MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 259 Recap: Blachowicz Upsets Adesanya, Nunes Dominate, Yan vs Sterling | Ep. 127

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Morning Kombat is back in a big way. The boys are LIVE from the bunker to break down all that happened at a crazy UFC 259 event. Jan Blachowicz handed Israel Adesanya his first loss and defended his light heavyweight title. What does this mean for Adesanya's legacy and how impressive is Blachowicz? In the co-main, women's featherweight champion Amanda Nunes dominated Megan Anderson cementing her GOAT status. Plus, bantamweight champion Petyr Yan lost his belt to Aljamain Sterling after a being disqualified in round 4 due to an illegal knee to the face of Sterling. What to make of this crazy ending?  --------------------------- '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

You hear that? Ugh, paid. And done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month.

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

This is Morning Combat. It is Monday, the 8th of March 2021, and it is time, diggity donks, for Morning Combat. Look at us, BC, all growns up and back in studio. This is what we used to do before that thing happened, right? It is a thing that once existed. I have to constantly remind myself. But we're going to relive it here today. We are live in studio, of course, for the entirety of today's programming. Thank you so much for joining us.

My name is Luke Thomas. That's Brian Campbell. We are both from CBS Sports as well as the occasional Showtime event. And we're happy to be here. We're excited. Big show today. We're going to recap UFC 259 and a whole lot more. BC, are you hashtag fired up?

I will be. The more caffeine that I intake, I'll get there. But you didn't open with, you know, the Jeffrey to my Galane. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. Are you?

That's hilarious. No, I didn't do it. The Q to my Anon, the peanut butter to my jelly, you know, obviously, Brian. Yeah, yeah. The crown to my shaft. All right, enough of that. Let's keep that going, you know? It didn't take you long to make it weird.

About 28 seconds, but it's a pretty good record. All right, so this program, of course, is brought to you by Showtime. If you'd like to try it, I certainly would encourage you to do so. You can go to Showtime.com. 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can go pound sand. Yeah, and we are not just shills here for Showtime,

although we're more than happy to play that role. Yeah, the checks are nice. Look, April 2nd is a new era Bellator MMA on Showtime. End of the featherweight tournament. Kickoff of the light heavyweight tournament. You've got to see it, Luke, and there's only one place to see it, so why not? Showtime.

And if you do it now, I believe the first six months will be $4.99 a month for the entirety of the Showtime experience. I mean, you want Romero and Rumble? All right, come to Showtime. All right? All right? That's right. You want producers dancing in the videos?

Stay with the Canadians, all right? Yeah. Okay, you're feisty this morning. Okay, feisty. I see that. If you want to get some MK merch, you can go to store.show.com. Brian and I are obviously forward-thinking, and none of us wore any MK merch here today.

This is great. But we swear it's good. It fits really good, yeah. And that's it. So where did you watch 259? Were you at home? I was. So when I went away to Puerto Rico, I came back.

My wife had redone my office. Did you go to Puerto Rico? You didn't tell anyone. Yeah. My wife had redone my basement office, which is normally just a filth hole of all things me. She cleared it out, moved some things around, and I got a TV in there. It's great. I watch the fights there.

Now, wait. She put a TV in there. Is that a subtle way to tell you to go get lost? Yeah, I mean, the family's slowly phasing me out. I have my own room now, so it's, you know. You're becoming the new person in Parasite who takes over the basement. Okay. All right. Well, let's get this party started. A lot to get to.

Your questions, have you seen this shit and everything? But we start BC, as we always do, with our top five topics. Let's go to topic number one, if we can. We start with the main event at UFC 259. And lo and behold, the little train that could keeps on chugging. Jan Blachowicz defeats Israel Adesanya. Not some beating, close fight, but in the end, the right guy won. It was not a controversial call, really at all, except maybe for some of the scoring, which we'll talk about in just a second,

but the right guy absolutely won. BC, I did the post-fight show here for Morning Combat. Thank you to everyone who saw, but let's go to you without further ado. Your biggest takeaway from Jan Blachowicz being a pretty considerable underdog and beating the then undefeated guy trying to become champ champ, Israa Dasani. What do you make of it? I want to make this about Jan. My biggest takeaway should be about Jan because, look, he's better than we thought he was. What was he, the underdog in 10 of his last 12 UFC fights?

Yet he's having almost a steep amyotis-like run here where people, me, are counting him out and he's coming out there and he's winning it in such mature championship veteran fashion even though this was his first title defense. He showed adaptability. He showed toughness and grit. He showed everything you would need for a guy who's anything but a transitional champion,

which is what I sort of labeled him the potential to be in the aftermath of Jon Jones vacating his title and opening the door here for somebody like Adesanya to be opportunistic. So I don't want to bury that lead because it is about Jan surprising us. But what's my biggest takeaway? It's that Adesanya's human. He's not superhuman after all. He's fantastic.

He's one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world right now. He's certainly the best middleweight, but Luke, we have to slow our roll on the idea that he's going to now take over the light heavyweight and the heavyweight division and beat Jon Jones in a battle of goat versus goat. He dared to be great, and let's

give Izzy the full credit to do that. But I think the biggest takeaway for me was... And it wasn't a blowout. It was not a blowout. A competitive fight in many ways. I had it even going into that last round. So that shows you that in a lot of ways it was up for grabs in the way a lot of us were thinking. Yet, you know, the wrestling wasn't there. He succumbed to a bigger man in a lot of ways. And I don't think he was as quick or powerful, meaning Izzy, as we thought he would be against Jan.

And at the end of the day, Jan deserves the credit. He's going to have the championship. He's going to keep going. I am a Jan super fan from the last few fights, seeing what he's done. But it's not wrong that we were seduced into thinking Adesanya might be that dude. Luke, this does not mean he's not a dude, that there's not dude, where's my car, that there's not something dude stuck to him. But he's not that dude. He's not that dude that regardless of weight is going to walk in there and win the light heavyweight and heavyweight championship. And that's not giving me less sleep at night.

But that is my biggest takeaway. We stretched our belief in what was possible here because of what he did in three years, that 9-0 run. That got a little bit humbled in the end because Jan made the perfect adjustments, was the bigger man, established that jab, did so many key things to win that fight. It was a little surprising. I talked myself into the belief that, you know,

I got a lot of hot knife through butter tweets at me. Oh, did you? In a very, you know, but, you know, I think it was not incorrect to believe that was a possible scenario. All right, so there's a lot to unpack from what you just said. Let's be fair to the person who really deserves to get, By the way, it says Luke underneath the mug. I didn't

realize that. Yeah, it says Campbell misspelled under your mug. You want to change mugs and just be super weird about it? I try not to exchange fluids with you at all. All right, so let's talk about Jan Blachowicz first. Let's really be fair about this. I like what you said about the Stipe Miocik comparison. What do you think about this one? It's a little Stipe Miocik, although it doesn't quite feel right. I said on Saturday night, he was a little Michael Bisping-ish, where this last chapter, again, I'm not saying he's done, but you know, he's 38. How much longer can he really keep this up? I think it's reasonable to conclude by 40. It may not be quite as good as it is right now. So this chapter that he's in, which is last-ish, was really his most glorious

one, where Michael Bisping got revenge over Dan Henderson and beat Luke Rockhold and blah, blah, blah. It's sort of a mix between that Bisping and a little bit about Stipe growing into it, because I think you're right. He's not really a transitional figure in the way that we had imagined him to be. Dude, how... I cannot overstate this. I made this point on the Post-Fight Show. I'd love to know what you make about this. When he had a series of wins, he had two stoppages, one over Devin Clark, then he had two decision wins, and then he had a stoppage win over Nikita Krylov. Those were nice wins, but those were definitely outside the major contendership at light heavyweight.

Then he loses to Tiago Santos. I believe that was in February of 2019, somewhere around there. Don't dead-roll me if I'm super off on that. Who was the person, okay, who in, let's say, March or April of that year, who was the person a few months later that was saying, Jan Blachowicz is the future of this division? I think it was only some tiny little rope that a guy suffocated on and died before. This is what I'm saying, because it was...

That's the only thing that was telling us. Dude, that was... Because it was after that he beats Rockhold and then goes on this stretch that he's on now, where, what is he doing? Dude, his decision-making is so much better. I went back and I re-watched this fight. He's patient. How about five-round cardio?

He looked like he was gassed to open round five. I'm like, Izzy's got an opening here to put this fight away. And there's Jan getting the takedown and ground and pounding to the end. Yeah, totally. Look, for a guy in his first title defense, that was a veteran championship performance out of blow. And also, here's what I also take from it. To me, the way Blachowicz fought, he learned from the Romero fight,

if you slow things down with Adesanya and don't try to have crazy exchanges, really wait for him to forward commit, and then you would see Blachowicz have a couple of punches he would counter with, or he would press all the way back into him and get Adesanya to kind of just retreat covering up. He waited until he could get Adesanya the most vulnerable. And that meant there were times where Adesanya was leg kicking and leg kicking and moving into his, but he took his time. He realized you can do what Romero did in slowing down.

But this to me proves Romero should not have won and should not have considered to be winning. This was the Romero game plan with offense. Yes. That's what this was. And so that, I think to me, the big lesson I take is Adesanya, you can take him from being this special talent to a lot, I'm going to say, easier to beat if you can implement a style like what Blachowicz did. But the thing is, you have to have crazy patience and good decision making.

Jan Blachowicz has both. And he out-thought Izzy in this fight. That was the key in the end. He made the right adjustments and out-thought him. He opened up opportunities to use the advantages he had coming in. That's why when people are asking afterwards, you know, was it really about the fact that he's the bigger man? Yeah, that played a part.

But he had to open up Mignogne. He had to create the areas where being the bigger man could be an advantage, which he did by taking him down, by controlling the clock, by eventually getting some ground to pound. Now, look, the whole 10-8 thing is another discussion I want to have in a second. But at the very least, this was a fight that was close and up for grabs, and it was Jan who made the better adjustments.

I think, Luke, ultimately, why I'm constantly trying to spin this back to Izzy, I expected Izzy to have another gear, game plan, strategy. I did not expect him to be in, I don't want to say survival mode because that wasn't the case, but to be not knowing what the next move was going to be when he's on his back and to sort of just be stuck there. Didn't really see that coming. All right, so let's talk about Adesanya too. I mean, I don't want to, I think it's, I would not agree that like, oh, you can say he's not the guy. Well, he's not the guy in the sense that right now he's prepared to do that. And he may never get

there. I'm not declaring to you that that's the case. I don't, I don't know. He's the guy. Well, he's not the guy in the sense that right now he's prepared to do that. And he may never get there. I'm not declaring to you that that's the case. I don't know. He's the guy if you come at him, Luke. He's going to be the guy who I'm going to pick Izzy to beat Paulo Costa in any situation. Now that fight they had, because of all the weirdness and the wine and all that stuff, I mean it's not a real representation of what that fight could have been.

But Costa is this type of opponent who even at his very best, Luke, he's going to come in guns blazing and that's the way Izzy beats these guys. He is so perfectly prepared to counter you and figure you out and land. But when someone's going to pause, stall, and outthink him, which is what you said, taking the Romero game plan and just adding enough offense and smarts, this exposes the fact that he may still be that dude.

He's not that dude right now, Luke. Okay, one more thing on this before we... I want to talk about Izzy. We've been at a whole second point, which I almost forgot. Our producer in the back reminded me. With Jan Blachowicz, probably what's next for him

is going to be Glover Teixeira. On the one hand, it's not great for light heavyweight that you're having a title contended between two guys who are 38 and 40 or 41. That's probably not great. On the other hand, no one is more deserving than those two.

How do you think Blachowicz versus Teixeira goes? It's one of those things where it's the worst-case scenario for the UFC financially, marketability-wise, like 38 and 41, both not huge brands, but it's a really good fight, and it needs to happen for this division. Jan opening up as a slight but strong favorite there on the betting odds, and I look forward to that fight, but it's a hardcore fans fight. You can't main event that but strong favorite there on the betting odds. And I look forward to that fight. But it's a hardcore fans fight. You can't main event that on anything. No, you can't. Although I have to say, I think also it's worth pointing out, I mean,

God, is there a person that you and I, especially me, have been more wrong about than Jan Bohovic? It is wild how wrong they are. You know, that's why I make the steep comparisons. And it's not because they're two white guys, but it's the two guys that fight in a lunch pail hard hat mentality, and I've been wrong about both guys over and over and over again. Okay, but am I, maybe the answer is yes. Are we wrong for saying or assuming that we think Glover Teixeira can win that fight? I don't think that's crazy. Oh, he can win that fight.

Yeah, yeah, he's in that fight. Okay, I just can't tell we're being a hater and being an irrational skeptic. Well, what's weird is, you know, when Jon Jones leaves the division, 205 was already not deep at the moment, right? There's exciting guys. There's the racketeers. It certainly was not a glamour division. The Mahettas.

There's some sex in there, so to speak. People hate when I make that reference. It is gross. But now you're looking at it's like Reyes coming off a loss. Adesanya just moved up in loss. Tiago Santos just lost on Saturday. If you were going to try to make the Bellator argument that they have the better light heavyweight division at the moment, you're kind of seeing the fruits of that now that the next title shot is Blahowitz versus Glover,

even though that's still a really good fight. And us as true hardcore fight fans are like, yeah, man, that's going to be a really interesting fight. It's really weird that we are in this place right now where there's not sort of, you know, I would bet all my money that Dom Reyes would be your champion right now after the performance we saw against Jon Jones. Sure, no doubt about it. Well, either way, a guy who has never candidly, this is why I bring that up, because after that fight he had with Tiago Santos in first or second quarter of 2019, there was no possible way to know that the Rockhold win,

combined with the Reyes win, combined with everything he's done, was going to look the way it looked, and yet it did. He just figured... What it turned out was that the Santos loss... He was already crescendoing, right? He was building. The Santos loss made you think,

oh, that's his ceiling, when in fact I actually feel like he grew from that experience and that patience... How about the Jacare win? The patience that he showed in the Jacare win on top of it, that has been a game changer for him. And it was like the Jacare win we sort of criticized him for. We're like, this is your close-up. You got a

main event opportunity for a chance to sort of splash the pot and demand a title shot. You got to go out there and knock Jacare out and Blahowicz was patient and boring and wrestling heavy, yet what did that do? That showed him there's other avenues to win. That showed him there's other ways to do it.

And it all went together in building up the guy who right now, despite me trying to turn the conversation back to Adesanya constantly, deserves us to keep it right here on Jan Blachowicz. He's 38 years old. What a freaking turnaround. I assumed it would be one and done. He's a footnote in history. And yet right now he's the power player in this division.

And, Luke, he's only looking like he's getting better. I cannot believe he went five rounds. I don't want to say hard. It wasn't a crazy pace. But five solid rounds. Calculating rounds. Calculated rounds. And I cued the guy who we put out a video, Luke, right?

Ring resume out of Sonia and fed those comments from the fans going, hey, real cute video, video guys why are we not doing this for Blahowich now we've created an imagine cover jinx oh by the way with our resume review but at the same time like it wasn't supposed to be this way and it's fun when people you know upset the

apple cart and flip it over and make you rethink it he's better than he does that he has any right to be shout out to Jan Blahowich pierogies for everyone. Poonchkis, bro. You know Poonchkis, right? I don't think I've ever had a Poonchki. They're really, really ridiculously large glazed jelly donuts. Are you pronouncing that wrong?

It looks like Pakski, but the real, the true Polish heads know it's Poonchki. I used to live in New Britain, Connecticut. There are neighborhoods where they don't speak the English language. Chased a lot of Poonchki in college. I know what you do, chasing the poonski around, right? Let's go to topic number two, if we can. All right, so the aforementioned Israel Adesanya loses. Now, I actually thought he took the loss really well. I watched his post-fight

press conference. I think getting super down on yourself is not the right idea, but then recalculating what went wrong, because that was a winnable fight. On the feet, obviously, as we mentioned, Jan Blachowicz was very competitive on the feet, and I think was winning in certain spots, but it was the combined attack, obviously, for him that made the difference. All right, so my question for you, BC, is the biggest lesson you took from his defeat, you've been alluding to it, how would you sum it up? What did you learn from this as it relates to the stylebender? You know, it's hard to sit here and damn him

because he was in position entering round five to win the fight, and it was a very strategic fight. We had said in sort of the final previews leading up to this that you and I were doing either on MK or CBS Sports HQ that this could end up being a very patient chess match given that both are content standing on the outside, and it kind of was, only Blahowich had the better game plan

establishing the jab and really establishing a weapon, something Romero didn't do, to be able to stay in that fight and have a moment. Luke, I just learned that... The same thing in the ring resume video that we talked about Adesanya, and we're splitting hairs at the very highest level here, where we said, he's on this amazing run, but it's not without times where we

criticized him, or times he had to learn and grow. The Silva fight, Luke, was maybe too calculated than it needed to be. Certainly the Romero fight, he took a chance by letting the judges backdoor him. He took that chance by not pressing the issue. Were those harbingers of doom

that he's not the dude that we were seduced to believe. I think this fight showed us that. Yeah, I don't think it did. You don't think it did? I think, here's what I would say. People are looking at this, well, listen, he lost, and it was not a perfect performance. There are plenty of things to criticize.

I'm about to do that. But what I don't want to do is take one fight that was close-ish and then say that the things that Adesanya failed to do or got wrong are death penalties. Because I don't think that they are. To me... So he didn't expose himself by showing holes in his game? He just didn't do enough.

No, no, no. He actually did have holes. Well, okay, wrestling-wise, but we kind of knew that coming in. No, we didn't. To me, the big... Yes and no. No, no, we knew the takedown defense, which he showed against Brunson,

he showed against Romero even, could keep him in control of a fight. How often had you seen him stuck on his back? No, that is the difference. Here's why. I went back and I watched every single takedown attempt that anyone's tried on Adesanya in the UFC. How many times?

I went back and I looked. It's more than 20. It's a bunch. Here's what I noticed. Almost to the number. If someone presses Adesanya into the fence, where now Adesanya has a set of takedown defense routines related to that specific scenario,

he's actually really good. He is very hard to take down. Gastelum couldn't do it. Brunson couldn't do it. And what's interesting about Gastelum and Brunson that I noticed is that when they fought Adesanya, they pressured him backwards. So a lot of times they would go one, two, shoot, and you'd already be so close to the fence that they would wrap the legs

and then just run him to the fence and try to get takedowns there, and they couldn't really do it. But if you take him down in open space where you would do a Habib takedown, shoot, and then turn the corner rather than driving him to the fence, his takedown defense falls apart. This is the thing for me. This is what I took from it. That is not a death sentence.

That doesn't mean he can't go back to middleweight or won't go back to middleweight and just beat the next six guys. What it does signal to me is, one, the weight was really important and the grappling context, not so much on the feet, but on the grappling context, I do think it was majorly impactful. No, I don't want to cut you off and go in another direction. I want to say, do you think that are you kind of implying

in saying that, that if he was going to commit to 205 and rebuild his body like John's doing right now for the move to heavyweight that we may have seen a different outcome? Is that what you're kind of saying? Yes, I think John is doing it right to get his body in that weight class. It clearly does hold some significance in the grappling context. And that's either a big part of the way you fight

or a big reason you should expect you're going to fight that way. I think that going in as light as he did probably did serve him some benefit on the feet. It served him no benefit on the ground. Last thing about the ground, too. Again, on the fence, if he can scoot to the fence, Adesanya is going to get up. And his separation off the fence is excellent, BC.

It's very, very good. How many times have you seen him grab the skull and then pull the guy behind him, and then he scoots away? He's super awesome at that. On his back, it's interesting. At middleweight, he had an active guard when he was put in scenarios like this. I think he felt like Jan was so heavy that all he could do was really defend. But if you are in a position where they're getting past your knees from half guard,

he's got work to do. These are risky liabilities if you want to keep winning at the highest level now that someone like Jan said, hey, are you a big-ass middleweight like a Marvin Vittori? Take this guy down in open space and get to half guard and pound on him. And you might actually have a pretty goddamn good chance of success if you can do that. I think the biggest winners from this are the three guys looking for rematches against him. You know what I mean?

Whitaker, Gastelum, and Costa. And Vittori. I'm sorry. Vittori's the big one. By the way, Vittori, how he held him down that third round, it was a takedown in open space. That's a good point. So I just want to clear up one thing here because, you know, people watching this, sometimes they want a very sober. People love you, Luke, because you look at the information.

Do they love me? You look at the information, right? You watch it 49 times. You go over it. And you give a sober take, a very critical, scientific, sober take. I'm a little bit more of the theatrical romanticized reactionary takes. Maybe that's, you know, I'm a little bit more of the fandom side of it. And it's not Adesanya's fault that we would necessarily that somebody like me would so

over inflate and be seduced by his potential based on the incredible run he went on, you know, going 9-0 to start out at middleweight. But similar to McGregor's rise, I think that we are so deeply enamored and catnipped and in love with the idea of somebody where we cannot figure out their ceiling, Luke. We don't know where it ends. We don't know how good they are or when it ends or what their limit is. And I think that McGregor's run through Aldo specifically shattered that. And that's why he still, McGregor is still living off the ghost of that run, Luke, where we're going, you know what? He just stopped

drinking and got in the best shape ever. Who cares about his wrestling, man? He could just, I mean, it's still ingrained in us that this is almost a magician, you know, the mystic magic I like to talk about a lot. There was just this era and run with him that it's like, damn the liabilities and the negatives in his game. He's going to figure out a way to do it. I think Izzy entered into that stratosphere heading into his fight, and it's not fair that we raise those expectations to an almost like, oh, he'll go in there and figure it out level.

But at the same time, I think secretly we crave that. We want to find somebody who's an alien, who's a little bit supernatural, who we're just sort of like, there's no limits at what they can accomplish. So Izzy's got work to do. He's still the best middleweight in the world. He's still one of the best pound for pound in the world.

This is not a big sort of, you know, this explains all the other holes in his games through the years, and he just skirted by, and now it's all catching up with him. But let's be honest. Right now, he's not an extraterrestrial. And I got seduced into thinking that it was possible. So here's what I would say. As much as I was critical about his takedown defense in open space, and here's why I think it's a liability, BC, is because that Vittori fight, if you are having the same problems of defending an open space and then finding an underhook and then having to stand or using your guard to create space and then stand or create some kind

of scramble, between the Vittori fight and now, it's still that much of a liability. To me, that's a problem that should be addressed. What I can say, though, is, BC, and here's what I think everyone's going a little bit overboard. He was not far from winning that fight. In fact, he was fairly close. And you would imagine with a couple of adjustments here or there, that was a perfectly winnable fight for him. He was kind of winning it at the midway point of round five, right? He was kind of— That's what I thought, too.

The judges may have a different perspective, but that's not a crazy thought. More to the point, I do think he needs to work on the things that I identified. But if he does that, if he does that and then makes some other adjustments,

that was the best 205-pounder that maybe you have in the world in Jan Blachowicz, right? I don't think that's a crazy claim to make. And he was pretty close to beating him.

This idea that, excuse me, that Adesanya can't go up to 205 and have success always oh, it was too much. Well, he miscalculated this time. But that seemed totally winnable. And I absolutely think when he says he's going to go back to 205, I think he means it. And I very much think he can win at a championship level there.

Just not on Saturday. Can he, though, finish guys and have fight-aling and ending powerful moments like he has at middleweight, though? I do think that just watching how his power carried at 185 pounds going back through, because to watch some of the takedowns, I would look where they would happen in rounds, but I didn't have a timestamp, so I'd have to end up watching the whole round. And it was amazing to me to watch how much he was snapping guys' heads back a little bit with that.

But again, partly Jan is a fucking Polish tree stump. He's a goddamn firehider. You ever seen how he just walks around? He's just built thick. So there may be some power-carrying issues, but I do think he can get striking stoppage wins at 205 pounds. And I think what he showed you, because he was on pace to it, he can have some of the Jon Jones-style wins at 205 that he's had

before moving up to heavyweight in some of those close fights where it just comes down to defense and craft and technique and just doing enough to edge those rounds. Because, Luke, to the scoring, I thought he was doing enough, meaning Izzy, to edge those rounds. I had him on pace to win the fight by winning that fifth round. Except Blahowitz made that adjustment, started wrestling. So on my scorecard in the end, rounds one and two to Izzy,

rounds three through five to Blahowitz, but 10-9 across the board. I think that rant Dana White had in the post-fight press conference about the 10-8 rounds, Luke, I don't tend to often fully agree with the old man. Is he right about your journalism? He's right about some things, Luke, okay? But he's right on about this. Where the hell was there a 10-8 round in there? Yeah, I don't understand that either.

I will say this. Did you... Because that's not just what he said. He did say that. But he was saying these 10-8s are getting out of control. I would actually argue 10-8s have gotten much better. Although I agree in this case, I don't know where the hell you'd find a 10-8 there.

Yeah, he passed him out. But even then, that was at the very end of the... Like, the very end of the round. Five seconds or less. You really have to do something. He didn't cut him end of the round, like the very end of the round. Five seconds are left. You've got to do sustained damage. You really have to do sustained damage. He didn't cut him. He didn't, like, swell him up.

He didn't drop him. He was landing enough strikes to keep him there, and that's what won him the fight. So shout out to Blahowitz. That ain't a 10-8 round, though. Last thing I want to say on this, if you ever watch a... There could be a lot of reasons

why fighters do what they do in fights, but when Adesanya's flat on his back like that, just trying to prevent the pass, again, he might be doing that maybe to conserve energy. Maybe he felt like, you know what, I'm doing well enough on the feet. I don't want to make a move because this guy's really heavy. I don't have to exert a lot of energy. Give him the rest of the round. I'll be back on my feet. There could be total calculations like that. I don't know why he fought that way. But the one thing that just sort of discourages me about the progress in the Vittori fight to this one in terms of this particular

Consideration this scenario is that you should know that like if in MMA If you're gonna get taken down and you can't stop it there whether it's on the fence or an open space When you go to your back like that, you are relenting to the position that is use either either perfectly there could be tactical But if you're flat on your back and you're just sort of catching biceps to prevent face pressure or shoulder pressure or whatever, that is you essentially saying, I'm just going to hold this here. I'm not going to try to swim to shore at all. Man, you've got to be on your side. You've got to be rocking back and forth.

You've got to be digging for underhooks. You've got to be getting your butterfly hook inside. I really feel like Adesanya can do everything you think he can do, but if that liability continues in the way that it has, I think it's going to materialize in a bad way for him. And Izzy, as you mentioned, did lose the correct way. Some people think there's no value in this. I look closely to see how a guy loses, what he says afterwards, how he sort of mentally transitions. I was very happy with that. Speaking of Mystic Mac and the power

and the magic that some people think is bullshit, are we underscoring the magic of that noose, of the hangman's thing? Do you know what underscoring means? Luke, I'm not really into grammar as much as you are, okay? It means to highlight something. So are we highlighting? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, you're right. Underscore is a positive. I was treating it like it was a negative there. Are we underscoring, Luke? We are now. You turned your words into reality. You made it possible. The power of the people that died via suicide

has been transported to Yon Blahoweth right now. Yeah, well, I don't know what that man's situation was. It's certainly it's a morbid thing. If you're a cannoneer, do you transition away from the power crystals and maybe try to get your own hangman's noose? Where are you sort of at in that?

I feel like I want to move away from this question. Before... If you're openly questioning Mike Perry's parenting skills on camera, should you expect a knock on your door? Maybe you should. All right, let's move all along.

There was a lot more to get to, so let's start with someone else who just had a fairly easy night. Topic number three, Amanda Nunes just blows the doors off of Megan Anderson. You knew that was possible. You thought maybe, hey, puncher's chance. You don't want to be dismissive of a fighter's opportunity. But, yeah, that was not especially close ever. And it was a quick win.

Biggest question for you, BC. What can we possibly say about Amanda Nunes at this point that we've not already said? And I mean that sincerely. What else can we do? I mean, she's as great as we thought she was. She's winning in every category, not just the full dominance of this fight, which showcased her ridiculously hard fight changing power and her efficiency and all that. But look, she kind of won the outside of the cage stuff too, whether that

matters to anybody or not. She's an awesome mom. Their family story with her, Nina, I love it. I don't even think it gets enough of you know, of a spotlight around it. And I love, by the way, that both have really embraced the power of their platform to share their life with people. But back to the sort of the fights, Luke, you know, something Rashad Evans, our colleague, said on CBS Sports HQ after that he felt Nunes almost won this on like a Tyson level of intimidation. That Megan Anderson had some things she maybe could have done, but it was almost like once

they touched gloves and went out there, the power of the GOAT just really took over. I don't know if I really disagree with that, and I'm where I have been ahead of the last few fights. That kid looks happy. Which is, unless we're going to talk about this Shevchenko trilogy, which I think UFC should, there's no one that is on a remote puncher's chance level. I mean, GDR,

Jermaine Durandamy in the rematch, had some moments. I was very proud of her toughness and ability to stay in there where you're like, ooh, is she kind of in this fight? She was a threat. Outside of that, I mean, even if we build toward a Holly Holm rematch, who, by the way, got face kicked in round one when they fought, there's just nobody else, and that is insane. It doesn't mean that the 35 and 45 divisions aren't just dead. They are. They're dead, Luke, okay? But the times that we say, well, Mandy's allowed to keep the two belts, but Dana strips these

other people, dude, she can do whatever the hell she wants. If I'm Nunes, I'm basically saying this to Dana White. Yeah, I'll entertain the idea of your Valentina trilogy, okay? But you've got to really pay me, okay? I've beaten her twice. And even though I'm a Valentina super fan, happy birthday, she just celebrated Luke. And I had her beating Nunes in that second fight.

But even with that said, if you're Amanda, you've just got to be like, keep lining them up and I'll knock them down. But if you want to do the Shevchenko thing, pay me. Let's do it. Yeah, I don't know what to do either. Short of that, I mean, how are you this much better than women in two different weight classes? I understand the answer is that one is the great dominance and then one at 45 is not really a full weight class and blah, blah, blah. I know the story. I just mean to say it is shocking to watch someone where this is just feeding the prehistoric creatures at Jurassic World for everyone to show. It's Shamu, and you just guarantee the splash.

Like, everything works like clockwork with her. Dude, in MMA we talked about this. We did CBS Sports HQ, and they ask us sometimes for our picks, and sometimes they ask us for our bets. I'm not really good at that kind of a thing. And so they were like, what is your lock of the card? And I'm like, I don't really want to do this because the odds were like minus, what was she, 900 or something to win.

But my lock is Amanda Nunes. But here was my argument, and I think it's true, BC. Even when you have like Modelo tries to sponsor people, and they tried it with Stipe people, and they tried it with Stipe, and then they tried it with Brian Ortega, and then both suffered these losses, not because they're bad, but dude, that's the nature of MMA. When the best fight the best, the best

win, but the best also lose. You can still be in that category of best, and experience both the highs and the lows, but it shows that a brand, it's hard for them to find someone who they can rely upon to win. Motherfucker, you can who they can rely upon to win. Motherfucker, you can rely on Amanda Nunes to win. Take that, Darren Revell.

She is absolutely the only thing certain in this world. Death taxes and her right hand bearing down on your fucking teeth. Reagan's mama is going to get up in that ass. Is it not amazing that she defies all the rules? All right, let's have a real discussion here, all right? The whole idea, it was talked about coming into this fight. You hear it whispered, but what do you really think here? The idea that she's not just the greatest women's fighter of all time.

Let's not, especially on International Women's Day, so shout out. Let's not corner her and closet her and just limit her to that. Luke, does she belong in the discussion of the actual goats, of the Jon Jones, Habib Nurmagomedov, Anderson Silva, GSP? Yeah, of course. Okay, but not just belong like a seat at the table. Is it actually an apples-to-apples comparison? Can we actually put what she's accomplished up against Jon and, again, Habib or whoever you have at number one right now?

Or are we always going to lean back on the idea, well, the men's side, the competition's deeper, up and down the ladder, and blah, blah, blah? Is that a legitimate separator, or is it just ignorant now to not consider her on that level? I mean, listen, if you're talking about her strength of schedule and what she was up against, Megan Anderson, who I think is a talented fighter, her stats in Zufa-backed promotions showed that she had not just a negative differential striking, but a fairly significant one. I don't know that Jon Jones has ever fought anyone on a championship level who was ever like that.

So the idea that we can't really make meaningful understanding of the differences in strength of schedule I don't think is right, that there can be a make meaningful understanding of the differences in strength of schedule I don't think is right that there can be a debate to be had sure yeah yeah by the way Nunes has the best schedule like by far yeah in terms of strength of schedule in female history like by what she has that they don't have is her level of dominance where you've beaten every other bantamweight champion who's ever had that belt and by the way I think she finished all of them you know if you're that good um there probably are some questions to be asked about whether or not you are just superhuman

or there are some strength of schedule issues. Nevertheless, nevertheless, dude, I made this point on Twitter on Saturday night and I'm half joking because candidly, I don't know what the truth is. Yeah, what was up with this, Luke? I feel like you were like, here's my face on my dartboard, but go for it.

No, dude, people lack reading comprehension skills. Okay. And they don't want to think about things. They just want to react. What I said on Twitter was, and again, I'm sort of halfway joking, but could she beat, and these debates are stupid, I gather. I'm having a little fun. But to the extent you can ask a question,

what would it look like if a 135-pound pro man who was a lot better than Megan Anderson fought her? What would it look like? It'd look about like what Amanda did to her. Punches, sitting her down pretty quickly, and then if you want to take her back, take her back and choke her out. It was utterly dominant, okay?

So your point isn't that... You haven't even heard me make it. May I make it, please? Is that okay with you? And then you can react? This guy's so salty. It's not just the beer. It's not salty.

I would like a chance to make the point, and then you can tell me why it's so salty. It's not just the beer. It's not salty. I'm just, I would like a chance to make the point. Then you can tell me why it's wrong. This is the line, all right? All right. The point is this. If you look at what, I don't think she could beat a UFC pro. I don't think that's quite right. I tend to think that's totally wrong, as a matter of fact.

But if you look at what it would take to get a pro license, could she beat a pro fighter around the same weight? Yeah, I actually think she could. Or at least hold her own against someone who was status pro, not UFC level, and they were reasonably comparable in size. I think at a bare minimum... Your tweet did not explain that, Luke. Yes, it did.

Your tweet did not explain that. Let's go read the tweet, shall we? I'm just trying to protect you, Luke. You don't need to protect me. I felt like you were throwing that out there as bait to try to... No, people don't like to read and they don't like to think critically. It's Twitter. And then they like to give the most bad faith

interpretation of what you're saying as a way to just manufacture controversy. Well, Twitter is the house of bad faith. Yeah, well, that part is absolutely true. Here, very quickly. I'll find it. Sorry. Scrolling through all your Latina big booty tweets and just getting right to the.

Oh, yeah. You cannot convince me Nunes couldn't compete with professional level men of a similar size. What about that is different? All right. So that is very generic. I think. Yeah, exactly. It's not controversial.

Yeah, but it doesn't read what it says right after seeing her finish somebody. It says, like, she could compete in the UFC Bantamweight men's division right now. It's so not what I said. It's kind of what it teases, though. No, that's what you make it to be when you don't do proper reading. So what you're really saying is there are active, alive men on the regional level with a pro license who I think she could defeat. Or at a bare minimum hold her own against, yes.

Okay, so that's not a crazy statement. Dean Thomas tells me she absolutely, under no circumstances spars with women Maybe in the grappling context, but on her feet she does not they cannot take her punches dude That has to count for something. We're talking about not any old woman We're talking about the one who is just going in there and break dancing on two divisions She can't even hold her own against a regional level pro? I'm a little bit skeptical to think that that's not true.

I don't know, but I'm skeptical. It's weird. I don't know if this discussion needs to be talked about more. It's a dumb thing. Or if it's just dumb. It's dumb.

It's pretty dumb. Back to what she's doing now in the future. I think Shevchenko has a better chance in a third fight against her. Since she's moved down to flyweight, I think she's... She was... Shevchenko was very good as a bantamweight. Very good.

But because of the size differential, a lot of times she was just a counterstriker only, right? I think with the natural size at 125, Valentina... Look, not against the same level of competition, but she's destroying people and she's figuring out how to be a finisher. She's figuring out how to go after it. She's just really rounded out her game completely. I think she's at a higher operating level. I think she stepped into her absolute prime.

This third fight between them could be amazing. It could be magical. And do you think I'm incorrect in thinking right now it has a chance to be closer than even the first two were? Definitely closer. The question I would have is, back to you real quickly, because you thought about this a little more than I have, what does the UFC want more?

More of what they got with Amanda versus Megan Anderson? Or someone with Shevchenko who you could build a narrative around, but do the second fight, it was strategic. I'm not hating on it in the sense of like like I liked it okay, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that was the world's most exciting fight. Yeah, it was a chess match. Are they going to be hesitant because they want to avoid that?

When you can just get narratives like this and then feed her whoever. I don't think there's a reason to avoid it. Because Shevchenko's, you know, she's not going to damage herself at flyweight where she's insanely dominant. I mean, is there a potential she can get knocked out?

Of course. But no one really gets to her on that level, not even Amanda. And I'm not trying to say that Valentina is the only one that's evolved since their first two fights. I mean, the first fight, Amanda was almost raw at 196 compared to now, right? I mean, she faded in that third round as Valentina came on. So she's gotten a lot better, too. But I don't think you lose much by doing this.

It's a big event. There's potential where Amanda just triple stamps down that I'm the greatest we've ever seen. I mean, look, Shevchenko, who I'm not even joking, might be at worst the second or third greatest female who's ever stepped foot in an MMA cage if she beats her three times. Good God.

And on the flip side, if Valentina can win a close fight and just continue this rivalry, if anyone deserves to fight each other four, five, six times, it might be these two women. So there's potential openings there for, I think, better compelling theater than letting her just run rampant over who's next. Aspen Ladd, who the heck's

next, right? By the way, one thing that really sort of distinguishes, I was thinking about this, we've been talking about Adesanya and some of his loopholes. Another thing is, dude, he can't really go for the takedown because it's not really a part of his game. But you look at Shevchenko, who has a super decorated background in striking, she has added not really grappling defense to her game, but she'll take them down now. And she'll transition and just, I mean, she's incredible.

You see how much more it adds to your options when you have that? I really think Adesanya should take a look in the mirror. He can accomplish big things, but he's really got to address some of these little deficiencies. All right, let's move to point number four. Should we look in his mirror or Amanda's mirror? Because you're basically saying he needs to evolve like they have. I don't know. I don't know.

I misunderstood your question. All right, let's go to point number four. I'm just going to ignore it. Plenty of controversy if you want it. Aljamain Sterling is now, BC, the first person in UFC history to win a title via disqualification. He was losing by most judges' accounts. It was stopped in the fourth due to an illegal knee. The judges had it 29-28 for Jan on two of the scorecards, 29-28 Aljo on one of them, but fourth round was not, fair to say, not going his way. My question for you, BC, is

do you consider Aljamain Sterling to be the rightful champion? No, I got a lot of issues with this. So first and foremost, this is a horrendous mistake by Jan in that moment. This was not like him. Can we talk about that for just one second? I don't know if I've ever seen a mistake that bad.

I mean, it's really bad. So anything I say after this does not take away from the fact that this was a really bad decision. Piotr Jan deserves to not be your champion right now. I'm going to say that right now. And I'm not going to crap on him, but like, at that moment when you were in control of the fight and a guy who doesn't show, not only a guy, Jan,

who doesn't show any faults in his game, but was calming on round by round and getting better. Look, I scored this fight three rounds to zero for Jan and had him winning the fourth. It wasn't that it was so dominant. Early on, Sterling fought great. If you wanted to even give Sterling one, two rounds,

I don't have an issue with that. Him being ahead on the scorecards, I did. But Luke, for as horrendous of a mistake as this was, and it was, and I don't care if it's, I know one corner man said don't do it, the other corner said, yes. So there's some idea that maybe he was, you know, led the wrong way, but still, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't do that. My issue with is, is Sterling should not be your champion right now. And I thought if there was one person that could have benefited from this and, and it was Sterling,

and he's the guy, the most ardently in your face saying, I don't want this belt and throwing it down. Whether you thought that whole dramatic sequence was called for or not, I loved it because it's Aljo saying, I am a true competitor. A champion should not win in this way, regardless of that man making an error. So here's what I'm really trying to say. UFC has to look closer at the rules and decide what they want moving forward. I thought that they dodged a bullet and I make reference to it all the time in that Anthony Smith-John Jones fight. Anthony Smith is getting absolutely dominated. He got hit with a similar illegal strike. If he would have looked at the referee and ringside doctor and said, you know what, I just can't continue, he would have been your champion. He would have got a big money rematch he wouldn't have deserved, and we would have had another weird

Matt Hamill kind of footnote in John Jones's history. I felt that UFC dodged a bullet that Anthony Smith did the sort of right thing, the tough guy thing, and said, no, no, no, let's just continue. Took the loss and moved on. I'm not here to sort of say Aljo didn't do that because he, from my take, was trying everything he could to get back into this fight

but just couldn't shake the cobwebs. My thing is, Luke, it shouldn't come down to a decision from a concussed fighter to debate the merits of, will I get killed on Twitter for this? But hey, I do get a chance to be in history as a champion and get a big money rematch. I don't think that should be in play. What I'm saying is, in this type of situation, it's got to be a no contest. And that title, at very worst, has to go vacant. And I get why the rules are this stringent. Because you don't want, like,

it's a famous pro wrestling finish and out where the champion, knowing he can't lose the title on disqualification, will intentionally follow, like the referee in pro wrestling late in a match. Oh, it's a DQ loss, but they kept their title. You obviously don't want a real life situation, Luke, where anyone was in that spot. But I still think putting it vacant and saying, okay, we'll run this back is such a better idea than having history change. And Sterling, who to his own admission, Luke, did not win that fight, wasn't the better man in that fight, is now gets to walk around with a title he didn't really earn. And it's not his fault, but what kind of system are we in where that's the reward? There's a way to balance it out, Luke. Keeping it

so the integrity stays, so no one can illegally cheat to try to avoid a loss, but also making an actual penalty in there that you lose your title and it goes vacant. What's the difference between that and a champion missing weight on the scales, losing their belt, but still going forward with the fight the next day, right?

I was thinking about this. The night of the fight, I said I didn't think that the rules should do what they do. If it's a purposeful DQ, it's an intentional DQ, then it automatically results in the belt being won for the person who got hit and then the belt, in this particular case, being handed over. Now I'm sort of agnostic about it. I don't know that I have a good idea. I will say the one thing that occurs to me, BC,

that I don't know also what the answer is, but it's unusual. Let's say you have Patrick Mahomes and the people that somebody might know. Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, right? I mean, they should know who Patrick Mahomes is, but we have an international audience. Okay, so Tom Brady is playing and he gets sacked. Let's say it's a vicious roughing the passer call, okay? And he got hit really hard.

And it was clearly intentional. But imagine we had to sit there and wait and watch Tom Brady writhe in agony before we decided what to do about it. It is a little bit weird to me. Not that I have a better answer. I do not. But we are putting this all on the plate

of Aljamain Sterling and saying, well, we're just going to watch you wiggle like a worm on a hot rock and then decide what to do about it. So he now is in this weird position where he is absolutely incentivized either to tell the truth about an injury or to completely play one up. I don't know what he did. I don't really care what he did because those are the rules he is being asked to play by. And if you do that, you will get shit tons of reward.

Or you can be the tough guy and you can go get your fucking brains bashed out. As long as those are the incentives you are setting up for, by the way, a potentially very hurt athlete, you're going to get shit like this. You are begging the fighters to do it and on occasion they just might. It's not a good system. I mean, look, if Anthony Smith would have been your light heavyweight champion after that fight, after a fight in which he got his ass kicked, how is that a good system that that's an outcome in it?

Because isn't the idea that in the UFC, not so much boxing anymore, but in the UFC, if you've got that title, it's not just a belt you can get more pay-per-view points for, bigger paycheck, or different color Reebok shorts. The idea is that it confers upon you the title of

being the best person in that weight class. You are the one who not only has achieved the most, you are considered to be the premier version of what it is for that weight class. You cannot argue that on that night, that's what Aljamain Sterling showed. I do think by the rules, very much the rightful winner. I don't know whether he was super injured and couldn't continue. Don't really care. Those are the rules he played by. Fine. Fair play to him.

But did you get the impression that after that was over, that was the best 135-pounder on earth? No. That question was very much not settled. I did not get the impression that the best move for the fans, the fighters, and the organization is that the guy who was clearly losing and was looking like almost he was close to getting finished, to be really honest with you, and was fading, comes out as holding up the championship. Again, you can do a lot of different things.

You can make the fight a no contest. You can even go as far as giving Sterling a win, giving Jan a loss, but again, not having that title transfer. I'm not trying to be old school and be like... So it would go vacant? It would go vacant. I'm not trying to be old school and be like, So it would go vacant? It would go vacant. I'm not trying to be old school and be like if you don't finish the champion, you can't

win, you know, as if all decisions in title fights should be draws. No, I'm not trying to go that level. I'm just saying you should not win the championship on that level. There should be an incentive for a fighter to never cheat to try to skirt that, and you should never to win in that case, meaning a champion following to keep a belt.

You never want that, but on the flip side, you never want a concussed fighter to be in a case, meaning a champion following to keep a belt. You never want that. But on the flip side, you never want a concussed fighter to be in a spot where he can make a decision about history, where maybe he's not even in the right frame of mind. I mean, it's just, that is not the right setup. I think they should examine and go closer on this. I think at the very least comparable to the Jon Jones-Anthony Smith situation is that even though Jan, in my eyes, was winning this fight and was the more dominant fighter by far,

Sterling was in this fight for a lot of it. They're certainly very evenly matched. A rematch is still something I think we want to see, even though you can ask yourself, how much more can I learn about it? I think Aljo can make certainly some adjustments with his pace and all that to be in this. So it's not a meaningless rematch, in which an Anthony Smith-John Jones fight, to my opinion, would have been. But you've got to look at what you're doing now for UFC and look at the rule set and say, is this the best thing?

I mean, look, this was so womp womp afterwards. And it would be no matter what when there's a DQ to end it. It would be no matter what. But your champion just threw the belt down and said, I don't want it. What other footage or proof do you need that this is the wrong thing? Yeah, it's a problem. And again, as long as you're asking the fighter, like, hey, the more you sit there and show us it hurts, the better it'll be up for you.

Like, what do you want them to do? That's what they're going to do. They're just humans in the end of it. Okay. And oh, by the way, that was a vicious frickin' knee. Can we just put that out there? I mean, again. Can we just talk very quickly about the fight?

I would love to know what your biggest takeaway was. One of them for me, for the fight itself, was that I thought when Aljo was humming, you know, switching stances, putting a shot in his face. Crazy pace. The pace was too much, but I will say, it looked like Peter Jan was caught in the rain and didn't have an umbrella and was trying to cover.

So that to me was like, that was working, not sustainable at that pace, but there was something there that was really having an effect. The thing that I took away from this one was, Aljo got one takedown, and Peter Jan got every single takedown he was looking for. 100% took him down in every round. Boy, I did not expect that. No, because we were coming in saying, look, if Aljo can control the terms of this fight, if he can make his wrestling a big part of it, that is where this is basically a 50-50 fight. That is where he's going to find out a way to have advantages.

Luke, I like the point you made about the pace, because I'm not against fighters who strategically come out with a crazy pace. It's a very thin line to walk, because you remember when Derek Brunson did against Robert Whitaker. It was reckless. It was just sort of like, you know what? Charging into him. what I'm just gonna go for it and go for the KO and you know what to Robert Whitaker's credit he countered it he landed he ended the fight and now we look at that as okay that was reckless and ridiculous even if that was Sterling's idea I'm gonna test his gas

tank I'm gonna just put him on tilt he kind of succeeded only we found out after seeing Jan sort of on an early tilt that he's everything we thought he was and then some. The adjustments, the wrestling, to the whole standpoint where Luke, he got better as the rounds went on, which is what he does, and that is a scary superlative to have in your game, that as that fight goes on, the pace increases and the grind continues, you get more scary, more violent, and he's just a mean fighter. He was the guy coming on. He was the better fighter.

That's why this mistake is so kind of heartbreaking and horrendous that would happen when the story should have been, where does Jan rank pound for pound in this sport right now because he really is that good. That's why this error sucked, but do you see an Aljo strategic change

in a rematch that could lift him to victory? Yeah, I actually talked to one of his coaches yesterday on the phone, and they had a lot of ideas about things they could implement. I actually feel like if you're Aljamain Sterling, yes, it could have gone better, but it could have gone a lot worse, a lot worse, and it didn't. And here's the thing. Who was better of the two at making adjustments during the fight?

I would argue Peter Jan. Oh, yeah. Much better. However, with this break, Aljamain, he seemed to be a little bit nervous, right? Going out there and getting tired the way he did. He caught himself. He had better gas tank in the fourth than I thought he would, so I think he was catching the second wind, but still, he didn't manage his resources effectively. Now you kind of know what you're up against. You know about what he's going to do. You know about

what to expect. You know what it feels like. If you're Aljamain Sterling, I think I'm still going to favor Jan because I even think Jan might have odds that are more exaggerated than before because of the way he was winning. But I'd also think if you're Aljamain Sterling, you get a chance to redo this. You shouldn't be as nervous the second time. You can learn a lot. You got a full three plus rounds with the guy. That's a lot of information to make adjustments off for a second camp.

I actually kind of like that for him a little bit. Sterling, by the way, in the first three, four minutes, that first round looked freaking insane. Dude, he was on fire. I need to know how you had scored the main event and the Bantamweight title fight at the time of their stoppages. I think I had it, well, the first one went this. So the main event, I had it 2-2 heading into the fifth.

And then I thought, obviously, Blachowicz did enough. For the Sterling fight, you're asking? I think I had Sterling round one. I had Peter Jan round two, and I think I had him in round three as well. That's right. I did have him in round three. So I had it 29-28 for Jan. Yeah, I gave Jan that first

when he rallied back at the end. Yes. You gave him the second? Yeah, and it was close. Look, I'm not saying, like, again, if somebody wanted to give Sterling a maximum of two rounds, I would have been okay with it because it was competitive and crazy early. I just liked what Jan was doing a little bit more. There's a listener, I wish I had his name on our show, Luke, who gets in my DMs all the time and hits me on Twitter.

Luke, we obviously butcher Jan's name. Sometimes we have fun of it going the peyote route. I think that's just you. No, you call them on the show so far, peter, petter. P-odor. P-odor. This man says two words, P-odor,

like what urine smells like. P-odor is how you say it. So this is what he's trying to- P-asparagus? P-odor. P-odor. P-odor. P-odor.

I'm not saying that. P-odor. I'm not going to say that. P-odor. What's that smell in here? P-odor. That's what he's trying to get us on that level. Look, I'm not here to dispar that. Pee odor. What's that smell in here? Pee odor. That's what he's trying to get us on that level. Look, I'm not here to disparage any people from any country,

especially women, on International Women's Day, okay? Yes. Okay, let's go to the last of the topic. There's a million things you can get to from UFC 259. BC, very simply, any other fight on that main, or the card, I should say, generally, that deserves a shout-out. Yeah, but does it have to be a positive shout-out? No?

Well, it's a little bit of a mixture of both. You could give game balls or gassers. Yeah, I'll give a pair of balls here. Luke, when we went on HQ, and of course they're asking us, what's your betting lock? Which, you know, I get it, Luke. It's a little bit of a ridiculous joke.

But, you know, my betting lock on the undercard was Askar Askarov, which I do want to get into in a minute. But I kind of forced it on the main card, but I did believe it. I said, look, Tiago Santos has an opportunity here at 37 in a window to get right back to the top of that title discussion. I think he's too good to lose three in a row. And then Luke, what the hell happened? Him and Alexander Rakic went out and played a weird game of technical chess for a while. And here's what I'm going to say.

I got issues with the way Mejeda fought, knowing what was at stake, knowing that it wasn't desperation mode, but it was, you don't want to lose three in a row. You're 37. You're coming off of a double knee injury. It was kind of exposed in this fight that maybe you're not explosive as you once were. You got to go for it.

I have less problem with Rakic. In fact, if that's the way he had to win to win that fight and maybe take a little bit of luster off his potential as a killer from a marketing standpoint, but look at what it did to to what's his name? The light heavyweight champ.

It's after he did that to Jacare, right? It was a move to change when he had to get. I think for Rakic and his long-term title contention this was actually a pretty damn good win, even though it was largely boring. He kept it at distance, and he kept a very explosive monster in Thiago Santos at range. And I really have more issues with Mejeda not going for it, Luke.

I was a little bit disappointed. You know, I was glad Joe Rogan brought it up. I remember at the time that he tore both of his knees. Everyone was like, you know, that's what you have to do when you're in championship fights. I'm like, you're not going to win in a championship fight. If you've got multiple knee tears, it's almost certain not going to happen to you. And John slowed that fight down in a way where he's able to win it as well. Now you're living with the other side of it. Okay. Let's even, let's even

argue that it was worth it to just go through with that, given the stakes. Well, now you're here. Now he's closer to 40, I believe, than he is 30, and he's had two completely rebuilt knees. I think Rogan was right. He doesn't move the same, and as a consequence, I think his game is suffering a little bit. But he had that moment against Glover. He knocked him down. He exploded on him early. Okay. I'm not saying he sucks. No, but you're right. It was a scary combination. Bro, if you run for five yards a carry in the NFL, you're going to stay employed. Well, 3.1, that's not far from it,

but if you're Ray Rice and you've got baggage, they're just going to cut you. That's a good point. So what I'm saying is there was a window there where his speed angles and explosive knockout power, which he tries on every single strike, was stupidly dangerous. And we saw that in the John fight.

And I think we do have to give Tiago credit, whether you think it was a bad move or not. I mean, that dude bit down against John and went for the win and came freaking damn close. But Luke, even if he is a slowly diminished form of that because of the knees, if you're not willing to go for it, bro, that's who you are. You got to go for it.

You got to go for the damn KO, right? You got to splash the pot, Luke. You got to get in there and get inside. He did that in his personal life, dating-wise, and look where he is today. He did not do that in this fight, but I'm here not to slander Rakic at all. Did what he had to do, survive in advance. Yes, he certainly did. Why don't you tell me a fight that tickled you? Luke, how about us back in person right now? Do you feel it? I love it so much more. It's so much better. It's just not the same show over Zoom. I love it. I mean, you know, we're lucky to be able to do what we do. Don't misunderstand me, but there's nothing like being back here

in the thing we've never actually called Orchids of Combat. There's a couple ways you could go. You could go the NZQU-Orberg fight. Not a good night for New Zealanders. Well, one won, but two of them didn't, obviously. But the one I'm going to go with just has to be mentioned, the Islam Makhachev win over Drew Dober. Oh, God.

Luke, can you – don't give me a sober reaction, Luke. Give me an intoxicated reaction about this man's future in lightweight contention. Please, please, Luke. Well, I'm still living a little bit in the shadow of the loss he suffered to Adriano Martins years ago when he got head kicked. Get out of that. Luke, you've got to get the pass. He's obviously massively improved.

He is going to become a contender. You know, will he win the title? He certainly looks like a guy who could. But as you always try to point out on CBS Sports HQ, as Floyd says, the proof's in the pudding. Yes. Beating Drew Dober, especially this version of him, is incredibly impressive.

And to finish him, understand something, right? So if this is Drew Dober's head and this is his feet, you can go side control, opposite side. I can see this. The people can't, Luke. If this is Drew Dober's head and this is his feet, you can go side control, opposite side. I can see this. The people can't, Luke. Okay, well, if this is Drew Dober's head and this is his feet, this is my daughter. You see that, right? You can be inside. You can be half guard, in the guard, half guard, and then side. Those are the positions all the way around. So rather than being in side control, he was on half guard, but still opposite side. When you finish a head and arm triangle, you actually want to be to the other side, right? If you're choking on this way. He actually stayed, BC, just one position away from side control and finished him with it. I cannot explain to you.

Understand, if you're here, you want to be here, okay? He finished it from here. I can tell you, even from here, there are variations of that choke where you actually bring your chest onto the back of their own tricep. It takes that much force to choke. For Makachev to be on the other side of the body and still get that, dude, he must have a fucking squeeze. Dude, this guy is real fucking good at it. So please talk me off the ledge of anti-sobriety here. Is he, like like ability-wise?

I know this was Drew Dober, but it's six fights in a row. Drew Dober's good, dude. And Drew Dober's good. But it's a six-fight win streak. And this was like a 17-month layoff or something ridiculous for him. And yet did he not come in there and look like a top five lightweight in the, by the way, the deepest and most dangerous division in UFC history, which I say often, but I believe it.

Is he not right now talent-wise, not ranking-wise, but talent-wise, like a top five guy? Talent-wise, he might be, yeah. He called out Tony Ferguson. Do you want that? Sure. Would you put on eBay whatever that weird trinket Tony gave you? That is the fight to make.

But do I like the fight? Sure. Where does that live in your house right now, that weird trinket that Tony gave you at 229 at the open? I still think this idea that like, oh, there's a little bit of we miss Habib. How fast can we replace him with another Dagestani vibe going on here?

And everyone is wanting Makachev to fill that hole in their heart that Habib's departure has left. Did you see Habib's reaction to it though? It's filling a hole in Habib's heart. I understand that. I'm just saying he is clearly talented. He is clearly going to fight and beat some good contenders.

Whether or not he'll eventually be the best of them, I need to see a little more evidence first. Okay, don't go sober on me. Where in your house do you keep that thing from Tony? Where? On my shelf. The one you see in the bookshelf behind you. I'll pull it out next show.

Okay. All right. Hopefully that's the only thing you'll pull out. Also, Luke, I'm glad you stopped next show. Okay. All right. Hopefully that's the only thing you'll pull out. Also, Luke. I'm glad you stopped the show for that. So you could. Oh, there are people that are telling you and I. As we, you know, do a little victory lap around Dana on this Habib retirement thing.

Right. And Habib's in our thought process now because he was in Maka Jeff's corner. There are a lot of people who say, hey, BC and Luke, you a-holes. Why is he still in the USADA testing pool? Okay, you jerks, you know-it-alls, you motherfuckers. Luke, why is Habib still in the USADA testing pool if we are so willingly ready to throw Dana under the bus for continuing on this thematic drama that Habib might be convinced

to coming back if Conor can ever eventually beat Poirier. Yeah, I think that what's happening is Khabib is doing some courtesy stuff for the UFC and as a gesture of goodwill, because I think he does probably care about them. Also, they might be trying to sign some deals with his organization to be on Fight Pass and blah, blah, blah. There probably is a little bit of him, you know, all right, I'll hear out the boss man.

All right, you know, whatever. If it makes you happy, I'll do it. Similar to your involvement and participation level in the documentaries that we do. Similar-ish. Similar-ish. A little more enthusiasm than that. But my point being is, if you just listen to Habib, that's, again, here's the whole test. You and I have talked about this a million times.

Just listen to what Habib says and tell me you come away with the impression that he is, you know, you're even remotely close to getting him back. He might come back. Doesn't seem like any time soon, BC. All right. Can we talk about... I didn't get a chance to name a fight. Oh, yes.

Can we talk about Asghar Asgharov? Because I've been here since the Moreno draw telling people that this is the dude. This Dagestani mother fricker is coming. Okay? Maybe not on a Doris Burke level. More on that. And have you seen the shit? Sorry to tease the bag on that. Luke, Askar, Askarov is a damn

bro. Alright? That was my best bet that he was going to send Uncle Joe there, you know, closer to buying another coffee maker with Megan. And shout out to them. Great couple. But Luke, I mean, he dominated that fella. He has no holes in, I mean, he dominated that fella. He has no holes in his game. And he's not, even though he can wrestle because he's from Dagestan,

he's more of just a precise and badass striker. Yeah, dude, Flyweight's got some fun killers in there. Can he be the champion within a year? Ooh. Can he beat Figueiredo? I think he can. I don't know that I would consider that the most probable outcome. Will he get the winner of Moreno-Figueiredo? I think he can. I don't know that I would consider that the most probable outcome. Will he get the winner of Moreno-Figueiredo?

Probably, yeah. And you know he's like a little bit deaf too, Luke? Yeah. Was I making you horny or something? No, just maybe. Like are you the guy who's looking up deaf porn or something? Like did you know he was deaf? Maybe losing half of that sense has raised his other senses, Luke, right? Like, I have an understanding and appreciation of art because I don't have a lot of common sense, right?

Oh, so you're going to go with me. I have an imbalance, right? Are you going to go with me to the National Art Gallery, Mr. Art Lover? Yeah, yeah, you're damn right. You come to D.C.? Yeah. You know you can't masturbate there. If only I could show people the actual text threads I get from you that I just ignore, ignore, ignore.

All right. With that in mind, we have to get to questions from the viewers. It's time now for DMs from dogs. As you guys know, every Sunday we put up a post, usually around the middle of the afternoon or so, and there you leave questions, and from there the production staff picks some and they send them to us. Let's get to it, BC, if you can. Hey, how good was that song that Damian O'Hara of Australia did on our documentary?

No one's giving that guy credit. Such a great song, right? I don't know. Okay, I don't know who that is. All right, from atlazylifts, what's your take on Dan Hardy parting ways with UFC? If you guys didn't hear, it was reported by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that he had been fired. According to that report, the report was that he had gotten into some kind of argument or verbal altercation with a female, I don't know if that's relevant

or not, but UFC Europe employee. Dan Hardy comes out and says the fact that she's female is irrelevant. It was just a dispute over something that has nothing to do with that. And he did part ways with UFC, but maybe with BT Sport he's still there. No, he lost both, according to the internet. Okay, but he's making it sound like that's not necessarily true. Whatever the case, what do you make of it? It's surprising. We don't know the full details about his decorum behind the scenes, obviously. Look, we don't know.

I mean, it's International Women's Day. I'm not looking to put women back in the kitchen like you were with the way you laid that out. But what I will say is he's a very good analyst. Like, seriously, the fight breakdowns he does in front of the big screen, Luke, you're a big screen fight breaker. Remember that show you used to do called Dissected that squirts the internets? Like, people clicking on it left and right, Luke? I know that kills you inside, but it's true.

Great show, Luke. Not enough, yeah, okay. He's fantastic on that. And look, there's some interest in him coming back. He certainly has a name. It'd be fun to see him against other old guys like Nick Diaz, like we talked about the other day. And yes, Luke, I follow him on Instagram,

and there's a lot of sneaky good stuff going on in his personal life. So shout out to Dan Hardy. But very surprising Luke Do you think and this is just us talking as fans not as connected Viacom CBS employees That he could be a fit both as a fighter and an analyst with a Bellator or anyone else Yeah, will he get a job quickly after this if Bellator and Showtime are watching and I suspect at least some of them I mean they hired us. Yeah You would be wise to hire

Dan Hardy, is the best way I can put that. Actually, I always say this as a compliment. I actually cannot look at his analysis before or right after a fight, BC, which is to say, it's so influential and so good that I know

that I will just end up repeating everything he says. So I actually wait like several weeks until after. I haven't even looked at his Connor analysis. I'll probably do that this week. That's the kind of level of detail he brings. So I don't know what the dispute is. I did hit him up. You know, he didn't give him a whole lot of details, but he said in due time.

I also read where the – didn't he speak out of school on the broadcast? Was it toward a referee? It was when he had the dispute with Herb, remember? Herb came over and he was like, I'll do my job, you do yours. In that report, was that that was a... Yeah, that was part of a larger issue, apparently. So we've not heard the larger stuff. I've worked with Dan Hardy.

I did a he, I, or him, me, or whatever the fucking grammar is. We did a show together with... It was me and him, and we had Adesanya come through. We had Dominic Reyes come through, Shevchenko sisters, Jake Shields. Oh, wow, yeah. Yeah, so I did a show with him for SiriusXM. I've never had anything, and I cannot be clear about this. Even if I hated the guy, I'd be like, oh, his analysis is great.

Dude, Dan has always been a fucking pro whenever I've worked with him. Except, oh, he did do this. He took contact lenses and put them in before the show, and it made him have these almost like highlighter color green eyes. So that was a little weird, Dan. But short of that, he's the man. By the way, maybe it's just me. As a fan in boxing or MMA, I like when the color commentator role, when it is an ex-fighter,

has a little bit of edge to them. It's like a Teddy Atlas type who's not going to be afraid to call out anyone. And I know UFC controls the broadcast on ESPN and everything from top to bottom is very... It's a controlled message, correct? It's a controlled message. It's a super controlled message. So, I'm trying to be polite here. I like some of the edge

that he sort of brought to it. I did too. And I feel like, you know, the problem with UFC commentary is MMA commentary is already hard. It's really hard to do. To the point where, like, when you go back, find whoever your favorite analyst is. Jim Brown, UFC 1. Jim Brown is certainly one. But find whoever. Get a breakdown of a fight, BC.

Find out which is one you're like, okay, this is a really great breakdown. Whoever that is. And then listen to what they say for the reason that the person won. Then go back and listen to the commentary for the fight. They almost never overlap, or there's very little overlap, because trying to parse it in real time is outrageous. Kind of like going back and watching our previews ahead of fights, never really breaks down what actually ends up happening.

No, there's just totally divorced. But the point being is it's just a hard job. It shouldn't be made harder by having to, like, if you come in on a four-fight win streak, that's the best-case scenario for that fighter. Coming off a four-fight losing streak, they'll just turn around and be like, you know what, here's another reason

why this is just an actually great thing. There's never a bad thing. It's just always great things. These guys, they're all contenders. They're all elite. They're all great. When in fact, you know, there's, there's nuance to it. And I think when a, when a, when a commentator goes into that detail or even during a fight, just calls it like it is,

there's a disparity with talent right here. It's better for the broad. This is a movie. This is a thing that's happening in recent years in a lot of ways in both combat sports, where the networks are so tied with the promoters that it's inevitable that almost every network ends up having almost a corporate presentation. I wish we could see, I mean, I try to bring it out in my own game in my various jobs, but I want to see a more sort of fair, open, both side, open-minded, honest way of, and you know, with the UFC control, the broadcast, you don't really necessarily get that. I mean, it's kudos to them for having that control, but imagine how different the product would be received if it was like ESPN announcers.

You know what I mean? That's one of the pluses UFC's done in being so self-built. It's true. For their regard, you know? All right. From at Taekwondoodmemes, that's the name. Do you think the UFC would benefit from a broadcast option of no commentary?

Jesus Christ. It seems like a lot of people are either annoyed or influenced by the biases that the commentary team brings. So in particular, people are really upset. I found out a lot of this on the post-fight show. I tend to not listen to that much commentary, in part, BC, for the reasons I just mentioned. Like, the very best ones are going to have a hard time following what's actually happening as the reason why someone won.

And, you know, I like Rogan and DC, but together they're a little giggly, you know. It's gotten very giggly. It's a little giggly. It's very fight companion. It's become a party. And by the way, I've said it before on the show, I like that personally. Right. Because I want to have fun.

But I get if you're like, you know. I'm not declaring it off limits. It's just not for me. But what they're really saying this time though is BC that the commentary team was all over Adesanya and not fairly accurately saying what was happening. Vittori was tweeting about that.

What do you make of the claims? It can happen in a fight Luke. You've done commentary. Yeah and the problem is in boxing you get a lot of accusations that it's the house fighter and the announ is, you know, in boxing, you get a lot of accusations that it's, you know, the house fighter, and the announcers are only announcing what's happening to the more marketable fighter that the network would want to win. Obviously, in ESPN, it's a little different

because they've got complete control over all the fighters. But I don't know, Luke. I mean, I never, you know, I always joke about the hardcore boxing technical fans who are like, you can't accurately watch a fight with commentary. There's too much bias. You've got to watch it in black and white and in reverse and with Spanish subtitles and with peanut butter smeared across the screen and a knife cutting through just enough to see it.

Look enough for that bullshit. Can't you, is it possible to watch a fight here, one-sided analysis, and still get your own breakdown of what's going on? I think that's possible. There's groups speak to people at home drinking a beer, not scoring at home. It shows up more in scoring, specifically in boxing, when you're constantly updating the unofficial score,

whether it's Showtime or anybody, right? And if that unofficial score is in one direction, and you're just watching at home not scoring scientifically, and you're drinking a beer, and you're going, yeah, you're right, it does kind of look like that guy's winning and is up six rounds to one. And then the scorecards come in and the fight to split decision is close, and you're like, what a robbery.

Well, it wasn't the robbery, it was groupthink. I think there's a difference between groupthink to a degree and outright, like, one-sided. But what I'm trying to say at the end of the day is, if you're a smart enough fan, shouldn't you be able to cut through that shit, Luke? There's a lot of bullshit in this show. People cut through it and they get out of it.

I understand your point. Yes, to answer your question, if you are an educated fan, you should be able to cut through it. The problem I think people are raising, maybe rightly, is I don't think that DC and Rogan and Anik got together and they were like, okay, we're going to really play up on Asanya here. Because the judges don't hear that commentary. At least if they do, it's incidental. And that's really not what they're basing their judging off of. By the way, the right guy won anyway,

and won kind of handily. I mean, for all the commentary, 49-45 is like a little bit out there. But the point I'm trying to raise here is that I don't think you should have no commentary because then, because I can imagine someone being like, oh, just put mics in the corners of each fighter. But then that's giving away information, I think, to the audience that, A, only a handful of people want, and B, could be weaponized by people at home who are in touch with Bluetooth speakers. It just becomes a thing. I don't really want to do that.

I would say maybe offering an alternative commentary stream, I think, is because what happens... Not Snoop Dogg and Faber. No, no, no, no, no. Like a really hardcore one. Because here's what I mean. If you've done commentary, I've done it a little bit, BC. Sometimes when you get together in those teams, one guy will just buoy the other one, and then it begins to get this circle happening in a conversation where you make Adesanya the center, and you don't even mean to do it consciously,

but then everything tends to orbit around that as your focal point. Having an alternative commentary stream, maybe you don't get a lot of that. Maybe you get a second look at things that are a little bit different. I think that's a little bit better. I'd like us to be an alternative commentary. Yeah, Showtime should do that for Bellator shows. Or every show. I mean, look at us.

Hey, look, great Spanish Star Wars t-shirt you're wearing. Yes. Shouts to House of Chingasos. This is Estarguars. Okay, let's do it. We have a couple more of these, BC. From at GregNorius.co.jp, what do you think Dana White,

excuse me, why do you think Dana White, excuse me, why do you think Dana White won't do anything about the judging and scoring even though he constantly complains about it after the judges get it wrong in his opinion? Because he can't. He doesn't run the commission. Because the UFC doesn't appoint judges and referees. It's a state commission. So he can, is he an influencer in this? Yes.

Luke, if there's a Mazzagati type guy on on the road they can really go to the mat if they want to if they want to yes but I change anything but look we've had how many times have we had the scoring debate discussion you know the 10.9 must system in boxing it's it's an MMA doesn't belong there is there a different scoring system yes I think that should be examined yes I think Dana made the right call on going public and saying, this fight is proof that 10-8 rounds need to actually be 10-8 rounds before we jump at it because it does affect things like these title fights.

But there is only so much he can do at the end of the day. And Luke, you want that if you're a fan. You don't want everything in-house. You don't want to be having these discussions of, did the commentary team want Adesanya to win because he's the more marketable guy, so they're trying to sway the public by only pointing out what he's doing. You don't want

those narratives. That's why you have the separation of church and state, Luke. And also, for folks who may not, the one thing I'm sympathetic about is, they're like, oh, we talked about privacy, if you're a hardcore educated fan, it shouldn't faze you. But there are a lot of people who just take their cues from the commentary. They don't know very well.

Yeah, there's a lot of assholes out there, right? Look, they tweet at you all the time, these people. I don't really see them. Those people. They tweet at you too, motherfucker. We got more rising takes. Yeah, but I don't really get offended by it. Oh, really?

Oh, really, Mr. Fucking? We got the block button on workout with the AK-47? That was a tough weekend, Luke. There was no whole risen JMA debacle. Wow, God. All right, from at TheRealKCarter. They're kind of spoiling this one for weekend, Luke. There was a whole Risen JMA debacle. Wow, God. All right, from AtTheRealKCarter. They're kind of spoiling this one for you, BC, so I don't know what you want to do about it.

I'll take it. Is Hans Mollenkamp MMA's version of Team Foxcatchers' John DuPont? The more I research old Hans. That's actually a good question. It actually seems to start feeling like that. So, yeah, my odds and ends, I'll do it now, was sort of, Luke, what the hell is going on with Dominic Cruz? So here's the deal.

Bro, he gets busy. I can't tell if I love this about Dominic Cruz or if it's scaring me. And here's what I'm saying, Luke. He's a warrior. He is a mental, like, machine. His ability to come back from injuries. His inspirational interviews. I mean, that one with Ariel he did, full respect, a couple years back, is just one of the best interviews

ever that's ever been conducted in MMA to show the inspirational side of just believing in yourself and fighting through stuff. So I love me some Dom Cruz, and that was a good win over Casey Kent, even though I was in the bathroom through most of it, full disclosure. Or all of it, actually. But Luke, my point here is that what I love about Dom is that he's a really good analyst.

He gets this game. You'll admit from interviewing him through the years, he's a little on edge. He's a little surly. He never really understands when you're asking him a question whether you're being sincere or not. There's always a question in his mind. Are you trying to undercut me? And I've always rounded that off, Luke, as he's a freaking competitor. And that's what I want out of this guy. He's a hard competitor. But we're seeing a little bit of the crazy come out. I still

don't understand the whole Keith Peterson situation when he lost that fight to Cejudo. And his public response in the interview is like, man, that referee smelt like bitches and hooch. He's trying to screw me. And you're like, is that the right reaction to this? And now this weird Hans Gruber call out at the end of this fight that he won. I was actually saying Boo earns. What the hell is happening here, Luke? I will say this. I didn't know anything about him.

I'd seen him on Instagram, Hans Molenkamp. I don't know anything about him. But I got to tell you, I was texting with maybe half a dozen fighters yesterday. Look at you getting added on a show. A little bit. Some time on the train. Dude. No one really came to his defense, is the way I would put it.

Maybe he's a corporate sponsor version of Ramzan, your boy over there. I don't know. I don't think he's engaging in human rights. But you get what I'm saying. A problematic figure who helps out some but is a little bit problematic in the overall scene. Let me just say that... No, look, Dana went, by the way, tooth and nail to like, afterwards, he's our sponsor.

They've given us so much money, blah, blah, blah, leave it alone. I'm not even here to really talk about Hans. I'm here to talk about Dom. Is this concerning, this two in a row of just sort of weirdness for a guy who, he's in the twilight of his career, but he's also a professional analyst on TV. It just seems like this is out of character. I would say that this is where his energy is focused now. He's not so much like, I'm trying to climb the ladder. Who's next in the contendership line? He's out there being like,

you know what? I ain't got a lot of time left. Fuck y'all. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. You're cool. I'm out. That's what he's doing, right? Hey, how about Luke Thomas? When you let the guard down, Luke, and you just release yourself on this table. Dude, I like the studio shows so much better. So much better.

Do you realize how good we could actually be? Yeah. If you just got on board with this, Luke? Oh, really, mother? Well, you keep the drugs to a minimum. I'll be fine. But I'm serious. Don't you agree?

Dom is like over it. He's over it. Like all the fuck fuck'll be fine. But I'm serious. Don't you agree? Dom is over it. He's over it. All the fuck-fuck games, people play with him. Dude, you're on it. If Dominic Cruz will fight, who the fuck ever, right? And maybe he wins, maybe he loses. But he's going to do interviews one way or the other afterwards. If you've crossed this guy, like...

Oh, he'll remember it. It's filed, bro. If you did his taxes wrong, you're going to get it. If you gave him a shitty service, you're going to get it. I don't know the truth about Hans Mollenkamp. I don't know. But Dom is not suffering fools gladly at all. I will say this, BC.

Let's say for a second it's true. I don't know that it is, but let's say that it's true. Certainly the corroborating evidence I've been able to pull together, it's fairly one-sided. I've not talked to Hans Mollenkamp. But let's say for a second that is true. Is it not amazing to you how many people or entities in MMA bully the shit out of pro fighters? Fighters might be the most bullied people on the planet

in terms of the power structures that they're in and they work around. It is shocking to me how many folks out there are just forcing them to do shit constantly that they don't want to do by virtue of whatever the mechanism is that they're using. You would imagine these are the most impervious people to bullying in the world. I mean, we talk about that.

We almost feel like we're still in a prehistoric era of the sport from the standpoint of fighter representation and unionization and all that stuff. You're right. historic era of the sport from the standpoint of like fighter representation and get, you know, unionization and all that stuff. You're right. Could you imagine like some, like, like, I don't know, fucking bang energy drink being like, it's like, can you imagine like, you know, uh, and Dominic and Sue being like, yeah, this is bullshit. We have to take, I got in order to get money from bang energy drink, fucking, they got to come through and take pictures in the locker room. You would never hear this shit at all in any other sport.

And yet in this one, Dominic Cruz has to go out of his way to raise attention to something that appears to be, I don't know, but appears to be a little bit fucked up. Are you in on the monster energy conspiracy theory that the logo is actually the Hebrew for 666? No, I've not been in a terrible car accident, no. I'm not brain damaged. Luke, you're almost too close in D.C. to, like, I feel like being in D.C. you would get shit,

but you're too close to it. I think I do, and it comes from actually studying the material a little bit. Oh, we got a couple more of these, I think. Was your father skull and bones? No. Fuck, I wish. All right, from AtArtVandalay1997, BC,

how many hot dogs could you eat if you were in the Nathan's 4th of July hot dog eating contest? I have to tell you, that is fucking gross. Yeah. Because what they do is they dip the water and then the fucking whatever in, they dip the buns in water and use it to like shove it down as fast as possible.

It was going to be in Have You Seen This Shit this week. I actually forgot to put it in. Luke, there's a video of this dude who swallows them whole. And the subtext of the video was like, imagine him against Joey Chestnut. Now, I followed this event for years because I used to work at ESPN. I always have to work holidays. So I was always working on 4th of July. And I kind of got into the rivalries with Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi back when he was

doing it. But yeah, what they do is absolutely disgusting. I don't think I can be on that level and know what I want to. Have you ever seen their faces when they're done, like when time is called? Oh, and their stomachs just expand out. I mean, Luke, you and I have put on, even together with the whole Taco Bell fiasco during the documentary weekend, we put on some gross food displays. We've all had chemically induced gross food display moments.

But yeah, I don't want to do that. Although, Luke... Did you ever see the MTV True Life episode with Kobayashi? Yeah. And he goes to noodle houses. Yes. And he's an honored guest there.

And he was bricked up, but then he would eat a training portion, a huge portion, and his stomach would literally, it would be distended through his skin. There was a 2003 Kansas City Royals at New York Yankees game that I went to with a bunch of people. And on our way into the stadium,

there's like the last hot dog vendor right outside before you go in. And it was like one of those that was only like $1 or $2. I ordered seven hot dogs and ate them in succession while we were in the line to get into the, and there's still women that were on that trip to this day that bring up how disgusting that was. That's as far as I've gone. I think the, someone asked me, what's the most amount of hot dogs you've eaten in one sitting? I want to say with a, with a bun, because I've definitely been 23 out of college, broke as fuck and just eating hot dogs out of the

pack. But I'll say with the bun, three. I went to a drunken wiffle ball tournament at like a stadium in a guy's backyard. He had like a fence and everything. And I had 14 pork products, whether it's sausage or hot dog, over the course of a four-hour tournament. That's pretty gross. Dude, you're like. That's pretty gross. Do pigs look at you as like the Adolf Hitler of pigs? Just irresponsible for the death and slaughter?

It was how I was raised, Luke, okay? By the way, my dad just got out of gallbladder surgery. Hey, how is Pops? Are you okay? All is good. Thank you, Dad. I love you. Thank you.

I'm so glad we're doing well there in Florida. All right, Pops. Best wishes to Pops. So is this a little weird, Luke, that the two dominant male forces in my life not only look alike, but both have gallbladder issues simultaneously? Yeah, I have to get surgery soon, but I'll be all right. Okay, BC, with that gallbladder surgery in mind, it is'll have to get surgery soon, but I'll be alright. Okay, BC, with that gallbladder surgery in mind, it is now

your time to take over the show. Good sir, what do you got for us? Thank you. You know what we do, folks. We scour the internet, the good, the bad, the beyond, the ugly, whatever. Whatever I say, Luke. It's Have You Seen This Shit? We're on the damn page. You know what we're getting into at this point. Scour the globe, that kind of thing? Yeah, we do all that shit. Alright, Luke, we

start UFC 259 in Las Vegas. Women's strawweight Amanda Lemos delivers a KO, Luke, via stiff jab against... Dude, she was a hammer in this fight. ...against Livia Renata Souza. Luke, we don't see stiff jab knockouts enough, right? Yeah, and she had a piston for a jab. We've not shouted her out, but she looked amazing. Is that a good stoppage, by the way?

It looked like she was. Yeah, dude, she was getting, that was a boxing stoppage. That was one where the referee was like, yo, young lady, I'm not going to bear witness to this mugging continuing. Sorry, I'm just going to, I'm going to do you a favor. You've been cut. Yes, there it is. All right, Luke, we mentioned light heavyweight Alexander Rokic

getting the victory over Maheta. He was awarded with a brown belt. And check out Coach giving him a little celebration here. Are you down with this? Yeah, nice little head toss there. That's nice. Were you down with DC shitting on the brown belt ceremony, Luke? Listen, I'm not in a position to tell a coach what he can and can't do.

I do find it always a little strange that, like, you know, obviously he planned to give it to him no matter what if he won, maybe even if he didn't win. But it's always a little weird when it's like a mostly striking fight and then they give you a brown belt. Like, you know, it'd be one thing if you submitted him or something. You'd be like, oh, perfect timing. It's the joy he showed, Luke.

It was joy. The joy is, you know, I'm not here to say whether he deserves to be a brown belt or not. I have no idea. No one likes interviewing concussed fighters less than Joe Rogan, yet Joe Rogan interviewed Al Joe after the fight. Luke, we have footage of it. Oh, boy. Yes.

By the way, people are like, he was acting. I'm like, I don't know if he was acting, but here's one thing I'll say. Go back and watch that knee, dude. Dude, how is he awake after that? And also, it's like, who is the bloodthirsty asswipe who's like, you know what? You have not had enough CTE today.

Have you ever noticed this? I need you to have more. Microphone right here? I've never noticed this. No, it's new. It's a boom mic that they're using, yeah. All right, boom. Boom goes the dynamite.

Let's keep it going. Fly away. See, Jay never did shit like that. We got these new ones. Never heard of them. That's the road. No, I don't really know. Never heard of them.

Kai Kata France, your city cuckboxing fellow, was getting beat down. But look at this. Nice rally, Luke, for the finish. Yeah, dude, that was sick. Is he? I know he's got some losses, but is he a potential player in this division? I don't think he'll. He's still young, by the way.

I think he's like 28, and he's still getting better. So let's see. Right now, he's definitely not the best flyweight. But I will say he showed tremendous resilience. Are you down with this running by the fallen man and kind of getting in his face a little bit? That was the next level. I think trying to clarify, you know,

whether you won or you lost is all right. You old bitch. I'll say that, but this is the reality of him. You can be better than him, but you need to be, your margin for error against him is pretty low. I'll say that. Luke, you and I came of age together

on a little show called the MMA Beat. Remember that? Certainly did. We used to have Phoenix Carnevale sitting between us. She's got jokes this weekend about UFC 259. Before this fight started, I told a friend, Yedong is impressive. And he said, thank you. How did you know?

And it took me five minutes to realize the joke. A woman after our own heart here, Luke, on International Women's Day. Did you see what UFC did with the lower third? No. So in the first round, who was he fighting? It was Song Yedong versus, who was the guy he was fighting? Yeah, the other guy. We know, the other guy.

Whatever, Smith or whatever. And so it said Smith and then Yedong. In the next round, they changed it to Smith and Song. They took Yedong off the screen. I'm like, UFC, it's way too late for that, bro. All right. Shout out to Phoenix, though, right? Shout out to Phoenix. Friend of the right? Good people, Phoenix Carnival.

Alright, time to celebrate some elbows, Luke. We begin one championship. Mark Abelardo with such an insane elbow, you need to watch the replay to figure out how he did it, Luke. Up the middle. What is this thing? They call it an atomic elbow? Let's see, up the middle. Did he bring it from below to high? No, a tomahawk elbow. That's what they were calling it on Twitter. It happens too quickly. Can we slow it down so we can see? I don't think Maneech has that ability back there. He's busy working on his white guy arm.

I think it's a high to low. Down the middle. Yes, it is. High to low down the middle. That is vicious, Luke. From somewhere in Eastern Europe, check out this dude landing a Yair Rodriguez-style sneaky elbow to get the finish.

Bop! Oh, the finish. Bob. Oh, hold that. Hold that, son. That could be Poland. That's fantastic. Yeah, that was nice. Maybe that's Caucasus. That's very Caucasus-y, right?

ACA? Yeah, that's the Wow Arena. Wow. Hold that. Okay. Thank you. Luke, this week's COVID-19 updates from Miami, virtually nonexistent, Luke. Good to see you, right?

Yeah, listen. I mean, Florida's going to Florida. What are you going to do? These people, it's outside, you know. It's just, oh, look at that ass. Speaking of Latina big booties. It's like, wow, there's an ass on the screen. I'll have a gander.

Maybe we should take the show on the road. All right, Luke. Speaking of Florida, though, I think we got some fans there. It's like, wow, there's an ass on the screen. I'll have a gander. Maybe we should take the show on the road. All right, Luke. Speaking of Florida, though, I think we got some fans there. Check out this, Luke. Donk 12. I don't know what the 12 stands for. I mean, it's a Hyundai Sonata. This is probably not some old bastard, right?

Yeah, he's probably living in a van down by the river, but that's all right. All right, Luke. Not sure if this is from Kazakhstan or not, but on the, the oh whoops sorry i'm out of order here no you're out of order do we not have number four man each what are we doing here what is he saying i don't know he's not saying anything to me all right we skipped number four let's go to five boxing from melbourne this weekend luke look at that fat man that's two and

13 cruiserweight hayden right you ready for this yeah missed weight-13 cruiserweight Hayden Wright. You ready for this? Missed weight for his cruiserweight bout by 44 pounds, Luke. Not only was the fight called, he subsequently retired afterwards. That is extreme. Not giving a fuck, Luke. You gotta love the fact that he's got like the pregnancy stretch marks

and he just said, you know what? I don't give a fuck. Luke, at what point did he give up in training camp and why did he not tell anybody? He has four necks, by the way. They have four necks. I mean, Luke, this was a secret he had to keep hidden for a while, right? You got to wear baggy clothes to keep this secret. I guess so.

Can you ask Maniche if we're going back to number four? He just said we are. OK, next. So four is next. Here we go, Luke. Not sure if this is from Kazakhstan, but on the weekends, Borat likes to go to Capital City and watch a woman make toilet. And apparently, Luke, they've got a crowd section to watch this.

You into this? I one time went to a boxing gym. And you know boxing gyms. They're not nice. They're fucking shitty. And I was just trying to get some work in. This was years ago. And I remember I walked into the bathroom.

The bathroom shower had no stall, just a hose coming out of the thing. Nothing. It was just water on the floor next to two urinals, next to two shitters, next to a sink in one open room. Nothing. There was nothing. Was there a crowd section to buy tickets to? There were not seats like that, but then the dudes started coming in and showering and pissing and shitting in front of each other, and I was like, I will not be coming back

to this gym. Yeah, that's very concentration camp-ish. I'm not really into that. They were not big on, you know, being a spa retreat. It was very, like, they took boxing gym, and they were like, let's make it worse. Yeah. Let's make it as bad as possible. Shout out to hoagie farts.

Luke, people want you to so badly create a new segment in which you critique their tattoos, so let's do a dry run. Rate this cactus, Luke. Love the fact that they're trying to get me to do dong jokes. That's nice. Shading's good. I like the black outline.

This is a traditional style tattoo. It's not one that I would ever wear. Now what are those pink things? Are those crabs or is that like pubes? Yeah, it's probably COVID. Okay. COVID thingy. The spikes, the protein spikes on the virus.

All right. Hey Luke, let's keep it going. This old guy definitely fucks. Check this guy out Luke. Is this Roger Stone? Who is this? Wow, look at the fuck. He was wearing hammer pants.

Bro, what? He was wearing hammer pants before it was cool, Luke. Check that out. My man's got Daniel Cormier pants up his nipples, bro. He's out here fucking getting it done. Shout out to this old South Florida bastard, right? Maybe he's driving Donks 12. Maybe it's possible, right?

Wow, my man gets after's possible, right? Wow. My man gets after it. All right, Luke. A lot of people are wondering where Shinya Yoyoki was ahead of his scheduled fight with Sage Northcutt. We found him. Extreme Division Championship Pro Wrestling. This is Shinya Yoyoki against Maku Donnarutu.

Luke, let's just... You're the pro wrestling guy. Tell me what's happening here. I'm going to ask you to tell me, Luke. Is it hard times in the Aoki family for money right now? What are we doing? Because this clown, this actual crown, Makudanaruto... It's nice of them to be doing this in a high school gymnasium.

Did he just try to... With maple syrup or jelly? Luke, did he just toss that man's salad? Are you that desperate to sneak in gay porn? No, no, no. Luke, people sent me this because they heard us talking about the Aoki-Northcutt fight coming up on one, and we were like, where's Shinya been, Luke? This, by the way, is only going to get worse.

Just a spoiler alert. I don't actually know if tickets were sold for this, Luke. Jesus Christ. I don't actually know if tickets were sold for this, Luke. But... Oh, Jesus Christ. Hey, it's popping the boys in the back, though, at least. I bet you have a fucking nuclear heart on watching this. You are absolutely the worst thing ever. He's in agony, Luke.

You, Osama bin Laden, are covered. I can't decide which one's worse. Alright, let's go to the hardwood, Luke. Is this a travel or is this legal? Either way, check out this filthy dribbling move in this old guy league. Is he going to nutmeg him? Oh, shit! Is that a carry?

Let's see. One more time. Either way, I got to bring that out in my 40 and over thing. No, I don't think so. I don't think that's a carry. Look at the round amount of rebound going after it right there. I love that. Yeah, dude.

Sometimes you go to the Y, you see some shit. All right. Hey, sound of the week, Luke. Get ready for this. ESPN's Doris Burke breaking down the NBA. Look like it again, Doris. You have to know when to come. So Chris does a great job.

Giannis comes from behind and gets a piece of it. Like, it's not just when you come. Like, it's how hard you come. Look like it again, Doris. You have to know when to come. So Chris does a great job. When was the last time you came that hard? I mean, when it comes to going hard in the paint, Luke, she's not wrong.

She didn't say in the paint. You know she didn't say in the paint. Oh, God. Luke, if that wasn't insensitive enough on International Women's Day, how many women do you think it takes to screw in a light bulb, Luke? I'm not answering that. All right, well, this next clip will show us, Luke. Wait for it.

What am I waiting for? See, I'm trying to get them out of the kitchen, Luke, and into the workforce. Is that what you're doing? Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. Oh, no. All right. Well, you know, there's only one place to go from here, Luke. We're already off the rails. Let's go to your favorite travel companion. Fucking Hitler. Airplane fee. Luke, you just came off a train on your way here to Jersey City. Did you see any of this, Luke?

Can we keep it going? Can we keep it going here? Oh, my God. What are they, fucking digging mole children out of the caves in the Pacific Northwest and then just throwing them on planes? The next one was sent. Why is Bilbo Baggins in coach? Jesus Christ.

MK viewer Jeff Figueroa caught this on the train in Jersey, Luke. All right. Dude, people are, they need help. These are some folks that need some help. All right, let's keep it going. Some psychological counseling. Luke, there ain't no party like an Angolan party because an Angolan party lasts

until we break off the window bars, Luke. Check out this event. This guy grinding up high, Luke. Wow. Damn. Well, you know what? You can't really say it's really lowering property value, can you?

Now it is, but wow, Luke, wow. Not much. What do you think happened after the camera turned off? They have all the furniture I had in my bachelor pad when but wow, Luke, wow. Not much. What do you think happened after the camera turned off? They have all the furniture I had in my bachelor pad when I was like 23, 24. Do you have bars

on the windows? Yes, and I had fucking plastic chairs like a very rich person. We do have footage. Luke, this is a surprise to you. We have footage

of Luke logging into loveloreda.com for the first time. Oh yeah, let me see this. Wow, my man, is that a flare gun? Is he shooting a fucking flare gun?

You got to be careful. That thing just goes off, Luke, okay? Yeah, yeah. All right. Just popped out of his hands, huh? He must have been a draft evader. I think he listened to Doris Burke, I think is what happened. What is that?

An old one-shotter, Luke? What is that, a cannon? I'm not sure. A hand cannon? All right. Skater die time, Luke? What is that, a cannon? I'm not sure. A hand cannon? All right. Skater die time, Luke. You love weird weightlifters. Rate this, please.

I'm trying to see what that is. So he's got, is that a safety bar squat? I'm not sure what that is. Yeah, those are 45s. He's dead lifting. No, safety bar is a different kind of bar. I don't know what the fuck that is. Oh, I guess that's dead lifting. No, safety bar is a different kind of bar. I don't know what the fuck that is. Oh, I guess that's just tape.

That's just a standard barbell. Impressive or no? Stupid, but impressive, yes. All right, well, this was skateboarding done right. Let's see it done wrong. Luke, you got to be careful at the skate park to stay in your lane. You know what I'm saying? Oh, see that chick? First of all, she's just out for a stroll on the bike, Luke.

It's International Women's Day. And then frickin' Tony Hawk's jumping over the crease there. Oh, God. Yeah. All right. Hey, Luke, you ever wonder what Peter North is doing in his retirement? No. I think he's working the hand sanitizer can for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Check out this little advertisement here. Can we get a full screen, Manish? I remember the first Peter North clip I ever saved on my computer. You want to know what it was called? Lake. Lake.mpeg. Luke, this is a camera the Bucks put on during timeouts to encourage people to sanitize. Just bukkake the whole. The Milwaukee bukkake, he's got it, alright. That's great, that's great. Alright, got one more for you, Luke. This is Luke, each time he used to have to take the train

back from NYC when you were the MMA beat host. This was you twice a week. What's he doing? He's flipping off New York on the way out. I like New York. For these reasons. All right, but that was a dark period

in your life, Luke. Yeah, it was a lot. That's the shit for the week, Luke. Hope you enjoyed it. That's great. That's great. Milwaukee Bukakis. That is a good one.

That is great. BC, it's time for Odds and Ends. You kind of already did it. Yeah, I already shot my look. Do you want to change one? Do you want to call an audible here? No. Can we...

No. What do you got, Luke? You got anything good? I do have one, yes. So for my odds and ends, I just want to... I actually thought from an entertainment standpoint, the prelim card was better than the main card. There was finish after finish.

It was crazy. So I want to give a shout out, if I can, to Sean Brady. Sean Brady out of, I think, is it Daniel Gracie Jiu-Jitsu? I'm not entirely sure. Sean Brady beating Jake Matthews via arm triangle, also doing it, showing a tremendous amount of strength, but skill as well. On the feet, had a little bit of issues, you know. Matthews was doing, was landing, because it was a problem.

Brady kept circling to his left, so he was landing, because it was a problem. Brady kept circling to his left, so he was running into the right hand a lot, but on the mat, he is a force to be reckoned with. Great win over Jake Matthews, and I'm undefeated. I think, what is his record? He said it was like 14, but I thought it was a little bit more

closer to 20. He looks really good, Luke. Are you down with his, speaking of his ink, he's got like the devil on his back. He has really good, Luke. Are you down with his, speaking of his ink, he's got like the devil on his back. He has very good ink, yes. Even with that very dark portrayal of a demon

on the back? The henna mask, the henna mask. I don't care for that personally, but like the quality of the Japanese sleeve that he has is very high, very, very high.

He has good ink. Luke, we should consider coming here more often. I love this shit, dude. This is what the show was designed to do. These are our people, right? We got Sweet Lou in the back re-racking on the couch, right? Remember that guy?

Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I wish we could do it every Monday, to be honest with you, because I don't think the show is the same without it. Maybe there will come a time where we will, Luke, okay? Maybe one day, BC. Are you smitten with the reaction to our doc? I mean, I like talking about it. You're not really into it, but... I think you are

grossly overstating its importance, but yes, the reaction has been extraordinarily positive. Okay. Shout out to Less Than Jake, our documentarian. Who, by the way, has COVID. I don't know if you're under HIPAA laws. Are you really allowed to just go out there? He has AIDS, not COVID. I'm sorry.

It's just HIV, it's not, it's nothing else. So you can't catch it by kissing him. Well, Jake tried. Jake tried.

All right, so are we done here? I mean, we could linger for a little bit, you know, we can go cranberries on you and just kind of,

you know. No, I don't want to do that. Did you have to? No. Did you have to? So let's get a couple things out here.

BC and I are in town because we're shooting some, should we say? I don't really think we that. Did you have to? No. Did you have to? So let's get a couple things out here. BC and I are in town because we're shooting some, should we say? I don't really think we should say. We're shooting some stuff for the future. How about that? Do you think it's a fair thing to say? Yeah. As long as they pay us what it's worth.

Yeah, as long as they pay us. I'm really into it. I'll pay that man his money. We're shooting some stuff for the future, so we'll give you more details when we can, but we're happy to be here. So thank you so much for joining us. If you are new from the Post Fight show, we added a bunch of new subscribers, welcome.

You can follow us on other places on social media as you see here. Instagram and Twitter have different names. Friend of the program, Chuck Mendenhall, relaunched his podcast with Shaheen El-Shahidi. Yes, he did. The man in the hat. The man in the myth.

The man in the myth, so check that out. I love that guy. They took a little shot at us. Did you hear that? No, no, I didn't. It was a friendly shot. But they were bringing up the fact that we still have to have, before the pandemic hit, and they were with The Athletic.

Yes. Sean still is, but they had said they issued us a drinking challenge for the next time we were all on the road, probably in Las Vegas. You and me versus, I think, Chuck and Sean. Do they know that I get white girl drunk off two drinks? No, but they were expecting me, I think, to do the heavy lifting there, which I'm not sure with my gallbladder I can anymore. Yes, yes.

But they were saying, like, you know, you need some alternatives. And I think Chuck said this. Chuck, I heard you, boy. Chuck goes, he goes, how much more in combat can you actually listen to? It was a good thing, actually. So I heard that. I miss Chuck when he used to come here. When we had a show in studio, Chuck was a big thing, actually. So I heard that. I miss Chuck when he used to come here. When we had a show in studio, Chuck was a big part of that.

On Zoom, it's a little bit different. Chuck and Aljo, those were our guys, you know? Aljo, the only pro fighter who has helped host a show here. That won't be the end of it, though. No, no, no, certainly not. We're making an imprint right now. Showtime.com if you want to try it. You can get a 30-day free trial.

If you like it, you can keep it. If not, pound sand. And then, as we mentioned, if you sign up now, you get the first six months for $4.99 for the entirety of the Showtime.com if you want to try it You can get a 30 day free trial If you like it you can keep it If not pound sand And then as we mentioned If you sign up now You get the first six months for $4.99 For the entirety of the Showtime experience Boxing this Saturday by the way David Benavidez will be back on the air

I'm going to talk to him for Morning Combat this week So be on the lookout if you like box There's a few of you out there that love to open the box Step three You know You know Like the I'm just going to let this linger

You want to like the... I'm just going to let this linger. You want to email the show for fan submissions or for dead wrong, morningcombat at gmail.com. Just hit up the show. Let us know what you got in mind. Make sure that the information is clear. You label it correctly, but we're happy to take a look at it. You want some merch? You can go to store.show.com.

And, yeah. Oh, where's the merch guy? Yeah, where's 2.0? It's coming, right?show.com. And yeah. Oh, here's the merch guy. Yeah, where's 2.0? It's coming, right? Soon. Yes, very soon. We actually went and had another meeting about it. And we had...

They don't want to hear the birth pains. They want to see the head, right? It's coming. It's coming. It's crowning like the king of England. So is Luke, by the way. I mean, you may have... No, I had Pepto-Bismol.

I won't shit for a week. It's great. Let's see. What else? I think that's about it, BC. I won't shit for a week. It's great. Let's see. What else? I think that's about it, BC. Anything else? I love our people. All right.

I love doing the show in studio. It's just a different experience. It really is, okay? I love this place. I don't know what they do with this table after hours. You know, not really. Yeah. Are you done?

You're done with your little you know your little side thing your little comedy special there yes yes Patrice are you done? alright

you'd be surprised Luke alright I bet I would be you fuck it face alright so that's Brian Campbell I'm Luke Thomas we're from CBS Sports as well as Showtime

thank you to CBS Sports Showtime and the crew here at Malka we appreciate it we don't ever take it for granted we love doing the shows in the studio thank you guys. We were COVID tested before this.

Of course we were. Of course we were. And we quarantined the whole nine yards. So then on top of it, I want to thank the audience who watched. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal. Thank you. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.