MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Freedom 250 Results: Topuria vs. Gaethje Full Card Recap | Grading UFC White House Card

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

What a night it was at the White House for UFC Freedom 250. Luke Thomas and Chuck Mindenhall react to the results of the whole card from top to bottom, starting with Justin Gaethje and Ilia Topuria going at it to the point where Topuria's corner called it at the end of the four rounds.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Revely, revelry. Look at this now. I'm back. You fit in seamlessly in this weird MK environment. Do you want a margarita? Your marks get set and go down.

I might die on air today, but at least I'll die doing what I love. We'll get some clicks if you do, Luke. Let's see what happens, baby. If I have a coronary, it just becomes morning. Iceman. Welcome, everyone, on this 15th day of June, 26, and it is time for another episode of Morning Combat. My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. I join you from the capital of Estatus with Neos right here in Washington, D.C., and you know who else does? Yeah. Chuck, the Iceman, Mindenhall, the man in the had good sir, good morning to you. How are you?

Luke, it's good to see you. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to actually get together with you. This was a lot more work than I anticipated, but I will say this. I answered more questions about Luke Thomas, I think, this week than ever before. It's like everybody I ran into the day, hey Chuck, they knew who I was. It always inevitably talked about Luke. What's Luke like? All this sort of thing. So, wait, wait. You're the hero out here. Like what? Give me an example of what. I don't know. I just felt like I went to the fan

fest, you know, the first day it was running and, you know, you're just out in the elements there and people are just walking up to you. But I felt like the common thing was like people just saying like, what's Luke like? or, you know, talking, mentioning something that you're theorizing or whatever. Like, just people want to talk about you, man. So I felt like you were kind of the, even though you didn't show,

didn't see you at a single event you're there in spirit yeah i stayed the fuck away yeah i didn't i didn't get close to that at all i didn't want to i didn't want to i wanted to first of all i mean last week was dude last night was insane last week was insane the last year has been fucking insane right can i just say one thing like i think that what we're going to get to is that most mama fans i think really enjoyed themselves last night um and i think we're going to talk about today's show by the way is just UFC White House. We're literally talking about nothing else. And so we have to apologize to the audience, Chuck, for a little bit. No DMs today. No fan subs today. It's just UFC White House talk beginning to end. We'll get back on that horse on Friday and Monday. So it was so crazy.

It was absolutely unlike anything I'd ever seen. But at the same time, you know, it was kind of funny, Chuck. Like, it's really weird when I can turn on the local news and all the local news is like, you know, careful about the traffic downtown. If you're going to be near the UFC of I'm like, I've never heard some shit like that around here. You know, it was just a totally different. My biggest regret is not doing what you suggested, which was to get a lime, whatever the line membership is and to ride the scooters around because I saw people doing that and it was just so smart.

They were going right by the hordes of people and, you know, I'm out there sweating, walking around all over the place. It would have made a lot of sense. And I would have saved a lot of money on Ubers. Can't say I didn't warn you, bud. You didn't say it. You didn't warn you. Let's bring in the third member of the show here today.

Okay. So I'm doing my live. stream last night, Chuck, right? I'm doing my live stream last night. And everyone in their brother is like, bro, you got to switch over. Like, I'm on the air. They're like, you got to switch over and see what Long Island Luke is up to. He's so hammered. Let's bring his bitch ass off here. Oh, my God. How's he doing? Dude, are you high still? What's going on? No, I'm chilling. I mean, I'm running on a few hours of sleep. But I mean, fuck, man. It's like people don't see me like that. I don't know if it's because I sit in this chair normally and it gives me like, it props me up, gives me

better posture. And last night I was on my couch, like, looking like a zombie. I don't know. But we didn't drink or smoke any less more than we normally do, whatever the fucking thing is. That's not exactly an exoneration. Just to be clear. All right. Well, the New York Knicks are NBA chip. Oh, look at that. So, dude, you had a big weekend.

New York Knicks win on Saturday. Amazing game. Amazing series. Congratulations to the city of New York and you as well. Let's show them. We've got some T-shirts for this. We're still going to make them available here in June. You can get the basketball. I mean, why would you want the basketball West at this point? But you can get the basketball east.

Morningcombat. Dot shop there. And of course, we have the other June specials. We have the Genesis design. We have the, we've got the biker design. And then we've got the crown design. Yes, crown with a K. Those are all available morningcombat dot shop. Long Island, how did you do

on your betting, either on the Knicks game and or UFC White House? I'm glad you brought up the Knicks and not, you know, we'll leave the White House Setting aside, it wasn't, you know, I did, I did have an over in the Poetan gone fight. That was a bummer. And I had the over in the nickel fight. And that was a bummer.

But other than that, you know, I think I did good otherwise. Nix wise did bet on them before the series started plus 180 to win the championship. Also, game five, they were plus 160 money line. Did hit that as well. Wow. Really? I got to just say, though, the Knicks winning kind of took a lot away from the White House event for me. I've like kind of just been so focused on that,

that like the fights were kind of just like maybe it's also how my bets went and I'm like fuck that card man but uh you know it was a fun time what a crazy thing you had the nicks you had the nix and then you had the stanley cup win last night as well right like it was like the stanley cut all this was going on in one weekend how crazy and world cup and the world cup that's right long island come back for just one second if you can here because i know we have a bit of an announcement oh um so we're doing memberships now on the youtube channel is that right that's what i learned this morning that is correct so mk memberships are now a thing there are two levels. You could be a donk

or you could be a die hard dunk. I mean, you're going to be done them. But either way, we got emojis, we got badges. We're going to do some fun stuff in the future too. I'm thinking maybe like DMs from dunks, members-only versions, some stuff like that. But if you want to support the channel, please become a member. Thank you very much.

All right. Cool. There you have it. So also you can reach the show Morningcombat at gmail.com. That's going to be for fan subs. Not for dead wrongs, but for, well, actually, no, sorry, dead wrongs and fan subs. not DMs from donks, I apologize. And we'll get to that a little bit on Friday,

and then, of course, we'll resume DMs from donks on Monday. Chuck, let's just sort of get right into it. We don't have the formal top five rundown. We're just going to talk about every single thing we saw and every single fight on the card. So let's just kind of go over, I guess, overall impressions of, you know, I want to talk about fight. You know what, let's talk about Fight Week.

You went down to the fan fest. You went down and you did a bunch of stories on this whole event. how would you rate the overall from fight night to the whole stuff that precede the because remember they had this huge way in show with the eagles and the the the paratroopers and all the stuff like give me your impression of everything that you saw it was a lot man and you know like the first thing that was like formally a part of this whole thing was go see the marco rubio um o you that was signed with uh with dana white you it was like what is that on thursday i believe yeah so that was the first thing i did and i am

positive. I was the only MMA representative in that room. That was very weird because you're standing among the throng of like, I guess, political reporters. You know what I mean? And like hearing them talk about the event and cage fighting and making these jokes about, well, you know, an Iranian fight. If it's an Iranian fighter, if he submits, we get a bomb them three times. They're making all these jokes. And I was like, okay, so this is, I mean, it just set you off on this, on this foot that you're like, okay, this is going to be a completely different event than I've ever done before, right? And so it's kind of been like that the whole time.

Like, you're just kind of, it has such a polarizing feel, but then you get into that fan fest and you're right back into the donk world, right? Like, everybody's running around and it's like lollapalooza for UFC fans. So I, it was like nothing I've experienced. And I can't say I loved it, but I thought that the production, you know, the amount of work that the UFC's team did and everything, that certainly struck me as, um, as something to like behold because that was a lot of work man and they were corralling a lot of media for this too i think that i mean again i take something of a local angle because i saw the evening news

interviewing ufc fans every single night and more than that too although it's kind of funny i went on local news here they asked me like hey can you come on to local usa w sa nine i was like yeah i'd be happy to and then they introduced me as like luke thomas of cbsports dot com and i'm like oh no i didn't say anything on the air but after it was over i told the producer. I was like, uh, you got to update your bio. But what I was going to say is I was I was like, I was credentialed as the ringer. I'm like, I haven't worked at the ringer in a couple years, but yeah, I have no idea how that happened. But anyway, go ahead. Carry on. Um, what I would say is in watching everything that transpired, I mean, I have a couple of things I would take away from it.

Folks might not remember this, uh, or they might, but about it, June 14th of last year, which was, you might recall this, Chuck. Do you remember that like kind of military? And again, I'm, we're going to do our best today to talk about the controversial slash political angles of this as minimally, but as forthrightly as possible with the caveat that if you want that, I am definitely going to have a full breakdown on all that stuff on my political channel. So I'm not shying away from the coverage, but I'm just trying to find the appropriate place for it in a show like today. But what I do want to just say this, because I actually think it's important. And it makes the UFC look good in this particular regard, Chuck.

But last year, Donald Trump had the military parade. You remember that? Yeah. And if you don't recall this, it ended up being something of a dud because what they were kind of expecting was, you know, like the don'tx goose stepping. You know what I mean, Chuck? Like, you know, rockets coming down the street like you see in Russia. And it just wasn't that. And I think it ended up being a little bit of a letdown.

But part of that, Chuck, was folks don't realize this or remember it. There was a fan fest at the ellipse last year. Now, it had nothing to do with the UFC, but it was run by, you know, the government, essentially. And it was a disaster. It went really poorly. It was overcrowded. They didn't have enough stuff for people to do. There was hard to get water. Everything I heard, for example, about the fan fest, Chuck, was that you could bring your own bottle. They would refill it. They were giving away water. Somehow they got a license to sell shit on federal land. I don't know what that is, but you knew they would. Yeah, I know. I mean, putting that to the side. But as I understand it, that the prices were not exorbitant, they were. were pretty fair. Like that whole experience, as I understand it, went well. And I mean, again, there is a very important conversation to have around the use of civic architecture for these kinds of events.

But I'm just going to say reading the tea leaves, Chuck, I feel like fight fans have been starving for the UFC to really lean into heavy production, heavy promotion, fan service, right? All three pillars, kind of. Yeah. because they haven't really done it in a while. They don't do it that often at all. Certainly not like this.

And from what I can tell, I feel like most UFC fans feel like it was a home run. Maybe I'm wrong about that. No, no, no. I think you're dead on right. I would talk to random people, just kind of get in the temperature. And I honestly don't,

I don't think there was one negative thing. It felt like everybody there was having a good time. And that's hard to do sometimes when you have whatever amount of people. They said that over 200,000 people went, through the, you know, the ellipse this weekend. I'm not sure that that number is accurate, but there were a lot of people there. And, dude, they were, they were having fun. It was, it was like if you were, it was like Lollapalooza, but better arranged in the sense

of like, you know, there's free water. There was big wines for free water. Like you said, they had like beer on the premises. It wasn't crazy for like that type of thing. It was only like 12 bucks for a beer versus like 15 or 20 that you see at some of these festivals. So they kind of had it dialed in. They had a lot of meet and greets.

There were fighters all over the place. you know, doing that thing. They had a main stage where they were just kind of, you know, doing all kinds of stuff. They had a Zufa boxing event. They had, I saw Bud Crawford walk in it. There was just, it was, it was fun in that sense, right? Like it just, it felt like a true festival. And it really felt like the fans there, like you're mentioning, I think that a lot of people came in from different areas. I heard people from all over the place, basically, in one area. I felt like they were kind of starving for something like this. Yeah, they just want the UFC to do something big. and the UFC, whatever else you want to say about it.

And again, I want to be clear, if you're interested in a political discussion about it, I'm going to have one on my channel. But I'm just trying to, like, put my goggles on and say, what is an MMA fan thinking? What are they thinking? Right. And I don't want to speak for them and I don't speak for them. I'm just saying, what am I observing?

I'm observing people are, for the most part. I mean, there's some complaints here and there. But in general, pretty happy with what it all went down. Let's talk about last night. Happy Pride Month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival, and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride.

Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada, your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy pride. I heart radio. They, man, dude, the weather here, everyone asked me all day, what's the weather like? Because I had to go to breakfast and I had to meet a friend and I bike down there. And the weather was, it was hot, but the weather was nice.

But like the forecast, Chuck, was kind of like anywhere from six to midnight, you were going to get some kind of rain somewhere in there. And they delay the broadcast at eight, but not that long. We thought they were going to delay it an hour. They only delayed it about like 15, 20 minutes. And then they just started up. And there was no rain. So they got a huge, huge stroke of luck because it rained in other parts of the area heavily. It just didn't rain there.

And so it got off to a start. It was, it was big, Chuck. It was colorful. It was the Marine Corps, the president's own, the Marine Corps band. I think most people would agree a monster success story. So walk me through Fight Night. How do you feel an open question? how do you feel fight night itself went what are your takeaways so i wasn't on the west lawn like

there there was a lot of um did i say west again it's uh which which south long i keep saying you got to the white house point i know i know north so i was on the west lawn though i was oh no i keep saying no but like the south i wasn't on the i wasn't on the south lawn um the very few media were and so the the bigger congregation of media was at the jw hotel across the street there um which you know was just like any other mission could that the UFC has done, but a much bigger room. And then there was another kind of, you know, kind of side section, I guess, that was being held over at the ellipse for anybody who wanted to be a part of that.

But the only problem with that was when you're talking about potential lightning, it was, it was just out in the open for the elements. If there was rain, and if you had your laptop or something like that, it didn't make a lot of sense. So there was, it was a, it was a cool event. The only thing I can say is that the, I felt like the UFC, I don't know if they purposely kind of obfuscated some of the things that were going on. But I didn't feel like they were completely forthcoming as to when things were

happening, who was invited to what, and all of that good stuff. And even on, you know, as we were hearing, basically that there were going to be delays in this, you know, with the weather and all that stuff, it's, they kept it fluid, but they wouldn't even kind of give you any kind of update as to what they were thinking. It was just, it was a weird thing that way. You felt, I felt all the week like I was kind of in the dark on certain aspects of what was going on. For instance, they had, like, even on Thursday, they had a walk-through, you know, for the claw to go on the grounds and check it all out, but only certain people were informed

of this. It was very strange that way. And so that kind of carried on. I mean, as far as fight night, like what you're mentioning, it was, I felt like it had like a, it had almost a surreal, you tell me, too, because in the end, I watched it on TV, but walked outside and saw, like, a couple of things that were going on with the flyover and all that stuff. but it felt very surreal as it actually started to happen. And that's what kept happening for me is that you would see these certain scenes. When Diego Lopez, you know, he's up there and he's doing this thing

and you see the White House and the backdrop and all of this stuff. And you see Trump and Dana walking out together watching the flyover. It just struck me as very surreal. What did you think about all of that? Well, I mean, I think that there's an open conversation that should be had, whether in this place or any other, about what we use civic architecture for. Yeah. And one thing that people may not appreciate that something that I feel like is true is that this was kind of, I mean, listen, once again, do I think the UFC absolutely deliver. I'll say this very clearly. The UFC definitely delivered on the expectations of fans. Again, not 100%, but pretty close, right? They, in general, I don't see much dissension in the ranks. And in fact, I see a lot of people largely satisfied. And I want to be clear that I see that and I understand that. I think that there is a debate. that needs to be had over the use of civic architecture

that I know a lot of people are not going to care to have or appreciate. Certainly, again, does this satisfy the combat sports checklist, Chuck? Big lights, big atmosphere, big show. It does times a million, right? Like anybody who knows anything about the fight game can obviously tell you that. I have some reservations just given the proximity.

It's like for me, Chuck, you know, one of the lessons from last night is I don't, okay, this was obviously like way over the top. but it's like dude like when the UFC tries to do stuff with production like when they really lean into it you ask yourself like what can't they do and I don't know what that would even be right I don't even know what that would be like they can do it I don't think this was necessarily the appropriate venue for it so I have a little bit of a different I think personal perspective on it but I will tell you I actually had something of a different feeling independent of that which was that I mean maybe it's the fact that I live here I see the

White House all the time. Right. So it didn't, it was a little like to me last night almost, I mean, with the exception of the Marine Band and the walkout and stuff and all that was a little bit different. To me, it sort of felt almost like an ordinary MMA. Not an ordinary, but I know what you're saying though. It'd be like if you see the local mall or something like you're used to seeing it all the time. I know, I drive past it every day. You know, it's like, it's like, it's sort of weird for me. And that's a personal thing. The other thing to kind of consider here is like fight culture is not local culture. Like there's a there's a boxing culture locally, but what I mean is, Chuck, if you look at what they were putting on here, I want to be clear, like there's a place for everything in the world.

Sure. But I think what if you ask most people hear about it, they would look at this and say it's something akin to the Vegas affocation of DC. It collides with what's local. It clashes with what's local. It does not, it does not weave in seamlessly. Now, again, I don't expect the average MMA fan or UFC fan to care about that. I recognize that they won't. asking me my personal opinion.

But again, I can just see visually. Put up the picture one more time, Long Island. Put up the picture. Like, with the jets coming over the top. Funny story on this, Chuck. I did an interview with a French outlet. And when I was doing it, they did the test run of this over the top of us. It was so fucking loud.

It hurt my ears, dude. Like, it was crazy. But I mean, like, again, anybody who knows anything about the fight game is just going to look at this and say, do you think fight fans left this pleased and I would just be shocked if they weren't. This is, it was almost the first time I saw the structure and there were times even last night, you know, as you're watching this, that it felt like, you know, Uncle Eddie showing up with the RV in front.

You know what I mean? In front of the nice house and like it's, there's this, uh, this feel of shitters full. It was this really big feel of that. And, um, I don't know if that ever went away because if you're walking around that area, too, that all of the buildings, right? Like you go, the Smithsonian's and everything. Everything is just so like, it's all very white and it's all very pillared and marmorial. And like, you know, and all of a sudden you've got this hoot and anything going on with this cage.

That was very strange, but I will say this. And you tell me what you thought about this because part of it was it's an outdoor show. I wasn't sure how the lighting would look, you know, how things like that. I wasn't sure if the live atmosphere would feel lacking in the sense like you've got these dignitaries. but they had the military contingency there and all of that was really good I was really kind of surprised at how

well that came off I think that the band itself kind of stole the show you mentioned them playing those walkout songs gave it such a different vibe when they were making those long walks out from the White House and the so you know the military members that were there that were really into it right and then even some of the people

which I guess were just the guest list of the president and Dana White they were really into it I didn't anticipate the crowd being as kind of vivid as they were. But what did you? I thought the lighting of it and stuff like that was so dialed in, though. It looked very good to me. So to, I, okay, so on the claw, now again, the question of like, should this be on the law of the White House is an important question.

But like just as a feat of engineering, I mean, how is that not a home run? Just as a feat of engineering. Because if that was put somewhere, Chuck, of a non, of a, of a, of a, you know, a benign parcel of land, right? and who would be talking shit about it. Like nobody, right? Nobody. There's only talking shit about it in that specific context.

I thought that was pretty incredible. To your point, you know, remember, dude, the lighting and the sphere show got a little weird. Remember that? There was like weird shadows everywhere. I didn't see a hint of that here. The only time it would happen was honestly when they were doing, like when Tyson Fury, for instance, they were doing his face was completely black. Do you see that because the lighting? They couldn't dial that in.

But that's like, you can forgive that because. they're not thinking in these ways. Also, he had a front-built hat on it. He did, you know what I mean? He did, man. Yeah, but his face was completely obscured. It was just completely dark. I got the sense all week that most UFC members,

like, and especially the people, like, maybe even Craig Bessar and the people who, like, were really instrumental in putting it together, were just ready for it to be over, man. Like, I think that this was a huge, like, when you think about it, this was so outside of their normal range of what you try to do. So much more work went into this. and so much more, you know, so much extra energy and extra planning and extra hoops and all of the things that they had to go through. I, I sensed a general exhaustion. And even with Dana White,

like all week with these guys, just kind of like, you know what, this is awesome, but I would never want to do it again. Did you kind of catch that? They were like, yeah, it just felt like they were done with it. Yeah, Dana admitted as much. And, you know, I talked to some folks, you know, behind the scenes. And I got a sense of, you know, pride in their work, but fatigue. Right. That's 100%. Yeah. Yeah. That's the kind of the view that I got. In terms of how it looked on TV, I thought it looked, I mean, the fan, dude, the fan fest integration, it was, I got to say, there was a little bit of like, well, the pores are behind the wall. There was a little bit of that going on. But I felt that all week. I was on that poor side, so I know about it. But yeah, I mean, I'd be on the poor side too. But the, the LED wall that they had and that fan integration, I just.

thought that there was a lot of like bells and whistles that they had clearly thought this through in the time that it took to think it through i really hope i just want to you know we'll move to the fights here in just a moment but i think one one lesson i just really hope the ufc takes from this is yes this is obviously uh a herculean effort how could you do this all the time you couldn't but you don't need to you don't need to you can make some of these fight nights on the road or like this idea chuck that like oh they didn't make money on this get the fuck out of here bro I don't believe that. I mean, at worst, they broke even.

At worst, they broke even. So to me, it's like, dude, there's just, fight fans are hungry for this shit. And to me, you can avoid the scandal and the political overtones by just doing it literally anywhere else. I hope that they consider that. Now, do you think that it's almost like what you're mentioning is

that these fans are bursting at the seams? Do you feel like that the apex? I feel like maybe that that's what happened, right? Like, as the sport kind of fan base blew up through the pandemic, it's just like what people in general they were dying to go to concerts they were dying to do all this stuff travel again and all that

it almost feels like a little bit of that it's still like they're just waiting for the for the UFC to show up in their town or to do something like this where they can all kind of splurge and show up on the scene that it really had that feel all week now and again and this one on top of it was I think there

was a sense of if we don't catch this one we'll just there'll be another another one to catch which is you know that probably could be true Although I'm a little doubtful of that. But I just think a combination of that, what you're articulating, Chuck. And then just generally, fight fans want someone to try. They just want someone to try.

And if you do that, they'll respond, I think, in kind. All right. So let's talk about this. Jesus Christ. Where do we start with the main event? Ilya loses at the end of the fourth round, between the fourth and the fifth round. Justin Gachie, Chuck, is your new U.S. F.C. lightweight champion. Look at this photo, dude. It's, I mean, honestly, I feel like such a dumbass because I called the gone fight, which I feel good about, although I didn't think he would stop him. I was surprised by that too. But I just didn't see this coming. I have left Justin on the side of the road for dead for years at this point. He looked phenomenal. Now, Chuck, he didn't look otherworldly like, oh, I don't recognize this guy. But you know what he did look like, Chuck? He looked ready. He looked prepared. He looked prepared.

paired specific fight scenarios. They had a checklist. He was muscle memory reflex doing it. And I just feel like Chuck, and maybe you agree, I just feel like all those losses and all those setbacks he suffered where he was kind of close but no cigar, they powered him into this final push to become the champion. What do you make of this incredible historic win by Justin Gachie? I mean, man, how do you even break it down? Because he's the one. one big American on the card, right? He's the guy and all, all, every sense they've made this fight, it feels like he's almost an interloper in his own country.

Like he shows up, you're not supposed to be, it's supposed to be Armand. Even when he's fighting Patty, it's like, why is he getting on to the interim title fight instead of Armand, right? Like this whole thing has felt like, you know, him crashing a party. But yet he's the most American figure on this whole card, comes from a coal mining town in a small town of Arizona.

And, you know, he's wearing the flag everywhere. and he's got his chin up. And he goes into this and you're thinking, this is all great in the preview and prospect, but once you go in there, you're going to get slaughtered. And that's not what happens. And it's almost like when I was watching it with all the media,

and they're, they kind of see in that first round the way it played out where he's very effective with the jab. He's, you know, you can see that he's got a clear game plan, which I think a lot of times he gets upset because people don't think he carries a game plan, that they think that he fights kind of berserker in there, which he can do, right?

And he's happy to do. But he also was very much following a game plan. Like he was using the jab. He was doing the uppercut. Look very good in the first round and made that statement. And at that point on, it becomes like, what are you watching? Are you watching the fall of Toporia? Like, is this the fall of Toporia?

Are you watching this moment for Justin Gage? And it really becomes both. But, dude, to come through at a stage like this where you are the American representative in a situation where it was a 6 to 1 underdog, and to put on that performance, which is going to stand as his master class. You know, like it's going to stand as,

when you talk about legacy, this is a guy who had a moment to kind of erase any part of his history you want that it was all leading to this, right? Like he'll never be able to take away. And he came through, I mean,

it was just phenomenal, man. Like, it was phenomenal in a way, like when I was saying, it was surreal to see, you know, the White House as the backdrop. It was even crazier to see

Justin Gachie pulled this off. I thought that that was the, I mean, it's just, it's, you couldn't write this. It's like, it was like a movie, right? It was crazy. Yeah. You, you, it's, that's up there to me, honestly, with Michael Bisping beating Luke Rockholder, UFC 199.

That's a good shout. Yeah. Now, it's a little different, obviously, because for folks who don't remember, Michael Bisping was on the set of a movie in Toronto when he got the call. Yeah, like two weeks, right? Two weeks beforehand. Honestly, I think it was closer to like 10 days or something. Yeah, something like, yeah.

Yeah, you're right. Insane. Like, I mean, like, in a circumstance where you're not supposed to do shit. in that regard. And then he goes in there and he beats the, he beats the champion, becomes it, defends against Dan Henderson later, although that's a little bit of a wonky one. But, you know, nevertheless, Chuck, let me just say two things. Number one, that, that, the war horses of lightweight is just one of the most impressive class of fighters I've ever seen. I'm talking about, you know, in terms of what they achieved, but also how they achieved and how they fought and what they

meant to the sport i'm talking eddie alvarez i'm talking dustin paurya i'm talking to an extent michael chandler as well you put olivera in there you certainly of course justing gaiti is anchoring that shit at this point and you can move out from there there there's some other names you can put in there there you can put him even there obviously although he's not the hammer in that particular way but these blood and guts warriors dude that have carried this division for well over a decade decades yeah at this point between them. I don't know if you're going to see a class of lightweights like that ever again. I think that this is a historically good durable. Now again, Porriet didn't quite get there and Eddie got it and didn't hold on it to it for too long, although Gaichi just got it and he got it

at the end. But I just, I mean, the amount of interim titles, the amount of titles in this group, Chuck, it's such, such a special group. Who has the mindset to basically drive a car off a cliff like as many times as Justin Gachie has. Like he's willing to do this every single time. That's just not human. And, you know, in that second round, I know we'll talk about all this, but like when he's taking those body shots and he's just getting battered, who comes back from that?

You know what I mean? Like it's just like those shots, it's where his reserves, like he was mentioned, his skin needs to be studied, but his reserves, his willpower needs to be studied as well. It's just one of those things. We saw like, you know, Robbie Lawler in the, in the 170 pound division where there was that moment of just guys taking, you know,

years off each other's life and those title fights. Like they were just going in there and slugging it out and you're like, this can't sustain. But you look at a guy like Justin Gatchi, and that's exactly how he's been doing it his whole career, which is just crazy. Isn't it? I mean, it's just crazy that he's able.

What is how old is he? He's got to be in his late 30s, right? Like so. Yeah. He's about to be 38. It's just, I mean, and we keep talking about this too when you're talking about war.

We keep talking about like these guys who are like in their upper 30s like that and they're and they're putting on these performances. It doesn't make any sense to the history we've seen in the sport at all. And like, you know, there's something to be said for like an aging athlete, Chuck, who takes care of their body and then they keep all these best practices. And so they're able to have like longevity. But the thing about Justin Gaichi is, dude, the miles on this guy are extraordinary. Like even in fights where he's won, they've been blood and guts fucking fights, man. You know, like, dude, is anyone going to sit here and. make the argument that Justin Gachie hasn't been in the fucking trenches of 155.

This guy has been from Luis Palomino in W World Series of Fighting all the way up to freaking Ilya to Porea in 26 on the goddamn White House lawn. Like look at what this dude is up to, bro. He is, this is just so, I mean, the odds makers, I mean, we all got it wrong. But like, I understand why they had the feeling that they did. I want to talk about the way in which he won, too. Play that highlight one more time. we have at Long Island where we'll just talk it through.

How about the jab of Justin Gachy, dude? Oh, how about the jab? He tore Chuck Ilya's face to pieces. And so the thing I want to pitch to you was, did you still see that hardcore ferocity of Justin Gaci? Yes. But you have seen it now channeled in a more fundamental direction. That's what it is.

And then one, I think one last one, and I'll pitch it to you, I think the last pillar is all of the things. that he had to learn that he's such a raw material. It took him a little bit more whittling down of the stick to get the fine point. But holy shit, he finally did it, didn't you? Did you like, I mean, honestly, like his game plan was either. I think what they, Trevor Whitman and his crew, I think that they're like, you know, he's going to do, he's going to wade into you.

Like, he's going to come forward on you. And we're going to do this. And he did it. Like he was laying in the jab from, from jump, right? Like he was laying in that jab. And then he was the uppercut later on. And I know that like people are always talking about him not, you know, kind of falling back a little bit more on his wrestling roots and stuff.

He gave a little bit of that, right? Like he kind of showed some of that. I thought in a crazy way, and I know you always know he's going to dig deep. But for him to just, that third round to me is just, it's, I mean, I have to go back and why I'm still here. So I haven't had a chance to watch. I don't know if you went back and watched you, you've been doing interviews. But that third round is just if you want to be a, well, What's the testament to Justin Gatier, what's his legs?

I think you got to go look at that and put the context of that second round with it and just say, like, look where he was here, takes a minute break and comes back in and does this. I mean, it's a crazy thing, but there was a method to his madness in this fight. He was very calm. He knew what he wanted to do. It's almost like they had zeroed in on what Teporia is going to do, and Teporia played right into it. He just played right into it, not respecting the power, kind of waiting in the shots. I know that you I know that you probably got stuff to say about Teporia's game plan,

but man, if you can if you can diagnose a guy that well and be prepared for it like he did, I mean, you can't call him just an agent of chaos in that situation. He'll always dig deep. But dude, it was it was organized chaos. He knew what he was doing. They had, they had that take down to the uppercut. That's not even a new thing that he's doing, but they had it ready for him. They had it ready for him ready to go.

The fake knee tap, same kind of thing that he was doing. Yeah. Into the collar ties. And again, to your point, I think I'llia just, went in there thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna you know I'm gonna lay a few of these on them and he'll just fall and it's like mm gait she is I mean yeah that can happen we've seen that happen but that's gonna be a little tougher than you might imagine and for sure it turned it turned out to be that way I just you know where does this rank all time in

title winning upsets in the UFC it would not by the odds be the biggest one Chuck although it's certainly gonna be on the short list I think the thing you need well we'll talk about the, you know, we'll talk about the Ilius side. Yeah. But, but to me, this is, I don't know, at worst, top five in terms of greatest UFC title winning upset. He's not supposed to be here, Luke. He's not supposed to be here. Like, this is, this guy's he threatened to, he threatened to retire, Chuck. He wanted to retire. And I mean, honestly, like, we were talking about three, at least three lightweights. We felt like he was

crashing a party at the beginning of the year when he got that, the first Paramount Plus card. Um, and he fights Patty. We felt like already like he doesn't, he doesn't really warrant it. They're just kind of going off of old fumes here, like they're putting him into a, because they know he'll deliver action. And I mean, for him to, this is the one of the greatest fighter of the year campaigns I think I've ever seen in the sense like, not only Z.B. Patty, that's somewhat, okay, he wins that. It's predictable, but it's going to the situation. It's really because to Poria, we held him at a high standard. I think in most consensus, like pound for pound rankings, he was either one or two, right, with him in Islam.

and to go do it against a guy like that. It's just it doesn't make any sense. So like when you put the, when you look at it like that, this has to stand up there. I know that we always get the, you know, the Matt Sarah beating GSP and stuff like that,

but he caught, you know, GSP. That's a whole different thing. This was a beat down, you know, where a guy had to quit between rounds. I mean, that's just to do that to a pound for pound guy in his prime, 29 years old.

and so much, so much future at stake as to what goes into a guy like to pour you. Like could be the biggest superstar in the sport right now. It's just, I don't even, it's like I don't know if I've wrapped my mind around that full thing yet, you know. Dana was asked to give his thoughts on this fight. We have a clip of it. This is what he said. You got an incredible main event. I just wanted to get your thoughts on.

I mean, obviously, Justin Gates, you walk in a lot of money. I mean, it was fight of the night, but, you know, fight of the year, fight of the whatever. It's one of the greatest fights you'll ever see. It was incredible. and especially when you got a guy, I don't know where it ended up, but six, seven, eight to one underdog, and then comes in and does what he did tonight. And then Ilya, I mean, the body shots that Ilya hit Gaichi with in that round.

And then Gaichi gets through it. Gachie's about to get into, you know, an arm bar. He almost got into a triangle. I mean, just every, you saw everything in that fight. I mean, he's right. It was, it was a marvelous. performance by Justin Gachie, you know. And the thing about it too was

Trevor Whitman is very interesting about stuff. He's not the first person to say this, but he has expounded on this. I'm just going to condense it very, very, very, very small, which is he's like, dude, in this game, it's the first guy to make an error. It's the first guy to make an error. And Justin Gachi did not make as nearly as,

I mean, not even close to the amount of errors that Ilya Tuporia was making. He respected what the challenge was. He took it seriously. he fought like he had done his homework. And look at that. The Trevor Whitman philosophy, don't, like, the first guy of, like, really fuck this up is going to lose.

Gachey lived that ethos, Chuck. Yeah. And I mean, like you mentioned Whitman. And I think, like, even when he was with Sandhagen, right, and he was going against Marab, there was an element of that. They're like, we want to set up where the mistake falls to Marab where we can capitalize on it. Obviously, Marab's a different fighter. It didn't happen.

But to me, this just felt like, and it's crazy. to say this because I never think of Gachi as one of the more cerebral fighters or even a guy who follows to a Tia game plan. But I thought that he did. And I think it's just because they, I, I, part of this is going to go to Toporia, right? Like that you're just like, dude, you came in there and you played right into their hands. And honestly, you know, that second round is probably going to be a big regret of his for the rest of his career, you know, that he wasn't able to put it away. And then there was a wrestling component. I'd like, he could have put that fight away then and he just didn't do it.

And if you give second life to a guy who just kind of out sadist, you know, anybody else in the league, I mean, this is what can happen. I mean, we did know this. If you fight a certain kind of style against Justin Gaci, this can happen. And that's what happened, man. I have so much to say on Ilya to use a clip

of Gachi talking about whether or not there'll be a rematch as a way to transition to that discussion. Here's Justin on a Teporia rematch. Again, I don't want to say anything better about this guy. He was a world champion, but he is in the hospital right now. And I'm not. Some people mentioned earlier a potential of an immediate rematch. Do you think there's grounds for that?

Do you think anything warrants that, or do you think you move on to the next contender? I don't even know of him. Again, sure. I don't know. I would say definitely not a rematch. I mean, I made him quit on the school. It's not like there was, he hurt me. I think it was three to one.

I've been three rounds of one. In any election, that's a domination. That's true. He's not wrong. He's right. What do you think, Chuck? I don't think that, I mean, in turn... Okay, I want to...

I know you want to talk to Tupori, but like, long-term vision. Okay, the U.S. puts together this thing. They dangle, I guess, in a strange way, like you're... Having a short-term success, which is this, versus a... guy like you know you're putting like if toporia gets through obviously the thing goes on to pouria star rises and all this stuff the long term like that this like screw up some play i feel like the two biggest stars in the ufc right now outside of conne

mcgregor lost in the same night that seems ordinarily if it's just a regular card we're talking about how that's a devastating blow right yes yes it's wild right like it's like that's such a detail that's pushed back because of the size of the event it's bizarre though I think that, man, I don't think there's any easy way to say this. I think Ilya, I think this mistake he made is one of the costlier ones I've literally ever seen. Okay, so first of all, like this question of immediate rematch, Chuck, is he even going to be physically able to? You know, it looked to me like he had a broken orbital. I'm not a doctor.

I don't know. Look on, look on. It's on the right side of our screen, but his left eye, look at that thing, dude. I mean, it is fucking torn to pieces. So first of all, even if he can recover, there's a question of if he can even recover. Can you recover enough to start fighting again? That's one.

And second of all, even if you can, are there going to be psychological scars? Well, that's another one you have to ask yourself. And then, Chuck, even if the answer is, oh, I can get through all of that. What is the timeline? You know, Justin's probably not going to want to hang out too much longer. If he wants to get one more in,

he probably wants it to be relatively quickly, depending on who it ends up being. I'm not saying an immediate three month. But, you know, if I'llia can't come back for another year, he's not going to wait for him. You know what I mean? So that's just not going to, like all of those are working against Ilya. So first of all, you may not like, who only knows when he'll return and what condition he'll be in if he even does return. That's the first thing I want to say.

Second of all, you had to think, Chuck, that Toporia was in the McGregor sweepstakes. That's gone. You had to think that he was in the Islam Makachev sweepstakes. That's gone. Right? And now look at this tweet You've got Patty Pembleit Duncan on this fool

I can't read it from my thing I don't know if you can Long Island Maybe you can read it Yeah have Long Island He's got you He says the only thing you had to do Was beat a 30 year old

Coming off of a five round war with me Instead you quit on your stool Like a little bitch you Like the little bitch you are I'm a real fighter and went five rounds You're a little pretender Cherizo Congratulations Justin Gachey Rematch for undisputed question mark

Okay, I mean, I still think Tuporia would kill him. You know, it's just my personal opinion. Yeah. But then not only that, Chuck, here's Islam dunking on him too. To quit in the biggest fight of your career is something not everybody can do. Real La Leenda. Chuck, this is, and I want to say this too, Gaichi was not on the pound for pound list when he beat Ilya.

And Ilya was near the very, very top. Dude, this is, and lost his title too. this is a devastating, devastating setback in his career. It's just such a, it's cataclysmic in the sense he's 29 years old. And you know, you mentioned like, does he come back? If he comes back, and I'm sure I think he will come back, but in what form? I think that is a big question because part of what went into his kind of mystique or his it factor was that he was calling his shots. He had this swagger, you know, even walking out for this one, man.

It was cool to watch his just confidence in what he was doing as the band was kind of playing him in. And it just, he commands the moment like that. And part of the reason we've been so on him is because he said he's going to do this to Charles Olivera, Holloway, Volk, and he does it, right? Now he's met a resistance. And I mean, he took a beating there. Like you said, I don't know the extent of it, but look at his face. I'm like, I don't know how that alters you in terms of a confidence standpoint, you know, in terms of like, look at that. Like, I don't know if you come back and you have the same mindset, even if you think you do,

that's the kind of thing that really alters your way of looking at a fight. So the Toporia that we just, the Toporia that came into this versus the Toporia we see next, I would sense is going to be a very different fighter. I'll just say this for Toporia, not that anyone from his team is listening, but I just mean in the sense that if there's one lesson I have learned in the fight game, Chuck, it's that the further you fall, the sweeter it makes the redemption story. Yeah. You know? Like, part of why Justin Gachey's redemption stories.

Right, because he failed so many times. Got so close to him. He's a very good fighter, but he was coming up. It was very Sisyphian where just, you know, couldn't get the bow. I mean, we're saying this about Strickland. I mean, every, like anybody who does this, right? Like, you see him fail a bunch and then all of a sudden they, all of a sudden, they're holding this clicks.

Yeah. It just clicks. They have the night of their life. So this will make any potential return for him. I do want to say something. like i don't bring to bring this up as like uh as like uh you know something like salacious or paparazzi like that divorce probably fucked him up bro oh that's a great point i didn't even think he had to he left the country right he left spain he was training in miami for most of it so who knows how much

he saw his kids you know who knows what it did to him financially who knows what it did to him like they dude can you imagine the spanish paparazzi have probably torn him to pieces one way or the other like i think i think he was mentally he walked in with the worst game plan getting bombed on in the first round by a guy known as a fucking punisher acting like it's no big deal he just looked to me like he was out of sorts and too arrogant

too arrogant and and then he still almost pulls it off like the second round you know he still he still bends things to his will and he doesn't get it done but I'm like it was just I mean it was I don't know what I just didn't feel like he respected Justin Gaichie

and he got by with it you know like and he was able to kind of dominate olivera holloway bulk and i i you feel like he kind of placed gaiti in an easier spot or something i don't know maybe he looked at the hallway like the way holloway handled um handled gachi maybe he thought like i can do that i've done that the hollow you know what i mean maybe he was doing that kind of math but dude i it was frustrated there were people because you get in in this kind of press environment you get people from spain you get people from france that were kind of gathered in room and obviously they're just

actively cheering but dude they were dying and this fight. Like the ones who were there to watch Toporia that came overseas, you could see them pacing around, groaning. I mean, it was just, it was, it was tough to watch. It was like his family members were in the room or something, but I think people were waiting for him to snap out of it, and he just couldn't. In the third round, it was just he could not do it. He was exhausted by that point as well. We should also say very quickly before we move to the co-main

event. What the fuck was that between rounds three and four? So weird. Okay, so Tuporia goes back there and he, by the way, in my opinion, he should have never gone out for round four to begin with. People are like, oh, he could have less damage. And also, like, the doctor would have stopped it instead of his own will, right? Like, right? So like for me, you know, there was a number of reasons why that fight should have been stopped. But okay, they go to the, well, they go, they basically the doctor's like, yeah, this fucker can't see. Because he was kind of saying he couldn't see. Then the doctor's like,

yeah, he can't see. And then Goddard basically overrules him. Now, Aaron Bronsteader has said that the way that this is taught is that the doctor can tell the referee, what their opinion is, but actually the final word falls with the referee, because Godder just essentially overruled him. But remember something here for a second, dude, the DC commission would have ordinarily regulated this. But UFC was like, nah, fuck y'all. We're on federal and you can't do shit. Right? Remember this? Yes. And instead, you got the association of boxing commissions, which is a trade association, Chuck. They're not even an actual sanctioning organization. And they kind of did this. To me, it's like, we know the UFC has self-regulated overseas and whatnot,

but I will say on the regulatory side, I don't feel like they got this one right. I really don't. No, I don't know. And also like, what was it, a full two minutes?

It was a very bizarre thing. Two minute break. It's just, I mean, how does that happen? How does that happen in such a big spot? Like, this is a fight.

It's just, that whole thing was very, um, it just kind of played into it. But I, I, in real time, I'm sitting there watching it like,

what in the hell is going on through this whole process? I wish you wouldn't have went out there, though. I mean, honestly like it would have been better it's just in gate is the biggest thing that happened for him was he got one more round to style on him and like look you know make him quit

that's all that came of that but for Tuporia side of it I think my final thought before we move to the co-main is that I don't care that he quit I know a lot of people are like oh he quit dude he should have quit he could have done irreparable damage he might have already done job irreparable

that's what I mean about the it's just unnecessary from his perspective you know to have to go in there good for his brother I think it was his brother, honestly, who like actually said like, we're done, you know? Yeah. Oh, no, I did hear a no mas. Moss. Someone sent it to me. I saw it. Oh, wow. Okay.

He comes back from the round and just says, no moss. Yeah, see, there's some details that I still haven't seen being here through this process. All right. Let's talk about that co-main. Chuck, I thought Gone would win, but, uh, holy shit. What was that? Okay. Cyril Gone stops Poetan in the second. Chuck, we knew on paper that this one would be the,

the most intriguing because of the odds, right? And like, you know, Poetan trying to do something special, but Gahn, you know, showing some brilliance, honestly, against Aspinall before the fouls. Yeah. And we're going to talk about like the, what do you want to call it? The Gatlin gun machine-like punching to the back of the head of Alex Pereira that Gond does in this fight. But we also

just have to say the truth here, Chuck, gone was way better than Poetton. He never lost, honestly, a minute of this fight. No. And I think you would have stopped him anyway. What, what is your read on what happened. That's exactly it. And again, this was one of those situations where Pereira was kind of plotting, right? Like coming in. And what surprised me was gone, like in the kickboxing aspects, gone was actually getting the better. Even with the high kicks and stuff like that, like you would think that Pereira might have that a little bit, just as kind of the link here

and also just his experience. That kind of surprised me. But as the thing was unfolding, did you see, like there was just a point. I think maybe just a couple of minutes. then I'm like unless Pereira knocks him out like land something which always can be the case it started to look immediately like this is going to be gone swight i don't know if he has a solution for what he's encountering here and gone like you know you looked at this the height was uh on perera's side and maybe the length i don't know like in terms of that but um just the thickness of body was gone and like he he was just he looks completely transformed in a weird way because i was one of those critics of him that said in big moments he kind of shrunk and we saw it against john jones

and even francis and gone it to an extent like where he's in a the biggest one of his career and then he's not there like he's just not the same guy but dude he's put it together mentally physically i felt like he looked pretty phenomenal to be honest man i thought he looked very good in that fight and to make alice perera look that bad that's impressive i feel like one of my assumptions in this definitely came true, which is that the natural, like, Poetan can get to something of a natural resting state and be a heavyweight. But that is not to me, I think it's very obvious at this point, Chuck, that's not his optimal performance weight, his sports performance weight, right? I mean, think about it. If you're an NFL lineman coming out of college, they'll often ask you to bulk up,

right? That's your optimal playing weight is going to be up. Or if you're a gymnast, your optimal performance weight is going to be down. You have to play to the performance. And I saw a lot of people just saying things like, oh, he'll be natural. I'm like, what does that have to do with optimal? Those two are not the same. They can be the same, but they're not necessarily the same, especially when we're talking like going up and weight this dramatically where he was heavier than gone at the way and like marginally, but still he was technically heavier than him. And I just didn't buy that that was going to be a thing. I didn't think he was going to be able to move the same way. But I also thought Chuck, and this is the thing

I got wrong. I thought that gone was going to be able to like, you know, stick and go, stick and move, stick and move, stick and move. And there was a little bit of that. But really, that's not the true thing either. He stood his ground for the most part and pushed Poetan back. Yeah. I think that's the thing that was like, wow. That he has, listen, he still got some donk in him.

We all saw him hitting the bongos, you know, like he was hitting the back of the head. He still got some donk in him. But I think similar to Gachie, a bunch of his setbacks, plus his natural athletic gifts, you're seeing his offense and his game gel together much better than you have before. Is it weird that we're like, because I feel like both these scenarios, are any casting down the road, right?

It was like we're looking at Deporia, what's next for him. And we're also looking at Pereira, right? Like you're almost looking at like Pereira's run as a heavyweight. Like this was kind of, even though this fight like you said was very dangerous and it was a pickum essentially on the betting line. I felt like most people were just,

just kind of like, this is Pereira, like, we're going to see this guy do this. And even talking to like people in Pereira's camp this week, they thought that a speed would be the same. But did you feel like it was? Because I felt like he was, he wasn't throwing a lot. And he was obviously dealing with something that he was trying to figure out. But it didn't look like he had a speed advantage in this fight to me at all. It looked to me, this is the way I would explain it. It looked to me that if he wanted to throw an explosive strike, it could be pretty fast. It could be, it could find the target quickly. Like some of those head kicks were kind of testing the reflexes of gone.

But what I'm going to say is the effortlessness of movement at heavyweight clearly favored gone. Clearly, in my opinion, Long Island, Luke, wait on this. I mean, I know that you were three sheets to the wind by this point. So God only knows what you remember. Maybe even four. Yeah. But did it seem to you that like gone, looked to me naturally at heavyweight much more agile.

For sure. And me and Gaff were saying that going into that fight. Like, I mean, that was everyone's biggest thing. How is Poeton going to look at heavyweight? And I think we got our question answered. We'll probably talk about it. But does he even stay there now?

That's what I'm wondering. Not, right? 251, though, man. He really packed it on. I mean, but I know he's just got to, you know, cut out the sweets for a week and he's good. To start twerking and BC will be there. I know that.

What's going to happen next with Poetton? That's the question. I don't know. I mean, it's strange because if you're not fighting for the title, right? Like, he's such a draw. He was like, they were talking about him on the telecastle. Like, he might be the biggest superstar going. And you watch him come out.

Dude, he's got the world captive when he makes that walk out and he's firing the arrow and all this. He's a big star. He's 38 years old or something like that. And I'm like, so what do you do? Do you stay there and try to get back into that spot? Because now you're going to have to go through somebody. And we know that the names in that division just aren't that sexy, man. I don't know. I don't know. Going back to 205 would be hard for him at this point, I think. I think he could do it. I think he could do it. I think if. If he's, I think, if he's a lot, they offer him a decent name at heavyweight he'll just stay there you know like i could say that it's like dude going back to on calli of it's like for example well poiton's always in main events or co-main events or it could still be in there's there's ways that one could be a non-title five rounder yeah but if you go and fight on coliav it's a guaranteed five rounder if you fight hoka it might be a three you know and given that they they might want to tweak where his weight comes in after this. I mean, I guess we'll see. I'm speculating. Maybe they feel like, okay, we can tweak this

a little bit and make him much more dynamic and he can fight Hokit and then get right back on the horse. That's a good point. Yeah. That might be a thing that they're trying. Or, you know, does Jones come out and start being like, hey, I'll fucking, you know. Yeah, that's true. Clean up the road. Well, see, that would make a lot of us. I mean, if that could happen, I mean, that's, that would be the type of fight I could see him doing. It just feels like he's kind of, you know, his star powers out, outdone just the meritocracy, right? Like, he's just, He's either going to be in a big fighter. I don't see him fighting, you know,

Tibera or something like that. I just, I can't imagine that he would do that. The Hocat one is a good, just given the timing of that and everything, the Hokit one might make the most sense because that would put him right back into the picture. And honestly,

if he's able to do that, like kind of thinking about it on the fly here, he'd be one of those pictures of perseverance that we were just talking about because, you know, this is a guy who won the middleweight title, lost it,

then goes up a weight class, you know, wins a title there. see you know and then he loses his chance but then if he got the chance back and he wins it I mean we would talk about we'd be talking about him as like the picture of perseverance in the UFC so that wouldn't be the worst thing I the more I just think about it on the fly though I just don't think he goes back to 205 I don't see why he would do that yeah I wouldn't rule it out I don't think it's the likeliest thing Dana White spoke about Gahn's performance I want to talk about

what's next for him but let's hear from Dana first and then last thing I would ask you at the co-main event, Cyril, obviously, an amazing performance. He comes out and says, man, give me that rematch with Tom Astinol. We need to get that done. Obviously, we're not going to make fights tonight. But is there anything standing in the way of you making that fight right now? Do you feel comfortable with that the fight you can make happen? I don't know.

I'm not even thinking about that right now. Yeah, Cyril gone, you know, listen, it's hard to move up three-weight classes in MMA, and especially in the UFC. And Cyril look great tonight. You know, the guy, we always say, he's heavyweight that moves like a middle-weight. He definitely looked like one tonight. You know, we'll get back. I'm going to love my people, have some time off, you know, this week,

and then, you know, we'll get back at it and we'll figure out what's next. Exhausting even to think about dealing with Eddie Hearn right now. He doesn't even want to know. I'll say this, and Chuck, I'll pitch it to you. I think that gone Aspinall 2, that rematch takes on an enormous amount of new gravity that it, I mean, it kind of always had some, but now it's another level. You know, when it was going to be Pereira, the big question mark was, are we going to put an asterisk on him winning an interim title?

Like, are we going to say, is he three division champion? But are we going to, is it going to feel diminished, right? Just because it's an interim and it's Cyril gone. But from gone's perspective, now that he beat Pereira, it almost feels like it's a little more solidified, like him actually meaning it. And I guess it really does stem back to that little bit of, the little bit of what we were able to see against him in Aspinall. So somehow there's something about Gone now that feels more of a lived-in interim guy like he deserves it.

So, you know, having that rematch, if they're able to kind of put that together, we'll see how that whole thing plays out. But that just got a hell of a lot bigger, man. And good for Gone. I mean, this is one of those situations where a dude probably arrived into a situation, very similar to Gachi, because I don't, know what did you just post the line on the on that fight because i'm like of aspinall because i'm like it wouldn't be crazy now to contemplate gone winning that and all of a sudden you're doing with this you know there are odds on a potential espinal gone rematch it's a pickum right now minus one 10 see that's that's that's nuts isn't it i mean this whole thing like a narrative's changed so

fast but the gone narrative is just the stock on that is pretty huge right now i mean dude for gone to be like the air to don't calli of okay lose to john John Jones the way he did. And then to maybe do himself, Chuck, come all the way back around to the point where you then fight Aspinall in a rematch and you win and you become the undisputed champion after you knocked out Poetan. Like, that's what Emma. We may never see John Jones stop tweeting at that point.

You just go like, eye rolls the whole time. It's so true. He's going to be like, I told you my fuckers. You know? And on some level he would have a point as well. It's just remarkable. I mean, I leave, I have a bad habit, man. I'm so used to leaving older fighters on the side of the road or donks on the side of the road who never get better.

Because you know this too, Chuck. There's a class of MMA fighter who is good, but will never be great. And you kind of know where they're going to top out, you know. And I have kind of extended that reality to a class of fighters where that just doesn't apply to them in the same kind of way. Gone appears to be one of those guys. although let's spend a moment if we can long out i would love your perspective on this i don't think all of those shots were to the back of the head but there was a bunch of shots to the back of the head he's what is he is he is he cheating or is he just negligent i think he's just negligent dude it is a

common occurrence what other fight did he do this in was it like jDS or something didn't he like early in his career hit someone in the back of that or some shit yeah like i feel like it's happening a lot but at the same time i do not think cyril gons like oh i'm going to hit this guy in the of the head that'll really you know like i think it's more of just heat of the moment throwing shots not really like i don't know locking it in and realizing what he's hitting but uh it's fucked up either way if it's you know but some of those were questionable you remember a fight card like where the two top fights are the both title fights right but that there's so many question marks coming out of both of them in the sense like justin gaichie may retire we don't really know what he's going to do like

you don't know what's happening to Poria either in that sense. Like if it's just like, and then you get Cyril gone, but there's this huge contention looming with Aspinall. And then that, that's an extenuation, obviously of like the heavy weights that were before Aspinall. Like it's just I can't like this is a new UFC terrain too.

It's just like where all of a sudden they used to always kind of streamline long contracts and everything like you just, everything was working towards the next thing. But these days, man, like you get this situation and it's like, I mean, it's completely cloudy. We have no idea what's going to,

going to happen for either one of these guys at the end, right? No, I suppose we don't, but I'll just say, you know, what's kind of interesting is the UFC put Tuporia and Poetan on this card. And, I mean, that's not an accident. Those are the two most electric talents that they have. And I mean, they've, those guys have like, they've anchored every big card, essentially like 300 and 303, the one that Connor had fallen out of, Pereira was, I mean, they've kind of anchored their,

big shows. They've been battling for a fighter of the year the last couple of years. Yeah, man. But like, you know, the UFC doesn't really lose in the sense that like, you know, heads day, wind, tails you lose. They have it. They have everyone under contract. So whoever.

But I, you know, I bet that if they are asking themselves, if there's a thing that didn't go right this week, it's like, okay, you mean our two guys who the fans love, both got smoked? Holy shit. Like, that's probably not necessarily ideal. So anyway. All right. Let's not talk about Sean O'Malley and Amon's a hobby.

Now, I have to confess here, I didn't hate this fight by any stretch. The finish itself was dramatic, and I don't think anyone's upset about that. Here you can see it. Look, he catches him with the left and then just follows it up. I mean, that was brilliant. And then you get the salute automatically, you know, I mean, it went well for Sean O'Malley. Chuck, we had discussed this on pregame preview. He got the win against Song Yadong, but he kind of had to rescue himself to do it.

And so did that mean that he now has to rescue himself in fights that he wouldn't have had to before or that he may have turned a corner. I don't know. Seems like he turned a mental corner back to maybe the Sean O'Malley of old. What do you think? Yeah, this was one of those scenarios where I was talking about. I was like, can he just go in there and do this very thing? Like, right? Like this would then signal that Sean O'Malley is back because remember who's the guy

that he did this with and then he did the fadeaway jumper? Which one was that? Was that the WEC guy? Eddie Wyneland, right? Eddie Wyneland. Was it Wyneland? That's what it was. But I was like, if he's able to kind of duplicate something like that, we're going

be talking about Sean O'Malley again and I certainly felt like and I saw a ton of O'Malley fans walking around with the silly afro things and stuff like I saw a lot of that going on. Dude, if any like he may have been one of the guys who kind of stole the show a little bit in the end and I knew he had that potential, but he's kind of lucky because if I recall like in that Wineland fight like he had done something else and it was only on the second one that he did the you know the fade way. But like he kind of goes away. There was a Cubs Swanson. There was another fight too where he kind of like. like let the guy off the hook a little bit.

Got a little lucky that the ref jumped in there. It was a beautiful knockout, that right hand. But like the ref kind of jumped in there. He was like, it was pretty immediate. You know what I mean? Like, so he's lucky that the ref gave him his full moment by stopping that fight. Happy Pride Month Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space.

To celebrate your existence. IHeartRadio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival. And we won't stop. Celebrate pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada, your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. Iheart Radio. Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I don't have a huge takeaway from this one.

He calls for Piotr-Yon, which that would be a rematch and I don't think would be a bad fight, but you kind of got Moravis. unfinished business. You probably to a degree have unfinished business with or, you know, Umar is at least in that mix somewhere as well, too. So I just don't know what's going to happen there. I will say it's kind of funny. We thought, you know, as a hobby, we said, you got dropped against Aldo, he got dropped against Cheeto. But he kind of just, you know, if you look at the stats in the end, it looks like he's off and ahead on the numeric totals. He kind of just like hunts and pecks. Yeah. To get his offense. You could see him doing it in this fight too. There's like blitzing to like inside leg kicks, you know? Inside leg kick. And Joe Rogan, like, basically.

fell in. I don't know if you were listening to it with the commentary, but Rogan fell in love with the talking about it. So like now we're fixating just on the inside lake kick. Boom. There it is again. Look at the, look how red that's getting. Boom. It's happening again. But it was the nickel and dime thing. You pointed this out. Like you said that this is how he's going to do it. And then we were, we've been talking about this too where, you know, Zahabi tends to get, he tends to get caught at some point. And that's exactly. I didn't know if he'd come back and he didn't. I mean, it would almost, in a strange way, it almost played out exactly how I envisioned it would, you know? Yeah. To me, the main and the co-main were either the most intriguing fights on paper or ultimately delivered the most interesting results.

The rest of the car, to me, felt a little on the predictable side. That's not me saying that they were terrible fights or something. But I just think there's an intrigue gap from the main and co-main that's like way up here. And then the rest of the car, to me, is fine, but kind of right there. I don't have a dramatic conclusion about this one. But nevertheless, a good win, certainly for O'Malley. And I think, you know, it would have been better to get Corey Sandy. get in there. Yeah, but still don't get.

You know, not a bad ending by stretch of the imagination. Now, before we go any further, Chuck, did you watch any soccer, any world football over the weekend? Only, only little pieces because I was so fixed on this. But walking by the bars out here, man, dude, that's where everybody was at. And they had those

games on everywhere. It was going on in D.C., man. Bro, that Brazil Morocco game was sick. I watched, did you watch Japan and the Netherlands yesterday? I saw a little bits. Yeah, saw a little bit. Dude, first half, no score. Second half starts. Netherlands scores, then Japan scores.

Netherlands scores, then Japan scores. It was a rock'em-sockham second half. I freaking love it. It was awesome. And by the way, guys, just in reference to all of this, the cup is taking over the U.S., and only Draft Kings has you fully covered. The Draft King's Sports app is now available in all 50 states and includes all markets.

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All right. Very good. All right, Chuck. Let's move it along to Hokit and Lewis. Now, this one was added last. It was not supposed to be on this card. Hoket had that war with Curtis Blades. And I'll say this. Lewis was a little bit more resistant, Chuck,

than I thought he was going to be, especially relative to the resistance he showed against Waldo, Cortez-A-Costa, where he just got dropped by a jab and rolled over. It was better than that, but not a whole lot better than that. Hocut could have been dropped here because Lewis has a big punch and the speed for him at heavyweight. There's a big difference.

But at the same time, it's like, I don't know what to take from this. I mean, Hocke, it's obviously athletic and good enough to win right now. But Lewis, man, this might be kind of getting close to the end here. Yeah, that's what I took from it. It just looked like anytime you start to spot a guy's kind of like general indifference or whatever it is. Like he just can't dig any deeper than he's going to. That's where I felt he was. And, you know, it was hot.

It wasn't like scorching hot. But, dude, it looked like it was a thousand degrees for Derek Lewis. You know, when he was on the, when he got to the ground there and he couldn't get up, I was just, I just, it just was a bad optic. I just felt like in one way, like, between him and Michael Chandler, I know we're going to get on that one in a second, but it just felt like there was a couple of guys in there who are past their expiration date, you know? it just didn't feel like they had much left in them. Yeah, I don't, Long Island, do you have a a read on the fight or is there any lesson to take from it? It just feels like this one was kind of straightforward.

Again, I felt a few fights that went that way for me where it was like, oh, that just ended. Why wasn't that that exciting? Like, I don't know. It was just weird, but I mean, I'm more intrigued with what's next for Josh Hokka than I am with like, what's next for Derek Lewis. I mean,

Derek Lewis at this point, I don't think he needs to retire, but like maybe stop fighting ranked guys. You know, give him like that. I know, but he's still so fun. He still leads.

Yeah. I know, but if he keeps getting hurt like this, that's a problem, bro. I know, but he seems like, I don't know.

I mean, for his family's sake, maybe he should hang it up. But for fan point of view, I could watch him fight still. I'm not like over the Derek Lewis experiment yet. But, uh,

hoak it, I mean, everyone's available in the top 10. He could fight any of those guys now. And you know, him versus Pavlovich, him versus Volkov. I'm into all those fights. So we'll see. We should say with Hokit that this is the part of the conversation that I don't think I can just silo off on my political channel.

We kind of have to have it here. So after the event, or obviously not the event, but after his fight is over, he gets interviewed and he says, you know, now it's all over the news that, you know, Michelle Obama is a man. You know, I got to understand something. This is what I remember. I told you before. like this was all clashing with like DC culture with like these lights and this fucking show and stuff and you know like it was kind of funny I've been doing interviews about it this morning Chuck and people like what do you think about this and I'm like you guys know that he had to

audition to get to the UFC like a job interview essentially with a fight he wins it and he does this exact same speech there so like at the job interview the UFC heard this and we're like that's our guy you know what I mean my hands are slippery they're like They're like, that's our guy. You know? So I was like, you know, this is just what MMA is now. But the reason I bring it up, Chuck, beyond just like lamenting the state of things, is that this is the, like, you know, there's been a lot of criticism about this card from outside parties.

And people can take that to how they feel about it. This one has acted like a lightning rod because now I'm seeing political media asking the Trump administration for comment. I just saw a senator, a sitting senator and a sitting congressman, tweet the video and express disgust. And I don't think MMA fans who, you know, I mean, if you're a person of conscience, you might want to care. But if you're not, I don't suspect that you will.

But what I just want to point out, Chuck, is one thing that I will say about this event that it did was that it hardened attitudes of political adversaries of the president towards UFC. And I think stuff like this puts a regulatory target on their back, if and when power changes. It's a great point. It was such a big deal that even Eric Trump asked me if the whole thing was rigged.

I was like, I don't know. No, but I was. We'll get to that in a minute. I couldn't resist. But like, as he said, you could see, I felt like I don't know how you were watching it, but I was like, just don't do anything stupid. Like, not on this one. And it was really for these very reasons.

I was like, if you do one of these types of things, it just won't go over. It's just the wrong venue and you're just inviting all the things you just went through. Like it's going to invite this and it is tasteless, right? It's just completely tasteless for this kind of event. Celebration of American, you know, birthday, or Trump's birthday. How do you want to look at it, but it's just not suitable for this type of event. And then he says that and the room that I'm in, there's probably be 150 people in there.

Such a groan, right? It's such a grown, like, oh my God, dude. why would you do that? And I knew, like, what you're detailing right now, I knew that that backlash was certain to come up because the other world that's peeking into this, that's what they're used to come. Like, they're used to these kinds of things,

like, they're used to controversies of this, of a different nature, and, like, they're used to political, all of the things that are going on with the current administration, everything. So you knew that this was going to go the exact way that it has. and I just, I feel like I would love to have known, did anybody ask, because I didn't see the full press conference. Does anybody ask Dana like if he's okay with Hokit saying this or if he's okay, you know, through this whole process? Because I felt like Dana, man, I was watching him at the press conference when Hokka was playing the bashful guy kind of interrupting and all that stuff. And Dana looked like he was just as pissed off as you could be at that Lincoln Memorial.

He looked so pissed off every time Hokka spoke. I can't imagine that this was a happy thing for them. You know, like, this is just not a good book. I have no sympathy for Dana. It's like, it's like, okay, you're trying to live this free speech ideal and you can make the argument to like to the point you're raising Chuck. Maybe, and I saw Dana say, oh, Dana put out a statement, by the way, Time magazine hit up Dana. I think we have, I may have retweeted it. I did see it.

Let me see if I, if I retweeted it. Oh, yes, he did. Okay, what was it said. this is Dana in response to Time magazine asking for comment. He writes, quote, I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I'm completely against saying nasty and false things about people's families. Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense. I appreciate this from Dana.

Right. Dude, this is crocodile tears to me in the end because if a fighter says who's broke, hey, can I please get a bonus? They're going to be like, fuck that. It's like, well, dude, that's free speech too. Like all of that is free speech. So to me, it's like you can't penalize fighters for that and then say, oh, well, we don't penalize them for this. You just end up creating a pro slur policy.

Yes. It's almost like a game of limbo, right? Like, who can go low? Like, you have one side. I made jokes all week that the UFC was kind of denigrating its product by being, you know, doing this thing. But like, it's just who can, who can lower the bar and who can get under that bar? It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's just funny, man. we're used to hoke it, right? Like, we see

this stuff and you just let it go on one and out the other, but it's the collision of these worlds for this one very event that makes it so you know, that makes it where Dana even has to make a comment on it. But this was kind of like a microcosm of how weird the week has been in general,

right? Like, it's just a lot of different attitudes, a lot of different scrutinies, a lot of polarization and the whole political thing of like, it's not, this isn't political doesn't matter when it's completely political. It's just, it was all in these moments that you're like, okay, this is exactly what it is. I honestly think if they didn't have this Hocat thing, people who didn't want this would find a way to

criticize no matter what, right? Because they're just opponents of Trump. And believe me, I've got plenty of my own. This gave them. But I feel like this one turned it to a supernova. Like absent Hocat doing this, I feel like there would be, you know, a dramatically smaller amount of criticism. This one kind of turned it into high gear. Dude, the UFC apparently has scrubbed that from Paramount Plus. My understanding is- wondering about that. They did that. Okay. So my understanding is I haven't double-checked this, but I've seen several people say it. So everyone go and double-check this, but they said that if you go on Paramount Plus right now and try to find that, it's gone. They took it out. They've done stuff

like this in the past. This did occur to me with like when he said it, I was like, is this of me one of those things that they just completely edit out for like people who want to look it up. How bizarre, man. I mean, I don't blame them. But at the same time, you know, it's like, what do you guys? What do you guys? I'm all for free speech, but I'm also for like, let's not, we don't have to do that. You know what I mean? Look, we're not, this is not, this is not some like, dude, if we're got, you know what, man, if they want to have a principled stand, I'd kind of respect that, you know, but the fact that it's so uneven. And it's just like, listen, you want to call people the N-word.

I mean, I guess, you know, that's just, you know, thing you can do now. Fishing with Hitler. Yeah, you just go fishing with pre-no, no, no, no, pre-Meth Hitler. Get it right, right, right, right, right. Sorry, man. All right, let's move the conversation if we can't. But I'll just say this. I'll wrap up on this.

This is a story to follow, dude. This is all over political media. So we'll see how it goes. And I say this is too, as I mentioned, dude, I think all this kind of shit, Chuck, not just the Hokkut thing, but just the Trump association, like the intertwining of the brands. I think that it's, put, I think it has, there were so many people who didn't realize the UFC and Trump were so aligned. Now they do.

That's a great point. If this is, you know, if there's one thing that's going to linger and kind of, you know, that you take out of this, even though you had these great fights on us, it might be this in the end, which is crazy, right? Like, that's a just a throwaway comment that he snuck in at the end. All right. Takes us to another fight. I don't even know what to say. I got one thing to say about this fight. Chuck, and I think you know what it's going to be.

Maricio Hoofi just absolutely buzz saws Michael Chandler. This went about exactly as you thought it would. Hoofie, by the way, taking his time, stuffing takedowns, landing, spinning heel kicks, and then polishing them off here. This is, I mean, dude, okay, Chuck,

I have one takeaway from this. Michael Chandler needs to retire as soon as possible, correct? Yes. Yes. And I was saying that even, I was trying to, I wrote a piece earlier, and I was like, trying to delicately list, but say the people are saying this and this. He's long in the tooth. He gets hit. He's last wins in 2022 against a fading Tony Ferguson. And you could, you're setting the table for basically what this is going to be. It plays out like that.

And there's a couple of times rather than even try to get out of the way. This is before he's completely hurt. He just puts his guard up like this. And he's just, let me see if I can just absorb whatever he's going to throw. It's just, oh, that's such a hard look. And even that footage you just played. It's just steak under the door, isn't it? Like this type of fight always bothers me. And I feel bad for Chandler because he was a guy who got, you know, kind of hijacked at the end of his career through that whole McGregor thing. And then they, you know, he gets on this White House card, which you could tell he was one of the proudest guys to get on this card. He wanted it so bad, but they feed him to Hoofie. They just set him up. I mean, let's face it,

He was the steak being split under the door. And it's just, it was exactly what I thought it would be, which is that you're watching through your fingers until it's over. I mean, Michael Chandler's taken so much damage. He's got two wins at this point in UFC. And they're nice wins, but they're just too, just the same. He got mauled against Patty. That was a grappler.

He got mauled against Hoofy. That's a striker. You know, I'm not, I don't, I just think, you know, he can't he's not his legs aren't there anymore which is the thing that you know like boxers often say but you can see it on him too yeah i don't know where this puts hoofy i'm not sure i'm not long island do you have a sense of like what would be a good fight for hoofy going forward i should pull up the rankings uh because top of my head i don't you know he ready beat fizziv who's obviously up there i don't know why michael chandler was ranked but he was

uh let's see he could fight gamrott two he um ross that's a interesting test because Hoofie still got questions about his ground game after that BSD loss. Otherwise you got Patty. Patty would be fun. That would be a good one. That would be a great one. Yes. So I like either of those too.

Yeah, because that's a real clash of skills in that one. Different different departments. I was a striker grappler. Nice win by Hoofy. I don't know what I mean? Like, yeah. I mean, he did what he had to do. He did what he had to do. It's a thing. task sometimes when you like you're like,

all right, man, I want you to put this guy out to the glue factory here and like that's what he went out and did, you know? When this fight was over, it felt like the MVP fights where you're like, well, okay, that went. I know. About how you thought it was going to, you know. Between this one and the, in the, in the, it did have that feel. It had, because it usually, UFC doesn't usually have squash match like this, right? And that's what that felt like.

It felt like you're watching a different promotion through those fights. Right. Totally. All right. Let's now talk about Bo Nickel who defeats Kyle in the first round. It gets a takedown pretty early in the fight and kind of, you know, didn't do a whole lot from guard, but does cut him a little bit. They eventually get back to the feet, but then he stops. He drops him on the feet, I should say, Chuck, and then polishes him off. This is the second win for nickel after getting stopped himself by Reneer de Ritter. I have to say, Chuck, this was something academic. And again, kind of going back to

Gaon and I'm not saying Daucas is on the same level of Poetton. Everyone, call him your tithes. But what I am going to say is it looked like one guy was just naturally faster and more. more athletic than the other guy. And the thing I do want to pinpoint about Nickel, though, is he looked bad against RDR. He didn't just beat Vieira in his comeback fight. He kind of like really attacked him. And I thought he had an attacking mindset for the most part.

And this one didn't mind the stand up because I thought Dawkins was stalling a little bit. Like, Nicol did what, to your point, Chuck, Nicol did what he was supposed to do. But I love the mental posture that he had taken. And we were talking about this. Like he's a guy who's had a thousand competitions. he's a guy who like if he he's that kind of competitor you lose a fight you're going to come back stronger

and I fully believe like some some guys feed you that this is a guy who I think is a real competitor the great thing about him is he is adding these elements of his striking we've seen him in both of these last couple of fights but he's not doing it at the expense really of his wrestling I feel like if he still

wants to default he would go to his wrestling he would know enough to do that like but he he showed that early and I guess it opened up honestly like a guy like docus he was doing pretty well but he was overmatched no matter where this fight took place it looked like but

just like his show of hands there man and like his stand-up that to me is like he's a bright guy who's putting it together and he's probably you know in the way that with Charles Alibera at one point was like kind of adding dimension Damien Maya back in the day who was

adding like a stand-up game it's going to accentuate the things he does really well and I'm starting to see that with him and I think if he gets like a top 15 top 10 guy next we'll know like kind of where he's at but I thought that he did everything that he was supposed to do exactly like the other guys he had a moment to showcase and that's what he did like that take down at the beginning set the tone and then his hands later it just tells you that he's getting more and more well-rounded man Dawkes did I think you know what he could he had won two fights in a row he'd stop both of those

guys by first round he was just he was was heavily outgunned here. And this went about as you expect. I will say it does bring up an interesting question. What would be a good next fight for Nickel at 185 pounds? Long Island, you're pretty good about some of these matchmaking considerations. What would you suggest as a good idea? Well, while I look at the rankings real quick,

you know who actually enjoyed this fight the most was President Trump? I mean, he is enthralled here while this fight goes down. It's like going to the caricatures. drawn in like the New Yorker or something. Yeah, it's pretty great. It looks like Brian Campbell watching violent pornography. You know what I thought was weird? They said on the broadcast

they were like, Bo Nickel will be ranked come whatever next week. I heard that. And it's like Dawkins wasn't ranked. Why? They're both just going to, one of them is just going to join the rankings now. So like you said, AI, whatever, right? I'm saying. Yeah. He should get someone in the 10 to 15 range.

You got Robocop. You got Christian Leroy Duncan I kind of like that Alaskarov or Deleidez a fight I kind of like either one of those Yeah I'm cool with both of us That's the kind of guy like you get

You know he's supposed to win But gives them a little bit more of the veterans That would be a good fight I agree I don't know if there's one that stands out More than the others to me But certainly that one seems pretty interesting And then it takes us to a fight

That was a little bit surprising Chuck for me anyway Which is that not that not that Diego Lopez beating Steve Garcia is a surprise, although we thought this would be an action fight that could potentially go either way. But to me, what's interesting is that I thought Garcia clearly won the first round. You know, I thought so,

too. We talked about it, right? He did on all three judges, score cards, by the way. Yeah, exactly.

His jab was great. You know, it was so funny to me, Chuck is he's pumping the jab. He's pumping the jab. He's moving, you know, and it's turning the jab into a hook,

right? He's doing all this fun stuff. And then eventually he just starts trading. And as soon as he trades with Diego, go, he gets set to the land of wind and ghost, which you can see here that the fans they really enjoyed. It was a question of what was going to win out. Like, you know, because for example, Chuck, like Volk can stick and move and he'll put a little bit more to it, but he can fight a disciplined range game like that. Garcia, for some reason, it just looked to me like kind of let it go.

You can see this photograph here, which is, you know, certainly something. It's an iconic photo. Look at that. But like, he just kind of let it go. So, I was a little frustrated by that performance because I think it could have been a little bit more than it was. I'm positive you were, man, because what you're saying is exactly what I saw, which is this is a guy kind of controlling the fight.

He's on his way to win in the fight because I didn't feel like Diego had necessarily any answers unless Garcia is like, you know what, man, I better go for it, which all of a sudden he did. He just all of a sudden was like, all right, let's go in there. And if you're talking about the pressure of being on this card, and remember all of these fights,

all seven ended in either. K-O or T-K-K-O, only one of them made it in past the third round, which is the main event. I think there was a pressure to go in there and deliver, and this being the first fight on this card, and in a way, like, almost like with the first quarter of the Super Bowl, right, like, where everything's, like settling in and you're like, whoa, the magnitude is, you know, everybody's paying attention. I just felt like Garcia was suddenly like, I better go in there and do something, which is bizarre because he was winning the fight.

And there's a point when you're like, dude, don't go in there and play roulette, chin roulette, just for that, right? Like I think he probably, I'm guessing at some point in this fight, Diego would have been the one in the press and he might have been able to, you know, have that result if he was patient, but it felt like he initiated it and he got caught and that's how Lopez has done this a couple of times. He's losing a fight and then boom he wins it. Played right into his hands.

It was very, it was frustrating. But that's the thing about Diego Lopez. Like, to me, the worry that I have is like, I don't know if he's exactly upgrading his skill, but he's got this kind of offense, like he's got offense everywhere all the time, kind of a situation, you know? Yes. And if you are not disciplined enough in the way in which you manage rounds, and I'm not saying that's easy.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying if you're not disciplined enough in that way, man, Diego can just swarm you. You know what I mean? He could just find ways to just overtake your volume or stand in the pocket with you or, you I mean, you name it. He's just real good about like fighting fire with fire. That's just where he excels. And I just feel like Garcia got away from that.

And I'll say this for Garcia. Like, I'm still interested in seeing Steve Garcia. I like how he fights. I just really hope he looks at this and says, Chuck, I'm going to, like he did against David Onama. I'm going to stick behind the jab for as long as I need to rather than, you know. Does it say something I know that we've talked about the don't tendencies of Lopez

that he might have been one of the biggest fan favorites. Like the fans really love this. Look at this. This is him at the ellipse afterwards. And I mean, this dude was doing victory. He has got 15 haircuts at once, Chuck. He does got a lot going on. But, dude, they love him.

I mean, they love them. And, you know, I think it's because of what you said. It's like an ABA or something to the NBA back in the day. It's all offense. Like, no defense type thing. Like, he's always looking for that. But, dude, they love him, man. And the U.S.C. loves him.

because he's been on the sphere card. He was on this. You know, got two title shots. They even made a joke like, I hope that he finally gets that title shot later in the night because remember you weighed in for the backup. I was like,

let's see if he gets it for later tonight. But he's got that kind of shine with the company and the fans, bizarre. It's a strange thing. So he'll end up being in a big spot next one too. Real quick, because you just mentioned that way and thing. Has that ever happened before that either of you can remember?

No, I've never seen that. Yeah, I don't remember that either. Was that another like we're on federal land? Let's do a little sketchy situation. We all kind of dismissed that. I mean, I didn't dismiss it that much.

I kind of brought it onto the show. But even then, I didn't think how relevant would it be. I think that them sidelining the DC commission actually proved to be more relevant than we thought. Yeah, dude, that was weird. Like super sure. And people were like, did he weigh in with rocks in his pocket? Like, I get he just went and hydrated, but he like weighed exactly 155 or whatever when he came by. That was really weird, man.

Right. well they might have told him ahead of time and then he just rehydrated to that point and then stepped on the scale. What happened to Armand? True. Like, did we hear? Well, we have some video of Armand. Here's what, show us long. That's right. That's right. Jesus. I forgot this was happening.

Norman was never the official backup. I think he just said he was the backup. I forgot this whole RIA thing was happening, dude. He tech followed or tech fell, whatever the proper verb conjugation is. Tony Ferguson 10 to nothing and they called it. He whooped his ass. And then there's Dylan Danis and Hamzot Chimayev.

Now, you know what? I will say this very quickly, Chuck. People are pointing out that like, you know, look at these guys. They're just brawling and blah, blah, blah. Look at the red. And by the way, it's like, who's surprised that Dylan Danis is having this thing? I will say that RAF needs to ask themselves if they're going to be misfits because if they are, I'm out. I don't really want to see that. Yeah. And they kind of need to get a hold on what their brand identity is. The one thing I will say in defense of RAF, Chuck, is that if you notice, like, if this kind of thing happens where like, you know, a fighter hits another fighter, let's. say after the bell, you have to clear the octagon wall to get over there. Yes. If you'll notice, there's literally nothing stopping these people. No, there's like 30 people in there instantaneously. Yeah, all of a sudden, it's the peak of the Wutan clan, right? There's like 50 guys on stage.

But like there's no barrier that you can just run. So like if RAF, you know, if this is what they want because they just want to be the bad boys of wrestling or something, you know, that's a choice that they can make. It doesn't appeal to me. And if they're not going to be that, they need to have better security. security protocol, even in a difficult situation where there's no barrier, you know. I mean, the fact that there was so many people pouncing at once, and you can see it better on this one than I was seeing before, like you can see some security jumping in there.

But, dude, if you're going to run that many shows and they're doing a lot of them, they're just kind of like throwing them up, showing up in St. Louis, I think this one was. They're showing up in different cities. The security thing becomes a major issue. Now we've seen a couple of instances, you know, where things are going, you know, wonky. long until there's a really crazy event where people really get hurt. I mean, you hate to be that guy, but dude, there's not a lot of resistance for people just jumping in there. And I don't even know if anybody's getting penalized or anything. Like, you know what I mean? For fines, assault

charges. I don't know what's going on. But dude, that could have been a lot worse than it ended up being. Yeah, no kidding about it. Now, let's circle back to some stuff that we didn't get to in terms of the overall event at the top here. All right. So first of all, let's get some Dana quotes or some videos going. So Dana was asked like, hey, are you going to do this again? And I had heard some rumblings that some people at least wanted them to. That's not the same as saying that they were going to. But I think, you know, I would be surprised.

I'll say this, Chuck. Here's my prediction. Will they do another White House event or not? I don't know. I think they will do another Trump UFC event. But you could do that at any military base. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't have to be at the White House.

I would be surprised if we never see the claw again. I think that part to me, I'd be surprised. What are they going to do with it? That's one of the questions I wanted to know. Like, what do you do with that structure? It's potentially true that they rented it and it will go back to the company that has it. Go ahead. I was going to ask, like, you think they can donate it to like a local area that it can actually be used for other things,

like a concert, you know, an outdoor auditorium kind of thing? I mean, it would work better in Vegas anyway. Yeah. You know what I mean? Outdoor Vegas fights is a much more dual. Maybe not in the summer, but yes. Yeah, no, no, but like, you know, when it's temperate, when it's temperate at night, like the desert can be actually quite cool.

Yeah. Here's what Dana had to say about it. Do you just think, man, this is as good as it's going to get, and we just have to write it into the history books? I mean, that's what I thought about the sphere. And then here we are now. So I'm always looking to go to great arenas with, you know, good technology and give fans that show up the best experience I possibly can.

It was an amazing experience. This was a one-of-one that will never happen again. You don't think there's a chance. The president says, that was good. Let's do it again next year. I can't afford it. There's no fucking way we can do this again. I'll never do the sphere again and we'll never do this again.

I get the fatigue. It's a big project and I think that they're probably happy with it, but it's so much to do. I can't imagine them doing something like this again anytime soon. You know? It's like they just have too many ways to make their money easier. And I mean, they can put on high. profile, very high profile, although they just lost, not lost like they died or anything,

but they lost a couple of, like, some sheen off of the top stars with this event. So they're going to have to deal with the kind of the aftermath of it, but I don't think that they'll do something like this for a long time. Dana was asked about, you know, the political implications of it. And he was like, you know what, it doesn't matter if you're an American, you enjoyed this. Let's play this clip. Things going on in this city up until July. forth to celebrate and the fact that you know he trusted me to do this and to deliver

tonight and we did and like I said I did all the media you know we went to New York I did far left I did far right I did down the middle I did it all and I believe that if you are an American no matter where you sit politically tonight was a proud night to just sit around and enjoy the 250th birthday Day of America. I was just honored to be able to be, I was honored to be the person that he trusted to deliver tonight. I hope everybody as an American feels that we did. Yeah, I can assure you that they don't. Let's just be super clear about that. Yes. I think that the, I saw the online right were really, really happy with it. I saw MMA fans, which dovetails fairly closely with the online

right. I saw them also saying it was the case, but going back to what I was talking about, previously, Chuck, either with the hocket thing without it, but the hoagot thing really supercharges it. I'm just looking around. And again, I'm not asking anyone to be like, oh, you have to care. Maybe you don't care. Or, oh, I don't like that. You don't have to like it. But I am just trying to tell people, if you're not an MMA fan or you're not ideologically right wing,

there is a very strong chance that you hated last night's event. And I just think fans, you can do with that information what you want, Chuck. but that is absolutely real. There are a lot of people. I heard this so much from just people who are like, you're going to be at that event, or they'd give you the puke emoji, or they would,

you know, they would say like, I don't envy you. I don't envy you having to go cover this event. I mean, dude, there were people who had strong opinions of it all over the place. So,

yeah, it's an association that you're not going to be able to separate either. I feel like the people were mad at me, you know, just recovering the sport. and all of a sudden I'm associated by just being here to this whole thing. So it has a complicated layer. And the people who are against this administration, man,

they did not look positively on this. I can guarantee it. A lot of them probably didn't watch. But I know I was seeing on one thread for the guys in my town that did. And boy, it's just, it's ugly, man, the kind of divide going on there. It's just, you know, I don't know if Dana doesn't understand it. or doesn't care and it could be more of the latter than it is anything else. I genuinely just don't know.

But like, it's very, very weird for me to be like, oh, every American would be really happy celebrating July 4th. And I know it's not July 4th. Let's just jump. Yeah, 250th. Every American would be happy to celebrate 250th with Donald Trump. I'm like, dude, on what fucking planet is that true? Because it's not this one.

You know, his popularity is now matching what it was when he left office in the first term. I know. Which is fucking low. like low 30s. He might get a slight bump from this. I don't think it'll be durable. But the point I'm just trying to make is, I know this is an MMA show.

We're talking to MMA fans. I think MMA fans are pretty happy. I just don't want y'all to be naive about what the outside world is saying. The idea that this was universally praised, no. Let me ask you something. Because I feel like you were like maybe the key member of media

who has the who's at that intersection. And like, I know that you were being talked to by CNN a lot. Lebitard and like Pablo Torre like tons right like are you gonna are you happy that it's over like or is it kind of fun to do this? I mean I'm sure that there was an element

and not fun at all. It was a lot right? Like you're dude I don't. I don't. Let me tell let me I'm going to take off my glasses for this one. Let's go. An IAR radio experience. You and a pal in Montreal and Oceaga with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal flights from Porter Airlines.

Two weekend gold tickets and $1,000 cash. Please love me. Lord, Zara Larson, Dave McRae, Somer, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio. Listen to IHeart new music for 10 minutes and enter to win. Osiaga, 26. Every day you listen is another chance to win. If we could go, I'm looking dead at the camera.

If we could go back to a world in 2019 as it was, I joined MK, And, you know, the, the MMA world as we understood it then and the guardrails that existed and the fan base that existed at that time and how the relationship I had to him and that like we never get to the pandemic and we certainly never get to the Trump laundering post-2020. And all that. And like, now we'll get to this point. I would get. And like, yes, have I gotten a lot of opportunity, Chuck, because of this particular angle that I have taken? Yes. Yes, of course I have.

I've gotten a shit ton, actually. I give every single piece of. it up to go back to that. If someone said, we can go back to that. You can never talk politics again. Deal. Where the fuck do I sign? You know what I mean? This is to me beyond regrettable, the place that we've arrived, um, where fans are like so starved for UFC production that they're willing to just like look the other way at the doorstep of a fucking fascist. That's my opinion. That's my opinion. That's my opinion. You know, but it just, it's, it's, I'd give. I give every piece of it up.

Yeah. It's been, this has been a very interesting thing, but dude, it's been, I'm happy to see this one go. I just didn't want to deal with it anymore, man. It's been exhausting for, I think, all of us on one level. Dude, I mean, how many times, and just in, absent all the political consideration, how many times do they promote a car to a year in advance?

You know what I mean? Very, very, very. We've been hearing about this shit for, for months, you know? I know, man. I know. All right. Another piece of interesting news that came out of it. We'll move on from this stuff.

Although not totally, I suppose. So Tyson Fury showed up last night. To your point, you couldn't see him because the hat was like this. I'm sure it was him, though. I feel like it was him. Hold on. I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best Tyson Fury impression.

Ready? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was like a Java. He was like a Java. He just said that.

You have big dosser. So he was out there. And the first thing I said to myself is, how the fuck do he get in this country? Because if you don't know, he and his father and his brother and Tommy Fury have been banned from coming here because of their association to Daniel Kinnahan, who has since been apprehended. He's the Irish kind of like drug lord or drug kingpin, whatever you would like to call him, who was kind of hiding out in the UAE. And then they finally got him. I'm not sure how that all happened, but they got him. And, you know, this guy had ties to

MMMA fighters, former UFC fighters. Meneer Luzez was one of his top lieutenants. In any case, he couldn't come here, and now all of a sudden he can. Dana White was asked about it, and here's what he said. Does Tyson Fury's presence here confirm the fact that you've signed him? We'll make an announcement soon. So that's a yes, maybe?

What's that? That's a yes, maybe? Listen, let me reiterate. Judge me January 1st of 2027 on what we've done this year with boxing. You know, I keep talking about, you know, all these other guys are talking a lot of... I haven't said anything about any of these guys. I haven't talked shit about anybody or any of their stuff. I'm in my lane.

I'm doing my thing. Just sit back and watch. We'll make an announcement soon. So there's no question... Shocker that the media there didn't ask him, like, hey, How is he here? I know. He's been banned here for having an association to a drug kingpin.

They don't ask that. But then it's weird, Chuck. It's like, is he a part of Zufa boxing? Well, not really. So it's like, just a flex. Well, what the fuck was the point of that then?

I don't know. I mean, it's, it was more of a flexible. It was almost like the subtext of it. Like being that he can't be here, but look, look who we have,

right? At this event, that's the way Dana treated it. The fact that they didn't, like, you know, basically John Anick asked Fury, like, do you want to make the nice? I'll leave that to Dana. Then the Dana gets the chance and he doesn't say it. It just struck me as like saying, like, you know, it's just them saying, look, we can, we can do whatever we want.

We can do whatever we want. We can even bring him to America, which I can tell you, they didn't ask him about it, but the people in that media room were all talking about it. You know, that was like a big, I think that was a, I forget the guy's name. It was asking the question there. And I feel bad about it. It's the English fellow. But like.

Alan Dawson. No, no, no, no. It's, yeah, just saying, is that how he pronounces his name? Justonga. Justonga. Yeah. Ptzee, I've been on, I feel bad, but like he's got an unusual name. But like he was talking about this and he's the one asking there. I feel like it was just a flex, wasn't it? So it's just like, hey, look, we can do whatever we want. We can. It's just like, and kind of like hinting at it, but it's just in the action of having him. it's it's um it's it's it's wild i mean i i honestly think that they brought him here to your point yeah kind of to just be like well look what we can do now that you know now that we're you know with these people right dude they were like the zufa boxing i just feel like he's it's so much spite like he's like he say we can't we'll show him we can you know like even on the stage you know

they had terence crawford they he wasn't he was standing right where i was at though like he was standing next to me. And, you know, they had Connor Ben up there, and we know what they've done for him. They had Jay Apataya. They had, like, he flew in from Australia for like two days just for this thing. Like, when do they do stuff like this? I just like right now they're like,

they're in the business of just kind of flexing in this Zufa boxing realm with just being like, we can do whatever we want. We're going to, you know, and spending the money there. It is a little weird. I got to say, man. I don't know what else to say about it. I mean, if they sign him, I guess we'll see. I know Anthony Joshua assigned to Match Room.

So, you know, the one thing he did say, by the way, was tune up in August and maybe the Joshua fight by the end of the year. Like, oh, my God, motherfuckers. Can you all fight, please? What the fuck? I know, dude. Jesus. I'm going forever.

Last but not least. What is going on with Daniel Cormier's Twitter account? What the fuck is that? I thought you're going to go to the song. Sean Stricklandian, but anyways, go ahead. Yes, this is nuts. By the way, I was talking to Craig Jones yesterday about that. They were planning that shit. That's bloody bad.

I don't even know what to say about this. So we don't have to read the whole thing. I think most MMA fans know this is one thing that we can say for a fact. Okay, so for a fact, Daniel Cormier posted on his account, or I should say this, tweets were posted on his account. Maybe that's the best way to say it. A tweet was posted on his account that seemed to show. show screenshots of a conversation between Daniel and Eric Trump, the son of the president.

And in the conversation and the screenshots, Eric Trump is basically trying to solicit information, illegal information from Daniel Cormier to engage in illegal betting. That's essentially insider betting was what he wanted. He wanted to know if fights were rigged so he could bet on one of them. Right. Now, he tweets this, again, I should say at a bare minimum, it comes out of his Twitter account. it that way. The tweet was real. It was tweeted. It gets deleted

within a couple of minutes. And someone showed it to me and I'm like, well, this is obviously fake. And then a bunch of media members who I actually trust and who are like real guys were like, uh, we saw it. So Chuck, Jesus. Clearly it got, I mean, it's a real thing.

And you could actually, the URL is no longer, you know, it doesn't show anything, but you can see all the replies still. So it happened. Donald Trump, or not John Trump Jr. Eric Trump gets out. there and is like, yeah, you know, this is an, look, we are aware of the fake AI generated screenshots being circulated online. I've never spoken to Daniel. He has since deleted his post, which confirms it was clearly fabricated. Why would Daniel Cormier tweet an AI generated screenshot

between himself and Eric Trump? Now, DC later said he was walking outside of the event and some fans found him. And he was like, this is what he said. I was hacked or something. What the fuck is going on here? I don't know, man. And this was a big focal point. Like everybody was kind of like, what is going on? What is going on? In fact, people are like, hey, did Luke, people asking me because you had tweeted something about the like, ask Luke this and this.

Because I think I shot your note that's like, hey, did you see this stuff or whatever? What a bizarre, like, just a bizarre thing. Did you see afterwards, like something else came from Daniel Korme's account, which was another, was it a Bitcoin thing or something? Like there was some link. Did you see that follow up? It was almost like to kind of reiterate that there was. a hacking going on.

So I did see, but like the first thing that comes out is could people really be like this stupid? Right, right. He did say that. And that's still like, okay, but what does that mean? It's like, well, I don't understand what that is. People were like, oh, he did it as a joke. Why would you joke that way? That doesn't make sense. I don't understand it either. That's a unnatural way to, yes. And then the account tweets like crypto shit, right? Or what, something like this. Some kind of like, you know, odd link that doesn't come from him. And it's like, my first thought was like, Oh, so maybe he did get hacked. But it's like, how do you recover your account that fast to tweet?

You're all stupid. And then it gets hacked again. The second one, which is the crypto one, is the kind of thing you might do to be like, see, I told you it was hacked, you know? That's where it started getting suspicious to me more so. I was like, wait a minute. So that's what happened. So fans were like, oh, well, that's just a cover.

That's just a cover for you doing this kind of a thing. And I'm like, Long Island. what the fuck was this dude what did cornea think like allegedly if this if this wasn't a hack what did he like think he was gonna gain by tweeting it that's what i don't like everything else you guys are saying kind of adds up and i love to buy into you know some conspiracy here but uh but i also know brian campbell's buying into it yeah but like why would he tweet it like you got to be kind of stupid to to put that out there like nothing about any of it makes sense other than the tweet went out from his account. Like that part is real, but everything around it, it just sounds so fucking weird

to me. I don't get it. I will say, I was getting asked about this all night on my stream, so it was a big topic of conversation. It was, man. It was all over political media. Political media ran with it too, you know? It doesn't seem like something a Trump would do, though, try to get insider information.

It doesn't. Well, I mean, let's be honest. Let's be honest. Crime comes second nature to him. Let's just, yeah, call that spade of spade here. But in either case, it was just, I mean, again, dude, Chuck, every time you think you have seen it all in the sport, you've seen nothing. I suppose Daniel is like, he's very active in podcasting himself. So I guess we stand by and, and, uh, and see what he has to say about it? Because he's going to have to address it. But it's a, it's a very strange way. It looks more and more suspicious, though, the more you look at it. It's just like, what the hell is happening here? But the thing is, it's like, people are like, oh, have you, moved on. I'm like, what do we think's going to happen? You know what? They're going to, they're going to, oh, there's going to be an investigation of Eric Trump. And it's not going to lose his job. There's not going to be an investigation. Like, I don't know. I'm not saying you don't have to care, but I'm just saying you're going to care to what end, you know. Yeah. I don't quite get it. Before we wrap up here,

anything that really stood out to you one way or the other that we haven't covered yet. I know I touched on at the top of the show, Chuck. I thought the Marine band and like doing some of the, not every intro was them playing but I thought when they did I thought that was kind of a home oh dude I thought the one distinguishing marker was just them playing you know the walkouts you know it's it added some such a cool element to it I thought that was all and that dude playing the guitar and singing was awesome man especially on the gagey song dude I try I try to explain this to people if you're in that back if you're in that band yeah you're a highly accomplished musician like the way to understand that is the Marine Corps if you get that job right

if you are unable to get it. The Marine Corps says you don't do anything else. This is what you do in the Marine Corps, right? Like you don't, you're not any other thing and then also in this. This is it. For the Marine Corps to do that is like you have to be the most special, like, person in that occupancy. Otherwise, they, otherwise, because I've seen guys who were like super jacked, but they couldn't get into, like, athlete programs, you know?

You have to be special to do that. crazy dude you know one of the things that stood out to me was just the tie that uh joe rogan was wearing he we're not used to seeing him what the fuck was that what the hell is that oh it's so weird to look at isn't it i mean you know isn't the rule that the tie has to touch the belt buckle or get kind of close to the belt buckle right i've always operated under some assumption along those lines yes the marine corps rule is it has to fit in a perfect posture the tip of the tie has to fit in the square of the belt buckle. It has to fit in that square somewhere.

Yeah, that's the rule. I mean, I get it that he's not normally dressed up like this, but that was a weird, that was weird to see. We were laughing, you know, when they showed him on there. What did you say that, and we were talking about this for a second. You said, you saw someone tweet a picture of like them putting like a fake tie on their dog and it looked just like it. Yeah.

Oh, man. Long Island. What do we miss? I don't know. Just overall, I think it was cool that they were at the White House, like production-wise, like you guys said, the walkouts, all that was really interesting and a great watch. But I actually enjoyed most what you guys were saying earlier about the lighting and stuff. At one point, I was like, holy shit, when you're watching these fights, you can't even tell they're outside.

You can't even tell in a good way. Yeah, that's true. It felt like any other arena because they had it so locked in with the lighting and everything. Yeah. So to me, that was really impressive. I thought we might see like some that sketchy looking lighting. I don't know. I thought it would be noticeably different, but it wasn't. And the kind of exterior lights on the claw were just, they were all, they were very cool. They had pyrotechnics coming off that thing. It was like it was. Although, dude, D.C. residents are pissed. So it's all over the news. They're, they never do fireworks like past 11 p.m. ever. Oh, not even for July 4th. Dude, they were shooting at 1.30. I know. I saw him. I took pictures. I was walking away. I'm like taking pictures of him. I was like, it was nuts. A buddy of mine texted me. He goes, hey, thanks to your fucking sport, a stealth bomber woke me up at midnight, you know?

See, this is what I'm saying. We're the ones who take the strays for this and we had nothing to do with it. I just assure the people, we had nothing to do with this. That's right. That's right. We had nothing to do with it. But, man, what a show. What a unique thing for better or for worse.

And again, there's a million different ways in which you can skin this cat. But that was something different. You survived, Luke. You survived. So did I. We made it. I haven't slept well in three weeks. I cannot wait to just get drunk tonight.

And boy, look at pornography. Yes. All right. Chuck, I know it's going to be. Do Long Island, what are the fights this weekend? Are there fights this weekend? Yeah, cop horo Gucci too, baby. Oh, shit.

And the UFC is not acknowledging that it's a rematch. The poster and everything is cop horo Gucci. But it's fun. It's not good. We'll talk about that on Friday's show. What do you got going on the rest of the week for your stuff Chuck Mendenhall. Man, I've just tried to get through this.

I do know that I'm going to update the pound for pound rankings on a crowned. And then, and then we'll see from there. I know I'll be on the crack come Friday as usual. This weekend, I'll be doing the crack. Yeah, there it is. Long Island. How about you? I'll have a bet breakdown coming out tomorrow.

It feels weird because the fights were yesterday and it feels like a short week. But yeah, usual bet breakdowns, watch along Saturday. You already know, prop quiz Friday. So, stay tuned. Hey, are you going to the parade on Thursday? Fuck, yeah, I am. Also, I was going to text you guys and be like, I'm going to be a little late getting those assets to you Thursday night. Yeah, definitely going to the parade Thursday.

Looking forward to it. Well, in July, that's a long time. 1973, that's older than me, Chuck. That's fucking crazy. All right, one more time, morningcombat. Dot shop to get the t-shirts. We'll very quickly go through them here. We've got three designs for you, the June exclusive on morningcombat.

dot shop the genesis design the biker design and the crown design and as well if you're still interested we can get the basketball designs the basketball west there in the gray the basketball east in the white um i'm still going to have a bunch of coverage as i mentioned for a political breakdown of everything you can head over to luke thomas gets political i'm going to have something for you uh we'll go through all angles of everything that we saw and what it all meant and then of course i'll have also on just my mma channel you know more to stuff more stuff to breakdown as well. What you got? For God, also, memberships, guys. Please become a member, help support the channel. Please and thank you. There you go. All right. Happy Monday,

everyone, everyone, y'all. We made it, y'all. We made it. So here we go. For everyone on the show, for Long Island, for Chuck Mindenhall, for everyone here. Thank you all so much for watching. Get some rest. We appreciate you. Talk to you on Friday. And until then, may all of your games be loyal. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.