MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨UFC 285 Results: Jon Jones vs. Ciryl Gane | Shevchenko-Grasso | UFC 285 Reaction

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell have you covered with an instant reaction to UFC 285. The guys break down Jon Jones vs. Ciryl Gane, Valentina Shevchenko vs. Alexa Grasso, Geoff Neal vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov and Much more! (00:00:30) - Jon Jones vs. Ciryl Gane (00:31:30) - Alexa Grasso vs. Valentina Shevchenko (00:47:30) - Shavkat Rakhmonov vs. Geoff Neal (00:55:30) - Mateusz Gamrot vs. Jalin Turner (00:57:50) - Bo Nickal vs. Jamie Pickett (01:01:00) - Fan Questions Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher 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 there, everyone. Welcome in. Look at us. I can hear myself in that studio if you don't mind closing that door. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. Welcome, welcome, welcome. As you can can see we are inside the morning combat studios as i mentioned

i'm lt bc is here he is currently doing a hit for cbs sports hq and then he will join us right thereafter uh this is the official ufc 285 post fight show instant reaction whatever you'd like to call it we're going to get to the results from UFC 285 right now. And also, I have a tweet up. Excuse me one second. Let me plug this in like an idiot. It takes me forever. We have a tweet up right now.

You can follow me at LThomasNews. I have a tweet up asking for questions. Shoot us a good one. The producers will pick it, and then we'll answer them live on air. We'll put them on the screen, and it'll be a be a dandy old time yeah so thumbs up as well if you are watching if you are new here please subscribe we don't just do post fight shows in studio all the time we do them pretty rarely and we also do lots of live coverage uh monday wednesday friday live 11 a.m in the east me and brian campbell but that is neither nor there, correct? Yes. UFC 285 is in the books, ladies and gentlemen.

So I'm going to start this off. Brian Campbell is going to finish his hit with CBS Sports HQ, and then he's going to be down here. You guys fill up the Twitter thread. We'll pick him. We'll answer him. And then we're going to go piece by piece. Let's start where the conversation starts, ladies and gentlemen.

Jon Jones is back. I don't know if you heard it. He did pretty well tonight. Wasn't, I mean, what a joke. Good Lord. Okay, so let's just get to the actual results with the full-on time. Jon Jones defeats Cyril Ghosn at 2-0-4 of the very first round. He got, I'm not sure.

I'll pull up the stats here in just a second. Let me get that going here, get the stats up. They're not going to write it up just yet, but basically the idea is this. Jon Jones gets a takedown on Cyril Ghosn. Cyril Ghosn throws a punch. Jon gets under it, wraps him at the waist. Ghosn turns away as he throws the punch, and so now Jon has the back. Now he doesn't have hooks in, but he has a grip around the waist.

And he follows him, takes him to the ground, nearly takes his back full on. Cyril is able to kind of stand a little bit, but can't quite get away. He gets dragged back down, this time John facing Cyril right up against the fence. And he actually just drives his hips in straight past the knee line, if you go back and look, of Cyril Gahosn and ends up in kind of a mount. Now, it's not full on mount because Ghosn is not laying down. He's sitting up against the fence. But John has sort of almost kind of sat in his lap at that point and is able to eventually just lock up a guillotine choke.

He sits it. He drives into it. Ghosn didn't really hand fight. I don't know what. I'd have to go back and look at all the sequences to have a better understanding of it, but he just looked like he was a little bit lost and kind of overwhelmed. John locks up the guillotine choke and he taps. That's one of John Jones's easiest fights in UFC history.

Think about that for a second. John's had some fights where he's beaten the shit out of guys. He beat up Jake O'Brien, but it took longer than this. He beat up Matt Yushchenko. It took longer than this. In fact, I can go through his fights. This is his first first round stoppage since beating Chael Sonnen at UFC 159 in April of 2013. And even that one went the full distance or actually, excuse me, 433. What happened before that? He had a first round stoppage against Matt Yushchenko. That was 152. I guess that was a little bit easier.

Brandon Vera went 319. Matt Hamill, 414. Of course, that's the loss, and so on and so forth. This is arguably his easiest win. It's up there with the Matt Yushchenko fight. Ladies and gentlemen, let's take a step back for just a second and make very clear what we all discovered tonight. And everyone who knows me knows I certainly am not a fan of Jon Jones as a person,

and he and I probably will never, ever see eye to eye. Not relevant. Doesn't matter. Who cares? Here is the reality. Jon Jones is the best mixed martial artist ever. Ever. It's really not up for debate.

Not at this point. The guy took three years plus off, in addition to all the other breaks he had through the course of his career and all the distractions and everything else, just this one takes about three years off changes weight classes they gave him the number one contender who had what was it from the francis and ganu fight but 14 months or more to to get better 15 months to get better to work on his takedown defense to work on everything else and And Jon Jones blew the doors off of him. Made it look like it was,

it made it look like the Jake Gyllenhaal, Jay Huron pretend fight that they had for the movie they were shooting. Seriously, that one may have been even more competitive. This wasn't competitive. This was nothing. This was a walk in the park for a guy like that with all of those circumstances and all of that uncertainty and all of those questions and all of the weight gain, everything, all of the doubt, all of the second guessing. The guy just won another title, up a weight class, off of three years like it was nothing. He had practices last week that were harder than this.

Think about that for a second. That's the best fighter I've ever seen. That's the best fighter I've ever seen. It's the best fighter I've ever seen. He's just fucking flawless. When it matters in the end, when it truly, truly matters in the end, when it's time to compete, when it's go time,

by hook or by crook, this guy either finds a way or just runs everything in his way over. He hasn't looked that good or that dominant in a long time. Now, granted, we should also say that was, I don't know what that was from Cyril Ghosn. I don't know if the hand injury he had was real. I don't know if he was overcome by the moment. I really don't know.

I don't get exactly why he turned in such a dud of a performance. I think in fairness to him, do I really think that's the very best that Cyril Ghosn could do? I don't know how fair that is. That seems a little harsh. I think he could probably do better if given another opportunity, although one is probably not coming anytime soon. But you get the idea. Folks, that's the best fighter I've ever seen.

That's the best fighter in the history of the sport, and I've been watching it for a very long time. You can look at my gray-ass hair. I've been around the block for a while. They just don't come like this. They just don't come like this. You just saw Volkanovski try to go up a weight class, just 10 pounds, and, of course, he put on a hell of an effort,

but you can see how difficult it was. And I know there's some other ones. What about Henry Cejudo when TJ came down a weight class? Or what about GSP taking time off and beating Bisping yeah but okay even that one was more back and forth than this one this was just nothing almost and actually depending on your perspective maybe quite anticlimactic actually I think for some people that must have been like I paid for this like you know I it's funny I saw some people on social media this week. This is how old and pathetic I am. But I saw some fans being like, this is the first time I'm going to see a Jon Jones fight live.

I mean, they usually don't. They haven't looked like this in a long time. They haven't looked like this in a long time. Long time. He made it look effortless. He had a huge sweat going he had a fat guy sweat going at the end of the fight there because he really didn't do a whole lot

he didn't really have to do a whole lot you add up the context you add up the circumstances you add up the challenges you add up what we knew about Gon and if you watch MK I've been high on Gon for a long time although I did have serious questions about his ground game.

I think I articulated those this past week. You know, it's hard to fight off Jon Jones once he's already wrapped around your waist from a punch, so that's not quite takedown defense altogether. But he didn't put up a sturdy defense in the grappling. He failed to hand fight on the choke effectively. You should not be getting stopped in a heavyweight championship out that way but but john was was simply not to be denied today he was simply not going to be held back or otherwise um prevented from this moment i'm not

a big believer in destiny i don't think any of that is real i think you create your own destiny there's no divine plan for any of us but But there are people who are enormously talented, and he is one of them. And despite all the times he has tried to self-sabotage his way out of there, he just finds ways to reinvent himself in this particular context, and more importantly, just keep stacking Ws. So let's talk a little bit. Here's the one problem that we have. There's really not enough information for us to fully gauge, like, all the truth of what the weight gain will mean for John if he has another opponent like Stipe who's, you know, a better wrestler and perhaps more careful. What will John's cardio look like in the third and fourth and fifth rounds? I think these are still relevant and important questions.

Certainly, he didn't look too slow. We didn't get a great sample size. He didn't look too slow for me. He still looked pretty nimble. There were, what were the rumors, camera guys? What were the rumors before the fight today? That John was injured? That he was injured, right?

He was limping. Did anyone see any evidence of that? I know he had the toe tape and they cut it, but if you've ever injured your big toe, they tape it next to the side toe so that it creates a bit of a buddy system for support so that it can create alignment and you can still bounce. A lot of big guys do that, so it's a very common thing. But they cut off the one on the center of the foot

and left everything else. But he looked, again so it's a very common thing. But they cut off the one on the center of the foot and left everything else. But he looked, again, it's a small sample size. He looked pretty sprightly. He looked pretty quick. Gone looked a little bit quicker, but not dramatically so. Do we have Brian Campbell? Yeah, here he is. All right, so let's sit him down.

This is the man who picked Gone like a fucking idiot. Wow, I mean, we're swearing already here, too. Oh, wow. All right, Brian Campbell, Luke Thomas, let's reset. UFC 285, morning combat, instant reaction, post-fight show. BC, I said Jon Jones is the best fighter I've ever seen. Would you disagree? Well, certainly not.

Look, let's be honest. A little anticlimactic, that victory. Jon, though, doesn't get any disparaging comments against him. He took advantage of the opportunity, took the fight to an area which was his strength and was Gon's weakness. Is it a little white belt shit out of Gon here in terms of how they ease and how quickly he succumbed here? Yes. Surprising at the very least. I just said before you walked in, do I think that's the very best Gon could have done?

I certainly do not certainly and look anyone like me who had picked gone in and had questions that needed answering if this fight went you know three rounds into the championship rounds well look it didn't happen at the end of the day so what did we say about john jones coming in that i think was most important he's a gamer he's unflappable i compared him to floyd mayweather in that regard where how many times in floyd's run was he having issues outside the ring, accused of this, you know, this and that. He was able to always keep his focus, and three years was a long time. It was weird the way things went, that as soon as Francis Ngannou was unable to re-sign with the Pro-Ocean, suddenly John's there to end his three-year layoff and re-sign his deal and walk in and take the shot. But look what John Jones did

after three years. Took his time in building up his body. You saw a different Jon Jones tonight. I'm not asking your opinion on the comments he made and has he changed and all this. It almost doesn't matter in the conversation at the moment. What matters right now is he looks happy, he was somewhat humble, and he's back. And he's got the biggest prize in all of combat sports. You can make the argument at the moment. And look, I mean, I wanted to see if he was going to gas out.

I wanted to see if he can carry that weight late. But if it doesn't get there, it doesn't get there. This is Jon Jones, death taxes, and Jon Jones is your greatest fighter in MMA history. It was true three years ago. It's even more true now. So here's what I have to say about his performance. We just don't have a great sample size. It's hard.

It's really hard. But I will say this. He didn't look slow to me. No, he admitted that it was the timing was a little bit off, which you would expect. And that's why I thought there was the potential if he was able to, if gone was able to keep the fight off the ground, which he wasn't that we could see some of those wrinkles play out in the first two rounds. Would John's timing be off? Would it be harder to carry that bulk? Would he be able to, you know, win these close rounds if it ended up being on the feet largely? We didn't get answers to those questions. So I just did CBS Sports HQ with our great colleague, Hakeem Dermish, who mentioned, look,

you know, John calls out Stipe afterwards. And what a big fight you can do for July International Fight Week. He said, who would you favor there? You know, I would say, I think John, but do I have conclusive questions to all my answers coming in? No, and this is not meant by any means to put slander on John or try to protect this idea that I picked gone. But we just don't know exactly how good John is yet. But what do gamers do? What do great all-time champions do? They don't screw around and wait until the end of the fight

and try to see if they get exposed. They go right in there and take care of business. He did that. Stipe, however, would be a different matchup and a different challenge of his skills. We'll get to Stipe later. Let me read some of the stat line here if I can. John landed five strikes.

Gon landed six for whatever that is worth. Including a stick kick, right? Yeah, that's right. It started off inauspiciously. It looked a little bit like Mitrion Karatanov won. I was like, ooh, that's it? Just like that? John is credited with two takedowns.

The initial one and then Gon got back up initially and then got sucked back down again. Then one sub attempt. And John is credited with 57 seconds of control time. There's really not a lot to judge from this. BC, I was looking at the timing of this. This is the second easiest win in his career if you're judging by how quickly he got a stoppage. So the other one would be 152. He put away Matt Yushchenko.

Yes. The damn janitor in John's first. By the way away Matt Yushchenko. Yes. The damn janitor. And by the way, Matt Yushchenko was a good fighter too. Like the way, the ease he ran through with him was like, God damn. I watched that fight in real time. That was in 2010, 13 years later, he goes up a weight class and dummies. Well, one thing you'll say though, I wasn't sure about the comments John was making this week that, you know, that, that Cyril's actually not as great as he looks in certain areas that he's more of a you know one-dimensional fighter all that stuff one thing you can say is all that stuff that john said it kind of played out to be true now i don't know if in the long run they are true

but we have seen cyril gone in two major close-ups for the full world title and would you say both were clearly disappointing his grappling is a serious problem. I said it on MK yesterday, did I not? I just don't. He is not a good grappler. He's got a big problem with it, and he can strike. In this particular case, he didn't use it well for defensive wrestling purposes. He probably should have not lunged and been a little bit more behind the jab, but okay, hindsight 2020, but he's very far behind he's really far and also here's the thing we've seen on the feet gone is good enough we don't probably to beat john if it was strictly a kickboxing match yeah i'm gonna bet on gone and i think gone even against in gone who in a pure kickboxing match i would pick him but dude you cannot survive at heavyweight with

even steepay at 40 doesn't matter matter. Curtis Blades is out there. We saw what Ngannou was able to do. If a guy like Ngannou can take you down and he had tried one takedown before he ever fought Cyril Ghosn, one, then he got four on Cyril. And we talked about it before, grabbing the ankle and sitting instead of passing.

Did you have problems? You have, that is very novice decision-making that you don't see advanced fighters do because they usually are not considering things like that in those situations i'm sure he got better i'm sure he got better from the gone fight excuse me from the n ghanu fight but clearly not good enough and against a guy like this you just can't make mistakes like that no no this this no, this was damning the performance against Gunn, in my opinion. And, you know, I didn't even think

he had that, John had that choke in that deep. Obviously, when you see the replay and you see the pressure and the weight that John was putting, all his weight on top of the head and neck. A guy like that, when he puts the squeeze on, it's gonna be significant. I understand how that happened in the end, but in real time, it was sort of like, what just happened? And you got Luke Thomas yelling, the fight's over, the fight's over!

I knew the fight was over, Luke, okay, by the seventh time you said it. Yeah, but if you're asking what happened, it means you don't understand what you're looking at. Well, I saw a choke attempt. I didn't think it was tapable in the moment. The replay shows you that. Here was the weird part about that, about the choke attempt. God didn't really hand fight. If you're sitting down and your back is on the fence, he can't run you over.

At a bare minimum, you can plant one hand and grab and turn or whatever. I have to go back a little bit of the direction whenever he had to turn. Or you can even get two hands and kind of post. He just didn't fight it. I don't – it was weird. I mean, look, I felt – because I was at the Gustafson rematch for Jon Jones, and we remember that fight moved locations and states in the same week and all that. Wait, so you flew out to Vegas. Well, I didn't actually flew to Vegas. I switched my travel and flew to LA. But the whole point is it was an anticlimactic fight in the end because the

first two rounds were kind of nothing happened. And then suddenly Gus Simpson comes and you're sort of like, whoa, where is he at? This was even quicker and worse. And Luke, maybe, you know, it's not all negative from an entertainment standpoint that it went that way meaning if John fights Stipe again for example there's still a lot of questions that we don't know about John that he's going to have to answer so it's more in terms of a coming attractions things to come but you can't just the way this whole thing happened the way the whole transaction happened it's not best case scenario Luke best case scenario obviously would have been that John comes back and fights Francis Ngannou and we decide that, okay?

It didn't happen. However, you can put more blame on the UFC or more Francis. It's depending on how you view the situation based on the facts we know. But not only did we not get, you know, maybe the best matchup of all the available to see Gon succumb in the way he did. It's disappointing.

It's disappointing from that standpoint. It was here and it was gone, this fight, just like that. Cereal gone in 30 seconds. Cereal gain. The gains were not loyal, okay? I'd be curious to see how John, how he names him in the post-fight presser. Yes.

Because I bet he'll go right to cereal gone and just stop the cereal gain shit. Well, if someone asks him a question, he answers, this feels surreal. Once he starts saying the word surreal again, then he moves it. It does get you. But it's wild, man.

I mean, we had a little internal OK Bet thing going. The swing fight for our OK Bet this week was gone in Jones. And if I had won that, I would have won, you know, 3-2 there. No, we would have tied. Or we would have tied that, yeah. But instead I got 4-1. But look, you know, I can sit here and be like, man, I wish it was against Francis or I wish gone showed us more.

But that's the way it goes, man. And what can you say about Jon Jones? When GSP came back from five years and moved up in weight and beat Bisping, you know, you could do the whole while Bisping was old. No, GSP came back and won that. Jon Jones just came back and fucking won that. You know what I mean? Like, you gotta give him credit where credit is due, and I know you're doing that, and you've done that tonight. You've given him credit.

Look, look, the rivalry's over between you and Jon, okay? Give him his flowers. Well, I mean, what does he care about me? I mean, the guy's winning in every kind of way. But again, I've said this before, look, the rivalry is over between you and John, okay? Give him his flowers. I mean, what does he care about me? I mean, the guy is winning in every kind of way. But again, I've said this before. Like, dude, fighting is so hard. It's so insane. You just have to make sure the person who deserves to win does. Looking at the evidence tonight, there was only one guy who deserved anything,

and it would be John Jones, obviously. He deserved it, dude. He deserved it. What do you say about the fans' reaction to the... It felt like a conquering hero was back, right? It did. And what do you mix that with what you saw to Jon in the post-fight interview? Fiance kissing him in the cage, dad in the cage, brothers.

Like, look, say what you will about Jon's outside-the-cage stuff and whether you like him or not. There's some wholesome, wholesimity to this. I don't wish poorly on Jon. I don't know. I mean, only a true degenerate would wish poorly on a guy and his family and his kids um i have to go back and listen i don't know if he's uh i'm sure he's mentioned his kids before in post-fight interviews but this time felt like he made him like this that he talked about other people as well but

he definitely made him a real priority this time listen he's 35 years old he doesn't have much time left in the sport whatever else else you saw today, his body just probably can't take it for too much longer. I still disagree. Even though he's on record saying what you've echoed in the past, that hey, maybe he'll come back for two heavyweight fights and be done. He's not going to walk away if he beats Stipe.

Like, I'm telling you, he's going to... Okay, but just given his age and the wear and tear on his body, as easy as tonight went. By the way, for that, it's best-case scenario. Oh, for sure. He comes out of this fight feeling like not even a sparring session. Dude, that wasn't even a five-minute roll.

And they can make that July fight card feel royal. But I will tell you, I'm not that high on the Stipe fight because I just don't take his chances that seriously. To me, the only thing I get is another twinge of regret, or however you want to phrase it, that Francis Ngannou is not here. Should have been him tonight. Would have been a much more competitive fight.

Or that it took three years to get John back in. Or that it took three years, yeah. So all of it is kind of related. The timing is just unfortunate for fans. But look, you will say this about Stipe. I'll say, real quickly, gun to your head, Jones, Stipe, July. Yeah, I think it'll happen.

I think Jones will be the favorite, rightfully so. You think Jones wins? I think he'll be favored to win. I don't know yet because mostly, again, question's not fully answered. You know, what happens in this fight if John is shooting at Will and we get into rounds three and four? Just a lot of things we don't know. I think that's fair.

The difference in the matchup-wise this time around is Stipe's got got a legitimate chin stipe will still fight back even if he's down and deep into a fight and stipe is not going to be easily manhandled on the ground no no certainly not um but he's also for i think right at 40 coming off of a long time ago but a knockout loss to big francis that fight's got great themes it's greatest of all time against greatest heavyweight of all time i mean it's gonna matter it's interesting i think the thing you talked about like returning or accepting john as a returning welcoming hero i did pick up on that big time how could you not by the way the ufc the way they shot the crowd today and with the lighting everything it looked big i thought they made an effort at making it feel big and then obviously the fight

ended early but in general that succeeded well they had they had to get a big atmosphere for jake gyllenhaal's debut you know they really had to like fill that or you know here's what i'm curious to see i'm curious to see if we can ever get some sales numbers for this one like what kind of pay-per-view numbers it does and what kind of interest here's my thing am i the only one i doubt it but am i the only one who feels like, okay, I am certainly in no position to say I don't want to see John Stipe. Yes, of course I do. But I'd be lying if I thought that was very competitive.

I don't know how competitive I think that is. Okay, but you don't know where John is exactly at. He hasn't fought in three years and he was in there for what, a minute? Two. Two. And in that two, he got kicked in the nuts. Okay? He missed the left cross. I mean, like, it was just sort of like touch and go and then they take him down and the fight's over. So, And in that two, he got kicked in the nuts. Okay? He missed the left cross. I mean, like, it was just sort of like touch and go,

and then they take him down and the fight's over. So I'm not, like, again, I don't say that at all to demean what John did. John put himself in an advantageous position. You realize he made that guy look bad, right? I realize that. I'm just saying. In large part. Did that answer all of our questions?

No. No. Is Stipe a game or two? Because Stipe could jab and circle and then, like, clinch break and just not do anything other than move. And then it goes one, two, three rounds and then he could pick up the pace. And God only knows what you find out. I want to remind you that Stipe is used to fighting once a year.

After just epically getting the call for this one wrong, are you now going to double down on Stipe? Maybe have a little humility. I instead was going to flip it back on you and say, look, your 20s were out of control. What would you say when you look back on your 20s, you know? I don't remember much of it, quite frankly. I drank my way through it. I don't know why this is becoming

BC against Jon Jones. This is not a rivalry. It's not. Hold on, hold on. What did you say there, Luke? Long Island Luke? We have tweets about Jon Jones in the document? Yeah, okay. We'll get to those in just a minute. I don't have much on the stat sheet.

Here, BC, Jon Jones. There's no stats here. Yeah, there's not much. There's really not a whole lot to go to. I'll tell you the only stat that matters right now. Jon Jones is a black belt in jiu-jitsu probably, and Cyril Gunn's a white belt. That's the only stat that matters.

Or you know what? I remember Mike Easton told me this a long time ago. He used to say Alistair Overeem, this was like in 2006 or 2007, he used to tell me Alistair Overeem is not a black belt, but he's got a black belt guillotine. I don't know if John's a black belt, but he might have certain things. And also, like once it's on, his squeeze is going to be probably absurd. So in that particular sense, it's unstoppable.

Okay. If, again, based on the little amount you know, now gun to your head, does this John beat the last Ngannou we saw against Cyril Ghosn? You can't ask that. I just did. Because that Ngannou had a – How could you say something so provocative yet so brave? I just did.

Because that Ngannou had an effed up knee and wrestled his way to victory against a guy who now in three straight fights... Okay, gun to your head. ...colectively... Make a call. He's never going to fight that guy again with half a knee. Make a call! We don't know. I'll pull Luke Thomas here.

You don't know. There's Luke Thomas in HQ. Luke, we're going to need a pick in the main event. Nobody actually knows who's going to win. Yeah, that's the truth. That's the reality. Nobody knows. Hey, why don't you look at the right camera, goofus?

Here's the thing, Luke. Here's the thing. Your take on not being too excited about John Stipe is bullshit. But you know what's not bullshit, Luke? And I'm going to say it now, okay? What? Lamenting. And it's not bullshit, Luke? And I'm going to say it now, okay? What? Lamenting. And it's not over.

But lamenting the idea that we were that close to John versus Nganou and it didn't happen. Can it happen? So, look, Dana White this week was asked about that and straight up said, no. Nganou will never fight in the UFC again. Like he almost basically said, Ben, they've done that. We tried. I'm not going to say they didn't try. They gave in Ghanu record money. There were different elements to in Ghanu's decision. If John, let's say John beats Stipe. I don't know if the next contender in line

is going to be like banging on the door. Would we all want to see him against Curtis played? Sure. Eventually Tom Aspinall is going to get healthy and boy would that be a sexy matchup but let's say Francis makes a lot of money in a boxing one-off are we going to revisit this in a year we should because you know who I gotta ask you the most important question right now who's the best heavyweight in the world right now in what sport uh boxing Luke I mean what the fuck i mean i mean what are we doing here i mean i've just told you he's the best of all time how would he i'm not heavyweight champion how would he be anything else i'm not asking who's the best fighter of all time i'm asking you right now who's the best mixed martial arts oh oh oh right okay okay sorry i misunderstood the question uh francis i am spread eagle on this side of the table right now, you know? You're just a moron.

So I'll tell you this, Luke. I'll tell you this. John's not going away anytime soon unless he gets KO'd twice, okay? John's going to stay because there's something about fighting and being the man that makes John Jones the happiest. You know that. He's a competitor at the end of the day, a gamer. Yes.

We're going to revisit this conversation in a year. Is this something the UFC is going to try to go after? Are they just going to stick to this thing and turn Ngannou into the next Fedor and say, oh, he was never that good enough to begin with and now he's too old and look at this and we tried and look at that. You know what I'm saying, Luke?

It will depend on what kind of fight Francis takes between now and then and how he looks. Honestly, I find it highly unlikely, but if they just made something like an Ngannou versus Wilder fight, and seriously, like, this is all totally implausible nonsense, but if Ngannou were to knock out Wilder or even knock him down or whatever, like, just make it so they had to do it again, just that,

where are these conversations at that point? I don't even know what you would say at that point. All right, I got something else to say that I know you don't want to hear. So let's say you just answered me definitively what you didn't and said, I'm sorry, BC, I know Dana's spite. Francis is never walking through that door again, okay? Yeah, okay. What Dana said, it's the same thing with John.

I don't take any of it at face value. It could be true, but what they say is just a thing. All right. Can we do the show? We still have other fights to get to. This is the show because that's a very important question to ask you. Okay. All right.

Now, here we go. Also, I'd like to say you get over really small shit, all right? It's just because you're just annoying. Do something. What are you doing? Okay. The thing is, I didn't pick you as a partner. You picked me, okay?

I know. I regret it. All right. There's a man that I sometimes fat shame. DC? Where's the camera? Hey, DC. It's the camera? Hey DC It's time to get up and get back in that gym

Time Business just picked up DC One more run baby One more run Luke I smell I smell a trilogy You don't smell it do you? No

No I don't buy it I mean do you think dc is above three bills right now i mean that ref in the wwe referee shirt at that time he was yeah i was three bill territory uh no i don't think he i mean he's on tv he's probably not three points. Okay, will this be even a discussion between Dana and DC? He might toss it out. He might toss it out, right? A little bit. Okay, that's all I wanted to say.

Because remember, what happened in the third fight with Stipe? Obviously, Stipe won, but there was a terrible eye pokes on DC. Remember that? Yes. And he was like, I can't see. It is what it is. His eye looked like shit the whole time. Also, in the second and third Stipe fight,

DC was not in the best physical shape in my opinion the combination of injuries and not being able to do the full cardio and maybe some of it is motivation at that point i don't know i mean how could you say motivation when he was literally fighting for history at that moment right in that in that trilogy but didn't something just feel off those last two dc fights yeah i mean he was also in his 40s i believe right i, if he had gotten into a little bit better shape, could he have continued the wrestling dominance he showed in round one of the Stipe Rematch? I think that you're just being like, if it wasn't for his Twinkies, he'd still be champion.

And I think that's a little simplistic. All right, my little song and dance is over. We'll come to it when we have questions again. Let's quickly talk about... Who's the best threat? Who's the biggest threat in the heavyweight division right now, not counting DC Francis? Get that bullshit out of here.

Who's the biggest threat to Jon Jones' title, from what you know, which is very little about Jon Jones. Curtis Blades. Curtis Blades. You don't want to say Tom Aspinall because you want to see him recover from that injury first. And also he was, I mean, again, talk about short sample sizes. I mean, I hesitate to even bring it up,

but he was getting tuned up a little bit before he injured himself and the whole thing fell apart. Okay, let's talk about this co-main event. We'll back to the main event we're gonna get all your tweets they're collecting it for us all right uh bc we have a new women's flyweight champion and neither of us saw this shit coming how did i'm not sure who did quite frankly who was the person who was like yup we're gonna get alexa grasso with a finally can you put some sorry dude my bad with a fourth round submission at 434 they They call it a face

crank. It's still a rear naked choke. It's just over the jaw. It's the same kind of thing. So you can either break the person's jaw or you can actually pull it backwards and it can still get the job done as a choke. Either way, BC, your reaction. Grasso, your new flyweight champ. Mexico has three

champs at the same time in the UFC. There's a couple things I want to shout out here, okay? First, the fighting spirit of Alexa Grosser. You got to give her a lot of credit. She was plus 2,500 to be able to get a submission victory over Shevchenko. And even though I thought she did great in that opening round, I thought she edged out Shevchenko with a beautiful left cross that rocked her. Look, rounds two and three not going her way.

But look at this recent trend that we're seeing. The comeback from Edwards against Usman in round five, the comeback from Poiton against Adesanya in round five. Like, man, there's already a million ways to lose in this game. And the odd thing was for Shevchenko, yes, coming off the toughest fight of her reign, but style-wise, I thought she'd bounce back. And we thought, there's tougher opponents out there for her. Let's just get through this.

But, you know, no one told Alexa Grasso that. And, Luke, what's the biggest surprise in how this went down to me is that Valentina Shevchenko doesn't make mistakes at that level. I'm so glad you said that. Okay. Stylistically, we've already found out what her very small flaw is. Jennifer Amaya used size and grappling ability to humanize her. Tyler Santos did the same thing, but even more to make it a disputed win.

She doesn't make mistakes like that. And this was a fight where I thought she had won rounds two and three. Clearly. I thought the momentum was in her favor. I thought she was winning round four, but to find out she tries to spin some spinny shit and that Grasso was preparing for it. And that's where the connection of Leon Edwards to me is Leon Edwards was

preparing for that moment to counter with that kick against Usman when he dips his head. It just so happened that that moment finally came in such a point in the fight that we all thought it was desperate. It turns out only John Anik knew he was of that ilk, Luke. I actually disagree with your analysis. She does make mistakes, but this

level of mistake is uncharacteristic. This level is Chris Weidman against Rockhold. This level is Chael against Anderson Silva in the rematch, right? They're like, this is disaster. We actually have the scorecard of the fight heading into the— well, we only have the three rounds, so here we go. Look at this multimedia right here. Ben Cartlidge had it, who, by the way, is a fun—

It's Cartlidge. Cartlidge. What am I saying? Cartlidge. Cartlidge. He is a phenomenal, phenomenal judge. He had it first round for Grasso, I agree. Second two, yes, that's about right. All three had it the same. All three had it first round for Grasso, I agree. Second two. Yes, that's about right. All three had it the same.

All three had it the same. Chris Lee and then Derek Clearly. So the judges did it right, and Grasso taking the first. Her hand speed and her ability to cover distance shocked the Venn champion in the first round. I thought it was pretty clever she was able to do that, but the adjustment from Shevchenko to level change when she was doing it was a nice adjustment dude Shevchenko began to time those takedowns where she ducked the punch coming in get the double leg get it down uh she wasn't this is Val wasn't as offensive in the top position as you would want but she was busy at the one point didn't agree

with Jason what do you make of Jason Herzog jumping in now some people are saying that the punch that Shevchenko landed afterwards was a dirty shot because he had already jumped in and tried to get their attention. But I don't know. When both are being offensive in that situation, you're just going to stand them up? Jason Herzog's a great referee. No one's perfect. They're not all going to have 100% calls. I still think he's a great referee.

I just think I disagree with that call. That call to stand them up was not a great one. Didn't influence the way the rest of that round went. So she still got the round, it turns out, from the judges' scorecards, but an uncharacteristically poor performance from Jason Herzog, who is normally quite good. So is now after, look,

the Jennifer Maia fight was a few fights ago. Valentina had two dominant wins in between that, heading into the Tyler Santos one last year, but the narrative coming in that Shevchenko was tasked with exploiting was that she's getting a little bit old at 34, you know, like just the natural progression of age. But that division is catching up. The division is clearly catching up.

Is this development, though, before we were ever going to get rising Blanchfield against Shevchenko or Manon Faroe in France against Shevchenko not going to happen now, right? Is this the best thing that could happen to this division given the new influx of talent? Or is this sort of kind of – I mean, it throws some surprise shade on some of the themes and direction we thought we were going. I don't think it's best thing, worst thing. I really don't view it as that. I just sort of see it – I'm like you.

I sort of see it. If things like this happen, that was – that's going to be a hard thing to repeat in the future. Like the way she got the victory, it's not a victory you could easily repeat over time. But, of course, it's possible. Obviously, back control and giving up the back and her susceptibility to back attacks is a commonality for Shevchenko at this point now with a few fights under the bag. But I think for me, I don't see it as best or worst. I do want to point out the upside, though, which if you're the UFC,

you've got to be clinking champagne glasses about your efforts in Mexico. They're opening up a performance institute there. Now in the first three pay-per-views of 2023, the Mexicans are cleaning the fucking joint up. Look at this. It's crazy. You had first Brandon Moreno. He wins.

Then secondly, Yair Rodriguez wins. And then tonight, back to back to back. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. The game got released last year. Big year, Luke. The Mexicans have arrived at the highest level of MMA. Welcome them. This is great news for the future of MMA.

I think it's great news for the UFC, certainly. And if you're a Mexican fight fan, this is something to be truly happy about. You know the first time the MMA fan base turned on me? The first time. First time. You always remember your first time, right? You said Stipe was like a hoe or something? No, I said in the Cormier-Stipe rematch, I said Stipe didn't win that fight.

Cormier lost it. Cormier lost it. You know, and that's a recycled, purposely controversial opinion that I used in both Weidman-Silva fights. But I say this stupidity to serve it up to you, Luke. I'm not asking you were there elements of both. I'm asking you what was the more dominant reason why the title changed hands.

Because Alexa Grasso won it or because Valentina Shevchenko lost it? Uh, Alexa Grasso won it. Okay. Alexa Grasso won it. I. Alexa Grasso won it. I mean, look, the perseverance, you know, even when she got pieced up at times in the stand-up, she kept coming back.

Here's what you're trying to point out. It was not a forced error, right? In baseball, you have forced errors and you have unforced errors. This was an unforced error. In other words, Shevchenko of her own decided to throw that kick and then expose her back that was the error uh Grasso didn't like faint her way into it to get a reaction she just did it on her own but to have the presence of mind and the clamp and I want to talk about this for just a second

because you'll see this enough with certain in MMA too like uh Oliveira is a good example of this there are certain guys or ladies in jiu-j. Some of them have very technical games and they can do mobile passing or whatever they, whatever their signature is. But there are certain kinds of people who have what I call quick clamps that they can achieve either some kind of lock, some kind of grip, some kind of position, and they can attach instantly quick, right? Notice what she's able to do. She doesn't have to fidget once she gets the back. There's a little bit of hand fighting, but it was so quickly she had positionally obtained what she wanted to obtain and it went to the ground.

She's already deep in looking across the throat, threatening with a choke, right? Her clamp is instantaneous. That's not something that even all very good jiu-jitsu players have. She had it in this moment at a bare minimum. And, dude, she held on for dear life. And once she went behind the head, there was no defense. I want to save it for Monday's Morning Combat show where I essentially ask you and I to sort of book the territory at 125 in the future.

Okay, I want to save that. The one thing I do want to ask, though, is there's times we talk about does the champion deserve, excuse me, an immediate rematch. I always thought DJ did against Cejudo in the second fight and said they traded him, right? There's times that people got,

I thought Dillashaw to some degree deserved it after that cruise split decision and they didn't give it to him. So I ask you right now, because Valentina was humble afterwards in the cage. She said, look, this happens. But she said, I'm going to come back and win my title

and I deserve an immediate rematch. She's got a UFC female record of seven title defenses. She's arguably the most dominant champion in women's history. Arguably. When you consider the totality of title defenses. It's true. I mean, Ronda was more dominant in like a three, four fight stretch where she was finishing

people in seconds and Amanda was incredible in her dominance there. But does Valentina deserve an immediate rematch? Okay, probably. Almost certainly. Here's the thing, though. I'm just going to put my cards on the table. I would love to see them.

Let's see that ace in the hole there. It's late. I mean, here's what I was going to say. Probably, almost certainly she will. But what's my level of interest in it? Not high. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because it doesn't matter if it's Grosso or Shevchenko. Tonight, if you're Erin Blanchfield, you must have been licking your chops. Oh, yeah. Because I think Blanchfield's a bad matchup for either of them. I want to see her put into the mix. That's what I want to see.

This division could get cold-blooded. It really could. Could be cold-blooded. Let's look at some of the stats here if we can, and we'll get to some of these tweets after we talk about one more of these fights. Let's go to the co-main here. Let's look at some of these numbers. Can we talk about this?

The Pau-wee-way-like celebration you had when Shavkat Rachmanov got that finish. I was diced. Dude, I was like, anybody got tissues, paper towels, anything? Clean up on aisle dungarees over here, Luke? Yeah. Luke, you went a little, like there wasn't even cameras on. There wasn't like, you know, this will show up in our documentary later. Dude, you had a moment of like. Dude, I'm a moment of like...

Dude, I'm high on Shavkat Raghmanov. I've been high on Shavkat Raghmanov. Well, you've had that vape all night. You could just be high. I wish I was high. It's fucking nicotine, not weed. Okay. So Shevchenko is interesting. She landed 167 of 228 attempted, 87 significant strikes.

Grasso has more total strikes, 182, but in terms of significant strikes, far less, 59%. Shevchenko is credited with four takedowns, obviously one subattempt from Grasso, but control time for Shevchenko, 524. I will say this, the takedowns did come very easily for Shevchenko in this contest, right? This is what I mean.

It's like, I think Blanchfield can stuff those. I think she can threaten her own. I think she can get up at the bottom. And if Shevchenko can get Grosso down, why couldn't Blanchfield? Did you notice? You're correct. And did you notice that Valentina looked a little bit gassy in round two after the first round, which had some striking sequences?

I mean, she had a cut across her nose. We're not used to seeing that. She got a couple of takedowns there. I'm not going to say gas. She got two takedowns there. Gas is the wrong word. She looked a little compromised. I mean, she scored, again, this is numeric totals.

She scored 12 to 7 in terms of strikes over Grosso. She had the two takedowns. She had three minutes of control time. On paper, it doesn't show up. I'll put it that way. On paper, it doesn't show up. And honestly, round three was a really good round for Shevchenko, 27 to 15. on paper, it doesn't show up. I'll put it that way. On paper, it doesn't show up. And honestly, round three was a really good round for Shevchenko, 27 to 15.

She was kind of pulling away a little bit. Same number she was picking up in round four, but then she makes an error. Trevor Whitman, I'm glad you started with it. Trevor Whitman talks about it all the time. He's like, you know what separates great fighters? He's like, not much, really, to be honest with you. Just the first one to make a mistake. It's really all that it is.

And you saw something like that here. Shevchenko was better, I think, overall. And to your point, Izzy losing round five, Usman round five. And here, in the very end stage of round four, these champions losing in these sudden bursts of inspiration that their challengers are having. But you did say something that she doesn't make a lot of mistakes. Now, I agree she doesn't make mistakes this bad. This one was a bad one.

But those head and arm throws she has, dude, they're not good. We should just say that out loud. They're not very good. You saw she tried one, I think, at the end of the second or maybe the end of the third, and Grasso was able to belly out and go hip down with her at the same time. Dude, a lot of those throws where she's trying to get it, Santos was able to get the back off of them.

She has issues, I think, in certain things that she goes to that really open up some of her deficiencies. And also just defending yourself in the back is hard. You should have more things in your repertoire that don't create back exposure the way that you do. She has a lot of things that create back exposure. It's kind of funny actually.

Can I ask you a question about the Shevchenkos that I know you're not going to want to answer but I just want a yes or no. Oh, here we go. According to Wikipedia, older sister Antonina is married to their coach Pavel. This is per Wikipedia, okay? Do you believe that's true? Do I believe it's true? I don't want any other details added into it.

I just want a yes or no. I'm going to guess yes. Okay. I just needed to know that. I'm going to guess yes. Okay. I just needed to know that. I'm going to guess yes. Well, on our Patreon show on Only Pipes, we'll break that down a little bit deeper. All right? BC, you want to save the conversation about Blanchfield mostly for Monday, yeah? Absolutely.

I got an idea of where Valentina actually should go next, and it might surprise you. Let's save that. We'll put that on the shelf for Monday. But look, Alexa Grasso, give her her flowers, Luke. Man. What a victory. But look, Alexa Grasso, give her her flowers, Luke. What a victory. You know, perseverance. Look, not known for the ground game, Luke.

And then you tap out the champ like that? That's crazy. Well, she's had a decent ground game. She's had rear naked jokes and stuff, right? Yeah, but she's known as a boxer, you know? Yes. I mean, you saw the odds, plus 2,500. If someone would have presented you all the potential situations

in which Shevchenko can lose this title, somebody taking her back on the feet and taking her down and instantly putting her in a rear naked that would produce a tap would not be on that list. Would not be on that list, yeah. It's just so weird that you get these long reigning champs, Izzy, Usman, Shevchenko, and it almost feels like the division is like slowly waiting them out,

slowly waiting them out, slowly waiting them out. And then in these final fights, still kind of waiting them out a little bit. And then just enough pressure, just enough things to unsettle them. That was the other part too. It's like, did you ever feel like Shevchenko was comfortable in there? I did. No, I felt like that. I felt like she got, I think that left hand rocked her in the first round.

She got hit with a couple left hands, but that big one that they showed. I think it led to her looking like she was gassed out a little bit for for a while i think it took some time for her to kind of get back good take the takedowns around to helped her sort of i think put put the you know the cobwebs back together all that but something seemed a little bit off and sometimes that happens early in a fight remember the anthony joshua upset knockout lost andy ruiz the the the first knockdown was like four rounds before the fight actually ended. But sometimes you just get hit with that right shot. In that case, it was an equilibrium to the side.

You're kind of just never the same. Now, I'm not going to say that that was the reason for Valentina because she seemed to put everything back on the tracks. But the road to the loss, the road to getting there through rounds two, three, and four, it just didn't seem like the same exact confident Valentina. One thing you'll say about her, we were a lot more worried in the Tyler Santos fight than she was that the fight was that close, right?

Yes. Even afterwards, she was calm, like, oh, I knew it all along, right? You know, like, there was not that confidence it didn't seem like in the fight this time. No, and she had moments. She's human. Luke, you know what?

She's human. Her jab was cooking, too, I thought. In the second and third rounds, what? She's human. Her jab was cooking too, I thought. In the second and third rounds, I thought Shevchenko's jab was really on fire. It was good work. But back exposure. We've talked about it a long time on this show, back exposure. All of these guys, this one was fortuitous in that it fell in her lap a little bit. Yeah.

But all of the fighters who now don't even seek takedowns. They just seek back exposure. You can see why. It is a potent fucking weapon. All right, BC. Again, we're going to save some of this stuff for Monday, but Shavkat Rachmaninoff defeating Jeff Neal. Rear naked choke. 417

of the third round. They call it a rear naked choke. It was almost like a standing bulldog choke. Dude, it was a standing bulldog choke. Jed Meshew tweeted that. Jed Meshew II. Did he? Yeah. Okay. Did you know that he went to law school? Yeah, he went to UGA Law, yeah. Dude, if you would have told me, and I say this with disrespectful respect about Jed. If you would have told me that that guy went directly from 7-Eleven behind the counter

to contributing to MMA fighting, I would have been like, damn right. Put the camera on me. Damn right, Jed, because you and I, all right, I guess I don't have that kind of, but you see how blotchy I am today, Luke? I just... I mean, I look like a... I look like a used basketball. Yeah, dude. Dude, HIV will fuck a man up? Wow, I mean, what is this, Luke?

Am I allergic to, uh... to success? Yeah, wow. I guess it's happening, right? Wow. Dude, you... I mean, you've been drinking all day and night? What the fuck is wrong with you? No, no, I don't know. I mean, you know, Luke, the thing is, we're all dying. How much did I fart in the studio tonight? I mean, okay, so here's the thing between men, all right?

And I'm a man. I mean, it's a lot. I'm a man with questionable hygienic morals. Luke, you know, a good fart among men is a reoccurring joke, even throughout the point of a night, right? A little bit of here, a little there. He's like, I'm tired of you. Go shit.

Okay, but by the time the raw sewage was just siphoning out for like the 17th consecutive time, especially with open containers of food right here, you know what I mean? It's just, yeah. Listen, when nature calls. You know what normally happens when It's just, yeah. Listen, when nature calls. You know what normally happens when nature calls? People go to the restaurant.

Okay, okay. We have a funny tweet about this. Let's see it. White, I told Hunter, charter a private jet and get John Jones home to New Mexico right now. Yeah, yeah. Get him home to that intersection in Albuquerque there. Yeah, yeah, book a flight.

No, I'm not going to put the disrespect. I'm not going to say, where do you think John Jones is going afterwards? Look, I hope Jon Jones is a refocused family man right now because I don't think he's going away after two fights. I think there could be a big run in him. Let's talk about that another time. Let's get back to Shavkat.

Shavkat Rakhmanov. So Jeff Neal misses weight but comes in. Badly. And look, at the end of the day, that's a nasty win for Shavkat Rakhmanov. It went further than any of his UFC fights up to this point. And, look, at the end of the day, that's a nasty win for Shavkat Rachmanov. It went further than any of his UFC fights up to this point. It showed a lot of what he's capable of and when a fight heats up,

how nasty he can be. That finish is sick. And the fight was fun as shit. But, Luke Thomas, for as celebratory as your celebration was, is not this great fighter who's what now? What is he like 17 and 0? 17 fights, 17 wins, 17 stoppages. I got to ask you a question here.

Why the hell was he more than willing? I mean, not just willing, able to put his guard down, stand in front of a proven puncher and Jeff Neal and almost willingly take big shots in order to land. It wasn't one or two sequences where you say, maybe, look, maybe he's trying too hard to make a statement. Maybe he's trying. Look at that. I mean, look, Luke, you hear what I'm saying here. There's times when people take too much punishment

when we're not used to seeing it and we go, well, are they too excited to try to land the big moment? What's going on here? Was there no respect for Neal's power? Because you saw Chavko get rocked with that three-punch combination late in the fight. And it was sort of like, whoa. He got wobbled, yep. And that was not the first time he took shots.

Give me not a celebratory one of those. Give me a more sobered reaction. We love the finish. We love the totality of how he broke Neal down. Why was he so willing to skirt danger? You actually heard a great call from Saif Saoud about what he wanted Jeff Neal to do, why was he so willing to skirt danger? You actually heard a great call from Saif Saoud about what he wanted Jeff Neal to do, which was speed, if you heard him

talking about that. Because it wasn't just that he wasn't moving his head, he was kind of waiting to look and see what else he was doing. You actually heard Dean Thomas talk about the fact that he wouldn't fully exit. There were times he wouldn't exit at all. And if you could just put speedy hand combinations together, you can score a bunch of shots in rapid succession for a guy

who's not adequately moving in and out of space or in and out of range or off angle. So he was saying speed, speed, speed. Anytime he's throwing, throw with him, but make him go much quicker. And that had a profound effect. But I will also say it looked to me that Rachmanov was purposely courting risk. Purposely courting risk. Just not

just trying to it almost seemed to me like he was trying to out-psychologize out kind of compete mentally Jeff Neal. Whether that was the weight cut or just what he wanted to do or how he was feeling or I'm just imagining it. Certainly up to you to decide how you feel about that. But it just looked to me

like he was he was going to get a finish. He had to mix it up to get it. He was just willing to do it. It was a cost he was simply willing to pay. So I agree there are some head movement issues. There are not any chin issues. Old Rachmaninoff's got a fucking

dynamite chin. Both guys showed incredible resistance. But Jeff Neal made Rachmaninoff look more human than anyone has by far. I mean, I'm wondering if it was like, for example, when Hamzat went in there with our buddy Gilbert Burns. Yeah. There seemed to be, going against the game plan,

a little bit more willing to show you guys, oh, you guys want a fun fight? I'll show you that I'm that dude. It almost looked like that was what he was doing. A little bit. But that was so out of character from how I perceived him to be. It almost cost him. You admit it be. Also – It almost cost him. You admit it almost cost him.

It almost cost him. And I think the takedowns were harder than he thought they were going to be. Yes, yes. Also, you know, one of the things that Rachmaninoff is really good about is trips and throws and the clinch, including when you press him into the cage, he actually likes it. You could hear all – do credit shouts to Saif Saoud. He was telling – and I'm sure they drilled all of this ahead of time, but he was telling Jeff Neal all the things he needed to do

to not get thrown where his head needed to be, where his hips needed to be. Go back and listen. You can hear him on the call. And, dude, Jeff listened. He listened. That's a good pairing. Jeff Neal and Saif Saoud, they get a lot out of each other.

They work well together. It wasn't enough, obviously, in the end today. But Rachmaninov is special. He's a very different kind of fighter. He's going to be a hard guy to beat. Did he ever get reasons as to why Neil missed weight that badly? Was it a – DC said he asked him.

It was like, ah, it's nothing. No, it's something. No, you lost money. If you miss by four fucking pounds over, over the one-pound allowance, something went wrong. Something went badly wrong. I don't know what that is. Who would you want to see him next?

He's like title shot ready. I'm thinking one more and then title shot. I'd have to look at the rankings. He called Colby. It's a great call out because Colby is sort of, it seems like just waiting around for a big fight. Colby would get subbed out by him. I feel very strong in that opinion.

Okay, if you believe right now and you have no idea what the future brings, but he's looked like a future champion to you, and I don't think even with the mistakes tonight that changes anything, right? He looks like a potential future champion. He still has the ability to win it, yes. How many more wins? One more win

and then he gets a title shot? Yeah. Let me look at the rankings real quick. Pull up the rankings. So at welterweight... How badly do you think our staff wants to leave? Oh, I mean, they're just dying to go. I mean, is this a rash, Luke? I mean, like... You know, not so much here or here, but like right here. So Neil was sitting at seven.

You have Thompson, Burns, Bilal, Hamzat. Well, we don't know if he's there. Colby and Kamaru. I could do any of those. Oh, man. Burns and Rachmaninoff are teammates, so that's a little bit weird. Or sometimes teammates anyway. Bilal?

Bilal wants to come. The real question here is, like, what the hell is Colby doing? Waiting for a title shot. Right. Just we got to figure that part out. Paying women to film videos with him. Is he on social media at all still? I don't even know.

He seems quite quiet. Dude, I think he's waiting to see who comes out of this Trump DeSantis race before he rebrands himself. Did you see that Trump has spent all weekend coming up with names to call him? So one was like Ron Deestablishment, and the other one was, ready for this, Tiny D. Hey, a lot of people, by the way, saying Valentina's obviously declining. I want to make one point here. The division is catching up more than she's declining.

You're not, any, you said she, oh, she's made mistakes in the past. Yeah, probably. The thing is, Shikage and Lauren Murphy, they're not going to capitalize on the mistakes in that way. Dude, the division has caught up in a big way. Yeah, they have finally. It took them a while. Yeah, it took a while.

It took them a while. This is like Saved by the Bell, the new class, right? Remember that? Real quickly, any thoughts we have here? Mateusz Gamerot, Jalen Turner, he wins via split. The brunette, though, in the first season of Saved by the Bell, the new class, was Tommy D's girl. She was kind of hot, though.

There were people upset with the 30-27 scorecard. It's not how I necessarily would have scored it, but I understand why. Which fight did you have? Put the scorecard here up on the screen if we can. This is for Gamerot and Turner. Let's take a look at it. Okay, so two of the judges gave the first round to Gamrot. One.

These are all over the place. Derek clearly gives round one to Jalen Turner and the rest to Gamrot, but David Letheby gives two and three to Turner. The third judge, Ron McCarthy, gives none to Turner. Ron McCarthy, what was the other fight

he recently got in trouble with because of the judging? That's John McCarthy's son. Is it? Remember when John even said Ron McCarthy gives none to Turner. Ron McCarthy, what was the other fight he recently got in trouble with? Because of the judging. That's John McCarthy's son. Is it? Remember when John even said you got this one wrong? I don't remember that. Was it Sean O'Malley and Piotr Jan?

You know what John got wrong? Not being willing to tell stories about Tokyo. About taking a dump in Tokyo? Yeah, I mean, seriously. Hey, where do you think Doug Crosby was watching the fights from tonight? Wawa. No, probably a bathhouse, right? Probably just sitting in his car solo in a Wawa. All right, this is a win that Gamrot needed,

but he did get lit off at times. He took it on short notice, man. True. That is an asterisk we have to land here. But did he show us? Because we wanted more urgency. We wanted more offense. It seems like the times that he showed more offense,

he kind of got hurt and had to go back to wrestling. Yeah, I mean, I just feel like this is a bad matchup for Turner. He's got a lot of ability, but he needs to be more selective. I mean, he went from Dan Hooker to this. Yeah, I appreciate his willingness to take the fight. I really do. But he didn't serve his interest long-term in taking it. Obviously, I'm still very high on him. And Gamrot's great.

But Gamrot still doesn't... Gamrot can wrestle and scramble and keep himself out of trouble like no one's business. But he's not that much of an offensive dynamo still. Whereas Turner is very much an offensive dynamo but doesn't have the ability to keep himself from being controlled. Give Mike Thomas Brown time. He'll turn

him around. Yeah, no shit. All right, last but not least, before we get to the tweets, Bo Nickel defeating Jamie Pickett, arm triangle. 254, round one. Here's the thing. Bo Nickel looked great. Let's not pretend that he didn't. He is who we thought he was, but.

But, dude, I'll say two things about this. You and I had a big argument during this. Well, you're just flatly wrong. I mean, you just don't know what you're talking about. Oh, wow. But here's the, this is the joke we were talking about. Pause it right there. Can you pause the slide? Ah, fuck. Yes joke we were talking about. Pause it right there. Can you pause the slide?

Ah, fuck. There it is. Okay, stop right there. Here is the problem with what he was doing. You notice his left elbow. We're talking about nickel. It's almost all the way to the ground. That part is nice.

Palm down. The arm that's snaking around the throat goes palm down. But the problem with what he's got here is his is the left knee that's between the legs of picket they need to be separate you need to be to the side and more to the point what what you have to realize here is if someone is that deep on a cross face the left arm across picket it's called a cross face you're reaching into my screen over there if you could pull that finger back a little bit there you go thanks thank you thank you okay thank you the whole time i'm like oh shit bo's gonna get this in the first round like you said you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. The whole time I'm like, oh, shit, Bo's going to get this in the first round.

Like you said, you're like, he needs to move his knee. He needs to move his knee, BC. Yes, he does. Yes, he fucking does. I've been rolling for 11 years. He needs to move his knee. I didn't say that. But this is true.

This is fucking true, dude. What happens here is that cross face across Jimmy Pickett that he's suffering from, that is the pin of his shoulders. If you're pinning his shoulders, the rear end of Nickle has to come up and the left knee does what's called a knee cut and slides across. I'm telling you. So here's what happened. Anybody who's rolled for any amount of time can look at this and see that.

I argued that maybe this dynamic grappler Bo Nickel knows what he's doing and might be trying to set something up or do it. Because there's more than one way to skin a cat. But one guy tweeted out on twitter that bone nickel needs to work on this and you were like motherfucker i told you and you were like i'm right like doing this whole like like celebration dance like dude you didn't win shit yeah i know well i won the pick because actually it was good for i also picked uh submission in this here's my point though even if you don't want to grant that the knee cut was available and was the right answer, even though that's the only answer that's correct, here's what I would say.

He kept, like, he just kept trying to force things. He's playing with his food a little bit. A little bit. And the speed with which he was trying stuff, it's like, dude, I got to tell you, that's like how a wrestler would attack things. Like, remember, in wrestling, it's just a sprint until you can get the pin or the tech fall or whatever. It's just constant go, go, go, go, go. He's kind of fighting like that, and that's fine against these dudes.

That's not going to work against somebody better. I'd like to see him with all of his talent just slow it down a little bit, take a little bit more time, and work methodically. He's got the ability. There's no doubt in my mind. But the strategy, this like, it's not, he's still calm doing it, but that's just not a recipe for, an MMA cardio is king, and the good guys are going to be able to get out of this and defend it,

and you're going to have spent a whole round monkeying around like that, and then round two is going to come around, and you're not going to get it. Now what are you going to do in round three? Like you have to have a game that scales across excuse me 15 or 25 minutes well we got to see his striking challenge we got to see a lot but you want to talk about look the pressure of this moment he aced that test again i mean but look there's there's an intensive question i have to follow this up with for 34 year old jamie pickett that's three straight defeats two wins and five defeats in seven ufc fights is this the end of the line probably okay

all right let's take a look at some of these, let's take a look at some of these tweets. Let's take a look at some of these tweets. Let's go first, if we can, to TheSarcasticGee. Gee? I don't know how you pronounce it. Jon Jones just won the heavyweight title against the number one ranked guy, and the only significant strike he took was to the ball dicks. Where do you guys think this ranks among title-winning performances, BC?

I'm going to be honest. It's really hard to rank this. Now, is it impressive to come back from three years, take on a super elite guy in Cyril Ghosn and just kind of sit on him and choke him out? Yeah, it's impressive as shit. But I mean, how are you really going to compare this in the pantheon of John's wins?

Dude, it was anticlimactic. It was. A little bit. It was. And that's not John's fault, right? He took what was served in front of him. But it's hard to make comparisons on that. It's hard to answer how good will John look in the future.

There's a lot we don't know. All right. We got one from Ian A. McInerney. I'm sure I'm saying it right. McInerney? McInerney. Over under two and a half title defenses for John. So he just won.

So now that's saying two more fights or three more fights. Dude, John's going to have five to six at least. Oh, I don't think so. He's 35 and heavyweights age late. He seemed just buoyed. You know that word? Is it pronounced buoyed? Buoyed?

B-U-O-Y-E-D. I don't mean like buoyed. B-U-O-Y. He seemed buoyed. He seemed buoyed by, you know, the return, the love. Look, he loves being a badass. He loves being on top. He's the ultimate competitor.

If he can go out there and beat Stipe, that's title defense number one. Let's say he can beat Blades after that. Let's say he can fight whoever. Yeah, Luke, he's going to put it together. Hey, guys in the back, can I jump around? Yeah. Okay. Jump up.

Go to tweet number nine here from CFC in the back, can I jump around? Yeah. Okay. Jump up, jump again. Go to tweet number nine here from CFC underscore Fielder. I like this question. Yeah, Cecil Fielder. It says, Luke mentioned on Friday's MK that he thought maybe gone hit his limit at MMA factory potentially, taking nothing away from John's win. Is it time, Brian Campbell, for him to explore a new place to train? You're saying this is actually a referendum of Ferdinand Lopez?

Yeah, it might be. Even deeper than the MMAI analytics video was a little bit of that too. Yeah, but that's not so much about his ground game. That's more about the conflict between manager and promoter? And manager and trainer. Yeah, and the contrast of white on white, right? Connie Crowe's great line, right? In between the moon and you, the angels get a better view, right?

What part of that is on strip raped and strangled by Cannibal Corpse? It was a cover. Yeah, it was pretty good. Yeah, I mean, I guess you can say that, Luke. I don't look at Disappointing Night for Cyril Gaughan, whether McInerney thinks it is or not, you know? Okay, tweet 10 from Diego Cherry Ruiz. Yeah.

Does the Shevchenko-Grasso rematch make sense for a fight night in Mexico City in September, which, of course, is Mexico's Independence Month? Now sense for a fight night in Mexico City in September, which of course is Mexico's independence month. Freak the fight night idea. Let's go straight with giving Mexico City another big pay-per-view and let's put Brandon Moreno in there. The problem is elevation. It's 7,000 plus feet above sea level.

That's fucking high, dude. That's 2,000 feet more than Denver. So what are you saying when you say that? I know what that means, but what are you saying? I don't mind taking a marquee fight there. I don't want to take a bunch of marquee fights there. I know what that means, but what are you saying? I don't mind taking a marquee fight. I don't want to take a bunch of marquee fights there. I know what you're saying. What am I saying?

I don't want Volk to have to go fight at that elevation. Oh, he could handle it. I wouldn't have. Tony Ferguson beat fucking Rafael Dos Anjos in the sky in Mexico City. If you're good enough, you can do it. Okay, then what's the issue then? Let's do it. Can't Mexico get a close-up here?

Because a bunch of people fucking can't. You're talking about Volk. Volk can. Okay, then what's the problem? Him versus Yair is the main event. Do it as a fight it. Can't Mexico get a close-up? Because there's a bunch of people fucking can't. You're talking about Volk. Volk can. Okay, then what's the problem? Him versus Yair is the main event. Do it as a fight night. I don't want a fight night. I want a pay-per-view of Mexico City with three Mexican champions defending their titles.

Is that too much to ask? Yes. There's a couple of these that we kind of already got to. Here's one. Let's go to tweet four if we can from PKO Kosar, BC. He asked me this, but let's pitch it to you. How do you think John would do against prime Cain Velasquez? What a great question.

Peter Kokosar. We don't know. We don't freaking know. What does this, like, do? I'm going to take 60 seconds of John with a big belly sitting on gone and go, oh, yeah, it'd be great against Cain. You know? I mean, here's the thing.

Cain would not make those mistakes. He did make a very crucial mistake, though. He made a few, but not like the kind of wrestling and like mistakes that – Ghosn's mistakes were amateurish. Here we go. BC, tweet 11 from Tyrone Davis. What do you attribute to the continuing turnover of championship belts from longtime and dominant champions to hungry contenders in the last 12 to 18 months?

I don't think it's a necessarily – it feels like a new trend. It's a reminder of how hard it is to sustain a win streak in this sport. I think it's constantly showing you how quickly the sport is evolving, how quickly contenders are adding to their game. I mean, people are becoming more well-rounded at a faster level. There's always been a million ways to win, but nothing is ever guaranteed. Luke, you've got to be on your game every second, all 25 minutes of a championship fight.

It's nearly impossible to do what these handful of great fighters have done, which is put together a long title reign with multiple defenses. Let's say one more great thing about Jon Jones. If he was never stripped of the title three separate times, UFC record, he would have like blown all those stats out of the water, right? For career title defenses, consecutive, like all that stuff. I think this puts him in first place alone for most combined title defenses. Oh, no, this isn't a title defense.

Sorry. He's tied with Demetrius Johnson right now with combined 11 title defenses. It's not in one consecutive reign. But, yeah, I mean, he's going to blow it up. Look, he's not going to be two and done. If Jon Jones keeps winning, he's hanging around. The thing is, it's just the fights I don't think will be as interesting to him. But we'll see.

Tweet 12, Apathetic Lawler asks, bigger upset, Peña or Grosso? Ooh, good question. Oh, the Nunes-Peña fight, by far. Yeah, I would agree with that, though. By far. To me, that's arguably the biggest upset in the history of the sport, which means you have to put it up against Rousey versus Holm, which means you have to put it up against Sarah versus GSP,

which means you have to put it up against, who's that chick who lost to Shana Young when she was like plus 8,000? I don't know. I think we're done. I have to fart again. Agapova. Yeah. Was that Shana Young she farted or somebody else?

Who did she lose to? I don't know. Maria Agapova? Agapova. We can end this. Is it because... The camera guys are literally just making armpit noises. Is it because of my skin blotches?

Well, I mean, you just, you know, look at you. We did a lot of work tonight. People were like, oh, you guys are going to call boxing on John Jones. I know. It's like, dude, do you know how many motherfuckers in this industry could call boxing fights and then do a show like this? You're looking at how many could do it. You're looking at how many could do it.

You know, I also wrote a couple of recaps for CBS, appeared on CBS Sports HQ. You want to know why? Because we're fucking great at this, okay? And this is not us bragging about how great we are. It's to show you that if you want it bad enough, you're going to go after it. You're going to grab that thing with two hands. BC, I really got a fart.

Look, you would say this. You'll say one thing about me. You don't always love me. You never laugh at my jokes for the most part. They're not that good. But I grabbed it. They're not that good. I grabbed that thing with two hands. You grabbed the titties of life. Yes, congratulations.

It's just, you know. You're like, I grabbed him titties. Yeah, yeah. All right, we're done here. Let's remind everyone. Let's remind everyone. We're on Monday, live 11 a.m. We got tons more coverage coming your way all next week.

Plus, of course, we have to get to all the stuff that happened this weekend beyond. Oh, dude, that Showtime Championship Boxing Main Event. Fucking sick. Sick. Our cameraman, Drew, had a big heart on her. He was like that bored in the UFC. Although Jared Hurd lost. That was fucking terrible.

Yeah, big loss for the DMV, right? Well, there was a couple DMV fighters who won, but not Jared Hurd. So what are you going to do? Let's see. Yeah, we're done. Okay, so I want to thank everyone, all the crew who came in late. Oh, my God, BC. Dude, you're such a bitch.

Can I go to 2 in the morning? It's about time somebody finally said it. I have an 8 a.m. train. I'll close the show. You can take off. I was saying in honor of Valentina's long streak coming to an end, do you want to reprise her dance? I'm not doing her fucking dance.

You do her dance. I'll count us out. You you want to reprise her dance? I'm not doing her fucking dance. You do her dance. I'll count us out. You do her dance. Do her dance. If I had more emotional support, I might think about it. All right. That's Brian Campbell. I want to thank all the Malka crew who came in and helped everything go so smoothly tonight

for both broadcasts. Yeah. We appreciate it. Let's see. We're back on Monday, live at 11 a.m. So for Brian Campbell from Malka Showtime, CBS Sports, thank you to Mikey for watching. Help us with the tweets. Thanks to all the guys in the back. Everything. All the good stuff. And allca Showtime CBS Sports, thanks to Mikey for watching. Help us with the tweets. Thanks to all the guys

in the back. Everything, all the good stuff and all the highlights too for social. We appreciate it. Until next time, get some sleep.

And if you don't like it, you can kiss our ass. Yeah.