MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Fight Night: Vettori vs. Dolidze 2 Preview + UFC Star Debate | FULL EPISODE | Morning Kombat

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

It might be a low-key weekend in combat sports, but you know the guys never take a round off! On this episode of Morning Kombat, we start with a full preview of this weekend’s UFC Fight Night, where Marvin Vettori faces Roman Dolidze in a highly anticipated rematch. Can Dolidze even the score, or will Vettori secure another win? Then, it's all about the DONKS! On Monday, we asked fans if our criticism of recent UFC champions and PPV events was fair or overblown. The guys react to the best responses and debate whether the sport is delivering at the highest level. And of course, we wrap things up with another wild round of fan submissions—you won’t want to miss it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Reveille, reveille. Look at us now, Tim, it's a skip. Oh, Jesus. Oh. Oh It's time to bang. Oh, yeah, it's Friday. You got a feeling inside your loins. It's time to express that in a safe manner. Hey, it's morning combat.

We're back in your absolute face hole here on March 14th, 2025. Only three days away from when Irish people all around this country will black out in honor of themselves. So shout out to them. Hey, we got a great show for you today. I'm Brian Campbell, that BBC with that double A energy and that BDE. If you will, I don't know if you will, but I will. I have been. It's been fantastic. Hey, the other guy, that guy, DC's finest, Luke Thomas is back in the building and Luke, I think you would say we got a decent show for the people today. I think we we I think we have something interesting for the folks today. So if you'll recall, I know you do BC but I'm saying for the audience's sake,

if you'll recall Monday, Brian and I, we asked you guys, hey, why don't you email the show a video of yourself an audio clip or just write us at morning combat at gmail.com. Tell us what we may not be understanding about the ufc star making machine and what we you know we we don't think it's what it once was but we seem to be missing the point to a lot of people so we asked okay what is the point bc they answered that call tremendously we have good audio clips video clips tons of written replies let me just say this i don't think we have time to get to all of them because there was so freaking many, but we selected the best. If yours didn't get picked, it may just be because of length or we call it a different one that had

the same topics first, but thank you for the overwhelming response. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Size normally matters, not when it comes to sending 19 paragraphs, but I don't think we got any screenshots of any genitalia. So this was a successful event, right? We didn't get any screenshots of genitalia, but I did see some, well, some fansubs we can't use. Let's put it that way. How about that?

They were very BBL-tastic to say the least. Clothes were optional in that one. Hey, it's great to be back here with you. So why don't you like the show? Why don't you subscribe to what we're doing here on Morning Combat, make it a part of your regular Monday and Friday routine. You can follow us on those socials.

How are socials, Chandi? Pretty damn good, right? You also can subscribe to our YouTube channels and that not only includes Luke Thomas, the BCX. how about that main card minute with Luke Nocita. In fact, we have that producer, director, and bong enthusiast with us today. Long Island Luke, how the hell are you? I'm hyped guys. Roman DeLidze, Marvin Vittori too this weekend. Can we get a better main event? I mean, shit. Is this the shittiest card ever or just in recent shitty UFC

memory? I think it's the shittiest card in a 12 month span. Like I'll go as far back as you know, last March. So yeah, it's pretty bad. I got a judgment on this. I read you open the door already. I gotta close it. You guys talk

amongst bring them on, bring them on. Now that doesn't mean that you're not gambling though, right? No, of course. I'm doing a watch long I'll even go an hour before the main card because they jumbled the card a little bit on me and I have a bet on Su young you verse AJ Cunningham and they move that to the fight before the featured prelim So I'm gonna go an hour before the main so we can squeeze that in and then I'll do the main card. All right. Well, that is quite the commitment. I have to say boyfriend of the year over there.

Yeah, yeah. Shout out to this cat here as well. Reggie J. He's back. He's back. How's he doing? Is he all right? So get happy about that. How are you, Reggie?

You're doing well? You're doing good? What's up, Reg? He has less teeth like a lot of our listeners, but he's very happy. Look, I had to pull before Barbis died died maybe like a year or two before he died. I had to pull a bunch of his teeth. Not cheap. It turns out not.

No, nothing about this is cheap, but it's for the love Luke. Yeah, the game. Okay. At the end of it. So shout out to the Reg. Look. Anything else you want to tell the people about your life? Anymore recent medical reports you want to know? No, no, no, no. All that is steadily improving. Thank the Reg. Luke, anything else you want to tell the people about your life? Any recent medical reports you want to share?

No, no, no, no. All that is steadily improving, thank the Lord. I saw an amazing movie last night, and I'm on this kick where I know I'm watching all of the foreign movies, but I just kind of wanted to see them. I watched the one, so I remember last, or however many weeks ago, I promoted The Seed of the Sacred Fig, this Iranian movie I liked that that one did not win the Oscar. The one that won the Oscar was a Brazilian movie called I'm still here. I saw that last night. It finally came out on streaming. Holy shit. I can see why it won the Oscar BC it is. It's it's a special movie, man. I can't believe how good those last two

movies I've seen were. If you get a chance to watch it, do it. It's remarkable. That's awesome. That's awesome right there. Sorry, I was just putting this on Reggie's head. I use that as like a stress. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a stress. Yeah, that's it.

It makes you tingle in your jumpers, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean? Yeah, all right. It's almost like there's a person giving you affection, but it's just you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah You know what I mean? Yeah. All right. It's almost like there's a person giving you affection, but it's just you. You know what I'm saying? It's just me.

Yeah. Which is, you know, been, been probably my longest standing relationship to be fair though. All right. Uh, Luke, remember we did MK homework that time and I watched a foreign, uh, violent movie and came back to you. What was that call? Was that raid?

It was either the raid or the night comes for us and both of them are exceedingly violent. Yes. We were having a raid discussion with Rafe Boogs yesterday on the inside. What did he say about it? He loves raid and raid redemption or whatever. Yeah. And I was like, I think I saw one of those, but I wasn't sure. Rafe, smart man, very smart man. Yeah. I mean, if Cora Sauer makes mad films, Luke, somehow that I'm going to turn that into a one week by Bared Naked Ladies joke. But I don't want to put that song in everybody's head, right? I don't even know what you're referencing. It's been right.

Nobody wants that in their life, right? You know, I used to call my sister and just leave voice mails that would go, it's been in the hang up so that she would have it in her head for like, you know, the next year, it's great. All right. Hey, we got a show for you and it's coming right now. So, uh, Oh, Luke, real quick. We've made a little bit of advancements on the merch.

Do tell. And, uh, average Joe art shared a couple are one of the designs yesterday. It's it is common guys. It's it's on the way. Okay. It's in development. So I'm very excited about that. And you know how much I love me some Joe Romero,

you know what I mean? Yes, and I know merch, I mean, I'm wearing the old merch. I know that merch has been a, you know, it's one of these things that just takes time to do right, but I promise that BC and I are taking active steps and we appreciate everyone's patience. Thank you very much. Patience is the key. A reminder also that it's time to start the show.

So here we go. Topic number one. There will be UFC this weekend. The quality of that depends on whether your mileage varies, right? Hey, we got Fight Night Apex and again, a rematch that I don't know if we call for, but got it UFC fight night middleweight main event Marvin Vittori versus Roman de Lidze part The Luke Thomas has been almost two years for Vittori as he heads into this to lead a main event He's in part was off due to major surgery was taking this much time off a good idea smack in the middle of Vittori's off a good idea smack in the middle of Vittorio's athletic prime in your opinion, as we enter into this main event? Yeah, it's a great question.

So, I mean, they thought about two years ago, but he's been off. I mean, I have to look at the exact math, maybe 18, 19 months, something like that, but quite some time, quite some time BC. And you know, normally in the middle of an athletic prime, I would not recommend that I just have not seen, obviously there can be scenarios where someone has to do the injury or something like that. And it is not necessarily conclusively bad for them. It can, you know, they have to take the time off, they come back, they look refreshed, they got a little few extra tricks. It's all as well that ends well. But in general, I would say if you're healthy, and again, part of what he was up against here was he was not, you know, you would not want to necessarily take that kind of time.

But in his particular case, BC, we have to see, obviously, could he have taken this time off and it just been a waste of time and he's just going to come back exactly the same guy? Well, then of course, it would not have been worth it. But this is the point I'm trying to make. He is one of those cases where he kind of maxed out where he was. He was still at a pretty young age. He had got two chances against Izzy. It failed, not both of them for a title, but two chances ultimately against Izzy. You know, he went up against, I believe, who else did he fight? Whitaker and many of the mainstays in that division, and he just kind of couldn't get past and it was a bit of a technical stagnation that had happened the point

I'm trying to make is BC if he played this right and again a big part of this was just injury But if he played the overall experience, right where he used this time to get his head, right to get his mind Game face on so to, as well as add some technical wrinkles to what he was doing before. I actually think it could be a pay, excuse me, huge dividends, we will have to see if he used this time effectively. Yeah, 31 years old, Vittori has lost two of his last three. You mentioned the big names, he went in against the wind came against

the leads. Yeah, that's almost two years to the day. It'll actually be two years and three days removed from when they met and the opening bout of the UFC London card in 2023. It went down as a unanimous decision over three rounds as Vittori took the score cards 30 to 27 and two score cards of 29 to 28. Now, Luke, if I recall that fight, and I do, because that was during a time when Roman DeLize was riding a win streak, and I was wondering if that was going to be the fight that would catapult him into

contention. It didn't happen. It was, there were pockets of action. It wasn't an awful fight, but I think the biggest takeaway was DeLize's cardio was not ready for the higher level of this division at that point. Now, fight. But I think the big the leads a cardio was not level of this division at though he suffered an imme fight, he has rebounded w and this fight will be a

event. Do you believe stor of the actual X's and O's on to lead here at 36 to worked on that that that vulnerable area in his game. Definitely feel like if I had a conversation about this yesterday, you know, if you're heading into a rematch, if you're the one who lost the initial bout, the onus is on you to make the adjustments. And of course, the challenge with that is not merely making the requisite successful adjustments that get you past the performance

that your opponent put in last time. But of course they're going to get better too. It really is an unenviable task. It is quite difficult. It can happen. We've seen very noteworthy examples when obviously for example, Shogun Hua fought Machida the first time didn't go his way. Now very controversially with the scoring, but it did not go his way.

However, he left no doubt the second time and just steamrolled them and got the job done. So, you know, I, I'm always going to say, if you lost the first one, the onus is on you. And something to sort of consider in this return, he fought Anthony Smith, who I think has admitted he's got like literally a retirement fight left. Uh, and he took that one on short notice. It was a weird fight. And then Kevin Holland who probably shouldn't be fighting at one 85. I'm not here to diminish the fact that he's got two wins in the UFC and that's something valuable but it's not like after the losses to Vittori and Imovov he beat another you know in

prime high quality opponent. I don't think he did that right so this also remains a sort of a proving ground about what your limit is and again I'm not sure how Tori is. I think he's close to 30 or 31, something like that. 31. But in the leads case, he's 36. Now, of course, at middleweight, that is hardly a death sentence. But certainly the time that the clock is ticking about trying to make a worthy and capable, consistent run back into the top five and potentially even further. Would you say, and I understand what you're saying about the quality of theLizze's recent wins and the timing, that if you look at his resume, what is his greatest win? Is it Kevin Holland?

Is it Jack Hermansen? Or is it silently and privately wedding Cheyenne Vlissmus? Your thoughts, Luke. Okay. So yesterday on my live chat, somebody asked me how soon it would be before BC brings up the fact that deletes a and Cheyenne Blissmas have a relationship and I was like probably pretty quickly the answer is 15 minutes 15 dude does this audience know you or it's a significant factor in his development

as a fighter, Luke. I will say that. Here's the thing. Every time you're like, oh, well this one is of suspect quality or this one is of suspect quality, what people are saying is, or what people hear I should say is that,

oh, that person is saying that they're bad and they didn't do anything and it doesn't count for anything. It's actually not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, in terms of getting right where your ceiling is, it's inconclusive because it just doesn't tell you if it is true. However, what you usually can deduce from this BC is confidence boost, right? If you lost two in a row and in the case

of Vittori, it was, you know, competitive throughout and in the case of Imovov, it was competitive in general. And then you get two wins back to back. Maybe those two wins aren't the same quality in terms of opponent that you had in the loss, but it's, you know, we don't get tune up fights very often in UFC. I'm not saying exactly that's what it is, but it certainly is a confidence boost.

It certainly is something that makes you feel good. It means you got two full paychecks back to back. You know what I mean? Like there's all kinds of ways that that actually can boost your performance heading into a fight like this when a rematch with Vittori. All I'm pointing out is the quality of the opponent

in a undersized Holland and a certainly a Smith who, you know, I think he would tell you he's just not really able to give anything close to his best effort. We can't draw necessarily a ton of information from that. I wanna ask you something specifically about Vitori and I don't disagree with everything you just said there. It feels like when Vitori has stepped up to the highest level rematch without Asanya the Whitaker fight the can

near fight. We've seen the limitations of him. Although I'll give him credit for that 2021 win over Paula Costa and some of the sort of second-rate middleweights. He's defeated. But the last time I remember pre-injury us really having a discussion considering he's still relatively young, right? 31 years old about Vittori's high end ceiling.

We always seem to settle on the same thing. He's battle tested from the standpoint of being in many five round main events. He's certainly durable as Sh shit and he's overall pretty damn good fighter but the lack of consistent finishing ability does seem to ceiling whether he's able to get above these elite names and avoid being essentially a big name gatekeeper the rest of the way. What is your confidence level almost two years away that he's put in the work to evolve and get a little bit more dangerous because it is tough to be a

decision machine in a division with dynamic strikers like this. Yeah, not just a decision machine, a guy. I don't mind if people have basic offense. I mean, if you really think about it, Poetan, he certainly has very sharply refined basics and that makes it incredibly dangerous. But you know, he's not doing the Shara Bullet bop bop thing on Armand Petrosian, you know what I mean? He's not doing 360 tornado kicks. He's doing pretty conventional things.

He just does them with razor sharp effectiveness. So I don't mind that Marvin Vettori has a fundamental game where there's not anything necessarily flashy about it, but the problem is there's just not a whole lot super dangerous about it either. It gets the job done, but it's very labor-intensive in order to make that happen and he's tough and he's big and by the way one thing that really should be noted here is DeLizia was landing on him in the first fight. Vittori's chin is insane. Vittori has one of the better chins in this division.

And frankly, I'm gonna say one of the better chins currently among active UFC fighters, a fantastic ability to take a punch and just kind of keep going. But there just hasn't been enough technical development. That's simply the reality that he's up against. You know he's big and strong. You know he's got, got again a lot of bases covered in terms of like what

skills he has but how many of them are in excess of what you know the really good guys in this division have. What makes any of those special? What is your favorite? I mean serious question. What is your favorite Marvin Vittori fight? I can find rounds where he performs well. I can find exchanges where he performs well. He doesn't exchanges where he performs well. He doesn't exactly have a highlight reel because there's just not enough development that really gives him an edge over his contemporaries

to then begin to move downhill on them. He can kind of push the sled the whole time. You know what I mean? It's a very, very labor and he can do it. He's a fucking big, strong guy. He can do it, but that's not it. Clearly it's not enough to be in the very elite of this division. The thing you're

asking you see is the confidence level. All I can say is, he was in a rare position where he had the time. He had the time he got he got he kind of zoomed to the front of the line or pretty close to it at age 27. And then that's where he hit the wall. But now he's had some time to learn and rebuild and take some lessons and make some changes. So time is on his side and for that reason, I think this fight on Saturday is actually a bit intriguing. Yeah, five of Vittori's last seven fights, by the way, have gone the five round distance.

Obviously, he'll be back in a five rounder here in the main event. So there's certain intangible qualities like we're saying that he's very strong in. I need to see more variety. I need to see him sitting down on shots and going for the finish more. I'm looking back on his finish history in the UFC. He submitted a fellow by the name of Alberto Yuda in his UFC debut in 2016.

And he also has a first round submission of Karl Roberson back in 2020, but that is it. So Luke, we have some sound here from Vitt spending his time, hopfali in the gym. But let's hea stallion. Obviously welco been, what you've been up know, I've been in Miami,

that's that's what I've b all of a sudden, all of a sudden, my, my new favorite fighter. No, I'm teasing. He's not, but I was like, I was not expecting that at that moment. That was great. That was fantastic. Uh, I believe we have a deeper conversation on Victoria's attempt to prove here in this fight that he's truly, truly worthy of entering back into title contention. There's been a lot of changes in your division since you last competed.

New champion with DDP and you have new contenders like Nazar Deir Emoav and Kaio Baraglio. What's your assessment of the division right now and where do you think you fit in it? Yeah, it's deep, man. Division, we raised the bar. And I mean, they raised the bar for for now but I'll come in soon but yeah yeah yeah no it's it's good it was it's been good I think it's stuff like there's a lot of

good fighters and uh yeah listen it starts with Saturday my comeback starts with Saturday and I'm gonna show I'm I'm gonna be a contender and and get that title because that's where my head is and for the title you know when the ball start rolling and I keep winning things happen very fast I believe so and especially also when is your moment to to to make it happen and I believe it is now so it all also with Saturday and that's it. You know he kind of looks in that outfit did you ever see that original MTV true life I live on the Jersey Shore episode that that I think was the inspiration for them

bringing a real world season there are you know developing that spin off you know that fellow with the wife Peter that would go out to the clubs and look at sad existence no scene knows this yes he wore the Rue hat and he would go out with the chicks with the white pants. Yeah, I know exactly the episode you're talking about. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I feel I feel noticed. I think Long Island Luke watches a lot of TV. I get the feeling you're talking like early 2000s MTV. Yeah, I was watching a lot of TV. I was on the broken leather couch and Nothing but MTV. Yes. Long Island. Luke. What year did you graduate high school? 2010 2010.

Okay. So would you say, Luke, it's, it's not his fault. He was born in the late nineties, ultimately probably in his case, it's all his fault. Early nineties, early early nineties. Uh, that is interesting, Luke, but I gotta be honest with you right here. I don't have a lot in general. I want to see him turn that corner here right now from our friends 162 the favorite Vitori pl

This fight is interesting of in some ways a crossro nature of who's coming and who's going. Who do you have more confidence in giving their age, recent injury history, you see that this fight is not a pick-em-but-close-enough, in terms of showing us on Saturday night that they are headed toward contention again? I don't understand the question. Who do you have, whose stock stock? Do you have more confidence? Oh, sorry. I'm not answering this fight.

Well, okay. I'm trying to read your mind here a little bit, which is why I was confused. It sounds to me like, I'm not saying you're suggesting this, but if I may, you have more confidence in the leads a for a very good reason, which is it's gonna almost, I'm going gonna say almost always it is routinely true that if you are active that just is going to be better than being inactive and even if you can say BC to the point we raised earlier about the confidence boosting properties

of you didn't have necessarily the two toughest opponents for you in that moment, but just putting two back to back wins together like what this does for you. It also just keeps you sharp in the gym, active, doing those kinds of things. So then you can raise your performance. It's much easier to ratchet it up against a better opponent if you've had a couple of ones that were a little bit more of an intro pace, so to speak. And for that reason, I think it's not, I don't know what the odds are, Long Island Luke, if you could tell me from our friends at DraftKings. No, Luke, I literally just read them too.

I didn't hear it. I'm read them I didn't hear it I'm sorry I didn't hear it all right I could read it back to you we're looking at minus 162 Vittori plus 136 okay don't leave apologies I didn't hear it that's probably well that's kind of an interesting one I'd be curious to hear what long on looks like betting pick is here in other words I'm trying to say this BC. I'm I'm torn because on the one hand the consistency of just getting out there getting it done. What deletes it has done and he's got well rounded offense. He can grapple with you. He can strike with you to a degree as well. He's a bigger

puncher, bigger puncher of the two bigger puncher. I think that's also true and I understand that I think that's a totally reasonable thing. Here's what I'm going to say. What I'm hung up on is that I do believe that at least in terms of potential, Vittori should or could have a higher ceiling. What I don't know if he's going to actualize it. And so that's where like that's why I'm saying, you know, if you go back and you watch their first fight, we didn't really talk about this.

But if you watch your first fight, there's nothing interesting about it. It's a fine fight, but it's whatever. There's a little bit back and forth with the punching there. I mean, but you know not a technical thriller is what I would say. Just I love that term. Oh, I love that term. Yes. Just a fine fight. It happened. It was whatever, but I guess what I'm trying to say here is I keep waiting, maybe stupidly, I keep waiting for Vittori to finally turn that corner and there's so many factors where he actually does have the

win that is back. I want to see what happens on Saturday. So I'm actually going to lean Vittori and he won the first time. I'm going to lean Vittori, but I get having some faith in Dalidze as a bit of a wild card here. Long Island Luke,, if the leads a cardio is not an issue in this five round fight, that that could be a big, if we'll see if that's the case, who do you like in this one? And why? I think regardless, I like to lead. Say I'm not trusting Vittoria after the layoff. Also, I was talking to Luke about this pre-show.

If you go to MMA decisions right now, more than half of the media members scored the fight for deletes, including a couple of 30, 27 in favor of the leads. Whoa. They really? Yep. I had a two to one to lead. Yeah, I exactly BC. I remember watching it live and thinking to one to lead day as well.

So given that, I think he won the first fight. You're giving me him a dog odds here. I took him at plus one 36 like a week ago. So that line really hasn't moved at all. But yeah, I'm riding with the leads on this one. Fair enough. I don't think any of that sounds crazy to me. If Vittori can't take him down and it's more of a kickboxing match, if the lead day's got the fuel, I think he can do it here, but it is interesting matchmaking. I don't love it as a main event. I don't necessarily love the fight. I kind of like the personalities of the fighters themselves,

but I got questions for both. So this will be interesting We do have more sound from Vittori. Did he accept the fight thinking it was a different opponent? It's it's not sound It's just a graphic. Yeah LOL this whole time. I thought it was Roman copy law But it's a Roman deleted Oh My god, wow, I'm just like very different opponents. Very different opponents. Yeah. This whole time I thought I was fighting John Jones. Turns out it's John Copenhaver. You

know, probably there's no difference, right? Same thing. Yeah. All right. There we go. One more piece of sound though is the lead day. Let's hear from him in terms of what could be different this time around for him looking to avenge that first defeat against a Vitor. Win or lose don't change nothing in me. It doesn't define who I am. That's why it is another fight and I'm as always ready. This is mindset not only for fights, this is my mindset for life. I was very happy. I didn't expect that UFC will offer me exactly this fight, but I'm glad because a lot of people have questions after our last fight and I also think I didn't lose my previous fight with Marvin. I won that fight and I think this fight will give answers to all

questions what everybody have. I think I'm a little bit different fighter than before in that fight. Back then I was fighting more with anger but now I'm more confident and I more understand what I need to exactly do to do to win the fight. I think Marvin is very durable fighter. He has a good heart going forward. Unfortunately that last fight he didn't go forward with me. He was tapping back but I still think that he's a great fighter. Of course, it's a little bit different preparation, but it's more understanding. You get the idea.

Yeah, I do get the idea there. He's very happy these days compared to fighting angry in the past. Maybe it's two kids, happy situation at home. We did see on Cheyenne's Instagram stories three years ago on New Year's Eve that Roman was on the balcony just firing off hand weapons, Luke,

just, just, bam, bam, bam. That's, that must be Georgian culture right there. I don't know. I don't know. It's certainly an interesting one. What I will say, BC, is all, interesting stat, if you combine all of DeLidze's losses and all of Vittori's losses, I believe this is correct. They're all decisions.

Neither has ever been stopped. So an interesting possibility here, which I don't expect. I don't expect this, but an interesting thing is because again, Vittorio's got a really good chin and the leads a is very offensive. It makes it hard for this to get stopped. But if somebody does get stopped, it would be it would be quite novel. I mean if Vittorio gets stopped here, that's a that's a, you know, his, his career is going in the wrong direction fast. So I would agree. That would be, that would be for deleted. He gets stopped would be bad, but yeah,

he's closer to 40 than he is 34 for Victoria to get stopped would be, I think quite, quite destructive. Do we feel like, um, look at rankings wise coming into this fight, we S we currently have Vittoria at number eight at middleweight Roman Delezee at number 12. How far does the winner go here Luke? Top five top five fight? I think bubble top five I think okay if Vittoria wins even though the opponent is ranked 12th especially if it's really, I think he's got a chance to break in. But I think if the leads a wins, it's, you know,

he's probably just going to take something approximating give or take what for Tori currently occupies. So it really kind of depends. Are we over looking the momentum of George and UFC fighters at the moment? I mean, they are quite good. Um, does it rub off? Does it just rub off on people?

Luke, they are good. They are excellent, but they've also hit roadblocks too. I thought Gurum Kuta, the lads. I was going to be the next big thing and that didn't quite that didn't quite work. So we'll see. We'll see there. I mean, these, these, these, these people are tough as shit. I mean, we do know that right?

Yeah. Uh, let's talk about this undercard. It may be a are tough as shit. I mean, we do know that right? Yeah. Let's talk about this undercard. It may be a short conversation. Look, I mean, we hit it on Monday. This is. Would you say irreparably bad? I mean, it's just it's not even made. It's just like you just don't need it, you know, not irreparable, not irreparable. There is one. OK, so if someone was like, what is the other fight on here? You absolutely have to watch. There is one clear choice for me on this one, and it's

actually going to be on, I believe on the prelims. If I'm looking at this correctly, I have to double check. But it's a guy who initially lost on the contender series, came back and won spectacularly. 23 year old kid out of Argentina, Kevin by Yehose again, as my wife would say Kevin by Jehose, but nevertheless, Kevin by Yehose out of Argentina, he's taken on Siong Wu Choi, this will be his full on for by Yehose, it'll be his full on UFC debut. And if you haven't watched this kid, first of all, when he fought Jaon Silva, he was 21.

Silva was 26, I believe. I looked this up earlier this week. And then if, you know, he was still working on his development through the whole thing. When he came back on the Contender series and fought this dude, I think his name was Teague, whatever it was, Ginger with the Afro. I mean, Kevin Villegos could not have looked better if he tried. Unbelievable boxing combinations in the pocket, out of the pocket, smart decision making. He looked like he was shot out of a cannon. This should be a really, really, really fun fight. 14 and one.

The Argentine is BC. That is definitely one of the young prospects on this roster. You're going to want to pay attention to. Yeah. I've heard a lot of seriously. I've heard a lot of great things about him. Long Island. Luke, you've made a, uh, your place in this industry on caring about these types of fights on I'm creating betting parlays of why people can combine

a demand Blackshear with a Priscillaoeira and make some money. What are you looking at on this undercard besides absolute slop? Uh, well, Luke just mentioned Kevin Vallejos. I do have him in a parlay. I think he looks damn good. And you mentioned Daman Blackshear. I mean, just parlay those two together. Add on a little Zelizy, Eliza Zelensky dos Santos. Yes.ize, Alize, Alize, Alize, Alize, Alize, down five different opponents. I can easily see him just mixing it up, taking them down. You got to read on Hernandez and Halabah. I am riding with Hernandez for this reason and this reason alone. He's lost four of his last six, but three of those were at featherweight. This fight will be at lightweight where he's won three of his last four and the only loss was to Moikano. So like he's not losing to scrubs, he's losing the

top 15 guys. Kurt Halabah. I mean, who's he fighting? Kanan Kruschevsky. Yeah, I mean who the fuck is that, you know, so I'm I'm riding with fucking Alex For all these guys. All right. Yeah, Luke. DeMond Blackshire reminds me of this guy in New Haven Who used to sit out front of the Anna Liffey's bar and quote Shakespeare and everybody called him Black Spear and he would always be shirtless and would be like spouting off with like a British accent like these these Shakespeare lines and it was always very poetic and I enjoyed it. What's he doing now?

What'd you say? What's he doing now? I would hope the same thing entertaining folks spreading the good word the good joy of I would hope the same thing, entertaining folks, spreading the good word, the good joy of Shakespeare and you know, it's, is that, that'd be a racist story though, I'm not sure. Favorite Shakespeare play of Brian Campbell. The Merchant of Venice. Hey, there we go. All right.

I was just testing to see if you knew any, but I did that one. I did Hamlet. I didn't go too deep on Shakespeare. Not surprisingly, given my public school system and upbringing, but I went to public school to tell me about it. Yeah. You probably went to a different kind of public school, although you were in dirt bag Georgia in different spots. What was so dude, you can, okay. So like when you have a child, you have to look this up. There are two services. One is called great schools. One is called niche and they rate schools by objective criteria nationwide.

And you can plug in your public school to see where it fits in there. Dude. I looked up all the schools I went to. The best one was a five out of 10. Like, no, I did not go to good schools. Absolutely not. Yeah. There you go. Uh, Luke, I wanted to talk to you about of 10. Yeah. Like, no, I did not go to good schools. Absolutely not. Yeah. There you go. Uh, Luke, I wanted to talk to you about something though. Yes. You know, you know what March brings big time basketball, right? Yes. It absolutely brings big time

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Luke, do you think when Canada becomes the 51st state that Shaquille Masioudi of CBS Sports will lose that free health care? Yeah, but he'll still be going to terrible raves with his laptop. Well, I appeared on his YouTube channel yesterday and he did make mention about, you know, he would like if you texted him back once in a while, okay? I do text him back once in a while, just not as often as he texts me. All right. Well, Luke, we got another topic for you and it's topic number two. And it's the call to action that we put out on, was it Monday's MK episode in

response to the UFC 313 pay-per-view, not just Alex Pereira's upset, not upset, but loss to top ranked Magomed and Kalaya, but the whole idea that in general, over the past year and a half, as the TKO era, the Endeavor era increases with power and momentum, is the UFC battling not only a star power issue, but maybe a change in philosophy that is spurring

this if it is true. We put out the call to you using our email address, morning combat at gmail.com. And as we mentioned off the top of the show, we got an interesting mix of opinions, reviews, hopefully some insults there. Luke, why don't you take this over? Yeah. Um, okay. So here's how this is going to go. By the way, one thing that we kind of kind of one thing that we definitely

messed up one, first of all, let me just say it one more time. Thank everybody who responded. We cannot get to all of them. It was simply too much in number. Also for next time BC, here's what we have to do. We didn't do it this time. We got to put a word limit on it and a video length limit on it. Cause we got a lot of videos, we got a lot of videos which was awesome.

But some of them are like 10 minutes. Like we just don't have time to play a 10 minute video on the show. It has to be like two minutes or less. We'll set that up for next time. But here's how this is gonna go. I have read some of these responses, but I haven't heard any of the video responses. So what we're gonna do is we're just gonna go through as many as we can.

And then if some of them challenge you, some of them challenge me, some of them challenge both. But again, one more time, we, as BC indicated, we've been wondering what the problem is with the UFC star machine, such that there even is one. What about the watered down cars? Is there something missing here? And I know a lot of fans see the product differently.

So we said, this is your chance to tell us what we're missing, almost like a more thoughtful, dead wrong all the way through, but we'll have some debate about it as well. You think we'll have a lot of male viewers here and. Do we have any submissions from women? I don't think we do. I think it's all dudes.

All right. Yeah. All right. Real sausage fest. Where you see it. Yeah. MK the sausage fest is gonna's going to be great. All right.

With that in mind, BC, let's get this party started if we can. So our first response, and again, we may not watch the whole thing depending on the length, but our first response comes to us from Clayton. It's a video. What's up, Bluecombe BC.

Just wanted to hop on. You guys asked for some responses on kind of the star power and if there's something that is maybe different Based on kind of the younger demographic. So to give context, I'm 28 years old I'm a white guy live in a predominantly white area and one of the biggest things that I've seen when I came to the sport I viewed it as I was always in a combat sports I was started coaching kickboxing and then just fell in love.

So watch almost all the cards, stay very much in tune with kind of what's going on. One of the big things with the progression that I've seen, at least within my sphere, is that a lot of young people don't watch the sport for the sake of the sport. They watch the sport for the sake of the sport. They watch the sport for the sake of personality. So when you're thinking about the biggest kind of content that people can watch in the era of personalities

and streamers and these big kind of very polarizing kind of people, they watch for that. They don't watch for the sport for more necessarily in combat sports like I work at a place where we look and we put on USC events for the guys we put them on a big screen for the guys to come watch so many people showed up for Sean Strickland and DDP they did not care almost about any of the other fights. All they wanted to see was Sean Strickland.

Just because he was a personality. And he somehow speaks to their views in some capacity. Which, for me, irreparable. But whatever. None of them watched this last card with Magomed on Collide and Politan. Zero. Grand total. Because they don't resonate with the personalities of the people.

They want that. They don't want a good product with good sport. They want the clips and the outrageous stuff and the things that they think are funny. And that's just my experience with them. Right. The only people who. Okay. Yeah. BC your reaction.

So this does play into the ideal that people have had that it has been a calculated shift on UFC's part in terms of what audience they're going after. Obviously everybody wants to go after young male between 18 and 34, or whatever your metric is, and they're aggressive in that. I can't tell you how many of my kids' high school friends or kids in my neighborhood here that are in college that are suddenly out of nowhere UFC fanatics and are watching this show and liking it and stuff. So I think that everything from the aggressiveness

of putting politics to the forefront and having Trump and Kid Rock and Tucker Carlson and all that to the choice that they're making in the specific celebrities and influencers that they're not only giving front row seats to which happens in boxing too and you're always going to want famous people there, but specifically the ones that are almost becoming the journalists of this era. I agree with them. They are aiming at a specific lifestyle, feel, culture. And I wasn't surprised when he said Sean Strickland is a guy that people really wanted to see, but didn't really care about the rest of it. That's kind of always in some way. That's why to me, big super fights matter or what have you, because it's always something that, that pulls people in.

It doesn't address the quality issues to their product, which I think is helping them not retain fans over time, especially the recent run. But I love that Clayton took the time to get, you know, he's not a, he's a hardcore fan. You can tell, but gave us that look into him. And also ginger beard game strong, wrong play in, but him telling us as a disclaimer that he's a white guy was not up for debate, dude. Yeah. Clayton Clayton.

We know we know. Yeah. But in all seriousness, thoughtful response, I guess the one thing I would say to that is that sounds like a Sean Strickland fandom thing, less than it does an overall fandom thing. In other words, like because he's made his identity so much a function of his political and social worldview, it's it's almost like he's pulled like the dynamic of fandom that he enjoys is separate from the kind of broader fandom question that we're having. I think there might be something to that but nevertheless a thoughtful reply. BC if you can I want to there's a bunch of these I want to get through as many as we can so we thank him. Alright our next one I don't know

if it's Lionel or as my wife would say Lionel but Lionel has a video response as well. Hello gentlemen Lion Lionel Rivera here. I pretty much agreed Luke with pretty much your entire assessment champion by champion. But BC, I did have a little bit of an issue with your framing of the argument, right? This argument about the UFC having maybe a star problem, a boring champion problem, whatever you wanna call it. I think too much blame was put onto the UFC.

And I'm not saying that the UFC delivers a perfect product. The UFC can do tons of things to improve the product, right? Fewer apex cards, probably fewer events per year. I think that there's a lot that UFC can do. However, some agency needs to be reapplied to this cohort of champions. We are not seeing the same urgency with especially this current cohort of champions that we did see with previous champions like Alexander Volkonovsky and Israel Adesanya that did media outside of their fight camp fight week obligations to build rapport with the fans to put their personalities out there. We're not seeing that with this current cohort of champions.

I think that that contributes to perhaps your interpretation of a sold-ish product because if a champion is only relying on embeddeds and countdowns to build any rapport with the audience, we can't really expect there to be any buzz or any anticipation for five, six months out of a big champion, a big championship fight or even just a routine title defense. We're not going to experience that excitement if we don't even know them. And we can't just put all of the agency on the UFC to make us care about the champion. The champion has to want to build a deeper rapport with the audience. And that starts, that starts with their

own channels. Your response. Yeah, is a thoughtful response right there. It makes me ask a counter question in light of what I've been saying about. I guess the laziness if you want to call it that or maybe it's just a financial decision not to do the same efforts of the past and I even have to wake up and realize that when I'm talking about the past and the way UFC used to spend money to aggressively promote new champions and get them out there, we were under a different time when it comes to social media, streaming, and the roles that all this play.

In light of what Lionel said right there, I do wonder, Luke, does the UFC look at it, not just when I say look at, I mean, their decision not to market and pay for the money aggressively to do these type of media tours or what have you. Is that because of how much social media has changed the fact that so many fighters do have their own systems now to get out there, whether it be a YouTube channel, camera crews following them, more aggressive and understanding use of social media? Is this the UFC's way of saying in a lot of ways, times have changed, we'd love to save this money. following them more aggres use of social media. Is th of saying in a lot of way

we'd love to save this mo point to some degree up t out there and market and I will put some responsib But how much do you belie social landscape affects it's a much bigger conversation because first of all, I think his point is well taken.

People think this conversation is like, oh, what can the UFC do better? And yes, obviously that's a big part of it. But part of star making is like, if not just part of it, maybe principally about what the individual athlete does and what kind of magnetism they have with the audience. That is aided by a capable promotion. And that is a very, very important condition. But again, it all

starts with like, is this person a magnetic personality? Is this person interesting to audiences? And then how do you get them in front of maximum audiences and blah, blah, blah, right. So it's a bit of a handshake deal with one having more of a responsibility than the other. At the same time, though, BC, like this is something we haven't really talked about. Like, yeah, you're right. Like fighters have YouTube channels and they have podcasts.

It's like also everyone's doing the same thing even with the extra content. It's actually, what's interesting to me is the extra content part of it is actually harder than ever, even though you have more options than ever because there's so much homogeneity, in terms of what everyone just does the whole way through. And in fact, if it's kind of interesting that one of the we talked about Sean Strickland, whatever your views of him,

one way or the other, like he does have an audience that is very, very magnetized to him. And he does spot a lot of opinions. And I know he had a podcast for a little while with Chris Curtis, but like that fell to the waist. I'm pointing out he doesn't do any of that stuff. And there yet still kind of is maybe even a much bigger appeal relative to some other folks in the UFC for him. So it's a more complicated debate than just whose responsibilities are the fighter or the athlete in a world where what's available to the athlete is yes, there's a lot of it, but it's very difficult to stand out when there's just this tidal wave of existing content. I mean, I still feel like in the end, the UFC is not making the

effort to make the fighters the stars in general. I mean, you can't, you have to be able to concede that here. Here's what I would say. This is the way I would describe it. And this is something that hasn't come up here, but I kind of wanted to pitch it to you as a little bit of here. If you came up watching MMA at the time that we did and you watch them grow and they absorb pride and they absorb strike force and they absorb WEC and they just grew and grew and grew and they went white knuckle with affliction. They went white knuckle with, you know, Elite XC. They went white knuckle with IFL. They went, you know, they just were, I mean, they were absolutely ferocious competitors, ferocious promoters. It is hard not to notice that that doesn't happen today, in part because there's just not the same kind

of competition, they're not at the same stage of development. There's just not as much of a need, quite honestly, and in terms of that kind of adversarial approach to the industry. But it's also at the same time, like if you watch them do this, it is hard not to notice that just doesn't happen anymore at the same time, BC, here's where I come down, this is the kind of lesson that I've learned through all of this and we'll have many more responses here. It's that.

I remember during the pandemic that I, I, my wife convinced me to buy one of those monthly services where they send you a box of clothes and you can keep what you like and then send back what you don't. And then just you know, you tell them what you like. And then a stylist picks it out and you get another box and you get another box and you get another box, right. And I ultimately only did it for like two months because I hated everything that they sent. But the point I'm trying to make is you just it's

just a surprise like whatever just arrives in the mail, you know, maybe you'll like some of it. maybe you won't you keep what you do you move on it seems to me like if you came of age either during the pandemic or slightly after and all you know is a world where the UFC has you know 42 43 events per year they have a different relationship to the product BC their relationship is hey you just turn on Saturday morning or morning sorry evening or whatever the time is and maybe you like the fights maybe you don't maybe their relationship is, hey, you just turn on Saturday morning, or morning, sorry, evening, or whatever the time is, and maybe you like the fights, maybe you don't, maybe they're good,

maybe they're not, you got the one special one each month, and the rest of them, you know, just a surprise box that arrives in the mail. That's not our experience, but it is theirs, and there do appear to be a lot of people that seem to prefer, not prefer, but certainly enjoy the way in which they interface, even if it wasn't the way that we came up. I wonder what you make of that. I agree with that. I also think that to a lot of people, they couldn't like what's said in these two videos already.

They're not worried about the business's financial future or anything like that, right? We look at it from more of a trend that we're, from a trend that we're almost like critical gatekeepers of trying to make sure that not only things are done ethically, but are done in a sense that's, you know, lifting up the sport and growing in that regard. So I get that.

If this is your Saturday entertainment routine, if you connect with the vibe, then that's why there's so many people that sort of blindly, you know, protect UFC and defend them on these type of topics. I do get that. But that's the whole point though. To them, it's the brand that they love. And that's, you know, obviously what UFC would prefer.

So many of us, maybe it's, maybe it's different because, you know, of my, of our age group, we're like eighties kids that came from pro wrestling. It is about personality and storyline and truly making you care. But interesting conversations just the same. Let's hear another dog. I got to see someone's face here. All right, very good. Well, we have we have we have an audio message next. This comes to us from Josh M. What's up, fellas? I want to open up by quoting the great George Costanza when he said, without story, all you have is masturbation. And I say that because I agree with what BC said today on the show about the UFC lacking

storylines and developing stars and rivalries and all that. And just, you know, it's everything these days just seems like about the bottom line and there's this and that and their new TV deal and just making it super political anymore and the way they treated the media and you know they're you know a lot of the fighters you know I became a you know a really big fan of the sport going all the way back to the Chuck Liddell Tito Ortiz uh Ken Shamrock rival Rivalry's back then in the mid 2000s, 05, 06, whatever that was, GSP, BJ Penn, Matt Hughes. I mean, I bought 80, 90% of the pay-per-views.

I followed it, listened to podcasts like you guys and co-main event, everything. And now it's just like, the product is like almost unrecognizable to me anymore. I don't know any of these fighters. Everything's a paywall behind the paywall to watch it. It is just, it's a TKO and UFC has taken it in a drastically worse direction for an old school fan like me. Now I watch maybe 15 to 20% of the flights versus probably about 97% for 18 plus years. So I agree with B.

Okay. That's interesting right there, Luke, if you'll let me jump in. He's definitely speaking to an extension of this problem, which is this era of corporateness and the whole, you know, Walmartification of the UFC and that's, that seems to be a TKO influence and they're already making those same changes in WWE. And that's part of the fear if depending on which side of the line you're on, on this potential TKO boxing takeover, it's the whole idea of just, in my opinion, taking a lot of that soul and personality out of it and being more what we know

they are about now content filling, because ultimately that's who their masters are right now. The broadcast deals they're trying to make and the government contracts they're trying to create with major cities, putting the whole TKO portfolio on the table. So I do kind of completely agree with what he's saying right there, but something kind of triggered my memory when he mentioned the era that sort of sparked him, which seems to be the tail end of that Randy, Liddell, Tito, Shamrock era that transitioned

into the beginning of the GSP Anderson Silva and sort of that first amazing modern pay-per-view killing takeover era. And I wonder, we saw Poetton, if he had beaten Ankaliyev, would have set the modern record for most title defenses in a 12-month window with four. The record is Tito Ortiz, who back then was almost headlining consecutive pay-per-views on a regular basis.

Obviously, they had less cards. They were stretched out. But I think you could argue that when they had less fighters back then, when they were more hungry and fighting just for survival, it kind of in a way had to be about the personalities. You know what I mean? Like pushing Shamrock into huge fights with his resume and in the WWE crossover he had and all that. Like Tito Ortiz with the Huntington Bad Boy personality, Liddell, they needed it back then so they pushed it. These guys fought often. They were in our face constantly.

The machine's too large for that nowadays if you're really being fair and honest. I think it's a fair comment. I want to make sure we get more critical voices than ones agreeing with us for the purpose of the exercise. So if I may, I appreciate Josh M's response and in yours as well BC. Let's hear though if we can from another video message this time from our friend Steve N. Hey Luke, hey Brian, Bong Island Luke. My name is Steve Nguyen. I thought I'd send this in since you guys asked on your last video talking about how we should send in videos if we feel like you guys are missing anything in the topic when it comes to creating new stars for the UFC. I think one of the things that Luke brought up,

that was actually outside of the subject of superstars, but like later on in that same episode was how Mauricio Hufi and the Fighting Nerds have become like artists in the sense of the work, martial artists. They are like bringing fire to the UFC. Every time they fight, it's a must watch, right? And I think that's part of the equation as to why the UFC isn't as interested in marketing

certain stars as much. They will market certain fights. They will market certain values that they hold, but I don't think they want to market people. I think in boxing, it's a lot easier to want to create a superstar because there's so much competition. I'm pretty sure Luke and Brian have talked about this before. There's a lot of competition in boxing. Like there's PBC, WBCBC top rank, there's Turkey, like there's a lot of like independent moving pieces always fighting for like smaller contract

bids to keep their boxers in their promotion to give their boxers what it is they want. So that way they don't lose out on that gate that pay-per-view whatever it is. Whereas with the UFC, I think their deal with ESPN has allowed them to kind of give less of an effort toward the entire idea of creating superstars because they get a set amount of money and because they underpay their fighters. I think it's not as big of a rush for them, like to create the next set of superstars due to some of these like mitigating factors, right? Like, you have people like the fighting nerds who are doing that marketing for them themselves.

MMA fighters are a hungry breed. I train at a gym. I have a few amateur fights. I have guys who are climbing the rankings right now, amateur pro, whatever it is. And they are always hungry, they are always working, they're always grinding, including trying to market themselves efficiently, trying to reach out to the correct people,

trying to ensure that they are going out and getting the sort of support they need from sponsorships and whatnot. And maybe in the eyes of the UFC, they don't see that as a priority because the fighters are already putting in the legwork. A star is going to break out at a star once. Like Alex Pajera wanted to be a star. He just wants to fight. He doesn't care about anything else, really. Like the money obviously is an important factor for him, but he wants to fight. And so he created a stardom for himself. He like had

this it factor, right? And I think the UFC, since they are kind of the only competition out there, like PFL Tour isn't really even competition. And that's just the truth. You guys have talked about it a lot. Where PFL tour, PFL, whatever you want to call it, is trying to constantly market themselves with the smart cage or announcers, the tournaments, you know, a new way of looking at fighting when in reality, I don't think most people give a fuck about looking at it as just like a new way of fighting what people usually want. Okay, BC, any response there? Yeah, I think he's really touching deep on the whole idea that it's a content farm nowadays. That's their angle. I think it does play into

the idea of they still want the brand and Dana and the vibe that they're selling to be the appeal to be the star, but it all plays into it. Luke, Steve N by the way, who said he trains a bit, looks like he knows where the gym is, looks like his his DMs probably full. Um, we don't get many of those in this MK fandom. The thing you have to kind of like ask is, is not whether it's more content farmish than it was before. I mean, just by like scope and size with contender series road to UFC all the apex stuff I mean all the you know, the regular content calendar, you know, it's just obviously is more I mean just like like inarguably more than it was even you know, five ten years ago with all of those additions

The question is is that a good thing? That's the issue. The issue is not is it happening? The question is is that okay? Is that good? And the answer might change. Now BC, let's move this along. Those are our video and audio responses. We had some other ones. Some of these videos were insanely long. We just couldn't get to them. Next time we'll put some parameters on this.

Okay, the BC, this comes to us from our friend KU. You might have seen him on Twitter a time or two. And he writes, quote, So I think BC is overstating the issue. UFC have never been great at promoting stars unless they already had the it factor like Connor, Rhonda, Brock. They tried pushing Paige Van Zandt and Sage and failed because they weren't at that level. Patty still has a chance but his hype hasn't matched his skills. They now only really know how to promote someone that brings controversy like Sean

and Colby. UFC isn't concerned about the stars that generate pay-per-view by since they aren't reliant on them stars would be a bonus but not a requirement. This is why they can charge $300 for the cheapest seats in Newark no matter the main event until the model starts losing money. They have no incentive to try and make more stars. I want you to react BC to the to the initial point, which was they were never great at promoting stars. The guys that they had just already had the it factor. That's an interesting point because I think there's

been some really good podcasts that have come out in response to the TKO boxing news, which is aligned with this conversation from the whole idea of this triple monopoly that TKO is trying to achieve right here. And I heard some really good opinions, whether it be Zach Arnold or Kid Nate on the MMA Draw podcast, or I love John S. Nash's work of late, especially when he was on Kurt Emhoff's Boxing Esquire podcast. And what came out of that is interesting thought, the whole idea that may be in line with this opinion, that the UFC has never necessarily been great at building stars, and that a lot of their stars arrived in some ways fully formed when you consider the takeover of the Pride roster, the merging with WEC, the buyout of Strike

Force, and etc. etc. I mean, I think you can push back on that to some degree and look at the times that they were struggling to survive and they certainly needed Liddell and Ortiz. And like I said earlier, like they needed those guys to be active and be on their cards and they were. So it was easy to push them as your brand, their personalities, because it was. It seems a little harsh to fully agree with the idea that they've never been good at building stars

or they have no ability in that area. I don't agree with that on that pretty aggressively. I feel like to a large degree, like they've taken chances on people and put money into people. I remember they put a lot of money into Stipe. He used to show up at ESPN a lot. So it's happened before. You're not always going to get it right as a promoter, right? It's the gamble you take of which, which horse are you going to back? But no, I think in general, they used to have a firm grasp on how to do it. Uh, a method, a system. And like I said, maybe that's changed over times with the changes around us, but it's definitely changed in their philosophy and how much money they're

willing to spend on doing it. They believe they've won the war already. So because they've won the war already and they're making money spend on doing it. They believe they've won the war already. So because they've won the war already, and they're making money hand over fist, now they're just trying every possible way to squeeze out every every coin out of every couch cushion. That's that's the problem. That's that problem to me bleeds out in every category that we're talking about.

You see, I just want to get back to the argument like, oh, they've never been good at promoting. Well, then why are they so successful? Like, this is this this is a nonce like why are there no stars coming out? I mean, Dakota ditch of a little bit but like, why are there no stars coming out of PFL or you know, to even to an extent Bellator like, why why is it just so happened all the stars come out of UFC and of course, there's bigger economic reasons in play but I

just want to point out something once again,, BC, you know this to be true. Like just take Conor McGregor as like the apex example, not the current version, but the 2016 version, right? Like this is a guy who clearly by his own magnetism is the one forcing the issue, right? He's the guy that almost because he was so popular, it almost forced UFC to do that world tour and everything else that they mean. They he you can clearly tell that in many cases and in particular

his the dynamism of the individual athlete in play is clearly the most important factor. I mean, I just cannot overstate that and in that sense I agree with Kay, But it is also true that an effective promoter knows how to use that and a bad promoter knows and does bury that. You cannot really believe that bad promoters, like if you have somebody who is naturally a magnet and they work with a bad promoter, is that going to maximize their personality? You're effectively saying the promoter just doesn't do anything. This is obviously nonsensical. It is clearly a handshake deal in the end while recognizing same with Ronda Rousey BC Olympic, you know, medalist obviously bronze

but the Olympic medalist. She's coming out to Joan Jett bad reputation like this is whole way. You've never seen this kind of thing before clearly what she represented and who she was played the biggest factor in her star development. But at the same time, the way in which they match made her the way in which they were able to promote rivalries. Yes, and to an extent the way her rival stepped up to make it even more so again, it's

everyone working in concert. But you're telling me any promoter could have done that because it just comes down to whether the fighter, it decides to we be a magnet to the public. Obviously not. It takes skilled promotion on top of that to make all of that work. I think it's like, it's, I don't think it's fair to say that they've never been good at it. They, they clearly have.

Um, yeah, no, no, yeah, you're right. You're right. And speaking of promoters, Luke, are you, I don't know if excited is the word, but Oscar De La Hoya teased a particularly saucy clap back Thursday that still has, I don't believe it's arrived yet, in which he teased that he's gonna bring up

Dana White's wife beating issues and backstory and dig up a lot of dirt. Does that interest you at all for them to go down a dirty rabbit hole with each other? No, in part because he's probably just gonna punt on that and instead put on a thong and then gyrate and cavort his genitals in front of the camera again. And it's gonna be real awful.

Pretty much, pretty much. You see, I'm gonna skip one here from Caleb V, but let's jump if we can on Luke to Tyler Z. Tyler Z says, quote, what up dogs? I think BC has a strong point. And I think Luke's point of a lack of American talent is a huge factor. If you don't have an international star that transcends the American pride, UFC fans have, or don't speak English, sadly, storytelling is an issue.

The only star they were really pushing and bit hard on. I think he means the American one was O'Malley. The UFC never put out instant highlights, excuse me, the UFC never puts out instant highlights and when he finished Alja that was all over the internet, that's for sure. But besides him, there's nobody with a star personality or performance style to push. Peyton Talbot is a character to advertise and he could bounce back, but right now it's not looking good and then he has nice things to say about the show. BC, I will say this, the lack of English, again, it's never like a light switch on or off deal. For example, Anderson Silva didn't speak English through the vast majority of his run and it didn't really seem to matter. Again, it took a long time for him to become a star, it did delay it but in

the end, yeah. But I'm saying in the end, he was still able to certainly overcome it. At the same time, I believe like Jose Aldo, never speaking English didn't necessarily help him as he was really unable. I mean, except through the Connor thing, wasn't really able to connect. But again, with Fador, Fador didn't speak English and at his prime, it didn't necessarily matter. The point I'm trying to make is a lack of English proficiency can and often does play a role. It's just not by itself always the limiting factor. I think that's fair to say. And I don't look at the American thing as a curse or something they

did wrong. Sometimes that's the movement of the sport or the evolution of the sport. I don't, you know, I don't damn them for putting Pereira in there with that, with Ankle Live. In fact, I had been criticizing them for over a year for seemingly actively avoiding that. That just sometimes happens when you get pockets of nations that are hot and producing so many, so much talent. It'll definitely hurt if these fighters have a style

that the mainstream would think is, is, is, mixed with maybe they don't speak English or they don't have dynamic personalities, but that's always a bit of a gamble too. Again, spending the money and taking the time to promote that, I think that's a good argument. I had one other argument to ask you. They tend to promote the storylines, meaning UFC ahead of big pay-per-view fights, definitely that they feel produce money. That's why, you know, DC versus John is arguably the greatest rivalry of all time because it was just such a soap opera we had to keep watching,

especially when John would get in and out of trouble that linked with that. And obviously, Connor versus Abebe got to, you know, death, death stare threat levels of just insanity and intensity. And they certainly publicized Connor getting arrested, throwing the dolly and use that as fuel. Maybe in the same ways they're using this Bryce Mitchell thing as sort of propaganda fuel. But on the flip side, you can always argue that there's not as much money in

promoting good news stories. It's why your local newscasts, right? You know, you got to wait 23 minutes of the half hour to hear something good. It's always going to be the stuff that's going to move and make people click or make people stay and watch, whether that's crazy weather coming or arrests or murders. I have criticized them softly over the years from this standpoint. They don't seem to really care or want to push that stuff in aggressive ways in which you spend money to do it. I felt like Francis had the best story ever and it was almost a footnote to him. The marketing for him was always he's MMA's Mike Tyson.

He's got the heart, he's the MMA Deontay Wilder, understandably so. But I never felt like they pushed that as a great story. And I don't feel like that's something that they are wired to look at as it may be just from the standpoint of black and white, it doesn't sell, but that goes a long way in humanizing athletes and getting you to really care in about them. Now I know you can push back and say, well, what about this instance where they did it or this instance? I'm saying largely in general, I don't feel like that's something they focus on.

Okay, fair enough. Let's go if we can here. I'm going to move to Gabe C. Brian Campbell. Greetings, donks. I was just listening to the UFC star problem segment and have some thoughts. Okay, this guy started watching in 2015-2016 when the UFC had some of their best years. He writes, I agree that the UFC doesn't put in as much effort as they used to and that there aren't as many big names as there used to be. I hate that they still use the apex and have zero interest, he says in Vittori Gliedzei too. However, he writes, this is still a sport at the end of the day. The UFC can't control who wins and I don't believe the quality of fights and fighters have declined. I personally still enjoy watching fights just to see different styles and techniques clash, even if it's between fighters I'm not familiar with. MMA also moves so fast that stars can

literally come out of nowhere. Nobody would have predicted Poetan success when he signed a few years ago. Nobody expected a 20-year-old Max Holloway who lost his debut to go on and become a legend. I agree the UFC has gotten lazy, but I believe there will always be enough talented fighters to make the sport worth watching. And I don't see that changing. BC, what do you make of his optimism about it's just gonna take care of itself over time? Well, I'll use that defense

and what I just said earlier about the whole idea of there's not enough American charismatic champions. Sometimes that's a time and place thing and it changes with it. I definitely won't push back and say that now we're not seeing at the highest level the most sophisticated, talented, well-rounded, you know, evolved fighters.

We are, that the sport grows over time. I mean, only boxing in some weird ways has aged in like a Benjamin Button way where you can make arguments that guys from 60, 70 years ago would mop up today. No, not an MMA. I think though, that's not what we're complaining about and saying it's not the quality of the higher end guys. It's a, their new style of what they promote and how much effort they do that,

but also B, what's the effect of the Dana White Contender Series assembly line factory at bringing too many people in that shouldn't be there or too early? And it's just this rotating wheel of the bottom 40% of the roster is just so infinitely replaceable. That you can't avoid or argue with the idea of, we're seeing the highest, most elite fighters ever.

Also true on the highest level, but the levels change quickly in this. And that's our problem when we tune in on a Saturday night and we're like one and a half of these fights around the level. The rest are sub level. And it's not to say that MMA and boxing haven't historically had younger fighters on the undercard or developing fighters. It's the it's how you do it. It's the machine at work. It's understandable. But there is a difference between who filled out the prelims 10 years ago, and the level and quality and experience of the fighters who are doing it today. And that regard, it has gone in the wrong direction. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing,

just think about it this way. Like if you've got the top, I'll say, you know, 25 fighters on the rosters only 15 are ranked, but let's just say top 25 people in each weight class. And obviously, you know, some are going to be in PFL. Some are going to be somewhere else. But basically, you've got more or less the top 25 BC. If you want to put them in fights all the time, you can do that. But if you want to grow the product, there's no other way to grow it except from 26 to 50 or 51 to 75 or 76 to 100. If you want more of the product, you can't grow it past the top ranked guys. Of course, you can find new talent and getting, by the way, some of those 26 to 50s and 51s to 75s is actually pretty critical in order for the effective turnover to happen and for the next set of fighters to come up. It's not an all or nothing proposition. But the point I'm trying to make is there are more fighters in the UFC than there are players in the NBA and the end and basketball is much more of a global sport. Like when you're watching so many of 74 versus 82. It's it's not that there's not a place for that kind of a fight. It's just that we're talking about the premium brand Engaging in sub premium MMA and there's nothing wrong with sub premium MMA But you know the NBA isn't pulling in people from your AAU teams or rec leagues or you know Just guys who haven't been playing very long It's highly selective all the way through even the worst NBA teams would smoke the very best college teams Like there's not that line of separation with with the UFC product by virtue of the way in which you're trying to just grow the brand so expansively if I mean you can't have crap. They're putting crap fights on pay-per-view cards

I'm not talking about the early part of the pay-per-view on the pay portion of the pay-per-view card They're putting like random heavyweight versus random heavyweight. That's the shit that has to stop. You got to stand up against that kind of stuff. If I may, I think this is from Rup H. I could be saying that wrong. I don't know. He writes quote or she, whoever quote, building up superstars like Connor with press tours and creative creating massive hype is something a company would do when trying to get the maximum value from a sale VC. The presence of true superstars can be risky, but if you have a sale in mind,

it absolutely will inflate the price. The Fertina is gambled and it paid off massively if they had been playing the long game. They too would have started to focus on max maxing out the gates and the number of events. Those ESPN deals sure seem to create a constant stream of massive revenue and it's all about predictable profits for these guys. Also, without building true superstars, the fighters don't have true leverage which makes the costs, aka fighter pay, more predictable. For example, if Francis and Ganu had got the Connor treatment PR-wise, it would have been very difficult to let him go. Now the whole shit show has been swept under the rug

pretty successfully. And then he does skits and bits here in the end. We appreciate the call. But you see, but this is the weird part. It's not even, I disagree with that, but what they're trying to tell us is like, oh, well that's just the way it is now. And we're like, yeah, right.

That's the problem. I don't, certain people, it just seems want consistency. And then some of us want punctuated moments and it's, there's just a hard reconcile between them. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, back to your original point on the first topic of this that we talked about the first submission, the video we watched about the idea of the life cycle

of MMA fans and how, you know, the fans that came in in the COVID apex era don't know any better or this is what they like or this is what they expect. I do think that aligns with the beginning of Roops Point with the sale in 2016. Because if you ask anybody who's been in the journalism game a while or fans you know that have been watching for more than 10 years,

we're all gonna say 2016 or maybe in particular that 2014 to 2016 window, which did coincide perfectly with Conor McGregor's rocket launch, was just such a, oh my God, the depth of cards, the excitement, the amount of stars and personalities, Rhonda and Brock were still lingering, GSP and Silva, Diaz brothers, I mean it was a special time. But Roop might not be wrong that the success of that and how much that equaled the entertainment level that came with that was so much more about that the ultimate end goal for

successful swinging corporate raiders like the casino trained for Tita Brothers is to build up big enough that you can sell it for some astronomical figure. So for that era, I do have to be honest and say that era is almost like the steroid numbers era in baseball in the late 90s. It's like that era is just different in terms of how you have to look back at it.

And if you wanna go even further, okay, well, what about that 2007, eight area where they were becoming such a breakout pay-per-view brand from the tail end of Liddell through Lesnar through eventually John Jones around the corner and the other stars, GSB and Silva. Well, that time they were hungry to become legitimized. That time was about not only are we doing better numbers than most big boxing pay-per-views outside of the really, really big ones. But we want to get to where we're on network TV. We want to get to where we are a top story every day on SportsCenter. So they had motivation, just like they had the same motivation around the time of

the first Ultimate Fighter, Griffin Bonner won, to just stay alive financially and not go under. So I think you do have to take light of what that era produced and the reasoning behind it and the financial reality of it. Right now is just a different game where they've already won. So it's starting to get to people that have endured it all, people that have seen it all like us. We're waiting for something to happen and it's probably gonna have to be negative unless they sell off to somebody else for that culture shift to change. And maybe Rupes right. Maybe if Lorenza and Frank were still here,

they'd be milking every possible dime out of it. I feel like they'd have more pride because they seem to be more pure fight guys, but it all matters in the end. And maybe Rupes not wrong in that first point. Okay. We have a few more, but you know. BC. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. I'm just fixing my thing. I thought you might respond Luke, but you know, no.

Oh, sorry about that. No, I mean, I want to make sure that we spend maximum time airing the viewpoints of our people who challenge us. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, they do challenge us. There's no question about it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? You know what BC? You Yeah. Yeah. They do challenge us. There's no question about it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? You know what BC? You know what BC?

They have a sweating is what they do. They do have a sweating, but luckily there is a cure for that. There is an antidote for that. Luke, we've all had experiences with mainstream deodorants, with body odor, with the desire to stay cool and clean. But I gotta tell you, Mando, they offer a different experience. From the founders of Lume comes Mando, the whole body deodorant that's helping men conquer

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Right, PC? I mean, look, we got cream, as you mentioned, we got the Mando deodorant wipes. You're pretty much setting yourself up as a man to always be smelling great. It's quiet quality stuff. It doesn't have that gross, you know, mainstream feel. It's got a beautiful natural scent and I'm loving the Mando experience. I want our fans to get on board. Let's game. Here's what I'm going to do BC. I'm looking at some of these responses and in the interest of time and getting the right ones let me bump down if we got if you can see it here BC to number 12. Yeah we can go there. This is one that kind of challenges us here pretty directly. Okay this comes to us from Brandon Z. Brandon Z writes the following. I'm

just going to jump to point number one. Number one I always feel like Luke and BC kind of missed the point in these conversations. I don't even really disagree. I just think UFC is so clearly a business and the real issue is the conflict between what BC and to some extent, Luke want to cover versus what the reality of the business is. The whole point of the Aldo McGregor world tour is to drive pay-per-view purchases, which leads to an increased revenue, which leads to an increased profit, which leads to increased valuation. TKO Group just sees a different path to max out the valuation, and that's way less fun for Luke and BC to cover. I don't feel like any of that is particularly controversial. BC, before we go to point number two, your reaction there. You can always say that.

I mean, I'm not, you know, we don't lie about our intentions. We are longtime fans of the sport, which is why we got into this profession. So there's that part of you that has a pride in ownership and a gatekeeping effect of wanting, you know, the sport to keep growing or evolving or all those things mixed with, you know, job control, wanting to feed our families, wanting this business to thrive and be what it is in the sport, just the relevancy of the sport always growing. So it is a selfish way of looking at it in some way, but I also think it's looking out at the sport for the better of it.

I get ultimately his key point there. And it's not that we've lost that point. The idea that their aim financially, which used to be about pay-per-views, is now about keeping multi-year content plans in full. So if there's a reason why we maybe aren't so aggressively fed the type of stuff that is catnip to us as fight fans

that would get us fired up about fights. But that doesn't mean that it's wrong from the standpoint of maximizing the entertainment experience and that doesn't mean, and this is the real reason why it pisses me off and why probably, you know, annoy people talking about it too much is because long-term you're turning away fans, ruining the experience and removing the average, hardcore, middle of the road fan from being able to even afford to do it. So, or to follow it or to go to events

and make vacations out of it as super fans do. That's, those are the areas where I'm like, I've seen this happen before. I've never seen an industry greedier than boxing, all right? I've seen this happen before. And they could stop this. But the greed is ultimately where it's affecting things. And I and I that sucks. That sucks. Luke, let me let me say this. There's a question of like, not whether

he's right, but whether this is inevitable, like this is the only way to do business. And it might be because he's sort of saying, Well, well, this is just where we are, which technically true, but we're thinking about, I have seen the UFC have to be ferocious competitors, but they don't have to be ferocious competitors anymore because they have total control in the industry. I think the point we're trying to communicate to the audience is this, like people ask, what's the benefit of monopoly? Okay.

One is that everything's under one umbrella, but the problem is they have no incentive to try harder. Whereas if there was a more robust competitive space, you would see what we used to see, which is them go, you know, gas pedal to the floor, white knuckle with everyone. And like the quality difference you get, I think in situations like that is noteworthy.

Back to point number two, BC, he says, quote, back in my corporate finance days, we made a huge distinction between growth mindset and harvest the profits mindset. UFC used to be about growth now it's about harvesting the profits. If TKO followed BC's ideas would that maybe get better top-line growth? Yeah probably. Better long-term health of the business? Almost certainly but that's not how the TKO folks think about it and to be clear he says he doesn't have inside info he He's just, you know, he's been in this business. It's about quarterly goals, profit maximization to max value of the business in

the line here and now focus on converting the UFC fan monoculture to the new boxing entity to power slap to grappling, whatever leverage the UFC brand to squeeze more money out of existing fans. Does that lead to smaller and less valuable entity in five plus years? Yeah, probably. But TKO folks will move on to bigger and better things. UFC will be someone else's problem to deal with. Yeah, when corporate, this is cage fighting. There was a feeling we used to have, and I'm not saying that a new generation isn't receiving that feeling in a different way and thriving from it. I'm establishing here that there's an extreme amount of teenager and 20-somethings these days

that are hardcore fans of the sport. And in reality, that's one of the most valuable ways of knowing your health and moving forward. Only I feel like it's all gonna be cyclical and short-lived from the standpoint because it got commercial when it was always the rebel. And I know they still present that. they're still defenders of free speech but you know just whether you you're on the side of them politically or not it's too much politics it's too much you know cringy

influencers it's a lot of things now that it wasn't before it was about fighting before okay let me jump on the hit oh yeah let me jump down to his last point if I may be see because this is the one that's more interesting and this is the one that I think is central to the entire debate. This is the one I picked up on as just really the difference now. Quote, he writes, I actually enjoy the idea of weekly fight cards. I usually don't watch the cards but if I'm home, I'll catch the main event. It's nice if I have nothing going on. It

can be a nice way to fill a few hours in the background while I'm doing other stuff around the house. I'm a weirdo who likes to knock out a bunch of reading during downtime and then pause my reading to watch the fights themselves. Then once the decision is read, I go back to reading until the next fight. I do that for most of the pay per views too until the last few fights are on the pay per view. I've basically just adjusted the way I watch to deal with the way the UFC content is presented now. I don't really see it as a big issue for my fandom. BC, this is really where we're at on this one.

We just kind of have to admit people are going to have difference of opinions and we have to respect the audience here a little bit. Not that we have to agree with them, but we have to put ourselves in their shoes. They're just our people and it appears to be a, I mean, it's hard to know we don't have any raw data on this, but it seems like there's enough. We have to take it seriously that they just experienced the product differently than we ever did. And they're totally okay with it. And if they're okay with it and the UFC is okay with it, two old fucks like us can bellyache

about it, but they're never going to change. And that's just the way things are done. Now we kind of have to accept it to some degree, I think. Yeah, I mean, but look at what it's actually doing. Because this is the exact same experience I went through as a born again wrestling fan turned wrestling journalist, meaning pro wrestling from the stretch of 2016 to 2020. Essentially, I mean, and that happens during certain eras of Vince McMahon's booking in WWE and like the UFC having such a grip and power control over everything in the industry. So did Vince, obviously in WWE, but like, you know, getting to that point where it's like, it's cyclical monotonous, not, you know, the quality of the craft

isn't the dedication isn't there. It's a business. It's blah, blah, blah. But where does that lead you? It led me to get out of the business and maybe there's some that want me to here in MMA too, but it's ripping our heart out as fans, like that's the bottom line. Like we're talking a lot about money and we can always bring the job security of journalism in there for us and that's a big part of why we care so much. But it's always at the end of the day rooted in fandom. Maybe it's great and fun as a fan right now just to experience it for this new generation for the first time. But we not only have experienced that in different generations,

we experienced it with crossover superstars and rivalries that we still talk about today. crossover superstars and rivalries that we still talk about today. That's that that shit still matters. When you remove that, you remove the soul of your product and in place, it's a corporate cash register. That's really the root and heart of this issue. It's why, I mean, I'm not saying there, there aren't fight fight, real fight people running the UFC still. I'm not saying that, but it's T fight people running the UFC still I'm not saying that

But it's TKOs or its endeavor now That's really running the show and these aren't fight people which is fine You have credit to UFC for getting to that level where they can be in a situation like this But we rip PFL all the time because it's non fight people making fight decisions all the time Let's be fair the people that are really making decisions in UFC right now are financially trained people, not fight people. It's why Dana White seems to have lost interest in the UFC. It's why he's throwing himself a power slap in such shameless ways

and why he seems to be set up now for almost a pivot full-time into boxing. Even he, the purest fight fan of us all, the guy we used to align with and cheer for as he was taking this ridiculous sport of fighting in a cage with almost no rules and was cleaning it up and bringing it out there to the masses. Well, it's been in the masses for a while

and the character and charm and integrity of it has been stripped away. Even he's kind of done with this. What does that say to you? Right? Hmm. Um, I don't want to belabor the point. I'm looking at a bunch of these other ones and it's a lot of the same points, but there

is a good one here at the NBC from Corey P. It's the very last one. I think long on Luke, Corey P by the way, from, from Valdosta, Georgia. So shots to him. Wow. Yeah. Not much else to do in Valdosta, but watch MMA if I'm being honest, but neither here nor there. All right, here we go. He has a few points and he really takes us to task here. Okay. One, he kind of agrees, quote, there used to be a lot more big North American stars, GSP, John Jones, BJ Penn, blah, blah, blah.

He goes on, I won't keep going, but you get the picture. Islam is a huge star overseas. Shofcott seems to have a huge following. Zhong Wai-Li is a huge star in China. So I think some of what we're feeling is a lack of North American stars, not overall stars. I definitely think this is true. I don't see how you can really disagree with this.

This appears to me, like, it's not just you had American champions when you had DJ and John, or North American anyway, and GSP, you know, This appears to me like it's not just you had American champions when you had DJ and John and North American anyway and GSP, you know, you had like these were like the pinnacle of the sport. You know what I mean? Not just champions at the time, but like they stood the test of time, but like all champions and they were all at the same time. It's hard to replicate that. Okay, but here's where he begins to disagree. Two, he writes quote, I think UFC isn't motivated to create stars like Conor like they used to. to Connor got big enough that he was able to call

The shots I'm not saying I actually he agrees with us here I agree with Dana and team here But I think they've learned their lesson or comfortable making huge profits by putting on content and making the trains leave the station is loose Like to say all the time. Okay, here's where he begins to take us to task three I feel like MMA media doesn't do a lot to boost up up and coming talent anymore, partly because their jobs have been outsourced to podcasters and askers. But I used to see a lot of stories about potential stars. And now it's just he writes, I have no beef with her, but he just writes,

now it's just Nina drama asking people weird questions. BC, why don't, in his mind, what would you say is the answer about why MMA media doesn't cover up and coming fighters anymore? I have a very good answer for this, but I'm curious to hear yours. This is, this is an easy one. Well, yeah. I mean, the answer is the relation to clicks, aggregation and MMA media kind of, you know, five, seven, eight, 10 years ago, becoming just an aggregation

of trash talk on talk on social media. So it can feel that way because when you work for websites where you're based upon clicks, that's the currency. So I mean, I think that's part of it. The idea of the written word has gone away, right? We thought when the athletic came into combat sports and they were spouting the return to that. And I know there's still the ring know, the ringer or uncrowned

or wherever your favorite thing is where, yes, there's still smart things being written. But in general, it's not about that anymore. Yeah. I mean, this is an easy one. The answer is we've destroyed media generally with the way in which we have destroyed advertising. And so we've destroyed the jobs. There's just not as many people

who are doing this at a professional level. Yeah, there's like people doing it. There's like a bunch of people who do it like a semi pro level or hobbyist level, but there's not a bunch of pros doing it anymore. But more to the point, you just have to understand something. If you make content now online media content for audiences, you have to take into consideration what will, what will the audience respond to and what will they not? Because they're gonna sell ads against your content and the more reviewed it is, the more viewed it is, the more you can pump ads into it

and then get that money back. Understand something, that's why you can just put a post up about what Conor McGregor is tweeting and it will massively outperform, fuck even just any other UFC fighter. Certainly a UFC prospect wouldn't even come close. Let me just be as clear as I can. You will go bankrupt covering prospects in this sport, but

based on the way we now incentivize media, and I'm not happy about it. But it's just the media warned everyone, if we don't put limits on what Facebook and Craigslist and what these kinds of folks are doing it's going to decimate the business well welcome to the era of decimation there is absolutely from a financial standpoint and when I say that I don't mean like getting rich I mean paying your fucking bills there is zero incentive to cover prospects anymore no one's going to click on it no one's going going to care. It's a waste of your time. That's unfortunate because it doesn't mean it's not an important job. It actually is, to his point, a critical job.

But I'm simply not going to shoulder any blame whatsoever for the larger forces in play that have decimated the ability of media to focus on what is actually important versus how do we create content to maximize revenue. And again, I'm going to say one more time, when I say maximize revenue, I don't mean getting rich. I mean, just, you know, subsisting on a basic level. That's what I'm going to say there. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, that the company or not the company, but Dana has been at war with the media for like a long time, like full war. Like you don't matter. We don't need you. Let's bring in the influencers. And I'm not saying it hasn't been a smart financial decision for them or

creating this culture that is picking up so many young viewers, but all of that plays a role. It's all affected in that. I mean, look, James happens. We might just be the old guys that are late to the accepting the change, but I'm glad we at least created a forum to air that out here, the other side of it and kind of ask ourselves the hard questions in the mirror after the show, Luke. So I hope you have a deep rooted conversation with yourself. I try. I try. All right. Last but

not least, he takes us to task again and he says, I mean this with all due respect and I believe him. Certainly. I appreciate this. We want these responses. We don't want everyone to just agree with us. We want what you got. So Corey, don't worry. He says, I mean, this would all do respect. And I've been listening to the show since even before COVID. I think you two used to cover the fights more positively. Part of your job is to create excitement about up and coming talent or the fights more generally. But lately, all I hear is you guys say about undercard fights and fighters is quote, who gives a

F about these fights end quote, and he writes, aren't you supposed to? Isn't that your job? I have parts of my job that don't excite me either, but I still do them. And he does say he loves the show born and raised about us to Georgia. Hashtag two to nine BC. It gets to the center of the question here. Part of your G he writes part of your job is to create excitement about up and coming town. I think he needs to cover the sport more broadly. Isn't that your job BC? Is that the job part of the job? And. And I think maybe the better criticism is, is are we making all of our takes and decisions about this promotion through the lens of some of these things that have become unavoidable for us,

topics of fight or pay, you know, the over pushing of political narratives, and you know, and even the monopoly play, all of that, the TKO era, everything we're talking about. Are we playing, are we swimming in the negative pool too much and always using that as the lead? I'll look in the mirror and talk about that. That might be the case, but as far as what our job is,

it's all encompassing, you know what I'm saying? I mean, are we pure journalists? No, part in entertainment,, get the word out, but part hold the task critical reviewers. So it all matters. It's all part of the gig. Could we balance it better in terms of how we deliver it? Certainly we can be more thoughtful in that regard. Yeah. I mean, it's a complicated answer. Actually.

This one to me is a little bit different. Like what is the job? Because on some level he's right. it is the job to cover the fights whether you like them all or not if you're going to do this like some level of coverage about it in a way that is not like hey guys it's the best fight ever but you know enthusiastically leaning in to educate the audience because again you're supposed to be the pro here um and obviously i'm not saying that we you know many times our audience knows better than us but you know we know, we have the dedicated ability to focus on these topics. So I do think part of that is correct,

but I mean, here's the problem. Like the other part of the job, partly the job is what you define it as, you know? When you work for another outlet and they tell you what they want you to do, they tell you, hey, we need you to do, like when I was at MMA Fighting, I was an editor at times, but there are also rules I had to fulfill. And it tell you, hey, we need you to do, like when I was at MMA fighting, I was an editor at times,

but there are also rules I had to fulfill. And it was like, hey, you gotta watch Bellator on Friday. You gotta do Bellator predictions. I didn't necessarily love that, but it was part of the job and fine. All in the, all's well that ends well. You do have to do stuff like that. But the reality about the current situation is it's,

again, I'm gonna say it one more time. It's hard not to notice the differences. These differences make the product different. I'm granting now that people interface with the product differently, and so we have to understand those differences. But you know, like, to me, the fighters, not all of them, but many of them have taken the joy out of getting to know them. You know, when they go and they're spouting pre-Meth, pre-Meth Hitler stuff and you know taking pictures with the Tates and you know then this is just the tip of the iceberg it goes on down the list it's just not as like this is not very interesting to me it's in or at a bare minimum some of the various decisions or turns that the company has made aren't

necessarily always agreeable do we have an obligation to also tell the audience that there are limits to that as well I certainly recognize if you go want too far in that direction, you'll just drive everyone away. And what is the point of that? But the point I'm trying to make is it's a complicated tension between what are the things that matter? What are the things that are newsworthy? What is the job even in some of its more unpleasant details versus also what is the truth of what is happening more broadly? What are these changes? Are all of these changes good? And how do we talk about them? We're in this complicated middle ground spot, BC, where I don't have a great answer to all

of these. We're trying to figure it out. It's not so simple all the time. It's a new world. Wrestling with that is not easy. But I just hope people can understand from our perspective, we're not saying that we get that balance right, far from it.

But we are saying, we're asking you to notice we're in a different place now, and that it's at least worth considering that this new place, and I know we drive it home, we can accept that some of it is just different and that's the way it's gonna be. Are there bigger questions to be asked about whether it's better or just fine

or worthy of ignoring? And I think that's a little bit more difficult to do. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's it. I think we've gone full circle. I appreciate the, the opinions and the thoughts of everybody, especially the ones that take us to task, because like I said, you gotta be flexible, self accountable, you got to look in the mirror.

Okay. I got to look in the mirror and figure out a better a better beard presentation, but that's just me. Uh let's let's get into uh thank you very much for that. Let's get into our segment here where we offer the opportunity of the fans to uh wait, we gotta do one more thing if you don't if you recall, I might recall it. I may have already forgotten it but well, remember that time? Remember that time? Right?

Where? Where I said, you know, you know what they sent to me in the mail? This gigantic, it was a 10 pound delivery. And I called it What is this? What could be 10 pounds? Well, I'll tell you what it was BC was freaking gold belly. It was wings in there. They even put a t shirt in there from anchor bar because of course, Goldbelly, you can order from some of the best places all over the country.

Wing sauce, directions on how to prepare it. All of it taken care of perfectly all ready to use BC. I've used Goldbelly and I've had awesome freaking experiences doing it. That's the thing. The experience has been incredible. What matters most though? The taste.

Oh, they got that too, right? We're talking about iconic food that you can ship to your door. Chicago deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's. New York's best famous cheesecake from Junior's. That's just an example. We can go barbecue if you're craving that and get Franklin's barbecue from Texas right to your door.

So when we talk about the experience, getting that package in the mail, the quality of how it's packaged to keep your ingredients cool, all the fictions. I told you before we got Guy Fieri's trash can nachos. And I was like, all right, let's see what we got here. It was Super Bowl Sunday and the real MVP were those damn nachos.

That's what I'm talking about. So it's dishes from one of a kind restaurants, world famous chefs like Ina Garten, Daniel Balloud, Jose Andreas, Goldbelly here has you covered. I mean, Mikey lives in Florida right now, right? You know he'd love to get some of that Connecticut, New Haven pizza sent to his door. This is a very, very cool service that makes it easy

to enjoy the things you love. So if you're looking for that perfect gift or want to impress your friends and family with an epic meal, the next time you're hosting one of those get togethers, you got to go to goldbelly.com right now and you'll get free shipping and 20% off your first order by using our promo code, Combat with a K. That's goldbelly.com code combat with a K that's gold belly.com code combat with a K for free shipping 20% off your order Luke I'm team gold belly in fact let me get a little more of that if you know what I'm saying yeah no doubt about it and by the way they were talking about Jose Andres he's a DC guy

I want he's from Spain but he's a DC guy tremendous food and I just want to drive it home that's the whole great part of it. You're not just getting some random takeout. It's not some random delivery from some of the best places delivered to you with quality and care. We want you to go to goldbelly.com and use the code COMBAT, that's COMBAT with a K, free shipping as BC said, and 20% off your first order. Tell them that LT and BC sent you.

And yeah, great, great save there. Glad to bring Gold Belly to the masses. They deserve that. But also it's time to bring maybe your artwork, maybe the tight t-shirt pictures of you and your significant other. We send out the email address, morningcombat.gmail.com, and you respond sometimes with genitalia pics.

Mikey does not like that, okay? Mikey does not like that. But this one's called fan submissions. You've got mail. Viewers. The dulcet tones of one gaff. Yeah, Gaffney Jim. That's my guy. Hey, let's hear from Ben B. This is the follow up video from his last submission. Let's see what he's got going on. Calm down doctor. Now is not the time for fear. Not control later. Dude.

Wow. Okay. I believe that video was real. That's one of our viewers that did that. I wonder. That's Ben B. I wonder if the B stands for balls. Holy crap. First of all, I looked beautiful, but also frightening. That is incredible. Would you do that? BC the 4 20 sticker on there? I'd love to try something like that. See, I want to like skydive and stuff, but you know, I got kids. I guess I got to wait. Would you do that for like with an expert crew, help you and get you ready and then $20,000 cash? Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't fear like heights

or things in this category that much. I fear a lot of other things in my life. I'm trying to get over them. Look, but not this. okay? There you go. I certainly haven't feared gas station cuisine, but I probably should have. Our second one is from J Moss. He says, hey guys, I should have sent this in so long ago, but I'm lazy and anxious about being on a podcast. I also promised BC I would send these when he was door dashing and we thought the worst.

Anyway, I trekked the Northern circuit of Mount Kilimanjaro and brought my MK hoodie to keep me warm. So did my girlfriend at the time, Tracy, we're married now, and so did her daughter Rachel. In fact, Rachel stole my first MK hoodie, so I bought us a family set. Obviously the teenager hates that we watch, but that was a choice she made when she took mine. There's a bonus pick. Oh, I'm sorry. Obviously, the teenager hates that we match matching sweatshirts. There's a bonus pick of Tracy and I on the beach in Cape Town, South Africa. If you want to use it with love from Kazakhstan. Wow. Wow. That's insane. Yeah, dude. All the way from East Africa, then South Africa,

and then now, I guess, you know, Eurasia or Asia, basically. But still, that's maybe, yeah, that's incredible, man. These are so many cool places in the world I want to see. I am. We got MK fans doing it everywhere. It's amazing. I know we had we had that couple of Mount Fuji wearing MK. We've had, we've had so many great moments right here. Kill him and Jaro. This is incredible. Thank you, Jim. And shout out to your now wife, Tracy and her daughter, Rachel, MK family, baby. That's what we're talking about. Okay. We have something now from a name that just it's, you love this Francisco,

Luke, right? It just off the tongue, right? Francisco. Francisco Luke, right? It just off the tongue, right? Francisco. Good day. Bong Island is what he says. I have a fan sub of Luke shaking all these damn haters off. Please enjoy. It's Francisco from Houston. I wish I wish that was that, is that prime Arnold right there? Yeah. Yeah. That's probably my bro. That's great. I know that bodybuilders now are bigger, but like to me, this is basically a perfect physique. This is basically what perfection

looks like. Yeah. Either that or, uh, who do you think is the Arnold of MMA at this exact moment? Luke at this moment, whose body is the biggest wonderland? Probably Sarukian. Yeah. God. Yeah. Those high ribs he's got Luke and that, yeah, that's, that's this guy is a Hulk right there. Right. I mean, I'm, you know, they probably could add a few straw weights search fly weights to this combo too, but maybe on our Patreon later also, uh, from heavy riff magnet, Hey there, alpha donks. Here's a Luke Thomas bingo card.

And I did it with love to make sure your MK viewing experiences are more fun Keep on dunking in the free world. That's at have heavy riff magnet on it. Oh Like I said BC I accused you earlier of the audience knowing you I would be remiss if I didn't point out they also know Me. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So we got a lot of shitting stories on there. We've got a monopoly. Let me finish. Now I'm not saying dot dot dot. Technique talk.

You got to key at the bottom there. Cannibal Corpse. What's the other logo there? Dying fetus. Dying fetus. All right. A lot of shitting stories. Yeah, that is that is incredible.

Look, if you look at the entire left column, it A lot of shitting stories. Yeah, that is that is incredible. Look, if you look at the entire left column, it's an entire shitting story column. Wow. Wow. Shout out to add heavy, heavy riff magnet on the IG. Finally, Josh K has a trio of pictures for us. This will be the first time we're seeing these. I painted this for you. Luke responds you're a bad faith actor in the world of the arts. I mean. Oh, this is the most beautiful thing in the world. Second to my brown growler, Joseph A. Banks.

Second to my made with memetic brown growler. Wow. That is, that is hilarious. That is, that is amazing. Like I said, do the audience fucking knows us, bro? They do. Mikey, who I think was in the chat today you know who's gonna be mad at you is Alan W said on this week's BCX ramble that he's been trying to get a fan sub through Mikey's filter for I know that Alan W and by the way danger mouse I know is sending some stuff in we couldn't play everything today. We appreciate you contributing I promise we'll make time for you I promise well. Well, I think in particular, you know, Danger Mouse may have been trying to get us fired

with the last submission that he's trying. So maybe Mikey's filter is necessary, right? Yeah, I think the filter is important, but I just want to say we appreciate everyone who, and by the way, again, one more time, not just the fan subs and Danger Mouse and LW, but for everyone who sent questions in, morningcombat.gmo, not questions, but challenges,

morningcombat.gmo.com. I think if we do this again, BC, and I would like to, we gotta put, we gotta put a word limit, and we gotta put a time limit on these videos. But I think if we do, we'll be cooking. We gotta keep that circle tighter, Luke, which is what everyone looks for, you know what I mean? That is, that's disgusting.

All right, yeah, hey, hey, we had a decent show for you. I hope you, you know, saw through the, even if you didn't like what we said and saw our pure hearts at play. All right. That's what it's about. You know, young hearts beat fast. Yeah. Right.

That was on the karate kid soundtrack. You got it. You had to be there, I guess, Luke, you know. I was there. All right. Luke, is there anything you want to say to the people? Monday in studio, we'll talk a lot about these, this middleweight main event. I'm not sure what else. Are you guys dressing up on Monday? Oh, first of all, I have to say something. The Irish don't like it when you say St. Patty's.

What they tell me is you can say St. Patrick's ordy's, but you can't say Saint Paddy's. Apparently that's a big no-no in Ireland. I didn't know that. But they get bitter about it. But the question is, let me just say, as somebody who has worked in bars in his life, this is every bartender's 9-11. They have 9-11 every year and it's Saint Patrick's Day. It is fucking amateur hour every single time.

It's a lot of white people fist fighting again, thrown out of bars. It's really what that is. Luke, speaking of building seven, I go I still have a lot of questions. I know this is inappropriate to speak out loud, but I have a lot of questions. All right. You know, they will probably already answered by capable architects and engineers. So you should just look into what they had to say about it. It's interesting. Long Island Luke, I'm sure we can watch the main card minutes content to preview the fights, maybe even a live stream during the leads a Vittori to on Saturday. Yeah I'm going an hour before the main card 6 p.m. Eastern Time, so we'll watch the last like eight

fights or something. Tune in, gonna be a good time. Main card minute. Hey, hey, how's your girlfriend? She's doing great, Luke. We spend six days of the week together. You know, Saturday is for me. Saturday is my day. I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. Luke, did you see Keith Thurman this week by any chance?

Dude, one time gave old Brock Jarvis the two time. Bop, bop, hit him with it, didn't he? He looked pretty good. I gotta stay. Yeah, it was pretty vicious. I mean, he was like a little sloppy timing off early, but he was aggressive and he hit, you know what, his hand speed was back.

So three years off. His foot speed was pretty good too. He's always had pretty good foot speed, but first round was whatever. Second round, he was tuning up Brock Jarvis and then putting them away in the third. Good job. Brock Jarvis is not a world beater,

but the idea of Keith Thurman against Tim Tzu or Errol Spence or Jermell Charlo, like there could be a couple of fun fights on the way out here for him that way he can make some money, you know? Also, fan meows suing Ryan Garcia. Yes, yes. Which is kind of interesting.

I don't know what, and I would love to get paid for hosting that press conference. So, you know, that'd be wonderful, you know? Yeah. So hopefully they get to the bottom of that one. I wanted to also mention, guys, I wrote it to you in the chat, but DR Nurgose, who is on the main card tomorrow night,

did misweight by five pounds. He weighed in at 210 and a half for a light heavyweight bout. And also we're waiting on still like four or five more fighters to weigh in, which is pretty late. Yeah, we're up against it. And did the main event fully weigh in? Main events good. Co-main we're still waiting on. Chitty Bang. Did Vallejos weigh in? Yeah, he's good. His bout is all good to go. This guy weighing in right now, Josias Musasa, it's his debut. He's getting the, uh, the old tent

around him. So not looking good for this car, but we'll see what happens. And look, I haven't watched the fight yet, but did you guys hear about this top rank triple header they had a couple of mornings ago in the Japanese one? Yeah. We're, we're Ken Shiro that do that flyway champion, I guess, rallied back in the 12th round to score a knockout win. And it's being called the fight of the year. So I'm excited to take the time to check it out. Dan Rayfield saying it's only the 16th time in, I think, boxing history, someone who was down on the cards rallied to stop the opponent in the 12th. That's crazy. Something like that. So like, like a rare historical event, whatever the actual number is, you know.

Yeah. Nick Ball defending his featherweight title this weekend against TJ Doheny on Dazon and also Berlanga is in a co-main on Dazon in Orlando and openly feuding with Matrim right now. He's fighting like a janitor. It's really interesting. Yeah, he should be. That's about the appropriate level for him. I want to see him against Caleb Plant. You? Yes, I also want to or Jaime Munguia. I would take either of those. Yeah. Yeah, I would too. I hope if Munguia beats Serra, Serrace in the rematch here, I'd like to see him against Caleb. Yeah, that whole there's a couple names there that there's a bunch of good fights that could be made with Caleb right now. Yeah, indeed. And damn, could they just make be Volbenevita is already and let me call it? That'd be the greatest one of my words. Yeah, that's Luke Thomas right there. Sons out, guns out with the tats, right, Luke? It's just a short sleeve shirt. Is it a cherry blossom season yet in DC?

Oh, close. They're predicting March 26th was the last one that I saw. I would, I'm going to go check it out. That's when there's a lot of people down there and My recommendation is for anyone coming to see them. Don't drive take the metro. Thank you very much Luke Thomas always repping DC always protecting it right like like she and punk rep Chicago or you know Larry Holmes reps Easton, Pennsylvania. That's Luke in DC. Those were our socials. You can follow us. Thank you for watching.

Take care of yourselves too, okay? For Long Island Luke, regular Luke in your boy BC, we love you. Thank you for watching. Enjoy the fights this weekend for whatever reason you're watching them for. Enjoy the shit out of them because we are out of here.