MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Kansas City: Holloway vs. Allen | Fight Announcements | 2023 PFL 3 | Ep. 429

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

On episode 429 of Morning Kombat Luke Thomas is Joined by Shakiel Mahjouri to preview the weekend. The guys start off with UFC Kansas City: Holloway vs. Allen. What should we be looking out for on this card? Next up the guys preview 2023 PFL 3 before breaking down a bunch of recent fight announcements. They close the show with a little buy or sell. (6:30) - UFC Kansas City (51:30) - 2023 PFL 3 Preview (63:30) - Fight News & Announcements (87:00) - Buy or Sell Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, when did Brian Campbell look Persian? I don't know about that, but he figured it out. Hi, everyone. Let's see. It is the 12th of April, 2023, and it's time for a Wednesday edition of Morning Combat. My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of your hosting duo.

I join you from the capital of Estados Unidos right here in Washington, D.C., joined by, boy, look at this, back-to-back Canadians here on the show today. Can you believe it? Joining me now, fill it in, for the one Brian Campbell is my friend and yours. It's Shaquille Majorey.

Hi Shaq, how are you buddy? I'm doing great. Clearly I still got some work to do though, because I saw that Aaron Bronstetter got his own graphic the other day, and here I am swerving the folks. You got no graphics, you ain't shit up in this bitch. Nice to see you Shaq. By the way, what part of Canada are you in? Vancouver. Vancouver. Vancouver so you know UFC

289 coming to my neck of the woods very excited not the main event I dreamed about but I'll take it you know beggars can't be choosers when they come up this side of the planet like once a year yeah I gotta also say I hear the strip clubs in Vancouver are legit is that true

no comment Luke yeah they're legit I know you've been up there, you dirty dog. Of course, Shaq is one of our... Oops, move this out of the way. Shaq is one of our co-workers, our colleagues at CBS Sports. He does great work. We're going to talk about some of that here on today's show, but we have a lot to get to today.

So let's see. Max Holloway is coming back this weekend. Can you believe that? We'll talk about Max Holloway versus Arnold Allen and the rest of that card. There's a PFL event this weekend as well. We'll talk about that. And of course, there's a bunch of fight news and notes. We'll react to some of those pieces. Plus, we're going to do buy or sell with Shaq.

We've got five of those to hit as well. So thumbs up if you're watching on YouTube. Please hit subscribe if you'd be so kind. Appreciate everyone out there. And Shaq, are you ready? Shaq, we've done one show together, I think. think we have not so if we're doing some inside baseball here i was doing the math i think you and i are supposed to do it together four times and every time something's come up um including including you asking me

like the day i was proposing to my fiance now fiance so i'm glad we can finally make it happen all right well here we are we're good to go um we'll plug this at the end but i don't want to just plug it at the end you do a lot of interviews you have your own youtube channel uh again folks can find it at the mma hub of cbs sports.com fair enough yes but independent of that where else can they find your stuff yeah uh as i'm sure you know because it's blasted on the show every single week, Shaq MMA on YouTube is where you'll find all of my interviews. That's Shaq with a K. It's not great branding.

The first 10 things you're going to see are probably Shaquille O'Neal in a boxing ring. But hey, man, it's the name I was given. I'm doing the best I can. Twitter at Shaq Fu is basically where you're going to find the rest of that stuff. There you go. Good stuff. I want to remind everyone before we get started here, you should get Showtime if you don't have it.

Showtime.com. You can get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can bounce. Of course, we've got lots of Bellator and boxing on there, plus everything else. And then I also want to remind folks

to vote for MK for the Best Combat Sports Podcast for the Sports Podcast Group. You can put your phone up to the screen right there. Use the QR code. Or if you're so inclined, if you're listening on the audio platform, go to sportspodcastgroup.com.

Vote for your boys. Give us a vote. Shaq, have you voted for us yet? Have you sent me any MK merch yet? Oh! Boy, I got to tell you, the demands for MK merch are absurd. They're so high. I tell you what, we got gotta get you that bomber jacket.

Vancouver, it's Canada, right? It gets colder and colder up there. Yeah, absolutely. What's the weather today in Vancouver? It's good today. The weird thing was it was hailing yesterday, and then suddenly a bolt of sunshine. It's neurotic, but you do what you can you suffer through like nine months of seasonal depression they get those like two three months of like i guess we're doing celsius fahrenheit i don't know how warm it is for you guys but it's nice you get two or three good months of the year i'm i'm told that when the ufc finally goes there for 289 it'll be in june i hear

bronze center was saying june in van in Vancouver is like the bee's knees. Is that right? It's amazing. It's not too hot. It's not too cold. It's a very moderate to warm temperature. 20 minutes to the ocean. Basically, it's only if you like surfing, skiing, best place.

Other than that, there's nothing to do. All right. Fair enough. By the way, can't you go like orca watching over in vancouver sorry uh yeah probably probably if i've never done it you're just like yo fuck blackfish i don't even like that documentary things right like you don't do any of the tourist things when you actually live somewhere but uh i'm missing out what can i'm working too hard luke you know what yeah i know i know i know when i was your age and i was doing this kind of stuff i didn't have a lot of free time either all right with that in mind we do have some fights to get to so let's get started here if we can topic number one ufc kansas city so we talked about this as well shack i don't know if they've released the prices for ufc 288 on pre-sale

have they done that yet uh i'm not sure, but I was watching the other episode that you did with Aaron. So, hey, man, if they can turn a profit, they're going to turn a profit. They're going to turn a profit. But this is what I always tell folks. You got Max Holloway and Arnold Allen in Kansas City for a fight night card. I'm going to imagine that the ticket prices are going to be, relatively speaking to the pay-per-view, much more modest in price. And that's an A-level headliner right there. So let's start with the stakes, if we can, Shaq. What do you think the stakes are? And the reason why I ask that is obviously these two guys are highly ranked, but it's a little bit unclear as well. Now, we know Yair is going to fight Volkanovski at UFC 290. Okay, fair enough. That

will resolve the title dispute, as much as one wants to call it that but you know they're gonna fight this fight seems like the winner might get a title shot but if volkanovski wins and max wins are they really going to do it again set up for me in your mind what's really on the line here for the winner for arnold allen it's a little bit more straightforward right um perfect in the octagon so far 10 straight wins if he beats a guy like Max Holloway, it's sort of the big name opponent that's eluded him up till this point. And he's right there. When you think about a guy like Bilal Mohamed or sort of even Benil Daryush, the only real knock that you could make against their resumes is that they haven't beaten someone in the top five or somebody who's a former champion.

And that's not really an argument you can make if Arnold Allen beats Max Holloway, who for the last, what, five, seven years has been... Arnold, it's very... All right, hold on. Let's time out on him. You got some audio issues. Let's clarify that. If you could take him off, just put me on full screen. We'll fix his issues. And I'll set this up while we get that resolved. Let's talk about this for just a second.

I like everything he was saying there. This is a strange one. Now, obviously, it doesn't matter. Okay, so there's a couple things in play. First of all, between Volkanovski at UFC 290 and between what could happen there, if Yair wins, they might just do another rematch right away. I'm not necessarily in favor of that, but it just appears to be something that's a bit of a problem, right?

Where now guys lose, and if they're long-standing champions, in the case of Volkanovski, regarded as either one or two pound-for-pound, however you want to put that, by most people's account, one, you beat the number one pound-for-pound guy, you're probably going to have to do it twice. So there's an issue there. Assuming that Volkanovski wins and Arnold wins, really no issue. You would imagine Arnold beating Max Holloway, should that happen, would move into that position.

The bigger issue is, what do you do if Yair wins? Do you do Yair max two? I suppose you could do that. Or if Volkanovski wins, you could do, of course, you could also do Yair versus Arnold if suppose you could do that or if Volkanovski wins you could do of course you could also do Yair versus Arnold if they don't do the automatic rematch but once it gets back to Holloway and Volkanovski that part I really really really don't know I don't quite get how that might go I think if if Max turns in a really strong performance that changes the debate if he ekes to the finish line i just don't know what

the situation with that might be i don't understand how they might go there all right we got shack back shack how's your sound now uh you be the judge of that man i don't know what's going on sounds good it sounds good all right so what do you make of my assessment obvious so there's two parts to this right if yair wins do you think they do an automatic rematch? And on the other side of the case, what do they do if Max wins either way? Yeah, I think obviously for Max, kind of like with Robert Whitaker, his best case scenario is if you get the title off of Volkanovski. Because it's not only that he's lost three times to Alexander Volkanovski at this point. The bigger issue is that the last fight was by far the most decisive loss.

At least with Robert Whitaker, you can say that he did so much better in the second fight against Izzy than he did in the first. Max, I think, is having a bit of an identity crisis. And I'm sure he doesn't feel that way. But what I mean is, for so long, he's been either the one. We're having more audio issues. Let's see if we can get things set up here for just a second if we can. Let's take him off. Hold on one second, Shaq.

Let's take him off. Let's try one more time. You might have to restart your computer or something. I'm not sure what the issue is. We'll get it solved here. Don't worry, folks. We're going to fix it. It wouldn't be a show without, hey, at least it's not me. At least it's not me.

Let's go a little further with this if we can. He mentioned that the last fight was the most decisive, which would be a contrast between Izzy and Whitaker. Izzy and Whitaker might do a third fight. We don't really know how things are going to go at middleweight now that Izzy has regained the title. But to his point, first one between those meetings, Izzy won very decisively, stopping him.

In the second fight, some folks think Whitaker won. It's debatable, but Izzy got his hand raised. But you can see he got much better between the two, like significantly better. And Vittori got better, I guess, but it wasn't really close. It didn't meaningfully change with the Volkanovski and Holloway side it got a lot worse so let me pull up the numbers from that if I may because I think that really tells the story Holloway with a record of 23 and 7 so in the last contest Volkanovski landed 199 significant strikes.

Meaning before that, he landed 137 in the first one, 157. So he went high, then it got a little bit lower. Most people think the second fight is the one where Max did the best. But then the last one, he just whooped up on him. Now Holloway landed a record amount too relative to his fights with Volkanovski, landing 127 in the third contest. He landed 102 in the second, 134. Actually, so the first was the most he ever landed. The last was the second most.

But those are significant strikes, and then there are significant strikes. He got whooped up on in that contest. 50-45s across the board, first of all, which makes it unusual. Holloway 0-3 on takedowns. Volkanovski attempting 377. 377 total strikes, landing 204, of which 109 were significant. And let's see his numbers over time. Yeah, listen to this.

Volkanovski in round one, 28. In round two, 37. In round three, 40. In round four, 44. In round two, 37 in round three, 40 in round four, 44 in round five, 50, 50. It got worse as it went along, not just from the first or the third fight accumulatively, but over the rounds, over the rounds as well. So it makes the case for him just, just much more difficult, which this is something I want to get into when we bring Shaq in, we'll talk about it. This is to me, when I think about like the most important questions related to Max Holloway versus Arnold Allen,

I can look at their matchup preview here on Fight Metric, which I can pull up in just a second and I'll tell you about. The big part to me is how much Max gets hit and how much he has been hit. So if you look at their strikes landed per minute, Max is high, 7.24. That's just extremely high. That's a very high level of output, which I want to talk about as well.

Just 3.40 for Arnold Allen at average or below for a ranked fighter. Just not have a high output. Strikes absorbed per minute, 4.89 for Max Holloway, 2.25 for Arnold Allen. So Arnold Allen doesn't throw a lot of punches, doesn't get hit a lot. He's very judicious and likes to have a more even-keeled pace. Max Holloway is basically the opposite of that. He has a much higher intensity, a much higher volume, last fight notwithstanding. And it increases for him usually typically over time as well.

He just couldn't get that going against Volkanovski. So here's what the question is for me. The two big questions are, number one, what kind of Max Holloway are we going to get, right? Not just that we have this statistical data to buttress the point that he gets hit a lot, which he does, but the amount of damage he's taken has been, in my mind, extraordinary. I mean, even in my last interview with him prior to his third

Volkanovski fight, it was something I raised with him. He seemed to think that it was not the biggest issue in the world. He recognized it as a bit of a problem, it seemed, but not an imminent one, not a right now one, not one that he feels like is slowing him down. Whether or not that played a role in the Volkanovski fight itself, I guess we'll see in this one. It's really hard to say. I mean, he could have either been suffering from that before that fight or that fight could have made it worse, right?

Because he did take a bit of a beating in that one. So that's question number one. But question number two is, if you get max even remotely like the one we got you know um a couple of years ago or something something like that I guess the one in 2021 who if you get that one what is Arnold Allen going to do when or if I should say Holloway is moving downhill on him how do we do that when when he's moving hardcore into his space, where he's beginning to put punches together, combinations together, and a guy like Arnold can't get the takedown,

because Bex Holloway's takedown defense has historically been excellent. And on the other side of things, he's forcing Arnold to fight in a way that he was simply unprepared for or stylistically not suited for remember it's not just i mean these numbers are not by accident in the accumulative sense he likes a judicious not a super slow pace but not the kind of pace that max holloway put on calvin cater or somebody else so that that requires a gap in skill in that particular dimension which i don't really know if we're going to have or not. We'll have to see.

But that's the part I'm curious about is can, number one, what kind of Max Holloway are we going to get, right, from all of the damage? What state is he in? And if he is in any kind of a good state, can his typical volume style and not super high pressure, but pretty high pressure, what does that do to pull Arnold Allen out of his normal style? Can he accommodate that? Or can he slow down Max to get more of an even keeled, slower pace fight that he tends to prefer? These are the biggest questions for me. Now I want to bring up one more point if I can, let me pull up some more information about Max Holloway that I think is a relevant portion of the conversation that we need to have as well. So how old is Max Holloway?

He currently, he was born in 91. I was in fifth grade in 1991. He is now 31 years of age. He turned 31 in December. Now, 31 is not supposed to be old. Not supposed to be old. In fact, for many people, we've talked about this. You get certain guys who don't really hit their MMA prime until actually far later than this in certain cases. But I don't know if that's the case with Max Holloway. Now, people like to say that there is no such thing as a prime in combat sports like it's just a

absurd notion and they're not totally wrong right because when you have other sports that are based upon uh certain life benchmarks or in certain life order right for example if you want to play in the nfl in america you go through high school until you're about age 18. Some guys go through the draft early, but basically you're going to be 20, 21, usually 22 by the time you draft. So there's that up until 18, there's roughly the four years of college. You're on a rookie deal after that, and then you get going. And there's all these marks where you can kind of tell if someone's going to be good enough by then, how much damage they've taken. And yes, even in those sports, which by the way, also operate on calendar cycles, right? So they have much more time off. They have time

to rest. They have, you know, there's only what's 16, 17 games in an NFL schedule. Everything happens on a much more ordered sequential basis. Combat sports is really not like that. You go to the UFC when you're ready, whether you're it's age 18, whether it's age 25, something like that you go to the ufc when you're ready whether it's age 18 whether it's age 25 something like that he got his start max holloway so remember he's 31 now he got his start in terms of his pro debut back in 2010. so let's see that that was 13 years ago so uh we're talking was he 26 at the time or it was what was my math doing 28 i think at the time no what am i doing i'm i'm talking about my own age jesus he was what 18 or 19 at that time uh when he made his pro debut jesus christ my math is all my stuff on that one but you get the idea he was a teenager maybe 20 or you know 19 i think 18 or 19 when he made his pro debut he fought in the ufc in his fifth

contest which was in 2012 so two years later so yeah he's about 20 when he made his UFC debut, or 21, give or take. His entire 20s he spent basically in the UFC. Basically. Basically he spent in the UFC. Listen to these names as we go through them. I just want to point this out. Dustin Poirier was his UFC debut. Pat Schilling, Justin Lawrence, who at the time was a top prospect.

Leonard Garcia, Dennis Bermudez, Conor McGregor in his 10th fight. Will Chope, Andre Feely, Clay Collard, Akira Khorasani, who was a standout for the Ultimate Fighter for a time. Cole Miller, a very good fighter out of Georgia. Cub Swanson, Charles Oliveira, who we beat. Jeremy Stevens, Ricardo Lamas, Anthony Pettis, Jose Aldo back-to-back, Brian Ortega, Dustin Poirier again at 155, Frankie Edgar, two fights with Volkanovski, Cater, Rodriguez, and Volkanovski. Folks, that is an insane amount of mileage and

difficulty. So to me, I don't know when his career, Max Holloway, will be over. I don't know what we're going to get on Saturday. None of us have clean answers to this stuff, and I know he changed management during his off time, so between the last fight and today, he has a new manager. I don't think there was an ugly falling out or anything, but I think they were going in separate directions. And it's just a, there is such a thing as a prime in MMA or in combat sports, but it can start, change, or end in wildly different circumstances based on each fighter's weight class, how young they started, how young they started in UFC, what kind of fights they had. So with that in let's bring in check one more time let's see if we can get this going here i think we got a

decent shot here all right shaq how you sound can you hear me right now i can hear you you sound am i cutting out at all during this no conversation okay you know what i know a lot of people give you guys crap for this i never have audio issues when i'm doing my own thing you don't when you do your own thing usually i think it's just a curse i don't i think there's some higher power or some sort of evil presence i don't believe in that stuff but i do today you might have to today all right but let's get to my point here and we'll backtrack a little bit but starting here max holloway turned 31 in december so in 31 you'd be like wow that's not that old.

But Max started, again, I did some of the math poorly on air, roughly 20 years old when he went to the UFC and roughly 18 or 19 when he started in pro MMA. All of that time in his 20s in the UFC against a murderer's row the entire time. He's a very old 31. True or false? Oh, absolutely true.

And I think it makes it all the more remarkable that outside of title fights the fights with volkanovsky as well as the dustin poirier fight up a division he hasn't lost since the 2013 conor mcgregor beat him like it is remarkable how consistent how um dominant in many cases he's been for such a long time against the very, very best. And that's sort of what I was trying to get to before the NK God sort of interfered is he's been the 1A or the 1B at featherweight for so long that if he continues to get gridlocked out of the title picture because Volkanovski continues to win, what's his primary motivating factor, driving force, right? It was a conversation that I had with Sean Sheehan ahead of Anderson Silva's fight against Uriah Hall, and we were kind of talking about retirement,

not to suggest that Max needs to retire, furthest thing from that, but when I asked, what's the right time for a fighter to retire, Sean said, what is that fighter's purpose for competing? And can he still get it done? Max Holloway could certainly be the champion right now if it weren't for Volkanovski. But if Max can't get back to the title as a matter of circumstance for the next several years, what's his purpose for fighting? That's what I really want to see tonight on saturday uh what does your gut tell you about what kind of max holloway we're gonna get just your gut i think it's fair to say that the division is beginning to catch up to him or that maybe he's

sort of starting to taper down taper off of the peak But I'm not ready to count him out yet. You know, he is statistically the most active striker in UFC by a country mile. I mean, I have the stats somewhere here if I could pull it up. 2,975 strikes landed. The next closest is Frankie Edgar at 1801. And three of the top five have retired. So he's just going to keep building that. And I think as a fan, I don't want to say that Max Holloway is over the hill.

And he's not. He just beat Yair Rodriguez, right? That was 2021. That was 2021, bro. We're in 2023. I guess we'll have to see how much people decline over time. But I'm not ready to count them out yet. I think this Saturday is going to answer all these questions that we have.

I'm still pulling for Holloway in this one. I don't think we've seen Arnold Allen have a clean win over a very top-level guy. The Calvin Cater fight as a matter of injury was a little inconclusive. He looked great, but we don't know how high arnold allen's ceiling is in part because of his inactivity right on average he's fought like 1.4 times a year 10 fights over seven years so this is his proving ground and i i just think max hallway has been too good for too long to count him out quite yet i think think that's fair. Wouldn't want to count him out. Don't want to be in that space.

What about the other idea that I brought up? So to me, like the big one is just, I mean, the biggest question is what kind of Max Holloway are we going to get, right? That's the number one question. But I'm not so much concerned about what kind of Arnold Allen we're going to get. I think we're going to get a pretty good one. But the difference is he has a much more measured fight style. I went through the numbers.

He averages, I think, less than half the strikes landed per minute that Max does, which granted But the difference is he has a much more measured fight style. I went through the numbers. He averages, I think, less than half the strikes landed per minute that Max does, which, granted, that's a very high number, but still it's less than half or right around half anyway. And on the other side, Max just has this ability, assuming we get Max that is relatively similar to the one that we've had previously, he's just going to force volume on Arnold can he never mind pull Arnold into a bit of a war in ways where Arnold likes to slow the fight down put it at his pace Max just might force him out of that certainly I think it's a bit of an inevitability with Max because we've seen guys like Frankie Edgar try and slow down that pace. And the reason Volkanovsky had so

much success and the reason that Rodriguez did as well as he did is because they've gotten to a point where they can match that sort of style, right? Like you're not going to slow Max all the way down. There are very few people that can hold him down, force him against the clinch. Like he's been preparing for that for a very very long time now and i think arnold allen is going to need to take the fight to him max max just has too much volume to lose on the scorecards in most cases right like we still see judges putting a lot of emphasis on strikes um and visually it's just hard to beat out a guy like max round to round because he's putting so much volume on his opponents.

Yeah, I wonder how that's going to go to where if it's just a volume issue, but the quality is relatively similar. Also, here's another thing too. Like I had a conversation with Chris Curtis. And again, I don't know this. I can't prove this. And it was just something I thought I shared with him because he was distraught after his last loss to Kelvin Gaslam over the weekend. And you know, again, I can't prove this, Shaq, but one thing I've kind of got my eye on is to what extent the body work doesn't get properly counted by judges. Dan Tom was tweeting this to me, something similar as well. Max is a headhunter. Max is a headhunter.

So he'll pop people's heads back or, you know, push them off balance by landing all the time. He does get hit in the line of fire for it, but that is, at least on the offensive side, a very effective way to get the judges on your side. I think Aaron Bronstetter brought it up on Monday's show that I feel like judges are still really under-emphasizing the value of leg kicks. I mean, it's hilarious because Izzy credited Alex for the leg kicks setting up the finish in the fifth round of their first MMA fight, right? Like, there's something so visceral and sort of visually painful about seeing someone get hit in the face that we oftentimes, I think, undervalue the other work.

Like, you can make the argument in many cases that if shots to the head don't knock down knock out or cut your opponent they may not have as much of a long-term impact over the course of a fight as the way that body shots can sort of drain your gas tank or leg kicks can immobilize an opponent you just don't for whatever reason we don't view it in the same way but if you're talking about scoring an mma as impactful strikes i think a lot of times the body shots and the leg kicks take a bigger toll on the fighter over the course of a fight and they're just not really credited for as much as they should be i really believe that like if you want a body shot to count in the judges you got to fold a guy

yeah you know what i mean or like let's say you take a body kick and it leaves like a big old welt or something some kind of something that the judges can literally oh i can connect the dots between them or something without that i just don't know exactly how much good they're doing it remains to be seen well and i guess sorry let's just interject i guess part of the problem is the this kind of falls back into the idea of scoring a fight round by round or by totality right like if you don't get to see the impact or the work that is done from a leg kick or a body shot until round four around five you don't have enough evidence to support the damage that those strikes are doing earlier in a fight right so i think we'd see fights play out very

differently if you're scoring it in totality to To your point, this is a five-round fight. We'll see what investment early leads to late, should it go long. We do have a couple clips from Arnold Allen that I would like to play. This is from our sit-down with him on RSD. We asked him about all of the damage catching up to Max and what he thinks it might mean. Here was his answer. Hey! What's up mikey what are we doing here my guy it's me i mean just you got to be shitting me here today mikey we there buddy all right i don't know what's

happening um you want to be enacted i think i remember what he said what did i actually i i was hoping to see it because i actually don't remember what he said i got you i got you give me one second here yeah you know he's he's max hollywood he's great uh but yeah that's one of the things i always think is mileage it's gonna catch up here it doesn't matter how old you are if you have 20 fights when every fight is a back and forth 50 50 you know i've been in a bit of a war it's even even where he's been very dominant he's taken a lot of shots so yeah then the miles have got to add up definitely they're definitely gonna add up now we have one more for him i'd like to play as well back to back uh we asked him like about what it means to be fighting max holloway and the significance to it of for him what is how

does he view this opportunity here's what he said yeah i've always liked watching max like he's i mean who hasn't you know He's fun to watch. He seems like a top bloke. Not when he fights, though. He's an arsehole when he fights. You see him, he hits you, shaking his hand, he's like mocking you. He talks to the commentators. So there's that. You need to be aware of that.

He's a nice guy outside the cage, but in there, nah. He's not. Do you have to walk through that aura at all or any other opponents you've fought or is Max the first time

where you're sort of like I gotta check any level of respect in legend status put that aside it's just another fight yeah nah when I fought Gilbert Melendez

there was a little bit of that but then it was like once the bell rang I was like fuck this guy but yeah before it's the most polite way anyone's. But yeah, before I'm like, oh my God. It's the most polite way anyone's ever said that, yeah.

Yeah, before I'm looking at his tape and watching him fight, I think, that's fucking Gilbert Melendez. He's done this, he's done that, he's done that. And then, yeah, once you're in there, I'm like, oh, I'm better than this guy. I'm going to beat this guy. So yeah, there's no being overwhelmed with who it is. And it's just another man, isn't it?

Arnold's a competitor he's been doing this a while to your point he doesn't have a ton of activity and so maybe that hurts him but i'm not in any way worried about arnold bringing the fight to him on saturday no particularly the last couple like um there were so many decisions and like you mentioned fights where he sort of brings the fight down to his pace. But the Dan Hooker one was wild. The Calvin Cater one was fun for as long as it's lasted. I don't know what's changed.

There were definitely a couple of fights where he had to kind of come back from behind to win. So maybe he's been putting more emphasis on sort of starting fast. But, dude, it's exciting. The thing with Arnold Allen is it's been such a slow burn, a consequence of a couple injuries on his part, his opponents falling out like we've waited for this moment for so long. I remember interviewing Arnold Allen back when me and Kajan Johnson, when he was still in the UFC, interviewing him on our old podcast. So it's cool to see this isn't a guy who came out of nowhere, but it's someone who's been bubbling for a long time that a lot of the casual audience may not be too familiar with. As we saw on Room Service Diaries,

underneath that sort of shy personality, there's a lot of character to the guy. So I hope people start really sort of understanding who Arnold Allen is as a person and as a fighter. He was delightful in person, man. Truly. start really sort of understanding who arnold allen is as a person and as a fighter he was delightful in person man truly like okay man yeah sweet guy um humble uh you know i do i do think he wants to make some money in his i saw the espn put out something some kind of like hype video for it like 30 minutes or something on their youtube channel and i watched it last night and

they were talking like oh arnold doesn want, he just wants to be the best in the world, he doesn't even want any money and I'm like well, he wants some money but I do believe that like what really motivates him, like when you talk to the guy he definitely is just committed to the craft, very very committed to the craft and to your point, like that cater fight, that would have been

such a proving ground had it gone longer, so there's questions both ways here're not in terms of are these guys bad we know they're very good but exactly how good are they going to be in these particular circumstances this is a great laboratory on saturday night in kansas city absolutely um i'm just so excited to see what happens like i was looking at this sadiq yusef fight and that was a 29 28 so when you look at a two to one round fight against a guy who's behind you in the division i think sadiq's like ranked number 12 right now it bears questions but at the

same time what we saw with calvin and rob font for example after those big beatings that they took against max holloway and against marlin chidovera respectively is like maybe sometimes guys are fighting too much like we always praise kevin holland for his activity but we saw how it sort of came to bite him as he rocketed up the division arnold allen has had a lot of time to improve between fights and i think it makes reading tape on him really challenging because when you're only fighting once a year there's so much development being done on the back end that you don't see until fight night so i'm having a hard time predicting what he's gonna look like and as a consequence like, I have no idea what Max Holloway is in for.

Also on this card, by the way, Max Holloway, a minus 180 favorite Arnold Allen plus 155. I think that's about right. I would not be so bold as to make Max the underdog, but I think that's probably fair. But your co-main event, super interesting one. I don't know what's left for Edson Barboza but we're gonna find out at plus 155 he is the underdog to Billy Quarantillo Billy Quarantillo having a dominant or I should say a amazing win in his last contest

uh but I don't know what we got from Edson Barboza it feels like for me Shaq uh feels like he's been figured out two Two problems with Barboza, right? One is his style's been figured out where if you just kind of crowd him and put the pressure on him, he just can't get going with the kind of kicking, attacking game that has really lifted him to this point. The other side is that, dude, he's taken out beating.

I mean, he's been beating the fuck up over the course of his career. Billy Quarantillo gets hit, but he has shown us some new wrinkles himself. Size this one up for me. What do you see as the dominant potential factors that you're looking at that could influence how this one goes? I'm not entirely ready to cast off Edson Barbosa quite yet. To your point, the style has been figured out, but he's clearly struggling with guys in the top 15, but he has an experience level and power and a striking style that's going to carry him until I think the chin starts giving out. Billy has a ridiculous striking output.

I was taking a look at it. According to the UFC stats fight metric, it's 7.88 strikes landed per minute. The UFC records page has it a bit lower, but if it is indeed 7.88, that puts him number three at all time for strikes landed per minute behind Casey O'Neill and Sergey Pavlovich. The problem is he absorbs 5.72 at a rate of 40 with a 40% striking defense. I think he's going to have to employ a much more diverse strategy. You said that we saw Edson getting crowded a lot. Big reason for why

he lost to Bryce Mitchell. He's young. He has a lot of room to improve. It's a bit of a quick turnaround for Billy Q. I just don't know how confident I am that a 24% takedown rate, 1.55 for 15 minutes. I just don't know if that's going to be sufficient enough against an Edson Barboza that has been dealing with this kind of game plan basically his whole career. Like if the wrestling and the clinching and the forward pressure is not your bread and butter, I don't know how much success you're going to have. And I just worry that Billy Q is a little too hittable. And Edson Barboza still has the power that can carry him at this stage. Pop quiz.

How old is Edson Barboza? Oh, man. I bet he's not as old as it feels. Let's say 34. Billy Quarantillo is 34. Edson Barboza is 37. 37. Boy, let me just say this. 37, and you know this as well as anyone, 37 at 145 pounds. That's a tough place to be.

Now, I think your general point is well taken and again we talked about primes everyone's goes shorter longer I'm gonna guess that here's my read my read is that your analysis is pretty fair that it would be the odds I mentioned them they're very very close

Barboza sitting at plus 155 Quarantillo at minus 180 basically almost the exact same odds in certain ways as the main event. But I think that... I don't need to belabor the point, dude. At 37, that's just... The winning records of guys age 37 and 145 at the Elite is not great.

It's not high. It's just a really really rough place to be so wouldn't i think you're fair i think it's fair wouldn't want to dismiss it but here's the part too right he could beat up corintilla for the first round and then kind of fade a little bit and then the whole fight can change too so like he like this is the thing with vitor after vitor got off trt everyone's like oh he sucks, sort of. He had three minutes of fury. Like Brian Campbell on prom night, he had three minutes of fury he could give you. And then he would fall apart. But look at Vitor's hands in the Weidman fight they came after.

His hands early were still good. It's just he kind of faded pretty quickly. That's a different scenario. Much older fighter. And then there was obviously some chemical issues involved. But I don't know. I wonder if Barboza is really built for the long haul in these fights where you can't get the guy out of there early enough i would love to know what kind of back to the max holloway point is what edson barboza's

motivation is at this point because for me if i was edson barboza i wouldn't be going into this fight with a ton of pressure because win or lose he's not getting back into the title scene um if he has sort of a jim miller mindset to the whole thing i feel like he could stick around a little bit longer but this is a big fight for billy q man like this is this is a chance you you edson barboza still has enough name value and billy q has an exciting style that the ufc favors if ed if billy can win this one we're gonna start talking about what's next form of the division i just considering the fall from grace that alexander hernandez has i still have questions about how far billy q can take this but i'd be very excited to see his name in the mix uh also on this card it's not the best card but it's not a terrible card you've got dustin jacobi

taking on azamat murzakanov that's i guess a fun ish contest someone's getting knocked out someone's probably going to get knocked out i think it's a fair way to put it but what it's more interesting to me is down at 205 and it's not quite a pick them but it's pretty close uh iwan kutailaba minus 125 taking on former heavyweight now 205er tanner bosser one of your canadian brethren what kind of how do i say this what are your expectations for tanner bosser at 205 it's complex because one of the things he had going for him at heavyweight um is that much like the newer heavyweights we see he's very athletic right nimble moves around well it's the sort of heavyweight style that's starting to take over that division and the fact that he couldn't crack

it at two at heavyweight the way guys like tom aspinall. Makes me question how much success he's going to have a weight class down. The power may carry. That'll serve him really well. But he's just going to be fighting guys who are faster, who are more mobile, who have a lot of the same skills or sort of the same athletic benefits that he had. So I'm curious, but I don't have a ton of confidence that Tanner is going to make a very serious run at 205 pounds. It's hard to say.

I think I share some of your skepticism. Only 31 years of age, for what it's worth, and has looked decent, certainly at times. He's, you know, that missing tooth with the beer thing he can do with the beer can. It's pretty amazing. You know, it's all nice. He has a story about having to man when we talked about this um the memory's a little foggy but i think him and his brother were like climbing up the face of a mountain and his brother fell off and was like it was a near

fatal thing and him and his friends have like drag his brother up the side fake cliff of a mountain until they could get to like and rescue. No mobile service. He's got stories for you, man. Pedro Munoz is back on this card against Chris Gutierrez. Chris Gutierrez fresh off of beating Frankie Edgar. I don't know what it did to boost his profile, to be perfectly honest with you, but this is a very tough contest at 135 pounds. Pedro Munoz, let me see how old Pedro is.

Pedro currently sits at uh 36 so also very young yeah uh he's also coming off of he's got three losses in his last four fights the one is against jimmy rivera in 2021 is this the time for chris gutierrez to beat another uh obviously frankie was a legend but let's just say a mainstay of this division yeah i mean uh whatever confidence i'm sort of i lack or the skepticism I have towards Billy beating Edson Barbosa, I have almost no doubt in my mind that this is Chris Gutierrez's time to shine, right? I think it's a really bad matchup for Munoz. He's the shorter guy.

He's got the smaller reach. He couldn't get it done against Frankie Edgar, Jose Aldo, or Dominic Cruz. I'm not convinced that he can withstand Gutierrez's power. Now, Munoz has never been stopped. So you got to give him credit there. But like you said, we're going up in age. That chin is bound to deteriorate at some point. And Gutierrez, I mean, not only does he hit hard, he hits from crazy angles.

That knee knockout of Frankie Edgar was just, well, it was uncomfortable. Watch, let's be honest. That's like the worst way you could send a guy into retirement. Pedro does have a very big, very advanced submission game, I think, compared to Gutierrez. But his takedown defense is like 20%,.55 for 15 minutes. I don't think the wrestling is up to snuff to get gutierrez down and man i i think chris is the bantamweight division is so ridiculously stacked there's no shortage of contenders at the top of the division uh we thought adrian yanez was going

to be the next one to get elevated there i don't think chris gutierrez is too far behind i don't see where does he sit he sits at 13 right now dude that's the 13th rank guy for for comparison that stuff dude 13 at light heavyweight is dustin jacobi 13 at middleweight is brendan allen these are these are fine these are good fighters 13 at welterweight is jorge masvidal you know what i mean like dude 13 is this kid sitting there who is really good that division is just fucking absurd well trained out of mark montoya's factory x dynamic kicking game the one thing the one little x factor for me not that this is a huge liability for chris per se but pedro has sneaky guillotines sneaky guillotines um i wonder if he could get pull him into that

but i think i agree in general if he doesn't get some kind of not hail mary but maybe low percentage like opportunity uh which you know those don't work very well anyway by definition without one of those like oh i can maybe get a guillotine without that i just feel like chris's firepower and setups are just way too dynamic for him at this stage of his career. But we shall see. Anything else? Orlando Venata is back on this card as an underdog.

Jillian Robertson is on this card. Anything else stand out to you? Oh, how about this? Dude, hold on. How am I missing this? Hold on. I got to say this. Thank you.

Hold on. Hold on. Two things I want to point out. Brandon Royville's on this card against Matthias Nicolau. Amazing. We'll talk about that in just a second. But I have to point this out. Clay Guida's on this card against matthias nicolau amazing we'll talk about that just a second but i have to point this out clay guida is on this card against rafa garcia clay guida has 22 losses uh obviously he's a legend in the game please don't misunderstand me but he's 41

he has a record of 38 and 22 also on this card if i may ed fucking herman is on this card dude ed herman was on what season two or no maybe three of the ultimate fighters something like that some absurd thing 42 years of age guys i'm 43 i'm 43 he's 42 uh and by the way has a win and last one was 2020 he didn't fight in 2020 we lost one time to alonzo mennefield which i thought he was going to get dusted and hasn't fought since then he's taking on zach cummings walk me through some of these bouts in your impression what stands out i'm honestly fine with it look if guys want to compete and this is how they want to make their living and what this is this is what they're passionate about far be it for me to tell them otherwise what i think is most important and it's a point i brought up repeatedly throughout the show is what is your primary motivating factor for risking

your physical health inside of a cage fist fighting another person and can it be accomplished clay guida for the most part is fighting relative opposition i think for ed hern herman zach cummings relative opposition what really really frustrates frustrates me is when the UFC pairs one of their aging veterans against a guy who's sort of an unknown prospect, who smokes him, but doesn't really gain the name value because there's no prior momentum behind him, right? beat Anderson Silva. There was so much that made sense in terms of a passing of a torch moment. You have this guy coming up in Izzy who people see as a future world champion. There are so many parallels you can draw to the spider. That fight makes sense

because Israel Adesanya had momentum under his wings, and this was a chance to elevate him in a big spot further. But we see so many times, like I can't remember who it was that Matt Brown fought, where the UFC will just feed one of their aging stars to a guy that nobody knows about.

And you end up just feeling more sad for the veteran than you do excited for the prospect who beat him. And that prospect inevitably loses to someone more challenging who also doesn't have a ton of name value. And it's a moot point. If you're an aging fighter in the UFC, what I would love to see is for you to fight relative opposition or fight someone who you can, who will ultimately benefit from getting that rub. We see it happen so rarely in the UFC. But if Clay is up for the challenge and if Herman is up for the challenge, so be it. Okay, so let's talk about that Brandon Royville fight. He takes on Mateus Nicolaou. So Royville enters this contest.

Let's see. He is 30 years of age. He has a record of 14 and 6 he's coming in off two wins over Rogerio Bontarine that's a split decision then he finished off Matt Schnell in round one with a guillotine that was in 2022 he has not fought since then Mateus Nicolaou is an absolute hammer 19 and 2 record he's 30 years of age and he has let's see one two three four five six wins in a row over chanel devorek elliott cop and on and on from there uh i am looking to see for brandon roival who obviously has a bit of the fans interest and imagination captured who has one of the more fan-friendly styles particularly as a grappler but he almost does it to a fault at times like

he's obviously got great submissions and can chain them together. But sometimes he tries to force that for me against a smooth operator like Mateus Nicolaou. I think Royville can beat him, but it's going to have to make more, I think, you know, uh,

mature adjustments in terms of how he apportions his game, setting things up and getting to the next stage. Just trying to run into these guys. You'll get wins doing that. You will get wins doing that, but you won't get all the wins you could with a more, I think, even tempered style. Yeah. I talked to Brandon Royville. The video should be coming out later today. I mean, maybe, you know, he's just misdirecting people, but if your hope is to see a more sort of mindful, measured approach to that dynamic fight style, I don't think we're going to get it. His quote was that he has mastered chaos.

Is it really chaos if you can master it, right? He actually takes umbrage often with fighters who use a point fighting style. He's like, why are you in here? We're trying to fight so i do think there's a level of maturity that still needs to happen if he really wants to realize his aspirations to win a world championship and it's funny because we have brandon moreno in the uh as the as the champion right now and there was a point where moreno and roival fought and then their careers just branched off in totally different directions right roival suffered a shoulder injury ended up getting TKO'd with one second left in

round one next thing you know Moreno is fighting Davidson Figueiredo and that takes us off for years and years and years as they do their quadrilogy so there's an interesting sort of comeback story here for Roival whose other loss the one he really wants to get back, is against Pantoja, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Royville needs to chill. I'm excited to see what happens, and it's funny you mentioned that he sort of has the fans' imagination, because the UFC hasn't rewarded this. This isn't on the main card.

This isn't even the prelims headliner, and Royville really took umbrage with that. He's like, I have fight of the night in 50 percent of my ufc fights i go out there i'm a soldier i do my best to put on a show for the fans you have uh you know matthias nicolaou four fight win streak in the ufc six in total the winner of this may very well be next in line after moreno and Pantoja sort of seal the deal. Why aren't we putting a little bit more respect on this fight? I feel like there's definitely fights you could have taken off the main card.

And this, I think, definitely deserves to be the prelims headliner over Bill Algeo versus TJ Brown. Yeah, I'm going to guess the flyweight disrespect. You know, I thought we were over it, guys. We just had a quadrilogy. Doesn't doesn't sound like we are had a quadrilogy doesn't doesn't sound like we are does it it doesn't look that way anyway it could just be for other reasons we don't really understand but i agree it's a curious placement just the same all right moving on to

topic number two i want to start with something here we're talking about pfl3 um before we get into this conversation because it's going to be headlined by a very good fight between olivier albin morcia your canadian brethren take it on sh to be headlined by a very good fight between Olivier Aubin-Morcier, your Canadian brethren, taking on Shane Burgos. That's a minus 110 in either direction, a true pick-em. That's a fun fight. But before we get to that, I have to say something. Has PFL lost momentum? Because it feels like they have.

Now, I know they had that signing with Jake Paul, but he is busy doing whatever the fuck he's doing, which is not fighting for them in MMA. He had the fight with, obviously, Tommy Fury, and it didn't go as well. But that's not PFL-related. But he's busy anyway. And we may not get him at all this year. Kayla looks like she might be done with him. She might have a couple more things she has to do contractually.

But it doesn't appear her future is with this company. They did sign Shane Burgos. They've got some other interesting names. But I don't really see a lot of fan enthusiasm for this season. I don't really see them building a lot of momentum. I don't know if anyone watched that Challenger series, and I'm not saying this to bag on them. Dude, MMA is better when the other promotions outside of the UFC

are all hitting, when Bellator's hitting, when PFL is hitting, when one is out there killing it. We want that. But I'd be lying if I said i saw that from pfl right now give me your state of the of the promotion for pfl right now in 2023 you know i think this is sort of hard for fans and for media to parse sometimes because you kind of have to put on your hardcore hat and then sometimes you got to take that off and look at it from uh the the perspective of a fan who has you know a bit more of a just overall general understanding of the sport, but maybe not quite as in tune with the fine details of it.

Because as you were saying that statement, I was going and saying, you know what, I'm actually particularly excited. I feel like PFL is assembling a very interesting roster of free agents from the UFC who aren't over the hill like Shane Burgos. I think that's a massive signing for him. You're seeing comeback stories from UFC vets like Olivier Aubin-Mercier and Clay Collard. You're building some new guys like Haushman Fio, who beat Anthony Pettis and won last year's season. And then you've got one of the guys in the co-main yamato nishikawa amazing fighter from shuto i think in totality they actually have a really interesting blend of fighters on their roster right now but you wouldn't know that if you weren't really in the nitty-gritty of things they need some sort of pull right now

that's gonna draw interest from people beyond those who watch everything with a fine tooth comb losing kayla if that's the case huge hit for him who knows what jake paul's boxing loss is gonna sort of do to his mma aspirations because you know he's lost a lot of steam off that i agree with you there's not one major pull um and they need someone because i think if they have that it'll complete the package because i think there's a one major pull and they need someone because I think if they have that, it'll complete the package. Because I think there's a lot of interesting things just kind of bubbling beneath the surface of PFL right now. Man, if there was the UFC on one side

and then let's just call it the Megatron on the other side and Megatron was PFL-Beltorne 1, that'd be a lot of fun. You could really do something with a roster like that absolutely um i think you know this is a case where at least for me i find pfl's free agency acquisitions a bit more interesting than bellator but bellator has a lot more name value on the top end um if you could just combine those two and then throw in some of the things one championship was doing i mean especially if he wins the trilogy you still have arguably the best fighter on the planet over at one championship with demetrius johnson if those three could start

doing some work together i mean there's no shortage of fights and i would i would put that up against most ufc pay-per-views at this stage dude can you imagine demetrius johnson at 135 versus patricio pitbull that'd be a lot of fun to be a lot of fun but going back to this pfl thing it's just the reason why i'm i express skepticism the way that i do is certainly the casual fan i don't think has nearly enough awareness about them that's one problem but the other problem is like can you really make money and stay in business just doing nights like this? I don't think you can. I think in order to make money to really stay in this business, you probably have to be in pay-per-view or their ratings have to go vastly

through the roof, which means they can sell more ad inventory at a higher price and then justify the costs. Like right now they're just living off venture capital funding and whatever else. They're not really making money. And I'm not sure Bellator is, or one is,

I don't really know, but I for sure PFL is not. So it's more or less long-term. It's going to be pay-per-view or bust. They have to buttress everything else with these nights like this. It's not one or the other. But in the end, it has to lead to that. And I just don't see any meaningful traction.

We'll see what happens with Francis. But then if they sign Francis, who the hell is he going to fight? So it's some problems. But okay, here we are. PFL 3 for the 2023 regular season. This will be at the theater at the Virgin Hotels. By the way, have you been to Vegas? I just got back. It was my

bachelor party on Friday. Oh, where did you stay you fucking degenerate? You probably have all kinds of chlamydia right now crawling over your gross dungarees. Some of the people on that trip probably do let me tell you uh where'd you stay caesars how was caesars i haven't stayed at caesars bro we got a noise complaint at 10 p.m on a saturday night why are you in las vegas if you can't handle a little

bit of sound like pre-midnight on a weekend yeah well what were you guys you know i one time made a noise complaint at three in the afternoon in vegas but it's because the people next door brought a ping pong table into their room and i was like you should reward that kind of fuck no fuck that that's why that's why now when i go i don't stay i don't stay at any hotel that has a casino i don't i just won't do it without a casino in vegas oh yeah vedara has no casino mgm signature has no casino yeah there's a couple of them shocking shock yeah all right but here's the point i want to make it's that the virgin one across the street from virgin hotels is an amazing place to buy marijuana in vegas just shouts to med men no no sponsor they don't sponsor me but uh it's a white castle that's

never open it has like a 0.5 star review dude's a 7-Eleven across the street from that Virgin Hotels. I swear to God, you go in there, you're going to get knifed. You're just going to get knifed. It's the worst place on earth. All right. But this PFL card there is going to be a little bit of fun. Olivia Aubin-Marcier taking on Shane Burgos. What a fun fight.

So Olivia Aubin-Marcier, you know, did okay in UFC, kind of washed out in the end, but wasn't a bad fighter by any stretch. He was a good one. Goes over to PFL, wins the championship last season, and now has to basically defend it against Shane Burgos, who was supposed to fight Marlon Marais, and it fell apart, but here he is finally. The oddsmakers have this one as even.

We know the strengths. Aubin Marcia can strike, but he's also a good wrestler. Shane Burgos is all about these, boy. It's this or bust. He's so fast, too. He's so fast. So give me a sense of what this fight is going to look like. Yeah, to your point, I think it's very much going to look striker versus grappler.

Shane Burgos really has one speed. It's all go, but there's a lot of movement involved. And as a consequence, we don't see a lot of knockouts at the top level. It's actually one of the reasons I and as a consequence, we don't see a lot of knockouts at the top level. It's actually one of the reasons I'm really excited he made this transition. I don't know what his primary incentive was. I'm sure the finances played a big role. This was a great move for Shane Burgos, particularly,

because he left the UFC with consecutive wins over Billy Q. And also, fun fact, right? Has the loss to Edson Barboza recently, the win over Billy Q, all three guys fighting this week. I'm really excited to see what Shane does because I think this is a case where this isn't a demotion for him. I think he's made a lateral movement. He's coming off two wins. I think his skills and power as a striker is going to carry over in ways that maybe it didn't against the top 15 of the UFC. And I think in a couple of years, we could see him back in the UFC with a high profile and a better paycheck.

OAM, looking tremendous. Six straight wins. It's going to be a tough fight. But if Shane Burgos is as good as he seemed to be in the UFC, you know, kind of struggling in the top 10, but a nightmare before that point. I think he could do really well for himself the next couple of years, and he might be one of those guys that PFL really starts to lean on. I think it's a great signing for them. I really like Shane Burgos a lot. He's a good dude.

He's a great fighter. The fans like him. He's exciting. He's talented I think he also brings a real spark of life to this division as well right now that the division's kind of like sad or or whatever but I don't know Shane Burgos is electric how many guys can you say on the PFL roster are electric Aubin Marcier is good he's very he's the champion but he's not electric in the same way that Burgos is.

He might be better, but I just mean Burgos is good for fun. He's just such a reliable guy for delivering both on high-level MMA, usually wins, but also just great, exciting action. That's one of the better signings and more interesting signings I think that they've had in some time. Can I tell you how much of a madman Shane Burgos is? Please. He's a bit of a foodie

right so during training camp he's always watching the food channel on fight week he takes his team to the restaurants that he's been wanting to try he orders and watches them eat and describe it to him wow what the why would you do that fighters are great why would you do that dude that's a that's a metal forge and steel man that's some fortitude right there oh my god that's just torture that's just torture as well i wouldn't even know what the point of that would be except to just hurt yourself my god uh well you know what he's a different breed um the rest of this card's got some interesting names but it's very pfle yes so sadabu c is a good fighter uh he has really proven himself a guy out of sweden and i think he's at extreme couture taking on jara el salawi he's expected to win but

more striker than anything else he's pretty exciting natan schulte taking on stevie ray fun contest stevie ray by the way really kind of just sort of making a name for himself this organization with the with the wins over pettis and the way that he had them. So that's pretty impressive. But Schultz is a tough fucking guy to handle. Haushman Fio is back against Alexander Martinez. Clay Collard is back. How about old Clay Collard, right?

Taking on Yamato Nishikawa. And then Mega Man, Mega Man Karamov is on this card as well, by the way, at a minus 900 favorite favorite he is one of the very best guys on that roster and he's probably going to give old ben eggly or however you pronounce his name the fucking business anything stand out to you about this card i actually really like the nishikawa fight i was kind of doing he was supposed to debut at ufc 280 that's the charles olivera versus machachev fight um there was some sort of contract dispute, I think, regarding his stance with Shudo. It didn't work out. But 10-fight winning streak between 2020 and 2022.

This guy is supremely active. 30 fights despite just debuting in 2016. 80% of his wins by stoppage. It's always interesting seeing how a guy with that sort of output makes the transition to a bigger organization. I'm actually happy to see him in PFL versus UFC because I think it's a little bit more of a sort of a modest step up in competition and one where we can see if that sort of exciting style pays off. Clay Collard we know is a gamer.

Great boxing. Those wins over Anthony Pettis and Jeremy Stephens I think really established him as a PFLer. So, man, I think that could be your fight of the night. I'm looking at his record on PFL. He has a loss to Nuki Narita. This happened in 2018, and it says loss via bleeding. 325 for round two. I haven't seen that contest, but now I have to.

That should be a lot of fun. Let's get to some fight news and announcements if we can. This will be in your neck of the woods, so let's talk about it. I will tell you something. I don't love this fight. I don't love this fight. I don't. I'm not going to sit here and defend this fight. Amanda Nunes taking on Juliana Pena, 3. UFC 289, June 10th, Vancouver.

All right. I don't hate this fight. They could have done Nunes versus Holm based on her last performance, and I wouldn't hate this fight they could have done Nunes versus Holm based on her last performance and I wouldn't have hated it and maybe the fans would have liked that more but I doubt that I'm not saying this is the most exciting fight in the world

but I don't get what's if it's your headliner and you're waiting for UFC to go back to Canada and this is what they bring I get the disappointment but objectively as a fight, I don't get what's so awful about it on the following sense.

Peña has one win. Nunes has another. I think most people think that the Nunes' second win was more indicative of their two levels of ability. But she had to change her stance just to deal with the jab of Peña. You're going to get action. You're probably going to get people getting dropped in this one or choked out like there's gonna be violence through the whole way on this one just by virtue

of how they match up it there are definitely worse fights they could have brought well tell me what is so awful about this fight before i do i want to point to how awful your memory is because mikey just reminded me we were in ve Vegas together last year, dude. Yes, we were. Of course. Yes, we were. How could I fucking forget? Jesus, dude.

Wow. Now that we're in Vegas together, we spent days together. Oh, yeah. I was there for the notorious brew house episode of Morning Club. Oh, right. We had dinner together. Although at that point i was i had a lot going on in my mind you can well imagine i was like wow did my career just go up in flames

but okay no what do you think um hey i told you i told you you guys were also down i told you people are gonna love that episode in a weird way they did but they also hated it too you know what i mean um all right sorry new nez penya 3 yeah i mean as, if you're a Canadian UFC fan, you've come to expect that, like, we talk about how much the UFC charges for tickets because they can. We've come to expect that because we're so deprived of UFC up here that when they come, they're not going to bring their very best. I mean, we're a long ways away removed from GSP versus Jake Shields in Toronto. I do agree, though, um the fight makes sense relatively i think

i would have liked to see the arena aldana fight particularly because mexico is on just such a crazy wave of momentum um it doesn't look like we're getting that moreno fight in mexico soon though if we did maybe circumstances would have been a little bit different the Nunes-Pena fight is fine I think where people may be taking issue with it is that kind of like with Izzy and Pereira in a way it's like when a champion reclaims their title in the immediate rematch and they do so as dominantly as Nunes did over Pena what reason do we have to believe that the third fight is going to be as competitive? It seems like Nunes, when a champion can make the adjustments immediately after losing a fight against an underdog,

I think we kind of have a sense that the champion is the better fighter and that they slipped up. It was either a poor night at the office or they ran into the wrong game plan. But that ability to adjust sort of cements them. Amanda Nunes earned a right to an immediate rematch. I don't know that Julia Pena has earned a right to an immediate rematch. But there's not a lot of matchups you can make. I have a lot of faith in Aldana.

I wouldn't be mad to see her get one more fight before the Nunes one just to really tighten everything. I think the biggest sort of faux pas of all this is it's just not an exciting main event for a pay-per-view, especially if you don't have something big underneath it. If you can buoy that with something really strong like a Gilbert Burns versus Jorge Masvidal fight that's at least going to drum up casual interest, it's great.

But the closest thing we have right now is Wonderboy versus Michel Pereira. So there's just not enough meat to it. Like Nunes versus penya three needs some support and it doesn't have it yet and i think that's a portion of why people are so disappointed with it so there's sort of two questions here one would be who else would you book against amanda you could say aldona but would that really change people's opinions about that as a headliner some i think some but probably not greatly or they could have just had another champion headline but which one would it be like for all the fans complaining what would be the alternative based on who's available who could fit into the calendar i don't know let's see who is available um i mean i guess they could have brought moreno up here but that's not happening

um they could have sterling's i mean i but that's not happening. They could have. Sterling's. I mean, I think Canadian fans would love that. Sterling. Sterling and Cejudo. That's already booked, though, so you can't do that. Volkanovski. I think a lot of things being booked for International Fight Week one month later probably stripped this card.

It hurts. Right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And even with IFW, I don't know what's happening with Jones versus miochich it doesn't seem like right now there's that one really big fight that you would usually top off International Fight week left so I think they've had to draw from a lot of slightly smaller Championship fights that they could make to sort of try and boost things and I think it's going to strip everything around the summer as a consequence all right you mentioned it Steven uh Wonder Boy Thompson thompson taking on michelle pareda also ufc 289 june 10th again

fine fight nothing wrong with the fight fine fight but that card's gonna need some help i agree that like if what you have is a man who is rich julian opinion it's not a whole lot to get excited about but then when you add in the rest of those which these are it's you know what it's a, it's a, it's a fight night with a title fight at the top. It's really what it is. Why did we stop doing that? They used to do title fights for fight nights and it was great. You could, that's so much more. I'm so okay to accept that as a fight night headliner.

Right. Because they're going to charge probably a shit ton at the gate. Whereas if it was a fight night, it'd probably be in a different venue. Maybe a small, maybe it wouldn't be in vancouver necessarily but it might be more accessible i'm guessing it's just the best way to get amanda paid because when they did it for let's say demetrius johnson he wasn't getting pay-per-view points so it just didn't matter her contract might in fact call for it um but it's hard to say uh anyway sorry fun fact michelle perera last time he fought in Vancouver, the last time UFC came to Canada was Vancouver 2019. Gaethje Cerrone, that's the one where he botched his weight terribly, gassed himself dancing to the octagon,

and then lost to local fighter Tristan Connolly, who's not even with the UFC anymore. So this is a bit of a chance for Michelle to right a wrong there, because i think tristan got like both of their fight night checks that night and then go to the strip clubs that you have uh you visited so many times uh how about this ufc 290 international fight week and this fight is not on this card by accident or happenstance bow nickel taking on trayshon gore again july 8th at the t-mobile arena and i think it's a T-Mobile in Las Vegas, Nevada Bo Nickel, Treshawn Gore I like that they're not giving Bo Nickel top rated guys

just yet, I think a semi not a slow roll Shaq, but a semi slow roll is the right call here, this is a good next opponent for him we talk so much about how poor of a job UFC does with managing their prospects, whether they're young prospects or new prospects.

I mean, we're just coming off of the Raul Rosas Jr. fight where, you know, all that steam, all that fan engagement, and it just went plummeting down a hill because they gave him the wrong guy at the wrong time. Bo Nickel told me he expects to be, like, in a position to fight for a title by the end of this year. I don't want to see that. Just give the guy time. Let him work the kinks out. You have such an important prospect on your hands here. There's a long-term investment to be made in Bo Nickel.

This is a perfect matchup for him, all things considered. Let's just take our time, people. Completely agreed. I expect Bo Nickel to look good, but it's piece by piece on this one. How about this one? UFC Fight Night 224. This will be May 20th, so just around the corner, really. Michael Johnson,

who just signed an $8 billion fight deal in terms of the number of fights on it, taking on Carlos Diego Fajera. I love this contest. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy

chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only. And participate in McDonald's in Canada. Do you love it as much as I do? Because here's the thing. Michael Johnson has kind of had a bit of a late rebound-ish more recently. And Diego Fajeda has kind of fallen off after having a previous late rebound, but is still good enough to make this a fun competitive contest.

Yeah, exactly. When I first saw the fight, I was really concerned for Michael Johnson because I have this memory of Carlos Diego Fajira being such a killer at this stage. And then I had to actually go and look at the resume. I'm like, no, we're on a three-fight losing streak. We've kind of fallen off of that. I'm happy with the matchup. Man, Michael Johnson is just one of those guys.

I have such a hard time. He's so much fun to watch when he's on. And you want to see the guy succeed. But it's so hard to get invested in the rise because there's just been so many falls. Like you see the guy that lost four consecutive fights to Clay Guida, Tiago Moises, Stevie Ray and Josh Emmett. And then you tell me that same guy beat Dustin Poirier,

beat Edson Barboza, beat Tony Ferguson. Like it's just been such an unusual up and down that I have a hard time getting invested too much in the comeback story. But I would really love to see it happen. I agree with you. And by the way, some of those wins, like the win over Poirier, he stopped him. I think Barboza stopped him as well, if I'm not mistaken.

He gave Justin Gaethje a run for his money too. He had him hurt bad. So when he's on, well, if I'm not mistaken. He gave Justin Gaethje a run for his money, too. Had him hurt bad. So when he's on, well, he's on. It just seems to be somewhat dependent on the knight and on the opponent. Fellow Canadian, Hakeem Duwadu, taking on Lucas Almeida.

Same card, UFC 289, June 10th. Not a bad fight at all. I don't know where they're going to put it on the card, Shaq, but you can't complain. It's a very, very acceptable fight to put on the card. I don't know where they're going to put it on the card, Shaq, but you can't complain. It's a very, very acceptable fight to put on the card. Yeah, you know, we Canadians are just like grasping at straws for our next guy

and a lot of people thought Hakeem was going to be that guy. It hasn't quite panned out. But I would... He's still very good. He's still very athletic. He's a very good striker. He's had a lot of injuries too i think both a lot of injuries messed up for a long time there and he said that was contributing to the lack of knockouts that people were expecting he's like i was fighting with two

busted shoulders so i don't know what it is with shoulders in mma but continues to uh they get mangled they get mangled trust me uh all right how about this one this one i like the most maybe of all the ones on this one amanda hebas taking on macy barber this will be ufc fight night 227 june 24th uh here's why i love this contest mace so for example let's start with amanda hebas so she loses to marina rodriguez badly back at the uh rematch between poirier and mcgregor on fight island and i was like oh that was really bad. Rebounded against Janji Roba. Lost again to Kaitlyn Shukagan, although it was split,

but then rebounds against Vivian Araujo. Okay? Macy Barber, after losing all the way back two times in a row to Modaferi and Grasso, has had four wins. Split decision, unanimous, unanimous split. She's had a few of these wins, man, that have been by the skin of her teeth. Hibas looks to be a little bit rejuvenated

from the previous loss to Rodriguez. Size this one up for me between Hibas and Barber. Okay, I'm confirming this one's at flyweight, correct? I believe that's right. Let me double check here. It says flyweight, yes flyweight yes yes okay so both actually ranked number 10 amanda and in the strawweight division macy in the um flyweight division i agree with your assessment like macy barber we put a lot of emphasis on her very early and it hasn't quite panned out sort of similar expectations we put

on he boss i think she's been a little more consistent of the two man we see this a lot right with newer divisions particularly in this case with the women's divisions is like there's these dominant forces for such a long time and then you begin to see all the contenders sort of emerge and amalgamate and start giving the champs the run for their money. Flyweight's been the one that's struggled for a long time, and it's really nice to see it getting populated, right? You have Manon Firo, Taylor Santos, Aaron Blanchfield, of course, Hammer of the Month. I would like to see Macy Barber sort of live up to the expectations people had of her,

but why I like this fight the most is there's no bad winner here for the UFC. These are two women who do have a bit of a fan base behind them. They do both have the potential. And naturally, you're about to kill off one of those contenders for the time being. But at least you're going to have the winner be someone who you can slot into a top 10 fight next. And so in that case, it's both compelling from a rankings perspective, skills, and there's something for the winner to take off of this. Almost done here. Arjun Buller taking on Anatoly Malikin in the one heavyweight title unification.

So Malikin, dude, I'll tell you what. I don't know where you're at on Malikin. He might be the most exciting fighter outside of UFC. I mean, that's very debatable, obviously obviously but he's on the short list for me so he was the interim heavyweight champion argent buller is the full heavyweight champion but i think he was having some contract disputes so they they it looks like they got that worked out but malikin also went down to their light heavyweight to be reneer de ritter and take his title from him so he's technically a two-weight champion he looks to be to be the real deal.

Phenomenal takedown defense, crippling punching power, fast as shit. Buller can wrestle, but Malikin, man, that dude, I'm telling you, he is one of the best guys outside of the UFC. If people haven't paid attention, you need to make time for him on July 14th when he tries to take the full title from Arjun Buller. Arjun, my fellow British Columbian. We actually live a couple hours away from each other um yeah i'm i think you're spot on with your assessment arjun obviously a fantastic wrestler bringing that experience with him

from his life before mma the the contract disputes would really concern me like we talked with arnold allen about how the um time off in between fights maybe gave him a chance to sort of work on a lot of things on the back end and i'm sure arjun's been pulling in the work putting in the work i just don't think he's had enough mma experience to be able to take so much time off between fights between contract disputes and whatever's been happening to really make the strides he needs to make in this fight i worry that he's still too one-dimensional and it's gonna cost him in this fight and i don't know what the deal is with one championship but they may just be happy to get the title off of him so that they can have the heavyweight belt contested more

frequently yeah there might be something to that i don't think that's crazy at all uh all right so that oh one more one more if we can i saw that you put this in the chat. Breaking news. Let me pull it up here. This comes to us from our friend Mark Ramondi at ESPN. Brandon Moreno will defend his UFC flight weight title against Alessandre Pantoja at UFC 290 on July 8th in Las Vegas. UFC Chief Business Officer Hunter Campbell confirmed with ESPN. First reported by somebody called Freak MMA 1 on Instagram. So this is to your point.

Again, we're International Fight Week, not right around the corner. They could have put that there. Also, so two things that makes me wonder. A, what do you think about the fight? And B, by putting Moreno versus Pantoja at 290, does that mean that they're punting on Jon Jones versus Stipe? Or are they going to put three title fights because now you've already got uh yeah you're volkanovski now you got moreno pantoja

would they put a third one or are we going to not we're not going to see john jones international fight week okay well shout out to mark ray money of espn uh he actually tweeted about an hour ago quote i've seen several tweets talking about jones versus miochic at ufc 290 in july that's still the fight all parties want next but it won't happen in july and hasn't really been discussed for july in a while much more likely now for the fall so i guess we're not getting it should we be surprised no is anything ever easy when it comes to john jones no and honestly booking steeper miochic hasn't been very successful either, so I'm not quite sure what the holdup is.

If you're telling me we're not going to get it in the summer, we're going to get it in fall, I'm going to predict that we're not going to get it at all. Ooh. Ooh. I mean, it's a bit strong. It's a bit strong. But, like, how long have we been talking about Jones versus Stipe? How many times have fights been pushed back involving these guys before they actually happen?

Like, I just... They needed that fight on International Fight Week, I think, more than they need it any other time of the year. It's just a shame. Listen, I'm a disenfranchised soul. I just want to see cool fights get made. And when they don't, I have to emotionally shelter myself. It's the only way I got through high school. I didn't expect to pass my test.

And so when I did, I'm like, you know what? We're still kicking. Well, that's something. Yeah, I failed grade 12 math. How does that make you feel as a class valedictorian? Say what? You were class valedictorian and you failed? I mean, no, you.

No, no, no, no. My best friend. So there was four of us with a group of friends. One of them was the valedictorian. The second one was the salutatorian. And both of them had the highest SAT score that year. So I had tough competition with my friends that year. My math teacher did write me a glowing reference letter, though. So shout out to Dave who saw something dude this is a true story i don't know if i've ever told this one it's very minor but i just want to tell it so i don't know how it goes anymore but when i was in high school you had to get a lot of people to write you recommendations and one of them was like it was demanded at certain places that your guidance counselor uh write you one and i got i got one from her it was fine and then i read it and uh it said you know luke is dedicated determined and dependable and i was was like, that sounds familiar.

Sure enough, I turn on the evening news. That was Channel 5 in Atlanta, Georgia's evening news. That was their slogan. Channel 5 news, dedicated, determined, and dependable. She just wrote what the news slogan was on my fucking recommendation letter to colleges. I was like, what the fuck lady what is this you know like not even not even given a damn in the end but okay neither here nor there let's talk about the matchup itself moreno versus pantoja moreno has lost twice to him he lost once

on the ultimate fighter via rear naked choke and then they rematched what year was that 2018 and he lost via decision but to your point their careers have gone in somewhat different directions it's not to say that Pantoja didn't have winning ways after that in fact he's only lost I think once after that to Figueiredo in 2022 but obviously it was Moreno who had the rivalry with him and was able to get some other wins and so now they meet back here again it's a little it's not quite like Izzy and Pineda but it just goes to show you guys can lose multiple times to the same guy if they rematch later. It's all about timing.

I would imagine Moreno will be favored to win this one. As he should. I mean, I just think every flyweight in the UFC is breathing a sigh of relief that Figueiredo versus Moreno Ford didn't end in another draw because it's really stifled a lot of solid contenders in this division while these guys just went tit for tat over the course of four years um Pantoja has a lot of reason to be confident I'm sure he's very relieved to finally get this booking and for Moreno look MMA is at its best when you have a combination of stakes, skills, and storytelling. And this is one that you can sell.

For all the disrespect the Flyweights still get, I think they're in a stronger position than they've been in forever. I love that this is on International Fight Week. I hope we still get something with a little bit more name value. Obviously, Volkanovski versus Yair is a tremendous fight, and Volk deserves a really big like for volk i'd be happy for volk if he gets that headlining spot because he deserves it um but in terms of making this a real you know like wrestlemania-esque spectacle i think it would actually behoove both him and moreno and their opponents if we could get something if we're not

getting jones versus tipe i don't know what it be. I just hope we get one big fight to top end all of this because it's going to bring a lot of well-deserved attention to Moreno, to Pantoja, to Yair, and to Volkanovski. Let me ask you a question. How happy would you be if they brought Bilal Mohamed versus Shavkat Rachmanov to Canada? I hate... As a matter of competition, absolutely. Shavkat Rachmaninoff to Canada. I hate, I'm on a,

as a matter of competition, absolutely. I hate that fight because Balal deserves, he does not deserve to be fighting backwards against the guy as difficult as Shavkat. You know, I think we're going to talk about a little, a little later in the show with who is vying for the welterweight title. The only fight I want to see for Balal,

if you're not going to give him the title shot. And like I said earlier, you can make the argument that he hasn't beat a top five guy but the winning streak is there the only person i want to see balal fight other than leon edwards right now is kamar usman or gilbert burns but those are the only two fights i want for balal because he deserves something that's going to guarantee him a title shot okay uh all right well with that him versus shop gots a dope fight it's a great fight it's yeah it does suck for below all right with that in mind let's do now a segment we like to call buy or sell so here's how this is going to go we got five of these uh for you here shock shack calling you shock shack and you're gonna tell me whether you're

gonna buy this or sell this i'll read to you what i'm asking you to buy or sell and then i'll give you what the context is let me know if you're ready more ready than i'll no less ready than i'll be a second from now luke all right here we go buy or sell dustin poirier will fight justin gaethje before August. Here's what Dustin said at the UFC 287 post-fight show. Quote, it seems like the Gaethje fight makes the most sense. We'll see. I think it could happen this summer, but I don't

have an answer for you. I don't know what's next, but it's looking like the Gaethje fight. He's calling for it. His people around him, I saw an interview. They said they don't think I'm going to take it. There's some silly, he wrote, there's some silly goose. The plural of goose is geese. So I'm going to say there. There's some silly. He wrote, there's some silly goose. The plural of goose is geese. So I'm going to say, there are some silly geese, man.

Buy or sell? Before August or not? I passed English class, so I knew that one. Before August, I feel like Justin Gaethje, for as wild as he is, has been more mindful to take time off and let himself heal. So if anything's the holdup, I it might be justin just trying to recover from the fisea fight i'm gonna go yes oh you're gonna buy it okay i want to believe it i want that's a dope fight the winner is primed for a title shot after olivera darush fight makhachev i think

it behooves the ufc to get those things done in a relatively similar time frame. Let's buy it. All right. Number two, buy or sell. Jorge Masvidal will fight again, but it will be only in boxing. Quote from Masvidal in the MMA Hour. He's not going to fight bare knuckle just because of his hands. Your boy has 20 years in the fight game.

My hands have been through everything you can imagine. There's times after fights that it's like my hands are bad with gloves and casts and all that. So I personally couldn't do that. I wouldn't, talk about bare knuckle, I wouldn't do MMA obviously and I always wanted to do boxing fights. But as of right now, I would say no to all of it. If something crazy came about, yeah, I would entertain it. Obviously, first and foremost,

I'd have to get the UFC's permission. They'd have to be the ones to grace me with that because I'm still under contract with him. He will fight again, but only in boxing. Buy or sell? I'm going to say buy, and I'm actually going to say it's in the UFC. I think if Jorge can, again... Wait, wait, wait. But this is only boxing i know boxing you're gonna sell on boxing i'm gonna sell on boxing i just don't know who he's gonna fight

the jake paul thing has obviously taken a dip also i just don't like the idea of guys nate and jorge size fighting jake paul i i just think it's too big of a weight discrepancy there i'm gonna sell him in boxing i think that's right i don't weight discrepancy there. I'm going to sell him in boxing. I think that's right. I don't... But he has his own promotion. I guess he could do something. Is he going to pay himself that way, though? I don't really know.

Can you do that? I don't even know if that's legal in boxing. I think you can do it in MMA. I don't know if you can do it in boxing. Well, if he can do it for his own promotion, I'd buy. Maybe, yeah. But is he going to fight Canelo? Is he going to fight, to your point, Jake Paul? It seems unlikely. It seems unlikely. All right. Three, buy or sell? it for his own promotion i'd buy maybe yeah but like is he gonna fight canelo is he gonna fight

to your point jake paul seems unlikely seems unlikely all right three by herself no doubt about it gilbert burns is next after colby for the welterweight title shot gilbert in the post fight scrum says i think it's almost a done deal that leon and colby are going to be in london uh i want to be the backup no i'm going to i'm not asking that Leon and Colby are going to be in London. I want to be the backup. No, I'm going to. I'm not asking. I'm demanding that I'm going to because whenever they ask me, the UFC calls for an opponent, I always say yes. Now I'm demanding that I'm going to do my training camp for five rounds.

I go to London. I'm next in line for the title, Burns said. Otherwise, let me go do my thing. These guys asking a million and other organizations, you know, that's it. I'm back up for the next title fight, and I'm fighting for the title next. Dana White's saying, I love that. Deal. You've got a deal.

Do you think, though, that that actually means that Gilbert gets the winner of Edwards-Covington by herself? Pop off, Gilbert Burns. I love to see a nice guy stand up for himself a little bit. I'm going to say bye on the condition that he does actually fill in his backup, makes the weight on fight night, and doesn't get the fight, because it's the reason Colby Covington, at least the Dana White has publicly stated, is getting the title shot, because he was willing to go

through that weight cut for a fight he never got on Leon Edwards' Kamar Usman 2. We've seen him reward Michael Chandler for being the fill-in for, I think it was, the Habib Gaethje fight Dana seems to like it when a fighter is willing to go through all of that just to not even be guaranteed a fight um and it also sort of ties that fighter into the fight week promotion a

little bit so if Gilbert actually serves as fill-in yes bye he's gonna get the next title shot all right so how about this one uh i'm gonna skip one and then come back to another one how about this one buy or sell is the israel adesanya is a top five all-time fighter here is matt brown talking to mma fighting he says quote if we want to compare with other goats that that we always talk about gsp had a very unexciting career as a champion we simply put him up there for his wins his amount of wins and not losing rounds this with other goats that we always talk about. GSP had a very unexciting career as a champion. We simply put him up there for his wins, his amount of wins and not losing rounds.

This fight just hit me in a different way. Maybe I'm a little bit biased right now because it just happened this weekend and I'm still a little bit high from it. It definitely gave me a buzz watching that. And Izzy, just the way he did it, I think that's an extremely special person to be able to do that. He thinks he's a top five all time, buy or sell. Izzy is an extremely special person to be able to do that he thinks he's a top five all time by or sell

is he is an extremely special person that's a sell i i don't think the resume is quite there yet top 10 i'd be willing to have that conversation but if i'm just looking at like topology's greatest mma fighters of all time gsp john jones demetrius Johnson Anderson Silva Izzy's close because from there on you got Habib Jose Fedor DC stipe volkanovski I'd be willing to have the conversation about top 10 but my issue is Izzy hasn't had the same sustained amount of success he fell short in his move up to light heavyweight against Jan Blachowicz he He lost to Alex Pereira. The other guys that we think of as the top five have record-setting reigns.

Demetrius Johnson still holds the record for most successful and most consecutive UFC title defenses, regardless of weight class. You have guys who've sustained their success against the very best, almost never come short. Izzy's just had a couple of hiccups he can

definitely be top 10 but i think right now i'd almost put i probably put volkanovski ahead of izzy um so yeah i i think top five is a bit of a stretch i'm gonna sell that one it might be a bit of a stretch but i don't think it's right now but like i gotta tell you man i don't know how i haven't had a chance to ask you about it that's got to be one of the most special wins i've ever seen in mma you know it's one thing to beat a guy who beat you before in this case you know three times twice via stoppage but then to put yourself in the line of fire the way he did to lose time recapture which by itself is hard to do like every way that fight was supposed to go was probably going to lead to Izzy losing. And he found the one way to just change the course of history,

to beat the odds, to truly defy them, and to not just win, but to win so matter-of-factly. It's one of the more iconic, historic, and special wins. Maybe by itself and even with the rest of the resume, it doesn't put him top five, certainly not yet. But I got to tell you, man, man that is where do you rank that into like when i when i think of triumphant moments in mma just think about that for just a moment triumphant moments one of one one of them that stands out has got to be connor beating eddie alvarez right becoming the first ever two-weight world champ

dude he just couldn't be beaten that night he was not gonna fucking lose that night maybe this one didn't quite feel like that but to just defy as i indicated to defy all of the pressure all of the odds put himself in the line of fire in order to get the win man so special where do you rank it certainly it's up there it's again i was away from my bachelor party and so i watched it back i feel like that always sort of takes you out of the moment a little it does yeah experiencing something in real time what actually stand stood out to me the most was not the incredible post-fight speech or him bullying alex's son it was after knocking out alex that little bow and arrow sequence he kind of fired two imaginary arrows at alex and the third one, he held on to the draw.

And that release was so cathartic. That was the moment where you could really see how much it meant for him to get this back, to cope with all the losses, to all the stigma around where his future is going. To succeed in that way is truly remarkable. And it's something that Brandon Wise, our editor over at CBS Sports, sort of was explaining to someone on the staff about why we love combat sports, because at the end of the day, it's a battle of wills between two people. For all the training and preparation, all the coaching, at the end of the day, it's two people who go in there and have to execute at the highest level

and put all of their heart and spirit in there with their technique. And that's what Izzy did. Supremely wise, supremely technical, but you do not get there unless you have the determination and an indomitable will to make it happen. I certainly think that goes down as one of the greatest examples of triumph and overcoming. And you can make the argument that, hey, Alex deserves a rematch, or I disagree just because I think we do have to sort of isolate MMA versus kickboxing. You can make the argument that Alex has, I mean, he does have three wins over Izzy, but in that moment, in that encapsulated space, the way he was able to overcome adversity and the speech afterwards,

just chef's kiss. Izzy, all credit, that's an iconic moment. It really was. All overcome adversity and the speech afterwards, just chef's kiss. Izzy, all credit. That's an iconic moment. It really was. All right. Last but not least, buy or sell. Jake Paul will find a way to fight Ali, Muhammad Ali's grandchildren. Here we go.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let me just read it out. In boxing, here's what he wanted to do. He wanted to fight Nico Ali Walsh, the boxer.

He says, this is Nico Ali Walsh talking. I've been asked a few times. I would say that for me personally, that's not something I'm interested in. I want to make a career for myself. I want to continue my grandfather's legacy and carve out my own path as well. I feel like no disrespect to him,

but once you fight someone in that category, I think like YouTuber thing, you often get categorized as that type of fighter. And then Biagio Ali Walsh, who is the PFL amateur, Nico fights at 162 and I fight at 155. I don't have a problem with Jake, but he should fight someone his own size. I don't know why he is trying to fight people smaller than him.

He fought at cruiserweight in boxing, so fight at the same weight in MMA. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. It's the exact reason I'm so vehemently against a Nate Diaz-Jake Paul fight. Like, certainly I want Nate Diaz to get that payday, but the size discrepancy, the damage that Nate's taken, it's just too wide. Sell this. I think Jake Paul, I mean, listen, he makes a lot, a lot more money than I do. Far be it for me to give him business advice, but I think the sort of web traffic and pay-per-view by success of Jake

Paul versus Tommy Fury over like the Anderson Silva fight and the second Tyron Woodley fight, what I think it shows is it's a point you've made often that it seems like the people who tune into this are more MMA fans than boxing fans, but I think the people that are tuning in the most aren't really big fans of either. It the internet crowd so if jake paul wants to make a big payday and make the biggest fight possible you go after the ksis i mean i don't i don't know that you're aware of this but there was something called um mogul chess boxing that happened in december it's one round of chess followed by one round of boxing and the fight ends either when you get checkmate or someone resigns or you knock your opponent out.

That thing had 10,000 fans in attendance, 500,000 people watching the live stream, and 3.7 million viewers to date from December till now. That's sad. Right? That's sad. Are you good at chess? Could you do this? I'm okay in chess. At 43, I'm going to be terrible at chess boxing.

Let me assure you. And I don't want that kind of pressure when I play chess to do it either. Well, that's the market. Jake, sell, sell. Go make your money with KSI. I think that's probably right. Well, that is it, my friend, for us today. We got the tech difficulties worked out.

How about that? Look at that. Made it work. That's the true underdog story. Forget Izzy. Yeah forget it yeah that's right you know what triumphant moment right there in vancouver canada getting through one more time folks so tell us what you have coming up like what what you mentioned you have a roival interview in the cooker what else do you have in the cooker like and how do folks get a hold of it yeah uh shack mma is the place to go for all the mma content on youtube that's shack with a k if you're into pro wrestling, I know most of you are not Shaq Wrestling is there as well

Interviews with WWE superstars, AEW guys What do I have in the docket? Well, we have Bellator coming up next week So you can bet there's going to be a lot of content there Great doubleheader You have the Grand Prix Bantamweight Finals Stotts vs. Mix You have Liz Karmush who's

just made a tremendous career for herself as bellator champ after a very underappreciated run in the ufc i think beyond that guys just stay tuned look i'm always hustling i'm always grinding we had jorge masvidal last week it might be fun to go back and watch that and sort of see how a statement sort of played out to the reality of the situation just subscribe best thing you can do hit that notification bell and it's shack fu on youtube on it on twitter shak underscore fu i will spam you with my content there as well and luke i want to thank you and brian role models both in terms of how to approach this journalism career as well as how to not abuse my body with vapes and gas station hot dogs well uh you know we are the worst possible guys you could listen to on that account uh

also don't text me to retweet your shit that's the thing i don't care i've done it twice luke i've done it twice i'm just teasing i'm just teasing honestly it's it's a very effective way to get things to to to get people to do that for you. It's just so funny. I love making fun of it, but I hope you know I don't actually mind it at all. Let me tell everyone. Luke has never once told me this in privately. He never even texted me back to say don't do this. He just uses it to shit on me on camera. That's the only way it's fun.

It's not fun if I'm like, I don't appreciate this on text. I'm not doing that. I'm going to tear you up on air. Well, you did a great job today. Thanks for coming through. Congratulations on your bachelor party when are you getting married by the way uh summer this summer wow in canada are you gonna have in the half years yeah we're doing in vancouver okay that should be a lot of fun uh well thank you so much for joining me oh one more one more reminder if you want showtime you can get it showtime.com you get a 30-day free

trial if you'd like it you can keep it of Showtime.com. You get a 30-day free trial. If you'd like it, you can keep it. If not, feel free to bounce. That's entirely up to you. And then don't forget, you can go to SportsPodcastGroup.com, and you can vote for Old MK for Best Combat Sports Podcast. Do that now. You can go here, or... go are we back luke just froze guys vote for them vote for them yeah i mean it might be i get to tell people i'm on an award-winning podcast so that's right

that's right cloud you're moonlighting now that bc is gone all right shack thank you so much thanks to uh showtime thanks to cbs sports mike. Mikey Morms on the ones and twos. Thank you to everyone who watched. We appreciate it. We're out. By the way, a John Anik room service diaries hits the YouTubes right here. YouTube.com slash Morning Combat on Friday. So

Friday, a sit down with the legendary John Anik. You are not going to want to miss that one. It's really good. So until then, thank you so much for watching and may all of your gains be loyal.