MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC London Preview, Jon Jones New Demands, Ryan Garcia Opens Up | Full Episode | MORNING KOMBAT

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Different time, same MK. Luke and BC take you into the weekend the way only they can. First, they break down the big UFC London card, where Leon Edwards faces Sean Brady in a high-stakes main event, and Jan Blachowicz battles Carlos Ulberg in the co-main. Can Edwards defend home turf, or is an upset on the horizon? Next, they react to reports that Jon Jones wants a six-month camp before facing Tom Aspinall. Is this a sign the fight might actually happen, or just another delay? Finally, the guys discuss Ryan Garcia’s candid interview on @RingChampsPodcast where he opened up about his difficult 2024 and what’s next for him in boxing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you get into an Escape Plug-in Hybrid, you get the perfect mix. You can chill in electric mode, turn it up in gas mode, or get the best of both in hybrid mode. Choose how you move in the all-in-one Escape. And right now, get a $3,000 rebate on the Escape Plug-in Hybrid and all 2025 Escape models. For details, visit your Toronto area Ford store or ford.ca. Reveille, reveille.

Look at us now, tip-tips. Oh, Jesus. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho Oh It's time to bang. Oh, yeah, it's Friday. I know for a fact you ain't got shit to do. Let's get fired up. We're in your face hole. It's morning combat, the best damn combat sports show they ever considered putting together and the one that just won't die.

Brian Campbell live and direct from the suburbs of Connecticut with you. Happy to be here. BBC with all of that BDE. But you might come here for my co-host. Yes, there he is. He's from Washington, DC. He's silver and gold, only silver and gray. And look at that tattoo right there. He's a former Marine Sergeant. And he once got busy in a Joseph a banks bathroom. It's Luke Thomas. Yes. What's what's up BC? How you doing? Yeah, fired up Luke Thomas after the show. I'm going to get on a bird and head over to Vegas for that PBC on Prime event with Sebastian Fundora, but we are here today to talk about UFC London. Look

at the biggest stories of the past few days involving John Jones, Ryan Garcia, TKO boxing, and so much more. And how about, how about one championship 172 pay-per-view this weekend, a kickboxing matchup that will be seen and heard around the world, Luke. So get yourselves fired up. All right. Are you feeling what I'm feeling? Actually, it's a great weekend of combat sports as you mentioned, PBC has Sebastian from Dora back in action a 66 154 pounder. But on top of that cage Warriors is today UFC London tomorrow. And then as you indicated one championship, I guess early morning East Coast time here on Sunday, but altogether a packed weekend

of combat one championship event featuring to Kero versus Rod here on Sunday, but altogether a packed weekend. At one championship event featuring Takeru versus Rod Tang is at the Saitama Super Arena. So plenty of history there of combat sports fired up to be there. You can, by the way, if you enjoy this product, you can like it on YouTube. You can subscribe to what we got going on right there. You can follow us on the socials, including our independent YouTube channels, which is really just an extension of what we do going on right there. You can follow us on the socials, including our independent YouTube channels, which is really just an extension of what we do here on MK, whether you're talking about the BCX,

the Luke Thomas experience in a way, and don't forget, of course, about the main card minute and our producer, director, bong enthusiast and son of an Australian. Hey, let's meet Luke Noceda. Hey, what's up? World's world's worst boyfriend. There he is. Everybody. This is this is the running joke. Guys, I'm hyped for UFC London this weekend. I feel like it's a great card.

It's a totally great card. BC was a little bit down on it pre-show. A little bit. Not down. I'm not down. He's what was the word you used Nocita? I said I'm hyped for this card or something. No, you you use some huge word and I'm like, I really like this card, I'm ready. But I was just like, don't overdo it. But you talked me into some of those undercard matchups that I may have missed because you are our resident degenerate hardcore.

I got you. Also, four fights on this card, pick them odds. Plenty of money to be made on this card. Are you betting on any of them in any way? Any of them. Every single fight, obviously. What kind of question is that? Great stuff.

Boyfriend of the year right there, everybody. Yes. Yes. Look, will we be having a special guest today as well in the one segment? Yes. So here's the thing. Obviously, 1172 takes place this weekend, headlined by Rod Tang taking on Takeru, which is a fight years, literally years in the making at this point. And I was like, Listen, we do have some things to talk about with one that BC and I will talk about.

But I was like, we got to get somebody to help us. So Timothy Wheaton, if you guys may not know him, and he'll plug his stuff in there. He is a kickboxing aficionado. He helps us out. I pre recorded an interview with him yesterday. He's great. Tons of good information in this one. So big shots to Timothy Wheaton. Follow his work and we really appreciate his contribution today. As well, yes, hell yeah. Can't wait to check that out.

Thank you so much users, viewers, listeners, degenerates for tuning in today. We were big fans of you. Thank you for keeping us afloat and we are about to get into it. I don't know, almost right about now. Luke, anything else you want to say? Weekend plans, health updates? I'll be doing a watch along for the top fights at UFC London and of course, of course a live post fight show. So check that out

youtube.com slash Luke Thomas. All right. I believe that's a, is that a 1 p.m eastern main card start on Saturday? No, I think the main card starts at like four, if I'm not mistaken. It's 1 p.m. prelims, 4 p.m. main. Thank you. There you go. Thank you, Long Island. Luke, all right, let's get into our topic. It's number one and it's the big one of the weekend, UFC London, a plus Fight Night card. I was telling Luke, almost reminiscent of a UFC on Fox quarterly card from back in the day. We expect a raucous crowd th how about UK zone Leon Ed return in this five round against Sean Brady, the f

since losing that title t summer, there's been excus to figure out exactly wher former welterweight champion is at as he welcomes in that hungry Philadelphia grappler. Luke Thomas, as we speak to kick off this segment, our friends at DraftKings have Leon Edwards as a plus 130 underdog against the minus 155 Sean Brady. First and foremost, did the odds makers get that part right?

That's a tough question. That's a really tough question. I'm going to say yes, I'm going to say yes. And, and I think the reason why is that, I mean, of course, part of the story here again, and betting odds are always designed in a way to induce betting. So they're not necessarily a clear demonstration of like, who is the favorite or for what reason. But if the implication is that Brady deserves to be, you know, kind of favored here a little bit, I do think that is correct. I think that he is clearly has turned a corner since the Muhammad fight. I think he has absolutely numerous things that are gonna give Leon problems.

And if you just watch the Gilbert Burns fight in particular, what you really notice from that one is that he gets stronger as the fight goes longer. It really is quite remarkable how much better he gets. He got seven takedowns in that fight. He got three of them in the fifth round. And then he got 31 significant strikes. He landed Gilbert Burns just nine, right?

So he really began to put it on him late. I think that's gonna serve his interests in something like this against Leon Edwards at the same time and we'll get to this I'm sure BC. There are real individual instances where I think Leon Edwards is going to have clear advantages. As we indicated on Monday, if you're Leon Edwards, it is a big change to go from Jack Dalum at Elena

to Sean Brady, however, in the scope of what he's done more recently in his career with the Kamaru Usman rematch and trilogy, Colby Covington, and then last, Bilal Muhammad, this is the same kind of fighter, everyone's a little bit different, but the same kind of fighter that he's faced before. So that should give him some real opportunity for his own improvement. Slight adjustments carry big consequences. He should be able to make them.

It's just that I feel like Sean Brady is right on the cusp of becoming the best version of what he can be. He's got to get past Leon Edwards to do it. I think he can. I think he probably will. But it's close. It's real close. These odds tell you how close this is. We talk so much about, I mean, the questions we have for Leon Edwards. You know, is he just a streaky fighter? Is he mercurial? Is he, you know, I mean, does he get

in his own head? There's been inconsistencies within this overall incredible run, which of course included back-to-back victories over the former champion, Kamaru Usman, pay-per-view win over Colby Covington. But who we saw Leon to be last year against the pressure of Bilal Muhammad just wasn't that same guy. Now, Leon says the following thing I'm gonna show you is not a big deal, but look, you know we have MMA fans that are sleuths, right?

They can see through the pictures and find the truth. If any hashtag staff infection heads are out there, here's Leon at I believe like a public workout or something. You see that on his forearm. The quote from Leon was that it happened six weeks ago and it's all good. Luke, due to your extensive medical background from the College of William & Mary, should we be concerned about that?

Yes, based on my vast medical expertise and studying philosophy in 2002. Here's my here's my rule of thumb on this. It's the same one that we applied whenever we see you know, who was who Sean Strickland had the last one, correct? If correct. The question is not did he have staff he to the point you raised, he confirmed it, right? He had staff. The question is, was he on antibiotics for it recently? And or how long was he on antibiotics for it recently and or how long was he on antibiotics?

So even if he's not on it, let's say this week, how long was he on it before that? And to what extent, actually what particular antibiotics was he on? Was he on IV administered ones? Was he on oral antibiotics, whatever? And again, what was the length of term there? Because obviously this can affect your cardio.

This can affect your training. This can affect, I'm not sure what the proper description is, but like the tensile strength of some of your connective tissue. You have to pair down training so that you don't get injured. I remember like I was on antibiotics for,

dude, for like five months I've been on antibiotics and the doctors are depending on which ones you're on and the ones that don't want to treat this, they typically, it follows this Which is that you know, you can't lift weights in certain cases They have to be very very careful lifting weights because you are your body has been depleted in this particular way So the question is like what did that do to his training and these are of course unknowable But BC you started off by asking what did the odds makers get it, right?

There are of course many reasons to look at this and think that Leon Edwards has a great shot. I am not one of these guys that thinks even if Sean Brady wins, he's just going to go in there and do to him what he did to Kelvin Gastelum. That is absolutely not what I expect. But when you look at some of the other factors, if he dealt with staff and then, you know, any kind of lengthy course of antibiotics in which to deal with it, that did probably impact his training and probably at least will show up in some kind of way over the course of a 25 minute fight. I mean, let's not forget, Leon was pound for pound top five a year ago and now we're talking about at 33. Is he over the hill?

Is he too inconsistent? One of the things we talked about on Monday's storylines, of course, was the excuse making in regards to the loss to Bilal. Bilal has come out, of course, and called Leon Edwards weak for these excuses. Here is Leon Edwards from Media Day responding to that accusation from Muhammad. You said recently on Twitter that you're full of excuses and mentally weak regarding, obviously, your fight together. What's your take on that? What's your response? The way Billard talks is like he went out there and like fucking knocked me down and dropped me and batted me for it all around like all he did was wrestled me, single-ed me, picked me up, put me against a cage. He didn't, no damage really. The thing

that ended the fight, if anything, he was the one on the floor leaking about to get stopped You know means if I was already broken you about to get stopped one more minute out of fight He would have got stopped. You know me so Yeah, the way he talks he just doesn't From what he does in the cage is two different person he talks like he's like Mike Tyson But when he fights, he's not you know me so he thought it is I feel like Yeah, he thought it is and he said fights he's not, you know what I mean? So, here's what it is. I feel like, yeah, here's what it is. And he said that he's picking Sean Brady, obviously, this weekend.

But is it personal between you two? Not really, I don't like him. I mean, I don't think there's, wouldn't be friends outside the sport. I wouldn't know who he is, you know what I mean? So, no, not really. And Sean Brady told us today in the media, David, is a bad look, he thinks, for you to be talking so much about Below in the run up to this fight. I'm not talking about Below. You have to talk about Below. I'm not talking about him. You keep asking me about him.

But yeah. Do you think it's hard for you to get away from that subject? So you heard in there the mention of Sean Brady echoing what Bilal said. We'll play one more sound for you from Sean Brady and then we can react to it about this topic maybe of Leon being in his own head. For a title match? I'm not I'm not trying to get a title shot out of this you know um I don't I'm not trying to rush it that's what I did before in career. I've but the ball fight, I was pushing for that so hard and it turned out that that wasn't the night for me, you know? So I'm going to go out there.

I'm going to do my job, get my hand raised by any means necessary. And then wherever I go from there, I go. Thank you very much. Cause I said today, yeah, Sean, just here, just going back to where you said. Yeah. Here. Oh, what's up brother? Yeah. Good. good if you beat Leon you'll become the number one contender Would you be disappointed if the UFC didn't offer you that next because all week Leon has been saying that it's an immediate It's immediate rematch next. It's the title next for me. He's appointed if that wasn't your next fight

No, I think I think that's a bad look on Leon to be thinking about other people when all I'm thinking about is fighting him. He's thinking about number one contenders and getting back at Balal and talking about Balal. But he's got someone who's trying to kill him Saturday night in front of him and he has more things to be concerned about than being a number one contender in the division. Yeah. And just lastly, who would your ideal opponent be for your title shot below? Of course. Yep.

Of course we know that Sean would want to run back that recent loss in which he's turned his career around in some degree to no sense that point. But look about what we're talking about with Leon. Is it fair to say that in some ways he's almost his own biggest enemy that maybe he's focusing too much on other things than this Philadelphia gorilla coming after him. He admitted, uh, you know, this week that a, he had dealt with staff recently, that's sort of one obstacle. And there's nothing he can really do about that, obviously, but you know, it's something to keep in mind. But to the point you raise, he had also kind of, you know, indicated in the, the, the audio clip kind of speaks to it to a degree, which was like he just you know, it's balal like I didn't even take balal seriously. And it's like, okay, you're the welterweight champion of the

world fighting the number one contender at five in the morning like you can't get up for that. Like that's that's just bizarre to me to hear something like that. Absolutely bizarre. You would have never seen George St. Pierre say something like that. Like it would have absolutely never left his lips. And the reason why I would have never left his lips is because he never would have been in that position to begin with. Right. I mean, it's just insane. That's too busy greasing for BJ. Right. Okay, fair point. But I think you see what I'm getting at.

Like it's just insane to be the champion and be like, Oh, well, you know, I, I thought so little of my contender. I was surprised he was able to take three clean rounds from me, potentially four. Uh, it's just, it's just madness to me. And so here he is a little bit later, still kind of dismissive of bull all kind of dismissive of what it was. Now, listen, some of the things that Mohammed has said, obviously, you know, he a little bit exaggerated, right?

And so Leon's trying to correct the record. And to his point, he was beating him up in that fifth round. That is very, very true. But that was also too little too late. I mean, that's also the reality. If I was him and granted, I'm no position to tell any prize fighter what they should be doing, doing but just observing what the really really good ones do who can maintain that longevity, they don't ever let their minds get to a place where the person they're up against has like you

know they like hedge their chances. They don't ever seem to do that. They treat it all as like an existential threat, five alarm fire and it looks to me that like that loss that I mean, consider something BC consider something, both Sean Brady and Leon Edwards have losses to Bilal Muhammad, and one was worse than the other. Brady got beat worse. There's no question about it. But who seems to have learned the lesson better coming out of it? You know, again, that may not necessarily carry any one of them to victory, but just to answer that question,

it looks to me like Sean Brady got a lot more out of that loss than Leon did. He seemed to take it quite to heart, and that's not a guarantee of victory, as I indicated, but it certainly puts him in a best position to get one. I mean, you mentioned that, you know, Leon is still out here disparaging, disrespecting Bilal who beat him. I mean, you mentioned that, you know, Leon is still out here, disparaging,

disrespecting Bilal who beat him. I think Sean's trying to say you're also disrespecting me by not taking me seriously and always talking about Bilal. So we got the mental half out of the way. Let's get into the physical. Let's get into the X's and O's. Look, you know, when I like to look at the central tension that might decide this fight, Bilal is a pressure fighter and we know that Edwards was kind of lifeless at times with his back to the cage. Sean Brady doesn't pressure the same way. It's not built off of the jab and in your face as much.

He can be a counter puncher and he can also be looking to shoot for the takedown. What type of difference do you think that'll make because it's clear that Edwards kind of fell apart amid that pressure from below? So I think you can't I mean not so much the jab, but let's say a flurry of flurry of that from Sean Brady is typically what he likes to do is get someone to raise their guard and then to get underneath it with you know

In an underhook body lock or to go right to the double But I want to say two things about Bala Muhammad. It's kind of funny that we're talking about this fight and then Bala Muhammad features so prominently in these discussions, but it really is quite relevant and important to note. I did a breakdown. You can catch it on my sub stack if you want

about how Bala Muhammad took out Leon Edwards. And one of the things that you really notice from that, and I confirmed it with his coaches, is just the insane level of specificity that they put into a game plan. They didn't have a general idea about what they wanted to do. They didn't even have like, you know, a specific idea about what they wanted to do.

They had a highly specific idea about what they wanted to do in each of the scenarios that Leon was gonna be pressed in and then what his reactions would be. It was remarkable how specifically good it was. I bring this all up to say to me what's kind of interesting about it is those specific things that they pinpointed as weaknesses for Edwards, they're real, but the question is whether

or not Sean Brady has that particular ability to take advantage of it. Let me give you an example what I'm talking about. It's not just where he was shooting which is something I've discussed a lot where you would see Balaam Mohammed put his right ear to the right hip consistently every time because Leon Edwards on the tape he doesn't use his right arm very well for down blocking for under hooking framing getting it involved so they knew if they could bring his head to that side off the double that they would have great success and sure enough that is exactly what happened but here's the thing about that if you actually

look at their shots the way they shoot and their penetration step Bala Muhammad has a very low fast shot I mean Hamsa is obviously quicker, but it's kind of like that. That is not how Brady shoots. That's really not the same kind of way. He doesn't really have that like hardcore explosive penetration step into the double. So, you know, is that something necessarily he's gonna be able to take advantage of?

I don't think. What I think, and where I absolutely think this fight is gonna be one and lost, BC, and I I truly mean this is the clinch along the fence. Okay, I think that is going to be absolutely the demarcation line here more than anything else because you know, while we'll all we'll he would back him up and whatever and then have this explosive shot underneath Brady is probably going to try and like get make him, press him into the fence and then begin to work from that position. Whereas Balal is a few feet away and then slamming into him off of that shot.

I don't think Brady's gonna do that. And what makes that really interesting is one, I think that could tire out Leon Edwards. Like if we're talking about things that are good for Shawn Brady, we just mentioned he gets stronger as the fight goes longer. He was able to solve the riddle of Gilbert Burns who has very good defensive wrestling if nothing else. Right? So you're gonna be able to wear him down potentially, really like, you know, just drain him and just make him carry the weight as time goes on,

even if you don't necessarily get the takedown. But here's the interesting contrast. And this is where I think Edwards has real life in this one. Edwards has got, under situations like that, typically pretty good takedown defense and more to that, he's got really good strikes in the clinch off of the clinch break in particular elbows, he has slashing hardcore elbows, right over the top, they land against virtually all of his opponents, they score great damage, they

often do some cutting depending on the situation, obviously, but they're very, very, very important to everything he does. And that's something I think that could really derail what Sean Brady is trying to do. But I guess I just wanted to point out, if you're asking me what the demarcation line is, it is once they are up against the fence, clinched together, how does Sean Brady drain? How does he get him down to the mat? He's probably gonna do what I think he's gonna try and do is get behind the elbows of Leon Edwards. So then now he can attack from the waist behind, trip out the leg, and then just slowly bleed him dry.

You see, if I think there's a stoppage in this fight, I think it's Edwards who stops Brady. But if it goes to a decision, I tend to think that that should favor Sean Brady. Interesting style class. Yeah, definitely. I mean, to your point, shooters are going to shoot whether your last name is Oswald or Velasquez, but Luke, we just learned from Ankaliyev that you don't actually need to take someone down to win with that fence-scrappling pressure, which is ultimately what he did, but it wasn't all that entertaining. Is there snooze fest potential in this one? Yes. Yes. But, but also, you know, listen, that crowd is going to be hyping them up.

Leon Edwards talked a lot of shit about that being, you know, we didn't want to fight a five in the morning. Fair enough. I don't think that that helped anything, but that's not in play here anymore and I do think Sean Brady is going to be I mean Sean Brady is going to be grinding certainly up against the fence. There's just no doubt that could lead to prolonged periods of stalemate or inactivity. So now here's a question BC which is do we know who the referee is? Does that I don't have that information. Maybe LIL does. Long Island Luke, do you have the information?

Top of my head no, but I could Google it. Yeah, please Google. That is gonna be highly relevant here. And I'm gonna say it one more time for all the people who are like, I don't want any standups. And if you can't separate, blah, blah, blah. Bullshit, if action stalls, get involved.

I don't know if the referee will in this case, but BC, if I'm thinking just down the line What could play a hugely? Determinative role about how this goes if it goes to a decision The extent to which if their action is stalled the referee does anything about it could play a massive massive Referees don't do much about it anymore Luke So if I'm one of them, I'm looking to see who can get the first eye poke But we talked about the physical side of it.

That'll come into play. We know Sean Brady, Brady, excuse me, is is just a machine, a tank. But there were a little shots fired from Leon Edwards regarding the size of Sean Brady when they did stand off across from each other. So why don't we do it? I think it's time right now for a little shots fired brought to you by Cuervo. And we can go to the face-off that they did earlier this week in London.

You can see the height difference and here's what Leon Edwards told reporters at Media Day. Quote, I didn't know he was that small. I was walking towards him and he had his back turned to me and I looked over and I was like, where the fuck is Sean? Then he turned around and I was like, what the hell? So yeah, I think he's about 5'8", 5'9", probably. I feel like the size difference, the reach and the strength will play a big part in this fight.

Luke height differences has not stopped certain people in mixed martial arts. Look at Joe Rogan's career arc. Is this a fair shot being fired by Leon regarding the, the truth, you know, what he's up against in this fight? Yeah. Yes. And no, he has a two inch reach advantage that should play a role. Um, and of course we've seen Sean Brady, we had him on the RSD couch. He is not a tall welterweight. He does not necessarily give off like, he's not the biggest welterweight I've ever seen. Let's put it that way.

However, if Sean, excuse me, if Leon Edwards thinks he's going to have a strength advantage over Sean Brady, he is about to be in for a rude fucking awakening. Absolutely not. He'll get mauled in a strength competition. There is just no doubt in my mind whatsoever about that. Now, of course, skilled fighting means you have technique

and technique makes up for a lot of strength. All these things are in the wash together, but you know, did you see the grip test that they did? Yeah. Yeah. The only guy to beat Sean Brady was 205 or Carlos Ulberg. It was only by seven kilos. Like, please be serious about this. Like, what are we talking about here? He is a gorilla and other welterweights who have fought him. We talked about Michael Chiesa, but he

ain't the only one have told us Jesus, that guy is strong. So absolutely not. But, but BC, you know, he is going to be rangier. He's going to have better long range weapons. I think kicking is going to be an interesting question here for Leon. Does he do it in order to keep maybe some of the hands holstered of a guy like Sean Brady? Does he do it because Sean Brady obviously is going to be a little bit more at a disadvantage relatively speaking in terms of pure striking skill in these ranges.

Does he, does he not do it because he doesn't want to risk it getting taken down. These are all relevant factors and Sean Brady to that point is is is you know from a from a far wearing sweats. He doesn't look that imposing but once he gets his hands on you well now now the gorilla begins to do what he's going to do. So I think it's a yes and no kind of answer but it's just this is what I mean.

This is what I freaking mean BC. Well let me pause you on that. I just wanted to tell you Luke I just wanted to interrupt you to say that Shots Fired has been brought to you by Cuervo and by the way now's a good time as any to enjoy the tequila that invented tequila. Shout out to Cuervo this was Shots Fired. Yeah okay fair enough this is what I meant it's fine to observe that your opponent is a little bit smaller than maybe you would have imagined, but it just seems like yet another log on the fire of him being like, oh, he's small. I'll have all these advantages over him. And it's like, where, what is the line BC between him being very confident as any fighter should be and like dismissive and it's a thin line but it just seems to me that Leon's a little bit kind of crossing over into that other one all

the time. I mean isn't this part of the reason why we overlooked him on the rise up and said you know he's the he's not marketable enough he never got his uh receipt back against Masvidal for that backstage incident. Nade almost solved him. Weird eye poke in the first Bilal fight there. I mean, yet, yet, Luke, round five, headshot dead and the Rocky story came to life. So as we turn this into our prediction here, will the real Leon Edwards please stand up?

Which one are we getting? We getting Leon or we getting Rocky on Saturday? I think we're getting Leon. I think we're getting Leon. I mean, listen, we started this conversation talking about the odds. This is a close one. And if people don't believe in Sean Brady

because of what happened, let's say not just in the Balal Muhammad fight, but like go back to the Michael Chiesa fight where he was able to win that one with position Mohammed fight, but like go back to the Michael Chiesa fight where he was able to win that one with positional control, but he had some real damages, you know, like there wasn't enough damage that he was putting it on him. I think those are fair considerations. I think that that's absolutely something that you should take

seriously. And you know, listen, if you want to be like, hey, I think Leon is an underdog is a good betting proposition. I fully understand that as well. But in preparation for today, I rewatched the Gilbert Burns fight, some other ones here from Sean Brady. I really feel like he has learned a lot of valuable lessons from that loss. That's what I mean. And the way in which he was able to overcome a very sturdy Gilbert Burns. Yes, a 38-year Gilbert Burns, of course, but one who still has very good jiu-jitsu, good defensive wrestling and obviously a wealth of experience and to be able to just put it on him even more as the fight went long.

I just thought it was very impressive, kept himself safe in the standup BC, didn't make a lot of errors. That was a big one before. I, I, I like Sean Brady in this contest. I mean, and I think it, I, again, to the point you raised, could it be boring? Yes, it could. I absolutely, but I feel like he's ready to really make a push here and And I think it again, to the point you raised, could it be boring? Yes, it could. Absolutely.

But I feel like he's ready to really make a push here and we'll see what happens on Saturday. Here's the interesting question though. What if Leon doesn't have these concerns we're talking about? What if we get 75 to 100% of the best Leon? And what if he's able to stop the take down consistently? What if he has weapons for the clinch to keep Sean away? If this turns into a five round kickboxing bout,

has Brady evolved his game enough to be a former top five pound for pound guy? That's why I'm still leaning with the underdog Leon, because I believe Luke, he's gonna be better than he showed mentally, verbally this week. And I still have questions whether Sean Brady, if he has to go toe to toe with somebody, can get the better of them.

Is that a legitimate concern here? Yeah, totally. If he has to, if he can't, so Sean Brady averages 3.5 takedowns per 15 minutes. So more than one around. Now he doesn't have to get that every single round, obviously, like I think there was a round and like maybe round two or something, he didn't get any takedowns on Gilbert Burns. So it doesn't have to get that every single round. Obviously, like I think there was a round and maybe round two or something.

He didn't get any takedowns on Gilbert Burns. So it doesn't have to get him every single round. But basically if he can't get takedowns, I don't think he can beat Leon. I think it's as simple as that. By the way, I don't think that's exclusive to Sean Brady. I think there's actually a lot of welterweights who if they were forced to just stand with him,

could they win? Could Balaamahamed, who's the freaking champion, could he have won if he just had to stand with him? I don't know about that. That's a completely different proposition at that point. So to your point, if we end up in a place where the take down just isn't happening or entering round three, Sean Brady's in some trouble in that scenario for sure. All right. I'm leaning Leon. Luke is leaning Brady. Their odds once again from DraftKings plus 130, Rocky Edwards minus 155.

Sean Brady is bringing our betting expert, Noceda. Settle the difference. What's the value bet here and who do you think really wins this? The value bet is definitely Leon at plus money. Personally, I'm taking the over two and a half in a parlay. Fuck man, you both make good points. Just straight up, gun to your head. Gun to my head, I'm going headshot, headshot dead baby.

Okay, interesting. There it is, there it is. Let's get into this fantastic co-main event. Both of these light heavyweights in this crossroads matchup believe that a victory will elevate them immediately to a title shot against the winner of the expected rematch between Magomed and Koliah from former champion Alex Pereira. This time it's 42-year-old former champion himself Jan Blachowicz coming back after nearly two years off due to double shoulder surgery. Surgery recovery so difficult that he considered retirement multiple times. But he's back and he's a plus 245 underdog

according to DraftKings against a streaking, handsome Carlos Ulberg who is minus 305 favorite coming in. Luke, I believe this is a three round fight. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest it's a five round fight. But do you think those odds are acceptable given the questions coming in on Jan? Or maybe should the betting oddsman focus on

that as good as Ulberg is, he's riding a hell of a win streak, he's only fault Volkan Oztomir of those higher level guys. That's gotta come into play when you're handicapping this matchup. I don't think the odds are crazy on this one. Um, you know, okay. You know, I, I've had shoulder reconstruction. I've had my, I tore my labrum completely and my shoulder fell out of my socket in my sleep. I mean, it was, it was bad. You know, not everyone's rehab is the same, but I didn't feel right until about a year later. It took forever for shit to feel like it was normal again.

And I did aggressive physical therapy to get it back. And this happened when I was 29, not when I was 39 or 40, completely different proposition. He had that on not one, but two shoulders. I mean, understand something, the shoulder, like your knee just bends, that's it. But your shoulder can go to the side, your can go forward, it can go backwards, it can do all different kinds of

stuff. It is a much more complicated joint to heal and he had both of them motherfuckers under surgical repair, that is extremely difficult to come back from and to be in your 40s now 42 off for basically two years. And here's the thing. I've not necessarily been the biggest believer in Carlos Alberg. He looked interesting as a prospect. He's 34 is not like he's a young guy.

Granted, 34 is a lot younger than 42, especially a 205, but you know you get the point I'm trying to make. It wasn't like he was surging through, but I tell you what man, you're right. The only opponent he's face where I was like, OK, that's a quality opponent he just beat was the Vulcan-Usdermir fight.

But I remember going into that when I was like, yeah, I don't know, Usdermir's looking pretty good here too. I think he'll probably beat him. And then Ulberg, I thought, performed very well in that contest. I thought he looked really, really good, has really understood, like, he picked a style and he's got this kind of rangy sort of in

and out style lateral movement a lot of the times. You know he's not really a pocket boxer in that way in the same kind of way anyway. I mean he'll do a little bit of it but not much. But he didn't really understand like what maintaining that style meant and it seems to me that he now understands the parameters of it much better. He gets it much more and he's gonna be able to be, I think, faster in this contest. He's gonna be able to fight at range, I think, very nimbly. His movement is gonna be pretty good.

And you know, the other part too, BC, is if I had double shoulder surgery, I'm sure Jan is gonna say he finally feels comfortable and confident to be able to throw punches and trust that. But I wonder if in the back of his mind that it really will be true once the fight actually starts or if he takes a shot to the arm even, and it rattles him a little bit or anything like that

where it can sow seeds of doubt or potentially even confusion about how well this thing is gonna be able to operate or to work for him through the course of that bout, the time off BC, the age coming back from surgery against the guy and Carlos Olberg, who looks to me like he's really beginning to put together all the pieces of his style. Yeah. I totally get why the odds are. And I fully agree with them.

All right. Let me push back on, on Jan potentially here. Okay. His major blemishes of his, you know, reinventive, rejuvenated late thirties, uh, have come in three of his last four fights, right? We're of course talking about the title loss relatively early and quickly to go over to Shara that majority draw against Maghomed and Kalaya for the vacant title in which Jan was taken down and controlled late.

And of course the split decision loss in Alex Pereira's 205 debut two years ago. But Jan told Ariel Hauwani in a sit down two weeks ago that the shoulders issues started all the way back in the 2019 Israel, sorry 2021 Israel Adesanya title defense at 205 pounds. So that's that entire run where he had legitimate trouble in some degree with those shoulders and was compromised. I did sit down with Jan Blachowicz this week on the Brian Campbell Experience where I basically teed that up.

I said, look, you've had shoulder problems going back to the Adesanya fight. How much did that play a role in the draw and the two defeats since then? Let's hear his response. And I know you're never one to make excuses. You're always a very honest fighter and we love that about you.

But when you look back at losing to Pereira or losing to- No excuse anyway. I don't like excuses, I never gonna be excused. But did that- If you are sick- Did that affect you back then? Did you have- No. I don't like talk about this. That was the shoulders was fucked up long time and that's it and finishing this. you're back then? Did you was bad because I have a broken toe

or I have diarrhea, I don't care. So stay at home. Let's hope not on the diarrhea. Wow, wow, you don't want that in the game. That will be great, you know, in the fight diarrhea. Wow, shout out to Justin Kish once again. I like how every online conversation you have in MMA ends up with diarrhea.

Yeah, there's no question about that. Do you think any of that affected him? Is there an idea that he can be Henry Rowan Gartner sitting in the center field bleachers of Wrigley field Luke and when his arm recovers from that surgery, he can, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Rookie of the year. He can throw strikes to the plate from the bleachers. Are we going to see a turbocharged bionic legendary Polish power on Saturday that will leave you surprised?

I well, let me just say this. He's not using it as an excuse, which I you know, mad respect to Yon Blachowicz. I think we all really appreciate that. But in his defense BC, if he had to get double fucking shoulder surgery, there is simply no question it affected him badly. There is no question in my mind, to the point where it's like, now, how could it have affected him if he was still able to fight? Well, the question is, what kind of range of motion did he have to mechanically cock back to

throw with full authority? Was he having to pull his punches because he just wasn't really able to trust the integrity of the shoulder in order to, I mean, like, dude, that could have major implicate, and any kind of static holding you need to do. All of it, all of it. Dude, I remember when, after I had shoulder surgery, I went, it was three months later, I went for a run.

Three months, BC, three months later, and just the bouncing of the shoulders as I ran hurt just that just that and I was like to the point it hurt well I was like oh am I fucking like I can't mess up my surgery I don't want to go back under the knife just that so this is this is what I mean like there's no question in my mind that messed him up and I think obviously in terms of like what happens when they do these kinds of things is what they what they do is they just sew the shoulder joint even tighter so that it reduces your overall range of motion, but it that tends to have cost. So, this is what I mean. It's probably much more secure and that confers some benefits, but you're gonna be limited with range of motion plus the time off plus this is a surging opponent who likes to fight at range who

is gonna be faster BC. I think certainly even you would agree with that. Carlos, Carlos Ulberg is gonna be the quicker of the two. And more handsome of the two and more handsome with the two like I mean that's just about 99% of guys at this point but you understand my point I love Jan Blachowicz I think everybody likes Jan Blachowicz I mean he's very hard to dislike but he's got an uphill climb here and I don't think we should lose sight of that. All right let's go to the flip side here in Carlos Ulberg who like Jan said a victory like I said earlier will automatically get him a title shot. I don't know if that's true in this division. I think it might make more sense for Jan who has history with the two guys that we think will be rematching.

You know, recent history. Let's not forget that Blachowicz gave Pereira a very tough test in a split decision. But first, Carlos Alberg, this is his opportunity to show himself. I also sat down with him on the BCX and ultimately asked him what makes him different among the other title contenders at 205. I bring this table just a different look that's what it is. It's just a different look that nobody's really seen before and it opens doors for many other opportunities for the company of the UFC. So the prettiest face on the book, man, that's all it is. But that's the joke. But yeah, now, man, it all comes down to just having a different style. When I get that title, it just brings a different

style. Well, speaking of pretty faces, we always joke Carlos on morning combat that you probably have the best DMS after a win in terms of people wanting a PC you reaching out is modeling still in your, uh, your portfolio these days. I'm not going to count it out. I mean, I do, I do, there are jobs that come my way, but, um, I'm kind of putting that aside until I get what I want from this, from the UFC. And then I'll look to getting that eventually later on in the future.

And hope that, you know, I don't break my nose in too many ways, but I don't know, I could be a hand model or something, but who knows? But yeah, later on in the future, we'll look at that. Lukey, I would later ask him whether he gets job offers in his DMs. He said only hand jobs, so that does align with the hand modeling right there. All jokes aside, of course, he's got power. He's quick's quick he's 34 but we consider him young youthful obviously inexperienced compared to Yan but he's the betting favor coming in if he gets this done how does he do it you're right it is three

rounds it's not five I think he can out point him. Now, Jan, one of the things that he's been really great at is very good about checking kicks. And remember, he shut down Izzy, you know, at 205. Like that is a very, very impressive thing. And one of the ways he was able to do that was by shutting down the leg kicks, forcing him into boxing range. And he had much better boxing.

Like, is that something he can do against Carlos Ulberg at this stage of his game? That's where I have a little bit of question I think the speed is ultimately gonna be a big problem for him now that being said the question is what does Jan Blachowicz do? Does he lead or does he follow and I have a feeling he's gonna lead And he's gonna try and pressure Ulberg because the more that Ulberg is on the move the less he can plant and throw particularly from the kicking department. And so like what does that do? But I just feel like, I'm not that he'll have hesitancy to throw. I don't think that's right. I suspect he's totally committed to get the job done. But I have a feeling that ultimately some of the rust of the rust is going to play a role here,

even though he's a very experienced fighter, as I mentioned, the speed, I think is going to play a role, the hand speed, the explosive ability. And I just feel like Carlos Alberg, he might have to scrape by. Like when I, when I say I agree with the odds makers about who ultimately will get their hand raised. I, I do. I actually think it'll be pretty close though. I mean, you could, you know, you know what I mean? Like I don't think he's going to run away with it. I just feel like can he take two rounds from a guy he's quicker than, rangier than, more explosive than, who's been off for two years with double shoulder surgery, who's

42 years old. He should be able to do that even though Blachowicz is very, very tricky and certainly has stout defense and hard to hurt. Have we seen his chin truly chested? Excuse me for that jumble. I'm talking about Carlos Olberg who did go through. Yeah, he got smoked. So you think he can handle the legendary Polish power outside of getting cold?

No, I think if I mean, I think if Blachowicz lands on him clean, he's got you're referencing his his debut loss with the UFC. The not yeah. But I'm saying like, you know, dude, if I mean, if we're at a point in this fight where Blachowicz is landing on him clean, I mean, yeah, Carlos Alberg is in a world of shit at that point. I don't misunderstand me, but, um, it's just a question of like, are we going to get to that point or are we going to get to that point a little too little too

late? You know what I mean? Like, Oh, he figures it out by the third round or something. I think that's kind of where my head is at a little bit on this. If we're looking at a final four brackets, speaking of March madness right now at 205 with Pereira on Kalei of rematching on one side and this fight on the other, it's like you could kind of argue though that it'd be a lot better for the UFC if Poetan won that rematch Carlos Oldberg won this one so we get a fresh matchup because do you think the UFC would even attempt to roll

out a mago med and Koli of yonbal hovich rematch for the championship? Not if they don't have to. Yeah, not if they don't have to if they don't have to I mean, look what they're doing they're putting an old guy against a again, you know, he's 34, but an old guy versus a relatively speaking young guy that kind of tells you where their head is at a little bit on this one. But you know old guys, especially especially with legendary Polish power. They die hard.

I mean, we all know that they die hard. You're damn right. They do Luke. Let's look at the rest of this card briefly here. A welterweight matchup that does have our attention is finally a returning Gunnar Nelson, no longer training in Iceland with Conor McGregor, by the way, he's a minus 118 favorite against the... Sorry, yeah, he is a favorite,

but it's a virtual pick-em fight against Kevin Holland. It surprised me, he's minus 102 is Holland. So we're looking at basically a pick-em in this three round welterweight tilt. Is that more about the ability of that gunner Nelson shown over the years or more about the inconsistency of Kevin Holland in your eyes? I think it's more about Holland's inconsistency. I mean, this is better for Holland, right? He fought deletes a had the rib injury. Then he fought, uh,

already are, and he got smoked and these were fights he should have never taken. He's back at 170. I think at 170, he has a completely different game, a completely different level of physicality. And I think his back is up against the wall here BC. I mean, it's like Donald Cerrone went on losing streaks, but they were closer to the end of his career. And even like he had one losing streak where I think he lost like three or

four in a row. And then he rattled off like three wins in a row you know he got right back to it you know like Kevin Holland needs to kind of try to do something closer to that and you're getting an opponent who hasn't competed in fucking forever granted he's dangerous but you know quite some time it's been yeah like I Kevin Holland Kevin Holland is talented. He is very, very talented, but he fights suboptimally, either down to his opponent or in the wrong weight class all the time. And it's like getting the right weight class

and put in maximum effort into these fights, like, you know, according to your best skillset and see what happens. And I think when he does that, you know, he does really well. Dude, this is a guy who knocked out fucking Joaquin Buckley. People forget that. Dude, Kevin Holland fucking knocked out Joaquin Buckley.

Like he's a good fighter. But if you're looking at these odds, it's because I think the odds makers are like, oh, so yeah. He scored a KO off his back that time against what, Jockeray? I mean, he's done some things. Yeah, yeah, dude, Kevin Holland is a nasty dude when he wants to be. But I'd be very curious from a betting perspective where Bong Island

Luke is on this one because you know it's hard to have confidence in Kevin Holland and at the same time Gunnar Nelson, I mean I remember when he made a name for himself beating Jeff Monson at ADCC, but he's been off forever. So where are you at on this one Bong Island? Earlier the odds have moved a lot. It is a pick-em now, but earlier in the week Kevin Holland was actually a pretty fat dog. I got him at plus 125. You mentioned he's got the win over Joaquin Buckley. That was at 85, but Joaquin Buckley is a ranked welterweight right now.

That is a really good win. He is four and three at welterweight. Those three losses all came to top 15 welterweights. So I feel like you're getting Gunnar here hasn't fought in two years. Excuse me. And how about this? Gunnar Nelson has fought five times in Kevin Holland's entire 25 fight UFC career. No way! Yep. So Kevin Holland been way more active, literally fought five times the amount that Gunnar has in the last however many years that is. But yeah I'm riding with Kevin Holland here. He is

inconsistent. You gotta take the value. Yeah. Dude, again, it's like the same thing with Yann Blajovich. Like, you know, Yann Blajovich's high end is higher than anything Goldberg has shown. But two years off is, or you know, almost, is a long time, dude. It's a long time. So Nelson's 36. He's off almost two years to the day. He fought March 18th of 2023 against Brian Barberina. He submitted him. He fought a year earlier taking a decision from Takashi Sato. He had a three year break before that. It had a loss in 2019 to both Gilbert Burns and Leon Edwards.

And then he was off for almost a full year before that. What is going on here, Luke? These dudes are, you know, I mean, partly it's partly it's you know it's like with Ryan Hall it's for example like Ryan why has Ryan Hall been so inconsistent well there's a lot of matchups he was offered that I know he didn't particularly want and then he had a bunch of injuries and he wanted to get right with that and then a lot of these guys I'm not sure to what extent this affects Gunnar in Iceland but you know in many other cases these guys run gyms you sure to what extent this affects Gunnar in Iceland, but you know, in many other cases, these guys run gyms, you have to go, like life just kind of finds a way of getting in the way. Yeah. But you know, they're not done. They are competitors. They

want to get out there and win and Gunnar Nelson's ground game. I mean, I don't need to tell anybody about this. It's, it's, it's phenomenal. It's just, you know, golly, dude, two years off is a tough, tough time to come back to even an inconsistent, yet quite talented Kevin Holland. Luke, Molly meatball has lost three of her last four. She is of course a big time local favorite here at women's star way to she welcomes Alexia Ty Nara, who I know nothing about. Uh, does this fight make you move at all?

Contender series winner, Ty Nara. Um, I didn't see anything super impressive necessarily. Jungle Fight veteran. I think it's probably something of a get right fight for Molly, but we shall see. F the Tories, by the way, as she would say, Luke, what else you like on this card? Man, there's a bunch of stuff I like on this card. If I, if I do say so myself. Okay. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing his name because I'm terrible about it. But Jordan Vucenich against Chris Duncan, dude, Vucenich has had a one on one with Paul Hughes, the second of which was

an absolute amazing fight. And I know he had his UFC debut Jordan did on short notice. And you know, it didn't look necessarily like that. Awesome. But it was like crazy short notice in order to get there. This guy has been doing great things in the lightweight division over in cage warriors and in Europe. I love this fight. I think it's a great one.

Nathaniel Wood, who has been somewhat inconsistent, but still quite good against Morgan Charriere. I'm sure I'm saying that last name, not quite right. He's 20 and 10, but still seems to me like one of the brighter French talents that has emerged on the UFC scene. Jai Herbert's always kind of fun against Chris Padilla that you can take that. Mick Parkin at heavyweight 10-0 out of England. You know, I don't really believe a lot in heavyweight prospects

and I don't know if he's gonna win this one against Marcin Taibora, but Mick Parkin has looked pretty good to me of late actually. I love his spark. He's got some decent boxing. This is an interesting contest and dude if we can get a guy at heavyweight who can do exciting things and move through the contendership queue, I'm all in favor of that. And then last but not least for me, Guram Kutateladze, who I really thought was going to be one of these guys at lightweight who was going to be you know the new class to replace the old one. It didn't quite happen that way but he's still very very talented taking on,

I don't know how to say this guy's first name, but Fernandez out of Brazil, who's a decent to good fighter, but Coutteladze I've had a high opinion of in terms of what I think his game could be. So there's other ones you can pick up and down here, but just those alone are pretty good for me. Yeah, indeed.

And by the way, Mick Park in last year had a first round knockout finish there in his last fight. Who was that again? So I'm sorry. I just just dropped off the side of my brain and didn't see it there. Also, before that, he beat Mohamed Usman by decision Lucas Breski. So this is, you know, this is him trying to step up to that next level, to that Mendoza line that people like to burrow and speed back represent. Long Island, Luke, you had a hot on for this undercard.

Can we get a bet to look for? A straw weight to watch? What do you got for me? Not a straw weight to watch. Bet to look for, you guys didn't ask my opinion when we were going over it, but Jan Blachowicz, man, I got him at plus two 20s, plus two 45 right now. He's only lost to champions in the last six years.

Olberg hasn't even fought anyone in the top eight. Blachowicz last seven fights been against the top eight. So, you know, this is a big step up. I'm taking the Polish power too. Me too, let's go. I do want to give a shout out to Nathan Fletcher versus Kalin Lofrin. That is the battle of the Liverpool gyms next gen

going against team Kaobahn, I don't know. We're Darren Till trains. Isn't Kalin, isn't he Irish? He's Irish, but he trains. So that's a pick them to that fight. Looking forward to it. You mentioned Jai Herbert versus Taco Padilla. That was a Jai was a big favorite in that now it's a pick them. So I'm pretty excited to see that Padilla did cash is like a plus 220 dog last time he fought a lot of fights to look forward to here, man.

Yeah, a lot of bong hits to take on the main card minute live show on Saturday. So check that out in the afternoon. Connor McGregor is also running for president, Luke. I'll throw that in as a footnote there in Irish. Yes, lucky for the Irish. All right, let's go to topic number two. And it all stems from an Ariel Hawani report

about a week and a half ago, but it really became a topic this week. The idea that John Jones, who we all hope waiting, will sign a heavyweight unification against Tom Aspinall at some point this year. The report from Helwani was twofold. One, that Jones is demanding a six month training camp to prepare for Aspinall,

and two, that he's also demanding that Deontay Wilder level money that we used to talk about that around 30 million according to Helwani Luke at this moment. How confident are you that we see this fight at all? Because this could just be public negotiation right this could just be public negotiation, right? This could just be that. Okay, okay, okay. I made a video about this on my YouTube channel and then I had a discussion about on the live chat yesterday as well and there was a viewer who brought up a great point into something that I really, I thought really kind of crystallized it for me. We

are now, I think, just three or four days away, maybe maybe less. We're basically on the precipice of Tom Aspinall being 500 days as interim champion and we have a graphic for that. Look, let's see the graphic because this was this was several days ago. I'm not sure when this was put up. So you know, and then the notion is on April 29th, he'll have 535, which will make him either tied for first and then eventually overtake. He's going to overtake Henenborough essentially as the longest reigning interim champion. And the point that the viewer brought up to me quite correct is that like, dude, if you're John Jones, you have had to have known for quite some time that you had a showdown with this guy.

That you had to have known. There's like, there's no mystery about it. It wasn't like he was like the unofficial number one contender, right? He's been the guy with the belt and now to a point where it will be the record in the history of the organization in terms of how long he'll have it. Like there's no way, there's no plausible deniability that there was anything else.

Yeah, I know he tried to shoot horn in the Poetan fight and whatnot, but like you had to have known the claim that you now need an additional six months. Now, BC, my thought was, okay, if he's asking for more money and it's public negotiation. Like what's the line between negotiation and then ducking. Sometimes it can be very thin. It could be very, very thin between them. And we understand that, or it could also be the case that he's asking for six months, not that he needs an actual six months, but that like, he's got like family stuff or whatever, and then people think cycling, Luke cycling.

And I don't mean tour de France, right? Yeah. I mean, listen, there's any number of I mean, any. Yeah. Well, you do me tour de France. Just the Lance. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But there's all these theories and like all of them we know. I'm just going to say this, dude. I am trying to not be negative about this. And you're asking me like what my level of, you know, what likelihood is there? I'm still gonna remain 50-50 on this one, perhaps even irrationally. It's the most important fight

I think the UFC can make this year. It's one of the most important fights the UFC can make for its entire heavyweight history. I absolutely believe that. And it's one of the most lucrative fights of any weight class that they could make. So for these reasons, there's a lot of there's a lot of you know, belief in why it should take place. At the same time. It's like john says he doesn't want

to fight him a long time ago tries to shoehorn in the poet on fight is asking for six months for reasons we can't even fucking fathom what they would even be at this point. And he's asking for money. Not that I think that that money is unreasonable, but you know, part of the reason why pay-per-view buys are down is because the UFC has had stars that they could have accessed and used and those stars chose to sit on the sidelines because they weren't getting enough money or at least they didn't feel like they were being adequately compensated.

Like we're already in this position because when the UFC has to choose between their business model and then breaking out the piggy bank a little bit to break that model to make something happen, they just don't, they don't. There's no evidence that they do that. And so hope springs eternal, I suppose, BC.

I'm really not gonna sit here and declare it won't happen because maybe in the end, you know, John just budges and then we all this goes away and then we don't really have to worry about it. But like, while I recognize as I aforementioned that the line between ducking and negotiating can be quite thin, is there any evidence is what I would ask, is there any evidence that you can look at

that John wants this fight? He might take this fight in the end, or he might be compensated to such a degree BC that he relents to his objections. But all of the available evidence to me suggests he just doesn't fucking want it. And I think we have to come to terms with that. I mean, it's a little ironic or coincidental because I'm also from Connecticut, but all I have right now is apathy for this situation. I just kind of like when we were doing the Connor Chandler bit and we're just sort of like, we get to a point where we're like, I don't care anymore.

Make a decision, shit, or get off the pod. I mean, when I heard this report, I tweeted and got a lot of pushback by the way, but tweeted like six months you've had six years to prepare for this fight or whoever was in this spot across from you. Wait a second let me back up what what were the objections? The objections were that this is obviously public negotiation and that if anyone deserves this money it is John and I believe with I believe in the latter but it was hard for me not to go. You took three years off

to rebuild your body, hired Richard Schaeffer and try to get this money. You couldn't. It allowed you to duck in Ghanu. Then the UFC conspires with you to just drag this out to unthinkable levels after his injury post-Ghan fight, allowing Stipe's old ass to wait another year. And now you're just stun starting on Aspinall's career. You know who else didn't like this news? His former John Jones opponent, Chelsunin, the bad guy. Let's listen.

The four and a half months since that fight, did he not train? Train with Aspinall in mind? Did he not full well know the undefeated champion, or rather undisputed champion was gonna take on the interim champion? What do you mean he needs six months? Six months from when? Six months starting when? Dare do I guess? You mean from right now, don't you?

Anything that I am saying aside from six months from now is silly as a matter of fact, isn't it? You wouldn't have even brought it up unless you meant from now. So of course it's from now. That's very interesting to me. So six months Luke would put us in September. Obviously there's going to be that November New York City MSG card. That could be a perfect landing spot. I get the problem I have with leaning on the money side of it for John is well, A, the time it's taking, it's embarrassing. It's allowing him to say all these comments that make you believe he's not the guy we thought he was and he doesn't want this fight at all. But beyond that it's like who are you at the end of the day? Like if you were the person that says fighting Aspinal means nothing to me then you

should have left the title in the ring when you beat Stipe and walked off okay. And over the years we would stop talking about the Aspinal part of this, and we would probably only be talking about John's greatness, but he's also dragged this out, so he's also at fault. I kind of just wanted to go away. Luckily, Aspinal is keeping of sound mind. Here's a little snippet of his talk on one-on-one MMA. There's nowhere to go for Johnny. He either has to fight me or retire now.

And if he does retire, everyone knows that he will have been avoiding me. So there literally isn't another fight for John at the moment. So it works out pretty. It is an indictment on the UFC to like get your shit together. You know, strip him if he doesn't want it, strip him. Or I mean, listen, I don't think John is like, you know, an awesome person, but like, pay him fucking pay him like just pay him. Oh, we don't want to break our model.

We want to keep athlete costs at 20% or below people. I mean, if anybody is sick of the fight or pay conversation, believe me, it is me. But like, guys, maybe he is negotiating for more money. And in the end, if he gets all 30 million, apparently is what he's asking for. If he ends up getting it, God bless him. I don't think 30 million is, you know, even if it ends up being 2025, that to me is like a great payday. He's more than earned. He's more than earned. I don't have any problem with it. But like, this

is what I mean. John Nash on his podcast was talking about this. So the UFC from ESPN gets paid 20 million per pay per view and then ESPN takes whatever they can get, you know, from from the from the from the buys, right? So they just pay him 20 million. And then they get to keep the receipts on the buys. And the thing is, it's like, you know, pay per view buys are just down tremendously. And so like the average pay per view return is not that high. But apparently, according to him,

the UFC is willing to look the other way when like, hey, Connor would come in and he'd fight Cironi and do a million buys, they more than make up for it for like, half of the year with something just like that. So they'd be totally cool with it in those scenarios. And apparently, John Jones versus Stipe sold pretty well. I don't know exactly what the number was. But I guess everyone was happy with it in the end. But this is the point I'm trying to make it's like if

They would just come up off their pockets a little bit to pay these guys outside of what they're you know Business model that lets them keep 80 cents of every dollar that is generated You could have these fucking fights. You could have them They're not like, they're not like so difficult to make. They're just difficult to make if you're going to pinch pennies and again, they still might do it. I'm not, I'm not saying that it won't happen,

but like all of this difficulty, like if John is saying 30 million fucking call his bluff, call his bluff and see what happens or make a phone call. Uncle Turkey, line one. Seriously, you're in bed with the man. Call him. He bailed you out on the sphere. Let's go. I don't care if the fight's in Saudi. Let's go. Let's make the fight. End of discussion though, Luke. We got to keep going here. Let's go to topic number three. The very controversial boxing superstar, Ryan Garcia has cleared, of course, his one year, or will be clearing his one year suspension in April next month, and of course,

is prepping for his May 2nd Times Square return against Rolando Romero. But Garcia kind of came clean for the first time about that very tumultuous 2024 when he sat down last week with Ak and Barack of the new podcast, Ring Champs, which of course is on the All the Smoke Fight Network, and you can check out the full episode of this on the Ring Champs YouTube page, Garcia revealed really in-depth detail about the drugs and

alcohol that led to a lot of the crazy erratic behavior leading up to the Haney victory, and of course after it when he was stripped or when the wind got taken away due to the positive test due to Oster and it became a no contest. Let's listen in to Ryan talking about how much the drugs and alcohol did really put him on the verge of throwing it all the way last year. I'm surprised I'm here right now.

Really? I was drinking every day, every single day. I feel like the people are really loving. Really? I was drinking every day. Every single day. I feel like the people are really loving it. Even the day of the fight. Really? Day of the fight, I just got so involved in just trying to cope whatever was going on inside and like I said, I've been struggling mentally for years and it just wouldn't stop

for me. What was the turning point? Turning point is to realize like damn bro, I'm slacking my life up. Getting arrested was a big part of it. Almost losing my kids was a huge part of it. Can you talk about what happened that day? I decided to take a bunch of shrooms and something I was doing already, but this time I took too many and I kind of just lost it, bro.

I can't really say anything else, I mean. They were saying that you trashed the room. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean't really say anything else, I mean. They were saying that you trashed the room. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I ended up breaking everything in the room. I don't, I really don't remember, bro. I was drunk and fucked up to the- But to his point, who were you with that day? The same people you always seen me with, bro.

And see, this is the thing though. I'm sure those people love you, but that doesn't mean that they know what's good for you and your career and your life and your spirit. You know what I mean? That's all. I'm sure other people love you. I ain't trying to knock them. I'm just trying to say,

do you think you should have been around that kind of people that's comfortable when you getting drunk? All right, no, no, I respect that. And no, man, I feel I just didn't have those types of people. ["Dreams of a New World"] just didn't have those types of people. You can download the full episode on all pot wherever you find podcasts along with of course the ring champs YouTube channel. Luke I'm not looking for you to provide sympathy to

a guy who just did so much bullshit last year the conspiracies the racism the challenging all these fighters talking bad about their wives like Like it was nonstop, it was out of control. He did touch on two moments that played a big part, the cancer diagnosis for his mom in June and the divorce he had in January of last year that came just a few weeks after the birth of his son, Henry. So Luke, I want you to kind of just gauge what you're seeing here.

We've also seen a more relaxed Ryan in the two press conferences for this Romero fight. Do you think he can put this behind him and instill access the the highest points of his career if he is clean and sober and in the right state with the right help around and moving forward? Well you know let he who has I mean I know the I've tortured this phrase but it really is quite true like he who is without sin cast the first stone and more to the point anybody who has been in the throws and the control of, you know, illicit substances, drugs or alcohol,

knows that not only do you end up hurting yourself a lot, but you hurt a lot of people around you. And it seems like that has dawned on him, at least in some of the early and very important stages. I mean, BC, you would agree, he just looks a lot better here. He certainly sounds a lot better here. He was so manic before, right?

Where he was just firing off words and sentences. Everything seems down to earth in a much better way. So let me just say, I commend him on the progress. I commend him on the sobriety. I commend him on I think also BC wasn't it part of this that he was potentially losing custody of his children. Yes with the arrest. So he caused $15,000 of damage at the Waldorf and Beverly Hills. And by the way that was fueled at that moment by his mom's cancer diagnosis. And it led

to when he was arrested I think there was an incident with his ex-wife as well that led to him being on the verge of losing visitation with his three kids. So if that was a turning point that sobered him up, you know, for the human side of it, you certainly hope he can stay. But for the boxing side, we never thought he can be as dangerous, nasty,

and everything as he was in that Haney fight. I know that there were... Well, hold on. I mean, remember, granted, you know, we've all had some bad predictions. Me saying Haney was going to tune him up like a guitar is an all-time bad one. But I will say, in my defense, you know, not that there was any, like, it was a bad prediction but the guy is admitting he was drinking like the day of the fight under normal circumstances that derails 99% of pro boxers so it wasn't like we were crazy for being like uh this might not be bad i just want to say one more thing about the personal side you know um again anybody who's been in the throws and i've been in the throws not so much of

drugs but certainly uh you knowism, and it's terrible. It does terrible things to you. It does terrible things to your relationships. It does terrible things to your professional prospects. It's terrible. It takes a long time to get right. I will say BC, I had to block him on social media because there was a point in his life

where he was just spewing the most hateful shit about everybody and anybody. You mentioned people's wives, people's religions, people's skin colors, people's, I mean, sexual orientation, anything, anything, anything he could find to just fucking blast away at. I couldn't take it anymore. I think he's actually got a long road to recovery

to really get to a point where he can fully understand like some of the damage that he caused to himself and like the people, his loved ones. but I will say he looks a lot better he sounds way better and I do believe in second chances I do believe in redemption he seems like he's on a good path but I still think he's got a long way to go now you're asking about the boxing side of things BC this is the crazy part if that guy was drinking it in the clubs before fighting Devin Haney, and then even drinking the day of the fight and does that.

Now granted, there was the weight issue and there was the Osterine stuff. It's a much more complicated hole, but it's quite obvious he is very skilled and it's very talented. I think if he's really getting right, he can rescue himself BC and you can't make up for lost time,

but he's still got a lot of good time in front of him to make effective, great use of a professional boxing career. Dude, I think he's still untapped at his full potential. We saw flashes early on. You know, I think even when you look back at the tank fight, you have to look at that through the lens of the rehydration clause. And he did make big mistakes in that tank fight. And once tank humbled him wit

He wasn't the same. He wa times. But I think if the rematch that could look d a big plan ahead of him. He's already signed the d said the third fight afte Teofimo or boots and so coming out and saying, I

to be the first one to fi every one of the four kings, princes, wherever you want to talk about him. He wants the smoke. And also he's getting a really big bag for this Romero fight. Let's hear him talk about that. Is this fight going to be the most money you've ever made? What is the money looking like? Mind your business. I'm always going to bring up money. I'm just watching what you're saying.

You know what I do? I'll hire or lower. I do higher or lower. Okay. So let's say for this particular fight against Rowley, would you be making more than 10 million? More than 15? Mm-hmm. Damn. 20? He understands this generation on how to promote fights.

You know, you should just be seeing what he's bringing to the table. He's bringing Mr. Beast into play. He's bringing KSI, all these guys that are huge names and that are going to amplify the promotion. He's going to move the knee. You're going to see. There is a method to what he's doing. And I think he's the new guy on the block, but I think he's gonna take over. And if you're hating on it, it's weird

because he's bringing all the best fights possible. He's making sure that we fight, me and Devin. There's no, if you have an excuse, it's not about money. It's not about money. And he's exposing people because it ain't about money when it comes to- Usually outpriced themselves out. Now there's no-

So if they deny a fight, it ain't about money, for sure. For this particular fight against Rowley, would you be making more than 20? Around there. Around there. Oh, shoot! All right, I got it. ["Ring of the Bells"]

Too bad for John Jones when he hears things like that, Luke. There's no doubt about it. I wanted to bring up one thing real quick to you. I have clowned Ryan's reaction on this podcast by the way, the one with Alcom Brock on Ring Champs, because he's still going on the heavy conspiracy theory that this test was a joint plant, the Osterine test that he failed by both the Haney family and the New York State Athletic Commission and he's citing the fact that he tested clean before and after on all the other tests. And he's citing the fact that he tested clean before

and after on all the other tests. He's also citing the fact that Haney's brother put out on social media, like I think before the fight, predicting that Ryan was gonna pop. There's other, and I thought that was sort of more him acting crazy. A lot of fans came back at me on my personal channel and were like, read the details on that.

It, there does seem to be sketchy circumstances A lot of fans came back at me on my personal channel and we're like, read the details on that. It does. There does seem to be sketchy circumstances surrounding it. I don't know, Luke. It sounds farfetched to me, but sketchy circumstances like what? Like he believes the Haney family had knowledge ahead of time that this was going to happen and it was a plant and all that.

I mean, that could be a lawsuit and return coming up. Oh wait, he's already getting sick. I'm going to guess that the guy who wasn't really in control with substance abuse problems probably was not artificially poisoned. I'm going to guess that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. There's this weird cult that of fans that he has that are desperate to like, like if he does something great, that they're desperate to like credit him for it. And when he does something bad, they've, bad they've they've they're they they they have any number of excuses he was poisoned or he was treated poorly or this is unfair or even if he did it to himself there's some other kind of Like he had guys, Ryan Garcia has agency. He has agency over his own decisions. He has agency over his own life and you can hold him to account for doing that.

It's really not that difficult to understand. Yeah. Well, 20 million is a lot of money. So good luck to Ryan. That is big time stuff. And look, if you're ready to win some real money this March madness, this March mania that we're having with this tournament. And if you're struggling to

choose which team will pull off and upset, how about this? Forget about the teams. All you need to focus on are player stats to rack up big cash prizes with DraftKings Pick6. And when it comes to massive payouts, get this DraftKings is going to dunk all over the competition. Ain't that right LT? That's right. Pick six is available in most states, including Missouri and California and Texas and Georgia and more. You can track your picks for a shot to win huge cash prizes. It's really as simple as that and you can turn your March mania BC. I know March madness

started yesterday. Of course I did a bracket by the way with Tookster. And you can turn that knowledge into cash today. New players, you're gonna get 50 bucks in PICS6 credits instantly with just a $5 entry. Let me say that one more time. New players get 50 bones in PICS6 credits like that with just a $5 entry. Get on it, folks, get on it.

Yeah, come on, here's what we need you to do. Download that DraftKings Pick Six app right now. Use our code COMBAT with a K, yes, COMBAT with a K for new customers to get what Luke just said. Play $5, get $50 and pick six credits. Better payouts, bigger wins only with Pick Six from DraftKings. The crown, of course, is yours.

Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org in Connecticut. Must be 18 plus, age and eligibility restrictions vary by jurisdiction. Pick six not available everywhere, including New York and Ontario.

Voidware prohibited, one per new customer, bonus awarded as non-withdrawable, Pick6 credits that expire in 14 days, limited time offer, see terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. Let's get into topic number four. And it seems to be a little reveal, or is it, about the future of TKO Boxing, the partnership of course, between Turkey, Al-Asheq, Saudi Arabia, Dana White, UFC, Nick Khan, Ari Emanuel, everything going on on that side.

What we saw was boxing scenes, Lance Pugmire talking to multiple fighter managers who have received according to Lance contract offers, stating certain financial structure for what this TKO league will look like. They're a going after young fighters for the future. Let's show this potential pay scale

viegas from fight hub. The the purses will be increas fighters ability to crack of the company and climb the rankings. You can see there, $20,000 for a 10-round bout by an unranked fighter, escalating the higher you go in rankings and the higher that you come to that title. $375,000 when challenging for a company championship, $750,000 when defending a company championship. And there's a lot of other elements to this that we've seen within it.

One is Luke, that it seems if you sign with them, you're under the books for three fights. No word yet if there's other sort of UFC style contract kick-ins that allow TKO to keep you longer. But I wanted to get your reaction, mostly because it seems so polarizing. A lot of boxing people read this boxing scene story and said, oh, this will never work. See, they're bringing UFC payouts. Just the same, a lot of people with experience in this

area were like, hold on, this does bring a return to the middle class for fighters that can't normally reach this level of payout, it might cap you on the highest end, but what was your takeaway on this? I'm a little bit closer to the latter. I mean, this is, it's very, okay. So first of all, like they're giving the game away here a little bit, like what do they plan to do? Well, you see what they plan to do.

They plan to offer pay that allows the house, the promoter to make more on an event than the current structure allows. And if you read the court documents in the UFC anti-trust suit, there were, you know, there were statements from Lou deBellof, there were receipts from Golden Boy Promotions, there were, you know, testimonials from Bob Arumam where they all kind of explained 70% or higher, including up to 80%, going to the boxer is quite normal in that industry. And they explained sort of the reasons why.

They want to invert this or to bare minimum, kind of change it. And I don't think that's much of a surprise. I think that part is kind of obvious. So to that extent, I don't have much to say. The question is like, who ends up taking advantage of these. Also, by the way, for the company championship, the company championship kind of tells you

that they're gonna stay in compliance with the Ali Act because they're not trying to form like a real title. They're just trying to, they're gonna have a ceremonial title and then they're gonna kind of treat it like a real title. But you're asking about the pay and who will apply to. If you look at pay in boxing, now this is somewhat disputed depending on how you measure it, but there are ways to look at it based on boxing receipts where the in the curve of like all the different pay slots and who makes what, the vast majority

of the time boxers make more than MMA including at the low end and especially at the high end. People think at the low end MMA fighters make more. That's really not the case but to the point that you raised BC there kind of is a bit of a middle class there where they can make more and so if this is geared towards that there could be it could work out in a quite of a lucrative way. But what I would say is, if they're bringing UFC pay, and these are three five deals ostensibly, my hunch is that they want to add UFC style contract provisions like if you get injured,

and granted that's not as relevant in boxing, but it does tend to happen. It extends your career from the day you signed versus the day of your first fight that difference being an extension If you end up becoming a champion are there other championship clauses? What other things are they going to do to tack on to that that make it a longer deal? Because by the way UFC deals when they're offered often are just three fight deals. I've seen UFC contracts That's very very normal It's not not all of them are that way obviously, but as like a sort of like a standard thing They do that too

so I can see the argument that this could service a particular kind of boxer and It's a bit of a middler that could have something of a bump in pay BC when the UFC got rid of Individual sponsors and they picked up the Reebok deal, you know, it didn't affect every MMA or I should say every UFC fighter the same at the high end. It was really bad for those guys at the very low end. It was really good for those guys because they weren't getting any sponsorship and such that they were didn't have to chase these guys down. And in the middle, it

kind of depended on your circumstances. Seems to me this will be something like that. I just want to add the real kicker here are any of the additional things that lengthen the terms of the deal. That's what we have to see. Right yeah I mean we still don't know the full package. In fact it must be noted Turkey Alişek who is uh him and his country are of course funding the TKO league. He owns Ring magazine and on the Ring Twitter account, he did refute this report. He also took it a little bit further here,

showing a picture of Gary Jonas, who is the owner of the Pro Box promotion, which purchased boxing scene from Paramount over the past two years. And Turkey says, this article is not factually accurate. I think Gary Jonas should focus on his business in Florida because he doesn't want the FTC to call him again. I'm wondering what the structure of his business model with the rehab facilities and boxing are. So, end quote.

There you've got a very aggressive use of the supposedly independent, editorially ring magazine account. Now, Jonas earlier that day did give an interview that was very negative and aggressive against Turkey in terms of what his intentions and whether he will succeed in this. But Luke, I know that TKO seems to be pushing back

to how we reacted to their initial announcement. You saw Turkey come on Twitter and give that long spaces thing where he kind of said, no, we're not looking to push everybody out, drive everybody out of business. I don't know what to think anymore. I feel like every other day I feel like they've got all the connections and money to take over. But there is a lot of old guard that are gonna dig their heels and

probably try to prevent this from happening. Do you see Samson Lukowicz talk about this with With the biv- with the biv- all thing? Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. I mean, it's it's you're you're raising all like literally all the right questions, but we're so far out. They came out guns blazing and the response was like, oh, and now they're like, no, no,

no, no, no, no, like, we're gonna do this and then we're gonna be this, but we're gonna do that. You know, I mean, that they've softened the tone in a few different directions. And again, to the point Dana White raised, Turkey's got like what 18 months left on some of these. It's gonna be a while. It's gonna be a while. It will be. It will be. We'll continue to follow this development. Let's go to topic number five. There is a monster event this Sunday from the Saitama Super Arena in Japan. Yes, it is one championship, 172. And Luke to access this card this weekend

is available on global pay-per-view on watch.onefc.com. Not the normal prime video there. This is a super card that's gonna mix, of course, the different combat styles that one likes to present. But in that main event, Takeru Sagawa, the former three division K-1 champion, will take on former one championship flyweight Muay Thai champion, Arad Tang, in a five round flyweight kickboxing match. Luke, set us up here. There's a lot to love about this matchup. Before we even get to we're going to talk to Timothy Wheaton here in just a second from

Low Kick MMA. But BC one thing I want to point out on this card there are let's see I believe there are let's see how many fights there are don't say anything yet. There are 14 fights 14 fights on this card. One, two, three of them are MMA. Only three MMA fights. Now I was talking about this with Long Island Luke before the show. I don't mind this at all. I don't mind this even a little bit. Like of course it's going to be great to have more big leagues

or bigger promotions doing MMA. And there is some of that. And by the way, if you're asking which ones they are, there's one on the prelim card that's really not that interesting. But Shinya Aoki taking on Edward Foleyang. This is kind of that. And by the way, if you're asking which ones they are, there's one on the prelim card that's really not that interesting, but Shinya Aoki taking on Edward Foley Yang. This is kind of like a fun fight. Foley Yang was something of a Filipino pioneer.

This will be a 170 fight. And then the one that's much more interesting is with the vacant Bantamweight Championship between Adriano Morais who had obviously those interesting fights with DJ, former champion himself, taking on Yuya Wakamatsu. So that's actually a pretty fun contest there as well. Yeah, rematch for the big players.

It's rematch, yes, exactly. So there's some, even the MMA they have on there is actually reasonably respectable, especially for the title level, but really the star of the show obviously is all the kickboxing. They got Takeru versus Rateng in the main, Taiwen Chai, taking on Masaki Noiri, I'm sure I'm saying his name wrong.

And then Superlek is also on this card as well. Superlek obviously had an amazing fight with Takeru previously. So like there's a bunch of really interesting things happening on it, but BC, it does appear to me two things worth observing. One, this is clearly an organization that is just moving into more of an Muay Thai

kickboxing direction, even if it's four ounce Muay Thai. And second of all, this was brought to me by Timothy as well. Have you noticed for a pay-per-view event where they've got literally this Takeru versus Rateng fight has been years in the making, Chotri has been very quiet. Have you noticed that? Chotri has done a little bit of media for it, but not much. And my understanding figuring out the next season of the one championship apprentice, there's a lot of producing that needs to be done for that. Okay.

Yeah, fair enough. But the reason that was given to me was previously. Chattery had said, well, you know, Thai fighters are just Thai kickboxers and Muay Thai fighters are better than Japanese kickboxers. And you know, this was at a time when he was trying to sign Japanese talent and then like curry favor with the Japanese market. And my understanding was it wasn't like what Chotri said was necessarily factually inaccurate,

somewhat overstated, but factually inaccurate, but just really tone deaf for a legion of fighters and a market that you need, frankly, especially if you're gonna go in a kickboxing direction, Japanese kickboxing is obviously not what it once was, but still is an important market, you know. So what's interesting about that, he's kind of taken a bit of a backseat and they're letting other factors and other kind of influences promote this fight. So really interesting what's happening with one. And as I said, with the Long Island Luke,

I don't care what direction they go. If you put on banger fights and you've got something that you can do sustainably over time, go do that. You don't need to do MMA. Like again, I'm not saying I don't want MMA. I'm just saying I want them to do something that will enable them to thrive. That's what I want them to do.

And it seems like this is it. Now, to set this up, BC, we did speak to Timothy Wheaton earlier this week to give you guys a preview because listen, as much as I love kickboxing and BC2, we don't know shit about it. All right. Can we just be honest about that? We know fuck all about kickboxing. It's not our wheelhouse at all. I feel like I know a fair bit about MMA. BC knows a fair bit about boxing and then you know kind of a little bit in between the two of us there but we don't know much about kickboxing so we said we got to call in reinforcements. Well, Timothy Wheaton has you covered. Guys, Takeru versus Rod Tang is fucking guaranteed barn burning excitement but what is the relevancy? How do they match up? Here's my conversation with Tim Wheaton.

Tim, let's get to it. Why is Takeru versus Rod Tang such a big fight in kickboxing? Man, I am so excited for this fight. We have been waiting years to get this match up and the way that I compare it to MMA or boxing is that these are Cold War rivals. They are the best from one organization versus the best from another organization,

but they could never meet. Contract disputes, TV deals, all that sort of stuff going on. But finally, after years of waiting, we finally get the fight we want. We get the Cold War rivals, the best of Muay Thai and one championship facing the best of K-1 and kickboxing.

I am so, so excited for this matchup that these two will finally get in the ring. We had injuries, we had so many blocks coming in the way, but we finally made it, Luke Thomas. We've made it, bro. Does it matter that there's no title on the line? No, not at all here. This is like the way that I compare it to MMA, very accurately would be Von der Leysilva and Chuck Liddell. Now when they met, eventually there was no title on the line,

but it didn't diminish how exciting and important that fight was in MMA history. This fight is in a very similar vein of there may not be a title on the line, but the title doesn't tell the full story. The records are the more important part. The names are the far more important part in this fight and it's a five round super fight anyway, so I'm pumped for it. Does this fight being in Japan obviously that gives Takeru some kind of support? To what extent does that matter in terms of how it could influence the fight or the judges or anything else? I've wondered the same thing as well. I think everyone has that home crowd advantage that when you go to Brazil they're always going to you know select the Brazilians. When you go to Japan they're always going to

select the Japanese people. I think him being surrounded by his home audience there in Tokyo, I think that's really going to benefit Takeru's attitude when it comes to officiating and judging. I don't think it's going to make a massive difference there but Takeru's attitude when it comes to officiating and judging. I don't think it's gonna make a massive difference there but Takeru is very emotional fighter. He's a guy who listens to the audience. He when they're not cheering, he's slowing down when they are cheering. He is speeding up. So, he's a very emotional fighter and I think for that for that factor being in Japan is gonna be very important for

Mr. Takeru. Takeru style could be described as what? Dude this guy, oh my God, he's one of those guys that you think, I don't even like combat sports, go and watch Takeru fight and you will immediately change your mind. This guy is a forward pressure brawler. He is looking to take his opponent's head off with a flurry of strikes. It's honestly just his leg kicks and body kicks are in the way of him throwing a tornado of punches. And Rod Tang is a fighter who's an expert

at getting to where he wants to be. He wants to get to the inside and throw combination punches and he will use head movement and parries to get to that position. Whereas Takeru loves to use his face to block punches and get in the positions that he wants to be. So he's willing to take a flurry of punches to land four or five punches of his own. And man, this is why, like, you guys know Rod Tang real well. You know, this whirlwind of a puncher against another flurry fighter.

Oh, sign me up. This is why we're here. This is why we do this sport. By the way, what kind of gloves are they using? And depending on what your answer is, does that influence? Does that favor either fighter? Yeah, no, that's a really good question here. So coming into the fight, Takeru had said that I'm willing to fight Rod Tang in Muay Thai. I'm willing to fight Takeru under any or sorry, I'm willing to fight Rod Tang under anyay Thai. I'm willing to fight Tekkeru under any, or sorry, I'm willing to fight Rod Tang under any ruleset. I simply do not care. I want to fight Rod Tang.

And he's always made it clear that that's his intention. So if they wanted small gloves, they could have done small gloves. If they wanted to fight under Muay Thai rules, they could have. For whatever reason, they chose to do it under K1 kickboxing standard rules. So we will be in the big gloves in this matchup. And honestly, I think that favors probably Rod Tang a little bit because he does cover up a lot more to defend himself against punches. Whereas Takeru is a guy who will just put his hands down by his waist, wait for you to finish your little combination and then throw back in return. So I actually think a lot of things in this matchup favor Rod Tang to be honest with you. What's interesting is I heard Takeru say he like this could be his last fight.

I know he's only 33. Does he have a lot of miles on him? How would you compare the wear and tear on him to the wear and tear on Rod Tang? Yeah okay so that's kind of the X factor for both men in this fight because if you remember a few years ago, Teck Karu had fought the phenom, Tenshin Nasekawa lost to him. He relinquished his three K1 titles and he said, all I want to do now is fight Rod Tang and then I'm pretty much done. He went and won a title in Paris. Then he took the fight against Superlek and the other guy.

Now he's going to fight Rod Tang. And I think this is going to be it for him. I do think this is his final fight. And I think the miles on him are not just from fighting. When I compared him to Chocoladel and Vonderley Silva, it's also because of the way he trains. He is a guy who over trains. He is getting into full on gym wars routinely. So I think he's a guy who over trains and it maybe has a little bit more damage. And if you remember a good MMA comparison is Dan Henderson

where he was a guy who had a full range of tools but then by the end of his career he was just throwing the overhand. So rather than having all the setups to the overhand he just fell in love with that one thing. And I feel like Tech Care was in that same boat where he's not doing his step in leg kicks as much as he used to, to get to the flurries. He's just going for

the flurries. Now Rod Tang is not overtrained him coming in has the opposite problem where he actually hasn't been super active in the gym for the last couple of years. He got married and he's like, yeah, that's taken up all my time. I have a child on the way even said in an interview for one of his past title defenses that he only trained two days. Like that's it. Like not two days before the fight, just two days overall. So, you got one guy whose motivation for training is iffy versus another guy who is way the **** over trained. Who does one want to win? Matt, man, you know one wants to win.

They want Rod Tank. That is their golden goose that and and for good reason he's absolutely awesome. Like you put his highlights out is going viral consistently. He's going to be punching himself in the highlight reel. One championship absolutely

wants Rod Tank to win and you notice. You know, maybe that's an off air conversation. Never mind. What do you expect in terms of what the fight will look like early and then down the stretch? Take care. Oddly enough, I think he likes to pretend that he's a fast starter. So he runs right at his opponent, but he needs to get knocked down for him to really get his head in the game. He needs to get slapped up a little bit to get things going. And that's an interesting fold of his career consistently is that he hasn't been this world beater who looks flawless and no one ever touches him. Allah, you know, a Cain Velasquez or someone like that. He actually struggles in almost every fight and then comes back. So he's willing to take a few punches,

wake himself up, and then in the later rounds, mid rounds two and three. He's very very strong So I think he's actually gonna get dropped in round one it's just a matter of if he has the willpower and Stamina to come back now He's never lost by knockout in his career But I mean Rod Tang's a different beast and there's a lot of pressure going into this fight This is the oldest he's ever been so I think it's's going to be, you know, an absolute banger here. In the case of what what can though, I saw to care who say

how the winner of this is the best striker in the world. And obviously, that's a promotional kind of title. But I guess I would ask, what can the winner claim from this victory? Who Who are they after this contest? So, okay, let's jump out of the promotional line here a little bit is just essentially the second best fighter in this way class after tension NASA Kala, both guys have lost attention NASA Kala. And both of them have created incredible legacies

despite that losing to a guy like that there's no shame in it. But yeah, this is fight is just going to define their legacy. This is the biggest fight for both fighters. This is gonna be the most important fight on their record. When we look back in 10 years, this is the fight that we're still gonna be talking about. This is the fight that's still gonna be trending on YouTube 10 years from now.

So this is just like that Chuck Liddell and Von Der Leysilva fight. Maybe there wasn't a title on the line. Maybe both guys were at the end of their career, but it's still one of those fights that we talk about as a very, very important milestone kind of fight. All right. As we wrap up, Tim, you ready to give me a prediction? What do you think is going to happen? Who's going to get their hand raised? And if you are being bold by what method I am, man, I love Tech Care. He is like the coolest, coolest guy in the world. He's one of those guys who fell in love with kickboxing as a young,

young man because of the golden age of K1 and like who didn't. But I can't look away from the miles on getting in gym wars routinely, him struggling in his last few bouts. Honestly, if Rod Tang has trained for this fight, I have him winning this fight, but that's just my prediction. Luke, what do you see in it? honestly, if Rod Tang has trained for this fight, I haven't winning this fight. But that's just my prediction. Luke, what do you see in it? Chaos.

Yeah. Chaos, I am waiting for this one. I, you know, this is that we've talked about it off air. Like, this is not necessarily our strong suit, which is why we wanted to bring you in, but even I am pretty hyped for this one. And it seems like the martial arts world in general is pretty high for this one. Tim, if folks want more of your work, where can they get it? Man, I'm all over the place. I got an MMA show at Low Kick MMA and then I have a kickboxing show Kick Weekly with Tim Wheaton on the

Calf Kick Sports Network. Just look up Tim Wheaton, you'll find me. Links will be down below or whatever. Tim Wheaton, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. There we have it. Look, he's really good. He's great. He's got me fired the hell up because you know, our fans told us that when Rod tank fought super like and when also to Kiro fought super like we missed it. They're like, how are you guys not talking about that? I'm glad we're getting in tune to where we should be. And that just educated me a lot on what's going to happen on Sunday. Yeah. It gives you, I mean, listen, of course there's going to be like more detailed breakdowns with the people who really, really want the hardcore stuff

as it relates to kickboxing, but Tim is going to Tim was great. So shouts to Tim, go follow his work. He's awesome. And then we'll definitely have him back BC cause he is useful and smart and fun. So shouts to him. And like I said, if you can listen to that and not be interested in the fight, I don't know if you have a fucking pulse, man. I'm, I'm well, let's look at a couple of things here.

He mentioned it could come down to how much Rod Tang is training. Let's watch this video of Rod Tang chaining his, his chin for Takiru's power. I'm going to go. Hey, hey. Hey, hey. Hey, hey. Luke, that seems ill-advised, dude. That seems. Okay.

I mean, he's going to have insane CTE, but the fight's going to bang. Let's just be honest about that. All right. We've got a face off from them after the press conference. So, you can see what we're looking at. That is Rod Tang on the left to care on the right I love Rod Tang's pants here Luke you Well, it's not the pants it's what he's wearing on top of it or whatever that is it's like but yeah dude fucking in Fucking intense crazy intense

I love it. There's shotri overseeing that one right there. Well, shout out to Shotri for putting this together. And Luke, Takeru did fight Superlek in January of 2024, and he got a super leg injury in the five round unanimous decision loss. Here's Superlek talking about the recovery from that. I was in a bad position, and I was kicked by a left kick. I had to finish the kick, or I would have been out of the game. I was trying my best.

The pain of the kick was so bad that I was kicked out of the game. I was so worried about the pain during the game. I was like, is was going to fly away in pain. I thought, this is what torture is like. I was seriously injured, so I thought it would be difficult to stand in the ring again. But as I got better after treatment, I felt like I wanted to get back to it as soon as possible. Oh my God, Luke, that video just got me fired up. These guys are savage superheroes. This is what I mean. Like does one need to be doing lesser MMA if they can do stuff like this? I don't think that they do, to be honest.

Wow. All right. That goes down Sunday. Saitama Super Arena. And a reminder, watch.onefc.com is where you can purchase this global pay-per-view. A lot of MMA, some names we know that we mentioned right there. Very good stuff right there. All right, that wraps our top five topics.

Now we'll get into a pair of brief fan segments. We put out the call, of course, to morningcombat.gmail.com, your pipeline to show Mikey your pipe. Yeah, only pipes. All right, we start off with an opportunity here to take the stand. Maybe we don't always say everything that's accurate.

Sometimes in fact, we are dead wrong. Dead wrong. We got one dead wrong this week, it's from Sadiq and he says that 154 of Monday's Monday show March 17th, Luke referred to John Jones's haircut as quote, the Kimbo slice bit, but it's actually just an avatar of the last airbender haircut. You uncultured swine. Look, I don't speak anime. These fucking nerds. Oh my God. Guys, I understand it's an anime reference by virtue of if you go back and look at the picture,

there's other things happening. I made a joke because Kimbo slice also put one in his chest as did Brian Ebersole as like also a Kimbo slice bit. I didn't think he was actually doing a Kimbo slice bit. I just thought it was a joke to say it's a Kimbo get the fuck out of here with this shit. Wow. By the being called by the way, by the way, like, is there some kind of concerted effort to ignore all of the various errors you're making and only focus on? Like, I feel like the last like nine of these have only focused on what I'm at, which to say, fine, I get some of these wrong, but like they're, they're purposely not doing yours. I've noticed

that I think I'm undefeated, dude. I think that's what's going on. They're trying to take me down a peg, which is fine. Come after me. I don't give a shit, but they're definitely you're being you're the DEI fucking case here. They're not there. You know, you're getting, you're getting some special treatment here. You know, who's getting some special treatment? Reggie J. Luke. He's back. Yeah. Let's see his butthole. Okay, we don't we don't play that game in this house. Okay, look, we got one more fan segment for you. I'm surprised Daz didn't mahalo our ass on that dead wrong and give these MFers right?

Right, Luke blast from the past. That's what I'm talking about. Hey, we got another segment called fan submissions where you send in your artwork, pictures of your wife and tight t-shirts. Luke, did you hear by the way that I had the great Saul A of Louisville on my live ramble on Wednesday, live from the ladder when he was cleaning gutters in Louisville? Great, great stuff. Dude, it was epic. He's literally on the gutters live. It was fucking awesome.

That's awesome. Oh, let's do it. This one's called fan submissions. You've got mail. Viewers. The immortal voice of Gaffney Jim Pierre right there. Let's hear from Long Island Rob. He says, hey, it's Long Island Rob here. Happy Friday. This past Saturday, I had another opportunity to coach and corner my longtime friend and training partner, Disco Danny Fox for his second amateur MMA match. We worked on some things after our last match, even though we didn't get to display a lot of it. Why, you ask? Because Disco Dan won by TKO

20 seconds into the first round. He's carved out of stone with devastating power in his hands and a killer ground game as BC says he is coming on. Luke, let me know what you think of his performance. All right, let's see. Wow, a little bit aggressive, but that's wow. Kind of looks like Jack Della from this distance. Dude, I'm telling you something, if you watch MMA at this level, I'm telling you, I've seen so many fights like this. If you just overwhelm your opponent, if you're like 1-0 or 2-0, if you just like take

the fight immediately to them, they typically don't have the ability to just resist. They just they kind of just cover up because they don't, you know, they're obviously inexperienced fighters. You'll win 80% of the time doing that. What weight class do you think Disco Danny Fox is at? I don't know, 45, something like that? Because I think for our second fight under MK Promotions, right, our first one is Daz versus, Daz is gonna bare-knuckle Televen Kipapa at the Lava Shack.

But for our second one, can we get Christian DeGarro against Disco Danny Fox for MK Promotions? You and I each pick a corner, right? Oh my God. All right. I'd be funny as shit. I'd do that. No, Cedar, are you down with this Long Island Robb character stealing everything you work for? I was just going to say, I'm about to go see Danny Fox fight live next time. He's fighting in Brentwood and it's right down the road, man. Hey, shout out seriously to Long Island Rob, Disco, Danny Fox.

Congratulations on the win. I don't know if there's a future of you putting an MK patch on your ball sack but we gotta love a lot of love for you, DeGarro, all the crew here. We love you. Thank you. Let's hear from the Rick Sanchez. He has one photo surrounding me. Hi, I'm Luke Thomas. Everyday Brian and countless others like him chase the fleeting high of nitrous oxide in the back of an Arby's parking lots. Behind the roast beef, behind the curly fries, they're crying out for help. A dollar a

day. That's all it takes to save them. For less than the cost of a beef and cheddar, you can give Brian a future. A future without the hiss of nitrous. A future where he's back in the studio not passed out by the drive-through Your donation provides counseling a warm meal that isn't Arby's and a chance at redemption call now 1-800 save Brian Operators are standing by together. We can pull Brian Campbell and so many others from the Arby's abyss Don't let another night end with the sound of whipped cream and regret. Luke, thank you for launching your sub stack to to point out this injustice in the world. For a good

cause, you know what I'm saying? For a good cause. Congratulations once again on on extending. Thanks everyone who subscribed. I appreciate it. All right, great to hear right there. Thank you very much. The Rick Sanchez for that. Here's RJ who has a photo. So what's what's the implication here that he's saving our asses? Yes, that he is, you know, come up from the Earth to help carry the car. I revived you from the dead. That's yeah, yeah, there's something to be said for that. Shout out RJ, although you also, but you don't look this cool. Can I tell you the truth about that one? I mean, no one looks as cool as that's a fair point. Yeah. Yeah. I heard you mentioned Edward Furlong earlier on that one card. He was great in T2, right? Luke. He was awesome. Yeah. Wow. Hey, let's hear from Jeff. He says, good afternoon, gents.

I believe the legend goes quote, and with the herb of Hades, Luke stumbled into the land of Latinas, Cartagena pronunciation for the ever cultured BC, Columbia, where he heard the sirens echoing, hola, papacito. And his comrades watched helplessly until they were taken hold by the siren call as well. I mean, I feel like if you're gonna have a weakness, this is a pretty good one. Yes, my weakness is wieners. Apparently, look of the edible kind and yours is Latin. Well,

there's many kinds of edible wieners BC. If you know what I'm saying, I don't get down with that guy necessarily. That is hilarious. Thank you very much for your contribution. Jeff. Do we have one more and all now? Lookers at an empty spot. That's it. All right, that is it. MorningCombat at gmail.com. And Luke, there it is right there.

You can get your fansubs, Dead Wrongs. Reach out to the show, complain, critique, whatever you got for us, we'll take it. Thank you. Luke, of course I'll be getting out of plane in minutes. I will be Saturday night on the call. Prime Video, no pay-per-view, prime video, 8 PM Eastern, a triple header from PBC.

With the main event, yeah, thank you very much. Maura Ranallo, Abner Morris, Jordan Plant, and myself. Main event, Sebastian Fundora, first fight since that bloody war against Tim Tzu last year where he became a unified champion at 154 pounds. He'll welcome Stanford Connecticut's own Cordell Booker. Now, Fundora, a big time betting favorite here, a lot of potential big matchups for him in the future.

But I don't count out Booker here because you know Fundora Luke, he'll give away his height, he'll bend over and he'll just brawl with you. So this should be an interesting test. Yeah, he's a million feet tall and fights like he's... Abdu-Rozic. I mean, you just can't believe it. So, enjoy that.

Indeed, right there. So, that should be interesting. The Tripleheader will also give us the return of Jesus Ramos Jr. in the Coalman event. So, could he be a future opponent? Look, if Fundora gets by this test and he is a minus 1400 betting favorite according to DraftKings against the plus 750 Booker, is there a 154 you want to see him against most?

I mean, wasn't he supposed to fight Spence? Yeah, I still want that. Yeah, I would say that one. By the way, I also saw that PBC or I'm not sure if it's a PBC event but Tim Zue's fighting Joey Spencer in Australia. Yes, that is Saturday, April 5th. It's April 6th. I like that fight. Down under and that will be on Prime Video, regular Prime Video as well.

I like that fight. I think that's a good fight. I like that fight a lot. And then if he wins, they're already talking about doing Tim Zue, Keith Thurman in July. So that could be interesting. Thurman though is saying, look, I'll fight anybody. Give me Charlo, give me Fundora, give me Spence, give me whatever. So, wow. Okay. There it

is. Also, Dazon this weekend from Sydney, George Cambos is moving up to 140 and he's taking on a late replacement. The belief is that he would then fight Richardson Hitchens for a title if that goes down, Luke. I don't think you care about that though. I don't know. Thank you very much. That is the show that we have for today. So Luke anything Tim Wheaton was a fantastic guest. We certainly hope to see more of him. Lowkick MMA and other places. You can follow us right there below our YouTube channels. Dude I'm gonna have an interview next week with Edgar Berlenga that I filmed last night. That is yeah he gets loose and turn four. He wants all the smoke and all the money Luke. So it's going to be interesting to see. All right. Well, I look

forward to that. And like I mentioned, uh, UFC London, watch along post fight show live on my YouTube tomorrow. Be there. All right. Main card minute. What time we go on live tomorrow? I'm doing the full card tomorrow. 1pm. You could join me for the prelims, join Luke for the main card if you want, or join me for both.s join Luke for the main card if you want or Join me for both. You know, yeah, there it is. Whoop. There it is Thank you so much for it to all of you for coming in an hour early to facilitate my Travel schedule staff and viewers included have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Enjoy the fights Don't forget to Carol versus Rob Tang on Sunday should be fun

We'll be back in the studio Monday Manhattan and, Meadowlark to break it all down. For Long Island Luke, Luke Thomas, this is Brian Campbell. Take care of yourselves, folks. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.