MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC on ESPN 5, Colby Covington, Shevchenko | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 5 | BELOW THE BELT

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Today's episode of Morning Kombat with Luke Thomas and Brian Campbell includes UFC on ESPN 5, Colby Covington, Shevchenko, and more. MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL, Showtime's first live digital series, spotlights the weekend’s biggest news from the world of combat sports. MORNING KOMBAT airs live every Monday at 12 PM ET / 9 AM PT. #BelowTheBelt #MorningKombat Subscribe to the BELOW THE BELT with Brendan Schaub channel: http://s.sho.com/BelowtheBelt Get More BELOW THE BELT with Brendan Schaub: Follow: https://twitter.com/btbshowtime Like: https://www.facebook.com/BelowTheBeltSHO Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belowthebelt/ Get more SHOWTIME: Website: http://www.sho.com/sho/home Follow: https://twitter.com/SHO_Network Like: https://www.facebook.com/showtime Instagram: https://instagram.com/showtime/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Reveille, Reveille, Donks. It is Monday, August 5th, 2019. And it's time for Morning Combat. My name is Luke Thomas. I am the host of this program along with my co-host, you know this man very well, from CBS Sports and a bunch of other places.

This is Brian Campbell, y'all. Fired up. Fired up. MKUltra back. So we've got fired up Brian, not hung over Brian, huh? Yeah, I don't really speak about your personal life on air. I don't know where you're going with that one right there. Alright, ready to do some morning combat? Yeah, let's do this. Actually, you know what? I'll say this before we get to the first topic. It's a surprisingly busy weekend, actually. There's a lot of stuff going on. In the past summertime, outside of that

UFC early July, 4th of July week, normally nothing going on, but it really speaks to where MMA and boxing is at this year in 2019 that business is moving. All right, so let's get to the first order of business if we can. You know where we're going to start. UFC 241, no, excuse me, post-UFC 241, UFC on ESPN 5. Chaos was here. Colby Covington just down the street from where we are defeats Robbie Lawler, 50-45 on all three judges' scorecards. Now appears to be in all, your runaway contender

for the next title shot against Kamar Usman. They brought him up on stage. They had to have a row of security there. It was... Rashad Evans almost turned into Dave Schaller trying to separate those two. He'd probably do a bit of a better job, if we're being honest. Shouts to Dave Schaller. Dave Schaller's a strong hair part these days, though.

You've got to give him that. Rashad Evans, too. In any event, so let's get to this. What did we learn about Colby Covington? I'll go first on this one, if I may. Hey, it's your show. Why not, right? Hey, well, it's our show. In any event, actually, it's their show, too. In any event, so let's get to this. What did we learn about Colby Covington? I'll go first on this one if I may. Hey, it's your show. Why not, right? Well, it's our show.

In any event, actually, it's their show too. Okay, so what did we learn? First, here's what I learned. This might be the first fight where the MMA media begrudgingly accepted that he's actually pretty good. Let me just sort of state this out loud. There is, look, there's nothing wrong, I think, with letting your political views be brought to bear. Colby Covington's doing that. But you have to always make sure that that doesn't influence the way you assess how good a fighter is.

And I'll be honest, I believe, not across the board, but in general, the amount of vitriol they have for Colby Covington's views in the media. It has blinded them to actually how good he is. He's been this good for a while. They just didn't want to accept it. This was the one where they were like, will you beat Robbie Lawler even at 37? Not prime, but still very, very good. They finally had to accept Gulp. I find Colby's political views odious

as well, but I am the first person to be like, yo, that dude is awesome. He's very, very talented. And honestly, I did this on Dissected, Brian, that fight against Kumar Usman is ultra-competitive. You may have just seen the next UFC

welterweight champion. So for me, what did we learn about Colby Chaos Covington? He's a serious threat to the throne at 170. Not by virtue of being the top contender, but because of actually how legitimately talented and how well he matches up against Kamaru. Yeah, you may not like his

paintbrushes, his choice of colors, his easel, but he painted a masterpiece on Saturday against Lawler. And you're right. This is that moment where you gotta step up, and whether you hate him for the right reasons, whether you hate him in general, all of that, you gotta to give him his due. It's very reminiscent.

They're not the same fighters. It's not an equal comparison, but very reminiscent to Conor McGregor against Chad Mendes. Where up to that point, it was, you know, when we finally see him against this style, we can prove that he's just a trash talker. We can prove that he's not legit. We can prove that maybe he's just a puncher.

So it sort of had that same air where when you saw that, and I know Chad Mendes took that fight late, but that victory and you saw the emotion in Conor that night, that was when I think a lot of people were like, okay, get ready. The Conor McGregor era is here, like it or not. This is a much different situation because of the personality at stake because Colby wants you to hate him. If you're upset about anything he said on Saturday, that means he won. That Matt Hughes joke, distasteful, yes. Well-timed, perfectly. He wants you to hate him on that level.

His public workout had scantily clad women. He's telling everyone, including me in fight week, I got the best cardio in the game because of what I do in the bedroom. Hey, guys. Porn star cardio. Wake up. This is great for the sport. Not good for the sport.

Great for the sport to have a button pusher like this. But for that aside, this is opening segment. This first question is really about what he did in that cage. Yes, he established himself as a true title contender. We cannot take that away from him. But because of his polarizing nature, I'm sure you had this happen too because you're a lightning rod for controversy no matter what on social media. But me, I don't put out there that I voted for Nader in 96 and 2000.

I did, though. Did you really? Really. But once I put out there that I voted for Nader in 96 and 2000 I did though did you really really but once I put out there that Colby Covington painted a masterpiece and he looked great and now we have to respect him man you would think I I did that with like a serpent on my chest and a machine gun in my hand you know what I mean I'm just talking about what he did in the cage yeah it was so funny to watch this because look Robbie Lawler is 37 am I suggesting Brian that Robbie Lawler is in his prime? Well, of course not. No, he is not in his prime.

To that point, I had Robbie Lawler on my show on SiriusXM, and I asked him, hey, man, how have you stayed this good, this relevant, frankly, this healthy for his 18-year pro career? That's how long he's been a pro. That is remarkable, and that is a very long time. And look, father time comes for everybody. Am I willing to look at this and say that Colby beat the very best version of Robbie Lawler we've ever seen? No, he did not. Am I also willing to probably bet, because there's no really way to know,

this Colby Covington gives the very best version of Robbie Lawler fits? Yes, because look at how he does it. Look at how he is able to fight. Look at how he is able to win. Look at how he is able to win. And when you begin to piece together the skills that he has, with the strategy that he has, with that unbelievable cardio, dude, I've got news for you. He's good enough to beat any welterweight.

That's a fact. Colby Covington is good enough. Doesn't mean he will, by the way. But you're saying he's good enough. Doesn't mean he will. I'm not predicting he goes out there and just blows the doors of everybody. But does he have the skills? Does he have the cardio? Does he have the experience now

to beat any welterweight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship? Nay. On Earth, yes. Let me give him this shout-out here. Had him on my podcast State of Combat

on CBS Sports last week. Like that little plug it in right there? I see that. Check it out. Subtle. All right, anyway, the point is I said to him, look, Colby, you know the questions coming in in this fight.

Yeah, you're probably going to be able to take Robbie down. You're probably going to be able to control large chunks of this fight. What happens if he stuffs your takedowns? What happens if this becomes a striking match? If this becomes a kickboxing slash boxing match? And, of course, he said the right things. He said, I had a chance to show you how well-rounded I actually am. You've got to give him that credit here.

A good deal of the second half of that fight was on the feet. From the second round on, they were striking, and Colby was winning. And he outstruck Robbie. He did it with volume. He did it with smarts. And we were waiting this whole time over rounds two, three, four, and five. And by the way, shout out to Jon Jones for that tweet that we were all thinking, you know, you let the world down, Robbie Lawler.

But the point is, we're waiting for that boom to come, and it never came. Is it because Lawler's 37? No. Is it because Colby worked so hard to bleed his gas tank? Probably. But I think Colby at least established something in Robbie's mind, that if you go for broke, if you do the one thing everybody watching at home, regardless of their political views are screaming, Robbie, let the hands go, brother.

Bring the pain. Be that guy. Be ruthless. Colby gave him reasons not to. And you've got to give Colby that hands go, brother. Bring the pain. Be that guy. Be ruthless. Colby gave him reasons not to. And you've got to give Colby that credit there, Luke. And also, how can you expect Robbie Lawler to get off with some kind of big shot when Colby Covington literally attempted more strikes in this fight than any other fighter has ever done in any other fight in UFC history?

500-plus attempted strikes. The idea is that not every single one causes a maximum amount of damage. But if I could just be in your face all the time, how can you ever get started? How can you ever do it? Didn't Robbie look like Woodley did against Usman? Wasn't that the same thing? Right, a little bit flat. You're waiting for Woodley to wake up and go for broke, and it was never there.

Because he's spamming you with offense. How can you get your defense beyond just stage one, stage two? It's like when you try to illegally stream a pay-per-view and you've got all these Russian sex things dropping up on your laptop. It's that same type of thing. You've got to get a Mac. They have less of the spamware that you're affected by. All right, that's the good news for Robbie.

Can I deliver some bad news? I'm sorry, good news for Colby. Let's hear it. So here's the deal. Yeah, that was fantastic. Yeah, we have to praise him right now. Same time, Luke? I think we just saw his ceiling.

Who? I think we just saw as great as Colby Covington can be. We knew we can beat the B-minuses, the B+, maybe even an A-, depending on where you sort of rated RDA coming to that last fight and this rejuvenated version of Robbie Lawler. There were some bad parts about that. He couldn't finish Lawler. He didn't try to finish Lawler. So now

when I look at what happens now when Colby moves up to the elite level, the truly elite level, the top of the pops here, the Kamaru Usmans, I don't think he has it. Okay. So here's the deal. Remember what I said on any given night, Colby has the ability, the gas tank, the willingness, the know-how to beat any welterweight. Now, I don't know that he will. What's funny, by the way, is that he and Kamaru are actually really similar fighters. There's a pretty key difference. If you want to know what that difference is, watch Dissected. See how I did that?

But the point being is, I actually think at the very, very top of welterweight right now, there's a little bit of parity. One person can beat one one night, one person can beat one the next night, and so forth. When they roll that dice, whenever that fight eventually gets made it's it's really whoever just sort of i hate to put it in these terms because they're so cliche but they're really true in wrestling whoever really wants it more that night is probably here's the bigger problem for colby

though in this like what we're talking right here we just saw the best of him the next step is obviously kamaru usman i got a problem for you col Colby. You're a sum-of-your-parts guy. You've put it all together and made a very elite fighter out of yourself. But Kamaru's better at what you do. And that's a problem. And I know you can say, let's look at Kamaru's recent history. He's not finishing guys either. But he's battering guys.

He's mauling guys. Colby's out-pressuring them. He's dripping them of their gas tank. He's out-voluming them. Kamaru is actually bashinguling guys. Colby's out pressuring them. He's dripping them of their gas tank. He's outvoluming them. Kamaru is actually bashing and hurting guys. So when I look at this and sort of handicap from a few steps away and say, okay, as we get closer to Usman Covington, can Colby win this? I don't think so.

Yeah, he actually can, but it's the way in which they score damage that is the difference. Again, watch dissect it. We went over this. Okay, from UFC on ESPN5, any other standout? For me, I'll say this. There was a lot of fights that happened, a lot of different interesting things. How about Jim Miller's guillotine?

Unbelievable for him to just dive the way he did. Arm in. He caught it. I think Mickey Gall stands out to me. A lot of folks were saying, oh, well, he didn't look that good. I don't know. I thought I saw an improved Mickey Gall. Is he out there beating the very best of his division? Well, no, probably not. But is he getting better

over time? I actually thought his gas didn't look better than he was getting credit for. So for me, Jim Miller, Mickey Gall, a couple of interesting standouts. I wonder for you, when you look back on UFC and ESPN5, give me some standouts. Oh, for me, it's Antonina Shevchenko. Completely. Because when she came into the sport, Valentina's older sister, we know that.

We know the decorated kickboxing background. We didn't know if she could be a complete mixed martial artist. And up to this point in her UFC run, there's been a little bit of a mixed bag. And the mixed part of it has been, she hasn't shown you the complete mixed martial arts game against Roxy Wanafari. She kind of looked remedial on the ground in that regard.

So to see her come out, to see her survive damage, survive a cut, and then get such a vicious choke in which she choked her opponent out, and then do so with sort of a creepy, violent smile on her face, this was a large step forward because nobody wants to be the oddball sibling to a star. Nobody wants to be Ozzy Canseco, Dan Miller, Marcus Vick, Frank Stallone, whoever your dirtbag brother is. You got any? Yeah, I got one.

Nobody wants to be that guy. And this is Antonina's chance to sort of separate herself a little bit. I would say this. I thought that she looked, don't get me wrong, the choke coming off of the way she sort of flipped onto the back, I thought was pretty remarkable. That was good. But I thought Putilova's strategy was weird because if you watched well first of all you just knew her background as a Muay Thai fighter maybe clinching up with her not the best

idea plus here you already knew in MMA she could do that her first fight on the contender series which is how she got into the UFC you'll recall she pieced somebody up in the clinch so I was like I'm not sure what you're doing to me though the though, the growth to find the choke in a, let's say, an unusual entry into that position, that was the best. Because you go back to the Montefiore fight. Montefiore on the feet, probably not much of a match for Shevchenko. I thought it was a little bit more some of the transition game. Obviously, the ground. Neither Shevchenko's sisters are great on the ground, except Valentina's deep.

Actually, Valentina's pretty good submitting Juliana Pena. But it's not what they're best at, right? So you sort of know. They're great at firing handguns, too. And dancing. They're dancers. But I guess the point being is you kind of know what to expect there. That's going to be easier to fight them there than other phases. But then to go into the middle phase where they're actually still pretty good, I'm not saying you learned nothing about it.

I just think it's another step in the right direction. Not that we can sort of say, oh, my God, it's the most amazing thing. One more person I want to shout out. I think you rolled off of Colby way too soon. I got a lot more I want to talk to you about. We got some stuff. Dude, they're making me go. They're in my ear.

I know the people in your ear. They can come talk to me. You bring that shit to me, all right? Real quickly, Claudio Silva is a guy who has been off forever. He was on the prelim card. He has only fought, I think, twice in the last four years. He's just had injury after injury. Described it as being in a prison, I think, to Fernando Proches over from MMA Junkie slash now The Athletic.

And he has been super talented. Has a win over Leon Edwards, which a lot of folks don't really realize. He's really good. He's just been injured. He's just been off. He got back to work on this card and made short work of his opponent, I think, who had already missed weight, came in at 176. So for him to be able to do that, I thought, pretty impressive return.

I actually am keeping my eye on that guy because he's good. He's just been inactive. And if you're inactive, you're invisible in this sport. Anyone else on this card? Yeah, Colby Covington. So get ready for this, Luke. Here's the deal. If you're UFC and you're looking at Kamaru Usman, dominant victory over Tyron Woodley,

but in a business sense, look, the guy's not marketable. He doesn't talk the talk and doesn't finish guys. Some of the same things we said negatively about Leon Edwards, potentially. Usman does grind them out hard. Is Covington getting to this level and proving himself to be legitimate as an elite fighter? The best thing that can happen to UFC if Usman is going to be that guy, if he's going to go on some kind of run as your UFC welterweight champion, because doesn't Colby automatically make Kamaru Usman the biggest possible babyface

when they're on that ESPN Plus set afterwards and they're arguing and it's, by the way, I think it's fantastic what they did. That back and forth bickering, people on Twitter going, oh, this is a debacle, this is ridiculous. This is great TV, okay? This is the fight game.

And you are now making Kamaru Usman, he's going to be a household name as a baby face, as this great guy from Africa, as this whatever, automatically because of the hatred that comes with Colby Covington. He's different from a marketing standpoint than anyone we've seen in UFC. He's not Sonnen. He's not McGregor. Yes, a lot of it is sort of fake and calculated. But it pierces people on a deeper level to get them legitimately mad because of the political tie-in. When people fail to understand

about Colby Covington, they're like, oh, he's the MAGA guy. Okay, well, he is that, quite expressly the MAGA guy. Don Jr. and Eric in the house. But he is more than that. He is, it's like a lower-level Andy Kaufman where the joke is on the audience. When people are saying, oh my God, how could he say something like about Matt Hughes?

Because he's not trying to make you laugh. He's trying to make you hurt. And that's exactly what he does. When he comes out to the Kurt Angle music and everyone's telling him he sucks, he is, the whole point is to put his finger in the chest of taboos, of establishment, of manners, of goodwill, of good cheer. He wants to set a blaze to all of that. He happens to do that alongside of the sort of political bent, but there's actually a much more going on to that. So when they label him in these sort of cheap ways,

they don't really understand who he is. I will say though, I will say though, while I don't mind the bickering back and forth, and particularly when Colby accused Kamaru of, you know, who have you knocked out? He's like, Sergio Marais. He's like, never heard of him. Okay, good moment. Funny, hilarious, even though Sergio Marais, very good black belt. Yeah, who the fuck is that guy? It's really weird.

He's actually a good black belt. Yeah. The question is, how ugly is it going to get? Well, that's the question I want to ask you next. What's your personal line of where it goes too far? Because the Matt Hughes joke, distasteful to the 9th, but pretty hilarious in that moment. To the point where if they are stoking political and racial tension to the point where it bleeds into the audience itself, that to me is the limit. If they want to keep it between themselves and say things to take it out on each other, Dana White, I'll say this.

One thing he has been very consistent about is this is the fight game. People say nasty things to each other. You know what? He's right. You have to just let room for that to happen. And you know, having covered Ricardo Mayorga, he said really nasty things to De La Hoya. He smoked cigarettes in the ring. That's like the coolest move you could possibly ever do.

Yeah, but he said vicious things about his wife, things like that. Okay, so the point being is, that's going to happen. But when it spills into the audience, that was why people were like, oh, you're going to regulate the speech of Habib and Conor? I'm not regulating their speech, but when you stoke enough ethnic

and national tension to the point where people at home feel like their identity is being attacked. That's when you call an A-dog. That's when it's like regulators mount up. But here's the deal, though. If Colby is exactly who I'm sort of saying what he is, which is really good, but warning track power against the very elite, he has a chance to be UFC's Chael Sonnen. And I don't want to bring up that name around you because we're going to dig. No, we worked it out. We're going to Tito Ortiz that stuff back up.

Chael and I are good now. We called each other. We're fine. Go ahead. DM slides? Yeah, we spoke on the phone. Picks? We didn't tell you this?

Picks? No, we spoke on the phone. Pics? We didn't tell you this? Pics? No, we spoke on the phone. So here's the deal. They have a chance to, what did Chael Sonnen do, the best thing he did the second half of his career, was make stars out of other people. So one thing when he retired, some really smart people like Chuck Mendenhall wrote in pieces and columns, they said, the best move Chael Sonnen ever did was make Anderson Silva sort of a charismatic crossover type of star from being such a villain in his face.

I wonder if Colby can consistently do that on this level for them. All right, well, speaking of somebody who won't be a star in the UFC anymore because they're not going to be in the UFC star, we move now to Chris Cyborg. Huh, where does this story even begin? It's actually hard to say. I would actually argue it goes all the way back to Baltimore in 2015 or 14. But here's the story as we understand it. On Friday, Laura Senko sat down with UFC President Dana

White and did an interview. And in that interview, Dana White makes a series of claims and also just an outright proclamation that the UFC is no longer, Brian, in the cyborg business. She was, for folks who may not understand, she had finished the fights on her deal, but UFC contracts work in such a way where if you're not the champion, although that's a different scenario, but if you're not, they have 90 days to exclusively negotiate with you. Nobody else can come in and make you an offer. Now, when that window expires, everybody gets a shot.

They waived that 90 days and said they're not even going to attempt a match. We're done. We're out of here. I will go to you first on this one. Your reaction to the news, was UFC right to do it? Is it the good thing? How do you assess what happened? My reaction to the news was disappointment if I'm looking at this as a whole, as a sport,

because the right fight for Cyborg's legacy of what she has left is a rematch with Nunez. It's a chance to run back that sort of passing of the torch of the women's greatest of all time, whether you believe in that or not. So I'm sad as a fan to see that happen. But things have happened to almost make it necessary. I'm almost at the point where even I'm getting a little sick of this soap opera.

If you can't get along, then maybe just move on. Cyborg still has a window to make a lot of money, like I said, whether it's Bellator, pro wrestling, boxing, all that stuff. But here's what's interesting. Up until this point, Cyborg had done such a great job at making us believe that this soap opera was completely one-sided. That it was Dana White has a history of talking bad about her, point, Cyborg had done such a great job at making us believe that this soap opera was

completely one-sided, that it was Dana White has a history of talking bad about her, and now he's saying that she doesn't want the rematch, and now blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think she screwed up by having her team put out that video, whoever's decision it was. The video of the edited backstage conversation that I'm sure Dana maybe didn't know the cameras were on, whatever, but you know that they edited it in a way with those subtitles on the screen that didn't seem to accurately portray what Dana was saying

and seemed to almost make you think he was saying two other separate things that were bad in his case. I know she's publicly sort of said she was sorry in that, but that almost puts power back on Dana's side in this. And look, in reality, this is some stupid soap opera where we're trying to figure out who really said bad things about each other. The problem probably was at the negotiation table, probably more with her team. But this took away me feeling almost 100% bad for her because I know the history of Dana and what

he says. Now I just feel like it's this weird soap opera that needs to end. And by the way, in terms of that video, whether it's Laura Sanko or Megan Oliva, they do a great job. But can we not open the video by saying, thank you so much, Dana, for your time. I know you're so busy. Dana called for that camera. I know you're so busy. Dana called for that camera to put on there because he trashed ESPN and their E60 report too. The outside the line. The outside the line.

So this is him basically dropping a big dump with a UFC camera right there. He called for it. He doesn't even need a host. He can just send it up a webcam in his bathroom. It's not like a media outlet requested time and he's like, well, let me carve out 15 minutes for you. They called her. We're like, yo, show up. We're going to do this. In any event.

So it's bad for fans. But at this point, do you agree with me where it's like, I don't even care anymore. Just break apart. Your parents together? Yes. See, I come from divorced parents. Shocker. I'm sure that was a major surprise to everyone that I'm broken like that. In all fairness, though, look, divorce is never a great thing. And this is sort of like a bit of a pedestrian way to make the point. But there are just certain entities, certain people, they just cannot get along. Trying to make them get along, it only exacerbates the tensions, the problems. And then there becomes all manner of collateral damage. They absolutely need to move on.

I will say this, though, about the video Cyborg put out. Look, it was nakedly duplicitous to do that. whether it was her call or her production team's call. Whoever's call it was, you effed up because I don't think it's like 50-50, both sides are equal to blame. To me, it's much more Dana White's to blame. But when you do this, particularly at the juncture of what you're getting released, and now you're having to come out and say you're apologized, God, the optics are so bad. You end up looking like it's a completely equal scenario when it's not. Remember what I said before about Colby and Kumar when it's gone too far, when it bleeds into the audience.

This is the one thing about Dana that I just can't wrap my head around, is his inability to recognize the power of his own statements. He loves it when his statements are listened to and everyone snaps their heels and jumps at attention and the world says, yes, Dana, you're so right. But then when he diminishes somebody and insults them, he wants to say, I didn't do anything. It's like, you can't have it both ways. You're the most powerful guy or you're not. Back at that scrum in Baltimore, you can hear on the video, the 172, it is me and Errol Hawane and John Morgan questioning him about this. I was there. You can hear my voice on the video. Two quick questions. Was John Morgan wearing the blue

shirt and was he allowed to ask the first question? Does he not ever wear the blue shirt? I mean, this is a bear shit in the woods. But the point being is when we go through the video, you can hear us talking to him about it. He was not taken out of context. You can go and watch it in context. It is not in any way, shape, or form exonerating.

In fact, he brings it up without provocation. And the point being is when Cyborg is saying her kid is getting bullied at school, dude, that is not an accident. That did not just happen. People get emboldened to say things, yes, because kids are animals. And also because there has been from the top down a culture created where Cyborg gets to get bullied to the point where she's having to fist fight Angela Magana at the fighter retreat. Dude, that started somewhere. It didn't start just, you know, it wasn't some big bang where people just decided, let's do this to Cyborg. People in high positions normalized it.

And it got, it trickled down. Do you want to throw some blame at Ronda for this? Sure. Absolutely. She's calling her in. It's like, again, I get it. I get it. People in the fight game say nasty things to each other.

But when it starts affecting other people, that's when you've got to look around and say, maybe take some culpability here. Maybe say, you know what? For someone I want to do business with, maybe I shouldn't call this person incredibly disparaging things down the line because it'll have lasting consequences beyond just the parties involved and it will make getting business done difficult. Maybe, maybe don't sow seeds of discontent from day one and we won't have to be in a position where you're explaining to Laura Sanko why you're letting a person go. With everything that you just said, and you are correct, I will agree with you on that. Did you like seeing old

school fiery, angry Dana back? That was like 2009 Dana was resurrected. I mean, they had the full screen graphics ready with the quotes. They had video they were thrown to. This was like angry Dana ready to swear out somebody. Sure. I don't love it or hate it. It's just the choice that he makes. Do you think he listens to that metal band you do called Dying Children? Dying Fetus. You act like this band is

some marginal dirtbag band. This is one of the best bands in metal. I could see you two having more in common than you realize. I know that you think headbanging to Matchbox 20 is like apex masculinity. But on this side of the table, we get busy with actual metal. Okay, in any event, moving on.

So, we'll see what happens there. By the way, did she go to Bellator or PFL you think? The fight is Kayla Harrison then at this point. But did she go there or did she fight Julia Budd? I'm going to be honest with you. If Dana's right that she avoided the Nunes fight to fight the Pam Sorsons of the world, Julia Budd is a legitimate contender, but my hunch is that she's going to head towards Bell.

That fight doesn't move me, and here's the problem. Kayla Harrison might be the only fight that moves me. The cyborg, the attraction against anybody moved me to a degree, but it will get old after a while. So really, the Kayla Harrison, I'd like to see her go to boxing. I'd like to see her use her name to inject that in the fledgling women's game in boxing, which finally has a couple stars. I know they're not all equal in weight, but we finally have three or four women that we would at least know who they are when you say their name.

So I wouldn't mind seeing that potential. All right. Speaking of seeing the next fight in women's, well, title history in this particular case, upcoming this coming weekend, I believe, the UFC heads to Uruguay, I believe Montevideo. You can just call it Uruguay. You and John Adnick doing the Uru-Uru. I mean, come on.

That's how it's pronounced. I mean, this is America. I'm not trying to go all Colby Covington. Right, but if you ask people, how do you pronounce Uruguay from Uruguay, they're going to say Uruguay. That's how you pronounce it. Bro, it's Uruguay. But it's actually not Uruguay.

It's actually Uruguay. That's how you say it. You know that, right? That's all right. Repeating how, it's Uruguay. But it's actually not Uruguay. It's actually Uruguay. That's how you say it. You know that, right? That's all right. Repeating how native speakers say the name of their own country is not a problem. It's actually the way we should do things. I'm going to have to check my Columbia House subscription to see if they have dying children. Maybe that will culture me a little bit better.

In any event, they go to Montevideo. I believe that's where it's going to be. The point being is they're going to very far down in South America. First time they're going to, very far down in South America, first time they're ever in this country, Valentina Shevchenko, Spanish speaker, should be noted, is taking on Liz Karmush. Now, this is actually the second time they fought. It's technically a rematch, Brian Campbell. So I'm going to pitch this question to you first again. Actually, you know what? I'm going to take this one first, if I may. Because the question was, as we talked about it yesterday,

playing the show, is there anything to this fight beyond the narrative they're presenting, which, hey, it's a rematch, blah, blah, blah. I want to make this point. It's a fine fight. And, in fact, I would never dismiss the chances of somebody like Gorilla in Liz Carmouche, United States Marine, strong as an ox, trains with a good team. Ex-Marine or former Marine? No such thing as an ex-Marine. Trains with a good team, always comes prepared, right,

and has been in big fight scenarios before. I'm actually looking forward to the main event. I want to be serious about that. And the narrative of back at her natural weight. She'd been fighting at 35 over her head. So that's fair. So if she was strong at 135, at 125, look out, bro. She is really, really, really powerful. And she holds a win over Jessica

Andrade so holds a win over two active champions right you can sell it you can sell it you can sell it that way but let's be real you actually really can't sell it to me the fight itself is fine but when you look down the rest of that card you say to yourself wow they have put together a fight at the top of a UFC card where the whole point is, look, if you're the UFC, you're looking down this card, you're like, okay, we owe fights to this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. We have to meet contractual demands for this platform, this service, this country, this broadcast deal.

Let's just throw something together. Put a respectable fight, no doubt about it, at the top of the card. But that card, we say this all the time, it might be the least impressive card in UFC history. You're not wrong. People always go, bro, you can't judge fights before they happen. Yes, you can. You absolutely can do that. When you look at that

card on paper, are you trying to do the math in your head and do the time zones and figure out what time the main event starts? That's when you know that it's not a great card. But to your question of what's sort of the real narrative here, the real narrative here is kind of what you said. It's a crappy card. How do we put something good on it?

Oh, let's put a title fight in a non-pay-per-view fight. Let's put it in a fight night. But also, let's not forget Shevchenko is Peruvian, born in Kyrgyzstan, but has made Peru her second home. So maybe there's some elements of marketing and trying to establish a Spanish-speaking sort of celebrity there in Uruguay. She can do media. There's really nothing else out of there.

Yes, you can go with that Karmush has won four or five since 2015. Yes, she's a former title contender. But, Luke, you know the truth as much as I do. There's nobody at 125. There's like two good fighters. So it's no surprise that Karmush would get into this fight, and it's a sellable narrative of the rematch, just like at some point if Kat Zingano can put a couple wins together,

she may end up getting an Amanda Nunes rematch because she's the last one to beat her. That's about it. So they've got, here's on the prelim card, Rogerio Bonteran taking on Rowley and Paiva. Could you pick either from a lineup? Geraldo or Geraldo de Fritas versus Chris Gutierrez. Cyril Gane, actually, not bad, versus Rafael Pesau Nunez. That guy used to be the bassist of Slaughtering Animals.

Cattle decapitation is a real band. But here's also on the card, Vicente Luque taking on Mike Perry. I actually do like that fight. It's a great fight. And they have moved 1,000 times, Vulcan, Uzdemir, and Elio Latifi. I think this is the third time they moved it, if I'm not mistaken. Also, the last thing to look out for is Adolfo Vieira. Do you know Adolfo Vieira?

No. Best grappler of our generation ever is Hadri Gracie. Of our generation, probably Marcus Almeida Buchecha. The guy who was right under Buchecha is Adolfo Vieira. He is, first of all, super bricked up, has won titles in the Gi and no Gi, has good wrestling. So he's not one of these like jujitsu guys, like I'm the pole guard. No, no, no. He'd get one there and pick you up, put you on your head. He's a bit like, who's a good comparison? Well, he's the opposite of Ryan Hall, who's a great fighter, but he's

not going to go there and just bear on you physically. Adolfo Vieira will. So he'll make his debut on this card. There's some decent fights there, but down and up the card. Oh, my God. Like, they're just putting this together for no other reason. So last question on this. If Karmush loses, and she's expected to, according to the oddsmakers, but MMA's crazy, but let's assume she does,

so Shevchenko retains her title. Cyborg's gone. So do they do a third fight between Shevchenko and Nunes? They will have to because the truth is Nunes has cleaned out two divisions and there's maybe one or two names you could throw at me and say, okay, they can build toward that for Nunes and it would make a little bit of sense either style-wise or marketing-wise. But Shevchenko's the big fight. It has to happen.

I would actually say this. The first fight between Shevchenko and Nunes, Nunes clearly won, but her deficiencies were put on display. Right. I mean, Valentina started too late in that fight. She did. And the deficiencies were not on display, in my judgment, in the second fight. It was a really different fight, in no small part because it was three rounds versus five

from the first of the rematch. I actually thought Shevchenko won the second fight. Do you remember how you scored it? I scored it for Shevchenko as well. Interesting. It's almost gotten to the point where it's not a sneaky hot take to say that. It's almost as if more than 50% of people are going to tell you that same thing. Nunez did show in that fight that the cardio is real and sort of put to rest any of those concerns against her.

That's the night, in my mind, she became truly well-rounded. But as much as she says, hey, Valentina, you can't win that fight because you didn't fight like a champion, you didn't come to finish me, it was a bit of a stalemate, and I think Nunez kind of left that door open for Shevchenko. All right, let's quickly do some UFC 241 stuff that I want to talk about some boxing. So UFC 241 is two weeks away, never too early to get going. You've got a good main event, you've got a good co-main event, you've got a good feature fight. You go first, Brian. Fight you're looking forward to most. If you go main event, you're going to let

me down. No, I really like that middleweight bout between Derek Brunson and Ian Hynish. I've been wanting to follow the Hynish story for a while. Not just because he's got Jurassic back and sort of, I mean, you're rocking the dad bod pushing 40. He's rocking that jail bod. He's got a great story and one day it'll be an action movie,

and we all know that. But the whole point is, is he for real? Can he fight? His UFC appearance is up to this date. He's been unbeaten. He's sort of overcome his own early deficiencies, whether it was gas tanking his debut or whether it was sort of figuring out exactly who he is as a fighter.

I feel like even though he had a great win in his last fight over the Brazilian fellow, you know, Juan Carlos. Amutachi. Juan Carlos Jr. Oh, Shoeface. Yeah, Shoeface. Yeah, Shoeface. This is a real test. Brunson's coming off a win.

Yes, at the elite level, Brunson is going to alternate wins and losses constantly. But for me, this is the fight that lets me know if Heinish is just a good story or whether we really have something here. Yeah, he's an interesting test case for a potential upset. And by the way, in those fights, he's been pushed a little bit. He's had to come back and show resiliency, which he did, which is always really interesting to see. You learned that in the hole. Yeah, you know what?

I mean, we would know that from this set. Talk about perseverance. My man's persevering. I'm going to say, I don't know how you pick any other one but this. Yoel Romero taking on Paulo Costa. What a storyline to this one. What an unbelievable contest. So here's what we have cooked up, right? You've got

first of all, they were just on a collision course to begin with because Joel Romero, there was questions like, does he go to 205? But he decided not to, so he's there. He's this presence who you could argue who beat Whitaker, but he didn't. Okay, the judges didn't give it to him. We don't have to argue it, Luke. We can put out there the great misses and scorecards.

You can only say that you thought he did. You can't actually say that he did. Anyway, certainly, let's put it this way. He gave Whitaker all he could handle and then some. All right, but he's still at 80. North of 40. He's older than me, which is very old. He's like 42 and a half.

I mean, when will this guy look old? Paulo Costa looking like he's been chiseled out of stone, battling accusations about USADA. Has a USADA run in, but it's for something that is not exactly all that performance enhancing. Although banned. It's a banned substance. Are you talking about picograms in this case? No, we're not in this particular case.

And then he has this sort of like IV thing. Yoel comes out and says, oh, I heard it was a USADA issue. This guy got hemmed up for it. Why his fights have all been canceled, blah, blah, blah. He only gets a short suspension because he does the whole substantial assistance thing. He's back in the octagon. So whatever it was, it wasn't all that serious, I guess. It's hard to really piece together what happened.

Point being is Brazil has been looking for their next big star because all of their giants are all aging out. Andrade appears to be leading that charge, at least for right now as the champion. But they really need someone marketable. The Eraser, I don't think is a great name for him, but when he fights up to his potential, he just looks the part. When you think fighter in your mind from Brazil, it looks like that. It's like Vanderlei 2.0, only with a better haircut, right? And less sort of scalp tattoos. It's that dude. But Yoel Romero, I don't know if you've ever paid attention to it, he doesn't, he's not a two-way fighter.

He just defends, defends, defends, defends, and then explodes. Full-on explosion. So I can't wait to see what happens when these two animals clash. And I say that not in a pejorative way, in the most exciting way possible. Cannot wait. Storyline meets interesting fight, meets generational turnover. If you like good-looking men, this is your fight, really. If you like dudes who just look like

they can lift the earth, this is what you want. Are you not sharing my excitement for this one? Oh, massively. I was trying to go a little bit under the radar. I assumed you'd play

big-ticket with me here. No, I'm all in on this one. Look, this card is great, and it's more great from being top-heavy, but it's great in terms of the must-see fight storyline.

I mean, this is a great main event. This is a great co-main because we have to see what Nate looks like. We have to see whether this is just going to be a one appearance and we don't see him again for two years or never again. Or if this is the beginning of something. Could we use his star? Who could we match that against if you're the UFC matchmakers? If he's able to beat Anthony Pettis.

So much to see there. But this Costa-Romero fight could main event any other card. It's fantastic. Let me ask you this just personally. What would you put your... And there's no wrong answer to see there. But this Costa Romero fight could main event any other card. It's fantastic. Let me ask you this just personally. What would you put your, and there's no wrong answer to this one, what would you put your level of enthusiasm for on the main event? Very, very high. Okay, tell me why.

Because I'm a little bit, it's not bad. It's good. I give it a 7 or 8. Instead of telling me why, Luke, why don't you tell them why you're. No, no, are you like a 9 or a 10? I'm about 9 1⁄2. I don't see how you could... So I'm 7 1⁄2.

Tell me why you're 9 1⁄2. Okay, heavyweight historically, not deep. Historically, we sort of wait every couple years for a big fight like this. This last fight was interesting because Stipe was on the verge of cementing that he is the most decorated, greatest UFC heavyweight champion. We've sort of been waiting for someone to climb that throne and lay that down. Then Daniel Cormier comes back. The guy who, had he not been such a great friend, may have already ended up in that

spot. Right now, we may have been already talking about that DC is the greatest heavyweight to ever walk the planet. He takes the circuitous route, puts himself on the upper table, and then walks in there and knocks out Stipe. And now you're like, wow. But yet at the same time, even though that first round knockout was the very definition of not being a fluke because it was calculated, it was something he sort of said in interviews ahead of time, this is what Stipe does wrong and I'm going to take advantage

of it. And then he goes out and he does that. Still a first round knockout. We still didn't see what happened if that fight got into some deep rounds. Both are accomplished wrestlers. Both are very smart fighters. I really think this fight has potential to go the distance, and I think it has potential to be very exciting back and forth trading rounds and sort of it's not an automatic in my mind that DC comes in here and wins this. Well, it's never automatic. No, but even in the sense of comparing two great fighters

when you're trying to self-handicap to build your hot takes. So my enthusiasm, I would say, is still high. But here's my hunch. If you're a 9.5 and I'm 7.5, my hunch is that the fight's going to come out around an 8, 8.5. So probably a little bit closer to you. And that's the middle point. But I'm saying it'll probably be better than I'm giving it credit. Maybe not quite as good as you are.

What fuels your flaccidity? 40 years on earth. What I would say is the first fight, like to me when Stipe was like, I deserve a rematch, to me, like it's not a personal thing when I say this. I just never understood how that was a valid thing you could ask for. The fight was signed in January. They fought in July. You had seven months to prepare,

and it was, there was no foul. I mean, as you could say, I don't believe there was a foul. It just looked like a clean-ass win. You just got beat by a better guy. Now, that, you could say the same thing happened with Nama Yunus and Jacek. But okay, there was a weight cut issue, blah, blah, blah.

Second fight, much closer, much more competitive. But in the end, it was the same person who got her hand raised. I'm just struggling to see it weigh again. MMA's crazy. Steve Pickett could go in there and knock him out in a round. I've seen it before. But to me, yeah, there's been a little bit of time that elapsed, well over a year, but not a huge amount of time.

Like usually for a real change in fighting ability, you have to let it marinate two years, three years, and then people circle back, year but not a huge amount of time like usually for a real change in fighting ability you get you have to let it marinate two years three years and then people circle back and they're in different points in their career to me Cormier has been active even with injuries Stipe has not paid off in terms of not having to take anybody else and risk it but he's not been active ring rust doesn't affect everybody I'm just I'm just struggling to understand all right part of this here's my central question I am not hearing a convincing case for why the second time

will be different from anybody. Okay, that's fair. Part of this, to be really honest, is that it's not Brock Lesnar in D.C., which didn't need to happen, shouldn't have happened,

and I thank God it didn't because that's sort of... Mr. Pro Wrestling doesn't want to see Brock Lesnar. Mr. Pro Wrestling doesn't want to see it under those circumstances right there, for sure.

Look, I'm always for when they lean on the entertainment side in certain situations. That's why we're sitting here saying, you know, you could put Masvidal on the title shot. You could put anybody that's marketable. But in that case, coming off of a steroid test,

I don't have to sit here and explain it. You understand. Brock Lesnar in that case would have been bad for the sport. So what do we get instead? A really great fight. And yes, DC can go into a Jon Jones trilogy, which is the best and biggest fight, in my opinion, you can make in this sport.

Okay, biggest, you can put an asterisk there, because anything Conor, Habib rematch could sell more. But in terms of a fight that matters, you could argue that DC Jones 3 is the most important fight in UFC history. There's just so much at stake with their legacies in the two titles, and it may happen regardless if DC wins or loses at 241, but if he wins, loses at 241, but if he wins, Luke, that I think elevates that third fight even more as to not just

we need it, but like I mentioned, it really could be the biggest fight from importance ever. And I think everyone's been trying to slow roll it, which I understand, but if DC, let's say, okay, let's say DC wins, and then imagine a scenario where DC wins violently again. Maybe not the first round, but let's say third round. The amount of gravitational force pushing John and D.C. together is going to be overwhelming. Now, there's some questions about do they do it at heavyweight, do they do it at light heavyweight. Can we unpack that for a quick second?

Because Dana White's actually on my side. He's on the right side of history, which means this has to happen at heavyweight. It's Jones and D.C. that won it at 205. I would get that if you're John Jones, but if you're D.C., why? Why the hell would you need to go back and cut down at this point when you are thick with three C's right now, bro? And I'm proud

of you. You're the heavyweight champion of the world, but why would you need to do that? Why would you want to do that? There's an inherent advantage for D.C. for this being at heavyweight. He's proven himself this way. We have no idea what Jones would look like. Why would you not take advantage of that considering those first two fights, yes, you lost them cleanly in the cage,

but there's enough going on around it with the drug tests and all that, that you could sort of always make that claim in your heart, did I really lose fair and square? So I get that that's why he would want to go back to 205 and do it. I just don't think it's necessary. I think you want to make the best fight possible. The best fight between these two is at heavyweight.

They want me to go to fan questions real quickly. I do want to make sure we get to boxing real quickly before we do that because the fan questions are a little bit all over the place. We have to kind of hurry this up on the boxing side, so let's get to the most important one. In the boxing side of things, there were some fights over the weekend. Would you only rent this room for a certain amount of minutes? They're in my ear, goddammit.

Let me just do this. The big news, though, is Canelo is upset with Golden Boy. I want to talk about the DAZN implications, but first I'll throw to you, Mr. Boxing. What is happening with Canelo? What is happening with Golden Boy, and why is it so serious? What is happening with Canelo, the biggest star in the sport, the biggest

pay-per-view brand, the guy who took the baton from Floyd Mayweather is, he has those May and September dates on lockdown, the Mexican holloways, the big pay-per-view brand, the guy who took the baton from Floyd Mayweather is, he has those May and September dates on lockdown, the Mexican holloways, the big pay-per-view moments that matter, and suddenly, as of right now, he doesn't have a date, he doesn't have an opponent, and we've cycled through in a very short amount of time

three or four opponents, sort of fueled by the same idea that he doesn't want to give Triple G, Gennady Golovkin, a third fight. He hates him, he doesn't want to give him the payday. In Canelo's mind, I fought that guy twice. They were both classics. It was a draw and a victory for me.

What else do I have to prove? This guy's calling me a drug user. This guy's saying things I don't want anything to do with him. Well, the problem is, Canelo, your network in DAZN, which we can get to in a second, wants a lot to do with that and built their financial future around that. And your promotional team, Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions, certainly wants

that to the point that they had written language in the DAZN deals that sort of guaranteed that they would get that third fight. And now with Canelo being stripped of that IBF title last week and for it being stripped in a way in which Golden Boy's matchmaker was negotiating for a potential vacant title bout against

Sergey Derevyanchenko, who lost to Daniel Jacobs in a close split decision a year and a half ago. Very credible fighter for a fall date. But the idea was if you don't make the fight by this certain time, IBF is going to pull that title. Golden Boy signs off on that, apparently not telling Canelo. So we're getting to a sort of potential impasse here where you've got to remember a couple of things.

Canelo holds the power here. I thought I was going to talk about this show when you talk about the decision-taker when it's Canelo in the zone. Who really holds the power? Well, we're learning that it's Canelo holds the power here. I thought I was going to talk about this show when you talk about the decision takeover when it's Canelo and Dazon. Who really holds the power? Well, we're learning that it's Canelo. But Canelo versus Oscar and his team, Canelo holds the power. What have we seen historically in the past when fighters become unhappy at the way they're

handling or believe that they can make more money or do better decisions better? Hashtag Floyd Mayweather. Hashtag buy yourself out. Right. I wonder if that's coming right now, if you can believe the reporting and the rumor that's coming out and the feeling that Canelo maybe hasn't been completely happy with the decisions being made behind the scenes

without his knowledge by his own team. What has happened since then? Top golden boy on Beat and Prospect, Ryan Garcia, who's got the 2 million following on Instagram. Blasting people. Blasting. He also shares the same trainers as Canelo. Blasting on Twitter, going publicly, like Canelo did this week, sort of calling out his own promoter. Is it just a messy soap opera and we're going to figure it out and Canelo's going to come back against somebody credible this fall?

Maybe. But there's been a lot of missteps publicly in the last couple months where you need to start asking yourself, like, what's the future of Canelo Alvarez and Golden Boy? Let's not forget. Remember that big split up between Oscar De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer with Golden Boy? It led to PBC going their own route when originally it was Golden Boy Promotions possibly going to be the house promoter for PBC. Pretty much all the fighters went with Al Heyman and PBC. Canelo stayed true to Oscar. Canelo is Golden Boy Promotions.

He's the meal ticket. Name their top five fighters without not naming Canelo. You guys are struggling. So this is going to be very interesting. There's probably huge damage control Name their top five fighters without not naming Canelo. You guys are struggling. So, this is going to be very interesting. There's probably huge damage control going on in the office as a golden boy. And watch how this plays out and maybe how this might affect

Canelo's future at DAZN, which is very interesting. Okay, last thing on this for me. What is the worst thing that a streaming subscription service, what's the worst thing their customers could ever ask it? It is, wait, why do I pay for this again? If you lose Canelo, I mean, look, I don't know how you feel about DAZN.

I've already asked this question. Now, I'm not going to get rid of DAZN because when I use DAZN, I actually like it. I get it for Bellator, occasional KSW, Combate America. You're a big Aachen Brock fan. Actually, I do love Akin Brock. They're cool guys, actually. And also, look, you have the Anthony Joshua Ruiz fight on there. You have Canelo fighting on there, you thought, on a reasonable schedule.

Dude, you're not just losing Canelo if he decides to bounce. You're losing the crown jewel. You're losing the anchor that makes DAZN kind of what DAZN is. Now, if you're an MMA fan, you're like, well, I don't really care all that much. But if you're DAZN, you're saying to yourself, this is the biggest contract in sports at the time that we signed. Everyone's like, Bryce Harper had the biggest deal. Mike Trout had the biggest deal.

No, Canelo Alvarez had the biggest deal. Well, you can argue Floyd Mayweather's Showtime deal was pretty damn massive too, but I get what you're saying. Okay, but at the time he signed it, it was the biggest contract in sports. So I'm just pointing out, this is not just any old boxer. This is the thing that is gluing everyone together. You lose him, you're already on the hook to pay Triple G. Who the hell is he going to fight?

I mean, I guess you can make things happen, but you're not going to make that happen. I'm pointing out, I'm not saying a bunch of dominoes get pulled if he decides to somehow force a breach of contract and go somewhere else. What I'm pointing out is you're beginning to ask yourself more and more as a DAZN customer, wait, well, if I don't get Canelo, why am I paying for this? To be clear, I don't have the legal background to tell you that there's a breach of contract here or whatever, but if you have a star that's unhappy and you made it your financial backbone in DAZN, they signed Golden Boy and Oscar guaranteed a third Canelo-Triple G fight.

They signed Triple G for $100 million and in the language in the contract reportedly is a guarantee for a Canelo-Triple G fight. Canelo's the guy that doesn't want it. What are you going to do? It's going to be a very interesting soap opera. Alright, so time now, if we can, we have to go to fan questions. Brian Campbell, let's do the fan questions

if we can. I've got to find the old email they sent me here at the bottom, I believe. Okay, we can put them up here on the screen, I believe, if I'm not mistaken here. Oops, hold on. I've got to go back to my inbox. Here we go. Yes, now I have them. Okay, let's do this.

All right. First up, you have the tiny tank one. So, were you in order? Well, these don't match mine at all. Oh, here we go. Yes, now they do. Did Covington go too far with the Matt Hughes comment? Please let me go first on this one.

Yeah, go for it. Okay. I found this one. How do I explain this? This is a larger commentary on, well, who's your favorite stand-up comedian? Which is, this is not, Colby's not a stand-up comedian, but who's your favorite stand-up comedian? Dennis Leary. Tell me why.

Because I listened to 1991's No Cure for Cancer in the back of my Chevy Celebrity for about seven straight years. Okay. My answer is Patrice O'Neill. And I don't know how Patrice O'Neill would fit into today's comedic scene because what people want now is like woke comedy, which is not really comedy at all. And here's the point about this. What people want now are people you can put on Netflix. I call them good boys who just say all the right things and they kind of make sure that they're sponsor friendly. And again, Colby's not a comedian, but the point being is that need to

accommodate establishment ideas and establishment thought is suffocating. It is going to create somebody who comes and does this. In MMA, we have suffocating demands. You have to be reverential towards X fighter. You have to think that so-and-so was the right call. You have to think that that's the best fight ever. And then someone comes along and goes, no, no, I don't think that. Would I make the Matt Hughes joke? Never. I would never personally make it, nor do I endorse it. I'm not even sure I think it's all that funny, but I also understand someone is going to come around when you have ideas that are not supposed to be challenged and taboos that are not supposed to be touched, and he's going to set them all ablaze. The key is to not let it offend you.

The key is to understand what it is. It is vandalism of your senses, but don't let it... Well, the key is to not tweet and talk about it. The key is to not give it oxygen. Because I took umbrage with what you said last week, I think, when you said, you know, don't be confused. Colby Covington has been fueled and made up by the media. No, no, no. That's not what I said.

What I said is, if you found the weaknesses of how MMA media covers the sport, and you wanted to craft ways to take advantage of all the weaknesses, that is who he is. And I don't know how you could possibly contest that. Well, I think when you say that, though, some people sort of imply that people want a guy like this to be created. So they're taking part purposely in creating him, whether for political reasons or boredom or laziness or whatever. But you've got to understand, covering sports in any form, and I mean, I started covering high school

sports like 1995. You find someone that can talk, I don't care if it's someone on the girls' swimming team or their coach or anybody, you flock to that person. They break the monotony of the job in journalism. They add the spice that you cling for. It's catnip.

It's sex. Somebody who can fill your notebooks and say things, especially controversial, it's great. The problem is it only matters if they're relevant, if they keep winning. When they stop winning, it doesn't matter. No one's tweeting about it. No one cares. Speaking of a trade coming off the tracks, if he loses, then this goes away. But right now, he's in that golden period

where he keeps winning he's almost doing what connor did where every step of the way okay the next one he's going to get served and then he didn't so at this point it's sort of like he built himself this is already a built engine in practice and system where if somebody can talk you give them the form you want this we want big quotes we want anything from these people right but the point is like people are like oh, they accused him of being indecent. It's like, I don't understand how that, I don't understand that criticism. It's like, dude, that's what he's trying to do. When you tweet, oh, my God, that was really, that was over the line.

Colby's looking at it and going, mission accomplished. Look, this is entertainment. We say this all the time. It's freaking entertainment. It's not, it's not, the idea is not that, the idea is the time. It's freaking entertainment. The idea is not that. The idea is, yes, it is indecent. And you should hold on to your own sense of decency. But when you have a provocateur, which is what he is, he is a provocateur,

when you lash out on social media at it, you are enabling him. You're fueling him. You are enabling him. So if you find it indecent, deprive him of oxygen. It's the only way to combat this. But try to tell me that he's bad for the sport. Try to convince me of that. I do worry about this fight with Usman. I do worry about this fight.

If you're worried about it from a racial standpoint and where the politics comes together, I agree with you. I don't want to see it cross that line. But to act like true villains, and look, true is a weird word because he is fake. This is fake. It's a character he's playing. It's a halfway character. Is there curmudgeonry underneath him to fuel that character? Yes.

But a lot of what he's doing is out of the pro wrestling handbook. So my whole point is MMA and boxing, it's so close to pro wrestling on the terms of marketing and in the terms of how we get excited about things that he's a character. You need villains. I will just say this though. People want a character like the Joker, who they can kind of like admire from afar. Oh my God, Heath Ledger did such a great

job in The Dark Knight. What a character. I can really wrap my arms around. Colby is not interested in that. He is not interested. The joke is on the audience. He is not trying to bring you into a dark world and show you its mystery and wonder and also its frightening sense. He's trying to bring you into a dark world and show you its mystery and wonder and also its frightening sense. He's trying to piss you off. So when you lash out, you are

enabling this. I don't know how, I don't know. People are like, well, his gimmick doesn't work. Do you dislike him? Yeah. Are you pissed off about his Matt Hughes joke? Yeah. MF-er, it works perfectly. That's what it's designed to do. Stop. It's going to fit great in the new sizzle reel, one of these. By the way, real quick, Dana White not showing up cage side for this one in a New York market with Don Jr. and Eric Trump there. Your thoughts?

I hadn't thought much about that. What, you think it's conspiratorial? I don't know. Maybe on Morning Combat Political Edition next week we'll get down on it. All right. All right. Next one. Let's do this.

Next one. I'm going to make sure these are coordinated in the right way. All right. From Joel Embiid. I don't think the real one, though. Usman and Colby both have great wrestling cardio, pace combined with good striking. What is the difference maker in the fight and who has it? Now, I did a big one on this on Dissected, so I'd love to hear what your thought is.

You think it's, what, the damage? It's power. The difference is power and ability has it. Now, I did a big one on this on Dissected, so I'd love to hear what your thought is. You think it's, what, the damage? It's power. The difference is power and ability to finish. Both don't always show finishing instincts, but the ability to finish, I think, is much stronger in Usman. I think he wins this fight. Yeah, he might.

I don't think that the instinct is much higher with... I think the instinct is probably the same with both guys. The difference is, you came in and dissected it, I think, at the end. The difference is that if you look at the way Colby wrestles when he goes for takedowns, he keeps his hands locked, and when he's in or in a position, he wrestles through it. Usman, when he gets to a position, he'll find some kind of static place and then begin to bang on you. Won't their wrestling cancel out, though?

Won't they cancel out? This will turn into a boxing match? Here's the interesting part. Colby does all of his damage. If you look at his totals, literally 90% of it happens on the feet. If you look at Usman, more than 60% of it happens on the ground. Colby doesn't do ground and pound. He exchanges.

Usman doesn't really exchange. He ground and pounds. That's the big difference. The key is this. Kamaru Usman has 100% takedown defense. Three fights he's only ever had a takedown attempt on him. One was Demian Maia, which you saw, not much of a wrestler, okay? Tricky, but not much of a wrestler. One was Tyron Woodley, but it was, I showed it on Dissected, not much of a shot. And then the other one was from Javel Dos Anjos, who was not big enough and

not a wrestler. Which is to say, here's the other X factor. No one who has the ability of Colby has ever really tried to take down Kamaru. If you look at the shot from Woodley, it's not much of one. He didn't really try. What if someone goes out there and tries to really take him down? Now what happens? So the interesting part is, if he gets taken down, Colby's going to get banged on. You're trying to say teams that press hate being pressed? Is that where this is going?

I'm saying both guys are similar. They have a key difference. But one has never really quite faced the other. That's going to be the issue. One hasn't quite faced the pain. Please leave. Okay, next. Okay, here we go.

How could a fighter beat these modern wrestling heavy fighters like Covington, Usman, Habib? Granted, Habib's game is a tad different comparing to the other two. Very different, actually. But it seems as if there's not a clear way to beat these modern wrestlers

who surprisingly have a monstrous cardio. What are you taking that? Big fan from, as you would say, Iran. Because you can just pronounce whatever you want, huh? Is it Charday to you or Sayed? It's Iran. Okay, Iran. All right, how do you want to do this?

What do you think the big difference is? Cool, you're the professor. What do you got? So the answer to this is, first of all, hard to do. Because these guys, with the key insight for all of them, Habib is different because Habib, so Usman and Covington, here's what is similar. They want to get you to a knee.

They want to get you a wrist control. And then Covington will just keep wrestling you. Usman will begin to fire. What Habib does is he actually doesn't stop there. He will bang on you from there, but he actually wants to get you flat on his back because he wants to go to mount. He wants to take the back. He actually wants to finish. He has much more finishing instincts. But what binds all three of them, the Covingtons, the Usmans, and the Habibs, is that they have an incredibly labor-intensive style.

It is built on this work rate that is astronomical. So just to tread water with them, you're in the choppiest of seas, and you have to do it round after round. The key is, easier said than done, I think about somebody like Stylebender. Now what I'm saying is, I don't think Stylebender necessarily, I mean, he's smaller than all these guys, so I don't think he, well, not Habib. But the idea is when you get in on Stylebender, he stops the takedown and then creates quick separation along the fence line.

You've got to have a jab that sticks in their face, like a Jose Aldo type, quick, athletic, break the hands, combined with a jab in their face. It's kind of that mix Mix a Jose Aldo with a stylebender, which doesn't exist, I suppose, but I'm just pointing out. What about a GSP? When you consider he has the jab to mix with the rest of them. That's right. He has the jab to keep distance on the Kostcheks, and when

the Fitches want to get in on him, he could stuff it and then repurpose it. Something like that. What about an old GSP? Like a prime? No, what about GSP right now? Could he come in here and be that? Prime GSP. Like a prime? No, what about GSP right now? Could he come in here and be that? Prime GSP? Yeah. No, I'm talking about late 30s

right now GSP. Active GSP. Back in the gym, EGSP. Is he the savior in waiting to beat this style of fighter? No, I don't think he could. Maybe... It's interesting. I don't know. It's a good question

coming soon to mortal kombat morning combat i know i keep saying mortal too all right next uh i'm gonna pronounce this name wrong alex schulker schulcher in a period where the ufc is struggling to replicate the superstar pull of fighters such as mcgregor and rousey the loss of cyborg is huge. I don't agree. Is there a point where the powers that be at the UFC will start to question having Dana White as the face of the organization? Or is his power and influence in the sport so great that he'll have the carte blanche to do as he pleases until he decides to call it quits?

Go ahead. What do you think? Yeah, his power is so great to get to this point. Any behind-the-scenes things you see, his passion isn't slowing down. His big business thinking, his passion isn't slowing down. His big business thinking, his ideas, he's still got it. So there's no need

to replace him at this point. And I don't think we're that... If you're going to make the take that Dana White negatively doesn't support the building of new superstars, I wouldn't agree with that. This isn't like a Vince McMahon hot take in pro wrestling where it's like, well, he doesn't want the next Cena

or Rock to be there. This is like, he's trying to build the next stars. They're throwing people into fights sometimes to try to see if they have that star power. It's just not an exact science. And this is a sport where you can lose 50 different ways. So when somebody goes on a GSP or John Jones or Demetrius Johnson type run,

we need to stop and applaud because it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Here's what I would say. If you grew up watching Dana White, or you know, my career began almost, not at the exact same time as his, but not too far apart. If you watch that, and then you went through, I mean he has toned it down massively. It used to be way more. The only liability came

when those fighters launched the lawsuit against the UFC, and they weaponized some of his anti-competitive comments against him. But it remains to be seen whether he'll pay a cost for that. When that first happened, UFC dialed back his schedule. He was only speaking to the Jim Rohns and so forth of the world. Now he's back to talking to the MMA media, not all the time, but much more than he used to. He's doing the Tuesday night contender series scrums and whatnot.

So the answer is, yeah, he has carte blanche. If there was ever a way that that was going to impact him, it already would have. If you thought cutting Cyborg was aberrant, you missed the days when they threatened to cut everyone from AKA for not signing away their likeness rights for not a penny for a video game. You missed all of that. This is child's play. Now, he can negatively influence the promotion of certain brands with his comments, but it doesn't seem to be lasting, unless he's got a grudge against you. And also, people keep bringing this up.

I just want to make this point. Like, I like ESPN. I watch ESPN. I think it's great. I think UFC looks even better on ESPN than I ever thought it would. But this idea, it's like, oh, ESPN is going to be a big check to him. Dude, ESPN is not a disinfectant. ESPN is an accelerant.

It is a complete accelerant. Anything that they do, whether it's, you know, you don't like, like signing Greg Hardy or cutting Cyborg, ESPN is not going to make that look bad. And they can say whatever they want. They're never going to make that look bad. They are their partners. Go listen to Jimmy Pataro on the Recode Decode podcast with Peter Kafka.

He talks about this. They see themselves as partners with the leagues, which is fine. That's their right to do. But this idea like, oh, they're going to hold their feet to the fire as their broadcast entity? No chance. No chance.

Or that Jeremy Shatner get on there and really hammer them for it? Nope. Where is Sarah Spain saying anything? Where is Dan Lebitard saying anything? Where is Bomani Jones? Where is... Chael Sonnen. What's wrong with Chael being on there? He's there.

Where is he saying anything? Okay, but I think he also works for ESPN. The point being is, the point being is, the people who are like the ones who speak out against all the injustices in their normal sports, you notice they get real quiet about you. I mean, it's just like, no. It's never going to happen. So, he's here until he's not here. Let's go to

the next one. Look at this. We got UFC flyweight. Macy Barber. Wow. Verified. That's the real deal. Got the blue checkmark, bro. All right. Brian Campbell. What do they think about the beating I'm going to give

on October 18th in Boston? She takes on Jillian Robertson, who has four wins at women's flyweight. They're going to compete on that Weidman versus Reyes card. Te gusta or no te gusta? Oh, yeah. She's going to deliver that. I'm going to be there for a row to watch it. Can't wait. You're going to go to that one? I look damn right. What do you think about that fight? I actually love that fight. So you've got

7-3, Jillian Robertson taking on 7-0, Macy Barber. You've got tough versus contender series. You've got, finally, a little bit of contender action happening at women's flag. You're talking about how empty it was. Okay, it is. But it's starting to build a little bit. And this is how you build faces and names.

Two finishers. Two people in Robertson and in Barber who get after it, bro. I love this fight. If you had me, I'd get after it. I'm ready. Great analysis. Great insight. Every Monday, 12 Eastern. Okay, very me, I'd get after it. I'm ready. Oh, great analysis. Great insight. Every Monday, 12 Eastern.

Okay, very quickly, time for odds and ends. Anything else you want to mention before we go? We had a nice sloppy weekend of boxing. Did you see that Fox main event? Heavyweights unbeaten out of Kovnachki against Chris Areola. I said it might be a sloppy Super Bowl coming in. These guys let their hands go. If there was a 311 song that best described this, I might go beautiful disaster.

Although I know you wanted me to pick Amber, right? Omaha style-y. Because it's the color of your beard and your energy. But here's the thing. They let their hands go. It was solid entertainment. It broke CompuBox records for punches thrown and landed over a 12-round fight by heavyweights. But here's the thing for Kownacki.

Great dude. Kid on the way. Trying to be the first Polish heavyweight champion, has that fun style. Even though he won and won kind of dominantly in a great fight, I think it was a step back from the idea of what he wants to do, which is get Deontay Wilder in the ring, get one of these big heavyweights. I don't think he has the power to beat them.

I thought you were going to mention something about Cain Velasquez. Well, I didn't get there yet. You want to mention Cain Velasquez? You know what I'm saying. From what you saw of Kownacki, can he beat the Wilders, Furies, and Joshuas? I didn't get there yet. You want to mention Kenny Velasquez? You know what I'm saying. From what you saw of Kovnatsky, can he beat the Wilders, Furies, and Joshuas? I feel like he showed you. I just don't see how. Decent gas tank, great infighting.

He's not going to outbox Fury. Wilder, I just feel like the firepower is way too much. And I guess the one against Joshua is kind of interesting. That'd be interesting. Even Andrew Ruiz might be a better version of Dadbod Kovnatsky, but it'd be interesting. The hand speed, I think, still gives problems in ways that Kovnatsky can't replicate.

So, that's a little more interesting, but I mean, we'll see. Alright, Cain Velasquez in AAA in Mexico, made his pro wrestling debut in a six-man tag. Cody Rhodes involved. I know this is going way past your line of comfort here. He was fantastic. What does that mean? So, he jumped in the ring wearing a Lucha mask. Came in with his line of comfort here. He was fantastic. What does that mean?

So he jumped in the ring wearing a lucha mask. Came in with his cane dad. This was in Mexico, right? Yeah. And you know what? When celebrities come in, when they try to make the crossover, it's normally very safe. You're seeing basic kick-punch slams. Heavyweight Cain Velasquez is coming out there doing Hurricane Ranas.

He's coming out there doing traditional Mexican luchador moves. This was eye-opening, and it really made you wonder, he can do this. Now, he doesn't have the charisma. He doesn't have the charisma for UFC. And even though he had sort of a mini tryout with the WWE last year, they were impressed with him physically. I hear they weren't that impressed with him in terms of what he can do on the mic. But could you imagine him getting signed by WWE and going into a program with Brock Lesnar?

That could be interesting. You ever been to like Cirque du Soleil? Yes. You get to see all that. In other words, it's like pro wrestling, only it's good. All right. You know what I'm saying? Just try that out.

Hey, but we can't walk away from the show and end it right now. No, no, I have one. I have one, odds and ends. For me, that one that really stood out to me, people were asking about some of the late stoppages at UFC on ESPN5, or stoppages they thought were late where referees were checking to see if chokes had worked. And all the times, I think there was three different situations where they had separated fighters and the fighter was unconscious. I think one was the Miller one.

One was the Pudilova one. There's another one. Maybe it was the Silva one. I can't remember. But the point being is people are like, oh, my God, Herb Dean screwed up. Now, Herb Dean has screwed up many times, I think, as every referee, even the best ones have. He did not screw up this time. That is not true.

If you actually ask any Jujitero what the rule is, yes, you want a referee to be quick. You want a referee to be decisive. But you want a referee to be as thorough as possible. Taking one to two extra seconds to verify a choke is in is perfectly okay. There's a team in Manhattan, I mentioned this before, I won't say who it is, but I know for a fact that they're pro practices. They have a no tap to chokes rule. Now, I'm not saying that's the healthiest thing, but I'm saying inside jiu-jitsu,

it's not, I would much, much rather a choke be held one to two seconds longer than is necessary to verify someone is unconscious than to have a situation where you're peeling an aspirin off of a Lawler or a Will Brooks and a Gleason Tebow where the referee doesn't check. They check this time. It went a little bit long. All those fighters got up off their own power and they're fine. I'm not saying there's no health consequences

to it, but save your criticisms of referees when it's deserved. Herb Dean does not deserve criticism. Espen Lann is still on line one. What happened? That stoppage with the random me. We already went over that. We can't close this show. We can't bury the lead any longer to talk about

what today really is. What is today? This guy's a man. Come after him. Oh, you've got to be kidding. Luke Thomas, 40 ounces to freedom today. You've got to be kidding. Here it comes.

Bring this in right away. Are you shitting me? Oh, my God. Luke. Look at this. From the team here. With my face on. From the team here at Morning Combat, below the belt showtime.

Oh, look at that. Do you have 40 wishes to give? I'm going to be like DC and throw my back out trying to blow these candles out. Look at that handsome guy. That's at least five years ago. Oh, my God. Wow. I don't even know what to say.

I'm speechless. Well, thanks, everybody. This is really sweet. I was not, I was not. Dude, my dad's not even going to call me today. Like, this, everybody. This is really sweet. I was not, I was not, dude, my dad's not even going to call me today. Like, this is amazing. Did they get a good shot at that? Can I lift this one up?

Hold the cake up. Don't spill it like you will. Donk. Help me support this here. Look at this. And you can see very, very, there you go. Oh, yeah. I look like a Turkish dictator on this thing.

That is fantastic. I want to get Enos Cantor for this. That is great. Can you make a wish, Luke? Yeah. All right. You know what I wish? I wish that...

We have so much to tell people. In all seriousness, I have so much fun doing this show. It's really maybe the funnest thing I think I've ever done in all my years.

And to many more of these, man. This is awesome. Thank you guys so much. Wow, I am blown away. Happy birthday, sir. Welcome to the Watch Club. Let's see if I throw my back out. No, I didn blown away. Happy birthday, sir. Welcome to the Wasp Club. Let's see if I throw my back out. No, I didn't get it!

There it is! All right! Woo! Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I really appreciate it. Yes, I'm old and couldn't even blow out my own effing birthday candle. So that's it for me.

My life ends here. Thank you guys so much for watching. Like the video. Subscribe to the channel. Stay tuned for Dissected. That's going up soon. Appreciate y'all until next time. May all of your gains be loyal We out Thank you. We'll be you next time.