MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - The Rise of Elbows in MMA | MK Extra Credit Ep. 8

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Luke Thomas is back with Episode 8 of Morning Kombat Extra Credit. Luke breaks down a couple fights from UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs. Rodriguez and Bellator 271 that the boys didn't get to on Episode 229 of Morning Kombat. 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 if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Oh, hello, everyone. It is the 15th of November, 2021. I am Luke Thomas. This is Morning Combat Extra Credit. This is where I pick out a few fights that we didn't get a chance to get into on regular MK. Which, by the way, if you're listening now, regular MK with me and Brian Campbell is already up on YouTube, already up on the podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, platform, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever you want. So it's already up, but here we are to talk about five extra fights today. We're going to get into those in just a second.

But here, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see the social graphic below. Give us a follow anywhere on Twitter or on Instagram. Morning Combat's name is the same everywhere. And, of course, if you're watching this, thumbs up, hit subscribe. Do all that good stuff. Okay, five fights, as always, as promised. Let's take a look at them. We're going to go four fights on the UFC card, one from Bellator.

Here's the UFC card we're going to go into. Song Yedong versus Julio Arce. Joel Alvarez taking on Tiago Moises. Sean Woodson fighting Colin Anglin. And then Da Un Jun taking on, forgive me for the pronunciation here, Kennedy Nzechukwu. I'm sure I am fucking that up as bad as one possibly can. And then we'll get to the Bellator fight in just a minute. It'll be the Lytton Vassell versus Tyrell Fortune fight.

So those are the fights we're going to get to here today. Without further ado, let's start, if we can, on Extra Credit Episode 8. With the fight I mentioned first here in that lineup, Song Yedong taking on Julio Arce. Song Yedong wins at 135 of the second round via head kick and then a punch. So he lands a head kick and then fires off a right hand, or was a right head kick, falls off a right hand behind it. And at that point, Arce is in deep trouble. He falls him off and then polishes him off. I mean, a few things stand out about Song Yedong in this one.

First of all, this was a very patient performance. The first round, I think he won it, but it wasn't like some drubbing beatdown or something. He was, it looked to me like he was taking his time and fact-f fact finding seeing what Arce was giving him but what thing was kind of interesting was he was doing a really good job of kind of just taking away whatever Julio Arce was trying to do particularly the leg kicks you'll notice he was bouncing out of the way a lot and then as the fight wore on he stopped um doing that bouncing out as much because what was happening was he would bounce out to get out of the way.

And that would work, right? Like moving your feet is not in any way necessarily wrong. It just depends on what the goal is and what you're trying to do and whether or not that particular movement is helpful for that particular strategy and what you're looking for. So it's good in the sense that it got him out of the way of what was coming but then he would kind of have to renegotiate the distance again and so the first round was kind of about what's this guy throwing to me how do i get out of the way let me get out of the way let me read this and see you know what works and what and and what doesn't and then what you saw him do was really kind of put a little bit more pressure on him the second round a lot of taking away of the jab of arse that was a big part of this too whether he was slipping it and just sort of not

letting it land but also uh parrying it covering it you know getting out of the way of it just not letting it ever really begin to be a commanding presence in the fight whatsoever a couple of them snuck through obviously Julio Arce is a talented fighter but um the thing that stands out in addition to me beyond just the patience is what we kind of already knew about Song Yedong which is that obviously he is a very gifted athlete and he hits like a ton of bricks he's got fast hand speed explosive athleticism I mean think about something here like I mentioned for example Song Yedong was trying to take away the jab of Arce. Understand that if you look at that final sequence, what happened there, it looks like Arce and Song Yudong are throwing their strikes at the exact same time,

a jab for Arce and a head kick for Yudong. I can't quite exactly tell if it's one of two scenarios. Is it that he read it and immediately fired up the leg kick, or that they had separated? Because what happened was there was a bit of a blitz from Yedong and then he pushes him back. And then you watch Arce begin to reclose that distance. Did he push and then expect that return

where he got just enough into close space where he could fire the leg kick right up there without hardly any telegraph and then landed hard to tell exactly because the timing is weird but in any case it was a challenge to the jab it certainly was not he was not the head was not there to be hit actually i don't think it was quite off i think he was raised because he was on his tippy toe so it ended up being like right around here and then the head kick landed the only point i i i am trying to make in all of that is the setup was nice, although it's somewhat serendipitous.

But the point is, like, dude, his – like, maybe the jab from Arce got there first, but the jab from Arce and then the head kick from Yudong were almost as equally quick. I mean, that dude can lightning get his feet to someone's face. It is very, very impressive. And then there was a couple times he would – I mean, that dude can lightning get his feet to someone's face. It is very, very impressive. And then there was a couple times he would, you see him shift as he was pressing, stance switching is the term I'm trying to use here, but it's called shifting,

as he would press Arce backwards. And then as he would press him backwards, you'd see these heavy, heavy hooks. That landed a couple of times as he switched through the motions, but there was a lot of times where it didn't. But the big story there was just him taking his time to find out the distance once he got it. I mean, here's the reality. Like, Yudong landed strikes in the first round, but it wasn't, like, the first thing that landed clean,

like, super clean, and even then it wasn't all that clean because the hand was kind of up, but the first thing that really struck him with authority was that head kick and then the fight was basically over like that dude must have sick power um and you add that this was a very difficult opponent I thought he had I think very highly of Julio Arce. And then he just took his time in the first round. And then, like, here's what you want from someone this athletic. This is what you want.

You want them to do what he's doing, which is that you can't forget about, like, having all of that power and having all of that athleticism. It's just such an obvious benefit. But let's find a scientific way to use it. Let's find a clever way to use it. Let's find a way where when you use it properly, you don't have to do much of it. Let me pull up his striking numbers, if I can, from that first round.

Yeah, I mean, he only landed 17 of 52, but he held Arce to just 5. Arce very, very, just couldn't get much going, very, very defensively minded, kind of covering up, and he was doing a lot, which is interesting because you had two opponents who were kind of trying to read the other one, and even, I would say, a semi-reserved Yudong still landed a lot. And his other fights, let's see, what did he land in the Kyler Phillips fight in the first round?

He landed 21, which is a little bit more what about marlon vera he landed 17 in that one although he got outstruck in that round and it wasn't until the second and third round we had 44 and 40 jesus christ hold on let's go back to the casey kenny win how many did he have there he had 31 in the first round jesus christ and then he had 34 and 51 in the second and third subsequently against kyler how much did he have here all the way around 20 21 and 26 which is pretty good in the third round when he really put a bit of a pace on him there let's look at the because the cody statement fight was a lot of wrestling what about alejandro perez oh i mean that was you you know, eight punches,

but that fight didn't last very long. Yeah. So I would say this is in line with what you see from him, but maybe a little bit on the reserved side. There's definitely been some rounds where he had much more activity, but it's a lot of, a lot of blitzing, a lot of just heavy hooking, a lot of less patient, less scientific approaches to the game. This to me seemed both equally thoughtful and powerful. And if he can keep building on that, um, he me, seemed both equally thoughtful and powerful. If he can keep building on that, he's going to have a lot of success. Okay, so that takes us now down to the fight that I thought was the most interesting fight. Certainly, I won't say of the weekend because there was the main event,

but on that preliminary card, Joel Alvarez defeating Tiago Moises via TKO elbows at 301 of the first round. Now, big caveat, and you could see it play out in person. I don't know how long Joel Alvarez is built for this weight class. He missed weight 157 and a half is what he made. So he missed it by a pound and a half, even with the one pound allowance, he is nowhere close to championship weight. He looks to be huge for lightweight. You know, Moises and Makachev were more or less the same size. You know, it wasn't a huge difference. There was a huge difference here. So I don't know how he would do at welterweight.

I'm not saying he would do poorly, but I do wonder when a guy is looking for this much of an advantage what that might say. Still, you got to make weight we'll see what weight class he belongs in okay but for the time being if we just talk about this fight this was brilliant quite frankly i mean he had moisess on the end of his punches and strikes the entire time again let's look at some of these numbers here as i pull them up but the big read that i made was folks were asking about the elbow versus the dot jung elbow which I guess I'm going to skip to here in just a second to make the conversation a little more of a flowing thing in the case of Alvarez the answer is that they basically did more or less the same thing now they had different kinds of elbows that they threw

and their setups weren't exactly the same nor were the situations identical but the basic idea in both the dot jung fight and in the Joel Alvarez fight is that they got their opponents to cover themselves up so that they couldn't see. And they did that with a lot of different things that they were trying to do. But partly it's getting a reaction from the opponent. So when you see an opponent constantly covered this way, again, this is not necessarily wrong. In fact, that could save you and win you the whole fight,

depending on when you employ this. But if you go to this a lot versus slipping versus circling out versus whatever, any other kind of operational defense you can employ, a lot of this means a lot of times you can't use your hands because they're literally covering your face. So someone just jabs and jabs and jabs and then gets you to hold it. Then the hands come up and it opens up the body or any kind of hooking punch. Although sometimes people can work with that a little bit. But it's very powerful in that if it deflects a punch or a kick, the hands are kind of covering this and you're still there. You don't have to move your feet.

But the problem is you can just build around a lot of different scenarios. So what you saw Joel Alvarez do was a lot of straight punches, straight punches, then he'd throw a hooking punch. But the big key was he did that skip knee to help him close the distance, almost like Thai boxing style. And from there, he could grab the hands and then elbow over it or elbow around him or whatever he wanted to do. So he's changing up the range at which he's playing with some of these strikes.

So you might think that there's a straight punch coming. Excuse me. You might think that he's not going to throw something like that because he's super up on close with you and you only felt the hooking punches when he was really away. So he's playing with the ranges. And then also what the shot selection is. If they think that you're in close, oh, he's not going to throw elbows

or I'm not too worried about it. I'm not expecting them to land here per se. Whatever miscalculation you're making about the shot selection in that particular case and for those reasons, then it works out perfectly, right? with it at the same time uh and then you having an opponent who has a bit of a one-dimensional defense like your defense like your offense needs to have dimensions to it you know you can't do all things right Adesanya doesn't defend the same way as Wonderboy Thompson and both of their styles are not perfect and both of their styles have plenty of weaknesses but they also have a lot of different dimensions they can slip punches and they can step around and reset angles and they can do all, they can turn defense into offense. There's lots they can do with how they have employed defensive responsibility into their game. And a lot of the guys you see now in MMA who just hold their hands over their head, again, it's not wrong. It's not me to be like, Luke knows better. I'm not saying I know better. it's not wrong it's not me to be like Luke knows better I'm not saying I know better it's not about that but it is true I have seen it way too many times if you are one note with

that offense where you're consistently blinding yourself covering up like that uh guys who can get into that flow state right the guys who can be high volume and then bop bop bop and then they're chopping to the body and bop bop bop bop b, and then they're chopping to the body and bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, and then they're coming with an uppercut and then they back off. The guys who can let the volume go and they just kind of feel out the situation and have this inherent ability to let the right shots flow at the right time without a whole lot of direct thinking about it, they're going to tear people like that up, man.

They're going to tear them up. And especially when a guy like Tyo moisess who's tall so his knees can come up high so you're kind of bending down so that when he throws he can slash by the way i can't really throw elbows uh hardly at all anymore because i've had shoulder surgery and they're all bad people like you have to have kind of like real good shoulder dexterity to throw uh which I don't. But a guy like a tall, nimble, rangy guy like Joel Alvarez, that's the perfect kind of striking style for him. And against Moises, he just had all the wrong defense for that particular kind of challenge. And you saw Alvarez just absolutely shine.

So the linear attacks up the middle, getting Moises to bend over and then bringing all different kind of stuff behind it, linear attacks with the jabs, bringing all kinds of stuff behind it, those skip knees to close in range, and then he could attack to the body, push off, he could do an elbow off the clinch break. There's just so much he could do from there because he was playing with all. How can you throw all those weapons only if you can play with all those ranges right like what good is a skip knee all the way away

what good is a head kick if you're right in front it's everything he could do from all the different spaces and he could go to it instantly without having to think too much um i'm gonna skip the sean woodson fight for just a second just to talk about the elbows and keep it consistent. But this might have been my favorite fight on rewatch, I'll say. Dao-Wen Zhang, taking on, again, I'm going to mispronounce his last name, so I'm just going to say Kennedy. Good fighter on light heavyweight division. And Zetsu Yu-Kyu out of Saif Saoud's gym, 4-7 MA. Not a great performance by him.

I don't think he would probably disagree with that too much. Couldn't win the referee for this one. Dao and Jung had a really interesting moment there. And I thought it was interesting because you did hear Michael Bisping note that there was almost no footwork in the fight, which is quite correct. There was almost none. Didn't hear a lot of commentary, though, about what he was doing with his hands. So you had open stance on this one.

So you had one southpaw. I believe that was Kennedy was standing southpaw. And you had Dao-un-jung standing in orthodox. And what was so interesting was Dao-un-jung kept using his left hand to control the lead hand. So two lead hands. The lead hand of Jung, lead hand of Kennedy. And what was he doing with that? Everything.

So one, he's managing the distance. Like, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Two, you can actually pin it to someone's body if you wanted to throw something else behind it. And you could pin it here. If it's up high, you can pin it to their head.

You can actually take their hand. You could pin it to them. And then you could throw around it. We've talked about this with Volkanovsky. You can do that. And also, when you hold it, not only do I know where I am, I know where you are. I know where I can pin it to you. I can pull you in certain directions. I can pull your hand down so I can create openings with the hand. And if this hand is occupied, yes, my hand is occupied. But if I can bait you to throw,

which is what Dao Jung was doing a little bit, he was sort of acting a bit of a, he was going at lead at times, but a lot of times he was counteracting. He just knows what's coming. And plus, if you got a guy who you know is not a kicker and not much of a takedown threat, you can kind of just play with that space. He used that strategy perfectly. Glove control, where he's controlling the glove, he's controlling the lead wrist, sometimes the elbow, right? A little bit depending on where he was grabbing. And you have to think of it this way like in grappling what's what does almost everything start with starts with your grips in a gi sleeve and a collar right in uh no gi it could be a wrestling it could be a collar tie but everything starts with a grip you gotta this

is not exactly correct i'm just trying to explain conceptually what's happening here. But imagine what would happen if Jung grabbed the wrist of Kennedy and then didn't let go. Now, there are times when Kennedy fought out of it. I want to make a point here, though. He would rip his hand away. But then he would kind of go back to what he's doing. And so Jung would just go back to touching, touching, touching. But imagine he had kept it there. Kennedy would probably just pull it away. You wouldn't let someone do it. You would never let them establish a grip on you. You're not going to let another prize fighter just grab your wrist, and then it's just going to go unattended in a fight. You're going to lose. Everyone knows that.

You would never let them. You would peel the grip off and go back to what you're doing. I have to tell you, though, if you're up against a fighter who, when you peel your hand off and you go back to what you're doing and the offense is more or less 50, 50, and they keep touching, you're playing their game. You're not playing your game. You got to remember, dude, whenever you do anything, whether you want to pass guard or go for a submission or throw a particular strike to the extent possible. And many times it will not be possible, to the extent possible, you want to do it on your terms, not theirs, or not even equal terms. You don't want it to be 50-50.

50-50 is a fucking coin flip. Fuck that. You want to be able to put it on your terms. Israel Adesanya puts it on his terms. When Demian Maia grapples, he grapples you on your terms. Israel Adesanya puts it on his terms. When Demian Maya grapples, he grapples you on his terms, not yours. So the whole point of touching like that is it's not the functional equivalent of a grip. That's not what I mean. But it has the same kind of effect where you're letting him, it's a grip almost intermittent. I can touch it for a second. I can

touch it for a second. I can touch it for a second. And it has in many ways, not the functional equivalence, but there are similar rewards that can be reaped. I can hold it and pin it to you for just the second that I need it. I can gauge the distance. I can do all these things that a normal grip would also allow me to do if left unattended. It's almost like he's establishing a grip without having to keep it on locked the entire time. And so when you think of it that way, where, yeah, I would never let you do that. And then I would never go back to you just letting you re-grip. You have to keep stripping the grip, but you just can't keep going back to that scenario because now you're just constantly fighting out of a deficit. You let someone keep doing this long enough, you're going to be fighting

out of a deficit. So I was surprised that he let it go that long and that you know it wasn't just three minutes into a fight um but still too too long to let a guy just unattended grabbing your wrist like that and so uh the the elbow was interesting that you had from elvarez you had a bit of a slashing elbow coming again i can't quite rotate my wrist you know well enough to get the proper elbow and shoulder angle. I don't have any of the nimble dexterity. But you had a slashing kind of side elbow around this from Joel Alvarez. By the way, Spanish speakers might want to help me with this one. I asked my wife this too.

I'm like, okay, so the guy's from Spain and his name is Joel and it's spelled with a J. So why isn't it Joel? Because Joel Romero would be pronounced by my wife and some other people in Latin America by with a J. The Y would be a J sound. So it would be Joel to them. Right? Why is it Joel and not

Joel? I don't know the answer. She didn't know the answer either actually. It was kind of funny. All right, but speaking about the elbow, so his Da Eun Jung's was different. Rather than it being sort of a slide-slashing elbow. Now, the second elbow that Jung threw was a side kind of slashing elbow, or at least almost like a whipping, cracking elbow this way, kind of a thing. But the first one was it actually cocked back like a punch,

and Kennedy, I don't think, realized what it was. Now, his hand was up, but it must have come around just around the front. If you go back, and I did it just to be sure, if you watch in slow motion, the hand and the arm chambers like he's getting ready to throw a punch. What I think he was doing was he was constantly not just controlling where Kennedy was and controlling his lead hand. And then again, you know, learning to live with what's coming on that end.

Because by the way, he lets go of that at times about halfway through the fight. I should say halfway through the round at the 230 mark, he gets a little more free flowing, but then kind of comes back to it whenever he needs to. He kind of just used it to establish distance. I'm like, okay, where do I need to be to be out of the way and whatnot? But the point I'm trying to make is the elbow was chambered this way and then kind of came forward

like this. And I guess it's almost like the tip or inside there's a bone here that can come around the side and then it hit him in the head. And then you saw Kennedy take a step back but then kind of come back. It seemed like he was okay. But here's how you knew he wasn't. Then he gets his hands right back up.

The elbow hits it again, and then he's visibly wobbled from a elbow strike in the case of the second elbow strike that was completely blocked. I mean, if you're blocking an elbow 100% and it still rocks you, it probably means that, A, both elbows were hard, but that the first one really kind of got whipped

around the glove. And so what I think he was doing there was when he was controlling and then pot-shotting with his – remember, he's controlling with his hand, like Dao Jung, right, grabbing, grabbing, going around, coming around with this, get grabbing. He was trying to see where the guy's hands go when he tests for whatever he was looking for, and he probably got the guy's hands to go from here, or let's say I'm left-handed,

so somewhere around like this. What I think he was looking for was for this hand to come forward a little bit so they could open this lane. That's what I think he was looking for. If you're listening on the audio podcast, what I'm trying to say is I think he was looking to more closely center Kennedy's hands

rather than being outside of his face, a little bit closer to the inside of his face so that he could whip, he could chamber a punch that Kennedy probably thought was coming straight at him, right? Probably thought it was a jab. That's why the punch was chambered the way that it was. So Kennedy thinks it's coming right for him. He puts his hands right in front of his face, more or less, and then it actually slides by on the outside um as the trajectory of the strike uh changes as it changes shape from a chambered

punch to a kind of like a like a you know like a almost like a slapping elbow it's not quite the right word but an interesting an interesting way uh certainly to go about things great win by him that was extremely impressive so two nice wins there. But yeah, man, the big lesson for me, I was watching like, dude,

you're just going to let this guy keep touching you like this. You got it. You got to change it up. You got to switch stances. You got to, you know, fake a level change. You got to get him off of constantly touching the outside of your arm.

And then when they do that, every one of those is like, you know, uh, sonar. And they're going to find out kind of exactly where you are. They're going to control your lead hand the whole time. It's just not a great place to be. You got to move. You got to get all, or, you know, yeah, like start using, you know, fainting and then angle change and then circular, you know, lateral motion as you go around and you're circling and you're getting out of the way, but just standing in front and letting a guy grab you like that,

it's going to be bad for you. Sean Woodson taking on Colin Anglin. He wins TKO, about to do the punches at 430 of round one. This is an extremely impressive performance from Sean Woodson, who I know everyone said, you know, I don't want to bring it up because there's no point to, but it is relevant here. He does have a strange body type. He's got a giant melon. I'm in the giant melon club myself. I'm a man who understands these challenges. I, like Sean Woodson, cannot buy a snapback hat

and wear it because my head is so huge. Nevertheless, he's got long limbs. That's really the reason why I bring it up in a very short torso. He's got long limbs. That's really the reason why I bring it up in a very short torso. He's got long limbs. He used them quite effectively here. But the story of the fight is not just how good he was at maintaining range, although that was good. Colin Englund had a very hard time closing that distance at all. He also had a really hard time reading what was coming. And that, to me, is the story of this fight. Not only did Sean Woodson do a great job at keeping england at the end range at his range which was very far for colin i mean you could tell he had a hard time figuring out just how far back he needed to be and then even then you know a safe distance was really far away like the guy woods and his his limbs they just keep traveling it's like shocking how far they go for that featherweight

weight class but the other part was and this was the most impressive part to me dude his shot selection was excellent what do i mean by shot selection you have to throw the right strike for the right time you know for the right need and that there can be a lot of different ones you throw listen maybe you're supposed to throw a shot to the body because your coach called for it you threw a a left hook instead and knocked him out listen if the punch lands and it wins there can be a lot of different ones you throw. Listen, maybe you're supposed to throw a shot to the body because your coach called for it. You threw a left hook instead and knocked him out. Listen, if the punch lands and it wins, that's what matters most. But if you're trying to apply these things in a little bit more of a thoughtful way, certain strikes are going to work better at certain moments

against certain kinds of opponents and challenges. And he just seemed to be able to find not just a nice mix of things, of straight linear punches with hooking punches and that kind of a thing, also using his teep really well as a way to score, cause posture change and whatnot. But he was also just flowing out there. So when he was at end range, he was using end range kind of strikes. And then as it got closer, he was just really good about another opponent

occupying his hands, bringing him up. And then what did you see him roasting with? The body shots. I mean, I'm telling you, I want to go back to this. Again, this is not me saying this is bad defense. That's not the argument that I'm making. The argument that I am making is that an over-reliance on hands-up defense in modern MMA against anyone who's got decent striking, you're going to get fucking eaten alive doing that.

You're going to get eaten alive. You have to switch something up. You can do it somewhat. Again, some of it might not just be like okay. Some of it might be perfect in the right moment, good. Dude, again, in boxing, you saw Canelo Alvarez not quite hands up this high but kind of leaning and shelling and covering again in the right moment for the right context and the right

amounts it's exactly what you need it's not a question of right or wrong it's a question on how much you rely on certain forms of defense to protect you against high level opponents dude a high level guy like Sean Woodson you come up to him with this over and over again, he's going to eat you alive. Those body shots were fantastic. And my man was in a flow state the whole time. He looked like Neo in the fucking Matrix. He didn't even have to think about what he was throwing. He's thrown those strikes in practice and in sparring so many times.

So many times, excuse me, they just effortlessly began to just produce themselves. Really, really, really impressive shot selection from Sean Woodson. I really liked what he was choosing to go with, or at least what he chose to go with in practice, and then turn into muscle memory. How about that? But even then, he could recognize as the ranges changed and what his opponent was showing him changed, so did the particular kinds of strikes that he needed to. And again, he didn't really go to the body shots, as you notice. There was some body work, certainly with the legs at long range, but the best body work was almost when he was right drive down with almost maximum authority to a wide open opponent because his hands are up, you know, covering up whatever else he was doing. And he tore him up for it. That's great work from Sean Woodson, who I know had a setback. Who did he have a setback against? Who was it against? Yeah, Arosa. But that was back in 2020. Since then,

he beat Yusuf Zalal, which is a tough fight because Yusuf Zalal is very good. And then Colin Aylton, he wins here. Tremendous performance. Let me look at some of his numbers if I can here very quickly, and then we'll call it a day with one more fight. In this one, Sean Woodson, let's see. He, here we go, against Colin Anglin. Man, they gave him, in three minutes, he landed 50 strikes and threw 107. Wow. Impressive. And listen to these numbers. 40%.

This is what he targeted. So this is what he targeted. He targeted 46% to the head, 34% to the body, 20% to the legs. That's a nice, very good distribution of, um, of targeting most of them at distance, of course, but that's, you know, you see what I mean? Just mixing it all up, all the different ways he can do it. Really nice stuff, man. He landed, uh, he landed more significant strikes than Anglin even attempted. Anglin attempted 40 total strikes.

Woodson landed 50 significant strikes. Yikes. And then last but certainly not least, let's go to the final fight here that we have for me. Co-main event for Bellator. Not the most interesting fight, but it is worth paying attention to

because here's a guy who switched weight classes. Now I'm doing the BC bit. Linton Vassell ran to Ryan Bader. He got stopped. And then Phil Davis, he got stopped. This was in 2017 and 2018 at light heavyweight. He's a huge light heavyweight. So then he moves up to heavyweight in 2019 but his first

fight was against valentine moldovsky who is the interim champ as it stands right so that uh right i believe valentine moldovsky is the interim champ if i'm not mistaken yes he won the interim bellator heavyweight champion okay so you can't beat that guy so he fights sergey haritanov and wins he fights honey marks and wins, but that's also not the same as beating like, you know, Sergei Haritonov is a legend, but he's old and honey marks is,

you know, he's had some highs, but he's been, he's been, you know, outside of, he's been in major promotions, but he's been losing for a while.

I mean, let me look at his record. Yeah. I mean, he's won. He hasn't won two in a row since 2017. So he's been inconsistent and, um, he hasn't won two in a row since 2017 so he's been inconsistent and um he hasn't beaten anyone with a wikipedia entry since 2017 so yeah so you know we're not talking

about the very best that the division has to offer here even if i take him you know seriously as a threat so then you have this fight and i thought okay Fortune is a natural heavyweight. Not as big, but much better wrestler. Fast. You know, Linton Vassell is athletic, but heavyweight is clearly not his natural weight class. He's a little bit slower.

And I thought Tyrell Fortune was going to have the speed edge. His striking has come a long way and his wrestling has come a long way. And that just didn't really play out the way I thought it would. One, Linton Vassell had much more strength than I thought he was going to. And I knew he was, like, he's bricked up. It's not like that's surprising. But at heavyweight, I didn't know how that was going to go.

And it didn't go well for Tyrell Fortune is the first thing I would say. But the real key to this fight was Fortune, at times, was able to do well as it related to pure wrestling exchanges or as much as you can have pure wrestling exchanges in MMA. But when it came time to Matt Russell or even Matt Grapple, he completely lost his way. He would try to stuff a takedown and then not depart from the position, like not trying to really move away from it. And then Vassil will just use that to score some reversal or get on top or move to side control and turn him over. Or even then, get a half, like a hook in, and then opposite side wrist control,

and then left hands are just going unobstructed as they're against the fence. Like some kind of modern control position. And that's basically how a couple of the rounds went where they weren't obvious wins, these wrestling exchanges. Sometimes they were. Sometimes you could get them down. But there was a couple of times where Fortune was not fighting out of a deficit. Then he would put one hand down

and then there goes linton vasel to his back and now the whole round is basically or at least the next few minutes are going to be spent taking an l it was weird it was weird because some of my initial impressions i thought were right about how the speed and athleticism would pair up. But I guess I was surprised at some of the defensive grappling of Tyrell Fortune. He's very talented, very athletic. He's got great trainers in the Lally brothers, but that was a big gap in skill is that one particular area. And to me, if it wasn't for that, maybe Vassell could have won if he had gotten more.

Obviously, if he couldn't have any of the success on the ground in the way that he did, he would have gone to another path to get it. He could not have won this fight striking. I will maintain that. Again, maybe the British gentleman could have got it, Linton Vassell, with wrestling. But I don't know. That was, I was very surprised by that.

I was very surprised by that. And that's it. I know some folks want to talk very quickly about the Alicia Bumgarner and Terry Harper fight for honorable mention. Maybe you could mention Chaos Williams versus Miguel Baeza, but we kind of went over both of those

on Have You Seen This Shit for Morning Combat, so I won't repeat it here, but this is what what i let me just say one last thing about this this is what i mean when i watch mma here is a card with not a whole lot of names in the ufc case belt war ii not a whole lot of big names on there and i don't know that this video is going to do all that well because there was no real big names on it and yet what you're actually paying attention to and what you are invested in is the fight itself just between joel alvarez and daun jung you had these elbow attacks that were absolutely spectacular you throw in what sean woodson was up to and then the reads these quick amazing you know uh reflexive decision making from a guy like song yodong and then you go down the list but there's other fights we could have gone to we

didn't even get to it's like dude every week if you're watching high level fighting and that's a big if you're going to get high level action on some level even the regional scene will produce these crazy knockouts because there's often a talent disparity that produces them that is a little more extreme than what you get at the highest level but this is what I mean you got to fall in love not with the storylines or your favorite camps or what your favorite witty fighter says what you have to fall in love with is the act of fighting itself the science behind it yes the beauty too you can the art and you can enjoy that as well that's all part of it but once you once the fighting is what matters to you and

not the other things and you realize how much better fighting is getting over time you know you can complain about this card. And I'm not telling you it's the best card I've ever seen. It wasn't, although it was pretty good. But you don't need big names to have really important, interesting, fun, thoughtful mixed martial arts. You really don't. You can get it from just about, as long as it's high level, you can get it from just about any kind of card these days.

Really is true. Absolutely. And I mean that with 100% sincerity. Okay. That's it. What did I miss? What were some of your favorite fights? Leave a comment below.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about what you saw. And we'll be back next week. All right? Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe if you're listening on a podcast. Give this show a thumbs up. We appreciate it. Give Morning Combat a thumbs up. We appreciate it. Give Morning Combat a nice review.

I will talk to you guys next Monday. And until then, enjoy the fights.