MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 256 Look Ahead: Usman vs. Burns OFF | Deontay Wilder | Leon Edwards | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 66

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Episode 66 of Morning Kombat is here and Luke and Brian look ahead to UFC 256 breaking down the news that Kamaru Usman vs. Gilbert Burns is OFF for the event in December and look at potential replacement fights including Aljamain Sterling vs. Petr Yan for the Bantamweight title and Francis Ngannou vs. Stipe Miocic (5:15). The boys also discuss Deontay Wilder firing his co-trainer Mark Breland and how it could impact his Fury trilogy fight (19:47). Plus, what is next for Leon Edwards (32:56)? The guys discuss all the twitter beef from early this week.... ESPN vs Dominance MMA management (43:02). Gervonta Davis vs Ryan Garcia (48:00). Darren Till vs Mike Perry (52:04). Finally the guys close out the show with a deep dive on Colby Covington. Can he change his gimmick? Who would he be today without the schtick and where it ranks compared to the best (58:45). --------------------------------- '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 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

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Reveille, reveille, dogs. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell.

This is Morning Combat. It is Wednesday, October 7th, 2020, and it is time, donks, for Morning Combat. Hi everyone, my name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo. I am joined by the gentleman on the other side of the screen, no bigger fan in the world of MK Dissected than him, the conspiracy to my theory, my friend and yours, Connecticut's king not named apathy the one and only brian campbell hi brian how are you good sir uh luke as you already know i've got a tongue like a razor a sweet switchblade knife and i tell it like it is even to your passive

aggressiveness i heard rumors going around someone close to the show has found out that you don't believe that i support non-bc mk products on the same level that i do what we cook up live every monday wednesday friday luke uh do you like apples because i i got a number i retweeted the damn uh dissected so uh city cock boxing all day every day thank you yes the only reason i might have the only reason i might have that view is because you told me that that was your view just sort of putting it out there but yes and that person who put the bug in my ear was actually you luke okay but congratulations you're you're dissected on izzy i hear luke because i get texted about it by you every hour that it's our most watched video in morning combat history so congratulations it's not it's not it's second most behind the khabib dissected that i did but uh yes

it's who's counting right who's counting you know i mean who would look at these metrics i don't know nevertheless uh we have a lot to get to today it's a wednesday edition of the show so a few news and notes people have been asking are we still going to do the Dead Wrong segment? Yes, but now it's going to be on Fridays. Makes a lot more sense to end the week with all of these stupid things we've said, Brian. Yeah, because we'll make errors every other day, so yeah, we might as well just

round them up at the end. Fair enough. So we'll do that, but today we have a lot to get to. UFC 256 matchmaking. We're going to talk about Deontay Wilder firing the coach who threw the towel in his fight. There's a rematch, I should say, with Tyson Fury. We're going to talk about Deontay Wilder firing the coach who threw the towel in his fight. There's a rematch, I should say, with Tyson Fury. We're going to get to some social media beefs, deep dive on Colby Covington, and a whole lot more. First things first, apologies for starting late, but we're here. We're ready to go.

Please give the video a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button. We're doing great numbers now that we're going in heavier rotation. Really appreciate that. Also, we're giving you content every single day. Live chat tomorrow and yesterday, BC. Why don't you tell the folks about this new podcast thing you're doing with Mr. Boogs. It's the Boxing Hardcores, right? Yes, yes.

Boxing Hardcore, not the regular fans, as the great Richard Dwyer would say. A lot of you may have been fans of what I've done with Rafe Bartholomew in many networks and iterations over the year, but we're bringing the boxing hardcores under the MK flag. Very excited. You know, every couple weeks checking in on the sport. We certainly had a big one to do yesterday. Going real deep

on all things Zepeda Baranchuk. Where does it fit in in terms of best fights of the century? What made it so great? All that great stuff was fun to throw the balls around there with good old Ray Faye, New York Times bestselling author. But welcome to the family, MK. We're going to keep giving it to you on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

A lot of creative, fun, side content there. A little bit of appetizers for what you get every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11 a.m. Eastern in your face hole. It's MK. Nobody does it better, Luke. Nobody. Very true. All right. So if you would like, let's MK. Nobody does it better, Luke. Nobody. Very true. All right.

So if you would like, let's see, to try Showtime, you certainly can. Showtime.com. 30-day free trial. You'll like it. You can keep it if not pound sand. You want some merch? Store.show.com. These links should be in the description box.

I don't know if they are, but store.show.com is the place to be for that. And a reminder, 3 p.m. East Coast coast time tomorrow the live chat my live chat moves to the mk channel you can check it out there all right so okay uh bc with that in mind we have a lot to get to we no time to waste let's start with our big what's that i said let's do it luke that's all i said okay let's do it it's hard to hear over these effing happy editorial wife is a happy editorial life okay thank you i mean it was just being you're being weird not me but okay neither here nor there let's start the show three big topics to get to first things first espn's area hawani has reported that ufc 256 has lost its

main event bc it was supposed to be the, well, I would say somewhat long anticipated fight to a degree between Gilbert Burns and champion Kamaru Usman. Usman needs a little bit more time to heal from injuries, get right to be in a position to compete fully. And so now the organization is kind of sitting out there, not knowing what to do. A lot of different actors in the space have thrown their you know their uh name in the hat and they want to be picked up uh first things first your reaction to the news that they don't have this welterweight fight to lean on for the i think the last pay-per-view of the year if i'm not mistaken yeah i believe it's uh what mid

december maybe december 12th to look that up i think the 12th yeah but uh ufc 256 was shaping up pretty well look uh usman burns is not going to have the sex factor you know of a of a colby on one side of it or a connor or whatever but but that's one of the best fights you can make in this sport right now and the co-header for that one is looking like it would be am Nunes defending her 145 belt against Megan Anderson. So while it's certainly not great news that this falls apart, Luke, I think it does give UFC an opportunity to build up that pay-per-view even larger and add some more commercial crossover sort of name value to it while still getting a very good fight to replace Burns Usman. And you mentioned there was no shortage of people coming out and throwing their name

into the mix. We can go up and down it, but I'm interested in saying if you are Dana White, Mick Maynard, the other guy, Sean Shelby, you call up your Endeavor friends, right? You've probably having an eyes wide shut party, no pants, covered eyes, you know what I'm saying? Maybe the Illuminati's involved. And you're like, what are we going to do for 256 let's bring in luke thomas to help us uh book the territory what's the best fix here well so some of the reporting that has come out to me that i've seen

is that they have a few options you already mentioned they've got nunez and anderson sort of tentatively targeted for this card so that's's an interesting one, but that's more like a fun addition. As good as Amanda Nunes is, it's just not on paper the most competitive fight. I think a lot of folks look at that as sort of a lion being fed a gazelle. We'll see if that ends up being true in the end. They're still waiting to hear about what's going to happen between Peter Jan, your UFC bantamweight champion, and Aljamain Sterling. But the one that caught my attention that I thought was the most interesting, and I don't know if it's doable, but I like the idea. Francis Ngannou wants his title shot, and he wants it against Stipe Miocic.

That was also reported that the UFC has reached out to both sides to see if that's something they can get going. Now, obviously, we have Francis Ngannou beating Jairzinho Rosenstruck, but back in May, and doing it with absolute ease. Did the fight even last 30 seconds? I don't think that it did. And then you have another five-round fight just this past August for Stipe Miocic. So they are in different positions. One, Francis has been waiting a lot longer, and two, that was a much tougher fight than what Francis had to go through versus what Stipe had to go through for DC the second time. Nevertheless, if it's your last pay-per-view of the year, while I like the Nunes and Anderson fight, and while I absolutely love the Jan and Sterling fight, neither of those are your get

over the hump from a pay-per-view standpoint kind of major attraction both of those are great b and in the case i think of nunez and c as sort of if you want to have a three title fights on the card that would be your c and if there was an a b and c or a three if there was a one two and a three in your power rankings they still need that one they still need that a in the title picture power rankings for me, if they can find a way to do it. And I might understand Miocic's reticence here, BC, because not only did he have a tough fight,

he already beat Francis. He's looking for something different. John Jones is out there. Maybe you go that direction, but they apparently have promised Francis a title fight. Francis, as people have told me that they have promised him a title fight next. I think if you can find a way to get it done,

that's gotta be your clubhouse leader, right? be that would be the the i think the middle ground answer where it's safe enough look you're not even with stipe and francis in there with amanda in the supporting act you know you're not going to sell massive buys but that's a sexy bout the the ingano stipe rematch there's a lot you can do with i think that's the safe middle ground answer right here. And how do you get Stipe back? You probably just pay him, right? Just pay him a little bit more. Pay him what he probably deserves at this point

as a guy who regained his title and has been there for you at each step of the way. Jones would be nice to crash this party, but we're already talking about the potential of Jones out of Sanya. Plus, Ngannou is more deserving. I think you can also get a pay-per-view main event out of John debuting at heavyweight without a title in some form so this would be probably

meaning Stipe Francis to safest strongest best move to do you probably wouldn't have to break the bank while still giving Stipe enough to to make him want to do this right now but what about those rumors that Dana was throwing out that he did put an offer out there for Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor? That could certainly swoop in and save the day without question, Luke. I wouldn't want or need an interim title there, but do you think UFC would be willing,

if they went that direction, to put Conor in a non-title main event in a non-one-off super fight situation? Like, this is a fight that is within the title picture at 155 and put Amanda in a title bout co-main event. Would that be okay? This is the weird one for me.

If they don't put Conor in there, you mean to tell me we're going to end the year without a Conor McGregor fight except for the one in January against Cowboy that lasted, what, a minute? I forget even how long it was. 42 seconds? Yeah, it was nothing. It was cotton candy. It was there and then it wasn't.

That seems to me like almost impossible to believe, and yet it feels like that's the path that we're headed on, because my guess is Dana White put out this ultimatum, which, by the way, he leaked stuff to the press to make the fighters look a certain way. Oh, we're going to offer the fight, and we did offer the fight to Conor and to Dustin,

and Dustin was like, I accept immediately. He didn't hear anything from Conor, and Dana was like, we're supposed to hear by a certain time this day. That deadline passed, and we didn't hear anything, which leads me to believe he doesn't really find that bout all that interesting. BC, I'm trying to think about this. If you're trying to get Conor McGregor to fight Dustin Poirier, how do you sell it to him? How do you sell it to him other than saying, hey, if you don't take this,

you're going to be inactive even longer, right? Other than just getting out there again, what is the rationale? Because one, you have to cut to 155, which he'll do, but I think he prefers if he doesn't have to. Two, it's a non-title fight. Number three, it'd probably be a main event, which means it would be five rounds, which is a much more difficult thing. It probably blows up any attempts to make the Pacquiao fight, if that's even real or headed in any kind of meaningful direction. And he already beat the guy. Now, I understand the differences, as do you. This is not the Dustin Poirier he beat back then, which isn't to say that Conor can't beat him or wouldn't beat him, but it's a much more difficult task and ask this time around. Plus, Conor was on a red-hot streak, and now he's very, what do you want to say,

all over the place at this point in terms of whether he's training and whether he's not. So I like that fight. I think you could go that direction. But Stipe has an obligation to defend the title. That's a little bit different. And they can do something with that. They can make another interim title with John versus whoever, as you indicated. People would riot, but you could do it. You can't make another interim belt. Gaethje already has it.

Well, let me answer your question. You threw out a rhetorical in there, Luke. You said, what would they do to get connor to do it you you'd have to guarantee that he gets habib if he wins i mean straight up uh you know habib could say every day of the week you know i want to go out and fight gsp and be done and i don't want to be you know in the same uh puddle with this with this piece of shit you know your boy i boy, I will smash him. You have to sit down and be Dana and not send it via DM and maybe do a blood oath and shake hands

and say, look, Conor, you come back and you fight Poirier in this pay-per-view main event. We're not going to, you know, we're going to give you Conor money. We're not going to give you Floyd money. But you come do this for us, you're getting the Habib rematch because it makes sense for all of us.

That would have to be a conversation Dana would have to have with Habib to make that work, certainly. Do you think Tony Ferguson fits into this scenario at all, considering he just did an interview with Ariel in the past 24 hours and I was able to skim it? And Tony's pretty upset with the way UFC handled the whole thing with the Poirier fight coming to him last minute,

assuming he would take things. He did call out Dana, said, look, you know, we're not boys. We're not friends, right? This is business. And basically put out there, I have been a company man for them. I stood up for them during the quarantine, fought Gaethje last minute. And now they're not necessarily respecting me. I need another fight in 2020.

I'll main event either the November or December cards. Give me Poirier. Give me McNuggets. Give me Chandler but pay me for it is there any scenario do you think where Tony can crash this party as a headliner I mean you can make the Poirier and Ferguson fight and you and me would love it till our dying day but I don't know that's a fight you could put in there I mean imagine if what you had was you couldn't convince Stipe to do it for whatever reason. Conor is just not going to play ball for whatever reason he's not going to.

These are very plausible scenarios, by the way. It leaves you with Nunes and Anderson, Jan and Sterling, which are, at least in the latter of those two, a totally competitive fight. Fine title fights, I suppose, all things considered. And then you have Poirier versus Ferguson. Now, don't get me wrong. That is a killer card for hardcores,

and maybe they end up going that direction. I mean, part of this whole year has been, if we can meet our volume quota with these contractual revenue deals that we have, that being the UFC, they don't have to bend to the stars in the ways that they might have had to four or five years ago. The game has certainly changed in that way. So maybe they just end up going that way. But as a headlining fight, no, I don't think you can do that.

I think it's just another fun fight. Plus, if you end up doing it that way, where you put it on the pay-per-view and you've got two title fights above it, it can't headline, which means it's going to be three rounds. Maybe you do want Poirier versus Ferguson for three rounds, given all the battles they've been in, but you have to be okay with that ahead of time

and say, there's a reason why we don't want that to be five, right? Right, but Conor's going to be nobody's co-main event. He's going to headline if he fights, and he should. And you should put the title fights as the co-main event if they're not bigger than a Conor fight. And what title fights are bigger than any Conor fight. So I'm of the belief, and we've seen it before, right? You know, Diaz, Conor won was was the main event to uh

Holly Tate for the for the title I know that was a last minute scenario supposed to be RDA but uh if it's Conor it should main event if it's not you know if you can get Ferguson Poirier but I don't think you can I mean I think I don't think you can put out the money unless you're paying them I mean one thing Ferguson said in that interview was I bring pay-per-view buys so no I think at this point Luke no one's willing to take a discount and fit in as your second or third fight and do it for three rounds. They want a headline. UFC has to step up and just basically say, look, lightweight division is our sex division.

Everyone in there is a star. Let's get the two guys that fit the price for us, but let's put it as the main event. I'm all for that. I wanted to ask you one thing, though, about Tony Ferguson before we close. He talked about that he wants us to be so busy UFC won't let him, that he thinks he can go as high as 205, Luke. Light heavyweight. He thinks his frame could support light heavyweight,

and he's willing to fight in any weight class above lightweight just to stay busy. Is this just El Kukui talk? Because I know you and him have that weird relationship. Do you remember that open workout when he was playing with those crystal balls and then he came over and gave you that gift? What the hell was that about, Luke? It was a grip trainer. He gave me a grip trainer, yeah.

No, I mean, you couldn't do that all the way back when MMA was much less fully fleshed out and formed, meaning there weren't as many divisions and they weren't as well-staffed. Like BJ Penn trying to go up and fight Lyoto Machida and just getting absolutely worked over. You can't do that anymore. And I certainly understand he's got big power at 155, and I think some of that will probably carry up to 170 pounds. So it's not like he can't play with some of his options

in the way that a lot of other lightweights have done, like Conor, like Cerrone. He can do that, I think, or even Masvidal to a degree. But 185, I mean, Luke Rockhold is a different species in terms of size than Tony Ferguson. That's simply not true. Last thing on this, then we'll move along, BC. Speaking of Jorge Masvidal,

what about as a dark horse candidate, theby and jorge fight that they've been talking about could you do that yeah you could and you also could by the way do the same with the masvidal nate diaz rematch if you wanted to bring back the bmf and make that a pay-per-view main event you could go either of those ways to fill it i just think that ufc when they look at all the options on the table luke it's going to be important what they do specifically with the lightweight division because they could move the story further right now. What I mean by that is we've seen a lot of moves, seen Habib and Tony fall apart five times, right?

We've seen Conor sit out for two years. We've seen a lot of holes in telling the full story of us finding out who's the best lightweight, you know, all that. Everybody faced each other. We already know Habib's going to fight Gaethje. I'd like to see them get tony chandler poirier and connor all four back in some form to close this year to further that story so when habib is looking for a potential go away retirement fight we know out of those remaining

four who's the hottest at the moment who is most deserving you can also though argue luke that there's as much reason not to further that discussion if the hope is conor abib too and that's the ultimate lottery ticket that's the ultimate cash-in you may want to just play it safe and not ruin that so that's why they get paid the big bucks luke that's why they sit in the war room that's why dana has that large machine gun with all the drugs in it that piece of art i don't don't understand it, but I don't make that kind of money. Very subtle art. Very subtle, the art in his office.

All right, so we now go to topic number two of the three, BC. Deontay Wilder has fired one of his co-trainers, Mark Breland. Now, he's got two. The other one is Jay Diaz. Jay Diaz is the one who's been with Wilder since he was in the amateurs. Breland didn't come around until Shelly Finkel, so the overseer of these whole operations, put him there when the professional career began.

But he's been there for 12 years or so, like a fairly long time. All right, so he fires him. Why did he fire him? Well, we're not exactly sure, BC. But if you'll recall, Breland, who, by the way, is a two-time world champion Olympic gold medalist, sort of a quiet guy in that whole yelling bomb squad arsenal, he was the one that threw the towel in the Fury rematch. Now, after the fight, Wilder was very unhappy with that and

said so vocally, although he did at the time know Breland would still be welcomed in the camp Jay Diaz was critical about it taking Wilder's back and I guess at first they tried to make it work and then in the end they couldn't what is your takeaway from Wilder firing Breland before the rematch excuse me the trilogy fight which may take place either December or January we believe uh you know your knee-jerk reaction to say, like, this is wrong. This feels like it's a million percent wrong move. Not only is Mark Breland, who is, you know, I don't know the percentage, you know, that you get co-trainers 50-50, but in some forms, you know, he's the guy who brings the credentials.

He's one of the greatest amateur fighters of all time. Oh, and by the way, he had a pretty good pro career, too, and was a world champion. Here's a guy, when you're looking at Wilder, I know he's the blood and guts warrior. I know he's the guy who can win a fight at any time. But Breland was able to bring the quiet sort of technical side of it. And those are some of the holes in Deontay's game that you would think need well rounding. So you mix that with the idea of this was the guy who was trying to protect your future. You weren't winning that Fury rematch.

Fury was walking you down. We find out after that Wilder had an injury on his bicep from surgery. He was worn down from wearing the ridiculous costume. That was just a bad night at the office. So your knee-jerk reaction is to say, you're getting rid of the one guy in that camp who had your best interests? But obviously, Luke, anytime there's a divorce or a spat, a domestic issue, and I'm calling this meaning a family here, this domestic family team, Wilder, you never really know what goes on behind the scenes.

So I do give credence to what Wilder's manager, Shelly Finkel, said when he came out and was like, look, nobody can act like they're in the gym day to day and that there's not more reasons for Mark Breland's exit than just he's the guy that threw in the towel. I don't believe it's that simple as that. I want to kind of oddly spin this back to you, though, and say this. Yeah, knee-jerk, it looks like a bad look. But you are Deontay Wilder. You're always going to have, you know, the great equalizer, the one-trick pony, the thing that's going to separate you from the guys who are more skilled than you. Deontay came to this sport late.

He's kind of still learning on the job, even though he's had an incredible career and all those knockouts. If anybody has a puncher's chance, even in a fight, they're getting beat up. It is Deontay Wilder. Do you think there's anything to the idea that while on the surface,

it seems like the wrong motive and the wrong message to send that the one guy that's looking out for your health, you get rid of him. Does Deontay Wilder need to be wired to ride or die to get the very best out of him in the ring it's not a pc sort of uh you know motto and and and look at this you know and yes he was getting beat up by fury he got dropped he was straight up getting beat up it looked like that fight was going to go south and it and going worse downhill the whole way but if any fighter could pull that out of the brink it is Deontay Wilder with that

right hand and maybe that's just you know the life and death feel that he embraces maybe that's how you get him at its very best I can't I can't assume to know what goes on in that camp it seems like the wrong move on the surface. It seems like it's a yes-man move. But maybe that's the best way to get the most out of Deontay Wilder at the end of the day, and Jay Diaz knows it, and this is the best plan moving forward. I don't know what motivates Deontay Wilder at the end of the day. That's a question for Breland.

That's a question for Diaz and anybody else in that camp who has a much closer sense of things. And to your point, you're right. Who knows what has gone on between them as individuals or business partners or coach trainer that has, or I should say trainer student that has led to this split between them. However, there's just a series of things that Wilder has said that make you think he has judgment issues. I mean, here's why ultimately Breland threw the towel. I'm not sure exactly where it happened in the calendar relative to those other deaths we had last year.

Two of them, by the way, in the state of Maryland in boxing. One with Dadashev not too far from my place of residence over at National Harbor. And then there was another one as well. I forget. I believe both of those happened, though, before the Wilder Fury rematch. Patrick Day. Last October, Patrick Day. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you have a guy like Breland, who, by the way, I'm sure has seen many other deaths in boxing along the way and then may have been reminded of them. I mean, understand something about Deontay Wilder. If he was not married, if he didn't have kids, I do think some of these calculations might be a little bit different. And he's not poor by any stretch of the imagination. He's done quite well for himself. But if you're Breland and you have a rational sense about what kind of punishment is tolerable, and you know that the guy who you are watching

is taking a beating even he can't come back from, and I don't care what anybody says, you go back and watch that second Wilder fight with Fury. That puncher's chance shit is out the window. Sorry, he was no position to give it to Fury like that. And then you realize this guy has multiple people in their lives counting on him, not really financially, but for their, you know, I mean, the father figure that you play in someone's life is profound. And he's got young kids too.

They're not all in college. I mean, it would be totally immoral for him to not at least have considered to throw the towel. Now you could debate about when he threw the towel and that's fine. But the idea that he, like, remember, the big thing that even Diaz and Wilder got after Breland Four was the very notion

that he would even think of throwing the towel. Not that he actually even did it. Like the very concept to them was simply something you couldn't tolerate no matter what the circumstances are. You simply cannot do that. That is not a rational way of working your way through the sport. And the sport has many irrationalities that we have to tolerate, but suicide by competition or you know maiming by competition willingly is not something you can do especially when you have other vulnerable people in this world counting on you and what it would do to the sport itself you cannot do you cannot allow the sport to be a place where people just decide i'm going to die here for some nobility reason

and then what kind of damage you leave the sport as a consequence. I mean, the Dadashev and the Dave fights had some kind of profile, but not the kind of profile that Wilder Fury 2 had. That was a much bigger situation. And again, I'm not suggesting that we're on the same path as that, but thinking about those things. And so to me, the real big thing is here. I actually interviewed Wilder before and after the Dominic Breazeale fight. And before, you'll recall recall he was like i i'm trying to catch a body on my record and then afterwards i asked him if he regretted it and he said no and i'm like dude wilder's got he's got judgment issues he just has judgment issues he has judgment issues about what kinds of things and what kinds of limits we have to tolerate

not merely for your own good, but for the good of the sport, for the good of humanity, to make this a thing that we can allow in society. For a normal person, Luke. For a normal person, yes. Are we ever going to act like these are normal people? I'll end here.

I'll throw it back to you. But BC, every other fighter, including fighters much better than him, have been able to make and walk that tightrope. The idea that he can't because he's tough or something is nonsense no yeah look nothing you said there is wrong in in the whole knee-jerk thing leans completely in that direction and at the end of the day gun to my head i lean in that direction too i am trying to look at this from that standpoint that these are just different people this is a a profession deontay wilder signed up for he talks openly, like it or not, about the idea that he could die in there

and he could kill another man in there. Does he go too far with the whole idea of I want to buy? I'm trying to catch a buy. Of course, of course. It's also part of this crazy sport. It's in play. So I'm not saying that this is something JDS should embrace. I'm just saying De diante is already a

non-traditional fighter in a lot of ways maybe there's something to that maybe there's something to the idea that while i'm thinking how the hell are you getting rid of breland he's the guy who can teach you technique he's a guy who can teach you a jab he's a guy who can teach you self preservation in certain things maybe diante is one of those guys who's wired in a certain way that it's all or nothing it is go out there looking to catch that body or he can't be at his very best. Part of the fight game, maybe a lot of the fight game, Luke, if we're honest, is these guys have to be the biggest con man for themselves, right? It's not just convincing the public that they still have it, that they can win these fights to come out and buy it. It's convincing themselves that no

matter the damage they've taken in the past, the losses they've accrued, the betting odds, that they have to go out there and put it all on the line. So maybe it's more of, you know, J. Diaz, this mentality is the best way to fire up Deontay and get the best out of him. Not saying it's safe, it's interesting, but I do think that Deontay's got one big chance left. I'm not saying that he needs to retire or that his career is going to be over soon. I'm saying he's got one big chance left in this trilogy bout to really redeem his entire name, Luke.

And there was a certain level of staining on him, the way he lost to Fury, the way he got walked down, the way the towel gets thrown in, the stupid costume, all that stuff. If they had run back this trilogy fight this summer, like was the original plan. It's almost giving you that feeling like, you know, are the promoters and company just kind of cashing them out? We got this contractually obligated thing. Hey, let's do it one more time. Roll the dice. Maybe he'll catch fury. Maybe not, man. You're giving this guy nine, 10 months,

maybe a year when it's all said and done to get better from that second fight. Uh, you know, can an old dog learn new tricks you know not not completely but there are certainly a lot of ways i believe that deontay wilder if he is again the right people in camp that that are looking at this constructively and saying we got to have you use your jab more we got to have you looking to be less dependent on all or nothing with a big right hand i get that tyson fighting tyson fury is different than fighting any other heavyweight in the world i just think it's going to be interesting when this trilogy fight does happen whether it's december january look it's on the books it's got to happen right contractually whether because of the quarantine dionte actually benefits from this and he comes out looking like a hungry aggressive

live dog in that third fight because the one thing we have not seen from wilder in this trilogy luke and i think you can agree with this is him fighting like he fought against brazil in round one just balls to the wall going for it the reason why is because you you can't do that against fury he's six to nine he's got long arms he's quicker than you but if you can just take wilder which what he is not a boxer he's not these other things he's a destroyer i think there's two ways you go from this you either use the quarantine to build up his technique or you go all in on saying the the new deontay wilder 2.0 to finish out his career is leaving nothing to judges leaving nothing to anything i'm going in there to finish you in the first three four rounds and if i gas out after that i do i'm going to be so interested to see come this third fight which version we see of dionte coming

out of there given this time to think about this the last thing i'd add to that is it's not that jay diaz represent this is the white guy in his corner for folks who may not know it's not that he represents all of the excesses of Deontay's personality. That's not true. He seems like a very mild-mannered Alabama guy himself, but he certainly accommodates them. And I don't know that Breland didn't accommodate those things in the way that Diaz did, but he was always really quiet. He didn't do nearly as many interviews. He was never out there screaming bomb squad, the whole thing. He was just the guy who you were like, oh, that's the dude that Wilder keeps in his

camp because he knows he has to work on the fundamentals of boxing that he doesn't have. By the way, Breedlum had them in pretty strong supply. He was always that anchor of reality in the corner. Diaz is not the anchor of reality. He can provide many other benefits to Wilder, but not that. You jettison the guy who was that, that's going to put you on the right footing to beat the best heavyweight boxer alive? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe the path is just to be the juggernaut and bust down walls and just overwhelm the guy with force. But part of me feels like the pattern of misjudgments he's made, there's a through line with them and ending with the dismissal of Breland does not speak well of him. All right. Point three, by the way, our topic

number three, BC, which leads us sort of back to the initial conversation to just a small degree. What should be next for Leon Edwards so here's what happened he was offered a fight or I believe they tried to make a fight between he and Wonderboy he did not seem especially interested then the Gilbert fight with Gilbert Burns with Usman gets delayed so Leon's like well hey BC why don't I fight Gilbert Burns for number one contender but Gilbert Burns is like I'm already the number one contender why the hell would I fight you for something I already have so help us understand something here if you are advising Leon Edwards who has been on ice for what I mean the last time he fought was the the RDA fight right it's almost

a year and a half ago uh if memory serves, I'll look that up. What the hell do you do? Well, the worst thing you can do is not fight, right? When you're being avoided or when you are not falling in the graces of the company to be a favored son, the best thing you can do is stay active and get to a point where the promotion has no other choice or if your opponents in boxing or if we say this about Gennady Golovkin right when all the big middleweights were avoiding him the best thing he could do is become an attraction fight four times

a year which he was doing and knocking fools out and it kind of you know you're eventually going to either get up to the rankings where people don't have a choice or you know and mandatories and all that or you're just going to become such a big star they'll want to fight you in leon edwards case here he does have the eight wins in a row he does have the idea that he's being you know overlooked and maybe not getting the full benefit of the doubt because he's not a sexy fighter and he's not a loud fighter and all that stuff but within those eight victories look he really only has what like one sort of top five victories so what he's missing right now are the kind of real credible wins so you know he's not going to get masvidal right now he's probably not going to get colby he's

probably not going to get the title shot so you gotta stay busy now maybe to you if you're leon why would i go down and face cow or not cowboy uh wonder boy i don't know to stay busy and look good maybe beating a top name that can that can push you up even more. So why don't I throw out this wildcard suggestion? And somebody brought this to Leon, and he did, I think, crap on it. Why not fight Hamzat Chimaev? Why not fight the UFC's rising favored son? Because Chimaev is going to skip the line inevitably and eventually anyway

by beating these top guys, Luke. And if you are UFC's redheaded stepchild at the moment, which Leon is in some ways, why don't you call out their favored son and say, look, the only way I'm going to get your attention, Dana, matchmakers, and company, is beating the guy you think has next. I don't see how UFC wouldn't go for that.

That would be an incredibly huge critical win for chemayev it would also get leon edwards out of their hair for the moment if he lost and if you're edwards you're basically like dude i win that fight i beat your boy i'm next i am next okay i'm next for money i'm next for titles it's time let's do this i think leon edwards is at a point where playing the wait and see game, playing the what's fair game, it's not working because it's not fair. That's the system. The game is the game, Luke.

Omar already taught us this. The best thing you can do now is get aggressive and go after their prize toy at the moment. And I don't care if you go five rounds with them in a main event and you look boring the whole way. You beat them, you're going to end up with the prize anyway, Luke. What do you think? That's it.

That's it right there. That's grabbing the bull by the balls. That's putting on the damn Vince McMahon brass ring right there and going after it. I mean, the reason why he wouldn't take the Wonderboy fight is not identical to, but basically, basically, the same reason why he wouldn't take the Chimaev fight is because he doesn't believe he should fight anyone who is, in his mind, beneath him.

Now let me correct the record here a couple times. Dos Anjos lost to Edwards in Edwards' last fight. That was in July of 2019, so not quite a year and a half, but we're getting there. By the time he fights, it might end up being a year and a half, by the way. So there's that, number one. Number two, I think you're understating how good Edwards' resume is. He has wins over Tumanov, who I know MMA hardcores may or may not know, but he's very good.

Submitted him. He has wins over Vicente Luque, Donald Cerrone, Gunnar Nelson, and Rafael dos Anjos. That's a legitimate fighter, folks. I mean, you can say what you want about how exciting those wins were, but they're absolutely legitimate, totally real. Okay, but Luke, aren't those all B wins? Full respect to everybody you just mentioned.

Aren't those all B and B- wins? You've got to get some B- and A- wins to really get into that title conversation. Fair enough. Here's where I'll split the difference with you, BC. Bro, let me just say, do you remember the road Max Holloway had to go through to finally get a title shot? Sometimes that just happens. Tell about Tony Ferguson. I mean max holloway had to go through to finally get a title shot sometimes that just happens and tony tell about tony ferguson i mean tony ferguson to do

this much longer i i'm totally on board with the idea that uh he has not done so much that his case is so overwhelming that we should pound our fist on the formica and demand to see the manager what i'm saying is the following though pound. Pound Sam, brother. Yes. You have to set the context. He was supposed to, that's Leon Edwards, was supposed to fight Tyron Woodley in March right before the pandemic hit. You'll recall, or with the pandemic hit, I should say, because they had that UFC Brazil card

after the rest of the sports world had went on ice. Then they tried to have that UFC London card. That was the card where Edwards was supposed to fight Woodley. That was his big coming out moment. That was when he was basically going to announce to the world that this is the guy that needs to be taken seriously because that would have only been Woodley coming off of the Kamaru Usman loss,

just off of losing his belt. If Edwards had fought Woodley and won, and I think he probably would have, all things being what we've now seen, he would be in an absolutely, totally different position. And I feel like that's where in his mind he actually should be. I don't think he should take the Chamaya fight, but I do think he should take the Wonderboy fight. To me, that is that sort of space in between where it's probably not exactly what he wants, but what he wants is really not available.

He's been on ice too long. Wonderboy is a very tough decorated competitor, very hard to beat, and enough of a name and BC, I think you would agree with this, enough of a rankings presence that you beat that guy and people say, okay, all right, we're cooking with gas here because only the very best are able to really do that i'm going to give you two more scenarios in which leon edwards could get ufc's attention do you like either of these scenario one how about hire ali manager to the stars because all the least fighters seem to be passing go and getting big opportunities or scenario two uh show up backstage one time with a camera around and maybe give that receipt to Jorge Masvidal.

Not trying to get WWE on your ass, but just saying you give that receipt back to him, you may see him in the cage, all right? I mean, here's the thing. It's like, okay, you could do Edwards versus Masvidal, but Masvidal is popular not because he beat up Leon Edwards. It's because he did the three piece in the soda after knocking out Darren Till and then did

Askren and then did Nate Diaz it's got very little to do with the actuality of Leon Edwards, how many fans real UFC fans can name Leon Edwards, not in the UK so you gotta make Jorge want to fight you right, you gotta give him that receipt you gotta go back and give him that payback

make him look bad, look it him look bad. Look, it is pro wrestling 101, bro. It is. That's how you get, I mean, you know, that's how you get somebody's attention. Okay, I'm not saying it's not a fight that wouldn't do well, but you've already got the Colby fight in the works, or potentially that's what the UFC is telling us. Which fight is bigger?

Edwards versus Masvidal or Colby versus Masvidal? It's the latter of those two by far. I'm not saying I want to see Masvidal or Colby versus Masvidal? It's the latter of those two by far. I'm not saying I want to see Masvidal-Edwards. I'm saying if you're looking at scenarios in which Leon Edwards can get his respect and get the company's attention, you're known mostly now, to be honest, for taking that sucker punch from the three-piece Minnesota guy. Why don't you go and give that back to him and then see if you can enter into that discussion? I'm just throwing out scenarios to try to help our guy, Leon, get the respect he deserves.

Let's not act like MMA and fight promoting his polite society. It's not, right? This is the game as well. And there are ways to play that game and cut the line. That's maybe one of them. Okay? It's not for everybody, Luke. I mean, just understand the rankings here.

This is why I don't understand why you wouldn't take the Wonderboy fight. Kamara is your champion. You're a number one contender as the rankings go for what it's worth. It's Colby. Two is Burns. We already sort of know what's up with them. Well, Edwards is sitting at three. Masvidal's sitting at four.

Yes, you could do that. I don't think it's optimal, but you could. Five is Wonderboy. Why wouldn't you? You have a top five opponent there ready to go, willing to take it. Why not just take it? That's probably the middle ground.

That's the smartest, safest. That's the play if you're Leon Edwards. All right, sitting out, not the play. Complaining any longer, not the play. I don't know. Sliding into Masvidal's girls' DMs might be the play, right? Hitting them with that left hook backstage in front of a camera might be the play, but, you know, it's just me.

Well, I'll just say this. Sid, I agree with you. It's like, I don't mind fighters sitting out for a little while, and the pandemic, certainly not Leon Edwards' fault or anybody else's. He's managed my paradigm, which probably means he won't be going to Allie anytime soon, but the real key is a little bit of time off, probably not the end of the world, situation depending. But when you're Leon Edwards and your last win was July

of 2019, buddy, I mean, I respect the ability completely. No doubt about it. I've been saying this guy is very, very hard to beat. But you've got to get out there. You've got to get out there against... At some point, you have to recognize it's not your fault, but the pandemic pushed you back a little bit. You're going to

have to... As unfair as the world may be, BC, sometimes you have to recapture things that you already had by no fault of your own. Yep. You got to learn to hold your own. They get jealous when they see it with your mobile phone, right, Jay? Oh, Jay's not with us this week. Sorry. Sorry. Gaff in our ear.

Shout out to Gaff this week in our ear. All right, BC. We're trying something new here for our next segment on the show. Why don't you take it away, good sir? Yeah, we all know from the comments, if you read them, that Luke is just a far-left wuss SJW face, right, Luke? I would fuck up. Anybody who's ever called me that, I would fuck them up in front of their loved ones.

But, you know, for the purposes of this conversation, I'll tolerate it. All right. We have a new segment called, how about it? SJW, Social Justice Wednesdays. Really aimed at identifying things that happen every other day in both the combat sports world and beyond. Social media beefs. People going back and forth.

People running their mouth. So I want to bring in the honorable Luke Fauci here to sit on the old throne and tell us you know who's right who's wrong who you know who wins on this all right let's start with number one beef of the week uh this has how this whole gilbert burns thing started right ariel helwani of espn tweeted out out, Usman's not ready for the Gilbert Burns fight. But hey, how about we do the Leon Edwards Burns fight? It's the number one contender fight, whatever. And that's when the walls of Jericho broke down, Luke.

And can we play the next slide? Gilbert jumps in, basically sends Ariel to hell. Why am I going to fight for the number one contention when I've already earned that, etc.? And then the floodgames of Ariel versus MMA dominance started coming out. Ali throwing shots. I don't know if you saw this, but then DC, Ariel's man, jumps in to defend him, being like, Ali, who are you talking to right now? This thing got a little bit wild here, and it didn't stop there.

Ali coming back over the top. Even Marvin Vittori. Look at that. The coffee boy is calling Ariel. No one calls Ariel that and gets away with it, all right? And then we got even Marvin Vittori coming in over the top and being like, I was right about Ariel all along. He sucks. There you go, DC jumping in there as well.

Luke, you want to sort this out? Who's right? Who's wrong? Who wins? Wait, you know exactly what happened downtown when people got out of the line at my job rum bay what is that you know i don't tend to know what what ali does when people get out of out of line on downtown streets you know that's his business okay what is rum bay someplace room bay i don't know i don't know what that is. Well, I'll just say this. I mean, here's the thing.

It's like, number one, we don't know how long Usman's going to be out. If it's like a whole fight in January or February, you know, Gilbert's point is very well taken. Ariel was trying to argue, what if it's seven months down the line? Do you guys want to wait that long? Because at that point, you're almost back in July again. That would be two years for Edwards if he he somehow got a fight or you know probably longer than gilbert wants to be out so it's like here's the thing i've got my own differences with ariel to be quite clear i don't think it's any secret but i take his side in this one why is everybody

overreacting to the suggestion of an opinion and i don don't begrudge Ali or certainly Gilbert. I understand his perspective as well. I totally get it. Like Gilbert was, you know, he's dialed in right now and he wants that fight and he was supposed to get in December. And, you know, and Ali has differences with him and everything else. I get it.

I understand. But it's like, dude, he just stated an opinion. He didn't like, he didn't like dig up someone's finances and prove they were cheating on their taxes or here's, I hired a private investigator to show you were fucking around on your wife or he's just like, hey, why not? I'll leave it zero to 60. I know there's a thing. They went nuclear over a pretty harmless opinion.

That's the thing I don't get. It's like clearly the issue is not the opinion. The issue is something else. So if we're just judging it based on the merits of what Ariel said, I side with Ariel. I think he, I think, I don't agree per se,

but I think that the overreaction, it's like, dude, everyone in MMA, there's no in between. There's no like, oh, I disagree.

It's like, fuck you, die slow, you know, eat shit, I'll kill you. It's like, dude,

chill. Make sure all your kids won't grow. Yeah. Yeah. It's either, it's either love songs or diss tracks in mma what was vittori doing just piling on i don't know if you saw vittori he's like bam just piling on so luke um just to let you know social justice wednesday isn't actually our new segment this is an intervention we actually have ariel waiting on

the line and you wanna right after him so hopefully we can keep mending bridges um i wanted to point out there how about dc stepping right in for his man right there luke would you would you kill for me would you get my back because you know i don't know if you remember just a month and a half ago um mike perry on my own podcast right hung up on me told me to fuck off said if he sees me he'll find me um you know i i would hope you would have the same love respect loyalty that daniel cormier shows for a can of his own ariel hawani that no i'm gonna let you get knocked the fuck out and then we're gonna put that on have you seen this shit so we can narrate it that is that is what i deserve yes at the end of the day all right let's go to sjw number two in the boxing game luke this is an old beef,

but it's opening up again. We know Gervonta Davis going to get that Showtime pay-per-view main event against Leo Santa Cruz. Halloween night inside the Alamo Dome. Looks like we're going to get a crowd there. Ryan Garcia, who wants that, is now jumping back in, saying a lot of things. Can I go?

He went on to say, can we advance the slide here? As he's jumping in on Leonard Ellerbee's DMs on his reply there. Yeah. Yeah. Gervonta and Gerani? Good one, Gervonta, but I'll still whoop your ass. There was another thread there where Ryguy basically saying, look, Gervonta, keep fighting.

Wow. How about that finish clowning with the uh with the paul brothers you golden girl that that was not bad there that was a not bad comeback there from tank rye guy back over the top so that's the key part of the beef here luke let me jump in and handle this okay keep fighting people two sizes too small i can't wait to be in there with you there is some criticism against gervonta look i love this fight against leo santa cruz this is the best guy on his resume by far they're meeting in the middle it's a creative matchup at 130 both the junior lightweight and lightweight titles will be on the line i love it but gervonta davis some of his biggest fights have been against smaller guys. Does Ryan Garcia have any leg to stand on in this beef?

Dude, this is like, I interviewed Gordon Ryan one time. And Gordon Ryan, if you follow him on social media, I don't know how much he does it these days. But for a long time, he was relentlessly mocking, almost every day, Dylan Danis. Because Dylan Danis is very, very good, but when it comes to being elite-level black belts, he's not nearly as good as Gordon Ryan. And if you'll notice, Dylan Danis never responds to him. And Gordon understood this.

He's like, he can't respond to me because Dylan has a bigger following than Gordon, but Gordon's way better and knows that if they ever competed, there's almost a guaranteed certainty that Gordon would win. So Gordon can just sort of fire shots. Gervonta is in a similar position with Garcia, but he indulges this guy because Garcia has a huge following, but BC, come on now, stop playing. He's not nearly on the level of tank and if they fought 2020 or 2021 he is going to get absolutely wrecked unless you make some kind of unbelievable progress look what i love gervonta davis in that fight yes but i think we don't really know yet how good

ryan garcia is i know there were some levels of his coming up where he looked like uh is he going to be vulnerable i think since you know teaming up with Eddie Reynoso and Canelo's team, they have added some more defense and wrinkles to him. And here's the thing. He does have explosive speed and confidence in there. You asked me to pick gun to my head. I'm taking Gervonta by KO.

I want to see that fight. That'd be a monster fight. But I think in the realm of who's winning this beef in the back and forth, Raikai can't even get himself into the ring. He's constantly fighting with Golden Boy and DAZN. He wants to fight Luke Campbell. They're not paying him enough money for this, you know,

big fight they're building up. Whereas Gervonta is, you know, headlining a pay-per-view and getting full support here. So as of right now, I think if you're Gervonta, you're like, you know, pound sand, brother. But Luke, I want to see that. That's a sexy, big time, cross the street type of fight to make, you know, in the nearest future.

I'll say this. Gervonta's doing better in real life, but Garcia, for all the disadvantages that are conferred upon him, he's actually winning the online beef. Now, that will come to a halt if he ever fights Gervonta, and Gervonta knocks his head into the third row. But for this moment, I might have to rule in favor of Garcia, not because he's better,

but because he is coming from such a disadvantage and he's baiting. He's baiting Tank to level things with him. It creates some different impressions. Indeed, indeed. Interesting stuff.

Our final beat for the week. Speaking of Mike Perry, Luke, he has an interesting idea on social media. This is an amazing story. On Tuesday, I love this. So Mike Perry's going to come back. I don't know the date, but the report is he's going to fight Robbie Lawler,

which to me is a great sloppy welterweight fight. He says, whoever gives me the most money can join me in the corner with Coach Latore, his fiancée Latore Gonzalez, who I know not fiancée, I'm sorry. I'm not aware of their entanglements with a ring or not, but I know that she is, you know, carrying his child right now. Yeah. His main squeeze, his baby mama, all that stuff.

So Luke, let's just start right here before we advance the slides. All right. And it goes on here with Darren Till, but that's a really cool idea. I hope UFC doesn't get in the way and stop this. Like that's one of the coolest ideas ever. Like you're a super fan out there. Put up the money. You can join me and be my get in the way and stop this. That's one of the coolest ideas ever. You're a super fan out there? Put up the money. You can join me and be my coach in the corner.

Perry's a genius, Luke. First of all, auctioning off a cornerman spot has got to be one of the most amazing ideas I'd never... How did we not think of this before? It is so genius to the point where haven't they started didn't Darren Till or something start a GoFundMe to raise money for this yeah well I want I want to get to the the beef here in a second but just in terms of the idea it's it's amazing and look it's it's a it's carnival it's circus but that's Mike Perry he's got his pregnant baby mama as his lead trainer I

mean look it's you know he's got tattoos on all over his body you know what this is all right let's advance it now darren till jumps in and basically says look i'll pay anything i'll start a go fund me i'm willing to pay up to five grand then we saw i think it was one of the kawa brothers jump in and say look i got nfl guys offering big time money and then darren till did darren Till things on Twitter and really started coming at Mike Perry as we advanced the slides here. Talking about his baby mama. Okay. Mike came back with a nice little, you got sent to hell by Masvidal.

Throw in the towel. And then we started talking about each other's ladies. Okay. There's a little comeback there from Till. Can we keep going? And so I love Mike's comeback. He's like, you know, that's all fine, but let's see what you're banging. Let's see your baby mama, because here's mine right here.

And then Till comes back and says, this is my future baby mama right here. And then we get into Darren Till doing what he does, which is putting faces over other people's memes. And there's Mike's ex-wife oh the platinum princess dude this this i mean y'all are trying to play the dozens y'all are trying to play the dozens with these dudes from liverpool don't do it don't do it but them are fighting words platinum mike not happy and now he's talking about english women here luke okay all right you know what

mike perry i mean you know he's a certain ends in a fight okay this has to end in a fight first of all it has to and i hope it does um yeah they're still going right here we're still going back and forth here uh look this is uh this is like you know a 10-8 round in terms of darren tell handling him on social media oh man, man. Nobody in England posts their girlfriends wonder why. They all post mine talking about mine. LOL. That's because you're the only ones who use the word wanker because it's all you do. Wank off to pictures because the

birds on that side have the flu. Yeah, not so great. Not the best. Yeah. Trash talk. So, um, what's the best case scenario? Because Mike Perry draws eyes, right? You know, he just got that. He had that co-main event with Mickey Gall and like people cared.

He draws eyes, Luke. If you're UFC and you want to partner in on this idea, can we actually get Darren Till? Is that possible? I mean, no, because number one, the commission has to raw dog pro. That's Kendra Lutz jumping in. I know. luke i know i know she's a huge mma fan uh dude she likes grappling of all kinds i heard luke here's the deal it's like it's not merely that darren's insults are better it's that it's that it's that darren is the one who clearly has

the other guy upset you Mike Perry gets mad, and Darren Till just keeps finding new ways to throw gasoline on the fire. You can't play the dozens with this guy. He's just too funny. I mean, when he came out and said, okay, now that I'm the one who'll be in the corner, who's going to pay me money to throw in the towel?

Dude, I was hooting and hollering over here, laughing my ass off, because that is hysterical he'll take any opportunity to be like okay i'm not playing i'm not playing i'm playing bitch he is constantly that guy the trick for mike perry you got to block these guys and just focus on you know the help set till would beat him in a fight right so you can talk that kind of trash when you can you can back it up in the streets or in the cage. I'm assuming.

I mean, look, Mike Perry does have experience knocking out old guys. But, Luke, what is a good case scenario here to make this, you know, to really make this a circus extravaganza? Do you go the celebrity route? Do you go the, you know, little kid, old guy route? Where do you go? How about bringing back the old guy that he knocked out to be his coach in the corner? How about, you know, you kid, old guy. Where do you go? How about bringing back the old guy that he knocked out to be his coach in the corner?

How about, you know, you like a celebrity here? You like the Just Bleed guy? Where are you going? Do you go YouTube star or do you go like Frank Shamrock? Like, who are you trying to piss off? Oh, yeah. I don't think if you're Mike Perry, though, given his things outside the cage that can prevent him from getting fights,

you know, UFCcs has supported him it seems despite his uh craziness i don't think you want to piss off the management right no so he'd probably i mean i don't know you got to get um get ryan garcia i don't know some shit like that gets uh who is uh who's like a famous internet you got like not troll but like uh you know mr beast from youtube who can blow up your spotlight like that mr beast is got like not troll but like uh you know mr beast from youtube who can blow up your spotlight like that mr beast is always like i gave my friends all you know purple colored lambos here's the video it's like well one second you can't just donate money to be in mike perry's corner and then make a mr beast youtube video about it blow up mike perry's

spotlight i think that might be pretty good uh at what point should latore not be carrying the spit bucket when she's this much pregnant though luke uh at what point does your wife just like say you know i'm not gonna walk around anymore my wife is pretty active all the way through the pregnancy we had we i've only got i've got two kids they're twins and uh they were born four four and a half months premature which is insane insane. So I didn't have the traditional experience. I see. Well, my wife was pretty active all the way through. Spitbucket's not that hard to carry.

Getting up the stairs, you know, I wouldn't ask her to do it more than once. So she's probably fine. I'd like to see the Platinum Princess back in there. There's a reality show waiting to happen, okay? Thank you. Thank you. That's what we got this week for SJW. Let's move on, uh all right well now it's time for a segment that we are tentatively and i do

mean tentatively calling going deep so we do a bit of a deep dive on one topic but a topic maybe with many many different tentacles uh colby covington obviously coming off the great win over tyron woodley he was most recently in the news, not for MMA reasons per se, but because he was actually at the last debate between President Trump and then former Vice President Joe Biden. You can actually hear him when the debate is over sort of scream, I think, what was it, best president ever or some kind of plot it. But it was clearly him, and you can actually see him in the audience.

Since then, he put out a message, BC, on social media saying he does not have COVID. We don't know if that's actually true, but let's say for the sake of argument that it is. And that he is going to, he's sort of celebrating the healthy return that, I don't know how healthy it actually is, but the return to the Oval Office of President Trump. And all the people who have been speaking ill of him will get theirs in the end. But it raises an interesting question, BC. It's one that I've been asked, and I don't think I've given a very good answer to,

so I'd like to do it here today. The election for... Go ahead, I'm sorry. I said, please do, Luke. Yeah. The election for president is less than a month away, for folks who may not realize it. It's less than a month.

This is not something I wish to have as an overtly political discussion. In fact, I don't think that it will be, but it does have some tie-ins, because, BC, you watch pro wrestling, I don't. Maybe you can think of an example that will help us better understand this. Whether you like Trump or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Colby Covington has tied his identity to a political actor. And a political actor, at least in theory, will have their fortunes change day to day, month to month, year to year, but substantially over the course of elections.

And there are two different scenarios I guess I'd like to imagine. One in which Trump loses the election. We'll start with that one first. And then one where he wins. Because I actually do think that's a separate and important part of the conversation as well. But first, let's go to the other one. BC, have you ever seen somebody tie their fortunes and their, not really their fortunes really, their identity to some outside actor, some outside figure that has really uncertain futures because that's really what

this is all about is there anything in pro wrestling that reminds you what we're seeing here i mean maybe uh you know ahead of uh wrestlemania 7 when sergeant slaughter that that dirtbag turned uh turncoat and joined the uh the iranian military luke and for the big showdown with hulk hogan at wrestlemania 7 all right he was really playing up the gulf war right during that point but no this is real life and by the way i like you referring to politicians as actors that's my territory luke okay the both sides are fake this is the you're they're selling you uh up the river here, Luke, to try to believe that this stuff is real.

No, there is no one person who has ever tied his boat to something in his shtick and his personification of what makes him famous more right now than Colby and Donald Trump. So Luke, how important is November 3rd to the future of Colby's career from a marketing standpoint? Is it win or go home? Here's the thing I just find so interesting.

Colby started out as the guy who was spoiling Star Wars and Spider-Man or whatever it was. I think there was another one he spoiled as well. And I actually found that more hilarious because if you looked at his mentions, it was just everybody in mma didn't matter the political affiliation super bitter at him i found that to be very funny but he morphed that into basically being the trump world mascot in mma he wears the hat all the time he's reading the book at the press conferences there's any time he does an interview he's wearing some kind of trump shirt there's the trump letter over his shoulder right it? It's at all times Trump symbolism in your face. Again, it's not about a good or bad,

it's just, it is what it is. But he got in on it at basically what could be the high watermark of it. I mean, right now Trump is in fact president. I don't know if he'll win on November 3rd, but right now that is the most powerful office in the land. That is the apex leader of the free world, for better or for worse. And so to have an association with that, dude, it has a lot of dividends. You get to go to the Oval Office. He's on ESPN, and the President of the United States is calling him on the phone, and he gets to pick it up and answer on live television. Dude, that is powerful. That is very, very powerful. And I can understand why you might want those associations. That's not

to say he doesn't have actual political agreement with Trump, but that power and that status, it is that imprimatur of the presidential seal on everything that he does. And then to an extent, depending on what you want to believe in, the success of the larger Trump family. Well, that's got to be intoxicating for somebody to have that kind of arm, so to speak, put around you. But the problem is it's incredibly fleeting. Now we will get to a scenario,

as I mentioned, where he wins. But here's the thing, BC. If he loses, and if there is a peaceful transference of power, which at this point, you know, I guess we'll have to see exactly what happens. Let's assume that it does. You have to ask yourself what happens to the Trump brand afterwards. some of these questions, which is to say, even today, BC, you had a federal court rule that essentially a New York prosecutor can take a look at Trump's taxes. There was a report by, and by the way, Cy Vance is looking at them, and so is Tish James and many other prosecutors

at various levels of the government in New York looking after his finances to see if there's any actually illegal activity. More to that point, if you look at the licensing agreements that he made by virtue of the New York Times reports, we're talking upwards of $400 million he was able to make off the Trump name. Can you still do that if you're a one-term president? So he gets to a point where after he becomes, if he doesn't get reelected, you have to ask yourself, to what extent do Trump's misfortunes, should they happen, does that affect Colby's identity? Because he's not a right-leaning fighter, BC.

He is the Trump mascot. And so tying your fortunes to that guy, if he A, loses an election, and then B, faces any kind of criminal prosecution or some kind of status decline, I think that could have profound impacts on how he's viewed. A hundred percent. So, like, let's be honest here. The origin of this is, you know, and Colby tells his own sort of creation story. And, you know, you can argue if it's completely true, but, you know, that after a boring win in which he wrestled early in his UFC run, that UFC matchmaker said, we're not going to

sign you to a new contract, win or lose entering your last fight. And that was when it all got into his head. I need something different. And look, I talked two, three years ago, even to people close to ATT, and they've said straight up behind the scenes that it's a Dan Lambert creation. Dan Lambert's the wrestling super fan. He's the guy with the room in his house, you know, the ATT founder with all the legendary wrestling belts that he's collected. He actually had a pretty good run on Impact Wrestling a couple years back as a heel when they had that MMA invasion for Bobby Lashley, which Colby and Gleason Tebow and others were actually a part of.

But Colby, you know, he rode that pretty damn well and he got himself into a title fight with Usman. But I thought that was going to be the turning point, Luke, because do you remember he did that interview ahead of time with the Republican female? Who am I thinking of? Oh, the African-American lady? Yes.

Candace Owens. And he seemed in that moment to do the, you know, and Chael got on him for it, a lot of other people did, to do the cardinal sin in pro-wrestling s is you know break kayfabe and basically admit this is an act and i did this to save myself and suddenly colby's changing his story from lead agitator you know trash talking uh troll to almost like you know underdog hero i thought he was going to stay in that direction he didn't talk hella trash with usman leading into that build we didn't see them fight in the buffet line like they almost did before that fight happened luke it was almost a boring build and then obviously a great exciting

fight but he's doubled down since then and maybe it was smart to double down because we're entering not only an election season but like you know the all-time uh you know craziest one in terms of people being this passionate and you know puff daddy vote or die brother and all that wildness luke i mean good god the nba finals have vote on the back of the uniforms i mean it's a it's a time like no other luke but i do think it's all or nothing here um i'm not going to compare donald trump and joe exotic exactly but remember when tiger king came out it was freaking the best thing ever for like two weeks. I even bought two t-shirts, Luke. You ever try to wear a Tiger King t-shirt like six months later?

It just feels weird, right? It's over. The joke's over, right? We lived it. It's good. You can't do the red hat anymore if Trump loses here. That doesn't mean that Colby still can't be a popular fighter. That doesn't mean he can't be a contending title fighter.

But there is now a next level sort of marketing star asterisk attached to him i don't care if you love it or not when the president can call you on live tv when you can have him tweeting out you know good luck to colby coming like that matters that's a giant ordeal it also kind of matters for the ufc in terms of how they market and use him knowing that he's you know got that brand on him if that's gone luke it's gonna have to be more about colby the fighter and the real person on the inside if biden wins this election i don't know if he could keep that up does he give up the shtick at that point does he stop trying to be the agitator or where else could he go here's the thing that's interesting

to me it's like let's talk about some other people who are very pro-Trump. Dana White, right? Dana White, I mean, speaking quite literally on his behalf at not the first, but even the second Republican National Convention. But if I had to ask you, forget about his Trump support, who is Dana White? You could probably give me a pretty good answer. UFC president, long-time fight promoter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Jorge Masvidal. Forget about his Trump support for just a second. And unfortunately for him, you know, the president got COVID,

so they couldn't do that bus tour, you know, which would have, I think, enmeshed him to a degree with the Trump brand as well. But you can still say street Jesus, you know, the sort of the Cuban, well, actually that's Romero, the Cuban muscle crisis. But, you know, he still has some kind of identity absent that. For Colby, the whole thing for him is, again, this is not a referendum on Trump's identity per se. It's just a question of who are you without it? Now, BC, here's the part I'm trying to think of.

Can you pivot out of this in a way that fans might find authentic? I know in pro wrestling, it's all of a sudden like some guy goes from being a villain all his life to all of a sudden, boom, overnight, now he's the greatest or quite the opposite. You could be good in an instant, storylines change and you're bad. Can you do that in MMA? I'm not saying it's good or bad,

just from X to Y, from black to white to white to black. Well, look, let's present it like it is. It was a heel turn when he became this gimmick, right mean he got but it's but it's but it's not it's a heel turn in the sense that he was polarizing but it's very different than the heel turn he made when he was sending out the spoilers because he got a whole side of people to then support him he got this whole uh uh part of america quite frankly that pays attention to it anyway, that said, you know what, I identify with that guy. So it was and it wasn't.

Well, look, for pro wrestling terms, it was. It was a heel turn. He was kind of a nobody. He started to get people to hate him and want to hate him, and that's how he got popular through that. It also helps that he's a really good fighter and started climbing the ranks there. In pro wrestling terms,

if he's going to try to do started climbing the the ranks there um in pro wrestling terms if he's going to try to do a face turn after this election in pro wrestling you do it by go rescuing the hero so i don't know if there's any scenario in in in real mma where that's possible where he comes running in the cage to rescue somebody i just find it really interesting in this regard with the whole idea of this heel turn because he's it's annoying it's over the top it's ridiculous he's ridden it really far like if i'm grading this heel turn it's wildly successful he's got the president calling him he showed up at the damn uh debate as you mentioned could be heard on camera yelling and the fact that he makes you rub your fingers down you know chalkboard feeling

whether you're you know pro or against just because of how corny at times his shtick can be the fact that it elicits those emotions out of you in pro wrestling terms means that it works means that he's winning i don't actually think there's a real life pivot here luke i don't think there's there's a way to to keep that level of celebrity for him and be able to do that whether it's you know attempt to turn good guy or anything here unless there's some is there a villain in ufc that people hate so badly that they'd love to see colby call out and go after i don't think so not yet but i want to say this too i mean mma media has been very much in denial about how much colby has ridden this to a successful conclusion or level.

Now, has he become Brock Lesnar in terms of pay-per-view sales? No. Is he the ratings juggernaut that, I don't know, some other fighter might be when you put him on television? I'm not suggesting that. But what he did was he not only asked a certain part of the world, or I should say America, to identify with him, but he asked a portion of America that feels like sometimes the world is a little bit against them. And he represented them proudly and without any equivocation, quite blatantly. And it's a world that is both inside MMA, but also very far outside of MMA. And if you're out there at the debates and the president's calling you on national television and you're a very good fighter

and you can use that to, you know, he's getting on shows that most fighters don't get on, dude, it quite obviously worked. And I don't know why media has had trouble saying that up until now. They find every sort of little excuse, oh, the Lawler fight didn't do good ratings.

Dude, the Lawler fight was in 3pm in the middle of the afternoon and again I'm not suggesting it has resulted in popularity as a I want to put down money to see that guy or to see that guy get knocked out which maybe is the ultimate litmus test but in terms of like how visible he was before to how visible he is now it's a dramatic

upgrade it's a huge upgrade and there's just no getting around it so maybe the only face turn luke is to go out there and start supporting fighter pay and coming back at dana maybe if he turns on dana that's the ultimate sort of pro wrestling window of how he turns it back good but uh keep going where you were going well i was just gonna say if you think about other people that mma fans have hated as fighters, like a Josh Koscheck, he sort of morphed at the end there to something of an elder statesman.

Even Michael Bisping for a time was a little bit of a heel. And then all of a sudden turned into an elder statements, elder statesman to the point where Bisping was even like, I don't even know how the fuck it happened. I just, people just started liking me all of a sudden. I don't know that I foresee that for Colby because independent of the Magristic,

separate from that, he's doing stuff like Khabib engages in all kinds of unspeakable acts with animals or making fun of Dustin Poirier with gross verbiage and he's a very well-liked fighter. Maybe he can just keep

that up? Is that a thing he can do, just being shitty to everybody? Yeah, a shitty person works if you just want to stay a sort of generic heel. I want to ask you, though, short of saving his job, and maybe it did, maybe it did save his job, where would he be today, though, if he hadn't fully embraced the political side of it? Because there was a time where it wasn't so much about politics and it was more about, you know, these Brazilians are filthy.

He was Dennis the Menace. That's who he was. He was Dennis the Menace. You know, where would he be right now? Would he have gotten all the opportunity he had up to this point? As much as we say this was a great victory for him, he has succeeded in making this gimmick work and getting fairly popular out of it.

Would his ability have gotten here anyway? His ability would have gotten him pretty far. How far, it's hard to say. You know, when Verdun was chucking boomerangs at him, that had a pretty interesting effect too, right? It wasn't like people weren't paying attention. But it changed, right? Because when he started becoming out of Super Pro Maga,

you had a lot of other fighters been like, you know what, I thought I hated Colby, I'm pretty Pro Maga too. And so a lot of that kind of tension went away. I tend to think he still would have gotten pretty far. But I don't think that the level of attention that he got would be the same. And by the way, not all the attention is good. You know, call them Brazilians, filthy animals, making the smoke signal argument or claim against, you know, Usman usman these are just call them what they are it's the racist as shit but at the same time there's just a level of visibility that was

afforded to him because there were people shining spotlights on him due to his advocacy that ordinarily would not have but by hook or by crook he was going to find a way to be clear now at least it's interesting if trump wins the election what we assume him to sort of ride out over the next four years of of colby's career this idea that he's you know this red hat wearing guy he may also become a baby face through that you know they're all you know like you said there is a large amount of people i mean if if a large amount of people vote this man in as president again luke there you know there's a there's a there's an idea there that maybe uh colby turns baby face through that what do you like about this idea though if trump loses the election and let's say colby is unsuccessful in in winning the welterweight title outright

do you think there's a secondary run in his career as a Chael Sonnen-esque type troll, is what you're saying, just kind of being shitty and going after people? I mean, look, Sonnen got his popularity by going after the beloved Anderson Silva and sort of pressing the right buttons and doing that. Who's his Anderson Silva? Can he do that to Conor? If we're looking at this as wrestling where you're like, okay, I got this aging superstar who's the perfect villain.

I got to try to match him up with this guy. I can make money here. I try to match him up with this guy i can make money here i got to match him up with here do you think it's going after connor or going after the diaz brothers or going after a fighter that more people love than hate and trying to purposely be the chael son and bad guy in those scenarios you know usman seems to be his his muse one way or the other i don't think there's any kind of analogous thing. Chael also, you know, was never overtly political and still had this ability to capture an audience. I don't know.

Again, this is a debate about to what extent Colby has the same kind of powers. I just don't think it would work out the same way. He doesn't have quite the same overt pulling the pro wrestling strings ability. I don't think he has the wit. He doesn't have the wit of a chel sunning right and it's not even exactly humorous it's only humorous for how insulting it is you know and even then he's dialed even some of that back like remember when people would miss weight even when he was doing the maga stick he would still go after them he doesn't do

that anymore he doesn't really go after he has much bigger i mean when he went after lebron james they were comparing not lebron james and col per se, but they were sort of talking about this juxtaposition on first take. He's realized you got to have huge targets. So he's not even really focused on MMA targets for the most part. It's more about the larger culture wars. And he sees himself as sort of an avatar for one of the soldiers. All right. But it leads me to a question now about the other side of the coin, BC. What happens if Trump wins? And I want to say it in the same way we talked about with Biden, where it's a reasonably normal election with reasonably normal results and Trump wins outright

in a way that is reasonably without controversy. All right. Let's imagine that because there could be a million different spaces in between, but let's imagine that. That has to be an unbelievable boost for him because you got four more years, 32 years of age. He'd be 36 by the time that the president would be done. You would have built this goodwill where now, I mean, you know this as well as I do, being a one-term president can be devastating for your historical record. Getting two doesn't absolve you from all of the different blame or it doesn't absolve you from all of the different blame, or it doesn't absolve you from having your sort of name stock decline, but it puts you in an elite status. It gives you

a way for the faithful to look back fondly upon you for a very long time. And I don't know what's going to happen in the next four years. It seems very uncertain these days, especially with the pandemic. But if he wins outright, that is something that Colby is going to be able to ride, I think, not merely for the next four years, BC, maybe the next 40. That is something he might be able to ride for as long as he has a professional and public life. Do you agree? I do.

I do agree. He's got to be able to stay winning. He's got to be able to, I mean, there has to be a monster win, whether it's winning the welterweight championship or it's, again, getting him cooked up in some type of celebrity feud against a Conor type that he would end up winning to sort of keep his relevancy. Because look, any shtick is great until you suffer losses, right? Then it doesn't work.

But he would have the opportunity few have had to really ride the joining. I mean, it's almost like marrying Beyonce or something. It's that level of stardom and it just lifting you up. It would be fairly interesting. I mean, do you think, how close do you think he is to his leveling out ceiling of us finding out how great he can be? Can he win a welterweight championship, Luke? I think he can.

I don't know that he will, but again, we go back to that fight with Usman. It was 1-3, 3-1, 2-2 heading into the fifth. I mean, that was basically anybody's fight, right? I mean, something like that. He had a real opportunity to take that from him, and Usman was the better guy that day, but I think if Colby had fought a little bit more, you know, in a more of a diverse way, I honestly think he maybe could have beaten him. But this is what makes the rematch so exciting. You saw Colby lose his shit when they

were going back and forth at each other on that sort of split screen that they did after his last win over Woodley. And you could see that he was pissed and the fire was real. He was still on the adrenaline of having beat Woodley. I mean, Woodley is funny. We all thought that the Woodley versus Colby fight was the one to make. We were actually kind of concerned how the promotion might be that these were the two rivals that would define this generation of welterweights. It turns out not really.

Turns out it's going to be Usman probably and Colby. Maybe Gilbert Burns wins. I don't know. But it doesn't have the same kind of heat. Well, look, Usman needs him to a certain degree, right? Commercially, you need your, you know, he'll be his Huckleberry. Imagine if they end up getting a title trilogy out of this. That could be fairly interesting.

Right. They have this, like, chapter of the welterweight division together. You can't talk about one without the other. And maybe Colby wins. Jones and DC. I mean, look, you know, Sonnen fought Silva twice and lost both, division together you can't talk about one without the other and maybe colby jones in dc i mean look you know right asan and fought silva twice and lost both but he's still you know that's what made him so look colby does have this potential luke to go down like chael sun and as one of the greatest salesmen a guy who look you can't get to that level of salesmanship unless your ability is

there but a guy who was able to elevate his status so much higher than he would have with a different persona there may be there may be a chale-like ending for him in that regard and that's where you know let me pitch this to you bc let's say trump wins the election uh and again in a normal reasonably non-controversial way and colby goes on to win a title, can he naturally outgrow what he has with this sort of representative of Trump world? Can he be something more than that without ever actually leaving it, but maybe adding on to the identity?

Can he do that? Well, yeah. So the add-on would be a cleverly smart face turn. Because again, if Trump gets re-elected a second time there's a fairly loud majority saying that they're pro almost everything that the maga red hat brings to the table so there is the idea of colby can win the championship bring it to the oval office and and do that whole shtick that he turns baby face out of that and then you know gets himself into a fight if it's possible with with someone who

other people don't like at all and you know they look it's happened i even think floyd mayweather who was sort of a purposeful villain most of his career in order to get you to pay to try to see him lose there were times i thought he was attempting sort of heel turn suddenly very humble and glowing with the media uh you know i i wonder if there's an angle there to get out of the idea of i'm just this this top shelf agitator um look you know stone cold steve austin as a good guy was really a a good guy doing bad things right you know drinking beer pouring it over i mean like there's there's a way to pull this off i don't know though i don't know how long colby can can win on this super elite level though and carry that shtick goingick going? It's going to be fun to find out, though.

We didn't actually talk about it, but what if, going back to the original part of the conversation, what if Trump loses, but then Colby becomes champion? Is that the moment where he can say, okay, I rode this thing out as far as it's going to go. Net, net, it was kind of a win. Now I'm a champion. I can use this as some kind of launch pad for a way to pivot or redefine. It seems like if anything is going to give you a new way to look at you,

it's a UFC belt wrapped around your waist. I got it. Instead of going MAGA, go, what's that guy's name? Rob's John Kamanu, that guy? Oh, Rob's on Kadyrov? Become Rob's John Kadyrov's caddy that's the only way that that colby can take this villainous political gimmick and just rise it right back up to a whole new

level luke okay there it is right there thank you yeah it's gonna be super interesting to see you know that ends with a fight against habib in moscow you know how that ends that story that's how that ends that yeah uh by the way do you think uh you think he actually has covid or no uh yeah i don't know luke i don't know what's real and what's not anymore okay all right yeah a lot of those dogs in that orbit who got covid i thought i had covid when i went to the er the day after i thought you had episode at the turn of the new year but the antibody test said i didn't i think there was was something happened. All right. Something happened that day. Was it AIDS? Did you have AIDS? Beyond you acting like an old bitch because the public

transportation system got me there late. Good Lord, Luke. Yeah. My fault for getting up at 430 and you still being late. My bad. My bad about that. Okay. For folks who like the episode, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe. One more reminder. Tomorrow, 3 p.m., right here,

we're doing the live chat pitches, so don't go anywhere. Odds and ends real quick, Luke. Odds and ends, all right, brother? Oh, yeah, hold on. Just want to remind him now that I'm here. Live chat tomorrow, 3 p.m., but before we call it a day, odds and ends, good sir, what do you have? Look, Wednesday night, that's tonight, as we record this,

9 p.m. Eastern on Showtime. It's Showbox, the new generation. And look, this is a legit prospect in the main event. Junior middleweight Charles Conwell, former Olympian. He's 12-0 with nine KOs out of Cleveland. Unfortunately, he is best known for that fight last October when he knocked out Patrick Day in Chicago. Day was unconscious.

Four days later, died in the hospital. Look, Luke, there are many fighters who don't come back from this. You know, Ray Boom Boom Mancini, the Hall of Famer, right? When he was in that brawl with Dooku Kim, he'll tell you himself. He was never the same after that. I give Conwell a lot of credit with how he's handled the burden of this. No one ever asks to be the guy who lives in a fight like this. You know what I mean?

Like I can't even unspeakable sort of guilt. He had said, you know, he came back last February.ary was his first fight back he won by stoppage uh conwell had basically said um he was in a real bad bad place emotionally trying to deal with that all that he has dedicated the rest of his career to patrick day he's got a very interesting main event you know how showbox does this luke it they match him tough okay conwell coming in undefeated he's facing haiti's wendy toussaint who is 12 and 0 with five knockouts a 28 year old uh conwell only 22 a true rising prospect it's gonna be interesting to see how he comes out of this battle and toussaint by the way toussaint's tall for the division and he sparred with derevin chanko

ahead of this fight so uh should be a good one. For my odds and ends, they have not actually filed suit as far as I am aware, but Lance Palmer and I believe Kayla Harrison, some other ones, maybe not Kayla, but certainly Lance Palmer and well, maybe Kayla too. I'm not sure. Let's start with Lance Palmer.

He has threatened to sue the PFL because he is claiming that they have kept him from making money during a short career window by virtue of delaying their season. You'll recall they were already supposed to be in the season. Rory McDonald was supposed to be there, not in his division, but it's part of this whole effort. And they had to cancel it or postpone it, depending on your perspective, to the next year because of COVID. Well, he is now saying, look at all these other promotions. They've gotten going. They've been able to work this out. They've been able to figure out a way. I'm just sitting on the shelf. I can't make money.

I don't know exactly what kind of law he's saying that PFL broke or what kind of agreement in the contract that they didn't uphold i guess we'll see if they actually go through with the lawsuit but there are a lot of people in pfl who aren't happy and palmer has been a staple of that organization i think winning the uh winning it a couple of times certainly making a ton more money there than he might have otherwise but he's pissed bc and he wants out yeah i want to see how this ends up because you know pfl had made that early decision to just kind of forego the season and not try to work this out i know they're trying to get good pr just put out a

a release that they'd signed some new fighters uh you know some ufc cast off shaman marias among them but um it doesn't feel great for PFL at the moment here, Luke. I know they signed Rory McDonald. I know there's some things to like about their seasonal format here, but I don't know. I don't have a law enough background to figure this out, but you want to fight, the promotion won't let you. There's an issue there.

I mean, here's the thing. When they initially delayed their season and then gave everyone a stipend, there's a lot of people who are like, wow, that was really a smart move by PFL because Lord knows we had no idea when things were going to get back to normal. They were trying to give people some money in the interim. But then two things have happened since then. One, we found out to make that stipend possible, they had to cut a shitload of fighters on the roster. And then number two, it looks like they misjudged, not necessarily by any fault of their own, but they misjudged how long it was going to take to find a workable solution to put on events in a COVID era. And now they're stuck with these dates that are not for a long time. And now they've got fighters on the shelf being like, what the fuck?

I want to make some money. It's a difficult situation for them. I understand Lance's point, and I don't know what the PFL could have done differently other than wait longer. You feel in the PFL, Luke? What does the PFL have to do to get you to care? I mean, look, they put on occasionally...

I'm not going to badmouth them. They put on occasionally interesting fights, and so occasionally I tune in. That's about it. It's a good proofing ground for young ali fighters right it's a great way for fighters who ordinarily would not necessarily make a ton of money to make a ton of money so i like that uh kayla harrison so far has had a decent uh opportunity to get some practice there i like that um they've got some interesting fires they've pulled from parts of russia that's

cool you know some names have gotten popular there that ordinarily would not have rory mcdonald my fine i mean there's things to like about it but event over event do i like get up for it no not really okay okay uh luke to close here can we pour one out for the great eddie van halen um yeah you know we just had this whole talk about you know celeb deaths happen i'm like you know i Luke, to close here, can we pour one out for the great Eddie Van Halen? Yeah. You know, we just had this whole talk about, you know, celeb deaths happen, and I'm like, you know, I never knew that guy. I'm not that torn. You know, shout out to him and his family.

But, you know, I feel like I knew Eddie Van Halen. I mean, I can't even tell you the role he played in my music journey at multiple stops. This one was a tough one, you know, of throat cancer. And what was he 56 65 that's it 65 did you say yeah all right um it hurts all right i always said if i was a fighter my walkout song would be mean street by van halen with that freaking heavy ass riff i mean um i could say a million great things about him luke i'm i'm mourning i'm mourning i'm mourning it all right i'm not gonna put all these video links and tweets

about how much this guy meant to me, but I'm mourning it, Luke, okay? Yeah, I can't, and I won't pretend to be the biggest Van Halen fan, but if you grew up when we did, where we were little kids in the 80s and then came of age in the 90s, dude, it's impossible to understand music

at that time without Van halen they were they were quintessential 80s they had some of the most important hits in the early 90s uh eddie van halen reworking beat it by michael jackson just absolute titans of those decades important for any number of reasons and in the case of van halen like a legit virtuoso uh on the guitar um oh bro bought a brought a classical background and was like no one no one had his chops and and technique and ability to make really since hendrix make that instrument make sounds that people had never heard before so uh look i got mtv in 1984 that's you know that's the last david the roth album that all that all had all the videos and the big hits.

We talked about some of the best music videos in history. How about Hop for Teacher by Van Halen, among the greatest music videos of all time? So, yeah, we're mourning it here. I even had a run with Van Hagar. I'm not recognizing the Gary Cherone era, though. All right. Sorry. Yeah, we can skip that one.

All right. If you want to try Showtime, because, by the way, there's going to be fights on tonight, you can go to Showtime.com. Get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, keep it. If not, it's okay. You're a loser. We understand there's losers out there.

Let's see. We are on social media, BC. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. And, of course, there's the show if you want to buy some merch. We are on YouTube. Give that video a thumbs up right here hit that subscribe button lots more content coming your way tomorrow 3 p.m the live chat friday show

where we'll preview let's see there's bellator over the weekend by the way san hagen morice this weekend bc pretty pretty excited about that mv we got mvp for bellator fighting in paris we got uh sergey lipnets on showtime a little bit of a sleepy weekend, sneaking in some good fights there. I'm very excited here. Obviously, next week, a lot of big stuff. Lomachenko Lopez. Yeah, yeah. Injected right here, Luke.

I'm getting fired up, all right? And then last but not least, we have an email, morningcombat at gmail.com. morningcombat at gmail.com. If you want to send us a note about anything, especially if there are things we got wrong, we will do, wrong slide, we will do Dead Wrong on Friday. And I believe we have some imaging for it that we will debut on Friday at the time.

There's the email. Yeah, please do your homework for Friday. It is re-watching the 1997 Featherweight title bout. Prince Nassim Hamed versus Kevin Kelly. Madison Square Garden. You can find many a replay on YouTube for the full fight. Make sure, like I mentioned, you get the ones that have the full walkout and entrance, the pre-fight hype, the post-fight interviews.

It's all on YouTube. Check it out. We're going to be reliving that. There ain't nothing like a Prince Nassim fight. There ain't nothing. There ain't nothing like it. There you have it. All right.

We appreciate you guys watching today. You have your homework. You have your assignments. I will talk to you at 3 p.m. East Coast time tomorrow. Until then, for Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas. May all of your gains be loyal. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time. you