MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 266: Volkanovski Beats Ortega, Lawler TKOs Diaz | Usyk Upsets Joshua | EP 208

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

MK is back with a MASSIVE episode 208, as the boys recap the huge weekend in combat sports. Luke and Brian breakdown all the results from UFC 266, including Volkanovski's win over Ortega in a fight of the year contender & Robbie Lawler beating Nick Diaz in his MMA return. Plus, Is there any other fight to make besides Valentina Shevchenko vs. Amanda Nunes 3? Also, the guys give their biggest takeaways from Oleksandr Usyk’s upset win over Anthony Joshua and Jon Jones was arrested again. 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:morning kombat.store   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

Back like a bad habit, feel so wrong, feel so right at the same time it's morning combat hello everyone my name is luke thomas i am one half of your hosting duo on this 27th of september 2021 i am joined by my partner in crime he is the king of connecticut the landed well he's royalty if not the landed gentry he is my friend and and yours. It's Brian Campbell, BC. How was your weekend, good sir? Did you just call me gentrified, Luke? Is that how you described me? Landed gentry is a little bit different than royalty, but no, not quite.

What's up? Good weekend in the beautiful autumn, Luke. That is just about upon us here in New England. If you don't know, you should know, okay? What a time to be alive. I mean, fall, they say, Luke, is the best season, and there's no better place to celebrate it than here in Connecticut when you're the king. Happy to be back, Luke. I've willed, I've walked, I've read, I've talked. I've been here before, but like that song's next line, Luke,

hey now, we won't be raped, okay? thank you very much uh luke it's a great time for combat sports uh you asked me on my weekend was yeah i did get some family time but my weekend was usic joshua and ufc 266 and boy did that shit ever deliver i mean right here luke come on bro come on right here right now there's no other place i'd rather be i'll put it to you that way little jesus jones on that ass yeah all right yeah you got any mf in there uh two things i gotta say bc one thing we should open the show with is you know uh sunday was finally the last day obviously beginning last monday for that full week that we had pressing into ufc 266 and joshua and it was a long hard slog slog. There was resume reviews.

There was the barfing on the rooftop. There was late nights with instant reacts. And even early evenings instant reacts were yours with obviously the boxing results. There was a lot that we went through last week. So first of all, thanks to all the fans who came along with us. If you're new here, we appreciate it. We will get the show sorted momentarily. I just wanted to thank everyone who was part of that little mini push that we did.

Second thing I'd say, BC, is I saw Guns N' Roses last night in Baltimore. Third time I've seen GNR. Well, second time I've seen GNR. I saw them once when it was Axl and Buckethead. That doesn't really count. And Dizzy Reed on the keys, Luke, okay? Never forget. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. They're really good count. And Dizzy Reed on the keys, Luke.

Here's the thing. They're really good, no matter who Axl is playing with, but it's not the real thing unless you see Guns N' Roses. Let me just say this real quick. First of all, my wife and I paid we've always gotten bleeders. We've never had, never once have we had nice tickets. We decidedly finally had to get nice tickets. We had front

row seats, dude. Right up front. I could have made a high school dating joke about that bleeders line. But I don't really go down that road. Come on keep it going. Keep it going. I'm just going to say. We had never had nice seats before. So we finally decided to get nice seats.

Now I'm not the biggest GNR fan. I mean I like them. Don't get me wrong. My wife loves them. Yeah. So we went to go see them. Yeah. Let me say this about GNR.

They do a. I mean They do a live show. If you've not seen it, I cannot recommend it enough. These guys are pros beyond pros beyond pros. They have so many hits. It's kind of shocking how many they have. And they're great showmen. You know who carries that show? I've seen them, again, three times but twice now with Slash.

I'm going to guess Slash. Slash carries that show. Oh, yeah. He's the heavyweight of that stage. Everyone thinks Axl is the guy, and obviously he's a showman. When they played November Rain, they brought out a piano, and his seat was the back half of a motorcycle. I mean, he does it up big, okay?

I'm not going to say he doesn't. But the dude who carries that show, it's Slash, bro. He is unbelievable. When Axl goes off and gets a 10-minute rest, Slash is up there doing the do the whole time, never sweats, never loses breath. He's unbelievable. I mean, I grew up in the midst. In fact, probably the coolest thing my dad would ever do was every day I'd get home from school in fifth grade,

I'd go down to the basement and he'd be like, it's time for your daily dose, and he'd pump Welcome to the Jungle at air-bleeding levels of sound. So I grew up realizing, Luke, how great that band was and that Slash is actually one of the greatest guitarists of all time. I'm blown away at how many rock fans dismissed GNR, put them in the hair metal group, which they're not even close. They're legitimate rock and roll. And I'm glad you were able to have that experience. Was it Izzy Stratton on rhythm guitar? Who they got these days?

Do you know? Some guy who was really good, Robert Fillmore or something. Something different. But they did have, what's his face on the keys? What was his name? They got Dizzy Reed on the keys. They had Duff McKagan on bass, right? Yeah.

And then they have Duff McKagan. Duff McKagan was in great shape. And they had some other girl there doing sort of smaller roles in the production. Dude, I mean, we were in the Royal Farms Arena, completely sold out. Like, they killed it. They did a three and a half

hour set the whole time. It was unbelievable. A lot of white lightning involved to fuel that, Luke. Our documentarian, Less Than Jake, by the way, his girlfriend dragged him to a Portugal the Man concert over the weekend, I think in Jersey, Luke. Friend of the show there, by the way. Shout out to John and the boys.

And Jake said he loved it so much he's now a fan for life. So was happy to see that. Just the same. All right, so let's remind folks, if you're new here, thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe. If you have been somebody who hits subscribe over the weekend, welcome. this three times a week 11 a.m in the east monday wednesday friday plus a ton more content but thank you for being along for the ride if you would like to try showtime and by the way bellator is back in action this coming weekend go to

showtime.com get a 30-day free trial if you like it you can. If not, go and do whatever it is you do with your life. BC, I see you've got some nice new merch on. Where can folks get that sick-ass Morning Combat Fight Club shirt? That's what I'm talking about, Luke. Morningcombat.store is your official website. You want to dip into our new Factory Town MMA launch. You want to get the mugs. This is the old-school mug, but there's much better ones on that website Please this is the best way to support us because you know, you can wear this shit and look cool in your daily life

So please head on over that website. We have more designs coming and they are badass Luke The new factory town shirt is badass hasn't hit the streets yet. I'm told in about a week It will love love what we're doing here at merch 2.0 Shout out to RJ grundle maker and the boys behind the scenes. Good, good shit. And Luke, speaking of less than Jake in the doc, I was told I need to apologize to the fans for over-hyping them up and under-promising on the launch of Documentary 5.0,

Donkey Mentory 5.0, which I believe is going to be titled Healing, Luke. There were some promises made that it would be ready now. It looks like possibly Wednesday this week. I would love to say it's my fault, Luke, but it's not. And also, they needed to take out

some incendiary comments made by yourself. So we got to just edit that up a little bit. Past legal, no more Pat Tillman jokes. Let's get to the finish line with this. luke there's an argument to be made that doc five maybe not as good as doc two or four but it's the deepest there's some serious self-reflection going on uh it started it co-stars oscar willis ariel hawani and jake paul it's a great watch believe me i've seen it it's actually pretty good I actually watched this one it's pretty good all right so that's there as well uh last but not least BC MK well they're brought to you by DK DraftKings want to give a shout out to the folks at DraftKings who gave away MK fans

tons of money if they wanted it free money and you know what the generosity continues BC so here's what we're going to do for week four with DraftKings Sportsbook. By the way, the official sports betting partner of the NFL. My Washington football team, well, they got waxed by the Buffalo Bills, but the show goes on. They take on the Falcons this week. I think that's a winnable game. And if you want to bet on that or really anything from NFL's week four,

DraftKings is going to give new customers 150 instantly when they bet just one dollar on any football game from week four bc if you live in a state of free money if you live in a state where this is legal and you're like well i don't really have the money to bet you do now okay download the draft king sportsbook act but here's the deal as As Luke mentioned, use our code. You got to use our special promo code of Combat with a K. If you do, you got $150 to play around with. Guys, we told you to bet on Robbie Lawler because the resume review curse is real and it's undefeated. You could have been $150 richer at least, at least, okay?

So take the free money when it's given to you. Luke, there's a thing i do i don't care how much money i make i don't care how much i've eaten that day you come across free food in your life you eat that shit right uh yeah i mean it's not from the dumpster or something but yes free food is the best taste the best luke just like free women you know what i mean uh i don't know about that but i will say to your point also DraftKings is giving away new customers a free shot at millions of dollars in total prizes with their first deposit they also have huge cash prizes for grabs all season long with their daily fantasy contest so what you need to do right now go download the DraftKings

sportsbook app use the promo code as BC said with a K, and you get $150 in free bets when you place just $1 on any football game from week four. That's the promo code COMBAT this week at DraftKings Sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of the NFL. Okay, BC, we have a lot of work to do. You want to get this show started? In the amazing

words, Luke, of is it Julian Lane? Justin Lane? Dwayne Wayne? Let me bang, bro. Okay? Alright, let you bang. Alright, let's go. Topic number one, if we can. So we start with

UFC 266. Of course, I did a post-fight show, but we have not heard from BC, so we're going to get to him right away. We start with that main event. Alexander Volkanovsky retains his title by defeating Brian Ortega via unanimous decision. A 50-45, a 50-44, and a 49-46. For my card, I would have had it about 49-46. I would have given him that fifth.

But okay, it was more or less the Alexander Volkanovsky show. So BC, let's start the questions like this. With this win, is Alexander Volkanovski going to finally get the respect he deserves? Yeah, he will. He will, Luke, because look, when the conversation is a fighter getting the respect they deserve, it doesn't always mean it's fair. In typical fashion, it's unfair. Look at like, you know, guys like Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Alvarez in boxing. At certain points, you're a pretty boy. Even though you're a tough guy and a great fighter, it takes a while to overcome that reputation.

You could argue we already should have been here. You could argue BC already should have been here. But Luke, what's the best way to remove any lingering doubt? I don't know. Get yourself in a batshit crazy war against another elite foe and fight like an absolute maniac yet to the point of your intro, retain control, never say die in legitimately stressful moments in which two chokes were applied in round three that probably would have finished anybody. A third submission attempt against a submission expert in round four. Not only fight through that, land the better shots,

show incredible amounts of chin, cardio, IQ. Luke, not only is this a there's nothing bad we can ever say about this guy again type fight. Okay, is that extreme? No, this is that good of a win. He's in that conversation of legitimately maybe being your pound-for-pound best in the game. I still throw my vote to Usman. There's some people still standing on the John Jones hill. He's in the top three.

But I think Volkanovski just parachuted into that conversation if he wasn't before, Luke, because it's one thing to outsmart guys, and Volkanovski's brilliant at doing that. But, Luke, he had to get dirty in the trenches here. He didn't win this fight on calf kicks. He didn't win this fight on footwork patterns. He won this fight by being the better fighter, along with being the better technician, tactician, and all of that. I've got nothing, nothing but respect for this guy.

And can we pour one out for both of them, Luke, for providing what was already a fun and exciting card with big highs and big lows, a crazy main event with one of the greatest rounds in championship history, that round three, but just full-on old-school savagery. I was humbled, I was entertained, and Volkanovski rightfully was the guy at the end

with the wide scorecards in his arm raised yeah there's no doubt about it I mean I don't I understood to a degree why folks were a little bit hesitant to give him perhaps his due right because I don't think a lot of folks even saw the Aldo fight and maybe if they did it probably didn't make a huge impression the Mendes fight but that seems like a lifetime ago at this point so you had the two Holloway fights and we all know the story there they were were close, they were competitive, and certainly Max Holloway is adored, and was in both of those fights, as I mentioned. They were very, very competitive. This was the first time I think folks really saw the Volkanovski machine. The Volkanovski machine

was grinding in every way here. He was doing all the things that we knew him to be able to do, right? Giving you the looks, going, you think he's going one way, he goes another. But as you mentioned, getting hurt or falling over, whatever it was with that counter right hand from the kick, and then nearly getting finished with those two submissions and showing a measure of grit to get through them that nobody can take away. And I think what really got the fans on his side

was not only did he get out of those submissions, which by itself was incredible, he then decides to reverse the guard, or reverse position, I should say, of Brian Ortega, then get on top and stay in his guard to go for ground and pound, which, by the way, was brutal across two different rounds. I mean, that level of just diving into the pit of Cobras and electing to... Killer instinct. Say again?

It's killer instinct. On top of championship poise to get out of the submissions, but then that killer instinct to know I got a guy weak who's desperately trying to finish me and to turn the tables on him. Luke, he checked every box, meaning Volkanovski, in this performance. It's ridiculous. He really did. And to your point, we saw this before, right?

When Paul Felder just stayed in the guard of Charles Oliveira and absolutely hammered him into the mat. There are certain guys who can just get away with it, partly because they have that skill and partly because they're driven competitively in a way that is borderline psychotic. They keep it professional, but they have their will to win is unbelievable. Let me go back to one thing, BC. I want to talk about Volkanovski getting out of those submissions. Because to me, here is what is so unbelievably impressive about them. If you take away, or I should say not take away,

let's separate something like Tony Ferguson or even Dan Hardy getting their limb extended. So there might be getting out of limb extension submissions, and then there might be getting out of choke extension submissions, and then there might be getting out of choke attempt submissions because there's two different things. How was Volkanovsky able to do that? Well, one of the reasons he was able to do that is, I mean, listen, it's just biology. If those chokes are tight enough, it doesn't matter what else is going to go on. If they stay on tight enough, you will out right that's just that's just a fact of life so what he was able to do was give himself just enough air to remain or i should say uh blood flow to remain conscious uh and then kind of almost weighed out the attention applied by ortega what i mean to say is he had to combine insane levels of perseverance and

grit and determination with just enough technical savvy to find enough space to breathe. Dude, and he did that twice, but twice in the same round, then a third time the next round over. That is a level of grit you may literally never see again

in those contexts. And Luke, you can say it's unfair that Volkanovski has to go to that level in this type of a fight to win over the remaining people criticizing him or win over the, I guess I want to say the less educated casual fan, but he had two strikes against him that the casual fans tend to take a long time to look over. It's not the same thing that, like I said, Canelo and De La Hoya had as pretty boys, because you assume pretty boys can't get in there and get dirty, right?

But he had his biggest win, you could argue, being a disputed one, the rematch with Holloway. And he also had the label of what Ortega called him heading in. You're a point fighter. You're a decision fighter. Casual fans hate that shit, Luke. They want violent cage fights. So I think you can understand why the criticism lingered because you look at a guy,

people even said this about Floyd Mayweather for a while until he really leaned into that villainous persona to sell fights, that if you're more technical and defensive-based and not damage-based based you're going to get people that that tend to if they if they aren't smart enough to realize how great you are they don't want to realize it and maybe to a small degree luke that was a little bit of me maybe i saw that second fight you know again not 49 times but two or three and i'm like you know i'm sorry holloway beat him i'm sorry okay good effort but hollow but Holloway beat him. So maybe it's not fair that you have to go to this extreme,

but everything you just laid out, like that poise under fire, the brains. Luke, the cardio was insane. You saw the damage that Ortega acquired, and that affected his cardio. And we can get into Ortega in a second. Very few have the resolve that he has. But Ortega's just hanging on for dear life. You know, Volkanovski's never not in control in there. And there's something to be said for that

in a championship fight when the stakes are the highest and again in those submission moments when one slip, you're done. I mean, God, that's real metal. That's real shit right there so um shout out to your boys down there at ckb luke i don't know what's in the water but maybe it's time i start you know start applying that to my diet you know i mean maybe that'll fix my liver and ckb might be headed to the usa too which is sort of a funny whole side note about this we'll see what happens

with that um either way they're gonna kick ass i I have no denying it. But I want to point out something here. I said this on, I did a post-fight show for the guys over at Submission Radio. Shouts to them. I mean, this is also, I think, at some point, BC, you get a specific fight like this where a guy like Volkanovski does specific things that just make you go, wow, okay, maybe I wasn't giving this guy the respect he deserves and now I'm ready to do that. That part is true, too. The other part is just an accumulation here, right? I mean, think about this for just a second.

Forget the fact that the guy is undefeated in the UFC. I mean, just think about that. He made his UFC debut in November of 2016, and the guy was a champion in three years and has not lost since 2013 in only his fourth fight. That's it. That's the only fight he's ever lost. Beyond that, though, you had Jose Aldo, Max twice, and now Brian Ortega. So you're talking about two guys who might be the best to ever do it in that weight class,

plus a guy, Brian Ortega, who is just a constant threat for anyone, no matter what day. Collectively, among the three of them, they have had 18 rounds to try and beat Volkanovski. And you can say that maybe Max deserved it, but when it came time to it, after 18 rounds, none of them could beat him. Dude, at what point do the doubters out there need to look at the visual evidence from rounds three and four and whatever else in this fight, and then the larger weight of the body of work and just realize to your point you are talking about someone wherever you want to put him but you are talking about someone who's a top five pound for pound fighter in mma that is at a bare minimum where he comes in he is a special guy

and to beat him you're gonna have to take another special fighter and they're gonna have to have the night of their lives to get past him look on that, I'd like to see you put your money where your mouth is just because I'm curious. I handle the pound-for-pound voting across MMA for CBSSports.com. Actually, after this show, I'll be recalibrating and, you know, reforming my top ten after this weekend. Where – just give me your top three. After this performance from Volkanovski, where do you sort of lie?

I told you I had Usman one. Where do you sort of lay out the top three in order of where they should be for the men only in the sport of MMA right now? Here's the thing. I will give you an answer. I'm not trying to back out. The only thing I would say is I don't do voting on these, so I'm never going to have a very good card,

which is why I always make these sort of vague allusions to top five, top ten, because the placement, I'm not really all that great at. I'd probably have Usman one. Jones, I would not... Jones' overall body of work is beyond impressive, but when I think about pound for pound, you've got to be kind of relevant out there

beating people, which he's not done. So if he goes out there and just beats gone or something, well, then forget about it, right? But, okay. So I'd probably put Usman in there. Obviously, I would have put Habib in there, but he's gone too. Top three?

Top three for Volkanovski in your eyes? Top three, probably, yeah. Yeah, probably top three. Maybe Poirier behind that. Maybe, well, Ngannou crashed the party too Luke you know it's a little bit yeah I'm not again these these are debatable calls but I'm just saying like wherever you want to put him dude he's in this conversation yeah yeah I mean he's probably right there probably you know Volkanovsky's right there without a sign year round you know between two and four

depending on your opinion it's probably right there and also we didn't really get into it but like I'm not saying that the fight between Max Holloway and yair is bad or even then max is some kind of you know shoe in to win yair's talented mma is tough who the hell knows what's gonna happen i tend to think that max will win but okay it's not that even it's like it's not like i even don't want to see it it's a great fight b but dude, look at what Max did to that division where, you know, Volkanovski beat Aldo, but fucking Max stopped him twice, okay? Look at what those guys have done to that division, and tell me any other fight besides Max and Volkanovski makes sense. I know that Volkanovski and his team kind of have Max fatigue. I understand that, but dude, you're dealing with a peer in your division

that he may not feel like there's unfinished business. I think everybody else around feels like there's unfinished business. And at a bare minimum, that's still clearly his toughest challenge. I'm not saying I hate that fight with Yair, but I would much rather see Max Volk III. Yeah, and two points real quick. UFC might as well put Max Volk III on the same card as Nunes Shevchenko 3 because, you know, you're never going to find someone winning the first two fights

and having a need for a trilogy again, so you might as well combine them. And then number two, I don't know if you saw, because this is somewhat related to this, did you see Coach Mark Henry's Instagram post that alluded to the idea that maybe Zabit Magomed Sharapov is back and can train and fight again. There was no full context to that. But, you know, it shows you that there's no shortage of top-level elite talent for Volkanovski to keep fighting. But, dude, Max is coming off the greatest performance arguably of his career against Cater.

So I don't even think Max should have to go through Yair. I think he already sealed a third fight. In fact, if I'm UFC, because you're allowed to play Puppet Master like this, I just blow up that Yair fight. I don't even need a fake COVID test, all right? Let's go Max Volkanovski. Do you realize that Volkanovski beats Max a third time? And if the third one has no controversy, Luke, he's suddenly like an all-time great.

He is. Seriously. That's an interesting point you know i mean it's wild if he goes in there and beats him cleanly like in a way where people like you know it was competitive but yeah the right guy won with volkanovski at that point i don't know what you could deny him you could deny him that maybe you know his style isn't the best for you or whatever but you could not deny him his place. All right, let's talk about the other side of this equation though, BC, because it is worth examining.

Brian Ortega did not win, but he fought his absolute heart out. So let's go to topic number two. I've got a lot of thoughts on this, but I can't wait to hear yours. Okay, it wasn't like he didn't make it interesting, and it wasn't like he didn't make it interesting and it wasn't like he didn't make it fun again round of the year round three unbelievable what he was able to do there but he lost and bc here's a stat for you brian ortega is the only fighter i believe in ufc history to have two fights where he absorbed 200 significant strikes or more it was 200 plus with max and now 200 plus with volkanovski. So with that in mind,

where does he go from here? What would you recommend as a next career step for Brian Ortega? Well, look, I was big on Brian Ortega. I mean, it's hard to deny the BDE coming off of that guy. And I don't want to say I was wrong because look how close he came, Luke, to doing what I predicted. I predicted he wouldn't buy submission after losing a couple rounds. He damn near almost did that. I mean, like, you know, how many others in either of those chokes in round three, how many other defending champions would have tapped, and then we have this wild conversation of, like, it's time to run this fight back.

But it didn't happen. So I do have to adjust, you know, where I actually see Ortega at. So here's the deal. I was blinded by the leap he made against Korean Zombie. Not that I assumed, you know, he could have that same success against Volkanovski. No, they're far different fighters. Volkanovski's far better, although they're both elite. There's levels. But I thought that that fight was going to show me that Ortega's ceiling, we still don't know what it is he still doesn't know what it is I'm not wrong still for saying that because obviously he's got a lot to work on but I will admit I was wrong on getting drunk on the idea that we saw such

dramatic improvements the Frankie Edgar fight you know the the heart shown against Max the the TKZ win that I was gambling on that he could rise to an even higher level. And if he had, meaning he had completely rounded out his game planning and IQ with that toughness and finishing ability, whether on the feet or on the ground, that holy shit, he probably is the best featherweight in the world. But he's not that guy and he didn't get there. I don't know if he can. But one he can do luke is swing dramatically and that swing could be a swing of the fist or it could be how many times have we seen him pull a submission win out of a fight he was losing or in this case a fight he was badly damaged in go for broke he is able to swing big because he's got the guts, and with those big swings, as he just did this against probably a future all-timer

in Volkanovski, he came pretty damn close. But even I, Luke, can't let that distract me from the idea that he's not super elite. He's elite. He can swing big and touch the super elites, but he's got a lot to work on in his game. I think he's still young enough at 30 that there's time, but like the conversation involving Dan Hooker, and oh, by the way, did Dan Hooker, who now wrestles, make a completely huge leap on this undercard to show you that there's still a lot of future title contention and life left? Ortega's going to have to figure some shit out, Luke.

I think, obviously, defensively, he's got to stop being in position to take damage. I mean, it's not that I didn't expect him to lose the first two rounds, potentially, and then have to figure something out and figure out how to try to go for the finish, but he takes far too much damage, like in the Max fight, and in this one, Volkanovski was so smart at realizing he can get off those lead hard right hands over the top and Ortega just wasn't moving his head enough and we didn't see the consistency of getting off the center line there's a certain willingness of Ortega to to take damage that that's not sustainable one and you can't do it against the the great the the super greats you know what I mean theenders, the champions, you can't do that again.

So I think he's smart enough. I think his team is smart enough to go back, go back into the rankings. If you're going to get back to the title level, you're going to need two to three wins here,

but really figure out how to be more efficient, take less damage, and have better setups. Luke, he's dramatic as all hell. It's like a dude who, you know, I mean, he could be great in bed, Luke, but can he balance a checkbook? You know, can he cook a meal?

I got to see Ortega go back to the gym and build on his structural foundations before I can continue to get, you know, fall for the BDE and realize that he's a true title contender. But, Luke, you got to give him the credit. Very few are able to as boldly swing that big and come that close, you know, without maybe being the same level of elite fighter as the champion to damn near almost steal the title in the way he almost did. Yeah, I mean, you can't say enough good things about his determination. I thought he won that fifth round, which was kind of amazing.

Hard to say if Volkanovski was, you know, letting his foot off the gas a little bit to preserve Ortega. I don't know that. It looked that way to me, but I certainly don't know that. But either way, like, the amount of push he had in that fifth round was wild. And certainly in round three to kind of snatch up those submissions was just, it's just next level. But, dude, you take damage like this, you're not going to be around for very long it's just a reality and like i appreciate how tough he is in the moment i appreciate the guts he shows and these are title fights right so like if you're going to push these are the times to do it you never know an mma and i appreciate that he can

do that i really really do i mean that but dude he keeps going like this and terrible things are going to happen to him. Not least of which is his career will be cut very short. I mean, in three fights, two of them have been bruising, and he lost two years after the first one. That's bad. Like, how long is he going to be out for this one before he's back? And I don't mean because, like, the injuries he can't recover from,

just because, I mean, to give himself enough of a refreshing pause between these car crashes that he's in so that he can get back out there. He has got to stop this. I thought people were asking me on the post-fight show, BC, like, oh, what's next for Ortega? Should he go to 155 and blah, blah, blah? I'm like, no, no, no, no.

Pause. Time out. This guy's offense is obviously quite good. Is it the best in the division? I don't know about that, but it's formidable at a bare minimum. The issue here is this guy's got to work on his defense. Fundamentals, setups,

everything. Here's the thing. At the elite level, BC, you know this as well as I do, they're not separate things. Offense bleeds into defense. Defense bleeds into offense. I get that you can't just separate them out. It's not like jujitsu and striking in that sense, but what I am saying is a greater focus on it. Like, dude, go back in the contendership queue. Far back if you have to. Dude, take a fight that you can easily win and slowly put the pieces of

your game together. Because here's the reality, BC. Volkanovski and Max, as long as they're there, and they are going to be there for a while, it like brian will take the current version of him at his absolute most he cannot beat those guys he cannot do it but if you want a chance at beating them you got to shore up all the other parts of the game where those guys are having a big advantage otherwise what is the entire point i don't think a weight class change is this problem because you're going to take those same defensive liabilities to guys who are a little bit slower but hit a lot fucking harder. No chance is that a good idea. The trick here is go back to the laboratory. Take your time.

Remember, dude, he had the fight against Max, which he kind of got rushed into there a little bit, to be honest with you. And he had fights against Guida, where Guida was winning. Then he had the fights against the Brazilian kid, who's named Renato Moicano. Dude, Moicano was winning that fight up until he wasn't, right? He was putting the beat down on him, too. I was there in the Honda Center when Brian Ortega came backstage. I remember the kind of pain he was sitting in.

He verbally told us, like, ugh, I feel terrible after that. Like, he got wrecked. Dude, he's getting wrecked a lot. This has got to stop. He cannot keep doing this. Take your time, go back to the back of the line, and let's see him work his way forward. Look, I ran cross-country in high school. I've done

a lot of road races. He's very similar to that rare runner who doesn't put in the time to log the miles, but has that pre-Fontaine killer instinct in a race that he's willing to empty everything he has to try to beat you. And it's like, bro, if you just go run an extra 25 miles a week, you could be a superstar. So we need him to make that change.

By the way, Luke, I think you're on the wrong rundown. This is still topic one, okay? This was originally topic two. Then we changed it because that other UFC champion got arrested and stuff. But, Luke. Oh, yeah, you're right. I botched that. My bad, real quick on the scoring, I also gave round five to Ortega, who just put it on.

Actually, I thought he might have hurt Alex in the final 10 seconds there. I gave him round three, too. And I am curious in how you think round three should be scored. It's one of the craziest rounds of all time. Even though Volkanovski finished the round on top with strikes and hurt him, I felt that the two dramatic submissions and the takedown was enough to edge a 10-9 round to Ortega. Am I crazy? People hate my scoring.

Although I think they're a little bit off on that. Luke, am I crazy? That's a good question. Here's the thing. Okay, here's the problem, dude. It wasn't just that Volkanovski reversed position, you know, like kind of withstood it or whatever. Dude, he withstood it, stood up, and then put a fucking beating on Ortega to the point where I was like, I don't think a stoppage was like right around the corner, but it wasn't too far either. So the question you have to ask yourself is, who took the fight closer to the finish?

I would argue, in that sense, Ortega with some of the submissions, especially the guillotine one where you saw Volkanovski thrashing to create space because he was in real trouble. At the same time, dude, it wasn't like Volkanovski just did enough to survive and didn't put it back on him. Dude, he put it on him after that. is that a 10 10 round we hate even rounds in both combat sports because it it sucks is that a 10 10 round because i thought i thought round four was a 10 8 round for volkanovski without question so is is round three 10 10 is that the fairest way to do it then

maybe yeah i would i would want to talk to big john or someone like that who's got a better sense about what to do in situations where there's like massive momentum swings i did see people giving what round was it for uh morice i saw them giving round one to davalishvili for for their fight i completely disagree with that i thought morice had him really close to a finish and so so for that reason, even though Murab turned the tables, there wasn't enough on the back end to match what happened on the front end. Obviously, he turned the tables completely in the following

round, but I just mean in that round. This one's a little tighter. This one's a little bit more like there wasn't quite enough of a gap in either direction, so it's a tough one to score. I'll say that say the final point on these two and i'm not afraid to go late in the show talking about good shit okay it's not like we're talking about boxing here people get people angry at me um you had wrote down in the rundown

rightfully so you know it's round three of the round of the year i want to take it further luke how high in the pantheon of all time considering it's a championship fight main event of a pay-per-view and it was that crazy and by the, we saw what you just mentioned, the Wallace Schilly comeback against Marais, which was a crazy round to begin with. Is that in the same conversation with Daly, Nick Diaz, round one, Arlovsky versus Travis Brown, round one, round one of the Edgar Maynard rematch?

I mean, is this a historically relevant championship round that we just saw? In terms of the highs, it's better than all of them. However, one of the issues that this round may suffer from is that I don't think that Volkanovski went down. Again, people might dead wrong me for this, but it was closer to the midway mark. So there was a couple of minutes of this fight where it was fine, but it was mostly, you know, one way ish kind of traffic from Volkanovski was after he got dropped with around turned into an I mean, it went from zero to 60, right? It went to immediate boil and then stayed there. So you have to weigh like an around where things got started earlier and maybe didn't have quite the punctuated moments, but it was still great from the word go versus one that got cooking later and then just stayed at high heat. It depends on your perspective there.

You know what round doesn't make that conversation, but drama-wise, Lesnar Carwin round one, just edge of your seat drama. That shit, I was sweaty after that. Come on, Luke. I needed a cigarette after that fight. I needed a cigarette after that. Wild, yes.

Also, I would say, yeah, that's a good one. Also, I would say round five of Gastelum and Adesanya. Yes, yes. That was a huge push. The guy's looking across the cage saying, I'm ready to die. We're even in round four of that fight, too, where Gastelum almost had that submission in round four. How about that round in Woodley-Thompson one that no one talks about?

Round four in that fight at 205. Great great rounds great rounds Luke exactly so there's a lot of different ways to cut it all right so now we go to point number two I apologize to the production crew for my idiocy on this one point number two let's talk about another fight we'll get to Valentina there's not a whole lot to say about that there's a whole lot to say however about Nick Diaz so we'll talk about him. All right, BC, he loses. He basically, you know, I don't say this to besmirch him, but he quit, which I think was the fine decision. If you don't want to take punishment and, you know,

I'll tell you what I think about it in just a second, but let's start with you. Did Nick Diaz's return in the way that you saw it make you think we should see more of him or we should see less of him i'm done i'm done completely and i'm not here to jab at him i give him all the credit in the world for coming back after six years and being that willing and especially in the first round but it continued on to just brawl at a high pace i mean that was a sick insane pace and it got the crowd going what i just don't understand, Luke, beyond having respect for that, when you package in the no mas moment, which again, I'm not going to hold against him

considering the circumstances, but I don't see how that no mas moment doesn't play into everything we saw. And I don't see how the world is not on the same side of the street I am right now and saying, Hey, we did it. It was fun, but that's not a UFC level fight that I just watched in the in Nick Diaz is not a UFC level fighter anymore. And when you package in all the comments about not wanting to be there and Jake Shields, his tweets, his teammate kind of somehow confirming those weird comments Nick had that maybe his management team tricked him and pushed him into it, only getting him a six week camp. There's there seems to be a lot of behind the scenes, I guess, bullshit, you know, at the end of the day. I mean, Nick's the fighter. He probably should have been more in control of this, but my whole point is this. I'm not going to

disparage him quitting, and I'm not going to disparage the dad bod, but Luke, maybe I'm just a little bit done with Triller, Holyfield, Paul Brothers over this summer where, you know, some of that was fun, but that's not elite level real fighting. Even under the guise of two old guys getting back in there and throwing hands, this was not on the level to me, Luke. I was kind of cringing the whole fight. You know I love old guy fights. You know I love gas station bullshit.

Even when they're trading, Luke, they were grossly slow and just, I mean, no one's talking about this fact. He may have been in good shape, you know, abs-wise. Robbie's washed. Robbie's badly washed. I felt like I was the only guy saying that about Carlos Condit two fights ago when everyone's like, no, no, man, he puts a couple fights together. Maybe he's a dark horse title challenger. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?

I love me, Nick. I don't know how people responded to my tweets having concern about him with saying, man, you're a Nick hater. Nick hater? Go rewatch Resume Review, okay? Did we put the curse on him? Well, not us. You know, the gods of all MMA thunder handled that one.

But, you know, did we present the mogwais to you and say, here's what not to do? Don't feed them after midnight. Don't, don't put water on them. Yes. Uh, but here's the deal, Luke, this, this was like a CM Punk fight to me. I didn't get the nostalgic feels. It was sloppy, gross, and I kind of just wanted it to end. I know that's off brand for me, but I don't want to see him taking punishment when he's not even remotely close to a UFC fighter in my eyes right now. I don't get how people want to see... Luke, why don't you stand up to this?

Because I heard a rumor from one of our colleagues who listened to your post-pod that you had some enlightenment on wanting to see Nick Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal. If you said those words and put that out in the ethos fair, Luke, you can fuck off, bro. I got a lot of pushback for it.

I will tell you in real time, I wasn't thinking much about it. And then when folks were like, you sure about that idea, Luke? And I was like, well, let me think about that a second. Yeah, that's a terrible fucking idea. I fully retract it. And certainly at this stage anyway. Here's what I would say about this, BC. I didn't quite share...

I'm not quite as down on Nick as I think you and some other ones are. Which isn't to say I think you're wrong. I just tend to think of it in these terms. Sorry, someone calls my effing phone again and it goes to my goddamn ear. I'll put it to you like this. He looked rusty. I mean rusty in every sense of the word. He looked like getting into fight shape was a thing he was rusty at. He looked like doing media. He was rusty at, uh, doing the

whole fight week dance, all the things you have to do. He looked rusty at, he looked rusty with his punches. He looked like he just hadn't done a lot of this in a really long time. And he forgot what it was like to do it. There were moments where i thought he was kind of cooking with the hand combinations end of the first maybe early parts of the second we were like okay all right he did have a high amount of output right that's sort of from a volume standpoint objectively true relative to his peers i get it and with an opponent who was also long in the tooth fine so i what i would say is if he wants to have another one um under by the way 170 pounds not this 185 bullshit right no chance they should allow that again and against somebody that makes sense the reason why i was thinking about masvidal at the time was i was like well

if he gets down to 170 and looks a little bit better the second time there are reasons to think it could be better than folks thought but okay i i fine, I, I, I fine. It's a bad idea. And I, I was just, you know, it was two, two in the morning. Let me pause you and ask you this. Do you see the difference between like even a clay Guido or a Diego Sanchez hanging on of late that they're at least not that far off from being in unranked, legitimate UFC fighter on the bottom. Whereas this was like, dude, this was like when Bellator you know seven years ago used to put on those old guy fights yeah so here's what I would say I don't

know how to answer that I think Diego was pretty far past his last few fights but what I would say is this dude UFC has a hard choice to make which is to say the following there was a time when Diaz was just not competing but he was still young enough and sort of hip enough and with it enough where they could have, if they, if they could have found a way to pull him off the bleachers and get him into the, you know, the, the venom fight kit or the Reebok fight kit where it could have made some sense. But now Nick is at a stage where the UFC is not going to be able to make effective use of him. The UFC should have a long look in the mirror. And by the way, Nick Diaz, too, about all the time that was lost.

And if there was no way to make it happen on either side, then fine. There was no way to make it happen. But here's just the reality. Both sides, whoever you want to blame, spent enough time apart from each other where now Nick Diaz is at a stage in his career where the UFC is not going to be able to make very effective use out of him. We talked about Anderson Silva at the end of his reign and all these other guys who are at the end of their runs where they're clearly not

going to be able to beat not only the top guys. Dude, I don't know exactly who Nick's going to be able to beat at all at this stage. And he's 38 years old. He is not getting any younger. He looked, as I said, quite rusty with it. This is not a place where UFC typically knows what to do with talent. What they know what to do is if you are very, very good or something approximating that they have all the space in the world for you. But what if you are past that? They don't know what to do. They don't know how they don't have the structure is not built for. I'm not even impugning them. Their structure is just not built for this side of the game. Other promoters know what to do. They don't know how. Their structure's not built for it. I'm not even impugning them. Their structure's just not built for this side of the game. Other promoters know what to do with this side

of the game because that's sort of more what they specialize in. This is not the UFC's product. And so if he can turn things around with a dedicated camp, a 170 weight cut, some kind of an opponent that makes sense, and he can show more signs of life, that's fine. But if we're not there, I don't know what we're doing last point BC here's the other part dude Diaz's Nick Diaz's

boxing game is quite clearly better to me than Nate Diaz's boxing game even with all of that rust happening I just thought he just puts combinations to better to together much better I think he stands in the pocket longer dude that body work he was throwing it looked nice like there's just no doubting it. It looked good. But his overall game, the flat-footedness of it all, BC, the no dynamism in the movement or anything, dude, that's an outdated style of fighting.

That worked 10 years ago on BJ Penn. That would not work with today's fighters in any kind of difficult sense at all. I've got to change headphones. And you add in there that he doesn't want to be there. He's telling you he doesn't want to be there. It's like there's more than enough warning signs that he's going to get hurt. And the first time he did get hurt, he passed out of the fight. And, again, you know, I was happy in that moment that it happened.

But, Luke, I just, you know, who in their right mind approved this as a five-round fight? Under what remote circumstances does that make sense as a five-round fight? A five-round fight is a title fight, a big-name main event. I'm going to be fair with you. I don't even like on these in-between fight night cards when we have five-round main events between guys who I'm not even sure can go five rounds and aren't in a title elimination picture, and we're just like, well, that's what we do.

We do five-round main events. Okay, well, this wasn't a main event. It wasn't a title fight. And anybody that can't see through my words and realize this is coming out of a place of love for Nick, not a place of hatred. Like, at the end of the day, Luke, they have

places like Triller for fights like this, but the UFC is not a Sunday rec league. So I can't see this anymore. I don't think Nick should be fighting anymore. You know, you want to go do jujitsu tournaments. You want to get a triller boxing match against Oscar De La Hoya. Like, okay, do what you want.

But, you know, I don't think Robbie should walk away, Luke. There's a hot take for you, okay? I mean, he was just taking punishment. It's just, I mean, they were taps. He had a little red blotch on his head there but uh he didn't look good either Luke well he he at least was in Diaz's face putting constant pressure he was rolling with a lot of the shots a lot of them landed a lot of them didn't a lot of them kind of bounced off and he was able to kind of make it work um but you know everyone wants to wait until a guy is absolutely decrepit not speaking of this

fight specifically just you know what fans want to see they're like oh well he can still fight a little bit dude you're not supposed to wait until the last fucking stage before the commission has to be like dude fucking stop before you stop you're supposed to do it a little bit before that here's the reality man here's the reality we talked about it years ago i think when this podcast first started BC even on the MMA beat prior to this one we said that Scott Coker had always had a good relationship with Nick Diaz remember he featured Nick Diaz in Strikeforce and the way we went through in the resume review and everything like they knew how to make use of this guy again I don't want

to blame just UFC for this I really don't Nick is I'm sure hard to do business with or whatever the case may be but in that last six years dude they wasted all the parties involved they wasted the precious time that nick had to be in big fights for big money against big names dude i'm afraid to tell folks i am pretty sure this is as far as ufc is concerned that shit is over and we are not going to get it back whatsoever you know what else they wasted? And again, it's probably half Diaz's fault, half Dana's fault. They wasted Nate Diaz's prime.

Who the hell goes to two pay-per-view fights against Conor McGregor, becomes a household name, and then sits out three full years? I know Nate still has more left in the tank, and he's had some fun fights since coming back, and some elite performances too. But imagine what Nate could have been immediately after those Conor fights. It's wild, Luke. It certainly is.

So it's unfortunate that it's come to this. But we are where we are. We are where we are. Nearly 40 years old and quite rusty. So we'll see what happens. All right, Luke. The truth is the truth. Resume review is what?

Is it 7-0 or 8-0? I lost track. What's the curse? I think it's 7. I think it's 7-0. You know what's funny? I actually totally forgot about it. I swear to God. I wasn't even thinking about it in the moment.

I was just watching Nick. And then, of course, he loses. And I wasn't thinking. I swear to God. On my deceased mother, I wasn't thinking about the curse. It didn't even occur to me, the whole thing. And then my mentions just blew up out of nowhere. All these people being like, fuck you, the curse does it again. Eat shit.

Hey, listen, guys, I wish. You don't think there's fighters out there that have done me wrong privately that I would love to stick it to with a resume review? I would fucking love to do it. But I just don't think our little podcast has that kind of ability. I will say, though, BC, whether you believe in a curse or whatever you want to believe, I will say this, and I said it on a Saturday night. It is fucking hilarious that we constantly pick the loser heading into this in a way where it just...

I'm not sure what it says, but it's funny just the same. Luke, I've not sure what it says, but it's funny just the same. Even mathematically, if we had flipped a coin, we would have gotten some right at this point, right? Like a monkey just sort of picking at random would have gotten a few of these. We haven't done that. Look, we did one on a betting favorite Adesanya against Blachowicz, so it's not like we're picking

the more washed of the two. But Luke, I asked you this before, but I want an updated answer. What number, if we're picking the more washed of the two. But, Luke, I asked you this before, but I want an updated answer. What number, if we're 7-0, what number do we have to get to where you'll go, it's real? 100-0. Oh, come on. That's not even fun, Luke.

That's not even like a fun game. That's just like old curmudgeon bullshit. Here's the thing. If people want to do this because it makes them laugh, then fine. You can tweet me and say nasty things about me and tell me I ruined your fans, you know, return or whatever. You can blow us up for it because it is funny. I admit it's legitimately hilarious that this happens the way that it does. I certainly understand that.

But then it's like, you know, you want me to, like, indulge superstitions? I can't do that. Okay, but what? I mean, 15 and 0. If we got to 15 you'd still be saying oh bro well like yes i don't believe in superstitions yes i'm never not i'm never going to believe in superstitions it just doesn't happen that way sorry look let me get two hands on there for you okay listen there is no god when you die you just rot in the ground okay i hate to give you

the bearer of bad news all right let's go to point number three here if we can BC not a lot to say about this but it is worth bringing up Valentina Shevchenko does exactly what we thought she was going to do Lauren Murphy god bless her you know she came in prepared she's never missed weight she earned that opportunity I'm not going to bash her but it was not close there were rounds literally, in terms of significant strikes, I don't know if you saw the numbers, there was two rounds where one round she scored one significant strike and another just two. I think she scored 11 significant strikes over the course of almost four rounds.

I mean, she was never really in this fight. Okay, so that's not my question. My question to you is, dude, is it time to finally book Shevchenko-Nunes 3? Yeah, I mean, it's been time, first of all. It's absolutely time right now because we're in the same spot we kind of were about two or three fights ago where neither one has somebody knocking on their door. Again, I thought Jessica Andrade was maybe going to be that for Shevchenko, and Shevchenko

beat her as easy as she's beat anyone since Jessica Ai. So when you have these two that are still in their physical prime, and even though Valentina's older, Luke, I think Amanda is aging a little bit faster, so you don't want to wait until it's a little bit past its prime. You don't want to wait until it's, you know, Mayweather-Pacquiao, where you're like, okay, they were still number one and two pound for pound but they were 38 and 36 that's not the accurate representation of who would have won at their best and I know this is a different situation because we've seen them fight twice before but look for anybody that doesn't know along with that second fight being so close that whoever you think won you're probably right let's forget, Valentina lost that first one, a three-round fight at UFC 196.

She lost it fair and square, two rounds to one. But Luke, she was a late starter, and she figured out something in round three that carried over into the second fight. So I'm not saying that's not a loss. It's a loss. But it's not like Nunes has ever had her way with her at all. So, yeah, let's do it now while there's nothing else you can do. Valentina's the best soldier they have.

She comes in insanely ready, fixes all the holes in her game, always in shape, ambassador for the sport, never gets hurt, is willing to fight every three months, shows up, dominates, and dances in the cage afterwards. So let's reward her with the one fight that would give her the best chance to put the capstone historically on what she's building, which right now is an all-time great resume

and complete fighter, which she's at a prime right now. So do not pass Godena. Make this fight next. It is what it is. It's time, okay? And if you're Amanda, it's like, you know, who else do you have? Who else do you have that's going to pump ticket sales? I don't think I need to see Jermaine Durandamy a third time.

I don't think I need to see Holly Holm a second time, right? I don't think Misha Tate, for all she's doing right on her comeback, is going to be a legitimate threat for your title. it now and let's let's stop this conversation but luke i i don't want to pass too far where you said you know i can't really blame lauren murphy i want to ask you though if we actually can and i don't want to make this about lauren murphy but i might want to make this about caitlin shukagian or anyone else who gets to this point, like at least Jennifer Maya showed out to a degree. She leaned on her one strength, one around, made it somewhat, somewhat competitive. But like, I'll throw Karmush in there. Look, they have to realize they are extremely

outgunned. So you can't come out and just say i'm gonna fight my fight your fight is not gonna work unless you land one punch and open a cut across her forehead and you you know i mean unless like like lightning strikes shouldn't lauren murphy in hindsight luke have had an almost ortega like want to say the only way i'm gonna win this is by finishing her so i'm gonna go out in my shield trying to finish her rather than completely lowering my output and just standing on the outside throwing one strike for every five valentina throws i'm not saying it's easy she's an all-time great luke but i can't watch another one of these where you're just sort of like these opponents aren't trying hard enough to show you Valentina's greatness.

I mean, I think there's a case where if you're overmatched to press the gas pedal and take more risk, I think that's sort of what you're saying. But dude, when you're this overmatched, when you're overmatched where you're landing one significant strike in five minutes, I would actually argue the onus is on Valentina. You're talking about opponents who can't do shit to you. It's up to you, actually, to press it on that point, to be quite honest with you. Because, dude, if you're Lauren Murphy, you know, it's very easy for us, and I know that's not what you're saying, but it's very easy for us as fans to look at a situation like this and say something like, you know, you should really try

harder. Dude, what the fuck is she going to do gonna do you know you try and go in there and mess around you're gonna get viciously ko'd stopped even earlier you're gonna have a kat zingano ronda rousey moment like it's gonna go bad i can understand why they think if i can slow it down i won't take too much of a beating and i can kind of maybe find a window later and see what happens and that's probably you know not really true, but I can at least understand that. Dude, I'm not blaming Valentina either exactly because she doesn't want to give up her belt. But dude, if your opponent is that much behind you,

nah, I don't blame the opponent. All right, I blame Valentina, for example, in the Karmush fight. She got to a certain point where Karmush didn't want to play ball and Valentina's like, what am I going to do? I'll go to the finish line with you. You know, maybe that. But I'm not arguing it from an entertainment standpoint as much as I'm arguing that this is the biggest moment of your career. You've worked so hard to get to this point.

Again, it's easier for keyboard warrior BC in his own damn basement to say it. I'm not taking these punches. Okay. But to say, if your only chance at winning that belt is doing something dramatic you're gonna come come on right luke so that you don't what what do you say okay i went five rounds with the with the with one of the greatest fighters ever great that's great is that is that what we're playing for luke are we playing to win you play to win the game bro okay okay but so lauren murphy comes back to you after the third round.

And again, we're not technicians, but you have to have some kind of a path to recommend for her. What is it? You charge her? Maybe try to take her down? Charge her? Try and take her down? Is that it? Charge her?

Cheat? Reckless attempts at takedowns? You've got to do something. Luke, seriously. Talk trash. You've got to do something to get her off her game. You know, again, if anyone makes the Connie argument, okay, BC, I'd like you to do it, like, enough with that shit, okay?

We're pundits here talking about what we just saw and watched. I'm just saying, for her to go home happy, she got stopped anyway by being safe. You might as well go for it, Luke, okay? That's all i'm gonna say that's all i'll just i'll just end on this i think that's a fair point especially for um you know like for example ortega was badly out of it and then but he had that ace in the hole and found a way to get the fight all of a sudden kind of close right pushing past whatever perceived

limits are there but in the end if the limits are here i think it's fine to be like hey man you you had a chance there you got to do more than that but when the limits are here and their coaches don't even know what to say yeah you gotta look you gotta look to valentina and be like you know you got it she got it done that fourth round she threw that right hand over the top that was great i mean and if you do if you do it luke you get jessica eyed right you do right you do you're fucked you're you're fucked either way the one thing i say is about the original question with amanda nunez here's one thing i want to ask ubc we both know i don't know what's going to happen but we both know amanda nunez right now does not have an incentive to take that fight

right we went we might want her to but if you're amanda nunez you're like i've got two dubs on her i'm not trying to risk a third. So we may end up with a situation where they don't actually make it. But I also think Amanda Nunes is probably a little bit close. Hold on, hold on. Let me just posit to you a world that might exist where they don't make it and Amanda Nunes retires without the third fight happening. However, in that same world, we hear Valentina say, I can do this till i'm 50 well i don't know about that but let's say she's around for like another 10 years and just beats the shit out of people

can she beat enough people without having beat amanda to surpass amanda as the goat of women's mma she would probably need a few check marks to add meaning let's say set the u set the UFC record for title defenses, set the UFC record for most wins in a title fight. That kind of stuff could help her argument and fuel it up. Because look, ability-wise, she's right there, okay? She fought way over her head at 135, yet submitted Juliana Pena like it was nothing. Outpointed Holly Holm in an absolutely brilliant performance. May have beaten the greatest fighter of all time in their title rematch. So she's close enough, Luke, that to your argument, yes, I think she might be able to just keep stockpiling.

And obviously, you wait around long enough, the next people are going to come. I mean, if the Nunes fight isn't even on the board, Luke, the argument may still be for UFC right now that only super fights for the near future for Valentina. What does that mean? If Zhang Weili wins that title against Rose in the rematch, run champion versus champion. Okay, why? Because I think Valentina's

performances deserve her to get the biggest platform and pay and opportunities possible. So when you said, well, what if Amanda doesn't have the incentive? And I shook my head right away. What I'm saying is there's no reason why UFC should not provide the incentive. Obviously, UFC is bathing in $100 bills, right? Or wiping their ass with them right now, Luke.

It's not like you can say, well, the promotion can't afford it. If there's somebody that you should pay to take a really hard fight, it's the person who's the greatest of all time, Amanda Nunes, who already moved up in weight and knocked out the other goat, Cyborg. So if you're going to pay her career-high money that she can make sure her beautiful daughter has a college fund, do that now for the Valentina fight. And here's, Luke, here's what else I would do to add a little spice on it. Promote the shit out of it as this.

The battle for number one pound for pound and possibly the battle for best of all time. Because I know Cyborg's in this conversation. I'm not taking one first round knockout loss to take her out of it against Amanda. But I'm saying this. If Valentina has this title streak and those wins at 135 and those performances

against Amanda and then adds a victory over Amanda potentially without controversy to become a two division champion you can make an argument that just a you know performance and ability wise she's the goat so why not market it as that god good god Daly used to come out and tell us that Hennon Burrell was the pound-for-pound king just because nobody wanted to buy the fights because the guy didn't speak English. I think you can fudge it just a little for this one, Luke, and pay everybody what it's worth to make it all happen. Please?

Okay, we got the money. We got enough money right now. Maybe we could slow down construction of the new PI coming up in Zaire, Luke, or whatever new country we're putting it in, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Maybe we can slow down the global expansion and make a fight that we need to see, okay? Yeah, maybe less fighter hotels, more fights that fans want to see. It's an interesting way to put it. Also, we're going to switch gears here a little bit to some other things happening.

More MMA news, but we're going to get to some boxing here in just a second. I want to remind folks, not remind, I guess we should tell them for the first time. You see, we're going to launch a Monday, I don't want to call it a new podcast but an addendum podcast where all the fights over the weekend that we never got to in the rundown because we want to save it for the biggest things we're going to do all of that in a short podcast we're going to release later today so if you're like oh what about the curtis blades fight what about dan hooker good news podcast coming your way stay tuned for it later on even better news luke toasted by you so anyway

that's like okay i can only take so much of bc's passion and jokes all right you want to hear luke break down bull nichols amateur mma debut tune in later today okay he he looked good He looked good. He looked good. Okay. All right. Let's do this. Topic number four, BC. I mean, this is so huge, dude. What if you were watching this live? First of all, credit to Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Boxing. They made this look enormous and it was enormous. And in the end at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, Oleksandr Usyk got it done. He wins against Anthony Joshua via unanimous decision. I think it was 117-111, 116-111, 115-113. There could be no denying it.

And dude, in the 12th and final round, you had Usyk with Joshua quite literally on the ropes, getting tuned up. It was unbelievable. Thrilling from start to finish. Usyk took that division, BC, by the scruff of the neck and said, this one is mine. I could not believe what I was looking at. Let me ask you, if there's so much to say,

let's start with your biggest takeaway from this monumental achievement in boxing. That not only was Alexander Usyk as great as I was trying to tell you he was, Luke, turns out he's even better. And I know that's an old school paraphrase of the great Larry Merchant line on Manny Pacquiao after he stopped Miguel Cotto, but it's like, turns out, Luke, he was even fucking better than we thought. And what that means here is that, you know, skills pay the bill.

Skills win fights in the end when guys are relatively even. But Usyk needed, Luke, toughness, daring abilities. He needed all these other intangibles to give his skills a chance to win the fight. And he had them, Luke. And he had them in spades. And you know what else he had?

Good fortune that the judges there, one from the UK, one from the US, one from Ukraine, didn't screw him. That this fight was on the up and up. Because, Luke, if it had played out like we kind of predicted it might, or Usyk had a case and then lost or it was a draw, anyone that watched this fight that's an MMA fan that got talked into it because of us would have been like, okay, yeah, that was cool for 45 minutes entertainment, but your sport's fucked. No, it's not, Luke. We've got a new generational talent and star here.

Dan Raphael threw it out there. He was like, hey, that might have really cemented his Hall of Fame induction. And in boxing, they actually keep a pretty stringent Hall of Fame where, you know, when Arturo Gatti got in, that was one of the first times where people were like, oh, is this Hall of Fame or Hall of what you've accomplished? But for the most part, it's what you've accomplished, Luke. Undisputed four-belt cruiserweight champion moves up and wins the unified heavyweight championship and lands the harder shots and makes the bigger adjustments and just bamboozles one of the greatest finishers and stars and fighters of this era look this was a special ass performance

this guy is a genius from a technical standpoint, but for him to come out and realize I can really shake things up early with those straight left hands, and I can stay in that pocket and be daring enough to keep up the fainting and the high activity, which is, by the way, not dissimilar to what Tyson Fury did against Wilder in that first fight. Keep an active guard to disarm my opponent, and that builds up the mental and physical fatigue, and it gave Usyk the landscape to operate surgically. And the fact that he never buckled because he never got hit by a fight-changing shot,

and the fact that he pulled this off, Luke, this is a credit to what the heavyweight division is. One punch can change anything. Upsets can happen left or right. But skills won out on this night. And I am very excited. Okay, we're not getting Fury Joshua for all four belts this year.

We may not get it next year, but I'm very excited to see how this plays out with Joshua already publicly declaring that he will invoke the mandatory contracted rematch. It could come in late winter, early spring of next year. We've got Wilder Fury three in two weeks. Dillian White's late winter, early spring of next year. We've got Wilder Fury three in two weeks. Dillian White's got a big fight to open next year. You know, Andy Ruiz is still around. Luke, would you rather have an undisputed four belt champion right now, or would

you rather have an active, unpredictable elite heavyweight division? I think we could have both, but I'd prefer the latter. And I think we're going to get that right now after this type of fight and performance. Everything came together for Usyk on the right night. I don't think we have anything to question about his greatness beyond the conversations of, can he do that against a Fury? I don't know. Well, you know, we're going to have that topic down the road if we get there. But I think the real topic spins to this, luke and if people want more on this i did an instant uh reaction to it uh after the fight is what do you say about what

joshua didn't do and what do you say about the time still left with him at 31 still in his physical prime to try to turn this around entering yet another big money rematch luke where he needs to come back and figure out what went wrong so for me what was so interesting about this bout is we had thought based on how Usyk had done at cruiserweight even to an extent at heavyweight with the two fights he had had that the last six

rounds not the first six rounds would be the most important and for sure the last six rounds I mean all of the rounds were really important and there were moments in the last three I thought 10 to 12 where it really took a bad turn, um, for, for Joshua for the most part. But what was so interesting BC is, you know, what rounds really mattered the most, the fucking opening bell to round one, dude, Usyk went from the word go and got right in his face. And he just, he boxed circles around him literally and figuratively dude

this is what's interesting like I haven't seen anyone else make this comment because it's different sports and they have different strategies and they have different executions there's a lot of things that are different but what is the commonality between what Volkanovsky does in the striking and what a guy like Usyk does again for all of the many many many many many differences one of the things they do is they get their opponent to just make so many short-term decisions that they can't ever really execute, right? You're constantly worried about what they're doing, and Usyk's going in and out, and he's jabbing to the body, and he's coming over with the hook, and he's chasing you this way, and he's taking that angle this way, and he's constantly in motion,

and he's constantly throwing. joshua was in a storm and couldn't tell which wave was going to crash on the boat next it was just he was overwhelmed in that sense with all of the things not just the feints but the punches too not just the punches but the feints and the movement he couldn't get a read on this guy one time dude volkanovski in his own kind of way he shows up to you and he shows you all these different things he's doing and you think it's this and it's not he's got a little bit more misdirection and trickery in that sense but um you get the idea where you you can never get going if you're an opponent of these guys because they just won't let you in the case of Usyk he did this from

the word go I could not believe what I was looking at. And he stayed on it. Now, give it credit to Joshua, BC. He kind of made some adjustments around the midpoint. I thought rounds 5, 6, and 7 were better for him. Depending on whether you want to score it or not. But he certainly did better in that way. But he couldn't hang on. And you ask what he could do differently. If you beat a guy like Joshua once, you have to do it twice.

We all know the rules of boxing, so to speak. Formal or informal. The rematch clause, I'm'm certain will be executed here i do think it will be interesting bc tony bell you who knows usic and his boxing prowess quite well he made a point he's like dude josh was never gonna outbox this guy it's not possible yeah difference in boxing okay but here's what Joshua can do Joshua thought if I get smaller and I get more mobile that will work to my advantage it didn't I think he's going to get back to a bigger size and really try and put the lumber to a guy like Usyk who is smaller and I do think that will make for an interesting rematch what about you well yeah look I gave Joshua around

six eight and nine and he did make a great adjustment, not just what Roy Jones said to take a little bit off of his punches to be able to land more in quicker succession and make the fight more on his terms, but he went hard to the body, and he did hit a couple right hands, which I think coincided with Usyk having a bit of a stamina dump, because look, the pace Usyk put on in the beginning, to your point about comparing it to Volkanovski, it was insane. I mean, it took away, all those feints took away AJ's jab. But the real point of criticism is that AJ tried to outbox, you know, the boxer, outchess the chess master. And you can't do that. So he's got to make substantial changes entering the second one.

And, Luke, his trainer, Rob McCracken, was highly under fire when he lost to Andy Ruiz, where it's like, okay, you've had this guy forever. Do you need a major change? And he stuck by his man, Luke. Again, I'm not saying they need to fire him, but they need a major change. I mean, you can't bring in Emmanuel Stewart, right? He's gone, the late Hall of Famer.

But Stewart turned Lennox Lewis and, you know, a punchy Vladimir Klitschko around by teaching them the legitimate big man style. Not just standing up strong and using your size and reach and living and dying behind your jab. But, Luke, you know this in heavyweight boxing by being physical and establishing your size. AJ never fought like the bigger man.

He was content to fall into the counterpuncher role, but because Usyk's guard was so active and because those left hands stung AJ enough, he got wobbled in round three where he's like, yo, I could get knocked out if I keep this up. AJ became the counterpuncher, but Luke, he never became the bigger man. What does the bigger man do? He throws that weight in size advantage and lays all over you luke why did we hate the second half of the vladimir klitschko era because you don't want to get hit by any punches he got knocked out three times early in his run that he once he landed a stiff jab he'd lay on you and force the clinch he was always using his size and forearms

and everything he could to remind you that you were in there against the bigger man. Obviously, the referee's jurisdiction on that can play a big part. But AJ, who doesn't have an inside fighting game outside of maybe that uppercut he hit on Pulev, look, he's bewildered from the start, so maybe he was in survival mode earlier than we thought. But for as much as he made adjustments to the boxing side, bro, you're not the boxer in this matchup. And you can look around this heavyweight division. I said this in the Instant Reaction show, Luke.

There's two people that can do this to you. Tyson Fury and Alexander Usyk. Everybody else. AJ's athleticism is enough to outbox and eventually knock them out because he's such a great puncher. But when you're facing the true craftsman of this era, you can't outcraft them, bro. You got to go out there and knock this guy the hell out.

And I still do think there's questions, legit questions, of whether Usyk can take an elite knockout artist's best punch over consecutive rounds and still be able to get off the offense he can. Luke, I think we saw a brief window of that in those rounds that we did score for Joshua where Usyk's output went down, and he was starting to be much more defensive and shifty in the other direction rather than shifty coming at you, which confuses you and makes you use up a lot of nervous energy.

Luke, do you think he needs to change trainers? Or do you think there's a way they can look at this tape? You know, old dog, new tricks, all those type of euphemisms and stuff. Can you teach? Can he be taught? Can we bring Lennox Lewis in here and teach the real big man style? Because he's going to need it, brother. I got to say, I almost wish this fight had happened before the, I keep calling him Andy Reid

before the Andy before the Andy Ruiz fights um because I think the Andy I mean here's the thing like remember the Klitschko fight like who had a better Klitschko fight Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua well Tyson Fury was it was more one-sided I guess you could argue but the better fight like you know getting off the canvas and everything else. I mean, that fight with Joshua was thrilling. It was super thrilling, right? But he wasn't afraid to fight in that way. I think, again, I keep saying Reed, the Ruiz fight kind of spooked him a little bit about what it would mean to lose and how you could and all the things that could go wrong in a fight. Not that he's afraid of taking punches, but afraid of what the consequences would be if that kind of thing happened and um i i don't know if he needs

to change trainers i obviously think being bigger dude you got i said it on the on the on the friday show and i think since then others have used the fight to make a more um uh pronounced case for it dude he need to get in there and like pump that jab in a way that could really sting a guy like uh usic if usic can get there cooking and doing his you know his dancing kind of thing there's just not a whole lot to do beyond that not only could he not land the jab but he was getting countered with i think he thought usic here's the deal i told you this before i called that usic bell you fight on his fight on the zone. A week later, I went to New York City to interview Canelo, and Eddie Hearn was there because Canelo was fighting when Eddie Hearn's guy was at Rocky Fielding or some shit. I forgot the timeline of events.

But I said to Eddie's face, Eddie, love you. Usyk's going to be Joshua, though. And they're like, no, no, no, he's too small, bro. He's too small. I don't think AJ thought Usyk could knock him out, Luke. I really didn't. So we want to say, hey, big man, use your jab. I think his plan was to use that jab, but once he started getting

pieced up with those left hands, it was like, I'm going to get dropped. But it goes back, again, different sport, but same night. It goes back to the Cynthia, just gone drage fight, where like, dude, you can land on him, but you've got to put something on them that makes them back up. You've got to get them off of you.

Now, in the case of Andrade, we'll talk about her later, but the idea would be that she's just so tough. Usyk is the smaller guy. I do believe... It's like the Tyson Fury fight, where he was kind of dancing around Wilder the first time, and then the second time he just went and took it to him. There's got...

I mean, I'm not saying that I think Josh was on the same technical acumen ability as a guy like tyson fury but there has to be some kind of a way to make this more competitive especially like you know this was in england like you were you should have gotten some hometown cooking and they just couldn't give it to him and there's just no way he's got to be physical he's got to use his forearms he's got to basically be grimy i mean i'd love him and lennox lewis have had a weird sort of not brotherly mentorship if they could get good and you can get lennox in there and you can really start to figure out how to use that size to your advantage look that's the problem with this overall era where these heavyweights aren't actual boxers they're either bruisers or they're athletes turned into heavyweights and when you get an actual guy once in a while like an usic and fury

who can actually do this at the super elite technical level you're gonna have problems if you're joshua so luke what we did learn was that fury would have fucked joshua up and knocked him the hell out oh yeah he would have dude people got bitter at me when I said it I'm like no sorry you don't think yeah dude if you don't think that Tyson Fury would go in there and fucking dummy Joshua at this point I don't know what you're looking at he's a terrible matchup for him now Joshua and Wilder a bit of a different scenario right because you got the vulnerability on both sides. Wilder's not nearly the boxer. Joshua, anyone really, up against that power

is going to have some difficulty. But that one seems to me like that's a well-made fight. But Tyson Fury, fuck that, dude. He's working him like a summer job, no doubt about it. So, thrilling if you didn't see it. And BC's recap of it is an ode to boxing if not

just the fight itself i highly recommend checking it out would you say i would rock hard with emotion while delivering that luke you certainly rock hard whether it was emotion i want to relive i don't know all right last but not least bc let's just get to this now if we can um topic number five i don't bring this up for fun. It's not fun. Everything about it actually sucks. But Jon Jones was arrested again just hours, quite literally, just hours after being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame

for his bout with Alexander Gustafson. BC, I don't want to editorialize any more than we already have about this situation or I should say Jon Jones' ongoing situations. What is there left to say about this? What reaction do you have? I got a few things to say.

Beyond it's a sad, it's a pattern, it's whatever. Obviously, everyone said it best. You know, the fact that this was the same night of the Hall of Fame, that this is his career in a microcosm. Luke, we've said this before, we'll say it again. He's the sport's greatest fighter of all time. He's the sport's biggest cautionary tale of what if

anyone that's like, what if, he's the GOAT well, what could he have how far could that GOAT argument be right now if he didn't have these type of hiccups I also want to say, and I made this argument with Diego Sanchez, he didn't get inducted to the Hall of Fame, his fight did, I know that you didn't necessarily

say that, but everybody was sort of like get inducted to the Hall of Fame. His fight did. I know that you didn't necessarily say that, but everybody was sort of like, you know, get inducted to the Hall of Fame, get a rest. It's his fight, bro. He's not a Hall of Famer yet, okay? Obviously, he's a slam dunk Hall of Famer when it happens, but can we have some actual standards here? Stick to the point. UFC needs to cut him.

Wow. Oh, that's crazy, BC. Is it crazy? Because I feel like we had this same exact topic and argument in 2020 when jones got pulled over in albuquerque when we thought he was doing good right and fired a firearm dui was talking to homeless people was just you know drugs in the car just a sketchy situation luke i had to write that newser for CBS Sports. I know you did the IA sort of news reaction to it. Do you agree with me?

When you went up and down the list of the amount of infractions from drug tests to the hit and run in 2015, I forgot about the 2012 when he crashed his car drunkenly into a tree. Like, you forget the time with the waitress that got thrown out of court. You forget all of these infractions. Not before he was famous in the midst of his championship reign. Luke, here's the deal. His absence during this whole heavyweight reinvention slash public fight for money,

does it coincide with the UFC's greatest financial period ever? Yes. But what that shows you is they don't actually need him. The problem is they're not going to discipline him at all because that's what the UFC does. They don't do that. They leave it in the hands of the law. Conor McGregor throwing the thing through the window

and getting glass in Ray Borg's eye and scaring the crap out of Ioana and all of his other co-workers in there. Good God. Look, he didn't get a slap on the damn wrist from the UFC he got rewarded with the biggest pay-per-view fight of all time I don't care what Dana says about how much the legal fees cost for Conor not applicable here okay if they want to be responsible for caring about John Jones the person they need to cut and fire him right now and not worry about what's left in

the tank for potential pay-per-view buys, either as an A-list future heavyweight champion or even just as a B-side to sell his name to up-and-coming fighters. It's not about that. It shouldn't be about that. And I'll add in there again that because the promotion is not hurting for money or pay-per-view buys there is nothing left to do but to fire him to try to be some form of lasting message that there's a penalty for this Luke I don't know exactly how the justice system works I know that if this was John Jones the the McDonald's uh janitor you know what I'm saying he'd already be in jail for this many infractions in a short period I'm not saying John Jones, the McDonald's janitor, you know what I'm saying? He'd already be in jail for this many infractions in a short period. I'm not saying John Jones needs to go to jail, although

you can argue maybe he does for a long time to really see the full spectrum of his actions here. But do you know what's not going to fix him? Dana coming out to the media and saying, I told you guys, Las Vegas and John Jones doesn't mix. Dana, what is that saying? We can't trust him in Las Vegas? Okay, cool. You're just going to enable him again by giving him a pay-per-view fight and nothing's going to get fixed here because Jon's got a problem and he and those who handle and surround him do not have the power to fix it. But if you're UFC at some level with the Disney backing and the corporate sponsorships and all this ridiculous money that's coming in, what would the NFL do, Luke?

They'd cut them. Right? A team would cut them, and then another team would pick them up. But yes. You know, at some point, how much more do you want the disgrace of these things happening to your brand and how much more do you want to keep seeing this redemption fake story and just another infraction look they don't actually need him so the best thing they can do to help him is send

him back out there and he'll have to look in the mirror and say okay i'm still john jones oh maybe i can make a payday here or here but if i'm not fighting the ufc for the heavyweight championship who am i i i i i don't know i mean i don't know what the right answer is for what the ufc should do or what anyone else should argue against that try to argue against that here's what i would say though the if you're saying something like oh well we can't bring john to las vegas without getting in trouble it's like dude las vegas ain't the problem yes like you know what i mean if you can't go to vegas without getting arrested vegas is not the problem the problem is is you or whatever is and i don't bring this up to be like dude let's think about this he got arrested a year ago during

the middle of the pandemic for we saw the video from the dash cam or not the dash cam i should say the the chest cam of the of the attending officer where you know there was issues with drinking in the car and potentially firing off gunshots and he pled guilty to most of this but they reduced it there was covet issues because of overcrowded jails or whatever our staff they just couldn't handle it so let him walk. And here he is about a year or 18 months later, and he's getting arrested again. Dude, if you're getting arrested like this, and we don't know a whole lot,

again, innocent until proven guilty, but you pled guilty to the last ones. We saw all the other issues you've had. Dude, if you're getting in trouble this much, you've got serious problems in your life. And I don't want to get up on here and be like, I've got life figured out. My life is so grand. My life is not grand. I've got all problems in your life. And I don't want to get up on here and be like, I've got life figured out. My life is so grand.

My life is not grand. I've got all kinds of problems. And most of those are overwhelmingly my fault. I'm not some person who has life figured out. But I'm not getting arrested in the fucking street in my 30s, man. What are you doing? This is a serious problem, whether it's substance abuse or risk management or a combination of the two i'm not even saying this to score points i'm saying this because the guy

fucking needs help he needs help and if he did if he bc hold on if he doesn't get it you this is not the end of the problems they will continue either you will solve the problems or the problems will solve themselves one way or another this is bad and I also want to say like I've never really addressed it before like the comments where he you know he slam dunked on me at the pre-fight presser but let's sort of go back and revisit that for a second because it turns out part of what happened was unflattering comments I made around UFC 200 some of those have been shown to me and yeah they were not especially nice but dude reflect on this now what is it three four years later since that has happened think about all the shit that has happened in the cage and out of it collectively all since that

second fucking redemption story was sold to us. I'm the asshole for saying that I was dead right then. And I'm dead right now. There was nothing. I said that you could go back and look at it and be like, wow, he was really, he was way too harsh. He was way off on that. No one owes me anything. I'm not owed an interview. I'm not owed anything. They don't have to answer questions. That part is fine. But it's probably time to reflect on the fact

that people who said Jon Jones really fucked up around UFC 200, and this is unconscionable that it keeps happening, now four years later, they have only been vindicated only been vindicated well but the most important story here is bc dude if we're still singing this fucking tune four years later dude the guy needs help and i'm not somebody that looks past both mental illness and the disease of addiction and says you know know, just get it together. No, he's got legitimate issues.

But, you know, bringing him back just to cash out his name does nothing for anyone. And we all thought, you know, the public embarrassment of multiple arrests would be his rock bottom. It's not. I don't know if jail is, Luke. It might be. But I think cutting him, I think firing him is another step toward that rock bottom. So we got enough money in the vault here. I think we can afford this.

Let's do the right thing. Look, forget the McDonald's comparison or even Joe and accounting at your company. If this was name any fighter outside the top 10, look, they don't have a job in the UFC anymore, right? True. Probably not. No. They may not even be in MMA.

Right. So, like what what do you need do we need john jones to kill somebody in the dui do we need him to i mean what do you what do we need luke what's the line i think we're past that already if we care about him as a person then fighting shouldn't even be remotely in this topic by the way you, you can always, like, re-sign him down the road if he turns things around, Luke. But for now, he's not fit to be a UFC fighter. Make a public statement about this. Take a stand to help him. Here's the thing, though. Like, he would hold a grudge where if they cut him,

you know, unless it was utterly impossible to make money without them, you know, he would never go back. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. I'm just saying that right don't you think if they cut him he would take it as like some kind of a front you know no look okay what if he went out and got took a couple fights elsewhere and rejuvenate himself he'd want to come back eventually and if he cleaned up his life luke why not but again i'm just saying if he if he were to get where that's the the where that's part of the decision making that's what i'm saying let me ask you this is your reason for

cutting him to send a message or is your argument for cutting him this will continue and when it does you're gonna have a guy on your roster who will have done something heinous and all this time you did nothing about it is that the argument i think it's both of those and i think it's mixed with the other argument of what's fair you know star treatment versus like how many more times do we need to see this like it's all together in the same argument luke because you know in the past it would be like okay a couple infractions well look at Well, look at boxing. These guys, you know, this shit happens all the time. And look, let's be honest. Trevante Tank Davis has had some stuff happening too.

But like UFC is in a different place than the disorganized nature of boxing promoters and where we're at. I mean, they're trying to go full on real across the board mainstream. So to your point, that's something i wasn't necessarily stressing on but let's be honest about it if something really bad does happen to somebody else and it's a public really bad public scandal do you want your ufc brand attached to that no so at what point do you make like the responsible adult decision here i don't know i guess we're gonna find out all right with that bc it is no longer time for

you and us to ask ourselves questions it's time for the audience to ask us it's time for dms from dogs as you guys know we put up a thread on instagram every sunday and uh we uh let you guys ask questions all right so let's go to the... Let me pull this up here, my notes. All right, first up is from Kev J. Math. I guess the elephant in the room, almost quite literally. Are we going to talk about Ortega's package? Well, I did mention that the BDE was undeniable. Luke, I know there's sizes to cups, right?

Yes, and there's shapes as well, too. They're not all identically shaped. I played roller hockey in my 20s, and I was wearing the Little League cup that I had, and it wasn't working out well. So I know there's sizes to cups, Luke. He must buy the biggest one possible. Now, is there a need or a reason behind that?

Does his celebrity list of clientele over the years tell you there might be, Luke? Hey, that'd be a great problem to have, but that cup is freaking enormous, Luke. It's a huge cup. It's a giant. I mean, it's like he's got the Stanley Cup in there, you know, of cups. I don't know why, but he, I will say this. It's a bit of a weapon. Like if you can get arm bars across it, it acts as a fulcrum and you can fucking tear people up

with it but yeah he's got a giant ass cup I mean if you put somebody in a triangle could you use that cup against their face as a weapon like you're saying Luke yeah you could I don't know if it would it doesn't really meaningfully address the triangle because the triangle works

one leg is on one side of the carotid and then their own arm is on the other so i should say this leg on this side so yeah but you can just pull their nose into your crotch and just smash their face with it luke yes you could do that you could do that um all right super awkward from at underscore is a terrain isatarain? How much do we need to donate for a resume review on Colby Covington? So after the John Jones news, Colby took to Twitter and, you know, was unkind, as you can well imagine. You know, I'm not sure what to say about this.

What do you think? Well, Luke, let's spin this as a positive. Mikey Mormyle, our producer, says the resume review is 7-0 with six finishes, which is pretty damn impressive. Wow. I don't want to take up money and have everybody tell us, you should do the next one on someone we hate. But because it's 7-0 now, does that change the selection process at all?

I mean, are we still looking at, look, big fight, who's a fighter that has a decent sized career that would be entertaining to break down we're still looking at it at that right luke colby's not that guy yet yes um but but but if we did usman ahead of the colby rematch that would really be putting that resume review to the test but see that's a tough fight like our producers are saying what we got to do is we got to find a Valentina squash match. Can you imagine if

we did win a Valentina and she fucking lost? People would come to us with pitch forks. But it was like a shattered leg where she didn't actually get beaten, but TKO injury loss. She just suffered a horribly traumatic injury. Yeah, that'd be bad.

All right. From Riggins32. With city kickboxing relocating to the U.S. Everyone says they're relocating. Adesanya was like, I'm relocating. And then other people were like, we might do it. So I'm not sure how that's going to work. Do you think you'll see many American-based fighters going to train there?

Fuck yeah. Yeah, hell yeah. And which top fighters do you think would benefit most from their type of coaching? Anyone who is not... Anybody could benefit from their coaching, BC. If I'm Kevin Lee's tattoo artist, Luke, I tell him, head right there, please. No? What would he benefit from that he doesn't get at Extreme Couture? I don't think Extreme Couture is his problem.

Well, I think that, look, some guy, you know, is game planning X's and O's his issue, or is it making big mistakes and having cardio dumps in big moments? I don't know, but this would be a major new player to the scene in terms of super teams where an established fighter who's had a down period can go and potentially recharge himself. Again, in boxing, it's in boxing. It's the equivalent to when Freddie Roach became world famous and boxers

were leaving their trainers to go see if he can turn their offense around. It would be very interesting to see Luke. If, if, if a mid-level talented, but flawed fighter could go there and learn their, their systems, the way that they look at game planning, the striking,

and setting things up. And if somebody like a Kevin Lee who seems to have the physical tools could just have that little seasoning on the steak, Luke, it could be interesting. Yeah, but how many times have you seen him go back to his corner and his corner's like, we need you to do X next round, and then he just doesn't do X at all. I don't know that's a cornering issue.

Or, you know, you got to listen to your corner, man. I mean, they can't make you do that. I don't know what to say about that. But the answer is, if they really go to the U.S., dude, people are going to be beating down their door to train with them. Come on now. All right. From Alto Reto1, what are your opinions on Valentina equating ring girls to decorations?

Did you see this, BC? Yeah, so is this officially in response to Habib's comments that ring girls are like an outdated, sexist thing? I believe so, from the post-fight presser comments that she made on Saturday. So Valentina went full bore in support of ring girls, but I don't know if it's the English translation, the way in which she articulated it, Luke, it made it seem like she was like pro let's put women up there

to focus on their bodies. Pro objectification, yeah. Yeah, it was weird. That's an interesting hill to try to die on. I mean, what Valentina's trying to say is that women in this role have been there for a long time, and they play a key role, so let's not trash them because I'm a woman too and I support women. And if it was delivered like that, I'd be like, yeah. But it almost sounds like she's accidentally saying, yeah, this is what we've done forever.

Objectified women's bodies. Let's keep doing it, right? Yeah. be done forever objectified women's bodies let's keep doing it right yeah i i would say that like first of all remember she spent nearly a decade in latin america getting used to women being objectified is like i'm not saying it's a good thing but that is just how life is down there at the present moment and it's everywhere everywhere it is deeply embedded across multiple nations there the objectification of women so like partly you just kind of get used to it also even here like you know dude how many times have you been to like you know i had a friend by the way who was a manager for like a not a big famous club

at nyc but a decent one right like a pretty good one and he was telling me like they make sure they hire in terms of women the best looking ones they can because it just creates for a better atmosphere. Whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing, and in many cases it can be something that, you know, you can rightly criticize, you ring girls it's like dude like clearly you don't need them right like you don't let's be honest about it like in terms of the service of you know wrapping around like it's the third round like you don't need that in any capacity whatsoever so the way in which that they justify their existence is that one it's a long-standing practice two people seem to like them on an individual level and then three this was the big one they become brand ambassadors that that's sort of partly the whole thing here is that we do media tours and we greet fans and like we're all part of the UFC family which fine if that's the way they want to do business I don't

have an issue with it but just being like oh people like pretty women it's like well yes but like even the ring girls are telling you that's not really the full totality of the ring girl experience. So it's a very interesting way of justifying it. I'll put it that way. And look, the counter to that, of course, is like, well, what about NFL cheerleaders with low cut and dancing or the dancers at the NBA games on timeouts, Luke? It's kind of all related in that regard. Right. So it's either all or nothing on that. The one thing that Valentina said is something that people should just wrap

their heads around a little bit. And again, I'm not, you know, 42 year old white guy says, get over it. That's not what I'm trying to do. But what I am trying to say is like, I've lived long enough. You've lived long enough to know, dude, who likes pretty women? Everybody, everybody likes them. Everybody likes pretty women? Everybody. Everybody likes them. Everybody likes them everywhere you go.

That's just a fact of, that's been a fact of my life as long as I've lived in. Now, what are you supposed to do about that? Hey, we can have a great debate. But, you know, I understand why that kind of thing is in demand. And I understand why people want to be next to it. I understand that uh it's a thing that people like so I don't think that should be the sum total of someone's existence obviously that would be terrible but you know pretty women are visible for a reason because people thrust them to the front of everything they do all right from the last word yes yes Luke thrust of course At bedside rumble.

That's like me when I have to fart in the bed and I just kind of lean out the side. Is it true? Is it true that BC smells like cabbage and bologna? No, it's not cabbage and bologna. It's fentanyl and bologna, and it's only that drug rug. Yeah, how about that drug rug? By the way, a lot of people saying, hey, if you put an mk logo on that i'd scoop that shit up okay luke oh yeah of course of course would you wear an mk drug rug yes or no um to like the grocery store yes no well to answer your question, BC smells like, you know,

probably like Old Spice deodorant and like a, not real BO, but like a quarter amount coffee breath mixed with like just a little BO. Right? That's probably like. Here's the real question. When you were at your dirt bag worst. Oh, God. How many times did you Febreze your way through things you should not have Febrezed your way through?

Yeah. Look, I remember one time a girlfriend made a mention of washing the sheets of their bed every week. I was like, every week? How about twice a year on this end? That's when you know you're like a 22-year-old dirtbag living in a dirtbag apartment. When you're like, oh, twice a year is not the recommended amount? Okay, all right, got it. I mean, look, back then, you would only wash your sheets if there was a blood stain or you spilled bong water on it, right?

Basically, yeah, basically. I'll just say this. I knew a girl in college, and this is just the most filthy thing ever. She would wash her sheets once a semester. Once a semester. Oh, God, Luke. Can you imagine just the butt grease

and everything else that just stained those sheets to the worst degree imaginable would be pretty bad. All right. Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Real quick, real quick. Do you employ the 24-hour rule on a pair of underwear as long as you haven't worked out or overly sweat, Luke? Oh, 24-hour, more like 72, bitch. I'm just cruising.

I'm cruising in those pampers. I'm like my daughter. It's amazing. Yeah, until the fabric tears. They're still good. Yeah, bitch. I'm fucking, I'm just cruising. I'm cruising in those pampers. I'm like my daughter. It's amazing. Until the fabric tears. They're still good. Yeah, okay. Alright, with that in mind, BC, it's time to watch Elder Abuse. Let's do it. Speaking of that shit, let's transition to the highs

and lows, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the in-between, Luke, in combat sports and beyond. We call this Have You Seen This Shit? Oh. An award-winning segment, Luke. We start out UFC 266 from Las Vegas. Luke, did you see on this undercard,

welterweight Matt Semelsberger needing just one punch to send Martin Sano Jr. to the deep dark ones, Luke? Look at this. Semelsberger is from this neck of the woods. He's from Rockville, which is not far outside DC at all. Oh, whoa, look at the backflip. You like that? Yeah, yeah. Dude can punch his... He can thump, man.

By the way, I'm not, like, bagging on the UFC for making this. I don't know exactly the terms of how this fight came around, but, like, after the fact, this other guy was out for, like, four years. This was a mismatch. They should not have put this together. It looked a lot like Lawler Diaz, too. Got you on that one.

All right, Luke, let's see the celebration from the champion, Alexander Volkanovski, doing it Aussie style with the shoeie. But, Luke, he's doing it out of a slide, like a flip-flop, basically. Is that manly? Did he get it right? Here's the thing. If that was the only one he did, it would not have been manly. But he did it also with a shoe at the podium.

So I'll give him credit and say this is just a bonus shoeie. Tooey, let's bang. Right? Yeah. I'm going to bang with you, Tooey. What do you think that guy, Jaime or Jamie, whatever his name is, the guy that we drank out of his shoe where do you think those shoes are today because if he still has them i would be willing to buy them and autograph them and put them on our new studio that that we're designing for jersey city luke what do what do coroners do with

the clothes that show up on dead bodies they wear them home obviously luke come on yeah there you go that's that's where the shoes are. They're like, is that a large? I could fit into that one. Yeah. This shirt's so nice. Somebody was dying to wear it. Yeah, all right.

Let's keep it going. Let's check out this celebration. Sister Antonina, Luke, posting Team Shevchenko with Brandon Moreno present. But, Luke, I'm not looking at the sisters here. Check out the guy in the purple cravat shirt. Luke, this guy listens to Jethro Tull and probably drinks some really old whiskey and does lines. If I'm hanging out with one guy in Team Shevchenko, it's this guy over here on the right. You?

Yeah, this is a smoke on the water. This is what happens when Grimace from McDonald's gets a haircut. That guy, Luke. I love that guy. But shout out to Brandon Moreno joining this team, Luke. Look at Valentina's coach, Pavel Fedotov or whatever his name. He's just looking like, you know, hey, sir, your order will be ready

in 15 minutes here at the drive-thru. I mean, he couldn't be less plus if his life depended on it. You think your coach would take a bullet for you? Okay, no. Alright, this guy would. This guy would. Quite literally. He proved it. Okay, speaking of Shevchenko, Luke, you know what we're here

to see. The celebratory dance. Luke, I love that first, she kind of just stood over Lauren Murphy like, look at me, I'm a badass. Are you noticing, and of course we get the dance right after are you noticing that she's starting to kind of carry a little bit more swagger these days hundred hundred percent it's beginning to dawn on her if it you know in a big way that like you

know she can't coast her way to victory but if she trains like she has been she's going to be wearing that belt for a long time fame hasn't gone to her head in like a, I hate to say it, like a Ioana way. And maybe that's the key to her, you know, long-term success here. But as long as she doesn't change this dance, Luke, this is, I mean, this and Tito Ortiz, you know, doing the grave thing are the two iconic dances of our era, of our lifetimes, right? Am I missing anything? Is what Ortiz does a dance or more just a routine?

Yeah, yeah. All right. Got it. Okay, Luke, let's keep it going. Speaking of celebratory dances, there's Valentina. What do you think of Marab Dwalashili, Luke, with Coach Matt Serra here in the locker room? Check this shit out.

Bro, I got to tell you, these guys who chuck minnenhall was talking about these donks with the furry hats that they wear after the fact yeah because he not he doesn't have one here he's got like you know he delivers newspapers and he's got chuck's hat on basically he's got a myth yeah yeah but when he had the normal one on from from georgia bro those guys are the toughest motherfuckers around oh yeah this dude is another level of fucking determined. Straight from the Shmesh factory to your living room. What a victory. I'm sure you're going to have more on that in your post-fight, post-show, post-post.

All right, Luke, let's keep it going. Luke, I know all Canadians don't look alike. That'd be a stereotype. But why is GSP dressing like Aaron Bronstetter these days, dude? What's going on here? Yeah, I don't know. I also don't love the haircut, candidly. I mean, my hair is just, you know, falling out like it's on fire at this point.

So I can't critique. But I don't love the little wave curl at the front. I got to say. GSP, can you turn back into a badass, please? Thank you very much. All right, Luke. There was so much real recognizing real this weekend in the fight game that I had to put together a super post.

Check out Teofimo Jr. and Jorge Masvidal at UFC 266. Your thoughts? Hey, two Latin gangsters, if there ever was any. That's what I'm talking about. Speaking of GSP, there was a little real on real action in the locker room

when former opponent Nick Diaz came up and a little bit of respect between the two. Cautious respect, though, Luke. No, it was respect there. Look, GSP gave him the wink and he gave him the two-handed shake. You know what I mean? Okay, okay. And I never know exactly what that means, but I feel like for GSP it's like ultimate respect.

No, okay, you could read it as that. I read it as GSP saying, you're crazier than anyone I've ever fought, so just so you know, there's no lingering beef between us. That's what he's saying right there, Luke. Maybe, maybe that's true, yeah. I mean, have you ever run into the bar, like you bumped into somebody in your local bar, like, oh, I went to high school with that.

Yo, bro! Like you overly hug or two-handed shake. Just so you know, guy, I respect your craziness, right? Dude, if I see people I went to college with, much less high school, I walk the other way. Look, you should boast. You should be like, look at me now. No, I'm not trying to have awkward conversations.

Hey, how are things? I don't give a fuck about your life. All right. Real recognizing real, Luke. This was before Usyk's victory over Joshua. Him and Ukrainian amateur teammate Vasily Lomachenko did a little tip-on-tip action. But, Luke, do you know what the Internet's really talking about? Can we zoom in, Manich?

The size of Lomachenko's baby feet, Luke. What's going on here? That has to be some kind of camera lens issue. No. This is how me and BC greet each other right here is what it looks like. There's multiple pictures of Lomachenko in the locker room and they all have these really, really small feet, Luke. I mean, you know, he's not a tall

man. Maybe he's just got baby feet. I don't know. You think he has micro... No, just stop that. He's got plenty of swagger and BDE, Luke, even if it's not true, okay? Can you just go to the next slide, please? Alright, Luke. Also in the parking lot before 266... Oh, Luke, even if it's not true, okay? Can you just go to the next slide, please? All right, Luke. Also in the

parking lot before 266... Oh, wait, sorry. This is in the cage. Nick and Robbie embracing a little real-on-real love fest. This was good to see, though. I liked this moment, Luke. Yeah, this was nice. Two old warhorses, you know.

Helping each other up. Commending each other on battle, yes. Yeah, yeah. They had a lot of respect for each other up, commending each other on battle. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They had a lot of respect for each other afterwards in the parking lot. Luke, before 266, two Cali kids showing some love. Brian Ortega and Nate Diaz. I kind of popped for this. You?

Yeah. I love the the flat brim hat, like West Coast style of wearing hats that Ortega does. Plus, he's got like the Chino pants and everything. He's very California. Very California. Oh, I love it. I love it. Those are two Cali kids.

How about two Ukrainian kids? Vitaly Klitschko. Is he still the mayor of Kiev, Luke? I don't know. But look at the hug he put on Alexander Usyk as Ukraine wins on Saturday. Yeah, dude, he's fucking huge, man. Yeah, he's like 6'7", bro. Dude, he's a fucking large man.

That's ridiculous. He's jacked, too. No question about it. That wasn't the only love fest, Luke. In L.A. a week ago at an L.A. Chargers game, Conor McGregor and Sean O'Malley trading notes here. What do you think they're talking about? Leg kicks?

I don't know. All right. Drugs? Wait drugs wait no wait wait wait no i like i like i like sugar sean a lot i'm just teasing but like uh who's the dude behind him look at that guy he's like big boss man or something oh you're right it looks like the big show yeah he's that's the bodyguard luke just in case anyone tries it with a ufc fire they get a little well he's oh because he's got connor's cane see him oh he's the cane man yes yes he's the cane guy yeah he's got his sugar cane he's got his actual cane he's got all that shit all right luke oh luke who had the best walkout mask over the weekend let's start at 266 with team ortega yes the problem with this is i definitely appreciate the theatrics like don't get me wrong anybody who

tries to do something a little bit different than a standard walkout you get thumbs up in my my book so i give it thumbs up bc but here's the problem do you remember the band i'm not even sure if they're still around but they were kind of big in the aughts for a little while mushroom head no they would wear masks that were black with white blacked-out eyes like this and then big drawn-in white teeth. They looked like the band Mushroomhead when they did this. It's really weird. Got a mushroom head.

It's better than the rest. Green to red. Okay. Luke, the one we're comparing this against is Alexander Usyk walking out in front of 68,000 strong with like a space helmet on. Did you dig this? Don't know what it means other than he looks like Daft Punk has been in the gym. But dude, Usyk's fucking weird, so let him be weird.

Yo, here's what's cool about him. I'm glad that more than just hardcore boxing fans are getting to know him now. He's weird. He's hilarious. He's also a really good like family man behind the scenes like i couldn't vouch for this guy anymore he's my hero luke okay did they say he didn't see his kids because he was training for six months yes i believe they still live in ukraine he trains in california uh you know i mean that's that dude i i i can't i don't imagine i

don't know what a scenario would be for me where I would be able to live with not seeing my daughter for six months. That's crazy. That's wild, yes. Luke, we had some real boxing Friday night. Showbox at Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. They put a ring in the actual downtown street. We got an upset in the main event. Bantamweight Saul Sanchez put it on Jericho O'Quinn.

I think we got a little knockdown action here early on in round one. But it was a good match. Good matchmaking as always on Showbox, the next generation. And this was a upset win. And Luke, it was also a little bit of a reunion. Barry Tompkins and Al Bernstein coming back together

the pair of Hall of Famers. Luke, they were the guys, if you forget, they did top-ranked boxing for ESPN in the 80s and into the early 90s. They were always my favorite pairing together because you never knew who was the color guy and who was the play-by-play guy. They were just sort of like two donks going at it. I loved it. Yeah, the free-flow ones are the best ones, for sure.

Shouts to those legends. And, dude, this guy fucking put it on him. He looks good. Yeah, yeah, he did. There was no doubt legends. And, dude, this guy fucking put it on him. He looks good. Yeah, yeah, he did. There was no doubt afterwards, Luke. Great performance there from the Bantamweight. Luke, I don't have highlights like I thought I did of Callum Smith moving up to light heavyweight and destroying Lennon Castillo on that DAZN undercard,

maybe because Castillo came off on a stretcher afterwards, but he is deemed okay, Luke, which is good to hear. Let's keep it going. Here's some fake fighting, Luke. Did you see AEW Rampage Friday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York? ATT, American Top Team, continued their invasion angle, and you had Masvidal giving it to Chris Jericho, Ben Askren style. Luke, the crowd, though, I don't think they were MMA fans.

They didn't pop for this. Yeah, neither, I don't think they were MMA fans. They didn't pop for this. Yeah, neither did I. Alright, alright. It wasn't bad, though. Paige Van Zandt was part of the extended team. Arlovski, JDS, and obviously Dan Lambert has been the mouthpiece for this, and he's

incredible. There's a real wrestler there, Ethan Page. I know you don't care, Luke, so I'll just keep going. Wow, wow, Luke. Look at that. Did he just blade right in front of us? Is that a blade job? Luke, I still... Pro wrestling is silly. I mean, I don't know what else to say. But Luke, like me, do you still

pop for blade jobs? Do you still pop for the old school theater that is keeping a razor blade slightly obscured in your wristband tape and then cutting your forehead open to make it feel like a real fight. I pop for that grimy shit, Luke. I no,

I no longer do because I now use manscaped products. I used to pop for the, the razor blades, but now I just use the lawnmower 4.0. All right. Hey Luke, there was some crazy horse Bennett MMA highlights on the timeline. So I,

I grabbed this memorable one. I forget what fight, what year, what opponent, what this was. But, Luke, is there any better highlight ever than this? Remember we showed the one of that Japanese guy last week slamming the guy on his face? This has to be the greatest highlight of all time here, right? And he had him dead to rights, too. He had the Kimura.

He tried to step over the head for it, then switched to the armbar, and then got kind of lazy with the positioning. Look at him count it down. Crazy Horse, whatever else his limits, he's always been super athletic, super strong. Look, you can still find him in BKFC if you're looking for him, Luke. I'm not, but I can respect, you know, I remember when he was active.

Do you remember when the first Elite XC show happened? If you don't remember, remember this. He fought KJ Nunes, and Nunes was expected to run over him, and he got fucking demolished by this guy. So, you know, he's had some decent moments in MMA. Yeah, no doubt about it. Love me some Crazy Horse Bennett. All right, Luke, let's check out some real hungry, hungry hippos.

Are you as entertained by this as I was? Dude, I love that you're showing me this because I'm not kidding. This is my favorite type of video for my daughter to watch. Okay. She loves the hippos eating the watermelon. I mean, half the

watermelon comes flying out. It's like me trying to eat with my eye jumping out, Luke. Yeah, they don't look like Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China, but watermelon comes flying out it's like me trying to eat with my eye jumping out luke yeah they don't look like egg shen from big trouble in little china but um they they got some strong ass now are they violent because luke they would they would f your shit up are they violent dude hip male hippos are incredibly violent they account for a lot of deaths in parts of africa where they're uh they're they take over certain bodies of water Michael Crichton, the famous author

wrote about them in one of his fictional books but what he wrote about them was quite true they're in, they're dude, you do not fuck with male hippos especially like during breeding moments or seasons or whatever, they will wreck your shit, they'll attack boats, they'll kill people like they're fucking savages

I did learn a move in Mike Tyson's punch out to get around them though. You just kind of dip your head and come up. Didn't King Hippo lose because you had to do body work on him? Yeah, he didn't take it well at the bread basket there. Alright Luke, check out this tweet from former Bellator

star David Caveman Rickles who was tweeting at Julian Lane, the infamous famous ex-tough fighter with the UFC. Do we have the tweet here? This is just a poster. Can we zoom in on this shit? Yeah, can you blow it up?

We shall bang, bro. Rickles is like, hey, Tui. We shall bang, bro. And Luke. Isaac Valley Flag. Glad you guys are banging. Yeah. I mean, Valley Flag's response is probably better than the original tweet,

but you know I'm popping for this. Luke, is there any way I could get you to watch this fight, BKFC Wichita? Probably not, no. Okay. They're going to bang regardless, Luke, okay? Greg Hardy would love this. They would love this. They would love this.

All right, let's move on here. Let's go over to Rate That Tat if we can, Gav. Let's start off with this. We've got to zoom in. Luke, you sent this to me, and this is not Mr. He-Boss level. I think it might be next level. What are your thoughts on Rate This Tat? Some of these tats are difficult to do, but most of these portrait works are pretty good.

The Rogan is very good. If you look down at the calf, sort of like Tib area, the Demetrius Johnson there is pretty good. The one with George St-Pierre and Bisping is not as good, but that's much harder to do. But these are pretty good. These are pretty good. Okay. You give it like a 7 out of 10? Yeah, 8 in most cases.

By the way, we have another tattoo. Did you see the feed there from Corey? Yeah, I responded. Luke, rate that tat. PFL's Clay Collard. He went all kinds of MK, and I'm not talking about Morning Combat. He went Mortal Combat. Let's check out this array

of tats, and you give me your thoughts uh the raiden is not great it's actually it's actually pretty bad um you know what are we these are uh they're not great they're not great unfortunately i hate to say that see i thought that raiden was pretty cool i'd get that on my arm luke dude look at the line work on the hat. It's a mess. I like it, actually. See, I'm a big Risen fan, so I support all Asian martial arts.

I would be down with this. Dude, let's be clear about this. Clay Collard is the man, and it doesn't matter what tattoos he has. He's the man. But these are not my favorite, if I could just be candid with you. All right. Well, Luke, speaking of tattoos on fingers, breaking news. Tyron Woodley did get

the jake paul tattoo luke and he put it on his flipper your thoughts i don't understand this tattoo um i get the middle finger thing but it's on the inside of the middle finger not the outside please tell me it's not real please it's real because you can see that it's got a sort of a purpley orange look around the letters. Blow up the letters here for a second if you don't mind. So if you see real closely, see how it's a little bit irritated around some of the letters that does tell you that it's real? Here's what I don't get. They did not plan this well, right?

Because you've got the I and then Jake Paul all in the same letters. Love is written differently, and it looks like they didn't have enough room. So they wrote it diagonal. Like, I don't understand this tattoo at all really and also why do you get it you're not in the sweepstakes anymore you're getting overly technical but i think the point is what you just said you're not getting the fights so who cares if you live up to the bet right what are you doing tyron yeah i don't understand i don't understand your at all. Tyron, when you go to itch your ass later tonight, there's going to be Jake Paul all over it, you know? Also, like, every time you look at your left hand, you're going to see it?

Yeah. I don't know about that, dude. I mean, that's probably his wiping hand, to be fair. But, yeah, all right, Luke. I bet he stands like a real man. Yeah. I stand to pee like a real man, Luke, and I'd love to try out this restroom. What's your analysis on this basketball court, Luke?

That's an NBA three, buddy. You got to have like two tall boys. I got to piss. Dude, poor Axel. Let me just say this. So Duff McKagan, Duff McKagan is like bricked up. He's clearly on TRt or something right he looked great slash looked like he has been eating salads for 20 years i mean he looked not like duff all

built up but clearly taking care of himself right he's great shape and axel looks fine for his age whatever that is i don't even know he was 60 or something but dude he's kind of got like that like chuck liddell you know middle that kind of got like that, like Chuck Liddell, you know, middle that kind of pulls you forward a little bit with the skinny legs, you know? And he tried to do, you know,

you know, Axel does that bit when he dances kind of thing. Oh yeah. So he tried to do that, like across the stage. And it just looked like he looked like one of those dudes who was outside of a locked men's room and he had to shit real bad, you know, like he looked like one of those dudes who was outside of a locked men's room and he had to shit real bad you know like he couldn't he couldn't quite make it smooth all the way with the footwork it was he maybe needs to let that routine go a little bit now how many times do

you think axel's had sex in an abandoned building on a used mattress more times than you can count how many times has axel probably had to take a dump and you know there were like three groupies waiting for him to finish you know maybe noties waiting for him to finish, you know, and maybe not even waiting for him to finish. Oh, God. Wow. All right, Luke. Let's head on down to the subway.

You never know what creatures you'll find. I don't know where this train is going, but next stop, Luke, the Jersey Shore. Look at this MF-er. Dude, I can't stand the New York City subway. Every time you pull this up and you show me these pieces of shit i just i'm so glad i don't take the train anymore by the way is this new york i think because those the seats look different i don't know but gtl just the same all right bro yes yeah gym tan laundry all right uh, Luke, let's go to the best street fight of the week.

These guys got sauced up, but check out the hook on number 10. The hook will bring you back. Are we watching bum fights on this show now? No, no, they're not. They have houses, Luke, but look at that guy. Oh, man. Wow, Luke, I got to give him credit, though. He was much quicker than Nick Diaz was this weekend with those punches.

I mean, they found the mark a lot faster luke oh oh jesus no that is not diaz lawler too that is uh guy in the hat you got to move your head bro i mean look at that you're just right in the right in the center line right yeah not a lot that guy takes the angle on him sleeps him oh you never would have thought that guy could bang right never would have thought lu guy could bang, right? Never would have thought, Luke. You gotta be aware of those slung downs. You gotta get that guy BKFC. What are we doing? Alright, Luke. I don't know if this is

John DuPont. No, no, sorry. It's Chachri Sidyongtong, Luke. He was given a brown belt this week. Congratulations to a lifelong mixed martial artist. That looks purple. That's not brown. Anyway, Luke, you got a purple belt. Your thoughts?

Sweet. Sweet. Good for him. Do you think this ends like Foxcatcher, or was that rude, Luke? Well, that guy had real money, so probably not. All right. Luke, I feel like we ran this on the show once before, but I was watching this video again.

It's so good. I got to run it one more time to close this week. Your friends over there at High Rollers. Listen, the High Roller guys, we visited them. They're cool as shit. Their product is cool as shit. Their hospitality knows no boundaries. And now, BC, I think it's safe to call them innovators and inventors. Look at this. I mean, if you're in that room when this goes off, forget being high, dude.

Do you just pass out? I mean, this is next level, Luke. Dude, this kills COVID. I don't know if that's true, but I want to believe that. And if it does. Can you zoom in on this? I got to look at the fine detail. I mean, this blowtorch is ridiculous.

Dude, put that exhaust pipe right in my mouth. How did that guy not fall over? The guy that just took it to the face right there. Wow. Look at Coach LaTorre. She's like, yeah, let me get more of that. Yeah, all right. Can you blame anyone in that room?

That guy's just taking it in the face, the full-on facial, Luke. I think we need to investigate this. Just me talking here. We need to go to High Rollers again and be like, we need to inspect this device of yours that has set fire to the world. Yeah, I don't think that's real. Is that real? I need to check that out.

That's your shit for the week, Luke. I hope you enjoyed it. That's amazing. All right, time for odds and ends, BC. What do you have for odds and or ends? So, look, you know, sad news to report that Aljamain Sterling is not fully healed, Luke, and he has pulled out of his, what, UFC 267 Bantamweight title rematch against Peyotre Jan.

So, Luke, you're getting a lot of, you know, hateful pushback. Peyotre Jan quote tweeted his own tweet prediction from a couple months back that al jermaine would uh would bitch out and pull out i'm not here to say it's any of that category it seems like uh some people are saying luke that maybe ufc tried to rush him back quickly from injury i either way we've got a situation now on how this title will be defended and i think luke for all the criticism i give the interim belts this is a time potentially where an interim belt is needed. The top of this division is absolutely loaded. By the way, so is the middle and the bottom of this top 15, basically.

You're not going to see a World Grand Prix tournament any day now. So, Luke, I was thinking, what's the best way to fix this? Considering TJ Dillashaw is the rightful next in line but he's injured coming off of that win over Corey Sanhagen and both Jan and Sanhagen are coming off losses so it's hard to like justify that they run into each other I've got two fixes for the UFC here and I want to know which one you believe is the better move? Fix number one. You announce that TJ Dillashaw, since he's also injured and is probably the rightful contender next in line, passes to the front and will fight Aljamain Sterling for the full title once he is healthy. And in the meantime, at 267,

your interim title replacement bout is Peyoter Jan versus Corey Sanhagen. That is option number one to fix this, Luke. You take option one. I don't care what your option two is. Option two is you take a budding, growing, hungry superstar who just tweeted that he's available and he's ready and he's willing

and you give sugar sean sean o'malley the conor mcgregor star treatment and you put him in there against peyote or yan for the interim title and you just say hey we'll see what happens next no you put in cory sanhagen to your point every circumstance here is super less than ideal, but they should have made a bantam weight. Dude, have you ever had nerve damage before? This was the funniest doctor's appointment I'd ever had in my life. I couldn't feel my finger and my thumb for like a while, okay? And every time I would push my shoulder forward, they would go instantly numb, and it was a problem. So I go to the doctor.

I'm like, dude, I got nerve damage. And he kind of figured out it was from something I was doing, some physical activity. And so they gave me some like rehab, not to fix the nerve damage, but to fix maybe my motor patterns that were creating or making it worse. So I was like, dude, when does this come back?

He's like, yeah, it'll be back in six months to a year. I'm like, is there anything I can do to make it faster? He's like, nope, just don't make it worse. And I was like, so wait, you're telling me your medical treatment is just to look at this and then just say the words, wait? Yes, that is literally what they prescribed. So, like, dude, if you've got nerve issues in your fucking neck, you cannot rush that whatsoever. You have to be very, very careful. And so the fact that they didn't give him an interim title or in this division to begin with is just a mess.

And now here we find ourselves with one, and now Aljamain has to eat more bad headlines. It's not really all that fair. There's an option C in this. It'd be a little brash, but it's not like we haven't seen the UFC in the past strip GDR and Nico Montano under somewhat arguable and questionable circumstances.

Because Aljo didn't actually win the belt, Luke, and it was a DQ finish, do you strip him because you don't know when or if he is coming back, and you say, look, you'll get a big fight upon return, but you didn't win the belt to begin with. We make the belt vacant, forget interim. We go San and forget TJ Dillashaw's hurt,

and we go Sanhagen versus Jan for the gold belt. No, you already gave him gold belt. No, you already gave him the belt. No, you can't do that yet. No, no, no. And dude, he's got a legit... Tell that to Nico Montano, Luke! Her situation is much more complex and much worse. You know, to have nerve damage in your neck,

and you already gave the guy the belt, you just gotta wait. You gotta wait. If he can't come back after, like, a full year or two or something like that, then yeah. They saved her a beating from Valentina. Remember she was like a minus like 5,000 favorite or whatever the record, you know, like broke the record by like Barry Bonds on steroids levels. I mean, it was just ridiculous.

All right. So last. No, no, no. Hold on. Hold on, Luke. Real quick. Wow. We're way over time because this show is so good.

No shit. What happens to tj bro he will get first crack at whatever the relevant belt situation is at the time i tend to think that he'll be back before this is all resolved for sure okay okay kind of funny though that he was the guy that was carrying the interim belt before uh okay for my odds and ends i go to one championship again their leadership are donks, but their product is pretty good. It's pretty good. So they had Marcus Almeida, also known as Bouchesha,

arguably the winningest jiu-jitsu competitor ever, depending on how you want to stack up titles, but certainly the best of our generation, the best post-Hodra Gracie for sure, at least amassing the number of belts and Mundungiel titles and ADCC titles that he won. So he's finally transitioning to MMA. He's big. He's super athletic. In fact, he got away with a lot of, like, maybe technical deficiencies, even at

the black belt level, by virtue of insane athleticism. And he won in his one championship debut via North-South choke. So, you know, it was a fight he should have won, and he did, and it was relatively easy for him. But keep your eye on Marcus Almeida Boucher. Love it. And also, as we mentioned earlier, Bo Nickel, the Penn State wrestling phenom, Luke,

getting the win in his MMA debut. I'm going to be following that story, only because my neighbor, Luke, shout out to Anthony Weber, big-time amateur wrestling fan and high school coach. He's been on the Bo Nickel train since day one. Luke, we're going to see a real fighter come out of this? I had Bo Nickel announce he was moving to MMA on my show.

How about that? My old radio show. Take that. All right. Take that, Jimmy Smith. Take that to your coach. Rewind it back. Take that one to heart.

Yeah. So let's remind everyone. Check out later today. Going to do a short podcast, 30 minutes or less, on all the fights that we missed. So if you were curious about Hooker and everything else, we're going to get to it. I want to remind everyone, if you want to follow us on social, we're everywhere. Like this video. Hit thumbs up.

You can see where we are on Twitter and on Instagram and everything else. Wednesday, fan submissions. Friday, Dead Wrong. You've got to email us. MorningCombat at gmail.com. Send us your pics. Send us your Photoshop. Send us your Dead Wrongs. Whatever you got to email us morningcombat at gmail.com Send us your pics, send us your photoshops, send us your dead wrongs, whatever you want to do. You want to try Showtime

because we have a Showtime bout coming up this weekend. Go to showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, go do something else. We have merch, morningcombat.store. Lots of new stuff on there, Factory Town MMA stuff and a whole lot more. You can go check that out. And then last but not least, DraftKings, the official sports betting partner of the NFL,

as well as the UFC. If you put down just a $1 bet for new customers on any week four NFL game, you get $150 free to play with there. Of course, use the promo code COMBAT, COMBAT with a K. BC, any final thoughts on today's epic show finally doc five wednesday get pumped up get ready be there it's it's a it's a deep dive into uh the growth of men and the lives of of you know sensational spectacular people like luke thomas and myself so we'll see where that goes people want to see the the gritty details of gossip and the truth they're going to get it in episode five thank you there. There you have it. All right.

So for Brian Campbell, Malka, Showtime, CBS Sports, I'm Luke Thomas. Thank you guys so much for watching. And until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.