MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Austin Results: Calvin Kattar vs. Josh Emmett | Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

At UFC Austin, featherweight contender Calvin Kattar and Josh Emmett face off in the main event. Also on the fight card, Kevin Holland locks horns with Tim Means, Joaquin Buckley fights Albert Duraev, Damir Ismagulov faces Guram Kutateladze, Adrian Yanez fights Tony Kelley and more. We'll go over the results of the main event plus the rest of the UFC Austin results. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It is Saturday, June 18th, 2022, and this is the official Morning Combat UFC Austin post-fight show. I am merely one half of your hosting duo for Morning Combat. My name is Luke Thomas. Thank you so much for joining me. I will be joining you for the next 45 minutes or so as we wrap up and discuss all things UFC Austin.

As a standard disclaimer, thumbs up if you're watching this. If you are new, please consider subscribing. We do a show three times a week, live with me and Brian Campbell, who, by the way, is in my city today as we speak, although he is on vacation. And we do that plus a whole lot more, including post-fight stuff for some of the better or more major MMA cards as well. All right?

We appreciate everyone who is here. If you've got a question, I've got a tweet up. You can go take a look at it there, at LThomasNews. You can drop a question. I'll probably get to it at the end. If not, we can just move along. But either way, we're going to get to all of the results from at least the main card we'll talk about today and some of the implications for them and everything else.

So if you don't want any spoilers, I would imagine, oh Luke, why would you say that? Because you'd be surprised at who complains about this kind of thing. So if you don't want any spoilers, now is your time to go. I'll give you the countdown. Five, four, three, two, one. Okay, let's get into it. What a card. Jesus. First things first, this card in Austin was fantastic, and it wasn't really a whole lot of Texas fuckery. It could have been Texas's athletic commission is not great. We had seen last week, although that was not in Texas, but we had seen last week the doctor just kind of look at someone's incredibly fucked up eye and been like, whatever, let it rock. The one here, which we'll talk about a little bit later, in this case, it was Albert Duraev.

The doctor came in and actually was like, yeah, there's no way this fight can go on. So I was actually surprised. I thought for sure Texas was going to fuck this up. But no, it was actually a great crowd for the most part. You could hear the people howling. Those were probably people who have put their life savings into NFTs, and that's why their buttholes hurt so much. But short of that, it was actually a pretty good crowd on balance, and it was reasonably well officiated. Again, some of the judging people

might take issue with. We'll get into some of it. But I did not. A lot of times I go to Texas, and I'm like, ugh, I don't know how this shit's going to go. But this one was not so bad in that regard. In fact, overall, it was a pretty great card. Of course, this took place at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas. Let's start with the main event. By the way, again, there were how many stoppages on this card? You had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine stoppages. You had, let's see, one, 8, 9 stoppages You had, let's see, 1, 2, 3 4 KOs You had 1, 2, 3 TKOs via punches

1 TKO via stoppage You had a submission via a brabo choke Or a Darcy, the way you want to call it Well, yes, that's right Well, actually Yes, that's right, I'm sorry Well, actually, no, I thought Yeah, no, it was, that was, that's right It was because it came from the back angle Yes, that's right. I'm sorry. Well, actually, no, I thought, yeah, no, it was.

That was. That's right. It was because it came from the back angle. Yes, that was a Bravo joke. In any event, action-packed, top to bottom, and there's a lot to get to. So we shall start with the main event. This one, I, okay, so I've got to be clear about this with some of the judging. One, for everyone who complains about whatever the judging might be, you've got to remember a couple of things.

Are you really fully employing the judging criteria as it is written and as it is instructed? I'm not even sure Texas has the most updated version of that, but it's still worth thinking about that. Number two, are you really judging it from a judging perspective? Like, I'm going to focus in and just judge. I'm not going to worry about anything else. Or were you focused on other things? Like, when I watch these, I judge kind of in the back of my mind. And I more pay attention to individual tactics or strategies that they employ. So my scorecards are usually somewhat overlapping with how they ultimately turn out.

But there obviously tends to be differences. I'm not sure who I thought won. I knew it was crazy close. But Josh Hema defeats Calvin Cater 48-47 on two of the judges' scorecards. 48-47 on one of the other scorecards for Calvin Cater. I had thought they were going to give it Calvin Cater, 48-47 on two of the judges' scorecards, 48-47 on one of the other scorecards for Calvin Cater. I had thought they were going to give it to Cater, and the reason why was I thought he took the last two from what I had seen, which was round four and round five, and then all he had to do was grab one of the three in the first one, which I thought he had

basically done. So for that reason, I thought the judges might give it to him. Remember something, again, I have to be clear on this. I guess I should have double-checked this before the broadcast. One of the things that really got in the way of the Dominic Reyes decision with John Jones was that I think at that time, Texas was still employing a rule set that rewarded forward pressure, even though it wasn't necessarily effective forward pressure. I would have to go and double-check to see exactly what instructions were given to the judges tonight in terms of which criteria to employ. Because there's not a federal regulation around MMA it is state to state and not all of the states have taken it upon themselves to put on the um association of boxing

commission's latest version from 2016 2017 and that did have an impact on the John Jones fight whether it had an impact on this one I'm not entirely clear. So there might be a role about what forward pressure had done versus not done. The big one for me in this was the power. And I'm going to, except for the last two rounds, I'm going to say overall activity of volume. It wasn't like it was voluminous in nature, but just who was a little bit busier, a little bit trying trying harder clearly exerting a little bit more effort in the contest which i recognize is not the same as damage but like for example what i mean is you'd see a lot of these blitzes from josh emmet and what would that result in a lot of times cater would cover up but you know he's the one backing up he's the one kind of getting moved by the power and then on top of that and one of the stuff that

is much more effective and much more valuable would be the body shots. Now he got away from those in the last couple of rounds, which is why I thought Cater had taken those cleanly. Let me pull up the fight metric numbers because that will tell you the answer there. Again, I want to be clear. I have zero issue with the Josh Emmett scorecard. Like if you had one for, he said 4-1 to Daniel Cormier post-fight. I don't know if I see 4-1, but I think 3-2 would be fine. And more to the point, there's actually something to like here. Calvin Cater had kind of been to the mountaintop-ish, obviously with that ABC fight against Max Holloway, and he got tuned up in that one. But then he had, you know, he's been trying to rebound, and I think since then has looked pretty

great. Certainly in the Giga Chikadze fight he did. And this one, he didn't look bad by any stretch. But Josh Hammett is 37 years old. You know, 37 years old at 145 pounds, that is not an advantageous place to be. And I know a lot of folks were like probably groaning maybe when he was asking for a title shot because he's still sitting out of the top five as we speak, right? Now, this win probably puts him into the top five. And granted, some of the ones in the top five would be Korean Zombie and Brian Ortega, who have had multiple title shots, at least in the case of Ortega. Well, actually, in the case of Korean Zombie, too, if you go back to the Aldo days. Rodriguez, not yet. And now, I guess, Emmitt moves in and not

yet. And, of course, Rodriguez has a fight against Ortega later in July. But the point I'm trying to make is, if you're 37 years old, you had a blood and guts fight like this, where his face was super messed up by the end, you know, you don't have a moment to waste. You don't have a year to give up. You can't take your time. Like, you have got to go in there and shoot your shot. And it may not work. And they may tell you to go pound sand. But at the bare minimum, you have to do it. So he, I think, did the right thing post-fight. And, you know, you've got to be happy for a guy who has lost a lot of time due to injury, got into the sport a little bit late.

This was his biggest win of his career. Granted, close, close, but biggest win of his career, and there's just no time. I mean, Cinderella's going to turn back into a pumpkin, or be riding in one anyway, whatever the proper metaphor is, pretty soon. So don't mind that. All right, let's pull up some of these numbers here. We'll talk about the story of the fight. Emmett having bigger power.

Calvin Cater's jab, especially in the last two rounds, was really important. One of the things I noticed that really was kind of interesting was there were times where he would kind of get hit, Emmett, but when he could throw with Cater, right, where he could kind of time whenever Cater was going to go and then go with him. Sometimes there were counters over the top. Sometimes he would just jab with him a little bit. That's when he had

success. Cater's defense, if he's not already extended on a punch, is actually really good. If you actually think about what Max Holloway did, now Max put so much damage on Cater that this would be very much limiting all the things that he did right. But one of the important things that Max doesn't get credit for is Max does take punishment himself, but Max is great with counters. He's good at slipping and countering among a variety of other things. And so he was really able to score on Cater when Cater was most vulnerable and when Cater was trying to do offense. So not only does it score, but it then dissuades further offense

because you're just getting hit in your best time. Emmitt wasn't really able to do that. That wasn't the way in which he would go. He couldn't slip and then throw. He could go at the same time and get hit, but he couldn't make him pay with a slip and then counter. And so sometimes he would go with him, or then you would see those blitzes, sometimes off the stance switch, right?

He's kind of mixing up his angles. And then he would go heavy, heavy, heavy, and then he would dig to the body, or he would go upstairs and then dig to the body, right? Kind of mixing it up on the same side, or at least going high-low, and that was very effective. That did a really, a lot of good work. He would push Cater back to the fence line, which would make his movement a little bit more predictable. It would just have him covering up. He couldn't get going with the distance management. Again, in the fourth and fifth rounds, some of that faded a little bit. But certainly through the first three rounds, however you score them, it was a pretty big part there.

In fact, I thought round three was going to be, was in fact Emmitt's best round. I want to pull up these numbers to be close. First round was the scoring. I want to see the scorecards. I don't have them yet. The scoring is going to be interesting on that one because there wasn't a lot of offense behind that. And Richard Banna, Fightmetric, I brought this up, I think, on Friday's MK, was talking about this.

If you look at the stats on Calvin Cater, obviously everyone is going to do better when they land and the opponent doesn't. But Calvin Cater is, I guess, again, prior to this contest, when he had kept the strikes per minute landing from his opponents under five, he was undefeated in the UFC. I'd have to see what they were here. How much did, let's see. These actually are being updated in real time. Do we have them all in yet? Let's see. We might.

Calvin Cater lands 130 of 375 attempted. Good Lord. Josh Emmett, 107, excuse me, of 332. So if he landed over 100 and there's five rounds, so that's 20 around. Yeah, actually that might be under, I have to look closely, that might be a little bit under that numerical total,

which would be an interesting moment for him because that would be the first one to do it under that threshold, right? Because if it's five minutes, if it's five strikes per minute and you have 25 minutes, obviously there's 125, so Emmitt would be a little bit less than that. Now, there's a little bit more to the story here. Emmitt attempting a takedown in round one, didn't get it, but sort of mixing it up a little bit.

Emmitt attempting two takedowns in round two. Emmitt attempting a takedown in round five. I'm not saying that he gets credit for the attempt. I guess what I'm pointing out, though, is he probably was voluminous enough, and then because he had the power differential, and because, again, he was sort of offensively just a little bit busier. Cater, more total strikes attempted and landing more. Again, let me refresh this just to be clear. Yeah, you know what?

That's actually not a fair assessment because he actually landed a little bit more. Okay, a little more offensively varied, right? A couple of kicks being thrown from Emmett. Some takedown attempts. Some distance closing. Some pressing up against the fence. Making him react physically. Some of those kinds of things.

First round, Cater, and these are just numeric totals, not qualitative totals. So keep that in mind. Cater landing 14 to 11 on Emmett in round one. Round two, 26 to 22 for Emmett had the favor there. Round three, this again was to me the clearest round for Emmett, 27 to 19. Round four, this is why I don't understand the scoring in this fight a little bit. Round four, again, these are numeric totals, so keep that in mind, not qualitative totals such that they can be amassed but Calvin Cater landed 41 to Emmett's 21 in round four and then 34 to 22 in round five he had like a the two biggest differentials in the fight in terms of striking

totals happened in Cater's favor and they happened in the fourth and fifth round again I want to really see you know what I can actually pull those scorecards up. The UFC does a really good job about getting them up to media pretty soon. Let's pull those up, shall we? Let's see those scorecards. I would love to see what they come up with here. All right, let's take a look. What do we got here? Emmett, let's go all the way down to the bottom. So what do we got here? All right, so Judge Chris Lee gave rounds one, three, and four to Emmett. Doug Crosby gave rounds one and three to Emmett. I think that's pretty fair, right? Yeah, I could live with that. I think it's a good scorecard. And then Judge Sal DeAmato gave rounds one, two, and three to Emmett. I think you could probably do that. Yeah,

that's right. I actually like the last two scorecards the most. I don't really see how you give round four to Emmett. That's the part that I really, that's the one that I just don't get. Yeah, I don't quite understand that one, candidly. It is what it is. What are you going to do? Okay, but the... Going back to the numbers here. Let's look at the targeting as well. Yeah, Josh Emmett just much more varied.

I can say that. Calvin Cater had slightly more volume, but the variation of targeting, 68% to the head, 24% to the body, 7% to the leg. Calvin Cater, 87% to the head, 11% to the body. Again, that's not necessarily what they all landed, but that's what they were at least targeting throughout the course of this. Yeah, Josh Emmett did a pretty good job. You had Calvin Cater shelling up real well. You saw Dean Thomas talking about how he was preventing

the overhand. I also think he was lowering his level to prevent some of any kind of potential takedown entries or attempts, which ultimately was fairly successful. He was 0 for how many takedowns? 0 for four takedowns. And Josh Emmett, again, varying up some of the offense, but he couldn't really get that part of the game going. The big part was Calvin Cater's defense is pretty good. It's really good, actually, unless you can get him reacting in motion. You can close the space on him where the fence line is really right behind him, or you've got to punch with him. Those seem to be the three biggest ones that you can do,

or you can attack other parts of what he does. Leg kicks, which was not a huge part of this, because I think Cater had a bigger reach, so there was a little bit of hesitation on Emmett's part, or going to the body, which he was successful in in the early parts. In fact, let's look at some of the body strikes here round by round. Let's see what happened here. Going to the body, Josh Emmett was credited with one strike there, six of nine attempts in rounds two for Josh Emmett, eight of 11 in round three. Yeah, that makes sense.

And then round four, five of nine, then six of seven. So it kind of declined from a high. It got back to about round two-ish or so. Still, it just didn't feel like they were as impactful. It felt like the early to sort of middle parts of the fight was where Emmett had a lot of success with the body work.

And I did think it slowed down for a decent portion of the fight. It slowed down some of the movement. It just slowed down. It looked to me like Cater was having a hard time figuring out how to get himself out of the rut he was in, especially after round three. Now, obviously, he did figure it out, and the jab was a key part of it. I also think some of the injuries to Emmett's face, again, that left eye being really swollen between what rounds, I think by round five,

it was really bad. But that was a big part of it. He had a cut over his eye. And so that limited, let me look at some of the numbers here on Josh Emmett and the overall career side. On the career side, he is landing 4.2. Yeah, dude, he was right around his career average. That's about right. Actually, he was absorbing right around his career average as well. That's interesting. Below average on takedown success. Yeah, and obviously then below average on takedown accuracy. But that was it. That was a big key portion of the fight. There was a lot of it that I thought was fought in the middle, which you would have generally thought benefited, well, both guys. Obviously, if Cater can move, he can jab. And if he's not up against the fence line, he's going to be much more offensively

inclined anyway. Dominic Cruz sort of made a point that whoever was sort of leading the push forward was winning. And then typically, sometimes I think that the commentary booth somewhat overstates that. But in this particular case, I did think it was pretty true. Kater, both guys are pretty, Emmett is much more of a mover in general. And so he obviously needs that space. But the thing I would say for Calvin Kater is when he's driving behind the jab, right, when he's really delivering punishment and putting combinations together. Also, we haven't talked about it, his ability to incorporate and weave in elbows was a big portion of some of his success as well, both in cutting the skin of Josh Emmett and then landing effective blows to deter some further offense, especially, I thought, in that fifth round meaningfully.

But when Cater can drive forward on the jab, which means he's now putting offense behind it, yes, sometimes he can intercept people pressuring too hard. And sometimes Emmitt historically can pressure very hard. But I actually thought he was pretty good about dialing that back, especially in that first round. Not overcommitting positionally, not overcommitting with what he was trying to do and then getting countered with something. And so there was something to be said for forward pressuring. Again, I do believe that that analysis in general, not just in the commentary booth, but in MMA analysis, is somewhat overstated. All you got to do is just drive a guy forward. It's true enough that it is worth bearing in mind.

It's especially true by virtue of the fact that we talked about this before, a lot of fighters appear to train on open floors where they don't have this much cognizance about the limits of their space and how to angle out and how to get out of there and just sort of, again, octagon awareness by virtue of the training scenarios. And then when they get in the cage, their offense isn't exactly the same because once they get pushed behind the two black lines,

they become a different kind of fighter. Cater certainly seems to be that. Everyone is a little bit that way. Cater was in particular muted in that regard. So there was something to be said for that. And Josh Emmett's blitzes were just constantly pushing Cater back. But they took a lot of turns with this one. This was a very, very, very closely contested contest. Really, really closely contested. How old is our guy Calvin Cater? When was he born? I can't find it here. I'll find it in just a minute. But again, I think that the sort of, not the more important story here, but the more present story would be Emmett's age at 37. This was a big win for him in terms of what he could do. But it was tight,

man. It was tight. I just think the story of it was the blitzes, the varied offense, the bigger power. Yeah, I think those are the things that won it for him. And then, again, sort of eating one to trade one back, not being able to slip and counter, and that kind of having an effect on the positioning of it. But this was an incredibly close contest. Going back to that scorecard, I just don't agree at all. What's the one that they gave him? Yeah, they gave round, Chris Lee gave round four to Josh Hemant. I really don't agree with that at all. I would love to see what his reasoning was, but of course the commission doesn't ever make anyone ever available to discuss these kinds of things. So there's no real way to know exactly what he saw and why he put it that way. Not that it's a crime that you can find three rounds. Again,

Sal DiAmato giving the first three, I can live with that. Although the first two judges gave round two to Cater. What are you going to do? If you have any questions about the fight, let me know. We'll get to it here as we go through the scorecard, or excuse me, the fight card. All right, let's talk about the co-main event here. Usually I go for an hour on these. This one's going to be a little bit shorter because it's a fight night. Kevin Holland defeating Tim Means, Jesus Christ, at 128 of round two. Kevin Holland is so much better at welterweight than middleweight, and not just that. It's not just the weight class change, although I do believe that's important. I don't think that you can in any way minimize that, nor am I in any way

suggesting to minimize that, But it's more than that, right? Like, it's not just the weight class change. The weight class change to me, in fact, is much more of a function of this guy just really tightening up the way in which he approaches the fight game more generally. He probably had success at 185 and was like, fuck it, I can just be 185. But then, you know, he ran into a bunch of hammers and realized that wasn't it. And he still does his shit talking, but not exactly in the same kind of overbearing way in the middle of the fight that he used to. And the other part to me is he clearly, same with the Ola Vera fight at 170, obviously, and then same with this one against Tim Means. He takes a little bit of time, roughly about three, three and a half minutes

of the first round where you can see him. He doesn't have his balance under him. He gets hit a little bit more in that first three and a half minutes. He over commits positionally when he's running punches down. You can see it happens constantly with him. But then right towards the end of that first round, you can see he's beginning to get a little more balanced. He's beginning to see things coming his way. He's making better reads. He can slip and counter. He's got good reach. We talk about Kevin Holland striking, I think because it has a great effect and because it is accurate. It might be worth acknowledging Kevin Holland's got some underrated pop too. I'm not saying he's Francis Ngannou or something, but he's not just an accurate puncher. He's a heavy puncher too.

And he was a heavy puncher at 185, which means he's going to be a heavy-ass puncher at 170 pounds as well. This was a sensational performance by Kevin Holland. He should really be proud of himself, and the thing that I love is I kind of indicated he got right with the weight class because I think he got right with a self-assessment about what needed to change. I think he leaned into it. Obviously, there are still some things to work out with the way in which he can make some faster adjustments. I think in the first part of the first round. But I'm nitpicking a little bit or being a little bit harsh.

Overall, this was a super, super positive thing. And dude, I just love his finishing instincts. This was great. He landed a right, which hurt Means. Then he stung him with the uppercut. Means tries to dig for a takedown. He not only sprawls, but he doesn't sprawl square on him. He sprawls where? At an angle, right?

And it looked like he was going to hit like a half Nelson or a three-quarter stack, but instead just had the frame, and then he had the other hand underneath the body. He just let the frame that was on this side of the head basically go to the other one, just slide it over, and then he reached for the bicep and then he got it. Didn't quite have the same angle that he needed for the roll, but then turned over and then Tim Means turned back, which allowed him to then sink it deeper, right? Because Means is going this way, which means I can get all the way under, which is what he needed, and Means tapped immediately. Dude, you put out Tim Means. That's not easy to do. Granted, he's long in the tooth, relatively speaking, and has incurred a fair amount of damage, but that's a very tough guy with very good overall well-rounded skills.

He gives good fighters tough times and has beaten a handful of them along the way. And Kevin Holland, again, first few minutes got a little bit sketchy for him. It wasn't too bad, but he's getting hit a little here and there. And then he just went to work. Dude, he's so accurate. His feints are very good. He makes good use of his reach. He changes his rhythm a lot. By the way, look at how often he would time the movement of Tim Means.

Tim Means, whatever he was trying with his various head movement or rocking back and forth on his feet or whatever steps he was taking, he would split his timing constantly, whether it was a single jab, whether it was combinations. They were talking about his fast hand speed. Yes, his hand speed at the commentary booth was right. His hand speed was blazing, especially relative to what Tim Means could either see or tolerate. But it was complemented by just great timing that he would do. Once Kevin Holland settles into a fight, you know, if there's other parts of his game are squared away and he's got the

right attitude, and he very much did in this case, he's a handful. He's quite a handful. I'm going to pull up the numbers on this fight too. I kind of just love looking at them. Let's see what we got for this one. Let's see. For old Kevin. Two of five takedowns they award for Tim Means. Yeah, 36 strikes total landed to Tim Means. At least significant strikes. First round, Kevin Holland landing 27 to 14 for Tim Means.

And then in the second round, there wasn't a whole lot going on because it just didn't go that long. Tim Means getting two of the four takedowns but how about this only one minute and 30 seconds of control time it's the other part too like kevin holland obviously can be taken down especially when he positionally over commits or he can get pressed against the fence he can get kind of square against it that can create problems but he didn't get overwhelmed underneath was able to get back to his feet and there you know the other part too is while he's once he makes the adjustment this is very true not as true in the early part of the first round but once he makes an adjustment dude he's he he just seems to be more at peace with what he has to do and how he understands

he can do it there's a certain veteran calmness that he's able to bring yet he's still got youthful exuberance as well he can kind of thread that needle in a very interesting and unusual way. Obviously, Tim Means is a very tough customer, but couldn't really get a whole lot going with the offense. Again, a little bit in the first part of the round. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot to it. Let me look at some of the targeting here. Tim Means, 38% to the head, 52% to the body. That makes sense. And then Kevin Holland, bit of a headhunter, bit of a headhunter, 72% to the head, 8% to the body, 19% to the legs. So he goes low, he goes high, not so much to the middle. Obviously, most of this took place at distance. But you know, Kevin Holland, man, this is what I want to see from him. I want to see him make use of his physical tools, be that his hand speed, be that his physical dimensions in terms of his

reach, the physicality that he needs to wrestle or not get muscled around by some of these guys. I want to see that, which we did. I want to see him make adjustments in the fight, which he did. I want to see him make use of his striking talents, quite prodigious. He did. I want to see him, again, use veteran poise to make smart, clear-headed decisions, which he did. And I want to see confidence, but not confidence to the point of being comical. You know what I mean? Where you're just getting taken down and you're talking to the guy and you're boxing his ears, but then you're losing the round or something. That's not what he did he he upped the talking proportionate to the

amount of success he was having in the round that's okay that i can live with that i think is great and that also puts pressure on the opponent and gets them out of their game and gets them out of their comfort zone but really what did it for him was the timing his timing and his distance management um and his accuracy with his right hand and again the uppercut and then his defense was on point in this game wrestling or otherwise. And once he had that, dude, he had Tim Means

in all kinds of trouble. But I really believe the two big things I'm going to take away from this fight was the veteran poise, which I think was important. And I'm going to take away from this that Kevin Holland's got some underrated pop. I think we need to start putting some respect on his name. He's an accurate puncher, no doubt about it. His timing is tremendous, and that affects how a shot lands.

If you don't see it coming, you don't expect it to come, your defense isn't sturdy enough, you can't roll with it, they're going to have more pronounced effects. But, dude, he hurts people when he lands, big time. And even when they see it coming, he can do serious damage with it. This was a sensational performance by him. He should be super, super proud of himself. Phenomenal. Phenomenal.

Let me see something here real quick. Yes, okay. He called out Sean Brady afterwards That's a dicey proposition You guys know I'm high on Sean Brady I think a lot of people are high on Sean Brady It's not like I think Kevin Holland is completely overmatched in that sense It's not what I'm saying

And in fact, you gotta like the gusto of it Kevin Holland doesn't back down from a challenge, ever On the other hand, Sean Brady being such a dominant wrestler and such a dominant top position guy, and that still being something of a weakness for him, that's a risky fight. But, you know, that's what he takes, I suppose. That's what he takes.

Now, Sean Brady might not take it. I know he's been hunting a fight. I know Sean's been looking for someone who is ranked relatively commensurate with his position, which currently Kevin Holland is not. So I don't know how Sean will take that or whether he wants it. And it's also not a great fight for him in many ways. But that seems to be who Kevin Holland is these days.

He seems to be game for the challenge. But still, I was still at 170. Would like to see him slow roll his own development a little bit. It feels to me like he's finally rounding the corner. And if he can really make quicker in-round first-round adjustments, he's going to be extremely difficult to beat. I believe that. We go now to this one, Joaquin Buckley defeating Albert Duraev, Dr. Stabage, end of the second round. Dude, you know,

I didn't really say this with the Kevin Holland fight, but it's pretty similar with him. This is the story of the fight to me for Joaquin Buckley. His offense has always been dynamic. I mean, do I have to tell you that? I don't have to tell you that. You all know that. But at times it felt like his defense was either not up to par or not sufficiently prioritized. You guys ever heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Right?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you can look it up. It's a complicated sort of idea about sort of the state of human existence and the things that really matter for both life and happiness. And it's sort of a description about the priority of life. And so it starts with like basic necessities, like, you know, food and water and that sort of thing. And then there's like, you know, safety. And then there's like, you know, social group belonging. And then there's like personal fulfillment

and then like cognitive fulfillment. The point I'm trying to make is, you know, the fun stuff at the top of his game was always there. But it kind of felt like some of the defensive foundations, pieces of it were there, to be clear, but it just wasn't fully in place all the times that it needed to be. And, you know, he got hit with some stuff here.

Hello, it's an MMA fight. You have to fight another guy. DeRoy was able to get a takedown. Like, there were things, he was able to land a head kick of his own in the first round. But what really, to me, mattered was, like, when he had to wall walk, he knew he did and did it. When he knew he had to strike and roll

and exit, he did. When he knew he had to wait for the right moment, he did. When he had to parry a shot, he did. When he had to pull back on the offense a little bit and just kind of wait it out. He did. There was just real attentiveness to the priority that defense has to have in a game. And on top of that, the commensurate ability to then exercise that defense. And so for those reasons, Dariyev could just never get out of second gear, could he? He had a couple of decent punches. He landed here or there. Again, the head kick he landed. That was nice. Got some takedowns. But what was really the most impactful thing that Dariyev did?

You'll remember the head kick from the first round. But again, Buckley landed one-two and was just a better striker generally. Fought off most of what Dariyev was able to do anyway. Intercepting him with left hands as he was coming in by better footwork. It looked to me like, if we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's nice to have the stuff at the top, but if you don't have the foundation, the whole thing falls apart. He had foundational defense this time, and the results were tremendous.

Tremendous. Again, we go to the numbers here, because that's just what I love to do. Yeah, two knockdowns credited to Buckley. He got both of them in the second round. Zero of two takedowns for Dariyev in the first. He got two of seven with a control time of 148. Now, that's not insignificant, but he got his whole fucking left eye blown up. And this is what I was referencing earlier in the broadcast.

I thought for sure, for sure, Texas was going to be like, yeah, fuck it. Yeehaw, boss hog. And they're fucking suspenders. And like, you know, let's go eat some salted meats or something. But no, no, they didn't. They actually, the doctor took one look at his eye. I was like, yeah, fuck this. No.

He goes, no. And the referee goes, no. And he took one more look. And he was like, yeah, fuck this, no. He goes, no. And the referee goes, no? And he took one more look and he was like, yeah, no. There's no chance. He covered the one eye and Dariyev's face. Dariyev looked like he was melting or something. I mean, it was blowing up, but it was just this weight kind of hanging down. It was terrible.

But you know what the funny part about it was? His right eye was getting touched up too from everything that he was throwing. That left hand was a problem. His combinations in the pocket at times where it was a problem for Buckley. He's heavy-handed. He's quick. And again, what did Dariyev have? Pop quiz.

How many significant strikes did Dariyev have in this fight total? So that's 10 minutes of fighting. How many significant strikes did he land total? Ready for this? 10. 10. He landed 10 significant strikes and 2 takedowns for a control time of 148. Dude, the defense of Joaquin Buckley. The defense. Better decision making and the skills to pull it off. It's one thing to have the awareness. The other one is to have the ability to exercise that defense when it's important. He had both. And as I mentioned, the offense was already good. Now look at him. He's not only doing vicious things to opponents. He's not letting them really just kind of ever settle into a fight. Dariyev had a hard time, hard time with the distance management here. He had a hard time seeing what was coming. He was shooting in, I think, in a desperation sense a lot. He ran into a lot of punches, a lot of damage. Dude, Joaquin Buckley put it on him. Let me look at some of the targeting here for Buckley. Very nice mix. 55% to the head, 40% to the body,

especially jabs to the body, which I thought were really important for him as well. Albert Duraev, mixing it up a lot, 30% to the head, 30% to the body, 40% to the leg. But if you're only landing 10 significant strikes in the course of 10 minutes, you landed one every minute. That's not good enough to win at this level. It's just not. It's not good enough to hardly do anything at this level, quite frankly, unless you've got just lights out, takedown ability and control after the fact or something like that. That is not there. So, you know, I've heard good things about Duraev.

I've seen him do good things. I'm told his ground and pound, when he can actually get it going, is ferocious. But Buckley was physically there. Oh, and another thing about Buckley. How about his cardio tonight? Right? This is what I'm talking about his offense when he's dealing it's fearsome to put it mildly but other parts of his game would kind of undercut him a little bit maybe he didn't

have like you know as much offensive efficiency as he needed or he would kind of go outside his own his own you know best practices strategy to throw something wild that might drain him or he would kind of go outside his own best practices strategy to throw something wild that might drain him or he didn't quite have the cardio he needed to fully defend in the wrestling department. Now he's got the skills to defend it. He's got the defensive sensibility to know when to press the gas and when to press the brake. And then on top of that, he's got the cardio to power everything.

Shit. Feel sorry for the next few guys's got the cardio to power everything. Shit. Feel sorry for the next few guys. I've got to fight him. Even if they win, it's going to be hard as shit. Joaquin Buckley looked... This was... You might say, well, the win over Impa Kasonganai is better by a million miles by virtue of how acrobatic and just devastating it was. And I

wouldn't deny that to you. But to me, if you've got an opponent like Dariyev in your face and you can make his offense look like that, what were Dariyev's overall averages? Obviously, this will be affected here a little bit. Dude, Dariyev's overall strikes landed per minute is four. Joaquin Buckley had him at 25% of that. Takedown average is over one and a half. I guess he got the two, so he beat the average there. Takedown accuracy, 20%. Jesus, that's low. And then strikes of four per minute, 2.33, which he was above that as well. But the striking here was the big part. He normally is able to land with a decent degree here. But Joaquin Buckley's power, speed, timing, movement, takedown defense, ability to intercept with that left hand,

ability to read. Duraev could not get out of second gear. Could not get out of second gear. Joaquin Buckley is going to be, there's already been a handful, but this version of him, and maybe it's road work as he indicated, out of second gear. Could not get out of second gear. Joaquin Buckley is going to be, has already been a handful, but this version of him, you know, and maybe it's road work as he indicated, like all that extra road work has really paid dividends. I'm willing to believe that. But he looked, he looked tremendous in this contest. I was blown away by just how foundational

his defense looked, right? I know that I made an esoteric kind of reference there to, you know, needs, but it stands. It stands to, it reasons that way. All right, this one, it just drove me a little bit nuts on. Demir Ismagulov defeating Goran Kutatiladze via split. I don't mind 28, excuse me, I don't mind 29- me i don't mind 29 28 in either direction which you have the 30 27 about ismogulov is incomprehensible to me i don't really understand that you could easily give the first round is you know very second okay none of the judges gave Kuta De La Zay the second round.

Again, I wasn't watching from a clear judging perspective, so please take that for what it is worth. I thought he did much better damage, the Georgian, in the second round. And in the third round, okay, that was close too, but I thought, again, the better overall damage... I know that cuts and whatnot count in the minds of judges,

but to me, you have to really judge how did that cut happen? Did it cut because it was incidental contact? Did it happen from a headbutt? Did it happen from a strike that grazed him? Sometimes just the lining on the glove can touch a certain way. Not everyone cuts the same. Not everyone has the same tactile strength. Fedor, folks who may not know, even in his prime, was famous for being cut open on... Someone would just sneeze on him and it would pop open. Or people who have a lot of scar tissue. Scar tissue opens up very, very quickly.

So, you know, okay, I can certainly acknowledge that the jab of Ismagulov was pumping and his striking, his check hooking was really great. But I, and he did cut Kutateladze open and he was, he had been bleeding, I think, since the first round, certainly through the second. But I, you know, I don't, if you're asking me who did better damage, I thought Kutateladze did better damage, but this was the one I had highlighted coming in, in part because Ismagulov, dude, he is a phenomenal boxer. His jab works. He is so good. You heard Dean Thomas kind of talk about it. He's able to slide back or slide at an angle, let something happen, counter, and then move right back.

He can pressure with footwork and feints. He doesn't have as varied an offense as Kutateladze. Kutateladze, obviously, much better with the kicking game, kneeing game. I thought Kutateladze's trunk movement and ability to roll with strikes, right? I mean, I thought a lot of that was really, really good. And there was a lot, there was a lot, there was another part too. There was a lot that this Magulov was landing, but you could see Kutadiladze kind of not just cover and roll, right?

Not just all that or turn, but the other part he could do was, even if it came straight on and it was going to land, he would roll backwards with it and it would strike. I mean, it would make contact. But it wasn't like something that would like, you know, you guys have seen Dustin Poirier puts the elbow up and then he kind of redirects. Or, you know, it can bounce. Like Floyd Mayweather does the Philly Shell, right, and kind of bounces off the shoulder.

That's not what I'm talking about. It would actually make contact with the face. But he would already be motioning back and it would take the sting out yeah a lot of that landed no doubt about it and I'm also not saying that there's no scorecard for Isma Gula but 3027 is a fucking crime 3027 is a fucking crime I have a hard time justifying that one that one I just don't see um introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's it looks like a regular chicken sandwich but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich McSpicy consider yourself warned limited time only

at participating McDonald's in Canada but Kuta Teladzi dude oh actually we're sticking with Isma Gulov I knew this was going to be like like again they're both well-rounded so it's MMA and you know you can never be too into the archetypes but you knew this was going to be like, again, they're both well-rounded, so it's MMA, and you can never be too into the archetypes, but you knew it was going to be something like boxer versus kickboxer, in part because of their backgrounds, and certainly in the case of Kuta Naladze, but Ismagulov's jab and the way he dictates range and his ability to find punches in the slightest openings, dude, go back and look at the strike he landed, like almost a jab or maybe even a check hook. It was just a tiny little punch that he dropped Tiago Moises with, I think, in the third round, right? Just a tiny little thing, but the timing was perfect.

The accuracy was perfect. His feints off that, his movement off that, he was getting chewed up with the leg kicks a little bit. I don't think that counted as much as it should have. But, you know, we talk about best boxers in MMA. Kutuzin-Ladze doesn't have Mike Tyson-esque power or something like that. But if you look at how much he can affect a fight with his boxing and how he's able to beat elite guys, or at least perceived to be elite guys, it's remarkable. It's remarkable how good it is. But I just thought Kutuzin-Ladze was somewhat limited by it, and he was getting lit up with a jab.

Please don't make any mistake in terms of what I'm saying. But I thought the body kicks were pretty good for him. I thought a lot of the defense was pretty good. I think he had a takedown or two. Maybe that's not quite right. Let me see. He got one. He got one takedown in the first round,

which was pretty nice, but just 17 seconds of control time, so that's pretty good. But these striking totals were close, man. Ismagulov, 21. Kutuzaladze, 26. Again, these are numeric, not qualitative totals. Round two, Ismagulov, 30.

Kutuzaladze, 23. And then in round three, Kutuzaladze, 29. Ismagulov, 28. So from a numeric standpoint, round two belonged to Ismagulov. Rounds one and three are probably your swing-ish rounds, depending on how you want to look at it. Again, I thought that Kutuzaladze had certainly done enough overall. But look at how high level this was. These guys, are they even fucking ranked?

I don't think that they are. Right? I could be wrong that they are. Right? I could be wrong about that, but let me see. So this is a lightweight contest. Yeah, I mean, they're not even ranked. They're not even ranked. Although Gamrot is ranked 12th, and Kutatiladze already fought him and beat him. So keep that in mind.

Kutatiladze, to me, is a. So keep that in mind. Kutatiladze to me is a guy who has better offense in more places in the game. He has more sort of different tricks to go with. This Magulov seems to be the kind of guy who's very good at keeping the fight in the sort of like, he's like a sheepdog. He wants to keep the fight in front of him in a certain kind of way.

He corrals it that way so that his strengths are always kind of playing a more prominent and important role. Conversely, Kuta Deladze seems to be able to roll with different kind of scenarios. He can strike on the outside. He can clinch. Again, he went for how many takedowns did he attempt? He only got one of them. He attempted seven. He attempted seven, so he's constantly kind of mixing it up in that way.

I'm going to guess the targeting is going to be better as well for Kutuzalazi. Yeah, Kutuzalazi, listen to this. Kutuzalazi, 37% to the head, 35% to the body, 26% to the leg. Ismagulov, 2% to the leg, 17% to the body,

79% to the head. So something of a headhunter there. And I think, you know, the other part about it you have to ask yourself is what counts more in the eyes of the judges demonstrably getting your head snapped back um or a body kick that might land like your head could get snapped back and not be all that impactful and then someone could crack you in the ribs but if you got a good poker face you know the judges don't really know what to make of it. And also you're like, well, which one sounded worse?

But the auditory clues are not always so clear either. I don't know. I'm sort of complaining about this one because it... I just can't stand seeing 30-27 scorecards on fights like this. And I tend to think that Kutatiladze, higher upside, that's a little bit more difficult to say because this is Magulov's boxing. These guys from former Soviet satellite states, Kazakhstan and Georgia and some other places along the way, there's so many of them that are so fucking good, it's crazy. I thought that what Kutateladze did was the more impactful, damaging strikes. But I recognize that the smoother technician in the sense of defining the complexion of the fight was Ismagulov. Ismagulov was able to fight his fight, I think, for longer stretches. And even though Kutateladze could react, roll, respond,

and at times have his way, perhaps that sort of central feature of Ismogulov's game played a role. Now, there is that third round we should talk about where there's a knee. I did think it touched the chin of Ismogulov, but he was down. He was trying to scramble. And Kutadaladze was about to just bowl him over and get on top. And in fact, he did and hit a knee right to the chest, which I did think touched, but didn't like crack him in the knee. And I don't think it was

targeting the knee, targeting the head either. And Herb Dean steps in and was like, you lose the point. It's like, man, I have said this before and people poo-pooed it because no one ever wants to make any changes that ever matter in the sport. I'm sorry. I'm just going to say this out loud. I don't think most high-level MMA fights... Let me walk that back a little bit. My view is as follows.

I believe officiating in MMA, in terms of when we look back, are we satisfied or are we unsatisfied with the officiating? Did we get a clear adherence to the rules? Did they understand the nuances that they needed to understand? Granted, there's a lot of split understand the nuances that they needed to understand? Granted, there's a lot of split-second decisions that they have to make. I think you get better results with two active referees. Now, let me explain what I mean. I do not mean you need two referees inside the cage. And I'm also not suggesting you need two of them who necessarily have equal power.

What I am suggesting is in tennis, in hockey, in football, American football, in soccer, in baseball, in virtually any sport you can name. This is not entirely true, but in any of those sports, and granted those are team sports, a lot of things going on, you have multiple officiants calling a game. Now you might be like, well, there's a lot of teams there, and there's more players there, and they have more to do. That's right, but they also have the ability to pause the game. So they actually have the ability much more routinely, either through timeouts or TV breaks or whatever their desired will on the fight. They can actually stop it and take it out of the game.

They can stop it, take a look at things. There's actually much more review that happens now. And none of these systems are perfect. But I have long believed that a referee, one needs to be the A referee in the middle of the fight, and you need a B referee looking over the top. And I think in a case where the A referee makes a call in real time, or the B referee doesn't have to be over the top, the B referee could be ringside looking at the instant replay, whatever the case. Not every state allows for it, by the way. I don't even know if Texas allowed for instant replay in this case, which is another thing I need to look into. But, you know, having a B referee with the capacity to interact with the A referee in the

event that they can catch something that they missed, an instant replay here, you know, would have at least had the guy to be like, hey, to signal to Herb Dean or whoever the B referee might have been, like, hey, there's more to this story. You might want to put them back on the ground. Granted, it was eight seconds left, but Kuta Taladzi, let me go back and look at the scorecards. Did he get the third round? Let's see. I don't think he did. He got the third round on one judge's scorecard.

He got it on Douglas Crosby, who gave it to him. If Chris Lee gives him that round, because Jason Staffan, whoever the fuck that is, he gave all three to Isma Gulov, which again is just, I don't know what fight you're watching, fella. But if Chris Lee, who gave round two to Kutatiladze, excuse me, he gave round one to Kutatiladze,

if he gives round three to him by virtue of hard knee rolling him over, like, oh, that really, okay, we have to judge the round as a whole, but that last bit was probably the most impactful stuff in the round, at least certainly in combined with other things he was doing. That could have been everything. And to me, it's like, I'm not going to mess with Herb Dean too much because you can argue with his positioning, but he has to make a call in real time. And it's not exactly clear that they have instant replay rules in Texas.

At a bare minimum, there certainly is no B referee. What would be the argument that the B referee would somehow make officiating worse? I'm not sure what that is. You could argue that the B referee, if they had the capacity to routinely interfere with the A referee, could make it worse. But that seems to me like a very easy rule to adjust around. If the referee calls timeout, the B referee should have the ability to talk to the A referee. I just really think we have to rethink some of this stuff.

We've just inherited all these systems without really giving proper considerations, like what actually do we need in these fights to get the best officiating possible within reason? But an A and a B referee, one inside the cage, one at either top or cage side position in a more formal capacity, and a formal capacity to talk to the A referee,

I think it would yield better results. I realize this is sort of a tangent that isn't specific to this fight in any kind of realistic way, but it's sort of where my head is at. It's where my head has been at for a long time. I think asking referees in MMA to do everything that they do is setting them up to fail very often. All right. Gregory, is it Rodriguez or Rodriguez? He is Brazilian, defeating Julian Marquez at 3 minutes 18 seconds. They call him Robocop. Dude, he is fucking impressive.

I want you to go back and look at this fight if you get a chance. It's not merely that he was just landing on Marquez over and over. Why was he landing on Marquez? Dude, his shot selection was brilliant. He was throwing, like when the uppercut was called for, either because the trajectory of the punch was one that Marquez was either leaning into or he couldn't see or whatever the case may be, he was picking just the right things to throw at just the right moment, took the back, gave it up when it was going to be costly for him. And what really blew me away was for a guy with a grappling background, the speed with which he could process those decisions, it was borderline effortless for him.

Borderline effortless for him. I give all the credit in the world to Julian Marquez, dude. Ton of heart. Ton of heart. Amazing display. But Gregory Rodriguez, man, I was so impressed with his patience in this contest, and I was impressed with the shot selection without being overzealous. Exactly what it needed to be at exactly the time, and that's why it was landing clean. That's why it was landing impactfully, and that's why he was giving Marquez fits. Thought they could have probably interfered a little bit earlier, and they didn't. And that cost Marquez his consciousness temporarily. I know a lot of fighters might prefer that because they would prefer to go out in their terms versus somebody else's. I understand that. But I don't really. It didn't need to go that way.

I mean, once it started going downhill, Marquez was trying to fire back, dude. He was trying. God bless him. He was trying. But I was, for a guy with a grappling background, when did he win his major grappling titles? He's 40 years old. Look at that guy, 40. I don't have that here.

I'd have to go back and look. But for a guy like that, to make decisions like that. Again, the effortlessness, the speed of computation was remarkable. Not just great patience, not just great punches, but the got one here, got one here, got one here, got one here, got one here. This range, that range, middle range, like extremely impressive. And then last but not least, Adrian Yanez defeating Tony Kelly at 349 of round number one. It's kind of funny. It took about 90 seconds for Yanez to get going. He was parrying punches, looking, seeing what kind of reactions he could

get with his footwork and pressures and feints. But once he got going, fuck, he ran over Tony Kelly like a freight train. Tony Kelly getting booed, obviously for two reasons. Yanez was the hometown guy and Kelly was not. Also, Kelly was the guy who had, you know, less than progressive things to say to his corner during the, when he was quartering, excuse me for forgetting here. It's, I don't sleep very much because I'm a dad now. Andrea Lee, excuse me. Anyway, we've been over that a million times. And by the way, Kerry Hatley let that one go a little long too, which I realize no one gives a fuck about, but it was kind of funny. I was like, well, Hatley letting this one. Okay, let's see how this one goes. But Yanez, here's what really got me was two things, and they work in conjunction with each other.

Again, we talk about best boxers in MMA. Now, Yanez has not fought the kinds of guys that will tell us if he is the best boxer in MMA, and I would not put him on the top of that list. But if he's not on your top 15, he should be in your honorable mention somewhere. One of the things he's doing, you have to remember there's all kinds of guards.

You can go high hands here. You can do what Tony Kelly was doing where high forearms, elbows come together and you're on top. Rampage sort of did this sort of ear cover. Some guys cover the back of the head when they roll. And Rampage would kind of roll like this. You could do with the Joe Lewis, you can do cross guard like that. Yanez has the ability to not merely adjust to whatever guard someone is using.

So if they're going this way, he'll throw hooking shots. But he can sort of force different guard uses. Pump the jab, pump the jab, hands come up, and he'll fire a one-two. By the way, he's breaking rhythm the whole time. And then he starts hooking punches when the hands come up this way. Then on top of it, he sets up angles. So he'll go jab, jab, hands come up, hook, step out, hook to the body, hook to the head, right? So he's constantly finding interesting ways of forcing guard use,

making you pay for your transference of defense, all the while setting angles to land cleaner and then get himself out of the way and just create epic mass confusion. And dude, when he got rolling, he was rolling down fucking hell. What are the numbers on this one? He beat the brakes off Tony Kelly. This was not especially close. Let's see, 35 significant strikes landed to 20. He is credited with a knockdown, obviously, towards the end of that finish.

Yanez going a lot to the head, some to the body. Tony Kelly trying to, I think, mix it up a little bit more, just couldn't really get it going. Dude, Yanez's ability, I was so glad he took, I still think he takes a little bit too many punches in the pocket, but the reality is I think that that style just kind of breeds it. You know, you see all the guys, if you're asking who are the best boxers in MMA, these are guys that take above average punishment. Not in an enormous amount all the time,

but above average for sure. Above average. And I think you saw that in this contest as well, a little bit. Nothing too terrible. So he took his time to make his adjustments and make his reads, and then from there he was just pouring it on Tony Kelly. But I will say that going forward, the more he can limit his exposure in the mid-range of where he's attacking, the longer his career will go and the more success he'll have. All right. Do you have any questions for me? Let's see. If so, I'll take a look at them. Let's see what you got. Deshaun Brady cream Kevin Holland. He might. Am I bugging for the Verdict scorecard? Who did Verdict have? They had Calvin Cater. Again, you can make a scorecard

either way in that one, as I've kind of explained. So in the Cater and Emmett fight, the two disputed rounds were two and four. I gave the last two to Cater, but matchup was so close. Yes, agreed. It seemed that while Cater's jab pieced him up, a lot of Emmett's power punches deflected off Cater's gloves.

Agreed. And hands as he circled away. Agreed. How much does the power aspect sway the judges and them thinking Cater took more damage than he appeared to take? Again, without them telling us, it's hard to know.

I tend to think that they're at least somewhat reasonable at not overly counting that kind of thing. But I'm guessing because we don't fucking know. Is Kevin Holland the modern-day Cowboy Cerrone? Multi-division, short notice, all-fight certified bangers, slow starter. And how good is his fight IQ? Once he gets going, it's very good. It's very good. Again, he kind of has to get his balance and his legs under him a little bit.

But then once that gets into motion, he's great. He's off to the races. Thoughts on Natalia Silva after that performance? I skipped that fight because my daughter came home and I wanted to see her. The Buckley improvement with his takedown defense, agreed. What do you feel edged the cards for Josh, judging-wise? As I mentioned, power, perhaps like offensive diversity, pressuring Cater back in these blitzes. I tend to think did it for him.

If you were managing Kevin Holland, who would you recommend him to fight next? I'll tell you who. Michelle Pereira is who I would say. Let's see. Why do MMA fans scream every close fight is a robbery and specifically go against the decision to feel special about themselves? MMA fan base is annoying. Yeah, they can be. But every fan base can be annoying. So MMA is hardly exclusive. Because people have strong emotions.

They have strong passions for the card results. They have strong sentiments. They have strong opinions. And it's also like the consequences for losses are devastating, right? You get half your purse in many cases. For Emmett, again, 37, if he had lost, that would have been the end. There would have been no other bounce back fight, really. And so, you know, the consequences can be very dire, plus all the damage that one takes. It's difficult.

It's a very, very difficult thing. But yes, there is an overuse of robbery a lot in MMA discussions when big fights end the way that they did. But, you know, this one was close, so you're going to get a diversity of opinion. That's the way it goes. All right. I know if you're a boxing fan,

you probably have tuned in if it's not already on yet. Beterbiev or Beterbiev and Smith. So go take a look at that. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. We got some more content coming for you on Monday. Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. Have a good one. I hope your fam takes care of you. And if not, I don't know what to tell you. But I appreciate you guys watching just the same. Thank you guys so much. Have a great night. Be safe. Don't drink and drive. And until next time, enjoy the fights. Peace.