MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 252 Recap: Cormier-Miocic 3, Sean O'Malley | Benavidez vs. Angulo | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 56

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

On episode 56 of Morning Kombat, Luke and Brian breakdown a massive weekend in combat sports, including Stipe Miocic's UD win over Daniel Cormier at UFC 252 and David Benavidez' victory over Alexis Angulo. The boys also discuss Sean O'Malley's loss to Chito Vera and Jair Rozenstruik's TKO of Junior Dos Santos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is Monday, August 17th, 2020, and it is time, Donks, for Morning Combat. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo. I am joined by the gentleman on the other side of the screen. You know him from CBS Sports as well as various couches in his basement. Drunk on a Sunday, passed out, shirt up to his his nipples not really knowing what's going on with the world it is my friend and yours brian campbell hi bc as the great john sebastian once saying luke

what a day for a day drink yesterday all right but that's behind us okay all your viewers out there you can breathe out so you can breathe us in right mk i am ever along with excitement and uh and feels down below for today's episode not just luke because we're coming off uh d say steep a3 and such a historic event but you know we can remove that fourth wall and let people know that you're dressed in a t-shirt today because you're underslept and very angry and i love that spice i'm angry at the world generally and i'm in particular angry for no good reason other than I just haven't slept. I haven't slept more than six hours. That's the most I've gotten in any night in over like nine or ten days.

So I'm ready to die. Like the notorious B.I.G. Where's my nightly encounter? Fuckface. Very quickly, if we can, BC, we're going to get to UFC 252 today. Showtime Championship Boxing was back on Saturday night. We'll look ahead to a bunch of fights, both on MMA and boxing sides, this coming weekend. First things first, though, if you would like to try Showtime

so you can watch that championship boxing, you can go to Showtime.com right now. 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can kick rocks. If you'd like to buy some MK merch, and why wouldn't you? Store.show, that's S-H-O dot com. It's up and available right now. Go get your hat, your beanie, your shirt, your tumbler, your coffee mug, and everything else in between. And BC, what am I forgetting to plug here? I must be forgetting something. Well, plug us, Luke, because the MK just don't stop for hoes we get around i hope people saw us on the showtime weigh-in feed on friday

ahead of benavides angulo and look uh we're not really allowed to talk about it but once legal makes some clearances there may be some more bonus content coming out from mk that i may have may or may not have had a hand in uh disrupting but uh Luke, I think what the... I cannot wait to tell that story. But, yes, that's true. But, you know, I'm sure the viewers, they're waiting for one thing and hoping for it. Another Luke-crisised tech fail meltdown coming their way after the Abuela cooking incident. Your wife showing up on the speaker box and you sending her to hell last week. And then your damn live chat on Friday.

I don't know what happened at the end, but it was, you know, it was good TV at the very least. You know, you try to simplify your workflow. I have, I only really have two cameras, the Sony a7 III and the Sony a6400, and I wasn't even using the a6400, just the a7 III to go back and forth, but I have to

constantly change the settings from when I use it in this position or for dissected. So I said, you know what, let me get the a6400 back in rotation had a full charge before the live chat and then it went to zero right at the end when someone asked me about QAnon and I wanted to eat a bullet it was really really just a very bad day that day see I thought it was ViacomCBS's quality control team stepping in there yeah might have been that too. Secret forces at work. All right, well, let's get to it. A lot on our plate, BC, so let's start to eat.

Topic number one, UFC 252 is now in the books. Daniel Cormier loses a unanimous decision across the board. I think it was 249-46, it was 148-47 to Stipe Miocic. BC, let's start with you my dearest friend i'm going to ask the question this way all people can seem to talk about is the eye poke that happened i believe at the end of the third round because of it can you still call stipe the greatest ufc heavyweight of all time? You're damn right you can, Luke.

And I know I'm not going to do what you all think I'm going to do, which is come out here and bring up the eye poke and try to say that Stipe didn't win this, right? Daniel lost it. No, the third time's a charm. Crown him. Stipe is what he is, the greatest heavyweight in UFC history. And if he can continue this run, oh, by the way, you know, may be able to creep up on fate or in that conversation as well, because this resume

is sick. Yes. He's won certain fights with intangibles Luke, but this specific fight, I thought he won with his intelligence, his adjustments and his stamina. He was a perfect heavyweight fighter in there on this night, But let's bring up that eye poke. Here's where I say Daniel Cormier, a guy that I love. You know that. I love me some DC. He doesn't have a leg to stand on on this argument, and I'm not necessarily saying that he was attempting to. He said in the post-fight interview, it is what it is.

I couldn't see out of the eye. It was black. But you lose the right to complain about it or have even your supporters lean on that when you have a history now did this eye poke potentially affect the outcome of this third fight absolutely but when you have a history of poking stipe so bad in the first two fights that he needed surgery after the second one and had his career cut up for grabs of whether he would continue and then you come out in round one as Cormier did and I poke him one more time I'm sorry you lose the benefit of the doubt you lose all of that that's kind of like fighting karma in a weird way coming back to bite you and um you know Luke

it is what it is let me just make let me make sure hold on I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna pitch it right back to you just to be clear it's karma that he got poked in the eye? I'm not going to go to the death on the karma thing, but when you have a history of doing that and you get away with it, and in some cases it may have helped you win, although I obviously know he lost that rematch, it's going to come back to you. It was an accident.

I'm not saying he purposely trying to foul people, but when you do this, it come back to you. It was an accident. I'm not saying he purposely trying to foul people, but when you do this, it comes back on you. When Oscar De La Hoya got robbed against Tito Trinidad, he lost his case to argue because he ran the last three rounds. He gave up the opportunity to fight on his way out. I just think in this specific case, not that I think DC's leaning on that, but even his supporters can't lean on that. He's got a history of doing that to Stipe, in this damn fight so it happened against him that's some random bad luck but it

is what it is at the end of the day look yeah i mean here's the the view i take and thinking about it a little bit longer which is number one i do not personally i'm not suggesting that's exactly what you're saying but people being like oh fuck d this is karma, this is what he gets for poking DC in the eye. You had to be a sort of disturbed person to wish blinding on a fighter, because yes, there's no denying over the course of three fights, DC obviously could have exercised greater caution. That is without debate. Second of all, I'm going to start putting some blame on the referees. How many eye pokes did DC have, some worse than others, of course,

where he didn't get a single point taken across three fights? Three fights and not one point taken. He had an eye poke in all of them. And again, some are going to be worse than others. I don't think this one was as bad as the one maybe in the first fight. Again, who's to know? We'd have to ask Stipe. But the point being is just that. You got to be kidding me that they never did anything about it. And of course, guys are not going to exercise as much discipline as they should if the referees are never enforcing it. So they have to take a long look in the mirror here and ask themselves how in three fights we got four eye pokes

and guys had to get surgery on one end. And so far it looks like DC might not have to get surgery, but he might have to as well. I look squarely on the officiating crew for that. Not just each one, but all of them in totality. And that's sort of my broader point about the eye poke BC. It's that if you count what have they fought roughly 10 rounds right uh three and some change in the second one

nearly around in the first one so more or less 10 rounds in 10 rounds who sustained the most amount of eye damage it is probably stipe miocic in aggregate he got poked in every single one of those intervals. That sounded a little weird. But you know what I mean, in the eye. And so the point being here is, as bad as that, I think DC's singular eye poke for that moment in time was probably worse than any individual eye poke that Stipe had to deal with. But Stipe had to deal with it as a constant problem over the course of 10 rounds. And so for those reasons, it's like, do I think it played a role?

I don't see how it didn't on either end. But one guy in aggregate got it much worse than the other. DC is right. It just kind of is what it is. But look, I don't think it's bad to use the term karma and necessarily mean you're like wishing it upon somebody. Like Canelo Alvarez in boxing. He's got a long history of giving the benefit

of the doubt in close fights. One of these fights, Luke, our eyes will tell us he has won it and he's going to get the scorecards against him. And at that point we'll be like, you know, it's kind of cosmic combat karma coming back on you. Doesn't mean people are with a voodoo doll wishing it on him,

but I think that's the case with DC, because, Luke, I'm going to ask you this question. If there had been no history of eye pokes between them, and this third fight went the way it did with the one eye poke, Stipe against DC, I think we would be talking afterwards, hey, man, the ref missed that. Maybe we should do a fourth fight or something because DC was severely compromised the last two-plus rounds.

But when you have that history, you lose that benefit of the doubt. I think that's right. If this was a unique moment in time, we were dealing with that. There's no doubt in my mind. I don't know that the commission would be receptive to it because the commission circles the wagons and never, ever asks themselves, what could we do better in terms of facilitating result integrity they just don't care about that kind of thing in

any sort of serious way but to your point at least there would be talk about hey man you're really gonna let it go out on this and and and because of their history now you can't really say that also it just deserves to be said dc got dropped long before the eye poke and nearly finished. That eye was initially messed up. Now, for it to go black clearly comes from the eye poke itself. I'm not saying he was almost there and then the eye poke finished him off. I think it probably hurt his vision and wasn't nearly as bad until he got poked in the eye. But still, he was on the losing end of that fight. I mean, understand something. In the first fight, BC, Stipe got finished in the first round.

In the second fight, DC basically won on the feet and then took him down and controlled him for the round. Easy 10-9 Cormier. In the third fight, you could maybe say that Stipe lost the first round if you want to count that last rally at the very, very end of that one hard right hand defense line. And then you could say maybe he stole the round. But Stipe was winning that round basically up until then, and maybe even still with that. The tides had clearly turned between these two. Stipe was the one who continued to get better. DC did not. DC made adjustments, and i take those seriously

but the facts are what they are you go from getting finished to losing 10-9 to basically winning outright again you know somewhat debatable there it shows you the progression and he dropped him in the second and then he clearly won the third so so for me the point is here it's like yes is did the eye poke make a difference in that fight sure in aggregate a bit of a wash and stipe showed himself from every different phase of the game to have taken more of adjustments from round from the second to the third fight and then bringing back in general what had worked between the first two dc had a much harder time with that so by the time he got poked in the eye, it was too little, too late anyway. card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full

and on time every month level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply fair very fair and uh i want to ask you this because uh you know i'm a dc guy and i thought he just got beat he didn't beat himself he just got beat uh am i surprised that he abandoned wrestling after round one and never tried again? Just like in the second fight? Yes. But I think he must have known where his gas tank was and figured his best chance was to keep it on the feet. Again, shout out to Stipe for the varying of his style and his adjustments. But overall, Luke, I didn't necessarily feel like DC wanted to be in there as a whole. I didn't see that same eye of the tiger and fighting spare of the past. I think he got frustrated when Stipe was closing his avenues to victory

and separate from that eye poke. You know, we found out who was the better fighter in the third fight, which is what the third fight was all about and supposed to be created for. And, you know, I just saw a frustrated DC who, the more that fight went on, it was like, we're playing it out. We're playing out the string here. That's right. I think I also just saw a guy. He had that moment in the end of the first.

Okay, that's enough to maybe on certain people's scorecards steal the round. I think I may have done it in real time. And then watching it back again, I was like, no, Stipe won that round. Clearly winning the second, nearly stopping him there. And then the third sort of running away with it, and then the fifth running away with it. And by the way, even after the eye poke, DC's best round, certainly in terms of volume and success at landing, was round four. It was the one after he was dealing with it, which isn't to say that the eye poke helped, but still that he was able to muster some of his offense.

Look, at 41 years of age, he was trying to make up for a mistake that he made in the second fight, which he did not necessarily have to, right? He got a little lackadaisical with the threat that Stipe was, and it was too little too late when he was chasing it here at 41 years of age. Stipe continued to get better. He continued to improve. He continued to show that he was still capable of maximizing his skills and adding to them in meaningful ways. And so I really take my hat off to Stipe. I thought it was an excellent performance by him. To me, this was the best of the three fights.

I know a lot of people disagree with that, but I really like him. You had something else to add? I think the blood and guts of the second one made it a little bit better. I thought the ending of this fight, the last round and a half, really kind of pulled it down. But the first three rounds were very exciting and tense. I just want to say this, that I felt like DC would have wrestled more

if he felt comfortable that he was ahead in the fight and had built up a lead. I think the frustration that we saw, and maybe some of the people saying like I just did, I'm not really sure DC looked like he wanted to be there, was this Luke, he hit Stipe in this third fight with the kitchen sink. He hit him with his best Sunday punches, I thought two or three times he hit Stipe in this third fight with the kitchen sink. He hit him with his best Sunday punches, I thought, two or three times.

And Stipe was there and he kept coming. I think that's when DC kind of realized, like, you know, I can out-wrestle him and get tired here. That's not going to win me the fight. The more he saw this younger, fresher, hungrier man keep coming, I think that slowly worn down the fight inside of him. And that's all credit to Stipeipe who is not just intangibles who had the right game plan who had the right everything in this fight and look it's a hell

of a win it's a absolutely uh huge win to kind of put on top of your career at this point for Stipe in a career that is not ending anytime soon very quickly DC's legacy now is he at the second tier of all-time great still yeah I think he is look uh and I don't think it's wrong to say look he's kind of a bridesmaid historically now and that's not taking away from his surefire hall of fame two division champion a guy who came very close to being one of the best all time but you lose to the man of the era twice in each division John Jones and Stipe Miocic it kind of puts you in a bridesmaid role. And one thing about DC's career,

his losses have come to only the very best, but there's been some real heartbreaking elements in there where he tried his best to get over that hill and just couldn't. It doesn't mean we'll look at him any less historically, but it does mean we were right, Luke, in saying that this third fight was the most prestigious in some ways in UFC history

because had DC won this he really could have made that final leap to the top I don't disagree with any of that Jay wants to move us Jay wants us to move along one last question on this BC and I'll give it to you again Dana White was asked at the post-fight press conference what about Jon Jones versus Stipe Jon Jones very active on Twitter that night in a way we hadn't seen him clearly interested in returning clearly interested in returning. Clearly interested in competing. Probably more so against DC, but still, against Stipe, he seemed to be all in.

And then when White was asked about it, he was like, no, we got somebody else in mind. Okay, why are they doing this, BC? They want to save money on a Stipe versus Francis fight. They want to reduce Jones' leverage. Why wouldn't you make a john jones fight against stipe which to me seems like the best of all possible outcomes yeah i have to go with the reduce the leverage of john jones based on the public fight that dana and john had before abu

dhabi came in and and we had you know access to bigger money during this quarantine uh the the best news about this situation and you know if daniel's probably never going to fight again everyone including dana is sort of biting their lip and saying, we'll see, we'll see. If he doesn't want to go out on his own terms for big money, I know DC said, I only want to fight for titles. So obviously there is a scenario, by the way, where Jon Jones can become your heavyweight champion

and DC can come out of retirement for one more. But put that aside, the fact that we have three studs right now, Stipe, Francis, and Jon Jones, that could fight each other a couple times, this is incredible news for the heavyweight division, and I do think, Luke, the right move, and I get people that are like, look, what else does Francis have to do, I'm sorry, Jon Jones is the best of all time, and a giant draw, the move right now is to substitute Jon Jones in, and put him against Stipe, Francis gets the winner. You cannot lose here. You cannot lose business-wise, importance-wise. These

three are going to make some fun-ass fights. And did you see some of the early odds makers putting Francis as a potential favorite over Stipe, putting Jones as a favorite over Stipe? Very interesting stuff right there. I'd love to see any of those fights, but Jones is the fight to make right now. Lastly, I would just add, I wouldn't mind seeing Francis

get the title shot that I do think he he richly deserves but if that's the argument the ufc is going to make like oh francis has earned it it's like lol the things you're doing in many other divisions that totally counteract that make that argument utterly hollow but we'll come back to that at a later time all right point number two here bc we go to the co-main event. Sean O'Malley losing in the first round via TKO to Marlon Chito Vera, but not without some controversy. It appeared that O'Malley suffered some kind of leg injury roughly two minutes into the contest or so. He eventually fell under his own weight trying to fight with this sort of, you know, deadened, broken, damaged leg, whatever you want to call it.

Marlon Vera gets on top and absolutely drills him with an elbow that maybe knocked him out, maybe it didn't, but certainly was a vicious shot to the point where Herb Dean stepped in. And very importantly, you did not see any protest from one Sean O'Malley, which tells us a lot. So the question is, if I can, I'd like to go first on this one, because I had a change of heart, PC. The question is, is this a fight that the UFC needs to run back? Well, I'll say this.

If the UFC wants to run it back in the same way that Bellator wanted to run it back for Michael Chandler and Brent Primus because they feel like their guy, in that case Chandler, in this case O'Malley, could, under different circumstances, get a win that he would need to to climb up the rankings and that people wanted to see. Like maybe Chito thinks, hey, I beat this guy once, I can do it again, and his popularity is good for boosting my visibility.

I'm okay with it. I don't think there's any problem with it in that sense. If all the parties feel like they can gain from it, why not? If the idea is to run it again because the result is not considered to be legitimate, then that's where I draw the line. Now, on fight night and on my post-fight show, I watched it and I thought to myself, you know what, I don't know exactly what happened here. And I think maybe the UFC does need to run this back. They do need to get behind this effort because who can say for sure how Sean injured himself or how he was injured. And for Cheeto

to be all celebratory in a case where it's murky, you know, I don't know if that's the best look. And then I really reviewed what evidence is available. And to be clear, we've not heard from Sean O'Malley himself or heard what the medical diagnosis actually is. And until we have that information, we should probably pause this a little bit. But I think all the evidence that we have points to this being not controversial at all. Chito Vera, either some people think it was from a check or around 254 of the first round, he drilled him with a hard shot. And from there, his leg was just never the same. I admire his guts trying to fight out of it, but he fell down. And then Chito Vera, we knew has vicious ground upon. We knew. Dude, Chito Vera is not to be trifled with. He is a

tough, durable veteran and talented guy. He's not just some dude who's a stand in there who can take a shot. He is a guy who can deliver them back as well and can do it with skill and patience. And that is exactly what he did. It is not a surprise that he beat someone like Sean O'Malley. And for me, if I'm in the Sean O'Malley camp, the question is not so much, is this guy talented when he has space and time to do his razzle dazzle? Obviously he is. He looked amazing for the first couple of minutes there, BC. his razzle dazzle obviously he is he looked amazing for the first couple of minutes there bc but the other question is dude is he durable enough quite literally to withstand the kind of punishment that he's going to have to face in that bantamweight

division dude it is all heavy hitters up there it is all monsters who deliver serious shots to the body whether it is concussive blows across the jaw, rib roasters, or leg kicks like this. You want to be a bantamweight buddy? Bring a helmet. You better strap in. It is very, very difficult. And there are some questions at this point about to what extent, not that he has a bad chin, of course,

but about different bodies sustain injury loads differently. And if that's an issue for him, it's going to be a longstanding one. Yeah, strap it on, strap it in. Let you begin, Luke, there. I think those are fair takes. And I think that there's two things that can be mutual at the same time, that this was both correctly a breakout performance from Marlon Vera. He gets all the credit for the win and is able to use that to catapult into the top ten and maybe get a top five matchup.

And at the same time, Luke, I think it was a wonky enough loss where, you know, O'Malley wasn't solved and he doesn't necessarily get hurt longterm from this with the exception of this slowing down his rise. And then obviously anything, any fallout from the injury, unlike the Chandler premise fight, which you mentioned.

And unlike, you know, Weidman Silva too, where when both of those fights ended, you're like, well, it was the freak injury that caused it. I think it was Marlon Vera by being so aggressive and opportunistic of leaping in with that absolutely vicious ground and pound that he was able to

remove some of that. Because if eventually O'Malley just gives away and taps out because of the leg, you really don't get credit. In this case, Vera was able to take a lot of that credit and deserve it. I don't think you need to of that credit and deserve it i don't think you need to run it back right away i don't think there's um even though it was unanswered questions it kind of reminded me a lot of lesnar mere one where you know we didn't get the real answer at who was the better fighter but the win was sneaky enough where that guy can move on and we'll probably see it again down the road i think you see this rematch again down the road. I think Vera should be rewarded for this win, for being tough, for causing that injury

if he checked the kick or what have you. And I think for O'Malley, it's just get healthy and we'll start this train all over again in terms of catapulting you to the mainstream and finding out if you actually are tough and durable enough. Not a good ending, Luke. But at the very least least we have a bright story to talk out of that and that's vera having won six of his last seven and really proving that he's an

absolute badass and you know he can compete with a lot of these guys in this load of top 10 no doubt about it but the one thing that deserves to be mentioned here is the media was taking some heat from the fan base and not without not without good reason you know me that steven a smith package when they were introducing uh o'malley as like this mix between lamar jackson and lebron and i don't know it was like lamar jackson luka donchich and i forget who the other one was and i was like are you out of your fucking mind like what are you talking about you absolute zero nothing well you're just absurd level i mean literal comic comic levels of hyperbole it's not that sean o'malley is not talented i do believe in terms of his actual ability he's crazy talented he does have i think

what it takes but you got to put it together in fights and that means injuries and that means dudes who have great chins and that means being unlucky and that means you got to be lucky on some ways too right Fedor didn't win 30 fights in a row or 30 fights out of his first 31 just on skill he got lucky a couple of times Fujita rocked him he still found a way to win but that got you know pretty dicey for him and so this is my point It's like I think he has the things that the media have pinpointed, but there has been an outrageous amount of hyperbole culminating in that Stephen A. Smith package on fight night. It's time to dial it back just a little bit. Let's see at 25 years of age what he can do.

I think that the interesting part about Vera is that he has not shown that same razzle-dazzle, but he has been in the trenches against really tough dudes. He fought Lineker and took Lineker's best shots. Like, it was nothing. He was right there with him. That's an L on his record, but it's one of those moments where you're like, okay, all right, this guy, you know,

if he can round the corner from a talent standpoint, he's got everything else he needs in terms of just being fight ready for this kind of a, you know, in the trenches division. I think Sean O'Malley is a little bit different in that regard. And maybe that means, you know, getting in the weight room or I don't know, I'm not a physical conditioning coach. I wouldn't know what the proper answer to that is because I don't think it's his chin and I don't think it's his mindset it could just be his body I made this point yesterday BC we had a tight end here in DC Jordan Reed when he was healthy and running routes dude he was an absolute marvel to watch but he had constant concussion problems every time he got tackled something happened to his ribs or his legs or his knees he just could

not stay healthy we will see we will see if that's a similar fate that Sean O'Malley might suffer. Yeah, and look, it's obviously a disappointment the way the fight went down because you didn't get the answers you needed coming in. But we'll find them out. We'll find them out, and, you know, there's no reason to panic. Let's not panic about Sugar Sean, all right? No panicking. All right, so let's talk about showtime.

Hey, you know who shouldn't panic is Jay in my ear, right? Jay. We've got a lot of show left. Panicking Jay. All right. Showtime Championship Boxing. Let's go through this if we can to return to the Mohegan Sun. Over the weekend, David Benavidez scoring essentially a 10th round TKO,

sort of retirement on the stool kind of a thing, over Alexis Angulo. BC, we did the weigh-in shows, and Benavidez missed weight, losing his title on the scales. He was immediately apologetic and sort of had indicated that maybe it was him not having enough preparation, not realizing that with these new COVID protocols, he wouldn't have access to the things he normally had access to. I found that to be a, you know, look, you still signed the dotted line, said you were going to do the weight and make it. So you're still responsible, but not a crazy excuse. Seems pretty reasonable. Did he look good enough to redeem himself on Saturday?

Yeah, I mean, he looked absolutely fantastic. He looked so good, Luke, in just dominating Angulo. Now, look, Angulo was more raw and more of a limited fighter, but the distance that Benafidez was able to keep so that he never got caught with anything big and then did his typical flare of the flurries he switched stances this time i mean he showed more wrinkles than normal he redeemed the best he good for what was an embarrassing situation certainly some of the covid related parts and the unprecedented nature plays into that also at the same time what he mentioned was you know this isn't me being lazy or unprepared

maybe i messed up my diet a little bit, but you know, stamina wise, preparation wise, training camp, I'm there. You saw that in the ring and I think we did Luke and that doesn't cover up what he did. He has to pay the price for being unprofessional ultimately, despite the things against him. And he did, he lost that WBC title for the second time, both times, not for things that happened in the ring, but I think he fought well enough where if his reward is inevitably a vacant title bout to try to regain that green belt for the third time maybe against his his original mandatory challenger and avni yildirim the the slugger from turkey which would be a fun fight that's not bad i think this will

delay his his launch into the unification realm to try to get guys like caleb plant in the ring who you know they hate each other we want to see that fight a lot that will slow that down maybe put another hurdle in the road but Benavidez absolutely did what he needed to do which was handle his business in the ring to sort of mute some of that criticism coming his way yeah the interesting part about this was what was bothering me to watch I had the two screens up on saturdays he was absolutely tooling alexis angulo i mean it was not it was competitive in the sense that it took he took his time and he was patient and then angulo was as tough as advertised right okay that that was true but the whole narrative shifted from he is going to do what he needs to do to set up these big

fights i know he had the mandatory against yildirim but you know the caleb plant fights he was basically planting seeds in the minds of fans and promoters and everybody else that these were fights you needed to see and he still did that but the narrative switched to what can he do tonight to make up for what he lost yesterday and that just sets everything back so was it the kind of performance where he went in there and just bulldozed him in four rounds and knocked him out and blew him out of his shoes to the point where you could just forget everything and you're and you're making everyone skip all the the you know oh he has a mandatory you know when he comes back we'll skip all that we don't need to worry

about that at all we'll just we'll just fast forward him you know it wasn't some kind of miraculous experience um it was as you mentioned what he needed to do. But the problem was what he needed to do shifted from setting up Caleb Plant to just getting back on the tracks. So while he did that, you can't get around the setback that he put for himself. It's not the end of the world, but it certainly is unfortunate. In a time when, in COVID, promoters of all stripes need their best talents in rotation against their best fighters when possible. This was a bit of an unfortunate one. Still, he looked pretty good. Now, I want to talk about that co-main event, if we can, the vacant interim WBA lightweight title between Rolando Romero and Jackson Marines. I don't use the word robbery very often, but that was a robbery.

In fact, I'm usually one of these folks who says, listen, with the way that scoring works and the kind of latitude that we provide, you need to understand that based on ringside position and what you saw and what you heard, your own internal subjective biases, any number of other factors, there can really be a lot of circumstances where a round can go to either fighter. This was not one of those fights. I had Mourinho's winning, I think, eight to four, essentially. Not only did he lose, one of the judges had it 118 to 110 for Romero. Now, Romero had moments in this fight to be clear.

He is heavy-handed. There were rounds he won quite cleanly, and when he did, he is certainly impressive. Make no mistake about it. But we knew Mourinho had been in much longer fights, had a little bit more experience in that way, and it showed. It showed, BC.

I am shocked at this result. First of all, how do you score it, and what do you make of what happened? I had it 8-4 for Mourinho. I thought 9-3 would have even been acceptable. I know our guy Steve Farhood on the Showtime broadcast had it 117-111. I thought that was a fair score the same way. Look, here's the brief defense I'll give of the judges. Two of the three of those guys, Dontrella, Glenn Feldman from Connecticut,

known them a long time. They're two of the most respected judges in the game. The fact that it was unanimous does sort of tell you one thing. Maybe there were elements of it that we missed. Look, they're in that empty arena, whereas we found out from the UFC fights in the empty arenas, you hear the impact of the punches much more. So even though it seemed from our eyes that Rolando Romero was clearly outboxed and outclassed in some ways,

you know, there's always the value that the fewer amount of punches he's landed may have had such a triggering effect ringside that they would score that more. But that's the last defense I'll sort of give them because it seemed like everyone watching at that could see that this was a test to find out really how good is Rody Romero

11 12 fights into his career and I think what we learned in the end was he's still aggressive he still got pop but he needs to figure out some of these wrinkles he needs this type of experience these tough fights of somebody who can stretch him out and can you know make him work and I thought he was following Mourinho's the whole fight and always seemingly a step behind this was a breakout boxing performance for a young fighter in Jackson Marinas who hadn't really gotten his close-up yet. And instead, it's one of those sort of womp, womp, hashtag that's boxing moments where the younger, brighter fighter with the bigger following

and maybe the quote-unquote money guy A-side gets the decision that most people don't think he deserved. You hate that in boxing because too often that becomes a regular thing in boxing where we don't even get mad at it because we're so used to seeing it. I'm trying to see it through the judge's eyes. Yes, this was an ugly fight in the second half,

but I can watch that two, three more times and I feel like I'm going to tell you Jackson Marinas was the better, slicker boxer, landed much more punches on the CompuBox side and just looked like he controlled that ring for the 12 rounds. was the better, slicker boxer, landed much more punches on the CompuBox side, and just looked like he controlled that ring for the 12 rounds. This isn't a death sentence for Romero. Obviously, it comes out with a win,

but he does have to add more wrinkles and get more experience on this level. I want to make a point here, and if I had not seen this study, I would be like everyone else, and I heard Steve Farhood say the same thing that you just said, which is, some of these guys, I forget which judge that it was, had judged a thousand boxing fights.

Let me tell you how little I care about that. Major League Baseball did a study recently, and what they did was they looked at their umpiring crews, and they tried to evaluate, in terms of balls and strikes or various other calls that they could make, depending on their position, first and third baseline, whatever, how good they were. Do you know which group ended up being and performing the worst? The answer is the group that had been there the longest. It turned out that if you had 20-plus years or more of experience at the major league level, not 20 years umpiring,

20 years as a major league umpire, they were by far the worst performers in terms of accurately identifying and being consistent with a strike zone among various other calls. It turned out that the most competent group were not the newest because they made errors as well, but it was somewhere in that five to 10 year range when they had enough experience on the job to begin to get through most of those errors that happen up front. That is the sweet spot. Let me tell you something. I don't think that there is any solution to this because we know the reality with boxing. Commission circle

the wagons. I'm sure these judges are nice people. I don't think that they're bad people. Don't misunderstand me. But this idea that because they have tenure, that they deserve reverence, you need to throw that out the window. Because they have tenure, they have overstayed their welcome. That study from Major League Baseball was absolutely eye-opening for me. If there is not ongoing competency tests, and that does not come from judging fights, it comes independent of that if there is not ongoing competency tests i do not care about the argument that judges have been there a long time and therefore deserve our reverence either you can do the job effectively or you can't and 118 to 110 for romero is unbridled matter of fact incompetence and if it's not reviewed shame on everybody in that commission

and involved for not doing more about it you took something from jackson marinas a guy who has never had that many uh uh you know uh the wind has never been uh his back in life for the most part and he finally had a great opportunity to show something and you stole it from him you should be ashamed of yourselves and you should do something about it it makes me sick yeah wow wow look at this guy teddy atlas luke thomas over i love that oh look i think it's just so ridiculous that we just while these guys are nice guys and they've been there a long time so what so what they can't do the job anymore doesn't that matter these are people's lives you're messing with just right here wow i haven't i haven't slept respect you all respect, you nailed it.

You nailed it. I did want to say this. I think the other two judges were almost ruined by the egregiousness of, I think it was Frank Lombardi who had that 10 rounds to two for Roley Romero. That gives the impression of impropriety. It gives the impression that it was written down before the fight even started. It reminds you of, you know, C.J. Ross scoring Mayweather uh canelo even for mayweather for canelo you know i mean it's the same thing in golovkin canelo won which which we remember it as triple g getting screwed yet the reality is i thought

triple g won but it was a it was a close fight and had all three of these judges luke had it seven to five for romero we could have sat here and talked about the difference between sitting ringside without social media, without a crowd and all that. But when you have the shit of 118-110, it smells and everybody else smells for it. I'm sorry, it screams impropriety and I hate that. I hate that about boxing.

I just don't want to hear this argument anymore that they've been there a long time and therefore we should genuflect. No, you've been there a long time and therefore we should genuflect no you've been there a long time prove you can still drive behind the wheel of the automobile grandpa it's more along the lines of that last thing Otto Wallin getting a win over Travis Kaufman who injured his shoulder on a on a hook still BC Wallin was just too good for too long it ended in unfortunate circumstance. Obviously, I hope Kaufman's shoulder is okay,

but he was, to me, never really in this fight. No, no, he wasn't. And Kaufman retired afterwards and said beforehand, look, he's been in this game a long time. His dad's a promoter and trainer and all that. If he couldn't win this and he lost twice in a row for the first time, he would retire. It seemed like the right move. Vahleen did show you what he had to coming in, Luke, I thought,

was that he is a top 10 legitimate title threat heavyweight. Again, we're never going to know until he gets in there again against the very elite whether that one night against Fury was the best he could be or just a tease in terms of how good he can do. But when you're 6'5", you're a softball, you've got speed, and you have an understanding of footwork and basic boxing uh you know at its technical core this guy's a player and i love again the the mean streak he showed against tyson fury i thought he did what he had to do in this one and there's nothing bad he can say about it all right so let's move on back to ufc 252 we talked about the main

and the co-main but what about the feature fight bc junior Junior Dos Santos losing three in a row, and not just three in a row, all three by way of stoppage at this point. He looks physically to be in phenomenal shape, but this is sort of a bad run. Jairzinho Rosenstreich stopping him. Again, I believe it was the second round, if memory serves. But either way, he gets his hand raised by putting his lights out. Here's the question for you, BC.

Should JDS retire? No. And that's tough to say after three straight knockouts, but I think here's what JDS is showing us. He's 36. Here's what this version of him has become. And it's not against him, but he's become a gatekeeper because he has the ability to beat

you. He's got the experience. He can still box. He's in tremendous shape. And for a round and a half, he was beating Rosenstruck. He was doing what we said coming in he would have to do to have a chance to win this uh but he got caught and I think this shows you that against the very elite who have big power he doesn't have the chin anymore to hold up against them he's more of now a b-level fighter who can beat the guys coming up can beat the retreads and all that if he wants to continue fighting I don't think, even with three consecutive knockouts,

that he's yet a full liability to his long-term health. I mean, look, obviously you've got to watch it close for any fighter in the heavyweight division, especially at this age, when you have losses piling up. But should he continue, Luke, there's a lot of people he can still beat. I just think this is a special fighter in Rosenstruck from the standpoint of he has that out pitch. He has that go-home punch when he needs to.

He didn't show us enough yet to prove that he will ever one day end up being a legitimate title contender. There's a lot of raw there, but Biggie Boy did what he had to do to keep his brand strong and to move forward and not suffer a second straight defeat. It was kind of like natural selection, Luke. You know, the younger, hungrier lion won out in this case. But I don't need JDS to run for the hills yet. That's not actually what natural selection means. But still, your point is well taken.

Let me just say something here. Omerta. I always get pissed off when people say things like, you can never tell another man to retire. Well, of course I can't. I can't get on my stupid ass Samsung phone here, call up JDS and be like, Hey, it's time to retire. And he's like, I'm his mom. And I can just tell him, you know, put on your galoshes to get out in the rain before you head off to school. He doesn't give a shit what I have to say. So fine. But the reality is when someone is beginning to get to a stage in

their career where that question even pops up and you feel like you're trying to answer it honestly, then answer it honestly. Now, should he retire? I don't know that he has to right away. I don't think it's that kind of level of urgency. Is it something he needs to start thinking about? Yes, of course it is. Of course it is. Dude, you're 36 years old. You've've lost three in a row you've taken a hellacious amount of damage not so much in the last three which were knockout blows those were more like emblematic of the damage that was done although of course they add to it on their own to be quite clear but yes he needs to begin to think about you're you're on the wrong side of 30 close to 40 you you are not able to I mean the other part is in addition to the punishment he is taking and where he is

it's a question of what Robert Griffin used to say although he sucked as a player after he got his knees blown out which was know your why like why are you here if you are doing the Rich Franklin thing is which I just still like to compete I still think I can find ways to win against interesting matchups I want to keep doing that until I can't okay i think that's a that's a reasonable path but if the ideas are going to come out in interviews and say i'm going to find my way back to the title you know you're asking for more heartache you are asking for punishment you are asking for fights that are probably you know not really winnable at this stage and when i say not winnable i mean they could come with some serious consequences on the other end I think if that's what you're in this

for then there are there really are some questions you have to start asking yourself it doesn't mean he didn't have a great career it doesn't mean people don't like him or shouldn't like him it doesn't mean he didn't have incredible highs he had all of those things none of this takes any of that away it just dude the end comes for every athlete in every sport every time. It is an inevitability that you all have to face. And I don't think the walls have closed in yet. I don't think that's true. But they are fast approaching.

And it is worth at least thinking about an exit plan because the idea that you're going to be a title contender again, I think is just not realistic. And rearranging your goals and your priorities around a different purpose, I do think that's doable, but that's what needs to happen. Lastly, I'll say this about... Go ahead. No, no, Luke, you go ahead, okay?

Why don't you? I was just going to say about Rosenstreich, it was interesting about him. At first, I was like, this is not the performance we really want to see. And then he made the adjustment to really corner JDS and get in his face which is exactly how Stipe beat him in their rematch and once he did he closed the show like that we talked about it last week who was he going to show us to be the guys who you know can beat the junior Albanians or can you

beat somebody a little bit more forceful well it's the latter solid win by him yeah absolutely and shout out to the mustache on JDS. And you mentioned that, you know, all things must finish, come to an end. Luke, what are the parameters that would force you to shave the beard? I am interested in that. I know you're like, oh, BC, stop slowing us down. Jay's in my ear. Like, what would it take?

Would it take some giant mountaintop career success for you to say, I'll trim it or I'll shave it? Or, I mean, would it take a death in your family? Not that I'm wishing that on you. When will we ever see you? Not clean shaven, but, you know, a little bit thicker than this, Luke. It would take gender reassignment surgery, so don't wait up. Wow.

Wow. Okay. All right. Really don't know how to follow that. Well done. We'll move on. All right. So with that in mind, let's go to our fifth and final point here for the rundown, which

is a weekend preview. So we've got a lot going on, BC. Let's see. We've got a UFC show. We've got a Bellator show, and we've got some boxing. Let's start with UFC. Please go first. To you, BC, what is the major storyline heading into the Bantamweight clash between former

lightweight champion Frankie Edgar and Pedro Munoz? I don't know that there's a major one it's an interesting fight we want to see how Frankie looks against somebody who's you know fairly damn elite and Pedro Munoz moving down to bantamweight it's at a precarious spot in Frankie's career in which you know he's old it's toward the end yet you know in pockets he's still really good and still good enough can he trim this weight like Aldo did and still, you know, have a motor and be at that level? It'd be a big win, by the way, if he beat Munoz here. So I'm interested in seeing that.

I think it'll be an exciting fight. I don't necessarily think either one, you know, catapults too far because of how loaded this division is in the top five at the moment. Yeah, my sense is the UFC is looking at this to be like, all right, is Frankie a guy we can reasonably put in a title picture with enough wins? Because he could then raise the profile of these other bantamweight figures who need a little bit of like the old celebrity of the old guard to come down, wash over them. They get the wins eventually, not every time, but eventually anyway, and then everybody moves on.

Okay, that could be a thing. Or is Pedro Munoz one of these guys that's going to join the ranks of the Morices and the Sanhagans and eventually maybe even the Sterlings? We'll have to see. It's principally about that. Which guy is not merely coming or going, but do we have this ability to rely on Frankie

to be a top contender that we can put in against other guys? Remember, they had initially booked Edgar against Sandhagen for that North Carolina card, and then they lost it all for Edgar going and taking on the Korean zombie at upper weight class in a very misbegotten quest to reclaim glory at 145 pounds. So they're trying to see, do we still have any of that left at 135? Pedro Munoz is a pretty decent test, I think, to start. Bellator 245, go ahead.

Well, hold on. If I told you one of these two fighters will somehow get one more title shot before their career is done, are you taking Frankie Edgar or Holly Holm? That's a good question. That's a really good question. I'll go home. I'll go Holly home. I was going to say, couldn't you see Amanda maybe giving up the Bantamweight title

because that division is a little bit deeper, defending the featherweight title once a year, being a mom, doing what she wants to do, and then you go whoever, vacant title at 35. Oh, Holly home. Here's your ninth title opportunity. Go for it. Yeah, I can see it for her a little bit more clearly. But time will tell.

All right, Bellator 245. Ryan Bader up against Vadim Nemkov there, BC. I got to tell you, I find this to be a very legitimate threat to Ryan Bader. It's a very good contest. I'm straight up. I'm not that woke to Vadim. So tell me the story here. Let's see. He got a close fight, but a win over Phil Davis. So this idea that he's going to get wrestle effed the entire time could be true

because Ryan Bader certainly is a bit of a slightly different style wrestler than Phil Davis. Phil Davis is a little bit more. He has good takedowns, but he's also a bit of a mat wrestler. I think someone like Ryan Bader, a little bit more he has a good takedowns because he's also a bit of a mat wrestler i think someone like ryan bader a little bit more of the ground and pound sort of risk control variety so there are some some noteworthy differences between them and he's a bigger person as well um than phil davis but he is a combat sambo world champion i think a couple times over and had a bit of a slow start in certain ways in bellator but has really shined of late i find him to be one of these sort of guys that no one really knows.

Like, I remember when he beat Phil Davis, I was looking at the results, and I was like, he beat Phil Davis? How's that possible? Well, because he's actually quite talented. He's beaten a lot of other guys in that light heavyweight division as well. So listen, I think Ryan Bader is your deserved favorite. I mean, the guy just went through the heavyweight tournament and barely had a scratch on him.

Still, this is probably his toughest fight ever in Bellator. Oh, I guess he had the Phil Davis fight in the first fight in Bellator, right? Can we forget that ever happened? MSG, that was a rough fight. That was rough. Yeah, it wasn't that fun, but in terms of how difficult it was to win,

dude, Nemkov is a beast. He can strike his ass off he is aggressive he has very good defensive well-rounded abilities he is a serious serious challenge for Ryan Bader um I love the evolution of Bader's boxing I love uh sort of that it took this long Luke to for him to figure out the confidence in the the more well-rounded game to be at his very best. But I do want to ask you this. Where would he be right now in a worldwide ranking at both 205 and heavyweight in your eyes? You mean like had he not gone to Bellator?

With the evolution of his game that we've seen at Bellator and the wins that he recently added, do you think he's a top five heavyweight in the world? And how far down the 205 rankings would you put him? So you'd have Stipe, Francis, DC, and then who would you have after that? Well, DC retired. So you don't count DC?

So then you can have... He's on the bubble. Yeah, he's on the bubble, sure. Curtis Blades. Yeah, he's up there. I don't know if he's top five, but he's on the bubble. Yeah, he's on the bubble. Sure. Curtis Blades. Yeah, he's up there. I don't know if he's top five, but he's on the bubble for sure. He might be top three.

At light heavyweight, though, light heavyweight's where it's interesting because I think if he had stayed in the UFC, he'd have found another way to get a title shot. He just happened to be there at the same time, A, John was, and B, there were still some of those glory year names like the Machidas when Machida was still really, really good.

And so he got kind of caught at a bad time. But he was still there i think he'd be right i think you'd be watching jones bader too for sure all right what about uh bader reyes head to head right now 205 who wins that's a tough you could make a case you could make a case for darth bader here you could bad Vader has certainly benefited by the move to Bellator for a number of ways. But to the point you're making, he has still managed to add layers of complexity to his game to rough up some of the old edges that were there, smooth things out, the boxing and the jab. He's not relying on takedowns. He's got a full array of a kickboxing arsenal too when he needs, at least for MMA purposes. He has become quite talented. And so when he needs to wrestle, he can. And when he

doesn't, he won't have to. I think Nemkov is interesting because he's going to make us see what are Ryan Bader's offensive priorities because Nemkov can do it all as well. Fair enough. Fair enough. And then last but not least least take us home on this one bc for the weekend matchroom boxing has about a heavyweight and this is interesting right dillian white taking on pavetkin size these two up for the audience and what does the winner reasonably get here uh this is a big fight look of the four eddie hearn uh garden party fight camp fights whatever he's calling them this is the most loaded card it's going to be a pay-per-view in britain the zone just recently officially picked it up for this weekend so here's what that's what's at stake dillian white is your interim wbc heavyweight

champion what that basically means is he's the number one contender for tyson fury who's going to get deontay wilder a third time coming up and the winner of this will basically secure themselves a title shot and look pavetkin has been to the top before he's lingered the last couple years as a dangerous out got stopped by Anthony Joshua despite looking good at certain moments has had some look he came after Vladimir Klitschko in that loss before getting stopped this is really his last chance at 40-41 to to get back into that picture or to fade away he's going to be dangerous and people have slept on how good dillian white is we all remember him pushing aj in that early fight they had in which he heard aj wobbled him and then joshua rallied back to stop him he's won something like 11 fights since then luke and he's beaten

some very credible names derek jazora twice former champion robert parker so he is in an excellent spot right now to force himself into this, you know, three-headed triumvirate of Joshua Fury and Deontay Wilder in the moment. And this fight is certainly high stakes because we all want to see Fury, if he beats Deontay, go on to this giant super fight against AJ. But we know both have business at hand, some mandatories coming up, and whoever comes out of this fight, it's going to be a tough out for Tyson Fury, and it's going to be a fun fight to see. BC, how much blood is in Dillian White's steroid stream?

Oh, how dare you? How dare you? How dare you? This is going to be a good fight, Luke. I hope you watch it. And more importantly, I hope you watch what could be the fight of the weekend, the co-main event. Do you remember on that AJ Andy Ruiz undercard in Madison Square Garden when Katie Taylor, the fighting pride of Ireland, had that absolute brawl, 10 rounds, all action,

against that Belgian policewoman, Delphine Pursun, who squares up, walks straight into oncoming traffic, and just throws haymakers the whole time, and basically turns a regular boxing match into a cockfight, if you will. They're going to do it a second time on Saturday.

I'm fired that up. Luke, I thought that was one of the top three fights of the year in boxing last year. Should be interesting. All right. Those are our top five. No care from you. I have another job and we have shit to do. All right.

So with that in mind, it is time now on the show where you get to ask us questions. It is time for dms from dogs and i think i kicked my camera out of position a little bit here which is why you see a little bit on the more on the one side now i gotta fix it uh all right you should hire a tech manager i know a guy his name's yeah i kicked it yeah jay's telling me i kicked it sorry about that all right from at v underscore r underscore b86 how iconic is steepipe's walkout at this point we know that someone is about to get effed up when that mgk music hits are you kidding i couldn't hate that walkout more i mean i like stipe um the idea that we live in an age

where machine gun kelly is cool is the saddest shit ever. It's the perfect encapsulation of 2020. He can't rap. He's turned into a Netflix actor. He's actually not bad as an actor. I'll give him some credit. He's pretty good for the kind of things he's in. He did Tommy Lee in that Motley Crue thingamajig. But no, I absolutely hate that walkout,

and I now judge this person for having shit taste in music. I don't mind that walkout and i i now judge this person for having shit taste in music i don't mind that walkout i think i think it adds to the cool factor that stipe is kind of lacking all and by the way i'm gonna give stipe credit more credit here did you see him in the post fight press conference he he's always had sort of like corny daddish jokes you know a man after my own heart but i thought he was hilarious and sort of the way he looks at it like he's just an unemotional dude who works really hard and is great at his job. He doesn't overly gloat when he wins. He doesn't complain overly when he loses. And he just kind of goes out there and is like, yeah, whatever.

And, you know, that's hurt him marketing-wise. But I think over time it's endeared him to us, Luke. All right? I'm giving the man the respect he deserves, finally. I'll just say this. I know Stipe and MGk are like buds or whatever it just is amazing to me that bone thugs and harmony are from cleveland and no one that i know from cleveland as a fighter has ever walked out to east 1999 which to me is maybe one of the hardest sort of

uh 90s gangster rap songs ever ever i mean it's hard to top how awesome and no pun intended, bone-chilling that song is. And no one ever walks, and it stands the test of time, at least in terms of like sort of sonically. And they don't walk out to it. They walk out to this, you know, absolute zilch. The more talented Paul brother of the three is basically how I look at him. I can't wait for the FBI to raid your house one day, okay?

Thank you. All right, from at 8HeavyLims, what would it take for the UFC to adopt a new glove before a maiming injury occurs? BC, if you think about this, in all the problems that UFC has to deal with in terms of injuries and whatnot, and they build the Performance Institute, and they work on weight cutting, and who knows, eventually they might add a 165-pound weight class to make things easier, and they've really put a lot into health and safety.

You mean to tell me that in terms of glove innovation and rule enforcement, which is not the UFC's cause per se, but on the commission side. Still, at least in terms of glove innovation, am I supposed to believe that we have reached the apex that this is, no pun intended, this is the end of innovation? There is no other mechanism possible by which to fix this problem?

It seems insane to me. A lot of us are woke to what Coach Trevor Whitman has created, those gloves. He showed them off on the Rogan Pod. Rashad Evans is always telling me great things about them, that it's more pride-like. It's sort of your hand is bent. It's going to eliminate a lot more eye pokes.

What did Trevor tell Joe? That they brought that technology to UFC, but UFC is too deep into a current deal with its current glove makers? I don't know. It was something like that where they wanted Trevor to sell the science behind it it he wanted to keep it for himself but uh either way yes uh it'd be it'd be smart to eliminate that because look it's it's just a shitty way for things to get affected and i know that's coming off of me saying sorry daniel can't complain it's karma well it also sucks at the same time if we could remove that the best we can from a possibility. I know you have to give consideration, Luke,

for how much the grip would change the grappling game. Can you speak to that at all? I'd have to see how the gloves fit. But, I mean, the question is also important here, the way it's worded, before a maiming. Hopefully, DC makes a full recovery, and I guess with surgical intervention, the eyesight of Stipe is okay.

But it's like, dude, eventually, someone's just going to get straight up blinded. They're just going to either lose the eye or whatever. And it's going to be because we had a deal where we couldn't innovate for the, I mean, which is it? We care about the health and safety of fighters or we don't? Clearly eye poking is a problem. It's a reality of reaching in the way in which we have it. There's got to be more that we can do. I don't know if pride gloves or some other kind of technical innovation that exists is the answer, Trevor Whitman's or not,

probably worth some experimentation on this because what we have now is woefully inadequate. Yeah, I mean, we don't want to see more Michael Bisping's out there. By the way, did you see that runaway eye on that girl that beat the crap out of Felice Herrig? She looked scary. Janda Roba, I knew you were going to say something about her eye to the side. I woke up with a nightmare that eye was looking at me last night.

It was crazy. Which one? I can never tell which one is the one that you have to look at. But all right, at mporter440, I keep hearing people say the much-improved Francis Ngannou. What has he done since the Stipe fight that makes you believe he has improved bc that's a fair question a bunch of wins uh this much improvement he's just been

knocking fools out in an even quicker fashion at a higher level than he did in his initial rise so yes uh unfortunately his power is so strong that we never got to see cain velasquez take him down never got to see any of these guys force him to show us that he's not at the remedial level he was on the ground against Stipe. And oh, by the way, since I'm here today giving all Stipe the credit he deserves that I've been holding back through the years, look, he did walk through hell in that opening round and kept coming against Francis.

So I think we have to assume that based on the 180 he did confidence-wise, because that loss to Stipe mixed with that weird fight with Derek Lewis, mixed with Dana crapping on him in public, it seemed to sort of hurt the invincibility of him, and he had to work through that. And I think that it's telling us that he's as explosive and confident as ever, but no, we really don't know until he's in there against an elite fighter and forced to show it to us whether he has that.

And I think Luke, the fact that we don't know that continues to play into the entertainment factor, because, you know, if somebody like only steep has proven, he can, can negate those wild punches and make it a different kind of fight.

Then we're going to find out what he's made of. And until somebody can, you know, it's, it's part of know, it's part of the calling card of all of his fights, to see that happen. I think that's right. I mean, I hear from his trainer, Eric Nixick, about all the things they've worked on and the improvements. I'm sure on some level he is better, maybe exactly as much as he tells me, but you've got to show it.

You've got to show it, and we haven't seen it. And so until then, I think people will be like, oh, he's definitely improved. It's not that that's wrong, but it's not right. It just remains undetermined. We need to see it determined. I think Stipe would be a good test of that. Maybe, well, he's already fought Curtis Blade, so I guess Jon Jones would be the other good one.

All right, from at OG underscore AUK, what is the MK over under on Paulo Costa making weight for his middleweight title bout with Izzy. I'm going to take the over, BC. You? Yeah, he'll make it. This is the biggest fight of his life. He'll make it.

Yeah. That's a weird question. I mean, I know he's huge, but he makes the weight. He doesn't have a Romero-like history of missing it for important fights. Exactly. All right. And then last but not least, from Ann Vic. Veronica Vaughn in Billy Madison or Vicky Valancourt in The Waterboy?

Come on. You see, you can probably have these ones committed to memory. I'm going to have to look them up here. What do you think? Well, let me tell you, that Veronica Vaughn is one piece of ish, and I would know from experience, dude. No, you wouldn't. It's not close.

Her and a friend of mine, the two of them. Got it. All right, enough of that crap. It's Veronica Vaughn all day. She's Pete Sampras' wife. She was on Saved by the Bell as an extra. She's smoking hot. It's not close.

Vicky Valancourt is like a, you know, I mean, she played the role of a dirtbag trailer park witchcraft girlfriend, which she's played the role on many TV shows. And I'm sorry, Luke, this is not a debate. This is like, you know? Not close. Yeah, no. I mean, look, Kelly Kapowski Topanga, that was a debate there, right? Because some people like different things, all right?

Save your bandwidth, Luke. Save your bandwidth. It's not cool. Or give it to Brian. His Zoom doesn't work all the time. The comment that I want to make right now is not appropriate for air, but the answer is quite obviously, what's her face? Vicky Vaughn.

Yes. Sorry. Veronica Vaughn. I'm sorry. Veronica Vaughn is the answer here, and it's walking away at that point. All right, BC. With that in mind, with that utterly ridiculous question, it is time for

the utterly ridiculous portion of the show. Good sir, take it away. Thank you. Please play the intro. Here's what we do. We scour the globe, the highs and lows, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the in-between in combat sports and beyond. It's have you seen this shit? Special shout out to all

the H-Y-T-th s uh stalwarts out there okay the people that fill my constant dms with potential videos not realizing how many times we've played already the ones they send me some aren't just aren't fair for air but we find the best we distill them here we go luke does own boxing the weekend. Did you see it in the street corner of Tulsa downtown? How about this blown call by referee Gary Ritter when unbeaten prospect Israel Madriov does a leaping left hook knockdown that probably would have finished Eric Walker and won the fight. Yet the ref gave Eric Walker five minutes to recover and ruled it a slip

and a push. Check out the replay. This is a crazy punch. Damn. Well, you know what, BC? I mean, he's been reffing for so long. We just have to give him reverence. You know what I mean?

Wow, this ageist bastard. Look, Thomas, this is great. All right. Listen, the age is going to come. Here's the thing. It's going to come for you and me too, but just not right now. Okay, my balls, right now. Okay. My balls.

My balls. Okay. Hey, so Israel Madri got his, I just butchered his name. Sorry. He got his knockout streak stopped, but he's still 6-0. And check out the celebration, Luke. This guy is coming. He's coming at junior middleweight.

He's going to be somebody. It's fun to watch him. And I liked what Dazon did on the, you know, downtown Tulsa, right on the streets. Todd Grisham, Sergio Mora there. Looked like a fun to watch him. And I liked what DAZN did on the, you know, downtown Tulsa, right on the streets. Todd Grisham, Sergio Mora there. It looked like a fun night. Yeah, I mean, you're stuck in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but otherwise it's great. Yeah, besides that, right?

Omaha, somewhere in middle America. Let's roll on, Luke. This is from a week ago, but this is the real Fight Island out of Mexico. Check out Gael Jaroz Maeza sending Joel Juarez to hell in 49 seconds of round one via TKO. Luke, this is what the bill of goods they sold us, what Fight Island was supposed to be. I love it.

Are they on an island or just the beach? They're right near the beach. Boy, right down in Mexico. It's perfect. I hear the beaches in Mexico, like Tulum, are really nice. Yeah, yeah. All right. You got any comments?

Could UFC have pulled this off? No? Yeah, I mean, it's just a bunch of donks. You know, terrible fight. I don't really care. I have to imagine there's a bar like right off stage left that you could just kind of walk up to while you're watching the fights, right? You would hope, right?

I mean, you're not there to watch great boxing. Yeah it's part of the culture there all right let's move on hey how about some spinny shit gone right check out this move from islav murtaiyasev i just butchered that oh my this is one of the best spinny shits i have ever seen kickboxing wow that is amazing hold that that's some yeah that's some mortal combat ish right there that's incredible that it's similar to what um nate marquardt did to wilson guvea you remember that one i do remember that was pretty jab cross missed and then through the spinning back fist missed and then hit him with the head, the head kick all in one go kind of just like this. Yeah, that is that look,

that's in contention. We show a lot of wild and crazy Taekwondo KOs. And sometimes we're like, you know, that may be the best I've ever seen. This is on that ballot. Luke. I mean,

you can't, I mean, this is ridiculous. It's nice. That's a nice, that one you put on the resume for sure. It's not my wife. She's dead. It's nice. All right, let's a nice aside. That one you put on the resume, for sure. My wife, she's dead. It's nice. All right, let's move on here.

There's some decrepit fans who want to see more near-deaths on this show, so check out this dog. This is a rally car race somewhere in, I don't know, Europe, South America. But somebody get that dog out of the road. We got a live race going on right here, Luke. Check this out. Jesus. Wow this out. Jesus. Wow.

Wow. Yeah, dude. You don't realize how much of the world just lives with stray dog populations until you travel a bit, and you're like, y'all just let them roam the streets? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, like pigeons? They're like, yeah.

I'm like, okay. I didn't realize that was a thing, but it's a thing. But Luke, is that like just blind luck, right place, right time with that jumper? Did he hit like the nitrous button like my guy Dom Toretto? See, you could make the argument that whatever hellhole this dog is living in, probably hungry most of the time, that maybe getting run over was a euthanization

and therefore a relief from the hell that is its normal existence but you know that's just me thinking out loud yeah i'd like to believe that this guy was both fast and furious on that button sweet the sweet sweet embrace of death from this uh shitty toyota tercel let's move on here. Somebody tried to recreate this without a dog. Check out this athletic dude. He said, why don't you drive your ATV at me? Oh, God. No, dude.

I got ups for real, Buckham. Oh, my God. Look like John Elway going for the first down in the second Super Bowl against the Packers. Yeah. Here's the difference between this guy and A.J. Green. A.J. Green can stick the landing. Oh, that is awesome's the difference between this guy and AJ Green. AJ Green can stick the landing. Oh, that is awesome.

That is incredible. Speaking of backflips, Luke, check out this TikTok video gone wrong. Look, when you try to pull off these, you know, dances that are all kind of choreographed and you think you're cool, you kind of deserve when this happens luke dude these women who think i want to watch them do skits and bits and dance on uh tiktok you do not understand what your audience is looking for let me tell you that is the least yeah they're looking for kibbles and bits yeah old yeah this is this is this is much more interesting to me than any you know i'm gonna get on tiktok and dance because I'm an 8 out of 10. Yeah, go fuck yourself.

I think she might be, you know, a spicy Latino in your conversation, though. So don't damn on her too much, all right? Yeah, not that spicy. Okay, all right. Hey, let's move on to female MMA from Sweden. Brave CF37, Bianca Antman. This is her pro debut. Watch her send this chick to hell via head kick, Luke.

Nice stoppage, too, by the way. Yeah, that ref coming in there to make the tackle to save the first down. That is just stiff. Hands down. Bow. Oh, God. Yes. Luke, we were a little bit late to the party on this.

I want to show it. Three weeks ago in the top-ranked bubble, God, yes. Luke, we were a little bit late to the party on this. I want to show it. Three weeks ago in the top-ranked bubble, are you aware of super middleweight prospect Edgar Berlanga? He improved to 14-0 with his 14th first-round KO here against Eric Moon. This is pretty impressive, Luke. Let's see. I had not heard of him.

Okay, well, this is the guy that David Benavidez came out this week and said, one of these days, eventually, I'm going to be fighting berlanga that's my one of my long-term hopes i mean this guy's bang he's poor he's a puerto rican guy i don't have that act that that answer in front of me here luke but um what i do have flag yeah that does look puerto rico i mean 14 14 first round ko's that's young Tyson-level stuff right there. So, Luke, we have access to training footage from Edgar Berlanga. This is how he built his power, by warming up, not on the bag, Luke, but on the buns.

Your thoughts? This is what TikTok should be right here. I mean, look, it keeps your focused right baby uh you know little in the middle luke but she's got much back right it's also like sort of a smelly heavy bag huh yeah wow the first thing i do is make a toss my salad yeah okay all right let's let's let's not shut the show down here, Luke. Maybe we should move on. Okay. You're the one who brought it up.

I'm going to need you to shout out to Edgar Berlanga right there. We're going to need you to score this high school dive here, Luke. Degree of difficulty 1.4. Can you be the judge here? Is this going to be some Greg Louganis moment I don't know how you come back from that what the fuck is she doing I don't know how you come back from that I mean yeah I know it's one of those sports

you don't have to try out they're just looking for members right but the best part about it is it's like a decent belly flop, but not even that great. Oh, wow. Things went wrong. Things went wrong for sure. All right. Hey, it's boat season.

Luke rule number one in summertime boat season. When you're drunk on the expensive yacht, do not. I repeat, do not lose your head. Luke. Bop. They tell you I went on one not lose your head, Luke. Bop. They tell you. I went on one of those canal tours in Amsterdam, and they tell you, yo, don't stand up in the boat, fuckfaces,

because this will happen. By the way, not really a yacht, more like a very nice boat. Okay. Did you visit the red light district when you were there, Luke? I did, yes. Wow. Wow. Okay. This is an interesting public reveal here all right um did you say it's cool but it's not what you think it is it's very cool but the only thing that was weird you were a voyeur you weren't a customer that's where you're yeah no no like the thing is that there's like it's a walkway and

there's this neighborhood and they actually have red lights on the street i think hence the name uh the thing that was weird was they they have these um they have what do you want to call them whore houses or you know the women of the night homes something like that and they stand professionals they're regulated by the government there so check this yeah home but check this out they stand in the window like it's a butcher shop or something or like you know they're selling their goods here's the thing that you don't understand until you get there when you walk by and you look because hello they make eye contact with you and they keep it as you move it's a little bit uh if you're not prepared for it it takes you out you know if you've had a few

it is a little bit unnerving at first i will tell you that so did you true or false did you get rock hard with emotion did you have a phoner no i would no i was more like you know a stupid american tourist than anything okay were you with mrs thomas on this trip i was yeah oh my god okay wow all right you know i guess that's how they do it at their house okay uh lu, let's roll on here. It's parkour time. We always see these great videos of people back flipping off buildings. We never see the fails, though. Check that out.

Wow. Come and get some of that brick. All right. Yeah. This is how you know. I realize parkour has a French name, and I'm probably totally botching the history. I don't know anything about parkour other than the name and that it's this. But it's like, this is why the drinking age should be lowered in this country,

because you've got a lot of bored teenagers that are just trying to pretend like they're Superman, and then they're losing teeth and shit. And it's like, maybe we could just let them have a beer. What happened to convincing somebody's older brother to get you a case of Bush proper and going out into the woods right what's wrong with that right what happened to that luke this guy thinks he's fucking people are always like we shouldn't tear down the the trees in the forest because the the wild animals have to you know repopulate and they

don't know where to go how about just keeping those trees in forest for the teenagers so they can be out there and do their debauchery not ending up like this kissing the pavement all right yeah this was you know i mean i mean i enjoy his misery but at the same time you know this is why you go to like a tcby and some idiot kid has smeared dog shit on your your handle of your car because they're bored they're just bored bored. All right. Hey, let's move on here. You do have to be careful with parkour, Luke, that you F around and end up not being able to father kids. Check out this genius. Oh, fucking hell.

Oh, boy. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, press your luck here. Oh, you got a whammy. You caught a whammy, Luke. Oh, man. He's going to roll into traffic, Luke. You know what?

This is natural selection. Yeah, yeah. It sort of is. Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. That's enough of that.

I'm just grabbing that. Him writhing in agony makes me want to take my pants off. Yeah. Well, speaking of taking your pants off, let's check in on Abuelo this week. It's MAGA time in the Speedo. Give me a 1 to 10 on this guy's swag level and lack of care, Luke. 11 out of 10. Look at this fat fuck.

He doesn't. Oh, yeah. What do you think he was drinking? You know, smearing off ice. Oh, yeah. Bush Light. Look at this just starts grinding yeah look at that that security guards like touch touch her one time touch her one time yeah all right there's a there's a point in a dude's life like this where you just get so fat and so old you pack it in and not only

do you not care but you kind of like lean into it you know yeah yeah it's like the old guys in the locker room at uh at the gym right it's why they brush their teeth with their balls dragging on the floor they just don't care but i don't know there's i don't care and then there's i'm fat and i'm gonna wear a usa flag speedo and grind young women that's well you know i've been i've been told by generations of folks now that uh all bodies are great bodies and that they all look the same. So I don't know about you, BC.

I look at this. I don't see a grotesque old man with a gut the size of Bermuda. I see a beautiful older man embracing the reality of aging in a healthy and, you know, still sexually provocative way. Well, he could be judging fights or calling strikes or doing this. So shout out to that old boomer. Hey, let's move on. It wasn't all old guy wins this week.

There was a fail. Check out this prank they pulled on this guy at the pool hall. They kept the door closed with the pool cues. He didn't like that, and I don't know why the video froze there, but he took a hard fall. In fact, he was hurting. He could not get up, Luke.

That was, yeah. All right. Well, hey, they don't always work. We try them. They don't always work. Yeah, this one sucked. All right. Hey, flashback to 2010, though.

No, wait, I got a joke for you first. You ever hear the joke about the guy who walked into the bar, Luke? I've seen this before in real life yeah that is great it did flash me back to 2010 when your guy justin bieber joined this club you remember that one luke yep oh nice one oh yeah this is great beebs okay beebs, he probably had that coming. Probably did, Luke. I can't wait till your daughter grows up and is just playing nothing but really gross, cheap pop like this all over the house. How did this guy end up being

popular? Hey, let's go to... Remember that time that guy in the street was like, all third world, your ass? Let's go to some third world boxing here, Luke. I don't know what what uh what country this is but shout out for to kevin aioli for putting it on our timeline look this is a heated battle right now and um you do have to watch where you step though in a boxing ring okay you gotta you gotta watch out for the trap door luke you know what i like traveling internationally

but even i recognize maybe it is a decent moment in time for my american passport to be worthless as i wish to travel the world yeah yeah i don't know i don't know how that happened very reminiscent maybe they bought this ring from uh vince mcmahon and wwe can we advance the footage here very reminiscent of 2011 and the big show uh lifting the undertaker up i mean come on right i cannot believe you watch this stuff i don't anymore luke there was this supposed to be a big deal that he did this yeah i don't know it happens every once in a while that's all i got for you all right let's let's let's hit the grand finale here luke um you're big on on hygiene violations so our hygiene violation of the week comes from a New York City subway.

Luke, I know that you don't like the idea of going barefoot on a plane, but is it okay to trim the toenails out in public like this and just leave the scraps hanging around? This is an amazing. First of all, subway creatures is the account. Perfect. Number one. Perfect. Amazing. First of all, Subway Creatures is the account perfect. Number one, perfect.

Number two, she's on the local because you can see the brick behind her. So she's not on the express, meaning she's taking her sweet-ass time. She somehow has a mask on, and yet, not only is she clipping her nails, BC, but they're attached to her keychain. Oh, yeah. That means she does this all the time in public. Yeah. you think this is the first time she's done this yeah she got on the six to the bronx and said fuck it i'm just going to wow bro that you see things on the subway sometimes you're like what's rock bottom and then you see this you're like i've not even gotten close to rock bottom

wow i told you dude honestly this is the one thing here is one thing that covid has given my life it's less of the subway creatures i gotta tell you that i'm ready to challenge you okay back up your your tough talk here luke because if you and i were in that undisclosed new jersey location and we finished a morning combat post-quarantine we got on the train like we do to go to manhattan to catch the other train and uh this lady sits down next to us what is what does luke thomas do okay step up be a man luke what am i gonna do fist fighter i'm gonna tell her she's a gross i don't know what are you gonna do tell her that she's gross and she shouldn't do it all right but here's

the deal though here's the thing you think she cares you know what i mean i'm gonna tell her she's gross you think she gives a flying f what my opinion is you know well look you do have i told you two episodes ago you do have to watch your back in public because i owe you one luke one of these days once that rear naked slips in it it's it's tap or nap your choice luke it's going to come out of nowhere. And speaking of that, our friend Web Scream, you know this guy, right? The great Greek master of all things graphics, Christos Christoforos. He's back this week with another original gaffe. Can we play this, Jay?

You have this, right? This is pretty much amazing. Thank you. Can you hear this? I hope so so this is the Batman movie right Aaron Eckhart oh that's

awesome to show you the genius of web scream he put February 2021 Oh, that's awesome. To show you the genius of web scream, he put February 2021 because that's our bet of full arenas, and he has a classical version of Sweet Caroline playing in the background of that clip. That is funny. Very funny. Really good.

Very funny. We'll see, Luke. One of these days, all right? One of these days. We'll see. Mind your P's and Q's. All right, with that in mind, good sir, it's time for Odds and Ends. What do you have for Odds and Ends? I just wanted to shout out, there was that DAZN main event last week,

the Women's Championship. We ended up seeing Cecilia Brakus, after defending her welterweight titles 25 times, lost a clochess, questionable decision to McCaskill there and did not break the tie with Joe Lewis for most title defenses but I did want to shout out Cecilia she was as humble as I have ever seen in defeat didn't complain about the scoring or whether it could have gone her way and was like ready to pass the torch to the next fighter and uh it was it was so nice it was humbling it was very reminiscent of when when Ricky Hatton fought on Showtime

against Costazou in that fight that made him. And they went through 11 brutal rounds, and then Costazou, the legend, decided not to come out for that 12th round and then basically walked Ricky around the ring and anointed him as the next big thing. Look, we celebrate a lot of ridiculousness in this sport, and we got to see some humble class from a true lady of the game there in Cecilia Bracus.

So I shout that out, Luke, because I'm not all about ridiculousness, all right? That's a fair point. I appreciate that. For my odds and ends, did everyone see this on Saturday night? Inside the octagon, the UFC had plastered on the cage floor an ad from Trojan condoms. I'm not making this up. And ready for this?

The tagline was protect yourself at all times, which is the dumbest fucking tagline imaginable. First of all, it's like, BC, are you wearing a condom right now to protect yourself against evil spirits? And my argument because i sat through the three freaking needles luke that's why i don't have to anymore good lord fair enough so you can just go raw dog like uh one of the fighters who was named that way in the ufc look at this octagon you know what these products are like modello and jimmy johns and stuff these are the products next to the products i actually buy when I go to the store. Like, I'm like, oh, where is the Bell's Two-Hearted Ale?

Oh, look at that. It's actually next to the Modelo. Interesting. And then I'm on my way. But here's the point I wanted to make. Aside from the fact that, you know, this gauche and garish look that they have on the octagon just splattered with ads that is you know totally acceptable it doesn't look in any way incongruous with the rest of the environment

it doesn't have that nascar feel at all i want to be very clear about that and more to the point 2009 condom depot was a major sponsor of fighters to the point where they've given hundreds of thousands they were not even allowed to sponsor fighters anymore inside the ufc not even just pay the fee and keep going they were just simply banned and the ufc also had banned i think firearms sponsors and some things like that to me it is the height of hypocrisy if not outright ridiculousness that they did that in 2009 and then in 2020 here they are circling back to Trojan condoms while forcing the fighters to wear these kits where they cannot have sponsors,

and you've got Jimmy John's and Modelo and Speedway and Monster and your own video game and whatever the hell else in there. Yes, I guess it's an, I guess, BC, I guess going from Mickey's Malt Liquor and Condom Depot to Modelo and Trojan is an upgrade. It's a difference in degree, not kind. And it is hysterical that they have the audacity to do this

while taking money from fighters in the process. Really just amazing. I don't get it all i get your point i just laugh at it right it's just it's a throwback to the mickey's because it's not your paycheck being a it's not your paycheck being affected that's why it's easy to laugh at then bro tell your people to start a union then okay that's up to them and you're right on that it's just it's just hilarious to me that they would do that really very funny uh okay shout out to dynamic fasteners uh south coast mitsubishi all the egregious sponsors that litter the screen dip

your car what would it take what would it take for morning freaking combat to show up on the octagon would you would you die if that happened if our people paid that much money to put us on the damn bloodstain? No, they would never do that. The question is, could we get it on a Showtime championship boxing mat? Maybe. Probably not. There's no way in hell. But a guy can dream, can't he?

Something like that. All right. If you would like to try Showtime, by the way, so you can watch maybe for an MK logo on the ring that will never happen, you can go to Showtime.com right now. 30-day free trial. And if you like it, you can keep it. If not, you're free to go. You want some merch?

Store.show.com. And also, BC and I can be reached on social media. We are on Twitter. We are on Instagram. This video here, of course, you can see it there, Morning Combat on Instagram, Morning Combat on the channel. I don't think I said it up front, PC, but we need the thumbs up, and we need the subscriptions. What else do we need?

Well, you know, we kind of buried it under the radar. We reached 50,000 subscribers a while ago on YouTube and never mentioned it, Luke. I think you were supposed to at least take your shirt off or something, what we agreed to with the audience. No, I think it's like 75 or something. I forget what it is, though. All right.

Well, 50, hey, we made it, but this is just the beginning. And, you know, I'm not kidding. This thing's freaking blowing up. All right? All right? It's happening. It's about, like, look, you know what I'm saying? Get on board.

Get on the rocket ship. But you're going to have to be part of the business here. So hit like. Hit subscribe. Tell your freaking friends, okay? Because they don't make shows like this anymore. They get shut down the first bad joke, okay? All right?

People aren't allowed to tell the truth anymore. We do inside this cage right here, all right? All right? The truth last week was, I'm sorry. You know, Stipe didn't win that second fight. He won the damn third one, okay? Three needles. He won that.

We tell you like it is and how it could be, how it and of course how it should be it's the damn mk all right they there ain't nothing like this right luke right no there is certainly not for better or for worse bc we are we are certainly alone in all of this um all right you want to give jay some time some screen time or do you have more jobs no someone had a hilarious comment last week and i do need to go but they had a hilarious comment and they said you know we time to pull the plug on the jay experiment it's it sounds like he's drying his balls at a public restroom hand dryer and i thought that was one of the funniest comments i'd ever heard whoever said that you are a genius what do you think about that, Jay? I think it's hilarious that

I'm stuck in a room with all this equipment by myself making this entire show happen. It's very funny. Jay, to be honest, you've never shared your thoughts publicly. People hate you. And I don't just mean the people you work with. I mean the viewers of this show hate you. How does that

how do you still drive to thrive in this role? In an electric vehicle. It's very quiet. Yeah, that's on brand. Okay, great. You want to plug anything? Back in time, great documentary.

Yeah, it's on Hulu and the new Peacock Network streaming NBC. Check it out. There you have it. All right. With that in mind, we have to get out of here. I want to thank Jay and the team at Malka Showtime as well. Thanks to you guys. Stay tuned for Morning Combat Dissected.

And for Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal. Thank you. We'll be right back.