MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Fight Night Recap | UFC 268 | Dana White's Contender Series Recap | EP 197

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell are back from Cleveland and ready to break down the latest in the combat sports world. The boys open up with a recap of UFC Fight Night: Barboza vs. Chikadze. What's next for Giga Chikadze? Should the guys be ready to give up on Kevin Lee? Next up the guys discuss the fallout of Jake Paul's win over Tyron Woodley. Has their view on a rematch changed? Do we believe Jake is really retired? There were some big Fight announcements for UFC 268. Where does this rank among 2021 PPVs? The boys recap Dana White's Contender Series and discuss some big news coming out of it. Finally they close out topics with Quick Hitters. Amanda Nunes vs. Juliana Pena was rescheduled, Junior Dos Santos wants to box and much more. 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: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Look at us now, tip to tip. This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat. Back like a bad habit. We're hoping you make us one of your good habits. It is the 1st

of September. Can you believe it? September 1st, 2021 already, and it is time for Morning Combat. Hello, everyone. Your dynamic duo is back for a full show with plenty of MMA to talk about today. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. I am joined by a gentleman who is skin tag free, little bit ornery on the other side of the pillow this morning,

little bit, little bit, little bit grumpy, but you know what? We're happy to have him. It's the king of Connecticut. It's Brian Campbell. What's up? Well, not skin tag free yet. They still have to fall off,

but I got various parts of my body cosmetically frozen and picked at luke why because i'm a uh half washed old white dad and half uh don't want my face covered in it for this camera job so uh thank you fans for for for coming back to us i know we haven't communicated well and we're working on that we didn't have a show monday as we flew back but what a week last week jake paul tyron woodley cleveland um a doc coming in the next two weeks i hear luke a really heartfelt doc that's bold that's bold on grown men growing up so uh you might get a little bit more of an adult bc moving forward luke okay okay you know i've i've already mastered the uh the adult teenager look so maybe i'll you know maybe it's time to rotate a bit and

shift you know uh so we'll see anyway we got a great show mma heavy today uh luke any closing thoughts on cleveland before we get into the good stuff yeah i'm glad we went i'm glad that we get these opportunities from showtime i think in many ways there was lots of successes to be had but i think in also some ways bc and i would already look at it as we're happy to get back to some hardcore fan boxing hardcore fan mma mma as you indicated today's show is mma heavy and uh you know listen man we still got lots to work lots of work to do we have lots of things we need to get right and lots of things and still goals to attain and so it's full steam ahead so i'm glad we went but i'm ready to pivot to the next thing if that makes i will say though in closing to put this behind us for good you know like rocky for luke if if you can change we can change and um you know um i reached out to that guy over dms

and i i squared everything up okay we? We're good. We're good. All right. Time will tell if you're actually really good. No, we're good. We're good. You didn't have a date with him at P.F. Chang's, by the way, right? Because that guy was coming hard at Bapa. I mean, coming hard in the paint.

So, wow. I did not have a date at P.F. You know, I've actually, this is a true story, I've never actually eaten at P.F. Chang's. Is it any good? I have no idea. Orange chicken. And orange chicken

bubba incredible incredible so uh shout out to all the all the employees there uh getting it done but uh yeah luke you know there's it's a big mma world a big combat world and there's world there's room for all of us on there so um you know heard that shout out that our guy gave us on monday respect okay thank you yes fair enough uh he's talking about Ariel. Okay, as always, thumbs up on the video no matter who you are and if you're new here, please hit subscribe. We do these more typically on a Monday and a Wednesday and a Friday. BC will host

a Friday show and a whole lot of other stuff. You can see us here on social, everything there in your lower third. So follow us wherever that may be, but especially right here on YouTube. If you want to try Showtime, you certainly may. Plenty of Bellator action coming your way, as well as Showtime Championship Boxing. You can go to Showtime.com, get a 30-day free trial.

If you like it, you can keep it. If not, no harm, no foul. We do have a merch store. BC, I don't know if your face Hawaiian shirt is up yet, but either way, it's morningcombat.store is the place to go. Do you have any update on what kind of stuff fans can expect there no but i will get one very shortly it's time to get all our ducks in a row and be professionals luke okay that includes the merch site that that that that

hawaiian shirt with bc's old more immature face on it that could be a big hit hopefully we'll get that out soon some factory mma uh merch on the rise coming so get your mugs get all that shit okay abuela or abuela let's not keep that man out of the conversation either that's right grandfather plays a role too i'll fit your family in this stuff it supports us we appreciate that uh can't can't give nothing but love to our friends bill and jen in the rv luke i don't know if you saw him in butte montana over this weekend bill repping that 1.0 MK shirt tight. Okay? Shout out to Bill there. Love him. Love him.

And then, reminder for folks, I think voting is still open for the World MMA Awards. If you want to be involved, go to worldmmawards.com slash nominees and give us a vote if you haven't already. We appreciate that. I think that's everything. Did I forget anything, BC? I think I got to everything right thank you to our peeps our fans hopefully you enjoyed our content over the weekend

we cover all facets of combat sports no we are not covering pro wrestling moving forward that was a BC special so I saw a lot of hate out there but when it looks away sometimes BC will play but no we're MMA big time boxing sometimes we dabble in the celeb game but we're back with a

bang this is a serious show let's get real okay let's get inside on each other let's do this thing okay it's a little weird but you can go to morningcombat at gmail.com if you want to email the show all right with that out of the way let's get to some stuff that we missed bc it was on saturday we're probably the latest to recap this so we won't belabor the point but we have to get to i think it was UFC fight night or UFC on ESPN 30 I don't know what fight night number it was but it was headlined of course this was the ultimate fighter the brand new one that aired exclusively on ESPN plus coming back but it had a headlining about at featherweight between the previously ranked between 9 and 10

Giga Chikadze and Edson Barboza and And Chikadze really kind of walked away with this one, winning via TKO in the third round. BC, my question for you is, real basic but important, what exactly did Giga Chikadze prove with this win? I think he proved that upper tier. He's legit. He's a legitimate threat to this larger title picture, which is obviously very crowded

some very dangerous names there but even at 36 or 35 i could be wrong on that you know edson barbosa rebranded to fight win streak moving down in weight as tough as they come and in both the first and second round barbosa had good stretches in the opening 90 seconds or so where he shows you how tough of a test this was for Chikadze to pass. Well, not only did he pass it, Luke, he passed it spectacularly. This is a very, very big win, because when you get those highlight wins against a certain level, and he's coming off Chikadze the biggest win of that certain level when he stopped Cub Swanson with a kick to the body,

you do wonder, can you do that on the higher level? I think it certainly wasn't perfect he had to get through some stuff but i gotta give this card a lot of credit like you probably i watched this piecemeal little saturday night little sunday little monday little this morning it's a really good card across the board and i think chikazi still you know stole the show in the end um luke i have a question to spin back to you. I mean, he proved more to come with this guy, big time top 10 matchups to come, maybe even top five after this performance. So we're going to find out who he really is. But when this was, I guess the comparison to something like a basketball

is, you know, half court offense set up versus free flowing, fast breaking. When this was a half court game, when this was a game set up i thought barbosa had the advantage but i thought bar that became almost a detriment to barbosa he really needed to control the terms to have success and what chikadze was able to do was paint outside the lines a little bit and mix it up and his big strikes which i ultimately turned this fight they're a little bit wild now his technique his speed his accuracy are all top end but he almost squares up to get off his big shots and really just overwhelmed and surprised Barbosa with it. Can he do that, Luke, against the very elite, the very top tier,

the chess players, the Volkanovskis? I'm not so sure, but this was a brilliant finish in how he broke down one of the most consistently dangerous and tough fighters over two divisions of the last decade. No doubt i thought that's a good recap i'd say i feel a little bad for barboza because he always comes in shape he dude i mean his resume whether he we've talked about jeremy stevens's resume on this show if you just look at the names he's had to face it's just an incredible list over a long period of time barboza's got to be right up there if not better than that in terms of just absolute hammers he has to fight.

Fight in and fight out, winning or losing. I always take my hat off to Barboza because we just don't get a lot of guys like this anymore, and he is really quite special in that regard. Still, he did come up on the losing end of things. Chikadze wanted to get pushed into the top five with the win, but he was sitting at between nine and ten. He's only now sitting at eight. I think it's asking a lot because if you look at one to seven, it's Holloway, Ortega, Rodriguez, Korean zombie, Calvin Cater, Arnold Allen,

and now Josh Emmett ahead of him. Any of those fights would Giga Chikazi sound amazing. For me, what I took away from this BC was one, I still think Barbosa is a little bit chinny. You know, it's not going to be a thing he's gonna be able to get rid of. I don't think it's a, it's a, it's, I don't think it's such an obstacle that he can't be good fighters but it is going to be hard to beat good fighters so long as that is a present condition and obviously it will be the other thing I would say about Chikadze though is man this guy really you mentioned the Cub Swanson thing I was like was that really you know can he do that at scale against better opposition?

And I think he can. Now, to what extent, we'll have to see. Obviously, I do think that someone who's a wrestler might nullify some of this. For example, BC, you noticed how many times he would just blitz Edson Barboza and then come with a huge punch or an elbow against a guy who can level change against you. That's going to be, obviously, Chikadze's timing is phenomenal to be able to do something like that and reading what's open and setting everything up and showing a lot of different looks. But that might get limited somewhat. That was a big problem for Barboza because it kind of spelled the beginning of the end.

But really, Chikadze, for me, I think what was impressive was that when he needed to let Barboza or when Barboza just sort of took command of the center, Chikadze was still the one getting off first. He had to do more work because he had to do lateral motion. He was better with his combos. Both guys were pretty good, especially early, about checking kicks. But you can just see, man, here's the one knock on Barboza. This is what Chikadze had over him. Barboza, what he has is extremely formidable. But in the modern game, if you can do something at your core, yes. But then you've got a lot of different tools in the toolbox. That tends to win out all things being equal. Of course, things aren't always equal.

But you know what I mean, BC. You can see a guy like Chikadze constantly switching stances. Constantly playing with ranges. Constantly playing with timing. Plus, he has good defense and good fundamentals. He landed his famed Giga Kick there as well in that first round, eventually a two. Dude, he's a very, very talented guy. He's got a ton of weapons, made the transition from kickboxing, I would say, pretty seamlessly.

He is now at a point where he's got a lot of different tools in the toolbox, and he has found a way to make them much more lethal. I think when he first started in the UFC, he was kind of on the mental backfoot about, I don't want to get taken down and blah, blah, blah. You know, obviously Barbosa is not that takedown threat BC, but I still believe that he has really, really come a long way with this title threat yet. No, but, um, the next question would be who makes sense next? Well, hold on. I think, I think he proved that he's a title threat to To do that against Barbosa, you are 100% proving that. But I think to something that both you and I alluded to, there's still legitimate questions.

What about, to your point, if somebody can have a threat at taking him down? And I think, what about somebody who's just a high-level game planner and mover and slickster? And he called out Max Holloway afterwards, I'm sure in your head you can imagine. Could he have some of those same successes against Zvolkanovsky? I do have legit questions about that, Luke, because, you know, he takes chances with some of these surges. It's just that his mixture of timing and speed up to these levels has been perfect, right?

Up to these levels of competition. You know, what's going to happen if somebody can constantly slick that and make him constantly adapt? Is he on that same game-planning IQ level? His kickboxing is tremendous. His kicks are hard. They're accurate. He has a way of really throwing them without much wind-up or tell on them.

So there's a lot to love here. I think he proved he's ready for the title level. I don't think he proved yet, though. You know, you can only prove it by beating the best. That he's a legitimate threat right now to win that belt still more to climb so when you ask who's next i think the max holloway call out was bold i don't think he's going to get that next he's going to have to going to get at least one to two in my eyes to climb this top you know six or seven in front of him one to two more solid wins so you know i love the

boldness of a holloway but holloway's basically waiting for this volkanovsky or take a fight to play out so he could get one more shot at the bell or not one more you know his next shot at the bell we forget how young holloway actually is so i'd like to see him do this luke against somebody with a completely different skill set of barbosa who is firmly in the midst of that top 10, though. Who do you like? I like the Josh Emmett fight because Josh will meet you on your feet. He can kick, but he's much less of a kicker. He's more of a boxer.

And, of course, if he needs to, he can wrestle. Plus, I've been saying this, Josh Emmett has extremely high fight IQ. He understands what the conditions have to be in place in order for him to have his best chance at victory, which often includes a lot of movement and nullification and whatnot. But then he is absolutely an offensive dynamo. He doesn't just shut you down. He shuts you down and then really hammers you. I don't know if he's ready. I don't know if that makes sense, but you're asking me like in theory in that ranking list, I love the Josh Emmett fight because here's the thing, man. Pop quiz. Can you name, and I couldn't do this until I looked it up,

so no shame if you can't do it, but can you name the guy who submitted Giga Chikadze on the Contender Series a couple years ago? Oh, God. I was looking up some Chikadze fights last week, and I saw that. Who was it, Luke? I didn't know until I looked it up either. It's Austin Springer.

So I asked myself, where is Austin Springer now? After choking out Giga Chikadze, he had one win in cage sport, which he won, and then he had his UFC debut, which he lost via first-round submission to Alex Caceres. Now, I'm not here to say that the win over Chikadze was some kind of fluke. Maybe that was actually just where Chikadze was in terms of his weaknesses at that time. But back to my previous point, dude, this guy is getting better rapidly. Rafael Cordero, you can see those two guys have a really good relationship. And Cordero has good relationships with a lot of his guys.

You can see that they have a good bond. But Chikadze seems to be really in tune with what Cordero wants him to do. And he has now much more ability to pull that off. I think we very much have a brand new face in the top 10. Obviously, we already did before, but I mean, a real threat, and folks need to take him seriously. Well, we have Holloway. I'm sorry, we have Ortega, Wilkinowski soon,

and I forgot that Holloway had the on-and-off-again fight schedule with Rodriguez. So I still think it'll take him two wins. Josh Emma is ranked 7 right above him. Luke, that does offer the know holes that we haven't seen Chikadze master in terms of the skill set of Emmett I'd love to see that fight I know there's a couple guys in front of him Cater Korean Zombie but I think you know Emmett is the right fight

coming off of that win against what against Burgos right yes correct but out for a long time with the injury yeah I mean look dude you go out there and finish Barbosa like that i mean those right hands were powerful accurate you know quick on the money i think his hand speed surprised me here luke to be able to give barbosa fits on this level so big win more to come this guy's no shortage of confidence he was also you know

kind of made a man in high school in georgia just like yourself luke so i think there's a he's a different kind of man in a different kind of georgia but high school in Georgia just like yourself, Luke. So I think there's a kinship. Yeah, he's a different kind of man in a different kind of Georgia, but that's fair. The last thing I'd say, well, you know, we can move on from there because we've been sort of belaboring the point. But, you know, I was just going to say his hand speed, yes, is quick. But, like, his ability, he's rangy, and his ability to cover that range is, I think,

it very much took Barboza by surprise. So good work by him. Now the other part about this, BC, that kind of breaks our heart, we have both been Kevin Lee future world champion dead-enders, but we might be reaching the dead end of that. I like Kevin Lee a lot. I still believe that we have not. I'll say this.

Is he going to be a world champion? I don't know. That's up to him. But I do believe we've not seen his best work. I am quite confident in saying that. But he loses to Daniel Rodriguez via unanimous decision. What am I saying? 29-28 across the board.

I thought he won the first. And then he really just kind of fell apart in the second and the third. BC, are you ready to declare that you have to give up your Kevin Lee future world champion card man when these guys have nine lives in your heart right I've been here with Adrian Broner I've been here with Zab Judah I've been here with uh you know I'm even Luke Rockhold to a certain degree I can still talk myself into things that in reality of like what the hell am I doing there's no chance, right? Yeah, you gotta take the L, and we're past

taking the L here. So this was a tough loss, and we can hold off the Rodriguez breakdown for a second because he's the reason that Kevin Lee lost this fight, but I'm not gonna sit here and say, well, when we said future champion, we didn't necessarily mean UFC could win a Bellator title or PFL

tomorrow. I don't know, but here's the deal, Luke, this is going to sound harsh. I think he should get cut. And it's not because he's not of UFC talent. I mean, he had kicked Gregor Gillespie, you know, which, which was an important win for him to like hold off the, the bleeding there. But let's not forget guys who have been cut by the UFC before when they sort of hit a certain dead end. Not a dead end like five losses in a row. Old guy dead end. But you know what?

I can't figure it out. Look at what Brandon Moreno did, Luke, when he got cut. Look at how quickly he was able to put a couple of big wins together. Really look into himself. Now, you could say, BC, like, what are you doing, dude? How many more times can Kevin Lee look into himself, right? You may want to look into a reverse mirror and ask yourself if that tattoo was the right move. I mean, but if there is a ninth life left in the Kevin, future champion Kevin Lee saga, because you and I both see the ability there, but there's not just one thing missing. There's multiple key intangible things missing he finds new ways to to lose close fights where you can really talk yourself into him winning coming in um i think the last gasp on this because he's still so young is a release that surprises people and maybe would surprise him and force him to go elsewhere whether it's the regional scene, whether it's the secondary large market

of Bellator, PFL, or even one, but is one even still a thing? Luke, I don't hear much rumbling anymore from those parts. Yeah, I think it's still a rum. You know, that might be the best thing to rattle the cage and figure it out, because you know what he's going to figure out by going to that level, Luke? He's going to figure out whether he belongs

at that level, and he's comfortable and happy with it, and could he win a title at those levels? Sure. The talent's there. But as of right now, he just he's missing what he would need to maximize his talent. And these are drastic measures. But before it gets too drastic, before you're 34 and suddenly the last stop down the road, BKFC, yes, is the only stop left. Something drastic would need to happen here, Luke.

He's not the man yet. We thought he was. And yes, we are running out of options to try to prove to you that what we saw, you know, was what it was. I'll take the L. He took the L. Is that drastic, Luke? Could he get cut? I think he might get cut because the way

you know some things I've heard and obviously we all heard what Dana White said like you know I don't know if he's still gonna stick around we'll see I certainly don't wish that upon him like the difficulties that can come with the UFC life taken from you and now you have to go and yeah some people of course go to some place outside the UFC and have a lot of success but you know a lot of people don't so I don't that upon him, but it's pretty clear that if he wants to get the best out of himself, he is in need of a reset moment. He is very much in need of a reset moment. I mean, I didn't realize this until I did some research. The last time he put back-to-back wins together was 2017. I mean, we are way, way past that. It is time for a look into what is happening here. And between 2016 and 2017, I think he had like a five-fight win streak.

Since then, the only back-to-back, what do you want to put it, you know, consistency he's had is back-to-back losses against Iaquinta and Dos Anjos and then Charles Oliveira and Rodriguez. And look, he's not losing to bad guys. He's losing to Tony Ferguson in 2017. That's about as close to peak Tony as you're going to get. Iaquinta, I still think very highly of him. He's got a great jab, comes from a good team. Obviously, Dos Anjos, former champion. Charles Oliveira, current champion.

And Rodriguez, pretty clearly at this point, should not be anyone's secret. This guy is very legit, and he's going to do big things with the time he has remaining in his career. But everything is trending in the wrong direction. I did not like this fight for him because he was supposed to take on Sean Brady. And Sean Brady is a tough customer, but that would have been more of a ground tussle, I feel like, which maybe would have been suiting to more of someone who would accommodate him with that kind of an approach to the game, which Rodriguez was not. You know, but when I saw this fight, I was like, dude, Rodriguez is tough. He can strike his ass off. He's, you know, he doesn't, he has fantastic bearing under pressure. I mean, this was a really,

really tough guy to come back to. And I'll say this. This is going to sound like I'm making excuses for Kevin Lee, but I really believe this. Look, if we had a 155 and a 165 and a 175-pound weight class, I'm not saying Kevin Lee would be your runaway 165-pound champ. I don't know that. But do I think that the way in which the weights are structured now with 155, then a big jump to 170, and of course, if we had welterweight under the 165 system, it would be 175.

Do I think that this current system, does it maximize his skill set and his size? No. I think it puts him between a rock and a hard place. I don't think you're going to get the best out of him under those circumstances. So what the solution is, I don't know. It seems to me like he's a little bit all over the place, and there's a lot of things he has to get right. He showed flashes in the first round, but I don't think he It seems to me like he's a little bit all over the place, and there's just a lot of things he has to get right. He showed flashes in the first round,

but I don't think he's, from my understanding, he didn't stick to his game plan, from what I could tell. His coaches were saying one thing, which seems to be a consistent problem with him, because then he does another. There's just a lot of things that need to be cleaned up and ironed out, and it sucks, because he had two years off.

He didn't make any money. It had to be terrible. I feel bad giving this analysis. I don't take any pleasure in it. No, no. But until he until he really really really shakes the foundation of what he's doing and fully resets i don't know you're going to get the best out of him anytime soon i mean when when i did that show solo coming off of that kelvin gastelum loss it's like you know i did the bill parcelle's quote because you know you you are what your record says you are and And I love Kelvin Gastelum and I think he's shown such elite flashes. He's no longer elite when he's lost five in a row.

And it doesn't matter, you know, when the losses pile up to that level. Oh, he's been fighting all killers. Kevin Lee, as you mentioned, has been fighting all killers. But it's four losses in five fights. It's two in five over the last seven. He's only 28 years old. That's why I said the extreme move of a cut might be the thing that rattles the cage a la Moreno.

And here's the quote from Dana White after the fight. That's a good question. Again, that's the thing we will get together on Tuesday and talk about and figure out what's next for him here or not here. I don't take any pleasure in it either, Luke, but let's not belabor the Kevin Lee not putting it together point too long and just say Daniel Rodriguez, I think in his past three, four fights went from, wow, this is

a really exciting guy that we need to watch to like, wow, this guy I mean, Luke, he looks you don't judge somebody by looks but he looks like a fringe guy but he's starting to fight like a real contender that boxing ability, the savviness the toughness, he is legit.

I think you saw limitations on the ground in the first round, although he was able to keep his back off of it in two and three. It is time to talk about now, like, how legit can Jano Rodriguez be? Because D-Rod, crazy tattoos, crazy look in his eyes. He can bring it. But do you see, like, upward bound? What's your phrase, Luke? Upper bound.

Upper bound limits? What are your upper bound upper bound limits? What are his upper bound limits, Luke? Well, I will say that he did struggle a little bit on the ground now, not enough, obviously, to lose the fight, but to lose the first round. And even then, you know, it wasn't like he had a dynamic presence on the ground. What he was able to do was either have defense and then nullify it by creating separation standing or whatever the case like just getting out of those scenarios so having the good defense is not it's critical like it's a it's a it's a clearly important component to getting back to his feet to do the kinds of things where he is um you know much more offensively capable of doing so as long as remember as a real basic level of understanding jiu-jitsu, it's survive, defend, and attack. So he's at that defense stage, right?

It becomes a little bit more natural, becomes a little bit easier. He's not an offensive threat there in that way. Obviously, with ground and pound on top, he might be, but not underneath. And so to that extent, when you look at the top of that division, I'm not saying he's ready for Kamaru or Colby or something like that. But you've got some, you know, Kiesa too. You've got some pretty dominant wrestlers up there. I think that could be a problem long-term, but what I will say is, you know, we're still outside, I think, the top.

I think he's sitting at 15. You know, listen, here's who's in front of him right now. Santiago Ponzinibbio, Sean Brady, Muslim Salikov, and then the Leech, Li Zhenglang. I think any of those fights are great tests. Ponzinibbio one stands out to me in particular because I think that could be a great striking battle. Sean Brady, the guy who's supposed to fight Kevin Lee, I think very highly of Sean Brady's ability. Any of those would be pretty good. But to your point, he is tough.

And I can't say this enough. His composure. He never loses bearing under any situation, good or bad. He doesn't get too excited. He doesn't get too down on himself. he stays real stoic right in the middle and that carries him to victory man more often than not yeah and the window is going to be smaller he's 34 years old i mean in comparison kevin lee only only 28 still but including the daniel white contender series rodriguez now seven and one under the ufc banner so uh making noise because. Still has a lot to prove, but man,

the head movement, the nastiness when he needs to be the long reach, he's fun. At the very least, he's must-see and maybe more. We'll find out. But that was a good fight that told us a lot about both, Luke. Quickly, quickly, I couldn't name the two guys who won the Ultimate Fighter. I apologize

to them. I'm sure they're very good fighters. It's nothing personal. I just didn't watch this season. Anyone else on the card stand out to you? Yeah, I just mentioned I really like this card, so I'll hit you up on the tough finale. I did focus on these two fights even though I also didn't watch the season. Ricky Tursios, the Bantamweight, did get

a lot of attention, Luke, because of his aggressive style and sort of free-flowing personality, although he used his victory afterwards to really send a message of love and peace that I thought was well-received. But his victory here over Brady, is it Brady-Heastand? By split decision, it was a fun-ass fight. I didn't necessarily agree with the Paul Felder insinuation

that this is kind of like a poor man's Bonner-Griffin, even though you did see determination on both. I don't, you know, I'm not huge on Tertius, even though he's younger, he's in his late 20s, and this is his, you know, introduction to the big-time UFC. I don't see, you know, he's going to have to prove it to me long-term. But short-term from an attraction, from from a guy you know with with a lot of spunk he really pushes a pace and brings it he's fun he's wild he can scramble his takedown defense

over the second half of this fight improved which which i think ultimately what won it even though he had some some rough moments on the ground and i even want to see more from brady he stan luke because here's a guy a wrestler who i thought his best work in this fight was his boxing he had some really stiff shots overcame a cut uh this was a fun fight in the end and I think you know Tertius is gonna lot gonna get a lot of attention because of the look and the attitude but um I think he's still got a lot to prove long term but a big win for him and did you catch at all this uh this tough middleweight finale when uh Brian Battle came in there and he took on a guy in last minute Luke Gilbert Urbino was a late late replacement here due to injury

in the final and Urbino came with that same energy as like prime Ugeth Urbino with the machete against his gardener I mean this guy was looking to finish this fight early Luke but shout out to Brian Battle for turning it around and overcoming a cut and getting the submission

it kind of made me wish I'd watched the season, Luke, because these are fun personalities here. I'll add to that list. I feel like you did a good job highlighting those two. I would add just a couple of names. I thought Dustin Jacoby's win over Darren Stewart was really good. I think Stewart has since been removed from the rankings, but he's still a good fighter. And Dustin Jacoby, I covered this guy when he was doing road to glory stuff after washing out of the UFC the first time to see him now up here you know there's probably still a limit on what he can accomplish but what he's accomplishing and the ease with which he's accomplishing it pretty goddamn impressive I take my hat off to Justin Jacoby

in a big way and then Abdul Razak Alhassan having that huge huge head kick win win over Alessio DiCarrico. Good for him as well. JJ Aldridge, by the way. 17 seconds. Our boy Dick Rico got sent to hell, Luke. And I know he's going to be mad at me for that because he's usually mad at the media. And I didn't take any pleasure in it, but that's a big flashy win for Alhassan who can bring it.

And a tough loss for Alessio. And you did mention Stewart, Luke. He was extracted from the rankings. There's now a filling in that group and you know it's a real cavity to his career there Luke but hopefully the dentist can bounce

back and I'm sure he can he's very talented but Dustin Jacoby is really a different guy just a totally different guy than he used to be okay let's do this finally and once and for all. I know the audience has dealt with tons of coverage from a fight they may or may not have cared about, but

we'll close the book on it here today. Let's do the epilogue to Woodley and Paul. Alright, so we all know the story. Jake Paul defeated Tyron Woodley via split decision, which is still a card that I can't wrap my head around. If you haven't seen it, we did a post-fight show.

Me and BC, we reacted in real time. In fact, shouts to BC. He did a recap for CBS Sports HQ. I checked today. It has over 2 million views. So good job with that, BC. Those are Helwani-like numbers, right? Yeah, they're pretty good.

They're pretty good. They're pretty good. All right, but let's get to the story at hand. So BC, we've kind of said how we felt about the fight. We kind of said how we felt about the whole experiment and everything else. What I want to ask now is, first things first, have you changed your view one way or the other on an idea of a Paul and Woodley rematch? No, I haven't changed at all. And I really, look, we're being honest. We were honest

ahead of this fight the promotion of this fight won us over good lord did it it was fun as balls and i hope that you know i hope that the numbers are big for showtime because of that because everyone worked their ass off the fighters most importantly to really sell this but you know the fight didn't live up to the expectations even though there were things to like about the fight there was tense you did see better boxing in some ways from both than we necessarily expected but luke i don't think there's a a call for this rematch at all tyron woodley got an opportunity again i didn't like the call that that that his legacy was at stake no no he this is a payday for him okay could he have spun this into bigger things with a win maybe yeah but this he was brought in as the opponent

so when you're brought in as the opponent there in this kind of case dude man you got a wow and he he let jake paul off the hook and i think it's what led to it not being as exciting as it could so from my standpoint there's absolutely no call for a rematch. Tyron had his opportunity, and we've said pretty consistently, or maybe I've said, Luke, that this bubble is going to last as long as the faces of this celebrity crossover bubble are making really fun fights. Logan and Floyd didn't pan out what it could have been. And to a lesser degree, neither did this one, Luke.

So I think the best idea, if you're Jake Paul, is to move on. You're going to have to step up the level of competition, meaning somebody potentially younger, bigger, with more legitimate boxing experience. I mean, look, it's a fine art when you're matchmaking at this level, right? The level where obviously Jake Paul's not a real fighter, even though he's showing hints of some things to really like giving his novice level, but you got to pick the right opponent to move it forward. I don't know what the call would be in terms of the selling to get

people excited about a second Woodley fight. If it happens and it's a showtime fight, and even if we're on the board, we're going to cover it, we're going to do what we have to do. But Luke, to me, Woodley missed his opportunity to really make a big statement, get a big money rematch, or get more opportunity short of a Hector Lombard bare-knuckle fight, which

by the way, I would watch, given the juicy side piece storylines right there. No, there's no call for this, just like there's no call for us to believe or really give any time to Jake Paul's Conor McGregor like retirement tweet that was only backed up by a I'm back type of tweet. So I don't want to be sour here on Jake Luke because I thought he he really showed us a lot in terms of the poise and the boxing. But I really let me let me hold this

question luke because i don't want to go too far do you agree with me on that regard that to be really honest there's there's no need for this rematch i agree completely yes do you have another one then let me ask you this okay okay we were i was critical of floyd the Logan fight saying, your job is to knock out Logan Paul in that spot, right? Or at least try to do it. And I think you and I both agreed that Floyd got to a point, look, it was an exhibition, there was going to be no winner or loser short of a knockout, right? That Floyd got to a point where, well, maybe this guy's a little bigger,

faster, younger than I expected. Yeah, I can win. And I think Floyd, if we were judging that fight, won that fight. But afterwards, Luke, I sort of said, look, you're Floyd Mayweather. You're expected to go out there and knock out this novice, and you didn't do it. And I gave the criticism to him for not necessarily going after it. Do you think Jake Paul deserves the same level of criticism here,

even though it's a different scenario, when people are tuning into this fight to see one of you get knocked out and it's not that they didn't try for the knockout but there were elements on both sides of trying to balance stamina to go the full eight rounds given their experience and you know we talked about Woodley not throwing enough certainly do you think Jake deserves a certain level of criticism that says like we're tuning in not to watch a novice get better at boxing. We're tuning in to find out whether you're for real or not, specifically through the lens of did you knock out the other guy

or did you get knocked out? Did he do enough to force that equation in your eyes, Luke? No, no, he did not. But two things I would say. One is you have to ask yourself, did Jake Paul exercise, relatively speaking, the majority of his skill to get that win? In other words, was there a lot left in the tank

he could have gone to to push the fight further? I mean, yes, you can always do more. You can kamikaze it to the nth degree. But in terms of a responsible, stay-within-your-skill-set perspective, no, I think he kind of emptied the tank. I think you saw what he's got. He couldn't do a whole lot more without really absorbing a lot more risk. But I'll say this, BC, on its face, and Woodley's claims for wanting the rematch, none of them really ring true to me. They just, they just,

you know, listen, and also Woodley is smart. You know, Woodley is a bright guy. He knows that the payday he got for this, just his base pay was 2 million for this to say whatever else he's going to get on top of that. And he's going to get a huge fat check. And if you can get two of those fat checks, Hey man, you're living pretty nice. So he knew he had a job to do once the microphone was in his face about what he had to sell. The one thing I will say in his, not defense, but what he knows he has going for him is, dude, Tyron Woodley in many ways was pretty close to the perfect opponent. In fact, the MMA side of things is the perfect opponent. I made this point previously, but I didn't quite crystallize it. I think I've got a better handle on it now, BC. I want to pitch it to you. The reason why there's a little bit of like, well, the Tommy Fury fight's there. I don't really believe in the rematch. I guess we can just do that. But there's not all that much enthusiasm

for it is because, dude, MMA being there and being a broken business model is perfect for Jake Paul. Think of it this way. If MMA didn't exist and Jake Paul wanted to do this, what could he do to get the kind of credibility that beating Tyron Woodley offers? You could go to kickboxers, but no one knows who they are. You could go to old boxers, but I have a feeling the old boxer would either be still too good or just too old. In either case, there wouldn't be the same kind of transfer of credibility that beating someone who is a former UFC champion, because folks know who UFC fighters are. They know who UFC champions are. So you've got that credibility. You've got that stature he reached in that organization. And striking's kind of a close cousin to boxing. So you have this whole universe of guys that offer you enough

credibility athletically, but are challenged in terms of the actual skill set. Now you add on top of that, that basically MMA is under something approximating monopolistic control. So you're only going to get them at the end and you're going to offer them paydays. That they basically could not get in the other sport. Dude MMA guys. At the end of their career. Are perfect for Jake Paul. Tommy Fury does not offer them in that way. You might beat Tommy Fury.

You might sell a ton of tickets in the UK. And they might go that way and do a bunch of big business. But beating him doesn't offer you the same kind of credibility. You can sell to the public anyway. That beating Tyron Woodley does. so woodley knows for those reasons he's still going to be an attractive offer i don't know i i almost see it it flipped in a sense meaning if this had been the tommy fury fight and jake paul had put forth what he did which was kind of a smart boxing performance, you'd go, okay, he outboxed an actual boxer.

But when he's going in there with an MMA fighter who's older and doesn't have the same boxing experience, although, you know, with the questions that we didn't know coming in, we didn't know if Woodley was just going to come in there and have better hands and movement and all that. I almost feel like you kind of have to

knock this guy out to keep the same level of excitement going with the train. Because, Luke, unless you believe that this bubble has nine lives, like a future champion Kevin Lee, I don't know how many more times you can keep not delivering the boom at the end to keep that casual base satisfied. And you know that the casual base is what sells all pay-per-views in the long run for the most part, or at least pay-per-views that go up at or over the million

mark, but certainly in this type of fight, it's heavy marketing at those same casuals. I don't know, man. I don't know. I wonder if going for a knockout and getting knocked out trying it would have been better for the overall bubble here, setting up a rematch.

Now I don't see the hook of the rematch, and I think Team Paul is going to have to get really creative in finding the perfect opponent next that satisfies all those things that say he's moving closer to legitimacy. Yeah, the only thing I would say is I had a similar feeling. I still do. At some point, people have to be like, wow, did you see the fight? The fight was great. I don't think anyone. I still do. At some point, people have to be like, wow, did you see the fight? The fight was great.

I don't think anyone's really saying that. Some have, but it wasn't an overwhelming, like, wow, that fight was amazing. Even though it did have moments of tension. And obviously, Woodley was, I think we can both agree, probably robbed of a knockdown. But the one thing I would say is, dude, Floyd's fights weren't exciting for a long time. People kept buying them. Obviously, there's a million, um you know obviously there's a million i get it there's a million differences with floyd but at the same time dude everyone

was like you know his critics would be like don't give him money he's just gonna do the same thing he always does and then people still do it again you know it's the highest highest highest highest end of the of the spectrum for the most part uh you know the logan fight notwithstanding but he did face a lot of those criticisms and it never really seemed to affect how people purchased around him. Yeah, but there's a major difference. His hard lean into making the pursuit of the undefeated record and besting Rocky Marciano and all that,

that was a big part of the selling. He was also more polarizing than Jake Paul at his best in terms of knowing how to pull the money out of people's wallets to hopefully see him lose in the trash talk and the TBE and all that. Not to mention that that's real boxing where that's sort of allowed, where you can have a skillset in that avenue and it can still be respected and even marketable. I'm going to ask you, Luke, is there room in the celebrity bubble for actual boxing? I don't think there is. I think

the celebrity bubble is by nature, foundationally a shit show and it needs the threat of a knockout it's sort of it's the same thing i said about xfl or any football league that's not not the top of the end professional if you don't have vibrant personalities or over the top violence or crazy rules that increase scoring you have second rate football. In the celebrity boxing bubble, if you got okay boxers, you have second rate boxing. People want slugfests. They'll pay for the shit show if they're gonna get

a slugfest. That's all I'm saying for the long-term marketability of this bubble. You gotta go after it. And maybe that means getting really careful in your matchmaking, bringing in guys who still have a threat, but you know will bring it and maybe that means getting really careful in your matchmaking bringing in guys who still have a threat but you know will bring it and get themselves knocked out in the process maybe that's what you have to do woodley was almost too good in that regard but yet not

good enough to win it it's it's it's tough luke you can't script these it's not pro wrestling you got it you can build the fight up the best you can and they did an amazing job but when you roll it out there it's the fight that that you the next paycheck, though, at the end of the day. No, listen, I'm saying these things about Floyd almost rhetorically, and I don't know that I believe them. But I'm always trying to check ourselves. Before we wreck ourselves. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Well, also so that our biases about what we like and what we think is important may not really matter in the larger marketplace. The fact that it's boring seems to me, boring might be a strong word, wasn't thrilling. For us, that seems like it's a limiting factor. Maybe for the public, it's not. I don't know. We'll have to end up seeing. I tend to think you're right.

I tend to think that's exactly what's going to happen. But only time will tell. All right, let's move on and get rid of that for just a second if we can and get back to some MMA. Get that shit out of here, yo. Get that out of here. We're done. We're done.

Let's go to topic number three. Not the biggest topic, but pretty dang good in terms of what it sets up. So now we know exactly what's going to happen with UFC 268. We're going to get a lot of different stuff on it. First of all, Kamaru Usman taking on Colby Covington will be your main event for the UFC welterweight title. Banger. Can't wait for it. Your co-main, Rose Namajunas versus Zhang Weili too. They're going to run that one back, which I don't necessarily love, but I kind of get. I don't hate the fight, you know, in terms of,

hey, Rose is going to fight Weili. Don't you like that on those simple terms? Yes, of course I do. And let me read the rest of the card here. By the way, this will take place, I believe, at Madison Square Garden. Justin Gaethje versus Michael Chandler, which is going to be a three-rounder, not a five. Sean Strickland taking on Luke Rockhold. Frankie Edgar versus Chito Vera. Jermaine Durand-Ami versus Irene Aldana, which is, by the way, a sleeper fight if was ever what was one and then alia quinta is back taking on bobby green dude what can you say about this card and of course the championship fights other than completely fucking stacked you know this card and did you mention the actual news that it's rose nama unis zhong weili too as the co-main event i mean yes this card is like

is awesome and and i love it luke because you know i grew up 90 minutes from new york city the the you know madison square garden to me anything at the garden is still the biggest thing you can do concert circus hockey game fight whatever so when ufc commits to making the msg cards especially after all those years of mma being banned in new york it gets me fired up that that is a major, right? Like golf majors, UFC has majors, right? You know, you have IFW weekend, you've got New Year's Eve weekend,

and you got this MSG card. So it's freaking loaded. So Luke, if I'm Canelo, by the way, who's also going this night against Caleb Plant in Las Vegas, I don't know, man. I mean, look, it's a different scenario than when Canelo fought Sergey Kovalev on DAZN, and they made that very controversial decision to delay the main

event by like 90 minutes so that the BMF fight could take place in Madison Square Garden on the UFC pay-per-view. And, you know, we saw Canelo and Kovalev with their feet up on the couch. I mean, it was embarrassing. I watched the BMF fight from the Canelo arena that night at the MGM Grand. So I'm almost, if you're Canelo, I mean, you don't want to move nights because that's a, and the reason why I say it'd be different from DAZN because DAZN's not doing the fight. It's going to be a PBC pay-per-view either on Showtime or on Fox. I don't know, Luke, do you start at a different time? You can't be going head-to-head with this like this. I mean, this is a loaded card to the level of, what do you think the

decision-making was by the UFC to put Rose Whaley to when there was a storyline for Rose and Cookie Monster in the rematch of the inaugural women's strawweight title fight, and that's a fight, I think, you know, even though Esparza's coming off a great win

and she's on a great run, I think that's a fight you're going to believe Rose would win at this level and still set up this fight anyway. What do you think the decision-making is when this card's already stacked to just break glass and go, screw it, we're doing Rose Whaley too right now? I tend to think for maybe the same reason they ran back Rose and JJ You know, like whatever you got that first time just wasn't representative of what the broader fight should be Not that the result would change

But that, you know, listen, this was her first fight after the pandemic She had to travel further than anybody There was a lot of situations even there where she had to kind of accommodate things She was getting booed in the arena, you know And she got hit with a head kick or whatever it was like i have to go back and look but um you know you just didn't get you didn't get the fight you were supposed to get even though rose might like i'm gonna pick rose this time to win like i tend to think that's just the way it's going to go so their part might be that i think they just you know it's a bigger fight internationally obviously if um if if jang wai lee can get back on the horse and she can just you know it's a bigger fight internationally obviously if um if if

jang wai lee can get back on the horse and she can win you know obviously it it restarts everything that they're trying to build in the chinese market not that every single fight hinges on what they need to do and what they can do but you know just getting back with a you know oh let's let's let's reconstitute our efforts and let's have a ufc champion behind us to do it makes a big big difference obviously entering that market so you can't overlook that point reasons and listen listen what i don't want your answer i don't want your answer to be china last thing last thing last thing last thing this isn't the way that fights should be made but we know sometimes they are made this way for all the other reasons i mentioned on top of it just what's a better fight rose versus uh uh zhang wiley two or rose versus uh uh jang wai lee 2 or rose versus esparza 2 i mean it's easier call yeah

there's no doubt about it i mean it has a chance to make this card which already is epic on paper i mean uzman covington was a four and a half round you know fight of the year when it happened gaethje chandler i don't care if it's one round luke it's going to be the best fight of the night there's so many storylines but the answer probably is china and i don't think we should ever look past the marketing you know concerns and we don't you know that's probably the answer but hey great fight maybe it plays out like rose yoana too where the first one ended you know quickly and and powerfully but the second one was more representation of how evenly matched this is and their strengths and weaknesses so we'll see um back quickly to that canelo point luke we don't even know which network is going to put

that on so it's hard to really get a gauge but what do you think is the responsive the responsible move just go head to head and say look we're different sports we believe in our product and look canelo trying to become an undisputed champion against an undefeated fighter who's got a certain level of marketing like caleb plant it's a great fight do you put it on earlier do you start the pay-per-view at 7 p.m do you put it on later Luke do you go another day what do you do I tend to think you maybe could put it on slightly earlier but then you begin to mess with your west coast audiences I just think if you're promoting Canelo versus Caleb Plant you have to ask yourself how many how many people are looking at their wallet and saying, well, it's either going to be Canelo versus Plant or it's going to be UFC 268? I think it's very few people, to be quite honest with you.

There is overlap between MMA and boxing audiences, especially in ways that there never used to be. But they're lined up in certain cases along the Jake Paul thing or, hey, let's pay attention to what Clarissa Shields is doing. It's less about, you know, I actually like both in an equal way and don't know how to apportion my dollars. The media can be distinct. The fan base can be distinct. Certainly the location in this particular case is distinct. There's enough reasons to think that, yes, running head-to-head is not necessarily the best thing to do. But you're talking about the number one pound number one pound for pound guy in boxing trying

to unify a weight class and on the other side of the country is just a bunch of MMA fighters and they're very very good I don't mean to demean them I just mean to say if you're Canelo that's kind of divorced from your universe to a pretty strong degree so while I do think they should try and squeeze in the result or have the main event start long before the ufc's main event starting and if they get a five round fight in the co-main in the women's fight then they get that uh you know no no problem but other than that i think it's just full steam ahead to be honest with you yes i mean it's always a tough decision to say either we know we're competing against other big combat events so let's not go the same night or at some point you just say we have a great product

we're here whatever I don't know I it's a selfish fan and journalist in me who doesn't want to compete against both wants to watch both with the same you know eyes and in the moment but I kind of wish the biggest you know Canelo fights it is arguably the biggest fight of the

year I wish it wouldn't go head to head with a UFC card that also could say it's the biggest card of the year I mean that was your initial question Luke is this the best fight card on paper UFC's put out this year yeah right it's up there if it's not I've struggled to understand what could be number one this is a very very very thorough really good fight card all right let's move very quickly not a big topic um not a whole lot to say about it but there was some interesting things that happened last night for topic number four on Dana White's uh Tuesday night contender series it is back this is the beginning of a new season there were some winners there were some losers I'll get to them in just a second BC first things

first though we did have a little bit of history last night Laura Sanko served not just as a commentator but as a color commentator and it's hard to know exactly how, it's hard to describe exactly what, how historically significant this is, because the only woman to fully commentate a UFC event was UFC 1 Kathy Long, who by the way is now 2-0 in MMA, although she's obviously a little bit older, but was a decorated martial artist. Since then, no woman has touched a UFC broadcast in terms of being in that booth. Now, obviously, the Contender Series is not part of the pay-per-view fight night lineage, but that's a UFC-promoted event. Everyone who wins, basically, not quite, but basically, for the last two seasons anyway,

ends up getting a UFC contract. She not only commentated, she did ring announcing and post fight interviews but i gotta say dude it is it is high time that we had some women commentators laura senko is deserving of this opportunity she is an excellent broadcaster and uh i have nothing but congratulations for her we're all richer for her analysis first of all to juggle all those roles i was like she's ring announcing what like that you know there's specific, you know, voices you need and mindsets you need to be able to do all those roles. So I'll shout it out.

And then obviously, as you mentioned, we've seen women, you know, Megan O'Leary's fantastic. We've seen Karen Bryan and who's the other one, Luke? She's great. Heidi Andrall. Heidi Andrall, who I was going to say, who works for PBC on Fox and also does ESPN UFC and then had the famous meme

during the Ronda Rousey Strikeforce interview, which was a great moment in MMA history. But to be able to actually break down fights, which is what a collar commentator does, Luke, this was a step up. It was historical, as you mentioned, even though it's just crazy that

pre-Zufa, it's already been done. I mean, UFC 1, it's like it's just crazy that you pre you know pre-zufa it's already been done i mean ufc one it's already been done it's like you forget long ever did that you know i mean forget jim brown ever did that for crap's sake but i think the best compliment i can say is this luke um the the thing you're gonna judge the most critically of somebody in this spot where there's a lot of pressure and it's you know sort of a historic moment is you know can she actually break down the fights i think the best thing she showed last night was her ability mid-fight to break down what's going on and obviously you know it's different compared to others who could have this role because laura has a fighting background but i thought she was absolutely fantastic in breaking down the stances and the openings and all of that

i mean some of the other things that come with that job, the timing, the banter, some of that only, you know, you're only going to get better with experience. But the most important thing you bring as a color commentator is the ability to see the action in front of you and relay, whether in expert terms or whether in simple terms, for the non-educated audience to understand what's happening. And I thought she did a great job with that.

So a big moment for Laura Sanko, and she delivered, Luke. It was great to see. The only thing I want to say is I'm not one of these guys who's going to lecture the audience. You need to make sure that you have a checklist of every different gender and racial identity and background and age, and you have someone from every one of those who's constantly giving you information.

I just don't think that's realistic. But what I will say is what someone put a challenge to me one time, which was make a list of all, for whatever sport you consume, whether it's MMA or football, whatever. Make a list of all the podcasts that are in your rotation on your phone. Make a list of all the authors you go to. Make a list of all the commentators who are your favorite. Put them all on a piece of paper and then go down the list and see how many are women.

And I did that and I had almost none. I had almost none. All the guys I read were, of course, guys. All my podcasts were hosted by guys. Whatever. It was just constantly all the way down. There's nothing wrong with those guys doing their best effort. But I just mean to say, the women play a pretty big role in the UFC at this point. There's no good reason why there's asymmetry between that and then how many are serving in commentary roles this point, there's no good reason why there's asymmetry between that and then how many are serving in commentary roles. I get there's not very many commentary roles are hard to get, but I'm just pointing out, it can't always be true that only the guys do the very, very best job. It's just, it's not possible. So when you begin to rotate in fresher faces across, you know, all these different lines, this particular case of gender line,

you're, you're casting a wider net of getting the best available talent. And Laura Sanko obviously is the first, hopefully among many. But if you've ever been out there, audit yourself, see what you do. And I was shocked, I didn't even think of it on those terms. And so now I'm trying to be a little bit more conscious of casting a wider net out there. But I don't think many MMA fans have female voices in their ear telling them about technique and i think it's actually pretty important and laura sango does a great job now as it relates to the real quick you know i had forgotten i always forget that she was a fighter

and i maybe that's a a nod to how well she does in some of those like hosting presenting roles where you know that that background isn't necessarily uh you know. She is 1-0 as a professional, Luke. Did you see her fight in 2013 at Invicta FC4 against Cassie Robb? Why did her career end? Do you know anything about that? I know she was 4-1 as an amateur. She got pregnant. Okay. And she had a kid, and so everything just kind of turned after that,

but she didn't want to give up what she was doing. And, you know, listen, they put her in those roles. Listen, if you get a role doing the kind of hosting thing, as you imagined, for UFC, that's still a great accomplishment. There's nothing in any way, you know, wrong. They're limited, too, and they're hard to get. And she's good at that. But, like, you know, you just have to ask yourself, is that what she's best suited for? I don't think so.

I think what she's best suited for i don't think so i think what she's best suited for is analytical work um we're just not accustomed to hearing women in our ear say things like hey good stance or blah blah whatever it may be and and i think it's high time that we uh you know get rid of some of that asymmetry between how important they are as fighters and then what kind of role they play as commentators or analysts we said a quick shout out on the boxing side a couple weeks back i don't think we even mentioned on the show but top rank had a card uh where they had two women calling the international feed of the broadcast and it was christina poncher who does great work calling uh you know undercards for top rank on espn and

the international broadcast they brought in mikaela mayor who's an unbeaten uh championship female fighter and uh that was great to see as well, Luke. I mean, it's high time. Yeah, no doubt about it. From the results themselves, BC, I'm not sure if you saw any of this. I did. Yeah, it was an okay. For me, the two standouts were AJ Fletcher with that unbelievable, well-timed flying knee. I loved it.

And his whole fam went crazy back there. They had footage of it, which was great. But the big one for me was the guy who really stood out was Azamat Mirzakhanov. He defeated Mateusz Sheffel first round, three minutes in. Dude, he set up his punches brilliantly. This guy is 10-0. I thought Dana White was right. He could go down to 185,

even though a 205, he's still a hammer. But, man, these Russians, they're just so many of them, and they're all so good. Dude, I mean, can we do a tough season at the shmesh factory now because uh i think it's high time for that luke um that was a hell of a performance i mean it was sort of like you're you look at that match up and you know no disrespect to his opponent who was a shuffle as you mentioned but like you sort of looked at that matchup you go oh the russian

guy's gonna hammer him and he did exactly that so that's a big win in the main event of this card on a big you know platform in the first episode of this season but AJ Fletcher man with that backstory coming from Lafayette Louisiana and you know how hard that area Luke of the country just got hit by the by the hurricane and to be able to get that spectacular of a win that was heavy on spinny shit and the celebration and the passion um i want to see more of that guy and you know look sometimes we we tie in the fighter pay conversation to to this series because it produces just bat shit hungry people looking to go get finishes to impress dana and sometimes the brendan lochnin's fit slipped through the cracks where they get a win but dana doesn't think they were aggressive enough and doesn't get a contract lu Luke, how about this? Four fights on last night's show, five fighters got a contract,

including the loser of that flyweight three-round fight between Victor Altamirano and Carlos Candeliero. That was good to see. Do you think that's because, though, of the COVID uncertainty and just having more hands on deck, especially people that don't make a lot of money, can fill up some of these cards. Luke, am I being ultra cynical here?

No, I don't think so. I mean, the reality is they were giving me basically if you won last season, which again was in the middle of the middle, middle, middle of the pandemic, whatever stage we're in now, they were, if you won, they were just handing out contracts because they just need to fill the roster for turnover. I think you're going to get some of that. Candelario also, you know, listen, that was a tough fight. It was a split decision loss. It wasn't like he got run over by an stretch of the imagination. They're looking for guys in certain weight classes and certain numbers,

you know, and he passed the test. I don't really have any issue with it. The one I did not like was the Brito and Lopez fight. Dude, if you guys didn't see it, both guys seem to be good fighters. You could give them a contract or not. Brito got one. It's fine. But Diego Lopez got poked in the eye three times. More than that, maybe even four times. But at least two times before the fight ending eye poke, he was warned by the referee, Chris Tagnoni.

And the referee not only just said, like, you know, watch for the hands, blah, blah, blah. There was one point where he stopped the fight to warn the guy, yo, watch out with your fucking hands where you're putting them. In the third round, he then pokes the guy in the eye, Diego Lopez. They have to stop the fight. He can't continue. Now, Tione took a point because at that point, if it goes to the third round, you have to go to the judge's scorecards. But there wasn't much time in the round.

First of all, 32 seconds had expired, so you didn't get to see hardly shit. Then he got poked. It's like, let me get this straight. This guy poked another person in the eye so many times that the other guy couldn't continue. And he ends up winning a result as a consequence. I understand that you don't want to set up a situation where if you get eye poked and the guy just pretends that he is worse than he is, that you just award him him the win i'm happy to call it a no contest or or you know i would actually argue brito probably deserves a disqualification here but i understand why the rules are set up the way they are but it creates weird ass results like this where brito ends up just poking the guy enough where he can't fight anymore and then he

gets his fucking hand raised not okay with that rule i don't't fight anymore, and then he gets his fucking hand raised. Not okay with that rule. I don't like it at all. And then he gets a contract, Luke, so yeah. Yeah, and Lopez did not get a contract. I'm like, you know, you lost out on four and a half minutes of the most critical fight of your life, maybe, because the other guy kept poking you in the fucking eye. Like, that's not a good rule.

He left Lopez underwater. Dicey situation there. But Brito gets the nod, gets the contract, and we move on, Luke, on this great show. I know what you did there. I know what you did there. I just want to say it out loud. I know what you did there. All right.

Let's move to the last and final topic. Just a set of quick hitters. Who the fuck is John Africa, bro? You know what I mean? All right. Let's go to our quick hitters now if we can uh a bunch of these but we'll get to the first one that's uh pretty easy to digest bc loves this shit i'm so out on i don't care we've got some tweets about it let's see them here conor mcgregor

and nate diaz just going after each other on twitter bc, you were texting me, frothing at the mouth last night like a rabid dog. Walk us through this. What is so important about these two killing each other on Twitter? Okay, I was just like, hey, wake up to this. It's not one or two tweets. It's like 38 of them, and this is heating up a bit. Maybe we should work it into the show, Luke, okay?

Not have me have to design some Wheel of Death segment to get it in there. But, Luke, it got aggressive, and it started off with Wheel of Death segment to get it in there. But Luke, it got aggressive, and it started off with I don't know what it started off with. I know ESPN MMA account put out a you know, hey, remember when? Connor versus Nate.

And Nate started talking trash back to it. Maybe we can blow up some of these tweets to get a feel for the take here, Gaff or Maniche. Great folks who work on this show yeah connor mentioning that uh he's adding 30 pounds of muscle to say ding ding nate saying bro you can't walk or fight right now why are you talking shit well it kept escalating if we can keep advancing the slides here um connor's like who can't come through and see you little skinny

fool you'd be smacked up and rolled up you bum callous mine callie's mine callie's mine like california yeah yeah that's what i'm talking about here yeah it's social justice wednesday this is where bc tries to decode uh hip talk on twitter nah bitch says nate you should have learned how to not break your leg when i checked your shit you crutched out of the fight with me and how are you gonna fight me when you can't run for your life this time with your broken ass? You lost the last fight and ran for the hills just like kebab. You're a pussy too. I love how Dana White, Nate Diaz never calls Habib Habib.

It's always kebab every time. Yes. And he brought an interesting point. Conor did use movement and boxing in that second fight to be able to survive although he was obviously very good with his hands um but there were some down moments of stamina dumps for connor where he really had to man he had to get on his horse um it continues is there any other juicy ones here uh many so we can roll to nate says that means i'm the double triple champ of this whole shit fuck all you pussies yeah uh into the belly says connor when i get you all right this is getting lame now but the whole point is this luke um oh hey here's nate p.s you jump ship on your

country bitch go home you don't got any friends all right that's nate saying i still reside in the 209 right yeah yeah dude i don't give a fuck about anything all right luke the point of this is this okay the point of this is this okay the point of me bringing this and there's a there's a there's a bunch of them there's a bunch of them okay oh wait go back to that last one nate loves saying kebab uh you know he only says kebab it's so insulting he did slap kebab in front of his team right dude i like how he takes that as like a win i'm not even sure he actually made contact with him for for starters and more to the point it's like you know dude habib would do bad things to nate diaz but okay you know yo he takes porie pulling out of that fight at msg even though to porie's

point nate and the ufc weren't getting you know weren't making headway on the contract so dustin was just sort of like, I'm going to move on. He takes those as wins, Luke. So he is undefeated. All right, here's the point of me bringing you down this road is to say this. I'm starting to feel like because of everything Connor has been publicly since the second straight loss to Poirier, which is emotional, like, bitter. I mean, he's been running the full gamut of emotions that probably come

with a big-name fighter coming off a loss and a serious injury. Just most people don't broadcast it 24-7 with Twitter videos and riding around on a bicycle and all that, Luke. But the full gamut I think has kind of softened us even more to, like, what Conor can actually be when he comes back,

the intensity of this injury, all that shit. I think Poirier is going in the direction of the title and I think he should. And yes, I know at any point Conor can get healthy enough to come back and the UFC just goes, hey, Poirier is the champ. Let's milk what's left of Conor and we'll run it back a fourth time. I know that can happen. But I'm starting to think, Luke, that maybe the UFC is starting to think here that cashing in that lottery ticket,

which is Diaz-McGregor 3, which has been around now for five years, and we've always said they'll get to it eventually, right? When they're both older and coming off losses and it's the only fight left. Tell me if I'm wrong here, Luke. This might actually be the UFC's smartest move here. Okay?

Yes, if Poirier's the... I think so. I think it is. This might be the UFC's smartest move here I think so, I think it is this might be the smartest move because this is a rivalry where the wins and losses don't really matter entering in and this might be Conor's best chance being that he's already proven he can beat Nate

to revive his brand in a way. Do you remember when Chuck Liddell's crazy losing streak that ended his career had that one stop in between when he beat Wanderlei in an absolute war and we're sort of like, oh, Chuck's not done? This could give Conor that opportunity, Luke,

to buy another giant payday. But I'm losing confidence every day that Conor can come back and still be Conor. So maybe if you're UFC, this is what we're doing when he gets back, when he's ready. I mean, I know Nate just put out a video of Luque calling him out with like a fist emoji. What the hell do you gain if you're Nate Diaz by fighting or beating Luque? I mean, unless they're saying if you beat him, you get Dustin. Unless that's what they're saying, right?

If you beat him, you get the title shot against the dustin olivera winner but i don't think they're doing that shit man no they don't want to give him a belt at all you know so yeah i this is to me it's this fight makes a lot of sense right now for both guys and uh the public wants it i think it's a well-matched fight we know it's a well-matched fight they're good rivals for one another it's it's a great fight to make and i We know it's a well-matched fight. They're good rivals for one another. It's a great fight to make, and I just don't want to see Conor come back. Dustin or Charles. It's not that those fights can't be good or exciting or worthwhile, but, man, you should not be in a title fight, Conor McGregor.

You just should not be. Listen, you get a win over somebody big, hey, totally different story but like right away into a title fight i'm just not okay with it so and look at me to me is much better and if he beat him luke that would given his celebrity status that would kind of justify him getting back into another title fight right like it wouldn't work for everyone but probably probably all right let's go through some of these other hitters here hold on hold on luke because i'm not in any rush here and i know you don't want to talk about this but um do you think who do you think has the advantage five years later entering into a third fight is it Nate is Nate the betting favorite here I would say Connor actually

I think Connor should be I think Nate has declined as well like we put a huge magnifying glass up to Connor's mistakes and shortcomings, which we should. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that because, listen, he is the biggest name, and you're going to get the most amount of scrutiny as a consequence. Some of that unfair, but a lot of it not. Nate's a huge name, but I don't think, you know, he's not had the same outside-the-cage troubles, and he's well-liked, and he's a bit of an iconoclast. But, dude, Nate's long in the tooth, and he's had a lot of damage and a lot of time off.

I don't think he's the same fighter he once was at his peak either, which isn't to say that either is bad. Both are still great, but they're not what they once were. And I think, um, Connor to me, despite all his troubles,

I still think that if he can just manage his cardio, that's a fight and that's a big if, but if he can do that that's still a very winnable fight for him and he's not getting taken down, there's no dusty bitches taking anyone down there. Luke, in closing on this topic, and this will really upset you, but Diego Sanchez had a run of tweets yesterday which said he was going to go to BKFC

said he wanted to challenge BJ Penn to a rematch at BKFC, I'm not going to ask your take on that, said he turned down an BJ Penn to a rematch at BKFC. I'm not going to ask your take on that. Said he turned down an offer from the devil to sell his soul and then insinuated that in 2009, Conor McGregor received that same offer only to accept it. Luke, does that explain the whole Mystic Mac run in 2015 and 16 when he just defied believability and kept winning

in such crazy and unthinkable ways? I am not going to talk shit about Diego Sanchez. I wish him nothing but the best. I mean, you're into like pseudo-Satanic Rock. I mean, is there a connection there, Luke? I'm not into Satanic Rock. None of the rock I'm into

is in any way religious. Okay. I guess we gotta bring back the wheel of death to get you to really care about the important stuff out there okay thank you yeah yeah like like that all right uh real quick nunez versus pena rescheduled for ufc 269 bc in a reaction uh that'll be december 11th like that also on that card we've've got Cody Garbrandt against Kaikara France. And Luke, just today, we are finding out that Montana De La Rosa versus Macy Barber at Women's Flyweight also on that December 11th card. Give me some of that, bro.

Give me that shit. That's pretty good. Mike Perry tells Ariel Helwani that after therapy and fatherhood, still has anger inside but feels like a changed man. Is he a changed man not so much better for humanity but better for cage fighting i mean if he if he was a changed man if this is true yeah i think this could help him focus more and figure out what's left of him i i have huge concerns and fears luke that he's he's headed to the full-time bkfc route because i just

haven't seen positives in his career. Did you see that video that the Perry family posted where Coach Latorre was holding Ocean and then she tripped over something and she fell on her back. She took a hard back bump, but she kept Ocean elevated so he didn't take any hit. That was well done there. I did that once. I was

carrying my kid in the carrier, the child the car seat, but when I was taking her to the car and I slipped in mud and I landed and put the car seat, but when I was taking her to the car and I slipped in mud and I landed and put the car seat right on top of my chest like a fucking hero that I was. I slipped down the stairs with a baby with one of my sons once, Luke, and my back bounced off as I held little Isaac, not Ocean, but little Isaac up the whole way.

It's a mythic feat that I did that day. I kept the baby alive, so that was great. JDS is looking for a boxing fight but says he has no takers because everyone is scared bc is is that really the reason he doesn't have any takers um you know yeah i mean nobody care i mean nobody wants this jds is probably like a good candidate for a crossover boxing match but like who's going to cash that in? The heavyweight boxing division itself is hot. So unless Mike Tyson's looking

to fight JDS, which he's not going to be. So I don't know, Luke. Who the hell is he going to fight? Frank Mir? No one wants that shit. I'm going to skip the BJ Penn one because it's dumb, and then I'm going to go to this last one bc did you see who triller announced up announced excuse me as the music lineup for the belfort

de la joya fight no i was focused on bj pen being upset at jake paul for licking the blood off his gloves which is uh that's rich yeah that's rich uh okay so here's who they have they have the snoop dog's gonna be on it but of course he's the part owner well he's doing a duet with marvin gaye right even though he's dead well marvin gaye is dead so they're gonna do it with i believe his son um and uh that'll be bad and then on top of it they've got anita who is apparently brazil's most famous pop star i guess like she's like shusha they have lunai puerto rico's chart-topping next-generation reggaeton star. I mean, I guess that would be more like Bad Bunny.

And then one of my favorites, a duo that gets a lot of rotations in this household, Gente de Zona. They have a song called Gozadera, which is, you know, it's a big one here. So they do reggaeton. They're cute. Yeah, you're speaking another language to me, Luke. They, they do reggaeton. It's a they're cute. Yeah, I that's this. I like you're speaking another language to me. Luke, I have a song with Mark Anthony.

Is it by her? That the rhythm take you over. Yeah, like goes out there is the name of the video, which basically means like party. By the way, here's how you know that they're all better than us. Like people from Latin America are better than partying. They've got 50 different words for the word party. I don't's how you know that they're all better than us. Like, people from Latin America are better than us than partying. They've got 50 different words for the word party. I don't know if you know that. A gazillion different words for it.

Gozadera is one of them. So, there you go. All right, BC. I'll be talking to Oscar De La Hoya today for Morning Combat. So, check that out. That should get sloppy and interesting, Luke. Okay? Okay.

That should be really interesting. Actually, I'm looking forward to that. But, BC, it's now. That should be really interesting. Actually, I'm looking forward to that. But, BC, it's now the time I hand over the reins of the show to you because we have to do fan submissions. Wow, a long time coming for this. MorningCombat at gmail.com is your depository for all of your fan shit. We got a lot of them today, Luke. At some point, it may have to be like that hook at the Apollo Theater

where you're just like I've had enough submissions BC that's it but uh for now we've got mail well there it is fan subs yeah all right Luke this is gonna start off with Pat M who has three photos he says hey Luke in BC my brother and I went out west to RV around Colorado and Utah for two weeks. But more importantly, we went out there to spread the MK gospel. Even my 275-pound brother hiked 10 miles

and climbed through a waterfall to take this second picture at Sky Pond at Rocky Mountain National Park just to spread the BDE. From two Philly hooligans, we appreciate what you do to get us through the pandemic. Keep, keep up the great work,

blah, blah, blah. Also, we have to get some resume review curse merch around Halloween this year. It's a great idea. I'm going to reach out to Krupp, our merch master,

Luke, and see if Pat M's ideas can come forward. But Hey, shout out to these grown men for going out to the, to the desert, Luke going out to the national parks and repping what we do. I hope they run into Bill and Jen when they're out there. Yeah, this is a weird duo because the guy on the left is definitely posing in a way where he wants you to know he works out.

Yeah. And the guy on the right is probably under federal indictment for January 6th activities. Amazing. He put his feet up on Pelosi's desk, and now he's holding our merch out at Zion National Park. All right, Julio R. is here. He says, hey, Luke in BC. This is Julio from Moreno Valley, Cali.

Wanted to show off my garage gym and see what you think. I've got a treadmill, a cycling bike, an elliptical, cast iron weight, and also a power rack. Luke, does this man have a nice rack? No, he doesn't. Oh, the rack is okay. But BC, what is messier, this room or my hotel room from Cleveland? The one that you solicited me in to do room service diaries.

I'll never forget. BC walked in, and it was a disaster of epic proportions. But BC walked in. I'll never forget what you said. Do you remember the first words that you said to me when I opened the door? No. You go, I can't work in these conditions. Everything you owned was on the floor in some form.

It was just as if you walked in and just threw it all out there. It was great. Basically. You know what? The rack itself by the water heater. I mean, this man is getting it. He's thugging it out. Hardcore. Yeah. It was great. Basically. You know what? The rack itself by the water heater. I mean, this man is getting it. He's thugging it out hardcore. Yeah.

It's actually pretty good. You can do a lot with a basic rack like that. And it looks like it's bolted to either the wall or the ground, which is perfect because you can do heavier loads. The rest of this, you know, you can just set fire to it and collect the insurance money. Well, don't set fire to that MK merch 1.0 sweatshirt. They're looking good right there. All right. Tim B slides in and says,

Hey, guys, I just want to say I took this photo a couple weeks ago during the 4th of July mailbag episode. I got Luke's live chat today, and his opening truly inspired me to finally submit this. That's my daughter named Marlo, and that's Luke trying to teach her how to count. She's a bit confused, but I really appreciate the help. You voicing your gratitude and speaking about your daughter and the opening of your live chat on August 5th

inspired me to share this big fan of you guys, your humor and chemistry are top notch. He's going to vote for us. And also he watches the show when at work so that his daughter doesn't hear you guys talking about porn. Like I said, this was the holiday mailbag jack b from la looks good and i gotta say well does it say tim o on the photo um tim b tim b yeah i said jack b well he no he's he sent it he signed it jack b i don't know maybe this

guy's got two alien two personalities luke okay either way cute kid and i used to have that thing my daughter used to sit in that exact same thing when uh she was younger so brings back memories man wouldn't it be ironic luke if you sold the one you had at like a tag sale and it made it all the way to cali to this guy tim and he was using the same one that your daughter was in and he had no idea? Yes. I mean, that's a little too ironic, right? Max. Okay, okay, sorry.

Jason W. says, To Luke and BC, thanks for keeping me enjoyed through my boring-ass day. Been watching you, Luke, for a long time. Hey, BC, you're also the shit. Hey, thanks, Jason. Looking good in that hoodie and hat from the mk folks this dude probably goes like the sonic drive-thru with this fucking thing on it's

like bro take it easy we're just ordering you know oreo shakes you don't have to have the punisher logo everywhere you go look do you think he wore that in this photo just to solicit a uh capital step storming reference from you is it possible i can't i can't go back to that well on every photo but you know he definitely is a good candidate for it all right max b says mk all day every day even in alaska while out photographing bears luke are they are they effing they're fucking or fighting either way yeah it's all the same. Shout out to this guy, Max. Nice with the MK Beanie.

I wonder if he knows Antoine, Luke. You know that six foot eight fellow who lives out there? That tall drink of water? Yeah. No, you don't know? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I got to say, dude, we have a disproportionate amount of listeners who are either in or go to Alaska.

Have you noticed that? Yes yes we are last frontier men just like them luke we are doing something with this show that you know it's not easy it's not recommended right the same thing in last year people go out there to hide luke all right they got warrants against them they got you know they got they got caught jerking off in a car in their hometown they're like i gotta go somewhere where nobody knows my name okay i'm gonna go someplace where they can't find me for masturbating at a wendy's probably what happened to antoine although we're a big fan of him all right bruce b slides and says good morning luke and bc just a couple short weeks since they were last in town my brother my brother who's pictured without sleeves and my dad came back to Houston for

two 65. We made a whole weekend out of it, went to the weigh-ins. We stopped at the black beast mural, caught up with the sugar show, had front row seats in the balcony, no time for NASA. Naturally.

We watched Friday's MK episode just in case any donks we crossed paths with needed the facts. I heard how much you love Houston, Luke. So I'm looking forward to one of those roadshows when the opportunity arrives. I have zero Houston connections, but I'd put my barbecue sides and accoutrements

up against anyone's. Keeping it frosty, it's Bruce, Steve, and Steve Sr. It's a nice American family right there, Luke. It is, and by the way, so when I went back to the Cleveland airport on Monday to leave, right there luke it is and by the way so when i when i went back to the cleveland airport on monday to leave uh sean o'malley was in my same you know uh concourse but a little bit a little bit of a different gate and this was you know it wasn't early in the morning this was like 10 a.m

or something but he looked to have me like majorly hung over and had a line of people at the gate trying to take pictures with him so he is very popular it's hard for him to hide when he's dressed like that luke it is he had a hoodie on he had a hoodie on and his afro was kind of tucked into it but yeah they still spotted him a million miles away all right we got a fellow named justo f he's got two pictures he moved to north carolina in 2017 and because of the pandemic he wasn't able to go back and visit for 19 months. Last week, he was finally able to head back. In the first picture, he's repping MK while at Diggerland with his friend Dan. Diggerland? And in the second picture, he met up with a couple of Marines, Luke,

that he served almost 20 years with. Semper Fi, never die, motherfucker. We were now in the defunct first tank battalion when we were part of the invasion of iraq in 2003 i love the show i had to upgrade to unlimited data because i was using up all my data streaming on your show thanks for everything semper fi luke it's justo there yeah how about those fine gentlemen luke well the shit bird on the left is a Giants fan, I think. He keeps it very subtle. You can't quite tell, but I'm teasing.

But they all seem like great guys, and we appreciate their patronage, and I appreciate, of course, their service. Semper Fidelis to all the Marines out there. Yes. Yes. Yes. No jokes. No jokes, okay?

Aurelius B. says, hey, guys, as you can see, I was not at the Capitol Riot, but I'm glad to add some mulatto melanin to your show. The shirt feels softer than expected, and it's good quality. Also, I'm a P1 fan from back when Dr. Salt-N-Pepa was just pepper, making guest appearances with Dana's favorite Canadian on the MMA beat. And I even remember when Luke confessed on his live chat that he was so stressed that he was grinding his teeth in his sleep, which is why I'm glad to see you and BC doing great things with the recognition you deserve.

Much love, but I've got a PS for you, Luke. I never spoke ill of you on your show, yet I've been blocked on Instagram for the past three years. This is my last appeal. I feel like I've served my time. Please unblock me on Instagram. My handle is Aurelius92.

Luke, does he deserve it? How am I going to spell that? A-U-R-E-L Can you send it to me? Just send it to me. Yeah, I'll send that to you. Or maybe Mikey can shoot it out to you. Mikey, the producer, send it to me, please. Aurelius is looking fit in that MK t-shirt, Luke,

and I think he presented himself well, okay? It's a heartfelt message. And he probably got, listen, all these guys are like, how did I get blocked for a good reason? You said something fucking stupid. But yeah, I'll unblock him. It's fine. Luke, a lot of people wondering,

now that you're on good terms with one Ariel Hawane, will there be an MMA beat reunion? I would meet up with the guys if they wanted to, but I would never... I'm not interested in doing any favors for my old company. Sort of, but not really. I'm also

an alumnus of that show, Luke. You are. We are both alumni. Some would say the best run ever of that show. Some, at least. Some would probably say that. Some. But some would say the exact opposite and say it was kind of dying at the end there. It was a dying fetus, but BC was there, too. It was a dying fetus, but it wasn't.

Not because of us, but because of, you know. It did birth MK, though, so shout out to the MMA beat. It was a good run. Ronald F. says, Hey, Luke and BC, I'm a 50-something washed after many years of combat and collision sports, and I'm finally broken down. I recently had lumbar fusion spinal decompression surgery to correct the wreckage that was my spine. As you can see, I'm three weeks out of the hospital, ready to begin the long and successful rehab.

What got me through the initial post-surgery was my constant streaming of MK all day, every day, even during my hospital stay. You guys are the best in the business. Keep crushing it. The fabulous one, Ronald F. Luke, is he in the water here? I don't know. BC, is this Ronald F. or is this you doing Ryzen analysis? Wow.

Wow. Wow, Luke. Yeah. That was a tribute to all things. yeah i'm just teasing i'm just teasing hey shout out to ronald's back luke okay yeah get well he looks like he's okay actually but get well take it day by day get better and get out there and live your life yeah he looks great in that hat for for 50 something this guy i, he should be swiping right now, Luke, right? Grinder.

I never got on the dating apps, but yes. Yeah. All right, Tom P. says, From our divorce trip in Tulum, shout out to April, my best friend and more. Love the show, guys, from day one. Hope your vacations were fun. BC, you're hilarious, my friend.

I truly respect you as an artist. Fuck the critics. Wow. Luke, do you know about the Cenotes? They are cool as fuck. Luke, why would Tom P. say this was our divorce trip? I don't

know. I don't know. The gentleman on the right of the screen is well-muscled. Maybe he took all the girls? I don't know. Yeah, is that a thing? Do people get divorced and then go on vacation? Or is this his way of saying, like, it's I can tell you my parents got divorced, and there was no vacation afterwards. So I don't think so. Okay.

All right. Adam H. slides in with four photos. My wife and I went to Puerto Rico for our 10-year anniversary in July. Nice. And I had to rep the 1.0 merch while climbing El Morro. Food baby pic, an ode to BC and the gas station food. Keep it up, gents. This is Adam Luke in the, all right, all right, nice.

Camo shorts. Oh, there's the food baby, Luke. You know what? God bless this man. Yeah. These are fine Americans that we have here. Yeah, this is just living your life out there in Puerto Rico, eating that mofongo, having a good-ass time.

Congratulations on 10 years of marriage, sir. Adam, thank you. All right, Saul A. says, out here spreading the gospel of MK and COVID at the Kentucky State Fair. Sure hope the vaccine works for me. Brian, these sloppy fair foods go out to your liver. Damn right they do. These bourbon slushies

were great. Got the classic turkey leg, cotton candy, and I never turned down a gyro, Luke? A gyro? Gyro? Gyro. Gyro. Yeah. Luke, Saul, hey, is he rocking a mullet?

Oh, is he ever. He's got a bag of cotton candy the size of a Volkswagen, too. I mean, look at that shit. I support this man. My man's out here living life. I mean, he'll have to answer to the liver fairy at the end of the day, Luke, but I support this man. Looking good.

Oh, he's got a little side piece there too, Luke. You down with that? I mean, she might be more than that. It's a little disrespectful, but of course, you know. Oh, she may be the main course. Yeah, yeah. I didn't mean to disrespect her title, but yeah, well done there, sir, Saul. Saul Canelo.

I like that. All right. Matthew S. says, all those years of pickup hoops in the ash crack of Connecticut finally paid off. Not many co-hosts could keep their composure. Dude, look at this picture. That is amazing. While sweating. Wow.

This is a time-lapse photography here, Luke. Can we zoom in on this, please? Dude, look at. Dude, that is amazing. I like how your face just gets worse and worse over time. Yeah, I'm in hell by the fourth one. Look at the fire there. That's great.

Wow. Hey, I was looking kind of jealous. You know what sets it off is that your collar never gets wet, so it just stands in deep contrast to your filthy, filthy chest. Look, there was some speculation that I had drugs in my system, and that's why I was, no, we were in a tent, okay? We've already explained this on Room Service Diaries, all right? It didn't look like it, but yeah.

And also, because we were in the tent, we also had lights on us inside the tent, so it sucked. Yes, yes. All right, there you go. Well, good fun and games. Dim from Bulgaria says, you guys are great. I appreciate the effort you're putting into MK. I would love to try to be helpful to you

and show you my submission featuring a very special UFC 500 card. I've never looked this good. I'm never going to look this good. So I'll just say thanks to Dim from Bulgaria for the complete lie that I could ever look this amazing. He put all of his ideas together, Lukeke and this was the dim sum of them why don't you do more ryzen analysis all right all right hickson is here that's hickson with an h luke not the brazilian version um good day guys it's your boy hickson from the woodlands texas keep up the good work bc yes those dick riding doniding donks at the UFC stole your Wheel of Death game.

May they choke on a gas station hot dog. The first sub is a tribute to LT's days of being pissed and his love for gym clubs. Let's zoom in. What does SMSHG stand for? I don't know. I don't know. BC, have you ever seen Luke Thomas'omas's piss i used to love that show i used to tell you about that back when we were just mere acquaintances luke and you'd always say

yeah i wish i wish thousands of other all elected to luke that was it was just so weird when we put it out it didn't do great numbers and it was actually kind of hard for me to do so i had to stop and then after i stopped i got i never it was a crazy i got like doesn't no more than that everywhere i went people were like dude i used to love that i'm like why in the fuck didn't you watch it yeah yeah that's uh you know could we recreate that here luke now that rosected is is dead and buried can we recreate you know luke thomas is really mad you could do a you could do a spin-off of it yeah i could or you could uh both of us could i don't know if you could pull off you know seething anger and resentment quite as well as i could because it comes a little more natural to me but you know it's possible okay the second submission

is lt flexing about his high alcohol liquor tolerance the last mosquito that bit me had to check into the Betty Ford. Look, for all your talk that 46 beers it would take to get you buzzed, you were pretty buzzed in the frat house slash Cleveland Indians box that we had the other night, okay? I don't understand why you think I didn't have a lot to drink that night. Dude, I had like four or five monster doubles or triples before i even touched the beer and then i had beer on top of it like you're totally the whole night you're whole bc you're whole you're whole bc you're actually no i think what

i said was you're a bitch constantly i'd like start a conversation with somebody about their life and stuff you come bc in, BC, you ho. That was great. That was great. Great. All right. You know what? When people imitate you and they sound like a stupider Kenny Powers, you know you've got some questions to ask yourself.

Yeah, you do. All right. A man named Ollie said, hey, MK, wanted Luke to rate my lift. This came only three months into joining the gym. Five plates, 485 pounds. I failed the first attempt, but the second, but I got the second, and I think I had the third one in the tank.

I've been told that's good for a new lifter. Blah, blah, blah. He grew up playing football and judo and snowboarding, Luke, and it's given him strong legs and a lower back that's strong as well. No, he is fucking this all up. No. He can barely do any

pull-ups but this was pre-pandemic this is terrible this is terrible no he is obviously quite strong so this is not this is not a comment this is not a comment about his strength roll the video one more time first mistake he's making it's the mistake that everyone makes i made it for years too whenever you use the straps you don't need to roll it multiple times over the bar one wrap over the bar is all you need number one and number two it looks like he's got his bar plate see how the bar placement comes right up against the shins it should not do that this is not the snatch the bar path is crooked and he the most important part is watch how he lifts with the back of the the top his lower part of his back. Whenever you're doing this, the number one thing in deadlifting is there will be some rounding, especially if it's a max

load, but you need to drop your shoulder all the way down and lock your lats into place. So your back stays tight and wound the whole time. All these major, like a deadlift, overhead press, bench press, you have to wind your body super, super, super, super tight and then execute the lift. He's loose all the way through. This is just leg drive and lower back drive. He's going to fuck himself up if he keeps doing this. I'm not here to be like a dick at all. He's obviously strong. If you can lift that weight off the ground the way he's doing it with basically like his spinal erectors you're obviously quite strong uh in fact if he cleans up his technique he'll he can he can do good things but you do for your own

sake you need to clean that up you're gonna get injured lifting like that remember in doc four when chob was like what you had a problem with the the 400 pounds and then luke's like you know he lifted he lifted six and i told this to his face i called him on the phone i'm like bro you're strong as fuck and he cleaned it up a little bit but he was jerking into the bar what i was trying to explain to him was if you ever lift a deadlift and you can hear the bar clank into the weights it means you didn't provide that proper tension i'm talking about prior to executing the lift he was just yanking it off the ground without getting tight first again you can do that for a while but you're gonna fuck your shit up doing that yeah like it's nasa kawa already all right john g has an mk meme let's run let's run through these quick

and get out of here uh yeah yeah i think you got it i think you got it i mean is it wrong is it wrong it's not wrong it's not wrong hey you keep going away for two weeks it's going to be a lot of weird shit on this show all right um mhd says hey luke and bc this is my artwork ask bc about only fans before i hope you're well this is my first submission uh it's a new comic called the wheel of death so let's see what it is luke mk headquarters ring ring looks pretty cool looks pretty cool lu Looks pretty cool. Luke Thomas News. You made me much less gray than I actually am. How can I help you?

Yep. Does it advance? Is there another slide? Hey, Luke, did you get the request I sent for our new segment? Yeah. Let me read the Luke part. Yeah, I decided not to accept it since I have producer credit. We'll see, Luke.

We'll see. All right. What do we get? Is there a punchline here? here no that's the next one let's back that shit up okay so uh mhd says i know luke is going to shit all over this but i'm sure bc is going to love it since artists recognize artists thank you mhd i actually love i mean there's no punchline you're right but i actually do love the artwork i think it's pretty good he says ps i P.S. I'm fully vaccinated now, Luke, and waiting on my merch. Much love from both Syria and Portugal.

He's a man of the world like you, Luke. There you go, dude. Appreciate you getting that vax. Appreciate you getting that merch. God bless you. Unlike you, he would never turn his back on his Indian faith, though. All right. John G. says, Luke and BC have hit Cleveland.

Let's see this thing. I mean, could we look more stupid and pretentious at the same time? Yeah, yeah, that's well done. All right, Tony Z says, hey, fellas, I'm no photo grisser, but here's a post-workout pic of Luke wearing the pride gloves from Merch 3.0. Keep up the good work. You're truly best brains for the art tony z luke that's an incredible photo of uh mr t and hulk hogan with our heads on it that is great can i just say that they are bringing it this week with the fan subs they are killing it this week wait luke you hate

gloves but what about belts are you okay on workout belts no belts are pretty critical they can be overused like anything else but um people don't understand people like oh he lifted it with a belt like it's cheating no it's not belt uh belting your the the core of your body is i would argue for maximal lifting almost essential almost essential all right i'll keep that in mind. Fan sub. Last one. It's from Ben J. Hey, guys, check out the alternate universe where Luke guns down the Gen Z aliens and B.

She shows how his painting skills have come along. Possibly a couple of T-shirt designs here for Merch 3.0. Love the show. I like how you're painting urban blight. Love from Wales. It's Ben Z. And there you have it. A little happy little abandoned factory in bridgeport connecticut there's many of those down there and uh and father panic village down there in bridgeport uh i look fantastic with the uh with the bob ross fro and

can we go back to that first one here yeah luke nukem 3d that is great dude these guys make me look cooler than i'll ever be, but I am grateful for this. That is fucking awesome. We close with two birthday shout-outs. By the way, we'll never do fan subs this long again. It's just that we've been so long in doing them. This is from Kristen D.

She says, Dear Luke and Brian, First off, great work with the show. My boyfriend Christopher, a DC native, is a huge MK fan, never misses an episode, so I've become a fan too. As a matter of fact, we've been traveling abroad since January, and I've taken you guys with us everywhere we go. So thank you for the endless banner and entertainment. It's Chris's birthday on Monday, August 23rd.

That was last week. He doesn't know it yet, but you're about to tell him. He has some morning combat gear waiting for him when we arrive back in the States. promise to send fan photos it'd be awesome if you can give him a birthday shout out stay frosty thanks for all the laughs luke this was supposed to go last week but um there was a lot of issues with your travel and me you know doing great solo shit without you so do you want to wish christopher a dc native who's indoctrinated his wife into all things MK a very happy birthday yeah shouts to the DC fellas appreciate you happy birthday I don't like doing these shout outs because we're not a hip-hop radio station but at the same time I will

because they found a way to sneak it in so um you know uh sweet How about this guy studying abroad with his wife? Hope it becomes a three-way, Luke, right? All right, this last one is from Scott M. Rizzo's wife, Amy. Luke, you know Scott M. Rizzo, right? Amy says, hoping you could do me a solid for my husband's birthday. It's August 24th. He's a huge fan and has sent you several things that you've shared on the show. I heard you say that you would answer a question if we flood Apple with reviews.

So I wrote one. Plus, I bought some MK swag. So I'm hoping you'll help me out. Would love for you to give him a shout. Thanks and keep on trucking. Scott M. Rizzo, you've been one of our OGs. Maybe you've flooded us with too many at times. Maybe we question if there's human heads floating in your freezer. But you're an artiste, and art does recognize art. Happy birthday, buddy. And shout out to your lovely wife, I'm sure, for reaching out to us. Luke, I know you don't like this, but this stuff goes a long way.

These are our people. It does. It does. I just don't want to be their place. Here's the thing. You love giving milk to stray cats. That's your favorite thing to do. Because you're a humanitarian, which I understand. But if you do it, it's not that I don't want to wish these people happy birthday.

The problem is if you do it, you get flooded with requests from people that you don't care about. This isn't cameo. So for the hardcores, I'm cool with it. But if you're just a donk on the fringe and you want a happy birthday, go fuck yourself. How about that? Wow. Go pound sand after 30 days of showtime yeah all right there you go look that's the friggin show for today i don't know i i hope it was good you know i didn't sell i didn't listen it's a wednesday show kind of in between big events i thought we did great on this

so i'm happy to be back in the seat and everything else let's remind folks tomorrow live chat is back uh 3 p.m. Friday, the show is back, 11 a.m. We're going to get you ready for the weekend's fights. There actually are some. And of course, if you want to follow everything we're doing from now until then, be seeing me on Twitter and Instagram. You can see Morning Combat Twitter and Instagram.

And of course, of course, right here, youtube.com slash morningcombat with a K. If you want to try Showtime, you can. 30 days free. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can go do something else with your life. We will do Dead Wrong, not tomorrow, but on Friday's show. So get those Dead Wrongs and email the show.

MorningCombat at gmail.com is going to be the place to do that. We are still up for an MMA award. World MMA award, I should say. So why don't you vote for us? You can go to worldmmawards.com slash nominees you can give us we're best mma programming nominee and uh morning combat dot store for merch all the merch you guys have out there is pretty amazing we appreciate it if you haven't taken the plunge yet

now you can worldwide shipping for folks who are in the far stretches and corners of the earth you see any final uh thoughts to impose yeah hopefully by friday this uh mole will have completely fallen off after being frozen luke so yeah i got a couple here i had three i had two taken off but i kind of got one back here i gotta get taken off yeah i had a few on my on my eyelid the lady was just yanking them off no no needles for those luke i don't want a needle on the eyelid i did tell the she didn't burn them oh some she froze some she injected a needle and then picked and then sliced off um oh i see it led to me telling her my harrowing um um three needles yeah three needle story which you know maybe regrettable to tell a female doctor that story but i think she got the point that hey

we just met let me talk about my chopped up balls yeah yeah um all right that's it i'm not here to do anything else but tell you that i'm gonna be back friday with a bang a great show coming your way um i'm ready i'm ready to take this shit to the next level and the de la joya interview when does that go up that's probably gonna go up tomorrow um so get ready for that talking all things v tour uh you know we'll get you ready we'll get you ready okay i'll get you ready, okay? I'm fired up. So there you have it. That's all for us today.

We appreciate you watching. Live chat tomorrow. Show on Friday. So for everyone else on the show, Malka, CBS, Showtime, we appreciate you. We're glad to be back in the saddle. For Brian Campbell, the King of Connecticut,

I'm Luke Thomas. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal.