MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 UFC: Ketlen Vieira vs. Miesha Tate Results | UFC Vegas 43 Post-Fight Show

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

Luke Thomas is here with an instant reaction to UFC Vegas 43. At UFC Vegas 43, bantamweights Ketlen Vieira and Miesha Tate battle in the main event while welterweights Sean Brady and Michael Chiesa face off in the co main. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMimo eclipse rise visa card paying your bills could sound like this earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month rise to rewards with the bimo eclipse rise visa card terms and conditions apply all right hi everybody it is the 20th of November 2021, and this is the Morning Combat UFC Vegas 43 post-fight show. My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of your hosting duo for Morning Combat, and I'll be with you today for about 20, maybe 30 minutes.

We usually go for an hour on the pay-per-views. There's not enough for us to get to that kind of length today, but we will do about 20 to 30 minutes talking about the main and co-main and perhaps a couple of other small items. First things first, if you're watching this now and you haven't already done so, please hit the thumbs up button. We appreciate it. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button. We also appreciate that as well. So one last warning. I can't believe I have to say this, but I do because people lose their minds. Spoiler alert if you don't want any results. Now is your time to turn this off or hit pause or whatever it is you want to do. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

All right, let's get this party. Oops, let me switch back over. Let's get this party started now. All right, and there we are. Let me turn the subscribe button off. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Let me pull up the results if I can. And we will get this going.

Excuse me, I'm going to close this. All right. All right. So let's talk about it. UFC Fight Night, Vieira versus Tate, UFC Fight Night, Vegas 43, UFC Fight Night, whatever you want to call it, whatever number it is. That event is now in the books. Of course, it took place at the Apex facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. The headlining bout was a women's bantamweight contest between Ketlyn Vieira and Misha Tate. The results of that contest are as follows. Let's see. A unanimous decision win for Ketlyn Vieira. She wins 48-47, 48-47, and 49-46. A couple of notes about this.

I don't often do it. Sometimes I do it, or sometimes I don't watch with the commentary on for the first time, but then I'll watch it on subsequent viewings, the commentary I'll hear. This time I listened to the commentary live as the event went on, and I noticed there was a lot of consternation about Daniel Cormier. Well, one suggesting that Ketlin Vieira could and should do more. Perhaps I think that is less controversial. But I think he was...

Actually, let me back up a step. The read I have on what people were saying on Twitter is that people were a little bit upset that he was suggesting the bout was being a little bit more competitive than it was. It's probably a fair criticism. You know, whether these things are intentional bias or not, I think is a very almost unknowable thing to a degree. I don't really think that he was favoring, you know, Tate for some kind of petty grievance or because he likes her more or something. But that doesn't mean he wasn't necessarily overly estimating how well she was doing. In fact, if you looked at her face, and again, you want to be real careful about stuff like this,

but if there are other factors that also tell you somebody lost, and then on top of it, you can see a pretty clear disparity in visible damage between the two, right? You can usually side with the person who has less visible damage as the one who did better. Ketlyn Vieira, certainly like she had been in a fist fight, I suppose, certainly a longer one, but Misha Tate's face was a mess. She got busted up real bad. Her nose was busted up. It was bleeding everywhere, and Ketlyn Vieira was throwing from the first to the fifth, a bit of a steady jab. And it almost just like turned the entire face of Misha Tate red. And her left cheek looked to be swollen. Maybe she has a fracture on her cheekbone. It's hard to say.

One thing that also deserves to be noted before we look at any of the X's and O's and the results of everything you see here. Dude, Misha Tate is tough as shit, man. That's a tough fighter, folks. I mean, you go back and look at her fight with Kat Zingano, and Kat was like really a force to be reckoned with in that division. And Misha Tate absolutely absorbed every possible punch, strike, kick, knee that Kat had to offer and withstood the overwhelming majority of it. I mean, the ref had to kind of save her, but she was, you know, she didn't quit out there for sure. Other fights, certainly she's had to be patient, even though there wasn't necessarily a lot of damage like the Holly Holm fight. In this fight, she had to be both patient and she had to wear a

lot of damage to get to where she ultimately ended up. But dude, Misha Tate is fucking tough. That's a tough lady, folks. Wow. She really, you know, it's one thing to say like it's hard to rock her, right? Like her chin is good. It's another to be like once someone begins to dump that level of punishment on you, especially if it might interfere with your vision or something else, broken nose, hard to breathe, whatever it may be.

She just doesn't lose composure. You know, she didn't necessarily get to overcome the things that were holding her back by the end of the round or the end of the fight, but she never, it never felt like the punishment really deterred her out of what she was capable of. It always seems like the punishment is almost like an afterthought. Like she's willing to just absorb it all in the course of, you know, that amount of damage is just utterly ordinary, totally necessary. All right. So let's talk about this fight here a little bit. How did it go? Again, to the point that people were raising about some of Cormier's commentary and the objections therein, did I feel like the commentary sided with Misha more than normal?

Yeah, maybe a little bit. Again, I don't think any sort of nefarious plot or anything, but they definitely were focusing on that. It could be because that's where their minds were. It could be because that's a lot of what the UFC, for the English-speaking audiences anyway, that's a lot of what the UFC marketing around this fight was. Like, hey, Misha Tate 2.0, and she's back. And of course, she had the Renault fight since her return, but this was really fighting another top contender. Marion Renault literally retired at the end of the bout with Misha Tate, and it was planned all along. We kind of knew the whole story there. Or maybe it wasn't a Tate fight, it was some fight.

But Marion Renault is now retired. You know, Ketlin Vieira is not that. Ketlin Vieira has tremendous grappling. This was her most high-profile bout to date, especially given the card was smaller, but it was a main event against a former champion. There was certainly a lot of high-profile that had gone to that. So how did the fight play out? There was hardly any grappling.

Misha Tate was credited with one takedown. I'm not sure what round it was. Was it the third? Let's see. What round did she get the takedown in? It was in the... Oh, no, this is the fifth. Was it the fifth where she was able to nearly get her back? I can't quite remember off the top of my head,

but she got one out of five takedowns. She whiffed in the third. Oh, they haven't finished updating their stats. That's why. I'm looking at the wrong one. Excuse me. Now I have it. Sorry.

There we go. The takedown came in the fourth. That's right. When she nearly got the back in the process, but even Ketlin Vieira was still able to post a hand back to the fence and stand eventually. So the takedown counted. But, you know, obviously related to the Colby and Usman controversy from UFC 268. But the real story of the fight is that here's what happened at first.

As long as Misha Tate was outside, or I should say at the end of the strikes coming from Ketlin Vieira, typically from far away, the fight wasn't competitive even at all. There was a point eventually towards the end of the first and certainly into the second where what you saw was Misha Tate get inside of boxing range. Because what happened in the first two, sort of three rounds was that Ketlin Vieira was, again, doing a really good job of being the longer fighter in the striking exchanges, so that was really beneficial for her.

A great jab, as I mentioned. DC had noted a good uppercut, left hook, I think it was right hook, maybe combo, right? No, left hook, excuse me, because I think she was self-orthodox. So there was a couple of sort of noteworthy things she was doing along the way, but the real story was, again, by the second round, what you noticed was that Tate was able to lower her level, punch to the body, overhand right.

And then she got into punching reigns. And once the range was roughly equivalent for them, where they were both able to land standing in front of each other. Maybe one had a slightly better reach or opportunity given the distance between them, but they were both inside what they call mid-range, boxing range. The fight was pretty even there on the feet. Ketlyn Vieira was doing overall better in the totality of the round, but in those little moments, Ketlyn Vieira had some problems.

Why? Because both Tate and Vieira kind of keep their head a bit on a up and down. And so there might be some leaning, there's a little bit of slipping, but it's largely blocking or just absorbing what's coming their way. And what you saw was that once Tate got into the boxing mid-range, there was just a lot of that going back and forth. There wasn't a hugely noticeable difference between them. But the key adjustment, it looked like to me, was that Vieira recognized that she couldn't just maintain this pocket presence with Tate. She was giving her essentially what she was looking for.

And so she might throw a counter-strike, Kitland-Vieira, as Tate comes in. But after the counter-strike or the counter-combo, then she was exiting. It was strike and move or just get out of the way sometimes to begin with so that there wasn't this oh now you've just changed the terms of how we're striking I'll just fight on your terms now it was here she comes in pop pop exit and then once she did that Tate couldn't really get a whole lot going behind it now she did sometimes land uh making and closing the distance, even up into the fourth and fifth rounds. You did actually see a little bit of that. She was able to

have some success with that throughout the course of the rounds. I mean, look at some of these numbers. Let me refresh it one more time to get the most accurate, but this is what they've got right now from Fight Metric. They've got, you know, pretty close. Misha Tate landing technically more. 122 of 276 significant strikes, attempted 302 in total. And for Ketlyn Vieira, 113 of 263 strikes, 313 attempted in total. By the way, now that they counted the fifth round, Tate was one for six on takedowns, not one for five. So that put her successful percentage at 16%.

She was awarded overall, through the totality of five rounds, two minutes and 52 seconds of control time. But that would include any time on a superior grappling position on the floor. And then pressing her to the fence for any kind of extended period of time as well. So you get the idea. Let's look at the targeting here. This will usually tell you a lot. Ketlin Vieira, yeah, this is definitely the story of the fight. Ketlin Vieira, 84% of her strikes were targeted to the head,

just 12% to the body, just 3% to the leg. Ketlin Vieira did not want to get taken down. And Andre Pettiniris out of Nova Uniao in her ear between rounds telling her, do not go for takedowns. Fuck that. Like, whatever you do, do not do that. And you saw that she was largely, for the most part, pretty compliant in carrying out that message. A couple of, maybe she only attempted one, I think.

Yeah, she attempted one. So one only attempted one, I think. Yeah, she attempted one. So one takedown attempt, notwithstanding, she was listening pretty well. Tate, this also makes a lot of sense. Leg kicks, 8%. She was either too far away to throw a leg kick. She didn't want to throw them. She did have one linear attack right up the middle of the front kick, the toes right to the chin. That was nice for Misha Tate, either in the first or second round. Again, because the linear attacks were there to be had, especially in the kickboxing range for someone like Tate who was sitting on far on the outside. But you know, Ketlin Vieira's head was right there, right in the center line. But this was the story. Targeting for Misha Tate, 42% to the head. To the extent she could find it, she was looking for it,

49% to the body. She was using a lowered level. There's a couple things she was doing with her stance. I'd love to talk to her about it because I didn't quite understand. She started out like this. Now, high hands can be distracting in certain ways when you do this, but I'm not entirely certain what she was looking for. She eventually let that go and had her hands in a more natural position, but then she had a really lower level, which that to me made all the sense in the world. Because the parts of the fight where she had the most success from what I could tell on initial viewing, and I'll have to go back and double check to really get a better sense of things, but upon initial viewing, it looked to me like it was a lowered level, some kind of feint, I want to come back to that, body strike

overhand to close the distance, and then it would usually be from whatever from there. But she was forced to reset a lot towards the end of that fight or middle end of that fight. As Vieira realized, if I just stand here and exchange, we're just, you know, it's just your coin flipping at that point. Let's stop doing that. So we counter and then exit. And once she did that, you had these constant reset moments.

And so if there's a constant reset moment, Tate had to go back to the body to bring the hands down to then come over the top, or at least faint a level change or whatever she was going to do. So the numbers tell the story of what they were looking for. The numbers tell the story of what obviously you saw being successful there. The question you have to ask yourself with a fight like this is, you know, I'll come back to that. I was going to ask about the Amanda Nunes factor. I want to come back to that in just a second. Let me say this first, actually.

Volume actually went up over the course of the fight. Ketlin Vieira, 14 strikes she landed in the first, 13 for Misha Tate. By the end of the fifth, 30 landed for Ketlin Vieira, 13 for Misha Tate. By the end of the fifth, 30 landed for Ketlyn Vieira, 33 for Misha Tate. So they got a lot more comfortable with the fight and the ranges they're in. 29 strikes for Ketlyn Vieira in the second, just 20, and then 20 in the third and fourth. It bumped it up to 30 for Misha Tate. 13, 21, 24, 31, 33. Her numbers went up literally over every round. But it just seemed to me like the jab of Kit Lanvier was having a huge effect. She seemed to be the more

powerful puncher of the two, although Tate whipped her head around a couple of times. But in general, just more consistent, it felt like, with bread and butter kind of strikes, better positioning for the most part, and just doing more effective work to the other person like always again the the ability of kitlin viera to make this distance closing perilous situation a constant challenge that tate had to overcome all the time in these fights. She could never just find it and stay there as the fight wore on. It was critical to ultimately the damage that you saw there. Now, the fainting was something I noticed from Tate. At the first two rounds, I didn't see hardly any fainting from Misha Tate. Now, I don't just mean in the striking department. I mean,

even with the wrestling. I guess some of the level changes were there, but what I noticed was there wasn't a lot of fainting from Misha Tate. Now, as the fight wore on, actually, there got to be more. In the first part of the fight, I didn't see a ton of fainting, either level changing or foot fainting or shoulder fainting or hip fainting, any of those kinds of faints. And again, you might be asking, what's the point of that? Dude, like, if you put your opponent in a position where they have to think about what you're doing with the feint, that opens up everything you can build behind it. You know, to me, in general, your better fighters are going to be the ones that are better feinters and more active feinters.

Again, there's going to be exceptions here or there, but that tends to be the bit of the rule. I noticed that a lot of her feints were very exaggerated feints, like where you're whipping your head and shoulders way over. And there's times where she was doing it, it almost looked like she was faking kind of like an overhand or a level change, and then trying to twist back into it the other way. But Ketlin Vieira was long gone by then. The feints didn't have a ton of success. What had the most amount of success was changing the levels, going low and then coming over the top. That was a consistently pretty successful

thing for her, but in the end, there just wasn't enough meaningful volume from her in that way. And so, Ketlyn Vieira, I think through having, by the way, noticeable speed difference between the two. So she could let her hands go, I think, in greater rapid succession and more nimbly. She seemed like she was just a little bit quicker kind of everywhere. And Tate was kind of behind the eight ball basically for most of the fight as a consequence. You know, it ended up being a cumulatively quite a damaging fight, but it wasn't like each round was some kind of terrible beating for Tate. Most of the rounds were pretty competitive. Most of the rounds for them were pretty close. I think I had tweeted, not that I agreed exactly that Tate had done enough to win when the fight was over, but some of the rounds

were close, and some of the judging tonight, man, like when doing a round is like, you know, it's hard to tell exactly who won, or you could understand why one person saw it one way and a different person saw it a different way. You just never know with these judges sometimes. So it was good to see that there was one 49-46 for Vieira. I think that's a defensible scorecard. 49-46 is not decided at the end, right? The judges, all three of them are required to turn in the score for each round at the end of each round. So the round's over, they write 10-9 for whoever, and then they hand it to the scorekeeper and it's done. They don't get to go back and change it. It's locked in. That's there. So when you see a 49-46, people want to say, oh, that

doesn't show what Misha Tate may have done, which is entirely fair to bring up, but it doesn't necessarily, that score is not designed to do that. The score is just designed to say who won each round, even if each round was at times quite close. Some of the offense, a little bit ambiguous. There's a lot of times you heard the commentary team talk about it where they were just trade like each one would land a pretty heavy shot it's just that sant or excuse santos what am i saying viera would land those and then also the busier work in between them like tate had punctuated moments of offense right sometimes big ones like the front kick up the middle.

But it was, Vieira had basically, basically just as many of those plus all of this other work on top of it. And that ended up making all of the difference. A nice takedown attempt from Tate and getting it in the fourth round and then finding her way to the back, trying to take the back like she did Holly Holm. But Ketlyn Vieira's takedown defense and her positional awareness just too much. The fence was an ally for her in that particular scenario, and she was able to stand and create separation. So certainly a spirited effort there to get the fight to the floor. But Vieira's takedown defense is phenomenal. Generally was sturdy in this one.

And you saw, like, even though the takedown counted, obviously given some of the controversy around the way a fight metric evaluates those, to what end did it matter in this particular case? Really not at all. It didn't give her much of an edge. But for a moment, put, you know, Vieira on the back foot, I suppose, a little bit during the course of that fight, or that exchange anyway, but not enough to really do a whole hell of a lot. So Ketlin Vieira, let me pull up the rankings if I may. Let's look at these here.

All right, so Ketlin Vieira today. Now, this result will not factor in yet to these rankings. These rankings, excuse me, but this ranking. But at bantamweight, Kittlin Vieira is currently sitting at 7. Misha Tate was at 8. So technically, it's hard to know exactly how many spots, if at all, Vieira moves. She might move one or two. Kunitskaya has a win over Vieira, although it was somewhat controversial, and Kunitskaya is sitting at six. So it's hard to know if Vieira is really going to move all that much, but I think it does sort of

point out that you beat a name like Misha Tate that can only be good for your career. We'll see what ends up happening there. Two things more, I think, to consider about this contest. First, did you see a fighter in there tonight that could beat Amanda Nunes? In many ways, that's not really a fair question to ask. For starters, this wasn't like a title eliminator. We're obviously looking for fresh contenders all the time, but this wasn't a title eliminator. I think even if people, even if Ketlin Vieira had gone in there and just blown the doors off of Misha Tate, I think people would have rightly asked, hey, you probably need one, maybe even two more before you're ready

for a title shot with Amanda, right? Seems only fair. The other part is this fight wasn't the kind of challenge that told you where Ketlin Vieira could be dangerous against Amanda Nunes, right? What I mean to say is, you know, if Ketlin Vieira and her team are smart, and they are, they're probably not planning on doing a whole lot of striking with Amanda Nunes if that opportunity ever arises. Some is inevitable, some is important, and I think Kitland Vieira showed she has abilities in that way. But if she was to fight Amanda Nunes, my hunch is that she's going to be looking for the takedown pretty overwhelmingly because she's got a great ground game. She has a good wrestling game. I think you saw some of that spots. This fight, you didn't get to see really

the bigger strengths in the overall arsenal that Kitland Vieira has. In terms of her striking itself, again, I thought some of it looked pretty good. The jab looked pretty good. The nimbleness of her combination work, her hand speed looked good. Footwork was moving to a degree, but the defense was not especially great and you have to imagine a precise, thoughtful striker who sets traps in the way that Amanda Nunes does would have probably a great degree of success on the feet

opposite a striker that way even if she might get touched up a few times along the way. So when I ask, did you see a fighter there who could beat Amanda Nunes? Not tonight, but that doesn't really mean we can affirmatively conclude Ketlyn Vieira will never get an opportunity, never will deserve one, and never will win even if she does. That would be very much unfair, and I'm not making that claim.

Even if you can grant tonight wasn't the best showcase for that. The other part is where Misha Tate goes from here. Because I thought she looked a little bit rusty early in her return fight. But ultimately looked pretty great. In this fight, it's interesting, right? She actually looked better to me as a striker than she did in her initial UFC run. The problem she might be up against... And by the way, we don't know if that

was like the full demonstration of what she has, even if you look better than you did four years ago, which even with time off, that shouldn't be like completely surprising. Even with that time off, it looked to me like the game had caught up in a dramatic way. I don't think Tate was ever like the bleeding edge of the very best strikers that Bantamweight had to offer, but she had some utility there. She could do some decent work with it when she needed to. It was not her greatest strength, but hardly some kind of super limiting weakness. And in many ways that really hasn't changed, except she's gotten better. Clearly like the choices she was making as the fight went on got much smarter, even as Vieira was making adjustments. The issue for me was that, I'm not going to say is it too late, but rather you just have to ask how much of what she demonstrated tonight was still just part of a work in progress towards a much more complete ultimate goal? Or is that even with all those

improvements, and you cannot take those away from her, is it the case with all those improvements that that's going to be enough given the modern state of the women's bantamweight division? And we're going to wrestle with those questions for some time, but I do think you can probably conclude this affirmatively. Maybe not this. I don't think you conclude that. I would say you should definitely not deny the improvements that Tate showed. I thought they were meaningful and important and will probably matter, if not for winning tonight, in the future. For sure, I do think that.

But I don't think it's necessarily altogether unfair to question if... Stop sitting on your Aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now, you can save up to 25% in Aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at AirCanada.com. Conditions apply. Whether you own a bustling hair salon,

a painting company that just landed a big job, or the hottest new bakery in town, you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay for what you need. Get a quote in minutes from TD Insurance today. only pay for what you need. Get a quote in minutes from TD Insurance today. TD, ready for you. There's just too much of a distance to overcome at this point, given the improved state of the division. Could be the case, like who's ahead of her in line? Holly Holm, Jermaine Durandamy, Irene Aldana, Juliana Pena, Aspen Ladd, Yana Kunitskaya.

Now you might be saying, Tate's competitive with a lot of them. I'd agree. And again, two fights back after four years, how representative is that? It could be fully representative. It could be, you know, not so. I would say after three, four fights, though, given that Tate is a senior level fighter, right? Like, what is she, 34 roughly years of age? Previous champion.

Like, she's done. Dude, she fought in fucking hook and shoot. I mean, hook and shoot was like the original, this isn't quite right, but for women's MMA, it was almost like the original Invicta. It wasn't, not in that way, but like the people giving,

the people who were taking care of women's MMA before people were taking care of it, hook and shoot. Misha T care of it, hook and shoot. Misha Tate fought in fucking hook and shoot, you know? So she's a senior level fighter. She is pretty advanced. Whatever progress she might make at 34 is going to be minimal. But the big caveat there is she had so much time off that there actually is opportunity for real growth.

In other words, if she had never taken time off and you saw wherever she was at this point, any kind of improvement in terms of overall skill set is going to be quite difficult, right? The way I try to explain it is, if you've never lifted weights, you can actually make enormous gains in strength over time. But if you're a senior level lifter, you're going to be pretty close to your genetic peak.

Good programming and better training methods and diet and sleep and everything else, you're going to be pretty close to your genetic peak. Good programming and better training methods and diet and sleep and everything else, that can get you obviously further than anything else, absent anabolic steroids. But you know, sort of naturally speaking, it can get you as far as you can go. But it's going to be really hard to make progress if you've been lifting weights for 20 years. If you've been lifting weights for 20 minutes, man, give it time. You can make an enormous amount of gains. So what I'm trying to point out is from an age standpoint and an overall experience standpoint, Misha Tate is a senior level fighter, but she had four years off. And so

you wonder how much could be gained given that large gap. But a nice win for Ketlin Vieira, certainly the biggest to date. This makes her record. Let's talk about that for just a second, and we'll move on to the co-main. It brings Ketlin to 12-2, and her losses are to Aldana, which she got knocked out in the first. Okay, fair enough. And then Kunitskaya, which was a little dicey in terms of... Vieira had a lot of good positions, but just didn't do a lot with them. So I won't say controversial, but not like the best demonstration of her overall ability. But her wins, Tate, Eubanks, Zingano, McMahon, Ashley Evans-Smith, and then Kelly Fasholtz. That was all the way back in 2016. But, you know, you beat Sarah McMahon, previous title challenger and Olympic silver medalist.

Kat Zingano, you know, pioneering legend and title challenger as well. Sajara Eubanks, one of the better names in this division, certainly. And then Naomi Shetaite, former champion and obviously a bigger name in terms of the promotional side of things, too. So, solid win by her. Solid win by her. Still some work to do on some of her numbers. She still takes way too much damage.

But okay, let's talk about the co-main event. So it brings us there. Sean Brady defeats Michael Chiesa via 29-28, 29-28, 29-28. Your judges, Eric Colon, Doug Crosby, and Junichiro Kimijo. Pretty good judges. Doug Crosby's a little bit of a loose cannon sometimes. But in general, this was good judging here. Okay, this was a hell of a fight. First of all, easily Sean Brady's biggest win by far. He remains undefeated.

If you guys watch Morning Combat at all, maybe you're new here, you don't know this. You watch Morning Combat at all. I've been singing Sean Brady's praises for as long as the show's been in existence. But this was a tough one for him, and I wasn't sure he got it either. So what happened in the fight? First round, rough start for Sean Brady. He gets poked in the eye twice. Now, I like Michael Chiesa a lot. In no way do I think they were intentional. And he was able to keep his hand closed throughout subsequent portions of the fight to avoid any other issue. Like, clearly he wasn't trying to rake Sean Brady's eyes. He just, you know, it happens in a fight.

Nevertheless, I will say, in the interest of being consistent, I really, really, really, really don't like it when fighters get two free eye pokes on a guy. And, you know, it just goes. Listen, folks have been asking what the rule is on this. It sounds goofy. And every time I bring it up, folks are like, oh, it would never work. Only if you just imagine it to be the case. Guys, I'm not making a joke here. Pride used the yellow and then the

red card system before. I forget exactly how it worked, but if they flashed you a red, you lost a point in the middle of the round. But they wouldn't necessarily break it up or whatever. Sometimes they would, and then there would also be a monetary fine. But they would give you a yellow sometimes as a warning. And there was also, I think, a smaller monetary fine but they would give you a yellow sometimes as like a warning and there was also i think a smaller monetary fine associated with that because folks are asking like what's a way you could give a stern warning without necessarily taking a point first of all i think on the second of those man you could take a point from me personally i like michael a lot again it wouldn't have mattered because the outcome was what it was but i just i i don't feel like it should be the case where you can just have two free

eye pokes on a guy and it counts. That was one problem. The other problem was Michael Kiesa ended up, I was totally wrong in the previews about this. I thought that Sean Brady was going to be dealing on the feet. Michael Kiesa looked, that might be the best Michael Kiesa's ever looked on the feet for crying out loud, which we'll talk about in a second. And one of the punches broke Sean Brady's nose in the first round, such that he had blood pouring out of that thing. And what you ended up seeing was, you know, Sean Brady had a little bit of trouble seeing, and there was like, you know, the blood was acting as a bit of a lubricant in certain grappling situations. But the reason Sean Brady won this fight is because his level changes were great, his forward pressure was great,

and his takedowns were overwhelming. And then once he got the takedown, dude, his back control was outstanding. Ladies and gentlemen, let me explain this as simply as I can. There are several different skills in jiu-jitsu. One of them is finding the back, and there's a million different ways to do it. And people who are good at it have, in fact, a million different ways. A few different go-tos,

maybe some arm drags, barambolos back in the day or whatever. There's a lot of ways you can find it. But there is people who get to the back. That's a certain skill. Keeping the back is a related, but in many ways, different skill. So understand, you can do a drill where it's like, okay, start having the person's back, go. Get them off your back. Dude, there are people who are going to be very good at that. There's going to be people who are going to be not so great at necessarily finding the back, but might be much better at holding it.

They're related skills, but they're not the same. Dude, Sean Brady's ability to maintain back control is superb. It is superb. You hardly ever see the uki, his opponent, create a lot of space with chest to back. You rarely ever see them rotate off an angle. You rarely ever see them go through motion and then use that motion to create some kind of barrier upon which they can use to create asymmetry in the forms of control. He's good about keeping in steps out from easy grabbing. I mean, everything is just real textbook. He's heavy on there. He knows when to post an elbow to roll through. He knows which underhooks he has to have at which times. Because you'll notice at the end of the fight, he was actually going no underhooks. Sometimes he had body triangle and sometimes not. And then using

two hands to try and wrestle as opposed to keeping one underhook and then punching here and then trying to wrap the hand or whatever. He would just let it go. Dude, you can't do that against a guy like Michael Chiesa, who is a very good grappler himself, unless you have outstanding back control. So just think about what you saw there. You saw a guy routinely find the back, and then you saw a guy, once he got it, against a guy, dude, Michael Chiesa is fucking good.

And Michael Chiesa couldn't get him off of him. You know, that guy knows what he is doing when it comes to back control. A very, very impressive performance. See, he was awarded Sean Brady over the course of 15 minutes, 7 minutes and 45 seconds. So over half of that fight, he was awarded with control time. He got one of one taked. Michael Chiesa did. Sean Brady got five of eight. Um, I'm pretty impressed by that actually. I, here's what I thought was going to happen. I thought that it would be, I thought Chiesa would be a little bit more physically dominant

on the ground and he looked the bigger of the two. How that guy ever made lightweight. I, it's comical. Like, Sean Brady is like a fucking jacked 170er, and Michael Chiesa towered over him. I was like, holy fucking shit. I thought Chiesa was going to be a bit more of a bully on the ground, or at least be a little bit more aggressive about seeking out the offensive side of those positions. And that didn't prove to be the case. Brady was much better, frankly, everywhere as it related to the ground.

I knew he'd be good once they got there. I wasn't sure how the wrestling was going to go. Well, there's your answer. So that was impressive. However, on the feet, the funny part about it all was that it was Chiesa who was causing real problems for Sean Brady. Now, I don't know. Sean was saying that because his nose was broken, he couldn't strike the way he wanted to. He was probably a lot more hesitant.

As a consequence, when you're hesitant, you can get hit more. The other part was once he got hit, he kind of just froze. And so subsequent, like if you put shots together, a lot of them landed, he kept getting hit with the double jumping switch knee. So Chiesa, while losing now two in a row and losing to a guy who, you know, might be something closer to the future of this division than the present, nevertheless showed to me some new wrinkles. If you look at Michael Chiesa's game prior to this fight, both landed and absorbed significant strikes. Strikes absorbed per minute, strikes landed per minute.

Both of his numbers are under 2. I don't know of any other ranked fighter I've ever seen that has numbers like that, where both strikes absorbed and strikes landed are under 2, like 1.7 or so. Something like that for both. Let me pull it up here. I'll tell you exactly what it is. Yeah, 1.87 strikes landed per minute. That's funny, right?

Drive-by. And then strikes absorbed per minute, 1.72. So an interesting result there. But that really is the story of the fight, was that Brady, you could maybe argue, I'm not going to say got away with one, but at certain times in the back, he was hunting for submissions, but wasn't necessarily getting all that close with them and was still awarded the round, most of the judges' scorecards. I would imagine that he won the first and second and then lost the third.

What do the numbers on the striking have it? Yeah, the third round, I'm numbers on the striking have it? Yeah, yeah, the third round, I'm imagining that Chiesa won that one. Sean Brady landed only three strikes in that round. He did get awarded two takedowns and had three minutes and 21 seconds of control, but Chiesa landed. That was his best round by far. Chiesa, that's the only round Chiesa ever had double digits in terms of significant strikes landed. Third round, 17 of 25. If you look at targeting, Michael Kiesa, 65% to the head, 35% to the body, 0 to the leg. For Sean Brady, 44% to the head, 11 to the body, 44% to the legs.

He was much more willing to engage in the leg kicking battle, especially at distance. And that's no big surprise. The tape shows that's exactly what he likes to do. But I have to say, for Sean Brady going forward in this division, clearly we know he can wrestle. Clearly we know he's got phenomenal grappling. Not a lot of ground and pound. Submission attempts were consistent, but never close.

Back control, phenomenal. Like, truly excellent back control. And on the ground, you know, if the nose busted him up and that's the issue and he needed the experience of this fight that's one thing I'd like to see I'd like to see a little bit more nimbleness on the feet um as opposed to what he was showing and then sort of defensive bearing when he needs it still seems to me like as good as Sean Brady is and he is excellent there's just a lot more development that's possible with what he has already shown and and and frankly what he might need that's in front of him so huge win for Sean Brady bit of a tough loss for Michael Chiesa but I don't like

I'm not really downgraded like if you want to use this performance to downgrade Chiesa's title chances I think that's fair you lose against Sean Brady and against Vicente Luque, you're going to get sent back further in the top 10, maybe even outside of it. In fact, I think the rankings for this one are going to be a little bit weird, right? So they've got...

At welterweight, Brady was at 14. Chiesa was at 6. So Sean Brady's going to take a huge jump probably in the rankings. I'm not saying he's going to take the sixth spot, but he might jump a lot. He's going to be in the deep end. You want to be in the deep end with these guys, man. You got to be real careful. So to me, there are some clear improvements that are going to be necessary, but the strengths that he already has, like the real ones, those are top 10 ready for sure. For sure, for sure.

So in many ways, a strong showing. In many ways, a showing that there's still some green parts to his game, or relatively green anyway. And then for Chiesa, definitely I don't have a lower opinion of his ability. In many ways, higher. But as it pertains to title aspirations, I do think we have to dial those back a little bit. Yeah?

All right, how long have I gone for? About 40 minutes. Way longer than I should for a card like this. So, what happened to the rest of the card? You're going to have to tune in to MK or MK Extra Credit on Monday. The two different podcasts we put out. Obviously, Morning Combat's the more important one. Extra credits for all the fights that we don't get to

on regular MK. Yeah? Alright, so thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. I'll be back for another one of these after the Terrence Crawford and Sean Porter fight a little bit later tonight. I appreciate you all watching. Thank you very much. And until next time, enjoy the fights.