MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 294 Results: Islam Makhachev vs. Alexander Volkanovski 2 | Chimaev-Usman | UFC 294 Reaction Show

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

At UFC 294, Islam Makhachev will face Alexander Volkanovski in a rematch for the UFC lightweight title. In the co-main event, Khamzat Chimaev faces Kamaru Usman for a middleweight title shot. Also on the card is Magomed Ankalaev vs. Johnny Walker, Ikram Aliskerov vs. Warlley Alves, and Said Nurmagomedov vs. Muin Gafurov. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts 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, we're live, Dingleberries. Alright, let me close this off to make sure nothing is going to get reverbed all the way around. But how we doing, folks? How are we doing? It is, let's see, it is 4.17pm East Coast time on the 21st of October, 2023. And ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the UFC 294 post-fight show. This is our reaction show. UFC 294 is in the books and we're going to talk about all of the results. Welcome to the Morning Combat channel. Of course, my name is Luke Thomas. I may have already said that before. I don't even really know. Need you to do me a favor now that you're here, which by the way, I very much appreciate.

Going to need you to hit that subscribe button. It's free. It doesn't cost you nothing. Please go ahead and do that. And of course, if you'd be so kind, give that video a nice thumbs up, right? Tell YouTube you enjoyed this content. I get a lot of nice messages about these post-fight shows, which I really appreciate, but don't just tell me that message. Tell YouTube that message.

Yeah? All right. We have UFC 294 was fucking insane. Wasn't it? Like that was completely crazy in every way. Good, bad, and just weird. What a weird, weird night in Abu Dhabi. If I do say so myself. All right. We got a lot to get to. My name is Luke Thomas for the third time. Um, I have a tweet up right now. You can go to, or X, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Twitter.com. My screen name is the letter LThomasNews.

LThomasNews. I have a thread up there. You can go and put in your question. We'll get to it at the end of the program. Yeah? All right. Let's get this party started, shall we? And we're there. By the way, I'm getting breaking news here from my producer, the intrepid Mikey Mormyle, who says that Megan O'Leary just said Hamzat thinks he

broke his right hand in the first round. We'll talk about the Hamzat fight obviously here in just a minute, but one last thing. Of course, there's going to be spoilers. We're going to talk about nothing but the results, okay? Okay. So let's get to these results. UFC 294. I mean, what a night. What a night. This took place at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. That's a relevant data point for the Johnny Walker fight, which we'll also come back to. Which, by the way, was also completely, what's the word I'm looking for? Bat shit insane. Anyway, alright, let's start with that main event, which was crazy, but in a better and more understandable way.

Islam Makachev retains his title, defeating Alexander Volkanovski via head kick KO. There were subsequent punches at 306 of round number one. Yeah, folks, let's be very clear about this. There isn't a, I mean, maybe you could say Habib, but among active fighters anywhere in the world, there is not one of them who can beat Islam Makhachev on 12 days notice. You had arguably the pound for pound best guy or number two at worst, get a second crack at it, a second crack at it, all being on 12 days notice. And he got his ass handed to him. I mean, he got wrecked. Right? So I don't, I'm not saying that other 155ers can't beat him or that they

won't beat him although I don't I think it's gonna be a while before that happens there ain't no one beating him on 12 days notice you cannot handicap yourself that much against a guy that good and expect to win I know that Volkanovski who of course is quite literally still a champion, might be the best to ever do it at 145. I realize that we all have great respect for his abilities. If he's getting washed like that inside of four but nearly three minutes, I mean, it's hopeless for the rest of them.

Put some respect on Islam Makachev's name. Everyone who thought that that first fight was very close, again, I do recognize in real time it was competitive, and I do recognize in real time scoring is difficult. The way in which we do scoring is designed to be maximally efficient, not designed to be maximally correct. And so for that reason, I understand some of the narratives. But a closer inspection, I think, after the fact, pretty clearly shows you

Makachev easily has three of those rounds. I think very clearly has four of them. You could give the fifth one to Volkanovski, and that's it. It was competitive, but the idea that that was a fight you could swing in Volkanovski's direction, there's just really not strong evidence for that. There's not. I'm sorry. There's not.

And again, I don't think you got the very best of Volkanovski tonight. I mean, from a physical standpoint, I know he was not at 145. He was at 155. And I know he made weight. But he looked a little loose with his skin today a little bit. And again, I hope everyone understands I'm not body shaming. That's the last thing I'm doing. But when you see pro fighters, pro athletes, their body fat count is usually very low, especially at the 155 and below weight class.

That's not entirely true. Obviously, there are some exceptions, but at the championship level, they're not leaving a lot of fat on there. You can see he visibly looked a little less ready to go, which is understandable, having had surgery recently and then backing that up, going to 155 and then having a 12-day camp. Yeah, of course, you're not going to look your best. I mean, that's understandable. But nevertheless, he did look that way. He did not look like his best physical self. Now, as for the fight itself,

again, there's only three minutes of it. There's not much to go to. The basic story is this. You saw Makachev land some great body kicks. Obviously, a guy like Volkanovsky going back to the first fight, right? A lot of what he was doing was starting in orthodox and then taking a step and then switching to land this right hand, the right hook coming on that side, right? So he would switch and then throw. You didn't see a whole lot of that this time, only because there was really no need for him to do that, or at least we didn't have time anyway to see it. We just didn't see it.

But the body kick was landing. Some of the leg kicks were landing for Makachev, which they had landed pretty well in the first fight too, not quite to this extent. He threw a head kick earlier. It didn't quite go, but eventually he gets him backed up close to the fence line and he throws a head kick. And the way he sets it up is that you can't really tell where it's going. So what ends up happening is you can see that Volkanovski has a hand up, or I should say it's this side, right? Volkanovski has a hand up. So I should say it's this side, right? Volkanovski has a hand up. So that part he got right.

But the thing about it is he doesn't know clearly where to put his defense. And the kick is not aiming for the jaw like a punch would. It's not even aiming for the ear line. Makachev knows he's going to have to be fairly precise with the placement of the kick. And so he's going to aim it for the crown. The crown is kind of where the sort of two different hairlines meet, right here, right? So if you're in the Marine Corps, you don't wear a cover like a hat. You wear a cover straight onto the crown of the head, right here, this part, yeah? Again, kind of where the hairline meets the forehead. He aims for the crown, and because the way it looks like Makachev's throwing,

you can't quite tell if you're going to have to bring it down to go to the body or raise it up. The location is kind of hard to interpret based on the way the setup looks, right? That's the whole goal. The setup looks the same. The execution ends up being different in placement. And so he gets hit because he doesn't know where to go with it.

It just kind of keeps it here, which is respectable, but it still leaves all this space essentially right over here on the crown of the head. And he hit him there. He hit him there. So he set up this, I'm going to go to the middle. I'm going to go to the leg. I'm going to go to the middle, go to the high a little bit, right? But sort of keep at with the misdirection, make the setups look the same, and then place it a little bit different at the end. And that's what he did. He went right over the top of the guard, dropped him, finished him off with a series of devastating punches, although he was pretty much done by that point. Anyway, oh, I forgot this part. Hold on, let me do this one. Here we go. There we go. Much better.

And so that's that. A couple of other notes from the fight itself. There was a takedown attempt in the middle of the cage, which Volkanovski did a very good job to stuff, and even talked to Makachev and saying, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, which was nice, but of course, you know, the very best fighters, and you saw this with Chermayev a little bit as well, they just want to make contact with you.

So he gets stuffed, but he's able to then, I think, underhook his way by essentially just, not quite fully picking up, but kind of lifting the weight up a little bit of Volkanovski, and then just walks him back into the fence there. Now, from there, I thought Volkanovski did a pretty good job to defend himself. He didn't get thrown. There wasn't a throw attempt. But one thing you saw Makachev go back to in that circumstance, which is something he didn't do quite well enough in the first time, but you thought, you know, given a second opportunity, you thought that he might was the clinch, right?

The tie clinch. Right? There's a height differential, right? Volkanovski is very low, so you would imagine any kind of uppercuts, knees, or linear attacks up the middle, especially with open stance, those are going to be, or, you know, your straight punches off of your, depending on your foot placement, you know, going in those, those are going to be very devastating under those conditions, right? Or at least they can be, statistically speaking.

And so you saw, once they were clinched up, getting back to that for just a second, there's a height differential, right? Going back to that. You saw them kind of wrestle for position a little bit. And Volkanovsky doing a good job getting the underhook turning getting his head underneath the head right underneath the head of Islam and then pushing it up with his own forehead and that ended up neutralizing a fair bit of what was happening there but then you would see Makachev kind of return for position continue to turn sometimes just off of an overhook, but either way, then he would grab behind the head.

And, you know, if you've never been put in one, one of the things that they're trying to do to you is they're trying to shove their forearm essentially into your clavicle, and then they're going to pull on the crown of your head down as they push up. So it's this thing where, you know, they could be pulling very substantially downward, but you can't always just kind of put your face forward. One, you might get hit, and two, they could actually be stopping you or making it difficult with the pin of the clavicle. Again, it depends on the kind of one that they're doing.

But the point being is it controls your posture that way. You saw some knees. Not all of them got through to Volkanovski's face, but several got through to the body. Several got through upstairs. The point I'm trying to make was, in the grappling context, for the little amount of information that we got from a three-minute and six-second fight, it seemed like we got a continuation of the first one.

What was the big lesson from the first fight? The big lesson from the first fight, of course, was that Volkanovski's defensive grappling was much better than we thought it was, right? At least, you know, in that first fight, certainly, you know, relative to expectations that he was going to do much, much better. And I thought here he did pretty well as well. He didn't get thrown. He didn't get taken down in the middle. I'll look at the stats here in just a second. He neutralized a lot of the clinch, not completely. He obviously got a little bit, more than a little bit, he got touched up several times in that space. But in general, you know, he wasn't the one on his back suffering, you know, like the first round between Kamaru and Chimaev. There was none of that. So I thought they were still a pretty good job in that sense. There was some good disengagement. But the

other big lesson of the first fight was that Makachev had really overperformed relative to expectations in the striking. And that picked up here again as well. Makachev, to me, looked smooth on the feet. Shouts to Jack Slack. There was one punch he noticed from the first fight where a lot of the stuff that Makachev does,

he'll throw linear stuff and then he'll hook later. And you can see what he does. Again, the setups all look the same. So it's hard to tell what's coming. It looks like he's going to throw a jab. And when the parry comes down, he actually hooks it at the very end. He changes direction at the last minute. And then comes over the top and he popped Volkanovski with it in the first fight and in this fight.

And in this fight. He was active with the kicks. As I mentioned, he was strong in the clinch landing good strikes in the clinch he was just you could see that there were places where volkanovsky could thwart stop slow down some of the attacks but like what was the most meaningful strike that volkanovsky landed i mean did he land like a couple of leg kicks or something like he landed almost nothing he landed almost nothing in this fight you know what i mean this was all essentially islam at least in terms of the striking so with that being said let's

pull up some of these numbers i gotta see this yeah yeah okay volkanovsky uh attempted 18 total strikes, landed 11. He only landed four of six significant strikes. God damn. I mean, he got run over. He got run over. They credit Volkanovski with 49 seconds of control time. A lot of that's going to be some of that jockeying for position along the fence. So control time would not just be in a superior position

top to bottom, but if you are pressing someone into the cage and they really can't extricate themselves, Fightmetric will count that as well. They give Makachev just 19 seconds of control time. They credit him with 0 of 1 takedown attempts. That's right. However, 39 of 46 significant strikes, 24 of, excuse me, 39 of 46 total strikes, 24 of 29 significant strikes, and they credit him with a knockdown. I want to look at the targeting relative to the first fight. Again, you got much more data in the first fight, so it's going to be, you know, a little different. By the way, Makachev landing only 70 significant strikes in the first fight. He landed 24 just in this one.

So he had five rounds. He had 70, just one. He had 25 in this one. So he was busier. Let's see, how many did he throw in the first round? 14 of, excuse me, 18 of 25. And in this one, 39 of 46. Now, a lot of that, all those finishing shots on the ground, but even then, how many of those are seven or eight? You still have much more you'd still have much more so a much busier uh more calculating and not busier so much from range but busier in the at range at times in the clinch any kind of offensive position he was much busier but let's look at the targeting so the targeting in this fight again we don't have as much data. Targeting. So this is where Islam was targeting. Head, body, leg. Yeah. 54% to the head, 37% to the body, just 8% to the leg. So he was touching it,

but not a whole lot. Volkanovski never targeted the head once. By the way, 25% to the body and 75% to the leg. Yeah, that's just not going to be enough. Okay. That was the first fight. First fight, 54-37-8, right? Or this is the second fight. No, sorry, that's this one. I apologize. Tonight, 54-37-8 for Makachev. 54-37-8. For the first fight, 63-31-5.

So the leg still doesn't mean as much, but he definitely dialed down the head attacks and went more to the body. And then let's see with the leg. How many of those to the head? Yeah, yeah. Volkanovsky only attempted one strike to the head attacks and went more to the body. And then let's see with the leg, how many of those to the head? Yeah. Yeah. Volkanovski only attempted one strike to the head and he missed. One strike to the body, which he got three or four to the leg and that's it. In the clinch, eight of nine for Makachev, just one for Volkanovski. There's a big difference. How many did he get in the clinch on the first fight? In the clinch on the first fight, 12 of 13 over the

course of five rounds. So the most he had in any round in the clinch was round two, six of seven, this time eight of nine. Again, these are not enormous differences, but I think the little pieces added up together, targeting head less, going to the body more, attacking more in the clinch, taking advantage of that height differential, taking advantage of the strength from that position, you know, changing up the targeting ultimately in terms of the head body and then, excuse me, the body leg and then head, as we talked about, making him transfer defense and then not knowing where to put it. All of those things made a huge difference. And I want to say something too, right? Like all these people who've been talking about

how Makachev had an easy run to the title. Listen, you can look at his resume. Now, not all of those fights are his fault. Like, you know, guys fell out and he had to fight Bobby Green or whatever, right? Tiago Moises wasn't the most, you know, credentialed candidate in terms of contenders he could have fought.

All of those things are true. Dude, put some respect on Islam Makhachev's name. It's time. Like Birdman walking in to the studio with DJ Envy and Charlamagne the God taking off his glasses

and saying, put some respect on my motherfucking name. That's what that talk that Birdman had with the Breakfast Club, off his glasses and saying, put some respect on my mother fucking name. Right? That's what, that's what, that's what, that talk that Birdman had with the Breakfast Club, that's the talk that Islam needs to have with MMA. Because I saw nothing but Islam slander on social media all week from the fan base and how happy everyone was when Volkanovski was going to be double champion. Dude, I mean, everybody likes Volkanovski.

There's nothing wrong, I think, with cheering. You can cheer and dislike who you, all that's upanovski. There's nothing wrong. I think you can cheer and dislike who you, all that's up to you. All that's up to you. But like the way in which people have presented him as some kind of fraud, as some kind of benefit of, you know, the Nurmagomedov machine just propping him up when there was really nothing there. Get the fuck out of here. He beat Volkanovski. I'm going to argue cleanly the first time, finishes him off the second time, and I don't want to hear any fucking excuses. I do recognize that 12 days, you didn't get the best Volkanovski. I fully appreciate that fact. But for everyone who's like, well, then he can still do it, you can't walk that back now. You told me affirmatively, and everyone else in the world affirmatively, he was going to win.

If anyone could do it, it was him. I actually believe that if anyone could do it, it'd be him. But there's not a person in the world who can beat this guy on 12 days notice. It's a pipe dream. It's absurd. It's silly. Look at how good he is. Look at how good he is.

Volkanovski did everything. And he has a great team. They did everything possible in the first fight. And I'm sure, given the circumstances for this one, to ready themselves. And I do think they had a lot of interesting answers in the grappling department for as much as we saw. But this idea that Makachev is some guy who keeps just skating by, who's not proving his worth. I mean, it's fucking time to retire that. And I know what everyone says, oh, but he has this relationship with Ramzan Kadyrov. Guys, you don't say shit about the other dudes who do that who you like. So I really don't give a fuck about it.

I mean, I care about that. I understand that. But when you list that as a reason to dislike Makachev, and it's not applied in several other cases, it's hard for me to take that seriously as a reason to dislike Makachev and it's not applied in several other cases it's hard for me to take that seriously as like a genuine critique I do admit that his run to the title was not as strenuous as it should have been given the way it all played out but look at what has happened since that time he is clearly clearly still getting better everywhere, in particular on the feet. He looked to be in tremendous physical condition, right? Again, for what we saw, we didn't really test his gas tank, so I can't declare that to you.

I don't know that for sure. But he at least appeared to be in excellent physical condition. And the sharpness of his counter-striking, the sharpness, the accuracy of his strikes, the shot selection, right? The ability to camouflage and disguise setups such that it makes regulating your own defense a very difficult, if not impossible choice. If it's even fooling Volkanovsky, who else is it going to fool? It is time to recognize this dude. Whether he's as good as Habib, I don't know. And do I think he's as funny and as charismatic as Habib?

Quite obviously not, right? Not many guys are. And Islam is not. He is not that guy. But he is extremely good. And he's not just extremely good because he can wrestle and put submissions together and can pin and has Turks and rides and the Dagestani handcuffs and all that stuff.

He's got those. Look at what he's got on the feet too. And he's what, 32? This is like the peak of his powers. He took the last game plan, tweaked it up a little bit. Granted, he didn't get the very best his opponent had to offer, as I'm willing to admit. And then completely ran him over.

Right? Remember what happened when Shogun fought Machida? Everyone was like, oh, Machida's leg kicks. No, Shogun's leg kicks don't count. They're not counting that. And those should have counted and he didn't win. And then he went in there in the second fight and then just stomped him out. It felt a little bit like that.

Now, that comparison doesn't quite work because Machida won the first one. And the fans were on Shogun's side as like having been wronged. And then he gets a second opportunity and kind of proves them right. If that analogy were to work more appropriately, it would have been Volkanovski who won tonight. But I'm just sort of pointing out a competitive first fight. They do it again and one guy just rolls over the other one. Again, circumstances being what they are, it's time.

It's time to put some... It's time to recognize that you have a... You can debate who's the best pound-for-pound fighter, but it's not hard to make a case for Makachev. And you really have to understand the evolution of his game. He rode what he had at the time he needed it. But these championship fights, these championship opportunities, these very difficult opponents have made him raise his game. And the dudes who he trains with, and obviously the skill that he possesses and the hard work he put in results in this.

Results in this. Where Volkanovski didn't have, turns out in the end, Volkanovski didn't have a prayer. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying that. I wouldn't say that probably about anybody else but it's true in this case. It's true in this case. He didn't have a

prayer against Islam tonight. No flukiness about it, no nothing. Referee didn't get in too early. We don't have to worry about any judges in this particular fight. None of that. He just smoked them. Just like that. Big bank take little bank. 84s and candy paint. Now we should mention a couple of other factors here About who they're supposed to fight ultimately next Well, gets a little dicey, doesn't it? So Volkanovsky says he wants to stay active He got real bold

And had promised that, in fact, he was going to fight this fight and then go fight Ilya Teporia in January. Yeah, no. Uh-uh. Right? You get head kick KO'd in the first round. Let's see, it's October, November, December, January. Commission might let him. I don't know how that's going to work. I'm guessing they're not going to let him. They're going to make him take a break if you get stopped like that. I know he says he's fine, but that's a traumatic shot to your brain.

And so I'm going to guess, based on how the sport typically functions, that what you're going to end up getting is Max Holloway versus Ilya Teporia for the interim title in January instead in Canada, which would make sense given that Max has beaten everybody else but him. Who else would Teporia fight? Max is well-liked in Canada. It's a great fight, but I would be very, very surprised, not totally shocked, but surprised if they slot Volkanovski. And when you get KO'd like that, the commissions are typically going to ask you to take six months.

Not always, but typically. Especially on a high-profile visibility fight like this, the main event of a UFC pay-per-view. So that is probably not going to happen now, in all likelihood. I would suspect that they're going to go with Max Holloway. On the other end, and by the way, let me also say this, the 35-year-old stat, still in play, is it not? One more time about the 35-year-old stat, right? It's not a hard and fast rule. We've seen it broken already. Like, people will break it, but it's a really helpful demarcation line. It just goes to show you your time at the top is very, very, very short. It takes forever

to get good. It takes forever to get through the opposition. You have a very short window of a few years, if you're lucky, and one of the very best in the world, to really make that count. Because once you turn 35, especially when you're taking fights like this on 12 days notice, it's just, you're not going to have the same zip and pop and decision-making skill. The damage is going to add up. And now you're going to go into a fight having been previously KO'd against a guy who's got vicious KO power in Ilya Teporia. Not only do I think that fight's not going to happen in January, I will say I think it gets a lot more intriguing for Teporia's chances. Volk at his best is better than any featherweight I've ever seen. I think most people would say that. Volk at his very best.

But at 35, coming off of a head kick KO, are you still your best? But people are like, oh yeah, everyone can do that. Guys, they're very talented, very courageous people. They're not superhuman. They're not, this is not the Avengers. A lot of people treat them like they're these larger than life figures in terms of what their biology can handle. And they can handle more than the average person. That's true. But they're human. You go into a fight against a heavy, heavy, heavy puncher and kicker in the way that Teporia is. Didn't see all of that during the Josh Hammett fight, but certainly you've, I mean, he looks like he cut Jai Herbert in half with a punch in terms of how he spun him and

lifted him off of his feet. Upper weight class, no less, right? So his power carries upper weight class. You're going to fight that guy, come out with a head kick KO, that one gets a lot more competitive to me. You can only get your chin tapped so many times like that. And Volk's never been fully put out like that, I guess, until today. And even then, he was still sort of with it. But he's been dropped several times. The accumulation of this will have an effect.

So again, I said this to BC on Friday's MK. I think there's a lot of people who were not on the Volk train when he was fighting Mendez, when he was fighting Aldo, when he was fighting Max that got onto the train now. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. The train that you should have been on started then. It looks to me like, I don't know if it's coming to a close, but the best of him is probably over.

Right? Probably? Something like that? That may be a little bit presumptuous. I don't want to declare that to be true, but I have a feeling it might be. Certainly on 155, the door now closes to him for the very foreseeable future. And probably forever. At least in terms of title opportunities. He might be able to luck in terms of timing his way in, in the same way that Kamaru kind of got one at a future date, so you can't affirmatively declare.

But if you lose twice to the champion and you get just absolutely bludgeoned in the second one, it's going to be very, very, very difficult for you to skip the line yet again against other 155ers. So this was a risky one, right? We talked about the risk on this fight, and everyone being like, oh, he's playing with house money.

Get the fuck out of here. No, he's not. No. No, he's not. Now he loses. The 155 days, at least in terms of getting a title shot to become champ champ are almost certainly over. Almost certainly over. Right? Because he might be able to get the 55 belt later, but holding both at the same time, that's almost certainly done with.

Right? That will affect his legacy. I'm sorry to say this. We all like Volk, but these are at the same time, that's almost certainly done with. That will affect his legacy. I'm sorry to say this. We all like Volk, but these are the risks that you run. He's going in having been put out with strikes and going in against a heavy puncher after the age of 35 and heavy striker after the age of 35. Yeah, there's lots of ways where this could turn out real bad and just sort of a cascading effect. Now, again, Volk is extremely talented, historically so. So if he can go in there and put it on Teporia, that's a new lease on life. We shall see. But, you know, when people like a fighter,

they just like to focus on the really positive, affirming storylines around them, which I understand. But I'm inherently negative. And I'm inherently, you know, risk conscious. And I'm always like, oof, you know. People want to pretend there's no costs to trying. There absolutely are. There absolutely can be.

So I give him shit tons of credit for trying this on 12 days notice. I mean, he was trying what I consider to be borderline impossible. Sure enough, it looked like it was. But the athletic courageousness, the belief in himself, salute. You got to give it to him. But Makachev, there is a lack of respect out there. Not so much for Volkanovski and his team, but that lack of respect out there that permeates

everything, that treats him like an afterthought, that makes him be like some lesser version of Khabib or whatever. Khabib couldn't strike like that. I never saw him strike like that. Maybe he didn't need to, but he didn't. He's his own guy. I'm not saying he's better. I'm saying he's his own guy.

Right now now that guy is an absolute handful for anybody at 155 so let's talk about what might be next for makachev the charles olivera fight is still there i think you can run that one back i don't know after a night like tonight one way or the not many people are gonna have watched ufc 294 and then thought to themselves uh oh wow you know charles is gonna have a great shot against this version of islam i mean you might still believe in charles because he is so good, but it's not like Islam looked like shit tonight.

He looked awesome. He looked awesome tonight, right? His shot selection, his camouflage, his location, his accuracy, all of that was like very, very good, right? And you heard what Javier Mendez said too. They hated that there was this narrative out there that Volkanovski had unfinished business with him. They always thought it was the other way around. No, no, no, no, no.

We have unfinished business with you. And in the end, it looks like, you know, Javier and the team over at AK or whatever, the team that Makachev has assembled, were correct. But it could be Charles. Certainly you could do that. I don't think anyone would object. The Justin Gaethje one has picked up some steam. But I got to say, does anyone really kind of... I mean, listen.

Justin Gaethje just head-kick KO Dustin Poirier. Like, you know, he's the BMF champ. He is worthy of respect. He is worthy of being taken seriously. But just given the way in which he kind of crumbled against Oliveira and then also kind of fell apart the way he did against Habib, it just feels like Islam would be able to follow either of those paths. I don't know that slugging it out with Gaethje at length is the best idea,

but do I ultimately think that Islam could get him down and submit him? I do. Of course, whether or not you have confidence in these ideas in no way says you should or shouldn't make them, but I suspect I'm not alone in that. I suspect a lot of people would look at this and be like, yeah, you can probably get it. So I don't know what the UFC will do. I don't know if they're unhappy with Charles about this fight falling through. I don't know, because this whole night was about this fight falling through. I don't know. Because this whole night was weird. You got a one-sided main event.

You got a good but kind of not so good co-main. You had a disaster feature fight. Some of the other ones that opened the card were pretty good. The preliminary card was just a complete clusterfuck. As we used to say, goat rope. I mean a total goat rope. Are they bitter at Oliveira, hypothetically, for not fulfilling this card,

and they had to go to a guy on 12 days who clearly wasn't ready? I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do about that. I think Charles, they might run that back, but the Gaethje one is a fresh matchup for Makhachev, so they could go in that direction too. It's really hard to say. The sort of dark horse one, that's much more interesting to me.

Before it wasn't, now it is, because I don't think there actually is a 155er who can beat Islam. That's not a reason to not defend the title, but I don't personally believe that there is one. I think he is not just better than the rest of the pack. I think he's better by a considerable distance. I didn't love the idea before, but now I'm thinking maybe. Getting the winner of Colby versus Leon. I got to tell you, I don't hate the idea. I hated it before. I don't hate it now. Wouldn't be my first choice. Don't know that I really want to

tie things up that way, but if they went there, I don't know that I really want to tie things up that way but if they went there I don't think that'd be the craziest or most insane thing that they've ever done so man it's back to the drawing board for Volkanovski and his team about that there's simply no doubt not the worst

loss but a pretty bad scenario for a 35 year old fighter even though he's still champion at 145, of course. Best to ever do it, probably, at 145. But that KO loss, setting back that one in January, probably going to have to unify with an interim champion, whoever that ends up being, either Max or Ilya. Now, if Max wins again against Ilya, and there's a fourth fight between Max and Volk, I don't even know what that would mean. I've never even thought about that. So God only knows if we get to a place like that.

But yeah, fantastic night for Islam Makachev. Fantastic night. I left not an ounce of doubt about who's who nothing zero zilch not a lot of fat on that performance huh pretty goddamn good all right let's talk about your co-main event in your co-main hamsat shimayev defeats Kumaru Usman via majority decision. There was one 28-28, which is a draw, and then two 29-27s. Okay. This was a tale of two fights, basically.

There was the Hamzat Shemaev from round one, who, in my mind, won that round 10-8. I don't think that's a 10-9 round. I really don't think you can do that. And then there's rounds two and three, which I'm not sure if Hamzat really won either of those rounds. I do think he did win the third, but it's really close. And so that's where that draw comes from. The draw comes from 10-8 first round for Hamzat. And then you give the subsequent two rounds to Usman. This was way more competitive than I thought it was going to be.

Let's talk about the first round. One-way traffic, 10-8 round, as I mentioned. Hamzat able to capture the back off of a takedown. Not even a great setup. He shot from way outside, but he did it where his timing on it was good. And he had Kamaru close to the fence line, so he was able to use that as a sandwiching mechanism. Was able to get the leg ride and then eventually to the back and then eventually flattened him out on his belly. At times, he stood even, and he got the body lock, and he tried to shake him off,

but even then, even though he slammed Chemayev from his back, there wasn't enough to get him off. He maintained top pressure, had good ground and pound, threatening with submissions, clear 10-8 for Hamzat Shemaev. I mean, he worked Kamaru over.

If fights were one round, you'd be like, well, that guy is going to be the champion. And then the second round came out. And it wasn't like a horrible round. It was a little on the boring side. And Kamaru kind of got back in it a little bit. Let's look at the numbers here for just a second if we can. So in the second round, so round one, in terms of significant strikes, Kamaru landed three.

Three. Hamzat landed 16. He got two takedowns on seven attempts. He's credited with at least one sub-attempt and four minutes and 35 seconds of riding time or control time. Riding time is different. Riding time comes from collegiate wrestling. Every one minute of riding time when a match is over, it counts as a point. But okay, neither here nor there. So then in the second round, Hamzat goes from landing 16

significant strikes to just nine. Kamaru landing 11. Hamzat getting one of one takedown with 41 seconds. That was closer to, I believe, the end of the frame. But it was pretty close, and I thought that on the feet that Usman did slightly better work. Then round three, Kamaru landing 22 to 13 of those strikes and having like a moment where he was pushing Hamzat back, kind of just biting down on the mouthpiece with jabs and hooks. Hamzat is credited with one takedown, which he had two minutes of riding time. He gets no credit for a sub attempt. And he didn't do much ground and pound. And that was why I was like, you know me, I'm not, we'll talk about this later.

I'm not one of these guys who thinks that grappling doesn't matter unless you just score shit tons of damage but even then there's like a question of like who really did more to the other overall uh in a bigger way and I I didn't know I scored it for Chimaev in real time but I can certainly see a case for Kamaru not winning the fight, but certainly getting a draw. And of course, one of the judges did agree. Now, here's where it gets interesting. On the one hand, the first round was an insanely inspiring performance from Chimaev. He was disciplined, he was aggressive, but he wasn't going berserk like he was in the Gilbert Burns fight where he was just over committing to any fucking thing that mattered.

It was much more strategic and calculated even if the pace was urgent. Right? And it wasn't like he fought like shit in the second round. But it's just like everything that made the first round what it was went away. He wasn't really able to get the takedowns. At least he didn't shoot for one very much until the last minute of the second round. In the third round, he got it, but there wasn't heavy ground and pound, even though he was able to pin.

And on the feet, it was kind of back and forth. And maybe you could argue over the course of two rounds and the total striking that happened, maybe you could argue Usman did a little bit better. He was doing well with teeps and some calf kicks. Chemayev doing well with some body kicks that I was getting through. He had a jab on occasion that was nice. These were sort of the main things that they were going to, but it wasn't like Chimaev really put it on him. In fact, like the pace went from like urgent crazy to medium. Third round, medium, except until the

very end or those moments where they were kind of firing back at each other. So I don't know if it was a cardio issue. I don't know. Again, we go back to, Megan O'Leary thinks Chemaev may have broken his hand. That could be a big explainer as well. You know, if he's losing the power on his right hand, and of course he is, you know, standing, I believe he's right-handed, right? Chemaev, is he Orthodox or is he Southpaw? He is Orthodox, yeah.

He switches stance, I know, but anyway. Man, my phone just won't stop. Just won't stop. Good lord. Let's see here. Oh. Yeah, here we go. Oh, nice.

Okay, great. So, I'll just say this. I know he's supposed to get a title shot from this. I think a lot of us thought Kamaru was going to get run over. I'll be honest. I picked Makachev to win. I did bad on the rest of my picks. I picked Makachev to win,

and I picked Chumaev to win, and I think the rest of OK Bet I fucking stunk up the joint. But BC did too, by the way. BC completely fucked it up. So we both had shitty records. But, okay, neither here nor there. I believe, personally, even though Kamaru, I think, overperformed, you know, most of us thought that Shumai was going to come out of this

just running over Kamaru, get the title shot against Shawn, and even be favored. I'm not so sure if he'd be favored against Shawn. I'm not so sure right now. And I also have to say this, too, because I was late to the Drikus Duplicee party. I was very wrong about that, which you all know. But the Drikus Duplicee thing, it's like, dude, of anybody who is even capable of getting a title shot, like you've got Kananir kind of floating out there. I guess Kosta is kind of floating out there. But not really.

But now you've got Shemaev. And you've got Drikus Duplicy. Dude, Drikus Duplicy fought and stopped Robert Whitaker. Man, I've got to tell you. Of anybody who's kind of in the orbit for a title shot. You wouldn't pick it off of one win. But if you're looking at anybody who's up for a title shot, and now you're asking, oops, let me switch.

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And anybody who's up potentially for a title shot, anyone in that orbit, what is their best win? The best win that any of them have is Drickish Duplessy's win over Robert Whitaker. That's the most meaningful. That's the most impactful. That's the most valuable. That's the most telling. Like, that's the best win in terms of a quality opponent, former champion, like, knows the game. And you stopped that guy, I think inside of what,

two rounds, something like that? And you stopped him? It should be him. It should be him. This to me was not the kind of performance that really told me like, oh, Chemayev's going to be a destroyer at 185. I think he could be. He certainly looked like one in the first round. But, you know, again, this was Kamaru Usman off the couch, and he's also basically a welterweight. I got to tell you, I don't really know how much I like this idea of Chemaev getting a title shot or whether we think he's still the bruising marauder at 185.

He looked like it in the first round and then not at all after. He went from all the way yes to not really overnight. With the one minute between round one and round two, it just completely turned. And again, I want to be clear, it wasn't like he looked bad in rounds two or three, but he didn't look world beater. He did not look world beater. He looked fine. He looked fine, basically. Not great. And interestingly, I think this boosts Kamaru Usman's stock a little bit at 185. I don't know that it boosted in a tremendous way. I'm not saying everyone's like, oh, we got to see Kamaru fight for the title soon. I don't think it's quite like that. But I do think that he did himself certainly a favor with the company and he performed well.

He and Gilbert both lost to Hamza, but you could make a case for either of them having won. He's kind of the two good guys he really fought, like really high, high level title contender, title winning guys he fought. Granted, these are good fighters, but he eked it out. He eked it out both times. He didn't, he didn't, he's like, dude, Hamzat Shumayev is like the best first round fighter in like UFC history. In round one, he's fucking terrifying.

Terrifying. And I'm not saying he's like a chump in round two or a chump in round three, that's not. But he's, but that round one guy, one guy, that guy is the grim reaper. Everyone that comes after that is a little bit more manageable. So I guess the UFC is going to give him a title shot just based on the promise and how it all goes. I'm certain that Hamzat will have his way in the grappling. I don't think that's going to be crazy.

I think even Abus Megamedov had some success, albeit relatively brief, against Sean Strickland. So you would imagine Hamzat's going to be able to do that. But dude, Sean can go the distance. No problem. And if this is a question of what he's going to have to deal with striking, it's like, I don't know. problem and if this is a question of like what he's going to have to deal with striking that's like i don't know i was expecting to come out of this being like oh hamza's just gonna lawnmower

the the uh division no didn't look like that not not in any kind of sustained way um but if you broke his right hand and that really explains it and that's really behind why rounds two and round three looked the way they did and that's a behind why rounds 2 and round 3 looked the way they did and that's a little bit different that would be genuinely a mitigating circumstance if that really is the explainer but I guess we'll have to see when he's on he's on

right he's cooking he's cooking with grease but then there's just times where it's like what happened to the rest of that you know I'm trying to see if there's anything else in the scoring. Derek, clearly 29-27. David, letheby. Had the 28s.

And then another donk whose name I cannot remember had it the other way. Let's keep it going here down the list. Man, I don't even know what to fucking say about this. Let me take this off. Right? How about this one? How about this one? Why don't you get up there and subscribe? Huh? Get up there and subscribe.

I'm out here slaving at five in the afternoon. Alright. Magomed Ankhalaev defeats Johnny Walker at 313 of round number one. No, sorry, what am I saying?

Wrong. Fake news. Magamad Onkalayev versus Johnny Walker ends in a no contest at 313 of round number one. Man, what a fucking comedy of errors. There were fouls all over this card. We're going to do a extra credit where I'm going to talk about the whole preliminary card because that was just a clusterfuck times a thousand. But some of that spilled over into this one. So you had the doctor who had a previous issue. What fight was that? That was the fight with Javed Basharat and Victor Henry.

Poor Victor Henry getting absolutely just screwed. But okay. So Ankhalaev looks like he hits Walker with a body shot. Maybe even a liver shot. I have to go back and watch. And you see Walker go like visibly hunch. And so here comes on Kaliav and then Walker tries to greet him with a vertical knee. Uh, it partially lands. I don't think it landed very cleanly. And then, um, you know, a grappling sequence ensues. Ultimately you have

Walker kind of up against the fence on his knee, and he eats a very clearly illegal knee, according to the unified rules. Now, what ends up happening is they bring in the ringside physician after calling time and all the other appropriate steps. The ref was Dave Movaheddy, and what ends up happening is the doctor comes in to check on him. The doctor asks him a series of questions, one of which was, do you know what country you're in right now? Now, I saw people saying, how many people can name where Abu Dhabi is?

Well, guys, I have to tell you, if you get on a plane to go to Abu Dhabi and you have to get your passport stamped and you have to go through customs and explain why you're there to passport control. In fact, I don't know if you need a visa to go to Abu Dhabi as a Brazilian or whatever the nationality that would get him through the door on his passport. I don't even know.

But even if you don't even need a visa and you can just travel there, asking someone as a general rule, what country are you in right now? That's not a geography quiz, right? I'm not asking you to name the third biggest city in Tajikistan or what the capital of Mongolia is. The answer is Yulan Bataar. But neither here nor there. the three longest rivers, not including the Amazon, the Mekong, and, you know, I don't know, the Mississippi or something, right?

Where this is like a final Jeopardy quiz. Asking a fucking guy what country you're in is not some grand imposition, okay? Especially when you have to get documentation to go through. Like, you fly to a fucking place and you don't even know what country you're in like you know unless you've been hit in the head when you're need in a mixed martial arts fight if you can't answer that i mean you're just you're just fucking you're a fucking idiot right like that's that's the only explanation for why you couldn't answer that question unless you've been need in the head which he was now there is a again in this

particular case a mitigating circumstance, which I saw people bring up, which was, yes, Johnny Walker does speak English at what I would consider to be a proficient, not quite fluent level, but he's pretty good with it. He's got good English, is what I would say. But if you're going to have to answer questions from a medical professional, and the answer to those questions hinges on whether or not a fight continues. I saw people saying he should have been given someone who could ask him questions in Portuguese. Yes, I agree with that. I do think that is fair.

I don't think it's fair to be like, oh, of course he doesn't know where Abu Dhabi is. Motherfucker, he's in it. He had to take a plane to get there. How do you not know unless you've been hit in the head but like just the average person how do you not know what fucking country you're in that's a silly ass argument but that you know having to field all of this after you've been hit in the head and in not in your first language i am very sympathetic to that very sympathetic to that they should have gotten someone who spoke Portuguese up there.

They should be able to ask you those questions in whatever your native language is. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. But either Walker didn't give an answer to the questions or he gave the wrong answer to those questions because then there were other questions that were asked. Some of them were hard to hear. The referee turns to the doctor. The doctor says he can't continue. And the ref's like, are you sure? And he says he can't continue. And then he waves it. Now, this doctor, I don't know if he did the right thing in this particular case or not. Because if you're asking a guy questions,

and there's no translator provided, and they're just giving you a glazed over look with no responses i honestly don't know what a medical professional is supposed to do in this case however however right this is the same doctor who told victor henry after he got kicked in the balls so badly that A, he couldn't continue, B, he was vomiting in the back, and then three, had to go get what apparently the broadcast described as a testicular ultrasound. You know, I don't know how much I trust his judgment, to be honest with you. And I don't know who flew him in.

I don't know if I've seen him before or not. Certainly none of us understand medical science in the way that he might, but he might not understand being a ringside physician in the way that high level athletes sort of expect and demand of it. So the fight got called off. They just waived it. And then Walker comes out and he's pushing the referee. The security comes in. Dana White had to get in there and bring some order, get these guys out of the octagon. It was a shit show.

It just seemed to me, man, listen, you had, you had, let's see, let's go through it here very quickly. You had Victoria Dudakova. You had Mohamed Naimov. And you had Mike Breeden three fighters in a row later admit after their fights were over and they were talking to the media

they all admitted that they had staff infection so you had three guys who had staff infection you had or three fighters two guys one girl then you had the whole situation with kimaru's knees you've got whatever the fuck this ringside physician is going on dude again i'm

gonna say it on the prelim card you know i could point to a million of these but abu azaitar clearly and blatantly grabbing the hair of i don't want to say his name wrong, Cedricus Dumas, is how I think they said it? I can't remember. But he fully grabs Dumas' hair and just gets a warning for it. You know, and there were a series of instances of a bunch of fouls where people got warned and a point wasn't taken. This happened over and over and

over and over again. Not to say, also to say on the prelim card, in the case of Shara Bullitt, Magomedov defeating Bruno Silva, getting a 30-27, and everyone's like, oh, he did more damage in the third round. Yeah, he didn't though, right? He didn't. I mean, there were some standing two ground shots that Bruno Silva landed, so some of

the judging was a little bit weird. The folks in charge of the commission tonight, and listen, there's good folks there, referee Jason Herzog certainly being one of them, but they got overwhelmed tonight. They got overwhelmed tonight. That ringside physician, I don't know. Again, I want to be very clear on this fight between Ankaliev and Walker. I don't know if he did the right thing, but there certainly are a lot of unanswered questions about what the proper protocol should be in a situation like this. And then everything else aforementioned that we had to go through with this doctor doing that to Victor Henry, the weird judging at times,

the reffing not in any way doing anything about guys fouling. It was not a strong night for commission representation this evening. But there is one more point that must be made in a fight like this, and it's something that I say all the time, and I really hope people are listening now when you see this. Folks were asking about certain scenarios where guys are trying to go to a knees to the head of a downed opponent and the ref is kind of having difficulty explaining when someone is down versus not in real time to the combatants. Guys, the unified rules are not as good as one's rules. You can be whatever MMA fan you want.

You can like UFC more. Fine. I'm not arguing any of that. But if you're just looking at rule sets. The rule about knees to the head of a downed opponent. Whether it's a hand. Two hands. Knees.

Three points of contact. Whatever. It fucking sucks. It sucks. It's not good. It's not clarifying. It's not good it's not clarifying it's not helpful and i genuinely don't understand why people can't understand this i i'm not one of these guys who just wants to make damage easier in order to make the rules smoother and easier to interpret it does have that benefit but you can

get to some bad places if you're just trying to do that. If you're just trying to make the rules, make the fight go smoother because anything's allowed, you can get to some dark places. But this, to me, is not one of those cases. This, to me, is clearly having your knees down as defined by, or having a downed opponent as defined by the unified rules and what you're allowed to do in that circumstance, it just creates nonsense.

It doesn't make for a better fight. It doesn't make for, I think, healthier outcomes on balance. It's just silly. There has to be a better way to do it. And the good news is we know there's a better way to do it. One's rule set is better. It's just matter-of-factly better. Not just for this reason,

but among others, this one in particular would be a big one. There should be much more allowance of knees to the head of a downed opponent. There are circumstances where you don't want to allow it, but there are so many that we find ourselves in that are, I think, relatively easy to legislate that we should get ourselves to. So now, I said this before, Jon Jones hasn't fought since February of 2020. We still don't have a number one contender in this division. We don't even have a fucking champion in this division. Of course, we did, and they got injured, and another one got it, and then got injured. I understand. But there's still no one who has brought order to 205 since Jon Jones

left the division. It's gone up, it's gone down and there's nothing wrong with parity per se, but no one has a grip on that division quite like he did when he had it. Alright. Not much to say about this, but it was rad. Ikram Alaskerov just fucking runs over Worley Alves at 207 with a TKO knee.

Drops him with a jab. He gets up. There's a, I think, I forget, there's action that pushes Alves to the fence. He does a switch knee, just crushes him and finishes him off. Ikram Alaskerov, how old is this guy? Alaskerov is 30. Perfect timing. Boy, all of a sudden, there's some movement at 185, right? Here comes Drikus Duplicy. Sean Strickland is now your champion. I don't know how inspiring Hamzat was tonight. Again, for all the

things that could have gone wrong with his hand, whatever. But he's certainly up there as well. Bo Nichols kind of still in the back of the pack, but you know, probably not too far away. And now here's Ikram Alaskarov. Man, all of a sudden, there's a massive turnover happening at 185. Probably good for the division to happen that way. You can't be giving this guy, this dude, guys who are not ranked.

Can't be doing that. And I know that they tried. I know that they tried. They tried with Paulo Costa. It fell through. Then they gave him Nasurdin Imavov. That fell through. And so Varley Alves, Worley Alves was a, you know, he was a late replacement as well. Three late replacements on this main card. Kind of crazy. But you can't be giving this guy, anybody who's not ranked, it's not fair to those dudes,

right? He should be fighting guys that are ranked. I respect Alves for getting in there. I really do. But completely overmatched. Completely overmatched. So I don't have much to say about this because the guy only fought for two minutes and seven seconds. But he desperately needs somebody who is a top 15 ranked contender. Because he's going to be fighting for a title eventually i don't i you know i don't know if he's going to win you know that part

remains a little bit unclear but like yeah yeah he's going to be in number one contender fights like that's the kind of talent he has so we need to put him in fights that are more he's more appropriately suited for uh and then you have saeed numbermagomedov defeating Muin Ghaffarov, who basically just overcommitted into, they called it a guillotine choke. I want to remind folks, if you are sinking the arm underneath and you have a bicep grip on the guillotine, they call that a ninja choke. But years ago, when it was taught to your boy, who's now old and gray,

they called it a power guillotine. If I call it a power to your boy, who's now old and gray, they called it a Power Guillotine. If I call it a Power Guillotine, it's okay for me to do that. I want you guys to know that. It's totally okay. But if you want to call it a Ninja Choke, that's cool too. Anyway, Ninja Choke, Power Guillotine, whatever. It hits him with the bicep grip, which is just an extremely powerful grip.

And finishes him off. No problem. So the Knights started out well on the main card with Nurmagomedov and Alaskerov getting quick wins and then it just kind of went in weird directions after it and before it obviously we'll talk about

this more on on what you call it on extra credit but Mohamed Mokhaev had a great night Trevor Peek that was a terrible fight. Javed Basharat, Victor Henry, I mean, oh my god, what the fuck was that? We talked about the

Dumas and Azaitar fight, Mike Breeden and Anshul Jubilee. What happened to Jubilee? I don't know. I don't know. Just, a guy started barking at him and he froze. Mohamed Naimov defeating Nathaniel Wood. Victoria Dudakova defeating Jin Yu Frey before she had missed weight and so had Mike Breeden

and then Shara Magomedov. He looked pretty good for the most part against Bruno Silva. All right, let's take a look at your questions. Let's see what we got there and let's see if we can answer them because this has been just absolute craziness the whole way through.

By the way, one more time. I mean, why aren't you subscribing? You should just be subscribing. You know what I'm saying? All right. While I pull up these answers, let's see. Ready questions. Okay, good question.

How do you rate the AKA Nurmagomedov team historically? Pretty fucking good. Not only do they win consistently at the highest level, but their fighters have influenced the overall style of MMA, grappling with fence wrestling, mat returns, and ground and pound. Incredibly successful. Yeah, dude. Absolutely great point.

Again, this is more of a mix of two different teams in the ways he indicated. It's a little bit of AKA. It's a little bit of Nurmagomedov team. But together, this is how of a mix of two different teams in the ways he indicated. It's a little bit of AKA. It's a little bit of Nurmagomedov team. But together, this is how it works, right? There's always a group or a person or some kind of coaching team or whatever that have advanced skills relative to the pack. They're able to use that,

and then they teach the rest of the world how to fight that way. They, over time, lose that advantage, but then someone else does some other kind of advantage, and then the sort of situation repeats itself. They have sick athletes, they have ridiculous training, they have ridiculous motivation, they have excellent coaching, they have world-class prep, and they have a vision of the game that's just ahead of what most people in the rest of the sport have to offer, you know, very

clearly. All right. and the rest of the sport have to offer. Very clearly. Alright. You posed the question, if Volk has to heal and Featherweight makes an interim of Holloway and Teporia and the torch is passed, fine. But if Max wins, you just dangled it out there, would Volk even be like, hell no,

and vacate and go 1-55? I don't know, but if you're Max, you probably want a fourth fight. If you're Volk, do you want a fourth fight with Max? I doubt it. Let's see. Was the ending of Uncle Ive Walker? We talked about that.

Abu Dhabi Doctors, we talked about that. I think people are going to be too depressed for this one, Luke. Okay, why is everyone so depressed? You got to witness a good fighter. Oh, he's not as funny as the last one. All right. Oh, he takes money from Kadyrov, like the last one, which people don't care about.

When Justin Gaethje does it, or Henry Cejudo, or Kamar Usman, no one brought it up with Kamar Usman. He did the same thing. Or with his kid, anyway. We're just going to bring it up for Islam? You're going to bring it up. You've got to bring it up for everybody.

And I think you should, but nobody seems to do that. So I don't quite get it. The staff infections. I mean, this card was held together with like paperclips and gonorrhea. I mean, like three people fighting with staff. That's a bad idea to fight with staff. You like, three people fighting with staff. That's a bad idea to fight with staff. You know, other people could get it. You could worsen it.

Like, it's not the best idea. But they did. They did. BC's vibes. Excuse me. BC's vibe picks are legendary. Char volk i need him to pick john awful vibes yeah i mean again the overall picture of okay bed bc and i are just absolutely the sorriest fuckers on earth but on like you know the big main events he had charlo who just shat

the bed against canelo and then he had you know again everyone loved the romance of Volk's story and I did too you know like hey this guy's gonna come off the couch and fight and settle the score and like it sounded it's yeah it sounded great it sounded great but that's just not the case. Do you think Bo Nickel would ragdoll Hamzat? I don't know, but if I had any curiosity around that way before, it went into overdrive now. I really want to see

what's next for Bo Nickel. You know, on a pure wrestling, yeah, but MMA wrestling is different, and obviously MMA in general is different. There's lots of ways where Bo Nickel could get tripped up. But now I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Again, with the Hamza thing in his hand, we'll have to see.

Paul says, I'm a big Toporia and Volk fan from Montreal. If it's still going to be the main event, I may go to the Toronto show. However, after tonight, I'm not sure how good of an idea it would be for Volk to turn around so quickly. Yeah, dude. It would be a bad idea. It would be a bad idea. The commission probably won't allow it anyway. How did Usman's knees look to you? They looked

okay. They didn't look great. He didn't have a ton of spring. He threatened those reaching singles. Did you notice that? He would threaten, like where he puts like two hands like this. He threatened the reaching singles, but he never went for them. So I think his knees probably are toast, but not like injured in

that way where he can't move or something like he can still move around he just can't he can't explode off of him you know what's your view on usman regretting turning down five rounds yeah i mean hindsight's 2020 i would have bet on three as well. You know. How did not Walker get that win? 100% intentional knee. It's an intentional knee. It's not an intentional foul. That's the difference.

Right? According to the referee. Yeah. You know, the knee was intended to land. Was that a foul intended in motivation. How many pay-per-view buys do you think this did? Probably pretty well. There's a big crowd online tonight.

I think there's a big crowd. Was this as awful a card as I currently believe it was? I'm giving it a 3 out of 10, Lee and Taiwan. No. Okay, prelim card, 3 out of 10. Main card, I give it a 6 or 7. 6 or 7. Six or seven. Six maybe is better. Let's see.

As soon as I saw their stances and Islam throw that body kick, I got flashbacks to the Shevchenko versus I. That's a little bit different because I was bearing down on Shevchenko, which is not the same thing, but yes. Do you think the Shamayev-Usman fight should have been a five-rounder? It's hard to ask someone on 12 days notice to fight five rounds. In retrospect, yes, but it's hard to ask that in real time. All right, let me see if there's anything else that I may have forgotten to check. I think that's about it for me. So stay tuned, folks, because we're going to get a very good episode of, a really good episode of Extra Credit. There might be some stuff on my personal channel as well, youtube.com slash Luke Thomas.

There's a plug. Go ahead and subscribe if you can. And, yeah, what a weird, bizarre, kind of strange, pretty good evening, but strange and bizarre, I think, is a great way to put it. And And yeah, all right, we're done. Thank you guys so much for watching. Stay tuned to Morning Combat. Until next time, get some sleep. Enjoy the rest of your day. Go sniff the flowers. Go get bit by mosquitoes. Do something interesting outdoors. Peace, y'all. I'm out of here. Bye.