MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Recap: Oretega-Korean Zombie | Lopez Upsets Lomachenko, Who Is Next? | Morning Kombat | Ep. 71

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

On MK episode 71, Brian and Luke recap the weekend in combat sports. First up is Brian Ortega's dominant victory over Chan Sung Jung (4:30)). Following Ortega's victory Alexander Volkanovski tweeted that finally there is some clarity in the featherweight division. Is Alexander Volkanovski vs. Brian Ortega the fight to make (15:00)? Teofimo Lopez Shocked the world by defeating Vasiliy Lomachenko to become the youngest unified lightweight champion (25:05). Did Vasiliy Lomachenko do enough to earn an immediate rematch (39:02)? There were tons of great fights this weekend and we got you covered here (47:27). The boys answer your DMs (54:22). Have You Seen This Shit (1:03:24)? The guys close out the show with their Odds and Ends (1:22:00). --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is Monday, October 19th, 2020, and it is time, ladies and gentlemen, diggity donks for morning combat. Hi everyone, I am one half of your hosting duo on this hangover Monday. Big weekend of combat sports to get to, but we have to get to the other side of the screen. It is my friend and yours, the conspiracy to my theory, it's Brian Campbell. Brian was unavailable by text yesterday because he was doing a puzzle. Did I get that right, BC? Yeah, you know, that's how I choose to spend my time, Luke. 2,000 pieces, a little Genesis in the headphones. Just, you know, you got to recharge. Luke, when you give and you give and you give, like we did last week to the MK Nation, you got to, you know, recharge,

okay? You can call me old. You can call me whatever you want, Luke. This show ain't live. I could have a wardrobe malfunction, all right? I'm ready to go off at any point. Let's do this thing. Usually my Monday nights are when I recharge because I have to work all day Sunday. But in any case, you're right.

Should we note off the top? We should. The show is not live today. We put out a statement on social media about it. Should just be a one-time thing. Sincerest apologies. I think by Wednesday, fingers crossed, knock on wood, we should be right back to where we started.

But we're going to get dissected up. The interviews are going to continue this week. All the other stuff where MK rolls on, just working through some challenges here behind the scenes for Monday's show. So sorry about that. But it's still going to be the same quality, BC. Still you and me. It's still Have You Seen This Shit.

It's still DMs from donks. It's still a lot of good stuff. It's still Jay. I don't know if we can get Jay on the air, but it's still going to be the same quality bc still you and me it's still have you seen this shit it's still dm's from donks it's still a lot of good stuff it's still jay i don't know if we can get jay on the air but it's not his fault he's still on the show we're all there he is there's the aircraft carrier guys here we go by the way you have blasted jay so much that i had a issue with my live chat on thursday which by the way is unrelated to this and the issue was i've got this new mixer that i've been using uh for the live chat and the settings got all messed up jay had nothing to do with it right it was really my error and the new equipment error but that's not the equipment's fault poor carpenter blames his tools it was my fault uh everyone in the comments blamed jay yes everybody blamed jay of course the irony is i was

the only one that offered to help with that as well. I know. And then Jay sends an email actually figuring out what the problem was. He was actually the solution, BC. Can you believe that? Well, you know. Hey, Jay, welcome to our show. There's no escape once you join the MK family there.

So happy to be here. Happy Ron Johnson Day to you. All right. Thank you. Well, if you're not out there collecting shirts as part of the president of the Betch Gohea fan club, you can do something else. You can go to Showtime.com right now, get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it.

If not, you can go about your merry way. We always recommend Showtime content. By the way, if you get Showtime and you get the app, you can check us out there. Morning Combat, Strikeforce Classics, me, BC, Maura Ronello, Scott Coker. Just reliving great Strikeforce memories and then watching fights. That is available on there for your

on-demand services. If you want to get some MK merch, BC, like this amazing hoodie. Yes. And look at that beanie. Look at that beanie right there. You can go to store.show.com. Keeps you warm in the winter, cool in the summer.

And then last but not least, give this video a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button. Let the continuation of the MK movement keep growing, BC. Any other final thoughts before we get started? Just, you know, thank you to our people. Our numbers are increasing. We promised you if you stay with us, you subscribe if you like the video if you join where this rocket ship is going you'll you'll be plenty satisfied now i do want to thank everybody for uh boosting our numbers

being a part of it great feedback from the folks this weekend great fights right across mma and boxing so this is why we do it and it was uh it i can only say thank you we're having a great time all right well with that in mind we've got five major topics to get to so let's roll right into them if we can i believe i have to go this way yes because i have to do the mirror image yes there we go topic number one brian ortega is back ladies and gentlemen he gets an emphatic win now i did put up an immediate reaction but we haven't heard from bc and I've got some additional thoughts. First things first, BC, Brian Ortega, what do you want to say? Just dummies, the Korean zombie, wins 50-45 on all three judges' scorecards. That's not Brian Ortega on the screen. I know we're not live here. Can we sort this shit out, Jay? What are we doing here? Yeah,

we got Corey Sandhagen up there. Really, Jay is just knocking this one out the park in fact if you look at the rundown there bc it's the entire rundown i think from last week so that's fun neither here nor there bc forget all that nonsense yeah talk to me 50 45 across all three judges scorecards brian uh he was never in danger he did amazingly well the question is this What does the win tell us? It tells us a lot of really good things about Brian Ortega. That two years of cage rust was not an issue whatsoever, as Dominic Cruz would say. It's not even a thing in his vocabulary. And even though he did admit after the fight in the post-fight press conference that, yeah, he did donate the hair to a good cause.

He cut it due to a bad way cut all that concern we had coming in all that reason that Ortega gave me to pick the Korean zombie who was peaking who was coming in red hot uh we were wrong I was wrong I mean maybe that's why Luke doesn't like to make picks I'm just not afraid to come in here and tell you I was wrong and I was happy to be wrong because Brian Ortega is a great fighter who before the long layoff had showed you such flashes of brilliance first with the jiu-jitsu then in the evolved striking game but he used the two years off through sustained injuries to do nothing but work on himself and it showed here is a smooth complete fighter who understands distance game planning

angles feints all the sophisticated things that people like you luke fill up mk dissected episodes about this guy came out there and showed you that right now forget the layoff he is a legitimate threat to that featherweight title and he made a great fighter in the korean zombie really look basic for five rounds who would have thought it would be that case coming in and best thing i'll say luke he never even took the fight to the ground which was his strength he kept it on the feet it wasn't just technical he perfectly mixed in a variety of power shots tell me if i'm wrong here but we are looking at an absolute complete stud fighter right now yeah that was amazing my initial reaction on on Saturday night for folks who may not

have seen the instant reaction vid that I did. My first thought in putting that video together was if someone asked me what was one word you would use to describe the striking, the overall performance, but you know, as you indicated, it was, you know, almost entirely a striking affair. What would you call it? And I would call it thoughtful. To me, he was, he was thinking through the problems he was facing. He was thinking through the problems he was facing. He was thinking through what challenges he wanted to set up for the Korean zombie. He was letting the game come to him. He wasn't forcing anything.

He wasn't rushing anything. And it wasn't effortless. I mean, you could tell the guy was in there working and making decisions. You could see the wheels turning. But it had a nice flow. It just seemed like he was in command of it. A lot of times previously when you watched Brian Ortega strike, he shows you flashes of great things.

We talked about that elbow he hit Edgar with. I mean, that was phenomenal, right? All of that is great, but it just seemed like he would sometimes get robotic or he wouldn't mind the things he needed to mind or he would lose concentration about what his central task was, and would rush things a little bit, and as a consequence, at times, got himself into trouble, even if he could pull out a bit of a Hail Mary. Remember, he was losing the Guida and the Moicano fights until he won them, right, at the very, very end, that third round, he was able to

make those significant rallies. This time, he didn't have to do, there was no rally. There was no come from behind. There was nothing. And like even small stuff, BC, like, you know, very deliberatively choosing which stance. And then when he picked his stance, what kind of weapons was he choosing? And when he chose the weapons, what kind of timing was there behind them? Everything just seemed very calculated. But BC, you know this, when you're learning a new skill, you might be able to say and recite, okay, when I go to this thing, I'm going to do that. And when I go to that, I'm going to follow it up with X. And when I follow it with X, I'm going to follow it up with Y. You could think through it, but then to do it in a way where there's just, it's frictionless,

that takes time. That takes effort. And to your point, man, the two years off, he may have been two years off BC from fighting. He was not two years off from development, two years off from hardcore training, two years off from realizing, you know what? Max Holloway showed me there are some things I need to fix. Let's go in there and fix them. In fact, I watched the Holloway fight last night as just a, what did it look like? Because sometimes you see things in your mind and you remember them. If you remember the Holloway and Ortega just a what did it look like because sometimes you see things in your mind and you remember them if you remember the Holloway and Ortega fight what do you remember

the beating right so I went back and I watched it and I was trying to see like what were some similarities there was a lot of good stuff in that fight for Brian Ortega that I think a lot of people forget but there's a lot of bad and the reasons why there was bad and I'll save this for dissected they were not a part of this fight he had fixed a lot of things mature smart credible let me ask you this BC well I am I am seeing online a lot of people saying okay Ortega look great like no one's taking anything away from him in that sense but I am seeing a little bit of like well what about the idea that the Korean zombie just didn't show up he did put out a social media post saying after he ate that spinning back elbow towards the end of the second round, he has no memory of rounds three, four, and five.

But, you know, hello, he was losing rounds one and two. He got dropped in round one. Folks, forget that one as well. What about that argument? Well, I think that's wrong. And I think that, you know, you've tweeted something similar to this in the last couple days. And I think you're right on whether we're talking about the Lomachenko-Lopez fight, which we will talk about, or whether we're talking about other recent fights, Adesanya most recently, for example.

Look, when someone's doing things extra sophisticated, taking the lead as the striker, they can disarm the other man. And I certainly, having picked the Korean zombie in this fight, and having had high expectations for coming in, at first was disappointed, saying, look, throw, bro. You know what I mean? What are you doing? You're blowing it, son. You're basically giving away rounds. But I think when you do take a closer look, and it's something you do a great job with on Dissected, you'll find out that Ortega gave him multiple reasons not to throw.

Zombie's great when he can walk all over you, when he can dictate the terms of this fight. This was a fight, maybe it was made extra hard by, let's say, getting potentially concussed by that spinning back elbow, although he showed a great chin to keep going. He was never comfortable. He was never in control.

He was never really in the fight from the standpoint of that unspoken battle about who's taking the lead, who's controlling distance, all of those things that go into the terms of this fight. He was a step behind following Ortega around. And I really want to double and triple down, Luke, on the praise for Ortega here.

Like, he sent all of us to hell that doubted him afterwards in a somewhat hilarious way, you know, saying all you who counted me out learned how to F and count, basically. But I like that. I'll take that L because here's a guy who came back from two years off and he went into a five-round fight against a killer and never showed you a doubt cardio wise or game plan wise or toughness wise what makes Brian Ortega the scariest in my eyes is not just his complete

combination of a ground game and now a completely evolved uh striking game it's the intangibles mixed in. It's really not comparing Brian Ortega to Jon Jones, but what made Jon Jones to go from a championship great level to an all-time great GOAT level? The intangibles. The fact that even on an off night, he could pull it out. The fact that even when bent backwards, he would never break.

I think we already saw the toughness in Ortega in the Holloway fight. know exactly what he's made of but luke he had been very honest in recent i've looked one of my favorite interviews he'd been very honest the last four or five years that you know some personal issues had creeped into his life and made certain training camps or certain matchups or certain periods of his life tough we talked you know a couple weeks back that this game is 90 mental yet all we talk about is 90% physical when we break it down I think right now you're seeing a guy who's happy who's cleared out members of his team as he talked about before this fight that we're getting in the way he's figuring out how great he can be right now and it is a very scary equation because I don't see

holes in his foundation meaning I'm not talking about the jiu-jitsu or the striking. I'm talking about the focus. I'm talking about the commitment, talking about the toughness. He has all of those things. So there's really nothing stopping him, Luke, when we're talking about how does he match up now with Alexander Volkanovsky, who he will get next. I mean, you could not be coming into that fight off of such a questionable two-year period and fix it with one night, five rounds, 25 minutes, as Ortega did on Saturday.

I'm sitting here in awe, happy for him. I think you would agree with me on this, BC. If the fight was competitive and he would have lost, I think both of us probably would have forgiven him on some level. I mean, it would depend, you know, obviously on some of the specifics, right? And that part is a little bit hard to figure out. But, you know, you would have said, hey, two years off, coming back into a five-round fight. You know, the cardio and the training for that is different.

Korean Zombie, who was on a roll since coming back in 2017, the Yair Elbow notwithstanding. You would have had every, he had every reason to be justifiably in a losing position. And not only did he win, he won comfortably. I mean, that is a tremendous, tremendous statement. UFC has to be so happy. Yes, they would have been happy if I think Korean Zombie had won. The Korean market is one they've been trying to nurture and develop for a really long time.

He's a very exciting fighter. Fans love him. But fans love Brian Ortega, too. Bilingual. He can do media in a couple of different languages. A young guy, right? So you have a lot of time, wind at his back, to get him some, not just this big fight coming up against Volkanovski, but other big opportunities.

It really is such a redemptive moment. And to do it in the cerebral way that he did it where he had no reason to win and then won easily I just find that so admirable now you mentioned BC what is next topic number two for us here on the show today it looks like Brian Ortega is going to be facing Alexander Volkanovsky next now we don't know exactly when Volkanovski on social media seemed to indicate maybe in February but all intents and purposes for all the information that we know it appears to be Volkanovski versus Ortega let's say sometime in 2021 okay BC how does that fight go down uh that's gonna be a great fight that I mean like we are we're overly spoiled right

in terms of UFC right now I mean we're just talking about boxing finally got its ish together and gave us a great fight, and we got a couple more on the horizon. I feel like UFC every other week is setting us up with another, oh, my God, I have to see that. This is one of them, Luke, and I want to see it, and I think it's going to be technical as a ball bag. And in the past, I would have said, how's Ortega going to fit into that? But again, this performance was so overwhelming.

I think he really leveled up to another level where that's the level you have to be at if you're going to walk into an Alexander Volkanovski fight and try to play that math equation game with him, right? Try to be the janitor from Goodwill Hunting and try to figure that shit out, what they're doing down there in city cockboxing. You consider this man's length, his toughness,

his ability to brawl if he has to and oh by the way he's incredible on the ground uh luke he's a this is this might be the toughest matchup on paper if this version of ortega is as great as he looked if this wasn't a fool's gold if zombie didn't shit his pants if this is what we think it was tell me if i'm wrong vulcanosti's got his fell, Luke. We may have to take the title away from that MMA math nerd and put it on this god from the city of Los Angeles because this guy is flying red hot right now. Not enough necessarily to favor him,

but I think those odds are going to be really close. I think they are. I think they're going to probably start out a little bit further spaced apart. And as time gets closer and the more you think about it, I think they're going to narrow. Probably we'll end up in a situation where Volkanovski is still your favorite. And I think that's okay. I think that the things he has shown make that not some kind of crazy or unfair

or, you know, some insult to Brian Ortega. It's a fair reflection of the kind of work and the talent that Volkanovski has shown. But okay, let's talk about what this fight might look like. I find it so compelling because Ortega is not like hardly anybody else in that division and certainly not like anyone else Volkanovski has faced. I mean, on paper, Aldo has good jiu-jitsu and good striking. On paper, Max Holloway has great jiu-jitsu, right? But not in the kind of way where Ortega might almost,

in some ways, invite the takedown. Like, by all means, please, let's go to the ground. And even if you go to the ground, are you going to get anything done there? They don't just award takedown points in the way that they used to in modern MMA, probably for better or for worse, maybe for better. So there's that. But the other part is, going back to the Korean zombie argument, people being like, why didn't he throw more? It is true that Korean zombie was unusually reserved. But it's not unusually reserved relative to like some high level output standard. The thing you have to always measure is what is his level of normal output and where did he turn in relative to that? And he was well below his own average. And the reason why he was well below his own average is for a whole number of

factors I'll get to later. But one of which is that Brian Ortega made him that way. He confused him. He did not let him get into range very often to throw the kinds of things that he wanted to. And when he was Brian Ortega didn't take the bait to engage in a brawl for very long. Again, we'll go over some of the specifics later on in a different video. Here's my point. I'm not going to call that a two-up fight, BC, because fighting in a five-round main event against another possible

number one contender is anything but. But it was the right kind of style to get, I think, Ortega back on his feet because I think he prefers that kind of style to go against. Now, Volkanovski is anything but that. He's not necessarily super high volume in terms of the number of strikes, but he is super high volume in terms of the amount of activity, from the feints to the footwork to the angle changes and blah, blah, blah. The question you have to ask yourself is, while Volkanovski is different from the Korean zombie in that way, what does Brian Ortega have that could cause problems? One, as we mentioned,

take him down at your own peril. I dare you. Number one. Number two, he had better vision this time. Did you notice that he could see things coming, either make a defensive read or an offensive one, depending on what he wanted to do. He just understood what was coming at him better and could adjust accordingly. We saw Max Holloway in the second fight stand his ground and have a lot more success doing it. That is something that is very available to Brian Ortega, both from that strategy standpoint and then the skills necessary to bring that strategy to life, especially if you're not worried about the takedown. I will say this.

I think Volkanovski deserves to be favored. But Brian Ortega, with his creative decision-making, like we saw with the spinning back elbow, with his ability to stand your ground and make reads now, with his total lack of fear about takedowns, ha, Alexander Volkanovski has his hands full bc you're damn right would you say that you know volkanovsky is a genius right and i'll give him a lot of credit for the adjustments he made in that max rematch to come back and make it close even though i thought holloway had won that fight um do you believe that to some degree though volkanovsky's great when

when you underestimate him, when you're not prepared exactly for that sort of weird MMA math style, and then he can pull one out on you. But like Max in that rematch, when you take him as serious as you should and you have length and you can match his speed and IQ and power, there's not disrespect against Volkanovski, but I feel like that height is going to catch up to him in the end against these longer fighters who figure out what he's doing. Well, to an extent, wasn't that the story around Brian Ortega, right?

Like even if you favored him against pick somebody, boy, kind of work, we did these two fights I'm talking about. He was losing those and then kind of came back. He had this sort of like, not me against the world attitude, but somebody who was winning, not really despite some flaws, but was winning in situations that maybe somebody just a little bit lesser than him would not have. It was that extra something that he had that pushed him over the finish line, and that ran into a brick wall against someone like Max Holloway, right,

where that was just too much of a bridge too far. So when thinking about it on the other side, I know you asked about Volkanovski, but in thinking about it on the Ortega side, I will say this. Just because he has a chip on his shoulder now and he may not necessarily be favored, that's not a guarantee to get him a win.

It never is. But I like him being in that position for his chances versus some kind of expectation that he's going to waltz in there and handle somebody. I like it when Brian Ortega has something to prove, and now with the work being done and the skills being developed, he can really prove things in a way that I don't think he could before. On the Volkanovsky side, I tend to not buy into these narratives for him

because he doesn't do a lot of media. He doesn't pay attention to the odds. He's not trying to sell you somebody. Not that Ortega is either, but he's not a media darling in the way that Ortega can be. He's just kind of there to do the work. The thing that Ortega has to get around for me is going to be much more strategic. When you have a guy who can move like that, who can set angles like that, who is fainting like that, who is just so hard to read, how do you take that away from him? You're not going to take him down, at least not very often. He's very hard to take down. So are you going to do your own feints to stop him? Are you going to make reads and then intercept him? A combination of both? That's really the key task, which you have to ask yourself is, is somebody like Brian Ortega

up to that task? Well, you know, in fairness to Ortega, he also has his hands full, uh, to, in terms of Volkanovsky, because that's, that's a very difficult thing to defeat. But I just feel like if this was the the if he had gotten lucky against Max or something where he was getting his ass whooped in that fourth and goes out for a fifth and gets a Hail Mary guillotine I wouldn't like his chances at all against Volkanovsky but he redeveloped and so for those reasons I think either guy has a very good chance to beat the other one Luke final thought on this some people were speculating after Ortega's great performance saying oh my god i think we know now what he's done those last two years i did see some memes floating around collecting all the females who had been publicly attached to ortega during that

same two years i would go as far as saying this little jeter-esque you got any comments on that i'll say this though you know what's kind of funny i didn't see that but i was thinking about his his uh shaved head because it doesn't do him any justice. I had a shaved head for most of my 20s, and I'll never forget this, BC. And you didn't pull the same tail. Is this how this story ends? No, no, no, no, no. You didn't pull the same tail as her.

Oh, are you kidding? Not even 1% of 1%. But it's a small little story. This is true. When I had a shaved head for all the time I was in the military and blah, blah, blah, and then I got out and I grew my hair out, I will never forget this, BC. I was walking down the street one time, and someone stopped me and asked me what the time I was in the military and blah, blah, blah. And then I got out and I grew my hair out. I will never forget this, BC. I was walking down the street one time and someone stopped me and asked me what the time was.

And in all my time where I had a shaved head and blah, blah, blah, no one ever did that. I was almost taken aback by it. Like you just seem more approachable. I'll say this. Did you open your trench coat and you had a long line of wristwatches in there or what, Luke? I'll say this, BC.

Brian Ortega with a shaved head doesn't do himself the justice that he does when he's got those Aquaman Jason Momoa locks. On the other hand, the shaved head version, you know, a little bit like F.U. to the world kind of a thing, I told you so kind of a thing, a little bit angry chip on your shoulder kind of thing. I might like that one better as a fighter, BC. Just my personal opinion i was trying to talk about his own poontang you're talking about him that's fine but i'm sure you watch bulworth afterwards shout out to brian

ortega let's move on luke all right very good so let's get to the other big main event over the weekend i i'm not in a position bc to say i told you so because in the end, I was too chicken shit to make the call. But Teofimo Lopez defeats, defeats Vasily Lomachenko. Can you believe it? Now, the scores were some shit. I think it was 116 to 112, which is okay. It's fine. 117 to 111, which is starting to get a little bit out there. And then it was 119 to 109, which is an absolutely dreadful card.

Totally indefensible but I think what I would you would say BC is and I would like to talk about the scores to start here for just a second the right guy won and and I want to make one quick point if I may BC because I know you did an instant reaction vid it was so good I couldn't help but watch it myself here's what stood out to me and I don't like making MMA comparisons when I'm talking to a direct boxing audience, but I know a lot of folks reached out to UBC. They reached out to me. They said something on social media. We kind of arm-twisted the audience into watching a boxing match that maybe they weren't going to. I think a lot of them enjoyed it by the end. I want to make a point here. I had it six to five personally in favor of

Lopez heading into the 12th, meaning it was either going to be a tie of Lomachenko one, or maybe he got a knockdown. He was doing really well rounds eight through 11, depending on how you scored it. But that was a very, it was, it was either going to be a draw, potentially a winnable fight, seemingly based on the momentum for Lomachenko. And then in the 12th round, Teofimo Lopez bit down and decided, I am not going to let this one slip away. Charging back, won the 12th with his highest output. Maybe that was his best one. Even got hit in the head with a headbutt that cut him open late in the round still.

Didn't get distracted. It was as if Dominic Reyes was fighting Jon Jones, and instead of just barely hanging on in the fifth, putting it on Jon in the fifth better than he had in the first three rounds. No doubt about it. Seven to five on my scorecard. Shocking the world, but really, BC, as impressive as it was, we warned everybody, you should not be too too shocked

teofimo lopez the real deal holy there's a difference though there's a difference here we warned that despite the lack of experience and despite how great lomachenko really is and oh by the way dude we are overwhelmed because this is boxing it's a shit show at times we're overwhelmed by the people now saying lomachenko was never that great blah blah blah could you guys you know can you guys sit on a cactus about that uh the reason why this fight went this way is because lopez is great i mean he's great but to your point here luke uh i wanted to predict lopez by knockout you almost bid on a lopez prediction we knew that there's there's a chance he's that good i I thought his intangibles, meaning what's inside, his belief in himself, all that stuff,

I really was touched by that and really wanted to pick him. I couldn't in the end. But with all that said, I really think any of us who believed in his ability to compete in this fight really believed because of his power, really believed that there was a chance he could knock out the smaller man. I don't think anybody, even people in the Lopez family would have guessed that Teofimo at 23 could knock out the smaller man. I don't think anybody, even people in the Lopez family would

have guessed that Teofimo at 23 with again, that little of pro experience in general, but that little of pro experience against anybody within miles of ability of Womachenko could outbox the best boxer today. This is the headline story. If you're a hardcore boxing fan, he went in there and disarmed the magician and forced this guy to really back himself into a horrible game plan. And I do think we need to throw shade at Team Lomachenko was like okay he looks good early but I'm gonna wait for him he's gonna screw up or he's gonna tire none of that happened none of that happened at all look I think the bottom line is Lomachenko had no idea Lopez was gonna be that quick or that sharp and it was shocking to him and that's when this fight became more about Lomachenko not being a finisher and a big puncher because he's fighting over his head at this weight class. And how is he going to figure a way back into the fight? But credit to him, Luke. He almost did.

Now, look, I scored it 8-4, 116-112. I know in the incident analysis video, my score, I said I would score to 117. I was delirious and it was late at night. I did eight rounds to four. I thought Lomachenko rallied. And, you know, if you had it 7-5, I thought Lomachenko rallied and you know if you had it seven five I'm okay with it I mean I didn't like Andre Ward's draw scorecard just as much as I didn't like the 119 109 from Julie Letterman but again when when you have these rounds where there isn't a lot that

happens in them it's only three minutes you really could go either way in a lot of these so I don't get too crazy in the end like you said the right guy won which is great we didn't get a typical boxing moment of Golovkin-Alvarez one, where you're like, oh my God, I just watched Canelo lose, and then he gets the bailout draw to force the rematch. We didn't get any of that. We got a star being born, Luke, and he did it in a way that we can sit here today

and completely praise him, because this is something that Lopez Sr. said after the fight, and I echoed it in the instant analysis, Luke. If they had knocked out Lomachenko and blown him away in the first two rounds, they would have got the praise. But that praise would have been muted to a certain degree. We would have been talking about the size difference, and we still wouldn't know how great Lopez is.

Right? We still wouldn't know what that fight would have looked like if it went deep. Instead, we got the full package of how great this kid is from poise to technique, defense, how good was his defense, his game planning, all that stuff. Look, this is what you want in boxing. Every once in a while, somebody who looks like the next big thing actually go out there and show you that they are. It's a great night for the sport, and I was very happy for all those MMA diehards that we looped them in, Luke.

A good amount of them were like, you know what? This was great. This was skill at the highest level. It was dramatic. I'm going to come back again. Yeah, but some people said it's too boring for them. And it's fine. Same equivalent if you try to show a boxing fan a big-time MMA fight

and they go, I don't need that grappling. I don't need grown men in panties rolling around. I get it. I get it. Okay. But this was a great night for the sport, Luke. And the right guy won. Holy crap. This kid's legit. I'm sitting here, you know, as great as I thought he was, he was even better. And that's great to see. You know, it's amazing. We made this point on Friday, but we couldn't really, I couldn't really lean into it because he hadn't done the work yet.

Now that he's done the work, I'd like to revisit this point because I do think it's worth making. And if you're a real fight fan, you have made this mistake before. I'm a fight fan. I consider myself a fight fan. Hello, I have made this mistake before. Sometimes somebody comes around with a big mouth and you love them. Sometimes somebody comes around with a big mouth and you can't stand them to the point where you are unable to see them for who they really are. Or their fans will be really awful and you can't stand their fans. Same problem ends up emerging. You can't see them for who they really are. I'm not going to compare Lopez to McGregor.

I don't think there's a one-to-one. We talked about this before. It seems like it's a little bit of a bridge too far to say that Teofimo Lopez is boxing's Conor McGregor. I don't think that's quite right. But him and his father have been saying for a long time that they had Lomachenko's number. And when Lomachenko was just blazing through everybody, it seemed really hard to accept that. He hadn't done anything nearly as impressive. Yeah, he had big power, but he had just as big of

a mouth. You know, he would do the Fortnite dance and put on the LSU jersey on Heisman night and do that, you know, patented backflip that he does and everything else. And it just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including Lomachenko, who, as I mentioned, thought that Comey was going to beat him and beat him pretty handily. Lots of others as well. There is something that happens in fight sports that will not let great fighters be seen as great at first when they have a big mouth. But then they go through something where you just can't take it away from them anymore. Adesanya rolls through Whitaker,

and then in this particular case, yeah, they had a bad fight against Romero, but then rolled through, obviously, Costa. You have a case where McGregor just bludgeons Jose Aldo, 13 seconds, but then he goes up and does what he does to Eddie Alvarez, becomes the first time a UFC fighter's ever held two belts at the same time. And then Lopez goes up and unifies 135 pounds, which for folks in MMA who may not realize, it's one of boxing's deepest divisions, okay? Super, super deep. Their version of lightweight, 135 pounds. And he goes out there

and outboxes a dude who comes out to the Matrix talk, who had, you know, Olympic gold medals, 300 plus amateur fights, who every MMA fighter I've ever talked to says Lomachenko is their favorite fighter, the whole nine yards, and he beat him. And he beat him, I'm not going to say without any controversy, but pretty much no controversy. Now I think people are finally going to realize that you can't let the brash talk distract you from what the tape shows. That dude, Teofimo Lopez, is uber, uber talented. Don't you ever lose sight of that fact. I want to counter you to a slight degree. And I do think the spirit of what you're saying is correct.

And there are instances where it's easy to always, you know, downvote the loud, brash guy and say, come on, you know, prove it to me first. I was on ESPN Radio on the national show on Saturday previewing this fight with Bart Scott, the ex-NFL player. And Bart's a big Lomachenko guy. And we kind of got into an argument on the air in which I'm like, no, you got to understand

the kid is for real. He's going to have a chance to be in this fight he's going to have a chance to score the knockout and Bart just kept arguing me going look you know I've been ringside I've been all these Lomachenko fights you're telling me this this kid with no experience is going to come in there and box with him like hell no you're telling me he's going to be able to time him and figure him out hell no and I don't think it's ignorance I think it's just this that like Lopez had 15 pro fights Luke and on top of that all of the fights that really mattered the Richard call me fight the step up against Diego Magdaleno for example both of those were early knockouts we never

actually got to see if he really could box if he could figure things out we only have that unanimous decision he scored over Nakatani in which he looked flat the whole night. We talked about a lot of family drama beforehand. He did sort of figure out with his jab how to box and take the lead and win that fight, but he looked bad. We don't have footage of him outboxing people. We only had footage of him spectacularly blowing people away. There's no way even for the hardcore fan, even for the fan who put on the goggles, took the eye test and said, this kid could be great to have the confidence level that he could have done exactly what he did on Saturday. I think you and I had enough confidence that he's in the game,

that it wasn't a mistake to match him in this fight. But even beyond a puncher's chance, I mean, Luke, in the back of your mind, could you have seen this coming? I couldn't, I couldn't have seen him completely disarming Lomachenko unless he'd knocked him down early and landed something. He did it with the skills, man. That, that was wild. If you had asked, if you had told me, okay, that you could predict the future and you would tell me that Lopez is going to win. And then you asked me, how do you think he's going to win the way in which he did would not have been the first, maybe even the second way I would have picked. But in the end, am I super surprised by it all? I'm amazed by it. I'm not going to tell you I'm super surprised, BC. I understand the point that you're making, where you begin to

think about, like, if the Lopez doubt had started at the Lomachenko fight, where they said, I'm going to make a rational case for Lomachenko for the reasons that you mentioned, both in terms of Lopez and Lomachenko, I don't know that I would have minded it. The problem that I'm identifying is pervasive skepticism and understanding, at least the seeming understanding about what he's capable of. But then when it came time to really sort of say what you thought he was going to do to consistently get that wrong, I'm not saying about you, I'm just saying throughout the boxing world, I went back and I told you, I looked through it. It's not just a Comey fight. I saw it over and over and over again. There is something about somebody arrogantly declaring to the world

what they're going to do that makes the rest of the world, at least parts of the rest of the world, say no chance, never going to happen. And they hang on to it despite all the evidence to the contrary. BC, I told you I would watch this guy. I said this on Friday in these exact words. He jumped off the screen at me. He did not move like other boxers. Again, was he going to outbox or shut Lomachenko down for basically the first seven rounds?

Okay, maybe I didn't see that coming. But beating him by basically being the better guy of the two. I don't think that that's should be necessarily massively surprising as amazing as it was to your point though. Uh, Muhammad Ali was the betting underdog going into the sunny listen rematch. So I think seven, seven or eight,

seven or eight to one in that one. Yeah. Going into the rematch in which he stopped him in the first fight. I know it was weird, you know, quit on a duel with a bad shoulder. But, yeah, wild. We're believers now, Luke. And now I think you have to spin off and talk about what's next. And, look, I've got to make a statement about boxing.

And I don't mean to, you know, piss on the fire and ruin, you know, whatever here. But because good things are happening in boxing right now. I mean, the Wilder Fury fights, for example, in which rival promoters, rival networks are coming together to make a big, I mean, that's great news. We are seeing people work together more often than not, but coming off of this win in which Lopez is now undisputed champion. And I know I'm when people hit me up left and right BC, he's not the real undisputed champion because of the WBC franchise.

Dude, I know that better than anybody, okay? But it's bullshit. So at some point, you got to kind of decide what you're going to recognize and what you care about. He's kind of the undisputed champion, but he isn't. But a lot of people are going, okay, no, I got to see him against Devin Haney. Oh, no, I got to see him against Ryan Garcia. You're not going to see that. You're not going to see it right now.

I'm sorry. That's how boxing works. It is what it is, Luke, okay? If it's big enough. You're stepping on the fourth topic, so let's just get her into it. I'll pitch it right back to you. Topic number four here. This is the central question.

You had Ryan Garcia coming out saying, I want to fight him in 2021. You had Lopez himself at the post-fight presser calling out Devin Haney, saying it was sad he was fighting a washed Gamboa. I don't know if you mentioned Ryan Garcia, but he also took shots at Gervonta Davis as well. So BC, set this up for us. Is it going to be a rematch? Is it going to be Haney?

Is it going to be Gervonta if he beats Santa Cruz? Ryan Garcia, who the hell is this guy fighting next? So what I was saying was, you know, a lot of people are going to want him now to see him against the very best lightweights. and get haney's secondary wbc title i don't see any of it happening because when promoters get together and sort of share fighters or do combined deals they do it at the highest level mayweather pacquiao mike tyson lennox lewis was an hbo showtime co-pay-per-view like mayweather pacquiao now Fury Wilder I don't see it happening on the

in-between fights unless you know because because look their fighters are so tied to networks these days it's hard for me to sit there and believe that a network executive's gonna be like yeah sure fine go go across the street go put the fight on the other person's network it's just not gonna happen what is most realistic for both fighters Luke unless Lopez wants to move up to 140 right now. And I don't really see that happening right now because of what we talked about. Jose Ramirez and Josh Taylor are gonna have a fight for all four belts, okay?

That's been a long time building. They're gonna have their big fight. The biggest money fight for Lomachenko and Lopez is each other once again. So Luke, after 24 hours, 48 hours of thinking about this, not only do I think it's most likely, even though there wasn't a rematch clause, which is very surprising for this day and age

and boxing for the big name star not to have that, I do think that's where they go. They're both on ESPN. They're both promoted by top rank. This fight, putting it on regular ESPN, got a lot of crossover interest. And oh, by the the way here's the most important part why I think it's next Luke and you can tell me if I'm wrong Lomachenko did figure him

out in the second half we are rightfully saying some bad things about Lomachenko bad strategy late adjustment uh the the the size factor got exposed against a guy who is as elite as he is in certain categories but you go back and watch round seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, the first half of round 12. You may have scored a couple of those for Lopez, but Loma Chinco was the guy coming on, finding the angles, landing the power shots. Luke, I think there is a scintillating way

to sell this rematch, which is what if Loma starts early? It may end up ending the same way do you remember that great great chocolate tito fight against strisa gets so wrong beside on the triple g danny jacobs uh pay-per-view undercard in 2017 absolute war right chocolate tito was number one pound for pound he hung on for a disputed decision it was a bloodbath one of the best fights i was ever ringside for at msg they did the rematch so rungvisai sent him to hell we may see that we may go out that way but i gotta see it luke i gotta see it because lomachenko ran out of the ring didn't do an interview he gave a very short one backstage and all he said was

i was you know i figured him out i was coming on the judges got it wrong yeah sour grapes to a certain degree but do you believe that loma figured out enough where yeah he's always gonna have to beware the power but you don't know what the rematch would look like i think that's why you're gonna see it next do i think that there's enough reason to believe a rematch could be different in either direction or even if Lopez wins certainly the fight takes on a different complexion yes is there a reason to do a rematch because of that I guess that depends on your appetite given what else is available if we're talking about what should be next for Teofimo Lopez uh Teofimo Lopez the idea that like we have to see a rematch I don't buy the idea that a rematch could be good enough to make. And that's

better than any other fight that could be next for Lopez. So why not just do the Lomachenko fight? Fine. Make that case. But the idea that like he was figuring him out, well, if he figured him out, then what happened to the 12th round where he got munished? I mean, that's just not really true. I mean, that was easily the best round that anybody won in either direction, and that was commanded by Lopez. So to me, it's like he figured him out to an extent. I think that's true, right? He was having his way around 8 to 11, and it looked like Lopez was maybe getting tired,

maybe not understanding some of the things in terms of the volume and the angles and the setups that was going his way. So could that be built upon for the next one? Yes. But hello, Lopez is going to make adjustments the next time too. And to the extent, honestly, you have to admit this, to the extent that either of them open up, or I should say to the extent that the fight opens up, I'm going to say that that favors somebody who's the bigger puncher like Lopez.

I mean, one of the reasons why it took so long for Lomachenko to get going was partly maybe he misjudged it. The other one was he was eating heavy body shots and he knew that if he opened up, he could get killed. He didn't want to. That's something that's going to be there the very next fight, maybe in just as much, if not worse, the second time around. So I can understand being a Lomachenko fan or just a rational observer and saying, there's a case to be made for Lomachenko winning the rematch. The idea that it's overwhelming or that this one is as disputed as the Chocolatito fight

you're referencing, I don't think that is true. By the way, I do think if they ran it back, if we're using Lomachenko in the Chocolatito role, I think Lopez would have a good chance of knocking him out because if you're Lomachenko, you're going to have to figure out a way to be more offensive. And as we talked about, the more offensive he is, the more he enters the line of fire.

But again, you want to give the genius a chance to go back to the computer, figure out the second time. Well, I think it's high theater. I wouldn't be pushing for it right now as a fan, right? If there were other big options, I just don't know why golden boy or da zone would be like yeah here you could have ryan garcia go ahead put him on espn no it's not gonna happen right you know eddie hearn's not gonna say sure devon haney go walk

over there i mean maybe if da zone exploded tomorrow that could happen but uh right two names i want to live in a world look i want to live in a world where teo can fight the winner of gervonta davis and leo santa cruz i i want to get there a world where Teo can fight the winner of Gervonta Davis and Leo Santa Cruz. I want to get there, okay? All right. Can you create that world for me? Two names for you. If Gervonta wins, why or why not is that a possibility? And here's the other one that I saw referenced.

He's got a fight coming up, and he's got some work to do, but let's say he wins it. Why not Gervonta if he wins? Why not Bud Crawford if he wins up at a weight class for Teofimo Lopez now we are talking a little bit of bingo and I can insert one more name in there for you are you ready how about Manny Pacquiao who's kind of a promotional free agent at the moment right how about Manny Pacquiao in a 140 pound crossroad showdown rising star against guy who still has it as we saw in the Keith Thurman fight. I think what would the best chance of one of these crossfights happening might actually end up being

if Gervonta Davis beats Leo Santa Cruz. Gervonta has a really big following, as we know. He's going to be coming off his first pay-per-view. That might be one of those where, like Wilder Fury, the powers that be could say, hey, maybe we could do a two network thing. Maybe we could figure this out. Luke, I do really need to see though. We saw Wilder Fury. I do need to see Bud Crawford fight a PBC welterweight to make me really believe though that the streets are opening up, right? Crawford's spend should have already happened

to my taste up to this point. Hopefully we're getting there. If we end up building though toward, hey, Terrence Crawford does not have elite welterweights on his side of the road he's beating up on the old Amir Khan's now he's going to fight old Kel Brooke it is what it is right he's fighting Cavaluskis because there's nobody else it is what it is if if Teo's the long game here and by long game I mean a year year and a half to get to him or it doesn't have to be a long game look we've seen people we've seen the great Shane Mosley

go from lightweight right to welterweight and beat Oscar De La Hoya. It's not impossible when you have the skills of Teo. Maybe you're on to something. Maybe if you're Team Teo, too, without the rematch clause, maybe you say, I don't want to roll the dice. We just beat Lomacheco. What else do we have to prove?

Let's go up. There's a lot of business that could be had there if Tao is ready to go to 140 and above. Fair enough. All right, that takes us to our final topic of the top five here on Monday's show. Namely, we only talked about two fights so far. It's a limited show. We've got to do what we've got to do. We want to talk about the most important things.

But there are some people that deserve shout-outs. There are some other standouts from the weekend, BC. How about Jessica Andrade? She did just absolutely phenomenal against Kaitlyn Shukagian. What do you make of her? Why does she deserve some praise here on this Monday morning afternoon show? Yeah, she's one of the big MVPs of this weekend. Becoming the first UFC female.

Sorry, I got issues here. I got a lot of issues here. I'm working them out, though. All right. Becoming the first UFC female to win a fight in three different divisions this was impressive we already know that previously when bannon weight was the only division that she was a player she had some wins she had some losses she was good but to go down to straw weight completely build herself up into a world champion and now to move up where the path toward a title shot

is like that compared to women's strawweight, right? The elite division. It's like that to go in there being eight inches shorter than an elite fighter and Caitlin to Kagan and to send her to hell via vicious body shots and throw in a couple slams. This was eyeopening and why it was most eyeopening.

Luke is that even though I'd been minimally excited of late for this dead empty division women's 125 that there's nobody and I mean nobody who could give Valentina Shevchenko even you know something to blink at that we'd had a few names that were starting to distinguish them themselves but in reality Luke could any of those names get you excited no you're not fired up to see Jennifer Maya against, no, you're not fired up to see anybody. I'd be fired up to see Jessica Andrade go in there against Valentina.

You wouldn't favor her. You'd give her that puncher's chance though. The thing about Andrade is she's, she can elevate herself to the elite level because of her power and her strength. And that strength seems to not know any boundaries or limits when it comes to weight. I am just so excited that in a division in which you have

one of the best fighters of all time, and that is true about Valentina, one of the best fighters of all time as your champion, now you've got a legitimate challenger. I don't think you F around. I think you send her right to the title shot. She'll get the winner of Maya Shevchenko. And I think we got a little business here, Luke.

I mean, I don't think the height matters she's got tree trunk thighs and i say that in a respectful way about a great female fighter she's strong as an ox she's long suffering we saw that against both rose in the rematch and in the uh you wanna fight she'll she'll take a beating and keep coming and linger luke she just she did well this this is big news for that Yeah, she pound for pound might be the strongest fighter in the UFC. I don't think that's necessarily crazy to say. The things she can do and the way she can weaponize her strength. You saw it in the fight on Saturday, picking Chukagian up like a child to get the takedown that she wanted.

And you indicated something that I thought was kind of interesting, that she had the wins in 115, now 125, and then obviously 135 previously. But to me, the thing that really stands out is when you look at her game and you look at some of the successes that she's had and some of the challenges, there were times where she leaned on those physical tools a little too much to get the job done. And they're so formidable against lesser competition that they will but then you know she would go up against somebody who was just a little bit better who could find ways to handle that strength maybe not match it but you know diffuse it handle it deal with it and she would have problems whether it was Joanna sticking the jab in her face and and sticking and moving right because if all you've done is developed a big punch and use your big power that's only going to get you so far or someone like um the current uh bantamweight champ uh zhang wiley who you know just sort of met power

for power in a short window um not so much wrestling but striking and uh overcame it now what you've seen is somebody who is look she still uses her strength and sometimes it deserves to be said uses it to fill in the gaps in her technical know-how. But those gaps have significantly narrowed. She has worked on her head movement. She has worked on her striking. She has worked on her shot selection. She has worked on, you know, how do I want to win this fight from a strategy standpoint?

What skills do I have to bring that to life? How do I connect all those dots? You can tell she's beginning to really think through the problems. And so it's good to have the strength that she does or the power that she does as a backup. Pull that card when you need it. The less the better, but if you need it, hey, rely on it. It's okay, right? But if you've got all those other things in front of it, you can do a lot with it. And now the marriage of the two in this particular fight I thought was pretty incredible. So I love that she is now ostensibly your number one contender after Shevchenko's next fight.

I think Shevchenko versus Andrade is a hell of a contest for all the reasons I just mentioned. Plus now Andrade has all this experience, experience right weight class much more developed than she ever was still strong as shit and has seen a lot of different competitive looks across three divisions a lot of different body types a lot of different skill sets i still like shevchenko because you're right i think she's one of the best fighters ufc has today and certainly maybe ever but that is so much more interesting than what we thought was possible when Shevchenko was fighting Jessica. I yeah.

Can we shout out on Draga's new look with the, with a high tight fade, very well, hell of a fade there. That's a better haircut than you and I have ever had. I'd pay a hundred bucks for that fade. I wouldn't for yours, Luke,

but that's, you know, it's fantastic. Yeah. Well, you know, you're also cheap and, uh,

you know, deserves to be said, uh, okay. BC, we have gotten to our top five. Now it is time to get to where the viewers get a chance to ask us some questions. It is time for DMs from dogs. Hey, Jay got the animation right.

I thought he was going to put up dead wrong. That being the kind of day that it is. All right, BC. Yeah, hold on. Can we just bring in jay real quick to troll the fans jay that was a brutal brutal showing out of you after we praised you there with all the the i mean i was having a seizure from seeing all those things jump up yeah no the timing could not have been worse for that um yeah that's uh on me that's me this is luke this is like bringing in a referee after he screws up and trying to you know and stick a

microphone in front of his face, right? Yeah, but see, I said that's on me. Referees will be like, no, no, we got it right. Hey, Jay, I did see in a comment, because I don't know if you noticed, but we're climbing, and we have 60-something thousand subscribers. They said if we can get to 100K, they want to see Uriah Hall give you retribution, redemption, and send you to hell with a spinning back kick? That would hurt because that guy kicks good.

I'd need a couple months to get in shape for that. But, you know, we could run it back. All right. Luke, you believe nothing of their sparring session. You believe no facts coming out of Jay on that. I know that. No, no, completely fake news. All right, so let's go to our first question here from at rdylincarrybc.

Is Brian Ortega stylistically the worst matchup for Habib after showing his new level of striking? What do you think? Now think about that before you answer it. Let me one-up the answer here. I had Ortega on my show about a year after he fought Holloway. He was looking for a fight, right? So he was, uh, yes, he had lost the Holloway, but he was, you know, training again and, uh, over the surgery on his

hand and blah, blah, blah. And, um, I think it was, you know what, you know what it was? I can't remember exactly, but he was on my show and he was making the case that he was the worst fight for Habib. He was like, I'm just going to play guard, and I dare you. I dare you, Habib, to get into my guard. Watch what happens. You are not going to like the result. It's an interesting thought, Luke. What do you think?

But I still think he gets swallow up in wrestling on there. I mean, I'd love to see it. He's going to have to go up a weight class, which might diminish him. Look, I've always said this, Luke, and this is a little teaser toward our preview for Saturday's fight, know i always said there's one guy there's one elite guy that can beat happy outside of connor you know putting his head on and landing one lucky punch there's one guy and it's tony ferguson's you only got to be habib now i think that one guy might be just engaging so uh i like the idea but, I still think it ends badly. I'll just say this.

I think it's a very interesting idea. It is amazing that we are nearly 30 fights into the career of Nurmagomedov. He is undefeated. And a lot of these fights tend to go a little bit long. Like he doesn't get a lot of first round subs or KOs. And we still don't really understand the totality of his game. Like against Gaethje, is he going to be able to take him down? Probably, you know, but how often and what can he do while he's down there?

We don't really know. What happens if he can't take him down? How far can his striking carry him? Like, we don't really know the answer to that, number one. Number two, it's like, okay, what if someone just gave up position and said, take me down, and then they went to guard? What would happen there? Like, would he pass? And if he passed, would he like get into trouble? Like, because

the pass was a setup for something else. Like what happens if Khabib gets his back taken? Like we just never seen any number of these other scenarios to really know. So I'll say this, I think, you know, evidence being what what it is it's not crazy to think habib can handle some of these situations but i gotta tell you i'm a little bit more willing to give the underdog here a chance than maybe some other folks luke how would you have liked max holloway's chances at 223 the same week of the the bus incident with canelo i mean canelo good god conor mcgregor uh and it turned out obviously to be ally Akinta would you have liked Holloway's chances at all in that last minute situation uh to to you know not win maybe but to to give Habib a different look that he's never seen

I think uh I like them more than others may have I think Max Holloway has extraordinarily good takedown defense you saw Volkanovsky late in the fight, I think, get one or two, and he couldn't do too much with him. And you think, well, Volkanovski's small. Right, but he's very powerful. He has very good takedowns. I'm not saying they're on par with Habib's, but, you know, Habib is going to takedown folks who can't get takedown,

and so is Volkanovski. I think they can both be considered two of those guys. So I'll say I'd probably still favor Habib to win, but I think Volkanovski, excuse me, I think Holloway would have outperformed the skeptics. I'll put it that way. All right. I'm going to have to see Habib get out of the McKenzie team

before I give him the nod over anybody. All right. No one, BC, gets out of the McKenzie team. All right. At DB, no one, BC, gets out of the McKenzie team. All right. At DB underscore Scott underscore outlaw. Why am I okay with the immediate championship rematches in boxing, but in MMA they piss me off? Scott, maybe you have issues.

Maybe in boxing sometimes the immediate championship rematch is the best and only big fight you can make in certain circumstances. And I don't know. I don't know. I mean, what do I look like? Scott's psychiatrist here? I don't know. All right. From, I don't have much to add.

I mean, well, look, maybe because we see more shitty decisions in boxing, which make us want to see them run it back to kind of fix them. Right. That's that's that's as good an answer as I think you're going to find. All right. All right. From at Randy Villarama. How do you think a pretty a prime pretty boy Mayweather would have done against both Lopez or Lomachenko at lightweight? Wow. Wow. Well, let's talk about it here okay uh pretty boy floyd which was the floyd at basically you know 140 and below before he became floyd money mayweather at welter weight uh was way more offensive than people realize luke it was before the hand issues it was before he was moving up and losing some of the size advantages you do have to remember that

mayweather even at welterweight has like a freakishly long reach people forget this um I love his chances against both Luke I really do I mean look those are both great myth matchup Monday mythical fights uh I think he's gonna be too big for Lomachenko and while I think Lomachenko is going to give him uh certainly some of the best looks from a chess match that anybody else could Lomachenko at 135 again is is a little physically over his head doesn't mean he can't win great fights doesn't mean he can't continue to campaign there and win it just means if you find somebody who's your relative equal from the standpoint of speed IQ reaction time counter punching all that that's when the size becomes an issue Floyd had power at lightweight Floyd you know

Floyd would would put people down I mean so I like him there and I like him obviously against Lopez as well fair enough I don't have much to add I don't have enough of a knowledge base to answer that one adequately so BC the most important question I could possibly ask you comes to us from at Emilio Bruce underscore. Question for BC. What's your educated opinion on Brian Ortega's cup? Let me just say something about Brian Ortega's cup. That fucking thing.

He was in one area code as zip code rather. And his cup was in another. I'd never seen a cup where, you know, he went tip to with a poor korean zombie and they were standing on opposite sides of the octagon how is that possible bc yeah is that a large cup or is he just happy to be there it might be both luke that thing was sticking like through my screen i thought that was the only one that mentioned it i didn't have the balls to tweet about his balls but uh wow that's either that man is uh maybe there's a reason that man had a great two years, if you know what I mean.

You know what I'm saying? Maybe we saw that reason on Saturday. I don't really want to invest in. So you know what's funny? I went back and I watched the Holloway fight. I was like, did he have a big-ass cup in that one too? And he did. It's a little less noticeable, in part,

because he was getting tuned up, like, in the face. Right? Like, all of Max's punches, like, 85% went to his face. So you're just kind of focused there. And he also had, like, the board shorts, which don't sell it as much this time. You know, the fight was kind of slow and he was moving around and he had the old tight, uh, you know, biker shorts on. Oh my God.

That thing, you know, just swing that. But I mean, I was surprised there weren't more eye pokes with that thing. Jesus Christ. Uh, yeah, let's move on here. Thank you very much. All thing. Jesus Christ. Yeah, let's move on here. Thank you very much. All right. And last but not least, from at Jonathan to

Darian. Todarian? Who gets sent to Hellmore, BC during interviews, or Luke versus his audio? It's a great question. It's a great question, Luke. That's the Lopez versus lomachenko of uh questions here for setups wow yeah that was on brand for you to completely f up your live chat

uh i should have came in i should have parachuted in on my day off and uh saved the day for you there luke but uh no yeah you know what i'd say more recently you get sent to hell. Historically over, during your interviews, that is. Historically over the course of my YouTube career, I would say I definitely have had more being sent to hell issues with my audio, for sure. Yeah, and I didn't really get sent to hell a lot in previous interviews. I had Adrian Broner hang up on me in 2013, but it was not regular. Last year and a half half they're coming for me luke okay what happened with adrian for them what happened with adrian broner oh it was 2013 i was

early in my interview game it was on a podcast i think i i asked too early the kind of challenging questions that we all want to ask about being a floyd clone and stuff like that and he checked out after answer two and And then, uh, he started just basically saying nonsense and they just hung up. So, I mean, look, we've all been there,

Luke. Okay. Well, you can get it as he is so fond of telling the world. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah,

yeah. Well, yeah, the can man indeed. Yes. All right. BC. It's,

uh, Armin, Armin, a cans, Armin, a cans, connect kinetic hands. They can get it.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, all right. BC. It's time when we get silly. Take it over, please. Well, it doesn, they can get it. Yeah, yeah. All right, BC, it's time when we get silly. Take it over, please. Well, it doesn't have to be silly, Luke. We could see some violence here.

This is what we do. We scour the globe for the highs and lows, the good, the bad, and in between. In combat sports and beyond, Luke, it's the best segment in all of digital video. It's called Have You Seen the Shit? Luke, have you seen the light heavyweight from ufc over the weekend jimmy crew maybe more like jimmy brute sending my lithuanian brohan bukowskis to the deep dark depths i don't think we have it on video here but did you like him jumping over the fence and getting the uh the well look at the little we look at the weekend

at bernie's action he's doing right here But did you like him jumping over the fence and giving Dana the high five, Luke? I'm not much of a – I don't – it doesn't move me one way or the other. The fence jumping scenario, like I don't care about it either positively or negatively. I'll say if you knock a guy out, I feel like this is the routine. And like, you know, this is not a thing I can brag about because, hello, you know, never done it. But I feel like you knock the guy out like that. The trick is go celebrate and then come back and check on it. When they do that thing where like he immediately tries to pick him up and carry him like a baby for bedtime.

Like right this. I feel like it's a little too much. Yeah, don't do that. Get away from him. Let the man take the L on his own. I agree with you on that. Well, what we found out in the aftermath of this great knockout, if we didn't already know, was that Jimmy Crew lives in a van down by the river,

Luke, and he confirmed it after Brett Okamoto put it out on Twitter that he lives in a van outside the gym parking lot, and Jimmy said it takes away all the distractions of going home because he lives two hours from training camp. It lets him focus 100% in training and recovery,

Luke. Wow. he's got a pull out couch in there i guess well you know what i'll say this he's tough as shit uh he's like a super in shape chris farley then and i'll also say like legitimately in his favor dude has he's legit like these guys coming out of new zealand and australia whether it's city kickboxing or not they're producing some serious talent down there and and he is looking like the real deal for the next you know i won't say number one contender but he's moving his way up the the food chain there bc pretty rapidly all right well also from saturday and fight island let's just uh relive how great this spinning back elbow was that ortega hit zombie with luke that was even for us it's's a sneaky strike. It's spinny shit,

but he made it extra sneaky. That was tight right there. That was like 2013 Vitor Belfort tight, right? Yeah. Wait till I show you something from the tape that I picked up and looking at this and everyone was like showing like, Oh,

he, he drilled this in the locker room. Isn't that interesting? Do y'all think he just like, what is the alternative to just invent some shit on the fly like of course he drilled it in the locker room that's how you learn to throw shit you practice it incessantly like i don't you know it's cool to see the symmetry i get but i don't quite understand the novelty of it that was tight as shit though that was like

no it's amazing problem i mean he he killed it. He killed it. All right, we mentioned this on Friday's show. Now we have video from Bellator249, Kermin Lachinov. I don't know if I pronounced that correct, but he did a great Ricardo Mayorgo with this, Luke. Look at this zombie routine. And he was yelling,

that's all you got? I mean, this is just dirtbag caveman bullshit, and I love it. I love it. You know what? That's like there's nothing you can save. I'm like, that's super refined. It's a cerebral way to fight.

That's just He-Man, you know, grew over-the-top nonsense that I am here for 100% of the way. And he won the fight, by the way. Well, it's very shades of 2004 middleweight fight. Madison Square Garden, Ricardo Mayorga, and Tito Trinidad, one of the best electric crowds that we've seen in boxing in recent memory. And look at Mayorga just saying

right here, right here, one more time. Yes, yes. I love that ish. He's been known to do that multiple times, Luke. Did you see when he fought when he got fat and fought Mosley the second time? He did the same thing. I love that ish. He's, he's been known to do that multiple times. Luke, did you see when he fought, when he got fat and fought all Mosley the second time he did the same thing? I think we have it.

Yeah, here it is. All right. Or when he told Oscar de La Hoya, he was going to drink his wife's breast milk. That was a very professional thing. Put it on me, put it on me right here.

I guess they say, if you can see it coming, Luke, you don't get knocked out. I don't know if that really works, but we also have, I don't know if you saw that fat and sloppy rematch between Christy Martin and Mia St. John a couple years ago. Christy Martin closed the fight with this trick,

but she almost got caught with it. It was a little bit tough to watch. Luke, check this out. Yeah, then we hug it out. All right, That was weird. Let's move on from that. Uh, Luke, I don't know if you saw over the weekend in England, there was a controversial bout.

Louis Ritson took a split decision win over Miguel Vasquez, which nobody thought. I mean, Ritson lost every metric of the punch stats. It was a bad night for him at the office. This British judge though, I don't have his name in front of me was caught looking at his cell phone and this was the guy who scored it 117 111 for Lewis the Sandman Ritson Luke what do we do with this and you get mad at me for elder abuse you have the temerity send this man to the old folks home feed him tapioca pudding three times a day a hot and a cot and be done with this loser

in all seriousness you should lose your job for this you should lose what is he what is he looking at no what is what do you think i mean i hope if it's nudes i'll let him pass i'll just be like he's definitely on red tube i mean there's no denying that right now uh eddie hearn is gonna he did tweet out that he's gonna send this to the british board of boxing control yeah get this bloke you should lose your job for that i mean these are people's lives you know hey luke let's check in do you get down with barstools rough and rowdy you like when when these uh hillbillies send each other to hell check out this wow good god yeah hold hold that Hold that, Jethro. Golly, son. Somebody catch that mouthpiece. Ah!

Appalachian thunder. Yeah. You know what, BC? I didn't know Vans made boxing shoes. Oh, wow. I think that guy, Luke, was bartending before this. They literally pulled him from behind the bar for this. Wow.

Yeah. Take me home, country roads. That's great. All right, let's go on. Luke, this happened again last night, but this video is a little bit older. It's a week old. Enrique Hernandez of the Dodgers hit a big home run in game one of the NLCS to tie the game. I don't know. I don't watch baseball anymore. It's for old people. But hey, nice little home run there. But did you see the celebration afterwards that the Dodgers pulled off?

Let's see. Okay, he's trotting the bases. Fuck the Braves, by the way. Yep, there we go. Here he comes. All right, round's third. You've got to do the Kirk Gibson, right? You've got to do the lawnmower start. I don't see anything.

Hold on. What's the? There we go. Okay. Oh, here we go. All right, he does the fist dap. All right. Hey, buddy, how are you?

Yep, congratulations. Okay, so far. It's pretty hetero So far, you know, it's pretty hetero so far, right? Right. You know what? Tip on tip.

Oh, that is awesome. You gotta be shitting me. Just the tip though. Just for a second there. Shout out to the shitting me. Just the tip, though. Just for a second there. Shout out to the Dodgers. I think they're. Wow. I don't really watch this stuff anymore.

Yeah. Fuck baseball. But that is great. I watched the Nets. I watched the Nets. But that's it. I don't care about anybody else. All right.

Wow. Hey, this street fight video is making the rounds here. Shout out to Street Beefs. Did you see this, Luke, when Beverly Hills Ninja came out to fight the guy with the moves? Check this piece of business out. Look at this guy, Luke. Look at Kung Fu Panda right there on the right. Come on, this is great.

These two guys, definitely kings of the prom. Each one, rivals. And all it takes is one punch, Luke. Maybe it was a kick. Hold that, as Luke would say. Good God. You know, if you're fighting in front of some hay bales, then you know it's street beefs, right?

Bro, you cannot lose to the fat guy in the Halloween costume. You can't do that. It was very, you know, reminiscent of reminiscent of haru right you remember the great white ninja correct luke can we advance the slide please what dude this is i think that's his doppelganger right there look it's a great movie it still holds up okay i watch it with my kids oh yeah give it put it on them put it on. We've actually made a couple of Chris Farley references today. That's funny. Oh, yeah.

Go back if you could show the clip from the fight itself. I just want to see something here very quickly if we can. I don't know if Jay has that ability. Very difficult task. Now, this referee looks relatively normal, right? This guy here, he looks relatively normal. I think he's going to be the promoter. Oh, he's the promoter. Okay. Why is the referee here fat? Look guy here, he looks relatively normal. I think he might be the promoter, yeah.

Oh, he's the promoter. Okay, why is the referee here fat? Look at him. They're all fat. Have you noticed that? Like Sideshow Bob put on like 50 LBs there. Wow. Wow. Hold that there, son.

Wow. Amazing. All right, you would not believe how many times that video got sent to me uh let's let's check out some global prevention updates here dr fauci this is in mexico for espn deportes knockout card look this is not healthy what is this was there a fumigation what is this this kills covid and or fleas and or humans look this is um i think i think this is hitler-esque what is this yeah it's like okay it's like good news it kills covid bad news also people

what is the point of killing everyone in the audience so that you can have an audience yeah i don't know i don't know well look there's a russian man and shout out to the great instagram account at look at this russian who has, and shout out to the great Instagram account, at look at this Russian, who has figured out another way to stay safe, Luke, you know, in this COVID times. Jay, can you hit the button, please? You know, we're seeing a lot of hand sanitizer around, you know, why not just get a little taste of that, right?

Well, it's just, you know, you know, if you're going to make out with chicks during the quarantine, Luke, you do want to keep safe, right? OK, you know what? My man is hard up for some booze. Somebody get this guy. Somebody get this guy. This is the dude who like, you know, is shoplifting NyQuil to get the codeine out.

Yes, he is. He's definitely a meth cooker. Yes, I love that man great work right there all right hey speaking of um famous russians or kurgs how about the valentina sisters here the shevchenko's posing with don jr luke are all of our mma heroes big maga heads or just most of them no i think most of them there's very few on the other side i think the huge majority of them they love them some mags. Which one do you think Don Jr. prefers?

Let me think about that. Probably the one with more gold, so I'll say Valentina. Yeah, that's a fair guess right there. Well, shout out to these. Hey, they have readopted themselves as Peruvians, so are they in your sphere of respect now as South Americans? Now, aren't they? I could be wrong about this, but I believe, if I'm not mistaken,

I believe they have Peruvian citizenship. They do. They do. So have you ever drinken Inca cola? It's called the Champagne of Cola. They have it at this bootleg store down the road from me. There's only one country in the world. Jay, not time for a boiler yet.

No, no, Jay. There's only one country in the world in which Coca-Cola is outsold, and it's Peru, and it's because of Inca-Cola. You know, Valentina, she has a commercial campaign. So ready for this? Every country in South America has their own national brand. And to your point, Inca-Cola is the big one out of Peru, but you can get it here as well. So ready for this? Every country in South America has their own national brand. To your point, Inca Cola is the big one out of Peru,

but you can get it here as well. Just go to any Latin grocery store. Colombia has their own version of it. It's not the same as Inca Cola, but their own national cola. It's called Colombiana. But here's the trick, BC. They have a drink there called refajo, which is if you have a hangover on Sunday, when you get up to go have brunch to get over the hangover you take a pitcher you pour half colombiana half beer and

you drink that with your meal is that like a south american bloody mary something like that would you have refajo if you ever uh got a hangover? Yeah, I'd try it because I get vicious ones, Luke. I got, yeah, I had a one beer hangover the other night because like the barometer changed, the weather dipped. No, just drink more water, you little girl. It's not that hard. I do, bro. You don't know. Don't speak for my body. You don't know what goes on inside of here, all right? Hey, Luke, you had mentioned on friday show in which we you know we debuted my cat reggie jackson your cat booger your your beautiful daughter that abuela was that was visiting columbia right now let's check in with abuela right now they're south of the border you know what god bless her smile look at that smile luke yeah

luke when i visit your home in dc i'll bring my family do you think abuela and i can get down like this uh i don't think that my abuela is necessarily all that big a fan of marijuana but we definitely will throw back a couple of beers together how about that okay all right well we'll talk about yeah we'll talk about uh the escobars would be great i love it okay great work don't don't yeah don't do that part you can skip no no no no, don't do that part. You can skip that part. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. All right.

You know we like trampoline fails in these parts, Luke, but check out this dude's left wrist as he sends himself to the deep, dark depths. Wow, Luke. Yikes. Oh, that just makes my day. He just put his lover out of commission right there. Wow.

Gravity's like, hold that. Yikes. All right. Well, Luke, your favorite kind of videos on this segment. By the way, and I know everyone gets bitter at me when I say this, BC, but I'm sorry. The facts are what they are. You can devise whatever theory you want.

Whenever we look at fails like this bc they're always white and you can say i'm wrong but i'm not and this is also why my kids will not be getting a trampoline while while they're under my insurance policy all right luke your favorite videos are knockouts in which the the man getting sent downstairs testifies to the congregation check out this fighting organization in vegas Pyramid Fights. We've got a new preacher stepping up to the altar there, Luke. Wow. Testifying in church.

He saw Jesus. Wow, that is great. Is that like a high school cafeteria? Who's watching this fight? It's amazing. It's like this is a PTA meeting. Hey, by the way, let's watch this guy get brain damaged. Hey, you know what's amazing about this, though?

We should talk about this for just a second, BC. We were talking about the amazing Buckley K over Kasonganai, right? Maybe the best one in MMA history, right? Maybe. And people were saying, oh, what we love about it was what Buckley did. We don't, you know, not Kasonganai, not what happened to him. And I'm like, well, that's not totally true, is it? Like, yes, of

course, you want Kasanga and I to be okay. I mean, the sport doesn't work if people are getting really so severely hurt in that kind of way. But it's like, how the person reacts who got hit tells you the story of the damage and

like, sorry, that's part of it. It's almost like you've done the knockout. I find that in boxing knockouts of the year. If they fall face first, if the person does their job, who lost their life in that transaction and like twitches or does something wild, that can add a lot to it, Luke, okay? I hope folks understand. That's why you've got to be honest with yourself about the fandom here.

Yeah. Scott Van Pelt don't want to have this discussion okay oh by the way he replied to you on twitter yeah he did he was a nice guy dc guy yeah nice guy nice guy all right hey luke you know regional mma anything like this can happen at the pta meeting tell me if this is morally corrupt or wrong this fat guy faked a heart attack and then got the knockout luke i don't know about this come on all right now my understanding and i don't know about this. Come on. Come on now. My understanding, and I could be wrong about this, so please someone double check us,

and if I'm wrong, we'll do it in dead wrong on Friday. My understanding is, at least for a time, and maybe this is no longer the case, BC, but it was for a time that faking an injury to trick an opponent was specifically banned under the unified rules. I actually think that this either was or is illegal. Wow. I thought he maybe just dislocated his shoulder like Tommy Reardon

and they decided to let the fight go on for two more rounds like in Warrior. But no. I thought it was like that SNL sketch where they're talking about Da Bears and the guys all have heart attacks and then like pound their chest to like work the heart attack through, you know, that's another Farley reference. What a day. All right. All right. Hey, let's bring on the hot chick moment of the week.

This chick started out in a two piece, ended up in a thong. Luke, this is, this is great stuff right here. I mean, that I don't care mean, you know. Oh. I don't care what, you know, pork and beans or something else down there. That's going to hurt. That is. Yeah. That camel's dead, Luke. That is.

That is. Wow. Yeah. All right. I got one more for you on the way out. It is Halloween season, but we already have a winner for best costume. Check out this couple, Luke.

Wow. You know what? That is great. I love that. Predator. I know you could appreciate that. That is amazing. I love that.

That's a great job. What are you going as hollow for Halloween this year? I'm going as a boxing journalist covering the Leo Santa Cruz, Gervonta tank Davis fight. While I also watch Anderson Silva's finale. You. Probably Chewbacca. While you're covering those same fights.

Well, yeah. Well, you can go out. Oh, you can go out early with the daughter. Oh, okay.

So my kid, Halloween is Halloween's canceled here. I don't know about your foot. All right. Yeah. Well, my kids are also at that. They're okay. So my kid, Halloween is, uh, Halloween's canceled here. I don't know about your foot. All right. Yeah. Well, my kids are also at that. They're 12.

So they're at that age, right? Where like, there are like border. Like I went out the last time I went out was, uh, when I was 14, freshman in high school and like every single house,

they were like, they were like, why are you here? Like, what are you doing? You know what I'm saying? Like last year I was, I was 11.

My last year you went out to, into high school. I did. And the kids last year. You went out into high school? I did. And the kids I knew were still going out through high school. No, no, no, no, no. Kids your age were going out either to parties, not to trick-or-treat. No, they were going out. They were going out trick-or-treating.

I'm telling you. No, no, no. They were bag snatching is what they were doing. They were bag snatching. No, no, no. I come from a factory town. We did things differently there, Luke. But that's the shit of the week. I hope you saw it, Luke. I certainly did. Great job No, no, no. I come from a factory town. We did things differently there, Luke. But that's the shit of the week.

I hope you saw it, Luke. I certainly did. Great job, as always, BC. BC, time for odds and ends. What do you got for us on your odds and ends? Yeah, on the undercard of Lomachenko Lopez, we talk big about this guy Edgar Berlanga, the unbeaten super middleweight,

who was 14-0 with 14 first-round KOs coming in. He fought a journeyman, but a tough guy. And Linnell Bellows. And even though I hated the stoppage to a large degree being too quick, he did improve to 15 and 0 with 15 first round KOs. I know when that happens, people go against two. Who'd you fight? Well, look, not many guys fight people with pulses on the way up

through 15 pro fights in boxing. But I'll say this, Luke. The power's real. The kid is like what 22 he's uh from new york born and bred puerto rican uh look that's a great boxing fan base as we saw they made you know they back guys like tito trinidad hector camacho i mean you know uh kodo we thought we thought uh what's his name was going to be the next big star but he hasn't panned out yet for top rank. But this kid looks absolutely legit so far. Obviously, you're never going to know if he's going to gas out in round three

until he gets there, but he's big. He's strong. He can talk on the mic. He said afterwards in the interview, I looked in his eyes. He looked like he wanted to go, so I sent him there. I mean, this has become a must-see TV. I love this guy. And you know who else does, too?

Aaron Bronstetter, Canadian MMA journalist. Great man, by the way. Loves us, loves the show. One of my favorite Canucks. He said he tuned into this fight because of us, Luke. So shout out to that. Did he say that? I missed that.

Really? Yeah, he tweeted it out. He DM'd me looking for what time the fight was going to be on. That's a strong Canadian man right there. God bless aaron bronstetter definitely one of the good ones one of the smart ones as well great coverage um appreciate that from him for my odds and ends i'm gonna go back to the uh oh by the way just for that the berlanga fight dude that stoppage sucked i'll agree with you did you see the eyeballs on his opponent before they stopped it? He was terrified after feeling Berlanga's power, dude.

Yes, yes. Well, at least what we learned is that the power's real. I'm not saying the kid's Mike Tyson, but, you know, you start doing stuff like this, this kind of streak, that's nasty. That's nasty. Okay, and so for my odds and ends, two notes here. I'll make them both pretty quick. First things first, well, sad to see it, but you kind of knew it might be coming.

James Vick has been released from the UFC. He had lost, I think, four in a row up to this point, and his contract had expired, and the UFC decided not to renew. Now, as we all know, you get enough wins out there on the regional scene, they might sign you back, so we'll see how it goes. He said on Twitter, by the way, I think Aaron Bronstad was the first to report that so I'll give him credit as well on that but he had said on social media that you know he's already talking to a bunch of other promotions and so we'll see what happens I'm not ready to bury James Vick I've had a lot of positive conversations with him

I think he's talented obviously he's got some things to work on in terms of his defense but you know let's see what he can do in that regard. Call Edmund, bro. You got to move that head. And I like him. He's a fun fighter. You know, when he's winning, Luke, he's long and tall. He's fun.

Yeah. And then last but not least, people keep talking about what the hell is going to be next for Kamzat Shemaya. What are we going to give him? Who is he going to fight? Yo, he got the Dana seat on Saturday. You see that? You know that seat next to Dana that, like, Connor would get or young Anthony Pettis would get?

Always, like, whoever's next sits right there. Yeah, wow. Or Jake Shields when they're sticking it to Strikeforce. Remember that? That was a time in MMA. But in any case, we don't know exactly who was next. But one of the names that, A, signed up for it on social media, and, B, Dana confirmed was one of the people

they were thinking about or trying or seeing what they could do, Chris Weidman. Now, Chris Weidman, of course, had, what, five losses in a row, something like that. Got back to a win against Omari Akhmedov. A little bit workmanlike, but he won 29-28, I think, across the board. It was the better one when, you know, the final bell rang bell rang kind of say bc you know at first i was like i don't know how i feel about this one but now i kind of like it because if chamayev can beat a guy like that who's big and strong and can wrestle if he just knocks him out like he did meershardt i don't know what that means but if he wrestles them a little bit and can hang at that weight class you got to wonder what a it means for him down at 170 and b

for weidman to win to stop his hype it's actually a pretty redemptive win I think I like this fight I want to hate on it right away and be like Chris stop signing yourself up to death but no like especially you know look I liked some things that Weidman showed in the Akhmedov fight in terms of uh trying to mix in a little bit of a new style trying not to take as much damage and uh yeah this is this is the right matchup to kind of try to stretch the young kid there. I like, by the way, first of all, the thing you love most about Chimaev is just that he's so ballsy. He tweeted out, let me go old school.

Let me fight three guys in one night. I like that spirit, all right? I like that a lot. By the way, I didn't put this on odds and ends. I just wanted to reference it very quickly. If you looked at Lomachenko's, so the whole motif was the Matrix thing when he walked out, the music, whatever else,

but also he had the code falling on the screen as his shorts. Now, the reason I bring that up is because he has a sponsorship. They have a whole line. It's not just shorts. It's everything. Gloves, shorts, track suits, whatever the works, for Lomachenko by Venom, who, of course, is going to be the new official apparel provider of the UFC starting in 2021.

BC is what we saw with Loma there and maybe some other places as well. Does it give you hope for maybe some cooler gear, things that can be tailored to someone's individual personality that fans can get behind that Reebok could not do? yeah I think so a little bit I've never hated the Reebok as much as people in terms of what it actually looked like I just hated the spirit of the Reebok deal how it took money away from people but you know what Luke I gotta say one one thing about what UFC has done and maybe this sounds like corporate BC I don't really care. When you see flashbacks to fights from the pre-Rebok deal, it does look minor league, and it's not just seeing Condom Depot

or dynamic fasteners on someone's crotch. I like the uniformity of it. I'm sorry. I like uniforms, all right? Like when I watch NBA games today and I see the sponsorship logo right here, I think it looks like AAA baseball, okay? I like the professional look of the UFC uniform. I don't care what you think.

Do your kids, when the school is in session, do your kids wear uniforms? No, but when they play basketball for the Travel Town team, they wear the same uniform. Yeah, it's not a big deal, Luke. They don't wear Luke's Donut Shop on the back. By the way, my town, we've got a Luke's Donut Shop. It's like an institution here. It's a well-known, Luke.

I'd love if you could come here at one time and try Luke. Well, you know, uniformity is cool when there's a purpose to it. But if the purpose is, you know, to do bad apparel that denies people money, I don't quite understand the value. Well, yeah, the denying the money part stinks. But outside of that, the uniformity looks good. I also, in fact, not only did I also say I led with bad apparel. It's not good apparel. I mean, it might be good tactically, but it's not visually pleasing. All right. And when you were in the Marines, you guys all wore the same thing every day.

Right. But there's a clear purpose to that from a... Wouldn't it confuse the enemy more if you guys were coming out with your own sponsors all over your tactical gear? Yeah. Well, if you were fist fighting for money in a way that was identical you know if war was identical to prize fighting i don't know that'd be the same kind of issue but alas it's quite different speaking of war luke what is it good for absolutely nothing yeah say it again yeah yeah all right uh isn't that what you what your marines say woo, got you all in check? That's what they said during Warrior. That is Busta Rhymes, I believe.

Oh. Brooklyn, not the Marines. All right, but that being said, BC, we've got to let folks know there's a lot they can do to get in touch with us. We have a bunch of social channels. We are on, let's see, we're on Insta, we're on Twitter, we're, of course, on YouTube. Thumbs up on the video. Hit that subscribe.

And if you want to give us a follow in any of these wonderful places, certainly you may do that. Also, we have an email address. What did we get wrong today? What did we get wrong on Wednesday or any other place? Shoot us an email, morningcombat at gmail.com. What were you going to say? Time out. Time out here.

Friday is our next homework assignment, our next art project. I'm not done yet. I'm not art project. I'm not done yet. What is art? I'm not done yet. All right. Okay. Well, then, please follow us, support us, and check out that Justin Gaethje interview that Luke and I had on Thursday.

If you haven't yet, set in the stage for 254. And, obviously, if you watched this show and you said, where's the damn Habib preview? We'll be back Wednesday and Friday. We also got a lot of bonus content coming this week as well. This is the new new for MK all day, almost every day. So go ahead, Luke. Sorry to steal your thunder.

Yeah, so for Friday's homework, it's my choice to pick it this week, and I'm going to go with a comedy special. We had referenced it, I think, either last week or two weeks ago, Patrice O'Neill, Elephant in the Room. This was the last televised special that he did prior to his death. I would argue it's not necessarily his best special, although it's certainly up there. But it is something that I feel like is... No one had the original perspective that he had. His death,

I think, has been a dramatic hit to modern comedy. I could only imagine the things he'd be saying if he were around today. You don't see a lot of people in this world who have both original ideas and be a willingness to espouse them, even when they're ridiculous. And then C, can make them all funny. And that's Patrice O'Neill. And Elephant in the Room. We will talk about it on Friday. Is it on YouTube? Yes, it is on YouTube.

I think it's for free on YouTube, but you can rent it as well. I haven't seen the comedy special since You'd Be Surprised, so I'm ready to check this out. You don't watch comedy specials on Netflix? You know, I try. Because it's not. You don't watch comedy specials on Netflix? You know, I try. Because it's not like I don't love comedy.

You know, I try. But, Luke, it speaks to... I'll put comedy specials right now and the same thing I'll put pro sports. I want to try to watch this. And I start watching it. But we have too many options. I end up on YouTube watching the 93 NBA playoffs over again.

I'm sorry, Luke. All right, I like what I like. And that's the way it is. That's a great Genesis song, by the way. Luke, Genesis is so good in my ear holes all day yesterday. So good. People try to call me casual because I like the Phil Collins era of Genesis. I'm not trying to tell you that Van Hagar is better than Van Halen. I'm just saying I like that era. All right. Get off my balls. All right. Thanks. Thanks. All right. There you go. So let's see.

If you would like to try Showtime, you certainly can. Showtime.com right now. 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, no harm, no foul. You can go be a loser somewhere else. And if you want some of this great, mkmerchstore.show.com right now. It's out there. By the way, Jay or somebody, maybe it was gaff was asking me before the show.

Luke, if someone sends a picture of themselves wearing MK merch, will you unblock them? Yes, I will. I will. I will. Now that I will do that development right there.

I'm hoping Dana sends you something then, by the way, do you think Dana blocked me? Dana's a masculine male Luke, as we know, and shout out to him for winning the quarantine. But do you remember that episode of Dana White looking for a fight where he wouldn't jump off the cliff and Rachel Ostevich is doing backflips off and Dana bitched out and they stood there for hours?

Do you want to say anything about that? Yeah, I didn't quite understand. Does he have a fear of heights or some shit? What is that? I think he just got to a point where he's so rich now, he's like, I'm not effing around here. I'm not, you know, I didn't quite understand. Does he have a fear of heights or some shit? What is that? I think he just got to a point where he's so rich now, he's like, I'm not effing around here. I'm not, you know, I'm not. And also, it's like, what are you watching in this video?

Man does nothing at edge of cliff. It's like, yeah, it's scintillating content. Okay, for somebody, I suppose. Please, go find us the next Sage Northcutt. Thank you. Yes, let's do that. All right, so coming your way, Wednesday show, fingers crossed, knock on wood, should be live, no guarantees, but I think we'll be fine by then.

We're going to have Dissected coming out, plenty more content. Folks asking, what about UFC 254 preview, as BC indicated? We got plenty-o content coming your way for UFC 254. Want to just make sure we wrapped up the weekend before we lean into the next weekend, as big as it may be. So be on the lookout for that. All right.

For Malka, for Showtime, for Brian Campbell and CBS Sports, I'm Luke Thomas. Until next time, may all of your gains be loyal. Thank you. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.