MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Vegas 11: Woodley vs. Covington, Khamzat Chimaev | Lubin vs. Gausha | MORNING KOMBAT | Ep. 61

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

On episode 61 of Morning Kombat Luke and Brian recap the weekend in combat sports, including Colby Covington beating Tyron Woodley at UFC Vegas 11 and Erickson Lubin picking up a big win in boxing over Terrell Gausha. The boys also look ahead to the massive weekend coming up in combat sports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is Monday, September 21st, 2020, and it is time, donks, for Morning Combat. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. I am one half of the hosting duo here. I am joined by the gentleman on the other side of the screen. We're both from CBS Sports, but he is the conspiracy to my theory. It is the one and only Brian Campbell. Brian, could you believe this week will be the first time we see each other, in person anyway, since March? Can you believe that?

Wow, wow. It's been a long time, Luke, since we've rocked and rolled, and I am fired up. Luke, for all intents and purposes, this is the biggest week of your life, of your career, of your existence on this earth. So shout out to you and the MK merch right now. The new glasses makes you very studious, very William & Mary.

And I don't know why your shot is more zoomed in than mine. Maybe Jay can get in on that. But look, guys, this is it. You know what I mean? This may not be a typical Morning Combat week because of the live events, the double pay-per-view going on. But this is, like we said, Luke, this is the launch

for better or worse we're going to be hitting you up many times this week okay we're going to be banging that drum slowly if you will uh i am so fired up once again welcome to the family hope you enjoyed the vacation luke uh i'm ready i'm ready for this okay it's double charlo it's ufc two five three i am so i have feelings luke that are deep in the loins just bubbling up well you know what i i have uh not quite the same feelings but i'm certainly excited as you guys may know this weekend is a big weekend for all combat sports fans as brian just alluded to on the mma side ufc 253 on the boxing side it's the charlo double header if you guys did not already know it is

worth saying right now brian and i essentially two different cards it will start at 7 p.m in the east on pay-per-view for showtime the first charlo jermall charlo brother will fight that card will end there'll be a 30-minute intermission before the next card begins again one pay-per-view price for the both of the cards the intermission will be brian and i probably breaking down the last card setting up the next one my first debut on pay-per-view i'm pretty excited plus ufc 253 so i want to say this brian we don't know exactly how this is going to go you and i are going to be doing the weigh-in stream and the press conference stream and that intermission on pay-per-view we're also going to be bringing you wednesday presser press conference stream and that intermission on pay-per-view we're also going

to be bringing you wednesday presser press conference stream we're going to host it get ready you're going to be able to hear interviews with all the fighters hear us break it down friday check your check your local listings there but late morning we're going to hit you up we're going to host that way and get you fired up and then as you mentioned luke that halftime show but that's just the beginning and this that hasn't been a halftime show this good since Shakira and J-Lo. More to the point, we're also going to be bringing you special extra MK episodes this week

on top of our coverage of the Charlo doubleheader live from the Mohegan Sun. Some of them may not be live. We'll see how that goes. But all I'm saying is expect a ton of content this week. Both of us will be at the Mohegan Sun by tonight. Now, with that in mind, BC. You want to see a wardrobe malfunction at the halftime show?

Pay it, all right? Pay that man his money. Let's go. Double Charlo, six fights, five title fights, maybe the two most important and toughest fights of the great Charlo's career. This is going to be a great night of action. And, oh, by the way, Luke, we have a box of sex called adesanya costa so this is what a what a time wait what a time brother for folks who haven't done the math yet and we'll start the show here in

just a second between the two events the charlo doubleheader and ufc 253 there are seven world title fights this weekend five on the boxing side, two on the MMA side. It is, uh, combat sports weekends basically don't come a whole lot better than this. So we have a lot to do. Now we are going to preview most of that throughout the coming week. What we have to do first, BC, is number one, if you want to try Showtime, you can try it for free. Go to Showtime.com.

You can get a 30-day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can try it for free go to showtime.com you can get a 30-day free trial if you like it you can keep it if not you can pound sand if you want sweet morning combat gear like this go to store.show that's sho.com plenty of morning combat gear up there and uh certainly give the video a thumbs up hit that subscribe button this is the week where mk really sort of launches into its second third maybe fourth maybe even fifth gear. We will see. And I just wanted to jump in there and say a lot of people have reached out and said, hey, remember that show you guys did with Maura Rinaldo and Scott Coker, Morning Combat Strike Force Classics?

You want to find that? There's only one place. It's by subscribing to Showtime. It's got its own folder under that app. That is worth it right there. Get your 30 days going. After you watch that Suge Knight documentary, check in with what MK's doing, relive some strike force classics let's do this it's finally

happening the head the head is out luke okay all this talk all this teasing this is the week that you prove whether cbs made a sound financial investment do they know i work for them it's a very sort of uh we'll see how that goes. Debatable. It's certainly debatable. All right, BC, we got a lot to get to in the coming week, but first things first, we got to recap the weekend that was. Let's start that now. Over the weekend, UFC Vegas 11 took place. In your main event, Brian, I will go to you first. Tyron Woodley losing essentially via TKO fifth round injury, but as you know, the story

of the fight was that Colby Covington basically walked away with it, especially as the fight more or less wore on. Let's start with the first question here, Brian. Should Tyron Woodley retire? Yeah, 1,000%. You know, we can bring out the Prince Nassim meme and be like, you know, I know it's too harsh, I think he should finish. Unfortunately, he should have finished a while ago.

It took us a while to really figure out whoa whoa hopefully people didn't hear that same echo i did in my ear uh it took us it took us a while to figure out was that one bad night against usman was that two bad nights against gilbert burns no it's over unfortunately it's over tyron woodley as dana white basically alluded to he should be done and i know in this case luke there is that whole thing about the rib injury the broken rib and i'm not saying that's not legit right but that did happen somewhat later in the fight and it just comes to a certain point where you can't lean on that as some sort of crutch or excuse and i'm not necessarily saying tyron did to try to say look that fight could have gone differently or really the rest of my career could

go differently it can't his fighting spirit has been extinguished, Luke. It's not that he's not a real man and not a warrior. I mean, look, he took punishment against Gilbert Burns and like he patted himself on the back this past week, he did go five rounds and finish the fight. But the point is he's not willing to pull the trigger anymore. He's not willing to risk it all and find out what he needs to do in order to win these fights it's like he goes in there luke he he tests the temperature of the water he says i'm not going to be able to win this fight on my own terms so i'm just going to survive and that doesn't work certainly at the elite level that's how you're going to get yourself hurt and to be even more critical because this is our job that's how you produce really

boring fights which for the most part this fight was even though to be honest more critical because this is our job that's how you produce really boring fights which for the most part this fight was even though to be honest Woodley did let his hands go more against Colby than I think he did against uh Kamaru and Gilbert Burns combined it's tough for me to see this because I've been on the Tyron bandwagon for a while okay there are very few Luke extended championship reigns in this promotion's history. This is why we need to bow down at the altar of the John Joneses, Amanda Nunes, GSP, those type of fighters who've been able to package wins over such a long period of time. Tyron Woodley had a great welterweight title run.

I don't want to hear it from anybody. A great one. He figured out how to beat all of these fighters in that 4-5 defense run that he had um by beating them at their own strength but he's not that guy anymore and i love him i want to give him historically the respect he deserves as one of the better champions in ufc's modern history here but it's not only over luke it's it was probably over in round one against usman we just didn't know it something happened during that stretch we could say the rap album we could say the TMZ show we can say a lot of things he's also in his late 30s you can get old overnight it can be physically or it could be mentally and I think more than anything this is mentally he doesn't want to be there in there anymore Luke and I don't

think he should be I mean people talk about how boring the Woodley versus Maya fight was and I'm not here to endorse that view, but I am here to say it is certainly a perception among some fans. In that fight, Tyron Woodley landed nearly 60 significant strikes. I don't think he landed 60 combined in the last two of them. Here are some of the numbers here. I mean, he might have hit 60, but barely. The last three fights were all five round fights, right? 34 strikes he landed against Usman, 28 against Woodley, 34 against, excuse me, against Burns, 34 against Covington. He got his guard passed in total 12 times during the course of those

three fights. He's been taken down eight times in the course of those three fights. He had a submission attempted against him for the first time, really, in his whole, I think, UFC career. No, I think Till attempted one as well. No, actually, no, that's it. That's it. Just the one there. In any event, you're seeing numbers here in terms of his record low output and then record high output of his opponents. We have seen this in boxing a little bit more readily. When someone is at the end of the line, what are some of the trademark sort of tales that you can see, the signs that this is time to hang it up?

And usually it's an unwillingness to offensively engage. They just stop throwing. The one that always comes to mind for me, I don't know why, but it sticks out in my mind, Brian Campbell, is Kermit Cintron. You could just tell at the end there. He just didn't want to throw anymore. And it's not like Woodley has been battered through the course of his career. Even in this fight, he didn't get battered.

Covington scored less significant strikes than Burns, who scored less significant strikes than Usman. In some ways, it was maybe one of the better performances minus the fifth round injury but the key here is he just doesn't have a willingness to offensively fight uh a fight is sort of two sides right on the one hand there's defense which you have to really be mindful of because hello the other person is a paid professional athlete who is there to to do some work so understanding that that's a part of the responsibility is quite literally essential but there there's another half to it, which is the offensive side, which is really, frankly, the winning side. He's been doing a lot of defending and surviving.

That is not sufficient. So you can look at the numbers. You can look at the body language. You can also look at just the fact that he's 38 years of age. He'll be 39 next April. He is the oldest UFC welterweight champion ever, and he held it into a later year than any other UFC champion at welterweight ever has. And that speaks highly to his ability to persevere and succeed in a frame that literally no one

else ever could. It also tells you that maintaining that is going to be very, very, very difficult. If he were fighting three round fights, that means he would have lost four fights consecutively, 14 rounds plus that last 15th round. That would have been three fights consecutively. He would have had a full on shutout and then a fifth fight where he would have lost the first round and then gotten stopped in the second. If he was on a five-fight losing streak, almost anybody would say it's time. 14, basically 15 consecutive rounds of taking an L is the kind of broad swath of information you need to say

it is time to begin to look for the exit door. No, it's time to run through the exit door, Luke. It's not pussyfoot around. It's time to kick that door open because we have it. This is such a unique fall off the cliff because as you sort of tease there normally it's a guy getting knocked the hell out who still has the fighting spirit that we tell it's time to go i don't think we've ever seen a guy lose the title in subsequent fights just on a failure to launch like this this is as unique in terms of the wheel falling off as i can remember from an elite fighter but it

doesn't make it any less the same. Like you're saying, there's the exit. It's time to go. Right, but this is also what you know from combat sports too, Brian. You get old overnight. It just kind of happens, just like that. Some can push that out. Some can find the fountain of youth for a second gear Alistair Overeem,

who we talked about the last time I was on the show. Those are real things. But in general, when you get old in this game, you just get old quickly, especially in a hyper-competitive division like 170 pounds. Listen, I believe you can make a very clear case that Tyron Woodley is the third best UFC welterweight champion of all time. I would put Matt Hughes ahead of him

based on the record of accomplishment, and certainly St. Pierre. But I think he probably is ahead of Pat Miletic, who would be the other sort of obvious choice there. That is a very, very, very good run. But the run has come to an end here. And it has been probably insulting to him to see what has happened in the last two fights before this one.

Well, now we're adding injury to insult. This should not be able to continue anymore, and even Dana White said as much. Now, Brian we're adding injury to insult. This should not be able to continue anymore, and even Dana White said as much. Now, Brian, we go back to you. What about the other side of the equation? Colby Covington, again, didn't have the same output, at least from a statistical standpoint, that Gilbert Burns did. Certainly not as much as Kamaru Usman did, but he also got the injury stoppage, which, you know, he was putting pressure on him. I'm not sure how much you can credit him for that, But hey, he was winning that one walking away. He is ranked number two currently at welterweight.

Should his next fight be a title shot? Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO eclipse rise visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply it shouldn't but it should be something that's arguably just as good he should fight jorge masvidal next luke

and i'd be perfectly fine if it was a pay-per-view main event. I don't need an interim title thrown in there, but I think both would understand you're fighting for a chance to fight for a title. I'm glad that Dana White stuck to his guns and more or less infirm that it's still going to be Gilbert Burns getting that shot at Usman. He deserves it.

I don't want to hear the Leon Edwards arguments until he beats a top-five guy, even though he's won 17 fights in a row. But I think that makes the most sense because Colby fought great. He did exactly what he had to do, avoided the big shots, never got into any kinds of trouble, and just did what he does, which is grind. I don't think he should skip the line, even with the potential of the grudge match rematch and how good that first fight was against Kamaru Usman here.

Gilbert Burns is red hot. Let's reward him. But I think you've got to go Colby against Masvidal. This is the most pure way, in my eyes, for Masvidal to get back to a title shot legitimately by going in there and beating a top guy and not just sort of, you know, going, let's say, the Nate Diaz part two route and then waiting around. I want to see Jorge carry out this serious side of his career where it is now suddenly for him in his late 30s about trying to find out how

great he can be well I think look you know it's on him that he took that fight last minute and you get both the rewards and the criticism that comes with it when he was unable to go out there and really give us five hard rounds I think he's got to earn his way back in, and I'd much rather see him fight a Colby Covington, given the history between them. Look, Luke, this was supposed to be the grudge match of the century, Covington-Woodley, and for many different reasons that I'm sure we're going to get into in a second,

it was not promoted the way you would think it would. It slipped in under the radar on the calendar like, oh crap, that's this weekend? And that's a fight night main event good god let's do it i mean this should have been a super bowl of of of kind of grudge and hate in in in good ways there's different kinds but i think you can still have that with jorge and i want to see that that's the fight to make but at the very least look colby told showed you right there that he is of the very elite in this division and honestly in this sport. I still think at the end of the day he's Kamaru Usman Light

and he wouldn't be able to get over that hill. But that's why we watched the fights. He pushed Kamaru for five incredible rounds in their first fight. They chose not to wrestle. They banged, brother. And I know he's got some of those controversy elements to lean on with the referee jumping in and all that. But I want to see him earn it and get back there this was a huge first step against Woodley but now he's got to do

it in my eyes against a a big one in Masvidal let me pitch it right back to you which is to say the following I don't really disagree with anything you're saying look you can't go wrong with Colby versus Jorge and frankly if it comes to it you can't really go wrong with Colby versus Kamaru too. Now, I'm not saying that that's the best way to go, but he is ranked number two. You saw them have this exchange post fight on the ESPN plus show. Obviously he's a worthy adversary. Their first fight was actually kind of fun. So there's a lot of reasons why you could get away with that. But let me ask you this, Brian, we're all kind of banking on the idea that it is Kamaru Usman, and maybe in fact it will be, but we at least have to consider the

possibility that it won't be. So what would you say should be next if Gilbert Burns wins? Because if you burn Colby versus Jorge, Leon's still waiting on a fight. Gilbert might not be able to get back into rotation very soon. You're kind of taking away a contender for someone who might need it because I don't have a desire short short of some crazy circumstance, to see an immediate rematch between Burns and Usman if Burns wins in some kind of fairly legitimate way. I think you stay on course. If Burns wins the title from Usman, I think you would have already scheduled Colby against Jorge if you go that direction, and then the winners fight each other, but obviously UFC could take the route of leaving Colby as sort of the last minute replacement should somebody miss weight

in that fight and if that's the case you'd go right to Colby he you know look he's done this as close as you can come to deserving he's right there on the outside looking in I have no problem with that Luke the potential problem is the other side of it which I'm I think it's worth getting into I mean I don't know if you saw this morning, Dan Lebitard let off his national show with this topic. I mean, bigger than Woodley's rib, it's the talk between them, and it's what's going on in terms of their mouths right now. All right, so let's get into that. This will be the last topic on this particular fight,

but it's sort of a broader one more generally. As you guys may have seen, it's not been any kind of secret. Colby Covington has sort of turned himself into a Donald Trump mascot um supporter certainly and Tyron Woodley has been very advocate on the very very vocal I should say on the other side of things Kamaru's been a little bit less so still there's a bigger and broader question here where you had former um UFC light heavyweight champion and hall of famer Tito Ortiz calling Tyron Woodley a terrorist. You had essentially Colby Covington signing off on it, calling him more of a terrorist sympathizer. But nevertheless, saying these incendiary things.

Brian, I'll go to you first. One more time here. The basic question is as follows. Should UFC regulate fighters' pre-fight speech? Yes, to a point luke it's hard to say hard and fast yes or no in this case because i don't want it to be yes i never want a situation where anyone has controlled speech i want a colin kaepernick to be able to put across his message on the nfl field as much as anybody else I also love that fights in the fight game is a little bit different, right? We can trade non-PC words at each other because it's a fight at the

end of the day and half the job of a fighter, I'm sorry, it really is, is hyping up that fight. I do think though there are lines and limitations where if the UFC does not want to step in, then there are potential pitfalls and results of the conduct. And I think it goes back, Luke, to the debate you and I had back in the day on the great MMA beat when Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov were going back and forth. They got into the religion. It got into Khabib's wife.

And it got to a certain level. And, Luke, this was after UFC 229 when they had the attack in the cage where i remember you and i asking each other you know is this too far should dana step in at that point we both agreed yes and there was a reason if you're going to allow that level of trash talk back and forth you're going to have extended people whether it's the camps of both fighters or the fan bases of both fighters that aren't going to take that as typical trash talk, which is why we saw that brawl after 229. That, luckily for the UFC, was contained at a level where we are allowed to look back at history

and be like, wow, wasn't that crazy? Habib made Conor tap, and then they had to fight off each other in the cage. But let's not forget how freaking close that came to being the NBA Palace Brawl. And I don't care what you call me in response to that. I'll soy boy for up the nines for this I was in the crowd and Habib's manager got tackled onto my laptop there in the front row of the media section and ish was wild people were jumping in from the crowd that almost went into a full-on thing that the UFC would never want right you would never want fans to have fear of entering into an arena that they could basically be involved in the violence. So when I say that there is a limit, it's a soft yes. UFC has to put in some element here because

if a fighter wants to take a political stance, that's on them, right? As much as Dana wants to be like, we don't want to talk about COVID in the UFC. We want this to be a safe space where you can come in and not deal with the headlines of the real world and just focus on fights. Well, that's fine until you have fighters who really want to make a statement. And I know it doesn't look great, Luke, and it shouldn't, that the UFC happens to support the same cause that Colby does, so there's no problem in letting him run his mouth on the mic. I do think there's limits, though, when Colby has the kind of speech

that he did both before and after this fight that seemed to go further than politics when he's saying I hate Tyron Woodley because he stands for everything I hate like the black uh like the BLM and all that I think you're crossing a line into into areas of hate and it's not that I don't think someone should have a space to give their own stance on politics religion on life on treatment on right? You want to make that stand? It's up to the UFC to pull the microphone eventually and give you that space for as long as they will. Just like when fighters get on the microphone and try to call out their sponsors, right?

The announcer goes, okay, that's it, great, great talking to you, good win. There's a limit to things. If you don't put in those limitations, there may be consequences. And I think Colby showed us, Luke, the pro wrestling side of him ahead of that Usman fight where he didn't do the trash talk like crazy he admitted in that interview that this is all an act well he's doubled down on that act to the point that it is gray and I'm not here to tell you like the Colby character needs to go we need villains in this sport but if you're going to allow unlimited free speech you are setting up the potential for consequences and results.

I don't know whether it's violence outside the cage or the arena or whatever, but you're going to create volatile situations with that. It's a gray area, Luke, at best. But it's only going to take one bad consequence to sort of pull back and be like, you know, there's a limit to trash talk here. I mean, it reminds me of the debate around big tech, right? These platforms like YouTube and Facebook, and they allow these provocateurs essentially on either side to say incredibly inflammatory, often totally false, outrageous things. And there's a debate here. It's like, do we just allow them to say that? Or does big tech step in and then censor them?

Well, the problem with censorship is that once you allow big tech to start having a say over who gets to have a say, they begin to just essentially take out anything that's not a centrist element and important voices that could be unfairly grouped with extremities of a fringe movement now lose out on their chance to voice opposition outside of the Overton window, right? So you don't really know what to do. But here's the problem. If you just let everybody have a voice and say whatever they want to say, now you get to a situation where you have these platforms which have proliferated across the world

that have radicalized young people, particularly young men, and it has turned them into, it has damaged democracy deeply, not just here but abroad as well. It is bad for society. It is bad for any kind of, the social fabric is fraying in no small part because of the radicalization of the online platforms that are designed to maximize false, conspiratorial, and frankly damaging information. Now, Dana White asked a question at the Post-Five press conference, who is more free speech than us? I would like to give an answer to that. When it comes to fighters saying what they want to, it is very true that they are very hands-off, perhaps

to your point, Brian, to a fault. On the other hand, when it comes to criticism about the UFC, they're a little bit more like North Korea. This is an organization that has blackballed unapologetically multiple reporters from multiple legitimate outlets. They made people sign COVID waivers, although I think a lot of that has gone away. Certainly in every UFC contract I've ever seen, there is a clause that prohibits fighters from discussing the specifics of their pay and so on and so on. So to answer the question about who cares more about free speech than us, I would say, relative to those concerns, literally anybody, literally anyone is more forgiving of that than them. The reason why I think that they let the fighters say what they

say, remember, there's one key piece of information here that's worth keeping in mind, BC, which is that on the books, the code of conduct is still there. They have previously fined fighters like Nate Diaz for anti-gay slurs. You can agree, you can not agree, but it did, in fact, happen. They have completely moved away from that. Why? The reason why they're so pro-free speech is not because they have some genteel idea about Madisonian politics and the way things should be in a free and equal society. It's because you begin to blur the line between independent contractor and employee, and they don't want to get sideways with that when they already have this lawsuit ongoing that appears to be headed in the plaintiff's direction.

That's going to be the former fighters suing them for money. So what is the right answer here? Let me explain something to you very quickly. If you call Tyron Woodley a terrorist, there are two problems with that. Number one, the only people who can do that are profoundly stupid and totally unencumbered by the facts. That is a reckless, absurd, fact-free assertion that does not deserve to be taken seriously, except for the second part, which is that it is incredibly dangerous. You keep letting people do stuff like this, and somebody is going to get hurt. I don't know if it's Tyron Woodley. I don't know if it's tomorrow.

You allow rhetoric like this that is not really dangerous because of what it says, but what it says is also totally false. We're going to have problems. These are people who, in this particular case, right-wing provocateurs, who like to just label people different from them with these incredibly awful labels, like Marxist, like communist. These are people who could not tell you anything about Marxism other than what Facebook told them. These are people who know nothing about communism other than what Facebook told them. These are people who know nothing about communism other than what Facebook told them. And to be clear, communism

has its own massive set of evils, and I am no Marxist. That is a thing that you cannot sign onto. But we're talking about deeply ignorant people sharing profoundly stupid ideas that also happen to be very, very dangerous. The UFC does need to step in when it comes to that. I don't know if they need to fine them or throw them in jail. I'm not suggesting that. But having a word with them might be a good idea because this is a path to a very, very, very bad place. Last thing on this, BC.

Hate speech laws. Maybe we go an hour on this. Last thing, last thing, last thing. Hate speech laws in this country never survive judicial review. I know we've got to move on. They never survive judicial review. You can't pass laws or even as a private entity rules about this. They won't survive in court.

I'm not suggesting as much. I'm not calling for anyone to lose their job. I'm not calling for anyone to be fined. But a level of decency, a norm that you stick stick to if you lose sight of that you are in big big trouble and we are tumbling down that hill at record speed right and it's it's it's tough it's a gray area when again ufc and dana white are extremely pro trump so anything colby does with the red hat on it starts to look like they're backing that as well and by the way just so we can say this colby talking to donald trump on the phone is like a fun viral moment is as far as i'm

concerned sure will be though on the microphone going level of terrorist and basically i mean look there were some things he said that almost sounded straight up hatred of black people and i know uh and and that's just the way it is and that's how it can be perceived and i don't think that's any different luke than somebody a fighter after a win holding up a bible and saying all gay people should burn it's kind of stuff that if you're a brand and the UFC is you've got to determine what is smart and right for you both financially and in terms of the message that you're sending that will affect ratings and right now there's it's easy to throw a lot of shade at UFC because Colby

and Dana are sort of on the same side of this but you got to be crazy super careful and you know Luke the second that this would affect a major sponsor you'd see a you'd see a tightening you'd see a you know and and I want to ask you straight up Luke do you think it would be okay if Dana and company went the opposite level and said forget this crap no we're only talking fights inside the fights fair we're not losing sponsorships we're not starting fights we're not doing anything we fight we talk about fights in here I don't want to hear about your politics your sponsors your religion anything like that we may have to get to that level if this keeps up and it breeds something Luke again I don't think passing rules but I mean they already have the

code of conduct they just don't enforce it. Beginning to enforce that again, I think, gets to a very bad place, both for them and, frankly, the sport. You are right. This is combat sports. People have a right to be rude and mean and, frankly, awful to each other. What they don't have a right to do is, and I'm not saying we've gotten there yet, but if we keep going, we will. What they don't have a right to do is endanger health and safety. You don't have a right to do is endanger health and safety. You don't have a right to do that. And to the extent that we get to a point where we allow this kind of climate to get worse,

we are headed to a bad place. So all I'm suggesting is having some kind of norm respected, if at all possible, is a much healthier way to go. Now, let's move on. We'll come back to Kamzat Shemaev in just a second, but we have to do this, BC. Over the weekend, there was a boxing main event. Erickson Lubin getting back to action, winning via unanimous decision.

Now, it sets him up for the winner of the next weekend's Jermel Charlo and then Jason Rosario fight. Okay, BC, did you see anything based on how he looked that gave you a feeling, no matter who it is charlo rosario he's gonna look good against them uh i think it showed us that he can be competitive and probably will be against them obviously the larger picture here luke and the concern you have is is erickson lubin's chin as strong as the rest of his game look Look, he's only 24 years old, and he's a southpaw with big-time power, yet he showed you against a difficult out in Terrell Gauchet,

who if you make a mistake against, he'll make you pay, that he can be poised and box. And over 12 rounds for the hole, you've got to be impressed at what Erickson Lubin showed you. But it's hard to overlook, of course, that 10th round when he did get clocked with the right hand and was wobbly he recovered well his legs were there but when you mix that with the way we saw him get knocked out by one punch against jamal charlo in 2017 in his first title fight maybe it came a little bit too early in his run whatever he's won five in a row since then i think

it's not wrong to have a little bit of concern say does lubin have the chin for this level we can only find that out in the ring he passed this test and maybe it wasn't the most exciting fight because that's gauche style but i got nothing for respect respect luke for the way that lubin went in there and stayed poised didn't overextend himself led with his jab went to the body did all the things he needed to do and oh by the way hurt uh gauche really bad in the 12th round and seemed to be on the verge of a stoppage he's going to not be favored against either rosario and charlo and shouldn't be but by locking up the wbc number one contendership here in the mandatory title shot he's going to be in play to have a shot in

that fight and that's all you really need at this point luke he's a growing fighter a lot of those skills are coming on the fly. I love a lot of what I see, but don't overlook that warning sign, though. Here's the deal. When he lost to Charlo the first time, what happened? He got knocked out, not quite cold, but something pretty close to it, in the first round. And not by some wild punch, not by some accident some accident a double jab which was designed to make

lubin duck down and to his own left and he got greeted with a right from charlo and it just absolutely stopped the show right there did you see something in this fight that told you it would go differently than the next time okay maybe he doesn't get stopped in the first but the point is the charlo brothers both have pretty good chins insofar as we can tell. We certainly know they're athletic. We certainly know they hit hard. Dremel may be more so than Dremel. Nevertheless, they still are power punchers, and they're quick, and they're smart, and they're gifted. You already got knocked out in the first round. You had to show something in this fight that can make us reimagine the second one. I can imagine that the limits of

what happened last time could be stretched. I can't imagine that it'd be broken unless something really, really went differently. Now, you might be asking, well, what about Jason Rosario? Rosario, I don't think is the boxer that Jermell Charlo is. At the same time, he is willing to take risks. He is kind of heavy handed. He's getting older. He's getting more mature. When I say older, I don't mean old. old i mean coming into his own as a young man i think he's still in his early to mid-20s he is i think lubin a bit probably a better boxer but the kind of risks that rosario might take especially with inside fighting even when he loses are something that could give him a little bit of problem so i might like lubin a little bit better against Rosario, even though he had that nice win over Jay Rock. But against Charlo, I got to tell you,

I know he's the mandatory challenger, BC. I don't see exactly what would be different unless Charlo goes in there with pneumonia or something. I don't mean to be disrespectful. I'm just saying. Well, Luke, he's grown a lot in three years. I mean, look, Lubin that boxed on Saturday was not the same fighter against Charlo the first time.

Obviously, we didn't see what that fight would have looked like, and you set up that right hand perfectly. It was kind of a freak shot, but perfect timing. The ploy worked to get him to move in, and he got caught. I think he is a much more mature, better fighter. Adding Kevin Cunningham as his trainer has been a key in that regard, and he's even told me last week, you know, he cleaned up some personal things in his life that obviously any you know pro fighter that becomes sort of a quasi celebrity in his early 20s okay yes okay but bc he got rocked late in this fight the power of uh uh carried late into this fight you mean to tell me charlo doesn't have the exact same kind of power

late a sport even are significantly more so early and the same kind of power late, or even significantly more so early, and the same kind of skills to match it. I need to tell you that three years ago, Lubin's chances against Charlo, I think would have come down to more of a puncher's chance in getting that into an action fight. What Lubin did show us against Gauthier is that now he can box at world-class level

and has at least an avenue and a potential, Luke, especially when you consider that Jermell Charlo. If there's any flaw, a great fighter, a quasi-pound-for-pound guy, and by the way, if he beats Rosario, he's going to leap into that top ten if he's not already in there in terms of best in the world. Sometimes Jermell doesn't throw enough punches. So there is that potential for him to get into a boxing match, have that left hand, use that jab,

which it's not always easy southpaw against orthodox to establish that jab lubin is consistently showing you that he can i'm saying he has a much better chance now if he gets into a firefight against either guy he's probably going to get knocked out of there i didn't like the way he looked off of one punch there from gauche but uh i think he's growing a lot and i think this was a step forward all things considered now the the star of the show if you ask me, from Saturday's Showtime card, this guy from Philly. Wow, Jerron Ennis.

They call him Boots. Holy smokes, folks. 23 years of age. Every time I see this guy box, he is, to me, BC, if you're an MMA fan, you should love Jerron Ennis. Here's why. He switches stances. He can fight Southpaw for long extended periods.

He can fight Orthodox for long extended periods. He has brilliant combos, timing, slick movement offensively, defensively, and he has the confidence of a 23-year-old who knows nothing but talent, will, and winning. We'll talk about Kamzat Shemayev here in just a second where he just walks down Gerald Mearshart and drops him with a shot. Jerron Ennis, at least on the boxing side of things, has that similar kind of piss and vinegar FU vibe. And yet still in command, still going out there beating Carlos Abreu,

who had never been stopped before, I don't think, finally stopped him and did it with relative ease. I mean, here was the part, PC, that sort of got me. When he wants to be slick and precise and stick and move, he can do that. And then sometimes in this fight, he just took risks to land big shots and still got away with it. He is incredible. He is next level. And the thing that got me when I looked at his record yesterday in preparation for today's show, he's been fighting in like the most random uh not cities exactly but facilities and venues and he's been fighting in Freemason uh you know I don't know what you call them shrines he's been fighting in hardware stores he's been fighting in all these places I'm like dude this guy is due for a step up not merely in

competition but in getting the word out about who he is. People need to pay attention. I think Philly has a future champion on their hand and not kind of like some squeaky end champion, undisputed world title holder, probably across multiple sanctioning bodies. He appears to me to be the next big thing in boxing potentially. Yeah. First of all, how dare you disrespect the Showbox franchise from Showtime, showtime which you know if they got to put on a fight in a hardware store

or a masonic call or sloan iowa they'll do that luke okay so i'll read you the right way he fought in norfolk virginia in some of the most random places not on showbox uh look he is uh he's next level here he's 26 and 0 with 24 ko's it's it's almost past time to see him make a big time leap forward and look this was supposed to be a legitimate step up against a guy in a bray you who's gone the distance and fought some very you know legitimate contenders across this division throughout his career and he walked through him like nothing he's in the welterweight division which we know is always overflowing with stars whether they're long-faded names who still can draw or young guys on the way up or champions in the middle.

I can't wait to see who he gets matched with because you mentioned he both took chances in there and showed you his skill. He has such next-level skill, command, and really a confidence and poise in there, Luke, that he's able to create such highlight reel moments because there's so sophisticated uh movement to his setups there and his fainting and all the things he does that he can put fighters in such a uh difficult position off balance and then come with the boom and absolutely destroy them I cannot wait to see what happens when he does step up to that upper elite level he's only getting better by the fight I said it on Twitter I meant it it's it's a destination television when Boots Ennis is there and obviously under the pbc banner there are no no shortage of fun matchups you can make in the 147 division uh yeah he leaped through the screen he won saturday night luke brian you ever been to the pa the pennsylvania sheet metal workers hall

because geron ennis has i think think I worked there, by the way. In 2005, yeah. He fought at the Masonic Temple in Norfolk, Virginia twice. And he fought at the Howard Theater in 2017 here in D.C. I didn't even know they were putting on fights at the Howard Theater. Is that where John Wilkes Booth shot your president, Luke? That's a little bit more downtown. Let's go back to UFC Vegas 11.

Comes out Shemaya bc holy smokes and i got people who were shitting on me on twitter when i was like you know this guy is different pre-fight than khabib because he's got knockout power fight starts 17 seconds later he knocks out gerald mearshard one shot i had a lot of apologists in my mentions after that bc i really i really enjoyed that moment but in all seriousness the question goes to you sir okay is it time to say the hype is real it's deserved time time to get on the hype trade of kamzat shemayev yeah buy all the stock luke buy it all right um we we still don't know what we're not going to know until he gets pushed into that deep

end of the pool and that's a reality with any star and i know in recent weeks in fact after kamzat's last win we were like let's be careful let's not create another sage north cut johnny walker but i think if we're going to make the johnny walker conspiracy here comparison and by the way shout out to johnny walker for getting a win this weekend and putting the train back on the tracks um there's a demeanor inside of kamzat jamaev that i think is as impressive luke as what he's doing inside the cage whether it's taking you down and just grinding out your soul or showing you that flash light switch button power to knock a guy out cold it's that uh he's wired to be a champion almost right now and it's very rare throughout history when you see that those

conor mcgregor types on the way up where you're just like there's just an extra glow coming out of them it's a level of confidence it's a level of of sort of on uh you know on a star power that's yet to fully develop but is waiting to leap forward this guy calls out everyone he doesn't care he's got a great look he's got a great persona i think that's what separates him from somebody like johnny walker who came in there with you know a plus athleticism and seemed to like accidentally walk into some spectacular knockouts and obviously got figured out a bit and we're gonna it's still we gotta wait and see who he's gonna become now look tomorrow you can put coms out in there with a guy who who seems to have his kryptonite the problem right now luke is i don't know what this guy's kryptonite is because it's not just the offensive force. I feel like he's way more mature than he should be at this point. He's way more confident than he should be at this point. And you put all that together and you get a very dangerous man who is a cold-blooded killer and is going to go in there and just take people apart. Damian Maia is the right fight, most likely.

Let's see him against another style, another sort of out in here. But the Gerald Mearshart types, if he can cut through them like nothing, Luke, then why are we fooling around? Let's match him very tough. Let's even go past Maia. I don't want to get this guy ruined, but it looks so good to be true that I have to find out. So the reason why I thought he might have real KO power was, one, he had dropped a lot of opponents previously. You could go back and look and see. There are times where he gets the takedown by virtue of his knuckle game, which was kind of interesting.

But the one fight that stood out to me on the regional scene, you can go and watch it on YouTube, was at Brave CF 23. This was about April, about a year ago when my daughter was born, he beat a guy by the name of Ikram Aleskarov. Ikram Aleskarov was a, believe it or not, world champion in combat Sambo, and what was noticeable in this fight, BC, was that Aleskarov stuffed all of his takedowns. He couldn't get them. Now, the fight did not go very long, 226 into the first, before half a round, he shut down the takedowns completely of Kamzat Shemayev

that is also something to note maybe there are going to be some limits to his takedown game but what ended up happening was Kamzat just decided to I think he even did a switching stance if I'm not mistaken but at a welterweight threw a feint got the hands down from uh Oleskarov and then knocked him out with basically one shot just Just like this. Here's what's interesting about Saturday. This was at middleweight. So his power, one punch power up a weight class was enough to knock out a guy like Gerald Mearshart,

who, by the way, yes, he's been finished in the first round before, but only by TKO by Ian Heinish, Eric Anders, uh, defeated him via split decision.

Kevin Holland, split decision, Jack Herm, split decision. Jack Hermanson submitted him, and then Tiago Santos beat him, but not until the second round. I mean, this guy put a punch on him that those guys basically couldn't, or at least at a bare minimum, didn't. For his power to go up like that at a weight class that he's not necessarily best situated for is shocking. So do I think the hype is real? To an extent, yeah, I suppose I do. The only thing we haven't seen yet, to your point, is we don't know what we don't know. Demian Maia is going to pull guard. How does he deal with a guard player?

Or how does he deal with somebody who can stuff his takedowns but has better striking than Oleskarov? Or what does he do with somebody like maybe BC or Colby Covington who doesn't play games and goes to try to take him down? How does he react to those things? I don't know. But here's what I do know. When he's a bully, he is appointment viewing in MMA. Some of the most exciting times in a fighter's career, if not the most exciting, is when they're on that way up the ladder. every fight they keep making you reimagine what's possible I remember the rise of John Jones just that way and Kamzat's not there yet but you get that same kind of feeling when he goes and does stuff like that yeah he's a tank rolling down the street Luke and I can't wait to see who runs in front of him that's really where we're at right now and uh you know the Habib

comparisons at times, you know, you can see why. Same area of the world they're from, but he's such a... And look, we love Habib for almost having sort of the anti-personality, right? So quiet and he'll smash you and all that stuff. The fact that Chemaev is almost overwhelmingly,

you know, charismatic in certain regards, there's so much potential here. If I'm the UFC, I what dana sort of teased uh let's get him back in in uh abu dhabi you know in a couple weeks let's let's figure this out luke let's make this happen all right so lastly before we move on to the michael chandler point here very quickly any thoughts about nico price and serrani do you have any any major takeaway from that it was weird right it was weird like you know it's not that i'm against the respect shown by both it was certainly weird that nico price overly celebrated the joy of a draw against a guy who i know is a legend and he rightfully kissed the ring and gave cowboy that

respect but you know a guy would come off four straight defeats and you know we really should be talking right now uh whether he should be going the route of Tyron Woodley as well. And to see him so excited and looking for a rematch. And look, I like when they're talking about their kids. I like the good moments there in the Megan Alivi interview. That's all great. But I saw Cowboy Cerrone, Luke, who it's time. It really is.

Or at least it's time to say, what the hell are we doing? You and I have rightfully criticized in the past few weeks Anderson Silva's booking by the UFC in his 40s. Cowboy, I think, is really in that same territory. There's no reason to feed him to any guy. And I know, look, this had the potential to be an all-action masterpiece, which it wasn't, right? But it did. Nico Price in the cages is crazy. This could have been great.

But I think for Cowboy Cerrone at this point, if he wants to keep guido let's give him diego sanchez let's give him that level of matchmaking and let's completely give him the victory lap because uh the ship has sailed as well for him luke on the idea certainly of him being a contender but even being the type of guy that you use to get over other guys i don't want to see that he doesn't pull the trigger the same way i cringe when he gets hit so much love and respect look you can't not love cowboy right but they shined him up for one last ride and it was the connor fight and it ended you know worst case scenario for him let's not go through this anymore the issue for me is that i think you would agree he showed a lot more offensive life than tyron woodley the problem is is, you know, Woodley had, and I said this on Saturday night,

I mean, you can say what you want about Colby as a person or as an act or whatever. Dude, as a fighter, he is a very worthy adversary. I mean, that's, you know, the number two ranked welterweight in that organization. He is very, very good. Nico Price is not some scrub. He's talented, but he's not even ranked, right? And this sort of tells you sort of the difference there a little bit. bit now you can make a case that he was coming on in the third you can make a case that i and i thought he did beat pettis in their rematch but you know in the end

the judges disagreed and and certainly here it was a majority draw you didn't look good early and sort of had some moments in the middle i'm just saying while i think he needs to look for the exit door, BC, he's had a ton of miles. The fact that he's willing to throw the way he is, to me, says you don't have to rush him outside the door. Because every subsequent defeat is getting worse for Woodley to the point where now he's breaking his ribs. Certainly, Cowboys had a gazillion injuries, but he did put on, I think, something of a spirited performance, at least relative to what Woodley did. So, to me, there's a little bit of a difference there. Now, speaking of top contenders and some names we appreciate,

UFC made big news last week, and we're finally getting a chance to discuss it. Michael Chandler signed with the UFC, but here's the deal. His first fight, he's going to be, as I get to the side here, his first fight is going to make him a backup, basically, to either Khabib or Justin Gaethje if one of them falls out. Now, UFC tried to make him or give him a fight against Dustin Poirier. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But first, BC, you like Chandler to the UFC,fc a and b in his first fight as a backup yeah look it's weird i don't want to crap on this more than it deserves

and i by the way uh pitbull uh patricio pitbull had a great tweet basically saying that's the guy i knocked out and now he's your big signee and you're making him a backup i don't love the backup thing him signing with the ufc is great at 34 we've talked about it before he is on one hell of a run he deserves this bellator made their decision ufc made theirs and i think it was the right one for all parties all three ufc bellator and chandler i can't wait to see him fight everybody luke basically in the top 15 and beyond that's the type of fighter he is uh but this is a very muted announcement when you announce, we got this great fighter, and oh yeah, he's going to cut weight and go through a training camp to be the potential backup.

You could have accomplished that same thing by giving him a damn fight, right? On that same card, you can give him a Paul Felder or Kevin Lee, somebody in that category. Heck, Luke, if you wanted to, you could give him somebody worse, one that you'd almost be assured he would win and still use him in that same regard as the potential main event backup. And if he filled in for either Habib or Gaethje, obviously it's must-see TV. It's violence.

It's action. It's everything we want to see. You know, I don't think, I don't want to harp on it too long. I don't think they disrespected him. I just think this is a little bit muted to what it could have been. And I think it touches on that other topic. Why the hell are we not doing Ferguson Poirier? Pay both that men their money.

What are we doing here? All right. So yeah, my only view of Chandler is like, signing with the UFC, I totally get it. 34, it was now or never. He pulled the trigger on it. That's cool. The other part for me is,

it's like if for some reason Khabib falls out and they do Chandler versus Gaethje, I like it. I don't hate it. I just wouldn't want to see it under those circumstances. Conversely, same kind of thing. If Chandler gets the call to Khabib, I don't hate it. I just wouldn't.

Nothing about it is bad. It just feels out of order. It's like trying to put on your shoes before your pants. You might get them on, but there's going to be a struggle and it's going to be a little bit weird and it shouldn't go that way. Sort of how I feel about it. But shouldn't that be Poirier or Ferguson? Now you're getting me all, all hating on this, but shouldn't that be the, for them instead of Chandler? Aren't they more deserving? Here's the thing. I don't know. I wouldn't mind less about Chandler filling in actually, if they had Poirier versus Ferguson also on the card.

So the news is they didn't want to pay Poirier the money. Ferguson took his back and was like, eh, you should pay this guy. Then they said, how about they go to Poirier, hey, why don't we just give you Chandler? And he said, you know what, out of respect for Ferguson, I'm also not going to take it. I love the fact that Ferguson and Poirier kind of worked in tandem here

most of the time opponents just shit on each other for no particular reason here they work together to increase their pay it didn't exactly come out the way they wanted to but I admire the spirit of it and now we lose the fight it's like, let me explain something let me see if I understand this if you look at the combined records of Poirier and Ferguson

who have fought the absolute hammers of their generation, probably at a discount 99% of the time, you mean to tell me we can't come up off our pockets a little bit more, especially at Fight Island when they're giving you a site fee and they're paying for logistics and travel and everything else? We can't come up off our pockets a little bit more to make that fight happen. I mean, this is why these stories about, hey, the UFC put $50,000 in my Christmas stocking. Dude, I've been broke.

If someone gave me $50,000, that would mean a lot to me. I would have an emotional attachment to somebody who would show that kind of generosity. But it doesn't undo the fact that we know it's 20 annual revenue that gets shared with the fighters and that's it all these other stories of largesse and generosity i get that they mean something to the individual fighter but they don't change the facts and it's why we keep losing good fights like this yeah yeah you know how you fix this look and i don't know what dustin poirier was asking for i agree with you that pay him you deserve it or call up call up your buddy over there in uh in abu dhabi they'll pay for it but uh how you fix this is put chandler against

ferguson right or like is that hard yeah you could do that too you could do that too i mean just here's but this is the problem bc the problem with what what the UFC has is, and I say problem like, the problem for fighters who want more money. It's not a problem for you and I. It's that they have such a command over the top talent that when, like what's a promoter's responsibility? To put on the fights that people want to pay money to see, right? That's what it is.

So what happens is they have such a command of the market, essentially, that if one of the guys falls out, they can sub in somebody else. And it's a really good fighter. To your point, they could just go Ferguson versus Chandler and everyone would be like, well, it's not exactly what we were looking for, but who's going to complain? Because, hey, that's a phenomenal contest. And the fans are kind of conditioned to substitution, especially in this COVID era where things are falling out left and right. So as a service to the fans or the media, yeah, it's great. As it relates to fighter pay, it's a hurdle, certainly, that they have to overcome.

All right. Yeah. Last one on this, BC. Well, we've got to move on. Boxing and MMA. We've got big, big doings this weekend. As I mentioned, between the two cards, I should say three, sort of, between the two cards i should say three sort of between the two events let's say you've got seven world title fights all right bc which one are you looking

forward to the most which one is everyone sleeping on such a tough ass answer look i mean look under my head both fight both cards combined you're not going to get more action than you're probably going to get on Adesanya Costa. But let me put that to a side for a second. The best actual matchup might be Jermall Charlo, Sergey Derevyanchenko. Look, I want to see that one so freaking bad. It's the first of the two double Charlo main events. And look, when you compare the resumes of the two Charlo brothers,

Jermall is a little bit more proven against elite talent. It's because jermall moved up to middleweight and because of the boxing politics if you will where he'd been on a certain side of the street where there wasn't access to as many elite 160 pounders he's looked great and blown away hugo centeno and and you know getting the decision over matt korobov and he's won some tough fights but derevyanchenko offers Dramal Charlo the stamp fight the absolute you are a legitimate fighter if you walk in there against that killer and come out on top and defend your title we've seen Derevyanchenko against the very best in the world

that middleweight losing a split decision to Danny Jacobs and losing that close as balls nail biter with Gennady Golovkin that really was in the discussion for your fight of the year last year and deservedly so Derevyanchenko can get inside he can go 12 hard rounds he's tough as nails and oh by the way his nickname is the technician because he can box and do some things to see Jermall in there against that I cannot wait Jermall Charlo is plus level on things like speed power athleticism he can box too but as we talk about all the time in here, Luke, as I spit all over the place, you don't know what you don't know.

You don't know if you really can swim on that level until someone's kicking you off the plank and you're down there in the bottom of the tank. And we're going to find out as this fight rolls on, if it does, whether Jermall Charlo can. I cannot wait to see. I've been itching like everyone else to put the

charlos in the top 10 pound for pound and really really say that they are everything they seem to be this is that moment for germall uh please don't sleep on this this is an absolutely great fight and uh the biggest sleeper very quickly you know i like a lot of how about this luke how about this you ready for this you wouldn't think so dom reyes yon blahowitz you took you took mine why don't you tell the people why i don't want to i don't want to take anything more from by the way because uh you know our guy uh uh web scream he just hit me up with a picture of you and malcolm x side by side of my dms with the title same energy you buy that at the uh where'd you get those those shades there look yeah I got some uh my wife got me these how

about that I got a little some got some Tom Fords up in this piece um so the reason why I like this fight is I don't know if you guys saw it over the weekend it was revealed that there is this sort of uh pre-fright ritual that Jan Blachowicz has where he touches the noose that was used to hang a man now it's it's not as morbid as it sounds. I don't want to spoil it. Go read the story about why he does it. It's actually a little bit more respectful than it certainly sounds. But here's the point I've been trying to make about Jon Jones

or any kind of towering figure in a division. There are pluses and there are minuses to their departure, and the minuses are obvious, right, when you lose a St. Pierre or when Silva doesn't have the same relationship to middleweight that he once did. In this case, Jon Jones leaving light heavyweight to go to heavyweight. Pick your other transcendental figure.

But some of the pluses are that they are so encompassing, so larger than life, is that the stories of a lot of these other guys sometimes don't get told. Yes, if they fought Jon, they get magnified a million ways. but almost as like part of his story especially if he wins in the way that john does when he leaves you get a chance to learn not more sorry it depends on what you're clued in but you know the attention goes directly to guys that ordinarily would not necessarily get it and

jan blachowicz here is 36 i think years. People are finally learning about this guy and his Polish background and all the different sort of weird eccentricities about him. And hello, again, I have been a big proponent of Jon Jones's ability for a long time. I did not score the Tiago Santos fight against him. I did not score the Gustafson fight against him. I did score the Dom Reyes fight against him. I think Dom Reyes is absolutely incredible, and I think he'll probably win on Saturday, but if he doesn't, can you be surprised because Jan Blachowicz has been slept on all this time. You've got a gunslinger in one way

versus a modern fighter in another. I love how international it is. I love how weird one guy is. The other guy used to be an IT technician at a high school, and now he's doing all this kind of different stuff. There are just a lot of really interesting stories that don't get told. The fight itself should be interesting. And I don't expect light heavyweight to capture your imagination right away.

It's going to take some time. But the path to light heavyweight in its new post-John Jones era, it starts Saturday. And I love this fight. I love everything about this fight. I cannot wait to see it. Well said there, Malcolm. What I like about this fight. I cannot wait to see it. Well said there, Malcolm. What I like about this fight a lot is— We didn't land on Plymouth Rock.

Plymouth Rock landed on us. What I love about this is your gut tells you—well done. Your gut tells you that, oh, Reyes pushed Jones to the limit. Of course he's going to beat Blahowitz. But let's not forget, go back and watch the Dom Reyes fight against Vulcan Ozdemir, right? I thought Vulcan won that fight. I thought he kind of got screwed. And, you know, Jan is a big boy in that same regard.

If he can keep this fight on his terms at close range, there's one other sneaky thing about Jan Blahowicz, Luke. And sometimes we criticize him for this. He can be patient to a fault. He's had some boring fights. Remember the Jacare one I wanted to throw up in my speedo, Luke? That was so bad uh if he lingers in a five round fight and has that power and can carry it there's gonna be a tough out okay noose and all there's gonna be a tough out can't wait to see that and obviously many more fights on this six fight loaded double charlo pay-per-view card and anyone who's late to the party here luke probably saying what these guys aren't gonna preview all

the damn pay-per-view fights? We got some episodes this week we're going to roll out. We got future. We're hitting them hard this week, Luke, right? All right, well, with that in mind. What day is it? Yes, with that in mind, let's get now to our next segment. Well, Luke, I'm going to stop the damn show because I don't have producer credits here,

but why are we rushing? We're not rushing, BC. It's 12. We're not rushing. It's 12 12 we're not rushing it's 1204 we are in no way shape or form rushing this might end up being our longest show we don't have to go long just to go long there should be a reason to go long like we did look some people are just born long you know what i'm you know you know what i mean you just can't you can't you can't hide it luke okay it is what it is, all right? I certainly am.

All right. Time now for when you get to ask us questions, it's time for DMs from donks. There's the donkey. There we go. All right. BC, you go first. This is from XS Killy, Texas. Whatever.

Is Tyrone, which is not his name, it's Tyron. Is Tyron Woodley's decline the sharpest we have ever seen in the UFC? From killer to a no-show. Hard to imagine one quicker than that one. Yeah, I mentioned that this is a unique one because, again, it's not him getting knocked out. Like, he actually showed fairly responsible defense in his last three losses and was in great

shape and all that. I think the starkest fall I've seen, Luke, is more of like the Hennon-Barau type to legitimately go from pound for pound number two killer title defender to seven losses in eight fights and lost his job. Johnny Hendricks was also a steep fall. I'm going to say this again. I've never seen anyone quite like this because at that point entering the usman fight where woodley was i think i had him number

three pound for pound and i'm the guy again that was banging the drum saying ufc's not promoting this guy they're not telling you what they should that he can beat anybody any way that he wants to under his own terms look he got old got old. Something happened, right? Something, the wiring, you know, fell apart on the inside. The computer overheated. Something went wrong. But again, I've never seen anybody exactly like this. It's hard to make a comparison. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing.

It's like, Hedon Burrell had all this hype, and Woodley was well-known and hyped, but not in the same way. Remember, he was knocked out in his last Strikeforce fight against Nate Marquardt. Now, he came back and then he beat, I think, Jay Heron. Knocked him out, but then he lost to Jake Shields. Had a couple wins.

Lost to Roy McDonald. Had some wins. And then he went on this long stretch between the Dong Kyung Kim fight and then the Darren Till fight where he basically never lost. I think he was a draw with Thompson in between. So he had this really long, impactful moment.

And then it just fell off a cliff. The only thing I'd say to that is, he also was fighting Kamar Usman, who is now the champion, Gilbert Burns, who might end up being the champion very soon, we'll see, and then Colby Covington, who also could be champion and was the interim champion. It's not like he's fighting scrubs. If they bumped him down, could he get right maybe? I don't know. It's certainly worth considering. The only thing I would say is, A, I've never seen anything like this. I agree with you. And, B, the age is sort of the complicating factor here. He was so athletic and so talented.

He was able to do stuff at a moment in his career when most fighters are done. And now that he's in the past that stage, there's no more magic to make up for that. You're sort of stuck with what the position is. All right. Luke, hold on. Hold on here, Luke. I know you're rushing to go somewhere. I know you do have to actually catch a plane, too.

Yes, I have a flight to catch, but by all means, make me late. Jay, are you still here, Jay? Jay, Jay's working from his basement today. You don't have a camera there, Jay, right? Yeah. Oh, wow. Hey, guys, look. It's Jay.

It's the back of Jay's head. Jay, why are we in such a hurry? Is that Jay or is that Skrillex? No, it's still Jay. Why are we in such a damn hurry today? What the hell's going on here? I thought we hired, we pay Luke too much money to avoid having to hurry up. So the TSA called.

You ever listen to a Luke Thomas live chat? The thing goes on and on and on. Why are we in a hurry here? It's actually every live chat is shorter than one of these, motherfucker. Yeah, yeah. Apparently the TSA said they will not wait for Luke, that they're going to leave without him, and that'll screw up the rest of our week.

All right. Thank you, Jay. Thank you. It's great merch that you're wearing there at store.show.com. can you can wear that same thing uh luke i did want to ask you we mentioned it was a muted promotion for woodley and uh and colby in fact i didn't see colby do any interviews once that fight was was uh official he did one with mma fighting right before it i didn't see him do any until like a day before the fight do you want to explain what ufc did with that press conference where it was an undercard press conference on wednesday and then both kobe

and and uh tyron came out for like separate three minute scrums and and look and you know tyron took that moment and and did black lives matter to everything and i'm not and that's fine but that seemed to be a calculated move by dana no i didn't read into it the way that you read into it but i can't say that you're wrong you know it's um it was unusual but at the same time it didn't it didn't i didn't think of it that way at first like don't you think in a real grudge match you'd put them both on sports center and have them screaming at each other like that's what you do it seemed calculated like dana didn't want this to turn into sort of a political

racial mess, right? That would seem like they made moves to avoid that. Perhaps, although you didn't exactly get that either. Alright, let's move along. At JimGregory11 BC, this is an interesting one, especially in boxing

where everyone has a title. Should Derevyanchenko lose in another close great fight which is entirely possible where would he be in the list of greatest ever non-champion fighters yeah that's a tough one this is a much different debate in boxing

where you could accidentally fall into a title it seems like there's way too many belts both legitimate and ridiculous. But yeah, this guy's 34. He had an insanely long and decorated amateur career in which he was teammates and defeated the likes of Alexander Usyk, Alexander Vodzik, he was Lomachenko's teammate and all that. But yeah, he'd be on that list.

I don't know exactly where you'd put him. know it's a that list is hard to make because as i mentioned someone like adrian broner who we don't you know you people don't always have a great amount of respect for he's a four division champion luke but it's in the it's in the proliferated belt era it's as different than eight divisions one champion back in the 40s and 50s but you'd take your hat off to derevyanchenko because as I mentioned the Jacobs fight was a split decision I thought Jacobs won but it was close but that Gennady Golovkin won his flip a damn coin I mean he's walking down the old man and hurting Golovkin late in that fight and again nobody but Canelo has ever ever been able to do that so uh this

would be uh uh this would be some Susan Lucci bullshit if this happened Luke okay if he goes three hard fights right outdated of a reference. If he goes three hard fights, how dated of a reference is that? If he goes three hard-ass fights and comes up empty on the title level. But hey, Jermall's that good, or at least he looks to be. We're going to find out, Luke. And I didn't want to underscore Jermall and Rosario. Good God, that fight's

going to be great. But when are we going to preview the pay-per-view action? What's our schedule this week, Luke? We got a bunch of stuff to happen this week, so just hold your horses. Alright, at Ghost Hardware, although they've got some numbers doing some substituting work there. This is a question for BC.

Yes, it is. What's going on with Taras Shalestuk? Shalestuk? He was the best amateur welterweight out of that 2012 Olympic class and was with Freddie Roach's wildcard gym, but we haven't heard from him in a while. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, I don't know the situation. I do know the name.

I know him as a fighter. I haven't heard of the name in a while. I wish I had a better answer or more prepared or could have researched it. But, yeah, was a Freddie Roach guy. Well, I believe he's Ukrainian. If not, it's close enough, right? Serbian. It's close enough, Luke, okay?

I don't mean to be rude there, but it's, you know. I'm a Lithuanian, people, okay? Vaguely Slavic is what you would say, right? Yeah, I mean, some white guy? Yeah. No, look, he's a good fighter. I don't know. I don't know.

Look, I can't answer them all. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, neither can I, certainly, so I'm no better than you. All right, from underscore Kate LW. K8 LW. What are your plans for free time in the showtime pay-per-view bubble board games reading stair exercise prison workouts what do you got bcbc i have uh i don't know we're gonna be able to go to the gym in fact i'm pretty sure we're not going to be able to

yeah i heard mixed mixed reports on that if we can you know what i come i come prepared because i brought uh banded weights not weights but but each one has different tensile strength. So some are good for 10 pounds, 20, 30, 40, 50. So I've got all of those. I've got an ab wheel, and I've got some workout clothes. So if I need to work out in my room, I'm good to go. PR Maven, head of communications there, Chris de Blasio of Showtime, has told me that he's been doing the in-room prison workout,

the legitimate one from the bubble. And he's looking a little bit cut there out on Sunday on the boat. So shout out to de Blas right there, big-time fish head, that guy. I'm going to do 100 push-ups and 100 squats every morning, Luke. Okay, I think that's enough, right? Are you going to do any reading, board games? I'm going to bring books but never read them. And I'll probably be on YouTube each night watching 90s NBA playoff games in full.

That's what I do, all right? No, you should be with me podcasting every night is what you should be doing. Well, that's the real answer. That's what we're going to do. Luke, what are we going to do? Are we going to get a case of beer? Are we going to get some edibles? What are we going to do?

End up arm wrestling? What's going to happen? I think we should. I don't want to declare for the audience what we're going to do, but if it's up to me, I'm going to podcast every night, including tonight. So we'll see how that goes. You're going to podcast tonight? Wow.

All right. After dark with Luke, no rules, baby. Yeah? That's right. The fight sphere episode one, bitches. All right, and last but not least, from iHeartDemete. I don't think that's what it means, but I'm going to say it this way. What would be more damaging to the show?

A Conor McGregor-like sexual allegation against either Luke, Brian, or Jay? Jay most likely. Or B, Brian actually becomes well-read and vegan. Does that mean becomes? Or that means that Brian actually is, and it's just hard goddamn work making something this pretty look this ugly. Right. Billy Ho. Right.

That's another interpretation. What do you think? Jay getting hemmed up for, you know, masturbating at the bus stop. Let's bring in Jay. Jay, can you come in here, please? I can't wait until the allegations come out against No Escape that we were thinking you guys got got lou perlman for years right you lost your money and your innocence maybe it was you guys doing that to others maybe do you know what i would have given to get lou perlman that i mean that's the dream that is the dream instead i got ron johnson uh nobody's ever

heard of ron johnson or no escape here we are. I don't even know who Ron Johnson is but I know from that name what he did to you. I can tell you that. I love that Jason record saying I wish I got Lou Perlman. That is gross. Wow. Seven days a week. Why do you think Lance

Bass wanted to go to space, right? Alright, BC. Fucking A. Answer to the question, please. What would happen if you actually became vegan and like a big-time book reader? Would it fuck up the vibe? I might think clearly for once, you know, right? Maybe it would add to it, Luke.

Actually, I'll say this. You always think clearly, right? Everything with you starts with this nugget of truth and then sometimes goes in wacky directions, this you always think clearly right everything with you starts with this nugget of truth and then sometimes goes in wacky directions but you're usually pretty centered on the nucleus of your idea the nucleus of your ideas are actually pretty pretty uh not moderate per se but well-informed defensible you know good stuff including that Antonina might be the sneakier one of the two well now you're just speaking of slanderous bullshit okay well with that in mind BC speaking of which it is time for

the part where you steer this ship take it away good sir yeah here's what we do as you know this is the best look here's the deal it's a really big week in our life and in all jokes aside we thank everyone for supporting us to get us to this point. We've been teasing things for a long time. This is just the beginning. We're going to start hitting you pretty hard. MK Daily coming up. And, yes, we will be there on the halftime show this week.

Double Charlo, Saturday night, Showtime pay-per-view. So I wanted to hit you, Luke, with a double pay-per-view edition of Have You Seen This Shit? We scoured the globe the good the bad and the ugly the highs and lows luke i took some flack last week people say i pussyfooted rashad evans and indoctrinated him into a fight heavy have you seen the shit not enough dong not enough drunk chicks not enough you know fat people would you agree with that or you didn't watch it i didn't watch last week's show all right all right well i'm i'm coming and i'm coming hard okay like ron johnson here we go uh let's start off here luke i don't know if you watch one kickboxing but they had the

fastest ko in company history four seconds watch copy ton wow send pension agate hell luke look at that shot right it's like an opening bout from the kumite yes yes uh i think shotry just emailed you to let you know that this was the most watched highlight in in uh in global history luke 78 billion people watched it live can you believe that and it helped kurt yeah it helped cure covid this highlight it was great yeah so shout out to that man capitan right there hey let's go to Bellator 245. This is a little bit more than a week ago, but I forgot about this one. You know Alex Easy Polizzi, Luke? Look what he did to Rafael Carvalho.

Slam! Let the boys be boys, right? Yeah! Wow! Yes, that's some pile driver right there, right? No. I don't think so. Is it? I shout out to Jay for throwing up that graphic.

Jay just fucking everything up. Yeah, but wow. Luke, I don't care if you tuck the chin. That's got to suck, right? Yeah, that's the suck balls. All right. Hey, let's go on. What's this promotion?

ACA? Is that Russia? I think so. Check out this up kick, Luke, from the Deep Dark Ones. That's the old Musashi on Jacare in Dream win right there. Yes, the man's name is Lam Ali Nagiev, and he did the up kick from Hades on Imanli Gamzathinov. Wow, Luke.

That's heel right there. Bro, that's a heel turn. If you've got a beard without the chip without the mustache and your name has v's and z's in it with also arabic names you are not to be trifled with no not not in the streets i will third world your ass and not on the mat lara luke okay thank you that is fantastic. Luke, speaking of kicks to the head, check this out from your world. Football. Look, we got football highlights here. This can't be legal. Oh, he did the old Higuita scorpion kick. Sort of. Oh my God. Who is that? Employee

number eight right there. I don't know. I don't know what league this is. Is that Kaka or is that your shit? All right, let's get out of here. Hey, Luke, let's go to Dorm Quad Backyard Football. You want to see the greatest kick return in backyard football history? Check out this fella. Whoop, whoop. I just Berman'd you there, Luke.

Wow, look at this guy. Wow. Luke's still on it, r bumbling look at this one black dude 50 white guys not one of them can get the job done amazing this is shirtless tackle and he's making dudes run into each other's like michael vick against the damn vikings right this is great somebody just shot a dog this is not good i've actually i've actually lived this experience one time we were playing tackle football with some friends of mine this was like uh what year was this i was eighth grade and we invited one of the kids who was an actual

running back on the football team to come play in the park with us. Oh, he fucking ran all over us. It was terrible. Yeah. You know how many girls this guy banged after this game? This probably all, how many of these guys had girlfriends? Cause's the answer yeah uh let's get drunk here luke let's see uh drunk moves of the week this is this dude this dude is the guy in all the archie comics who's all muscled up who kicks face in the kickstand in the face of all the losers uh luke i don't know what you call this but i want to learn in fact if you want to do this in your hotel bubble i'm down check out this fellow with the 40 ounce and they got a uh is this a beer bong what is this luke does that they're lighting so they're lighting the top of

it there's a hole in the bottom and look at this dude take 40 ounces to freedom right in front of us i can't tell if i'm horrified or amazed or aroused. I'm definitely aroused. Look at that, Luke. Whoa. I want to try that. I'll do that on camera, too. That is fantastic. Whoa.

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, that is awesome. Somebody please DM us. This is the official drink of this show right there. Yes. The champagne of beer is 40 i like that high life right there actually not a not a 40 if it's not malt liquor just so you know but okay all right uh hardcore no no no i know the guy i know the guy uh personally he's been to my house who has the uh this is true, Guinness Book of World Records largest 40-ounce bottle collection. He owns 40ouncemaltliquor.com, and he's explained to me, if you put regular.

I'm sure he's married, too. He is married, actually. He has kids. If you put beer into a 40-ounce container, it's not a 40. A 40 is only malt liquor. Do you know the difference between malt liquor and beer? Yeah, I do, Luke. I do know the difference. What is the difference? White people and beer? Yeah, I do, Luke. I do know the difference.

What is the difference? White people drink beer. No, just kidding. No, I mean, it's how it's made, Luke. You know how much 40s I've drank in my life, dude? You know? The difference is that in the fermentation process, they add sugar to the beer, basically,

so they can up the amount of alcohol they can stuff into it, hence the name malt liquor. That's why you can get, like, you know get ridiculously high percentage alcohol relative to what normal beer is. But it also means you're working with dirt cheap ingredients, hence the name malt liquor, and hence the price of $1.50 for a 40. So there you go. Don't make me tell you again my Hef invest in private stock 40 stories. Those are great.

By the way, certain drinking things, misgenerations, like I was before the Edward Scissorhands 40 generation. That's something I wish I did. We were more of the cassette tape power hour people. I've done a century. You ever done a century? No, no. It feels like I would throw up at the end of it, Luke. A century is a power hour, but instead of an hour, you do it for 100 minutes.

You want to do a, hey, how about this? How about you and I do a power half hour during a podcast in your hotel room, right? We'll mix... No, no, we should do a real one. We'll mix metal songs with 70s... Yeah, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Three beers is...

This is the buzzing of flies to me. You want to do it, you got to do it right. Can you hear me there, BC?c yeah i can hear you now jay's pulling wires over there sorry all right you what i'll do it luke i'll do it you want to move on with the show i'm down yes next next all right it was it was a birthday for this girl i think she turned 21 luke but i don't think she has the best friends uh is this legal what is happening here this is not how you treat somebody on their birthday luke oh god that's that's that's assault brother that is like i've seen strippers treated better i mean come on why are they why are they in the middle of a cornfield i don't i don't know that is uh. We might want to get off of this before we get arrested. Hey, Luke, let's go to great sports celebrations.

Are you down with this? Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer getting the strike three and check out the celebration. What would you call this? Oh, yeah. I call that winning, Luke. That is fantastic right there. That guy's a weirdo, but he's got good stuff.

Got a nice jersey. Yeah, you know what? My new favorite pitcher. Yeah. All right. Hey, let's move on here, Luke. You got to be careful. Look, anytime we're men, we see poles, we want to jump over them.

But bad things typically happen, Luke. You can lose your shorts, Luke. That is fantastic. What are this dude's shorts made out of? Cotton candy? They just disintegrated. Look at that. Fly paper, yeah.

I've never seen denim just disappear. Let's go out here. It's tip-on-tip time. But with the toes, Lukeke is this official tip on tip they call it a pinky promise but uh that's love right there right no that's just being broke that's what that is all right all right i've been there down with it okay hey let's go to a weird gym people this is your type of thing luke this is workout weirdos check out this dude rocking out to cannibal clubs over there on the step machine wow look you gotta rage like no one's watching right you know what this dude is trying to you know what shouts of this gentleman because he is a weirdo and there's

no denying it however he is trying to pump himself up through a workout and he's out there hustling salute to that gentleman he He fucks, Luke. And you think he's probably listening to Taylor Swift or something, though. That's probably the problem. 100%, this guy is a Kesha fan. No, come on. I'm a big-time ketchup fan, so why don't you... Kesha, you fucking dad.

Sorry, Luke. Speaking of Cannibal Corpse, Luke, Tom Hayes, at Gingerbread tommy on ig sent us in this meme including you let's see the quote uh annie on reception has has been really nice all week but she just completely avoided eye contact this morning he exclaimed and the headline luke is uh committed metalhead wears cannibal corpse long sleeve to uh first casual friday at the new office that would totally be you at the uh at mulca headquarters if we were literally i'm literally satire i'm literally satire yeah yeah that's fine that's great that is that's hilarious

all right uh speaking of user submissions we got a lot of them this week luke i've been holding them for two weeks let's see what the people put together here's tim may at tim slugga he he heard our rap discussion and sent in a nice uh black sheep a wolf in sheep's clothing album cover but made it morning combat centric luke i'm down with that right looks like we're banging but okay otherwise it's fine you know i think you're trapped you're uh you're mr, you know, the 9.5-er. And who's the other guy in Black Sheep? I forgot. All right.

Prez, right? Drez. Drez of the Black Sheep. Sorry. Okay, thank you. We sound old and white. Let's move on. At Square Punch Circle on Instagram is an artist, Luke,

and he reconstructed you running out of that Wawa after stealing the grinder. Luke, you down with this? Yeah, but he's missing another sub, a bag of Doritos, two Snickers, and the pack is bigger. Oh, let's go over to our friend at 8BitImaginations on Instagram. He created a Morning Combat comic book cover. Wow. Incredible Luke and BC Boy.

Well done. Well done there done there right that looks pretty cool that's nicely done that looks like pre-kids luke right power lifting luke remember that year you got jacked luke yeah yeah i'm trying to get back there it was all creatine and water weight though but you know that's fine that's fine you can do what you have to do um mk tip on tip uh how about this poster art from scott at Anya Burry? We've seen work from this guy before. Morning Combat Extended Edition, Luke, if you know what we're talking about here, right? This could happen this week in the bubble.

You never know, right? Dude, this is uncomfortable. Yeah, at best, at best. But well done there. And at Greg All 31, and that's greg with two g's on instagram luke he had the broken morning combat mug that he got in the mail last week so he decided to pose with it while wearing a brokini and watching our show on his tv you you down with greg all here or what you think this guy's got a girlfriend yeah yeah i think i mean look he's got tats he kind of looks like he hunts

on the weekends there look there are states in this union where that's you know that'll get it done luke that right there will get it done all right you know what he is committed to the bit god bless this gentleman yeah oh we got one more from d pierce's comics he sent in an animated drawing of you, Luke. Wow, that looks underslept and angry. That's pretty much right on, right? Did he get this from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam? Luke, is that art?

Are we art? Yeah. Art, Luke. I'm a microscopically as talented Van Gogh. That's who I am. He made it with his Etch-A-Sketch while sitting on the toilet. All right here, Luke. Let's check in on Abuela this week. We actually picked this up off the camera on the dresser of your daughter's room.

Abuela helping you guys out so Mr. and Mrs. Luke Thomas can go on a date this past week. She's putting the baby into the crib here the crib here luke using the step ladder abuela look she's eliminated from the royal rumble that's it wow yeah okay uh the the baby did not recover luke uh that is amazing it kind of looks like you're abuela i like that all right uh you know what my abuela looks like mfr you know what if i come to dc i'll do a podcast with abuela we'll do it in spanglish it'll be fantastic uh our street fight of the week luke let's go down to miami beach between on collins avenue between 9th and 10th street oh god oh god luke this is good i don't know if we're effing or

we're fighting but i'm in for both luke this is great wow that's a topless chick right there you know who sent the you know who filmed this billy corbin of the uh dot of 5000 doc you know that guy right wow i'm amazed i thought for sure the old thong th thong, thong, thong was going to get walloped. She did a number on her, huh? Oh, no, no. So the lady with the free breasts, she did a number on that lady. She pulled off her wig. I don't know if you can see that. Oh!

And now she's like, oh, you guys over here want some of this? Oh, what? Oh, and now here's her problem, though. Now she's getting served, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She got a little too greedy. You know, Colby can beat Maya, but he goes in there against Usman. He's in trouble.

You know what I'm saying, Luke? This is what happens here. You got to know your limits, you know? Yeah. This is, wow. Okay. Imagine just walking down the street. I mean, that's Miami, Luke.

In fact, it's actually- You know what? She took the fight to everybody. I'm going to say, I'm pretty impressed. And look at this, Mariah Goshen. Yeah, well, PCP is a hell of a drug, Luke. No, not exactly. Wow, I'm going to say I'm pretty impressed. And look at this. Mariah Goshen. PCP is a hell of a drug, Luke. No, not exactly. Wow, I'm amazed.

But, Luke, that's Miami on a Monday morning. Let's check out Miami on a Tuesday night. It don't get any weirder, but I don't know if you've been down there, Luke. It's not a regular place. Check out what's going on in the middle of traffic right here, Luke. Yeah, right? Wow. Luke, that girl will dance for money, for honks.

Is she going to start peeing? Look at these guys making it rain in the middle of traffic. Look, this is great. We've got to move there, right? Yeah, we've got to be like Dan Levitard and take the show to Miami. What are we doing? MK Miami Nights. That would be great, right? Rather than the damn Mohegan bubble. All right. Luke, we've got a couple more for you.

This week in Corona airplane etiquette, I thought you would like this. I hope these two get Corona. Absolute filthy swine. Cerdo. Pigs. All right, all right, all right. can you imagine the hubris between these two we're gonna close with this luke this is the biggest week in our show's history so i just wanted to send as always another suge knight like offering out to all you people out there

if you watch other shows look you're wasting your time this is what we do on MK, and that's you out there. If you ain't watching us, okay? We don't need you. We don't want you. Take that, okay? Hold this, as Luke would say, okay? Hold that. Right there.

I don't care who you think you watch. It's MK. It's all day. It's no other way, okay? This is it. This is the one. This is the stuff right here, okay? Did I tell you the one time I threw water balloons in college at these people walking by and I felt really bad about it?

I was in the third floor, which is the highest floor for this particular dorm. And I was at this window and I couldn't quite throw it this way. So I had to kind of like, I had to flea flick. I had to kind of hit them with the option, you know. And I wasn't really paying attention to who I was throwing because I just wanted to hit somebody as they were walking by. And this girl had this bag from Chick-fil-A. There was a Chick-fil-A in the dining hall.

But the key was the Chick-fil-A had just opened. So, like, I knew if you had gone there and you had gotten food, you probably waited a long time to get it. And she comes and I hit her with the old option, you know what I'm saying? And it hit right through her bag and all hit her with the old option. You know what I'm saying? And it hit right through her bag and all of her food hit the ground and then just spread out with the water balloon

drenching it like cheese covering nachos or something. And she just sat there and looked at it and started to cry. I felt really bad about it. Yeah, that's bad. That's not good. I apologize. I went and got her Chick-fil-A the next day. Oh wow, did you end up sleeping with her? really bad about it yeah that's that's bad like that's not good that's yeah all right i apologize i went and got her chick-fil-a the next day but you know that's different oh wow did you end up

sleeping with her no no no she's not my type but i felt bad luke in college there's no such thing as types it's just you know right uh depends how ugly they are bc okay all right hey have you seen all that ish there was luke hope you enjoyed that okay let's all right very good with that in with that in mind bc it is time now for odds and ends sir what do you have for us i got two quick ones here over the weekend on that ufc card uh how shout to mackenzie dern uh she's a mother and she's a tough one luke i know she went in there against uh what's her name uh with the you know random marcos random marcos who's now 10 10 and one with the, you know, random Marcos, random Marcos, who's now 10, 10 and one,

by the way. But, um, I saw a dedication this time for McKenzie Dern to like fitness and making weight. And it was a McKenzie Dern type fight. Look, Marcos took guard and didn't,

you know, and she, she jumped into the deep end of the pool. She shouldn't have been there, but Luke, I'm now seeing a, a much more dedicated McKenzie Dern post, uh,

pregnancy, if you will, who is starting to really look like a legit contender. And she'd been sort of an attraction for a little bit. We know she's very skilled, but I think she's starting to put it together, and it's almost time, right? She's going to need a few more wins. This is a killer division, as we know.

But it's almost time to start thinking about what she might look like against those upper- elite and we know this division is full of them luke are you seeing right now somebody that can contend with the rose nama unices with the whaley zhangs with the yoanas in terms of that because look on the ground she got a big right hand but on the ground few can match that strength and that in that technique no i'm not i mean she got she went to the ground by slipping on a kick and then random marcos for reasons that will remain unclear to me for the rest of my life decided to engage her by going to the ground with her a all-time galactically bad

call in fight sports um so yeah mackenzie duran i've watched her jiu-jitsu career she's as good as advertised in that. You know, the thing for me I'll give you is that she looked to be in tremendous physical condition. And you're right, she does seem to have a renewed focus. But this fight doesn't tell us anything other than what we already knew, other than, you know, she does appear to be training hard in perhaps the right way. So, still a lot of questions for me. She's such a physical specimen, though.

And I know that, like, you know, they made a Rousey comparison on there, and there's certainly some levels of that, Luke, but she's big and strong for the weight class, and that's going to make, I know she doesn't have the hands of those names that I mentioned. I actually don't think she's that strong. In the clinch, she's been muscled around even by the Ashley Yoder types. She wins on technique.

All right. All right. We'll see. I know you hate women in birth but we'll see luke um i also wanted to shout out uh i didn't like this luke can we play that video jay espn's mma account put this out this was yesterday i believe israel adesanya has touched down and so has paulo costa in abu dhabi ahead of this weekend's title fight and luke they went face to face and there is absolutely no protection of kayfabe here. And I know what you're going to say, pro wrestling fanboy, shut the heck up.

Luke, I didn't expect them to throw hands, but the volume of this video is very chummy. Hey, buddy, you know what I'm looking at? I understand there's Bushido, there's respect. These guys aren't going to, you know, scratch each other's eyeballs out in the parking lot. But the promotion has been well handled up to this point. The countdown show came out, by the way, which has you and I, our own voice, featured in it for morning combat. So shout out to those folks. But it's been built upon the idea that they don't like each other, that, you know, Costa wanted to run into the cage after the Romero fight.

They're supposed to hate each other. Luke, I want to believe that they hate each other. I don't like when this stuff sees the light of day. Maybe it's just the pro wrestling fan in me. I didn't enjoy that, Luke. You care? No, I didn't care for two fucking seconds at all. Not even a little bit.

Well, all right, Luke. It's still real to me. All right, damn it. It is still real to me. I mean, this is you being like getting super invested in some pro wrestling storyline. I mean, does this in any way change how you think the fight might go? I mean, who gives a fuck? Not necessarily, but don't you want to believe that?

I mean, I interviewed Izzy last week, and he's calling him a steroid. He's ripping him left and right, saying our energies don't match. I mean, he's giving you the quotes you want. So they see each other we're supposed to we're supposed to bro out luke you've got some enemies in this mma media game do i expect you and your enemies to to hug at a fight no bro they didn't really keep him alive they didn't really hug and and more to the point uh yeah i've got plenty of people i fucking can't stand. But, you know, am I going to go out of my way to have a conflict with them during a pandemic? You know, probably not. Probably I'm going to just let it rock and, you know, be cordial to the extent that I need to be.

That's it. Hey, Luke, you're going to have to be careful of one thing in the bubble this week. If you plan on podcasting with me in the evening, got some beers cracked, right? It might just be the time for me to get that rear naked and i know what your mind is telling you right you know your mind's telling you this guy bc's a washed dad he's you know he doesn't have the proper jiu-jitsu experience that i do i'm a tough guy who beat people down as a bouncer, all this stuff. Luke, do you know how bad it would be for your brand, speaking of kayfabe, for me to make you tap on camera? Do you have any idea?

Anytime you want a shot at the title, you let me know. All right. I'm just saying. I'm not trying to go one-on-one against you, but if I slip that thing in, Luke, it is tap or nap. You don't even know how to slip it in. Well, I have fathered children. Luke, all right.

Three needles, BC. Three needles. Well, three. Yeah, that's true. That's true. All right. All right. Go ahead, Luke.

For my audience, we'll stay with Israel Adesanya. Dana White was asked recently about the entrances because against Robert Whitaker, he had the whole dance thing. Against Yoel Romero, he had this sort of, I don't know what you call this, more traditional Nigerian vibe, sort of low-key, but clearly there's a little bit of theatrics to it. And Dana White was basically saying, yeah, I want less of that. I want it to be as basic as possible, as bare bones as possible. To which I which I thought okay I get it because to the extent that fighters are just anonymized you can sub them in sub them out and hey

the brand is the product on the other hand it's like holy smokes do you actually do that for a business reason or do you just do it because you don't like it the business reason I don't agree with but I understand you mean to tell me you might be doing this because you actually don't like it?

BC, I was shocked. Who doesn't like that kind of thing? Like Colby going off on right-wing politics and them, you know, being okay with it. And it's like, oh, convenient. I know what this looks like. The optics look like, you know. No, I don't. The race thing I didn't buy because I don't think he wants to do it for Connor either all that much.

Maybe just to think he got talked into. He's been pretty clear and consistent. He doesn't like it. I just thought he was warming up to it. It's kind of like the uniform deal, right? Like, you know, they want to keep it streamlined. It's like, look, in the NBA, right? You got one sponsor on the shoulder, but that wasn't there for years.

It's a very streamlined look. I'm, again, not against uniform-wise that they keep it that way. I would like them to be, the fighters to be allowed to do a little, it doesn't have to be pride or anything like that, but I would like a little bit more showmanship in there, Luke. So I'm against him being against that, but I don't think it's anything more than that. It's just annoying.

It's just annoying. All right. Hey, Luke, can we shout out a great friend of the program, Greg Kelly? Yeah. Okay. Number two in your scorebooks, number one in our hearts, from the Outcry documentary on Showtime. He was wronged.

Talk about perseverance and grace. He's an impressive human Luke. He just signed a letter of intent for a full ride to play football. And, uh, was it central? It was Eastern Michigan, correct? Eastern Michigan. Yep. He had been looking to try to walk on at Texas.

You know, he had been training with X NFL guys. Shout out to Greg Kelly. I know it's many years in the making. He's what? 25, 26. But you know, however it goes from here, right? If he's a star, if he's a Rudy, however it goes from here to get to this point, to get what he lost, what he could have had, which is just experience,

life experience, playing football, playing the sport he loves. It was a warming moment to see that. And he cut the hair, Luke. You see that? He went in for the high and tight. Good. It looks better that way um well you are you are completely unmoved by this topic in fact are you still holding it against me that the legal team held up our interview for about a month yes you mean for the entire window where anyone could have possibly cared yes yes as i am luke you have misdirected hostilities one day day you'll forgive the New York public transportation system

for me being late to the morning combat New Year's Eve drinking episode. One day you'll forgive me. If I can get to the studio on time from nine states away, you do not have an excuse. Luke, I took public transportation the whole way. It's not my fault. You know what I'm saying? Yes, it is precisely your fault

and no one else's. With that being said, at least we got to do that in person. And BC, I say this sincerely, I'm excited to see you this week. I've been very much looking forward to it, not merely for what it means for the show, in our careers,

and all that other kind of grandiose stuff, but just on a personal level, we are lucky as balls to be able to do the show in the way that we have been through this pandemic but i i have missed the studio i have missed being together in the same room i'm excited about the cards yes but i'm also excited about uh just getting together again dude i've missed you let's do it i'm fan I'm fired up, all right? MK all week, all right? Check us out Wednesday. It's the Showtime pay-per-view.

Press conference stream we'll be hosting. Friday, the weigh-in stream we'll be hosting. Of course, the halftime show on Saturday night's pay-per-view. And as Luke mentioned, in some form, pretty much every day this week, you'll be hearing from us. Is that correct to say, Luke? I think that's probably fair to say.

In some form or another, you'll be hearing from us. Is that correct to say, Luke? I think that's probably fair to say. In some form or another, you'll be hearing from us. By the way, my live chat, I will do on Thursday. I don't know exactly when. I've got to work on those details, but we'll figure that out as well. That's going to be a permanent move. So be on the lookout for that. Okay, if you want to try Showtime, you certainly can. Go to Showtime.com right now, and you can try it for free for 30 days. You'll like it. You can keep it. If not, go watch showtime.com right now and uh you can try it for free for 30 days you'll like it you can

keep it if not you know go watch something stupid if you want to get some of this brilliant mk merchandise store.show that's sho.com now you can go and check that out more of that coming by the way so be on the lookout for it and then last but not least we're on social media this channel here morning combat is on instagram as well same name give us a like there you can see the very and we have a twitter now bc by the same name morning combat follow us on twitter it's it starts now folks it's about it's about i mean look there's a weird week we're on the road this week we're gonna hit you up with content we're gonna go three episodes a week moving forward out of here at least to start off in uh so many bonuses so many surprises hey

people liked our friend rashad evans last week well well you know we'll see more of him in the future of course we love chuck we love chuck people like oh what does this mean you guys you guys broke up with chuck no all right all right it's okay it was there's there's there's technical concerns and stuff all right we love chuck hey jay thank you for being our producer you're not going to the bubble this week jay you're're not. No. You're not, Jay. Jay is anti-COVID testing. He believes in the virus and disease. I am not going to the bubble.

I will produce you from right here, just like I always do. Okay, Jay. All right, Squirrel X. Thank you. Okay, BC, I will see you. I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning when we get COVID tested, right? Yeah, I mean, you might see me tonight, Luke. You want to slide through, come through?

We can do a podcast in masks. I don't know. We'll figure something out. All right, for Brian Campbell over on that side of the screen, I'm Luke Thomas. Thanks to everyone at Showtime and at Malka. We are on the road after the show all week long at the Mohegan Sun. Don't go anywhere.

Stay tuned for more content. But until then, may all of your gains be loyal. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time.