MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC Fight Night: Max Holloway vs. Yair Rodriguez Instant Reaction

Episode Date: November 14, 2021

Brian Campbell has you covered with an instant reaction to UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs. Rodriguez. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Wow. Wow. Wow. wow wow wow featherweight fury in the ufc fight night main event this saturday today just behind us in the books max holloway yayer rodriguez so good we had to give you the mk instant analysis reaction handling of this yes this, this is morning combat. The premier combat sports and lifestyle and comedy show on the planet today. I am Brian Campbell. One half of your MK duo every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11 a.m. Eastern on the YouTube here. Talking all things combat sports. Why are you not getting Luke Thomas right now?

I thought Luke Thomas did the MMA recap. So you're getting your boy bc he's got a big vacation coming up so we don't want to wear luke thomas out so i'm hitting you right now in reaction to what was an absolutely incredible five round war with max holloway coming away with a unanimous decision over a game as all kinds of hell. Yair Rodriguez off a two-year layoff. And I'm here to break that down for you. So spoiler alert, I just told you who won. And by the way, if you're somehow lingering on YouTube looking for videos to not tell you who won, you're in the wrong business here.

That's not how this life works, okay? So that's enough on the spoilers right there. But please like this video. Subscribe to what we're doing here on MK. Uh, there's nobody else like this. Okay. So, uh, that's all I got to say about that. All right, let's get right into this fight. No fooling around, uh, basically a title fight without a title belt at stake. The number one fighter in the division, Max Holloway, the number three, Ayer Rodriguez, both looking to get back into that upper core and get a shot at Alexander Volander volkanovsky's title max holloway of course using words like conor mcgregor as well lately we'll see what happens

with that but this fight was advertised as being a you know potential for fireworks or war it was exactly that and probably then some you know it wasn't gaethje chandler but it was high skill, high pace. And these two absolute warriors had to show, I mean, just a sick, sick chin to get through what they did, the adjustments, particularly made by the former champion Max. And wow. I mean, what insane, incredible theater, just another, uh, you know, amazing fight, a fight of the year candidate, which I feel like we're talking about every week right now. I saw that tweet from Forrest Griffin that made the air that's, you know, another one of my favorite fights this week. Right. It's like what an incredible run right now for the UFC in 2021.

And what a fighter that Max Holloway is. Guys, that's why he's so great. He you know, I think right now he's probably the best UFC fighter without a belt, could very well have it following that rematch with Alexander Volkanovsky that was heavily disputed, whether you watched it once or 49 times, either without a cover on your head or a cap for that matter. But here's the deal. Two years away, we had some questions about Yair Rodriguez. Despite that eight and one record in the UFC with one, no contest. There've been the USADA suspension. There's been some miraculous wins. There's been some inconsistencies, injuries. He came out to win like a full title champion.

Yair Rodriguez came for the knockout in this one. And I think what he ended up finding out, what we also ended up finding out again, if we didn't already know it is that Max Holloway is just great, but all-time great. I mean, at 29 years old, you don't rarely hear, you rarely hear guys at that age where you're like, oh yeah, sure, fire Hall of Famer, or has already achieved the Hall of Fame status. And this performance to take the damage early,

the heavy offense from Jair Rodriguez and make the adjustments in rounds three and four and to just keep up both a sick pace the chin that I mentioned that he needed and to just fight off those aggressive ass rallies from a Yair that just would not fold uh Yair Rodriguez had a cut below his left eye had bad swelling below his right eye I thought at one point it was really going to be Max's chin up against Yair's face, meaning get his face hold up at this level. Can his gas tank for Rodriguez hold up?

There was going to be a lot of questions that were going to be asked of Yair based on how this fight started and the incredible pace and that first round, which was a killer. And he passed all those tests. He didn't win this fight. Although as controversial as it may or may not sound about what i'm about to say about the scoring i think you could make a case that uh that yeah yeah you're almost kind of deserved a backdoor draw oh bc you don't know how to score

fights stop looking at twitter while you're scoring well i'm not just looking at twitter while i'm scoring i'm also doing play-by-play writing recaps taking down my own notes but even with that said i do think there's a case here for Yair. Yet I also think had he come away with a backdoor draw, it wouldn't have actually told the story of this fight. The story of this fight was that Yair Rodriguez fought like he was great. And Max was just even better. He, if you're pride scoring this, this was Max Holloway's fight.

He won the rounds wider that he did win. And I think he made every adjustment he needed to make to show you that he's either ready to roads in the diverge in the woods. He's either ready for a trilogy with Alexander Volkanovsky. Should the UFC go that direction or he's ready for some kind of other super fight. Conor McGregor, the winner of Poirier,Oliveira, what have you. An incredible fight. I just got the ESPN alert on my phone that said, you know, Max Holloway dominates all five rounds in thrilling victory.

No, he didn't dominate all five rounds. This was a back and forth great fight. And I want to make sure that throughout this entire discussion of talking about Max's greatness, which is justified in this case, that we recognize just how balls tough and dangerous Jair Rodriguez was. He wasn't all or nothing slugger. Now look, everything he threw and landed was heavy. Did he sustain his attack enough to have, you know, no doubt on the scorecards or have more of an argument on the scorecards?

No, he's still a little bit of like big flurry of heavy strikes and then take a little time off. But I do think this this may have been one of the best performances of his career, like without question, considering the opponent and considering the. The, you know, again, there were many times Yair could have take a step back in the wrong direction. He could have guessed he could have succumbed to everything that Max does. He could have got submitted in round three when I thought Max had a 10-8 round, by the way, and just dominated by taking him down. And Yair responded to every piece of adversity with, to be fair, championship-level poise and perseverance.

His corner told him before round five that he needed a finish, and Yair put on an incredible pace. He didn't get that finish, but he would not stop landing huge strikes. And to Yair's credit, every time he was taken down by Max, and by the way, the wrestling became a big part of the adjustments Max made, even though he's the UFC's best boxer per blessed. I'm not necessarily arguing that,

but every time Yair got taken down, even if he took damage, even if he had to fight off a submission, as soon as he got back up to his feet, it was right back into throwing heavy shit like crazy. Was I nervous at all for Max's chin? I was a little nervous in round two. Round one and then round two started to play out the same way.

I was nervous for Max's lead leg, by the way, in round two, but credit to Max's adjustments for sort of taking away the calf strike from Yair. If you only watch the first two rounds of this fight, you want to know how the rest end. Your first question is going to be, did Max's legs hold up? Well, Max took that out of the equation power to him, but Max needed to use that all time great chin that he does have. He's never been stopped before. And the shots he took in round one. Just to quickly recap, Max came out, I thought, and had the better first part of round one.

Yair didn't move his head enough. Max just landing at will. But Yair starts countering, starts coming back with heavy shot here. Ooh, heavy shot there. Ooh, heavy shot there. And then suddenly you're going, are we onto something? Are we onto an upset here? I mean, Max is kind of forced to walk through some heavy shit to do this,

and he did that. And the best thing about Max and Max's chin is that he doesn't show you the damage. I mean, I mean his fate, you know, he ended up being cut in round five, but he,

he walks right through that damage and he's switching stances and he doesn't show you any hurt. And there is a next level element to everything that Max does, where, you know, if you watched him with the with a not so discernible eye it'd be easy to say okay he's great but you know he doesn't have a lot he doesn't have a ton of power doesn't fight all well he's got fight altering power in the right

situation but you know it isn't a big isn't a big one punch knockout guy goes five rounds a lot and you can look at other parts of his game and sort of say okay he's a little bit more stand-up heavy but yet what did he do here use key takedowns when he needed to his adjustments and reversals and grappling exchanges on the ground and, and submission attacks were all on point. Max is a absolute complete mixed martial artist. And there are very little sort of subtleties that he does in his game adjustments that he makes that this is why he's in the top 10 pound for pound, despite not being a champion. I mean, this is, I mean, you know, he, we thought he was just fresh off,

maybe the best performance of his entire career in that five round dismantling of Calvin cater to set out all those records. So, you know, he's not going in the wrong direction by any means, but he is so smart, so adaptable, so everything. What are we, a couple minutes into this show and all you're hearing is your boy BC, you know, talking up how great both of these guys are. Well, they were. This was a great performance by both fighters and a thrill and joy to watch.

But let's look at the scoring here and how this actually broke down. The official scoring is Max Holloway wins a unanimous decision. I did mention Yair's team told him after round four, you needed the stoppage. I think most people would agree with that. Although I'll make that case for a year in the second, 49, 46 for Holloway and the other two judges, 48, 47 for Holloway. So three rounds to two on two cards, four rounds to one on the other. Now I don't agree with that 49, 46, but like like I said off the top, I do agree that if you watch this without scoring intently, without doing the math and carrying the one and all that stuff, Max Holloway won this fight. He got the better of overall of the exchanges, and because his chin is so rock solid, the kind of big shots that Yair did land didn't have a major effect on on changing the momentum in the fight I think some of the shots that year Yair landed in round one would have finished you know most

fighters would have severely altered many elite fighters but that's Max he's absolutely incredible so here's the rounds that I feel like I know for sure round one won. Yeah. Area Rodriguez won that. I don't think anyone's debating that. He landed heavier shots. He, I thought in the moment was, was taking a chance on his gas tank. Maybe he thought he had a window for a stoppage. Some people on Twitter saying, I don't think he,

he kind of went for it enough. I actually thought, you know, I don't want him to see him throw a little, I don't want to see him throw too much out there and going for it because it's just a five round fight and max is not going anywhere we know that insane cardio uh great chin all that good stuff but yeah air wins round one no doubt round three is a no doubt max holloway round and that's when he made that big adjustment i know they debated on the air could be a 10-8

round do you think michael bisping didn't think it was i think outside of that little sequence right late in the in the third round where rodriguez got up off the canvas after nearly think? Michael Bisping didn't think it was. I think outside of that little sequence, right? Late in the, in the third round where Rodriguez got up off the canvas after nearly being finished and just really spending the whole time on his back. And he had a quick and aggressive exchange in which he went right after Max and landed some big shots and then ended the round again on his back. I don't think that little flurry of a comeback was enough to make it a 10, nine. And I think Max's full dominance there and having him in near submission situations and getting a, a, a, a full Mount situation and landing big strikes. That's a 10, eight round.

That's a, you know, in the new scoring, that's a 10, eight round. There's, to me, there's no question about it. So round one for Yair, no question. Round three for Max, no question. But for me no question but for me 10-8 I'm cool with that round four I think was a clear Max Holloway round once again now these rounds are not devoid of Yair landing big stuff and when I look back at my notes for round four uh Yair gets his eye poked something that Max would uh happen or to Max earlier in the fight. But I liked Holloway's defense overall in round four, even though Yair did land some big shots. So that's clear to me.

Now, round two and five were the closest. For me, round five, I saw a rally from Yair. He put on the pressure constantly. I thought he outworked Max just enough. And I certainly thought he landed heavier blows until the final bell really just pushing for something and his corner said you know be an orthodox do you know go out there and and do something crazy and finish it and he tried that wackadoo sort of uh back kick where he put

his hands to the ground and did sort of a river i don't know the terms okay i'm done bc the boxing guy what do you want me to say what do you want me to call it a in a an american rano what do you want me to say here um song you do you want to make song you dong jokes to make Luke unhappy whatever that kick was it didn't land but he went for it I'm going to give him that round 10 to 9 so round two is the swing round so here's the deal if you gave Yair rounds one and five like I did and if you were also willing to give him round two, which I did, and I'll explain why in a second. Well, that's three rounds to two. Yeah, I tended to. I also put a ten eight round on Max. So to me, this fight, when I get to the math equation at the end,

whether you think I'm the worst scorer or whatever, in the end, it doesn't really matter because I'm not an appointed judge. But there's a case there for forty seven, forty seven. But I also think that's one of those situations where it would not have told the story of the fight. And that happens. It happens more in boxing where there's more rounds where you can see in boxing, where one fighter can be much more dominant in the rounds he won. And I do think that's the case here. I wouldn't call max dominant outside of round three,

but I will say the rounds max Holloway one, there's no doubt you knew it. You know, unless you gave him round two as well. And I've seen it in boxing. I scored Keith Thurman 115-113 for Pacquiao ringside, even though everyone watching saw Pacquiao get the knockdown, saw Pacquiao have the better finish. But you don't score it that way. You score it round by round as if it's individual fights.

So there's a case for Yair. And the round two case for me is this. Max began his adjustment to the heavy shots that Yair threw in round one by stepping up his pace in round two by crowding him. But I thought Yair did an incredible job of those counter leg strikes. Now, again, Max took away the calf kicks at the beginning in round three. But in round two, you know, I don't want to make more Habib Gaethje jokes, but I'm wondering if he's getting close to being in peril.

This wasn't just Gaethje being one kick away from maybe turning the sequence of that fight around, but he's landing big time strikes. And even though Max was doing the higher volume work, I favored Yair Rodriguez's harder shots in a close round. And I score it for CBS Sports HQ. And it's the first thing I typed in the text. So the producer round two, hey man, close round, but you can make a case here, 10-9 Yair. Now you can make the same case on the flip side for Max. It seems like all three judges did. It seems like the majority on Twitter did as well.

So when that happens, then we don't have an argument and that's fine. And Max, I thought was the better fighter and deserves to have won. But this is all part of just saying, yeah, Rodriguez may have just fought the fight of his life considering the uh the platform considering the opponent considering two years off i thought he came back from those two years off which was usada suspension and injury

and uh he said he lost somebody in his family due to covid and then you add in the delay when they were supposed to fight in july but max had gotten injured, that Yair really came in best shape of his life. You could see that he was just ridiculously caught up. He always is, but you could see that. But there was really some, you know, better strategy, better focus, maybe still not, while I said it was a championship effort, at least from the intangible standpoint, no doubt about it, you still would like to see him be a little bit more consistent over the totality of a fight.

But again, he was landing the kind of strikes that would take people out. And you could make a case. And the case is really just to say, what a great performance from Jair Rodriguez. You saw Max Holloway get cut in round five. You saw the swelling around his eyes. He got put through the ringer. I mean, this was a war of attrition both guys uh not the type of fight where they're never going to be the same but you know this this takes something out of you this type of fight and

they thrilled the fans and i'm i'm happy that we didn't end it up end up with the kind of scorecard that i ended up with i'm happy we didn't end up with a math snafu because the right fighter did win but it just shows you that uh yeah, yeah, you're never stopped coming. You know, there was a, what Harold, Harold Howard, the great random UFC veteran who's once said, if you're going to come on, come on, right. If you're coming in, uh, yeah, it was coming. So just, uh, just an incredible, just an incredible fight, uh, across the board. And Max, I didn't expect him to take the fight to the ground. just an incredible just an incredible fight uh across the board and max

i didn't expect him to take the fight to the ground it was something we said in the morning combat preview ahead of time will this fight go to the ground at all it was yeah year that got an early takedown by taking max's back i believe in round two could have been around one but it was max who made those adjustments and took him down and you know uh max damn near came close to winning that in round three and this was this i'm trying to factor i'm trying to do the math quickly that's why i'm pausing here and saying you know where does this fight actually belong in the fight of the year debate and you obviously saw enough in the first two rounds of gaethje chandler which had big stakes right basically a number one contender fight could be, we'll see.

This fight had that same feeling. This was a main event, number one contender fight, but five rounds. It's got to be in that discussion. And it's a credit to both two guys, but the max bless show at age 29 is still going upward. Now me, if I had a choice, I'd see him against Volkanovski a third time because they are the two best fighters in this great division. And I mean, look, what I like to go fight Zabit next. I don't think,

I don't know if Zabit's coming through that door, Rick Patino, you know, I don't know what's happening next with him. I hope he comes back and fights, but I think that second fight was polarizing enough in the scoring that it's rare to do a third fight when somebody has lost the first two. And there's a few odd scenarios right now across the sport where we could do that, but this would be the one to do it. I don't begrudge max getting a chance to rematch Conor McGregor for big

money. I don't begrudge match begrudge max, excuse me, getting a chance to fight for the lightweight title again. I just don't think that's necessary. If he can still make 145, and I think he's young enough still, despite the tax and toll on his body to where he can, and he just did, that would be the fight for me to make. I don't see a different Alexander Volkanovsky opponent in this division who is more deserving, or you're just saying, look, we haven't seen that matchup yet, so let's do that next. Unless you're going to call Henry Cejudo. But that's another discussion, another topic for another day.

The point here was not to belabor and go crazy long. Of course, we're going to hit you up on Morning Combat on Monday, 11 a.m. Eastern on YouTube to break down this card in totality. That insane Ben Rothwell finished, even though Herb Dean tried to stop and start that fight more times than the rhythm method there, right? Or what's that method called? And just some bat shit good finishes on that prelim section of the card. This was a fun afternoon of fights starting the main card at 4 p.m. Eastern on the East Coast.

Thank you very much. And we'll be hitting you up with the recap of the stuff going on in boxing this weekend and all that with Luke Thomas and myself, Brian Campbell. So please like and subscribe to this podcast. Wanted to give you a little flavor, a little taste of what I saw and thought, whether you care about that or not, but I'm, I I'm talking in circles cause I'm so impressed by what I just saw. And I'm trying to, to sort of put it in the right terms and, and,

and framed a yeah. Yeah. Rodriguez. What's next BC. I think he, he wins meaning this is a loss, but I think more good will come from this loss for him than bad. You didn't know how he was going to respond from the two years off. He had an, a bit of an inflated, yet had still shown flashes of brilliance. We're getting closer to real brilliance for Rodriguez. So I think he's going to get a big fight, a top five type fight after this. And one day, considering he's also only 29 and he comes from Mexico, which could be a nice little Trump card in his pocket for the UFC's hope, as always.

You see Brandon Moreno, the first Mexican born champion of expanding there. I think we're going to end up seeing a Rodriguez one day fight for a world title. And I think this was the fight where his doubters might start believing that. And maybe more importantly, he will start believing that. So great on him. Give me Volkanovski. Give me Max. Give me the third time.

I don't want to hear the people on Twitter that say, well, just so you know, it's not really that exciting. The first two fights anyway. It's a lot like playing chess, you know? Well, it is at times when you got two guys that brilliant and that smart. But this is why we love Max so much. This is why we love Blessed, because he can go into the phone booth and go through hell against Yair and come out on top. And he can also make the adjustments like he did in the second volkanovski fight where i thought he had done enough to win three rounds to two and had figured out what went wrong from a

brilliant performance by alex and by the way alex was brilliant both because volkanovski made the adjustments in round two and had that rally i'm sorry in the second fight and had that rally that gave people uh that thought he won you know, the fuel to say that. So that's just me, your boy, B.C., all that. And then some tall, pale and handsome reporting live from my basement somewhere in Connecticut. Watch our show. Love our show. Live our show. It's it's it's really it's really a lot more than just you guys talking about combat sports. So happy veterans day to all you have served out there this week. Thank you.

Thank you very much, including the great Luke Thomas. And hopefully him and I can keep our marriage on the tracks, right? Happy editorial wife, happy life. They say, see, I don't, I don't, you know, a little aside. I'm not, you know, I like Luke. First of all, I love Luke Thomas. Okay. Off camera. Great guy. Never met him.

No, I haven't met him. I hung out with him. Great guy. I'm not here though, to please him. I'm not here to make him comfortable on camera. Okay. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Maybe that's why this show is so great.

All right. All right. That's all I show is so great. All right. All right. That's all I got. Two words. We out.