MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 297 Recap: Du Plessis Defeats Strickland | Pennington Wins | Evloev-Allen | Morning Kombat 538

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

On Episode 538 of Morning Kombat Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell recap UFC 297. The guys break down the entire main card, Should Israel Adesanya be next for DDP? What did we learn about Strickland from this fight? Will the UFC try to make Valentina Shevchenko vs. Raquel Pennington? How bad of a loss was Mike Malott’s collapse against Neil Magny? Was Arnold Allen robbed of a fair outcome against Movsar Evloev? Who else stood out at UFC 297? The guys break it all down. As always we close out Monday's with Dm's from Donks and HYSTS. (00:08:20) - Dricus Du Plessis defeats Sean Strickland  (00:50:30) - Raquel Pennington (01:02:30) - Mike Malott's Colapse (01:09:00) - Evloev vs. Allen (01:22:50) - Rest of UFC 297 (01:28:30) - Dm's from Donks (01:50:00) - HYSTS 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

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This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Hey, not dead yet. Not dead yet. Soon, maybe. Not dead yet. Hi, everyone. It's the 22nd of January,uary 2024 and it is time for episode

apparently 538 of morning combat my name is luke thomas i join you from the capital of estados nidos right here in washington dc joined by my friend who is the king of connecticut got a lot of nicknames not one of them fits but people love them just the same it's brian campbell hi brian campbell well look that that love and you're talking about has certainly been questioned this week all right you know i think i think it's become hate in a few circles but uh you know what people have been calling you some real not nice names this week not i mean the shoe has been on the other foot huh was my my face and image uh put in the same meme as hitler at some point this week yes unfortunately that didn't happen for the first time that's amazing what a week it was what a week it was what a weekend it was we're on

the heels here in this monday edition of morning combat by the way thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate it happy to be back to talk with you we did not have a lot of coverage last week but here we have a chance on this monday to get to everything ufc 297 the entire show a ufc 297 edition of the program so if you're watching please be so kind just to give us a thumbs up hit subscribe it's free doesn't cost you a damn thing and all the channels all the channels by the way Mikey there it is there it is the social graphic you can follow us on social and everything else uh all of that we want you to to be a part of uh for this trip this part of the show's transition and everything else so uh BC did you enjoy UFC 297?

Give me a grade on, not so much the card, your experience. What kind of experience did you have watching it? Experience? That's an interesting question. An old one, since the main event didn't start until 1 a.m., Luke, and suddenly I'm doing podcasts and post-fight columns half delirious in the middle of the morning, but that's the job I choose that works at those times. Look, I'll say that the card was a little bit weird, underwhelming for most of it,

but I obviously give a lot of credit to the middleweights in that main event. That was a, not great, but a very good fight. And it had, you know, back and forth, ebbs of momentum, and it was pretty gnarly at the same time. Fought at a high level, fought very intense. That main event saved the card, Luke, because of the flat tire of that co-main event.

More on that to come. But yeah, I thought the card underachieved in a lot of ways. Maybe that's what happens when a lot of, I mean, all seven male Canadian fighters on the card ended up losing. Do you believe that? A wild stat. Certainly, we had some moments, but it wasn't a great deep card to begin with. I thought it underperformed, but the main event was enough to keep the storyline moving, and I did enjoy that.

So that's my favorite part. Yeah, we have a lot to get to on today's show, but I will say Dana's comments yesterday, well, after the fight, Dana's comments after the fight that he really did not seem to like the Arnold Allen-Movsar, and I'm going to try to pronounce his name, Yves-Louis fight, the Movsar fight. He didn't like that one. And BC, my thought is this. Okay, it wasn't necessarily a barn burner

in the most, you know, Vanderlei Silva versus Bryan Stans sense, and there was controversy in the third round. It was way better than the co-main event. Oh, God. Like, of all the fights to go after, the co-main event oh god like all the fights to go after the co-main event is the one to go how is he going after arnold allen yeah i don't get that i thought alan and evloev however it's pronounced correctly uh was actually my second favorite fight on the card yeah it was it was a technical affair but the constant grappling adjustments by arnold allen the back and forth i mean look that was, that was a fun-ass important fight.

Maybe not fun in the traditional sense, but certainly, yeah, I didn't understand that. And there were a couple other reactions from Dana that I was like, are we watching the same card here? But, you know, Luke, what I found in life is that people can have different opinions on things. Yes. Well, no, that's not true. Sometimes they have a different opinion. That's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible. It's the worst thing in the world, but we'll get to more of that here in just a minute. Sometimes we have a hateful and that's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible. It's the worst thing in the world,

but we'll get to more of that here in just a minute. So we appreciate you guys joining us. As I mentioned, UFC 297 edition, you saw all the socials, you heard everything else. We do have a merch store. We do have a merch store, morningcombat.store. You can go and check that out. I believe BC, do we have anything of note to pimp today on the program? I would, you know, i think you should roll the dice

with that live 10 code if you want 10 off our merch today at morningcombat.store and you can certainly wear a number of our fine lines from factory town mma to the average jar crossover uh adorn your children in our fantastic wear you know we got tie-dye we've got a lot of good stuff going there look out we barely have a show yet we We've got a merch site running with RJ Dunkel Gangbang. Who's paying him? I don't even know. Maybe he's working off pride right now, but you can order it. He'll get it to you.

All right. Yeah. Listen, those are IOU, sir. That's as good as money. So, okay. There's that. And then I think that's it. Right.

We see. We can just get. Well, I don't mean to completely, you know, kick dead horses right in the gut but you know i drove the kids to school today you know we have a thing you know if the weather is too rough then the dad bus becomes an option you know the dad bus was working this morning and you know was fiddling around the radio going kids i'm not dropping you off till a banger comes on here guess what song came on next luke um i'm going to guess uh hey, You're So Fine. How about that?

No, no, no, no. Shimmer by Fuel, Luke. And I'm telling you, one of the worst eras in rock history. One of the best songs, though. Yeah. Just when I was young, feeling short of stable. No, just when I was low and feeling short of stable. Just when I was low.

Thank you, Luke. She does drink the champagne drink. I mean, it's such a great song in a shitty horrible regrettable rock era so shout out that shout out the fuel there all right i once listened to a radio show i don't remember where i mean it was on the internet like i caught the mp3 but it was clearly like you know this is 2001 so the only people who can sound like a radio at that point was a radio station and they claimed to be a rock station i forget where where the the woman who the song was ostensibly about or written to had called in to describe the lead singer of the band

um and she did not have nice things to say so i don't know if that was a totally a phony thing of the late 90s early 2000s but i definitely heard that i definitely heard that are you trying to talk bad about fuel listen i don't know if that was early era fake news i don't know i don't know but i remember hearing that all right everything they've ever said about scott's staff though is true luke it was true all right yeah yeah didn't him and kid rock do like the london bridges like bang bus tour together i don't know but that sounds interesting luke i mean you know people don't forget people forget that you and i grew up during girls gone wild so you know we've come a long way ourselves when i was in college girls gone wild was all over television in terms of

advertising like we came from a place you know that's the funny part about bc like we're revisiting all of that during ufc fight weeks it turns out all the things that we did during our teens in the 90s it is it has come back in style it has come back in style has it not kind of fun all right all right bc with that in, let's start with the main event. A lot of controversy. A lot of, actually, things to like, but we've got to settle some of this scoring. So let's get to it. Topic number one on our UFC 297 edition of MK here, BC.

Drikus Duplicy scores a split decision victory over former NOW champion Sean Strickland the question is this what is a your scorecard and b what is the true story of the fight itself it's interesting question uh the former I'm going to go like this a close fight literally could have gone either way it ended up being a split decision and I did identify as a lot of people did that third round, although some people thought second round too, but the third round to me is the swing round. And I think all three judges, whoever gave the third round to that specific fighter, they ultimately awarded the fight to that person. I scored a three to two for Sean Strickland and it came down to that third round, which I did score for Sean, but really fell of all the five rounds, the third, I ended it going, you know, it really could go either way based on what you preferred.

And Luke, I want to reiterate again, a very, you know, a very good fight. I mean, it was back and forth Strickland using that jab, like an absolute mallet and the ability of DDP to mix in the takedowns with some of those bigger punches. Uh, it was a very interesting fight in which both had to dig deep. What's the story though? I mean, I think the story out of it in a lot of ways was, was DDP continuing to evolve his game, whether you thought he won or not. And Dana White didn't.

Dana White had the same score as I did in favor of Strickland. But whatever you thought about DDP, each step of the way in this short run in the UFC, good Lord, is he raising his game and blowing us away. We mentioned that Darren Till fight, which is one of his biggest early wins, really showcased a lot of the raw elements that was there for him at the time. That wasn't there when he plowed through Robert Whitaker, but plowing through Robert Whitaker certainly mixed together

the IQ that he has and that he's starting to show us with that physicality and that explosion. The Sean Strickland matchup really asked different things of DDP. And I think, well, again, whether you thought he won or not, he raised his striking again. You may have heard his comment as he was walking out of the arena to the back and their cameras following him. He said, I just beat the best boxer in the UFC. So what does that make me now? I'll say, Luke, what I took away from is my sort of call on our 2024 New Year's prediction

where I said, look, this division is going to be red hot and wild from the former champions lingering, the prospects on the rise to that current core of elites that we have now. I think this fight was a perfect showcase of exactly how competitive, close, and elite this decision is, this division is right now. And I think DDP getting his hand raised shows you because Strickland proved he wasn't one and done.

That wasn't an aberration performance against Adesanya. Strickland proved that he is of that elite ilk. It's just that DDP in the minds of two of the three judges was that much better. And to me, Luke, I already stopped doubting Drakus Duplicy but I'm going to continue to to not really try to declare what his ceiling is because this guy so quickly is maturing and adding so much to his game so hey good night for the middleweight division good night for both of these fighters because Sean Strickland's only going to come back from this and get big opportunities and a very good fight all the way around.

I'd share some of that sentiment. So I went back and I rewatched it, BC. Now, in real time, and then you would agree with this probably, right? In real time, a very difficult fight to have a strong feeling about, like, these are the rounds. I mean, yes, round one, pretty clearly Strickland. Round four, pretty clearly DDP. Round five, pretty clearly Strickland. But the two and three DDP. Round five, pretty clearly Strickland.

But the two and three ones, dude, they were really close. They were really tough. They were not easy. And we all know real-time judging is just not a very good way to ensure accuracy. It's a great way to ensure speed. It's not a great way to ensure accuracy, which is why when people get mad when they go through fights afterwards and they see the details perhaps more clearly, they're like, huh, well, maybe I would have scored this differently in BC I'll tell you that's exactly what happened to me so I scored it in real time one and five for Strickland two three four for DDP but I even said my last tweet about the fight was you know this is going to be 48 47 either way you just had to know that. Having watched it again, my scorecard changes a bit. It goes one, two, five, I think, for Strickland. I would have him winning. The round three one,

which you call the swing round, I don't agree as much, although I do recognize in real time, that's what I also thought. Again, this is the benefit of hindsight I'm describing here, and having the ability to go through it a second time and slow it down and relook at it. I think Strickland won that fight. The interesting part about it to me is I do agree though with the broader sense about what you took, like what's the story of this fight? The story is it's very, very difficult with this newer Sean Strickland, the post-Alex Pareda Sean Strickland. It's very, very difficult to put sustained offense on him. Really, really, really hard. Even if you mix it up, and DDP went 6-4-11 on takedowns,

different kinds, by the way, single legs, double legs. He had an outside trip. He's just hard to take down. He's hard to hold down on the feet, BC. I have to tell you, I really wondered how this, I mean, the style isn't new, but the level of refinement you would agree perhaps bc in terms of sean strickland's defense has more recently taken him to a new level hello oh yeah he ended up he ended up beating izzy and i didn't know how it was going to go against

someone who's a bit more of a physical presence in your face against ddp it went pretty well it went pretty pretty goddamn well his look at ddp's face that'll tell you how well it went pretty good pretty goddamn well his look at ddp's face that'll tell you how well it went right that's partly a lot of the jab too i'm just strictly speaking about the defensive component of it bc the amount of friction and traffic he puts and how he can catch it and he sees thing and he leans out of the way we all knew this was true but it's like in the details against different kinds of challenges then does it hold up right we know what it looks like does it hold up under the most difficult circumstances? It did.

By the way, look at his demeanor from round one on. He was lasered in and locked in. He ended stronger in that fight. I don't want to take away from what DDP did. Again, I did have him winning in real time when I watched on Saturday. But my lesson from this is, A, Sean Strickland's defense is a genuine, I mean a real problem now for anybody. But I will say, BC, if there's any common denominator between, let's say, this fight and maybe the Cannoneer fight and some other fights he's had,

what's the most memorable striking offense from this fight? It's probably Strickland's jab and that teep kick, especially early in that first round to an extent a little bit later, but it's not enough. It's not enough. It did lump up the face of DDP, but it wasn't enough as you indicated to convince two of the three judges. It kept the fight close despite him being very defensively strong. I know he got cut. I mean, he did get touched. It's a fist fight for 25 minutes. You're going to get hit a little bit. That's, that's a guarantee. Well, I want want to i want to stop you there that that upon further review that cut is of a headbutt that was ddp leaning in on the right he got hit there subsequent to that and i think it opened it up even more and by the way like the headbutt was clearly unintentional it was it was they were clinched and drichus was coming up to force his head to make the guy lean which is what you're supposed to do and it ended up being a

bit of an intentional headbutt but it wasn't egregious. Like there's a lot of guys who fight with their head like that. It's just sort of unfortunate that it happened that way. And again, he did get touched up, especially in round number four, really began to open up and bleed. Although it got cut before that. But, um, I think my lesson is BC Sean Strickland has turned out to have a very unique and, you know, not impenetrable, but but very legitimate defense but maybe hasn't squared that

enough with a requisite improvement in the offense in terms of its danger in terms of its ability to cause memorable damage well that to me is where he has fallen short and why the judges i think maybe looking the other way at times and i thought that was always going to be the thing that was going to hold him back from the truly elite level not being a consistent finisher whether it's on the feet or on the ground or threat of being one at this level i think he you know you saw the shape that sean strickland came in and i think i saw at times him purposely trying to sit down more on those right crosses even though it was the jab that was largely doing business for him but to strickland's credit because i started off giving the winner ddp that same nod on his evolution.

Man, has Strickland evolved from that Poiton fight? And while yes, to your point, maybe ultimately the thing that's going to hold him back in these 50-50 elite fights when he's got somebody like a DDP, and there's not a lot out there who have the size, IQ, gas tank, and ability to fight and be able to take damage and give it back, Strickland coming up just empty in a fight that I actually thought he won. But part of what allows Strickland to hang in there, despite that fact, is the attention to detail him and obviously his team and the great Eric Nixick have on other areas, like Strickland's ability to completely take away Drakus's calf striking target from in the first two rounds, completely taking it away to the point where you caught DDP kind of limping a little bit at times,

and you're like, I don't think you can take more of that. But even more, Luke, I actually question if Strickland's stamina-wise was fading after that big fourth round from DDP with the headbutt, with the huge cut opening up. I remember when they walked back to the corners, I had it 2-2 entering the fifth, but I remember thinking that, you know, there's no question. Duplicy has the momentum right now. In my opinion, all he's got to do is come forward with big volume and he's going to win this fight. But yet it was Strickland who came back in that fifth round and out, outstruck him, you know, somewhere like 55 to 35, somewhere in that, that, uh, that frame of range there.

And like you said, was the busier fighter coming on more down the stretch. That's obviously a huge credit to Strickland's fighting spirit, his incredible stamina, and then all that attention to detail in the striking, in the defense, in the head movement. He's hard to hit, yet he's right in front of you. Yet it was this time after watching Strickland do what he did to Adesanya and audit him so demonstratively naturally so we had questions of was is he's mentally wired in where he needed to be was that the perf was that a Buster Douglas night for Sean Strickland I'm happy for Strickland the fighter that it wasn't because he came out there and damn near rallied in the final seconds

to to turn that decision in his way and, whatever he lacks in that finishing ability or that consistent damage, it's hell keeping Sean Strickland off of you. And his jab is not just a range finder or something to touch you. It's awkward. It comes at weird angles. It's quick, it's direct, and it's heavy. So yeah, Sean Strickland, just the same, has evolved his game on such short notice that there was a reason why it felt weird that these two were fighting in the first UFC middleweight title fight, not involving Adesanya or Whitaker since GSP won the belt back in 2017. That was already weird enough because I don't think even a year ago there was, you know,

a majority feeling that either of these guys were legit elite contenders, like legit threats to the belt. They both needed big upsets of former champions to really get to this point, but they both raised their game to the level that it's only fueling this idea that this middleweight division from the standpoint of fights you need to see. And from the standpoint of exciting depth on the way up, man, they have leveled up as a group and it's going to be continually fun, whether it's Whitaker Costa or Hamzat's return to see how this division continues to play out but man I do look Luke obviously I'm separating Sean the person and the political comments and all that stuff

to Sean the fighter Sean Strickland the fighter is pound for pound worthy you get right like you gotta say that Luke yeah he lost a split decision that I thought he won i don't know if i don't know if you gotta say that i mean i do his defense is unusual but super super elite no question about it man i was i was actually very impressed i did not know how it was going to hold up against ddp and it held up much better than i guess part of what my brain thought again on review i think he won that contest pound for pound though that's a big reason why i say that's because he has to work extra hard in the other skill categories to to compete at this level without having as much power as much of a knockout thread and look i mean dude we couldn't give eric nixick enough credit for the camp that he's built there but it's sean the student and the fighter that has really stepped in and found a new demeanor

in the cage that's not the reckless guy that walked into potan's left hook it's just not the same guy anymore so it's not yeah i think it is he has the last like two years or so maybe a little bit longer than that but two years he's really leveled up really leveled up he is in a massive group and it gets me to my other point about sean strickland i want to talk about ddp in just a moment i know you already have but i have a few extra thoughts but lastly on Sean Strickland I mean I don't know how again tell me how you felt after the fights BC but I was like okay well again this is in real time I was like all right he didn't win it was very close it was a split decision he was bleeding but he didn't take a beating exactly he got cut up in a normal sort of fist fight way for MMA

purposes I'm in no way of the belief that like that's his last title fight he is he'll turn 33 in february we just talked about how elite his defense is if he can tighten up some of the other parts dude he's going to be right back here again perhaps multiple times i i i i think his future is still quite bright do you think he goes the route of sort of right back into a number one contender type fight think of like a hamza chamayev considering like look there were references on the broadcast last night that sean was getting conor mcgregor level pops now that felt in the moment like like wow that's a statement yeah that's not but dude he certainly grabbed the attention of the audience and and claimed it like we can't argue that good bad or worse indifferent anyway like it's true um i i would think that's more like like if he lost this fight disastrously

he had gotten stopped in the in you know the first three rounds i'm thinking he's going colby after this right i'm thinking he's going more of how can i stay in the limelight make the most money get into a trash talk war with somebody but to your point you're right he's still in this title picture he will fight for another title there's still in this title picture he will fight for another title there's still business of him rematching izzy for the belt or not eventually so i'd love to see the matchups we haven't seen yet whether that's the winner of whittaker costa whether that's hamza um you think he's going right back into a title contender type fight i think he will look i think you know sean was pretty clear clear about what he wanted as champion, which was a big fat check.

And, you know, obviously some of that when you become champion or not, a lot of that is fixed in terms of what you're going to get. I think, you know, he likes to stay busy. I honestly feel like if he wanted to fight and they offered him like a decent guy, top 10 of the Apex, he would take it. If they offered him Hamzat he'd take it I really don't I'm not going to say he's not discriminating at all but he's not as discriminating as other guys I think in his position might be for better or for worse in terms of which opponents he'll select to stay yes or no say yes or no to I mean he said yes to Abusbegamedov not too long ago you know what I mean granted that was that was an advantageous

one but a lot of guys would be like I don't want to cut weight for it it's a waste of time or whatever he was like no I'll take it so you know what I mean like as long as he wants to take it and and it's available I don't I I would not imagine he's going to be super selective about it I'll say this you wouldn't have anyone ever be like yeah I got to see Kananir versus Sean Strickland a second time but you'd have to believe that's a different fight the second time right a much different probably probably a better fight than the last time i'll say that i don't know about much different because sean style does i mean sean made ddp look more like i should say this even

if ddp won he looked less like himself in this fight than he did in the Robert Whitaker fight. That felt more like a DDP performance. This one did as well, but Shawn's defense has a way of just casting, and this is to his benefit, casting like a shadow over the entire fight. You've got to kind of fight in his darkness all the time. And so for that reason, know i i i there there's we should appreciate those differences i guess is what i have a question about strickland before we

get too far ahead here there's there was a big narrative that they said on the broadcast a lot about how his love to spar is what he feels that keeps him sharp he's in there constantly fighting in practice which has been against the grain to the new developing brain health way of thinking of, you know, it's the same idea in practice when your quarterback would wear a red Jersey and you wouldn't put them through extra sacks, right. That you wouldn't want to get them injured. Do you think this starts a trend? Do you think there's an advantage there that, that if you have a style, that's not going to welcome unnecessary training camp damage, that there is something to staying that sharp, being constantly in that chaos, because that's

the secret sauce of what makes Strickland elite. He can walk you down, stand right in front of you and, you know, swim without getting wet against some super elite and established strikers. Do you see that being a momentumist type idea in the future i i suspect you'll see some principles or individual tactics of what strickland does with his defense taken and borrowed by others but wholesale no i mean for starters i you know part of the reason why i think sean struggles with having really big offense, again, his defense just lights out excellent. But in terms of having great offense,

I think part of the reason why he struggles is that style demands a tradeoff. It's hard to be offensive when you're that defensively backing up all the time and worried about what everyone else is doing. It's just hard to get going, which is why the jab is a really important weapon for him and that push kick, but not a whole lot else. I think that's one criticism I would have. The second one is I think part of the reason why his style looks the way that it looks is just partly his psychological makeup. He likes to spar. He likes to be in the gym. By the way, some guys, and we don't really have nearly enough

conversation about this, but there is wide disparity in terms of people's tolerance to injury and how uh injury risk uh verse they are and how injury uh resistant their bodies naturally are there's a lot that goes into that sean might be one of these guys who's just an iron man that just doesn't get injured in the same kind of way so he can go to sparring more often and make that really work for him in ways that people other people just cannot do stuff like that that. No, no matter how much they want it to. And I think the last thing I'd say is about his style again, dude, it's a, I was amazed watching what he would do. And I'm so glad you brought it up. It's not just up here, the checking that he would be doing with his, I mean, it was incredible how much he shut a lot of that down, but dude, that takes a long time to

fine tune that, you know what I mean and you gotta pull you have to go through a lot of rounds of sparring to be able to build that kind of awareness and anticipation part of the reason why he can get out of the way so often is he tends to know what combos guys are going to throw in what kind of sequences because he's seen it so many times his level of anticipation has gotten better but dude that's a lot of work you got to do to build up a style that way I just tend to think it's it's it's great that we have a fighter in mma during the fights that can do stuff like this uh but i don't think it's a very copyable style for those reasons well it's a credit to the type of fighter who didn't come in as a hot

prospect and i don't think people realize and I forgot about it until I was doing research on Strickland for some pre-fight stories, but in the UFC for 10 full years, 10 years, 10 years, he's been in different divisions. He's taken big L's against elite names. Like he's had to constantly go back to the drawing board and to,

to the spirit of your point about the, the, the hard sparring and stuff. Not everybody can take those kind of L's and keep putting their nose down and getting better. Not everybody can physically, you know, endure that type of thing and keep getting better. This guy has really put in the time to his craft

and seemed to have found the right coach and the right gym at the right time. So yeah, I give him a lot of credit, even if he came up empty in a fight that I thought he won. But dude, DDP raised the same bar as we talked about because if he didn't, he wouldn't have been able to land on Sean. And I think ultimately, although the takedowns helped, he did seem to land the bigger shots when they were sort of trading.

And I feel like that's what gave the judges the nod for the edge there to DDP. He mixed the power with the technique. I went through. Let's switch gears here to just finish up if we can on DDP. I really admired his effort in this one. So like, obviously you have to just sort of figure out what was he able to get from each particular stance. And he couldn't get a necessarily early,

a whole lot going from Orthodox. The leg kicks were shut down. The jab overhand was shut down. So he began to then switch to Southpaw. And that was a big win for him the body kicks bc i mean if that's one criticism i would have of sean strickland it's like i know he would have like the teeps to the gut sometimes and the teeps up to the midsection but those are more about stopping forward pressure i mean they don't feel great obviously but it's not going to

do like a roundhouse kick up underneath your elbow to the inside of the rib cage is going to do and ddp had a fair number of those right just sort of willing to be in the line of fire, which he would in order to land stuff like that. Plus he would then switch and then to overhand, or he would double switch into overhand. He eventually found ways, or he would double switch into overhand, then leg kick. He just kept swinging the ax in ways in which he just would find whatever opening he basically could. And it, it really worked out for him. This is what I'm amazed about with DDP. I was like, if Shawn ends up defining how the fight kind of looks by slowing it down and frustrating him in the way that he did against Izzy, I don't know if DDP can win.

And again, upon second review, I've already said it a million times, I had Shawn winning. But in real time, and again, the fight's very close. I mean, this is obviously still quite debatable. He just seemed to want, like, it almost looked like he wanted it more, which I know is not a fair way to judge it. I'm simply just remarking as a person who saw it, the constant, he was the one pushing into Sean and trying and trying and trying. And then he'd have these bursts where stuff would land.

I really admire the level of dedication, so to speak, about not being frustrated. Again, if you had told me it was going to look like this, BC, I would have thought Sean was going to win no matter what. But it was actually DDP that did enough to convince the judges to get his hand raised. I don't know how much I learned other than could he problem solve just enough to get the win over a very difficult defense to conquer. Turns out he did. I didn't know if he had that in him, and he does. And they both had to make the win over a very difficult defense to conquer. Turns out he did.

I didn't know if he had that in him, and he does. And they both had to make the adjustments, and that's when you know you've got a very good title fight, and it was, right? One more thing on DDP that I love, Luke. And I think this is the reason why at the beginning I thought he was too big for his britches when he would grab the microphone after an early win

and say, remember my name. You know, Drake is Duplessis. You're going to be saying it a lot. And you're like, all right, big, strong, blowhard. Like, let's see what you got in there first. But Luke, I say that to show he carried himself as a champion from the beginning. And there is something to that. There is an extreme level of battle-tested confidence that Drake is duplicy brought into the Octagon when he first started without, you know, I want to say without having that same requisite experience, but he did start young on the regional scene in South Africa

and was a very accomplished two-division champion early in his rise, so I get where that would come from. But mentally, you've got to be insanely tough to be able to be long-suffering to make those adjustments that win these type of close championship fights. So I like the way you said it, that that you were impressed with his want, with his will. He's always impressed me with that. Initially, it annoyed me. Now that I figured it out, now that I kind of get it, I think Daniel Cormier kind of gave the same rant during the broadcast. It was sort of like, you know, I didn't get this guy at first. I think it's easy to miss some of that.

But some of those intangible areas, man, does he have it locked down? Yes, he has the air of I was supposed to be here. I belong here. And I don't know if you ever look closely, Luke, when they show like the side. He's got these gnarly scars near his ear on the side of his face. I mean, that leads me to believe it's like, you know, in the 90s, if somebody walked into your town with a necktie you're like oh that guy's came directly from the pen i'm not messing with him in the outdoor pickup game he might be packing that's what i saw on the side of gdp's face like all those scars have a story to tell luke they probably do i doubt it's a very happy one but i don't i genuinely don't

know the answer to that so okay did you pop luke when you heard and i'm paraphrasing here john jones get your shit together when he called out Israel Adesonya. Yeah, I got to tell you, I'm pretty excited. I hope they make that fight. Now, whether it's UFC 300 or any other time, I don't know. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't know what his turnaround time is going to be like. God only knows.

I don't know. Also, if they did make it for the UFC 300 main event, I'd be happy with that. But I don't know if the rest of the fan base would necessarily be as happy. So there's a question. Maybe they would. You think they would? Okay, fair enough. Here's what I think.

I think there are divides in this fan base, no question. I think Shawn has taken over a lot of aspects of this fan base. But I do think people really respect Drakus. But if Drakus now goes in there against Adesanya, who's one of Sean's biggest rivals, and we just saw him audit him, I think you're automatically going to get that fan base leaning on DDP, which along with his international fan base coming from South Africa, he has the chance to continue to make him a star. But Luke, seriously, DDP versus Adesanya has to be one of the three or four biggest fights they can make

right now in terms of like momentum, fan attention, elite skill. Like this is this, this became a big one. And I think Strickland against both of them in the future will also be big, but this will be real big. I don't know if that face can turn around that quick. Where are we? Are we three months out? Three months out. So what is it? Mid-April, basically, is UFC 300? Yeah, so I mean, it's possible. It's possible. You could do it. You could even give him a little bit of a break and you could do it.

I love the fight, by the way. My only objection at the time when Shawn beat Izzy was that, okay, I don't think Izzy deserves an automatic rematch. Because if you recall, he had lost to Pineda. Then he wins and then had lost again. So he had lost in two or three fights. Obviously, he's an enormously successful middleweight, but I was like, okay, if you're losing that many times in close succession, you might have to do a little bit of work or at a bare minimum weight, right?

At a bare minimum weight. He did. He waited. He waited. And so here you have now the champion calling him out. It's a fresh matchup. There's bad blood. It's an interesting style clash too, and I saw a lot of people very, I guess I understand it. There were a lot of people who after the fight were like, man, Izzy's going to tune this guy up. And far be it for me to discourage you from thinking that. I also agree. But if there's one thing I've learned with Drikus is you really would be wise to not

count out his decisions and his decision-making and ultimately his success. He didn't get to this position in any way by total accident although obviously some things have gone his way but the point i'm trying to make is bc like there are things like oh he got hit with a jab in this fight yeah he got hit with a jab in this fight for for reasons related to this fight that may not relate to the next fight at all it could it's potentially possible i'm just saying i would also stand up versus stand up i would favor izzy but it's an fight that can go wrong in a lot of ways don't sleep on ddp it's competitive that's all i'm pointing out i'm not going to tell you don't sleep on ddp you bet you said it is he would

piece him up we got a lot of questions about izzy that's not just i mean i don't want to say the 35 and under rule because he's not he's he's not with the jab, but like Izzy's not stopping that, that double leg blast every single time. Luke, he's just not, he's just not. I don't think he is. I don't think he is. Yeah. DDP has good, strong takedowns.

Yes. So here's the deal. Izzy does have good takedown defense. Can Izzy get up though with DDP on top of him? That's my question. You know what I'm saying? Can he consistently get up? I don't know.

You didn't against Jan, different fighter different situation different division but um but also ddp is a submission threat ddp or at least um even if he doesn't really go through with it he can lock up you know darces or whatever to at least make you have to work at it which can then keep you underneath longer and he does have both guard passing, as we've seen, against Robert Whitaker and good ground and pound. Loves to move to mount. That's a real fight that Izzy's got on his hands. Make no mistake about it. And Izzy came out on YouTube since that call-out from Drakus

and basically congratulated him for becoming the fourth African champion. Had a couple comments that made it seem like he was just trying to put him back in his place, but he gave him his respect. But closed it with saying that like, yeah, I respect you, but, uh, but it's not going to stop me from coming after that ass. So whatever the idea was that Izzy was going to take two years off or whatever we thought at some points based on things he said, Luke business wise now would be the time for him to come back with, with, with hot opponents right now, also, it could be the 300 main event. I mean, it could be.

If not, then UFC's got another anchor to put atop of any pay-per-view, and that's good news. But Izzy's going to have a lot of questions, man, because don't, we can't, like, also, these two fights in succession, man, we talk about how much DDP keeps leveling up. How does he level up from this one, Luke?

You know what I mean? It might be to a next level. So it's going to be a hot fight, man. That's going to be a very, very hot one. I want to see Hamzat in this. I thought it was going to be Hamzat versus DDP for my prediction on the year. It was going to be bat-ass crazy.

I guess we'll see. Okay, let me ask you, who does Hamzat fight next? Is it Strickland? Is it Cannoneer? What do you got? Is it a veteran, another big-name veteran? I really don't. It's a great question. I don't know what the fuck they're gonna do with him uh i don't know where he can travel to

i don't know where he can't travel to i mean i'm not even doing a bit here like the fact that the guy does business with kadirov probably makes him ineligible to return to this country i don't i don't know that uh but i'm fairly certain that that's now the rule that's not dana's rule that's the u.s government's rule the That's the U S government's rule. The government's like, well, you can't do business with us if you're going to do business with him basically. And so,

um, I don't really know what's going to happen with that. So if they have to, in other words, if they have to wait until they're going to go to Europe or they're going to wait until they're going to go to somewhere in the middle East, that dictates who's going to be available at that time. That makes it even harder to know.

I don't know. I don't really know what the answer is. I want, here's what I want them to do. Uh, and it may not work, but I would like to have the next time the middleweight title is contested that the co-main event would be essentially a number one contender middleweight fight because that group is getting so hot. Roman Deleuze is in there.

Brendan Allen, I mean, this is a fun-ass mix of fighters. I mean, Paul Craig is in there too, Luke. But there's a fun-ass mix of fighters here. I want to start seeing these as the featured pay-per-view main and co-mains look in this middleweight division because it's getting fun it's getting are you getting that itch i'm getting that itch looking it it's not because i need to wash my ass that's not the situation it is because i need to wash my ass i really did not do an appropriate job and here i am doing the wiggle butt um bc before we move on from this this is the only time we're going to address this there was obviously just a shit ton of controversy last week some of which came your

way so i guess i'll just give you the floor here just a little bit before we move on to the co-main event which i know everyone is very excited to talk about i'll ask you very simply what what lesson if any is there about last week's controversy i don't know if there's a lesson i will say uh yeah thanks all the mk fans the people that didn't need to but kind of came out and were like you know bc's hanging there stand by not that i needed it but dude i got i got attacked fluke i mean i know what you go through when you when you uh you know would stand on on your own beliefs in certain categories too but i think that i was most disappointed by the amount of aggressively hateful, crazy people that came

after me, but also how many people were framing this whole situation only from a political standpoint where like, I've got to say that I can't say this enough. Like, yes, there's elements of politics in here, but my outrage with the situation is not about the politics. Like I don't care about Sean Strickland's take on these categories. I get that they're important. You know, I may agree or disagree with parts of it, but that wasn't even my focus. My focus was twofold. One, the way that he talked to journalist, uh, Alexander K Lee and the way, you know, I mean, look, you know, calling anyone weak for, for saying they would love their gay child. Like that's, that's just, that's hate speech. That's not politics. That's fricking like that's, we don't need that in MMA mixed with the idea that

UFC has just completely become a no rules, you know, freedom area where unfortunately when you're going to push stuff like that. And when just three years ago, Dana's going to be like politics and sports have no mix. You'll never see that on a UFC broadcast, all those woke athletes in the NBA and NFL. And unfortunately, Luke, a lot of people came after me going, oh, we never knew before you were a fake Christian and a liberal and a, and a libtard and all these, you know, I've, I mean, dude, they were putting me in Hitler memes. Like it was really out of control, but like my response each time was like, I could give a damn about the political debate of it. Like you can have that on political debate shows. I'm just saying, we don't need that on ESPN or UFC channelsc channels and all people going what about the journalist let me say this first and foremost the journalist

asked a question that was important to him you could say he had an agenda maybe maybe it was a loaded question but he was repeating back to sean prior difficult and controversial statements that sean had said which now that sean was a champion and this is how it was framed, he gave him a platform to basically change his mind, explain it further, decline to answer. But instead, Sean took that platform and attacked him. And I thought it was classless. And I thought, we don't need that. And Luke, I don't need to share this info, but if you care, I've been a born again Christian since 2003. I've been a registered Republican since 1996. But like, I'm sick of people using either of those two categories as a way to mask bigotry and hatred in the way that they talk about others. I don't agree with everything out there, like, you know,

whether it's laws or people's needs, but I do agree about love and empathy and treating others the way that they deserve to be treated. And we're just going so far into that other direction with the UFC. And it's not about like, shut up, stop whining. They can say bad things to each other. It's not even about that. This was just too far. When you know, when you see it, when you smell it, you know, and it's too far, this know when you see it when you smell it you know it it's too far this was bullshit and too far and i'm not saying people need to be muzzled but like there is a a cost when when stuff's just allowed to be said and for anyone saying well what about your beloved nfl and nba guys first of all i don't watch the nba nfl second of all i don't think there should be politics pushed on that screen either my personal opinion and i certainly don't think it should be pushed through my ufc screen either again you want to go debate that stuff and watch it go to your

political channels and uh you know i know you guys can come back say well what you guys saying this and that about the pandemic during the pandemic we may have but in general i know if we speak too much politics on here what does it do it pisses off our our audience because people are obviously divided i don't want that shit pushed through the screen on ufc and it's not the journalist's fault sean can speak for himself you just go, oh, what do you think when you put a mic in front of a fighter? Guys, it's not 2004 anymore. It's not 1996. It's 2024. So there is certainly a responsibility when you represent a company, when you represent ESPN by fighting on their network and when you're just going to act like there's no rules and consequences and just shit

on people. That's not cool to me. That's not cool to me at all. So, you know, you want to see me in real life. I'll debate politics with you all day. But I don't really talk about it on the show because we're talking about life and we're talking about combat sports. So when it crosses over and bleeds like that, yeah, like, you know, you've stood up for things you believed in the past for better or worse. And I'm going to, you know, know my role and my responsibility with whatever platform I'm afforded and try to do the same thing. But if you're going to speak like that,

unfollow me, please like get out, you know, get away from me, please. Because that's, that's bullshit. Like we're past that in this society, I thought, but apparently not. So that's my soapbox two cents, Luke. You know what I mean? Because it's about people at the end of the day. And, you know, and my, my friend, I call him my friend, lead singer, Portugal, the man, John Baldwin, Gorley. He always tells me, Luke, we're all in this together. And that's, that's the true fact, dude, whether we're podcaster, podcast, E fighter, fan journalist,

like have a little decorum here, try, try to, try to read the room and realize where we're at. And it was, it was disappointing to see, uh, because I come from boxing Luke, which, and I've been covering boxing on the national level for 15 years now. And boxing's a dark,

dark, dark place. And MMA right now is a lot grosser. And I don't say that with joy at all. It's a lot grosser. And, um, which is saying something is boxing is filthy.

I mean, it's the worst in many ways. Um, yeah, I wouldn't add much BC. Which is saying something because boxing is filthy. I mean, it's the worst in many ways. I wouldn't add much, BC. I think it's a real heartfelt message. People can take it however they want, and they will. The only thing I would add is this one thing that just sort of keeps coming up about this that just drives me a little bit. I just don't understand it, which is when people are like, oh, well, this is a free speech issue. And I'm like, guys, you either have to be the most gullible human alive, or you have to think that everyone else is the most gullible

human alive in order to say something like that. So Islam Makachev, not just merely one of their champions, but one of their better ones, makes a statement, a pro-Palestinian statement, I think not his last fight, the one before, I think the first Volk fight, but whatever it was, makes a pro-Palestinian message. These are people that were, up until recently, more than 150 children were being killed a day. 25,000 people have died in three months. They're being slaughtered. Even just saying that, by the way, could potentially,

any kind of pro-Palestinian advocacy in the media will get you in trouble, virtually. Anyway, he doesn't do any of that. He just gives a message of solidarity, and they cut it out on their official channels when they rebroadcasted um his message so like first of all they are frankly and a matter of factly edited and censored his speech in solidarity of a people being killed left and right right so let's just understand what that's all about and and again that's their right to do that as well they have they have control of these mechanisms but you do not get to lecture me or anybody else about the necessities of free speech when a fighter reaches out to the world of some of the most aggrieved people on the planet currently, and that message is not fit for release to the wider public.

Please be serious with me. That's the first thing I would say. Right. And look, I don't know if people want me to say this, they'll be upset about it, but ESPN needs a backbone in this situation. Please. I don't know what they're doing either. I don't know what people want me to say this, they'll be upset about it, but ESPN needs a backbone in this situation. Please. I don't know what they're doing either. I don't know what they're doing either. But people think that we object to the airing of the viewpoints.

I really actually don't. And by the way, no one on this show has ever called to fine him, fine anyone, to lose their job. We never do any of that. But we just have a right to say what we want to say about it, as does anybody else. And I hope that folks who are at least semi-rational and above can understand something like that but let's just be very clear they will censor your speech if they feel like they need to more to the point you do not know how many fighters i talk to on a regular basis off the record or whatever who feel like there could be retribution for frank commentary about the ufc and you could even say

that's just their imagination it might be but the fact that there is that kind of self-censorship going on indicates perhaps a wider climate in the sport. But what really it all comes down to is this is just about making sure that, one, these guys don't turn into employees because you're not enforcing the code of conduct, right? Because if you do that, then it changes the equation potentially between independent contractor and employee. And it's also about just creating a culture of not having to ever be accountable for anything you say or do.

And you might say, well, what should he be accountable for what he's saying? Maybe nothing, maybe other than just commenting on this. But Dana going out there and being like, you know, and again, his wife was involved as well. It was a mutual affair in that regard. But there was no real consequence to it. It's enforcing that as the broad mechanism in play here right that's really that's really what this is all about so so here's my point say what you guys want to say i i think bc i think trying to fight it i'm not saying it's not there's no point in it but

they clearly you have we were in canada and they're doing let's go biden chants and biden wasn't even in the fucking room like these are people that make culture war identity part of their personality up front and that again, that's their choice. I'm just saying, please, guys, I'm 44 years old. BC and I have watched the world litigate all these questions only for another generation to come back and be like, let's relitigate them all again. You do not need to sell this on the lie that it's about free speech. It's about anything but that. Just have the intellectual honesty to say as much.

That's my only request. And that's my fear for the way the UFC has been run. I'm trying to think about what's the turning point. Is the turning point getting bought out by Endeavor and escalating the financial lives of people like Dana to a whole new level? I don't know. But ever since the Conor Dolly incident,

it's as if there are no rules. And the reason why I think that's dangerous is not because I'm trying to be a parent critic, outspoken soapboxer. It's because when you have an environment with no rules, the escalation of that is going to be too far and it's going to damage the sport. And Luke, you said it to me offline. What if a white fighter comes out and uses the N word? Is Dana going to go? It's freedom of speech. They can say whatever he wants. No, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's death to your brand, to your sponsors, to your network, to your everything. And also it's death to the platform you have and the message that you're allowing to be put out there. So it's a lot of this was also me looking at the state of journalism, which isn't strong,

seeing how much it's getting marginalized and seeing how publicly journalists in general were the enemy because of this situation when i ask you if patrick mahomes or tom brady or lebron james or insert athlete says anything controversially publicly you you assume they're going to come to the next press conference not be asked about it like are you kidding me are they going to go well you already knew lebron's thoughts on that so good luck trying to ask him on that no you're doing your job too and i know that like there is a big influencer culture in mma and i'm not looking at this from the oh those guys are just jealous they're losing their control no we're pivoting through a a tough you know part of this

industry's history like a lot of people but good good for those influencers that are that are turning you know making business and doing that but let's not shit on the need for journalism and completely move it out of the building because what you're going to have is going to be a one-sided echo chamber. And again, three years ago, Dana didn't want politics and sports at all. And now we are televising Trump's walk from the locker room to the chair at the front row. And we did a documentary about it. Like I'm just saying, like we're going in aggressive different directions here. If you want your broadcast filled with politics and if your politics aligns with it, then I'm sure you have no problem with it.

But what are we doing? That's my question. All right. Fair enough. With that in mind, let's move on to happier topics. UFC 297's co-main event. Okay, BC, what the hell do we say about this? So, again, Raquel Pennington she wins a uh unanimous

decision victory over my rubino silva she becomes the new bantamweight champion bc and my question i'm going to ask you this way if you're valentina shevchenko do you feel like you can take this belt whenever you want right now i would feel like and and people are upset at some of the comments i made and i'll address that but right now i feel like like and and people are upset at some of the comments i made and i'll address that but right now i feel like anyone can whether it's valentina coming up from 125 based on what happens in her expected trilogy with grasso to arena aldona who bounced back with a win after losing a title fight to juliana pena if she can get healthy to anyone so okay you're gonna dunk on these two women poor And I did a lot of people on Twitter and people I respect, how about Jam Bands Roasted, my guy who's like, look, BC,

if this was a more attractive 115 or in your, you know, in your strike zone, you'd be praising. And I, you know, I, I do stand up against that because it's not true, but here's my ultimate feeling of why I tweeted out that the belt should be vacant, which is a crash joke, but why I'd even be willing to be crass in this space rather than celebrate the six fight win streak for Rocky Pennington, which is not nothing, the comeback in her career, the toughness, all of that. Did I like seeing her booed to bits while Dana put the belt on? No, I felt bad for her, the extended family, tiny tornado and all that. But Luke, we rightfully panned this fight when it was announced, you know, some seven months after Nunes gave up the title that you had that time,

you know, the pool of fighters you have, and you're essentially picking two who yes, maybe meritocrically are in, in the argument close enough where it's not a fight that people were, you know, going to rally and pick it against but is this a title fight are these two championship level fighters not the fight i saw on saturday this was definitely not bad definitely this was a disaster okay it's not just the crowd booing it's not just the constant clenching it's the corners of both were aggressively yelling at them to stop doing the type of fight IQ decisions that had both women getting skewered on social media. And I get that Pennington had the better gas tank and she's always been tough. I mean, that's her calling

card. Congratulations to Raquel Pennington. I'm not trying to take that away, but neither of these fighters fought like a champion in this fight. It was sort of like, who's going to be the last one standing? Because for all the talk that, I guess it's not pronounced my era and I respect that. So my era, Bueno Silva, for all the talk and the trash talk and us saying, look, she's more dynamic. She should win this dude. She was gassed out by like the third round. So what type of representation is that? She finished the fifth round. She spent of representation is that she finished the fifth round she spent entirely on her back probably should have been finished with strikes or chokes

but Raquel couldn't quite find the angle and put it together my point is I was mad when they rushed the the Nico Montano Amata Ferry title shot because uh Valentina wasn't ready and their plans weren't perfect I guess that was the ultimate fighter championship, but still Roxanne was a fill-in. I was mad when they rushed the idea of creating this division at 145 for Cyborg, but she's not ready yet. So let's just put Holly and GDR out there. It'll be fine. I'm sure.

No, it wasn't. When you have an extreme lack of depth, you do have to be careful in how you do this. What if you just waited a few more months and this was Juliana Pena versus either one or Pena versus Aldana for the title. When you roll this out in an already kind of weak pay-per-view card, what are your expectations? It received the worst possible expectations in my mind. If that's an advertisement for the division to keep going, they got booed out of the building and the challenger, you know, one of the challengers could barely make it to the final bell. That's not elite championship fighting that this is, this is not good. And this is, so, you

know, what are we going to do here? You're going to create women's heavyweight. Are you going to dump one 45? I don't know, but it felt like this was very haphazard. And, um, I don't know, Luke, do I sound like I'm whining for the sake of it? Am I being angry? Cause these aren't my favorite flyweights, which I take as an insult, or strawweights? I don't know, Luke. I don't know how you can say anything positive outside of credit to Rocky for putting this industry together, putting her head to the grind

and getting it done. But, dude, that was a bad fight, and I thought they were two bad performances. And I'll stand by that, Luke. All right? Listen, Rocky Pennington did her job. She's a pro by the way, she had to deal with all the stuff. Sean Strickland had to say all week, which I'm sure, you know, was not great, but she's a pro. She didn't say anything about it. She never got distracted.

She never inserted herself into the news. She got ready for her opponent. She made weight. She went out there and fought. She did what was asked of her and she got the belt wrapped around her waist. I feel great for Rocky Pennington. She did. She went out there and fought. She did what was asked of her and she got the belt wrapped around her waist. I feel great for Rocky Pennington. She did. She did. She was a pro at every stage pre during post. She did everything she was supposed to do. Um, good for her is what I would say. Good for her. Good for her that she got this opportunity. Good for her that the belt is now going to confer some kind of permanent status on her. And then of course, for her subsequent bouts from here to the extent that she can keep it, it's going to raise her pay.

Good for her. I feel really good for somebody who has just worked really hard and do I think is of the elite of the elite? I do not, but I do think is a skilled competitor, a patient one, a hardworking one, and a professional one. People like that find themselves more often than not, BC, in good spots. She did. Silva, on the other hand, was unprepared for the enormity of this moment.

She didn't have cardio for two of those rounds. You know, Pennington didn't put her away, but nevertheless, I could not believe the inability to really put together a... I know 25 minutes fighting is not easy. It's a very difficult thing to do. But folks, most UFC fighters never get a title shot. And even the ones who do, the number of champions relative to how many people fight in the UFC is infinitesimally small. You don't get many opportunities to fight for a belt like this, even in a weight class like this. And to go in there and lay that kind of an egg, it's not enough to say because of the weakness of the division, BC, that she'll never get back here, but it might be a while. That was nearly disqualifying

for future opportunity. She is, in many ways, BC, I found her to be in individual contexts or phases, I found her to be more skilled than Pennington, right? But not so different that she was able to either finish the fight or cause substantial harm and then when she didn't have the requisite prep in her in her fight camp to give her the opportunity to fight beyond 15 minutes the entire thing fell apart dude i mean can you imagine going into a 25 minute fight and knowing you have to punt the last two rounds like you you shouldn't even basically be there. I mean, you're wasting everyone's time with that.

I felt like it was a good thing that Rocky Pennington had something good happen to her in the fight game, given all the various challenges she's been up against. But did we need to see this fight? Did it fulfill some kind of thing that just giving the title to Rocky wouldn't have otherwise done? I don't, I don't really have a strong answer for that,

but my inclination is no BC. My point is there, there's like a lot better fighting in this division than what we saw on Saturday night. And I felt like we could offer that when the fight was announced. Like, why do you think, why do people think me on this show got upset when this fight was

announced? Cause I don't like either fighter. No, because it's not representative of who might be the two best in this division in my opinion I get there were other circumstances that opened the door to make this fight I wonder if the promotion thought you know thought my hero would would put forth a better performance as we did but that you know you could question constantly the decisions made by both in this fight neither one were really able to turn advantageous positions into anything I mean mean, it was, it was, it was almost, it was almost

comical at times, Luke. And I don't want that for those women, for this division, for the reputation of female fighting. It felt like such a step back in time that it was almost like I was almost disgusted by it, but maybe those are my own issues. I'm not trying to put it on you, the viewer shout out to Rocky shout out to the pay-per-view points. Um, I'm not trying to put it on you, the viewer. Shout out to Rocky. Shout out to the pay-per-view points. I'm sure that the build to her and Juliana, if they go that way, will be somewhat interesting. That'll be better.

Juliana will make it silly and fun, probably, right? The fight will probably be better, but man, dude, when you're already coming in with people expecting the worst or expecting to you know what i mean it was like dude the quality of that fight was almost didn't even belong off the prelims luke am i going way too far again i mean are you gonna you know you can no i don't i don't just know that's the dude if you can only fight 15 minutes like you really don't have what it takes to fight 20 or 25 you are a prelim fighter i mean i mean i realize that she's ranked higher than that and

she does have skill level above that again it's not like silva doesn't have skills she has skills but if you're if you can't fight beyond 15 minutes then that's sort of the level of prep that you are able to give or you were in this particular circumstance you don't you're not ready for those bigger opportunities no you're a prelim i mean i guess i'm happy that it wasn't like ronda holly 2 for the vacant title, even though that would have been, drew a lot of attention and would have been interesting in its own regard.

And I'm not saying like, it just should have been Holly. Her star power could have saved it. It could have been an awful fight with Holly too. I just wish more, I don't know, I wish more planning, more success. I mean, it felt very haphazard,

but I'm just one man and I'm an agent. It just did, like, even when you're watching Drickus and sean you know any elite fighters even ones like that you know you saw some wild ass off-balance stuff from ddp you saw sean throw these you know completely winging hooks especially in the fifth round like i mean you know there's technical sloppiness at every part of the game even among the very best that the men's game has to offer i'm not saying that dvp and sean is i'm just saying even even among even among volk he makes mistakes you see stuff like that but this one felt to me like you i don't know that i was watching the same kind of thing you know i didn't know that i was i didn't feel like i was watching

elite mma i felt like i was watching you know good mma from rocky and then at times some deep good mma from silva and then she just fell off a cliff and then that was that i was like this is this feels not this doesn't feel like a championship fight it feels like something else if i'm gdr i know she had she gave birth right luke that was part of her long absence but like i'm coming back right i'm coming back to this division making 135 and trying to win that title i'm a two division champion or valentina shevchenko dude if things i was wondering this about valentina Shevchenko dude if things I was wondering this about Valentina Shevchenko either she's going to beat uh Grosso in their next fight and she could

potentially go for champ champ status or she could lose and then just jump over I mean dude think about it what's it again dude I want to it sounds like we're not respecting Rocky like we will honest to god do think she's a credit to the game like she is a a pro in every sense of the word but what do i think is a tougher fight for valentina do i think it's grasso or do i think it's penitence probably grasso right i don't i don't think that's crazy to say no it's not crazy to say it's not crazy to say but see what's going on there in the future um wow i mean i did the promotion has to feel the pain of that booing of like of the stain right they've got to feel that they're not going to say anything by the way how does nobody ever ask dana what's the future of 145 i feel like there's questions out

there that journalists used to ask nobody asks them anymore you know what gets asked um what's your future of coming to the city that i live in and work out of that's that's a big question that's asked that's a big i get when it's framed under like hey we're in canada when are you coming back i get that it's it's exciting i get that that's all it's ever asked what that and when does connor fight that's it luke that's pretty much when does connor fight when you're coming back to canada or you know pick whatever place they're in they ask the same thing every every local media outlet though has to do that like if you're with the Toronto was a Toronto Sun I forget the name the big uh the paper out there whatever it is you have to if you're if you're attending that you have to ask that so I get it all right but BC let's move on a little bit if we can let's

go to topic number three I'm not really sure what to say about this Mike Malott was winning dot dot dot until he wasn't he goes for a leg lock underneath even though he has full guard he gets his guard passed and then pounded out with 15 seconds left in a fight that he was absolutely controlling in every possible way bc what happened and how bad of a loss is this for a guy who looked like he was ready to have his big coming out party as a big time contender yeah i mean it's potentially damaging given what we know about his moxie i saw his interview afterwards where he said sorry to the fans not that thought that he needed to but like look short-term impact this is very damaging he imploded this was a self-enforced error he was dominating and winning against a

very good opponent late and you know we talk about bend but don't break. He snapped. I mean, it went from I've got it to I don't. And that can happen in this game. I always reference, Luke, Stipe losing that first fight to Junior Dos Santos when he looked so good throughout most of it. But, you know, the fatigue caught up with him. He kind of got outworked and he lost the fight.

But that didn't end his run. Obviously, being a 32-year-old welterweight, even though, Luke, even though, how did I not say this until now? Rocky Pennington just took your 35 and over welterweight and below stat, tore it up into a ball, Luke. The stat is the men's game, so she didn't touch it but go ahead oh how dare you how dare you do that by the way and stick to only men in that case um i but like yeah 32 but he seems to be a late bloomer he took all that time off if he's who he is luke if he's

who he's shown to be he's going to go back to the gym he's going to work on that cardio like you've never seen before and he's going to come back better from this and still have the window to be that. But, you know, it's a slip up. It's a major slip up. He got a ridiculous pop in Vancouver last time. He was positioned here to be really the most popular of that Canadian group. Although Sean Strickland seemed to get the biggest Canadian inspired pop that I've seen on this night, but they wanted malat to be the next big thing and and um if he's wired the right way he'll bounce back from that but it could break a person luke we've seen it many times you know you get that invincibility snatched

you might never be the same dude i just okay so here's the thing right we kill people rightly. So not just you and me fans do it. We all do it. We all kill people who we know coast at the end. Right. Especially if they do it, like, you know, between rounds,

like they get done and it's like, whatever, if it's MMA, it's the third round for whatever normal fight. Or, you know, if you're in the 11th or 12th round and you can hear their corner being like,

you know, don't take risks, blah, blah, blah. We hate that kind of a thing. Now that's not not what happened here he was still trying to win in the third he goes for a guillotine he gets taken down and he had full guard so he had his feet crossed had him locked up bc he opens to go for a leg lock or i believe maybe perhaps id bar underneath

but he certainly opened his guard and then reached underneath to go and do that and it's like i'm not saying that i wanted him to coast because people like you can just coast yes you could have and it would have only just been a minute it wasn't a whole round i want to be clear about that it would have been just been about a minute or so maybe maybe like 90 seconds or something i'm not saying you had to do that but like why would you go for a risky leg lock slash knee bar sequence underneath against a guy who is very experienced, maybe not the best fighter in the world, but certainly very experienced, you know, he's whatever else is going to be wrong with him, he's gonna have great cardio. And he did. And it's like, if that if leg locking and part of people don't understand this necessarily, part of leg locking, and the way which you get out of it is you can stand right the more you can stand and force your heel to the

ground and begin to peel their legs off of your hip off of your knee off of your ankle right and you can put stability down you can break this so part of what comes into effective leg locking especially in mma is the ability to be underneath and then off balance the opponent above you, right? To be able to take them off of their feet, which you saw him do a little bit, but you have to come up when you do that. When they go down, you have to come up so you can claim top position. He didn't even necessarily have the energy for that. In other words, I'm not saying he's got bad leg locks or bad heel hooks or something, but I am going to say it's clearly not as much of a part of his game as it is like say for Ryan Hall where you would very much trust their ability underneath to do

something like that because it's part and parcel of they're the very best of what they have to offer that's the best of what Hall can do and he can do it almost better than than anyone Mike Malott just went to like a very low risk or excuse me very high risk low reward scenario underneath electing to and it led to a disastrous consequence. We see, they put him on the main card. They gave him a name opponent. He was doing everything he possibly could. I'm not saying there's no bounce back from this, but I am saying, dude, that's a really bad unforced error for someone. They did not need to go this way. They picked one of the worst ways they could

have gone and this whole idea like oh well they had to coast maybe they did maybe they didn't i'd actually argue they could still have had some offense and they would not have had to do that just a real suboptimal experience it's that's what an experience is right 32 though i mean he's 32 same age as sean strickland he is impressive though And let's not overlook that for two and three quarter rounds, he was outclassing, you know, a super, not a super, I don't want, I want to call him not a super elite guy, but a guy who loses the super elites. But if you're not, if you're not heading in that direction, he'll expose you. He exposed him. But like what we did learn in the process is that he's way better than this level. So that's why I still have to hold out hope, Luke, that if it's just, oh, fix the stamina, make smarter decisions.

He can do that. He can do that. You can do that. He didn't get like dragged around the cage and took extraordinary damage. He was beating Magni thoroughly just up until he wasn't. It was an outright implosion at the very, very end. So he obviously has ability, but you know, it's not just, oh, he made a bad decision. No, he made a really bad decision. That was a really bad decision that

did not need to get made. That's the issue. The issue is not like, hey, was it the wrong call? It was obviously the wrong call, but it was like a really bad wrong call, but okay. We'll see how he can bounce back from that. BC, we go to question number four here. Topic number four. Let's talk about Arnold Allen, if we can. Very basic question for you, given what happened in the third round. Was Arnold Allen robbed of a fair outcome against Movzar Ivloyv? Close fight. In real time, I was getting kind of made fun of by our CBS Sports editorial brethren there,

because I thought Allen had won the fight two rounds to one. I thought he had won the first and won the third. And I thought, I thought that the broadcast was like sort of way too quick to dismiss that that was even a possibility as basically saying, well, look, you know, moves are when he bloodied him in the second round and knocked him down. Like that's enough. Unless that's a guaranteed 10, eight on every card.

I don't see how it would be so I think ultimately when I look at the scorecards here uh all three judges gave Evloev one and two so that that was a moot point my giving Allen round one which I thought was close didn't didn't factor into the scoring here but I thought even on the just that basis Arnold could have won he didn't fight poorly did Did he lose though, rightfully to a guy that fought better? I think ultimately so. But Luke, weird elements to this, mostly the knees from Arnold Allen, which certainly flirted with being illegal. I was really happy the way that the referee Mark Goddard didn't take it away, but firmly warned him. But I think the reason why he

didn't take it away is because it was so close. When you look at the replay, it's like, is the tip of the fingernail touching or not when he's landing them? I think at least three of the four of those were clean. Am I coming off as an Arnold Allen super fan? I don't want to, even though I like the guy. No, I'm surprised that you think that. I don't think Mark Goddard made a bad call. I think Mark Goddard is dealing with bad rules that make good calls hard to

come by but i did not think it was a great call to stop the contest even temporarily oh agreed on that first of all agreed on that okay i think it was because they were borderline he and he was sort of like we got to do something but i can we get a real change in the area that that just stops this please just please because here's the thing here's the thing about it dude answer me this whether it's two hands down one hand down just fingertips weighted whatever any of those rules are fucking suck you never get a better outcome with people like oh they're using the old rules from new jersey and it's true. Ontario was using New Jersey's rules, and this is not a joke, folks, from 2003.

They were using rules from before the Ultimate Fighter ever existed. Two years before, in fact. Like a long time before. And so you've got outdated rules. But guys, the new rules suck ass too. It doesn't make a difference if it's two hands or weighted fingertips or anything else. They suck ass too because not only, BC, do they not really provide clarity in terms of the individual moment and you get much better action one way or the other. It doesn't really change it. It just makes it

confusing one way or the other. These rules, dude, any rule that you have has to be like basically enforceable by pro referees. Like someone who's good enough to be a professional referee has to be able to implement this in an easy way. I don't think Mark Goddard is a bad referee at all, but I think that it's hard to know in real time what the fuck is happening. And I don't know if Toronto has instant replay. You have no real way of understanding what had happened. Plus, you've already interfered with the action itself. Here's the rule. Dude, the knees to the head of a downed opponent should be fucking legal.

I think there's a couple of carve outs you can make to that. But in general, if you fail on a shot of carve-outs you can make to that. But in general, if you fail on a shot. You got two hands and two knees down. One knee is all you need. One knee. No, but I'm saying that would be a situation where you knew firmly somebody was down. But whenever it's short of that, when it's in between, when it's in transition, or if there's the idea that someone's playing the game,

it's too close for a striker to be able to tell or to time that. Or no knees, just no knees. Like, listen, if you shoot underneath a guy, you should know if you get stuffed, if there's down blocking or whatever, you're fair game. You're fair game. We already have seen it in one. People think there'll be this crisis of CTE beyond what we already have

if that happens. And the numbers, according to the Colorado Athletic Commission, simply do not bear this out. It does add some risk, but of course it changes so much fighter behavior, both in terms of what shots they take and then obviously how they scramble out pretty quickly from underneath that you don't really get all... Yes, it does meaningfully change some of the action,

but you don't get this concussion parade in a way that you ordinarily would not get, but for those rules. It's just nonsense. Change the fucking rule to a place where we can actually, a referee can easily enforce it. The people can easily understand it. The fighters can easily implement it.

It's not going to massively add to CTE. And then we just move on. I just, oh, it drives me nuts. Yeah. Back to the fight for a second. I was very impressed with, with Evloev, Luke. I know this is a six straight decision and he wanted to change that, but look, Arnold Allen's a killer out there. Dude, Movstar is just a rock. I mean, he is Luke and he showed, even though he

was given that break after that, you know, borderline or if actually a legal knee, the knee kind of effed him up and he took that well and bounced back well. And dude, when he gets grinding with those takedowns, I mean, Arnold Allen was almost superhuman in avoiding a lot of those takedowns or rolling through them or just really showing expert, elite grappling. And yet Evlov will just outlast you with that relentlessness and inevitably put you down.

And whether or not the lack of sustained excitement ever holds him back. I'm not sure. Absolutely. You got to take this guy for real. He leveled up with this performance. I love Arnold Allen. I thought that max performance was arguably his best, even though he lost,

he fought pretty damn well here. Not enough, not, you know, not enough to guarantee the argument of you couldn't score it for him. Although I still thought you could have, but dude, Eve Loeb looks like the dude. He looks like the guy another hammer luke another freaking hammer this hammer's legit tell me why he's not please i mean the striking's got improved but it's

not bad it's not awful it's not bad he gets better or through the rounds he makes adaptations and changes he obviously is physically dominant for the weight class his wrestling is you know again it was kind of interesting as his wrestling was not lights out in this fight. It was good, but you know, usually it's overwhelming. It wasn't overwhelming. Arnold Allen had very good takedown defense and scrambling by and large, or, you know, defense for subs or from the back or whatever. You saw some of those Granby rolls, for example.

So his wrestling was a threat. It was a presence, but it wasn't the same kind of like fight decider, you know, that it once was. And yet he was still able to get the win. The only thing that come, I come back to is, you know, I asked you the question, was he robbed of a fair outcome? Yes, the fuck he was. Yes, he was Arnold Allen. Yes, he was. I know according to the letter of the law, there's no mechanism. There's no lever for him to pull to get him a new fight or the athletic commission to review it. In that sense, it's over and done with and everyone's going to move on, and I understand that. But I am going to point out, in terms of a fair outcome, that's what I asked you about, a fair outcome. I don't see how you can have rules this bad that are this hard

for good referees to interpret that have a potentially massive consequence, not really on the round itself, although obviously Arnold won round three, but on potentially fight-ending sequences, moments of significant damage, all taken away from a guy, and people are just like, yeah, that's how the rules should be. Dude, you can't look at this situation and say, yeah, the rules have gotten it right. They don't.

They're not giving people the fair chance to do the job they're trying to do with, again, with relatively speaking, minimal risk that better rules could give us. And as a consequence, I don't think you're getting fairly adjudicated outcomes. I don't. I don't think you can do this to a guy and say that win is a very clear and decisive win and a fair win, frankly, for Mozart. It's not. It's the way it is, but it's not the way that it should be. Dude, I feel bad in a way for Arnold Allen because he's a very good fighter, but I'm starting to agree with some of the sentiment that the reason why he's a very good

fighter is because, like he says in his own words, he's he's he can do everything. He's well-rounded. He's pretty much at the same level across the board. I mean, look at that wrestling defense and grappling skills and all that stuff you mentioned. But if he would realize how dangerous he is on the feet and not need the final round rally to to to, you know, raise his argument to have won a fight. Sometimes he's too technical and too picky on the striking to start the fight. I'm wondering, Luke, if he comes in there with a more aggressive attitude because he's got a great chin. I mean, he got effed up from those shots. He's got a great chin. He can do everything, but I think he's better offensively than he sometimes consistently shows because he's better offensively than he sometimes consistently

shows because he's trying to show you the full package if he gets in there and sits down on his shots from that southpaw stance dude he's a his combinations are I mean those combinations he put on Mobstar were just like for a guy like Evil will have to get hit and not even know which direction they were coming from and just be like damn I mean he's crisp he's perfect in a lot of ways but yet Arnold Allen just lost twice in a row of ways but yet arnold allen just lost twice in a row to two very good fighters and he has these injuries or layoffs where he's only fought once a year for a lot of the last five years coming you know closing in on each 30 i'm wondering if um you know i'm not telling him go back in the shed and let pacer you know shoot you on the ass cheek

i'm just saying like know how freaking awesome and dangerous you have the full potential to be luke what what am i saying here i'm talking in straight vibes do you do you decode it do you agree with me because i feel like he could be a knockout threat if he went after it more well he knocked out dan hooker although dan hooker was obviously very drained from that 145 weight cut but i mean i take a sort of a similar but maybe a slightly different lesson it's like dude look at how fucking good arnold allen is like look at how ridiculously talented he is and he still is far from a star i mean he's close to but not that close to being a champion and is coming up just short in majorly consequential fights that are hard to get back to that place like against a movsar or against a max right he's coming up just short it's like dude you can be as good as that

and you still will be behind the eight ball in the sport fucking brutal man fucking brutal sport that you can be that talented and still that far behind you know all right i have the most important question for you though okay yeah i know that you we don't know your full official pick yet but you may pick topori over volkanovski but let's leave ilia out for a second movsar evloev from what you've seen up to this point could he beat volkanovski for the title if he ended up getting that chance i don't think so no no i think volkanovski has too much takedown defense, too much lateral movement, too much confusion on the feet. I think Movsar is going to be competitive with anybody, right? I mean, I don't think Volk's going to walk through him or something like that. And I don't think, you know, Max, I don't think he's going to either way, whoever wins in that Max fight, no one's walking through the other guy. Like those are tough tough ass fights but i would pick volkanovski to beat him yes all right well he's still the standard of this division even though he's he's really testing your stat right now if rocky pennington didn't

break through the stat curse of tyron woodley's dude people are going to break through it it's just going to happen very infrequently that's all you know what i mean all right if anybody could could break the streak though naturally it's it's volkanovski right to just be that guy that's like f your shit you would think if there's a candidate who is best situated to do it who would be better than the guy that people have considered to be the best pound for pound fighter on earth um probably him true what do you believe what do you think about people calling that the luke thomas stat because that's what it's become well it's kind of weird because i didn't come up with it someone else came up with it i just signal boosted it um to like a broader audience now i've kept up with it in ways that maybe the original person who came up with it hasn't or something

but um i actually kind of like it to be honest with you because so many people not that i just i want credit for it again i didn't come up with it it's not my math but the thing that I want people to understand about it is like there's so many people who watch MMA who don't watch other sports and don't really have a clear understanding of what age actually means in sports and here you have this demarcation line that but for the stat there'd be there still is always going to be confusion but the stat is like this fucking slap of a fish in your face telling you to shut the fuck up with your so-and-so can fight till they're 40 nonsense. Look at the fucking math, asshole. Yeah.

They drop off a cliff. Take this power slap. It's big in India. Take this power slap. Accept the truth of the math here, or again, the relative probability anyway, of the math. Quit doing this shit where it's like, dude, they're 38. They're going to be fighting for another three years as an elite they're already not elite right understand again if they're they're not that that bracket so to speak my favorite bit of irony in life and i think

alanis and um uncle joey would agree with me going down in the theater is that power slap is big only in your home nation luke that is perfect perfect. That is just, that is perfect. I mean, again, I live there from birth to six months old. I don't know if it's fair to call it my home nation. I have an American passport and that's it. I don't have any other.

Okay. Let me, let me throw out the bad signal morning combat at gmail.com. Cause I know we have Indian born fans and we met in, in the UK, by the way, a lot of fans of Indian descent who were all fantastic. Do you, met in in the uk by the way a lot of uh fans of indian descent who were all fantastic uh do you do you folks consider luke thomas because he was born on sovereign american territory in india

as a true indian okay okay what which flag is that dc luke you're trying to represent armenia what do we got there dc yeah that's the flag of washington dc bitch don't forget it all right i i consider you a true indie luke i know you're you're you're lightly racist yeah that was accidentally hateful sorry i consider yourself a true indian man luke okay all right last but not least topic number five five, BC. Topic number five. Give me any name on the card that we haven't discussed. Who, for good reasons or bad reasons, who stood out at UFC 297? No question. And she ended up getting the pop that Mike Malott probably, you know, was on his way to get.

And that's Jasmine Jazz-DeVisius, who has, she's putting it together. She is coming on. You have to shout out Priscilla. Slow it down a little bit. She had an opponent who missed weight so bad they had to jump to the next weight class and is now taking the two worst beatings uh in this weight class ever historically speaking she kicked her ass don't make don't please don't misunderstand me this was not a fight that needed to take place we didn't need priscilla showed although she didn't make weight

and there's a lot of other issues going on and is somewhat labeled as a dirty fighter, just to finish this fight was incredible, the will she showed. But I think the fact that Jasmine couldn't finish her is also the idea that she's not a perfect fighter, she's not all the way there, she's not going to fight for a title tomorrow. But she's making obvious strides,

and the gas tank, the takedowns, the spamming of offense, um, that even the right cross that knocked down catch away. I mean, she wasn't able to, she doesn't have the power to finish it as consistently. It seems, although again, she's a very durable opponent there, but look, you saw her progression. There's been ups. There's been downs. She's putting it together. I think she's, she's climbing's climbing she's climbing i don't know exactly where you're right

maybe we got to pump the brakes a bit i don't mean to i don't mean to i don't mean to to rain on the parade she is getting uh she's 34 i believe but she is definitely getting better and definitely is having uh i know uh some of the some of the better performances of her career generally speaking of late i know it's been a little bit up and down but in general she's been to your point she's been impressive at several uh junctures but she's technically a 125er and that's a deep pool do you think if she stayed at bantam she could she could be a contender or am i putting too much if i were her i'd consider it honestly she i saw her at the weigh-ins because you know obviously all those overnight it's like 10 pound allowance basically you had i mean 11 right she could have made i guess 136 whatever she made i think like 134 or

something you know she was she was happy as she could be who wouldn't be right i don't have to 10 less pounds i have to cut that's why the vast majority of what it was going to be and so if i were her i would strongly consider it so now catch where is not necessarily the class of 135 either but why not take it for a spin i mean that was that ref that refused to stop the valentina fight because he wanted mario yamasaki dc's yeah he wanted her to go out on her shield and fight like a warrior luke right why are you waving that flag dc the yamasaki brothers they're from brazil but their entire business is in dc all right can we pour one out you didn't know that or no hey mayor for life like as bombo sauce once said um uh our mayor smoked crack but we all kept it real and we voted him back yes and as cricks rock said luke smoke crack got his job back that's

bitch set me up we should have t-shirts m MK, bitch set me up. All right, BC. Can I give a shout out to a couple names? I'll stay with the Canadian women because, by the way, they were very successful. How about Jillian Robertson? Great win over Pollyanna Vianna. Totally dominant grappling, basically from beginning to end. Shouts to her. She has not the most, I think third most wins ever at 115 in terms of stoppages.

Yeah, stoppage wins in that that weight class so good for her i will also say bc sean woodson looks to me like three different people from three different weight classes all put together in the same body but he gave charles jordan a tough fight he won on this contest he looked like he was pretty good and last but not least he fought like jordaine's stepsister right or no i guess the opposite of it yeah well i was gonna say sean woodson's body type looks like you ever seen like those like uh you know comics or stories where like three kids stack on top of each other and then put a trench coat so they can go see an r-rated movie and it's got like the weirdest body type and they got like did you see see the pics of him as a heavyweight boxer back in the day? It's unbelievable. He was 215 as a boxer.

Unbelievable. But he can make the weight. Anyway, he looked good. He did his job. I thought he fought quite well. I thought he won that one pretty cleanly. I know that Bruce Buffer kind of said, like, instead of Sean, he kind of said Charles or Charles.

Oh, you'll be seeing more of that coming up. Yeah. Okay. And then last but not least, dude, from the UK, how about Sam Peterson? Nice win over Johan Lainessi or Lainess. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. Getting that rear naked choke.

He had one hook in, sagged him down, kept a post behind his other leg, used straight jacket from the back to set up the choke, got it in, and it was clinical good work from sam peterson i liked all of their performances all right can you settle a uh twitter beef for me here twitter debate i tweeted at the within the first four fights of the night that i was happy dom cruz was back because he is my favorite ufc analyst i think he does the best job of the technical stuff.

I know he annoys people in certain categories. I also like when he like holds DC to task and plays difficult as partner with him. Yeah, I guess we'll get into that in the DMs. Mikey says, so there we go. I saw the first question from DMs. We'll get right into this. But if anyone else from 297, you want to give a shout out to.

Not really. I didn't think it was a great card. I'm not trying to give a shout out to? Not really. I didn't think it was a great card. I'm not trying to be a hater. I just didn't think it was a great card. All right. There you go. Well, those are our top five topics. So let's keep this moving if we can and head right into our next segment where you get to ask us questions.

It's time for DMs from dogs. Can we outlaw that sound? i know i say that every week just a donkey ejaculating is really mikey can you put that donkey out of its misery please thank you could you just finish the job mikey if he if you need help could you just finish the job with that donkey yeah thank you all right uh bc question number one here it is from donovan underscore martinez thoughts on the commentary saturday night so dominant cruz bc appears to believe that if well you and i are in a fight and you cut my face in the first round and it bleeds even if i beat the living shit out of you for the subsequent 14 minutes i win that contest

i don't know what was happening there okay so the debate I was going to bring up to you is whether you think Dom belongs here, because he, after I tweeted that out, which I did think early on, he was doing a great job. Yeah. There were a bunch of sidesteps he took that got everybody mad. And then people were like, wow, we thought your Strickland comments were controversial. This is the worst thing you've ever said that Dom Cruz belongs on this broadcast, but specific to that debate you're talking about and i want to add in one other thing that dana said that i i want to like wake people up to this isn't a rant against dana i hear this in boxing all the time too but dana's like when talking about the strickland versus ddp scoring and dana thought that strickland won three to two like i did he said yeah but i'm one of those people that believes

you have to go in there and take it from the champion i get that old school belief it's just not how fights are scored right that's how pride fights are scored whoever really kind of did the more damage or had the bigger moments even then that's not the rule with pride it's not like hey if you're gonna fight a champion you gotta really beat his ass that doesn't exist anywhere anywhere the problem is in boxing or mma you score on a 10 point must system round by round so that does not come into play at all and it's the same debate in close fights in boxing where you know it's like somebody may have landed three big punches but they got out jabbed you know 30 to 3 in that round who won that you got to figure that out and for yourself when you're watching it um yeah i felt like they were talking when they're talking about the alan

um movsar fight too, they were like, well, yeah, you know, because of that second round, Alan can't win this. Like, no, there was a chance you could have won the first and third round there, unless it's a 10-8 in the second round. So we have enough scoring problems. We have enough rules problems where I feel like

even when I'm watching, I'm not really sure what happened or what should happen next. Luke, when you get the announcers involved too, it, it, it really makes that rough. Where do you stand on Dom?

Because I think I still want him there. I think he adds a dynamic that's different from the DC Rogan pay-per-view party that everybody has become accustomed to. And I enjoy most of that most of the time to that trio with John, but I also like real analysis in there i really like dom's style of delivering it although people are starting to have issues with some of his analysis i get that but do you want him in or out in terms of your dream pay-per-view team laura senko is the i know this is gonna people think this is crazy it's not crazy laura

senko is the best color commentator that they have. She's very good. I don't think she's better than Dom. But people hate me for liking Dom, okay? That's where I'm at. I don't hate you for liking Dom, but I think she's like, her level of detail,

both in fighter history, in terms of their personality, but also their individual fight history in the library that comes with that and studying that, her understanding of modern judging, her understanding of modern criteria, is i would argue as a total package second to none uh i don't think i don't know i would say especially on the latter parts understanding what the rules are understanding how they're implemented she is clearly better than her

male peers like not even would you say there's ultimately three criterias to compare, and it would be knowledge, personality, and delivery. Is that fair to say? Because personality. I would definitely say knowledge is the first one for sure. Why are you there? And then I would say broadcast skills. How good of a broadcaster are you? Yeah, you're right.

Those foundational skills have to be there with the knowledge your broadcast skills but i think personality because it's also an entertainment product so like some people can you know dc's 10 out of 10 of personality in my opinion that's why i like him in that booth yes i agree with that and then the other thing is delivery um yeah i guess dom comes up short in a couple of those but you're right senko across the board is very high in every category. I'll give you that. I don't know if Senko is like the, does she know more about wrestling than DC?

Well, no, probably not. Right. I don't think that's the case. Or does she know more about certain intricacies about who knows certain things that Dom might know about positioning? I don't think that, but in terms of playing the levels of the skills you discussed, her overall package to me is better. I think than just about all of her peers now paul felder is obviously quite good um i do think that there are there's listen there's good parts and trade-offs to all of them i would just say this i there's a lot i do like about dom's skill set as a

as a commentator and there's many times i have profited from his wisdom and i think you probably feel the same but it's somewhat inexcusable to be on a broadcast like that and not know what the rules are about how judging of and cutting affects judging or doesn't that seems to me like a part of your uh game that um deserves that needs to be upped i'll give you that i'll give you that would you like to see the same pay-per-view team each time whether it's you know john joe and dc or not or would you like to see the same pay-per-view team each time whether it's you know john joe and dc or not or would you like to see a regular rotation i like a rotation i mean there could be like an a crew and a b crew in which they kind of already sort of have you know dan helly does i think like

contender series i think they i think they started making them do slap fights so i hate that but i do love oh they have him in bisping yeah yeah well Yeah, well, shouts to Dan Helly. He's the man. But, you know, so they have like sort of tiers in that way. But, you know, the NFL, I like what they – it's different, obviously. It's a totally different system. But, for example, you've got Romo and Nance for better or for worse in one, and then you're going to get Aikman and Buck in another one. And you've got these sort of like teams that work in these different ones. Some are more prestigious than others, but there's a bit of a rotation.

I kind of like that a little bit. I wouldn't mind if they mixed it up. But, you know, listen, Joe was doing his, what do you call it, the fight companion, and Dom got in there. Except for the cutting, I didn't really mind it. But this is also why, like, I don't know. There might be a lot more voices that need to be explored for potential roles that they already have not looked at. I don't know. There might be a lot more voices that need to be explored for potential roles that they already have not looked at.

I don't know. Interesting stuff. All right. Next DM. Question number two. Cal underscore 9009. What does Arnold Allen need? Good question.

What does Arnold Allen need to work on to break into the elite category of fighters, BC? Let those hands go. Because when he rallies in the final round, he puts it together. He looks like a million bucks. I totally agree. It's like dude it's like you know if you had to ask this the question does he have the skill to pull off what you're asking of him yes he fucking does you know he has the chin part welcome more danger i think he does he does have the chin to welcome this is my point it's like we're not asking him oh well you need to go back and work on a bunch

of shit yeah i mean of course there's always to go back and work on a bunch of shit. Yeah, I mean, of course, there's always gonna be stuff to work on. In that sense, he's, yes. But that's really not what we mean. What we mean is like, today, do you have what it takes to have more offensive firepower play a role to your advantage in fights? And I think the answer is absolutely he does.

That's the great part about him. He's fucking good. He's good, dude. It's not a big departure of what we're asking for. know what i mean yeah son of pacer mogli we love that guy he's very good but two in a row gotta go back i've i'm looking forward to see who his next foe i'd love to see him in ortega wouldn't you be that'd be a great fantastic i also like you know kind of more careful versus less him versus Yair and what that might mean. That's a crazy ass fight, too.

That's a good news for Alan. There's still some great fights. You want to see Brian Ortega bang everybody, including. Oh, no. I just want to see the beat come back, Luke. Then I will. Then I can retire as an MMA journalist and fan. It's a beat comes back and fulfills that legacy that the great potential. I don think i don't think honest abe is making his way back uh all right bc question

number three jimmy underscore eat world no it's reed um jillian robertson must be due for a ranked strawweight how about robertson versus carolina we were talking about jim miller last week i'm not comparing jim miller explicitly to jillian robertson but we were saying like you know there's elite achievement and there's not robertson I think, third now on this list for strawweight stoppages, but she, I don't know how many ranked fighters that would include. So this is where we get to like, who did you beat? When did you beat them? These questions matter to me more than how long you did it. But I do also recognize how long you did it is a different, but still laudable achievement. I'll just put that out there. out there yeah i mean this was a great win against uh vianna this really was she does juggle wins and

losses a lot along the way and has lost to some very talented fighters if this is sort of a turning point for her i mean this she she's starting to show herself luke but i still need to see a little bit more especially in this division it's tough. All right. Where is your pants on the pants-o-meter, pants-to-ankles-meter on that one? First of all, I think that's despicable, but I would like this fight because Carolina has put together the win streak of lower-level fighters, but to come back in a little name value there,

she's very durable, Kovalkevich as well, so I think this would be a good test. Not great on the ground. She goes for the finish, too. Can't say she doesn't. You know what I think this would be a good test. Not great on the ground. Robinson goes for the finish too. Can't say she doesn't. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. I got a piece so bad. And I'm in this awkward spot where it's like, do I interrupt Luke and tell him that? Do I just go pee right there while he talks to himself? Or do I just hold it until the end of the shit, Luke? So how about this one? I'll answer this one. And when you come back, you can answer it. But go right now, okay?

Thank you. I can't wait. How about this? Why don't you just wear, you can answer it. But go right now, okay? Thank you. I can't wait. How about this? Why don't you just wear an adult diaper like a real man and go on yourself? Luke, I got to go see about a horse. You know what I mean? Or a man about a horse. Yeah.

Question number four from Jonathan to Doreen, however the fuck you say it. With so many controversial decisions, what would it actually take for a change? Fan outrage and pushback. Fighters pushback and unity, Dana working with commissions. It would take the latter of those three. Dana working with commissions. Not so much Dana, but, you know, Mark Ratner or somebody in the UFC organization to do that, right? So if you listen to my live chat or even this show, you've heard me describe this any number of times. The UFC doing what they called running to regulation when their previous seg owners of ufc did not was ultimately what saved them and there's

probably a fair amount of truth to that argument not totally there's a bit of a zoo for myth but there is something to be said for um moving to regulations getting the athletic commissions to sanction it as a way to preserve what could have been otherwise banned by the government on the other hand here is the problem. You have other organizations in sports, and there's, of course, differences in many, many ways where they mix this apples to oranges comparison, certainly not apples to apples. But the NFL will tinker with its rules, and they have a formalized process as well. But in short, they'll tinker with their rules between seasons. So will the NBA. So will really any of these leagues. They'll tinker with what

they want to. Now, if you're a major league baseball and you wanted to introduce a pitching clock, they wanted to wait until other minor league teams had experimented with it and see what kind of results there were. But they had the ability when they wanted to to change the rules.

The UFC does not. They do not have that ability. They do not have the ability to get a cleaner rule set. They do not have the ability to get a better judging system. They do not have the ability to get a better judging system. They do not, in the sense of just, you know, just snapping their fingers and making it happen. They, and there is of course no national commission. So they could go to the association of boxing commissions and they could say,

we want this to be our rules. But in terms of the binding power that they have in MMA, the ABC has positively fuck all zero, none. They cannot make any state athletic commission do anything. So they'd have to do what they once did, which is go to all 50 states to get these kinds of things changed if they really felt like they had a better system to implement BC that made these kinds of controversies less likely. But that to me seems very unlikely.

Does it not? Well, I'm going to say what I'm about to say, and then you're going to say it's very unlikely. And it's the same conversation we've been having in combat sports in general for multiple decades, but can we just get a national sanctioning body organization that can say, okay, when these fights are in the U S whether it's boxing, slap, whatever, like whatever, these are the rule sets we're going to use period.

And then work with the fight promoters and, and, and those when there needs to be change and have a system that can, you know, vote and, and, and really try to look at what rules become outdated by the evolutions of the sport, what rules are, you know, what rules need to be added to prevent dangerous situations. Like let's put adults in a room instead of just going state by state and these chamber of commerce offers offices that just want the promoters to come back so they'll do anything um you're always going to say well it's going to lead to corruption and all that probably maybe yeah i mean okay but can we at least try in the beginning to pretend that it's there for a reason to do good because the system we have now sucks look it's not a system just sucks i would agree with all of that yeah all right last but not least i'm starting to get the old guy rant thing down pretty good it's you know i'm going to drive away viewers but it's

going to help me on a front porch one day when i'm screaming at the clouds it's going to be great uh from uh v vs arts i don't know what the Hi, Luke in BC. What is the best piece of advice you've ever gotten that still sticks with you today? I honestly think the best advice I've ever gotten was, quote, stop caring what other people think about you. I don't know how much I agree with that as being good advice, but okay. Really want to know what

you guys have. What do you think, BC? Best piece of advice? Well, I think there's levels to that advice. It could be the best piece of advice to say, you know, not worrying about what other people think, but you've got to get to certain levels in your maturity and growth to where that becomes a superpower for you rather than leading you to become unselfaware. I would say the best piece of advice I ever heard randomly enough. Okay. Randomly enough from one of my favorite VHS cassettes of all time, Luke. No, I'm not going down the road. You think I do, but it was called super slams of the NBA that I, you know, wore out in middle school. And for some reason, when Spud Webb was talking about winning the 86 dunk contest, you know, at five foot seven and overcoming the odds and all that, he very in passing said, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. And I don't think I was able to really weaponize that or even understand the importance of that and why that could become a,

a, you know, an oasis in a storm until late, much later in life, really, you know, my mid third, I mean, look at some ways career wise, I don't think I really became into a full level of confidence until I was 40, really like a full true man level of self-esteem and confidence. We all grow and walk our own battle. But that's ultimately the biggest truth of all. I mean, you know, you don't have to know how you're going to get there or what it's going to look like, but it's not fake it till you make it. It's, it's declaring enough of the doubt and the fear. And if you're ever going to move forward at some point, you've got to believe in something, right? And you might as well believe in yourself because your words and your thoughts, like the food you put in your body,

fuel you. And even before you've earned it, Muhammad Ali said he was the greatest before we knew it and all that. Is that just one special person? I look back at the magic of McGregor. Was he just more confident, more willing, more hopeful, more optimistic? The mind is the ultimate muscle. We haven't figured out how to flex and train and keep strong. But at least in this modern day, we're making strides. But Luke, self-belief is not just a thing. I mean, it's everything. It's absolutely everything.

If you don't have it, you won't be successful at anything. You won't. Yeah, because you're going to fail a lot. You're going to embarrass the shit out of yourself. You'll quit when it gets hard. You'll fail and then take it personally, other than learning a lesson. BC's right. It doesn't mean because you have self-confidence that you're going to achieve no but if you don't you will there is no chance you have no hope it will not

happen simple as that um do you have any good advice yeah two things one anybody who says to you and everything happens for a reason is almost certainly a fucking idiot. Just remember that. Remember that I said that. I don't know. I don't know. That sounds a little too heavy handed. It's the most sophomoric, nothing piece of absolutely disprovable bullshit.

Like it totally is not true. But neither here nor there. Well, hold on. Don't keep going. You don't think you can look back on your life and realize there were a lot of moments that initially seemed like a death sentence or something awful that happened to you that through maturity and growth, you look back and go, wow, that breakup or whatever

was the best thing that ever happened to me. I think sometimes you can do that. I don't think that, I mean, the idea that that's universally true and that these things are all connected in some kind of ultimately beautiful or an otherwise benign way is absolutely not true dude there are a lot of things that happen that i have stinging regret with that yes it might have made me better about some of the lessons i learned

but i may have caused harm to somebody else i may have harmed other things that were not fixable and i don't think that had to happen i don't think it did happen for a reason other than some kind of cataclysmic mistake or profound error in judgment. And that this is some kind of cosmic design or something when it just brought harm to people or the universe. No, I don't think that at all. I don't agree with that in any way. Also, if you want to go back to the previous conversation, if you're a child who's living in Gaza right now, this is happening multiple times a day where you have to go get a limb amputated with no anesthesia. You might be asking, do all things really happen for some kind of reason? Or is this just a comforting lie that we like to tell ourselves to make us not dwell necessarily on things that we don't want to dwell on in the way

that we might have to i get where you're going with that it's sort of a pushback against the idea that everything's already been pre-written bc bc my mom put a gun in her mouth and killed herself that didn't happen for any kind of reason i give a fuck about right when people say it happens for a reason for oh everything happens for a reason yeah dude yeah dude because my mom lost her fucking mind and then i lost my mother tell me what the what the what the what the cosmic reason is or what i was supposed to smile upon for something like that well that shit that shit robbed me it changed me yeah it hurt me it hurts to even say this word i don't i don't in any way look at this like a universe where everything happens for a reason. Fuck. Yeah. Certainly not pushing against that.

In that instance, I think what I was trying to say was that I get pushing back against the idea that, you know, universally everything's been written. So why even make any decisions in your life? Cause it's already been predestined. I don't believe that. I think along the way, you know, you can change the path of your own life for negative reasons and negative things can be introduced into your life that yes, I would agree with you may not necessarily be there for some life learning lesson. They may have just been somebody executing their own free will and unfortunately altering the course of your life in very negative ways. But I don't want to uh shut that idea down as being 100 false or even anything

um you know what i'm saying luke i do think there's a rhyme and reason to what happens in most things but i think also man can step in and change can can step in and change the course that maybe they should have been up you know what i mean i don't know people get murdered on the street accidentally drunk driver hits people and now someone's a single widow who has to take care of two kids. And I think trying to tell people that like, oh, it's part of some kind of design. I think it's fucking cruel, to be honest with you. I don't really. Yeah, but I don't think that would be the first move by anyone after extreme tragedy anyway, to be you'd be surprised probably right yeah yeah people tell you all kinds of shit i mean it's you know some of it's good some of it's good uh but some of the last thing on this to end on a more positive note than this what i would say is bc and i know you would agree with this too there's probably been times where you thought like hey maybe i should be further along than i am or where is this all leading to and by the way this business is in such a place

that like you know what's what's it gonna look like for me and BC in 10 years who the hell knows who the hell knows it's really hard to say dude we might be doing this show for free on a street corner around a garbage with a you know original plan for for a pregame preview yeah what I mean is but what I mean is in in all, the magic of building something are the little small things you do that you probably don't want to do, but you just do them anyway. And it's the slow accumulation of little wins. That's really what it is. There's no time where like, okay, I've made it. This day, it all came true.

It's sort of just any, how did someone put it to me the other day? Or it's rephrased it in a different way. It was, there is no magic. The magic is on the other side of the little details of consistent work you're not doing. It's just consistent work. It's every day where you're supposed to showing up and doing the job to the best of your ability. And of course, you're going to fail. Everyone's going to fail at that.

But if you consistently work hard, if you consistently try to make good decisions, if you think and plan and you consistently act on that vision, whether it's work, whether it's losing weight, whether it's finances, anything, it's those little daily victories that ultimately make up the big one that you enjoy in the end. Don't lose sight of the fact that it's not a day that you reach. It's the little days of winning that actually matter the most that's why you lift them weights in the off season that's why you lift them weights in the off season and with that bc it's time to see your feces oh wow that's a perfect transition uh wow i don't know where to go from there hey i what i did though i scoured the globe for the highs and the lows the good the bad the ugly, the ugly, the in-between. Here's my shit.

Have you frigging seen it? Luke, UFC 297 from Toronto to kick us off. Myra BS didn't have the five-run stamina, but I wonder, Luke, did this moment contribute to her gassing out at all? What the hell? Wow. Oh, I gotta tell you, I know the fighters love it. And I know sometimes the fans love it.

I don't love buffer and fighter screaming at each other. No, it's, it's extreme cringe to me. There's times cringe to me. There's times it'll sit through my wall. I don't know. Extreme cringe is a strong one. It's a strong one. Sometimes it'll catch me off guard and I'll be like, man, that was kind of cool. I just, this felt weird.

It was a little weird. It was a little weird, but whatever. I miss sometimes the stoic, you know, people, dude, I mean, again, it was 20 years ago, but if you missed Fedor's prime and you know how he would just look like he was fucking waiting for the bus before he went and just wrecked somebody's shit there was a certain kind of like special magic about that so if it was just like one or two guys or ladies who were like fist bumping him like it was just michael akiessa or something it'd be cool but like a bunch of them are doing it now and i'm like that's too much yeah it used to just be like clay guida and

diego sanchez and we're like well yeah look at those guys yeah exactly two maniacs yeah yeah now everyone's doing it uh luke it's not all negativity here in team tiny tornado and rocky pennington shout out to the new champion at 135 here's your wholesome moment alert when tisha and company ringside heard the decision yeah i love this stuff yeah i love this stuff the kids kids the kids got like the gun range headphones on oh yeah i mean you're like that's a life-changing moment especially financially so that's great to see yeah it definitely is that is that rocky's mom i believe so and then of course good friends with uh amanda and nina from down there in south florida yeah like i said man rocky dude rocky here's one you can say whatever you want about her what you

can't say is she didn't pay her dues right didn't you cannot say that absolutely paid and to borrow from dustin poirier paid in full is what i would say it's not as extreme age-wise as what glover did but to lose a championship fight to work all the way back years later. And in Rocky's case, she's 35, which is not nothing, Luke, not nothing to come all the way back and win a championship. Even under these circumstances. Yes, that's, that's, that's the type of stuff we need to applaud more. No question. You mentioned Sean Woodson's confusing win.

Let's listen in on Buff here. For the winner by split decision, Sean the Snake Bear Woodson! Guys, Sean Woodson won the fight. He said Sean Woodson. Ladies and gentlemen, it sounds like Charles, but it was Sean Woodson. I don't think I've seen that before, Luke. Well done on DC to just correct the situation. I don't think Buffer screwed up before luke well done on dc to just correct the situation i don't think buffer screwed up but does sean and charles sound alike no what is it

you know what it was once he i admit for just a second he was like it was you know i mean like a shot or something maybe that was it i'll say this too by the way it's a little more complicated you might imagine, for example, because of my in-laws, Colombians have a hard time differentiating she from chi. So, for example, they don't say sushi. They say sushi. Like, su-c-h-i almost. They have a little bit of a hard time. But here's my point.

Once he said Woodson, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, it's the the dog who looks like he can dunk just, you know, and scratch his knees standing up. But there you go. Yeah. The crowd was loud. Obviously that played into it. Interesting stuff. Hey, here's DDP. Check out his face after the fight. And here's when he found out that Dana scored it against him. Just so for the record, is there some people that think I lost the fight?

Dana actually said he scored it. Dana said it? Yeah. Just so for the record, is there some people that think I lost the fight? Dana said it? Oh, that's pretty cold, right? I mean, he tried. Even if you don't score for him, he was out there hustling the best he could. It was a tough fight. Absolutely. Congratulations to the champion.

Let's go over to Daniel Cormier from The Weigh-In Show. You know they have fun in hijinks over there. They got a wheel that looks a lot like ours. Let's listen to this piece of business. Think about how this fits into the macros. We have an arrangement. We have an arrangement. Okay, okay. He's like, save that for me.

You know, I just heard my ear, bro. Tyron Woodley likes poutine. That's so good. The video's out. What time of day does Woodley have poutine there is no specific time you guys are wrong paul one last question for you oh yeah luke come on it was well timed good you know i mean it was it was it's a great it's a great joke but now i'm reminded of the video and i had forgotten about it mercifully for a few days that was a full meal luke wow that was something there that was great all right um let's go over to dana white we mentioned uh earlier sort of the the whole sean strickland gate what's a journalist writes what's all that. Dana was asked about all

this at the Post Fight Press Conference. Here's his sound if you haven't heard it. You obviously give a long leash to your fighters about what they can say when they are up there with a UFC microphone and you are getting into territory of homophobia, transphobia.

I don't give anybody a leash. Well, I'm saying you... A leash? I'm... Free speech. Control what people say. I'm going to tell people what to believe. I'm going to tell people...

I don't fucking tell any other human being what to say, what to think, and there's no leashes on any of them. What is your question? I was asking that question.'ll move on though yeah probably a good idea that's ridiculous to say i give somebody a leash free speech brother people can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want okay i want to ask a question rather than just this shit rather than just laugh and just be like what a hypocrite

no one somebody what the reporter should have said was then what about the time you find nate diaz 20 000 and suspended him three months for calling brian carraway a homophobic slur on twitter what about the miguel torres just say he's changed his views he would just say he's changed his views you know like what has happened between now and then he has poor paul daly paul daly got fired from the ufc and never fought there again for that post-fight sucker punch sean strickland just brawled in the crowd with ddp and they were like hey this will make a great promotional video i just want to go back to this real quickly it's like oh we don't tell guys what to believe well you can tell someone that certain things are off limits in terms of what they can say at a press conference and not actually try to change the way they believe.

Those things are two different ones. But okay, folks would still have an issue with him telling someone what to say or not to say at a press conference. And here's my point. It's like, dude, I'm all in favor of opening up the Overton window, but we need to be honest about this. Are you telling me that a fighter can show up? And I'm not saying Sean did this. In fact, he did not in any way do this. But the logic is he's not going to tell someone what they can do can a white fighter go up to a black fighter and tell

him he's going to like uh call him like to his face like n-word n-word n-word can they do that can they do something like that can they can they show up with a swastika t-shirt can they hire hitler at a press conference can they say you know horrific things about the jews can they do holocaust denial like i mean and the answer might be yes to these things. I don't think that they are, but this is my point. The thing is, no one's crossed those lines yet, so we haven't had to have this conversation, but the idea, they already took out

the pro-Palestinian message from Islam Makhachev. The whole thing is a charade, but I'm just pointing out, no one's really fully tested the limits of that logic yet. I'd be curious to see what happens when they do. Mike Ryan. By the way, the reporter was John Pollock from I'm not sure what outlet he's in in Canada, but it was not the same guy who had the issue with Strickland. Absolutely. That was Alexander Lee.

All right, let's hear this. So Mike Ryan of the Levitard Show, who had a pretty explosive rant after strickland's comments but aimed at espn he found an old school video of dana that that does reference earlier times work at any company anywhere in america and go out and say ignorant stupid stuff publicly even on top of that say it publicly on a big you know place where people can go read it read it or hear it publicly and see what happens to you. There's, there's a way to voice your opinion without sounding like a bigot. You know what I mean? And he came off sounding like a complete jackass and a bigot. Wow. Those, those weights are, those words are pretty heavy all these years later, Luke.

Pretty heavy, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't have much to add, but he's certainly right. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Let's go mean, I don't have much to add, but he's certainly right. Interesting. Interesting. All right, let's go to the weekend in boxing, but we got an MMA twist to it. Chris Cyborg in her third professional boxing match needed just one round and really one punch. Check it out. Oh, I mean, that one didn't even land clean and it still knocked this poor lady

down. What does she do for a living besides this? Oh, well, she just ate some canvas there luke when they brace their fall with their face it's a wrap it's a wrap what do you think about her now being trained by um jose benavides senior the father of david dude i fucking love it good for cyborg i hope she gets a big fight before it's all said and done i'm telling you I watched that fight with the... Hold on. I watched her kickboxing. Maybe it was Muay Thai.

I forget the rules exactly. But I watched her fight on HDNet when she fought at Lion against Yorina Bars. And Yorina tuned her up. I remember that. I was in shock watching that live. What was the problem in that fight? The technique of the... Yorina Bars was real fucking good. That was the problem in that fight? What the technique of the, of the arena bars is real. It was real fucking good.

That was the problem. It was like a Mayweather McGregor type of thing where it was like, one person's really good at this. And one person's like, you know, respectable at it. And that's, that was the big difference. Saturday in the UK, Luke women's boxing had a hell of a welterweight title bout as Natasha Jonas, 39 year old Natasha Jonas, by the way, really pushing this stat of yours, Luke.

Oh, wait, there's a different sport. Her and Michaela Mayer had a classic, but it was Jonas that got the somewhat disputed split decision as Mayer came on late. And when you consider Mayer moved up two weight classes for this fight, dude, I love this fight, and I want to see it again. What were your thoughts on this? Look at this war.

I watched this one live as well. I thought Mayer edged it out. They were calling her Mayweather. I'm live as well i thought mayor edged it out um they were calling her may what they were something i'm sorry i thought mayor edged it out they were calling her margarito margarita in uh on twitter because she was just eating everything and walking forward the thing that goes back to me dude it was a similar kind of thing like when we learn about judging preferences in the real world like compared to the ddp fight again a very different circumstance but the point is this ddp seemed to land harder shots jonas appeared to land harder shots even though a mayor was putting a lot of damage on her and was being really consistent and moving forward uh at times anyway so i think it's a question of like you can numerically outstrike someone i don't

know what the exact totals were in that fight but there were times she was certainly getting outstruck but the judges just value the big one that they can remember that really is the thing that has to that sticks with them you know yeah mayor really sold out and just committed to squaring up walking down and making it a fight it was exciting to watch uh it was a big fight i loved it big big fan of mayor even though luke she's she's lost a couple title fights former unified champion what down like 130 like 130, I believe. But she makes fun fights happen. So watch this from the broadcast, Luke.

Check, I don't know who you picked for this fight. Watch who this lady picked in the crowd. Watch closely here after this is the end of the fight. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Did she just pick it and eat it, Luke? She's not going to eat it, right? Can we see that one more time?

Who are these fucking animals who do this? Watch this lady closely. Look at her pick the winner. Oh, wow. Yeah, you got to eat that, Jesus. Oh, you disgusting. Just hose her down and de-louse her. I mean, what an absolute cretin.

Last week in London, we had the first face-off between Joshua and Nganou ahead of their March showdown. And, Luke, we already knew Frank was a big dude, but he looks bigger than AJ, right? I don't know. AJ looks big, dude. That neck looks like it's hard for him to wrap a fucking dress shirt around.

Dude, this fight's going to rule. It's going to rule. I'm going to say it one more time, BC. Did you end up getting a chance to hear my interview with Dewey Cooper? Not yet, but I will. Believe that. I will. Bro, I'm going to say it one more time, BC. Did you end up getting a chance to hear my interview with Dewey Cooper? Not yet, but I will. Believe that. I will. Bro, I'm telling you.

I'm telling you. Maybe he doesn't convince you. I'm not saying he'll be like, oh, Francis is going to win. But you're going to be like, maybe. Maybe. I'm becoming a believer there. Also, did you see that Turkey, how do you say his last name? Turkey, the Saudi guy who's running their boxing.

Oh, Alal Sheikh? He claimed in an extended interview. So DAZN did a sit-down interview with him that was basically Tywin Woodley. They just blew him. They blew him for an hour, yeah. But there was another interview where he said that he's having a, he made it sound like, Luke, that he's having a major health scare that could threaten his life and that that sped up his financial interest in making all of these big boxing

fights happen because now he's talking about like haney versus tank like he really wants to make every fight fans want what do you does that change your belief on this at all or understand i mean this like if this guy's got some disease or something and this is his dying wishes this does this add a wrinkle to the story or am i romanticizing something that doesn't belong there yeah i mean i'm not going to take the saudis at their word okay i was just saying hey your knockout of the weekend in boxing came from the zone misfits luke it was tristan ham against not logan paul did you see this piece did you see this luke dude there's not logan paul on the right dude this looks like scooby beating up uh you know what i'm saying it's like taking a fucking

beating dude they should have stopped the fight right there this is the guy from the street fight in new orleans i don't know where we're not logan paul comes from you'd have to educate me but that's that's who he is oh no no no that wasn't the guy Nate Diaz choked out Nate Diaz choked out some other guy right maybe anyway they let this fight continue despite the mouthpiece going out and this guy basically giving up

on the ropes and it didn't really spoiler alert go his way if we can wait on it here Luke this is great I mean they had Todd Grisham on this call but they had all these influencers that were just screaming over his voice voice fed him the old scooby snack wow all right zoinks uh luke uh do you like donuts because i love them i love donuts do you mind what shape they're in? Oh, God.

Who got fired for this one, huh? Wow. I think Mikey is like, let's pull that and get to the next one. All right, let's go to your main license plates of the week. You know those maniacs up there. They'll put anything on their plate. HIV to poop. Oh, wait, have to poop.

Okay. Although HIV to poop would have been interesting just the same. We've got one more from maine all right that's a little uh those were three words i don't know if you read that correctly luke it was yeah it was okay well i've heard i've heard um i've heard songs like that um make the coochie breathe you know what can you do wow wow okay well there we go more poutine uh it's time for abuse for all ages first stop elders luke oh no oh hey nice boat shoes fuck face it's not gonna end well look at this dumb old fuck yeah bitch oh call life alert asshole call life alert he's fallen and he will not be getting up at all let's go to now let's go to the younger generation luke let's get some kid abuse in here

bah dude okay okay let me tell you something let me tell you something let me tell you something let me tell you something please i thought i had seen it all i thought i had seen it all bc pop quiz pop quiz serious question pop quiz yes hot shot where do most kids get injured on the playground chucky cheese no no no but like what part of the playground what part of the playground i would guess the the monkey bars the jungle gym that those giant no no i'm more mean outdoor parks or playgrounds i can tell you from like taking my daughter to the park it has been a unanimous answer it is the kids who walk in front of the swings and then some kid is then on the swing and they can't stop and they punt those fucking kids into orbit. I have seen it 50 times.

BC, I found something else because I took my kids sledding twice this week. Okay. And we went to the Capitol grounds for a long time, like on the back steps of the stack. We Jan six did over there. Oh, yeah. The city had closed it off for many years. It's been open now for some time. It was open when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, you could play hockey games in the reflecting pool. If it was frozen, you can't do that shit anymore, but you can sled down the back, the backside of the Capitol, hence Capitol Hill. Right.

Took my kid out there. Can I tell you how many house frowns who clearly had never done this before would stand in the middle of the slope back turned to all the kids sledding dude i watched violetta tear about 15 acls out this motherfucker just i mean turning adults off of that'd be ass over tea kettle harai goshi the whole fucking way i could not believe it and i would try to like angle them off but of course once they go you know they're off to whatever direction and it kept fucking happening people of the world don't fucking stand with your back to the where the kids are sledding unless you want to go ass over tea kettle with a kid missile going 800 miles an hour i saw a bunch the past week now you know

and knowing is half the battle. Wow, Luke, let's keep it going here. One more for DDP versus, oh, what's Mikey saying? He says, using Tukey as a bowling ball. Take out half of the DC. Dude, I tried. I would take them. I'll be, oh, let's go sledding where there's no one standing. But then the sled goes sideways.

Bam, just taking out four fucking house brows. Blinko. You have no idea where it's going to land. Luke, one more on Strickland and DDP. This one brought to you by Joe Hogan. Who's saying certain random people? What about

Jack Donald Trump Jr.? How about Luke Thomas? Luke Thomas says, good first round. Oh, this is 26 minutes to go. She said before, this one's going to be close. I can see 40 to 47 either direction. It's close on paper, as we imagined. So he said the last two rounds

I definitely think he won the fourth But you think he won the fifth? Well that was longer than it needed to be Luke But that was Joe Rogan Calling out you as sort of Like they're like how did Trump Jr. have it? And he's like wait how did Luke Thomas have it? That was I've never seen you and trump jr in the same sentence before uh somebody said he did it during one of the volk islam um what you call it fight companions as well

it's weird he won't return my texts but but or he hasn't i've stopped texting but uh but he'll shout me out on occasion i guess it's nice you know i hope it's not because i believe that he dresses like a bus boy during ufc pay-per-views is that you think that's related at all because i would apologize i doubt it i did call you a co-host on that show though i that will always i will always have that in my back pocket yeah one of the first times you've broken my heart luke just one of the first ones all right let's keep this going where are we in the list okay uh i've worked fast food so have you restaurants suck watch this guy's situation oh my fucking god look at all that barbecue oh bitch oh look at the eyes bitch

oh boy that's that's a bad day you walk away from the store when that happens that's a quit your job type of day all right a couple more on the way out here. This is your commentary moment of the week comes from this cricket match. Balls, maybe even a bouncer, put square back, put fine leg back, make the batsman think twice about it. And even if you want to trap him on the front foot, I just like to see some more aggressive tactics from the fielding side here. My mouth is very dry because I've had a line of cocaine. Just a bit outside.

Yeah. Apparently we've been playing the wrong sport, BC. Yes. Apparently we've been playing the wrong sport. Look, do you know the rapper Fatboy by any chance um i know a lot of fat rappers but i don't know if i know that one he's not part of the fat boys and their incredible movie from the 80s delirious did you watch that no just sorry not delirious

that was eddie murphy special disorderly is starring the fat boys yes disorderly yes people fat boys had a moment they had a moment this is fat boy and he's living out your dream of being a human bomb you couldn't last more than two seconds in this thing luke i wouldn't want to again folks i want you to understand something when i get cancer or i get some kind of terminal condition this is how i want the state to administer my death. Just like this. So fat boy had to break out during it. Cause he was getting overwhelmed.

Could you stand in there during that whole thing? Would you, or would you let yourself not? Yeah. Yeah. I certainly hope not. I certainly hope that I would die. Um,

that's a great way to go. But again, in the words of who is it? Crowbar. I forget the name of the Phil Anselmo band, but, uh, bury me in smoke.

That's what I want. Bury me in smoke. All, all the frigging smoke. Uh, two more for you. Is this lady turn you on or scare you? It's up to you.

If we could, um, if you have her number, she's a little bit old, you know, not necessarily in my direct wheelhouse, but she appears to be a woman of considerable talent. Yeah, we would call her a cougar where I come from. You know what I mean? I mean, she just swallowed that that wiener. I mean, just swallowed it.

And we've got one more to close here. Luke, you've been you love farting so much. It's almost like art to you, right? Yeah. I put the art in that. You know what I'm saying? Put the art in that. Allow me.

Allow me. That's your shit of the week. I you saw it there you go this is the worst show ever we deserve to be uh you know canceled but we are somehow trudging on so thank you guys everyone who watched thank you to mikey morms on the ones and twos getting the show ready and carrying it out today uh reminder to everyone let's get the social graphic up if we can mikey very, as a reminder, you can follow us on all of these different places for me and BC as well as Morning Combat. What would you say if a fan said,

when can we expect you guys again? Well, next week for sure. Yeah. We'll be popping in for some interviews, some things going on. If there's breaking news, we'll be around, right? Listen, the best way to get information about what we're going to be doing next is to follow us on social. That is where you're going to get it.

Exactly. There you go. That's where you're going to get it. So Morning Combat on Insta, Twitter, and TikTok. And then it's LThomasNews and LThomas, respectively, Instagram and Twitter. And then for BC, it's Brian C. Campbell on Instagram. And then just B. Campbell over on Twitter there as well follow us there you'll get your good information as well yeah it's morning it's first and goal from like the three yard line right now and once we get in that end zone you guys will hear exactly uh exactly the full plan and you're

gonna love it you're gonna love the way it looks on you guarantee it so reminder there as well morningcombat.store to get any merch that might be by the way i got my factory town anime shirt on how about that right oh i love that love that stuff yes all right uh and then last but not least uh bc uh morningcombat gmail.com to reach mikey or and or the show and anything else you might have yeah so people want to know if we're still doing fan subs we are send them in send them in we'll send them if we got enough good ones we'll do them next next monday all right we'll do them next Monday. All right? We'll see what happens.

And we know, by the way, there's not going to be a regular live show on February, as you guys may already be aware of. But we're already talking like there's a bunch of big fights. You might be like, hey, you're going to do a post-fight show for the UFC pay-per-view? Absolutely. What about that Bellator versus PFL card? Yes, we'll have coverage of that. UFC Mexico City is coming up.

UFC Mexico, we'll have some coverage of that. we have mexico city is coming up we'll have some coverage of that isn't fury fury usic in february as well or do they move february 17th yes same same day as the pay-per-view exactly so that day well you'll hear from us a lot and there'll be other times as well again social media is going to where we're going to be announcing this kind of stuff if you have any questions so bc any final thoughts before we get out of here uh just want to say thank you to our listeners, our viewers, for standing by us through like every change that's come our way, right? I mean, the pandemic was not easy, right?

Luckily, we had the technology to keep the show going, and we've been, you know, almost every, MK, every day, damn near almost all the days since then. Give us a chance to finish this little break off, and this next chapter is going to be spectacular. But all the P1s, all the days since then give us a chance to finish this little break off and uh this next chapter is going to be spectacular but all the p1s all the day ones whether you hated us and came back or you you're still away um we needed you and you guys were there for us to win awards to you know help us do this for a living to bring this ridiculousness to you thank you we mean that

big fans you guys more than ever thank you guys so much we really really appreciate it whether you like what we have to say or hate it if you stuck by us if you've supported the show in any capacity we are grateful for every single one of you and every single one of those acts we don't take them for granted because it's it's easy to be hateful bc it's actually it's for someone to do something nice for you send you a nice note send it around to their friends actually takes a little bit something different inside. So anybody who does that, who makes that effort, I really appreciate it. Yes, go ahead.

Quick shout out. You know our great fan, Seferino Luke, who sent us a bunch of gifts to the studio. I got the Depeche Mode record that I've been listening to. I love it. His cat, Onion, passed away, and that was like a life partner, like a rock of his life. And I know that feeling. You just went through that with a couple of animals in recent years to Luke.

It's the worst. And I don't look down on when people lose a companion in that sense. So shout out to you, Seferino and your family. And we wish you well during this transition, but onion, a real one. Thank you. Yeah. Shouts to onion and everyone else's pets out there. All right. With that in mind, we are done for the day. So again, thank you to Mikeyouts to onion and everyone else's pets out there all right with

that in mind we are done for the day so again thank you to mikey thank you to cbs sports that's bc i'm lt you've just watched mk and until next time may all of your gains be loyal Thank you. you