MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC 263 Instant Reaction: Israel Adesanya vs. Marvin Vettori | Brandon Moreno vs. Deiveson Figueiredo

Episode Date: June 13, 2021

UFC 263 features a main event between UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and challenger Marvin Vettori. In the co-main event, the flyweight title is up for grabs as champion Deivison Figueiredo faces off against Brandon Moreno for the second time in as many fights. Also on the pay-per-view fight card is a welterweight non-title, non-main event five-round bout. It's the first of its kind on UFC history. '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

Hi everybody, it is 1.23 in the morning, East Coast time, on the 13th of June 2021, and it is time for the official Morning Combat UFC 263 post-fight show. My name is Luke Thomas, I am one half of the hosting duo from Morning Combat, which is a podcast that is brought to you by CBS and Showtime. All right, UFC 263 just ended moments ago. We have all the results. We have all the analysis. There's a tweet up right now. I have linking to this video. If you want to leave a question for me to get to, put it in the comments there You can't miss it. I'm at L Thomas news all the information is in the description box below or at least it should be and

Yeah So there you have it. All right If you don't want spoilers now's your time to get out of here But for everybody else who wants to get into the nitty-gritty details Let's do that now, shall we? Alright. If you are new here, please subscribe to the channel. If you are not new here, either way I suppose,

please give the video a thumbs up. We're looking to drive some subscriptions. We're pretty close to getting to at least our very first goal, but we need your help to get there. We do a show Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11 a.m. in the East live, plus all kinds of interviews, post-fight shows like this. A lot of different stuff. Okay, I have my glasses somewhere. I'll put them on if I need them, but I've been wearing them all day and somehow they're not helping that much. All right. Well, they are, but I'm too blind for it to fucking matter. Okay. So I'm assuming if you're here,

you're okay with the spoilers. I'll turn this off so it doesn't super annoy you. Let's get to results. All right. So UFC 263 is now officially in the books. We'll go for about an hour today, by the way. Okay. This took place at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona. The crowd today sucked. They were not good. Don't know if that's typical of Arizona crowds generally. I've been to Arizona a few times.

Had a great time every time. Everyone was really nice to me. But the crowd tonight, should be noted noted authoritatively sucked the horn. They were not a good MMA crowd. We'll get back to that a little bit later. Let's start with the main event for UFC 263. The middleweight title was up for grabs tonight as champion Israel Adesanya defended his title against Marvin Vittori. He wins via clean sweep, 50-45 on all three judges' scorecards. Marvin Vittori couldn't take one round off of him. In many ways, this was actually a worse performance for him than the first fight, where he at least got that third round. Okay, so what happened? There are a few fighters in the UFC where I found that if I do enough tape study on them,

their games become very memorable to me. Max Holloway is that way to me. There's a couple other ones. Israel Adesanya is a big one for me. I've done more, him and Max Holloway, I've probably done more tape study on than anybody else. If you go to my personal YouTube channel, which just has my name in it, you can see there's a lot there. And of course, I did some for MMA Fighting and for Showtime as well. But what were the lessons to me? A couple of things. Number one, I've been saying it all

week and I'll repeat it again. I think that the fight today proves that, but the real whole record proves it. It is true that if you can pull Adesanya away from the fence or catch him in open space somewhere, his takedown defense is not, it's okay, but it's not like his best defensive asset. If you push him directly against the fence line where he's there working, you know, splitting his base, whizzering, underhooking the whole nine yards, he's very difficult to take down. And you saw that there were times where Vittori would like run him into the fence and kind of corkscrew it before he got there. He had a little bit of success with that. Caught the kick in open space, proof of concept. There was a couple times where he would press him into the fence and then pull

him away and then change directions, which is exactly the same kind of thing he did in the first fight. And the first one was actually very successful. In that third round, you saw him try it here. It worked once, but mostly failed. My point being is, the general truth about Adesanya's takedown defense, more or less held. It was pretty close to perfect. Not quite, but pretty close to perfect. Along the fence line, a little bit more porous. Out in open space. However, I did not see a real growth or maturation in some of the ways that Marvin was approaching this. I mean,

again, to pull Adesanya off the fence and then you can level change through the takedown itself, turn him a different direction, whatever you want to do. Those things worked the first time. He brought them back. I didn't see any modifications to them to deal with the kind of things Adesanya was going to do. It's like, oh, that worked the first time. Let's just try it again. I didn't see any modifications to them to deal with the kind of things Adesanya was going to do. It's like, oh, that worked the first time. Let's just try it again. I didn't see a lot of change or adaptation either to get to those places or then to do a lot differently once he got there.

So that, I thought, was really weird. But the first part I want to say is the takedown defense basically held in the ways that we knew. I also will say, and the second part that sort of feeds into it, you lost sight a little bit, I think we all did, about how dynamic a fighter Adesanya can be when he goes to 205. And that's a lot of reasons for that. That's not his normal weight class. I know he's won as high as heavyweight, but I think middleweight is obviously going to be his best weight class, certainly in MMA anyway. He's just much more of a dynamic fighter.

Against Blachowicz, when he got taken down, he just couldn't really do a whole lot. And then we did the tape study on him for my personal channel. We went through the Gastelum fight, the Vittori, the first Vittori fight, obviously, and then the Blachowicz fight. And what you saw was that at middleweight, he just did a lot more, took a lot more grappling chances, just was much more of a dynamic force defensively or offensively when he needed to be, putting feet in the hips of Kelvin Gastelum to get him off of him. You saw a lot of that today.

Now, some of that was a new tricks he was building in. A lot of it he was really planning on, like weak control for reversals. He did that, I think, twice once he had his back taken, and then the other was off the takedown. He just immediately reversed it. So he really had good time. For a guy like that, that second one in particular, both of them really involve timing, among a few other things. But if you've got good timing striking, that means you've got good timing generally. Those are going to be opportunities for him. But that's what, to me, the story of this was, was that Vittori is actually pretty defensively sound. He didn't really get caught with any huge shots. I mean, he got laid into with the leg kicks over and over again.

But think about how many shots up here he blocked or got out of the way of or ducked and rolled under. It was a fair amount. I think Adesanya didn't have like a real signature punch in this fight, even though he had a six-inch reach advantage. But what he did have was, again, as I mentioned, much more of a dynamic MMA grappler at middleweight than he is at 205. He added some new things for sure. And then on top of that, the reality about his takedown defense kind of held.

Plus, his ability to sort of scramble kind of aided what he was able to do uh all together but but that to me was was really sort of the story of the fight um about why he was able to win leg kicks are a thing that people don't talk a lot about without a sonya but they're actually really critical to his game they're the they were the most impactful thing he did in this fight they were the most impactful thing he did in the romero fight. Like when fights are kind of close, the leg kicks sometimes end up being not just the most important work he's done, but the most voluminous as well. I think that was the case here.

Again, I have to look at the striking totals to be sure and see what they say. But that's often the case. And, you know, we sort of associate him with flashy kicks. And he was trying this combination. You got to see it over and over again. He hit it although not super cleanly but it was the jab and then he would lean off and then try to get the uppercut to come at an angle and then he would throw the leg kick back from the other side you know he was he was just eating Vittori alive like that but I want to go into something that I think is just really important to point out here, coming off of that Blachowicz loss, and then moving into this Vittori rematch. I saw a lot

of people saying that this was a lot like the Blachowicz fight, you know, just at middleweight. How would Adesanya deal with that? And I got to tell you, I understand some of that framing. I don't think that's an unfair comparison in totality. And again, as somebody who makes comparisons sometimes at MMA and people are like, oh, but these things are different. I don't necessarily always mean them in a totalizing way. Still, I think it's a fundamental misreading. And I'll tell you why. The biggest piece, there's a couple of pieces, but the biggest piece is that the reason why Adesanya lost to Blahovicz is Blachowicz was actually passive

in many parts of this fight, unassuming, and he backed up a lot. Part of the reason he was able to get takedowns is because he would have his back to the fence. Adesanya would move into him, and then he would use the space behind Adesanya to run down a takedown, open space. That was one. Adesanya walked into a lot of traps that Blachowicz was setting on the feet. So Blachowicz is doing a lot different. Yes, there were times Blachowicz marched him down. You know, Blachowicz is famous for those blitzes he likes to do. But in general, that was the reason why he was able to get the upper hand. Like, you know, there was a pretty even fight. One was a little bit ahead. And obviously in the wrestling department, Blachowicz

had a big advantage. But on the feet, and how he approached tactically his spatial awareness, that was a big deal for Blahovich, right? That's one of the reasons why he is very, very capable. He's got a fucking just Armageddon when he balls up the fist, but he's very patient.

He'll back up. He'll let you come into him. Like, he's not a marauder. That is not the case with Marvin Vittori. Marvin Vittori moved into Adesanya for 25 minutes. For 25 minutes. Listen, against a lot of guys, they can't take that heat. And especially for somebody like Vittori, who I do think is, for the most part, he's offensively limited, but pretty defensively sound. It's hard to land clean on that guy. Leg kicks notwithstanding, but sort of waist up. He not only has a good chin, he doesn't take a tremendous amount of abuse for the most part. But when a guy just marches into someone like Adesanya, it's going to be very,

unless they're just really dynamic, it's going to be really hard for them to beat him. It's going to be really hard. He can just plan what you're going to do, and so that means he can make a lot more choices calmly and confidently about what he needs to do. You're just presenting the same weapon over and over and over and over again. Obviously, he was trying to fe faint his way on the inside. He was trying to do what he could to disrupt the rhythm or whatever he was trying to grope for there in the dark a little bit. But that's a really hard way to fight Adesanya. And then if you press into all these guys, they keep pressing into him. They press into him, press into him,

Gastelum pressing into him, Brunson, pressing into him. You know, I mean, the list goes on. Blachowicz was the first one who took a step back. And that, to me, is just, it's a complete and really, not just a difference between them, but it almost makes, almost, not quite, but it almost makes the comparison between Vittori and Blachowicz meaningless. The second thing I would say is about Vittori, people are like, oh, can he learn from what Blachowicz did? Well, for sure, there are things to pick up on from that. Again, the spatial awareness and the employment of negative space was a big deal,

although that wasn't a lesson that he decided to learn. But the other part was, like, credit to Vittori. Vittori was really the first, I mean, the Wilkinson fight is whatever. It's his first fight in UFC. But to me, Vittori, back in 2018, whenever that was, that was the first time I saw somebody do something different without assigning it as related to takedowns, pulling him off of the fence, changing directions, right? All the things we've been talking about. It's actually Blachowicz who built off of that. Now, again, every time somebody iterates something, you can learn from them, even if you're the originator or the first one in line or whatever. There's always stuff you can pick up on. But like, to me, people got the

narrative backwards. So in learning this, it's like, what did he learn from Blachowicz? Well, okay, some stuff, but this was the first guy to really have some success. He took a round from Adesanya in their first fight in that third round by virtue of the things I'm pointing out. Blachowicz just built on top of that. So I really did not agree with a lot of the comparisons there. There are some other ones that are kind of meaningful, but I just think this was a showcase tonight. You already knew Adesanya was a good striker. You already knew he was pretty good with defensive movement. The other part was I had talked about it relentlessly. Golly, I cannot believe Vittori fought the way he did now that I'm going through it. What did we talk about in the lead up to this

fight over and over and over and over again? I did it on morning combat. I did it fucking months ago on my own tape study. One of the ways Blachowicz was able to get him, one was backing up and then using the negative space to push into Adesanya when he wanted to make a blitz on him. The other one was he would throw either a certain kind of strike or at a certain rhythm or at a certain number to get Adesanya in space. Not against the fence line directly, but in space. First of all, he would double leg him.

I didn't see a lot of sort of power doubles, but not the double, not the sort of scoop double the way that Blachowicz went for it. But the other part was that Blachowicz would get him moving with his feet planted. So a lot of trunk movement. Now you saw a lot of that tonight with Vittori, but what was the difference? Once again, in ordinary scenarios, if you're backed up against the fence, it's not like boxing ropes, right? Imagine I have boxing ropes behind me. What would happen if I lean into the boxing ropes? This would happen.

I can lean through them. Tyson Fury, he doesn't want to spend a lot of time on the ropes, but Tyson Fury is amazing. And you can see this lot of time on the ropes, but Tyson Fury is amazing. And you can see this in the Otto Wallin fight, where Fury would lean against the ropes and then pass the ring apron, and the punches would go right in front. Against the cage, you can't do that. Once you touch it, it's like the chair is locked, right? Let's lock the chair. Okay, chair is locked. Now what happens when you back up? I can't move. Okay, so ordinarily, when you get backed up into situations like that, that's a bad thing.

But against Vittori, in this particular case, with the skills Adesanya has, it's fine. Number one, he's really good at moving and juking. Two, he can't get that far off balance by virtue of how close he is to the fence. He can move, but he can't get too reckless with it. And it doesn't matter anyway, because if he's already against the fence, once you press into him, now you're in the territory where his takedown defense is his best. Not a great game plan, I'm afraid to say, for Marvin Vittori. I respect the growth that he has shown. I think at 27, maybe 28 years of age,

I don't think we've seen the last of him as a real contender in this organization and in this weight class, perhaps. Maybe the next one we'll see. He did look fucking big, you know. He's a big, strong guy. But I did not see a ton of lessons learned, either from that Blachowicz fight to the extent that there were some there. Frankly, even from his first fight. It felt to me like he was a more polished version of that, but not enough polish to make up the difference between them, he and Adesanya.

To me, that's really the reason why he lost. He couldn't effectively secure the takedown and hold it. He couldn't really effectively secure the takedown for the most part. And he had trouble landing. He was reacting to Adesanya. He had no answer for the leg kicks. And he got pieced up. you know, it wasn't a tremendous beating, right, he didn't get, you know, annihilated, but five rounds of distance, and that's all she

wrote, man, that to me is really the story of the fight, it's amazing to me that Vittori, you know, I want to be very clear about this, I want to be very fair to him. It can't be easy to fight Adesanya. I respect how far he's come. I thought Whitaker deserved the title shot, but if they weren't going to do that, I was okay with this. I thought this was a good test after the Blachowicz fight to see exactly where is Adesanya? Where's his head at? Where's everything at?

I really did not like Vittori's approach to this. I really, really, really didn't. And I think that... I'm going to just keep saying it, I guess, until it becomes more widely adopted. Someone else more famous needs to say this than me. I'm not saying Adesanya can't be beat by the guys who press into him constantly. I don't just mean the takedowns, although that's part of it, but constantly trying to walk him down.

I'm not saying that he can't be beat that way. That's not the argument. But I don't think that's the best way to beat him because his weaknesses are very limited in that range. And most of his strengths are still there. Right? So this constant pressure into him, it makes him throw more. Let's look at some of the numbers from Fightmetric.

By the way, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but Fightmetric is owned by Zufa now. They are not an independent company anymore. Actually, it hasn't been that way for years, so I'm told. I've never said that personally, but it's true. All right, let's look at these numbers. So let's compare the Blachowicz fight, shall we, to tonight's. We'll go round by round, okay, just in striking volume, for whatever that is worth. Adesanya landed 18 in the first round,

this is against Vittori. He landed 18 in the first round, 28 in the second, 19 in the third, 20 in the fourth, and they both had pretty low output. Only 11 in the fifth for Adesanya, just nine for Vittori, so not a lot there. He is credited with a takedown, but I guess he didn't do a whole lot with it. Okay, so 18, 28, 19, 20, 11. So exception of the fifth round, around 20, a little bit higher than that or so, right? 20-ish. What was he against? Blachowicz.

13. 21, 21, 11, 12. So he had two rounds of that fight where he was about in the same range, but he had three that were 11, 12, and 13. So I think he had a lower amount of output. Let's see, he totaled 182 attempted strikes in the fight with Blachowicz. He totaled 208 here. So not a huge difference, but about, yeah, about 30. 30 and some change. 36, I think, is how many is the difference, right? Or no, 26. Or what is it? Hold on, let me see one more time. 182, so it would be, yeah, 24, wait, my math is all messed up. Yes, 18 plus 8, so it'd be 26. Yeah, still, almost 30 strikes is the difference. So he was just more, when you constantly press into him, he's going to be able to reset the angle because he's going to do all of his stuff. You might land on him a little

bit. You know, he's not impervious, but he's able to get the lateral movement going, which forces you to reset. He can intercept like a son of a bitch. And then those leg kicks, they come. You guys got to pay attention to them. Sometimes they come as part of a combo. As I mentioned, jab, getting off, uppercut, and then he would throw the leg kick as the cutting sort of finisher there.

But a lot of times what he would do is he would kind of move into a space and feint something. Vittori backs up and then sees that there's no threat, walks back, and as soon as he steps into him, Adesanya would catch him. He does it over and over. It does not just to him. Most everyone he fights, he'll feint, back him off.

As soon as they begin to move back into him, he cracks him over and over again. So good news for Adesanya. Back in the winning track, I think, as I mentioned before, showing some growth. Getting those two reversals was big, at least the ability to stand up. I think he did it on maybe even three occasions. There was one where he corkscrewed along the fence line, which was pretty great. So I definitely feel like he's been working on that. I still think he's got some vulnerabilities out in open space

that he just won't have against the fence line, but they're not quite as pronounced as they were before. I do think, and I said it before, if you guys go back to the tape I did, I thought that when Blachowicz beat him, you'd notice that Blachowicz wasn't just level with him on top. He was kind of past him, and you almost saw Adesanya almost in a scenario I thought that when Blachowicz beat him, you noticed that Blachowicz wasn't just level with him on top. He was kind of past him.

And you almost saw Adesanya almost in a scenario where he was kind of like almost getting pushed and smushed over. You know, when a bigger, stronger grappler. That was like one of those signs to me. It was like you're dealing with a bigger man here. That's what it looks like when a bigger man goes against a smaller man if their skills are roughly equal-ish. You know, you see a guy get kind of smushed and kind of flattened out in a direction. That's what you saw there. You didn't see that here. You didn't see it in the Kelvin Gastelum fight. He's so much more of a dynamic presence grappling at 185 pounds. It suits him much better, especially when there's a skill gap, right?

The grappling is not the thing he's best at. The thing he's best at is striking. So minimizing any weight advantage to the extent that the fight takes place in those areas really makes a big difference for him, and I think you saw that tonight. Whitaker fight has got to be next, no doubt about it. I don't know exactly how that will go. Adesanya wants it in Auckland. I would love for that fight to take place there. The last one was in what, Melbourne? I think that's right. Maybe it was Sydney. I don't remember. Where was that other one? Now I want to know. It was in Melbourne. Yeah, back in October of 2019 against Robert Whittaker. So I guess that'll

be next. I don't know where it will be. I think Robert Whittaker's looked the best he's looked since that fight. It'll be tremendous. But this was a reminder that like, I saw people say like, you know, Luke Rockhold might give Adesanya a tough time at 205 pounds. Sorry, at 185 pounds. It'd be interesting. Certainly on the floor, he's going to have greater control, and he's going to have really good passing. He's got very, very good passing. He's got a good mount.

Luke Rockhold's got a phenomenal ground game, but he's got to beat some guys so he can get to a point where that's even a relevant thing. Do I think that there's a skill differential in that particular way with Luke Rockhold having the advantage over Adesanya? Sure. Sure I do. But before that can even become a real thing, he's got some work to do. I don't want to dismiss the idea that there are vulnerabilities there, but I'd also want to make sure that if we're talking about what's going to happen with him, we're talking about a scenario that is plausible given the present circumstances.

So, phenomenal win by Israel Adesanya and a real back-to-form moment. You know, walking out with the Hanya mask and talking the way he was talking. You could tell he was believing strongly in his opportunity to win here. And I'll say it one more time for Vittori. 27, I believe he's 27, at most 28. He is, where is the age here on this fucking thing? 27. He doesn't turn 28 until September.

You know, you've not seen the last of him in big, important fights, and you've not seen the last of him getting his hand raised either. Don't lose sight of that. All right, if you have any questions for it check me out on twitter um i'll answer let's go to the second one i i just don't know i don't know what else to say about this one how about this we have a new flyweight champion folks brandon moreno defeats Devison Figueredo via rear naked choke, 226 of the third round. I mean, what a brilliant moment. It's almost as if like, I don't know how dated a reference this is anymore because I'm fucking old and I don't know what's cool,

but if you guys have never seen the movie Rudy, it's about this long shot guy who wanted to play football at Notre Dame, which is one of the big powerhouses here in the United States. And he literally gets to play like on the last eligible play of his entire fucking career. Just that is all he ever gets to do. And everyone in the world tells him no. And he actually gets a sack in his only play as a football player for Notre Dame. This isn't like, you know, this is an exaggeration.

But it feels a little bit like, for whatever this is worth, it feels like Rudy, you know, won the Heisman or something. You know, that's how good it feels to watch Brandon Moreno achieve in the way that he has. I mean, there's just so many nice things to say about it. Let me say something first about this. Folks, if you are new to MMA, or even if you're not that new, either way, it is worth saying out loud. 15, 20 years ago, let's say 15 years ago, around the time of The Ultimate Fighter, the idea that you could get a fighter born, raised, not entirely, but largely trained in Mexico,

and that they would become a UFC champion, number one, and number two, that they would beat a Brazilian doing it, was more or less unfathomable. It's not because Mexicans aren't good fighters, far from it. We know from boxing that they are rocked, ribbed fighters and one of the best fight communities on earth. That's a true statement about the Mexican people. But Dana White did an interview years and years ago. And when they thought about expanding, they said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to follow the boxing model. So where was boxing big when they took over around 2001?

UK, United States, and Mexico. And they thought that that would be the path to where they wanted to go. And what they discovered was MMA's footprint, at that time anyway, was just entirely different from that. It followed much more along the pro wrestling model. Canada was pretty far advanced at the time. Brazil is obviously just a fucking powerhouse in the world of MMA, right? And so they had to kind of redo things.

And building that UK market took a long time. And building this Mexican market took a long time. And it's not just them. It's a lot of players. But still, they've had a really key hand in growing it. And you have to say, folks, this is a huge moment. A huge moment. Not just for the Mexican MMA fans, for Mexican MMA.

This is a huge moment in MMA. Dude, the world is getting a little bit flatter. When you've got a fucking young 28-year-old Brandon Moreno from Mexico, frankly, kind of putting it on Figueiredo, right, from Brazil, and so Moreno wins and he's your rightful champion this was unfathomable 15 years ago when i started getting into mma like coverage on my own around that time you could never have imagined that and the good news is for us even if you're not mexican is that when you see the talent pools in all these other places begin to develop, dude, it makes MMA better. We are richer as a fight community. We have more. We

have things like tonight because of the growth of Mexican MMA. And there's going to be another country that's going to grow and become something pretty special too. I don't know which one's going to be next. Again, MMA is sort of charting its own footprint and its own path, independent of the kind of boxing world as we understand it. But this is a huge, huge moment. Not quite passing of the

torch, but more like lifting. They've arrived in a way. This isn't to say that Mexico's going to be as good as Brazil. It's going to be hard for any country to be as good as Brazil I don't it's gonna be hard for any country to be as good as what Brazil has but I just I just think it is important to note here today how monumental this is and if this kid can keep winning and stay champion God only knows what he could do to kickstart that market and make it not just a place where more fighters come from

but you know make it a place where more shows go to and there's native stuff that comes out of it that's even bigger and better than what it already produces. Folks don't talk about it, but a lot of Latin American women go to this camp of Alexa Grasso's in Mexico because it's just a great place to train. It's ahead of the curve. It's a great pipeline into Bellator and UFC.

There's amazing things happening in Mexican MMA that just don't get a lot of coverage. Nandy Segura and I were talking about it when I saw him last in Miami. All right, so that preamble out of the way, how did he do it? He just took it to a figurino. Figurino has had a habit of being a little bit spotty at times or, I don't know, disinterested or inconsistent, whatever word you want to use to describe, that was definitely one of these nights. The night he came out against Benavidez in the rematch, I mean, he fucking crushed him, right?

He was just on a mission. I didn't exactly see that tonight, but part of the reason why you didn't see it, because I think he tried to will himself into it at times, part of the reason why you didn't see it, though, was Moreno was just on a mission he wanted it more I firmly believe that he was getting off first with his strikes he was pushing Figueiredo around he was attacking him without fear in multiple dimensions of the game not just at range kind of safely kicking his legs and circling around no dude going for takedowns trying to take the back back. In fact, that's exactly what he did, which was actually a really interesting moment. He had a takedown on Figueredo dead to rights.

So Figueredo, rather than give that to him, turned, turned away, right? Because they're facing each other. So Figueredo actually turns away. So now they're uh chest to back right like they have like a back take and he finishes it off from there and gets it done and it's just so impressive because the first fight you know figueredo had that controversial point taken in the first one right where if that doesn't happen you know is do we even have a rematch i i don't know right because part of the reason part of the reason we had a rematch was yes it was competitive and fun and crazy but it was also a draw right it wouldn't have been a draw like would they have done it again i don't know, right? Because part of the reason we had a rematch was, yes, it was competitive and fun and crazy, but it was also a draw, right? It wouldn't have been a draw. Like, would they have done it again? I don't know, but it happened.

So you felt like, in watching the first one, Moreno definitely had his moments, definitely was game. But I felt like, in terms of some of the things Figueredo was doing, Moreno was playing just a little bit of catch-up in the first fight. Not this time. Not this time. He wasn't playing catch-up at all. He took it right to Figueiredo from the opening fucking bell, man. He is an excellent boxer. He's a dynamic grappler. He makes quick decisions in multiple phases about what he wants to do without much error, he's a special fighter. I was talking to Danny Segura earlier tonight on WhatsApp, and I don't know exactly how long

Moreno will hold this title. I don't mean to take anything from him. I just mean, it's tough to be a UFC champion, right? It's tough to get there. It's tough to hold it. Like, it's not easy. And at 28, I don't even think he's at his peak. Like, he's got time. But if he can stave off, you know, a couple of contenders here or there, and he gets to, like, you know, age 30, dude, you might,

I don't know what kind of figure we're going to see there, but if he can be, think about this, if he can be a quarter as popular as Conor McGregor, just a quarter inside Mexico, that could do not just unbelievable things for him, but for that market, for those people, for that community, for us, you know, it'd be, it'd be fucking huge. It'd be huge. I was so, he arrived tonight, I was so impressed with Brandon Moreno's just, I'm going to stick it to your game plan. He was able to affect change in ways that Vittori wasn't.

Vittori was pressing into the guy, but not having the results that he wanted. Moreno was pressing into Figueiredo, and Figueiredo just didn't know what to do with it. I need to go back and watch the fight to get a keener sense of exactly all the things he was doing right, but I just remember watching it and thinking, he's not letting Figueredo set the tone, come to him first. He is jabbing his way. He is leg-kicking his way. He is pressuring his way.

He is not afraid to swing. He is not afraid to swing. He is not afraid to take down. He is not afraid to get in scrambles. And that lack of fear, that lack of encumbrance by expectation, that lack of, I don't give a shit what you're good at. Doesn't matter to me. I'm going to do what I'm good at. And I'm going to just absolutely, with full faith and confidence, go in there and just attack you. And that's what he did. Let me see some of the numbers from him. For the first fight especially, I would love to see that.

Let's see. All right here. Okay, so in the first fight, let's take a look at that one. There was a total, let's take a look. This one only went to the third round. So it wins to be a rear naked choke in the first fight let's take a look at that one there was a total uh let's say it was just there was this one only went to the third round so it wouldn't be a rear naked choke in the third so let's look at the first round figueredo land they both landed 28 to 55. let's okay so this time around wow moreno landed 25. you know how many figure radio landed in the first round. Seven. They cut, Moreno cut his output by, what, a fourth almost? By 75% almost, not quite.

Let's see. Second round, Figueiredo, 34 of the first fight. Second round tonight, 13. One-third, almost. Round three. Granted, it was a full round last time. This time it was not. Figueiredo, 21.

This time, four. Brandon Moreno, 12. Brandon Moreno had less than him in the second. It was just 10 to 13, But had a ton of control time. Three minutes and some change of control time. He's credited with a takedown. And then he just absolutely stuck it to him in the third. So a slight rebound in the second for Figueiredo here.

But in the first and the third, just completely outgunned. Just never let the guy settle in. Never let him get a rhythm going. Constantly keeping him on the back foot, making him guessing. Dude, it happens so many times where, listen, it's easier said than done. It's very easy for some jamoke like me to be like, this is what you have to do to win. They're like, yeah, we fucking know that. But it does bear repeating that when I would look at these high-level fights

and I look at why guys win, a lot of times, a lot of times you can tell their coach made a list of like, okay, so what is this guy good at? All right. Now, what do we have to do to take away the conditions where he can employ those things? How do we just rearrange the weather, right? So that we get the best kind of plant growth. That's really the way to kind of think about it a little bit. And the better teams, the better tacticians, the better fighters, yes, they win because they land big punches or, you know, they have good output or they have good wrestling or whatever.

But more than that, like one of the reasons why Adesanya wins a lot or Max Holloway wins a lot is they look at what the opponent needs. What are the things that they need, the conditions in place that they need to succeed? Let's just strip them of all of it. And now what can you do? And you see they have these impotent partial games that are just not really all that formidable. There's something to them. They're not like these are not chumps by any stretch of the imagination.

But they're not nearly as formidable under those conditions. And so Brandon Moreno, let's see the rankings here very quickly, if I may, just sort of see what he might be up against. Frankly, I'm not as much of a connoisseur of flyweight as some others. Yeah, you've got the Pantoja fight sitting there, Askarov. I thought that they fought already. Did Brandon Marino fight him already? I could have sworn that he fought Askarov already. Is that my imagination? Perhaps that it is. No, he did, and it was a draw. That's funny. I remember that, yeah. So there's a couple of things that they could do. Yeah, they've not done the Pantoja fight. Oh, yes, he did. He had a loss to Pantoja back in 2018. God, I don't even remember that.

I do remember the Sergio Pettis loss. But yeah, crazy. Crazy. Crazy what he's been able to do. Just, you've got to be so proud of the guy. And I don't think Figueiredo's done by a long shot either. Does he go to 135 to try and see what he can do there? I don't know, because he's so big at 125.

But not some kind of humiliating devastating loss for him just a night where Brandon Moreno seemed like a man possessed and because he was willing to fight in all these dimensions and because he makes decisions so quickly and so good what are you going to do?

alright how about this feature fight amazing What are you going to do? What are you going to do? All right, how about this feature fight? Amazing. Leon Edwards defeats Nate Diaz, 49-46 across the board. Didn't win the fifth. Why didn't he win the fifth? Basically, this was 23, maybe you can even say 24 minutes of Leon Edwards kicking his ass. Like, for 24 minutes, it just looked like every Leon Edwards fight I've basically ever seen. Dude, Leon Edwards is amazing.

If you're not new to sort of my theories on Leon Edwards, excuse me, if you are new, he's like the king of the half position. Like what defines his game? He's got great accuracy, good economy of motion. He's well-trained. He's a high-level fighter. But I mean, the thing that sort of defines him is he doesn't make a ton of mistakes. We'll get to that in a second. But in general, he does not make a lot. I mean, for 24 minutes, he did make a ton of errors, hardly any. And when he gets to positions, he finds the way to thread a needle where he can be controlling and it scores and it damages. But if he has to bail on it

he never gets caught like reversed and then held underneath right he can always sort of dictate when he wants to exit from something and then just start anew they're not always the most exciting or necessarily the most violent but they're usually pretty thorough and they're hard to stop and for 24 minutes that's exactly what you saw the leg kicks were a big problem he was landing those he was looking for some home run punches. Had a couple of exchanges with Nate early. But in general, got the better of that. Was getting the takedown whenever he wanted.

Was never in trouble in the grappling department. Had the back a couple of times. Yeah, that's Leon Edwards, man. That's really, that's what he does, you know. Pot shot you here. Control of position here. Score some points here. You know, threaten something here for a little bit. Doesn't go too't go too far but it's you know you definitely have to take it seriously

and then rinse and repeat round over round over round around he's because he is so meticulous and so careful this has been a very winning formula for him except he ate a one two in the fifth round of like the last minute or maybe a minute and a half or something like that and nearly got finished and i i you know folks have been asking me like why didn't nate diaz he rocks him with a stiff left right and by the way nate's really good i have to go back and watch the tape but nate's really good at being like uh jab cross jab cross and then it'll switch the timing up on you so So rather than bop, bop, right? So all the time it'll be like bop, bop, bop, bop, and then he'll switch the timing. He'll go bop, bop. That's one of these. He switched the timing on him and that left was right behind.

And I think Edwards thought he could catch him with the right hook off the jab and it wasn't there to be caught because he was playing with the timing and then Diaz rolled underneath he was actually really nice by Diaz catches him dead to rights uses the slap the Stockton slap to move his head into line a little bit although he was already in line because I don't think he understood what was coming and uh just devastated him with his with his brilliant left hand he just didn't imagine seeing so he makes a mistake you finally got the guy who doesn't really make mistakes. You finally got him where he didn't just make a mistake, but a very costly one where a little extra push could completely take him off of his game. And Nate kind of pointed at

him. He did follow up a little bit. Actually, he followed up some, more than a little bit. He followed up some. But there was definitely a part of me that was like, dude, could you have won that? You know, I mean, we'll never know. We'll never know. If you think he might have, I can't talk you out of it. How can I say that's wrong? He very well might have, but he didn't this time.

Still, despite losing for 23, 24 minutes, that last minute was so redemptive and I think so fun for the crowd and maybe even people watching at home that they won't even care that he, you know, that he was, you know, the real of lost causes that you can't let go of your appreciation for him and you can't ever overlook him and um in many ways even though he lost it was kind of quintessential nate diaz like do i think he suffered a big stock drop from this i really don't no i i don't i think that it's going to be harder and harder the more losses he has to continually make A-list fights. Now, you might be like, well, Luke, you could just have the Conor trilogy. 100%.

That is sort of an ace in the hole, and it undercuts the argument that I'm making here. But nevertheless, I think he has to go back to 155 at this point, I guess they could run back the Jorge Masvidal fight, because they're both coming off of losses, so maybe you could stick around 170 there, but that was an ass kicking to begin with too, so I tend to think that 155 is a better place, if Conor gets smoked, that's something that you could do, if Nate wins, maybe Nate wants him, and he can just skip the queue again, like he's still definitely in the thick of a few big fights

that I think you could make, and that's maybe all that he needs. Like, maybe that's all that matters in the end. Still, if he sticks around for a little bit longer and he keeps losing, even with moments where he maybe could have outright won, much less, you know, well, forget all that, but, you know, in this case got a moral victory and a reminder to the audience about why he's so beloved,

among other things. You know, maybe just keeping a few fights that are big on the stove, heated up or something. That's all he really, that's all that really matters to him.

I guess we'll have to see. But I do think that, like, this idea, like, oh, he lost nothing in this. Well, perhaps, I can't guarantee you

that there's, like, some, you's some collapse coming his way because of this. But at the same time, the accumulative weight of losses, it does tend to constrain options even for unusual cases like Nadia. So I don't know exactly what will happen for him. I tend to think it will probably be either Jorge at 170, but that's unlikely. Although maybe, who knows? I don't know what Jorge wants. That really kind of depends on him.

The Conor Trilogy is kind of sitting out there. There's some decent ones for him. But I think that the most competitive chances that he has are at 155. I do, I will maintain that. I think if you really believe that you want, you know, that Nate can win again, you know, going to be tough at 170. Going to be tough. They're just naturally bigger.

They're stronger. And as resilient as he is and as punishing as he can be sometimes, I feel like he's just physically overwhelmed there a little bit. And you saw here too, like the takedowns were, you know, not that Nate Diaz ever has like the best takedown defense you've ever seen, but it did feel like Edwards was able to get those without a ton of effort. You can

only imagine what a Colby or a Kamaru or somebody else in that space might do. He's just better suited at 155, but I gotta tell you, man, I've never seen someone get kind of handled for 23, 24 minutes and then come back and do that. We've seen Derek Lewis come back against Volkov, but that was a

three-rounder, not a five. Pretty amazing. Pretty goddamn amazing. Nate Diaz, he, that guy continues to pull rabbits out of his hat, man. He just finds ways not to just stay relevant, but stay exciting. And he was, who was the biggest star on this card? Fucking Nate Diaz by a million miles. I mean, that crowd loved him. So I think because he gave them something at the end, something real, by the way. Again, dude, like it's not crazy to be like Nate could have won that fight. We'll never know.

He didn't. But like, that was have won that fight. We'll never know. He didn't. But like, that was enough for the audience. That was enough for them to like, for the magic to stay alive, you know. Bilal Muhammad defeating Demi and Maya. Hard to look good against Demi and Maya. 32-7, 229-28. You know, Maya couldn't get the takedown and didn't pull guard. Do I need to say a whole lot more? Bilal Muhammad didn't exactly like, you know exactly beat him up in the way that Kamaru and Colby did, but I think the Kamaru one was five rounds. Maybe the Colby one was two, but the Kamaru one was definitely five rounds.

So he wasn't like an offensive dynamo, but he deserved to win, and that's the end of that. And then Paul Craig absolutely disfiguring Jamal Hill. Did you guys see how he set it up? He pulls guard. Not a lot of 205 guard pullers, but he pulls guard. And he actually had an overhook on Hill's right arm. Hill using his, so actually, no, I'm going to be Craig.

So he has an overhook on this side. Wait, right, no, other way. He has an overhook on this side. He has an overhook with his left of Jamal's right. Jamal uses his left and presses into the bicep of Craig. So if I'm Craig, I have overhook this side and I'm getting my bicep pressed here, right? But he lets Hill press that. Pressing the biceps is okay. You can press the biceps. You can actually press into the armpits that way. It's sort of a way to control the inside space if you want to stand to pass or ground and pound or whatever, right? Controlling that inside space is fine. It's a

fine thing to do. But if you've got an overhook or it's like someone grabbing your lapel, you got to break this shit, man. You cannot let people put grips on you. Feet and hips, that's a grip. Overhook, that's a grip. Collar tie, that's a grip. You got to break these fucking grips, man. If people get grips on you, break them. Break grips. Grips are key to everything else. So what does he do? So again, I'll be Paul Craig. What he does is, overhook here, he's getting his bicep pressed here. So he's got this controlled and this hand's open. He lets his bicep get pushed back. Why does he do that? Because he's got feet in the hips. So with that, he can pull the overhook and he can stretch out Paul Craig. And if Craig is pressing into the bicep and he's letting his arm go back, what happens to Hill's

arm? It's fully extended. So when he sits to the arm bar, he doesn't sit to the overhook, which, you know, like Crone Gracie is very good at that. I think that's the arm bar he hit on JT Torres at ADCC from the overhook. Instead, what he does is with the elbow, with the one where his hand is getting, where the hand is pressing into his bicep, so there's a long arm here, he actually takes that hand and then passes it to his own and then sits for the arm bar on the free hand. So Hill thinks the one that Craig has the overhook on,

that that's the one he's going for, and he's pressing into the bicep, the thing that he's supposed to do. But Craig is letting him do that. He is letting him press so he can get extended. And then he can just pass the hand to himself and he can flip underneath. And that's exactly what he did. And then once he flipped underneath, he corkscrewed so that he could not merely pull Hill to the ground, but then come out on top where he is facing the ceiling.

They're both facing the ceiling, right? Because if I flip over for the arm bar, you're going to be bent over. But if I keep rotating, it's going to pull the whole upper body with you. Like if you're just at the edge of a diving board, you just push them over a little bit and they go ass over tea kettle. That's exactly what he did. So a nice little fake out to get the armbar and then pass it to himself, whipped underneath, and that was all she wrote.

Fucking mangled the guy after that. Brad Riddell and Drew Dober, I had to do a CBS interview at the time, so I kind of missed, you know, some key chunks of it. But an unbelievable fight. Yeah. All right, let's get to some of your questions here because I have to go to fucking bed. I have to get up balls early for a wedding. Let's see what we got here. Blah, blah, blah, blah. bed. I have to get up balls early for a wedding. Let's see what we got here. Alright.

What makes the most sense for Edwards? The winner of Burns vs. Thompson or Masvidal? Probably the winner of Burns vs. Thompson. Do you think Nate gets the finish? Asvidal. Probably the winner of Burns-Thompson. Do you think Nate gets the finish? If the fight goes 20 rounds and he can have replacement blood added back into his body after the 10th, yeah, probably. Vittoria was never rocked.

That's true. Do you think it was because of his weight or chin or has Izzy's striking skills become less effective with his defense and movement still being top notch he did have a problem I think getting off some of his better punches I did notice there was something missing there I don't know that his striking is getting less effective what did you think of ESPN blocking out Bilal's post-fight interview?

It was probably a timing issue. Do you think Dana will seriously consider having the next Izzy fight in Auckland? I mean, you might. You can do it with COVID stuff. If it's with Whitaker and he's in Australia, it's going to be easy for him to get there. You know, what Dana will do, I don't know, but it's not implausible as a suggestion.

What do you think about Rafael Cordero advising Vittori to go first? Izzy is arguably one of the greatest counterstrikers, so I found it a bit ill-advised to request him there by choosing to fight Adesanya's fight. Yeah, I just didn't love the game plan. There might be an argument to be made that the reason why they went with that game plan is because Vittoria just can't implement a game plan where he's sort of setting traps, moving backwards, or letting Adesanya come to him.

And it's also, by the way, it should be noted, it's very dangerous to let Adesanya just come to you. Like, yeah, Blachowicz made it work, but a lot of other guys can't. And also, if you know Marvin Vittori, when does he do his best work? He does his best work in that gear, that move forward gear. It's not like that's a...

By the way, I've got to have my Z-Quil so I can go to sleep. It's not like that's a foreign thing for him. The problem is if that's the best way you know how to win, you're going to beat a lot of guys. But it's just not a great matchup against Adesanya. It's just a bad... He's built for that.

So you have a unique advantage over most of the pack, and then a unique disadvantage at the very top of the pack. I don't know how you solve that problem. Other than just having more skills so you don't have to fight that way. But that takes time. It's not easy. Mmm, Z-Quil. You're like, oh Luke.

It's bad for you to have that all the time. Yeah, it is. But it's even worse if I don't get sleep. Alright. Alright. Oh, someone suggests Nate versus Tony Ferguson. That's a fun one. Yeah, maybe Nate's got some big fights.

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick. Yeah, that might work. Will you do an in-depth breakdown of Brad Riddell? I would like to talk to Brad about the fight and have him walk me through it. That's what I would like to do. I'm going to try to do that this week. We'll see if he's up for it.

Don't you think it's effed up that Bilal didn't get a post-fight interview? Would have been nice. Would have been nice. To Marvin's credit, this person writes, he negated a lot of Izzy's offense and blocked a lot. Only a few calf kicks landed big. That's mostly fair. Again, like, the problem wasn't Vittori's defense exactly.

Yes, the leg kicks he had no real answer for, and that was big. But it was just his offense was just not enough. That was his problem. Even when you take away a lot of Izzy's weapons, he has a few... Dude, it'd be nice to win a chess match with a rook, a bishop, maybe your queen if you have to. But if you can win the game with your pawns, win the game with your pawns.

That's how Adesanya plays MMA, so to speak, if you want to use a chess metaphor. Sometimes he'll just win with his pawns. If Vittori thinks he won that fight, should he get a psych eval? I think Vittori has such a strong will that it blinds him to a lot of things. If Rob tries to wrestle a lot, even if unsuccessful, could he mitigate Izzy striking enough to land his own? Sure. If the wrestling is successful, or at least the threat

is real. You have to really establish that threat, you know. Had Nate finished that comeback, no way Dana doesn't give him a title shot despite doing nothing for 24 minutes. They might have made him president of the fucking company if he had won that. Are you kidding? This guy writes, Moreno stole the show. Agree.

I got this pinched nerve in my neck, y'all. It is fucking painful. Not in my neck, it's in my trap. And now it's radiating underneath my arm into my finger. It is a fucking nightmare. Let me turn this way a little bit. God damn, it hurts. How much do you think Figgy's weight cut played into his performance tonight?

Probably some. I don't think you could completely divorce it, but that would be a risk he would run every time with this weight class. How much do you think Figgy's weight cut played into his performance tonight? Probably some. I don't think you could completely divorce it, but that would be a risk he would run every time at this weight class. The guy has no fat on him by the time he shows up for a fight. Do I like Robert Whitaker's chances more after tonight? Not so much after tonight, but just after the recent push that Whitaker's had. I didn't see a lot tonight that I thought like, oh, this is a thing that Whitaker

could definitely take advantage of. I'm sure Whitaker and his team might have. But it's not really about what I saw tonight per se. Maybe there's some stuff. Again, we'll have to see what Whitaker does. But just the Whitaker that I've seen the last few fights has been so rejuvenated, so complete, so strong-willed himself. I think that's enough for you to say, does he have a better chance this time around? Yeah, I think he does.

Is it possible to get a Mexico or New Zealand card within the next few months? Some of this shit's going to be hard, y'all, because I don't know what the rules are for travel. I know, like, for example, to go to Europe, you know, if you're an American, you just have to be vaccinated, you know? And again, I'm not going to get into some big, broad debate about it. You know, how many fighters don't want to get vaccinated and therefore aren't eligible for travel? Some will probably, you know, hey, we want to get vaccinated and therefore aren't eligible for travel. Some will probably, hey, we want to book you in the UK or something. I'll make something up.

You can do it. And I realize that there's already some vaccination you have to get for purposes of residency and whatnot. So I don't know how logistically feasible that is. There's some other issues that might make it. The Auckland one is interesting because you can build a card around so many fighters from that region and you might be able to fill it in with enough people who could get around some of the travel conditions.

I don't know what the rules are for vaccinated Americans. Do they have to still quarantine 14 days in Auckland? I don't even know if that's still a rule anymore. So there's a lot of things you have to figure out with that. And Mexico is just not doing great with COVID. They don't have the same medical infrastructure, although the U.S. has got plenty of issues. They still don't even have some of the same infrastructure

and capabilities that we do. The vaccination rollout's been very slow. So I don't know. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't know. It'd be nice. I think by the end of the year, assuming there's not some major COVID resurgence or something,

these will be much more realistic. But right now, some of these old rules have to drop. What you guys don't realize is, I deal with this a lot when me and BC go to do Mohegan Sun stuff with Bellator. When COVID hit, there was no playbook. No one knew what to do. So they invented all these rules about what you're supposed to do. And some of them work, some of them don't.

But you play ball because you're just trying to get through your day. Now that all these vaccinations start happening, you see a lot of the same rules there and i'm like dude i know that these rules should not be the same there should be a difference now and and you saw fans at bell torrent friday i'm so some of them are being eased i'm just pointing out all around the world not just the united states all throughout the world all these governments and companies and facilities and institutions they all brought in all this COVID policy. And it differs a little bit place to place. But now we're slowly trying to undo that.

It takes time. It takes time. Who's a better fainter, Sean O'Malley or Izzy? They're both pretty good. I'd say maybe Izzy's a little bit better, but fucking O'Malley's good at it too, man. Um... Do you think Izzy is kind of stuck in a not-so-good middleweight division? He can't make 170? No.

And he's too small for 205. I'm not entirely convinced he can't win at 205, but I agree. If I were, you know, I'm not in a position to advise him. If I were to advise him, I think he could do it. But I would do it not right away. I would put a little bit more work in the grappling department before I could make that leap again. Especially if you want to go up against Jon Jones. I mean, he's going to heavyweight, but, you know, assuming that there's some way to make that.

There's still some work to do. Big improvements tonight. Big improvements tonight. Those reversals were sweet, but still some work to do. Someone says, don't say spoilers. Your video's name is 263 results. Are UFC 263 results? Folks, I know that.

And I know that most of you know that. And I know you're like, oh, look Luke you don't have to say spoilers everyone knows no they don't I can't tell you oh it's only because of the way it's titled in the podcast I don't want to get spoiled no if I don't say it somebody in some chain of custody

gets bitter if I don't so I have to say it every time alright how long we been going here let's see So I have to say it every time. All right. How long we've been going here? Let's see. Cause I need to go the fuck to sleep. Yeah. I think that's going to be it for today. Yeah. It's been about an hour and seven minutes. Okay. So one more time, thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe, uh, morning combat with Brian Campbell campbell will be out monday live at 11 a.m tons of reaction what much more news more analysis more results the whole nine yards um thank you guys so much for watching it's super late into the evening

and so it's time for us to close it down here i thank you all for