MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Paris Results: Ciryl Gane vs. Tom Aspinall NEXT? | Extra Credit ep. 32

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

At UFC Paris, Ciryl Gane got the much-needed win over Sergey Spivac in the heavyweight main event, but did he look good doing it? Luke Thomas discusses this plus whether Tom Aspinall is next, Rose Namajunas vs. Manon Fiorot, the French crowd and so much more. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. At participating McDonald's in Canada. You hear that? Ugh. Paid.

And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone, welcome to this fourth day of September 2023, episode 32 of Morning Combat Extra Credit.

There's no live Morning Combat today, it's Labor Day, but we wanted to give you, well we have the pregame actually for UFC 293, which is out right now, youtube.com slash morningcombat, but we also wanted to give you just something to touch on from UFC Paris. So that's what we're going to do today, I'm going to give you my five biggest takeaways from UFC Paris. You can disagree with them, you can agree with them. You can give me your opinion in the comments below, but either way, thank you for being here. If you'd be so kind, give us a thumbs up, hit subscribe. It's free. It doesn't cost you nothing. It would be a very nice thing to do. Yeah. All right. So without further ado, let's talk about UFC Paris, the five biggest takeaways right now. All right, takeaway number one, pretty simply, I thought Cyril Ghosn had a nice, very solid win in defeating Sergei Spivak. He got it in the second round, TKO.

There's a lot of people who are killing Sergei Spivak for his performance. We'll talk about that in just a second, but more to the point, let's sort of stick with Cyril Ghosn. What did he show in this one? Well, some stuff you already knew about him, right? His movement where he's bouncing on his feet. He likes to be mobile. He fought a lot out of the southpaw stance, although not exclusively. He was able to use his jab to maintain range. He was using a lot of his kicks to sort of touch and like change angles to kind of mix things up. He looks pretty good. So really the secret to his win here was that he was able to maintain range and you saw Sergei Spivak

He was credited I think with a couple of takedown attempts, but he was never really able to get established grips He couldn't grab a wrist. He couldn't get an underhook. He couldn't get a body lock He just couldn't get a hold really of Cyril gone throughout the whole process and there were a couple of like I should say one or two decent attempts decent decent-ish attempts from Sergei Spivak. Even that might be a little bit exaggerated. But what I mean is where Cyril Ghosn couldn't rely strictly on footwork or range management to defend the takedown, right? We talk about the better strikers like Izzy and O'Malley and whatnot. These guys, you know, part of their takedown defense is that they're able to maintain range and

angles and distance in such a way where like, it's just hard. So I always go back to it, standard rule of thumb, if you're going to go for a double leg, you should be able to reach out and just touch them right in front of you, right? And if you're not close enough for that, not to say you couldn't get the double leg, it's just now you're talking about suboptimal conditions. So when you think about how close that is, basically it's punching sort of mid-range, basically. You know, the further out you are from that, or if someone's moving or they're changing angles or whatever, it can be very, very hard.

Spivak could not get any gripping sequences going. He could not get a hold, frankly, of Cyril Gant. So I think Gant's movement looked good. I think in general, relative to the last fight, certainly his strike selection looked better. The jabbing was great. Jabbing to the body didn't go to like the hooking to a little bit later where Spivak was much more mobile or stationary or even backing up. So in general, I give Gon high marks for we knew he was already good at this part, but in general, I thought pretty good at maintaining range, maintaining distance,

not throwing the kinds of strikes that make it easier for you to get taken down, like big hooking strikes up top. Those are the ones you can roll underneath or level change underneath. And then people can either escape if they're trying to, like say in boxing or something like that. But in MMA, they can go for the takedowns. You didn't see a lot of that. A lot of stuff that was very linear up the middle, and that was good.

Couple of times on the evasion, I would say Gon got into quite trouble overstating it. For example, there was one time where he got hit with a big left hook from Spivak. Probably Spivak's best and only really memorable strike from the fight, where Gon changed stances to escape pressure, which is common. Or not even just pressure, just a couple of strikes. So if a guy's like this, what they'll do is they'll back up to the opposite stance because you're literally going from... I have to have something to show you, a visual tool,

but you can get the idea, right? So you're not just stance switching in place, but you're pivoting basically out. And he did that, and that was fine, but then he just stopped moving. So he took an angle and then Spivak just kept going so then he tried to evade again and ran into a punch so there's a couple times his evasion wasn't necessarily where it needed to be but again he he really was sort of

the dominant force here it's a great win now folks are asking what will come from it I don't know I don't know if they're going to do an Aspinall fight he was there I don't know you know Pavlovich is obviously the fill-in for Jones versus Stipe. So a lot of this remains in flux. I'd be happy with Gon and Aspinall. I don't think anyone would really object to that. I wouldn't have a problem if Aspinall was next for the winner of Jones and Stipe. Any permutation between Pavlovich and Gon, Gon and Aspinall, Aspinall and Pavlovich, I'm okay with any of them. You might have a different degree of preferences,

but to me, I'm not going to say they're all the same exactly. To me, the one that's the most interesting right now would be Gon and Aspinall, but any of them are great. One note on Spivak about this. A lot of folks are killing him, like, oh, he didn't do what he,

he kind of faded in the big moment. One, it looked like he might have had a broken rib on his left side. I don't know that to be true, but it looked like he had a weird welt out there. That's part of it. The other one is he can level change for takedowns, which you didn't really see this time. He can level change for takedowns, but it's typically when someone is really close up against the fence. And he tried one of those, and Gon's takedown defense was not super technical, but it was very athletic, which it always is,

and then it was technical enough. In other words, we didn't get Gon and his wrestling defense fully tested, but to the extent it was tested in this fight, it looked improved, and I think that's important. In the case of Spivak, we thought on paper it could be in this fight, it looked improved. And I think that's important. In the case of Spivak, we thought on paper, he could be an interesting test and the odds were close because he has a wide arsenal of takedowns and he chains them together well. But the reality is the

more athletic type where a big tall guy is level changing into a takedown. He does those under more limited and narrow circumstances. The other ones where he's doing inside trips or harai goshis or whatever, he has to establish contact. He has to establish gripping. And he just couldn't get the gripping going. If you don't have an underhook, if you don't have a body lock, if you don't have a wrist, if you don't have something, a two-on-one, a Russian, whatever, it's just hard to get anything else like what he does going versus a guy who can, again, at punching range, fake

high and then go low into a double leg, turn the corner and get on top. He's a little bit less able to do that. He can get a double leg and they kind of run you into the fence and then from there begin to work things. But Gahn was very good about breaking contact. So, you know, folks are saying, oh, Spivak shit the bed. Well, it wasn't his best performance, but he was outmatched against a guy who had a much more disciplined and appropriate game plan. Still some questions about Gon's takedown defense and overall defensive grappling, but at least in this particular case, he not only got the W, he showed some improvement. You know, a good performance from him.

Okay, takeaway number two. Let's talk about Manon Fiorot taking on Rose Namajunas. Not a great fight. Not a great fight. Okay, first things first. Rose did not have a strong performance. She didn't look horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but I wouldn't call it a strong performance from her. However, she broke her pinky into the first round very quickly and then just couldn't really get anything going. It was on her right hand. And again, that's going to be hard to get a grip. That's going to be hard to make a fist to punch. Even like a spinning back fist that's on the bladed side, like there's just a lot that's going to be hampered as a consequence. So that's, you know,

that's a tough injury to deal with. It seems like, oh, it's a pinky. How valuable could it be? You'd be surprised. It's actually pretty valuable. So that kind of hurt her. That was one part. And it wasn't like Manon Fiorotowe shined in this contest. She did what she needed to. If you look at the numeric totals, they're roughly equivalent-ish. It wasn't like one person was just much better than the other one. But here was, to me, the big difference. Maybe your mileage may vary on this one. But for me, I just don't buy Rowe as a 125, or at least not in this fight. Now, maybe over time, she can continue to accumulate muscle mass and really grow into that body, and then maybe that might make more sense.

As it stands right now, and again, this was her first real attempt at 125, and she was fighting a top contender. She probably should have fought someone a little bit maybe back in the rankings to get her feet wet in the division. But either way, Fiiora looked much bigger. And that's not just a problem because she was bigger and stronger. Like her defensive wrestling, like when they locked up, you could just tell Fiora was significantly stronger, had a really big advantage there.

And the other problem was Nama Yunus, as I said, if you look at the numeric totals, landed a lot, at least relative to Fiorot, it wasn't a huge difference really at all. But it's not a measure of the quantitative difference. It's the qualitative difference. When Fiorot hit Rose, you could see the impact. When Rose hit Manon, it didn't do a thing hardly.

At least it seemingly didn't do a thing. Now, there was a big gash on the side of Firo's head, which was from an inadvertent head clash. So, you know, she did get bloodied up, technically, but not from really the damage that Rose was doing. I mean, I always thought Rose had a good body type in terms of, like, she has a thin frame, but it works well for 115 because she can be rangy, she's mobile, she's strong enough. It wasn't like she was the strongest person at 115, but she was certainly able to hang. I think that part is clear. At 125, I didn't see much evidence that this was a good long-term move for her.

So, you know, we have to be fair to Rose and say the broken pinky really hampered her in innumerable ways, and that's just the reality. So was this the fairest assessment of what she's going to look like at 125? In some ways it might be. In other ways, more is needed to be seen. I just think you have to be fair to her as well. On the other hand, if you have, like me, questions about, okay, all right, the pinky didn't help. I mean, there's no denying that pinky set her back, but it looked like there might have been some other issues at

play just in terms of the natural size that someone like a Furo has at this weight class. I just don't know how Rose is going to overcome that. I don't think that's unfair to at least at a bare minimum question either. Pat Berry took some flack on social media because she came back to her corner and was like, oh, I think my pinky's broken. And I forget what he had said, but something to the effect of, you don't need it or just sort of dismissing the idea that it was impactful. I mean, I don't quite know the story about why Trevor Whitman was not in her corner. I think it's a question certainly worth asking. I don't know what the answer there is. She had Halleck Gracie in her corner. This is the guy behind Metta Morris. I don't really understand what that's all about

either. There are some bigger questions in play about who her coaching staff is. I didn't mind Barry saying, hey, like, you know, basically like trying to like get her to not think about the pinky because when George St. Pierre fought Tiago Alves, Greg Jackson, St. Pierre went back to the corner after one of the rounds and was like, you know, I think I tore my groin and Greg Jackson was like, you know, forget about it. Hit him with your groin. Like just trying to like really motivate him and obviously St. Pierre won that contest. You know, here she did. And I think it's just the reality that when you're in a contest and something goes wrong and you win, your coach's motivation around it is going to look a lot more impressive than when they do the exact same advice and then you lose. Still, the thing that got me

was they never even, at least what they showed on camera, her coaching staff never looked at her hand. That was a little bit weird to me. So, again, just a really inauspicious beginning for Rose at 125. It leaves the question of what you're going to do with Manon Fiorot. Candidly, I don't know what the answer is. I think that Blanchfield should probably get the title shot ahead of her, but if the UFC wants to make Fiorot versus Blanchfield, I'd be okay with that. I think that there's not really, there's no one who has really been like planting their flag

and been like, I'm the clear consensus next contender who gets the winner of the rematch between Shevchenko and Grosso. You couldn't go wrong in either direction, I suppose, but it's another one of these situations where like a few, like at heavyweight, right, where a few different permutations could work. Also, we have to see what happens between Grasso and Shevchenko in the rematch.

So, a weird one at 125 in the co-main event. Okay, takeaway number three. Benoit Saint-Denis defeats Thiago Moises. He gets the stoppage in round two. A good win for Benoit Saint-Denis, who's only, I think, 27 years old. And Thiago Moises, a very skilled fighter. He's not the best fighter at 155, but a good one, a skilled one, a respectable one. So this was by far Benoit Saint-Denis' best win.

And basically the difference was his pressure. He has a ferocious commitment to the fight, which the fans really loved, and the commentary was really hyping, and I think the audience really thrived off of it. In fact, not just that, the guy is French, so all of it worked together to his benefit. The only thing I would caution people about this win is it's not to me that this wasn't a good win, a great win really. And on top of it, you know, the guy's 27 and he's got this insane commitment, no matter what happens in the fight to, you know, just bulldog it forward. Like you got to love that if you're a fight fan, but I just want to caution folks about being too high on him. I saw a lot of commentary afterwards being like, Oh, is this guy a future champion? Hello? This was his breakout moment. I'd pump the brakes on that a little bit.

A little bit. It's not to say that this wasn't, listen to what I'm saying. Was it a good win? Yes. Is this the best win of his career over a very skilled competitor? Yes.

Does his high pressure style in general work very well? Yes. So those are all great things. You add in the fact that he's 27, hey, this guy's cooking with gas, right? Okay, that's great. The problem is that you cannot take defense as unseriously as a guy like Benoit Saint-Denis takes it and then expect to be a title contender. He takes way, way too much punishment. Listen, folks, his strikes

absorb per minute according to Fight Metric, aka 3027, is 5.27. I mean, that's insanely high. That's very, very high to have a number like that. You're plus five eating strikes per minute. Now, Moises was able to land on him, and he was able to keep going. So you might be like, okay, well, it doesn't matter if you eat that many strikes. Look how far you can get. And folks will point to Justin Gaethje as a guy who can do that too.

But Justin Gaethje has won an interim title, not a full one, although he has the BMF title. He's had a very successful career. Don't misunderstand me. He's been a great fighter. But, you know, you're crowning someone a future champion. Guys, the very best fighters in the UFC, you know, there are exceptions. Ronda Rousey is one.

There's some other ones where they can just sort of get by on overwhelming offense. That does happen time to time. But this guy fights at 155. You cannot have defense that porous and be a champion in this weight class. It just isn't going to happen. So what you can say is, well, okay, his defense isn't great now, but if he can tighten that up over time, do you think then he's got some of the other skills to be a great 155er? Well, if he ties up his defense, brand new ball game, brand new ball game. But we got to see that first. So he has great skill. He couldn't quite figure out what to do every time Moises would go to turtle. And then eventually his coaches were like, stop trying to take more advanced position,

just beat up on him. And he did, and that did the number. So, you know, listen, when he puts, he presses the gas pedal, guys wilt. I mean, he's got some skills. And again, like cannot be mentally deterred whatsoever. That will take him far. It will. I'm not saying he's some chump that's easy to beat, but I don't want to hear any championship talk about a guy who's got 5.27 strikes of sword per minute in the 155-pound weight class. Uh-uh. Not going to work. That's not going to work. You cannot do that at that weight class and be a champion. So let's see how he develops over the years. The French crowd really responded to him. I think anybody watching responded to him. He's an exciting, exciting talent. But let's pump the brakes on the talk about how far he can go when he has

defensive issues this serious. Takeaway number four for me, this is an easy one, dude. How about that French crowd? I mean, there's other fights we'll get to in just a second, but that French crowd was just remarkable. They were singing and chanting. And I guess one time the translator had said that the way they were chanting was if, what is is it if you're if you're not standing you're not French something like that like just just a phenomenal crowd and it was really great I mean it just goes to show you like was this the best card on paper probably not I think most people knew that I know some folks who are like in the weeds on the regional scene thought that this was a better card that it was getting credit I don't think the I don't think it really played out in that way

but it wasn't a bad card by any stretch of imagination it was a better card, that it was getting credit. I don't think it really played out in that way, but it wasn't a bad card by any stretch of imagination. It was a good card. I'm just not saying it was amazing. It was a good card. But the crowd made it even better. I mean, they were going bananas for fighters on the undercard who I think most American or North American fans hadn't heard of, who had not done a whole lot in the sport yet, but were French, and they were going ballistic. That's what it's all about, man. That's what it's all about. I want to see crowds show up early, root for their hometown guy. That's what you expect them to do. They paid respect to Rose. They didn't boo Rose, but they were obviously very happy for Manon Fierro. That's just really all you want, getting out of the apex, going to see the world a little bit more, getting some of

these bigger markets in Europe, getting more rotations through so that we can see what they can offer. Building up that, not just the event itself, but the scene. By having a more consistent presence there. I just loved it. And I've got to say so many good things about the French crowd. Americans take a dump on France, and I really don't understand it. It's not my favorite country in Europe, but it's a fantastic place. There's these stupid-ass American jokes about, but it's a fantastic place. And, you know, there's these

stupid ass American jokes about like, oh, they, you know, surrender in war. Dude, the French are phenomenal athletes, including phenomenal combat athletes, some of the best judokas ever in history, certainly in Europe. I mean, they're just powerhouses when it comes to that. Obviously, the striking arts on top of it. And if you've never seen the French rugby team, dude, they're hammers, absolute hammers. I have great respect for France just in general, but especially their sporting scene and the kind of athletic talent they're able to produce. And if you watch world football, aka soccer,

you know, the French are not to be trifled with. So like just getting there more often, getting MMA seen in a big way, getting MMA fans excited about MMA shows in their backyard like this. All this is going to do is going to recruit more people of talent to come over, and it's just going to make MMA better. It's going to get better fighters, better shows, better everything. This is what we want, right?

This is what we want, to be able to take MMA anywhere and have a phenomenal show, and to see the French crowd so enthusiastic, so into it, so ready to be there, it was great. Shouts to the French, man. What a phenomenal crowd. Okay, takeaway number five. I mean, there were some other fights you could have gone to. I thought Morgan, and again, I don't speak French, Morgan Cherier, his winner from Manolo Zucchini was nice. The running body kick kick stopping him, that was great. William Gomez had a really weird fight where he had a kick that looked like he had landed under the belt line, maybe on or next to the groin.

It's a little harder to say against Giannis Gamori. And Gamori thought it was a low blow. Ref said keep going, and he didn't, so they waived it. I don't know what rule specifically the French Federation employs to determine whether a shot is low or not. So everyone's like, is it low or is it not? Well, the only question is how the French rules define that. I don't know what the answer is there. But more to the point, if the referee does instruct you to keep going,

you have to keep going, and then once the fight was over, he seemed to be fine. So I don't get mad at guys for milking shots when they're low just to be careful and buy a little extra time, settle into the fight. It doesn't bother me so much, but, um, even if the ref call was bad, if the ref gives you instructions to keep going, you have to keep going. So that part, I don't know what to say. Uh, Taylor Lapolis got a good win over a crowd, over a, over the Irish fighter. Who's the last name was Loughran. Please forgive me if I'm mispronouncing it. I don't always listen to the fights with the sound on.

He looked pretty good getting the win after Loughran pissed off everyone. So that didn't go well for him. But the one I wanted to point out, the fighter that I thought stood out the best to me on the prelim card was Farid Basharat, or Farid, I'm not sure he pronounced it either, beating Clayton Rodriguez. He looked good, man. I mean, he had a bit of a rush takedown on the first attempt, but he secured it, and his top control looked very good. Able to pass to half, able to maintain it, move to mount. He did get reversed, but was able to get the takedown again, then go back to half, and then secure the head and arm triangle. The commentary crowd was talking about an uppercut he had when he was on top in ground

and pound. He had an uppercut on top from ground and pound. Jack Hermanson is very, very good at that. Jack Hermanson's got a great little uppercut on top. So when people think of uppercuts, it's like a standing thing that you do, obviously. But if you're clever, you can do it in all different kinds of ways. So he had one of those. It was sweet. So this is a guy, very young, 11 and 0 now in his career, him and his brother

Javid. The Boshra brothers are talented. Those are guys that are worth keeping your eye on. So they're slowly making their way piece by piece by piece, every little brick they're laying to build that wall, but they're getting there. And he looked very impressive to me. He looked very impressive. So, you know, I don't think he's ready to have a title fight tomorrow, but let me see how old he is. So, I believe he is 26. Yeah, he's got time. He's got time. This was a nice win. He was coming off a win over Daman Blackshear before that. So, you know, putting together a resume and doing it with skillful top control. By the way, you had Rodriguez, who had like a triangle to prevent the pass, and he was using,

Bacherot was using his instep to free his leg, and he was going to get it, so then Rodriguez opens his guard to buck and roll, and then Bacherot just took mount very ably. Like, you know, that's a skillful thing. It looks sort of ordinary, I think, to most folks, because you've seen it a few times, but to not lose your balance or to come too far forward, to have everything nice and low

and controlled, tight pressure. He had good shoulder pressure, turning Rodriguez's head away with his shoulder pressure. Talented guy. Talented guy. Young guy, still getting things done. Got a long way to go. 135 is a tough division, but keep your eye on Javid and Farid or Farid Basharat. two very, very skilled fighters. All right, so that's it for me. I thought it was a decent card, a good card. Yeah, I enjoyed it for the most part. Not the most exciting fights, not the most relevant ones, but good enough just the same.

And some standout performances along the way. That's it. We're done here for Extra Credit. Thank you guys so much for watching. Stay tuned. We're back on Wednesday with a live show. We'll get you ready for UFC 293. And of course, on top of that, UFC 293 pregame preview with yours truly, BC, and the Iceman himself, Chuck Mendenhall. That's out now, youtube.com slash morningcombat. Until next time, enjoy the fights.