MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Cuts Heavyweight Jailton Almeida | Nate Diaz Comeback? | Dana Promises Record White House Event

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Luke Thomas is joined by Oscar Willis on a Friday edition of Morning Kombat. Former UFC heavyweight Jailton Almeida was released from the organization. Almeida recently lost against Rizvan Kuniev, which had to have played a role in his dismissal given how boring the fight was. Almeida was ranked 8th at the time of his release. Is a fighter like this - highly-ranked but lopsided in skills and often boring - being cut good or bad for a division in need? Nate Diaz put out a recent social media message that seemed to indicate perhaps an imminent return to the Octagon. What is the appetite from fans for a Diaz return? And Dana White recently told BC that the UFC White House event will be the organization's most-watched card ever.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Revely, revely, d'alks. Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. I'm Luke Thomas. This is Morning Kombat.

Whether your looks maxing, jester maxing, and not trying to get frame-mogged by an ASU frat leader, we've got the show for you. Welcome, everyone. It's time for Morning Kombat here on the... 13th day of February, 26. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm merely one half of your host and duo. I join you for the capital of the status news right here in Washington, D.C.

This time with my friend who I'm not sure how well slept he is, and I don't know if he has any STDs, but he's here. It's Oscar Willis. What's up, Oscar? How are you, bud? I'm good. The second half of that question, I don't want to answer. The first half of that question, you know, there's been a little bit of sleep. You know, 45 minutes is enough for a mid-30s guy, right?

All right, let's talk to you. Since the last time we saw you, you went, You've been where? Where have you been the last like three weeks? So I went to Sydney and then from Sydney I went to Auckland and I got back to Vegas two days ago. But you also went to London for that for the funeral. Yeah, yeah.

So I flew to London for a day, which was great. Wild funeral. The priest showed up halfway through drunk, which was something I've never seen before in my life. And then I flew back to Vegas, did the card with Gaichi and Paddy and then flew straight. left the arena, had a few hours of sleep, left straight to Sydney, then to Auckland, then back. So it's been a long three weeks, to be honest. I'm actually quite grateful for the little break we have here.

What's a better city? Sydney or Auckland? Sydney. It's fuck all to do in Auckland. No, Auckland's very nice, but it's much more chill. Sydney's like very beautiful, lots of stuff going on. Yeah, I actually really like Sydney. I think I'll retire there, maybe.

My wife compared Sydney to Toronto. She thought it was a little boring. I mean, it's all It depends if you're into pub cralls or not Then it's great Yeah Well welcome This is Oscar

Yeah, this is Oscar Willis from the MacLap We appreciate you guys joining us A lot to get to today I know there's no big events this weekend There's no UFC, there's no PFL There is Valentine's Oscar, do you have any big Valentine's Day plans Other than just touching yourself inappropriately at the bus stop

Just jerking off in the mirror as usual You know, it's my favorite one Neuse around my neck what are you gonna what do you what do you do you do in Las Vegas on a Saturday night where there is genuinely no work like you couldn't even do work if you wanted just find the diviest dirtiest bar and sit in there for eight hours pretty much yeah it's really I'm gonna try this weekend to be good and be healthy so we'll see all right very good well we're happy to have you here thank you for joining us we're gonna talk about what is going on with the recent cuts we've seen

mostly in the heavyweight division, although not exclusive to them. We'll talk about that. By the way, there was a, I'm going to add lip here in just a minute. There was a Pete C. Carroll article, I don't know if you saw it this morning, Oscar. He went with Tom Aspinall when Tom Aspinall went to the hospital to get double eye surgery. Pete C. Carroll was there and reported on it. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Plus, MVP thinks the UFC might be mad at him.

Joaquin Buckley and then Bud Crawford? going back and forth in the media. We have a lot to get to today. So here's what you're going to do. First of all, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. On top of that, follow us on all the social ways you can get the show, whether that is TikTok, whether that is X, whether that is IG or YouTube. And of course, there's Oscar as well, Oscar S. Willis on the various platforms. Let's remind folks, we've got some new merch. You can go to morningcombat.combat. You can see the Army of Dawkinsness that is there. And by the way, average Joe was telling me, and I've shared it on IG.

If you look at the chainsaw, it's got some Easter eggs sitting inside of the blade of the chainsaw. So you can check that out. Also, we have the posters. These will only last until February 28th at 1159 p.m. Or while supplies last.

Let's bring in the third member here of the show. It's the great defender of Sydney, Australia. He has no accent. I'm not sure he's even been to Sydney, but it's Long Island, Luke. I have been to Sydney multiple times, and I've been to Toronto multiple times. They are incomparable.

I don't know how you would compare those two. I've never been to Sydney. I'm only repeating what I heard. Why did you guys do Sydney multiple times? I'm fucking half Australian, bro. I've been to Australia like five times. He's an Australian. He's an Australian citizen.

His dad is Australian. Yeah. Come on. I apologize. Sorry for sending you over there on the bites. You know, you've never heard of my horned up Aussie dad. I mean, do you even watch this show? It's like, my goodness.

No, but Sydney to me is beautiful, dude. It's like, I always Australians are probably going to hate this but I always compare Melbourne to like New York beautiful great city Sydney's like Cali it's like oh

we're on the beach we got like a lot going on like this is the vibes like I feel like that's why I like Sydney also Matt Snyder in our private chat saying Sydney is nothing like Toronto he went on his honeymoon in Sydney so he would know listen I can only repeat what my wife tells me I've never been to Toronto but I've never been to I've never been to Sydney but she liked it she was just like

It's kind of quiet. And I was like, okay, all right. Take that for what it is worth. What else do we have to going on? Oh, you can reach the show Morning Combat at GMO.com. Oh, Long Island, Luke, come back one more time if you can. Tell them the game we're going to play today. Oh, so we got a game.

It's called Combat Couples. It's a little Valentine's Day special. I'm going to show the guys couples. They're going to answer questions based on the couples. And whether they get them right or wrong, we're going to kind of intervene some, like, have you seen this shit kind of clips, with each one. So it should be a fun game. It's, it's themed around the holiday. It's also Friday to 13th today, which I didn't realize until, uh, oh my God. Yes, it is. You're so right. Let's get spooky with it.

Hold on. We'll come back and we're doing fan subs as well, correct? Yeah, fan subs are backed and a reminder to everyone. Please keep sending fan subs in. Memes, especially. We want to do like a funniest meme contest or something, but either way, keep sending them in. Also, you know, I got to use this opportunity. New prop quiz dropping after this show here. It's Ben the Bain taking on Sean Sheehan. Sean Sheehan making his pop quiz debut. So they check that out. All right. Very good. Very good at that, I reckon. Yeah. Yeah, he seems to be dialed in on that kind of stuff. So I guess we'll see how that goes. All right. Oscar, anything else before we get started here? No, I just laughed at a combat couples because in MMA that just sounds like domestic violence. But, you know, I'm looking forward to the game

anyway. We'll try to, we'll try to stay away from that component of it. All right. Let's get to it now. Topic number one. So earlier this week, it was reported and revealed and then confirmed that Gilethin Almeida, one time light heavyweight, then a heavyweight, and had promised to go back down, in fact, light heavyweight following his most recent fight where he lost to Rizvon Kuneev. He was cut. He was released from the organization. Almeida, as I mentioned, recently lost to Kuneev, which I think had to have played a role in his dismissal Oscar, given how boring the fight was sort of universally received as. Now, he was ranked eighth at the time of his release. And again, I want to say it one more time. He had before the release, his manager had kind of

talked to the media and indicated he was going to go back down to light heavyweight. But for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to treat him like a heavyweight. Nevertheless, the question is this. I can agree. Oscar, that that fight was very boring and really not up to par for somebody who was supposed to be ranked eighth in the division. When they cut him, there was a part of me that was certainly in no way surprised. But the question is this, is a fighter like this, like Jalton Almeida, I highly ranked but very, very lopsided in skills and now more occasionally quite boring, is cutting a guy like that good or bad for that division. Again, treating him as a heavyweight. Well, so this one's

especially, that heavyweight itself is a special case, right? If we're talking about cutting boring fighters, that just goes back to the old age question of, is this a sport or is it entertainment and the blurry lines that MMA often finds itself in? For Almeida, at heavyweight, which will treat him as, as you said for this convoy, it is an interesting one, right? Because that division is so starved of talents that you would assume they would try and keep anyone with any semblance of a name. The only reason I can assume they didn't want to keep a heavyweight is basically they're worried he would beat other guys that they would prefer to have on the

wrestler. You know, like they don't want to put him against, I mean, tied to his last is maybe a bad example right now, but people that do put on fun fights, they don't want this guy to go in there and fucking shit. Like, you know, he laid on Derek Lewis for 25 minutes. I don't think they love that either. So I think that's probably why I did hear they were going to give him another fight. And then basically I think it sounds like Dana was just like absolutely not.

he sucks get him out of it um so it's an interesting one at heavyweight in terms of do we get rid of boring fighters and stuff like that again curious if paramount that you know they spend a lot of money do they get a say on like we don't want boring like lay and pray decisions or clinch work and stuff like that curious if we're going to start seeing a trend towards we value entertainment over necessarily rankings and who's the best in the world um so i wonder if we're in a period of transition but I don't hate it necessarily because I have to sit there and watch these and I don't love watching our made a fight.

It's very, very tedious. I have mixed feelings because on the one hand, when they cut him, I was kind of like, okay, you know what I mean? Like I didn't, I mean, when you saw it,

you might have been shocked in the sense that, hey, they cut a guy within the top 10, who yes, was coming up of a loss, but we have reporting to this effect. Put it up here on the screen if you can, Long Island. And this is from Guillermo Cruz over at MMA fighting. One bit of info here, he writes, Jalton Al-Meda had one fight left on his deal with the UFC,

but signed a new contract when he agreed to fight Kuniev on short notice last week. And you might say, oh, again, the guy's coming in on short notice, and sure he didn't have this best performance, but he is ranked eighth, should they really have cut him? It's one of these lessons that I think everybody has to learn. If you fill in on short notice and you're either really, really boring, and this was one of those kinds of fights where he didn't even want to be. be there or B, you miss weight. The fact that you're coming in on short notice is not going

to absolve you from blame with UFC brass. It's just not. I think a lot of these guys end up taking short notice contests and thinking, well, I'm doing them a favor. I'm going to half ass it one way or the other, either in the fight itself or in the weight cutting process. And that just doesn't work. It's a bit of an aside, but I want to point it out. But I'll tell you this much. So to be honest, maybe the new contract kind of fucked him, right? If you got a big pay rise, maybe they're just like, well, no, we don't want to pay you at this rate moving forward after that performance. Well, here's what I was going to say, which is, I think that could certainly play a role. People keep saying, well, you know, he was ranked eighth and how could you cut a guy inside the top 10?

And obviously, it's an important question to ask. But at the same time, he wasn't just boring. It looked to me like he was regressing. Like, if you look at the guy who was collecting necks in circa 2022, what would you point to as evidence that in three years or even four years, depending a little bit of the math, that he's gotten better, like four years later, wow, look at how much he's turned a corner. In fact, it looks like he's gotten actually worse at it.

And to what extent that would be repaired by a drop down to 205 to me is not even necessarily clear. I think part of what they had seen, Oscar, was not just that, okay, this fight certainly was boring and did not deliver. but it's like, dude, where even is this guy going? It looks to me like, I mean, I find Josh Hokit's personality just unbearable, but at a bare minimum, you can see he's getting better fight over fight. He certainly has a lot of ability athletically.

I'm just talking about the guy who competes, forget everything else for just a moment. I can see why they would have some enthusiasm, and they might even like the antics too, but certainly as a competitor, you can see that there's optimism for the future. I think if the UFC looks at you and you've been there for years and your most recent stuff is consistently some of your worst stuff, even when you're taking on competition, that's not necessarily the best, that is absolutely going to catch their attention and it's going to get you in trouble with them. Yeah, I also think as well, you know, certain fighters gain narratives around them, right? And with Almeida, remember Daniel Cormier said, I think on a way in show, he was like, I could, come back and fight Almada right now because I wouldn't get hurt. So there's a narrative around this guy about him being kind of a cuddle monster anyway. So I don't think that helps either. I think

when, you know, the brass or on Instagram and they see this, then it gets in their head and then they watch you perform and they sort of buy that narrative. I don't think that helps either. And to your point about Hocket and stuff like that, it's the reason why you cut these guys is because they're not exciting and they're just good enough to beat guys you'd rather they didn't, you know, like I said earlier. So I think you kind of have to get rid of these grinding monsters because, let's say you have a striker who's not that well polished in that area. And the next thing, you know, he loses to Armada and then everyone thinks he's shit too. So I think in their mind, it's like, yes, it takes a name out of the division, but it also gives the division some sort of

movement. It gives it some fluidity rather than having this guy who's a gatekeeper, but not even an exciting gatekeeper. He's not like a seroni. He's just a roadblock for certain people. So I can see why they did it. Yeah, certainly for a division, he can gum up the works because the upside is not, the true upside, like championship upside is not there, but he can absolutely, he can Neil Magny, everyone below him to a degree. But the point you raised earlier, I think is also correct, that heavyweight appears to be a special case. Here they cut Almeida at eight, and they also cut Boudet, I don't think he was ever ranked, or maybe he was ranked quite low, like somewhere in the teens, not certainly not within the top 10, and they let him go, he had no losses within the U.S.

of C itself. I want to, so I want to preface something because I'd love to get your opinion on this, Oscar. I was curious about something. On Monday's M.K., Chuck Mindenhall and I were talking about the state of heavyweight division and we're like, it's never been worse. After that, I began to think to myself and I began to say, what was my favorite, what were I should say, my heavy, my favorite heavy weight moments from 2025? What was my favorite knockout? What was my favorite stuff? And I honestly couldn't hardly think of anything. So I began to go through the fights. And then I begin to look at something. And I looked and I noticed that if you take the year 2025, there was about 36 to 37 total heavyweight fights, nearly 60% of them. So the vast majority

aired on the prelim cards. Just one headlined a fight night card and I think just one headlined a main event. I thought to myself, I don't remember it being like that back in the day. And in fact, on Monday's episode, Chuck had brought up 2012, which had that UFC 146, I believe, that all heavyweight main card. Well, a buddy of mine, I crunched the numbers from 2012, so ready for this? So nearly 60% of heavyweight fights err on the prelims now. In 2012, it was about 22, 23, or maybe closer to 25%. Like we've gone from a quarter of heavyweight fights landing on the prelims to now the majority of them. More to the point, they had 13 numbered events then in 2012. Nine of them featured heavyweight fights. There were

four main events on fight nights, including two back to back, right? Two back to back fight nights that had heavyweight main event, heavyweight main event for co-main. You had, I think, just two main events and then one co-main in, in 2025. So like the argument I'm trying to make is you don't have to believe boomers like me being like, oh, the division's as good as it once is. The UFC itself is showing you from a priority standpoint. They don't even consider it.

So a friend of mine actually crunch the numbers, Oscar, take a look at this. all the way before 2012 from 2010, all the way up to 2025. Now, you do get something of an anomalous year in 2017. However, in general, what you can see is, pardon me, that the heavyweight division, you can look at the total fights, how many aired on the main card, how many ended up on the prelims, in general have been the centerpiece of their plans for quite some time.

But from 2018 on down, it's been basically consistently declining. And the last two years, by the first two back-to-back years that have ever happened, where the vast majority of heavyweight fights aired on the prelim cards. And I've got to say, well, I do think 2017 is somewhat anomalous. It feels to me, like in 2024 and 2025, the UFC itself took a look at what they had.

And they're like, we're just going to put that somewhere else for right now because this is not a product we can share on our marquee cards or the more important parts of the cards themselves. What do you make of what you're seeing there? I mean, it's not just a drop-off. It's a dramatic drop-off in the last two years, right? And I think maybe there's a couple of reasons for that. But the talent coming through heavyweight is not that exciting, which means I think people are less excited about the division as a whole. We're talking about narratives earlier. I think the narrative around the heavyweight division is that it's shit. So people treat it as if it's shit, because it's shit.

And then I think as well, like the people in the top of that division, like your Volkovs and your Cyrils, it's not like the old days where they're going out there and swang and banging and getting finishes, a lot of their fights are kind of point fights. And I think, again, if that's the top of the division,

it sort of filters down in terms of the fans' attitude towards it and maybe the UFC's attitude towards it. It's really weird. I heard your point that you think Tim Sylvia would do really well against some of these guys. I don't think he's all. Like, Roy Nelson was a top 10 guy, but never like top five, maybe. He would be dramatically better than some of these guys.

It's a really, really crazy to drop off. And I know a lot of these things are cyclical, but heavyweight's the tough one, right? Because it's very hard to find big men who are good in MMA. So it's very curiously. So it almost feels like now with Tom on the shelf with the eye, it's kind of like the next thing is Gable. And he's not even in the UFC yet. there's just no excitement around that division. I think it really needs a shot in the arm.

Maybe they can get Pereira to move up or not. But it's, I don't quite know, it's certainly not a quick fix. Do you know what I mean? So you get Gable in there and then you've got Gable and Josh Hocken are your two big prospects. And then after that it's you,

you're probably in the top 20 of heavyweight at this point. Do you know what I mean? Like it's who even, what do you do with that? I don't, I know that they, I know that they're looking at like going direct to college athletes who are graduating and trying to like get them to go

the PI and sort of give them like a prospect deal. But they've tried that before. And at the end of the day, a lot of guys don't want to get hit in the head for not a lot of money. So it's a tricky one. I don't really know how they fix it. Yeah. That's the part to me. It's like on it's on I, I'm not immune to the idea that cutting Almeida solves a few problems. I guess what I would say, though, is I don't understand what their long term plan is to restore the division. I'm not saying they don't have one. I guess to me it's just not immediately clear what that would be. So I get to your point, like it kind of like unclogs a little bit and so they can at least be some movement and there's some value there. I don't mind that they got rid of a guy who I think was

regressing and kind of phoning it in at times. On the other hand, you know, this is one of those divisions where at least at the present moment, beggars can't be choosers. You know what I mean? Like it's just one of those situations where it's just not a lot to work with. And so cutting anyone, especially within the top 10, feels a little risky. I mean, that's not quite the right word, but a little strange, perhaps. Last thing on this, did you get a chance? I know it came out before the show. So if you didn't, it's totally cool.

Did you get a chance to read the PC Carroll uncrown? I actually didn't know he was there. That's pretty cool that he went. Probably not the funniest thing to watch you'd ever see. I mean. No, he described to like a clockwork orange surgery where they're to hold his eyes. I won't believe with the point, but suffice to say, dude, Tom Aspinall's eyes are fucked. He has no peripheral vision in one of them.

Like, he can't see motion happening to the side. And on the other one, he's got a giant black spot sitting in the center of the eye. So wherever he looks, it's black. He can't go pick up his kids from school. He can't run errands unattended. He can't leave the house without some kind of person helping him to get where he wants to go. He can't play video games. He is like, like absolutely, I'm not going to say incapacitated per se, but he was making a point, like when his knee was messed up, you know, if you sit down, it just

stops hurting, right? Yeah, you're not mobile, but you're not sitting there in pain. He's like, as long as I am awake, I am consistently reminded of this problem, hearing what they're reporting here and what the hope is of this surgery is that it will get rid of the black spot. And then what they think is it's going to trigger potentially the improvement of his peripheral vision, but they at least acknowledge that while they can fix the black spot with the surgery that he got, they may have to do an additional surgery to restore his peripheral vision. Guys, I don't know when he's competing at this point. I'm being dead serious about this.

I have no idea when he's going to return. Your reaction to hearing some of these medical updates. Yeah, well, also as well, you know, it's not like when he, when this starts, off his healing. He can't take any impact. You know what I mean? So it's not just that he's off. He's not like, he's not training. He can't train, you know, because if there's any impact, it can completely ruin the surgery. For me, the, the, um, I spoke to Tom and for me, the easiest way to understand what's going on here because I know people look at that eye poke and they sort of thing, blah, blah, blah, it's not the poke that's done his eyes. It's the force

that they were pushed with, basically, you know, Cyril Garne is a massive man and it's the force of which his eyes were hit that has caused the damage and caused this long-term issue. And in terms of when he's competing again, yeah, man, it could be a very, I don't want to say, but like, who knows if it's this year. And I feel for Tom, really, because as you said, every time he's awake, he's reminded of this, I don't think he's necessarily in a very happy place right now, as you can imagine. And I think it's probably quite hard, you know, that I don't know if this is happening, right? There's rumors of a Cyril Pereira interim fight.

I mean, how would you feel if the guy who fucking ruined your eyes gets another shot? You know, I'm sure it's very, very hard for him to sort of sit there and he's a younger guy and he's had this crazy career of like amazing successes and then like a big setback with the knee, amazing success and then this. It's very, very unfortunate. And in a division that is talent starved, I still maintain Tom could be one of the best we've ever seen in that division just in terms of his ability and his athleticism. So it fucking sucks for him, to be honest.

and I feel for the guy. Yeah, I mean, Tim Sylvie is one of these guys where I said I think he would do well, but I do think against a guy like gone or against a guy like Aspinol that would come, I would not pick Tim over those two guys, for example, because I do think that they represent a very different kind of athletic profile that would just be kryptonite for a guy like that. But at the same time, my God, dude, if Aspinall's not there and they're doing Gone versus Perera, are you hearing that that could be a White House fight?

No, I heard that could be sooner. I think I did. I mean, listen, it's all rumors. It's not like I've got a particularly good source on that. I'm reacting to Pereira's post and stuff like that, but I did wonder if maybe Miami. I haven't heard of like the main event that's kind of keeps moving around. So if they have a fight, Cyril Garne will have fought like the best heavyweights of this error.

In Ganu, John Jones, Espinall and Alex Pereira, that would be fucking wild. For me, the main thing is if they did that Pereira, that basically means John's gone, right? If they're doing Pereira for a heavyweight title fight, I don't imagine. I don't see it. Look at me. John is gone. He's gone. And you love it. You're so happy that he's It's not even that. It's just like, dude, the guy is He's the best light heavyweight I've ever seen by a million miles. I was there for basically the entire run But he is a manipulator. He is a bullshitter. He is attention starved. And so when you realize those are also major motivating factors in how he, especially how he interacts with the public.

You just can't take anything he says. I'm not saying that's so much seriously, but you can't accept any of it at face value. And a lot of it you have to realize is just to manipulate how he's viewed in a present moment or whatever. Like this idea, like the stuff about the arthritic hip, you saw what Cormier said. Cormié was like, he probably put that out intentionally. Cormier, I guarantee Cormier is right. I guarantee that's correct. I guarantee he was, he did.

didn't get the nod for the Poetton fight that he wanted, certainly not on the White House. And I think he was like, well, if it wasn't going to be Tom, it was going to be that. And now he's like, okay, well, I'm kind of checked out. Like, I guarantee that's correct. I just, it's like when he retired and it's like, oh, no, I'm back now. If they had given him the White House fight, that would have been, okay, well, yes, we'll come back for that. But if they're not even going to give him that, all the rest of this is just bullshit. It's just total bullshit.

You know, I don't believe any of it. This is why he won't answer your questions. this sort of talk. Yeah, I don't have anymore. I don't have anymore. Now it's like, here's my question. When are you leaving? That's my question. Well, no, now you get to watch him in Gables' corner for the rest of his career. Very Floyd Mayweather tank vibes that, that whole thing. Curious how that's going to turn out. Like John giving the spotlight to someone else is not really in his forte. Yeah. Also, that was a little different though, because Floyd was kind of

a bit of a money influence too like how to manage your career not just training a guy I think John's doing that for Gable I think John's like his Oh is that right I think John's like his de facto manager I wouldn't trust that guy

to be dog catcher in my neighborhood much less fucking manage my money please Very quickly long out of Luke You had eye surgery 10 years ago Yes I was born with cataracts Me I have four or three siblings I'm the fourth obviously three

of us were born with cataracts because my mom had cataracts. So we all had to get the surgery. But you have to wait till you're like, like my niece actually was born with it too. She just got the surgery. She's 14. So she got it very young. But we all waited until our like mid 20s to get it. But yo, I, like I didn't realize how shitty my eyesight was my whole life until I got this surgery and it was crazy. The point I wanted to bring up was they had to do one eye. You had to wait like three weeks. Then they do the other eye because obviously you were bandaged up. I would have not had any eyesight. But they told me, they said, yo, don't be like horse. forcing around with your friends and shit.

They were like, if someone lightly taps you in the eye, you can go permanently blind in that healing stage. Now, I don't know if Tom's surgery was more intense than this or not. I'm just saying I can only imagine going back to sparring, let alone getting fully punched in the face as hard as you can. Like, I'd be really worried if I was Tom, so I understand he's going to be taking it slow. Also as well, imagine right.

So you get this surgery, a fucking horrible experience by the sound of it. Then you're told that you have to sit out, for months, basically in a dark room until you're better. And the only thing you have to look forward to is potentially doing it again. You know what I mean? It's not like, he would be within his rise to be like, fuck this fighting shit. You know what I mean? Like this is, and then even if you get through all that and they're like, you can fight again,

all you're thinking is, God, really suck. I got poked in the eye again. Do you know what I mean? It's probably a really, like, this, I don't want to like, like, make it like daddy talk. But it's probably really traumatic event for the guy. genuinely like traumatic event also you know in boxing i mean i will see this will this won't be the case i'm sure with zupa boxing but in general outside of that if you're a boxer now you sometimes you have to negotiate it with the promoter or the opponent or or the commission as well but you have

some discretion over what kind of glove you can use horsehair standard padding size is more a function of the uh the weight class and the number of rounds or whatever but um but you have some discretion over that if if there was a similar kind of discretion in m m ms and I was Tom Aspinall, I'd be like, we're not competing unless you're using a curved glove. I want to be clear one more time. The Association of Ringside Physicians conducted a study about this. And what they found was that there is a statistically significant improvement measurable between the curvature of the glove geometry over the knuckles versus the ones where you can just go straight.

I don't know why the UFC has not employed this technology, even in the newer gloves that they had tried. I really don't understand what the problem is. But if it was up to me and I had a choice, I would, at one of the U.S. billion percent I would elect to be using that. All right. With that out of the way, let's go to topic number two. This was an interesting one. I didn't quite know what to make of it. So I wanted to put it on today's show, Oscar, to see what you had to say. Nate Diaz put out a recent social media message. And it was a little bit, I'm not cryptic, it's not quite the right word, but it seemed to indicate perhaps an imminent return to the octagon. Here is the message. Let me read it out for people who

might be listening on the audio platforms. Quote, let's not act like I didn't start a whole division bringing value to all these guys claiming they're it i gave opportunity and i put notice on the dopest fights i got unfinished business and i plan on going and taking what's mine asap first to ever start a division and the dopest one at that you're welcome you're spelled wrong mfers i'll see you soon i'm coming and then it's the fist emoji then he also put this one up bmf the bmf the bmf belt and put unfinished business below it as the caption. My question to you, Oscar Willis, what exactly do you think in the year of our Lord 2026 is the appetite from the fans for a Diaz return? Now, you might be able to say, well, it might be matchmaking dependent. So walk me through.

What would you say are the fights that would be of the most level of interest? And to what extent do you think even UFC has interest, even in the high end of what that could be? I think I saw like some of the reaction to this is like oh ghetto like no way Nate you're like past it but I think if they booked Nate Diaz to have a fight people would get excited pretty quickly I know I would I actually like when I saw it I was like I actually

would love Nate to come back again not I don't need him challenging for titles but for fun fights I'd love Nate to come back it's a lot of talk about the sport being stale right now Nate's a character and gets people emotionally invested and I think there's somewhat lacking in a

lot of the top guys right now so I'd love him back I think as you said, matchmaking dependent. I saw he, he said he would slap Charles. Sure. He took it back. He took it back. No, no, no. So what happened was everyone thought he was talking about Max.

And so he had to come out and be like, no, I was actually talking about Charles. Oh, I see. I see. I see. Okay. But then he said, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. But I would, but I'm also sorry.

You know, just great, nice stuff. But I mean, like, it's sort of, I will get onto the White House and shit, right? But there's certain fights that are like not canon. You know, they kind of don't really math. they're just fun fights and there's plenty of those for Nate and obviously I think the main one is the trilogy with Connor I think that would be unbelievable if they actually did do that yes it's a little bit dated it reminds me kind like subtle adele vandalay vibes where they finally got it done you know I'd love to see those guys do it again just for nostalgia's sake if anything but in terms of Nate like

why not do you know what I mean like he beat mazvada in that boxing match it's not like he's completely washed and I think there are definitely guys he can have fun fights with so I'd love to see May back. This month, IHeart Radio is celebrating the stars of the 2026 Winter Games. Representing Vienna, Ilya Malanin is redefining what is possible on the ice. Known as the Quad-Gon, the reigning world champion arrives in Milano Cortina as the only skater in history to land a quadruple axle in competition. He isn't just performing a routine. He's pushing the laws of physics. Malin steps on to the Olympic ice looking to turn his technical revolution into pure gold. For more Winter Games gold, search Olympic.

on the IHeart Radio app. I'm Dylan Playfair. And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers,

proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find Bromance on the IHart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. All right, so let's talk about the... Let's go through maybe the top three, or four fights you'd like the most.

I agree with you that the Connor trilogy would certainly be the one that I think would do the most amount of casual fan interest grabbing, so to speak. What would be second or third or even fourth from there? I mean, again, this is where I guess

a bit tricky, right? But the Porier fight, I know Porre is retired, but that was the one that sort of got away. I'd actually, it's hilarious. Nate posted this, and then Porre posted himself back at ATT, and you sort of go,

but no, that one would be great. I wouldn't mind seeing him against Charles. You know, that would be quite funny. I think even, and again, I'm not saying necessarily

that he's the favorite in any of these, but like even a Nate Diaz, Paddy Pimlet fight, you know, there's a lot of fun in that. There's like, there's certain fights like that where I think if you do Nate

versus another character, those, that's where he's best served. You know, that's where Nate is at his best. I don't think like, you need to put him against young, hungry up-and-comers,

but if you can put him against someone else who has like a relationship with the fans. Fuck, I'll be biased. Nate Diaz, Dan Hooker. That would be fun. You know, Nate Diaz, Michael Chandler, now there's loads of fights.

But there are definitely, like, fights like that, where it's against another name guy who elicits an emotion from fans. I think that's where Nate thrives, and that's where people will want to watch whatever the standard of the fight may be. They'll be invested in watching it.

We haven't talked about it yet because it just hasn't come up, but what to do with the winner and the loser of the 320, main event, the BMF title fight between Max and Charles, because it's an interesting question, right? You could say, well,

Saryukian's waiting in the wings after Gajee gets a shot at Ilya, if Ilya doesn't end up fighting Islam, right? I mean, that's a whole other potential can of worms. So what would you do in the event that a title... Let's walk this through. So if Max ends up winning at 326 is the most logical thing to do is to then to start considering a rematch with the winner of Tuporia and Gaei,

or is it a Saurukian fight? Or could Diaz slot in there in a BMF title fight without the fans revolting being saying, well, because I want to be clear, Nate Diaz is going to be 41 in April. 41, the last time he competed in MMA was in 2022. So would that be an acceptable BMF fight if Max goes out there, or Charles, I suppose, goes out there and wins. I mean, it would be acceptable, but I do get the impression.

At some point, I think, if Max wins, for example, I think at some point Max is going to be like, I've done the BMF thing. I want the actual fight to fight for the title. So I can imagine if Max wins, he might not necessarily want to do another BMF, I can see him actually kind of holding out

for a needy a rematch or a Justin rematch. But not Charles? I think Charles will fight anyone. I think Charles is a lot less picky. do you know what I mean it seems to be anyway um so but I just like Max talks about the title a lot you know Charles just goes I'm the lion max specifically says I want to rematch with Edia and I actually see like I know that he like everywhere he's got a fan support now but I see Armand getting jumped over again I don't like if Armand can't get himself a fight then like the winner of this will jump over him

in that title fight I actually was laughing with someone yesterday if Iedia moved up I would crack up if they did Gaichi Conner of the White House. That would be so funny for the lightweight title. Just to see the absolute reaction to that would be amazing. But yeah, I think that division is kind of interesting, right?

Like there's just, maybe they do Paddy Armand. That kind of takes care of that actually. But yeah, it's the BMF. Having the BMF in the same division as like the best and most sought after title is going to start getting very murky quite quickly. And again, like we're talking about the BMF and what that means.

means and so on and so forth. I do think it has value now. But you are going to start like, when you have a title challenger also be the BMF champion, it's going to get kind of murky because then like what, you know, like does Max drop the BMF? He fights the title, you know, this is where it gets a bit murky and weird. But as far as Nate's involvement in that picture, I think you could put him against any BMF fight. And again, like I said, it's the BMF fights are more about the story and the specs glove it rather than the meritocracy. what would you say is your best understanding of the UFC's appetite for a Nate Diaz return I always heard that it was not that high I always I always got the impression they were not

that happy he lost to Jake Paul was the kind of the vibe I got but yeah why would that be why would that be disqualifying well because they fucking he got out right he he was one of the only people in this sport who actually got out on a win didn't get yeah, fuck, lucked out, but didn't get have to fight hands at, got the Tony fight, bailed, got the Jake Paul fight that he wanted, kind of won against the UFC and then didn't win. I think they're kind of like, they didn't love, they didn't like to lose, right? They never like to lose in those negotiations. So I think that kind of just not soured them, but I think they're like, okay, Nate's time is done.

But I don't, and also like, it's not like he doesn't get paid very well, you know what I mean? So I think it's a little harder for them to justify internally like, oh, let's pay this. guy X million dollars when he's out here showing us up, I guess. I think it's also changed, right? When Nate fought Jake, there was still this argument of like, oh, these guys should be beating Jake. Now we've actually worked out that Jake's pretty good, good boxer, boxing is better. Boxes are, we'll get on this later, but like boxes boxing is usually better than

MMA boxing. But at the time when he lost to Nate, I think there was still like a motherfuckers, you should be getting this guy. So I think there was a bit of that. That's just me. That's just from the rumor mill. but that's what I think. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure what to say with the appetite is. I think the fan appetite for it is certainly greater than the UFC appetite for it. But the interesting part for it to me

is that you kind of have to game this one out, which is what would you use him for? And again, I do agree that there are places you could use them. For example, to me, the Connor trilogy makes the most amount of sense in terms of fun, storyline, you know, the style clash. But at the same time, dude, he's going to be 41 in April. So by the time he comes back, he'll be 41, right? Because I don't think he's going to be on a card before then. So it'll be 41 by the time he comes back. And it's like, dude, what are we actually?

Okay, it's one thing to be like, he injected some life into a pre-fight run. And then the fight itself, maybe you could even say delivered, whatever, whatever that means. But it's like, is anyone actually expecting him to win? You know what I mean? And not just that. He could easily get stopped in one of these, if for no other reason than cuts. you know, any number of ways. Obviously, the Diaz brothers have legendary chins,

but there's a lot of ways that he could just end up getting stopped. And it's like, what, what is the, what is, how many times could you even use him? And the answer has to be, I cannot imagine it be more than two. I just cannot imagine there would be a world where he, they give him Connor, he potentially gets thumped. And then they give him, I don't know, Max or something. He gets mega thumped.

And like what, at that point, point you might be 42. I just don't know. Like to me it's like could he provide in a very narrow but important circumstance a shot in the arm? Yes. I absolutely believe that. But more than that, I don't even see. I just don't know what would else be out there. I think it's the point that I would come back to. It's a it's a sugar high. Yeah. And to just go away. And to your point, right, I'm sure they're thinking about it too. Like, okay, we bring this guy back and then in his first fight, he gets absolutely fucked up. Like how bad do we look?

And then, you know, so I certainly don't think they're thinking about this. But like, it would be kind of sad, right? You bring Nate back. He gets smashed by one of these younger guys and then just goes away again. It's like,

why would you even bring him back? He just gave every, the lasting image they now have of him is him getting destroyed, you know? So there's an element of like maybe there's somewhat like a legacy protection by not bringing him back. But I don't know. I was still like.

to see it. I just think it's match up dependent. But like Matt, like him and Connor would be would still feel mega, I think. I still think that would be great because it's even got the nostalgia thing. People who are new fans didn't get to watch it in real time. I think it would probably feel very, very

big. Also, fans who were like hardcore, maybe, I don't know, five, six years ago, who maybe a little bit less so, they'd come roaring back for that one. I absolutely do think that that is the case. Long Island, what would be the top two fights for Nate Diaz, if he came back this year.

I just want to start by saying I have zero interest in him coming back. But the two best fights will say Connor and, yeah, I guess Max, something like that, like another legendary or actually I'll put Dustin there. I'll put Dustin second. So why do you have less than zero? What is what is the apprehension? I just like I felt like the end of his UFC run was lackluster. And then he's been out for what, the three years now.

He's 41 years old. Like, what do we, we're holding on to threads here, bro. I don't know. It's just like, let the man walk. It's kind of like, man, I don't know. I have no interest. I just got to be honest. Damn.

Hardcore. I saw Nate the other day. I was he for boxing. How was he? He's good. Nate's a good, Nate's a funny guy. I think like Nate has this sort of, people have this image of Nate.

Nate's actually like a very like switched on funny dude. Yeah, he's very friendly. I don't know if you may not remember this. but one time in Series XM, Nate and Nick for a long time had a series of people around them that did various different things. Now, Nate's manager, in my view, the money he had more recently anyway, has been a lot more locked on than any manager Nick has ever had. But we were working with one of Nick's people,

and they were like, yeah, we're going to deliver to you both of the brothers in studio. We were in Las Vegas for a show. And we had, you know, because they had confirmed to us that this was going to happen. And so we promoted it. it and then neither showed up and you know this was this was live on the air this was live on the air and of course this was like incredibly humiliating and terrible and Nate somehow caught wind of it and then DM'd me and was like hey I don't know how this happened I've known even told me about this um but you want to meet up later and I said sure and I met up with him in a casino he was with

Joe shilling and I forget somebody else may have been there too that I recognize I forget and he was like he didn't he didn't need to do any of this he was apologetic he was you know he was like hey do you want to hang out with us we're going to go to clubs we're going to hang out do you want to come with us i declined at the time but uh he made an effort to be like hey i don't know how this happened i'm really sorry i'll make it up to you blah blah blah so uh and he you know he was very friendly and um again just he seemed like he wanted to do right by me given what all had happened and i think he was obviously covering for this guy who was in Nick's orbit who was a fucking lying idiot.

So, so, so I have, uh, so I have great, I have great appreciation for Nate for doing that. Um, you know, he started something he didn't have to do. When Nate fought Jake Paul, uh, I think it was in Texas. After they did the press conference, Nate, like really freaked out on that kid. He used to ask goofy questions. Like, you know, what's going to happen when you get fucked up? Oh, like Derek better. That's the one.

Um, and Nate freaked out. And then afterwards, there was a group of those like four or five of us ever made reporters like in the lobby of a hotel and Nate saw us there. I was like, I'm going to Whole Foods. I'll be right back. Okay. And then he came back after like 30, 45 minutes and sat with us and explained like 10 minutes in real like passionate detail why he hated Jake so much, why he felt like Jake was a really bad influence on kids, why he felt like he's presented as this bad guy, but actually all he does is like train kids jiu-jitsu whereas Jake's out here turning the island boys gay is what he said. But like

He was really quite passionate about it. And that was another really cool moment. And then at the end, he just went, you know, I just wanted to give guys some context and then just bailed. It was just really cool moment. But again, like you said, he didn't need to do that. He really, he recognized we were the MMA guys. He wanted to like sort of let us know that he appreciated us being there and stuff with

that. So that was a really cool moment. And the other like shorts, Nate Diaz story I have was, I think it was before the Tony fight, they did, they did, I think it was a way end or something. And PR said to Nate, Nate, you just have four more interviews. And he went right, for sure, took out his phone and then just slowly turned and then sprinted out of the mobile arena. Literally, like, all of us are going, where's Nate going? They just ran as fast as you could.

So, yeah, character. Love the guy. One of my, one of my great accomplishments was, I had briefly hosted, or it was co-host. I wasn't the main host, but I had briefly co-hosted MMA on Censor live. This was a national TV show on Spike TV. It was live. It was like a precursor to MMA beat or something, but like on TV. It only lasted one season.

It was great fun. But one of the episodes, we got Nick and Nate in studio together. And they actually showed up because at the time, Viacom flew them out. And they show up and they were real friendly to me. And we sit them down. And then, you know, the cameras start and neither of them has a thing to say. Like nothing, nothing to say. Because Nate at that time hadn't broken out of his shell, Nick was kind of the guy.

but you know Nick he's you know yeah he's mercurial and at times hard to read anyway though the camera goes off and they're back to being friendly again and they're like you know and we told them because every after every episode the crew would go out to eat and drink and in new york city we're like we invited him and then i'll never forget nate was like i can go out but i can only drink vegan beer and so the only place around because the show was shot in times square the only place around there that served vegan beer was guy Fierries like Flavertown restaurant So

So we went and drank at Flavortown Because Nate had to have Vegan beer but it was cool like they It was the fucking weirdest thing It was like we didn't even know if they were going to get on the flights that day They missed their first flights They get on the second ones They actually made it

Don't say a fucking word on the air And then afterwards You know Nate's out there Do like the life of the party and shit It was like Just one of the strange strange moment. That's the interviewer curse, right, when they're amazing off camera and then the camera rolls and they just shut up. You're just like, what happened? Why? Why? It's why you got to get

those meta glasses just because you can catch all the good stuff that way. All right. Let's go topic number three. UFC president Dana White told friend of the show, former host, Brian Campbell, that the UFC White House event will actually be the organization's most watched card ever. the most watched event in UFC history. That is what they believe. That is what they told Brian Campbell. We're going to take a look at that claim here in just a minute. Actually, you know what?

Before I go any further, I've got a question for you, Oscar. Let's set the context. Let's see what Dana told Brian. Let's close with this. You tease that White House card. We're all excited for it come June on the South lawn. We talk so much about the logistics of it. But now you're literally about to enter into the matchmaking of it.

And you have a good problem to have almost every big. big name fighters seemingly going out of their way to publicly say, I want on that card. What can you tell us, if you can tell us anything now, Dana, about the structure of the card? How many title fights is the right call? How many big names of old? John Jones, Connor McGregor, what are we going to see Sunday, June 14th? Well, we're going to figure that all out this week. But when you look at, you know, this is like a one-of-one event, something that will never happen again. And we, you know, building this card, I've all, we, we have this video rendering of what it

looks like. We literally have the trees that are in, you know, the South Lawn. We'll know exactly where the sun is until it sets. Um, you know, so all the logistics are done. And now it's time to, we believe that this is going to be the most watched UFC event ever. All right. So there is a, I don't, understand some of the 3D renderings of the Lincoln Memorial, which is not close in any, I mean, you could walk it or you could scooter it or you could bike it, but they're not, they're not co-located in that particular way. It's a, it's a bit of a walk quite quite a while from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial. Putting that aside, you saw what he had to say, you saw some of the renderings. The question is as follows, is it realistic to think that a six

or seven fight card would be the most washed one over events like Habibu. versus Connor, which had an enormous amount of promotion heat. And then obviously, this was Connor at his relative popularity peak. Will the event achieve that goal no matter the matchmaking, or again, is it matchmaking dependent? What do you think? Share for me what your impression is. It's really an interesting one, right, because the X Factor is obviously the White House. But sometimes I wonder if actually that turns people off, you know, like the casual

audience, maybe they just don't want to deal with it. Obviously, we know about the political climate. It's not for everyone. So maybe part of me wondered if actually the X-Fact for the White House isn't the home run that we might expect it. I think it is, but it's just something to think about. I mean, it'll obviously be very highly watched. Yeah. The question is, do we think it's the runaway most watched event and what circumstances have to be?

It's just weird because obviously, I feel like the sport has grown since Connor Kavib, right? It feels like it feels like we've lost fans, but the sport is bigger. It's a very weird thing. It's much more just like accepted and like it's much more just tolerated as a regular sport now, I guess, even in 2018. So it's much more accessible in terms of like people aren't going, oh, cage fighting. You know, I think it's much more accessible. I do feel like maybe like if you had Edia Tuporia versus Justin Gaci, let's say that's the main event. I don't know if that grabs people as much as Connor Khabib.

Connor Khab is obviously, that's probably one of the biggest fights of all time. it's an interesting one. I'm curious. Let me ask you as like the MacLife guy. And obviously, you know, it's not like Conner's calling you up every day telling you exactly what he thinks. However, this is a question I get. And I don't know how to answer it because everything about this kind of defies convention. You know, they might have more than three title fights.

They might have less than seven fights. You know what I mean? Like it's, hello, it's at the White House. Like it's just a very, very weird event, unusual from convention. if they had Ilya versus Gaichi as your main event. Let's presume for a second. That's the main event. Would Connor allow himself to be on the co-main?

I don't know. Also, I'm sure Connor wouldn't mind a three-rounder. It's just like really hard. Like, you know, Conn's been away for a while. I'm sure three rounds would probably be quite helpful for him, you know? But again, it's, I don't think it's, you know, people have egos. and I don't know if I think it probably depends on who would who would the main event be like is Connor going to play second fiddle to

Edia or Gaichi both men he's had like kind of a thing with and certainly I don't think he wants to play second fiddle to like the new generation that is Edia but I also think he wants to be on that card and I think it's actually funny like you know because all these big names are coming out saying they want on that card like none of them have any leverage because let's say they can't come to a deal with Connor they can go to John let's say they can't come to deal with John they can go to Gaichi and Edia you know they just have

many options. It's like the fighters themselves don't really have like any leverage. I think he would do co-main. I don't know. But then again, would you want him to be co-made? He is still the biggest star in the sport by a long way. Well, that's the other part too. Let's say they bring Nate back. If they do Connor Nate three as a three rounder, is that what we want? You know what I mean? You couldn't do that though. That's the thing, right? But also like the whole thing about the Connor status on the White House is when they took. took away, when Dana took away the Chandler fight, it does make you sort of go, well, what the fuck are they going to do with him then?

And I do wonder where they see Connor. Do they see Connor as like, well, he, you know, we're going to pay him a lot of money. So he has to fight like, does he fight Max, you know, if Max wins or Charles or Charles wins? Is that what they're planning, you know? I also think as well, not to accuse the UFC of being cheap. But, you know, there's this, they're not going to have any sponsors on the canvas and stuff like that, they've already made their money from the TV deal. So being that this event is already costing the millions and millions of dollars to do because of the logistics of it, do they then

want to fork out millions and millions of dollars to the fighters? Or do they feel like the White House is the selling point? We can do it during H.E.N. We don't want to pay 30 million plus to a car or anything. You know, I wonder how, what does the card look like? Do they stack it up as much they're saying? Or do they think like, well, we kind of just, we'll put young up and comers on it. We'll put Gabe and Stevenson on there. We'll put bone nickel on there. And then will have just like one or two massive fires title fights. It's really cute. I don't know how they're,

I don't know how they're looking at it. I would be, I think I saw you talking about it, but like a Connor or a John fight is kind of a gimmy because it doesn't affect the rest of their calendar. You know, so those are the fights. I feel like they should probably elect towards

because of the U.S.C. 300 and then the rest of the year sucks. So I think like, yeah, it's secure. And also, again, as I keep coming back to you, I presume the president has a say in who's fighting on it. I presume they're going to, to show him the card and he'll be like, yes, yes, yes, they're all white. I think, I mean, to me, it's like, do I think that it could end up being the most watched UFC event ever? I do think that is on the table, yes. I do think it's on the table. However,

you know, one of the things that I think we have to consider are one, let's start with just like the sports side, it is going to be matchmaking dependent. It is going to be, you know, a question of like how palatable this is. Not. so much for people like the white house angle will sell some people to watch for sure but at the end of the day the thing that gets people to watch fight sports are the fights like like what what what are you showing to us at the end of the day and to your point it is true like relative to 2016 when Connor and habib fought it's like mm a is more within the firmament of accepted sports and activities in the sporting world but it does feel like it has shrunk a little bit in terms of like

who's participating it and how many people are part of it. And so to me, in a world like that, matchmaking is absolutely really, really, really critical. Like, you have to find a way to make the most exciting biggest fights that you can think of. And I just, even like the best permutations, Ilya, for example, versus Islam, what does that actually drive at the box office? I don't think that comes even a fraction as close as Connor and Habib in 2016. It's just, dude, people forget this. Connor was obviously a massive, massive star.

Habib was a big fucking name in 2016, too. Like you had two towering names in the MMA world. Neither Islam nor Ilya are even as big as Habib to say nothing of 2016 Connor. So that to me is kind of like a real bit of a challenge. I'll be interesting. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I would go as far as to say neither of Elia or Islam are as big as Nate was back then.

In 2016? Yeah, I just feel like the Nate thing caught fire. And like, pay-per-view is what it is. It's completely changed. But Connor sold over a million pay-per-views like seven times in a row, I think it was. And I just don't. With either in Islam, let's say you pick them up and put them back then, do either of them sell a million pay-per-views?

And I just think that I just think it's very hard to sort of get your head around what a stratospheric star Connor was. You know, like him and Mayweather, in my opinion, two by four. far in a way the best pay-b-view cells ever, apart from the unit, got Tyson and stuff like that, but like, it's very hard to sort of get your head around

just like how fucking big Connor actually was. Yeah. And I put Packia, Pac-ya was close to that too. Yeah, yeah. But I just think, so, yeah, it's, I'm very curious.

And I, again, also, I, they have the CBS element, right? Like, if you whack a couple of big names on CBS to lead into that, does that then boost the main,

you know, stuff like that. I think they have more tool. And no pay-per-view. Connor and Habib were behind a pay-per-view. And again, that also drove people to like kind of covet it as an event to be there. But at the same time, it also keeps some people out too. This won't necessarily have that.

I also do think, and this one is, I just want to mention it because I do think it's important to at least consider how it will look at, you know, by June is just, I don't know. Nobody can know. It's just, is impossible to say. But like, this is a political event. I know folks want to be like, oh, it's just a fight event. It is not just a fight event. It is happening because it is a reward for the. the UFC's boosterism for Trump as a candidate for the 2024 election.

That's why it's a reward for that. And so because there's this intertwining of both the political establishment as well as the sports brand, you know, there's political implications for it. Like, for example, I don't think MMA media is going to be particularly adversarial towards the event. But I can imagine, Oscar, that there's going to be a lot of political media that will be very adversarial about it and what that does to both drive more attention as well as to drive people away, right?

this polarizing effect and how that all plays out in the wash. I don't know. I don't know. Also, not for nothing. Like, Trump's health is not great. I don't know what that will mean between now and then. But there's just a lot of factors about like what could happen between now and June on the more political side. Let's still the sports side, although the sports side, as we just indicated, is relevant to,

that can make this a little bit harder to go. So I think to wrap this up for me, Oscar, I absolutely believe it can do that. but whether it will in the end to me remains to be seen. I also think as well, one thing that it has as an advantage for this event over any other UFC event is because it's at the White House, it will de facto get global coverage, right? Like every country will at least acknowledge this event happening

because, A, it's a very American thing to do. But also it's just like it's a global event because it's at the White House. It's Trump's birthday. It's going to be, you know, USA. But so because of that, I have no doubt it will be the most covered UFC event of all time. I think it will get the most articles and color mitches,

whether that translates to geiships, I'm not sure. But I sort of just realized that as I was sitting here that the White House factor means it will be global news, which is something that is very, very hard. You know, not since Connor or Floyd, have we seen the combat sports get that level of attention. Did you cover Mayweather-Pakio? I didn't do Mayweather-Pakio.

I did Mayweather-M-Ber-M-Ber-M-Wather-M-M-Breg. But I was actually thinking, like, when was the last time there was a fight that, like, drove people into the bars? Like, you could not miss this. You could charge cover at the bars. It was like a social event. Like, I don't think there's been one like that since probably Mayweather McGregor. Do you know what? Where, like, everyone on the streets talking about it.

I even feel in Vegas. Well, no, you know what? The Jake Paul, I hate to say this, but the Jake Paul Tyson fight. Yeah, I never forget that night, there's a local restaurant that I went. too it's like a neighborhood bar restaurant you know just a total family place and we were sitting there eating and i'm not kidding every conversation around me was about the jake paul tyson fight like it absolutely was that kind of thing yeah that's true that is true and it just i think maybe there's more like a just in the modern age like these things don't live in the memory as long and

obviously that performance was never going to live in the memory you know what i mean but you're right that is the last one and actually that's probably as massive as the other two so fair play but I think, and actually, to be honest, I actually felt like Jake Paul Joshua, not nowhere near as close, but I felt like the aftermath of that, everyone was talking about it. You know, like, I was finding those fucking shit wrecked. So, yeah, you're right. But in terms of like UFC proper, I don't really feel like any of those things get that level of sort of space in the sphere, I guess. Yeah. I was just going to say, I covered Mayweather Pacchio for SB Nation at the time.

And I'll never forget, I went to the press conference, which was in the car theater. in MGM. And they had a section for like U.S. press. And then I went down the line in the main section and the side section. And I'll never forget, they had like the number one paper for Columbia, number one paper for the Philippines. Obviously, the Philippines is going to be big there. But you had a number one paper for Uruguay, number one media outlet for Mexico,

number one, you know what I mean? It had all these spaces designated geographically for the Germans, for the Dutch, for the Australians, like for all of these entities that were there. I'm not saying that the White House card will be that exactly. But I've seen what it's like when a global event happens in combat sports. And the reach is unlike anything else other than to your point, May Mac, right? I think May Mac, but I was in the media tent for Maymac. That was also fucking insane.

Yeah. I just don't remember the last time I was crushed by tripods. You know, like the last time I was just like completely like fuck. There's no room here. I don't remember the last time I had to do that. So that speaks to your point as well. Like, that just feels, I think combat sports in general is kind of dropped up. Do you remember carrot top showing up to the media tent for Maymac smelling like booze every single morning?

Do you remember that? I obviously had a very different experience of Mayweather McGregor, but I did that night was, I was, I just remember like off the top of my head. After the fight, Demi Lovato came in Conner's locker room and Conner's going around meeting all the people and they said, oh, this is Demi Lovato. and he was like, did you sing the national anthem for Floyd? And she went, yeah, I'm such a big fan. He just turned and walked away. And then I tried to hit on her and she didn't appreciate it. Yeah, I bet she didn't.

I bet she didn't. But I just remember Carrotop showed up to the media tent every single day. And it'd be like, dude, your face looks like it's melting and you smell like B.O. and Johnny Walker. Like what are we doing here? All right. There's another thing. Like you never get those, sorry, dude, keep going.

You never get those tents anymore. We're just like, oh, Chris, you. bank seniors here, just like random people just milling around. You know, I feel like what you do at the Super Bowl, at the Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Let's, uh, let's pay some bills here. Let's, let's thank our friends over at Draft King's who, of course, make this possible.

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and responsible gaming resources. See dkng.com slash audio limited time offer. Let's go to topic number four. Oscar, if we can. Michael Venham Page had some interesting comments, so we're going to take a look at them here in just a moment. He is facing Sam Patterson at the upcoming UFC London card towards the end of March. I believe the 21st of March of memory serves. Now, he recently stated that he doesn't understand the matchmaking and thinks he might have upset someone important in the UFC.

I want to ask you about it, but first for context, here are his comments. I definitely don't feel like I'm in good favor with the UFC at the moment. Interesting. What makes you say that just based off of who you just drew as an opponent now? Yeah, I think who I drew as an opponent. Actually, even down to when I saw the fight card, it's interesting because La Ron Murphy, you know, massively deserves his position. He's been an absolute killing a spree. But then you look at the coal main event and it's like, you look at the whole card in general and it's not the most exciting. And I would have felt that a name like myself being on that card, I'm definitely going to be positioned as, I'm always going to go and show out always and make noise as I've always done.

But I'm being positioned on the card in a weird way and I've been given an opponent, which is a bit of a weird opponent as well. I'm just wanting to fight. I don't really want to wait. So it's kind of like, let's just do it. But yeah, it just feels like I've upset somebody. All right. Let's take a look at the card here very quickly. As you indicated, and as he indicated, I should say,

Moussar-Evloy versus Lerone Murphy, one versus four. No one can argue that these guys don't deserve a big opportunity, whether this is the fight to make or whether each one deserves a title shot. Separate consideration, but certainly a very good fight deserving of a main event slot. Fair enough. Luke Riley versus Michael Aswell. There's MVP, Michael Page, taking on Sam Patterson, Ewo Barnevsky. I don't know how to say his name. He's Polish, taking on Austin Lane, Roman DeLeedze versus Christian Leroy-Duckin, Curtis Campbell, taking on Danny Silva, by the way, Michael Page back at Welterway. Okay, Oscar, question for you is, is he reading the situation correctly?

And if so, why would UFC have an issue with Page, given that he's generally performed quite well for them. Yeah, it's a very weird one. And he has a point, right? Like the co-main event, Luke Riley, I know someone they're hot on. Like, Big Riley is a very exciting fighter. But you would assume just a name value and honestly career achievements, MVP would probably get that spot. I don't know if it's necessarily as easy as just like, oh, they're pissed off at him because obviously they want him on that London card. And therefore, it's like, who can they get him against to be on that card? I don't know if anyone's like, even if they think they can beat him. Is anyone like rushing to fight MVP? It's like a fucking.

very annoying night at the office, even if you win, you know what I mean? So I bet it's quite hard to book the guy against other fighters. So therefore, maybe it's like we just couldn't get him anyone good, but we had to have him on the card. Not the San Palis is not good. But you know what I mean? Maybe there's maybe a bit of that. But if you look at his last few fights, like he came into the UFC, Kevin Holland,

40 in Gary, then Sharra bullet, then Jared Cananeer. Like, it's a substantial drop-off in terms of name-value opponents from this to San Patterson and it does feel a little bit weird. And I know MVP's been quite outspoken that they weren't giving him fights at well-to-weight, that he was frustrated he had to go to middle-weight. So, you know, sometimes those comments do just strike an nerve and piss people off. But I don't know if that's what's happened here, but it does feel weird. I do think there should be some conversations internally with him and where he is.

Because it's not like he's shit either. He's on a two-fight winning street. So I don't really get it. And I understand his confusion. I don't know if he's because they're pissed off, but definitely. it's like i don't know if i've seen anything quite like it in recent memory like in terms of the way they're handling this guy's career you think he went to middleweight because he couldn't get fights at welterweight said that he said they were not giving fights at welterweight so he had to move

up because he wanted to stay active twice so this is the only fight he could get by going back to welterweight seems like it i don't know if he may i don't know if he outwardly refused to do another middleweight fight i know that when he fought his last fight against cannoneer he was frustrated that he was only getting middleweight fights and he didn't want to be in that division. He wanted to be a welterweight. And he said that publicly. So I don't know if maybe this was a case of like,

well, you don't want a middleweight. This is the welder weight we have for you. I don't know if there's an element of that. But yeah, it's very strange. It's a bit weird. Okay, I'm going to pull up the rankings here because I want to see like who at Welterweight

they would not match him up against here at the bottom of the, you got Colby at 14, MVP sitting at 14. I don't think there's much interest in that per se. Then you have DROT at 3. Then you have D-Rod at 13. He doesn't have a fight coming up that I'm aware of, right? Well, I think he's, isn't he in like a Mexican prison? He might be fighting every day.

I forgot about that. You've got Jeff Neal at 12. Still right. Still right. Yeah, exactly. Gilbert Burns at 11 and then Gabriel Bonfim at 10. The Sam Patterson one, I mean, could, let me play devil's advocate. Could they be doing partly maybe a little bit of a Scott,

cocker thing where it's like, okay, we're good. Yeah, we know you're three and one in the UFC. Your only losses to Ian Gary, which, you know, Gary's pretty good, turns out. Um, but we want to kind of use you in a way that you can give us a viral moment. So we're going to just give you a guy that you should probably easily beat. And because if you consider all of his fights win or lose in the UFC, they're all decisions. This is maybe a good chance for him to do something kind of viral, get a funky knockout. use that unusual skill set to create something more memorable. Is that too charitable a read?

No, I did think about that too. You said about the Scott Coker play. Like, look, fucking all of MVP's career has basically been him against undermatched opponents that he can style on to create these viral moments. And they have not got that from him yet in the EEOC. What's funny is actually, I don't think Dana particularly likes those viral moments. Dana doesn't really like, you know, the flashy style from some guys. So maybe I don't think that's the UFC's thinking,

but I think in a silver lining, they probably have set him up for a moment that he can create and then make demands after. So I assume, you know, he's training properly, but he's in a position where, yeah, he's fighting a guy that, you know, maybe he's not super excited about,

but he should be excited about the opportunity to remind everyone why he was this viral sensation. I'm trying to look up this guy. What do you know about his opponent? well according to long island luke he's on a four-fight win streak all first round finishes so i i can and that's another thing as well you know his last guys freeze against mbp certainly in the uc they have done that you know like guy like kevin holland completely froze i and gary got the win but that was a weird little fight as well shara didn't quite know what to do jared canaer fight was very forgettable really because jari kaner kind of didn't know what to do with him

so maybe as long island luke has put in the chat they want someone who's going to aggressively go at MVP. So either way, they get a good fight out of it. And again, like, if someone comes in and knocks MVP out, that doesn't do San Patterson any danger either. That gives him something to build on as well. So it's probably a win-win for the UFC. I can understand MVP's frustration, but I think it would be good to see him in a great fight. You know, it's not fun to see him. I love watching MVP fight, but sometimes he's sort of like a guy freezes, doesn't give any openings because he's so concerned about defense and then MVP kind of has to play like how do I get in here and it kind of just sort of peters out. I think it would be better to see him in an actual contest where he

either gets an opportunity to look amazing like we've seen him do before or where like he puts himself at risk and the other guy gets to build a name. Or maybe they're building Sam Patterson to the point you raise. He does he lost his UFC debut after winning on the contender series. He lost to Yannal Ashmoos at UFC 286 in the first round. However since then he's been on a path of destruction. He He defeated via rear naked choke in the first round. Johann Layness, he defeated Kiefer Crosby in the first round, via arm triangle. He stopped Danny Barlow in the first round with punches. And then he beat Trey Waters.

So actually, I did some tape study on him because he fought a guy named Jalen Fuller. And I was doing some tape study on that for XFC. Anyway, Trey Waters, he beats him also in the first round. Is it maybe an argument that they're feeding MVP because they actually think that Patterson's got it some upside and they just want to make Patterson? Like they're feeding old to young to make the young look better. yeah I think there is and like San Paterson's British as well so maybe they're just like take this new one you know it could be that so yeah and like I said win win for the UFC

I'm sure the UFC are pretty I never really to to MVP's point I never really got the impression Dana was on the MVP train I remember when he did he debuted he had the Undertaker theme he danced his way to the ring I never got the impression Dana was like super hyped on him I don't think Dana really likes his style of fighting either so it wouldn't surprise me if they're like let's get a young guy to knock him out and then just sort of move on, you know?

It's kind of weird. It's a very, it's interesting matchmaking. It's an interesting decision. It is very hard for me to understand how someone could be a lifelong combat sports fan and then hate flashy fighters. You know what I mean? It's very strange. Individualism.

Just at all like, yeah. It's like, again, the flashy fighters who are super trolley can be very annoying. That's true. But they just generate lots of attention. you know what I mean? Like, I didn't think Pokemon Go was interesting, but the Pokemon Go celebration that he did

went mega fucking viral. And it's like, why wouldn't you want that? I don't, I don't, I just never understood it. It's never made sense. If everyone was doing it, for sure, that would be annoying as fuck. But when they come along once every four months or six months, because they fight twice a year, I don't, yeah, I don't see the,

I don't quite get the disgust with any of it. either. What do you think about, what do you think Dana thinks of Josh Hokit who does the, he hates it? Slightly more racist, worst version of Chal Sondon, you know what I mean? Significantly worse. Well, I mean, like, we asked him after the last one, Dana was asked, oh, what do you think of Josh Hawking? He went to a good performance. What do you think of the character? And he just paused. It was like, I don't like it.

I think, yeah, I'm not here. Yeah. I mean, what can you even say? That was one of the weirder post-fire press conferences when that guy came in and did like a bit. I didn't see it, but the people on my substack were talking about it. I guess he did an interview with Ariel all in character. Yeah, doing a Randy Savage impression.

But you know we were talking earlier about like guys on camera versus guys off? Like Colby became the character, right? There was a time where Colby was like volume turned up. When he was off camera, it turned down. But I could still

see the consistency between the two men I was dealing with. This guy is literally like Kamaroff. Thanks so much, guys. So nice. It's like the, it's, yeah, I do not get it. I actually don't mind that he does the, the bits. You know what I mean? The skits and the bits because I don't.

Well, in the sense of, here's the thing. I kind of appreciate people who take fighting seriously, but not the fight industry seriously. I do actually kind of appreciate. that however you just got to be good at it you know what i mean like you actually like care about is the delivery you can be transphobic just be funny you know what i mean it's not even that i'm not even saying like like the i like the i like the material either i'm just simply pointing out like if you're going to take one of these kinds of i'm going to troll the industry bits you know you got to be good at it you got to

have something that really works and to me it just is like it's not funny enough to get people to like it's not edgy enough to get enough edge lords to sign off on it. It's just kind of somewhere in the middle of sucking, right? That's sort of a problem. The thing I've noticed about it and, you know, listen, maybe we don't understand Gen Z and Gen Alpha. But what I, it's like all these aggregate accounts on Twitter and stuff like that, these, like, they fucking love the guy. Like, any time he's like, all, like, all these aggregate accounts between and I just all constantly think like, what am I missing here? Why? If you're racist and stupid, it's a great time to be an anime fan. It's a great time. It's never been a bad time if you've been racist, Stephen. It's

been a great sport for you. Let's be honest. Okay, but it's really dialed up. Like, if you did bad in school and you hate books and you're, you've got an degree of worldview about racial minorities and you're not particularly bright, buddy, you walked into the mother load of the perfect time of MMA. Let me assure you. All right, with that in mind, let's go to topic number five if we can. I'm Dylan Playfair And I'm Tyler Smith We're putting loneliness in the penalty box By talking to some of our favorite athletes

About the importance of friendship This is bromance Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers Proudly Canadian-owned and operator Charm has been part of your love stories And bromances for over 50 years And you can find Bromance on the IHartRadio Network Or wherever you get your podcast

And this one was so dumb But I had to put it in here I had to put it in here because it's speaking of the things that are incredibly stupid. There was a recent social media spat, Oscar, between, well, Joaquin Buckley and Bud Crawford, although it was really about walking Buckley and Shakur, but really it was about Shakur and Ilya, and then Buckley got involved, and then Bud got involved, and it's this really weird thing.

We're going to play this clip here in a second to kind of unpack it, but here's basically the deal. Eventually, Aidan Ross, who is, speaking of stupid racist streamers, was Hayad Shakur and Bud in his house or whatever that was and kind of indicated like, hey, Ilya, he could come to boxing and they were very, very much against it. Joaquin Buckley comes out and then has a lot to say about it. And then they responded to him.

We've got a video that kind of ties it all together. I've got a question for you. Let's take a look at the context first. Shakur Stevenson, he was with Bud, right? He thought boxing was way more entertaining than the UFC, right? You see would never be better than boxing at all. It ain't even close. The skill level is different.

Y'all boxes are so disrespectful. And I understand we don't get paid like y'all. We don't get money like y'all. But I tell you right now, we outwork every single boxer. Shakur, I'm on you. Even though you beat Timo all that trash that he was doing. He's saying, nigger, he throwing bananas at you and all that type of stuff, right? Yeah, you beat him.

But you should have knocked his ass out cold. But because you're worried about your little record, You want to blame it or whether it's the art of boxing or I, you know, I just want to show my jab all night. You a ho! You're a ho! You ain't want to go out there and put on your best performance. Stop disrespecting us, bro. We are way more entertaining than y'all.

And y'all try to say, no, you're the real fighters. How? If we came outside, I could kill you. I'm not saying I want to kill you or want to take you out of this earth. But realistically, I would kill you if we fought. Hand-to-hand combat. Boxers, y'all got to quit. All right? Y'all will get your ass will by somebody that is a USC fighter.

Because I heard Shakur also say, oh, hey, then let's fight then, to I'll tell him to fight me. He's a crazy boxer, bro. I don't care. Tell him to go by me. And I ain't going to pick on the little dude because he's little. I get his big brodo. But, but, no disrespect. You might be retired. I ain't asking to fight you in an actual ring, but let's just work.

Let's just work. Let me work with you, bro. I got something to prove today. I got some to prove the day. Okay. I love these debates because of the dumbest debates on Earth. Here is the question. The boxers focus on what would happen in boxing.

MMA fans and fighters think that this makes Buckley, or at least MMA look good. Who looks good out of this scenario? I will say, Buckley does have a point. They are pretty disrespectful. You don't really hear. boxers ever talk that complimentary of MMA fighters, I feel like. So he has got a point there.

In terms of the, I just like, we've been having this boxer versus MMA guy on the street conversation for probably 15 years. Has it ever happened? I would love to see it actually happen one day, just a street fight between any boxer and MMA like a high level guy. It just never happened. So we go round and rounded circles.

I also appreciate Buckley's enthusiasm, but I don't see Bud taking up that sparring invitation. but yeah like can I tell you this this is what drives me nuts listen to what Shakur and Bud said and what they said was UFC will never be more popular than boxing

now I'm not sure that's true but what they said after that was the skill level is different guys I mean I think there's a plenty of blame Oscar to go around in every direction and I'm going to do that but let me first start with this one which is guys you MMA fighters

can't even beat Jake Paul in boxing. You can't get mad when high-level boxers say the skill level is different. And I know what everyone's going to say, well, yes, the striking level may be different, but they can do wrestling. They can do all these other things. And of course, that is also true. I'll come back to that in just a second. But when you watch MMA fighters throw punches in boxing, dude, it looks bad. It looks bad. They look bad. The skill level is significantly lower, not just from the average boxer, but from certainly a Bud Crawford or a Shakur Stevenson. Like, dude, if you watch a lot of, this is true,

you ever done this, Oscar, where you watch for whatever reason it's just happening this way? I've been times in like the last few years where I've watched a lot of boxing. And then I'll go watch UFC and I'm like, oh, oh my God. Yeah. It's even crazier as well, like not to throw anyone under the bus, but like Stipe Miochich, you know,

the greatest heavyweight of all time is considered a fantastic boxer. and then if you go like watch Stipe Miotich throw a combination and watch Anthony Joshua throw a combination. It's a different sport. It's like like Stipe's fucking still doing this, you know what I mean? So yeah, yeah, the skill, it's just, and it makes sense, right? I don't understand why no one can just acknowledge it makes sense. These guys do one thing since they're six years old. These guys do a lot of different things, probably when they were 20 and started.

Of course they're going to be better. You know what I mean? It's just very strange. And it's just, it's always a shame that I guess it's the money and stuff that they chase it. But it's just like we always come back to this conversation. And then the MMA guy gets the moral high ground because it's like, yeah, well, fucking I limited my weapons and stuff like that. Here's the part for me. I think these spats, they make everyone look weak.

And the reason why is pretty simple. Yes, it is true, as you just indicated on pure boxing terms, like, you guys keep losing to Jake Paul. Like, how good could you possibly be? Right. I mean, let's just be honest about that. Now, certainly the well-roundedness, the wrestling of the jiu-jitsu changes the equation. So here's what I mean, Oscar. The boxers look weak because obviously the MMA fighters are right.

If they had a more open, combative rule set, 99 times out of 100, if not more than that, they're going to get fucking smoked. And not just that beat very quickly. Like James Tony was not in his prime when he fought Randy Couture. I'm not sure how much of a difference it really would have made. You know, Couture also, not for nothing, was not in his physical prime during that run either. and he beat the fucking dog shit out of him. So like, let's just be honest about that.

The boxers look bad because the MMA fighters are right. On the other hand, on the other hand, the MMA fighters also look weak because, hello, a bunch of y'all are trying to chase a payday that is never going to happen, but you don't make as much as them. And so there's this inadequacy that happens. And then not for nothing, when they critique the MMA fighters about the kind of weakness of their technique, at least as it relates to throwing punches, they're 100% on the Like, it's very weird that rather than being like there's any kind of camaraderie about this, both sides battle in such a way as to magnify their own weaknesses through this whole thing.

I didn't come away from this being like so-and-so got the upper hand. I walked away from this being like, y'all know all of y'all look bad here, right? Y'all know that. I wonder if badminton and tennis players get into this. Like, fuck your racket sucks or whatever. You know what? I don't understand why boxing and MMA like these are two. two angry cousins that can never leave each other alone.

So I mean, it's always like going on. It's always like every generation there's a new one. Ryan Garcia O'Malley was a fucking thing for two minutes. Connor Floyd, obviously. And now this with Bud and Waki and Buckley, which is like a random one that you wouldn't have seen coming. Or it's even Tuporia, right? It's just like this conversation can never end.

I mean, respect to Clarester Shields, at least she got in there and tried it. But then we saw what happened to her. She was very, washing in MMA. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's just, we've seen it guys we've done it now we can all move on yeah it's just it's just everyone is focused

on winning a debate that the other side is not having with them yeah yeah right the mma side is having a debate about which style is better and the boxing side is having a debate about refinement of technique and then obviously the purses that they get and they're just whoop talking right past each other every single time yeah drives me kind of crazy all right those are our five topics here for the day now let's turn over the show to long island luke who going to put us through by the way i got to say this he showed us the intro to this new to this new uh segment he's doing it's the best intro in mk history set us up here and take us through along i praise all right uh this is called combat couples you guys are going to answer a question about a couple

and then i'll just show you something related to that all right all right for folks out there listen to this this is fucking awesome if one man go hold you now and i'll be damned if one man go home me down Don't let no man. The music is so good. And then it's a Valentine's Day special. It's like, Don't let no man hold you down. You know,

it's for all the strong women. What a sport. What is for what we cover? Speaking of strong women, Luke, this one is for you. All right. Tisha Pennington and Raquel Pennington.

Who has more professional MMA wins? Raquel. That is correct. Luke, she has 16. Tisha has 15, but either way, you're going to get a little bit of a punishment here. Have you seen the new,

Netflix show called Free Bert. Bert Kreischer has his own Netflix show now. Not only that, Luke, not only does he take his shirt off in it, the whole damn cast took their shirts off for it. I mean, where is a drive-by shooter when you need one? Well, they look like

they're on a plane, so like really where is a hijacker when you know? Yeah, where someone, I was going to make a box cutter joke. I'll skip that one, but you know what I'm saying? Somebody send this one crashing to the earth, please. All right, well, there you go. Next up for Oscar. we got Travis Brown and Honda-Hausie

your question is since Ronda's UFC debut in 2013, who has more wins in the UFC? Surely Ronda? That is correct as well, but it is close. Ronda has six

Travis only had five in that span, which is actually kind of crazy. Which brings me to my next point, Oscar. Ronda Rousey just came out with a new book. Would you read it? would I read it yeah no wait is it like a fiction book what is it

I don't know dude it's some fucking Ronda rousey illustrated book and you could see there's a quote from what she said on bert Kreischer's bertcast this was the first time I really got to tell a story exactly how I wanted to tell it and you can feel that on every single page so you know the Burt cast approves

I just wanted to know if Oscar would read it I probably would skip the Ronda Rousey graphic novel you know I felt like I lived it You know, it could only have a really pale in comparison to the real thing. All right. That's weird. Does it have a segment where she goes on Ellen and cries and says she wanted to kill herself until she had Travis's babies? Or is that just we got love yourself?

I think they illustrate that very well in it. Yeah. I saw something. I saw a page. She said that. Yeah. Yeah. She fucking went on, uh, she went on Ellen after losing the Holly and was like, you know,

I feel suicidal. But then I look at my man and she was crying. And she's like, and I just know I have to live to have his babies. Your feminist hero, ladies. That's not. That's not especially healthy, but okay. LT, for you, we got a little bit of a thruple, a love triangle, whatever you want to call it. Ryan Ortega, Tracy Cortez, Alex Poetan Pereira.

Who has fought more UFC champions, Ortega and Tracy combined or Poetton? Boy, that's a great question. I'm going to say Tracy and Ortega combined. That is incorrect, but it is close. Poetons fought six UFC championships. Champions. Tracy and Cortez combined four. Three for Ortega. He fought Frankie Egger, Max Holloway. Or sorry, five combined for them. He fought Frankie Edgar, Max Holloway, Volcanovsky, Al Jemaine Sterling. Tracy only fought Rose. Poetan fought. Sean Strickland, Izzy Adasanya, Jan Blahovich,

Yeri Prasca, Jamal Hill, and Magamette, Uncleaya. So now, LT, I have to ask you, the entries are closed, but are you disappointed you did not get to enter this contest? This is this is the Brian Campbell experience right here. Would you have signed up for it if you knew. You got to sign up and BC would walk around with his pants around his ankles. Oscar, did you sign up for this? I've never thought MMA fighters are underpaid as much as I do right now.

She has to go and like shake hands with sweaty dudes. Joe, that was that. But yeah, I was there. She's a lovely lady. Oh, yeah. All right. You won? All right.

Congrats. You went to this? No. What are you talking about? I was like, what the fuck? Not since the restraining order. I can't get anywhere nearer. Oscar.

Next for you, we got Mr. and Mrs. Van Zanzan. He looks like Michael Kiesa a little bit in this picture. He looks weird in this picture, I'm going to say. Who started fighting professionally first? Mr. or Mrs. She was pretty fucking young, eh? I'm going to say, Paige. Correct. I thought that would be tricky

because he is 35 years old, but he started fighting professionally in 2017. She did a lot different when she started, I feel like. Yeah, she did. You know, maybe, yeah, in the, yeah, okay. This is going to be news to me. She's doing power slap? Yeah, she's done it twice. I did.

Yeah, she did it at least once. Did she win? Yes. The one I would say one of the decisions was a little bit generous. She's like the Luke Rockhold of women's combat sports now where she's just doing every like random like she did misfits box yeah rando show whatever she'll do karate combat neck but uh both of you really but oscar because this was prompted to you let me get a rating

on off van derford's throat tat would you ever rock that can i get a one to 10 what are we thinking on that i wouldn't rock it but there would be a great opportunity to be laying with the lady and say look at my third eye and i don't mean the one between my legs up you know something like but um Yeah. I mean, the tattoo itself is not poorly done, but I got to tell you, man, I think, you know, it's kind of funny. I, I, uh, how do I explain this without getting myself in trouble? Um, I'll just say this. I've met a lot of young people that their first tattoos now are throat tattoos. And I have to tell you, please don't fucking do that. Now, this, this gentleman is more obviously well tattooed. But as a, a general rule throat tattoos are very very hard to do well the placement can be uh critical i mean it's just much more magnified any of the deficiencies in it this one to me is off putting because the eye is so distracting um it's not a poorly done tattoo but the placement is just very weird and i just want to caution everyone if you have if you have 10 tattoos or less you're not even close to being ready for a

throat tattoo don't do it they're overused and most come out quite bad there's also a real risk for him when his skin starts to sag it's going to look like a vagina for sure if it doesn't already but uh i was going to say or i was going to i thought you were going to say rather it looks like the eye is going to be like kind of sagging and you're like it's going to be a vagina and i'm like all right well that's

apparently austin van derford gets a new tattoo after every fight i'm not sure which fight was related to the throat tap but i thought that was an interesting fact anyways we move on to a pfl power couple Dalton Rosta and Dakota Dichiva. So, LT, who has more wins by decision? I'm going to go Rasta. That is correct. He has six decision wins.

Dakota with only two decision wins. She loves getting knockouts. Now we've got to look at a happy photo of the couple at a Pittsburgh Steelers game. Luke, what do you think happened when they were at this game? Is this a trick question? They watched football. No, I mean, would you ever bring your love?

ones to a football game. Oh, why would you ever go to it? Let me explain something to you. And hard, I'm not saying these people, but hardcore NFL fans are bigger pieces of shit than hardcore combat sports fans, boxing or MMA. Well, they're the biggest degenerates on earth. Never go to an NFL game ever if you can avoid it. Now, if you get box seats, maybe it's a little bit different.

But like, you're just sitting out there with the donks. I'd rather die than go to an NFL game. They were sitting amongst the donks. And this don't told Dakota that she wasn't that good. at fighting and things got nasty here. You see Dalton try and step in here. Oh, oh, oh, things are not going well for the. Oh, oh, oh, sorry, Dakota. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, dude, if you're fighting, oh, dude, he was fighting from the lower position and he won that. I know that's not Dalton Rasta, by the way. Uh, Judy grabbed the fucking head. Yeah, dude,

fighting from the lower position and winning. That is a special kind of talent. Get this man at PFL contract immediately. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Next up, Oscar, for you, we got another thruple. JP Bays, Cheyenne Vlysmus, and Roman. This is the segment for Brian Campbell. Whenever he comes back, you have to save this for him. All right. My question to you is, who has won a fight more recently? We're leaving Roman out of this one. Cheyenne or JP? Oh, my. Against each other? Fuck, probably JP because she's been pregnant for like eight years, I think. It is actually Cheyenne.

She won most recently in 2021. JP has winless in at least three straight. I don't have it in front of me, but he last won a fight in 2020, unfortunately. Oscar, I don't know if you're much of a snowboarder living out in Vegas, but do you think you could do better than Cheyenne on the mountain here? I mean, she just eats it ends up on her knees again.

Oh, sorry. Anyways, Oscar, do you think he could do any better than her? Honestly, I've never snowboarded or skied. I've only skateboarded once and broke my leg going down the hill, so it's never really been a forte of mine. So I'm actually going to say, even in this performance, she probably has me beat there. All right, balanced.

Would you end up on your knees as well? Yeah, maybe after a long night. I don't know. I'll see. Shia at any time. Yeah, yeah. LT. We got the Santos's.

Tiago and Iiana. So my question to you, who has fought more UFC champions? I'm going to say Tiago. That is correct. He has fought five. Jan Blohovich, John Jones, Glover, Tashara, Magamette, Ankaliv, and Jamal Hill. But to her credit, Yana has fought Misha Tate, Hollyholm, and Chris Cyborg. Luke, this has nothing to do with the couple, but, you know, maybe tomorrow Valentine's Day, you're going to eat some cake.

Why not from the cake lady? That's fucking dumb bitch. Look at the, oh, yeah, just eat the shoes. Look at this fucking Billy goat ass weirdo who just can't do. Yeah, of course. Why would you? Oh, yeah, just eat the car, you fucking skank. I mean, just the worst person on earth eating, eating, eating electronics and plastic.

And I hope you get enough microplastics to poison your entire bloodline, you absolute weirdo. How about that? Right. So you're not a fan of, is it? I like is it cake when they're like, oh, is it cake or is it not? Not when they're like, oh, watch me eat this boom box. It's way more intriguing. I got to be honest.

Anyways, Oscar, next up for you, we got the, they're now broken up. But, you know, once a power couple, McKenzie Dern and Antonio Tricoli. So my question to you is, who has more professional MMA wins? Probably McKenzie, I would have thought. You would have thought correct. She has 16 professional MMA wins. Tricoli with only 12. I was hoping maybe I could trick you and you'd be like,

uh, that, you know, maybe he's got a bunch of regional wins. I don't believe how fucking many, I'm getting right today. I never do this well on your fucking quiz. Yeah,

well, luckily there's no points on the line today. But we got to show you a McKenzie at the Chargers game. Now, again, would you- This is the Brian Campbell list. I'm not saying,

I'm not saying she was there with a loved one, but would you ever go, Oscar, would you ever go to an NFL game that is my question here uh fucking very expensive to go see and they're very long so probably not to be honest have you never been to a raiders game no i went to a u and lv game at the raged stadium but i've never been to raiders i'd go if there was a box and free booze but i don't think a fuck would you go to an unlv game free tickets and there was a box with free booze oh all right well that sounds like in that case i would go too yeah yeah that was just

the note but uh yeah no i've never been to an nfl game would i go with mckenzie dan sure I would go creep her out. Well, if you did go with her, you'd have to deal with shit like this. Fans saying that Way Lee is actually the real champ. That's what this person yelled at this man. They were like, Wayley is the real strawweight champ. He said, what?

There's McKenzie right there. You can see the back of her head as she stands up. And, you know, this man is just defending her. He's never able to the end here. He's like, what? And then they're like, Wayley, bitch. And then look, they get this man down and oh, just punching his ass there.

Just punching his love. And then this guy's like, oh, I'm a Vernon. a fan and they're like oh shit and then Tatiana's crew is that did the shit just got out of hand it was going wild dude why would you ever go to an NFL game look at these fucking creatures

you got to be prepared to defend to the death all right LT we got our last thruple for you it is Brian Carraway Misha Tate and Johnny Nunes so my question to you is who is the only one that has never been knocked out

not knocked up knocked out I'm not, so I had dinner one time with Johnny and Misha when they were working at Sirius XM and they were very friendly. Doesn't mean they aren't chiny. Who's the only one who has not been knocked out? Correct. Has Misha Tate never been? Oh, she got stopped. Yeah, she got stopped.

Does TKO count? Yeah, TKO counts. Okay, so no, you can't count Misha. I'll go Johnny, I guess. But I'm not super familiar with his career, to be honest with you. Well, you are correct. being not familiar worked out for you Brian Carraway and Misha Tate both been

K-O-T-K-Oed twice Johnny never been T-K-K-Oed Luke this one's a little bit of a friendlier one for you this isn't a tattoo it is just a drawing but rate this drawing of Misha Tate as some sort of superhero I don't know she posted this on her Instagram Is this the most recent Brian Campbell painting

that he had? This was like her most recent recent Instagram post I didn't have to search far for it so I mean it's not a bad drawing it's just the person who did it is clearly a horny pro wrestling fan. Or maybe a comic book reader, you know. I don't know. All right. Well, what are we rating it?

One to ten. I'll give it a seven. Okay. Okay. You can see her and Ronda in some of the fields now. Graphic novels, you know. Oscar, are you more likely to get this tattooed somewhere on your body or the throat tad eye tattoo? Fuck.

Uh, I would probably get the eye tattooed. Not on that. But I wouldn't love me. Can you imagine? I could very much. I could imagine you pulling up your leg right now and being like, I actually do have Amisha tattoo.

I've got my own face tattooed on my leg. I'm not getting a woman. Exactly. That's why I, that's why I wouldn't shock me. But anyways, last one for you, Oscar.

We got Pat Barry and Rose Namayunis. Your question is, who has more professional MMA losses? I'll say Pat. But I don't know how much. actually rose so rose has eight pat has seven although i think pat's record is like eight and seven so you know he's pretty close but either way uh oscar you know you went kind of viral last week by incorrectly or two weeks ago incorrectly guessing the sex of arnold allen's cat you know it's probably

an embarrassing moment for you so i wanted to give you a little bit of a redemption here can you guess the sex of rose's dog oh it's like looking into a mirror I'm assuming that's a... I'm not fucking... I actually can't. Is that a go? It's pretty hard despite it presenting to you. You know what?

Let me make it a little easier. Can you guess the sex of Izzy's dog? Okay. Okay. Okay. Is this a phone? All right, guys. That is combat couples.

See you next time. Okay. That's how you get out? Fuck. Oh, all right. Time now for the last part. of the show. We don't do these every week anymore, but we're still definitely going to do them. Always, you can reach the show. Morningcombat at gmail.com. Morningcombat at

Gmail.com. It's where you can contact the show, but definitely for your fan subs. Let's get to it. Do we still have the animation? You've got mail. All right. This comes to us from Rajiv. We have four photos. This was submitted right before BC's last show at early January. Hey, fellas. Just wanted to say thank you to BCLT and the production team for the last several years. years of MK in its current iteration. You guys always put me in a good mood after a crazy day at work or just generally the stress of life. BC, you're going to kill it with CBS, praying for you and your family's continued success. I hope you can still get goofy every now and then in the suit and tie. To the two Luke's, that's me in Long Island. You already know it's MK all day,

every day. Don't forget, I already recruited Yawanna to replace BC. Yeah, this was the, this was that show we did in Vegas where I got drunk on air. It was great. great. What year was that, Nick? So that was the third Volcanovsky and a holloway fight. So 22, 23, 22, I think. The last three years have not been kind to you, my friend. Yeah. Aged very badly. Oh, I mean, that's a nice picture. I wouldn't say I've aged much too, too badly from this one, but yes, it's certainly not been great. Big shots to Rijiv and we'll make sure BCC sees this. I'll make sure we send it to him so he can get a look at it. All right, let's go to Spence.

He just says, hey, guys, big fan, love the show. What do we have here from Spence? All right, here's a meme. When you're driving home knowing there won't be a second date, but at least she knows that UFC 236 kicked off the ESPN era. This is going back to what event kicked off the ESPN era, which, you know, 236 was technically that one, I believe, but, you know, what are you going to do? all right we have two more let's see

Oscar Willis making the stripper watch his fight in the private room this is when Oscar told us he made a stripper watch which fight was it that you had that you made her watch that was my M&A fight that she got to watch she got to watch lucky lady yeah well you're in the strip club and Oscar Willis walks in because they know

they're about to get fucking paid Shout out Izzy, by the way. Shout out, commenting on that being like, yeah, I was there. Oh, I did see that. I did see that. That was great. That was great. All right.

This is from our friend at Jay Piquette of Mountain Unike. Here we go. Good day, MK Nation. Just wanted to share some cool merch pictures from Bangkok, Thailand at the Rajadam Nern Stadium. This is one of the two most important stadiums in the entirety of Maitai kickboxing. Boss lady and I went to see some pro championship. Thai kickboxing as lifetime fight fans. What an amazing night of entertainment. Originally constructed in the 1940s, this historic venue is often referred to as the birthplace

of professional Muay Thai and is the oldest kickboxing stadium in the world. Bucket list moment for sure. Keep up the great work. Hope all as well. JP and Dawn, the boss lady. Uh, great photos. Lumpini is the other stadium. The two big ones would be Raja Domner and then Lumpini. As you can see, he's wearing the MK stuff. Oscar, you ever been to Rajad Domnern Stadium or Lumpini? I have not. Is this in Thailand?

I've never been to Thailand. Yeah, this is in Thailand. I'm desperate to go for reasons you can probably imagine. But yeah, no, I've never been. It's my bucket list. What Asian countries have you been to? Singapore, which sort of is like Asia for beginners. And Bali, which is mostly Australians and British people getting drunk.

I think that might be it. That's it, really? Yeah, I'd love to go to Japan. I'd love to go to all of them, really, but yeah, I've not been taken out that way. Maybe if they did, like, if the U.S. did another rip to turn to Japan, I'd be all over that. I've been desperate for them to go to Thailand, but I guess they just never will. So, but yeah. I hear Bangkok is the Toronto of Asia.

Yeah. Very good. We appreciate you guys, Jay. Great pictures. I'm jealous that you guys got to go. All right. This is from Saul. Due to the, how cold is it in Vegas right now?

What's the weather? I don't know your fucking Fahrenheit. Let me just see one second. It's been the coldest winter here. 61 in Vegas right now. I would kill a man for 61. Dude, it's been in the teens here for weeks.

Sub zero, sub zero for Celsius for weeks. It didn't warm up the last two days, Luke? Last two days, me have been like mid 30s, 40. Yeah,

it's been better the last couple of days. But dude, there's still like a shitload of snow that's just sitting out there. What? Street, yes. Dude, so it didn't snow that much in D.C. It's not about five, six inches or whatever, but then it sleeted off of it. Okay, hold on it. But then it's sleeted on top of it, another two inches or so. And then it didn't like warm up later. It got colder and colder and colder. So the entire thing froze. So for weeks now, the snow has not gone anywhere. They've had to kind of move it just aside. So like, it's hard to park. It's hard to walk anywhere. It's been a

fucking nightmare. I've been very, very, snow's always one of those things that you're like, oh my God, it's snowing. And then 10 minutes, they're like, oh, fuck, it's snowing. Great for one time to take my daughter sledding. We'll go do that. And then after that, it's a fucking pain. All right. Here's from Saul. Due to the winter storm, I've not been able to change people's gutters safely.

Well, the wife put me to work and had me help her make a bunch of cheeseboards for her business and took me out to get mid-tier Mexican afterwards for a job Well, Don, look at this gentleman. Oh, my God, it's a big-ass beer with a lime wedge in it. Later that night was date night, and we went and saw the Grammy Award-winning Louisville Orchestra do a bunch of Dolly Parton songs. That sounds pretty fun. Afterwards, we went and got drinks, and I ran into the very peculiar bathroom, M.K.

All day. This man reps M.K. so hard. There's Muhammad Ali, I guess, doing a bunch of weird-ass, Andy Warhol-esque poses. I'm not so sure. But he's got the M.K. hat on. He's got the M.K. jacket on. I'm guessing he's got an MK shirt on. Show me some of these other photos here because I didn't get a chance.

There we go. Yeah. Look at that. He's got the one from last month, the January Stranger Danger. Yeah. Oh, look at, dude. I got to tell you, Oscar, mid-tier Mexican food, it might, I don't know if there's anything better, if I can just be honest with you.

Oh, yeah, especially if you have a couple of those sized beers as well. Really helps to go down. What is your go-to order at a place like that? I'm very, very Caucasian. So as you can imagine, it's a very spiceless, flavorless thing being from Britain. But it would be a cassidia or a lovely burrito, thank you. What about you? I love carditas.

That's my fucking, that's the one I go for. Do you hate like spicy food? Can't add lip. Tobasco is hot for me, bro. Yeah. I've got, I'm not kidding. In my kitchen right now, I've got maybe 20 or 30 bottles of different kinds of hot sauce. Not even a joke.

The British took over the world for seasoning and spice and used none of it. Yeah. Yeah. So do you eat Indian food in London? No, I won't. That's too spicy. Yeah, yeah, right. I know it's very good, but I'm not.

So this is kind of funny. So for example, like people don't realize this or maybe, maybe some people do, but like just as a general background, the Iranians do not eat very spicy food, right? They eat. It's very tasty, but they don't, there's no heat to it per se. Whereas in other cuisines, that might be nearby, Indian or in certain cases, some Arabic food, you can definitely get some spice. Mexico, for example, has very, very, very spicy food.

They have spicy candy that they give kids. But in Colombia, for example, they don't do anything spicy hardly at all. They'll tell you that they do with something called ahi, but trust me, they don't. They don't really do anything spicy. I bring us all up to say, well, I forgot what I was going with this. I was just fucking on a stupid out. I'm excited about spice. Oh, anyway, I just, I just, oh, here's what I was going to say.

So I'll try and order Indian food with my wife. And she can have like the occasional like Tandori or butter chicken, you know, but she won't eat it. And so I don't think as like a person to person she's racist, but I accused Brian Campbell of this. And I'm now going to accuse you of this. You're a food racist. I'm a food racist. It's true. I can't deny it.

I'm a food racist. A very, very, very basic palate. I did actually, although ironically, I did, you know the hot ones? I did get the bomb. Like they're very, very hot. Yeah, which is very hot. Yes. Yeah.

It's also just fucking shit. shit like horrible but I did try that. It doesn't taste good at all right. And that was five minutes of just not fun. I have I get every new season. I get the full pack and I can have the hottest one no problem. I would struggle with that. I'd struggle at number three. I fucking love spicy food. I love it so much. All right. This is from and big shots to Seoul. Great don't. Let's go to Maximiliano. He's got a video here for us about what I said to shopcock for three and this one i take no pleasure in in having a conversation about but i do think it's actually important to do namely the future of shopcott rock monoc here we go guy that i have

pegged for a long time whoa no wonder he's out take it easy on him man holy heck luke you nasty that is fucking awesome i didn't even realize i did that that is so fucking funny oh that's great well done well played max lelliano well played all right and last but certainly not least we have one got a very diverse group here we got one from zahidi zahidi zahidi zahidi every middle-aged man posting a selfie it's not bad bro i see the relevance so i have to post a photos I have to post a photo on my YouTube channel on Wednesdays because I'm soliciting questions that I can then read for the live chat on Thursday. And I hadn't put one. I usually put it up in the morning.

And for some reason this week, I completely forgot. And then I was at, I was at Costco. And I had to go get my resupply of sleep medicine. And you know how it goes. You go to refill and they're like, come back in 15, 20 minutes. So I'm just like, you know, mulling around to Costco. And then I went to the furniture section and I was sitting there. And I was like, oh, fuck.

I completely forgot. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to take a dad. selfie took one and like all the comments were like one of them was this looks like the profile of a trucker's uh this looks like a trucker's profile on hinge you know what i mean a hundred is that i see yeah so they all they all got me with the dad jokes it's true i can't deny who i am i can't deny who i am there'd be lots of american flags in the bio i can see it right now yeah i'm gonna go catch some fish here at the bait shop you know just keep on trucking uh all right oscar

why don't you plug your stuff? Where can folks get more of what you produce? I am going to Houston next week to watch Sean Strickland talk about ice and Epstein and all the rest of that shit probably at Media Day and then I will be there all week for the fights and then just cruising along

on the MacLife YouTube, my socials, all the rest of it, man, the usual places. I'm trucking on. How do you think that's going to go next week? What's your early feeling? On the fight itself. Yeah, I think I heard you do a good breakdown on a submission radio but basically you'll probably know after the first or second round like the

first round i think if shorn can keep him off and get his game going you know he's a very fucking tricky dude to be like he's really really a tricky guy to do well against if he haven't thought that style before but i do feel like fluffy's very relentless in the pursuit of grappling and i think to beat sean you kind of have to be like you know drink his de plessey just fucking like forward motion constantly, just really taking it to him. And then he sort of struggles to get that range going. And also, you know, we don't really know what Sean is. He seems very vitalized.

I definitely feel like his fight. When he lost to the GDP, he seemed like completely uninterested. So maybe he's a bit more fired up. He wanted this fight. So I'm leaning towards Fluffy, just like having the pressure game work for him, but it wouldn't surprise me. Do you think if Strickland stops him, he leapfrogs him off? A thousand percent, bro.

I don't even think he has to stop it. I think. Oh, really? just even we get us to get some way straight down it. Yeah, because Hamza and him have that little beef and I just think, and as you said yourself, they are desperate for Americans right now. Do you know what I mean? Right on.

Although, I don't know if they would love to put Sean on the White House. I think that would be. Yeah. Also, what do you think now, now not the fight itself, but the ICE, the Epstein files, do you think his media day is going to be fucking insane? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, he's definitely, I'll tell you,

I'll give the list and we'll see how many. He's going to talk about Epstein. going to talk about ICE, going to talk about immigration, it's going to talk about gun control in Texas. He's going to talk about Fluffy Hernandez being, you know, not American. Oh, right.

He's going to talk about, yeah, you know, the fucking the usual trans will probably get a mention. Gays will definitely get a mention. All the classics. Yeah, he'll play the hits for sure. All right. Well, if you want more of Oscars coverage,

you can check it out there. Of course, if you want more of our socials, there they go below on the screen. Morning Combat is everywhere. you can catch me on the various platforms and of course Oscar S. Willis on IG and X. Don't forget morningcombat.combat. We've got the Army of Dawkinsh shirts plus the

evergreen ones. I didn't mention that before. But of course, we do have the two evergreen shirts. We've got the one, the MKDC one, as well as the graffiti logo on top of it. To reach the show, you can go to Morning Kombat at gmail.com. Please send the fan subs. Really appreciate them today from Zahidi, from Maximiliano, from Saul, from Jay Piquet, from Spence as well as Rajiv.

Great job, guys. You really appreciate that. Good stuff. And for all the rest of you, thank you so much for watching here on this Friday. We really appreciate it. I'll be back with Chuck on Monday to get you ready for the week ahead. So for Long Island, Luke and everyone else on the show, that's Oscar Willis. I'm Luke Thomas. Thank you all so much for watching. And until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.

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