MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 290: Volkanovki Stops Rodriguez | Pantoja-Moreno | Dricus Du Plessis | Ep 462

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

On episode 462 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian react to UFC 290. What is the UFC going to do with Islam Makhachev in October if Volk isn't ready? hould the UFC book an immediate rematch for Pantoja and Moreno or look to make something else? How impressive was DDP against Robert Whittaker? What the hell should be next for Bo Nickal? The boys also break down the news that Jon Jones will fight Stipe Miocic in November. The guys also break down Jaron Ennis' win and discuss what they think he should do next. As always we close out Monday with Dm's from Donks and HYSTS. (8:40) - Alexander Volkanovski (30:00) - Pantoja vs. Moreno  (39:30) - Rest of UFC 290 (76:30) - Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic (91:00) - Jaron Ennis 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

Hey, it's not the first of the month, it's the 10th of the month, and it's time for morning combat. Cash your checks and get up, everyone. How are you doing? My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo. Joining you from the capital of the status unidos right here in Washington, D.C., joined by my friend, my broadcast partner, and a man I truly don't understand or even respect.

It's Brian Campbell. Hi, Brian Campbell. I've tried to put the broad in broadcasting, Luke. You know what I'm saying? I thought you were trying to put the cast. I've studied abroad before, Luke, and then I was lucky enough to marry her, so congratulations to her.

Monday morning, let's bang, right? UFC 290 recap, boots. I mean, what a time to be alive in combat sports, right? Yeah, it was good. How was your ride home yesterday? What time did the car come get you? 8 a.m., Luke, after three hours of sleep. But, you know, that's the sacrifice I put in for this show.

Yeah, we finished our broadcast at like 2.30. Then I did extra credit. I think that put me to like 3 or 3.30. I wrote a column for CBS. Yeah, you know, it's part of the gig. It's part of the lifestyle we choose luke but hey here's the question did the guy in the car ride home try to kill you by slamming on the brakes repeatedly not in a death-defying sense but in uh i will not allow you to sleep at all during this ride because i'm going to slam on

the brakes and then speed up and then slam on them the whole time in and out of you know tri-state traffic but again Luke it's what I sign up for and when you have an experience like 290 on Saturday that takes all the negativity surrounding certain things in combat sports and flushes them down the toilet faster than if the cops raided a Craig Jones party you gotta be happy Luke you gotta be fired up all cops raided a Craig Jones party. You got to be happy. Look, you got to be fired up. All right. Shouts to Craig Jones. He just posted about something we said about him on the post fight show.

Yeah. Love it. All right. Love it. We're big Craig Jones fans here. BC big nose beer guy. Not so much me, but BC. Not so much.

Not so much. All right. Let's set the tone here. Thumbs up if you haven't already. If you're watching so much, Luke. Not so much. All right. Let's set the tone here. Thumbs up if you haven't already. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe. It doesn't cost you anything. It's free. We'd appreciate that.

There's all the socials there on the screen. You can see them right there. Looks like who want to ride, it won't cost you a dollar, right? That's right, BC. Glad you're here. Let me finish, please. Morningcombat.store for some of the merch. RJ Dunkel Gangbang is back on the job in between gangbangs,

and I'm told he's gangbanging this all the way to the bank. Has he touched base with one average Joe Art to begin a new chapter in MK merch? Yes, he has. Yes, he has. I can officially confirm he has. All right. Let's hope. Let's hope.

Let's see. Showtime.com is the label that pays. Show.com 30-day free trial if you like it you can keep it if not feel free to bounce and of course bc we were on well we were on showtime's youtube channel but of course showtime had championship boxing in atlantic city geron ennis we'll talk about him a little bit later in the show but bc if you're ready i want to get to the ufc action first and i thought whenever we do a post fightfight show where you and I are together, because usually it's solo one way or the other, and we were together there in Atlantic City, it's good to bring in a fresh perspective.

We're about to do that here in just a second. And on top of it, I want to say something. He just got back from UFC 290. He was there the entire time. Friend of the show. Let's bring him in now. It is Canada's own, from the Great White North, TSN's Aaron Bronstetter.

Hey, Bron! With enough records to put any good record store to shame. How are you doing, Abron? I'm doing great. I mean, my wife would agree with you on that. She thinks I have way too many, but it is what it is. Yeah, it was a great week. I think between, I calculated this, between Wednesday and Saturday, I did about 30 interviews,

which is just like like just a marathon of MMA content but I would want it no other way it was so much fun how many times were you talking to one of these guys or ladies and just being like you know what I just want to do this anymore let's just call it a day here I'm sick of talking to people ever? Zero times wow I just love it man

you should be in my head I love talking to all of the different athletes in the sport honestly look unlike sorry to interrupt unlike you Luke You should be in my head. I love talking to all of the different athletes in the sport, honestly. Luke, unlike, sorry to interrupt, unlike you, Luke, people that have actually achieved their dreams and are living their dream career, they actually enjoy it. That's true. Luke did the grind of five-day-a-week radio, which is like you don't want to talk to people ever again.

Like I've produced five-day-a-week radio and five-day-a-week television, and it's like that's a grind right there. Yes, indeed. Very quickly, highlight of the trip. Okay, I guess 290 the night was. day a week television and it's like that's that's a grind right there yes indeed uh very quickly highlight of the trip okay i guess 290 the night was so discounting the night very quickly highlight of the rest of international fight week as you experienced it well sitting down with george saint pierre unexpectedly because the ufc did a great job of keeping under lock and key that he was going to be uh doing a grappling tournament with them or competing and in grappling, rather, on Fight Pass at the end of the year.

It was just an unexpected sit-down with GSP. It was awesome. I mean, like, getting to chat with GSP in general was great, but I started talking to him beforehand, and Intermittent Fasting came out, and he talked to me for, like, 20 minutes off-air about Intermittent Fasting. He's, like, he's as passionate about Intermittent Fasting as I am about music. Like, he loves talking about how much it's changed his life and all of that. So that was kind of fun. I love GSP.

He's the man. I mean, Canadian royalty, obviously. But just as a dude, he's just a nice down-to-earth guy when the cameras are off. Now, Bron, quickly, how much was the talk of the town in Las Vegas this Saturday focused around Jed Meshew II's monster upset pick of DDP over Whitaker? Well, I too had that monster upset pick, so him and I can take a victory lap. Whoa. Hold on.

This was a legitimate, straight-up, non-ironic, non-hey-take-the-plus-money-on-a-guy-that-might-not-be-as-might-be-better-than-we-think. You straight-up said he's going to defeat a living legend and get a title shot. I picked DDP by KO for some icing on the cake. Plus 500. That was one of my official picks for the weekend. And after Cameron Simon won, his coach was there because of course the same coach. And he sat down with me and he goes, what do you think of Drakus tonight? And I said to him, I go, I think Drakus is going to win by KO. I go, I don't think, I feel like people haven't been watching his fights, and they're completely sleeping on him. I thought he was the best underdog on the card. And I make a lot of bad predictions.

That was one of my better ones. All right, well, Luke, we'll never have to mention the name Meshu again. Ever. We never have to mention him again, Luke, Jed Meshu. It's over. Who? The bromance is over. Who?

This is Aaron Bronstetter's time to shine. Wow. All right. All right. Very good. So with that in mind, let's start topic number one. over this is error this is Aaron Bronstetter's time to shine wow all right all right very good so with that in mind let's start topic number one here we go after Alexander Volkanovsky's what would you want to call it one-sided victory over Yair Rodriguez the question goes to Aaron Bronstetter first Aaron with that in mind where does this rank him Alexander Volkanovsky all-time on the GOAT list forget featherweight GOAT I just mean overall what did a victory like this do for his ranking there well I've been saying all week leading up that the marker of an all-time great if you look at I think if you're gonna do your top three almost everybody's top three is in some order John Jones

GSP Anderson Silva the thing that those three guys have in common order, Jon Jones, GSP, Anderson Silva. The thing that those three guys have in common is that they were able to beat kind of two generations, I think in Jon Jones' case, you can almost say three generations of contenders. This was Volk's first chapter of that all-time great marker, because you look at the old guard, guys that have challenged for the title before, you've got your Brian Ortegas, you've got your Korean Zombies, you've got your Aldos, your Holloways, like he's gone through all those guys yeah rodriguez was fresh blood and then you see topuria come into the cage afterwards he's now getting into that echelon where you can say he's now beat or or on on route to beating two generations of featherweight talent and featherweight

is no joke you look at this division top to, it is just killer after killer after killer. And not only is he beating them, he's making it look easy. He's won 18 rounds in a row at featherweight. He's just, he's an elite competitor. It's unbelievable what he's been able to achieve and how much better he looks against top guys at this, again, very, very difficult division. BC, what do you think? It's interesting here because we had an interesting debate some of us in the media some fans thought it was overkill about the whole idea of featherweight goat and

maybe the biggest statistic i failed to deliver in arguing for volkanovski over the great jose aldo the hall of famer was that aldo has been knocked out three times in ufc featherweight title fights and volkanovski is not only unbeaten in his career at featherweight his ability to just disarm great dangerous fighters is is really you know I mean we're talking about the shortlist in MMA history to bring this type of IQ this type of headspace into the game but mix it across the board with the athleticism the now the growing power the grappling across the board i've akinned him a bit as he continues to climb these historical ranks to almost demetrius johnson like and how he's rounded out his talent and there's almost nothing he can't do is is there a secret sauce a special uh you know you know maybe use the a the Jair Rodriguez fight as sort of the comparison here in his performance.

But do you think there's something that does separate him when we are talking about where he belongs, either in the GOAT list or in featherweight all-time rankings or all of that? What do you think has been unique about his path that does separate him from the greats in what we're seeing in real time here, one of the most special careers that we've ever seen play out? Yeah, it's a good question. I think that you look at Aldo's early career, and I think we always have a bit of recency bias when you look at Aldo's later career, but Aldo was doing kind of the same thing. He was very dominant, and he was a guy that also looked like he couldn't be touched for a time. So I think

Volkanovsky, you look at his career and the trajectory, there's not really been a situation at Featherweight, aside from maybe the first round of that second Max fight, where it looked like he was in any real trouble during the fight. It's just been fairly dominant and it seems like the game planning is on point, his ability to do what a great fighter like Floyd Mayweather can do, where he can download the data and then use it against you and weaponize it and then find holes as the fight goes on. I mean, Jair Rodriguez had a great third round up until he didn't, right? Like Jair was still hitting him with some good shots and Volk saw an opening and capitalized immediately. Like, it just seems to me he's just on another level in a division where you can argue it's

one of the best in the sport. And he's just way better than everybody right now, which is just, it's staggering to see. I think Aldo kind of had that early in his run too when he was a champion at kind of a younger age he just looked like he was that much better than everybody yeah Aldo during his peak run I would I said I feel like was that you could just tell he was ahead of the game like way ahead of his peers yes but like the things he was doing the rest of the game in some ways just hadn't even really caught up to him, and so he had this lead on them. I feel like to answer the question from my vantage point,

I'd be curious to see what you feel, Aaron, but the way I had come down on the featherweight GOAT contest was the amount of title defenses, the amount of time that this guy was able to maintain dominance over his division with a number of contenders in a number of different ways and blah blah blah there's just too much tenure there right now and this was pre uh UFC 290 for me to say that Volk was number one obviously beating Ayer further complicates the debate a little bit but it was still too much tenure and as it relates to GSP and Silva and Jones it's a similar kind of problem but I will say this after watching his

fight and again I re-watched it today I he might have the highest fight IQ of any MMA fighter I've ever seen. I really don't think that's much of a stretch at all. His ability to read, diagnose, make adjustments, and then enact a plan, he makes it look effortless. Most guys can barely stick to a game plan, much less change things they see in real time, much less get it right. It's very, very difficult to do. I've just never seen a guy who has the computer-like brain needed for fighting to strategically problem solve. And I mean, we never talk about this, but we should say it out loud. This guy is shorter and has a smaller reach and is making

guys with significant height and reach advantages lose the distance battle. Like it's so very difficult to do that. You can't really say that with like Floyd fighting Manny. I'm not sure what Manny's reach was, but these were like comparably sized people in terms of frames. It's not the same with Yair and Volk. It's not the same with even Brian Ortega and Volk or Max and Volk these are much bigger framed guys and he's still able to do this he's got the highest fight IQ I think I've ever seen and I've seen some pretty good ones so whether he'll come to a place where he's amassed enough victories to alter that debate clearly I don't know Aaron but I wonder what you think we are watching a guy

who is ahead of the game innovate the game and his competitors as skilled as they are and they're very skilled hard-working deserving contenders they're just way way too much overmatched when it comes to what's up here yeah i think gsp is kind of a good comparison because gsp wasn't particularly big for welterweight like he had some situations where he had to overcome, you know, I guess, dimensional hurdles, if you want to call it that. Jon Jones always has that intangible going for him. He's got that insane reach, great athleticism. Like he has those intangibles. I think that from an athleticism standpoint, GSP has that too.

And so does Volk. Like Volk, of course, was a rugby player, right? So he's obviously a great athlete, but in terms of just his sheer size and he's seemingly at a reach or height disadvantage against everybody he faces, I think that might be what makes him unique. It's like always got this kind of David versus Goliath vibe

where he's able to hang with these guys. And I mean, the Islam fight, I think is a good comparison too. It's like went up a weight class against the guy who's a fairly big lightweight in his own right in Islam and really was able to narrow that gap where, without a tune-up fight at 155, he dove right into the deep end against the guy

who's very elite in Islam and made it a very close fight. Like, I still believe that Islam won that fight, but I think that if they rematch, you know, if Volkanovsky is a sizable underdog again, I think that you'd be silly not to put money on him in that kind of a situation. I don't know if he will be a sizable underdog next time because of how good he looked in that last fight. So I think that we see what he's able to do with his size at 145 pounds.

And he's just a marvel. He really is incredible when it comes to fight IQ. I think GSP had that fight IQ too. Like like I think that he was a great problem solver you you see how he bounced back from that massive head kick against Carlos Condit and basically won every round of that fight you know that's the kind of thing that GSP was able to do so that's kind of the the echelon that I'm looking at when you look at fight IQ and I mean again we're talking about one of the all-time greats yeah Mighty Mouse obviously right in that mix as well. Before we get into, Aaron, what could be next, what should be next, the whole idea of this rematch lingering with Mahachev or Ilya Tuporia, who did have a face-off with Volkanovski.

Also, Alexander has an injury that we're going to talk about. I want to talk about where he's at. Now, he's pound for pound number one, I want to say with a bullet, but obviously I think the UFC has had Jon Jones coming into this fight. If you thought Volkanovski lost, you could have him at number two. I wonder if this fight changes that. But at 34, he's doing incredible things across the board. You're on the inside more than we are covering fight to fight. Where do you think he's at brand wise?

I look at this as somebody where, I mean, look at what Dana White's post-fight comment said. He said, look, whether Volkanovski wants to go to 55 or fight Teporia or do whatever, he's almost earned a shot, earned a spot here where he could call his own shots. That shows you you've reached a certain stature of elite. How well known is Volkanovski? How big of a, you know, pay-per-view star can he be for what's left of his career, considering critically he's already climbed that mountain? I think he's beloved by those who watch the sport frequently. But somebody asked me, I forget who I ran into, somebody in Vegas, where they were like, oh, who's fighting this weekend?

I said Volkanovski, and they looked at me like they had no idea who I was talking about. So I don't know if he's gone outside that bubble bubble yet and I think that there are very few who do right so that's not a knock on him but he's had like an international fight week I mean it doesn't get much bigger in this sport right so I think that within the sport people know who he is people you know he's revered everybody seems to love him and want to watch him if you if you know even like the slightest bit about MMA you understand how good Volkanovski is so I don't know if he's kind of met that threshold. But at the same time, I think this was a full arena again on Saturday. There was a lot of buzz around International Fight Week. Volkanovski's the headliner.

There's got to be some name recognition there, even that extends a little bit outside that bubble, I would have to think. But in terms of Toporia or Islam and him calling his own shot I mean you can say what you want but I think it always depends on where the dominoes fall like right now if Charles isn't gonna face Islam I'm sure we're gonna talk about this a bit later on but you know October there's not really a great option otherwise I mean we'll see what happens with poor a versus Gaethje because those are both fresh opponents for Islam so I think that there are still options for Islam but maybe if

you want to have a big fight in Abu Dhabi you just you run back that Volk fight but personally I want to see Volk versus Dopouria I mean Dopouria looked phenomenal his last fight I'm hungry for that one yeah let's talk about that one so that that's an interesting one for me because they all kind of relate in different ways so for example to BC's, if you're the UFC and you're thinking to yourself, hey, how do we maximize and get more star appeal for Volk, putting him back in that Islam fight would probably help to a degree. I think Islam is one of the surprising stars of the sport for folks who don't pay attention to online metrics. People care about what he's up to in a big way.

So that could do something for him. On the other hand, in terms of markets, Aaron, he was asked this weekend, UFC President Dana White, about going to Spain. Danny Segura and I have been talking about this privately, and Danny's been trying to explain to me just how big Ilya Teporia is in Spain. Even Dana White, by his own admission, was like,

we weren't even thinking about it. Then we saw all of this, and now we're actively trying to make it happen over there. That's another kind of direction you could go that's different because you're then leaning into the b-sides power there whereas Islam might be the b-side but he's also the lightweight champ it's a rematch so it's different so I'm wondering from your vantage point I know you want to see the Teporia fight more tell me why and then tell me which one you think makes more sense for UFC to book, Duporia or Makachev?

Well, I think that the latter part of your question, again, depends kind of on scheduling and availability, right? Like, what makes sense for the UFC is typically can be a product of convenience. Like, what can we do that's going to be selling the most pay-per-views right now? And, you know, do we have a contender available, etc. Like, that often is what stops big fights from happening, is, like, if there's another contender that comes along, like, we never saw Nunes versus Shevchenko 3 when people were looking for it for the last 3-4 years, because there were always just contenders at flyweight, contenders at bantamweight.

It's like, kind of when the well's dry, that's when they'll go to that kind of division versus division type fight. So, I mean, Topuria seems healthy. I think that's the next fight to make personally, and like you mentioned, Spain is really an untapped market for them, they haven't really had anybody coming out of Spain that's done anything, I mean, Joel Alvarez was ranked for a time, Topuria, I think, kind of gets lumped in with the Georgian fighters, because that's where he's from, but he's massive in Spain, I don't know anything about soccer, but it seems like Sergio

Ramos is a pretty big deal, and he showed up for a fight night in Jacksonville to see Topuria fight, right? Like, it seems like he's making a lot of noise in that region. I think that they have the infrastructure, I'd imagine. I think that there's the money there that can sell a big gate in Spain. All of these things matter when it comes to Topuria. So do they want to do a pay-per-view there,

like, early next year? Maybe that's something they look into doing, and that's where you have that fight, because it would be massive. Again, that's another thing that the UFC has to look at, is where can we maximize this fight? Can we make the Spanish market something bigger by doing this? And I think you absolutely can. So maybe that's something that would also make it have more reason

to do an Islam versus Volk fight in October, because you get to do that. And then win or lose, Volk versus Topuria is a massive fight in Spain, if you do it like early next year sometime, or March, April, something along those lines. So maybe that's the direction they go in, because they can use Topuria right now to make the Spanish market really blossom. I think that would be a good idea as well. I mean, I wonder if that... Real quick follow-up. Do you want to see the Toporia fight because you believe Toporia has earned it

and that would be interesting? Or do you believe that's more competitive than the fight with Islam? What is the specific appeal for you? Sorry about that, BC. I think it's more the further than the latter like I think that I'm very curious to see what Topuria can do against Volkanovski because of how good he looked against Josh Emmett by the way Josh Emmett I was like at that UFC X

the fan expo thing on the Thursday and Josh Emmett was doing interviews guys got like one scratch on it was like seeing the undertaker pop up from the grave I'm like Josh Emmett's here and he's like looks totally healthy like nothing happened and like he was just in like a car wreck two weeks ago basically so kudos to Joshosh emmett for being like wolverine and having that kind of durability but we saw what topuria did to him and it was uh it was not pretty but i i just think topuria right now is on a roll he's in his like you know mid to late 20s you know he's just full of gusto right now he's got all of this confidence volk's coming off that awesome win against Yair Rodriguez

and I think it would be a massive notch on the belt of Volkanovski to again go through another one of these second wave contenders that's just coming in full of piss and vinegar uh so I I'm just really eager to see what Toporia can do against Volkanovski because Toporia has looked so great thus far at featherweight in the UFC Aaron I wanted to stay with Volkanovski and kind of focus in on his own intention. You get a chance to interview him. We all have watched him. After the fight, it did seem like he was kind of split on the idea like we're talking about. If the UFC wants to match a fight, if that makes sense, he'd do it just the same.

He seemed to go out of his way to set up a cage-side face-off with Tepuria. He's not, you know, afraid of him or anything. I've argued a lot that there's just so much more for Volkanovski to gain in, you know, all time credibility in terms of going back up to that second weight class and maybe making it a full time effort considering how close he came against Mahachev. It's rare you can get as a promotion the idea of one versus two on a pound for pound level. And it's rare when you just

had it it was so great everyone seems to be split on who won it and now you can do it again what do you think might be holding volkanovski back from just that a full-time move to 55 luke had talked about the idea of maybe trying to make a run at the title defense record of jose aldo i just think given his age the time would be now to maximize on. I just think given his age, the time would be now to maximize on what he can do to his resume and all those big opportunities. And to me, that's at 155. Well, I asked him straight up, if you could choose, like, what would you prefer? Would you prefer Islam or would you prefer Topuria? And he said he'd prefer Islam. But then at the same time was talking about how Topuria really excites him, you know, how Jair Rodriguez was so respectful

in the lead up to this fight, but he likes when he has a contender that's selling the fight, that's talking trash, that thinks that they can beat him. That gets him out of bed. So I think that he has stated his preference is Makachev, but he's, you know, he's a team player and he's happy to face Topuria as well. It's not like he's saying, no, I'm moving up to lightweight next. He's keeping the door open to either opportunity. And I think that's smart because from a promotional standpoint, you want to be able to sell both those fights. And he's often said if he won at 55 and was the champion, he wants to defend in both divisions.

I mean, I think that he knows right now at 34, you, Luke, love to talk about the 35-year-old statistic. I think that he really wants to prove that even when he hits 35 he can defend two titles and make a push to be the all-time greatest i you know he's always had his eye on that prize it's like not just being a champion not just being a double champion being the greatest of all time like he's been very open about that and i think if he can be 35 36 37 years old and defending in two weight classes like if anything's gonna push people to think maybe someone can

challenge John Jones or challenge GSP to be the greatest of all time like that that kind of work late in a career we haven't seen any fighter do that no we certainly have not um I guess we'll see what happens here in the end any thoughts about Yair Rodriguez on this occasion I was sort of going back and watching the fight to your point about third round, he was starting to cook a little bit. He looked pretty good. He did not seem to me unprepared for the moment. They had built up this Mexican MMA thing, which I want to save that conversation

to the Brandon Moreno fight in just a moment so we can pause that side of it. Put a pin in it, please. But on the Yair side, I mean, part of the reason why this Volk win to me was so nice is that Yair looked fine. He looked like he was not injured, that he had trained well, that he had thought this through. He looked overmatched, but he didn't look in any way bad.

So he's still got some time on his side. I don't think his title aspirations are in any way done, but they're probably on hold as long as Volkanovsky is around. Would you concur? Yeah, I would think so. I don't think he's going to get a rematch anytime soon based on that performance. And like you said, I don't think he was ill-prepared either. I thought that he actually looked fairly good in a lot of moments in that fight. It's just when you have a guy like Volkanovski who can, you know, turn around on you on a dime, those moments don't really stay in the mind of the viewer. They'd see, hey, Volkanovski won two rounds in a row and then beat him in the third, right?

Because before that sequence that earned Volkanovski the win, I would say Yair Rodriguez was winning that round. And as I mentioned, Volkanovski won 18 rounds in a row at featherweight. So had Yair Rodriguez even won one round in that fight, that's a bit of a notch on his belt. But he doesn't walk away with that. And I had a great talk with Yair prior to the fight. We talked for like 12 minutes just about his creativity

and where his creativity comes from. It's a fascinating interview if you get a chance to listen to it. I don't think it's aged poorly or anything since that one because I just think he's such an enigma in this sport. He's somebody who almost approaches it like somebody who's painting a masterpiece, who's doing artwork, something that BC, I'm sure, would love and relish listening to just to hear his creative process when it comes to fighting i i think that he still has time i mean he's 30 years old to to make a

statement in the sport and i think what he's done in his career to date has been very impressive because if you remember when when he won the ultimate fighter latin america mexican fighters couldn't buy a win in the ufc like they were losing every fight for the most part none of them are having success you see how far that's come thus far, and I know we're tabling that conversation for a bit later, but I think that Yair Rodriguez still has a ton of upside in this sport. Alright, but we've gone 25

minutes talking about Yair versus Volk, and neither of you guys were like, you know, Yair looked great in that third round until he didn't. I don't mean to be a man of the people all the time, but the people are filling my DM holes going, hey, MMA media, wake up. Volk headbutted the freaking shit out of him. It stopped his momentum and suddenly the scales changed. Aaron, you didn't even mention the headbutt. Is it worth mentioning? It's part of the game. It happens. Volk didn't do it on purpose,

but there is a cry out there that that snuffed off whatever Yair did have in that moment. I'll be honest. This is the first I've heard of it. I was watching it in the back, and I didn't notice it. Did they show it in the replay at all? Because I didn't notice a clash of heads at all during the fight. Yeah, it was a monstrous clash of heads that forced a stoppage in the fight. Like a brief pause, a timeout of the fight.

Yeah, I mean, the atmosphere when I'm backstage is very busy and distracting. So I do miss little things when I'm at the event and I'm watching on the TVs because there's so much going on around me. So I did miss that, and I'll be honest, I hadn't seen a whole lot about it. Here's what you missed, nothing. It's not to say that it didn't happen or that it didn't hurt, but that this is the reason why things went the way they went. No, probably not not I would not buy

that um okay with that in mind let's move to topic number two here the co-main event one of the best fights I've ever seen one of the best flyweight fights I've ever seen maybe the best flyweight title fight I've ever seen an absolute blood and guts affair that BC and I talked about on Saturday night and we thought like there's just no way those guys come out the same how bad we'll see in the end but okay Aaron let's talk about it on this level should the UFC actually you know what let me back up a step tell me what how you scored it if you have scored it and then secondly in conjunction with that should the UFC book an immediate rematch or should Pantoja defend against a fresh contender? My very loose score on the night watching it was 48-47 Pantoja. But again, I was watching that fight. There's lots of stuff going on around me backstage. I did get to watch the fight from

round one to round like the whole fight, which is rare because usually they bring people back for interviews. But because you know, Dan Hooker and Turner were transported, I don't think that and Drakus was, I guess, wanted to put on a suit in between, like, these are the little things that can shift when these interviews are going to happen, so luckily I was able to watch the whole fight, but when I was watching it, I was, there were so many sequences in that fight that, if you're trying to score that fight from home, good luck to you, because there was so much going on in every single round of that fight, like, I thought the clearest rounds were one, two, and five. If I recall correctly, one for Pantoja, two for Moreno, and five for Pantoja.

I thought were relatively clear. I know that Ben Cartridge is a very, very good judge, scored the fifth for Moreno. So I would have to go back and watch and see if maybe I could see what he was seeing. But I think that, I thought that Pantoja won three of those five rounds personally. But again, I have to go back and watch it because I just remember while watching it, I was like, wow, how are you computing and keeping note of every single one of these things that's happening? Because it seemed like one guy lands a big shot, another guy lands a big shot. Somebody's taking somebody down. There's a scramble.

Like, it's a flyweight fight. It's fast. And there's so many things happening in a round. Like, a five-minute round feels like a ten-minute round because of everything that's going on. So, trying to score that fight, I mean, the judges had their hands full in that situation because there was so much to score. Okay. Now, on the rematch side, where are you? Yes or yay or nay? I think you just put it in Moreno's, you offer it to Moreno and you see if he wants to take it right away. Because if I'm Moreno, personally, I would say let Pantoja defend it against Roybal. I'm going to chill for a bit. I think Moreno's earned that.

I think that he should, he's been in, like, look at his recent fights. He's four fights against Figueiredo, a fight against Kaikara France, and then this war with Pantoja. I think that Moreno should just take some time. Honestly, like, if I were advising Moreno, I'd say Moreno should just take some time. Honestly, like if I were advising Moreno, I'd say, listen, wait like a year, like maybe next year at International Fight Week or June or August of next year. See who the champion is if Pantoja faces Roy Ball and try to fight Ben. I honestly think he needs to just take it easy for a bit. I agree. I'm starting to get nervous

for the amount of damage at a very young age. I mean, every single fight he gets into, Brandon Moreno, it's a war and that's a sellable item. He's a great face of the larger Mexican MMA movement, but it's all bangers. And that's also the reputation of this division for the moment, along with the parody across it but it is interesting the debate of what could or should be next because the the rooval fight was two fights ago that he fought uh up against pantoja and lost and got finished and then in the interim rooval just happened to kind of make a run looks like maybe the most deserving and bright prospect prospect for the title along with amir al-bazi kai car france in that mix too i don't think the promotion could go wrong in the direction they go i wouldn't necessarily though to echo what everybody's saying want to rush moreno back in there because of that i want to celebrate the moment that pantosia did have i mean aaron that post-fight speech the family the shout out to the father he never knew this felt like one of those rare wholesome i got the feels type of moments right there I kind of want to let that air out a bit because what Pantoja has had to go through through his entire career run to get on

this three fight win streak and make himself where he was coming into this fight and then to see all of that come out it did feel next level special yeah I agree with you and if you saw the clip of Gilbert watching the decision get read and you can see Pantoja's family in front of him, like, oh, man. Like, Gilbert was just like, he looked more emotional than I've ever seen Gilbert Burns. Like, it meant so much to his team and to the Brazilians. You saw Charles Oliveira, like, it was just such a cool moment. I agree with you. Hey, Brazilian MMA is back, Aaron, okay? Can we get five minutes? They got a champ again. About the Brazilian champions? You betcha. You betcha, alright? We're back. We're back.

Yeah, absolutely. And Pantoja, the thing about Pantoja is he's always been that good. Like, he's always been a championship caliber fighter. It just seemed like the division kept having all of these reasons to hold him back. And then he finally got that opportunity, and it's such a close fight, such a war, one of the all-time great flyweight fights.

Might be the best flyweight fight ever, in hindsight, right? Like, I think that you've got to look at what he accomplished in that fight, and yeah, like you said, BC, just kind of let the moment go. And I think one thing that is kind of in the court of Moreno for whether or not he gets a rematch is that Jason House represents both him and Royval. So, you know, I don't think that they're going to push Moreno into an immediate rematch. I think that, you know, Jason House is probably going to look at, like, he thinks of Moreno as like a son or like a brother.

And I think that he'll probably advise Moreno to just kind of like, you know, chill for a bit. We'll make sure that you get the next shot. But I think that, like, it is a better idea for him to kind of just take a little bit of a step back like i don't want to speak for jason house or or for moreno and his team maybe moreno's like i need to get this one back as soon as possible a lot of fighters have that mentality but personally i think roival came he made the weight he did his job um and i i think that he's earned it and he should be next personally but i could certainly see if the ufc wanted to make that immediate rematch that uh you know I don't think anybody would be against that either yeah I I worry about his long-term health a lot after all of this I completely echo

your thoughts on him taking a break again whether he will or not I simply do not know but it seems to me long overdue otherwise he simply I mean this this is the reality he's up against he can either take time now or he's going to shave off years in his career. I mean, you go back into the fray after one of these in quick succession, you just won't have many more of them left. The body's capacity for punishment is remarkable but finite. And he has made a lot of difficulty for his body to absorb all that trauma in the cage. And I think taking some time away is probably in his best interest. Also, it showed that he had massively closed the gap

because there was a huge gap the first time they fought. There was a really big gap the second time. There was almost no gap at all this time. I mean, obviously there were some differences, but he had really shown himself to be a pretty incredible improvement. I think a little bit more time off and that equation might alter altogether. The only thing I want to say

is on the Pantoja thing you brought up, BC, I really echo that. I mean, that haunted me. I was haunted by that. I watched that on Saturday night. I watched it Sunday. I couldn't believe the pain he was still dealing with

when he actually uttered it. It was actually hurtful for him to do that. And I know we all know this from BC. You've been boxing fan a long time. You know, you know this as well. Like a lot of these guys who become the very best prize fighters who give us so much joy when we watch them compete. Part of the secret sauce about who they are is they come from fucked up backgrounds with family dysfunction and poverty. And I mean, I hate to say it, but the thing that in some ways creates who they are is this horribly traumatic upbringing.

And a lot of these fighters, MMA or boxing, they go into combat or in combat sports, I should say as a way of like sort of therapeutically fueling it and then finding a resolution through it. And I don't know where Pantoja is in that journey, but Jesus, man, that one, I can't get it out of my head the way he said that. Like, and it felt unrehearsed as well.

You know what I mean? I don't think he, I don't know if he planned to say that at all. It just kind of sprung out of him and grabbed you and shook you. I almost got a tear in my eye. I really did, man. It's hard to get me to care about someone like that in that kind of way. But he did it. He did it.

Normally you don't care if he lives or dies. Normally he has zero empathy for anybody. And finally, the empathy of Luke Thomas came out. And on that day, Luke Thomas came out. Look, this is actually an intervention. And on that day, Luke Thomas' heart grew three times as big. I will say to close on that whole debate about the future,

I know this happened in the Volk versus Holloway rivalry, and there was potential for it to happen again in the Whitaker-Adesanya rivalry. DDP had a big say in stopping that. But if you're Team Pantoja, how many more times do you have to beat Moreno before the UFC stops asking you to?

Right. Three times already. Great fight or not, how many more times, right? Like, come on. Come on now. And Moreno facing the same opponent four times twice. Pretty crazy. No, it's crazy. It's too much. It's too much. Although, although, I'm just going to say, it took Izzy four times.

I know it was two in kickboxing. I know. But it took him four times. So, you know, we shall see. It's not unheard of. All right. In that case, though, topic number three. So let's talk about some of the other things that happened at UFC 290.

Speaking of our man who called DDP over Whitaker. Let's go to him first on this one. All right. He was on the line? Yeah, exactly. All right, Aaron. So you're not surprised that he won because, in fact, you thought it would happen. However, my question is not so much that. My question is, expectations or otherwise, just watching the job that he did, tell me

how impressed you were by DDP. Oh, very impressed. I mean, the thing is, I've been impressed by DDP for a while. Like, I don't know if other people just forget his fights, because maybe they're on nights with other big fights. But I've always thought Drake as Duplassie has a ton of skill. He's very well rounded. He's got massive power. He's got good wrestling. He's got good wrestling defense. He's got good submissions. Like there's not much that his game lacks. I was not surprised by this at all. And the thing that really sold me on Du Paisy in this fight is while Whitaker is such a master of all trades, he's so good everywhere. The one thing that has

been shaky with Whitaker is when he faces power, like he gets rocked in fights. And I just didn't think DDP would let him off the hook if he touched that chin and he didn't that's what I expected to happen I thought that if DDP would would hit him I personally I thought it was finish or bust for DDP and I think I might have been wrong on that because Duplassie won that first round which is difficult to do against a guy like Whitaker to win a first round against the guy who's just so good and it's difficult to get reads on but I just thought that as soon as DDP connected at some point that he wasn't going to let Rob off the hook. And that's exactly what happened. All right. If it came down to size and power in your prediction on this, Aaron, I would understand it.

But here's what I don't necessarily understand for people like you and Jed who came out and said, man, I'm picking this again. If it's just size and power and you thought he'd get there, that's fine. Part of this equation on me not giving DDP a chance almost comically and saying, I don't, I literally don't give him a chance. That's more theatric. Obviously he's big enough. He deserves to be a contender. But Aaron, we got to be honest here. When people DM me after the fact and be like, BC, how did you not see that this could come? Because we haven't seen him slow down. We haven't seen him fight with patience, poise, care, really. It's been full speed ahead at all times, which certainly has grayed the idea

of how good his fight IQ might be, how much he can do things like figure out distance and work on technique and stuff. But when what we have seen before this has been so much of just kind of reckless, you just can't do that against Robert Whitaker. Only he wasn't reckless. He perfectly married together thought, care, technique, concern, all of that with monster power and a huge size advantage. How did you know he was going to be, I mean, going to be able to kind of switch gears and do this at this level. Well, I just, I haven't seen any reason why he couldn't. Like, what is there to suggest that he couldn't have had that performance on Saturday? Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker. Yeah. Yeah. But you're looking at one guy. You're not looking at the other guy. And I think that's

what everybody's problem was with, oh, Robert Whitaker's so good. It's like, well, Duplassie is too. And he's proven that time and time again, right, like, from a X's and O's standpoint, like, what is Whitaker going to be able to do to Duplassie that Duplassie can't handle, like, that was always my thought on it, is like, I think he's probably going to be faster than Duplassie, but that's not new to Drake as Duplassie, he's beaten guys that are faster than him, in fact, I think a lot of guys in the division are faster than him, but I just didn't see that big of a gap between the two fighters from what I had seen from Du Paisy. And knowing that Whitaker had a lot of miles on him and that he's had his chin cracked before. I respect Robert Whitaker like crazy.

The guy's such a good fighter. And he became champion at such a young age. And he's gotten better even since becoming champion. He really pushed Israel to the limits in their last fight. But I just never thought that, like, I always thought Duplassie was really good. And like, I mean, I didn't see anything in Duplassie's game where I was like, yeah, Robert Whitaker is going to be able to exploit that for sure. And in a three round fight, especially when Duplassie can utilize those big power movements without

worrying about slowing down, not to mention the fact that he got surgery on his nose that seemingly has allowed him to breathe a lot better. When I asked him after the fight, because he was still breathing through his mouth during the fight, I go, you were still breathing through your mouth for like the first and second round of that fight? He was like, oh, was I? He's like, I have never felt that fresh in the second round in my life.

I've never felt better. And he's like, I could feel Whitaker slowing down while I still had full strength. And he's like, I'm not used to that. Well, if he's a mouth breather, he'll fit right in here. I want to meet you guys halfway. I want meet you halfway which is i mean when we are as wrong as we were we need to be very careful about like um our own biases that got us into the wrong place and so i want to do that here with you aaron you asked like what things would you see i mean listen how many times have you

ever seen robert whitaker go for a taked fail, and then the guy falls on top of him? Like, you've never seen that. Like, when you're asking, like, what we see in Drikus' game, there's a few things. Like, some of his mechanics are bad. Sometimes his takedowns are too physical and not technical enough, and then they end up not working. Like, he's got a little bit of a spaz in him at times that I think we have. The error that we made is not pretending that he doesn't spaz in him at times that I think we have the error that we made is not pretending that he doesn't spaz sometimes the error is in overstating its importance and I think here was the big one

for me I underestimated just how much better he was going to get so I want to be you know like no fighter is perfect right like of course they're going to be things that they're not great at but two things you brought up that really stand out to me. One was, Jesus, dude, Drikus is an absolute bull in this weight class. He is so physically sturdy, so physically strong, and technical on the ground. He was a handful for Robert Whitaker. But I think something else I noticed in this fight really needs to be brought to light which is I mean Drikus is an orthodox fighter and there were times he was fighting an orthodox but the vast majority of this time he fought at southpaw and there was very clear reason for that in fact

the reason that the fight kind of the beginning of the end happened on a jab was quite intentional they had dude Drikus and his team this is big one, they diagnosed everything Drikus needed to do. They understood Robert Whitaker's game perfectly. They came up with an excellent game plan, which he utilized to the absolute fullest extent, going southpaw, neutralizing that jab, completely blocking all of his blitzes, completely getting out of the way of the vast majority of that stuff. He ran into trouble over committing at first early, but I sent a graphic to the boys in the back. Do they have it yet? If you have it, put it on the screen. I want to show it to you. This is something I saw in the numbers a little bit in the tape study for this one. Do we have it? Yeah, there it is. Okay, boys, look at this. All you have to pay attention to is the red bar chart for Robert Whitaker, where it says landed by target, 74% to the head, 6% to the body, 19% to the leg. So I looked up all of Robert Whitaker's numbers. They almost always look like this. Three fourths of his shots go to the head, single digits to the body,

and maybe 15 to 25% on the leg. i bring this up because drichus had a high guard with his hands around his head retreating the entire time and robert whittaker couldn't hit shit everything he was throwing got blocked parried rolled with caught you name it and so he there were times you might remember where drichus walks forward and gets his head popped yes but how many times do you remember him doing this retreating and Whitaker just kind of landing on top of the guard dude between the Southpaw stance, neutralizing the jab between the good defense and all the other stuff that went into this Drikus had a much better game plan than Robert Whitaker. I cannot believe I'm saying this, but it's matter of factlyfactly true. They did a bang-up job.

Never saw that coming. Completely earned my respect. And hey, wrong as wrong could be, happy to learn my lesson about it. Yeah, he was using the shell defense to perfection. And like you pointed out, Luke, if you're seeing single-digit percentage going to the body, that's where the shell defense will fail you. If people start going to the body on you, they pick up on that pattern, and they start to hit you to the body when you bring the shell defense in because

the shell defense is meant almost solely to protect the head you can use your elbows of course to protect the body shots but they still sting i asked him those two questions after when i spoke to drake is backstage i said southpaw i asked him about scoring southpaw and he said our team noticed a bunch of tendencies where he would get rocked by Southpaw fighters, and he had trouble against Southpaw fighters. They diagnosed that, and I said, I thought the biggest growth to your game this time around was your defense. I thought his defense looked impeccable, and he said they were really working on that as well. So, you know, I think you're right. I think that they really had a solid game plan for Robert Whitaker from watching a lot of tape, breaking down his tendencies, noticing what you noticed there in terms of the statistics. And we talk about UFC stats and a lot of people say the

stats don't matter. Those kinds of stats are very important when you're trying to learn about, and this is what you've talked about in the past, Luke, in terms of stats. It's like, it gives you a feel for the fighter and their style and what their tendencies are. While stats aren't the be all end all when it comes to how fights are scored or who won a fight, etc., they do tell a story in terms of a fighter's style. And I think that they picked up on this. That kind of pattern recognition is very important in learning about different fighters and figuring out what their weaknesses are. I mean, him and his team are way smarter than we gave him credit coming in.

And I do wonder, listening closely to DDP's post-fight comments, if some of those earlier matchups where I was fooled watching him, I think he kind of came in with the idea, I'm bigger than everybody, I'm strong, I can get punches off. I want to act the bully. Maybe that was some of the, I was deceived by that. He acted the bully in matchups that he knew he could. This time around, he said he knew he couldn't get away with that type of stuff

against Whitaker's speed and accuracy and footwork. But the fact that they then, like Luke said, made that adjustment, carved out a new game plan, switched stances. This guy is not only incredibly smart. I've got to give him a lot of credit in this other category. Mentally, just the, not just the IQ, the discipline, the confidence. He thoroughly has impressed me on how he has handled himself in a lot of key moments here, which show us that, yeah, he's not only ready for prime time, he's like prepared to take it over. So, Aaron, with that in mind, you actually picked him to be a living legend and a former champion of Robert Whitaker.

What type of legitimate chances would you give him against Israel Adesanya? I think it's a very legitimate chance. I mean, I don't know how he's going to react if Israel's sniping and picking him apart. And Israel, I think, is a much more difficult guy to project than Robert Whitaker in terms of what he's going to bring, because they always have such a good strategy over the city kickboxing team. So, but at the same time, I don't see how you can write Drake as Dupay Seoff, because if you thought that Vittori had a chance against Israel because of his wrestling, which he barely utilized against Israel, then I think you got to imagine that a more diverse fighter who switches stances who's good from both southpaw and orthodox who's good with

takedowns who's good with submissions i think that he can give israel a lot of problems where do you come down on on the uh oh sorry bc if you got one more i please you're going the same way i'm going here luke i was was going to ask Aaron who we thought, you know, is the real African champion, but why don't you set it up, all right? Yeah, let's three white guys all from North America. Who's the African champion, I wonder?

I will ask this, you know, Dana was like, yeah, who cares if it, you know, for some reason he couldn't understand how there'd be racial undertones, which is like, okay, I mean, do we need to explain that? But I guess we forget that. I'll ask a different question. Rather, do you worry about the tenor the fight promotion could take?

Not so much from the UFC authoring it. I don't mean that. But just the way in which all of these things could be weaponized in any direction. Well, listen, a lot of people were very uncomfortable with what happened after the fight, but it's a very uncomfortable situation. And we have three ways of approaching this. You've got Dana White's way, which is like, it's a fight. People are going to talk. They're going to say all kinds of stuff. And it's the fight game. And you know, it's all fair game. Then there's number two, where people are like, Israel shouldn't be saying stuff. Why are you making this into a racial situation? It makes me very uncomfortable. And then there's the third

way you can approach is like, we are uncomfortable because apartheid is uncomfortable colonialism is uncomfortable right like there are generations of of you know hurt and segregation and all these things that happened in south africa and you can't pin that on drakis but i mean drake is is an afrikaans fighter and again if you look at the history of South Africa and what black people had to overcome, like they had a social status situation, like it was in like legal, like that was part of their legislation

where it was like ordered, like white people were here. Then you had like Indian people, you had people categorized as like people of color, and then you had black people. And that was the way that the government had structured things in apartheid South Africa, right? Like we're talking about like generations of hurt, of segregation, of racism that Israel is carrying with them into this fight. So, yes, when he's saying stuff like that, it's very uncomfortable. And if you want to look into the history of South Africa, which again, that's not today's South Africa, but if, you know, at the same time, if you look at the wealth gap and you look at employment rates,

it certainly doesn't seem like that is a problem that has been fixed. It's a problem that's been addressed. We've had apologies from public figures in South Africa, but when you look at the history there and you have Drake is saying, you know, I'm the real African champion. And then he goes on to clarify what I mean by that is I'm the only champion that actually trains in Africa, which, you know, it's fair. It's true. But when you have somebody say that and then you have a fighter from Nigeria who who knows the history of South Africa and knows about segregation and apartheid. And, you know, the I guess the racial structures that I had mentioned before, it is uncomfortable. We're supposed to be uncomfortable in this situation because we're talking about something that is very uncomfortable. So you can choose to be uncomfortable and say, this has no place here.

You can choose to ignore it and say, hey, this is just a fight game, and these guys are going to try to get in each other's heads, and it's mental warfare. Or you can say, well, this is meant to be uncomfortable. Here's why it's meant to be uncomfortable. And we should learn more about this and understand why it's uncomfortable. I think those are really the three avenues that you can take when looking at this particular fight. Okay.

But Aaron, what I want to know from you, and you know, we asked the hard questions here is which avenue are you taking as Canadian white guy? Because when I do rewatch that head to head with them a couple of times, it's uncomfortable as shit. And I do have to give DDP credit. If you look at the amended comments that he originally made that set this off, he's actually not the guy that's pushing the race card. It is Izzy completely. What is actually your opinion? That's not true. I'm going to disagree with that, too, just because when you say i'm the real african champion i know he's clarified it but when you first say that how do you expect israel to react to that right like again i i don't think that he necessarily meant a lot of harm by saying

it but at the same time like i said he's an africans fighter from south africa where there's a history of colonialism and there's a history of apartheid. Again, the avenue that I'm choosing is to learn about why this is uncomfortable. And I think that that is the way that if you're a critical thinker, you would approach this. Why is this uncomfortable? Why is this a subject that's being used to create animosity between these two fighters?

Because at the end of the day, I think that after this fight is said and done, these guys shake hands, they hug, they have respect for each other. We saw how Israel was with Gaslam. We've seen how Israel has been with Pereira. We saw how Israel was with Jon Jones. This is the fight game. People will use things in any way, shape, or form in order to mentally throw off their opponent and to make things uncomfortable for them and to make them have to think it through. And I asked Drakus about it

after the fight. I said, are you going to let these mental histrionics get to you? And he said, I don't care who, he goes, I don't care if Israel, the champion, he was, I don't care who the champion is. My goal is to beat them and to become the greatest of all time. So he, he's kind of brushing it off. But at the same time, you have to imagine like, this is where Drakus Duplessis has grown up. He knows what it's like in South Africa. He understands the dynamic and he has black training partners, right? Like, it's not like this guy is necessarily, you know, trying to make this into something that's racial, but at the same time, it's, he's from South Africa, right? Like we have to acknowledge that there's a history here, um, that ended in like 1992. Like we're not talking, we're talking

20, like what, 30 years ago. It's still very fresh. Um, and Drakis isn't 30 years old yet, but he has to know that that's the country he lives in. He lives in Pretoria, which has one of the biggest white populations in South Africa, which is a predominantly black country in terms of population. So again, you can ignore it. And again, three approaches, you can ignore it and say, it's part of the fight game that these guys are going to talk trash, that's just mental warfare. You can say, I don't want them talking

about this at all. Or you can say, why is this a subject? Why is this something that's being talked about? And why is this uncomfortable? And that's where I fall into this. That's the part that I believe is the category that I fall under, which is like, let's learn about why this is such an issue. Why is this being used in such a way? It's such a vitriolic way that israel has and israel might be using this as fuel to make him dislike drake is more because he's going to be well no doubt aaron we lost you there for a second check your mic we'll come back to you in just a second bc if you got a response let's hear it yeah i want to respond to that and

i appreciate aaron articulated that at the level he did to show where he does stand on that but look almost separate from the idea of who's right who's wrong should this be in here this race and fusion and the stare down they had on saturday a lot along with the real part about that stare down the intensity no matter where it comes from that intensity is freaking you could feel it coming through the screen dude this has the potential to be a monster build there's no question about that so i think the discussion does belong next on where should this fight land location wise and look they never shied away from the dolly going through the window and conor habib there's going to be some level of leaning into this because this is it this is what this fight is about for better or worse there's some

gross elements i said before this fight i didn't want ddp to win because i don't want to go down this holmes cooney boxing road but aaron did put it into some respectable terms look how big could this fight be straight up whether you care about the angles or not this feels like it could be like real big big we talked about it on saturday you could put the fight in not, this feels like it could be like real big. Big. We talked about it on Saturday. You could put the fight in South Africa. Again, I don't know what the UFC's willingness or readiness is for something like that, but it would do well there.

You could take it back to New Zealand. I don't know if Izzy wants that, but it could be big there. You could certainly put it in Australia and kill. And of course, one of the bigger ones you could also do is just take it to Abu Dhabi, where there could be a lot of folks from South Africa or other neighboring places who could come by and check it out hell you could even put it in Madison Square Garden it would still be pretty great Izzy I think really turned a corner

against Pareda in his last bout so I think that's big but I want to make one more point if I maybe see and not even about Drick it's not even about Izzy which I realize this is the center of the conflict when I don't I'm with you that I don't think he necessarily intended in any way to like, I'm the white guy and therefore the real black Panther. Like, of course he's not doing that. I don't really believe that at all. I think he was trying to say like, I am a guy who stayed here. I am a guy who lives here.

I'm a guy who, this is all I know. Shouldn't I be able to, you know, magnify that when I'm on a big stage? And the answer is, of course, he should. But, like, let's talk about Francis Ngannou in Cameroon, right? Why does Francis Ngannou speak French? And why is Cameroon a fucking disaster, right? Colonization destroyed Cameroon. Destroyed it.

Destroyed it, okay? There's just no other way to say it. Now, of course, there have been other actors in the space who have not necessarily changed Cameroon. Destroyed it. Destroyed it. Okay? There's just no other way to say it. Now, of course, there have been other actors in the space who have not necessarily changed Cameroon's fortunes, but there's simply no way to understand the modern dilapidated state of Cameroon without understanding the role that French colonialization plays in it, not just previously, but even to today. Okay? Why do you think he had to leave that place after working in the mines to get out and cross the desert? Does anyone actually in their mind really believe that he wanted to leave his family? He wanted to leave his people?

He wanted to go on this treacherous journey that had taken the lives of thousands of people just like him before and then sleep on the streets of Paris and then find his way into a gym? Does anyone think he wanted that? No, he got forced into it because the place he came from got wrecked by a European power. That's why. So it's very easy to be, to Aaron's point, to be the descendant of Afrikaans people, the Dutch basically, in South Africa and say, hey, I've been here my whole life. He should be proud of that. But there are a lot of people who are not in Africa anymore who wanted to be from there

and simply couldn't because it was no life for them. And a lot of those reasons have to do inextricably with the role colonialization plays in that continent. Saying, I've been here this whole time and I'm the guy who stood here. yeah, dude, you had a real different experience than other people like Francis Ngannou. Having a little respect for that, I think, is in order. All right, Luke Thomas. All right. So what's the deal with Aaron? Aaron, is he...

Aaron, can you hear me? Check your phone. Check the Zoom chat here. I'll try to get to the to the conclusion of these tech issues here but thank you for your patience just the same all right his mic isn't working we'll come back to him when it does bc for the moment let's carry this through um bc we talked a little bit about this on saturday and i did my extra credit on it give me a grade for for the UFC send-off of Robbie Lawler. Dude, A+. I mean, I almost want to go A++,

and you can certainly argue that to the idea of, is this the best send-off ever? Well, no, it isn't, because Amanda Nunes just won a championship fight and went away on her own terms with two belts and her family dancing around her, drinking beers, having the time of their lives. But separate from that, I think the greatest thing Dana White said this week about Robbie when he was constantly asked about Robbie's legacy and the whole idea of doing this fight

is, look, not only does he had this incredibly long career, like 23 years as a pro and started before 9-11 and fought in every major organization he could for the most part, had multiple runs in the UFC. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. He's still here in the UFC at 41, even though it's been, what, eight years since he's won UFC, since he's worn UFC gold.

That speaks a lot to longevity, consistency, and still being able to do this. And then when you have a send-off in which, like, we thought bare bones, whether Robbie was going to win or lose, look great or not. He was going to get sent off the way he always handles himself in an absolute war. Entertain us. Win or lose, you go home. Thanks for playing, Robbie Lawler. No, he commandeered the situation. Took what? What was it?

A minute? I mean, took, took, you know, no time at all and absolutely knocked this guy cold with big combination punches. And this is where you got to give the UFC credit. We did late Saturday night. It was on ABC, by the way. It goes to commercial. They come back, video package ready to go.

Then the interview. This is perfection. This is what you almost never get in the combat game, largely because of how violent and unforgiving this sport is, where it's rare you can sort of commandeer your own chance at carrying out a legacy this way but then you also have to step up and deliver the way Robbie did on ABC right before the start of this huge pay-per-view I mean that's as great as it gets and it's due to Robbie's longevity consistency character all of that but then he also stepped up

in the moment like Kobe scoring 60 in his last nba game and just sort of ted williams in his last at bat and delivered on top of that wow for short of a world title at stake here short of gsp by what gsp didn't get the send-off after biz ping that he deserved because he didn't actually retire in that moment and lingered for years of is he going to come back or not but the only comparison for Robbie Lawler is what Amanda Nunes just did in terms of how great can it get going out that's it right there man loved it love loved it let's bring in let's bring in Abron back here for just a little bit longer appreciate your time Aaron I know you got some things to do so let's just ask the same

question to you you were there we thought it was remarkable on television give me a grade for how well everything went for robbie lawler sendoff and in particular the way the ufc handled it give me a grade oh dude it was an a plus and you know i spoke to a lot of ufc brass backstage and said to them like all the newspapers in the world write obituaries in advance and obviously it's not an obituary but i think that if you have packages prepared for fighters in the instance i mean they knew he was going to retire which is is different. But if you had an Amanda Nunes package ready to go, wouldn't that have added so much to her retirement that you could just put, I mean, all you do is you keep it in your system, you pull it up. If you have an inkling that a

fighter might be retiring, I think that it's really important that you can send them off with the same kind of tribute that they sent Robbie Lawler off with. I mean, but yeah, I mean, that might be one of the all-time great retirements in the sport. It was the fastest finish he's had in his UFC slash Strikeforce career. He had a faster finish back in Pride. But at the same time, like, what an absolutely incredible way for Robbie Lawler to go out in this sport. He goes to the Hall of Fame in the same week. Like, there's just nothing that could have made it better.

Like, can you think of a single thing that would have made that a better retirement i can't think of not not nothing unless you you have like maybe you have like matt hughes and jen's pulver you could bring into the cage afterwards like maybe that could have made it a little bit better but i mean i i can't think of anything else somebody flashing their so their chest like something that's the only way it could escalate it aaron to be honest you know i mean like I mean? Just a wet t-shirt contest. BC's like, you know what would have made it better? A wet t-shirt contest right in the middle. Yeah, marijuana and tits.

That's about it, Aaron. I'm sorry. I will say this. I thought one little production detail was so smart. I don't know what your situation was there, Aaron, but watching at home, so on the broadcast feed, we can see the highlight reel, and then in the corner, you see Robbie's reaction to him watching the broadcast feed, we can see the highlight reel. And then in the corner, you see Robbie's reaction to him watching the highlight reel.

And he can't even keep it together. Dude, there was like all these little finely tuned notes, man. When the UFC really leans into this kind of thing, they're tough to beat, man. They're really tough to beat. When they leverage all of their power they can do remarkable things and i feel like we should say that well i'll just say uh i watch it the same way as you do when i'm at the arena i'm always in the back just watching it on tv so i got i got the same experience as you did i mean obviously i'm in the building so it's a little bit escalated but

um yeah i asked robbie about that i said like i could tell that you were really trying hard to keep it together and then they showed that package and you just kind of like lost it and he was like yeah you know i i really do try to keep it together and you know i wasn't i wasn't looking to get emotional but like sometimes he gets kind of swept up in the moment and we know how robbie is like robbie's always been um you know i hate to say a little bit robotic but i mean he's it doesn't show a ton of emotion really at the best of times and it was nice it was nice to see him show that kind of emotion and uh kind of a cool thing was like i think it was 38 seconds into the first round and then in the next fight bo nickel won at 38 seconds in the first round and when bo nickel won robbie lawler kind of gave him daps in the

back it was almost like a passing of the torch it was really cool and then when i told bo nickel about that he just thought it was the coolest thing hmm all right now speaking of which let's say well let me let me just move it to if i can BC, because it's the last thing we have for him here. The Bo Nickel experience. I mean, did we need to see that fight on Saturday? We really didn't need to. I'm glad that he got an opportunity to compete in all things, given what they were. I understand the UFC's got terrible choices to make in terms of trying to fix a problem.

But okay, forget that for just a second. What the hell should we do with him next? Top 15 or no? What do you think? I think there are a lot of good middleweight names that you can put against him that aren't ranked. I think that's kind of the way you want to go. I think Treshawn Gore, you can do a little bit of a step up from that, obviously. But I think that if you look at some of the middleweights in this division, there are a lot of fighters that you can put him up against that i think he's going to probably run through fairly easily that are more established like i think

what you do is you try to find an established name in the division that will get him closer to being like facing a ranked opponent next like i think you just wait and you find that next stepping stone for him i think that he needs to step up though and i mean kudos to him because this was a striking fight and everything i had heard about battleburn, like Val Woodburn had a lot of contemporaries that I spoke to leading up to this fight. And they just kept saying, this guy is violent. He hits hard. He's low to the ground.

So it's going to be tough for Bo to take him down. And Bo stood with him and knocked him out. I mean, so that's why we did need to see that. Because I think that any questions that you have about Bo Nichols striking and where he's at kind of answered that question too. So I think it is kind of a progression from what we've seen in his previous fights where it wasn't just let's take a guy down dominate him and choke him out like this this fight took place

almost entirely on the feet so I think it wasn't good to see what Bo Nickel can do in that facet and uh but yeah I think it's time absolutely time for a step up in competition yeah this was his third Dana White contender Series fight. It just turned out to be that way due to circumstance. Well, I mean, you're not wrong. Not to mention that Jamie Pickett, his last opponent, was on Contender Series, what, twice or three times? I mean, even though I've argued that a guy like Nickel feels so special

that who cares about what we don't know? Let's see him even up to the level of the title. If you want to do something crazy, this might be the guy to do it. But I think more realistic, let's find something in between. Give him the number six or seventh-ranked guy. Let's find out if he can go three rounds and go back and forth and make adjustments. It's that time now.

You know who we should give him? Who? Abus Magomedov. Well, yeah. Nickel versus Magomedov. You have the name Magomedov attached to him. I think Nicole Nickel would do well against him. Then that bus is going to gas out in the first round.

It's not going to figure out Aaron. It was very rude of Luke to constantly tell you to table X Mexican MMA talk and then never bring it up again at the end. And I'm not trying to do that now, but I do have the only question left. I care about to ask you. I'm not going to put words in your mouth and assume you fully agree with some of the stances I've taken in recent months that this had been a rough year for UFC, not just in a PR way, but like what's with the matchmaking. Saturday's card was like a shut the F up. This is how great we can be when the stars aligned, right? Like they did the best job they could to give us a really good card on paper. Even if I argued it wasn't, you know, what I expect from previous years. Dude, it over-delivered, like, incredibly,

where it created that magic of quick finishes and big upsets. Anything can happen. Is this contagious? Do you feel like Saturday's card might start a sea change for 2023 for the UFC? From however you want to give them a grade on the first half, this might kick open the door for the second half of the year to just be bang, bang, bang, bang. Try and stop me. Bang. We've got Poirier versus Gaethje coming up at the end of the month with a co-main event of Elect Pereira versus Jan Bohovic. Like, let's keep it rolling, man. Like, I think that there's a lot of good stuff that can

happen. Like, probably the most, the least eventful fight on this past weekend's card was tatsuro tairo against edgar shires and that was still a young budding prospect being kind of pushed to his limit by a newcomer to the ufc like that still was a good fight right like you could argue that volk versus yagir rodriguez was like the might have been like the second worst fight on that card not to take anything away from that like it was awesome it's two high level guys but i mean it was just like crazy moment after crazy moment that knockout in the second fight of the night aguilar's knockout might have been the best flyweight knockout in history like and he didn't get even get a bonus like i you should have handed that guy a check in the cage like chatri would like to give you fifty thousand dollars that should have happened right there

and he didn't even get a bonus it was the greatest flyweight knockout i think i've ever seen i mean what a night like honestly that night was so special and i and i and we're coming off that card in vancouver where like if you were in the building that was also a very special card like the canadians were rolling like we're amanda nunez retires on on a high note i mean just a just an absolutely crazy night of combat on Saturday. I think that's the best event, top to bottom, I've ever been at and I've ever seen. Wow. Okay, I'm glad you answered that because we did feel in the moment like you could put it up there with 205, 217, 116, whatever your favorite one is.

But you made some strong points there. I wonder if this does change some feeling and just kick off a new run of momentum. It just, man, it would have. So here's the difference the difference here's the difference luke here's the answer to give them the best chance shut the freaking apex down give it to power slap in the contender series that's it get back no really get back in front of arenas because what makes a card overachieve it's that magic that was special saturday. But sometimes that's cultivated by that fan base, right? And even culturally. Yeah, but, like, dude, they got Holly Holm headlining this weekend.

They're building cards that can only live there. You know what I'm saying? They can't live anywhere but the Apex. And, Aaron, I think it sounds like you agree. Like, I'm not – you know, Holly Holm deserves to be taken seriously. Put it in Jacksonville. Put it in Tai Chi. Put it somewhere where there's people. Tashi Palace, that's the one but in in all seriousness you're right july 29 for both boxing

and ufc reasons is going to be killer but between now and then you've got some shit to wade through do you not well you also kind of have to ignore the these fight night cards if you're going to talk about momentum and just look at the pay-per-views i mean those are the special evenings that we're getting and it's not that the fight nights have been bad. Like, there's still good nights of combat. But again, like, we got Bueno Silva against Holm in the main event. You've got a featherweight women's fight in the division that basically doesn't exist. You've got a middleweight, like, token middleweight co-main event. You've got heavyweights on the main card.

Like, it's kind of like we're back to the paradigm of a, you know, ho-hum fight night card on Saturday. But, you know, those are for the diehards, man. Like, these UFC fight night cards are still solid. They still deliver. They're still fun to watch. But it's hard to, like, you can't really expect that the momentum is going to continue into Saturday. You kind of have to just look at the markers of these massive pay-per-view cards, and they're building really good pay-per-view cards for the rest of the year.

Like, that's kind of the signifier of the momentum the diehards are always going to watch fight nights on saturdays i mean if they're not going to watch it live they're going to they're going to pvr or tape them or watch them after the fact um they're not going to tape them i don't think people are still using vcrs you know what i mean but they're going to go back and watch it after the fact and i think that the momentum is probably not going to roll into the saturday it could still be a great fight card and still deliver and if you love the ufc and you love combat sports you watch it and you you walk away whether you like it or not you're happy you spend your time on a saturday night watching fights but i mean you can't expect that what we

saw on saturday is going to roll into this saturday it's gonna be just as good yes i can yes i dare you how dare you profess that? Yes, I can. All right, Aaron, I've kept you longer than we were supposed to, so let me leave on this, and I'm glad BC shamed me, but he also did remind me he was right. Let's wrap up UFC 290 on here. I thought that UFC had done a really good job about embracing their Mexican fan base, both for this weekend as well as in September, doing all the right things,

but MMA success is fleeting, and this Mexican revolution, I'm not saying even if Grasso loses that it's over, but the ability to hold on to a UFC title is hard to do, and it's coming undone just as quickly as we got here. Give me your sense of things, your view of the next year or two, Mexican MMA, at least as you've experienced it and its growth and potential. Yeah, I mean, it was a bad night, especially with Jasmine Huaregui losing earlier in the card. I mean, that's certainly, or Yasmin Huaregui, rather,

that kind of made it even worse. But I think it's one of those, like, don't be sad that it's over, be grateful that it happened situations. I mean, it's probably the best way to put it, to see Mexican MMA get on the map like it did this year. But, I mean, you had Aldana last month. It was, you know, the potential to be four champions. And one month later, you got one champion.

That's tough skating right now for Mexican MMA. But, again, what they did this year is something special. And we really need to just acknowledge that and not, it's, I still think that there's the potential for it down the road. But, I mean, yeah, it came apart pretty quickly. Okay. All right. Well, listen, we kept you longer than we were supposed to i know you've got some other things

to attend to uh if folks want more of your work and it is uh copious in amount prolific as a publisher of content you are where can they get it yeah guys thanks for having me it's at www.aaron.report has all of my stuff and you can you can browse it all in one great place and of course you can see his socials beneath on the lower third there. He posts all his stuff. I get to see all your stuff on Twitter, too, and I watch a lot of it there. So, dude, great work at UFC 290. I know you're due for a break.

Go get some rest. We thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate you. Enjoy your health care. Thank you, Aaron. I always, always will.

All right. With that in mind, we move now, BC, to topic number four. Now, this was some news we did not get to on Saturday. I had a small kind of reaction video to it a little bit on Saturday before UFC 290. So let's get to it now here a little bit. BC, UFC 295 in November. It will be Jon Jones taking on Steve Bamiyotich. And I want to ask the question this way. Namely, I saw folks happy that the fight was made, but I saw a lot of people being like,

listen, I'm not going to complain about the fight, but if you're asking me where I would have really been excited, it would have been Jon Jones versus Sergey Pavlovich. Was that the fight to make instead bc no and and i need to tell all those people to to sit to quiet down i've actually done a lot of complaining about the ufc and matchmaking and dana and all that this year and i do feel like it's been fair but it has been heavy they've given me ammo this is not one of the times to complain this is the type of big fights that if you're a promoter, you go out of your way to make. I get that Miocic hasn't fought in three years. I get that he's, you know, look, what is his official age right now? Do you have that in front of you?

I think he's 42. I'll double check right now. which might explain to some degree Stipe kind of always sits in the bullpen and waits for the big title or big fight opportunities but does get in skirmishes with UFC at times about money and placement and all that this is the right time to make this fight 41 okay heavyweights age later is Stipe the same guy he was three years ago could we expect that

you can fill that in all you want but I also want to remind people we don't know who Jon Jones actually is as a heavyweight if you think that gone fight fully explains who he is it doesn't jones was great after that long of a layoff moving up in weight everything worked perfectly and unfortunately gone looked about as bad as he could i'm not saying gone laying an egg takes away from what john accomplished there no he's the greatest fighter of all time. And now he has the two belts to show for it. But if we actually think we know what John looks like at that weight as a striker, stamina wise over a sustained period of time.

What if this fight does feature some wrestling? Stipe's not inadequate in those areas. We just don't know that. But when you can make a fight this big and historic where it does dip into the casual pool, I don't cheer for casual main events because I'm a casual fan, Luke, although I think some of our viewers would argue that. I cheer for it because those big type of fights need to happen in between the hardcore killer fights like Volk versus Yair or Volk versus Mahachev 2, which might be big enough to be

a crossover fight in the end in terms of people waking up to it. But Jones versus Miocic is a crossover fight. And Luke, you and I, let's be really honest here. We were supposed to be an international fight week with full on coverage. It didn't work out in the end. You can argue why it didn't work out. But one of the reasons why I did argue that on paper, that IFW card, which did overachieve and slam dunk in every category, why I argued it was just short of what I was looking for. Sometimes what I'm looking for is not just for the health of the sport, but for the idea of like us going on the road for really big fights that a lot of people care about and giving that type of coverage.

Hardcore fights sometimes push away from that, from people in those positions who control budgets and are going to do that. This fight is like, if you missed it, I think if they missed this, if they didn't do this now, Luke, even if you think John Jones is going to go in there and wipe him up, it's still promotional malpractice to me.

Stipe is arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time. We've already been through that sort of debate when he had the trilogy with Cormier. And now you have the greatest fighter of all time, who just became heavyweight champion. Like, come on, you got to make this fight and you're putting it in Madison Square Garden, UFC. Congratulations. This was by far the right move to make by far. Uh, and if you're scared that we're only going to get Jon Jones for one or two more fights and you preferred Pavlovich now, that's cool but Luke

sometimes as a promoter as a brand you've got to make these super huge big fights that are gonna wake people up that haven't watched the sport closely in two to three years this is that fight dude this is that fight this is a monster fight can we stop with the oh John's is just gonna wash him you know bring on Pavlovich you don't know who John Jones is a heavyweight is Luke you don't know you don't even know Luke Thomas you don't I don't you freaking don't okay i don't i don't let me ask you just in your heart of hearts what's a tougher fight miocic or pavlovich pavlovich there's more unknown in pavlovich there's not only more known about stipe there's hey he he hasn't fought in three years yeah that that doesn't matter to some degree,

even if heavyweights age late and he's only 41, you know, as opposed to being like 46 or 47. But you get my point. This isn't Yoel Romero, right? Like this is like, I think he's closer to being in this and you mix that with what we don't know about John. But what's a harder fight for him? Yeah, without question, Pavlovich.

But look, if he goes out there and beats Stipe and doesn't retire, and I'll re, once again, tell tell you john's not going anywhere if he keeps winning he's going to stay because john loves doing this he loves being the best and if he's going to be as good as heavyweight as a heavyweight as the cyril gone fight teased he might although there's fools gold elements due to gone's lack of wrestling prowess i think he's going to stay and if he goes out there and does to stipe what people think he should, as long as they pay him the right amount of money, Luke, he'll still fight Pavlovich.

And why wouldn't you make that fight massive, put it in a stadium, do something big for that? First, he's got to do this at MSG. So try to explain to me, Luke, in a real way beyond, oh, Stipe's old, why this is a bad choice. I don't think it's a bad choice. I don't think it's a bad choice. I'm not one of these guys who's like, oh, well, what does it mean to beat the corpse of Stipe's old, why this is a bad choice. I don't think it's a bad choice. I don't think it's a bad choice. I'm not one of these guys who's like,

oh, well, what does it mean to beat the corpse of Stipe Miocic? And it's like, I get that we could end up there. Like, I think you can be high on this fight, but you should also have a little bit of realistic expectations, which is, okay, do we have reason to conclude that Stipe's going to be completely, you know, just a shell of himself at 41? No,

no. But if we end up with a fight where it actually turns out that he was, however, improbable that may seem, we should be like, we should be saying out loud, like we do run the risk of getting Cyril gone 2.0, which what I mean by that is a guy who had,

it seemed nice on paper for other reasons, and then you get there and you're like, oh, right, this was a waste of time. Like, there's just, this is not who we thought it was at all. That is, to me, on the table. However, like, this is something I've been thinking about for a while, which is, and we've talked about it on the show, which is, listen, there's just way too much gravitational pull from the business end to make this fight for it to supersede a fight

with pavlovich that's just never going to happen if you're john why the fuck would you take that fight the state the they may or may not have put john versus sergey in msg they may have done it bc but you like like there's i mean we know the for a fact that they did it but like you obviously are going to put this fight in a huge venue on a massive night and the fact they went to msg tells you like the kind of supremacy that they feel that this fight holds both for the heavyweight division currently and then historically if john ends up beating cormier gone and miochic right sort of back to back to back in that way i mean not not in his most recent fights but you mean like you know the last three of these champions not including francis that's a big fucking deal. That's a really big deal.

And they just can't pass that up. I do think it's also worth saying, though, just forget about the box office. Forget about anything else. What's a more interesting fight? On fight terms, it's Pavlovich. I don't think it's as interesting to me as Miocic, personally. Okay.

Okay. I mean, I guess it's fair, but's fair but dude i mean we criticize them enough in certain areas to me it's just like get off and enjoy this yeah it's not worth it's definitely not worth criticizing it's not now there is one element to the story though that is interesting namely we we started this topic talking about jones and stipe but but like an hour or two before ariel hawani had tweeted that, per sources, we are getting very close to an announcement between Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou. Now, we don't have many details to go on here, BC. One, I wonder what you make of the

timing of this Stipe John news. That's kind of interesting about when it came out. But more importantly, it is believed in the media that what happens between fury and nganu is going to be an exhibition now what does that mean and is there going to be knockdowns and four ounce gloves again a lot of this remains very unknown yeah we don't have my sorry i was just going to say very quickly i guess my question for you is bc in a world where he was supposed to fight Usyk, and instead he fights an MMA fighter in exhibitions terms. I'm not saying as an MMA fan I hate that, and especially for Francis, hey, I'm happy he gets a bag. But if you're a boxing fan, you've got to be irate at this news, right?

You do. So a couple things to pick up on from what you said right there is do I believe the UFC counter promoted this and ran that announcement of Joan Stipe out quick after seeing Ariel's tweet? Yes, because that's they do do that. They do that often. I believe that. I don't hate it, whatever. It is what it is. This fight has not been announced yet, meaning Francis in fear in fury. And we don't know the rules. We are only only hearing it could be an exhibition. You asked me how this fight got made or why or the timing. A lot of people inside boxing are arguing because Tyson couldn't secure anything else he was trying to,

meaning he didn't want Usyk now. And that, yes, is he open for debate and criticism? Of course. Even if he's delaying, which is where you want Tyson Fury to finally be honest. And it's hard to tell when or if he's honest because he's constantly, the given day, so many other things at once and just, you know, switching course out of nowhere and posting a video and saying, I'm retiring and doing bullshit. But Joshua seems to be tied up.

He's got a fight now coming up, a rematch with Dillian White. Usyk has moved on to his mandatory Daniel Dubois the same month. And it feels like while, you know, they're not going to do Wilder Fury 4, but it feels like Wilder is preparing for Joshua in December. If Fury's plan all along and his plan continues to include fighting Usyk in December, no matter what, in Saudi Arabia for a shitload of money, and if Usyk just signed with that upstart Saudi Arabian fight promotion only to get this Fury fight, then I don't care about the Francis fight, meaning I'm not going to get mad at it. And no matter how this goes off, it's a win for Francis.

And congratulations, you stuck the course. You never fumbled the bag. But no, it sucks that Fury's doing this right now, again, unless, and this is where I wish he would be honest, unless the plan is still to fight Usyk no matter what in December. Because if it's not, then you are dropping the ball fury in one of the biggest opportunities historically, the idea to be the face of this heavyweight division, have the first four belt championship, have one name, one face, and do it against a guy we're going

to favor you to be in Usyk and have a chance. You can just retire after that. You don't need to fight anybody else. You would have done what you were supposed to do in your era separate from Joshuaoshua and if you still want to make that fight happen you know no matter what and it seems you do then that's cool that's great but if you're if you're going to fumble this and delay this and sneak in an ingano fight and and not come around on the other end and still fight usic like everything we've ever said positively about fury the fighter and this great comeback story you're gonna have this is clouded in the idea of you had a chance at history i mean like dude the fury usic fight

just separate from what it can do financially or commercial and it would be big just historically this is freaking massive and you're gonna avoid that and without really an explanation you had that third chisora fight that nobody wanted but we had all suck it up because we thought you were gonna fight usik three four months later i don't know luke and if this thing is an exhibition sadly i don't think we like there's not going to be a lot of reasons to care outside of the curiosity of what does francis look like and good for francis because what are we doing if unless this is exhibition with four ounce gloves which then you go okay it's taking the best heavyweight in MMA against the best heavyweight in boxing and trying to find out, you know, who could win if you give a little bit of the rules of both sides to both of them and do the four ounce gloves.

If it's that, there's something there. If it's a title fight, there's something there, even though you can argue why would Ngannou deserve a chance at the title. But Luke Usyk's manager just came out today and was like, if he's going to take this Ngannou fight, how is the WBC not stripping Fury? Like, what the hell's going on here? It's time to stand up. I mean, it's been time to look in the camera and say, Tyson Fury, what the hell's going on here? What are we doing? Separate from, hey, cool for Francis, what the hell are you doing? Because this is not the direction that your talent screams you should be going. We're not asking you to take a fight against Usyk that won't sell when you can make money elsewhere. That fight's going to sell like crazy.

And if you do it in Saudi Arabia, you're going to make more money than you've ever made in your entire career combined. So tell us that you're doing it already, and we can stop doubting the character inside you as a true fighting man because you're not showing it right now. I will say this, though. Again, the rules matter here, and if these guys can't really hurt each other then it's you know then fuck this fight honestly like i'm not going to say good things about it like i don't mind them

fighting in any kind of rule set but what i don't want is like a rule set where it's not really a fight that's what i don't want but let me say this bc i've seen a lot of fans in boxing and MMA being like, oh, four ounce gloves. Who wants to see that? Me? Have you guys been watching four ounce Muay Thai in one? It fucking rules. It's amazing. It's a game changer. I absolutely love it. I couldn't say more good things about it. Now, of course, what makes that dynamic is matchmaking, some other different rules, sometimes a different fighting surface, a cage versus a ring. It's not one thing. And I cannot guarantee you that it's because for it, that if they do in fact make it four ounce gloves,

that that will automatically make it awesome. That's not what I'm saying either. I don't know what it's going to be, but what I can say is I've seen another promoter change up gloves in another sport. And that one's got, you know, all kinds of cultural elements weaved into the identity of the sport. They still went the other way, changed up

the gloves, and they've had nothing but good success with it. All I'm asking people to do is maybe consider that adding four-ounce gloves could make it significantly better. I cannot guarantee that, but I guess I just don't understand the pushback. You have an MMA fighter versus a boxer. You don't need to have normal rules. You need to have rules that make sense four ounce gloves, count me the fuck in

yeah, either that or actually making a boxing match with the real championship at stake even though that's weird but that gives you a reason to watch it gives you a reason to watch if Ngannou could do the impossible and then become the reigning defending best fighter in both sports

I mean if you knock out Tyson Fury in a real fight for the championship, the hell would people say negatively against you after that? It's weird, Luke. It's just weird. It's weird. I'm done. Bring on boots. I'm done. Okay. Last... We can skip the GSP thing because we got to that at the top. Alright, so let's talk about it now.

UFC 290 was incredible over the weekend, but it wasn't the only incredible thing over the weekend. Funnily enough the only incredible thing over the weekend. Funnily enough, BC, I've been checking trending. Now, these results will change based on your country that you're in. Not so much what part of the country, but you'll have one trending list for UK, one trending list for the US, and so forth. And in the US, both yesterday and today, the only combat sports trending video was Jaron Ennis beating the brakes off of Royman Villavici. I don't even know what to ask you about this, but I'll ask it this way.

We were there in January at his last fight where he dominated, but I think underwhelmed. Did he erase any of the criticisms you think he was facing from January with a performance like this? Oh, my God. By far, like monstrously erased them. And it's not that he took on an opponent who was necessarily this massive world beater. And what does this win mean? This win was kind of a stay busy. Yeah, we get to see him against another quality guy, a dangerous guy in via.

But, you know, Boots is waiting on Staniosis or Spence and Crawford or Thurman. I mean, he's waiting to show us how great he can be. What you loved about this performance, though, is it wasn't the same frustrating part of the last fight against Chukudzin, who was trying to get away from the action. Not only did Villa want the action, Boots doubled down. And for the majority of this fight, fought Villa on his own terms, directly in front of him, got hit a couple times, but showed something that I love that Al Bernstein said it out loud. You want to know how good Boots might be?

Al Bernstein, the Hall of Famer who's been calling fights monster fights since like basically the early 80s, said that Boots Ennis is the most skilled offensive fighter possibly that he's ever seen, that he's ever covered in called fights. Boots stood right in front in punching range against a killer, a guy with 24 knockouts and 26 wins, and took what he had but showed that incredible stance switching, baiting and feinting, and then full explosion, ridiculous speed, ridiculous power. He hit Villa with shots that would have knocked so many people out cold. Villa fought like an absolute maniac because that's who he is.

He's got a heavy heart. His family got kidnapped in Venezuela and they're trying to escape him. There's a lot going on. He came and brought what we thought he would. Yet Boots still went in the trenches and got him the hell out of there. This guy Villa had never been stopped or even dropped. To see Boots and his showcase that, this is what that January fight was supposed to be. I think Boots benefits from that experience

against Chukotzen going 12 for the first time. But what he did in 10 rounds here in this one-sided assault, it's the rare one-sided fight that was actually exciting to watch. And the reason was boots operating directly in front of him yet operating like an absolute virtuoso this guy is absolutely the real deal do i know for sure what it's going to look like against a you know thurman spence crawford those super elite guys no but it's going to be fun as hell finding out and look if he if it's unbeaten i'm on to staniosis next that's actually a good test

and a good step up while we wait the bigger names but he's ready for those bigger names right the hell now I mean this guy's sublime he's been ready for him he's been ready for him they don't want a part of him right I mean they just who would want to sign up for this assignment if you don't have to fuck that yeah Jesus folks you see the finish they could play the finish again I would love to show it to you he did it from southpaw right look at this finish I want I mean I'll just talk you through a little bit I don't have my my telestrator but pay attention to the angles the referee's going to intervene here separate them then turn them boots is going to take closer to the center Royman throws a right and misses wide right here and then look at the timing on which boots catches

him over the top and then another one folks all of that happened from the southpaw stance he's not a southpaw fighter that's not his dominant stance he's actually more of an orthodox fighter but he's so fucking good from either stance it doesn't matter and to bc's point so he can stand at range at southpaw at range at orthodox or right up in front of you and he could play the phone booth fighting game too and he'll beat your ass at all of them it is he is a tornado of offense he's a tornado of ability there is no safe place to hide when boots ennis enters the ropes dude you got nowhere to go it is terrifying how good he is bc, I will say, I went back and I watched in this fight and then the Chukadzon fight, like where he got hit. The only blemish I see on him, and I wonder what you make of this, is not his ability.

His ability is like, I mean, it's there. Now, right now. He sometimes gets so confident, I think he gets a little bit lax. Like he was doing a bunch of cross-stepping where your feet are basically like you're walking backwards, but that you're unstable when you're doing that. And he got hit right up against the ropes by Villa doing that. A couple times he was walking into Chukadzan and he got drilled, but he wasn't actually using proper footwork. So I guess my point is, when he's boxing the way he's supposed to box, I don't know who's going to beat him. But sometimes he lets his guard down and invites these guys in a little bit more than maybe they'd be there of course

because he's bored because he's so much better than this level that's it and like he even said after this fight yeah my dad my coroner was getting on me and when they were trying to get me to you know fight more from distance be a little bit more safe and i i love the fact that he felt the need to entertain me look do you think boots liked what happened in that fight in January on that pay-per-view where instead of, you know, people talking about that he won all 12 rounds and all three scorecards, they were talking about that he couldn't finish this, you know, tough, difficult guy. And maybe he's not as good as we thought.

So he goes in the trenches against the guy and absolutely showcases how great he can be. Yes, sometimes he does welcome the unnecessary danger but luke if he came out there and completely dominated via with the jab from distance we would have been like wow he didn't take any chances and he dominated like we thought he would hey i hope he gets a big fight one day i actually love look at 26 i mean he's so smart like technique wise game planning wise iq wise he also seems to be more mature in how he reacts to things. But like he knows the pulse and the situation and what's expected if you want to be considered very good or what's expected if you want to be considered the breakout star of the sport.

That's like ready as ready as Tank and all these other guys to like literally be the face of the sport. Did he only elevated what he's all about by welcoming some of that danger. And yet he was kind of barely touched against Villa standing right, I mean, dude, standing right in front of him. You saw that first round look. If Boots wanted to control him from distance, could have done it in his sleep.

He made it harder to entertain and in the process showed us how great he might actually be. Like any creator can say, but who's roman via let's put him in there hopefully this year the let's put him in there things really going to happen again whether that's staniosis uh thurman ugas the winner of thurman ugas if that fight happens unlikely to get either spencer crawford but there's still big names here you know either big names or big tests he can get that will get him closer yeah the

name for me Royman via wasn't so much the story here the story was like what kind of challenge he presented which was a barrel down on you tough as shit fighter who was big uh he'd had guys who were pressure fighters before but they weren't as physically sturdy um as Royman And then to see how he just obliterated him from just stance and range and punch selection and angle. I mean, the angle on that finish, I barely even talked about it. After the right goes through, look at the angle. Like, look who's facing who. Look whose hips are facing away.

I mean, he just, he is a marvel to watch. I hope to your point is either Staniosis or Ugas or thurman or somebody because if he can't get a name i mean that's all he should be fighting right you should not be fighting anybody else other than a big name at this point obviously spenson crawford we don't know but to your point the like just a step down from that the rest of those guys porter would have been a good fight if he was still around um but we'll see we shall see yeah All right, BC. That is it for our top five. This is now where we transition to the donks asking us questions. It's time for DM from the diggity dogs.

Let's hit it. He haul. He haul. Okay. BC. This is from Oso Al Daco. I don't, I guess I'm saying that right.

Probably not. Was the UFC hall of fame class of 2023 the best one yet? Well, Jose Aldo was in it, Jens Pulver was in it, and some other ones as well, Anderson Silva. That is a pretty fucking good class of the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean, didn't they just have DC and Ann Habib going in the same class a couple years ago? I think that was a monster. Who did GSP go in with, Luke? He went in with some big names too um it's up there it's up there yeah it felt

it felt like royalty watching back some of those speeches and those moments it felt like a a very good night for the promotion i still really i guess i'm alone on this but i still really don't like that if you get in the hall of fame for for a hall of fame fight which is a cool idea by the way to put fights in the hall of fame always love that but the idea that if you get in the Hall of Fame for a Hall of Fame fight, which is a cool idea, by the way, to put fights in the Hall of Fame. Always love that. But the idea that if you're in the Hall of Fame because of one fight, like do who Choi, you're suddenly now called the Hall of Fame fighter. I don't like that, Luke. I didn't like that when Diego got that nod.

I don't like it that they said, hey, Robbie Lawler on his last night. He's already in the Hall of Fame. Well, he's not. He will be, but he's not really. That's the only thing that keeps ruining it for me, Luke. Shouldn there be a distinction why am i the only one that cares about stuff like this no you're right the fight should go into the hall of fame but the fighters do not uh unless they get in independently of that i agree with you i will say this we didn't really talk about it anderson silva not posting for his own hall i mean for example like look how much it meant to

jose i'm sure you saw the video of the walkout and it's all these pictures of him and like glory through all the battles he had it was beautiful like they ufc did a bang up job with that looked really really nice and he was crying and they played his walkout music it was great it was great anderson silva just said nah i'm good like that is he sent kid, I know he didn't completely tell him to go fuck himself, but he did tell the UFC to go fuck themselves for whatever reason. He's got beef with them. Yes. I mean,

I mean, dude, there were some comments when Anderson fought Jake and Dana's getting, you know, provocatively asked a lot of questions. They didn't exit on, on wonderful terms. I don't think Anderson feels appreciated on the level that he expects to be,

but hopefully Luke, that can get healed in some form over time. Again, at least he sent his son. This was a very big class. Let's give the UFC credit for a few things. They do the Hall of Fame ceremony very well with the video packages and they interview a bunch of journalists. But also, remember during the pay-per-view broadcast on Saturday, they had that montage

package about Dana White's Contender Series, which is coming back. That literally made me want to never miss a fight again on Dana White's Contender Series, which is coming back. That literally made me want to never miss a fight again on Dana White's Contender Series. Like, that was as good of a sizzle reel type of get you fired up thing as could be done. You said it. When they feel the need to flex, dude, they're fantastic at this damn job. Can we keep having Saturday all over again?

Because, you know, that feeling, Luke, which just hit the lips, you know what I mean it's just it's damn right that crack pipe smoking smoking those crack rocks all right uh BC question number two from Cole Brown 858 how much has Brandon Moreno changed the way fans look at the flyweight division in a weight class that was on the brink of being scratched Brandon has come to put on a war win or lose i think he says in every fight i don't i don't really understand this like i do think that there are certain flyweight fighters who have captured the imagination of the fan base but like we said this before if you just look at the box office returns have the fans really changed their preference on flyweight no that's not what they're saying here here's what they're really saying luke post so hudo and dj it could have gotten folded but it ultimately didn't so you can argue

that what so hudo's doing to keep it alive they put suddenly put matchmaker mcmainard on it and he gets a lot of credit i try to bring it up a lot because he deserves it for making this must see they're trying to say is moreno the connective tissue across the board that has made this new post Cejudo flyweight era so fun and so must see I'll counter and say he's a major player but I think it's the combination of the matchmaking and all of them Figueiredo in four fights against Moreno just pouring it out right like Askar Askarov before he left had some sick fights Kai Karfet dude everyone in this top 10 against one another just keeps trading win-losses and absolute fire fights. If you went back and tried to chart it, Luke, it might be hard to find a three-round fight involving ranked guys over the past two to three years that wasn't awesome. It's this entire division.

Moreno, to his credit, in the reinvention and becoming a two-time champion, he's been a large face of it. But it's not just him, dude. It's Pantoja too right it's all of them Mick Maynard too yeah it's everybody fair enough I'm just saying I think it's great that they kept it around I do think that a fight like that speaks to the quality of what you can get in the uniqueness of how much dynamism there is in that division but I think people are like oh my god isn't this so great it's like yeah but the casual fan doesn't give a shit so yeah yeah let's just be real about that all right uh three from eerie iran delaney i don't know how to say this name how likely is it that mexico has zero champions at the end of the year i gotta say i saw bisping being like oh shevchenko's best days

are over and i definitely feel like in the biggest, broadest sense that is true. I don't think she's at the peak of her powers anymore. Right. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, in the broad strokes, I agree, BC. But I'm not going to say that win was fluky. I'm not. What I am going to say is for a Shevchenko who now has the opportunity to make adjustments,

it gets harder, I think. Doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, it is interesting that you're talking about female fights and using the term broad strokes, Luke. Don't you? I mean, you want them to make you a sandwich, too? You're a despicable human.

I want you to know that. Dude, she could very well win this back. And obviously, she's training probably harder than ever before. And she's constantly adding new things to do that. So I think this fight is up for grabs. It's a great fight. We may go through it. We may go from three or four champions to none. Can you blame Aldana?

Is that fair, Luke? I'm doing a bit with the Aldana thing, although it obviously was a non-representative performance. Dude, the two fighters that you think have the worst magic ever middle nog and then aldona i mean you just think they're a hex on the game yeah i like to call him in between nog no shout out to little nog but is he riding the coattails yes he is luke no um look it will come and go i think that we will we're starting to see the impact of what Mexican MMA can do with like grassroots champions from the country who try. You know, they become of age saying, I want to become an MMA champion.

That's what they're doing. The ripple effect will be great. But will we see them with a belt? You may not, Luke. I mean, do we ever expect Brazil to go, you know, to have a point of having zero titles and then Pantoja change that? No, it does kind of come and go waves it's hard to keep belts but um yeah i think one day they'll do a documentary on how aldana closed this chat this great chapter in mexican main it's unfortunate it really is if that comes

to pass which given our history of cursing things it probably will all right for uh paul go dennett's go denise says who's the best bet for actually fighting islam and abu dhabi kind of been over this one a little bit um best bet bc do you think they give it to chandler do you think there's any sense of way chandler gets it because it would have to them it would have to be them admitting that this connor tough slash usada situation is is in has become an absolute debacle. I know Dana went on this, you know, fire rant against the media for missed. He says, miscongruing his comments about forget USADA that he told.

Miscongruing. Miss, miss. Yeah. I mean, I thought you were going to let me have that. I don't know if I necessarily deserve being, you know, grammar police in the moment. Like they're like, I tried to do for you for your, you know, putting women, you know, not on a pedestal like they belong, Luke. I don't know.

Where are we in this show, Luke? Just take us out of here. Where are we at? Who's fighting Islam in Abu Dhabi? Is it going to be Chandler? Okay, let's go on the record now for what we believe will happen next with Volk. Because Volk plays a big role in this, Luke. If Volk's turnaround on that surgery, which Dana

reiterated was just a scope, Volk's team was saying somewhere, right, where it might be six to eight weeks. Is that true? That's a true fact? Yep. He's going to fight Islam there. That's what they're going to do. And that's what they should do, Luke. And it doesn't mean the Tuporia fight won't happen eventually because it does seem like Bronny

said that... Damn, I just called him Bronny and it sounded weird, Luke. Like Bronstetter said that he might want to, meaning Volk, jump up and down between weight classes, which is hard to do, but he might want to. You got to make this next. So forget Chandler, Luke. That would turn into a debacle there. Let's make, I mean, the only way Chandler's fighting Islam is if they're going to make McGregor Volkanovsky. And they're not going to do that, Lukeanovsky and they're not going to do that no they're not going to do that probably not going to do that uh it's not a great fight for

mcgregor candidly no it would be the only reason they would do that is to try to make volkanovsky like their biggest star yeah but to do that at 35 it's like the time to do that was a year ago yeah i mean the storyline is there it's the only featherweight champion he hasn't faced right like or whatever the story is there hasn't beaten whatever but um yeah all right there you go all right last but not least from dallin m johnson what happens good question what happens to jack de la maddalena financially he's asked out he went through a whole training camp only to not fight truly the ufc compensates him right uh no well he's there under no obligation it sounds like what they're going to try and do

is put him on a card this weekend because he came all this way. He's spent probably, I'm going to guess, somewhere in the order of tens of thousands of dollars to make this camp happen. He wants to compete. He wants to get his money. But we went over this.

One of the times where Habib fell out was at 207-209 when he was supposed to fight Tony. And Tony weighed in. The way that the contracts work is we all say that there's win and show and win money that doesn't exist in any ufc contract doesn't work that way there's the purse which is what you would associate with the show money and then there's the win bonus if they win which of course is the win money but that's how it goes and you can only get the purse if you weigh in and you actually compete. So if you weigh in and you don't

fight, you are contractually entitled to nothing. You get absolutely zilch. It will require UFC generosity to get anything out of them, which at times they show BC, at times they don't. Yeah, that's fair. That's very fair, Luke. That is fair, but

the fact that they almost gave them, they tried to make the Chris Curtis fight extreme last minute for him, and I think everybody agreed, but then I had read that the two matchmakers of the UFC were split because Curtis is on a September card, and they would have had to fill that hole. So they tried. He tried. I hope they do give him a chance.

It doesn't even really matter the level of opponent because he's been through the – I mean, he's been through the middle of bad luck. And by the way, his opponent that fell out is not doing well, right, Luke? Is that true? The gentleman who they caught had, I mean, it was actually an interesting story. So basically he had a brain condition where there's like these bundles that get, I'm not sure exactly how it all works biologically, but the point being is there is a certain amount of unfortunate crossover inside the brain between the various organs and how it all operates there. And how the blood and the nervous system all intertwine such that if it was hit with blunt force trauma, it could cause death and other serious brain complications. It makes you uniquely susceptible to these problems if you actually get hit there.

But the interesting story is less so that, although I certainly am glad that they discovered it, but it's just that, the discovery. So this was one of the criticisms folks were making of the UFC. And after this weekend, I don't want to do this a lot. In fact, I don't even know what the right answer is because, to your point, they wanted to get Chris Curtis on there, but they would have had to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to do that. So there's a cost either way, but the UFC, they go to, they typically go to more established States in terms of their commissions or at least long standing ones, California, Nevada, that kind of a thing. And they require even independent of state, a certain battery of

medical tests that regional promoters either don't or the commissions in these like backward states don't. So these guys just go into the cage with like very little medical oversight. And it wasn't until you had to do a fuller battery of tests that they discovered it. So the argument would be, BC, they should have done somebody who was already on the roster who's been competing regularly because they've already got all those medical screenings. You pull these dudes up from the regional show, you just don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how fair that is.

Was his name Josiah Harrell? Josiah Harrell, yeah. Yeah, and Dana did say that Val Woodburn, who came in last minute to fight Nico, will get another fight because he did it. I hope, obviously health-wise, that Harold bounces back here luke and if he's healthy and cleared to fight eventually that he gets an opportunity for being willing to do this i mean they that guy just signed out of nowhere and just showed up and yeah there you go okay

all right you're desperate to get to bc's feces so let's just do it right now my friend show me your shit wow uh luke i scoured the globe yesterday uh for the uh good the bad the ugly the highs the lows the in-betweens and combat sports and beyond i can't claim this is as strong as friday's you know all-time great one was because i robbed peter to play pay paul as you say and and cross streams there to make that batch so dynamic across the streams but. But this is the shit we got. It's BC's Feast. Oh. Okay, Luke. Before I throw this video, because UFC 290 in Vegas, that's how we always start off.

I want to play one more time that interaction between Izzy and DDP, Luke. Not to jump on anybody. I thought Bronstetter did kind of give a nice, fresh perspective of it. But I do have one key question I'm going to hit you up with. Let's go back one more time. We're fine. Relax, relax, relax. This is my African brother right here.

Let's go, nigga. What's up, bitch? Let's go, nigga. Yeah, nigga. What's up, nigga? Get this shit up. What the fuck you gonna do, nigga? Yeah, my African brother. Yeah, my African brother. What's up, nigga? Get this shit up. What the fuck you gonna do, nigga? Yeah, my African brother. Yeah, my African brother. What's up, nigga?

I'm African, but I ain't no brother of your son. You my nigga. Let's go. You my nigga for real. So what are you saying to everybody in New Zealand? What are you saying? I'll tell you one thing. Yo, I don't need a DNA test. I don't need a 36 and me to know where I'm from. If I do a 26 and me to know where I'm from. If I do a 26 and me, those have from Nigeria.

Do a 26 and me DNA test. It'll tell you where you're from. I will show you where you're from. Luke, I want to give you an intervention but a chance to defend yourself because our fan base is not completely happy to you. They did assault my DMs and accuse me of not... You mean our right wing fan base doesn't like the fact that i found it hilarious yes of not putting my foot down after you said

hey look man is he was drunk that was kind of funny i did think aaron really kind of connected us to to some levels of look we can't we're not from africa luke we're not a black man in this situation but look that was distasteful as shit luke it was i don't like that look for this promotion yeah i mean i'm not he was up there drunk calling a white guy the n-word i mean this is hardly the behavior of someone you know um that you like you know this is not what children should be emulating i understand it's just like this is what i don't understand like are people gonna really sit there and say you found it distasteful fair no argument you found it unfunny fair fine no i'm not okay you were offended i mean please be serious like no

one was actually offended by that other than perhaps like the off-puttingness of it but that he was calling a white guy the n-word like this you got i thought i thought this was the crowd that didn't clutch their pearls and now they're clutching pearls so which is a comeback i mean you gotta love the ufc's twitter account and you're like we're not gonna bleep that out we're just i know dude i was about to say i thought for sure you they were about to bleep it and they didn't here's what i have to ask if i'm gonna play the intermediator for these fans whether they storm the capital or not luke i'll say this their was if this, and it's easy to make this counter argument, but if that was a white

guy talking about somebody who was born in our country, but is from a different country and said, you know, 23 and me, you're not, you know, you're not really of this. Go back and trace your origin. That's racist as shit, Luke. Isn't that what just happened? That's why I think there's a really bad look altogether that we even would have this debate but people are saying because you dick ride izzy you can't be subjective and i wanted to understand the argument so if someone was okay so let's see if i understand this they're saying the equivalent would be if let's say a white guy here was was

like hey hispanic man because you're even if you were born here because of your family origins right which is all bullshit uh and in so many ways anyway luke but what if that happened in a ufc cage you'd be like i still don't i just don't understand it because how would the white guy be the one spitting the racial epithets in this context okay what if a white guy born in the u.s looked at someone from any other culture but were born in the u.s and said because you're from a different culture even though everyone in the u.s unless you yeah but izzy doesn't say dude izzy has been very clear he said this on aerial show i saw it he didn't in fact here's what he said i thought it's actually a pretty good response which was he didn't say that he cared that that guy is african of course he is african the fucking guy was born and lived there

like just there's no way to take Africa from Dricus Duplicy. That is, that is inextricably linked. Rather that he had asserted himself as this, uh, the authentic, uh, representative that, that, that, that this actually began with him. And it's like, uh, the point he had made was if, if let's say Dricus had done this, Dricus had said, I look up to Francis and what Kamaru has done and what Izzy has done. And I want to join them in the pantheon of those who have made Africa great. Because, again, you could get an Arab guy from the north.

You could get an Egyptian. You could get a Moroccan. And they would be able to have the same claim as being someone who represents the African continent. So you could get all different kinds of looks it was rather that he was the authentic one and the other ones were pretenders because they're not there anymore that is where the central tension comes in true what people said if it was a different race and not your favorite fighter you would have went off differently and i want i guess i guess i'd have to i guess i'd have to see i guess just answer the question i guess i'd have to see the mechanics of what they're particularly uh saying is true i'd have to dig through the racial slurs and figure it out but

yeah it's all either way luke it's gross it's just i don't know it's gross it's gonna win though it's gonna work people are gonna get fired up for the fight let's let's keep going in ufc i mentioned that when volkanovsky left the cage oh he was willing to go nose to nose with toporia let's look at it. Ready? You want to make it happen? Get one ready. That's a big ass cut. Wait till you see what happens, eh? You might be undefeated, but I'm coming for that zero.

Luke, he's coming for that zero. They look not that far apart in size, by the way. No, they don't. And I got to tell you, like, Volk is not intimidated. And Teporia, not intimidated. I got to tell you, like, I don't know, man. People want the Makachev fight to happen. And I'm not, I mean, hey, who's going to sit here and say it's a bad fight?

But that's a poor fight. It's a good one, too. Oh, if they did it in Spain, like you're talking about, and Dana said they found out, he said in the post-fight press conference that they figured out they could do this pretty soon at a really high level. Oh, yeah. If you got that chance, do it then. But I think Makachev is next.

Let's look in on this. Look, we didn't talk about this in the post-fight show. It wasn't, you know, a lot of eyes on this, but Tetsura Taira on that preliminary card, it looked like he kind of threw 12 to 6 elbows, and it looked like Herb Dean was coaching him on how not to get DQ'd. What is your take on this scenario? Right from being in an advantageous position. That's not illegal. That's not illegal.

He's got enough of tough scenario, right? Like what's the line between telling them or making it, how about this? Because remember, I don't think he speaks English, right? So what does the referee do to communicate an important thing about this is legal that's not illegal, but at the same time not get into a territory where it looks like you're coaching them? I don't know.

I always wondered that. I remember from having played youth football one time, Luke, and then from covering a lot of high school games, if a receiver, for example, goes up to the line, they are allowed to check with the official and ask if they're onside before it snaps. So it's like, that's, I always felt like

that's kind of weird. Isn't the official supposed to like, just kind of be a silent watcher and if you screw up, they do it? This is kind of like that. And we have seen that at times where sometimes it's not just warning a guy if you grab the fence again,

but saying like, here's what you can and can't do. Does that help a fight if a referee is kind of being that preemptive? No, because the problem with that analogy, I know what you're talking about. And then if you line up, like, you can ask him, hey, is this formation blah, blah, blah on side? And then if you, you know, they'll say yes. And then if you don't line up in that formation, they'll just throw the flag. And, you know, they're not going to intervene on your behalf. Fair enough.

But, like, football, American football for our European audiences, it stops and starts all the time. The plays last like five seconds, if that. So you have this ability to constantly do that, whereas these fights, they just flow. So you can't just stop the fight and be like, hey, this is a warning or whatever. You kind of just got to throw shit at them in the middle and hope that it sticks.

Again, this is a tough scenario. I don't know what the right answer is. I think he definitely got it wrong, but I will say that that was a tough one. I don't know what you're supposed to do. Luke, we should start talking about flyweight Jesus Santos Aguilar as he needed just 17 seconds to send Shannon Ross to hell. Here's a quick little replay at it. He changes his levels like he's gonna go to the

body guy drops his hand and he just sends him to the land of wind and ghosts that was brutal yeah he's doing the 50k dance somebody give that man a bonus uh denise gomes luke gomez gomes from brazil uh you you spent a lot of time telling the world that Yasmin Hora Guy was the next big thing is that what she is? she's gonna whore a guy? 20 seconds later Luke it seems you were dead wrong brother dead wrong dead wrong on this night

I think that the larger equation has yet to play out she got wrecked she got rocked I mean I can't talk I said DDP had zero chance. Yeah, we both. I mean, listen, we don't know what the fuck we're doing.

If there's been anything that's been clear after 500 episodes, we're just making it up as we go. I love that we get to raise the right white flag of it's just entertainment. Guys, come on. We don't know shit. Look at my betting records. All right. I mean, if you just, honestly, if you watch Howard Egggy, if you watch her, she's still pretty talented, but that was a poor showing if ever there was one.

And Bronstetter brought out a pronunciation that you haven't even attempted yet until right now. No, his was pretty close. His was pretty close. Howdeggy. I think it looks like horror guy. I don't think that's insensitive. Definitely not horror a guy.

I can tell you that. All right. Hey, UFC 290 also gave us some real. Although, Guy Fieri was at UFC 290 and probably giving everyone diarrhea with donkey sauce, you know? Yeah, or Guy Fieri was there. 290 also gave us some really wholesome moments. Let's quickly review. Here's Volkanovski reacting backstage to Dan Hooker's wild victory over the Tarantula.

Love. Dude, this team supports each other like nobody else, Luke. Yeah, they do. I don't know who these donks are back there. They had a lot of live cameras around the country at bars, Luke. That's their new thing, which is whatever. I mean, it works if it's like a track and field in Tajikistan. It works. If it's like a bar and grill in Vegas, it doesn't work.

Seriously. I have to tell you, though, if you pay close attention, like every bar and grill is a sausage fest when they're watching UFC. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like our audience. How about this wholesome moment? We mentioned it. All of the Brazilian fighters, and then in this shot,

you're going to get Charles Oliveira, Glover Teixeira, and especially Gilbert Burns, who was crying. But in addition, I want you to find Jessicaessica or i'm sorry juliana pena and watch that makeup job she's doing during the uh celebration look yeah bottom left corner i see it and here's the announcement yeah look at this love look at this love and oh man that is incredible and there's charles yeah that's look at sugar sean on the back there just nodding his head not Yeah, he's just like. That was big, dude.

It was big. I mean, these guys come from humble beginnings, man. And these are big heights for them. You got to feel good. Well, Luke 290 wasn't the only big combat sports event in Vegas this past week. Yeah, I'm talking about Power Slap 3. And here's all you need to know about Friday's event. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Look at it. You can't break it, baby. Can we play that every single time? Those are the people that send me emails, and I'm just like, I can't believe you haven't won a Darwin Award yet. You know what I'm saying? I just cannot believe it.

The cool thing is, Luke, unlike you, PowerSlam's big in India. Really big, Luke. Real big, right? Real big. The biggest. I mean, what's bigger in India than PowerSlam? Nothing.

All right, Luke, you know I get fired the hell up when real recognizes real. Will I be this fired up when Donald Trump ran into Nelk Boy Steve at the Red Rock Casino? Oh, I love this guy. I love this guy. How are you? Are you OK? You're fantastic.

That's OK. It's just a little bit concerning. Everything is fine, sir. You guys have done such a fantastic job. And this man is the one that introduced us, right? Good guy. That's right. The most loyal best friend in the world.

Yeah, he can do anything. You're the best, so thank you. He was just talking about you when we were walking up here. Thank you, Mr. President. Take care of yourself. We'll do it again, okay? You're gonna be the president again. Okay, well, we better be.

No, you will. The country's in big trouble. Thank you. We're actually in such a... That's a perfect one. It's better than you using it. I think, anyway, I love you, sir. Say hello to the kids, okay?

I will. Thank you very much. You're the man. Meet me over there. You look great. I'll be over there in a minute. You look younger every time I see him. Thank you.

No stories. Look, you know. This guy is under 71 criminal indictments, which, by the way, haven't even gotten to half of the election interference indictments that are coming from Georgia. There's going to be January 6th indictments. I'm not here to talk about your politics, Luke. No, no, neither am I. I just find it hilarious that they're trotting out a guy with this many criminal indictments and everyone is acting like it's not happening. Because if the roles were reversed and the NBA was trotting out some left-wing politician

with 71 criminal indictments, we would never hear the fucking end of it. Well, Luke, I'll just say that every time you meet a celebrity and they're super nice, you always wonder, do they just say that to everybody? It appears Donald Trump just says that to everybody. Steve, you're doing a great job with the Nelk Boys. We love it. Dude, you have no idea who that is, Don. China.

You have no idea. All right. Big moment, though, for Steve there. Let's keep it going, Luke. Is he reunited with UFC 236 opponent Kelvin Gastelum in the crowd on Saturday? And I probably should have put this in the category of wholesome as shit, Luke, because it was. I was a big fan of the show, I was a big'm in that place. Right? That's Bushido, Luke. That's as good as it gets.

Right there. Yeah, that's pretty great. I mean, Izzy has been on a, what do you want to say, BC? Well, except for Drickus, I guess. But with opponents and foes, or former foes, he's been on a reconciliation tour. I mean, the Jon Jones moment was fun, Luke. Look, this was great,

not just because that's my favorite fight of all time or because Gastelum declared, Luke, that it's his time and Izzy agreed. I can get down with that. We'll find out against Shavka. Good Lord. Wow, that's a tough fight. But that moment, dude. See, I love that.

Sometimes you weed through the BS in this game and you can get those good moments. Speaking of real recognizing, real Luke, you're going to love this. Dylan Danis with your guy, Portuguese Ronaldo. Luke, look at this. Look at this. Yeah, that is the Portuguese Ronaldo. That's right. Look at that. I i mean this combines your

two favorite things luke mma and worldwide soccer right this is great can you really associate dylan dennis with mma he's more of a celebrity boxer luke in parking lots but that's fine but speaking of the portuguese ronaldo luke we can now induct him to one of my favorite clubs. Those who work out with gloves and are not afraid to share that with the world, Luke. Look at this specimen. Yeah, I got to get his drugs. I got to figure out what those are. Okay, would you wear gloves?

Lifting gloves if you can get his drugs? True or false? If I had to, sure. Okay. Take that, Phil DeR what i what i choose to no phil derue dunked on me hard when i brought up workout gloves anybody anybody will it's not just me or him anybody will i love coach bam bam uh luke they they caught up with lawrence taylor and they wanted to you know hear his memories about his time in the NFL draft. Let's go back and reminisce. Lawrence Taylor does not remember being drafted by the Giants because he drank 41 Coors Lights that day.

Okay, look, they don't have the video that was linked with this, but LT hilariously recalls the day he was drafted and how when he found out he was like 41 deep uh of course like yeah that's that's something right there and that reminded me that's an american hero right there i mean that's the exact amount that it takes to get you drunk luke no not anymore now it takes 4.1 but i don't really drink anymore now now it takes three margaritas in a live show thank you very much uh luke it's time for dicks in the. Why don't we go off the rails here? Check out this cloud in Poland.

That's full mass, right? That's great. That's a little God. That's gross. Uh, dicks in the wild were spotted on the MMA. Matt Luke,

here's your combination of the week okay what the fuck dude people will do anything for the gram i swear they will you do have to be careful though luke about your your your uh your jewels when you're out in the wild. Check out this wedding photographer. Dude, she's just, what was she doing? Cabbage patch? What the hell was she doing? Yeah, kind of the running man. I think that's, no, that's like the floss with the running man.

I think she was comboing right there. Oh, you're right. The floss thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. floss with the running man. I think she was comboing right there. Oh, you're right. The floss thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. All right. Big week for power bombs, Luke. We saw the one on Friday at that jujitsu event.

Here's one at the pool. Okay. All right. That's a German suplex right there, Luke. That's suplex city. That's a German suplex right there, Luke. That's suplex city. That's a Darwin award. That's what that is. That's the ICU is what that is.

That doubled as your Scorpion of the week. Let's go out to the fire pit, though, to see another power bomb, another physical explosion. Just fucking – I mean, are these rednecks in Brazil or something? What is this? Well, Luke, speaking of my favorite rednecks, you know I now follow and connect with Squirrel Bait on Instagram, Luke, okay? Here's my favorite Squirrel Bait video.

Eat fresh, just the same. Whoa, that's some big gas. Yo, whoever made this needs a raise. Y'all need a raise. Whoever made this needs a raise. Yeah, Tron, you are awesome. I love y'all. This dude.

Big dad. Dude, he's a feral animal you know that right that's a barn cat that's right that guy's the best dude that guy that guy has a barn cat he's got a haircut that looks like he lost a dare and then he goes into subway unwraps the thing, and was like, wow, congratulations to the chef, as he's just blowing marijuana smoke in everyone's face. And then drinks out of the soda fountain. Speaking of Subway, it's better content than that Jared documentary. Look, I'm not watching that, okay? You can't make me watch that. Yeah, well, that's not saying much, because the phone calls that they play are trifling.

I mean, they're all. Hey, how about Larry Nassar getting stabbed, right? Hey, we move on here, Luke. Let's check out this. He did get stabbed. Let's check out this lady's demise. You know, this makes the new meaning to the walk of shame, Luke.

Wow. Caught in the door. Sweatpants in the door. No. No. No. That was on the ground or something. I she she's she got her pants caught in the door i think maybe uh maybe not maybe not well it doesn't matter big country looks like she's

got bigger issues there luke it's time for another groundbreaking performance let's go to the local oh god the big one's gonna fall off the stage yeah oh gosh yeah yeah yeah you knew that was happening look you ever watch women women play volleyball and just imagine what it'd be like if one of the players turned around and grabbed your package no oh okay well let's watch this guy. Look. You're right. Okay. BC, we should just change careers and become volleyball judges.

Oh, skate or die, brother. Let's get out there. Here's a good one. Check out this wizard on the old skateboard. Okay, that was pretty cool. That was real cool. That's the good, Luke, but here's the bad and the ugly at the same time. No, that's the good.

This is the good part. Let me guess. Is he white? I can't tell. Right. Right. is the good part let me guess is he white i can't tell right right well luke he didn't land perfectly but sometimes things do land perfectly uh watch this car accident turn into a uh afternoon vacation look at that luke you think it's real uh i think this was a stupid inclusion all right we don't tend to put doctored videos in here luke but i've got another one of say i didn't chuckle i chuckle you know i mean you didn't make that uh abhorrent joe c joke the other day okay just so you know little joe you made that uh yeah

all right hey luke about the shoebox yeah yeah shoebox greetings right there. You ever wonder why there's weight classes, Luke? Sometimes you'll find out. Let's watch this lady out on the lake. Wait, did she go right through it? Yes, she did. Wow. Dude, these, I mean, yeah worth uh didn't didn't appreciate you know everyone's like hey everybody is beautiful but not everybody is light you ever wonder why they have posted weight limits at campsites luke

because of this yeah sit down bitch chair okay why do you want to play video i don't want anything sweet all right uh two more for you luke let's go over to uh the motorcycle i mean you know safety rules were different in the in the 80s and early 90s when we grew up. I was on the back of my dad's motorcycle all the time, Luke, although he used to put a belt around me and then tie it around his own waist. Kind of harder to do with this dad. Holy shit. I mean, first of all, why is I mean mean, what, the guy is literally hanging on by like, like his back titties.

You know what I mean? Like that's the only thing keeping them there is the fact that this guy's got titties on his back. Okay. I mean, okay. They're called moobs on the male body. Thank you. Finally, Luke, we got one more for you to close.

We've all been here, but you ever been drunk and you have to piss and your balance is off, Luke? Yeah. Okay. You ever done that at a gas station parking lot? Oh, man. Okay. I want to tell you I've never done this. I've done this. Just not in a gas station.

You think that trucker went right back on the road, Luke, or he sat, you know, he wrote in the logbook he took his eight hours off in the back of that cab? You know, given what I've seen from truckers on the highway, I'm going to guess my man went right back into that cab and drove that fucking thing on I-66. That's disrespectful. Gregory D., big MK fan, would never do that. That's your shit for the week, Luke. Hey, there's some good ones. There's some bad ones. There we go.

All right. Big thanks to Aaron Bronsetter for stopping by. You can catch his stuff over at TSN in Canada. I want to remind everyone, Showtime.com is the label that pays. Showtime.com, 30-day free trial. If you'd like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. Let's see.

Morningcombat.store. There's going to be some good stuff for you there. Let's see. Morningcombat at gmail.com. Email the show for Wednesdays, Fan Subs, Fridays, Dead Wrong, all that good stuff. NBC, you got anything else cooking? Nah. Nah, I don't really cook that much.

I believe you. I've got an interview with Moe Jassim that's actually done. We'll get that out probably tomorrow. You mean the one from six months ago, Luke? No, a new one. We had to get a new one. Oh, okay. We had a new one.

Yeah. The other one was no good because the news changed, so we had to get a new one. We have a new one now. All right, so that's good. And, yeah, all that kind of fun stuff. So big thanks to Aaron Bronsetter. Big thanks to Malka.

Big thanks to Showtime. Thanks to Brian Campbell. Thanks to everyone who watched, right? So 4BC, I know with Mikey Morms and the ones and twos, CBS Sports, all that good stuff, the whole family. So we're done for the day. For Brian Campbell, I'm Luke Thomas. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We'll be back on Wednesday. Appreciate you. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal. Yeah. Yeah.