MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Recap: UFC Vegas 57 Mateusz Gamrot, Shavkat Rakhmonov | Bellator 282 | PFL 5 | Ep 316

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

On episode 316 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian recap a packed weekend in MMA. The boys start off with UFC Vegas 57. How did BC and LT score Gamrot vs. Tsarukyan? How good is Shavkat Rakhmonov? The boys also break down Bellator 282. Is it time to recognize how good Johnny Eblen really is? Can Danny Sabatello win the entire bantamweight grand prix?. They close out the show with some DM's from donks and HYSTS. (11:45) - Gamrot Edges Tsarukyan (30:20) - Shavkat Rakhmonov (47:10) - Eblen dethrones Mousasi (57:20) - Bellator 282 Undercard (71:30) - PFL 5 (84:30) - Dm's from Donks (97:00) - HYSTS Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. Reveille, reveille, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion.

That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. It is the 27th of June, 2022, and you know what that means. It is time for International Fight Week to begin. Hello, everyone. It's also time for Morning Combat. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. My name is Luke Thomas.

I am joining you from the capital of Estados Unidos right here in Washington, D.C., joined by the king of Connecticut to, I guess, my left. I guess that's right, yes. He's my friend and yours. He makes up a lot of titles for himself that in no way portray reality, but he's a great dude. It's Brian Campbell. what's up bc how you doing bro luke i am so damn fired up for ifw 276 ltbc mk all day nearly every day live show friday 5 p.m pacific time beer hot i've just i'm living uh you know a right now. Let me, let me ask you a question with this great MK sphincter shirt right here. And Luke, um, you know, we got great fights this week. We got great fights to look back on. We got great content to pitch to the people. Everything

right now is great. Yeah. Yes. It's great. It's going to be a huge week. It's going to be a busy week. It's going to be a crazy week. But it starts today. Now, you just kind of mentioned it. You saw the lower third. Let's get it up one more time. First order of business. Yes, of course, we have to do a show today. But Friday, 5 p.m., directly following the weigh-ins, the ceremonial weigh-ins,

at the T-Mobile Arena on Friday at 5 p.m. local time in Las Vegas. Meet us at the Beer House. Free entry. You ain't got to pay a dime. Vegas, meet us at the Beer House. Free entry. You ain't got to pay a dime. It's right next to the T-Mobile Arena. You can't miss it. You actually, true or false, BC, you can't get from the T-Mobile Arena

back to the Strip without passing the Beer House. It's right there. You can't get from here to there without getting a little MK on you. And what do you expect from this live show? How about in-person DMs from Donks? How about the wheel of death? No, not the UFC weigh-in show wheel.

Our damn wheel, okay? How about Sugar Rashad Evans live and in-person? Other special guests? Mikey Morms on security? I mean, it's going to be an S-show, Luke, but we're happy to provide that because don't forget who made this show possible. Well, the CBS Sports

budget, but because the reason why they made this possible Luke, was because our incredible viewers, our rabid family of just rejects and amazing folks they voted for us, they wanted this show to be the best in the world, it became the best in the world

at least for this year, right? and we're happy to give you back what we promised okay? Luke, like your favorite politician, it is promises made, promises kept when it comes to MK. Thank you. How much beef jerky from a bag are you going to eat this weekend? By a bag, I mean from someone just randomly showing it to you. You know, there's a lot of fans that say they're going to be there. I really hope Aaron from Washington State, who made you that land Jaeger with that special ingredient inside. I hope he shows up, Luke.

Melissa Loves Nachos says she's going to be there. Maybe Jaime, who gave us that shoe with the hole in it as a drinking consumption material will be there. Okay, Luke? I hope. We'll see. Jaime? I tend to pronounce things more American than you do, Luke, okay?

Yes, that is certainly true. But you got the details right. There's tons of stuff we're going to be doing. It's free to get in. It's right by the T-Mobile Arena. You could throw a rock and hit it. What's up? I was going to say, Luke, speaking of America, right?

I saw Top Gun Maverick this weekend with my wife, kids, and parents. Give me the review. Holy crap. Look, that movie had no business being that great. I know. It's better than the first. And, you know, while I say it's a cinematic classic, obviously no. Yet I was gripped the whole time.

Edge of my seat. Like, dude, they nailed it. They win. And, Luke, you know what? That movie was actually filmed three years ago do you know they had to rent those planes from the u.s navy for eleven thousand dollars an hour jesus good lord uh dude i couldn't believe how good it was you're right it had no business being as good as it was and i know people today don't even understand this but you and i might a little

bit tom cruise's i've said this before him turning turning into an action star is so improbable. But at this point, it's hard to think of him without being that. But this used to be the guy in Risky Business who was sliding around the fucking floor in his underwear. Look at him now. I mean, he's like 59 now, but he was 56 when they filmed that, Luke. And he was shredded, man. I mean, that's what the Hollywood TRT will get you. But man, I mean, Miles Teller, amazing. The connection to the first movie, amazing.

Dude, Val Kilmer, amazing. I loved it. It was really, really good. If you've not seen it yet, I don't know what you're waiting for. So tons of fun there. All right, BC, let's remind everyone, if you're watching on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. If you're new here because you came recently from some of the other stuff we've done,

we do this three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11 a.m. in the east, 8 p.m. in the west. And as I mentioned before, we're going to have, by the way, it's not just we're doing the live show on Friday. We're going to have reactions to the pressers, reactions to the weigh-ins, reactions to the media days, all that stuff, all the news. We're going to be getting to it. Plus, we shouldn't forget about this.

There is, we're not going to be in New York City, obviously, but at New York City on Wednesday, if memory serves, that's right, the 29th, there's going to be a Jake Paul, Tommy Fury presser. We're going to watch it and then react to that from Las Vegas as well. We're going to be locked in, dialed in. We're going to be your one-stop shop, BC True or False for all of combat sports for this next week.

People actually have no idea how much, not just us, but our extended team, CBS Sports, Showtime, Malka are putting into this week, by the way. Look, we are banking content that people won't see that week, but we'll see in the future that is going to be incredible. So, Luke, you know, like, you know, Bruce Springsteen, for example,

three-and-a-half-hour live show, gives everything he has. They've got to carry him off the stage. That is going to be you and I this week. We will be working around the clock, making special content, reacting to everything. I couldn't be more fired up, Luke. I don't know what we're going to look like physically at the end of it or smell like spiritually luke but i'm ready to take that journey arm and armor with you for our fans look they deserve this because they are the reason we have so much success luke you could say you know what i mean the sauce is the boss and you

know at the end of the day do i believe that absolutely but those fans luke along with you have played a big part in this show yeah we are entirely grateful yeah grateful of course to cbs for what they've done for us and everything else showtime mulca all that but really the the um the engine behind all of this the thing that makes it go is the fans so we're happy to see them in person on friday at the beer house and um i can't wait. It's going to be a big week. I fly out tomorrow morning. I guess I'll see you tomorrow night or I guess Wednesday morning, one of the two. But we've got a lot to do next week. So we also have a show to do today as well. I want to remind folks, if you want to email the show, you can do that, morningcombat at gmail.com.

That will be for Friday's Dead Wrongs. I think we're going to push fan subs to Friday as well. So we're going to do a live edition of fan subs Friday at the Beer House. So be on standby for that. And, of course, Showtime is the label that pays. You want to get Showtime. You can watch it. You can watch BC on show box. You can watch Showtime championship boxing. You can watch Bellator. You can do all kinds of stuff. Just go to showtime.com 30 day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. Ah, they're saying fan subs will be on Wednesday, just the same morning combat at gmail.com. We have

a place to get the fan subs in. BC, anything else you want to get to before we start the show? I want to say that, as always, look, if you're new to MK, you get the three live shows per week, you get the post-fight reactions, but don't sleep on our bonus content right now at youtube.com slash morningcombat. Resume review Max Holloway. We just published yesterday pre-game preview UFC 276 with the great man in the hat,

Chuck Mendenhall. I think you're going to love that. Do I interrupt Chuck every other sentence, Luke? Unfortunately, yes. It's my, you know, you put a beer in my hand and he put me on a couch.

I'm going to interrupt you. But I think it's one of our better stuff. And Luke, we also have that great watch along. Volkanovski, Holloway, one and two, rescoring it what do we think looking back on it how will that affect the third fight we got an interview today with

Jared Cannoneer who's in the main event on Saturday you got a great chat with Adrian Yanez that's out there I mean we are pumping we're pumping it Luke you know what I'm saying tons of good stuff there so we're going to be talking to all kinds of people this week we're going to have all kinds of sit downs all kinds of different forms of content coming your way. So keep it locked to MK, tell your friends, and come see us on Friday at the Beer House. All right, with that out of the way, BC, we also have insane fights to react to from the weekend. Let's start as we customarily do with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC Vegas 57, 58, whatever one it was, over the weekend. Here's where we'll start. In the main event, Mateusz Gamrot defeating Armin Saryukian somewhat controversially.

However, he did win unanimously, 48-47 on all three judges' scorecards. It was an incredible scramble fest for the first couple of rounds. And then Gamrot's wrestling kind of sort of started to take over, but there's a question about the striking. So first thing to you, BC, is number one, there is some controversy about the scoring. How did you score it? And two, your biggest takeaway from the fight is?

Well, let me hit you with the biggest takeaway first. Look, how great was this fight? And fights are different. And fight of the year contenders, which I'm not saying this necessarily is, but it could be if you like that. They can be different styles. It doesn't have to be sloppy brawl.

It could be high-speed chest. This was just a high-speed, technical, brilliant fight. I mean, Luke, am I right in saying this? We said coming in it was a hardcore special. But just before I tell you my score, how much do you look at this and say that was a beautiful piece

of mixed martial arts? It's impossible to deny it, and more to the point, very quickly i would just say it gives me such hope for the future of mma if this is what guys are doing basically outside the top 10 my god we are in for a delightful future okay so back to the fight how you know who should have won how did you score i mean you know as much as there are close fights i put this one as close as you can get i don't't really know who truly won it. How did I score it when I watched it in real time, although I knew who had

won, which sometimes can change it if you're catching a fight late. Did I like three rounds to two in the end for Gamrop? Yes. I do know that there were at least two, maybe even three rounds in which you could have gone either way, and obvious, when they're canceling out each other's wrestling like they were in the first half of the fight, at such a high speed pace,

you're sort of like, okay, well, whose jabs were better you know what about sarukin spinning back kicks those were impressive i do agree one and two sarukin i agree on that luke okay three gamrot i agree on that four yeah i like gamrot again would you agree with me and say the fifth round is the most contentious one or are you not on that page no i have round four as the most contentious one, or are you not on that page? No, I have round four as the most contentious. Round five, I gave to Gamrot. Okay. At the end of the day, though, if you have to have something to separate them, here's what I liked a lot about

what Gamrot did, Luke. He settled in as a counter-striker from the southpaw stance early in the fight, in the first two rounds. He had some success, but Sarukian was landing the bigger punches. I think once Sarukian, in the second round, really started to hit him hard with those body kicks, and in fact that pop was shotgun level, it was incredible to see them eat those hard strikes and just keep going in the flow.

That kind of forced him not only back into an orthodox stance, but it kind of forced him to get on the offensive to counter that. And I think that's really where he not only sped up his wrestling attempts and really began to control things from a grappling sense, but from that orthodox stance, Luke, his jab and overhand right really started to put things together. I thought the third round in particular was the best showcase of that. I thought he carried it into the fourth round,

although I understand what you're saying. It was so close in the end it could have gone either way. All I know is that these two fighters who we talked about coming in with the changeover in the lightweight division, you know, Poirier, Gaethje, Tony, Conor, they're not getting any younger. Some of them have more juice left in the tank than not. But I look, am I wrong? I'm putting both of these fellas pretty close to the level.

I have Islam Mahachev, who I know already beat Saruki in an early, but you know, very good test for both. If these three, as you sort of said, are sort of the future, forget about the sport, the future of this division. Damn, dude, could you see all three of those gentlemen winning a world title? I think the answer has to be yes, Luke. I absolutely love from this fight where lightweight is headed. And I want to open up the proceedings here by asking you a controversial question i'm not sure i think any of those old guys can beat these three right now i

mean they could they yes but would they these three are mahachev sarukian gamrod and obviously they're pretty damn close in terms of you know fight have having fought each other and what we've seen they are so damn technical. They have a backbone. They're tough. And obviously the gas tank shown by both of these two in this five-round fight was just next level. You know, Gamrock calls out Gaethje after, and we can get into that, and I love that call out.

But this aging group of lightweights that are more of the action variety, but obviously are elite pound-for-pound nearish level fighters. I don't like their future against this next wave because this next wave is coming on, Luke, and they don't seem to have holes in their game. Is that too much?

Am I reacting to the moment of a great one-night stand and telling you I love you too soon here, Luke? I'm saying that these guys are coming on, and the future is now at lightweight. I don't know if i could say that they would well i i think i largely agree with you i would say that they're not there's there's definitely holes in their game by the way don't forget guram kutateladze who already beat gamrot right for sure close fight too that was all i mean again all these guys saryuki and gamrot

kutateladze like they're all neck and neck the whole time which is what the fight really spoke to and in fact if you go back and watch kutateladze and gamrot that one all neck and neck the whole time, which is what the fight really spoke to. And in fact, if you go back and watch Kuta Ter Laze and Gamrot, that one was neck and neck the whole time too. Different kind of fight, obviously, but you had the same similar kinds of dynamics in that way. So I totally agree that these guys, dude, when they start moving up the top 10, they're going to be just demolishing some of these guys who've been there a long time. And I think, by the way, it should be noted, I think some of those guys at the top, they

know, like Chandler, by the way, signed the UFC at 34. He always he always said I'm not here for a long time I'm here for a good time I think that they know that like not on they're on the way out but that their time at the top is going to be probably more limited than not so there is something to be said for that but for me I don't think it's fair to say that they don't have holes in their game like they all have a lot of holes in their game um the good part about Saryukian is he really worked on his kicking game. Certainly, I thought, to your point, the body kicks and the force in the stance switch was incredible. His defensive wrestling was good for two rounds, but Gamrot's ability to keep pushing past

that was remarkable. So there are some questions there. Of course, we don't know how they're going to match up in terms of submissions. And I would love to see Saryukian versus Kutatilazi down the road. But they definitely have some things to work on. It's just that you can see this next wave coming. And all the things they're capable of doing, even being that far back in the pack, you're like, oh my god, the guys over there who aren't even here yet can already do those things.

And these guys probably in some ways can't. It takes your breath away in terms of what the potential holds. But I want to focus in on the scoring if we can here. I want to tell you where I'm at and tell me what I'm missing here. It's not that I don't think that there's a case for Gamrot, even though I scored it three rounds to two for Saryukian. I just need to know what the judges are going to be looking for. All this time they've been telling us impact, damage,

immediate impact matters more than accumulative. Of course, there is effective grappling, but that's a function of whether or not you get subs or fight-ending scenarios or that kind of thing. There's virtually no ground and pound that Gamrot had from any of it. There was no subs of it. I mean, he was going for the throw one time.

It was not close, hardly at all. So if that's what we're measuring, I just don't see how on earth you can give the four rounds, or round four, excuse me, to Gamrot when he got dropped clearly with a spinning backfist, which was especially proven true on the replay. If you get dropped with a shot, and granted, it wasn't like he got super rocked, but he got taken off of his feet. He also got taken off of his feet with leg kicks, and he visibly winced in pain from getting hit to the stomach. It's like, let me see if I understand this. You guys are telling us that damage, impact, and the immediate version of it is the most important. And the guy who clearly, clearly got outstruck is the guy who won the fight. If you want it to go

back five, six, seven, eight years and say that criteria is the one that we're using where, you know, control has a much more meaningful role i don't have any problem with the gamrot win under that condition he he should have won but under the new one it doesn't make any sense to me at all and i frankly can't understand how round four can go to gamrot given those conditions okay i remember that spinning back fist happened it didn't land as hard and crazy flush as a normal one that you you know, but obviously it dropped him, right? It was a flash knockdown. He got right back up.

I get what you're saying. I remember in that moment thinking, oh, crap. And he got numerically outstruck in that round, too. He did, although let's not forget, though, Gamerot did come on in the final, you know, 15, 20 seconds when they did let their hands go a bit. But I get what you're saying, and I almost want to say right now, Luke, we're in this, you know, spinning toilet bowl with the MMA judging at the moment.

It was like, okay, they with the MMA judging at the moment. It was like, okay, they changed the rules a while back. People overcorrected against wrestling. Now I feel like every week there's just the fights that aren't really making sense. And you can go letter of the law like we have on some of these fights and go, okay, letter of the law, it should have been this. But now more often than not, it's going against letter of the law. Luke, do you feel like, well, I don't even have to ask you this. Yeah, I feel like judges are confused

at the moment yeah i get what you're asking about round four and it's like part of what i feel like no there wasn't from either side there wasn't ground to pound there wasn't extended submission attempts or threats but i think some of that was how well they ultimately canceled each other out i mean this was as beautiful a constant transition of elite grappling and counter grappling techniques and i mean it was wild. It was as good as it gets. Does that mean that just automatically equals each other out? Or if Gamerod had more control overall, to your point, is it Trump, the one spinning

back fist and the numbers? I guess the way you laid it out, it is hard to argue against that to the letter of the law. My problem is I don't think every judge is doing the letter of the law. I'm not even sure every judge knows the letter of the law luke we're going backwards every week i don't get it either again it's not to me like could you make a case for gamrot depending on how you assess certain variables yes of course yes of course you can and i have to say it's impressive as shit that gamrot you know do those scrambles in the first two rounds those are some of the best wrestling

scrambles you'll see in mma at any point in the MMA's history. I really mean that, like that level of ability is extraordinary. And when Gamrot was hoisting his leg for the treetop takedown and Saryukian had that kind of flexibility and balance, dude, that is like, you got to be, I was shocked watching how good that was. But for Gamrot to then take over late with the ability of control that he had there, and I'm the guy, by the way, to be clear, I value control. I do think it has value. But every week we get told, well, unless it leads to the X or Y, which would be significant ground and pound that you can really assess or fight ending scenarios in terms of the threats of submission, right? Then the control position doesn't really mean a whole lot.

Okay. Well, if that's the way you're going to judge it, I mean, I don't agree with that, but if that's the way you're going to judge it, then judge it that way. Judge it that way. You can't have a guy taken off of his feet with a shot and numerically outstruck, then the other guy does well with control.

I admit he did, again, he did really well with control. I was blown away by that. And then award him the round. And by the way, to be clear about it, it was all three judges. All three judges agreed on all five rounds. They had one, two, sorry, you can three, five, three, three through five, I should say.

For Gamrot, it's like, dude, what the fuck? Here's the thing. Look how confused we are. I honestly don't think that the judges are less confused. I honestly feel like we have gotten to a point where they don't exactly, unless it's like super clear, right? Super clear. This is not super clear. This is actually really hard to tell. And the way that they're judging, it doesn't give me any clarity about it. I guess that's what I

would say. No. And you know, you asked me who I thought one and I said, you know, out of any other fight, I feel like I'm not sure. And I kind of like Gamera, but you just kind of just, you know, in real time was sort of like, well, let me tell you this. And you're kind of right, Luke. So, you know, could either guy have won in this case? Yes. Do I have trust in judging moving forward? No, I feel like they're more confused than ever. And there's a lot of other issues involved with scoring as well. Did the right guy win? I mean, he did. I felt like Gamrot was more in control over the second half of this fight, although that doesn't necessarily say if somebody won because it's round by round 10-9 scoring for the most part.

But, you know, when he got his hand raised, I didn't feel bad at least, Luke. Did I feel like it could have gone so Ricky's way? Yeah, but it was that good of a fight. What do you think Habib was thinking watching this? Because he was ringside, cage side, excuse me, because he was coaching his cousin Umar and he was talking to him. And obviously he's coaching Mahachev, who's on the verge of a title shot here.

They know how good Sarurkian is. What do you think when they look at what Gamrot did? Because, Luke, this was a next-level burst-out performance for him. In fact, I can't even tell you how many people DM me after Friday's show going, why'd you guys give 35 minutes on breaking down that main event? Everyone knows Sarukyan's going to roll through this guy. Yeah, no, first of all. And number two, do you think they look at him right now

as a guy who matches up very well with Mahajev? There's not a doubt in my mind Habib was looking at that fight thinking the winner was not going to get a title shot or something like that, but that they know that either one, or to borrow from you, either one or both of those guys, if you're going to come on, come on, and they're on their way. Gamrot, you know, the big difference from EBC is Gamrot's 31, Saryukin's 25, and I tweeted that, you know, Saryukin,

he's not even close to his prime, and of course, Twitter filled with dumbasses who don't understand sports were writing to me who were saying things like, well, primes can happen in different ages. Yes, thank you, geniuses. But it is quite obvious that this guy is very... Dude, here's the part about Soryukin. I don't think he lost any stock in this fight.

You can make a case that he won. The other part was at 25, what's clear to me is he's not even close to his athletic peak. And he's still quite clearly, quite clearly... And this is the point I'm trying to make. In the... Gamrot is much more of a finished product I'm not saying he is a finished product but he's much further along and he's got six years of development on Saryukian in terms of that's in that position Saryukian at 25 is not fully realized his athletic potential and I also don't think he's fully realized his development potential you can look at his striking from his early UFC fights, which was not that long ago, to now, and you can see major leaps. What have we talked about with Marvin Vittori?

Everyone kind of bags on him because he gets all aggro all the time, but he's actually a pretty good fighter. He's gotten significantly better under the UFC. Now, he's not even 30 years old, I don't believe. So I really think that Gamrot showed what it means to have a little bit of veteran experience to really take hold of a fight you can argue whether he won or lost but to your point he really tried to take control of it and I do completely agree with that to me though do you agree BC I don't feel like there's a lot of stock loss in Saryukian given his relative youth and given his relative underdevelopment as a full fully realized fighter you know what I love best about him too too, is they interviewed him afterwards, Luke, and he was doing his best to put his thoughts to English,

which is not his first language, but it was almost like, damn, I tried the best I could, but I got to work on some things, and I will work on some things, and look at the changes he's made since the match I've lost. Luke, he is only going to get better from this, and damn, we say this about a few different guys, but Luke, this man's body is a wonderland. I'm not saying I'll use my hands, John Mayer, but I am saying, Luke, that like he has maxed himself out physically. He is such a

damn thread. If he can learn whatever subtle nuance he needs when he finds someone who is his equal, like he did with Matzev and now he did with Gamrot. Yeah, that's why I say, Luke, this trio who seem to be next in this division. And I do like Riddell, even though he got knocked out by Fazeev. And I obviously like Fazeev's UBL, upper bound limits. But I will say this, Luke, those three men, they, dude, they are coming. They are, all three could win a title. Who knows? You know, it could be, Mahachev could take over this division and be the next, you know,

Habib for all we know. And let's not obviously, you know, no one's taken the belt from Charlie Olives yet. So I obviously respect that. But my original point, I think, stands true. Look, I love Poirier. I love Chandler. I love Gaethje, who Gamrot just called out.

And I do want to get your thoughts on that type of matchup. But those guys, while having pound for pound skill and being very great all-time fighters, if you're really being honest here, right? You know, either all-time in terms of action or an accomplishment or both. You say there's still holes in these guys' games,

Saruki and Gamrot, and you're right when you find Tooth Komet, but they don't get handled, Luke. That's the thing in the end. That's right. And so far, their intangibles seem to be so strong across the board that I think they're actually going to be waiting for the veterans to make a mistake and capitalize on it.

I just don't see where you're going to dominate these guys or you're going to find that opening in the Death Star and shoot it and the fight's over. I don't see that right now. So let me come back to that. Gamrock calling out Gaethje. Do you like it? And what does that look like? I love it i love it and for a couple of reasons one gaethje is a much more devastating

striker than gamrot i mean whatever stage of development and however good they are i think that's a pretty fair statement but dude gamrot's wrestling is remarkable he got down kutete ladzi a lot now kutete ladzi kind of nullified a little bit with guard, but that's not Justin Gaethje's game at all, right? I mean, I think we can all pretty much agree there. And more to the point, like, dude, he is so... Dude, how about this from this fight, and it leads to the Gamrock Gaethje question,

how about the energy expenditure in this fight? I could not... They were pushing a flyweight pace at 155 pounds. They don't have an ounce of fat on them, and they constantly were grinding, grinding. I don't know how any of those guys at the top who are sometimes closer to 40 than they are 30,

or at least the bare minimum very close to in past 35, I don't know how those guys, when finally, Gamrot moves up or whatever, if he gets the Gaethje fight, I don't know how they're going to deal with it. I really don't. They always say, as sports or whatever, it's a young man's game. Dude, the next generation of young men are on their way, and they're not complete upgrades because they don't have some of that sophistication,

obviously, that veteran experience that you guys at the top four, top five have. But they're about to get there, and I think by the time that they do, they're going to have all the pieces in place to be considered, at that point, largely upgrades. It's unbelievable what's coming. And when the young take on the new, the veterans' advantage, Luke, is sometimes the five-round experience or a young guy aggressive, he'll make a mistake.

These guys don't make mistakes. And to your point you just made about the stamina, I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth. I don't want to discount legends because they're amazing. And Dustin Poirier could go out there tomorrow if he got another title shot and win it because he's that great. But if he's sitting there watching on TV and the pace that they put out there and endured

and didn't slow down for a second, do you want that? Do you want to go 25 minutes with that, Luke? I don't think they do. You know what I'm saying? So let's see what type of matchups both Sarukian and Gamrock can get from here, whether both get an elevation into the top 10 in terms of matchmaking.

And can we get Mahachev in a title fight already, Luke, please? Yeah, I know. Jesus, it's been long overdue at this point. Alright, with that in mind, let's go to point number two, BC. And I mean, as close as the main event was, the co-main event wasn as close as the main event was, the co-main event wasn't close at all.

Shavkat Rachmaninoff ran through Neil Magny like a freight train. It wasn't competitive. I mean, I guess you could say some of the leg entanglements were maybe a little dicey at points, but not really. He scores a second round guillotine choke, Rachmaninoff does. BC, you know what I'm about to ask you. One, what did you make of the fight overall in terms of what Shavkat Rachmaninoff to do and more importantly now that he fought someone who we like again we both respect neil magnet we both know where he's been we both know what he's done

rakmana made it look like light work given that how far can he go now the top the top of the division luke and to be really fair here, fair here, excuse me, fear here, air here, baiter, fader, the top of the sport, Luke, and you know, will he get there? We'll find out. But you want to talk about not seeing holes, and look, I got some flack

last week, including from Shofcott's manager who told you, but we love the guy, we met him, great guy. Have met him. You know, the comment about him being an efficient finisher. Well, he's finished everyone he fought. I sort of meant if he's in a fight where he's down or he's in a fight where it's boring, will he go after it the same way? Luke,

this fight was so one-sided that it was boring for a while until he finished him because he had so much control. It looked like a grown man fighting a little boy. So when he does that against lesser competition before this, you have to somewhat tepper your expectations in long terms, you know, figuring out his ceiling.

But when you do it against someone so battle-tested as Magny, who was coming in on such a good streak and looked to be that perfect, okay, is this guy for real? Let's find out. And then you don't even let Magny, outside of those leg entanglements you brought up, have a second of control, offense, or hope. Like, look, we are looking at a potential future pound-for-pound king.

And I say that so rarely because you should say that so rarely. We are looking at the type of guy who has the demeanor, talent, and although we don't know all of his intangibles yet and won't until he finds until he meets his equal right or until he enters a real pit of despair in a fight so we're not going to be able to find that out until we find that out but from what we've seen now he looks like he could become the best fighter in the sport and i'm not saying he will or i think he will luke but everything you saw early this was the fight i think where everyone else saw that because it needed an opponent of this level with this level of durability who doesn't, you know, even when he loses, Luke, does he get handled?

Does anyone go out there and piss on Neil Magny? No. Okay. But he, he urinal caked him here, Luke. You know what I'm saying? Remember that? It's a little, it's a little, it's a little. No, but, but, you know, that's no disrespect to Neil Magny, but like, you know, you know,

remember I told you about that, that adult men's adult men's club in the middle of the Midwest one time where they were just pouring buckets of ice in the urinal and it was great. Oh yeah, I've seen that before, yeah. You know, I mean, he just melted the ice, Luke, and damn, is he coming on. It calls out Wonderboy

afterwards in sort of a cheeky, fun way. Luke, I'll say it better like this. I don't know. I don't know when we're going to find out when he meets his equal. And I can't wait to find that out. And I think we have to put him on the level now of the love we have for Chimaev, who's a little bit flashier, has gotten finishes quicker because he goes after a little bit more. But yes, we have two chess pieces here in the future of this welterweight division that every time I see either of them,

I start to wonder how much more Kamaru Usman is going to stay in this game, Luke. And that's not that Kamaru couldn't be both or wouldn't. He's the best fighter in the sport right now in my pound-for-pound rankings. But again, just like the conversation we had about lightweight, these guys are coming on. And Luke, if I offered you four names right now, Mahachev, Gamrot, Chamaev,

Sarukian. That's four. UBL, baby. Who at the moment is showing the highest upper bound limits? I'm not sure you mentioned Rachmanov there, but I would say Rachmanov. Who did I say when I thought I said Rachmanov?

Who did I just say? I think you said Saryukian. Oh, okay. Let me remove Saryukian for a second. Put Rachmanov in there like I intended to, but I've got, you know. I wouldn't call it CTE, Luke, because I haven't taken a lot of head damage, but have I shown those traits to you? That's for you to decide off camera.

You know, you have fears about what I'm about to say every time I open my mouth. There's something going on in here. I miss that. Put Rachmaninoff in that four. Who at the moment gives you the biggest UBL phoner at the moment? I mean, where are we at, Luke? Here's the thing. It's like everyone loves rage monsters, right, which is what Shemaev is.

He comes out. He's screaming. He's taking down the leech right next to Dana White, and he's like, look what I'm about to do. They love the fearsome wolves. I saw a movie recently. It was well-made, it was well-shot, but it was just torture porn,

and I didn't like it that much. The Northmen. And everyone was like, yo, you gotta see this movie. And I saw it. It's fine. Again, it's a beautifully well-made movie, but it's one of these guys who just attacks everyone based off of rage. And I can see why people like that.

There's a sort of attraction to battle through rage. But Shavka Raghmanov is so different than that. He actually just lets people do what they want and then uses it against them. He has this real thing where the front kick that Neil Magny was trying, he used that to go into what he was trying to do and everything else in there. He lets people try things.

He lets them press them up against the fence. He lets them do these things. And then he just takes the fight away from them thereafter. Versus some, he's quiet. He doesn't speak English. He's sort of seemingly demure. He's like the guy at the library who figures out in the Dewey Decimal System

where the book you want on cooking is in the 90s or something. Whereas Chumayev just comes out there and just, you know, he's like this Viking warrior that people seem to respond to. But, like, I don't know that that... He fights undisciplined. Now, maybe if he fights more disciplined, I'll have to change that. Again, we don't have complete information.

I'm making this based on your question with incomplete information. But Rachmaninoff is, of all the guys that you mentioned to me, yeah, I'll say this. I think he's the most complete of them already. And he's still in his late 20s as well. Think about that. That dude isn't even close. Well, he's close to his prime, but he's not even fully in it either. So that's why for me, it's like everyone kind of loves the flashing lights and they love the bright lights. And Shumayev is obviously beating Gilbert Burns. Even beating Gilbert Burns, fighting undisciplined is extremely impressive. But there are some questions about that. Now, there's questions about Rachmaninoff too.

In fact, I wonder about some of those leg entanglements. I was talking to a couple of buddies that train. They think that like, you know, he was kind of playing with fire there. Was he playing with fire because he didn't know better? Was he playing with fire because he just didn't care what Neil Magny was doing it'd be curious to see what a Gilbert Burns might do to him in those particular situations if there were leg entanglements in that way but short of that dude the most complete guy by far of all of them that I have seen is Rachmanov he can can do it in every different range. He is calm. He is patient.

That doesn't scream the alarms or sound the alarms, by the way, about like, oh my God, pay attention to this guy. When you actually watch what he does, he is so mature, so patient, so effortless. It is hard not to think that that guy is either not going to fight for a title

or more likely wear one at some point. That's why I asked that question as a final devil's advocate about if there's a hole in him sometimes he feels too patient to me although he tends to just wait for that moment the mistake take capitalize but at the same time luke you know who's at this point who's going to make him have to be impatient you know i mean eventually they will and we'll see but the the ease at which dude the ease the freaking ease now now to your point about the you know okay you got got tangled up a bit i wonder if he's even setting traps luke who knows right who knows at this point there's a couple times where i mean dude here's the other part about rock monoff's game that people are

sleeping on he's got a few really unusual pieces to it. I talked about the ground and pound at the waist where he doesn't employ formal tools of control to keep someone down. This time he twisted it a little bit. Did you notice? He went to knee on belly a lot. Now sometimes it was like half knee on belly. Sometimes it was like half knee cut that didn't finish. There's obviously some subtleties to that position.

But he went to it a lot. And here's the other one too. Have you noticed how many times he stands over guys and they try to up kick him and it never lands his ability to manage that up kick scenario I don't know if anyone else in the game has stuff like that

I saw comparisons on Twitter to Anderson Silva's standing ground attack I'd have to go back and review the tape I still think his is somewhat unique because again going, going back to the Magnify, the knee on belly was a little bit different there. But like, for example, everyone's like, oh, we're going to go to the third round here. Dude, he gets those late round submissions all the time.

He just needs for you to adjust a little bit of whatever position you're doing. And notice he keeps weight on you so it slows whatever movement you can go to. If it's against the fence, he knows what direction you're going to turn. And then he just waits for you to give just enough of an opening. And then he drives for it and he gets it. And his finishing ability is absolutely dramatic in that way. Here's the thing we're talking about. We just had Saryukin versus Gamrot.

Dude, here's the one I'm looking forward to. Who's better? I don't know. I can't wait to see Chimaya fight Rachmanov. Chimaya versus Rachmanov Chamaya versus Rachmanov to me is like the welterweight takeover whatever else you thought of welterweight you talk about the guys at the top being old there's a lot of names that welterweight now Bilal Muhammad has really pushed his way through but there's a lot of guys that welterweight that

have kind of been hanging around for a while dude Chamaya and Rachmanov are going to run through all of them oh yeah in front of it Those guys are the next gen for real. You know, they call, what do they call Stephen Thompson? What did Errol used to call Stephen Thompson? What's the opposite of BMF, Luke? Nicest. You know, and he is. But he should take on some of that motherfucker

and not sign a contract to fight Shovkat. I mean, I don't see any plus in that at this moment, Luke. He is coming the hell on. Where do you go next with him? So he cheekily tried to put out the English of saying he wants Wonderboy. Do you do an early showdown? Is it like Sean Brady versus Shavkat Rachmaninoff? That's the other one, too.

We haven't even talked about him because he can't get a fight right now. Or I don't know what the hell's going on. I know he's trying to get the Bahamut fight. It didn't really work. Sean Brady is the third one too we haven't even talked about him because he can't get a fight right now or i don't know what the hell's going on i know he's trying to get the bahamut fight it didn't really work sean brady is the third one i think the the the three horsemen of the welterweight apocalypse i don't know who the fourth one would be let me pull up the rankings here real quick if i maybe see i would like to answer your question let's imagine a world where wonder boy does not say yes that they have to go a different route. Wonderboy, please don't say yes. Please don't do that.

We like you too much. Please don't do that. So here's what you have. Obviously, you've got Colby sitting at one, but who the fuck knows what's going to happen with him with the lawsuit and the issue with Jorge in courts. I don't know. Leon's going to fight Kamaru.

Okay, fair enough. Then you have Hamza at three. I cannot wait to see that fight. You got Burns sitting at four, but Burns seems like he wants that Masvidal fight. He wants a big name fight. He money luke he wants money he just just gave it all against that killer he wants money now good give him the money gilbert is more than entitled to it by the way burns and rock monoff kind of teammates down there at uh sanford mma then you got balal at five luke at six and then wonder boy at seven after that it's brady excuse me it's masvidal

brady and magni he just beat magni so he's going to be that, it's Masvidal, Brady, and Magny. He just beat Magny. So he's going to be next to Brady, Masvidal, Thompson, Luque, and Muhammad. I think any of those work. Now, Masvidal might end up being with Burns. We'll see. So what do you think? Bilal, Luque, Thompson, or Brady? Which way do you go?

Bilal, Luque, Thompson, or Brady. I mean, look, everything I just said about loving Stephen Thompson, that might be the next best matchup because of the name value of Thompson. You know what I mean? You want to put Shavkat in a main event against Stephen Thompson on a fight night, Luke, or a featured, you know, whatever. It's going to matter. It's going to be a great push to Shavkat.

If I'm the UFC, I probably go that way more than I go, let's put him against Brady and see who's got it, right? Although I love those sort of early unbeaten versus unbeaten, let's find out who's the boss. Luke K coming off a loss, I don't hate. Luke, really, really, I don't hate any of those. But I do kind of think matchmaking-wise, feeding old to young, Wonderboy would be the next fight in succession, right?

Yeah. I will tell you that the one that interests me Wonderboy would be the next fight in succession, right? Yeah. I will tell you that the one that interests me the most would be Brady and Rachmaninoff. Of course. Because I got to tell you, Brady's wrestling mixed with his submission ability, that could be an interesting test for Rachmaninoff. I do wonder about what some of these guys were telling me

over the weekend about Rachmaninoff being real open with how he was letting neil magny get into some of those leg entanglements and i know that for the uninitiated it's hard to follow even i i certainly might of all my knowledge in the fight game leg locks are probably one of my worst ones so i was really leaning on some friends and they were telling me they were like dude it wasn't like he was super close but like their point was you get someone who is really good at those underneath and it could have been a whole different scenario. Again, could Rachmaninoff fight differently under those scenarios? But Brady's strong as shit.

He can wrestle his ass off, black belt in jiu-jitsu. He can put it all together. He has got ground to pound on the floor. I wonder about that. That's an interesting matchup as well, you know? Oh, absolutely. Luke, I want to also shout you out for the diversification of your catchphrases. We know you for things like upper bound limits,

if I may, BC, you know, there's a lot of them. You have really worked hard to work Ring the Alarm in, and every time you do that, dude, I'm thinking Fushnikins, right? I'm thinking Shaq in the background, you know, ring the alarm without a sign of dying. Whoa, hey. Did you have your family guy moment?

Is this it, where you just have a non sequitur out of nowhere? Making it all about you? Anyway, Luke. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are you done making it about you? Okay.

Any other thoughts on this fight? I don't know what's going to happen. Oh, what about Neil Magny? I guess he stays in the top 15. It is a bit of a... I mean, here's the thing, bc it's like we all respect no magny for what he's done and also we should say it one more time one more time this dude was begging for a chamaya fight this dude was begging for a fight against a very tough guy there's a lot

of people i guarantee that their manager was like hey you want to take on shavkat ragman and they were like fuck no neil magny took that phone call dude I am I am you're you got to be appreciative of fighters that take on risk and sometimes it doesn't work out to their benefit but you are your sport is better when you have volunteers like that no doubt about it absolutely shout out to Neil Magny um but you know Luke sometimes you're the hammer and sometimes you're, you know, the urinal cake. Real quickly, yeah, dude, here's who he's lost to. Rachmanov, Chiesa,

Pons, Ponzinibbio, Dos Anjos, Lorenz, Demian, and then all the way back, Seth Pazinski, Marash. But dude, he's beaten a lot of good guys. Here's who Neil Magny has beaten. Eric Silva, Kelvin Gastelum, Hector Lombard Johnny Hendricks Carlos Condit the leech Anthony Rocco Martin Robbie Lawler Jeff Neil Max Griffin and

there's some other ones in there as Tim means he's beaten holy shit man and Rachmanov just walked through him shocking shocking to see that but look if you are Sean Brady or Michael Chiesa and you have you know a strength on the ground do you look at that concern of the of the leg lock moment and go okay I got a path now I I am curious again no one's style is perfect even if someone has mastered one complete style every style has pluses every style has negatives Brady is an interesting matchup for me I think Brady is that's a that's like Brady could absolutely do some things to him in a couple of scenarios that could be really has negatives. Brady is an interesting matchup for me. I think Brady is, that's like, Brady could absolutely do some things to him in a couple of scenarios

that could be really interesting. Now, there's a couple of risks that get involved with doing that. Fighting underneath Rachmaninoff would not be an ideal scenario under any circumstance. But dude, Brady is a fucking, an animal, an animal.

And so I really, again, maybe don't make that fight next. That's not what I'm necessarily advocating for. To your point, old fighting new is how the world kind of works in combat sports. But Brady has some very unique skills all put together that seems like that could be a problem for Rachmaninoff. But of course, that turns it away. Rachmaninoff could be a problem for Brady and Chimay. And a big part of the old new thing is you do have to now market Rachmaninoff, right?

He's not a guy that right now is going to market himself, right? He's very reserved demeanor, still picking up English. So the way to do that is feed him to recognize names and casual fans go, Oh, I love wonder boy. Let's see. Is he still fighting? Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right. All right. Let's turn our table to the Showtime side of things, or at least we'll with bellator so how about this this one bc i'm not surprised by this but i'm a little bit surprised by this johnny eblin defeats gay

guard musasi how about this 50 45 on all three judges scorecards and unlike our main event there wasn't a hint of controversy about this he beat him clearly now bc here's the funny part to me you knew that I was kind of doubting Musashi before the Vanderford fight, and it was the wrestling in particular based off the Lovato fight and some other ones, King Moe, whatever, where I kind of thought that would play a role. Now, I was too chicken shit to

pick Eblen here. I did think he was going to be able to beat him in the wrestling, which was true. You saw that. But here's the real story of the fight. He beat him fucking everywhere. Everywhere. He beat him fucking everywhere. Everywhere. He beat him standing up. He beat him in the clinch.

He beat him on the ground. He beat him wherever they decided to go. Is it finally time people recognize how good Eblen is, or is it maybe the story that Moose looked a little old? Dude, Moose has been wavy, and it's messed with our analysis of him. No, you said he was coming in on, this might be the motherfucking best Musashi I've ever seen.

Order me the three-piece with the side of crow, Luke, because I'm going to eat that, right? Damn right, but the question is why? So, you know, you got those glowing stats on Musashi, 12 of his last 13 victories. We talked about that four-fight slide where he lost his title and looked human. I mean, he didn't look great against Machida, Luke. It was a damn split decision.

But then he's dominant suddenly, and he says he feels like he's the best he's ever been, and he's the best in the world, and it's like, resurgent Gagard, let's give him his love. And by the way, he deserves our love. But this performance, Luke, he got his ass kicked. So now you look back at the signs that maybe we should have seen. Now, one of those signs is that Eblen is coming on and seems to have some plus elements to his game, which we acknowledged. Our pick ultimately was that Musashi would win a decision in a close fight. That was your pick. That was my pick.

We didn't crap on Eblen. We didn't expect this to be Vanderford all over again. But Musashi admitted that he had to cut 24 pounds in 24 hours before the weigh-in. And when we interviewed him on HQ, he was just like, yeah, it's not a big deal. I'm going to smash everybody. And you and I both talked on air and off about how weird the loosey-goosey nature of Musashi in that interview was. Now, could it have been a moment of just having fun and talking shit? Yeah, but he doesn't do that normally. But he was almost discounting Eblen in the way of like,

no, I'm going to smash everybody, bring it on. It's all finishes from here. I don't know, Luke. You don't know in the end. Bad camp, bad cut, underestimating his opponent. Whatever it was, old and new fought and new was coming on. And Luke, I did not expect Eblen's striking to have that impact. I don't think he's got technique even anywhere near Musashi.

But he figured out how to put in those looping, winging punches, how to do damage with them. And, you know, to find out, he's got the great King Mo Lawal of ATT in his corner, who, as you mentioned, did beat Musashi for the Strikeforce title years back. And, oh, no, by the way, did knock out Yuri Prohotska and was brought in as a special advisor for Glover Teixeira ahead of that most recent fight. Eblen figured out how to take his game and take it to another level. And Luke, all I can do is sit here and applaud him.

I had said repeatedly, I love me some Eblen, but I don't see exactly what we saw in Amosov when he came over the top of the welterweight division and took it over. I now see that from Eblen because this was the breakthrough performance against a legend, and Luke, it wasn't even particularly close. So was it a flat Musashi? Did he underestimate? I don't really know because of those weird signs we saw.

Either way, they fed the old to the young, and we have a new champion and a new era, you know, potentially, not a new era, but you get what I'm saying, changing of the guard at middleweight for Bellator. Eblen was fantastic. The gas tank, the wrestling. I mean, look, there were things of his game that I expected Musashi to neutralize, and he just did not meet that same, you know, level of pushback that I thought.

He pushed right through it. Let's give him his followers. Johnny Eblen, you got it, baby. You're the new champion. I mean, here's the thing for me. It's like there was a clear difference in athleticism, right? In terms of speed, explosion. Not saying Musashi's a bad athlete, but at 36, he's not the athlete that Ebelin is, I

think, at 30 or so. There was a big difference there. And I'm willing to believe that the weight cut did affect Musashi. I'm also very much willing to believe that age is slowly taking a toll on him. That's true. But here's the thing as well. When his gas tank was the best, he still lost. It wasn't like he put it on Eblen early and Eblen rallied to a guy who just didn't have the energy to do it late like Gedalia and Joanna.

That wasn't that the case at all. From the word go, he was beating his ass. From the word go, he was setting traps. From the word go, he was beating his ass. From the word go, he was setting traps. From the word go, he was getting takedowns. So it's like, did Musashi look flat-footed by rounds four and five? And he was just, you can see the highlights here, just getting kind of teed off on a little bit for sure. And I do think that that played a role as the fight wore on, but when he was completely fresh, he still got his shit rocked and taken down. I think the reality is a lot of people just slept on Evelyn, which I somewhat understand, right? He wasn't heavily promoted.

He doesn't do a ton of interviews. And then on top of that, what was his best win before this? It was John Salter. Okay. What was the best win before that? Can anybody even name it? Like Daniel Madrid or whatever the guy's name is? I'm not, I forget. Like even, even someone like me, who's been paying attention to him a little bit longer i i don't know that any of those other wins even hold a candle or those other fighters hold a candle to who musashi is but the reality is dude i said it on hq after the fight you're not fighting a guy's resume you're not fighting a guy's aura or legacy you're only fighting who they stand who is across from you and musashi i don't think he took eblen as seriously as he probably needed to and maybe he is a little bit older and maybe the weight cut wasn't there he needs to fix those things because

Eblen is talented as shit and he put it on him from the beginning bell to the last one and in the cut you could see it was a the confidence was there to carry out that game plan and Luke some guys just raise their game when the opposition gets better and the platform gets better. It's the same thing that we use as a negative against certain guys in trying to anticipate what they'll do when they rise up. No, he didn't have the resume that would have showed you that this was necessarily possible. Although we both, again, let's be fair, predicted he would have success taking Musashi down at times. He would be in this fight. Oh, he wasn't in this fight, Luke.

He was this fight. So I'll happily eat crow to see another major player on the world stage. And that's unbeaten Johnny Ebelin right now with a great team. And Luke, if he can continue to add to the striking game, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a big boy, Luke. He's aggressive. He's got a motor. He goes after it. This was the full bloom of that. And I, and I, and I couldn't be happier to see it. And I don't think it, you know, it doesn't kill Musashi, you know what I mean? I mean, he could still

make some fun, you know, the thing about Musashi moving forward, Luke there's still something there, right? Well, I was going to ask you, let me pitch it to you real quick Yeah, why don't you pitch and I'll catch, go ahead Is the rematch in order? No, I don't like to do a rematch after a one-sided dismant dismantling luke and this was

borderline that so even if you could make a case that like all right next time he'll not have a weight cut like this next time he'll realize what he's in for that that could yield different results in a very different fight that's not compelling i'm not arguing in favor of that i'm just asking devil's advocate that's not compelling to you sometimes you have to sell that in the moment both the fighter and the organization and sort of put that narrative out there and trying to lean on i don't necessarily see people leaning on that luke i don't think enough people talked about that weight cut little quote that came out beforehand and i don't see a lot of people talking about it now so no i don't think you go in that direction right now. See, here's why I'm going to say under 99% of the time, I agree with you.

This particular, like this kind of situation, like what do you do a rematch? I've always been the guy that's like, oh, is there an immediate rematch? And I'm like, yeah, it's 50-45 on all three. What the fuck would be the case for it? Yeah. I mean, what's wrong with you? Here's what I would say, though. Here's what I would say.

The number one contender, as far as I can tell now, now that Eblen is the champion, is Anatoly Tokov, who just absolutely obliterated Mohamed Abdullah. I told you he's coming on. I told you about that guy. Okay, but here's the problem, dude. They buried him on the prelim card. Like, if I had to ask the average fan, okay, who should Johnny Ebelin fight next? Can they even name

who the number one contender would be? I don't know that they could, and so for that reason, I'm not saying that, like, from a meritocratic standpoint musashi has a better case no he does not tokov is the guy end of story but like if you put eblen versus tokov you're not setting anyone up for any kind of grand arrival moment by virtue of the fact that tokov was kind of just on the prelims here on youtube it's a little strange yeah i mean they make decisions sometimes on a promotional level that we like or sometimes we don't like. Yeah, I agree

with you in that regard. I don't know if they knew that he was coming on like I did, Luke, but I caught that smell and I knew it. Tokov is on a great run right now. That would be an interesting matchup, by the way. What I was trying to say about Musashi is 36, but let's not forget, Luke, he can fight in multiple divisions. I've said

it, that if I'm Bellator, I'm calling up Anderson Silva. You know, of course I said that for Fedor versus Anderson Silva, but I'd love me a Musashi-Silva fight. I'd love me Musashi versus Fedor. I think there's some fun fights you can make with a great legend like this who's already made some of those cross-divisional ones against Rory and

against Lima. You know, I still think that there's definitely stuff left in the tank, but he got humbled the same way Bader did walking in there against Arizerer and Nemkov and and that's you know the belt in Bellator Luke the the younger taking over at the moment the the there's turnover now happening from the people who were dominating from the aughts and then the 2010s who are in their home grown right they're largely homegrown in Bellator so this has to be a good sign that's why I don't I wouldn't rush you back into a Musashi room this has to be a good sign. That's why I don't, I wouldn't rush you back into a Musashi rim. This has to be a good sign for the promotion

that no one really knew much about Amisov before winning the title or Nemkov or, you know, some of these other guys coming on. AJ McKee's been there since day one. Listen, Bellator has found, signed and developed really good fighters across all of their weight classes. My only issue, again, going back to the Tokov thing, it's like, dude, Tokov is a real threat to beat Eblen. Like a very real threat to beat Eblen. And I don't know if anyone's paid attention to what Tokov has done by virtue of some of his card placements.

That's my only gripe with how that's been handled. Yep, I'm with you on that, Luke. All right, so let's go to the other parts of the card that were somewhat slow, but somewhat sensational as well. Let's start with the one that was slow, although Danny Sabatello, Jesus Christ, this guy, he's unbelievable. So he edges out Leandro Ego,

this is topic number four, with a unanimous decision. Now, his wrestling was decisive, BC, but he struggled a little bit. He got his back taken in the second round and he lost it. Okay, but hold on. Can I interrupt you before you finish your question?

I don't like the word edging out when you win four rounds to one on three scorecards. Is that edging it out, Luke? Yes, because each of those rounds, it wasn't dominant at all. I mean, he was able to use his wrestling for control and then enough to keep the position. He didn't beat up Leandro Ego at all, dude. All that stuff about I'm going to torture him, none of that happened. So, and again, he got his back taken in the second round. And this is why I say edge, BC,

is because we can talk about A and B skill sets. Now, in fairness to Danny Sabatello, he's been in the sport, what, four or five years or something? Like, the fact that he's this good this quickly is incredible, but he obviously has a lot of development that needs to happen. So this is my question. Okay, no issue with the judging. He won this fight.

But did he show you he could win the tournament? He'll fight Rafael Stotts next for the interim title. How far can Sabatolo actually go? It's a great question. So ultimately what you're saying is did this humble a bit the whole coming on thing? It did a bit. Obviously he's got the swagger.

He can fill a sound bite. Him standing across Rafael Stotts afterwards with the finger. I mean, it was great. It was theater, Luke. It was great theater. Do I feel confident like he's the true dark horse of this tournament right now? No, I don't at the moment. Because we had questions, of course, about his plan B.

Could he strike if someone neutralized his ground game? We didn't necessarily get that answer here, Luke. In fact, his plan A was at times neutralized. And I get what you're saying. Even though I didn't like edging out, was this more survive in advance than it was shining or dominating? Yes, at the end of the day, it was. He relied on his strengths to get the job done

against a guy that maybe fought better than Sabatello thought he did. But no, Luke, I'm not here to disparage Sabatello. I love everything about him, but I don't have that same fervor. Like he's going to walk in there and just lean on that A side, no matter who's against him. Because situationally, Luke, if he's got to fight the likes of Stotts, who he has next, Magomed Magomedov, or Apache Mix, who has a fantastic ground game, Luke, I want to see it.

Not him against a striker who can overachieve on the ground. I want to see him against somebody with similar credentials on the ground as a you know wrestler grappler submission expert and see what happens if they not only take that away from him but but you know they don't let him use it to his advantage to win rounds in the fashion that he did what's it going to look like when he has to strike yeah i got questions luke I hope he has the right answers. And it's not necessarily horrible from a marketing standpoint that we don't have answers to these, that we have these questions, because that's sometimes,

you know, you want people betting against a guy like this only to have him come forward and prove you're wrong. But yeah, Luke, it was a bit humbling. Let's be fair. I am curious. I am really curious to see how the stats fight goes the maga met if he gets that far if maga met off we'll talk about him in just a second if he beats

a mix and you know we'll see how that all turns out it's like the the a skill that sabatello has is so good it's so fight ready it's so i'm not gonna say complete but it's it's just a handful for these guys to deal with but the b skill set the c skill set it's not even close to being ready for prime time yet which you can understand again it's not like he's been around for a long time this is this is understandable that he is where he is but i have to tell you i think that that's eventually going to cost him now i don't know if it's going to cost him in this tournament i don't know i don't know exactly how that's going to work i don't know if it's going to be the next fight or the one after what are you making great content thank you keep going i'm listening or the one after. What are you making? Great content.

Thank you. Keep going. I'm listening. Beyond that, what mud water are you putting together there? You know, I was combining the leftover AG1 crumbs with the rest of my seltzer, Luke, in this coffee cup, so it's just a concoction of fuel to get me to the next level. You're disgusting beyond words, but beyond that,

thank you. Again, I think that there is a big question here about Sabatello's not full upside, but tournament run. Well, let me ask you this. Of the three remaining guys,

would you favor, on a betting odds standpoint, Sabatello against any of them? No, you can't right now. You can't. You couldn't favor him against Pettis? What about Magomedov? What about Magomedov?

Or Horiguchi. We'll talk about it in a second, but his defensive wrestling, a bit of an issue. Yeah, but his adaptability, Luke, was on point. I mean, look, Magomedov is a guy that,

for as great as he looks in moments, is vulnerable in certain other areas. We saw that against Stotts. We saw that in this fight. But no, Luke, I'm still on a betting level. I'm favoring Magomedov. He's more complete at this moment.

Okay, but Stotts versus Sabatello. Who are you picking? You have to pick Stotts, dude. You have to. He's a better fighter up to this point. Doesn't mean Sabatello can't win this tournament. Doesn't mean he's you know, Sabatello could lose his next round and still exit the tournament having made himself, right? He's young. He's coming mean he's, you know, Sabatello could lose his next round and still exit the tournament

having made himself, right? He's young. He's coming on. Like, you know, there's a lot of room for growth. He's only going to get better from here on out. But right now, no, right now, Luke, Stotts is the favorite to win the tournament or at least should be in my opinion. You can counter me all you want.

But you know who the new Dark Horse is to win it, Luke? Meet the new Dark Horse horse same as the old dark horse it's mogomed mogomed off so i'm here to tell you why you shouldn't be afraid from what you saw in this other quarterfinal bracket so let's talk about it very quickly megamed megamed of course gets a was it a guillotine choke finish over enrique barzola he now advances he'll fight patchy mix in the semis tell me how impressive it was well look he's a little loose at times meaning was i surprised that barzola was taking him down yes but luke just like he showed in the second half of the stats loss there's an adaptability factor with magomedov that you have

to like even when he's in vulnerable spots he gets out of it he's got a decently well-rounded game no striking is not at the level of his ground game but his striking will surprise you from the spinning attacks to the stiff jabs to the use of kicks. Luke, I love the way he stayed the course here, never panicked in situations where he wasn't in his best, and then used those vulnerable spots to improve his position is ultimately what set up

that guillotine that got him the win here. Luke, I thought he made strides in his striking in this fight. In fact, Rafion Stotz, who had already beat Magomedov, you could expect, giving Stotzts' trash-talking nature, that when they had him on the desk next to Amanda Guerra and Josh Thompson, that he might, you know, shit on Magomedov. No, he was like, that's a fantastic performance. His striking was on point.

Luke, outside of the fact that, yes, he's known for his grappling, and Stotts had moments against him, and now, you know, Barzola. But like you said coming in, Barzola's pretty damn underrated. And he showed the toughness here. He showed a lot that you have to like. The adaptability of Magomedov, Luke. No. I was wrong in framing it the way I did on the Friday show and saying, you know, if he wins this

fight against Barzola, is he your new favorite? He's obviously not. Stotz already beat him. Stotz is the interim champion. Stotz is the tournament favorite at the moment. And obviously, Patrick Mix can fight. And he can certainly win this tournament. But the Dark Horse is Magomedov. Luke, I'm telling you right now, I'm going to tell you something that you're not going to believe until you see it. Are you ready?

Get timestamp me here, Luke. Magomed Magomedov is your next Bellator Bantamweight champion. Yeah, why? Because, Luke, he can adapt. He can come out of dangerous situations and take advantage of it. And in this bracket, look, do we have a bunch of well-rounded oiled killer machines? No, it's sort of a specialist bracket, right?

Who's the most well-rounded fighter of the four remaining, Luke? Is it Stotts? Stotts. But not outrageously. They had a fun, competitive fight. Could Magomedov grow from that Stotts loss and beat him in the championship should it happen, Luke? I say yes. I say it's in play.

I say it's possible. I'm telling you right now, this guy's going to win the tournament. Is it because he has the same exact hair and facial hair features that I had at 19? And I wasn't getting laid with it. I'm not sure he is right now either, Luke. No, it's not because of that, although it is ironic. Don't you think? But still, Luke, I'm not sure he is right now either, Luke. No, it's not because of that, although it is ironic. Don't you think? But still, Luke, I'm telling you this guy's coming. There's something

there. It's there. I have a slightly different view of it. I mean, there's a lot of positives from this, right? Because to your point, the striking was really good for Megamedov. That's really, I mean, yes, it was a guillotine choke that won it, but the striking actually was the difference. Barzola turned out to be very difficult to take down.

Very difficult to hold down. He was an absolute monster like that. And plus, he was taking down Magomedov, I'm not going to say at will, but surprisingly easy given how difficult we had assumed that to be. So I don't dock him for that because we actually saw a little bit of that in the Stotz fight too. The part that gives me a little bit of pause was as good as the striking was, he didn't seem to believe in it at first, at least for a long time.

It was clear to me, at least watching on TV, I'm like, dude, you're having success in the stand-up, you're not having that much success on the floor, and he kept going back to the wrestling, and kept going back to the wrestling. Now eventually, he wised up and he abandoned it, and then he did what he did, and he was putting on with the strikes,

but it was almost like he didn't even believe in it. It tells me that the comfort zone for him is very much the wrestling. It's very much the grappling, which is fine. Because again, how did he finish it? Guillotine choke from out the whole nine yards. But I'm just trying to point out, like you're talking about he adapted. To me, it's almost the opposite. Yes, he sort of eventually moved his game that way as the fight wore on.

But it was obvious for a while before he did that that he needed to make the striking the centerpiece of his game and it was only when he defensively wrestled got off the fence and did it later in the fight that that was clear but that that that the the decision to do that was delayed uh he could have made that much earlier in the fight i even tweeted about it like four or five minutes ahead of time being like, dude, you're winning in the stand-up. You're just obliging him by having these grappling exchanges. He only went to it much later than he had to.

For me, it's like the read on that, he made the right read, but he did not make the right read quickly. That was the problem for me. And so you're talking about being a dark horse. I certainly look at the tail of the tape, like what can he do? He can do a lot. But the slowness to turn in the direction that he needed to

gives me a little bit of pause. Not so much against Patchy Mix, who is by the way, actually it could be because Patchy Mix has this tremendous ability to find the back. So that's another issue. But assuming, talking about well-roundedness, Megamedov's your guy. But dude, if he's making reads that slowly about the better parts of the game that are demonstrably having success i don't

know that i can call him the dark horse or the future champ i'm i'm not as high on that as you are i'm more irrational than you i'm irrational by nature not because i hate you but i did tell you that gone was gonna out wrestle you know the uh uh you did andano was going to out-wrestle Gano. I did tell you on the MMA beat in 2018 that Tyron Woodley was going to knock out Darren Till. And you were like, I don't know about that, gay. And I did tell you, Luke, that, you know. Are these the only ones you've ever gotten right? Because the rest of them have not been this way.

Anyway, Luke, my point is this. I see something. And time will tell, Luke, whether I'm just some casual idiot who shouldn't be in this chair next to you. But do you feel like you have, of the final four left, I think we would both agree, and I'm putting words in your mouth, that Stotts would be the betting favorite of the four, but whatever. Do you have a feel like you feel like you know who's going to win this tournament right now?

I think it's close. You know, it's all about matchups. Like, again, I think Megamedov is certainly, certainly much more well-rounded than Patchy Mix. But Patchy Mix is, you know, his go-to game of finding and holding the back. That could prove real bad for Megamedov. Like, that is... I mean, think about it. Listen to what I'm saying.

Like, he's slow to listen to what i'm saying like he's slow to adjust to what he needs now he's probably going to be very aware about the back skills of of of patchy mix but it's like dude that could that's that's a little dicey on the other side size difference between them to cut you off super quick when they when they matched up after and did that face off and they were like goofy and hugging the size difference was was a little alarming luke yeah mix is a monster monster bantamweight and the other side it's like dude again who do i think is more well-rounded stats or sabatello stats and i favor stats to win but dude sabatello's a game it's not as it's not as complete his overall game as you want it but his a skill set it is decisive it is good another thing too on like on ego again ego is not the

wrestler that stats is but dude he was shooting from a mile away and still getting him he's athletic as shit he's quick it's like does the better fighter always win not necessarily it's just a function of matchup so i think you're gonna get i think you're likely to get a stats mega made of final but is it crazy to say you could get a sabatello Mix final? It's not, dude. It's really not. I mean, dude, let's put some respect on Patchy Mix's name. You remember when you and I were at High Rollers, Luke, and he was

warming up and getting ready for the main event, and he walked by, and I was like, yo, Patchy, take this motherfucker out! He was like, security, can you remove this? But they were handing out gimmicks left and right. It was great. Luke, what he did against Horiguchi, we did not predict. We did not see coming.

I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention to your question. What were you saying? I was going to say, to put some respect on his name, not only is he a great fighter, but Luke, he seemed to raise his game against Horiguchi in a major way. Let's be fair. He's coming in with some momentum at the moment.

He did. And again, I think he knew that that was going to be the way he had to win and he went to it and held the back control for basically five effing rounds. He's a handful. He's a handful. Again, if Megamedov's not careful, he's like, oh, I'm going to go back to my comfort zone. It's like,

dude, that may not be the game plan against this dude. That really might not be. So it's there are favorites. there are tiers in this tournament very very true but it's winnable in a lot of different directions gonna be one to pay attention to dude i gotta be really excited about this tournament the fact that you know naturally we're gonna put the winner who will be the interim champion against the real champion who's hurt sergio pettis gooch still lingering some people are have already made their names from their spot in this tournament.

Like, well done, Bellator. Let's keep the momentum going. All right, last but not least, PFL was on Friday night, and this was the night of upsets, the night of surprises, the night of a lot of different things. Let's start with this one, BC.

How about Stevie Ray submitting Anthony Pettis with something of a rib compression? I thought at first it might have been like a modified twister or some kind of spine crank. It wasn't. It was a rib compression. In fact, as soon as they let go, you can see Pettis go to grab his ribs and it's the same probably the

same spot, sort of the same injury, same place where he had the issue with Dustin Poirier from a similar circumstance. It's kind of funny, right? He's about spinning from to have someone having his back to top and I think Stevie Ray slowed it down anticipated it cranked his ribs and that was all she wrote are you surprised by this like what's your takeaway from how this fight went I guess I'm not surprised in the end because who has Pettis been since losing the UFC lightweight title he's been a guy who has a remarkable I'll'll win one, I'll lose one run.

I mean, look, he had done that in like nine straight fights. Win one, lose one. What does that mean? It means he's still capable of rallying back against Stephen Thompson to get a big win against a name. He's still capable of what he did in the first round of this tournament, which is get back into great shape and get focused all again. But Luke, who Anthony Pettis is at this point, is a guy with big lapses and big holes.

And Stevie Ray stood his ground. I liked the striking for the round and a half that we saw. It was largely on even terms. But Ray's tough. You know, he's got an experience. He's been around. He's an experienced guy. It was surprising to see him put him in what they call the modified body lock.

And obviously, you know, if you re-aggravated the old injury, you get why he tapped. But it wasn't surprising in the end to see this result, Luke. It just factored into a trio of big upsets on that main card that was one after another that was like, damn, this one wasn't big in terms of odds. But obviously, with the momentum Pettis had, I think we kind of thought he could put this together. What's interesting, Luke, is that they both advanced to the playoffs and will be fighting each other again in the first round of the playoffs. So Pettis will get that chance to capitalize on having fought Ray at pretty even striking terms and we'll see who gets the nod. But I wanted to use this fight, Luke, to ask you

about the scoring system as it pertains to who makes the playoffs. Because I saw a bunch of controversy, not controversy, but talk online. So we know that PFL has the unique system that no one else has. Regular season, playoffs, championship on pay-per-view, and it's cool, right? But look, you only get two regular season bouts. That doesn't necessarily always give you enough information to know who should have made the playoffs. Some people are saying, well, maybe we should do three regular season. Yeah, but that's such a damaging way to go through a season. Oh, God, it's rough.

But the scoring of how you get points is interesting. So you get three points for a win, but there's obviously tiered toward getting stoppages. And if you get a stoppage in a first round, you get three bonus points. If you get in the second round, you get two. If you get in the third round, you get two. If you get in the third round, you get one. So the whole point is you can get six points for getting a first-round finish against a lesser opponent in the first round. So, Luke, you know, you get the same amount of points.

If you go 1-1 in this tournament, but your win is an early stoppage and somebody else goes 2-0 and gets two decision wins, you know, you can pass them in a tiebreaker and make the playoffs. So do you think that now that we're a couple seasons into this format, that tweaking would be a good move moving forward? Or are you okay where we're at right here? I don't know what the better alternative would be, honestly. I mean, if you're going to do the system that PFL has, this seems like, I like i mean dude asking for a third fight in the regular season what what problem does that solve it solves the problem of well maybe two fights

isn't enough for this point system to get a more accurate assessment of who should move on and why okay fine but dude that is a brutal brutal way these are human beings there's only so much damage they can take there's only so much time in a year that they. There's only so much damage they can take. There's only so much time in a year that they have. There's only so much the body can do. Asking them to fight another bout before that, it just seems to me almost cruel. And I know what you could say, oh, they could win in 30 seconds. Right. But the accumulation over time would be extraordinary, especially if you have a blood and guts one there. No, I don't really agree with that. And in fact, here's really the takeaway that I have from this fight. I don't say this as some kind of insult or that I expect anyone to listen to me. I don't know that Anthony Pettis...

I'm a little bit concerned about his health, dude. He's taken a lot of fucking damage. I mean a lot. And you go back to watch the... You talk about the RDA fight as a turning point. And he had some wins after the RDA fight, obviously. Dude, he has taken a metric ton of abuse. It has been alarming to me, not just with punches and whatnot, but now with this rib issue and everything else.

He has been slammed and choked and pushed and kicked, and God only knows what has happened in training. I really believe that damage has taken an extraordinary toll on his career. And yes, the game has moved on and he's's gotten older, and blah, blah, blah. All those things are true. But dude, I'm a little bit worried about him, to be honest with you. And I know he's going to have this rematch with Stevie Ray, and it might go differently.

It's not even, I'm not making the argument that he can't win fights. What I'm saying is, part of the way I try to evaluate fighters as they age is, how much abuse have they taken? Not where are they, not what can they do, which I'm not saying are irrelevant questions, but to me, the most relevant question is how much damage have

you actually absorbed brain damage and everything else on in dude, he's taken a lot. He's taken a lot for me. And I honestly worry about his health. That's fair. That's fair. He'd been in the game a long time across what three what, three major organizations. And to be fair, Luke, he really has never been the same fighter since the loss to RDA. Yeah, by itself. Dude, by itself, that fight was a career-altering beating. Now think about all the damage that's happened after that,

all the tough guys he's fought after that, and then add in all the training and everything else. Man, it's an alarming alarming alarming amount of damage if you really care about what these guys are and again he's trying to get that million here's what he wants he wants to win that season and i bet retire right get that million dollar paycheck and then write off and do his promotion stuff which honestly i kind of hope happens so we can see this guy finally put his career to rest because dude he is taking really, really troubling amounts of damage and it's make, it makes me uncomfortable watching him fight to be honest.

And I say this as someone not who hates Anthony Pettis as someone who has great reverence for his career and is genuinely worried about him. Uh, I agree with you, Luke. So as we look at the lightweight division entering the playoffs, uh, defending champion,

how's Manfeo is out. Natan Scholl out, Clay Collar, Jeremy Stevens, Marchin Held, Miles Price, Don Madge out. Pettis, No. 1 seed Luke from that one first-round finish win, despite losing this, he'll take on Stevie Ray, the No. 4, and then Olivier Aubin-Mercier against Alex Martinez on the other side. So Pettis still has a chance to right the wrong, depending on the recovery from injury, obviously. But we'll see what happens there.

But, Luke, this heavyweight bracket, they have two upsets in one night. Big ones. Big ones, dude. From a betting standpoint, I lost some FanDuel cash on this mofo here, Luke. Okay? All right. Mateus Sheffel, who I just completely wrote off.

I mean, that blew up in my face like a grenade. He beat Bruno Capoloza via unanimous. I got to tell you, I was very surprised by this. But then I watched the fight. Dude, it wasn't all that close. He just backed him up basically for long stretches of this fight. And Bruno was kind of fighting on the back foot. Dude, everything changed at the end of this first round.

I think Bruno, who rightfully was cocksure, I mean, he had been on an incredible run, winning the championship last year and getting our attention. And look, his debut in this season was strong as well. But dude, when he got hurt late in round one, and the reason why his opponent went for the finish so aggressively was, what's his name, Scheffler? Adam Schefter, Luke, is that his name? Scheffle.

Scheffle. Respect to Scheffle, by the way. Sorry about butchering that. Scheffle needed a first-round finish to make the playoffs, and that's again with the problem of only having two fights. While I fully understand the grind, the potential for injury and the damage of having a three-fight regular season, having only two

makes these wonky scenarios in which Scheffle lost his first fight, but then upsets the defending champion yet still can't make the playoffs it's tough Luke he didn't get that first round finish but I think you'll agree with me I know we're not supposed to talk about Bruno in this family but Capoloza was never the same Luke after the end of that first round I don't know if it's just someone stood up to him and kind of bodied him and hurt him a little bit but he wasn't able to make those adjustments. Luke, his run to making himself a name in PFL, it wasn't without meeting opposition.

I mean, he fought into some wars and came out on the other end, but he lost something in that first round that he never regained in round two and three. It was kind of a boring end for Sheffer, who got the big upset win, kind of got his name on this show and announced him. How disappointed should we be with Capoloza, who still ends up advancing to the playoffs as the number four seed because Sheffield was unable to finish him in the first round? How much does he lose the luster of us going, damn, this guy's pretty damn good?

Definitely a little bit. Definitely a lot, actually. Now, to your point point we'll talk about the rest of this he's uh there well i'll say this one win one loss heading into this he currently sits four out of the top four to go into the playoffs you know maybe it was an off night who knows it's like you can totally write off his career to this point which i know is not what you're suggesting as much but it was because he was lifeless, right? Lifeless.

Yes, that's right. It was so underwhelming that you're like, wow, what happened here? Yeah. And who knows, dude? He could have got rocked in that first round and never fully recovered. Obviously, that happens in fights, Luke. It could have been a little bit of that. But, dude, he was a monster betting favorite in this one.

There's no question. But the bigger one, too, to me was Clitson Abreu defeating Henen Fajeda 30-27, dude. And I couldn't watch the whole thing. Obviously, I'm back and looked at it this morning, but I remember when I was watching it on Friday night, I was going back and forth. Every time I looked at it, Henen Fajeda was on his back, or Abreu was just kind of putting it on him.

Dude, he just won all three of these. Like, it was nothing. Fajeda is a plus athlete. He's kind of amazing in that regard. But talk about writing a blueprint on how to beat him i really wonder what's going to happen for him going forward in this tournament he got solved and like i said luke when we previewed this card i said look i don't know how good this guy is but those highlight reel wins the athleticism he can do these crazy backflips he's nearly six foot eight you had to take notice of him dude every round of the state was

the same here abreu from the southpaw stance got underneath the big strikes to fajita stunned him with a left cross and then took him down luke not only with ease but his ability to put his knees down on fajita's arms and just rain down ground and pound dude once he took him down each round that was the end of each round. That was like three straight minutes of ground control each time. It was a strong performance, but I think obviously the bigger story, because correctly if I'm wrong, I think Fajedo was the biggest betting favorite

coming in, Luke. He ruined a bunch of my potential parlays, Luke. He goes down. He still makes the playoffs as the number three seed, so the fact that both him and Capeloza will have a chance to redeem themselves. 3 seed, so the fact that both him and Capoloza will have a chance to redeem themselves are interesting, as is the fact that the two guys who pulled the upset won't make the playoffs.

But both of those enter the playoffs now with questionable futures and brands because we've got Denis Goitsov, who won as well on this night. He's 2-0 this season. He'll be the No. 1 seed. He'll take on Capoloza. And then Ante Deligia also was 2-0. He'll be the No. 2 seed and will take on Fajeda. But, delicia also was two and oh he'll be the number two seed and we'll take on fajita but luke it doesn't mean fajita can't bounce back but he's

going to have to show us some of those intangibles and bounce back and clean up his his faults pretty quickly because dude he wasn't just upset he was demolished in this fight i mean he got absolutely handled i mean i'm not going to say i say people's names correctly all the time because I definitely don't. I walk over landmines constantly. But I think you just said everyone's name wrong like seven different ways. I just want to point that out. You know, some of our viewers, though, Luke, feel that it's like if we don't come from the native language, it may not be our job to try to like Adesanya, Adesino. Like, dude, I don't have the same dialect and infliction, Luke,

to be able to do that. Listen, there's so many languages and there's so many names, it's not possible. But there's a couple of rules. One is, you know, how would a native speaker say it? That's one. Two, does the person have a particular preference around it? Right?

That's sort of what you try to hold on to a little bit. So you're all, look, I'm going to keep saying names wrong, but you know, it's Goltsov. It's the letter L, not the letter I. I think it's Goitsov, Luke. I think that's how I like to say it. That's how it feels. It feels better that way, okay? I probably have Goiter from all the

eating I did this weekend. Is that where your neck just enlarges, Luke? Yeah, a few things going on there. All right. That's it for us on the top five. So that means we have to answer questions from the donks. We put up an Instagram post every Sunday. You all fill it up with questions. The producers pick them, and then we answer them.

It's time for DMs from donks. All that good shit. We've got mail. Viewers. Thank you. All right. From at triple A 1017 or whatever the fuck. How many top 10 welterweights would you favor over shop?

Wow. Wow. You know, I love this game, Luke, right? This is one of my favorite games we play on here. My other favorite game is when you go down the person's Wikipedia and read every fight that they've ever had wins or losses, Luke. But let's play this game. Can I tell you?

Yes, I know. Having a record and talking about it is so irrelevant. Why would I ever do something like that? Luke, here we go okay right now rakmanov still at 15 i don't know how he's not higher after that win but here we go they haven't they haven't updated the rankings yet okay then i'm an asshole all right let me start with this number 11 michael kiesa probably rakmanov probably number nine Brady? Oh, that's a... I don't know. I don't know.

Don't protect our friend, Luke. Be honest with the people. No, I'm not. I really don't. Dude, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Right now, Sean Brady's like, yo, I'll send that drug rug back to New Jersey, okay? Luke, number eight, Jorge Masvidal? Yeah, Rachmanov. Wonder Boy at seven? Yep. Rachmanov. Luke A at six?

Probably Rachmanov. Luque at six. Probably Rachmanov. Bilal Muhammad. See, that's a tough one, too. What about you? I mean, there would be questions that we would need answering about Rachmanov, but who would I favor at a betting standpoint right now? Dude, again, it's what we don't know in the eye test. Yeah, right?

Shavka, right? Yeah, and then you got Burns, Chimaev, Edwards, and Covington. I'd say you favor him. You favor him over what? The question was how many do you favor? Probably a solid five to six, maybe more. Five to six, Luke? Okay, you'd have to favor Usman. Would you favor Colby Covington to beat

Rachmaninoff from what we know right now? That's so tough. That's so tough. I don't like that fight for Colby, Luke. I don't. I would favor him to beat Edwards. I'll say that. Okay. Chimaev, we don't know. Do we know? We don't know. No, we have no fucking idea.

Gilbert Burns, we don't even know because there are those... Look said rock monoff looks like he could be a future power for pound king it's it's aggressive it's it's hyperbolic but until we see those questions answered of when you're down in a fight when when things aren't going your way obviously we won't know until we know gilbert burns is still in play to, to, to F anyone up, Luke on the elite level. Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's move along on this.

If we can, it's always looking to get out of this show. Because dude, more is not more efficient is more next question at it's not cage fighting. How many more times will Volkanovski and Holloway face each other after this Saturday? I'll say at most once more, BC. Okay, I think the better question is what would need to happen to necessitate that? A max victory of any kind, Luke?

Yeah, right? Of any kind? You'd probably see them again? Ooh. Well, that is the question, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, like if Max got a controversial decision, of course you're going to see it again, right? Okay, let's ask this.

What if Max knees him again, shooting in for a takedown, puts his lights out? Do you do a rematch? That's a hard question to answer. The reason why is because these are arguably the two best this division's ever had, arguably, right? They're coming on to show you that at this moment um yeah i don't know i mean there are scenarios where you wouldn't

do it right away necessarily what if max wins of four rounds to one decision i don't think you run it back right away but i say what's the over under? I don't know. I haven't seen the odds. No, on them fighting. How many more are they fighting a fourth time? Ooh.

If the, if it was one half, would you take the over or the under? I'll take the over. I'll take the over. Here's the thing though. Here's the big question. What if Volkanovski wins again,

and it's actually the most controversial of the three? But then you'd have three fucking wins, not back-to-back in the sense that they fought each other that way, but three wins total collectively. What do you do then? Well, it's a comparison I can make, but it's a little different. Pacquiao, Marquez. The third one was the most controversial in terms of who people thought

won, because although Pacquiao rallied in that fight, Marquez was so good in the first half that people were like, damn, they screwed him again. And then we saw the fourth one. The difference is that first fight was a draw, and the difference is every single fight was debatable as to who won. Dude, if Volkanovski

wins a third time here, Luke, unless it's an outright robbery, no chance they fight again. No chance. Unless they both fight at age 39 or something for fun. No. Like Tim Sylvia and Andrei Orlovski in one. They had a rematch there.

All right, from Jack Barras. I'm not sure how this... How did Luke mismatch his predictions between Vanderford and Eblen? I'll tell you how. I had a feeling... Okay, let's back up actually even further than that, BC. I was at SiriusXM at the time,

and I had predicted that Lovato was going to beat Musashi, and everyone fucking murdered me on Friday. All the callers called in and told me how stupid I was. And then they all had to call back on Monday and tell me how sorry they were um so from that and then the King Mo fight I've always kind of thought that like not that Musashi had bad grappling he's won a lot of fights with it or whatever the case like he's obviously very good but you get someone who's like really dominant at it and I tend to think that he fades a little bit and Vanderford had really good wrestling and I thought huh you know he's kind of getting older let's see what happens here and then he just

totally imploded and I was like okay the only way I'm gonna pick him is if someone has like a Lovato-esque game and I thought that Eblen would win in the wrestling but I didn't know that the rest of it would follow the thing that was really surprising here was, as we talked about, it was like, dude, it wasn't just the wrestling. It wasn't like, oh, well, Moose, you know, he just, those other guys followed the Lovato game plan. No, dude, it was everywhere.

And so, yes, I turned into a chicken shit after the Vandervoort thing fell through. But even I was surprised at that a little bit, dude. Weren't you? I think we've kind of been over this, but I was shocked. Yes, I was. And are we going to end up finding out that out that vanderford was hurt in that fight and

that explains a lot in that luke did i hear a little birdie had told me that vanderford was pretty hurt going into that fight but even then dude there's a big difference between vanderford's overall game and eblin's overall game wouldn't you agree with that yes i would definitely agree with that um luke not not to belabor your point of having a more efficient show, because I do respect you, there was a lot of other fights on Bellator, on UFC, that I'm sure people want to know about. Is there an extra credit or not because of how busy we are this week?

There is an extra credit. It won't be out today because your Cannoneer interview is going up at 2.30, but it will be up first thing Tuesday morning. Because I do want to say that there was enough on that UFC card up and down worth talking about, right? Yeah, I mean, we could have done a whole show on it. We could have done a whole show, honestly, on the Bellator card,

because you had the Alejandro Lara loss, which was pretty bad, actually. Cody Law was a huge upset to James Gonzalez. It's actually a fair bit to go over. All right. From at fron underscore 607 this is more relevant for you bc how many homemade edibles of unknown dosage are you willing to eat in vegas at brew house why would i do that luke why would i do uh you know why would i why would i do unknown

luke i'll say this i don't know how much of that i'm gonna have for a show because you kind of have to remain you know with your feet under you a little bit but i'm definitely really really you you've done every episode of mk with both feet under you luke i can neither confirm nor deny the implication of this question but i'll say this i'm not gonna drink until friday's show at friday's show i'm gonna open up the floodgates and just booze like it's out of control. Wow. Yeah. Luke, I want to ask you this. So what if Aaron from Spokane, Washington, right?

Home of Michael Chiesa, right? Is that what he said to us? What if he comes and he goes, Luke, I made you more Land Yeager because of how much you enjoyed it last time. And by the way, you did eat those in your hotel room, right? The whole bag or one of them? I had about half the bag. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, you're still here so

that there you go uh what if he says luke russian roulette baby or ukrainian roulette here we go they're either made with semen or homemade edibles but it's a 50 50 chance yeah dude i'm not gonna roll the dice on eating jizz i mean this is not you not... You know? It's like, oh, I'll just go get the edibles that don't have, like, warning. Decent chance you could be eating another man's semen. I'm not gonna do that.

So... Come as you are as you were. If there's at all, like like no one goes to Denny's it's like I'll have the moons over my hammy hold the jizz like there's no you shouldn't have to worry about that

you know it's like either you're into that or you're not into that and listen it's not for me yeah remember when Dice Clay was like you either S a D or you don't S a D Luke right you know what I mean like right yeah okay great we just got so yeah yeah remember when dice clay was like you either s a d or you don't s a d luke right you know what i mean like right yeah okay great all right last last before we get fired uh not least at zach buldin i'm sure i'm mispronouncing his name too question for both in your heart of

hearts who do you guys truly believe has the lower t between luke and bc dude this is not a question it is quite obviously me i haven't slept properly in fucking years. Are you shitting me? So, I'll repeat. Dude, I'm so beat up and I can't even think straight half the time. My low T is out of control. I did go to my doctor, as I've said many times in the show, a year plus ago and said, Look, I think I have low T. Can you turn me into 2013 Vitor?

And he was like, Let's get you tested. And Luke, I think I have low T. Can you turn me into 2013 VTOR? And he was like, let's get you tested. And Luke, he claims I had proper T. But I want to respect our viewers because multiple people came out afterward and said, BC, I think he's wrong. And I can help you improve your T if you're willing to do webinar meetings with me. Like people have offered their services for my T, Luke, maybe for my D too. we'll find out if i take them up on the offer but um i would love if the mk cameras could roll with both of us going on a run of of of uh human growth hormone or yeah i would love to i mean i'm i think it's inevitable that i get on something i'm just waiting and like here's the truth when i lost all the weight and i've obviously got more to go, but when I lost all the pandemic weight and then I was weight training again,

I did feel a lot better, not just with health, but more clarity of thought, that kind of thing. I'm not going to say something, you know, libido, that kind of thing as well. Oh, wow. Because a lot of people thought that you guys came home from that Top Gun Maverick date and, you know, whew. Crushed it. Yeah.

I can neither confirm nor deny that that happened but i will say this dude are you goose or a rooster in that scenario luke all right i'll just say i'm not gonna get into that but i'm just gonna say this dude my daughter has fucked up my sleep so bad she's we put her to bed in her bed at night in her room but i can't just lock the doors at night i don't it just seems unsafe and bad so she wakes up whenever the fuck she wakes up between 12 and 2 every night just turns the knob like the velociraptor in jurassic park and then just waltzes on into our beds every time i wake up fucking 3 a.m she's there kicking me dude every night it's karate combat on my face with my

daughter. I cannot get a good night's sleep ever, ever. She's like, Daddy, it's cold outside. Here's your raincoat. You know, she's always worried about things like that, Luke. But if it's 3 a.m., you're going to be unhappy, Luke, because you're going to be a grouch the next day. But, Luke, I don't know

what substances we will have in our body in Vegas, because, you know, just being in Vegas, you're bound to catch something. So we'll see what happens, Luke, okay? All right. Well, that is it for you and me blabbering at each other and taking the audience questions. Again, we'll do this live Friday at the Beer House. Come check us out if you're going to be in Las Vegas.

But right now, BC, we've got to pitch it over to you. Pitch and catch. It's time for your – it's time for BC's PC. You know what I did this weekend, right? I scoured the globe for the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs and lows, the in-between. In combat sports and beyond, and boy was it a busy combat sports, especially in the more

shitty side realms. We call this, have you seen this shit? Oh god. Oh god, yes. Oh, there it is. Okay. UFC fight night in Vegas, Luke. Don't mind me, I'm just gonna vape. At the A, yes. Oh, there it is. Okay. UFC Fight Night in Vegas, Luke. Don't mind me. I'm just going to vape. At the Apex here.

What flavor is that vape? Do people always want to know what flavor, Luke? This is watermelon ice. But it's tobacco. It's nicotine. It's not tobacco. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Luke, let's enjoy this grapple porn provided by uh matthias gamrot and armand saruki and i believe this was round one luke this was a joy to behold as you mentioned earlier yeah i haven't even gone back and watched the scrambles yet but i it's just dude this was like unfathomable even when you had early stage wrestlers and like early UFC this kind of shit is just it's it's what I mean dude one guy is 31 one guy is 25 the future of MMA is so bright in terms of the quality of action did the exchanges remind you of Rousey Tate one or is that just me a little bit in terms of like you know there were a couple of grand b-roll scenarios and like flip or even Kat Zingano

getting flipped over yeah a little bit. There was some of that too. Yeah. Great stuff. All right, let's keep it going, UFC. Did you see this insane front kick from Umar Nurmagomedov, Luke? The brother, by the way, of Usman of Bellator fame. I mean, this is...

Oh my God, dude. Think about the flexibility you have to have, the balance you have to have, and like the power. Yes, it's his back leg. So in that sense, but about the flexibility you have to have, the balance you have to have, and the power. Yes, it's his back leg, so in that sense, but the accuracy. I mean, everything about that kick, it looks amazing, but then when you think about what you have to have to do, try it at home.

Don't break your drywall, but try it at home. It's hard as shit to do. Dude, and he nearly landed KO versions of this earlier and then finally hit that one. Luke, his win wasn't overly exciting, but, dude, he dominated Maness. Maness or Maness or however you say it. Yeah, I'm mispronouncing an English name too, but, yeah, he kicked his ass. Luke, the MVP of the early prelims, of course, Vanessa Dimopoulos,

after taking home a somewhat disputed split decision over Jin Yu Fry, gave Bisping the treatment, but unlike Joe, he didn't cup the undercarriage, Luke, to make sure she stays up, you know? Well, the problem was she did it on the side where he's got the microphone. What's he supposed to do? Like, come underneath the legs? I mean, that's a little weird, right? He's a married man. Did you think she should have won, Luke? I did

not. I did not. I thought Fry had won it, but judge isn't going to judge. Bueller. Luke, let's go to Bellator 282 from the Mohegan Sun. Mandel Nalo is back. It was rat garbage time. A redemption victory. KO won over

Bryce Logan. I mean, this is what would happen in a street fight. I mean, I'm not saying this guy's not a, you know, he's a professional mixed martial artist and deserves respect accordingly, but like it looked like a faster version of that London bouncer who fought Tysonyson and then the dude rolled up and he just got his he just got julius francis yes look at look at look at nalo he just steps back throws the right times that dude just walks right into it just like that splits his timing

luke you know it was a ball of energy punching power and marketability. It's Sabaho Masi. Check out this KO. Oh, my God. I saw this. I saw this. Mekon Mendonka. Luke, they had fought backstage after the weigh-in, by the way. They had to be separated multiple times. And look at that.

Woo. Oh, and by the way, he had the same corner that I think Eblen had. So it was Tiago Alves, Mike Brown, Dustin Poirier, and King Moe. It's like, could you have? I mean, it's like a Hall of Fame. Not quite Hall of Fame, but fucking legendary corner. That is. We're going to play some sound here.

Here is Rafael Stotz using Danny Sabatello's insults right back at him when they had that face-off with Danny flipping him off. He fucking sucked! That shit was terrible! That shit was terrible! God damn! That shit was terrible. God damn. That shit was fucking terrible. Luke, if he can keep winning, he feels like he's a star.

Like every time he's on the mic, Luke, he's incredible. I got to say, your Stotts impression is pretty good. It's not bad. That's not racist, right, for me to say that? I don't think it's racist, but we are two white guys telling each other we're not racist. So that's usually a call for racism. Alright, we mentioned King Mo was in the corner

of Johnny Eblen and had defeated one Musashi in the past. Here is King Mo hyping up Eblen after the win. I love this. He lost his voice. King Mo. Who, again, we talked about it. He defeated Gengar.

King Mo. Who, again, we talked about it. He defeated Gengar. A couple things here. Yeah, I love King Mo. Damn, I love King Mo. I can count on my hand the number of guys who have sent me footage of their sparring to look at. Not like he was like, oh, give me your opinion because I don't know shit.

But he was like, you know, I'd asked him some questions. And he had said that there was, you know, some scenarios he had had in sparring about it. And he actually sent me footage on WhatsApp to take a look at. Mo did that, and he's an encyclopedia of the fight game. The fans always kind of had a mixed response to him, but how about a guy that staff just really devastated his career? Dude, he has a wealth of information, memories. Like, when he was my podcast co-host on CBS Sports a few years back,

dude, I had a blast. He is so much fun. And to have him as your hype man, that'd be fantastic. By the way, how about the – But because his career didn't quite turn out – I mean, he did become a champion in Strikeforce, so it's not like he was some failure, but I don't think he quite reached the heights he was capable of

and staff that played a huge role in that i think he's channeling that energy into coaching you see it there he's going to be a phenomenal coach what do you make eblin kind of having that and you know admitted look i wasn't i didn't know if i believed in myself coming into this on that level like yeah that's i mean everyone's like oh what does that mean dude it means he's fucking human all these guys like when you think about it dude when you tell yourself something about what you can do sometimes you know if you're not telling yourself the truth like your your internal clock on that and your internal radar i should say is a better way to put it there is something to that but so you have to

constantly reinforce it and constantly reinforce it and sometimes you actually have to do something before you actually believe it but when you say it to yourself even through doubt and then you carry it out that that that moment where things come together that's a beautiful rare moment in life and um i think it's totally human and totally understandable i don't i don't read anything into that i love the humility i absolutely love it i mean we try to think of these guys as superheroes and they they act the part in terms of the danger they take on but they're just like one of us luke a slob like one of us you know i love it um pfl from atlanta luke here was the highlights of the stevie ray upset submission luke i know that there's a rib injury in in play here that affected it but have you ever seen someone tap to this in

an elite fight like this i have not so watch him just bends. At first I thought it was a spine crank and there is a bending of the spine but as someone had pointed out to me, Joe from BJJ Fanatics, it wasn't a twist. But if you notice, the rib injury is on the side of the ribs that Pettis has facing the mat. So what you see

Ray do there is just kind of crank into it, right? watch him grab behind the head and then drive it down like that yeah i mean that's just that's brutal that's super super brutal that's like wrestling shit oh so good so good uh check out this finish by ryoji kudo against alejandro flores some good undercard shit here, Luke. Hold that. Damn. Get in there, ref. Save the power.

Wow. And Luke, Bubba Jenkins, who had a win on this main card. Did you see this running power slam? You look like Davey Boy Smith of the British Bulldogs here, Luke. I don't know what that means. This is like Matt Hughes against Frank. Yeah. Boom.

That's what I'm talking about right there. All right. Luke, we had a Jon Jones sighting out in the wild. The crochet expert himself, Maurice Green, who lost to Denis Boitsov, Luke? Boitsov? Yes. Boitsov. If you just change letters in his name, that's what it would sound like. Here's Jon running the corner between rounds.

You know what the takedown he wants to do. That's got to be the same takedown that he wants. He had a good round on the top. He's probably going to want to try to get another takedown. So when you're in a clinch, you got to know that that's what he wants. Work your jab. Work your jab. And check this out.

Hit him with a sneaky aim. But make it count. Make it count. You're all right. You're doing great. Well, there we go. Luke, I gotta be honest I liked seeing this All we talk about is bad from John

With the bad headlines, when's he gonna fight all this It was good to see him in this spot Helping a teammate out, giving back Maybe he's got a future in coaching after his fight game, Luke I don't care one way or the other Alright Shout out to UFC 214 I didn't forget one way or the other. All right. Shout out to UFC 214. I didn't forget

about the call that got released at his time in Vegas. Maybe other people have. I didn't forget about it. That's fair, Luke. I'll tell you who didn't forget about it, Luke. Boo Boo Wild Thing. All right, Luke. Check out the intensity of this

stare down. Canelo and triple g will meet in september for a third time at t-mobile they had the first bc let me ask you a question we're gonna watch this i'm sorry to cut you off but let me just ask you you know more about this than i do i've watched their first two fights um i gotta tell you canelo looks decidedly more pissed off this time true or false true he's coming to fuck triple g shit up luke like he's done subsequent interviews after this in the last 48 hours dude he's in full english now by the way in the interviews and he's just like fuck that guy he's washed he's old he's wants one more payday i'll give it to him him. I'm going to avenge the loss to B-Vol. I'm going to get back on track. So, Luke, this is either two scenarios here,

maybe both in the end. One, it could be bad news for Triple G, although let's not forget, Triple G has a legendary chin, and I showed you the highlights I texted you of from the first two fights of Canelo just turning that shit, by the way, and Triple G kept coming. Or two, it could lead this

to be the most brutal of the three fights for as long as it lasts, because what else does Triple G do? He comes walking you down throwing power shots. This could be interesting, but the reason why, if anyone's wondering, why does Canelo hate this guy so much? Let's not forget Canelo popped for the tainted beef, clumb butyrol

to delay their second fight. And dude, Triple G went on a public tour saying, not only is this guy dirty, he's always been dirty. I saw the track marks on his chest during our fight, or his ribs, or whatever, where he injected himself. And Triple G kept making, like, hey, the commission, they need to take notice. I saw the track marks.

For whatever reason, Canelo took that shit as, like, I will never forgive you, and I effing hate you. And I think that was the biggest reason Why this fight, third fight hasn't happened yet Remember DAZN basically built their model You know Along the idea of these two fighting on DAZN You know what I mean and not on regular pay-per-view

Although this will be on DAZN pay-per-view now Yeah on DAZN pay-per-view So you know look Is there a reason to believe a younger Pound for pound king canelo could stop this guy could do damage yes but luke dude we all saw pacquiao morales or pacquiao marquez four this could also be a tremendous explosive slugfest i i'm i'm not gonna lie to you luke i didn't want this third fight for so long i don't know if it was the b-ball loss that opened

the door for me wanting it again, but seeing them hate each other this much, seeing these intense stare-downs, dude, this third fight could be something. It could be something, Luke. It really could. I'm in the exact same boat as you. I was like, eh, I don't really care about this. And dude, Canelo, like, people are like, oh, he's just trying to promote the fight. Dude, Canelo

always promotes the fight. He always does the interviews. He does the media tours. He does all that stuff. And yeah, he says I'm going to look for the knockout. But dude, if you have it all, and we've been following Canelo pretty closely because I remember he fought on Showtime against Caleb Plant. So we were there. We covered it. You have talked to him. I've talked to him.

I have not seen this particular kind of energy in a long time, if ever, from him. It's quite clear he's more than annoyed by the guy. He really can't stand him. And let's not forget, those first two fights, among the best classic title fights,

not full-on brawls, but action title fights between two pound-for-pound Hall of Fame greats. Those were some amazing fights. Let's see what the third one offers. Uh, Luke, what kind of sauce is 48 year old Bob Sapp on these days? And where do we get some? Damn.

And he's like, really? Damn. He's like 300 at his peak in prime. I want to say he was like three 75 and had abs. Um, just give me all the horse steroids I just don't even care at this point

I hope he's not still fighting in some form is he Luke? I think he did that whole long tour where he used the last of his name to go and then just tap immediately after one punch and then he had that interview with Ariel that was a disaster I haven't seen him since

I hope he doesn't have cte or anything luke he's been through a lot of wars but you know let's let's be fair about one thing whether you loved him or hate him he made fun fights dude those early k1 fights like dude do you remember the promised fight with tyson yeah yeah never happened yeah yeah but if you've never seen for the audience who might be new to bobsap if you've never seen it and he loses in this fight, go watch Bob Sapp versus Noguera from Pride. That is one of the most brutal fights. If you want to see a comeback that is just fucking epic,

go watch Noguera fight this guy. Insane. Damn right. BKFC from Hollywood, Florida, Luke. I think Danny Segura, our buddy, was on the scene. Luis Palomino becoming a two division bkfc champion at age 41 luke your thoughts i'm so happy for palomino a lot of mma opportunities were denied him by virtue of some legal circumstances that are now resolved i think

uh and he's always been i mean again you go back and watch the Palomino-Justin Gaethje war. He's such a fun fighter. He's such a great talent. And, you know, I would have preferred to see him do things in the UFC, but I guess he's getting banked and now he's a champ champ in BKFC. Good for Luis Palomino. Very, very good fighter who never got his due. I like seeing Hector Lombard there too.

He kind of fits that mold pretty well as well, Luke, you know? Whatever. All right. Hey, mold pretty well as well, Luke, you know? Whatever. All right, despite a severe height disadvantage, Luke, Jimmy Rivera came out on the winning end of his BKFC debut. Any thoughts on this, Luke? I thought he lost. Did he? I thought he won a decision.

No? Did I screw that up? You might have. Or maybe he did. Hold on. Who's he fighting? Shaquille O'Neal here? What kind of weight division we got going on here?

Oh, sorry. Majority draw, according to Mikey Mormont. See, I couldn't. It was really hard to find footage of this shit, Luke. So, sorry. Okay, majority draw. You didn't pay for that. Dude, I'll tell you this.

BKFC, it's. All these MMA. I'm not saying Rivera took them lightly. But, like, I do think that in MMA, there is a little overestimation of how valuable MMA striking is for BKFC. It's a different animal, bro. It's a different animal. It really is. Luke, in the featured fight for me at least, Britton Beltran rematched

Beck Rawlings, and this time, Luke, it wasn't a war. Britton Beltran relied on footwork, circling away, darting in and out to win a decision in which Beck was just pissed off that Britt wouldn't fight her, but this was the aftermath of it, Luke. But, you know, hey, survive in advance for the Beltrans. So, wait, what happened the first time?

First time, Britt lost a split decision over five rounds, and it was a war like most of Britt and Beltrans' fights are. This time, she really worked on pure boxing and movement and footwork and kind of outclassed Beck,lings Rodriguez here in the rematch. There you go. No more elder abuse today, Luke. I'm trying to give the old people a break, but it's time for some children to take some L's. Check out this

open field tackle of the week. Uh-oh. Or not. Bonus! But to zone boxing, Luke, here's my bad on this. Raymond Ford doing the. He's doing imaginary basketball. Yeah.

What was that movie? The Air Up There. Kevin Bacon played that guy, Jimmy, who had that triple crossover move. You know what I'm talking about? You ever see that movie, Luke? Yes. All right. This is Raymond Ford doing his own Jimmy two-step. There you go.

Okay. I screwed that up, Luke. Back to children abuse. Let's go over to your open field tackle of the week. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Big mama's running. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, Lord. Okay. I don't know if we could show that, Luke, but we do have some more children taking Ls. Let's go over to the other. Keep buying dogs the size of horses, please.'s what happened let's go over the basketball court

luke you know you can try these dude perfect uh skits all you want just make sure you know where your kids are at it's 10 p.m sir do you know where your kids are uh you just are you're so mean i always imagine this is my kid and i'll just be heartbroken. Yeah, I mean, I clearly didn't do that. That was his kid that did that, Luke. I got one more for you. You're going to sled down a snowy hill, Luke. You got to know the parameters here. Let's check out the ending on this.

Bro, how many times have you had sledding accidents? I had a few one time. Oh, God. Not this bad, though, Luke. Sorry, son. You'll never be a father now. Let's call Maury. Yes.

Oh, wow. God, yeah. All right, biggest L's of the week, Luke. These are all brought to you by white people from middle America. Here we go. Best KO of the week goes down to this guy for this picnic table. Are we sure this is not Bill's Mafia doing dumb shit? Oh, my God.

Yo, I need some dental work. I got a great idea. Damn near scorpion, Luke. Yikes. Wow. Speaking of scorpions, you got to be careful on the parkour course, Luke. Oh, is this some other idiot just losing teeth? Yep.

How's that spine? Is this the submission that Stevie Ray did on? Did he walk away from this? Can we show this, Luke? Wow. All right. Let's go on to the next white person. Bop.

Oh! The handle of the sand kettlebell took her down. That's hilarious. Poor strong woman, Luke. She got handled. And on to the subway, Luke. You got to check yourself in the mirror before you do any kind of... Is this the New York City subway?

That disgusting place fecund with disease? It doesn't look New York City-like. It could be D.C. for all I know. No, this is like the tube. This is the tube. This is in London. Oh, he's going to do a backflip? You fucking moron.

Oh, boy, yeah. Get fucked, loser. All right. Luke, let's play my favorite game on have you seen the shit it's called mind the gap asshole it's called would you eat luke all i need is a yes or no number one on would you eat i think they call these sushi dogs oh that's just perfectly disgusting and the answer is yes i would eat it okay okay one for one ding ding ding number two luke i think they call this a uh a chocolate baked bean popsicle dude this is i mean i'll eat land jaeger from some dude's bag but i ain't eating this look i would eat the shit out of this so fucking gross dude i ate chocolate covered beef jerky at the uh at the big e in massachusetts at the fair look it Massachusetts at the Fair, Luke.

It was fantastic. All right, number three. Dude, chocolate-covered beef jerky, I'd eat that. But this is up there with chocolate-covered grasshoppers and shit. No, it's not. Dude, it's baked beans. It's an American tradition, Luke, right? Not with fucking chocolate.

Okay. Sorry, dude. Sorry. Here's the thing. I have invented things that work. The peanut butter and cheese sandwich is a killer, Luke. And everybody's like, oh, this is so gross. And then they try it.

They're like, there's something here, BC. Dude, that's what you eat. Like, that's literally like I've got enough for top. That's like top ramen trading in prison. Like, I got a peanut butter and cheese sandwich for you. Dude, it works, and it's great. You wouldn't think. All right, let's go over to the next one, Luke.

You're right, I wouldn't. Vending machine chili dogs. Now, Luke, they had a vending machine at a newspaper I worked at, the Waterbury Republican American, and I ate meals out of there during my three years twice a day. Luke, would you try these? Okay, so SiriusXM also had a vending machine like this where they had these packaged foods with enough preservatives

to totally liquefy your organs. Yeah, and give you a black liver. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, okay, but even under those conditions i wouldn't eat that that is okay i'd eat this if i was literally starving that's that's the only condition under which i would eat it i never had the the chili version but at the waterbury republican american great newspaper by the way um i ate double hot dog yes meatball grind i ate everything they had in there luke i, that explains a lot, unfortunately, but I've been there. Finally, or no, not finally, Luke, what do you think about this birthday cake?

Staying on theme here. Would you try this, Luke? This is actually the Land Yeager the guy dropped off. It looks just like this. Aaron, is that you? And finally, Luke, if you don't like this cake, you might want to try this one. Happy 10th birthday to this young lad. We could only be so lucky to get a cake like this.

Are those his titties or some other girl's? Oh, stop that. Stop that. Luke, let's go over to regional MMA. You know anything can happen. Shout out to Grabaka Hitman for always filling the universe with stuff like this. Luke, someone is still giving 42-year bigfoot silva a fighting license is not even funny anymore man he lost his ninth straight combat sports fight against oleg popov in russia luke it's unethical like i'm not even trying to like again i don't say these things to like yo

get that fighter that's not what i'm doing but it's just unethical to book him in fights. And I understand he's got his own choice. If that doesn't make you uncomfortable, nothing does. Eight of those nine losses across multiple combat disciplines have been by knockout. But Luke, someone's also giving 44-year-old Zulozinho a fighting license, the Brazilian legend, Luke. Here he loses a unanimous decision to Vasily Komatsky.

You into this? I am not into this. Yeah. I mean, did that guy set up the cage and then drive the Uber home, Luke? What are we doing here? Look at the guy he's fighting. Yeah, this is, what's the word i'm looking for terrible yeah okay all right uh looks like abdullah the butcher there in the middle oh let's go over to jck mma here's airdake

ap air with a perfect uh some some spinny shit luke look at that that's amazing perfection right to the bop to the jaw hit Hit him with the bop gun. Damn, that's perfect. You don't see that at Elite MMA that often. Matrix Fight Night 9. Jojo Rakamuri with a brutal left-hand finish. Great name, by the way. Oh, damn.

There's a testify going on there, Luke. Yeah, she did the old testifying in church bit uh and this one is uh jesus that was i didn't see that coming nope i mean it was just right outside your door luke now testify battle of los angeles great album no one ever talks about it luke uh here's a replay of it damn yeah she faked the takedown and came over with the overhand. That's classic MMA. That's great. That's nice. Real recognizing real this week as new Hall of Famer Andre Ward doing a little impromptu shadow box with rising star Devin the Dream Haney.

Did this give you any feels, Luke? I saw this, too. Andre looked a little rusty. Yeah, I love that man, though. Big Andre Ward fan. Showtime documentary coming out next year. Should be good. Should be good.

That's right. That's right. That's right. All right, last week, Luke, I got criticized for showing people falling through the floor a lot. Apparently, that woman in the bar that fell through the floor was severely injured, so I apologize. It may have happened to this guy, too, but you know the old saying, Luke. Yeah, sounds like you've learned your lesson. Man hole, man down, Luke.

Oh. Oh, boy. That's just good lesson. Man hole, man down, Luke. Oh. Oh boy. That's just good. That's just good municipal governance right there. Yep. Sir, your Uber is here, but the devil is driving. You're done. Okay, there you go. Luke, you love doing this. At least you can hang out with the Ninja Turtles. Yeah, indeed. What's the guy's, what's the bad guy's name? Sphincter?

Yes, yes, yes, BC. It's Sphincter. Yes. There you go. That is what he's called. Luke, not everyone knows that you do this show from a weird gaming chair that a 15-year-old high on energy drink should be drinking, but I found you an upgrade to your gaming chair, Luke. You act like this is a joke. Wow, Luke. Look at that. Look that little hand a little how's your father while you're sitting down luke you you act like i wouldn't by the way this chair is the most

comfortable chair in the world and once you sit in it you will retract all of your blaspheming about it but more to the point you act like i wouldn't accept this i would accept this all right let me know how your league of legends tournaments go after this show world of warcraft fuck face get it right. Here's how to not... By the way, I should talk. I'm addicted to Fortnite. I play more than my kids.

Look, I'm sorry. I've literally never played Fortnite. Not one time. Now that they have a no-build option, so I don't have to deal with all those punk kids putting me in a wooden box and killing me. It's fantastic right now, Luke. I'm so in. I'm so in.

All right. Here's how to not take an L. How to not take an L. Okay. Luke, we always show fails. How about some wins? Look at this parkour magic. Damn! I kind of wish he had fallen through. Dana White decided against this, Luke, unfortunately.

Let's go to Skateboard and check out this guy. This guy should be on the X Games. Well, holy shit. All the air, Luke. You know, that's the magic of skateboarding. It's like you have to do the most like the margin of error is so slim. But if you do it, man, it is fucking epic.

Look, I'm awful on roller skates. No surprise. I have no coordination on things like that, but check out this, man. This is some sick shit. If we can advance the slide. Thank you, Long Island Luke, please. There it is.

Dude, what the fuck? Look at that magician. That's crazy. I can't even do that in the pool. Luke, shout out to Roller Magic in Waterbury, Connecticut. Dude, I've had so many birthday parties there. I held the girl's hand for the first time, watched kids smoke cigarettes in the bathroom. It was great. Great times.

This is going to be you after our show on Friday at Beer House. I hope so. I hope so. Luke, is this man a hero or a weirdo? Your thoughts. Apparently he buried liquor in the grass a month before of the concert venue and then dug it up like the hero he is. I hope you think this guy's a hero, Luke. Okay.

He is definitely a weirdo because that's a lot of commitment to a brain toxin. On the other hand, he is also a hero because, buddy, the party just arrived. Yeah, the party's where you're at, Red Pants. There you go. All right. A couple more here, Luke. Finally, footage of Joan of Arc's wedding has surfaced, Luke, before her death. She's a French hero, Luke.

What the fuck? They're going to... What the fuck? Dude, that wedding's fire. Oh, will you please quit this job i mean you know the statue of limitations i don't have art jokes have have passed luke it's okay all right it's like 1400 okay look please honestly honestly just just i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna use the line from saving private ryan b BC. Don't shoot. Let him burn.

Yeah. Luke, I don't know if you know that heavyweights Derek Chisora and Kubra Pulev are headed toward a July 9th rematch, but we already have the sound bite of the year. Here we go. Basically, it's like this. You got Miss Universe there. Yeah.

And you got some Timbuktu chick somewhere. Fat, smelly pussy. Which one would you go for? Which one would I wake up for and get a hard-on for? I'm getting my hard-on for you. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. So you have to understand.

Now I am going to come vicious, man. Luke, he's going to come viciously on July 9th there's a lot to unpack there old Del Boy just put it right on the table Luke right

just yeah there it is dude they get to a point where they get so horny it just turns into like a self orgy I don't even know how to describe it exactly fucking fighting it's all the same luke right louie dog yep okay uh luke that was supposed to be at the end of it but there was a clip that was sent to me i don't know 78 times from our fans and one gaffney pierre the fine producer who assembles this shit each week

said bc i gotta add it to the show so here we go luke i did see this because some people tagged me as well um i don't like this at all luke but you know we are here to rate that tat so what do you think luke do you imagine the uh the tattoo artist he's like yeah we're not done with the tattoo. We have to finish the ball hair. We have to wrap the shafts around each other, Luke. Okay. I didn't finish shading on the grundle. Let me get to that. This is, I mean, two people who definitely don't want to have gainful employment ever in their lives.

So nice work. Yeah. Shout out to Mr. He boss, Luke, a lot of love for his daughter, but with that tat, right.

I wish you would have recognized that. Yeah. Come here. Spitfire. You old horny bastard. You're just the worst. Oh, Luke,

we don't, what was that segment we used to do to close every Monday? Odds and ends. Odds and ends. Odds and ends. I got one this week, Luke. I didn't want to let the sun go down on me. No one goes down on me, Luke. Bam Rodriguez.

Jesse Bam Rodriguez in the DAZN Boxing Main Event on Saturday from San Antonio. Luke, here's the deal if you don't know him. 22 years old, southpaw, the brother of Bantamweightoshua franco but luke he was a champion at what 108 was offered his last fight on six days notice to move up to 115 two divisions and fight carlos quadras and he beat him by upset now he went on to fight the guy who was supposed to fight quadras that night, the killer of the division at Superfly, Srisaket Sorungvisai, the guy, Luke, who for a short season looked like he sent Chocolatito into retirement

with that vicious KO in split fights with pound-for-pound ranked Juan Francisco Estrada. I don't know if you saw this fight on Saturday, Luke. Sorungvisai at 35 poured out the jug the first couple rounds, but Bam Rodriguez started putting him on him, and he stopped him, Luke. Sorongvisai at 35 poured out the jug the first couple rounds, but Bam Rodriguez started putting him on him, and he stopped him, Luke. Sorongvisai had only been stopped on cuts

previously in his career. Dude, this is a major breakthrough performance for the guy who's trained by Robert Garcia, again, just 22 years old, an American success story, Luke, and right now he's saying he will fight anybody at 108, 112,

or 115. He is coming the hell on. Watch out for Bam Rodriguez. Mexican-American can fight his balls off. To go in there against the Rat King, Serisa Ketsura, Wong Visai, and brutally beat him

down and stop him, dude. That's a breakthrough performance. Give me Chocolatito. Give me Inouye. Give me Estrada. Give me anybody who wants this smoke. And by the way, like I said, he can also go back down to 108

and fight some of the global threats at that division, too. You got to start watching this guy. You got to start taking notice. He's coming. Bam Rodriguez. I didn't watch the entirety of it, but I watched a few rounds, and I was watching live when he sat him down the first time.

Dude, it wasn't close. It wasn't close. He beat his ass from beginning to end. That dude is incredible. Super incredible. And Eddie Hearn afterwards, speaking to Chris Mannix, in the ring of the crowd in San Antonio was hyping him up big time, and the crowd was just fucking eating it.

So it was a great, great breakout moment for him. the ring and the crowd in San Antonio was hyping him up big time and the crowd was just fucking eating it. It was a great, great breakout moment for him. Final boxing nugget, Luke, in that co-main event, Muradjan Akhmadaliev stopped Ronnie Rios in round 12. He has two titles at 122. Stephen Fulton Jr. has the other two. According to Eddie Hearn, because Stephen Fulton tweeted out, like, hey, let's

do it. Let's make this fight. Eddie Hearn was like, we have no problems. Let's make it. Luke, I hope everybody is being sincere. I don't know. Does it happen on Showtime? I would think. But Eddie Hearn has the contract with The Zone. If they can make this fight happen for all four belts at 122, Luke,

this is a hell, hell of a fight to close the year. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so as well. That would be, that's the dream fight for that weight class. That really is. Akma Dali and Fulton. And that's the problem fight for that weight class that really is, Akmedali and Fulton and that's the problem in boxing because promoters are so tied to networks that when a promoter is like, no I have no problem making that fight, let's do it

when it's Oscar De La Hoya saying that he really means, yeah come to my network and we'll fight under my terms, I don't know how they make this happen Luke, but it would be great for the sport if they did and everybody's saying let's make it happen, so hey Luke Thomas let's make it happen, alright? BC we Luke Thomas, let's make it happen. All right? All right.

BC, we've got to get moving here. So let's remind everyone we're going to do it all weekend long. All week long, I should say. Beerhouse. Beerhouse. Beerhouse. Beerhouse. Beerhouse.

Friday, live, 5 p.m. start time, local time. Of course, if you want to watch, that would be 8 p.m. in the east. But 5 p.m. local time, right after the ceremonial weigh-ins for UFC 276. Come hang out with me and BC. It's free to get in.'re going to do dms from donks we're going to do the wheel we're going to have a good time it's going to be fun sugar rashad evans is going to be there maybe some other folks as well so come hang out with us at beer house right outside the t-mobile arena on friday as a reminder morning combat at gmail.com is the place to reach the show for any kind of dead wrongs or any kind of fan subs.

Showtime.com is the label that pays. You get a 30-day free trial at showtime.com. The guy's here to look at my furnace. Luke, I don't have hot water in the upstairs bathroom. I got to run. I'm sorry. All right, do your thing. I'll take us out of here. And yeah.

Oh, don't forget. Jared Cannoneer interview with BC will be on the site, youtube.com slash morningcombat at 2.30. My Adrian Yanez interview, because that's apparently how you pronounce his name now, he told me, is on the site as well,

plus the pregame preview with Chuck Mendenhall, plus the Max Holloway resume review, plus the Max Holloway Volkanovsky rewatch as well. All of that is there available for your viewing pleasure. That's it for us today. We thank you so much for watching. We'll be back on Wednesday. We'll have content. I'm flying out tomorrow

so is BC, but we'll have some stuff for you live on Tuesday. It'll be on the site Tuesday as well. Until then, for CBS Sports, for Showtime, for Malka, that's Brian Campbell. I'm Luke Thomas. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.