MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC 255 Instant Reaction: Figueiredo submits Perez, Shevchenko defeats Maia

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

Luke Thomas is here to give you an instant reaction to UFC 255. Deiveson Figueiredo defeats Alex Perez to retain his flyweight title. Valentina Shevchenko retains her flyweight title in a unanimous decision win over Jennifer Maia. Plus more on the main card. --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: 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

The only thing I was going to say was that you missed in terms of analysis, for whatever it is worth, was that the overall card was fine, right? Between the main card and the prelim card, it was fine. It wasn't spectacular. Your main event was not especially competitive, although it had a good finish. Your co-main was not all that competitive, and it did go long. There were some gems on the prelim card and some interesting moments interspersed throughout, but it was not like some ruckus affair,

and it didn't suck either. It was just sort of fine, which I think is about what you could say for it heading into it, just based on how it looked on paper. We'll get to some of the pieces there. We're not going to go to every fight. We'll look at the main card and then a couple of the news and notes from the prelim card just for today. We'll go for about 30 minutes or so.

I apologize for the opening. Jesus Christ. I am tired and old and washed, and I can't believe anyone is watching. But if you still are, I will try to make it worth your while. All right. Now let's begin. So UFC 255 in the books. Again, if you don't want spoilers, now's the time to go. Took place at the UFC Apex facility.

Deveson Figueredo defeating Alex Perez. He does it via guillotine choke at 157 of the very first round. What can we say about it? As I mentioned, not especially competitive. I thought Perez had a decent, I mean, it was hard to really get a clear sense of the game plan, given that he didn't have a whole lot of time to let us see it. You heard that in the interview, the post-fight interview with Joe Rogan and Devison Figueredo, that switching that stance so he didn't offer the lead leg to Perez to kick was a big part of it. And the way the whole fight ended was

you had Perez trying to go for what's called a treetop takedown where you take the leg and then you underhook it and you can put it actually on your shoulder. You can do a lot of things with it. You kind of want to hold it high because it's something of a crotch ripper where it can off balance them. You saw him hopping up and down and he was trying to take him out. And you saw Perez hold it high because it's something of a crotch ripper where it can off-balance him. You saw him hopping up and down, and he was trying to take him out, and you saw Perez try to kick out the post leg while holding the other one up in the air, and he couldn't quite do it. Then, Figueiredo goes for this, essentially this way to sort of sit into heel hook.

I'm not sure what position of Ashi Garami he went to inside or outside. I'd have to go back and look. I didn't quite tell, but he gives up on the, um, it was actually, you know, it might've been inside Ashi. I have to double check. It looked similar to what, um, Jack Hermanson used on Kelvin Gastelum and that was inside Ashi, whatever the case, we can go back and look later, but it didn't matter because he basically gave it up, he didn't really have it, and so you saw Perez come around the front rather than try and spin around the

back, as he does there's a scramble, and in the scramble, you see Figueiredo go into turtle, which means he is sort of crouched here, facing the mat, and someone could take his back. I mean, there weren't openings underneath here to do it,

but he was not in guard facing the ceiling. He was facing the mat kind of turtled, and you saw Perez try to come to the side there to get a hold of it. As he does, you see Figueiredo do the option pass where he's coming around the side like this and then scoops the guillotine choke from there. At that point, Perez has to go to this side to block it. If the head is here, the body has to go to the other side.

But at that point, Figueiredo is A, already there and B, expecting it because that's his setup. He essentially rolled into it backwards like that and essentially locked up the guillotine there. They were noting that the guillotine was kind of high, and it was. The guillotine was kind of high. You could see a clear patch of hair on the back of Perez's head sticking out in ways that you don't commonly do in MMA.

A lot of times what you'll see is where they'll fold the head, you know, into the chest almost. And the back of the bicep will sit, I've got a water bottle here, but the back of the bicep will, I can't really show it, will sit like this. And so it'll cover everything, right? This is someone's sort of head and neck. It'll just sit on top as they begin to squeeze. And you didn't really see that this time. The head was, it looked like it might have popped out for a second, especially as Perez was kind of sitting up and, you know, you're thinking maybe he was going to get out of it.

Obviously, Figueiredo probably has a tremendous squeeze and a very good guillotine. I was just going to say, Jeff Glover was one of these guys. You don't know who he was. Jeff Glover is sort of famous in jiu-jitsu for a lot of reasons. One, he was a very good competitor. But two, he sort of comically was one of these guys who would do the donkey guard, which is where you basically stick your ass at someone. But in all actuality, he was actually a very, very good competitor for a time. He competed in Metamorris, I think.

And he won some major titles in jiu-jitsu. He had one of these guillotines where he even talked about it, where he would actually almost prefer it to be sitting on the crown of the head rather than the back of it. I candidly don't know those details all that well to tell you why it works better than others. That's a little bit above my pay grade, but all I mean to say is I've seen really high-level guillotine guys

who have a kind of finishing scenario where it looks like, oh, they're about to get out, but they're not. It just sort of looks that way. And he gets it at 157 of the very first round. So it's a nice win. I don't know what lesson to infer from it, to be quite honest with you. Did anyone expect the fight? I mean, you could say you would expect it to go differently.

Maybe you would have thought it would have gone to the second or third. Maybe you would have thought Perez would have done one or two things differently. It's not like I had a clear sense of exactly how the fight would go. You knew Figueiredo had good jiu-jitsu. You knew he was a big power puncher. You knew he was physical and strong for the weight class. And I think you saw a lot of that in every kind of way in which they tangled up. Perez was game.

I'm trying to, again, mention taking the takedown to him, pushing him against the fence, trying to tree-top him. He was getting after it. But the technical difference was hard for Perez to handle. And then when you get to the physical differences between them, I mean, that's just way too much of a bridge to cross. So I don't know exactly how I thought it was going to go, but then when it ended, you're not surprised at all. So it's kind of hard to know what to make of it, except to say, I think he's clearly your best flyweight, Deveson Figueredo.

I mean, that was pretty clear before this, but this is a friendly reminder that that is true. I don't know if it will pull Henry Cejudo out of retirement and into face him. I would love to see it. I think Figueredo is a legitimate challenge for Cejudo. I think that'd be a really fun fight. And it does appear that Figueredo has finally figured out the weight-cut cutting scenarios and challenges that were something of an issue for him before. He looked like he didn't have an ounce of weight left to give.

Like, you know, when you can see the entire detail of a pectoral muscle that's almost kind of flat, where you can see it. People think there's two parts of the pec. There's actually a third lower part. You can see it on him. I mean, his back has like zero fat on it. When you're that low, your margin of error in terms of getting that cut right is very, very small. But he did it.

He did it. He did it. He made it work. He made it work really well. So the challenge, I thought, the one thing I guess I thought Perez might do was if you look at his numbers, and I know in Morning Combat we thought he would make a stronger account of himself. But I guess when it's all over, you're like, well, you know, what other way was it going to go?

But the one thing I think I did say on Friday was that I thought Perez would have a really high work rate. And if you could make Figueiredo work and you could find a way to stay out of trouble and drag this late, then that might be one of the sort of things you do better than him. You have a very heavy, labor-intensive style, and for a guy who has a very difficult cut, that might be something where you could really exploit, but we never even got close to doing that,

so that's out the window. It's going to be hard to make him work because he is tricky to lock up with, as you can see, when you're coming in behind guillotines backwards like that from the position. I mean, this is a common way to snatch it, but rolling from turtle and then into it and over it, that is not unheard of, but certainly sneaky. Certainly sneaky. And then his ability to finish from there is going to be really, really high as well.

So I'm not really sure what to say beyond that. He is special. Let me see what the numbers from Fightmetric are, if they're at all finished at this point. And again, I'm just terribly embarrassed by the way this started. You know, I'm just washed. I'm washed and sad. What are you going to do?

All right, so here's what the preliminary numbers are from Fightmetric. I mean, there's not much of them. Five significant strikes for Figueredo, six for Perez. Let's see, takedown attempts. Two attempted for Perez, but Figueredo gets credited with a pass, and that's it. I mean, there's nothing really in the numbers to be all that interesting. Figueiredo 40% targeting to the head, 60 to the body. And that was it. A hundred percent took place at distance. Yeah. There's really not a whole,

I mean, there's not a lot to say. There's not a lot to say about this one. I don't know how soon he'll get back out there. This was not an especially arduous contest. I'm sure his training is. He probably, you know, this is not a guy who can take a fight on short notice. I realize he's the champion, but what I mean to say is if the UFC was like, hey, we need to move your fight, you know, can you accommodate it three weeks earlier? I don't think he's got that leeway. He probably needs that three weeks to do road work and get his weight down

in the way that he has been. So that's where we are with that. It was a nice clinical win, man. It's a nice clinical win. The guy has control from the back. He has incredible entries. He'll take risks with it in ways that you haven't seen before, right? Sort of swooping in that way to find Ashigurami the way that he did.

Again, didn't even get close to finishing from there, but that you can threaten in that way is pretty interesting as well. Let me look at the rankings at flyweight. Now, he said he wanted Brandon Moreno, who also had a nice win, which we'll get to a little bit later, that he should be next, and he should be next. And Brandon Moreno, I think, will give him a tougher fight. But here's who else is on that list.

Benavidez is still sitting at one because the rankings people have no idea what they're doing. Moreno's also at one. Askar Askarov is sitting at three. Perez is sitting at four. Pantoja at five. Royville, who lost tonight at six. Kaikar France, seven. And then on and on from there. And then, of course, if you look at who Figueiredo has beaten already, he has a win, two wins over Benavidez, then Elliott, Pantoja. He has the loss to Formiga all the way back in 2019. And then wins over Moraga Morales, Jared Brooks, and Marco Beltran. So there are some other interesting fights available to him. Moreno's the most interesting one.

After that, it's not entirely clear which direction they would go. Askarov, I guess, but I'm not sure what his situation is. And then from there, you'd have to go to Royville, but he lost. So really the only answer even could be at this point is Brandon Moreno.

And I suspect that fight would be a little bit more competitive, but even then it's like Moreno, you know, you have to find, you have to thread this needle between like physically making him make different decisions, but then also staying out of his big power and not locking up with him.

So I mean, staying off the fence, clinch breaking, circling, angling, the whole nine yards so that he can't get his hands on you. That's a very hard needle to thread man you know it's one thing to be like oh i don't want to strike with this guy i can just take him down but that's not really an option for most people against figueredo right because he's not just good from guard he'll stand he'll arm drag you and then take the back or you

know he's got probably all different kinds of stuff he can do from underneath to reverse position to take you away from it. He's a nightmare. He's a handful. And then when he gets into a dominant position, he's a clinical finisher, physically so strong. That went about how I guess it should have gone. Not so much necessarily how me and Brian thought it would, but about how it should have gone, I suspect, in the end. All right. Not sure what else to say about that. We'll probably have more to say about it on Monday.

To me, the more interesting thing to talk about, even though the fight itself was not very good, is the co-main event. Let me pull up the results to make sure I get them here accurately. Valentina Shevchenko remains champion, defeating Jennifer Maya 49-46 across the board, which is how I scored it. I think I gave Maya the second round. And here's what, I mean, this fight was like, the commentary tonight was not great, if we could be honest. I think that each individual commentator,

and Anik, who's play-by-play, or Roganan or DC um they're all good I don't know that's the right pairing because what you end up getting is you end up getting like it and this may be what you want but it ends up sounding to me more like a fight companion podcast that it does the actual calling of the fights it's a little too chummy for me. I like it better when, frankly, I like it a little bit better when Cruz and Rogan are sort of at odds or Cruz and DC are sort of at odds. Like there's a little bit of balance between them, you know, because the commentary gets distracted and I just don't feel like they focus in on the things that they're supposed to because they're having a good time.

Look, I understand that. Who's against having a good time? I'm just saying there was a lot made of how well Maya had done. And in the end, she didn't do all that well. She far exceeded expectation, right? She submits Joanne Calderwood to basically take her position that she was in for this opportunity anyway. And then she was like, you know, they were talking about how crazy Shevchenko is in terms of how talented and, you know, look at these odds at this fight and all the other fights, you know, minus 1400, minus 1000, blah, blah, blah, whatever the numbers were.

And so you thought, oh, Maya's going to go in there and get creamed. And what you ended up seeing was one, Maya took the second round, but she didn't win any of the other rounds. But you got a Shevchenko that was very careful, in many ways early quite hesitant, who was looking for the takedown, looking for top control. And so I think people are like, wow, Maya did a lot better than we thought she would, which that part is true. Relative to how everyone said she would do, she did a lot better than we thought she would, which that part is true. Relative to how everyone said she would do, she did much better. But relative to any kind of objective standard

of how competitive was this bout, not especially. And part of the reason why it was not competitive is really, or I should say, well, not competitive. It was competitive. Here's what I mean to say. Sorry, I'm getting a little bit lost.

But what I mean to say is it was competitive in the sense that each moment was not necessarily filled with overwhelming dominance. And part of the reason why that was true is neither fighter was really taking a lot of risks. Now, as the fight wore on, and I have to look at the numbers, Shevchenko found a home for that check right hook the left straight and sort of the left overhand really found the mark a lot especially late but on the ground this is what really kind of bugged me and let me explain what I mean on the ground if you're in if you're chest to on somebody, there's very limited things you can do. You can do some stuff, but not necessarily a whole lot. For example, if you are in someone's full guard and you want to pass, there are passes you can do from the knees. It is quite doable.

But in general, if you want to pass and you're in someone's full guard, you've got to get on your feet. What I'm telling you here is not controversial. There's a lot of people who know a lot more than me who I don't think would really disagree with that. Again, there are passes on your knees, to be very clear. You can do it. But if you're really interested in passing, especially when you're in like the fourth or fifth round of a fight, you got to get on your feet a little bit. And they didn't even attempt it. They would get top control and then just hold it. And I understand that.

I understand that, right? It's major stakes. You got to fight smart. But that doesn't mean I have to say that the fight was especially interesting. I don't have to say that the fight was especially fun. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn was especially fun. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't very fun. And neither took a ton of risk. And Shevchenko even talked about, like, I wasn't even glad the fight went five rounds because I needed the time after such a long layoff. I get it. I get the game. I understand it. I'm not like,

I'm not arguing to you Shevchenko should have done more. I'm just reviewing the fact and saying she didn't do much on the ground. Neither did Maya. She had that one sort of armbar attempt or triangle attempt off of her back. Maya was really good actually about underhooking here better. There was this time when she was underneath and she had an underhook and she just stood inside control, folks, inside control. If you can control this space, and the other person has to control the outer space, it doesn't mean that the person who's controlling the outside space

and not the inside space has nothing, but inside control is significantly more important than outside control. Significantly. And so she was much better along the fence line and underneath getting that underhook to stand. But I just mean to say there was long stretches of the fight. In the second round, Maya would be on top. Or, in the other case, Shevchenko would be on top.

And it was just coast. Coast is a strong word. They were content to hold it there and then see what they could get. You know, you go back and look at the Chukagian fight, or whichever one it was, she was moving to crucifix. shevchenko was right she's really kind of getting after it it was none of that here and again i get it major stakes coming back from injury blah blah blah you got to fight the way you got to fight to get the w right you got to um at some point if it gets so dominant and they're still not doing much i think then you can have a conversation about it like

there was a point i think in saint pierre's career where people were like, oh, what you really object to is, you know, um, you just don't understand the ground game and it's boring. And it's like, well, are you think it's boring? It's like, well, sort of, uh, but maybe if you were watching St. Pierre in his prime and you watch the Dan Hardy fight, it was not clear to me why he wasn't doing more ground and pound. There was just long stretches where it was like,

Dan's not going to be able to get up from this. And so because he's not going to be able to get up from this, and he did not appear to be a real threat from guard, why aren't you doing more to pound on him? Because you can go back and look and be like, oh, well, St. Pierre was trying to pass in certain ways, and there was a couple submissions that got close, and Dan really fought out of them, and he did.

Dan showed unbelievable, not merely flexibility, but total grit in not surrendering. All of it true. But just think about this logically. You are this senior in your career. This is a style you've been using at that point for quite a while. You have an opponent underneath who, you know,

you don't, you don't want to take them lightly, but did not appear to be any kind of real significant guard threat and was not really capable of getting back to his feet. And you're not opening up with the ground upon at that point. I think you can make a conversation about it and at least have an argument and say, it's probably more. He could have done.

I'm not quite ready to put Shevchenko in that territory yet, especially since she was coming back from injury. But I'm not going to say it was like, yay, fight. It wasn't that. The one thing I will say that I thought was really impressive, again, I thought Maya did a really good job of underhooking, and that was true against the fence line. She had one reversal of a takedown, I think, as a consequence of it.

She was able to stand underneath from it at least one time. That's a really important skill to have. She was actually, I think, better of the two, at least in this fight. Shevchenko, though, those body lock takedowns, I didn't have the commentary

turned up very high, but I saw people complaining on Twitter that they were surprised she was doing it or maybe they were suggesting it was new. I did not hear that part. Suffice to say, though, that it's something she has shown an affinity towards

and a clear, consistent desire to, and fact that she has implemented it. Those body lock takedowns, she'll spin one way and then she'll spin the other. And it's usually once she turns to the second direction that she's able to get them off their feet. And by the way, she'll leave her feet when she does it. So when she comes down, she crashes on top of them. Which is a truly horrific and awful feeling. So I guess we're going to get, for terms of what's next for her,

I guess we're going to get Shevchenko-Andrade, which does not seem like the worst fight ever. Actually, it seems like it's a great fight, to be quite candid with you. That one should be a ton of fun. Big differential on the feet, but maybe not as much as there once was. And certainly with Andrade, you know, there's not a lot of room for error when you're playing around with that. So, um, keep that in mind now. Um, let's pull back up here. The results. Okay. Um, so nice win by Shevchenko. Got the job done.

Retains her title. I think she has six title fights now in UFC. Or five. So her next one will be six, which will put her in a three-way tie with her, Rousey, and I think Ioana. And I think Amanda Nunes has the record with eight. So she's creeping up on that, which is really interesting. Again, dominant in the sense that by the time you were really tallying everything up, it was more than clear who won. Shevchenko, I think, a little bit hesitant, maybe more so than she needed to be.

The other factor here was that it was in that small cage. I wonder to what extent that played a role. Shevchenko will bear down on you, but she doesn't mind angling off or backing up. But in that small cage, you have a really tight window in which you can do that. So I wonder if she was a little bit hesitant in that regard. I don't know the answer to that, but it's something worth thinking about. But you know, the people who were the champions retained their titles in what I can call fairly non-controversial ways, right? Well, actually, I should say not at all controversial, but largely expected. Not totally, not totally, but largely expected.

We move down the card. Tim Means defeating Mike Perry, 1-30-27, 2-29-28. The issue with the 29-28 versus the 30-27 is how you scored the first. Mike Perry had the back of Tim Means for some time. It was pretty close-ish on chokes. I mean, he was making him work for it in terms of the defense of it, but ultimately, obviously,

did not get it. And then, you know, got lit up on the feet a little bit in the intervening space. Second and third rounds, easiest call ever. It was all Tim Means. Mike Perry, man. I just don't know what to say about the guy. This matchup to me was really interesting

because people overstate, excuse me, I should say, people don't give Perry enough credit for his technical abilities. And Tim Means probably gets looked over a little bit in terms of what he can offer physically. There's probably more to the story there, right? But what this fight was really about is

Mike Perry has a lot of the physical advantages and gifts that Tim Means does not. And Tim Means has a lot of the technical mastery that Mike Perry does not. That's why I made it for an interesting fight. And Mike Perry just didn't really have any... He had the takedown in the first round, which was nice. He got a he-man.

He's strong as shit, Mike Perry. My God. And then he took the back nicely. I think there's many ways he showed some real ability there. But then once Means got out of it and they were back on the feet, and then he could stuff, and then when he was stuffing, he was very good about circling off and getting ways off the cage. And even when they get pressed, he was much better about defending that space.

And so now you're just on the feet with the guy. And if he wanted to accommodate Mike, he did a couple times, sort of standing in front of him and trading. But when he didn't want to and he just wanted to pop and move, I mean, he was lighting Mike up all day. The problem is you're looking at Mike and you're like, what was the second gear that Mike had? He didn't have one.

And it's not because I think Mike is some dumb guy. I know he does a lot of indefensible shit in public, and I think that makes people think a certain thing about him. I actually don't think the two are necessarily related. I don't know that it's a mark of his intelligence. I think it's more just a mark of his upbringing, because he's quite physically capable of doing this.

And you see these flashes of thinking through these problems, and you're like, wow, there's something here. And then it just relentlessly disappoints you in terms of what you think is there and what he ends up showing you. Not all the time. He's had some great wins. But in this time, it was definitely true. Now, I don't know that he was going to beat Tim Means no matter what.

But Mike appears to have an issue with structure in his life. And maybe he's got some with his new significant other who is carrying his child. That would be nice. But I don't know how much that really means anything for his professional ambitions. And in his professional world, things appear to me to be getting less and less structured

from what we can tell. I do not feel like he is progressing at the rate that he should be given the amount of time he's been spending in the UFC and it's very frustrating because when you have the ability to take punishment like he does, when you have his God given power and the strength that he does and he clearly is not

optimally reasoning through fights in a way that better instruction and better structure by the camp and a coach and a weight cut and a blah, blah, blah could give him. It's frustrating to watch people leave that kind of stuff on the table. I mean, Tim Means, whatever he succeeds at, whatever he fails at, you feel like he gave it the old college try. And he's actually developed it to be to me. I mean, there's,

you know, I've never heard, I've never brought up Tim means his name in the company of fighters outside of anyone who fought him or something, you know, totally like, you know, neutral observers. And, uh, and I've heard only good things from him. I mean, this dude has the respect of fighters, you know, like to quite, quite clearly, no one, you can't look at Tim means and be like, well, you know, he's not this, he's not that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's not Yoel Romero or something, but that dude is so technically sound everywhere has fought, you know, the best fighters that he could given the opportunity and the wins or the loss streaks he was on at the time.

And, you know, he's put his time in the game and, uh, Tim means is hugely respected. You know, I mean, whatever Tim does in the end, you feel like he tried, you know, I just don't feel like you're getting that out of Mike. And I don't know his life. This is just a guess. And I don't know what the reasons are. It's impossible. I'd be way too much speculating to say from afar. On Friday's show, I thought that maybe he was profiting from his relationship in a way

with his significant other that was putting his mind elsewhere. Not necessarily in a bad way, maybe even in a healthy way, but it wasn't keeping him focused on his ambitions and maybe the drive for some of those ambitions had gone. Even now, I'm not sure how true that is, but the problem is the first thing that would have to get fixed is you've got to get some structure. He needs structure or not, or this is just what it will be. But unless he adopts best practices, and not all of them, you take the general universe of best practices,

you take the majority of them and you tinker with them and make your own, but we're not even talking about that. If he doesn't do that, then this is all it's going to be. You know, it's just going to be, you can beat guys who probably don't belong in UFC. You might, you know, catch some other ones along the way, but it's not going to be what it could, not even close. And, uh, it's a little frustrating. It's a little frustrating as somebody to watch, but you know, I'm not his dad. I'm not his friend. It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what any of us think. He's going to do what he wants to do. It's just frustrating

to watch. And so he was getting jabbed up, man, over and over. And Tim Means was pull countering and popping and then angling off. And you know, there was a couple of times where he got pushed up against the fence or he would just plant his feet and trade. And you could see his head was getting rocked worse than he was rocking the head of Mike Perry. But by the time the fight was over, Mike's face was a mess. He was bleeding in a bunch of different places. His eye was all swollen and shit. You know, because Tim maybe doesn't hit as hard, but he hit him way more.

What are the numbers on this? I actually should look this up. What are the numbers on what Tim did with fight metric? Let's see. Old Dirty Bird. Oh my God, dude. Listen to this number. Mike Perry landed 64 significant strikes in a sub 40% clip.

Okay. Fucking Tim Means landed 128, literally double, literally double 66%. Uh, in terms of, uh, significant strike percentage.

I mean, it's just crazy. Mike Perry got one out of five takedowns, you know, and they created him with two sub attempts, which is nice. You know, he did look good in that first round. Yeahowns. And they credited him with two subattempts, which is nice. He did look good in that first round. Yeah, man.

And there's some people who are like, oh, let him be. People were overstating how good he could be. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that. But you may end up being right that this is all he ever ends up being. Because without structure or some way to round the corner beyond what this is currently is this is all it's ever going to be um and so really it's up to him to decide what he would want uh caitlin shukagian defeating cynthia cal i'm going to say calvillo just because whenever i pronounce it in an alternate but equally correct way people lose

their fucking mind anyway caitlin defeats cynthia uh 30 27 across the board this one did surprise me this one surprised me here's what i don't get about cynthia she did better in the first round than i thought she was getting credit for with the commentary team but of course not the end of the world i did think caitlin was doing the better work but i thought early c Cynthia was landing more than was being recognized. As the fight wore on, although there were some moments in the third round, but as the fight wore on, it was pretty clear that she was just a step behind, or maybe a couple of steps behind. This is what I don't get. It's like, I understand rounding out your striking game for the purposes of well-roundedness. And so you're not reliant on certain things.

And so you can, you know, if you really want to ascend the ladder, unless you're Nurmagomedov, you really need to work on the overall threats that your game can pose. Fine. But at this point, I think it's worth reevaluating how to structure that. Because, to me, she has always looked much more dynamic and threatening and interesting and calculating. And even just when she's playing off instinct, much better as a grappler than a striker. Much better.

And you could still work on striking to facilitate that, because the big issue here was her ability to close the distance to get the takedown. To me, it's like there should be a refocus there. It's like your striking has definitely gotten way better than it once was, no doubt about it. Since your days at the Cheesecake Factory, you're a much better striker. Okay, to what end?

I mean, look at her resume, right? What are her best wins from? So she came in at UFC 209. She beat Amanda Cooper and Pearl Gonzalez. She submitted them both. And she beat Joanne Calderwood in her third UFC fight. Now, she lost to Carla Esparza. Okay, fine.

She beats Pollyanna Battaglia, Courtney Casey. That was a bit dicey. Had the draw with Rodriguez. She beat Jessica Ai, although that was sort of a painful affair. And then she beats Chukagian. Now it's, so she's won one and one in her last three. And of course she had, she had missed weight for the 115 fight. So the last two are 125.

It's not like she's looked bad. In this fight, she was a little bit overmatched, but she didn't look bad. But it's like, and I'm not saying that Caitlin Chukagian is on par with Amanda Cooper as a level of competition. But what I'm saying is, there's a thing that you do that is so clearly good. And the thing that you do with striking is good enough for the most part. I sometimes I feel like I've, I've been around the game long enough to know not what's best for her, but I can tell you that I've seen this a number of times of fighters being

like, yeah, you know what? I was chasing this goal of either being a striker or being a wrestler or being well-rounded. And I should have just done what I do best, whatever that other piece that they neglected may have been. You know, Demi and Maya is a clear example of that.

I'm not suggesting to her that she goes pull guard. I'm not saying that, you know, but Demi and Maya was like, I'm going to go out there and strike with these guys and be well-rounded. I'm not going to rely on my jujitsu. And then he was like, you know what, man, fuck all that. I'm like a, you know, a ridiculously, insanely good grappler. I'm just going to go and do that,

and I'm not going to worry about all this other bullshit. And he had a total career resurgence as a consequence of it. I just feel like there's something to be said for, what are you really good at? Where do you really shine in this game? And what got you here? And honestly, what got her here was that. I think some kind of reconstituting of the effort around those skills

is at least worth thinking about. In the end, these are decisions for her and her coach to make. Who knows if she has some kind of injury that's preventing it. There's always some kind of story that you're never really aware of when you do this kind of a job and you're just yapping into a microphone and then, of course, you get all the information and you're like, oh, right, well, I should've got that part. Okay. I fucked it up. But, um, but I do feel that way as for Chukagian, nice win. I'm not sure what it does

for her. Um, except it shows her to be much better than I thought she was candidly, you know, uh, she's still at the top of the ranking. She's behind Andrade. Yeah, that's it. You know, so maybe she'll fight Lauren Murphy. Maybe Lauren Murphy will get the winner of Andrade and Shevchenko. That part's not clear, but she has certainly retained status and she's done it in a pretty interesting way. So shouts to her for a job well done. And then lastly on the main card, Paul Craig defeating Shogun Hua. Shogun Hua tapped a strike tonight, y'all. That's not a question,

that is not a statement I thought I would say or write as I did on Twitter. And I had some people write back to me and like, oh, that was a good thing he did because he saved himself some punishment. And I'm like, folks, it's a little late in the game to be like, oh, Shogun is saving himself some brain damage.

I mean, folks, he's been doing this for almost, I mean, what was this, 17, 18 years he's been doing this? I mean, he made his pro debut in 2002. So he's probably training before that. So he's basically been doing this for 20 fucking years. You know, the amount of brain damage that guy has taken is astronomically high. And I have terrible fears for the future for him. You know, I know it's very Debbie Downer ish, but I had people like, well, he got good wins, right? People always want to look at it like, Oh, you're done when you can't win anymore.

Well, that's one way to be like you're done. Another one is to say, how much damage have you accumulated such that you should keep on accumulating it? And to me, he passed, I mean, I'm almost, I guess he passes the medical screens, but it tells you about the value of those because, you know, I mean, just listen to these losses and think about them, he got his arm dislocated against Mark Coleman, he got submitted against Forrest Griffin, forget all the gym wars you know, and you came out of shoot the box

which is like the gym war team he got decision by Liotta but whatever you know, doesn't count John Jones beat the ever living fuck out of him he had a fight against Dan Henderson that took multiple years off his life. Gustafson beat him. Chael Sonnen submitted him.

Dan Henderson viciously KO'd him. Ovin St. Preux TKO'd him. Anthony Smith KO'd him. He got rocked in a bunch of other fights along the way. And then, of course, he just got finished off in this one. So, yeah. Like, was tapping tonight the right call to avoid further damage of course but you know we're talking years of fights that probably should not have happened with just absolutely

baked in damage a little late in the game to to be like he's he saved. It's like, okay, I mean, I can't say that's wrong. It's just like, I'm not sure how much that's going to matter when it's all said and done. Because that dude took a fucking walloping over the course of 20 years of doing this shit. You know. So, nice win for Paul Craig. I've got to say, I love it when a guy is 205 pounds and can get out there and use the guard for sweeps or reversal is actually what it does not come from guard. If it comes, change position from top to bottom with the guard, that's a sweep. But he's threatening underneath. He's doing deep half and shit.

And Shogun tried that as well. I don't know how far that will take paul craig using that particular kind of skill but it's nice to see somebody trying that and i'm very appreciative of it i mean he does a good job a couple of notes here from the prelim card if i may not going to get into a whole this a whole lot brandon royville dislocates his shoulder in this fantastic first round fight it It stopped at 459 of the first. Brandon Moreno, he was winning anyway, but it was very fun and scrappy and competitive for sure. And then sadly, I think he was in a leg lock position or initially and then had moved to,

I have to go back and look. I can't remember exactly the genesis of it, but ultimately had this point where his shoulder was dislocated. Anyone who's ever had shoulder problems where your shoulder was chronically falling out of the joint? And I don't know if that's exactly his problem, but it appears that that may be a concern. If your shoulder is routinely falling out, yes, the particular reasons surrounding that

need to be examined by a medical professional, and that's not me. Obviously, that is not what I do, surrounding that need to be examined by a medical professional. And that's not me. Obviously, that is not what I do. But as a guy who's had shoulder surgery before, my shit was falling out in my sleep. I've had a lot of conversations with orthopedic surgeons about the nature of fixing this. Every time I tell someone,

you have to get surgery to fix that shit. Because what they basically do is, I've always made this example. Watch. So this is the one I had repaired. This is my normal one, right? So if I make one like this and I wanted to open it,

I wanted to externally rotate. Let's see how far I can get. Let me, I can get pretty far. Okay, it's my normal shoulder. If I want to externally rotate on my repaired side, how far can I get?

That's it. So that versus that. It's hard to see from the angle you're at, but it's like, it's like I can go to 10 o'clock. This is 12. I can go to 10. And on this side, I can go all almost all the way to three, right? So there's a big difference there in terms of it. And what they literally do is in my case, and I have what's called slap surgery, they tighten it so that they're intentionally reducing range of motion, which, if you're a professional athlete, has some concerns that you would want to, you know, that's a thing you want to make sure you can do

before you just sort of up and get it. But, you know, I've just had enough conversations to at least feel like, you know, physical rehab is obviously going to be part of any surgery. But if your shoulder's chronically falling out of the joint, yes, it is true that you can get that done. You can probably address many of those issues without surgical intervention. But anytime I bring up surgery, people are always like, well, what about non-surgery choices?

Yeah, they're not as fucking good. They're not. Not for that problem. They're not as fucking good. I'm sure some orthopedic surgeon's going to write me and tell me that I'm wrong, but I've had fucking years of conversations about this with people who do that for a living. And, um, it is strongly my position that

again, that may not be his issue. Maybe this is a one or two time thing in his whole life. I don't know. But if your shit is just coming out pretty frequently, you have to get that, the integrity of the shoulder, the ball and socket is compromised, and simple physical rehabilitation is typically going to be insufficient to repair that. Joaquin Buckley got a nice win over Jordan Wright. I don't know why Jordan Wright's corner sent him out from the first round to the second, but you know, in MMA, no one gives a fuck about any of this stuff anymore.

Dude, a fighter could come back to the corner and speak fucking gibberish, like my daughter does, and they'd be like, you know what? Send him on back out, because you just never know what's going to happen in MMA. And then he goes and gets fucked up in the second round.

He got fucked up at the end of the first, too. He was winning the round, basically, up until he wasn't. He got really hurt by Joaquin Buckley, and then they come out in the second round, and he just finished him off. Basically, the guy didn't even know what he was doing. He was not responding to his corner.

He was slurring his speech, and they sent him back out. It's like, I've raised hell about issues like this a million times, and no one seems to give a shit, so I don't even know why. I don't know what I'm supposed to say anymore. It's like, no, nobody cares. Nobody cares. But Joaquin Buckley did get a nice win. It's amazing to think that this guy got finished by Kevin Holland with strikes just in August. That win he had, that KO win over Kasonganai, and then the subsequent hyping that has happened, UFC really went all in on it.

It has been tremendously beneficial for him. And he got a nice win to follow up with it. And now it looks like the UFC might try and set up a fight with him and James Krause, who are local rivals in the St. Louis area for whatever reason. Would love to see it. Antonina Shevchenko got a nice win over Ariana Lipsky, dominating in the ground game, basically. And then Nicholas Dalby defeated Daniel Rodriguez. I did not score that closely, but I was surprised that Dalby won it. But I'd have to go back and re-judge it and see if I got a different one on the second try.

And then last but not least, Alan Joban, that's a win over Jared Gooden. Kyle Daukus had a win over Dustin Stoltzfus. And the fight that kicked off the whole car was tremendous. This dude out of Hong Kong, Sasha Polotnikov, fighting Louis Kosey and beats him at 227 of the third round. Kosey's one of these hard-nosed wrestlers coming into this contest. I think he had all first-round finishes or something. Something pretty close to that.

You see this kind of thing on the regional scene all the time. All the time. These hard-nosed, real athletic wrestler types. Heavy ground to pound. They're fucking balls to the wall right up front. Like that dude Spike who believes in a million. He's not exactly a wrestler type, but he's really athletic. He believes in all the conspiracy theories.

But he comes out fucking, you know, like a bat out of hell that again on the regional scene, that is basically an unbeatable style, not totally, but you're going to win a shitload of fights that way. And even in the low level UFC ranks, you'll win probably more often than not, but against anybody skilled, you may even put it on them for a time, but it's going to be hard to advance. You're going to be very limited if you fight that way. And I think this was a bit of a wake-up call. He showed grit, Kosti did. You know, he tried to rebound and figure out a way, but he just didn't have a second or third gear to go to.

And Polotnikov did. And you saw the results as a consequence. All right, let me see if I have any questions on Twitter. If not, we'll go back to it. I'm sure everyone's going to be like Yo you're fucking Mike is off Oh not too many of them

Jesus Christ thank God Yeah so what we'll do is Normally I would take questions from, what do you call it, the Super Chat. We're not doing that because we don't need the donations in that way. What we need is your subs, not your donations. So we'll have to figure out some other way

for the next one of these. I want to do these every pay-per-view, and I want to make them longer and longer, and if we can get BC on them, I want to do that too. But BC will be here on Monday, and we will do it from that point on. Right. Um, or sorry. Um, we'll do it together, uh, on Monday, but, um, an interesting, interesting night. So I apologize, uh, for the, I apologize, excuse me for the technical difficulties up front. Yeah, no, I'm 41 and washed and I'm tired. It's two in the morning and I haven't slept. Um, it's just the way it is,

but at least I rebounded without too much trouble. So please give the video a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button. If you have a question for me or a comment, you guys know how to reach me. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com If there's something you want to get asked on Monday's Morning Combat,

tomorrow at Morning Combat on Instagram, we'll put out a post Where you can Write a question underneath That's the best place for it But if you want to just Ask me something

Or make a comment Or whatever Not for the show But just for interaction LukeThomasNews At gmail.com Alright Not the greatest pay-per-view

In the world But not the worst I appreciate you guys watching And one more time Sincerely apologize For the technical difficulties Thank you for sticking around I hope you got something out of it

And until next time