MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC 328 Results: Strickland Stuns Chimaev to Reclaim Middleweight Title | Van-Taira War | Fight News

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

The big result coming out of UFC 328 - Sean Strickland defeated Khamzat Chimaev to become the UFC middleweight champion for the second time. Luke Thomas and Chuck Mindenhall break it all down, from the fight itself, to the ramifications for both Strickland and Chimaev. And in the co-main event, Joshua Van stopped Tatsuro Taira in the fifth round to defend his flyweight title. The fellas recap the flyweight bout, plus all the major results from the main card and preliminary card, including: Alexander Volkov's win over Waldo Cortes-Acosta, Sean Brady beating Joaquin Buckley and more.  The guys take you through everything you need to know in the world of combat sports on a Morning Kombat Monday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Look at this mouth. That's what 11 a. I'm back. You fit in seamlessly in this weird MK environment. Do you want a margarita? That's good.

Your marks get set and go. That old Ray Longgo, Chuck Mendenhall. That old Ray Longgo. That old goat is clever. All right. We got a lot to talk about. Welcome, welcome, welcome. on this Monday edition, the 11th of May, 26.

My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. I join you from the capital of a very rainy Washington, D.C., the capital of Estabos, Camus de Moodos, right here, as I mentioned in Washington, D.C., sorry about that. I kind of botched that intro. Nevertheless, I go to my Connecticut brethren now, the Iceman himself, Chuck Mendenhall. Chuck, how are you doing, sir?

I'm well, man. Did you have a good Mother's Day? What did you guys do? Did you get out? Do something? I mostly fumbled my way through an attempt to honor my wife and mother-in-law yeah i mean it was fine it was fine i got them flowers i got them both flowers uh i got them both they love korean skim care stuff you know i got some stuff for that and

then i took them to actually you know i thought the big hit was uh there was a really nice restaurant out in town i'd never been to and i've been dying to go so i went uh and it was great it lived up to the hype you know how i mean that said you know sometimes you get your heart set on something you're like all right let's go and then it doesn't live up and it's like soul-crushing but this one this one did how about you i always feel a little bit like adult going in there on the day of something like that like valentine's day or mother's day and you go into the flower section there's like eight other guys just like you like picking up flowers at the exact same time i always felt like such a schmuck when i do that i don't know why it's just i don't very self-conscious about it i never

i never go to the flower shop anymore yeah flowers yeah i have a long grocery store yeah like two weeks before my wife's birthday two weeks for mother's day i get urban stems i use urban stems you never used them before? No, no, but I might start doing that because I realized that this time I was like, man, I don't want to be one of these guys, you know? You know what? I'll tell you what. Here's a, here's a little bit of an uncle Luke giving out some unsolicited advice to the minute out there. Costco has surprisingly good flowers. This is Uncle Luke. That is right there. I love that we taught Ray Longo what Unc means and Don't. I feel like we were really kind of educating him less. I know. It's like Ray, we're, I'm beating 50s door down and I'm telling you

lingo. This seems like the wrong guy for the job, you know. But anyway, hey, UFC 328 was a lot. There's a lot to unpack from this. We have a new champion, the same as the old champion in certain ways. We'll get to that. Josh Van putting on an absolute clinic, although some resistance along the way. And then the rest of that 328 main card. Plus, it was insane boxing over the weekend. Fabio Wardley and Daniel Dubois basically killing each other. We have some fight announcements to get to. We got Josh kind of taking over stuff a little bit as well so we appreciate you guys being here thumbs up if you haven't on the video hit subscribe you can give us a follow on the social let's bring in the third member

of the show here long island luke long island i saw you ran into bc this weekend you were at 328 how was it it was great and not only did i run into bc but they had a buffet this is not even a joke they had a buffet of hot dogs there what and yes and i mean brian was in heaven he was running back and forth i saw in the in between each fight the man was coming back for another hot dog No. So I saw him at the beginning of the night. Never saw him again the rest of the night. I've seen him handle as many as 10 at those weeners at one time, man. Dude, he can handle a lot of weeners.

It's crazy. Yeah. And guzzle him, too. I mean, BC and I have very different experiences with the eight dick walrus. Let's just be honest about it. That's a great point. But, yes, was it? UFC 328 was a great time, by the way.

So excited to get into it, guys. Yeah, that was a fun one. If you attended that one, that atmosphere seemed like it was a lit all night, didn't it? It was a crazy atmosphere. You know, we'll talk about the main event in a second. I tweeted this yesterday. Some people agreed. Some people disagreed.

But I really stand by it, which is, you know, if you watch that main event, Chuck, it was, it was not like a crazy fun fight. Right. You know, this was not a recreation of Hokit and Blades. But it was bizarrely intriguing. You know what I mean? It was like, so it had a, it was fun in a like, whoa, like I'm sort of seeing pieces of a puzzle kind of come together here. That's how it felt

to me anyway. I don't know about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And I mean, we're going to get into it, but like, you know, just the kind of loss of aura that kind of played out over 25 minutes, you know? That was interesting to see. Yep, for sure. Let's remind everyone, we do have some new merch out morningcombat.combat.com. These are the designs for May. They're only available until the end of the month.

You can get the donk, uh, renegades of donk t-shirt. There is the Washington, D.C., like a D.C. one one t-shirt and then certainly last but not least the L ray up in this bitch whipits in the parking lot morning combat style if you're not doing whipits in it behind a hearties or an arby's i don't know what you're doing with your life except buying the t-shirt to commemorate it morning combat dot shop is there and of course you can always reach the show morning combat at gmail dot combe at gmail dot com for all of your various needs all right with that out of the way let's get now to the show top you know what actually wait wait wait let me get my glasses on sorry, I've started the show without my glasses. I'm too old for this shit. All right, here we go. Now we go. Topic number one.

All right. At UFC 328, Sean Strickland narrowly but gets the job done in defeating Hamzaa Chimayv. He becomes the UFC middleweight champion now for the second time. We started the show out by mentioning Ray Longo had a feeling. I did not think he had a bad case for it at all. I did some tape study on Friday. And I was like, you know what, Ray might be on to something. But let's just see.

Sure enough, it was close. but Strickland got it done. Chuck, let's just sort of start out with this, kind of a two-parter, and then you take it from there. One, what is the real story of this fight, having now experienced it? And then secondly, once you understand what the story is, where does it put Strickland's victory for his status, frankly all time in this division?

Well, I think the story for me, at least, was that, you know, Shemayev is beatable. We had seen evidence, you know, but you're taking little pieces of evidence and you're saying, okay, we've seen this and the Gilbert Burns fight, like we were mentioning, like you can kind of get him into a little bit of a brawl. That might be advantageous.

You could look and take little snippets, but in this particular fight, you know, the way that the second round played out was very eye-opening in the sense that once you saw him kind of, I don't know if he had an adrenaline dump. I still really don't know 100% if it's just the weight cut, but just to see him go in there and get shut down

and then try to pull guard a couple of times was a was a type of retreat i never thought we'd see especially that early in the fight if it was going to happen i thought that was a championship's rounds type of uh scenario for sean strickland so to me the story was man like the we we saw the aura like leave the room and that had to felt like a million bucks to any middle weight you know who's kind of coming up there's especially guys like drichus de plusy who you know was just never going to have a shot back in it unless he's kind of removed from the scenario so that's what it was man and as far as your second part of your

question was Strickland he is was it you that I saw somebody was saying like the Eli Manning of MMA was that yes I can't take credit for it but someone on my chat Friday night was like he's the Eli Manning of MMA and I'm like holy shit I'm great which is so apt I mean that is so apt because

he's a guy who has dropped up he has seven losses in the UFC I mean this is a guy very resilient obviously puts on sometimes really masterful performances like the fluffy Hernandez. But this even, I didn't even think, I'll get your impression of it, but I didn't, this didn't strike me like he fought a brilliant fight. He fought his fight and it worked. And he was able to kind of, you know, make Shimae of, you know, take him out of his comfort

zone and, you know, the way it played out, he was able to win this fight. I didn't really think it was like a beautiful thing in that sense. But here he is holding the belt again. And now you have to almost, it's like the Strickland arrow. The biggest thing for me is, already put it in the rear view. You know, once he lost to Drika's second time, you're like, well, that's, that's it. He won't have another shot. And for him to not only get that shot, whether you thought he deserved it or not, for him to make good on it, that tells me something about the guy, man. I mean, if nothing else, his legacy is that he was one of the most resilient fighters that the UFC has ever had. Man, this is a lot to unpacker, because I do want to talk

about the loss of aura for Hamzaa Chamaa, because I totally agree. I said as much, I didn't quite use it in those terms, but I said as much on Saturday night, Chuck, I was like, he just made him look lesser than he, he made him, he, he turned him into something that's a lot more beatable than what the impressions of what we had previously. But I want to say something about the Strickland side, and I want to start there, if I may, Chuck, which is, you know, to getting to the question I asked you, what's the story of the fight and where does it fit, where does it put Sean all time of the division? I'm not sure about the second part of that yet. But in terms of the first fight, or the first part of the question,

this question comes up all the time about like, oh, well, Strickland's not good at anything. All he does is teep and jab. And it's like, if you watch this fight, Chuck, there's not that much teeping, but there's a lot of jabbing. You know what I mean? It's like he did, like, one of the interesting parts about this fight was that neither have got, neither guy, I mean, there was a couple of times guys got the right hand through. But like, in general, both guys only really landed the jab, which was kind of a

weird thing. But this is the point I wanted to make. People say Strickland's not elite at anything, and yet look at what he's achieving. Two-time champion. You can win a title one time, and I wouldn't call it fluky, but it's possible. But to come back around and get it a second time, nah, you're good. You're really, really good. Sean Strickland is elite, maybe one of the best, if not the best I've ever seen at building a game, it seems to me more designed than anything else to simply nullify opponent weakness. Like, for example, people will say things like, wow, what really makes Sean's run kind of special and they're right is that, hey, look, on the one hand, he was a huge underdog and he beat one of the

greatest strikers the division has ever seen in Israel, Adasania. And then on the other side, he beats maybe the best wrestler the division has ever seen. how is it something like that possible? Because his game is predicated on whatever you're good at, I'm going to have a set of defensive conditions that just pull that back down to earth. And then we're going to fight trench warfare. And that's why this fight was still kind of close, Chuck. I mean, that's what the real strength of, in my opinion,

now I've seen him multiple times, the real strength of Sean Strickland is this ability to absolutely show resilient. Very, very tricky defense through all phases of it. And it doesn't necessarily make his offense overpowering, although it certainly wasn't the Fluffy Hernandez fight. But what it does do is it then forces the opponent onto offensive terms that tend to favor Sean over time, this kind of you lob, I lob, you jab, I jab.

He tends to be pretty good at that as a way of winning. Not all the time, it's close. But that is such an, you would never plan a game, Chuck. you were teaching a guy to fight. You would never be like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to make your defense insane, like in every way. And then we're going to give you a jab and a team. Like you would never plan around that.

But he's done that. And it turns out that that is like it is so difficult to deal with that he can take a title twice off of two guys who were supposed to have and then one case did legendary runs in the division. I can remember talking to Eric Nixick too and him saying something along the lines of, You know, guys don't prefer to come in and train defensive wrestling, right? They just don't want to do it. He was talking about Francis and Gano, but he had mentioned Sean Strickland as being one of those guys who didn't mind this, you know,

who would go in there and, you know, in training and work through scenarios or work hard at scenarios to do exactly what you're saying, which is basically the nullification of strength is absolutely right. I hadn't really thought of it in terms of like you're mentioning beating an excellent like sublime type striker in Izzy. the way he did and then this fight. I wonder, like, in that first round, is it strategic? Like, the way they, the commentators, and we talked to Ray, we had, we talked about this all week in general, like, it's inevitable you're going to be taken down. He didn't necessarily just bounce back up, but he scooted over to the fence.

He, he, he, like you said, he was very squirm. He was very squirmy, right? Like, he was very squirmy. He made Shemiah of work. There was a couple of submission attempts in that round. He had his back. Shemaya had his back for a good portion of that. that round. It looked like he was trying to get the finish. Unlike the DDP, that fight.

So there was, there was some elements there. I think it was long ago, and Luke was pointing out that there was no significant strikes liner, maybe this was you in that first round. And you're like, that's crazy. There was no significant strikes. But was it strategic to just say, like, let's, let's survive the first round. You know, let's just not, let's, let's, we know what he's going to do. Let's survive the first round and like second round, let's go to work. Do you think that that was their plan? I think the plan was probably survive as long as you need to. I mean, the fact that Hamzot Gaston round two. That was the surprise. It was a huge surprise. I mean, we'll talk about that in just a minute, but like, you know, this is what I mean about Sean, dude. Like, this, this fucking

guy's clever, man. He's real clever. So one thing I feel like I, I saw a little bit of discussion about it, and I went back and I watched and there's something I kind of noticed on real time, but I it kind of crystallized upon further review. One thing to pay attention to that Sean does is do they know Strickland's game and they have good answers for it, like thoughtful answers. So for example, like Sean's, this is not new. As you mentioned, he'll get taken down and what's he doing? He's immediately going to the fence, whereas a guy like DDP, if he got taken down off

the fence, would just kind of turn underneath and accept it. So first of all he doesn't accept it. Then he's very good at using it, not giving up his back, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, building height of hands and elbows and everything else. But the part that's interesting is, go back and watch the first round. Every time Strickland gets his back taken, and that's when I say back taken, I mean both hooks in. Not one hook, but both. He immediately gives up what he's doing and then lets himself get taken to the ground or even like elects to go where he's basically laying on top of Chimaya.

And it has this incredible effect. It turns Chimayev in those instances into nothing. he can't get ground and pound going he can't get subs going and what he eventually ends up doing every single time is just turning strickland to a side and then trying to re-attack the position and a couple of those times strickland's able to kind of get up after the fact like they just knew when he puts both hooks in fall to a side fall to your back literally lay on this guy and it becomes a completely different fight like they saw that in the tape to say nothing of all of the other defensive lines like dude this guy's eye and his team too team deserves credit, but that guy's eye and the team's eye for real subtle conditions that have to be established to nullify someone's defense, I should say, that they might be the best of the MMA at that shit. It's insane how good they are at that. That's kind of what I saw. Yeah. No, 100%. You mentioned the ground and pound, man. Gone. Where is that? Where is that from Shamaev, though? Like, I mean, this is one of those things I know that we're like, I don't mean

to like jump to the Shemaya end of it. But in that first round, I rewatched it. this morning. Where was the ground and pound? Like, you know, he had him in positions where if he just starts hammer fisting him, maybe he opens up more, you know, avenues for the offense. But it's just like he's so monofocused on kind of, you know, working towards a submission or like, you know, going into more of a dominant position that he's not using all of his weapons to just strike you that way.

Because I there's a little bit of a frustration, I think, if you were his coaches. I saw this in the DDP too, like the little baby punches he was throwing. He wasn't doing much. But where's the ground impound with this guy? Wouldn't that round out his game to another level? I think that there's a bigger issue that this fight and many others, this is not the only one, but this fight certainly underscores or reveals, which is that we might be entering a phase.

And this is not going to be true universally, but it might be true for like select fighters at the top for sure. We might be entering a phase where guys have gotten so good at getting up that the most styles of ground and pound won't work anymore. Right. That's actually a real thing. That was especially true in this one. I'm not saying there weren't instances where Chimaev couldn't have done something,

but it absolutely would have come at the cost of maintaining control. And so if the goal is to maintain control no matter what, then you're just going to be in a place where ground and pound isn't nearly as possible. I mean, this is a real, I honestly think, I think, again, there's going to be guys on regional cards or low-level UFC and even, you know, occasional high-level UFC as well. But there's, I think there's a time coming where we're going to see people make ground and pound. Certain select guys make ground and pound kind of impossible. And if your game isn't well-rounded enough to move to the second order of things, you're going to have some trouble.

Yeah, I thought he had some moments where he could have. But at the same time, like, when did it occur to you, I guess? You know, you're watching this fight. You see the first round. I think that that the first round was kind of emblematic of how, you know, I think a lot of us thought it might go. There was resistance. He didn't accept the terms like you mentioned Strickland, but like at the same time, he was fighting off submissions. He's on his back.

But in that second round, is this one like occurs to you like, okay, wait a minute. This isn't going to be the, this isn't going to be a typical Shemaiah fight. And was it at that moment, I guess, that you were like, Strickland can win this fight. Bro, I thought Strickland might have, I thought Strickland was about to stop him in the second. I mean, that was bad. Me too. Me too, man. And remember how it got set up.

Remember, Chameh, Shots on him and can't actually get the takedown. Like the takedown is stuffed so hard that Chamehive is knocked to his rear end. He's sitting down. Right. And then because of that, he chooses to scoot underneath and, you know, and get double under. Right.

Yeah. But, like, he actually, like, he got out muscled in the takedown. I was like, and then, you know, okay, it's one thing to be like, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to aggressively scoot underneath. you know, because I'm going to start setting up my getting up. Like, I'm going to make this an active position from which to work, right? But he doesn't. He just kind of lays there.

And I'm like, oh, dude, this is like, like, I mean, this is, I mean, first of all, just flatly unacceptable from a championship fighter and a championship fight in round fucking two, especially after there's basically no damage in either way in round number one, unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable from them to do that. the third round we were kind of discussing this before we were jumping on it's like the third round becomes like the big round in my mind because

that fight like the way that it was there we go yeah and you can see obviously like what do we got so Sean's actually winning on all scorecards going in the championship rounds which is yeah which I don't agree with again so this is where we went off course because I when I was watching it

especially the first time through there was a weird kind of phenomena that was almost it was it reminded me a lot of the Evela versus Leone Murphy fight where you're watching a guy. The third round, okay, so you have the sense of pending, right? Where Shamiya, what are you doing when are you going to shoot for a takedown? When is this coming?

You know, never shows up in this round. But because that optic or because that preconceived idea is there, it's strange that you think, well, we're now playing in Strickland's world. This is an obvious Strickland round. But if you really watch it, Shamiab is landing, like, you know, within the exchanges, at least on the first watch, I'll get your impression. on the suit, but look to me, like if you get rid of all of that, the Shemaya's holding his own and maybe even doing the better damage in that round,

like where he's on the, where he's fighting the standup. But it had that trick to it, right? Because you're thinking, if it's standing that we're playing Strickland's game. And sometimes like when people are watching something like that, it can be confusing when a guy, like, I thought Shemaya have actually held a zone on the feet in that round. And maybe, you know, that's why it was so close. I don't have any problem with if you saw it for Strickland.

but at the same time, just because it wasn't a wrestling match in the third round, I didn't think that it was like Strickland's round by default, right? Yeah, yes. I also didn't agree it was his by default. So your score was what, 1, 3, 4 for Shama. Yeah, I had Shemaya of 1, 3, and 4, yep, correct. Yeah, I had it that way as well. I think you can have it 2, 3, 5, Strickland.

I think that one makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I watch it again, like I said this morning, And you're like, all right, well, I mean, that third round is close. So you could give that to Strickland. So that's kind of how it went. The third round is tough because I saw Sean Sheehan talking about it. He's right. Like you come out of round two where Hamzaa looks like, you know, it's almost like a minor miracle.

He made it to the end of the round. Right. In certain ways. And then Strickland starts hot in round three. His jab is cooking the whole time. And numerically, he lands more in round three. It's a big part of the argument for him. Again, those are quantitative, not qualitative totals.

But he certainly, unmistakably, was land. more. And so a call for him in this round is really not a big deal at all. It's just to me, if you watch the fight, I thought Chameyev's punching was harder. And the fact that it shattered the nose after round three men, that was the round where Strickland goes back to his corner after the end of the round. And his face looked like Frank Meir after getting done up by Brock Lesnar. We got a picture here after the fight. This is after the fight. This is not after the round. But yeah, dude, I mean, he got, you know, again, and Chimae's face is a shit show too. It's not like it's one way or the other, but to just kind of illustrate.

So to me, like, is the argument good for Strickland in round three? Yes, it's really not a bad argument at all. It's just that to me, I don't think that the Chameh of argument is any worse. And in fact, I thought that the damage, which was supposed to be looked at the preeminent judgment there, I thought the damage was a little bit better with Chimaya, but clearly it's debatable. This is not in any way, shape, or form. any kind of robbery. Sean won it fair and square within the rules. That's just how the way it goes. And the fifth round was close, but you, you clearly saw that for Strickland in the end.

I thought, yes, I definitely did. I thought that, I thought that Chimae have tried to make a push a couple times in that round, and Strickland just was more active. They gave one round, or one judge gave him the round. Sue Sanadad, I don't know who that is. Her name is Sue Sanity. that's interesting. Okay. Weird. Some kind of translation from Spanish maybe. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is,

I thought that that was pretty clearly Strickland's round. So, like, me, I said to part two about his effort here, man. Like, starts out just playing fucking prevent defense the whole way, not letting this dude get anything. And having clever answers to really nullify him on the ground, they exchanged jabs for basically four rounds.

And it was Strickland with a fucked up nose, in my opinion, who got after. in round five more and took that fight. That's the other part too, Chuck. It's like even if you wanted to have it to two, two, heading into the fifth, and many people did obviously by that point,

like, who had the dog in them late? It was Strickland. Oh, yeah. It was strictly. Oh, yeah. Do you find, like, you know, there's a big buildup to this fight? I felt like when they were coming in there

with all that security, it had the air, had the atmosphere of a big fight. And it made me think about, like, when you first get in the sport, and you're watching like BJ Penn, get in there or Chuck Ladell, those guys,

and you'd be like, this is a big fight feel. It just felt that way. This kind of had that. And it was such a big buildup. When you see a guy like Sean Strickland, who then he seems like a loose cannon, right? He seems like he's crazy in the buildup. But yet he goes in there.

Like you said, methodically plays defense, kind of systematically enacts his game plan and makes guys kind of dance to his tune, which is not the prettiest tune. Is it a big enough payoff? I know that he's, so him winning this fight,

just by strength of like, you know, kind of expelling the boogey, man type thing is why there was a big drama around it. But if this is just an ordinary fight, are people even talking about this fight or would it be like, oh, God, I don't want to watch Sean Strickland fight?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Like, because he, like, he builds up something around him, right? We watch that fight. He's, he's overthrowing a guy, though. Obviously, in this case, it's for a title. He's overthrowing a guy who had never been beat. You understand that on a drama level, but let's just say that this was

just a fight. Like, he's just fighting a guy who happens to be Shimae who's just wherever he is, would we be like, man, Sean Strickland fights are boring because he's just because he does that nullification. Because I've heard people basically say this, like, you know, the other part that sucks about Sean Strickland is, I can't stand to watch him fight, you know? Well, do you get some of that or do you see like the beauty in ways?

I guess that's what I'm saying, you know, like, do you get a payoff when you watch him fight? To me, it's hit or miss with him. Yeah. It's really hit or miss, you know, like I had to go back and do some tape study for this one. And, you know, you rewatch the cannoneer fight. And it's not just his fault, by the way. But like, it's dreadful. It's dreadful.

And frankly, both of the DDP fights, which he lost, they were also kind of dreadful. You know, they weren't that fun. But like, it's like, this is what I mean. It's like, but also, what did those fights look like? They look like Sean Strickland fights. Now, he didn't win any of the ones I mentioned, but they were all, for the most part, pretty close. Certainly the Canaaner one was very close. And now you could have argued that Strickland should have won it.

But like, it's not that case. But then you see him against Fluffy and you're like, you know, he can obviously, do a lot. And then in this one, you're like, well, if it was just any guy, would we care? No, but, or not as much. But, like, partly Strickland's fans from what I can tell, they kind of see him as a guy who's beating a system designed to not let people like him succeed. And so I do think no matter what he does, they would be supportive of him in some kind of way. But then the other part is, and this is where I come down. It's like, dude, this is what Strickland was built for. Like, give him the guys who, okay he couldn't beat poetime

but like the other part too is he's cleaned up his game after every setback like after every setback dude he seems to come back in my opinion significantly improved and tightened up and this is cleaned up and that thing is no longer there he's still kind of the same guy but the point I'm trying to make is the reason

that we talked about to start the show so you just watch this fight and you don't know who these guys are how entertaining is this going to be your mileage may vary but maybe not not the most but if you understand that this guy is the wrestling boogeyman. And then you see a guy just slowly take that away from him.

And he doesn't really get hit except with jabs. You know what I mean? But like he's constantly parrying and putting up traffic and punching lanes and peeling out and, you know, just shutting every fucking door that is an opportunity for offense. I think if you are a fan of the game, there is something kind of special about that. That is very, dude, like, that's what I mean, too. Like, he pulls his head back, right?

which is risky and he puts his hands out in front. Like all of that is some shit that no one would ever teach you. No one would ever teach you do this shit. You know what I mean? Like you're trying to prevent, I don't know, hail in a hail storm. Like, you know, or you're trying to swat flies. Like no one would do that. And yet he does it very, very, very effectively against the best guys in the world.

For me, that is very respectable, certainly and highly. intriguing. This is what I mean. I was like, I was like watching like this in the whole way in this fight, you know? You know, it's funny because I'm with you. I mean, I see the kind of value of what he does and it's entertaining mostly. You know, it's for the most part it's entertainment. But like in the 90s, there were NBA games that would finish like, you know, 80 to 79, 80 to 76. They would have these very low scoring games to the point where they started having to change the rules basically to kind of get the scoring back up. But those games, I mean, they were, aesthetically they weren't

you know they weren't the most pleasing there wasn't the most action but when you mentioned like just trying to like work through his you know his his lanes and things like that where he's just putting up his vines and he's making it difficult on you

that's what it reminds me of you know it's like it's just like kind of clogging up every single avenue right like every single thing that's happening you see him kind of nullifying to some extent and there's something about it's like it's like chess right like he's just he anticipates

your move and he's doing something about it. I don't have a problem with that because it's just as much of a reputation as he has as a loose cannon. I mean, a very cerebral kind of fighter when it comes to that sort of thing. So I find it, like especially in this, it was very fascinating to watch it unfold. I mean, dude,

offense for offense, who can he beat? Like, I'm just going to play an offensive game with trickling. Like, I don't know who he's, he's not winning titles doing that. But if he can take what you're really good at and then just gum it all up, throw sand in all the years and now you have to contend with his offense.

Now it's a different ball game. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's a guy who breaks some people in a strange way. He breaks him mentally and then physically like this particular fight I felt like he kind of just broke Shemai. That's what started to translate obviously in that second round. But the Izzy fight, if you go back to it, even the fluffy fight, like you just see

the moments when you're like, okay, he knows this guy. He pours it on. That's when he pours it on, right? And that Izzy fight. I'll just never forget when all of a sudden he just started landing. Boom, boom, boom, boom. because he knew he'd broke him. And that kind of thing is always fascinating, too,

that he'll play the game as long as it takes until he senses that he's got you. And then he comes to life. So it's not like he's a guy who is just, you know, resting on his laurels and he's not going to do something in the end. I think if he'd had a big moment, you know, like let's say third round, something where he had him,

like he would have went all in to get that finish. I think that he's that kind of guy. But he's just not going to, like you mentioned, he's just not going to bring like one punch knockout power or, you know, some dynamic, you know, submission game. He just doesn't do that. He just, he plays his game until he sees the opening, then he tries to get it.

No question about it. Real quickly, before we talk about the, what's next? There's been some discussion about like what this, like what does this achievement mean? One kind of signpost I've seen introduced is that Strickland could enter the UFC Hall of Fame with this. Now I'm not declaring that he would and I know what some folks might say. It's like, well, he hasn't

even had a successful title defense, which is also true. To the point you raised, Chuck, it's not his resume is not perfect. It's, now, it's starting to get really good, but it has blemishes. Nevertheless, though, like if we're answering the question, does he belong? I don't really understand the UFC Hall of Fame in part because a lot of it is just rewarding people that they really like who did some good stuff, but it's not clear that they're like

the best of their generation. But I'll just say this, there are other guys already in the Hall of Fame who I would put Strickland over. You know what I mean? Yes, I know you're saying. So if you're going to put those guys in, Chris Widman's like on the night where Chris Wideman is being inducted right like they're basically announcing that

you kind of think of a guy like him right what was his biggest achievement obviously like he was a very good middleweight his biggest achievement everybody's going to always remember the Anderson Silva knockout and then the subsequent you know breaking the leg in the rematch you're always going to have that and I think it's on that sort

of idea that he's in there but you know Chris Wydenman was a guy who had plenty of losses in the I think he had eight UFC losses he had a couple of title defenses and I think that that's one of the things that Strickland's missing, but to get the belt twice, right? And not just that, but as a huge underdog in both instances against what I wouldn't, you hate to use the words like generational, but guys who are dominant in that moment. I mean, Israel at Asena at some point,

people were thinking he might be a generational talent. And I think that that was the fight when the wheels came off and Strickland was right there to be the guy to deconstruct him. That should say something to me. Like that would be on the merit of getting into a Hall of Fame. But then to do it again against Shemayev, who, again, is a huge favorite. Nobody's ever seen him made vulnerable for a fight. And to do that again, that's like beating. I mean, I know Silva was like another level when, when Wyden got him. But man, you've done it twice now against guys like that are like that have that aura.

That's got to mean something, right? Like to just overthrow these guys. As a huge underdog too. Long Island, are you aware of like anyone who's captured UFC titles twice? It could be different weight classes. but that was an underdog. I'm sure someone has done it as an underdog, but definitely not to this extent.

I believe against Izzy, dude, he was like plus 700, and in this fight he was like plus four something. So that's ridiculous. Those two alone are probably bigger than anyone's singular. Well, maybe Sarah upsetting GSP. But either way, like he's up.

Sarah GSP was much bigger in terms of upset. And so was rousy. No, I just meant odd wise. I just meant odd wise. But even odds wise, but both of those are arguably top five. in title upsets. Yeah, he might have two in the top five. That's fucking crazy. It is. It's crazy, man. It's wild. I mean, you got to look at that too and put it into context with what we're talking about. It's like,

if you can make the case for some of these guys who make the Hall of Fame, like you could certainly make his case based on that alone. And, you know, it's crazy, too, that the people who've become two-time champions, not necessarily that they jumped up and won a second title like Conner McGregor, but just two-time champions where they've battled the way back. There's so few. We've mentioned this a million times. It's very difficult to do that. Amanda Nunes did it because you could almost say, well, there was a flukiness to her losing to Julianna Pena. The first time she corrected that course, got her title back. And, you know, GSP, like, you had examples of guys and fighters who've done it, but these are greats, right? Like, they're the greats. They stood forever as, you know, kind of the

goat status type thing. And they did go on and win titles in, like, other divisions. They were that good strickland just doesn't really fit into any box it's just he's a completely i just don't think that they ufc has ever seen a guy like this before uh i certainly haven't i want to play one quick clip and then we're going to move to the like the discussion about what's next uh to make all of this more impressive listen to the difficulties strickland was dealing with on fight week funny funny funny so on tuesday i'm sparring johnny that motherfucker pfl champ and i'm at a polino's gym cruz's gym and He fucking shoots off me and I hit his brick-ass wall and I separated my shoulder.

So I had a grade one AC joint separation on Tuesday and I remember laying in bed on Tuesday night. I'm sure Chris has a video and we slamming the fucking shoulder do. Get some better pads. And I'm laying, I can't lay on my rights, my left side. I'm like, you're such a fucking idiot. You are such a fucking idiot. So in the back, I'd normally like to get better warmups, but I didn't want to warm up and throw my shoulder out

the entire time like you're a fucking moron I don't know if it's a funny Jesus man yeah these guys are they're animals when it comes to this kind of thing all right now it brings us to a question of like what is next for both guys we'll talk about the Strickland side in just a minute but I want to start actually

with the Chimae side and to do that we're going to bring in our friends from Cuervo this is what we're mixing up presented by Cuervo And of course, we had a great time last week in studio and joining some Cuervo with Ray Longo for the preview for UFC 328. Chuck, I want to talk about what should be next for Hamzat Chimayev. And in order to do that, let me start by playing a clip about Dana talking about Chameh, and then I'll tee you up about it.

Let's pull the clip. And I mean, in a normal situation, like split decision, undefeated champion, it seems like everything would be set up for a rematch given their history and everything. But it seemed like Hamzat really struggled to make the weight this time. and he said, he literally walked up to me after the fight and said, I want to move up. Yeah. I don't want to fight in this weight class anymore. Interesting.

And I know it's very soon, but like, do you feel like he probably needs to fight turn the title shot there and stuff like that? Carlos is injured. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not even thinking about that. Yeah.

But, you know, him moving up is exciting. Wow. By the way, for every round, keep it fun, keep it Cuervo and are mixing up with presented by Cuervo segment here. Chuck, all right. As soon as the fight is over. He goes to Dana and he says, I want to go to 205. Experience Harry Styles live in London, England at Wembley Stadium. This is Harry Styles.

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Very excited to see you at the show. Kiss all the time, disco occasionally available now. I want to know what you make of that, but I want to add the little detail here that there have been some, there's been some speculation, and it's not been confirmed, but that there were some suggestions a time ago that Chimae was going to go to 205 and fight Yuri Prohachka and that there was then a title defense that was kind of ordered, and he had to go back down. I got to say I don't really buy that as the full answer. or even if it did happen, I don't really care.

I wonder what you make of Dana saying this and everything we've been sort of like looking into here. I mean, it was a split decision. Just imagine if Shemaya wins this fight. Is he still saying that? Like, that's a question too, right? Like, if he wins it, if he makes that defense, is he saying, all right, I'm vacating, I'm out of here.

I don't know. You know, my biggest issue was, you see, did you, I thought Strickland looked big compared to him. And there was a little surprise to me. Strickland looked big. I'm trying to imagine Shemaya against guys like Onkolaev or, you know, Blahev, like he's not going to be able to do to those guys what he's been able to do at 170 and 185 to the guys.

Like, you know, there are no Kevin Hollins, you know, like guys like that, he's not just going to be able to wreck through those dudes at the top. So if you want to reinvent yourself, you know, and try it. Like, we've seen it work for Alex Pereira, you know, like you see a guy like him going up and he's able to win another title and he's going up again, trying to make a third one. I don't know if it translates for Hamzot. And again, this is part of that aura thing that we were just talking about.

If he had won the title, just that one judge gives him the fifth or whatever, one more judge, maybe that aura is still intact to an extent because he didn't actually lose. Maybe you would look at it this differently, but that's a tough place to recover. That's 20 pounds difference, right? I just, it'd be good. It's better for him. Like, if he was truly compromised, and I believe he was, because that just did not seem like he had any, cardio in this fight. It just seemed like he

wasn't himself. He wasn't a boogeyman at all. If he, you know, if he's able to go in there and fill out and look like himself, great, like it's, I want to see him as peak form, but I just don't know the monsters at 205 man. I just don't, I don't know if he translates there. Yeah, I

hate this idea. I hate it. I can't stand it. I don't agree. You know, can he win a fight up there? I'm sure he can. I don't think that's really much of an issue, but, and maybe he could win a title although I don't really think that that is true though I you know again we'll have to see how that goes but again I think this fight is going to look like of the tape on what to do

with Hamzat and the ways in which to nullify him yeah each time he does this and he can't get anything going you're just adding more tape that guys in subsequent fights are going to be able to pick up on but like in general you know this is what the thing that strikes me about Hamzat like I can't tell if he's at times under training or overtraining he's so inconsistent right where he can at times he looks like he can take over the world and other times he can't even finish a takedown in the second round and you're like

you're worried that he just doesn't love the game I'd worry a little bit like through his course like this has been for a while it just doesn't doesn't love it you know like I mean I can speculate yeah it's yeah I think he's a bully and a bully is not necessarily one that won't train hard but like Strickland is not a bully not well he might be in real life or something but like in the cage

he's not a bully like in fact his game is built on, I have to cross every T and dot every I to make this work. Otherwise, it won't. Whereas it feels like Chimaev is like, oh, I'm just going to bulldoze these guys with my A game. And he's developed his B game. It's not fair to say he doesn't have one. Again, I thought he won round three. Right.

But it's not like, it's not, what would you say about Chami of striking? It's overwhelming. No, it's dangerous, but it's fairly ordinary. Yeah. You know, and so like there's a certain mentality where, like one guy is trying to like, you know, save every penny. And another guy might be rich, but it's just profligate spending. And it's like tortoise in the hair who gets there first.

Well, you know, it's the one that kind of sort of has a dedicated plan about the whole thing, right? What about Donkolaev? You think that he would be able to, uh, I mean, don't Kalayev is certainly the king of the donks, but he's fucking big. I know. That's the problem. You can imagine him just being like resisted again and again. And then what happens, you know, I suppose if he's in better condition and, you know, I suppose if he's in better

condition and he's like anticipating that it's going to be a struggle and he's built to last through at least three rounds right like maybe you know but i just i i'm with you man i just i think that when he went to one 85 that felt like the right move there was a lot of intriguing fights for him to make the jump up i mean he could prove me wrong but given his style i just don't you know you're talking about guys who are very hard to budge off their spots there um especially at the top man those guys there's just old stalwarts at the top that's going to be very tough for him i just want to end this by saying i'm not saying this is the end of homzat i think that would be a silly thing to say but this fight to your point chuck and to kind of wrap it up here this fight might have been the

end of hamzot as the boogeyman sure especially if he goes to 205 where it's like is he a tough fight sure but any possibility like they just changes i mean obviously we're talking right after a fight right any possibility he's like okay staying in 185 if they give him a rematch would you want that like uh to watch it play back or is that too un unkind to uh imov who was right there in the stands watching that right up close. I think Imovov should be next. Yeah, I do too. I agree. You know, I wouldn't hate if they made a rematch.

I don't think it's necessary. I know it's close, but. Yeah. No, I think Yimov should. And I know this will be a rematch in that Sean's already beaten him. So maybe that will make them make a rematch, you know, I don't know. But that first five was a 205, though, right? Like it was like a weird little.

It was very strange. So, I mean, I'm intrigued, man. I think that that is the right play. I don't think it'll be as big as, this one because I can't imagine you know I can't imagine Strickland's stick kind of keep

like moving the needle in the same way especially when he doesn't when he's not fighting a guy who's a you know seven to one favorite or whatever that was I don't think it's going to have the same buildup but we'll find out and then for Sean he said he wants some time off and he thinks he mavov might be next but we'll just have to see him from his end certainly he's earned

some time off with this and I hope he gets it by the way this is what we're mixing up presented by Cuervo for every round. Keep it fun. Keep it quervo. All right. With that, before we move on to topic number two, Chuck, I don't know if you saw this, but my Washington Wizards, number one in the draft, baby. They're going to be good with Trey and all that, man. They're going to build quickly here. I can't wait for the 15 minutes total that Anthony Davis plays in a wizard's uniform for full season. It's going to be great, a great 15 minutes. Yeah. But also, I saw Long Island's New York Knicks yesterday beat up on the Philadelphia 76.

They swept them, right? Let's fucking go. Mother's Day miracle, baby. Let's go. I'm glad they did it on home court too. It's nice to have their home fans celebrate with them. Yeah. People forget how close Philly and New York are.

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Chuck, we roll in now to topic number two. Let's talk about that co-main event in the co-main event. By the way, one of the best flyweight title fights of all time. Joshua Vann stops Tatsuro Taira in the fifth round to defend the throne. where does this bout for you rank all time in flyweight title fights and you can see man look at some of these pictures incredible where does it rank all time for you for enjoyment but then more importantly does this victory prove to you that van is the best flyweight in the world what do you think this fight was amazing man like and again this was like it looked like it looked like a tessu's

fight from the beginning was we were we were wondering like which which style would trump the other and you get that first round where it goes to the ground round van looks like he's in trouble comes back does all this i mean it was up there i would probably was it ian mccall versus a demetrius johnson you remember that fight when they first introduced the flywates that fight always stuck with me um as as one of the best and it was like this great case for the flywates that had been in the ufc and i was like here we are see this is what it's about we've seen some good ones man the first morano um figgy fight figurado was a very good one but i think i would put this one on top i just i thought both guys just the

display of heart how far they're willing to go, especially Tyra in the sense of like taking that beating, but still coming on like when he got that takedown, what was a late third? Late third round, looked like he was out of it. He gets the take down and you're like, how's this guy doing this man? When you see

stuff like that, you're like, it somehow tells you something about the size of the guy's heart and he wanted to keep going even when he was getting lit up at the end there and they called the fight. So that type of thing is the boxing of van is really the thing. Like, just just the ability to land that jab, snap, jab, boom, boom, and then the right hand come on up straight down the middle.

Didn't feel like Tyra could do anything about it in terms of anything coming straight down the middle was snapping his head back. It reminded me of the Shane Burgos Calvin Caterfight a long time ago. Same kind of thing where it was just a jab and then the occasion of the right hand, boom, boom, boom, boom, like it just clean crisp boxing. I mean, I could watch that all day. I mean, that sort of thing, man, is just so beautiful to watch. So is he the best?

I just have to, I guess that because of the way he won his title against Pantoja, who had the four title fights, the four defenses, I should say, he had been, I thought one of the guys who was starting to enter the pound for pound top five, because of how he was doing it, I still need to see Van get by him for me to anoint him the best fly weight. And obviously, that's just a, that's what should be next. And that's, that would tell me that he's there. But if you want to call him the best right now, I wouldn't have a problem with it. because he's 24 years old.

You see how calm he looked in that first round? It was like, well, let me just get through this. And then we'll get to my side of things. And I'm going to kick your ass. I mean, that stuff is fun to watch. Yeah, kind of funny. He uses guard to sit up or if you notice that and to stand. He uses double butterfly, whereas a guy like Strickland's like, fuck this.

I'm not doing that. You know what I mean? I'm going to use the fence and stand. But he didn't. I will say this about the ultimate question. Like, is he the best flyweight in the world? Certainly he's the champion. So he almost de facto.

gets to the designation. But like you, I won't really know until he fights Pantoja. But this is the problem Pantoja is up against. How old is Josh Van? 24. He's 24. Like if Van is not the best in the world now, he's going to be. Right. And even if Pantoja beats him, I got bad news for you, bro. You're going to have to do it again because he's going to be right back there in front of you. Because if he's not better than Pantoja, he's, and I guess I would need to see them in no cop fight, but I would still pick Van over him. Dude, Van is a natural. He is a natural. He is a This game comes to him naturally effortlessly. Even his ground game?

You like enough like what you're seeing just in terms of his, you know, like what you saw? Like you thought he did okay? I think that if he can get through what Tyra can offer, there's really, the only other guy that would be a threat like that. So here's the thing, right? Pantoja can do what Tyra can do. Tyra cannot do what Pantogia can do. Right. And so that is the part where they, it splits.

and so, you know, to that end, I would need to see him, but it's like, who can, who's a threat on the ground in the way that Tyra is absent Pantoja? I don't, I don't know who that would be at 125 pounds. I would say it's not, it's not a flawless ground game by any stretch, but like every time you see it, it's better. And also, you can tell it's got a core identity now. Yeah. Where he kind of is like, these are my go-tos, these are the things I like, and these are the things I like. And these are the things are going to keep doing. And he's just refining it and refining it.

And very, very quickly. but dude on the feet like it is effortless for him naturally can settle into range the combination punching the ability to go to the head and the body by the way foundationally the ability to find the jab the jab was tearing up Tyro of just as much as the combination punching was it was everything every part of it was just setting him uh setting him on fire so like man if josh van isn't the best guy in the world just just just give it a minute kick your feet up yeah have a nice cold glass water because by the time you finish it, he for sure will be. Yeah.

And you know, I don't know how you saw this. I think it was the third round right where he, he had Tyra very hurt. I thought he was two, three punches away from finishing the fight. And what does he do? He goes for a submission. And I was like, is this a 24 year old guy just like, hey, man, I've heard all, whatever, all lead up that this guy is really good on the

ground. I want to submit him. Did you get that says, I talking to Ben folks about this saying, I think he just took what was given to him. And I, I rewatched it. was like maybe, but I still think that he could have just finished the fight right then. If he just lands a couple more shots, the referee's leaning in. He's ready to kind of call it.

And it seemed like Van was like, nah, I'm going to see if I can sub this guy. Yeah, I hated that. Yeah, me too. Me too. And I was like, I thought for a minute, he's going to learn a very hard lesson because when Tyra came back and started to put him back on the ground and it started going the other way again, I was like, watch out. If he loses this fight, he's going to circle this moment and be like, dude, I let it get through

my hands, you know? Eric Cologne, giving the fourth round to Van. is a crime. That is, how do you, because I agree with you, he gets, I mean, so for example, Sal Diomato has a 10-8 for Van in round three. I don't mind that. I mean, it's a little aggressive, but I don't mind that, okay? And so does, by the way, Eric Colon.

But then I thought, man, the effort and the response from Tyra in round four, you know, really kind of made this fight interesting again. And they didn't, Colon, two of the judges did, so he would have won it anyway, but that's crazy to me that they went this way. But, you know, I'll say this about Tyra. Holy, I mean, tough. He comes out of this shining, right? I think.

Like, I think there's the first time. He's just 26. That's what I'm saying. He's almost as young. And I mean, people are watching him. I think a lot of people probably had never seen him fight. You know what I mean? Like, so you see him in this fight.

I mean, he walks away. I know he got battered. His face was a mess after that. But man, if you didn't know who he was and you watch that, that's your first introduction to him, what a stud. I mean, he comes out of that with a loss. But dude, I think he probably made a lot of fans. There's no question.

I think he made a lot of fans. And the best part is he's just 26. If he keeps working on his ground game, he's going to see Tyra. I'm sorry, he's going to see Van again. I think so too. And my favorite kind of rematches are when you get two talented guys and one gets the better of them. And then a couple of years pass. And then you get them, you know, two, three, four years later when they've really become, you know, who they are at that point.

point and then you start getting some real interesting fights. I really wonder how that's going to be. But as it stands, like, dude, honestly, if they make the Pantoja rematch next, who are you picking, Chuck? Well, I would have, I know in the first time when they did it in December, I'd pick Pantosia. And that's because you just think that Vans too green is probably, you know, he's going to get schooled on some level of this fight, probably on the ground.

But after watching this, his poise and that kind of handling of the spotlight, just believing that he belongs. they're believing he's the best and that's there makes a little more difficult guy coming off an injury too um you know with it with his elbow and pantos is not young man what is he is he 36 37 right like he's past 35 i think i would lean van now you know i just think that and also this was like that big moment where you're like okay if he's going to get a fight where maybe the moment's too big this would be it right like in a in a his first you know real title offense people kind of doubting that he's a real champion and all this.

And he goes in there and puts on that kind of fight. He's made for the moment. So I just, I feel like he's going to be ready for Pantosia. And, uh, I just, I think he's already there,

man. So I would probably lean his way. I, I think I, Long Island. Long Island. After Saturday, are you picking Pantoja or Van?

I don't fucking know. I was just trying. I thought maybe you were going to come to me and be like, what do you think the odds would be? And I, I honestly think it would be a pickum at this point. Yeah. I think the first time they fought,

Pantoja was like a minus 200. van was like plus 170. Even at Tyra like what? He was he was like minus he was arguably the same odds. Yeah, he was like plus 160 van was and Tyra was like minus 190. But yeah, I do think he at least narrowed them. He might still be the dog, but it'll be very slight if they fought against it. I really don't.

You know, I'd be swayed by the odds, put it that way. Bro, if I'm Pantoja and I get that fight and I win, I'm leaving and just go into Bantamweight. Because otherwise you're just going to have to keep facing this fucking point. you, which is inevitable. You think Tyra looks at this video and he's like, I mean, you like to watch tape. Like, did you see how many times he took punches just straight down the middle? And he just did not move his head. Like, no.

He just kept taking those pen. He kept moving forward into it. I was like, dude, you got to do something a little more. I think he can learn a lot from this tape is what I'm saying. You know. There's no question. Yeah. Dude, to his credit.

Like, he was getting bombed on in the fifth. I know. And they stop it. And he protested. He was like, no, no, no, no. He was willing to die in there, man. he looks like a little Japanese schoolboy like hello everyone and then he's just going there

he's like doing fucking murders it's crazy yeah but I want to say this about Josh Van as I mentioned he's a natural first of all this dude was born my junior year of college which is just insanely depressing no sorry he was born my senior year of college which is insanely depressing that's so weird to put it my

he was born a month after 9-11 so listen to this he's had I think 11 fights in UF C's 10 and 1. Two of those were title fights, although the last title fight, the one before this one was, you know, 26 seconds.

So what can you really say? However, I want to just read you his numbers. And some of these came down a little bit because of the amount of takedowns that Tyra got, but then consider what the effective result was, right? This fucking guy, after he's been, he only made his debut in June of 2023. Now 11 fights later,

and now he's champion. Strikes landed per minute, 8.43. I don't know this off. hand, Chuck, but I'm willing to bet that in terms of strikes landed per minute for any champion, not only now but ever, that's the highest.

I'm willing to bet that's... I can confirm because he's the all-time UFC active leader, or active or past leader in strikes per minute. So he's above anyone that is so fucking insane. I cannot. Do you have to be in the line of fire to land those kinds

of shots, right? Yeah. Strikes of sore per minute is still kind of high. 5.82. There's still a little bit of a problem there. However, uh, take down defense 75% this dropped from 80 because what Tyra got. But again, look at the material result and then his take down accuracy is still below about 50% it's 61%. Dude like he's 24. He's only been here less than three fucking years. Think about that for a second. He's been in his second title fight and he's got numeric supremacy here that is like shocking to look at. He is a natural like very few.

people are. You love his audacity too. He's basically like, I want to be the goat. He was trying to get John Jones. He missed it by like 180 days. He took that loss earlier with Charles Johnson, right? Like he took that loss, but he's rebounded. He could have got it. But like him just saying like, I want to be the goat, man.

I want to be the goat. Like I like sometimes like, okay, it's 24 year old guy. He just hasn't had life beat him down yet. But like, but he's a, but you see how good he is at 24 years old. And I'm like, it is a little John Jones ask in that sense. We were like, okay, wait a minute, this guy's already better than just about

anybody going. And I mean, that's why we're, they said Pantoja has to be next because that's the one remaining question. But right now, I'd favor him against any of the other guys. And I think flyweight is as deep as it's been ever probably at this point. Bro, whenever I see a young person, like in their teens or in their early 20s, talk about like, I want to do great. I want to be, you know, I want to run for elected office and blah, blah. I just look at him like, oh, my sweet, sweet little duckling, you have, you have no idea. how life is about to beat the fuck out of you. You just, you are, you are, you are woefully unprepared.

Here are the longest flyweight wind streaks in UFC history. Obviously, Demetrius is still the gold standard. Chuck, if there was ever a person who could beat this, it is Josh Van. Now, Pantoja is certainly putting in a good effort, but Josh Van is, I want to say one more time, 24, 24 years of age. And also, it kind of sucks, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. The Muhammad Mukaii fight against Adriano Martinez fell, no, Maraishe, Maraisch, fell out. Oh, it did? I didn't even hear that.

Well, because he couldn't get a visa or something. I want to say, all right, it does suck. It's a bummer. But Pumi Nakuta's stepping in, dude, that's a bang of a lot. I'm actually even more excited. That's what, fair enough. Fair enough. It's a great replacement. But the point I'm trying to say is it's time the UFC brought Mokkaiv back to. 100%. I just got these young guys that are ready for another step up. And look at how young, dude, Vance's 24. I know.

He's going to need some. some competition out there. It was Mahayev who was like the original like I want to beat John Jones record. Remember he was the guy of gunning for it. Honestly, there's been a lot of them. I know. But I mean, so young,

you got to bring them back. You got to bring them back for that fight. Yeah. But what a treat it is to have a young guy like this. If he can do it, if he can just stay active and more importantly, you know, he seems like he's got a good family.

I hope that they keep this kid grounded because if they don't, you know, he's obviously reached a lot of great, but right in this. but he won't reach his potential. But if he reaches his potential, you know, there's just very few guys

that are going to give Demetri's Johnson a run for his money at 25. And he's got work to do, but he's on his way. Isn't it a while that they were trying to shudder that division a few years ago? Isn't that just nuts to think about now? Yeah, by the way, the trash talk of this.

Oh, yeah, I know. Well, you know what? I have to cop to something. I don't know how long ago this was. It was like when they got rid of like Shorty Torres, remember him? Yeah, yeah. And they were thinking about it.

And I did a call-in segment on my serious XM show. And at the time, it made sense, I did not want to see the flyweight division shuttered. That was not the argument. The argument was not, oh, get rid of it. No, no, no, no. Keep the division. Fix it, but keep it.

However, the fun caller-driven segment we did was, if you had to get rid of one division right now, would it be flyweight or would it be heavyweight? Which one would you pick? And dude, this is at the time when, like, you know, Kane was still around, JDS was, I think, still around, like a bunch of most of the big names were still at least floating around. And it would seem insane to have gotten rid of it.

fast forward 10 or however many years it's been and you're like I don't know I think maybe On my gosh heavyweight Take care And now on the show we're like You'll get rid of these heavyweight bombs I'd hate to see Hocut go though

But anyway I mean that's like you know Speaking of bad trash talk We'll end on this one Take a look at what Pantoja had to say about Van Needing to fortify his bones You said that backwards It's Van talking about Pantoja Oh sorry

Your caption sucks But yes, I was listening to one of your interviews over there and what Pantosia's interview. And Dana White confirms that he's probably next for you. Pantosia seems to want to make this a five round. He wants to drag it five rounds to make it painful for you. And I think I heard your response was he better go drink some milk.

Is that correct? Yes. Yes. You better go get some milk, man. I mean, we got a, I'm not saying I wasn't a bone break, was it? It wasn't a bone break, right? It was a dislocation. Dislocation.

I mean. Yeah. I mean, look, I don't need Islamophobia to get ready for fights. I guess some of the fan base does. I can't join them there. But I will say, how many do need that. Yeah, a lot of them, buddy. They're like, if we're not insulting Muslims, I just can't watch this fight.

And I'm like, really? That's okay. But anyway, in this particular case, I would say, you know, a little pushing and and shoving wouldn't hurt anybody. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. All right. With that in mind, let's go to do it.

topic number three. Let's talk the rest of that main card. We're going to do a lot of U.S.C. 328 discussion here. So there's a few different ways to start this conversation. Let's go to the heavyweight fight. Volkov, Alexander Volkov, defeats Waldo, Cortez, Ocosta. It was, you know,

fine. I guess the question is, does Volkov finally have a case for a title shot at heavyweight at this point? What do you think? I mean, he has a case, but I don't know how many people want to hear it, right? Because I mean, did you think he'd be gone?

I mean, that's where it kind of comes down to it. I did think he'd be gone. So it's like the fight was a split decision. I thought he got robbed in that fight. So he would be on a crazy winning streak at this point. It may not be like the most aesthetic thing. I had a guy texting me last night that I watch us occasionally. And he was like, I think I could be bulk of right now.

And I'm like, well, it just looks slow and prodding. And he sucks the area of the room a little bit because, you know, even when Waldo was coming in and trying to like engage. and landing the crowd to get into it, he would just kind of coolly leg kick him and peel him off there a little bit and be like, okay, don't do that again, but it slowed everything down.

You know, that's how he's winning these fights kind of out pointing. And the sooner that we scrubbed that Al-Meda fight from our minds, the better, right? The one that preceded this. So even if he has the case, I just don't know if anybody would hear it. Do you?

I mean, I don't think there'd be anybody pining to see him get that shot. I feel bad for him because he should get that shot, you know? I think he should get it. Yeah. Don't know that he will. Yeah, it's a mess too right now with all the, you know, Aspinol out and all this stuff.

And what happens? I mean, let's sort of game this out, right? So if Gone wins, they're going to do the Gone rematch. Right. So Gone has to get through two fights before there'd ever be a fight for him. If Poetan wins, it's the same thing because they're not going to do. Oh, Poetan wins. Well, we got to do Aspinall versus fucking Volkov.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't, they're not going to cry. If Josh Hokic beats Derek Lewis, you don't think we're going to try and throw him. So I think if Josh Hokit beats Derek Lewis, they're going to give him to Volkov. Because it's a terrible fight for Volkov. And it's a great fight for Hokit. The handspeed alone is going to be, the wrestling is just going to be way too much for him in all likelihood. So I think that's actually what's going to happen.

It sucks, man, because he did get screwed by gone. I want to say this about Volkov. Like when he got beat by Vitelli Minikov and Bellator, I was like, oh, he's tall, but he's just, you know. Right. He's good, but he's, you know, it's not whatever, you know. Yeah. But I will, and if you have any pictures of Volkov, put him up here again, Long Island. Because look, like, you can't really tell from these pictures.

It's kind of covered up. But I thought Volkov looked maybe the best shape I've ever seen him in this fight. Yeah. He's leaned up. He's faster on his feet. Now, he's still slow on his feet, but he was faster than I'd ever seen him. Dude, like, the thing about Volkov to me is he doesn't have an ideal build or athletic profile to be, you know, the best heavyweight.

Obviously, size can for some advantage. I don't mean to say it suggests that. But, you know, he's sort of big and slow, right? Right. But he has taken just methodically piece by piece. He has tried to work on everything that he could to make whatever, whatever deal you got dealt. Sorry, whatever hand you got dealt. I'm sorry.

Whatever hand it is, play that hand. And he has played that hand to me to maximum effect. He's actually gotten really good. If you're not really good and you're not really dialed in or athletic or you kind of leveled up in your own way he'll find that out you know he's very good about that so i really appreciate that from his yeah i mean that i just you know you just wouldn't pick him against the other athletic heavyweights and yeah you know there's just not a big pro volkov constituency there's not in the u.s he's completely under sung um i don't know what it is exactly i mean part of it is he doesn't

have like a big dynamic personality either like he gets on the mic and i mean he's he's sincere and all that but he doesn't have that it factor but i do think you you bring up a good point. Like if he does fight Hokit, that would be, if it all shook out just like that, that would probably be his moment to, if he was going to get by a guy

and really make a definitive case for a title shot, that would be it. I think he's got to get through a guy like that who's very loud and going to draw a lot of eyes for him to kind of punch that ticket. This is tattoo distract you.

Like if I, you know, some guys are just covered all over the place, but he's just got this one huge ass tattoo on his back. And I, I don't know why, but it's like, it's very distracting to me,

like when I watch him fight. No, back pieces like that are not distracting. The ones that are distracting are the weird ones that like don't fit the contours because that's a cover up. The one he has on his back is a cover up of an old tattoo. Oh, it is. Okay, I didn't know that. And so the problem with cover-ups is that they tend to go much darker and bolder because

they're literally trying to cover the ink that's already there. So that's why you got this big old kind of cover-up tattoo. Remember to Alan Belcher's like Johnny Cash tattoo? Yeah, that's like it's like it's like, it's like, it's like, which it's just like distractingly weird. Right. Yes. That's the one that kind of get a little bit odd about. And again, here are the scores for that fight.

You know, they, I guess round, well, that's interesting. One judge thought that, um, yeah, that was. So they gave all three to Volkov. Then the next one gave him round one and round two. And then the next one gave him around two and round three. So I guess round two was the only one that they all agreed on. Wow. That's a little strange.

It is strange. I thought the third round was. to score. I don't know. Like sometimes I see this. Dana said post-fight that he thought Waldo won. He did. Yeah, I don't know if I did, but I also had a bet on Waldo.

I was going to say that's a little swayed, you know. I thought it was close. I didn't I, you know, Cortez-A-Costa, this is the problem for him. It's like if you're going to lose, you know, you can always rebounded heavyweight. It's not the end

of the world. But this is one of those ones where he like, he had a hard time closing the distance. He ended up having to blitz. It was frustrating. Yeah. And he just did, he looked, I don't know, he looked like an unk out there at the, fighting another unk at the, at the backyard cookout, you know, just winging heavy. Yeah.

Just trying to come over the top. Those guys who can't close the distance and they, you're fighting a tall guy like that who's almost like a lance, you know, like he's jousting you with us, you know, so tough. Like you get frustrated watching them try because it's just they can't get it done, you know. Yeah, it's tough. All right. How about this one? Sean Brady scoring a much needed win.

And boy, did he ever, two scores, if you can fucking believe it, of 30, 25. I mean, did you go in there and make them mow your lawn? What the hell? So he got the job done, Chuck. Let's talk about him and then we'll talk about Joaquin Buckley. But first for Brady, how restorative to his stock was this? I thought it was a great performance. But I will say, and I know you were looking forward to this fight.

And it probably underdelivered in the sense that it was so one side. but for Brady's perspective, he did exactly what he should do. Just in that first round, I was looking at Buckley and you could, I felt like he looked like he was in peak physical shape. It looked like he was, you know, the bigger fighter. He had this, this optic like, okay, this is going to be a tough, this is going to be a tough fight for Brady. And how easy he made that look, I think it was over 12 minutes, 12 and a half minutes of

control time, just taking him down. and onslaught, you know, just beating him from pillar to post that whole fight. I thought that was hugely really. It tells you these fights always magnify where that division is. When you look at like Michael Morales and what he was able to do against Brady, doesn't that stand out to you now more when you see how good he is? And then it just reminds you like, dude, Brady's a beast. You know, when he's on, like when he's able to dictate the fight, this is what he does.

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disco occasionally available now. But from the other side of it, it's very disappointing, I guess, for Joaquin Buckley. I mean, we kind of went through this a little bit with the Usman fight, even though he had his moments later in that fight. But this is a fall from grace for a guy. I thought he would have a better resistance, I guess, for that type of fighting. Like he would have some kind of response for Brady's style,

but it did not seem like he did. I mean, it was the repeat of the Uspin fight in the sense of, you know, sometimes he looks like in that fifth round against Ustman. He was able to stuff to take down multiple times and look great. there were some instances like that but in general dude like man brady's brady's grappling is a fucking nightmare for anybody if he gets on top all he needs i don't know if everyone's noticed this all he needs is in the middle he'll jab and cross switch step his way into getting an underhook in the middle of the octagon then just walk you to the fence and then the games begin you know what i mean he's

tripping he's body locking he's level changing for a double or you know whatever he's going for and then once he gets on top, man, holy smokes, dude, his mount is awesome. Yeah. Really good. The one criticism, the one criticism that I would have is, you know, he didn't trade with Buckley much on the feet, but that's a dangerous proposition.

To me, it's if your mount is going to be that good, you know, and by the way, I feel like my criticism of Tremiav in the DDP fight, boy, that aged pretty well, I feel like, because everyone was like, what do you mean? It wasn't dominant. I'm like, he didn't finish the fucking job. Well, it turns out there's a problem with that, isn't there?

In this case, this is only three rounds, so I can't get on him as much. And he was trying. He was actively punching. But when you've got mount and you're trying to ride it, it's kind of hard. Elbows. And you can do 12 to 6 elbows now. Use them. Although not in New Jersey.

Not in New Jersey. Not in New Jersey. They have the old rule set. Yeah, yeah. Not in New Jersey. Fair enough. But you can still use all different kinds of slashing elbows. You can do closing elbows.

you can come slashing over the top there's just a lot you can do and he and he's just covering up with like he's bringing his hands so guard people and then come down and smash him like just trying to finish a guy from mount with punches while holding mount is a very very hard thing to do that's what i'm yeah yeah no i hear you who would you put him against you know what i mean like that's a big bounce back good question good spot you know who i'd like to see him fight because we're just talking about this, the two comparisons, right? With the Usman fight, why not have him fight Usman? I mean, I don't know what they're doing with Usman.

I have no idea if he's interested in this kind of fight, but I would love to see that fight. You could do that. You could do him versus JDM. That's a tough fight for JDM after that would be like, hey, you got to go fight Carlos Proches and Islam Machuzev. Have fun with that shit, bitch. Brady said pre-fight, he would fight anyone in Philly. That's that August pay-per-view.

UFC 3 surety but then he said post-fight he would only fight the right person and he suggested Usman so i do think if they made the usma matchup he'd be all over that would be a fun one that's a tough fight man yeah yeah that's a tough one for buckley man uh this is tough he was sitting at number nine he's probably going to drop out of the top 10 you got to give him a striker don't you you can't just throw him in there another guy who's going to rag doll him like throw him down on the ground like how about you could do buckley jdm yeah i mean see that would be that would be smart because I think that would be a, I think JDM could see that as like a good pounceback fight, right?

Like he would look at that as something, somebody could do Buckley Leon. You could do that too. Buckley MVP would be fun. Ooh, I didn't thought about that one. Is he still with the Oregon? They let him go yet?

What's the story on that? Right number 12. I'm looking at the rankings. 12 and 9? That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, Medit, right? Like he likes to stand and bang and throw.

Something like that seems a little bit more appropriate. But like you got a real clear difference there where one guy was like, you know, the Morales fight. didn't go his way, but he was able to climb back up. And one guy, okay, it was if I didn't go your way, but you didn't really cover for the problem, you know, so. It tells me that Michael Morales, though, man, that dude, he's got to be one of those like pending stars in the league for how easy he got through Brady. That's just crazy, man.

That loss is going to end up looking. Yeah. Not so bad. I mean, it was a bad loss, but, you know, it'll be, yeah, not too terrible in the future. Lastly, how about King Green? By the way, winning at 420. You got to love that. 420 of round number one.

Dude, that is fun. I didn't realize that. I mean, here's the thing. This fight didn't need to be in the main card, but the fans love it. They love Bobby Green. Bobby Green after the fight, Chuck, asking Venom for he wants Apollo Creed-inspired trunks. And it's like, dude, let me just say this about Bobby Green. And it's a very short thing.

And I've mentioned it a million times. There are guys out there in the fight game who are never going to touch gold and they're never even going to get close. And yet you can't deny that they make MMA better and more fun. and there's millions like them, like a Donald Soroni, a Matt Brown, you can go on down the list. How about adding a guy like King Green to that? Is he going to beat Islam Makachev? No, he's not.

Is he going to beat Ilyat Ceporia? Nope, he's not. However, you can't deny, is MMA, is UFC better? Is your UFC experience better because of guys like King Green? Unquestionably, Chuck, it is. And occasionally he does this. And I know, you know, Jeremy Stevens, very long in the tooth, he's barely won a fight in the last like,

seven years, you know, but it's just his kind of style, right? Like he keeps his hands way low. He's talking. He's kind of moving his chin in there. He's like, daring you to do something. And then he just sparks you, right? And this fight, it was very easy for him.

And the Jim Miller fight, when he fought Jim Miller at UFC 300, I think it was, he just kind of tore him apart, you know, like so, like the right opponent, like, he'll just put on a show for you. And it is. It's kind of like, you're like, dude, I don't know what it is. like you mentioned that you've got to have these types of guys on the card. I do think it's funny that he basically is like, hey, Dana, you know, whatever he said at the end. And he was basically lobbying for the bonus, right?

And in the post-fight presser, basically Dana's like, well, give him his custom shorts. That's what kind of the consolation prize of this. I mean, he did not get the, you know, he did not get the bonus. He does get the automatic $25,000 bonus, right, for finish. But he did not get the performance bonus. us. Yes, well, yeah, that can happen. Yeah. Along the way there.

I think we got to, oh, very quickly, before we move on, because I forgot about it, Long Island, what the hell happened with the betting line on Brady and Buckley? Oh, what was that? So you're the one who put me on to this, LTA. I just saw the movement, but I didn't understand what was happening. Yeah, that was weird. Basically, this shows Joaquin Buckley's line. So as you can see, he opened as a plus 210 underdog, or sorry, plus 250.

I have terrible eyes. and then closed as a minus 182. That is a crazy flip. So basically he went from a huge underdog to a pretty decent favorite. And Sean Brady, obviously, vice versa. So people were hopping on Sean Brady as a dog. Congratulations to anyone who did that. Yeah.

That's fucking fantastic. We do have a clip of Sean Brady talking after about he got a call from the UFC about the betting lines here. Let's have to ask about the weird betting lines that were happening before this fight. Did that reach you at all? Because it seems pretty wild that they swung. Somebody at the UFC reached out to me a couple hours before my fight and just made sure I was fine and I was sitting like this getting worked on by my strength coach. Well, it just got done getting worked on.

And I was like, I'm completely fine. There's nothing wrong with me. My wife was upstairs. They already all knew about it, but they weren't telling me because they didn't want to let anything get in my head. But as soon as they called, I told them I'm good. I went one ear, went out the other. Like I said, I didn't know if I could have been a minus 10,000 favorite or a plus 10,000. I wouldn't have known because I didn't look.

So, yeah, I'm completely fine and somebody just lost a bunch of money. Long Island, I was going to ask, like, an off-center kind of fight like this is not a main attraction, right? Is it just, is it somebody moving in with like a big, big, you know,

bet and that's what just weighs it? Oh, you're muted. You're muted. Sorry. I feel like even if you put a million dollars on one of them, it wouldn't move it that much. Weird.

It seems way too much. The plus 250, though, I didn't see it when it was like that, but plus 250, it never should have been the case for Brady. Not in that kind of stylistic matchup. You know, that's crazy to me. It certainly is. Anyway, fun, fun main card. We'll talk about the prelim card in a second, but we got to remind everyone about our friends from Cuervo. Chuck had a great time with old Ray Longo in studio.

It's always fun to get in studio. And, you know, listen, listen, I, I, you know, you always have to enjoy things responsible. I love my Margs at 11 a.m. on these days. You know what I mean? I thought we were crazy, but he had a good time in the end. See?

Yeah, he sure did. And we'll be back in studio before you know it. And, you know, it's always a great time when we do. So it's a good time to remind all of you that our pregame previews, of course, are sponsored by our friends. Ooh, you know what? At Cuervo. From face off to final decision,

Fight Night delivers the adrenaline and Cuervo, the energy to match. Certainly it was on Saturday. Whether you're hosting your crew at home or catching the action at a bar, Cuervo brings the good vibes that turn every round into a celebration. From Margaritas to Palomas, every main event simply tastes better with the world's most iconic tequila. No matter who walks out with the belt with Cuervo in hand, there we are, you're already celebrating like an undisputed champion for every round.

Keep it fun. Keep it quervo. And of course, you guys know the combat sports calendar is heating up for the summer. UFC White House card is fast approaching international fight week the month thereafter. So stay tuned for our plans and coverage on that. Of course, we're going to be enjoying Cuervo the whole way you should too in your own home and or places of fun. All right. All right.

Very good. Let's do this. Let's now talk last thing about the UFC 328 card. Let's get to that preliminary card if we can. I don't need to touch every part of this card, Chuck. I didn't think the card was bad by any stretch. but I thought I didn't. We only need to talk about the stuff that ruled.

Number one, number one, Yarrislav Amasov. Okay. I want to say a couple things about this. I said Chuck on the pregame, this was the fight on the prelim card I wanted to see the most. Look at this high amplitude mat return that he did in the top picture on Joel Alvarez, who by the way is a fun, good fighter, to be very clear, talented guy out of Spain. But Chuck, there's all this.

consternation about, oh, the guys from Bellator, they're not that good, and they're failing and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, a lot of that might be true, but I don't know if we've got all the right ones from Bellator. This is one of the right ones. What a fun entrant he is into this division.

You're 100% right, man. We were talking about patchy mix and guys like that who came over with a little more high profile fighters. And they just didn't translate in the UFC. This guy came over fairly unsung. I mean, I felt like people knew of them, but they weren't really paying close attention to him but they are now i mean if you watch this fight i i thought alvarez and he was alvarez was the

underdog in this fight but i was like he's this is kind of a dangerous fight i think alvarez could be the guy who is able to stop him you know in that situation because his only loss alvarez was against uh serukian a couple of years ago so i was like i really thought that he was kind of hitting on all right did you see how easy he made that look like amoslav like that was wild this is a guy if you if you've really kind of paid any attention we just were talking about logan Storley and what do you do with a guy who's that dominant when he wants when he wrestles and this guy shut Storley down 50 to 45 in their rematch and he can do it any way he wants it seems like you know I just I feel like he is completely unsunged but if you watch this

fight he should be I really believe now that you're looking at a future contender maybe within a year that's how good I thought he was that good I thought he I can't I'm so glad he's here and I'm so glad he's doing what he's doing he's the He's a nationalist Ukrainian I've ever seen because he's obviously training down there in Florida. You know? That's true. Yeah. He's so fucking skilled. He's had it.

I mean, this is the good thing about competing in Bellator, man. You get to iron out your game, you know, with tough but manageable challenges. And, you know, it's just nice to see a guy come over and you can tell instantly he can swim with the sharks here. I'm not saying he's going to win a title. That's, that's a different conversation. But is he going to be a player in the top 10? There's simply no question about it. I mean, Alvarez had never been submitted, and he made that look incredibly easy.

Yeah. Now, I mean, when you got touched up, but Alvarez is good on the feet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just, that's the type of showcase fight, though, that he needed. The Neil Magny, I mean, we watched it because we watch all the fights. And it was like, well, that's a sturdy veteran who got through him, you know, we'll see about this one. And now he got through this.

He's passing the tests. And they could throw him in the top 10 right now. And I'd, you know, in the right matchup, I'd be like, I'd favor him. Jim Miller gets the choke at 329 of round number one over Jared Gordon. He snatches the neck in transition. I mean, what can we say? It was a night for the unks, the Ray Longo prognosticators. And then the old guys out there, Chuck, like Jim Miller.

I want to say this about Jim Miller. And I'm sure you probably agree. But like, you know, people might be asking like, how does he keep doing it? Well, on the one level, you know, he is kind of reassigned what competition level he's sort of like, you know, staying focused on, that's part of it. But their other part of it, Chuck, is, you know, we see so many guys rush to UFC these days, and they just don't have the skills to, even if they can get a win that they can't hang on to a career.

I did the XFC card recently. There's some really good fighters on there, but there were guys, their fighters themselves admitted to me. They went on the contender series and they won. And then they got to UFC and it was like, just the whole thing kind of came apart. They weren't ready for it. look at how Jim Miller has longevity in this game by virtue of how outrageously skilled he is. He has deep, deep wells of skill.

And of course, veteran experience to match it, Chuck, but like, dude, skills win fights. And it's not an accident why he keeps winning even at 175 years old. Is it 47 UFC fights? I mean, it's just an incredible number. I mean, he's barreling down on 50. It's, you can't believe it. I was looking because I knew I knew he debuted at UFC 89. I did a piece a long time ago.

And it feels like 25 years ago. It feels like it's so long ago that we did this. Look at the, I was looking at I had to look this up. Like, the card that he debuts and he ends up getting his first submission. It's Bisping Leibin. It's, uh, it was, uh, Brandon Vera was fighting against Jardine. There was Louise Kane versus So could you. Listen to these names.

They've been out of the game five, 10, 15 years. Like, all of. them, right? Chris Lytle against Paul Taylor, as Marcus Davis was fighting, you know, Irish hand grenade. Paul Kelly, yeah, Paul Kelly and you had Hardy versus whoever he's fighting, Gomo, I think it was, going out, like,

you look back at that and you're like, how is that possible that Jim Miller is still around? You think about those names, so many of them are bygone or they're on to like broadcasting careers or whatever. They've all moved on so far from like the actual competition of fighting. And yet Jim Miller's still in there submitting guys. That's pretty crazy, man. And not just that.

Like, okay, so he lost. lost to Chase Hooper back in 2025, fine. But like Jared Gordon finished in the first round, Damon Jackson finished in the first round, Gabriel Benitez finished in the third round. Jesse Butler finished in the first round. And again, he's got some losses sprinkled in there. But even going back to 2022, Donald Soroni finished in the second round.

Nicholas Motta finished in the second round. And the Eric Gonzalez finished in the second round. Like Roosevelt Roberts finished in the first round, Clay Guida. I mean, it just goes on and on and on like this. we'd be here all day. He's so fucking skilled. He's so great to watch. Obviously,

you know, we've told a story a million times and, you know, it's just, it's just, this is what I mean, dude, about like,

is every guy going to be a champion? No, but it's stupid to only care about the champions because there's so much more depth and character in MMA beyond that, you know? You know, you know,

here's something like this. I had, I did a piece on Anthony Bordaenbeg and I met him at the Lambs Club in New York City. And I asked him, Who's your favorite fighter? He said, I love Jim Miller.

It's crazy that he's able to do what he's doing at such a rate. This is in 2016. Like he's like, it's crazy that he's, you know, it's, you know, kind of with the experience level he's at where, you know, he's been at a long time that he's still doing that. That was 10 years ago, dude. 10 years ago. Bordaim's been dead for eight years.

You know, it's like, and he was saying that then. It's a wild ride. Elsewhere on this car, Chuck. Are you a believer in Bisonger, Susserkayev? Yeah, man, I mean, because he's so young. I'm not. I'm not. You're not a believer? How come? I think his own estimation.

All fighters are crazy confident, but then there's like, there's a certain level of delusion. You kind of have to fine-tune it, but like his delusion to me looks like the kind that could undo him. Yeah. Well, you remember back in the day, with like Rashad Evans is coming up on tough and he's kind of hot dogging it all the time. People

didn't like the show boat, but he could back it up, right? Like he would get in there. I remember the Chuck Liddle when he's kind of give him some of that sass and then he knocks him out and that was like, oh, dude, I mean, he's he is who is. I haven't seen that yet. I haven't seen the guy that you're like, there's a good reason for him to have that kind of you know, swagger in there

like that. But he is very young and he's, he's in Florida, right? Like he's training with these guys. I don't know. I certainly see. I don't know if I'm a believer in the sense that he'll be a champion, but I'm a believer that he can be a contender in that at some point, you know? Contender maybe. I'm not sure about much more than that for me personally. Roman Coppulov. Oh, my God. Roman Coppulov, I thought of you. I thought of you.

Oh, my God. He gets the job done against Marco Tullio. So in the end, he gets the win. He deserved it. But the fight IQ, bro, what is up? Oh, my God. And once again, it's one. of these things where it's like, oh, why do you know? You haven't fought. It's like, right, you're right. I haven't. I haven't. But I have watched what the very best do, and they don't do that shit. You know what I mean? In fact, they assiduously avoid it, where you have your, your opponent rocked like a motherfucker, and then you decide to wrestle him in a way that lets him regain his breath as well as his senses. And you do it multiple times in a fight. By the way,

he wasn't the only one in this card who did it. There was another guy who did it as well. and I was just sitting there looking at this being like, I'm just going to scroll TikTok. I'm just going to scroll TikTok. I'm not. He did it twice too. He did it twice. Like he could have finished this fight twice.

But the one you're talking about, he lands the shots. He's landing these lefts on the fence. The referee moves in. The referee moves in like, okay, a couple more of these and we're done. And he tied up as if he was the one under bombardment.

Like he was the one who tied up like, okay, I got to stop this. I was like, who do you doing? And I know that the commentators were saying, that too, but there is nothing more frustrating to me than a guy who lacks that killer instinct or just doesn't know what he's, it drives me nuts. And also that they've incentivized basically these finishes, right, like by giving you 25 grand, whatever it is. He missed his chance to get that. Like, it ends up being a decision. And I'm like, great, you, you, you, uh, you showed that you're

a good fighter on the feet, but where I, I have no idea what he's thinking, man. I mean, what does he do when, what does he see when he watches the tape? You know, and you're like, okay, wait, maybe I did something. Does he see that? Does he see that? Does he see the, of his ways. Do they watch the tape? I have no idea, man. You know what I mean? We've talked about this guy before, though. I don't know, man. His game can be fun because he's a hard-nosed Breaker, which I like.

But it's like, it's like, dude, I don't, I just, it's like, it's so weird to me that things that should be obvious to high-level fighters are just not, are just not. And to me, there can be a case for

rocking a guy and then taking him down. There could be a case, but if it doesn't happen very quickly, you have fucked up. Not when you're a boxer, too. It's like, dude, this guy's like his hands are the reason he's in there. It's like, it's like, dude, if he's not, if this isn't, if you're not able to carry the momentum that you've got hurting him to the ground. So if you can carry that momentum to the ground and now you're fucking just, you know, he can't even move and you're pounding on him, fine, fine, No problem. If you have to wrestle this motherfucker to the ground for minutes on end, you have fucked up.

You're letting him recover. If I was one of those guys was like, I have a copy love by knockout, you know, as part of a parlay. And you saw that. Can you imagine? Oh my God. Uh-oh. Long Island. What else on this pre-limb card stood out to you?

The king of the undercard. Grant Austin, I mean, getting the finish over. Matush Rambezky. He did this weird. He called it the GD variation of the rear naked choke. It's a genie choke. I can explain it to you. Okay, explain it. So a rear naked choke is if I were to, you got put the camera on me. Oh, sorry.

If this is someone's neck, a rear naked choke, and I can't quite do it here. Obviously, it would go to the bicep and then this would come around, right? It would come around, okay? And then you put your head down there, too. So it's on the bicep. And then this, some people think you put this way, you don't. You actually look at your palm. And then you, okay, that's the way you do it.

And again, you can bring it elbow in line with their center line. There's a lot of details. But this is the basic idea. But what happens if they're peeling your hand? So then what you can do is you can go up to the shoulder with the choking arm. And then when they try to peel this hand, you just grab the back of the arm. And then it's kind of like a little dip. And then you choke that way.

So it's called the genie. Wow. Learn something new here, Long Island. This is cool. Yeah, I mean, yeah. What else can you teach us else? Can you tell us what? Who else fought on this?

card i don't even know i tiba goatea got away oh yeah it's time for them to ramp him up though man they got to give him like a guy that you know a better competition at this point i i thought as he was fine the stoppage was a little quick too did you guys think so on that one no i didn't mind it i was looking forward to that fight being over actually i mean i mean he wasn't going to come back but i feel like how l t feels about suzer kai of where i'm like um i don't know if i'm i don't know if I'm sold on Gautier as like a I mean he's still so young but like I don't know I mean dude put that put that picture of Goteer back up

this fucking guy I'm gonna let's just let's just assume he's telling the truth he told like I think UFC.com or something he was like yeah I don't lift weights I don't like the way it makes me feel do you understand I have at even at the point where I was lifting weights six times a week I never looked like this I've had to lift weights like a motherfucker

to at best he is at best have a mid physique. And he does, he's like, what do you do? He's like, yeah, I just, you know, I go, I go to town and I carry my groceries home and I look like the incredible Hulk. What the fuck? He goes to kitty cafes and pets the cats. He's all about the cat.

I know we already talked about the Jim Miller fight, but I just want to say that was the loudest the arena got besides the main card, like besides the top three fights. He was a Jersey guy, yeah. They do, but they got hyped for Jim Miller. It was a great moment. New Jersey loves its own, man. I saw Bruce Spring Theater years ago. God, it was like.

No one else is going to love them. Let's be honest. All right. And that is our rundown for UFC 328. So before we end things here, let's go to topic number five. And let's kind of get to some smaller stuff that happened or relative to what we cover, some smaller stuff that happened around the horn here, so to speak, in the combat sports world. Let's talk about the first part, Chuck, which is simple question. So you may have seen this.

So Ariel Hawani did a Friday night show. Did you go? no no okay but i know he did like a friday night show i think wonder boy was there what did you say i wasn't invited so ah you know what fuck you uh no but i'm serious like uh you know wonder boy was there and i think uh joe pifer might have been there i for yeah yeah and during the course of it and again this is you know you've worked with aerial forever yeah i i don't work with them any longer but i work with him for a while and like if he's he didn't exactly report it chuck but like if he's reporting something, it's as good as

fact. Okay? I can just tell you it's a fact. You can like him or you can hate him. It's a fact. And he says, again, he didn't exactly say I'm reporting, but he kind of intimated that on Friday night, there was going to be an announcement within 24 hours about Conner's return to the Octagon. And then there is no announced

return, and Dana is asked about it. I want to play this clip and then get your reaction. Connor would return this summer. He's he had been tweeting a lot about his contract situation and everything over the last several months. Is that, it's anything new with Connor's contract or is it still like this?

There is no deal done with Connor. I was just saying I'm confident. I was confident last year too, but I'm way more confident this year. Yeah. Okay. So again, I'm not trying to do this to blow a burial. In fact, I think if he had a reason to say it,

it was probably like everything was at the finish line or something. So where, dude, like, internet. National Fight Week is not that far away. What's going on here with Connor? Well, saying that there's no deal, though. That makes me think that you're right. It got to the goal line and it just didn't get across. He said extremely confident

when he was on, whose show was he on Jim Rome or something? Or somebody was pressing him and he's like, I'm extremely confident. And I thought the deal was basically done. But to hear him say this, that actually was quite a walk back. wasn't it? I just seemed that seemed to me like he no longer is a certain it's going to get done. So this tells me that there's some kind of contractual snag at the end here. But man, if we don't, if this doesn't happen at this point, how many times have we done this with Connor? I just feel like we've been through this loop so many times.

It would just be bad, wouldn't it? Like if we go through this again and he's not fighting? Can I offer something that I think is happening? Or at least I got told by somebody who would really know. not so much about the Connor situation specifically, but about like how these negotiations go. And basically if you think about it, Connor's got two things that they have to figure out.

And I think this is what the problem is. Number one, if John Jones is asking for $30 million, Connor could be asking for $50 plus. Because whatever Jones can sell, Connor can sell that or 2X. You know what I mean? Right. And so partly he might be asking for a lot of money

and he might be asking for a lot of money, not merely because if, well, if Jones is going to get 30, I can get 50 or 60, but also because, hello, they just signed a nearly $8 billion deal. He might be thinking, come up off your pockets now. I think that could be one fault line, but I don't think that's the biggest one. The biggest one I do think is, number one, he's had two fights left on his remaining deal. Whatever money he would make fighting Nate Diaz in the UFC, he would make two X that fighting him outside.

There's just a gap. I mean, there's just no doubt about that. So I think that they want to extend him, and they probably want to extend him. But can you imagine if Connor left UFC at the end of two more fights? That would be a big deal for UFC to lose him, you know? Yeah. Even amidst all of his troubles and inactivity and everything else. So that's one.

And then the other part is, so there probably is a, there's a, there's a pay issue involved. There's this extension involved. And then the other part is not just what the aggregate pay looks like, but the mechanism of it, because he's on an old deal. So he's on an old deal that's got two fights left That doesn't match how new deals work They want to extend him But they also signed a big deal And now he probably wants a lot more money

To make it work I can see why this is taking a while to go through Right? Yeah, yeah I think you laid it out exactly right They do not want him to walk They don't want him to go, you know, be done And that's it for Connor right?

They do not want that Connor being on Netflix is something they probably don't want to see but I bet he does what's up long island side note someone asked a question about bsd patty being on international fight week to dana and dana was like we never announced that that's not a done deal that's not a fight whatever dana says that a lot so maybe he's just saying it's not a done deal if conner's out do you think they do like bsd max bmf title for for uh international fight week like is max and back to back bmf fights well the argument is they're going to do

max bmf for connor right or is it just going to be a fight well i don't know oh sorry i might have been a 170 i'm stupid yeah yeah yeah max lost the two all right i take it all back charles fiasse long i don't know if you notice it's hard to do this show when you're high it hurts i beg to differ but all right uh chuck you may have just caught the highlights i don't know but daniel dubois versus fabio wardly over the weekend uh my litmus test from m m ms side of things if you've never seen Bigfoot versus Mark Hunt won. It is where by the third round, you're watching it through your fingers because you can't believe it's the first 10 seconds, by the way, of round number one. First punch,

right? First punch. Down goes Dubois. Dude, they killed each other for as long as it lasted. Dubois went down, I think a couple of times. Wardley never did, but Wardley loses. I saw people saying this is the best loss they've ever seen. This was absolute magic. Frank Warren himself said, this was the best heavyweight fight he's ever put on. It's crazy. Absolute heavyweight magic on the other side of the pond this past weekend. Their whole motif for this fight was like, don't blink, don't blink.

The very first punch, boom, he's down. You know, what was it? Like the third round goes down again, takes a knee. To kind of come back, like that sixth round was wild, man. I mean, I was thinking, like, what was it the third fight between Fury and Wilder? like you think back to the fights so you're like oh my god like at the heavyway variety that you that you know as you're watching like this is incredible that's what this was you know i i didn't get a chance to watch it live i don't know if you watched it live but i was able to catch it later and

dude heavyweight you know heavyweights aren't supposed to be able to withstand that you know it's not supposed to happen it's just so to see that kind of fight going back and forth and for dubois to come back and get it i that was that was tremendous man it did remind me a little bit like who what would you what would you put this up with you just mentioned the big full one i think that is a great equivalent for like for the boxing ring right like for translated there i mean no this one won a title granted there's multiple world titles in boxing but um it's it's it's as electric as any heavyweight bout i've ever seen i'll put it that way just in terms of raw entertainment yeah fun man it was super fun um okay cody garbrand is going to be facing adrian yon yon

at UFC 329. Yon Yez had a bit of a rebound. I thought he got cheated in his last fight. It should have been a win for him. It ended up being a draw, I recall. Cody Garbrandt seems to be hanging on. Chuck, what's on the line between these two? I mean, just staying relevant, right?

I mean, both guys have had rough, rough time. Garbrand especially just kind of his whole ride after post title, like where he was, it just seemed like he's got chinny and all that. But he has been better. I don't know if you said, like his last fight he looked pretty good. And he's had moments where you're like, okay, there's the Garbrandt that we know, the one, I don't know if we've ever seen the version that did that to dominant crews, but he's had his moments. I just think that he's just on the precipice, man, like, where he still has a name, you know, but at some point, you lose interest in a guy if he can't win. And I think this is, that's a good matchup. I think he should be able to compete in this one and put on a good fight.

But it's just relevance, right? Like, I feel like you kind of slip from the, from the talks all to together at that point. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're both skilled, but hanging on there a little bit. Yanyas too. He had like, you know, he had some hype and he's not, he's kind of hit the skids a little bit too. So it's the same thing. He's got to kind of maintain if you, you know, you can't lose this one. Elsewhere, Costello Vancinas is going to face Johnny Evelyn. This is going to headline at PFL Austin. This will be Saturday, July 18th. Of course, this is the rematch where Eblen won basically everything but the fight in the last 20 seconds. You're, you're, you're,

intrigue for this. Johnny Eblen, by the way, rebounding big time against Brian Battle, and then Van Stenis stopping Fabian Edwards in Spain. Well, it's kind of like the McKinsey Dern, like, enjoy your belt, you know, like if Waley comes back, it doesn't seem... So enjoy your victory lap while you have it.

I kind of feel like that a little bit with Vancinas, because, yes, the first fight was almost like Hollywood cinematic, the way it went down, right? He's losing the whole fight until the very end inside of a minute, like he catches the submission, or was it as TK, I can't remember. No, he submitted him from the back, yeah. And it was like, and then he gets this homecoming in Madrid, Van Sienis, and like, he wins that fight.

He was an underdog in that fight. He wins it. Now it's the return match and they're doing it in Austin. I mean, it's a fun ride. But man, if that Johnny Eblen that we just saw against Brian Batt, I know Brian Battle, like, you can discount him in that situation. He did not put up much resistance. But Eblen's a competitor. And this is just stuck in his craw the wrong way, this whole way.

He's going to be ready, man. and I'd be shocked if I'd be shocked if he doesn't walk out of there with the title. Last but not least, I just kind of wanted to pitch this question to you. Josh Hokka, of course, got added to the UFC White House card. They added him to the presser and he, I don't know, I think it'd be wrong to say he stole the show, but he's certainly made for part of it. You know, it's kind of an interesting debate, Chuck. I wonder where you come down on it.

Is his gimmick working hard or hardly working? What do you think? Experience Harry Styles live in London, England. at Wembley Stadium. This is Harry Styles. IHart Radio wants to send you and a mate across the pond with flights from Virgin Atlantic,

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Kiss all the time, disco occasionally available now. I would love to say it's hardly working. But again, he's making the rounds. We all watched it. And it's like, it's just such, does it bother you to watch stuff like that? It makes, I can't. I don't watch it.

The cringy stuff is, it's like, I can't. It makes, I have to turn it off. When it starts happening, I'm like, oh, I can't watch this. It's so awkward to me to see guys try that hard, like that try hard, you know? Like, just, I think he thought he was having that Connor McGregor moment with Jeremy Stevens, you know, where he's like, who the fuck is this guy? You know, I think he thought he was having that moment. but the rhymes and the golden showers and then the whole ilia thing i was just like i couldn't make

it through i couldn't make it through the problem is it's uh to me it's quite obviously working now it's a question of how long it will work or how far it can take you in terms of the ultimate heights um i think the jury is maybe a little bit out on that but like dude people like people have just uh have to accept where we are with things and this is not exclusive to m m ms by any stretch of imagination. But like, dude, MMA culture is troll culture now. It's just troll culture. You don't have to have, you don't have to be Andy Kaufman

wrestling women and be like the world wrestling champion of women. And then, you know, you're going on late night TV shows, kind of taunting them. That's not what this is. It's not performance art. It's just, can you find a way to stand out? Can you find a way to, for whatever reason, be memorable? It doesn't have to be coherent or funny or good. it just has to be noticeable

and then that noticeable has to then translate into something else. Now, he's obviously making it work because his fighting style has been pretty electric to this point. We'll see if he can keep that up. But people keep trying to deny that it's working because they're trying to grade the performance. And

that's just the wrong way to look at it. It's got nothing to do with it. If troll culture is the defining way in which to understand them, all you have to ask is whether or not his trolling is eliciting a response. Right.

End of argument, you know. Well, it's definitely doing that. I've, a lot of people are talking about it. We're talking about it. We're not, I mean, I feel like we're barely scratching the surface, unfortunately. I feel like we're going to be seeing a lot of it coming up here. And he won't be the only one. Before we get to DMs from donks, I want to remind everyone, we just came off UFC

328. Next month, of course, is going to be, the whole summer's going to be filled with a bunch of big fights. But the big fights roll on this upcoming weekend. Can you believe it? It is already here. The return of Ronda Rousey. Rhonda Rousey faces Gina Carrano on Netflix. Most valuable promotions, and Netflix, of course,

are putting on the Blockbuster MMA fight featuring triple headliner of fan favorite fighters on Saturday, May 16th. This Netflix's first MMA fight. It's going to be awesome, I think. For the main event, it's Ronda Rousey. She's back to shake up the world of combat sports with her first fight in nearly a decade

taking on fellow women's MMA pioneer, Gina Carrano, Combat Sports icon Nate Diaz, is going to face platinum, Mike Perry. That's my personal favorite one, pitting two of the sports toughest competitors against each other. Francis Nganu is on this card, widely regarded as the hardest puncher in MMA history, maybe, and certainly as well, the lineal heavyweight champion.

He's going to be facing off against Felipe Linz in a heavyweight bout. You won't want to miss. Five rounds, five minutes each are chance to leave it all, excuse me, five rounds, five minutes each, one chance to leave it all in the cage. You don't want to miss this. Watch Rousy versus Carrano live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

And of course, we're going to get you ready for that on Friday. We'll have a reaction next Monday. I'll have some stuff on my personal channel. I'm sure Chuck will have coverage as well. It'll be a lot here, Chuck. Oh, yeah. I'm anxious to see it. I want to see the production, like kind of what they do with the M.A.

There's a lot of curiosity going to that. Besides a great match. I'm down for, I know, like, the Rousey coming back and like kind of reminding people of who she was. is fun for me, you know. I didn't think I would have this much fun. The way she left, I thought we'd never be here. Yeah, exactly. 100%.

Kind of unexpected for me. All right, that is it for our top five topics. Let's go right now into DMs from donks. All right, let's now go to question number one from Antonio M. Alvarez. Why does the UFC bother going to New Jersey if the athletic commission still adheres to an outdated set of rules

such as no 12 to 6 and one hand on the ground to be considered a downed opponent. It is annoying that they have these slightly different rules, Chuck. I hate that. Especially because New Jersey is supposed to be leading the way, like, right? Yeah, it's supposed to be, yeah. New Jersey still has what I would consider to be one of the better respected commissions. There's probably going to be side fees as Long Island. Luke brings up in the comments.

Also, they are close to New York. This is, you know, there's going to be, the gate wasn't like a Las Vegas gate, but it was still a pretty good gate, sub eight mill. you know, there's good reasons for it. Yeah, and I mean, back in the day, it was like New Jersey was the New York stop, right? Because they were just trying to like show, hey, guys, we'd love to do it across the river,

but they've always had big shows there. You know, John Jones with Shogun, they've had a ton, right? And I feel like they just, they make money there. You know, it's like they're going to make money there. I just, it is crazy, though, the New Jersey Athletic Commission, especially with Nick Limbo and everything, like, has not updated itself to, like, to catch up with the rest of the, Yeah, in fact, they actively resisted and were,

very weird to be, like they wanted to be known they were resisting. So that's kind of strange, but what are you going to do? All right, question number two from Sergeant Molina. Is this the beginning of Chamaev's downfall? Chuck, we kind of touched on this. I have to say, you mentioned the loss of aura. That can only be continued if they can also, other opponents can find ways to stop him. And I do think that there's just going to be a class of fighter that's really never going to stand a chance against them.

Sure. But against the elite guys. I am very curious to see what this does to him long term. There's a little bit of me, and we touched on this too, like that just wonders how bad he wants to do it. And I'm, you know, maybe,

maybe I'm wrong, but it's going to be a tough road for him if he stays at middleweight because I think you're right that the tapes out on him, but if he goes to light heavyweight, I don't know, man. I don't think he can rediscover that sheen of invincibility or whatever it is there.

It may be gone for good, but I don't know. The downfall is pretty strong. Like, I don't know if he's, just going to plummet off the face of the earth. He may still win some fights. I just don't think he's going to have the same kind of chill factor that he used to where you're like, ooh, God, this guy. I don't know if he has that anymore. Question number three. From Jonathan to derying, I don't know, how do I say this fucking name. Given how good Van and Strickland's jabs were, does it not

frustrate you to no end that other fighters like Volkov don't develop a good jab? Dude, it is quite literally fucking true, you can win a UFC title not once but twice doing it. Yeah. Like the jab is the best and most important punch in boxing and it might be the same in MMA. What the fuck are we doing? The teep kicks

too. Like you're almost like, well, it's like a kind of a leg jab, you know, like just keep distance, keep distance. I'm always shocked. And you see like certain fighters where you're like this would be very effective. It'd be very effective for you right now to have a teep or if you like you can, you know, work the jab. But we watch this game

long time, man. There are some guys that just refused to do it. Dude, he doesn't have combination punching. He doesn't do spinning back fists, you know, all that of the shit. It's just bop. Bop, just for 25 minutes, and you can win a UFC title doing that. Yeah. Like, there's

very few other things you can point to in someone's arsenal that you can do for long stretches of time to win a title. It's crazy. Yeah. All right, next. Flannels and Jits. Excuse me. Wood does Jim Miller. That's not a great question. Does Jim Miller rank among the best submission artist in

UFC history? Yes, of course. Does he have the best guillotine in UFC history? Where does he rank? It should say, not wood. Where does he rank? Oh, where does Jim? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's got to be up there, right? I mean, that's his whole thing. For sure. For sure. Especially in the lightweight division. And there's been some good ones. But even then, he would be very, very high. I don't know where I would rank him all time because, you know, you've got Verdum, Nogera, Mier. just a heavyweight, Barnett, just as heavy weight,

you know, and on down the list, Jacques-A-ray, some other ones as well. But certainly at lightweight, top three, probably. No,

because you got Penn, Olivera, Islam. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, there's a lot of good ones. You know what I mean?

There's a lot of good ones. He is, he is one of the more dogged, you know, how you talk about wrestlers being that way, like just doggedness. They're going to just dictate that.

He is one of the more dogged submission, like, seekers, you know, like he just, you know, he sells out for it and he gets him man i mean like you got to give it to him and it works you know it works

he's but he's been he's been that over the point down miller his brother who fought for a time in u.c who was in this corner dan uh it had one of the best guilletines ever in iFL history uh it just had a guy whose neck was touching his chin like it was the most insane thing's right i know what you're talking about i remember up against the ropes he had this dude he had his i thought he was going to break his neck. So the Miller brothers are very good guillotiners. Last question number five. Sticks plays time.

What's the dumbest thing you've seen a co-worker do at a previous job you've had? Steal. Definitely seen some of that. I don't know. What a funny question. I mean, I was, I don't know what your early jobs were. I worked in the food industry

like serving. I worked a Chick-fil-A. Yeah. I mean, so you see some shit when you work with things like that. But the thieving, I think, is probably the biggest. I mean, there's all kinds of that. I know, they do. They do. Definitely, I've seen stealing.

Stealing was probably the biggest one. I'm trying to think of anything like super donk. But you know what, man? Like, I had, I mean, I was into Marine Corps too. So, you know, I saw some don't shit up in that. Oh, my God. Have I seen some dog shit in that? But I'm trying to think like in my Joe jobs, you know, like ordinary jobs.

Because I work doors at ball. I worked at Chick-fil-A. I worked at Baskin-Robbins for a while. Wow, man. That's hard to imagine. Yeah, I know. I know. It was my senior year of college and I needed some money. I quit that job because then I got hired to go do work the door. And the door money was way better. I was like, yeah, I'll just take that. I'm trying to think at the bar. Oh, my God. I saw people.

Yeah. Begging on the job. I've seen that, you know. Yeah, man. I've seen some shit. Yeah. you know yeah I've never I'm trying to think I mean even with our colleagues now I mean some of them do crazy shit some of them fight like Oscar Oscar right like he's he gets in there and fights I mean that's kind of crazy isn't it that's kind of dumb and I had a manager my first bar I worked at I had a manager his name was Kevin he had a broken hand and he had

a cast on and it was his dominant hand and this is still like you had credit cards for for you know this is you know 2002 so you obviously go using credit cards but the cast was still the point i make was cash was still a little bit more ubiquitous at the time yeah and some guy comes in and i he because of what he did i had to throw this fucking guy out uh he had a broken hand and he was working behind the bar he was the lead bartender but you know he has to work so he's going to be fucking slow right the guy ordered like two beers and it took you know it took kevin a little bit to get the beers to the guy you could tell you was like real fucking impatient about it and finally

he he be he's like you know it'll be so so amount of money and and no sorry the guy had used a car he had used a car sorry because he wrote on the tip something like seven cents and so Kevin went into the register and got seven pennies and went over to the dude's table and then threw it in his fucking faith and was like here's your fucking tip back and so that guy is irate and now they're going at it And so then I had to go in and throw that guy out. Yeah, it was... Dude, as a server, when people would do stuff like that, there was a temptation, like a murderous temptation

to go chase them down in the parking lot and wait, you know... I had a guy one time his bill was 5950, and he gave me a card, and it was declined. And then he gave me another card, and that one went through, and then he left a tip of 50 cents on the car. And I was like, okay, all right. I hope you die, sir.

I hope you die. All right. There you go. That is it for our DMs from donks. All right. So I think now we're doing fan subs. Let's roll right into it. All right.

Time for, well, you've got mail. Viewers. You've got mail. Viewers. All right. We got a few of these, Chuck. All right. Two from Wesley, two videos and a meme.

Let's see this. I saw an adult movie that was really awesome. It was unusual and tense. What these people do for. their lives and like the damage that they sustain. You know, I kind of, I kind of appreciate it on those terms. So thank you.

Dicks. Dicks everywhere. Dicks. I think I had mentioned I had seen a children's movie, the movie Arcoe. It's a French movie. It's really good. And then I was like, but I'd also seen an adult movie. I didn't mean that kind of a name of glasses. All right. There's two of these. So we got another video. This is Sparta.

Oh, I mean, the 300th live chat. What's going on there? I don't. I mean, I kind of get what's happening there, but here's my rule on this AI stuff. I don't mind if you guys use AI, but it's got to be clever. All right. We've got a meme as well here from West. All right. You know what?

I don't know who that is, except he works on this show. It's just me with a song chilling. Aong, Gle-Lisland. All right. All right. That's from Wesley. appreciate that. All right, Paul sent in a music video. He said, I didn't send the X-rated version, as I might never gain entry to the U.S. ever again. Oh, God, here we go.

Almost Delta, eight, liberal former Marines, six-foot flex, boom a salt, the drama queen. Slick chuck, midden hall, hating Dana White trick balls. I got to say. That was sick. I kind of like, that was AI, obviously, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was. Except for the last photo was a legit one. It was just me in the 80s when he was at a that was great. You got to send that one to BC. That's a great one. That's a great. All right, that's a good job by Paul. All right. So John McLean, wow, these guys have a lot of these.

John McLean has a video and two memes. Let's see the video first. Here on this fourth day of May, 26, may the fourth be with you if you're a fucking Star Wars loser. If you're a fucking Star Wars loser, Star Wars Loser, Ah, if you're a fucking loser. I am merely one half of your hosting duo, joined by my Connecticut brethren fucking Star Wars loser. It is Chuck Mindenhall. What's up, Iceman?

you like that uh you know what man i just want i just want everyone to know that if you publicly tell people you like the phantom menace i think less of you as a person i don't know if you made that clear yeah i see people just keep trying to defend it and it's like you know you come across like a fucking idiot when you do this right all right uh he's got two memes let's see these alcoholic perverted co-host or alcoholic perverted co-host Oh, that's awesome. All right. There's one more.

Luke going 10 minutes without saying your mileage may vary. A little bit. A little bit. It's true. I do say it. I do say it. Too much probably. All right.

Not bad. Not bad. That's all right. Our friend Spencer has a meme. Mom, can we have Luke back on the JRE? Honey, we have Luke on J.R.E at home. The Luke back on J.R.E. at home. That's a little unfair to Jimmy.

I thought, did you see the Jimmy show. He did a great job. He did a great job. Yeah, but he's often compared to Rogan, so I got the job. Oh, I see, I see, I see. I see. Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm sure Joe's going to invite you back, Luke.

Not bad. Yeah, I don't think I'm going hard at him. You've been going hard at him here. Yeah, I don't think I'm going on Dan Lebitart tomorrow to talk about him. Oh, that's good. Nice, man. All right, from Joseph, Joseph says, inspired by one of my favorite MK moments when the boys were stuck by the bathrooms at Mohegan.

What is this, Mugadishu? What is this? Mugadishu. Oh, man. Yeah, it looks like Bacara Market out there. Holy shit. I was there this weekend. Great time.

Newark Man Station, you know, spent the night. Did you get the hauntar virus? I got a couple things. Yeah. You get less of your wallet because it gets fucking knifed from you and you get communicable diseases. Congrats. All right.

This is a meme from Kevin S. The doc. Beware what waits in the dark. That's good. Ray Longo, Yuri Prahachka, Magamette, Ancalaia. Why are we using Longo for this picture? He didn't know what a dog was. He didn't know what a donk was. Yeah. Oh, and Yeri is the ultimate dog.

Is that the idea? Yeah. And then Al-Khalyav is the other one? Ankelyap, yeah. Refined print, I think it says, directed by me, Long Island, Luke. And then it says written by Chuck Miggins. Oh, yeah. That's pretty good.

Oh, yeah, that's a great one, actually. I really enjoy this one. That's pretty good. All right. And then lastly, we've got a video from RJ. Like, I mean, Joseph A Bank restroom locations is so good. Oh, that's a good one. All right. Those are some pretty good ones. I have to say, if you've got one for us, morningcom at gmail.com.

But Gmail.com. Chuck, you're getting rotated in now, morrow. Yeah, I noticed that. Thank you for fighting for me to get involved here. Yeah, everyone's got to get killed, including you. All right. Let's set this up. Chuck, what do you have going on the rest of the week?

Are you going to California? I'm not going to California. I know a lot of the uncrowned people. I think Ariel's actually working the show, right? Like, he's part of the podcast. So, but they're all heading out. I will have some material surrounding it, some columns. I'll be on the crack Friday.

And, you know, the normal stuff. The normal stuff. Long Island, what do you got for us, bud? I'll have, you know, UFC Vegas 117, everyone's most anticipated card of the year. You know, bet breakdown. I'm going to do prop quiz on Friday. Got the tournament finale, $100 on the line. New York Rick taking on Sean Sheehan.

So looking forward to that. And then Saturday, I'm going to do like a dual watch-along full cards, both baby Netflix and UFC Apex. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to definitely do a watchalong for the MVP Netflix card. I'm going to do a post-fight show for that one. I don't know.

Long Island, what is the timing looking like between the two? So Apex prelimbs are 5 o'clock, main card 8, and then MVP is 6 p.m. prelimm. 9 p.m. main. So there. They might overlap, yeah. Though 100% overlap. UFC main event will end.

Oh, no, I think we'll be good. I think we'll be out of the UFC by the co-main on Netflix. Yeah. I hope. I hope. Yeah. I think they'll delay it a little. bit for that reason. All right. So I'll definitely have some coverage of that this

upcoming weekend. I appreciate everyone who tuned in on Saturday on my YouTube channel as well. Let's remind everyone, we are on social. You can get those everywhere, different places for MK, for LT, for Chuck Mindenhall. And then of course for merch, morningcombat. Dot shop. We got the three designs this month, my favorite being the Wippets. But, you know, getting them while you can at morningcombat.combat. All right. That is it. Great show here, everyone. Really appreciate everyone. on tuning in today. Fun, fun, fun show for Long Island, for Chuck Mindenhall. I'm Luke Thomas. We'll see you guys on Friday. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.

This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.