MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Paris Recap: Moicano Stops Saint-Denis | Haney Sues Garcia | Full Episode | Morning Kombat

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

MK Monday is here. The guys are in studio to breakdown all the latest MMA news. First, Renato Moicano battered Benoit Saint-Denis to score a TKO after the second round of their UFC Paris main event. Given Moicano was injured, just how impressive was this performance? Nassourdine Imavov bests Brendan Allen; who makes sense for Imavov next? The UFC and fighters suing them reached a new agreement in the long-standing antitrust case. Will this new agreement finally stick? Devin Haney has filed suit against both Ryan Garcia and Golden Boy Promotions. Does his lawsuit carry any merit and was it a good idea to sue a rival in the sport of boxing? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only. And participate in McDonald's in Canada. Reveille, Reveille. Look at us now. Tip to tip.

Oh, Jesus. Reveille, Reveille. Look at us now. Tip to tip. Oh, Jesus. Do you want a margarita? Oh, my God. It's us doing what we love. You, me, you, me. It's us, doing what we love. It's time to bang. Hey, it's Monday. Grab your balls and say hello.

I don't even know why I said that. To your little friends, yes. Say hello to friends, little and big. Doesn't matter who are here. How you doing everyone on this 30th of September, 2024 my name is luke thomas that's brian campbell and we together are morning combat fun show we have planned for everyone here today on the show and by that i mean we're going to have some ufc paris reaction we're going to have some antitrust talk devin haney brian campbell yes is suing ryan garcia that's going well be wild. And we have some edgy shit.

We're going to find some corn in that shit, okay? There's going to be some weird stuff coming your way. And RIP Dikembe Mutombo. Dikembe Mutombo. The news just broke eight minutes ago. Eight minutes ago. Not in Mutombo House. Mutombo.

Dikembe Mutombo, the famous NBA center, has passed away at age 58. They happen in threes. So you go Chris Christopherson yesterday, Dikembe today. Oh, you're so right. Who's coming with them? Luke, who's next? Probably me. But I'm not a legend, so it doesn't really count.

Good thing you got a Bang Energy drink for your final wish. Not only do I have, here we go. You can put the camera on me. Here we go. Bang Energy drink, the energy of people who are looking for a heart attack and a life expectancy of Thursday. You bought the Purple Haze flavor. I don't even know what that, what does that even mean?

Purple Haze, the very best Cameron album, or at least one of the, that's not quite true, but my favorite Cameron album, I'll put it that way. Yeah, it was a great Jimi Hendrix song too. We will also talk about UFC 307 BC. Your enthusiasm meter on a scale of 1 to 10 for UFC 307 is what? I was telling Noseda this, the Australian son, you know, the Long Island Luke, that as a pay-per-view, but like as a fight night card, I'm kind of into some of these weird fights and weird storylines.

It's a really good fight night card. Yeah. That's the way you have to look at it. It's a really good fight night card. Yeah. That's the way you have to look at it. It's a really good fight night card. Long Island Luke is back there, fresh off of being bailed out from jail for masturbating at the bus stops in Long Island. Wow. What's up, Aussie Rules Luke?

How you doing, bud? I can nor confirm nor deny that any of that is true, but I'm doing good, guys. How we doing? You think he did drugs on the main card minute over the weekend? I think he's doing drugs as we speak. I do have the pen in here, not going to lie. Dude, I got to tell you, that whole room in there, not one of them could pass a drug test for a new job.

No, no. Not one of them. Ken's still reeling from that Amsterdam trip. Eyes as bloodshot as anything you've ever seen in your life. He was mentioning he has chlamydia. I'm like, that's what you get. Listen, those guys. I mean, dirtbag central up in there.

All right, we have a lot to get to today bc very quickly your weekend was how was good everyone in my house was sick so i was fighting the good fight to stay unsick luke so don't don't open mouth kiss me unless that was your what your want for today not mine i'm not into that you know i'm here like a nice gentleman and stuff but uh no um you know what? We should probably- You've ruined my day. We don't have great updates on the idea of going two days a week in October, but it is coming. Yes, we're just trying to iron out which day to go is basically where we're at. You ever thought about to drive interest or merch sales like a big giveaway?

Like we'll give away Long Island Luke's car or something. We'll conveniently an employee of the show a winner. I don't think he even has a car. Does he? I have a car, yeah. What do you have? I have a Mazda CX-7 2010. 2010?

Yeah, come on, man. You know, you're still running. Your car in dog years, it should be dead by now. I mean, dude, I had a 96 before this, and I've only had this car for a few years. How many drug deals have gone down in that car? In the 2010, not that many. In the 96, many.

Quite a few. All right, let's remind everyone for merch. We'll have to talk about that as well. You can go to morningcombat.store. There it is. You can get stuff like this jacket, this shirt. Do you have any merch on? That's all the smoke merch.

No, a rare episode that I'm not wearing any. We have socials. You can go take a look at those as well. There we are. We got to get that graphic updated to put our YouTubes on there. I've been living the Brian Campbell experience for five years. You have no need to ever watch it. It's very so-so.

How did it go? It's going fantastic. I did see you spoke to Jed, correct? Jed Meshue, yes. He's just that absolute dirt hole. Did he eat boogers on air? No, he actually stayed for almost an hour and a half. We had a very interesting conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So it's good. I love it. I didn't think that, I mean, you know, I'm having meager success, but that's, you know, I'm starting off. I didn't think people would like it this much. I'm pleasantly surprised. So I'm having a lot of fun. Well, listen, Jed Mishu looks like the kind of guy who has stds yes knows it and just doesn't want to take medicine for it you know what i mean

just let's see him being just stubborn like that yeah i just have warts on my hog now that's really just the way it's gonna go yeah that's that kind of guy uh bc there was action over the weekend we're gonna get to here in just a second did you see the pfl fight that had 14 different knockdowns no you had sent that to me and i had not watched i saw the stevie ray uh scottish twister which you'll see in this shit later but no it was a wild glass co card was it not dude they they i forget there was a fight between two guys with the most european anglo-saxon names you've ever seen in your life uh donk Donkerson. Yeah, and Rick Rickerson. And they just went after each other. The way I would explain it, it was an MMA fight,

but it had a street fight energy. It looked like they were fighting in the stands of an NFL stadium, but with actually better technique. You know what I mean? I didn't even watch that video that you tweeted about, like the vicious one. Dude, why would, Long Island Luke, why would anyone ever

go to an NFL game? NFL fans, more than any other fan base in the world, like, it casts a wider net than MMA, so you do get families, you do get old people, young people, you get a different mix. I'd rather go to a Renaissance Fair. I'd rather just have HIV.

I mean, why would you ever go to a Renaissance Festival? But the point I wanted to make was the NFL also has the most degenerate fan base of any major sports league, maybe in the world, certainly in this country. Well, not comparable to European soccer, right? Okay, hooligans are a different thing. But certainly in this country,

do you not agree NFL fans are a certain kind of absolute bottom feeder? I agree, and I'm not really an NFL fan, so I can agree. He's a diehard Islanders guy. I am a hockey fan, which is arguably just as degenerate. I have been to a soccer match in South America. Did not feel all that safe.

I'll admit that. I'll admit that. But the only other time I felt comparable to that was when I went to football games. Don't like doing it. It's the effing worst. I don't know how it is for you, but like, otheritals games capitals games are like family affairs 100 and there's no one really at wizards games so that doesn't count so much but and dc united is definitely more festive but dude the amount of people that are like going to get the max amount of beers every single time you

know a couple times a game like three four times i mean there's people that are like between the parking lot in the game i'm gonna drink 37 beers you know, a couple times a game, like three, four times. I mean, there's people that are like, between the parking lot and the game, I'm going to drink 37 beers. You know, that's the, it's like the old. Either in celebration or sorrow. It doesn't really matter. True, true. Yeah. You all right, Luke?

Are you going to die in front of us? I had to belch. I didn't want to do it. Super loudly. You hit your burp button. I hit my burp button. All right, BC, with that in mind, why don't we get to the show here that we have today? Appreciate everyone joining us here this morning. All right, let's talk about it, BC. We start with the most obvious, which of course

is going to be UFC Paris. We'll kick things off there. BC, Hanato Moikano, what do you want to say? Battered Benoit Saint-Denis to score a TKO essentially after this end of the second round. This was the main event at UFC Paris in the lightweight division. Very simple question for you. We now know that ultimately Moikano was injured, not just in the second round, but through the entirety of that bout. Given all of that and given how it looked, how impressive was this? As impressive as physically possible.

Not just because I picked BSD to stop him, but you're going into your opponent's backyard. The narrative is for as hot as Moicano has been with this sort of late career surge that he's on. Eventually he'll find his, his, his he'll, he'll hit a ceiling,

right? He'll level it out. I thought that would be BSD who was beating on Poirier until they got stopped, had the, the, the staff, you know,

we can question, was it that or what? And then you go into that guy's backyard, you jump all over him, you brutalize him on the ground, compromise him completely, and kind of fight smart the rest of the way and get the win. And oh, by the way, your shoulder was jumping out of your body during this, and you had a promo ready to tear about the French government. I would say this was a five-star performance across the board.

But what's crazy about it, not just that he went into the home of a big lion and just completely de-toothed him, was I didn't think he was that good. I didn't know Moikano had this performance. Now you're seeing the videos he's posting on social media in the last 24 hours where they were practiced and ready to go for the takedown off of BSD's high kicks. They had really scouted and were ready for this guy. This was a performance I did not expect from Moikano.

Showed the full asset of his game. Obviously, he's got Moxie and he's crazy and there's all these lovable things about him, but his ability to show us that he's tough as nails and he can execute as his freaking shoulders jumping out of his skin. Wow, dude. Nobody does it to BSD like that, right? I mean, he brutalized him. Certainly nobody in the UFC.

Even Poirier winning. Poirier had to fight out of really bad positions to do ultimately what he did. You see, let me say something about injuries first. I don't know how you feel covering boxing. Obviously, it's not making a question of or a consideration even of who's tougher. I'm not interested in that. But I can say I've been covering MMA for quite some time. Not quite 20 years, but a long while. Half your adult life. Pretty much. Pretty much. A few things have really occurred to me as a result. Number one, there are common injuries, but every time you think you've seen what the depth of injuries look like, you see another one that you just can't believe.

Or a new one inside of a fighting context you hadn't seen before. I'd never seen this where the ligament tears here and the ligament tears here, so the shoulder just kind of floats. How do you pass the medical example? People don't understand this. Every time you go to a doctor, they're never confused about what you have because you're telling them everything that's wrong with you. But if you actively tried, like imagine you tried to go to the doctor and like you were shitting blood and...

Okay, sounds from experience possibly. I'm just trying to think of something like terrible, but something you could disguise. Yes. And they asked you how are things going, and you just told them everything is fine. from experience, possibly. I'm just trying to think of something terrible, but something you could disguise. Yes. And they asked you, how are things going? And you just told them everything is fine. How would they ever know?

They would never, ever know. Now, obviously, if your arm is completely hanging off the socket. Dillashaw style. Dillashaw style, then they'll know. But if it is not completely visible, and even with the shirt off, you could just be like, oh, that's just always how it's been. There's ways to play it off they have no way of knowing they part of doing medicine is a relationship of honesty in order to do it correctly okay so that's how they get around this there are some things they can detect through blood tests

obviously through some different kinds of screens but this is the biggest fight of his life it reportedly happened three weeks out of the fight yeah and he just bit down and got it done holy crap yeah i mean i'm sure he was on cortisol and other painkillers i mean i don't know how you do that without it but maybe some gas station delta aids to help you through the pain some tussin rub that the picture on there check it out someone who's had shoulder problems yeah dude what the fuck i mean look at that dude look at that now he is kind of if you look at his shoulders they're kind of hunched forward a little bit and down so if you're standing up and you're like hey how am i doing and the doctor just takes a look at that now he is kind of if you look at his shoulders they're kind of hunched forward a little bit and down so if you're standing up and you're like hey how am i doing and the doctor just takes a look at you and you can just kind of grin and bear it how would they know this that

of course they could see but if you're not doing like a really hardcore examination how would you do look at that it is completely i think this is called an ac joint separation this is uh that's bad that's really it's not a broken bone. There's two ligaments that are cut and missing there, essentially. So he did focus on takedowns. That was a big part of the damage he did in round one, the major part of it. In round two, we give BSD a lot of credit for battling back

and sort of, I think, winning the rounds, potentially, in the scorecard. So I looked at the judges' scorecards. Moicano won 10-8 on all three. BSD won 10-9 on all three for the second. Now in hindsight, we can say, on the feet at least, Moikano heavily compromised in this fight. How could he not be with that?

Extremely compromised. I can't believe he fought this way. I got to say, on the injury side, every time you feel like you have seen the end of the line, you have absolutely not seen it. As it pertains to his performance, dude, this was so impressive, and I want to, in a very specific context, I don't know if Moikano will ever win a belt. Seems unlikely, but perhaps not.

But there is a certain kind of guy, and you definitely see them in the lower weight classes, 155 and down, of which this is one. And of course, Moicano used to compete at 145. There's a certain kind of guy who maybe they won't win a title. They might get to it, but they're a little bit short of that. But by the time they reach 34, 35 years of age, all the parts of their game have really come together very well, and they've got great experience against tough guys,

some tough losses, some good wins along the way. They've really matured in their skill set. They're a formidable force. Plus, he woke up on the marketing side. A switch was flipped. For sure. I'm only focusing for this particular point on the game itself itself but you're absolutely right that is a huge component his english proficiency and he seems to be a very funny guy in general that's also raising his visibility but i'm just talking

about the game itself they come to a certain point where all of that reaches ahead and if your game is lacking in any kind of significant way, they will eat you alive. Another guy like this was Carlos Diego Fajera. He won some and he lost some, but right around the age of 35, he began to put it together really well. Black belt for a long time. If your game had substantive holes in it against him, he was going to make you pay for it.

Dude, BSD is tough. BSD is athletic. BSD is incredibly driven, but there are limits to what he does. And somebody like Moicano who has that depth of technique, right? I mean, look at the difference in the depth of their technique on the ground. It was significant. And you only get to that place that Moicano's in with years and years and years of steady investment. He didn't peak at 27, 28 like an Ilya Teporya. He's peaking at 35.

He's had some tough loss. I mean, the Ortega and the Aldo loss were enough to show you that he may not be ready for that level. And he was winning that Ortega fight until it just kind of came apart against him. There's been times where you're like, wow, Moicano could be the next big thing. And maybe 145 wasn't the right weight class.

There's a lot of things we can all say. I'm just pointing out, there are ways to look. I always say this. People are like, oh, I only care about the championship fighters and nobody else or people who are destined for it. Moicano may end up getting there. We shall see. But even if he doesn't, he's got the kind of mature veteran game

that to me is a delight to watch. The way he was able to prevent BSD from sitting up from double butterfly, the way he was able to take the back, maintain back position, and most importantly to me, maintain back to mount position without ever relinquishing it or at a bare minimum he'd have to go to half guard and then he could easily recapture by turning the hips over to the same side getting it back and then to his ground and pound it wasn't like he was just throwing randomly hardcore super precise okay i want to ask the whole way through because that ground and pound was the reason why he won that fight. It was nasty. He got BSD to a position where his face was falling apart, and it seemed inevitable that even a jab or anything

was just going to cause the doctor to do exactly what he ultimately did. Was that... I mean, look, for all the hype we gave BSD, I don't hold the Poirier loss against him necessarily because he was winning that fight. He had the medical setback with the staph infection, but he did find a way to lose that fight. Was that like, I mean, you never would have expected him to take,

if he's that level of fighter that we thought, BSD, he took a shitload of basic damage with some aggressive elbows. So how much of that equation is Moicano's timing and the way he set it up, and BSD almost looking too casual. And you notice that? The defense wasn't really that tight. There was a couple elbows that were getting through, situation is Moikano's timing and the way he set it up and BSD almost looking too casual and you notice that like he the defense wasn't really that tight there was a couple elbows that were getting through and you're sort of like dude okay you got to cover up or these are these are going to matter soon and then suddenly three more it seemed like flush elbows and then he's that's

where he's at so BSD in this fight has something I call the Frank Mir Shane Carwin syndrome you ever seen Frank Mir versus Shane Carwin of course this ever seen Frank Mir versus Shane Carwin? Yes, of course. This was for an interim heavyweight title at the time. And if you notice, Shane Carwin, what was the scouting report at the time? Shane Carwin had enormous power. Huge, huge power. You can go back and look at many of his fights. One of my favorite ones for Shane Carwin is the Christian Wellish fight, who was an AKA fighter.

He gets hit with a cross, and it spins his head to the other side and launches his mouthpiece into orbit in a shocking kind of way. His upper cuts and the clinch were devastating. He melts him right there. Yeah. So in this fight, they're up against the fence, and Carwin is not drilling him with his heaviest shot, but they're heavy.

They're all quite heavy. And what Frank Mir does in that fight sort of makes sense, which is you can see him taking not gasping breaths, but big inhalations through his nose like trying to stay calm. Don't want to panic under pressure. You'll make bad decisions. But the problem is if you're getting teed off on, you definitely don't want to panic,

but you also don't want to reduce the alarm so much that you keep getting drilled and he keeps getting drilled comfortable there and ultimately gets finished off to your point bsd was trying to stay calm that's good but if you stay so calm that you end up just taking more abuse there's no benefit to staying that particular calm however i'm going to say something the best ground and pound guys in mma today they all have a common denominator about what they do. They have different ways of setting it up, different ways of maintaining. We were talking about this before the show, Long Island Luke, about what Khabib Nurmagomedov does.

We're talking about it in a separate context about the takedowns. We'll talk about that when we get to Brendan Allen. But he is very clear about something. You have to be able in MMA to use your legs to maintain not just top position, but to control the bottom player so that your hands are free to punch. And he used that body triangle, maintaining it through rotation of position to absolutely tee off on that guy. With a hurt shoulder. With a hurt shoulder.

Using both hands. Dude, that is skill. I have to say, I'm disappointed BSD looking so out of his depth in that situation. It cost him the fight. It's a tough position to get out of. Obviously a tough position, but it's like, we had him ready to essentially, I did,

to win this by knockout and catapult into legitimate contention. And he certainly showed you elements that would make you believe that, but this was such step back dude in that regard there are certain guys who get great wins in the ufc because they have some skill but then they just have so much drive and aggression it kind of overwhelms people and i think he's a championship level fighter for sure i'm not discounting him to that but a lot but he rides these big momentums and he goes after they're usually power punchers they're usually not like mixed guys like this like a drew mcfedry's you

guys remember drew mcfedry's yeah you remember him long island luke no big big not his fault he was born in the 1990s as you would say that's your fault the point i'm trying to make is he had big power huge huge power and they would get wins just by cracking people but then when someone could stand up to it or get around it their game would just kind of collapse bsd is better than that but it's a similar kind of thing i thought that was going to happen to moicano and instead look at the result he looked incredible now bc let me advance the conversation here a little bit yeah by the way do we have that uh we have the we had the x-ray is that all we have of bsd was oh yeah look look at BSD's face lord so this is basically I think a round of damage I mean I guess you could say two rounds no it was right it was one round so his

right eye completely swelled shut and had a massive cut on the outside swelling part that was just gushing all over his face and obviously you can see his left eye was severely Any issues with the stoppage? No, no because there's only so much you can take in that. It's funny I was talking to Tim Zhu in an interview that will be on my channel this week and he was explaining what it's like to fight through when your face is a crimson

mess and the blood is getting in your eyes and it's burning and you can't see it's such a danger to begin with but he not only had the swollen shut he had the massive cut on the outside of that that was leaking well it was like here tim zoos was different because it was here but it did constantly compromise his vision to the point where it led to him losing a close fight in that regard i have no problem with the stoppage my biggest concern in question luke is how damaging is this to bsSD's potential brand slash title contention? It's two losses in a row.

We've seen many guys come, come back from that. And there's certain circumstances in both that you can almost explain away to some degree. You want to explain away this loss, but he just got caught with big strikes early on the ground and showed tremendous heart. But,

but you know, he's up against time with his fate. It's going to leak and it's going to fall apart. So no issue with the stoppage, but how concerned should we be about DBSD's future? How much does this potentially stop him from eventually making that run to, to the title shot? I think this is a crossroads fight for him.

The only conceivable conclusion you can have. And I know he used the excuse of, uh, he was on antibiotics for staff ahead of the. Poirier. Poirier fight as someone this is the first show i've done back since vacation where i've not been on antibiotics i'm actually done with them that's true you had you had so i understand that like he was probably on heavy artillery so yes it will drain you i certainly respect and understand that you can't use it anymore plus your opponent had a terrible orthopedic injury and you got fucking dominated

you have to be able to look at this and say you don't have enough skill yet you just don't have enough skill you have tons of athleticism no one's questioning his heart to go out there and win the second round even with that injury that moicano had is still ridiculously calm down and was executing a game plan it was and he would have fought the third if they would have let him but you don't have enough skill. He does not have enough skill. That's just as flat as I can make it. But he's still, well, he's 27, 28, BSD?

28? He's got time. He's got time. If he really looks at this and says, I need to get better, he's got the time. You know he's got the athletic ability, and you know he's got all the aggression in the world. It can be a turning point positively, or it could be a reinforcement of a negative future the choice is really his choice is he's got to he's got to hit the ground and really work on that and i know what some people are going to say he needs to get out of france i don't know if

that is true but if i were him moicano was taking him up on the offer to come train at att i would at least spend a little bit of time there to like the tires on the idea. Do you agree with Moikano when he said, fuck Macron? I mean, I don't think anybody likes Emmanuel Macron, right? I don't know much about the bloke. He's widely disliked. I mean, I'll put it that way. But you know what? I said this, and I maintain it.

None of that shit counts until someone does it in Saudi Arabia. Hey, Darius brought up Jesus in the Middle East, right? Okay, but that's all Abrahamic religion stuff. Jesus is a prophet in Islam. Like, that's not. It was ballsy, though. A little bit ballsy. A lot of bit ballsy.

That was also UAE, correct? Correct. Yeah. Okay, so I'll give them honorable mention. Honorable mention. But it doesn't count until you go to some place where they'll throw your ass in jail for insulting the leader and then you insult the leader that's what i want to hear that's that's when you're like okay props that's a but of course that's not what happens anyway all right neither here nor there what would you want to see next for honato moicano the choices are as follows patty pimblitt

dan hooker i love this the jazz hands are breaking up yeah you're like dan hooker justin gaethje. Easy answer for me, it's Paddy Pumple. Tell me why. Even if it's not a step forward in ranking aggressively that you would think a win this impressive would give you, it gives him the ultimate opportunity to kind of become a star. If he can win one more, there's obviously legitimate questions about Paddy.

This is really the perfect crossroads fight for us to find out right now. How tough is Paddy? How good is his well-rounded game? How will he look when a legit fighter, a finisher like this, potentially puts him in his back against the wall and he has to rally back? I think it's one of those perfect situations where if Paddy would win it, he would get so much respect for doing it against a veteran battle tested on that hot of a streak.

But if this is the moment we find out that Patty's not ready for primetime, dude, how big of a win would that be for Moikano? I mean, you can certainly argue that if you got in there with a gauge that that win could win mean more on a critical palm for palm level. But on a this guy's trying to become a star. And I give Moikano a lot of credit for the character that he's unleashed in recent years. I don't know if it's just like a Stone Cold Steve Austin thing where you take your regular personality and turn it up to 11. Seems to be the case. This is what we have. Or if he charted out a way to create this character.

But he's hilarious. It would be a monster win. And I think you even have the opportunity to bring this fight to the UK and make it. You have to see that. Look, you have of all the tests you can do for Patty. This one, you could see him getting effed up. You got to see this. I love that matchmaking more than any of the other fights.

Why not the Dan Hooker fight? Because that's also a great fight. It would make sense on the idea of who can take a leap in the rankings. But I don't think it's as valuable for Moikano. Because he's got, I mean, think about it from like, he's got a window. Look, he's got a window here to do it. Wouldn't you want Patty, who is so less proven compared to these other guys? And you get double the commercial exposure?

First of all, all three of those choices are great. There's not a bad one in there. The Gaethje one means a little bit less to me because I don't really know how much time he's got left in the sport. I don't know if that's exactly the direction we should go. So to me, the two best ones would be Hooker or patty patty is to me the better of those two but i just don't know if the ufc really i don't i don't know what they want from moicano they obviously believe in him to a degree they gave him this even though he was the underdog but main event in paris but it's hard to

say don't you think the equation falls more when you're talking about the ufc and what they want with patty than moicano it's more like how good do they think Paddy is and are they willing to risk how he can win that fight right but are they willing to risk it on Moikano is he a big enough perfect foil to play the b-side in that is that the matchup they would want I think they would he might be he might be by now he might be by now yeah I mean I do think we're at a place now where that is listen if you're main eventing an overseas card in a, I won't say premier, but a market of the future, let's say, market of the present, but also market of the future, they probably do believe in you. And, dude, he performed awesome. Would he be the favorite? Moikano might be the betting favorite.

I think he would be, but slight. It'd be very slight. I mean, I have respect for Patty's game and the increments he's been adding to it, the maturity, the poise, and all that. But you got a favor from a betting standpoint, McConnell. This would be a great fight. I mean, look, talk me into Hooker on the other side, outside of just could be a fun, crazy action fight.

There's not a lot of personality. I don't know. Well, the thing is, Hooker's ranked fifth, and so there's a value there because of his ranking position that I think he covets and I think would make a lot of sense. Dude, Hanato Moikano versus Dan Hooker would be an awesome fight. People are acting like it wouldn't be.

It's just that the Patty one would be uglier in terms of the pre-fight buildup. It would be a lot more fun probably. It would almost feel like a quasi, not title fight, but it would feel way more important than it actually is because of Patty's brand and the polarizing thing around him right moicano brings a certain kind of i'll stir the pot energy sure which would work great against patty pimble it for our entertainment so that might be the way that they go but i guess we'll have to see in terms of the other parts of this card bc nasur dean imov gets a decision win over brendan allen two rounds to one essentially

what did you make of their performances and who who should be next for Imavov? It wasn't pretty. It was a tactical one, one on the ground there, largely by Imavov. But I thought he showed his veteran-ness, and it really showed Brendan Allen possibly not being ready for prime time. And you saw that. He had a very good first round, couldn't make the adjustments to stop what Imavov was doing in rounds two and and three couldn't really figure out how to win that fight so it said a lot wasn't

overly exciting but imav is becoming one of these like sleeper contenders now where not every fight is an absolute banger but just does part of him remind you of musashi or do they just kind of look alike there's parts of the game i think it's more that they look alike i think musashi's game was a little bit more well-rounded. Sure. And he was certainly a better fighter at this point when you're comparing what they've, you know, what their reputation is and who they beat and what they've accomplished.

But this win streak now stopping cannon near this to Alan, there's another good name in that too, on this three fight turn to lead. Thank you, Luke. He's he, did he show you here in a, in a veteran sense?

Like he's here, he's ready for real contention, obviously not exciting, not great, but he figured out the lane to veteran sense? Like, he's here. He's ready for real contention. Obviously not exciting, not great, but he figured out the lane to win this fight. He leaned in it, and he got it done on a technical basis. He had two tough losses, as you mentioned, to Strickland and Curtis all the way back in 2023, and it seems like since then he has learned quite a bit

about himself and his game. I still think some of this was interesting. To me, Brendan Allen looked good early. Definitely looked really good early in that first round. No question that he won it. But in the second round, like how often did you see this? We talked about this as well. Habib Nurmagomedov is big on this.

He would push Imavov to the fence off a single leg and then would just let him stay there in position rather than making him balance. And the best guys in those positions make him balance. I don't know if he had the gas tank. I don't, I don't really know. I didn't see it like urgency. Like this is his fight. This is his moment. And then and then you know the other part too was wrestling on his knees i mean he i'm not saying anything he doesn't know you know like you just imovov has good first order takedown defense like a good sprawl but i have the feeling if you chain stuff together you could really get the better of him or at a bare minimum

find the back and it just seemed like alan would have a good decent first attempt at it it'd get stuffed and then he'd just be stuck underneath and then you'd pull guard and try and sit underneath like that which can be fine if you're demi and maya but that's a hard act to follow so i it wasn't a great performance from ronan allen there was parts of it that were great imovov to me looks competent a good in certain areas his boxing looked good i thought that was the best part about his game he's not overly exciting there's not overly dynamic he's sound he's sound he's not excellent everywhere do you think he represents his dagastani heritage enough in the cage would you like to see more of a commitment to dominant i don't i mean i'd no i would want to see him do what he does best i think he's good not great sure and so for that reason i'm not like

super high on but if you're incomplete he's sort of great sure and so for that reason i'm not like super high on but if you're incomplete he's sort of becoming that that guy that lets you know yes he's not necessarily a gatekeeper he's making his own rise that's right that's right if you're lacking he's not the same kind of depth of technique as a guy like moicano but in a similar kind of way i thought brendan allen's wrestling he wasn't really able to chain stuff together very effectively and that really hurt him disappointing performance a little bit performance. A little bit, yeah. I think he's better than what he showed, but you got to show what you have,

and it was okay. It was okay. It wasn't great. BC, we have to talk about our guy, Matt Frivola. Oh, my God. Do we have that TKO? It's in. Have you seen this?

Can you pull it out of there now, Long Island? Can you pull it out by chance? We'll revisit it. Yeah, he'll find it. So, Farez, the... Who looked really good, dude. Who looked pretty good. TKO's him.

After beating his ass, I thought, you know, I'd seen the highlight before I watched the fight. So, I'm thinking, okay, maybe Favola's in this fight. He just got caught. No, he got systematically beaten down. Here it is. And set up perfectly for this. We have it here. I mean, look at, look at, dude.

Oh, man. So, in my opinion, BC, Justin Gaethje being ko'd by max holloway is ko of the year but buddy if this ain't number two i don't know what is this is a phenomenal knockout so we'll talk about ziama just a second but we gotta talk about our guy matt favola we've had him on rsd i love matt favola he just had a kid he's vacationing in in france he seemed to have a good attitude about it all i hope he's okay pictures with ziam after this is several knockouts he's had in his career where does he go from here it's hard because what is he 34 35 he's right in that pocket right there where you wonder have we found out about him enough when he does move up to it to you know the highest level as

as we've seen him kind of level off against bsd now this there's been some tough knockout losses in the past. I mean, look, he's aggressive. He can be dangerous, but he got handled in this fight. So it's funny. I want, I got to bring back Long Island Luke because he lives in the same damn town as Frivola. So this must be like, feel like the home team.

But do you almost feel like you can make a case Long Island that he should, he should step away? Yeah, I hate to say it and I don't know i'm not in charge of his financial future but this is a brutal loss and i i would not be shocked if he stepped away what about if you just take the year off let me ask the question if i may i'm not saying that that shot wouldn't have ko'd him no matter what but i do wonder both what the ko shows and then what the aftermath is about the resiliency of frivolola's chin at this point. I agree.

That's the argument. We've seen him get flash KO'd a few times now, so it's just... And this was no flash. No, I'm saying this just adds on top. The full Monty on this one. But all the credit in the world. You mentioned Zeom was doing well. Listen to these numbers, BC.

These are, again, quantitative, not qualitative totals, but in significant strikes in round one, Zeon 18 to Favola's nine in round two, 34 to seven. And in round three, it wasn't very long, but six to zero. He also got three takedowns in round three. He was savvy. He got one takedown in round one and Favola got one takedown in round, um, in round one as well. But this was comprehensively good. It really was. I mean, how much did this make you excited with Zeon that we have a new arrival of somebody on the scene? Was it just one fight, one good performance,

or are you circling him on your rankings in the UFC war room as a guy to watch? I definitely feel like this was a bit of a standout performance, and he's got a couple of other nice wins. He has a win over Jai Herbert, but the fight before this, had a split against claudio poiges who is kind of a little bit one note sure so more to more more to show more to show but obviously this was ridiculous uh brian battle had a nice win he gets a tko in the second round he's doing a lot to get to getting his brand out there more i like that the added tats i certainly like

the aggressiveness of that finish and the call outout after that we'll see in the shit later, the sort of battle with the French fans. But would you agree that while he's still sort of building a case into true contention and us seeing, going from, okay, that was a tough guy, he had some success there, to now he's legit, he's kind of playing the right notes with the look, the attitude, the feel. Like, I cheer for him.

I want to see him do well. He's starting to win me over look are you on my level with that or you're like man i hate mma fighters uh no i don't hate mma fighters but i just white people just well just you uh no it's not even that it's just that he had a very he had a very, he had a good fight. He had a very spirited pre-fight thing going on. And certainly his post-fight call-out was memorable. Sure. But I'm most high on fighters who have championship potential. I just don't know if we're there with him. I'm not saying we're not.

I don't know. So, you know, this is why people are like, I like so-and-so's call-out. And I'm like, well, how good are they? And then, you know, you get a bit of a mixed answer. And it's like, this is why people are like, I like so-and-so's call-out. And I'm like, well, how good are they? And then, you know, you get a bit of a mixed answer. And it's like, this is why I like Ilya Teporia. I don't give a shit what these guys say for the most part. I want to see what they do when they perform. And that dude is one of the most electric talents in the sport.

Like, I have a completely, it seems like relatively to many fans, I have an upside-down version of what appeals to me about the sport. I like the sport for the most part. Oh, the sport part of it. Oh, the sport part of it. I like the sport part of it. But you do like some of the fanfare. Of course. Some of it is fantastic.

No, no, no. Trash talking. 100%. Like, you can't... It's hard to like fighting without that, like, at all. That has to play a role. But it seems like the balance for me is a little bit different. What are your thoughts on in-cage twerking?

So Aileen Perez gets a win over Daria Zalesnayakova, who was not great. No, and we have a, believe me, Aileen has her own section in Have You Seen This Shit This Week? Because she won this week. But let's actually have the conversation right here. How good is she as a fighter? You look at her resume. It's getting there. It's starting to get there.

She missed weight in this fight, which was a problem. She's a handful, it seems like. She's a wild card. she's a wild card she's a wild card she's got some ability but i i don't she beat a donk right she beat a donk i mean you know we're not this is not the kind of fight where you can make an assessment about someone's talent very much um she knows how to entertain luke let me ask you how is it that like extra coaching from the sidelines is verboten, and then you can put your ass and butthole in someone's face, and the referees— Call the North-South, Luke.

Yeah, and the referees may or may not say anything. Like, I don't—it's not that I care about either one individually, but I don't quite get the standard that we're trying to uphold here. Do you sit in the same pocket I do where as much as you want sportsmanship and Bushido and people to treat each other right, the allure of the ridiculi, her putting her ass in the face of somebody she just beat up and submitted, I don't know, dude. Maybe it's my gas station hot dog upbringing,

but I also really like that shit too. See, it's the kind of thing you would do to your sibling, right? If you were like, if you were like squabbling with your siblings and you were wrestling, or you ever had a brother, like you're wrestling with your brother and you finally win. And you're two bagging him, yeah. Yeah, you fart in his face. You know what I mean? I've lived those lives.

It felt a little bit like that, which again, it's not like I find it offensive. I just find the rules of MMA, like what are the rules of engagement? What are the rules of decorum? What's the difference between them? Well, let me ask you a personal thing. Would you rather have a completely buttoned up Bushido, almost one championship vibe going on, or would you be okay with more sauciness with, you know,

remember the Strikeforce Nashville brawl? Gentlemen were on live TV. I was sitting there on TV going, yeah, yeah. Like that was, I like hijinks like that. I think here, I will say this. In general, I don't think you should get in the way of a fighter celebration. I don't like it when the commission finds people forgetting on top of the cage.

I understand why they do it, but I don't agree with it. Unless it's Molly Meatball running around in circles with Patty on her shoulders for like an hour. However, what I will say is if you've submitted an opponent, whether they're conscious or not, and the referee tells you to get off you need to get off and like move away from it off you're saying two positions in a one night stand what song is that my prince off of diamonds and pearls sorry i lived the 90s you know i still live in them apparently you got to move away from them so like but just putting your ass in their face to me is like

kobe it's a little much kobe it's a little much tell me how my ass tastes a little much uh all right bc with that in mind any other thoughts on this card ufc paris fun card for the most part you see shop tweeted that this card on paper was like way better than the sphere i thought that was a little aggressive he said that yeah he's been a very anti-sphere i thought it was an okay card. I like the crowd. The crowd was into it. We certainly had some good performances here,

but it didn't move me. Long Island Luke, you're in the weeds, dude. You and the main card Minipot are like punch for punch. Did that card move you at all? No, it was better on paper than it actually played out. I didn't think it was that great. It's always the ones you miss. That's what they say.

Oh, it's the ones that no one considers that they're always great always great and i'm like that's what you believe if you're the world's biggest moron that's that's what morons believe just so everyone knows that okay yeah did you see that study came out that power slap brings brain damage 78 of it's yeah yeah i mean i'm like i bet it's higher than that i bet it's higher than that just can we just trade what are you what are you passionate about what just trade? What are you passionate about? What are you passionate about? Are you passionate about taking brain damage for cheap? No, no, no. No, I don't know where you're going with that passionate.

Don't you remember what Dana White said? Because he was asked about his own brain damage, and he was asked about the safety of power slap, and his answer was basically like, you know, what are you? I got news for doctors. You're all going to die, which is true. Yes. You know, what are you passionate about? And and i'm like it's very hard to make an argument that anyone is passionate about slap it's like no what do you think about in the it got a lot of mileage out of the mcmahon netflix stock that stone cold i need to watch this it's

all over my timeline stone cold steve austin went on a rant it was they were having conversation about brain damage and chris benoit and is are the mcmahons ultimately responsible for not previously having the wellness program that they ultimately had to put in after chris benoit but they had you know concussion experts speak and then suddenly stunk cold steve austin's like yeah i don't believe in that cte i just don't believe in it it's like saying i don't believe in the rain like you don't have a choice yeah i don't think it's something i mean like when someone like dom cruz is like yes i do not believe in ring rust it's not a real thing or cage rust i think that's more of just like you're training your mind that's like this will not affect me like but i think cte stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy they can see it in your fucking

brain they showed the benoit like scans of his brain like they can it was as it was the worst they'd ever seen the tau proteins get tangled that's what that's what they mean um it's not like this is what i mean like i don't i don't believe in the sun you don't have to it's like it's there irrespective of your belief of it it's that's what i mean like i just a lot of athletes i tune out these days you know unrelated to this luke but you are a man of education and a man of the world or maybe the man of the solar system do you see that they found a new planet that might have life on it? I didn't see this, but they do this every so often. Where did they find one?

They used some crazy telescope to find one, you know, outside of our solar system that they think has almost a consistency of Earth in terms of like the... Does it have the same proximity to its own sun? That typically tends to be what they look for. You know, I didn't go that too in but um you know then the crazier conspiracy people are saying that they've also seen but they won't report that there's been like an armada of ships coming but i don't know if i'm i'm not going that far luke but uh an armada armada is just spanish

for navy yeah a large armada of ships coming all right let's get to point number two here if we can bc the this is a very simple one so we didn't get a chance to get to this last week we don't have to spend all the time in the world on it but we do need to touch on it the ufc announced that they had reached a renewed settlement with the plaintiffs in the kung lee fighters antitrust case now previously in the last settlement they had agreed to 335 million for for both the Johnson and the Lee cases. This one is $375 million, but now they're splitting the cases. So it would be $375 million for just the Kung Lee case.

They would not be touching the Johnson case at all. BC, what is your sense that the judge will accept this settlement? I don't know. I wanted to get your McGraken ass going. You know, can you put on your John S. Nash and tell me. So I do think there is. People are looking at the number, 375 versus the last one, which is 335. And they're saying this is a paltry increase, which is true in the grand scheme of things.

It's not much of a change in the number, but there was a really big change. The settlement as it was originally constructed was for two cases, for the Kung Lee case, 2010-2017, Johnson case, everything thereafter up until essentially today. The reason why these are different is because there is no injunctive relief in the Lee case. It is strictly a monetary damage. So minor contractual stuff, but it's basically a monetary damages case. All the stuff that would change UFC contracts

is all a part of the Johnson case. However, the Johnson case, because so many people are not really a member of that class or they've signed off on being able to participate in class action lawsuits. Remember, on being able to participate in class action lawsuits remember if you sign to fight with the ufc you have to agree to not fight excuse me you have to agree you won't participate in class action lawsuit against them there are no really monetary damages in the johnson case but there could be if they win or whatever significant

changes to the johnson case is the one that could change the business for the future that's correct where the lee one is let's get these retired fighters paid. That's exactly correct. Different time periods, but in functionality, that's the purpose that they serve. The UFC agreed to let go, for now, of the Johnson case. They're just going to say, hey, let's focus on the Lee case. We'll give you 375 mil for approximately 1,200 fighters. I think that's roughly what it comes out to

and we'll deal with the johnson case later that might do it now i don't like it out out of the conversation right that might bring an end to it but it's a big change because i think what the judge wanted to see out of this and whole thing was some kind of change with the way the UFC does their business. That's not even possible really in the Lee case anyway. It's only really a monetary damages one. So the question you have to ask yourself is, is this enough in terms of monetary damages? And maybe it's not. I don't know.

But the fact that they disentangled the two as a way to get a settlement, that is a significant difference. And then you're seeing fighters, one of them, Tom Lawler, was on Twitter basically almost begging Judge Bold where to accept this because they need and want the money. I mean, that seems to be, from the league standpoint, what this is about for them. And a lot of them could probably use it in a big way.

So you were saying off camera that the Johnson settlement could be years. So this really is a way to kind of take away this hurdle right now. How much of a hit to their business do you think that amount would be? I know they have an opportunity to pay it over time. Nothing. Nothing at all. We wouldn't even notice it. Nothing.

It's very, very easy for them to pay that. It doesn't really become a problem until you're a billion dollars or more. Like, they're not even close. This is very, mean i'm again you know i'm sure if you ask them they'd be like hey 375 million is not chump change nor am i suggesting that it is tv deal is going to be outrageous what i mean it's gonna sometimes you'll see this in like soccer for example you'll see like a big signing at a new club and then they'll debut and you're like how does this club afford to even pay for this guy and then you'll look at their jersey sales for the new club from like the first week that they were debuted and it recover they recoup all their money just in jersey sales alone so like it feels a little bit like that you

know like yes it's a lot of money but i don't think it's going to put them in the poorhouse but everyone thinking this is just the same as the last settlement oh but 40 million more no that is definitely not the case it's 40 million more for just a case that could only ever be about a monetary settlement sure we shall see what i wonder if there's a connection between this kind of getting out of the way and how aggressive dana wants to be in boxing next i think i think it's a lot i mean do you so so imagine the judge rejects it don't know that he will but imagine that he does and by the way we should note something too the judge rejected the first deal

and the second deal but as it pertains to the second deal he never really wrote down why we all kind of estimated that it was just not enough both from a monetary standpoint and because it was both cases i thought dana said because they went to high school together. Maybe he stuffed him in a locker. It's got to be personal. I'm like, or maybe you don't understand that people don't like all of your business practices. But okay, the point I'm trying to make here is he didn't exactly articulate precisely why he rejected it. So we're kind of forced to be like, is it just that he separated the cases this time is it just the monetary settlement size i don't know i don't know i

don't know what's going to happen but the point you're raising is can you imagine you're you already have the dominant brand in professional wrestling you already have the dominant brand in ufc or i'm sorry i should say mma and now you wouldn't have the dominant brand necessarily in boxing but you would be involved in the way. If you're involved with Turkey, you have a huge potential. If you're involved with Turkey, you're in business with a dominant brand, right? They wouldn't own it per se, but they would be in business with it. While you're being sued for antitrust violations,

I just feel like you could do it. I don't know. I don't know what kind of look that is. But if they weren't the promoter, if they did almost an Al hayman pbc model where al hayman's not the promoter it's a managerial company tgb promotions but they've got tgb they've got mayweather promotions you know they've got louis de cuba they've got like samson is a promoter they use a lot too so if you did it that way and you wouldn't really have those same muhammad ali

act issues in that regard there are ways to get around it. There are ways to get around it. Yes. There are ways to get around it. So I don't know what they're going to do. We're really kind of guessing, but it's all I want folks to understand is the one big change is not the money. The big change is the splitting of the cases in the settlement.

That's the big change. Barely connected to this. Do you think that there's pressure on the zone that if Dana and Turkey come together and make a boxing super league or super network or something right now DAZN is kind of in control as the clubhouse leader in boxing broadcasting at the moment they have the biggest fights consistently yep BBC still doing big time stuff just not as consistently and top rank is maybe a step back from where they were a couple years ago still strong though um what do you think that means for DAZN? I don't know. Because didn't Turkey recently just say he thought DAZN was the best in quality?

Yes. And like the leader in the business for. It's like, would you go that quickly from one? Or is that like, is he sending a message with that? I don't know. Also, here's this new thing that's happening. It's like, it used to be like, oh, you only got a pay-per-view via ESPN and now it's like yeah it's gonna air on espn the zone ppv.com you can basically just get it anywhere is it going to be something like that where there's one dominant place for it but

you can just basically just do a deal with whoever like it's a weird time it's a weird time in the exciting time but it's really going to be interesting with the next all these guard rails that used to exist both for good and bad there many of them are just falling apart and yes how the business is mixing together is so straight dude mma and boxing being in business together 10 and certainly 15 years ago was unfathomable yes it's like being at a weird wedding reception right we're like people from opposite sides of the lines that the families that don't like each other they're being brought together. Interesting.

Interesting stuff coming ahead. Let's move along to the boxing side of things. We'll get to UFC 307 a little bit later. You see, we've got to talk about this. This is, I thought, one of the most interesting, strange, I don't know what you want to call it. But here it goes, something like this. In the Eastern New York District Court, Devin Haney has filed a lawsuit against both Ryan Garcia.

By the way, Golden Boy promotions as well, but for the purposes of this conversation, we'll focus largely on Ryan Garcia. B-Seat, he is suing for really a few different things. If I may, let me just tell the audience here very quickly. He's suing for damages related to what he claims are battery, fraud, and breach of contract this is also again a breach of contract claim is what he's also asserting to a degree against golden boy bc the the response to this that he has been met with has been less than enthusiastic i think you could say from the fan base. What will be, what is the upside? Excuse me.

Let me, let me, let me ask a different way. Talk to me about the immediate fallout of this lawsuit. What is the reaction on the street? Secondly, do you think there's any merit to it? And I've read the lawsuit.

Yes. I'll send it to you now as a matter of fact. Haney is getting killed for this, killed for this on boxing, X boxing, you the twitter the social media culture i had regis progray on my uh brian campbell experience you'll see that interview this week and i asked him you know he had just fought haney in his last fight in december and lost and and he said that's a pussy move and that's not my words that you know let's let a fighter talk about it but the whole idea of like why what's the real motivation what is there to win i think this is the haney family almost

desperately trying to make up for by chasing ryan financially here the things that they didn't do when this fight in the way in situation happened that they should have done protected themselves i mean luke now you've got eddie hearn who seems to be on the ropes with Haney. I don't know if you saw them bickering in England over the tickets and all that. You know, he's basically coming out and saying, you know, he would have preferred that after Ryan missed Wade and all the craziness that went on there that, you know, they forced him to have a rehydration clause for the next day to have to weigh in a second time. These are the things that the Haney's didn't do. They didn't put as much pressure on Garcia when it, when he was sort of flippantly on purpose,

missing weight. And they just sort of maybe due to the chaos, not wondering if Ryan was even fit to even be in that ring. We're just like, let's just get through this. Let the fight can go on no matter what we believe in ourselves. And to some degree, I understand and respect that,

but ultimately you lost. And it doesn't seem in the opinion of, of everybody from people in the barbershop on Twitter, real fighters, analysts, whatever that you lost because of the Osterine. Ryan did test clean with Vada as intrusive as you can get all the way leading up.

And this was, seems to be tied into his attempt last minute to make weight. And the whole idea that he was potentially up 15 pounds overweight entering fight week, and we know that was as crazy and bizarre a build as possible. The Haney family lost this fight because they couldn't pick up Ryan's left hook. That's really what happened.

But they also did not protect themselves in the A-side power and leverage they could have had and could have wielded against Ryan when it became clear that he wasn't going to take the way in part seriously, that he was probably listening to Floyd and strategically doing this to give himself an advantage and not suck himself down. So now after the fact, you're going to sue him for battery.

It's such a bad look. It's so against sort of the old school nature of take the L get up. Are there certain elements to it? Are there potential excuses you could have? Is there an asterisk? Yes, it's a no contest now. There's clearly an asterisk. But to try to beat him in the courtroom

rather than going back and making a rematch happen and have it be a monster, hot fire rematch where everybody wins and show everybody the old school way that you're the better man, the better fighter. That's how it's been done. This is, while there's certainly an argument to make about what will the results of

this trial do for boxing moving forward? There may be no trial. It's just a lawsuit right now. But at the same time, it's like, it's such a bad look and it took him a while to get it out there. It wasn't like they sued him right away, right it's sort of like I don't know it's been a really bad PR stretch for a fighter I really like in Devin Haney and really believe in his ability and think

think he also doesn't even get the credit he deserves for how tough he was in that fight getting up three times and fighting his way back and it was a very close fight but you lost and you got to take the L and you didn't lose because of the Osterine, even if it did give Garcia an advantage to get close enough to the weight, potentially. You lost because you couldn't pick up the left hook repeatedly. And Luke, when you see Ryan Garcia, you see the old sparring video that leaked of them sparring about three, four years ago, it was the same thing. Ryan Garcia was landing that left hook like at will. So now you look back on their six fight amateur run where they were rivals and they went three and three against each other.

Ryan acted crazy enough leading up to that fight where it changed all, it warped all of our visions of what that fight really was and what's going to be. I do for his ridiculousness. He's absurd, Ryan Garcia, but I give him a little bit more respect. Now that I see that sparring footage and how ready they were game plan wise, mentality wise to come in and do that to Haney.

But he lost because of that, not because of the Osterine. So this looks very after the fact, kind of petty. And I don't want to say weak. I can't say that. I'm a journalist. You know, like I'm not in there risking my life like he is. But it's a fresh and new move. And I don't know if it's necessarily the right move.

So I have two points I want to make about this. I read the lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer. I don't really know how successful it will be. My hunch is that it's probably a long shot, especially if on the doping side, Garcia is able to substantively show some evidence that it was contamination or incidental. It wasn't direct doping. I will say that little spree he has gone on where he has talked about everything in this sort of loose and disorganized way.

All of it is cited in the lawsuit. All the stuff he said online, all the stuff he said. Talking about Ryan. Talking about Ryan, yeah. I mean, they have his ass, like, nailed. He hasn't helped himself in any way. Well, he's done himself no favors. That's one thing that did come away from me when reading the lawsuit like they took every piece of him being like the

guy scooter gave it to me and all this different stuff he doesn't come across looking very good i'll just be honest however in terms of the legal case i don't exactly think it's super strong i will say that they sued golden boy as well get this so they claim that when r when Ryan Garcia was fined by the Athletic Commission and had to return his $1.5 million purse, Golden Boy is allowed to, by contract, they agree with this, take a cut of that, but that they are entitled to 47% of the rest of it, and Golden Boy won't give them that,

and they believe they are entitled to it. So if you think about it, it actually could be around $500K that he thinks he's owed. I did think that was an interesting claim. I wonder how that one's going to go. So that's a side claim, but I have two real claims about this one. I looked up a couple of other incidents where a boxer has sued another active boxer. Two of them came up. Number one, it turns out, we found out recently, Victor Ortiz was sued by Floyd Mayweather. They fought in September of 2011.

Yes. But in that bout, Victor Ortiz was kind of like popping him in the corner and then headbutted him. The referee takes a point in that case, gets him to box again, and then Floyd knocks him out. There's some dispute about whether he took him to box again. They were hugging, and Victor's hands were down. His hands were down, and Floyd tees off on him, and the fight is over there. But the point I'm trying to make is he apparently got sued for the headbutt.

I don't know what came of it. But in this particular case, Floyd was suing over a foul, an illegal thing that, I mean, and there's no denying, you would agree, Victor Ortiz clearly headbutts him in that case, right? So Floyd is suing over a foul in a bout where he won. In the other case, Deontay Wilder sued Alexander Povetkin

because they were supposed to fight. Povetkin tests positive, ultimately, for meldonium. It cost him the payday. It cost him the payday. He sues for basically $5 million. He is initially awarded that. However, in 2019, upon appeal, actually Povetkin's promoter, World of Boxing,

ends up winning the whole thing, and they didn't owe him anything. But that's about that Povetkin essentially, through the drug testing system, squandered, and Deontay never got on a flight to Moscow. The fight never even happened. In both cases, it's not a fighter who got hardcore beat up suing the guy who did the hardcore beating up. So I've seen people say, well, how come anyone had nothing to say about Deontay suing or Floyd suing? One didn't have a fight, and the other one won it over a foul. They're very, very different.

But the thing that really stands out to me, the biggest point I come away with here is, because I saw the reaction online about this, even from people who I would say are sympathetic to Devin Haynes. You had Ryan Garcia who missed weight for this bout, potentially on purpose. You had him at a bare minimum, whether you think he did it on purpose or not failed multiple doping tests

for performance enhancing substance ended up going on the fight afterwards saying virulently racist things um i'm not even going to get started on the stuff he said about gay folks or muslims just on the race thing indistinguishable from like the most hardcore racist shit you've ever seen in your life and the fan base is much more upset with devin haney because what's the true currency of the fight because i was gonna say on the one hand it's such an indictment of combat sports and their sense of like even basic moral reasoning on the other hand it also tells you just given the lay of the landscape if you can't even get positive pr against a guy like that doing those things holy shit you are going down a path that is i'm not going to say irreversible bc because i actually think this makes the rematch even bigger oh the rematch can be rematch is going to be one of the biggest rematch even bigger. Oh, the rematch is going to be massive. Rematch is going to be one of the biggest rematches of our modern era.

However, Devin Haney's stock as a fighter has collapsed. His Q rating has collapsed. It's collapsed. But the thing is, you can win that back by getting back in the ring and handling your business. Agreed. And that's always been the case. Even Duran, who had a no-moss moment, you thought at that point,

given how machismo he was that should have been a killer and he survived that I mean you can survive it by getting back in the ring in doing kind of what again I think Haney deserves respect in some ways for the toughness he showed in that Garcia fight when it wasn't his night and he kept getting beat with that brutal shot repeatedly um I think he should use this period to get the eye of the tiger and look in the mirror and fill in whatever gaps were exposed by Ryan acting that crazy. And I don't, I can't imagine it was easy at all for the Haney's that fight week, wondering if, if he's going to show up, is this fight, should this fight even happen?

All of that, but they could not have handled it worse. I believe from a reputation standpoint in the aftermath, maybe that doesn't matter to them and whatever. And maybe they're just trying to make things hard on ryan and get him back and get some money out of i don't know but make the rematch now let's find out when ryan's coming back i know he's got that one year suspension that's coming toward an end soon yeah april and let's make that shit now because i was going to ask you from hype alone and the fact that both fighters are still so young and do connect with a very young fan base in ways that maybe only Tank versus Ryan has had in modern memory.

Could this fight be as big as these heavyweight championship fights that we've been seeing lately? Yes, yes. This fight has captivated boxing. Again, the Ryan Garcia show, in terms of what he was able to perform on fight night, was such a, many certainly me revelatory but he's also been and i'm going to say this as nicely as possible a polarizing and troubled

figure yes i think that's a fair way to put it very troubled uh and then devin haney who had a ton of momentum honestly we shouldn't forget the lomachenko fight was disputed and there's been various criticisms of Haney but going to Australia and then beating Cambosis and you know playing the cards of the he raised his game against Loma I know you can argue who should have won and I thought Loma should have won yes but Haney fought very well what's so interesting is you know we had talked about how Haney and his father deserved credit yes because he went pro early in Mexico he didn't play the traditional route like Look at the

hand that they were dealt. They made the most of it. And it feels like if you're just, again, I'm not signing on to, I think Ryan Garcia is a great guy, but if I'm just reading the tea leaves, it feels like they've gone in the opposite direction of everything that they, all the little

and big decisions they were making to advance Devin Haney's causes they have made a series of decisions subsequent to that fight that have gone backwards big time in terms of um advancing their cause within the boxing game itself I don't feel like journalists can really you know they can come close but they can't really speak about a fighter's behavior because we are keyboard warriors at the end of the day and we're not putting our our lives on the line in the ring and i do respect that difference but i always try to ask myself in these situations what would ray leonard do i mean ray leonard to me above being an all-time great ability wise and certainly marketing wise

um he behaved like a fighter he made fighter decisions in fights you know big rallies or just in in the in the grand wall of his matchmaking he met he match made with a lot of balls you know what i'm saying yes and to see him go in against duran and suffer that loss and have duran mock him like that and instantly run that back and win back his reputation it's probably like the ultimate example of it um i want to see haney do that i want to see haney go in there and have that chance to right the wrong and do it demonstratively um but i don't know if he's using this period to truly build that eye of the tiger luke will it ever be there for him or will he always be more of a you know technical very very slick slick boxer do you do you think he can come out of this with a mean streak that he needs so the the answer is, could he?

Yes, of course. Does it seem like he's building towards that? No. It doesn't seem that way. I have a separate question. Come on, Luke. Come on the microphone here for just a second. How do you feel?

Let's assume for the sake, by the way, I want to be clear about this. Garcia might be able to show, should this thing even go forward, it could be thrown out, by the way, but to the extent that it goes forward, he very well might, I want to be super honest about this, he might very well be able to show this was all incidental use, which is a massive problem for Haney. But let's say it goes the other way, and Haney is able to have a victorious moment against a guy by, at least for the court's purposes,

demonstrating that he was doping when he said he would not. Do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing for combat sports? Shit, that's a good question. That's a big question, right? Yeah. Do we want courts settling these kinds of doping disputes? Based on the way you're wording it, I'm going to say no. We don't want them involved.

But also, if it's helping the sport get clean and that's what you're into, then it's a good thing, I guess. That's what I'm asking. Like, BC, independent of how it's been received, because it's been received poorly, poorly, is there any merit to it? Just on legal terms, strictly that. I don't know. I don't feel like there is. The Golden Boy one's kind of interesting. There might be some real merit to that one.

What he wants with Golden Boy is he wants a timeline of events that happened, when they found out about the test, how quickly did they share the results. Also, he wants a more detailed. He believes that they have not given him a full accounting of their expenses, and he's entitled to more money. What do you make about what's being said about Haney in the Twitter streets, that there's this theory that it's considered a big misstep that the Haney's didn't force Ryan to weigh in a second time on Saturday after

missing weight by that much, right? You know, where they keep him in overnight rehydration. So he can't rehydrate and eat and all that. Can't just balloon back up. And has to do it. There are people that are saying, well, the reason why they didn't make him do it is because Haney is such a weight bully in these lower weight classes that he could never go through it himself.

Like, if you make Garcia do it, you also have to meet a certain rehydration clause. Do you think there's anything to that? Because Haney does put on a lot, you know, it does seem like he's huge for these. And that weight cut, I remember his face on the day of the weigh-in, like he had sunken eyes into his face. He was even saying it was a rematch at 147. I think they should both move up to Walter Waite now. The whole fight, if there is a rematch, it should not be at 140.

I can't imagine that it would be, considering how much Garcia missing weight is such a contentious point of this contest. They can't let Garcia get a comeback fight. They've got to rematch him right away. It's going to be to their advantage if they try to push for it. If you're Ryan Garcia, why wouldn't you take this fight? By the way, even if Haney wins the

second one, it seems unlikely he would knock Garcia out. There's probably going to be a third. These are the rivalries we need because it's not people waiting until they're 34 and 35 and we finally have Spence Crawford and Mayweather Pacquiao and we're just so happy we got them. No, let's have these four kings,

1980s, where you meet in your freaking prime you have your i mean when when when sugar ray leonard and tommy hearns fought for the first time what were they 22 23 i mean it's just ridiculous right yeah and to be able to have where you had those four names and they fought each other nine times in i think it was was it nine times in nine years something like that yeah i'm not sure what the figure or nine times in 10 years that's. Let's get this trilogy. Let's get Tank in here. Let's get Shakur in here.

Let's fucking find out. Fucking go. I mean, who is the man out of this group? I don't know. The five princes. I don't know. Well, definitely Tank is better than Garcia. Maybe we can say that.

Yes, and Haney right now. And Haney, yeah. Shakur, I don't know. And then Tao's kind of up and down. Sometimes he's up and down. I'm just saying, if you're the Haney's, maybe you really believe in the strength of your case. Maybe they genuinely do.

Maybe they have been sitting down with lawyers and they're like, we can actually do something here. That is possible. Hit him financially, that's what they're going to get, right? Just really cripple his career as best they can. Really make him suffer as much as possible. And maybe change. Maybe they really feel like they can change the way that doping enforcement goes with this.

I tend to find that unlikely. But I'm just saying, maybe they actually believe that. But if you can turn someone as odious as Ryan Garcia into a sympathetic figure... Rough times. Holy shit. You would have to reevaluate the steps you have taken for that to happen.

All right. Let's move on. BC, let's talk a little bit about the weekend in boxing because on the one hand, if you're an MMA fan and you didn't pay attention you might be like oh what really happened well nothing super big although some good fights i want to talk about in a second we got to talk about mckayla mayor so mckayla mayor moves up a weight class to what was this welterweight moves up from she won a title at 130 yeah and

then she had some big fights at 135 then moved all the way up to welterweight because she was killing herself yeah and then lost that title shot to Natasha Jonas earlier this year by split decision. But she takes on Sandy Ryan. By the way, if you guys didn't see it, yes, it's 10 rounds, 2 minutes, but it's action-packed. It's one of the best women's fights I've ever seen. It was awesome.

Sandy Ryan can punch her ass off, and Mikayla Mayer is a great boxer. No question about it. So, BC, that part was great. But put the picture up if you can. Not the one where she's naked. The other one where she's got pants on. You have to put it like that. So, here's Sandy Ryan.

And if you guys didn't hear about that, prior to the fight itself, on fight day, someone... Was it fight day, right? Yeah. It was fight night. Someone came and chucked paint on her. Now you can show the other one there, Long Island Luke. And do we have the note she put up? We love to show this.

This looks like a... I know, it looks like a... She goes, still trying to come to terms with what happened last night. I know I shouldn't have fought after I was attacked leaving my hotel, but I couldn't let them win like that. I was fighting off empty and still felt I won the fight. We've obtained CCTV footage and are in contact with the NYPD. Pretty obvious what happened, and the truth shall set you free shortly.

You tried to ruin my career, but trust me, it's only just begun. BC, there have been some suggestions. I don't know if there's anything, you know. There have been a lot of suggestions. That maybe Michaela's camp was involved. I want to be clear, these are just rumors. It's not anything to that we know it. I'm just saying, who the fuck throws paint on another person in 2024.

What happened here? We miss. What is this? We missed how saucy this rivalry was coming in. We didn't talk about this card last Friday in New York City. I wasn't even really that excited about. I didn't even know this backstory. Did you know the backstory between them?

I don't. They Sandy Ryan had come to the States after her big title win and was and was looking to train with a top name guy and started training with K-Karoma who was in Michaela Mayer's corner. Obviously Al Mitchell is her main trainer. And she ultimately felt like Ryan and Karoma suddenly had this, you know, where she thought I could be a future opponent for Ryan and they didn't tell her that they were working together and that Karoma was preparing.

So ultimately K-Karoma kind of pulled out and wasn't with either fighter in here, but his best friend is Sandy Ryan's trainer. So you had this kind of saucy back and forth of like, you stole my trainer. I demanded more respect. And Sandy Ryan saying like, I don't have to tell this bitch who I'm working with. So I didn't know that they outright hated each other.

Then you add in that, which who knows, right? They, I give ESPN credit. They covered this like the soap opera it was, and they went in the locker room and interviewed both. And, you know, Ryan was like, I don't even, they say I shouldn't fight this, but I'm going to kill her. I mean, it was like, it was pro wrestling. It was perfect.

And then Michaela Mayer's like, you don't, you can't believe that I would actually have a role in this. You know, and it was just, it was very dramatic. And then they have a fight of the year candidate on top of that. And then there's the storyline that for as good as make Kayla mayor has been. And as much as she's been one of the faces of this, you know, sort of re Renaissance women's boxing period, although not as high up on pound for pound,

she's definitely been a champion before there was that storyline. Like, you know, maybe, maybe she's not going to get that second title because she had that really close fight with Jonas. And this one was close as close as as possible but for her to get the dramatic victory and the dislike between them and now Ryan is talking about finding the cct video and it's like a mystery Luke this is awesome this was great I missed this fight coming in and they fought they fought with so much heart and they were making adjustments that was a an amazing fight why did espn air it at one in the morning on that was not my favorite part yeah at all i don't understand that also

i just don't get like who does the paint thing is that because you don't want to shoot them you just want to humiliate them yeah you want to humiliate them and it did rattle her like she came in she even admitted in the pre-fight interview that like i'm just going to come in there and fight like this is a fight now it It got her off her game. Her team didn't want her to. How did you score it? I felt like it really felt like an even fight. Like, I would not have had a problem at all with the draw.

I had 96-94. Who'd you lean to? Mikayla Mayer, yeah. She. It was a tale of two fights, right? Mikayla outboxed her in the first half. Yeah, but here's the thing. To me, she pushed back in the eighth and the tenth.

But Ryan came on in that second half. She did. She absolutely did. No question about it but like michaela didn't relent she rescued herself to me just enough to get to get the six rounds to four in my school okay i scored it even but if you said if you had to declare a winner like pride style i actually would have given it to sandy ryan because i thought she landed the bigger shots and especially in that second half when she was just putting that pace on and judging it as getting after her it was fun but mark regal did he did have some big moments there he said that the winner of this would be added to the mount rushmore of women's boxers and boxing history

mark that's not going to happen i was like let's slow down a little bit here and then he said you can have haggler hearns i'll take mayor versus ryan and even bernardo osuna jumped in on the broadcast it was like all right all right mark that's like that's too far like all right slow your roll I forgot the term he used what is Mark's story how did was he like a journalist for a long time yeah no he's a fantastic journalist and do you remember he used to host that show on Fox Sportsnet with Al Bundy called Barfly where they would like sit in a restaurant with other famous athletes and tell stories it was you know I don't remember that no all right and then he had the run He was on Showtime for a while and not Top Rank. I mean, he's good, but he was being very hyperbolic. He was working for ESPN that night.

He's a good dude, by the way, too, as well. I think he trains, too. He's always like, looks like he's ready. I mean, he's older than me, Luke, but I bet he can kick my ass. That's not saying much. That's not saying much. I mean, I want to see a rematch now. Yeah, I'd be happy to see a rematch, but just no paint this time, for sure.

Again, this goes back to our earlier conversation, Luke. Sauciness, it's a little spicy. Yeah, I know, but I don't want... It's not like we got a bad fight from it. We got a great fight, but I think we would have had a good fight no matter what. But do you think the mayor team was behind it? That's the soap opera. I will tell you this.

I don't, because I'm going to give them the presumption of innocence. But can you noodle a world where they are yeah like i could i'm not blaming them i have no idea boxing mma is brutal but i don't feel like it's as weird as boxing boxing's fucking weird it's weird it's equally what you love and hate about it at the same time yes it's weird in a disturbing way and then weird in like a enthralling kind of way this was a little bit of both it's like when you bring home the tattoo chick luke you know what i saw i saw an interesting statistic people who don't have tattoos are much more likely to bang people who also don't have tattoos really whereas people who have tattoos are much more likely to bang people who also don't have tattoos really whereas people who have tattoos

are much more likely to bang people who also have tattoos all right do you have tattoos long island luke i do not is your girl she does how many look that well this is getting into just one does your wife have any no my wife has tattoos all right would you say more than five? No. I think she only has like two or three. Yeah. Any of a Colombian variety? The flag. Definitely the flag. I don't think she has the flag.

No. No, I don't think she has any nationalistic ones. No. All right. Very quickly, Shushu Carrington had a real tough fight. This was a moment of truth. By the way, Suleiman Sehgal, can I just tell you something? And I don't mean dead serious about this. This is... So, okay. So, Shushu Carrington is this top prospect.

He's 27 years old. New York City. They're fighting in Madison Square Gardens where the fight's taking place. He's taking on Suleiman Sagawa, who is from Uganda. I'll come back to that in just a second. And Carrington barely got this one, okay? Here's what's... I'm really bemoaning.

So Suleiman is from... sagawa is from uganda but he lives in dc he trains out of urban boxing which is which is over in northwest he lives out of silver spring maryland so shouts to him you know what blows my mind boxing media has declined and mma media generally has declined so much but in this particular case boxing media has declined so much that you don't even know who the boxers are in your town until they get just big enough to wear ESPN or whoever shines a light on them. But anything they do before that, unless you're really plugged in like a Olympic pedigree, you know?

Yes. Well, okay. But I'm saying you have to be on a massive tournament or like, you know, I don't have to be tank Davis, but like I could tell you Lamont Roach does not get much. Lamont Roach fought in DC recently and I've sponsored a local fighter on that card scooter davis they didn't even like there was no local coverage of this fight so i had no idea sagawa was basically like adopted dc guy by the way he trains at urban boxing do you know who is a i looked this up today do you know who is a coach over at not his coach but a coach

at urban boxing no i don't mike easton the ufc former ufc bantamweight mike easton yeah i was like holy you did like a local news segment with mike easton i i should but no you did i thought oh yes i did he was promoting his fights at the time i had deep dived google searched you once it's a little uncomfortable but you suffocated some chick one time that came up. What? I wanted to see your natural reaction. The fuck are you talking about? How did you find that?

Don't be starting dumbass rumors. Oh, God. The point I wanted to make was it bums me out that I have to find out about guys who are competing from the city under circumstances like this. How did you score this fight? And this is the bigger question. Folks,

if you're asking, who cares about this? They were kind of setting up Shushu to be an opponent for Inoue. Naoya Inoue. The pound for pound great Naoya Inoue. Naoya Inoue would beat the fucking breaks off Shushu Carrington. Can we be honest about that? Oh, get out!

Fuck you! I'm not making the argument at this point that they should make that fight, nor that Carrington. Can we be honest about that? Oh, get out! Fuck you! I'm not making the argument at this point that they should make that fight, nor that Carrington wins it. But what I'm trying to say here is I think you have to make a decision of what you want to learn about a young fighter when they step up to like, this was a step-up fight for them, when they step up to a level where

they could be exposed if they're not for real. In some ways, the boxing Twitter reaction to this has been, okay, let's slow the roll on Shushu. Let's stop talking about Inoue, which I think they should stop anyway for now because he's building, he's developing. But I don't think he got exposed.

Look, in a perfect case scenario, he figures out Sagawa, walks him down, and gets him out of there, and we wouldn't have had any questions about him. But there was a lot we learned about Bruce Carrington's character and boxing ability in this fight. Did he take a chance by lowering his output, going to the counter punching stance and really turning into a chess match?

Yes. You take the chance that it's not going to go your way. And it was a close call. It was a split decision. I scored it six to four for Carrington in the end, but I thought the adjustments he made against a game smart battle tested veteran who really came to fight and win that fight, came to expose the kid. I think we still learned a lot.

It was close. It is a let's slow the train down. But the natural progression from knocking out dudes spectacularly, which is all Shushu has done, showing up and have you seen this shit all the time, to now we're fighting the real ones that don't go away. He did pass the test. And I thought he fought smart, Luke. Maybe he's not going to be a massive knockout punch.

Look at somebody like Keith Thurman, who was blowing people away. But when you got to the title level, Keith Thurman was there to box you. Maybe this is who Bruce Carrington really is underneath. But he's got, I thought, I saw a real veteran streak come out of there, even though it was probably closer than they wanted it to be. I thought he got lucky with the decision. I thought you easily could have scored it 95-95. You weren't impressed by the way he handled himself?

No, I thought Sagawa had a case to win. I didn't have him winning, but if he had won, I'd been okay. And I think scoring it 97-93, which I think what two of the judges may have had, was a fucking joke. There's not seven rounds for Shushu Carrington. There's not. Well, I give him six.

Six I can live with, but show me what the seventh one is. I mean, he took that gamble by lowering the output and being the counterpuncher. Yes. I just love the adjustments he made for a young kid, and I felt like he wasn't chasing. He felt like he had the fight under control. I don't think Carrington is a fraud. That's not what I'm saying. I don't think he's ready for the likes of Inouye. No. I don't think that.

They've got to continue to build him, but I don't think this was a failure. It wasn't a lateral step. He passed the test. We saw that he can box. We saw that he can box. Didn't we know that? Yes, but we wanted to see, when you really get tested on this level, you want to see what are you going to lean on. Some guys just lean on their power and they just let it go.

I thought he leaned on his pedigree underneath it, even though he's this flashy guy with New York and he's been through a lot. He's got all these knockouts. When it came down to it, he leaned on his boxing to win that. Yes, I would have liked him to have been more active, but, you know, throw more punches in that spot. But I don't know. I saw a good character come out of him.

I was a little bit surprised that people were that like almost call him a fraud or something. Or maybe he just looked average where this was a spot where he could have looked sensational. Yeah, the thing about Seagal was he's got the four losses. Two of them happened kind of like early in his career, but he has that Vio win. That was the Ruben Vio win, I believe. That was kind of surprising, and so this one should not

have been. I'll just say this. Carrington was being set up as like a future holy shit american guy that took a hit that took a hit you gotta slow him down a little bit that took a hit um all right bc with that in mind let's get to our fifth and final topic here before we close out the show by the way i did send you the devin haney lawsuit if you want to take a look at it um it is worth reading it's not very long ufc 307 ufc 307 takes place this weekend. They are back in Salt Lake City, Utah, for reasons that remain unclear

other than the Utah Commission's probably paying a hefty amount of money to bring them there. That being out of the way, BC, we have the return of Alexander Pareda. Poetan is back, and he's taking on Khalil Rountree, the number-eighth-ranked contender in this division. BC, my question to you is not so much about Poetan, because there is one to have here, we'll have it.

Let's start with Khalil Roundtree. Is he being overlooked heading into this contest on Saturday? I don't think so. I think he's getting the proper amount of respect. You know, it was a little bit of a reach for him to get this title shot at this spot, although, you know, you can look at who was available and who hadn't already been sunned by Pereira.

So, I mean, he's running through this division quickly. I'm not against it. I love Roundtree's story. This is going to be an action fight. But I think he's getting the, look, this guy's dangerous. He could jump in there and, you know, and if this turns into a war, land the big one. But I think this is more about let's keep Pereira busy right now

as we continue, you know, as they kind of decide, like, where's he going? Because he's talking about, he's still talking about going back to middleweight next and fighting DDP. It seems like Pereira really wants this for some reason. Which I have no interest in. When I would just the same want him to do the opposite in, let's say he wins against Roundtree.

We'll find out, right? But let's say he wins and knocks him out, gets on the mic. What would I love for him to say? Hey, Jon Jones, don't retire after you beat Stipe. F Aspinall. I'm theall, I'm the history maker. I'm the one who has the opportunity to become the first three-division champion. I have nuclear generational power right here. Nuclear. Nuclear. Nuclear.

I would love a moment like that, a call-out like that. It is ballsy to cut back down one more time and just take on DDP, and that'd be another huge win on this epic, epic. It's a short time, but wow, is he doing a lot. But I think people are giving Roundtree the respect as like he could win this. It's not a complete travesty that he's in this spot. It's surprising.

He's put together a nice streak here. But do you think there should, are you asking the question under the guise that maybe people should look a little bit closer and realize that, that he is equipped to do this? I think that folks should understand what matchmaking is, especially under the UFC is current model.

Matchmaking is like, why are they making this fight? Partly to keep poets on busy, partly because they probably want to preserve him in championship status as long as reasonably possible that, you know, they're, they they won't do that forever but that's also part of it but the other one is they need main events for their calendar and there may not be ready-made fights like they may have like obviously you have on khali he's going to be fighting in the middle east instead of in utah that seems not accidental given the fact that he is of muslim descent sure that's important for

that market which i understand there's no problem with that the point i'm trying to make is they literally had to kind of manufacture a fight out of thin air in order to have something that they could put in this place at that time it's not so much about like what's the best fight that they can make in this division who's the most deserving guy? It's a series of calculations. It's not one or the other, but one of them is we have a date on the calendar. What can we put together to just fill it? And that's a lot of what this is. Yeah.

You have to just admit it. However, we've said this from the start. It's a fun fight for as long as it lasts. I don't know how long that is, but I don't think it's going to be boring. Number two, if you just look at roundtree's style particularly of late he just stands in front of you and i'm not saying like that's a weakness per se what i'm saying is that's his preferred way he'll move around in the pocket a little bit he likes to he has a good right hook good left straight good overhand left he throws them with

significant intensity he's got a good back, a rear leg shot to the body. You know what I mean? Like, he's got a limited kind of game for a title contender. He knocked out Anthony Smith as Henry Cejudo was posting about. And then did this whole fucking thing, you know? So the point I'm trying to make is, I actually feel like there's a little bit more danger than folks realize with a guy like Leroy.

He's got a big, strong guy who's going to stand in front of him and throw with fucking intensity. If you make a mistake against that guy, it will cost you. However, this is my problem with the card. It's not made from like, everyone was like, damn, we have got to see Poiton fight Roundtree. Or we have got to see Juliana Pena fight against Rocky Pennington. I want to see Aldo fight Bautista and nobody else. Which, by the way, is a great fight.

I have no problem with the fight. But it was not one of those fights where like, oh my God, these two guys were on a collision course. It's the opposite of that. So I actually don't hate the fight. I do think that Roundtree is, based on what I'm reading, maybe a little bit more of a threat than folks recognize. I think if Poetan makes a mistake, it's anybody's fight.

But all things being equal, the most probable outcome is that Poiton keeps his title. Is that a fair assessment? Yes, but it'll be fun watching him do that. And boy, would this shake up the system if Rountree knocks him out. I mean, Poiton's been knocked out before. It's possible Rountree brings that power. I mean, how shocked would you be?

Like, how much chaos would this cause? I was talking about this. I don't think it's as big as what I'm about to say, and there are very meaningful differences. But there are some, I can hear the echoes a little bit, too. It wouldn't be, again, there's real differences. But I remember exactly where I was when I saw this fight. I was at Hard Times Cafe in Fredericksburg, Virginia,

when Matt Serra knocked out George St. Pierre. And I was like, what the fuck did I just witness? Remember, Matt Serra had come off the ultimate fighter, he had a win over Chris Lytle, which was not a great fight. This is different because Roundtree's had five wins in a row. Five wins in a row, and the last one was the Anthony Smith one like this. But the division lacks depth right now it a ton a ton but the point i'm trying to make is you didn't see a realistic pathway for matt sarah because you didn't think he was a dynamic puncher

at that time anyway and yeah he's good on the ground but saint pierre is really good on the ground so like what's the really the path and then he just starches him you know poiton is not the same as gsp roundtree very different from Matt Serra in all different kinds of ways. But for a very unexpected guy to get a title shot, again, Serra only got it because he won the Ultimate Fighter. Roundtree only getting it from just necessity of the UFC calendar. Are you about to make a Bisping comparison? Also, he's got a very fan-friendly style.

No, I'm not making a Bisping comparison. I'm just saying it's got a little bit of that echo there. Not so much that I'm predicting upset, but rather, if upset were to happen, it's a contender that maybe shouldn't have gotten that normally, made the most of it. You wouldn't expect him to win it twice, but it would

shake shit up in a very, very important way. It would shake up Pereira's best-laid plans, or it might free Pereira to go move to a different division, whether it is up or down. Heavyweight? Maybe that would be like F this. Let me rotate the question a little bit BC. What does meaningfully

Pereira get out of this with a knockout win? Just another payday, another title defense, another potential highlight reel knockout, but again, he's got to earn it. He's got to go in there against a slugger. Let me ask it a different way. If he goes in there and has a super brilliant knockout but again like he's got to earn it he's got to go in there against let me ask it a different way if he goes in there and like has a super brilliant knockout does he have a mandate to demand things from ufc yes he has how could he have not have earned it he bails them out every time like you know every time there's a monster pay-per-view nyc 300 call

perera he'll deliver and he's gonna win too win too. And now they're just sort of like kept him busy and put him in this in-between pay-per-view and they're kind of just using him to sell it. That's what it is. But he'll get a big one after this. I'm just wondering if should he get upset? Would he go back to immediate rematch and try to win his belt back?

I'm going to say this. If Poetan wins this without much, I'm not going to say difficulty, but not without too much damage, right? If he gets out of this relatively clean, you have got to make him the second alternate for Jones Stipe. You've got to do it. Jones Stipe.

Because hold on a second. We saw that Tom Aspinall was named the backup for Jones versus Stipe. Does anyone really believe that Jones or Stipe is going to fight Tom Aspinall in lieu of who they've been trying to fight this whole time? Oh, so you're fixing the problem that both of them would say no. Yes, by having Poiton at the ready. That's a good look. Look, you just created something I'm very excited about.

Sometimes you get Whitaker Jones. Sometimes you go a different direction. That's a good pull. Yeah. Wow, that is a very incredible idea. Now, if he gets beat up. Would it be a fight where you would want shit to go sideways? You don't really want Jones Stipe.

I want to see. Yeah, on the ground, I have no doubt that Aspinall would beat Poet Time. But he gets hit on the feet. He takes risks on the feet. And if we're talking about just a backup scenario anyway, yeah, you want to do that. Oh, so you're pitching that you would do... See, I'm still confused.

I'm still a step behind you. You're pitching that we'd put Poiton in there as the backup to fight Aspinall. I was pitching that if one of Jones or Stipe fell out, would they agree to Poiton moving in? But would you want someone to try to make history in that type of setting or is that the only type of setting where i mean so with the ufc go because the ufc has already declared or at least dana white has declared that aspinall is the official backup

could you pull the switcheroo and be like okay no it's actually not aspinall it's actually going to be poet on people would want that fight five times more than they want Jones to be. So they could pull the switcheroo. Yes. That would be a monster switcheroo. Okay. You could do that if they would be willing to fight him. But you'd fuck Aspinall again. All of our scenarios are fucking Aspinall.

That's why I'm saying you probably have to do Aspinall versus Poetan. I think, again, if he gets out of the round tree fight relatively unscathed, which I'm not suggesting he will. Who the hell knows? But if he does, I think that's your move. I think that's your move. Because I'm telling you, what's the worst thing that could fucking happen? Stipe tears his knee, being old as shit,

walking like Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, and he's not fucking ready. Have that fight at the ready. Are you shitting me? Yeah, it'd be monstrous. Are you shitting me? I would be fired. Come on. I want a little craziness but if roundtree wins everything gets torn to pieces yes including a ddp showdown including

again any potential heavyweight showdown like it fucks up everything and then uncle i have going to be like where am i fitting into all of this? Speaking of switcheroos, this takes us to the co-main event this weekend, the women's band and weight title bout. Rocky Pennington That is a fight that is happening. Juliana Pena coming back from two years in the one-sided loss. She fought the same night that Danny Garcia beat

Benavidez, the brother of Benavidez. I was there that night. Look, Kayla Harrison is going to weigh in as the potential title backup. She's also has a fight on the card against Katelyn Vieira. Shouldn't they just fix the glitch? And like,

I just feel like it, tell me if I'm, if I'm over, over micromanaging and a pro wrestling sense, the matchmaking here, I would love for Kayla to have fought Pennington in this fight. And then if she wins a championship, her first defense,

Kenya's right there. Ready? I agree. So Penn, did I say Pennington? So Pennington in this fight. And then if she wins a championship, her first defense, Pena's right there ready. I agree. Did I say Pennington? So Pennington would fight, if Kayla beats Pennington, Juliana Pena is the perfect first title defense. I agree. I agree that I would have preferred

to see that this way. I don't hate the way that they did it because I do think Harrison is likely to beat Vieira. And I do think that Pena has a good shot. I think that the last I saw on the odds, hey, you're a fucking degenerate piece of shit. What's one of the odds on this fight?

You could have stopped that degenerate. I mean, come on. Rocky is like minus 175, and Pena's plus 160-ish. That's about right, right? Don't you think? I mean, she's been eking out some wins. Not only could this fight be gross, we have no idea really what to expect.

Pena's been out for so long. I know she's always game. I couldn't remember when she fought Silva. Bueno Silva. How long ago was that? I can't believe Bueno Silva collapsed. It was on the Strickland DDP, 297 in January. Oh, so it was this year. I can't believe Bueno Silva gassed out in the second round against Pennington in that title fight. Good lord.

My whole point is this. You're only going to get a certain You're probably only going to get a certain amount of times that Kayla Harrison can cut down and be in top form at this weight. Right. I just feel like it's a little bit of a waste, but for my want to be true, Luke, wouldn't it be true that they would have to look at,

has she earned that? Has she earned in your eyes, the ability to come in off of one win against Holly home, by the way, but like one big win in jet, right to the title shot. Wouldn't she have earned that with what she's accomplished outside? Kayla Harrison.

Yes. Yes. I agree. I think this was a waste. And with no depth in this division? And there's no disrespect to Pena. She's probably the only draw there, right? Maybe it's the argument that the UFC wants more time to build up Kayla because they feel like she's inevitable and so let's just wait and see how it goes. You know, the best judoka in American history,

male or female? Like, I mean, that's... Could it be the weight cut and they were nervous she wouldn't make championship weight? Yeah, but if you felt nervous about the weight cut and they were nervous she wouldn't make championship weight? Yeah, but if you felt nervous about the weight, wouldn't you fast track the title shot? Because it's longer. You have to wait for her to make it. All right.

In the fight, Pennington... To say something very nice about her, you don't finish her and she's consistent. It's not flashy. It's not incredible, but there's a consistent offensive flow. She's physical. Can she do this against Pena?

You know what? It does. So I made this point. I talked to Submission Radio about this. There is so much, like, just dumb fuck misogyny in the sport. Yeah. But it's not an unfair opinion that women's mma has fucking declined it's declined it's just there's still great fights and great fighters but yes the depth

of great fighters has declined and the rivalries i mean a few are few and far between like it's just so it feels stagnant to me in large part however if you're going to be fair to Raquel Pennington, remember, she didn't want to come out for the fifth round against Amanda Nunes. Her corner kind of cajoled her into it. She got beat up. Then she got in that terrible, I think, four-wheeling accident. By her own admission, she had this insanely awful bout with COVID. She was never supposed to be back in this position.

And the fact that she got here is actually low-key pretty impressive and remarkable. But the thing I think that's holding her up, and reason why we're not like super jazzed about this is like there's nothing about her game that is transcendent where it's like you know the era of pennington she was so good at this her title win was gross to watch come on it was a war of attrition she nickel and dimes her ways to these wins and that's not nothing like that's fucking hard to do but it just doesn't inspire a ton of confidence. So I actually feel like Pena's got a real opportunity here. She fights balls out, which means she can either run you over or she can get run over. That's kind of the game she plays.

Does she have the chin to take Pennington's consistent boxing? Because Pena's defense is not there. She doesn't move her head enough. Okay, but she had the chin to last against Amanda Nunes. Very good. And Amanda Nunes can fucking crack, as we know. So if she can go the distance, can she outwork Pennington on the feet?

On the feet, I don't know. On the ground, yes. On the ground, for sure she can do that. But you're not two years off. Where is she at this point? That's what I mean. It just doesn't inspire a ton of confidence either way. But I will say this. If Pena gets a good win and

Harrison has a good call out and looks good against Vieta I would be interested in that I don't think there's a lot of like mystery about how that fight would go necessarily but it would be interesting to me for that showdown to ultimately occur but again we're at this place with this card where it's like I don't think I mean this fight is not great or bad it's's just a fight. It's fine. I suppose. I just wish Kayla could fight the winner of the main event tonight. Like the same night.

I know. Like later in the night. Four woman tourney on a night. That would get me excited. I mean, that's, that's, that's probably being insensitive, but it's also like, let's get to the point where we have the best fight and the best in this division. And that's the only disrespect I think I have ever had toward painting. Like not, not, I don't disrespect her journey, but it wasn't an awe-inspiring victory

or an awe-inspiring performance on the other side by Bueno Silva either. But it was a big fight. Let's see if she can do it. But Kayla's coming. Will Kayla run through Vieta? She should. I don't know if she will. She should.

Okay. The fact, I will say that giving her elbows on the ground transforms her ground-to-pound. Yes. It makes it much better. And obviously, at 135, assuming she can make the weight without too much complication, she's a fucking brick shithouse. She's inspiring on Instagram.

I had her in studio a couple of times when she was just normally walking around. It's hard to overstate how naturally muscular. Yes. She is a generational athlete. Yeah, there's some Lesnar qualities to her her she's a generational athlete all right uh bc you have they finally put him on the main card there was some obviously some injuries and so that's why but jose aldo taking on mario batista let me be clear about this not on the main card to begin with i don't know i don't know but listen better late than never yes they finally got it on there. Jose Aldo sitting at 10.

Bautista sitting at 11. Sneaky win streak for Bautista. Super, in both directions, a good return, I should say, for Jose Aldo. This is a tough-ass fight. If Bautista wins, it's a great win for him. The question is not that. The question is not, hey, what happens if Bautista wins? Because he's obviously going to shoot up the rankings a little bit. He's certainly going to be inside the top 10.

And there's any number of people he could fight afterwards. The question is, if Jose Aldo wins, what do you do with him? Is he a sneaky title contender? He's always good. When you're at that point, you're always going to be one big win away from being acceptable as the next title challenger

for better or worse. Remember when Frankie Edgar got the Holloway title shot? Yep. That was kind of a reach, too. He's kind of in that period where you could get that, which is kind of why I didn't love this fight. But if you frame it the way you just did, is it more important for Jose to go through young, hungry lions like this rather than other aging names?

If he could get a big win and catapult back in, yeah, Luke, he could catapult back in and be a perfect B-side. Imagine if you took a champion imagine if you took marab i don't want to see marab jose again but imagine if you took a champion to brazil with with jose as the b-side there you can still do stuff like that but uh can he get this win is the big question luke is he going to get buzzsawed in this what are your expectations uh it's going to be a battle i think bat Bautista has a higher amount of volume, but he's just dealing with a guy who is stubborn, clever, as experienced as any fighter you'll ever come across.

And in great shape all the time. Remarkable, his ability to stick at 135. I wasn't sure about it when he did it, and he's been able to do it very sick. I mean, Aldo is fucking tough. Tough, tough, tough guy. And I don't put him in the upper room and people kill me for it, but. The fact that he's got this longevity, even you have to be like, it's ridiculous. I'm going to come around.

I'm going to make a chair for him in the upper room. Ketlyn Vieira is back. She's going to be taking on, as you mentioned, Kayla Harrison. Harrison coming in off two wins in a row. The last one she had against Aspen Ladd in PFL, and then she just fucking demolished Holly Holm in her debut at UFC 300. You know, you don't want to put too much MMA math. Raquel Pennington has the win over Vieira,

which kind of tells you how any potential matchup might go, assuming that Harrison wins here. She's a heavy favorite, relatively speaking. I don't know what to say about it. I hope she can do it quick for her sake, and then let's get her ready to fight the winner of the main event. The fight I care about the most on this card is on the prelim, Stephen Thompson versus Joaquin Buckley.

How are you betting this one? Aussie rules, Luke. I haven't put a bet in on this yet, but I hate to say it because I normally fade Joaquin Buckley. I think I'm going to take Joaquin because I just think he's more well-rounded. He's probably going to take Wonderboy. If he's smart, I'll take Wonderboy down and just wrestle him. Wonderboy 42 years of age. His

last three losses went out for him. Bilal Gilbert Burns and Shavkat can Joaquin Buckley do something similar to those guys? Those are three very good fighters. It's a big step up for him, but you are catching the Wonderboy at the right time. Yeah, I lean Buckley here. I hope Wonderboy doesn't get stunned. I will say, of all the fights on this card, that's my favorite.

Really? I love to lead Jay against Kevin Holland. I don't care about that fight at all. Oh, come on. That could be the best fight on the card in terms of just kind of breaking out into great action. It could also be the worst. I'm realizing I care more about fights on this card, but like I said, I care about them in a fight night level. The problem is there's just

two problems. There's not much star power. Yes. Poetown's got some, but it's not multidirectional. You've got Jose Aldo. And you've got fights that are like good, but they're not fights that were like, that one has to happen for that division at this time. I care about Carlos Barza's retirement fight against Tisha Pennington.

I mean, could you care? I could not possibly care less. Are you serious? Long Island, look, how degenerate are you? I kind of care about that. Nothing against Carla, but if I'm going to be honest with you in the audience, like, am I thinking about that at all?

I'm not thinking about that even a little. See, I had a weird I was telling Rafe about this. I had a weird, when Danny Garcia got old in that Lara fight, and obviously he should step away, it kind of felt like when Danny Garcia was coming up and on top, like, that was one of my favorite periods to be a boxing journalist slash fan, right? It was just fun. Boxing

Twitter was on fire. It was a great time. Now I'm seeing Esparza, who just happened to be the first MMA fight I covered in person, was Esparza and Nama Yunus won in that tough finale night. When I see them go all the way through the cycle, I mean, she's won two championships.

She had a great career, but now it's going to come to an end, Luke. Do you feel like a part of you not dies inside, but you realize how old you are and when generations cross over and change like that, there's always a little bit of a lament you know no i had one the other day like when i was reading about i was researching this like victor ortiz fought lloyd in 2011 i think i had to live blog that fight you know

things were going well when i first signed up on morning combat if i told you where i was going to be if things had kept going i think i would have been where I thought I'd be in 2011, but then our world collapsed. The fact that that fight was 12 or 13 years ago was real humbling. Yeah, we're old POSs, but we're still going. Look, we're still going.

We are still going. You can even vote for us, by the way. They can vote. They can probably vote for us. We should remind them. Yeah, it's a good point. It's the final day of voting. i think is the last day you can go to worldmmawards.com i don't even know we have a lower third for that do we deserve it well here's the thing deserving ain't got shit to do with it that's the point so it's just a matter of who can rack up the most votes we did not really promote it so i don't expect that we'll get a win but if people would be so i did vote yesterday i finally went for bronstetter who did i vote for i don't know if i voted for him or uh no yes i did yes i did yes i did um

and i don't remember who i also voted for but i did vote for us and you know there's some other good shows that had some great years this wasn't our best year for sure it started out great 2023 started out really strong but it's 2024 luke i I know, I know. What I'm saying, it moved into a dark period that we've kind of now, only now are we starting to kind of wave the smoke away from here a little bit. All of the smoke, yeah. We've been choking on all that debris that has fallen on us. But listen, man, it would make me feel better. I can say that.

It would make me feel a lot better. As Diddy said, vote or die, Luke make me feel a lot better as as did he said vote or die luke he said a lot of other things somebody get the lube yes yes you know how long baby oil lasts well what do you think about people say wake up it's not baby well it's ghb bottles of mixed um that wouldn't surprise me yeah that wouldn't would that surprise you that if it's you know a thousand of them? Bullshit. A thousand of them? Did you see his lawyer trying to explain it?

Everyone walking around looking like Mudang. Did you see his lawyer trying to explain it away? It was really weak. Who is the dirtbag that's getting paid by him? I mean, how much money, if you had a law degree, right? If I was McGraken. And you had passed the bar, the whole thing. How much money for you to defend, Diddy?

Serious question. How much money? Am I one of those people who just believe that everybody deserves a chance? Yes, there are people who are like public defenders, and everyone deserves a defense before the court. That is the path you can take. Like the worst murderers, they're just like you. They have constitutional rights.

Yes. So, yes. I don't know if I'd be that kind of lawyer. I don't know. I don't know if i'd be that kind of lawyer i don't know um i don't i yeah i don't know i try not to be in situations where i can be bought luke bc's like pro bono but we'll see what happens body boxing right we'll see what happens yeah i'm pro boner yes that is for sure there you go uh all right with that in mind bc anything else on this card of no there are some other interesting i think we hit it enough luke yeah ryan span versus uh over in saint peru that's not interesting i just don't care on this card of no. There are some other interesting I think we hit it enough, Luke. Ryan Spann versus Ovin St. Peru.

That's not interesting. I just don't care. I just don't care. So here we hit what matters, and of course that'll be in Salt Lake City, Utah. BC, with that out of the way, I don't think we have any reads today. No. We are on the DraftKings network at 5, no, 8 p.m. because it's football season. By the way,

Jaden Daniels, Jaden Daniels, not only putting up rookie of the year numbers, but through four games, putting up MVP numbers suck my balls. Kregel, slow your roll. What's the record of the Redskins right now? 3-1. They're first place in the NFC East. Oh, shit. Yeah.

Back-to-back games, they basically put up 42 yesterday. Jaden fucking Daniels is a motherfucking playmaker. Terry McLaurin's a motherfucking playmaker. I can tell you that. When you predict their implosion this season, what will be the cause? Injury to Jaden Daniels. Not Daniel Snyder? He's gone.

He's gone. That's it. He's living in London, wherever the fuck he's going. We work with his nephew his nephew at snyder oh i got a face i'm sorry i'm sorry i got a face probably saying his name is not the part that he cared about the most uh all right bc with that in mind it's time for what the fans get to ask us question it's time for dms from dogs yeah we gotta move this along too shit i don't know how late it was. Alright.

Just put it on the screen. I'll try to read it with my blind ass here. From Oso Aldoco. Whatever. Can France become a global MMA powerhouse like Russia, USA, and Brazil? BC? The answer I think is yes. Well, they have the depth though.

I read this book. You can get it on Amazon. It's called Falling Hard. It's about a guy who enters the world of judo but he tells not only his story through judo but the story of the spread and formation of judo and one thing you come away with after you read this book is like how fucking insanely good the french are at judo they have obviously they're not really all that great at wrestling but you know we know that they can counteract that they can they can they can work up to it. Obviously, there's Penn Sox a lot, which is a whole other style of striking. The French, dude, are fucking

awesome, and I really think that they are and it's an advanced economy. They can afford modern training. The fan base is hungry. Dude, if a PFL show can look good there, I mean, that's saying something. I think we'll see. What do you think? It's twice a year for the UFC in Paris? Seems that way.

Russia, USA, Brazil, those are hard markets to replicate. I think we'll see. What do you think? It's twice a year for the UFC in Paris? Seems that way. Yeah. I mean, Russia, you know, USA, Brazil, those are hard markets to replicate. But can it be a big-time dominant player? Yes. Will we see a UFC card on Russian soil? We saw the Bellator show on Russian soil. Right. Will we see a UFC card?

UFC one was there, too. Not anytime soon. There might be, like like inability to treasury sanctions. But if Trump gets elected, who's to say? I don't know. Who is? Alright, next. PlayStation Xavi. What period was better for the UFC?

2007, 2009 or 2015, 2017? I feel like the UFC was firing all cylinders back in 07, 09. So that was an underrated dominant period but nothing is quite like 2015-2017. I think there's a better argument, because I think the best era is the Reebok era, the rise of McGregor, that whole stretch,

14-15 into the sale. I think that's when it ended. 16, yeah. 16. But the thing that the 07-09 had, we had Lesnar, right? Yep. So you certainly had that.

But you had competition in the industry still. And there was that. Pride collapsed basically in 07. So pride is dead, but the offshoots of who's left and who has power, Strikeforce legit during that time. There still was a, I don't know, there still was like this, there was still this fan culture of like, in media culture too, of like we need to all work together and get MMA to this next level.

And by proxy that is you know ufc in the leading position but the competition made it a much more fun era i don't think the fights ultimately were better than comparing it to the reebok era the mcgregor era and there was a matt the mcgregor magic couldn't it's never been equal to really in modern combat sports really it's it's a unique magic all into itself but i think you can make an argument for that 07 09 i'll just say this those are the two best periods so that's more the one a1b gsp silva that's right and again lesnar coming around sure for ufc this is basically ufc 100 ufc 200 those sort of two pronounced periods um the ufc was great in both of them for sure

both made huge legions of fans most of those fans are all gone all gone absolutely all gone yes all right uh let's see what's next from sticks plays time putting aside mma athletes utter refusal to form a union what is your ideal fair contract for fighters in the ufc i don't know how to answer that one uh would you like medical benefits or is that too, like, is that a realistic option? I mean, there's a lot, people often ask me, like, hey, what's the optimum way to set up the industry? And I don't

think of it in those terms ever. I think of it as, I just want a reasonably fair system that can offer fights reasonably consistently. You want a fair market where the fighters have the control to test free agency and to... That's right. And to be able to, you know, do they need as much in boxing like

80%? That might be too much. You know, there's an argument to be made in that way, but I don't think of it as like optimal terms. I think of it as I just need to be fair enough and consistent enough. That's it. I don't need anything else. And there's a lot of different ways to get there. I don't know if the fighters really, really care,

but I want to see them in a spot where they don't have to have full-time jobs outside of yeah i just don't want them door dashing that's yeah i mean it could change them or my co-hosts either way yeah all right next uh dj c123 if bc went to the big e so the big e is like new england state fair every year in southern Massachusetts. Okay. What are his top three foods, and how would Dana White somehow make that about Jon Jones? That's funny. All right, top three foods at Big E. So I had one time the meat stick, the Slim Jim.

Cock and balls. Slim Jim covered in chocolate. That is fucking heinous. That is the greatest and most heinous thing I've ever eaten. And it was glorious. Um, outside of that, you can get the typical state fair food. Obviously it'd be different in different areas,

but, um, do I have a favor? I mean, you know, can you go wrong with the fried dough with the red sauce on it? You got to get the red sauce. Like strawberry.

No, the marinara. Oh, Oh, you mean savory, uh, not sweet. Uh, sorry. Yeah. You mean, yes. Um, I don't live my life under those terms, but yes, the,ara. Oh, you mean savory, not sweet. Sorry, you mean, yes.

I don't live my life under those terms, but yes. Give me the. So one would be sweet and one would be salty. Savory versus sweet. Yeah, get the premise. I'll tell you what. I don't go to fairs because I'm not dub T, but. Oh, I missed it.

I missed it. When they take a whole Thanksgiving meal and then they roll it up in a wrap or they put it in a sandwich. Do you know what I'm talking about? Turkey. Can we talk about the Renaissance Festival and how it's the worst, stupidest thing on earth? Put the camera on me. Again. If you go to the Renaissance Festival, it's a guarantee you have lice.

It's a guarantee you have lice. I think that's fair. State fair food is incredible. If I can get the turkey roll-up thing, I'm in. Come on. I'll get the... But the Renaissance Festival I just don't get because everyone fucking stinks. Yeah.

There's just abortions in the shitter. I mean, blood and urine and feces. There's a lot of wenches. There's a lot of... But like, what is so cool about it? It's like, I get to eat a gross turkey leg that's not cooked very well. I get to stand in line with other people who have lice. And there's a lot of like what is so cool about it it's like i get to eat a gross turkey leg that's not cooked very well i get to stand in line with other people who have lice and there's like a progressive rock band playing in the corner and i like what is the appeal what is the appeal it's not my cup of tea but i've been to many luke and i regret every single you know my wife wants to go

to them so bad yeah and i'm like this is, you should take, this is the worst of humanity. Let me, you should say, honey, let me take you to Newark Penn first. Okay. And then let's see if, uh, I will say this. I do like going to street festivals in DC because they closed down

constitution or Pennsylvania Avenue. And you can kind of amazing to have like all that space for foot traffic. I went to the Latino festival over the weekend. Oh yeah. I, it's not a good one. Colombian representation. Nah, it's not's not a good one. Colombian representation? Nah, it's not really.

There's not many Colombians there. I will just say this. If even my wife is complaining about how loud it is, it's probably too fucking loud. They did have the world's, they sent the Guinness Book of World Records for the giant pupusa, the biggest pupusa ever made, which is fucking amazing.

You never had a pupusa? I'm thinking of, you know the sleeve of wizard you know i'm thinking of well yeah sorry i was thinking of it this is like a cake they put like uh they put like cheese and beans and stuff that's fucking awesome uh salvadorians delicious i will say the best one i've been to on that space chinese culture festival oh i would like that food was amazing really well run tons of vendors dude that the one I go to, they call it Fiesta DC. There's always long fucking lines, bro. There's always long fucking lines.

It's like, get your shit together, y'all. You're really disappointed about that fact. I was. I go every year, and every year, it's like, the lines are long, there's not many vendors, and it's like, what the fuck? All right, last one. Yeah, I'm about to get my shit together over here. Katie Ports.

What's your favorite holiday and why and can i think we've done this before thanks and can we get a high court debate on this topic the answer is christmas the answer is thanksgiving but christmas is the answer for people who are cheap i'm cheap thanksgiving is the best holiday by far sorry what am i saying thanks yeah thanksgiving is the answer yes for people who are cheap i'm cheap yeah i'm cheap i share my love i do think that the thanksgiving part of it where you make food for other people is special. I do agree with that. But Christmas is so clearly the better holiday.

You get time off. It's close to New Year's. The decorations are better. The food is better. Christmas rules. Thanksgiving food for most Americans, just raccoons eating cigarette butts and banana peels. That's a very anti-American speech. Call me Osama bin Luke.

I don't care. I mean, I'm from New England, so we take Thanksgiving a little more personally. I go to people's houses for their American Thanksgiving, and your fucking families can't cook. I'm sorry to tell you this. Your Meemaw fucking green bean casserole tastes like someone wiped toilet paper on the backside of my balls after I was farting all day on the Amtrak train. I'm not going to have this debate again.

But, yeah, Thanksgiving. What were you going to say, Long Island Luke? I'm right, wasn't I? I wasn't going to say anything. If you're asking me my favorite holiday, it's got to be New Year's Eve. Of course. Because everyone's up, everyone's partying, it's a good time. Meth is available.

I want food, friends, and football. And that's what – because it's not just Thanksgiving. It's Valley New Year the night before, you know, when you go back out. I don't do that. I'm 45. I don't do that. I mean, I don't do it anymore, but, you know. All right.

All right. Is that it? Is that all? Okay. All right. It's time for some shit. Let's see it. Let's go hard in the paint here to finish.

I scoured the globe, you know, the good and the bad, all that weird stuff. This one's called Have You Seen This Shit? Get Ready. Put the seatbelt on. This is going to be a wild ride. Luke, let's go to UFC Paris and this is about Aileen Perez who took over the headlines

at this event, getting the choke against Daria Zelenizkova-ish. And then the, I mean, that is disrespectful. That is kind of awesome. That is very disrespectful. Perez would go on to quote tweet Ariel saying it was disrespectful and say there was a backstory. She claims her opponent had talked some trash.

But still, that was, it was on brand for Eileen Perez. I'm coming around on Eileen Perez, all right? Why, because she shakes her ass. Not because of that. I thought she was like a joke and just ridiculous. But. She's she's an attention seeker. She's fun to watch.

Look, I love fighters like that. You know that. Are you saying that with your pants around your ankles? You always assume the worst. You always question my good, you know, my my the faith of my intentions on the show, particularly as a person, you know, it means to the 115-pound division, and I'm offended by that. But let's keep the Perez train rolling.

She also shared a sandwich with Brian Battle. Okay. All right, that's a little. And then she had time with the champ. She's a lot, right? And then she had time with the champ marab devalashvili before the uh the weigh-in okay okay i you know there might be some boundary issues that she has i don't know did you hear biz ping on the broadcast was basically saying he has it on authority that

she faked that that like weigh-in trauma that she was going through on the scale that were like looked like she was going to pass out is that true i don't know i had the commentary muted okay and then also she had a victory cigarette this is like myorga level watch this myorga was beast like this would you say luke that she's a savage she gets after it she lives the life yeah what is she doing? She's just holding it on? Yeah, I think she's, like, holding it in. And then, oh, wow, we get, like, the Triple H. Yeah, the spitting in the air thing. That's not nothing, Luke. I'll tell you this much.

She seems like a good candidate for RSD. Yes, if she can. She's doing decent on English. She'll smoke with us, right? I don't know if her English is good, and I don't know if my Spanish is good enough either. But we can try. All right. That might actually be the fun of it.

That would be. Hey, we're going to have an RSD couch again. I just wanted to let you know that. It's going to happen. I'll believe it when I see it. All right. Elsewhere in Paris, Brian Battle, not afraid to play heel with the French fans. Hey, hey, I know y'all, Brian, the butcher.

He, he had a big promo. I have breaking news. Yeah. What do you got uh it's official it's official december 14th the wba have now confirmed gervonta davis versus lamont roach the wba has announced they've granted special permission to roach to challenge davis for his wba lightweight world title while retaining his wba super featherweight world title big Big fight in D.C., Luke. Big fight in D.C., that's about it. All right, here's Money Moicano.

We know he cut a promo. Here's his promo on McGregor, by the way. Michael Chandra is out of the Conor McGregor bout. Don't you think you're in line for that fight? McGregor, you mean? Yeah. I don't think he's fighting Money Moicano. Is McGregor an easy fight?

If you ask me that a couple years ago, I would say so. But to be honest, one of the fighters that I respect most in the game is McGregor, because he completely changed the game. So I will pay my respect to him just because now he's almost a billionaire. So he can have, I don't know, 200 losses and he'll still be mcgregor so uh i don't know he's not fighting anybody i think of course if they offer me but i i would not wait for fight mcgregor because like chandler is just a trap right now i think mcgregor makes more money outside fighting so i i don't think he wants to go to a cage to somebody that is ready to kill somebody for money.

You know, I'm ready to kill somebody for money. So I don't think he wants to. Damn Moicano. That's a heck of a promo. Luke. Is that even in any level of consideration? You think Moicano versus McGregor?

No, not, not a talking point. No. Moicano is ready to kill a man for money. Yeah. Just not McGregor. Okay. I will skip for Vola and we'll continue on in combat sports. not not a talking point no wakano's ready to kill a man for money yeah just not mcgregor okay uh we'll skip for vola and we'll continue on in combat sports future champion kevin lee was back

first victory since 2022 with a uh submission in the first round lights out fight 17 was the promotion yeah i mean it only took him a couple a few minutes to uh no a couple minutes excuse me to get this going i think the guy he fought had a losing record. Doesn't mean much, but you know what? I'm not against Kevin Lee. If he can rebuild himself, maybe this is where it has to start. He wants the Contender Series. That's right.

He's trying to earn it back. I wish him well. I wish him well. Edgar Berlanga. Berlanga? Berlanga? I mean, the most annoying man on earth. Who does a victory tour after a fight where they got blanked?

He does. Un-fucking-believable. Here's a soundbite. If I had a longer camp, you know, obviously because I caught a short notice for this fight. You know what I'm saying? Like when we got signed, obviously I was training, but I wasn't at camp. But if we had a real solid camp, like a 10-week camp, 12-week camp, it would have been a different fight. You know what I'm saying?

No, it wouldn't. That's a bold take right there. No, it would not not it would have gone just the fucking same get the fuck out well if he doesn't if he's not able to get the canelo rematch luke he's got bigger plans here was a tweet i would love to go up to heavyweight and fight anthony joshua just to test greatness nothing bad towards this i'll walk in the ring 210 pounds hard fucking he would then say that he would he's be willing to fight dubois also yeah yeah i gotta i mean i you know all right hey let's go to uh i'd rather drop my balls in a bear trap i mean pfl glasgow did you see stevie ray it might be his final fight he didn't dude look at this fucking like sort of a halfway twister he gets on everybody yeah it's

like a rib separator it's the second of career. It's unbelievable how much I think the third actually. Unbelievable. What a career he had. He was a respectable fighter and he had some great moments. Good for him. I'm so glad he got to go out this way. Fantastic. Fantastic. Conor McGregor did an explosive live

betting stream and he looked like Vince Neal. The good news was he was sober. Yeah, he looked like Vince Neal during the Prime Motley Crue run. Here's his take on or call out of toporia or top toria actually how do you think you would beat illy illy abturo top toro grab him with a scruff of the chest and slap that little nose off him yeah little ding dong of a thing he is yeah i'm I'm fucking Spanish. I'm in my bay, bro, yeah? I'm in my bay at the Bare Knuckle Stall, and let's see what's what.

We're bouncing the old cover of Bare Knuckle. You little fool, I'll keg your head in. It's going to go disastrous. He's the Keith Richards of MMA right now. I can make a case that I've seen him on social media. I can make a case that I've seen him partying on social media every day for like the last six months. This is where his life is now. He hasn't fully come to terms with it, but that's where his life.

And by the way, nothing wrong with that. But that's where his life is now. And I think everyone needs to accept it. Luke, you ordered more elder abuse this week. But before we get to the abuse— I literally texted you about it. How about some elder wins? Let's go to Wrigley Field.

Catch of the day, Luke. Maybe catch of the year. Oh, shit. Caught it with the beer cup. Yo, my man is like, yo, oh, yeah. Big win for that elder. He probably drove home drunk and died, but nevertheless, he went out in a blaze of glory. God bless him. We got an elder win in a public space here.

You know old guys, Luke, they have no filter anymore. And their balls sag. And if the BBLs arrive. He is not unattractive. Dude, that motherfucker looks like me. That's me in like five years. He's not hiding it, Luke. That's called building material.

You know what? That's called living your life. Okay. Also, Luke, we have an elder win. Watch this old bastard. Look at this. That's the first one. That's the first one.

What the fuck? Dude, he looks like Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny hands him a fucking stick of dynamite and he eats it or something. You know what I mean? Most dads in my town growing up look like that guy. I'm serious. Like, that's, you know, that's where I come from. You know what that is? Book reader.

All right, let's go to some elder abuse. Let's hit it. I want this shampoo. We're not getting the big bottle. You don't got that much time left. Let's keep it going. Eating cake with chopsticks, dad? Yeah.

I hope you die in a fire. Okay. All right. Thank you, dear. Let's keep it going. We got more old fails kids are awesome that can happen at our age at any time though so he falls off the curb and then goes head first into the car yes what happened it's just wailing. He's wailing. Wow. She can barely walk. She's waddling there.

The worst thing you can combine are really old people and alcohol. Look at the titties on this. He's going to attempt to walk that drink back. He's walking like Vincent D'Onofrio in the first Men in Black. Oh, no. I think he's going down. I need more sugar. Oh, boy, there we go.

Sugar, I need more sugar. Time to hit the hardwood. Have you ever heard of the Moroccan Mamba? Hey, let's go, Moroccan Mamba. Oh, watch this move. All right, got some handles, let's see. Oh, shit! Yeah, big one right there.

You know what? They say the game's gone global. That is true, but I like to play a more physical game. Luke, have you ever done an oil check mid-game? So this is an actual move called a butt drag. You've never heard of a butt drag? It's a real thing. You're supposed to go a little lower than this, not quite in the actual, not quite in the anus.

Okay. That's a legal move you're saying? I can grab that? A butt drag is, yes, but you have to reach a little bit further. All right, why don't we do some drugs? Imagine if your name was Jeff Shooter. What do you think you'd be into? Jeff Shooter says it's the first thing on his mind in the morning.

Get up, take a shower, take a bonk hit, go to work. Then what do you do when you get home? Eat dinner and then have another bonk hit. I mean, that's the American way, Luke. You gotta be fiending. First of all, I would like to judge this man. I do mostly the same thing. Let's keep it going.

Oh, wow. Hey, there we go. Luke, would you call this art? Um. No. Okay. All right. Ele right elevator croak uh luke you know we we know you hate gender reveals have you ever heard of bender reveals bender reveal party see what it is it's below It's blow. I would go to that party.

Yes, yes, yes. That's a better party. Well, if you need directions, you can follow this sign. Do a bump? Yeah. All right. Let's head out to the race course. You know, people always want to sit as close as they possibly can.

They're not going very far. Oh, what the fuck? Oh, my God. It's a soul, brother. Wow. Missed the turn right there, okay? Yeah, you gotta go left, stupid. Let's get flatulent. What would you do if I tried this move on you in the weight room? Dude, let me explain something to you. I'm not one of these

people who thinks the saudi arabian style of government is all that great yes but i agree you should be executed for that i agree only bored dudes could come up with something like chicks like that too let's look at this chick so i just have one question for the guy that kept asking me to fart into a balloon and mail it to him earlier bro what in the fuck is your address? All right, wow. Luke, some people think misogyny is dead, but they're still... Oh, it's alive and well. They're still home for it in 2024.

One drunk man is more intelligent than three women with PhDs. Thank you so much. Okay. Is he an MMA fan? I don't know. Or a Ryan Garcia fan. Luke, if you're ever out in a foreign country and you want a third world guy, I got an option for you.

Watch this. That's a drive-by titty spray. It's disgusting. That is a drive-by titty spray. That is disgusting. That is a drive-by spray. All right. You ever been in a bad road rage incident? No, I've mostly avoided it. All right, let's watch these two.

Dude, you were going 20 fucking miles over the fucking speed limit. Now I'm getting fucking pissed. Give my face again. Give my fucking... What happened? He said nice tits. That was so insensitive. Right at the peak.

A bit of an icebreaker when you're in a moment of conflict, right? Luke, we have footage of you on your most recent vacation. This is very true. That's a literal thing that I have to do.'s a literal thing oh let's keep the fun going all right let's see it situations like this yeah i always ask myself what would p diddy do oh what would p diddy do no i don't know right let's ask p diddy what's up We can't wake up Shane. Take this toy helicopter. Put it down his pants. Okay, that seems disturbing.

That was unchill. In hindsight, that would be disturbing. Not one of those things where the comedy was lasting. No, no, but let's keep the Diddy fun going. Oh my God, you guys. Diddy was put on suicide watch this morning. That means he won't be able to do either of these things. That was dark.

Okay, let's see what else we got. If you could go back in time 23 years to September 10th, 2001. The day before 9-11. The day before 9-11. Knowing what you know now, would you warn people about P. Diddy? would you want people

about P. Diddy? At what point during the P. Diddy? Wow. It's an important question. It really is. Let's keep it going. Which country has the largest oil reserves? P. Diddy. Luke, Drive Fast All Gas continues to make the trends.

Uh-oh, is it time for a skits and bits? Yeah, Schaub willing to do anything for the camera. Let's get an update. That's not him, is it? I hope not. Oh, what the fuck? Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Oh! Wow. Yo! Run that one more time. time one more time that's a prom yo fuck seat belts my man was like seat belts off for a bitch i like how like a soccer player kicks him in the air and then volleys him forward yes oh wow don't look away at this next one. It's time to use my peanuts. No, don't look away. Look at me. Look at me.

That's disturbing. You can see him at the Renaissance Fair this weekend. 100% masturbating in the crowd. We've got one more. Let's see the fan cam. Alright. Can someone get her number for me, please? I'll have what he's having. You know what? That's a good date.

That's all the shit I got. We've got to get out of here. Let's remind everyone. WorldMMAAwards.com. You can go and vote for us. It hasn't been our you can go and vote for us it hasn't been our best year but vote for us anyway that's really our smile on luke thomas's face please it would be i would i would go to vegas to pick it up i would go to vega yeah i would go i'll go to vegas to pick it up if we win on your dime all right on my dime well whose dime is it gonna be on that's uh you know what i'm saying uh let's see the socials you can put those up you can follow us everywhere what's the what's the youtube address one more time youtube.com slash

the brian campbell experience yes or youtube.com slash luke thomas and of course youtube.com slash morning combat as well hit that bcx get your hands in there right feel around find out if it fits right that's gross sensually that's gross that's gross uh bc what do you have to plug anything coming up you know i got some good interviews coming up tim zoo we'll see we got we got check out the channel you're gonna be blown away maybe or maybe it'll annoy you i don't know all right uh and of course youtube.com slash luke thomas for some live post 307 coverage as well oh i got an announcement you do october 19th pbc on on amazon prime video yeah not pay-per-. First non-pay-per-view show. So just a regular thing. Tim Zhu

obviously fighting Bokrum Mertzelaya for the 154 title. I'll be on the call. Hit the buzzer. Hit the buzzer for that. Who are you on the call with very quickly? I believe it's I don't think that's fully been. Okay. You can announce that. Yes. Very good. And where is that

taking place? In Orlando at the Caribbean Royal Resort. That's where Jake Paul fought Uber drivers, right? Yes. Yes. Very good. And where is that taking place? In Orlando at the Cree Bay Royale Resort. That's where Jake Paul fought Uber drivers, right? Yes. Okay, very good. All right. I think that is it for us right now. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We really appreciate it. We're out. That's Brian Campbell. I'm Luke Thomas. This has been Morning Combat. Until next time, may all of your motherfucking gains be loyal.