MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 253 Recap: Adesanya vs. Costa | Charlo Doubleheader | Conor McGregor | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 62

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Luke and Brian return for a big episode 62 of Morning Kombat as they recap Showtime Boxing's PPV double header and UFC 253. They discuss Israel Adesanya's dominant victory over Paulo Costa (3:50) and break down how impressive new UFC Light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz was in his win over Dominick Reyes (19:20). Next up the guys discuss what's next for Jermall (29:10) and Jermell Charlo (36:33) and talk about their impressive victories this weekend. They also react to Conor McGregor and Dana White's feud. Does a McGregor vs Manny Pacquiao boxing match make any sense (42:15)? BC & Luke answer some DM's from Donks (58:08) and close the show with their odds and ends from this past weekend (1:44:45). --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  For more Combat Sports coverage: youtube.com/MorningKombat Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com Follow our hosts on Instagram: @Briancampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat   To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is Monday, the 28th of September, 2020. And it is time, ladies and gentlemen, donks and donkettes for morning combat. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm from CBS Sports. I am one half of your hosting duo, the gentleman on that side of the screen. He is also from CBS Sports. He is my partner in crime, the conspiracy to my theory. It's Brian Campbell.

Brian, we got seven days, basically basically of each other after seven months away. You complete me, Brian. Yeah, wow, wow. Yeah, you had me at hello. Wow, all right. We don't hate each other after that much time. And no, once again, we were not sharing the same motel room, although there's nothing wrong with that.

But we gave it to the people in every possible way and form. You know what I'm talking about, Luke. And hopefully people checked us out on OnlyFans as well. We launched that after Room Service Diaries. The camera went off. But we're back with a bang, and this is a big week, right? We're coming off two big pay-per-views, one in which we played a big role, and now this week we are launching, Luke, Monday, Wednesday, Friday,

live in your face hole, in your ear hole, however you want to consume it mk all day and also don't forget tuesdays and thursdays a lot of bonus stuff coming at you uh this is the takeover it's happening luke okay all right all right this is it okay yeah so as bc indicated he's uh totally right this is the week where we now expand from one. We did two shows last week, but now we're going to do three official shows this week. 11 a.m. in the East today, 11 a.m. in the East on Wednesday, and 11 a.m. in the East on Friday. And we're going to give you everything inside the world of combat sports. So, as we've been saying for a long time, thumbs up on the video, subscribe on the channel. We noticed that you guys really appreciated the weekend content. Well, get ready. there's a lot more of that coming your way we're going to blow this

channel up i'm very very excited about that um luke how can they get that that sweatshirt you're wearing how can people wear that just one second i want to do this bc because i know you agree with me in all seriousness we got a lot of people i know i did i'm sure you did as well sending us a lot of well wishes after the weekend and during the weekend itself saying you guys have come a long way MK has come a long way so I think it would be fair and appropriate BC to start the show to say you know what thanks to these people out there who made this happen we'll sell you some merch in a second but first really everyone who sent a note or didn't if you've supported this effort at all if you watch the Charlo doubleheader even if you just watch the YouTube stream even if you just thought in your mind i love mk we thank

you back yeah thank you india thank you providence sorry india you're not getting our merch yet but we're working on that all right you hear us showtime guys let's get our international folks outfitted luke tell them where they can't buy it where you can go to store.show.com, and if you're in the five neighborhoods they mail to, you can get this great gear. You can get a sweatshirt like this. You can get a hoodie. You can get a crew neck shirt. You can get hats, beanies, tumblers, mugs, the whole nine yards.

So more of that is coming, and including more geographic locations. But hey, like everything with this show, baby steps. Okay? All right. As always, as we we indicated before thumbs up on the video subscribe if you would like to try showtime you certainly may you go to showtime.com right now you get a 30-day free trial right you like it it's worth it just for the morning combat strike force classics there's a whole bunch of them it's got its own folder more ronallo scott coker luke bc please give it give it 30 days to change your life we'll see what happens all right now bc yesterday i just put out a short 20 minute video going over just the two title fights from ufc 253 there's a lot more we have to get to because that was a

whiny bitch luke that's why you did that a little bit a little bit but it's okay because now you're ready to rock you're back in the saddle again so without further ado BC let's get this party started time for the first topic and we go in fact to UFC 253 all right Israel Adesanya defends his UFC middleweight title against Paolo Costa and does it in a way that can only be described as utterly unequivocally dominant the question for you brian and i got to it a little bit yesterday i have a few additional thoughts but we'll start here how big of a statement was this for israel adesanya massive and let me tell you why to paraphrase the great larry merchant talking about manny pacquiao

we knew adesanya was great he's better than we thought he was. And I sincerely mean that because here's the deal. Luke, there are different kinds of intimidations in combat sports. And we seem to only know it through the one lens of like a Mike Tyson or a prime Ronda Rousey where you're so intimidated by their overwhelming power or ability to finish you so quickly that you go out of your own game plan and stop trying to be yourself and then you still succumb to the to the violence coming at you i thought adesanya won this entirely through intimidation but it wasn't for a massive knock

out or a takedown in an arm bar instantaneously it was i thought paulo costa you know maybe adesanya was in his head. Maybe he watched video of Robert Whittaker getting taken care of and as efficient and violent nature that Adesanya did because Paulo Costa wasn't himself in this fight. And I think that's his fault. I think he was in his own head. And the moment he decided, if I try to be who I am, which is rush this man,

he's going to take care of me. That was when he lost the fight. And I don't know if Costa was trying to save his energy to explode late in the fight. I'm not really sure what his strategy was. And I think across the board, that seems to be the sentiment, but either way, Adesanya was the alpha in this matchup from the moment that, you know, they said, go in that cage and he picked him apart and dominated him. And Luke, we got to start having some real conversations. And I don't mean the knee jerk.

He's looking like the one of the greatest of all time, which he is, by the way, but I don't mean that one. I mean the, how far is he away from entering the pound for pound King conversation right now? I think the dominant Habib Nurmagomedov has that right now on lockdown. And I think the formerly dominant John Jones is right

there still until we see him lose really I think Izzy's crashing this party now Luke tell me if I'm wrong and I know you're I know you drink the city kickboxing juice so you're probably going to say I'm right but seriously I think I'm right you are probably right it's actually something I've not thought too much about so the guys in the top four depending how you have one and two you're right Khabib or Jones and there's a debate to be had there the rankings as they stand now they've got Stipe at three and Izzy at four boy that's a great question I mean here's the deal we were debating this last week which was what would a win over Costa do in terms of making Adesanya in the rankings for best

middleweight champion of all time now Anderson Silva has that by a country mile. If Adesanya wants that title, well, that's not even in the conversation at this moment. But for the rest of them, it kind of is, because Rich Franklin had wins over Evan Tanner and Nate Quarry. Nate Quarry only had wins from The Ultimate Fighter, Lodinson Cade, Shoney Carter, that type. So to me, those don't really stand the test of time. And then you have cases like Evan Tanner.

I think it's just way too old. Murillo Bustamante, same thing. Luke Rockhold, not enough. Michael Bisping, not enough. The only one that's even in the orbit. To be fair, Nate Quarry did have a big win when he joined you on that Spike TV MMA show. Hopefully he didn't get involved in Craig Carton's Ponzi scheme. That's all I have to say for that.

He certainly did not. He's a very upstanding guy. He was a great combat sports fighter, but I just don't think that was the appropriate time for him to get a title shot and i think he would tell you the same actually but the point being is the only other real choice there is weidman and weidman's hard to parse because he's got the three defenses two of them well and then the two wins i should say over silva and to some people the wins over silva are evidence of achievement and then to some they're just sort of accidents and there's there's never really going to be any settling of that debate. So I can accept a world where Weidman is that, but to me, 20 fights in, less than three

years, four fights for a title, if you count the Kelvin Gaslam one, which you have to, undefeated. This is, I won't say an unprecedented run, given what Anderson Silva has done, but if anyone looks like the heir to the throne of Anderson Silva, quite literally and then figuratively, it is Israel Adesanya, man. Look at what he is doing. Yes, the Romero win was not great. Not all of them can be. How many duds along the way did Anderson Silva have? Demi and Maya.

And then the Cote fight ended up weirdly, but that fight was not going all that great. And on and on, Talis Laitis. Here's my thing. This fight was not merely a rebound from that. You're talking about, well, what was Costa's game plan? Dude, Costa's game plan was what Israel let it be. Israel froze him with those feints. He forced him to think.

Everyone's like, why didn't he throw? Because Israel wouldn't let him. That's why. Dude, when you have that kind of control this deep into your run over a presumed contender who was very deserving, at least of the opportunity, and you did something like that where it wasn't even a contest, I'm sorry, man. That's your second best middleweight champion ever. And I do think his case is better than Weidman's, even if I recognize there's a debate. So for Pound for Pound, which was your original question,

does he leap Stipe? I mean, Stipe is the greatest heavyweight in UFC history of all time. I don't know if we're there. But, man, you want to talk about if he's not already top three, knocking on the door at a bare minimum, we are looking at something that this is reminiscent of. I don't want to call him Silva 2.0, but in many ways he is. I think he's more technically sophisticated. I think he's doing things to this division and frustrating it in ways that Silva did where BC I'm sure you're seeing

this things like oh all he needs is someone who can grapple really well and will stick it to him and he'll lose or somebody who's got x ability or y ability that's the same thing they did with Anderson Silva until he shut every mouth along the way. And they just recognized, you know what? He's too good. Remember he dismantled Dan Henderson? Remember they thought that was going to be the one? I mean, you know, go on and on down the line. Absolutely brilliant.

And I think that you combine with how Dana bragged about the digital, you know, commercial success of this card. And I don't know if we're going to get the actual pay-per-view numbers, but it seemed like this card mattered a whole hell of a lot. He's stepping into the spot now as one of their biggest stars. I mean, obviously, Conor is still the guy, although we're going to talk about where he's going right now. But Izzy's also becoming that guy from a commercial standpoint to a large degree.

If you're still a hater and you're still like, stop even sniffing things like he could become a greatest of all time, just look at what he's building that luke just said and just look at even more the swagger and the ability to back it up there's a special it factor with izzy and uh it's fun being on this ride right now and yeah maybe there is a wrestler who can give him some damage but i want to see that wrestler beat him i want to see that submission expert beat him i want to see that brawler beat him it's just not happening right now luke because he is so extra sophisticated within the striking game that i don't know if it's going to matter until he gets a little bit older hey remember after the anderson silva fight you told me you weren't so sure and i was like you're

crazy and now you're realizing how right i was no no you're gonna mix that i want to i want to make that point cream and claire i'm sorry, because you were taking your love for Adi back then and rubbing it on yourself like it was the cream and clear there, Gary Sheffield. What I was saying at that point was Anderson Silva, at however old he was, poured out the jug that night and did succeed in disarming and somewhat humanizing Adesanya. And I know we can go, well, maybe he was respecting him. No, Adesanya didn't want to risk having this old champion, you know, ruin what he was building.

And he played it a little bit safe. He did. He was sophisticated and great, but he played it safe. And it allowed Adesanya, it allowed Anderson to save face and look really good and defeat that night. But, you know, like you said, not every fight's going to be a banger or a clean knockout. That was a tough Anderson Silva that night. I'm not going to hear anything else from anyone else, but I know what the rock's cooking on Adesanya from the beginning. Although you've got the city kickboxing tattoo across your chest, I have seen you shirtless.

I know you're day one-ish on these guys, but, you know, come on. I can see. I can hear Jimmy, bro. In all seriousness, and it's hard to compare somebody who's got such a diametrically opposed style like a Khabib, but I'm asking a question where I think he is certainly in the conversation. Who is a smarter fighter? The reason why the Romero fight was bad, there was a lot of factors, but one is Adesanya is not an idiot about who is in front of him.

He pays deference to their skills. Same with Anderson Silva. What you saw on Saturday, and the reason why there was such a wide gap is that for all of the physical prowess that Bojocinia possesses, and by the way, he's going to get some wins again. He's going to stack some Ws. He's by no means done. But the reason why there was such a gap is because in terms of the sophistication,

the cerebral approach to the game, thinking through the problems, understanding tactics, understanding strategy, understanding the layers of complexity. Dude, this was Big Bang take Little Bang, excuse me, 84s and Candy Paint. There was no comparison between the two. It was master and teacher, excuse me, master and student. I'm botching all of these analogies. I'm just trying to point out if you see still um adesanya in these scenarios where they're not quite exciting he's holding back a little bit

it tells you he recognizes there's a threat in front of him and he does that a little bit in this fight to start but once he got going i mean it was just it was over so what this tells you is you're looking at a guy who he can be exciting when he can make that skill differential a function of intelligence. And more to the point, when there is one, holy smokes, is he deadly. Whoa. And I'm looking, and by the way, last thing on this, BC, I'm looking at the rankings. Let me go through this here very quickly.

Not all these guys are in line, but here's who's left who he hasn't fought, and there's rematches in order, I get. But in terms of who he hasn't fought cannonier her manson till uh let's see weidman hall shabazian akhmedanov akhmadov excuse me i beat vittori and then heinous anyone on that list stand out to you as an obvious threat because they don't to me not yet and because you know they haven't had the run or the big time wins that can enter them there but obviously you know anyone on that list can rip off two in a row and separate himself from the rest of that pack and for a night we could feel like they're a legitimate test but i do not believe the respect we had for borashina coming in in the thought process of i mean you said it to me before that fight started you're

like i don't know man i'm'm feeling Costa might do something here. He might surprise us. That's because of what he had built. Somebody else could get there. Cannon, there's going to be a tough out, but no, you're not going to be able to favor anybody now until he decides to move up in weight, and who knows if he will.

I mean, he seems to be very bold in that regard. Oh, I just wanted to make one separation here. You mentioned, you know, he could be right there with Stipe in the pound for pound. I know people have different understandings of what pound for pound means to them and i get a lot of fights with the boxing journalists on this because i think a lot of people get it wrong what you have accomplished gets you into the discussion but i think ultimately it's the eye test that separates it so what that means is why i would put out of sanya ahead of stipe right now not only does he

have a great resume out of sanya that he's built, but the whole idea of they'll never actually fight unless one moves up and does something crazy. So you have to put them in the same mythical weight class in your mind. They bring with them the same advantages against their own weight class that they have. So if you're putting Izzy in this mythical thing against Stipe, yes, Stipe's going to have the power. He's going to have the chin.

He's going to have all that toughness. But I think Adesanya picks him apart style for style. So when it's that close and you have to separate it, I think that's why we have this pound-for-pound debate. I think that's a fine point. And then also just to clarify, when I bring up these names, I'm not saying that none of those guys can or will win. To BC's point, it's about favoritism.

I'm just sort of acknowledging, look, you know this as well as I do. You can be great, but if you show up and you have a bad night, you're going to get knocked out. If you show up and you're not feeling great and they're on, there's all kinds of reasons why you can lose that actually have nothing to do with skills per se. So this is not like, oh, Adesanya is never going to lose. I'm just pointing out he is poised at the moment to continue this run of domination or he's certainly winning and it seems like it might go for a while until something happens a new contender emerges blah blah blah but he is sitting in a very advantageous position that's why Matt's in the

hall of fame because it can happen anytime and did you see him uh disarm Joshua Fabia on that Dana White looking for a fight that was high theater right there so shout out to that one more question about Adesanya I want to get to here in this discussion. I know we'll have some more about it later. But for just this moment, BC, what do you make about his celebration, humping Paulo Costa, which you try to do to me every time I see you, and then also this sort of social media tour he's been on that's been totally unapologetic about how much he's enjoying the moment?

Bad look, good look, don't care? Where are you? I think it's part of the charm, and I don't mean it's charming. I just mean part of the character that he's putting out in the, I mean, yeah. A lot of things he says is on the line or over it, and I think it's that edge where, you know, if we're going to pro wrestling this, he's a baby face, but he's got villainous trends. You know, there's a little Stone Cold Steve he's got villainous trends. You know, there's a little stone cold Steve Austin in there. So I like it.

I'm not against it. Sometimes though, it depends on who you are, whether people are going to love it or hate it. I got no issue with it. I like when people who are bad asses act like bad asses and are largely remorseful for that. I think we all have that fantasy within ourselves, Luke, that we can walk around and whatever, whatever sphere of influence we have and just take no cares, take no shit. In fact, you know, Luke, we could say the same thing about your broadcasting career. You know,

you rub a lot of people the wrong way, you know what I'm saying? And you don't seem to care about it at all. So, you know, good for you. Most of the people who take issue with anything I have to say are, you know, they don know, they don't make especially good arguments about what bothers them about it. Now, let me just say this. I'm with you a little bit, like, do I prefer this that he is doing? I don't know that I prefer it, but I posted a video after Adesanya's win over Whitaker, where I had done a dissected in the old bomb shelter there, BC, and I noted that along the way from, not so much the Wilkinson fight, but certainly from the Vittori and then Tavares

and then Gastelum and Silva and then Whitaker. And even for this fight, people messaging like, oh, Costa's going to knock this bum the fuck out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like at every turn, this guy's doing the most amazing things and there is this perpetual need to undermine it from a pretty, I would say minority, but vocal minority of folks.

It's got to be annoying for him. If he goes out and does what he, I mean, if this was a close fight and he skirted by, I'd be like, all right, it's a little much. Yo, he went out there and just dunked. You ever seen that video of Joel Embiid showing up on some basketball court in Philly playing some randos, and he throws the basketball in the guy's face, catches the rebound, and then dunks it? That's what he did on Saturday. So it's disrespectful,'s disrespectful but it's like yeah but it's Joel Embiid

playing some regulars you know what I mean you think Borosina still slayed afterwards probably I mean you look like that and you can't get laid 24-7 you got a problem you know yeah uh all right so that takes us now to our second fight which we didn't I mean I gotta say you were really kind of high on this guy and you deserve some credit for bc i didn't have the balls to pick the upset though luke i didn't have the balls to go yeah all right sometimes we can't pull the trigger but you know what your confidence was well placed let's talk about now the second of the two title fights in your co-main event here point two jan blachowicz wow i am so impressed you know we were talking about how Adesanya made it look easy

as Jay puts up the wrong graphics all over the screen. You know what? No, Jay, we want that one back on, Jay, the one with the fighter where Luke leans. Yeah, we want that one. Hold on a second, BC. Let me get this out, and I'll toss it to you again. Jan Blachowicz not only won BC, and again, we watch combat sports so much. When upsets happen, we're surprised for a

little bit but then you rationalize and you're like okay i mean you know everyone's got a puncher's chance and blah blah blah dude this had nothing to do with it he also dominated dominic reyes this was not a close fight at all should we be surprised not that jan blohovichicz won BC but that he won so cleanly yeah we should because you know he is uh wow all right there we go there it is there's Dom uh because he's 37 years old Luke and there had been portions of his career where he looked like a not a pretender but somewhere between pretender and contender right he looked like a sort of average uh you know gatekeeper journeyman whatever full credit to him for the improvement. I mean, you've got to love this.

He's so confident, yet never cocky or outwardly confident. It's almost like a humble confidence, which is where, even look at that celebration, Luke. It was almost like, oh, my God, this actually happened. Like, it was almost like Holly Holm when she knocked out Ronda, and she didn't even know what to do with her hands, and she's just like, oh, my God. It was like, oh, my God. Like my dreams came true.

So we shouldn't necessarily have seen it coming. And I think the odds makers got this right. Here was my issue with Dom though. He didn't screw up in this fight. This wasn't where like, oh man, he came in too cocky. He was believing his own hype and, and Blahowicz made him pay. He straight up lost. Jan was the better fighter on this night.

But I do wonder, which is something I did talk about leading up, if there was any kind of like dump in motivation, given the circumstances, when you're going up against Jon Jones, which Dom Reyes did with such impeccable confidence in execution of his skill set, you're thinking this is the fight of my life. You're thinking I make one mistake and I'm getting KO'd. You're thinking I've got to pour out the whole jug this is my moment mom spaghetti this is everything right now and he fought the fight of his life and we hailed him we said he deserves the rematch we said if Jon Jones moves up you should just give the title to Dom Reyes and then when they schedule this fight and you look at the odds and it's like three to one and you're like, you know, OK, Dom should win this. And then we'll figure out if, you know, if Maheta can come out of his fight and maybe we can start a rivalry there.

I wonder if there was some natural element of that to Dom. I'm not saying he didn't train. I'm not saying he didn't focus. I'm not saying he didn't believe Jan could beat him. But whatever it was, he got steamrolled. And we have to give Blahowitz that credit. We talked about his patience coming in, Luke. This was a perfectly patient performance. He landed big shots.

He never overextended. He never went for broke. He just kept at his game plan. And yes, for a 37-year-old, he's got pretty sneaky counter shots. Normally it's that right uppercut left hook package. He kind of mixed in different kind of straight punches and awkward angle punches. Good God, he deserves it. he's a tough ass out and this was one of those rare times where you're like like maybe biz ping beating rock hold really or gsp beating biz ping we're like holy shit he did

it i never expected this i wouldn't have guessed he did it it was a good moment because you gotta love this guy have you ever interviewed him luke he is so genuine and pure he's literally that guy next door right who mows his lawn with his shirt off and drinks canned beer the whole time he's that dude i have nothing but love for him there's a couple of reasons why i think people like him you noted that he was something at first between pretender and contender i went over this yesterday in the video i posted on the morning combat channel BC, do you realize he only won two of his first six UFC fights? He'd win one, then lose two, then win one, then lose two. And so you were like, okay, I mean, he's good enough to beat the dudes on the regional scenes in Europe, and that's not nothing. And he seems like a nice guy, but how much more is he than that?

And then he just started stacking wins. Now he had that another stumble against Tiago Santos, but okay, he took him three rounds and hey, Tiago Santos is a tough out for anybody else. And he just continued to get better. I think people like it when you have this kind of perseverance about you, 37 years old, doing what he did. Like he just always finds a way to get better. I think people like that, you know, that late bloomer story. The other part about him, and we'll talk about the Charlo brothers because while that's boxing, they're very much the opposite of this it always feels like to me that jan blachowicz is not chasing outside validation yes validation of his fiance and his coaches maybe even there's this is not true in poland but in the wider mma community it just seems like he's totally secure in who he

is and why he's on this journey and he he's not chasing the adoration of large crowds or big social media followings or applause from whoever is some kind of influencer in this world. He just seems like he's on a martial arts journey for himself. I think people really respond to that. You know, I'm not saying that one way is right or the other but it's very much the opposite of what Charlo's have been doing Adesanya to a degree as well and for him it just seems to work I think the last thing I'd say in addition to that about why all of this excuse me is working for Jan is that um it was it was just it's it's not so much just the blooming thing, although that's a pretty key part of it. But I don't know, there's another factor there that's sort of, it's semi-related.

And he is just a guy out there who, he brings you joy to watch, right? Don't you feel, like, how many times do you see somebody good or bad? You don't have a connection. You don't. It doesn't change your view of the sport. I mean, ultimately, like why we watch sports is how the teams we like make us feel. Like someone was asking me, I was talking about it with the production crew behind the show. And they're asking me how I feel about the Washington football team this season.

Listen, man, I can never root for another team, but they don't make me feel very good. I don't get a lot of, I don't get enjoyment out of it anymore. I don't know Jan Blachowicz, but it feels like you can watch the journey he's been on and it makes you feel better about you watching the sport. That's a very rare thing in this messed up game full of bad actors, even when they're really good fighters. He's a delight dude and i'm honestly thrilled for his success and i am totally wrong and i missed the boat on it and mia coppa i won't make that mistake twice well you should have missed the boat luke to be honest you

mentioned he had that win one lose two thing going he also looked really bad against jacare did just enough to win in a fight that was supposed to be his showcase. Let me call out John Jones after it was just sort of an every man win, but that's the thing. He's Polish Forrest Griffin to your point, right? It's hard not to watch him and feel like that could be me in there. If I only had a legitimate backbone and no cares in the world, but yeah,

man, I mean, it really felt that good all along and he made Dom Reyes, a great fighter's nose look like mine, Luke. So that's not a bad deal for him. I'm mean it's so funny you know it's like you watch a guy like this you mentioned the pretender contender thing that's a good way to put it we talked about Jason Rosario from the Charlo fight a guy that's not supposed to be there

dude he wasn't supposed to be here either you know if you had just watched him in 2015-2016 you'd be like all right he's pretty good but he didn't really start winning until 2017 in any kind of consistent bout over bout way. This was not, I mean, if you had asked me two years ago, who's the next light heavyweight champ? There's a lot of names I would have come up with. Sure as fuck wouldn't have been Jan Blachowicz. He was not on that kind of a trajectory or that radar. And you know what? Here he is, dude.

What a great story in MMA. Like, I just, I feel so good for a guy. By the way, never a promoter's favorite, never handed an easy fight, never given the fast track, never given the bonus. Maybe he got bonuses by virtue of his performances, but I mean, he was never the guy

who was targeted for stardom. Just a guy who kind of slowly but surely took it and not for the crowd although he is a quite nice gentleman but because I think he just likes martial arts I think he likes the journey there's something so honest and pure about it yeah final point on that Luke I was still calling him Jan Blokowitz up until like a year ago so that shows you that he was never fully in our, in our crosshairs. All right. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card.

The credit 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. So true. All right, takes us to point three. BC and I were there at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The Charlo brothers putting on quite a show, albeit in different ways. Part of two cards, a doubleheader. We'll go to the first one. Sergey Derevyanchenko losing via unanimous decision to Jermall Charlo the bigger one at 160 pounds interestingly uh the

folks there in charge of the career for Derevyanchenko saying he's gonna drop to 154 I wonder if he might fight another Charlo brother but the question I have is and I'll start here if I may BC what Jermall Charlo proved now we know what he can get maybe a Eubanks Jr. fight if the stars align Canelo's not out of the question I suppose although probably not top of mind I don't mean like what's next in that sense I mean what did he prove unlike the Blachowicz situation which we just described the Charlo brothers have been scratching and clawing for that outside validation which again I don't begrudge them i've done things like that in my career as well but to me what they proved is that the upper bound limit that the very intense

skeptics that they draw clearly need to move the goalposts a little bit here they are capable of much more than their critics would let you believe. And that's true, really, of anybody. But what I mean to say is the Charlos, if you read even the boxing media, to an extent, they're sort of begrudging in their respect. They're good. They're athletic. They're talented. They work hard, but they're not really that person. They're not really at that level. They're not really that good. And if they did fight someone on that level, you know, they probably wouldn't do all that well. As we talked about on Saturday Night Night BC, Dramal Charlo beat Derevyanchenko better than Triple G or Jacobs. Jacobs and Triple G getting a knockdown, but then not having that

sustained effort. Total comprehensive effort from Dramal Charlo showing, yes, he has the physical tools to compete. He also has the smarts and the veteran skills at this point and understanding of the totality of the boxing experience to get the job done. And I'm not saying he beats Eubanks Jr. Maybe he does. I'm not saying he beats Canelo. This is not my point. My point being is he has proved in this and what he earned was that you cannot trust the skeptics to give you an honest view of the true nature of what he can do. You can't ignore them, but it just shows certain fighters illicit or even pro athletes illicit an amount of criticism that is rooted in something, but it's totally overblown in other ways. And I think Jamal

Charlo has shown that the critics are treating him in that kind of way. Well, look, you know, maybe some of the critics wouldn't give him the credit because, you know, the Charlos are brash African-American stars who take no crap. I don't know. Maybe some of that. But to defend the critics for to a second, you know, you can't really anoint somebody until you really see them in there against a contemporary, a true elite. And that's what we had here in Derevyanchenko. Now, time will tell if Derevyanchenko was, you know,

somewhat damaged goods from the hell he went through against Golovkin. He didn't seem to be on Saturday night. He gave a world-class effort. He is, you know, what we said he was coming in. Sergey Derevyanchenko is one of the best fighters in the world. I'm sorry, you know, he's one of the elite middleweights, whether he's lost three title fights or not. He was the perfect foil for Jamal Charlo to have the chance to show us everything that he's about.

He just so happens that he is the full package. So when he says before the fight, I'm already the best middleweight in the world, it's natural to be like, all right, bro, we got to see it, right? You know, I really can't give you any chance against canelo until i see you in there against someone comparable well here's derivinchenko and what you saw was such a full performance luke for for the fact that germall you know according to compu box i said this stat a lot last week you know attempts the least amount of punches for active middleweights there was always that concern that he would allow derivinchenko to have a certain place in this fight that maybe he didn't deserve because Dermal was the bigger fighter. I wanted to see him use the jab.

He did exactly just that. He controlled distance at such an expert level that there really are no flaws in Dermal Charlo's game at 160 pounds. And there really are very few fighters who are going to be able to deal outright with that combination of speed, power, and athleticism. And then when you add in the intelligence, the patience, the poise, this is an absolute complete fighter. You know, I don't know Canelo's future. I don't know his network future, given all that's going on with his DAZN lawsuit and the, you know, the reports coming out that he may settle with them or he may look to go elsewhere. Who knows? I don't even know if Canelo wants to fight or can fight anymore at 160 but what Jermall Charlo did on Saturday

was everything you just said and he also made a Canelo fight both needed and legitimate that you could make a strong case for him to win and I think when you take all things considered on this night Jermall Charlo I think while this was the Charlo's night, I think Jermall was the big winner on the entire pay-per-view card. Yeah. I mean, just let me go back to the critics point because I don't, again, I am a critic to many things in the, in the combat sports industry. So I think there is a valuable place for it, but the critics, the criticisms of the Charlo's was not like, oh, well, let's just see what happens. No, it was the opposite. It was this dismissal before he had a chance.

I would watch them, and certainly I've been gone from the boxing industry for a long time. I've got a lot of work to do to catch up to see what I missed. I acknowledge it up front. I make no bones about it. But I would watch tape on this guy, and I'd be like, okay, you're right. He does have to elevate the level of competition before we can draw a fuller picture of the totality of his abilities. What I didn't get was the people being like, oh, there's no chance. Oh, forget it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He can't do it. They're not that good. They're just X or Y. And I was like, well, why are you putting those limits?

What are you seeing in the tape that I'm not other than the competition needs to improve? I think that was the point. There was a certain hostility to the idea that they even belonged in that conversation or as somebody who would be on that trajectory. And I think that's what really bothered me. And to your point, the way in which he beat Derevyanchenko with the smarts and the power, the combination of brains and brawn and 30 years old, a lot of rings, a ring time at this point it was it was a you know masterful is a bit of a strong word but damn good performance against a very very significant challenge I thought he passed with flying colors any final thoughts on that particular contest yeah Derevyan Chanko's future final thought here his manager Keith Conley as you mentioned you know they talked

about he'll probably go down to 154 now and at at age 34, with a dream to win a world title, it makes a lot of sense. Dervinchenko is a small middleweight. He gave hell to the three best middleweights of his era at the moment. Luke, even though 154 is a much deeper category, right? There are hella names up and down that roster that go from Harrison, Laura, Hurd, J-Rock, on and on to Jermell and Banana as well. You know, he can win a world title in this weight class as long as the you know the the the the punishment he has a door he has absorbed and oh by the way let's not act like he didn't his face was a mess once again he

went for it he gave everything he had you know that's going to catch up to him one of these days but he's gonna be tough out for a lot of these guys at 154 and i think we can make some fun fights with him moving forward so it seems like the right move so then let's talk in point four here about the second of the two Charlo brothers Jermel Charlo dispatching Jason Rosario phenomenal work although there were times where the bout was I would say Rosario had some success along the way is there anything left for Brian, for the smaller of the two brothers, Jermell at 154, now that he's got three of the four titles? Yeah, there's, there's a laundry list of names that I just mentioned that I need to see Jermell fight. The good thing is though coming in, you know, our eye test told us that from like a pound for pound for pound

perspective, he was probably the best at 154 and he did nothing on Saturday to prove that wrong. Now he's the power player in the division. He has three or four belts, and boy, do I want to see him rematch Erickson Lubin, take on his former, you know, sparring partner and stablemate, the great Arislandi Lara, go in there against a repackaged Jarrett Hurd. I mean, there are plenty, Luke, of big marquee fights to make.

He's the guy now. I think he's going to deserve our pound-for-pound respect. I'd like to get in that maybe in another segment this week and sort of lay that out to see where the Charlo's belong in this, but he's legit. But here's one tiny criticism I'll say, and we did say coming in. If I look at the expectations of the four main event fighters coming in, I thought Derevyanchenko lived up to our expectations. I thought Jermall exceeded them. I do think though that Banana Rosario, who again, we said we're not really sure how good he is. I think he certainly was underwhelming overall. And I think even though Jermall dominated this fight, even though he scored three knockdowns, even though he pretty much showed you who he is, I do fear for Jermall still, Luke, that he does not

throw enough punches. That was a problem in two close fights with Tony Harrison. Maybe that first one didn't need to be a disputed decision if he had got out there with his jab and really made a statement, like Jermell did against Derevyanchenko. And if he had done that in the rematch with Charlo, I'm sorry, with Harrison,

although Jermell did get a late knockout and it was spectacular, that fight maybe wouldn't have been as close either. Jermell is an incredible talent, just like his brother, an amazing counterpuncher. You saw the three knockdowns. But Luke, you look at the stats. Banana landed something like 24 more punches than Charlo.

It's great to be efficient, but if you do not knock out the fellow elite standing across from you, and it just so happened that Rosario is not of that ilk the judges may not reward how great your counter punching was you have to leave no doubt Dramal learned that against Derevyanchenko I kind of need Dramal to learn that it's a small criticism but it may end up being again a hard lesson learned like he had the first time around against Harrison yeah it's funny he and he by way, he committed the same sin in the second Harrison fight. He was numerically outstruck in that one for long portions of the fight, right?

I mean, early knockdown notwithstanding, and of course the way he stopped it. And then here, the same thing in the Rosario fight, where he was numerically outstruck until he just waited for these giant, punctuated moments upon which to win. And he, in fact, did did win so the question is to your point right what happens if jayrock gets a crack what happens if heard re-establishes himself what happens if by the way derivinchenko goes down to 154 and that's a fight that makes it to you know guys you know might put it on him how long can he rest on these on this style before it costs him

one more point though I don't understand why you're surprised Rosario fought the way that he did to me it's like that that was the way in which he was dropped I will acknowledge was surprising especially that stab to the body I don't think there was any acting I think he got stuck with a hard shot but I mean the sort of loose style where in moments he can apply good pressure he's got big power I was looking at some boxing trainers on talking about it after the fact that they were saying his whole stance was wrong his whole approach to the game there was a reason or this particular fight I should say there was a reason why he was so susceptible there and why Charlo went the way he did I don't know like at 25 we talked about abc he's still

coming into his own and he has this risk style where at times he's going to overperform and at times he's going to underperform i don't know if he really underperformed versus he was overmatched but you're really surprised at the way he fought it may have been fool's gold with the j-rock fight you know i did tease that coming in i love julian williams when he went in there against your guy jared heard and just out jared hearded him it was incredible luke i mean j-rock is is a great fighter but does he have that major league level chin you know germal found out that he didn't rosario did as well but you're right rosario was not technically sound in there he didn't you know elevate his game to next level, and his power didn't seem to bother Jermell. So, you know, it is what it is.

He's a player in the division now, Banana, but I think this brings him certainly back down to earth. All right, and then last but not least, let's circle back to the UFC here if we can for point number five, BC. Ha, what about this? This is a funny one because you and I even barely talked about this during fight we're actually gonna talk about it more here than we ever did Conor McGregor versus Dana White now we'll talk about Conor versus Pacquiao in just a second but for the moment let's get to this

Conor McGregor uh posts essentially what do you want to say the dms from an instagram chat they had where he was asking for a series of things, BC, right? Diego Sanchez fight, certain dates, getting back out there. And you see this sort of back and forth discussion that he has with Dana. He posted on social media. Dana then says, it's one of the dirtiest things you can do. It's a breaking of guy code. Although I suppose it involves girls too. I don't know. Anyway. And then Connor took back to social media and he was like, bro, code was broken when you said I didn't want to fight earlier this year about Justin. When you lied about me, the code was off.

Okay, what the hell is going on here, BC? I want to get into the code part of it first. Does Dana do somewhat dirtbag tricks because he has leverage as the promoter and the way he talks to yes you know what i mean like like like any boss who's sort of negotiating with you it it is so you know in connor's own version of guy code i could see where he feels like you know you said this about me and it wasn't true now i don't need you as much because i can get this massive payday with the pacquiao fight so i'm just going going to flip out the middle fingers and kind of slap you around a little bit. But I actually back Dana in this completely. I do think this is a violation of human code. You know, it's like that on Twitter

or Instagram or whatever. You know, when you send somebody a private message, it's private. You know what I mean? In posting that out publicly, you know, we've seen it from time to time. It's a total slap in the face. Yes, you do speak in private differently than you do publicly, usually for certain reasons. I don't think that means Hulk Hogan is allowed to say the N-word on a sex tape privately. And then when it goes public, we can't, you know, roast him. Yeah, we should roast him. Good Lord, that's awful. I'm saying more like, you know, the Diego Sanchez conversation conversation that's promoter and fighter talking there's different negotiations and leverage going on with their i agree with dana in this regard but i want to talk about something larger here luke i mean look i am just randomly happen to be wearing a

connor t-shirt here and do have a couple connor posters lingering around why why you know why because i love the man well no but he is a big part of this MMA era and everything he's a part of is fun and I do miss that when he's not there but the week that you were gone and Rashad Evans slid in we did have this discussion does my and you know a lot of fans and media are like this does our love of what Conor brings to the sport not our love of Conor himself but what he brings to the sport cloud the fact that it's over Luke him being a legitimate title contender consistent fighter is it over we said you know with Rashad that I think it is and I think I'm completely waking up to that fact based on these recent things we've seen

the fact that he wanted to after beating cowboy main event against diego sanchez in la like what the hell is going on here and then the subsequent decision to make what is just an ill-advised move to box a manny pacquiao who still freaking has it dude who just knocked down in school then beating keith thurman last summer in one of the fights of the year and look you know i'd love to test manny pacquiao's bloodstream too i don't know what the hell is going on i don't know how that guy at age 40 or 41 has calves that big and is still that quick but the point is he is and there are a lot of ways conor mcgregor can make money and the fact that he's so hell-bent look you want to go free match floyd again do it dude i could even talk myself into it we'll we'll make it rain all over the two of you in the ring while you're boxing

manny pacquiaoiao's gonna knock you out cold, bro. He's gonna do bad things to your brand. I don't know what those guys in the Middle East are gonna pay you, but it better be worth it. Because now you're kind of shitting all over Dana, who is a key to who you really are. Like, you can go sell whiskey, you can go

moonlight as a boxer, but at the end of the day, if you don't come back into that octagon every once in a while and remind us who you are, you're nothing. You still need Dana. So to crap on him, to be flirting with this idea, of course Manny jumped all over it. Manny, to his credit, was like, I think I can help a lot of, you know, people, COVID victims. I think I can donate most of my purse, you know.

Whatever you want to say about Manny Pacquiao, he does some good gestures right there. What the hell's Conor doing? It's over, Luke.'s over Luke the dream the idea I thought 2020 was going to be his year to come back reignite himself build toward that Habib rematch and and you know see what's left of him after a couple wild years of making money and getting in trouble but Luke Thomas it is over I have come to terms with that I'm going to take this shirt off and rip it up we had a good run but uh bro we're gonna have to carry you out of that middle eastern ring against the great manny pacquiao well in in the famous words from stripes of sergeant holka lighten up francis what are you talking about listen i am perfectly willing to entertain the idea that these

detours the sanchez potential detour which i'm sure will not happen, and then DiPacchio one, which I guess we'll have to see. Neither of these are what we had envisioned for him. Neither of these are what we would recommend. I don't think either of these, I mean, we might watch either or both, but it's not what we prefer out of him. And what kind of detour he's on, it is hard to understand. And so can I definitively say that your point about his days as a ranked sort of

guy who was going to compete against the best in any sort of a reasonably consistent clip, are those days over? I can't say that you're wrong, but let's go back here just a step if we can. First, is Dana White right that if you're having a private message with somebody on a social media platform or even text and someone's like, hey, you know, if I'm having a discussion with you in private and in good conscience, can you keep these details between us and you share that with the wider world? Is that a bit of a dirtbag move? It is a dirtbag move. Okay, there can be no denying it and I won't defend it in that way. However, however, like every promoter in this sport, whether it's Bob Arum or Scott Coker or Dana White, all of these guys leak things to the media all the time

to make any fighter they don't like or rival promoter or any entity they don't like look good. They want to make it look bad. All of them do it. So this idea that we keep private. That's the game, Luke. The game is the game. Let me finish.

Let me finish. As Omar said, the game is the game, bro, okay? Listen, you can't claim that what you're really interested in is private conversations when you're sharing private information to disparage people or entities that you don't like. And I get it might be the game. Well, get it. Welcome to the game. Conor didn't break any laws by doing this.

He may have broken some understood agreement that there's nothing written, but still, he didn't break any laws, which brings me to this point. We're talking about an organization in the Ultimate Fighting Championship that can't stand any criticism that goes crazy when it happens, with Dana White going after Dave Doyle from USA Today MMA Junkie on Twitter for having an opinion that was frankly kind of innocuous. It was no big deal. And Dana White lost his mind. They put provisions in all their contracts that don't let you talk about pay if you're a fighter. We've been over this before, all the ways in which they try to muzzle any kind of information that they don't want to get out that could make them look bad.

And then we're going to have these situations where we're going to go after Con Connor for leaking information that makes him look good what they or not make him look good but but that certainly um furthers the conversation I think a little bit in in his favor at least the way he sees it listen here's the deal uh you can have all of these formal arrangements by which you can stifle speech but in the end if you try and bully everyone into a code of silence and a practice of not really sharing details, somebody is going to come along that doesn't feel leveraged to do that. And I don't recommend doing this. I wouldn't do it. I think Dana has a point in saying you probably shouldn't.

But it ain't written down. It's absolutely something he can do. No, you missed it here. Hold on. You're still angry at Dana for whatever. And Dana's not perfect. What am I angry at Dana for whatever and Dana's not perfect what am I angry at Dana for? he's done nothing to me

but I don't understand somebody that tries to find every which way they can with every party they interact with to either stifle criticism or stifle speech and then when someone leaks something that you don't like now you have the temerity to say well you owed me the honor of not doing this dude, if you want someone

if you want someone to you want someone if you want someone to not share details put it in writing that they can't because otherwise first of all if you share any of my dms to you including pics you're done first of all number two it'd be one thing if connor came out and was like you guys don't understand when dana and i talk behind the scenes it's different he said this and this well then it gives Dana a chance to say, oh, that's crazy. That's the game, bro. Okay? Dana is allowed to go out there and say false things

or certainly things that are insulting and make fighters look bad, and they're just supposed to take it? No, they are allowed to do the same thing, Luke. Conor is allowed to go in front of the media and even lie if he wants dms and now and now what is the difference there's a difference between saying dana won't pay me what i'm worth

and actually showing the contract right you don't do that you're not supposed to you're not supposed to do that that is you're not but even if that wasn't in the clause luke it's it's breaking the rules of the game i can tell you i think anything or the rules that you imagine exist that don't exist there's a code there's a human code luke i i mean look i do you have a friend is guilty of one thing around your people is guilty of this could be our last episode if you want to break the code all right connor is guilty of one thing the indecency of respect for a private conversation that's it but when you look at the okay fine but when you look at the larger conversation

about how many times the ufc uses their bully pulpit to define to the media their narrative to say things about other entities that aren't even true he wants ownership of the promotion he's not going to get it this is a different scenario this isn't like some middle class fighter who's been you know screwed over there's a lot of those guys connor like dude they've given him everything right i mean they they've gone over his house and drinking whiskey with him you know they took a huge chunk of his purse from the mayweather fight have they given him everything because you want to know why because if they didn't if he didn't bring them in as co

promoter there would have been a court battle that's why and the fight wouldn't happen because their contracts are insanely restrictive that's why i'm not trying to protect the evil empire here i am saying there are rules to this game and you do have to play it the right way okay when you play a game for years like they do of media manipulation and to say the things that they have said about he could play it too dude but he played it is playing by a different rule book that's it connor's playing by a different rule book it's one you don't like but it's one he has the right to play with and there's consequences to it maybe people don't share private information with him anymore fine those are the rules he'll have to accept but if you don't like the way connor's playing it too bad

do you want me to tell jay right now everything you said about him this weekend? I'll do that. I'll show him the DMs, okay? Jay, are you here? Jay, are you even here today? Jay is so irrelevant. I didn't even mention him. Let me troll the fans and bring Jay in.

Jay, are you there at the aircraft carrier? What's going on, bro? I'm here at the aircraft carrier. Okay. I got Ron Johnson waiting on Skype. Can we bring him in, please? I got to get to the bottom of this. I want Ron Johnson to show me the DMs of why No Escape never made it, all right?

By the way, those DMs would be very damning. Very damning. Jay, can you settle this debate? Who's right and who's wrong? There's a game, but there's a code, bro, okay? Come on. I don't know. I think when you're that famous, there's no code.

Yeah, exactly. Like, they're not buddies. They were, you know, Dana, it's good. I'm with Luke. I'm out of here. I realized Jay would sell our soul in a second, Luke. I would never. I would never.

Here's the only question for Jay that matters. Jay, why do you do such hilarious shtick before the show, and then when the show comes on, you act like this is Mindhunter and I'm interrogating you because you ate your neighbors? I try to, like like tone it down so brian could look funnier okay gotta go jay happy happy yom kippur to you and your tribe jay okay to you and your people thank you all our listeners out there okay look you don't look you don't serve any masters so you know check your dms bro i serve many masters one is this mk brand all right bc we

can't agree on this but maybe we can on the Pacquiao fight. Forget about the Diego Sanchez idea. I don't even know what to say about that. But he's got, he's girthy, right? Diego's girthy, bro. He certainly did not look in his best shape. So let's talk about the Pacquiao fight. Honestly, you know, here's what kind of got me about it.

I'm not even saying it won't happen. It actually might. We've talked about before that Pacquiao has been rejuvenated at this stage in his career. It's a terrible fight for Conor. It seems like on paper anyway. Rather than it happening or not happening, here's what caught my attention. It doesn't have nearly the same buzz as an idea of a Mayweather rematch or whatever.

People seemed interested in it, but they didn't seem that interested in it. Did I misread that? No, you're right because just like the first fight when floyd was two years retired let's not forget that right and connor was at a point after the alvarez win where you're like i don't know dude maybe he could knock out this old guy you know we've we've seen the guy behind the curtain now now look to connor's credit he fought well enough in that Floyd fight that we would buy a subsequent celebrity excuse me celebrity boxing type fight like this but he's picking the wrong guy he's picking a guy who still has it all right the Floyd one would matter more to your previous points in other

episodes um Manny's not going to sell this fight like Floyd would okay you're not going on a four city international tour and by the way two of those four stops I mean there was genius level marketing and performance art going on out there to sell that thing it's not going to happen with international tour and by the way two of those four stops i mean there was genius level marketing and performance art going on out there to sell that thing it's not going to happen with manny we'll care to a degree but you know what i'm more interested in do you see ksi said that he can definitely knock out mike tyson give me that kind of celebrity slop i'll watch mike tyson knock out all these fools all right you're not interested i mean i guess i look we would obviously dude not only would we watch a pacquiao mcgregor fight we'd be there in attendance telling folks why it's not so

bad the friday before i mean we're absolute fame chasing hypocrites but i just i i'm i'm sort of trying to here's what i'm trying to wrap my head around why is it people don't seem to be as interested in it as you otherwise might imagine if they fought it's good for a million buys i think we could agree with that and hell maybe even two maybe something like that i don't really know not without a storyline it's a million but no you're not getting two without a storyline you know connor would have to disparage all filipinos bro okay what does that say about this fight or about connor i mean maybe your point to start the initial conversation was correct that people are a little bit like, Jesus, dude, this is a weird detour that I don't know that I can get on.

I'm not going to ignore it because of the fame and, you know, sort of the car crash element to it. Do you think that this lack of interest, again, relative lack of interest in the Pacquiao fight is evidence of your original thesis? I guess it must be. Well, dude, if this fight happens but doesn't sell that well and he gets knocked out,

how is that even remotely good for his brand? You know what's good for his brand? Fight Tony Ferguson, right? You know what I mean? Come back and beat. Look, we gave you the cowboy one. We gave it to you. UFC gave it to you.

They served it up. You hit a freaking home run. Come back now. Get up, get Kevin Lee. Get somebody that we're like, all right, maybe that guy could beat you. Let's see. You know, come back. Make it a pay-per-view main event.

I'm sure there's enough money out there. I'm sure you can go to Abu Dhabi, and there's enough money out there to bring Conor in. Do that, okay? Get back in line to us believing that you're a real fighter because that's how you make the money. That's how you bring the excitement. When we think you're just some celebrity at this point,

we don't care. No one cares. I'm stopped. I'm done. I'm taking this shirt off right now. Do you want to see my gyno nipples? I'll take it off right now. All right?

We'll get to that a little bit later. But time now for when we take questions from you guys. You leave them every Sunday on our Instagram page, at Morning Combat. It's time for DMs from dogs. All right. All right. I don't know that I got them from uh yes i did gaff sent them here okay let's go here now first question from oscillate wildly 87 bc there's a lot of speculation online

about that's not the right question luke that's not the right question bro there well that's not my fault i read them in order there's a lot of speculation online about adesanya's right pec including some people saying steroid use what do you think the explanation for it could be I'm sorry we can't not talk about this right it's right in our damn face so here's the deal do you remember when Juan Manuel Marquez you know it was at the end of his career in his late 30s a hall of fame career a guy who won titles at like 122 126 135 he went up to welterweight to fight manny pacquiao and he was jacked his shit and he took his shirt off and he had back knee like a mofo and we're like are we supposed to act like it's not there are we supposed to act like that

isn't some giant warning sign i'm not gonna say what you think i'm gonna say because i don't know luke i could go the route of you which i am now pretty much believing in all of our heroes if they want to compete at this level whether it's boxing mma nba nfl i don't care you you're you're probably dipping your hand you know into the black magic bag it just is what it is right i mean if it was good enough for german track stars in the 60s it's probably good enough for our heroes now who are doing insanely great things in their late 30s by the way that seemed 20 years ago to be impossible uh thank you cryo chamber and keto diet uh but you know come on um let me ask you a serious question if you luke if you i'm as skeptical hold on bro i'm as skeptical seeing that i'm sorry as i am

boris sheena just being ripped to the freaking gills it gives you that same feeling all right i mean here's the thing about it with this interesting and intense focus it's like first of all there were two medical doctors that came out with videos on youtube for whatever that is worth they are licensed and practicing physicians but they said there actually could be a number of explanations for it and they went through it. One could be trauma because it was asymmetrical, although I saw some steroid users saying that they had asymmetric

gyno at times, so how much of that is a factor? And there was another one I retweeted yesterday. He listed all the ways in which this could happen. You have to ask yourself what the probability is of that. Neither of us are medical professionals. Would it surprise me if he or Adesanya or anyone was using something? No. When I began to read literature that the scholars were doing on anti-doping, they kept coming back to something.

And at first, I didn't understand its relevance, BC. They would talk about the Olympics and then its origin. And they were talking about the guy that founded it. And they kept saying that what he wanted was this ideal of sport as humanism, of amateurism, not as the way we understand it today, but of as an activity that was good for the soul, was good for social fabric, was good for certainly just as a person-building exercise. Part of what goes into anti-doping, certainly through the Olympics, which we've borrowed their system and then their punishment cycle, is this idea that what we should be doing should be good for ourselves, good for society. But what they've also done is complicated everything over the years by bringing

in, especially through 1984, this massive profit-driven machine with sponsors and the Coca-Cola spotlight and the Visa halftime show and everything else that goes into what you see there. They have utterly corrupted the first idea about what the Olympics, the modern Olympics, was supposed to be about. And so when you do that, when you put that much money on the line, where people want to see huge ratings, and they want to see larger-than-life figures, and they want to make sure that they can cash in if you're an athlete by being better than the next guy because the reward between first and second is enormous, what do you expect rational actors to do? And you're out of sanya and again i don't

know what the truth is use your best judgment if you want to think he used it fine i won't argue with you maybe he did maybe he didn't but if you're in there had we not heard that if you fought in pride it only made sense to use it if you knew the other guy across from you was out there juice to the gills as well too ladies and gentlemen you need to wake up a little bit this i've woken i've woken up it took me a while this idea that like people are bad because they use it you might want people to obey the rules you can't have sport without rules i understand that but you are conceptualizing let me finish you are conceptualizing a behavior that is absolutely rational from beginning to end for money for career preservation and depending on what you're taking for injury for rehabilitation

thinking that this is some kind of evidence of poor character rather than just responding to the incentive structure that we have laid out for people, you're going to keep running into this problem over and over and over again. If he used, I don't give a fuck. I mean, could he have like been doing a nice chest workout and strained a pack and it got a little, uh, yes, yes. Apparently that's a, that's a reasonable, yes. Apparently that's possible. I don't know. All I'm saying is I have come across, maybe it's your influence on me, but I've come around. I mean, like, look, if, if Sylvester Stallone's going to put out another Rambo movie and he's going to be like, you know, 68 or 70 years old shooting people,

and he takes your shirt off, you kind of want him to be ripped, right? We are fully okay with these actors, you know, juicing up to the gills. I know they're not competing against other humans, but remember when Stallone got stopped in the Australian airport and he had, like, enough HGH and uh to like fill up like a van i mean like you know like there's also here's a weird element to it it's probably safer at this level for some of these guys to use that knowing like you said in pride the guy across from them is going to be coming for their soul and looking to you know kill them i mean it's a wild man been using yeah um all i'm saying is uh i hope did he get asked like i hope somebody who

flew there and hopefully they didn't fly on like the ufc private plane but was there any media members there who asked about it at all to dana or out of sonja no everyone everyone pretends they don't see anything everyone i know that you gotta have a little bit of balls to do that because you know out of sign it could be like you mother effer what are you trying to say i hurt myself and you know i got injured whatever i mean look you know it could go very poorly for you you could lose you don't have to ask it you don't have to ask in a nefarious tone you have a clear change in your physical appearance i don't know what the hell explains it there are some bad explanations for it but what is yours just tell us what happened like it's not i'm not a medical fucking doctor i have no idea and izzy pulled the john jones and was like luke thomas i don't really like you that much yeah well you know i

mean you know what would i do it'd be the same thing i've always done i just okay well then don't talk to me but like we can't have a conversation about obvious changes in people's physical now he fought the same he always does you know he outsmarted him speaking of nipples and this is a ridiculous segue but if a female fighter gets enhanced which happens in this game we're not allowed to talk about that for certain obvious reasons it's it's it's not it's really i mean it's it's not appropriate. Do you think there's a similarity there? No, because that's sexual body policing. This is different. You've had a weird change in your appearance.

Not a change in, I mean, he fought just as well as he ever did. There was no change there. And again, there could be a totally innocent, within the rules explanation. They were saying certain depression medicines can cause this kind of thing. Maybe he's been, during the pandemic, he doesn't want to talk about the fact that he's been on medicines. Like I said, there could be any number of explanations.

It's just this idea that, oh my God, what if he was using? Yeah, what if he was using? Huge amounts of them use. It's a perfectly rational response. And the last thing I would say about this, BC, I'm not going to get on my high horse, but I'm just trying to help folks understand. You there bro well i'm already there okay i will ride

a very delicate trot not a full-on uh sprint i just want folks to understand something about this number one we live in a total world of hypocrisy when we have way way way worse injury outcomes in american football we have deaths at the high school level every year and they just absolutely tolerate ped use and no one seems to care. More to the point, I was told that when USADA was going to get here, they were going to make the sport safer. The sport looks safer to you. It doesn't look any safer to me.

I have never seen an entity in my life claim as much responsibility, claim as much accolade, without proving any effectiveness at what they are doing whatsoever than you saw it. And I'm the bad guy for asking, how do we know what you're doing works? I'm the asshole for that. I have to prove that I work. I have to prove to CBS that I'm worth it.

So do you, Brian Campbell, you saw it has to do this and they do nothing. Nothing. Start proving that by the way. Yeah. But you know, I would have liked it's weird, but I would have liked if Izzy addressed

it or somebody asked him. And again, even if he was lying, I would have taken that lie and say, okay, at least we addressed the large ass areola in the room. Okay, thank you. All right, with that in mind, we move along now to question, is there something to be said, by the way, from Pastor Blin,

better name. All right right a man of the cloth i love this yeah probably pastor in the church of satan though is there something to be said about reyes having his three brothers as his cornerman for this fight didn't seem to have anywhere near the same focus and intensity during fight week compared to the jones fight that's actually an interesting question bc what do you think it's a fair question uh it's hard for us to have any idea or no and i can't remember who his coach was before that do you offhand uh it was joe stevenson joe daddy wow you know i don't know i mean it's certainly something for him and his close inner circle to look at and address um again i don't think he made a major error here i'm not necessarily

saying his game plan sucked. He got crunched to the body twice with the same strike, and then he got taken apart with, you know, intelligent, sneaky counter shots. You know, I'm not really sure what else to say. He didn't look as sharp as the Jon Jones fight, which is why I sort of concur that maybe there was some, you know, letdown of natural can't stop it focus here.

I mean, obviously this was a title fight. Why wouldn't you be coming in at your best? But, again, it's not Jon Jones, and you're the favorite coming in. I don't know if we can blame that on the brothers, but he'll have to figure that out, Luke. That's not for us to speak of. We like to talk on nipples in this show. Yeah, and I don't want to – I'm not saying it was good or bad

because it's just too hard to know from this distance. The one thing I think we can say is, as a reminder to everybody, dude, never forget they're fighting at weird hours in the morning. What did that do for him? Because certainly it was a weird hour as well for Jan Blachowicz, but he's coming from Europe, so it's not going to be necessarily as much of a big change. Although it's a big change for him too. I don't want to say that that's... The thing is, every time you bring that up bring that up it's like oh you're saying that's why Blachowicz won. It's

not. Blachowicz was just so much better that night. I'm just pointing out I think when you're competing at weird hours you're going to get some weird differences at times. Always worth keeping that in mind. Alright from at St. John underscore CA BC. Who do you

want the Charlo brothers I guess who do Who do you want the Charlo brothers, I guess, who do you want to see the Charlo brothers up against next? Be the matchmaker. What do you think? All right, let's talk Jermel first at 154. Of the three titles he owns, Erickson Lubin did secure the WBC mandatory.

The reason why I wouldn't mind that next is even though Lubin, you know, he looked both good and bad against Gaucher to win that fight, Jermel knocked Lubin out in 2017, and I do think Erickson Lubin has improved a lot. You have that backstory, that would be a very fun fight to make next, but I can't stress this enough.

Unless, you know, some sanctioning body is going to push some name you've never heard of from Europe who's completely underserving, there are nothing but banger fights you can make for Jermel from here on out at 154. I would love a Tony Harrison trilogy down the line, but Luke, my specific fight I want to see the most for Jermell is Eris Landilara.

He's still got a lot left in his late 30s. He has to fight more than he used to because his legs are slowing down, and they used to both be trained by Ronnie Shields before Jermell left to join forces with Derek James, and they both said they are more than willing to fight each other. They've sparred in the past. I think that is the perfect fight that would look really good on Jermell's resume because Arislandi Lara has been, you know,

outside of the time when Canelo came in and beat him in that disputed fight, Arislandi's been the class of this division for a decade. Okay, the Canelo fight was a little bit boring. Let me play devil's advocate. Is that a is that a fun fight what what fight uh charlo versus laura um it would be now it has the potential to be now because if you look at erislandy laura in the past three four fights he's had some killer brawls right against jared herd against castagno that fight we were at. I mean, he's slowing down, so he has to fight now.

With Jermell, though, being a low-punch output counterpuncher, yes, there is potential here that this is some kind of slow chess. But I will say this. When you're someone like Jermell, who we are now ready to potentially throw pound-for-pound claim at, we're now saying you are the king of the division, I need to see him against every style. I need to see him against sluggers, guys like Jarrett jared hurt are going to be up inside of him all the time i need to see him against guys who can potentially out boring him in a chess match so just for me as the hardcore

fan i want to see that fight very much who do you want to see your mall take on luke well the one given the pbc realities that appears to be the likeliest is is chris eubanks jr so give me that give me that yeah Give me that. Yeah, which is not a bad fight, by the way, because he's got a... Folks, you may not realize this. We covered together, BC, in the last fight before this one, that we were together at the Brooklyn Barclays Center when Garcia fought Red Catch. Eubanks was on that card.

He's got a big mouth. He's got a very, very big mouth. He loves... Big right hand, too, bro. Yeah, big right hand. He's got a big out punch. He's got sort of a weird, interesting boxing style, too. So that's not certainly far from the worst fight you could make.

It's kind of interesting. But I'll be honest. I kind of feel like getting a guy, you know, young, 30, in his prime against Canelo. I know Canelo's got his hands full with the zone and everything else. I'm just speaking in a world. I, to me, again, would I favor Charlo to beat Canelo? No, I would not. I think I would favor Canelo to win, but what I favor Charlo to give us a really fun, interesting fight that could pull in a lot of, by the way, demographically, a lot of diverse crowds together to watch that would elevate the profiles of the Charlo brothers in a way

that I think it deserves to be elevated. I think this pay-per-view also went a long way towards doing that. To me, that's, I mean, I'm really excited by the, you know, knock on wood, maybe the gods are smiling upon us. We can get it. Yeah, real quick. Eubank is such a great trash talker, and they already hate each other. That time last year when Jamal Charlo told me to fuck off and hung up on me on my podcast

was because I mentioned Eubank's name too many times. Eubank's a great flashy guy like his dad, and he now has Roy Jones Jr. in his corner, which is very interesting because Eubank, not a traditional boxer. Other trainers have tried to make him one. Roy Jones understands this is an athlete in front of me who does weird things i want to see what that equation leads to and there's also demetrius andrade he does fight for the zone but look hasn't he just been like gone nobody wants to fight him right he was out for promotional reasons for a while now like if they could just make that work

that's a critical star on jamal's resume if he could beat andre he's world class so then we go to neon young do you agree with israel's idea to dock fighter pay at 90 for missing weight i gotta tell you i don't um i am not averse to the idea that we have not used enough effective penalization to deter missing weight i'm open to that concept but i gotta tell you bc taking these guys don't make enough money as it is taking 90 of someone's purse i understand why uh adesanya was so heated about this and i i respect it i really do i i think. I think you put yourself through that, and your opponent doesn't, and then they get certain advantages in a fight, and you're already not fighting for that much, and you're on these crazy schedules, and you've been away

from your family. Yeah, man, it's infuriating. It must be. There is some evidence, and Guilherme Cruz of MMA Fighting has looked into this. I believe it's the Chute organization, or maybe it's Jungle Fight in Brazil, where they'll take a certain monetary penalization. And then if you go beyond that, whatever the rules may be, they start taking points away from you in your fight. So you'll start the first round with the maximum amount of points you can get is nine, not ten. And they've asked, like, what has been the effect on that? Has it reduced the amount of weight failure catastrophes?

There is some evidence to suggest that it has. Has it made the fights go all to draws because you're already taking a point in the way that a referee might, and so you end up that way? No, not necessarily. You get a couple of them, a little bit more, but not dramatically. So to say there is some evidence, BC, to indicate that maybe taking points from a fighter

in addition to the monetary fine, if it gets bad enough, that actually is something I might be in favor of. Yeah. I'm not against the idea of making more of a penalty for what Izzy is saying to fully dissuade you from getting in that gray area where like, you know, do I want to kill myself over this hour? Or can I just take the penalty and have a better chance to win you never want to see anybody get an advantage from doing something wrong but to your point they're already making sometimes just enough to pay off training camps so not everyone's out there to do this some people you know they have perfectly legitimate reasons why they didn't make weight

maybe just cancel the fight if you don't make weight produce promoters won't want that there are scenarios in which that would really suck but but maybe avoid any kind of advantage. You don't make weight, you're not going to get paid for the fight to begin with. So I don't know. I'm not in favor of that either, because let's clarify something. The reason why you don't want to go too heavy handed with the punishment is that if you create an incentive structure for you to not miss weight because the penalty is so strong, then what you're going to get is people desperate to do it, and they're going to cut weight in inadvisable ways. Now, if the UFC is monitoring them and not letting them get to that point,

then that's not really something that you necessarily have to worry about. But now you have a situation where a guy cut as much weight as medical staff let them, and now they only have 10 percent of their purse this is not an effective way to manage the problem in my view you have to give them some kind of incentive to make him feel it but what you don't want to do is either end up with poor fighters who couldn't cut any more weight than they were allowed because of the rules or they cut so much goddamn weight that they end up the fight in a dangerous kind of scenario. Again,

I understand that 30% feels like we're not doing anything. Okay. We can do more, but let's do it in a way where we're not chasing extremes. I think that's, uh, I'm just waiting for a day when we fully wake up on weight cutting. And unfortunately it usually takes like deaths or loss of money for fights falling apart for someone to even think about this.

But let me give you, for example, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who's a train wreck, actually fought last Friday on DAZN. And they got like no fanfare. DAZN put out a Spanish only broadcast. He ended up doing junior things, which is he fought a nobody, got caught and quit and lost on the scorecards. But when he was actually, quote unquote, good for that short season, Luke, the only really redeemable skill he had, which made him quasi elite and a title holder, was that he could rehydrate insane amounts after cutting. He'd make 160 and then he'd get up to like cruiserweight level and he just walked dudes down, go to the body, lean on them and out big them and why don't we just going to get to a point where you have certain we already have like in boxing like a 30-day weight check where if you if you're not in a certain window the fight you know you can't continue i've always said the only way to really fix weight cutting so people don't attempt extreme things is have like 10 or 12 of those have a have a weight check two weeks

out one week out california system every day, all the way to the point where you check them like an hour before in the locker room so that it's actually impossible to go down to a weight class that your body really doesn't belong in. I think you would eliminate the health protocol that is the problem here. And I know you're saying, well, what about those people who are not big enough for a higher weight?

It just is what it is. All right. You got to fight at your comfortable weight. I don't know. I mean, maybe that's too logical, Luke. Maybe it's too logical. And then last thing on this, BC, you know, understand there is a natural tension between weight cutting and the number of weight classes. You know, you start having weight classes 15, 20 pounds apart.

You're going to have more of these problems that by itself none no one solution fixes everything and i think folks keep looking for one totalizing solution to the problem it's not that but i'm with you more weigh-ins um people always say hydration testing oh one does it and it works let me be clear about this there is no evidence which i'm not saying it doesn't mean it's not true but they have not presented clear verifiable comprehensive evidence that what they do works so it's something i think we should look into it was the most watched card in the history of global television i've never seen i mean people just promoters can say something and people just repeat oh well they do hydration testing and it works motherfuckers you have no idea if it works none do you remember when they did that covid money concert to raise money and shotry decided to stream it uh on like the one network and then that press release came

out that it was like i mean come on bro and they claimed like lady gaga was part of what they were i mean it's just like you mean these people who make totally false claims all the time, they're the ones who figured out weight cutting? Okay. All right. I mean, maybe they did, but we have no evidence that they did. All right. Last but not least, from Mark Menji, what was the grossest thing you both ate and drank all week and who showered less how many times did you shower bc uh i did shower uh daily but uh it did get gross and sweaty um doing the room service diaries in your non-air-conditioned room with the you know grossness all look i don't get i'm so i'm not here to rip the mohegan sun it's a fantastic hotel in brazil and they took great care of us but uh they did not clean our rooms every day. I think it was part of their COVID protocol. And it got a little gross in there.

It smelled bad. There was pizza boxes and food all over. What did I eat that was the good? So we stayed in the secondary hotel tower there. So it was a much smaller menu in access to the room service kitchen. And some days we were forced to eat room service. I had one of those Buffalo chicken wraps in which the Buffalo sauce, the heat was just jacked up and it was too much. It was too strong. I crapped for a lot. There was a lot of it. I had a, yeah, I, I blew the room out and then, you know, you can't, you know,

one travels with air freshener. I can only spray so much cologne in the air before I, you know, I know Luke, you like to smell yourself, but was just it was it was gross well i i'm sad to report i did in fact shower every day so that was a problem for the question in terms of the grossest thing i ate i had half a ruben sandwich fell asleep and then in the morning i forgot to refrigerate it and i ate it anyway the second half no problem all right can we let's let the truth be told here okay here's what luke would do every single time we would record a room service diary i'd come in and he'd be like hold on room service is going to be here in a second and he'd order a full-on hot meal and

i'd be like well dude bro you want me to give you like here take time to eat it we don't have to record right now and he'd be like no no i'll get to that later and then you would eat hot you'd have a microwave in your room and you would eat like a hot food like two hours later cold and you're like it's just the way i like it yeah well it got a little too cold but i usually don't like it as hot as they serve it so i would have i did have i had the salads before i went to bed i wouldn't wake up and eat a salad that was left out but i did eat a half a reuben sandwich that was left out overnight. I did do that. I was hungry.

Go fuck yourself. All right. Well, with that grossness, BC, take it away, good sir. All right. You know what we do in these parts? We circle the globe, high and low, for the good, the bad, the ugly, in combat, sports, and beyond. Please.

It's called. Can we run the thing, Jay? Jay, can you run the thing? The thing where the guy goes. Yeah, it's really weird. All right. It's called Have we run the run the thing jay jay can you run the thing the thing where the guy goes yeah it's really weird all right it's called have you seen the shit let's start with ufc 253 luke you referenced it earlier the wild antics of your guy out of sanya wow somebody was uh pointed out that date tank abbott did this in some in an early ufc fight but not this like didn't tank abbott was worse tank abbott brutally knocked out i think it was john matua if memory serves and then when the guy is like having a seizure on the ground he told the crowd with the microphone in his face that it made him sexually aroused people think though once the camera went off for room service diaries that this was us luke and that is not true i can report on

that this was basically us during room service diaries for fuck's sake. Adesanya, what didn't stop here with the grossness? He approached Costa's coach, Eric Alberacin. And did you see this thing where he did the Yeah, he told me he was

going to jizz all over him. Yeah. And then he yelled, I will come all over. Yeah, that was, you know, I did defend him earlier and say I like brashness,

but that was a little far, Luke. That was a little, Yeah, that's a little gross. Alberacin, who, by the way, is a great guy captain america's um he told him that we're still coming for volkanovski is what he said and then and then uh stylebender was like yeah well i'm gonna come all over you that's interesting who is that who he coaches so who know who else the pitbull brothers ah yeah i love i know here's the thing i love this guy he wears glasses that end up getting him mocked a little bit he is a brilliant coach and a sweet person i actually really like him a

lot your favorite coach is eugene bear man true or false i don't i've never met eugene in person so i can't say yes i'm gonna say my clubhouse leaders are brandon gibson and eric nixick i like them a lot remember that dude who used to to coach for Team Faber, the Asian guy? What happened to him? Buck Holtz. What happened to that dude? Oh, Master Tong. He went back to Thailand.

All right. All right. Here's what I did like from Adesanya and crew. Luke, there ain't no party like a city kickboxing party. Did you see the celebration when Adesanya took the cameras with him down the hallway and back to the makeshift uh locker room inside this thunderdome luke this is what i was hoping and expecting when we got off the set of the uh showtime intermission stage from our team here at malca but this was not the vibe i would have loved this they're all doing bushwhackers

and stuff i would have went nuts for this this is great yeah i've never been greeted this way and now i'm i didn't know that i needed to be and now i'm sad about it yeah next time i see you if i see you if i see you next month which is a possibility uh we have to greet each other this way this is great shout out to all those guys uh there was some other weirdness this week luke i don't even know this guy's name. Who was this undercard fighter during the face-offs who no-sold Dana's handshake and then just did some weird old-school kung fu karate type stuff? What is going on here? No. Oh, my God, Duke. You are so painfully white. Jesus Christ. He's doing a haka. He's from New Zealand, you fuck. Don't you understand that? What do you expect? I'm cultured to hakas, Luke? I mean, come on. You want me to write me a haiku? You've never seen the All Blacks do it?

No, no. I have many, many black friends, but no, Luke. No, not at all. The All Blacks is the name of the New Zealand rugby team, not because they are actually All Blacks. Okay, but who is this guy? It was weird, okay? Shane Young.

Shane Young. He's from New Zealand. He fights for City Kickboxing. He got viciously killed. Oh, he got sent to hell by an overweight guy. Yeah, he got whooped, but he was doing the ha haka true or false did dana call him kid afterwards uh he calls 90 year old people kids so i'm guessing okay all right uh we also got a little bit of bingo here in the costa adestania face off were you down with paulo bringing the white belt and trying to uh

while he's wearing a black one and insult izzyzy by throwing it? Did you like this, Luke? I didn't understand it. Like, neither of them are a black belt in what? Now, do you believe Dana's claim that this was the most watched face-off in UFC history? It sounded a little Chaudry-esque. Yeah, probably I don't. I mean, there might be some way to define it where it is.

Like, based on this way, which if you define metrics 18-34 in a live window, you know, maybe like that. But like, overall, no, I don't believe that. However, I will say this. You go through the trending YouTube sections yesterday and even today filled with UFC 253 content. So, I have no doubt UFC

had a big pay-per-view hit on their hands. Alright, this is the moment of the week for me luke did you see joanna my girl boogie woman going sick for jan blahowitz winning the title luke she's dropping f-bombs she's going nuts look at the passion and intensity right there luke you down on it you got any feels on this you catching anything luke sorry brian campbell uh i don't like you so i'm not gonna answer your question Luke she is feeling it I want what she's having Luke okay yes actually you're

wrong this is actually after watching episode 3 of room service diaries okay one day you'll forgive her Luke she's you know I mean she's no no I definitely won't I definitely won't. I definitely won't. All right. All right. We'll have more on this conversation on our Patreon show. Thank you. All right.

Luke, let's move on here. The person, I believe, who sent you to hell the best this week was former UFC fighter Dean Thomas, who tweeted out that Luke Thomas always reminds me of Michael J. Fox's father and teen wolf. Luke, this was the burn of a lifetime. I'm glad that you playfully accepted it. But can we show the footage of what Dean was talking about here, about old Luke?

This was such a great 80s reference. Jay, do you have the reference counter to throw out here in celebration? If you didn't see the tweet, he was like, that's me right there, that I look like the dad in teen wolf and uh um our guy on twitter he calls himself the meme guy at joe jaggy that's jaggy with two g's and an i he he did the work for us there we go remember we used to do that thing jay thank you uh can you advance the slide jay thank you to joe jaggy for uh you to Joe Jaggi for no that's not the one oh that's fucking awesome

that's not the one that is fucking awesome that's not the one Jay Jay give me the one there we go dude it's a dead it's your twins right there I look at honky kong right here buddy

i mean now if you are well versed on teen wolf joe jaggi the meme guy took it one step further he said i was giving him styles vibes you remember styles michael j fox's best friend in that movie the guy who rode on top of the van i don't i don't this is luke it's brilliant i it's brilliant okay so i like your belt all right what we meant to do there was say um if you guys think the man the myth the web scream could be outdone on any of this meme making you're wrong uh inspired by new luke's new choice of glasses luke this is as good or better than anything he's done. This is great. That is, um, I gotta tell you that made my day that made my, cause I've been the butt of jokes and that's okay.

That's part of the show. But every once in a while, a pat on the back, it makes you feel good. And me being an insane man from the movie falling down with Michael Douglas, that makes me, that makes me smile inside BC.

Everybody who's watching this on a big screen can read what web screen row, but it's always tied into our show. I can't see this on a big screen can read what WebScream wrote, but it's always tied into our show. I can't see it at the moment there, but great stuff. From Christos Christoforos, there are a Greek buddy. He lives in Italy, though. He's a man of the world. Luke, have you ever gone on your Waze app and put on the Greek language?

You mean like to tell you directions and shit? Yes. No, I put on. But here's what's kind of funny. You may not appreciate this because you're not cultured. You're from a factory town. If you put in different Hispanic nationalities, like if you put in Dominican versus Mexican,

the driver just doesn't sound different, or the person giving you directions. They don't just sound different. They have a completely different way of giving directions. It's actually kind of funny. Well, if you need directions in Greek, call sound different they have a completely different way of giving directions it's actually kind of funny well if you need directions in greek call on my guy web scream he won't disappoint you hey look let's go to the boxing ring this weekend very low profile card in miami but we may have a knockout of the year contender here uh guess we missed the beginning part it is 22 year old nicaraguan melvin l Lopez improved to 23 and one by sending Yaisin Vargas to the bottom floor of

hell in this Bantamweight fight Luke TKO won but what do you call it when he turns them into like the zombies from the thriller video and they're just hanging there uh I don't know it you know because this is the worst highlight I've ever seen you can barely see the punch that lands just straight left there I guess uh it looks like they're doing tai chi until they fall over i saw this comedian once he was like you ever seen the heroin addicts like in the streets the next morning they look like they're doing tai chi because they can't quite move uh it looks like that only they're falling over this time yes yes all right let's move on to the golf course here luke you all remember the greatest golf fight in history when bob barker and happy gilmore threw hands that time, Luke, at the Waterbury Open.

You remember this, right? It was the Celebrity Pro-Am. This is my favorite Adam Sandler movie. This was, you know, really, this is one of the better scenes of all time. The price is wrong, bitch. And, you know, I don't want to taste. I want the whole thing. Well, Bob Barker was back on the golf course this weekend luke and you know correct me if i'm wrong but i think he was seeking revenge on that crocodile

who ate chubbs his hand and he got sent to hell for his efforts bob what the hell are you doing here that's bob barker's dead right this is just some old dude who's absolutely out of his i can't speak on whether bob's still with us. Oh, you want to mount the gator. Oh, okay. I mean, what are rich white people thinking here? What is going on here? Okay, okay, okay. Okay.

Yes. Luke, this has all of your favorite elements. Animal on human violence, rich white people getting sent to hell. Dude, what the fuck he he avoided death or serious injury by virtue of this gator's kindness he took pity on this old man well you know this this this was probably the gator that took chubbs's hand and uh you know i mean come on bob barker is dead by the way bob barker is dead all right all right p bob barker oh this guy might be dead too look at or at least a new shoulder holy shit balls i told you this may be one of the best have you seen

this shit's ever luke it only gets better from here are you ready whoa here we'll put this pillowcase on the gator's head yeah that's it i mean come on don't mess don't i mean don't poke the bear right you know what i mean you yeah maybe leave gators alone there you fucking old bastard you geriatric piece of shit you mess with the bull you get horned right this motherfucker's life bc this motherfucker's life expectancy is thursday and he's looking for an exit on Tuesday. You mess with the bull, you get the horns. You mess with Ioana, you get horned up.

That's how it works, Luke. Okay, so leave her alone. Thank you. All right. Hey, let's move on. This is an oldie but goodie, but it resurfaced on my timeline. Top-ranked boxing earlier in the year, Robussy Ramirez. I don't think we ever showed this, but look at this all-time great snot rocket that comes out of this guy's nose.

Luke, you down for this? I like how it goes one direction and then whips around. And actually, it touches. If you look closely, it touches his eyeball. Bop. It's so gross. I mean, that's really gross, Luke. Dude, Indiana Jones could use this to hurt people.

Yeah, yeah, this is great stuff. All right, thank you. Luke, you and I had a lot of fun with the Room Service Diaries episodes one, two, and three. Better than the George Lucas prequels, if you ask me. But you got a little touchy-feely after a few drinks. And somebody captured this on camera for us. Luke, what happened here? What is, I mean, what is, what are you, what are you, I mean, is this how you do it?

Is this how you operate, Luke? What is happening here? You know, I had to just let my feelings show bc you know what one thing you're lucky for and i should have i should have hit you back for this move right here but i did never sneak up on you and attempt to put in the rear naked choke but our viewer scott marshall at anya berry on twitter i don't know what the hell that says or means but he created an illustration for my rear naked choke in anticipation for our reunion this weekend. You know, for a skinny guy, Luke,

I could have put you in hell. I could, I could have, you know, I could have. Nice, nice rash guard there. Brian Danaher. Great stuff there from our people as always. And thank you. I did say this is one of the best. Have you seen this as we've ever done? Let's continue rolling here. Check out the length. This Ohio man went Luke to escape his court date.

Watch this. Look, I don't know what he's in there for. Look, but he's gone, brother. Look at that cop. Wow. Look at the look at the old cop. That's the guy who's going to go get the guy. I'm going to go get that guy here. That's the old bailiff going to go get the... I got to go get that gator.

That's the old bailiff. That old bailiff ain't doing shit, Luke. That bailiff's like, I got to go get that gator in the front yard again. Look at this cop go from zero to six. Look at that, Luke. That is badass. Honestly, I got to tell you,

I'm not sure what I'm more impressed by. The Oscar Pistorius level of speed there on this dude. Or this bailiff just giving it? Dude, he gave it his all, man. You can't shit on this guy. Look at him. Wow. Bailiff, whack his peepee.

That is great. Serious question, BC. If you can run out of the courthouse, shouldn't they just make you not guilty of the crime? I think if you can get away, this guy. I'm actually shouting out this guy this guy is andy from shawshank if you ask me okay i don't know what he did hopefully it wasn't gross you can look it up all right he's from ohio uh let's move on luke this is the fail

of the week and this is an all-time great we're at a soccer match here and this chick tries to tries to hurdle the fence and gets knocked down but it doesn't end here look that's that's two fails for the price of one look that's so good that is so good cease fire cease fire cease fire that is you can't come back from that that is buddy buddy that bow ko fight fights over ko oh good dude you haven't i mean she looks like she's antifa and the nypd got the water hose to clear the protesters that is unbelievable uh luke uh mothers are doing a lot of very extraordinary things this year this this you know in this modern age right we went from suffrage to uh to women you know hosting tv shows uh doris burke color commentator in the nba becky hammond coaching

in the nba well check out this mom luke jay can we keep it going here jay please can you hit the button thank you uh mary f kill on this luke yeah right i don't know about Mary but the other two are in play she an extra in showgirls this is great maybe BC the other two are in play maybe at the same time that is gross that's very Rocco Sofretti of you. Yes, that is fantastic. That's right. Nacho Vidal and Rocco Sofretti, the hosts of Morning Combat. People are like, I can't believe BC doesn't know who Nacho Vidal is. Well, should I know?

I don't know. Should I look that up? Nacho Vidal has a better highlight reel than Israel Adesanya. All right. You know who put together a good highlight reel that we don't talk enough about? How about this flyweight bout at ufc 253 on saturday kai cara france and brandon roival put on a video game session this might be the best 20 seconds of mma you'll see all year luke what the hell's going on here this is great this is this fight if i someone's like what's the

difference between mma and boxing i'd be like yo this right this right here this right here this is the the unpredictability the craziness you know i don't know if it's a double knockdown or a double slip but it was great oh and then that back fist was just unbelievable this is like jamming the buttons it's like remember that first pro wrestling game like wwf wrestling challenge in the arcade there's one action button and you just pound it as hard as you can luke yeah no you don't you didn't have fun you didn't go to roller magic like i did you don't have fun all right luke um i have fun we got a lot we got a lot of web scream imitations here viewer scott rizzo created this mk inspired moving poster morning centipede you like it it's a little amateurish

but i like the coffee mug in the second uh hand there in the middle i like that all right here's where this show gets all-time great luke this is the greatest and most insane street brawl ever captured on video darren till tweeted it out i don't know what country but look at the chairs just ko and people here luke what is happening well it's definitely europe it has poland written all over it good Lord these guys are getting nailed and they're coming from like the second floor too this might be better than that one that happened in Richmond outside your sister's apartment yeah I'm not even sure what to say this is violent a shit Luke yeah. Yeah, but also great?

It's pretty great. I've watched this 5,000 times in the last 24 hours. It's ridiculous. Yeah, soccer. This is what? This is soccer hooligans, right? This is some, like, third-tier, you know, bumfuck FC versus fuckbum FC, and they're fighting to the death over it because that's what people at this level of life do.

I think this was right after blow. Oh, it's knocked out. Yeah. What's his name? Yeah. Okay. This is great.

Wow. A lot of, a lot of Reyes fans there apparently. All right, Luke. Look, I've said it before. We've called,

you know, sometimes we get knockouts. We're like, that's the greatest knockout of all time. That's the greatest clip of all time. This next clip is the greatest clip in the history of Have You Seen This Shit, Luke. Get ready. It's even got a title called I Just Wanted to Poop.

Here we go. Luke, we've all been here in high school. A brawl breaks out in the bathroom, and this is a pretty good one. Look at the punches they're trading here, Luke, okay? Do we know why these two MIT scholars are mit scholars are fighting no but luke it's just like a wwe brawl it rolls out into the arena almost look at the people watching they're filming it oh you know what going to the covid covid safe watching wearing their mask look at that guy look at every second. He's just trying to cover up.

He's dropped in the deuce. Look, he's just trying to take shelter. Look at this guy. Dude, what the fuck? I mean, how do you even? BC, sitting or standing, how do you wipe? I mean. What do you do if you're that kid?

What do you do? Oh, look at the more time. First of all, you got to get the hand up. He's just leaning over. You got to get the hand up, man, because you might take an errant punch at that point. God, half the school is watching this guy take a two. That's amazing, Luke. Really, that's amazing.

That's unbelievable. That's the best fight ever. Thank you. That is amazing. We do have one bonus clip sent in, Luke. People listened to our third episode of Room Service Diaries, and we pitched out a great idea for an Armenian rock band, Luke. And now we have the first album cover already printed out.

Can we see this? Can we advance it, Jay, to the final one, please? Can you hit the button? It's called Edmund and the Head Movements, Luke. So, wait, is that Shabazian getting KO'd and then Rousey getting KO'd with Edmund in the middle? Shabazian on the left, Rousey on the right. Shout out to at 420, be respectful for putting this together. Is that Huey Lewis in the news?

I don't know, but that's genius, Luke. I know you and all your... The people who watch this show, I mean, they are degenerates like us, but they are, they are crafty. I, I am all, I am continuously amazed. Yeah. Yeah. We, we got a guy for that, right? You ever like, like I got my barber, actually my barber is, uh, is he Armenian? No, he's Albanian. I swear, anything I need, he's like, oh, I got a guy for that. I got a plumber.

I got a guy for that. This is what we're building on this show. Look, we need graphic support. We got a guy for that. We need a new producer. We probably got a guy for that, right? I guess we do. Is the guy who cuts your hair Florio from 90 Day Fiance?

No, no, no. Actually, I've been cutting my hair this whole quarantine so i don't really need a barber right now but shout out all right well with that with that in mind bc it's time for odds and ends what do we have on odds and ends for you good sir real quickly uh there was some under the radar boxing this past weekend i'm not saying go back and watch this but espn plus and top rank put out a uh junior middleweight unification or unified championship out josh tay Taylor moved the chains. First round body knockout on some Thailand guy.

The guy's name is Kong Song or something like that. No disrespect to that man. But this was a mandatory move along. But the key element to this, it was a weird sort of shot to the body, maybe not too different from that jab that Banana got KO'd on. But the whole point is this. There is now nothing in our way, Luke. The 140-pound division will have its summit.

Josh Taylor, the tartan tornado, is going to bring his two belts. Jose Ramirez, the unbeaten from top rank, has the other two belts. We're going to finally see this bout. Bob Arum wants it later, probably more like early next year. Luke, these guys don't get a lot of pub, but if you remember how good that Reroo fight was against josh taylor this guy has impressed us every single step of the way this one right here is going to be a war i can't wait for it i'm glad that uh josh taylor didn't have to expound too much energy or get hurt here and we move the chains the other

was you know i don't know if the zone's be around next week, but they did give us what we wanted, the World Boxing Super Series Cruiserweight Tournament Final. Luke, this tournament in its second season, there's been all kinds of craziness. It's not in the forefront of our care level in America, but it should be if you're a hardcore boxing fan. We saw the Cruiserweight Final. Myris Brightus outpointing Junie Dordicos. If you remember the first season when Alexander Usyk basically became a star

by bringing all four belts together, he gave Breitis his only loss in an absolute 12-round classic. This one on Saturday had a lot of us being excited that it could be just the same. Pretty damn good fight overall. Very good. And it was Breitis coming away with the IBF title. He's really the key of the division right now, the class of it. Cruiserweight, Luke, nobody talks about it in the States

because we don't really have a lot of sexy Americans in this, but you get so much bang for your buck. If you're a hardcore boxing fan, you know what's going on at Cruiserweight. Thank you to these two for pouring it all on the line for us. Great call. For my odds and ends, sadly, they're not quite as celebratory. Diego Sanchez took an L on Saturday

against Jake Matthews and it wasn't terrible for two rounds but then it got pretty bad for him in the third cut open and he was trying to shake things up he brought Stefan Bonner in although he still had as you mentioned Joshua Fabio who got in your words BC sent to hell by Matt Sarah which was a great video to watch and I don't BC, I'm sure you ended up watching this fight. Here's the thing, Jake Matthews, 26, it wasn't like I was super blown away, although he had a good, I'm not here to disparage it, he had a good performance. But with Sanchez, he didn't look to be in great physical condition. And again, for two rounds, he wasn't totally out of it,

but he just, what would you say about it, BC? He looked lifeless to me. There wasn't just,, he wasn't totally out of it, but he just, what would you say about it, BC? He looked lifeless to me. There wasn't just, there just wasn't. So look, I'm not going to body shame any. It's not about body shaming. It's like, dude, are you in shape for the challenge here? Because if you're not, you're going to get hurt real bad. The key to Diego Sanchez, hold on, the last thing on this.

Even when he was technically overmatched, which was not infrequent, he had a certain intensity and drive and like in your face-ness. And that's gone too. And when that starts to go, that's when I get concerned. I don't know if we blame the school of self-awareness and your boy Fabio for this or not. But look, he didn't look to be in shape at the level that you need to be. Excuse me, to be a world-class fighter and i know that it's hard to say walk away now because he had he did he had won three of his last five coming in

and again that mickey gallwin was a very good one although he really didn't deserve a win in the michelle perero uh peredo one with the weird dq but uh luke when you do come in looking that chubby and you're like sort of a sad version of yourself i'm sorry like you know that that tells you something and even you you said something right he was competitive the first two rounds but luke competitive meant running like a maniac throwing like schoolyard punches i mean it was just it was just weird luke okay and then he took a savage beating in the third and it got gross with the blood we never save these guys from themselves ahead of time we always wait until it's too late i'm not saying i know his financial situation but i don't want to see it anymore luke

it's done don't you know why don't you go box connor in the middle east i'll pay for that right i'll watch that i i you know and i worry he's going to end up on someplace like BKFC, which I don't want to see. Why is Frank Mir doing BKFC? Shouldn't he be better than that? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they offered him a ton of cash. Who knows?

I mean, I know Hector Lombard's doing well in there, and I know it's sort of the last stop, Luke. See, Tiago Alves fought in there, and he actually didn't look half bad. He actually looked okay. I wasn't super concerned about how he looked, See, Tiago Alves fought in there, and he actually didn't look half bad. He actually looked okay, you know? I wasn't super concerned about how he looked. But it's sort of like, look, tell me if I'm wrong. It's the equivalent of, like, the aging adult film star who, like, the big guns don't want you anymore,

so on the way out, you have to do really gross things to stay in the game, right? I love how you compare fight sports to pornography, and I do too, but you could make that claim about any actor in any normal industry. It's like, oh, you didn't want to do commercials before, and now you are. You're Frank Thomas selling eugenics. There's a difference.

If you're an actor, you can go to Broadway. You can go to local theater, and you can still put on a classy performance, Luke. These guys are going somewhere where their face is going to be carved up for life. All right, Luke? Maybe so. All right, Luke. These guys are going somewhere where their face is going to be carved up for life. All right, Luke? Maybe so. All right, BC. So let's remind the folks a couple of things here. One, always a thumbs up, always a subscribe, always appreciate when you do. Number two,

we're back Wednesday, bitches. We're right back here on Wednesday. Now, BC, I got a question for you. We know that Monday we're going to do a lot of reacting to the stuff on the weekend, and we've kind of built a good show format. Friday, we're still working things out, but we know we're going to be doing a lot of previewing of the upcoming weekend's fights. Wednesday, I think you and I would both agree, we have an idea of what we want to do, but hey, we're open to suggestion. Should we get suggestions from the listeners and the viewers about what they want to see on Wednesdays? Absolutely.

Whether you want to see sort of a long-form version of sort of a, you know, DMs from Donks Q&A, whether you – look, you've got a great radio background. I'd like to take some, you know, larger-term topics and really stretch them out and go deep on them, you know. There's a lot we can do in there. We're obviously going to eventually mix in some fighter interviews and stuff. I mean, we've got a lot of great things coming. But I am open to see what Wednesday obviously going to eventually mix in some fighter interviews and stuff. I mean, we got a lot of great things coming, but I am open to see what Wednesday's going to bring us, because

Monday we're going to look back. Friday we're going to look forward, although this week we do have Bellator this Thursday on the CBS Sports Network, so we got some things to talk about. But yeah, I'm always open for the people to intervene here, Luke, okay? Alright, so by the way, we need to for the folks listening on this who work on the show,

we need a show email. But in the meantime, LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. All one word, LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. What do you guys want to see on Wednesday? And then to an extent as well on Friday shows, what is something we don't cover that you would want to see? You know, just an idea about something you might be looking for now that we're expanding some of the formats. And, of course, here's our social as well morning combat on twitter we have a twitter morning combat on insta morning combat right here on youtube and then you can see our various uh

twitters and instagrams for brian and i look can i interrupt for one second can i interrupt my wife bought me bought us a yum box which means every month you get a box of snacks from a different country last month was columbia here luke have you ever eaten these papa oreata mayonnaise chips i have yes you have you have made by la victoria papa oreata they're not bad they taste kind of like mayonnaise is this a um is abuela eating these two? Because I could probably handle Abuela. No, you're eating the equivalent of, I don't know. You went to Columbia 7-Eleven eating those, is what I'm trying to point out. All right. Very on brand. Okay.

BC, you need to figure out what chimichurri is. I still can't get over you don't know what that is, but we'll figure that out later. Also, before we go, BC, someone wrote me... You need to figure out what Classic Rock is, bro, alright? I figured it out. It's things that suck ass. But let me make this one last thing. A listener wrote me and they said that they want you and I to re-watch

this week. For me, re-watch. For you, watch. The Heath Ledger Joker movie, the Batman one, and then react to it on Friday's show. Would you be interested in like a segment where we have dedicated viewing responsibilities and then we, you know. I would not be against whether we,

well, don't pick books because I don't read that shit. If you picked either, if we picked either a song, an album, a live performance in music, or like you're saying, a movie that we had the time to digest and then specifically broke it down and had our audience ready there as well. I'm down with that, okay? I'm down. All right, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. All right, if you'd like to try Showtime, why wouldn't you?

Go to Showtime.com right now. 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can pound sand. Don't forget the store store. Dot show. That's S H O. Dot com for all your morning combat gear,

hoodies, shirts, long sleeve, short sleeve, whatever you need. We got it there. And we're back on Wednesday, bitches.

We are back. So for Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas. Thanks for everyone to show time in Malka until next time. May all of your gains be loyal. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.