MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Raul Rosas Jr. Stops Barcelos | Fury-Joshua Drama | Justin Gaethje vs. Arman Tsarukyan Next?

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Luke Thomas and Chuck Mindenhall are with you on a Morning Kombat Monday, breaking down the results from the Apex over the weekend and more. First up, the fellas discuss the main event, where Raul Rosas, Jr. secured a fifth-round stoppage win over Raoni Barcelos. However, the stoppage appeared to result from a medical episode Barcelos experienced. On the rest of the card, Norma Dumont dropped a decision to Ailin Perez, but did Perez really do enough to win her way to a title shot? How surprising was it to see Brady Hiestand choke out Rinya Nakamura? And how much can we take from Yazmin Jauregui's stoppage of Vanessa Demopoulas? There was also some drama surrounding the Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua fight. LT and The Iceman break it all down and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Look at his mouth. It's what 11 a. I'm back. You fit in seamlessly in this weird MK environment. Do you want a Margarita? Yeah, do it to be, two, three, two, three. It's a lecture. Your marks get set and go on.

Chuck, it's not just a Monday. Do you know what kind of Monday it is? What kind is it, Luke? It's a victory Monday, a 33 to 31, victory Monday here. on this 28th day of September, 26. It's also another episode of Morning Combat. Welcome, everyone, to the show. My name is Luke Thomas.

I'm merely one half of your hosting duo. Of course, I join you from the capital of Estatus onitos right here in Washington, D.C., joined by Connecticut Brethren, the Iceman himself, Chuck Mindenhall. Chuck did the Broncos, how did they perform? Well, they performed horribly for one half. They were down 16 to nothing last night,

Sunday night football, came back in 1, 30 to 26 against everybody's favorite Super Bowl prediction the Los Angeles Ram. So all told it came out beautifully in the end. Nice. So it's a double victory Monday. It is a double victory Monday, yes, sir. Excellent. I did not see the game. We didn't have Jaden Daniels, but you know what?

Marcus Mariotta? Not bad. He's a competitor, man. Yes. He's a competitor. I love that dude. Like, he's probably the best backup in the league because he comes in, he's fiery, you know. Slam in the ground when he doesn't get the first time. I'm like, that guy's who you want. They'll be on your bench. For a backup, that's about best case scenario, I feel like in the league.

Well, we have a lot to get to it here in the today including the very very scary finish in the raoul rosas honey howany barcelos fight and also the fight itself we have to talk about because rosas was losing it but then kind of having a surge in the fifth and then of course they're very very strange and somewhat somewhat very scary ending to that fight plus the rest of that card we also have just i mean what can you say drama in a j fury that just simply won't go away some ufc lightweight title picture to talk about a bit of a combat sports roundup and then of course fan subs and dead wrong so thumbs up on the on the video if you haven't already hit subscribe if you haven't already share this video with someone if you haven't already

as a reminder we have an email on this show morning combat at gmail dot combe fan subs dead wrongs to reach the show the whole nine yards badges emojis for the members and of course morning combat dot shop for the merch let's bring in the third member here of the show we don't know if he's sober but we know if he's here it's it's long island luke long island how are you you, sir. I'm good. I wasn't sober this weekend. I had my buddy's wedding this weekend. I missed the entire card. I missed every single phone. Wow. Yeah, I know. It was weird. I googled the results after. It just didn't feel right guys. It felt like the world was moving on without me. But, you know, I'm here to recap it all and pretend that I watched it all because I did see the highlights on Twitter. So let's bang, too.

How, how, well, home, let's go back to this. Like this extra girlfriend time, was it just pure torture or what? No, it was great. We were at a wedding. It was, this is my friend since I was, eight years old, so I knew a bunch of people at the wedding, a bunch of old high school friends. Yeah, it was a good time. Was it an open bar? Fuck, yeah, it was an open bar. And I was the best man. So I've, you know, fucking pounding. They were hooking me out. You know, it was great. I thought

he's going to say, like, I got to know her a little bit. And I don't know if this thing's going to work. Yeah, actually. It's first time we've been left alone in a room for more than 10 minutes. It was weird. But yeah, it's cool. Uh-oh. So that's it. We have quite a bit to get to. So Chuck, if you're ready, let's get this show started. If we can. Topic number one. Okay. So let's start with that

event from the weekend, which, by the way, I think something that's being a little bit lost along the way is that this was actually quite a spirited contest during it, most of the duration of it. Now, it was a little bit one-sided through the middle, but it was nevertheless a spirited contest that ended in just the most bizarre fashion possible. As you can see, Rale Roses Jr., by the way, he wins this contest in a fifth round stoppage. He takes down Howany Barcellos, after getting beaten up badly in Ramos. rounds, two, three, and four. In fact, if you can show the judge's scorecards here, he was up on all three judges' scorecards. All he had to do, he had 10-8, by the way,

there in the fourth round on the Chris Lee scorecard. All he had to do was just survived the fight, basically, and he would have won Chuck, but he goes down in this really, really scary, what would you want to call it, a medical episode, I think, is the best way to put that. So let's just sort of take this piece by piece. There's a lot of different moving parts to this one. We obviously hope Barcelos is okay. As of now, Chuck, we don't have a update other than this very basic one. If we can take a look at it here, this is from the UFC. The hospital medical team conducted a CT scan and comprehensive assessment, and he is currently being monitored.

Barcellus is stable, alert, and responsive with full movement. He will remain under medical supervision. We will provide updates on his condition as they become available. To my knowledge, we don't have one past this, Chuck. Is there a discussion to be had about Marcellos' age at 39 and what kinds of medical screening should be required before he is allowed to compete? Not really again, but in general, or what is your major takeaway, not so much from the fight, but from the medical episode at the end? Well, first of all, it was a terrifying moment, and I was trying to come up with anything in the MMA sphere, not maybe not MMA, but like the UFC sphere where you're like, man, what just happened? Why is this person out?

we've seen some very weird endings, but when you saw that he was just out, there was just this moment of like, what is going on with it? It was also just you could see there's, you know, his cords and his neck were just very taught and his breathing was very labored. And since you couldn't see a walkout, I mean, a knockout on that, you start to wonder. And then I saw the collective kind of gasp going on, especially within the ring and with the commentary and all that stuff. Never seen anything like it. So I was, I was very nervous. And I mean, obviously like, today we, we, we enter Monday, I've been looking all morning, like, just to see if there's any kind of updates, just so we'd have something more to go off of. But we just don't know exactly what that medical episode was.

We just know that it wasn't the knockout. They're considering it a slam, but that was not really the case. So, I mean, right now, like, in terms of, like, the medical, it's almost speculation. I know that they put them through going in a battery of like, you know, they go through a physical, basically. They're supposed to any way within like a window of 30 days or something like that. Like if it's still the old way in Nevada, like they have to go through these these procedures. You have to be checked out thoroughly. If they didn't detect anything, it could be one of those.

We just don't know. Like, what did you think it was? Like I was sitting there and I saw the speculation and you don't want to like, you know, it gets dark when people start speculating. But we've seen in boxing where something goes really haywire. And sometimes it is the worst result. And I know I texted you on the side like, dude, that that had me nervous for a minute that we were going to see something we hadn't seen in the UFC. Man, I did a couple of.

couple things. So one thing I did was I looked up and I don't know if I have a comprehensive list, Chuck, I want to be very clear about this. Yeah. But I looked up what is every instance of someone being stretchered out of the UFC Octagon? And let me put together a list. Now, again, the list is hard to make comprehensive because, for example, there are inconsistent reports about whether Oleg Tectarov after he fought, who was at Tank Abbott. I think it was in Denver. Remember that? And they had to get oxygen. Right. So they may have been stretched out. I don't know. the reporting on that one is inconsistent. But if you look at it, it's about 12 names.

Four of them are just the shin breaks. Corey Hill, Connor McGregor, Anderson, Sylvan, Chris Widman. And virtually every other one, Chuck, Igor Zinov, when he got slammed by Frank Shamrock or, you know, something like that. There's some kind of major impact that then caused them to get hurt such that the after effect made them get stretched out. But in this one, nothing happened. or at least from what we can tell, nothing happened.

He didn't really get slammed on his head. Now, he did go from standing to the ground and then we noticed the impact. So, like, obviously, or not obviously, it seems reasonable to conclude, Chuck, that even if he didn't, like, hit his head hard, something about going from standing to the ground

may have contributed to it, but even that we don't really know the answer to. I have to say, of any instance, I have seen someone stretch, out of the octagon, this is the most unusual. Yeah, yeah. Because you just simply have no idea what was

contributing to it. Now, the other thing I did, Chuck, was I did talk to a couple of doctors, one of which has like some expertise in combat sports. And the array of things that it could be is so vast that it's really, really hard to say. I think the fact that we haven't been given a medical update since that time, I don't know if that's automatically bad news, but maybe it communicates

a degree of seriousness about it. And like, dude, It could be anything from benign to like he was dehydrated and then was just exhausted and his body just kind of gave out for a moment or all the way up to it. I don't want to put this into the universe, but let's just say significantly more serious injuries related to the brain that it could be. And this was just every time Chuck you think you've seen it all in MMA good or bad, you have not. And this was one of those kinds of reminders, you know. And it was, you know, we talked about, like, you mentioned up the top, like, this was a, this was a very good fight. And you, and Barcellus was holding up, like, we're mentioning his age now, only because, you know, like, it becomes a factor into maybe what was going on here.

But he was winning the fight going away. And in fact, up until that moment when they post up on the fence and then he ends up being taken down, essentially, he's still being an aggressor in this situation. He's still out there kind of fighting with this pace that's kind of pretty natural for a guy who, is 39 years old, which was the whole story before this thing happened. I was like, dude, how does this guy have this kind of momentum? He can push a pace for five rounds? Like, he'd never even been in the championship rounds.

It's just, you know, we've seen in boxing. You followed it a long time. Like, you see a guy occasionally where all of a sudden he becomes disoriented and he starts to do something and you're like, uh-oh, what's wrong? Because that's the feeling it gave me. It's just something goes around. Obviously, he was unconscious. But you've seen that

in boxing where a guy like all of a sudden just loses his bearings and then goes unconscious. or like starts punching in nothing and goes unconscious. I was fearing that kind of thing. And I mean, obviously your brain goes all over the place when you see something like this. But it wasn't the fact that he was just stretchered out, which felt like, you know, that was going to happen.

It was the kind of urgency of, and also somebody had taken a shot where you can see his face was still kind of in the same mouth open, head straight up, where you're like, oh my gosh, he is not, he's exactly the same. He has not come to like, that was scary, man. That's where it became very terrifying. is just like usually if you see somebody stretch it out they'll they give you some indication that they've got their motor skills or they you know what i mean like you see something that like

eases your worry and in this case we didn't get that and we really didn't until later that like an hour later when a report started coming out that he was conscious and a communicative so i don't know what else to add without doing just baseless speculation except to say we obviously hope he's okay if we get some kind of update during the course of the show, we will share it, something to monitor going forward. And certainly, you know, I don't want to derail anyone's career, but whatever is the situation, this might call for additional medical screening for Barselo's for any subsequent approval, depending on how he goes. But again, that is going to be contingent upon, you know, the medical specifics of it.

Getting to the fight itself, Chuck, let's ask the question in a detail. different way. So as we saw, one more time with the scorecards, first round, pretty competitive, but I do think it's fair to give that one to Rosas Jr. Rosos Jr., not really going for takedowns. I think I have to pull up the stats here in just a minute, but I think for the most part didn't go for any until very, very late. And in the middle got completely outstruck and outboxed. And frankly, dude, actually, Barcellus was basically better everywhere, with the exception of certain stances he was getting hit from. What is your takeaway from what we learned about the fight itself from what we were able to see.

Well, I think that, you know, we've talked about, right, Grosos specifically. We've mentioned him because he's such a young guy coming up in this game, the youngest, right? Like, he's only 21 now and he's had a bunch of fights, having to learn on the fly. This particular one struck me as weird, I guess, in terms of game plan, you know, because I didn't, I didn't anticipate that he would try to stand as much as he did. And I also didn't anticipate he'd be taken down. quite as much as he was in this fight.

So it's a little, it's a strange one, right? Because I feel like in the end, he wins the fight. But I mean, like we've mentioned, if Barcellus is only able to survive without the freak thing at the end there, he loses this fight. And I,

so you kind of have this feeling that maybe he was trying to get back into an exciting stuff. Because if you look back on, what was it, the Vince Morales and Rob Font, and then there was a, there's somebody like, he's basically played a custody game

where he takes guys down, has a lot of control time. a couple of like one or two of those fights he had very little significant strikes landed because he was he was kind of just holding guys down and I feel like you know that part of it went away he was very game you know he's a southpaw so he is loading up on his left hand almost too much like I felt like he couldn't sustain that but he did kind of like he was able to kind of keep a pace with barceles but he was getting beaten up and I mean through those middle rounds I'm like you might

want to switch this up a little bit and I didn't feel like that was a forthcoming so he got his hand raised but I don't know I I didn't, it seemed like more like he wanted to put on an exciting fight, but it wasn't going his way. And so how are you supposed to look at that in the end? I have so many mixed feelings about this fight. Yeah. Like on the one hand, if there was a three-round fight, Barcelos would have won. And if he had made to the finish line, he would have won.

And, dude, like, Roses Jr. was getting boxed up in the middle of that fight. Not just that. Like, the stat line on this one is crazy, Chuck. Nine take downs for Barcellos. total he threw less overall strikes 303 to 327 for rosas but landed more significant ones in there he outstruck him numerically anyway in round one he outstruck him numerically in two he did not in three but it was close it was a tide again in four and then of course by the fifth you know what are you going to say he the whole thing kind of came apart there but like in general dude like

the foot sweeps from barcelos the ability to to to both pull punch from punches and then slip and then counter over the top. Like to me, on the one hand, this showcase that like Rosas Jr. was not ready for this kind of a level, although I recognize that, you know, he had that very spirited moment between the fourth and the fifth round where he was powering up the crowd and he came out with a renewed fury. I thought that was interesting. He got hit with all the body shots.

Remember all the body work? Yes. That that Marcellus was able to do. But on the other hand, the fact that he didn't shoot until the fifth, that he stood on his feet that I did think his striking looked better this time than it has in quite a least offensively it looked better defensively he still gets hit way too much it's weird chuck it's like on the one hand this showed it was too much for him certainly at this juncture of his career on the other hand you have to admire the perseverance I thought his defensive not wrestling

but defensive grappling to get up was excellent for turtle in particular and you have to kind of love like I'm just going to duke this out on the feet not for the fight IQ of it all but for the willingness to face down the pressure which is a different kind of consideration I would have loved to have seen better fight IQ mixing it up a little bit although maybe he was concerned about barcelos's submission ability I'm not too sure I guess what I'm trying to say is Chuck overall there's I disliked more from Rosas than I liked but the parts that I liked about him I think you can build off of does that make sense yeah I mean, he's 21, and it's, it's crazy that he had to kind of go through this test.

I mean, he's fortunate to have survived it. But, you know, what you mentioned, I was thinking back on this fight, because there was, I think it was late third round, there was a moment where, uh, where Barcellus trips him to the ground and gets his back. Do you remember this? And yes. It looks pretty bad for just a minute. And Rosehouse basically reverses and gets on top and, uh, and kind of wins in that

scramble. And I'm, that was a moment where I was like, okay, wait, maybe he's got a little something going here. Um, he wasn't able to do a lot of that type of thing. but there were little glimpses of it. So when you see that in certain situations where, you know, I guess that fighter IQ and like that kind of opportunism that presents itself in that situation, like shows up,

you know that he's got room for improvement, right? Like I feel like he does absolutely have that. I just felt like, you know, even in the, you know, in the post-fight interview and he's, again, this was very weird to go through this because he's, you know, juie-wee and all the stuff. And meanwhile, the guy's being stretched out of there, it felt so weird to be watching that. fight that way like at the end of it. But he was basically calling out for the hundred

G's. I really wonder if he was just like I got to, you know, I got to, I got to make some money on this one, you know, and he went in there with just kind of more of a cavalier game plan to do it. I don't really know the answer, but I did, I did feel like he had flashes of doing some nice things in there. And he did obviously, like that first round, I thought he won. Like I, and you're right. He came in strong in the fifth. I mean, all of that stuff's a tribute to him. but if I'm his coaches, if I'm the guys around him, I'm like, hey, man, we lost and I would treat it like that. And the other part too is like where you go from here. Long Island, what did you make of, again, not the medical episode at the end, which I do feel like is almost like a separate story.

But the fight itself, like what did you take away from from Rosas Jr. from the bout? Brother, I was at this wedding. I did not watch this fight. You didn't even watch it? No, dude. But I'm just going to be telling. I mean, I just looked at the stats and shit. I saw the finishes. You know, I got home late last night.

Did not check out of this completely. I'm just saying, on paper going into this, it was a tricky matchup for Rosas. And I was like, I don't think he's going to look good in this fight. He was the super slight fave, right? He was like, minus 180. Heione was like plus 150. That's wild to me.

The thing, though, was Hyoni's age. And I'm like, I don't know if I can trust this. So I took fight goes the distance. I was very disappointed to see that it ended this way. Yeah, dude. So, but again, I mean, I was having a good time. It was fine. But yeah, I didn't really watch. So don't ask my opinion on these fights. That's a bad beat. Return for the Ferguson fight later, though. I bet he snuck that one. I saw that. No. Of course he did. You fucking mutant. In any event, it's the thing that I would be curious about, Chuck, you kind of indicated like how you treat this is like where you would take Rosas Jr. because it is a win. Now there's a question about like whether. it should have been no contest. But like Chuck, I think you would only, no, so not no contest.

That if it was, I think there is a way where you, depending on how you classify what happened to Barcellos, it would force you to go to the cards. And if you went to the cards, obviously, Barcelos would win. But they didn't do that. I don't know if anything like that can ever be appealed. You know how it is. Like once that shit, once the commission

does something, they're like, well, I guess we can't undo that. The next. Yep. Locked and play. Well, who could do something about it, not us. No. Anyway, like, where would you go from here? What would make sense for Rosas at this point? Because as we've indicated, something to build off of, but a lot of things in that performance, despite the verve and the and the bread, to a degree the bravery, he showed bravery, I think. But he didn't show the kind of skill that makes me believe he's going to beat anyone above that. Where did they have him rank, Luke? I think I looked at you right now, something because I'm like, you know, obviously that's the, that's kind of the smoke. mirrors aspect in play here is, you know, he's starting to make his way up the wrongs. And you start to say, like, well, he should be facing these guys that are in his proximity to these rankings. And I know he's in there, you know, somewhere. I just don't think that

you need to use that progression for him. You don't really need to book him in one of those fights yet because he is 21 years old. And I do think from his coaches standpoint and his management standpoint, they should probably look at that a little bit and say, like, you know what, let's not put our foot on the gas too much here. You just got to. You just got a bonus, right? You escape to the wind. Let's take something a little easier. I mean, if you're going to give him somebody in that top space, like a Marcus

McGee or somebody like that, you know what I mean? I wouldn't, but I would not want to see him, you know, facing off with a guy who's around the 10 spot at this point. I know he's kind of hovering there, but I just don't think he's ready for it. And if you look at the names, a lot of them are veterans and stuff. I just feel like he would get a little bit schooled against some of those guys. Don't you? Like, look at the, if you look at the rankings there, I don't have them pulled up in

front of me, but I have them here. I mean, depending on which one you look at, he's either not ranked at all or he's ranked one above. So I can never tell if it's media or meta. The dark mode is media. Right. Yeah, there's that little toggle thing. So go dark mode. That's what it says, but that doesn't make sense because are the new rankings out already from the media panel?

Because they have them at 12 and they have Barcellos at 13. That would only be possible via computer. No, they were 12 and 13 going into this fight. It just hasn't updated yet. Really? Yeah, I'm pretty weird. Okay. Because I looked at this yesterday and they were 12 and 13.

Okay, well, then the other one, the meta ranking, it's just weird because the sliding thing that you click is different than the headline. It's just whatever. Anyway, the other one has it as Barcelos at 8 and then Rosas not even on the list at all. Right. So kind of keep that in mind. But like, dude, consider who's around six, five, six, and seven. This is my point. Go ahead.

Numer. Yeah. Corey Sandhagan. No. Okay, David Martinez is also a fight that you could do if you were going to do that. But Martinez moves a lot. That's not necessarily a great matchup for Rosas Jr. either. A guy who can like snipe and move.

Yeah. I agree. That's what I'm trying to say. Like, you know, just kind of getting the indication of where he's at. I don't think he bodes well against those guys. I would look further down for a, you know. Let me throw a name at you. Let me throw a name at you. All right.

Bryce Mitchell at 14. Well, see, that's, okay, now we're talking. I feel like that's where he should be. He should be in that kind of fight. I think that one to me is much better. I think Long Island is saying, would you say Long Island? You're saying like maybe Figgie if Figgie loses to Talbot next week?

If they like Roses, us, which we know they do, and they want him to move up in the rankings. Figgy is the clear like, all right, get him the next rung in the ladder. Get him up there, former champ. But Figgie's got to get, I mean, Figgie might get past Talbot. Who the fuck knows? Probably not.

I guess we'll see. Yeah. Okay. I mean, this was one of the weird ones. Can I say one thing? Let me ask you something, man. Going back real quick to the, we've seen this in the past where the UFC, like something,

I've been, I've been caged. I know you have two where there's a guy who's knocked out and he's down for like five minutes. And there's this feeling of like, oh, God, I hope he's okay. We've seen this happen occasion. But you'll eventually see the guy sit up, get on a stool. And you're like, you know, Jessica I back of the day when she got knocked out by Valentina.

Remember she laid there for a long time? You're like, ooh, I hope she's okay, man. Here we go. on Q. And she got knocked out. You're playing that. But, you know,

they focus so much of their telecast on just the guy who won. You don't really get to see what's happening. I feel like in these situations, and this one, I get it to one extent, like you don't want to, you do not want to focus on something you don't really have full information. You don't want to turn into a dirge type situation

if you just don't know what the situation is. You want to focus on the positive and push it forward. But dude, this one was a little scarier, just the stretcher and the, the way that played out and just the uncertainty. And I felt like it would have served the fan base a little better if they had been a little more concerned on some level. Because we went in there and we just did everything by the book.

It was like we go talk to Rosas. He gives you the Chihuahuiwi, you know, he's dancing. He's doing all this stuff. And it felt very off. They go to the studio after that, which is in the apex, I believe. And, you know, they're smiling and laughing and kind of having this light conversation. I just felt it's kind of toned of. I don't know why that bothers me, but I'm like, guys, carry a level of concern.

If, like, somebody really went down with stretchered off in an NFL game, there would definitely be some kind of return to that again and again. You know what I mean? Like, we'll get you something as soon as we know and just that sort of thing. But it kind of bothers me that they dismiss something when there's a lot of people on pins and needles to find out what's happening. Yeah, I think this one is, this one is a little trickier for me personally. Yeah. So the thing that I would say that I expect from a.

promoter in this case, UFC or anybody else in the MMA side is I would want updates during the course. I mean, this was the MMA. I'm sorry, this was the main event. So there isn't much broadcast once this is done, but such that they can give you consistent, not like overbearing, but consistent medical updates about someone. And particularly one at the end of the night before they close. I think that's the most important one is to recognize that a medical event happened. And here's what we know about it. Here's what steps we've taken to address it. And then again, to the extent you can do that earlier in the broadcast and then give the audience updates, I think that's the best.

I have mixed feelings about filming them in part because a lot of the injuries you see, for example, in football, guys can do like the fencing thing. And I'm not trying to mock them. I'm trying to show it. I know you're saying. And, you know, there's almost no way to get around it, but they're still kind of covered. You know, they have uniforms on. They have a helmet on. And I one thing I think often just doesn't get discussed is like, you know, sometimes when people have medical episodes, I think that they feel like their dignity is taken from them a little bit.

Sure. You know, if you're bleeding and you might be convulsing or, you know, God only knows and they don't want to be seen in that light, especially if it's not necessarily required for the audience to see it. But I think the concern you raised, Chuck, is not just merely giving us updates. Sure. Yeah. It's some level, and I don't know what the answer quite is, but some level of transparency is owed by the broadcaster to show what the reality of this is. But I don't, I'm not one of these guys that thinks they have to show the entire thing. Sure.

Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a debate. Yeah. It's more just like the tone. It feels so tone deaf or like, you know, the off tone when something like that's happening. I mean, everybody's on social media at this point. Like, dude, that was terrifying. what's happening. It just feels like

you've got to know that the audience is kind of you know, very concerned. You know, you see all the prayers up and all this stuff. But you kind of want, you just want there to be a level of concern, I guess, that matches that or, you know, it just felt like it was such business at usual. It felt weird to me. It felt all. That's all. All right. Fair enough. I mean,

yeah. It's, uh, I'll say this to wrap it up. For as long as it lasted, right up until the very end, it was a lot of fun. It was not an unfun fun fight to watch. It just got unfun based on what happened at the very, very old. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. All right. Let's turn our attention now on topic number two to the rest of this card,

which by the way also had some fun. And then, of course, some not so fun events. All right, let's talk about this co-main event, which just fucking sucked. I don't know what else you want to say. Now, listen, we were on the UFC's ass about this because they had Hidalfa Vieira taken on Robert Birchek in the co-main. We were like, why the fuck is this the co-main event? And then you have basically two fighters, two ranked fighters who could potentially even be in line, depending on who it is.

This is we'll talk of pre-fight for a title shot between Eileen Perez and Norma Dumont. They fight. It was acrimonious. One through condoms at the other ones at the way in. That was just like, there is. I was like, where is it? That was just actually, I texted that to BC and I cannot even repeat to you what he wrote back. So keep that in mind. I could only imagine.

The fight sucked. It was fucking terrible. They barely did anything to each other. And then they wanted to fight Chuck when the fight was over. Perez gets the win. She has the win streak. What does it mean? I don't know what it means because I think they mentioned it pretty well on the broadcast.

Because they're like, you know, if you build up a certain kind of acrimony before a fight, like some bad blood, there's big tension. Well, there comes an expectation now. And I think it was Dominic Cruz was like, are they going to try to hurt each other? Because I think that this is, you know, sometimes we separate that side of things and fighting. We think of it from a different way, you know, like sportsmen and stuff. But sometimes when there's bad blood, you're like, it comes down to the hurt business, right? And you're like, who's going to put the hurting on the other person? And I felt like this one lived in the state of pending where it never, it never happened.

That can't help but be a buzzkill, can it? I mean, like, when you're like, when you're watching something and, you know, both, both fighters are pretty gun shy. I don't have the stats in front me, but like, it couldn't have been a ton of strikes. I mean, it was like it felt like they were just reluctant to engage. That's what made it humorous at the end. You know, when the final ball, when the clacks go off and then the fights over and they're trying to get each other's faces, you're like, what are you going to do? Like, they should let that play out to see if a fight breaks out, because that's, that's how it felt. It was just completely anticlimatic.

I don't know what it does, you know, for Perez in this situation. She got through it. She still has her, you know, she still has her, you know, she still has her. streak intact and I guess her contendorship but like did you hear Paul Filder when they were saying I want a title shot next that's what we want he's like well good luck and he kind of walked off I mean that's kind of how I felt I was like good luck with that I mean that wasn't the best showing I don't I mean I don't have much to add it's like I think I think Perez probably has done enough depending on what they want to do and it looked like they were

probably trying to set her up to see if she could make a move in the division she is on quite the win streak. She hasn't lost since 2022. She has beaten consecutively. Ashley Evan Smith, Lucy Puterlova, Jocelyn Edwards, which is a, that one has aged nicely. Darya Zelaznakova, Carol Hosa, Macy Shazahn, and then Norma Dumont, like, dude, that's a legit win streak, whatever else you want to say about it, but it doesn't inspire necessarily a ton of confidence about, you know, the urge to put her in more meaningful fights, but we'll see if that ends up working.

Did you hear Paul Feldor like basically saying like, hey, you guys, you wanted to do the way? Didn't you just do that in the fight? Yeah. That was pretty funny. You had like 15 fucking minutes. That was pretty funny. I mean, you could just tell that they were agitated too. Like, dude, what was what was that about, you know?

Lewis Hernandez, Luis Hernandez, he pronounces it Lewis. He beats Cedric Dumas and about a red. Let me just explain something to you. If it's 2026 and you're getting beaten with a standing guillotine choke. just call it a day. Just calling a fucking day. Jordan Breene and I used to talk about this. This is him just hump in the air.

Look at that. Two twirks. Two twirks back to back. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of, this is gyrating and cavorting. Speaking of cavorting,

this is what it looks like. In any event, you know, what the fuck are we supposed? Cedric, Cedric Duma is 04 and 1 in his last five. A tie, a Cal Ripkin like Ty Tui Vasa-esque,

you know, losing streak, Chuck. Nice win for, Mr. Hernandez, I suppose. He wasn't wearing his ankle bracelet, though. I mean, that is, we're finally moving on here a little bit, right? Like, is that the sport of kings, Chuck. Yeah. Did you guys hear their walkout song? Cereke Dumas walked out to A-Conn's locked up. And then

Hernandez walked out to KRS1, sounded the police. Come on. It was fucking safe. Well, that was the best part. Then the whole, you know. Is this sport not the biggest carney show on fucking planet Earth? Oh my God. The dude, I don't give him credit, though, like, you know, shows up Luisita, like on what? He just fought, like, 11 days ago or something. Like shows up, yeah, and he's like, takes this fight.

That's a pretty good two-week stretch there. Obviously, this was, like, he got an opponent who was very willingly going to play into his hands, but still, that's a good showing for him. I just want to point out his contender series fight was vastly tougher than this one. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Hey, the Ultimate Fighter show had a finale. and if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it happen, Chuck? I don't know.

Let's start with the good side and jump down the car just a bit. Tina Black actually gets a nice stoppage against Melissa Amaya. Tina Black obviously had made a name for herself to a degree in Invicta. She's a dominant puncher, as you can see. Chuck, this one at 115? Yeah. I've got some belief in her. I actually think she's a good fighter and I think she can do something in this division.

Looks like a young Melvin Gillard in there, doesn't she? A little bit. She has super quick hands, man. super quick hands. Like there was a couple of those shots where she had landed the big shot and then when she was on her boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, that's kind of fun to watch. And she should have, she probably could have

gotten that finish in the first round. Like she had a, what was her opponent's name? I can't, I can never keep this. Melissa Amaya. Amaya, she had her pretty damn hurt in the first round. So that, I mean, from her perspective, and I had no idea that were at the tough finale, by the way, going into this, that was a, that was a very

nice showing for her and to become the next six-figured tough champion tough 34 right yes that's the game i play with my daughter it's like i'm gonna give you a dollar is this this is worth a dollar this chore i'm just gonna give it to you a nickel at a time you know um and then what the hell to even say about this i i i watched too many fights on mute so if i get the names pronounced wrong please forgive me but i limbic ackelbeck taking on mohammedali osmanli oh yeah uh os monli knees his opponent uh ackelbeck in the head and uh super illegal and it can't continue.

And so it's a disqualification. Illegal need to a grounded opponent. The other dog wins. Yeah, that's how it works. Luke. In Long Island, you see you probably were better off at the wedding. I mean, a lot of the stuff. Hey, a fight does not go the distance.

I was chilling on this. But it's funny because on Friday we were talking about like, does anyone even watch tough anymore? Like you don't even remember these winners. No, I mean, this guy might be great. But to win in this fashion is the most tough thing ever to win. Who won tough 31 just off the top of you guys' heads? Do you guys recall?

31. I couldn't even tell you one person who was on it. If you told me the coaches, I might know. I wouldn't. I don't know. I checked that around like tough 10 whenever they did heavyweights or something like that. Bro, let me get the words of Habib number get made off. Who cares, brother? Who cares?

True, man. I'm going to jump down the car. There were some nice finishes along the way here. By the way, very surprised Brady Highstand or I'm not sure I pronounce his last name. Gets the wind. Yeah, dude. Nakamura. This is a surprising

one, Chuck. Nakamura has a wrestling background kind of spotlit as one of these guys like Ray Saruya who was going to make a move. This one, a big setback for him. Long Island, how much of an upset was this on the numbers? It's pretty big, wasn't it? Pretty big. He was like plus 285.

Also, funny, we were just talking about tough winners. Brady Heistan did win tough. Oh, yeah, I know. Dude, the people kind of forgot it because I remember like he had a couple fights before, but he's only, he got had like some injuries right like i guess people sort of forgot about this dude but that was a nice return to be like hey y'all must have forgot if anybody was paying attention to him because he looked really good in there very impressive showing by him so welcome back hadolfo viera gets a

nondescript win over robert burcha christian edwards a good left hook uh of round three here on hodolfo bellito this was a nice one good stoppage here yeah as you can see i'm not sure what it means he moves to nine and five he had an eight and five record before this so uh i don't have like a great interpretation of what it's supposed to mean, Chuck. No. It's a nice win. Elvis Brenner, same thing, but this one was round one. Boom. Beautiful right hook on Josiah Horel, the muscle hamster. This was, I think,

an upset too, was it not? Yeah, he was a slight dog. Also, Harrell worth noting, that's the guy who had brain surgery like two years ago. Oh, that's right. Finally makes his UFC debut, like six months ago, gets fucking brutally knocked out and then has this fight and gets knocked out again. Yeah, not great. Not great.

Montel Jackson, who is a very talented fighter, he gets the stoppage over Ricky Simone. Look at that. Beautiful one, two, caught him off the head movement, just basically timed it. Just one more time, run that back. There's linear punching. Pop, pop, lo.

I've still got high hopes for that dude. I think he's he can be something. He is super talented. The only thing there's one more fight that I only care about, Jasmine Howdygey. Look at this, dude. By the way, I'm not saying that the stoppage wasn't clean. I'm saying there's like three stoppages in here. Do you know what this reminds me of?

Oh my God. Look at you. This is going to be an oldie but a goodie. Do you remember Phil Barone's stoppage of Dave Manet? Oh my God. You're going way back. I have seen this. Yes. Yeah. Basically what happens is Barone is firing straight punches like machine gun style, right? And like one or two of those early catches Manet and like icees him right there. But Manet can't fall because he's being propped up by the machine gun punching. That's what that looked like. It looked like she was on her way down. Then one caught her and like brought her back up.

Brought her back up. Yeah. That's what happened. That's what happened. It looked like that. But she, Huardigi, how do you,

has had, you know, all the Mexican media was like, oh, she's the next big thing. Then she has those setbacks. This was her getting back on the horse. Granted against an opponent with an 11 and 9 record,

but, you know, nice to see, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, it was a good way to kick up the car. She had to have been in Long Island

probably confirmed this. Like she had to have been a huge favorite in this, right? Because that was such a mismatch. She was, but it was weird because she had a long layoff. She was coming off the loss. I was like, I don't trust either of these. She put it on Demopolis. I was actually really surprised in that.

But yeah, she gave her the business on that one. Okay, so that's it for this card. Before we talk about what happens in the box, let me just say this, folks, this Saturday. Yes, this Saturday, the fight is on. And wherever you're watching, Draft Kings brings you closer to the M. MMA action. The Draft King sports app is now live in all 50 states. Yes, all 50. One app, every sport,

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Draft King's predictions to get predictions dollars that expire in one year. Event contract trading involved risk of loss. Predictions offer void in New York, non-withdrawable rewards issued as $50. Click to Claims every seven days for 14 days. terms at dkng.co slash offer limited time offer nationwide based on sports book predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability varies by state. All right, that's a mouthful. Here we go. Chuck, topic number three, on Friday, I don't even know what you want to say about this one. Let's just say it as nicely as we can. Reports emerged on Friday that the Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua fight was in potential jeopardy.

Now, this is the report. It came from the rings, Mike Coppinger, who, yes, of course, to acknowledge I've had, you know, a run in with. You are an untalented zero. That sounds like my dad. Tyson Fury, his will he writes, Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua could be called off due to issues, according to sources, and a replacement fight between Terrence Crawford and Ryan Garcia as being considered. What was funny about this was that Terrence Crawford was like, well, I didn't hear any of this. Yeah. Another fight that was floated was also that Tyson Fury could end up fighting David Benavides.

But it doesn't appear, Chuck, that there's really anything to those reports. So let me ask the question in the following way. Eddie Hearn seemed to suggest that nothing was amiss. There was no problem. Yet, according to Sports Illustrated, Chris Mannix, the issue is the role of Dana White, where he fits into this. Turkey basically wants Dana to promote the fight. Contractually, it appears that he is not able to able to do so. I don't know why, but that appears to be the case. And so, like, what is happening here? Why is, why are Dana and Turkey seemingly unwilling to, like, seed this battle to Hearn? And, like, how do you make sense of this episode? I honestly, like, this, this confuses me so much

because we had, what was it, on Wednesday or Thursday before this report, we finally get to the point where we're having this fight you know and i know we haven't had a chance to talk about but it's like we have this fight the poster comes out you're thinking okay here we go um and sport to kind of be thrown back into a gray area is very it's it just feel it's exhausting what's going on with this to i mean to kind of go to like it just feels like a pissing contest in a strange way of like two guys who are very publicly battling and you know in posturing in a strange way because you have eddie Hearn who, if you, you can almost understand Eddie Hearn's, you know, kind of disgruntled approach to things through this process because you've got a, you've got a mammoth or like a monolithic

Zupa boxing coming through the Ollie Revival Act, everything that's kind of coming in that what that means for Dana White to be coming through the Connor Bin situation. It's just been slap after slap to him. And I think that at some point he's like, you know what? We have a contract. We're going to stick to it. Like if he's being, if he's being the guy to hold things up, he's He's doing it in a way that he can, that he can fight back. From the Dana perspective, though, and I mean, this is what confused me because he was asked about it. I know we probably have the clip here, but he's asked about it, and he gets very angry, but he doesn't give you direct language either.

You know, he says he's answered it a million times. He's answered the question if he's going to be involved in all this stuff. He's going to be promoting the fight. He doesn't give you direct answer. He says, I'm involved with the fight. I'm involved with the fight. But did you hear that? It seemed to me like he's still not saying it.

maybe because he knows that he's not in an advantageous position yet, but he feels like he will be. You know, through his dealings with Turkey and like just being associated to Turkey, that they will figure it out. But it does seem to me like Dana's not 100% sure. That's what was weird about it. It felt like he's saying stuff,

but he's not saying anything. He's like, we're promoting the fight right now. You know what I mean? But that's not saying, I'm promoting this fight. You know? That's what caught me.

I mean, it's also like one of these games where it's like, what does it mean to promote the fight? Like if you and I show up to Fight Week and we do a podcast about it, we're promoting the fight. We're not promoters, but in a loose sense of the word, we're promoting versus like what Eddie Hearn is, who is like the promoter of that event, which is not just a license,

but kind of like a role of ambassador to the media as well. And it sounds like Turkey wants Dana in that role. So I want to just be clear about this. I don't know what the truth is, Chuck. I'm not asserting truthfully that I can say it's X or it's Y. But I think that one of the interpretations you could make here is like the Ring Magazine has under Turkey's leadership been used for, you know, personal vendettas, right? Where he remember the Ring published a report being like, oh, tickets aren't selling well to it was one of the Queensberry fights, a Frank Warren fight. I forget which one.

And tickets weren't even on sale. Like they couldn't possibly be bad because they'd never even gone on sale. And then when they did go on sale, I think it was a sellout. You know what I mean? So they'll just, like, they will straight up, like straight up. It is, they will report fake news. Whether that's the case here, I don't know. But I would say that take any report from anyone related to the ring very much with a verify kind of attitude about it.

But like in either case, like, I just hope everyone understands, like, this is what ZUFA boxing is, dude. This is what ZUFA is. This is what UFC is going to be, or I should say TKO. They don't want to share power. I hope everyone can understand the depth of what that means. Oh, they'll share a little bit here. Oh, they'll share a little bit there. They don't want to share power.

And it takes people a little while to fully accept the extent of what that means. It means in all ways they want final veto over everything. That is what that means. And they'll do anything they can in many cases to achieve that end, especially if they're motivated against a rival, which in this case, Chuck, fits the bill precisely. Now, Chuck, you mentioned the Dana White thing. We have it here.

We're probably not going to watch the entire thing. But Dana White was basically asked about it at a Zupa boxing event over the weekend and got extremely testy with the local media there, the boxing media who were following up being like, well, are you promoting it? and you said it was going to be in New York, and now it's in Cardiff. How do you explain all this?

Take a look. What's your role in the event? Have I not answered this question? 257,000 times. Same as it was yesterday. And the day before, and the day before that. As you sit here now, is that fight going to happen in December? That I don't know.

That I don't know. Well, the guy who's supposed to be helping the fight has been hurting the fight the entire time. He hasn't done the fight any. favors, let's put it that way. Matt's Kellerman said on the broadcast tonight, you won't be working the fight as a promoter but you'll be helping Turkey Alashake

on, I think he said, on a personal level. I don't know where that came from, yeah. That was weird. Eddie Hearn's been quite consistent in saying that there's a clause in a Eddie He says lots of things. He does indeed, but he says that there's a clause in the contract that says no Zoufa, no TKO, no Dana White. You've always been quite consistent in the past. If a fire has a

contract, you won't mess with him. Yeah. Am I trying to sign Anthony Joshua? I don't know. Have you seen anywhere anybody reporting that I've tried to sign Anthony Joshua? I suppose he's saying it's not about signing him. It's just about being involved in the fight. He said it can't have any outside involvement from anyone else. Were you aware of this?

We're promoting the fight right now. And what I've said 150,000 times, I don't know if I've ever known anybody who's more full of fucking shit than Eddie Hearn. If. I'm done. But if you're... If fucking, if, when, who, whatever... If your involvement...

This guy is full of fucking... of fucking shit. I've been saying the same thing since way back when, and here we are. But if your involvement hinges on the fight happening or not, would you be willing to step back and just say you guys sort out yourself? Well, that's not up to me.

That's not up to me. I'm involved in the fucking fight. Who's it up to then? I don't know. Take Lish out. I don't know. I know what you're doing. Your lead question? You fucking know. No, I don't think any bus.

Did you just get here? Hi, welcome to boxing. Would you fucking walk in from across the street with your cell phone and you don't know anything about this sport or what's going on and who the fuck are you and how'd you end up in this? No one in this room seems to know what's going on with the fight and who's involved. Oh, you have any other questions that are relevant to this evening or anything else? Eddie Hearn will probably do 652,000 interviews in the next three hours. So I'm sure he'll answer a lot of those questions for you.

If Eddie Hearn really cared about this fucking fight, first of all, the fight would happen fucking a long time ago, number one. Number two, he could finance the thing himself. Finance the fight yourself. Fucking sell tickets. Cut a TV deal and sell the fight? Listen, this thing is a whole shit show right now. If it doesn't happen from this point, those fans. I'm tired of it.

I can imagine. Can you imagine normal fans or casual fans? I do. The guy who is actually heavily invested in this fight. and he and his client are supposed to make a shitload of money off this fight. Oh, okay, I was going to say we don't need to see any more of it, but there we go. Chuck, your reaction to that. Oh, man, I don't.

I mean, we've been in the position to see Dana do this. It always cracks me at first of all that he's like, this guy's full of shit. When he talks about that with such confidence as if he's a straight shooter at all times and the guys he's dealing with are full of shit. It's just, it's so funny after like 25 years. of him at the helm or whatever it is at this point. I mean, Dana, he does, he's going to, he says this stuff with full confidence knowing that a lot of times he's the one obscuring everything. And you know what I mean?

I just, I don't really, it's, it's all in the inferences, right? Like at this point, I feel like that Dana is just, uh, he's basically putting it, he's putting the fight in jeopardy and putting Eddie Hearn at fault by saying this stuff. Don't you think he's basically like just casting the like if there's a problem with this fight. If it doesn't get made, it's not going to be because of me or if it doesn't get if it doesn't happen. It's not going to because of me. It's because of this guy who always hinders it. But you know, it's like with an exclusion of his own involvement. And also like just to play the game where you get mad at the media, was it you?

I just saw somebody mentioning this like that I saw somebody saying that the boxing, look at the box media. MMA media would never stand to this. You know, they would never fire back at Dana. And I think did you say this? was like you were like hey boxing media won't be able to withstand this either for very long right like it is boxing media thinking that what's going to happen is you're going to stand up to this long term in a world where now granted if it just stays a multipolar world you might still see more of this although even then i don't think that that's quite right but especially if it becomes more of a

unipolar world you have to be the most delusional personal alive to think that there is anything within boxing media capable of withstanding this. Look at me dead in the motherfucking face. Boxing media will be brought to heal. Make no mistake about it. Chuck, like, it is mind-blowing to me that people think like, oh, well, boxing has this culture of pushing back. Yeah, dumbasses, because it's a multipolar world. Change the equation a little bit and that shit goes away. More to the point, Chuck, you've seen this before, right? Where it's like, okay, here's what happens. Let me give you a scenario I've seen eight million times. A guy gets not credentialed for UFC, either banned

or they won't credential him and they work within a media outlet. Now the media outlet has two choices. One is you say, aha, well, if you're not going to let our guy in, we're just not going to cover your event and we're going to show solidarity here. But then the problem ends up being all of your competitors are not going to listen to that. So you're unilaterally disarming in ways you could get more robust content. That's one option. The second option is, okay, they're not going to ban the outlet, but they'll ban that one person. So now the outlet has to say, okay, we're going to allow that to happen. We're going to allow this person to be banned. We're just send someone else in their replacement. But if they do, that replacement knows that they can't rock the boat, number one.

And number two, you have effectively begun the end of that person's career. Because once they realize that the job is to have access to the events to generate the kind of media coverage that they need to do and that this person is no longer useful in that regard, they will become over time not useful to the media organization

in almost any capacity and then they will go, motherfuckers in boxing, that's coming to you. Just so it's very clear, all of that is coming to you. And if they can define the larger context of how many promoters there are,

what is it about? Boxing media, is hanging on by a thread as it is. You motherfuckers all laid down and lapped up Saudi Arabia and now you're going to stick it to Dana White. Good fucking luck. Good fucking luck. You got on your knees for Saudi Arabia.

You will do the same for Zufa. Mark my fucking words. Is it fascinating times, aren't they? I feel like it's just such a different, especially from our perspective. It was what really well said. I guess in one sense, too, like when Dana is saying, you know, why don't you?

you just finance it yourself? Why don't you get a TV deal and just finance it yourself? This is him saying that his contribution already is making this thing happen through Sela, through Turkey, right? Like this is his way of saying that he's a he's moving mountains to make it happen essentially, right? Like that's, it's just his way of doing it. But all of this is just Dana speak. And I mean, it might be a little weird for the for the boxing media, but we're so well versed in it, man. We've seen this for so long. And whenever he's got like a competitor, or like he wants to, you know, plant a narrative or kind of assign blame

or, you know, take it off of him. Like, this is what he does. So get used to it, boxing, because this is what you're going to get in force. As soon as this all Lee, right? As soon as this all the revival thing is through and all that, like this is going to be the new norm. Yeah, I mean, once you start to see a couple of promoters fold up,

and this might take a couple of years, you know, or even a little longer than that, maybe five, maybe 10. But like, it's coming. Like, I mean, The only way it doesn't is if it remains a true multipolar world for quite some time, in which case they can still make your life difficult. Don't think that they can't because they'll still be involved with big fights, but perhaps it'll be a little bit more tolerable.

I mean, again, the other part, too, Chuck is like the people don't understand the scale of the ambition. The ambition is total control. It is total control through every part, vertical integration. They want to control the whole thing. It's like, this is why you can't, people think you can play their game and beat them at it. You will not. You will not. You can either play their game under their rules or you can choose to not do that. But those are the only choice. People think there's like this in between that no one's thought of yet.

Oh, thanks. I didn't know. We hadn't considered that. Oh, it's so smart of you. So smart of you. No, no, no. Two choices. You can play by their rules or just not play at all. Make a pick because that's the choice that's coming, you know. If you had to predict right now, does it, does the fight happen and how involved is Dana White once it finally does? I do think it happens. Yeah. I think he is going to continue to make life difficult for Eddie Hearn. Yeah. You know, I don't know if he gets out there and violates the contract. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't.

I'm not suggesting that necessarily, although who knows, but it's not my prediction. My prediction, though, is does he find ways to continuously throw sand in the gears? Yes. Yes, he does. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is such a game between, you know, game within the game. And honestly, we, I'll say this, sorry to cut you off. No, that's good.

You know this from all our years in MMA. Dana hasn't had an MMA rival who was able to one up him in quite a long while. And in this case, Eddie Hearn just does have the upper hand. Right. Yeah, I was going to say, I talked about this a little bit with Pizzi on the crack. Like, you know, Scott Coker's of the world and the Bjorn revenues of the world, They were trying to coexist in a world where Dana was already on top. This is a very different thing because this is Dana moving into a space. It's moving in to take over a space.

There's going to be a lot of, I mean, these guys all have egos too. And those egos have been able to be served the way they want them, you know, for a long time. And what we're seeing right now is the kind of drama that's going to play out. And all of the, I think for a while, this is going to be the new drama that plays out. It's the game. I was saying it's the game within the game. it's crazy that, you know, every time we talk about it, like, and this is in general, whenever we, I've talked about this fight, it's about the promoters. It has nothing to do with the fight itself. Because if you get down to the fight itself, you get into these like, I mean, it's five years too late or whatever it is. You get back into the normal way of looking at a fight, but it's hilarious that we're just spending time trying to figure out contracts and who's posturing and who's trying to deflect and all that stuff. It's a, it's a very interesting time for, for Zuba boxing and the boxing world in general. The other part to those, if you're Eddie Hearnchuk, it's like, okay, you've got the upper hand here.

But are you going to have that long term? You know, I mean, I'm somewhat bearish on the Saudi involvement in combat sports going forward because they are under so much financial and, you know, let's just say euphemistically, various pressures related to how their government operates that I don't know how much boxing is going to be a long-term play. Also, I'm hearing things about, you know, um, certain places that might be up for sale a little bit. I haven't confirmed it yet, but I'm hearing some things that, in other words, that there might be some signs that Saudi investment in boxing,

I think it's already slowed and they could even go further away. And that certainly gives Eddie Hearn some a leg up. And again, Eddie's kind of very dominant in a particular market that's, you know, really important to boxing too. But, you know, if I was Eddie, I'd be looking at this being like, dude, this is, you can win this battle, but this is merely a prelude to more of what's to come, you know? It's interesting though to see anybody win in battle against Dana. Because even just the event being in Cardiff, the victory lap,

and Dana just kind of seething, you know, silent to see. You can see why they want to change the rules, Chuck, because if you got to play by them, you've got to deal with L's on a big. And they don't want to do that. They just want the whole thing to be controlled. So we'll go from there. All right. Topic number four, Chuck.

This was a smaller one, but I thought kind of an interesting one. So Justin Gache was on the, is it the flagrant podcast or flagrant two? The Andrew Schultz podcast. I thought it was just flagrant. I don't know. Actually, I really don't know. In any event, let's just call it the flagrant podcast. I'm not mistaken.

It used to be called flagrant too. And now it's just flagrant. Okay. So Armand Sarukian, according to Justin Gachey, is the guy that should be next in line. I was so delighted to hear it. Let me read you a quote of what he said. quote, Armand Soyukian is next in line. If and when I defend this championship, that will be who I fight.

I just don't know right now. I gave a lot of myself for this fight in January and June. I came out on top, but it cost me a lot, so I need to recover, end quote. So, Chuck, this to me sounded like, not like the best news. The best news would be, hey, the fight has a date and it's going to be blah, blah, blah. But this was to me heartening. I was heartened to hear he didn't want to fight to Pori. I was heartened to hear he wanted to fight the number one contender.

I was like, yes, this is exactly what I want to see. So the question is as follows. And I want to talk about the fight and how you see it in just a minute. But how soon should Gaichi be forced to make a decision about this? Because one of the things he says in this is he's still not 100% committed to the idea that he is going to have another fight. But what he's saying is if he does have one, it's going to be against this guy. When should the UFC force his hand? Well, let's see.

he fought in June, right? And if it's Armand, he just fought, what, a couple weeks back. So you're looking at June till December, you know, if he got until the end of the year, would be like a, what, what is that, a six-month kind of window to determine, I guess if he intends to fight, like, and to set a timetable or to, like, set a date maybe. Yes. I would put it till the end of the year. Like, I know that that's a little bit fast, but, like, you've got a lot of things going on in that division.

And if you were to like say, you know, in the in year or two of Paramount, they're trying to get like kind of dot some eyes and say like where things are going to go. If you could put it in the first quarter, like late first quarter of March or April in that range, I would think that, you know, that's enough time for everybody in the scenario to do this. I would say that at the end of the year would be ideal for something like that. What do you think? I mean, to me it's like that's six months to kind of, you know, have your title and to figure out what you want to do. and if he has

Justin Gachie has filled in he's been there for them he's been a yes man in terms of just jumping in against anybody if anybody should get a little leeway it should be him even and he made good on the opportunities he made this year he's probably going to be the fight over the year at the end of the year

I would give him that courtesy but I would want some kind of indication one way or another because you've got to keep things moving you can't keep everybody on the sidelines right like in this division where there's so many names at the top there yeah I genuinely come down in a pretty similar place. My view is you don't have to

fight anymore this year. I mean, I would be great if he did, but he doesn't have to. But he needs to make his intention very clear by the end of the year. Like by January 1, we should know exactly what the plan is, I feel like. The other thing I want to say too, Chuck, is, you know, it is important for the UFC to open their

pocketbook here because I don't know what the right number is. And maybe Justin wants so much, you know, that he can't be accommodated. You know, there's always two sides to every story. But like, consider what happened at heavyweight, right? We're just constantly administratively handing the title around. No one is beating anybody else to capture it in an exciting, kind of forceful way, right? It's just all this, you know, email champions, as they call them in boxing.

It's so bad for a division. Lightweight is so hot right now. Gaichi had one of the most important title victories in this division's history in June. like that title should be up for grabs and fought from champion to challenger for the sake of this division's health and the UFC we know can certainly afford it again i don't know if gaiti might ask for an insane amount but probably not right like i'm just saying chuck as a matter of like divisional health sport health they need to they they they need to do everything possible i'd say within reason to make this kind of thing happen because is it the end of the world chuck if they don't at lightweight well you might say If any division is resilient, it would be this one. I don't want the division to be resilient in the face of having to swim upstream. I want it to benefit from the natural order of things. And in order to do that, a guy who has been arguably the most exciting fighter in organization and sport history might have one more left.

He's willing to fight the number one contender, Chuck. in the words of who was it from Rounders pay that man his money you know what I'm talking about character yes yeah yes like that's what I believe here I really truly truly believe it yeah and I mean I get the sense that this is it if he's doing it's one more but I've heard people say like you know once you start making big money

and say he wins against Armand maybe it's not the last one maybe he keeps getting paid I do think that that's the part of the problem in the situation And this is where Teporia and Patty and all these things factor in. It's just the UFC can't look. I mean, not that they do anyway, but like you can't with these guys who you, you're not sure if they're going to keep fighting or not, I think are harder. This was the John Jones in the Aspinall thing. They're like, are you going to, are you coming back to fight? This is the fight to make.

And, you know, Jones noncommittal until the moment he retires and then all that stuff. We saw that play out. It's just I got to think that this is one of the more frustrating things. So I do think you have to come correct to have some clarity in a division. And you want to keep it running, man, as hot as you can because you just, you mentioned Justin, uh, Justin winning that like very important fight. The Patty fight on UFC 329 was kind of a savior for that card the way the Connor went down.

But like you had this storyline of Patty reemerging in that, uh, St. Denis thing and like beating him in such a way to kind of become like as big as he is right now. And you still got Ilya out there who will need a dance part. they've got the bad blood. You've got so many nice setups, if you play it all right, that would keep that division just really hot, even if just regardless, like, right?

Like if he comes in, he fights that last one, whatever happens, you've got so much already planted. I think that that's got to be key too for them. In terms of the stakes of the bout, can you imagine what this would do for Gachy's historical standing to beat Ilya and the way that he did? And then let's say he was able to do something, you know, similar-ish or whatever.

to Armin at 37 years of age, he'd have arguably his two best wins as potentially his very last two. As a guy who was considered to be very good, but sub-super elite, but still exciting. That was like the trade-off. Well, he can't be this because he's this at all times. But then what if he just levels up and just becomes that at the same time?

That would be insane. Insane. It would be unprecedented, you know? Because we've seen guys like Max Holloway or, you know, Charles Olivera that had later runs and then they were very good but they were not this late they were not this buried in the in the kind of conversation there weren't monsters coming up that they suddenly batted back out of nowhere as huge underdogs like this would be unprecedented to see somebody at the tail end of their career especially after so many wars and dude you could find

i'm sure you could go back on those old mima beats or something where we're talking about like justin gaitie beating up the palominoes of the world yet getting into these like you know these firefights with kind of no-name guys like going in there and you know fighting that way and you're like there's this is not sustainable for him to turn something around in the twilight what is he like 37 38 years old like in the twilight of his career and beat back these dudes who were like ilya was pound for pound up there with uh with Islam and you got arm on who a lot of people think might be the best in the division right now and like if you're beating those types of guys at the end as you walk away we've never seen anything like that in the sport

Indeed. Do you have a sense of how that fight might go? You have the right to change your opinion over time. My initial thing, but I mean, I think this is just a default when Gachi fights at this point. You're like, well, I don't think this is a step too far for Gachi. You're just saying this is going to be tough. He's got like a 70% like, you know, his defensive wrestling has been pretty good, right? Like you know about him. Like he's able to kind of do things.

And he's pretty good in using his defensive wrestling into his offense or into the kind of chaos of where he wants a fight. He wins in like these scrambles and things like that. I find it hard. I mean, like, it's, I know you have an opinion on this too, because you mentioned this. Like, this could be very interesting. This could be a very hard fight

for Armand. In my mind, I like to think that Armand would know how to handle him. You know, you could, there were certain guys who have been able to beat Gaetchi that you could probably go back and watch. I think Armand could do that and be like, you know what, if I do this, if I don't fall into

this and I do this and I'm able to kind of dictate that I think that he could win the fight. And he's going to be a big favorite in this fight. But I think it's his fight to lose. But dude, you tell me, because I know that when we first were talking about this, you said this could be a very bad stylistic matchup for Armron, right? Like you've got like a, why did you say that? Well, the thing is this. It's like, I don't say that in the way that I'm saying that Gachie deserves to be the outright favorite. I'm not quite saying in that way. What I am saying is, guy like Gaichi, very good defensive wrestling, very good cage tactics, dynamic puncher, highly experienced. We saw what Hoofie was able to do to the eye of Armin, even with just that one shot.

Now again, Armin, you know, showing new wrinkles to his game. So I don't mean to say that this is all just, you know, he's a punching bag or something. But like the guy with the good takedown defense and even if he does get taken down, I'm not, I'm not super convinced by the sub-ability of, um, Arm in against a guy like Gaichi, like Hooker off of his back is one thing. Gaichi being able to move, I think, is a little bit different. So I think he just presents some very, not like overwhelming challenges per se, Chuck, but stubborn ones.

Yes, stubborn ones, problem solving ones, that for sure. Well, I hope we get to break it down in a real sense. I hope that fight happens. I mean, it would be fun to see a division play out the way it should. When you put natural contenders against, you know, guys who are doing this, it'd be fun to watch it play out. Either way, it's good for, I mean, it's not bad. It's not good if Gachy wins and then hands the belt back, that sucks.

But if he wins, he achieves something incredibly historic. And then if Armin wins, he achieves potential, at least on some level, right? He became UFC champion. And then that's the natural order of things that makes a division churn forward. And that also, by the way, Chuck, is that's like when that guy beats the champion, that's often their biggest star-making moment. That is true. You know, it's true.

You need those moments for the division to thrive. So I really love. I'm going to see it. You make that fight you're doing Ilya obviously against Patty, right? Like that's what that's what it has to be. I mean, that's that's the other beautiful part of it. And that fight dude is a big fight. That's a big fight. So I think it I think there's just a lot of ways if the UFC does this right. And again, assuming Gachie's not pricing himself out. Right. This could be a big win for the fans. I truly believe that. I agree with you 100% man. I think that also like just on last thing I think Armand literally is a bigger star than he was obviously that he was in 2025.

when he was supposed to fight Islam, he just feels like his star has grown so much more. Like I feel like it's going to have a very big fight feel once it comes around. And not only does the UFC want to see him in that role on some level, but the fans want to see him there. The fans are demanding his attendance in these, not merely a ringside, but in the fight itself, you know?

Right. Yep. Speaking of fighters, boys and girls, street fighter fans, I know you're out there, or I guess most of us watching the show are probably all street fighter fans, grew up on it. The weight is over.

This action-packed movie has real martial arts, practical stunts, game-inspired fight choreography, and all the iconic characters you grew up with, Ryu, Ken, Chung Lee, the whole world comes alive with that nostalgic 90s energy before the new generation. Party, ladies and gentlemen, like it's 1993 with action that feels bold and fast on the biggest screen possible. Experience Street Fighter, a must-see theatrical event only in theaters, October 16. get your tickets now. Chuck, do we know what the rating of this movie's going to be? Am I able to take my daughter to this one now,

or do I got to wait until she gets older? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I don't, I don't know. How old's your daughter right now? She's seven. Seven. I mean, she has a pin. She's already watching NC17, I'm sure, but no, yeah, we're not doing anything.

But she's got opinions now. Yeah, I'm sure she does. Chip off the old block that way, you know? I'm just getting yelled at all. by Hispanic. It's unbelievable. All right. Topic number five, let's just do it. Combat Sports Roundup. Here we go. Just a bunch of smaller stories of stuff that kind of happened. That was kind of cool. Chuck, Darren Till was bloodied.

Yeah. But he defeated Yuel Romero in BKFC. Let me ask you, is Till a natural fit for bare knuckle? I watched the fight. I think he might be. That was kind of my takeaway in the end. Like he seems to, I know that. It's a nasty. Dude, the thing that bothers me, do you watch me? much of this because it's like when the guy, when they've got their knuckles out, and you're seeing Yole Romero, who looks like his head is made of

concrete, you know? And he's just hitting him and hitting him. And I'm like, how do your knuckles just not shattered a pieces through these processes? But that is something that Darren Till, and having talking to him, like, I know he takes that very seriously. He kind of, he doesn't load up. You know, he knows not to load up. He's trying to aim at certain parts of the head that

he's not hitting the top of the skull and breaking his hands. These are things that you're adjusting to. He's kind of evolving into this bare knuckle guy. And I got to say, he did pretty good. I don't know if you got a chance to watch the full fight, but he was able to kind of keep distance, you know, kind of keep at a distance, straight from far and like on the inside,

like, land some nice shots. I felt like he was, he learned a lot in that first fight that he had against the reality guy. What was that dude's name? The first fight. Like he came into this one, you could tell that he had gotten used to the idea what he was doing.

So that's, so, I think so. I think he's kind of tailor made for it. Dude, put that, put that cut on the screen again. nasty looking bro these cuts i mean the cuts that happen in mama they tend to be like more ninja-esque like you know linear it looks like flesh gets torn at the fingernails oh man you know like a bear slapped you or something yes you know it does oh it slices you in these

like jagged thick ways it's just awful man the uh the sport itself is horror it's crazy bad i mean they're going in there it's not like the old 77 rounds the jim mace would fight you know, it's like these guys are like, they're going in there and they're like, they're just trying to take each other's heads off within a minute, you know? It's a fucking sprint. You know what I mean? It is. It is.

I'll say this. I can't watch a full event of BKFC. I can watch a fight. You know, I can watch a fight. I got you. But after three rounds of that, I'm like, yeah, I'm good. I don't, you know. Yeah.

It's not for me. The sweet science might be for you. It's certainly for Henry Sohudo. He gets a win at Misfits boxing against the donk, Wana Walton. He wins via decision. Chuck, what do you feel about Suhudo's boxing resurgence, right? He won an Olympic gold medal.

He won two titles in UFC. Now he's not going to win any titles in boxing. But you know what? If you watch the fight, he actually looked pretty smooth on the feet for the most part. That's what I thought. I mean, he kind of stocked down a few times. His head movement wasn't bad.

Look, like, there was a couple times like he got out of the way of stuff. He was moving in. He was landing combos. I was like, it was kind of fun to watch. I got to be honest. I didn't anticipate that he'd be good at it. They mentioned that he'd had,

and I guess I didn't really know this, that he'd had some kind of boxing. back in his day like uh i didn't really know that you could see him gold gloves boxing on youtube from is that right back in the day it showed it showed that he had some experience because if you try to pick up boxing at 39 and you've been a wrestler your whole life in m mhm a it's tough dude it's time no it's tough and like you could tell that he'd had like he's got some instincts that way so that was good yeah i was pretty impressed actually you know and the thing i'm not like where are you on misfits boxing because here's what i'll say i'm not in

into the, oh, you know, it's, it's the Bloods versus the Crips kind of way-ins, you know, where there's just constant acrimony and people are just doing dumb shit. I'm not interested in that. But insofar as you get a lane for either an older boxer or like a Darren Till type or in this case, Henry's Suhudo type, you know, older enough, you know, obviously Henry's background is different than Till and Henry achieved much, much higher in every possible way. But I'm saying, you know, a lane for former MMA fighters, maybe is the best way to put that. where they can kind of get, you know, appropriate level matchmaking.

Like, I have mixed feelings. Like, on the one hand, it's like, you know, amazing MMA champion is going to fight hot sauce McFuckface. And I'm like, why is an Olympic champ fighting hot sauce McFuckface? I don't want to see this. But honestly, in some cases, it does kind of work. I'm torn on it too because it does work in that sense. But I'm like, I guess you want the glory of what they did.

in the sport that you backed. You know, like you're in the UFC, it meant something to do these things. So like to see guys end up in these strange kind of novelty situations, I guess, these leagues where you're going against some reality star or whatever it is, it just feels like it's either a lark at the end of the career or a paycheck or, you know what I mean?

But it doesn't have anything to do with the kind of greatness, I guess, that they had to define themselves through the thick of what they were doing. But I've kind of reconciled to the fact that like, that's our world now. Like so many of these guys, if they can make that, if they can make some money and go do this and they're not going to get their heads taken off,

a lot of times because you cover these guys for so long, that's what you don't want to see is guys getting their head taken off in some, you know, some brutal way, you know, at the end, like after they've already been beat up a ton in the UFC, that's what I don't want to see. So if they get the matchmaking, that makes sense and they can make some money and kind of continue their glory, I really don't have any problem with it in the end.

Tony Ferguson also won at Misfarthe boxing. Here's a knockdown of Mahmoud Sebi. That was really weird. I'm not sure how you say his last name. Yeah. And then he eventually stopped him after this. But you know, this is, you know, listen, I got to say, former MMA fighter just punching the fuck

out of donks. There is something to be said about that, right? That is that is MMA's gift to society. Yeah. I feel like. It's like MMA fighter versus influencer and then the influencer gets like super fucked up. You're like, this is, you're welcome, America. You're welcome. Well, that's kind of, I guess, where we're at it, right? Like, well, this influence. He bothers

you all the time. You know, he's in your face all the time. Now you get to watch him get beat up. I mean, that was kind of the whole Jake Paul premise, but he's right. Didn't really get beat up. But in reverse. That was weird though, watching that. Just get the guy get chopped down. Like it's just very strange to watch that. Well, I mean, who knows if this is on the up and up. I don't know what shit is, you know. I'm not declaring it

just like that. I would have the questions. Like I hear about it all the time with, uh, yeah, he does the old Rick Flair bit where they get hit and then five minutes later they fall face for it. Do it again. We'll show it one more time. Look, he's just hands down. Watch this. He's just like, you know what? Fuck y'all. In any event, that is our top five here on this Monday edition of Morning Combat. Now we're going to take a look at your

questions. We put up a call for them on IG every Sunday. Y'all fill them up, the producers pick them, and we answer them. It's time for DMs from dogs. All right, from Taekwuan dude memes. Number one, does Rosas have the lowest ceiling of any prodigy. we put in quotations that the UFC has pushed. He seems to still have many of the same flaws and is already talking, excuse me, early exit plans on the sport.

We talked about this on Friday, Chuck. He was like, you know, I want to win two titles by 25. He's like, you know, he kind of indicated it could take longer than that. But I was like, sorry, you're planning on winning two titles in your career. Okay. Good luck. What do you think, Chuck? He might own two titles of use cars, but I don't think he's going to like,

there's no way that he's going to. I don't see it yet. I mean, we kind of detailed that I'm like, if he'd went in there and just kind of thrash, you know, Barcellos or something and like really won that fight convincingly and you saw some things, maybe I would, maybe you'd be like, ah, we'll see, but I still haven't seen it yet. And he's a prodigy in age alone, right?

Like, you're just, okay, you're in there and he's, he's introducing his brothers. And so we might see more of these Rosas Boys showing up, but I still need to see more before I could do that. So, like, I'm putting Prodigy in quotes just like he did there. Yeah, I mean, the thing is this, like, he is getting better. you know i mentioned this before like you watch this fight and for all the problems in the striking of which they are considerable um it looked better to me this time and it looked a little bit more natural the thing

that you have to remember chuck and this is why people misunderstand development if you're a rossos junior and you're not fighting these kinds of guys yeah you're training and you're getting better over time i do think that that is real right i can see there is improvement and that's the good news right so okay that's good but again if you're fighting at a lower level of competition, you're under less pressure to fight a certain way because you're more comfortable

using all the tools that you might want to be able to use or try if it's a new wrinkle. Whereas if you're fighting up at this level, if you're Rosas Jr., it kind of narrows what you can do. You can sling heavy dogs or you can do wrestling or anti-restling, but there's really not, I mean, I guess he's got

the same sub-ability, but, you know, probably not a lot. Yeah. And so it just changes the calculations internally of what a fighter makes, which changes what they focus on in training, which changes how they perform. It changes the entire incentive structure, incentive structure. And I just, again, is he going to get better? He's 21, Chuck. To your point, it'll probably get better.

But I just don't think this was the way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Bryce Mitchell, that's the fight. I liked that when you said that. I'm like, dude, make that fight. All right.

Holmes by Garrett. And the way that Barcellos went down Is that the scariest way A fight has ended? Didn't say UFC, Chuck, just said fight has ended. You can only think of Mitchell of dying against Oh, Mitchell died.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. As a close second. That one was a bad one, but I'll tell you, Chuck, some of the ones I've seen in boxing. Yeah, I know. You know, where I saw a guy get, for example, like,

when Canelo slept Amir Khan. Yeah. And it just is like you turned the lights off instantly. and then their head bounces and then I've seen other ones where they get the lights turned off and then they'll be on the ground, you know, twitching and then you'll see them convulse like they'll throw a punch

like out of like a jolt in their arms where their body is just trying to process basic biological functioning. But dude, I was also there when Dada 5,000 fought Kimbo's Slice and that was so... He literally died for just a second, didn't he? He died for a second. I mean, that was so comical we didn't really know what was happening. But then as we've been,

begin to reflect on the evening more and more we're like, dude, that was really fucking bad, you know? Yeah. I mean, you're right about the boxing ring. I mean, the famous one, and I went back and watched it, right, is the, uh, uh, what was the, in 1982, it was the, uh, Mancini.

Yeah, dude, yeah, yeah, yes, against Mancina, right? Like, like, you've seen guys where you know something's wrong. Like, I just, you go back to watch it because it changed so much of boxing and the landscape. That's what you worry about in this sport. the moment. Do we have a boom, boom, mancini moment? We're like, oh, boy, here we go. Because you know that's going, that's going to be a, that's going to be the biggest hurdle of the UFC, if they ever have anything like that. But dude, there was a boxer recently who

he stood and he went toward the corner. He just started boxing in a corner as if the opponent was over there. And you see stuff like that. That's, that's terrifying. You know, like, where you're like, dude, he's, I think that it was like a bad thing, too, like where he, you know, had some bleeding on the brain type thing. And it's like, that's what you were. about you know so that's that's where my mind went i think oh i hope it's nothing like that yeah fair enough um from train how you fight nine seven nine this is a good point by the way for all the criticism recently of the ufc and rightly so i think we have to give them credit in their spelled wrong fighter signings this year solditch parnass gasanov vaggaev vagaev choperov and probably uspun

numberdov next chuck this is exactly right now i don't know if fighters are lowering their price tag I don't know if it's just because one has gone away and PFLs and whatever fucking straits it's in. Or UFC is paying more now. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. But remember, they didn't sign Parnas because they were like, yeah, we don't need him and he's too expensive. Right. Now they have them.

Soldage went to one and now he's there. One of the things that has gone right for UFC in 2026, in my opinion, is they've been much better about signing exciting overseas free agent talent that could really boost their divisions. in ways that maybe last year they were much more, you know, unconcerned with. Yeah, 100% man. I mean, a lot of those names like Parnas and Soldich, I mean, I wanted to see them, right? Like you want to see them come over and see what they can do, the partitioning. So my guess is it's some kind of combination. You do have the PFL and obviously like you've got, you know, Jake Paul and Nekisa who,

they're not quite the equivalent of Eddie Hearn, but they are definitely, that whole event they did in July was a sub-tweet to the UFC and Fighter Pay. This seems like a little bit of response to keep their guys out of their their grasp, you know, if they are trying to, you know, kind of get something going in 2007. You also have Scott Coker coming in. I think it might just be like strategic and they're probably opening up the pocketbook a little more than they would. But it's regardless of you as UFC fan, this is exactly what you want to see. So I hope they keep it up. Competition. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Flannels and Jitz says,

what do you think of Gordon Ryan getting kicked out of his own seminar in Ukraine? Did you see this? No, I didn't see this. I didn't know what was his own seminar. I guess I missed it. So Craig Jones apparently called in a favor in Ukraine when Gordon Ryan had a seminar and got him kicked out of it. Wow. And there's video of him being escorted out, I think.

Really? Yeah, you haven't seen this? I didn't see it. No. Dude, I talk to Craig, not that often, but every once in a while, I talk to Craig. And I'm like, Craig, this is. me saying that you got a lot of enemies bro you know what i mean yes and not just that you know i don't i'm not saying that gordon ryan would do anything but like in general Craig makes enemies of some

capable people sometimes dangerous people you know and i don't i just don't know how smart that is you know i love craig i don't want to see him in any kind of harm joe no i agree with you i got to look it up now long island did you see this i think i vaguely did uh but i was because like it's all coming back to me. I vaguely remember seeing something about it. He's recovered right now. Yeah, exactly. I'm not sure what the full story is,

except that I saw he got escorted out and Craig was doing a victory lap. And I was like, Craig, buddy. I don't know. All right. And last but not least from Shea Wardlesel. Who over the fuck? Oh, I don't know if you heard about this.

Thoughts on the Heather Hardy lawsuit. It's a very sad tale. But it sounds like she doesn't have much legal. standing against MVP. Chuck, are you familiar with this? Yeah, well, I saw, I did see it's like $10 million, right? She was kind of put into a fight where she was already compromised or something. What was the exact? Yeah, I mean, basically that, I mean, there was all, she makes a claim about like,

who was the actual promoter and there was a subsidiary. And that was done to shield them. But basically that they act, I mean, this is a very euthomistic way of describing it. But basically that they acted negligently in, and also purposefully putting her against Serrano to, you know, to hurt her and then boost Serrano's chances, you know, based on a series of things that they make some, again, these are all allegations. Sure. To the point that it's raised, this question to raise, I don't know what the legal merits of

it are. My amateurish reading of it felt to me like Hardy's medical concerns are real. And also that part of what she just describes, Chuck, is the unethical, but frankly, not necessarily illegal things that we just take for granted in boxing. I don't know how much of a, that's not a criminal thing, but I don't know how much of a civil case. That's what I wonder.

You'd have to ask an attorney. Right. And I mean, I'm horrible with this type of thing, really knowing one of those legs. I remember when the UFC, the first antitrust thing, when it was first brought up and you're hearing John Fitch's name and all

this stuff, you're like, ah, you know, we've heard things before. This is probably going nowhere and then look at, it went somewhere, you know,

so my legal understandings are not that great, but that's what it struck me as, is like this would probably be one of those things, you know, who knows that I don't know if she has like much to stand on here. Because we see a lot of, a lot of people could make claims like this if they wanted to, right? Over the course of boxing and MMA, you could make a claim that you were, you know what I mean, in that type of situation. And you wouldn't necessarily be wrong, you know?

Right. That's what I mean. So I don't know, it would have to be like a new precedent or something that she's creating here. So I'm not, I'm not super sure. I haven't read, I read the, I think it was on Yahoo, as a matter of fact, that had a write-up about it. But I did not read the actual lawsuit itself. So I'm not, I don't have enough information to say one or the other. I've, you've interviewed Heather Hardy before, right? Long time ago, yes, but I had it once. Yeah. I interviewed her pre-pandemic. So it's been quite some time, but a very nice lady who has never had it easy. And I don't know, again, I'm not sure what the

merits of her legal claims are, but the merits of her, you know, medical claims are quite real. right and I just want everyone to know like even if you don't think that she has a case and you know again the courts will decide ultimately this is a lady that's had a tough life that is true a real tough life true yeah and so go easy on her all right that's what I would say all right okay with that in mind now it is time for us to take a look at your artwork and put it on our proverbial fridge you could do that every time morning combat at gmail.com for fan subs well you know what time it is it's time for fan subs You've got mail Viewers All right Chuck

We got three here from left lane He goes at I don't know if it's this Luke FYI These were submitted late before Last Friday That's a note from Snyder to you Just let you know

These might be a little outdated Oh I see I see This might be a little outdated Okay so let's see what we got All right Show me the real main event Okay I said the real main event

Ah no the real main event Ah no the real main event. Cop versus criminal. Oh, man. Hey, did Eileen Perez twerk? Oh, here's another one. When the women's MMA fight

is bantam weight, not straw weight, and the fighters are from South America. Not quite my tempo. Yes. Yes, that's very true. And then lastly, I fear no man, but that thing, which O'N3 fighter made his debut on

UFC Warehouse Lop 73, blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, we're talking about main card minutes here. Prop quiz. Prop quiz, yeah. It scares me. Yes, yes, it does. I don't know who these people are, Chuck. That's really a problem.

I've embarrassed myself twice on that show. I know all about it. Yeah. Archie has a meme for us. Ready for Cyril God. Not a bad idea. Brother, I can't say I blame him. I know.

Chuck, we talked about it on Friday's show. We had Jimmy Smith on and we were talking about oblique kicks. And it's like, how the fuck are we talking about oblique kicks? and everyone can just poke each other in the eye. And said the same thing. Same discussion. I'm like, dude, we're really going to prioritize oblique kicks. I know Dana's kind of had a problem with them going back to John Jones.

And I think Quentin Rampage accident or it was Rashad. I remember he was upset by. He's like, he did not like that, right? He's always had a thing for it. But I'm like, dudes, you've got a heavyweight champion who can't see it. Who knows if he even comes back at this point, who got gouged in his eyes. I feel like that's the more pressing issue here, right? I agree.

from Colin. This is the bone marrow transplant donkey writes. Jimmy Smith made more references to football than Joe Buck does. Is this the perfect analogy for MMA? Yeah, he was like, so, Chuck, it's like the 76.

And they're all Steelers analogies too. He's like, you know, Mike Tomlin in the locker room, I'm like, hey, we don't give a fuck about the Steelers, Jimmy. So you'll know here. He likes the Steelers. Who gives a fuck the Steelers? That's what I have to say. All right, from Quinn.

Quinn has a meme. fan subs those who know those who don't know oh yeah i know all of our fan subs were like hey dan so we have this joke on this show where uh we talk about getting fucked by animals and you can just see dan being like i'm sorry what fucking show am i on you know poor dan he didn't know he didn't know he's getting into from sebastian we have a meme you have got to be fucking kidding me that in your grave they're still mowing God damn it. Get off my lawn. From Elvis, we have a meme. Can you guess who this media member is? He writes.

All right. Who's got the first question? Oh, is this John Morgan? Morgan got to be right. Blue shirt. Yeah, blue shirt. Yep. You know what? John Morgan's a nice guy. Yeah, I'll say that. He does wear that blue shirt like a motherfucker, though. All right. From Mike Kay, we've got a bunch of these. Let's see what Mike Kay has to say. Jimmy Smith cornering M.A. NFL covering MMA NFL reference he was hitting that button Chuck dude that's hilarious

Luke Thomas waiting speak when Jimmy Smith is on MKL he had some long he had some long wands yeah yeah it's all right I don't mind it everyone's got a different stuff toaster after becoming a

maddo bro hold on there's a couple more there's a hang on dude my daughter had to, it was like dress up like what you want to be. Right. You know what I mean?

Like, oh, I want to be. And every year the answer changes. Like when she was three, it was like, I want to be a chef. And then next year it was a cop and then it was a teacher. This year for reasons that remain unclear to me, it was a magician. And my, my dad was over. So her grandfather was over. And my dad looks at her and goes, you don't want to be a magician.

They don't make any money. And she started to cry. And so I had to show her like David Blaine. Oh, man. You know, who makes a lot of money. Of course. Of course. I was like, yeah, thanks a lot,

Dad. Anyway, that's hilarious. That's good, that's good. There's two more. The Cody's filling out a UFC prelim card. Chuck loves that shit. I just saw Cody got booked. I forget which one. One of the Cody's.

Durdon, Durdent, fighting O'Day. They're always booked. You know that that's a pre-limb fight. So let's go, baby. All right, and then there's one more, I think. Long Island Luke had a wedding. UFC Vegas, One, 20. Is that Lauren Michaels and what's his face?

Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon. That's all. At a Knicks game, I'm guessing. That's awesome. All right. Last one, not least,

we have artwork from Francisco. It's a piece titled Kong Thomas and Tukyzilla. The references in the drawing are Tuki. That's her coming down. Well, that's slow down. Slow down, slow down. I'm trying to find the Tuky one.

There we go. Godzilla. That's kind of her at the same time, actually. Joseph A. Bank. Do we have that? there it is vox media it's on far uh barbis and arby's what else we got uh there's the bank and then there's me is there something else in there they're saying there's other stuff i don't quite recognize oh cobb county courthouse in marietta georgia oh that's awesome that's tremendous

and then he says the work took me about a couple of weeks to finish and i may add some color over time. Brother, keep sending in drafts of this. We'll do it. Yeah, that's pretty cool, man. This with color and the fire coming out of Tuky's mouth, that would look sick. We would make a poster out of that, you know? I mean, we would steal your work and just claim it's AI, but, you know, we would do it. All right. I love seeing the box media burn in like that. That gives me a tickle. That's funny. Morningcombat at gmail.com is the place to get those in. And is, of course, you got all of the socials where you can follow us on top of that, on Twitter, on Instagram, on blah, blah, blah,

we have badges. We have emojis. If you want to put up those, there we go. Badges and emojis for members. Of course, morning combat. Dot, Chuck, before we get out of here, what can folks expect from the Iceman this week? I'll have plenty of coverage coming out on Crown. We've got a roundtable. I'm talking to Natalia Silva, I think tomorrow. So I'm going to do a little feature on her. I'll be on the crack on Friday, as usual. And yeah, just look for me. I'll be all over the place this week. Long Island, Luke, what's up with you? You fucking non-fight watching casual? I'm back to the regular. I'll watch before my live shot on Wednesday, but I got Contender Series tomorrow, you know,

bet breakdowns, prop quiz Friday, watch alongside, guys, we got a pay-per-view this weekend. It might not be the best card, but it's still a pay-per-view. Yeah, you can drink it all you want. We should actually discuss this on the here. We're not doing a pre-game preview for this.

For two reasons. One, this card is ass. I mean, it's butt cheeks. And then the other one is there's one later this month between Volk and Volknovsky, or sorry, Volknovsky and Evloev. that is much better. So we'll do one for that. We'll be in studio later in October, just not right now, all right? Because the card's just not worth it. That's a solid plan.

That's a solid plan. Yeah. And as for me, I'm going to put a bullet in my mouth and I'm probably going to be on the commode as soon as this show is over. All right? For Long Island Luke, for Chuck Mindenhall and everyone else on the show. We appreciate you guys watching so much. We'll talk to you on Friday to preview UFC 332. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.