MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 257 Leftovers, Masvidal-Covington, McGregor Size Advantage | Luke Thomas' Live Chat, ep. 61

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

On today's podcast, we'll go over all of the lingering issues from Conor McGregor's return against Dustin Poirier at UFC 257, the benefits of lifting weights and reading books, whether McGregor's success is due to having a size advantage, the prevalence of steroids in sports, whether UFC will make McGregor vs. Poirier III or something else next, Jon Jones at heavyweight, Yoel Romero suing a supplement company, Frank Mir's submission of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Jorge Masvidal vs. Colby Covington 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. Okay, let's get this party started. Apologies. Thanks for dealing with it. You know, it's the state of things, I suppose. All right, here we go. First question, Luke, to what extent does reading books and lifting weights in my front yard with homeless folks increase the upper bound limits of my potential?

Seriously, on the books, though, so we will ignore the lifting weights part, which was just a joke, I suppose. On the reading books, I mean, do I have to really sell you folks on reading books about why they're important? Obviously, it will depend on what you read and to what extent you read them. Do you finish them? Do you go all the way? Where are you getting your reading selections from? You know, that kind of a thing. But in general, it's always going to be better to do the reading. I put up a post on Instagram about it. There's a lot of times people will send me short video clips or just photos or a quote. And they'll ask me to get a reaction to it.

And the answer is I don't have a reaction to it 99% of the time. I mean, sometimes you can get a reaction to it. But a lot of it, you don't really understand the greater context of what they were trying to say. It's just a really incomplete way to make a judgment. But the value of reading books should be sort of self-evident. It can increase your vocabulary. It can give you new ways of thinking about the world. It can provide simply major points of information. It can help you reimagine how you understand interpersonal relationships. I mean, the things that can teach you are essentially endless. It doesn't mean you get that from every page of every book that you read. But

in general, if you make it a habit where I'm going to finish the podcast, I'm going to finish the book, and when I put one down, I'm going to pick up another one, that sort of a thing. If you just make that a lifestyle, in general, the dividends that it pays over time are extraordinary. I mean, just think about it. If you go and train two to three times a week, two is not much. Let's say three times a week in jiu-jitsu, Is every class and every role and every session going to be that beneficial? Probably not. I mean, some will be better than others.

Some will be incredible. Or if you're a student, think of it this way. You know, one time I went to a seminar and I told my buddy, Seth Smith, I was like, I didn't really get a whole lot out of that seminar. And he was like, you're not going to. It's not that every seminar you go to, you're going to be blown away. But to the extent you go to enough of them, obviously that being a cost issue to an extent, but if you go to enough of them over time, the amount of extra information or help that you get,

what dividends does it pay? It pays extraordinary dividends in the totality of your life. It can obviously mislead you as well if you don't read the right kinds of things or enough of a variety of things. It can cause other issues. But let's say on balance, is it better to listen to podcasts than to not or to read studies than to not or to read books than to not? On balance, it's almost always going to be better to get some kind of information about the world. Again, it won't make you an expert. This is something I see in MMA all the time that really drives me up the fucking wall. People are like, they assume that either you're a complete expert on something and you know it to

the nth degree and that gives you license to speak about it, or there's no other way to be anything other than that. Like you're either expert or you know zip. Well, that's not really true, is it? I mean, there's lots of people who know how to do things and know certain parts about the world or have some degree of expertise and literacy. I went over this before with a video I put up, you know, who's allowed to have an opinion in MMA, for example. But it's simply not true that there's one status. There's expert, non-expert. That's a very limited way about looking at the world. Now, yes, the expert wisdom is the one that you in general really want to make sure you focus in on.

Those are going to be in general, your most qualified speakers, but trying to better yourself, trying to get as much knowledge about the world, trying to get as much information as you can about a subject matter. these are good things to do. Having E.D. Hearst Jr., I talk about the book all the time, having cultural literacy is a good thing. It's a really good thing. It's almost never going to do you wrong. So what does it do for your limits? I mean, depending on what you do for a living, I don't know how you can get there without them to be quite candid and certainly to make you a more well-rounded, interesting person. I don't know how you get there without books. I mean, I'm sure some people can do it, but in general, you know, it's hard to overstate their importance. I mean, the, the,

the things they can do for you are endless. It's seemingly, can you please, I am begging you do a video exploring alternate pay-per-view models. There's got to be a better way than $75, five from ESPN Plus each month. I don't think we have a whole lot of alternate pay-per-view models. The pay-per-view models that we have aren't, well, okay, so they're trying this one thing with Floyd and Logan Paul, where if you buy, the earlier you buy, I think it's a tiered system depending where if you buy, the earlier you buy, I think it's a tiered system, depending on the date, but the earlier you buy, the cheaper it is, and then by the time you get to the fight date, which is when the most of the pay-per-view buys come in,

that's when it's going to be its most expensive. Okay, that certainly seems to be an interesting way, but when you say the pay-per-view model, there's the DAZN model, which is designed to upend it, but they've had a shitload of problems. Not in every market they've been in, but the USA has been a rough road for them. It has not gone easy. I guess we'll see how things go when the NFL rights are up for grabs. So the truth is, in terms of redefining the model, we don't really have a ton of alternative methods. What we have are different price points for different kinds of content based on consumer demand. In other words, the real change in model is not really a change in model. It's just a shift in scale on what are we selling?

What's the consumer demand for it? What can we reasonably get away with? It's just a shift in points based on demand. It's not a rethinking of how we actually do this. I suppose the other sports, like the stick and ball sports, they have a different kind of pay-per-view model, which is that if you think about it, if you want to watch whoever your team is, Washington football team here, you can watch basically all of their games through

network television, right? But if you wanted to get the package, the, was the one that direct TV sells or whatever, you know, they'll package certain forms of exclusive and premium kinds of content as an additional tier on top of that. That's a way you could experiment with it. And in a sense, that's kind of what UFC does in a way, where they'll put together the majority of their fight nights are on linear TV or if you want just the five bucks a month or whatever from ESPN+, sort of a nominal fee, right? It's not too, too much. And then they put their premiere content in that way.

But the problem is the premiere content is not just the premier content in MMA. It's the premier content by like a country fucking mile. You know what I mean? It's the most important to the nth degree. And it's not like, oh, I'm a Washington football fan, but sure, I'll watch the Cardinals in the red zone or something, which is almost extraneous. What the NFL is packaging is almost extraneous content right? I mean, with the NFL's packaging

is almost extraneous content. It'd be like if they were putting the Super Bowl on pay-per-view or something like that. Again, that equivalent is not there either. So really, it's just like what kind of content you package versus the overall amount that you offer at a free or marginal cost against consumer demand. But changing it up completely like what they're doing with the pricing model with Floyd and Logan. We don't know if that's even going to work. It might certainly listen. I hope it works because for somebody like me who has to buy all this shit, it'd be great. It'd be great if that worked, but the jury is very much still out. And then with the zone model, I tend to think that that model could work. The WWE model could work, depending on what their consumer, I should say, what their business

priorities are. But again, we just don't have a ton of information about these sort of all-in-inclusive packages, right? That being said, there probably is a broader discussion to be had about it. But, you know, it's not top of mind. I mean, here's all you need to know. The biggest, I say this all the time, the biggest MMA audience is the casual fan. Right?

Because they don't watch hardly any of the other stuff. They pop in for a McGregor fight or maybe a, you know, a John Jones fight or something like that. And then they're gone, but they're there enough to sustain this business model. And there's a shitload of them. There's way more of them than there are of us. And so to the extent that this, between that dynamic and then the hardcore is paying for everything else, to the extent that that, between that dynamic and then the hardcore is paying for everything else, to the extent that that is still in play and the UFC can make an absolute fuck ton of money, especially now that they are controlling the pay-per-views through ESPN+, you can have all the alternative models.

It's like the only alternative model that matters to them is like, oh, we can make more money doing something else, all right. But there's just no consumer revolt. We complain about it, but there's no real way to, to my knowledge, to force change unless someone like a DAZN really succeeds. And by the way, I'm a DAZN customer too. You know, it's, I think you got to put your money where your mouth is a little bit, if you want to say, I mean, I criticize DAZN because they do, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't really turn them on that often. When was the last time I put on DAZN? The Anthony Joshua fight? It's not like you can just go and comb through all the cool shit that they have. But, you know, I feel like you got to support alternative models if that's something

that really matters to you to find out if they work. Do you have any idea why Masvidal versus Colby hasn't been booked? I suspect Masvidal doesn't really want it. I don't know that. That's just a guess. Who, in your opinion, is negotiating for a better deal, as they both have in the past been in lockheads? You mean loggerheads?

Over wanting better pay? Well, Colby has come out and explicitly asked for it so it's at least through the media anyway so that's worth taking seriously the thing about Masvidal is like why would you want that fight it's actually a pretty difficult fight he does need a win that's true and getting a win over it's not like there's no benefit to beating Colby there's actually a tremendous benefit the bragging rights chief among them, I suppose, or at least certainly that's in play. But the other part is that, dude, if you beat Colby Covington,

you beat a top contender. You get to wash the taste out of your mouth from the loss to Usman, and you're right back in it. You're right back in it. You might even get the winner of Gilbert Burns versus Usman, depending on how that goes, right? You put you right back in that spot. So in that sense, it's quite valuable.

The reason why I think he might be hesitant about it is because he's got the Diaz syndrome a little bit, and it's understandable. You spent all this time in the trenches. You finally hit it big. You want to leverage that for not just more money, but for the right kinds of opportunities that not only generate more money, but that can preserve that status.

And so fighting Colby is a guy who I think has some measure of status, certainly, but probably you're looking for something a little bit bigger, like a Diaz rematch or Conor or something like that. You know, these fights that are quite winnable, but are against fighters with significant followings. And I think it's a lot easier for him to beat Diaz or McGregor than it is to beat Colby. In fact, Colby might even be favored to win depending on how we'll see how things shake out, but that's a tough out. That's a tough out.

You lose to him, you lose the bragging rights, you lose the space in line that you still kind of sort of have. You wouldn't lose your popularity overnight. I think the lesson of Kimbo Slice was, I remember after he lost to Seth Petruzzelli, even I thought, I was like, oh, that's the end of Kimbo Slice as we know it. Surely everyone will see that he is a fraud. And then that was before I knew him and everything. And years and years go by.

He reinvents himself a thousand times. And he's still, to this day, the most popular fighter Bellator's ever had. I mean, it's sort of crazy how long these guys can really hold on to their popularity. Now, I'm not saying Kimbo Slice and Jorge Masvidal have the same kind of sort of stickiness with their fan base. We'll have to see. But certainly, you know, the idea that if Jorge lost two in a row, they'd all jump ship is also grossly overstating it as well. Still, there's just a level of risk associated with fighting Masvidal, excuse me, the level of risk associated with fighting Covington that I wonder if Masvidal is trying to explore some other options

based on that. Is he a big enough opponent? Is he too difficult an opponent given what I'm trying to maintain here? I think those factors are probably in significant play. Many fighters continue to... Oh, these ones don't have thumbs up.

Why are they up here? Been over this one a little bit. That's weird. Did the algorithm pump them to the top of the food chain? Oh, I guess it's because they came in last or late. Do you have any idea of what fight Dana White offered to Nate Diaz for his return to 155? Weren't the rumors... I've not talked to Nate.

Weren't the rumors Gaethje? Isn't that what we heard? Which, got to tell you, that's a tough fight for Nate. But if Nate can get it to the ground, that's a really bad fight for Justin, right? So, something to be said for that, I suppose. How the fuck are all these things at the top that don't have the... Sort by... Top. let's see

who do you regard as the top three internet analyst uh internet mma analysts this person writes jack slack brandon dorman and striking thoughts are tough to beat i have to i have to claim ignorance i'm not in obviously i know who jack is and he's phenomenal i don't know who brandon dorman and striking thoughts are now i don't know who Brandon Dorman and Striking Thoughts are. Now, I don't say that to demean them. That's not like me being like, well, I've never heard of them. They must be nothing. Please don't misunderstand me. I told you guys, I try really, really hard to ignore what others are saying

until I've turned in my analysis. And then I kind of review it after the fact. Because one, I don't want to take their ideas either wittingly or unwittingly. And I found myself when I listened to other MMA podcasts, just giving them opinions, not even about technique, I'd find myself just kind of repeating it even if I wasn't even sure I agreed. It has this osmosis on you, which is why I always tell you, don't just listen to me.

Please be sure to listen to other folks so you can get a wide array of viewpoints, I hope. But Brandon Dorman and Striking Thoughts might be number one and number two. I do not know. So I don't mean to say that in a dismissive way, just that because I've sort of narrowed the scope of my consumption, it has hurt me a little bit

in terms of my awareness of who's out there. I mean, Jack Slack is great. BJJ Scout is maybe my favorite that I personally know of. He or she is tremendous. I don't know what their gender is. There's this dude who calls himself like the mixed... Fuck, what's his name? He's really good. He's really, really good. And he does a lot of historical boxing stuff too. I think he calls himself like the modern martial artist, you know, MMA, but, um, let me see. That's right. He's phenomenal. Uh, yes, he's got like 500,000 subscribers with

just 151 videos. It tells you what he's doing. He's got good shit. The Modern Martial Artist is very, very good. He's tremendous. I'm trying to think who else is like stuff I've seen out there. Weasel obviously is, you know, always just putting out, you know, killer content. When I check it out, again, I try to steer away from it just by virtue of, you know, having my own ideas right or wrong. But every time I check out Dan Hardy, you know, Dan doesn't really miss. Very often, Dan's always on point. So Dan's great. Who else out there that I read?

There's a site that I check out on occasion when I have time. Again, this is not like a huge thing. You guys ever go to, is it fightsite.com? I think Ed Gallo writes for them. Or maybe it's the fightsite. What the fuck is the name of that site, man?

The problem with Twitter is that I end up aggregating everything through there. And then I click on the links. I'm never even sure whose content I'm looking at sometimes. Yeah, the fightsite. So it's thefight-site.com. Because, yes, internet-based, not just YouTube-based. These guys have constant breakdowns across all different kinds of disciplines too. Wrestling, striking.

I don't know how much jiu-jitsu stuff that they do. They seem to be a little bit more based on the wrestling, striking stuff. But still, I would imagine they have some of that as well I mean there's just a million of these guys out there you know you just have to look um so those are some of the ones that I tend to pay more attention to than others but even then a lot of that I'll just skip for weeks and months at a time just you know I'll go back to it you know a long time later and be like you know what did I get right what did I get wrong or what did I Usually, usually we're all pretty much in consensus about what did or didn't lead to things with different things, maybe emphasized, or this person picked up on that, that person

picked up on something a little bit different. And then the totality, the picture is like a composite sketch. The picture is generally the same, but the little details around the edges are the ones that sort of separate the differences there. Concerning the Adesanya and Blachowicz fight, one of the times Israel encountered difficulty was when Romero didn't put himself in motion and remained stationary to counter. Blachowicz did something similar to Dominic Reyes. Do you believe Blachowicz employed a similar game plan against Adesanya, and how do you see it working? Yeah, he was sort of counter-striking, right? But the problem is, you know, you can say whatever you want, but Romero lost that fight. It was like, that was a great strategy. It was one

of those things where it was like, it was not addition by subtraction. It's like, okay, I'm going to limit him from doing what he normally does. I'm going to have a strategy that limits Adesanya. Okay, fair enough. Here's the problem. It's going to limit you too. And it's going to limit you, it turns out, more than him. That's not really all that effective. I think you have to find ways to not just try to walk into Adesanya.

That part is true. And to the extent he can employ that, I think that's great. But on some level, you have to score meaningful offense. And Romero, his strategy was, I'm just going to turn the dial down to one or two and hope that that is enough. But unless you land really cracking shots, and he had a couple of them here or there, to be sure, but not enough to convince the judges,

that's not a winning view. I'll entertain this just because it's in the news. Luke, do you think this WSB Melvin Capital Robin Hood fiasco will lead to anything in terms of criminal charges? Do you see similarities between this and the 2008 crash in that middle class investors feel the system is rigged against them. Yeah. But that was, um, that was a much more complicated scenario by virtue of manufactured financial instruments that were based on faulty, uh, or just outright, you know, corrupt amounts of information, right? Let's, let's, you know, credit default swaps. Let's give a bunch of loans based on bad speculation to people who are just keeping their head above water. And then when that goes awry and you've, you know, you entangled all these sort of financial assets and it all comes crumbling down as a consequence, it's much more involved

as a thing. Also, thanks for the Thomas Pink recommendation. Very good. I had so many people reach out saying that they really liked it. Again, you get a $180 shirt for 40 bucks, you know, and it fits like a $180 shirt. You just can't beat it. Uh, very few shirts left online at Nordstrom rack, but I was able to snag a couple. Good for you, bro. Um, here's the one thing I would say about this. I'm not, I don't do a lot of any real trading at all. Uh, I mean, I have a 401k I suppose, but that's really it. I've not gotten involved with it, but my best friend in the world, the guy who spoke at my wedding, who, you know, to this day is my best friend. He worked a long time on wall street, a long time, still lives in New York. And it, it, it, it didn't corrupt him. It actually was such a awful thing in his life,

even though he stuck with it for, I think, five, six years. He has been hitting me up constantly saying, don't believe anything you see on CNBC. And this guy did all kinds of foreign exchange trading and the whole nine yards. And he's been like, don't believe anything you see on CNBC. They're covering for these billionaires. These guys are absolute criminals. They're crooks. And they basically got outplayed in the system by virtue of the ways in which Reddit was, you know, using an audience to push, you know, among other assets, GameStop to undo the short sellers.

Other people doing the shorting anyway. Do I think there'll be any, the question was not so much about that, like what has happened. I actually put an explanation up on my, it wasn't mine, but I found a really helpful, basic way to understand this.

And I put it on my Instagram page. If you want to go look at my stories, it's up there. It's just a really easy way to understand what's happening. Basically being like, the idea is that, here's what happens. These head funge fucking criminals, they go out and they find companies to artificially short.

And this has just all kinds of depressive effects on any number of just ordinary working class Americans and these businesses. And they do this as a way to like create momentum for using other financial instruments to make money basically. And these Redditors who are whoever else decided, well, okay, if we artificially inflate the stock of the ones that the hedge funds went in on, they're going to be on the hook for all the money, but by virtue of ways that shorting works, works. So if you buy a stock at 10, if you're shorting it at 10, essentially, and it goes up to 15, you're on the hook for the 5. By virtue of if you short it, it's at 10, and then it goes to 7, you get the 3. That's sort of how it works.

But by climbing the stock price to the nth degree, they're putting these guys on the hook for billions of dollars. They're making these, you know, these aren't the most storied investment firms on Wall Street, but some pretty big ones. And they're like vaporizing billions of dollars overnight. So, you know, in the end, that's a bit of another pyramid scheme. Because here's the thing, like someone's going gonna get left holding the bag when the game stop uh price depresses again but a different story altogether you're

asking about um do i think there's gonna be criminal charges fuck no i don't think there's gonna be criminal charges do you know what country you live in is there ever any criminal charge for anyone in any kind of position of prominence virtually ever in this country? I mean, the Jeffrey Epstein case is kind of interesting in the sense that it's such an opposite of what we are accustomed to. Yes, there was obviously the terrible crimes he was accused of. And he rubbed shoulders with everyone, you know, on every kind of, either political side, and, you know, everyone who was anyone,

he sort of tried to put himself around, and then he committed all these unspeakable acts against these young women, and blah, blah, blah. You guys know the story. But, you know, basically, why did he think he could keep doing that?

Because the class in which he lives is more or less immune to either prosecution generally or the more serious kinds of it. I put up this piece. It was by David Sirota. You guys know David Sirota? He's been in this investigative reporter at times. For a while, he worked for Bernie Sanders, but obviously he doesn't anymore.

It was just part of the Bernie campaign. And he wrote this long article basically arguing, like, if you just look at every time there's been elite either corruption or just even incompetence, sometimes malfeasance, any of the three in this world, there's never anything to pay for. There's never any cost for the elites to, very rarely anyway, to pay. Dude, David Frum is, you know, the architect of the speech for the axis of evil, advocated heavily on behalf of invading Iraq. Or how about the other ones who sort of organized the policy around it? Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, all the neocons. Dude, these guys belong in the fucking Hague, man.

And they're out there today, in the case of from who's totally you know reinvented his career he is now sort of seen as a sane member at least the folks on the left he's seen as a sane member to the folks on the right or sorry yeah one of the folks on the right who's still you know whatever you want to put it as sort of a moderate guy who is to be trusted for his very learned ways there There's never any cost to pay. Is there ever a cost to pay for the 2008 financial collapse? Who went to jail for that?

Any major institution? Who went to jail for defrauding? I mean, I don't even know where to begin with this. Did you see anybody go to jail for that? Was there any real massive regulation put around? I mean, I guess there were some about changing some of these financial instruments. But in general, the people who were the architects of this, nothing happened to them. I brought this up before, like with this whole capital insurrection thing.

Did I not say, I got some of that wrong because I didn't realize how much of them would be either middle-class or even higher. I thought a lot of those would be sort of a little bit more, you know, of the unemployed variety, but that turned out to not quite be true at all. But one thing that is turning out to be true that I did say on that was that we're going to get the Abu Ghraib thing all over again, all over again. You're going to punish the soldiers who enacted the policies. Okay, fine. We're not going to go after the people who put in the policies? No. No, I don't expect any fucking thing to happen to these people.

And listen, here's what's amazing about it. You've got AOC, Alexandria Ocasio--cortez going after them ted cruz being like i agree you've got folks on the left pissed off you've got who's the guy david portnoy who's the head of barcelona calling this a crime he's fucking right they're all right this is a country where there is if you are a member of this sort of really, truly elite class, very rarely does the long arm of the law come hammering down upon you. No, I don't expect a fucking thing to happen. And if it does, great. Pleasantly surprised.

Wouldn't that be awesome? I think we'd all agree on that. That would be great. Do I expect it to happen? Fuck no. I expect them to go before Congress, pay some kind of hefty fine, get dressed down for, you know, whatever. Congressmen in some kind of committee meeting, or hearing rather, will say, you know, wag their fingers at them, and then they'll go back to do whatever

the fuck they were doing. No, I don't... This is not a society where that happens. With McGregor's mystique all but gone, that's a little bit overstating it, will it be an existing star like Israel or a far more unknown and the next fighter to reach his star power? It's going to be a long time before someone reaches his star power. I mean, Izzy is certainly on his way, but even he's got a very long way to go. And by the way, not everyone's going to top out at his level either. Conor's very special in that regard. Conor's mystique is not gone, but the Conor McGregor invincibility streak, where this is how you have to understand it. It wasn't that anyone thought, maybe you

thought he was the best 145er after beat Jose, but even after he beat Eddie, it wasn't like you necessarily, some might've thought he was the best fighter in the world, but let's assume for a second, you're like, okay, he's really on a hot streak. Is he the very best fighter pound for pound on earth? Let's say for a moment, you didn't believe that, which I think you'd be right not to. There was still something special about it, which was that the guy was just batting, you know, a thousand or up to that point, really in the UFC. He was on an incredible hot streak. It wasn't like you thought he was the best.

You just thought for whatever reason, every time he comes out here, he's got the wind at his back. He's got knowable flaws, but they just can't take advantage of them right now. That is gone. And so now he has regressed to a more moderate level that all fighters kind of regressed to over the totality of their career. Floyd kind of kept it high, but even then, you know, some of his performances weren't necessarily as good as other ones, especially a little bit late. That's what has happened, is that this artificial bubble around the assessment of him,

which is somewhat understandable given what he had done. I call it a bubble, like it's this overly speculative thing, but it was driven by this really unprecedented act. So to be fair, I think it's not the craziest thing in the world to imagine he was really, really good. And I think he is still really, really good. But that has been shattered. That illusion has been shattered that he can just go in there and will his way to victory.

No, no, no. You got to go. Now he's at a stage where he has to go, and this was always the case, but it just feels more like it. Now he has to go in there. He has to earn his way to victory. No shortcuts. No Mystic Mac. No, I'm going to get in your head and overwhelm folks. You know, I'm actually rethinking a little bit some of the posture stuff he's done. I don't mean this as in his posture. I mean as in his posture towards the fight game. I have to tell you folks, when he was doing the stuff where he was being a gentleman and whatnot, the last two camps, I'm not saying he has to go back and it's like,

oh, the key to fixing this is he has to trash talk. I don't think that's quite right. But I will say this. The trash talk, it seems to me, emanated from a worldview where he not only wanted to conquer, but he kind of wanted to prove something and he wanted to show it to you. He had this real demonstrative personality and goal. And a lot of that he already did. And so he doesn't need to do that anymore. I think internally he certainly feels that way.

But what that's done is, it's not like going and trash talking would fix the problem. The problem is actually, the trash talking came out of this deeper sense. And I wonder if that deeper purpose has been somewhat fizzled out a little bit. And so here's why I bring it up. Some of the weapons, I've made a whole video on my personal channel about it, some of the weapons

are missing from his game. I think people are overselling a little bit the idea that his stance has completely changed. Well, a lot of it was very circumstantial. There are some things that are missing, and the one thing that really binds it all together was there's a little bit of just dynamism missing, like a little bit of just dynamism missing. Like a little bit of zip and pop and hustle, quite frankly, from that. To me, there's like a little bit, yes, he was hustling against Cowboy Cerrone, but Cowboy was just really overmatched. And, you know, we talked about before, his fifth fight within less than 365 days.

That was just a really, really rough run he was on. To me, it's like, I don't need you to trash talk again, but that place where you got the trash talking from in here, this burning desire to show the world something, some part of that maybe needs to be recaptured. I don't know that for sure either. Again, you know, Dustin Poirier is an all-time fucking legend in this division now, so let's give credit where credit is due. But I do wonder about that. I wonder a little bit like, oh, Conor needs to get in everyone's head. Well, it's not so much that.

But if getting in someone's head came from this life goal that you had set out, and now that that goal's been taken away, you haven't found a reset, and as a consequence, it's not a super downgrade. It's just a little bit lethargic. It's a little bit lacking in dynamism. It's a little bit just not quite what it once was. You've got to re-engineer that. I think that might be something worth paying attention to. We'll see what happens in his next fight, whenever that is, against who that might be. You know, we never want to overstate one thing one way or the other, but I will tell you, I'm at least curious about that.

Who are you leaning towards, Masvidal or Colby, should they fight? Colby's a tough fucking fighter, man. Do you see the matchup being similar to Usman versus Masvidal? Yes. Or do you think it could be more of a stand-up fight because Colby does like to stay on his feet more and use his volume to overwhelm his opponents? There is a little bit of that. That's true. But dude, Jorge's dangerous, man. And Colby knows that shit too. Jorge is dangerous. You cannot play with him very long on the feet. And the worst part about it is, oh, I want to play at range. His kicking game is excellent. All right, I'll

keep it in close. Dude, his boxing game is excellent. You know, everyone's talking about who's the best boxer in the UFC. Is it Dustin? Is it Max Holloway? Well, we can have a debate about it, but you know who should be on that list? Jorge Masvidal. He should be on that list. That's just a fact. That dude can box his ass off, at least inside of the MMA world, you know? So I'd probably favor Colby because I think he's got the gas tank to do it for 25 rounds to make the fight ugly and frankly unexciting. But you know, I don't do predictions for a reason. I mean, CBS Sports makes me do them and I fucking hate doing them because

they're just such a it's such a fraudulent you can do them there's a way to do predictions that is good faith you know

informed content but you have to really specialize in that kind of a thing and if you don't do that just being like yeah I think so and so is going to win you don't fucking know, just being like, yeah, I think so-and-so's going to win. You don't fucking know.

You're just telling the audience it's going to snow when it's not. I don't like doing that. I honestly, I truly mean this. I really enjoy just not taking a position on that. And then seeing what the universe feeds back to me. It's a lot easier. And frankly, you know, not that hard to once the results are in, interpret them in a much more honest way. It's actually not that hard once everything is in front of you them in a much more honest way um it's actually

not that hard once everything is in front of you and laid bare okay fair enough but i'd rather be i'd rather have i will do my job which is hey give us a pick all right i'll give you a fucking pick but i'm telling you guys right now please understand i don't know so you should never never you should basically never ask me for picks every once in a while i'll get some real inside information about a guy who might have an injury in a camp or something. Something's going on. And I'll use that to make some kind of assessment. But short of that,

I'm not the guy to go to on that, ever. How different is MMA fandom compared to the other sports in terms of media consumption? I'm also a big Real Madrid fan, so I constantly read articles and keep up with the news with football slash soccer sites about Real, La Liga, Premier, blah, blah, blah, but rarely listen to podcasts or YouTube. Same with NBA. I rarely read, I don't know why, about MMA or keep up with the news via MMA sites, rather via Twitter, podcasts, and YouTube. I can't say how representative

the anecdote is, but do you also see different media consumption habits in MMA? See, I don't know because I use my consumption habits generally across sports, so I'll just sort of shoehorn that in. I will say BC and I have had a lot of conversations about this. I don't know if they're equivalent, but let's say for just a moment, for just a moment, that the boxing and MMA audiences are roughly equivalent in size. Let's assume that. If that is true, the MMA fan base is significantly more online. Significantly more online.

Now, I get it. BC and I are two 40-something-year-old white dads giving our opinions on young athletes. It's like, I get there's going to be a lot of people who just, you know, it's like, who the fuck cares what these two idiots have to say? But if that were true, it would be true across both boxing and MMA.

And it's not. Like, in MMA, we've been able to develop some kind of an audience. In boxing, it's been much, much harder. Now, obviously, those sports are going to cross a lot more demographic lines and even, frankly, language lines in ways that even in the United States, you're not going to get necessarily as much of. Like, could you do an all-Spanish podcast or site covering boxing and do well? I don't know, but I bet you could do it a lot easier in boxing than you could MMA. Obviously, Dennis DeGiro has Hablemos MMA.

But that's something, like, new. Like, he is the first person not doing, like, Spanish and English language media, but with a major English outlet trying to do Spanish language-focused content. That's very new. He's the first one to really focus in on that. Um, you know, I remember when I went to, um, what fight was it? I think it was Mayweather Canelo. And I remember going there and, uh, this is long before I worked for Showtime, but I remember the Showtime folks were there. And I remember seeing that they had PR people, you know,

just a standard PR folks, you know, handing out press releases and, hey, I've got this interview for you and blah, blah, you know, whatever PR folks do in the daily course of their routine. And I remember they had a bunch of, it was a lot of girls, women, and I think almost all of them at that time spoke Spanish. Like, I just couldn't believe they would just go back and forth. And if you think about it, you had to because you had so many parties coming through who were either Spanish first or that's their best language or, you know, how are you going to navigate through all of these like hordes of people that need you to communicate with them? And like MMA is not like that. And so, you know, I don't know what that says about consumption habits through media and how that might change between written and audio and video,

which is more the way you're asking. But I'm just sort of pointing out, BC and I have tried to noodle, you know, is the boxing audience as heavily online as the MMA audience? And if so, in English, or are they divided along language lines? It's actually been really hard for us to figure out. I found really good, frankly, I find a lot of the written stuff on soccer to be quite pedantic, where they're going over tactics and language and it doesn't make a lot of sense, or they're just bloviating on about, I like Sid Lowe, he's all right, but I read

some, and he essentially was making a point about, you've seen this guy Erdegaard, who they got sent from Madrid to Arsenal, basically the point is that this guy was signed at 16, supposed to be the next big thing, they sent him to a smaller Spanish club where he turned out to be one of the best players in all of La Liga, Madrid didn't have money to sign a new player, so like, let's just pull him up before he's frankly frankly, kind of ready and before there was squad turnover. But the problem is you've got all these institutions, Carvajal and Modric and Cruz and blah, blah, blah. The dude's not going to get time in the position he needs to play,

and so he's just sitting on the fucking bench. And that's true for a lot of players, man. You've got Fede Valverde. He's just sitting on the bench. You've got Rodrigo and Vinicius aren't getting a ton of time. You've got all these superstars who would be like getting shit loads of time on his other clubs. But in Madrid,

it's just not that easy. Anyway, his point was there was a lot of turnover. There needed to be more turnover for these guys to get time. And then it's not happening. So it's not in their development. So they want to go on loan to other clubs, blah,

blah, blah. But the fucking piece could argue that, you know, in half the amount of time, there's just a lot of this going on. So I tend to find that actually YouTube is really good for watching game recaps or, um, uh, strategy or tactics that were used in particular matches. I find it actually pretty good.

Podcast too. There's a podcast. It's like this British dude. I've listened to it in a while, but it's a British dude and an American dude. It's like the U S total soccer show, something like that. They, when I listened to it, I've listened to it in a while, but it's a British dude and an American dude. It's like the US Total Soccer Show, something like that. When I listened to it, I haven't listened to it in a while, but back when I was listening to it, they were doing really good work. I listen to it more when they do like USA men's coverage, but I've been kind of out on that team because they suck the horn. I'm going to skip this Biden question just because we don't need to get into it today. This one has 527. All right, I'll give it a run. Let me get to this one first.

Since Brendan Schaub has regularly thrown some shade in the comments section, y'all love doing it apparently, here's an opportunity to give him a little praise, which is Big Brown's most impressive athletic achievement making it onto the Buffalo Bills practice squad or his accomplishments in UFC. Yeah, it's got to be, I mean, you know, making it to the Buffalo Bills practice squad is something I couldn't do, but by itself is not necessarily something to hang your hat on. Dude had some nice wins in UFC. Let's pull up his resume here. You know, he had some notable losses. You know, the Roy Nelson loss was bad. And at the end there, obviously, you know, it was time for him to go.

But, you know, Nogueira was a bad one. But, like, here's who he beat. Chase Gormley, he TKO'd him inside of a round. Instead of a fucking minute. Chris DeSherr, TKO'd him inside of basically a minute. Gabriel Gonzaga, he decisioned. And then he went 8-1 and knocked out Mirko Krokop. You know. And he did it in the third round.

He got a knockout of the night at UFC 128. Now, he had the two losses to Rothwell and Nogueira. He rebounds against LeVar Johnson, who I'm certain was using PEDs at the time. Don't know that, just a guess. I say I'm certain. I'm not certain in that sense, but I'm confident, let's say. And then he beat Matt. He choked out Matt Mitrione. So he went to 10-3.

But then, you know, they had their Orlovsky split, which was not a good look. And then he had the terrible fight against Travis Brown, which he got memed into, you know, living death. But, you know, like, is this the most accomplished I've ever seen in anyone's career? No, but, dude, you got knocked out of the night when you viciously KO'd, essentially with one punch, Mirko Krokop. Dude, that's fucking awesome. That's really, really awesome. Especially since that time, that was 2011. Since that fight, since that fight, he's had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 fights. And in that time,

he beat Satoshi Ishii twice, Gabriel Gonzaga, Muhammad Lawal, Amir Ali Akbar, who's a good fighter, uh, Tiosha Kosaka, who's also old. And then Roy Nelson, he decision in 2019, dude's still out there putting it on him. And after that's after Brendan knocked him the fuck out, like, okay, you know, that's really, really impressive, actually. So, you know, did he have the most accomplished career at heavyweight you've ever seen in your life? No. But he did good shit and beat some solid guys along the way. I tip my hat to him.

I told him that, and I'm telling you that. how about that pay-per-view stream they charged extra for dude ESPN plus man the thing is it's like I want it to be better than it is I really do because I'm on it all I have to use ESPN plus all the time if for no other reason, just for work. Aside from the fact that I, as a sports fan, consume a lot of their content. It is such a bad service. It's such a bad service. It works.

Everyone's like, oh, I've got to... Whenever I say it's bad on Twitter, I always get these responses from people being like, oh, it works for me. And if you actually go through and say how they work, there's almost never congruity with it. Someone will be like, oh, I run it through my PS4, or I use it Amazon Fire, or works great on my laptop, or not so great on my laptop, great on my TV through my smartphone or my smart TV apps. Everyone's got a different version of why it works.

And I was like, well, check with your internet. Motherfucker, I got gigabit speeds up in here. This is a, I'm sitting in a room that is a business. This is a business expense for me. I don't play around with internet. You know, it's a shit service. It's so not good. The new interface is better with the 10 second rewind.

I've really benefited from that. With tape study, okay, so no doubt about it, that's better. But the search functionality is not great. When you load, when you click on thumbnails to populate something new, it is not great. When you're trying to find something just by scrolling, it's not great. I mean, and you know, there's buffering issues and lag issues. And, and like I said this before, it's like, dude, y'all knew y'all had a, y'all had an issue in 2017 with Mayweather McGregor, um, uh, not through ESPN plus, but that there can be these challenges last minute, you know, with these massive orders that come through, what the fuck is your excuse in 2021? There is none. There isn't,

it's no excuse. Oh, well, we got overwhelmed and blah, blah. There's no excuse. It doesn't exist anymore. Those days are over. Done. Zip. Don't want to hear it anymore. And this is the fucking billion dollar business with Disney. And Disney Plus's interface, it's like, well, why don't you have these complaints about Disney Plus? Well, one, I don't use Disney Plus all that often. Two, there's not the same library of content. Like, okay, there's Pixar, there's National Geographic, Marvel, Star Wars. I just go to the vertical I want, and then I'm usually, I know exactly what I want. My daughter wants to watch Coco for the 50th time. You know, it's not that hard for me to find, but with the constant glut of brand new content, just the wave of content crashing into the shore of ESPN plus every single day, do they do a bet? It's like, it's so not good. I don't take any, believe me,

I would love to take pleasure in saying ESPN plus is not good. I fucking pay for it. I say this as a customer. It's shit. It's terrible. It works for me, for me, better on my phone and better through my browser. But on my ESPN Plus app on my iPad, there are issues, constant buffering issues. Oh my Lord, it's a problem. Forget even trying to get to work on your television. That is just never going to happen. Oh, by the way, were you logged in last time you were on? Well, they logged you out. Oh, were you logged in just a second ago? Well, they logged you out. Hey, did you buy a pay-per-view and then try to stream it and say you had to buy it again? So then you had to log out and then log in again. And only then it worked after the 50th time of trying that. Dude, it's a

bad service. It's not good. No one ever works with ESPN plus on the consumer end of things and goes dude they fucking killed it they killed it like Fight Pass isn't that great either the search functionality is really not up to speed but it's not the primary mover they're not under the same kind of obligation that ESPN Plus

is to me oh and by the way the connectivity there between the two, you know, where some of the content is on Fight Pass, some of it isn't. Some of it I have to go to YouTube TV. Thank God they have unlimited DVR, but I have to go through YouTube TV. Sometimes I have to go right to back to ESPN Plus. And then by the way, they don't have it like listed where it is on the video within the like clickable link. I have to scroll through to find where the... I mean, it's a fucking mess. It's a mess.

It's a complete mess. And they want to charge out the ass for this. Where's all the money going, y'all? What are y'all doing with all the extra money? Y'all cut out the middleman there. The pay-per-view money goes right to you. What are you doing with it? Because, oh, you put a 10 second

forward and backward button on the interface. Yay. Great. Isn't that awesome? Now what are you doing with the rest of the money? Because it sure as fuck ain't improving the quality of this thing. Who has a better tattoo? Tiger tattoo. Michael Chiesa or Conor McGregor? I've not looked at Chiesa's up close. The guy who did this made a good point. And I think this tattoo is excellent.

Again, I've got really bad ones, but this ain't one of them. He made a point. Because this is Japanese traditional, which is going to be like American traditional. And what he was saying was, you actually look at the chest piece that Conor got. It's awesome. It's really, really, really, really well done if you like traditional stuff. Now, if you don't like traditional, then who cares? But he got a traditional sort of chest piece, got it blasted here.

And then on his stomach, he's got the tiger, which is almost like portrait realism. So you have this sort of incongruity between tattoo styles, which to me is not the biggest deal, but they seem to think that it was something. I will say, do you know who they spotlighted as having maybe the best tattoos in MMA? And it pains me to say this, but it is certainly true, at least for one part of it. Dylan Danis' Japanese sleeve. so I went to this place again, shouts to the civilization tattoo. Um, John Setzer is the guy who did, who did, who did my piece. Um, but, uh, they were telling me they, uh, these are, this place, place specializes in traditional and then Japanese traditional. So they can do American traditional. They can do Japanese as well. And they were telling me that his sleeve,

his whole sleeve, the Japanese one is like the highest quality. Like the very, maybe like if you went to Japan and went to like one of the very special, what do they call it? Tsubori tattoos. Maybe that might be better. And even then that's pushing it.

Like whoever did his sleeve apparently it's like immaculate apparently Marvin Vittori has a very good sleeve as well I've not really paid attention but um I've seen it a couple times I actually thought it was really good but they were saying Dylan Dennis's sleeve is like primo quality you know although Michael Bisping dunked on him yesterday on Twitter which I retweeted because I thought it was funny what happens first? Jay gets fired or you and Ariel collaborate? Jay would get fired first.

Would you think about releasing a podcast on your own channel once a week to talk about other topics besides MMA? There's a lot I want to do. I think I've realized that as much as I... Morning combat is my 95% focus, maybe 90% focus. You know, in other words, like when I think about my creative pursuits, I've got to put 90% of my energy into this, which is why I moved this chat to this channel and everything else. But I have to have my own outlet for creative expression as well, just for my own sanity.

And so the answer is I'm open to a lot of different things, but I only want something I can really commit to. And right now, I don't think that's something I could really commit to. I think I could do it, but not in the current way, which like, dude, we got to get, we got to get like my, my, the only thing I think about every day is we got to get MK to a hundred K. And once we hit a hundred K on subs, it's going to be 200 K. Like I'm just laser focused on what we can do for that. And everything else takes a backseat to that for now.

You know, maybe if we hit the, you know, somehow got lucky and we hit 200 K subs within the next year, maybe I might dial it back in terms of my intensity. But right now I'm not dialing back my intensity. And frankly, the only reason that like, you know, well, I'll get to that later. But you guys know the drill.

I know you've spoken about this before, but are you ever going to make a video about just how prevalent steroids are across all professional sports? Would that do a lot of damage to your career? Well, it depends what I would say in the video. I mean, I'd put that on the list, but this is the part you have to remember. Yes, I think it's worth having a video where we do that, but I have to figure out exactly how to do that. But, you know, when I see all these folks out here, this is what really kills me. The reason why you would want to make a video like that is because one, I think, um, well, let me say two things. One is that the reason why you would want to make a

video like that is because I see all these athletes who are like, Oh, they're competing into their late thirties and forties and they're better than ever. Like, well, yeah. What did you do to like stay healthy? You know? And it's always like, Oh, they ate asparagus and they have a masseuse who lives in, and you know, in and blah blah blah it's like that ain't that ain't the reason why their career has been extended i hope everyone understands that there's just a there's just a total fraudulence about it that drives me nuts but the other part about that makes all of this um you know a little bit difficult is that I don't, like, people are not ready to accept the reality of what has happened. They're not even, they're not even close to ready. I talked about this

before. They just passed the Rodchenkov Act, which will not throw athletes who use in jail, but the people who enable them. But folks, these are only artificial limits designed for, you know, palability to get them passed. Like, if you think that it is somehow off limits that they would ever throw athletes in prison for using, you are dreaming. You are lying to yourself. We're not there yet, but this measure, by the way, to throw these folks in jail, this also won't work because prohibition doesn't work. And so when this fails to do the job matter-of-factly and the people who have a zealotry about this cause decide that we need more tools to fix this problem. How many times have you heard that since the beginning of this fucking war on drugs? Oh, we need more tools.

We need more assets to get this done. I don't know if throwing them in jail is necessarily next, the athletes that is, but it is not in any way inconceivable in my lifetime. And frankly, I think that only then when you see just how over-dramatized and all of the resources that go towards criminalizing this behavior that basically can be limited but not really stopped in any kind of meaningful way. And by the way, once genetic manipulation begins to happen, I think this whole thing is just going to blow up in everyone's face. Only until the onerous effects of turning doping into the war on drugs,

only when that really comes crashing down on people are they ever going to be receptive to this message. Because what you have is you have a series of sports stars who have made their teams and personal careers absolutely off the back of PEDs. Nobody cared. Didn't bother anyone. You had injury loads, as I talked about before, including brain damage, far in excess of whatever happens in combat sports. And these people had these grand public identities

because they were just able to sweep it under the rug and be total hypocrites about it. Until their curtain is pulled back on that and then things get worse, and then after things get worse, only then do things get better, are we ever going to come to any kind of sane policy. So I can put out all the videos I want, and there is a case to be made about arguing your position and putting it out there, whether people are ready to accept it or not.

And I suppose in that sense, I certainly will. But man, the appetite for prohibition is strong, despite its historical failures in recreational or non-recreational use of anything. It's strong. And until people begin to recognize that this is not really a path to anywhere other than maintaining an illusion, nothing I say will really convince them otherwise. It's just good to be on the record for your views. What is the dynamic between you and Dan Hardy conversation-wise? I would love to see you two chatting about MMA techniques,

et cetera. Any chance you can interview him for MK? Yeah. Dan and I have a great relationship. Dan is we hosted so that last live event I did with SiriusXM where we had Dominic Reyes come through. We had Adesanya come through. Jake Shields.

The Shevchenko sisters. Laura Sanko came through. Angela Hill came through, everyone came through, it was a great night, this was before the Diaz-Masvidal fight, it was at Legends Bar in New York City, and we had the hole upstairs, and all these folks came through, it was amazing, Dan and I co-hosted, Dan and I were the co-hosts of that broadcast, and it was great, Dan's awesome, Dan's the man. So, and I interviewed him. I've interviewed him a bunch of times on my radio show, but I also did a Mayweather McGregor preview with him, which was really cool. So you can check that out on the MMA

Fighting YouTube channel. But yeah, dude, Dan, like I have a great relationship with Dan. You know, you got to be a real cocksucker to get sideways with Dan, don't you? Am I forgetting somebody who was, like, cool and also got sideways with him? I don't think so, right? Have you seen Dana's physique lately? Does he have the same supplier as Adesanya? I don't know what that means. You mean, like, is he growing a single boob or something?

I don't know what that means. What friendship do you not understand the most? Shob and the Paul brothers or Rogan and Jones? I sort of understand Rogan and Jones because I think Rogan has known him for a long time and is intensely loyal to people. The Paul brothers, I mean, listen, I'll say this. Of the two, Logan appears to be, you know, reasonable. The current stage he's in now in his life, you know, reasonably normal-ish. You know, certainly if I was his age and I was on YouTube, I'd be doing real fuck boy shit too. You know, I'm probably a total hypocrite in that way. His, I guess, I guess my daughter's there. I guess Logan is the older of the two. I think that's right. Jake is a real dirt bag. I don't

know anything about him personally, but you know, he does not appear to be the world's, you know, they say the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, then what is he doing? Living, uh living is really the question I have to ask. But I don't know their dynamic. You know, I don't know much about how they interact behind the scenes. And I, you know, as odious as I find Jones, I can understand on some level, I suppose. You know, if you've known a guy for a really long time, you're going to just sort of look past a lot of things. And I don't think, by the way, I don't think the Jones

has done as much harm in the world as the Paul. The Paul brothers are just annoying. It's like, why are they successful? Oh, they were Vine stars or whatever the fuck? It's like, oh, Jesus. You ever seen Vine comedy? whatever the fuck it's like oh jesus you ever seen vine comedy you know it's like it's like shah or not shah bc sent me something and it was like like it was like vine comedy which these new reels on instagram sort of mimic and it was like this dude being like he's like white guys who date latinos and it was like this dude being like, he's like, white guys who date Latinos, and it was like, this is what happens to them, and then you see him just dancing to merengue.

It's like, what is the joke here? Like, they dance more merengue? Okay, well, if you're, you know, if you're a, if you're brain damaged, boy, that's funny. It's like Vine comedy, perfect for people who are brain damaged that should be the sales pitch are you an immature dumbass and or were you in a severe car accident well boy do we have the comedy for you you know it's like did your mom drink when you were in utero

I've got some comedy that is perfect for you. Hi Luke, do you think the UFC should go down the further into the path of making itself a legitimate tier one sport where there are guaranteed minimums and the roster is trimmed down significantly from 500 to 600 where only truly elite fighters can make the roster and try to be more like the NFL and the NBA. Or do you think it should go the opposite way? I think ESPN clearly illustrates where they want to go as an organization. Well, where is that? I don't know where that is.

I would like to see them trimmed down a bit. I tend to think there's a bit too much of it in the way that it's been treated. Which isn't to say I want less MMA. It's to say I want the UFC product to be a little bit more streamlined. But you have to understand, again, dude, this is all driven by the market dynamics. Having this much content, if you're the UFC, enables you to have a certain amount of market control, access to pipelines for fresh talent, blah, blah, blah. And if you can sell either ads against it or you can get a larger deal with a broadcaster who needs inventory to fill up a service, you don't really have much of an incentive to do anything other

than what you're doing because you still have that tier one product, the UFC 257 main events of the world. Now you can add in all the rest of it. So it's not like I want less MMA. I don't think that's true. I would like to see portions of the sort of the bottom part of the UFC more widely dispersed around a healthier constellation of organizations rather than such market concentration. This is what I always don't get about like, oh, if you're criticizing UFC, why do you hate the sport? Since when are those the same thing? Two guys fist or two ladies, whatever, fist fighting in a cage, that's great.

But the UFC is not that. They're one promoter of that, certainly the most dominant promoter of that, and in many ways, they do it better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean they are free from blame or opprobrium or criticism of the good faith kind. And just because you are criticizing them doesn't mean you... Since when did I stop liking cage fights? I didn't like that at all. I think you'd have a healthier industry if you had a broader constellation of organizations. I think fighter pay would be higher. I think there'd have a healthier industry if you had a broader constellation of organizations. I think fighter pay would be higher. I think there'd be a lot of problems that could be solved. But that's just my personal opinion.

And again, it's a bit of a total pipe dream and kind of irrelevant, frankly, because the UFC's market position is pretty secure at this point. And they make a ton of money with this particular kind of arrangement with this current broadcast partner and all of their other deals globally. Like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point is kind of silly. There was a time where you could have held onto that a little bit more, you know, 15 years ago or something, but that, that window has closed. So it's not really even realistic. And you know, really even realistic. It's not even really what I want right now. In a perfect world, would I like to change some things? Okay, maybe. But you're asking me, let's just engage with reality as it exists. This is the question you

have to ask yourself. This is what I've been really wrestling with, man. It's like, what do you want, a union, or do you want the Ali Act? And I got to tell you, the more I have to cover boxing, the less inclined I am to believe that that is the thing that's going to fix MMA. I mean, it would definitely fix a lot of the things that put the fighters on the back foot. That is true. But I don't know how good it would be for MMA as a consumer to have that as the remedy for fighters versus some kind of a union to bump pay and then put in place protections. I don't think the fighters would get the same level of treatment or fairness with the union as they would the Ali Act, which makes going in that direction a little bit hard for me to endorse.

But there's a lot of problems that come with boxing's model. A lot. And I don't know that recreating those in MMA is really what we want. The week of content has been pretty good in terms of MK subscriptions. Yeah, it's almost 3K in like 10 days or something. But in general, could you tell us what type of content drives the most subscriptions? So go to the video page, and then you can sort the content by oldest, newest, or most viewed. Click on most viewed, and you'll see.

You mentioned you've gone back and watched all McGregor's fights in the UFC, which is very easy to do. It doesn't take very long at all. Are there any other fighters you could recommend to do this for? Well, as I mentioned, you couldn't really do it. I mean, you could do it for St. Pierre and Jon Jones, but it would take a long time. There's so many five-round fights. You could do it for both Diaz brothers to a degree. You could do that. A little bit harder for Nate. There's not many, man. Conor's kind of unique in that way. I don't think about that. That's a good question. Did Jay get fired? When the new documentary comes out, you will get an answer to that question. Again, some questions about tech issues. You will get some answers on the new documentary.

Long-ass question. John Cavanaugh went on Ariel's podcast two days after the fight and talked about how it's almost impossible to simulate calf kicks in practice. Really? And how he doesn't see the point in switching stances if one leg is compromised. Conor talked about how he's never experienced those kicks before and didn't know what they could do. Doesn't it seem odd that a high-level martial artist that's been in the game for years

hasn't been training for something as a big part of an opponent's game? Yes, it does. Well, I don't know exactly what the game plan was. They don't share those details. It might be a little bit unfair to oversimplify things that way. But I will say, you know, there's no way to simulate it. Well, in going full bore, that's true. But I've say, you know, there's no way to simulate it. Well, in going full bore, that's true, but I've actually, I've seen practices where they do it. They'll take some pads and they'll put it on the side of the back of their leg and they'll just drill combinations over and over or, you know, distances you need to keep when someone is throwing at the end of combinations or, I mean, yes. Can you go hard sparring with it? No,

you could not do that. At least not very much. You would get into some trouble. But can you arrange very valuable training scenarios to anticipate distances and combinations and looks and how you need to potentially deal with that by just getting out of the way or really working on your checking in terms of how far out your foot needs to be turned to really get into it.

Yeah, I've literally seen that before. So that's a very surprising thing to hear. I don't know what to make of that. The switching of the stance thing, it could be that there's just a major downgrade to what he could show with his other hand forward versus if his left hand was forward and his right leg was back, what that would do to his game.

Is he really the same kind of fighter that way, and is there a major downgrade? I'm less inclined to really take issue with that. But the one about, again, I've not heard the interview, so I want to be clear. I'm going off what you're telling me he said in the interview versus what he may have. I've not heard it firsthand.

But have I seen training around the calf kick at elite teams in a variety of scenarios that enable them to deal with how to measure distance, combos, looks, checking, and a variety of things in there that were then brought to bear in fights? Yeah, I've literally witnessed it. So I don't know what that's about. I'd have to hear what he had to say. Maybe there's some other detail that I'm not understanding about that, that I'm, that I'm missing. Let's find a couple of these and we'll go. Uh, what happened to the old Romero supplement payout? That story has just been left behind. Well, here's the problem with suing those, uh, fly by night companies. You'll put them into, and then they won't have to pay a dime because they have no money to pay. So I have to look this up,

but this is like, I mean, I've seen this a thousand times. You sue these guys, and they cry poor, and then the courts will bail them out because they cannot pay their debt obligations. And so they have to restructure how they make money, or they restructure their, well, they have to liquidate the business, basically. And so they have to restructure how they make money or they restructure their, well, they have to liquidate the business basically. And then they get essentially relieved of having to pay the bulk of any of that kind of stuff. And then they just go away. So what you're doing is you're essentially suing them into not being able to operate anymore. You're not suing them into collecting anything. Why did you delete that video mocking Dana's dislike of reading? Well, it's still on demand for SiriusXM. Dana was like doing the, Aaron Bronsetter asked him, it's like, you know,

doing the quarantine, favorite movie or TV show? He's like, favorite book. And Dan is like, I don't like books. I don't read. You know, which is like, okay. Couldn't imagine that. It's like saying, I don't like oxygen. I don't breathe. But we're just having fun at his expense. But my wife, who like never pays attention to my content, when I put it up, she saw it.

She was like, people aren't going to get that you're really kind of taking a lighthearted approach to this. You should take it down. And she never interjects. She never says a word about anything I put up. So for her to come down and be like, people are not going to get this the right way. I was like, all right. So I deferred to her. I still have it somewhere, I think, but you can, you can find it on Sirius XM on demand. But, um, you know, she was like, if you aren't going to get the joke, don't post it. I was like, alright, whatever. You're probably right. Have you and BC ever thought of doing

a segment where you guys play Mortal Kombat or UFC for the ultimate bragging rights? I don't mind doing some kind of frivolous game with that. Mortal Kombat in particular, but I don't want doing some kind of frivolous game with that. Mortal Kombat in particular. But I don't want to play UFC video games. I told you guys this. When I don't have to be involved in it, I want to have as much diverse interest as possible. Biggest fight or occasion you've ever been in attendance for?

What made the difference to others? I was at May Pack. I was at May Mac. And I was at Mayweather Canelo. And I was at Habib versus Conor. May Mac had the biggest circusy atmosphere may pack had the most celebrities i'd seen pre-fight i don't think on fight night i think fight night may mac had more but pre-fight that week was fucking bananas mayweather canelo was a real cross-section of different kinds of people and then i don't remember much from mayweather Canelo was a real cross-section of different kinds of people. And then, I don't remember much from Mayweather, excuse me, from Khabib versus Connor, because I was so busy working, I just wasn't even paying attention.

And I didn't get to go into the arena. I had to sit in the back. But I was there after the brawl, when Khabib came through. I was there for that shit. I was like, what? What camera and lighting do you use? So I have a, I have a, uh, let me, what is the name of that brand? Is a GVM set of RGB lights. I have three of them. And then I need to get some, I forget what you call it,

but to bounce the light off on this side of my face. But I have a Manfrotto stand. I'm not sure of the make and model. It's a fluid drag system. And then I have the Sonyfrotto stand. I'm not sure of the make and model. It's a fluid drag system. And then I have the Sony a7 III. And then I have a Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 lens that I'm filming this on. So there you go. All right, let's do maybe one or two more.

And then I swear I'll call it a day. Luke, did you watch Manon Fioro's Flyweight debut to open the Chiesa Magni card? Yes, I did She looked fucking awesome She might be a real player in the flyweight division Yeah, dude, you guys didn't see that? Go back and look

I was like, I'm telling you man There are sometimes these fighters They just jump off the screen You're like, this one is not like the others They're worth paying attention to Both Cody and TJ have called for the Aldo fight the screen, you're like, this one is not like the others. They're worth paying attention to. Both Cody and TJ have called for the Aldo fight. Which matchup do you prefer? TJ. I think it's a much better sense of where he is upon returning.

It's a funny question. I'm not going to read, but it is funny. Backstage post UFC 257, Poirier told Conor, I can't forget, but I can forgive, referring to their first fight. What did Poirier mean by that? He was talking about himself. He goes, your coach is right. I can't forget what happened, but I can forgive myself, is what he said, for losing. Don't lose sight of the things that went wrong to motivate you, but don't beat yourself up so much that you can't ever get past it. I think that's what he said, for losing. Don't lose sight of the things that went wrong to motivate you, but don't beat yourself up so much that you can't ever get past it.

I think that's what he meant. Last one. Luke, thanks for all the work. Thoughts on Wes Watson. I've noticed you like some of his IG posts, and I'm guessing that many shows ago, you saying let's stack some wins to BC was in reference to him. Yes, it was.

Do you guys know Wes Watson? This guy did like 10 years in California penitentiaries, got out and has this incredible. He initially made some YouTube videos about like what life is like in jail, a prison. And he certainly knows. He's super bricked up. He's got all these tats. But I got to tell you, like if you really sort of, you know, distill the message, it's like this super empowering message. You know, he's got a real, you know, kind of in your face way of delivering it. That's true. And I think that's

the way he knows to motivate, but he did, you can tell an enormous amount of reflection on his life about the things that went wrong, about the things that went right to fix it and what the journey is about and about motivation and about habits as virtue, about getting right with the world, about, you know, accountability. And it's super, super motivational, man. It's great. It's a very unusual marriage of like this sort of prison sensibility of, of, of reality mixed with this self-help, but it's real and he's living proof of it. And he posts all the people who, because he has this, uh, he, he does, um, flexible dieting, which is counting macros, like your proteins, your carbs and, um, and, uh, fats. And he has this whole system around doing it and about getting up and accountability for working out, blah, blah, blah. All the people who lose weight

on his method, he posts them all on Instagram. Dude, he's an impressive guy. He's a very, very impressive guy. As I mentioned, you watch it at first, it might be a little bit jarring how kind of in your face it is, but then when you really pay attention to it, there's a whole method to it that all makes sense. He's living

proof of its success, and he's killing it on YouTube, so God bless him, right? He's living life the right way. He's got a kid. He's got a wife, and I wish him nothing but success. He's an awesome guy. All right, with that being said, subscribe, like the video, do the whole bit. Back tomorrow with an MK to get you ready for the weekend. You guys know the drill. Morningcombat at gmail.com for dead wrong. Please make sure that they are correct.

I had someone message me yesterday being like, you said Blockbuster stock was up. It was GameStock. And I literally responded to him. I'm like, please Google Blockbuster stock. It was up 700%. All I'm saying is, you know, comb through it there a little bit.

Okay, so that's for me and BC when we get stuff wrong. I don't know. Fan submissions you can put in there, morningcombat at gmail.com. And yeah, that's it. Back tomorrow, BC will be here. Thanks for watching.