MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 297 Results: Sean Strickland vs. Dricus du Plessis | Silva-Pennington | UFC 297 Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

At UFC 297, Sean Strickland and Dricus du Plessis battle for the UFC middleweight championship while Mayra Bueno Silva and Raquel Pennington fight for the bantamweight title. Elsewhere on the card, Neil Magny faces Mike Malott, Arnold Allen fights Movsar Evloev and Chris Curtis faces off Marc Andre-Barriault. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, there we go. We're cooking. All right. Hi, everyone. Yes, I think we're firing on all cylinders here. Let me just make sure. Yes, there we go. Hi, everyone. How are you doing? It is late. It is 145 in the morning East Coast time here on the East Coast as we get ready. And now we're going to do, our UFC 297 post-fight show. Hello everyone from Morning Combat, my name is Luke Thomas. Nearly one half of your hosting duo, the other half of it, Brian Campbell, is doing the CBS Sports post-fight stuff. So I'll be here with you for your post-fight show. We're going to get to results, analysis, your questions to get answered. By the way, there is a tweet up at L Thomas News that I've got where people can put their questions. We're going to get to that at the end of the program. Of course, as always, if you don't want spoilers, now's the time to bolt. Trying to think what else there is

of value. Yes, a lot to get to. There were two championship fights tonight, so we have two champions to talk about here. All right, without further ado, you guys know the drill. Thumbs up on the video if you're watching. Please hit subscribe. It's free. Doesn't cost you nothing. And hey, I appreciate you guys here very much being here at 1.46 in the morning to talk about two five round fights, one of which was pretty good, one of which was really terrible.

But we're going to talk about them just the same. Alright, let's get this party started, shall we? And we're back. I know it's a little not loud. I'm really not sure how to fix that because the gain is all the way up. Let's see, does that fix it? No, that makes it worse. Yeah, I'm not really sure what to do. I will try to talk at a volume that is helpful for you. All right, so let's get to these results. UFC, let me turn this one off in the background here, if I may. Okay, yes, very good. UFC 297 is in the books, and with that in mind, hey, there we go. Let's get our instant reaction going. I'm going to turn this off as well. All right. So this is kind of big, kind of interesting. Here's what I'm going to say about UFC 297 to open the show. UFC 297, of course, took place at the Scotiabank Arena. This was in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This should be of note to you that Ontario will come back to this.

Ontario's rules are basically the same ones coming out of New Jersey. And I'm not joking when I say this. Circa 2003. They haven't really updated them since then, as to the best of my knowledge. So, they're dealing with very old MMA rules. Or at least not rules that match the current MMA landscape. That's not really relevant for the main event, but it will be relevant through the course of this program. But okay, we start with the main event. Here's how it goes. Ready?

Trick or Stupacy defeats Sean Strickland via split decision. Two 48-47s in one direction for DDP, 148-47 for Sean Strickland. I will tell you, I think that's pretty fair. I honestly thought by the end of the fifth round, you could go really either way. I did not think that one guy necessarily, it's not quite true. There is a case for Sean Strickland, 48-47, really no issue for me. I think it'd be like one, three, and five. If you have a score case for Sean Strickland, 48-47, really no issue for me. I think it'd be like 1-3-5. If you have a scorecard for Sean Strickland, I'm going to guess it's 1-3-5. If you have a scorecard for DDP, it's probably 1-5 Strickland, 2-4 DDP. There might be some variation of that, but it's probably something like that.

In the lead up to this particular fight, the conversation around the main event was that one, if you looked at the odds, they were very, very close. Let me make sure no one texts me. Yeah. Yeah, we're good. The odds were very, very close, which I'm sure you understand, and we all understood that. But the fight on paper was really close. We just didn't really know how these two were going to match up or what was really going to be the true fault line or where it would all kind of fall apart if it did and who had a decisive advantage in one particular area versus the other. It was close. It was kind of hard to say exactly how some of

this would go. Recall that most people did not have Sean Strickland becoming champion to begin with. Then he goes and he performs quite ably and obviously winning the title and then gets to this position. Same thing for Drikus Duplessis. Not many people had him at least ahead of the fight beating Robert Whitaker. And of course he does. And he gets to this position. So you even heard Dominic Cruz who had some strange commentary tonight related to like cuts and their value. Which was kind of weird. Dominic Cruz seemed to think that if like you get a cut in. I mean I can't say this is exactly what he thought.

But it appeared that what he thought was that in any bout. Let's say you get a cut in the first round, that that damage helps you win the consecutive second and third rounds just based on the damage done in the first round, even if it's not necessarily impacting you. It would still have this lingering value, even though that's not really how it goes at all. Anyway, that's not the point.

But you just knew that this fight between Strickland and DDP was going to be close and that there was something left to prove for whoever would emerge as the winner. There had to be another gear to hit. I will tell you, here is basically what I think this fight came down to. We're going to look at some of the numbers here in just a second. We're going to take a look at some of the things that may have contributed as best we can here at 2 in the morning. I will tell you that it just looked to me, and of course it's a little bit more complicated than this, but it just looked to me that if you look at the raw numbers, I'm going to guess that Sean Strickland does get credited with a lot of strike attempts.

But it seemed to me the overall amount of clashing that they did, even in the fifth round, this wasn't so true, but definitely true from the second round through most of the rest of the up to the fourth and even part of the fifth, it just seemed like it was from a labor issue, Drik is doing more. He just did a little bit more. He was trying to force things back. He was trying to put combinations more. He was trying to force things back. He was trying to put combinations together. He was trying to knock on the door, so to speak, with leg kicks. And the other side of the story is with Sean Strickland, which we knew would be his bread and butter, it seemed to be more a function of his defensive prowess. I will tell you, I was really wondering. You know, it's kind of funny, man.

It's not that I don't have a higher opinion of Drikus from winning this. Of course I do. And it's not great that Sean Strickland, for his own legacy, lost in his first title defense. That's not great either. But at the same time, there was a part of me that was really wondering with this fight, how was the defense of Sean Strickland going to hold up over time against Drikus? Which is to say, you knew it would be good for a while, but would it be able to maintain its poise throughout the course of the onslaught? And obviously, if he lost, it wasn't good enough. But I actually thought it was really good.

The thing you thought, at least what I had considered, was in looking back at the Izzy fight for Drikus, I really believe, excuse me, not for Drikus, for Sean, was that Sean was able to slow the fight down. And a guy like Izzy who faints and faints and faints and switches stance and then moves and resets, that that lowering of the output really dovetailed quite naturally with that defensive pressure style, right? Because he's blocking, he's throwing traffic up, he's leaning, he's getting out of the way, all that kind of stuff. But in the end, he's leaning, he's getting out of the way, all that kind of stuff. But in the end, you know, he's putting forward pressure on you. That worked really well against that particular

opponent based on the way that his style goes and based on the way that Izzy approached that fight. Sean just had a great game plan. He had a great execution. And that was one of those fights on that particular night where I really thought, wow, man, that style worked super well for Sean in this individual matchup. And you know it's going to be like smothering for any good middleweight. Like it's not like it doesn't scale. It scales. But you just wonder where that might fall apart. Man, it didn't really ever fall apart. Like this was nip and tuck both directions. His defense looked tremendous to me, even if he gave up the takedown a bunch of

times. Again, we'll look at what the numbers end up being, so I don't know what they are, but it was at least a near handful of takedowns. Drikus couldn't really do much with them, so it was impressive that Drikus was able to get them. And this is something that we had talked about in my personal film study on my personal YouTube channel, which was that, like, folks, like, how do you attack the style that Sean has? If he's raising a leg and then he's leaning, well, he's going to be pretty hard to hit. You can go to the body, as the commentary crew indicated, but the other one was you can just get under him and go for the takedown. So, Drikus actually employed some of that here tonight and then still really couldn't make good use with it.

It was just the guy who won just seemed to be the one who, I'm not saying numerically this is quite true, but the way it appeared was, or it might be numerically true, but it appeared to be the guy just kind of swinging the axe more to chop the tree. Just put a little bit more effort into it and then it was Sean blocking, rolling, you know, traffic blocking, all that stuff. All the different things that he does his leg dude his leg kicking game was tremendous i should say excuse me one more time the leg kicking defense from sean strickland was tremendous right so it's funny man like on the one hand he loses tonight and that's not great uh and you had to give it to ddp he had the crowd chanting his name in the fifth round, and they had come out

with any number of different slogans. But all of them, to the best of my memory, in unanimity for Sean, or certainly none for DDP up until that fifth round, so he had really turned the tide. But I actually thought this was a pretty good defense, a very good defensive performance from Sean Strickland. The issue for me is he spent a little bit too much time either throwing stuff past the first round that wasn't of significant consequence, or just not throwing enough at all. So his defense remained very, very stout. He did block a lot and get out of the way of a lot, but he just didn't get a lot going after that first round. His jab in the first round is really good, right? And you heard Drickus talk about it, where he's got that kind of roll where the elbow comes up first almost

a little bit. And sometimes he can get a high elbow block, but then it can roll into a hook or it can just kind of come in like a crooked jab. It's a nice, it was doing good work in that first round. Kind of got away from it, got away from the push kicks, got away from the rear leg teeps, got away from a few of those things, and then just started to play defense a little bit more. And the defense was good. The defense was really good. It just wasn't enough. It just wasn't enough to score enough points, I think. It really comes down to that. It's not, there wasn't a huge degree of separation. And like the other weird part too was like, like dude sometimes drichus would throw stuff that you thought was good so right from the southpaw

stance what would drichus do there the body kick was a big one right so if he goes to southpaw and it's orthodox now you've got open stance drichus was going to the body kick over and over again going to the head kick um that those things even when they got Sean to block or transfer his defense, it usually moved him out of position. It got a reaction from the crowd. Sometimes it even snuck through a little bit and kind of wobbled him to the side as opposed to just catching it out here. It had some effect. Some of the body kicks were tremendous, although it didn't seem to slow down Sean's cardio at all. You know what? It's not quite true. I thought Sean and Drikus were kind of slowing down towards the end of the fourth, but in general, they had a good strong fifth.

They ended the fifth on a high note. There was a lot going there. It just wasn't enough offense. I want to look at some of these numbers and see if that bears out ultimately in the end. Wow. Sort of. Sort of. Yeah. sort of. No, not really, not really. Okay, that's interesting. Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, so numerically, here's, again, this is numerically. So this is quite literally quantitative, not necessarily qualitative, but I do think it sort of tells the story of the fight.

First of all, six takedowns for Drikus Duplassif out of 11 attempts, a 54% takedown success rate for two minutes and eight seconds of control time. So six takedowns is very impressive. The guy's a bull, and he got it, dude, he was so good, he would whip him off the body lock in one direction and trip him the other. He ran down double a couple times i think he even got a single there's a bunch of different stuff that he had those were great but just to get two minutes of control time over six takedowns through five rounds is i'm not saying it's not nothing but that doesn't get you much in the end obviously but these numbers to me are significantly more interesting uh they're up being they real time by Fightmetrics, so if they change, I'll let you know. But it appears as

follows. Overall significant strikes landed, 173 for Sean Strickland, 137 for Drikus Duplicy. A lot of what he threw did not get through. Also, they credited Sean Strickland on this part, you got to be careful on. They credit Sean Strickland. Now, this part, you've got to be careful on. They credited Sean Strickland with attempting 419 total strikes, but a lot of those are not necessarily going to be a lot of things of consequence, whereas Drikus, for whatever quality the motion and mechanics had, he's putting a little bit more on it, but okay, doesn't matter. First round, Sean Strickland, again, quantitative totals.

Sean Strickland, 34 strikes landed in round one. Drikus Duplicy, just 18. Sean Strickland round, not just because he has higher numbers, but because he did better work in that round, although two or three takedowns for Drikus in that particular frame, but then things began to reverse. Again, quantitative totals, 26 for Drikus Duplicy, 22 in round two for Sean Strickland. One of one takedowns for 22 seconds of control time for Drikus. Round three, very close. 31 significant strikes to Drikus' 29. No takedown attempts, no nothing.

That could be one of those rounds that, again, since the quantitative total is nearly identical, that comes down to the quality of what the judges ended up seeing. Round four, Sean Strickland, 33 to Drikus, 29. There was three of five takedown attempts for a minute 18 of control time. Okay, so I thought he just did better overall work there. And then round five, I thought it was the opposite. Sean Strickland, 53 significant strikes landed to 35 for Drikus. He went 0 for 2 on takedown attempts. And there you have it.

Targeting. Targeting. Sean Strickland, 90% to the head. 90. To the body, 5%. To the leg, 3. He headhunt in this one. Little bit of work to the leg.

Not much. It's so much defensive catch. He just plays at this level. He doesn't play at any other particular level. Drikus Dublis, 59% to the head, 23% to the body, 17% to the leg. So what was Sean's targeting? So it was 95-3, right? What was his targeting against Izzy? Wow, completely different. Sean Strickland, excuse me, 62% to the head against Izzy, 32% to the body, just 5% to the leg.

Not a big leg kicker, but went much more to the body against Izzy. This one he didn't really do. So I talked about some of the stances that you saw from Drikus. He would do southpaw, go to the body, go to the head. He would do another one where he would switch stance back into orthodox

and then he would use that to then land the overhand right at times. Almost like shift double shift to go all the way through or he would shift and then under hook that kind of stuff he had to really fire you saw him he would shift and then do a spinning back fist at times he had a real hard time finding a guy who wants to lean away cory sandhagen has talked about this you leaning away can come with a lot of risks, especially in boxing where the space can be more constrained and you're on right angles, so it's very hard to circle out if you're just backing up straight. But you can back up straight

in MMA, or especially in the big UFC octagon, you can post and move out of the way. It's actually, I'm not going to say easy to get out of the way, but you can get away with certain things that would not necessarily be things you can get away with in other composite combat sports. But Shawn has made quite an art form out of just pushing and getting out of the way. So Drikus was trying all kinds of goofy shit, like inside cut kick to overhand right to left hook. There were times he would go shift right to the body, excuse me, shift left to the body, right over the top, like just all different kinds of things where he could take big steps because they were really on the outside of one another for long periods. And then the fight got closer, and then it became hand-to-hand.

But even still, or I should say mid-range, boxing range, just outside mid-range, which made the fight, I think, open up a little bit more. But still, Shawn kind of maintains that range right outside of it. It's very hard to get the guy, especially because of his footwork, right? He doesn't get too close to the fence where he leans and then he can get popped, and he's not pressuring the same where he did against Pareda, where he was just kind of walking the guy down. It's a different kind of more calculated pressure now, and all those things keep him a lot safer. Dude,

he's hard to hit. He's hard to hit clean. Somewhere around the third or fourth round, I forget exactly where, he got hit around his left eye and then began to bleed profusely from that. I suspect that played probably to the whole Dominic Cruz three, but in all seriousness, it probably played some role.

Both in whatever message it might have sent to the judges and also you did see Drikus in that frame. I believe it was round four, but we have to go back and and also you did see Drikus in that frame. I believe it was round four but we have to go back and look. You did see him in that frame make more contact with his right coming over the top against that left eye which makes a lot more sense. Sometimes he would hook and come over the top but you saw him make a little bit more

contact so it appeared to have a definite impact at least for various moments in time, on his vision. And there was actually one time I thought Dracus pushed Sean into the fence, took him down, and there's a moment where Sean, like, visibly, I don't know if wincing is exactly the word from pain, but, like, trying to, like, blink hard to wash out whatever blood was in his eye. But it appeared to have some kind of an effect. But there was... But there doesn't appear to be any magic to speak of

in this particular context. The interesting part for me here for Dricus Duplessis is he had different stuff working from different stances. The overhand right was a hard thing for him to make him work. He did have a jab from both stances that worked. I thought it worked better from orthodox, but that was part of it as well. He had different guards he implemented. Obviously, he went back to the high guard. That was an interesting part too,

that high guard from DDP. You always imagine guys are going to go to the body on him and they don't. I don't think they want to get close enough necessarily to do that or change levels in that way. Certainly, Sean didn't want to do that. So that kind of limited exactly what he was throwing for. He didn't throw any kicks to the body himself, kind of leaving something on the table there. But as I mentioned at the top of the program, it just seemed to me that it was a little bit more a function of just the dueling, the blitzing, the pushing the guy back. One guy was just defensively reacting more than the other guy and that isn't necessarily always the best way to judge this fight although again I think DDP winning is should be in no way controversial this fight was you know very very close and him winning makes total sense you can

totally understand that's not what I mean I'm just saying if you react defensively enough that's really great to keep you safe that's really great to keep you safe. That's really great to keep you in the ballgame. It's not going to be really great to get the dub. It's not going to be good enough. You actually have to put meaningful offense together behind it, and there just wasn't quite enough of it. You saw from 90% and more that there wasn't enough diversification of targets, getting away from, it's great to stop the leg kicking,

but getting away from your own teeps, making him force himself outside of range, making him work even further, putting a little bit more steam on him, getting back to the jab, he was just kind of waiting to use his hands to block and then get out of the way. It's not really going to be enough. Let me see if there's anything else in that, in those numbers. Have they been updated? No, those appear to be the final ones. They've not been updated.

Yeah, still 173 for Strickland overall. Significant strikes, 137. I want to see about the targeting of the legs. Targeting of the legs for each guy. Dirkus Duplicy targeted the legs 34 times. 34 times he targeted the legs. Hit him 24 times. Strickland just six.

Almost just one a round. That's it. Four for four in round one. Hit him 24 times. Strickland just six. Almost just one a round. That's it. Four for four in round one. That's pretty good. One for one in round two. Zero for zero in round three. Zero for zero in round four. One for one in round five.

That could have been a difference maker for him too. Didn't get that going. I'm trying to see targeting the body. Yeah, just 10 for Sean Strickland. 32 for Drikus du Plessis two for four to the body for round one, Sean Strickland, one of two in round two, two of three and round three, one of one in round four and then four or five to begin to open up there. Although listen to this head targeting 81. Strikes for Drikus Duplicy, 157.

157 of 387 attempted for Sean Strickland. That was really the entire amount. That was it. I would argue, so for now, if we're piecing together from what the numbers tell us, what the videotape showed us, now thinking about it, I would argue some of the things that I've already mentioned, but putting together sort of a comprehensive whole here, I really believe Sean Strickland's lack of offensive diversity in terms of both the targeting, combination work, and it's, again, numerically

there's a lot of it to like in terms of what the head strikes were, but in terms of the overall combinations that involved things outside of that or involved it in different ways, like, you know, a two-punch combo, then you go to the head kick or something like that. He wasn't really doing anything like that. That limited his opportunities here as well. That really limited him. So in the end, we get a contest where the guy who was the champion performed pretty ably, especially on the defensive side.

And then we have a guy like Drikus Duplicy who we knew was slightly more offense-oriented that ended up being mostly the difference that we thought it would. And it sets up what you might imagine as Drikus Duplicy, what he has said was he wanted a shot against Israel. Well, not a shot, but a fight against the former champ, Israel Adesanya. He wants to fight Izzy, which I'd be cool with. I don't know if it's exactly what everyone else wants. I guess we'll see what the fan base really feels like. To me, that is a fun contest. I did not believe that Izzy deserved an automatic rematch after losing to Shawn, but then Shawn taking this and now creating a situation where who would be next. I don't think Hamzat is the guy right now,

although we shall see. I'd take the Izzy fight big time. I don't know. Does that headline 300? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't be against it. I don't know if that's exactly the blockbuster main event that people are necessarily hoping for. It could be. But that appears to be a possibility. I really enjoy that fight. To me, that one is a little bit more interesting. Izzy is not as defensively...

His game is not as defensively... He has good defense. He has very good defense. He doesn't take too many shots cleanly. But Sean's style is to kind of be in the space and it's defensive friction. Hands up, blocking, you know, it's kind of bouncing off his shoulder. It's a lot of friction. I'm blocking punching lanes. I'm, you know, catching a lot on the arms and shoulders and I'm kind of just in that space. Izzy's a little bit more head movement, stuff misses, then he counters, or Robert Whitaker's in front of him, and he's backing up,

and he's punching that way, right? It's a very different kind of style, where that's a little bit more brute force meets offensive kind of, they're both very technical, but a little bit more razzle-dazzle. That's actually going to be a really interesting matchup with a big, I think, possibility for a KO relative to this one where both guys are, Sean doesn't have a ton of offensive firepower. DDP does, but he's heavily thwarted by a guy who's got excellent defense. So he had a good fight, but a little bit stuck in the mud. A little bit, a little bit. A good fight, but a little bit stuck in the mud, I think, as a consequence. A little bit of that. And that's the fight.

I think the bigger story will be looking at the individual offensive sequences that both guys tried. What were some of the very specific details of what we saw from what Sean offered defensively. What Drikus was doing defensively. We talked about the different preferences from what he liked from what Sean offered defensively, what Drikus was doing defensively. We talked about the different preferences from what he liked from different stances, some of the different stance switching combinations and different entries. Again, some of the amount of attacking,

the amount of overall work he's put together, the amount of times he was working for takedowns. Just did a little bit more offensively in the end, but the nuances of what they were trying, and again, I'm going to go back to it one more time dude Sean Strickland's defense to me is gonna like whatever he's got going now the style he's cooking with now I don't know if he's gonna win every fight but he's going to like absolutely this I mean he's been doing it for a while but you know against Pareda it wasn't a great example and then you're like you're beating're beating the Abus Magomedovs of the world.

It's hard to know exactly how good the offense is or even needs to be. And then you see it against Izzy, you're like, oh, yeah, it's very good. Then you see it against Drikus, and you're like, right, this is going to scale against elite opponents for a while. And by the way, the idea that he might not come back to this place and get a title shot, always these are questions about how much the UFC wants to see you in those positions. That is incontestably true. But it's not like he got the doors blown off him tonight.

He certainly did not. He has a case for even winning it. And what he's got going on, how old is Sean Strickland? Sean Strickland currently sits with us at, yeah, he's 32. He'll be 33 in February, but still, that's close to prime. I have to tell you, he might get back here sooner or later. I don't think it's out of the question at all. I mean, it's hard to say.

The world is unpredictable, but he's got exactly the kind of defense that's going to keep him in, make any kind of fight with any kind of, it's like he throws on the gi and the game slows down. Like his style of defense slows everything down, makes everything more measurable, makes everything a little bit easier to react to. Even if he's flinching,

it does create other openings. But even when you take advantage of those openings, he has stalwart defense on those second and third layers as well. As we indicated, like we're guys where if you you're if you're not balanced because you're leaning you're available for the takedown but then even if you get the takedown you can look at how much he really resists that as well dude he's gonna be a tough guy to beat he's gonna be a very very tough guy to beat uh he got beat today but barely and um his defense is remarkable. He might have the best defense.

He's got some of the most unusual defense, certainly in the UFC middleweight division and UFC overall, but some of the most effective as well. It's just an admirable skill to have. It's going to keep him in competitive fights against elite guys, but if he really wants... It's not same thing. It's not the same problem in terms of the specific tactical choices, but if I'm being honest, I think it's the thing that kind of cost him against Jared Cannoneer as well. I just didn't feel like he did enough in that

contest. Let me look at the numbers in the Jared Cannoneer fight. Do the numbers back up my claim? Let's see. Obviously, against Imavov, he had plenty. But against Jared Kananir, again, he attempted 410 strikes in that fight, only landed 157 of them, which was more than Kananir's 141. So let's go through the numbers. Kananir, 16 to 13, round one. Kananir, 25 to 28, round two. Oh, these are very close. Jesus. 33 to 35 round three, Cannoneer to Strickland 27 to 33, and then 40 to 43. These guys were never more than six strikes apart. So that's a little bit different. They were kind of always neck and neck. This one had more lopsided round one and round five, but nevertheless, he never kind of broke away from

the other guy against Cannoneer. And here he had enough rounds with the other guy. It was just a little bit more. So I would say if you're Sean Strickland, you're in his corner, you're in his coach, there's a lot to like here. There's a lot to take home. There's a lot that's going to keep you in the ballgame going forward. If there is a common denominator about some things that have held him back, it just has to be not what the numeric striking total

show, but about meaningful offense that has a memorable impact or otherwise changes your opponent's incentives or decision making. There is not enough of that. Whereas you do get enough of that with Drikus, even if you get some bizarre mechanics, even if you get him slipping. I mean, how many times do see him throw a an overhand right and then fall forward or you know you see it a lot on spinning back fists but even even not on spinning back fists he was falling all over the place a little bit I mean yeah he's trying to go

and that that was great but he's he's you know he's getting after it even to the point of putting himself out of position and off balance I don don't necessarily recommend that. I'm just saying it's kind of emblematic of the story of the fight. So both guys, it's not great to lose again if you're Sean Strickland, but I don't think this is, as I indicated, I don't think this is hardly any kind of death sentence for his future. And for Drikus, it looks like Izzy is probably going to be next and where that goes and when on the calendar that is will be kind of interesting. We shall see. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself

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water. Excuse me. Okay, we'll get to some of these questions about it here in just a minute. All right, let's talk about this co-main event for as little as possible. Little as possible. Raquel Pennington defeats Mayra Bueno Silva, 49-46, on two of the judges' scorecards, and then 49-45 on one of the other ones. Not a great fight at all. Raquel Pennington, your obvious and deserved winner. Raquel could have punted on the first few rounds, or the first couple of rounds anyway, and then just won on, again, kind of effort in the last three. Bueno Silva was not

there at all in the last two rounds, was barely there in the third, and that fight was terrible. That fight was terrible. Silva literally finished the fight on her back getting leg kicked. Not even hardcore leg kicks, not like Sakuraba leg kicks or something. Just standard old leg kicks or whatever, just kind of keeping you busy. And laid there for like 30 seconds doing that. She was absolutely not prepared for a five-round title fight. To me, there actually is a pretty cool story here, which Rocky Pennington, over the age of 35, gets a remarkable win, which is really hard to get. Somebody sent me some math, by the way. It turns out that when you really begin to see decline among elite fighters on the male side, 125 to 170, it's actually not 35. It's actually 34. 34 is when the real switch begins to flip in terms of negative things happening for their chances. But here Raquel Pennington at 35 gets the job done and was the deserved winner. And I will tell you that this was not a position most folks thought she would be in after the fourth round of her fight against Amanda Nunes

when she turned to her corner and said she did not want to go back out there. They kind of cajoled her into going back out there, which ended up being this large controversy. And then she got pummeled in the fifth round. I think she got her nose broken and you're like, okay, well, that's that. But then Amanda Nunes basically flattens the division and then leaves and Pennington's just kind of hanging around using veteran savvy, good clinch work, good effort, understanding how to win rounds, understanding how to neutralize opponents, and put together a decent win streak. She arrives at this position. Bueno Silva has a great ninja choke, which we kind of knew, or you can also, ninja choke's

like a newish term. That used to just be called a power guillotine, but whatever. Anyway, the point is, they can be slightly different too, but the point being is Silva just had nothing really in general. At first she had some stuff. She had great back takes. She had good back control. She has a very good ability to off balance from the back even when you're standing with these inside rides. She has a lot of ability there.

There was a moment there where she was across the jaw from the back, and she was really beginning to threaten. But once you saw that, Pennington is not going to go away easy. Pennington's going to be hard to hurt. She's going to be hard to submit. She won't necessarily be hard to score on, either with control from the back or with any other kinds of strikes, which you did see from Silva.

But there was no ability for Silva to have any sustained effort. She gassed, like basically after the third, and kind of just laid down in the fourth, and then definitely laid down in the fifth. I mean, usually you use the term like laid down almost like metaphorically, like, hey, we're not going to lay down for this opponent. She's like literally laid down. I mean, maybe perhaps not in spirit, but in physicality that she definitely was just not doing a whole lot. So it's not like, you know, it's like individual sequences on takedowns and whatnot.

Like Silva looked better. She looked like she had great elbows in the clinch off of framing. I thought that was really good as well. Like she had some nice weapons. But so much of this game, so much of this game comes down to knowing how to stay alive, how to minimize damage to the extent possible, as we indicated at the main event, knowing how to win rounds, having good cardio, knowing how to push late, right? And just sort of being present in a fight and waiting for a mistake to happen.

And a big mistake is either, however you want to explain why Silva didn't have the requisite cardio, that is up to you. But that was the problem. She had not the requisite cardio and it really limited her attacks where she was just kind of lazily

like working from guard. A couple of times she was threatening with triangles, you know, the middle parts, middle to latest parts of that fight, but they were never really all that close. Yeah, I hated this fight. I didn't like this fight at all. Let me look at some of my notes here that I made if I can. I had to take

notes on this one because I was like, I'm not going to forget. I remember a goddamn thing. Yeah, initially great leg kicks and then back control, ninja choke, and then when that would fail, she would go for the ninja choke, right? And then she would try and lock it up here, and then back control. Ninja choke. And then when that would fail, she would go for the ninja choke. And then she would try and lock it up here. And then it would pop out. So she would take that elbow and then just slice with it.

That was nice. I liked that. Round two. Again, elbows and clenching. Framing. And there was some good body work she was able to do. Penny and team was able to start scoring over the top with right hands. Off her blitzes.

And then there was the back take. And then the semi-close one over the jaw. Round three. I even have my notes she begins to fade and then sits to half court half guard to like thwart choke attempts which is a bad news uh didn't threaten from guard at all hardly in round four at a failed arm triangle from mount you raquel pettington did which somehow never it felt like she had the mount and mounted arm triangle for seven days, and it just didn't finish. I think there was three minutes left in the round, and Daniel Cormier was like, she'll lay here for three minutes.

And I was like, I think Cormier's right. I think Cormier's right. So terrible. Terrible fight. Not that interesting. It just felt like a sort of standard women's bantamweight fight that just happened to be five rounds. I feel great for Rocky Pennington's story, someone who's been around a long time, someone who's put in a lot of work, someone who's been in the trenches, someone who waited her turn.

You have to feel good about that. There was a lot of factors that could have prevented her from being here, and they would have tripped up a lot of fighters. They didn't trip up her. She was able to make it across the finish line, and for that, I think we should all be appreciative and respectful of what she's been able to achieve. At the same time, how does one look at a result like this

and think that, like, let me just ask you. If you're Valentina Shevchenko do you like your chances of winning the belt back or winning the belt at 135? Gotta tell you I would I would I'd like my chances um painting that you knew that this fight was going to take place in the clinch and she's going to be able to even though her coaches were telling her to fight her a distance for most of the time but the clinch is like a safe zone she knows how to work there she knows how to stay safe she knows how to turn she knows how to cover she knows how to do a lot from there she knows how to trip she knows how to punch she knows how to like underhook and pull and turn she's got a lot of safe places

she just really knows how to hang out in some of those spots. You knew it was going to get there. You just didn't think it would wear out her opponent to that point. I'm just sort of trying to say like, what's the, Pennington is very well-rounded. Pennington had a great game plan and she, well, that's not quite true. She had, her coaches had a great game plan. She didn't execute on it, but she still nevertheless managed to get the win. I mean, that's sort of the part that really kind of gets me. It's like she didn't really execute on what it appeared that her coaches wanted her to do and still was able to get the job done, which means it was like a really epic collapse in my view from Silva.

But like, did you get the opinion when you watched this that the winner had like a mandate, you know, like, oh, wow, like this person's like the person in this division you know and i recognize the division is not strong but i'm like saying did you get this overwhelming show of force from the champion you didn't get that from ddp but you have seen it as recently as his last fight before this and in many others as well rocky penitent's career is filled with a lot of great wins and a lot of respectable performances, but a lot of decisions, a lot of split decisions. I think she's got four finishes overall, three by a choke, only one by KO or TKO,

and I think that's through 18-plus fights or something like that in the UFC. It's a lot. Or I should say it's not much, but it's a lot of overall work, but not that much in terms of the kind that we really value. I did not walk away from this performance thinking, well, she's clearly going to be the champion for the foreseeable future. I didn't get that opinion at all. So she is that tonight. That is very much something that we should not take from her. We should not completely be like, oh, it's, you know, I saw people being like, close the division. Well, that's a little strong. That's a little strong.

But I certainly recognize there was not much in that performance that I was watching and being like, well, this is clearly the person that's going to hold this title for quite a long time. No. Not at all that. And for Silva, it's like, you beat Holly Holm. Then there was the USADA thing. You know, whatever. She had some documentation to to apparently justify her

cause and then she comes out here and just lays like the biggest of eggs and it's like no one was really all that excited about this performance and it looked like now their pessimism heading into the contest ended up being quite justified it was just another fight it just happened to go a little bit longer but like i don, I don't, there is no, like, there was no, the DDP Strickland fight was not a crazy barn burner, but you could tell there was a lot of different intricacies of two guys who were ready to go for 25 minutes. And, again, it was nip and tuck.

This was just a good fighter beat a fighter who does have some talent but seemed unprepared for the moment and ultimately got beat through just pure effort and better decision-making down the stretch, but nothing like especially super brilliant decision-making. Just meat and potatoes, the kind of thing that she's done to accumulate the opportunities that have been given to her. I respect it, but we have to call it what it is.

It's not like the highest level of achievement or ability we have seen in the fight game. It's good for what it was. And that's really, you know, that's a good, that's, that's fine, but it's not much more than that. So I don't have much more to say on this one. Are there any numbers to this one that are kind of interesting? Let's see. Just very briefly, if I may, I haven't even looked at these yet. Jesus. Raquel Pennington, 134 significant strikes landed to Silva's 69. Yikes. Pennington credited with one takedown out of three, two sub-attempts, two reversals. Silva credited with three of nine takedowns, three sub-attempts, no reversals. Pennington actually accumulating 11 and a half minutes of control time. Silva, eight and a half minutes, or nearly nine minutes, excuse me.

Now, control time in this particular case, not just on top, but pressing into the fence, so it's a little bit warped. Let me just see if there's anything in the numbers. No, not necessarily. The targeting, it all looks about as you might expect. Yeah, not a lot of leg kicking either, necessarily, especially from Raquel Pennington,

but you kind of knew the heading in. All right, elsewhere on this card, Neil Magny defeating Mike Malott. Dude, what the fuck happened here? Wow. This was a bad loss for Mike Malott. He loses via TKO at 445 in round three. All he had to do was hang on. Now, maybe round three would have been 10-8, maybe. Probably not, but maybe. And it would have been a draw, but that would have been better than what happened, which is him getting finished with 15 fucking seconds left in the fight.

Okay. Jesus. Mike, what happened here, dude? What happened? All right, I'll tell you what happened here, dude? What happened? All right. I'll tell you what happened. I literally was watching this fight being like, I think Neil Magny is shot. Like, I don't even know what he's got left. And he did not look great. We should be clear. First two rounds, I wrote on Twitter that he had lost the fight through the first two rounds everywhere. And that's true. There was nowhere he was winning that fight where he was being contested.

There was nowhere he was winning that fight. he was being contested. There was nowhere he was winning that fight. He was losing in the stand-up. Again, not necessarily horribly, but the leg kicks were landing, certainly in round number one, for example. To the extent that Milat wanted the takedowns, I believe we'll go to some of the numbers here as well. I want to see those. Yeah, let's see these takedowns for Milat.

He got four of six, not only in the first. He got two in the second. He got two in the fourth, or two in the third, excuse me, of four. And then it blew up in his face. Listen to these numbers. 20 significant strikes landed for Mike Malott in round one, just five for Neil Magny. Round two, 21 significant strikes landed for Mike Malott, just six for Neil Magny, plus the two takedowns, plus three minutes of control time. All right? And then in round three, he goes for a guillotine. Neil Magny kind of picks him up almost like a double. I think he did have a double.

Kind of dropped him a lot. Let's go of the choke. Goes to full guard. I went back and I looked. So he crosses his feet. Okay? So he has guard. Then he opens his guard. Fine. No problem. He wants to get his offense going, so he crosses his feet. Okay, so he has guard. Then he opens his guard.

Fine. No problem. He wants to get his offense going. Maybe he wants to stand. No. He begins to go for leg locks. Folks, you've got to understand something. And again, it's not that Mike Malott doesn't know this.

I don't know what he was thinking exactly. But what I can say is here's what you commonly see in this battle for people who are not like Charles Oliveira, for example. Charles Oliveira will go from full guard, open guard. He will go for some kind of leg entanglement, reverse de la jiva, de la jiva, spin underneath, begin to go for leg locks. And he'll go from all different kinds of position, backside 50-50, you name it. And then if they don't work, guys a lot of times escape and he can stand up or they might try to re-entangle and he can go back to that entanglement process. He can more or less keep himself safe because a lot of what he's doing is off-balancing his opponents. He's rolling underneath them. He's forcing them to their hands on the mat, right?

He's spreading their feet apart. So he's really challenging their balance. He's challenging their ability to get a stable structure and do work or separate. And he's very, very good about that. I'm not saying Mike Malott is not good at that, but he's not Charles Oliveira good at that. So what did you notice about this? A lot of times, guys, when they roll underneath for leg locks, which is exactly what he did, they have trouble off-balancing his opponent. He does get one. I think it was like a Kuru Kuru guard. I have to go back and look.

Or maybe it may have been a broom sweep. I have to go. No. A tripod sweep. I have to go back and check and see exactly how he did it. He does sit him down for a second and then goes for a heel hook. But the problem is Magni is able to force his leg across the other side and then Senkaku it to triangle it. And then basically pounds on him.

And what happens to Mike Malott in the process? He ends up in leg drag. He ends up in leg drag. To which Magni then goes to side, then goes to mount, and then goes to victory. By leg drag, what do I mean? Leg drag is when their hips go this way and then their shoulders go the other way. Other shoulders are flat to the mat and the hips go the other way and you have one leg between their legs, so you're pinning the bottom leg.

You can just easily move to side. Rather than being at side control, you're kind of pinning the dominant down, or you're pinning the bottom leg with your inside inside leg and then you're usually pinning the other shoulder flat so the hips are going one way and the shoulders supposed to be going the other way it's called leg drag you can look it up two words leg drag and there's all kinds of ways to get to leg drag but his leg lock fails and he ends up in leg drag which gives the opponent side control now he's exhausted because he he was straining to off balance straining to manipulate the weight and the and the motion of neil magny he gets

exhausted and he gets mounted and he has no way to then get himself out of it and then loses the fucking fight like oh my god this was this was his chance He's 32 years old. I think his style is great. I think he was actually, like, he should not have lost this fight. Like, he's almost tailor-made to beat a guy like Neil Magny. Strong in the clinch. Keeps good range. Good feinting. Used a lot of switch stances to get over with the right hook.

That wasn't working for him this time. Neil Magny was able to get away, and they kind of saw that coming. But nevertheless, the leg kicking was great. On top, the ground and pound was good. He was moving to mount himself. He had mount for most of the second round, I believe, certainly a long amount of it. He had three minutes and eight seconds of control time. He had everything going for him. He had exactly the kind of physicality he needs. He had the technical jujitsu that he needed. He made an epically bad call in the third, got tired doing it, ended up in a horrible position, and then lost the fight as a consequence. You see so many guys roll underneath

for leg locks and either end up in leg drag or with their back taken because they're not Charles Oliveira. Charles Oliveira is the opposite of this. He makes getting into leg locks and then getting out of them if someone neutralizes it. Like, for example, Darius was able to neutralize it for as long as it lasted. Then, of course, he lost that fight as well. But, you know, you get the idea. Like, guys have a lot to deal with and it doesn't

last very long even if they get out of one sequence. He doesn't like, oh, I'm going to go for a leg lock and if this doesn't work, I'm going to end up in a shit position and it's going to really compromise me. That's not the game he's playing. But so many other guys, that is exactly the fucking game they're playing. Dude, listen to these numbers. What did I tell you for the first round? 20 to 5 for Malat to Magni round one to four. 46 to four. Holy shit.

A minute 44 of control time. He gets credited with a takedown. Golly, man. Golly. I've never seen a guy go from... I mean, he just... The fight, it was a huge... Just winning it until you weren't. Like, just winning it until you weren't.

Like literally just winning it until you weren't. And then he just got away from him and that was it. Neil Magny is tough as shit, dude. Neil Magny is tough as old shoe leather. We go back to it, being durable, knowing how to win rounds, having good cardio, staying in the fight, keeping your composure, keeping your head, not getting down about it. Raquel Pennington has some of this. Neil Magny has some of this. It's a super valuable fucking trait. It's a super valuable trait. Even if your opponent appears to be better at you in a lot of different circumstances, if they can't maintain this through the course of the contest and you

can and your resistance, what do they say? What's the phrase? I can't remember. It's late in the evening. But all they have to do is just hold on until you can't. And then that's it. That's it. All they have to do is just wait you out until you're done. And then they go.

And then the whole shebang collapsed. 32 years old. It's not the end of the world for Mike Malott but this was I thought his real chance to have a real breakout moment was this card it was this night and he did not that's a bad one that's a bad loss unfortunately for him not irreparable but hometown crowd or know, hometown country or home country. An opponent that was tailor-made in many ways, had a name. You were doing everything you were supposed to and then made a super ill-advised call.

Super ill-advised call to enter into a leg entanglement that he could not finish and couldn't get the off balance. And dude, once you're trying to off balance, here's the other part too, which will tell you on like broom sweeps or in any kind of sweep where you're taking someone off their feet, it's not just about I'm going to pull their ankles and then push on their hips or whatever the mechanism is to get them down

and that sits them down. When they sit down, you have to come up. It has to be both at the same time and you collect an ankle. And all he ever did was sit Magny down and then try and still stay underneath. No! No! You gotta get up. You gotta take him down and get up at the same time.

And you can't wait for it either. You can't like sit him down and go, okay, well now that he's down, now I'm gonna get up. No, you gotta go! You gotta go, you gotta fire. And and he didn't and he paid for it he paid for it big wow unbelievable I did not see this fight

because I had some technical issues I had to work on Chris Curtis defeats Marc-Andre Berriot via split decision 230-27s for Chris 129-28 for Berriot my understanding is this fight was pretty close but in in the end, Chris was the deserved winner. I don't have a lot to say about this one because I had missed most of it to deal with some other issues. Which takes us now to Movsar Evloev.

How did they say it? Movsar Evloev? Evloev? Evloev? I'm just going to call him Movsar. Defeats Arnold Allen, 29-28 across the board. So you knew going into this one, this was going to be largely or at least one of the very key battles was going to be the takedown. So let's look at some of these numbers and some of the notes I have on this takedown here if we can.

The takedowns, I should say, in this fight. He gets credited, Movsar, with five takedowns out of 17 attempts. Jesus, just 29% conversion rate. Only 3 minutes and 31 seconds of control time, which went 131 round one, 59 seconds round two, 101 round three. So the numbers for striking were really close, 12 to 13 round one, 18 to 21 round two. Well, there were two takedowns in each of those rounds.

So you're like, okay, we don't know exactly how that first round is going. Let me look at my notes here from that fight. You might be able to make a claim that Allen won round one and round three already, but I understand why Moffsar won rounds one and rounds two. I don't think he won round three no matter what, so hence the 29-28. I thought Allen's footwork was really good in terms of keeping him light and turning at angles. His down blocking was, for the most part, pretty excellent. His first order takedown defense was good. Not so much his second, but then his resistance to getting up and never relenting to the position I thought was excellent.

But I thought there were two major things that really tripped him up in this fight. One, he went for a lot of body work, which I do think is helpful and relevant, but it does not score to me as easily for the judges as something where the impact is more demonstrative aka getting punched in the head and then the head flops back it's demonstrative the audience excuse me the judges can see this it looks like something whereas getting hit in the gut the guys might be having the best poker face that you've ever seen in your life you don't even know that they're hurt at all and they can be screaming inside with pain but there's no real public account of it. I think over time that this has cost a lot of guys who've invested in body work a lot.

I don't think that necessarily did him a favor, although I did think that his down blocking was good. But as Dominic Cruz noted, it kind of took away from his jab, right? Because you have to hang it to down block. You can't have it up here to go. But really, what the true story of the fight is, is round three. And in round three, there is a moment where Alan has, they're both technically standing, although the question is about whether one was down, but Alan has control of Mozart on top and is firing knees.

He fires, I think, about three or four of them before referee Mark Goddard intervenes to halt the contest because he believes that the knees were illegal. Remember at the top of the broadcast, I told you that Ontario basically uses New Jersey's rules from 2003. So what would that mean? What that would mean is if one hand is just touching the mat, you're down. Okay? It doesn't have to be just finger, it doesn't have to be full hand, it could be fingertips. It doesn't have to be fully weight bearingbearing. It just means you have to have contact.

So what he was doing is from that front headlock, he was, like you saw with Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman, picking him up a little bit as he's throwing so that the knee is hitting him when his hand is literally pulled off the mat to make the shot legal. Because if your knee is down, it doesn't matter if your hands are down, you're down.

But his knee was not down. They were bent over at the waist. The only thing that was touching the ground were the soles of their feet and then Movzar's hand. So if you're pulling him up and then firing the knee, they should be legal. And it clearly won him the round, right? Even though what happened happened. So Mark Goddard does not take a point, but he gives Arnold Allen a stern warning.

And then they resume. So Allen still wins the round, but this was a point where he was like landing damaging shots on Mosar Evloev. And it looked like, or Evloloev however you're supposed to say it and it looked like not that a finish was imminent but that this was the kind of thing that if it went just a little bit longer could have resulted in something really bad for mozar could potentially even a stoppage again we weren't close enough to really say that but but sure enough, the most damaging best work that Allen had in the fight

was ultimately artificially halted and then stopped by virtue of this rule and the way in which it's interpreted. I have tried to make the case to folks that the people who might run one championship, they seem like not trustworthy people when they open their mouths. But the product that they put out, the one championship product, is actually quite good. And in fact, I would argue that one's rules to me make a lot more sense than any version of the unified rule. Because here is the reality about this. Is it the fingertips? Is it the full hand? Is it one hand and a knee?

Is it two hands? Is it weight bearing? Is it not? None of those rules ever seem to solve the problem. At its core, you have to have rules that referees can enforce in real time. And I know a lot of people are going to look at Mark Goddard here and say, oh, he made a bad call. Well, he definitely didn't make, with the ability of hindsight, he definitely did not make the correct call. But watching in real time, that is very difficult to get right.

You're not the home plate umpire and you can see the runner running, you know, rounding third, and he's going to come in for a home plate collision. And so you can focus all of your attention on that one moment and you've got a few seconds to get ready. It just happens out of nowhere. And then it happens a bunch of multiple times. It's very, very difficult to adjudicate, especially jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which might have weight bearing, fingertips, all that whole shit, one hand, two hand, whatever. It's very difficult to adjudicate that in real time, even for an experienced pro referee like Mark Goddard. Mark Goddard is not a bad referee.

That doesn't mean I think he made a great call, but I don't think that the preponderance of evidence shows that he is a bad referee. What it shows is that the sport needs rules that the public can relatively easily understand that are not a huge trade-off for safety and that can be enforced in real time. I would humbly submit to you folks, there are better ways to enforce safety and what kinds of circumstances where knees can be or heads can be need than the way in which we do it. I would argue to you that knees to the head of the body should be or knees to the head of a grounded opponent should only be illegal when their back or when their chest is facing the ceiling when their back is touching the canvas.

But such that they are on their knees, to me it should be fair game. That's a better rule, especially if everyone knows to expect it. Doesn't mean everyone always will, but the data that we have from one championship in evaluating how many bouts were ultimately concluded because this is an extra way in which opponents can be hit in one

that they can't be hit, for example, in anyone using the unified rules. It's a very, very small amount, and it's only like some of the heavier weight classes. It's not hardly at all what you think. Eric McGracken from Combat Sports Law has some of the numbers on this. It's actually quite small. But in the relevant cases where it could be very important, you at least have that option and everyone's got clarity no matter what. You can only be kneed if you're on your back. Other than that, fuck off. And you might be asking, well, why can't you be kneed on your back?

Your head has nowhere to flex. Your neck can move, right? You can move it all around. If you get hit in the head, it has the ability to flex. Your neck can move, right? You can move it all around. If you get hit in the head, it has the ability to flex. If your back is on the canvas, it does not have that. And so I think it should be outlawed in circumstances like that. But if you're on your hands and knees, if you're on your base, it to me is completely fair game. There's other ways that you can be hit. Like if those people are in two leg lock situations, I think you should be able to hit the other person in the face. If so, if both are seated, then it could be a thing.

But I just don't want it if one is not seated and then one, or one is down and one isn't, and one is seated and one isn't. That's the asymmetry that creates a problem. Certainly we can all agree in the situation of someone trying to wrestle and then failing to do so because someone else stopped him, you should be threatened by knees. It should force action. It should force scrambles, not so guys put their hands on the mat and then expect the rules to save them.

The rule should not save them. Their own defense is its own reward. Your defense should save you, not this shitty-ass rule that doesn't do anybody any good at any point. That's what I believe. So, Allen comes up with the L. I thought that Movsar looked, I thought both guys looked fantastic. You knew that this was going to be a very, very difficult fight. I will tell you that, like, I don't know where he is in the rankings, old Movi. Where are they? Where is he in the rankings? This is before, obviously, this has been updated. Arnold Allen was sitting at four. Movsar is sitting at nine. He might jump into the top five.

Ilya Teporya is already sitting at five. Who's going to get a title shot? Dude, Movsar might be next. I mean, I guess if Ilya wins, there's going to be a rematch. If Volk wins, does he go to 155? I guess we don't know. I guess we'll see. Max is going to fight Justin Gaethje next.

So Movsar might have gotten himself a number one contender's fight out of this. We shall see. He might have one more in front of him. Potentially two. I doubt that. But at least one more maybe. But he's right up there. This is going to be a big, big win for him.

And again, it's not like Arnold Allen looked bad. If you have a rule where good referees have a very difficult time getting it right, your rule doesn't work. The rules that are best are ones that can be easily in for, or you'll get relatively easily enforced, easily understood. Everything works seamlessly or pretty close to it. This does nothing but create problems. It doesn't simplify anything. And all the addendum ones, again, hand, fingertips, fucking weight bearing, two, one, whatever,

none of those things make a difference either. All of them are shit rules. None of them make it better. They're all bad. So I think we just need a much more clarifying way to do this, and we don't have that. All right, let's take a look at some of your tweets and see what you guys have to say. Jesus, people are bitter at each other.

All right. Let's see what we got. What happened to Canada? Canada used to produce some of MMA's top contenders. GSP, Hominick, Luazo, Kang, Kote. Now I'm struggling to think of anyone that is even sniffing a major title other than OAM and he just retired. Flash in the pan? Or part of the cycle?

I definitely think part of the cycle. It's still big there. I think the market has been suffering from some of the rules that various commissions have used. I don't think the pandemic helped. The retirement of St. Pierre, there was a lot of factors where it kind of dampened the scene, but there still is overall with the amount of teams and the amount of talent and the amount of resources, there's still a lot of fighters coming out of there. And also on the boxing side too, right?

We just had, I know he's from native Chechnya, but he's really made Montreal his home for quite some time Archer better be of granted different sport but nevertheless Canada and Canadian based athletes being able to do something on a world-class level there's no good reason why they couldn't but I also think the other part is to the rest of the world has caught up the rest of the world has caught up big time there's like a lot of other hot spots that have had dramatic growth France I, I think, is poised to have dramatic growth. Australia's had dramatic growth. When Canada was hot under GSP, who did Australia have? Elvis Sinisek, you know?

Who was the hippo? What was his name? The hippo. The MMA fighter. What the fuck was his name? The hippo. MMA fighter. He was like, he was, what was his name the hippo mma fighter honey was like he was uh what was his name anthony pirosh anthony pirosh you know what i mean like that's who you had uh so it's part of a cycle

there's no good reason why it couldn't be the other way but i just feel like the various factors aforementioned have kind of dampened the enthusiasm. But yeah, the expansion of it more globally in the other markets has displaced them to a significant degree. How much better can Drikus get? I think a little bit better for sure. I don't think he's at his peak. There's a lot of things he can clean up. There's a lot of things he can add.

But as you can see, he's a bull. Why did Sean abandon the teep kick? Part of the pressure, I think. I don't think he felt like maybe it was working or he wanted to just, he preferred the range they were fighting at because he thought he could make better contact that way. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Does Mozart beat Topuria? I don't think so.

Not personally. How does middleweight play out now? You've got Izzy, Strickland, and DDP at the top. Yeah, I'm going to say Izzy, DDP, and then Strickland. This person says Strickland versus Whitaker, Costa. Ooh, that'd be a ton of fun. That'd be a lot of fun. And again, you've kind of got Hamzat out there somewhere playing this whole equation as well.

How do we feel about Duplicy's stand-up at this point? I can't get over how basic it appears. Feels like Izzy should handle him easily. Not so easily, dude. The takedowns especially, too. It's mechanically weird. It's tactically good enough. You know?

How quick does Dana look to get the belt off of Pennington? And how does Valentina do it? Well, she's got business with Grasso first, you know? But as soon as that's over, because either you're going to be champ-champ or you're going to go for it, or you can just leave and then go 135.

Why do prelims end up being more exciting than the main cards? Because a couple of them were squash matches. That Jazz DeVisius fight was against Cachoeira was a fucking waste of everyone's time. I mean, good for Jazz DeVisius. She looked great, right? Amazing. Dude, that fight ended up being the biggest differential in terms of strikes. It was like 323 to like 33 or something. If you're getting your ass kicked two back-to-back 10-8 rounds, I think one of them was 10-7, not only should the fight have been stopped,

that fight shouldn't have been made to begin with. Plus, remember, Cachoeira missed weight, so it ended up being a bantamweight fight on top of it. Dude, Cachoeira has caught two of the biggest Ls, not merely in that division's history, but in women's MMA history. Like, an astonishing amount, right? Astonishing.

Okay. I know everyone is pushing for Izzy DDP, but considering this fight was so close to the split decision, should they look to run this back? No. You could run it back if it felt more controversial. It feels like, yeah, either guy could have won. But is there really like a DDP, or Sean was robbed? I don't think Sean was robbed, right? It just felt like, eh.

As I mentioned, one guy was just doing a little bit more. Do you think Adam Waite could spark women's MMA in the UFC? That's where they're going to scale. They're not going to scale 145 and up anytime soon. They're going to scale down. You've got Japanese talent that can fill those ranks. You've got Japanese talent that can fill those ranks.

You've got American talent that can fill those ranks. Invicta already has a 105 division. You're going to scale that direction. Should there be a rematch? No. Can DDP recover in time for 300? I have no clue. How bad does a focused Izzy

piece DDP up? You guys know, I'm pretty high on Izzy and even I think people are really underestimating what that dude offers. Tough as nails, dual threat in terms of ground and standing and the mixing of the two. By the way, a consistent ground threat. So he went into this fight averaging 2.72 takedowns per 15 minutes. What is Drikus' number now? Let's see.

So it was 2.72 heading into the fight, and now his takedowns per 15 minutes stay the same, 2.72. Still fucking high. Nearly three per 15 minutes. Nearly one a round. That's a lot, dude. That's a lot to deal with with a guy like that. That's a lot. I think people are underestimating that a little bit. What about thoughts on allowing champions to

walk out with their belts or a celebrity guest similar to boxing? I'm okay with it. My only request that they don't do is the one thing I hate in boxing is they'll have like some rapper come out with them and then they just lip sync like obviously lip sync and it's like the worst on earth i hate that so as long as you're not doing that i'm cool someone says i had striptease winning round one two and five yeah i don't agree with that one rounds one three and five maybe maybe izzy versus d DDP 300 possible, yes? So is this congrats to DDP for being the first real African champion? Okay, can we please stop that?

I mean, just focus on the win, please. Do you think Shawn will reach his title shot again at any point in his career? Yes, as indicated. Do you think Arnold Allen won? I don't think he won, but if I I were him I'd want that fight overturned does Ronda Rousey beat both of those girls yeah dude not only do I think Shevchenko has a chance to win if I'm Ronda Rousey I'm like do you like your chances you might you just might you know will we ever have five judges no Strickland landed more and the takedowns were worthless how does this not go to Strickland Will we ever have five judges? No.

Strickland landed more and the takedowns were worthless. How does this not go to Strickland? He numerically landed more. That's true. The takedowns are not quite worthless, although in many cases I grant they didn't do a whole lot. I still think that the general nature of what he was landing was more impactful. The body kicks. Remember, Sean only landed punches basically to the head, right?

90% targeting of all strikes. He didn't land any kicks to the head. And I recall, I don't even know if he threw any kicks to the head. So that means those were all punches. And some of those were great. A lot of those didn't mean much at all. Or barely landed or partially landed. And I think a body kick lands with significant more authority.

I count that much more as an example. Do we think the UFC wanted Sean Strickland out as champ due to his excessive views on strong topics? I mean, who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows? Again, this person says Sean needs one more offensive weapon Agreed

There's a little bit of fine tuning that has to go into it Doesn't Izzy destroy DDP? He certainly could I think people assuming that that's what's going to happen are Izzy has the propensity Like, again, that one's either going to be Izzy by knockout Or stoppage Or DDP by stoppage I would be shocked if a fight like that went to the cards I'll like, again, that one's either going to be Izzy by knockout or stoppage or DDP by stoppage.

I would be shocked if a fight like that went to the cards. I'll put it to you that way. Much more combustible in that sense. Strickland was robbed. No, definitely was not robbed. Why is there not more talk about women's bantamweight being binned? I mean, thrown in the trash. When it's widely accepted knowledge that if Cejudo beat DJ, men's flyweight was cooked.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not... I don't know what the fuck that means. It's three in the morning. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. I appreciate it. Reminder. Reminder.

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another MK show on Monday. Join us. Join me and BC for some rever for some reverie huh revelry join us join us for fun join us for merriment refreshments and everything else in between yeah so it's uh i appreciate everyone sticking around and watching till fucking three in the morning especially for a card that was kind of so-so but you know i love you just the same so thank you guys i appreciate it thumbs up we'll talk to you on Monday. And until then, stay frosty, bitches. Let's go.