MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC 257 Instant Reaction: McGregor vs. Poirier 2 Results | Hooker vs. Chandler

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

At UFC 257, former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion Conor McGregor faced off with former interim lightweight champion Dustin Poirier in the pay-per-view main event on Fight Island. Elsewhere on the card, former Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler made his UFC debut against Dan Hooker. Amanda Ribas faced off against Marina Rodriguez, Jessica Eye and Joanne Calderwood locked horns and Andrew Sanchez fought Makhmud Muradov. On the preliminary fight card, Julianna Peña fought Sara McMann, Arman Tsarukyan faced Matt Frevola, Brad Tavares squared off against Antonio Carlos Junior and much more. ---------------------------- '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. Well, ladies and gentlemen, UFC 257 is in the books. Welcome, everyone. This is the Morning Combat UFC 257 post-fight show. My name is Luke Thomas. You might be asking, now, where the hell is Brian Campbell? Brian Campbell currently, right now, he's actually getting set up upstairs,

is going to be on CBS Sports HQ. He'll be on with Rashad Evans. You can actually watch that live if you would like to, although please don't turn away from this. Once he is done with that, and we expect that to be not too long, he's going to come down here and we will do the show together. But for right now, my name is Luke Thomas, of course, a combat sports analyst for CBS and Showtime, and I'm going to guide you through all of the UFC 257 results that we just saw. Two housekeeping notes. First, please give the video a thumbs up, and if you are new here,

we would love a subscription from you. Hit that subscribe button. I'm going to keep my phone on because I got texts coming in from people all over the place. So I got two computers. I got my phone coming in, but I need your subscriptions. Please hit that subscribe button if you're new here, as well as the notification bell. We do three live shows a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, plus I do a live chat on Thursdays and tons of other content. So we welcome you here and we thank you for it. And of course, a thumbs up on the video as well. Second bit of housekeeping notes, if you want to email me your biggest takeaways from the overall fight card, could be about the main, could be about the co-main, shoot me an email, lukethomasnews at gmail.com. I really

appreciate that when you do. Okay. All right. Well, when Brian Campbell comes in, we'll go to the wide shot for now. This is how we'll keep it. So if you don't want spoilers, I'm going to give you a five second count to go away. I'm assuming because you're here, this is what you're here for. So five, four, three, two, one. All right, let's do this. What can we say? UFC 257 took place at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, I guess by their time, January 24th, which is actually what time it is here now as I have my watch on backwards. Dustin Poirier has defeated Conor McGregor, 232 of the second round via TKO. There is so much to say about this, the fight itself, what it means for a potential Pacquiao fight, what it means for the potential return of Khabib Nurmagomedov, which I always thought was bullshit, but nevertheless, we'll talk about that

as well. First things first, we have to talk about the fight, and I thought Dustin Poirier had exactly the right game plan. I mean, perfectly done. Not just the perfect game plan. Obviously, you guys all saw he came in in fantastic physical shape. I think he actually looked a little bit better around his midsection. He looked like he was a little bit more well-muscled or maybe a little bit more chiseled. It's hard to know which one, but certainly he looked pretty good. But he didn't have an attitude about getting revenge on Conor. This was not about proving everybody wrong. This was about proving to himself what he felt like he had earned

up to that point. Regrouping, finding the right way to get past his demons, correcting his mistakes, and then taking a real professional, level-headed approach to this contest with a very famous person and what was once a heated rival. So first, his general psychological approach was correct. But in the fight itself, what did he do to win? Now, as a standard disclaimer, I always do post-fight analysis after I have a chance to fully review the film. I watched it in real time just like you guys, so you have to give me a little bit of a, you know, give me some time to get that done. But from my initial review, this is what was so important. I actually thought Conor won the first round.

His accuracy at range, his ability to find range very quickly, his timing. I mean, it is the elite. It is very, very good. He was popping Dustin Poirier's head back over and over again. And while he got the takedown, Poirier, he couldn't do much with it and he was just pressing him into the fence. But this is why that was so key. What was the best way for Dustin Poirier to fight? It was not to trade with Conor in boxing range, certainly not early. It was to go and to drain him. Pop quiz, folks.

What are the only two first rounds? We'll have to see what the scores are for this one, officially. But what were the only two first rounds heading into this contest that Conor McGregor had ever lost in the UFC? Chad Mendes and Habib Nurmagomedov. What is the common denominator there? They tried to wrestle him. Now, again, I'm saying that Conor won this, but why did they try to wrestle him, even if they had lost the round? Because they're trying to drain him. Certainly in the case of Nurmagomedov, he was trying to drain him. If Conor can bounce and set the tone and set the rhythm and find distance so quickly and get his combinations off, dude, he's a very hard fighter to beat.

He's a very hard fighter to beat, especially early. He might be the best starter, frankly, that we have in the UFC. Certainly at his peak, he was. You've got to take that away from him. I've talked about it on my live chat. I've talked about it on my podcast all the time. What do the best teams and fighters do in MMA? They look at what their opponent is good at, and then they ask themselves, okay, what am I good at? What can I do with those skills to take away what they are good at? And that is part of that effort. I'm not going out

there if you're Dustin Poirier trying to win the first round. Yes, it would be nice if that happened. But the much more important equation is start working this guy, slowing him down. Now, in the end, the fight didn't go to the third, fourth or fifth round. So how much of that investment was really the reason why he won? Not necessarily the best or not the most explanatory. But the reason why it's relevant is because you could tell he was having a much more thoughtful approach to this contest. So first of all, I saw that and I was like, yes, that is exactly what he should be doing, because Conor's really not going to get too far out of his comfort zone to win. Usually,

he doesn't need to. Conor doesn't usually have to switch things up when he's in command and go, you know, I've got to go find a way to get on top on the takedown or I need to really work my teeps as I'm backing up or moving laterally. He kind of just sort of commands the space in the way that he normally does and that's enough to get the win. So it was really up to Poirier to make the adjustments. It was up to him to make the big changes. That was the first one. The second one was slowing him down with the leg kicks. Some of the body shots too. I also thought, and I'm going to go back and look at this on tape. I also thought the right hook, especially the right check hook of Poirier was landing over and over. You guys saw Poirier pointing to Connor and saying things

like, got you. See, I got you with that. It was after that right hook was coming around the corner and then landing with some, if not like super, not like crazy authority, but maybe disrupting Conor, marking his face up, getting him to think twice about certain positions he could find himself in. So that was a nice, they had read that, they had read a certain opening through combination that the right hook was going to be a nice answer for. But obviously those leg kicks were absolutely critical. He was going inside with them a little bit, which can often be a little bit of an issue depending on how they check it.

But Conor wasn't doing a great job of checking. He was hardly checking them at all. And he was going to the outside at the beginning of the second round. I think it was after the first kick and they began circling each other. I mean, that leg at that point was already chewed up. And what's interesting was, Conor could catch it, and he could pull it, but then he couldn't really land anything significant as he backed Poirier up into the fence. And that's where he won. I mean, if you're Conor, you know, depending on which way somebody goes with their back against the fence,

that's where he does the most feasting. I mean, think about how many times he has put people away or at a bare minimum hurt them behind the warning track, forcing a lateral evasion in one direction and then lighting them on fire, depending on which way they go with what striker he wants to land, whether it's a left hand or some kind of kick, depending on the opposite angle. But Poirier kind of stood there, blocked most of it, got hit a little bit, but not that bad. But here was the key by the second round. When did the shift happen? Not long before the end. Between maybe, you know, expending some energy. I don't, again, I don't think that first round was like crazy draining, but you know, a little bit of not just couldn't quite get going, having to work out of some of those positions. And then with the leg kicks, you noticed Poirier was able to get just out of range and the punches were now missing a lot. He was able to swing by and get out of the

way and then counter. And then the real momentum was the leg kick landed. And I think it was, I have to go back and look at the punch, when they then switched positions. When now Poirier came out from behind with his back to the fence, Conor sort of retreats to the warning track, and then, you know, I forget who said it. Was it Cormier or Felder? It was just a fucking avalanche after that. He just absolutely unloaded on him with a series of punches that, I mean, who could withstand that? If you were feeling the way that Conor was feeling, who could stand up to that barrage, that machine gun barrage that the guy put up there. At that point,

he fell. I mean, a couple of things that sort of stand out to me about that. Connor, you know, it's funny. I watched this video today. Do you guys know who Gabriel Varga is? He's this Canadian kickboxer, two-time glory champ. I think he was a champion k1 for a time really really really good kickboxer he had done a video interestingly on max holloway and he had talked about you know max holloway's video or max holloway's statement that like you shouldn't spar and he had made a couple of points he had said he had had a rematch with a guy that he had lost to previously barely who was not a heavy hitter, you know, and he only lost a little bit.

So he actually did not spar much for that camp. He's like, aha, you know, maybe there's something to this. And then he fought Robin Van Roosmalen, who's like this, you know, hardcore sort of Dutch kickboxer, you know, really just a leather slinging demon. And in the middle of the fight, you could tell Vargas said, he's like, you know, I wasn't conditioned for it. I couldn't know, I wasn't conditioned for it. I couldn't withstand it. I just wasn't in the good space for it.

McGregor talked about the inactivity, which we'll get to in just a second. But it seems to me there might be something to that. He just, I mean, you can't take many of those leg kicks. Like, even if you were conditioned, it wouldn't be that way. But more to that point, like, Connors always had a pretty rock chin. I mean, you could hurt him with it, but, you know, it would take some time. It would take a lot of flush shots. The fact that he got dropped the way he did, a little on the surprising side, to be honest with you. Yes, I realized Poirier was going every which direction, including

to the body and then to the head, you know, some of those shots were landing flush. In fact, the last punch that sat McGregor down, where he kind of fell to the fence, he actually ducked into it. So that contributed to it. But I have to say, I was a little bit surprised he was not more physically resilient. And what the explanation for that is, is, I mean, you're going to say, oh, Poirier hits hard. Yeah, of course. Poirier looks, he's a huge 155-er. There's just no doubt about it. But at the same time, it looked a little like, I'm not going to say too easy. It did look like the Conor of old. Even in the first Diaz fight, he was shooting to avoid being bombed on.

But he didn't, and he kind of stumbled a little bit, but he didn't quite collapse like that. And, you know, that was a fight where he also, here's the other key to this. One thing I thought that Conor was doing really well was when they broke apart after Poirier goes for the takedown and they're clinching against the fence. When they broke apart, it wasn't like Conor went crazy unloading on him with strikes at a really high clip. And you're like, oh man, this goes three, four, five rounds. Conor's not going to have energy. I actually thought Conor was doing a

pretty good job of apportioning his energy and his output so that if the fight did need to go later, he would have the energy for it. I actually thought that was a pretty good thing, which was not the case in the Diaz fight. I mean, he was huffing and puffing, which contributed to his inability to avoid some of the punches and the volume of Nate Diaz. So you didn't have that same element here, and Conor just did not look as sturdy with it all as I thought he would have. I'm very surprised by that.

I got to tell you. I'm not sure what to make of it. Now, after the fight, they get interviewed. Let's talk about Conor and what he said first, because Dustin, you know, just all class. I don't want to talk about his career in a minute. I mean, there's so much to get to. But what Conor said was the level of inactivity. Now, I just mentioned, you know, I don't want to hear excuses from Connor or his fans and supporters. And I know that sounds like one. It's a little

bit of one. It's a, it's a little bit of one. Cause he was off for a year. The thing I would say, I have, I have mixed feelings about what he said there on the one hand. I mean, I know a lot of guys who have a year off and they come back and they look better than, than that, you know, uh, Dustin Poirier had a year off before the hooker fight and look how good he looked, you know? So there's that. The, the other thing on the other side though, is it's like, how many analysts did you hear saying prior to this contest, you know, I'm kind of leaning towards McGregor or they weren't leaning towards McGregor. And the reason why in either case was that, you know, we just don't know a lot about what he's been up to. There's been a shitload of inactivity

this entire time in MMA, man, you can't take time off like that. You know, and I've said it before, only the, I mean, only the very best can do that Saint Pierre could take four years off and come back and win a title up a weight class John Jones can you know and he's living a different life now but there was times where he would fight and then just not train for months on end and you know he obviously has indiscretions outside of the cage he would come back and just you know be as dominant as ever for the most part, you know, only those guys can get away with that. If you're not one of them, you can't do that. So when he says, like, I need to be more active and he wants to get back in there, you know,

part of me is actually pretty sympathetic to that as well. I guess we'll just have to see what he looks like. But listen, Floyd Mayweather started boxing when he was, you know, in single digits in age, and he just grew up getting better and better and was obviously one of the very best, if not the best, but one of the very best in his craft for as many of the years as he competed in it. You know, he could take time off, and his rivals would have a hard time catching up.

Plus, that's a sport where the best practices are much more well-known. MMA, dude, the best practices are changing overnight. Overnight. Was the calf kick a threat the first time they fought each other in terms of being as widespread and utilized as a tool inside of mixed martial arts in 2014? Let me tell you something, folks. I was covering MMA in 2014. No. Benson Henderson might have been using it or something like that, but it was not well known. It was not widely utilized. And now it's like if you don't have it, you're behind the eight ball. The game just moves on without you so fast because the sport is so new.

It is globalizing overnight. There are so many new fighters coming with new ideas, with all different types of body types and profiles and coaches and blah, blah, blah. It's getting harder and harder and harder to stay apace. And so a guy like Poirier, who just kind of swam upstream since losing to Conor and found a way to do it, he is really going to be in a conditioned, prepared. And, of course, again, he had more adjustments to make going into the rematch than Conor did. He was the one that had to adjust for the loss. Conor didn't, at least in theory anyway, right? And that's exactly what he did. You take time off in this game very much at your peril. Yes, if you're injured,

you got to take time off. Yes, if you're not medically eligible or there's some kind of life issue, it's not fight at all costs or there's no hope, but it is, you know, if you want to take fights in boxing and you're going to get stripped of both the titles you own and then you're going to have indiscretions outside the cage to keep you out or you're going to butt heads with UFC management, okay, there's a good reason to, in the moment, there's a good reason to do maybe some of the things you had done,

obviously not any of the indiscretions, but, you know but Bellator Cage or the more serious ones he's been accused of. I'm not supporting that, obviously, but fighting with UFC management. You want to be with management? Okay, maybe you think you're right. Maybe you were right, but you had 40 seconds against Cerrone a year ago. Before that, it was UFC 229 against Khabib. You know, this is not a great way to preserve your strengths or, frankly, even stay current. I mean, think about all of Dustin Poirier's fights.

Let's go through his record here for just a second, okay? Since moving to lightweight at a bare minimum, all right? Since going to lightweight, Diego Fajeda, he beat him inside of a round. Yancy Medeiros, he beat inside of a round. Joe Duffy went the distance. Bobby Green, he stopped inside of a round. He had the loss to Michael Johnson. He beat Jim Miller in 2017. Had the no contest with Eddie Alvarez.

Fought Pettis in 2017. Let's go to 2018. Fought Gaethje inside of four. Fought Alvarez inside of two. Holloway inside of five. Had the Nurmagomedov one. Hooker inside of five. And then McGregor inside of two.

Okay. Well, starting with the Jim Miller fight in 2017, if you go to one in 2018. From Gaethje, Alvarez, Holloway, Hooker, and McGregor. Those are the fights he won in 2018 on. Dude, this was the easiest one. Think about that for a second. Was this easier than the Hooker fight? Yes. Was this easier than the Holloway fight? That was 25 minutes and, you know, he put it on Holloway. Holloway had his moments. Was this easier than the Alvarez fight? I would argue. Gaethje fight didn't go nearly as long.

Gaethje fight went to the fourth fucking round. This was the easiest fight in two years. Again, that he won. The Nurmagomedov fight was obviously a disaster for him. But everything else. Dude, you've got to stay current. You've got to stay current. That was the big question here.

Could a guy take this much time off, come back and beat someone who had, I mean, been in the trenches and remained quite relevant as a top level figure in the lightweight division? The answer is no. Not yet anyway. The answer is no. Is Brian here? Y'all just make a noise. Brian's here? All right. Come on in, dude. Yeah, they're on because that shot's on me. You also have to do it on your hands like an orangutan. All right. So we're going to cut to the wide here. There he is, Brian Campbell. Let's go to the wide here if we can. We'll switch. There it is. Brian Campbell, Luke Thomas. Let's reset here for just a second. We are the hosts of Morning

Combat. You can check us out Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11 a.m. live. We do this show together, although not usually in the studio. This is a special occasion because it was such a big fight. Please, folks, if you're new to this place, thumbs up on the video. Hit that subscribe button. We're really trying to drive subscribers, and we always appreciate you guys watching. Okay, BC, we're still on the first fight. I've been giving my take in a bunch of different directions. A thousand questions for us to go back and forth. First one for you since you just joined us.

Give me your thoughts on the main event. Nobody does that to Conor McGregor. So I think you get over that initial shock. I don't know if I can get over that initial shock of seeing. Look, here's the thing about McGregor. So I think, you know, you get over that initial shock. I don't know if I can get over that initial shock of seeing, look, here's the thing about McGregor and to his degree, to his credit, I always say that, you know, nobody loses better. And I mean that from the standpoint of when he takes a loss, he takes the blame and he talks about what he needs to do to come back. But his two major losses, and certainly the only two in the UFC, Nate Diaz fight, you had moments where you could say, well, that was his fault. The Habib fight, well, that was a bad style matchup, or he didn't train where he wanted to,

or whatever narrative you were believing in the moment. Nobody had knocked him out in the UFC. So that image of him sitting with his back against the cage wall, this wasn't just because he was facing the greatest wrestler in history like a Habib. This was a fight in which he would have no excuses coming in because of how much his commitment returned to getting in shape and to, you know, trying to author the beginning of a true second chapter of his prime. And yet he ran into Dustin Poirier's best. And Luke, I mean, rightfully, McGregor dominated the narrative coming in. I mean, we did multiple shows on McGregor. You get it.

You get why. There's no surprise here. But Poirier, as I wrote on CBS Sports, still had, you know, 25 more minutes to make all things right and fulfill his destiny. I am so humbled by the warrior that that man is, the adaptability, the toughness, now the living legend. I mean, not that he wasn't before, but he's 12-2. Best win of his career. Best win of his career. The one that certainly meant the most emotionally because, again, the loss to Conor in 2014, when it was as mentally a loss as it was physically, was the turning point. It kicked him up to lightweight. It started that incredible

run through the Habib fight. He's now 10-2 since the first loss to Conor. The Michael Johnson hiccup. Michael Jackson, he also caught him in the loss. The Habib dominant loss. And then a Hall of Fame-making run. I mean, look, you know, he submitted Anthony Pettis. He stopped Eddie Alvarez and Justin Gaethje. He had classic all-time great wars with Max Holloway and with Dan Hooker. And now he knocked out Conor McGregor.

And he's 32 years old, still in his physical prime, humbled by what that man has been able to do. Specifically in this fight, he was in moments where it could have gone downhill for him. He was taking fairly clean shots, you know, in the end of the first, early second, against Conor, in which he could have crumbled, but he didn't. The takedown in the first round was key, which I'm sure you broke down. And to be able to focus on the legs, we said coming in. The Conner... But not just focus on the legs.

He got hit. McGregor's going to take his pound of flesh for the most part, right? But he avoided trading too much. He avoided getting stuck too long in playing Conner's game. Exactly. And Conner, and look, this is why I'm not going to negatively really talk much on Conor here. You saw what the flaws of inactivity can create, and he also just lost to a better guy, by the way. But at the same time, he still created an opening for his moments. And Poirier still ate those on the chin, but he didn't crumble. In 2014,

Poirier would have crumbled and did crumble. This guy wouldn't have. So, you know, in some ways he did sort of take Conor's best shot. And then at the same time, taking him down, working in the standing grapple in the clinch in the first round, maybe sucked a little bit of that speed and power off of Conor. But to work that hard on the legs, it does show you you've got to evolve so quickly in this game. We really didn't know. Poirier had been so consistent, but yet he'd also been through wars. Would that hurt him? Would Conor being away from the cage and not taking the damage, would that help him?

Well, no. It turned out the 40 seconds against Cowboy, I don't think it was fool's gold, but it really wasn't enough of a chapter there for Conor to figure out who he is as a fighter right now. And the Habib fight was totally different. The other part about it was like Conor, maybe if he'd been pushed more in that fight, maybe would have learned some lessons or developed some other practices and training that would have better prepared him. But it was 40 seconds. It robs the audience of a better and longer fight.

It also robs the fighter from a learning lesson. It certainly robbed him. And I don't say that by any means as an excuse. I just say that as that's what inactivity will do. And again, I will say props to Conor for the comments afterwards. Took the loss, knows what he has to work for, didn't retire, didn't say, I want Nate a third time, didn't say, Manny, please come out here. He wants to get back in line to try to get the trilogy with Poirier

and something Sugar Rashad Evans just said on CBS Sports HQ, you're going to have to go through hell to get there. You know, whether it's a Gaethje or Ferguson or whoever is going to be next for Connor animals, it's, it's all animals. It's a, it's a historic era. And, uh, as much as I'm just here to say, Hey, Connor, love the way you lost. Can we focus on the damn win? This is Dustin Poirier. One more focus on the loss. And I want to talk about Poirier because I do think it's important connor did make a bit of an excuse and i told the audience here before you got here i was a little 50 50 on it when he was like you know i need more activity on the one hand it's like guys that mcgregor and his team talked a gang of shit about how okay you know uh this was the you habib got me at my worst now my best. Now's the time for me to get,

I'll be, now's the time for me to work on passes. You're in for a treat. I'm prepared all the work you're, you're going to see. Oh, well, it turns out I actually,

you know, I need to be more consistent on the one hand. It felt like an immediate reach on the other hand, dude, we know this is what you know, as well as I do one, the game of MMA is evolving rapidly. It's so different than when Floyd Mayweather would be out for a year in

boxing. I made it. I made that exact point. One more point. I was telling him, like, did you not feel that that was like the worst demonstration of Conor's chin you'd ever seen? He did not look like he was conditioned for battle. Well, you know, I don't think you can recreate the toll of a super elite fight that it takes on you, whether that is just a round and a half as we saw. Look, the grappling, the standing clinch, that all wears down on you. Yeah, I think that also wears down on your chin.

And none of this is certainly excuse making. Do I have an issue with what Conor said with that? Well, I think that we've learned now that Conor wants to make, he wants to right the wrong. So I think this is more him figuring out this is probably why it didn't work for me. Now, when he's talking this shit about Habib and saying, you know, you ran out of the cage, you didn't even get the belt put around you, I'm still the champion, that's bullshit. That's excuse-making, that's just whatever to feed his own ego. I had no problem

with the way he not excused the loss, but described the loss. Because Luke, the inactivity, you can't do it. You cannot do it in this era, at this level, when you're going to fight legends and killers. Because again, he put Dustin into his crosshairs and set up the kind of finish that Conor normally gets, only he didn't finish him. And that's a credit to Poirier's chin. It's a credit to his focus. Luke, look up here. I'm listening to everything you're saying. I'm looking at something. Who has trained themselves to be as better in the midst of peril than Dustin Poirier? Think about those rounds with Hooker where it was swinging back and forth.

Gaethje. You know, Gaethje still – yeah, Gaethje's phenomenal. There are other players, but to your point, Dustin Poirier is maybe one of the best at that, yes. The thing I was looking up here was if I had had to ask you, how many punches or strikes, rather, did Conor McGregor land, let's say, against Nate Diaz in the rematch in the first round? What would you say, roughly? 45. That's a little high, but around 35. Around 35 is about his average when he's cooking.

Let's say 30, between 25 and 35. Do you know how many he landed in the first round against Dustin Poirier here? 10. Close. 15. That is fucking key to fighting Conor McGregor. And again, did you have McGregor winning the first round? I did have McGregor.

I thought he did a little bit better damage. He seemed to have started to piece him up a bit late with the punches. Yes, he did. I thought that's fine. But my point is that Poirier was invested in the right psychology. He was invested in the right strategy. And he was willing to maybe give up the first round or not go for broke in it as an investment for later. And holy shit, did it pay off. That was a smart operation by Dustin Poirier.

Not just a tough fighter or a fighter who deserves it. Can we say it out loud? Dustin Poirier, not just a tough fighter or a fighter who deserves it. Can we say it out loud? Dustin Poirier is a smart fighter. Yeah, I'm still stuck on the question that you asked about McGregor's chin. I'm inclined to say, again, had the energy sucked from him a bit in the first round, perfect game plan by Poirier. And then I thought when Poirier made that switch, when it was Poirier's back against the cage and he hit that hard leg shot and he made that switch, you know, that was a plan where if I'm going to find

an opening, I'm going to go for it. I don't know if that's a weak chin as much for McGregor as, again, he just fought a perfect all-time great guy who saw his moment and took advantage of it. And I think, you know, Conor loves to be in brawls where he's the bully, where he's got a certain advantage. For sure. But this is the reason why we said should this fight go into rounds three, four, and five?

Not just because of the stamina differences between the two where that would be an advantage for Poirier. But also, except for that Nate Diaz fight, you don't see Conor in sustained wars in which it's give and take. And that's where Poirier was going to shine. Except for the Diaz fight, right? And Diaz was not doing the type of things that would take advantage of his size advantage he wasn't trying to work the clinch he's not trying to take that fight to the ground he wasn't really working the same leg kicking strategy Poirier was a big lightweight he did exactly what he needed to do in there he sort of robbed from that gas tank a lot

of the blueprint that we were talking about and it was worked to perfection uh but I can't get back how stunned I am to see Conor in that spot. By the way, he looked kind of – have you ever seen those apps where you can plug in your face? They're all like Russian apparently, and then they make you look old. They give you like how you might look when you're 80. He looked old getting bombed on, didn't he? Not physically. He looked in tremendous shape.

But like with the haircut and the way he had it and just sort of like suffering under the weight of the punches of Poirier. God, it was not the best look for him tonight. Even though, again, I thought he, again, what does he do well? Accuracy, timing, finds his range like that. That was still there, dude. That was not gone. It's just that Poirier is not the better boxer between them. But he is the better overall fighter, at least he was tonight.

Let's talk about Dustin Poirier here for a second, man. A lot of times we want to heap praise on a guy because, hey, they have a charity and don't you want to say something nice about him? Yes, I think we do. Or a guy who had to, you know, who had to suffer terrible and embarrassing losses and then build himself back up. And he had to do that as well. But dude, Dustin Poirier, it's like, I sometimes feel like in MMA, good guys never win. You know, and not that Conor McGregor is the bad guy or however you want to frame it. I'm just talking about Dustin. Fuck, man, and a good guy won today.

You know, for as stunned as we are, again, to see that image of Conor sitting on his ass back up against a cage, not because he gassed or got submitted because he got beat up. He got whooped. You know, the equal emotion to that was the joy for Poirier, a joy for a good dude who you've been along with him. And I can't, like, I can't stress this enough. The build to the Habib fight, meaning the promotion. Poirier-Habib.

The Poirier-Habib. The build to that from the stories that we wrote as journalists. Luke, it was all about Poirier's finally going to get his moment. Look at that long road, the improvement of his mental game and his physical game and his belief in himself and all that. And, dude, he was humbled by Nurmagomedov. He was dominated in that fight. For him to be able to come back that quick against Hooker,

go through hell, and come out, I mean, so many people emotionally would have been spent after that Habib loss, even if there was a lot left in the tank physically for the rest of their career. They would have kept fighting. Could they have come right back and beat Hooker in a fight like that and come back and do this to McGregor? For everything he wasn't mentally in 2014 against McGregor, he has turned that around like two, threefold.

I mean, this was an incredible statement of of a of somebody who is so easy to root for and okay he's never gonna you know never be habib he's probably never gonna be habib but habib's stepping away yeah this is this doesn't mean dustin hasn't stepped into the fulfillment of his potential in his career let's say it out loud if it's true that habib is not there dustin poirier is the best lightweight on earth and he's and he probably should have right he's and he should probably have a fucking belt around hisirier is the best lightweight on earth. And he probably should have a chance. And he should probably have a fucking belt around his waist. He's the best lightweight on earth. This is one of those situations where if you want to make an aftermarket correction, Dana White. Wouldn't mind it. Sorry, I fucked up. You know, you want to do that? That's fine with me.

Better late than never is certainly the case. Also like, dude, what speaks better to Poirier's record than two things? One, I mean, just listen to some of these names. He mentioned, he's like, all respect to Max Holloway, I beat you twice. I'm like, and two different weight classes too. But listen to some of these names that he has faced. It's just shocking to listen to this. So Josh Grisby, who at the time was a big name.

Pablo Garza for a time was a big name. I mean, just skip past those guys. Hold on, Max Holloway, Diego Brandao, Kira Kasani carlos or diego fajero who's now quite good yancy medeiros joe duffy bobby green he did lose to michael johnson but he fought him jim miller eddie alvarez anthony pettis justin gaethje alvarez again holloway again number gamedev hooker conor mcgregor dude you want to talk about being in the fucking trenches and the real key there is and we've talked about this before but it really is worth reminding everyone he has lost never two times in a row. When they put him down, he has always dusted himself back off, back up, got ready to go, and went back out there and marched forward successfully.

That is very hard to do because show me where he took it. After he lost to Michael Johnson, he fought Jim Miller. After he lost to Beeb, he fought Dan Hooker. After he lost to McGregor, fought Jim Miller. After he lost to B, he fought Dan Hooker. After he lost to McGregor, he fought Diego Ferreira. He never had an easy out, ever. No, never, never. And that's why, Luke, you know, maybe people won't see this until the documentary. But you had your own Robert Barstool moment.

You know, he had his for Conor on the laptop camera when he beat Cowboy. You damn near jumped out of your jeans there after Dustin won. Why? Because this was a freaking moment in our sport, and a guy who deserves the respect and praise for finally getting that. Again, no title on the line. That's a championship Hall of Fame securing victory. Would he have been in already without it?

Probably, but you get the point. That's the biggest moment of his career, and he ran it back against the boogeyman from earlier on and he beat the biggest star and you might as well put the title around him. You did an Irish jig. No, I didn't do a jig. I was shocked in the moment that it was, it was going Connor's way until it just wasn't. And then when it wasn't, the rain came pouring down and i'm not i'm not saying you were dancing on on connor's grave no i was shocked i couldn't believe what i was looking at it was a sports moment as i like to say where it just exactly like holy shit that just happened and

again it was a fulfillment of a guy who luke it was it became tired to write the poirier redemption story this time around because we'd seen him lose so badly to Habib, yet he's the guy who stuck the course and still authored it. I mean, I don't want to do this, well, where does he fit on the all-time greatest lightweight rankings? But look, where the fuck does he fit on the all-time? I mean, this is an insane career he's on right now. Yeah, you're right. One thing that would have made it a little bit easier is if there had been a belt on the line tonight, and then if you added that to the interim belt, you could have been like, you know what, this is the guy. because listen, he was, I just, did you see anything there that told you a second fight with Habib would go

his way? I certainly did not. So for those reasons, um, I still consider Habib the best lightweight if he's active, but if he's not active, this is that guy. Now let's talk about some of the consequences of this in terms of matchmaking, a few different directions. One, we all thought, Habib was like, I can't disappoint my mother. Please stop asking me if I'm going to come back. But really, you could tell there was a clip from looking for a fight they had put out where Dana just, you know.

He's like, bro, bro, bro. He's sitting there close talking Habib about what this could be if you have another fight with Conor. Well, that shit is out the window. Certainly, any time Nurmagomedov comes back, it's big doings. But a fight with Dustin Poirier would not necessarily be that big. And second of all, there's no reason to think he'd be different. It seems to me that maybe he could get excited by Michael Chandler, which we'll talk about in just a second.

But for right now, Khabib ain't coming back. He's not coming back. Unless UFC would like to gift him with the greatest GSP situation. And even then, when are we going to stop taking Khabib's words? That's true. I mean, everything he says, he stands by. He said he's not coming back. He's not coming back. There's no Brinks truck with

Conor, so let's be done with that. And can we be done with Manny Pacquiao? Yeah, you're the boxing guy here. What about that? I mean, look, you know, it would have depended on Conor's interview afterwards. You know, some people are like, is he going to retire now? We didn't really know what we were going to get. He lost via leg kicks. This is obviously not a part of boxing. This was the kind of loss that had

Conor in the interview made it seem like he was going to pivot away from MMA for the moment. Then, yeah, there's probably still some market in the Manny Pacquiao fight, but this just in, Luke, Manny Pacquiao's going to knock him out. I don't care if he's Luke, Manny Pacquiao's going to knock him out. I don't care if he's 42, Manny Pacquiao's going to knock him out.

So that fight's over for now, okay? Can we be done with that? Thank you very much. Can we talk about Dustin Poirier as UFC lightweight champion and the people who we want to see him fight, the people that are most deserving? Luke, Michael Chandler is a... Hold on, hold on. I got a tweet here from Nurmagomedov. Flamethrower. Hold on, before we transition fully,

I got a tweet here from Nurmagomedov. Hold on, before we transition fully, I got a tweet here from Nurmagomedov 10 minutes ago. Quote, this is what happened, I guess it means what happens, when you change your team, leave the sparring partners who made you a champion, and sparring with little kids far away from reality. What do you make of that? Obviously he's talking about Conor. I mean, it's a little bit rare for Habib to take a victory lap like this, but it's a little bit rare for him to have a mortal, long-term, deathly rival like Conor has been.

So I'm okay with him sprinkling a little bit on the ground there. Dana White, quote, I did talk to Habib, and he said to me, Dana, I've got to be honest with you. I'm so many levels above these guys. I beat these guys. Yeah, he ain't coming back folks sorry this was well known ahead of time but this is like okay now we really know let me just see if there's anything

else Dana White is saying about Dana White finally admits Habib Nurmagomedov's return quote doesn't sound positive good timing now that Conor lost right yes yes all of a sudden he seems to have no interest Good timing. Good timing now that Conor lost, right? Yes, yes. All of a sudden, he seems to have no interest. I can't quite imagine why.

All right, we'll come back to that a little bit. We were all stuck on maybe. I mean, all along, it was a... You know what? The Jake Paul thing is there. He did insult his wife. God, how sad would that be? D-Devlin, not a four.

Let me ask one question about this before we move on to Michael Chan. Because that was just fucking crazy. I will say this. And I don't know if they're going to do it. And frankly, I'm not even sure how advisable it is. But you heard Conor say it. You heard Dustin say it. Okay, we're one and one.

What about a third one? I have to tell you, we'll see what happens to the Dustin Poirier star after this. It's something to pay attention to. It'll be a little hard to say in the moment. Oh, no, it's not hard to say. You beat Conor McGregor, and in any situation, you get a rub for that. But the Dustin, yes. I still wonder if the Diaz one was more climactic than this one.

Of course it was, but this cannot hurt the idea of Dustin getting shoved down the mainstream's throats. For sure. And it's his time. For sure. A third fight would be... Would be big. Would be big. Would anyone immediately, though, you think?

No, I... They might. You can never count out the fact. But I don't think there was anything in the way that fight ended that Connor deserves an immediate. Okay. So here's the deal. I think you build to that. It's a gamble to build to that. Of course it is a gamble to build for that. And that comes down with how careful UFC and Connor want to be with the

matchmaking moving forward. Because if he has to go back in line to try to win back his title, I think we would see the trilogy with Poirier sooner than later, not next, but certainly sooner than later. But you'd have to believe he should and would have to go through a Gaethje coming off a loss or a Ferguson coming off a loss, which by the way, both fights could be non-title pay-per-view main events without question. Or I guess you could also throw him Nate Diaz for the trilogy and try to make Nate wait, say Nate, it has to be at lightweight and try to do it that way. But either way, Luke, I think he's one win away and it would be up to UFC if they think it's worth it to put Poirier in there with

either Chandler or Dobronks. I got to tell you, the fight I like for Conor right now would be Ferguson. I think that's the fight you do because they're still intriguing it. Both guys coming off of losses. Both still ranked somewhere near the top of the division. If you're Conor, it's a very winnable fight for certain reasons. If you're Ferguson, there are discrepancies in parts of Conor's game that you might think that you are capable

of taking advantage of. That's the direction I would go. Now, we'll come back to that here in just a minute. If you want to shoot us some tweets or send us an email, lukethomasnews at gmail.com or just tweet us. What's your Twitter account? At B. Campbell. Just at B. Campbell, huh?

You're the B. Campbell, huh? No, it's at B. Campbell, not the B. Campbell. I know, no. B. Campbell and, of course, Luke Thomas News over here or L. Thomas News on Twitter. All right, Michael Chandler. Got to tell you. Let me say something. It is rare in modern MMA to get acquired from a, in the sense where you are seen at a commensurate level organization.

No one puts Bellator on par with UFC, but we grew up in the era where guys were getting acquired from Strikeforce. They were getting acquired from Pride, and it was always a big to-do about how they might do. But that has slowly trickled away as the UFC has become the predominant force. And again, UFC and belts are not equivalent. One is a hegemonic force and one is not. But Michael Chandler was sort of considered to be among that ilk. And we kind of thought, you know, Dan Hooker might be a bit of a bad matchup for a lot of reasons.

And on paper, it was. Believe me, it really was. It was close on the odds to be fair. But, and at first I thought, there was a lot that I thought that Hooker was doing well. I thought the lateral movement was pretty good for him. I thought he was tearing up the legs. And in fact, you go back to the Brent Primus fight the first time around, that was a real problem for Michael Chandler. He had to, in fact, do you remember how he beat Brent Primus in the second go round? Why are they putting the two shot on there? We're in the same fucking room. All right. Anyway, he wrestled him. He wrestled him. Do you remember that? He wrestled

Brent Primus. Jay, you ignorant slut. Yeah. He wrestled him. Remember? This time out, he has won two fights in a row over Benson Henderson and now Dan Hooker strictly with his hands. Boy, I got to say, for UFC debuts, for acquired talent, they don't come much better. In fact, that might be one of the better ones I've ever seen. I mean, this is the equivalent of like a teen movie where a nerd, you know, gets in the car of the cool kids and then ends up, you know, it's basically the script of Can't Hardly

Wait, ends up doing karaoke on the top and banging girls. I mean, look, could you have asked for a better debut? No. Was he banging girls beastly? Is that what he was doing? Michael Chandler is a beast. He's everything he said he was. And for, again, a guy that's easy to cheer for, knowing his story,

it was alarming. Yet it felt good to see this. Dan Hooker was nobody's pushover. I predicted Hooker by late stoppage. At the very least, you're thinking that this could be three rounds of hell. And Hooker just seemed to have those advantages. Yet, something you said earlier in this fight while I was watching with you, Luke, Chandler was cocking that right hand, and it created a very tense little sort of dance they were doing to try to negotiate space with the feet,

neither really trying to commit, but the only commitment was Chandler to the body. And that, in that moment, brought down the high hands of Hooker and really set up that left hook that did the damage. The backflip off the top was insane. He almost hurt himself, it looked like. But for a guy that's not a trash talker, for a guy that's not over the top and ridiculous, he was almost as good in the post-fight interview as he was in knocking out Hooker from the standpoint that he calls out Conor.

Now, that's a call out that we'll never mention again. And he calls out Habib. You want to come back from retirement? Go 30. No, I'm the guy. He's not going to get either of those. But I think as we sit here right now, he should play Dustin Poirier next. Do you like that?

I mean, how many people saw? Well, I want to say how many people saw this pay-per-view, right? How many casuals? But I don't know. Did ESPN Plus work? We'll talk about that. I mean, did Dana put a curse on himself or did he challenge? I mean, do you want to say how many people saw this pay-per-view, right? How many casuals? But I don't know. Did ESPN Plus work? We'll talk about that. I mean, did Dana put a curse on himself or did he challenge? I mean, do you want to talk about it?

Have you seen those Bugs Bunny cartoons or Daffy Duck? When they try to fire the gun and he turned the barrel and it blows the guy's bill? I mean, are there people on the dark web just taking down ESPN Plus? We'll talk about that. Let's stick to your point for the moment. My point is that, you know, look, you can go different ways commercially. But what else could Michael Chandler have done than come into that cage, ripped, good-looking dude, you hear about, oh, three-time Bellator champion,

and then knock out Dan Hooker, and then give you a little bit of a wrestling promo, and do the backflip? He deserves to be in the title fight. And that's nothing against Charles Oliveira. I think Chandler's a little bit sexier to sell for sure. And that's a hell of a fight against Dustin Poirier. A hell of a fight. Listen, there's no bad fight you can make, right? Chandler Ferguson? Sure. Chandler Gage? I'm not saying each one makes equal sense, but anyone you name in that title.

Chandler Oliveira for the title shot? I mean, yeah. There's nothing bad about it. Let me just say something. We criticize the UFC a lot because they deserve it a lot. But when they do good things, we should say it. They handled the promotion of Michael Chandler correct from the word go. Dana did not bash him when he was asked about him. They sign him. They bring him over to be the alternate. That part didn't work out necessarily, but they gave him all of that attention on that pay-per-view.

Tons of promo. Tons of media. They really put him out there, and then he did his part coming out today and delivering the way he did. The best kinds of scenarios are when the promotion gives a guy maximum attention, and then the guy or the lady uses that maximum attention

to maximum effect. Now, how far that will go, I don't know, but it was the co-main event on a Conor McGregor pay-per-view. It's going to go pretty fucking far. The call-out afterwards, someone told me, and again, I don't watch pro wrestling because I read books, but I was wondering, is that a Ric Flair thing? What is that? Was it reminiscent of something?

So Ric Flair at the Royal Rumble 1992, I believe, in that one year when he left WCW, went to WWF at the time. Yeah, I remember that so well. And he won the Royal Rumble. He was one of the first two entrants. He went all the way. It was a great way by Vince McMahon and the company to take this guy and just show you how great he is. And he gave the wrestling promo with a tear in my eye.

This is the greatest night of my life. There was some parallel in there, but he wasn't going script word for word. It was really DC, the wrestling fan, that sort of brought it. It was like, hey, that was very Ric Flair-esque. But again, you could tell that that's not Chandler's game to make a speech like that. And yet it was great. It was great to see him do that. Luke, has he altered his game to be a headhunter? And is that going to be the thing that makes up for his lack of size? Now look,

Dan Hunker's a tall, long, lightweight, but it seemed like a staggering height difference when you finally saw those two in there against each other, and he overcame it. Do you like him as more of a headhunter in the UFC who's obviously here for a good time, not a long time, and is going to go for it and maximize it than a guy to try to box from the outside, set up those takedowns?

I think eventually, listen, the way to Michael, what's true about Michael Chandler, when he's on, when he's on point, he's great, but you can't forget that there are things about him that the record, listen, he's 34. There's not like, there's not a lot of tape on the guy. There's a lot of tape. And what the tape shows is that, um, you know, if you can hit him upside the head, you know, it doesn't have a bad chin, but it's not what I would call the most amount of durability I've ever seen. And if he gets a little bit frustrated, he can take risks.

And sometimes he can overly rely on the wrestling later, which can gas him out because he doesn't apportion his offense appropriately. He, like Conor, is a house on fire in the first round. So I guess my thing would be like, you know, that first round against Michael Chandler, dude, especially now that's one where he can measure distance and he can use his hands to trick you. Because he had, if you think about it, it was, I think Dan Hooker was right to use the lateral movement. Because at first it was frustrating Michael Chandler. You could see him getting visibly annoyed

that he had to keep turning and keep turning and keep turning. But it also put Hooker in a defensive mindset where he wasn't really able to counter as soon as Chandler started going to the body. then body boop and he caught him up top. You know, he's adding layers of threats that didn't necessarily used to be there in the same kind of way. So you know, you got to fight this guy very carefully in the first round. I think the hooker got a bit of a wake up call there.

I don't really like I said, I don't really care who you match up against. I did see some people being like, oh, well, this validates Patricio Freyde. It's like, it's like, fuck faces. Freyde's not beating Hooker, if that's what you're saying. No, it's not saying that. It's like, you know, Styles makes fights and he's a 145-er. But it's like, dude, Patricio Pitbull is the best fighter in Bellator history. Chandler could have gotten his ass kicked tonight, and it doesn't change anything, nor winning changes anything.

That dude's resume is all killer, no filler. Like, I don't, it doesn't mean any, you didn't need to see tonight to know how good he is. I'm sure Bellator is probably happy with the result on some level, because, you know, they didn't send some guy who got absolutely fucking looking like a scrub out there. And they mentioned Bellator on the, you know, in the introduction. They did. got absolutely fucking looking like a scrub out there. And they mentioned Bellator in the introduction. They did. Were you surprised by that? Oh, yeah, for sure. But, you know, in this case, it certainly was a bolster to...

Look, you said it. UFC went out of their way to give Chandler a heck of an opportunity. We thought it was an opportunity that was going to be certainly dangerous and he might lose it in the end. Dude, he cashed in on that opportunity. So if you're the UFC, there's no chance you're subbing in Charles Oliveira to get a title shot. You have to make Poirier Chandler. Now look,

Luke, obviously UFC's best laid plans would have been Conor McGregor winning this fight. Have the meeting with Habib to see if you can make that rematch. If you can't and Chandler had that finish, Chandler, Conor would have been, oh my, you know, I'm rock hard, right, with emotion here. Only with emotion.

I mean, Chandler-McGregor would have been insane. It didn't happen. Poirier-Chandler is pretty freaking insane, okay? It's a great fight. I really hope. It would have to be for the title, right? Of course it would, but I really hope UFC would not. Conor does not deserve to fight for the title next. You know what I mean?

Get one win and then do the trilogy? Sure. But he does not deserve to go back and fight for the title. I think I agree with that. I think I like, if I'm Conor McGregor's team, I like to fight with Ferguson. And if I'm Chandler or Poirier, I say each other next, gotta be for a title. This one should have been for a title, but then it being what it is, you know, why be rational about it? I don't know. But for sure, that's the way I would go

here. I want to say something about Dan Hooker, man, because two losses in a row, the Poirier loss was a battle, dude. And you know, every time I've interviewed Dan Hooker, the guy is a complete savage. I mean, the guy is just a total animal, and he has been a little bit dismissive about the cost of damage. And again, Michael Chandler hits like a, like a freight train. So I'm not saying what happened in Poirier caused what happened

in Chandler. What I am saying is after Poirier and now after Chandler, shit, man, it might be time for a little bit of a review about how much damage you're taking. And the worst about it is that i feel so bad for him he can't see his family until basically through all the quarantine yes until the end of february february 21st i mean it's like an eight-week process this is a terrible terrible moment for him and i really feel bad because he's not a bad guy i mean he's got 10 career losses which you never would guess and he did have about three or four early in his in his and also 145 when his shin was badly depleted. But, you know, you're not just talking about the insane five rounds with Poirier. You're not just talking about this knockout.

Dude, he got the bags beaten off of him against Barbosa, and he was willing to show you how tough he can be. And then he had to go through a war with Felder, a fight we never talk about, Luke. That was an absolute war. Do you buy that this was a retirement he did leave his gloves in the cage which were i was that verified i know you brought that up i saw it on twitter luke i've never seen something on the internet that didn't end up coming true um i mean maybe the election voting yeah there is that um but um i mean i saw some video about dana's in the media that really

didn't look like that was true either but um yeah i, I mean, he's got to think about it. He's got to get back with his family. But sometimes, Luke, when you've had enough chances at crossing, at breaking through and proving your title ready, and it keeps coming up empty, sometimes people know it, that the price they're going to continue to have to pay won't be worth it. They may never get back there. And maybe he's one of those guys who can be his toughest critic and just say, you know, I tried and I, you know, and I, and I put it all out there. He's due for, he's due for a reset.

I mean, there's no denying that we have to dial back. Remember, he beat Paul Felder barely. That fight could have been scored for Felder. By the way, another war where his face was all fucked up. And I remember interviewing him afterwards. He's like, nah, two days later I was out fishing. I'm like, maybe you shouldn't have been? Like, Jesus Christ.

Like, it's not. He is. Dan Hooker is the definition of too tough for his own good. Way too tough. Because he like. He's too skilled for the amount of toughness he would show in these fights. Correct. I think that's right.

Sometimes it flashes like in the Gilbert Burns fight where you're like, oh my God, this guy has so much ability. And then there's times where, okay, this fight was over before it really got started. But certainly in the Poirier fight, you felt like, okay, he was overmatched by Poirier, but there's a lot of times where he just kind of, it's not, the bite down the mouthpiece thing is is not necessarily going to be for the best there felt like in the Poirier fight though of all the wars he was in that not only did he leave himself physically I feel like he left himself emotionally too because that was his chance to try to beat Dustin Poirier maybe get a title shot and Luke I mean he did not quit

in those five rounds he was trying to find ways to get back into that fight at every freaking turn I wonder if he dumped it all and didn't know that he did, so to speak. You know, and maybe now he's realizing again that at the very least a break is in order. A long break to try to think about things. He's not as young as you think though, isn't he 34?

Who? Hooker? Hooker? Let me see. Dan Hooker currently sits at, no, 30. Only 30. He is young. He has time. I'll take that back. Okay, but it's like, dude, you can't keep fighting like this. No. You've got to dial it back a little bit.

I mean, that's not the CKB way. Sources tell The Athletic, this is from Mike Coppinger, there are talks regarding a potential bout between Ryan Garcia and Manny Pacquiao. Preliminary discussions at this stage. Pacquiao, 42, hasn't competed since victory over Keith Thurman in July of 2019. He remains a champion. All right, you'd have Pacquiao old, and coming off a long layoff yet still being pound for pound good,

and you'd have Garcia moving up in weight. Yeah, but how fast did they move on from Conor McGregor? Holy fuck. They bolted on him like a jewel thief, smash and run. All right, well, we just talked quickly about the best laid plans for UFC. Honestly, what do you think Dana's reaction was to this? Hold on. White talks about how there may be new challenges with the Biden administration because of potential

impending changes to the travel rules and quarantine policy that they'll have to navigate in 2021. Oh, Lord. We'll see how that goes. Your question, I'm sorry. What do you think Dana's reaction inside is to to seeing kind of lose like that so to your point dana white to your point dana white also added poirier versus chandler for the title is the most likely scenario if habib vacates the title which it sounds like

he's probably going to that is that's the right move that's the absolute right move no doubt about it um early impressions who wins by the way and by the when I say early, I say this as a way that you can change your vote later if you feel like it. I think Poirier is the better fighter. I think he has more ways to win. But it's not different to how I saw this fight coming in where I said, look, Poirier is the better fighter. But I think Conor can find that chin. If Chandler is going to be this type of— Chandler is going to be— If Chandler is going to be this type of disarmor, though, with that bomb, you can't count him out.

But still, even though I went for Conor in this one, I'd go for Poirier. Here's what I'm saying. Poirier showed in this fight he can learn lessons. He can have a strategic approach. He can stick to it. And it's one thing to say I have to do a series of well-rounded things to win and then to effectively implement them really says a lot about how smart, crafty, well-rounded he is. If he provides a similar level of caution in the first round against Chandler, he beats Chandler. No doubt about it. Because I think one of those shots up against his dome and rattles his brain. Dude, Poirier hits hard at 155. He's not to be fucked with. And he has taken some damage. People oversold the damage that he took a little bit in terms of what it would mean for this contest.

He fought smartly enough that whatever damage he did take did not necessarily have any kind of role. When he flipped the switch to go into finishing mode, that was a speed, efficiency, and surge of power. He hadn't shown that throughout the fight. It was as if, Luke, you think that was part of his strategy. No doubt about it. No doubt about it.

I think he said that he kind of rushed it, which maybe felt like a little bit instinctual. But, dude, he's an experienced fighter. He knows when guys are hurt. He typically, for the most part, I think knows how to manage that. Poirier is a good finisher. He is, like, Poirier has skills where some things are better than others but like what is he bad at okay he's an okay wrestler or something but he's not bad at it like he's not bad at any of these things so really any kind of scenario you could find him in he'll have some kind of an answer for

with the exception of something like a number comeov, who was like next level fucking amazing. And what's crazy, though, and this is the honest truth, I don't know if Poirier beats a best version of Dobronks. You know? I mean, you know, if that becomes a title fight, it could change hands. Could Chandler land the bomb against Poirier? Absolutely. Could Justin Gaethje get back into a title fight?

You know, it wouldn't be impossible for him to beat Dustin in a rematch if he can get back to the level we thought he was entering that Khabib fight. I still don't see, let's say Poirier defends it a couple times. I don't see that waking Khabib up to want to come back. Let me see some reader mail here, see if we got anything. I mean, look, Poirier's not even the champion right now. So we get to slow our roll to a certain degree.

But if he ends up being the champion, if he ends up putting title defenses together, would you hear talk of, well, you didn't beat Habib? Or is this one of those scenarios because he's beaten just about everybody else that you wouldn't hear that? Quote from a reader or a viewer. Great response to my question, Luke. Sorry, what was your question? I'm trying to multitask here.

It's cool, Luke. I'm trying to multitask. What was your question? Just get to the... Okay, sorry. I'll read it for you. Am I drunk or was Conor in a much different stance from much of the fight,

which essentially they're claiming was more flat-footed in the pocket, which is why he was open to leg kicks. Did you detect that? Was he more flat-footed? Maybe a little bit. I didn't detect it but i mean did you see him trying to change things up to change the entry points to do anything or did or at the

end of the day was it still you know seek and destroy with that left hand so that's the thing though connor usually just has one or two gears and he's got different things inside of it but he doesn't do a whole lot plus if you lost the first fight isn't incumbent upon you to make the most amount of changes to win the second. So that was a bit of an element of surprise, which makes the third fight potentially kind of interesting given Poirier's kind of revealed his strategy. Could you replicate that? Well, in this case, a second time, but a third fight, I don't know. Usually in MMA, if you win the second fight, you usually win the trilogy overall. That tends to be how it goes. It's not always true, but it tends to be that way. So I would like Poirier's chances there. I don't know. I'm going to have to review the tape exactly to get a real clear sense of things, but

Conor looked good in parts. And I'm telling you, man, he looked, God, frail is not the right word, but he did not look like the Conor against Eddie Alvarez by a long shot in a lot of those scenarios. I was very, very surprised that age seemed to, or maybe it was just tonight. Maybe when he comes back. Well, that's a key debate here because I already got people texting me going, is Conor Donzo at 30? And he's 32. But, like, where we have to decide whether that was because he fought Poirier, that it went that way, or whether that is just slowly going away from him, slowly the reactions, the speed, the explosiveness.

Do you like my idea about Ferguson? If not, who else would you like to see him fight next? I mean, Ferguson's perfect because it seems like he's certainly more damaged than Gaethje. So it's not as dangerous, but it's probably the same in terms of fan interest in selling it. So I think you still put Conor McGregor as your pay-per-view A-side in any of these non-title situations. And I think Ferguson makes a lot of sense. How much does this damage the stock of Conor? Well, if he wanted to change paths now and go on more of the celebrity route, right? Like fight Nate Diaz next. It still sells a lot, especially if he wins that. And if you want to

do things like that, I mean, you can do a Max Holloway rematch. You can do really big things that aren't situated just inside the lightweight title picture. But Luke, it seems like he wants to get inside that lightweight title picture and do it. So it adds a lot of questions and intrigue to his next fight, no matter who he's fighting. And that will certainly equal interest and pay-per-view buys and all that. It doubles down on the questions that he's going to face entering this next fight. But again, this next fight, if he wins it, it will not have completely damaged him. I mean, really, if he can get himself back to the Poirier trilogy, if Poirier beats Chandler and stays champion, and Conor wins whoever he's matched with next,

then he's right back there where he was. Here's the question you have to ask yourself if you're a Conor McGregor fan. Can he still win in the octagon? Yes, the answer I think is very much of course. Again, I think a fight against Ferguson would be the smart play for a lot of reasons. But can you make up for lost time? Now, on the one hand, everyone's going to have an injury in their career that sidelines them for amount of time. We talked about it before. Poirier, prior to the hooker bout, was out for a solid year. Okay, that's time you can't get back. But basically, he'd been pretty consistent the whole time.

Conor has lost significant amounts of time not actively competing, not just the last year, but of course all the time, since basically UFC 205. He's been really, really, really inconsistent and not probably done the things that he should have done relative to someone who was strictly and intently focused on remaining a high-level fighter in MMA. How much of that can you get back by now doubling down on all of it?

I think there's still a question about that. The part about I need to be more active to be better conditioned, all the things that need to be there for my game, yeah, I suspect if he comes back relatively quickly, because he took some damage here, but not the kind that's going to keep him out for too, too long. I think we both agree on that. I mean, he wilted and crumbled quick.

It didn't take much, did it? No, it didn't. And that's the thing, again, the reference I made. Yeah, he traded back and forth with Nate. But most of that fight, he was in more of a dominant position. I mean, he started that rematch with Nate, dropping him and cutting him and kind of beating him up. And he withstood the Nate comebacks of where, you know, his stamina had dumped.

And yes, in the last sort of round and a half, there were two-way exchanges. But you just don't see that in Conor's career a lot. So, you know, he wilts when the stamina catches up to him quickly. He wilts quickly when that leads to a submission. And it seemed here that there wasn't a, you know, a bite down on a recovery. And again, it goes back to that debate. Is it because he's slipping? Is it because Poirier's a super all-time great elite?

Or is it a little bit of both? Probably is. Probably a little bit. The next fight for Conor, Conor's never lost two in a row. That's a, I mean, his next fight could not be bigger. Here's the key question. He did interviews this week where he changed a little bit of his tune. He said, like, I'm going to be fighting forever.

They're going to have to, you know, pull me forever. They're going to have to pull me out. They're going to have to wheel me out of here. I could see myself 30 years. He basically was trying to say, I'm just going to keep fighting forever. We don't normally see him talk like that. It's a little bit more the opposite. How many losses consecutively or in a group he would allow himself to take before kind of just going, you know, that's it.

Maybe I'll go box or maybe I'll go do something else, but I don't want to, you know, I want to preserve the legacy. Does that matter to him? Or could you see him Chuck Liddell-ing it to a degree? Well, let's not go too crazy. I don't mean that exactly the Liddell way, which was he just can't take punches anymore. But, I mean, would he allow himself to lose three out of four moving forward

and still come back in the interviews and say you know what i i just got to change some things or you know you know i doubt he would do that i'm i'm you know who knows i'm skeptical listen it was just one loss and it's against the guy we're telling the world is you know absent javier never committed participation certainly the best lightweight on earth and i think that is true so i don't want to go too far with it. It was not there. And there were, and there were parts of Connor's performance, which we're talking about, which I thought were pretty good.

You know, again, that boxing is just, it's on fire every time. It's really quite adept. Although I was looking at the tape again, what did it was a leg kick and then that check right hook. And it had, um, it had Connor stumbling like this. And then when he came to, I think Poirier looked at him, and Conor didn't look good. And then they switched positions, and then Poirier just set him on fire.

So it wasn't like Conor's boxing was so good that there was nothing to be said for it. But the general striking game of Poirier was tonight certainly too much. It was one loss. And it wasn't a horrible loss, but it definitely wasn't a, ah, not that big of a deal loss. There's some things to be concerned about. His next move is maybe his most critical move.

Agree or disagree? I agree with you. If we find out, Luke, that he's going to come back against Diego Sanchez or Mike Perry, he's not going to do that. If he does that, that would tell us something really bad. He also, by the way, could still have the

competitor inside of him say i'm coming back against whomever else get justin gaethje for all we know and still lose that you know what i mean and still lose that just because i would stay away from gaethje just because the other guy was better i would 100 stay away from gaethje especially now with the leg kicks yeah and by the way habib did say that leg kick from gaethje was the hardest strike he ever absorbed so there there is something there, but you get my point. The next step is very crucial. In terms of how you frame it,

how he announces it, what he's aiming for, because again, if you go that route, if you go the stupid route and you just take a serious get well fight, you get another cowboy fight, it's just not going to help you, it's not going to look good. Luke, if you're him right now, for the public to take that side of it seriously, the competitor, a serious get well fight. You get another cowboy fight. It's just not going to help you. It's not going to look good. You got, look, you got,

if you're him right now, for the public to take that side of it seriously, the competitor, maybe Nate Diaz is the only neutral answer in here, but you've got to come back. We haven't talked about the Nate Diaz angle at all. We should probably save that for Monday. Well,

you've got to come back and fight either Ferguson or Gaethje to get back in line. Diaz coming off of a loss to Jorge Masvidal as well, too. All right. There's so many other pieces to this card. We've been going off of a loss to Jorge Masvidal as well, too. All right. There's so many other pieces to this card. We've been going for about an hour, which is about how long we should go. So let me ask you, we want to save some stuff for Monday.

We'll revisit some of these bigger topics as well. Again, Monday, 11 a.m., live in the East here from Morning Combat. Give me one more key takeaway from the night that you had. Anywhere else on that card? Not main or co-main. Anything else? Anything else about the evening? Look, that the women's strawweight division that I laud all the time and has been one of the most consistently competitive divisions.

It's a pit of vipers. Since it launched in 2014, look, I mean, there's just no easy way. We were ready to annoy Amanda Hibis as the next title challenger and the next great personality and fresher breath there. And again, one loss isn't going to change that she can't be that but she went in there and she got she she got buzzsawed by Marina Rodriguez and Rodriguez uh you know we'd said coming in on HQ and everywhere else you know this is a tough out I know the odds are really getting heavier in Hibis' direction but you know I wouldn't have guessed it ended like this I wouldn't have guessed she got straight up

steamrolled and I know those Herb Dean had a weird reaction. He almost looked like he was going to go for the stoppage, and Rodriguez walked away. We'll talk about that on Monday. But that didn't lead, luckily, to changing what was probably going to happen anyway and where we were in that moment. And we need to be doing more talking about Marina Rodriguez. And Luke, whether we're talking about the title level,

like if Rose gets back in there with Weili Zhang, I kind of like Rose in that one. You know what I mean? There is no matchup here in the top ten where anything's a lock right now. That division always delivers. The pay-per-view was a disaster in the sense of sales. And listen, I get it. Conor McGregor's fighting.

You're going to get overloaded at the last minute. It really is the issue. Apparently, Eric Winter, who had worked for Yahoo and UFC for a time, he was saying the big challenge in pay-per-view online sales, because if you don't realize, a bunch of people tonight tried to buy the pay-per-view last minute on ESPN+, JJ Watt of the Houston Texans, chief among them, and was fucking bitter about it because it didn't work. A lot of people were bitter about it. It worked for us, but ESPN Plus is a garbage service. There's so many issues with it.

But one of the key issues is there was two things that were about it. One, BC, he was saying that they had this encountered issue when Mayweather fought McGregor. Yes. Okay, if you had that issue in 2017, it should no longer be an issue for a pay-per-view that is going to do obviously super huge numbers, but a fraction of what Mayweather McGregor actually did. Okay. That's the first thing to get out there. Again, that was split up among a variety of different ways to buy it, but still you had four years to work on this. To do that in the shadow of all of those claims about going after piracy and a pirate in particular,

and then to fuck it up this royally. Yeah, whether it was conspiratorially caused by that or not, it looks horrible. It's like, dude, if you want people to, if you want to combat piracy, maybe the best way to do that is to offer a service that works. I mean, that's just me thinking out loud. I'm not an executive. It's never worked on my laptop. That streaming system has never worked on my laptop. And I know people who are like, I buy it through PS4. It works. Or I buy it through whatever. And it works. Everyone's got their own hack. I've found ones that work for me versus better than other ones.

It doesn't work on my smart TV. It does work on my laptop, blah, blah, blah. But it shouldn't be that fucking hard, man. It should not be that hard. So listen, there's a bunch of other things to get to. Armin Saryukian looked fucking incredible. Brad Tavares had a nice win. There was a lot that happened on this card that was really a whole lot to get to. Herb Dean stoppage, bit of a mess,

but we're going to save some of that because we have- Calderwood and I gave us a brawl. Calderwood had a great win as well. Jessica, I thought that was pretty impressive. There's a lot to get to on that card. We got to save some of that because we have. Calderwood and I gave us a brawl. Calderwood had a great win as well over Jessica. I thought that was pretty impressive. There's a lot to get to on that card. We got to a bunch of it tonight. So please, one more time, thumbs up on the video.

Hit that subscribe button because we put out content all the time. We've been away from our families, giving each other coronavirus every single day, trying to get content for you. We're going to be back in the studio on Monday, 11 a.m., with a live reaction to everything we saw this weekend and everything we did not cover onto today's show. Plus, we'll incorporate all the news that's going to come out tomorrow. Connor's going to have a statement.

Habib's going to have more of a statement. There's going to be more news. We'll take all of that and bring it in there. Plus, we'll take your questions. We'll put up a post up tomorrow on Instagram. Leave your questions there when we do. Have you seen this shit? We'll do.

That's one of your tasks. Anything else? Any final thoughts? This was fucking fun, man. I really wish we could do this in the studio more often. Of course, on that. Definitely on that. But, you know, if you were French-Canadian,

I would now kiss you. But the point I'm trying to make here, Luke, is this is not a historic night, but this will be a memorable night. And not just because every McGregor fight tends to be, but again, that image of Conor McGregor, he got stopped. He got knocked out. That's a stunner.

And this was the night that Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler had major monster moments. Two guys who had long awaited some recognition. But the question is, is it a stumbling block to greater heights for McGregor, or is it a harbinger of things to come? And we're in quarantine. This fight was in Abu Dhabi, yet this felt like a big pay-per-view week, and it was a lot of fun.

It certainly did. All right, well, we thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you guys on Monday I'll have some analysis from the break down some video tomorrow and I'll post that but until then may all of your gains be loyal when the cameras rolling I like the danger in it. The heart pounds. It defies logic. It's thrilling to me. you