MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Triple Champ, BJJ, Conor & Khabib, Tony Ferguson | Live Chat, ep. 54| Luke Thomas

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

Today on the podcast, we'll discuss whether Israel Adesanya or Henry Cejudo will be the first UFC champion across three weight divisions, Brazilian jiu-jitsu journeys, my interactions with fighters like Conor McGregor or Khabib Nurmagomedov, where Tony Ferguson goes from here, how Glover Teixeira matches up with Adesanya or Jan Blachowicz, my tattoo preferences, styles of sports broadcasting, Bellator 252, Paul Felder vs. Rafael dos Anjos and much more. --------------------------------- '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

you hear that paid and done that's the sound of bills being paid on time but with the bimo eclipse rise visa card paying your bills could sound like this yes earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month rise to rewards with the bimo Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. All right. Hi, everybody. It is, let's see, Thursday, the 12th of November, 2020. And this is episode 54 of the Luke Thomas Live Chat. My name, of course, is Luke Thomas. I appreciate you joining me.

We'll see a lot to get to on today's chat. We could probably talk about UFC, excuse me, Bellator 252, which is tonight. Should be actually a really good main card. I'm looking forward to it, actually, which I don't get to say too, too often with Bellator. Let's see, there's a UFC event this weekend. There's some stuff going on. Feels like not the most exciting period in combat sports history, but there's enough definitely to do this podcast. As always, please give the video a thumbs up.

You can see it here. Now it's not rolling to do this podcast. As always, please give the video a thumbs up. You can see it here. Now it's not rolling. There it is. You can see the subscribe button over there. Subscribe, please. We always appreciate that when you do. And without further ado, let's see if we can get this party started. Ted. Alright, there you have it.

And of course, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Okay, if you are new to the podcast, here is how it works. For folks who already know this, this will be repetitive, but I get asked about it basically every day. So I'm going to keep doing it until everyone knows. But if you go to youtube.com slash morning combat, which is on all likelihood where you are watching this now, there is a section that says community. You click on the community tab and let's see, it was a Thursday, right? So every Wednesday at about this time, I put up a post calling for questions and people fill them in, fill them in, fill them in. If you like them, give it a thumbs up. And so you guys essentially tell me what you want me to get to, um, in that process. Okay. All right. Very good. Uh, let's do it. Let's do it. So with that in mind, let's pull

that up and we will get to it. All right. And, uh, the channel. Yeah. So it says home, videos, playlists, community, channels, and about. Click on community. That's what you want. All right. Very good. Okay. Let's get this party started. And I'll go for about an hour and some change. Not sure how long exactly, but enough. Okay. Never hear another woo at a UFC event again when fans are allowed back. But you have to listen to Face the Pain once a day for a year. I'd rather listen to the woos.

I couldn't live with Face the Pain every single day. And that's saying something. With many fan favorites or potential stars losing this year, whose stock is lowest, and who might have the toughest road to a title shot? So the names this person lists

are Holloway, O'Malley, Korean Zombie, Gaethje, Masvidal, Costa, Sandhagen, although recently rebounded. Well, definitely, I mean, his stock is not low, so you can take Sandhagen off of that. Plus, he's probably the number one contender, so he's definitely not on that list. The other ones are a little bit more interesting. Holloway having recently lost O'Malley, Zombie, Gaethje, Masvidal, and Costa. All right, so whose stock dropped the most? I'm not, Zombie, Gaethje, Masvidal, and Costa. Alright, so whose stock dropped the most?

I'm not going to say Gaethje, so you can take him off the list. I'm not going to say Holloway, because a lot of people thought he won. Has a tough road to the title shot, admittedly. Maybe, in fact, the toughest, given that he already lost twice. So I'm going to say it's a toss-up. Probably Korean Zombie, not there either, because it was a bad loss, but it wasn't exactly humiliating. I mean, it was one-sided, but it was more about the celebration of Ortega than it was zombies.

Stock declined. Masvidal took the fight on short notice, so you couldn't include him. So really it's a toss-up between O'Malley and Costa. And for those reasons, I'm going to say Costa. Because I don't think his road to the title is necessarily all that far off. But to just never land hardly anything of consequence in this super-anticipated title fight. O'Malley at least had an injury issue that we've seen in other fights. The way that both of them handled it did not necessarily please the fan base. O'Malley at least had an injury issue that we've seen in other fights.

The way that both of them handled it did not necessarily please the fan base, but I'd say Costa of all of them probably is, in the way in which you set up the question, the one most likely would be the uphill climb. What's more likely? Me talking to Ariel or Biden starting another useless war in the Middle East even after all of Trump's peace deals? Well, most of Trump's peace deals are not actual peace deals, but I'd probably say Biden start another war. That seems a lot more likely, actually.

Who is more likely to become a three-division champ, Cejudo or Adesanya? Hmm. All right, well, by virtue of still being active, the answer is probably Adesanya. Okay, so let's assume that the retirement of Cejudo is not actually a retirement, so now's assume that the retirement of Cejudo is not actually a retirement, so now we're talking about a real possibility. Well, Cejudo is quite literally

further along because he already captured two of those titles, so he'd just have to win one more, albeit not an easy thing to do, but Adesanya hasn't even won the second of those yet. Now, if you're asking me what will end up happening, ultimately, Cejudo having to beat Volkanovski to me seems like a bridge too far. Adesanya having to beat Stipe, I think, I'll say this, I find the idea of Adesanya beating Stipe, or it could be Big Francis, I suppose, but I find the idea of either of those things happening more plausible than I find Cejudo beating Volkanovski. I mean, I think Volkanovski doesn't necessarily wow a lot of people in the sense of, like, you know, dominating power or, you know, shut down, take down ability and vicious ground and pound or whatever like he doesn't light up the fans imagination as some kind of finisher or you know a marvel to behold because he doesn't fight that particular way but in terms of how

difficult he is to beat you know he might be the most difficult champ to beat in all of ufc and you might have said well max holloway did it but the is he, as far as the people who get tasked with calling it, they didn't. And so now you could argue his number one rival doesn't exist. We'll see what happens with Brian Ortega, I suppose. But it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. Adesanya has fought at heavyweight and he has the frame, not so much the, he doesn't have the size per se, but he's got the frame for it. So that one to me is a little bit more doable, but Cejudo is much further along in that process, because hello, Adesanya has to beat Jan Blachowicz first, and that is not anything you just want to look past.

Has any fighter ever made you nervous during an interview where you may have thought, okay, we're going to need some security here? How would you have handled Mayim Miller in the unhinged aerial interview situation? Yeah, where he lost his shit. I mean, I thought that was handled about as well as it could, which is to just avoid conflict. Basically, at all costs at that point, which is going to be the right thing. I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to fight the guy?

I mean, you've got to protect yourself if it comes to it, but just antagonizing him to do that doesn't seem like a smart idea. So I think trying to just diffuse the situation and being non-confrontational was probably the right call. I mean, in terms of like, have I ever faced anything like that? No. The vast majority of the interviews I've ever done have been over the phone or through Skype. You know, obviously I've done a ton in person, but I'm just thinking about like the totality

of my experience. I don't go on the road nearly as much as many, most, whatever, of my peers. You know, I've gone on the road, what, a couple of times in the pandemic, but certainly pre-pandemic, you guys know, like, going to shows just isn't my thing. I don't do a lot of it. So that's just not something I've ever had to really deal with. When we had him in studio, I was, you know,

much more selective and whatever. So no, I mean, I've had, I mean, I've had two things happen. I've had fighters like, you know, get bitter at me over the phone. Forrest Griffin got bitter at me over the phone, which is fine. I mean, I don't care anymore. Who cares? But he got bitter at me over the phone. I'll tell you one thing I get, I won't say routinely, that's not true, but it's not, once a year, once every other year, I'll get someone who threatens me through social media or something. I've had a couple of those things happen. I had one of those happen recently, as a matter of fact. So I've definitely been like, I mean, in the end, are they serious about it?

Hard to say. I mean, nothing's ever happened thus far. It doesn't mean that it won't. But I tend to think that, you know, they catch them on a bad day or you just rub them the wrong way or they're just crazy people. It can run the gamut, you know. But I've definitely had a, you know, reach out to me through the advent of social media and like straight up threatened me. I've had that happen several times. But, you know, they haven't done anything about it since, so I don't know what to make of it.

Who has more dirt on their laptop? They're spelled wrong. BC or Hunter Biden? That's funny. You know what? I can only imagine. I mean, we have some understanding, I guess, of what's on Hunter Biden's, uh, alleged laptop. Can you imagine what BC has on there? You know, and I would love to, I wouldn't want to look at the things he's looked, but I would love to at least have an idea of like his porn search history. Can you imagine the filth? Good Lord.

So I'm going to say, I mean, Dirt, you know, probably old Sleepy Joe's son, but in terms of filthiness, and even Hunter Biden had a sex tape on there, right? Oh God, I bet BC's is still even worse. Can you imagine the things he has looked up? My God, you know. Make you... worst. Can you imagine the things he has looked up? My God. The hair on the back of your neck stand up with a cold breeze that sort of runs through you when you figure that out. All right. I'm teasing, obviously. All right. Leon Edwards said in an interview recently that Dana told him

if he beats Hamzat, that he will get the next title shot. Do you think beating a guy that's not ranked should get him a title shot? I mean, this whole situation is totally fucked. I mean, what are we supposed to say at this point, right? So you're right. Like, if you beat a guy that's, I mean, if you look at his wins, yes, the way in which everything has happened for him has been very impressive.

But if I told you, hey, Leon Edwards is going to beat a guy and you didn't know who it was, and I'd be like, he's got one win in the UFC at, or sorry, two wins in the UFC at middleweight. He's got one at welter. Now they're all stoppages, two of them, you know, mostly through the ground. And then one was a nice, pretty quick, vicious knockout punch. You'd be like, okay, that's impressive, but that's not going to get you a title shot. But Chemaev is just sort of occupying this unofficial space where he doesn't qualify for the various markers of success that we would normally give to somebody who we would put in the kind of space that we're putting Jemayev in. So we're just declaring him to just be there already. In other words,

you have to have to have a lot of work done to capture a number one, number two, number three, number four, or number five ranking. You have to do some stuff. He hasn't done anything even close to that. I'm not saying he won't eventually get there. He might beat Leon and get there. I'm just pointing out to this point, he has not done that. But because there is such incredible hype, we're just like, yeah, you know what, it kind of counts. It's the way it goes, man. It's the matchmaker model.

The matchmaker model, you know, it's sort of like democracy. It's the worst form of matchmaking except for all the other forms. You know, it's sort of what it is. And you get situations like this where the guy doesn't qualify for the official things that we're supposed to have someone qualify for to mean what a result could mean, but we're just going to do it anyway. So no, it shouldn't. But you know, I said this on Rogan's podcast, you've got, was it Shavkat Rachmanov who has a win over Cowboy Olivera, not just a win, but a finish.

That's beating a guy much better than anyone Chumaev has beaten. And there's like, you know, just sort of standard no buzz for a guy who is from Kazakhstan or something. And you're like, that dude has done, he's already, in my view, further along. I'm not saying he's better. We don't know who's better. It's still very early. But in terms of like the accomplishments you need to accrue to move along or the accomplishments you can have to justify some kind of even informal placement, he's further along. It's weird. What sport do you think you would have made professional as you started at a young age? You're going to laugh at this, but there was a time up through age, what, 14, 15?

I think maybe into 16. I played super competitive racquetball, like going to tournaments. I know it sounds so lame, but going to tournaments, winning. I think I took second in state in my first time out And of course it's all ranked by various levels According to the amount of time you've had in the sport And various other things But I was good I was actually pretty good

And then my mom, we moved And I wasn't able to train anymore And so that whole thing went away But I was actually pretty good for a time You know, you're like, oh, is that a real sport? I don't know, Ask yourself, is it a real sport? Yes, I would argue that it is. Not an especially popular one, but yes, it is. It's just, you know, you're good at what you're good at, folks. Not sure what to tell you. All right, quick question. What exercises do you recommend to improve one's social skills?

Someone like yourself that interviews with new people and any books to help apply in real life. In terms of books you could read for this particular thing, I don't know. I'm sure there's a million good self-help books related to this particular question you're asking and this specific issue, uh, approval and social skills as someone like yourself that interviews with new people. Um, yeah, sure. I mean, here's a couple of things I would say. Not everybody will need to do this process. Like sometimes I'll write out questions ahead of an interview. Sometimes I will not, it really depends on how comfortable you are with the material or the person. But in general, if what you're lacking is a degree of comfort, you should spend the day before, not 15 minutes before, the day before, or even several days before, but at a bare minimum, no less than the day before, 24 hours ahead of time, writing out all the questions you want to ask and refining them. So that's the first thing you should do, right?

How long do you have to talk to them? What method? Are you recording it? Who's not, you know, is someone else recording it? So you need to have like the technological process ironed out. Are you putting a microphone in somebody's face? Somebody else? Are you using an iPhone?

Are you using whatever, right? Understand how that process works. Make sure that there's no hiccups in that and that it's smooth, right? Pull it out, record, and just go. So that's the first thing. I mean, the amount of hurdles you create is going to be the amount of hurdles you obviously at the end point have to then clear to get going. So you want to make it as smooth as possible. So iron out all technical issues, have your questions written ahead of time. Don't necessarily stick to them, right? If someone, if you add a planned question and then they give you an answer and then the answer requires a follow-up, you know,

you should have a little bit of courage to investigate that. But, you know, you should at least have an understanding of what you want. Like, and also, I mean, I'm sort of rambling here a little bit. So, you know, understanding the technological challenge, writing out the questions and like, what do you want out of the interview? Like The best interviews I've ever had are not just someone's like, oh, I'd like to talk to them. It's like, I'd like to talk to them for what purpose? Why do I want to talk to this person? What information do I want from them that necessitates this conversation?

This is why most interviews, I would argue, in boxing and in MMA are worthless. Because there's nothing to really be gained from it at every single time you have them. Like, I'm not saying every conversation is utterly fruitless, but how many do you have to have so that I need to talk to this person so I can learn something

or get information I didn't ordinarily have or something? The vast majority of them are total filler. There's no real good reason to do them. So have a purpose. What do you not know that... What the hell? Hang on. Oh, I hit my button on my... I got this new keyboard because I got it to do editing. Hang on, I'll show it to you. I got the new Logitech keyboard. This fucking thing is huge. And it's got this wheel on it. And you can program the wheel to do anything.

And I use it for Final Cut so I can zoom in and zoom out. And it's great, except it creates a lot of issues when I'm bumping into it here. But okay. What do you want to talk to this person for? What information do you not know so that by the time the interview is over, you now know, what are you looking to, what are you looking to better understand?

So what's the purpose of the conversation and write the questions out accordingly. And then the last thing I might say is make the question short, man. And this is a problem I've had my whole life. Like, you know, when I'm giving you best practices, I'm not telling you that I've always been the best person to carry them out.

But as a general rule, if you're trying to not slip up over your own words or get flustered, make the questions short, direct, to the point, easy to execute. If you've got some long preamble, you have to get all the parts of the preamble correct or they might ask you to repeat it or blah, blah, blah. Just make it smooth. Know the technology, know the questions, know how long you have to interview this person, know what you're looking to get out of it, and know how to execute the questions quickly by virtue of making them short. And then just practice. That's it. And then just practice. Everything else, well, you'll figure out how to do it from that point on and how you want to do interviews and methods to get the information you're looking for. But if you're at the stage where you're just looking to develop the social awareness and the smoothness of the conversation, I think the tips I've given you will be a good first step.

All right. Any words for a U.S. Army veteran going on his fourth deployment? Your fourth fucking deployment? Man, that is a lot of time. Yeah, what is there to say? I mean, thank you first. Secondly, you know, there's no reason in the modern, there's no good reason for you to be going on a fourth deployment, you know. America's overseas commitments are in desperate need of revision. But save your hazardous duty pay and have an exit plan, man.

You know, you're sending you on your fourth. I mean, what's to stop them from sending you on their fifth? Good God. Or if you're a vet, I mean, it's sort of a contradiction in terms. I'm assuming you mean like active, you know, but okay. Good Lord, Fourth deployment. I had some friends who did two and it nearly broke them. Although they were long deployments.

Okay. Without Adesanya and Whitaker, who is the middleweight champion? Man, that's a great question. Is it Romero, I guess? Let's see. Would it be Romero? Costa, Kananir, Hermansen, Romero, Till, Brunson, Gastelum. So it would be one of those guys, right?

It would be Costa, Kananir, Hermansen, Romero, and Till. First of all, I've watched that Romero versus Costa fight both times. I scored it for Romero. I realize that there's a debate about that. I'm just telling you how I feel. So it'd be Romero probably. I mean, here's my pecking order. Romero one, probably Costa two, and then Cannoneer three.

That's how I would. Well, Till is a bit of a wild card there too. So maybe I go Romero one, Costa 2, Till 3. Something like that. Something like that. But obviously that's very debatable. We need to see how Costa looks when he comes back. How much time does Romero have left?

Till is still very much a developmental project cannonier is um i think uh while he has made dramatic strides in his career by virtue of his age i'm not sure how many more are left and by the way he's made a strong account i thought a strong account of himself in the whittaker fight um and he's better than her manson as we saw so you could probably eliminate her manson from that list relative to the other contenders even though her manson is ranked higher than Till. But, you know, I don't know how good Till is exactly. I think he's pretty good, but he's yet to really, you know, truly build on that.

In your opinion, who do you believe was the biggest waste of talent in all of combat sports? Jesus, what a question that is. That's a hard one to answer, right? Because if you're thinking of somebody you know, it almost defeats the question. It almost makes the question irrelevant. It's like, is there somebody that none of us know that actually did have the talent to become something really special and really shit the bed? Or, you know, in the case of like a Len Bias in basketball died before they were even close to their prime. And what you saw

of them from college was just, you know, the sort of marvel of athletic gift and natural basketball acumen. Was there somebody like that in combat sports? Obviously, I can't answer that because that person either has sadly perished a la Len Bias or didn't make anything of themselves to otherwise have us aware of that. So there's a couple ways to answer this question. One is that there's somebody we just don't know who would fit the bill that I can't name by virtue of their anonymity that would be a better fit for the question.

In terms of folks we know who actually did make at least some kind of visible impact, the question is what did they make, or what could they have made relative to what they made? Waste of talent. You mean somebody who just wasted it. There are dreams that were unfulfilled. I never thought Cain Velasquez ever fully realized over an extended period how good he could have been, but I don't think he wasted it. That wouldn't be correct. Who wasted it? And you could say, well, John Jones kind of wasted it a little bit. But at the same time, look what he accomplished. So he didn't really waste it in the meaningful sense.

It's a difficult question to answer, man. Because you're looking at somebody who had ability and then just shit the bed. You know, almost like a Junie Browning for a time or something like that. Somebody who was very self-destructive. Like a war machine. But how good was war machine John Copenhaver before? a Junie Browning for a time or something like that. Somebody who was very self-destructive. Like a war machine. But how good was war machine John Copenhaver before? I mean, he was good, but he wasn't

some kind of, oh, were it not for the fact that he had incredibly poor judgment issues, he would have been world champion. Because that's not true either. Yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. I really don't know. There's three replies here. What do these donks have to say? Yeah. And by the way, the question is combat sports. So that would relate to Muay Thai. It'd relate to American wrestling, jujitsu,

or worldwide wrestling, you know, Sanchao, Sanda, you know, judo. I mean, that's a very difficult question to answer for all the reasons I mentioned and everything else. Someone here writes Tyron Woodley, but Tyron Woodley became a UFC champion and defended it and arguably is the third best champion in UFC welterweight history. That's a waste to you? I mean, what are you saying he could have been? I don't know that I would agree with that. What is your morning routine? What is my morning routine? Well, it depends. So I have two different

kinds of mornings. My wife and I alternate getting up with the child, because the child likes to get up around 6.30 or 7 a.m. So assuming I have to get up with the child, we get up, I let the dogs out. This is very riveting material. I give the baby, you know, a glass of milk to drink. We play games. We watch a little Sesame Street. I feed her, you know, and then there's daycare that's involved after that.

If I do not have to get up with the baby, I'll sleep in a little bit more. And then I get up and I make coffee and I come down, check emails in my office. And then, you know, just begin to execute the plan of the day. Am I going to the gym? Am I not? Do I have to do a morning combat broadcast? Do I not? Do I need to make a video?

Do I not? And just begin to execute. But I don't really keep to-do lists, which my wife says is a fatal illness that I have. But I usually just sort of begin each day at the beginning of each day. We have various questions about this. But what about BJJ? Do you still train? Can you walk us through your progression while you were doing it consistently?

No, I haven't trained. I do not train. Well, I mean, with the pandemic, there's not many people who are. But even if it wasn't for that, I haven't trained pre-pandemic in a while. I mean, I'm 41. I don't think I've trained since I was 39 or so. I mean, I may have stopped by a gym to get some rolls in or something, but not consistently. I spend most of my time doing no gi for years and years switched over, did a couple of years or so. Yeah, about a couple

of years or so. Um, maybe a little bit more than that on and off a couple of years doing some gi stuff. Um, stopped doing no gi cause I began to resent it. Stop doing gee, because I began to resent it. And when I say resented, it was due to injury, uh, and not big injuries. I never broke anything or tore a knee. It was just constant.

I mean, you don't really used to fucking and whammy is you'd go to these, like, you know, you go, you can show up to class and you see these guys taped together with fucking gaffer tape and KT tape. And you know,

they should obviously not be training. They should be healing. And then it's time to train. And, you know, they should obviously not be training. They should be healing. And then it's time to train. And they're like, oh, yeah, please don't grab this or squeeze that or go for submissions on this side. It's like, how about you fucking sit out? How about you do that? And then you see them show up over and over and over again.

I cannot tell you how many people I know who, because of the pandemic, who were training and then have had to really dial it back or just altogether stop, depending on the situation, have told me they haven't felt better in years because they're just constantly showing up, fucked up, their necks are fucked up and they're having to get surgery. It's like, dude, you're an accountant. Why are you training this hard? Oh, because I want to be the best that I can be in Jiu-Jitsu. Okay. Well, you know, you think it's worth the long-term health issues to be, you know, to get to brown belt six months quicker? Okay, all right, I guess. I mean, I don't, you know, to each his own, I suppose. But the juice never seemed to be worth the squeeze for that. In fact,

the only time in my life I've ever really felt good is through the weight room. And I've had issues with that too, but I was, who was I telling somebody about? I forget who it was. You had that guy, that strong man who went on Rogan's podcast and was like, people basically, unless you're like a super elite powerlifter, you should never do deadlifting. And I was just like, I couldn't imagine that being true for my own life. I mean, I sort of get what he's trying to convey, which is that if you don't do these correctly, you don't have a real need to do them.

Programming them, given some of the risks associated with poor performance or poor execution, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. But assuming you can do it correctly, I don't think it's all that. It can be hard, but it's very, very manageable. Getting that posterior chain strengthened was just maybe the best thing I've ever done for myself. Especially after years of just, like, getting battered. So anyway, even if they opened up all the schools tomorrow, I don't think I would go back.

But, you know, I'm glad I did it when I did it parts of my 20s, parts of my 30s but it doesn't interest me anymore not like that anyway God there are some of you that are in desperate need of a widening of your worldview. I'll read the question because it's stupid.

The person thinks it's some kind of own, but I'll read it because it's stupid. Let's see. I know you went to Texas for a short while, but could you ever see yourself moving there? Fuck no. Or will your... This is what they write. Soy boy politics, not resonant. They spelled resonate wrong.

Shocker that they couldn't get that right. With the MAGA lot. Well, I'm sure there are nice places in Texas. I didn't really go and see the sights in Austin. I flew in to my hotel, stayed there the night before, did the podcast, went back to my hotel, and flew out the morning after. I mean, that was an interesting sightseeing. There's nice places all over. I've been to Austin before.

It's a great town. I don't know how it is now with the pandemic and everything, and everything shut down or not. I don't know. I couldn't tell you much about it. But just as sort of a rule here, I've been over this with some of you guys, but there are some of you that think this is some kind of own.

I don't know why. I'm guessing it's because you also hang out with morons. For some of you watching this, you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. Folks, I'm trying to help you out here. I really am. This is not me asking you to agree with any of my worldview. Please, that is not what this is. It is okay if you disagree and disagree vehemently and that you get angry at me. All that is fine. I take no issue with any of that. For your own sake, you got to stop calling people soy boy. You got to. If you do that, people who read at a sixth grade level or above will look at that and go, aha, another fucking idiot outed themselves.

Another person, um, who in all likelihood consumed paint chips as a child is out here asserting some kind of tough guy attitude to the world, but they're doing it at a, in a way that signals they haven't read books since, you know, doing it in a way that signals they haven't read books since Harry Potter was made mandatory in first or second grade or something. That's what you're doing. You understand that? You're telling the world, hey, I'm a fucking idiot. Please don't listen to me ever. So you can keep calling me this

shit and you think it's some kind of own. All right, man, I'll read your question. It's fine by me. Doesn't hurt my feelings. But for the love of Jesus Christ, y'all got to do better for yourselves, man. You got to raise the game a little bit here. You got to find some kind of critique that actually stings and isn't the kind of flotsam and jetsam of somebody who doesn't have a mammalian brain,

just a few ganglia bobbing at the end of your spine so that it can go through the basic, you know, uh, organ function to keep that husk of, uh, skin and bones moving down the street or fucking, you know, uttering, uh, equally idiotic things along the way. You got to help yourself, fellas. Come on now. Step up that game. I know you can do better. Here's my daughter. I'm not gonna bring her in again today, though. How soon can we see you and BC smoking together

or at least eating some edibles 30 minutes before the start of a show? I don't know how that's gonna work. I mean, if it's legal in Jersey and you're doing it, how would CBS feel about it? I don't know. My hope is that there's a good chance. I mean, if it's legal in Jersey and you're doing it, you know, how would CBS feel about it? I don't know. My hope is that there's a good chance.

I'm going to say, okay, I'm not saying there's a good chance, but my hope is that there's a good chance. Because if you're doing it legally, and at that point it is, you know, no different in the state you're in than alcohol. And we're both dads, and we both kind of keep it under control, like not getting too crazy. What could be the problem with it? I'm not sure that there would be one. So BC and I definitely want to do that. I just don't know if we can yet. But I'll say this, cautiously optimistic. Cautiously optimistic.

Best thing to come from your appearance on JRE. I would say, um, I had a lot of folks reach out inside the MMA industry. That was nice. That one wouldn't call it the best thing, but that was nice. I think it was that there were people who, uh, had expressed it, you know, they support my work generally, but they were worried that I might come off either as one of two things. One, just sort of totally echoing what Joe had to say and not asserting my own worldview. Or two, maybe be too argumentative and impossible to get behind. And I've seen a lot of feedback that says that it was neither of those things. That I was able to assert my own views, but not any kind of heavy handed way. And that, um, you know, it was, it worked. There was, there was the, the conversation flowed in a kind of organized and, um, diverse viewpoint kind of

way. So I'm pretty happy with that. I mean, the best thing to come from it is that I'm glad people liked it. I'm glad people liked it. I got a chance to showcase some of my views. I had a chance to have some good conversation. And everyone was like, oh my God, you're going to get the Rogan rub and your life's going to be like it's winning the lottery or something. I mean, I think to get that rub, you have to go on multiple times, which isn't to say that I didn't get anything from it. I mean, I probably added three or 4,000 extra people on our followers on Instagram, a couple thousand, almost a couple thousand on YouTube. I think MK picked up like 800, 900. Twitter picked up about a thousand or so, not quite. You know, there was a definite bump,

don't get me wrong, but it wasn't like a life-changing bump. I think you'd have to have multiple forms of exposure to that kind of a major bump. I think you'd have to have multiple forms of exposure to that kind of a major audience. But it was a chance to just, you know, he doesn't have hardly any like MMA media on. He had Radio Raheem Me years ago. He had on Josh Gross, you know, back when it was still in his house or something. It was a long time ago. You know, so it's pretty rare to be in my position and get the chance to go on there. So, you know, bit of recognition, you know, it's nice, but in all, honestly, like the best thing to come from it is, um, just got a chance to have, I mean, it sounds stupid, but you know, if it's not going to change your life or the next day, your life is brand new and it's not,

my life is still basically the same. Then what did you get out of it? I got a chance to interact on the biggest podcast in the world, share my ideas, have people pay attention to it. And for the most part, people liked it. That's cool. That's super cool, man. You know, um, it's fun to get some additional followers, but I didn't get a life changing amount. So I'm just glad I got an opportunity to do that. Like in the end, if you're going to do all this stuff, shouldn't it be fun? If it's not going to be fun, it should be rewarding. You know, where you get, oh, I woke up the next day. I had 2 million followers on Instagram or something. Okay. Well, then, you know, you sort of tolerate it, but if it's not going to be that, at least not now,

anyway, then, you know, shouldn't it be, shouldn't it be, shouldn't you be having a good time? I had a good time. It cool man, it was a fun opportunity So I'll take it for what it is Toughest matchup for Adesanya at light heavy Gotta be Jones right? I mean I realize Jones isn't at light heavyweight at the moment But we're assuming that's still A thing he can do

I would say Jones I said before, I put out a video a couple of weeks ago Jones isn't at light heavyweight at the moment, but we're assuming that's still a thing he can do, I would say Jones. I said before, I put out a video a couple of weeks ago saying, you know, I'm not saying that it's a guarantee that Adesanya would beat Jon Jones, but it's a competitive fight. Anyone who tells you it's not competitive, I mean, I guess we'll have to see, obviously, in the end. But I have a hunch that Adesanya can win that fight a lot more easily than the skeptics think he can. And even if he doesn't win, that it's very, very competitive. This idea that John's just going to waltz over there and take him down, and that's just going to be the end of it, that seems like, I mean, I don't know, right? We're all just kind of guessing here in the dark a little bit, but that feels to me very simplistic

and based on ideas and conceptions of these two that just don't match where we're at with them in either case. So, you know, John winning to me, totally plausible. It may be even the likeliest of outcomes if they fought 10 times or something. But, like, inevitable? I don't buy that it's inevitable. No, not at all.

Beyond that, it's like the other ones, you know, we'll see what happens with Blachowicz. Dominic Reyes, I think is an interesting test case, but I think he's got some retooling to do and given the feints and distance management that somebody like he is good at, plus, you know, Dominic's not a heavy takedown guy, you know, That's going to be tough. Same for Tiago Santos. Same for Anthony Smith. Glover might be a tough one. Because Glover would have to deal at the range. And that, I think, is where Adesanya would light him on fire.

But Glover on the ground, where he's got good wrestling and he's got good ground and pound, and he can pass, he's a nightmare, dude. Glover's fucking Teixeira can pass. He's a nightmare, dude. Glover fucking Teixeira, bro. He's a nightmare. He's a total nightmare. He is a tough, tough, talented dude. He's my age, man. I cannot imagine doing what he's doing at my age.

It's just absolutely shocking. He'd be a tough matchup, you know. So Rumble. Rumble would be an interesting one. But again, I think Adesanya, I think we have to sort of say something about Adesanya. He does really well in MMA. Maybe it's a slightly different argument in kickboxing, but in MMA, he does really well with power punchers. You know, I think there's enough, there's not an overwhelming amount of evidence evidence but there's enough evidence to show that when you get a guy who's a physical powerhouse

he has a very it's maybe a careful style but a very careful calculated style to both get his hand raised and then diffuse the worst of that so I think you might see some of that do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert i'd ask pessimist or optimist but that seems fairly obvious okay so if we're assuming that pessimist i'm guessing is your

answer yes i'm certainly a pessimist uh introvert or extrovert i don't know misanthrope is a better word way to put it. And even that's not quite accurate. It's like, um, I'll say this. I can, uh, an introvert. Cause I'm a home body. Even before the pandemic, I didn't like leaving the house for any particular reason. You know, not like Howard Hughes style where the bed sheets are sticking to you because you haven't showered in seven days, not that kind of thing. But I can do the extrovert thing for this job or even in public where you have to interact with people and, you know, have a public facing kind of identity. I can play that game, but if I don't have to play it, like, you know, even BC was making fun of me. He, we went to Vegas. I forget what it was.

And he was like, Hey, let's go out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, I'm just going to sit in my room and, and, you know, hang out here. I don't want to, I don't want to go out. And they were like, what do you mean? You don't want to go out? Like it's Vegas. Like let's go out. And I'm like, I couldn't have less desire to go and mingle and all that shit.

If my life depended on it, I don't care about any of that stuff. You know, I like my close circle on it. I don't care about any of that stuff. I like my close circle of friends. I like my family. I like my job. And I don't need a whole lot more than that, to be quite honest with you. So I guess in that sense, introvert. I have an extroverted public identity, but personally not really that way.

Look, if you've ever watched Tough from start to finish, and I have, was there a fighter who you thought was going to win the whole tournament and ended up coming up short? I'm trying to think. I've been surprised. Oh, you know what? You know, when Chris McRae came pretty close, what season was that? 11 or 12 or 13.

I can't even keep track anymore. I thought he was going to do pretty well. Ended up not going his way. That'd be one. Chris McCray. I thought Chris McCray had a real big promising future. And then he got to the UFC and it just didn't really go his way. I mean, he was a good fighter. He had some good wins along the way, but

relative to the possibility I thought was there, it didn't quite match. Tell us about your interactions with Connor, Khabib, Tony, and Dustin. How have they been to you, and what do you think of them personally? Well, let's see.

Connor, I've had virtually no interaction with. Khabib, I've had only very professional setting interaction with. I mean, I've seen him in person a few times, and we've talked in person a few times, but not, you know, it's all like structured media days or when he came back after beating Michael Johnson. I was the one where he asked,

I asked the question I think he answered with, that's number one bullshit. So, you know, I had that kind of moment with him, and obviously I know his manager really well. But I've not had super close interaction with him. Tony and I, I don't know if I've ever discussed this, Tony and I had, I know Tony better than all these guys. I mean, I'm not saying I know Tony better than anybody else.

I'm quite obviously not. But I've had better, I've had much more interaction. I mean, Tony and I have texted. We don't text anymore. I don't think there's any beef or anything. It's not a thing we do anymore. But certainly no beef on my end. But there was a long time we would text back and forth.

I helped him with write-ups from The Ultimate Fighter. I've gotten to know Tony a little bit better, a little bit better than, um, really most fighters that I've ever known, quite frankly. Um, and Tony's a real sweet guy, man. He's a real sweet guy. You know, has he said some stuff in public that made you scratch your head or, you know, when he told that one guy, when the guy asked about like overcoming mental illness and he was like, he was real rude to the guy there with the reporter.

You know, I didn't so much care for that. I asked about overcoming mental illness, and he was real rude to the guy, the reporter. I didn't so much care for that. I thought that was pretty awful. But my personal interactions with him, the only time I've ever gotten mad at him was, who did he beat? He beat somebody. And we had been talking before the fight.

And then we were going to do an interview if he won. And then after the fight, we set it up. up and he just duffed he just didn't show and the good news was he didn't just duff on my show he duffed on everybody's he had gone into the mountains or something and then you know tony was being tony and uh a lot of times fighters just like make errors with their schedules or arrangements and they apologize for it like he didn't even sort of acknowledge it, which was a little bit annoying. But, you know, Tony's dealing with a lot of things. So I'm not upset about it. It was annoying at the time, but hey, who cares anymore, right?

But in general, what I can say is Tony is, of all the fighters I've ever interacted with, I think he's genuinely the kindest person, maybe of all of them. Now, I don't know Wonderboy all that well. He might be like Flanders. I don't know. And there's a lot of them who are all real decent people, to be clear. But Tony has always seemed to me like had a real big heart.

You know, like a real, he was a really caring person and, you know, he, he, he turns it on. I'm not saying it's fake. I think it's probably who he is. And then he just dials it up a little bit for the cameras. But like whenever I interact with him, relentlessly positive, very kind. Um, yeah, all that stuff. And then with Dustin, I've only ever had professional interaction with Dustin. I've never had like, I've never gone out to eat with him or anything. What I can tell you is when he says he's going to be somewhere at a certain time, I mean, that train is never late, dude. Very organized personally.

Everyone who knows him tells me he's, you know stand up as they come you can tell he's very much a family man and you know what I prefer that relationship than like being buddies with these guys to be honest with you I've not found that I was good at that I'm not really good at being their friends there's a couple times in the history of trying this

where I've tried to be like you know what's up or you naturally just you know gravitate to some people more. And I found that I just was not good at maintaining those kinds of relationships. Dustin, I think gets it just right where he's professional, he's friendly, you know, all that stuff. But he doesn't try to be buddy, buddy with the media as far as I can tell. And he's buddy, buddy with the people who are separate in his life. And that's how it should be. It's exactly how it should be. I frankly, you know, I really enjoy that from Dustin.

Because it just gives both of us the freedom to understand what the situation really is. And it's, you know, in many ways transactional. Why do we hate Jay so much? We don't. It's just a bit. It's literally just a bit. It's a fun bit. It's like just a bit. It's a fun bit. It's like you guys watch Family Guy and they just shit on Meg for no reason.

He's like Meg. We just shit on him for no reason. If you had one MMA fight and you could have just one UFC fighter, active UFC fighter, as your corner, who would it be? James Krause. Easy. James Krause. You mentioned you thought Habib could beat this version of Tony Ferguson, and I agree. But did you always feel this way throughout their timeline? No. For example, I felt Tony would have beaten Habib the first, second, maybe third booking of their fight, but for the remaining bookings, I thought Habib was

going to win pretty handily. Handily, you mean? It is what it is, but I wish Tony in his prime got to face stiffer competition. I'm not sure if I would look at it the same way, like, oh, the first three, I would have favored Tony, the last two, not. Which I'm not sure if I would look at it the same way, like, oh, the first three, I would have favored Tony, the last two, not. Which I'm not saying is wrong, I'm just saying I didn't look at it necessarily that way. I think there was a time, maybe third or fourth fight, where it was like,

I mean, here's the problem with Habib. Now that I've game, not game planned, but I've done, for the Poirier fight and for the Gaethje fight, I really went and dug through the material pretty heavily. And both times in trying to assess the wrestling, you watch Dustin deal with various wrestling challenges, and then you watch Gaethje deal with various wrestling challenges.

And of course Gaethje, you could say, beyond the black belt that Dustin has, Gaethje wrestled at a pretty high level nationally here in the United States. And so you think, okay, what does this tell us about the future? Let me explain something to you guys. I go through footage all the time. Today I watched UFC 40 for no particular reason. Just sort of turned it on. By the way, great event. Holy shit, a great event.

A 23-year-old Andre Arlovsky knocked out Ian the Machine Freeman on that card. I mean, it's just crazy, right? And this was the Tito versus Ken card. I watch an extraordinary amount of tape. By and large, if I watch a fighter in the modern era deal with a certain kind of situation, let's say take down defense against the double where he's actually pressed against the fence.

Okay? Sort of a very common scenario. I can use their success relative to their peers, and I can use that as a general, not of course not always super accurate, but as a general gauge on how they're going to do against somebody else in that same peer group

who might want to do the same thing. You can't do that with Habib. It doesn't work. It doesn't work at all. Like all those situations where I'm looking at Poirier's takedown defense or Gaethje's, again, you can say what you want, Poirier was never a wrestler. Okay, but Gaethje was. And takedown defense, you can say what you want about his offensive wrestling or his mat wrestling, but his takedown defense on the feet, that's what he was supposed to be a specialist in. That was the thing that made the rest of the game come to life. And it just disappeared when Habib got his hands on him, dude. It just disappeared.

That is so fucking rare, folks. I can probably count on my hand the number of fighters who have ever been able to have that issue but maybe you know uh two three fingers is really all you need to have somebody in a peer group who can be so far outside and we're not talking like you know a nude it's not women's flyweight there's not been around that long as a sort of defined weight category talking about fucking lightweight. Maybe the best division in the sport irrespective of organization. And you've got one guy.

You can look at other fighters, even ones who have relatively similar backgrounds, and you can look at these sort of situations that they all faced. And then when they face Habib, none of that shit is even close to mattering anymore. It doesn't mean anything for him. There's how fighters do against their peers at 155. And then there's how they do against Habib. And they're not the same. Especially this later stage Habib.

I mean, early on, Habib was a little bit closer to his peer group. So yes, he was better than them. But there was a little bit of close proximity where you could do that exercise. Okay, how do they do when they're pressed against the fence for a double? And how do they do against a B? But there might be some symmetry there. It's just beginning to just completely disappear. It's just shocking to watch.

Totally shocking. Or maybe they stuff the double, but then he goes to the single or the Harai Goshi or the body lock trip or whatever. Just the amount of levels he could play in that. It's completely shocking. So there have been times, to answer this question about Tony, where I was like, man, I don't know, I think Tony might be the guy. And it isn't to say that I thought Dustin, in the end,

would be able to stop Habib's takedowns and that, you know, he'd be able to, you know, fight to the fifth and make it a, you know, split decision. I always kind of thought Habib, you know, maybe he'll whiff on a few takedowns, but eventually he'll get him. But it was like utter dominance, you know? And then with Gaethje, I mean, my God, it just, you, I was, you're blown away by the ease with which he got it. Like, Khabib was getting better, way better. Like, the training and the years of investment, it was beginning to add up in a very impactful way. So while I would like to tell you, and I will tell you, that there were times where I thought,

man, I think Tony might have his number. Maybe that's me telling myself the same thing I said about a lot of his peers. And that by the time they got to face him, you realize all that shit about how they did against everyone else doesn't mean fuck all for Habib. And so, you know, your guess is as good

as mine, but I can tell you there are not many times in my life, in all the years I've been looking at footage where I can say, here's how fighters do in their peer group, elite peer group, and then here's how fighters in their elite peer group do against one guy in that peer group consistently. That is extremely rare. How do you think a current Tyron Woodley would do against a pure striker that's not Wonderboy? It's been a bit since we saw that sort of stylistic matchup in one of his fights,

and the last time we did, he dominated Darren Till. I know it's past his time, but I'm wondering if you think he may do better if he didn't have to worry about wrestling jiu-jitsu of his last three Savage opponents. Yeah, there's a big part of that, right? So, you could say, okay, what kind of striker? When you say non-Wonderboy, so non-super bladed stance, so it's a little bit half stance, and it's Southpaw, it's Orthodox, but sort of jab cross, fainting, faking, that kind of a thing. Yeah, listen.

He's lost to Kamaru, he's lost to Colby, and he's lost to Gilbert. I mean, those are three absolute hammers. Okay, all three of them are hammers. So you lose to those three, it's like, all right, you're not in that, again, you're not in that peer group anymore. Okay, but is there nobody who you could beat, especially if they weren't threatening you and bringing your hands to a position where you couldn't really let them go?

I think it'd be premature to conclude he couldn't do that. At the same time, it also looks to me like, you know, there's a substantial decline from the peak of what we saw, say, versus Lawler or something like that. So it's probably a little bit of both. How would a fight between Ryan Hall and Habib look in your opinion? That's an interesting one. You know, you'd probably favor Habib for his size and defense and his ground and pound. Plus just his pressure against the fence line, you know. But Hall could make it interesting, that's for sure. I just feel like, you know, the problem

would be that Hall would shoot up submissions from underneath, especially from guard or something like that. And Habib is so big and strong. You know, Habib's a board, he's not quite welterweight, but he's not far from it either. And you know And that punishment begins to rain down on a guy who's more of a much more natural 145-er. Man, that weight difference, you're going to see it. You're going to feel it. And the strength difference, you're going to see it. You're going to feel it. Does Ryan Hall have, I'm very biased towards Ryan, but does he have the kind of technical wizardry and innovative approach to the game that were weight not an issue

could give Habib serious problems. Yes, I think that probably could. If you get a 155er who could match the physical intensity of somebody like that and also had all those tricks underneath, that could be a problem. That could be a real problem. But as it stands, that's not exactly what we have.

The WBC's new weight class. By the way, so you know how folks in MMA want like a cruiserweight? WBC now has a space between cruiserweight and heavyweight, which is called bridgerweight. I mean, you couldn't, just ruining the product, but okay. Uh, why do you think the UFC doesn't follow a similar model to boxing of having belts other than undisputed slash interim champion? While I agree that with most that boxing is far too many belts and the whole picture there is very convoluted. I mean, you're answering your own question. The UFC have thrown interim belts around in the past

to save cards or promote fights to number one contender status. Considering the UFC's clear focus on profit, I find it surprising they haven't got something like a youth or continental champion that they can use as a marketing ploy when promoting up-and-coming fighters. It's sort of like addition by subtraction a little bit, whereas when there's a ufc title up for grabs it means more because there's fewer of them i don't know what the actual research shows in a much fuller picture but that's sort of my hunch

um but the other part is it just looks like a cheap ploy you know i'm not sure how much a bridge or weight is going to add to any particular card um and more to the point ufc kind of did this a little bit with the bmf belt now they said it was a one-time thing maybe he'll put it on the line again i guess we'll see but that was one of those belts where it's sort of unclear but yet kind of cool status that one could have. I've heard and read speculation about the option to take fights to New Zealand for the possibility of fan attendance, but I'm pretty sure they already have fans in the U.S.

The governor of Florida, I mean, a real fucking genius he is, gave the okay to sports teams to fill stadiums last month. Full on? Is Dana and the UFC, are they being surprisingly safe by not having fans in attendance yet? Have you heard anything about when they hope to have fans back? By the way, I'm not advocating for fan attendance.

Just surprised it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, I'm a little bit surprised too. You know, Showtime tried that thing. Well, really, it was a PBC thing. Showtime broadcasted. But, you know, with the Tank Davis and Leo Santa Cruz fight, I got to tell you, I'm not sure how I feel about the crowd aspect of it. I mean, the fight was phenomenal.

And the result, obviously, the uppercut was great. Because what you can do is, it turns out, of course, if, you know, let's say it was the Alamo Dome or any dome, let's say the place holds, you know, I'll make up a number, you know, 50,000. Okay, well, you can have, you know, 5,000 or 10,000 fans in there, and that's a thing that's easy to control. So you don't have to have the full crowds,

but, you know, are people really wearing their masks? I mean, they're cheering, you know, are they really socially distancing? Like you can control for one factor. I don't know how much you can control for all the factors. And I think that to me makes me a little bit more nervous. Now, if it's open air and people actually are socially distancing, then the mask thing becomes a little bit less of an issue unless they're dealing in close quarters. But I mean like actually in the attendance lane. Yeah, I mean, look, I think if you're the – I mean, look, the numbers in this country are just a fucking nightmare.

I mean, they are a complete nightmare. And it turns out like since we've last had this conversation, not every part of Europe certainly, but big parts of Europe fuck this up royally. They've had their own issues. You know, we had 140,000 cases. I mean, yesterday we lost 1,500 Americans. That's 10 times what we might lose on any given day due to car wrecks. Oh, people die in car wrecks all the time.

Yeah, well, imagine when they're happening at 10 times the rate that they normally happen. That's what you're getting right now. And by the way, we're almost, I mean, we'll have to see, but it seems almost inevitable that we are going to lose more than 2000 people a day coming here soon with the amount of like cases fucking exploding everywhere. So we'll see how that goes. You know, my guess is if you're one of these promoters or a sports entity generally, I understand the UFC's... Listen, I had all the criticism in the world of the UFC up front,

but what was my line in the sand? Or not line in the sand, rather. What was my... The thing that I was looking for to get back to normal, and it was work with the commission, have the commission develop protocol for it. And once they do, there's a lot of reasons to think that this is doable at scale. It turns out that I feel like that view has held up pretty well. Now, a lot of fights still fall through, but you can't, to my knowledge,

you can't trace any outbreak to any of these events. With the COVID testing, with the quarantining, with all the various measures that they have done in working with these commissions to keep the rate of transmission quite low, they have been largely successful with that. If you bring in the crowd and you have full attendance, I mean, the amount of scrutiny and judgment and potential blowback that you could hoist upon yourself is enormous. I mean, the UFC wants to be, from what I can tell, they want to be brand leaders and innovative in the space when they're doing something smart or clever or groundbreaking in some kind of way that makes the consumer experience better, that makes the brand stronger, that makes them look more forward thinking.

Having fans in attendance in a facility in Florida doesn't get you there. I mean, because the other side of the coin with MMA is, if you read the room incorrectly and you overstate your position, regulators are all too happy to come cracking down on you. Right? And imagine if Democrats win the two runoffs in Georgia. And so now with the vice president-elect, soon to be vice president Harris, being the tiebreaker, if they wanted to pass federal legislation through, that is a thing that they could, I'm not saying easily, but that's a real threat.

Forget about in individual states or whatever. And what would the Nevada Commission say or the California Commission say if you're just holding shows when COVID cases are fucking exploding across the country just because Florida has a comically lax attitude about all this stuff? You are overselling and overstating your strength of position. You know, MMA will always be on this thing where if you are upholding the highest standards of safety, if you are upholding the highest standards of innovation, of professionalism, which, you know, you can say, what about all the stuff that fighters do? That's totally off the rails, right? But no one pays attention to it. So there's never a cost to pay for it.

But as long as the public thinks you're doing those things, you're great. This is what they were trying to do by going to the Tachi Palace before a major commission had sat down and come up with protocol. That's why the blowback was extraordinary. That's where you can't do that. That would be repeating the mistakes of going to Florida tomorrow and putting a UFC show there, even if you could,

would be repeating the mistakes of going to Tachi Palace. Because even if they could have done that, and it would have been within whatever legal parameters were there, technically, the amount of scrutiny you're going to invite for that kind of an act

at this kind of a time, given who you are, that is a place you probably don't want to visit if you don't have to. And you don't have to. And the UFC is going to make a shitload of money this year. I mean, you heard Dana say it's one of our best years, blah, blah, blah. Yes, they took a hit on the gate. That's real.

But in the way they've structured their business, they are going to do quite well. Good for them. They should. I'm glad that they did. Once they got right with the commission, y'all business, they are going to do quite well. Good for them. They should. I'm glad that they did. Once they got right with the commission, y'all know, you watch what I do. What am I going to say?

Oh, you're not working with a commission? This is all a disaster? Like, just because you work with a commission doesn't make it perfect, but, you know, the Nevada commission was going pretty far. And when they were borrowing those standards for Fight Island, it seemed like,

and more, they were actually doing even more than that over there. Like, what are you supposed to complain about at that point? And we can't, to my knowledge, to my knowledge, you can't trace any outbreak there. So what are we complaining about?

There's nothing to complain about. It was all that shit they were doing beforehand, that little tiny window, which could have been bad, but it ended up not being that bad because, you know, cooler heads prevailed. But the reason you can go to New Zealand and, I mean, I guess to a lesser extent Australia, but let's just say New Zealand, is because they don't have COVID running around the country, you know, I said this before, like a fucking toddler before bath time, you know, just going ape shit around the house. So, you know, you could do it in Florida.

I just think the amount of blowback you would get would be extraordinary. It just makes, to me, a lot more sense to do it in New Zealand and Florida because you don't have to change your local pay-per-view time here because the Kiwis and the Aussies are used to watching it sort of like how we watch NFL football here. uh, McGregor Poirier, more likely to occur in January or December, January

questions about how Rico Verhoeven would do an MMA. And then Cedric Numbay. Uh, I don't know about Cedric, but Rico had a fight in MMA. It looked pretty good, but then Gloria offered him more money. So he said,

fuck it. Why do you think that the music that is played during the fight or walkout portion of pay-per-view cards is sometimes dubbed over with other music after the 1421 days of the actual event? Because it costs more money to have the rights to it in perpetuity. That's why. any book recommendations off the top of your head I got my own books I have to finish reading let's see

I'll pull one from the old Kindle that I read that you donks can read I'll have to go pick up my dog. Got Barbas sent him to the, not the cleaners. What do you call them? The groomers today. All right. So let's pull up the old Kindle, the Kindle app. All right. What's a book I can recommend in here that's not super dry reading that you guys might like? How about... Jesus, there's a lot of books in here that you fuckers will not like. Not because they're, like, super political, just um just dry ass reading it's another one here another one here that i can like recommend easily

problem is everything i'm going to recommend you guys you're going to fucking be like oh that's i put out i put out a recommendation on Instagram because folks were asking in the wake of my Rogan appearance for stuff on anti-doping. So I recommended six books that you could read. People were like, just fucking dry reading. Well, yeah. Yeah, not everything you can get from watching the Mickey Mouse Club.

Sometimes you've got to put on your big boy pants and you've got to crack a book and you've got to read it. People are like, oh, is there something you can watch in video form? No. No, not everything is distillable that way. Here, here's a book you can read that is...

I've mentioned it before, I'll mention it again. The Curse. four, I'll mention it again. The curse, let's see if we can focus, show the auto focus on those cameras. Good. There you go. The curse of bigness, antitrust in the new gilded age, Tim Wu. You know, there's this debate we have, you know, okay, so I've been dying to make this point. You know how there's this debate going around now about tech censorship? And tech censorship, to be clear, folks are like, oh, you're in fucking favor of that? Why would I be in favor of that? Certainly, I don't think all of it is bad, but there's many problems with it.

One is that you have these tech overlords who are deciding what constitutes a valid opinion and whatnot, which is just fraught with peril. And one of the things that it shuts out is that it shuts out what they're going to say are extremes on either end, but it's really they go much further than that. It's basically almost anything outside of the Overton window. So the Overton window is this concept that inside of this imaginary window are the amount of things you could talk about around a certain topic

or in a certain topic or in a certain company or whatever the situation may be that are acceptable opinions to have. And there's a range, but that's the acceptable range. What if you're outside the Overton window? The implication would be that, well, if you're outside the Overton window, it must be because you have some kind of extreme, irredeemable, stupid, false opinion. But it's really not true because the question is, what is defining the Overton window? And tech censorship as a function of defining the Overton window

is a dangerous idea because you're going to be losing potential ideas that are not fitting in with the sort of mainstream norm that still people might benefit from hearing. It could actually end up being correct. It's just that that opinion is ahead of its time or whatever the case may be. So tech censorship is real. It's a real problem, and the answers are not going to be obvious on how you fix it. Except there's one thing here that no one seems to be talking about, which is the consolidation of industry generally, and in particular, tech. Tim Wu has another book called The Master Switch.

Do I have it up here? Yes. This. Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia University. Okay, the rise and fall of information empires. Tim Wu is a, he was a Supreme court clerk. He is the guy who invented the term. This is the guy, Tim Wu is the guy who invented the term net neutrality. You guys have probably heard that. Okay. I'm not going to get back into it, but okay. So he, in this book, the master switch, there we are, Tim Wu. In this book, he makes a basic argument. If you look at the history and the development of new technologies,

so in this particular case, the telephone or the radio or the television, what you notice is that at the advent of this technology, when it first is developed, there is this incredible period where there's this burst of innovation around usage of this technology, of all the firms looking to compete for consumers, of consumers benefiting from all of these different firms trying to leverage this technology in an interesting and new and helpful way. But what ends up happening is over time, each of these industries begins to consolidate. And either a few players end up dominating or even one dominates.

And that's when regulation comes into play. Now, the difference between the master switch and the curse of bigness is that this is broadly about our current existing society and how we have, even though this is like just very few telecom companies, there's very few airlines, and you can go on down the list.

It's like, has no one noticed? It's not quite monopolization, but it's these industry consolidations that are happening that are reducing consumer choice, that are reducing business transparency, that are making our lives harder, and they're not improving the product. I mean, there's all kinds of harms, some worse than others, associated with this consolidation. And in this book, The Master Switch, he goes through

with evidence all of this burst of innovation with new technology and then industry consolidation. And the point he makes in it is that the internet is experiencing and is going through a serious process of consolidation. Do you guys remember years ago, in the aughts, maybe 15 years ago or so, even before that a little bit, yes, Google was one of the more important search engines, but there were many. When I was in college, AltaVista was a major search engine. Yahoo was a major search engine. There was real parity in the internet. You could develop your own blog and other blogs could link to it. You didn't necessarily have to have this reliance on Google as a search engine to get an audience. consolidated in a major, major way. This is my point about the tech debate. Part of the reason why folks are so focused on tech censorship, but they're not making this point, is because we are living right now in the age of platforms. If you want to win in the current internet, you have to win on YouTube. You have to win on Instagram. You have to win on Twitter. You have to win on Google.

You have to win on Facebook. And you don't have to win on all of them necessarily. Obviously, you can just pick one. But you have to dominate on basically a handful of platforms that exist. And if you don't, you just go away. There's no other real way to develop an audience or get your opinion heard or be a part of this exchange of ideas or have a business that has some kind of visibility and it's because as tim wu has rightly argued in my view antitrust in this country is not doing its job part of the reason and the the mistake of this debate about tech censorship is if we were living in the internet that existed 20, the internet 20 years ago wasn't as developed and the products weren't as good.

But the openness of the internet, the ability to reach out to an audience without reliance on individual strong platforms, was much better 20 years ago. So if one particular platform banned you or censored you, it didn't necessarily mean a whole lot because you had all these other options. It was a much more democratized space. But what has happened in 20 years is major consolidation. So now when Facebook is deciding what counts as a good opinion and what doesn't, you have much, much, much more severe consequences to those ideas, to your livelihood, to your visibility. To me, you cannot have a debate about tech censorship and what to do about it unless you are also having a conversation about antitrust and about how big tech has consolidated the internet and made it much

less usable relative to the way it used to be 20 years ago by consolidating on the platforms. YouTube today is no doubt better as an experience than it was 20 years ago. There's no denying that. But the age of the blogs and the aughts was much better for getting your opinion out there and much easier without as many barriers to entry or tech censorship and overlords telling you what goes and what doesn't. So there's this case now before the DOJ with Google. Who was the woman who was the, I'll tell you the name of this person. You can look her up. I just discovered her myself. I cannot claim to be some kind of an expert on this far from it. Um, there's a woman who

is just really, really amazing. Uh, what is her name here? Hold on. Uh, hold on just a second Okay. The woman I'm talking about is... What's her name? Lena Kahn. She published a paper on antitrust that has had an enormous effect. In fact, because of her work, she also served on the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. She helped expose how Silicon Valley's... How they use data and power to undercut, threaten, and swallow up competition. She had a major impact.

I've been sort of researching her. Dude, big tech needs some antitrust intervention. Our consumer choices more generally need some antitrust intervention. In fact, in this book here, Tim Wu goes through and talks about Bell and Bell being broken up as a telephone company and how much better it was for consumers afterwards. Now, there's been a subsequent AT&T gobbling up of everything. Again, there's been a reconsolidation and a process that's happened.

But basically the argument that he makes is that some form of antitrust intervention is required to keep the industries healthy and to service the consumer. So y'all can sit here and bitch about what Facebook and Twitter are doing, but to me, it's like this is just a totally incomplete debate. The debate goes much beyond that, and it goes into the consolidation of industry, and in particular, telecom and internet, and how that is impacting speech, private or otherwise, and who has an opinion that folks get to listen to and who has say over these issues. It is not just about, oh, I don't want my opinion censored or approved or whatever by

Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, of course, nobody does. I would rather have a much more open internet where I don't even have to worry about that kind of consideration even if he did pull that trigger. That is the point that I would like to make. Okay. All right. We will end on that, shall we? All right. So with that in mind, hit that subscribe button, thumbs up on this bitch. You know what I'm saying? The whole nine yards. Read Tim Wu's The Master Switch. By the way, Curse of Bigness. I think I have a copy right here.

Yes. Here it is. Curse of Bigness is small. Look. It's very short. Curse of Bigness is only, if you don't count citations, it's just 139 pages. It's short. Now, master switch, a little bit longer. Master switch is, yeah, it's about 300. So it's about twice the size. Curse of bigness

is very short, very easy to read, and gives you a real key blueprint to understanding our consolidated industries. And why, last thing I'll say in this, you all remember when that dude got his teeth broken because he didn't want to get off the United flight, or whatever American or whatever airline it was, and everyone's like, I'm going to boycott this airline. No the fuck you're not.

You can't. I mean, some people can work it in a very unique way, but the way in which the airlines have consolidated and constructed their business such that they only service certain hubs in certain ways and there's only a handful of them really in the United States anyway, they're not really subject to mass boycott

because it's not really possible to do. I mean, doesn't that tell you something incredibly fucked up about the state of airlines? Again, pre-pandemic. Yeah, it should. That there's a consolidation that has happened that is not in your interest. Not in my interest, not in yours,

not in anybody's, except theirs. And there needs to be intervention on that. All right. Morning Combat, tomorrow, 11 a.m. We'll go over Bellator 252. What else will we do? We will go over the UFC card for Saturday as well. There's some Canelo news we'll get to.

There's a lot of good stuff, okay?