side as fan or whatever. It was always like we assumed Vince would unfortunately die in office one day because he's just been so fueled and succeeding and working and driving forward. But when he had his recent sexual scandal and all of those lawsuits and the reveal of how many people he paid off uh we thought that was the end of it right but then he worked out this incredible sale that only brought him power again and he was suddenly back in the mix but what was revealed from this like luke with respect to the those that that died in the chris benoit story of you know almost 20 years ago like this is actually bigger than that just for the full impact of, of this one man who

was literally the most instrumental person in this genre, this entertainment field. And it's still be in it being what it is today. Yet Luke, what they were hiding. And I think even the way this, this story got presented as disgusting as it was in its next level, disgusting. I think people only read quick excerpts of like, you know, the defecation and some of the just ridiculous nature of this and maybe aren't getting the full picture here. But I read the full claim from start to finish at MK Donk, who happens to be a lawyer, sent it to me. And I know that, you know, everyone can access it. But look, reading this was like I was shaking. I mean, I was like, you know, in can access it. But look, reading this was like, I was shaking. I mean,

I was like, you know, in a, like a personal rage. This is an allegation. And I, and I hope, I hope it's not a hundred percent true, but this isn't just as heinous as it is sexual trafficking and all this other stuff. Like this is like outright rape. And this is outright abuse on levels that were just, that are just diabolical to to a next level extreme i mean the text messages alone i mean just it's unbelievable what went on and we all meaning us that were wrestling journalists at some time no knew about a a poor backstage culture in wwe everyone knew about it but it was always more focused on like maybe the abuses of owner to athlete, you know, that, that, or, you know, that type of thing. Some of the stuff

we argue about in the UFC fighters, current landscape, but like, there's no one bigger to a specific industry than Vince McMahon is to the history of pro wrestling and still had, you know, even at this age, a very viable role today, even with all the drama. And this is a death sentence, rightfully so. Like we should never hear from him again. I mean, this is, if this is true, this is just, so there's going to be a fall out there. That's going to be ugly because, you know, there's a bunch of people named only in that complaint under WWE executive numbers, one, two, three, or four. And, you know, there's some potential culpability there too, for those that were identified in that as having full knowledge of the kind of

stuff that was going on behind the scenes, but was sort of seemingly just allowed that, you know, there was a reason if anyone turned it, tuned into the Royal Rumble on Saturday night, that Brock Lesnar suddenly wasn't on it because there's a hint to him having a major role in this too. And his got pulled and also luke they went out of control because slim jim once vince stepped down decided to come back in and be the presenting sponsor for this they had slim jim like on every video board during the most important match and had sections of the crowd all dressed in slim Jim shirts, holding giant containers of Slim Jim, just eating them and dancing.

I mean, they went all the way to be like, no, no, don't worry. It was just one guy. We'll get rid of him. We're fine. We're fine. We're fine. And, you know, Triple H, Luke, who's the son-in-law of Vince McMahon, and people think might be one of those executives labeled in that complaint,

but they're going to have to, you know, figure that out in the legal system and process. He had probably the worst sort of damage control press conference Saturday night with the wrestling media. And shout out to the people in the wrestling media that actually came out and acted like media. Luke, you want to see a group of people who take those passes for the fan element in ways that anyone accused of doing that in boxing and MMA aren't even close to. They at least asked the questions and Triple H just punted on them and said, hey, guys, we just had this great week, meaning creatively, right? Yeah, Netflix and everything else too. Yeah, just come on.

But look, this is a monster story just in the celebrity culture pro wrestling area, but I'm interested in what you asked me on the fallout to tko group and ufc because vince formerly one note one note if i may very quickly bc it should be noted these are of course allegations and number two vince mcmahon did acknowledge he was stepping down but then put out a statement himself saying he would look forward to like vigorously defending himself take that for what it is worth and i think it never put out a statement correct which they never did post. I did not see that, but they could have. Okay, so here's the key question I have.

Look, this is heinous beyond belief if it's true. And unfortunately, Luke, if it's true, you've got to believe there's going to be other stories coming out because Vince has already had other heinous stories that came out that he originally had to remove himself from the company for. So unfortunately, there's a pattern here that goes beyond whispers. I hope they figure it all out legally. But that's a damage, obviously, in so many ways to the brand and to the genre and all of that.

I mean, Vince had a job that was higher than Dana in the TKO arc, you know, in that, in that career in the, in the silo there. So what does that do to everything we're talking about in the UFC, which is part of the same parent group there about the sudden tolerance of anything like Connor threw a dolly through a window and almost, you know, injured his, his coworkers are in some cases did and was rewarded with the biggest fight in history. And Dana said, well, guys, he just, he paid paid a lot he paid millions in legal fees that's enough when you act like that you allow an open field for anything to happen um something really really bad just happened in WWE I wonder if there's a warning in there of a crackdown of when things can go too far so here here's my read as somebody who does not know the professional wrestling industry but just trying to make sense of this because the ufc and wwe obviously have the same parent group tko it was

interesting to see how quickly the dominoes once they started falling as it relates to the sponsor withdrawal how quickly decisions were made right right oh yeah like it showed that the primacy of what they value was the wwe bottom, certainly much more than Vince's continued relationship to the business. But if you actually watch what both Nick Khan said, as well as what Vince said, they agreed that there was this termination of the existing relationship. But what you don't ever hear is that Owen will never be partners with them again. You actually don't hear that at all. And in fact, what I think that this shows is that the WWE can, and in fact will see it as existential to act

if something like sponsors are getting pulled during a week where they started that week, BC, with huge news related to this monster deal with Netflix. I mean, they were riding high earlier in the week. Is that $2 billion a year? Yes. No, I think it's, yes, something like that. You know, an enormous deal in every way.

For one show, not the full package. One show, a big show. One show. And again, with one of the two streamers in the entire business making money hand over fist. You can literally take shows that have existed on Macs, put them on netflix and they instantly turn to hits because no one watches them on the other one and everybody watches

netflix that's a real thing that has happened and so this they started the week with this incredible amount of positive news but what i think is going to what they're going to try to happen is if possible vince is going to try and fight this and rehab his way back into having some kind of relationship and that in that event they will probably welcome him back in if that is achievable. So it's the same kind of thing with Dana. Going back to what the nature of the sponsors are, what's ESPN's feeling about Sean Strickland? My understanding is they're not really thrilled with him,

but it is business and they're just going to keep going. As long as that's the modus operandi, we'll just get what we get. If there is some kind of executive scandal and somehow the MMA sponsors care enough that they feel like it's damaging to their brand, you'll get something similar. But all of these things are conditional. That's a very high bar, relatively speaking, to achieve in MMA. I'm not saying it doesn't mean anything for TKO and it doesn't mean anything for UFC. But what it does kind of tell me is everything is very specific conditional context dependent there are limits to everything but there are back doors always for billionaires it's just the way the world works it appears dude I'm telling

you if you don't read that Luke if you haven't read the detail don't do it because I know it's an allegation but it's it's you know damn like that they're not money they're not money the allegations are not money it's bad yeah yeah i'm damn i mean look this is you know quasi combat sports but it's close enough this is a story you just didn't think would go this way in this dark of a turn for one man in the in the in the legacy um you know you can say that doesn't relate to ufc at all but yeah they're they're they're business partners i mean the lesson is are there consume are there are there pressure points that even in our age of elite unaccountability

are there pressure points you can still touch to get reactions yes it turns out that there are yes um but all of these are conditional all of of these, nothing is written into stone. All of this is only for the moment unless Vince can rehab. There's just a lot of ways. I mean, as your point, Vince was already gone once, commandeered a return, and then this is his second time. This is like those guys who get married like seven times. You know what I mean?

They just cycle through them, and then they wait out the cycle, and they come back again. We shall see if that happens to Vince McMahon. I do not know. BC, topic number four, let's review some UFC 300 news that kind of got circulated during last week. Now, here's the interesting part. The UFC announced for UFC 300,

you had done a video on the relatively big news, I would consider, for Holly Holman, 135 pounds pounds taking on Kayla Harrison. There was some consternation about that, which frankly, I kind of agree with, which is, okay, very cool that Kayla's here. Very cool. Glad to see that. That's a change. All right, that's positive. 135 needed some fresh blood, but how the hell is she going to get to that weight, and what is she even going to be like when she gets down there there was additional announcement past that bc where they announced for ufc 300 jessica andrage taking on marina rodriguez and i saw some pushback from that which i found to be a little bit baffling so tell me your review now on the ufc 300 card rodriguez and and andrage what that does for

you and what you make of some of the pushback. Yeah, I still think 300 needs a main event. I think we're going to get a fight that has not been announced yet. And I think that'll be the main event because I think it needs it. But where it's going to be at if that main event is, you know, decent, at least, is this card is coming together awesome. I'm loving what 300 is becoming. The depth is incredible. But yeah, so look, here's what I'm trying to figure out. I watched the fallout of the announcements of these two female fights in particular closely. And I even wrote a positive

column about Katie versus Holly or Kayla versus Holly, excuse me. And, and did a video, like you mentioned on morning combat reacting to it, but it seemed like everyone's take was different on why they didn't like it, but there was like very little positive it was either the come on kayla can't cut to 35 or come on holly's washed in 42 and this will be one-sided or come on uh enough with the women's fighting already so i'm trying to figure out if the because all i saw in reaction to andrage versus rodriguez when in reality guys this might be like the second fight of the night and this fight's pretty badass i mean it's a pretty damn good fight between aging contenders in this division uh i'm i'm down with it completely the full reaction i saw on twitter was like enough of these bullshit women fights so i'm wondering is this just again a vocal minority group that's troll fueled that might not have a

history as mma fans that maybe came to MMA recently for whatever reason. And these are just the only people on X these days. And they just happened to be responding to my feed, but it was literally like 80% was like, this fight sucks. They should get rid of the women's divisions altogether. Uh, you know, put them in a kitchen and a gun in the other hand or something like that. Luke, that Luke. That's where we were at with this. Maybe I just need to get off X. Maybe that's what John Anik was really saying, Luke, when he said that. Yeah, we don't have to make it about, I mean, again, the moderation there has gone certainly downhill, BC. I mean, here's what I would say about this.

Okay. I actually am not immune to the idea that there are legitimate, listen to the words that I am saying very clearly and very carefully. Do I think that somebody who doesn't hate women is also able to say, hey, women's MMA did not have a super high performing year in the UFC in 2023? That's a very fair statement. Obviously Obviously you can look at fights like Shevchenko and Grasso and you could say, wow, those were delivered big time. No issue.

Like 100% true. Of course, we've talked about it before. Tatiana Suarez has hit a bit of a hiccup, but her return has been pretty excellent. Or how about Aaron Blanchfield's rise? Aaron Blanchfield, another name. I mean, Jan Schaunan turning things around. There's lots of positives that were things that were excellent that you could take, but it was not a super high performing year. It did not have a lot of standout performances

and it did not have a lot of epic rivalries. It did not have a lot of just really, you know, next level work happening. And that can happen over time. And I understand that it was not a high performing year. And so that on the back of also what we got as the co-main event for 297, which was a dreadful affair, absolutely dreadfulful affair i'm not saying that there aren't legitimate criticisms to make of perhaps the state of women's mma about the rivalries about the gap between that and the men's game we can have a conversation about that dude jessica andrage versus marina rodriguez that is not part of the problem and that is not the fucking hill to die on i mean it seems like the opposite of the hill to die on you know they're gonna they're gonna slug that one out and hadrigas

on the other side has certainly become a little bit more i think hittable and uh to an extent beatable she's certainly a lot older dude andrage is going to all likelihood like demolish her this is this is the major complaint to have i i even understand, like, hey, I got personally, do I have skepticism of that you're going to get a great Kayla Harrison at 135 pounds? I am skeptical of that. I don't know how that's going to go, but I don't get a warm, fuzzy feeling about it. But dude, Andrade versus Rodriguez, especially if it starts the card, it's not really featured on the pay-per-view side, nor should it be. No one's suggesting as much. This will be an all-action affair for as long as it lasts. I cannot even fathom what the problem here is, other than are there other good fights you could have put there? Yeah,

there's a lot of good fights you could put in a lot of places. There's nothing prohibitively bad about it or representatively a part of broader decline that this signals that lets you get irate or really dramatically affected by it. This is not the one, even if I am willing to acknowledge, yeah, 2023 was not a standout year for women's MMA in general. That's totally fair. You can divorce the two and understand them for what they are. I think that's fair, Luke. Definitely. I think that's fair. And I, and I don't, again, I don't know if this is just one small subset screaming and I can't stop hearing that, but those are pretty damn good fights. I wanted to ask you one element though, of the Kayla versus Holly fight that maybe not be, is maybe not be getting talked about enough.

And it's the whole idea here,ke of remember when cyborg was brought in they wanted her to cut to 135 they wanted it you know some disaster rousey showdown big money all that and they gave her the chance to cut to 140 and she did it but then you know that led to okay we should probably open up a 145 division and they also did that and cyborg to her credit became champion do you do you think that it's also a tryout from the ufc's idea that if kayla either can't make 35 or makes it and is compromised and either loses or let's just say wins but it's not you know overly impressive that they might be able to just go okay you tried it thank you but we didn't officially kill the 145 division now dana said probably right you know

everyone's like probably but it's not officially dead you hear those rumors that Amanda Nunes is is back up in the bullpen at the very least just training just just seeing what's up I'm wondering Luke that even though we have this idea that if Kayla can make 135 consistently and if she comes in here and beats Holly she might fight for the title next like like, you know, for all we know, and maybe become that champion. But if it doesn't work out, you could build toward Kayla versus Amanda potentially. And remember that the storyline as teammates and Amanda, not believing that the gym was prioritizing her over Kayla and all that. That's a, that's a, you know, pro wrestling angle right there.

But in real life, I think that's a great fallback plan for the ufc because all i've seen the last few days i saw big john mccarthy had a similar take where people were just like kayla's actually doing the opposite of what dana accused francis of doing they're saying she's going away from the actual competition which would have been pacheco and cyborg and going into an area potentially at 135 where it might be an easier fight for her against Rocky Pennington than those other two. But I think if you're going to say that you're not taking into account the risk that Kayla's doing in cutting down in weight and you're also not significant

handicap. Yeah. You're also not taking it from the angle of her going to the UFC, potentially even for less money because she was probably set up to do well in the PFC PFL money-wise. This is also her like trying to figure it find out how great she can be so um i haven't loved some of those negative takes but dude amanda's not getting getting up in the bullpen for no reason here luke right let's let's look let's look well i mean couldn't why couldn't they just do holly versus her versus kayla at 145 if they were trying to set up a 145 versus amanda what about as a fallback because they

haven't shoved 45 down so maybe they just wanted this is the experiment i mean i people i get asked this question on my live chat frequently which is like oh you know could you expand women's mma you can but right now not at 145 the best talent certainly is already at pfl in general or there's really not much to begin with you'd actually scale the other way which is to adam weight you would get a 105 division i think a 105 division in women's mma is significantly more likely than certainly uh 135 you actually might even find smaller weight classes if they divide them up a little bit differently like doing it we never talk about this but doing it on the men's schedule 10 pounds apart may not make sense for women's mma but separate conversation for a separate time okay but do you

think that the ufc which have been strategic now because pfl came out and said we're competing with you they were bold and what did ufc do since then they signed michael venom page and kayla harrison are not not saying it's purposefully to like poke them in the eye but it's also smart business to potentially take someone available ufc contracts are really hard to get out of i'm sure pfl contracts have a easier way pfl contracts are equally bad yeah okay that's good to know i was wondering if you if you if my idea worked out where kayla settled at 45 in the long run they kept the division alive maybe they go free agent hopping and try to get pacheco back into where she started too you know again i i really it's not that 145 is dead in the sense that, again, the UFC will make everything conditional.

We may not go, oh, our business is closed at 145. I don't know if they're going to be that declarative about it. They might just give themselves a little bit of leeway. But I once talked to UFC matchmakers about what a division requires. And what I was basically told is that you have to have at least 20 people on rotation that you can do that with. And that takes up bandwidth and time around all the other weight classes you have to pay attention to they're not just going to keep a 145 class and i don't think they're going to bring it back anytime soon they try there's not enough talent there maybe kayla could be a difference maker i don't think so not because she's not great but because there's just not much there again i think they're going to scale back

the other direction and you see what invicta is doing with their atom weight division i think that's probably next what invicta does tends to be a leading indicator of which way the ufc ultimately goes just do women's heavyweight it solves everything tell them bc sent you i mean come on just do 135 to 155 you just want two lunch ladies just out there fucking slinging the dogs on each other um all right bc also conor mcgregor tweeted out that he was, you know, UFC 300 is basically, he kind of hinted that he wanted to be part of it. Michael Chandler, of course, right. And after him being like, I admit, you know, challenge accepted.

It's like, all right, chill, chill. My guy, chill. Fight at heavyweight. Yeah. All right. BC, can I ask a question about this? Just what the fuck is going on between Conor and the UFC? Conor wants to come back immediately

they don't want i guess they still want to wait out the six month period which is why they're probably not including him it's i think it would still be at the five or whatever it would be um or maybe even then it still qualifies i just i gotta be honest i just don't even know they seem to be on very different positions about where he wants to be and where they want him right you know we do always tend to like go against UFC naturally in this. Let's take a UFC pro angle. Conor may be like very savvy and hard to negotiate with. So if they are in a position right now

where they feel like they don't need him, and technically right now they don't. They've got a loaded 299 card at 300 that's going to hit because it's got so much talent on it. It's got to hit, right? I mean, it's going to be an attraction. They've got all those other big fight night cards that are popping up from Saudi to Mexico City that kind of matter extra. You've got Noche.

So if Conor can come back, yeah, that's the perfect International Fight Week Super Bowl. And that's just another thing you can add on. But they don't actually need them. So they don't need to bend to the will of potentially, or maybe it's more six month related to give that visual that you saw that might be gone, but it doesn't mean we're just going to let people do what they want, even though it probably means that, but whatever,

whatever, whatever on that. But I just wonder, is there any, do you think Connor is in the discussion at all in the ufc matchmaking room about 300 because dana did say he's about to announce a welterweight title fight with with city and date and because he said that that way people are thinking he's moving leon edwards against balal off of that card and i still think they need an actual main event whether it would be

tom aspinall versus somebody or poiton in some form or adesanya whatever like there's options what do you think right now is connor in play as a possible 300 no i don't think so i don't think he would want to split pay-per-view points on anybody else because you would have zhong wai lee on there as well for a title they're not going to want to do that justin gaethje and max well at least justin gaethje is going to be entitled to pay-per-view points so that's going to take it up so no i don't i don't think well obviously that would be for a non-title you i guess you could do it but it'd still be splitting pay-per-view points because he'd get them no matter what so anyway you get the idea it would it would

mess up his money i don't think he wants to do it that way i think what they're i think here's what probably happened they probably had balal and leon and like a placeholder like we'll pull that card if we need it i think what they're probably going to do is put Izzy in there in some capacity or another. Izzy versus Pineda, three or five, or Izzy versus DDP. Something along those lines I think they're probably looking for. If they can put Bilal there, maybe they do. I doubt it. That would make them ship it somewhere else.

But that's probably your leading indicator. One more thing real quickly about... Oh, I was going to ask you if you think there's money in strickland versus adesanya 2 in a non-title fight yes i don't know as a headliner for ufc 300 i mean this is the point i want to make i understand people being like i want 300 to be special it's like okay well i saw ufc 100 and i saw ufc 200 happen in real time from the planning to the execution, or at least the announcement stage. I mean,

that wasn't there in the meetings, but you know, as receiving the news, as it was being put together, it happened afterwards. Same kind of thing. I've seen people say things like, Oh,

it should be a once in a decade card. I don't even know what the fuck that means. I don't even think you can build that. Like in order to build something like that, you would actually have to substantially damage the rest of the product. And even then it might not necessarily deliver there really is no such a thing as designing a card from an engineering standpoint hold on let me finish my point let me finish my point okay go ahead i'll give you that room yeah you got it yeah yeah i'm just pointing out like when

people say something like that which cards would you identify as being once a decade? And what about them made them that way? You're going to look and see that that kind of our cup runneth over engineering. A is not really necessary. B, even if you try to do it like UFC 200, it can fall apart in all kinds of ways or the fights themselves don't necessarily deliver. It's okay to expect maximal quality, but i think what people's understanding of maximal quality is is not legitimately achievable i disagree because what did we see in 2016 it wasn't just the ufc 200 card that was loaded initially and it was i mean it freaking was i mean they even got anderson silva on like a day notice it was okay tell me

which card tell me which card was the one you're describing so i can look it up over here it was not just 200 don't forget that week they also had rda versus alvarez main eventing a tough finale and then they also had juana versus claudia too in a title fight that like had a lot of interest coming in on a on a friday night so that year they also had UFC 205, which is in discussion of the argument of their deepest card in history. So they overloaded that for aesthetics, for the sale and all of that.

But they didn't fall apart afterwards, Luke. They did overplay their hand in terms of trying to load up a bunch of events in a short period. But what I'm saying is it is attainable to make this feel like once in a decade they're getting close to it how they have it set up right now and hopefully this main event i don't know okay so on the not achievable so why try it's very no no no no no no no no no first of all i don't know what you're describing as generationally important i

was there i was there in vegas that week i actually covered that on the ground the co-main for uh eddie and rda was derrick lewis and roy nelson alan joe band versus bilal muhammad and joseph duffy versus mitch clark there's nothing generational about any of that except for the main event that's not generational that's the point you took out of what i just said i said they had such a loaded amount of big fights that they put them on separate cards i'm not saying that thursday night card was deep that wasn't the argument the point was they had such a loaded amount of big fights that they put them on separate cards. I'm not saying that Thursday night card was deep. That wasn't the argument. The point was they had so many great fights, they spread them out. They could put it in one night on any point.

They could load up one card for 300 levels in one night. You have to have pay-per-views on subsequent dates that have to have a requisite amount of quality. You have no idea what commitments they might have to any of their overseas partners. You have no idea what commitments they might have to any of their overseas partners you have no idea what commitments they might have to have regional talent so they'll go to brazil they have to have a certain amount of brazilian talent or any other geographic co-location that way people don't seem to realize you have when you have as much content as the ufc that you have contractually obligated for and it could be on very specific guidelines about what can what can be there and what can't this idea that you can just dump everything on one date and fuck the rest of the dates,

that's not how this business works in any capacity whatsoever. Not true. No. The point I'm trying to make here is I was there when they had the three back-to-back dates, and you're right, it was a grand week. In fact, by Saturday, I was just done. I was so tired. The whole thing was incredibly exhausting. But I'm trying to point out the next night after Eddie versus RDA, they had Ioana and Claudia, which at the time was a great fight.

But the co-main event on that was Andrew Sanchez versus Khalil Rountree. They had just other fights that were happening. And then following that was UFC 200, which they did make a genuine effort at. The whole Jon Jones situation. It was initially supposed to be Conor. It all got jacked up. What I'm trying to point out is when you really think about big time fights big time moments they are often very stacked cards that's true but this idea that the way to get to that next level is top to bottom nothing but a class fights like that's the secret sauce if that were the secret sauce they would have done it by

now that actually doesn't meaningfully enhance everything huh i think you can look i think for a card like 300 they actually could have gone deeper down the down the road of bring back legends or celebrity crossover not that i necessarily wanted that to be the the draw for the card no i want a main event that matters that is relevant that you feel like will be historically relevant like that's what it should be but i thought they were going to go to more of those outside the box in terms of their active roster look even though their goal seems to be top to bottom quality which is going to be a fun night i actually think they could accomplish the same or more by even just focusing on the main card meaning meaning you almost have five main event level fights on one card. And then the early prelims and prelims are just average, or maybe it's all Dana White Contender Series graduates,

whatever. The whole point is if you're offering a pay-per-view, remember, you're not selling the prelims, right? They're used as a commercial for your pay-per-view. I want them to come out on a 300 level card with five fights that all could main event their own pay-per-view. Seriously. I know that's asking a lot, but you only have a 300, right? If you're successful enough to get there once. So that's why I think they can do it at any time.

I'm not saying it's easy, but you don't have to have 17 great fights. You could just have five unbelievably great fights. And we'd probably never forget that night looking back, because I think that's how we look at 100, right? Even though it was deep, you're looking at the main card when you look back at 100 right that's what you're looking at the you're looking at the main three fights lesnar mirror you're looking at gsp and tiago alves and then dan henderson versus michael bisping obviously um

john jones fought on that card as well there were some other notable names but again this is my point like that card what really matters to that one and what really defined its place in history were basically three fights. UFC 200 is basically two fights. This idea that top to bottom, we have to rob Peter to pay Paul. Again, the argument is not that what UFC 300 currently is is not without criticism or that there could be some interesting substitutions

or you could play it another way. And again, without a main event, that's the biggest criticism is who the hell is going to headline this thing? I fair enough. I'm not saying it's the perfect card, but what you can expect from the UFC for any particular big date. And this is a big one certainly is you want to, you want a high class main event. You want a two, three, potentially four, if you're really getting greedy, other good fight, like really important, big fight, specific items that you want to see that's available on the list. And then the rest just has to kind of satisfy a conditional level of quality. You're well on your

way to that. Like you're well on your way to, we're not there, but we're well on our way to that. So I'm not immune to the idea that this one should be substituted. That one should be added by the way, they added Sadiq Yusuf versus Diego Lopez. I mean, two thumbs up on that one. That one bangs. Huh? That's a 300 foot? Yeah, that's a 300, dude. Sadiq Yusuf, Diego Lopez. I mean, that fight is fucking bonkers awesome.

That's great. This is what I mean. Did you need that specific matchup on that specific date? Probably not. But it's a really useful one that, to me, could headline a card at the apex. Maybe not a fight night, but something pretty close to that so again i'm open to criticism i'm not defending every decision ufc has made it's just a level of hand-wringing seems to me like really out of touch with how the business operates and i guess i just don't understand why there's such a gap there that's

it i hear you but i'm happy all right last last thing Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty happy with it too. Again, let's see what they come up with the headliner. Let's see what the headliner is. But BC, last thing on this. Did you see the Roadhouse trailer featuring UFC's own Conor McGregor and Chicken and Broccoli only? No anabolics on this young man, Jake Gyllenhaal. Did you see it?

Yeah, and it looked freaking awesome. All I had heard about this film was not going to get a theatrical run direct to streaming. Direct to your fucking TV, yes. Direct to your eyeballs. We have the trailer. Let's take a look. He wants to take the roadhouse away from me.

He wants to build some bullshit resort for a bunch of rich assholes. I should warn you, people have a certain way of getting things done around here. Hey, fellas. Looks like you're having a smacky night. I got a tip for you. Don't let no one get this close. Come on, bro.

Let me get it. You know what threatened me? Telling me to get out of town. I get the impression that you can't be threatened. Once Knox is on the job, it's over, baby. It takes a lot to get me angry, but when I am, I just can't let go. People seem a little aggressive around here.

It looks, BC, dumb as hell in all the best ways does it not it it made me it made me look back with so much nostalgia seriously at the back at a time when connor used to be a freaking badass right because it reminded you i know it's a different version and boy is he buff luke uh but holy crap dude i want i know isn't there a controversy involving like the director or writer or somebody's suing them because it's not the director is boycotting the premiere is my understanding oh because he was told it was going to go to theaters and it was going to be something different bigger deal yeah either way dude i actually i actually hope that the the trailer makes it look like a better film than it is because even if it's like annoyingly campy b-movie like it's just going to be even better like i'm down for conor mcgregor going through like remember when stone cold steve austin had all those movies that were direct to

video where he was like a janitor like a billy blanks type role and then he'd like you know kick ass against the inside drug cartel that was trying to take the school town that sounds like the plot to the substitute doesn't it with tom i mean listen this is not one of these movies where you have to be sober to understand the plot points what i'm saying yes hey you can just be you can just be five vodka tonics deep and i think you'll be all right you know three margaritas in my case are we gonna do a watch along for this in february luke or that would not play well i mean what do you think uh when does it get released what's the release date mike is i think March, right? I don't even think it gets released in February. Oh, it's probably March.

Yeah, all right. So we'd have to wait a little bit. But yeah, I would love to watch this movie. It looks perfectly terrible. I can't wait to see it. All right, with that in mind, BC, let's quickly wrap on our top five with this. There was a one show in Japan over the weekend,

and BC, it wasn't a bad show. Listen to what I'm saying. Not a bad show. Good show, I think, in general. But definitely a little on the odd side. Okay, so let's recap what happened here at 1-1-65 at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan. Shout out to our boy Ray Flores. World's number one Hasbulla fan, BC.

World's number one. More than his parents. No one likes Hasbulla like ray flores does it's unbelievable but okay thing is that's true that's a true statement yes so there was a kickboxing main event between uh super lek and takaru i watched this bc it was a great contest he wins via decision 49 46 i think basically across the board there was a third round that takaru really kind of came alive oh that body kick right dude no no it was body kind of like body shots basically takaru spent five rounds getting absolutely annihilated in the legs there's actually a photo that came out afterwards

floating around social media i retweeted it the amount of he looks like i'm not joking it looks like uriah faber's legs after his loss to j Aldo, where he couldn't walk and had to go around in a wheelchair for like a week because he was immobilized. It looks that bad. Watching it, dude. You know how in MMA you'll watch MMA fighters take like seven leg kicks and then they can't walk anymore? Dude, when I tell you Takeru took like 8,000, I might be underselling it.

I could not fucking believe how many leg kicks he took. So basically what ended up happening was in the third round, he kind of bull rushes through, gets to boxing range. Takeru's jab was kind of failing him at that moment, gets his back up against the ropes. And then Takeru went to the body and had some great combinations. But in the end, Takeru lost out to the jab and then the leg kicking essentially of Superlek. Again, over the course of the distance, he rallied a little bit more in four than had a nice finish in five. He easily won the first two rounds.

Nothing super controversial there, except it was supposed to be Ra-Teng in that fight. Takeru has to take the Superlek fight on short notice, and he performs well in the third, but you just didn't get the result you wanted there necessarily in the sense that the Japanese fighter wasn't able to shine in his hometown when they had the opportunity to do so.

One is trying to make a bigger splash in this market. fighter wasn't able to shine in his hometown when they would have the opportunity to do so one is trying to make you know a bigger splash in this market so then we're going to talk about the sage north cut thing in just a second but after the event is over by the way chachu got pressed by the japanese media they asked him about one's finances and he compared it to like tesla or amazon that this is something that takes an extraordinary amount of scale to make it work which just means more investment but neither here here nor there. That's such an arrogant answer, but yeah. I know. Yeah. He was basically asked about Japanese talent succeeding in one, and Chachere decided to bury the Japanese in Japan to the Japanese media. Roll the clip, Mikey. I think that's the biggest challenge for Japan

is that if you look at the last several years, it doesn't matter which discipline, Japanese fighters come into one and they get crushed. And in order for one championship to truly blow up in Japan and become 125 million people go crazy, we need the Shohei Otani moment, where the best of the best in Japan, K-1, rise, risen, there's a best in Japan.

But when they come to one championship inevitably, most of them lose. And so if you look at the Japanese record, it's not a lot of losses in one. So that's the big struggle for us. You know, we're still in the search of Shohei Otani. Of course, I think Takeru still can. There's still a lot of potential,

but that's the biggest challenge. Okay. You know, here's what I will say in defense of shotry if you want to know how promoters candidly think that's how they candidly think right like the responsibility of essentially the i can only bring you the show i can only book the fights at the end it's their job to cross over which and the most framed out way is kind of sort of true but like just the optics of it b their job to cross over, which in the most framed out way is kind of sort of true, but like just the optics of it, BC, going to Japan, burying the Japanese fighters, understanding like they had tension. He was a Japanese fighter. They had K-1 fighters come over and do really well, like Chinggis. You know, it's not, even what he's saying is not

totally true. There was supposed to be a crossover with K-1, which one kind of backed away from. So like there's all of that as well bc are you as shocked as i am i mean if you were wondering why they're like several hundred million in the hole i gotta imagine that doesn't happen because here's the thing bc people took pictures of who were there in attendance apparently it was packed it was packed if you watch the broadcast it was so blacked out you couldn't see but no i think they had a sellout in in ariaki it was a big deal baffling baffling baffling well first of all my first response is finally luke i am not public enemy number one in japanese mma anymore so we now have uh we have a new target i can pass over

i've been fired from that apprenticeship luke but uh this screams marketing to me, right? This screams challenge free agents that he has wanted to potentially come to his promotion. And maybe the best way to get them there is to challenge them in a way that could be deemed disrespectful. Does that make sense? Because this is like, if that's the case, this might be like a subtle genius play, right? Or am I stretching too far? How do you, how do do you this is so easy you could be like listen um we love signing japanese talent because it adds already to our world-class roster we know that when we sign top japanese talent we know we're bringing in some of the best that the world

has to offer what's great about the one roster is we also have some of the great ties of our generation as well and putting them together we feel like it's something we uniquely do better than anybody else in the space and it shows whether it's our tie whether it's our japanese talent we have the best that fight fans can want to see how fucking hard is that that's like the easiest play on earth yeah that's what they were saying triple h should have said basically luke rather than nothing but uh um i don't know it made me feel like this is strategic that he's trying to you know really move into a market and explode and like he's saying we want our own otani we want our own japanese national that we can identify

with our brand and connect it and together we'll go to the next level like it's a recruitment pitch it's a challenge um it was aggressive though but luke did you see shinya ioki's response not happy not happy at all but this before actually and that was before Shattree said that so what what do you have that element or yes yes we have well I don't have the element but I can tell you exactly where it comes from which leads to the other part of the discussion here which again there were some bright moments on this card Cade Ruotolo had a nice win Gary Tonin had a nice win I mean there were some good parts to it up and down and again the main event in general was still pretty fun even though there was a lot of weirdness surrounding it.

But here's the weird part, right? Sage Northcutt was supposed to fight Shinya Aoki in what was largely believed to be Aoki's probable or at least possible last fight. The problem is, and if you actually watch the open workouts from the week, Uriah Faber was with him, you know, holding pads and being the wrestling dummy and so to speak. My understanding is Japan has, you you know uncompromising immigration laws they had you have to get a visa which you

can get on demand when you land in tokyo but you have to get a work visa they did not have a work visa and so the japanese government told him to get to stepping so he had no fucking quarterman and this was announced on the prelims that they like they waited to like you know as long as they could before they had to leave the country and so they waited to like you know as long as they could before they had to leave the country and so one tried to get obviously some of the talent i think they had like a world championship i forget the name of the jiu-jitsu guy they wanted to get oh ty yes kade's brother they want to get they want to get kade's brother to corner him fucking so northcutt said no so then john lineker who weighed in as an alternate which i guess

one had kind of seen the possibility that Uriah and co. would get deported, or told to leave anyway. And so in the stands, during the prelims, they go get him and tell him to warm up. So then John Lineker... That's about it. That's Chewbacca style from John Lineker.

Yeah, I mean, dude, he could have been one beer, two beers deep. I don't know. Anyway, he goes and gets wrapped up and fights shiniaki alky takes us back and chokes him out because hello i mean the guy was completely unprepared for the moment but then the whole thing you know yeah i mean there's a weight discrepancy too yes i mean there's i mean remember shiniaki fought uh uh gilbert melendez right and we're talking about a guy in lennox who fought at 125 uh previously so there's a big the whole thing's a fucking mess and the way that it went down BC I I kind of applaud one a little bit for like trying to find a way but it just feels like maybe the best call

was to not do it and Sage Northcutt has had the weirdest run in one that I've seen in quite some time well there's more to this so that kade rutolo offered to make his mma debut on one hour notice against ioki and one said no and then also luke um regarding this ioki's beef seemed to be that he was forced into accepting the lineker fight that that's what it seems his quotes were because he was ripping on Chaudhry in front of the audience and they didn't translate that part. And so it looks to be from his own translation. Yeah, for those who don't know, if you're actually looking to see

what Northcutt's one run has been like, he fights Cosmo Alessandri, which was a terrible matchup for him. Gets his face completely shattered. He gets beaten in 29 seconds. That calls out. He sits out basically four years. Wants to fight Aoki.

That gets canceled. Comes back. Has a heel hook in 39 seconds against Ahmed Mujtaba. And then has this fight canceled at the last second when his corner men are no longer allowed to stay in the country. And then there's pressure on Aki to take the fight that was weird and then they had BC they had a mixed rules fight

between Nikki Holtzkin a decorated kickboxer one of my favorites actually taking on Yoshihiro Akiyama who is by the way like Bernard Hopkins old I think nearly 50 years old at this point he still looks it though chicken and broccoli I mean chicken and broccoli if ever there was one, BC.

It was supposed to be like two rounds striking and one MMA. He can't make it out of the first. He gets tuned like a fucking guitar. And that one comes to a close. As Mikey is pointing out, Akiyama was at UFC 100 after a Japanese career. I mean, the whole thing was like, again, I'm not saying bad, BC. Yo, but you just glossed over,

you just quickly glossed over the key part. Aoki is accusing them of forcing him to take it, which led to him do basically, you know, Stitch Duran was never my friend or whatever that Dana's speech was, where he was just like, fuck Shotry. And they didn't translate it, Luke. And the crowd like shrieked. The Japanese-

Akiyama or Aoki? No, Aoki. This is the hook of the story. That's why he went on a post-fight ban. Yes, and they wouldn't translate. And they wouldn't translate. Because he's accusing Shotry not just of being negative

toward the Japanese fighters, Luke, which came after. That was not really what this was about. It seems like they just were like, like no you're fighting no matter what so i wonder what they would have said if he pulled out did they would they have taken his purse everything probably right uh yeah he wouldn't have gotten paid i guess this was this was kind of it these guys really don't have any insurance anyway uh mara mara gregorian beat uh sitachai as well on the card again there was some there were some bright spots but we're just sort of seeing like one's entrance into japan i'm like if this is a market

you're trying to win over i wonder if there were some different choices that could have been made you know the sage north part i don't know but dude what shot trees rant is pro wrestling style let's get some heat on this territory so that when we come back, they're going to be buying tickets to want to see us. You know what I mean? Like, you know, he's hoping that somebody stands up and is like, you've insulted my honor. F this. I'm coming on your show to kick your ass, Luke. That's what he's hoping.

Okay. I don't know if pro wrestling bits work. Japanese. I'll welcome that culture, though, Luke. I mean, the way that they tell stories in Japanese wrestling, Luke, is way better than what they do in the States you know what I mean way better yeah they try that's the difference they try it tends to be the issue you know what I mean it's like how Saudi Arabia does it it's like they just put effort into it yeah um yeah all right BC with that in mind that's our top five here for the day that now takes us to our favorite segment of a donkey achieving climax

unfortunately the audio of it it's from donks i mean that's just so disgusting it reminds me of that video with the horse that everybody was playing in the 90s you know that video i'm talking about unfortunately no i don't i'm not i'm not i didn't i wasn't friends with your friends but yeah yeah all right bc yeah all right from from con man uh that's funny con man 88 bc and luke's live chat last thursday he said i fucking love indian food isn't it common for people to love indian food from their motherland i.e you love gas station hot dogs what the fuck kind of question is this he's basically saying i come from an area where hot dog is culture and it is luke have you ever had al's hot dogs and nuggets of connecticut it's a you know it's a world-renowned landmark um so since you come from india luke it would make sense that you fucking love indian food indian food that that stands out is that's

delicious you know i mean i don't think you have to be from india to notice that um but when it gets out of nowhere it'll it'll cripple you it's crippling hot when it when you go too far it you're a little bit uh not tough enough with heat is my read on you if i can be honest yeah i'm better at shouldering in intense emotional pain that's really my skill in life. All right. Physical pain. I was going to say, I was going to say as well, by the way, we were talking about Slim Jim pulling out from WWE. Have you ever read a, someone did this to me one time. So now I'm going to pass it on. Have you actually ever read the ingredients in a Slim Jim?

No, no, no, no, no. The number one ingredient, the number one ingredient, and I'm not making this up. Mechanically separated chicken parts. That's number one ingredient, and I'm not making this up, mechanically separated chicken parts. That's number one. Mechanically separated chicken parts. So enjoy that. Hey, you know what I had at the Big E once, Luke? The big New England State Fair in Massachusetts?

Slim Jims dipped in chocolate, like chocolate-covered Slim Jims. Slim Jims. Oh, my God. gyms dipped in chocolate like chocolate covered slim gyms dude gyms oh my god it's it sounds it sounds like uh like remember remember when tyron woodley was going ham luke in that video it kind of sounds like that but it is it is um it is an experience it is it is a gourmet experience your body goes through so many changes over the next five minutes luke you know i mean that combination would you eat that the same way tyron woodley ate what he was eating um yeah um that is mikey says gross as shit but the big e is awesome he's he's right it is awesome i mean so but like so are all great state fairs right like that's what it

i mean also i mean state state fair food is just shit that's fried and then sugar splashed on it that's really yeah all right from junior young 22 like he once had a bacon cheeseburger with two glazed donuts as buns that's the shit that happens at the big oh my god or you end up buying a salad shooter because some guy gave like this performance of a lifetime to sell it do they do they perform amputations for the diabetics on the way out? No, they don't. They don't. No, no.

I like to go down the slide with that potato bag under. You know what I'm talking about? I've never done that. I always say this, though. The people who go to Renaissance festivals and are like, oh, I've got a big thing of turkey, you're a fucking moron. You're a fucking moron. All right.

I mean, there's much more to hate about Renaissance fairs than the than the giant turkey leg luke okay that's the port of johns the port of johns at the renaissance festival you will see the cover of a cannibal corpse album if you look down in there i mean it's it's a different show but i was just gonna say like there's nothing delicious about this like curly fries or whatever i mean i can get down with that maybe there's other things in there but the turkey leg is like the biggest scam on earth i want something delicious not a giant chunk of meat that's not that awesome you fucking you know what's delicious from your home luke your homeland is the rice pudding at the indian buffets that's really good really you know when i think about true indian food i think about buffets that's really that's the height of indian no no they have

where i live look they've got some elite indian food where they about buffets that's really that's the height of indian no no they have where i live look they've got some elite indian food where they also have a buffet in there so like don't let the buffet part about it lower your standards because look i live in a in a snobby area remember that all right you know what's kind of funny if you liked i mean they're different but i was going to say like if you don't like spicy food but you want that like you know that they're different but i would point out you should try persian food persian food is not spicy at all it's not like it's not like indian food in that sense it's not like arabic food in that sense it's it's very very mild relatively speaking and very delicious also they do this they do this bit where they when they make the rice they burn the bottom

of it and it becomes like this rice cake because the outside has been like you know sealed whatever it's awesome all right i had afghan food once look it was pretty damn good all right yeah uh all right from junior young 22 would ufc 300 break 1 million pay-per-views as of right now it has no main event no chance it would break a million but it can't like because pay-per-views aren't sold on depth and that's that's actually a reason why boxing pay-per-views continued to decline in quality for most of the last 10 to 15 years because promoters like bob arum will tell you we don't sell a single additional pay-per-view if we have a good call yeah yeah like they say

that you know i mean what we saw luke in that um floyd mayweather versus canelo alvarez fight in 2013 that we happened to meet in person for the first time. And that sold at the time, 2.2 million pay-per-view buys was second all time. That was a monstrous super fight that they also, through Floyd's decision-making, because he had the say in this, he wanted Danny Garcia versus Lucas Matisse, which was the best boxing pay-per-view co-main we've had in decades. He wanted it on there in the hopes that this fight would overtake the fight that he did with De La Hoya. So he could be seen as sort of the number one draw in boxing history. So that was his choice and they, you know, they sold a lot, but, um, you've got to have, that's why I'm really hoping they do come out with a main event that, that not that we didn't see coming. Cause I think we've eliminated all possibilities to this point,

but something that has either buzz and that would be like DDP versus Adesanya would have like some, some thick buzz to it. Right. Or just a big name, a really big name that you got to have one really big name that the casuals get up for Luke. We're running out of options. I know that, but come on, you got to, you got big name that the casuals get up for luke we're running out of options i know that but come on you got to you got to appeal to the casuals too you do you if you want to have block casuals are the biggest audience that you have that's the biggest one that's where the most money comes from yeah that's how you sell a million and i know people like stop making gsp fight he's 42 okay first of all he's in the best shape of any 42 year old of all

time right now probably go five rounds tomorrow okay but again that's how you sell block we sat with him at the jake paul which one was that what was the one in arizona was that jake paul and and anderson yeah we sat with gsp he was in phenomenal shape then phenomenal yeah he loves cold plunges luke loves it loves that i know it's like everyone who cold plunges like i'm happy for you you know i don't deny that it could be good for you i just want you to know sir this is a wendy's and nobody gives a fuck okay okay oh mikey has a tease that there's gonna be a wild cold plunge coming up and have you seen this shit so get ready luke okay hopefully somebody drowns i'm losing the autofocus today that's a little bit interesting all right uh from strike

dot mx true or false bc amanda assuming he means a nunez comes out of retirement to fight kayla before the end of 2024 what do you say true or false that would be awesome and i wonder okay so the answer the question true i'm gonna go true i'm gonna go true because if amanda's gonna come back i believe it would be sooner rather than like let's wait two and a half years it'd be a lot harder to restart the engine then i think she's still obviously close enough meaning that she hasn't even hit a year to the retirement point that she's still there um physically and mentally if she needs to the The key here is if Harrison comes in and looks great at 35 and then wins the championship, okay, maybe it wouldn't happen this year just due to

time in terms of how many months it takes to set up these fights, but that could get Amanda back. But I wonder if my other plan I said earlier gets Amanda back quicker. And that is if Kayla made the 35, but they all figured out and decided, Hey, it's not, it's, it's not makeable every time let's bring you back at 45. Cause that would be easier on Amanda coming back, even though it's been less than a year. And, uh, I think that that is, that's, that's business, Luke. I know people say Kayla's never really panned out on the star level to equal the critical respect people have for her as an overall combat sports uh athlete but um for that type of fight it would that'd be a that'd be a big fight i'm

not saying a million paper you guys but that'd be a big fight you can that's a that's a pay-per-view main event that's a big ass fight right there or at a bare minimum i mean there's no worse than co-main depending on how big the main event is but yeah that would be yeah greatest female fighter of all time coming back for a bit of a grudge match against the two-time gold medal gold medal winning olympian yeah that's big yeah that's big all right uh bc question number four it's not cage fighting asks uh i okay who is the most underrated female fighter of all time if you want to give me a boxer you could as well bc you want me to answer this one okay is you're gonna say majumi fumi luke yeah majumi fumi that's exactly who i was going to say yes on the name on that one

megumi fujii um she was the first like truly dominant female figure who like i would say transcended weight class but had to fight a lot a lot in ways that were disadvantageous. By the time she got to Bellator late in her career, you know, obviously she got tripped up a little bit, but was a really very important figure early in MMA's history. Just before, I'd say post-Tough Boom for part of it, but not so much in the way. North American women's MMA was just really behind Japanese women's MMA at the time. So that's where the scene really was dominated.'s why you had like you look at like Roxanne

Modaferri's resume she's got a big chunk of her career and she obviously had a job there at that time as well teaching English but it was in Japan you had to go to Japan long after the the men for a time had to go to Japan too when pride was the center of the universe but even when pride died off it still was the case after that that a lot of the women's game retained relevancy, more so in Japan. That has shifted now since back to the States or other places. But she was the leading figure of that time. You could maybe throw an honorable mention for Erin Tohill as well in there.

She was kind of a big figure that just never quite got the big fight that she needed to. Who was the other one? There was the other one. Yeah, other one oh yeah boxer there's another one she got she had a politically charged kind of recent past um i forget her name god so that's that's deeply depressing that i cannot recall that offhand um but i can recall the fact she had some kind of political battle let me see hold on i will tell you who it is if I may be. Anyone you want to add on the boxing side?

I mean, we're finally seeing some of these. I mean, with the opening of women being allowed in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, we're finally seeing people get recognized in big ways and those sort of core names that were considered all-time greats finally getting that final push. Certainly, there's some underrated ones in between none that's necessarily i mean it's hard to say ann wolf was underrated luke because people respect her so much for being maybe the hardest puncher of all time but i feel for her legacy never getting the chance to fight leila ali and she

blames leila for that and i and i wonder if that would that would have held back and well from even having potentially a larger hold on sort of that idea of who's the you know the pound for pound best female of all time which we're lucky right now if you are a women's boxing fan that fighters like Clarissa Shields and um Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano all are also in this discussion so that's that's great to see that type of evolution right there but I was trying to think of other other MMA female fighters. Yes, Tara La Rosa would be the other name you would throw in there. Tara La Rosa.

She had gone to 18-1 before losing to Mataferi, although I think she had previously beaten her. Yeah, she had. But she went undefeated in Bodog Fight, which for a time had some relevancy if you were watching. And she ended her career 22 and 5 with wins over some big names alexis davis shana basler julie kedsley julie kedsley excuse me hitomi akano roxanne modaferi magumi yabushida these were all sort of big names and relevant

names for their era um so she was very decorated and and quite good as well yeah all right last Yeah. All right. Last but not least, BC from New Year's Eve Oakley. I don't know what NYE stands for. Top three martial arts movies ever. What do you say? BC's like pornographic or not? I don't know. Do they make those look? I don't know.

I mean, are you going to welcome in the cheese? What's the true definition? Movies that have legitimate martial arts competitions? I would say that they can also be action movies, but they can't be action movies just by themselves without a significant martial arts component. Okay. So, for example, you could potentially could potentially put karate kid if you wanted to

in there i think enter the dragon has to be in there what sport blood sport is probably going to be on that list i think you could maybe you could the question is do you throw in john wick right so john wick not expressly martial arts but the martial arts is so high level it's such a key part of it you could potentially throw in anything from Jackie Chan's career Rumble in the Bronx or other ones that might go on that list what about kickboxer kickboxer would you put would you put two Jean-Claude Van Damme fights on a three fight lit our three movie list hey because he he did merge the two worlds meaning you know kind of like ridiculous fun 80s b action movie with legitimate martial arts critical reputation to some degree even though a lot

of people hated him luke and i i've always kept him out of that schwarzenegger stallone seagal pantheon because he annoys me but he did have a run, Luke. Even when he was already a cheesy character of himself, he still had a run, man. See, I think Steven Seagal and all his movies largely suck ass. I don't think he belongs on this list. Chuck Norris has a couple of bangers, but is not good enough to be all. No, no, no, no. Chuck Norris has a couple of bangers, but not worthy of being on this list.

Schwarzenegger doesn't qualify because it's not really martial arts. So I'm going to say here are the three ones that stand out to me. Enter the dragon would have to be on that list. I think you could put blood sport on there. And then I would add for, this is a personal favorite, right? No,

I'm not making a grand claim about cinema, personal favorite. I'm going to put the raid on there. I'll put the raid. I bet you a lot of people die in that movie. A lot of, and they die quite gruesomely. Yeah.

They get, they get quite gruesomely yeah they get they get quite killed to it um i'm thinking um yeah um you're not gonna put warrior even in the conversation or what people do love that movie yeah donks donks love that movie that's right um can i put here comes the boom in there because that movie is really underrated dude that movie kind of bangs man who's that fighter that um who's the main villain that stephen bonner beat at uh at 116 uh shishinsky right christoph uh yes christoph shoshinsky yeah so yeah that guy's pretty badass as the final boss in that game luke and he has had real bad

problems with uh with cte by the way yeah i i wouldn't doubt it mikey's saying that the people in the chat within the misogyny and racism that normally floods that area say never back down needs to be in this discussion right i've never seen it and i'm never going to and i feel confident excluding it from this list in any way at all um okay you know what i won't put on here is the next karate kid with uh hillary swain because i don't consider that part of the part of the package no i don't either the only two karate kids you can count are one and two karate kid three and all that shit after that no i'm not with it one and two okay three is is prime cheese but you can't disagree you can't

dismiss three okay you can dismiss jayden smith what do you think by the way about the new karate kid that's coming out that is going to merge ralph macchio with uh who is it with uh with uh jackie chan is it luke yeah jackie chan's kid yeah yeah or so jack or i don't know jackie chan's kid went to william and mary while i was there he had a really nice car uh that was kind of interesting but there's some merging of the jayden smith movie with the ralph macchio lineage in the movie and mikey's saying that his childhood friend alex's uncle is ralph machio so luke shout out to alex right yeah yeah come on come on i'm teasing we can't tease on mk anymore oh we can't anymore free speech

free fucking speech up in this bitch all right that's it for our top five i am told that there is an absolutely insane batch of bc's feces let's see what you got i didn't think this was overly great this batch but it was like a holdover till the next generation when i'm gonna bring it luke i'm gonna put the whole no i will i scoured the internet luke for the good the bad the ugly the highs the lows the in between in combat sports and beyond. Mikey had an ixnay on at least one of them, Luke, because we want to stay employed. But this one's called Peace.

They did tell me that, yeah. Yeah. I have this in my soul. Luke, let me introduce you to to drake is duplicy the fourth african champion in ufc history and when he came home well first of all this was post fight at the bar with the black eyes dude he just destroyed that guy straight up right there and then we get a little shirtless ddp um on his way to superhero stardom here i mean look at those eyes luke yeah tell see yeah that's this is what i did in college i mean more or less uh i mean to the victor goes the spoil the shirtless spoils luke but here's what i'm really talking about because

you know i popped for this this is when he got off the plane in south africa luke they showed up hold on you you just you just glitched in and out there you're all right now go ahead okay uh this is what i get fired up for luke the homecoming at the airport in south africa did you see this turnout look at that let's see it it's kind of a king moment right yep look at this i mean this guy does he does act the part of of superstar luke and now he's got yeah yeah like he is happy to accept the adulation and represent you know what i mean sure sure also at this event he was shown by a fan a tattoo of himself on the fan's leg and asked to autograph above it luke i know i think you've made it when a donk puts your

picture on his body for life okay why does he have the world's worst signature what is that i don't i don't know i would just write ddp and then draw a diamond or maybe that's copyright already from uh just draw a dick on him call it okay a day. Okay. Luke, check out this cool trick from this skateboarder dressed in black. Is he going to kill some kids? Oh! I'm telling you, bro. I'm telling you. Kids get hurt all the fucking time.

Bah! Right there. Yeah. Nice helmet, bitch. Here's one to the pills. This guy's all ollie air when that kid will never have. Yeah, there you go. Okay, here's one to the pills this guy's all ollie air when that kid will never have uh yeah there you go okay let's go to the next one luke bill's mafia getting way too much attention lately watch them send a detroit lions fan to hell through this

table can we get a luke play-by-play here yeah i mean just look at these motherfuckers all of them have their cars repossessed every one of them yeah why don't you sit down instead of hitting your ass why don't you sit down it's called science fatso hot pants over there i mean dude these guys just setting themselves on fire and like putting their balls in bear traps and everyone's like yeah bill's mafia rules i'm like yeah keep getting paralyzed keep getting paralyzed great great bit you got going why don't you do some mma sparring in the middle of traffic like our next guest luke here's poet timing glover the best the best uh you know man love affair we got going on in the sport right now i don't know where this is that might be danbury for all i know luke but they're just

out here like living look at this i mean you know these guys are great this i i gotta tell you if i was in this town and i saw this in the crosswalk i wouldn't wouldn't know what to think i wouldn't intervene i'll tell you that much look what do you think about merle you know there's a lot of talk about merle lately who poet times ex-girlfriend they found out she was married and you don't want to talk about this i don't yeah once again guys i don't give a fuck about their private lives at all all right i didn't know if you were team merle or not right there all right luke let's check in on the whites okay you know what i mean how they doing they doing all right oh buddy nice shoes fuckhead oh why don't you go reproduce bitch

let's see this one more time. Yeah, boy, look at this sick grip strength from the Trenchcoat Mafia. Go fuck yourself. Okay, that was aggressive. Well, Luke, let's go out to a crowd fight. I think this is a concert. I can't figure it out, but watch the wild ending here. Can you see there's a man in gray giving

the boots to somebody there? Yeah, somebody's getting kicked. Somebody's getting kicked. But watch out for spider-man what's happening i swear there he comes damn luke just a superhero in street clothes right there right what are they fighting over you know i bet it's stupid. I bet it's dumb. Probably a BBL, Luke, maybe, right?

Well, in that case, fight on, good gentleman. Yeah, fight forever. All right, Luke, the state of MMA journalism summed up in one clip. Here's Sugar Sean O'Malley. Would you ever have a threesome with like a foursome, like two girls and me and you? Yeah, 100%. I love a good fourbang. I've never had one with another guy.

I've never had one. I really want to experience it, bro. I mean, you know. And we just swap. Oh my God, man. Have you ever had a little threebanger or no? No, not a threebanger. Only a one-on-one, you know?

Dang, you're missing out, bud. Damn, me and you, we would be putting in work together. Like we would like dab each other up. I'll be nutting shit. Like, bro, that would be hard me and you we would be putting in work together like we like dab each other up i'll be nut and shit like bro that would be hard yeah that would be great is that a make-a-wish kid who is that oh come on you don't mean that that's that dude who was supposed to get a cage side credential and then he threatened trump on the internet and dana went off on him at that press conference.

Can you imagine interviewing someone and then, and then being like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to fist bang while we, uh, while we, while we,

uh, while we reach climax at a simultaneous, you know, I mean, Sean O'Malley was holding a child during that too. I mean, it's like, yeah,

this is, uh, yeah. Uh, MMA is gross. MMA is real gross. It's fucking gross, yeah. Wow, wow. Okay.

This was supposed to be your offensive pink jacket of the week, Luke, but apparently it was too offensive, so let's stay employed. So Mikey gets to pick his own wild card clip. This is a Mikey special. All right. You need to move your bag in your cleats like go i am so sorry mikey what are you doing what the fuck is that mikey mikey's like all right for my wild card clip i just picked guys getting murdered

it's like what the fuck dude that's assault brother okay yeah like she gets beamed in the head like the other girl is like a like a member of like a mafia enforcer team oh my god we cannot show white people's asses with firecrackers sticking out anymore we just can't do it but uh just getting bludgeoned in the skull that's all wow okay uh on that note luke uh the fighter formerly known as gervonta tank davis now uh a lot of people are just casually calling him waheed now live which is which is his new adopted name he did convert to islam did he not i believe he did yeah so i'm here to respect that um he ran into p diddy but p diddy got a little handsy here luke you see this i mean he's picking him up like he's a baby lifted him off his feet so if you're a javante

javante i mean i've interviewed him in person so have you he's not a big dude he's not a big dude okay so like remember when has beulah was on the set of the mike tyson podcast and mike like treated him like he was a two year old and picked him up. It was like, you know, tickling him and going ooey gooey with him. And people were like offended, even though it was really cute in a kind of weird, weird combat sports type weirdness way. I don't know about that. Like if you're really short, but you're like super famous. And in Tank's case, you're, you know, as a as a fighter, you're you're like super famous and in tank's case you're you know as a as a fighter you're you're a badass do you like it when uh wash celebrities come and lift you off the ground and uh and uh

i don't know that seems a little yeah if you're getting treated like a prop something is not gone great you know sure something is not going great in our next segment luke this is auto accidents of the week oh lord that is i don't know what country this was but it was pinball it doesn't look uh oh jesus fucking hell the guy got up and wrote one more time the guy who does the flip watch he gets up he wrote he got granby rolls one more time mackie watch watch watch watch he gets up look at that look at that oh he gets up and runs off at the edge of the screen how beast is that you see would have loved that one wow all right your next uh accident luke watch the skateboard closely here okay look at this stud uh-oh oh fuck me oh no fm look that's what happened yeah all right

i got one more for you you got to be careful on the motorcycle wear your helmets folks okay this is first of all did he get that car from a cracker jack box i have to know get out of my dreams play that one more time play that one more time geez louise and of course this is somewhere in latin america because you can tell by the signs let's see oh fucking hell bro i tell you what man here's one thing i learned and i don't know how all of latin america is i've only driven through panama and columbia so obviously there's a lot i have not seen they don't respect traffic laws like we do it's a lot it's a lot less um formalized a process they just drive wherever the fuck they want you know it's crazy uh luke sometimes people

send in a clip so many times that we've already played on this show that it reminds me it's time to induct it into the Have You Seen This Shit Hall of Fame. So here's your elder abuse moment of the week a second time. Oh, you tried to get fancy, Grandpa. Eat shit, bitch. He tried to be like that skateboarder. I mean, remember that snowboarder in the Olympics, Luke? Yeah, look at the nice coordination, fucking Wimbayana. Oh, wow.

Wimbanyama, excuse me. She tried to celebrate at the finish and crashed right before it. Yeah, he was trying to get fancy with it, Grandpa. Wow. All right. Hey, Luke, winter is here. It turns out there is a cure for blue balls. Would you right. Hey, Luke, winter is here. Turns out there is a cure for blue balls.

Would you ever do this, Luke? Would you? That's a bit. Only if they were on fire. You know, you talk about cold plunging. This must be the next level, right? Just shoveling mounds of snow and freezing your genitalia while your underwear facilitates and like mummifying it in cold.

I don't know. I don't know if that gentleman should be reproducing at any point, you know? Yes, but if he did, he should watch out in the snow for kids luke they they're you got to be careful here let's go to the next clip have you ever seen have you ever seen the uh it's probably everywhere but i've only ever seen on instagram the kids getting hurt account yes yes i i yeah it's a little much for me i can't i

couldn't subscribe to it and i see it every day but yeah dude kids do um they do dumb shit they do dumb shit yeah they have to be they have to be helped yes they do they do. Luke, what do you think of this? Oh, ice. A duck. Do you think if we just move on, we won't get fired? Luke, yeah. I think I need an adult. Okay. I got two more for you.

This is your strike of the week here. The two-handed overhead approach that's a great you know the people who run bowling alleys are like you know what this you know what this bowling alley needs bored white teens that's what it needs bored white teenagers i feel like i'm watching my you know my high school and college years play out in front of me with that clip that was the kind of stuff that i did every young group of idiots always thinks they're the first ones to think it's funny to like lob it versus to roll the bowling ball. And it's very, very funny to them. Yes.

Thank you, old man. Oh, we got one more for you. Let's go to the pissing trough. Here we go. Oh, yeah. That's the uh that's one more time for good time say one more time one more time now let me explain something to you brian campbell if if we ever get to a point where you're urinating on me for clicks on ig like sean strickland said like sean strickland said i will stab you i will stab you that's your shit of the week luke i hope you saw it yeah there you go how

was the guy urinating on the other guy and him doing the him doing the three stooges scooby-doo trying to get away bit in the piss how was that acceptable and then what you took out was not because I know what you took out and that's not great but also not meaningfully different from this Mikey's like yeah well just let me find a child getting hit in the head with a baseball bat that's the perfect sub

I will say this think about this if you wanted to see I wouldn't go and ask for it but like back in the day if you wanted to see murders you had to go on like the dark web or something like awful place on the internet you should never go now you just go on twitter now you just click on the for you tab and it's just murders and shit left and right it's actually uh you know it makes the process easier depending on your perspective right indeed luke indeed man i can't wait till we till we get the band back together luke and we um talk about more pissing and and um i think people need to realize that you know

we're gonna go away for for a bit but when we come back tooey we're gonna be looking to do one thing. Bang their mothers. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Try and stop me. Bang, bang. Right? There you go.

Hey, let's remind everyone. Let's remind everyone. Okay, youtube.com slash morning combat. This will be the last regular one of these for the hiatus part we're coming back later but for right now we're going to hold you over with this one it's not the last time you will hear from us one more time put that social clip up there bc or excuse me mikey if you can morning combat at all the places where you get your uh your social media clips and then of course you can follow bc and i on twitter and instagram and of course youtube.com slash morning combat we will have content for you during the month of February,

just not the regular shows until we return in March. Right, BC? Yeah, and we're going to have an announcement when we can, between now and then. And we hope that you're going to get as excited as we are because we're coming on. There you have it. Let's remind everyone morning combat at

gmail.com if you want to reach the show for any reason of course morningcombat.store if you want to get some merch between now and the you know 2.0 version of everything and there you go and uh yeah i want to thank hey let's just be grateful right let's thank everyone who watched today let's thank anyone who's watched at any point since we got going in july of 2019 yeah no i was gonna get to it i was gonna i was gonna get to it i was gonna get to it i want to just thank the audience real quick thanks to everyone who spreads around or watches clips or listens to the audio podcast or anything related to the show in terms of consumption thanks a lot let's also to your point extend a very special thanks to mikey more mile who has done i mean let's just be honest about this.

He has done work on and for this show that literally nobody else has had to do, not just in terms of the type of content, but the overall amount. When I say that the show literally would not survive for him, I am being dead serious. It would not. So Mikey, we know it has been at times overwhelming and at times probably unfair and just difficult in general to manage. You gave us everything you had. You did a great job. And we're more than thrilled with it. We're beyond grateful that we had somebody we could rely upon in times like these.

BC, I'm sure you have something you want to add to that as well. Yeah, absolutely. Mikey has been the backbone. We have certainly dialed down right the production here we've still been getting the shows off but we want to give you the type of shows that that you deserve and that we feel the show deserves and we wouldn't even even had a show of late without mikey so been here almost since day since day one ish i mean you do i wonder if there are like oldschool Jay Aaron fans.

Yeah, I got an email from someone saying, bring back Jay. And I was like, that's like saying I'd like to bring back fucking Salmonella or Chlamydia. Like, no, I don't need to do that. As a food travel foodie expert who will give reviews of local joints, so you can follow his escapades. I don't know if he is still also Pennington James, but Mikey said he joined in episode 66. Order 66 brought Mikey into our lives, right?

All the Jedis were slaughtered. Yes. And so let me just say thank you to everybody who had something to be a part of at the MK 1.0. The list is too long matt snyder courtney mag brian daly steven espinosa kieran portley um bc there's like a million names shout out yeah i mean the most perhaps the most important one when i needed an adult corrupt would be up on that list as well but you know uh all the folks from malco we can name over and over again cory mnich gaff long island luke you guys all know the names everyone had something to do with mk 1.0 we're gonna sunset 1.0 so we can get going

with 2.0 but we're really grateful that we had everything that we got we're really grateful for everyone who has been along for the ride and we you know the business is in a crazy place but we really feel confident when it's all said and done we we're going to make you guys proud. And so I'm excited for the, for the road ahead. We also expect to publish donkey memory. Number eight. Is it eight? Are we on eight,

eight or nine? Yeah. We do plan to publish that. We've got to get to this next stop, get to this next era of morning combat, but thank you to everybody. Who's who's played a part. Like Luke said, who's gone to bat with us,

voted for awards so we can get this clout as maybe the greatest or best combat sports show period, Luke. But, and thank you to people in the industry that come on our show that have become friends with us that have, you know, put us over as well. Just the same. I mean, you know, where we, where would we be without chuck mendenhall aaron bronstead or rashad evans people that have really helped define certain key parts of our eras as well shack majori shout out okay that's what i'm talking about all right luke

uh but what's coming is uh yeah you know like oh yeah right i mean you can could you get a little oh yeah i mean you could almost do a little oh yeah luke i think you know you personally i think you could almost you almost could like you know i'm not going to though i'm not i'm just not going to do that that's the thing about that just you know rev that rev that engine just a little luke just a little no and you might be asking when are we going to hear from you you will you will hear from us keep the faith we will let you know it is going to you are going to get updates from us don't worry it's not a disappearance it's just a reset time to do it all the right way all over again yeah all right we see any final thoughts review and we're going to

preview and review the biggest things coming out in february breaking news the big events fear or sorry in ghanu versus aj right ufc 299 is that or maybe that's for march how about 298 you got the you got bellator versus pfl you got a couple you got uh fury mexico city fury who's sick good oh yeah and gano's in march look don't let me talk and we should probably take a break from the show because i i need a yeah i'll just take a little break all right so let me just say again one last last time. Hey, thanks, everybody. We really, really cannot tell you how much we appreciate it, except to just tell you this as honestly as we can

and hope the message is received. We don't take a single day on the air in this business for granted. We don't take a single episode for granted. And we don't take a single one of the people who decides to spend time in their day listening to us for granted as well. So thank you to everyone at CBS. Thank you to everyone at Showtime. Thank you to everyone at Malka. Thanks to everyone who's worked on this show, Mikey and the rest

of the crew. We will see you guys soon. We'll have broadcasts for you in the month of February, but until then, we appreciate you. We love you. We'll see you on the other side. May all of your gains be loyal.