MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Should Frankie Edgar Retire? | Morning Kombat Extra Credit Ep. 7

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Luke Thomas is back with episode 7 of Morning Kombat Extra Credit. Luke will break down five fights from UFC 268 and get to some honorable mentions.  (1:20) - MARLON VERA vs. FRANKIE EDGAR (11:05) - ALEX PEREIRA vs. ANDREAS MICHAILIDIS (14:25) - BOBBY GREEN vs. AL IAQUINTA (19:10) - NASSOURDINE IMAVOV vs. EDMEN SHAHBAZYAN (26:11) - IAN GARRY vs. JORDAN WILLIAMS (28:56) - Honorable Mentions 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

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And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 7 of Morning Combat Extra Credit time for on big morning combat. So first things first, thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe. If you're listening on an audio podcast, do be so kind as to recommend this to a friend or leave

us a nice review on the platform on which you are listening to it. Okay. So with this, we're going to do five fights that we're going to get to then two honorable mention that I'll go over quite quickly. Let me show you the list of the five fights we're going to sink our teeth into. Now I'm going to do a big 268 edition because we just didn't have a lot of coverage or we had a lot of coverage I thought last week but you know we always could have done a little bit more. So I want to focus in on 268 for today's episode. Marlon Vera versus Frankie Edgar will center our conversations. Then we'll talk about the UFC debut of Alex Pereira. We'll talk Bobby Green and his phenomenal win over Al Iaquinta. Nasordine Imavov beating Edmund Shabazzian and what that might mean. And then the debut of Ian Gary as he defeated Jordan Williams. We have two more fights

for honorable mention that we'll get to as well. Okay. All right. With that in mind, let's begin. First things first, let's talk Frankie Edgar and Chito Vera. Now, what did I see out of this? Let's start with the end of the conversation first, because it kind of informs the judgment. There's a question about whether he should retire. And I raised at least the specter of that on social media, trying to be as careful and considerate as you can about someone who is revered in the fight game and has done a lot as well,

not merely that people like him, but that he is a major contributor to combat sports and the MMA side of things in the last 11 or 12 years. But to me, there's a few problems. He's not just losing a lot, which he did not used to do, but he is getting stopped a lot, which did not used to happen. He is tiring more quickly. His gas tank used to be indefatigable. It's certainly not bad by any stretch, but it's not the same as it used to be. He's a lot slower, visibly, than he used to be. Folks point out, and they're right, they are correct, that he can still beat good fighters.

That is absolutely true. By the way, he did not beat Marlon Vera, but he was doing quite well against him for long stretches of that fight. And Chito Vera, to me, is a top 10 bantamweight maybe even a little higher depending on one's perspective Frankie Edgar made a strong account of himself especially in that first round and even parts of the second to a degree as well the issue is not whether or not he can beat fighters he can do that the issue is at what point are we pursuing something where the cost outweighs the benefits now Now, those benefits will change to folks, like not losing your career and hanging on for various other reasons that can keep people lingering. But I'm just trying to point out here something. To me, there needs to be a different

and broader conversation around retirement. People usually make it out to be, well, once your physical skills begin to decline and you're losing fights and you can't win anymore well then it's time to go here's the issue he has experienced a ton of trauma a ton and yet he can still win fights to me it's not a question of whether or not he can beat good fighters so i don't think he can beat championship caliber fighters i think certainly those days are gone so he can't be that kind which of course is all he ever used to be so even that is a bit of a difference but i mean i just want to go through his record here for just a little bit first of all in his last five he's one and four um he's two and let's see one two three so he's

two and six in his last six but then he's uh two and seven or excuse me what am i then he's two and seven. Excuse me. What am I saying? He's two and four in his last six. He's two and seven in his last, what was that, nine or seven, whatever the fuck the number is. The point being is, yes, he's two and five. Excuse me. He went from two and four to two and five.

I keep jumping numbers here. I apologize. You get the idea though he's not losing to chumps but consider brian ortega uh was sort of the first loss that kicked us all off he lost to jose aldo but um he went the distance with him then he beat jeremy stevens and he beat yair rodriguez right and he beat him quite quite badly the stevens was a interesting fight but he won that pretty cleanly then he he loses to Brian Ortega, no big deal, and he rebounds against Cub Swanson. But then he has a decision against Max. Okay, he gets stopped by Chan Sung Jung.

So now he's been stopped two in his last four fights at that point. He beats Pedro Munoz, incredible accomplishment. He gets stopped by Corey, and now he gets stopped by Marlon. So now you have back-to-back stoppages. And you can say what you want about this one. I thought the stoppage was clean. The last time he had a three-fight losing streak was all the way back in 2012. He lost to Benson Henderson, decision.

Benson Henderson, split decision. And then Jose Aldo. He got beat up in that fight, but he didn't get stopped in a decision win. Before that, Frankie Edgar versus Gray Maynard, decision. So now for the first time in his career, he is putting together strings of stoppage losses. When you just add up even those Gray Maynard fights and now these more latter ones, and you look at his numbers generally, Frankie Edgar, his numbers strikes up sore per minute. It's still low based on, I think, some of the earlier parts of his work, but more

recently he's been taking a lot of damage. It only sits at 2.81 for the overall UFC run, which makes sense. Again, he was hard to hit in the early portions of his career. That is no longer the case. Listen, I'm not even saying that retirement is a requirement. I don't know. I'm trying to rhyme. I'm just saying I don't think that that's necessarily what we're looking for here. But the suggestion that it should be considered and that it's not far off, I don't

see how that is even remotely debatable. Yes, Frankie Edgar is so special that even at this very senior stage of his career, he is still competitive in fights where he loses and is capable of beating good fighters. We saw that on August of 2020. Beating Pedro Munoz the way that he did. Who by the way is a strong power puncher. That is still possible. But to me there's a question that has to be asked. About what happens when. The amount of damage one takes is concerning.

And that splits apart from their ability to win. Usually people think they coincide. Not all the time. Now as for the fight itself. Chito Vera is quite impressive. He was crediting Jason Perrilla. With him to his striking skills to where he wanted them. I thought that he had been remarkably well-developed under Colin Oyama. I don't know what the differences account for there, but the one thing I wanted to point out was about Chito Vera. I thought his guard is phenomenal, and he is weaving in leg upkicks with guard attacks.

I'll give you a perfect example. He tried to shove the arm through, pull one through for a triangle, and you saw Frankie Yeager pull his way out of it. But as he pulled out of it, Vera was already ready and had cocked back the heel and then drilled him right in the face with it. Everything was smoothly integrating leg attacks, either from the guard or from actual strikes.

And that should make sense. A guy as lanky who has the kind of guard that Chito Vera does, that ability to wrestle is probably going to have some mechanical transfer over and physical dexterity over to the ability to strike off of your back with your legs. He is quite good at it, both driving blows this way and then heel strikes, almost Taekwondo style, off his back and shoulders as he's attacking an opponent over him. He is quite gifted at that, quite nimble.

Also, it was pretty clear that they were adopting something of a conservative strategy with that guard in the first round because by the time he was going for subs and then rolling to his base and then standing, you just wondered why weren't you doing that in the first round? You could have stood up the whole time. So it was a good takedown by Frankie. It was good ground and pound for the most part, not too savage. He got his licks in there, but again, I thought Chito Vera did a pretty good job in large part of off balancing him and taking away some of those opportunities. But you know, here's the other part about Frankie that kind of caught my attention.

It used to be the case that if he couldn't get the takedown, he couldn't win. The Max fight is a great example of that, right? His striking was very much predicated as Dean Thomas had indicated on flurries, footwork and takedowns. They all kind of have to work in conjunction with the other. They're all built off of one works, then the other one works, then the other one works, then the other one works. And you take that away, they take off the leg of the triangle. It doesn't quite work so well. He got the takedown in the first and had some takedown success in the second,

and it still didn't matter. He still got finished. See, this is my point. It's like here is a case where Edgar is credited with three takedowns in the fight. Did he get a takedown in every round? Let's see. I don't think that's right. And he attempted nine. Yeah, Frankie Edgar got a takedown in every round. He got one of three in the first, one of four in the second, one of two in the third, and still got beat. See, this is what I mean, right're you're losing in ways that were up into a point impossible to not impossible but

extremely implausible if he was able to get the takedown previously and in all three rounds that almost always meant he could use that on route to if not a stoppage certainly a commanding lead and uh here he still gets finished. You saw Chito Vera going up the middle. They wanted some linear attacks for a guy who blitzes. They wanted to square him up. They didn't want to get blitzed at angles. They wanted to kind of stop him in motion a little bit, square him up,

and then they wanted to have the linear attacks up the middle because they knew he had to close distance if they could maintain it behind the jab. And now I'm behind that middle kick. And then he was going middle kick, middle kick, middle kick, middle kick. And then finally he went right up under the chin. It was a beautiful shot. I know Frankie objected to the stoppage. Could have gone a little bit longer maybe, you know, but I certainly feel like, again, within the understanding

that every referee is going to have a slightly different strike zone, and I'm borrowing that from baseball for folks who may not understand what I'm talking about there, where every referee or every every umpire behind home plate is going to see the balls and strikes a little bit differently but this is sort of within the realm of defensible action from a referee which is really all you can ask for yeah I think it's probably fine I know it's unfortunate but I do think it's probably okay so that was my read on this fight uh great great job by Marlon Vera who is a talented bantamweight, and if not automatically a moment for Edgar to retire right away,

I think we all need to begin to wrestle with the fact that whenever the end may come, it's probably sooner than you might think, or maybe perhaps it should be, depending on one's perspective there. Okay, second on the list. let's go to the UFC debut of Alex Pereira. We have some stats on this. They're not too effective or meaningful. Two of seven takedowns from Andreas Mikulidis or however you pronounce his last name. He did what he was supposed to do, but it was weird. Like in some of his takedown positions, he has a head kind of squashed all the way over because he wasn't using it very effectively.

That was kind of a strange thing. He was able to kind of get the takedown. I would call, did they grant him one? Yeah, the two of the seven. I would call the takedown defense of Alex Pereira decent. I'd call it decent. I certainly would not call it bad. That would be incorrect it might be much more open to

he might get taken down a lot more against a more I mean you know Derek Brunson would probably give him some problems maybe if he didn't get knocked out I do think that Alex Brewer by the way is capable of knocking out probably any top 10 or top 5 middleweight if they stand long enough with him. But you get my point. It was good enough for this fight, clearly. It's probably good enough for another level above it. But I guess the read I'm making is that it still has a little bit of work to do. He did not do a great job of forcing separation.

He was pretty good about using the fence. His base wasn't really wide enough. Some of the hand fighting and whizzering details got him into a little bit of trouble. So, you know, there's a few more things that I think can be cleaned up or think probably will get cleaned up and he'll be able to defend against a higher level opponent. The only issue he runs into is he's 34, right? He's not the youngest guy in the world, but then he comes out and does the jumping switch knee and lands it to perfection. I mean, here's really the reality about standing with this guy.

It's just a matter of time. Before him, he's eventually going to get you. Even if not necessarily the full-on KO or TKO, he'll land something with enough effect where it just has devastating consequences, one way or the other. He's got that kind of ability. So this was, I actually think, a really good job by the UFC in matchmaking.

Let's get this guy just the right opportunity, just the right, let's see exactly where from a very basic level, let's see where his takedown defense is, and make some calls accordingly. He passed this test. I'm not going to say barely, but I wouldn't call it with flying colors in terms of the takedown defense. It was good.

It was good enough. But definitely some room to improve and definitely needs to make that improvement pretty quickly if it's going to happen for him. There was one sort of note from a commentary perspective. I did hear Joe Rogan going on and on about Pereira's power. I do think Rogan is right to highlight that he does have tremendous power. He does, but he's got a lot of great setups and he's got a lot of great tactical approaches that bring that to life. It's not just that he's Vanderlei, and I don't think

Joe was suggesting as much, but I just want to be clear. Yes, he's got big power, but he's also got great accuracy and timing and clever setups that allows him to land cleanly. Also, a lot of defensive lapses in some of his opponents that I will go away a little bit as he climbs the ranks of the middleweight division. But he is powerful. There's a lot more than that. Just want to be clear. Okay, Bobby Green taking on Al Iaquinto. Let me pull this up here for just a second. but he is powerful. There's a lot more than that. Just, just want to be clear. Okay.

Bobby green taken on Al Iaquinto. Let me pull this up here for just a second. Um, some of my other notes, this was a very interesting result. Um, but this is Bobby greens. I won't say best performance to date.

I don't think that's probably fair, but one of his better ones for sure. So he wins via TKO 225 of round one. Bobby Green has been an interesting guy, and I'm going to read you his record and show you. He has some impressive wins to be sure, but he's also got a few fights where he was in them, but he made a strong account of himself in a losing effort. Like the fight before this one against the Fazaev. Similar kind of thing. He was kind of hanging with Fazaev and landing.

He did well, but not enough to win the fight, although he got fight of the night. He had a war with Lando Venata, but he won that one fight of the night. But he lost to Masaranduba. He lost to Drakkar close. By the way, those are all decisions. He had a decision lost to Rashid Magomedov. He had a decision lost to Edson Barboza. He did get stopped by Dustin Poirier all the way back in 2016.

And he's beaten a who's who of names all along the way, going back to his Strikeforce days. But, you know, listen to the real wins before this. Clay Guida, Lando Venata, Alon Patrick, Eric Koch. The Josh Thompson one he got, but that was later stage Josh Thompson, James Kraus, Jacob Volkman, and so forth.

Al Iaquinta is up there. Josh Thompson is probably the best name on the resume that he's got to win over, but given the time at which he fought him, still impressive. But I don't know. Al Iaquinta might be his best win. He legitimately might be his best win. Legitimately, it might be his best win because Al's been a top five guy in this division.

I don't think he's top five at the moment. I know he's been off for a while. I think it was like two years. Let me double check that. Let's see. And then we'll talk about the fight itself. Yeah, he last fought Hooker in October of 2019. So he's been off for a really long time.

By the way, he's lost four of his last five. The one only has Kevin Lee, although one of the other losses was never committed off on last minute notice so more like three in a row and but you get the idea okay um so bobby green has always had these moral victories in fights where he's competitive but kind of loses this is the first time where i thought you really got a sense of his overall ability. He's got nice wins via decision against some good opponents, but a lot of times it's just by that, by decision, where he has to kind of grind it out a little bit. He has flashes of brilliance.

Here he was just in a flow state from the get-go. There was a real difference, it seemed to me. Al was walking into a lot of punches. I think that you had a guy in Bobby Green, you saw Dean Thomas talk about his hands being down, but also his timing to deliver those. Yeah. Yes. He couldn't see them, but he was, he was throwing them just at the right moment to split Al's timing or just get ahead of any kind of exchange, um, to, to land at his range before Al could change the equation there. He was just really on point with that. And so you even saw that final one where they talked about it.

He had been in one stance, he had kind of gone square and then lunged in from the power side and then went to the jab side which i think caught out a little bit by surprise as he was trying to move into that to that space just phenomenal timing it just shows you when green is dialed in he you can't have a lot of errors about distance closing um again you know you got to give al a little bit of a break here two years away from the octagon i know some folks think there's no such thing as ring rust and blah blah blah again for some folks maybe that's true my general rule is ring rust affects most fighters in most situations most of the time right so here's a case where two years off i I think it's entirely understandable

that Al didn't necessarily look his best or get going in the way that he needed to. The one thing that I think I sort of took from that was I just didn't see a ton of fainting from Al. I don't know how intentional or not that was. I don't know exactly what he saw or what they had game planned around, but it just seems like for a guy like Bobby,

who's real slick and his hands are a certain position, getting him to react first, if at all possible. And again, very easy for me to say that and much harder for someone else to do it, but it does seem like that probably could have helped still Bobby green. Great win by him. He has been long in the tooth in this career. He's been around a long time. And, um, that's, you know, some of these guys just improve in their mid to late 30s. How old is Bobby? Bobby currently sits at 35. 35 for a lightweight is not young, but we're seeing this is the time where some of these guys in the game, they're always good, and they stay good for a while,

and they're up and they're down, but they're good. And then you see right around 34, 35, they begin to just turn another corner. And Bobby Green might be one of those guys. Great win by him. All right, so let's get to it. Nasur Dean. Nasur Dean.

My friend's dad's name is Noorah Dean. I think, by the way, Dean means light in Arabic. And Nasur means like faith. So like light of the faith, something like that. I'm not quite sure how it translates. Imavov taking on Edmund Shabazian. Jesus Christ, Edmund Shabazian's in a bad place. Here is what got me about this fight.

And by the way, let me give you the exact reading on the victory. 4.42 of the second round. He didn't make it to the third, man. Okay. At range, Edmund Shabazian is a handful. Accurate, powerful, great timing, linear, good footwork. You know, he's good. He is excellent, actually, at range.

So I don't understand why he was, at many times, accommodating Imovov in close range. And the other thing that just blew my mind was, I mean, I get Imovov was trying to put the fight there at times, but then he would reverse and then just accommodate it rather than like, you know, you need to be thinking about getting away, not getting away, you need to be thinking about creating the distance. Stop sitting on your aeroplan points and get big savings

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In the way that Israel Adesanya would do it. He would fight in the way in which he was made to, but then if he wasn't made to anymore, he's right back to where he needs to go, and then he just kicks the shit out of people. So I didn't see that instinct, number one. Here was the other problem. His wrestling looked pretty good. Certainly much improved.

It was his grappling I just didn't get. Listen, you guys know, man, I'm going to cheer for the Armenian guy 10 times out of 10, right? My mother was Armenian. I'm always going to be trying to, you know. Their success is always going to be important for me. He gets to the ground and then just kind of falls apart. I didn't under, I did not see any defensive urgency in the grappling game,

which can tell you maybe one of two things or more than this. My two best explanatory hypotheses are one, he got tired. And if you've got gas issues at that point from that kind of a fight, then that's a larger problem. And the other one was he knew he was outmatched there and so realized that there was a futility and overly trying to spaz out and resist in which case why is there that much of a gap imovov is good on the ground very good i don't mean to say that this was something that like anybody could have beaten

quite the opposite maybe he would have won no what, but like there was just an ease with which he found mounted crucifix that should not have happened. Now, yes, it's the Kurt Oceana rule. Well, what are you supposed to do when you're in that position? Well,

if you get mounted into a mounted crucifix, you fucked up a long time ago. Like the, the, the way to fix that was not now. It was a long time ago, but there are other ways to get out of it and stuff, right?

There's things you can do. But I didn't understand why he didn't have the urgency about range that maximized his game. And I did not understand how it just collapsed once it went to the mat, unless he could get right back up or it was some kind of wrestling exchange. But once he went to his back, contrast that with Chito Vero on his back. Chito Vero on his back, I mean, he had Frankie Edgar on his, minding his P's and Q's, right?

Got to be careful about the ground and pound, can't get overly extended, don't want to cross the center line with your elbow. Watch your posture, watch out for submission threat, watch out for the up kicks on the submission threat. Like, he's working. And by the way, and recapturing guard, like preventing the pass. Frank Yeager is a black belt in jiu-jitsu. He knows how to pass guard probably really well.

Contrast that with what you saw here. It was – I didn't understand that at all. So it's a nice win by Imhovov. Like he did everything he was supposed to. I thought he looked pretty good for the most part on the feet. Shabazzian a little bit better. But then in those tight ranges, he was just getting hit and then not getting back to a really stick-and-move,

hardcore kind of game. I don't know. I also have to say, I think they've rattled his confidence. I mean, understand his run has been just the worst kind of run you could get. And here's what I mean. You don't want to get out in front of your skis in the UFC because the bounce back is going to be potentially unmanageable. What I mean to say is you want to get the –

like coaches out there, don't rush your fighters. Don't fucking rush them, man. Don't do it. Golly, because you're going to get in a situation like this and he is only 23 this is a resolvable situation you hope unless they've absolutely ruined his confidence which i wonder about as well what sucks about what happened to him and i was cheerleading it the whole way too but kind of gave you the heebie-jeebies he made his uf he made his contender Series debut after just six fights. It's like at 21, just six fights?

You need a little bit more time, man. That's the first part. Then he has to wrestle his way against Darren Stewart, which was okay, learning experience. Blew away Charles Bird, blew away Jack Marshman. Then they jumped him up to Brad Tavares. Now, Brad Tavares did lose. He loses via head kick in the first round.

And you're thinking to yourself, my God, this guy is Shabazzian and just can't lose. But then they put him into the portion of the swimming pool that he just cannot handle. Derek Brunson put a beating on him. Jack Hermansen put a beating on him. And now Imavov, who's a good fighter but not up to this level previously, put a beating on him. So he's had three beatings basically in a row. Dude, they got to dial it back big time with him.

They should start from scratch at this point as far as I'm concerned. That doesn't mean that every experience he's gotten up to this point is invaluable or or he can't take that stuff with him all i mean to say is in terms of the difficulty of opponent dial it way back if that means unranked then it means i mean i think imbal may have been unranked i'm not sure what his ranking was so don't super dead wrong me they need to really really dial that back i mean get it way way way back uh otherwise you're going to ruin this guy's confidence it's not just the three losses it's how they've happened they've been thorough bad humiliating it's time to stop the bleeding dial it back get him a fight he can

win and then slowly rebuild him slowly i think then you'll be in a better position. Because it's not to me that I mind that he lost his third. It's that it all just instantly collapsed in situations where it should not happen that way. It should have been much more resistance underneath from him. And then how about lastly, Ian Gary taking on Jordan Williams. Great win by Ian Gary. You know, Ian Gary taking on Jordan Williams. Great win by Ian Gary. I feel bad for Jordan Williams. He loses at 4.59 of round number one, although he wouldn't have recovered anyway. The bell cannot save you.

Remember that. So he would have lost that one anyway. But still, he was having a ton of success with these wide hooks because Gary, as they pointed out, his hands would drop through combination as he exited, and he was doing a lot of leaning. It wasn't like he was, he was doing some rolling. I want to give him credit. Actually, he was, he was trying, he was doing some rolling, but he's doing a lot of leaning on the escape. So you just keep following it up. And then the next one kind of lands and his face was bleeding. He was getting tuned up a little bit. I thought he

showed some good defensive wrestling. Um, I thought he showed some good defensive wrestling um i thought he showed some good that head kick he landed where he was kind of he was baiting by dropping his head low dropping his head low waiting for jordan to williams to come in and then backing up taking a step and then throwing the head kick only reason it didn't really work is maybe quite where it landed also because of that quick step and throw there probably wasn't a whole lot of mustard on it but that was really really nice if he can perfect that a little bit he's gonna tear people up with it like he's he's athletic he's rangy has a great attitude so those are all the good parts and that and that's and by the way he didn't just step back when williams was blitzing for the final finish he stepped back at an angle right so he's

back and at an angle and so it was because of, he was able to get on the inside of the punch. He split the timing. It was perfect. I mean, that was beautiful, beautiful work from Ian Gary. He should be super proud of himself, but he is young. He himself said it. So with every young prospect, there's going to be good. There's going to be bad. The bad was obviously, I think you guys can tell he has some defensive issues that are going to be necessary to work on, and he's in a great camp to get that done. I'm sure he will. Could be just a matter of time.

This is, you know, we're just talking about something. None of these fighters are perfect, and I think for the ones at the beginning of their journey, you're going to see some of their issues a little bit more on display. Definitely some things in the striking department to clean up. Maybe some choices about offense, which weapons to use at certain times you could argue as well but you can see his counter punching and his uh you know

absorbing of a of pressure is going to be formidable and i think you know he'll have he seems like he has the kind of disposition to want to put guys on the back foot anyway so a ton to like but he was definitely getting hit a little too much from straight and hooking punches so there's some there's some defensive issues there but for a ufc debut unbelievable finished flash some real strengths yep along the way so so the package is good but uh as an overall fighter but definitely some things to clean up, for sure. All right, very quickly, two pieces of honorable mention,

if I can go to it. One, Pachy Mix defeating James Gallagher. Oh, this is a bad loss for Gallagher, man. I like the guy a lot. I really do. I thought his choice to go to Glory MMA and Fitness is and remains the right one. Um, he is beloved in his home country, which you could see. I liked the guy a lot. I think he gets a bad rap in the

media. And I fear that, you know, listen, he was on a four fight win streak. Bellator was giving him fights to get back. Right. You know, at some point they have to walk through that door as, as guys who can beat other good fighters and he just hasn't quite done that yet now here's the good news he's 25 years of age i didn't like a lot of the choices he was pulling guillotine in the second round and then just didn't really seem to either want or have the ability to get up patchy mix is a phenomenal grappler please don't think he was fighting some scrub because he's not fighting in ufc no no no patchy mixes excellent uh but he looked a little languid from the weight cut anyway for james gallagher he's 25 he's 25. it's time to go back to the the lab and just really

really work on skills uh maybe putting on the gi or something just getting back to really establishing um i'm almost say that metaphorically in a way just getting back to classes showing up learning as much as you can and you know it's easy for me easy for me to say that like oh don't take fights but this is how they make their living but i'm just saying you're asking me like what's needed what's needed is some time in the lab um and and opponents that are suitable for him. And I think probably in a couple of years, he can turn a corner. But he's in a space where they want him to headline, and he's not ready to beat headlining guys yet. It's just the reality at this point, but not forever.

And by the way, great win by Apache Mix. He sat to Gaetje, and did you notice, if you look, you can see all of the back of the neck of Gallagher, and you can see the back and the base of his skull. In fact, when Pachimix was sitting for it, he was sitting in a way where it was like a Jeff Glover type, where the grip was just around the crown of the head. That's a special guillotine to pull off,

and Pachemix did it in the main event. That's very, very impressive, number one. And then the last thing I would say is Phil Hawes and Chris Curtis. Phil Hawes looked great, but then I think got a little bit too confident with the range in which he was throwing and stopped fainting and just walked right into one, And that was all it took. I feel so happy for Chris Curtis, although it wasn't like he was shining before,

but he was being patient, found his moment, and then he won the fight. So we'll see what happens with him. Great win for him. I feel bad for Phil Hawes because he just can't quite seem to... He seems so skilled and so athletic and yet still gets stopped a lot. And,

uh, it just shouldn't be that way. Um, I don't, I don't know how much more I could say about it than that, but overall, congratulations to all the winners and to all the folks who didn't end up on the winning side.

Uh, we still appreciate that you fought and I'm sure it'll be a better day for you ahead. All right. So that's what we have here on the podcast today. Like the video. Thank you guys so much for watching. What did you like?

What was your favorite fight? Leave a comment below. And yeah, I'll see you guys next week for episode eight. And until then, enjoy the fights.