MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 258 Results: Kamaru Usman vs. Gilbert Burns | Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: February 14, 2021

All of your UFC 258 results, analysis and more on this post-fight show. On the main card, Kamaru Usman defended his strap via third-round KO. In the co-main event, Alexa Grasso was able to take two rounds against Maycee Barber. Elsewhere on the fight card, Kelvin Gastelum outclassed Ian Heinisch, Ricky Simon outpointed Brian Kelleher and Julian Marquez scored a late submission win over Maki Pitolo. ---------------------------- '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

All right, all right. Hi everybody, how are you doing? It is, what time is it? It is 1.10 in the morning, East Coast time, and Sunday, February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day, you filthy animals. This is the UFC 258 post-fight show right here on the Morning Combat channel. My name is Luke Thomas. I am from CBS Sports as well as Showtime. I am one half of the hosting duo of Morning Combat.

We do that show Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11 a.m. live right here. If you are new here, please consider giving the video a thumbs up and hitting the subscribe button, trying to drive those subscriptions. So happy you're tuning in and happy to get to this. I'm assuming if you're here, you don't want spoilers, but just the same. This is your last warning. I will start spoilers after the stinger airs. And I will also tell you that, um, what else? Yeah, we'll go for about anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, probably somewhere around the 45-minute mark. Obviously, we want to save the majority of our analysis for Monday, but this is at least an instant reaction to everything that you just saw at UFC 258. Okay?

All right, with that in mind, let's get this party started, shall we? All right. And we're back. And then you can see the subscribe thing there. Okay. So we'll go over the main event. We'll go over the co-main event. And then sort of sundry other pieces therein.

If you have a question that you want to get to, you can tweet me at LThomasNews and we'll see if I can find the questions after the fact and we will take a look there. Okay. All right. Let me turn this off here. Okay. Very good. All right. So I'm assuming if you're here, you are okay with the spoilers and with that in mind, let us begin. UFC 258 took place, of course, at the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. Your main event, Kamaru Usman fought Gilbert Burns for the UFC welterweight title. Kamaru Usman wins via third round TKO at 34 seconds, in fact, into the third. I have his data as well from Fightmetric up here. I will look at that in just a second. Actually, I perused it a little bit earlier, but we'll go over that in just a second.

What are some of the big picture stuff? Man, first of all, incredible moment, I should say, for Camaro. Let me pull up this stat if we can. Where is it? Where is it? Okay, I saw, what's his face have it? It was, we'll pull it up. It was Mike Bond. But really, you know, with this moment, this is a rarefied air that Kumar Usman has put himself into. He has fighters with the most consecutive UFC victories. He has 13 now, which is the most ever in the UFC welterweight division.

You know, we're coming up on, I'm not going to say St. Pierre territory, but if you look at the history of the welterweight division, in fact, I tweeted this earlier, they tend to keep their titles longer there. They don't play as much hot potato as some other divisions. In fact, if you look at successful defenses per undisputed championship, Welterweight has more than literally every other single division except flyweight. But flyweight, of course, had Demetrius Johnson as, you know,

not their only champion, but one of two or something. Him and Figueiredo. Or no, Cejudo would be three. And so he had that long streak that's going to fudge the math a little bit. But of mature divisions, you know, it's about three. They tend to hold on to this. And so this is now part of the reign of Kamaru Usman. You're talking about one of the great welterweights now in the narrowed pack about who has done a lot as a champion.

So you're talking about Miletic, if you want to include some of the older parts of that division. You're certainly talking about Hughes, St. Pierre. I don't know if I'd put Lawler in there necessarily, but I would absolutely put Woodley in there. And now Usman is part of that conversation about the broader greats inside that welterweight division. He is simply part of that.

And for a lot of good reasons, first things first, I should say, Gilbert Burns absolutely putting it on him first. Part of what makes a champion is not just the ability to win at a high level, but what you have to do to win. And very good fighters, as the coach of someone like Kamaru Usman has pointed out, they don't really make mistakes or they're not really forced to make mistakes. And it's not exactly like Kamaru made the world's biggest mistake, but he did get caught with some of the big shots, with the fast shots from Gilbert Burns. Burns was lighting them up early.

And so now you're in a bad spot, but it's the ability to work through those moments, take your time to bleed the clock, find a way around it, and then you have to switch things up pretty quickly. For example, when Henry Cejudo was getting leg kicked to pieces by Marlon Marais, I mean, I thought, I don't know how he was walking after that fight. You remember, he just began to crowd him and force him backwards and fight inside the boxing range. And when he did that, the fight just turned. So he took a beating early and then just found a way to stop it pretty quickly thereafter. So for that grit, that initial grit

that Kamaru Usman had and the composure, the bearing through a very difficult series of moments, being hurt multiple times, especially in the opening frame, probably not expecting it, taking a second to get your adjustment and then to come out there in the opening frame, probably not expecting it, taking a second to get your adjustment, and then to come out there in the second and win it pretty convincingly, and then to go out there and just 34 seconds into the third, you know, that's a champion, folks. That's what champions do. They usually don't make mistakes, but when they get caught, you know, where they make an egregious mistake, which is even rarer, but you know, they fight, if you're a champion, you're usually going to be fighting only the very best or something pretty close to it. We could all agree

Gilbert Burns, number one contender, at least at the moment in which the fight was taking place. And you know, you get caught a little bit in one of those scenarios, one of those very good fighters, and you're able to work through that and then strategically adjust after that point. Man, that's really special stuff. That's really special stuff. And if you look at Colby Covington, he outstruck another wrestler. If you look at Jorge Masvidal, you know, not the best fight, but certainly neutralizing of a guy he wasn't especially prepared for.

He took the title from Tyron Woodley, again, one of the great welterweights of our time. And he did that with wrestling and overall dominating force. And just other guys he would beat with record amounts of... I think he's the only other fighter since Cain Velasquez in a single fight to score 100 significant strikes and 10 takedowns. Which he did against Rafael dos Anjos. I mean, just absurd levels of offense. You know, the reality about Camaro is he gets labeled like a bit of a wrestler.

And of course, that's not altogether an unfair assessment of him. I don't, you know, this is predominantly what he has done up to this point. But it is also worth acknowledging, especially you've seen it through his championship tenure, there are many dimensions to his game that do not get accounted for properly. I mean, I think that's sort of just a reality we have to kind of face at this point. And part of that is because he didn't get to show a whole lot in the Jorge Masvidal fight. But two camps in with Trevor Whitman. So let's talk about the fight itself.

How was he able to do it? As we mentioned, you can praise the early bearing that he showed under intense duress and fighting and good offense from Gilbert Burns. But the way he was tactically able to turn it around a little bit is, one, he was able to catch some of the kicks of Gilbert Burns. Two, he was landing kicks of his own. And then three, some pull counters he was able to get.

So the punch comes, he pulls, and then fire. But of course, the story of the fight as it stands today, and I'll have a chance to break it down and look at more of the detail, was the jab. And not just the jab from one hand. His power hand is his right, so he wasn't just jabbing with his left. He would switch stance and then jab with this one. And I think a big part of the reason why he's doing that is he's trying to get off at an

angle and then line himself up for a straight shot down the middle by virtue of some of that switching and then outside or inside stepping, depending on which way he's going. You can get off angle, get out of the way, keep yourself safe, and then you can step in there. And if you've switched and you've done it in a convincing number of ways or you have snuck it in there and they didn't take a mental note of it or they took a mental note and they slowed down, but whatever the case, and then you line up in that space and they're not really in tune

with what they should be doing in that moment and fired it straight down the middle and he's got power. Obviously, you can tell. It's impressive, man. It's really impressive. He doesn't exactly have the prettiest movement on the feet like a saint pierre did saint pierre had one of the best uses in the history of the jab when he broke josh koshek's face and then just jabbed him to the point where

koshek couldn't even fly home he had to get his face repaired and healed to a degree before he could even get on a plane because of the pressure that was in his face. And, you know, he had this real polished, beautiful technique. It's not like Kamaru has bad technique. Certainly that would not be the case at all, but he doesn't show, at least in some of those situations, this really like dynamic, cleaned up, super polished level of technique. It's very good, but it doesn't have the same, you know, aesthetic dynamism or something. But the reality is, is insanely effective, insanely effective to be that powerful in the way that he is. And the timing was good. Did you notice on that last one that knocked him down? He wasn't just catching him at an angle. I think he wasn't expecting, um, and certainly from

a position he wasn't expecting, but he split his timing too. That was the other part about it. It's like, dude, those are the things when you can be like, how do you know one guy is really good? Well, you put up that many wins in the way that Kamaru Usman has, and okay, you can just sort of say it, you know nothing about fighting. But the other part of it is, dude, if you're able to switch stance, and then even out of your normal stance, you can still split a guy's timing with your jab. Dude, that's very hard to do. That's very hard. Those are high level skills that only really advanced fighters can reasonably use in a contest. And to do it in a UFC title fight like that is pretty remarkable. And then I also, you know, you saw this in the Demi and Maya fight, just nowhere even trying to engage with Gilbert Burns on the ground.

He knew that was a no man's land. He didn't need it either. It was there maybe if, you know, things got really rough on the feet, but he didn't really need it. And he was able to control and burn off a lot of time off the clock by virtue of sort of holding the feet and kicking under the legs. Especially in the first round, he got away with a ton of time for that. Herb let that go for a really long time.

So that was really interesting, the way he was able to do that. But for Kamar Usman, I want to look at some of his numbers here, if I may. These come to us from Fightmetric. Let me refresh because I know that these might not be finalized as it stands. So Kamar Usman threw a total of 140, excuse me, I should say, yes, landed a total of 93 significant strikes. Burns just 55. He whiffed on three takedowns.

The takedowns though, for folks who are like, why did Burns shoot? The reality is, dude, he wasn't going to take Kamaru down unless Kamaru was like really badly hurt. But if you can level change enough and you can bring their hands down because you've established a credible threat, you can then fake like you're going for a takedown and then you can go upstairs. It's just to facilitate his stand-up. It wasn't to actually take Kamaru Usman down again, not in all likelihood. If you look at the numbers for Kamaru Usman in terms of how much he attempted in the first and second round, he was barely outstruck from an effort standpoint in the first, but he was overwhelming in the second. And more to that point, in the second round he had attempted 65 significant strikes.

Usman had only landing 39 of them. That's still a lot. But if you go back and you look at his Jorge Masvidal fight, and then you look at his overall output, he beat his overall output in this fight. That was five rounds. Here's Kamaru, by the fifth round, was only attempting 21 significant strikes. We just said in the second round, he attempted 65. So in many ways, three times the level of output in certain ways. So much better, I think, from Kamaru for the fans to get behind him in that way. And again, in terms of the target location, 67% to the head, 13% to the body,

19% to the leg. Yeah, one out of five strikes targeting the leg. That's interesting. That's a little bit higher, I think, than normal. What do you have against Colby? It was mostly a striking affair. Yeah, just 3% to the leg. He didn't want to give him anything. I guess against Gilbert, in terms of being able to get taken down, I guess against Gilbert he felt a little bit more comfortable that if this guy grabs the leg and tries to go for a takedown, I'll be just fine in the end. Seems like he didn't want to risk that against somebody like Colby,

who if he gets a hold of your leg, that could be a problem that you don't really want to invest in too much. Also, let's just sort of state this. A lot of guys at MMA don't have great jabs. It's really great to see one. And here's the part why that's so relevant. It's like, dude, how many times, I think we talked about it before, either on this program or a different morning combat.

Oh, you know, it was Volkov. I was saying on Monday's show show I really appreciate that Alexander Volkov fights tall right a tall guy that uses height and reach to his advantage rather than just being a novel factor of the fight well here you go um Usman had a five inch reach advantage on Gilbert Burns and he used it he was the he was the rangier fighter and he fought with greater command of the range. He was getting the jab off early. He was getting it off often. Part of the jab in terms of what it was doing in the disruption was not merely landing on Kumardo and that hurting. That was a big part of it too. But if I'm getting popped before I can really do anything, I got to start that process over.

And if I'm getting split between my timing, now I don't even know when it's coming. So part of it is just, yes, it hurts. The other one is Gilbert couldn't quite get right. And if you're getting your timing split and your rhythm disrupted, you might start resorting to shots that aren't set up as well. You are resorting to a hurried up kind of scatter shot offense because you don't want to wait around too long to get your face punched, your rhythm broken, and your timing split. And you saw some of that

add up a little bit in the second round as well. Here was a Kamaru that was a little bit more deliberate with the particular weapon he was choosing and it was having a tremendous effect. And I think you saw something of a, I won't say desperate, but more desperate attempts in the second round of offense, certainly compared to the first for Gilbert Burns. But it's just finally good to see, like, how do you know MMA striking is coming a long way? Guys, I can't tell you how many times years would go by. You see like a major height, and in this case, a reach differential, and it wouldn't necessarily show itself up in fights. And there's a lot of reasons why it wouldn't if they're wrestling or clinch fighting or something like that. But here it's like a guy used a jab and a five-inch reach

advantage to tear apart his opponent. That is not a typical MMA story you can tell a lot, certainly not outside the championship level. Of course, this was at the championship level. And that sounds a little obvious, you know, well, most guys should have a jab, but it doesn't work that way. This is how far MMA striking has to come. And this is kind of novel for him in the way that he's able to do that. But for me, I mean, to look at his resume, you know, is ridiculous. This guy with now striking and wrestling, and he can do both because he's done it in the Covington and now the Burns fight, and then wrestling in the Masvidal and then the Woodley fight.

But to be looking at his name of dudes he's run through, Haider Hassan, that was from Ultimate Fighter, Leon Edwards in his second fight, he blanked him. Yakovlev was sort of this wiry guy he gave too much trouble to. Varley Alves, Sean Strickland, Sergio Maraisch, Emil Mech, who's another built-like-a-brick-shit-house guy. He got nothing going. Demian Maia, Rafael dos Anjos, Tyron Woodley, Colby Compton, Jorge Masvidal, and Gilbert Burns. This dude is cleaning out this fucking division, man. Not totally, but he's pretty

goddamn close. There's a couple of rematches maybe in order, but, um, you know, maybe the Edwards fight would go different a second time or something or better for Leon than it did the first time. I don't know whatever you want to say, but dude, that is impressive. And you've never lost in the UFC and you've been fighting there since 2015. Shit. You know, you could hear Kumaru's voice too. He was quite angry with the whole thing. He felt like people needed to put some respect on his name. Yeah, certainly I think as a guy who is deserving, to what extent is there a gap between how good someone is and how much they're appreciated during their era and their run? There's a gap here. There's a gap here. To some extent, understandable because he's always had a bit of a weird interaction with the audience. And of course,

he's had a couple of performances that were understandable, I think, to anyone who is a connoisseur of fighting. But to the overwhelming amount of casuals, it's not considered all that fun. And listen, I'm not going to sit here and say I had a joyous, amazing time watching the Jorge Masvidal fight either, but you can sort of understand when these guys are in desperate situations, they're going to respond to the incentives and the incentives at that point are win at all costs. So to me, the story of this fight is Burns' speed, I think is still going to give guys problems in this division. I think that Kumaru showing the bearing that he did is going to be pretty special.

Still, 18 fights into his career, at least inside the UFC, never been taken down. Got rocked here and was able to work through it, discover what worked best for him, and then simply apply it over and over and over again. This is the lesson I always try to tell folks about fights. If you go and watch any of my technical difficulties or previously dissected, or even previous to that Monday morning analyst, what you begin to see in fights is what works is what you can repeat as a pattern over time. Not always. There are obviously going to be exceptions to that rule, but here's a general rule that I find over and over again. I will show reasons for why somebody won,

and you'll watch them kind of slowly begin to apply it in the first, let's say it goes five rounds or something, and more of it in the second, and then by the third, they're usually hitting their stride, and then the fourth and the fifth are kind of academic. That's really, that's the truth of fighting is that somebody finds one or two things or some kind of combination of things that work really well and they just go back to it over and over and over and over and over again.

And with a jab from either stance, finding an angle, getting in the line that he needed to, getting out of the way, using that to dictate range with a five inch reach advantage and big power behind it. Dude, it's amazing. It's a simple weapon, the jab, using that to dictate range with a five inch reach advantage and big power behind it. Dude, it's amazing. It's a simple weapon, the jab, right? You're just pumping it out, but it's not simple. There's so much to it, how you throw it, with what intensity, with what stance in MMA, from what distance, for what purposes. And what was interesting about this jab is the jab did have strikes that came behind it. Jab know, jab cross, jab overhand. There was some of that. But some of the more memorable punches that dropped Burns were just the jab.

There was no two behind the one. It was just one. Bop. Isn't that wild? There was no follow-up. It didn't need to be. The jab was doing not just the setup work. It was doing the finishing work in many ways as well.

That is a pretty remarkable punch. That's a remarkable punch for a guy like that to have, given what we traditionally know about his skill set being largely wrestling-based. And that was the other part about it, too, that I was saying before the fight. BJJ Scout had made a really good point. If you look at the tactics for wrestling along the fence it's not a very well-developed side of the game there's some development of it particularly on the on the defensive side but there's not like there's not much done in the way of innovation there from best practices and Kumaro has a whole system there. He has decided like,

this is an underdeveloped portion of the game. So I'm just going to develop a whole system. And so there's this gap that's created by virtue of where he is putting his technical investments and innovations and where everyone else is. Which isn't to say it's wrong to do those other things. There's probably a good reason to it.

But if you can take advantage of where people aren't investing as much knowledge and attention and time, and you can use that to strong effect, you're going to have a pretty significant advantage. And you usually see that. He didn't even need that here. A little bit of wrestling in the open space. I was surprised, by the way, that Burns was able to back him up as early as he did. I thought, you know, two ways you see Gilbert Burns losing. If he's physically pressed against the fence or he's

constantly backing up. He can back up a little bit, but if you're constantly backing up, that would be a problem. And at first, dude, that was not what was happening at all. But even then, man, Kamaru didn't have to really use the fence this fight to get what he wanted. That is sort of scary. It's like he's got an open space game, and he's got a whole different game along the fence line. He's got a little bit of an ability to blend the two, I think it's fair to say. But you can't really argue that the fence played a dramatic role here in how Kamaru

was able to win. And that's really not true for the vast majority of his other fights. So even at, was he 33? When was he born? Yeah, about 33 or so. Even with that, even with that, he is, you know, still learning. Interesting here. His strikes landed per minute 4.5, which is high.

Strikes absorbed 2.23, nearly half. Takedown defense 100%. Striking accuracy 53, which is about right. Takedown accuracy 47%, which is about right. Takedown average per 15 minutes 3.38. He didn't even attempt one, or did he? He didn't get any, certainly. No, didn't even attempt a takedown here.

Wild, man. That's a guy who is good for nearly four takedowns every 15 minutes, and in 11, he didn't even attempt a single one, and he still won via stoppage. Shit. That's a good fighter. That's a very good fighter. I don't know what to tell you, man.

That dude can fight. That is a talent. Jesus Christ. All right, we'll come back to that here in a little bit. That's wild. That's wild. All right, let's see what else we got here. Your co-main event, Alexa Grasso defeating Macy Barber, 29-28 across the board, which I thought was the correct scorecard. That's an interesting one, that one. I thought that...

I thought that Macy Barber had a winnable fight here. They were talking about the odds being interesting that it was in Grasso's favor, but I didn't necessarily... First of all, the odds were not tremendously in Grasso's favor. She was a very moderate favorite,

and you can understand why. I mean, to bet on Barbara, I think, especially given that she was an underdog, I thought that might have been an interesting bet. Just in terms of odds, not up or down who wins or loses necessarily. Like, is it worth taking a risk on someone who is an underdog given what they were up against? You know, you knew that Grasso was a couple of things. A much more known

commodity than Barber. Part of the issue with Barber is we just didn't know as much about her game as we should have. And then the other part is Grasso's got a great jab and distance command and has very good known takedown defense. Well, you saw all of that here. And then she added some wrinkles that when it did go to the ground, she had significant transition abilities that included holding on to submissions through different positions. You know, that's good stuff. That's really, really good stuff that she can do that. The interesting part to me was here was Barber's basic challenge that she was trying to solve for.

She was trying to set up a different angle to find her way into an entry, a different kind of set up, a different look. And she was really far apart. And then when she would try to get closer and then faint or create some kind of a reaction, right, to get Grasso thinking one thing and then you do the other, that's what all high level fighters do for the most part, she was not convincing. Like, fainting is a talent, right? It's a separate skill.

People are not just equally good at fainting just because you put the effort into it and it should be known some people are better at reading these kinds of things than others so it's a big dance that's going on here but whatever the case she just couldn't that she couldn't navigate that position she could not she make sense of that, really, at all. She would get close and do a little bit of the movement, and you would watch Grasso just wait. I'm not waiting on any of this other extraneous movement. I'm just going to wait on what really actually matters, whether she was looking for a shoulder or a foot or something.

Who knows? And then she was constantly just timing her. The only way that Barbarabara was able to get around that it turns out was like really just kind of playing hurry up rush you offense where grasso doesn't have time to make reads and doesn't have time to the kind of thing that like kamaru was almost putting burns through towards the end where grasso just has to react and when you saw that and and also like you know I think Macy is physically strong and she was able to like do a lot of muscling around in the clinch you know making a fight just kind of like a a a you know almost like a workout

but like a really you know brutal one where you're constantly having to fight someone off of you and and they're in your face and blah, blah, blah. That seems to be like a very good, like that seemed to be like a potentially winning strategy for Barbara. But the problem is she didn't do it till like the last half of the last round. At that point, Grasso had already done all the great things we had seen from her. She's two and oh now at flyweight,

certainly a much better place for her than, um, than straw. And so Barbara just came up short. So it it was a decent nice sprint at the end needed a whole lot more of that um but it was interesting it was like you're too far away to land grasso knows it and by the time you get close and you're doing whatever you're doing to uh misdirect, it didn't misdirect her. She could read through it. And so you were in a position where you might be able to dive in and land a big shot, but chances are they're going to land one on you first, or you're going to get

pieced up in the interim and you're going to have a hard time and get increasingly nervous about making that distance closing. There's risks playing a game where you're constantly on top of them. You can get finished because you're being overcommitted. Look at what Edgar did. He barely overcommitted, and someone like Sanhagen could just jump through the air and catch him with an up knee. There's risks associated, but you already lost two rounds. I mean, that was like the first 30 seconds with Edgar.

You've lost two rounds. You're, that was like the first 30 seconds with Edgar. You've lost two rounds. You're probably going to be losing that third round, maybe, if you don't do something drastic. And then trying to do that was, I thought, you know, better late than never and probably should have been employed a little bit earlier. By the way, I'm getting a note here from one of the gentlemen at Fightmetric who's telling me not to worry too much about the Oosman's leg kick count.

Some of those are going to be leg kicks that he scored when Burns was on his back. So it's not exactly like, you know, targeting the dude in that similar kind of a way. Looking at the numbers here, Barber's in a tough spot, man. Two in a row here. And it was a hard, by the way, it should also be noted, that's a really hard fight to come back to from a layoff. You know, they didn't give her a tuned up fight by any stretch of the imagination, which, you know, okay, I get it. UFC doesn't do, it's hardly a new practice from them. But at the same time, it's like, Jesus, you know, this was not an easy fight at all for her, given that kind of a layoff

and that significant an injury that required that level of physical rehabilitation. So, something to keep in mind there. All right, let's see some more on these results here, and I'll come back. I don't have a whole lot to say about it. Kelvin Gastelum and Ian Hynish. Gastelum wins unanimous decision, 30-27, 2-29, 28s. Hynish showing some technical improvement. The real issue here was Gastelum is superior technically. Hynish much more of a motor. And so can you employ that motor in such a way to make up that difference

that exists in the technical gap? And he was not, at least not enough. Anyway, I thought he did show improvement and Gastelum got back in the win column. Not the kind of win, if you're Gastelum, that's going to tell the world that you're ready for a, you know, to be considered one of the very best in that division, but an important win, tough fought and hard fought win.

And Hyannis showed improvement, but everyone kind of is what we thought they were from before the fight. This didn't really change a whole lot. Ricky Simone defeating Brian Kelleher, unanimous decision across the board. He's simply too much. Kelleher couldn't really fight off the takedown. He was constantly trying to go for the guillotine. It didn't really work, and I thought that on the feet,

against the fence or even in open space, he was just a little too quick. Julian Marquez defeating Maki Ptolo, nearly lost that one. And found a way to come back and get it with going from a guillotine and switching as he rolled through to an anaconda, which is the technical switch there. When they go belly down like that, the guillotine no longer works. You switch the grip and then go for the anaconda, which is what he did, and he got it. Julian Marquez, out for a long time. Another guy wasn't getting much of a tune-up fight, but found a way to gut it out. He showed the exact same resiliency when he fought Phil Hawes

during Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender series. He was getting beat up. Now, Phil Hawes is a very different fighter than Maki Patola, although in this fight, much more wrestling from him, but Hawes was all over the guy, and he just waited and waited, and eventually Hawes faded, and then you saw Marquez do what he did. He's got tenacity, that guy, and he doesn't fade easy. How about on the prelim card, man, Adolfo Vieira getting subbed? I wrote this, man. I don't think people realize how big a deal this is.

There's been a couple of times where guys who were good on the ground submitted people who were much better than them. The biggest one I can think of before this would be when Mac Danzig submitted Mark Bocek. Mark Bocek, at the time, one of the very best grapplers out of Canada. High-level black belt with some high-level medals to his name. And he, you know, Matt Danzig, I think, was a black belt, but in terms of pure jiu-jitsu, not in the same ballpark.

But he got pieced up on the feet, and, you know, Danzig, good enough to take his back, certainly, and choked him out. I remember saying, like, there's no way Matt Danzig can sub Mark Bochek. Okay, not with pure jiu-jitsu for pure jiu-jitsu, but for MMA, yeah, actually, he totally can. So this one shouldn't surprise you. I mean, another one, I don't think he submitted him, did he? But Alan Belcher sort of undoing all the leg lock attempts of Husma Parhares.

Parhares is another one. But this is a big deal because if you look at other black belt world champions, and many of these guys don't even have their, and as good as they were in jiu-jitsu, many of them don't have the resume that Adolfo does in jiu-jitsu. But if you look at like Jacare or Fabricio Verdum or Demian Maia or Hadja Gracie, right? That's the kind of level we're talking about here. Multiple time, you know, in and out of the gi, world champions at the black belt level, like the no bullshit kind, right? So you want it in the gi, you want it outside of the gi, and you probably did it multiple times. None of those

guys have ever been submitted in an MMA fight. Not one of them. To get a submission like that, if you're Anthony Hernandez, is a huge deal. Huge deal. Those guys don't quit very easily. You know, he was breathing hard after the first round. You know, Dana Cormier saying it's about his muscles. I mean, I'm sure that plays a role, you know, but like, wow, man, that was, I thought, and by the way, Vieira put it on him earlier. Dude, let me explain something to you about Mount. If somebody has Mount on you and both of your arms are wrapped, so their arms are behind yours, right? They're wrapping you up. Someone has mount and they've got your arms

wrapped and you can't move. I can't think of anything more big brother other than the submission itself. And of course there's a big gap between that, but in pure jujitsu, I mean, in general, like in pure jujitsu terms, if someone mounts you and wraps up both of your arms so that they're on the opposite sides of your body, dude, there is a wide disparity in skill, a wide, wide disparity. You have passed their legs, which is a line of defense for them and a big line of defense at that. You got past both of them. You now have a dominant hip position. Yours are on top of theirs. In the case of Vieira, I think he was even grapevining them. And then on top of that, you have taken their other arms and you have scooped them up and then controlled them

so that they're tightly in front of the other person. Dude, I mean, wow. For him to go from that position to ultimately same side, Pat Coran, Shabalat Shumalaya style guillotine is remarkable. It's super, super remarkable. That's a huge win for Anthony Hernandez. Can't overstate that enough. It wasn't just like he landed a lucky shot. It wasn't like there was some kind of injury or that there was a quick interference with the referee. Dude, this fight went to another round.

And in the first round, Vieira had the most dominant of dominant positions, basically, that you could have. You could make a case that maybe it's more dominant if the person has chair sit behind you and rather than their arms holding your arms their body is behind the back of one of your arms so you can't put it back to the mat and then they'll control that for the arm bar right that's what they extend you can make a case if they've chair sit up that high then okay that is more dominant but you're splitting hairs at that point that is a may he had him dead to rights and somehow anthony hernandez fought out of it found a way to get on the good side of things gassed this guy and then gave a taste of his own medicine wow man that is a huge huge wins world

champion level black belts like this they They don't tap very easily. And he got one. Pretty impressive. Bilal Muhammad defeating Diego Lima. Pollyanna Viana defeating Mallory Martin. She got an armbar. Chris Gutierrez up at 140 pounds defeating Andre Ewell. And then in the opener, Gabe Green defeating Phil Rowe. If you've got questions for me at LThomasNews, I will take them.

Let me see what we've got here. Did you guys like that new camera? I didn't mind it. I don't think it was 8K. It was weird. It was a little bit overexposed because you could tell if their back was kind of sweaty, it would wash out with the light. So the exposure was a little weird. I it because it gave you a depth of field you know what if the background was kind of blurry a little bit the problem was the lens you could tell had a hard time focusing whether it was manual I think it was auto but the the lens would be blurry for a while and then it would see see I got the Sony though like the Sony is look how fast that autofocus is. Boom. And it keeps it, right? I mean,

that's really, that's super, really good autofocus. They didn't have that. Whatever they were using, it just wasn't as responsive. So it's cool the way they used it. I think there's going to be some more ways to play with that. But for the first time, I thought it was fun. Yeah. So it says, can you discuss the genius move of Usman kicking Burns his legs for so long so he could recover from the shot? Totally. Totally. That was brilliant, man. Where he held onto the ankle and then kicked underneath. And dude, those kicks hurt. And not just that, he could come and spiral over the top. Remember for a shot to the gut without committing himself knee to the ground, he could rainbow over the top, land a hard body shot and be right back out again

by virtue of some of that control as well. That was really nice work from Kamaru. It kept Herb Dean at bay. Burns was happy to welcome him down there, but he couldn't really force him to go down there. And Kamaru could land meaningful enough offense while biding his time to clear his head or whatever. Really, really smart. Understanding the rules, understanding the moment, and understanding what the opponent will or won't do based on a series of circumstances. That was really, really good. Do you feel as though Usman is turning a corner with his popularity amongst the MMA community?

UFC is seeming to get behind him more and more after fights like this, and Colby fans can do so as well. A little bit, right? I mean, nothing matters more than just winning. Amanda Nunes did not get really all that popular despite beating Misha Tate, despite beating Ronda Rousey. She didn't get the bump you thought that she might get. You see Poirier for a week, or at least, or even more, was everywhere after beating McGregor, right? He was on Hot Ones and blah, blah, blah, did a million interviews.

There was some of that for Amanda Nunes, but not as much as you might imagine. But just the accumulation. You throw in Holly Holm and you throw in Duran Dami and you throw in Cyborg, and the resume just becomes so overwhelming. That would grow your brand. And by the way, her fights are exciting too for the most part, right? I mean, not in totality, but what do you want to say?

Amanda Nunes is a boring fighter. She had some boring fights, but you know, let he who is among those without sin cast the first stone. So I think as long as he's dominating and as long as he's out there, you know, continuing to put forth impressive efforts and continuing to win like this, again, dude, Gilbert Burns was a real number one contender.

No bullshit about it. And if you look at the rankings, let's pull them up here very close, and we'll see, Walter, where things stand. This is before the fight, so these will obviously going to have to be amended to some degree after. Would Kamaru still be your champ? Number one was Gilbert Burns. Okay. Kamaru stopped him.

Number two, Colby Covington. Kamaru stopped him. Number three, Leon Edwards. Kamaru beat him. Number four, Jorge Masvidal. Kamaru beat him. You have Wonderboy out there sitting at five. Kiesa's at six.

Woodley, who Kamaru beat, is at seven. De. Woodley, who Kamaru beat, is at seven. Debian Maia, who Kamaru beat, is at eight. Magni and Luque are sitting at nine and ten. So really the only guys he hasn't beaten in the top ten are Luque and Magni, who are pretty far away from a title shot at this point, and Wonderboy, who is close by virtue of default. Like, Kamaru's beaten all those other guys,

so he hasn't beaten Wonderboy yet. That could be an interesting one. Although I suspect he'd find a way to get Wonderboy down, and that would be it. But, you know, we'd have to see. But he has beaten a lot of different kinds of fighters. Jorge Masvidal can do it all, granted with short notice, but he was fairly limited against Kamaru.

Leon Edwards, sort of a half-position guy that's got new meta, wasn't able to do much at the time anyway. Colby Covington, a wrestler, couldn't get a takedown off on him. Gilbert Burns, super well-rounded, brilliant jiu-jitsu. Kamaru stopped him inside of three. Yeah, man, like you just keep doing this. What are they going to say, man? You have wiped out the top four. Matter say man you've you have wiped out the top four matter matter of factly you have wiped out the top four you have to go to the fifth guy

who is good um and may get a title shot sort of but you have to go that far to find someone he hasn't even just wiped the floor with yet dude that is that is crazy. That is crazy. If he wanted to, well, there's too many fights because it's Thompson and Chiesa and Magny and Luque. I would say in one year, he could wipe out the rest of that division. He may not be able to do that, but he can, with two more fights this year, he could wipe out number five and number six, leaving just the only people he hasn't fought in that division, nine and ten. I mean, you know, at that point you have really just done the most amazing work. To me, it seems quite obvious that Kamaru could dominate GSP even in his prime. GSP is still going to be viewed widely as the welterweight goat. To me, this shows just how quickly MMA is

evolving. Am I off on this? And How competitive a fight do you think it would be between them? We're talking about prime GSP or something? I mean, now, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, these debates are hard to have because the record of achievement that George St. Pierre has is extraordinary. And you have to understand something about George.

His skill set was very much ahead of his time. So he was doing things at the time he was doing it in ways, in the totality and the depth of his skill, that really nobody else was. Certainly not in the way that he was. So there's that. That means I still think at a bare minimum he'd be very competitive with Kumaru.

He had dogged takedown ability. He could chain wrestle. He had good cardio. He was naturally strong as shit. He had dogged takedown ability. He could chain wrestle. He had good cardio. He's naturally strong as shit. He had an amazing jab as well. He had fantastic footwork. I think that, you know, if you had to ask me what's one really big difference between them, the footwork of someone like George, he could go to boxing footwork where he's cutting a lot of angles with short movements. He can do the karate style a little bit. Remember, he was a Shotokan, I think it was Shotokan karate. He was a black belt. So he could play some of those levels as well.

But I also feel like you're right, dude. MMA, I mean, why is Kamaru, for the most part, getting an edge on his contemporaries, people who are now competing today? I mentioned before, it's this sort of system of fence wrestling that is underdeveloped from a technical exploration standpoint. He's explored it and he's just ahead of the game. And then on the feet, he's just a hard guy to deal with because he's got a great command of range. He's heavy handed. He's merciless, has an incredible motor. I'll tell you what it would be if Kamaru won it would be not the least bit surprising if Kamaru finished him

it wouldn't be surprising but at the same time I don't think it would be altogether crazy to say St. Pierre could hold his own especially prime St. Pierre the one who beat Fitch or something even that wasn't necessarily prime St. Pierre, but something like

that for sure. Considering Usman's performance tonight, how do you think a fight between him and Habib would play out? Asking this since it was a hot hypothetical fight in the past. Did Khabib's striking improve as much as Usman's considering he knocked down such a proficient striker as Conor? Certainly, I think Khabib would have a speed advantage. And as you saw tonight, that's not nothing. That gave Usman some problems early. But dude, Usman is huge for that weight class. I think he could match the intensity of Khabib.

And I think he could shut him down, to be quite honest with you. I just feel like the size difference. I think Khabib would be quicker. I think he'd be a better scrambler. And I think he'd be lighter on his feet. But I just feel like it wouldn't be enough of a difference to overcome all of the other advantages that Kamaru has. Yeah, I do think Kamaru would win. I think we have to kind of give

Kamaru that respect. He's something special out there, for sure. Someone says Burns' chin is very suspect. He couldn't take the shots that all of Usman's previous opposition could, aside from Colby, but that was five rounds. Or he's just gotten that much better under Trevor. Maybe. Maybe he had a bad weight cut. Could also be that, you know, I think we're underrating Kamaru's power a little bit. I think, again, if it's splitting your timing, you're not even bracing for it. And it just crashes into you.

There could be a lot of ways where it's not just about Burns' chin being trashed that could help explain some of the ways in which he felt it. And by the way, you know, he rocked Kamaru's shit too. Usman's striking has grown quite a bit, this person writes, so has his confidence and therefore his natural power. Yeah, that's a good point.

The more comfortable he gets, the more knockouts he'll get. He's long, rangy, and powerful, not to mention sniper accurate. Yeah. All too true. Some funny tweets. To state how unlikely that finish was, what is the mainstream sports comparison to seeing Vieira being submitted like that?

Man, that is... Mainstream sport? I don't know. Something like... something like, I mean, this is not fair, but it's like LeVar Ball actually beating Michael Jordan at a one-on-one. I mean, it's not quite right, obviously. That's not quite fair to, not fair at all to Anthony Hernandez. But I'm just trying to imagine somebody, I mean, the levels between them in that one sport is beyond description. And then, you know, the guy

refuses to make it about being in that sport and fights another way and then comes back. And then after being in a horrible position, a really, really big brother position and still got it done and still did the damn thing. Very, very impressive. Very impressive. All right, let me see if there's anything else worth here answering. Put this up here. Subscribe. That'd be great if you did that. Thank you very much. Thank you kindly. Who do you see Burns fight next? I don't know. Maybe Wonderboy? Maybe they give Wonderboy the title shot?

I wonder what this might do to the UFC's plan for Colby and Jorge. Do they want to still make that fight, considering Usman might need contenders, or they just really want to build the ultimate fighter around that, because then those guys have to fight, but then you're eliminating a contender? That'll be fun to see how they play that game. That'll be interesting. That's a curious one.

Either he has to get a rematch from somebody he's already wiped, which includes Leon Edwards, which which you could do but he hasn't fought in forever you could do wonder boy if you're talking about usman i understand here but the question was about burns but i'm just trying to think because burns would be somewhere like a burns kiesa you know you could do that burn you could do burns um wonder boy or burns kiesa so that's who's sitting at five and six is Wonderboy then Kiesa. So you could do that. That would be a thing you could try for.

And then see how it goes from there. But then again, if you go with the route of Wonderboy, who the fuck is Usman gonna fight? Again, unless you just gave it to Leon, but Leon hasn't fought in forever. So it's a real sort of weird moment here where, dude, Usman just keeps beating these guys. You know, and there's not enough in rotation working their way to the front of that division.

That's why I like what Michael Kies is doing is so important because here comes somebody like pushing through the division. They need that. They need someone to give, they got to feed this beast, Kamaru, and they got to see what's going to happen with him. So all these guys at the top kind of haven't had enough rotation to create some fresh contenders. That's wild, man. Someone says about the fans getting behind Usman, definitely something to be said for fans eventually having to accept, however begrudginglyly your skill set if you just keep dominating the competition it's the same with with uh mighty mouse you know for the longest time does he draw does he not draw do people care blah blah blah and then at some point dude you're starting to stack so many w's you know it doesn't change

necessarily turning into the world's most popular figure overnight, but there are just, it has just this way of silently kind of killing off a lot of the undertow of questioning. It just kind of removes it. It just goes away. It doesn't mean, it doesn't necessarily translate into like adoration. And I think that's what Kamaru is kind of lacking a little bit is he's getting, he went went from dislike to begrudging respect. And then the next level I think is adoration. How you get to there, I don't know. But in terms of silencing doubters, I'm not sure what more the guy could do to get people to understand how fucking good he is. He is a talent.

A legitimate one. Okay. is. He is a talent. A legitimate one. Um, okay. Let's see here. Someone says Herb Dean's been slipping lately. He looked like he was fainting the stoppage. I didn't mind the stoppage in this one. He got close and then pulled back, but not too invasively like he did previously.

I don't see this one as... I know what you mean. It wasn't as clean as it could have been. That's fine. That's true. But, you know, we should really go after these referees when we have a really strong reason to do that. This, to me, would not be a strong reason. Is Usman the biggest welterweight in the division's history?

He's been taller and more muscle-bound than everyone he's fought. He's up there with one of the bigger welterweights. How big, precisely, I don't know. There would have to be a measurement of how big they got by the time they were actually in the octagon. We'd be able to review that. But certainly, he's one of the bigger ones. I thought Dana said it's Colby versus Leon 2 days ago. It's probably Wonderboy next for Usman.

I mean, Dana says lots of things, y'all. Here's my advice to you on things Dana White says. Wait for someone else to verify it. I'm not telling you what he says is wrong, but you're talking about a guy who... Oh, I should say, I'm not telling you what he says is always wrong, but you're talking about a guy where 50% of it is just not accurate and a guy who has formerly lied on the record. And then when challenged about it, it was like, who cares? No big deal. So will they make Colby Leon too?

Maybe. Maybe. But they still have to figure out what they're going to do with the welterweight season they want, or maybe that's the one that they'll make. And then Jorge Masvidal will do what? He needs to fight again too, so who's he going to fight? Nate Diaz maybe? I don't know how any of this is going to work.

But some of these slots have to get filled. And Kamaru, even then, you could do Colby Leon too. Winner of that would get Kamaru. And I guess he could wait for that. Maybe. Okay. I think that is enough. I said we were going to go about 30 minutes to an hour, around an hour or so, but there is plenty more to come your way. On my personal channel,

I'll have a breakdown of some of the fights from today. And then Monday, 11 a.m., 11 a.m. in the east, Morning Combat. It'll be me, it'll be Brian Campbell, it'll be all of you folks, and we will talk about all of the big action and all of the big results. If you're new here, please thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. We always appreciate that when you do. And until next time, thank you guys so much for watching.