MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC 269 Results: Charles Oliveira vs. Dustin Poirier | UFC 269 Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

At UFC 269, UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira will look to defend his title against Dustin Poirier in the main event. In the co-main event, Amanda Nunes will battle Julianna Pena for the UFC women's bantamweight title. 'Suga' Sean O'Malley will battle Raulian Paiva just as Cody Garbrandt makes his flyweight debut against Kai Kara-France plus so much more. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. All right. Hi, everyone. It is 12.50. It is 12.50 East Coast time in the morning on now the 12th of December 2021. The very last UFC pay-per-view of 2021. It is in the books. UFC 269 has just wrapped moments ago at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of the hosting duo for Morning Combat from CBS Sports and Showtime, award

winning Morning Combat. We'll talk more about that on Monday. Thanks to everyone who sent such kind notes and who voted for us for the MMA Awards, but we're not here for today to talk about that. We will get to that on Monday when BC joins me. We will review everything that happened the whole week, but right now, this is my UFC 269 post-fight show. Bit of a recommendation, please give the video a thumbs up if you are watching. Subscribe to MMA Fighting. What am I saying? MMA Fighting. There's a fucking

Freudian slip. Subscribe to Morning Combat if you haven't already, and then you can see my Instagram right here below. Okay? All right. I always have to mention this. If you don't want spoilers, now is your time to get out of here. So 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right. Let's get to some UFC 269 analysis. All right, there you have it. Okay. So let's get to these results. And again, if you don't want spoilers, they're gone. Please subscribe if you haven't. We're really trying to drive those subscription numbers. So if you are new here, please consider a subscription. Okay, so for today's show, we're only going to get to the main, co-main, maybe a couple of the things on the main card. Obviously, we're going to revisit these things on Monday

in a more full-throated way when BC joins me. But we're going to leave some stuff on the cutting room floor here today. We'll go for about 45 minutes to an hour or so. Okay, that's fine. I don't care about that. All right, let's do this. In your main event, Charles Oliveira defeats Dustin Poirier via rear naked choke at 102 of the third round. So, Charles Oliveira, I think, has now reached the 20-win club. He already had the record for the

most submissions in UFC history. That will only now continue. I think most finishes as well that will only continue. I don't know if we'll get a bonus, but I would imagine that he probably will and you get the idea. So all of those records that he already had, they're going to be added to here. Everyone says it sounds good. Okay, so what can we say about this fight? I will say something up front about this. Charles Oliveira is a guy that I have been very slow to warm to. you had asked me what I have thought by this time, maybe like two, three years ago, would he be here beating a guy the quality of Dustin Poirier the way that he did, I would have told you no chance. I would not have predicted that that would have been something he would have done. And yet, here he is. We should revisit for just a second the win streak that Charles Oliveira is on,

and then we'll talk about the fight itself. So his last loss was, I would argue, Paul Felder's probable best win. So Paul Felder beat him at UFC 218 in December of 2017, or December 2nd, excuse me, of 2017. Since then, he has submitted Clay Guida. He submitted Christos Giagos. He submitted Jim Miller. He submitted David Tamer. He TKO'd Nick Lentz. He KO'd Jared Gordon. He submitted Kevin Lee. He put Tony Ferguson through the ringer and, you know, Tony only didn't submit because he's an absolute maniac and could deal with it. Then he TKO's Chandler to win the title in May of 2021 and then now adds Dustin Poirier to his resume. So understand, since the pandemic, he's defeated and stopped three of the four, Kevin Lee, Tony Ferguson,

Michael Chandler, and Dustin Poirier. Sorry, if you saw it coming, you're a better person than me, didn't see that coming. But what can you say? The guy is, you know, obviously the submission threat is going to be the thing that is most forward about his game, even as much as his striking has improved. But it's such a devastating weapon for him because he can maintain, he can wrestle off of his back with his legs. He has a good guard. He has a good guard, he has a good clamp, he can find any of these positions. In a way, it used to actually be a little bit harder to find positions, but now he's got the offensive wrestling, and he was able to duck under the

punch, and then he was able to put his hands together, right? Locked hands, we know, around the waist from the back under a controlled operator is going to be a very difficult thing to deal with. He puts in the right side hook first to anchor himself to Poirier. Go back and watch that he takes the left hand, slides it on the inside hip. You can actually see him bring it around as they're both kind of bent over around the back side. You can see him holding that place in jiu-jitsu. Whenever you want to take a place, if you can't quite jump to it, you want to be able to have something hold it for you. So you stick your hand inside the thigh, and then you only put your hook in when you're almost on top of each other, but when one holds the space for the next one, and then you'll see him push the head down of Poirier. So then he takes the full on back. And then from there, he begins to put the choke in, which is only over the jaw slash face.

But that used to be semi-safe territory where guys would just kind of hold out the pain, or they would actually push up on the arm to have it go across their nose and face. And it's extremely uncomfortable. And 10, 15 years ago, you didn't see a lot of finishes from the back there, maybe with gi jiu-jitsu or something where you could grab the collar, but from MMA or from the back, it's either rear naked choke under the chin or bust. But now what people are doing is using the arm across the face for a couple of different ways. One is just the staging ground.

So put it on the face, around the chin, around the mouth area, and if you can slide it under the chin even better, which is eventually what he got to. But dude, you can just, you can just demolish their face now. We've talked about this before. Drew Weatherhead over at, he does a Because Jiu Jitsu is the name of his, he posted under Drew Weatherhead, but he also has like this sort of like meme page. But in either case, he has talked about the two kind of ways to get from there, where one is you can just do it right over the jaw,

and you can bring it down and back, and there's some other ones where you can hook under and whatever. But the point being is now you can just start there. You just need to get the arm across, and then you can figure out which way you want to go with it. And that's exactly what he did. He eventually was able to slide it, slide it, slide it. And then once you see, not the choking arm is going to be here. Once you see the finishing hand come behind the head palm facing the choker, right? Which is what

you see there, right? Like this. A lot of people think you have to turn the hand over. You don't. The hand stays. You look at, you're like John Cena, right? You're doing one of those. So then you come over like this. Once you see that go behind the head, it's over. There is simply no escape. As long as the arm has the ability to apply pressure, it's over and he tapped. If you're Dustin Poirier, it's hard to deal with because do you want to stand up and now you're going to backpack this guy? Maybe he thought he could have removed a hook and shook him off. I don't know. It's hard to say exactly, but I will just point it out again, man. If you can just get locked hands behind a guy, we talk about it all the time in collegiate wrestling, locked hands are in a lot of cases, there's actually a penalty for it called locked hands,

where if you're coming at a referee's position, you're actually not allowed to do that. Why? Because in amateur wrestling, if someone can actually get their hands together behind you, it's not that it can't be broken, but it actually will stall out the engagements for the guy who is in control to the point where the wrestling match is not nearly dynamic enough. So they actually, they don't allow you to lock your hands, one behind the elbow, one inside the waist, and then you have to kind of wrestle it through because it's such a powerful thing. But in MMA, we don't have any of those rules. So you can just put your hands together. If you can hold it, dude, you can do all kinds of stuff with it.

You can pick a guy up. You can mat return him. You can drag him around the cage if you want. Or in the case of Charles Oliveira, you sink the nearside hook. You still put the weight on Poirier so his hands are on the mat. So now he can't really defend. To take in the back, slide the same way. I just talked about slide the hand you're going to replace with the hook.

And then the other hand he pushed on the back of the head, took the back, and it was just clinical from there. Dude, once he's on your back, you know, I'm not saying it's automatically over, but you're, I mean, dude, Dustin Poirier has been living on the mats for nearly 20 years or something, 15, right? Black belt in jiu-jitsu, like in the gi, he's been around, man. This is not some guy who doesn't understand the intricacies of this, but when you have someone whose jiu-jitsu is unforgiving, unforgiving

jiu-jitsu, you just cannot allow them to ascend the ladder of where they need to go. You should always think about jiu-jitsu in kind of those ways, which is it's never from here to there in one fell swoop. It's this escalating series of steps you take, and then those steps build on one another, and it's that slow accumulation of small steps. Eventually, it adds up to a very, very devastating place. He has one hook in, then he has the second hook in. Now he has the throat, the arm in front of the throat. Now he has it over the face. And then now once it's over the face, now he worked to slide it under the chin. Now that it's under the chin, it's simply a matter

of hand fighting to get the high hand and then put it behind the throat like that. Dude, it's just a small incremental series of steps and he takes them and he knows exactly how to get there, how to set them up, what to do if you wanted to go this way, how he can set it back that way. He's a devastating finisher. He has, you know, in terms of I think pure submission skill, probably the best submission skills in the lightweight division. It remains to be seen about when we define overall top grappler where Makachev really falls. I'm not saying that he is on par with Oliveira or better. He certainly could be. I'm merely saying that we just don't have quite enough evidence to make a broad

declaration about him one way or the other. But dude, when you've got names like this on your resume, when you TKO Michael Chandler, when you submit outright Dustin Poirier, when you give Tony Ferguson limb extension and Kevin Lee, you know, that was the first fight in the middle of the pandemic. Remember that in the one in Brazil, you know, sent him packing on the way home too. Like it's just an unbelievable run he's on, man. He has gotten to be so good. And what really stood out to me in this fight, we'll pull up some of the stats here in just a second. What really stood out to me in this fight that I thought was kind of incredible about it all is, we'll talk about the alleged glove grab in the second round,

but put that aside for just a second. Let's talk about the first, because the third round, there wasn't a whole lot to it. It was just a minute long, and it was the series of steps that I just articulated. In the the first round dude like part of what we knew was going to happen happened which was Poirier's power is big he like that dude at 155 can thump man and you saw it when he was hitting Oliveira it moved him right it would you could see it like physically jar him as if some kind of small car crash was happening to him and to him only. I did think that Oliveira's body work was phenomenal. The knees he was finding were great.

And it was a really smart play, dude, because if you play at boxing range with Poirier, you're going to be in trouble. So I'm betting that they knew that there was going to be some of that that had to get done, but that Oliveira and his coaches probably had an idea about keeping this at kickboxing range, you know, and then if you're entering into striking range with punches on your own terms, if you can, or getting all the way in. So, you know, for the most part, all the way out or all the way in. And, you know, there was a lot of that missing. He was playing that mid-range game a little too much, but to the extent he was able to lock up, you know up an underhook, you saw

Dustin Poirier whizzering hard. If you guys don't know what a whizzer is, a whizzer is an overhook of an underhook, right? So that's the only thing that sometimes can prevent someone getting to your back. You could see that Oliveira was trying to turn him through takedowns off the fence by tripping him and then kind of lunging him forward, and it was just Poirier's whizzer that was saving him there. But then they would play in these mid-range spots.

And dude, Poirier was lighting him up. I thought for sure, for sure is a strong word, but I thought we were heading towards a finish in just the first round. Poirier was lighting him up and he was doing it. Some of the linear punches were landing, but it was a lot of the hooking punches actually around kind of this gloved position that Oliveira was adopting. But this is the story of this run, which is, you know, he has a reputation,

or at least has had a reputation for some time in the UFC, that Oliveira is obviously going to have incredible jiu-jitsu, is going to be a devastating finisher. But if you can put enough pressure on him or punishment that he will wilt and fade and go away and it's not an altogether unfair assumption it's not even really an assumption there's a body of work where you can see that like it does it did happen at certain times it just seems now that he is much calmer. He doesn't panic. He doesn't make poor choices because he's rushing something. Because he's more well-rounded, he is naturally going to be more comfortable in a wider array of fight scenarios.

He understands how to follow a game plan. He believes in himself, perhaps in a way that he didn't used to. There's just a lot of factors where, you know, was it previously fair to be like, Oliveira is not like, you know, he doesn't have like no Gara levels of bearing under punishment, right? I think that was pretty fair for a certain point in his career. And maybe there'll be a future opponent who brings him back to some kind of stage. But A, it's pretty clear that the reputation that had followed him for some time is in pretty clear need of some revision and updating. And B, even if there is another fighter who can, from a punishment standpoint, take him to that place, he's going to have to probably take him to a really, really dark place anyway. In which case, even if he got the stoppage, that would be a fair expectation of anyone who took that kind of damage, right? Like, it would take something like that scenario, which is to say that, like, you know, maybe

there's still a little bit of that guy in him who was making poor choices and, you know, had a lopsided skill set and all the various things that were happening to him. Injuries played a role as well. All of the things that kind of contributed to this narrative about being a quitter, just a lot of those factors aren't a part of his life these days. They're not a part of his professional existence. They're not a part of the competitive makeup that he brings to these occasions. Not that I can detect.

I didn't see it in the Kevin. I mean, I haven't seen it in any of these. He got pushed a little bit in some of these fights, but not really. The Paul Felder is the last one, and Felder was just on fire in that fight. By the way, Oliveira had a win over Brooks before that. It's insanely remarkable what he's been able to do. He was able to land some decent strikes in mid-range on Poirier too. It wasn't like it was completely one-sided in that way, but it did seem like the power difference was really hurting. It seemed like

it was hurting Oliveira more than the punishment that Oliveira was dishing out on Poirier, at least in the first. So then you get to the second round, and see, this is a really strange round, because the commentary team said that the reason Oliveira was able to hold on to this failed omoplata was because he had the grip on the glove. Now, for folks who don't know the rules, you can grab your own glove, and you might ask why you want to do that. There could be scenarios where you can't quite wrap your hands together and you might want to just grab your own glove. That is perfectly legal. You can grab your own glove. You cannot grab your opponent's glove. Now, you can grab the top of the hand. You can make contact with the wrist, but you can't put your fingers inside the glove. It tends to have a hole here, and obviously there's a tape section around the wrist, but fingers could potentially slide in there as well.

You're not allowed to put digits inside the glove itself, merely on, like you're grabbing the hand as a whole anyway. Obviously though, once it goes here, it kind of has a bit of a stop gap because there's obviously punished, or there's padding on the surface of the hand and then the knuckles themselves. So if it's true he was grabbing that,

you saw Cormier was wondering why Poirier went for the roll. I think his balance was getting pulled too far forward and he felt like it was about to get bad. So why not, like in other words, I'm going to get pulled off my base. If I'm going to get pulled off my base, right, and I'm going to go forward here and I'm not going to be able to catch myself, I mean, I could with one hand, but then I'm opening up some other kind of attack, I'm going to go forward here, my balance is going to fall, so if I'm going to do that, why don't I do that on my turn, so then you see him do a forward roll, which allows him to then spin back around, and then face with his guard, which is, you know, a rational choice to make, It comes with some pluses and

some minuses, but it's definitely a strategic call. Then Oliveira gets on top. Now, Oliveira doesn't really even attempt a pass at all that I can recall. I don't think he did that. And again, I'm going to go over this for folks who may not know. You can pass from your knees. It is certainly possible, but the vast majority of passing takes place on your feet. Again, there's a lot of exceptions to that. But for the majority of even in MMA and any place else, you've got to be on your feet to get the passing going. He never really did that.

So it wasn't like an aggressive thing. But he didn't really need to because he was, A, landing elbows, and, B, Poirier and his team had an interesting strategy. I thought the commentary team in this particular case, you know, everyone beats up on them all the time. In this particular case, I thought they were way off. They were saying that, I think it was mostly Joe, but I have to go back and listen, but that, you know, Poirier might be hurt and like blah, blah, blah, blah. Dude, it looked quite obvious to me that once he went to guard and was able to

establish so he had almost had like a senkaku for a while but once he had full guard and you know was using like a like a c-grip behind the neck to control posture and then like was using various overhooks to catch an arm it was clear he was either a looking for a stand-up but more than that he was not going to offensively press the issue from guard. He was going to punt the round, give the round away, but don't get passed, try not to take too much of a beating underneath. He still got lit up with some, I mean, that was an easy round for Charles Oliveira. And arguably, I haven't seen the scores, that's arguably a 10-8 round on top of it.

That was his round for sure. But the question is, if the glove is what enabled Olivera to keep control and Poirier could have pulled his hand out under ordinary circumstances. Now, Poirier, to my knowledge, hasn't complained about this. And again, I don't even know if the commentary team is right. They might be. I'm not saying they're wrong. I honestly don't know. I'd have to see the replay. I'll say this, dude. If he put his hand in the glove, it could be intentional. But to me, that is a serious problem. It's a serious problem. The reason why that is made illegal is because it's such a dominant grip.

If I can put my fingers inside the clothing, which I know a glove is not in that sense not clothing, but it is a covering material of the hand and skin. Obviously, if you can put your hand in there and then use that to grab, remember it is literally affixed to the other person's hand via stitching Velcro and tape. Like it's kind of on there. If you can, if you can weasel your fingers into certain parts of it or like the top of it where you can grab it and hold it, dude, that's going to be a very hard grip to break. And it's going to have a ton of consequences for folks that they're not expecting because you're not supposed to train in a way where someone can do that. It will have a profound effect on the outcome. Obviously, he didn't lose that round. And maybe you could argue that because even if that was a foul, it was in one round and

then the fight was lost in the next one. But I would actually argue that I think the fact that he spent so much time, Poirier did, on his back that way, I think he wanted to come out in the third one and get a little bit of it back and start strong. Could you argue that he got a little overaggressive on the feet and that's how Oliveira, obviously because he has skills as well, was able to get under and into the back and then everything else? Did it put him in a place where he wasn't as strategic as he needs to be in the third round because he got put on his back for so long? I don't know. Maybe that feels like reaching again. Some of you will have access to better information than I do at the time of the broadcast of

this. So if I have incomplete information, I apologize. In the interest of fairness, what I would say is if the grip was secured more faithfully or again, it could be just accidental. I'm not in any way implying that i know for a fact he cheated on purpose i'm merely saying if if he did break the rules negligently or otherwise it has a profound effect but if he didn't um and it was you know and this is just all misunderstanding then you could a don't just not only i i wouldn't even take back the the idea that like you know if he did have the the grab inside the

glove that that means that he's you know now we can revisit the idea that he's a quitter even then i wouldn't revisit it it would i think cast something of a controversial shadow over the fight but i tend to think most people will not it listen poirier never complained he he didn't complain i watched i watched him as soon as the round was over. What's he going to get up and do here? Is he going to say anything to the referee, referee Herb Dean in this case? He didn't say anything to him.

Maybe they discussed it in the corner and we didn't get it. Again, I don't have enough information at this stage to really say a whole lot about it. If it did play a role, that is extremely unfortunate. But in either case, I do think there's a lot of really positive things to take about Olivera. I mean, obviously, if it's a misunderstanding, then all you can do is just dish out praise on this guy and the kind of thing he has done. Let me say a word, if I can, about Dustin Poirier, then I want to look at some of these numbers.

That's a tough loss for Dustin, man. That's a tough loss for Dustin man that's a tough loss he was riding a ton of momentum I think if he had won this he'd have a good case maybe you disagree that it would have been the best case but he would at least have a good case for fighter of the year probably will go to

Kamaru Usman now, probably. I guess we'll have to see. So he's out of the running for that. I don't think he's that far away from a title shot, but when you get this close and you don't get it, it can take some time to get back here. And the boogeyman of the division, Habib, left. And so you thought, okay, I certainly thought, everyone kind of knew this fight was going to be close, but I had kind of thought that maybe, maybe Poirier can pull this one out here against a very, very tough Charles Oliveira. And he didn't.

He looked good in the first round. Second round was a little weird one, as we just indicated. But in the third round, you know, I felt he got a little bit aggressive, and then once he got behind, like, you really need, he didn't play that fight, I think, as well as he could have, and Oliveira did, and that was the difference. He was just, again, second round's a little bit unclear for me, but let's assume for the second, for the sake of conversation, that everything's above board, then, you know, I mean, what can you say? Like, Oliveira just performed as well as he needed to in the moments that he was required to do so.

And it's just as simple as that. He is a serious threat. He's going to be very hard to put away on the feet because he's got great skills. You know, he doesn't, before his resiliency, I think, was not out of bounds to be questioned. But because he is so comfortable by being a veteran now, because he's been on these big stages, he's in big main events,

he's on the poster, he has to do more media. And now, you know, look at the guys he's facing. Like, his skills are obviously on par. You know, he's the champion. I understand that. What I just mean to say is strip out the title for just a second. Like, do you look at the rest of that division and think, Olivera can beat these guys? You definitely do. Now, you might say, well, Justin Gaethje is is a different animal and we'll have to see how that goes or islam makachev or

whoever you think might be the best answer there um makachev maybe could take him down and ground and pound him gaethje might uh be able to like really physically hurt him before succumbing to some kind of you know and scramble out of some kind of delicate position. Like, these are tough guys to beat, but clearly, like, Oliveira is, you know, of the class, and again, obviously being the champion right now, the guy to beat in that division. It's an amazing thing, but for Poirier, as I got a little bit sidetracked, it's a tough loss. I had tweeted this.

It's hard to know exactly what's going to happen. McGregor seems to think that when he comes back, he'll just fight for the title. You can't really say he's wrong. I'm a little skeptical that that actually comes to fruition. I tend to think that probably won't. Probably will happen. But there's at least an outside chance that it won't. And I actually think the fact that Poirier losing in the same year makes a potential

fourth fight maybe not right away we'll have to see but makes a potential fourth fight between Poirier and McGregor a lot more likely actually you know because the problem that I thought was going to happen was that Poirier was going to win and then they were going to want to do that rematch now you could do the rematch without having to worry about the fourth fight anyway without having to worry about the title being involved here because Oliveira's got it. But of course, McGregor being the most powerful and popular fighter in the sport is going to want to come back and just compete right for the title. And by the way, listen, maybe you would argue that Oliveira beats McGregor. This is not a controversial opinion, but I do think it'd be a

little bit foolish to count out Conor McGregor. There are a lot of reasons to think why this version of him, especially coming off a very difficult injury, won't be a champion. And even if he gets to fight against Olivera, it will go quite poorly for him. That's not an implausible thing. But McGregor can be, historically speaking anyway, accurate right off the first bell. He comes out usually, typically, not always, obviously, but typically he comes out ready, shot out of a cannon, firing, accurate the whole nine yards. If you can get a version like that, it could be interesting early. Obviously, as the fight goes on, you would heavily favor Oliveira at that point but you know like every time I make a comment about Conor it's like I

have to navigate the spaces between the two audiences which is his fans and if I don't say that I think he can beat Olivera they're gonna like you know set me on fire and if I say that I think that you know the opposite of that then the other side gets all bitter and there's no way to please it I would probably favor Olivera to win while recognizing that Conor has a particular set of strengths that could match up quite interestingly with the skill sets of Charles Oliveira. Although I want to be very clear about this, any kind of McGregor and Oliveira fight is, I guess not fraudulent because it's real, but it should not happen. He should get another win. So this is the point. I think McGregor should come back and fight Poirier or you could have him fight Nate or you could have him fight Tony or whatever you want to do.

Have him fight somebody. Have him get the one win and then you could ole him to the front. But I guess that's not what they want to do. Well, actually, I guess we'll see what they want to do. I don't want to speak for them because I don't have any clue what they want to do. Let us look at the numbers for this fight, shall we? Okay. So for this one, wow, they didn't credit Oliveira with a single takedown. I hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, that makes sense. 0 for 6. But they gave him credit for three submission attempts. They've got Oliveira with 5 minutes and 41 seconds of control time.

That's pretty good. And then from the striking standpoint, he overall has 73 to 58 significant strike lead. Oliveira does. Poirier is credited with one knockdown. I believe that's in the first round. Yep, it was. First round, Poirier 54 to 48 significant strikes. Again, these are numerical totals, not qualitative totals.

Just to give you sort of a sense of things. In the second round, Poirier landed three. Three of five strikes. Oliveira 23. Clear round for him. And then in the third round, Poirier landed three. Three of five strikes, Oliveira 23. Clear round for him. And then in the third round, Poirier got one and Oliveira just got two, but then he got the submission. Charles Oliveira went to the body 30%. That's a lot. To the leg, just four. Dustin Poirier went 96% to the head. I would argue that Dustin Poirier did a little bit of head hunting. He already is a bit of a head hunter. It's worked out for him. But that is 96%

to the head, 3% to the body. Seems like a missed opportunity there, among some other things as well, like the way in which he had closed distance in the third. And yeah, dude, but this, you know, every time you feel like you got a beat on the game and which way it's going to go and what's going to work and who's on top and who's on bottom, the game will just shake shit up in ways you just never imagined. I knew, and I think most people knew, Oliveira win or lose was going to be a tough out here. Like it was clear at this point he had ascended to the level. But I just mean, one more time, backing up before this win streak started, when he had lost to Paul Felder.

After Charles Oliveira lost to Paul Felder, who was the person raising their hand and be like, you know, wait three, four years. He's going to be in X position. I'm sure there were some, of course. But I think there was a lot of people who were probably pretty skeptical, me among them. And you just can't really do a lot of that anymore second round of this fight even then not really withstanding

he he is you know someone was asking me like why he's so efficient because he is a veteran he understands what a how to keep himself calm and he's got such technical acumen in all of the phases of the game that there's none of these scenarios where he has to really like laboriously think through them everything is just kind of you know effortless is not right but it seems that way because everything is so um programmed into the way in which he's able to it's muscle memory really at this point is what i'm trying to say and it has paid off it has paid off in a pretty dramatic way dude his what he's doing with the way he's getting these finishes bring it by the way it was a great night overall for jujitsu like jujitsu made a big comeback tonight right

there's obviously some events where guys just can't get anything going you're seeing the ones that like really put the time in to make juj-jitsu a serious weapon for themselves. Not a box that they can tick and say, what am I good at? No, no, no, no, no, no. What am I lethal at? The guys who can do that, man, once the rest of their game rounds out and they can lord that prowess in a much more deliberative kind of way, dude, they're very tough to beat. And Charles Oliveira, I mean, what a journey this guy's had a much more deliberative kind of way, dude, they're very tough to beat.

And Charles Oliveira, I mean, what a journey this guy's had through weight cuts and bad losses and injuries and weight classes and you name it. And here he is at this point, and he, you know, did that to Dustin Poirier. Like, fuck, man. That dude's a really good fighter. Do you want to argue that, by the way, that Dustin Poirier has a weakness from the back? I mean, he got submitted in, what, two out of four fights, if my math is right? No, two out of five, excuse me, because of the hooker fight, and then the two Conor fights. He got submitted from the back by those two, his other losses in the UFC. He got stopped by McGregor that first time.

He got TKO'd by Michael Johnson on a really bad call. Cub Swanson that he went to a decision with. Chan Sung Jung, he got submitted, but it was a darts joke. It was fun back and forth, I should say. And then actually his WC debut against Danny Castillo last call was a decision. So these attacks from the back haven't happened until recently. You could argue that it's always been there and no one took advantage of it

or that it takes operators at the level of Habib and now Oliveira to make use of any weakness that he has or that nobody else is good enough to do the kinds of things that those two guys can do. Up to you to decide that. There isn't enough information either way.

But unbelievably impressive. The rankings as it stands. Let me pull that up as well. So these are the rankings. Again, this is not updated. They're not fully voted on and then changed until Monday or Tuesday. But for the lightweight division, they've got Poirier sitting at one, Gaethje at two. Looks like Gaethje's going to get the fight next.

So it's going to be Gaethje versus Oliveira. And then obviously we know Darius is going to fight Mokachev. Winner of that probably would fight with the winner of Gaethje versus Oliveira. And then you have Chandler and then Dos Anjos, Ferguson, Hooker, McGregor, and Gillespie. Now the X factor, as I just indicated, is that Conor McGregor could come back and then jump the line. But we at least think the Gaethje fight is next. Poirier, I'm not sure where he goes from here. Does he fight Chandler at five? Because Dariush and Makachev are in a bit of a different path. Something to think about. Maybe Poirier and Chandler and Lockhorns, which would be a hell of a fight. But with Oliveira and Gaethje, you would have to imagine that Gaethje's leg

kicking is going to be a thing. Could Oliveira use catching the kicks as a potential weapon to deter him because there's a threat of a takedown there? Or is he able to deliver those kicks in a way that it doesn't open him up to those kinds of attacks? We're going to have to see. Obviously, if Oliveira can get Gaethje to the ground, by hook or by crook, you would imagine he's going to have a significant... If Oliveira gets Gaethje to the ground, the level of difference there is going to be overwhelming. Where you can't do anything about it.

There would be almost nothing that Gaethje could do if he got fully taken down by Oliveira or had his back taken. There'd be almost nothing. I mean, the disparity in talent. Dude, Charles Oliveira didn't just beat us to poor and remove the name. Charles Oliveira submitted another black belt

to do this tonight. You know what I'm saying? Shit. He didn't submit some rando purple belt black belt to do this tonight. You know what I'm saying? Like shit. Like he, you know, that's, he didn't submit some like, you know, rando purple belt or something. That's like a long standing black belt. He did that too. So in that sense, I'm not sure what Gaethje can offer in that particular dimension that Poirier wouldn't be better at, but you can imagine Gaethje can fucking thump. He's much better about his entries. Trevor Whitman and him are going to work on that like crazy.

They're probably going to find a way to land the kick and get out. Like, you know, there's just a lot. It's a hell of a fight. Hell of a fight. Can't wait to see it, and probably time for the stragglers, whether it's you or me or anyone else. We all knew Oliveira was good, but, dude,

he's really, really special. This is what he's putting together is dramatic and important. All right, we'll come back to this. I have a tweet up right now. So my Instagram is Luke Thomas News, but it's LThomasNews on Twitter. And I have this thing up. So let me take a look at it. Here we go. I'm going to pin this to my profile now instead. You can leave a question there and we'll get to it. Thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe as always. All right, let's talk about it. Let's talk about the co main event. So in your co main event, I lost my thing here. I'm going to pull it back up one more time. In your co-main event, can you believe it? I certainly can, but I think some of

you are very surprised. Juliana Pena defeats Amanda Nunes via rear naked choke at 326 of the second round. Now, let me play a little bit of something for you that I don't know if you guys can hear this or not. So let me see if I can play this. Yeah, I think I can. This is me talking to Brian Campbell on Friday's show. I don't have anything on the tape to tell you that that's going to happen, but there's been upsets.

Listen, this is me talking about why it's foolish to dismiss Juliana Pena in this case. Here's what I said. Listen, to my knowledge, I can't find anything on the tape to tell you that's going to happen. But there's been upsets

that have happened where I was like, I didn't see coming and I didn't prepare for it. I just sort of assumed that we have a little bit of a lazy tendency in MMA. Yeah, but she doesn't have the game to do that, Luke. Let me finish. There's a little bit of a lazy tendency in MMA to just assume that greatness has inertia not worth thinking about. You blame the schmo for that? Are you speaking English? Because I can't tell. You're Pigeon English from Connecticut.

Why don't you go shuck some corn in the middle of nowhere? All right, Luke. Why don't you go take a crop dusting? Sometimes I try to take this show to the next level. Why don't you go take a crop dusting? And then you just shop me. You just shut the shit down, you know? You assume that all of your bad jokes elevate the show. I have news for you. Only some of them do.

Anyway, what I'm trying to make here is, dude, can I find something on tape to be like be like dude that look that's what she's going to do to amanda nunez no i don't have that for you i can't manufacture that but i just want to point out there's a little bit of laziness that we ascribe to greatness in mma in terms of the inertia just always taking care of itself that you i think we should check a little bit guys i lived through i lived through many crazy upsets um you know some of you i'm sure many of you saw rousey get beat by a hole that's a crazy one or i remember when takanori gomi got beat by marcus aurelio and you were like how the fuck did he get beat by Marcus Aurelio? Which was a whole mess for Pride at the time.

The big one, though, was I remember exactly where I was. I was at Hard Times Cafe. It's a true story. I was at Hard Times Cafe in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which no longer exists, I don't think. The bar, anyway. Obviously, the city is still there. And I i watched matt sarah knuckle gsp into the canvas and you want to talk about the most implausible of all scenarios that you could have ever imagined dude when i tell you that no one except for like ray longo was giving matt

sarah a chance when that happened i am telling. And then it just goes and it happens and it didn't just happen. It happened rather fucking easily. That was a big, that was a real learning lesson for me. This is why I say the same thing about Jon Jones going to heavyweight. Dude, Jon Jones might go to heavyweight and then just beat the shit out of everyone the way he's been doing. Like that is, that is not in any way implausible, but he struggled a little bit at the end at light heavyweight. He's had a lot of time off. He's got a shitload of distractions outside the cage. His numbers were kind of dropping off in light heavyweight before he made the move. All I've said is you just can't assume automatically he's going to be great. You just can't, and people just do. Once you get to a point in MMA where you're just good, people think that will just carry on forever. It

will not. It will not. Not if you stay around long enough. That was the big, like, this is why the way Habib played it is correct. Dude, Habib knows. He knows that maybe he can maybe beat everyone else out there right now, but that if you stick around, for you, it is the routine requirement of performative greatness, which, you know, the easier it gets for you, the harder it actually becomes to do over time, which is almost paradoxical, but true. And, you know, so it's for Amanda Nunes tonight, it was just another day at the office, dude, for Juliana Pena, that was, today was the biggest night of her life. The hardest thing to do in mixed martial arts, I would argue, is to be a UFC champion and then to stand a post and welcome wave after wave

of contender. It is exceedingly difficult to do. I have said this to you before. I'm going to say it to you again. I remember when Matt Brown, when I went to go cover Rashad versus Jon Jones, Matt Brown was facing Wonderboy. This was UFC's, I think. No, he had already fought Dan Stijan. So this was his second fight against Matt Brown. And Matt Brown said something to me that has stuck with me. I've told this story to you guys a thousand times.

But if you are new, it bears repeating one more time, which was, I asked him about Wonderboy's undefeated kickboxing record. And, you know, do you know any of these names and whatnot? And he was like, look, listen, I asked him about Wonderboy's undefeated kickboxing record, and you know, do you know any of these names and whatnot? And he was like, look, listen, I don't know who he fought, is what Matt Brown told me. I don't know who he fought, but here's what I do know. He had like something like 59 or 60 undefeated, you know, 59 and 0 was the record, something like that. And he goes, I don't know who those guys are, but I do know that there's no possible way that Wonderboy showed up 59 times and felt great 59 times. Didn't have any injuries at any point. Didn't have something going on in his personal life. Camp, you know, it didn't go

perfect every time. Dude, there were times when, in Matt Brown's assessment, to get a record like that, maybe you weren't beating all the best guys in the Chuck Norris League or whatever, but the fact that you cannot always be at your best and still be a high achiever, that says a lot about your character. It says a lot about who you are, but it also says how rare and how difficult that is. And I think in some other sports

where people are very careful about who they take and blah, blah, blah, turnover is a little bit less random and sporadic. But Juliana Pena, you could make an argument, you can make a case, didn't necessarily deserve this, but there wasn't really a great option about who else you could go to. So the argument as it stands is that the weight class champion has a responsibility to defend it. But the major point I want to just get folks to understand here is, dude, it is to do what Demetrius Johnson did, to do what for a long time John Jones did, to do what Anderson

Silva did, GSP. That is the hardest. Jumping weight classes is the thing that we now add on to the resume. But all you need to jump weight classes, and this is grossly simplistic, but you just have to have a great night. To do what Amanda does, and again, that's a gross oversimplification, but to do what Amanda does, dude, we're talking about prolonged greatness over time, months, years. Dude, in MMA, it is very, very, very Very difficult to ever Be the number one person in your weight class And then to hold that position

Dude, you're only going to hold it For a short amount of time The very great ones can hold it for years Which is just like fucking astronomically Impossible to even understand in certain ways They can do it But they are going to fall apart There are so many people who still can't fathom

why Chris Weidman won. Dude, it's not hard to figure out why Chris Weidman beat Anderson Silva. And yeah, was Matt Serra overall better than GSP? No. But it's not hard to see why St. Pierre lost on that night. It's not. And it's not all that hard to see why Amanda lost today.

Now, there are a couple of weird things about this fight. Where, like, you're like, where's Amanda's cardio? Now, her cardio wasn't all that great in the Duran to me fight. That's true. But it was, like, really not here tonight. Just to reiterate, people in MMA assume that once you become good, you will just always be that. I don't know why they do that. Like, dude, like Notorious B.I.G. said, your reign at the top was short like leprechauns. It's hard, very, very, very difficult when you are accepting number one contender after number one contender.

And all they have to do is just over time find that one weakness where you had some kind of skill differential or maybe you just had like a shitty game plan or you didn't listen to your coach like you used to or you know all that has to happen is for the things that make you great to come down just a little bit and then for the person who is new to that opportunity to just fucking to just say this is my big moment i'm going to have it dude this is what happens in MMA power changes hands like this all the time we want to imagine this is why you know fucking Modelo is like all right we're gonna be in that Brian Ortega train then he goes and he fights Max you're like oh fuck what are we gonna do now and they did it with um with Stipe for a while too now he won it back but there was a while where he had lost it and then they did it with Amanda. Now Amanda loses it. I'm not suggesting there's any kind of Modelo curse. I'm just trying to point out, dude,

it is hard for advertisers to reliably find fighters that can win consistently for a few years. It's really difficult to do, right? Especially the championship ones. And it's usually the championship ones that are the only ones that have any kind of degree of popularity. Sean O'Malley notwithstanding, right? But for the most part, you got to be in proximity to that to have any kind of a name in this business. And dude, it's hard as shit to keep that. You should take fighters like Lauren Murphy seriously when they fight Shevchenko. Dude, let me explain something to you. If Shevchenko sticks around long enough, she will have this day too. It will happen. It will happen.

She might retire before it happens. That's true. Khabib got out before it happened. If you stick around long enough, the game will get you. The house always wins. The house always wins. You might have a night where, you know, you did great at the blackjack table, but over time, the house is going to win. Dude, the game is going to beat you. And today is really how that went. Now, for the fight itself,

it was fucking insane. I thought Amanda was looking good early on, and then it was kind of strange she decided to have like this mid-range you know slug fest basically with juliana pena and pena was getting the better of it which i couldn't first of all pena has got is durable i'll give her that and clearly you know needed some time to get her feet under her once she got back to mixed martial arts. Looked like she got a little bit back today. You know, tried to get her down in the first, right? I need to put the numbers on this one. But by the time that the, you know, they were exchanging, like, and it was going back and forth,

Pena was, like, landing on her at like consistently and then you saw the and now amanda was landing too and she was busting up her eye but both of them had like a bloody nose and then you see amanda start getting hit and then wobbling and now backing up and like taking deep breaths you're like dude what is happening here so let me pull up the numbers on this one if i can so So for the co-main, here's what we have. Peña, 79 out of 135 significant strikes landed. Amanda Nunes, just 46. Now in the first round, Amanda landed 10. Peña landed 5. Amanda is credited with a takedown in that round. Peña is not. But in the second round, Peña is credited with a takedown. It's just 17 seconds of control,

but 74 strikes to Amanda Nunes is 36, and the fight was called off at what time? 3.26 of the first round. Yeah, dude. I mean, you know, like by the time um uh juliana sunk the choke there was amanda had almost nothing left to defend um from an energy standpoint like there was not an aggressive hand fight scenario to maintain that title once she put it in it was it was over by and large right right? Amanda just got, you know, she got outstruck on the feet, at least for portions of that fight. Again, she was lumping up and swelling up, Pena. It's not like it was one-way traffic, but, you know, it had hurt her and cost her. And then by the time she had, like, she had, I think she had to sit and then turn Pena to get to the takedown. But once she got it, she was off and running. And she had a great gas tank she was ready for it they implemented a

game plan dude give her credit give her credit dude juliana pena i i you know i can't go back and say that i predicted this like i but prior to this contest this is what you had to deal with to make a case for pena right which is why I understand some of why people were saying what they were saying before the Nunes fight, since her return let's say after 2017 she beat Nico Montano in 2019 then she lost to Duran Dami

via guillotine choke then she beat Sarah McMahon which was nice that was in 2021 but she had one fight in 2019, one fight in 2020 she had the first fight in January 2021. This was her first year since. This is her first year since 2015 where she had two fights in a calendar year for Juliana Pena. And then she beats Amanda Nunes here at the end.

She won in January and then she wins in December. So I understand why they're always like, oh, what could you point to in the resume That would make you think I didn't know that they were going to have a striking contest And if they did, I sure as hell wouldn't have been like Oh, Peña can stand up to that But dude, when someone has been a champion How long has Amanda been a champion? Which by the way, of course she is still the featherweight champion

Just not the bantamweight But she won that title From Misha Tate At UFC 200 in July of 2016. So five years later was July of this year. And she was still champion. Dude, she held the fucking belt for five years. Anytime she's going to face someone, particularly at 135, at 145 where there's like, I mean,

the gap between her and her contemporaries is so enormous. It would happen there, too, if she hung around. But at 135, where you're fighting fucking Duran Dami, who's a good fighter, Holly Holm, Chris Cyborg, Raquel Payton, Shevchenko. Dude, these are good fighters. Now, she got the wins over them, but you face enough of that caliber. You know, like, all that has to happen for Nunes is for her to pay a little bit less attention, to have a little bit less intensity,

to just be a little bit less dialed in on competition night, and then for Peña to just be a little bit better than what she normally is, and it's enough to cause a problem. It is the reign of the dominant champions that you think are dominant today, their reign is going to be short in all likelihood. It is the reign of the dominant champions that you think are dominant today. Their reign is going to be short in all likelihood. If Kamaru Usman, as good as he is, sticks around, he's going to lose. If he sticks around.

Adesanya, if he keeps sticking around, he's going to lose. Any of them. Any of them. You guys know I have the highest amount of respect for Adesanya. And the highest amount of respect. Kamaruanya. And the highest amount of respect. Carl, Kamaru Usman is the fighter of the year. And maybe he's pound for pound number one in the sport. I'm telling you.

I'm telling you. If he sticks around, you're going to see someone beat him. And you're going to be like, oh, holy fuck. We couldn't see this coming. Because people are like, oh, he's up there and everyone else is down there. That relationship is precarious. It is precarious it is precarious no one's domination on the game is a foregone conclusion or a given or like oh their their abilities are so far apart that's what we'll decide it over time and in general skills win fights but if you fight enough of

the top people you're that's why you don't see anyone in amateur wrestling with like these days anyway, with like a 100-0 record. Dude, because if you're fucking going to tournaments with hammers, eventually the hammer's going to get their way. It's just inevitable. Jordan Burroughs couldn't get all I see is gold all the time. He had to lose a little bit, you know? You know, and I know there's a couple people in sports that have undefeated records, and Floyd's got one too, but Floyd's resume is not immune to criticism about cherry-picking, by the way. But you do what Amanda has done, where, you know, since she lost to Kat Zingano in February of, excuse me, September of 2014. Am I getting that right? Yes. She TKO'd Shayna Baszler, who used to be, you know, Queen of Spades, was one of the top fighters in the world at the fourth time.

Then she submitted Sarah McMahon. Then she defeated Shevchenko. Then she submitted Misha Tate. Then she knocked out Ronda Rousey. Then she got it done again, controversially, but she got it done against Shevchenko. Then she TKO'd Raquel. Then she KO'd Cyborg. Then she TKO'd Holly.

And then she beat Duran Dami, Spencer, and then Megan Anderson. Dude, like that's just an unbelievable run. But if you keep putting, how old is Juliana Pena? Especially since she's been out a while, so she's like a younger version of this. 32. And, you know, she doesn't have a ton of miles on her. She had the injuries, which is bad. But she doesn't have like a ton of gym war, gym war, long, brutal fight battle miles on her.

In that sense, she's relatively refreshed. I've seen this movie too many times, man. I've seen it too many times to go in there and be like, oh, she's going to get knocked out. Okay, if they fought 10 times. By the way, you might pick Amanda Nunes in the rematch. I might pick Amanda Nunes in the rematch I might pick Amanda Nunes in the rematch but I you've got to have humility about how difficult it is to become the most elite in this division and how difficult it is to do that 12 13 14 fights long it's just so special it's so you talk to the

fight mentor guys ask them how many fighters in ufc history have like a five fight win streak forget fucking titles just that it's like the like the it's probably you know it's probably single digit percentage it's just very very very very difficult to do very difficult to do and the fact that she got that done, the fact that she went from Baszler to Megan Anderson from 2015 to March of this year, again, not counting the loss today, it's just beyond remarkable. It doesn't change the fact that she also is the best,

I think, women's fighter ever. I think, well, would this make people... The thing is, she's got the win over Cyborg and it's so authoritative that I don't think people would revisit that. But you might ask yourself, could Cyborg, she could make 135, so it'd be kind of a different scenario.

But you might ask yourself, could Cyborg beat Pena? And you might like Cyborg's chances to beat Pena, by the way, you know. Great at different weight classes, I understand. But you get the idea. Like, she still should be who we think her to be. But have a healthy respect for MMA, dude. And this should work backwards, which is, dude,

like when someone is getting to what, like, Oliver and Poirier, when those guys have done, like, you're that level of the game. Or you get someone, like, you know, obviously a completely different level, like what Anderson Silva did and Demetrius Johnson did. Dude, you just can't believe how hard that is to do. You just can't believe the amount of how locked on with your prep, with your athleticism, with your diet, with your sleep, with your strategy. You know, Jones got away with it for a long time. I don't know that he can keep

getting away with it with the state of the game today, but in general, like everything in your life needs to be locked on at this point for you to have, you know, to be like a person who can go on like an eight, nine fight run and have those, in the case of Olivera, be previous champions and now title defenses. It's amazing. So we'll see what happens with Amanda. As I mentioned, she still is the 145-pound champ. And maybe they'll do a rematch, right?

I mean, I don't know. If Amanda doesn't get a rematch, you know, it's funny. Like, my rule typically on rematches, again, you guys might feel differently. My rule on this is, like, if you lose badly, I don't really see a case for it. You know, with Bantamweight being the way that it is, and obviously Amanda being the best Bantamweight, certainly by a long shot ever in women's MMA, then, you know, she might be entitled to a rematch but um yeah and you might pick amanda i think that's okay if you do just

for the next time you see someone being like oh kamaru can't lose dude i'm telling you yes he can as good as he is as good as he is. As good as he is. And he is maybe the most special fighter we have. Dude, he is going up against fucking hammers. You give hammers enough try, that's just what's going to happen. Let's get to some of your questions here if we can. What else did I miss on this card? The Jeff Neal-Ponsonibbio fight was not great.

Oh, Cody Garbrandt, man. I feel... Ugh. That's a bad one. Let me just talk about that for just a second. Kaikara France looked great. I mean, he looked great. He looked well-prepared. He had a good strategy. Great management of range.

Like, when you just looked at what was ailing Cody Garbrandt, who, by the way, loses via TKO at 321 of the first round. I don't want to pile on Cody Garbrandt's misery. Okay? I want to be very clear about that. It has to be hard to beat him right now. Because he is, what, one and five in his last six? I mean, here's his last one, two, three, four. Yeah, here's his last six. So he

beat Dominic Cruz at UFC 207 in December of 2016, and it's just been mostly a nightmare since then. He got KO'd by Dillashaw, then TKO'd by Dillashaw, then KO'd by Munoz. He did have the rebound against Aslan Sa, which was a great win. But then he got kind of tuned up by Rob Font, and then he gets viciously stopped by Kaikara France in his flyweight debut. So he has lost five out of his last six, and all but one of those five he got stopped. And let me see. He got stopped by Dillashaw in the second round, so all the stoppages

either took place in the first or second round. It's bad. That's bad. Everyone is making it out to be his chin, and to be clear, I don't think he had necessarily the best one at bantamweight, and so you knew that going to flyweight, he was not doing himself any favors with regards to that. But let me just add this detail. It's a little bit simplistic to say it's just his chin. Folks, go back and look at the moments Kaikara France is hitting him. He fools him into where the punch is going and freezes him in space. So his defense is down and he's stationary and he gets hit clean. And by the way, he's near the fence line. Y'all, if Kaikara France hits most flyweights that way, most of those flyweights are going to be in trouble. I'm pointing out that,

one of the major problems that I can identify with Garbrandt, and this is very difficult to solve, but he gets, he doesn't just get hit. He gets hit clean. How many times have you seen clean shots get through on him? You know, even Oliveira, he might've like, it might've landed very hard, but you know, you see Poirier trying to find ways to like work around the glove the jab was getting through but I mean like really hard power punches and by the way Oliveira does get hit to an extent as well um his punching and strike his differential in strikes landed versus absorbed is like almost uh zero but I'm trying to point out like when you go back to Garbrandt man he gets hit clean like they're finding big

open punches and strikes on him where he's either like walking into it or he doesn't see it coming or in this particular case he's up and not moving and he doesn't have a he has a it looks like he has difficulty anticipating and making reads about what's coming at him and so he's getting hit completely clean dude you know his chin could be way better than it is and and so he's getting hit completely clean dude you know his chin could be way better than it is and the way he's getting hit he still might be getting stopped maybe he gets stopped by Kaikara Franstein or maybe he doesn't but dude with the way Dillashaw was hitting him or the way Munoz was hitting him dude he gets hit fucking clean I mean I don't know what to say man I don't want to pile on the dude's misery. But, like, dude, it's not just getting hit.

It's getting hit like he's getting every ounce of those shots that are getting through. He could have a Nogarechin and it would still be, like, this would not be a winnable scenario. Like, these are not scenarios you want to be in if you want to be able to win at a high level. The PI is doing a good job of getting these guys to weight classes that were not accessible in a safer way, in the sense of what they have to do to go through with the cut. But if you're getting these guys down to these weight classes, we'll see what happens when Hooker goes back to 145. But in the case of 125 here, you know, like, obviously, this is a very small sample size. But, for flyweight anyway, but, you know, everyone's like, oh, his chin's not the same.

Okay, man, I mean, it ain't doing him any favors i i'm with you i i understand the criticism but you gotta look at the broader picture here dude that like even if that wasn't an issue man like you could you can have a great chin dude if kai car france lands that right hand on you the way he landed it i mean it's gonna hurt a lot of people in that weight class. And it's just over and over and over where he's just getting, you know, he's taken every, the entire brunt of these things. I don't know what you expect from him if that's the case. To me, and that, and that, the problem with that is like, you know, with the chin, that's a hard problem to solve too. But like, you go back to Bantamweight and you're like, okay, you can fill out a little bit and whatever. But I've seen guys who didn't have the best chins who really worked on their defense and it, to varying degrees, paid off.

Short of Garbrandt doing that or just becoming like a Habib Black wrestler, I don't know what he's supposed to do. I feel bad even saying it, dude. I really do, man. His troubles don't make my life any better, so I don't want to pile on, but the way he's getting stung, man, it's bad. It's really bad. All right, let's get to some of your questions here if we can. At the top, all right. Bigger upset, Nunez, Pena, or MK winning best MMA programming? I would actually argue us winning best MMA programming, but probably Nunez, Pena, yeah.

What are the chances Pena's first title defense is against Shevchenko? See, that's an interesting question because Dana was just saying the other day he didn't give a shit about Shevchenko versus Nunes 3, but I would favor Shevchenko to beat Peña. One never knows, but I would do that. And then they would have to go do that again, but he was saying he didn't want it. So they might do the rematch, I guess.

I don't know. Asking about O'Malley. I'm going to save that for full-on MK. Potential matchups for Dustin or Islam, Darius and Gaethje. Yeah, or Chandler. Or Chandler. Someone's asking a boxing question. I'm going to skip that.

How do you think Oliveira fares against a prime Habib? I think Habib would be able to out-wrestle him safely and ground and pound him, but it would be interesting. Can't see a reason why Dustin rolled out of the omoplata. It didn't seem tight enough. No, the omoplata itself was not hurting him. An omoplata is just a kimura with your legs. You put the arm where it's not supposed to go and then you crank it even further.

That's the whole idea. No, there was no problem there. But if he was getting his weight pulled and he didn't want to plant for whatever reason uh there may have been some kind of issue about him not wanting to plant his hands which he did in the third round anyway i'd have to talk to him i it's a fair question but i think he felt like his weight was getting pulled and so if it's going to pull he wanted to he wanted to be in control of which direction it ultimately went has there ever been a champion in the UFC that takes too much damage and gets dropped like

Oliveira, but it is sustainable in the long term? Sorry for yawning. I have to look at the... Frank Mir got hurt a little bit like that and would pull out some big wins. Like against Noguera, for example. But it's hard to pull off over time, right?

Because eventually, again, someone's going to get you. Questions about O'Malley. Again, I'll save that for regular MK. Is it unfair to think this was more about Amanda not being there than Peña just having the right plan for the upset? Yeah, sure. Sure. Again, dude, if Amanda didn't train full on because she's more interested in being a mom or... I don't want to blame it on that. I'm just trying to think about things in her life that are difficult. And as a dad, I can understand how that might get in the way or whatever it is, whatever it is. You know, is that possible as a way to explain some of the performance? Yeah, sure. Sure. I don't

think that's any way crazy. Again, it wasn't like you could look on the resume of Pena and be like, oh, she's going to slug it out in the middle of the cage with her and win. Who the fuck was saying that? It's just, you know, it's not the Amanda Nunes you know. It's the actual human version has to go and do it. And the human version isn't the caricature you have built in your mind. They are a person with difficulties and feelings and challenges and worries and injuries. And it's hard to be the caricature that we make them out to be. You're saying Shev is too patient and that didn't work out for her in the rematch. I agree, but Shev is always patient.

It's true. She often takes five rounds to beat her seemingly even bigger dogs like Peña. High pace against either Nunes. Shevchenko seems smart but risky. Yeah, it's no doubt risky, but if you're Shevchenko, you've got to find some way to get over that hump. You know, easy for me to say that, but clearly the way she's been doing it has not been sufficient. Seems like Aldo is too close to a title fight to have one with Cruz. It'd be kind of fun though, right?

At what point should a black belt like Dustin tap back into really working on that part of his skill set? Seems to be the issue for him at the highest level. Dude, I guarantee they worked it. Dog, if you get someone on your back who's good from there, you can work that shit for six months and it may not matter. Like, I don't know how else to explain that. You know, imagine if I had to start with Gordon Ryan on my back, dude, you could give me three years of training. I don't know that I would be able to three more years. Cause I've got several under my belt. I don't know that I'd be able to stop it. Like, you know, he got choked by Khabib and Oliveira.

I would, yes, it's a problem at the highest, highest level, but I would caution against thinking that's like a thing he has ignored. Someone says that Oliveira is the best fighter in the UFC. I would challenge that a little bit, but he is certainly the man tonight. Cruz did look solid. We'll talk about him on Monday. Someone says, I think Amanda's killer instinct was left behind. Maybe. She had opportunities to inflict damage in the first round, but held back just maintaining top position. Maybe. Not a bad point. Overconfidence. I definitely think there might

be some of that. Dude, how many people are telling Amanda, you're the best, you're the most amazing? This is why the voice in your head is the most important. You have to have a good internal dialogue with yourself, whether you're a professional athlete or anybody else. But can you imagine having the world tell you you're the greatest at your given profession ever? You know, like what does that do to you? Again, maybe that played no role here. I don't know, but you have to, again, the kind of coalition of things you need to go right in your life to be a dominant champion, that coalition of things of the right time in your life and no injuries and your skill set just happened to be what it needed to be for that time and blah, blah, blah, is fragile. It's

very fragile. They can hold it together sometimes, but it's fragile. Was it more of a detriment for Garbrandt in his loss to Cara France, the lack of defensive skills, the weight cut to flyweight, or the inability to absorb strikes to the chin. Buddy, it's all three. It's all three. This person says, Cody's chin was never an issue. He took three big hooks in a row from TJ in the rematch. He took several clean hooks from Pedro before going out. Yeah, but at this point you have to ask, did he do damage to it because of those things? Not just like, did he show decent resiliency in them? Now, what is the accumulative effect afterwards? Do you think the glove grab was the swing in the fight?

Honestly, it could be, man. You know, I hate to say it because I don't want to take things away from Olivera. And I don't even know. I have to go back and look at the tape. I don't even know if it's true, but if it is true, it should give people a little bit of pause about it. A little bit. Does the Nunes loss hurt Kayla's negotiations? Ooh, good question. No, because it's still the biggest fight for Kayla. It's bigger than the Cyborg fight. But I have to admit, it does change the equation a little bit. Man, Kayla wanted that role, huh?

MMA just won't conform to your narrow version of things. It's just not how it works. Why does Herb Dean get to referee title fights so often? They love him in Nevada, I guess. Someone told me yesterday he was looking for me. I don't know if that's true or not. Did Amanda look off to you tonight? She didn't look like she looked in the home fight.

I can say that for sure. Is the only way to beat Charles Oliveira by a lucky well-timed haymaker? No. A disciplined approach of real good clinch breaking, a jab, right? Slick lateral movement, getting your back off the fence. I think that can beat him. But if you start fucking around with that it won't Okay This person says Reddit has the replay

Already And they're saying that there was no glove grab Again I am relying on What people are saying they could be totally trolling me If there was no glove grab Then that's He won mean, you can, you know, he won as clean as it can possibly be. Has there ever been a fight

that turned so drastically on such a clear hold of the gloves? Again, you know what? People aren't, okay, there's several people saying there was no glove grab. Okay people saying there was no glove grab, okay, if there's no glove grab, and Rogan just got that wrong, then I don't know what else you want me to say, like, all the thing I need to figure out is why Dustin rolled the way that he

did, I make you, I make that you and definitely your cohost didn't give Charles his respect as champ. So he went out there and took that. Yeah, it's true. Uh, well, I mean, we definitely knew he'd be a tough customer either way,

but I think we both picked against him. So yeah, sure. He is better. He has absolutely been better than I've been able to reasonably ascertain ahead of time. And, um, and,

and he's proving it. He's proving that he is extremely special. I mean, I'm convinced now, but how can Justin best prepare for the BJJ of Charles? He has to figure out a way to clinch break and stay as far away as possible, but find a way to maintain a space where he can be dangerous, but not be overtaken. Because once it becomes a jiu-jitsu match, there's nothing he can do. Pena1, this person writes, with Misha Tate level striking.

Dude. You know. St. Pierre got knuckled into the fucking canvas by Matt Serra. I watched it live happen. Like, yeah, that happens. Do I think Peña is able to beat Shevchenko? And again, able to beat? Yes. Do I think that's the likeliest outcome? No. What a card. Yeah, it was a pretty good card. You see Poirier going to 170 now, maybe for a fight with Colby for some money or something, but no. No, I don't. Okay. That's funny. Someone wrote, oh yeah, Shaquille Majorey wrote, no joke, I immediately searched for a

resume review after that Nunes-Pena fight, yeah, several people have made that joke, um, but dude, this is MMA, this is what happens, uh, okay, hold on, let's see what's up here, okay, so someone sent me a thing to the... Okay, here's the glove grab. There's definitely one at first. Then he lets it go. And then he goes to a C grip, now once he goes to the C grip, there isn't one, and then he sits up, um, people are saying that there's, maybe the angle I have is not so great. I don't... I gotta tell you, I'm not so sure that I...

I need to see more. There's definitely a moment where he does have it and then lets it go for a clean grip. And then what he does with his legs, let me watch his legs here for a second. Let's see how he switched this over. They kind of zoom in so it's hard to tell. Oh, so okay. Oh, this is why Dustin bailed. Now I can see it. So why did Dustin bail? So I have a theory based on what I'm seeing here. Forget the glove grab for just a second. So what I'm seeing here is that you see Oliveira from the Omoplata start scooting behind Dustin, right? There's a lot of like Barambolo type.

I'm not saying he was going to do a Barambolo, but there's a lot of back takes that involve finding yourself in that kind of a position. So you can see him scooting behind, and then Dustin's like, fuck that. He probably doesn't want his back taken, so might as well just go for guard. That's my hunch on what happened, but let me watch this one more time. Okay, so he switches to the C grip, which is fine.

Then he sits up, and then he tries to turn behind. It's hard for me to tell. It's hard for me to tell. I'm going to table this because I don't really have a good answer for the broadcast and I'm only going to muddy the waters any more than I already have. He definitely lets it go for a time. It's just hard to tell if he reconstitutes it when he begins to scoot behind Dustin. And he tries to overhook Dustin's leg. And that's when Dustin begins to roll.

I think he was like, fuck this. I don't want my back taken or him to get behind me or something. But we'll have room for debate on it at a bare minimum, right? All right. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. Follow me. On Instagram. Thank you guys so much for watching. minimum right all right thumbs up on the video hit subscribe follow me on instagram thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it morning combat award-winning morning combat will

be ready for you monday at 11 a.m plus i'll have a full mk extra credit where we get to all the fights on our podcast that we never got to um Morning Combat. We have tons of analysis coming your way, plus all the stuff from Lomachenko, who looked like a fucking beast tonight, and everything else. Okay? So thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time.