MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Baku Results: Fiziev Wants BMF Fight vs Charles Oliveira | Alex Pereira Escalates Herb Dean Feud

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Luke Thomas and Oscar Willis are with you on a Morning Kombat Monday, recapping the latest news in the world of combat sports. First up, in the main event of Saturday's UFC Fight Night from Baku, Azerbaijan, Rafael Fiziev dispatched Manuel Torres in dramatic fashion early in the second round. LT and Oscar break it down and ponder if Fiziev's title contentions have been renewed. The fellas talk the rest of the card and also the latest with referee Herb Dean and the feud with Alex Pereira. There was some PFL action in San Diego over the weekend that the guys discuss. Plus Jaron "Boots" Ennis stopped Xander Zayas in a hard-fought battle.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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of washed morning combat. Hello, everyone. Let's see, what day is it today? It is the 29th of June, 2026. My name is Luke Thomas. I join you not from the capital of the status news in Washington, D.C. I am on vacation,

although it's a working vacation because I'm here just kind of working. joined by my friend, who is question, it'll be sober, but he's ready to give some great M.A. analysis. It's Oscar Willis.

Hello, Oscar. How are you? I'm good, Luke. I was watching that intro, and I was seeing you cheering and being excited, and I realized I don't see, I haven't seen you have that emotion in years covering this sport. So it's nice to know that we're dragging you from your vacation

to still talk about the subject you're so passionate about. Revely, Revely! It's good. Who the fuck do you think you are, brother? Yeah, who the hell do you think you are? Yeah, you know what? I mean... You know what's the... Can I be honest what the truth is?

The less I read... And I'm being 100% serious. The less I read social media, the happier I become. like even if it's like you know just about nothing has to do with m mhm a it's just dude like the it's just such a poisonous like ugly place that it like when i unplug from it i'm like oh there's there's grass outside and uh i can go for a walk it just feels so much better you know what i mean i will agree with you except for one point obviously the world cup is here and the best thing about the world cup is you're allowed to be xenophobic for a few weeks but seeing the back and

forth between Brazilian fans and Japanese fans on Twitter, obviously translated for me. I've got to say their racism is on another level. I'm not going to repeat any of it, but the Japanese jokes about Brazil and vice versa, it's been tremendous reading. So I recommend that to anyone who's watching this. But I will say this, I will say this, don't you feel like, I guess it's AI driven, don't you feel like the translation tools on social media have like, they're like night and day for what they were even two years ago in terms of how good and accurate they are, right?

If I'm Fabiano at the UFC, I'm counting my fucking days, brother. The champion has a name and it's not you, it's AI. But yeah, I did for sure. The skills are becoming crazy. It's insane. So you've got access to so much more. In fact, I saw one joke where, you know, Argentines are famously, you know, listen, I'm sure there's some people of Argentina who watch the show who are not.

But they're famously racist. Okay, let's just be honest about that. Yeah. And there was one on Twitter and it was a Spanish translated tweet. And it was a pick. It was like a video of messy. crying and I think it was like a World Cup or two ago where he or maybe it's like Copa America where he had twisted his ankle or something and he was out and he goes and the

it was written in Spanish and the person was like here's messy crying because his ankles messy so racist just he's crying because his ankle is about to turn black from like twisting it you know phenomenal they're pretty they're pretty they're pretty uh yeah oh dude it got like listen I'm not I'm not justifying the premise of the joke I'm simply saying it got like 20,000 retweets, that's all. Yeah. Did you see, I mean, not to go on a too bunch of a tangent, did you see Elon Musk's mother, AI generate his birthday party as an image?

It was very good. And obviously, Elon runs that account. It's just great. Anyway, dead internet theory, you know. Yeah, indeed. All right, so let's set this up here. We have a lot to talk about. So we have, let's see, UFC Baku was on Saturday.

And as well, a morning show. And then you got Boots Zias, which ended up being pretty electric in the end. and then of course, PFL had a show as well. Plus, Alex Pereira just won't stop talking about how angry he is at Herb Dean. We'll get to all of that and more. Let's bring in the third member here of the show. He is, again, well, I mean, there's three of us on the show today. Only one of us might be sober, but let's bring him in anyway.

It's Long Island Luke. What's up, buddy? And it's our producer, Matt, who's off screen. But how you doing today, guys? Oh, right. You know, Baku was good, man. Baku was actually a great card. I don't know if you guys caught it live or had to watch it after the fact,

but I felt like it was a good card. You know what reminded me of it, Luke? I turned on YouTube and I saw your fucking live stream and I was like, oh yeah, Bar Couson and Luke doesn't have a lie. But other than that, I do have a life. Speaking of having a life, I did go to a concert last night. Jack Johnson, you guys into that at all? Not my thing.

It was my girl. I got her tickets for her birthday, you know, her thing. But funny enough, Dennis from submission radio asked me to come on yesterday and I was like, sorry, I got to go to this concert. And he's like, oh, who you seen? And I'm like, Jack Johnson. And he's like, I got tickets to see him when he comes to all. Australia, so I guess Dennis is a fan too.

Is he the guy who sticks in your eyes or whatever? I don't think he sings that. He's like a Hawaiian guy, plays guitar. It's like acoustic. He sings, where'd all the good people go? You know that song? Yeah, songs you would know. They're like feel good, like surfy, whatever.

Luke doesn't believe in feel good stuff. Yeah, I felt good. I was nice and drunk. It was a good time. But yeah. Again, I had to go see Dead in Company with Brian Campbell. at the sphere and that was that was enough whitey for me let me just tell you you know dude when you go to those shows when you go to those shows the the the people you know again predominantly white they just kind of stand

around and then they raise their hands and then they just sway in like these like endless guitar solos well that's the ketamine Luke that's the ketamine yeah that's dude it's it's it's gospel without like the religious text you know what I mean the pronunciation on ketamine in there say that again Oscar Ketamine. You said like ketamine. That's some British shit there. Well, that's usually where you find it. I'm going to stop my drug related down and go there.

There's usually plenty of that. All right, so let's set this up. Follow us on social if you haven't. You can do that. I think they'll put the lower third up here on the screen. You can see everything there for Oscar, for me and for course, MK. Let's see. We have the show email, Morning Kombat at gmail.

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You want to put those up real quick? The Genesis, we have the biker. And then we have the crown. There you have it. Those are the three for us. And then, of course, we're definitely bringing up the rear on this one. But for the basketball, West, we have the gray shirt. for the basketball east we have the off white shirt or whatever you like to call that gray a different

kind of gray i suppose uh and i'm i'm supposed to tell you not to forget to that we have mk memberships which offer customs emojis badge badges excuse me and more you can become a member here today all right with that out of the way let's get this party started yes yes ready to go all right see see see clado all right let's do it topic number one In the main event of UFC Baku on Saturday, what can you say? Rafael Fazeve, I don't know, what do you want to say? Turn back the clock, erased the doubt, got back to the place he needed to be mentally. Here's the finish.

You can see it from the crowd shot. Just an unbelievable sequence of events with that spinning heel kick to really get things going. And then, of course, he finished him off. This was early, early, early in the second round. He won the first round to. He had just such a better approach this. time. So the question for you is, Oscar, as we start things off, between how well the Justin Gachie losses have aged now, and then you add in this performance as well, is it fair to say

that Fazeve's prospects as a title contender have been renewed? I don't know if I'd go as far as to say title contender yet. I think he still won away. I actually think, and I hope I'm not wrong here, I believe the AI rankings didn't have him in the top 15 when they first came out last week. So I'm assuming he's going to be up there now. I think that. the Justin Gaiti loss has now aged well. I just think for Zee, when you watch him fight, he's going to struggle with the same thing. He's so muscle bound and explosive that you can see him fade very quickly. You know, he throws everything. So I think rounds one and two, he will be a danger for anybody. It's three to five that I have the questions about. That said, this performance,

exactly what he needed, right? It's a spectacular finish. Remind everyone how dynamic and exciting he is, win or lose. He made the call out for the BMF. I'm not sure if he'll get that next, but he's the sort of guy that would qualify for that belt, whatever you want to call it. So much needed for Fizzib because otherwise I think he could have got lost in that division. That's very deep. Title contention, not sure yet, but certainly righted the wrongs and right the ship that he needed to. Man, I thought this performance was great. I mean, you heard the commentator.

I think it was Feldor who noted that he didn't want to start slow like he did against Huffy. And so he came out, you know, landing the first big bombs. he got a take down fairly early into that round. He got the second one that he caught off the kick in that round. And there was a couple of that nice shots that I thought Torres landed along the way. A couple of those calf kicks really began to look like they were doing something for him. And, you know, he had a couple of, I think, jabs maybe too. But in general, like what you want out of Fiziv, what you're looking for to him is, you know,

I asked the question about whether he's a title contender. And I'm with you. You know, we're not really there yet. I think he's got some work to do in terms of building back. But he didn't just get a win to build back to me. me like he got a win that was I don't know like proof of concept that like when he's dealing and he's fighting his fight which again is going to be more difficult to hire you go up the rankings that he has the skills to leverage it in a very very interesting way but but but like what really

powers that what underwrites that is belief and I just didn't think he had a lot it didn't look to me he had a lot of belief against hoofy and okay maybe hoofy's better than manuel Torres, fair enough. But nevertheless, dude, like, I just loved it when he came out and was like, the ability, like, you know, we talk about it all the time here in American sports. And I'm sure there's, you know, a million other equivalents, but like quarterbacks who throw an interception and then they just forget about it the next moment. Like that, people, people look the other way on that, like, oh, anyone could do that. No, they can't. They cannot get over the psychological hump of having some kind of really bad display. And again, certain cases, catastrophic. And then finding a way to come back and then believe that like the next snap that they have, is going to be the best snap of their life. They like, Fiziv fought that way. And after those losses to Gachi, after the loss to Huffy, the injury to Gamrod,

I wasn't sure exactly what, like, in other words, Oscar, I never really doubted that Fiziv had more skills. I just didn't know if he believed he had more skills to use en route to a victory.

And what I saw here was absolute commitment to that idea or that reality. And that was to me the thing that was like, okay, that's what I was looking for. Right. Yeah, I think the thing you said there that I agree is proof of concept. Like, okay, he is good and those skills do translate to victories. You know, we've seen some flashy stuff before, but it's sort of after a couple of losses, you start to doubt like, is there anything here. And I think to your point, proof of concept, there absolutely is. Adding to your statement about belief in yourself, he said, speaking to the UFC after the fight, you know, watching Gaci win the title really sort of gave him confidence. Like, hey, I didn't do that bad against this guy and he's the world champion. and he said that really sort of bred a confidence in him going into this fight, which I found interesting.

And, you know, you can, it's very, very easy to just look at the performances in an isolation. And you don't actually anticipate, like you said, you're coming off two losses. You could very easily convince yourself your shit now and that you're going to just, you know, it's very easy to fall into a darker mentality. And to your point, to be able to go past that and become positive is very hard. So it's nice to see that he was able to take something from Gates. he's performance over earlier. It's nice to see that he was able to go out there and fight his fight.

As you said, he was very slow against Rufi, and you have to wonder, was that because he was being cautious because of the damage he did against Justin. But to get knocked out, come back win by doing what he does best, you have to imagine that next fight takes that confidence, doubles it, and goes into the next fight with that even more emboldened. An I-Hart Radio experience. You end up with weekend goal tickets to Lassau Montreal.

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Download the free I-Heart Radio app, listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes, and enter to win. Lassau, Montreal. Every day you listen is another chance to win. How good of a challenger was Manuel Torres? Was he, was he fools gold? What, what was he? I thought it was going to, I thought it would, could have the potential to go into a fire

fight and really be a back and forth thing, a little bit like we'll get on to Boots's fight later today. But I thought it had the potential to sort of go that way if Bezzeev allowed it to go that way. And there was moments in the first round where you're like, man, these two are going to start swinging and it could just go into a 50-50 sluggan. And then Fiziv just showed his quality to land that strike in the, in the second round. So I thought he had potential to be, harmful to Viziv, especially if Fiziv was starting to slide after the two losses.

But I think actually we talk often about the UFC matchmaking. If you wanted to rebuild Fiziv, this is probably as perfect to matchup as you've got, right? A big, ranger that you can knock out, that could cause you problem, sort of gets you a confidence back. Probably great matchmaking if you think, if you're looking to rebuild Fizzis. Yeah, I think this was, Torres to me, can get going when you play a bit of a boxing game with him. He's got more tools than that. I'm oversimplifying, but I feel like that's his best place where he does work. And Fiziv did a really good job of like kind of avoiding that.

I mean, to the extent that they would slug, he was sound def, that was the other part too. Like at the end of round one, do you remember he threw that like high kick Torres did? But if it had landed, it would have completely destroyed Fizziv, but he had his hand up the whole time. And like a bunch of other stuff. And I know he does some of that stuff anyway. But it just, you know, like the, the, like the naturalness of it, the ease of it, the commitment to it.

It just seemed like, you know, he really believed if I prepare, if I do this the right way I can do it, but getting to Torres, Torres to me is going to be interesting if you're playing a long-range boxing game with him. And I just felt like Fiziz did a good job, again, with those two takedowns in round one, you know, some of his own leg kicks to intercept some of the punching that Torres was doing. He just had to, I mean, this was just a real, like, you know, one guy is just vastly better than the other guy kind of moment. And I wasn't sure the confidence was going to be there for,

Torres, what do we want to say about him? I mean, I don't, I don't really know what there is. Like, I have, we'll talk about where Fiziv goes from here, but I don't, I don't have any strong feelings about like, for Torres. He's an interesting fighter. He can be a good one at times, but I don't know. I don't know that I see a ton of upside. Am I being a hater?

No, I think, and this is not a bad place to be, I think he will go into the litany of fun, scrappy lightweights. There's a lot of them. They're always in entertaining fights, win or lose. and he'll win a couple, lose a couple, win a couple. But he'll never be in a really truly shit, boring fight. You know, he'll be entertaining and probably get a name based on that. I mean, there's that division, the history of that division is built on guys like that.

Just guys who give you fun fights, win, lose, and you kind of just, you and deal yourself as being someone that, like, I recognize that name. That's going to be one to watch. So I think that's probably where he goes. And it's perfectly acceptable place to be as a professional fighter. In terms of Fazeve, you know, it's hard to put him in a bad matchup in terms of just fun, right? Hard to do that. But like what makes sense here?

Do you have a feeling about like where he should be? If you were ranking him, where you would put him and like what that would mean for the next good fight? Yeah. So I'm looking at the meta rankings now. He is not ranked, which is possibly one of the bigger issues with that meta ranking. But I'm assuming tomorrow the rank has come out and he shall be. He is in and it's not for the first time in his career, an interesting place where he's done his bit.

He doesn't want to fight below him, but perhaps he's also not big enough a name for the people above him to want to fight either, right? You know, he got that, he got that Gaichi fight to sort of cross that barrier and Gaichi put him back down. And now he's sort of back in that spot again where he needs to fight a big name to prove he's at the top of the division. And I can't imagine your Oliveras or Armin are going to be that interested in fighting for Z, right? Like they would rather fight each other and around the top five. So he's in an interesting spot. And I don't really know what you do with him then, right? Because maybe you just wait and see what happens with Paddy and BSD.

You know, a Fiziv BSD fight sounds great. If BSD were to lose to Paddy, even I think Paddy has Edia Rahman rivalries that will probably get tapped into. But yeah, Fiziv is in an interesting spot where he's like right in the middle where the guys know him want to fight him, that he doesn't want to fight him. And the guys above him, he wants to fight, but they won't want to fight him is my take on it. So I don't actually know the name that leaps out as like, that's the one. be day.

Long Island Lucas saying it's Dan Hooker. Leave Dan alone. I actually, I think that'll be a fun-ass scrap, dude. That'll be a, fucking throw that in a main event. You can't say it's a bad fight. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

I actually, I, listen, if we were looking to build Dan back up, you know, he's coming on two losses. I actually think him versus Menel Torres is a great fight. That's a fun little scrap too. And I imagine both for them, very tall-ranging guys. I think that's good. But the Fiziv-Hooker fight's been mentioned a lot of times

behind the scenes and I feel like that will inevitably happen. It's just now like Dan's ranked, not that I fucking give a shit about the rankings, but Dan's ranked 11 and I assume Fazeve will probably go in at like eight or nine after that, you know, I don't know. It's interesting because Rufi's only 10, the rankings are fucked. Media rankings, Fiziv's 11

and Hookers 9. So they're right next to each other right now. Yeah, fuck it. Yeah, I don't know what to say about that. Yeah. Yeah. Two rankings, if you trust neither of them. Yeah, yeah, we have two sets of things we don't like. What are we going to do about it?

In any event, I just thought it was phenomenal. And also, you know, for Fazeve to use like, what do you want to call it? I mean, they're very effective, but flashy weapons. You know, I just felt like that was a really nice touch to the finishing sequence. He got a huge roar, obviously, in Baku. By the way, is the Baku thing now like a yearly destination? Are we just doing Azerbaijan shows all the time now? What's the story there?

I mean, I don't believe they have a long-term deal in place, but it seems like we'll do a show and then they renegotiate for a second show. But certainly with the card they built, the locals, they tried to push that sort of region they tried to push. I assume that is now a yearly destination, yeah? Because also as well, I think in terms of that region, Baku is about as safe as you can get right now, is it not? I don't know. Are we still at war with Iran? Is a straight-upamu's open today or is it closed? I can't keep up. I don't know anymore.

I do know that there was bombing over the weekend, so I don't know how that's going to go. Azerbaijan did get bombed during that war briefly in their airport. I know they're going to Abu Dhabi in next month, so I guess it's not that larger concern anymore. But yeah, it does seem like we're going to Barku every year. I still haven't been. I still avoided both shows. Yeah. I mean, I don't have anything against Baku.

I just wouldn't say it's like top of my list to go, but maybe it's nice. I don't know. all right let's turn our attention now to i don't know let's turn our attention now to the say that again i said you're the member of the tourism board i don't know if it's nice it might be the end well the thing is it's like there's like a lot of things in life where it's like if you don't have a personal connection to it it doesn't mean that it's bad but it doesn't you know it just doesn't pull you per se um and i would put usurbanian probably on that list somewhere uh all right So let's go to now the rest of the UFC Baku card.

And there's a lot to chew on. So the first place that we have to go, unfortunately, is that co-main event, which is, I mean, I don't even, a dude, seriously, Oscar, I don't even know where to start with this shit. Is the story of this fight that bullet kind of is not good that now we kind of know? Is the story of this fight that he fouled so many times that Herb Dean is, his behavior was inexplicable is the story that, you know, I don't know. I don't even know where to start. He said there's two incidents of hair pulling. He gets warned. There's an eye poke. He gets warned. We'll talk about the Alex Pereira stuff later, although it's obviously related to this particular

bout, but putting the, the Poetan stuff as a separate conversation. Just, dude, like, what was, like, what is the takeaway from this bout? I think the perfect way to describe this bout is these are two fighters who pointed at the middle and then didn't swing. That's these, that's what these two fighters are. They are meant to be entertaining, but never quite are. Then you go, oh yeah, that guy's fucking crazy. Never actually is, though. So that's, and it's just two of them. Two misfiring bay blades, I guess. I don't know. But it was, it was weird, but I, I went into it knowing it was going to be weird. So then the weirder it got, the more amused I was. And actually, to be honest, more entertained I was.

It was better that they were fucking weird than then actually trying. And my favorite part, I think it was at the end of round two, Shara took a step back, gestured at the floor, as if to say, you should do a flip now.

And then Pereira did it. He did a rolling thunder. He's like, hey, can you do a rolling thunder? And he went, okay. And it was so strange. I enjoyed it. But yeah, in terms of fight quality, lacking somewhat.

Dude, that was terrible. I've never been a big believer in bullet, in part because, well, dude, anybody who wears a rag on their head that looks like a woman who washes dishes somewhere, just, you know, it's just not intimidating, bro. I don't know what else to tell you. I mean, the name is cool, the look with the eye and stuff is cool.

But that whole gimmick, you know, I'm a pirate. It's like, okay, Captain Jack Sparrow. I mean, just lighten up, Francis. This is not interesting to me. I think Sharra's whole thing when he came to the UFC was there was that viral photo of him weighing in with the fucking eye and the hair and he was fucking jacked.

And then he arrived in the UFC and he seemed to, for some reason, perhaps on a different nutrition plan, lost some of that dense muscle. And I think so people saw the clip of him looking like a fucking, you know, beheading sort of guy. And then when he arrived, like, oh, he looks like a human. He actually very small for middleweight, to be honest. So I think that took away some of his mystique. And then, you know, he's one of those people where it's like, the more you see him,

the more normal he becomes, you know? It's very human, I think, was Mr. Pirate. I mean, his striking is interesting, right? And he does have that one highlight reel. That's amazing. We had the double spinning back fist, the bop, right? Who was it? Bagdasarian?

No, it was the Armenian dude. What's his name? I forget. But anyway. Petrosian? Yeah, who knows? Petrosian. Yeah, Armand Petrosian.

So he hits it on Petrosian. And, I mean, that was really nice. I admit that's a super cool highlight. But dude, in general, like, what would be the evidence at this point where you're like, oh, this guy is going to move through the rankings? No, he's not. Like, absolutely. that's not happening. There's no, no chance that that is a real thing that's going to be. I mean,

this dude went tooth and nail with Michelle Pereira and he had to freaking cheat multiple times just to do that. Like, what are we talking about here? You know, it's crazy to me. But like, we have to have a conversation here, both about like what the upside is of Bullet, which I think fun fighter when, how about this? Matchup context dependent can be. Can be. Can be. Can be a really, really fun fighter, right? Absent that, like, if you're not grading him on a curve, I don't know what you're going to get from him. But beyond that, dude, what the fuck?

Or do we say about Herdeen? Because here's the thing, man, we're now like, I mean, it's like every week where we're complaining about some refereeing assignment. But, like, the fact that we had all these issues at UFC White House and then, you know, there was issues with, remember, Feeley and Loke Dog last week. And now there's issues this week. Now, these are not related to the back of the head, but it's related to, like, quite obvious hair pulling.

I mean, it was, dude, that was like Hoyce Gracie Kimo. You ever seen that fight? Yeah. Or Hoyt, you never seen it. So if you don't remember this, Hoyst Gracie was running through the UFC. And then I think it was UFC three or four. He fights chemo and he beats chemo.

But the only way he's able to beat chemo is by holding his hair, because he had his ponytail kind of here, is by holding his hair. And then I forget exactly with the method of victory. But he couldn't continue in the tournament. So people at that time took that to be like a big win. Oh, my God, Hoyst couldn't continue. You know, here's the list.

We're finally starting to see some limits of what this guy can do. And it felt a little bit like that to me. So I would just love for you to like weigh in here. Like what, what was happening here? Why can't we take points for fucking fouls? Well, to be honest, and again, this is not to say, like I don't understand Herb's lack of self preservation. You know, you're in the news for not being a disciplinarian in terms of being a referee.

You think you would notice, man, I've said the word warning a lot. in this cage right now. I should probably make a statement to the people who are judging me. I know this is not how you're meant to do it, but just as human psychology, you think you would maybe think, fuck, I've said warning a lot and I haven't done anything about it, regardless of the type of foul. We are getting to the point, and I know Herb is the highest profile referee, so therefore his mistakes are going to be amplified and they're going to be more noticed. But it's been happening a lot. There never seems to be, as I said, last time we were discussing this, which is another point about how often this is coming up. It's not never seems to be a lot of self-reflection

on it. And I think we are now getting to the point where the fans are becoming educated enough and certainly more noticing it more because of the high profile nature of these files, that referees are probably going to want to be more proactive in taking points. And I think there's always been this idea of passive officiating. I don't want to get involved. I don't want to affect the outcome of this fight. I want these fighters to do it. Well, now I think the fan desire is actually kind of changing where like fucking take a point, you know, take a point. And don't you get maybe half awarding and then take a point because it's starting to become the meta of MMA that cheating is allowed.

And I think the more that these guys start to do it and get away with it, it's going to become worse. And I think the fan backlash to it is going to become worse as well. So if I was a referee, I'd probably be a little bit more proactive about taking points. And then I would wager the fans would probably stop being in such a way. That said, if there was ever a fight that I was going to let. hair pulling and eye gouging and nut kicking in. It was this one. I didn't care at all. I thought it's very funny.

But if usually I would not be a fan. And also you're seeing more fighters. Tom Aspinall backlash about it. Pereira backlash about it. Someone else who I forgot about like people are now, high level fighters are now discussing like you're allowed to cheat and it's bullshit. Yes.

I mean, if that's not an indictment on the inability for these guys to get the job done, I don't know what is. Long Island, let me ask you a very basic question here. Very basic one. Is Herb Dean a good referee? I'll say no with the caveat that no right I'll say referees go through highs and lows that's just the reality they all go through Herb Dean was was the best referee 15 years ago and people hold them to that standard but for the last 10 years he's probably not been that great Jason Herzog was the best referee five years ago today Jason Herzog not that great Mark Goddard is probably the best referee today's date but in two years Mark Goddard is going to be the worst referee we have I don't know why it happens they just all go through. through like you go through a hot streak of not fucking up for a while and we're all like that guy's good and then they just start fucking up and it's like the it just I don't know what the

analogy is you know they just keep coming whatever the fuck it is so yeah there was this dicks everywhere dicks there was this study that boston you know i think someone double check this it was either boston university or boston college but one of them did a study on how good baseball umpires were. And they measured it by like, you know, how close to an objective, how consistent they were with like, you know, placement on calling balls and strikes. We're talking like, you know, home plate umpires, not the guys out in the field, right? And they, you know, they measured their performance and how their other colleagues rate them. Like, there's all these different ways in which you can evaluate umpire performance. But what they found was that the longer tenure you

were past a certain point, it would be the worst you became. So what they found was that, like, if you had gone through all the training you had to do, and then you'd done some of the minor leagues for a few years. And then let's say you were good enough to get elevated. So let's say you had been in the big leagues somewhere between five to eight years, closer to that eight year range. That was the sweet spot. That was the sweet spot. Like the guys who had who had been umpires around seven to eight years, they were killing it. Like they were the, they got the highest ratings from the league. They got the highest rating from the other umpires. You know, their strike zone was the most consistent, all that stuff. And what they found was that the ones who performed,

the worst were 15 to 20 years in. Like they just could, they, they, they got, I don't know, settled in their ways. They weren't as physically agile anymore. You know, there's just all these different measures. And I, I always think about that when because people naturally, they treat them like their college professors, like, oh, this guy has done research in the field of quantum physics for 40 years. Who are you to say anything?

What's like, well, dude, if we had like studies that showed a mathematician's abilities fell off after year nine. I don't know if he'd be tenured anymore. You know what I mean? Like, there's just a certain kind of way in which I don't think we appreciate, like, there is a prime for refereeing. And I'm not sure that many of the folks who are doing refereeing today, Oscar, are exactly in their primes anymore. Yeah, that's super interesting. And it would, it makes sense. It's almost, you don't really know what to attest that too. I'm sure there's a litany of different reasons. But I, if you do, the same thing as I think you and I can attest to, if you do the same thing for 10 plus years,

you care a little bit less about the nuts and bones. You know what I mean? It's human nature to be like, I've got this in the bag. I don't, you know, there's less pressure on myself because I know I can do this. And perhaps that's it, you know, but you would imagine the adrenaline of being that close to a fist fight would keep you locked in and stuff like that. I don't, I don't imagine Herb, although sometimes it does look like it. I don't imagine Herb is watching two guys ground and pounding on the floor and he's thinking about his fucking dinner. I'm sure he is locked in and paying attention. And maybe it becomes like we only have, we have the same rotation of referees each week.

So therefore, we just keep seeing more and more of them. And perhaps actually none of them make more mistakes than the other. It's just that because we see them so often we see the same person making the same mistake. So therefore we just associate that with the mistake. Maybe there's an element of that. And we're not getting enough new blood in to sort of diversify that. but then sometimes the new referees are shit as well, to be fair.

So I don't really know the issue, but it does seem to me that perhaps after a certain length of time, you would maybe be interested in perhaps lessening their workload, if only just to sort of keep them sharper, perhaps. I don't know, but there is something there. The longer these referees do it, they tend to get into more issues with making bad issues. It just fizzles. Yeah. Yeah.

It just fizzles down the stretch. I'm not sure else to say it. I don't understand why. didn't take a point here. And again, it's like, okay, you know, the, the I poke, that was the first I poke by the time that you saw it, but there were two other fouls. Do you add on a foul when the other ones are different? We've kind of been over this discussion.

I don't want to rehash it. But it's like, dude, if you've had three fouls, three warnings at a bare minimum and the obvious fouls to anyone who's got, like, it's just so funny to me, like, did you watch the Columbia Portugal game over the weekend? I did not, I did not catch the Columbia Portugal game. Did you see the goal, or maybe you saw the highlights, the goal that was disallowed. by Columbia. Did you see that? No. Okay.

VAR literally, you know how they do that magical line? Oh, the toe. The toe. The toe. Yeah. They disallowed a goal because my motherfucker's shoe size was too big. I mean, literally, that's what happened. And it's like,

they're like, they're, and I'm not saying that's an improved version of things, but it's just very interesting to watch other sports take getting the rules right on some level much more seriously. and in MMA it's like, shit happens. I don't know.

It's just, it's crazy. Isn't the argument, you give a warning if it's inadvertent, right? So, okay,

MMA's a weird wacky sport. Sometimes I, fingers get in the eyes. Sometimes you kick low. That's, like that happens, you know, that sort of,

you don't inadvertently grab a guy's fucking ponytail. You know, that's a very, decision, like, I'm going to foul you. And then do it again.

I don't, I think, I'm okay with warnings for like low blows. If you are Southpour and you kick the same time as North Docks, someone's getting kicked in the dick and it's not intentional. And I feel like that would be a bit harsh to alter the result of the fight based on that, just moving parts, moving bodies. But there's got to be certain files.

If someone headbutts someone, that's a point on the spot. There's no, you know, if someone's made a bite as someone did in Barquee, if someone makes a conscious decision, like you can't argue that it's a heat of the moment thing. that doesn't count, that's still a foul. If it's an active choice to do an illegal move, that should be a point regard, no warning at all. Because they're cheating. They are cheating the rules.

They're not mistakenly not controlling their weapons. They are cheating. And so I don't quite understand why we throw every foul as being equal. They're not equal and they shouldn't be treated as such. And I'm also getting to the point where I think an iPoke shouldn't be, shouldn't be treated equal. I think an iPok should be considered an immediate point as well, because it's just getting too frequent.

And you can even tell. You can actually tell now that guys are doing it on purpose. Shara got up and poked him in the eye. I feel like there's a few other fighters who quite clearly do it on purpose. And I think we're getting to the point where I would like to see referees be like, that's as bad as a headbutt. Yeah, that's a great point. I'll come back to the Nazim Sattakov lost.

Let's talk very quickly if we can about the Asu El Mabyev win. Dude, look at this fucking Sulu-Ev stretch. I mean... Justin Gachi was right. That is... What do you mean? Well, if one guy could hold you, you know? Oh, I think he said that to me and Brian Campbell, by the way.

I think that's where that comes from. Dude, this is, he locks up the back in the third round, and he tries for this. And you'll notice that Johnson kind of moves his leg to reduce a little bit of the pressure. So then Amabayev takes him off of his base and goes back down. So now they're both kind of facing the sky, which gives him the ultimate leverage to hip in to get this. going and I also want to make a point, dude, the first time I ever learned knee bars, and this has got a

similar kind of idea, the first time I ever learned knee bars was you want to have their ankle or the bottom of their foot near your ear. Look at where that ankle placement. The foot placement is. It's right on the ear. That is perfect. And he's got it elbow deep there, Oscar, at the point of the ankle. Dude, that must have freaking hurt. We've been talking about Alma Baim on this show because he didn't have a great showing against cop and it was a whole thing. But he is fucking. He is fucking good, dude. To be Charles Johnson like this is no small feat. You know, my dark horse 20, 24, just saying, you know, thank you. That's right. That's right. What did you think? What did you think, Oscar? I think sometimes if you show a, let's say, a hardcore boxing fan who thinks

MMA is gay, if you showed them some jiu jihitsu, you can sort of understand. They'd be right, by the way. Well, of course, but they, it's still a right wing sport. It's just the gayest. But if you, if you showed them like general jiu-jitsu, they would think this is just man-on-man action. You could show this to anyone. And while it does look a little fruity, you can see like that would fucking suck. That would fucking suck. It looks so painful. Yeah, it's brutal.

And also as well, like, once you get in there, you know, you can't just tough out. You can't, you can maybe tough out a guillotine. Once you're in that sort of thing, shit's getting torn. So yeah, I saw that and I was like, out. Yeah. I was glad he tapped because, dude, that is, that'll send you to the hospital. quick. Long Island, what did you think of of Omabayev's overall performance in this fight?

Since you're the resident Almibayev Dick Rider. He looked damn good, dude. He was winning the fight clearly, too, before the sub. Like, he was up on the scorecards and everything. And I was a little, I had a bet on him and I was like a little worried before it started. Because I like energy. And I was like, fuck, man. He's good. I could see Charles Johnson

putting it on him. I could see like a late third round TKO. But no, we get the fucking sub. It was sick. Dude, this card was so good to me, by the way. I came in first on tapology. I had like every fight fucking nailed. So Omabaya by sub, didn't have the sub had a decision,

but either way I had Omabai. Get this. What do you think about Charles Johnson, dude? We talked about this. Literally, I think his last like, I don't know, eight fights or something, he wins and loses, wins and loses. And he beats really good guys.

It's not like he's losing to scrubs, but it's like there's a big difference between the guys he's winning and losing to. Omabiah, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with losing to him. He's very good. Like, this is a tough guy. Shit happens. It is what it is.

But like, how do you explain how a guy can be so inconsistently awesome at times. Fuck, it's just MMA, right? There's loads of them. Look at Andre Fidi. Sometimes Andre Feeley looks like a world beater and then he just wins, loses, win, loses.

Now, they kind of remind me of each other where sometimes you see them and you're like, man, this guy has like a real special something. And then sometimes they just look very pedestrian. I do like that this is one of the only sports where you can be recognizable because you have a weird haircut. I think that's great. That's a very MMA thing.

But yeah, I don't really. really know. I think he's got, I think he's got some wins that have really aged well and perhaps maybe made him be treated as if he's better than he is. I tried to say respectfully. I think he's had some really good wins that have aged really well that maybe have him held in a higher regard than perhaps his actual skill level could have him. But as you said, there are times where he fights and he looks like a world beater. So it's really hard to tell. It's really hard to know. People say that MMA fighters have the worst tattoos, and I really disagree with that. I fully disagree with that.

Anybody who's ever seen like NBA players, like in photo shoots when they don't have their jerseys on, their tattoos are much worse. And those guys have way more money. You know what I mean? Like it's inexcusable how bad their tattoos are. What I will say is, MMA fighters have the worst haircuts, right? I feel like that is, I feel like that's pretty fair. You know, I guess some of them have great haircuts.

It's not across the board, obviously. But then you just get like, oh, I'm going to have a mullet with the hair. on my neck or, you know, I'm going to cornrow my mustache or, you know, whatever the fuck, some kind of weird shit. I mean, I think we could basically say that in the 2000s, MMA owned the Mohawk, did it not? I think it was basically that was this, that was this sports fucking identifiable. You're a white guy with a Mohawk.

You're an MMA fighter. I think that was it. So it's really rooted in our culture. Yes. If you have a bad haircut, you're culturally appropriating MMA. All right, very quickly, I was surprised that Camilo defeated Sattikov. I thought Sattakov was overall a little bit better. What do you want to say here?

Well, we'll get to him in a second. What do you want to say here, Oscar? He just got caught. I mean, this was 131 into round number one. Yeah, it sort of felt like I rewatched it before the show because I didn't watch it live. But I sort of felt like he hadn't really got going yet. And then like you said, it's just he got caught, a big explosive punch.

and I don't think it that is what fighters often tell themselves when they've lost sometimes this sport you as Michael Charler once famously said you zig when you should have zacked and you just get caught it's a wacky sport I wouldn't take much away from his stock

I think he's still got great potential but maybe watch out for the chin next time I don't know there's not much you can say if someone throws a fucking bomb at you and you don't get out of the way that's the end of that all right so among the fighters who got finishes I mean Ikema Alaskera I've got a win against Bruno Faheda if you want to talk about that. But the one that's more interesting to me is, so Abus

Megamadov gets a win over Oleg Sheeshik. Then you have Yayaev, who once again, the number one fan of Yakiyaev is Long Island. He disposes of Julius Walker in eight fucking seconds. There was nothing to that. Rusaboyev submits Puliayev in the first round as well. My guy from Colombia, Javier Regis, lost to Khan Olfi. Don Chanko gets a win in the the first round over Theodore Bergen, Bergen, excuse me, who had the best stoppage of the ones I just named? Oh, the eight seconds has to be, right? And particularly because I think Walker had said, I'm going to know, I want to knock him out

with my first punch and then got knocked out with the first punch. I think you can't. Oh, this is the word you sent me. That's right. Yeah. I said there's not, there's not a sport that comes at you fucking faster than MMA, bro. It's unbelievable. So, yeah, I think you've got to give it to him, right?

that's because Walker said, I want to knock him out with a jab. He threw a jab and then just got knocked out. It's unbelievable. Reverse manifestation, as someone commented, I know. I also manifested that fight. I said right before it started, I said, this is probably going to be the quickest fight of the night. And then it was over in eight seconds. Speaking of manifestation as well, by the way, I'm going to have to ask all these up and coming middleweights.

Stop calling out Israel ad-Sahnya. Leave him alone. I don't like it. Yeah, Shara Bullet. Shara Bullitt called him out. Shara Bullock called him out. I'm like, dude, what are you going to do when you can't pull his hair? That's really my question for you.

What are you going to do? I'm going to say this. It would be fun, but yeah, no. You don't deserve it. I'm going to say this. I think the eight second K.O. I mean, obviously for the reasons that it's eight seconds, Yakiyev also has just proven to be a vicious puncher.

And to your point, like, you know, his opponent was like, oh, yeah, you know, ideal scenario, first punch KOM. And that's what happens to him. It's like, you know, obviously, so, poetic. I will say, Daniel Donchenko looks like he's got a little something going for him at 170 pounds. I'm not, you know, this was, you know, he beat a guy who was eight and three, now eight and four. You know, how much do you really want to say? But I don't know, I like his attitude. He comes in shape, as you can see. He throws high intensity weapons. So far, I'm going to say this, so good for me on Donchenko.

I like what I've seen from him thus far. Don't move to middleweight or Sharers grabbing that fucking bony tail. But yeah. Long Island. Oh, and by the way, then you had the Gene Matsumoto fight against Bexat-Alma Khan. How did you score that one? Here, let's look at the judge of scorecards. Cardilage gave rounds two and three to Matsumoto. And then the only one that was different was Clemmon gave him round one.

I like Cardledge's card here. I thought he had to kind of not rally per se, but take control of the fight midway through and he got it done. Pretty entertaining fight. If I do say so myself, your reaction to this one if you saw it. yeah i'm gonna pretend i saw it and say i agree with you i love car's lusage's card it's great that's the one i scored it for long island what did you think of this fight ohma con definitely won this fight man he drops him in the first round clear 10 nine every judge had it for or no someone gave down one to matzumoto that's the bullshit that's that's insane yes i agree that's insane he gets like a

late takedown in that round it was not enough to fucking steal the round back you got dropped uh and then i thought like round three honestly round two and three were both close all three gave round two to John Matamoto, but I think there's an argument that also could have gone to AlmaCon. But either way, when they're reading the scorecards, they're like 29, 28 unanimous. I'm like, yeah, oh, macon. And then they say John Matsumoto. I was like, what the fuck? So this card got off to the weirdest start between that and the first fight of the night where we allegedly got a bite. And then we got like the weirdest stoppage, dude. And again, if you're watching that fight, that fight was probably going to end within 10 seconds. He's landing some big shots and guard there.

But at the same time, the moment the ref chose to get in was like the weird. weirdest point. He had like just pulled guard. And they're like, oh, no, that's it. And that ref was also not controlling the cage. It was just weird, dude, between those first two fights, but fucking, that was the Abdulyev, Nassio Mentor fight. Yeah, Ruzaboyev has the pick of the night, arguably, when he killed Andrei Pulyev in the Octagon, that was pretty sick. That belt and picture is Dan and I on a night out. Yeah, there you go. But, uh, no, dude, Al-Mabayev and Yaquiayev were definitely my MVP's in the night. I got to give a shout out to Khan awfully too.

I know we touched on it, but you know, Australia's own getting the sub there. That did cash one of my parley's had him by subs. Dude. And the Reyes fight, remember he walked out to this big ass dance number. Did you all see the dance number he came out to? Yes. I love God. Dude.

So he, so that got posted on social media like on like Colombian accounts and I went and looked at it. They're clowning him in Spanish too. Don't think that they're not. They all saw that and they're like, okay, this is great. but what happened to the fight you know what happened to the fight he got finished off i think in the first round in that fight if i'm not mistaken so um to your point fun fight what am i saying uh fun card fun card overall you got a lot of finishes some weirdness on there

a lot to kind of chew the fat on with that in mind let's now go to topic number three if we can which was the big boxing fight over the weekend there was a zupa boxing card last night which had its own kind of weirdness too by the way by the way did you watch that zoofa boxing card? I was there. Hold on the six. Huh? I was there.

You were there. How was it? Yeah, I mean, the main card had some great scraps. I have a pretty crazy take on boxing I've decided to come to.

I won't take too much time on, but I basically think boxing is not made for the modern attention span. In MMA, if you turn on the UFC to watch like a main event and you catch the prelims, but you don't know either. And this is for a casual

audience and you don't know them and the fight's kind of whatever your only investment is 15 minutes because there are so many titles and so many champions in boxing sometimes you can be watching two guys you don't know in a mid fight and it's 30 minutes long and that's really boring sometimes and maybe i'm coming across as an insane casual here but i think boxing is an interesting thing of trying to keep casuals hooked and so the zoo for boxing fights had some amazing but they're always towards the end, and I wonder how many people are still paying attention by that point, as well as the presentation being at the Chelsea and the Cosm Tolton, it's not the apex, but it's also kind of like the apex. It's still finding its identity. It looked good on camera.

It didn't look bad on camera. No, and it was, and people should clown on the apex and perhaps rightfully so and stuff, but because it's so contained, the atmosphere is always very good in person. It's all very loud, always very loud, comparatively to like an empty arena or whatever. But, yeah, I think Sufa boxing is finding its identity. And I think boxing might be going through a bit of an identity crisis too, unless, here's the transition, you fight, you make the decision to fight like boot sentence. Well, we'll talk about boots just one second. I just want to piggyback on your point because it's something I've been thinking about too.

Like having gone to, you know, I'm not a hardcore baseball fan. Like, if the nationals are playing, I'll watch. You know, I go to games a few times a year. But like, I don't, I couldn't name 10 people on the roster. You know, I can know a few of the highlights and that's it. Um, the way was interesting to me was like, like the last couple of years, I started going to games more because a buddy of mine could get really cheap tickets. And all the changes that they made to like the, like, if, like, if you were like me and

you just stopped paying attention to baseball for a long time and then you went and started watching it again, you know, they have a shot clock now on the, on the, on the, for the pitching. They have a shot clock now between innings. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of ways they kind of speak, dude, they've shaved like an hour or more off the game. And I know purists don't like it, but I got to. tell you, I think it's great. I think it's great. I think it juices the game so much. And I don't know

how you do that with boxing. What I was going to say is one of the interesting things that comes up, Oscar, is how the rules are different for women and men, which is true in tennis too, which is not exactly a sport. You can be like, oh, women aren't treated fair. You know, at least, you know, maybe you could make that argument, but certainly relative to boxing, you couldn't make that argument. I mean, they're going to be treated much better, you know, some of the biggest stars in the world, but for, you know, tennis or women and they remember they don't play five sets they only play three and in in in the u.s in boxing it's two minute rounds for up to 10 at most they don't do 12 rounds like one of the things i've seen people say i've literally seen the said is like hey if you want to speed the the women's game

up or if you want to make the women's game as dynamic as possible don't give them the men's rules give them the women's rules because they may have been put in place at a time you know when they were just trying to accommodate women because they didn't think as much of their abilities but But now it actually solves a different problem, which is the attention span problem, because it just forces action so quickly. What do you make of that argument? Yeah, I would actually agree. I've always said that women should stay on two minute rounds for that very reason.

It just keeps people engaged in a sport that's perhaps less followed. I don't know how you do it for boxing, because obviously, such a historical sport to make graphic changes like that. Let's say Zooka boxing came in and changed round times or round structure. the backlash would be so insane based on that. So I don't know how you do it, but I just think for the TikTok generation, which is obviously what boxing needs to grab, it's a much older demographic,

excuse my dog here. It's an older demographic than MMA. Joy, shut up. Sorry, boys. It's an older demographic than MMA. So let me get this dog out of this room. Yeah, it's fine. I'll set this up here as we take care of the dog.

Go euthanize him, please. radio experience. You end up how with weekend gold tickets to Lasso Montreal. Thomas Rhett Mumford and Sons. Here's my pride

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listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes and enter to win. Lassau, Montreal. Every day you listen, Another chance to win. All right. Let's talk about Boots. So, Jaron Ennis, Boots Ennis, defeats Xander Zayez,

via seventh round stoppage, technically the corner through the towel after the third knockdown. That's the first round, right? I think this is the first round. We're looking at here, Long Island, the first round knockdown? Yeah, it's all three knockdown. So that's the second. So that's round five right there. He hit him with that uppercut.

That was tremendous. And then the final one, here's round seven, right against the ropes. And he takes the knee. and then his corner eventually just throws it and then they call it. Does he count them here? I forget how exactly how this went. Oh yeah, then they wave it.

That's it. There you go. His corner throws the towel. So let me say this. I thought that this fight was electric. I thought Boots at certain times, I mean, through most of it looked incredible and at certain times looked really incredible.

However, credit to Zias hurts him pretty visibly in that third round. So let me ask the question in this way, because Boots is a guy, dude, I remember when Boots fought Chukadzan in D.C. under that, it was the Tank Davis-Hector Garcia card. You may not remember this. And some of the discussion around Boots at that time was like,

dude, Boots might be the new Roy Jones. You might be the new Roy Jones. And I think some of that has come back down to Earth, right? We're not in the same place we were back then. But, like, to me, this fight highlighted what I feel so strongly about Boots positively in terms of like, dude, his, I mean, some of his reflexes in getting out of the way of, punches some of his shot selection he can fight at range he can fight on the inside he's got big

power for this weight class he can punch and he can box he can move like it made showcased all of this at the same time he's been getting hit with big punches when he was fighting like c and b level guys i saw al bernstein making this point and he fought kind of like a b plus a minus guy in zayas who legitimately hurt him. So to me, Oscar, this fight kind of highlighted both what is incredible about Boots Anis, but maybe also what an A plus guy

might be able to take advantage of. What was your read ultimately on Boots once the fight was over? So I would agree with you that it showed the best and worst of Boots. I think what's really interesting is you saw in the pre-fight stuff, Eddie Hearn wanted this to be like Boots has a crazy performance.

he could maybe call out Crawford and try and get him out of retirement, stuff like that. But the moment he gets hit with that shot in the third round, that fight disappears. And you just, you know how Crawford views it as like this guy's making terrible ring IQ decisions and things like that. Back to my original point, however, if boots, because I feel like boots could have out box sounded pretty easily if he wanted to, but he wanted to go in there and get in a war and make a statement. That's why he's got 30 plus knockouts. And I actually am of the opinion, much to my point about the TikTok generation that my fucking dog interrupted, is that that you kind of need to file out this.

I feel like the people, the new fans who are going to appreciate the technicians like Shakur and Devin Haney are going to get fewer and further between the longer this goes on and the longer kids' attention spans get fucked up by TikTok, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I feel like boots may be in firefights that could risk a loss, but I do believe it's going to turn him into a bigger star than some of these other guys over time. As far as he's like, he's like a, he's like a high. high level Michael Chandler? No. No, no, no. That's not fair.

But I just think he's willing to get into engagements that perhaps, he's willing to get into engagements for entertainment value at the risk of getting caught that some of these other guys are willing to just coast for 12 rounds in a very dull affair. And I think that'll earn him, applaud it, as it rightfully should, in my opinion. I just think he's more a bit like, sorry, I hate, this is like a fucking Max Kellerman comparison who just like can't reference anything unless it happened before. 1970. But I feel like he's a bit like a Hagler, you know, he's very, very good,

but he's willing to get in there and fucking go for it if he wants to, you know, he's willing to pursue the finish rather than like, I made my money, I'm going to jab my way out of him. I guess is how I would look at him. It's weird though, right? Because I actually don't dislike the Hagler comparison, but like if you read about Hagler at the time,

he was, obviously he was respected for his physical durability and he was a good puncher. And people respected his skills. But they reserve the language of magic for like Ray Leonard or, you know, even even, um, hernes to a degree, you know, they kind of saw Hagler as a bit of a lunch pail guy. Whereas, I mean, that's, that's overstating it, but something like that. Whereas with boots, he's always been like, he's the ultimate slickster.

He's got, he can, you know, he can fight in either stance. You know what I mean? He can do. He can fight on the inside. He can find on the outside. And then this time it was just bite down on the mouthpiece and stand in front of the fucking guy. So it's kind of like a weird situation where like, I agree he is a lot like Hagler in that sense,

because Hagler was wildly underrated. But reputationalally, they're a little bit flipped, it seems to me. Yeah, I just like I said, this one feels like a weird one because it's almost, you almost see Boots make the decision, I'm getting into a fight right now. You know, he's easily, he's a much more skilled guy. But you see him, whether it's he wanted that finish really bad or he wanted to put on a show, whether he thought this was a big moment for him, but you saw him make the decision.

And so therefore, I almost am willing to give him a pass on getting caught in a third round because he could have fought in a different way and not have that happen. I suspect he will not make this sort of decision in the future. I think he will learn from this. I think people around him will tell him to learn from this. But I don't think it's bad to show every so often

that you're willing to just scrap it out. I think in terms of like fans and engagement, it's fun to show that. but his he's still this is something so he's being billed as like the new crawford he's going to become slowly but surely the number one pound for pound fights like this is what gets casuals believing that

oh that last time i saw him he was i don't know why i keep referencing casuals but last time i saw him he was in a great fight let's watch this one this is the sort of thing that adds to making him a star in boxing yeah well i mean boxing's got some problems attracting some you know like do all these fights on de zone too like you know i know that uh listen i'm not here to co-sign everything that dana white says far from it but when he talks about how de zone is basically a black hole you know where like things happen in there but then they just escape into it and no one

knows because unless you're in the black hole itself you don't really know what's there i mean i'm torturing this metaphor to a degree but you get my point like it's just can you build a star on de zone i don't know that you can you can put stars on zone. You could put stars on DeZone and have big nights. Can you, because dude, Boots is almost 40 fights in. He's not a star. You know what I mean? He's not a star. And PBC was kind of still building him. What you think he's a star? No, no, no, no. I was just to agree to your point, sorry for cutting up. I suspect you can have stars on DeZone. You can't build them on pay-per-view, you know, and DeZone puts these guys on pay-per-view really early in their career. And I think I saw,

Ariel did a thing with Eddie Hearn where he said to Eddie Hearn, everything on designs a fucking pay-per-view. And as we're getting to a point where everyone else is no longer doing pay-per-view, you become even increasingly more alienizing your fans because they think, why should I pay, why should I pay $25 for Tommy Fury versus Eddie Hall? You know, it's something I would watch, but I'm not paying for it. And that's becoming increasingly a problem, the more people like the UFC and everyone else goes to streaming services. And Eddie Hearn's response to that was, well, you need pay-per-view to essentially be able to pay these guys to do these fights. And while this is going to sound like a crazy anti-fighter thing, that would not suggest to me that this is good.

That would suggest to me these guys are asking for too much money. And the structure of boxing is changing that eventually pay-per-view is not going to work. And these guys won't get this money. And they're almost being overpaid for some of this stuff. I know that's like an anti-fighter thing to say. but pay-per-view is kind of dying and so people are going to have to adjust accordingly and I think that's the issue with the zone is they put everything on paper view to be able to pay these guys and people aren't likely to pay for someone they don't know they'll pay for someone they

do know if you wax connor versus max on pay-per-view people are paying $100 for it but people aren't paying people they don't recognize yet so it's a it's a chicken and egg situation you need to build them before you can start putting them on pay-per-view which means you're going to lose a lot of money until you can make it back. Yeah, I think that's totally true. Let's put up this graphic we have of the champs at 154. Obviously, Boots is going to be two of them now for WBA and WBO. I BF will be Josh Kelly.

I'm not sure who's way of looking for that fight. The Sebastian Fondora one is interesting, right, here at junior middleweight, because he's obviously surprisingly good. I thought Fondora after he lost to Brian Mendoza, I was like, oh, yeah, right, there's a limit to what he can do. And then, no, there's not. He comes back to look much better. but I got to say of all this fights,

the ones that intrigue me the most are none of them. The Fondora one would be interesting. I'd be cool to see the Fondora one. But if we're being honest, let's just admit it. Virgil Ortiz is the fight to make in this way class with boots. It was in the fight to make before, and they didn't make it. And the other interesting one is getting boots, I don't know what I'm saying that boots,

Bud Crawford out of retirement. What would be the Oscar Willis power rankings for Boots' next opponent? Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's funny. And this is a testament to Crawford's genius. Crawford's never been a bigger star as he walked away. You know, he beat Canello is the biggest and could command the most amount of money ever could and he walked, you know, he left. So I just don't believe he would ever bother with someone like boots.

It's a little bit, a little bit different. But like when John didn't want to fight Tom, you can say he was ducking him. But he was also making a calculated decision of risk versus reward. It's a bit different because Crawford's made the statement that he's retired. He's not pretending he's hanging around. So it's a bit different. But if you Crawford, why bother? Why would you bother risking it? Your legacy is already secured. You don't need to do anything else. The Virgil Ortiz fight, I think, is the one that will have the most fun and we'll have the best build up. And therefore, that's the one I think would be best for Boots' development

and career and star power. I believe Zayas has a rematch clause. I don't know if he's going to exercise it, but I believe he does. If I was Eddie Hearn, I'd probably pay him to not invoke that rematch clause just so you can keep boots momentum. Big fight, really fun fight. Let's not revisit it. Let's move on to the next bigger, a better thing. I would try to avoid maybe doing that rematch. The Fondora fight, I think, is also, is a, is not a bad alternative because if you want to, as Eddie Hearn has stated, present yourself as we are the traditional. Boxing is not broken. Promotion. We believe that boxing is amazing the way it is. Then you need to do a unification fight with Fondora as soon as possible to prove that.

that's what you can offer fans rather than sort of miscellaneous fights while everyone's negotiating forever and ever and ever. So I do Ortiz or Fondura, but I would try to avoid the rematch and I don't imagine Crawford's the reality. Did you see that reporter get sideways with Eddie Hearn? Did you see that video clip?

I did enjoy that. It's so funny because Eddie and Dana hate each other. It's like, you guys are fucking very similar, really. Totally. You guys pretty close. Like Eddie, the difference between Eddie in terms of their verbal style, is that Eddie will

he'll go back and forth with you a little more whereas Dana kind of tries to shut it down you know but when Eddie feels like shutting it down he's indistinguishable from Dana White like if they're the same guy it's really quite funny if you guys didn't see it basically a reporter I think it was an American reporter

was grilling Eddie on like how is this motherfucking boots guy 40 fights in basically and he's fought a bunch of scrub me not tonight like he wasn't saying that about Zias He's like in general, he's fought a bunch of nobody. He's like, how the fuck is that possible? And Eddie got defensive being like, oh, you know, we're, we got a plan to escalate.

And some of that's not Eddie's fault. Like, a lot of that has happened under PBC, you know, so like you can't, he can't be blamed for all of it. But in general, he took the question very poorly. And a lot of people were speculating that reporter. I don't know, shouts to whoever it was for pressing Eddie. I don't know his name. But people were speculating that that dude's, that's the last matchroom press pass he's going to get, which, you know, I don't know how. are they, is match room, are they shitty about credentials?

What do they do? I don't think so. To be honest with you, I've always felt that, that, I mean, I know the UFC banned a few people in the past and stuff like that. I'm not trying to negate that. I feel like these guys have all kind of got past it and they kind of don't care anymore. They might not credential you if they know ahead of time, you're going to be shitty. I do believe that.

I believe if they know like all your Twitter is is slating us, they probably won't credential you. But I don't think many people get decredential. anymore because I just don't think they give a shit, you know? I don't think anyone who cares anymore. It's just like there's too much stuff going on. Like, you've got to worry about next week. You've got to worry about Sean Ziddle saying something at a press conference. I guarantee he would get credentialed if he applied.

Maybe if I'm wrong, I apologize, Sean. But I just don't think that those stakes are as high anymore. And in fact, Eddie singled out that reporter because he says, oh, every time you do one of these press conferences, you try and ask challenging questions and they're shit. So he obviously recognized the guy. This is obviously something that happened before. But I've never seen Eddie tell someone to shut up at a press conference. I was like, oh, it's actually, yeah.

I'm a bit rude. But anyway. That's true. I know that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen that either. I've definitely seen him shout down people, but not, not that exactly. He's never usually a shouted guy. He's more of a, like, I find him very amusing, but he's very like a cutting wit, sarcasm kind of guy. Whereas Dane is like, what's the question?

Fuck you, asshole. But this one was sort of blending into the two, I thought. bro i don't know i don't know what's going on with dana's hearing but can you repeat the question must have been repeated that was like what was the most asked question at the presser for zupa boxing it was dana being like can you can you repeat the question his hearing has gone well i i think he's actually truly death in one ear right because he had the minare's thing and he had shit cut and stuff like that and then it came back and i don't think people know it like he had it came back and i think he had another time i think he's actually death in his right ear

So if they don't have like the speakers behind him for him to hear the mics, I think he's pretty fucked. And then he's he's obviously shit with accents. So I have to, even when I ask him questions, I slow it down and speak really loud like I'm speaking to, you know, I'm asking for directions in France or something. But yeah, he's, he's, people, people think that's a tactic for him to stall for time. And I think maybe on occasion it might be, as he's thinking of an answer. A lot of times he's fucking deaf a shit. Like he's actually deaf a shit. I've seen him. I spoke to him in person and he has to like angle his good ear at you.

Yeah. I have a friend who is deaf in one ear and he has to do that bit where like you have to sit on certain sides of him at restaurants. Because otherwise you can just be like whispering like, hey, you're a bitch and he won't hear anything. Which we've tried many times if I'm being honest. I'll just say this to wrap up on this topic. I think boots, and I'm not exaggerating, if it's promoted correctly, I mean obviously look, if you, they were talking this weekend, you know, that we might get in September, Ryan Garcia versus, um, was it, was it, is it the Tiofima Lopez fighter talking about making, right? No, Garcia, Connor Ben is the one that they're always thinking going on about.

Garcia Connor Ben, what am I saying? I'm so sorry. They're also talking Teo and, uh, Roli Romero, I saw. That was it. That was it. It was the Teo and then the Roli fight. The two guys who did like halfway decent, oh, well, Roli did really well on that, on that, on that, on that Times Square card. But, um, you know, they're talking about putting those fights in there and obviously you know garcia still has quite a bit of star power and that fight would be big and the the lopez fight would be big too but i'm just going to say this like i think i don't know how big a boots versus Ortiz fight would be but this to me feels like exactly the kind of fight that

boxing needs where you've got huge stakes big grudge you know two action fighters i mean you know of absolutely unquestionable quality in that sense different styles and more to the point just like giving like fans have expectations for X and the promoter delivers on X. I feel like so often, and you see this in MMA now a lot too where it's like the expectation is X and you get Y.

And that doesn't mean that Y doesn't deliver. Like for example, there was a lot of grumbling about the White House card because you didn't get the Islam and the Ilya fight. But in the end, you got something that I think most white fans would agree really deliver for the fights themselves. So it's not to say that it can't work Oscar,

but I just kind of feel like boxing has been real dead and getting promoters to deliver on highly anticipated and important action fights is exactly the kind of thing that, you know, turn the four portions around. I don't know, but get us out of this malaise that we've been in now for, I feel like the last year or so. I would completely agree. And I think as well, maybe just because it's more of a hardcore watch sport now, the casuals are kind of tuned out with the loss of the bigger names like Pacow, Mayweather and so on, but it feels like people are more in tune with the business of boxing. So they know what you're meant to be giving them. And so when you don't deliver that,

they hold it against you and the product. So yes, it's more important than ever, I think, to deliver on these fights, especially if you're going to bemoan super boxing, just throwing any old shit out there. You need to start delivering the alternative, which is like good, solid matchmaking sense fights. I also think, and this is complete speculation, I'm interested that Canello's fight got randomly postponed. And it does feel to me like it's been a while. Against Christian and Billy. Yeah, got postponed until October, but no spent date.

And it does seem to me like a little bit of a while since I've seen Read season pushing an event. And even the ring, I'm not sure the last time I saw that. I know there's been one more recently. But I am starting to wonder if maybe the Middle East are looking at this as a financial investment and thinking, fuck this. And perhaps we're going to start seeing more. more cutbacks. I know Canello's obviously going to earn a lot of money. It's very rare in boxing that you see a fight get postponed with no set date, never see it ever happen. So I'm curious

about that in Bili fight. And I just wonder if, okay, if you're a promoter and you're no longer dealing with the Middle East, you need to start showing fans that we didn't just have a mild resurgence because of the Middle East, we can still provide this without their money. And this is Boots versus Ortiz is a sort of fight. You can do without Turkey. And perhaps you need to do that to prove that like, hey, once these guys go, we're all fucked again, you know? Yeah, and just putting fights stateside again. Or, you know, if it needs to be,

it feels like, it feels like, I feel like a really underrated thing is a big Vegas fight night. I know that might just be because I'm here. But you're right, no. I just think like the MGM grand has like a sense of, you know, spectacle about it. It's got the history about it.

I have a theory that the reason Ussick is fucked off his belt. and wants to fight wilder, it's because he's never had a massive Vegas night. It's kind of like a real thing. And I don't really, like Canelo Crawford was the last one. And even that, because it was like the Allegiant just felt a little weird.

I think there's something really about those Vegas MGM Grand nights that sort of drive the sport into the mainstream in a way that other things don't. I don't know if that's just being biased or I'm too close to it. But I think something like, if you put boots or T's at the MGM grand, it will feel big. It will feel like, oh, a big Vegas fight night. Awesome.

Let's get the B roll of the fucking strip. You know, it just feels bigger. I'll say this too. I think one of the achievements of the fights in terms of the White House card, if I may, is that, you know, like, okay. So one of my working theories, especially in boxing is the more that they try to get out of how boxing works, you know, to your point, you've got to have a big Vegas fight night just works. Everything works. People know where to go. They know what they know what they, they know what to expect.

from Vegas. They like the association of Vegas to combat sports, whether it's MMA or whether it's boxing. It just works. It just works. People love that kind of system. And the more you get out of that, it's not to say you can't do it, but you take risks and things can go wrong every time you do. And to me, like the apex example of that, no pun intended, would not be the apex I'm saying, but that that time square card, right? That time square card, it just sucked. The fights suck. The crowd sucked, the atmosphere sucked because they were trying to remove too many of the pillars of the standard things that make boxing work. And to me, one of the achievements that the White House one was, think about how different that was from a traditional UFC event. All the other bells

and whistles, yes, but you have a shorter card, right? You've got a different kind of system working for everything. There's like a lot of ways that all, the weather, like the bugs. I mean, there's just a number of ways that could have gotten tripped up. And to me, one of the achievements, for that as a fight night was how well they were able to take something that kind of belongs in Vegas. So they do they vaguestified DC. You know what I mean? Like DC doesn't do shit like that, you know, and they put it here and then they still had a night of fights that people will remember for a very long time. I think that's one of the more underrated aspects, frankly, of that event. And so to your point, though, getting back to what is like bread and butter boxing,

particularly on the high end, you know, for big atmosphere, big stakes, big stars. I just feel like it's important to be back stateside, yes, but to your point as well, doing it in Vegas and doing it at Team Mobile or MGM or whatever, you know, the appropriate venue, let's say. I just think it's one of those things that promoters, they've been trying to think too far outside the box certain times, and there's a case to be made of just doing it correctly within side the box two. That's all I want to say. Just to finalize, if they get Garcia, if they get Garcia, versus Conner Ben across the line,

and it's in Vegas on September 12th or 13th, it'll be the biggest fight of the year. And I suspect half of that will be based on the location. That's my theory. Fair point. All right, let's get back to MMA if we can. Topic number four, we don't have to spend a ton of time on this one,

but I do think it's kind of interesting. PFL's San Diego card was on Saturday night on ESPN2. I don't know what the ratings are going to be. We'll have to see ultimately in the end. But, But, man, you know, A.J. McKee going from 45 to 55 and then 55 back to 45, taking on Salamot Isbalev, who looked really, really good up to this point, untested maybe against the higher end of this division. But, dude, he got a rude fucking awakening against A.J. McKee, who wins a unanimous decision, 3027 on all the scorecards. There was no 26, which I'm frankly surprised by Oscar, because the last 30 seconds of round number three, A. J. McKee is in Mount and just absolutely. pouring down elbows 12 to six ones I might add as well like from all angles and isful

i have had to wait under there to 30 seconds and you're getting bombed on from elbows from mount is a hell on earth i have to say welcome back to a j mackita 145 what did you make of his performance yeah i thought it's fantastic and much needed for both him and pfl uh j mckee still has one of the largest name recognitions that they have and you want those guys winning he's also a likable guy he's charismatic and it's nice to see he sort of hasn't aged out and he's now you know we're just going to see the decline it's good to see him not just do a performance but a very powerful one you know it shows that he's still at the top still has a very great potential could still be in great fights i thought it's fantastic great performance i had a conversation once with a j mckee and

you know it was like like what do you want out of your career and whatnot and he you know he was kind of flirting i mean like all fighters outside of ufc he was kind of flirting with the idea of of going inside of it and this was during the time when bellator was still around and he was just like i'm just going to go he kind of like settled on the idea where like i'm just going to go where the money is and i want to say something they put up the payouts which again we all know standard rules this is true for ufc it's true for pfl these may not be the final payouts although they're probably going to be you know roughly approximate and certainly for any one outside the main or co-main, they're going to be very, very accurate. But inside the main

and co-main, it's potentially not that case. But they weren't great. Like, they were not huge amounts of money. And people are killing them. And I just want to say this. The argument is not that, like, let me make a point here, if I may. PFL has never turned a profit a day in its life. Never turned to profit. They've never made money one time. This is a debt machine. Okay. Now, maybe they can turn that around and maybe they can get to a point where there's some stasis, that would be true. But like with Bellator gone and one on its last legs, and yes, I know there's some new entrance coming into the market. Hey, GFL, can't wait to see. But in all seriousness, there's just not a lot of people, there's not a lot of competitive pressure for wage growth, even outside of UFC,

because there's just not a lot of places where there's going to be a premium putting on them, the promoters to like buy for that dollar more to the point the question is not exactly what the ultimate amount of money is the question is what is that a percentage of relative to what they have so for example bellator we know was paying around 46 47 percent to the fighters versus you know what you get in other other places and i don't know what those numbers are for pfl i just want to say if the goal is to get as much money and you can do that in pfl do that but i think think what these payouts kind of indicate is I'm not taking the side that like oh these guys are all hypocrites because they don't they don't pay enough I don't know if they have much more to pay they

don't make money like they're there this is all debt financed or investor financed to the end degree but if I'm McKee and I'm thinking about where you can get the most money maybe it's maybe it's UFC Oscar maybe it's not but this kind of an event makes you want to like I don't know second guess that a little bit for for certain guys who at the top of the PFL like McKee. Yeah um I know this is a bit silly because obviously we'll forget about this in a couple of weeks. But if I was a company and I was paying people this low, I probably wouldn't hold events where I knew that pay was going to get disclosed by the commission. I'd probably go somewhere else where no one would ever find out.

I think what this shows is they are, as you said, they have to spend a lot more wisely than the UFC do. They have a lot less money, no profit. So I think what this shows is they are basically trying to spend money on bigger names. and that comes across as the much discussed middle class or the lower class here, if I guess you want to say it. You know, they are having to make those choices of do we pay everyone a bit more or do we pay certain people more and others less so.

I believe when AJ McKee was flirting with the UFC and talking about that pay, Bellator was probably in a better situation than PFL is right now. I don't know if that's true. I made you made that up. It just felt like they were more spoken about the zeitgeist of MMA. I just think PFL's not really considered any. more. So I think AJ McKee would easily make more money in the UFC at this point, just on his name value alone, and how much the UFC are making. It just seems that our number two spots has

never been further away than number one, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, that's a tough business, bro. You want to be the top pro league not named UFC? Yeah. I don't know about that. We do have this graphic. McKee says he wants the title next. I'm just going to be honest. I don't even know who the fucking 145 champ is a PFL. I was about, I'm so glad you said that, dude. I was like, damn, I'm going to have to lie my way through this. Long Island, who is the 145? Do have they crowned it yet?

Have they crowned the 45 champ? I think it's Timor Kisriev. Oh, Kisreyev. Okay. Well, AJ McKee can beat him. I can say that pretty confidently. Or at least, you know, I would favor McKee. Let's put it that way.

I favor McKee to win. Dude, he's talented. He's talented. He's got a lot going for him. He gave Paul Hughes a tough fight. You know what I mean? Like he can do shit. And to that point, you know, putting him in bigger fights and promoting him is going to be good for PFL. But I have to say, dude, to me, it's really not, that was not the most impressive win.

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Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Mother fucking Liz Carmush, bro. Liz Carmuch is what, 41, 42 years old. She takes on Vivian Arousho, who's coming out of the UFC, guillotines her in the second round. Dude, let me just say something about Liz Carmuch. What a fighter she is. And you know what I'm about to say, Oscar.

There are certain fighters who are like, you know, listen, the upside of Karmouche was never going to be as high as the potential upside for Rousey, right? Rousy was going to do bigger things in the sport with the time that she had. But when you see fighters who are consistently kind of this good as they age, it says a lot of different things about them. But the thing that it says to me, and I felt like Matt Brown was kind of in a similar kind of place, these are students of the game. these are people who never ever they don't stop training because they can't it's their life and it's the mentality that they have that they want to be students for as long as they possibly can be she has continued even though they're you know 42 she's not the same athlete she was at 24 but her skill set her maturity her understanding this comes from being a lifelong learner

of martial arts and i find it so fucking admirable seriously with my right hands loot to fucking Liz Karmouche. I am so, I got so many nice things to save. And by the way, just a great person too, which you cannot say very often in MMA. I love this one for her. Yeah, I do too. And honestly,

I don't think it's ever going to happen, unfortunately. But man, imagine if, you know, there could be a deal made and she could go compete on MVP MMA against a Gina or even full circle or Ronda, how big that would be. I think Liz is really sort of she's turning herself into a legend of the game.

to be honest, by just her longevity and the fact that she debuted in the O.C. With Ronda and stuff like that, I'd love to see her go back to the UFC at some point. I think she could do great stuff in that division at this point, you know, maybe Kayla and Amanda a bit above her. But like she's still a phenomenal competitor. I would like to see her get more of her flowers, to be honest, because anyone who can still win at this age, you know, we see so often these guys age out and it's sad because they still want to keep going.

God bless her for carrying on. And God bless for keep winning. And as you say, still evolving, still learning new tricks. I'd love to see her get like one massive opportunity before it was all said and done. Yeah. Yeah. She won that 2025 tournament as well, but I know what you mean like a big name. Well, bring me to this point.

So you would think, okay, well, they're going to make the Dakota, the Dakota ditch of a fight. But they danced around it on the broadcast. Do you think because of how good Karmouche has looked, they're a little concerned about how a fight between her and Dichiba would go when they need ditch of a star power to kind of be, you know, important for them. Yeah, it smells of MVP to me, Venom Page, smells of he does us more good by destroying cans and highlights than he does actually beating titles. You know, it kind of smells at that sort of matchmaking.

Like, hey, he's an attraction. He doesn't have to be good. He just needs to be an attraction. Now, I do think MVP obviously is good, but I just believe he served Bellator better by head king and rolling Pokemon balls of people that he did. getting in the title picture. And maybe they look at Dakota or the PFL's thing at Dakota in a similar way. Like, hey, it's better for us to just have a woman who's killing people and fucking some

fucking them up and stuff than it is having her getting decision by this commoche right now. You know, Long Island, Luke points out quite correctly, Dichiva is booked for July 31st. But they do, like, Long Island. Like, how do you not talk up? Yeah. How do you not talk up the possibility of this on the broadcast? Like, I mean, they did a little bit or it was alluded to a little bit. But like, you know, this is like an obvious pairing.

Yeah, but this was an obvious pairing, you know, three fights ago for Dakota. Like the fact that they haven't made it is ridiculous. I think the reason they weren't leading into it on the broadcast is out of respect to Denise Kielholz, who, you know, could possibly be the women's flyweight champion come July 31st, all right? So, you know, you don't want to go, you can't pull a boxing here and be like, once Ryan Garcia beats Roli Romero, then we'll do Ryan Garcia versus Devin Haney, too. That's true. But you can even say, you could be like, you know, she's got a date with. the top of this division or you know some kind of a way to introduce that um elsewhere on the card alexander shulbly uh rocks alfie davis i think in the second round but alfi davis hangs on he loses

a decision but he doesn't get stopped rob wilkinson was getting his ass kicked by abraham or abraham or ably one of your i think fellow brit there and then just succumbs to like basically clinch fighting on wilkinson's terms towards the end of the second round how this one though Hassan Magamad Sharapov, the brother of Zabit, hits an arm triangle choke, but it was actually, I saw a black ball, I really respect, say it's actually more of what they call a reverse dars,

where when they try to roll away from the head and arm triangle, that you kind of switch your grip a little bit on the support hand. So it ends up becoming almost like a reverse d'arse. He gets it over Joshua Weems in the second round, which was pretty interesting. I'm trying to see anything else on this car that I cared about. Oh, and then Kobe Fair, F-E-H-R, I think that's how you pronounce it. Kobe Fur, Kirby Fair.

This guy is widely considered to be one of Extreme Couture's best-kept secrets. He demolishes, granted, a guy who's making his pro debut in Daniel, I don't know how to pronounce his last thing, but he looked pretty good as well. He got, yeah, he got a, he got a, he got a, Dars joke there at the end of round, or two minutes into round one. So, fun little card there for PFL. I don't know what the numbers are going to be, but let's see,

because they didn't have a lot of competition, even though it was on ESPN 2. All right, last but not least, let's go to topic number five. Now, we already visited the conversation around Herb Dean and his performance in the Bullet Megamadov and Michelle Pereira fight. All right, we already, I don't want to relitigate. Should he have taken a point? Should he have not have taken a point?

The more interesting part to me is Alex Pereira just won't stop talking about it. So he called him a coward, literally, on social media. Look at, you can see the hair pulling here by Bullet Megamadov in round number one. And remember, so there's the two incidences of hair pulling, and he pokes the eyes of Michelle Peretta. And then Poetan is calling him a literal coward on social media. My question is as follows, because this is the thing I've been thinking about. Oscar, you, I think you've been watching the sport long enough for this.

If you were around when, and I'm not saying these are equivalent scenarios, that's not my point. But I was around when Dana White went on a fucking warped out against Steve Mazagati. And if you don't remember this, Mazagati. was getting active roles in refereeing for these UFC cards during that time. And at first the commission was like, you know, hey, you can say what you want. We're going to, you know, they weren't dismissive. But like, you know, they would kind of say like to the extent they would even comment on it. We're just going to kind of keep doing our thing.

And then eventually you start to notice that Mazagati is less and less on there and then not at all on the broadcast. And which is funny because if you watch other Vegas shows like tough enough, he does still referee. So he's actually still a referee with them, although he wears the footlocker bit to do like timekeeping for UFC events. He's like the official timekeeper or like the round timer. So the point I'm trying to make is Dana White's pressure campaign worked. It worked. It worked to get rid of Steve Mazagati.

Can Poetan do something like that is my first part of my question? And the second part of my question is, is that even a good thing? Is it a good thing? and we're not disputing that like dean's, this is not even a question of like, is Dean doing a good job? Is Dean doing a bad job? Is it a good idea for a high profile fighter to be able to create such a pressure campaign that, and I don't know if the commission will do something, but that you could see something like that. Is this a good thing for the sport? It's interesting because there's probably a middle ground here.

I don't like, you probably don't want, Dana White, in my opinion, respectfully, I think Dana really had a problem with Mazegati because Mazegati fucked up Brock Lesnar's debut against Frank Mear, right? That was the issue. Like he stopped them, the action when it really shouldn't have been stopped, made Brock stand up, got caught in the kneebar, kind of potentially fucked the UFC's big new investment. And I believe that's where Dana really did not like Mazegati. So you kind of want to say, well, he shouldn't be able to influence a referee's job based on

his personal irritation with what they did. That said, I really fucking hate the way the commission just backs their guy relentlessly, even though it's quite obvious that something bad's happened or judging or stuff like that. I don't like that the commission refuses to self reflect either. So there's a middle ground. I think that's more effective and probably better. In fact, there should just, if we're being honest, there should just be a third party that you can make a complaint to who then judges the footage and makes a recommendation to the commission that they should follow.

that's never happening there. In terms of your question about can Alex Pereira affected? I think, no, because Dana White's much more influential to the Vegas Commission or any commission than Alex Pereira is. I think also the fact that data doesn't make a song and dance about it now is because he's less invested

in that part of the business. I think Dana's area now is relationships with massive influential figures in the world rather than the nuts and bolts and caring about the sort of intricacies of judging and refereeing anymore. You just sort of see that in his his attitude towards it all. Pereira's campaign against Herb Dean, still confusing to me why he's mad at the referee,

but not the guy who fucking punched him in the back of the head. I still don't quite understand why Herbs, the Beal and End all of his ire. But it's well within a fighter's right. I think that the one thing I can say definitively, if a fighter feels uncomfortable with you refereeing their bout, there should there be absolutely no question that you cannot referee their bout. I think that is the standard, but that's the one thing I'm like super safer. but like Alex Perea should never have Herb Dean referees for ever again, ever, because he's not comfortable and because of everything he said. As far as can he cost Herb Dean work?

Clearly not. Herb Dean could watch a man die in there and it won't cost him any work. So I'll say this. You're right. And Floyd Mayweather was famous for this. Like if he didn't like a referee, they were not working his bout. Like he would just tell the commission no and they would agree. It's ultimately up to the commission.

But they tend to be somewhat responsive to that, you know, especially if it's like, oh, I just don't want this one guy. Okay, if you don't want the one guy, we'll just get a different guy. So that actually is a thing you can do. I'll say this. I actually don't think that I agree with you. I don't think Poetan can actually create enough of a pressure campaign to get Dean less work, at least not with UFC. What I will say is, though, like, in a world where the commission refuses to engage with the public,

in a world where the commission refuses to do anything other than circle the wagons, in a world where like, you know, again, the only time you can challenge a referee's decision or the judge's decisions is if there's literally like, in the case of the judges, let's say, an arithmetic error. Like they added up nine plus ten plus nine long. Of that, there's nothing you can really do to second guess, you know, often what can be quite visibly poor decisions. In a world where the athletes and maybe the promoters have stakes in similar kind of way, where there is no real, to your point, mechanism to challenge that. You're basically just on your own. What do they expect?

What do they expect? I actually don't think it's good for a fighter to be able to create a pressure campaign to get a referee removed from work. Again, I don't think it's going to work here. But we could imagine a scenario maybe in other cases where maybe it could, a smaller commission, a more popular fighter, one never knows. I actually don't think that's good for MMA or combat sports generally. I don't think it's good.

Do you have preference for a referee over the other? Fine. But you're like, you know, go on this like harassment campaign. I don't think that that's great. But I'm going to say if you leave the talent with nothing but to sit there and take all of your bad decisions, all of your questionable judgments over and over year after year where it's affecting people's money, it's affecting people's lives, it's affecting their health, it's affecting their vision. Like this is what you're going to get. Not just stuff like this, but the point you raised earlier where, yes, you get the. this harassment campaign going on

from where Poetan is calling Herb Dean a coward, but now the fighters are all openly being like, you can just cheat a little bit. This is what you're going to get. This is what you're going to get when you're so unresponsive to the public that they have no choice but to take up whatever means are available to them.

And media, what do you want to call it? Media, social media, harassment, this is it. This is all they have. So they're going to use those tools. I know that this is something I've been saying as long as I've been in combat sports, but how like ineffective and unresponsive the commissions are, Oscar, to, you know, pushback. The only time I've ever seen like blowback on a commission work was when they tried to ban Nick Diaz for five years for smoking marijuana. I'm sure you will call that. Like that was so insane that the governor got involved. You know what I mean? But like it's emblematic of like the way in which this works. So while I think it's regrettable that we're in a place where athletes, have to do this, dude, I mean, you're making them essentially create a black market of response because you won't create a regular market for addressing these concerns. I don't feel bad for

any of the referees or any of the judges who are in a system that protects them and protects themselves from public accountability at all costs. I just don't. And if you're the commission, you almost, we're getting into a little bit of hypotheticals here, you would almost want be more proactive because so Alex Pereira is not going to cost Herb Dean work. What he is going to do is create the narrative that Herb Dean's not good at his job anymore, which means every time Herb Dean is a referee, fans are going to be consciously or subconsciously looking out for mistakes, at which point every time Herb does a mistake, it amplifies the narrative that he's not good anymore, which therefore amplifies the pressure on the official referee, which is Herb. I don't

imagine more pressure and more scrutiny makes you better at refereeing. So you would almost want to be proactive as the commission to say, hey, we're investigating it, we're looking into it, just to sort of deflate the noise around it. So you're not having Herb's second-guess decisions, which we've seen him do. We've seen Herb lean in, stop a fight and then pull back. You'd rather him be confident and have momentum of being good decision-making skills than you would have a big, like, every time he's in the, it's not going to be long. It won't be long. It won't be long if this continues that when Bruce says, and the referee is Herb did the crowd booze. it won't be long.

In fact, I suspect it was fucking coming soon. And then how do you perform your job as a referee? Knowing that everyone's looking at you waiting for you to fuck up. You should, as the commission, should act,

they want to defend their guys. Defend him by saying, hey, we're just going to be, he's going to take a little break for a bit until the noise disappears, you know? Yeah, well,

I couldn't disagree. I just, yeah, but we shall see. I just want everyone to be clear, do not feel bad for the efficiency. Do not. Oh,

they have a hard job. I agree. But they make it harder on themselves by by by by by refusing to have any kind of public accountability so this is the result that you get all right that is our top five so now it is time for you guys to ask us questions we put up a thread on instagram every sunday you guys filled up with questions the producers pick them it's time for dms from dogs all right our first one comes to us from pha he dot leum would you rather be submitted by a twister or a Sulove's stretch

Oscar. I have some perspective on this one. Oh, well, I'll say Suleov stretch, but only by a margin. Yeah, I don't think, I don't want the Suluwef stretch because, you know, I'm as inflexible as a fucking board. I've been twistered by Ryan Hall. Zero out of 10. Do not recommend. It must have looked like you had a growth on your back. He's so small compared to you.

That must have looked very strange. I mean, I had been training maybe like, I don't know, like, not even a year, maybe. And he was maybe like a blue or, I think it was a purple belt at that point. It's not something like. It was a long time ago. And he got me in one. And I didn't even know what was happening to me because it was so fast because, you know, he's like a little fucking chipmunk, you know?

And, and then after it was over. Yeah. And then after it was over, he goes, you know, I took your soul, right? That's what happens when you get twisted. And I was like, uh, I guess so. I guess so. I'll take the Sula web stretch if I have to, but the twister was,

I've already been there, you know. All right. From, I can never pronounce this Armenian dog's name. From Mike, Herenchen, Herenchen, I'm so sorry,

he's corrected me numerous times and I can never get it right. How can boxing improve the pacing of their events? Between the Komen and the main of Boutzaius was about an hour and 15 minutes of largely filler. How much of that is like a dezone call versus like, they need to sell ads? So they got to stuff that shit in there.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know that for MVP, MMA on Netflix, they had to delay a lot of stuff from the finishes because they had set amount of ads at Netflix when it's run during the show. So I don't think it's, I don't think it's often the promoters call. That said, sometimes these things are just the standard and that's so, therefore, that's what they do. I, it's my biggest hate of any event is I'm watching it and you're telling me about what I could just be watching. I fucking cannot stand it. If I'm waiting for a fight to start, and then you're going to tell me what I'm about

to watch for 40 minutes, just fucking show me it. I hate it so much. I remember when Ussick fought Verhoeven, it was like an hour of fucking bullshit from cunts I don't care about. Just show me the fight. I hate it. So how you could fix that. Stop giving me punditry.

Give me punditry at the start of the night. I'll accept that. Not in between each fight. I've already paid for it. I'm already watching. Just show me. Dude, that's what people don't understand. People want punditry.

Like, you know, if you've ever worked in sports radio and the game is over, the first thing that fans, real hardcore fans want to do is they want to call into sports radio. They want to listen to sports radio. Like, there's a moment for punditry, like, or even beginning of the game. Here's our pregame preview. And then at the end of the game, you know, here's our post game wrap up. Like, this is a common thing.

It's like a great window. But putting it in the. middle of the fucking game or in the middle of the card, nobody wants that shit. Is there anything more soul destroying than the co-main event finishes? You cut to the desk. They've got some retired guy up there saying he could still win. They've got like just the same sort of formula every time. And then they go on for 30 minutes.

You go, well, fuck, we must be getting close. And then they go, and here's a look in the locker room. And they haven't even got their gloves on yet. Is there anything more so destroying that that? It sucks. As. Dude, you know you're like a completely abused combat sports fan when the co-main event ends. And let's say it ends quickly, like, you know, within five, six rounds because it's like a brutal knockout.

And a dumb ass would be like, oh, wow, the co-main event ended early. I guess we're going to get an early main event. No, bitch. You're about to wait. You're about to wait. Every time that happens, I'm always like, oh, great ending. Oh, God. It's going to be an hour.

you know. I know. And I'm just thinking of the journey home. I'm in the arena. I can't eat another hot dog. I'm on a calorie deficit. This is kidding me. It's yeah. You like it. It's us. All right. From, uh,

I hate it. I hate it. From Jay Bebbs 300. So you got boots, Fondora spelled wrong, Virgil and Josh Kelly. I have Fondora over the field due to his physical advantages being too unfair thoughts. We've kind of been over this, but no. Oh, I think Virgil and Boots can beat Fondora.

Yeah, I think Boots beats them all. I don't, I think unless Boots makes it difficult for himself like he did last, the other night, I think he does it fairly easily. Yes. Boots is, I mean, Virgil's going to get hit, but he's got a style kind of predicated on it. Whereas Boots has more of a slickster style and he can take a big punch, but I don't know how good that is for him. You know what I mean?

All right, from It's Not Cage Fighting. The past two years, I've seen a number of lightweight unks turning back the division's new guard. Is this because of how. good the old generation is or is there a lack of new elite talent coming through oscar i think um it's because of how good they are and the thing is because they are all competing at the same time you somewhat underestimate the overall level of each different athlete so i think because you know gaichi lost to charles you don't think of gauchy as good as charles but actually it would seem to me if you see every time a younger guy steps up benoit saint denier against dustin for ziv against against against against

Gachy, they kind of get handled. And I suspect that's because we're actually seeing like four or five of the best of all time across any division. I suspect that, like, I believe because they're all fighting each other, you don't really realize. But actually, Olivera, Porey, Gachy, Holloway, we could be looking at a four kings thing and not even realizing it. And dude, like, you know, Gachi and even going back to Chandler and Eddie Alvarez, like,

for folks who missed it, you know, I lived through. the era of when the 205 division was the division of kings so you know you had banderlea vitor rampage erona shogun tito chuck randy and i could go on down the list these these were the fucking kings of all of m m ms it was the most important division and look at it now partly yes it's a question of like decline and changes in the sport but the other part too is like dude m m ms goes through seasons it goes up it goes down and then divisions inside of it go through seasons based on how it's changing. And so, you know, having lived through a division that had a glory years and then we're

just not there anymore, people think that like, oh, there's just always going to be replenishment. And there might be, again, sometimes it, like, Walter Waite is looking pretty good for the, it was anyway. It still is, I think, to an extent looking pretty good. But like, dude, it being not, not these divisions don't last forever. Like, they have moments where there's this punctuated growth and this amazing influx of talent. And then when that's gone, that's just gone.

and getting kind of used to that is just part of the story, I think. Last but not least, Oscar, from Train How You Fight 979, after a classic between Boots and Zias and boxing and then Teporia Gachi a couple of weeks back, which fighters in combat sports would you genuinely on your own pay money to watch live? Out of these four, or in general? And just whoever? I mean, Gaiji is literally possibly one. the most entertaining men to ever compete. I think Porre was in his prime as well, or generally in his

career. You know, I think to people, I always remember the Soroni thing. Maybe Seroni's a bad example, but Serrani used to say, I want to be the guy that when you see his name on paper, you know you're getting a certain style and quality of fight. Maybe Soroni lost that a little bit. But I think Gagee is probably as sound an investment with your money as you could make, because even if he loses, it's going to be a scrap and if he wins it's usually a highlight attached to it so i think gaitie is probably as solid a choice as you could make in any combat sport um what the best fight i've ever seen in person was uh boots or crawford spence crawford spence because of the anticipation and just how incredible i mean that's not a back-and-forth fights i don't mean like a war

but i mean like a virtuoso performance you know what fighter would you pay to see obviously I was working with Showtime I didn't pay but like that to me I've never seen somebody more in the zone in combat sports with my own eyes than I did Bud Crawford that night but you know I'm spoiled dude I saw John Jones in his prime you know what I mean like um I saw I don't know Anderson Silva in his prime I saw St. Pierre in his prime like Josialdo in his prime like I saw a bunch of the fucking greats I'm a little bit spoiled in that regard I'm trying to think you know who I would pay money I mean I would pay like if boots or I'm was fighting Virgil Ortiz, I paid money for that. I paid money for that. Yeah, I think the individuals about, it's now about... Tuporia's comeback. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Tuporia's comeback.

Teporia versus just any old guy or whatever. I could imagine he fought in boxing and had a little save or whatever. But like, Tuporia's comeback for me is going to be, I mean, for everyone. It's going to be must-see TV. Like, I'd pay for that too. All right. That is our top five. That's our top five and our DMs from Donks.

Now it's time for you guys to roast us or make us laugh. You send them into morning combat at gmail.com. This is a little segment we call fan submissions. You've got mail. Viewer. All right. We've got six from Mike. I don't know how this is going to go.

Let's see. Doing crack. Doing the crack. This weekend I'll be doing the crack. Yeah, Chuck Mendenhall likes doing that crack. All right. Pretty good. Next.

Jed Mishu on. Oh, Afro man. Afro man was sat in court like this, bro. I mean, the balls on this guy. He's got balls the size of hippity hops. Unbelievable. All right. LTGP,

LT on MK. So what? Is the idea I'm buttoned up on LTGP and then I'm just a complete John Daly degenerate on MK? Is that the idea? Yeah, I feel like you always have your blazer on on LTGP, MK, Yeah, I do.

Yeah, super washed ads. There we go. Dude, fucking John Daly. I don't like drinking water. Okay. Yeah. All right. Next.

Days without being quite kids. I do have my verbal text, bro. I do have them. All right. Long Island Luke producing a half kid. These are pretty good. These are pretty. I was a little worried because sometimes it's like, you know,

Steve has 17 memes. I'm like, all right. How good. these be these are pretty good and then mk m m m a m a analysis dick jokes yeah dicks well done dicks everywhere dicks all right we got one from no chill nineteen eighty five it says good morning donks i know it's three weeks late but i had to get this one made for my boy long island have a great weekend and mk all day much love long i'll look at the bachelor party but the parley didn't hit is that actually you oh it's you he's one in the morning combat shirt yeah that's like a simpson's version

to me, which is pretty dope. But yeah, I was at my buddy's bachelor party like a few weeks back. So that's the reference. I'd say this is more your girlfriend trying to get your attention. No, I mean, you know, I'm not closing my eyes for that. Okay, fair enough. I think you have your headfights in still. Yeah. Yeah. Adelism of the strip club. All right. Shane has one meme. He says, nothing much to say. Just wanted to share a dope

meme and say, thanks for everything. By the way, Gary versus Islam over four and a half rounds when the prop bets, when the prop bets are enabled. It says L.T. Long Island, when is your girlfriend's birthday? He says, uh, LT. Can you name both active Mongolian, five? And it just interrupts me with. Pronounce these names, Long Island. Sorry, I couldn't get my mic off. Niam Jargul Tremendembral and Erichi Lang. Duh. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. I'll give him partial credit. I apparently am so racist. I just thought that guy had randomly smashed his keyboard to create fake names. I didn't realize those are actually people. Tendomendam Beryl is actually a great follow on Instagram.

He takes crazy photos with like eagles and shit. Go check it out. That's awesome. All right. From Robert, no description, just one mean. Luke Thomas versus Burt Kreischer.

August 22nd. Do you like Burt Kreischer? If so, you're fired. Yeah, no, dude. Fucking sucks ass and fucking. I cannot believe.

I honestly do. Like, of all the people, like I just listen I'm not a comedian I don't know funny I just know what I like okay so you know I leave that to the pros but I watch other pros do comedy and it feels like they're a lot better I don't you know what I mean like I don't I just don't get it dude I just think there's I just think it's very rare I mean it's very rare that a comedian can make so much money and still be relatable I think that's just a generic problem they all run into eventually I don't need him to be relatable I need him to be do Richard Pryor talking about his hair being set on fire? because he was smoking fucking crack or meth. Like, that's what I want to hear. You know what I mean? I don't want to hear, I'm an every man.

No, you're fucking not, you know. Less beer for Burt, more crack. I got it. Okay. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Let's get him on crack. All right.

From Robert, he says, major announcement. Dear Luke, Chuck and Bong Island, we officially got our first MK bingo today, Friday, June 26th. Oh, wow. I hope I'm the first one to send this in. So, we'll recall someone made a bingo card. This, I mean, truly the MK audience knows what a fraud I am. more than any other group alive.

So which one's got through Long Island? Because some of them are scratched out. I can't quite see. With that in mind. Okay. From the capital of Los Dados Unitos. Okay. The middle one is just like a freebie.

Yep. Old washed joke, I want to say it says. I can't read that one either. Okay. And then teases Long Island Luke about hating his girlfriend. What's the one at the top? Hold on. Over emphasis on Colombian pronunciation.

Yes, yes. Dude, is this not, I mean, have you ever seen your life undressed in such a fucking profound way in front of you? Well, it's just like why keep going on, you know? You just, you look how I generate this show. Bro, you look at this and you're like, your life is satire. I mean, that is the conclusion that I draw. I'm just so happy that Franklin played along because I was saying I really want to know if this ever hits. And I assume he's been playing every episode since.

we dropped it and it finally hit so let's go shout out to yeah i mean dude this is this is so biting and incisive a criticism i don't even have a response i don't even have a response that's a fucking great one i know dude put it up one more time like the ones that he didn't hit get sanctimonious land some of these are okay land of wind and ghosts okay fine trash is tkio ufs use a monopoly let's turn our attention to i did that trash is heavyweight but doesn't comment on the state of women's m ms see that's not true actually we've comment on the state of women's MMA a lot.

If there is one of these that's a little wrong, that one is. Let's see. The hatred of women onto the audience. Unreal. Let's see.

Mensions being in the Marines. I'm really one happy of your hosting duo. Not sure how to pronounce this name. I get that one a lot. Joseph A. Bank. Yep.

Add reads for, okay, I mean, I'll leave that one alone. Your mileage may vary and then insult someone for liking something. He does it. Dude, this is what I mean.

You get on camera. camera long enough and you bear your soul long enough people will just figure out you're a fucking fraud like that is what has happened to me uh all right oscar great job today what do you got going on for the week what should folks know about i have a new episode of my podcast foes to bros another mma podcast coming out tomorrow i don't remember what time but like oh no no it's got to go out seven a m eastern i think no 11 a m eastern like i just said uh yeah so you know i'm on top of it, boys. It's good. But yeah, Ben Davis doing great job trying to corral me into being a more professional. It's hard work. And then I go to California to meet with the team of Mr. McGregor as we go into White Week.

Why California? He's training there. This is, just so you know, this is the organization that this enterprise has. I said, right, booking an Airbnb. What's the gym? There's two. What's the address of both of them? I don't know, find one in the middle.

That never tells me the address. Hell. It's good. Yeah, bro. Yeah, that is, that sounds about right. Long Island, what you got going on this week? Not much, because there's no fights. So I have new prop quiz on Friday, and that's about it.

You know, I hope everyone has a good Fourth of July. Well, we'll talk to you on Friday, I guess. So I'll say that. I'll save that for that. Friday's the third. So, yeah. Yeah, so nothing this week, really. Yeah, we'll preview that then.

All right. And I'm going to be on vacation. So I'll be doing some work. some not. So it's half a vacation, I guess, I suppose. As a reminder, best meme from fan subs all month gets a free signed poster. You can keep sending those in morning combat at gmail.com. Of course, we have the merch morningcombat.combat. Dot shop. We don't have to go through the whole rotation. As you can see on the left, the Genesis design in the middle of the biker design, on the right, the crown design. These are only available today and tomorrow. And then of course,

same thing for these for the basketball west and the basketball east. appreciate everyone tuning in today. Thank you to Oscar Willis. Thank you to Long Island, Luke, and everyone involved with the show. We'll talk to you guys on Friday, and until then, may all of your gains be loyal. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.