MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Ryan Bader vs. Fedor 2 Results | Bellator 290 Reaction and Results

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

At Bellator 290, Ryan Bader and Fedor Emelianenko meet again to battle for the heavyweight title in the main event on Bellator's debut on CBS. This is also the retirement fight for Fedor. In the co-main event, Anatoly Tokov fights Johnny Eblen for the Bellator middleweight title. Opening the main card is a welterweight clash between Brennan Ward and Sabah Homasi. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMimo eclipse rise visa card paying your bills could sound like this earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month rise to rewards with the bimo eclipse rise visa card terms and conditions apply hey everybody it is uh we're live Let me turn this off so I don't mess this up. There we go. Hi, we're live, everyone. It is, let's see, the 4th. It is still the 4th.

Usually we do this the day after because the fights have ended late into the night. Today, that is not the occasion. Welcome. This is the Bellator 290 Morning Combat Post-Fight Show Instant Reaction, you name it. My name is Luke Thomas, of course. I'm one half of the hosting duo 290 Morning Combat post-fight show, instant reaction, you name it. My name is Luke Thomas, of course. I'm one half of the hosting duo from regular Morning Combat. Brian Campbell is off doing CBS Sports HQ stuff. You can go see his analysis if you like, but if you stick around here, I'll host this program here tonight. We'll go through the results from the main card for Bellator 290, which just finished on CBS. This was Bellator's debut on CBS. We'll talk some about

that. And of course, it was Fedor Emelianenko's last fight. He retired in the cage. It was a depressing affair. All right. So, excuse me, if you don't want spoilers, I mean, who cares anymore? Who cares? Who cares about any of that stuff, right? Let's just get this party started, shall we? Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. You know all the good stuff that makes everything here better. All right, let's do this, please. And we're back. All right.

All right, all right. And as a reminder, yo, hit that subscription button. Do us a solid. All right. Let's get to these results so this took place i didn't realize they had renamed the forum so it's now called the kia forum or just kia forum anyway in englewood california this is just outside los angeles basically it's a suburb of some kind of a way of looking at it all All right, neither here nor there. Bellator 290 headline. Ryan Bader defeats Fedor Emelianenko via TKO at 230 of round one. I mean, you know, we knew it was not going to go any other way.

Even on Friday's MK when we were breaking it down, I wanted to sort of give life to the idea about what a Fedor pick might look like if you could make one, and I hitched my wagon to it. But I even openly said that BC's pick and the pick for Bader was the correct one, and it was. I mean, there was, listen, we, you know, I mean, I could go down the list. This is hardly exhaustive, but even just recently, Frankie Edgar, I'm not putting Frankie as necessarily on par with Fedor's achievements, but I think a beloved figure of the game who was highly accomplished trying to get a retirement fight in Madison Square Garden. And that was a little bit different.

You know, they kind of booked him, Chris Gutierrez, which was a very difficult fight for him to win at that juncture. But, of course, he gets iced. Terrible. And then we had Shogun recently at UFC 283 against Ihor Potieria. And same thing. We were all like, all alright, maybe there's just a little bit of that Shogun magic left

and of course he gets iced. And then you thought maybe, maybe, maybe, like you knew Bader was going to win. But you thought maybe a guy like Fedor could pull out something spectacular and wow us one last time and it just wasn't to be, of course. He didn't. He got

iced. What happened? He gets hit with a punch, basically kind of like on the back of the head he falls Ryan Bader gets on top tries to finish him from full guard moves to half Fedor tries to turn over Bader goes behind the back and then captures his wrist Pulls it about from under him that does two things one it sucks the near side shoulder into the mat that's the first thing that it does when you pull it i mean just think about it this is the end of the lever right so if you pull it enough what happens to the shoulder it turns so that partly it drives them back into the mat it also if you watched one of my mackenzie dern breakdowns one of the things i talked about was getting a stable position from which to ground and pound and one of the ways you can do that, of course, is from the back when you

have wrist control. And of course, she finds the back very often. Bader didn't have the back, but that behind the back control effectively has a very similar kind of property where you can also balance yourself to fire down shots. And they only have one hand to protect themselves, which is insufficient to do the job effectively. And referee herb dean intervenes and then that's that uh ryan bader wins he retains his bellator heavyweight title and that's that ryan bader becomes the second excuse me the first person to ever defeat fedor twice although at this point um certainly i don't want to take anything away from ryan bader He even said when this fight was offered to him, he wasn't necessarily all that interested in it.

And Fedor is 46. He'll be 47 in September. You know, I think he had some other designs. But perhaps because the promotion wanted it, perhaps it was something that they were trying to make big enough for CBS that they booked the fight. But, you know, I think, let this be a reminder to everyone that the last, okay, how about this? It almost doesn't even matter how good they were, how much money they made, or how otherwise they were adored by the fan base. It turns out that effectively sticking the landing

of the last part of your career as a prizefighter, it trips a lot of them up. Even the very best ones can't get it right. And that tells you how hard it must be for all the myriad reasons. Sometimes they are broke. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they don't know when to quit. Sometimes they, I mean, who knows?

It's a myriad reasons why they want to prove to themselves something or whatever. Fedor seemed to be ready to be done with it. So I don't think he had anything to prove left to himself. He had nothing left to prove tonight. Would have been great if he had won in terms of all the feels, but he didn't have anything to prove. But anyway, it's just, you know, it's depressing. But anyway, Bader didn't really want to take the fight, and he did anyway. And it's a good win in the sense that he stays relevant. It was on CBS,

but you know, it's significant value I I don't really know anymore, but getting back to the point about sticking the landing, like Habib stuck the landing, right? And you could say, well, he got out early. Is that really sticking the landing? What I mean is you're just not crawling out in a diminished state relative to what you were, right? That's what I mean. Like you could end on a loss and it wouldn't necessarily be some kind of tragic thing. And this isn't tragic necessarily either. It wasn't some like prolonged beating or something like that. It wasn't that.

But the point being is Fedor went out in this kind of a state which was not terrible. And by the way, like Scott Coker doing that thing where there's Josh Barnett and Couture and Frank Shamrock and Henzo and like all these like Mark Coleman's and all these other guys up there. That was a cool scene for him to retire like that. But to point out, in terms of how the fight went, it didn't go great for Fedor. In terms of how the fight went, for Silva in MMA, it didn't really go the way he wanted to. It wasn't some kind of beating, but it was just, you know,

it felt so unnecessary after the fact. Like, why did we have to go through that? That seemed pointless to a degree. And then, of course, the other ones I've already mentioned. Like, it's very, very difficult to stick the landing. The very, very best prize fighters don't get it right. Habib got it right, and GSP got it right. And GSP almost got it wrong.

I mean, he got it right in the sense that he walked away after the Hendricks fight, which I thought he lost that fight. But either way, he wins it and then gives the title back. That was pretty good. Coming back and then winning the title against Bisping, that's crazy next level amazing. But what did he also do? He got right back the fuck out. He got right out again. He didn't waste any time. You can't beat the clock in this game. You just can't. You have to get out early. Some version of early, some version of, you know, GSP did the thief in the night bit, but in general you have to get out early and he didn't. And, uh, tonight Fedor didn't. And he, and you know, this is the, this is what you're going to get.

I mean, there's a few thoughts I had about the whole thing. Uh, there's not really a big fight to break down in this case, but it's more about the career of Fedor. Is he the best heavyweight of all time? I think that he is, at least at a bare minimum, I think he's got the most distinguished record. Let me just say a couple things about Fedor beyond just the fact of either he is the best heavyweight of all time, or he's certainly at worst number two. He used to be in much more of a contention for best fighter of all time. I think that has slipped through his grasp a little bit,

but at the heavyweight division, I think it stays. But there's something else that really occurs to me beyond just how difficult it is to stick the landing and Fedor's status, which is that tonight felt, for me, as someone who's been watching MMA quite a while at this point, and then covering it professionally for also a pretty long time,

tonight to me felt more like the end of Pride than I'd felt in a long time. Mike Bond had a tweet recently where, with the retirement of Shogun, he was the last guy on the existing UFC roster to fight in Pride in Japan. You have Nick Diaz and Robbie Lawler, who by the way are not going to be in the promotion much longer. They did fight in Pride, but never in Japan. They fought in the Las Vegas show. And so that doesn't really, I mean, it's not that it doesn't count. That was real Pride, but it wasn't real Pride in Japan. Shog, excuse me, Shogun was the last, so that means that there's no one on the UFC roster who's done that. I don't think there's anyone on the Bellator roster who did that either.

Fedor, like, he was the guy at pride. He was the most important guy there. I mean, from the Japanese perspective, maybe it's Sakuraba. I'm not sure. I don't know how historically they view that. Certainly he was a massive figure. For folks who may not know, Sakuraba, Kazushi Sakuraba was, like the best way to explain Kazushi Sakuraba is what someone once told me was,

imagine if Hulk Hogan in his prime could fight like actually really well in MMA and did both. You'd be like, you know, like what? Like it's hard to even fathom what that would mean. Like that's what he was. So maybe to the Japanese that's different, but at least I think to fans like me at the time. In North America, he's the most important figure out of that organization. Again, a guy who had a claim to be the best ever at a certain point,

certainly the best heavyweight out of that crop, no doubt about it. And again, arguably in the overall scope of MMA history. Man, if you have, we did it for resume review and honestly, I took my breath away when I did it. If you have a Fight Pass subscription, someone once asked me who it was. I forget who it was. What's the value of a Fight Pass subscription?

I don't watch anything live on Fight Pass. I pay just for the library. I forget who it was. What's the value of a Fight Pass subscription? I don't watch anything live on Fight Pass. I pay just for the library. And to me, it's worth every penny. It's so valuable to have a resource like that to be able to go and look stuff up. If you've never seen the 03, 04, 05 version of Fedor, and really closer to 03, 04, if you've never seen that, dude, you've just never seen Fedor, and really kind of closer to 03, 04, if you've never seen that, dude, you've just never seen Fedor.

Like, what you saw tonight, I mean, this is the, you know, I don't want to diminish the man. He is obviously a figure of adoration, and we revere him all, but the version that was there tonight, that's not even a pimple on the ass of the guy who fought in Pride. They're not, they barely, it's barely the same guy at all if you go back and watch like the fights against Schilt Herring the first Noguera fight obviously the Krokop fight is a fucking technical masterpiece um you know the Mark Hunt fight and I could go on and on and on through even even like when shitty Noya Ogawa refused to shake his hands and he went in there and just fucking drop bombs on him the fujita fight where he got hurt dude you you have to go see what a prime fedor emilienenko looked like i did a totally unscientific but kind of fun little thread

on twitter today i asked what was the first time you ever saw fedor compete live right not like i caught a dvd I caught a clip, like sat down and watched a live Fedor fight. What was the first one? And the vast majority of them, quite understandably, given who I was polling, were basically giving answers like strike force or affliction or, you know, whenever MMA had made its way to US airwaves, basically, which tells you that the vast majority, majority yes you could have gotten pride but most of them were like post pride bodog and after that like it's kind of crazy that pride and all its illustrious splendor never got noticed and bodog did but um and what that tells me is that

the vast majority of people who watch failure today barely understand who he actually was even by the time he got to strike force he was a diminished version of himself a little bit. Still very good, but not the guy that he once was. And so this is, like, he should have retired, in my judgment, quite a long while ago. Just to, you know. Well, you know what? He got the Timothy Johnson. The Timothy Johnson win should have been probably the end, right?

Because that was in Russia. He gets this incredible win over a ranked top guy in this organization. He puts his lights out. Like, that was tremendous. And to do that at, you know, 45 or whatever he was, 46 potentially even, it's just, it's insane. It's insane that he was able to do that. So that's great.

That probably should have been the end. But, you know, he retired several times before this, and then he had the terrible Fabio Maldonado fight, which was a disaster for him. He's had a series of these where he kind of thought he could have hung it up a little bit earlier. But either way, man, if you've never taken the time to do it, you're only hurting yourself.

If you've never taken the time to go through Fight Pass and actually sit down and watch that run, that run he was on when he was like the top guy in his 20s as the Pride Heavyweight Champion. You've just never, you've never seen Fedor and you've never seen another fighter quite like that. Cain Velasquez was an overwhelming force of nature, but in a very different way. Brock Lesnar was an overwhelming force of nature, but in a very different kind of way.

This was a middleweight who was up there competing with heavyweights basically. And he was throwing them around and he was catching with punches from angles and with timing that they never saw and blending the game and putting a blueprint to ground. Dude, he wrote the fucking blueprint on, you know, how to beat Noguera basically. At the time that was, you know, how to beat Noguera, basically. At the time, that was, you know, considered impossibly difficult. He did it like it was nothing. So, you know, I don't know how much these entreaties ever actually work and get people to go do it, but let me just say, like, if you do it, if you actually sit down and really go and watch,

you will be so rewarded with an additional perspective on what greatness looks like and how early he was achieving it and in what ways he was so vastly ahead of the game. This was the other part too. I remember when I was doing research for the resume review that we did for Morning Combat, I remember that I was watching him. For example, tonight he gets underneath Bader.

Bader goes behind the back and again gets that wrist control and then sucks that wrist out. You know, guys just weren't doing that in the era in which he was great. Like, there's parts of the game that have just technically evolved past what he really knows how to do. And that's sports, right? Like, the game is just different as it moves on. But the other part about the reality of him is that like he never spent a lot of time underneath like guys would take him down and they either get armbarred like mark coleman got armbarred for example in a very similar kind of

way you know even hong man choy was a similar kind of situation but like you know that would happen fairly regularly uh or like you know he would at least threaten from underneath or he would get reversals he would end up back on top. And with the modern wrestler, he would kind of get trapped. But the other part is... When you just look at how athletic he was in his prime, you can tell that it's not like he didn't have things that made him technically advanced. He was. He was.

But there was also a reality that his game was very much lifted and affected. The style that he brought by, at the time, he was really benefited by extraordinary athleticism and explosive athletic ability. Like, he really had it in spades during his late 20s. But as that faded, so too did his game. And again, he was so great that he was able to make it work in other ways for long periods of time. But, you know, that was always going to be a thing. I heard him at 46. That was just, you know, I mean, that's the fight game.

Like, you can't fight at these ages and beat guys. Bader's not young, but he's still in his 30s, you know, 39, barely. So he's still barely there. But, you know, he's still, I mean, imagine Fedor seven years ago right that's that's what we're talking about here so um kind of a kind of a real bookend moment for Pride FC tonight kind of a real bookend moment um it's a new sport it's a new era it's's a new day. And that's the way that it goes. Kind of sad that there's a lot of people who never saw Fade or there are familiar with Pride and got to enjoy it while it was around. It was, when I tell you that there's been absolutely not a single thing

like it since, I'm not exaggerating it. It really is. And I know people hate to hear this sometimes. It's like, ah, you know, why are you telling us about things we can't enjoy? I don't know. It's still a living part of our experiences in a way, right? Like, I can go back and watch them. I remember where I was when I watched some of these in real time and how I felt and who I was with. And anyway, you know, it's kind of old man reminiscing, but that's what you got tonight. Before we move on to the co-main, I do want to talk about the broader, like the overall broadcast and then the, like how this event went. Obviously, I have no idea how the ratings are going to go. I don't know what something like this can pull in modern television. It also aired on Paramount+. I don't know what that's going to do to viewership. I really have no idea. I will say I didn't think it was a heavily promoted card. I didn't think it was crazily promoted. I thought it was promoted okay, but not overwhelmingly. I thought that was a bit of an

issue. I don't know how much of the promos aired at all on CBS because I don't really watch linear TV hardly at all. So maybe you guys can speak better to that. So that'd be curious to see. In terms of the broadcast itself, I thought that they did a good job with Fedor and making it feel big and like being reverential towards him. I thought that was great. But I thought there was a couple of missed opportunities. One, why did they not show the Lorenz Larkin fight? The whole thing was a minute and 41 seconds. They had a minute and 41 seconds to sneak into that broadcast to show that, which I thought would have been just great for the viewers at home

and really added to the overall enjoyment factor of the evening. And again, we're only talking about a minute and 41 seconds. You know, a little bit more than that because they have to show a few things, but not a substantial amount of time in the broadcast. And I feel like there's so many things that they throw to in the broadcast that it doesn't give them the leeway to add things like that. This is just my personal opinion. I don't speak on behalf of, I am a CBS employee, so, you know, I'm just telling you how I felt as a viewer. I would have preferred to have seen Lorenz Larkin versus Berkamov, or Berkamov, however you pronounce it, or Berkamov.

I'm not sure how they pronounce it on the broadcast. I would have preferred to have seen that for sure versus not on that broadcast. I think it would have been great for them. So that was interesting. What else did I notice about the broadcast? The crowd seemed very silent. I don't know if that's... I don't know what that was.

I don't know how many numbers on the attendance. It seemed well attended. But the crowds... They would perk up when action would happen, but they weren't otherwise super engaged. So that kind of got my attention. I'm trying to think of other things that sort of stood out on the broadcast that I thought were kind of interesting. Yeah, aside from the Larkin thing and then the crowd being silent, I overall enjoyed the broadcast. It was pretty quick

in the sense that like, you know, it was two hours. You got three fights. It's about what you want. One of them was five rounder. Um, that was fine. But in terms of like the impact it had, like, I don't even know if it's trending. Let me see if it's trending on Twitter. I don't even know if it is. Yeah. I mean, UFC Vegas 68 is trending on mine and I don't see, let me pull up. Is it trending in sports even? Alicia Bumgarner, Ryan Bader is, Ryan Bader is. I'm surprised Fedor's not. That's amazing that Ryan, oh yeah, Fedor kind of is, yeah, a little bit. But you know, the event by name isn't. So you know, I don't know how this one's going to do, candidly. I don't know. It might do well. I don't know what the benchmarks are internally for success either. Like, what do they consider success? I don't know. They don't share these memos with me, but I think they made

a mistake not showing the Larkin fight, and the crowd was a little weird. The crowd was a little weird. The crowd was a little weird. I don't really know what to make of that. Okay, moving down the card. Your co-main event, Johnny Eblen defeats Anatoly Tokov, 50-45 and then 249-46 is unanimous decision. Johnny Eblen is the most unheralded champion among major MMA organizations today in any weight class. That's not me telling you that I can declare with total confidence that he's the very best middleweight. I don't know that. I don't know if he's the very best middleweight. This is not me declaring to you he's going to beat all of your favorite fighters if the UFC ever signs him. It's not what I'm suggesting either. What I am saying is relative to what he can do

and relative to what he's accomplished, matched against the acclaim he gets for it, I mean, there's just a yawning gap in between. I got news for you. Like, I don't know if Johnny Ebelin is the best middleweight on earth. I tend to think probably not. At least not right now not right now but he probably gives Alex Pereira a hard time real hard time just stylistically he

gives him a hard time uh and might just beat his ass like it could actually be ugly like that that that I'm not declaring to you like that would happen but that you you could add not dismiss that at all I mean let's sort of talk that would happen, but you could not dismiss that at all. I mean, let's sort of talk about what makes him good, right? He has striking that still is in development. I think you can see that. But he's got the ability to, he's got good linear punches, right? I mean, what was the punch that was giving Tokov so many problems?

The one-two. The one-two.ov so many problems? The one-two. The one-two. He could not miss with that one-two. That right hand was sticking Tokov flush over and over and over again. I was like, holy smoke, that thing is just dynamite. And, you know, he had a lot of winging punches off balance and then trying to switch through stances. Like, that stuff needs a little bit of work.

You know, that's not like his strong suit but he's got good respectable power i would call his striking um more than functional like valuable like he can he can stand with it and do with it he can win but what really sort of sets him apart is that his striking is not the best but it's good and he's got good power, he's got great cardio, and that dude can just wrestle you until he, for forever. He's a perpetual motion machine, and that's at 185 pounds. He reminds me a little bit, a little bit, this is not quite the right thing, because the guy I'm about to say is much better at weaving in the submission threat, but like when Chris Weidman was on his game, it was a little bit like this. Again, Weidman had a little bit more slickness with the boxing, a little more slickness with the submission game,

but it felt a little bit like what you're getting out of this, like a big, strong middleweight who has the gas tank to go forever. He can push the pace if he needs to. He's got good power. He can push you back with his striking. He can land on you. He can push you back with his striking. He can land on you. He has reasonable striking defense.

And when he mixes all of it together, it just becomes overwhelming. That's the kind of game that he's got. And I don't know who in that organization can beat him. He will only get beat if he makes some kind of error or one in a million shot lands or he doesn't prepare right. But if he's healthy and if he prepares and if Father Time doesn't whip his ass, he's going to hold on to that belt for some time. Let me pull up the Bellator middleweight rankings. I don't do the rankings for Bellator, so I couldn't tell you who they have up here. Let's see. So current middleweight. Here's your middleweights.

Fabian Edwards will probably be the next one. Tokov was the one sitting in that same space. Salter, who he already beat. Rasta. Rasta's only got eight fights, eight or nine fights. Then Aaron Jeffrey, Austin Vandiver. Lorenz Larkin was an interesting one. And then Romero Cotton.

So there's a couple of names in there. And Larkin is obviously a much better striker than Johnny Ebelin. But overall game in terms of just the amount of effort that guy can apply to you and what it can result in, that's a lot to deal with. That's a lot to deal with. So early I thought Tokov took maybe the first or second round. I think the first round, I thought Evelyn made a strong comeback in the second, uh, had to push through like the tide. Like I think he kind of squeaked it out.

And in the third round, I thought Tokov was really taking it to him, but then Evelyn ended strong, dropping it with that elbow, right? I believe that's right. Fourth round, he just wrestled him to death. Fifth round, more or less the same thing. Tokov couldn't get him off. Tokov's gas tank hurt him. That's something that you've noticed in the past if you've seen Tokov fights. His gas tank is not terrible, but I don't know that it's suited well for five rounds. He can usually be much more of a force through three.

So your gas tank was a bit of a problem. He had good punching power. He had good striking. But I think that once he became a little flat-footed and not able to be as reactive in that third round when he got stung with some of those hard rights, everything just began to slow. And he couldn't really ever get back out into another gear.

He couldn't catch his breath, really. He couldn't put Eblen on the back foot enough, and he was on the back foot metaphorically and literally constantly after that. He just couldn't ever look back. So I think stealing that second round and the third, or I should say taking the second round, stealing the third, and then just mopping him up after that, and then in that fifth round, get out of here.

With the suplex, with the release no less. I mean, no, I think he held on to him. I don't think there was a release, but drove him, I mean, right into the canvas. Amazing, amazing flair. So I would like to see Eblen continue to work on his overall game. In particular, the striking. I think obviously the wrestling is pretty far advanced. So bringing other parts of his game up.

Overall fight IQ. Working on all the pieces of his game. With a particular focus on striking. The other part too is getting to dominant ground positions for ground and pound. He's good at setting up positions to stifle and ride, not so much for maximum punishment, which is understandable because there's a trade-off inherent there, but getting that equation right and better.

And dude, he's off to the races. He's absolutely, I think, top five middleweight in the world, bare minimum, bare minimum. And you're going to look at part of his game and be like, it's a little, there's nothing super flashy about it. Right.

There's no part of it that's super flashy. It's the combo of everything. And it's deceptive too. It's deceptive to watch a guy that big who doesn't have super flashy striking or like crazy submission ability still kind of take it to these guys. And I just, it's this combination of having,

his ace in the hole is the cardio and the wrestling combined. But, dude, he didn't even really use that until much of, like, I don't recall that being a huge part of the first two rounds even. That really didn't get going until as, like, a real thing he could hold on to. I think he got a takedown in the second. I don't have any stats because Bellator doesn't offer stats. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Stop sitting on your aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach.

Right now you can save up to 25% in Aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com. Conditions apply. There's another thing about Bellator that drives me a little bit crazy, if I can be honest. They don't have stats that they compile and share, and it drives

me up the wall. But here we are. So I don't have any stats. But he got a takedown. I really didn't do a whole lot with it. But really, the takedowns didn't get to become a meaningful part, I think, until the third, a little bit, maybe even the second half of the third, something like that. But even before that, also, he has to make adjustments. Like, dude, he got beat up a little bit early. His initial read, his initial way of doing it um he had to kind of deal with it his eye was swollen shut he had to persevere and through and then once he found his reins and

once he found i think some of the timing and then what the setups were that worked better he just went back to them and that was it and again that right hand off the one two and it was the timing too because the the looping hands they take longer to travel so you can kind of get out of the way of them and you can anticipate them coming or whatever. You can roll and make big motions. But the one-two, bop bop, and it's not like a one-two, like dot dot, it's dot dot. It's like right behind it. Switching that timing up.

Like George Foreman on Michael Moore. Go watch the timing on Foreman's one-two that sits him down. It's bop bop. It's right behind each other. You pop some, not quite with the same speed, but an off-speed kind of rhythm and it catches him constantly, constantly in that fight.

So, that was supposed to be in that Cobain event roll. That was supposed to be Vadim Nemkov taking on Yoel Romero. But it all fell through. This was the kind of substitute.

For a substitute fight, given the circumstances, I don't mind it. I thought it was fine, and Eblen getting some promotion, I think, is what you want. And him ending it with a little bit of a dramatic flair is great, but I believe that there is work to be done to make sure that that guy gets the credit that he deserves, quite frankly. So more should be done to that effect. How about we talk about very quickly, if we can, the opening bout at welterweight. Brendan Ward taking on Sabaho Masi. He stops Sabaho Masi at 134 of round two via TKO head kick and then punches. Dude, Sabaho Masi was tearingnan Ward up in that first round. Punches he was walking into.

He was getting leg kicked to death. And a lot of the stuff that Ward was throwing was missing. Now, towards the end, Ward had a nice flurry. And he was able to slow things down because Hamasi would throw these wild strikes, slip, and then try and scramble out of it, and then Ward would get his back. And he couldn't do a whole lot with it in terms of getting actual chokes, but it slowed Homasi down.

It slowed the fight down. And then he gets a little bit of a flurry to a more tired Homasi. Second round comes out. Ward lands big punches again, and then a head kick that drops Homasi, or at least hurts him. He kind of falls over and then finishes him off with punches, tries to get a choke, couldn't get it, and then falls up with more punches and elbows and everything else, and Homasi's a bloody mess. So first of all, Ward versus Homasi is your first fight to return to CBS since, what, the Strikeforce brawl, basically in Nashville. First fight back is a

blood fest. I mean, it wasn't the bloodiest fight you've ever seen, but it was pretty bloody. Loved it. Perfect. That's exactly what MMA should be doing. So that was great. And then for Ward, man, this is a guy at 34 years of age who just punted on basically five plus years of his career. Even before that, he wasn't taking great care of himself in the way that he should have been. He lost all that time with jail and rehab and everything else and was losing this fight early. Homasi was landing the heavier, cleaner strikes. He was the one who had great takedown defense early,

great ability to cause separation. He was doing great stuff. And then, again, we talked about Ward getting in the back, taking advantage of the mistakes, putting some punches together, finding a range, keep walking Homasi down, slow him down a little bit. And then once he slowed down, the big punches from Ward, Ward's always been a big puncher. They caught up with him. They landed. He lands the head kick. He follows up. Just a great, great job by Brendan Ward, man. And I even said this on Friday, like, I don't know how far he's going to go, man. The guy missed a lot of time, you know, and he'll tell you that he missed a lot of time.

That's some cost has to be paid there. There always is. There's no such thing as a free lunch in this life. But, you know, I know that he has put himself in the best place he could possibly be to get something out of it. And the two guys he had beaten since he got back to his career to resume things, you know, they weren't great names. and sobaho mossy you know is he the is he the number one welterweight in the world no but he's a tough guy he was certainly a much tougher guy than who ward had been fighting and he was comes from a good camp and he was sticking it to ward early for war to overcome all of that and then come back and get the stoppage win man and then bring in jean-claude van damme for a very awkward hug but the guy he brought in mighty matt who he was talking about that's the guy

who founded high rollers bjj shouts to mighty matt that dude is super cool super cool um we he invited us out to his uh high rollers place out in vegas so me bc and a couple of the showtime guys we all went out some of the showtime producers we all went out, some of the Showtime producers, we all went out there, and he treated us like fucking kings, man. So that dude is just, you know, cool person, tries to do right by everybody. I think he's also involved. I think he's like, he runs, you know, Nick and Nate Diaz have that game up nutrition thing. I think he runs that.

So, you know, some cool people all the way around. So that was cool to see as well. But great, great win by Brennan Ward. Let's talk very briefly, if we can, about some of the highlights from the preliminary card. I won't get into too many of these, but we have to talk about it. I mean, I was killing CBS for not putting it on the broadcast, so we've got to mention it here. Lorenz Larkin.

Are you kidding me? Apparently this was a welterweight fight against, they got him ranked at middleweight, so it's a thing, against Mukamed mukamed i'm gonna say berkhamov i don't know the proper pronunciation via ko with a fucking elbow did y'all see this first of all i want to point out something about lorenz larkin he got signed by ufc i think excuse me he got signed by Bellator. I believe his last win in UFC was against, it was the back-to-back wins over Jorge Masvidal, and then he stops Neil Magny. Then he goes to Bellator and fights Douglas Lima and loses. Then he fights Paul Daly and gets knocked out. Terrible. I mean, his start to Bellator could not have gone worse, and he was like a prized acquisition. They brought

him out there for that Bellator, NYC, Deus, and this was a big deal like yes of course larkin had fought in strike force under scott coker but this was a huge deal for him to go back home this was 2016 only two years after scott took over bellator still trying to do big things and he just it just didn't work like none of it worked or at least early so. So then he fights Fernando Gonzalez. Doesn't look right. Then he fights Aion Pascu. Looks okay. He barely beats Koreshkov. But that's a tough win. He beats Kaito Nakamura.

Who's an underrated name. A little bit long in the tooth. But a good one. He barely beats Rafael Carvalho. He beats Kyle Stewart in Paris. But Kyle Stewart like took that fight on short notice. And then he has the illegal. Excuse me.

It was the no contest. The illegal elbow from his fight with Mukamad burkamov at bellator 283 back in july so this was like the rematch i'm just pointing out this guy is slowly he dug himself a huge hole after the magni fight and has slowly kind of clawed out and then had this performance how did he set it up he goes for a punch it misses but he ends up overshooting it and then as he retract. How did he set it up? He goes for a punch. It misses, but he ends up overshooting it. And then as he retracts his hand, he pulls the collar tie and then he had the outside elbow. So what does he do? He fucking snaps that dude down and turns him. He turns him. So what does Berkhamov do? He takes his foot, his right foot, and plants it on the ground to stop getting turned and to balance

himself. Well, dude, if someone is turning you and you plant to stop, you are setting up, if I turn you from here, from my left to my right, and then you stop and plant so I can't turn you, I'm going to keep coming with this left. Bah! And you are driving yourself back into it. You are driving yourself back into it. That's exactly what he did. He fucking snaps and turns this dude who plants his weight to stop and fucking Larkin just whips that elbow.

As soon as the guy plants, he keeps going, whips that elbow. Actually, he weights a beat on him. So he gets him on a half beat, actually. But then still, same physics apply. The guy stops. He's going into it. Almost two forces essentially colliding.

Brings that elbow over the top and fucking smokes this dude. I mean, smoked him. Goes flat. He actually did like the Ric Flair where he kind of like took a step and then fell but once he fell eyes wide open like you know completely out like lights on no one's home what one of the best knockouts from a standing elbow you'll ever see i know it's only february but that's you can add that at least to the list of like knockouts of the year content contenders or knock out of the year contenders i should sayout of the year contenders, I should say.

Amazing. And he, by the way, was the underdog Lorenz Larkin was in this fight. Like, I'm telling you, his stock has dropped to a dramatic degree. When was the last time you saw, like, a Lorenz Larkin interview? When was the last time he was part of something like in the news cycle? You just, his name has just almost been forgotten to a degree. And that's been a part because of, like, the way cycle. His name has just almost been forgotten to a degree. And that's been a part because of the way the Bellator run has gone. He had signed with all his hype and went, and he just had this slow, weird, kind of quiet climb back.

Well, dude, if this is the announcement that he's back and ready to start fighting other elite top guys, I can't think of a better commercial than the one he starred in today. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. And another thing about it is, keep your hands up on the clinch break, but the way he does it, he turns him and he gets the guy. Dude, Larkin is waiting for the guy to do that. It's the same thing in wrestling. If I snap a guy down, what's the reaction going to be? If I snap you down, what's the reaction going to be? From an elbow tie and a collar tie, snap you down. The reaction is going to be the normal person is going to want to, if I'm pulling

you down, what are they going to want to do? They're going to want to go up. And when they go up, you hit him, you just time the double. So you snap him down, waiting for the rebound, and then you pop the double in between. It's the same thing he does here. He pulls the guy, waiting for him to step, and all that does is, boop, set him up for the elbow. And he smoked him. He smoked him.

He completely shut the lights off with one shot. It was brutal. Very, very job well done. Kudos, all of that, to Lorenz Larkin tonight. Just an absolutely massive, massive win that should have been shown on the main broadcast. Henry Corrales gets a nice win. Ali Isaev and then Steve Mowry had a weird fight

where Isaev kind of wins the first round, gets demolished in the second round, and then wins the third third kind of like in a very boring ho-hum top control lamprey kind of way so it ends up being a draw because the second round was an easy 10-8 um anyway chris gonzalez defeating max roshkoff i might save that one you know what else that's the last one i'll go on i'll save the rest. Yeah. Okay. I remember when Usman Nurmagomedov beat Chris Gonzalez. I had people being like, dude, Nurmagomedov's not beating anybody good. And I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. Gonzalez is a Team Alpha Male guy, NCAA All-American,

the whole nine yards, great athlete. Yeah, it's hard to look good against Usman Nurmagomedov. Okay, but that doesn't mean you're not a good fighter. And he goes in here against Max Roshkoff, who, by the way, hit an amazing, like, turning inside arm throw. He hit an amazing duck under to get the back. But Chris Gonzalez is a great striker. I think he hit, he was able to connect, I think, with the right hand. I have to go back and look. That also kind of landed. It was legal, but it kind of landed in the back of the head and just polished him off.

Dude, Gonzalez, his down blocking was excellent in this contest. Roshkov had to really dig to get any takedowns and couldn't do a whole lot with him when he got him. Dude, that's a very good grappler. He's very much reborn. I still think highly of his future over Extreme Couture. But this is my point. It's like everyone was like, oh, Gonzalez is a tomato can.

Get the fuck out of here with that, dude. Chris Gonzalez is a very good fighter. Here's what happens, man. There's a lot of people who actually don't watch Bellator. They kind of half-ass watch Bellator. And then they make these grand proclamations about who is there and how good it is. No, Bellator is not an equivalent organization to the UFC, not even close. But you can't let that get in the way of identifying what are actual good fighters.

You have to give them their due if they are owed it. And of course, how that matches across any kind of aisle, one or UFC or PFL, we can get into those debates. But if you see a good fighter doing good things, you should say as much. Chris Gonzalez is a good fighter. He's a very good fighter, and this was a very good win that he was able to get, all right? I don't have anything else. I don't know if there's any bonuses. I mean, I don't know if Veltor does that, but overall, I guess we'll see how things go. I'll say this, it's almost kind of ho-hum that MMA returned to CBS. This was a big counterculture thing when it happened the last

time. Let me tell you, it was a huge deal. It was a shakeup in sports. And today it was just another day, which I think is kind of a good thing, right? Success. Like we don't have to constantly fight for every inch of, um, space to, to, to, to be treated as treated as a sport worth celebrating, worth broadcasting, worth being a part of. So that's really kind of nice. And last time, they would have weird crews for the CBS shows, like Gus Johnson was doing. It's like, why is he here?

I heard they stuck with the reliable people who do all of their broadcasts, which is probably the right call. I was glad to see that too. Like they didn't try to go too crazy with it. They wanted it to look nice, it seems to me, but not be like over the top. They didn't want to, they didn't want to have like the grandest show ever. They just want to have a good, solid, meaningful, impactful show. I think they got that. Whether or not they got the viewership for it, very much remains to be seen. You know, I don't know. I don't know how that's going to go. So, we'll see. That is it for me tonight, I think. Yeah, that's it for me tonight. We'll call it an early one here. Back on Monday, and then we're off to London. Yeah, that's it. So,

we got a lot of stuff going on. So, thank you guys so much for watching. Thumbs up, hit subscribe, all that good stuff. And yeah, I'll see you guys on Monday for watching. Thumbs up. Hit subscribe. All that good stuff. And yeah. I'll see you guys on Monday with the wonderful Brian Campbell. And until then, enjoy the fights. Oh, get some sleep. Do that. How about that? Bye, guys.

See you all later.