MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 287: Pereira vs. Adesanya 2, Burns vs. Masvidal | Beterbiev Wins | Bellator 290 | Ep 403

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

On Episode 403 of Morning Kombat, Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell react to the recently announced UFC 287 card. It will be headlined by Israel Adesanya once again fighting (this time) champion Alex Pereira. Are you glad the MMA rematch is happening so soon? Also, Gilbert Burns vs. Jorge Masvidal. What does this fight mean for both competitors and the division? Where is Colby Covington? Plus, Bellator 290 on CBS is coming up this weekend and Artur Beterbiev forced Anthony Yarde's corner to throw the towel in the eighth round of their light heavyweight matchup. 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

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That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Hey, it's the 30th of January, 2023. What's up, jerk jobs? Hello, it's Morning Combat. How are you? Happy Monday to you let's get this

week started shall we hi my name is luke thomas i'm one half of your hosting duo i join you from the capital of estados unidos i have i am told my friend is here i don't know i can't quite see him but uh be that as it may it's the king of connecticut himself it's brian campbell hi brian campbell luke thomas how are you great to see you uh back with a bang on a monday morning right it's almost the first of the month right so shout out to 90s hip-hop with that one wake up wake up cash your checks and get up yeah that's what i'm saying uh i'm excited to be back on this award-winning show one week one week before we get on a plane luke and head over to london for some mk in the uk okay london calling the reverse british invasion is coming your way i can't wait for that so you know

i'm fired up about life uh you know love happiness all that good stuff and maybe even combat sports as well you know i'll find yes bc can you believe it in a week from today we're going to be getting on a on a jet plane it's going to be bc's first time in europe everyone this is a big deal for you man i'm pretty yeah i've never crossed the atlantic before but like lucky lindbergh luke you know what i'm saying it's going to be a successful journey and uh you know february 8th wednesday night king's place 9 p.m local l local London time there in the King's Court section. MK in the UK is happening. The Pod Live Festival.

You guys know about that already brought to you by the Sports Podcast Group. You remember they named us Best Sports Podcast of 2022. Well, now we're going to go out there and earn it. So, folks, we're leaving in a week. There are a few rows left of tickets in this 500 seat or so venue. And we want to jam pack this thing. Right, Luke? We want to take that orifice and fill it.

Yeah. I mean, it's already filled to the point now where you might just gag on it. But no, in all seriousness, it'll be full enough where it'll be full enough where um it'll look it's going to be full basically but we would really love really love it would be really nice we could just completely say it's a full-on sellout it's not a full-on sellout yet um it'll be great no matter what but i think crossing that threshold would be nice if at all possible now if you watch the pre-show commercials you could argue it already is a full-on sellout luke but you know we're trying our best to navigate success but no seriously uh this is going to be the best 90 minutes of your

life if you like the ridiculousness that we bring to the table that outlaw dan hardy our special guest brings to the table we're still trying to secure some last minute special guests we're going to be filming a ton of stuff the day before the the day of, and the day after that. We're going to maximize our time in London. We're talking about room service diaries. We're talking about making some media stops of our own in London. Luke, this is going to be a very exciting trip. Jake von Amsterdam on the ground with the dock cameras. So, hey guys, whether you're Appy or the Paquettes or whoever else is coming, yeah, we're going to have time to raise a pint with you, to take pics, to hug, maybe harvest an organ or two, depending on how frisky you get.

But jokes aside, Luke, I'm ready. I'm ready, okay? I'm going to be arms open to this continent here, these aisles that we're landing on, and we'll see if I can unite the folks over there like we've done in this weird global MK family that we've built. Couldn't say it much better than that. So if you want to get tickets, you know how to do it, pod-live.com if you're listening, and of course you can just put your phone

up to the QR code right there on the screen. I want to remind you, Showtime is the label that pays, showtime.com. Get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can certainly bounce. If you want to reach the show at any point, can do morning combat at gmail.com bc and i do not read it but the producers do so have a use to use that channel and then say hi to mikey when you're there please yeah yeah say hi to mikey and then last but not least bc we have we have merch in general and specific

merch around this london trip of course you can go to morningcombat.store for that. I'm wearing a new Rising Sun shirt. Oh, I have a coffee mug here. Did I leave that upstairs, Luke? I don't know. Maybe during one of your long-winded rants, I can run up there and grab it. I mean, you're one to talk there, guy. You're one to talk.

Glass house isn't all right. Luke, here's the deal. We got three brand new shirts on that morningcombat.store website. Our live in London collection. Two of them very Union Jack oriented, as you can see in the bottom corner of the screen. One of them, Luke, destined to be a bestseller. The GTA MK shirt. You know what I'm saying?

This thing's blowing up, according to RJ Ballbagger. So thank you, folks. Get some fine merch. We're going to have a few giveaways in person there luke with the merch at the uk show i mean i'm just fired up to see our weird people dressed exactly like us here's one question i have though i don't understand what gta and again i'm not a video game player so this is definitely a question out of profound and you know abiding ignorance what does gta have to do with london specifically is there like a gta yeah i don't think it's related at all but

it's a grand theft auto design amazing shirt of like you know yeah i love the shirt i just don't i just don't get the london part of it maybe there's a london episode of gta uh you know because you know they come out with different maps and different games they update it all the time i don't know if there's been a london one i don't you know i'm more of a fortnight guy luke you know however people think that that makes me look but uh that's the reality okay does that mean if you play fortnight in 2023 and you're nearly 450 excuse me i'm not first of all i'm not nearly 50 okay let's let's get that out of the equation all right i mean you're you're you're you're kicking 50s door down at this point let's just be very clear about that i think it's a little

wash to play uh look here's the deal i did it to connect with my kids and then i caught the addiction bug and they they don't even really well one of one of my sons plays it all the time the other one doesn't play it much anymore but you know luke i'm like i always tell them when they tell me hey hey dad like dads aren't aren't really on Fortnite. What are you doing? Just living my life. I need an outlet for competition, Luke, okay? And that's what I've found, okay? You know what I mean?

It keeps me happy. Keeps me off the pole. You know what I'm saying, right? You know what I'm saying? Jason the Buffer. No. It keeps me happy. And yeah, there you go.

Well, as you can hear, BC, I am once again sick. Although it's still very mild cold it's really not you know i got a great sponsor for that if you're ever interested i just want to i just want to point this out i called it last week because my daughter came home sure enough with one of these let me ask you something which cough worries you more from your kid the one that's like kind of sounds like they're hacking up a lung that they've been smoking for five years or the kind that's like real dry and raspy i'm gonna go real dry and raspy sure enough she came home with one of those last week and i was like yep

it is inevitable you think she has a coughing cough luke or do you think that died out in the 40s no i think she i think she's been vaccinated against that and uh i think that vaccine is pretty pretty good anyway she doesn't have it i can tell you that she's fine oh my god toques doesn't know this but you're gonna buy her so many things in London. You're going to need an extra suitcase to bring home. Nah, mom already did that last year. So, you know, anyway, I should be fine, but you can hear my voice. All right, BC, let's get this going if we can.

Topic number one here for the day. Pretty fun. Now, this got announced well after MK's Friday show. It was closer to about Friday evening. But UFC president Dana White went on SportsCenter or various ESPN outlets, and he announced something pretty big. UFC 287, which will take place around April 8th of this year, will be headlined by the MMA rematch,

now the fourth overall fight between former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and the reigning UFC middleweight champion Alex Pereira, BC. I say it's the rematch because, of course, they fought last time at UFC 281 where Pereira was able to grab the title. They're going to do it at UFC 287. We don't have a firm location for it, but the believed spot that it will go will actually be miami florida which is kind of interesting the ufc has always had a bit of a fraught relation yeah not barclays

uh it's been reported it's again it's neither confirmed and it's not confirmed for any one location but the clubhouse leader that i have been reading about has been miami we'll see we'll see to your point we shall see but b BC my question for you to open the show is as follows are you glad that the rematch basically six UFCs in the modern era apart major pay-per-views is happening this fast yeah I am I am because this was a unique situation that feels slightly less unique because we just saw Usman and Edwards end in the same way a fifth round somewhat surprising dramatic stoppage. Obviously Leon Edwards' head kick was a

different kind of surprise, but the same scenario. Adesanya had that fighting control. Pineda rallied. They've got the deep history, of course, with the two victories from Alex Pineda in kickboxing outside of UFC. So to run it back right now, I think we need to find out. Because Robert

Whitaker, as we talked about, would he parachute in and get the next title shot or would he be waiting for who's next? That's still in play here, but I think we have to find out between these two. Was that an aberration? Was that Alex Pineda's big moment to show us that he truly is of this level? Or does he have a middleweight title run and a continued dominance over Israel Adesanya in his future. I can't wait to find out, Luke. I want to spin it back to you and ultimately say this. What does this fight mean for Israel Adesanya's legacy? Because if he never fought again and never fought this fight, dude, he's seriously like one of the all-time greats, one of the greatest champions in terms of a reign put together and in conversation of the greatest striker, pound for pound, we've ever seen in this game. But he's still got some time left and some work to do, whether it's in this division or not.

Is this some level of make or break for his legacy? How do you sort of define what's truly at stake for Adesanya in this one? It's so funny. It's a really great question, BC. I actually re-watched their fight at UFC 281 this morning before today's show just to see what I would find. I mean, I've seen the fight a million times, but sometimes you see something new every time. And one of the things that really stands out to me about this, and we had a conversation last week about how far could Pereira go as a 205er. And there are some weaknesses in his game that we're pretty well aware of.

But his physicality it does seem like it could potentially carry up a weight class i mean he looks like he is barely making 185 and when you watch the fight between izzy and alex from 281 there's a lot of things that stand out to you one uh he uh izzy's best weapon was from orthodox it was his jab and then his overhand um but from that stance he had worse defense actually got in more trouble it was actually from southpaw he had better defense but he couldn't quite hold it also like there was a question about whether the wrestling kind of drained him after the third round there's lots of things to stand up but one of those also is in the

clinch like the physicality of it the physicality of pareda really makes you wonder like what is is he up against here between that and his fight with Blachowicz? It looks to me like his skills and his size are really valuable through the vast majority of the kind of body types you might find at 185, but it could just be that the sturdiness and the power and the overall physicality that Pineda provides just is a hill too high for him to climb, no matter how skilled he is. And I think if that ends up being the case, to your point, what does it mean?

Listen, if he retires today and doesn't actually even take that fight, but even if he takes it and loses it, what he did at middleweight in terms of that successful run cannot be just erased. He's probably the second best middleweight in MMA history, or certainly in the running for it, at a very bare minimum. He has done incredible work in that way. However, styles make fights. Physicality, of course, is one of those components and part of that style as well.

And I think if he loses, we might have to recognize that the physicality quotient that he goes up against creates a real hard ceiling for him. But it doesn't, to me, diminish the successful run that he was ultimately on if he wins bc i guess you could say um you know beating a long-time rival in this way would be dramatic and and somewhat unheard of almost given that they had different sports it would be it would be huge but and again you're gonna say i'm making excuses for the guy maybe i am but i just i i i just you can't undo what he did it's's, it's remarkable. Okay.

He's already an all-time great. He's already, like you said, kind of at worst, the second best middleweight of all time. But there, you know, a loss here, I don't want to say puts a ceiling on that because for all we know, he can move up to light heavyweight and go on another run, or he could, you know, one day win this championship back. We don't know what the future brings, but the intriguing element to me and what that means legacy wise for Adesanya is just the, the, the boogeyman factor. I mean, if, if, if Pineda comes out and wins this and let's not forget again, I think you have to say it, dude, Adesanya was winning, going out of his way in that first fight, nearly stopped Pineda to end that first round. I mean, you know, five more seconds, he probably does stop him.

Could you imagine what happens here if Adesanya goes out and loses a fourth time, including potentially two via come-from-behind knockouts? Maybe that doesn't alter the legacy a ton, but it shows here is one of the all-time greats in Adesanya, win or lose.

But there was this other dude, and boy, did he have this number across multiple sports multiple stops along the globe so there's certainly a lot of intrigue and I don't discount you know the the same uh factors of what this could do for with another win coming over to this sport on a full-time basis at such a late point in his career making the instant adjustment overcoming the lack of experience in certain categories with just toughness and pure focus and deep drive. If he wins this, we're going to have to find out what happens when Whitaker walks through

that door. Could you imagine if he could go in this quick of run, Alex Padeta, and put away those two legends? I mean, there is huge potential in a short window, just the same for this guy to almost double and triple, you know, what he's accomplished across all combat sports coming in. So no shortage of stakes, whether it's Miami or Brooklyn, I'm going to be fired the hell up. Let me add one thing, though, BC, and disagree slightly.

It's like, okay. Yeah, what do you got? What do you got, Luke? Well, it's not like I fully disagree. I mean, the idea would be as follows. Like, if he goes up there and does this, to your point, in Brooklyn or Miami, wherever they end up putting, 287, it's as spectacular as you make it out to be. And I would never say otherwise. However, you just have to ask yourself a really basic question.

Do I believe at this stage, not that Pereira couldn't. I mean, Pereira, with his power and size and skill already can beat anyone at 185 I think that's pretty fair to say like if Whitaker is not careful he's going to wake up looking at the lights very very easy to see but do I think he actually would in the end beat Whitaker twice I actually don't think he could do that I don't that's not an implication no no what I'm just trying to say is if ifineda does this run through UFC, beats Izzy once, beats him twice, he's going to have a certain, like his stock is going to be at an all-time high,

but to me at an inflated price because then the downswing I think would come right after that. I think guys like Whitaker, potentially some other ones too, who just wrestle him to death, are going to find avenues to victory that's going to overall lower the question about actually how good he was but he would to your point in that case no matter what have izzy's number dude i mean look me me making this potential statement will probably throw me in the same bowl that people lop you of just man this guy just loves adesanya man he just freaking licks adesanya but dude could you imagine if he comes back, avenges this loss,

and let's say does it by stoppage? Like, legends are made different ways. I mean, if you can go unbeaten like a Mayweather or a Habib, it's a different kind of legend in some ways. But you know the legends we really love? The kind that are willing to risk it. They go in there and, hey, sometimes they don't get that biscuit, Luke, but then they come right the hell back and avenge that defeat, whether it's

Lennox Lewis avenging his only two losses by knockout in title fights or GSP against Matt Serra, not that I think Pineda is necessarily in the Serra category, but it's going to be fun to watch this with all the levels of implications and if Adesanya

comes back and avenges this, that's going to say a lot about who he is all the way down the line so so much at stake such a great matchup and obviously so many questions that need to be answered how much can Pineda improve on the the parts of his game that are still very raw and green in terms of this you know short time period that he's adjusted he's only been with the company you know for like a year and a half we have to you know we forget that sometimes but uh yeah I love this and what is the comb oh yeah we're gonna talk about the co-main my co-main in a second but i mean i i would be curious if you had any thoughts on like what might go differently because again i re-watched it heading into the fifth i definitely

had it three one is he first round is he third round fourth round one three and four were his rounds round two pretty clear went to pareda and then obviously in the fifth pareda closed the show but you know one of the things that sort of stands out to me is like uh pareda is like uh down blocking and like his initial takedown defense is pretty good but when you begin to like make him work through position to position to position to position it falls apart pretty quickly uh he doesn't quite have that built in and i don't know that izzy's offensive wrestling is there that to do that but one wonders the other part too was man he had it's like it's funny you know izzy rocked him at the end of that first round and to your point there was 10 more seconds in that round like the clappers had already gone

off i think he hit him at like the four or three second mark or something something crazy um but if you know that rounds a little bit longer he puts him away but the rest of the fight it looked to me like he had a hard time hurting banana that was the really interesting part about he couldn't get him for the most part off of him the leg kicks did a little bit for sure some of the body kicks did a little bit for sure but he just couldn't really get him off it was that right hand that was the thing that would do the work but that got harder and harder to find as the fight went on in general in general so I'd be really curious to see what adjustments they make between them I do think it's a very winnable fight for the former champion I really do well here's the question that I'm asking of Adesanya in this fight and I ask it this way because you know sometimes I had a big fights and we're tasked to make predictions and you have to

start thinking in your head what could that fight look like the big question I had ahead of the first one is does Adesanya want a point fight against a guy this dangerous I remember specifically saying you know I wonder if all the backlash against him being a little too safe sometimes against big sluggers I wonder whether that will motivate him to want to change that and I wondered at the time whether Padea's straight ahead style would essentially force him to change that meaning this idea I asked ahead of the first fight should Adesanya look to finish this guy rather than allow him to linger and the potential that he gets you late it just turned out that's exactly what happened Luke do you think the second time around Adesanya looks at his body of work said yeah I controlled him for most of it but there was something super special about this

guy he should he surprisingly showed us real five round stamina he surprisingly showed us you know like i said overcoming all the all the things he hasn't leveled up in his mma game and just relying on the fighting spirit if you're out of sanya are you looking to finish this guy the second one knowing that you had him close in the first round i think i think you know the thing maybe was a bit of a missed opportunity the first fight was not enough ground to pound there was some he had the axe kick at the end of the third and then a bit of a left hand that came after it when pareda was already on the ground i think that was pretty nice but in general there could have been a little bit more you know here's the thing bc if you go back and you watch he didn't change a whole lot obviously pareda got more aggressive in that fifth

but when when izzy is getting backed up against the fence which he's you know he's more mobile If you go back and you watch, he didn't change a whole lot. Obviously, he put in and got more aggressive in that fifth. But when Izzy is getting backed up against the fence, which he's more mobile when he's fresher, but it takes real precise trunk movement and fast twitch muscles and all that kind of stuff. It's a very delicate razor's edge of physicality you're working off of in terms of the danger you're inviting and how good your reflexes have to be. those waned a little bit not like didn't fall off a cliff but they weren't as good as they were in the first two three rounds by the fifth round and paredes putting even more pressure on he just couldn't make those quick reads and adjustments and pulls as fast and i think that

caught up with him what is the answer for that seems to me that's the problem to solve as long as it's striking in the middle a little bit of wrestling a little bit of clinch fighting potato will be in it but izzy will just be a little bit ahead by virtue of all the stuff you've already seen the question is once you have come from this level of physical reactive speed and agility down to this one and now he's turning up the intensity how do you solve that problem as long as he's got some answer for that, I think he can win. If he doesn't, he cannot. Yeah, I wonder if this new face tap from Adesanya is a tip of the hand

of what direction he's headed, Luke. Ultimate badassery, because anyone I've ever known before this became a popular sort of hipster move who had a tattoo above their chest or below their wrist they have either done two things in their life luke hard time or a willingness to kick your ass over very little and sometimes those two come together is he getting that face tattoo along with the neck one tells me luke he's entering a new season of his life a dramatic violent season he might be i know you get tattoos on your face man that's uh

that is a commitment that's a mike perry shit right there you know what i'm saying yeah uh all right uh point number our topic number two bc we stick with ufc 287 but this is why to the point you raised about the co-main why it could be ultimately in miami is that the co-main will be what we believe is Gilbert Burns returning against Jorge Masvidal of course both guys train and live in the Miami area BC if they actually do end up making this fight and by the way UFC president Dana White announced it but I'm saying it goes through what does this fight mean for each competitor and what does the result mean for the division given their stature given the

huge win gilbert burns had in terms of staying in line and contendership because he was unable to to land bigger opponents yet dude he mopped up on neil magny i think obviously from a distance you go okay this is a celebrity pseudo number one contender fight and if we are going to have visions of potentially inserting masvidal back into a title fight, which I believe could only truly happen if Edwards is the defending champion at that point, given their history, I like that the UFC essentially comes out and says, you know, all right, we can't just do it on name power alone anymore. You already had two of those, right?

We got to go in the direction of you got to beat a top guy. I think my biggest question, separate from Gilbert, we know what Gilbert wants, Luke. He wins this fight, he's going to get what he wants. He's either going to get a title shot or the biggest possible crossover name available to him. My question is, why did Masvidal accept this when every single person's reaction to this fight was, damn, Masvidal's going to get his ass kicked.

And that doesn't mean that's what's going to play out. And Masvidal's very capable. And this is why And that doesn't mean that's what's going to play out. And Masvidal's very capable. And this is why we watch the fights at the end of the day. But Luke, why is Masvidal doing this? He's already had two title shots. I don't see him at this age anymore as somebody that is caught up on the idea that I've got one more run in me. I think he's now a contracted hitman who's looking like Gilbert was

during the last season of trying to find the biggest name possible for the most amount of money obviously he beats Gilbert dude he could get anybody but is that worth the risk right now for Jorge yeah who else would he fight and take out Conor because they're not going to make that Conor fight with him so Conor's not on the table Nate Diaz not on the table who does who does if he's not fighting gilbert burns to get anywhere approximating what jorge masvidal would want which is you know to be as relevant as possible but as but more than likely more more uh well paid uh something of an action fight if if at all possible that's what he's looking for so who would it be bc because kamaru's fighting leon colby they're not gonna do they're just they

just did it hamzat is we don't even know if he's gonna be in this? Because Kamaru's fighting Leon. Colby, they're not going to do. They just did it. Hamzat, we don't even know if he's going to be in this weight class. Then there's Bilal. Jorge's not taking that. Gilbert's sitting at five. Wonderboy, he already fought and lost. And by the way, that fight, granted, that was before his renaissance, but that was one-sided.

Jeff Neal, he's already got a date with Shovkat. Then you have Sean Brady. I don't think that gets... Right. Well, just to be fair, you're getting to the level of names where the money's not going to be the same. So I get that. This is a pay-per-view

co-main event in Miami. To answer the question, hold on, hold on. And I'll finish it just very quickly. It's Sean Brady, Vicente Luque, and then Shavkat Rachmaninoff sitting at 10. Masvidal sitting at 11.

First of all, this is inside the top five as an opponent. And secondly, this is the best it's going to get for Jorge given the circumstances. To your point, he's 38. I believe Gilbert is 36.

So Gilbert not exactly young, but he does have a little bit of a youth advantage. I also think he's got fewer competitive MMA miles on him. Relatively speaking, Jorge has been fighting in backyards quite literally for a while. So there's a lot of wear and tear on his body. But this fight is not a perfect fight for Jorge by any stretch. But if he loses and performs well, it's not great. It's bad. But it's not altogether a complete disaster.

Moreover, it's a big enough name where if he does in fact win, it puts him back in that space where he does want to be to get those more marquee names potentially a connor fight or whoever comes out of this leon and kamaru thing we guess we'll have to see how it all plays out that's why it's because this is a very imperfect fight for jorge but given the lay of the land it's the very best one he's going to get at this point in time i guess i asked this under the the premise of did they tell him essentially that, look, you know, your money fights at the moment are Connor and Leon, if he has the belt,

if you want either of those, we're going to need you to come back, get a win and get a, you know, get a big one. So I guess I can understand it under that thinking for Jorge, same thinking you mentioned where like, he's not going to go fight Hamzat or Shavkat or, you know, I mean, he's not going to do that right now. Okay. looks at Gilbert's age the fact that Gilbert was lured into a brawl against Hamzat and he's just hoping Gilbert's not going to take him down and try to submit him and I know Jorge's got defense for that but I yeah I guess I guess I guess you're right you know for if you want big opportunities you got to win big fights to get there but uh man uh odds wise have they installed the odds yet Luke because they're they got to be aggressively in the direction of it.

Good question. Let me look that up right now. Let's see here for Jorge Masvidal. I'm not saying Jorge's scared of anybody. I'm sure he looks at Gilbert and goes, okay, I see my potential angle of victory. I just don't know if we see that, Luke. Okay, I'm not going to give you the place.

I'll just give you a rough approximation of what it looks like. It's roughly minus 500 for Gilbert Burns plus 400 for Horat. It's an uphill climb. It's an uphill climb. Let's just be very honest about that. He can do it, but it's an uphill climb. Would you advise him to do a unique training camp for this one and go back to the same forest in Central America

where he went to that reality show took the year plus break of his career and woke up one day and decided it's time to start baptizing fools luke can lightning strike twice in the same location um unlikely i mean you know you ever break up with someone bc and then you're apart from them for a while and then you're like you know what i really miss them and then you get back together and you're like, yeah, that was probably a mistake. Like, it was a good thing we had that moment in time, but I can't use this to recapture magic. The magic was that time and that time. You know, Luke, to respond to that, there's this weird phenomenon that happened in my single dating life where anyone that broke up with me wasn't looking to get back together with me.

I don't know what happened, Luke. So, no, I've never done that, to be honest with with you i've only had it happen a couple of times and both times it was done i was like yeah that was yeah nah it's not them luke it's me okay let's be fair about that yeah yeah i that that i can believe but to the point you raised it's like the fight is this is what you're basically getting at and i think you're 100 right it's like dude this is a uh it's a tough ass fight and gilbert is popular but he's not like the biggest name in the division certainly a big name a respectable name but not a huge name why the hell would you take this and the answer is given

his other options i'm not sure what the better option i mean i guess he could fool around at 185 or something but dude he's like what was it three fight losing streak he's on this would be a fourth um i'm wondering if he realized after after negotiating that he has to win this fight to get get a chance at those two money fights i mentioned but luke i want to ask you this quickly here and we're gonna have time to break this fight down ad nauseum but do you think jorge looks at gilbert compared to the two wrestle heavy elites that he most recently fought in this division, Colby Covington and Kamaru Usman, and says to himself, even though Gilbert's submission game is off the charts,

he won't be as consistent of a takedown threat of those other two. And if I fought those other two and I didn't win, but here I am still standing, I'll take that risk against Gilbert that I can try to stuff those takedowns. Yeah, I do think so. I think he probably feels like on the feet if it stays there, I'll win. And he is good on the ground and he can wrestle, but it's not like the Colby all over you kind of wrestle there. You could probably, you know, fight through a lot of that more nimbly than, you know, and by the way, fighting Colby is a good setup in the event that gilbert wants to wrestle right like you have that experience now whether any of that actually proves to be true or how true it is remains to be seen but i could understand that

still even with that the counter i would have like the you know devil's advocate would be like well gilbert can wrestle really well he can definitely wrestle really well in a three round contest which is probably what that's going to be and his submission game is you know they don't come much better they don't come much better um and plus he can strike his ass off too by the way like the idea that Jorge is automatically going to chew him up on the feet I'm not so sure how true that is I think Jorge at his best has been better but I don't even know what the state of things currently would be you know so look the only other matchup I would have said style wise could have been good for him and i want to know if you agree with this is balal muhammad do you agree that that's the best potential top five

matchup for jorge at the moment stylistic is a horrible matchup for him why would that be a good matchup i mean i was going to put on the pressure and the striking. Why you think we'll all dominates him on the ground. I don't think so. Bilal Muhammad is a guy that I've been wrong about a fair number of times. Absolutely. And I'd favor him to win that fight. I'm just wondering.

Yeah. Like a dude, a blonde Jorge fought. I'm picking Bilal. Like I, you know, maybe I wouldn't have two years ago or something, but I definitely would now.

So one of the things that's really impressive about Bilal, the fans don't like it, but you can see it just absolutely crushes his opponents. Yeah, I mean, he might strike a little bit on the feet, but once he begins to establish wrestling contact, he does chain stuff together, right? He's constantly just on you. He is like mosquitoes in a swamp. He just doesn't let go he doesn't all the time drown you or put on something flashy but once he begins that process of wrist control and underhooking and level changing and pressing against the fence and switching to the ankles and blah blah blah once that process gets going dude it just doesn't really fucking stop and these

guys have a hard time dealing with it and i think jorge at 38 even though by the way jorge is a good defensive wrestler and is a very good grappler but at 38 against a guy like that that's a bad matchup for him i don't like that at all no all right all right i'm you know i put out the possibilities luke and then you play whack-a-mole on whatever one you want i just wanted to know really at the end of the day does balal muhammad have the best rack in mma uh in terms of male fighters in terms of i gotta say his pecs are legitimate i mean those things are legitimate you know that's just just god i mean if you could take his pecs with ian heinoush's back do you have the perfect man luke i mean we really know you know you know who you know who i would need i

tell you so you take balal's pecs you take the traps of dolka lungi and bula you seen that fella's traps holy shit he can't walk through a normal door yo yo i know that dude yeah he wears green trunks all the time i know that guy he's got super fucking huge traps and then the back of like dude big francis's back i've seen francis in person a couple times oh and by the way they're saying sean brady sean brady's sean brady looks like he has dude this is how fucking yoked sean brady is ready if he turns to the side and you're not paying attention it looks like he has bad posture but he doesn't he just has so much muscle tissue on his back that it almost bows him out a little

bit it's crazy how strong and muscular that dude is. And well-tattooed there. Well-tattooed. And very well-tattooed, yes. All right, BC. By the way, before we move on from this topic, just lastly, where are we with Colby Covington? Because Hamza wanted that fight, and we thought we were going to get it. Then Gilbert calls for the fight, and we thought we were going to get it,

or maybe they would push in that direction, and they're not. They're going to do something else with the ultimate fighter which is something else i think he had potentially wanted where is colby i don't i'm trying to sort of understand by the time he makes his return to the division whenever that is will it already be too late it does feel like he's being a little bit forgotten okay true but if he has turned down fights he has had no shortage by the way people shouting his name like you mentioned gilbert burns included you know i wonder if this is potentially strategic because he does look at his situation right the this is the tail end of his physical prime his marketing peak as well just got a pay-per-view win over

jorge so there's some sort of momentum you know Luke he I think he's felt for some time that he has entered the celebrity fighter space that he already did the work climbing the ladder so you know he doesn't want to have to be thrown back into the mix whether you believe that or not whether you believe he truly is a pay-per-view brand or he's achieved that sort of lofty status I wonder if he's waiting on the results of the trilogy title fight thinking in his mind here I'm a fresh title foe for Leon Edwards waiting on the results of the trilogy title fight, thinking in his mind here, I'm a fresh title foe for Leon Edwards and have the biggest name if he does beat Usman. That's really where I'm wondering there, because if that door closes, if Usman wins the belt back,

okay, we're not going to a trilogy here against Colby. That's when Colby suddenly has to do the hard work again. That's when he's going to have to potentially beat a Hamza, a Gilbertilbert or whoever i wonder if right now this is a little bit about positioning and strategy in that regard that's a fair point uh yeah i don't have a better answer so i'll i'd let yours be the last word on that it'll be curious i'll be curious the best way to answer that to me is this if edwards wins the if edwards keeps his belt and you're saying what's next right away we're going to be talking about the winner of jorge versus uh versus uh gilbert gilbert we're also going to be talking about where is hamza in the you know in the two division equation but the guy again coming off of a win in a pay-per-view

main event will still be colby covington so i think that that sums it up you know yeah and obviously if jorge loses to gilbert then that somewhat narrows the situation as well. So we'll have to see. Excuse me. All right. BC point number three. So this one was very bad news at the end of last week. Bloody elbow, bloody elbow.com, which, which is still,

as I speak today, a Vox owned media property, one of the most long running and you know, it's not an independent site. It is owned by corporate, or at least for the time remaining, it is owned by a corporate entity, but had a very independently focused, I think, editorial posture.

It's being let go, essentially, by the parent company, which is Vox Media. BC, I don't know if you want to go first on this or not. I mean, given my proximity to the issue. I want to throw it to you, Luke, because I've certainly loved the the stuff i've read on bloody elbow but i don't have that same intimate up through the rain you know uh you know i come from boxing came over to mma a little bit later than a lot of my

contemporaries in this game i'd love for you to sort of sum up the impact of this website and what this means and what the future could be now after this yeah so for folks who don't know as i just indicated vox is going to drop it. I think they've got 30 more days, give or take of the entire operation. They're going to let it go. It was founded in February of 2007. At that time,

I took it over as the first editor in chief of bloody elbow.com. I worked there for about four or five years until around about 2011 or so. And then I moved to SB nation proper. And then at that point they then bought, uh, between that time they bought MMA mania. So MMA mania was then I moved to SB Nation proper. And then at that point, they then bought, between that time, they bought MMA Mania. So MMA Mania was the second site to come on board. And then the last of the big three was MMA Fighting, which was sold by AOL around 2012,

give or take around that time, at which point I moved into like an editorial role as an editor, excuse me, at MMA Fighting. So I worked at two of the big three that remained. I've seen folks be like, well, I can understand if Vox had three, why they would want to let one go.

But really that doesn't make a lot of sense because the way they've initially had positioned, first of all, it's been this way for more than 10 years, right? They've had three sites for 10 years. They just figured out they didn't need another, a third one.

That doesn't really make much sense. They got rid of it. In my judgment, in my opinion, rather intentionally, although it's a hard to say with any degree of true certainty um but the reality is at bloody elbow since that time and this is something that nate and i nate wilcox was the guy who was running at the time this is something that we have been focused on since day one we just didn't want to do what all the other sites were doing which was to us felt being

very obsequious to the industry. And Bloody Elbow, over the years, listen, you can take issue with individual things that have been written. You could take, certainly, it's a human-run institution. There's been mistakes that they have made. Fine. Absolutely. All true. But the vast majority of people you have seen mad at Bloody Elbow do so because they just

have a right-wing, a far right-wing political slant, and they don't like some of the stuff they report on. But if you just examine who has done over the course of its life as a media institution the most reporting on industry malfeasance industry malpractice bad actors in the space and as well most importantly bc the true realities of fighter pay who has really put a magnifying glass on the industry in the best way possible? The answer is, to me, Bloody Elbow by a mile. I don't think there's even really a close second. Other people in that space have done good work, but as an institution, it's one of the

most important ones. And frankly, BC, without it, I got to tell you, for the industry, I'm a little bit terrified. I'm a little bit terrified. It looks like what's going to happen at Bloody bloody elbow is that the people who have been working there now are going to try and reconstitute it independently i very much hope that works i would love to see that work you know you've seen the guys from deadspin they ended up making decoder um to some degree of success it's not easy to do so i really i really really hope they're able to make that work and if they are then all's well that ends well but that's a very difficult endeavor as well and bc does there's simply no one else in the industry that's really done this and i really want to make one more point

about this whole thing which is why i'm terrified there have been really two key events that make me very nervous for the state of mma media like already we're at a place where they just mostly cover events fight trance fight fight news this fight got booked this fight fell through here's what the commission said it's very much hands-off in terms of examining industry practices and that's fine that's a beat you can do but there should be other ones as well when the athletic came around they hired everybody they even tried to recruit me i don't know if they tried to recruit ubc but they tried to recruit me as well yeah they wanted and ended up collecting everyone who did real reporting the sean l shoddy

is the chuck mendenhall's josh gross they had chad dundas they have been folks and it goes on and on and on from there that wasn't the dan stuff was part of it and other ones as well and they basically let all those folks go many of them have not been able to find the same kind of work since then some haven't been able to get work really in any kind of meaningful capacity in the industry at all since then. That was devastating for MMA reporting. And we should say that out loud. That what The Athletic did was devastating for actual reporting in MMA. Because those other sites didn't hire most of those people back.

Sean El Shadi went to MMA fighting. But he's largely in an editorial role. He doesn't do a lot of actual writing day to day. Chuck Mendenhall never really went back to another site, for example, like his, the loss of what he was doing is, is incredible. And then this, you add up Vox dropping bloody elbow and what the athletic did to MMA. I can't think of anything that has put more people out of work who do the actual work of journalism in the space than even any ban from any promoter, which, by the way, those have been very bad

for certain people, no doubt about it, but the scale of devastation here, potential devastation, is horrible. Dude, you could really make an argument that losing these two sites, or losing Athletic and then losing Bloody Elbow if they're not able to reconstitute their efforts elsewhere is the end of MMA journalism

in any kind of genuine capacity as it used to exist and maybe in as a as a real practice the the act of what they do it doesn't pay no one really wants to fund it uh and it is going away and I gotta tell you I'm terrified terrified of it if you're a scumbag in this industry this is great news for you i mean it's tough i i came to the mma media on a full-time level rather than just a contributing one in 2016 and if you said what are the most important mma journalistic pieces i've read in that time you know they're probably all by john s nash and kareem zidane right Luke yeah something like that I mean in in what type of alumni that we now know in MMA media comes from there you Brent Brookhouse who now works at CBS I mean is

it a who's who across the board of people that have you know done work there and and and and learn the trade there so to speak I would say that you know uh in general one of the criticisms I've had of Vox Media is I don't believe that they are very good at nurturing any of their talent, but individual managers can be very much the exception to that rule, and I would say that Nate Wilcox has just the resume of people who have come through there is extraordinary. I don't think there's another site in MMA that can boast what they have in terms of the number of people who have been able to spread their wings

and fly, so to speak. Look, there's so much okay like sports journalism you know in the in the digital era you know look it's always volatile right in in any company and i've seen it in my days at espn years where they went all in on specific ports sports mma included and let's hire all these editors and writers and you know and then a couple years later go okay that didn't pan out what we thought. We're going another direction. But look at right now, ESPN, while not always maybe standing in the firmest of stance journalistically since signing on with UFC, is now airing UFC.

So it couldn't be more prominent. So, Luke, if you consider now that the MMA journalism space, anytime a sport is hot and god ufc has been hot for years there's money there what is stopping those who who bleed for this site behind the scenes from doing exactly what you said joining together and trying to find another financial suitor who believes in this style uh of i want to say the style of journalism how about who believes in journalism look all right you know what i mean like seriously uh i mean it it's like if this was a super niche sport and you know i've been in the boxing journalism game for so long where i've seen such highs and lows of like there's a lot of money in the sport right now it's a balloon there's no money in the sport at all dude there's money in

the sport right now you and i are benefiting from that and the great work we're doing at our various brands right now shouldn't somebody be able to pick this up or this, or this, you know, or at least the personnel or, or to keep this going. I mean, you have to be in a spot where you're not.

Dude, good journalism doesn't pay in any form or very rarely pays. It just doesn't pay. And then never, I mean, again, the original way in which newspapers worked was that they sold classified ads.

And then that ad money, which had nothing to do ostensibly with the journalistic work itself like the moscow bureau chief at that time in the 60s or whatever it was that the two were separate and so you you you didn't have to worry how much you mean everyone had budgets but you weren't you weren't thinking should i write this story because it'll get more clicks should i do this podcast because it'll get more clicks excuse me or should i do the actual story should i do the actual thing that matters that you know is not i'm not gearing my work from an editorial perspective based on what will generate immediate returns they didn't think of it in that way because they didn't have to and so when you think of journalism as what does this individual podcast episode what does this individual video what does this individual article net me immediately

in terms of metrics once you've made that switch good journalism doesn't pay anymore it doesn't pay now people might be saying well then if bloody elbow was that costly to vox then they have a right to cut them yes vox can certainly do everything that they want to but i would caution against that i think to me you know i i wasn't i've been gone from the company since basically in any full-time capacities and i think since 2017 and then all together after 2019 so since that time i could not tell you what the reality was but what i do know is that one that bloody elbow was not expensive to run relative to other sites they had hardly anybody that era that was full-time so like the fact that it was like weighing down from a call seat perspective i don't really buy to the way that the SB nation company works is that they're supposed to be able

to sell ads across a series of networks of sites that reach the same demos. And so you don't have to get individual, very niche sponsorship. You have this network effect that's supposed to like scale. And therefore you can reach your goals. Even if independent sites, um, aren't necessarily always the best fit or have always the best coverage. You have this wide array of scale you can use. That's the second part about it. And the third part is just this, man. When I was there, let me just tell you that this is true. Like Bloody Elbow reported on difficult stories by choice and because they had to push them through. No one was encouraging them to do it. No one was forcing them to do it. They elected to do it. And of course they'd have to go through in-house counsel to make sure everything was that they were publishing was above board, which they did

and blah, blah, blah, and on and on. But they're the ones that push the issue. And it's been this way since 2007, like in 2023, all of a sudden BE didn't make enough money. Maybe, maybe that's true. I just tend to think that they are probably more of an editorial headache internally, and maybe Vox just didn't want that anymore. I tend to think that's the likeliest of all the explanations. That's an interesting summary there, knowing your history and what you know. It's funny, when you said there's just not a lot of money to be made anymore for pure journalism, and I don't disagree.

You know what my knee-jerk response always is to that? Unless you're at espn meaning the arms that espn has as a whole i'm talking about you know the former magazine features they can do e60 outside the lines that level of stuff right um look espn has been very on top of the ball of reporting on the ufc gambling issues certainly we we in our opinion drop the ball on the out you know on the fallout of the dana white domestic uh situation are we still a couple years into this espn ufc deal like waiting to see when the next big scandal comes how they react or are there enough scandals out there right now that they already should be attacking and should be that,

that industry journalistic leader. I don't know, Luke, it's interesting. The issue, the issue is like on the fight, on the, on the fighter pay stuff.

It's not even like what should be the reaction to a scandal. It's like, dude, who is picking up the phones and looking for information that powerful, bad actors don't want them to do. Who's actually going against that. Who's working against those large scale interests. Well, it could hurt their own business at the end of the day their business is to profit off of the ufc so if their business is to do that how aggressive are they going to

dig up everything beyond the game even in the gambling scandal you can argue you know ufc wants that gambling scandal to be deeply investigated so they could never have it happen again and build up those you know those walls to stop that so i could see why they would be in support of that but you know there's a lot of issues that we talk about or sorry that you talk about a lot that sometimes even i look at like oh this one again but now that a lot of the pieces are really starting to come together through some very good aggressive investigative journalism in recent years and especially recent months and obviously bloody elbow is a big part of a lot of that. Dude, I'm starting to wonder what that next big scandal that's going to come above the surface

actually is, you know, is it, you know, Kadirov related and down that down that line in that category or what is it? And to your question or to the one in general, I mean, who is going to be the places that are aggressively covering that and funding the coverage of that? It's a very interesting question. So grateful for all the years that B was able to work under Vox. And I mean that genuinely because I know they probably didn't do that super gladly. But yeah, we shall see. I hope that they're able to reconstitute their efforts elsewhere because otherwise the industry is poor for it.

And by the way, just one more thing. It's like you can see a lot of people being bitter at B, which is great. Like you should be able to be fine. If there's a niche people of whatever, people are allowed to say what they want about your media outlet, especially if your coverage has been adversarial or otherwise investigative. That's fine. But you want players like that in

your industry right you want like dude nate wilcox like how bc how much do you know about nate the guy who ran the site how much do you know about him almost nothing beyond the name luke because he's not he doesn't purposely put himself out there as a public right because he doesn't give a shit about anyone's opinion in m. And I mean that like genuinely. He lives his life independently, doesn't care what the opinion is of cage fighters on feminism or Andrew Tate, just doesn't give a shit. Doesn't care what anyone in any position of power has to say, nothing. Doesn't bother him, doesn't live by it. And I mean like in the truest sense of the word. That guy was powering the editorial direction.

You need someone like that to do it. Otherwise it doesn't happen. And the point I wanted to make is people can be mad at it if they want, but the industry is better when someone who feels utterly unencumbered by it is asking questions about its practices. If you don't have that, you miss out on a lot. A lot. Okay. With that in mind, let's go to topic number four, BC.

So in positive news, well, I guess if you're not Anthony Yard, it's positive news. BC, Artur Beterbiev forced Anthony Yard's corner to chuck the towel, metaphorically speaking anyway, in the eighth round of their light heavyweight matchup. Beterbiev retains three of the titles. Of course, Dmitry Bilbo, who we'll talk about in a second, has the fourth. But BC, it was a great performance by Better BF. It was a great performance by Yard.

What a fight, first of all. What a fucking fight, right? So the question is this. Did Better BF look a little old to you this time? Yeah, it was a combination of a couple factors. So you started off by sort of saying, well, you know, happy, good news, unless you're Yard. No, I actually think this whole performance was great news for Anthony Yard. No, he didn't end up winning the Unified Lead Heavyweight Championship.

But Luke, despite being a monster underdog, despite you and I, given the history of us, you know, seeing Anthony Yard fight here and there, we're really down on his true prospects of winning this outside of landing the big punch. Why? Because he's somewhat still of a raw, crude boxer historically heading into here. And the guy gasses big late. He's a big muscular guy. I have to say he completely turned around his reputation and what we think of him by

a gutsy, courageous performance in defeat. Whether you actually agree or not on the scorecards, Yard was up on two of three scorecards at the time of the stoppage. Obviously, that would have changed with the knockdown that happened leading up to the stoppage. And yes, the reason why the corner threw in the towel was because Anthony Yard had really begun to hit exhaustion and wasn't showing the proper body language. And look, we all agree they saved him from probably a violent ending there. But your question is, in terms of what we learned, at 38, has age caught up to Baturbia, better be,

however we want to say it. To a certain degree, yes, Luke. And I thought that comeback fight from the long COVID layoff against, what was the guy's name? Adam Dienes. Was that the fellow's name, Luke? Something like that. I just like, you know, that was the fight a couple of years back. So let me look this up. That was Adam Dienes.

That was in Russia in 2021. Where, you know, Betterbeave looked kind of human there, taking big shots. Well, look, he came back with two big knockouts against two big names to kind of put that to rest. But here's the deal he did archer better be of things which is be willing to take some level of damage to close that distance and get to mid distance and then get him to where he had yard cornered which was surprisingly you know not surprisingly often in this fight and that's when he lands those clean hard clubbing ridiculous power shots but yard just would not stop trying to bounce back and win this fight and it helps when you've got big time power which is by far yards best calling but i can't say it

enough altogether yes 38 years old it's catching up to better be just a little bit and i do wonder if this performance being so close where he was caught pretty badly under one eye and he was you know bruised up pretty badly too i think this is going to lead to a lot of people if they were on the fence before you know going b-ball when they finally do make this undisputed fight but that notwithstanding yard over achieved big time through just toughness and sheer will and improved technique i can't go with it like you got to say it, Luke. His left hook was money. He was landing big shots,

which actually forced Betterbeef to take a step back a few times. Betterbeef did what he had to do. He's a true champion, but you saw that emotional celebration when he did get the stoppage. Did he get old overnight or did he just do exactly what we did

and go, I've seen enough of Anthony Yard to know what this is. A mandatory setup before the big career-defining, undisputed championship bout. I don't fully know the equation there. You know what I mean? Did Butterbeath have his eye off the ball just a little bit? Things caught up to him, but because he's so great,

he pulled it off. That might be the case with that power and the technique. You certainly wouldn't count out his chances of being the undisputed championship champion when they finally make that fight but make no mistake dude this was almost more Anthony Yard's night at the end of the day than it was Better Beavs well no I'm not kidding on that I'm not kidding on that this is like a fight of the year contender this is a war dude Yard would not stop coming on Luke it was wild i think that's i think that's a misread a little bit not that the fight wasn't great i certainly agree with that or

that yard doesn't deserve serious praise he does he does i thought he showed even for people i think we can agree here even for people kind of like us who thought better be have was gonna win yard showed us a lot more than we were expecting. And we were expecting something relatively good. It was, it was, it was relatively great. It was very,

very commendable what he was able to show. I think, I mean, I mean, look outside, I want to spin it back to you outside of criticizing better be from the standpoint of maybe ages catching up and the guy's 38. Okay.

We can't, you know, long amateur career. We can't avoid that father time does come knocking. We can't avoid that by the time does come knocking. I do think a large percentage of that, what I mentioned was overlooking his opponent, but I have to criticize better beef standing in the pocket consistently. I know that's what he does.

He breaks you down. He gets inside and dude, when he's got you cornered, those power shots are clean, accurate and damaging. That's who he is. But dude, he took on a lot of extra clean shots

and was standing in front of it, almost waiting to be hit. So either that's really bad judgment or his idea was, let's get this guy into an action fight. I know my chin's for real. He's going to gas out. Only look, en route to eventually gassing out, he nearly after-run and won

this fight. You know what I'm saying? He's up on two or three scorecards. He had better be rocked and cut like i don't know dude either anthony yard had the fight of his life or better beef had his eye off the ball but some combination came together to make a great fight and now we got to try to figure out exactly what bevolve versus better beef looks like and i'm not really sure i know luke not really i think i'm giving yard a little too much credit i mean don't get me wrong again all the nice things I could say, I'll say them again. And I do think that Betterbeev looked a little old at times, right? Like, here's one thing I noticed, BC.

There were times where you could see Betterbeev, like, recognize an opening and then just not throw, you know, kind of like, wait that one out. I'll wait for the next one. I'm not even saying rationing his offense, just not being quite as physically dynamic and present as he has been in previous years i saw that i saw that a little bit to me that was definitely a little bit of age that caught up with him you you you combined that yard had an aggressive i think in many ways interesting and and difficult to deal with game

plan and he's a big puncher. You say he rocked. Don't forget the quick hands. You say he rocked better be of. He definitely hurt him. I don't think he rocked. We might have a different expression. When I hear rocked, I mean he's doing this number. He was not doing that. He was hurt and retreating. You rock somebody extreme

they do a dance, but you can touch them, change their facial expression, make them take a step back, briefly wobble them. He did do that. We're getting into a game of semantics. I just sort of want to be clear about what we're saying he did. I agree that he did do that, what you're describing,

whatever you want to call it. But for me, the reason why Better Be Have won in the end is because, dude, he was just, he's more clever. Even when he was getting pressed against the ropes, some of that like retreating back to the ropes yes i'm sure standing in the pocket too long to your point was not a great idea but he would pull yard in and then reverse him on the ropes every time and then finish the round unloading on him moreover you look at the right hand that set everything up he faked yard into dropping and i think throwing his hands to an uppercut, got out of the way, and then greeted him with an overhand right.

He set that up. He tricked Yard into giving him what he wanted so he could land a hard, clean punch. Yard didn't really do that to him. He kind of overwhelmed him at times, but he wasn't as clever as Better Be Evan. For that reason, I can't quite agree with the spirit of what you're saying. Well, let me ask you this because here's ultimately better be fought in spurts in ways I didn't think he would need to meaning there what's the MMA comparison Anderson Silva versus Michael Bisping in these

spurts dude he looked like a million bucks that the two or three times he spun yard around in the corner like you mentioned late in the round and just put on the onslaught you know look a lot of guys get stopped by that so part of yards overachieving here was more of the intangible categories of hanging in there and being you know quick and having the threat of the power but you know better be it wasn't extended full-on like he fought in spurts to a certain level and and i wonder like you said packaged with the failure to launch when certain openings were there. Is he slowing down? Did he take his eye off the ball? You don't really

know, but I will say this. He was jovial in celebration, almost relieved in a way I never would have expected and then his post-fight interview, which in Britain, you know, they do it outside the ring I forgot the female broadcaster's name that interviewed him, but look, we talked heading in is like ahead of fights, he won't give you anything he looks angry mean he does speak

english and understands it well but he speaks in like two word phrases and that's it dude did you see him in that post-fight press conference he was like happy and jovial and talking at length there was a high level he said he was ready to leave london with happy memories and he was all smiles yeah because the last time he was there what, he had lost to, was it in the Olympics was he referencing to Usyk? I'm not really sure but the whole point here Luke is I think he was relieved so again it was what makes fights fun

especially when you're building the bigger fights you're never going to count better BV out here against BV but we got legitimate questions I wonder what that's going to do for the betting lines I wonder what that's going to do for the game planning but I think you saw what I saw when that fight ended. Everybody's reaction tweet was, this is the kind of version of him that B-Vol could pick apart, could control from distance potentially.

I mean, you're going to have to show a chin because Betterbeef will get inside on you. But it is interesting that Betterbeef is entering the defining fight of his pro career with a 19-0 record with 19 KOs, but at 38 where we're questioning what he has left. It just adds more story to the overall picture here. This is still B-Ball Betterby, one of the top three or four fights you can make in the sport this year. Two unbeaten champions in a unification, undisputed fight.

Pound-for for pound elements involved it's going to be massive but uh well i heard i heard some british people saying oh what might be next for better we have is callum smith is that how real is that i haven't heard that rumor you you saw of course uh in the ring afterwards better Better Beef basically say, you know, I want history. I want the four belts. Let's go. Let's make the B-Ball fight. I do still have questions, though, Luke,

on if B-Ball's still under contract with Eddie Hearn, which I believe he is on the DAZN side of things, how easy is that fight to make against Better Beef, who has the co-promotional deal with Top Rank and fights on ESPN? I don't know. So could boxing chicanery cause a delay in this super fight where you could slide in a Callum Smith for big money if the promoters... I mean, look, if you're

Bob Arum, Luke, and you were ringside for that and you saw a great fighter potentially look like he got old in there, do you want to try to max him out in England and bring on other big names? You might want to do that. I do know the powers that be in this situation seem to want this fight why wouldn't

you want to fight between two unbeaten guys both not marketable per se in their own right although b-ball being the fighter of the year last year has raised his profile considering considerably you want to make an undisputed fight like this but will they i hope i hope luke i don't need callum smith next i need it i will tell you. I have no interest in the Callum Smith fight. I respect Callum Smith. He is just that, a very respectable talent. But Betterbeev chews right through him. Sorry. Or does he, Luke? Because he's supposed to chew right through Anthony Yard. Let's be fair. Anthony Yard made a leap, yes.

But even making a leap, Betterbeev still should have probably been better. Dude, if you can't handle the power punching of Canelo, you're hopeless against Betterbeef. I mean, come on. There's no chance. Not a chance. Well, it is a different weight class. Yeah, I wonder how that changes things.

But I hear you. Fair enough. Okay, but here's what I'm trying to point out. The Bivol fight to me. Someone asked me in my early read. I'm going to ask you yours, BC. But my early read. Again, when I say early read,

you have the right to change your opinion based on what happens between now and the fight, whatever official prediction. My early read is Bivol beats him. And I think Bivol's jab and movement, it's not, dude, all of these guys, they keep, I guess, here's the thing. Better be of kind of forces you into his fight a little bit. Cause I think partly to your point, he does stand in that pocket being like, come on, fucking hit me, you know, a little bit because i think partly to your point he does stand in that pocket being like come on fucking hit me you know a little bit like that and it forces guys into bad game plans at time i don't think that's going to work all that well against biv all especially since biv all is arguably the better mover between them and the better jabber between them i don't know how far the better mover and jabber at this point yeah like and and also younger and whatever else the

thing is this because better be fights that way guys end up being like all right i guess i'm gonna have to fight fire with fire against better be i'm gonna i'm gonna meet him and i'm gonna have a contest of physicality but fellas you can't win that one not with this guy it doesn't work that way sorry he's the final game boss in that sense i don't think Bivol has even the slightest degree of interest in wanting to do that and doesn't need to to win a 12-round boxing contest, which doesn't make it not dangerous.

It's dangerous, but Bivol has all the skills already, I think, to give Better B a lot of problems. Okay, so who should be favored? It should be Bivol. Do I think he would win based on what we know right now? I do, but it's certainly not easy at all because if there's levels to this game and there is even 38 year old better beave is just simply at a different level than zerto ramirez who biv all in that big fight the second fight of his 2022 campaign which lifted him to fighter of the year

after upsetting canelo was you know i mean he dominated zerto look i mean he he made zerto really have to question doing, you know, doing Zerto things and standing in the pocket and landing big shots because this was always the criticism we had against B-Ball when he had so many boring title defenses from distance, just doing the amateur thing, is when somebody has to make him fight, can he stand in there and fight back? Can he handle himself in there?

Well, against both Canelo and Zerto dude he handled himself in such an insane manner that that's why he's now the fighter of the year and in your top 10 pound for pound meaning B-ball he stood in the pocket and landed such clean combinations and backed the guy up and just showed that his power when packaged like that can be something, but better beef has a crazy chin, but better beef carries his power late. Even if B-ball can control from this, let's not forget Alexander, Alexander Vazdik who fought better beef when they were both unbeaten in a

light heavyweight title unification bout Vazdik had moments during the first half of that fight, big moments controlling the action. He's very B-ball like Vazzik in terms of the amateur European background and boxing from distance. Doesn't maybe have the same level of pop, but what happened in that fight was Vodzik was getting control with the boxing and Better Beef slowly broke him down, stopped him and actually retired him in that fight. So can B-Ball carry that same level of control even if he steps into his power shots and fights better be off which he'll have to can you do that for 12 rounds can you do

that when better be backs you up into the ropes those are going to be the big questions that need answering of really how tough is b-ball actually because luke as skilled as he is and that skill allowed him to bully zerto i don't think better beef gets bullied like that i just don't think he does unless he gets tired he could get tired so like the body work of b-ball also might be important to see i like the way you set that up and made it uh and i made it i think presented it as a there's more parody here than maybe i was it It sounded like I was giving it. I think your assessment is better. So that's great.

I can't wait to see it. I really hope they make it again. I still would say my early read is Bivol gets it done. But to your point, plenty of reasons to think otherwise and or to just see the fight in general. Anyway, title unification being perhaps one of the most important ones of all of them. Can't wait to see it. If in fact they make it. All right, BC. Last but certainly not least, topic number five here.

You know what? We had a bit of a light weekend. We had the sort of mid to late afternoon here on the East Coast fight with Better Be Even Yard, but not really a whole lot of high-level MMA beyond the regional scene. However, that changes on Saturday. Bellator 290, of course, will be on Saturday on CBS slash Paramount Plus there's also a UFC fight night card Amanda Serrano is back in the boxing ring at Madison Square Garden

there's actually a lot happening this weekend so BC between between Bellator UFC boxing tell me a fight you are most looking forward to this weekend and why I couldn't break the tie I got two fights for you here that I'm really keying on. Obviously, beyond the headliners and, you know, Fedor versus Bader. Maybe it's Bader versus Fedor is massive. So is the Johnny Eblen. Very tough title defense against Tokov there for the middleweight championship in Bellator. But, Luke, I'm going to start that UFC fight night card that goes down at the apex.

Where was I? I didn't even know this was happening dude you know how big of a do-hoo choy fan i was korean super boy guy that arrived on the scene as a rising prospect many years back and was delivering big knockouts until he found himself in three consecutive wars obviously the one with cub swanson being an all-timer hall of fame fight and losing three in a row. Retiring from the sport. Luke, he's back after nearly a three and a half year layoff, retirement, whatever you want to call it.

He's going to be back in a featherweight bout against Kyle Nelson. Dude, did you know Doohu Choi was coming back? Luke, seriously. It was a brief shooting star when he came on the scene, but one of those guys that I just wanted to be great because I loved his attitude. I loved his game. I'm being told here, Luke, by our people, that it was maybe military service.

I don't think it was. Was it the mandatory military service that the Korean zombie also went through, Luke? So that would have been four years. I don't recall him. I'm not entirely certain. Yeah, I thought this was stepping away after three straight damaging losses you know in which he had moments of course but but couldn't pull together either way he's back what do you what do you what do

you believe at at 31 and he's from south korea so you know i don't know i'd have to look up the potential military uh placements here but uh he pulled out of a fight in 2021 luke with an injury so maybe i'm overplaying this retirement am i wrong did he not retire dude i haven't thought about duho choi in a while um i'm not entirely certain about the specifics of his career i right now i don't i don't recall um certainly the korean zombie had to take four years away from military service that's true i don't think dot or excuse me i don't think that duho troy got an exemption to that so he would have had to as well um but i can't say for certain this is this is your fight so you tell me yeah i mean i you know i guess i should have had better better uh better information on there but look i'm really

looking to see you know he reminds me of uh tom duken while luke another guy who kind of came out of nowhere made big fun fights and then just left just left at the same time i'm out before he could maximize that okay so that's what i'm looking for on that side but i wanted to specifically tailor this to you because that opening fight on the bellator on cbs card saturday night here february 4th coming up this weekend dude brennan ward versus sabah homasi is just smart matchmaking from the idea of let's just take two all action bangers. We'll put them out there, right? Like following, you know, Paul Daly just retired, but following in the footsteps of that.

Let's just put these two guys in there and go to war. And by the way, both of these guys did fight Paul Daly. But Luke, the side of the equation on Brennan Ward, you know, Connecticut background, all that. I know you talked to him. People can check out that interview at youtube.com slash morning combat. King of Connecticut factors in on this Luke, but I know his backstory as well as you and anybody else as dark a turn into drugs as you possibly could have had pulls himself out of there.

His backstory is insane. He's won a couple of comeback fights. He's the same all or nothing slugger. He's always been. And that isn't looking to change. But after talking to him at length, what do you really feel about the prospects of this fight? We expect it to be a war, and if he wins this,

is this comeback story not just to get back to this point, not just to get clean? Could he actually make noise in the Bellator standings in this division? I'll tell you what, Brendan Ward has always been a really good athlete. Like, you could say whatever else about him, but he's been a good athlete. Obviously, he has a wrestling... Pardon me.

He has a wrestling background. And, you know, if you listen to the interview, he's training in ways he just quite literally hasn't done since 2014. He got into the sport very young. He's 34, so even though he's missed a ton of time, he still got, you know, a little bit of time to do something special. He loves the opponent. He loves the way the opponent fights. You know, I don't really know what, I don't know what the

future holds for Brennan Ward. The only thing I can say with any degree of certainty is that he is, and maybe for the first time ever putting himself in his best position to get the most out of himself. He's training at Johnson and Wales, which I know is sort of a culinary institute, but they have, I think, a D3 wrestling organization. He's out there. They're a good one, by the way. He's out there wrestling with them as well. Dude, he's just crossing every T and dotting every I for the first time in his life. And when you hear him explain what he had to do to get sober, the levels of all the parts of his life

that had to change, he's not saying words that sound comforting. My man was in the trenches, not just the trenches of despair, but the trenches of recovery as well. And all of the stops on that awful highway that you have to take and all of the mental battles you have to win along that journey dude he lived that too and now he's in

a place where he is i i'm assuming quite clean sober clear-headed uh work he is still a union member work gave him time off to do nothing but train he's doing two and three a days dude i don't know if he can beat Sabaho Masi, but I know that you're going to get probably a very, very, very good version of Brendan Ward, and that might be enough to really push himself into potentially special territory in Bellator. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's always been a firecracker, not just in his fighting style, but, you know, interviews, big F-word type, big F-bomb type guy.

But, you know, he took four and a half years off and, and coming, just coming back is a monster victory. When you consider he did jail time, he was deeply addicted to the hardest of hardest drugs rehab. And, and you find out rehab and you find out on top of that, like he literally didn't train in his prime. When Luke, when we saw him, you you know fight those names i mentioned like paul daly dude he was not literally not training at all was doing drugs so it's one thing to stop the you know mid-level lower level competition guys he just did but sabahumasi is a big opportunity for him to make fireworks but you're doing it on cbs he's got a great story which you know they're going to tell he wins this luke you wonder if there are big, much

bigger things to head ahead at age 34 for him, even with the miles he's already put on himself physically and mentally. I cheer for this type of turnaround story for anyone. There's no question about it, and I am dialed in on this one heading into there. So everyone can check out the interview Luke did as well. Hey, Luke, I got another interview coming this week, by the way.

I already put it in the can. Mahmoud Abdul-Rouf on morning combat. Our producer says, check IG. Dana and Logan Paul just did a joint post on IG. It's basically a sizzle reel of Logan talking about wanting to fight in the UFC. Then closes with a major announcement tomorrow. Yeah, I don't care. Wait, is Logan Paul going to take a UFC fight, Luke?

I mean, if CM Punk did, what's stopping Logan Paul, who's a better athlete, you know? Okay. What's stopping him? They'll find somebody for him to fight. Yeah, I mean, they do gimmicks like this all the time. All right. BC, for me, I will tell you what, man.

Like, when Bellator cards are kind of nubs, I'll say it on the show. I really don't mind. This one's not. This one's good. This is a good card. I could pick a lot of fights on this Bellator card, which, by the way, I'm going to say it one more time. This one's good. This is a good card. I could pick a lot of fights on this Bellator card, which, by the way, I'm going to say it one more time, not on Showtime.

It's on CBS on Saturday at Paramount+. First of all, the Johnny Eblen-Anatoly Tokov fight. I know Eblen just beat Musashi, but, dude, Tokov might win this one. That dude is tough to beat. He is very talented, great fin finisher great attacker from the back well-rounded 34 pro fights 31 and 3 record experienced I mean that is a very very close fight number one I love that contest but dude you can go down the list how about Max Roshkoff who had you know the issue with UFC where he was supposed to come out of his corner and he didn't want to and blah blah blah

and then he went on the sojourn well he's back in bellator now he's gonna take on chris gonzalez the guy who just fought usman number gamedev out of team alpha male you can go on down the list bc there's a ton of uh russian prospects they have including but not limited to at heavyweight steve maury your connecticut boy taking on ali isaiah ali isaiah of a 2008 uh olympian he was a european champion and i think either freestyle i think freestyle wrestling maybe greco roman i have to double check but he's undefeated i think he's gonna be uh this might be his bellator debut or at least the second fight yeah his bellator debut after uh going undefeated in pfl so he's over here now darian caldwell is on this card as well

lorenz larkin is on this card neiman gracie is on this card up and down there's fights to check out i'm actually like genuinely looking forward to this by the way you're asking 9 p.m east coast start uh for vader versus fedor 2 on cbs yeah uh by the way steve maury although i like him big steve not a connecticut guy luke born in pittsburgh fights fights out of uh kill cliff down there and also used to spar cbs sports combat sports senior editor brandon wise once he joined hard knocks 365 as a civilian luke and then ended up in sparring matches with big steve i mean brandon what are you doing bro right also bc the bc special at 125 diana avsara gova

taking on alejandra alara uh out of columbia but she fights out of Mexico. BC, I know that really has got your heart aflutter. I reject that reputation, Luke. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf here, but damn, does Alejandra Lara need a win, Luke, right? Yeah, she does. She really does, to that point, badly. And here's an opponent who's tough, but only has five pro fights.

She has 15, so it should be winnable. Look, I love Laura. I love her fighting spirit, Luke. She does the dances heading in, usually at the weigh-in does something to raise awareness, but she's nine and six overall. Three-fight losing streak, has lost five of her last seven. So this feels like, can you turn that corner or not?

Yeah, but like you mentioned, this preliminary card me which will air live on youtube and pluto pluto tv uh loaded with names during call i mean so many across the board so uh don't miss out on that a three fight main card uh i'll be looking forward to that luke does does derrick lewis sergey spivak move you at all i don't think you're moved i mean it does but does, but they've got all these Korean fighters on there. I'm told, obviously, to promote the product in Korea and for their television holders over there, rights holders, which is fine. I mean, I don't really care about that one way or the other, but I would watch it. That's a 1 a.m. Eastern start time, 1 a.m. Eastern.

That's what I'm saying. So they're going to fight at what, like 3, 3.30? No, I'm not staying up until 3.30 in the morning to watch that. I know all the Irish and the UK fans, this is what we do all the time. Folks, what you don't do, here's what you don't do. You don't stay up until 3 in the morning for sporting contests in your country. That's what you don't do because no one puts them on there like that, except for the UFC when they did Dan Henderson versus UFC,c which is for american audiences which is why they did that

anyway the premier league games don't start at 1 a.m london time they don't fucking do that so give me a break with all that shit you remember in this country you remember ricky hatton's breakthrough title win over coast jazoo luke that was on showtime they they aired that live east coast on Showtime which was like 3 or 4 in the morning overseas where the fight was set from. Combat sports will abuse their audiences in

that way but in general the major sports don't do that so great but I'll watch it the next day is I guess what I'm saying the hours after it takes place I'll just get up and watch it on my TV. All right, BC, that is it for us here. So let me get to this one, BC. The day has finally come where we announce this month's Moneylion Hammer of the Month Award.

Yay. First and foremost, of course, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who voted on social media. We appreciate you. We looked through all the nominations, and while we wish we could give this award to everyone, of course, we cannot. So we made our final selection. And excited to share that today. BC, here's who was nominated. Number one, you had Umar Nurmagomedov.

You had two, Ismael Bonfim. Three, Gelton Almeida. A lot of Brazilians on there. And then four, out of Venezuela, Roman Villa. Don't forget about Bruno Fajardo we threw him in there as well as well I apologize uh all right but we have to choose a winner and so the winner of this month's money lion hammer of the month is it is Umar Nurmagomedov he is your your winner. He is the selection this month.

Again, thanks to everyone who voted. We're going to get a trophy to him and all that good stuff. So, of course, we have Aaron Blanchfield. We have Ilya Teporia. And now, BC, we have the great Umar Nurmagomedov. Thoughts on this? Now, Luke, I know we have, you know, flat-rate international shipping on morningcombat.store.

Does that same flat-rate go to getting the hammer in Ilya Teporya's hands for winning it last month? I believe that's right. We're working out the details there, yes. Okay. Can't wait to see that guy sporting it. And now Umar, who, look, the hardcores, right? The hardest of the hardcores have told us from day one

that you can get all excited about Habib. You can get all excited about Islamlam usman and magomedov but umar's the best of the group luke under team abdulmanap uh still time for that to be a real thing you know that right he might be he might be i don't think that's crazy people just know stuff luke okay they're on the inside they just know stuff it's true it's certainly true all right holy hammer bro hashtag holy hammer all right so again thanks to everyone congratulations to umar number made off we appreciate everyone who took part in that and again thanks to money lion for helping put that all together all right bc let's

get to it now it's not where you or i ask each other questions it's time for the donks to ask us questions it's time for dms from the don'ts yeah yeah all that good freaking ha yeah we've got male viewers all right from at james mitchell's is how it's written here uh mitchell ss why wouldn't you why would you put ss in your name okay but he did uh what do you think the chances are we end 2023 without an american born slash naturalized champion that's only hill and sterling currently what do you think bc we're gonna lose all the american champs are you trying to say it's down time right now for american mma luke at the highest level is that what you're trying to say because people were saying that about brazil recently

that's what this gentleman is asking i mean things come and go. The titles change quickly, Luke. Okay, so buckle up. You know, we got a lot of, you know, I don't try to look at MMA from a nationalistic sense. You know what I mean? I don't even go, yay, go damn Yankees. You know, I mean, like, whatever. But do you think this is a trend, Luke? I don't feel it is.

I just feel that that's where we're at at the moment. I think everything is cyclical, but it is evidence that, like, the global expansion of the game is going to make it harder for Americans to dominate the way they once have. Yeah, sure. Well, look, dude, these hammer countries are a problem right now in the sport, in MMA. They're all coming on, Luke. Okay. The greater Dagestan extended Russian, former Russian, Eastern European countries, Central Asia. former russian eastern european countries central asia i mean like there that whole region is just exploding on this level at the high you know at the highest promotions across the board um

you know do you do you want to offer advice to american mma to the to the american artists of marshall luke of of how we can turn this trend back around for old uh daddy janky over here and in in the the stars and stripes uh i don't get better work on your takedown defense yeah that's about it all right from clp film bc did you old washed dads hear about bigfoot silva possibly going to the slap dick league yes has there ever been yeah go ahead the worst idea has there ever been a worse idea in human history there's been a lot of really bad ideas in human history a lot of those related to mma unfortunately but yeah uh antonio bigfoot silva who you'll be seeing and have you seen this shit luke you're about to rate his new tat

but i'll tell you this uh he posted a photo of this with the slap and wondered on Instagram how he would do please please please good lord let's let's get this guy retired okay how many more yeah anymore if folks I know that like back in the day it's less of a thing these days but like it used to be back in the day where folks be like oh my god MMA is or you know ultimate fighting is what people called it in the aughts it's just too violent for me. This is not sport. This is barbarian acts. And I'm always like, lady, I'm not saying that this is not difficult to watch for some. I can buy that it is.

But if you think this is the bottom of the barrel, oh, let me introduce you to BKFC. Let me introduce you to Slapdick. Let me introduce. I mean, the levels at which it can get grimier than than mma are i mean we got diego sanchez and a bare knuckle main event coming up we we're fighting against the optics of this slap but i just want to answer one quick thing because everybody's you know these are grown adults who consent to this that's fine okay if there's slap league competitions in other

countries or at your local bar that's one thing it's an entirely different thing when ufc has their own slap dick league and is using all of their arms and tentacles to promote sanitize and do all that and if i have to hear another time or see another video online about dana going hey dummy this was the same feedback i heard when i launched mma but we're getting this shit regulated i don't care if you have every single doctor in the world along with at zuck renting out the apex and standing there those doctors can do tests before the slaps luke and they can do it after they can't stop the CTE from arriving. Okay, that's just the reality of the situation. So let's end any debate considering that.

If you like it, go watch it. But the fact that the UFC is unapologetically doing this is the central issue in this debate. End of topic. Also, if you like it, you're probably stupid. I mean, I can't guarantee that. That's not necessarily true. I mean, some people like gross, you know, adult films to the level where you're like is it even legal that they film them that they're watching it you know what i mean luke are you are you projecting right now

i i'm throwing or did you look at my search history i currently don't live in a glass house in that category luke okay you know what i mean you watched very you know romantic pornography i i'm not watching bc's like you know what i need in my pornography romance dialogue go on dates chan and tweed okay andrew stevens the night eyes franchise i need the only guy who's like pornography just does not have enough romance i really can't just it's not enough it's not enough i'm not gonna let you porn shame me anymore like okay that's that's for that's the end of this conversation. All right. Uh,

from at math. You. Sale. Era. Just the worst fucking name in the world. Would prime Tony Ferguson, Ryan Campbell have done better against Habib than Ola Vera did against Islam. Yes.

I think. Yeah, I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. Ola Vera didn't do shit to Islam. That's the problem. Yeah. It was 10, 10 bad minutes, as he said, but stylistically, dude, let's not act like

that wasn't just, oh, he happened to take him down and submit him. Dude, he was lighting him up on the feet, too. That's what led to the finish. Which I feel like Tony would have done spinning backfisted his way into getting taken down eventually or whatever, but he would have touched up, I think, Habib a little bit more than what look proverbial firearm to your head

and i don't even like saying that luke okay but like is it in play that islam passes habib in terms of being uh in terms of greatness is that still possible i mean obviously it's still possible but like possible difficult i mean he is a different stoppage loss right yeah that's bad and then he would have to beat a real cast of guys to get his name in that way but it's possible it's possible yeah all right uh all right from zach bolden bc over under two and a half. All right. Amount of margaritas Luke consumes at the live show before he utters the phrase, I'm starting to feel these margaritas, Brian Campbell. I'm feeling these margaritas, Brian Campbell. I believe we will not be drinking at the live show. Luke, this is a professional music venue, and we are invited.

We are invited guests. We're not handling the production. So shout out to the great folks at the sports podcast group and pod live but luke there are some talks about like taking the after party to a pub and i know you don't love this idea because the the the they're coming the zombies are coming and they're going to touch you and they're going to consider harvesting your organs if they can get enough margaritas. Also, we are going to, I mean, I don't know which one I don't know which one it will be,

but if we do that, just so it's clear, you and I are both going to get a communicable disease at that point. I just want to be very... Or ketamine slipped into our Delta-8, Luke. Something bad's going to happen. Probably, yes, probably. I don't know. But yeah, we're going to have fun. We're going to see our fans, but no, Luke, you're going to hold it together this time. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, we're going to have fun. We're going to see our fans.

But no, Luke, you're going to hold it together this time. You know, they're not. We are. This is for folks. Let's explain the difference. BC and I are not just randomly in the UK, like renting out a venue for an MK show. If that was the case, we'd be going hog wild and you'd have to deal with the sag. You know what I'm saying, Luke? That's exactly right.

Instead, this is a podcast festival of which we are headlining. So it's a little bit of like, you know, it's their house. We've got to play a little bit by their rules. So don't get us wrong. We've got some fun stuff planned. But, you know, BC is going to keep his pants on. Anyone expecting like G.G. Allen to open for GWAR? It's just not going to happen at

this venue that doesn't mean it's not going to be the most dynamic 90 minutes in you know combat sports podcasting history it's although bc might eat his feces that is on the table it's going to be a little highbrow but luke you know unless they're testing my bloodstream before i walk in there all bets are off right all bets are freaking off right uh okay And then last but not least, BC, last but not least, I don't quite understand this question. At Cole underscore Brown 858, if you had to either go to jail for a year or go to jail with a Rubik's Cube

and you get to leave when you finish it, which one are you choosing? Are you guys struggling with Rubik's Cubes out there? Where did I just, I just saw that. What show did I just see that, that question asked on? i don't know am i doing some stupid bit from a tv show they're gonna take the video of it i literally in the last 48 hours was watching something where that question was asked in the show what was it so they're saying it's a recent debate i saw it on some tv show i'm not i'm not really sure are people thinking it takes a year to solve a rubik's cube i got it i got it i was uh i was watching an

episode of bull luke my wife and i are you know going going back through that show season by season and i saw that asked in there um you could solve it in an afternoon or at least a couple of days well so if you were if you had a chance like if you were going to be put away right if you're going to be put away so wait what's the mikey is explaining this like i don't get it mikey i get it the idea is uh yes you could go there with the rubik's cube but what if it takes you a long time? The year in certain cases would be less. What I'm trying to say is if it takes you a year to figure out a Rubik's Cube, you're a fucking idiot.

That's what I'm trying to... It doesn't... It should not take you a year. That's crazy to me. Right? Am I out of my mind? I got it now. I saw Theo Vaughn on a clip talk about that as well, Luke,

also in the last 48 hours, okay? So it must be a hip thing right now to debate that. I mean, I haven't done one of these since, I don't know, I was in my teens or something, but they're... I'm going to guess, given your background in debate club and as a math team, that your ball's deep in Rubik's Cube and you're just not admitting it, and you probably know that. No, I don't own one. I don't own one own one i haven't played with one i was never one of

those kids who could go like and then do it fast yeah but like i could solve it like on a car ride or something you know what i mean like i don't i don't quite understand like you have a year to figure this out like okay i'll i'll take the rubik. Like, how is this a thing? I don't. All right. Well, you know. Okay. When they check your bags at customs, Luke, you're going to find this equation out. You know what I mean? It's going to be great.

So is this a live show? Luke does a Rubik's Cube in under X minutes or else he covers the tab to your post live show. Listen, here's how this is going to go. You give me one of those. A, I'm going to chuck that motherfucker into the into the audience too if you think i won't dine and dash let me explain something to you i will what about a scenario in which i stand fully clothed we set a timer you get handed the rubik's cube i begin a strip tease you have to solve it before i get before i drop my dungarees as you would say and we all get fired and never asked

back in the country again listen i'm not hold on i want to be very clear about this i'm not in any way suggesting i'm a genius with the rubik's cube that's not my point my point only is if the choice is whenever you're done or a year yeah i'm gonna take whenever i'm done you need to tell me you could bc you couldn't figure that out in a month so okay i'll spot you i've never made days i've never made much progress on that thing luke that's not my type of that's not my type of thing all right i'm more of like hey can i win this you know victory royale on fortnight against 99 you know sub teenagers they don't know i'm a dad luke but you know i'm bringing it i'm bringing that dad energy i'm taking them out one by one luke okay all right fair enough yeah listen i'm not i'm not

a puzzle guy or any of this shit that's not who i am i just feel like i'm not gonna punt on a year of my life over a over a rubik's cube i'm not gonna give that away jesus all right bc it's time for your bs before we get into my feces, Luke, there were a couple extra things we wanted to touch real quickly. Did you see that report? A Bloody Elbow was where I read it, actually, speaking of. Shocker. That the woman who accused Conor McGregor and Ibiza

of assaulting her and she had to jump off the boat to escape, her car exploded in the past few weeks? Is this what happened? that story i read i think it got set on fire more than it just spontaneously combusted i don't think it combusted what do you make of that because a lot of people are tweeting out it's going how have you guys not talked about this i just found out about it this morning i i sent the link for folks who don't understand

what we haven't like you're like how do you not know more about what the Irish have published? Because a lot of these stories, they're actually, I'm not familiar with the terrain of Irish media. I don't know how to navigate that in terms of what's really good, what's really bad, who you can trust, who you cannot. I just don't understand that market very well. And also, I don't exactly know who to get for reliable information. And also, Ireland has really weird laws about what the media can or can't publish.

So a lot of it seems, from the American perspective perspective because you can't name certain names it all seems very sketch so that's the reason why we haven't got into it further we're happy to report things that we feel like have a reasonable level of authenticity and truth value they've been reported but here's what it says a 40 year old woman who made a former complaint against uh mcgregor accusing him of assault had her car set ablaze earlier this month per the mail online um irish police confirmed there had been a suspected arson in the i'm gonna i'm sure i'm gonna mispronounce it drimna neighborhood of dublin the guardi are investigating a suspected criminal damage from a by fire incident that occurred at approximately

10 p.m on thursday january 19th at a residential premises in this area. No injuries reported. So it sounds like arson, BC. The other thing I wanted to mention was Arthur Betterbeave shouted out your boy. Oh, Kadyrov. Kadyrov after in the post fight interview after winning and

thanked him for all the support and stuff. And then I saw a news this morning that, uh, Hamza Chemaev has taken Kadyrov's 15 year old son, Ali to train with him at Tiger Muay Thai in Thailand and an entourage of Kadyrov affiliated fighters as well. Luke, I bring this up because of the crossover in boxing where any connection to

Daniel Kinahan, the Fury family still cannot fly to the States. That's why Tyson Fury fury is not going to be you know fighting usic in las vegas so to speak here um is something in that regard coming because there are so many fighters connected with a guy who is caught up in so many human rights abuses and other very i've tried to do a little bit digging on like how is it possible that the treasury can have these very specific guidelines that doing business with kadirov is strictly forbidden now of course uh someone like chamayev is both swedish and i think he probably still has chechen nationality so you know this doesn't apply to him in all the direct cases but just insofar as

it involves anyone who is american how is it possible that they can do business with him? And there's no issue here about what's going on. And the answer is, I don't know, but based on some folks I've been talking to, I wonder if there's on, I'd be very surprised if there was no ongoing criminal investigation into it and where it leads and who it snatches up. I have no idea if it ever makes it leads and who it snatches up i have no

idea if it ever makes it to the the light of day i don't know but there's reason to believe that it's ongoing and it feels like it's due for a reckoning doesn't it it feels like everyone's just kind of operating like it's no big deal it's a big fucking deal when ufc fighter munir laze laze is that how you say it when he was at the apex that time and he shouted out daniel kinahan like in the cage you know uh shout out to alan dawson of insider a friend of the show who you know was peppering him with questions and dawson's done an incredible job against resistance you know doing a lot of public reporting against kinahan i just question why that's not the case with kadirov you know what i'm saying

on that not not for dawson i mean for all of us why we're just sort of like yeah we know those associations are there but everybody's just cool with it um i don't know i don't have a good answer for you but i do feel like at some point it's due for a reckoning all right well hey check out m out MMA Analytics' new video out there on YouTube that dips deep into that category. If you want to hear more on putting the pieces together, very, very eye-opening, if all is true. Luke, it's time to put the serious stuff behind us because, you know, we can do both, Luke. We can dress down. I mean, we live in a dress-down reality.

We can also put it back together when it matters. But, you know, every Monday we do a very dressed-down segment where your boy BC scours the globe looking for the highs and lows, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly, the in-between in combat sports, and really even beyond if you're interested in, you know, old white fails or elder abuse. This one's called. Yeah. Have you seen the show?

Yeah, the elder abuse. Sign me up for that. That's really where I come to life. All one's called. Yeah. Have you seen this shit? Yeah, the elder abuse. Sign me up for that. That's really where I come to life. All right, Luke. We already knew this fight was happening. It had been reported, but it was officially announced. David Benavidez and Caleb Plant, two former super middleweight champions, are going to headline a Showtime pay-per-view March 25th in Las Vegas.

Can't freaking wait. But I've referenced many times that there are multiple incidents at gyms where they basically nearly came to blows. Here's the lead video on that for anyone looking to get fired up about this matchup. You're going to see Caleb Plant in the white there at a gym. You're going to see

Jose Benavidez Jr. who's there with the black t-shirt and black cap. You're also going to see David Benavidez in a red shirt. This is the big one that everyone references when we say oh these two don't like each other there's legit beef i just wanted to sort of set the stage properly for you That means nothing. Everyone, did I tell you what your fans are going to say? Hey, don't be saying that shit. Don't be saying that shit. I don't know what you're saying.

That was that mean you're a. You think I'm scary? You think I'm scary? You think I'm scary? What's up? What you want to do? I'll do whatever you want to do. I'm talking to a bitch.

You been acting like a bitch? I'm right here, dog. What's up? You better take your ass from outside. I'm acting. What's up? What's up? What's up?

What you trying to do? Hey, man, hold up. Hey, man, hold up. Y'all coming over man hold up, y'all coming over here! Hey y'all coming over here! Hey y'all coming over here! What the fuck is you talking about? I got it, I got it, no no no What you doing coming over here? You can't come over here Listen to me, if you come over here my coaches gonna take everyone down right?

Right? At least so Don't get mad at him for saying that Don't get mad at him for saying that. Don't get mad at him for saying that, okay? Huh? Man, this is stupid. Don't get mad at him for saying to come down. Don't get mad at him for saying to come down. And he just tells you to calm down.

So just don't calm the fuck down. Brian, this is stupid. It doesn't lead to anything. Don't eat down on you. Cool down, man. Shut that up, man. Shut the fuck out. Take your ass back over there

let's finish our workout or what? take your ass back over there take your ass back over there shut the fuck up in here man what's up you think I won't fucking beat your ass you think I won't beat your ass you got a problem

you got a problem you got a problem? You got a two. You got a two. You got a two. You got a two. You got a two. You got a two. You got a two. Oh, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey. Hey, hey. Hey, essentially kind of threw the first punch, a slapping left hand on Jose Benavidez Jr. Senior, the father and trainer, was there. You saw in the red shirt, David jumped in. And they've been at odds ever since. Does this light that juicy flame for you to think of this as more than just two former champions strategically facing each other on pay-per-view?

There's beef here, Luke. There's real beef, brother. Yeah, I just know it doesn't do shit for me. I love the fight because these two guys, I do like the fact that they don't like each other on pay-per-view there's beef here luke there's real beef brother yeah i just know it doesn't do shit for me i i love the fight because these two guys i do like the fact that they don't like each other that to me adds to the fight and i look in a legitimate way and i sort of get that but like pouring over these gym disputes where young men are yelling at each other over the dumbest shit no it doesn't do much for me all right i got fired up from it sorry luke we'll continue going hey we did have boxing from this past weekend. Let's go to the Golden Boy main event.

Check out Alexis Rocha with a knockout of the year contender against George Ashy. This was in the main event. Rocha's coming on a bit, Luke, but how about that finish? Damn. Good Lord, what a right hook from this guy. Popped him. Knew exactly where he was going to be.

He didn't really set up the uppercut, right? He just kind of flashed the jab and then went to the uppercut and didn't. No, excuse me. It looked to me like he led with the uppercut. Can we see it one more time? Yeah. So he leads with the uppercut. Never lead with the uppercutut especially the rear hand uppercut

with those set up first because if you just lead with that uppercut you're going to be wide open even if it's coming from the other side he doesn't put anything behind it and just gets absolutely crushed just throws the uppercut yeah boom boom damn uh we mentioned the better be fight which took place in london here's a key sequence in round five when Yard was lighting Betterbeave up, but he turned the tables. Fun to watch. Dude, Anthony Yard is intimidating, man. Yeah, look, he just turns

him. And look at that, same side, all right hands. Amazing, amazing. Turns him, moves him. Uses the fact that Yard's holding on to reposition him. Dude, Better be a... When he would reverse him in these rolls here, like just turn him,

so then he moves him just like that. Oh, I'm telling you, man. It looks like it's obvious. That takes a skilled tactician, man. And look, when he corners you there, you can't get extension on your punches. It's really hard to fight off a guy like that, but Yard showed a tremendous chin. I got a lot of respect for him.

Before the main event at Wembley, or not Wembley, at a different arena there in London, Luke, Jake Paul and Tommy Fury went face-to-face ahead of their February 25th showdown. Did you like this pro-wrestling theatrics? No. Why is Tommy shirtless? Did he fight on this card? No, he

just had to show you what's under the hood, Luke, okay? Yeah, this is all uh you know like i said man i'm not gonna say i'm not gonna i'm not gonna take a dump on logan paul i'm not gonna take a dump on jake paul you know i have been told you told me this other people have told me this that logan is actually really good at pro wrestling and has actually really tried so i respect that I respect that he's putting something together. I respect what Jake has done in boxing for what it is. I take it for what it is. But am I going to take time out of my day to like, oh, I got to go see what these two guys do.

Well, you may not be willing to drop a deuce on Jake Paul, but Tommy Fury was when walking up to the poster. Check out the drawing he put on here. You're going to draw a big old dick. Yeah, there are the balls. Look at that. Good old boxing, Luke. Always the lowest common denominator, right?

You know, either I can kick your ass or you have a dong attached to your face. Yeah, you got a dong in your face. And, yeah. Well, hey, Luke, you mentioned that Logan Paul might be a pretty good wrestler. The WWE Royal Rumble was Saturday night in San Antonio. And check out this moment he and Ricochet combined for. Didn't he tear up his knee? Yeah.

Look at this. This was like over the weekend? Yeah, Saturday. I thought he was going to be out for like a year with that torn up knee, which was what? I'm trying to think of what pay-per-view that would have been at. Maybe Survivor Series, Luke, which was November, right? Or was that SummerSlam?

Maybe, I don't know. Time moves so fast, but dude, just check out the athleticism here. It's insane, right? Yeah, that's pretty... I mean, again, I don't know anything about pro wrestling, so you guys can correct me. It looks to me like the difference in skill level between him and the other ones is not that

great. Yeah, physically, he has nuances he has to learn and all that, but he's like a day one, I can do this thing type of celebrity crossover. It's been pretty remarkable to see. This one, not Rumble related, but Valerie Lareda made her televised WWE debut for NXT with her wrestling name of Lolo Vice. She did not get the win, but there's a little bit of what she can do with the spinning

kick, Luke. You impressed at all by this? No. Alright, there it is. There you go. Hey, you want to see a Bills Mafia fatality? Here we go. We got those two. Look at this drunk fuck.

How do you get hit by a car that's not moving? There you go. We got those two. Look at this drunk fuck. How do you get hit by a car that's not moving? There you go. It's like, dude, I got run over by a car, and it was parked. Yeah, well, you drink 25 cans of Jenny Light before 8 a.m. That's usually how you do that. What was the BC? Okay, so I went to college 98 to 02, all right, 98 to 02. In that time, the cheap beer option was Natty Light or, like, Beast Light,

Old Milwaukee. Oh, yeah. What was the BC light, like, cheap-ass beer go-to for you? Okay, in high school, for a short season, do you remember when Miller Red came out in 1995? It was basically, it was just called, it wasn't Miller Light, it wasn't Miller Genuine Draft, it was just called Miller Beer, and it had an amber red tint to it. You remember that shit?

Vaguely. Dude, that was our jam in high school. And then, you know, for a long time, we were Bush Can, Bush Light or bush can for many, many a time. That was the official beer of low-level living, of underachieving. Because, look, you could grit. And then you remember when Coors came out with Coors Original and the can had the mountains etched into it and you could grip them better when you were all messed up?

Yeah, but no, dude, I came up on Natty Light in 94 like everybody else. I mean, that happened too. I just always hated the guy who was like, yo, Keystone was my favorite. I'm like, no one likes Keystone. You're a fucking liar. No one likes that. Dude, remember we used to drink Rolling Rocks until we realized that it's just like piss in a bottle. Bro, I had a fraternity brother whose house was so rancid and filthy, not our house, but like he had a place off campus,

that he had an empty Rolling Rock bottle in his sink. He would use that to swig his mouth after brushing his teeth at night true story i was like dude you're fucking gross man he was like well luke uh oscar de la joy you know him as the golden boy uh ceo luke the hall of famer he was giving away tickets to saturday's card but you needed you needed to pass a task first your thoughts i mean he's got class out the ass, you know? So he tweeted his wife's name, Holly Saunders, guess her boob size and win two ringside seats to Saturday.

I don't know if anybody guessed or won those seats, but, you know, if I did that, Luke, my wife would be very upset, as I'm sure yours. Here's Holly Saunders' reaction. All right, there you go that's um congratulations to that lucky fan luke whoever got those tickets yeah okay hey you ever you see lewis ck is back getting a lot of uh yeah cancel culture really really maybe it's not lewis ck did i get the wrong no i got the right guy here. Check out this tweet, Luke.

I'd have to say I agree with that. I agree with that, right? Hold on. Is that actually Louis C.K.? I don't... I think so. It's got 616,000 views. That doesn't mean anything.

What I'm trying to ascertain is that, did you include this because it actually is louis ck or did you include this because someone is making fun of joe rogan's height and you like those jokes well luke it's not a verified account um it's got 95 000 followers i can't confirm it okay i just love comedy so much that i thought i'd share his sentiment, but we can keep rolling, Luke. Hey, we haven't had any good virtual reality fails in a while. Hold on.

And also, hold on very quickly. The team wrote to us. It's Louis CK or Louis, Louis Casey. No. So you still haven't answered my question. Still haven't answered my question. Yes or no. What's your question?

Is it Louis CK? They go, it's Louis Casey. No, no. The account is at not louis ck this it's got 95 000 followers gina carano's a follower luke and it says everything is amazing and nobody is happy people ask if this is a parody it is i see so either that's a parody luke or he's trying real hard to make it not a parody but it was really about the content of the humor you know i don't judge you were doing you were doing a joe rogan is short bit i don't judge the comedian i just judge the material okay okay fair enough or the size of their fish tank jay

aaron dude fish tank obsessions yeah i know brendan shaw's got one dude jay aaron what does it do to middle-aged men where they all of a sudden, like, yo, I love fish, all of a sudden? I had a roommate in my 20s who randomly got this massive fish tank and was like, no, chicks love this. And his track record supports that, but I just don't know if the fish had anything to do with it, Luke. Yeah, I mean, if you're weird, you're weird.

But I will say that middle-aged white dudes and fish, there's something about that it pulls a little bit of like you know the band that side of you that wants romance in your pornography it's like that it's like a weird unexpected side you know all right hey let's listen to this vr moment right finger like push your right finger into it there you go okay when you hike the ball, you got to hold the right trigger down. Blue 42. Blue 42. You got to keep it held down. And then.

Don't move. He's going to. So, dude, I did. Have you done VR yet? No. No, I haven't. I haven't done, like, good VR. But I took my daughter to one of these things called one of these dino exhibits.

Oh, dude. I did the arcade VR where you go pay way too much money and you rent it for an hour and it's like you could jump and dive on the floor and you're attached to the ceiling. Is that what you're talking about? I'm not sure I've seen that, so I don't know, but I took my daughter to one of these dinosaur exhibits where they have all these to scale, you know, to scale robotic dinosaurs. And she loved it. It was whatever.

But at the end of it, they had a whole section where you could pay, like, a little bit extra. And you could put on a VR headset and be, like, in the Cretaceous period or the Jurassic period to go see what it was like. I will tell you, like, it does. It messed with my balance. When I would turn and see a cliff, my body would react to seeing it that way. It was kind of interesting so all i'm saying is i like watching this uh white guy fail but um it is they're deceptive those things yeah i took my kids to the vr arcade luke like i said you pay like whatever and you rent it for an hour and you're attached to a bungee cord that's attached

to the ceiling and yeah there's times when you like dive on the floor just sort of like out of instinct because there's like zombies coming at you. It feels real. Luke feels very real. I got all sweaty doing the Rocky boxing game. That's probably not a surprise to you. Hey, let's rotate to MMA fighters in the wild. I love seeing how these people live their lives.

Look at BKFC star Jimmy Rivera. Former top UFC level bantamweight. Well, obviously, but he passed the uh the police exam luke he's now officially an arm of the law congratulations to old jimmy yeah major congratulations that's incredible absolutely and the hammer of the month is umar namagir medoff but this is what he eats luke for his breakfast of champions habib flakes junicorn apparently i think junicorn tastes uh uh very steel like and heavy yeah yeah i know it's probably just like eating rocks they just fucking got rocks and threw them in there but uh yeah all right well there's all number good made of uh luke what two titans

two heavyweights of the respective industries met when real recognized real how about in ghanu and cristiano ronaldo right so do you know where this took place uh outside of the ufcpi well this is why it's interesting bc uh you got to remember who did ronaldo just sign with he signed with the saudi arabian team Al Nasser. And he lives, I think, in Riyadh or wherever that team is based. Francis visited him as well as some other folks in Saudi Arabia, which is how this all came together. Obviously, Ronaldo is a fan or whatever. What I'm saying is Big Francis went to Saudi Arabia.

Looks to me like Big Francis was doing some business. What kind of business, I don't know. But it looks to me like he was out there scoping out to see what's up what he could sniff out what might be some opportunities well we know there's money there jake paul versus tommy fury going down there and in the same area there so we know there's ronaldo ronaldo has if he if he meets all like the things in his contract like you know he hits every goal that he's supposed to whatever he can make 300 million in a year in a year damn uh luke our final mma fighter in the wild you remember friend of the extended program brian boom kelleher did you know that he's the

best dude he's i love him kill her bro boom has bars let's hear it let's hear it it's like a mirror when you fear it and your spirit need to cleanse your soul this shit is toxic when you mix it up like fentanyl just start from scratch you gotta patch it up to mend the hole there is a fixture if your picture is so plentiful yeah and now my heart is full of gold carrots like 24 the purest of them all look he's got a little soul to him right pretty fly for a white guy yeah see if the if the challenge was for me uh go to jail for a year or come out as soon as you've got you know 16 bars i'm taking the year-long jail term in that case oh i don't think i could do that you know what

i'm saying would you be interested in a two-fight series, him against Bryce Mitchell, one an MMA match and one a rap battle? I'd be interested in one of those. Okay. You can guess which one. All right. Hey, Luke,

you ever see a guy in public wearing a shirt saying the best dad ever and you wondered where he actually ranks? Yeah, he's probably late on child support. All right, well,

what do you think about this dad? Oh, is he going to punch this kid? Bah. Yikes. kid ah yeah i mean first of all let's just let's look at a couple things here number one you know they're not at the smithsonian right there i mean i like bc my wife and i this weekend we were like all right what are we gonna do with our kid you know because we were like what do you want to do for the for the weekend and we noticed we basically had we were down to two options one was there was a smithsonian exhibit for the lunar new year the chinese the chinese new year and it was also arts and crafts

and you could see the chinese dragons and the other one was a monster truck show and that would have been real fun and there's a time and a place for either of them but i just turned to my wife and i was like yo if we take our kid to the monster truck show instead of the chinese new year exhibit at the smithsonian i think that says a lot about us as parents i don't think you might as well just take her to the next power slap competition yeah exactly so we didn't we didn't end up doing that so first of all you're there second that look at where this guy is at he's at some fair which again they have their time and place but i'm just pointing out number one but throw the thing back up here throw it back up here too i want you to look at the men's adult uh shorts that this kid is wearing like the kid is clearly wearing his dad's pants why are your

shorts down to your your achilles uh maybe that's like the new skater look luke that was a thing back in the late 80s yeah if we were in 1998 i might agree with you but it's 2023 and that is no longer the case it hasn't been for quite some time so that's that now dad whips around the right hook all the way to the child who now is traumatized by all of this because he didn't realize that there's a you know a clear birth you're supposed to give all we needed was an affliction t-shirt

and this would have been the perfect clip Luke but let's keep it going he needs a hat that says wine I'm dying I'm 69 and it was really do you ever hear the phrase shit happens Luke check out this guy's dungarees yeah he drew a crowd i don't know what to say about this clip that won't okay what are why are you digging the way you're digging sir look he may have had an accident but you know he's these guys the paw patrol is not going to keep that accident quiet i'll tell you that much you know i gotta tell you the paul i mean did this guy put you know uh greenies up in his uh up at his you

know what i'm saying like yeah back area in the back door yeah you know my dog molly luke the most amazing animal of all time when we get people that come over and maybe one day it could be lt and ct and you can come meet her dude she'll go right for your asshole or your ball bag. I mean, she's just like. That means you're a bad owner. I just want you to know that. You mean I don't, you're trying to say I don't discipline her enough to stay out of people's general?

If your dog first thing goes up to people who walk in and start sniffing their balls and ass, you have improperly trained that dog. Just being very clear. She sleeps in her own bed though, Luke, okay? I'm not saying she's not a great dog dude the fact that she sniffs everyone's balls and ass is your fault not hers that's what i mean she's she's a dog that's what they do she's got a specific yeah she she she really focuses in on

those parts you know all right let's get out of that you also sniff your guest ball ball and ass when they come through your front door hey dude i thought this was like an enhanced video from ufc 283 people are telling me this is real it's real good lord it got trapped in his hair which i guess was hard to see without the water but once they pour it in there it comes right out shout out to jamal hill your new light heavyweight champion of the world. Hey, look, if Jan 6 was a person, I think I found him. If it has tits or tires, I can make it squeal. Wow. Dude, look at the, first of all, look at the piece on him. Then the Harley Davidson belt.

And then the haircut that makes him look like the guy from Goonies, Sloth, you know? You know what? This guy just screams book reader. Yeah, I would say that. All all right enough of these clowns luke it's time to rate that tat you know you get fired up for this dude how about charles olivera him and his brazilian artist william esposito have continued the back and arms what do you think about this um as you know so this is a tattoo by the way look at the belt line do you think it looks cool i think it looks weird on tattoo by the way look at the belt line do you think it looks cool i think it looks weird on the body if it stops at the belt line it looks good when you

have pants on or whatever okay but how many people are going to be that intimate with charles olivera that they're going to see the full-on ass it's just weird when you see it again i'm never hopefully i'm never going to see you're right because the opposite is not weird at all dude not weird at all to see no no it's weird either way but it's at least more artistically consistent. Anyway, neither here nor there. It's hard to tell because it's fresh and it will lighten up a little bit because I would say it looks a little dark. But in general, it appears to be pretty good.

It's hard to tell from the photo that I'm looking at here. I have to go look at it in close detail, but it looks to be decent. It looks to be decent. All right. Hey, check out this UFC fan. Rate this tat, a midriff tat of Tai Tuivasa. have to go look at it in close detail but uh it looks to be decent it looks to be decent all right hey check out this ufc fan rate this tat a midriff tat of tai tuivasa um not bad right not bad not not a bad tattoo at all in terms of like tattoo application the hair makes them look a little big footish right you're talking about bigfoot Silva? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, Bigfoot Silva. Uh-huh.

But in general, it's good. Not great, but good. Well, good connective tissue there, because here's Bigfoot Silva's new tattoo celebrating his marriage. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not really a fan of this. I don't think they come out very good they're really hard to do well he looks handsome in that photo he does which is part of the idea um and again you see how it's got that purplish almost brownish hue that tells you it's brand

new obviously uh but yeah i just dude to do portrait realism correctly there's like 10 people who can do that very well. If you don't pick one of them, it's going to come out fine, but just not great. Well, one of those 10, Luke, has blessed a lucky UFC fan with a tattoo of Alexander the Great Volkanovski. You talk about great portraits, Luke. Check this out. Yeah, no. He looks like Mike from Breaking Bad.

Dude, he looks like Volkanovski at age 70. Yeah, my man's got some todays. Yeah, no, not a great tattoo. All right. All right. Hey, let's do a throwback local news segment. Stop, stop, stop. You know who he looks like?

Have you seen Sin City with Bruce Willis and all that? No, I'm a big Color of Night fan with Bruce Willis You've never seen Sin City? Initially it was a dark novel or what do you want to call it? Frank Miller I think wrote them if I'm not mistaken

It's adapted from like a comic book that's essentially a novel and they made a movie out of it. There's a character who's yellow who was like the son of one of the rich, corrupt people in the city. He looks like him in this tattoo. Yeah, it's a terrible tattoo.

It looks like an old boxing cut man or something. It's just not good. Hey, remember that time the Astros won it all? Here's a throwback local news segment that I can't stop loving. Exactly. Hey, what do you have to say to the everyone who still considers the astros cheaters fuck y'all all right no no sorry guys did not mean to do that it is live television anything you can to have

luke what would you have to say to all those who called the astros cheaters yeah they are cheaters. That was the year the Nats beat them, too, by the way, when they were banging on the trash cans and everything. Yeah. Yeah. The Astros can get bent, and all their fans can get bent, too. They're a good team, but they're definitely cheaters, like no doubt about it.

Shout out to that guy for a great moment on local live TV. Hey, you know that saying that the University of Kansas has, rock hard Jayhawk Luke or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch this. Well, that young lady in the back is really making Dad proud. It's like, Dad, did you give her enough hugs? I'm not sure.

Maybe she's just a big fan of Dick Van Dyke, Luke. I mean, he had some hits, right? You're talking about Mary Poppins. Can you imagine just watching TV? It's like, yeah, let's turn on the Jayhawks game, and then you see your loved one on there with a shirt that says, I love Dick. All right.

Hey, soccer fan of the week, this is what you call keeping your eye on the ball. Oh, is this dude about to get murdered? Bah! Wake up. Wake up. Don't let me be the last to know. It's the first of the month.

Get up, get up, get up. Wake up. Why don't you put on a little makeup? That was a shout out to Armenians, Luke. it's the system of a down yeah yeah produced by rick rubin shout out to that finally luke uh we got people in public that you probably won't love but this is what happens in life okay all right um i mean do you do you give him any respect for the hygiene i don't understand which farmer

put dungarees on a barn animal all right they did but they did there it is this this gentleman should be at a bare minimum uh castrated right or just he will fit in well on the new york city subway system look he would fit he is the new york city subway and uh listen i don't wish death on a lot of people and i'm not gonna wish death on him but i'm just saying if something bad happened to him i wouldn't necessarily feel all that bad about it you know well that's the shit of the week shout out to the great gaffney pierre for sorting all that shit out uh hope you enjoyed it wow two two hours look on it you know on a monday we really drive it home you know what i mean we really we really do uh let's remind folks we're trying to pack the house with all the seats that

we can it's not this wednesday but it's the following, February 8th, King's Place. Come check us out, pod-live.com. In London, England, it's going to be a ton of fun. Come check us out there. Please be so kind as to do that. Tell your friends. Dan Hardy is going to be with us as well. Showtime.com is the label that pays. 30-day free trial.

If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. You can see the merch there as well. They kind of got all over the place. Merch, morningcombat.store. bounce you can see the merch there as well they kind of got all over the place uh merch morning combat dot store we've got some teas for the london show and the london uh well bc is more than really a london show it's a london trip and we've got a lot of stuff we're doing while we're there the trip of a lifetime will be uh we got a couple media stops planned we're going to be doing some room service diaries interview filling filming a donkey menary i mean this is it this is

peak you know hanging out with our fans luke during the live show and afterwards maybe maybe maybe we'll see we shall see if we have enough security if tristan can throw some bodies around but luke i was told here on twitter by admiral anthony that there was a london edition of grand theft auto on playstation one and he shared a picture of his of his case to show me. So right now, morningcombat.store, of course, you can get your MK in the UK T-shirts, also our Grand Theft Auto version

of the greatest moments in MK history on there. So check that out, morningcombat.store. Our new merch is just hog wild. It's fantastic. I can't. It certainly is. It certainly is. All right, so thank you to everyone who watched.

We're back on Wednesday. And that's it for us. So for Brian, one more thing, Luke, you blew me off earlier for breaking news, but dude, I chatted up.

Mahmoud Abdul Raouf, you know what I mean? My man from the, you know, social activist, great NBA player. And of course the subject of this Friday, February 3rd on Showtime the premiere of the documentary

Stand I got a chance to screen it Luke it is fantastic in all the categories you would hope it would be we talk 90s NBA we talk about all the incredible things he stood for and everything being blackballed out of the NBA all that good stuff so check it out this week folks

very good there you have it so for Brian Campbell, for me, for Malka, CBS Sports and Showtime, this has been Morning Combat. Back at you again on Wednesday. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.