MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC 272: Colby Covington vs. Jorge Masvidal Results | UFC 272 Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: March 6, 2022

At UFC 272, welterweights and bitter enemies Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal battle in the ESPN+ pay-per-view main event. In the co-main event, Rafael dos Anjos faces Renato Moicano. Elsewhere on the fight card, Bryce Mitchell takes on Edson Barboza. The card also features Greg Hardy, Maryna Rodriguez and many others. (2:20) - Colby Covington vs. Jorge Masvidal (31:10) - Rafael Dos Anjos vs. Renato Moicano (43:40) - Bryce Mitchell vs. Edson Barboza (53:40) - Kevin Holland vs. Alev Oliveira (56:00) - Sergey Spivak vs. Greg Hardy (65:15) - Fan Questions 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. Hi, everybody. It is 1.14 in the morning on the 6th of March, 2022. This is the official Morning Combat UFC 272 post-fight show. I'll be the host for today's festivities. My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of the normal Morning Combat hosting duo. And Brian Campbell, of course, is my partner. He will be

with me on Monday. We'll together talk about everything, including some of the boxing over the weekend. But today, we're going to talk about UFC 272. It just finished. It is in the book, so if you guys don't want spoilers, now's your time to go. If you're watching this on YouTube, please, for the love of Jesus Christ, give us, if you'd be so kind, a thumbs up on the video and hit that subscription button. What are you waiting for? Hit that joker. All right?

Please do that. Word of caution. I am a, well, I'm not single. I'm married. But I am a single dad for today anyway. And if my daughter wakes up, I have to go attend to it, which would cut short the show. So no time like the present with that out of the way. If you don't want spoilers, time to go. Let's get this party started, right?

All right. There we are. I think everything looks good. I think we're ready to go. And without further ado, let's get this thing moving. Man, there is a lot to talk about. What a very surprisingly eventful, in a lot of ways, actually. A lot of reffing things, a lot of judging things, a lot of commentary things, a lot of broadcasting. Can you believe they lost like a minute of round two? I almost had an aneurysm about that. ESPN, I don't know whose, accidents happened. I don't know whose fault it was. I'm sure they were freaking out to try to get it back up. But that was, that sucked. I was not thrilled with that reality. Let me turn this subscription animation off. Okay. Let's start with the main event. I have to pull up the stats on this too. So give me just a second here as I pull that up.

All right. Your results. Colby Covington defeats Jorge Masvidal. Your scores, 49-46, 50-44, 50-45. all of those are somewhat understandable. There was probably a 10-8 round, maybe that fifth round by Colby. So you could understand that score. The 50-45, you could understand sort of Colby winning all the rounds. And then the 49-46, I'm guessing, and I have not seen the judges' scorecards, I'm going to guess that what happened was that one of the judges gave Jorge round four, where he briefly dropped Colby Covington.

Okay, what is the story of this fight? I mean, I don't think any of us were super confused about what we might see here, or what different games the guys had, and how they all might match up. Jorge, I think, what was this, his 50th fight or something? He's got a ton of experience. He's 37 years old. We'll talk about that in just a minute because I do think that part is relevant. And Colby, we know, obviously, sort of a volume striker at times, but obviously, wrestling is his game, scrambling, particularly against the fence, although he can do it in open space as well.

And then really kind of controlling through transition top position, right? That's really where he shines. This fight was, in many ways, a lot like the Lawler fight. With Lawler, it wasn't... I should say this. For two rounds, it was like the Lawler fight, where he had Jorge on an elbow or something like that, and he would basically be sitting on a hip, threatening that rear naked choke. Not really threatening it, but Jorge couldn't fully ignore it, because if you fully ignore it, then he might actually really try and sink it in.

But by itself, it was never very close. I mean, he was off on the side, he was over the jaw. And again, you can submit people from over the jaw, but I don't know if Colby's all that good at it. And it doesn't matter. The point is that you have to take it seriously, so it affects the whole transition and your ability to do anything about it, because you have to bail to even worse positions to get out of it, which he then uses to advance, and then on and on and on and on. Not a ton of ground and pound in those two rounds. I think the first and the fifth looked a lot like that. Again, I missed parts of the second.

The fourth, Colby did a little bit more trading since he got dropped. Maybe the third, too, you could say that about. Although the third, I think he was doing a lot of damage from guard. There were some nice elbows from Colby where he was actually in guard throwing some heavy ground and pound. That is a sum. I'm not going to say it's a new wrinkle because he had it before he got to the elite stage.

But when he got to the elite stage, some of it went away. And so bringing that back was pretty important and a pretty good job. So in many ways, the fight kind of played out, I don't know if exactly like anyone thought, but not too dissimilar from the majority of what folks had said was these are the likeliest outcomes. You got something along those lines, not especially surprising. In fact, I tweeted this and I think it's really true. You know, he was by far the better wrestler, by far the better grappler, and in this particular case, by far the better fighter tonight. Colby Covington earned that victory and did it with a little bit of adversity, a little bit of adversity, not a ton, but some. And did it with a little bit of adversity, a little bit of adversity, not a ton, but some.

And did it showing... Well, I said I didn't learn anything new. I'll walk that back a little bit. Some of the ground and pound, again, not new, but the ability for him to weave that in against a better opponent is somewhat new. But I think in general, one of the knocks on Colby has been that up until tonight, he didn't get a, like, one of the knocks on Colby has been that up until tonight, he didn't have a win over an existing ranked welterweight.

Now, this win changes that. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like, okay, maybe there's some slight differences, but I didn't get a better sense based off of this victory in terms of how he matches up with the rest of the division in terms of what I already knew, right? In terms of what you already knew about how Colby matches up with Leon Edwards, how Colby matches up with Gilbert Burns, how Colby matches up with, we'll see what happens with Shemayev or whatever. You had a certain conception about what that might look like. Did tonight in any way change anything? Did you find some new wrinkle about him that you think might be really relevant for those contests? Perhaps you could find something at the margins,

but there was nothing super significant. Not that every fight needs to be. Again, this almost sounds pejorative. I don't mean it in that way. I'm just sort of saying it was a good victory. It was a dominant victory in almost every way. But it wasn't the kind of victory where you walked away being like, man, like he's really, you know, with the way in which he's operating these days,

he's really going to put it on the rest of the division. Again, you might've said that before the fight and I got killed on Twitter for saying I thought he was the second best welterweight. You know, sort of like Kamaru Usman's only real rival. And the argument, again, was that he didn't have a win over a top 15 welterweight at the time. I guess I will sort of concede that I don't have a clear picture. Perhaps you do. I do not have a clear picture in my mind in terms of how he matches up with Gilbert. Other than what I saw from him previously.

Alright, let's talk about some of the details of the fight. Let me pull some of the stats up if I can. Okay. So what does Colby usually average? He usually averages strikes landed four per minute, so 25-minute fight. Let's see, how many did he actually land? Just 94, so pretty low for him. Well, no, not that low, actually.

A little on the below-average side. A little on the below-average side. How many takedowns did he get? Six of 15. Jesus Christ. Three of five in the first. That was dominant. Zero of two in the second. And again, I didn't see a minute of that round. You got one of two in the third, zero of four in the fourth, and then two of two in the fifth. Now, what's also interesting is the control time. So the control time for Colby, again, this can also count like when you're pressing an opponent into the fence. It's not

just on top. They gave him 16 minutes and 14 seconds of the fight. Man, that is a lot of time for Jorge to be fighting from a defensive standpoint. Again, you might be like, well, what does it mean that Colby was pressing him into the fence? And it counts for control time if he's not like throwing punches or the takedown hasn't been established right by itself at that moment it doesn't mean a whole lot but when you look at the accumulative effect of what what happens the longer he stays Jorge Masvidal stays in those defensive positions they're not calamities per se and that they you know he just implodes all of a sudden but um Colby builds a lot of offense from them. Not necessarily all at once, but over time for sure. A lot of times you would see Colby grab the single leg and then run

it, right? Because it's one thing to try and take your opponent down against the fence. It's another when they have to start balancing and then using their hands instinctually or otherwise to balance off of what you're trying to do to them. And, you know, he changes directions on takedowns. Colby, he's a handful. He's a handful, man. So I thought you saw a lot of the older stuff in terms of control and the kinds of control that he pursues. Again, a little bit more ground and pound.

Winning the scrambles constantly. A couple of things that Jorge really did in that fight, I guess, was it the fourth round where he did it? I can't remember now. He drops him in the fourth, that part I remember. But then, that's right, then he tries to engage with Colby on the ground rather than backing up. I was like, dude, you saw it a few times, man. Jorge Masvidal is a good wrestler. He's a good wrestler. His overall body of work in terms of matching up with respected credentialed peers in terms of defensive or offensive wrestling has shown him to be not wanting he is quite good he is quite good but when you've got a guy like Colby who has been

wrestling as long as he has and has made it a central feature, not merely of his game, but to an extent of his identity. He talks about the community. He identifies himself as such, and his proud background, and everything else, right? When you've got a guy like that, man, there's just,

it's, you know, yes, I grant that there are the St. Pierres out there, and some other ones perhaps, but that is such a difficult thing to manage. And also, Colby's not like a Yoel Romero type wrestler, which is freestyle folk style, but that is such a difficult thing to manage. And also Colby's not like a Yoel Romero type wrestler, which is freestyle folk style, but more than that, dude, Colby's a good mat wrestler, right? The guys, there's wrestling on the feet and then there's wrestling in those sort of scrambly kind of tied up positions once everyone is, once both competitors are in a downed position.

Colby excels at that. Excels at that. I thought some of his entries were a little bit... When he was reaching with some of those long-range right hands, and I was like, man, he might get countered with some of that stuff, but he didn't. He managed to work through it, and then when he gets you on the floor, dude, he is all over you, like white on rice. And then when he gets you on the floor, dude, he is all over you like white on rice.

So you can either pull full guard on him, and he had actually pretty good ground and pound from there. Or you can try and scramble through it, and that's when he doesn't really have good ground and pound. But he doesn't really need it because he's got really good control. That's sort of the choice you're really left with. If you can fight him on the feet like Jorge did, and you can see that Jorge had some success, although Colby had some success too. We'll talk about that as well. But that's really the choice that he presented Jorge in this fight. You could try and play a jiu-jitsu game from full guard or like a stall out game with the referee, but then you're going to get a lot of ground and pound. Or you cannot do that,

and you won't get ground and pound as much, but you will be completely having your weight ripped out from under you, and he got big brother by the end of that fifth round there a little bit. That's a tough choice, man. That's a tough choice to do that, to play that game, one or the other, for 16 minutes and 14 seconds in a 25-minute fight. Boy, that's tough. That's a tough assignment, man. That's a tough, tough way to go about it. His takedown defense in the total aggregate looked quite good, right?

He defended 9 of 15 takedowns. But not enough to matter. Colby got takedowns again in the first, in the third, and then in the fifth rounds. He offered in the second and the fourth. I guess you could say those are the two best ones. Again, I'm not sure how to score the second. I think some people did give that to Jorge. So I guess maybe that's the one they gave to him. Now that I walk that back, I was thinking out loud that maybe it was the judges, one of the judges that gave him the fourth round for dropping Colby. But that was largely Colby's round other than that moment. And he didn't like fall and have his head hit. He kind of went to a knee and popped right back up.

So I didn't think, I'm actually, if they didn't score that one for him, that's probably correct because the better one may have been the second based on what I saw from people who were in the arena who were also professionally scoring. I mean media folks, not like actual judges, but you know, that's not professional, in their professional occupation. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, I did want to talk a bit about, actually let me finish on Colby here for a second.

So where does he go next? He calls out Dustin Poirier and then proceeds to, he was kind of screaming, so like I think a lot of it got missed. Sitting there insulting his wife and then bringing up his kids, which I need to double check that because he was mumbalicious and I missed a lot of that, I'm sure. But it did sound like he was going after his wife by name or by description and then by going after his kids, which is just like, I mean, I can't believe we're doing this, but whatever. I don't know if Dustin will take that or wants that or whatever.

I don't know what that is. But if Colby's going to stick around, I had advocated to, if Colby wins, which he did, to give the fight to Kamaru. But I guess what UFC's probably going to do, because here's the thing, there was a little bit of booze throughout some of that fight when Colby was kind of, again, not stolen it out, but when the fight kind of ground to a halt in a few moments, I thought if he had been a little bit more dominant that maybe, and there was a time where he was kind of, he was, it was blitzkrieging Jorge with punches. I should talk about that as well. But the point I'm trying to make is I thought they might give him the title shot. I don't think this was that kind of performance, so that's probably out. But what I think might be possible is

the winner of Chemaev-B if chemayev beats burns it's like i mean it's the it's the it's the most validating of wins in terms of the kind of threat like if you wanted to discover something about someone and they had to fight someone like gilbert burns you would learn a lot about them right because gilbert burns is super well-rounded or at least you could learn a lot about them. But I don't think by itself that's sufficient for Chamaya to get a title shot. Although, who the hell knows? If he goes in there and just ragdolls them, anything's possible.

But probably they're going to have to see each other at some point. So that's, I guess, what I would imagine would be next and how that goes, anyone's guess. Or if Gilbert wins, I guess that would be next. I do want to talk about the striking a little bit. Colby gets into a little bit of trouble at times because he will brawl and then just stand in the pocket a little flat-footed. And not just that, but give and take flat-footed. He might roll with something a little bit. He does actually do a pretty good job of blocking and rolling with things at times, sometimes anyway, but not with that right hook that Jorge landed. But it's when he does that, when he gets pulled into that you versus me kind of shoving match with his feet planted in the pocket, when he kind of is pushing the other guy back or doing some kind of setup and then landing

and then throwing and then moving away or changing or resetting, I tend to think he actually has a bit more success. There was that one moment of blitzing with punches. I think that was, I think, was it round four, the early part of round four? It's the round with the highest output for Colby. He landed 33 significant strikes. Now that is very high for him, especially without any takedowns. He went 0 for 4 in that round. So he didn't get any takedowns and he only had, I say only, but he had two minutes of control time there. But he managed to land 33 significant strikes. I think it was that round. If not, please don't get too upset with me. So I do think it has real utility.

It has real utility. It's just he gets himself into some trouble with that, with that, quite literally, the trading. It's worth talking about Masvidal a little bit here on a few different ways. One, Masvidal is, I think, 37. When is his birthday? Masvidal's birthday is November, so he won't be 38 until November,

so he's got some time. But 37, I would not say is necessarily over the hill for welterweight, but it is on, it's not young. It's a little bit on the older side jorge looked a little older to me tonight um i have great respect for his career i've always had great respect for his career i continue to um i don't know if anyone knows this i think i had the first interview with jorge right when he got maybe the first or the second one. No, it may have been the first one. I interviewed Jorge, I think like within days of his return

from that game show he was on. And it was fortuitous. Like we didn't, we hadn't heard from him. And my producer was like, Hey, what's Jorge up to? We hadn't heard from him. So we hit him up. And I think it was, you know think this had been just days after, very close proximity. And I've really always just believed he was a really quality fighter all the way around. I do think that age is beginning to play a factor in his performance. I'm not here to say that that doesn't mean he can't win again or won't win again or won't beat somebody good or can't have moments of brilliance because he did have some moments of brilliance in this particular fight. But it looked to me like there was a certain nimbleness of movement that was missing.

Granted, Colby was making him wrestle a ton, so there's some obviously real factors about that. But the way in which Jorge was kind of wearing the punches a little bit more than usual and just on the back foot a little bit more. What's the ultimate sign that someone is shopworn? It's when they don't throw back. That's not him. He's not shopworn. He's throwing back.

He dropped Colby in the fourth for crying out loud. So he's not at that level. I don't mean to suggest as much. I'm trying to be as accurate as I can be, but I don't think it's fair to be like, oh, age doesn't play a role in his performance. I think it does at this point. Exacerbated by the particular strengths of Colby Covington and the particular ways in which he applied them here, for sure. But 37 is not young. It's not young for 170 pounds. And so I don't know what's next for Jorge. I don't know what he's going to do because he's probably going to seek a Conor fight or a Nate fight or who knows, something along those lines. But I think that I had never seen Jorge.

You could say maybe in the Usman fight, but it didn't really go long enough. And the ending was so shocking. You were like, wow. But Jorge made his debut, they mentioned, in 2003 in Fort Lauderdale. And Jesus Christ, the guy's record is 35 and 16 to say nothing of however many street fights he had or sparring sessions and tough training days. It's a lot of wear and tear on the body.

It's a lot of damage overall. I think some of that played a bit of a role today. Now, that doesn't diminish what Colby did. As I mentioned, Jorge is still, will always be a quality fighter given certain ways you measure it, but I think he's still a quality fighter. And so that's a quality win. That's a quality win. But you just have to ask about the long term. How much longer is there left, not merely in Masvidal's career, but more specifically beating and fighting guys in the top 15 in really competitive ways.

Probably a little while longer, but at 38, 39, that's a hard place to be at 170 pounds in the top 10, top 15, top 5. It's hard to do. Very, very hard to do. So he had his moments. He was hooking with a hooker there. That's how he landed that right hand. That was just instinctual. I doubt he really thought through it. It was just probably natural for him to throw that given the how he landed that right hand. That was just instinctual. I doubt he really thought through it. It was just probably natural for him to throw that given the circumstance he landed. It was perfect. It whipped Colby's chin all the way around. Great shot. There was a lot of good body kicks he was able to land. I liked a lot of that from him. Some of the leg kicks early,

he got away from them, but of course you have to make some choices about what you can throw and what you couldn't throw. He was trying to get the teep going. Never really seemed to work all that well. He does have good defense for the most part. Like he doesn't get, you know, that was Colby Covington doing work tonight, but in general, he doesn't get super overwhelmed positionally. But what you can see is this has been sort of one of the knocks on Jorge's career in terms of performance, which is, you know, think about the Demi and Maya fight, right? In the Demi and Maya fight, like, Jorge didn't get his ass kicked by any stretch, but he got positionally controlled, and then the fight, he was just never really able to get out of it. That has been something of a lingering issue for him. Again, not bad wrestling, but the really good grappler types, and of course, Maya's not a wrestler type,

but a grappler type, they have the ones who can spam him with these repeated attempts and then can work through scrambles in a more complete way through the chain of attacks, they have found ways to neutralize Jorge. I think the way I would describe that, they neutralize him. And Colby was able to take it a step further, but you get the idea. There were long parts of that fight, which is why the control time was at 16 minutes and 14 seconds, where Jorge was on the defense and not getting torn up.

Those chokes from Colby, again, we've been over this a little bit, but Jorge was not super worried about them. Not ignoring them, but not super worried about them. So, you know, there was a lot of time where he was just kind of still in it, but he couldn't really ever get going to anything. Maybe it didn't get a whole lot worse a lot of the time, but you were just stuck. You're just stuck right there. I'll never forget, this was, I remember this from Strikeforce, from the Paul Daly and Tyron Woodley fight, and I was like, okay, dude, Paul Daly in that fight did a really good job of stopping, of not giving up the takedown in ways that he had in previous fights. But Tyron had him glued to that thing. Glued to it.

So always remember, it is one thing to stop the takedown, like you have not been taken down. It is quite another to then create separation off the fence. Jorge did that a few times. But this is when I get back to the age thing. It's like the urgency, the nimbleness to circle back to center. It just wasn't there. He seemed partly, again, Colby drained the gas tank, but he seemed a little bit more content to just kind of wait for Colby to bring the fight to

him and then see if he could do something about it once it was there. That's a tough way to fight Colby Covington, man. And it's also equally difficult to take the fight to him, but just accepting that he's going to be sort of leading the dance a little bit, it just puts you on the back foot metaphorically and in many cases quite literally. Let me see if there's any other stats that stand out about this fight. Let's look at the targeting. Man, Colby Covington is a headhunter. 89% of his targeted strikes to the head.

89. Just 1% to the leg, 9% to the body. For the Jorge Masvidal, 56% to the head, 14% to the body, 28% to the leg. So he did actually distribute the attacks a little bit more effectively, or a little bit more, I should say, there's a little bit more diversity. But Colby really had, I mean, Colby's overall volume, wow, Jesus. Overall total strike volume. So some of this didn't land, a good portion of it as a matter of fact. But in terms of just output, 338 for Colby, Jorge Masvidal just 166. Now, effective is even worse. Good Lord. Actually, it's about the same. 218 total strikes landing for Colby, significant just 94.

Just 90, just 90 for Jorge Masvidal. So you had 338 to 166 and then 218 to 90. It's just too much. I mean, just look at these numbers. 16 minutes and 14 seconds of control time. One sub-attempt, one reversal, six takedowns, 338 attempted strikes, 218 of which landed, 94 of which were significant over the course of 25 minutes. That's just too much offense. That's just way too much, I think, for a lot of guys to deal with. By contrast, look at the numbers for Jorge. 21 seconds of control time, credited with no reversals, no sub-attempts, no takedowns, no takedown attempts. Just 166 total strikes attempted, 90 landing.

Just 67 of them as significant strikes. That's a lot less work. Again, in part because he was put on the defensive standpoint, but that's what I mean. Colby just fucking layers it on top of you. We treat these rounds, and you're supposed to as you judge them, each one's what I mean. Colby just fucking layers it on top of you. We treat these rounds as, and you're supposed to as you judge them, each one is an individual round. So there's no such thing as like, well, you know, what momentum was this and that, and I find different ways to judge it. No, once the round is over, that is it. It is in the books. They go to the next one, same thing, right? But Colby doesn't have to worry about that. He's not judging the fight. He's fighting the fight. And so what he does is he just, he doesn't, when the round is over, yes, a new round begins.

But he just, it just feels like he just is constantly putting his thumb on the scale of the fight and just dumping offense on top and on top and on top and on top. And look at the face of Masvidal at the end of the fight. He didn't look too beat up, but he looked like he was just so sick of it, so worn down, so thoroughly overwhelmed. That's what Colby does, man. It's just, it's, you know, each moment,

each round by itself is not like some kind of highlight reel come to life. But the stat sheet at the end, the stat sheet at the end is just this fucking tidal wave of offense. And this isn't even the most I've ever seen. Like, go back to his Lawler fight, dude. So go back to Colby Covington's Lawler fight. In that fight, I mean, look at this. In that fight, right? That was a, was that, how many rounds was that one? Was that five rounds as well? I can't even remember anymore. Yes. And he didn't have as much control time, eight minutes and 43 seconds. But he had 10 of 18 takedowns, 541 attempted strikes, 201 of which he landed, 179 of which were significant.

Dude, it's just an avalanche. It's an avalanche. Slow-moving avalanche at certain times, but it's an avalanche. And that's what he does. That's how he wins. That's just how he wins. He ratchets it up. And let me see if I can see here one more thing with the stats here, if I can. Yeah, he... Actually, you know what? In terms of total strikes attempted, right? For Colby Covington, in terms of total strikes attempted, round five was his second most.

Round three would have been his most attempted. Round five was his second most. Round three would have been his most attempted. Most significant would be round four. So in the fifth round, he's putting out almost as much as his peak amount of volume. And he was two for two on takedowns. Probably would have had more if Jorge could have fought him off a little bit more nimbly. With four minutes and 34 seconds of control time. He is a sheet of ice. He is a sheet of ice.

That is what he is. I mean, you can like Colby or you can not like Colby. Seems like the fans are turning in his direction. You can like that fact or you can hate that fact. The guy can fucking fight, man. He can fight. And it's not the highlight reel kind of fighting, but it is at the end being like, God damn.

It's like looking at the bill after drinking all night. You're like, we drank all that shit. It's like, who had the shots of Jaeger? I didn't even, when were the shots of Jaeger? I don't even remember this. And who had the Patronron who's the fucking asshole who ordered Patron you're looking at your bill you're like I can't afford all this right that's what it is each glass you know is one thing by itself but accumulatively you and your friends just like fuck me what happened here that's that's he is the bill at the end of the night.

That's what Colby is, man. He is, you're looking at it like, waiter, garçon, bring that fucking check. And la cuenta, por favor. And then you look at it and you're like, fuck my life. Holy shit. And that bill comes due in real time for his opponents, man. So, you know, I'll walk back a little bit about not learning a whole lot new. There wasn't a whole lot new. There was a little bit that was new. I don't know

exactly that I have a clearer sense about how he matches up with the rest of the division. I think he'll probably end up fighting the winner of Burns versus Chimaev, but that's hard to say based on the Dustin Poirier sweepstakes. For Jorge, as I mentioned before, I think it was the first fight I ever felt where age was playing a factor. And it'll be very interesting to see what kind of his matchmaking looks like from here, given the age, what kind of fights make sense for him monetarily, but who's available. It's going to be interesting to see. All right, let's talk about that co-main event. Again, if you have questions, I put up a thread on Twitter. You can just go there, and I will get to them at the end of this.

Let's talk about this one. Wow. Rafael dos Anjos defeats Hanato Moikano. 49-45, 49-44, 50-44. Again, I think that scoring makes sense. Starting from the back here, 49-44, 50-44. Again, I think that scoring makes sense. Starting from the back here, 50-44, you would say he won all the rounds. And one of them, I forget which round it was, round three, where he beat the fucking dog shit out of him.

And then the other ones, 49-45, 49-44, you would still have the 10-8 round in the 44 case there. But I'm guessing they may have given Moicano the fifth because he kind of rallied a little bit. And then there was the 49-45, four rounds to one for RDA. So all of those are conceivably, you can understand them.

I don't know what it's going to take for an MMA coroner to save their guy short of someone dying in front of him. I don't know what it will take, honestly. I've had this debate with a lot of people. So if the fight goes like this, Javel Dos Anjos was, of course, supposed to fight Rafael Fazeev. It fell out.

So Moicano fills in on like four or five days notice. Something admirable but inadvisable. Does it anyway. And through the course of it, starts strong early in the first, but gets taken down and controlled. Continues more of that in the second. And in the third, just gets absolutely fucking beaten like a drum. Dropped. Pounded.

I thought for sure they were going to stop it. They didn't. Then he goes to his corner. And I thought they might do it. They didn't. He comes back out for the fourth, which for the most part was a bad round for him, but not terrible right up until the end. And then it got bad again. And I thought, okay, there's no way they're going to let him out for the fourth because he came out for like the, for the fifth, he came over the fourth and his eye was all fucked and he lied

his way through it, which every fighter or most fighters, a lot of fighters do. They don't tell the doctor the truth about what they're seeing. Think about that for a second. Imagine you had an illness, not immediately detectable or you had some kind of symptoms, but you weren't telling the doctor what you had. In fact, you were outright lying to him your doctor would make a very inaccurate diagnosis right the doctor is in this case and in every case they are to do their job effectively unless you have some kind of hideous visible injury they are reliant upon you to tell the truth like but if you don't tell the truth again they have a lot of ways of not knowing better whatever anyway um so he inspected it coming out for the fourth i thought okay coming out for the fifth there's just no way there's

just no way they're not going to let this happen and they did and now mark goddard um did tell moicano you need to show me something in the first 30 seconds or i'm stopping this. And again, that was Moikano's, maybe his best round. That may have been the only round he got on two of those judges' scorecards. I mean, this is such a problem. Like, you know, they could have called that fight easily after the third. You took the fight. Moikano was talented, but he took the, he has no wins on his record over an opponent the likes of RDA, number one. Not many people do, but he doesn't. Then you add in the fact that he takes his fight on five days notice.

Then you add in the fact that this dude's been put out a few times. I don't know if he's taken a shit ton of damage, but he's not taken a negligible amount before this fight even started. And he is down three rounds, having nearly been stopped at the end of the third and his opponent is in full control super skilled and very experienced and they just let it go it's like dude you can look at everything he takes from the end of the beginning of the fourth to the end of the fight and realize all of that didn't't need to happen. You would have gotten the exact, well, not the exact same result in terms of decision versus stoppage, but an L just the same.

And they let it go. And I hear all these arguments all the time, and they're just all fucking bullshit constantly. I don't care how experienced the corner is. I really don't. In fact, this is the argument that they trot out all the time. The argument that they trot out is, well, his corner knows him or her. His corner knows him better. They're going to be in a better position to make a decision about their welfare.

Not true. That statement is not even fucking close to true. If that was true, then how would you ever have deaths in combat sports? If the people who are cornering them there are best situated to make a medical choice for them, we wouldn't be having these problems now, would we? Because that is not true, we have problems. In fact, it is the absence of that statement being even remotely fucking true that we have that problem. It is true that they know them better. Of course, none of us know those individual fighters better. That part is true, but that doesn't equal I make better decisions for your health and safety weighed against your relative expectations for outcomes. In fact, that's exactly where it gets inverted. Because they love them so much or like them so much or

respect them so much, and often there can be a fight or pay dynamic or whatever, they will say, I've asked many coaches who have not stopped fights after the fact. By the way, a lot of them regret it. Off the record, a lot of them regret it. Number two, what they say is, you know, I love this person. But the reality ends up being that because they love them, they see them in this way where they just want to never deny. They don't want to be that person that denies them this chance at success. And they've seen them at their best. So they have this, you know, they have a warped perspective about how accessible that excellence is. Right?

If, you know, this is why, it's like, here's how silly this argument is. Those people in their corner, yes, they know them better and they're going to give them a lot of times, you know, in a competitive bout, they are the ones best situated to give them, not just because they're there, but even if they weren't there, they're the best ones to give them strategic advice. But dude, these people are very biased, right? By definition. I am biased towards my wife. And I have a view of my wife that might be higher than what other people have by virtue of the fact that she is my life partner and I love her and all that stuff, right? Like I believe in the utmost of her.

And I hope that my version is accurate, but I would imagine there might be other people who don't share that same feeling of affection for her or anybody else that may see things in a very different way. They are going to see their fighter in the absolute best light no matter how bad it gets. And that is why it gets fucking dangerous. This idea that MMA corners because they train with these people and they live with these people and they sweat with these people and they bleed with these people, that makes them the ones best situated to either throw the fight or not the fight, to either throw it or not to the towel, is the opposite of the truth. It actually biases them towards that fighter's strengths while ignoring the present. It does the opposite. So I'm going to keep saying this. I mean, you know, these guys, you watch fights long enough.

I know a lot of you probably have been watching fights a long time. But I'm going to guess that there's an equal amount of you that have not been watching fights all that long. Well, let me tell you how this movie ends. I have watched so many rotations of careers begin, middle, and end, and exit. And let me tell you something, the fighters on the exit side of things have a lot of regrets about a lot of the damage. Some of them don't, by the way. That's not universally't, by the way. That's not universally true, but it's truer than you might imagine. Especially if the money's not there at the end. And this lack of preservation in MMA for this all-out effort to just like,

we're just going to fetishize winning so much. Of course, winning is the most important thing, but it's not the only thing. It is not the only thing. It is of supreme importance. It is what makes the industry go round. But we're just not doing enough to protect these guys, period. It's not happening. But we're just not doing enough to protect these guys, period. It's not happening.

So Moikano got 10 minutes of damage that didn't need to happen. So I guess, congrats. Dos Anjos looked to be in Dos Anjos' shape. He looked to be, you know, not an ounce of fat on him. I don't mean that quite literally, but of course he was injos shape. He looked to be not an ounce of fat on him. I don't mean that quite literally, but of course he was in phenomenal shape. His wrestling saved him. I won't say saved him, but it drove his winning effort here. His great top control, great ground to pound.

I do think that I agree with the commentators that he was kind of letting off the gas after the third a little bit and was staying busy. Now Moicano, to his credit, because he is tough as fuck, came to life in the fifth. I hope folks don't think that that means that this validates anything because it doesn't.

It doesn't mean shit. I mean, it certainly validates how tough we can say he is and what kind of determination he has. I mean, this is what, I brought this up before, this is what the term gameness means or where Jorge Masvidal, as a matter of fact, gets his name, Gamebred. It's essentially a description of the same thing. Gameness, pursuit of the fight despite the physical consequences.

That is the definition. Pursuit of the fight despite the physical consequences. Boy, does he, does Hanato Moikano have that? Times a billion. Times a billion. Times a billion. I take my hat off to him, but that shit did not need to happen. Nothing meaningful or helpful was accomplished by that. So, I hope that what Moicano gets from this is a full camp.

I hope he gets a little bit of extra money. And a suitable opponent that, you know, obviously he just blitzed through Hernandez. He was due for an upgrade at 155. But all of this was asking a lot, man. It was asking a lot. You're coming in, you're flying from South America to North America on short notice. And you've got to fight Rafael Dos Anjos. And after the third, the fight could have been stopped in the third. North America on short notice, and you've got to fight Rafael Dos Anjos?

And after the third, the fight could have been stopped in the third, and by the luck of what the referee saw, it didn't. And they let it go 10 more minutes? For what, man? For what? For what? Oh, so he could, you know, so you didn't take that from him. You know, he had the chance to fight it out and go out on his shield. Yeah, man, that ain't the job. That ain't the job. And if you watch fights long enough, you really realize that ain't the job. One more note about

this. Another thing about damage, it will change guys. Now it's like ring rust. It doesn't change every guy every time in every situation. But, you know, to that. It doesn't change every guy, every time, and every situation. But to that point, RDA is actually taking a lot of damage, and he is just still a hammer. But I've seen a lot of fights where people were not the same afterwards, man. I'm not saying Moikana will be that way, but you put enough of these together. I'm not saying this about Brian Ortega, but if he had another fight like the Holloway or the Volk fights, then I would be really concerned at that point. That's just an overwhelming amount of damage.

I hope Moikano can avoid a fate like that. Bryce Mitchell defeats Edson Barboza and does so. This is amazing. 30-25, 30-26, 30-27. Again, you can understand the scorecards. I'm guessing the third round was a clear 10-8. Second round, yeah, I don't know if I'd give that. Or maybe they gave the first round a 10-8. I'm not really sure how they got the 25, but it doesn't really matter. This was supposed to be Bryce Mitchell's toughest fight, and on paper it was. Edson Barboza represented a class of opponent that he had not faced yet. It ended up looking more like something approximating a showcase fight. Now, it wasn't quite that, but dude, Bryce Mitchell was, of anyone, well, Holland had a nice KO too.

But I thought the most memorable performance on this card, quite frankly, was Mitchell's. Certainly on the main card. You know, Spivak did, I mean, there were some good finishes. I don't want to take that away from Spivak and Holland. But, you know, Mitchell just really shined tonight. He stayed out of trouble for the most part, right? Pressured and cage cut Edson Barboza consistently. And when he got into wrestling scenarios, dude, he was unstoppable. Barboza couldn't do anything to him. Dude, the timing on Bryce Mitchell's shots are excellent.

And his penetration to the hips is so fucking good. Dude, he had his hands clasped together underneath the rear end of Barboza before Barboza even knew what the fuck hit him. His level change is good. His shot is quick. And then once he gets to the mat, man, this is what all the top grapplers do. They force these impossible choices. They force choices between submissions and punches or other kinds of strikes. They force choices about rolling a certain direction and exposing something. But if you don't do that, then they'll just go and take something else positionally. If you don't give up X, I'm going to move to half.

If you don't give up something from half, whatever he wants, some kind of grip, whatever. And then punching. And if you don't turn away. Sorry, if I'm punching you from half and you turn away, I might take the back. If you don't turn away, I might pass to knee on belly. Like he's just constantly making you think about, if I don't take this, then I have to take that. There was one time he hit one of the doubles on Barboza.

Barboza tries to stand. Mitchell shelves it on his hip, which is, that's like good level wrestling right there, dude. People knowing how to shelf. And then on top of it, then reaches for the post hand and pulled it out. Dude, I was like, fucking Bryce Mitchell can, he'll put it on your ass. That was, that was impressive, man. And you know what?

He didn't make any mistakes in this fight. Nothing, nothing super significant. Nothing super significant. Nothing super significant. He made calculated, smart, I'm going to say careful, not risk averse, but careful decisions about timing his entries, planning them, getting underneath the punches of his opponent, And then once he got his opponent down, doing Bryce Mitchell things. By the way, not getting super greedy either. Like kind of taking what Barboza was giving him. Barboza had an inexplicable game plan or some kind of injury, or I don't understand. He also might be wearing it, by the way. Like, you know, obviously on the feet he throws back, but to not

have any offense except that one kind of obviously on the feet he throws back, but to not have any offense except that one kind of triangle at the end of the third, there's just not enough there. There's not enough there. He was just locking up full guard. I was like, dude, this ain't 2007 or whatever, man. You know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do a little bit more than that. But Bryce Mitchell didn't get super greedy with it. Now at the end there, he was kind of hammering him. But the point I'm trying to make here Now, at the end there, he was kind of hammering him, but the point I'm trying to make here is there was long stretches where he was happy to sit

in Barboza's guard because, you know, obviously to pass, if someone's holding full, you need to break that guard, which you can do, obviously, and many people do, but breaking that guard could potentially lead to, and there were times, by the way, where I realized that Barboza was working from open guard. I just mean to say, he didn't get greedy about passing. He pursued passing at times that it was advantageous to him, but he did not get greedy with the passing. He didn't necessarily need to. If you can tell your

opponent is just going to like collar tie and overhook and then put on full guard. He was just like, okay, I'll just beat you up from here. And then to the extent that he had to do a little bit more, he did that as well. He was constantly threatening him out. Dude, here's a good sign. Here's what you might want to look for on these top level grapplers, these guys who force impossible choices. No matter what you do, you're giving up something, right? Guys like Bryce Mitchell. Look at how much they incorporate Mount. Mount was lost for long stretches of the 2010s. I mean, you would see it, of course, but it didn't play a prominent role relative to what it played in the, the aughts, right? A lot of times I,

I remember why, when I watched MMA where guys would get Mount and that was the game over position. You were like, not the literal game over position, which is a different position, but which is a leg lock position. But, uh,

like it was game over. You were like, Oh, that guy's fucked, you know? And it's still obviously represents a significant threat, but the point I'm trying to make about Bryce Mitchell is that, maybe he gets to Mount, maybe he doesn't. But, do you notice what he does all the time? He threatens it.

He threatens it constantly. Dude, if you're underneath the grappling of Bryce Mitchell, the fucking last thing that you want is that dude in mount, right? And so you're going to have to push and shrimp and get to a hip and get to an elbow and get to a shoulder and everything else you need to do. And you're going to have to push on the leg and he's going to light you up when you do it, right? So there's your choice. I have a choice. Bryce Mitchell is about to achieve full mount. I think he hit three-quarter mount and then hit it. So here's my choice. I can put two hands on his knee, and I can shrimp, and I can recapture half. But if I do that, he's going to light my face on fire with his fists.

Well, I guess that's just the choice. Or you can just give up the mount fully and let him have it, which you can't do that either. So it's give up the mount or get your face plastered. That was a great performance by Bryce Mitchell, man. That was a great performance. Let me look at some of these stats. Let me see how much control time he had. I bet he had a metric ton of it. Oh man, in a 15-minute fight, he had 11 minutes and 28 seconds. Wow. Takedowns, 4 of 4. He didn't miss one of them. Didn't have a ton of strikes. He attempted 182, or excuse me, he landed 182 of 209,

which by itself is pretty good, but significant to only 34, so it's pretty low. Let me look at the targeting. Yeah, 82% to the head, 43% to the leg for Barboza, 37% to the body, 18% for Barboza to the head, just 11% to the body for Bryce Mitchell. But dude, I don't have a bad thing to say about that performance. No performance is perfect, but that was... You guys know how I felt about that fight beforehand. I didn't really know. I was like, I don't know how this one's going to go, right?

I could have seen a win for either guy. So Mitchell winning is in no way surprising, but I will say he's got better wins in the sense that he's got a twister on his record, you know, that kind of thing. But this might be the best example of, this is the greatest full demonstration. This performance is his most complete. You know, and still grappling heavy, obviously, but, oh, how am I leaving this out? He fucking dropped Barboza in round one.

I think it was a straight, I think it was a left, maybe it was a right. I can't remember quite at the moment. I have to go back and look. But he dropped him. Barboza never saw it coming. And he's able to use those level changes and that takedown threat to set that kind of stuff up. And he did it perfectly, man. Dude, that was a great performance.

That was a great performance. And, of course, he said a bunch of nice stuff afterwards about giving some of his money away. I don't know how advisable that is, but it's certainly a very charitable act. So I hope it works out for him financially. But I also like to see fighters give back to their local communities. That's the best thing to see. I made a point also about this fight not being in Miami. Is Bryce Mitchell, is he ever going to get a UFC fight in Arkansas? Think about that for a second, right? If he was a boxer, he would. If he was a boxer, he would. He would have a homecoming fight. He would have some guy who was clearly the B-side, and he would have a fight in UFC in Arkansas? Possible. Possible. Extremely unlikely.

So that kind of stuff kills me. But Bryce Mitchell, to me, had the... Everyone's going to say something may have been more standout to them. To me, this was the most standout performance. This is the one I'm going to remember the most, for sure. Okay, a couple of the quick, quick results. We'll spend more time on this on the full-on MK, which is live at 11 a.m. in the East on Mondays. Very quickly, Kevin Holland defeating Alex Oliveira. Came out not shit-talking at all. You know, he was brawling. When he was brawling, it was nice, but he was getting hurt a little bit, and his corner said, you know, you're looking a little flat when you're not brawling. A, stop brawling. And B, when you're not brawling, you're looking a little flat.

And I thought that was like right on the money because he was being, you know, when he's doing the whole shit-talking thing, it's like the porridge is too hot, right? And then when he was doing what he was doing today, the porridge was a little too cold. But then he goes out there in the second and dude, that fucking knockout. I think he faked a high double jab with the left, but he stutter steps into it and he had a high left hand. I think he double jabbed it again. I'm going strictly off of memory. I would have to review the tape. But he did have a high left hand and he did stutter step. Oliveira tries to evade and gets out of the way. But of course, this is all just a setup. It's a trick. So he is baiting and tricking Olivera into going to there and he intercepts

him with a right hand. Clean. And that stumbles him. And then Holland follows up with some elbows elbows that came from Mount Olympus. Kablam, dude. Just laying into Alex Oliveira. There was nothing he could do. They called that at 38 seconds of round number two. This is such a better weight class for Kevin Holland. I know he started a little slow in round one. His corner shook him up, woke him up. You saw the result. Dude, that kid is talented, man. He's really, really, really, really talented. I know that he did look flat in the first, but the fact that he woke up in the second is great. And I think that won't necessarily be an issue going forward. And I like that he's fighting smart. I like it. Even if it cost him the first round a little bit here in this contest, I still think that's the right pivot. I think he's a smart enough fighter to make that pivot I like it. Even if it cost him the first round a little bit here in this contest,

I still think that's the right pivot. I think he's a smart enough fighter to make that pivot because not every fighter is. He is smart enough to make that pivot, and his corner seemed to understand him. They gave him urgent but calm, sober advice, and look at the result, man. I feel bad for Alex Oliveira. He was saying how much he needed money

the guy's got like a gazillion kids and of course he's gonna get half of his purse because he lost fuck that's a tough way to go through life man and how about this one let's talk a little bit about this Sergei Spivak just fucking running through Greg Hardy

Greg Hardy lasted 2 minutes and 16 seconds before Spivak just had his way with him. Spivak has wins over Olenek, Jared, Vandera, Carlos Felipe, and Taito Ivasa. Wow, he has a win over Taito Ivasa. It was in 2019. I don't even remember that. So he's got some nice wins. He does have a loss to Tom Aspinall. Aspinall is a beast. And Marcin Tybura and Walt Harris. So he's been a little bit up and down. He's got some nice wins. He does have a loss to Tom Aspinall. Aspinall is a beast. And Marcin Tybura and Walt Harris. So he's been a little bit up and down. He's had some good moments. He's had some not so good moments.

But he's obviously a talented guy. He did have the world's biggest widow peak prior to shaving his head. Let me explain something to you about what went wrong for Greg Hardy here. I don't understand how that is a combat ready weight. 290 pounds is large. I've been 290 pounds. A couple of times in my life. It's not a very functional weight.

Now granted. I'm not an athlete the caliber of Greg Hardy. But it just is not. I don't. It doesn't look to me like that weight is doing him any favors. I'm not saying it has to get down to like 250 or something, but maybe a little bit closer to weigh-in weight, as the broadcast mentioned, for the cut itself, but also on top of that for some functionality.

So that's the first thing. Second thing is, man, every time Greg fights, I can't keep having conversations about the fact that the guy has domestic abuse in his past and, you know, guns and everything. I mean, the guy's got, I don't know what his life is like today, but he certainly had his own issues. I'm trying to divorce myself from that as much as possible so I can give the fighter here, the fighter Greg Hardy, a fair shake.

He's two and three in his last five. All the last three by stoppage. Now the catch to that is those three are Marcin Tybura, who's ranked, Taito Iwasa, who's ranked, and Sergei Spivak, who I believe is also ranked. So it's not happening to scrubs. But the problem for me is that we're just not seeing the kind of development you need to win at this level. In fact, I don't think he's got a win over anyone currently on the UFC roster, right? Jorgen DeCastro, Maurice Green, Juan Adams, and Dmitry Samolikov. None of these guys are on the roster.

He only lasted a minute and seven seconds against Taito Iwasa, which granted Taito is very good, but let me explain something to you. Sergey Spivak is a big guy, right? Greg Hardy is a much bigger guy. Did you notice how easily Spivak was able to move him around? Think about something. If you didn't know how to move someone and they were that much bigger than you, 40, potentially 50 pounds bigger than you, and you guys were roughly equally skilled in terms of wrestling, which is to say you had whatever it was, let's say very little wrestling, could you move that person around very easily? No. Fuck no, you wouldn't. You'd actually have a very hard time moving them around. In fact, it would go very poorly for you. Now, look at what Spivak did in terms of

manipulating his weight, moving him around. What does that tell you? That tells you that there is a gigantic difference in skill as it relates to that. He was able to move him in directions to off balance him where he makes contact with him. Hardy frames. This is called a frame. When you put your forearm up against something, he frames it. But notice my elbow when I frame. It's hard to frame and keep a low elbow. A lot of times framing requires, this is, again, it depends what you're framing. But a lot of times a crossface frame requires at least something of an elevated elbow, if not parallel to the ground but what does that do to your elbow it exposes all the space underneath which is what spivak was looking for to begin with so he fires an underhook right underneath it right away and if someone is good

with an underhook dude an underhook is a i know everyone's like oh why is domino cruz keep talking about underhooks a lot of people in in MMA know the importance of them and use them. You should see what it's like when someone is like a master of the underhook. Dude, they will fucking send you all over that gym. They can pull you. They can off-balance you. They can run you for a knee tap. Man, they can throw you.

They will make your life miserable. He fires an underhookook and he pulls him in a direction and then he pulls him in the opposite direction and then he hits him with a haraigoshi from the underhook. A haraigoshi is when you don't have a leg in between their legs. That would be an uchimata. That's when you have it in, I think it's major outer reap. I forget the, actually that may be wrong. I forget how the judo names go, but that might be osotogari. But it's when the one leg... Imagine just putting a broom in front of both of someone's legs.

They would fall over the top of it. It's like that. You put one leg across both of theirs. And then he tossed them over. And then immediately, what did he do, right? Moved to mount. Mount was just something no one pursued because they were spending all their time

working on all these other skills. And they were never threatening them out. So people lost it. But guys like Bryce Mitchell or in this particular case Spivak's skill differential over Hardy allowed them to pursue it. And dude, he goes from there and then just annihilated him with strikes to the point where they woke him up. Or he looked awake and then they kind of woke him up. And yet he seemed out of it. It was a weird sequence. He's always got weird shit going on in his fights. I don't understand it. Neither here nor there. I'm told this was the last fight on his deal. We'll have

to see how that goes. The UFC may retain him and there are definitely other UFC heavyweights who I do think are worse than him. He's only 33 and he made his pro debut in 2018. It would probably be a little bit unfair to say we can conclude affirmatively he can't get good at MMA. But I would say that the chances of it at this point are low. There is enough information for me to say that development is not happening. This is not moving in the right direction. And the parts of his offense that need development, including his overall cardiovascular conditioning, quite frankly, which is partly impacted by his weight, it's just not there. Dude, I don't imagine that he could beat Spivak in a grappling contest, even if he had

made some pretty good development up to this point. But you would not see a nearly 300-pound man manipulated like that with an underhook. A monster gap in skill level. Not just a little bit one, not even a big one. A gigantic one, dude. He got manipulated, tossed, mounted, and put out. It's as thorough as it can get. A one-punch shot wouldn't even be that thorough. You know what I mean? Because you could just hit the one and get lucky or whatever and it counts. Dude, he got audited. He got audited. I have been that bigger dude against much smaller guys who are way more advanced than me. I'm telling you. I saw that and I was like, oh, been there, homie. I have been there. I have been there. It fucking sucks when

a smaller guy can do that to you, that's who he is. At least that's who he was in this particular contest. Greg Hardy has massive problems, I think, if he wants to win at this level. Now, something to consider. Again, I don't know that for sure. I could be totally wrong. Only time will tell.

Two, even if he leaves, he might just go to bare knuckle, which he would actually be good for them because he is fast-handed for a heavyweight. I'm sure he does hit hard and he doesn't have to worry about the ground game and they only have two minute rounds, right? Like they're pretty short. That actually might be a better fit for him just anyway. Or he may, the UFC may retain his services. I don't know. Here's what I would say. Please, for the love of God, stop putting his fights on main cards until he deserves to be on main cards.

Marina Rodriguez versus Jan Schaunan should have been on that main card 10 times out of 10 over Greg Hardy versus Sergei Spivak, and especially the way Spivak just dispatched with him. Dude, that's what happens when, like, you know. I mean, they look like an amateur versus a pro.

That's what it looked like to me. Looked like an amateur versus a pro. That's how wide the gap was. If you see someone fire an underhook and then the other person just starts walking with them because they're getting dog walked. Ooh, buddy. You got a problem. All right, you guys have left your questions. Let me get to them now. I feel like a lot of Colby fans aren't familiar with how he fights. They probably think the Usman fights are an average representation of his entertainment level. They just eat up his persona. There might be something to that. I don't know. Do you think Jorge carried Nate at

244? Seems to not chase a finish and make it more of a fight than that was marketed. Doubt that. Now seems like the perfect opportunity to book Kevin Holland versus Michelle Pereira. Could be a really fun scrap. Sure. Sure.

Bilal Muhammad versus Colby Covington, this person writes, is the fight to make. That's an interesting one. Now, he's got to fight against Luque. If he beats Luque, sure. I'd be okay with that. I don't know if he would take that, though, so I'll have to see. That must have been a brutal weight cut. Jorge looked off.

He had anger, but very little firepower. Could have been a weight cut. Remember, he kind of weighed in at the last minute. He said after the fact that it was normal. He wanted to just get more sleep. You can decide if you believe him. Was the fight already lost when Masvidal spent way too much time contesting the eye poke in round one? Both of those guys were doing a lot of chirping at the referee.

But that was, you know... Here's the thing. Did it end up costing him? Yes, it did. Do lots of fighters do what Masvidal did and then get the reward of a referee intervention yes they do so I can I can agree that it cost him but a lot of guys do that and it seems to work just fine Dustin versus Colby really only benefits Colby so I think Dustin declines I would agree would you be willing to see Jorge matched up with Nick Diaz I'm not sure I want to see Nick benefits Colby, so I think Dustin declines. I would agree.

Would you be willing to see Jorge matched up with Nick Diaz? I'm not sure I want to see Nick fight again, but if he's in a better place than he was in his last fight, I guess. Thoughts on Dean Thomas' tweet on fighter pay not being MMA's biggest problem. It was tough watching Moicano take so much damage on one week notice and

knowing how underpaid he is. Yeah. I mean, I love Dean. I, I, I responded to him on Twitter. I,

and that particular tweet, I said, you know, um, low fighter pay doesn't affect bad judging or doesn't create for more bad judging, but bad judging definitely affects fighter pay. And the point there is not necessarily that judging bad judging compounds fighter pay, although in the current state of things,

it does compound fighter pay problems, right? Compound the problems, not the fighter pay. It does actually make it worse, but go back to why it makes it worse. It makes it worse because the promoter splits the contract between show and win. So if they didn't split those contracts, if they got paid all the full win amounts, then I couldn't make that argument. That's the point. People are talking about people's daughters too much. Dude, we just never... I just don't want... I don't want to...

I don't ever want to talk about another man's kid, man. I don't ever want to do that. You know, we all make mistakes. We all say heated things and trash talk. I try to look the other way after a fight's over, even with these two. But I really... I'm not even going to say, like, oh, I'm so offended. Like, UFC should step in.

I'm not even saying that. I'm just saying, like, Jesus, man. Is there... I just... When I go to bed at night, I don't want the weight of what that means on me. I guess if you don't worry about what the weight of it is, then you don't really care, but I would care, so, you know, but I'm not a fighter, so who cares? Is Kevin Holland an immediate player at welterweight?

Well, I mean, there's a little bit more work to do before we can be sure, but he looked good when he needed to. Based on this kind of loss from Jorge, in addition to his age, does it make sense that UFC gave him such a big new contract? Yes, because I doubt they think he's going to fight forever, but this would prevent him potentially from fighting out a deal and then going someplace else with the remainder of his star power. Now, you might be like, well, they let Chad Mendes go fight in BKFC. It is potentially conceivable that they might do that or let Jorge box after the fact or whatever.

But never lose sight of the fact that they didn't let GSP do that. So they might have just said, hey, let's just tie this guy up. And in these UFC contracts, what it says is that they are their sole combat sports promoter. And if they're going to do any other combat sport, they have to get their permission. Now, the UFC doesn't really beat up on guys who want to do jiu-jitsu tournaments. I think they actually encourage it, but for everything else, you have to get approval.

What's left from Masvidal after four straight losses? An opponent that is a little bit more suitable. Does Dustin Poirier really take the Covington fight? I don't think so, but one never knows. I would bet no. Mark me down as betting no, but it is MMA. What's stopping a Masvidal-McGregor fight in a couple of months? Nothing.

I think that would be legendary the only worry I have is Masvidal's new contract and that it might lower the pay-per-view value of the loser yeah but at this point who cares unpopular opinion Luke to some but I think RDA beats Conor convincingly this person writes and do you think he has the most underrated chin in MMA? he's got a great chin does he beat Conor convincingly, this person writes. And do you think he has the most underrated chin in MMA? He's got a great chin.

Does he beat Conor convincingly? If he can wrestle his way there, but Conor might sting him on the feet. I mean, it really all sort of depends on, like, can RDA beat Conor? Of course. Convincingly, even that seems plausible. But, like, Conor has some skills that Moicano does not. What is this Inu Rogan crypto all these fighters are talking about? They hit me up too.

I'm sure they're nice people. I didn't get involved, but they hit me up too saying they wanted to sponsor. I don't know. I don't really. It's some kind of crypto coin. How about Bryce Mitchell? Dude, he shined. He shined tonight. He shined like... How about Jalen Turner? Dude, Jalen Turner is good. Now, he was trading a little bit there and he got clipped a couple of times, but dude, he is so rangy, so accurate. He's such an accurate striker, especially with his boxing.

His punches just go right where they're supposed to. They go quickly. They're sneaky. He's a beast. He's a beast. And I've been wrong about Jay Lenturn. Not this time, but like in previous fights. I wasn't quite sure what to make of him.

I had some wake-up call with him recently. It was before this. So I knew what to expect this time. And dude, that kid Malarkey out of Australia, he's a tough SOB. He's a tough SOB. He had a gutsy win in the fight before this one, I believe. Let me see. Let me double check that. I remember being, I think it was at the Apex. I remember watching it and being like, damn. Let's see. Yeah, the Devontae Smith win. That was a good win. He got performance of the night bonus for that. So that's a solid, solid job by Jalen Turner. Why do smart fighters like Dominic Cruz support fighters taking prolonged beatings like Moicano did tonight? I don't know. I haven't seen what he said.

Was Masvidal's inability to stay off the cage more a function of Covington effectively cage-cutting, or Masvidal not exercising good positional awareness? Masvidal had good defense, but I think to get Colby off of you, you have to have great defense. So people are like, oh, is his defense bad? No. No.

Can you see Masvidal headlining another pay-per-view after tonight? Not soon. Yeah, people ask about this Marshall Rogan in you thing I don't know shit about that Alright Reminder, Morning Combat will be there on Monday Live at 11am in the East Me, Brian Campbell

You, everybody Thank you so much for watching this. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe, hit subscribe, hit subscribe. I appreciate you guys watching and until next time.