MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 282: Jan Blachowicz vs. Magomed Ankalaev Results | Paddy Pimblett Reaction

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

At UFC 282, Jan Blachowicz will face Magomed Ankalaev for the vacant light heavyweight title. Also on the ESPN+ main card will be the co-main event between Paddy Pimblett and Jared Gordon. 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

Hi everybody, how are you doing? Let's see, it is 1.19 in the morning, good lord. 1.19 in the morning, technically the 11th of December, 2022. This is the official UFC 282 Morning Combat Post Fight Show. My name is Luke Thomas. I will be your host for the next 45 minutes to an hour or so, Jesus Christ, to go over that card. Which, by the way, was so promising up until the main and co-main, huh? It was looking pretty fun.

It was pretty fun. It was actually pretty excellent. But everything got marred in the end there, didn't it? All right. So thumbs up if you're watching this. Let me put this down a little bit here if I can. Thumbs up if you're watching this on YouTube. And of course, if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform at some point later,

do leave a nice review. Hit subscribe. Hey, subscribe to MK. Hey, award-winning motherfuckers up in here, huh? Right? That's what we do around here, believe it or not. All right. So we're going to get to all the results from UFC

282 if you don't want spoilers and of course everyone's always like I can't believe you have to do spoiler warnings for you know post fight stuff I can't either I can't either and yet if I don't people complain it's really

one of the amazing mysteries of life like why people would do that or why people would like buy NFTs as an obvious fucking scam, but they did, but they did, you know? So anyway, all right, then neither here nor there. Um, let's get to the show and let's figure all this out. We have a lot to get to here. Let's get this party started, shall we? Hey, all right. Let's take this off. Let's take that off. Okay. Okay. what a fucking nightmare good lord i mean that card right ufc 282 in the books that card through 10 fights was on fire amazing prelims i think it's pretty fair to say amazing prelims uh we'll talk about it of course to puria and buria and Bryce Mitchell, fire. Drikus Duplicy and

Darren Till, good fight for sure, definitely. Even Santiago Ponzinibbio, like, rallying from a sure defeat. And then this bullshit. All right. Nothing to it but to do it. Let's get to it. Let's pull the results up, shall we? Okay, UFC 282 Blahovich versus Onkalayev took place, of course, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. And your main event, Jan Blahicz and Magomed Ankalayev. There is no winner. There is no winner. Can you believe it? It might sound impossible, but it's really true.

You have a split draw. I'm going to pull up the scorecards here because it's amazing. Okay, let's pull up the scorecards here for the main event. Still waiting on that from ESPN, excuse me, from UFC to upload, but it was 40, excuse me, let me pull up here my own notes. I'm sorry, I apologize. I'm just sort of in a state of shock based on how the judging went tonight, but be that as it may. Okay, 48-47 Blachowicz, which is understandable. 48-46 on Kalayev, which I don't really agree with either, but I agree that he was the right guy to win. I don't really agree that 48-46 is doable.

And then this fucking gem of a card, 47-47. So what does that mean? That means it's a split draw. That means no one wins, no one loses. It is just a draw. There's nothing else you can do about it. And there is still no UFC light heavyweight champion. After the fight, Jan Blachowicz is interviewed by Joe Rogan. You know, he says, I don't know if I lost it, but I definitely didn't win it. And Magomed Onkolaev incensed that he didn't win. And even Jan Blachowicz, the gentleman and the scholar that he is, walked over during Onkolaev's post-fight interview and said, give him the belt. Which I think is right.

I don't know what the UFC is going to do about a fight with Glover Teixeira. I suspect that they will probably, I mean, I don't know. I don't know the answer to this, but I'm going to guess that maybe they just sent on Kolayev to go fight Glover at some point in 2023, right? Probably in Brazil, maybe. We'll see. I don't know. But I don't know what the hell they're going to do here because the whole idea was that this was going to crown the vacant championship and that Glover would get first dibs on the winner. We don't have a winner, so do you run it back?

Is there an appetite for people to have it run back? It wasn't a bad fight, but it wasn't a particularly memorable or otherwise super interesting one. I mean, it was a fine fight. There's nothing wrong with the fight. But I don't know that there's a ton of interest in folks seeing a second one, especially because once Ankhalaev fought in the way that he was supposed to be fighting basically the entire time, you know,

Blachowicz didn't really have much of an answer for it. So maybe they'll do that, and poor Glover has to wait longer, I don't know. Maybe they won't do that, and maybe they'll just send Blachowicz down to fight Glover, or I really, I truly, I mean, anything is possible here. Your guess is as good as mine. Seems to me like what they'll probably do is probably put on Kolayev against Glover Teixeira, but there's really no way of knowing. The fight itself is fairly understandable. I gave on Kolayev the first round, but it was a close one. And for sure, the second and third rounds belong to Blachowicz. Really, the story of his best parts of the fight were his leg kicking were just absolutely phenomenal. And even when he checked,

it was causing trouble. But the leg kicking was a really, really, really big problem for Onkelayev. He didn't have much of an answer for it. He was trying to switch stance. I should say, didn't have much of an answer for it at first. He was trying to switch stance, but really not putting enough pressure on Blachowicz to get him moving backwards. But what he eventually realized was if he could actually do that, put genuine, make the guy leave his feet as he has to retreat, then he couldn't really settle for the takedown, right? It's the same kind of thing that they would do to Edson Barboza or what Fedor did to Krokop, right? Push them on their heels enough

that they can't kind of sit and throw in order to really do anything meaningful with any kind of kicking, in this particular case, leg kicking. And then also he was able to get the takedown. And once he got the takedowns in rounds four and five, he may have gotten one in round three at some point, I don't really remember, but once he got the takedowns in round four and five, it was a wrap. He was on top.

We're talking about Ankalayev. He had very good ground and pound. He had good control. He had good wrist capture. He would try a little bit in the fifth round to do some positional advancement, nothing too significant. I got to tell you, I thought Ankalayev would win this fight. I thought he did win this fight

I thought he deserved to win this fight Again, I think these scorecards are really quite remarkable The ones in the main event are not horrific They're not horrific But I don't really agree with the idea Even as much of an Onkoli of I don't know, what was the word, supporter? I'm not really a fan of the guy.

I don't hate him either. I'm just saying I'm not in that space. But I don't really agree. Round five's a 10-8, especially like all the other rounds that become 10-8s that they don't turn into 10-8s now that the commissions have kind of retreated from that norm. Under previous applications of the criteria,

maybe, but more recently they've been withdrawing from it. And even then, even then, listen, he was a clear 10-9. I mean, Ankalayev did a great job, as aforementioned, with the wrist capture and really kind of unloading there. But even with that, I just don't really, It has some of the ingredients. It's got the duration. It definitely had some damage, but I didn't think the damage was overwhelming. And it had duration. So you had some of the pieces of the puzzle in there for a 10-8.

But to me, not really enough of the damage quotient. It's good damage, but not 10-8 damage. Still, I guess two of the judges, actually, yes, two of the judges did that. That gets you the 48-46. And I guess, I was trying to noodle how you got 47-47. The answer would be, you go 30-27 on Blachowicz, so he gets the first three. Onkolaev takes the last two, but he takes the fifth round, 10-8, so that makes it 30-27, adding into basically a 17-20, and that gets you 47-47. That's how you do it. Yeah, that's a mess, man. That's a real mess. Let's look up some of the stats on this one. I'm really kind of shocked by the whole thing. All right, let's pull this up here and get the stats for the split draw. Not a ton of offense in terms of which means when I say total strikes, I mean significant and

otherwise, of 312. He landed total strikes 191, significant 78. Blachowicz, much less, 151 total strikes, 79 of which landed, 55 of which were significant. Onkoli of getting two of 10 takedowns with control time of 11.20. When he was trying to go for those half-ass takedowns after getting his leg chopped, they weren't that great along the fence. I'll say this too. I think that Blachowicz has good takedown defense along the fence line. You pull him off of that, it's not really the same. Again, when Onkolaev could overrun position and pull the leg in the middle of the octagon, he had much better results as a consequence. So let's look at round one here very quickly. Onkolaev modestly outlanding Blahovic.

Again, these are numeric totals. They are not qualitative totals, but 19 to 14 for Onkolaev. Round two was a bloodbath for him. It was 23 to 13 for Blahovic. Round 3, roughly equivalent, but again, I still thought that was Jan's round, 17-18. And then round 4, Magomed Ankhalaev to Blahovic, 10-1. And how about this? In round 5, yeah, maybe this is why, because he never got a significant strike off, although he did land 13-15 total strikes,

18 to 0 in round five. I guess I can sort of under, I'd have to go back and watch. My initial inclination when I watched at first was that round five being a 10-8 was an exaggeration, but I suppose there might be a case for that upon review. Let me see here. Yeah, upon review, perhaps there's a different view of things. Like I said, man, not really the most interesting fight. The stat going into it, which we talked about on MK and which I repeated on Twitter tonight, was heading into this contest in fights in the UFC that Blachowicz had had where the opponent never landed a takedown, not even one, he, his record in those fights for Blachowicz was 11-1. Pretty good.

In fights where the opponent got at least one takedown, he was 2-5. So now you can say he's 2-5-1. And what you could also say is we're still in a place where as long as an opponent has gotten at least one takedown on him... No, you can't quite say that exactly. That's not quite true. But you get the idea. He had a hard time. He's just not very offensively dynamic from his back.

Like, Blachowicz is very good with his defense standing along the fence. He has some decently okay down blocking out in space. But once you get him on his back, he kind of just locks up full guard and rides out the round or puts up a knee shield to prevent half guard passing. He doesn't really have much of a threat underneath. He was throwing some strikes underneath. I don't know how valuable they were.

But that was the insight there. It's like you can tell that when you take this guy down, he is much more beatable by virtue of historic performance. And then what does the tape tell you? The tape tells you that he just doesn't have much of an active guard game from those positions. And Ankhalaev has very good ground to pound. And some passing passing a little bit

anyway. So that's the story of the fight. It's a goddamn disaster, you know, in many ways that, Jesus, here we are. Let's look at the targeting. Yeah. Targeting. Blachowicz, 45% of his strikes were to the leg. 45. That's the highest among all of them. So he went 20% to the body, 34% to the head, 45% to the leg. God damn. For Ankalayev, 62%, 24%, and 12%. I mean, I'll tell you what about Ankalayev. He was a guy that I had thought was kind of inevitable when this whole thing got going.

Yeah, he had the issue with Paul Craig for his debut. But since then, man, he's been mostly just rolling downhill. Now, he did have the fight against Tiago Santos, which was not great. He's had some other ones that were a little bit ho-hum or weirdly resolved, even the Anthony Smith fight that happened. He was doing well, obviously, but it's just weird how it ended. So you kind of want to dial back maybe some of the more promising projections about how good he would be. But I really thought this guy was kind of inevitable. I will tell you what's interesting. Between the Santos fight and what his coach is, did you see the cornering and the corners of Onkolaev?

I should say the corner, but the corner advice he was getting. Onkolaev, his coach was incensed. He didn't say it exactly like this, but he basically was like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, why are you standing in front of this? This was like after round three. It's like, why are you standing in front of this guy and fucking brawling with him? Take him down.

He's like, you could take him down in five seconds. And dude, within, in round four, he had him down with three minutes left, but could take him down in five seconds. And dude, within, in round four, he had him down with three minutes left, but had closed the distance with 30 seconds into the first, into the, into the frame. So we're at like 430 of round four. Ankhalaev's already pressing Blahovic against the fence. And then about 90 seconds later, he gets the takedown, right? But never loses like control, right? Just sort of goes from there and then eventually gets him down. And then around five five I think he had kind of tripped along the way but the point being was you know by putting this kind of pressure where Blachowicz can't keep his balance under him

Ankhalaev gets on top within 15 motherfucking seconds of the round and maybe there was some other kind of injury issue involved there it's's hard to say, obviously, at 1.30 in the morning with any great specificity about it. But you could see why his corner was like, dude, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? Go take him down. And he eventually did, and he did it too late. So on one level, I did not think the judging was particularly great this time out at all. Obviously, we're going to spend some time on the Patty Pamblitt one. I didn't think it was great here because I think, as I mentioned,

the 10-8, I have to go back and double check, but it didn't occur to me as that being a very clear 10-8 beforehand. And then Ankaliyev not getting any of the first three rounds. I will say, though, on top of the suspect or just really... What do you want to call it? Unsatisfying judging in this main event. I will say Onkoliyev fucking around and waiting until the championship rounds, basically, to start wrestling. He screwed himself a little bit. He screwed himself a little bit. Right?

I'm not saying that that like otherwise justifies the judging decision or any particular scorecard you may or may not like. What I am saying is if it didn't have to be this way by virtue of how much better his wrestling and top game is why the fuck did he wait until it was the 16th minute of the fight to start doing that? That's the part that gets me.

Listen to this on the control time, right? So let's go to control time here in rounds four and five. So in rounds four and five, those are the only times he got a takedown. He got a takedown and he attempted zero in round one. Didn't even fucking attempt one in round one. That's what I mean. He attempted two in round two. He attempted five in round three. Got one of them, and had a minute and 26 seconds of control time,

although partly that's also getting pressed against the fence. But you could see him getting increasingly more desperate. But those were mostly not hardcore, get him off balance, run him off the single leg. Those were like, press him into the fence and see if he can squeeze a double. And if not, come back up for air and then try again later. Like not full-throated efforts. By the time he actually switches to that, four minutes and 32 seconds of control time in round number four. And again, in round five, there was a lot of Jan stumbling through. But again, it was Ankalayev collapsing his position through pressure.

Like that played a role there as well. Four minutes and 50 seconds of control time. You just got to be like dude what were you thinking what were you thinking what were you thinking like i don't want to wrestle for 25 minutes this is a better alternative uh hard for me to believe that so i did again take whatever reasonable issue you want with again i'm going to call it unsatisfying judging in this main event. Fine. Again, a promotional headache for the UFC where they can't put a belt on a guy.

That's a problem. And the fight itself was fine to maybe even good, but not remarkable. And this was the last UFC pay-per-view of the year. It ends on a split draw. The UFC pay-per-view experience of 2022 ends on a split draw. There was some debate online this week about, like, was this the worst year in UFC history, which is a very silly question. If you've been watching UFC long enough, yes, this was not its best year,

I don't think, by a mile, but it wasn't a bad year, A. And B, dog, I've seen some bad years. This ain't, like, we're not even bordering on that. So no. And by the way, even like how much easier it is to get MMA and how much better the fights are just in general, like you compare that to like 2000 or 2001, they're barely even the same sport. Anyway, I'm kind of rambling here a bit on a tangent, but to end the year on this, or to end the pay-per-view year certainly on this, let me look at the, let me see something here real quick. I think, so, Cannoneer versus Strickland will be December 17th. Yeah, and then that's it for the year. So, Kananier versus Strickland will be December 17th. Yeah, and then that's it for the

year. So, they got one more this year, and then that's it. One more, and then that's it. So, to end the pay-per-view year on this was, Jesus, deeply unsatisfying. For Jan Blachowicz, he looked amazing on the feet. His leg, excuse me, his checking and leg kicking game are some of the best we've ever seen at light heavyweight. Truly, I mean that. Some of the best in the UFC. Again, in terms of checking kicks, I think he's arguably the best. You know, Paredes obviously is going to have something to say about that. But to this point, the body of work that Blachowicz has put in on that level

has been very, very commendable. There was a lot that went right for him. I think Ankhalaev is going to want some of the judgment calls he made back on this one. Again, not to take away and say that Blachowicz didn't do a good job with some of the takedown defense through the first three rounds. I think that's true. But I also don't think Onkeliev was really trying all that hard with those, as I previously indicated. It wasn't until he really kind of needed it before he did, and that was too little too late with the judges that they had tonight. It wasn't going to go his

way, unfortunately, it seems. And here we are. Did you learn anything new about Megamed Onkoli? Let me think that through. Did you learn anything new? Not really. You did see him physically tested and he answered that, I think, for the most part. I thought he was quite resilient. Had to take a shit ton of damage. His legs are going to be a mess tomorrow. I hope he's not planning on getting any flight because that's going to be tough. Some fight IQ issues in this one. Maybe. To be quite honest with you. He's a guy who up to this point

had made some pretty good decisions but not really meaningfully tenaciously getting after the takedown and all the different ways you could get it. Switching from doubles to singles and chaining takedowns together and running him backwards and off-balancing him. Which is like, again, watch what Habib does on the fence. You rarely see Habib press into a guy and keep him pressed there

unless the guy is truly flat. What he's usually doing is he's running and changing directions on the guy. Running him backwards, they stop. He changes and runs him the other direction. Or what he'll do is he'll pick up a leg. And as I've talked about this a million times, the Nürburgring Madovs are famous for this. They like to grab the single and then run you around, either pull you or to push you because it forces you to balance on that second leg.

And once they do, they can chop the post out. They can trip. They can, in certain ways, they can take the lock on one of it and then slide it up, believe it or not. And you can get the that second leg. And once they do, they can chop the post out. They can trip. They can, in certain ways, they can take the lock on one of it and then slide it up, believe it or not. And you can get the double that way. There's a lot of things you can do. So, when he got a little lucky

in the fifth, but when he got to some of that in the fourth, you know, it just came a lot easier. He's going to want the decision-making back on this one i think from uncle i have some some fight iq questions here i think involved with him based on how he handled the first three rounds again someone's gonna hear that and go oh you're absolving the judges i am not absolving the judges i'm not what i'm saying is uh if you him not being awarded the fight draws it into like stark relief.

But I just don't know how you can argue again, not that he would have gotten it every single time within the first three rounds, but like did he make a full-throated wrestling effort in the first three rounds based on what we learned in the last two? You just really can't argue that. Not very effectively. And so as a consequence, here we are. Let me see if we got an update on the scorecards, and then we'll move to the

co-main. Yeah, here we go. All right, let's read this to you here. Judge Mike Bell gave the first three rounds to Blachowicz, gave the second two rounds to Ankalayev, 48-47 Blachowicz. I think that's a reasonable scorecard. Judge Derek Clearly gave rounds one and two to Blachowicz, rounds three and four to Ankalayev, so we had a 2-2 going into the 5th, and he gave round 5 to Ankalayev 10-8, and so that gives you the 48-46. Sal Di Amato had rounds 1, 2, and 3 for Blachowicz, and rounds 4 and 5 for Ankalayev, but then had, as we indicated, the fifth round, 10-8.

So there you go. Those are the scorecards. That's how they did it. Make whatever issue you want of it. Don't really know what else to say. Now, let's talk about that co-main event, shall we? Let's talk about the co-main event. Let's talk about the fucking co-main event. Okay. Well, this is a mess. Patty Pemblitt defeats Jared Gordon via unanimous decision 29-28, 29-28, and 29-28. The scorecards are as follows for this one ron mccarthy gives rounds one and two to patty which is like blows my fucking mind round three to jared gordon which is also somewhat surprising which i'll talk about just a second so there's your 29 28. Chris Lee gives round one to Jared Gordon. Fucking obviously gives rounds two and three to Patty, which I don't think is the end of the world.

Hear me out in just a second, but that's how you get a scorecard for Patty Pimblitt in that case. Of the three, that's the most defensible by far. Like that's the one that you can look at and fucking Doug Crosby. What a winner. This guy is fresh off of a, this fucking guy was at the Mohegan sun last night and had a 50 45 Danny Sabatello card that alone, that alone should have been disqualifying to work today. But it's Nevada, the commission that wants to tell you it's the best and most important in the United States, potentially even the world, and is consistently one of the fucking worst. Consistently.

Zero transparency with the public. Zero. Zero. Everything that they let you see is just for enough to shut you up that you don't complain that like the totality of their operations happen in secret and by the way we're in favor ready for this one in favor some of their members were in speaking about it, of purse numbers for fighters not being made public. Let's say it one more time. Why do you want purse numbers to be public? Because that, among other things, but certainly in terms of making it public, is sometimes the only information fighters have about what their peers are making,

which enables them to negotiate more. And they were okay with the promoter lobbying the state legislature to not have them go public. Imagine that. I'm going to say it one more time. Why were athletic commissions created? They were created in the early part, early to mid parts, for the most part, of the 20th century as a way to obviously help clean up and regulate boxing, in part by making sure the promoter had the money that they said he did in order to pay, in order to make sure that

the fights were reasonably competitive. They could overlook the card and everything else and to get rid of some of the seedy underbelly of gambling that was happening. The commission served that role. That's why they're there. They're there to protect the sport and they're there to protect the health and safety of the athletes and they fucking don't. There are some good commissions. They make mistakes too, but I think California is pretty good. New Jersey, I think is pretty good. There's some other ones

out there. I think Colorado is certainly making a name for itself. Maybe you have something to say about Kansas. There's some other ones out there that are trying, but the vast majority of them and make not one mistake about it, Nevada doesn't give a fuck what you think, doesn't give a fuck what I think, doesn't care what anybody thinks unless it results in bad press for them. Same commission that wanted to throw Nick Diaz into, not literal jail, but career jail, and then chucked the key away. Same fucking commission as them. Same commission as them. And only when it was massive public backlash, including from the governor at the time,

did they ultimately realize the error of their ways. These are not smart people, and these are not great decision makers. And they have so much say over the sport they that the these the goof troop in las vegas can't get it right if their life depended on it fresh off a 50 45 scorecard they're like here you go co-main event role i mean what what the fuck are you thinking what are you thinking what is the justification for that an all-time not just a bad scorecard a whopper of a bad scorecard one that will go down in history as like a whoa what that kind of a scorecard

they were like get your ass on a plane we need you to judge this important co-main event for the ultimate fighting championship and he was like right away i mean i'm sure it was planned more in advance i'm doing a bit but dude and and do you think anyone involved with the commission is going to make any effort to have any of the judges or anyone else involved with that commission explain literally a single card no they're going to circle the wagons and do you really think after this this will be the last assignment that doug crosby or anybody else gets for a long time not going to happen not going to happen they don't give a shit they don't give a shit right they don't care well what are we going to do to fix these judges? Call your

local representative. Ask the governor to do something. Because as long as it's just us complaining on places like this or online, the answer is nothing. Nothing will happen. Now, God, what do you even say about this fight? How did I score it? 29-28 Gordon is how I had it. I gave, I think, Patty the... Jesus, I have to go back and look at... Oh, I had to give it to CBS Sports. I'll tell you how I scored it.

Obviously, round one for Gordon, because I'm not give it to CBS Sports. I'll tell you how I scored it. Obviously, round one for Gordon because I'm not blind. Let's see. Oh, yeah. I had round three for Patty. All right. Let me tell you why I had round three for Patty. And I was like, I struggle with that one. Like, here's what I'll tell you.

Like, what are the acceptable scorecards here in this one? 30-27, Gordon is acceptable because rounds one and two are his, I think, without much issue. Round three is the one I can understand. I could squint. Okay, so 30-27 is one for Gordon. 29-28, Gordon is an acceptable scorecard. I can honestly live with 29. People are going to crucify me for this. I can sort of squint and get 29-28 Patty Pimblitt in the sense of giving Gordon round one.

Round two, he had a bit of a late flurry, and round three was kind of weird. Rounds two and three were both kind of hard to judge in certain ways. It's just the unanimity of it. They just deferred to that, which drives me up the wall and two of the three judges Ron McCarthy and Douglas Crosby giving round one to Patty when he got his face punched in and walloped around for almost three to four minutes is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. How is that possible? Let's look up the numbers on this.

Again, these are quantitative, not qualitative, but they matter. They matter. Let's look at them. The numbers numerically, interesting, again, most of these were, okay, so these, right, so round one numerically, 30 to 29, Gordon versus Pimblitt. However, what percentage of them was significant strikes?

58% of the 30 were significant for Jared. Just 41 of the 29, excuse me, of the total strikes anyway. 41% of the total strikes. I got that wrong. 29 ultimately, 30 ultimately. 41% of the total strikes. 58% of the total strikes were significant. Okay, round two.

28 to 24, Patty. Gordon did get a takedown with two minutes of control time. Make of that what you will. Round three. Patty, six strikes to Gordon's four. Not much of a difference. They both landed a total of 21, and Gordon got two takedowns with three minutes and 53 of control time. Now, a lot of that was against the fence.

The round I just can't, I cannot, and these are numeric totals, not qualitative. Let's look at the targeting. Targeting was pretty similar. 52 to 51, Patty to Gordon for the head. 20 to 24, Patty to Gordon for the body. 26 to 24, Pimblett to Gordon in terms of leg strikes. Again, most of them being at distance, a little bit in the clinch, almost nothing on the ground. The reason why Patty taking round three I think is doable is because there was a lot of control, but not a lot of offense behind it. And you guys know me. I actually think that people have taken this rule and gone too far with it. And in situations where there has been control,

and even a little bit of ground and pound, and not much of an answer on the feet, kind of overly focused on the fact that there has been positional control and then decided it didn't have the same amount of value that it should have. That's where I think the people get it wrong. And last night with Danny Sabatello, I'm open to the idea that you can't just control someone, have your hands around their hips or legs, not throw strikes, not really ever go for a submission, and you can win in a high-level MMA fight. In round three, the striking was roughly approximate between the two, roughly. And Gordon definitely did have the takedowns and definitely did have the control time. Not three in fitness and 53 seconds on the ground. So, again, I think you can see a round for Gordon there, but I can understand how folks might look at that

and say there just wasn't much behind it, didn't really do a whole lot with it. And so by virtue of that, what can we really say? You can give it to Patty because he had a couple of more impactful strikes. That's possible. It's round one. Round one is the one to me that is like, and even round two to an extent, but definitely around one, two 10 nines, two 10 nines for Patty

in round one is to me like incomprehensible, incomprehensible. I don't know how you arrive at that position. Now people I've seen online a very negative reaction thinking that Gordon won definitively two rounds and in certain cases three the three to me is a stretch I think you're you can do that it's a bit of a stretch the two seems to be a very strong argument and then you know again I think that I it's it sounds almost contradictory to say that I could live with a 29-28 pimblit and yet here we have a case where like three judges got that why isn't that okay it sounds almost contradictory to say that I could live with a 29-28 Pimblitt, and yet here we have a case where three judges got that. Why isn't that okay?

It's because... How was it possible? If there had been... If the scorecards had looked a little bit differently, if they had all been the way where all of them had given the first round to Jared Gordon, I'd feel a little bit differently about it. But Gordon's weakest round in many ways was the third round and his strongest round was the first round. He lost the first round on two of the judges' scorecards and he won them the third

on two of the judges' scorecards. Like in the round where he performed the least, they actually gave him the benefit of the doubt like in the round where he performed the least they actually gave him the benefit of the doubt in the round where he was like boxing his fucking ears off they didn't give it to him like how is this like what are you watching and again i have made this argument for years if you followed my work you sound like a broken record you must understand i'm willing to accommodate the idea as well that when you watch this, the position from which you watch, the judges do not sit together. They sit in opposite places on the cage. When you watch it, you may have instant replay or excuse me, you may have a video monitor that you could use.

Maybe that's useful. Maybe that's not. Maybe the action in a certain way or even a particular punch or particular strike happens where the fighter who got hit has their back turned to you so you don't really see it. I can there being some variance that's why you have to be a little bit more forgiving of you know um the idea of a 29 28 patty pimble i'm not i'm not offended by that as an idea but only one judge had it the right way that you could have done it the other two didn't and they did it in opposite ways it's like dude how are we even looking at the same thing here like you guys are having unanimity among the impossible that's that's the part that i just don't get it's like everything just went deferential to him in ways that are not in keeping with what we were just

with we saw. I can squint and like, I don't agree with it. It wouldn't be my scorecard. It wasn't my scorecard. I can squint with 10-9 round one to Gordon and giving the other two away. It's not, I don't agree with it, but given that the second and the third rounds were close-ish, I can understand.

Listen, any time, no matter how you feel about a round, any time it's either quantitatively close or just quite obviously visually close, any time, any time between any two fighters, it's up for grabs. Judging is so inconsistent and so difficult to anticipate you're going to get to that. That's the place you're going to get to that, right? That's the place you're going to arrive. So I can understand, I can live in a world where one judge saw it that way, but for the other two to not get it the right way and then get everything inverted in the process and for one of them to be the guy that just got off the fucking plane after, I mean, just mailing in a 50-45. You got to be fucking kidding me. You got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me.

In the fight itself, let's talk about Patty. Now he won, and I'm sure he's happy about that. And I want to remind you, it's not like he did the judging in this fight. So if you're pissed about it, save it for who it belongs to. Okay. But I'll say this. I don't think this was a great week for him, personally speaking. Yeah, he got the win. Okay. Here's why. One, he had the whole beef with Ariel Helwani, which, you know, we've already weighed in on, but just wasn't a great look. I think it's a pretty fair way to put it. And then he goes out here and he wins this contest in highly controversial fashion.

He gets on the mic and he's like, yo, is this fight of the night? It's like, dude, did you not see the that a decision couldn't beat a knockout or a submission when, you know, like, there would never be a case where that could happen. Of course, you could imagine a case where that could very easily happen. But not, like, when the judging is controversial, you're getting booed for it. Not his fault, but he is getting booed for it. And then, you know, the fight itself was not like terrible, but it wasn't like by any means remarkable either. He's like, oh, fight it in the night. I'm like, okay, no, that's not right. But here's the real reality. Even though he got the W tonight, it should be very clear to people

at this point now that his developmental issues are real and didn't cost him tonight. They're gonna in the future. How many fights into his career is Patty Pimblitt? Let's see. Patty Pimblitt is now officially, let's see his record. He's 23. My man has had 23 pro fights. And listen, I'm not his coach. I am not anyone's coach. This is just my opinion. You can take it for what it is worth. If it sounds good to you, great. If it doesn't, leave it. I'm going to just be honest with you. If you're 23 fights into your career, granted, not that old of a person, just 27 years old, so there is not, we don't have to be like utterly panic, but if you're 23 fights into your career and you still don't move your head at all

in the way that he does, you got some problems. That's a red flag, man. And it's been a red flag for a while. You know, it was a red flag in the Vendramini fight, and it's been a red flag in some other ones. But he kind of has found ways to, like, not have it be utterly costly against him. Even in this case, it wasn't utterly costly, although it potentially should have been. But if you're this deep into your run and you're having this much trouble with something that is frankly a very difficult skill to master,

it's simple, not easy, but foundational as in highly important and frankly critical for success at the next level, and it just does not appear to be there, and he's been doing it. He's got 23 fights. He went pro 10 years ago at age 17, basically. It's a red flag, folks. It's a red flag.

I don't know how you can watch this performance and think this is a guy ready to take on ranked contenders. I just don't see that at all. I don't see that at all. Jared Gordon's a good fighter and a talented one. I thought he won tonight, but he's not ranked either. And this was a fight where like, did Patty show you anywhere? I'll get to that in a minute, where he like clearly showed you elite talent. I'll say this, along the fence line, his grappling and his game there is formidable. I know he trains with Justin Flores, who's a phenomenal judo black belt and former judo competitor and a jujitsu black belt and a competitor and a coach. And you could do much worse than training with him, believe me.

But what I noticed was like, he doesn't really level change from distance. He kind of waits until someone like wraps up with him and then has like an upper body jockeying for position. Now he will change levels if he can turn them and press them into the fence, but his wrestling in open space doesn't really, doesn't really exist. He doesn't really move his head. Was striking real wide, you know? I mean, I could go to a lot of things. His game is not ready to beat ranked contenders and he's been doing it for a while. Um, that's a problem. That's a problem. So even if you thought whatever, whatever you thought about the decision, I don't know how you can watch this performance given the amount of, this is for fighting UFC given how much time he's been

there and been like, this is the kind of skill set that will take you to the next level it's it's not built for the next level with the exception of the back control like defense wrestling that is good that stuff's good like i'll give him credit the back control the back the attacking working along the fence line where he's got like you you know, one hook in and like weave through behind a leg and like he's working for, you know, an over under grip or something or making you wrestle. That's great. But the rest of that game is not even, and by the way, the rest of the game is the vast majority of the game. It is not ready for the next level at all. At all. You know, at 155, like, let's look at the ranked contenders at 155, shall we? And, you know, you want to be, like, we've talked about

this before. We had Raul Rosas Jr., who did look really good tonight, you know? Although the hype around him is just absurd, too. But he looked good. Like, he had a strong performance. He executed. He had a very different kind He executed. He had a very different kind of challenge. I think his opponent, Jay Perrin, is not nearly as good as Jared Gordon, but you get the idea. Okay, 155. Here's 11 to 15. Dan Hooker, Demir Ismagulov. Dude, Demir Ismagulov is about to fight Armin Saryukin. Armin Saryukin is ranked ninth, right? Ismogulov might win that contest. Like, he's awesome. Hanato Moikano's at 13, Conor McGregor at 14, Tony Ferguson at 15.

Now, maybe Tony, because he's truly at the very end of his career. But even then, I don't really think so. Like, would you pick him against Hooker, Ismogulov, Moikano, or McGregor, or Jalen Turner? Like, no. No, no, no, the fuck you would not. not in your not in your right mind you wouldn't uh-uh like his his game after 23 fights four fights in ufc is very much not ready for the next level and that's not me trying to be a dick or a hater and again if you're a fan you can feel free to tell me i'm wrong it's okay this is just my show it's my opinion you can take it for what it is worth i don't know what you would point to

aside from the two things i've highlighted back attacks and then fence wrestling which can be certainly important but all that other shit uh is not ready and there's a question you have to ask yourself about whether it'll even be ready, much less whether he won the fight tonight. So not a great showing at all, even if he gets the win by some minor miracle. So to me, the story of this fight was that, one, I thought Jared Gordon did enough to win. That's one.

Two, the judging and the judging assignments from the Nevada Commission are, Nevada, whatever, are unforgivable. And that even with the win, I just don't know how you can look at him as a contender who is going to be capable of climbing the ranks with the developed skill set he has.

Now, I will say this. As I mentioned, there's the piece to already build on, plus at 27, if he can keep going, there's some stuff to get to. But I got to tell you, man, if you're that experienced and you're still fighting the way you're fighting, I have serious questions about whether actual change is possible to this point. Yes, of course, improvement. He looked physically big for the weight class too. I'll say that. He looked to be in good shape. I'm sure he trains hard. There's no doubt in my mind he trains hard. All these guys do. But at the same time, dude, that was not an inspiring performance at all. It's not just that he gets hit, all the fighters get hit. It's that he doesn't really move his head at all. He's not cutting angles at all. And it, it is like very noticeable and he's not done anything about it since like ever.

Uh, I don't know why that would be a thing that folks would look at and be like, oh yeah, that's no big deal. It's a huge deal. And it's not just the head movement. It's a lot of other things too. It's a continued inability to address something over time. Because remember, you're never going to fix something overnight. It takes time to like, especially like, dude, head movement is hard. It's hard to exactly to time it,

to do it so you don't move too much in one direction because you can lean into something and the further you move away that's the same distance you have to recover to come back like it's hard it's hard to time it's hard to do it like it's not easy i'm not sitting here telling you it's some obvious thing but if you've been fighting professionally for 10 years and you still are at this level and now you're ready to begin to like you know challenge some some some better fighters in this division and it's lacking this dude. Jalen Turner would light this dude on fire.

I mean, like horrifically, horrifically. That would be a terrible fight. Dude, Demir Ismagulov with his jab and his takedown defense. Oh my God. And he's ranked, what, 12th? It would be a nightmare for him. It would be a nightmare.

Armin Saryukian ranked at 9th? Dan Hooker? Dude, just Demir Ismagulov would hand him serious L. Hand him a serious L. So, you know, I usually try to be very understanding of things and I am. Like, he didn't judge this fight and I know that there's a lot of, like, pent-up anger towards him

for other issues. You know, you have to kind of put that aside when you're making an evaluation of a fighter and a performance that they had. There were some things to take from this that weren't so bad, but the fact that the lingering issues continue to go unaddressed as he's trying to get more and more up the ladder. And the UFC gave him basically two gimmies.

A tough fight, but not on this. Like, here's the other part about it. Against Vendramini and Vargas, those were fights that were just getting him warmed up to get into things, right? Then they gave him Jordan Leavitt who is a good fighter but not really gonna like that was only gonna be a test of like ground game versus ground game for the most part right you knew that this was the first time he got a UFC fighter who could like genuinely give him a bit of a a tough fight on the feet over the long haul like Jared Gordon'sordon's built for that introducing the new mc

spicy from mcdonald's it looks like a regular chicken sandwich but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich mc spicy consider yourself warned limited time only at participating mcdonald's in canada and i didn't see anyone pass the test that's's not what I saw. That's not what I saw at all. So, sure, man, if Patty gets on your back, then you're in deep shit. And he's good at finding it. That's true. But short of that, man,

he might start encountering problems. And what I've noticed is when you look at the Paige Van Zandts or the Sage Northcuts or some other folks who are like, you know, these like, oh, really young, interesting prospects. The UFC gave him about three-ish fights, sometimes two, sometimes four, but three-ish fights before they really began to ratchet up the competition. I don't know what they're going to do here. They may give him somebody else that's not like this. I don't know. They may decide that he needs more help. I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do, but if they escalate from here, he's in trouble. He's in trouble. His game is just not developed to beat ranked contenders at this point. Certainly

not consistently and not very high up the rank, if any. Again, maybe a couple of permutations you could think of or squeeze out. But not a great showing. Not a great showing. All right. I've been rambling on this one. Let's talk about some other ones on this card if we can here. Don't have a lot to say about Santiago Ponzinibbio taking on Alex Morino,

winning at 229 of round three. We'll probably save this a little bit for either extra credit or regular MK on Monday. Morneau winning two rounds and much busier. Ponzinibbio going to the body a lot. Ton of body work from Ponzinibbio, but not really able to get it done for the first two rounds. And then finally is able to like use that bodywork to trick Morneau to then come over the top and dude, what's that line from 50 Cent? You know, he's like, I won't say the N word, but he's like, the dudes screw their face up at me, but on some real shit, son, they don't want me.

Is that what he says? That was like that. He had his face all messed up and then he came in and dropped the boom on him, lowered the boom on him one more time, and put his lights out. Great comeback win for Ponzinibbio. Certainly some questions to ask yourself, and that was a switch from a different kind of,

you know, stanced opponent, different kind of fight, different kind of fighter, than what he was going to get with Robbie Lawler. Fair enough. So when you make those switches, guys can get tripped up, and he got the win in the end.

So Ponzinibbio has a lot to be happy and proud about. No doubt about it. Still some things to work on and some questions to ask, but this was one, if he'd lost, it would have been really bad. Salvaging in the way he did, I thought was great. And using body work to set up the finish. Just no doubt about it. Took him a little while to get it done. Had to be patient, but he did. So congratulations to Santiago Ponzinibbio. Great job by him. All right, let's talk about Darren Till. Drikus Duplicy defeats Darren Till via face crank at 243 of the third round. Okay, so they're not the same age,

and they're not in the same stage of their career, and there's lots of differences. I don't mean to overstate them, but Darren Till's in trouble. His UFC career's in trouble and his MMA career's in trouble. And let's go over it. He hasn't won back-to-back fights since 2017 into 2018. Since then, he got Bravo choked by Tyron Woodley. He got KO'd by Jorge Masvidal. He did beat Kelvin Gaston in the split in November of 2019. Then he loses to Robert Whitaker via decision. He gets finished off by Derek Brunson and he

gets finished off here by Drikus Duplassie. Now, it got named fight of the night apparently, so there's that. Why is Darren Till's career in trouble? Well, first of all, he's lost five of his last six. He hasn't won a fight in over three years. That's the first reason. But here's the bigger reason. The bigger reason is I'm just not seeing any growth and development in his game at this point at all. Nothing super visible, nothing I can really be like, aha. He had a questionable sort of decision-making in the first round where he's getting held briefly against the fence. Actually, not even briefly, but he gets held against the fence.

And Duplicy kind of had captured the far wrist and was just unloading on the near side and Till didn't want to stand, even though he could have and he needed to. And okay, you're getting hit and you're trying to orient yourself. All right, fine. That's not the end of the world. But that was a weird thing. And he did storm back in that round.

And I thought he had a good second round where when he was at range, you know, he was landing for sure. He was landing. But here was the big problem. Two big problems. One, I cannot believe his wrestling defense has not gotten better than what it is. Duplessis is physical, and he's a good wrestler. But the ease with which he was able to get it came far too quickly.

There just was not much genuine, down-blocking, hardcore, intense wrestling resistance from Darren Till. Not in this fight. Didn't see it. And I think that there's a case to make that it could have been and should have been. Like, you can't tell me that's the best anyone could do. Even in, you know, of any UFC middleweight.

Like, not possible. It just, like, his takedown defense just collapsed almost immediately. It was the ease with which Duplessy was able to do it. And then capturing Mount very quickly in the third. Like, there's just not enough growth in that part of the game right now. And there hasn't been. And, you know, he's almost 30 years old at this point, which is not old, but he's been at it for a while.

He's had a lot of injury. Actually, how old is Darren Till? Yeah, 29. So he's not old, but, like, that he's been at it this long and it's going this way is a bit of a problem. So that's the first problem. But here's the other problem. The problem on the feet is not that he wasn't better than Duplicy on the feet.

And at times landing some nice shots. He is, and he was. The problem was he just had the same intensity sparring, because I've seen video of him sparring, that he does fighting. Like, there's no real distinction between them. And sometimes there shouldn't be, but like, he wasn't able to, okay, so like, you hear the saying, a good fighter takes advantages of his opponent's mistakes. That's one. But a great fighter makes his opponent make mistakes. He just wasn't creating hardly any good openings. He was chasing a lot with the left hand as his opponent was circling away. Like he was landing good shots, don't get me wrong, especially in the second round. He won that one cleanly. Like no question, he won it cleanly. But he wasn't bombing on the guy. He wasn't beating his

ass. He was just better overall landing the shots. I'll pull the stats up here in just a second. Again, these will be numeric and not qualitative. But I'm just not seeing proper development of his game up to this point. I'm not seeing it, man, at all. I don't understand why not, because I'm sure he seems to work hard. Being with Hamzat and going down to MMA All-Stars can't be a bad thing. But what has it amounted to? His wrestling defense didn't look to me any better than it was three years ago. His striking to me didn't look any better than it did three years ago.

And again, striking is not bad. His striking is pretty good. But, I mean, listen to these numbers. And again, I realize that a lot of this is going to be from the first round. Dude, round one, trick is duplicy. This is the quantitative total. Ready? 60 to 6.

jesus now till had a much much better second round uh 18 to 10 although he did give up two takedowns in a minute and 27 of control time but round three duplicy 16 to 11 he got the takedown and the sub attempt which he gets him with the face crank and dude even with the face crank listen i'm sure the face crank hurt but like till didn't even really hand fight i'm not sure how much he even wanted to be in this fight and i guess he got injured early on or at some point in the contest i don't even know and you could say well didn't that affect the result if he got injured yes of course it did of course it did but he's been injured a lot it's like some people like are just always injured and some fighters are not look Look at Israel. He's never injured, you know. He's just constantly able to go out there.

And some other guys get injured all the time. And some of that is luck. Some of that is training. It's really hard to exactly, you know, disentangle what's causing what. But whether it's the injury or the training or whatever, like, dude, I don't give a shit. Up to this point, up to this point, for the goals in which he's stated and for the ways in which we talk about the space he occupies in the division, you just have to be much further along than he is. Much further along.

And yeah, you know, if the injury... I was going to say, he looked worse in this fight than he did in the Robert Whitaker fight by a mile. He looked pretty good in the Robert Whitaker fight, certainly in parts. And Whitaker had great respect for him. And, you know, there was a real chess match there. He didn't look nearly as good tonight as he did then. Like, is he even regressing? I don't know. But certainly, certainly, certainly with the takedown questions and that you'd be like, oh, what about the toehold? Toehold wasn't close. A good toehold is when their knee, excuse me, is when their heel is close to the rear end. That's when you can get a real nasty one. When the foot is straight like that, it's a little harder to get, although

you can get them that way too. But you know, that toe hold wasn't very close. So I don't know what the injury was. I don't know what happened, but I just don't know how you can look at that and be like, wow, this guy is really on his way this far into his career, you know? So in the same with Patty, where you have a 27-year-old, and here you have a 29-year-old, it would still be foolish to write them off, but like Till needs a complete reset, and I don't know if he's going to get that in the UFC,

I don't really know what the hell they're going to do with him, up to this point, that's a terrible loss, and it was a loss, he had moments where he looked good, but never like great. And the parts of his game, as I'm just, I know I'm repeating myself over and over, but I just kind of can't believe it, to be honest with you.

I can't believe that we're this far along about guys we've like talked really strongly, like title contenders about, certainly in the case of Till and that's the kind of resistance he's able to marshal at this stage it's not enough, it's not even close to enough the results tell you that it's not enough and I know

that's shitty for me to say in a way that I don't have to worry about these things, he's the one that has to worry about them and it's got to be difficult but Christ on crutches, man. I just, you know, be a fan of who you want and don't abandon guys you've been liking at this point just because they're flagging. That's not what I'm saying.

But if you're going to base your fandom, guys, promoters will just straight up lie to you about fighters all the time. Both in terms of how good they are or how bad they are, how much they like them or don't. They'll just lie to you constantly. Hype jobs happen all the time in MMA. All the time. And sometimes by accident, believe it or not, that's a real thing.

You'd be like, well, wouldn't hype be like, not be possible to be by accident? But it's not. There's all kinds of ways where it could manifest itself in ways that it shouldn't necessarily. And Till got pushed. He got pushed hard. And he was out there telling everyone he was the best fighter in the world and he was going to be a title

contender and a champion and everything. And, dude, you've got to prove shit like that before you do it. And he did it to Cerrone and that was nice. And I think he had the win after Cerrone, right? Who he fought? He fought Stephen Thompson, but that fight sucked and didn't prove anything. But you always, always, always got to be careful of what promoters are selling you. You got to be careful about what media entities are selling you. You got to be careful what nations are selling you

about how sure they are that this guy's good or this guy's great. I'm not here to bury Darren Till. He has time to get right. But you should be concerned that this far into the journey, we are not seeing the requisite improvement while his peers are. Like Derek Brunson had his own set of issues. Derek Brunson tightened up some screws and got a lot better. And when they faced off, look what happened. Look what happened. So I feel for him. He fought two times in 2019, once in 2020, once in 2021. This was his only fight in 2022. He's not making the kind of money he probably had envisioned or wanted to. He's been injured a lot. He's missed a lot of time. He may have been injured here again. It's terrible. It's a terrible situation. But this is a brutal fucking game that these guys sign up to play not just in the actual act of the fight itself but in how merciless it is around

mistakes or difficulties or anything else obstacles it's fucking merciless this game and he's in a bad way he He's in a real bad way. Oh, okay, we'll end here. Ilya Teporia defeating Bryce Mitchell. 3-10 of round two. Fucking Ilya Teporia is a bull. Is a bull. 25 years old and he beat the shit out of Bryce Mitchell.

Now, his game is not perfect, but how did he do it? First of all, putting strikes in combination, and he was leaning everything into them shits. I mean, Bryce Mitchell's got a chin, to be quite honest with you. And, you know, obviously at the end of the first round, I think with about a minute left, he began to work his game a little bit, which was nice to see. It's obviously a formidable game.

But Teporia's going to be good about that. He's not going to make too many mistakes, which he didn't. And in the first round, Jesus, Teporia was able to keep his stance low. He was able to put combinations together. He was able to get Bryce backing up both with jabs and hooking punches that he was just driving everything into. And then in the end, this is the whole story. He hurts and I think dropped bryce mitchell if i'm not mistaken was bloodying him up over the eye through the nose the whole nine yards in the second round along the fence line captures uh excuse me so what hand was it around it was this way so uh this hand would be palm down he captures this now he Now he's ear to ear almost with Bryce Mitchell. By the way, he was rag-dolling him.

Did you see that? Like taking almost like a cross face and then forcing him down to the mat. Doing some big brother shit to Bryce Mitchell, which is not easy to do. Do Bryce Mitchell, like whatever else you think about his views and the fans seem to love him and all that,

which is great. He's a formidable talent, man. He was undefeated for a reason. He was in this fight for a good reason. That's a very skilled fighter. And Tupuria was just fucking muscling him down. But this was the best part. Once he even got the head and arm triangle, he had to have it side to side angle to yank him down to the mat and flatten him. But then what you notice he ends up doing is he slightly changes his position,

not just to tighten the choke, right, by like twisting the knob a little bit, but also he brings, he started here, he brings his chest on top of the tricep of Bryce Mitchell to tighten the choke as well. And it's a subtle, subtle slight thing but he does that this is what I'm talking about he he's going to have gas tank issues until he dials it back a little bit but he enters into exchanges punching he doesn't catch and shoot

he enters in exchanging he leaves exchanging he is out there pinning these guys he's forcing them down with crossfaces everything he does has hard core intent consistently hardcore intent all the time man gas pedal to the floor not built for a 25 25 minute fight fighting that way. Let's be very clear about that. But he's 25 years old. He's a black belt in jujitsu. He's undefeated. He submitted Bryce Mitchell in his last contest. He was up at 155 and viciously KO'd the guy. So we know his power already carries up to say nothing of what it looks like at 145. Yo, mark my words. Ilya Tsyporia is coming for the belt. Now, it's going to take him a while to get through the division.

Not next year, maybe not even 2024. It could take some time. But he's on his way. He's going to contend for it. There's not a doubt in my mind. This guy has championship potential written all over him. Now, as I mentioned, he does need to dial back the intensity. That intensity in the right moments, especially in grappling exchanges, and especially in certain kinds of striking exchanges even, will serve him well. But he

goes to the well a little too much. It creates big openings for takedowns. It off-balances him at times. He surrenders cage position when he throws and he kind of stumbles forward and the opponent gets behind him. He needs to tighten it up. Like there's not, I'm not to say he's a perfect fighter either, but, but on the good side, holy shit, a bull, a bull. That's what that, that kid is 25 years old and a fucking bull. I mean, what is his nickname? What do they call him? What do they call Ilya Teporia?

They should call him Toro. Let's see. I'm going to pull up his... They call him El Matador, funnily enough. Yeah, holy shit, man. This dude, he's so good. He's so talented. Crisp striking in combinations, malicious intent, but not just that offensive intent. You got to keep in mind something like even if he couldn't knock out Bryce Mitchell, and I know what the rules are

supposed to say. They're supposed to say we just have to judge the damage. But more than that, you're showing the judges when you do what he does, where I'm battling in with strikes, I'm getting out with strikes. I'm getting out with strikes, you know, I'm like, everything has this firm intensity to it. It does, I think, send signals to the judges about like what he's trying to do in there. You know, I'm trying to throw more volume. I'm trying to do it with more fire. I'm trying to put something behind it. Like everything is hard nosed purposed, high speed, low speed low drag everything everything that he's trying you know I do think over time like if it went to the judges scorecards that I think whether

they're conscious of it or not I think it does send a message so like there's layers to the offense in numerous kinds of ways both in which how it integrates with the rest of his offense, both in terms of like what's a fake, what's a faint, but also kind of fitting it just in case for judging help in the event that he needs it without like truly tailoring it for it. Because striking into exchange is great if there were no judges exiting striking if there is great even if there's no judges or or you know the pinning uh it would be great even if there's no judges like the things work for other reasons other than judging but if judging came into a play there it would yet be even more effective that's the kind of shit he's doing, man. Beast. Bull.

Just an absolute... Good luck to the next guy who has to fight that fucking guy. Good luck. All right, let's get to some of your questions here. So Till's only win at 185 is a blown-up 170 or a 5.9 Gastelum. His best win at welterweight, other than the controversial Thompson one, is a blown-up 185 is a blown up 170 or a 5'9 Gastelum. His best win at welterweight other than the controversial Thompson one is a blown up 155 or a cowboy. Is it time to realize that despite his popularity Till is not an elite top 15 UFC fighter

and maybe never was? Yes. I don't say it lightly but yes. How much public outrage short of the January 6th incident will need to take place for there to be something done about MMA judging? Like, there has to be some kind of coordinated campaign to alert the governor in various states. Truly, I'm not doing a bit. Like, that's what you actually have to do.

Should USADA start testing judges for performance decrease? Drugs. Yeah, maybe. 126 Media had Jan beating O'Malley. 124 had Gordon beating Patty. I'm 100% not saying corruption, but it's interesting that the judges saw it so different. Yeah, I didn't mind the O'Malley one.

And I even told him that too on his own podcast that I had scored it for Jan. But this one I think is bad. Even with a card that had so many finishes and moments of excitement, does it feel like after the main event closed, the UFC took a bit of an L? Yeah. I mean, they didn't, but it does feel that way. Yes.

Are you surprised that Till's takedown defense is so bad? Yeah, I am. Someone says Tony Ferguson is the clear next fight for Patty to get him into the rankings. Right, they might do that. Fuck, they might do that. Do you think we'll ever see a stage where judges are required to justify their scorecard? Nope. You think the commissions are going to make themselves vulnerable to the needs of the public?

Why would they do that? They don't serve the public. They serve rich institutional powers, in the case of the Nevada Commission in Las Vegas. Those are their clients. I mean, the taxpayers pay for them, but that's not who they serve. Vegas. Those are their clients. I mean, the taxpayers pay for them, but that's not who they serve. They don't serve the taxpayer. Not certainly, not exclusively, and I would say not even mostly. What?

What are they saying? When Dana White announces Glover Teixeira versus Jamal Hill for the vacant UFC light heavyweight title next month at UFC 283 in Brazil. Seriously? Really? I don't hate the fight by itself. Dude, Ankalayev got screwed. Oof.

Was that Paddy's worst post-fight speech ever? Yeah, probably. What do you think UFC appointed judges would look like? I don't want to find out. I don't want UFC appointed judges. The state should do that job. They should just do a better job. Right?

Is the light heavyweight division in shambles yeah where is jamal in the rankings jamal is sitting at seven oh man what a giant disaster yuri's out glover is the one in there Jan and Magomed were 3 and 4 but that's now gone Rakic is sitting at 5 but he's injured Smith is sitting at 6 but he's also injured I believe, I saw him he was recovering from surgery when we did room service

diaries and then sitting at number 7 is Jamal Hill, yeah that division is a mess that division is a complete mess it's pretty clear that Teporia would do some very nasty things to Paddy if they fought at this stage. Dude, if they put Paddy in front of Teporia, Teporia might fucking kill him. If you wanted to end Paddy's career as soon as possible, put him in front of Teporia. It's a mismatch. It's not even a good fight. It's a mismatch.

Teporia would fuck him up who hired those judges technically the commission who paid for them the taxpayers of Nevada and then of course the promoter in this case has to give a certain share of the proceeds to the state which they allocate for it

but yeah so your tax dollars at fine work there do you think do you think Yon gives Glover the title shot? It's not up to him. Do commissions take a cut of the gate? Yes, but there's a cap on it in many states. Or it's a small percentage base.

They don't take a huge amount off the promoter for the typical reason that the promoter, their margins are thin. And it will depend on state to state, but yes, they will typically take some, oh, a cut of the gate. I'm not sure if they take a cut of the gate or the overall event revenue.

Again, I have to check in Nevada, but they do take a small off the top from what the promoter makes, but again, it's mostly, or I should say a large part of it anyway, is taxpayer funded. All right, well, that was a hell of a night. Good Lord, man.

Can you believe this shit? What a night of great fights that were ruined by bad judging and incomprehensible judging in the co-main and some serious reckoning moments from people's careers about where they're headed and what the next stages might look like. My name is Luke Thomas. I've been on the air now, and it's 2.30 in the morning for an hour and almost a half, so I'm going to go.

I appreciate you watching. Thumbs up. Hit subscribe. Do all the fun. Do all that fun subscription shit, huh? Give us a subscription. We're out here working until 2.30 in the morning. I'm 43 years old.

I mean, what am I doing with my life, right? So thank you for joining me. I appreciate it. Regular MK, back with BC on Monday. We'll get all the reactions from Bellator from him and this and everything else. Teofimo Lopez and Bud Crawford, the whole nine yards. Let us know, all right? Until then, appreciate you watching. Get some sleep.