MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - UFC Vegas 120 Results: Quillan Salkilld UFC's Next Star? | Justin Gaethje vs Islam Makhachev at 170?

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Luke Thomas and Chuck Mindenhall are back on a Morning Kombat Monday, recapping the events from the weekend. Quillan Salkilld scored a first-round submission over Mateusz Gamrot at the Apex. What specifically stood out about this win and is it fair to call him the UFC's next big star? Carlos Diego Ferreira basically beat up Billy Q en route to a unanimous decision win. Should he get the King Green fight he called for and what's next for Billy? LT and Chuck also discuss other highlights from the card. Plus there was also some PFL action to go over. And the manager of both Islam Makhachev and Justin Gaethje suggested Gaethje's last fight could be against Makhachev at welterweight.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Revely, revelry. Look at this now. Oh, Jesus. Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, up the combat. Oh, there is. You fit in seamlessly in this weird MK environment. Do you want a margarita? Do it to three, two, three, six.

Your box gets set and go on. Hey, what's up, everybody, on this 10th day of August, 2026. Next, it's time for your morning edition, your coffee, your wake and bake, whatever you want to call it. It's time for morning combat. Hello there. I am merely one half of your hosting duo. My name is Luke Thomas. I join you from the capital of Estabas and Nidos right here in Washington, D.C., joined by my Connecticut dirtbag brethren brethren brethren.

Right. I cannot tell what kind of hat that is, but you know who it is. It's the Iceman, Chuck Mindenhall. What's up, bro? Nothing, man. This is the Denver Noggets, baby. 203 NBA champions. I've got you on a fairly small.

monitor, so it's a little hard to see. Yeah. Yeah. That was a little unjustifiable, Luke. The fact you didn't know that was the Denver Nuggets, look. I can't see that. I don't care how small it is. He's focused on those wizards, man. I mean, they've got they're the up and coming team right now.

Listen, I'm ready for new levels of disappointment this season. You understand that? If you get, the over under on Anthony Davis, I think, is a nine and a half how many games he'll appear in, right? Nine and a half is how many minutes he'll appear. Let's be honest about that. We have a lot to get to here. Yeah, exactly.

We have a lot to get to here today. So there were a bunch of fights over the weekend. I feel like it was, Chuck, I don't know how you feel about the weekend. To me, there were like some really high highs and then just a vast swath of mediocrity. Yes, there was, man. Yes. Right. It was, I mean, there was, especially Friday night, you know, if you're looking at the whole week, the weekend as a whole, I mean, it added up to a lot of mediocrity, yes.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the hell half of that was. All right. So we're going to talk about the UFC. The fights over the weekend, PFL as well, some like news and notes from around the sport. And then as you guys may recall, Wednesday, we are back in studio for the pregame preview. UFC 330 edition. It'll be me, the Iceman, and of course, Jed Mashu, getting you ready. But we are going to do a little bit of talk about Islam and Justin Gachie here today.

So thumbs up on the video, hit subscribe if you haven't. Remember to join us on Wednesday live at 11 a.m. for the pregame preview. Of course, here on the YouTube channel, you can also become a member. There's emojis, badges, and we'll think of some other fun stuff along the way. There is what, the email, MorningCombat at Gmail.com. That's to reach the show for fan subs, which have been tremendous. Fan subs, dead wrongs, and, you know, talk to Long Island Luke, I suppose. And then last but not least, the merch, morningcombat.

We have two new designs exclusive to this month. we have the head splitter design and then the John Donk design also the autographed poster and of course if you get the best fan sub you'll get an autograph poster each month so there's that as well morning combat dot shop for all of that as well let's bring in the third member here of the show we know he was many things over the weekend boyfriend of the weekend is not one of them it's Long Island Luke hello sir. It's not even true. Sunday was a whole day without fights we had a great day but uh I got a couple hot takes from this weekend. A, I feel like

UFC Vegas 120 was like slightly more entertaining than UFC serf UFC Belgrade. I don't know why. There was so many finishes on Belgrade, but I was a hot take man. I weirdly enjoyed Saturday's card more than I enjoyed Belgrade. I don't know why. The Belgrade car was

just empty calories. That's why. It was like cotton candy. Like the minute you put it in your house, but so was this. There were a lot of nothing fights that didn't mean anything, but for whatever reason I enjoyed them a little more. I don't know why. And then my other thing is like I still feel like I have so many question marks about Quill and Saul killed. And Luke thinks I'm crazy.

Wow. But I just, there's a lot of question marks still. I like the guy. Shout out to him. He's going to be, you know, top 10 now.

But I got to see more. I got to see more. That's all I'm saying. This is what happens when you watch too much bad MMA. You can't distinguish anything anymore. That is true. Although, I mean,

there are some questions, of course. I mean, he's not like a complete finished product by any stretch of the imagination. but I don't know, I was pretty impressed. With that in mind, Chuck, let's start things off here. Topic number one, and that's exactly where we're going to start. Cool and Saul killed.

Now, we'll talk about this with Long Island Luke. I'm going to give you my impression, and Chuck's going to give you his. Chuck will start with you. In my opinion, that was one of the most impressive prospect turn contender performances I've seen in quite some time. Here you can see the finish right here. Rolls to the back, tries to put pressure on the posture. Watch him push off here and when this choke fails.

And then as Gamrot turns, that's when he re-sinks it, right? Watch this. He's going to push off. He turns, boom, goes right into it. It's an interesting little setup there. I've actually never even seen before. Rolls him off of his base and then finishes the choke therein. Chuck, I have so much to say about this, but let's pitch it over to you.

This was a proven crafty veteran in Gamrot. He did this too. Can you call him, Quill and Salt Kild? the UFC's next big star, how big, how impressive in context was what he did on Saturday night? I thought it was huge, man. And in fact, when we went in here, Luke, did we, we were talking about this. I threw it to you. I said, hey, what would be the better thing that happens?

Would it be better for Saul killed to go five rounds where he faces adversity and has to, like, show a bunch of different wrinkles and maybe like some, you know, adaptability and he gets his hand raised? Or if he wins in the first round like he's been doing, you, you've mentioned like, well, as long as it's not a flukey thing, right? like where something happens and the fight ends in a fluky way, that the first round finish would still probably be the best way, especially for a rising star, like if he wants to kind of leap into that realm.

We got the best of all worlds in a single round. Like, that's what was great about it in the sense that we, in the setup to this fight, I was wondering specifically, I know a lot of us are questioning, why is this at the apex? You know, if you have a guy who's kind of coming up,

he's 5 in the UFC as like a string of first round finishes, why is he not fighting on a card in front of, you know, thousands of people and being highlighted? But also, why is he fighting Matus Gamrot, who can, you know, shut down the valve of anything that's exciting about a guy? We've seen him do it with other fighters where, like, they're pretty good, they're pretty exciting, and he just kind of shuts them down, or it makes them fight his fight, which is never that exciting.

This added up to a true litmus test to me, and for him to go out there, for Saul killed the Grub, go out there and not just try to make it like dictate space to be like you're going to fight my game. I'm going to fight your game and I'm going to dictate to you in your game plan. I'm going to shove it back in your face and I'm going to submit you late first round to continue my string of first round finishes. To me, that was incredible, man. I mean, and especially when you consider and I know it's at the apex and all that, but just this was the moment when people are really starting to pay attention where they're like, okay, is this the guy the goods? He's fighting a tie. I think

Gamrod was number six on one of the rankings. Like, is he good enough to do that very thing to a guy like Gamrod who'd only been finished once before, I think, against Charles Olivera, for him to go through it with relative ease and shut down everything that Gamrod is about, told me that he's a student of the game that he knew exactly what he's getting into, and also he's levels above where we thought he might be. I think that's a pretty fair summation. If I may add to this, because we're going to get long on Luke's opinion here in just a

second, and I really want to hear this because I think it's going to be interesting to hear. This is for me important to articulate, namely, you're allowed to be very, very, very high on Quill and I personally am now. This was, to me, a very convincing performance. However, it should be noted, like a lot of these fights. I think he's had one fight in the UFC go past the first round. The rest of them are all ending in the first round, asking, does he have five round cardio? This is an unknown. Now, it seems like a guy as buttoned up on the other ways would probably have. this also buttoned up, but, you know, BJ Penn was never really all that great for a lot of this except for a brief stint with the Morinovich brothers during one portion of his career.

Like, in other words, there are still plenty of scenarios where he has to be tested. Okay. But this was a huge one. This was a huge one. Mateus Gamrod is a veteran. He is a proven fighter. He's beaten top guys. To your point, he has been in every scenario imaginable, up on the cards,

down on the cards. Tired, not tired. Stomach hurts, doesn't hurt. You know, legs have been kicked to shit. They haven't. You know, whatever you have to wrestle, you have to strike. The guy's lanky, the guy's short-armed. He has seen every part of it. This dude has been in the trenches. And when it comes to what particular skill set really matters, a aggressive wrestler, a guy who knows every nook and cranny of all the positions, particularly when it comes to grappling, particularly up against the fence, right?

who's just mapped it all out and lived it all out. And dude, everything he threw at Saul Kild, Saul Kild had an answer for. To say nothing of the fact that Saul Kild actually took the, back up a step. Saul Kild called for this fight, yes, gets it, marches this guy down,

rocks him very quickly with a left hook, turns, or I should say, incentivizes, let's say, Gamrot to then begin to wrestle, answers all of it, takes, Gamrot down, gets to his back, avoids, you know, the knee bar, the heel hook. And those were kind of close, by the way. Like, he had a good bite on those. I thought that Salkill was playing a game that a 20-year-old might make in terms of risk calculation.

And it worked. But that was, you know, another thing to pay attention to. Nevertheless, gets out of it, eventually gets to the back himself, Chuck, and then puts this guy away with brilliant execution. And I want to say one thing more about the scrambling. you'll note in the scrambling that gamrott on one of the last things he does is he tries to take the far one side leg of Saul killed grab it and then pull it across right because if you can pull it across what happens is that they get to an edge and then they can fall over saw killed reaches across the back and then hooks the other arm which anchors him to it then he's able to take gamrod off of his base and recapture the back that was insane that is extremely, extremely, like, well, not, I mean, it's high level IQ that is coming instinctually

to him, or at a bare minimum, he knew exactly what, that they must have looked at a lot of tape. Like, he was very, very ready for it. Either way, rehearsed or not, it's still high level stuff. Everything in a four-minute-plus period that a proven scrambler and a proven veteran and a proven lightweight could throw it Saul killed. He was just Neo in the Matrix answering it all.

There was nothing there. So with that in mind, Chuck, let's bring in the third member here of the panel, the man who hates Australians clearly more than anyone else on this panel. What are we missing here? It's okay, you guys,

what you're missing is I guess my initial point, which is that not that I'm not impressed with the performance. I'm impressed with the performance. I just feel like I didn't learn a lot from it. And I would equate it to like, Patty versus BSD, where it was like, wow, great fucking finish for Patty. Yes, because to me, it was like great fucking finish for Patty, but it was like, oh, but it was like BSD where you're kind of like, all right, well, I don't really know how good either of these guys are. I still didn't really learn much about where either

these guys are. Like, if this had gone five rounds and Quillen won a decision, I'd be like, I think I'd be so high on Quillen right now. It's the fact that it was another. The fact that he had these automatic answers to a guy who is so much more proven than him means nothing. Also, no, it doesn't mean nothing. Also, like, I want to point out two things here to point out that I'm not salty. A, we got a new Australian prospect. Let's fucking go. Contender.

We do the mystery bed on my channel where we just blindly vote for a random thing. It was Saul killed submission under three and a half plus two or 75. So I was pretty fucking hype to anyone. I was actually excited, but I was like, fuck, man. I wanted that to just go a little longer. I wanted to see a little more. more wanted to see some adversity. Seeing him caught in the knee bar was nice.

He admitted it popped. He was limping afterwards. So he saw some adversity there, but it was within, you know, two minutes. It wasn't, I don't know. I just, I felt a little. Did you not pick Gamrod? Like then the guy, he did what Gamrod does. Gamrod does and he couldn't do it, right?

He could not Gamrod in this fight. I know, but Gamrodot fumbles in these main events. I know he beat Sarukin in the main event, but we all know Sarukin really won that fight. Also, he lost to Charles in the first round. He loses here in the first round. Gamrod just, he loses in the limelight. I don't know, man. Something about it.

Something about it I didn't love, but shout out to Quill and Salca. I mean, again, it is worth pointing out that there are still just many, like, oh, he keeps ending him in the first round because he's so good. True. But eventually, he's not going to, Chuck. Eventually, it's going to go to the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth. Like, eventually you're going to have to be there. And how they answer that is important and not really knowable from this information. It's not just a five round one.

It could be other scenarios too. He might have some weakness that we just don't know about because people haven't tested it yet. So, for example, Donald Serroney was kind of always susceptible to the body, right? Maybe Saul killed's like that and no one's figured it out yet. We can see. We should see. But I'm with you, Chuck.

The ability to have an answer as you're pressing the attack and being put in some dangerous positions, geez, I don't know, man. That's high level operating that really has to be considered. I'm not sure what to be more impressed by. honestly, I hear Long Island. Like, I could see some of these things, but like, I don't know if he should be more impressed with the fact that he was able to kind of play the Gamrod game, like, at least welcome it and say, like, go ahead.

You can do what you do to other fighters, but you can't do it to me. And to ultimately, punish him for it and win the fight that way. Like, to me, that was very impressive. Or the fact that this dude has been fighting, like, in the UFC officially for 18 months. And he's 6 and 0 in that time, five first round finishes. And already, I'm guessing, will buy. into the top five if not he'll be just on the outside of it but to to skyrocket that fast you know into the situation and he was one of those guys because he had that head kick uh that head kick

that was playing on the b-roll all the time against was it hackperass was that the one he knocked out and it was like you know that was played all over the place there was some hype on his name and i always feel like there are certain guys especially at 26 years old who let that go to their head and you're you're bound to see a little bit of a disappointment or an exposure and i felt like we got none of that. This is when Luke, when you're mentioning guys coming out and like, okay, is this the greatest, like a, you know, prospect to contender moment, like in terms of guys we've seen that have been great in the past, I was thinking about that and I was like, you know, it really might be up there because how many guys passed with flying colors

in the first one where you have the element of doubt and the line is right, you know, pretty 50-50. All of that was in play and he made it look incredibly easy. So I'm not sure what to be most impressed by, but dude, I am impressed on every level from that guy. I mean, that was a real guy he beat. But respect him to Tilly Schammer. That's a real dude. And it looked like it was his UFC debut. You know, that's the part to me.

It's like Gamrodt tried and tried and tried and never looked like himself against the guy who's 26 years old. And to your point, has not even been in the UFC a full two years. Like, holy shit, dude, that is extremely difficult to pull off. I was thinking about what the comparison might be. And again, these are always so silly, Chuck. and I recognize that they are silly because you're trying to reference someone in a way that the expectations are almost absurd

to put it on them. I don't know if this is akin to George St. Pierre, not beating Frank Trigg, but maybe someone a little bit earlier than that, like a Sean Shirk. I don't know if it's like that because I have no idea that declaration. There was something about, like in the sense

for sure with Sean Shirk because he was one of those militage guys, right? And he had like he had. No, Minnesota Martial Arts Academy. Yeah, but he was with Militich, too, for a while. I don't know if that was before or after. Yeah, he was with him for a little bit. But anyway, like, besides all that, like, he had, like, been out of the UFC, if you recall,

but he was on a ridiculous streak. And so, like, he was kind of battle test. He went back to earlier UFC's battle tested. And when GSP won that fight, it felt like a declarative statement of, like, something new blowing through, right? Like, and that type of thing is that's what it felt like. And I guess we haven't, have we got a lot of this? I feel like the times the USC, especially at the apex,

recently where they're trying to get a maybe a younger guy over on an older guy, you get a Moikano suddenly stepping out and like beating the brakes off of Duncan or something like that. Not that Duncan was the same thing, but like, you know what I'm saying? They keep trying to get younger guys through these older guys. And like the Santini versus Porriere fight was one of those type of fights. And it just doesn't happen. So when you see it kind of go in that direction, especially against a guy like Gamrod where it's a thankless task to have to beat him anyway

because he's just such he's such a hard out that's that's I mean it is it feels like he just launches into a contender for me because that you know nobody else has done it like you can look at the guys he's faced nobody else was able to make it look that easy yeah to physique it was an injury so you don't if you don't want to count that jalen Turner went to a split although gamrott won it Gamrodot lost to deriyush now all the way we're back in 2022 beats sarjuke in over five beats Diego Fahara stops him into Jeremy Stevens, Scott Holtzman, Guta Touladze, and you can go on from

there like the number of guys who he's fought and then since then RDA, Hucker, Klein, Olivera, like battle tested. You know, like that's, I mean, that's an absurd resume in terms of like, and desperate. He needed to win the fight. This is a fight. He probably

was like, I could take this young kid's juice and then I can make my own title run. That's how he had to view this fight. He was desperate to win this fight to stay in contention himself and he couldn't do anything, man. That's what I mean. Like when someone comes through and just beats a proven guy, and it's not 13 seconds, you know, you clipped him. This was, again, all kinds of defensive maneuvers on route to just take you the fight over. I will say one thing that I'm interested in Salkild is a guy who is, you know, he pressed the attack in this one. And to me, the attack press itself

seemed intelligent. But one thing I'm going to see as he goes forward is, I think he kind of likes to press the attack on guys to get them to force them to react because I think he feels like if you can get a guy to react early, I don't know, he seems to have a feel for how it's going to go. And I wonder if someone plays a little bit more of a Strickland game where they slow the fight down and they make it a little bit more tit for tat, what that might do for him because he seems to play not exactly hurry up offense. Yeah. But he doesn't let you sit around and make an opportunity. Isn't that what you talked about him too?

Like he does, he looks for shots. He's always pressing for that advantage that he can press with urgency, right? Like he wants to get there quicker. But yes, I agree with the 100%.

The one, the Ashmoos fight, was that the one that went to the distance? That was the one, that kid, like he kind of tried to muck it up a little bit. And I think that that, I thought that this fight

would actually play out similar to that one, like, where maybe you see a grind, but like where, you know, Saul killed is forced to kind of dig a little deeper, and maybe, maybe do some wrestling of his own, showcase that a little bit, but I, I think that the guy, like, the way he faces is probably going to be a blueprint of just saying, like, how do you just kind of nullify, if nothing else early on to try to wear him down or, like, change his instincts in the fight and make him fight your fight? But right now, I think that that's what's so impressive is Gamrod actually was a guy who could do that, and I think he's done that traditionally, and he was just not able to get off that way. And, I mean, to me, that's, that's, that's, that's, That's why it stands out. I mean, that is, it's really just the, it's the opponent. It's not a washed up guy is beating. It's still a guy very much who's viable in the division. So it's exciting. And I think the UFC needs guys like this, man. Honestly, they need some stars who have that sheen, right? Like, there's have that electricity to them. And also, like, I was thinking about this point. And I made a version of this point on my YouTube channel, which was like, and I'm here's to get your perspective. You know, I was, I famously thought, I'm famously not the right word, but I know, you know, I definitely was public.

in arguing that we had a new class of guys a few years ago, several years ago at this point. Yeah. You know, the Kutatalazes and Isma Gulovs and all those guys, they were going to replace that last class of lightweights, the Chandler, Sepureas, the Alvarez's, that kind of a thing. And it didn't really happen. Obviously, Sorukian broke through, but and Teporia broke through, but those are sort of the noteworthy examples. Well, now look at it, Chuck.

You've got Patty, who I know got sent packing by Baguichi, but obviously rebounded quite nicely against BSD. He's also in his 20s, as the other two guys are, I've mentioned. I think Ilya is still at his 20s, maybe 29 or so. So you can 29. Now look at what you have here happening at lightweight, Chuck. Now here comes another 20-year-old in Quillin-Sall killed. And there's other names I'm not even putting on the list there that are all in their 20s as well.

Now the class is starting to break through. Now you're beginning to see what I thought was going to happen. The previous one didn't quite work, but it's all kind of consolidating. Now, I wonder if you share that assessment. Yeah, I totally remember sitting around. I think we were with Brian Campbell, and we had this whole discussion about this. Because it looked like a range of beasts.

We're just descending on these veterans about to overtake them. And obviously, it didn't play out quite like that. But, man, the thing that is different is a lot of the guys you were mentioning are from, like, you know, places where the wrestling heavy and just dictate where the fight takes places, like, you know, these are guys who are going to do that. They're going to dictate. They're not going to be dictated, too. the great thing about Quillan is he's not I mean obviously he is not a wrestler right like I mean

you can tell that he can wrestle and he has some defense that way but he wants to do it in the way that I think will be fan friendly and you know in a complete sense and I guess this is where Taporia started to separate himself too was like he was going to put on an exciting fight as well as be very good and I feel like those two things because we've seen it so often where like look at Saurukin it feels like he's always behind the eight ball and it's like he finishes guys too but at the same time people aren't really talking about him and his fights as much as they probably should and this hinders him from getting you know thrust into a title shot i just feel like that quinlan is kind of the total package in that sense so far like you said

maybe there's the next guy will expose something but dude it's when you get a guy who has those goods and he can actually ignite an audience like that it's just gold we just don't see too many of them I know. If you think about it now, like Long Island, Patty Pemblett versus Quillen Salky. Oh, man. Lord. See, that's a fight. I would back Quillan and I'd be excited about it. You know what I mean? Even if he was an underdog, I'd be like, all right, I could take Quillan. What's going to piss me off is they're going to book him against BSD, and I'm going to again get nothing out of it and go, I still don't fucking know how good this guy is after he finishes BSD. Who would you like to see him fight? Max. I want to see him fight Max. And I want it to go five rounds.

And I want to see him beat Max for five rounds. And then I'll be. like fuck yeah this guy that's flying into flight dude going from gamrot to max is yeah that's crazy dude jump yeah yeah i don't know i don't know if i don't know if that's quite the right one i think he needs one more long island before you get to one like max because max is a five round fucking demon i'm just i'm looking at the top 10 and i feel like you got ilia which i feel like is too much too soon arman is booked charles you could do charles or max to me are the two options here I need a good vet that can go five rounds that let's see you dismantle that. And talking to him and talking to Saul killed before this fight,

like he thought that he could basically springboard off of this fight, you know, his first main event, into a situation where he'd fight a guy like that and then be a title fight. Like he thought he was two fights away where he got through the first hurdle. So in that sense, in his own kind of mind and what his objective is, one of those type of fights would probably make the most sense for him to get there, right? we shall see what they do next. I have a feeling that because he got through this relatively unscathed,

well, I was going to say that, but then his knee popped, so I don't know how true that is. Assuming that the knee is no big deal, I think they're going to get him right back out there pretty quickly. He wanted MSG. I don't know if, did he mention that in the post fight? Because when I talked to him, he's like, I want to be on that MSG card in November.

We have a clip. We have the clip. We'll play the clip. Okay, all right. Obviously in the interview inside the cage, you mentioned, you know, anyone in the top five, I believe? Is that what you said? Yeah, top five. A lot of people are booked right now, but I have a little bit of a twinge in the knee right now from one of the wrestling exchanges. So for the time being my focus is, you know,

seeing what the damage is, which, I don't know, I don't think it's too bad, but yeah, that's the next thing on my mind, to be honest. And then we'll be looking at closing in on that top five. Do you think by the end of the year, we'll see you again? 100%. Hell yeah. I'm like Wolverine. No matter what the injury is. I'm going to recover quick shit, so I'm looking to try to get on. The dream fight will be at MSG, New York, so there's always a card usually in November, so shit, fingers cross, I can get matched up on that. Well, what we're talking about dreams, I know you said anyone in the top five, but dream-wise,

is there anyone you want to see across from you at MSG? I don't give it. I don't give a fuck. The dream is the belt, so I don't know. Whoever is going to get me there, I don't really care. kind of refreshing is and it's like I got an injury but I'm for sure going to fight before the end of of the year I mean it's always so funny to me is sometimes like you get these breakout or this is not I mean there's obviously a million differences but you know instead of Connor and max they're the

initial one like the one back in 2013 or whatever on FS1 you know you set these up for these guys to do well and he did do well Connor obviously one but then he tears his ACL you know it's like yes this often happens this guy has like a big moment and then it's like a little you roll to achieve it like she shows up finally again and then breaks both their hands I'm like Come on, man. You can't get anybody rolling here. Yeah, yeah, indeed, very true. All right, with that in mind, let's go to the rest of this card, which I was not nearly as entertained as Long Island Luke was.

Although, as always, there tend to be a few gems along the way. UFC Vegas 120, UFC Fight Night, Gamrot versus Saul killed. Okay, we talked about the main event. Let's talk about the co-main event. Carlos Diego Faheda basically just, I don't know what do you want to say? Yeah, there was some given take, but I think it's fair to say he just beat up Billy Quill, Billy Quintillo on route to a unanimous decision, win he called for the king green fight after that before we talk about billy the fight was you know

what would you say chuck two old dudes slinging the dogs you can't be too mad about that i suppose kind of thought i kind of thought i kind of thought the dea go fahara was the more skilled of the two we said it on friday show and that basically it showed up yes and i thought that i don't know i mean how you're watching this like didn't you think corinillo like there was a little bit of me that's like I wanted to play a little bit of defense. It just felt like he was not going to, from the very earliest time exchanges in this, you could look at it two ways.

You know, that Ferreira was getting off and like he was just really good combos, but at the same time, when you land 116 significant strikes and something like, I'd have a figure it was like 90 or something like that in the first two rounds, it was,

it means that Quarantilla wasn't getting out of the way very well either. And if you looked at those replays, a lot of them, like, just stand in their stationary as the, as the punch was coming in. That part of it, I was, I didn't anticipate, but I guess when you're talking about a guy who's 40, what is he,

42 Ferreira and like 30, whatever it was, and it's like, you're talking about a guy's a little bit more longer in the tooth, and they both have been kind of inactive. You might get something like that. But honestly, man, you can take nothing away, you know, from, from CDF, like, in that type of fight, where he's kind of putting together the combos and also still doing that in the third round.

I know, like, at the end there, it got a little hairy, but like he was able to kind of maintain a pace at 42. I mean, I couldn't have you, I can't contemplate, you know, fighting at that kind of pace for that amount of time. So it's always a kudos when you see a guy put on a good performance like that, especially because he'd been a while. He'd lost his last couple and it was good to see. He's one of the good guys in the game.

Yeah, I mean, the numbers are pretty clear on this. Significant strikes landing for Fajaro 116 for Quarantillo, 73. To your point, it was it was somewhat narrowed, somewhat narrowed in the third. But in general, there was a. pretty clear just, you know, aggregate total more. I think, you know, you can say obviously a qualitative one as well. There was a few takedown sprinkled in as well for Diego Faheda.

Also, interesting to note, I'm looking at his numbers here, Chuck. 81% of his targets were to Billy Corantillo's head. 81%. I mean, he was... I think 80% of them landed, Luke. 1% to the leg. 1%. It's crazy.

So a little bit of work to the body, but he was mostly just bop, bop, right upstairs the whole time. Um, for Billy, 37 years of age. What do you think, Chuck? I mean, he's three in a row. He's lost. Uh, he didn't get finished this time, but. Yeah.

He took a pound in though. I just think that, you know, I mean, those guys, I'm not saying he can't. And I felt like he, he believed he was in, you know, a good shape for it and all this stuff. But I'm like, you know, obviously his better days are behind him. My camera just keeps screwing up here. I feel like it just keeps like swaying over there. But anyway, it's, uh, his better days are behind him. I still thought that he was very.

very game. You know what I mean? Like some guys you can see that they're like their mind is like, why am I still doing this? Even in the middle of the fight, I felt like he was game. He just couldn't do much. So if they're going, if he's going to keep going, I hope that they give him somebody who's in a similar type position. And I guess that's what this was. But that's probably the only way to do it. I think the UFC loves him on some level because he's always put on those fights, right? Or at least he always tries to put on those types of fights. I wouldn't mind seeing the diga-hago-Ferera King Green fight, but I also think we have to be realistic and say Diego Faheda will absolutely

like slug it out with you, right? He will slug it out with you. But he's also going to try and take King Green down at some point too, right? Yeah. Are you okay with a fight like that? That's what you have to ask yourself. Is that what you want? I'd be okay with that, but I would imagine that some MMA fans might say, hey, let's give someone to Green that is going to just accommodate the... Especially after Green's last one, right? like it's like comes back I mean it's just ridiculous

I mean it's not even that it's give Bobby Green a step up in competition he fucking deserves it at this point he's fighting a bunch of unranked guys and give him someone it's true I think for I was looking at like well he just got pushed to his limit by by Terrence McKinney

no he let Terrence you know gas himself out and then he knows that what he's yeah you know he knew what he was he to sees what he wants to see man like but but he also called out Jim Miller right like that was another name he threw out there which you know that could be entertaining as well. I mean, and honestly, that might make more sense in the situation. I think

I'm kind of with you. Like King Green, like do you want to put King, do you want to sacrifice King Green in that kind of fight when you could actually still put him in the middle, middle of a card like they like to do against some banger and you know you're going to get like some action fight, you know. Yeah, I mean, put them against a bigger name or something right. Yeah. A greater stature, not so much just a stylistic consideration. Yeah, Jadier del Vage or Valle, beats Darren Elkins. And there it is, in about 35 seconds into round one. Mercifully, Darren Elkins had declared ahead of time, this would be his final MMA fight. Thank sweet Jesus.

I don't know what to say, except Darren Elkins has had. Darren Elkins, you know, what was his superpower? It was that he would have to be physically rendered unconscious or immobile before he quit, Chuck. Right. Yes. Like Nozita said, like long ago, he said the damage is done, right? Like this, like he, that punch that landed was, I mean, it was a left, right? It was a left and it just goes right through the wickets. And it's like, it's basically, yeah, I mean, look at this.

It's just right down Maine, man. And it's like, it's just, I don't need to see that anymore. I appreciate a guy like there now because what is it? Like, he had like 30 fights. You know, you look at it like, he debuted on the Vera, like John Jones card way back in the day. No way. Yeah, man. And I mean like the fact that he fought that many times he, I think he won 19.

UFSI versus one. He beat Dwayne Ludwig. I know, DeWain Ludwig. I mean, it's like a throw. It's like watching a guy from throwback, right? Like, you know, still competing. He's definitely, I felt bad for him. He got very emotional in like the post, you know, conference and all that.

I'm sure he wanted a better end. But, dude, I mean, there's just overstating. Well, we've seen this before, man. We've seen other guys who go in there and they think they can try one last time. And they're kind of okay when we're another. like, you know, I'm going to do it. And that's kind of what they hang their hat on is saying, like, the fact that I'm doing it is really what the victory here is. And, you know, but then you see a knock on like, I could, if you're his family, you're like, I don't want to see my relative

taking any more damage like that, right? Dude, and he fought an absolute murderer. He did. He did. I'm looking at his resume now. It's insane, dude. Like he, first of all, like he's, he beat Hatsu Hioki in 2013. I know a lot of you dogs are not going to know the value of that. That's a big deal. That was a hard one to get. He did lose to Hakrin Diaz, another tough-ass fight. Then he beats Chaz Skelly, Go to Ferdoppe, who I think went to jail or might be dead. The Mirzad Bechtitch one, which you referenced was just an insane comeback. Dennis Bermuda's fight, which was a dog fight.

And then remember, Michael Johnson nearly stopped him and he stormed back in that one. Oh God, yes. Volk, Lama's Hall and then a bunch of other names. But dude, holy fucking shit. He's been fighting. I know. hammers the entire time. I was talking about like UFC 131, which was a long time. That's one at the time I was at that airport and I was talking to him and I was like, that was forever ago, dude.

I mean, we're talking about and he's like taking beatings then. And that was his superpower back then, Luke. So that's, you know, that's a lot of damage. There's a term that comes from dog fighting. I bring this up all time to time, only when it's really relevant. And we can, you know, move on to another fight in just a second. But it's called gameness. Yeah. Game, G-A-M-E-S-S. G-S. It is basically defined as pursuit of the fight despite the physical consequences. Unfortunately, it does come from dogfighting, so it has an ugly origin,

but such that you can sanitize it, Chuck, or apply it to a human in a more regulated context, I can think of someone who has no greater gameness than Darren Elkins himself. Maybe Michael Vick, but other than that, yes, that's probably right. Newport, bad news. Bad news kennels, baby.

Oh, God, that was so. That was such low-hanging fruit. All right. Yeah. But you ever been to Newport News? Yes, but it's been a way. Yeah, I've been out there. Yeah.

Don't go. Watch Newport News, which is the land that I forgot, my friend. Yeah. It sucks. All right. Alexia. Okay, I really like this fight. Alexia Tynaura slugging it out, basically, with Amanda Lemosch.

And I'll tell you why I like this fight, Chuck. Amanda Lemosch is older and she loses here. Tynara emerges. the victory she takes two rounds on the judge's scorecards, which I thought was basically correct. But here's the thing. Lemosch to me is obviously on the decline, but you saw it a little bit more so when she got out grappled.

As you can see, if you want to slug it out with her, she's always had punching power and a pretty good overall striking game in general, Chuck. And so Tynera, in my view, not only beat Amanda Lemish, was by itself, Lemos is a good, solid win as a resume builder, but she did it in what is arguably, in my view, the hardest way to do it, which is just to duke it out with someone like that. And she still got the nod.

Pretty impressive. That's true. And I thought that she had like kind of the acumen to, you know, stand kind of make her points, you know, and I think that she looked pretty damn good in that, especially in that second round. She stood in there quite a bit. But she also kind of would muck it up a little bit. Like she would, she would kind of push Lamo.

Like if anything started to kind of go the other way, they would, she would just kind of put it in her realm, put her against the fence, drive those, you know, knees into the thigh and just kind of, you know, you know, own the fight through control on the fence. To me, like, if you're, if you can kind of blend that, that's, that's pretty good,

especially against a veteran who I think Lamos is a pretty savvy veteran. Like, she's kind of stood in there against everybody. We kind of detailed all the different champions and everything that she's fought. So to me, it was a, it was a very good show. It was very, you know,

very much, I guess, a low key version of the main event where you're like, you have a kind of young up and comer or a younger up and comer who maybe doesn't have the name value, but, you know, has to get through a veteran or somebody who's battle tested and was able to do that. So I thought it was a good performance for her.

And honestly, dude, that division's starting to, you know, we've talked a lot about the women's ranks, but at least there's some new blood coming up these days. We talked about a Fatima Klein, right? And her fight like a couple weeks ago. And now you get this one. And I feel like that's kind of exciting for that division. Ty Miller defeats Billy Ray Golf.

Basically boxes him into oblivion. inside of the third, I believe. He scores two knockdowns along the way. Golf missed on eight takedowns. The numbers are horrendous. 133. Significant strikes landed for Miller to 25 Billy Ray Golf. I have two points about this one.

One, I'm high on Miller. I saw people being really high on him and being like, oh, he's a gold gloves champion. I don't mean to diminish people who accomplished more in athletics than I ever could. But I just want to be clear. It's not to say that there's not value to winning gold gloves, the golden gloves competition, depending on where you win it. It does not in any way portend success in MMA.

Now, to me, he has very good boxing and uses his reach well, which is really great. I'm not saying he has poor striking. He is very good. But I don't think it's fully fleshed out yet either. I don't think there's as many disparate weapons he could be employing as he is. Nevertheless, he really looked good. My other point about this, Chuck, and you can respond to both of these if you like, but the second one would be more of a, I guess more of a question.

and seems like oh, Billy Ray Golf didn't need to go out in that third round and his corner could have pulled it. I think do they deserve some criticism here? They're Connecticut people, you know, and it's like, you know how we do. No, but it's like if a guy, if they're telling, if they're telling their guy in between rounds, like, hey, man, circle them, just stay away from him. Just stay away from him. What are we doing? What are we doing, Luke? Like, that's the type of situation where you're like, you're telling a guy to go, like, he's already losing on his grave.

If he's winning and something and something was starting to turn, maybe that would be advice. But I'm like, so you're trying to just get to the scorecards. I think if you're basically conceding at that point, you should just stop the fight. There was no reason for him to go in there and take the extra damage. It was a little bit, it wasn't exact, obviously. But remember the Terrell Fortune fight? Like where was he fighting, what was that, who's he fighting? What was that?

Cuniev, the guy, he was fighting recently a few weeks ago. And he went in there. He had the ribbon. I can't breathe. And we were sort of like, well, why? would you send them back in there just to take that extra minute of damage and they did and it was you know it came into some some scrutiny during that week before you like blow off into the next card but it was like it was kind of like that where you're like i feel like these corners need to

be a little more aware of what their fighter is doing what they're saying especially and having an authority to be let's live to see another day you know what i mean like i just don't i just don't know why they don't do that more they're just um i think i think that partly the it's a it's a level of the sports maturity that you've got people who don't do it partly it's just a general culture like the entire culture is premised around you know limit breaking and then just constant refusal to bend and whereas there's a little bit more i mean again but hard like it's not like boxing super enlightened about this either but they have some better sense about like when a day should be called and you know to your point it's like dude if if you are

up two rounds, right? And you want to say to your guy, circle and stay away, there's a risk inherent with doing that. A, you could piss off the promoter or B, you know, if you just play too defensive, you can get overwhelmed. That's true almost of any sport, honestly, drive parking the bus like that. But that's at least a thing you can do, right? There's nothing offensive about that other than it's just boring, but it's well within the rules, and there's no ethical concern there. Okay. if you're down two rounds and the plan is to just surrender without but letting the clock run out

this is unethical to me okay like either if you're down two rounds the plan is either to win it or the plan is to call it a day and just letting a guy go out there and get bodied into the third round just seems insane to me

I want to point out that all three judges had round two as a 10-8 round so he was technically down, you know, three points on the scorecards. Also, I want to point out that we'll give his corner some credit for a second and just say that Jason Herzog could have ended that fight at any point in the final two minutes around two. Like at any point, he could have stepped in and no one would have been mad. But he let, you know, whatever.

It's crazy, man. I mean, like on the, on the, okay, but here's the thing. A corner might pull it under different circumstances than a referee might pull it. And you might say, well, this is a case where both could have pulled it. But what I'll say is golf, you know, he did get knocked down twice. But it wasn't until the final, like he basically collapsed under the final weight of punches. Like, I can see why a referee might have waited as long as he did. That's at a bare minimum, that to me is a little bit more defensible than you're telling a guy who's down two rounds.

And to your point, Long Island, coming off of a 10-8. round and then you're saying to him just stay away like no no no no no no either you're in this to win it or we're finished here right that's that's the objective and the other thing is you know that you MMA protects against the standing eight obviously and this is the

big difference in boxing and safety things Dana White has continuously pointed this out you know to lay people checking in on the octagon he's like well you know we're different than boxing this is where it gets weird it is in things like this it really comes down to a corner who's like they

have the ability and we just haven't seen it. We have not seen a kind of more progressive attitude of corners jumping in to save their fighter. But this is the type of situation where they should and like this is where it becomes almost like the standing eight. You just got destroyed for the last

two and a half minutes of that round. And they know he's out of it. They know he can't win this fight. But you're giving him that minute to recover and they're saying, all right, now get in there. Now, I know they're saying stay away, which makes no sense. But you know it's not, he's not going to be able to. Ultimately, he's going to take more damage. So this is almost like if you're getting close to what like some equivalent to problem areas in the standing eight cents, you know, like that's where it's at.

It comes down to the corners and maybe the referee's complicitous to this a little bit, but like the corners have to do a better job here, man. No question about it. But in the end, Ty Miller looks pretty good. So shouts to him for that. All right. Let's get Long Island here very quickly to wrap up on this one. I know you just love unremarkable MMA. Tell me about the rest of this card.

Oh, I thought you were going to team me up with a specific fight. And I thought you were going to go Stephen Asplen because he looked pretty fucking underwhelming in that fight. But no, I want to point out, you know, yeah, that's, yeah. I want to point out the curtain jerker, dude. Carol Faroe versus Gigi Canuto. This was actually, it should have won fight of the night. They gave it to the Comaine, Faheda, and Quintillo.

But to me, this was the best fight of the night. And we set it from the moment it was happening. It was one one going into the third. You could see the pick on the right there was like the final 30 seconds around three, where Faroe is up and almost gets armed barred, she gets out of it. It was crazy. Giuliana Miller gets a submission over

Raveno Levera. Ravina Levera has never won in the UFC and I'm pretty sure she's been submitted almost every time. So that was whatever. This was pretty sick though. Miles Johns, dude. Yeah, this was nice.

About 20 seconds coming on on the shortest of notices though. Okay, but about 20 seconds before this Vasquez rocked John's bed and it was like, oh shit, Vasquez is going to knock out Johns and then Johns rocks him, right? It was it was Pat Berry

check Congo ask it was very cool uh we don't have a clip of it or anything but uh manuel soza and richie miranda that was okay richie miranda won the first round and it was like oh we're about to get an upset here man well soza came back in the next two rounds uh this dude hose montana got the submission over louis sutherland i mean louis sutherland beat tie to avasa and that's about all he'll probably ever do in the ufc we'll see uh and diar nurgis getting the finish over bruno lopez this fight was pretty fun yeah but bruno lopez gets knocked out by everyone, so I don't know how much. But Nurgurge got poked in the eye

before this, so, you know, not bad for him. It was fun. Again, I really enjoyed the card, but, uh, you know, no real stakes involved, but it was fun. Except, did you enjoy it because you had more winning bets on it. That's what, because I didn't get a chance to talk to you about Belgrade. I did, you know, I did do decent

on the bets, you know, winning on Quillin and the main event was a lot of fun on the mystery bet, but, uh, yeah, you know, Chuck, we're not going to talk about the Belgrade results compared to excitement. All right. That tells me everything. Yep.

We'll talk about the Apex upgrades a little bit later in the show, but we are going to get to that as well because I do have some thoughts about it. But let's go to topic number three if we can, Chuck. Ooh, this was a rough one. The PFL has kept its summer series going this time with a stop in Charlotte, North Carolina. And in general, I am very happy with what the PFL, very happy is a strong word. But I think I'm generally supportive of what the PFL has done under the leadership of Jonathan Martin and even merging with MVP, I think this is one of the, it's a, it's a debatable decision,

but it seems to me a pretty rational one given the landscape. So in general, I'm pretty okay with what the PFL is trying to do to elevate itself. But the stop in Charlotte just didn't do a lot for me, if I can be honest. The overall event was fairly lackluster with some bright spots, definitely for sure. But the main event was not great, Chuck. Brian Battle eeked out a win opposite of Dalton Rasta. I gotta tell you man this was a weird one for me because

like Rosto had lost two in a row I think maybe even three heading into this one two by stoppage certainly and was trying to fight a more calculated fight and I thought he did right in general I thought he did but he just like if you get two guys Chuck who are not great and I say great I mean like really great

fighters but they're good both of these guys are good they are good fighters I'm not going to say, oh, these guys are scrubs. They're not scrubs. These are good fighters. Yeah. But they're not particularly exceptional. And we're also living in an age of a more homogenized,

styles and abilities, even with body type differences. Like, people just tend to know a lot of the same things as other people with slight differences and how they use it or slight differences in what matters to them, with very few people who can exist, you know, well beyond that. And so you just kind of got people who were trying to fight smarter in a more, homogenized era and they just didn't do much of anything to each other yeah didn't it look a little bit like dalton was saying okay i saw the johnny ublen thing i saw how he just kind of went right through you know brian battle i think i can do the same thing i when you talk about homogenes like the

what separates a johnny ublen is obviously that he has an exceptional he's an exceptional wrestler he you know this is where he comes from this is his background this is his default he's been doing it a long time. But it just felt like a little bit of an identity thing where it's like an identity crisis maybe you're like, all right, I'm going to try to be like a little more calculated or how you want it, but I'm going to try to do what Eblen did. And when that starts to fail, this is what you get. It just turns into a stalemate where you're kind of nullifying, I guess everything that's fun about Brian Battle in his hometown. But he's doing just enough kind of like to stay ahead maybe. Like I thought he won the fight ultimately, but like, you know, it's like you stay ahead on the

score cards, but it's not really doing anything. In fact, I felt like the place was bored to death by, you know, as the fight was going on because of the previous fights, too. But it just, it becomes a process of nullification. And once, once that happens, man, that, I feel like that that is the dilemma of MMA. It's like, you get certain guys who just kind of offset each other to where they, the happy meeting, they're meeting in now is a very boring fight where nothing much happens, you know? And that's what we got. It's just, it's a tough watch. It's, it feels like a sentence when it's a five round type fight or whatever you know it's like it feels like you're now subjected to this is when you get to scroll on luke when you get to like looking at your uh

instagram stuff like well mercifully this one being only three yeah yeah people people were people were complaining like i saw people online being like you know i can't believe you guys had a three round main event i'm like actually that was a great call great call 100% that one didn't need to be no and i mean i think that you i set this up dude when it when it was happening i was like i feel like this is going to be a little bit donk like because they're going to go in there. And I, you know, you're thinking of battle. He's, he had that like 14 second knockout of Gabriel Green the last time he fought there.

I think he was really wanting to go out there and do some highlight thing. And, you know, and Dalton, like, I think he's got a tendency sometimes to fight like that. But dude, you get just the opposite. It's really, it really lands like a thud when it's your main event, doesn't it? It's just, it doesn't, it's just a hard watch, you know? I was thinking about this too, man. It's like, again, everyone tends to. like there's various periods as something develops,

like as a sport develops, there are various periods of explosive, creative growth within the best practices of how the sport operates, right? And we've been through many, many of those periods. And to be very clear, technique is always evolving,

always changing, always growing. The process continues. But like the rate of how that process continues has clearly slowed. People just tend to know a lot of the same things. You know, not again, not identical, but there's sort of like a working toolkit that most people have some grasp of, again, with concentrations in various places.

But even then, the fluency through all of this is just much more well known. And that can create for fights where they're not necessarily as exciting. But like the UFC kind of gets away with it, Chuck, because they're the UFC. Like the brand to some extent does certainly sell. You know, they're, they've built up a large fan base. You know, you get the idea. But if you are producing homogenized MMA, relatively speaking, and you don't have star power.

Like, this is why the merger with MVP, not to believe or the point, but this is to me why it kind of makes sense, which is they had to get with some kind of promotional entity they can approve this, but also who, like, I don't see how this will ever be paid for under a consideration that like this kind of product has to be so profitable it can sell itself.

Right. You know, I don't think this can do that. This is all, what you're looking at is MMA, can only be paid for by debt financing. Yes. And, you know, when you mentioned the UFC, UFC has bad nights,

but the thing is it becomes an outlier. They have a schedule. It's going to keep going. They have enough of a roster to just kind of keep rolling. They have, you know, there are star-like performers going to be sprinkled, you know, through the cards and, you know,

in the divisions and whatnot. I just, when you're doing these kind of things, and this is your event, right? Like, this is your event that you have circled for a period of time or whatever. it's tougher to overcome like that sort of thing. So yes, I'm with you.

I just, you would love for whatever, whoever competes with UFC to not feel like they're spinning their wheels. You know, that's what you want. Like I just feel like we've seen it too much. We've covered the sport for, I don't know when you started,

I've been doing this for almost 20 years. So you have seen enough spinning of the wheels or like misdirections and all the things they try, but like it always ends up to being like, we're just kind of playing it. out now. You know, and I'm like, at some point, you want to see the variation where you're like, okay, this could work. I want to see the formula that you're like, this is what they should be doing, right? Dude, it sort of reminds me a little bit, honestly, of our business, of the news

business where it's like, people are like, well, you guys should be able to produce this kind of work and that kind of work. I'm like, yeah, if you're, if you're promoting like media companies on venture capital money, yeah, you can do a lot. But then when the content itself has to be able to pay for the operations, it becomes a much, much different affair. And I feel like we're in this last breath of venture capital money, kind of floating what MMA looks like. And I don't think it's necessarily great, by the way. I'm not saying it like, oh, we're going to get to some, we're going to restore ourselves

to a more, you know, market friendly number. And I think that that's true, there will be less MMA. But obviously, I don't know how great that is either. Yeah, you get to a place where the content pays for itself or something approximating it. But just like contraction generally, I don't. know. I have a lot of thoughts about what's going to happen to what's the PFL once their footprint shrinks. You know? Yeah. I mean, to me,

it's going to be fascinating, but only in the sense of the eternal optimism of finding more avenues for these fighters and all this. It's kind of the same things, but it's like, you have the MVP you know, kind of formula, I guess, that you're like, how was that going to mesh with the PFL?

But you also have Scott Coker. I know that like it's kind of now, I refer to him as kind of the Ross Perot candidate in this whole, this whole face because it's like he's coming in with his new promotion and you know at least he has understood on some level and he has a good relationship with fives but he has understood on some level how to coexist with the ufc and how to kind of do some stuff like that so i think it'd be very interesting to see you know kind of how anybody makes this viable once it comes down to it in 2007 i don't really get it i will say for the rest of that card um simian powell beats dovelets

don yajshamuradov he had one flying knee that was nice but the rest of rest of the time. There wasn't a whole lot. Yeah, that wasn't a whole lot happening there. That dude's got a good frame, though. It feels like he should be able to do work with that six foot. Yeah, he's huge. He's, he's carrying, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's got muscle and he's got springiness and all. And I'm like, he's, he just seems like his, he'd be able to do a little more, you know. The Jeffrey Silvera, so, uh, Silvera fight was fine, but otherwise unremarkable. Also, Josh Silvera, who had like a bit of an early successful run of PFL has really come back down to Earth at this point.

I don't know if he stays. This is what I mean. Like, are they going to keep him employed? I don't know. But the one that was the highlight was Lewis McGrillon taking on Brandon Lewis. A lot of Lewis is in this one. Dude, Brandon Lewis, first of all, you know who Brandon, sorry, you know what Lewis McGillan looks like? He looks like Edward Furlong's friend in Terminator 2. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes, I do.

I don't know that dude's name. But every time I see this dude, I'm always like, is that? Are you the guy who warned Edward Furlong in the arcade? that the Terminator was looking for, for the cops anyway. That's a good call. Anyway, he gets after it. He has some ability. His left hand was kind of finding the spot over and over again, roasting the ribs of Brandon Lewis, but Lewis kind of storming back at times.

This one was legit fun and had the crowd on their feet. Shows with these guys. With Brandon Lewis, like the whole thing was like that he wouldn't go away. And then he gets his moments. That's always when you get like a good fight, right? Like, okay, this dude is still battling. And all of a sudden he's having his moment. He's got his bloody tongue sticking.

out and he's like check it out you know that was a fun one the pfl's lucky that mcgrillan turned around and did a fight like what was it three weeks after his last that last loss they're lucky man because if you'd plugged in a boring fight there we'd be having a whole different conversation at least that salvaged something for that building at bow jangles out there in charlotte you know at least they had something to cheer about also uh just on the prelim card shyan bowers got pushed a little bit by elora adana and then storms back and wins via rear naked choke in the first round that was a fun ass one. She was getting put through the paces. Yeah. And she turned it around. But the other one, Dennis

Goldsov. Your boy. Oh, my God, dude. He blew the brains out of Hassan Meziev. I think it was your right hand. Yeah, with like a head kick on his way down. Oh, dude, it was fucking brutal. What's that piece of B roll? Like, who was it that did that in the UFC early on like UFC 70s somewhere

in there, like where it's kind of got him. And then as his head was going down, it's like, bam, hits him with the face kick as he's kind of leaning in. Oh, Chuck Ladella and Hanato Sabral. that might have been it that oh yes you're right that is it I believe that is the one yeah it's like they reminded me of that

you know it's like it's just you're kind of where his face is leaning is where my foot is boom see long island if you had trivia to when I was paying attention in MMA I would do well I got you whenever you refuse to come back on he refuses everyone he refuses

I do refuse because he's asking about an era of MMA where it's like I know he'll he'll always be like you have C you know, 246. And I'm like, dude, I don't, if you get into 200s, how about I have you both back on, but we'll do like pre 20, whatever, whatever year you

want, pre 2015 or something. Oh, okay. 1998. How about that? We'll do all 1998. There you got. I'm teasing. I'm teasing.

Even I don't know if I could do 1998 that well. All right. But so, I mean, shouts to PFL. They're trying, but I don't know what the market is for this. Yeah. I don't think there is one. They're going to need something more distinguishing than they're showing right now, though. Yeah, that's right. It's going to, it can't be this, right? This can't last.

Yep. Okay. Let's go to topic number four here if we can. I saw something, I thought, worthy of some conversation here on the show. Ali Abdel-Aziz is, of course, the manager to many UFC fighters, including but not limited to Justin Gachie as well as Islam Makachev. Okay. Now, as we know, Justin Gachie just won the biggest fight of his career at U.S. UFC White House defeating Ilya and Islam has a huge fight coming up this weekend. And of course, it's a reminder on Wednesday. We'll have the pregame preview live at 11 a.m. in the east in studio in New York City to discuss that one. Let's assume for just the sake of argument here today that Islam wins that one, that he defeats Ian Gary.

So we're living in some kind of world where both Gaichi has one and now Islam has one. here is what Ali said should be next maybe for the both of them put up the quote here if we have it he says that gaichi should chase the biggest payday possible next even if it means giving up his 155 pound belt i think if justin gaichi chooses to fight Islam he could get to fight Islam why not and he vacates his lightweight title now to be clear we've not heard from Islam what he wants, perhaps he'll be asked about that this week, Chuck, nor have we heard Justin, to my knowledge, comment on this. But I was thinking about this one, because my initial reaction was, no thanks. I don't really want to see this one. But then I thought, okay, but I also thought Tuporia was going

to beat the breaks off of Raiji, and he goes and has this kind of win. So what is your temperature on a fight like this, again, in a world where Islam wins? And are we giving Gachi enough credit for what he proved against Teporia? Are we still holding on to? maybe old biases. I think we are. I think I am. You know, it's like,

and I think I'm not giving him enough credit, and I should be given him more credit for, you know, that White House card because that fight, and I was, like I was there and you're in the process of going through all this, so it takes a minute to register anyway, but that was one of the single, you know,

I guess most like, what would you say? Like it was just such a clutch thing, what he did. To go in there and beat a guy who's in the, you know, the pound for pound. top two and to do it the way he did on that stage.

It just, to me, that was like, okay, he's fighter of the year and all that stuff. But there is a part of me, too, that's like, well, Justin Gitchie has, what, four or five losses in the UFC. And as much as you love him in terms of like an all-action guy who goes out there and puts on crazy fights, you can't help but remember that, you know, I don't want to say he was never a journeyman, but like the fact that he's had a journey to do these things, like he's had losses, setbacks, all that stuff, makes him a different. kind of fighter. Can you imagine

if Mokachev wins this fight against Gary and then they're saying, okay, Gachie, go ahead, you can go on up. And he goes up there and does it again. He somehow shocks the world again and beats Islam and then he's retired. Now you've just set, you know, fired a two divisions, knocked

off two pound for pound goats of our day, like right now, and you have a guy who is now skipping out of the fight game. That would be a weird setup for the UFC. I mean, as much as, even if you really love Justin Gachi, and maybe some People would be like, hey, why not? I don't care about all that other stuff.

For the UFC itself to do that would be, that would be unparalleled. I just, I can't imagine they would actually let that happen. I just feel like, here's what I think about this fight. Because I was asking myself this kind of same question that we're all, like, okay, my gut reaction when I thought this through was, or sorry, my gut reaction when I first heard it, I should say, was like, Islam would win this walking away. Yeah. And my belief is that he probably still would. Okay. I forced to make a pick. Who would you pick? I would pick Islam. But then I thought about it.

It's like, well, first of all, let's see how he does against Gary because that could change this whole conversation. And the other part too is in beating Toporia, how much credit did I really give that? And I don't think he just beat Toporia. I think he has shown an ability to still kind of level up to a degree in tightening things up in that he needed to be ready for something like that. Now, Islam is a different fighter, but Porre gave Islam, you know, an unexpectedly rougher fight than others, too. And with Gaichi really seemingly to focus more a little bit on his wrestling than I think he once did as well, Chuck. Like, that's what I mean, kind of tightening the screws on old deficiencies. I would still pick Islam, but I think that you could make an interesting case for that fight being better than your initial reaction to it might be. But that doesn't necessarily make it the right fight to make.

And I think that to me is the part that, I mean, here's the thing, Chuck, for Gagy to have this monumental of a win, could he escalate by going up and wait as some kind of reward or the next logical step? Yes, it's on the table. But to me, because he had these significant losses at lightweight and now this enormous achievement, it feels like he might have more unfinished business with lightweight. with maybe a max rematch or it doesn't have to be that per se but you know kind of still circling around with those other sharks and i feel like that would make more sense for just and especially with what some of the commotion is it's happening at 155 pounds but it just looks to me chuck like what he's looking for is is connor going to be there maybe but are they going to give him the connor fight who knows islam is obvious escalation but i don't think the escalation to me is the appropriate one.

To me, it's a return back to 55 to close some of those old loops, you know? Definitely. And like when you look at the 170 pound division, I mean, what are we doing? Like look at the, look at the monsters that are coming up to fight in that division. Like Mike Morales is, I think, right, he is the backup, he's weighing in as the backup fighter for this. Am I, in that still the case for this UFC 330?

I'd read somewhere that, Mike Morales? I actually don't know. Okay. I read that too. but I don't know if it's official. I don't know if he just said he's going to do it or if it's a thing. Okay, well, he's going to be there. But regardless, I mean, if he does, it's even more official of it.

It's more of a like, well, you have a dude right there, man, a phenom who's coming up. I mean, that, that fight, it doesn't get much better. I imagine if Macha Jeff goes right through in Gary and you can set up a Michael Morales fight, you know, or Carlos proches. I mean, some of these guys, I mean, it's just fascinating because Islam hasn't been in the division long enough for him for you to start matching them up with guys who were previously in his division. you know like like who you know to me that petition was Ardenne they could have made Gaichy versus Islam

when they were both 155ers and I mean the bottom line is I'm like I want to see the fights that you you know the guys in their weight classes that are getting their shots that really deserve it and also are potential stars like Morales to me is one of those guys and I'm like I wouldn't push him aside to give Justin Gage

especially if Gaetchi and the off chance that he goes in there and wins another title and then this says thank you very much guys good night You know, then all of a sudden you're dealing with vacant titles and that seems like a mess. I just think that both weight classes right now are deep enough and with enough good contenders and all that to like to function fine without that sort of thing. Long Island, where are you on this one? Could you see an escalation for Gaichi at 170 and would you care for it? Hard pass.

I don't want to see it at all. I really don't. If we were ever going to do like, ooh, lightweight champ moves up to fight Islam, we should have done. it with Ilya. We should have never even done it. Why does it win over Ilya? Why is that that not enough for this? I just I never had interest like the Ilya Islam fight was only really interesting because they were both kind of right there at lightweight for oh well I'm sorry. Ilya was that featherweight Islam was at lightweight and they were both kind of there and then they ilia moves up and you're like oh we're going to get it and then Islam moves up. It's like ah, you know like this fight was never really interesting to me. It's almost like when Porriye fought Islam. It's like yeah, okay. You know, solid veteran, but you know, Islam probably wins that. I don't know. I'd rather see him fight any other

welter with Islam. Yeah, I mean, for me, the more interesting step from here for Islam, and we'll talk about this on Wednesday, is going to be like Michael Morales or, yeah, you know. I agree. That's what you got to do, right? Like, that's why you're building these guys. You put them in these big spots. They pass with flying colors. They're supposed

to be right there. That's what it's supposed to be happening. But the other thing was with the Ilya, by the way, because I heard Al-Ali basically saying, like, you know, They were talking about giving Ilya that shot if he were to win against Gachi. But the problem was the setup was completely different. Ilya would then have not, you know, had beaten Gachi, also Max and Charles. But you're also talking about presuming Islam wins.

The two best, I mean by far at this point, pound for pound best going. This would be like a rare super fight opportunity. If you could get both guys on board, the UFC has traditionally had a lot of trouble kind of putting those types of guys together. The closest you probably ever got was Jones. versus Cormier or something like that back in the day. That's why that would have worked. But this one, it just feels, this feels forced and like out of left field and nobody really asked for it.

It's not apples to apples, you know, to say like, well, he'd beat really. So he should get the same thing. I just don't think it holds the same intrigue. I think in the end, when someone goes up to a division, there has to be some kind of connectivity between the two athletes in different weight classes. Like people have to organically say, oh, you know, would be cool, is if this guy in this division, that guy. And like, there was some kind of.

organic push versus this is just kind of like like a long partition there's a long partition held that suddenly you can bring down and let them fight that's that's when it's it's best where you're like I didn't think we could get this remember when BJ pinned the second like the GSP at UFC 94 I think it was

like he got that do you remember that feeling man it was like dude BJ that was also the first way ins that ESPN never covered yes I mean it just it had this feeling like dude it didn't get any better than that in that moment I was like this is crazy man you know but it's got to have kind of build. It's got to have two guys that are kind of parallel, great, and then all of a sudden

you set them on each other. That's how it's got to work. Yeah, indeed. Well, again, well, on Wednesday, we will have our pregame preview to get everyone ready for UFC 330. But here's what you all donks need to know. Fight night is here, and only Draft Kings has you fully cover. The Draft King's Sports app is now available in all 50 states. You're in on the excitement at the speed of sports. every round of the card all in one place with one app. So here's what you're going to do. New Draft King's customers, sign up with the code combat, that's Combat with a K, spend five bucks to get 150 in rewards within 14 days.

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what did I? Hold on, give me one second here. Let me make sure that I am seeing this. Yeah, I just want to make sure I sit here very quickly for the draft king's rea. on behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Kansas. Boot Hill Casino in Kansas that tax pass through may apply in Illinois. Okay? All right. Just make sure I got that correct for everybody.

Okay, with that in mind now, let's go to topic number five, if we can. We had put that this was kind of like a UFC roundup initially, but what I would say now is it's more if there's like an MMA roundup. Long Island, I haven't had a chance to even look into this, but I think we have the news from Dakota Dichiva, correct? No, we don't have that. We don't have that because we were going to go over it. It's a DM. Oh, it's a DM. Yeah, yeah.

Ah, okay, okay. Well, then I'll leave that there. All right. So then let's do this one. We'll start here, Chuck. We got to see the new apex. So there was more seating. There was a production upgrade. You can see in the facility itself. It looked. Your impressions, Chuck, of how it looked or how it felt, I guess I should say, when watching on Saturday. I don't know if it'll ever be anything more than a glorified show. room in this in this one sense but i will say that it had atmosphere and i've been in that i've been in the apex a couple of times i've seen a couple of cards there and that was the notable thing it was missing you know it's just they they were trying to you know build it out a little bit but it felt like you were just in this kind of cathedral type warehouse where sound was swallowed there was not much you know the acoustics are no good i feel like they have you know given it some kind of like

you know, venue sheen, and now with the seats, and especially with the, like, you know, with seats that go up like that, sections, it looks like it's an actual, you know, if you're just watching it from a TV sense, and this is a big part of it, because how many people are actually out there, it looks like there's an atmosphere, it feels like there's an atmosphere, you can see people surrounding it, the lighting was dialed in so that, you know, you're looking at the cage now, and it felt like very much you were watching a fight night or something like that. And honestly, the biggest issue is just more people create more sound and more like, you know, atmospheric noise. And I felt like that was in evidence.

One of the big things that was always standing out to me was just it felt like, you know, they're fighting in a funeral home or something. And back in the day, you could hear the corner shouting. You could hear all that stuff, which is fun for a little bit. But then it became kind of like, this isn't very exciting, you know. So I feel like they kind of, they've improved on all of that. I was, I think that they're, it's the step. I'm guessing this is, is this done? like are they done with it for now like but it's a step in the right direction because to me it felt

it felt like a live event and i guess that's the minimum of what you're trying to get here right yeah i mean to your point it still feels like a warehouse that they've turned into a production facility that they've made more hospitable um honestly dude it feels like regional like high production regional ms yes that's that's what it is yes what i mean by that is like if you've gone to regional mb like i've done this dude i do you know how many events i've seen seen here locally inside of a gun range. Like, that's a real thing. I have watched two dozen of them inside of a gun range, inside of a pool hall.

Like, MMA just exists at the regional level in things like this. Obviously, this is more high budget than that. I don't need to demean what the effort they put in is. I don't think it changes that, Chuck. It's still not a thing that was designed for this, and it never will be. But it did seem like a noticeable improvement to me, right? it seemed like it looked a little cooler on TV. And then, like, you know, when Saul killed got his win in the main event,

man, there was a crowd erupting and reacting and he had a response to them. You know, fighters when they win in the apex versus fighters, when there was no one really in there versus in the crowd, like, dude, there's a relationship that the winning fighter kind of has with the fans. You know, like, yeah, they react to them, they look to them. They, there's a call and response, you know? And you actually got some of that from him. And one thing I was thinking,

about too is dude if you're local to Las Vegas you know you're going to have the option to on occasion see some real gems I don't know how much tickets for this were right but like it can't be as much as what you're going to see that Quill and Saul killed in his next fight's going to be you know that whatever it's going to be much more than this we're not going to put him back in the apex probably anytime soon and by the way my understanding is you can get contender series tickets for $43 wow like now it's worth it it's well think about there's cool It is cool. You know.

Yeah, I've been to the apex. I've seen it. It's a, it's an interesting facility, you know, whether it's the best suited thing for M&A, no, it's not. But, but they're trying to make progress on it. And I was just going to say this, too, if I was local in Vegas and just a fan and $43 to go and sit and watch the contenders, dude, that's a fucking steal. I know, yeah.

Because listen, UFC doesn't need to make money at the gate on those things. Yes, if they can get a little bit extra, sure they will. Of course, they're capitalists. But like for contend. series, they're just trying to get people in the door. And it's kind of a cool gift to the locals, if you ask me, because I'm not sure you could get a good seat like that.

If that card was taking place at the Tropicana for $43. You know what I mean? Yeah, it actually kind of has the old palms vibe. Remember, like a little bit? Although Palms was supposed to be a venue, you know, it's supposed to be. And then cosmopolitan, they had a, they have had an event or two there. But yes, you know,

have you ever seen those videos like where it's like a music, you know, music video, but they strip away all the music and it's just like what they're making, it sounds like, you know is there like dancing or something like that that's what that's what the apex used to be like you were mentioned the kind of calling response and like everybody celebrating and when salt killed went up on the fence you know there was like when anybody was like anybody was celebrating there was there was that swell and that kind of like and in the past it seemed like if somebody climbed up on the fence and they were like this it was like those it was like those soundtracks that have been stripped down to

nothing and you know they're just comedic because you could hear as every thought and all this stuff it's just weird man um but i feel like they have solved the key issue it just i didn't like you don't want to watch something that feels like a dead event and you know even if it feels like a production like you're saying like it feels more of like a movie set or something like that at least they have atmosphere and i think i i didn't realize how much that mattered until we saw too much apex yeah i think that's pretty fair uh long island did you like the improvements i thought it was cool the one thing I'll say that I thought was kind of whack was they it felt like they kept the lights on the crowd the whole time like even during the fights like the crowd was lit and I'm wondering if you're there

how much that sucks because if you have lights in your face the whole time trying to watch fights like that might be pretty shitty but other than that I thought all the improvements were cool it actually felt like somewhat of a venue obviously it's still a warehouse but overall it was cool just the light thing was weird to me but it definitely is an improvement how much is for debate. All right, Roberto Solditch announced over the weekend, or I think relatively recently, now I can't read all of this, but he's done with one. He is now a free agent. And remember, he went to one back in 2022, I believe, after beating Mamma Kaldov and KSW. And we thought, wow, man, that's going to be, maybe he'll go to UFC, maybe he'll go somewhere else, but he goes

to one. He has a no contest, a loss, and one win before calling it a day, his last Last fight and won was in February of 2025. He had a boxing fight most recently against, I mean, the mega-washed Tomas Adamic, the Polish fighter. But he hasn't competed at all this year. Boy, a lot of guys go to one, and it just... It's where careers go to die. Yeah, it doesn't go too well for them. Chuck, let me ask the question here.

Long Island, Long Island, Luke wrote in the chat, won and done. Kids good. There it is. I'll say this. I mean, the obvious answer is, hey, go to UFC, but I guess just to make it kind of interesting, is there a chance that a guy who's lost out on some time in PFL slash MVP, they might come with a big fat paycheck. Yeah.

If you go to them? The only reason I'd say I'd like to see him in UFC is because he's ran parallel, you know, in a welterweight and like in different divisions, but like welterweight, right? Like, and you think about adding him to that roster and it adds. Is he still at Walterweight? I'm trying to, like, what did he fight at last? I think middleweight. A middleweight.

But in any case, like he's 31 years old. He's fought like two minutes in the last three years in an MMA context. And I'm like, dude, you're right going through the wheelhouse, your prime, and you're not fighting. And I guess there's this part of me that always thought he belonged in the UFC and you'd like to see him against some of those names. And if I said it, it's just a ready product, a guy who, a guy who's in that age range still that you could plug in, whichever division it is. Like if he goes over there, I feel like I'd still like to see that. given that we don't really know exactly yet what the whole MVP structure is going to look like

once they do the integration and all that I guess from that standpoint because I've had my eye on Soldage and like anybody else who's paid attention to him may I'd rather see him in the UFC but I think that MVP would be dumb not to try to sign him I mean I feel like there's a good chance that UFC signs him because he has two fights with Drickis in fact Soldich is the last guy to stop Drickis

in any fight he's the last guy to do it That's why everybody knows who he was when he's in KSW, right? It's because they were like, well, Solditch beat him and when Driekis went on that run. So, I mean, he's got that, like they've got that in their back pocket. He's, I think he's still 31 years of age, to your point, Chuck. There's still, there's going to be plenty of interest in him, and that's the good news. But man, that went sideways for him. It feels like, remember when Alvarez went to one?

And granted, Alvarez was in his senior year. So that's different. But it just, it just never got out of first gear. Like, Solich's run at one was snake. bitten, it feels like. All right, Bella Mir, the daughter of former UFC heavyweight champion multi-time UFC heavyweight champion, Frank Meir, is now set to compete on this season of the contender series.

She's going to take on Alex Apodaca. I hope I'm saying that one correctly. Please forgive me if I am not. Obviously, Bella Meir had a successful career as an scholastic wrestler. She's done some UFC BJJ stuff. fight not, maybe even the fight night invitational. In either case, she's done grappling for UFC, let's say. Chuck, I don't know what your expectations are of the season.

I'd be curious to hear. And also, like, now that we're old enough that guys we cover its progeny, that's what are fighting, is it time for us to go hang ourselves in shame for overstaying our welcome? Yes, because, you know, especially in MMA, right? Because this is a newer sport. if you watch baseball, basketball, all that stuff, eventually you start to see their kids come into the league and you're like, oh, wow, I remember watching his dad play, you know. But this hasn't really been the case much. And except for like A.J. McKee, there's been a couple of examples, right?

But like, you haven't seen a ton of it. And so that's the part that strikes me. Frank Muir was very much in the vitality of his, uh, of his run when I was watching him back in those days. But it's, I'm intrigued because didn't she make her debut, like her pro debut? I know she's kind of, she's done grappling and all that. But like, didn't she make her pro debut at like 17? I kind of remember like years ago where, you know, people are like, she's coming up, dude. And like people tell you behind the scenes, too, like watch out for eventually.

Bella's going to be something in the UFC. So it's kind of cool in the sense, like when you kind of know the Frank Mere crowd a little bit and they, the buzz, you know, precedes her and she finally gets this shot, it feels like, all right, here we go. We're getting this girl that we grew up with, even though we didn't technically grow up with her dad is getting her shot. So it feels weird. It's different, but it's kind of exciting in a new way. I'm modestly curious. No, I'm more than that. I'm reasonably curious.

I'm reasonably curious. I think the thing that I've realized with Contender Series is Contender Series has kind of become its own little universe where because there is so much noise to signal ratio with Contender Series that it's very easy to be like, oh, oh, this guy came from Contender Series. this means nothing to me. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know if they're good or bad, you know. And again, like a guy like Quill and Saul killed, he won on the contender series, but he won by decision, you know.

Right. So it just becomes a hard thing. You have to kind of like immerse yourself in that world to see where the quality exists. But the truth is that there is quality that comes out of there. You know, how much of it can be debatable and then, you know, what it all means is certainly upper debate. But it's worth getting into it.

So seeing Belamir on there, anything that the women's game can do to, you know, inject life into it, get a reason to watch, you know, anything. I'll welcome it, you know, and if she's good enough to keep going and obviously she's done something that may already, you can see that on YouTube. You know, she's got some skills, like pretty clearly she's got some skills.

And obviously her dad has a enormous wealth of knowledge. So we'll see. She's like a bantam weight, right? Like she's built. I forget exactly what weight she'll be competing. Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay. I just know, like, the times have, like, watched her on, like,

on YouTube, like you're mentioning. and like she just looks built, you know, like she's ready for it, you know? Yes, she's an athlete for sure and already an accomplished one in wrestling. So it's kind of interesting. But as to the season itself, I don't know, man. Like I don't know what I'm going to watch as much as I can because I think it's important to do that. But it's just hard to know what's going to come out of there. Yeah, it's tough, man.

It is tough. We're talking, we're breaking down two cards from the weekend into kind of like, you know, all the things that are going on in MMA. It's tough to keep track of all of it, you know. but yes, I agree. Enough good fighters have come from there that, like, you do have to keep an eye on it. The guys who are good at contender series coverage, like that's almost all that they do.

I know, that's true. They do a little bit else, because you just kind of have to follow a different universe, to be honest with you. And then last but not least, Anderson Silva's kid, yes, this is real, is going to be fighting Kimbo Slice Jr.

On Aidan Ross's brand risk promotions. It'll be August 27. second in Miami, Florida. It's Anderson's Silva son, Gabriel, who's going to be facing Kevin Ferguson, aka Kimbo Slice Jr., aka Baby Slice, who had a 3-3-1-1 run in Bellator. He hasn't, which by ended in 2020. I think they've both done some misfits. Chuck, yeah. Should the asteroid hit the United States before this event happens to purge us from our, I mean, anything A rancid nature. Anything Aiden Ross.

Like I saw, it's funny, man. I saw Baby Slice with Jeff Wagenheim up in his neck of the woods, like in Massachusetts, Northampton area, way back before the Bellator run. This is when Kimbo's still around, you know. And actually, I think it might have been right

when he had passed away. And, um, you know, I didn't, you know how you watch certain parts of, okay, this guy. And I'm not, you know,

I'm just saying like, like, you know that Kimbo was an attraction for something that wasn't because he was sort of, skilled and all that, right? Like he was a guy who made it on this, but you're watching his son and you're like, I don't know how far he can take this, you know? I guess this kind of answers the question like a decade later, where he's kind of doing this kind of thing. Now, for Anderson Silva's kid, I haven't really paid any attention to what he's able to do.

So maybe that's where the, uh, the true surprise pops up here. I think this is the guy, Ben the Bain Davis fought. Is that right, Long Island? Gabriel. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, shout out the really. Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit. I didn't realize that. Gabriel won. I mean, well, all, all, all right. right you know ben doesn't win off him but shout out he steps in there you know dude larry wheels is on this card card do you guys know who larry wheels is no no long island larry wheels no i don't know you fucking what's he do oh my god who is he porno guy you're pussy no he's not a porno guy Larry Wheels is like a enormously jacked fitness influencer. Okay.

But he actually does. Like he's actually competed. And we're weird for not knowing him. You're like, you guys don't know this. He's been viral as shit all over YouTube for several. I'd rather get fucked to death by a four dick squirrel than watch Larry Wheels. All right.

Larry Wheels also has a famous video of him deadlifting weight so violently that his pores start to leak blood. Oh my God. You love shit like this Which is something that I wish can happen to me But I'm not strong enough to do that Larry Wilson I think the first time I ever saw like a dude with like a nose bleed

Like you posted it Like a guy was doing something It was like nose started pushing blood You're like this is normal This is normal I was like what the fuck am I watching Yeah that's like to me That's like equivalent to popping a champagne cork

After you've successfully hit a lift You know Let's celebrate boys Anyway Larry He's fighting a guy called Vitali Who the fuck is Vitali and then Chuck ready for the main event on this. Mick Broome versus Faye's Temper.

I'm not calling any of you motherfuckers McBroom or Faced. You're Steve and John. Okay, that's who you the fuck you are. Yeah. Like you're not in the Wuchang Clan. Go buy your government name, pussies. If they wanted you to do play by play for this, or color, let's just say color.

Would you do it? They don't pay that great. Yeah. You know what I mean? Say they paid well enough. Like would you, would this be an enjoy? So, ethically, I could never, work for us. No. Okay. All right. I just, I couldn't look like my family in the eye and be like,

I'm normal. You know, all right. All right. That is it for our top five here on today's show. Now is the time where you get to ask us questions. We put up a thread, a call for questions, I should say, on Instagram every Sunday. It's time for DMs from the Diggity Dogs. All right, Chuck, from the DeGy DGy. Generate MMA fan says, am I the only one who thinks Quillen Salkild would handle Max Holloway after seeing just how legit and elite

his grappling? That's sort of one way to consider it, Chuck. Maybe Salkald says, you know what? I don't want to box it out with Holloway. I'm just going to do what Oliva did to him. Let me throw this to Long Island because he's the one who mentioned this fight. And what do you think about that?

Am I the only one who thinks Quillan would handle? I mean, I would love to see it. That's why I want to see that fight. You know, I wouldn't care. it went the way the Olivera fight. I wouldn't care if it was a boring five rounder as long as I see Quillan dominate him for five rounds. Then I'd be like Quillen can go five rounds and he can

fucking wrestle for five rounds. Great. I learned a lot. That'd be a weird one. That's tough to, that's tough for me to. You know what? He's just racist against Australians. We can't help you know. That's true. You know. That is true. Go join the clan already. I'm the opposite of racist. I'm too pro-Australian. That's what it is. All right. From Fitman Eats.

Based on how Salkild handled the transitions and scrambles with Gamrod, especially considering the kind of grappling Gamrod had with Armin. Granted, that was a while ago. And with Salt Hill's advantage on the feet, how do you like his chances against Armin right now? But this is the problem, dude. This is the problem.

I don't think he could finish Armin in the first round, and I don't know if he can sustain these things. Like the acrobatic, he wasn't like insane athlete, but the to just get the immediate physical answer for whatever he had to do was very, very impressive. can you sustain that for 10 minutes 15 you know yeah you and i again that's a tough one to kind of contemplate too because armand's a little bit of a wild card like he just there's a little bit

of like that pal harris type thing to him where you're like dude he just made do something stupid and you know what i mean it's it's it's just hard to uh it's hard to imagine that playing out and i think we're so new into the information of what we're getting with salt guild it would be a very intriguing fight but i i feel like you unless they're trying to kill off one of these guys. I can't imagine they would actually make that. No, there's no need to make it now. Yeah. Yeah. That's just not. I mean, it would be a great fight, but yeah. All right, from Fron 607. How awesome is it to get to listen to the general, safe

Saoud. He says safe Saoud, coach his guys. I know he said a few years ago that the end of coaching time is near for him, so it's a treat to listen to him still, in my opinion. I don't know. I haven't really thought like. Like you don't like listening to him coach in the corner? No, I do. I do. I kind of dig, I mean, I dig this whole element, to be honest. Like, I thought even like adding perspective like Dean Thomas, I love when I can hear coaches or guys who coach outside of it, like real analysts talk during it because it reminds me of old school boxing, you know what I mean, where they would kind of have all elements like that. They would have a guys to give you like a technical understanding what you're doing. I dig all of

that sort of thing. I think it just depends on what kind of coaching style you like. You know, some people like a Eugene Behrman who's a little bit more demure, you know. But for me, I like the kind of coaching that Safe does. I, it sounds to me more military-like, so I respond to it better. It sounds. And it feels like his type of coaching is, I mean, some coaches base it on their pupils, right?

Like one guy needs to be given hard love, another guy needs to be told, very brass acts. I feel like he kind of makes, not in a bad sense, but he kind of just holds the line that he holds and you respect it, right?

Which I dig. Yeah, it's just all going to be like, does that work for the athlete? And it's up to the athlete in them, you know, but for me, I like that kind of a thing.

Four, poorly painted ponies. Sounds like my daughter's artwork. Don't tell anybody. I said that. Thoughts on Dakota Ditchie breaking both her hands again, Chuck. She was already out for a full year before.

God only knows how long it's going to be now. And then, you know, we're talking about the PFL and she was in 2024 the breakout star, right? And she gets a very big win at the end against, um, was it? What was it? Oh, got you. The one who almost beat Valentina and Shevchenko. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So she, remember she like, she, like, she, gets that big fight. I think she wins four fights that year. She's fighter of the year. And then since then it's just been like pulling teeth to get to see her. It's so crazy. I feel so bad when this happens to somebody, especially at a young age where they have star potential, especially in a situation where like you could be a coveted like in my mind when she was doing that, she was the most coveted thing outside of the UFC that the UFC would probably want like we'd want to like galvanize your ranks and bring her in. But it's just gone so bad over the

the last little bit of time. She still looks good when she fights, but it's almost like Tatiana Suarez at this point. You're like, dude, only when you get a chance to see her and you can see why she's devastated in the aftermath of this having like learning that she'll be on the shelf again for this long. If you watch the video where she announces it, Chuck, she basically says that it's the same injury from before. She wanted it to heat. She had the opportunity to get a surgery and she passed on it because she wanted to see if it would heal naturally and then it didn't. So she just re-breaks it. And now she has to get the surgery, right? Yeah.

And so, like, this one is always tough because the orthopedic surgeries, man, they're very hard to get and then maintain what you had before. You can get pretty far. You can get pretty close. In some cases, you can get really close, and that's a great outcome. But there's usually some kind of a tradeoff to secure the integrity of whatever it is you're doing. So I understand the trepidation to not, like, want to get surgery if you don't have to.

But now it looks like that decision is backfiring, unfortunately. And I don't know how much longer she's going to be out, but getting surgery like this. I know. And she said hands. Did she break her out their hand? Yes. That's, I mean, dude, that's, that's rough. That is rough.

She said she didn't. She broke it in the second round. So now she's going to have to get surgery on both of them. It's a bummer. It is a bummer. I don't know how long. I don't know timetables on this, but obviously that's the one thing you use. And it comes into contact all the time.

so it's just, it's just not good news. For the PFR or anybody, you know, like who's been following her career. And then last but not least, the number five here we have from Velocadash. If Vloyve beats Volk by decision, will he be the first champ to never finish a UFC fight?

It's crazy how someone so talented couldn't put any of his 10 opponents away. What a great question. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. It might be. It's got to be. I mean, especially,

if you put a qualifier of saying like over a course of what nine fights or whatever it is right like um yeah he's saying maybe a female fighter i'd have to look that up but i mean honestly nobody comes to mind like that's very tough to do it's almost like at some point you're going to finish somebody right like he's had like nine or ten in a row i mean it's just it's an incredible stretch here yeah i i i mean Nico montaigneo but like would you count did she get finishes on the We can't count inaugural because there's no UFC fights before that. You know, like she fought for the title

in her ultimate fighter for now. So we're only counting situations where there was already a division. Yeah, because I'm thinking like Carla too, but I'm like we can't count Carla. She also fought for an inaugural title in a final. Well, she beat Rose, but then I guess she had finishes between them. I'm saying there's no previous UFC fights

before the title. Right, right, yes. I don't know. That actually is a good question. That's a really, I hadn't considered that one. I know. You can see why they pushed Evelov to the side for as long as they did. Usually the guys like Fish end up topping out, like right near the top, but not at it.

But Evelov, he actually might be the top, you know. Imagine the marketing material. And I guess, you know, this is UFC 333, correct, that he just got to put on the Abu Dhabi card, a dual, like, title situation where Marab is actually in Yon, which is a cool thing. But you could see why they would do this, because the UFC has to put. put together a promo package. And for guys like Evelov, like he's definitely got some highlights,

but he doesn't have finish highlights. It's just going to be one of those things where it's just like you're showing sequences. You know, there's no head kick, walk off. There's none of this stuff, you know. That is a challenge for like a promotion to be like, we're going to sell this guy, but we're not going to sell you on his explosion at all, you know.

We'll see how it goes. Yeah. All right. As always, you can send us those on Sundays when we put up. a request for questions on Instagram. Now, for the next ones, you can always go to morning combat at gmail.com. We're going to look at your proverbial artwork.

Put it on our fridge. It's time for fan subs. You've got mail. Viewers. All right. We've got a shit ton of these. I got to say, before we start on this, Long Island,

argument to be made. Argument to be made. Fan subs are better than ever. Fan subs have been better than ever. And I appreciate everyone who sends them in all the time. And I feel like it's because we put the poster on the line. You know, there's more of an incentive.

These people are prize pigs. Come on. Let's be honest. No, but I'm cool with it. Keep sending them in. The funny or the better. Let's go.

Listen, it's working. It's working. Like, I'm very happy with how these are turning out, even when I get fucking murdered for half the time. Yeah. All right.

Let's go to Danger Mouse. He's got three of these. Islam's new business. Dagestani MMA. Membership available. Two, three years and forget and forget. All right, not bad. Mom, can we have Luke Thomas? No, there is Luke Thomas at home. Who is that? Who is? Yeah, who is that? It's like a ring announcer. I'm not

sure. It looks like boxing almost. I'm not sure who that is. All right. I didn't know who that was. You'll have to forgive me. Not a bad meme, though. Prop quit. You won't be proof this even more today. That's great. That one's great. That one's great. That one's a really good one. All right. Awesome. All right. We got one here from Maximiliano. This integer is personal. The Jedditor. What's it say over my head? The hunter. He doesn't follow the rules. No mercy. No rules. Just don't. It says at the bottom. Not bad. Pretty good. Yeah, not bad. I guess I want a solid B plus. That's good. We got one from Jose.

He says, not the most high effort meme, but Jed trying to qualify his dislike for Ian Gary reminded me of this meme. You hate Ian Gary because you hate women. I hate him because I hate Zumers. We are not the same. That's pretty good. He's right. There's a lot of people who hate him because of dumbass reasons.

All right. Kevin says, I am 12 years old. Wow. There was one I saw in Bogota and I almost bought it. I didn't buy because it was too big. And it was like a 12 inch long and hard. I'm hard on for me. I don't like the idea of going long just for the sake of going along.

And there's obviously more we can do. It's not all. There's not nothing. Of course, we can do things. But it was too big. I couldn't, I couldn't this big ass long and hard. I'm hard on.

But I'll take it. Dicks. Dicks everywhere. Dicks. That was fucking good. I just want to point out I was talking about predator toys in that second. So everyone can lick my walls. You're a predator, all right.

All right. We got one here from Javid. Tattoos, drugs, toxic relationships. I can't read the top one. I've got to get a bigger fucking screen. It says rowing at metal concerts, bad grammar, mowing the lawn at slightly inconvenient times and lifting gloves.

Yeah. Well, you know what? If she goes that direction, they'll be all right. I'll be all right. Not bad. All right. Bruce has a meme. He says, Be forewarned, this will be the moment we look back on this

as the trigger for LT's donk retribution through his own order 66. Luke explaining why integer simply reflects an erudite vocabulary that should be aspired to. I wouldn't write it that way because you end on a preposition. Jed explaining that Luke should get aerodyte on these. I love it. I shouldn't end sentences with prepositions, Chuck.

People should know that. They should know that, especially when coming at you with one of these memes come on now it shouldn't do that all right brian's got a few of these let's see is this from our own bc is he just roasting us from afar is that that that's not real no there's no way it's real yeah oh because it's also ESPN too so yeah Pennington James is in the middle there's no oh yeah yeah sorry apple sauce McGreston wait

rick Rick Rick Roussaintophease McGee who are the ones donk donkerson pennington James and Rick rickerson sorry all I saw was don't donk donkerson at first I didn't even look at the other ones. All right. That's good. That is good. Yeah, yeah, I've kind of just getting set on fire here. Yeah. Crowdshot captures some of the eager

voluntary seat fillers at the AVN Awards. Oh, yeah. It's a dream of mine to go to those, Chuck, just to go people watching. Yeah. I used to work at a at an alternative news weekly in the Inland Empire and they would actually go to those because it was you know they advertised in the paper I never actually went I kind of kicked myself now well you missed out

all right Jerry's dead fish sucks get a job Luke's get ready with me for the sphere show FBI I'm not wearing the FBI hat it was a female body inspector I'm always like oh wow no body and $5 at a beach town go fuck yourself all right um i guess jordan is next oh

chuck do you see it yes yes i do got a big old ball bag hanging around yeah yes yes i love that one i love that was like a yeah it was like a fine waldo type thing there for a second all right steve says uh congrats on luke's new autobiography integers of magnitude how my mileage has varied that's a real picture, by the way. Is it? Yes. I interviewed Tito before he fought Rampage and Bellator in Memphis. Okay. Boy, let me tell you, what year was that fight? I don't remember,

but I can just tell you whatever year it was. That was their pay-per-view, right? Yeah. It was not easy to get an Uber in Memphis in that time of the... Yeah. In that time. Yeah. I remember being like 25 minutes for my fucking hotel's Uber. I remember those days. Can I ask you something? I've always wanted. I always want to... about this. Was it Tito who told you that God put him on this earth to be a tool? I don't think so. Okay. Because there was like this, I always, and I'm like, where did that quote come from? Like, is it really his? Do you tell Ariel that or something? I don't know. God put

me on this earth to be a tool, which is hilarious because if you watch his like, you know, all the things that people put together. I'm like, I can never find that one. I was like, maybe that was a, I couldn't remember. I was like, maybe that was from you, but he's reaching for those grapes, John. He's reaching for him. All right. We have one from Matt. I don't always defend myself against accusations of vocabulary elitism

for using the word integer. But when I do, I use the word parsimonious in said defense. Yes, an economy of language, fuckfaces. That's right. At one time, I tell the story all the time. I'm the writer. They're giving you the shit for this. Well, your writing is better than mine.

Chuck. I mean, like, but like, it's the same rules no matter what i tell the story all the time i took this class in symbolic logic where it's like p then q you know you have to solve these like long expressions and whatnot and i remember i got a proof done i was able to prove it and i did it in something like 60 plus steps and then i turned it in and i didn't get an a i got a b plus and i asked the professor i was like i got it right like how could i not and he was like you you can do this in 20-something steps

and yours is ineligent. Oh my God. And I was like, and I was like, man, your fucking face is in elegant, bitch. Give me an A, I got it right. But the point being is, you know, when you segueed into MMA, right? His point was if I can get to the proof faster, my answer is better.

And I'm like, yes, it is. Fuck you. All right. From Genghis Bong, he writes, MMA fighters when they only know how to punch and kick and fight a rassler.

they took us down we were actually making this joke during my watch along on Saturday I can't remember if it was gangus or not but we were like they took us down not bad not bad all right from Eric we have two memes yeah

well I mean if he's wearing the Mariachi hat I don't know if he's from Spain I got to be honest about that but fair point I get the joke look at the bitter Shrek the one that's not getting the B all right what's the other one uh oh my god soon the blunt will kick in wait what's can you read the small

wording there luke's vocabulary is quite extraordinary all the donks hope it all the donks hate it because they can't iterate it i think it says they hate it because they can't iterate it which is apropos because i can't fucking read it but yeah yeah that's funny by the way we got sent some ones chuck I'll just say this. They didn't make it past the North Korean censors.

And I'm not saying they weren't funny. They were very funny. One of them was really funny. Yeah, but, you know, maybe the kind of thing you might hear on a Kill Tony show, you know. Yeah. And that's not what this show is. His show is for families.

Okay. Let's be honest about that. All right. Chuck, what do you have going on this week in terms of coverage? Because by the way, aren't you going to Philly? I am not going to Philly. I think Long Island is, though, right?

Like, you're going to be. Chuck, are you going? I'll see you. No, I'm not. I thought about it, man, but you know, I can't be bothered. It's not a good enough card. But I will be doing a roundtable this week with Ben Folks. And I, there's no crack this week, though. All those guys, the video side of Uncrowned is on vacation. Yeah. So I'll have to be doing my own crack. And, uh, and then I'll have some other pieces. So you know how it is with these pay-per-views. There's, there's plenty of coverage around. I'll have a post-fight column as well. Yeah. What you got there, Long Island? I got a shit load going on. So obviously we got pregame preview on Wednesday. So instead of doing my live chat on Wednesday, I'm going to do that Tuesday. Also doing a contender series watch along with Gaff on Tuesday. Let's go. Thursday, I got nothing.

Friday, I got prop quiz. Saturday. We're doing, Friday we're doing a preview for the card. Saturday will be there. Saturday we're doing a post-fight thing. I'm doing giveaways all weekend. So make sure you follow me on Maycar Minute, social media. I'm giving away shirts, all that stuff.

So, yeah, a lot going on. We'll talk about it. This week I'll have a tape study on my substack. You can look out for that. And then, of course, I'll have a post-fight and watch along on Saturday night on my YouTube channel. So be on the lookout for that. You can follow us all the various socials that you see on your screen there. One more reminder, we are going to be in studio Wednesday, Wednesday,

live at 11 a.m. in the east for our UFC 330 pregame preview. So stay tuned for that. We'll see you all on Wednesday. Let's see, merch, morningcombat. dot shop. We got the two new shirts, the head splitter and the John Donk designs. Those are available just until the end of the month. Get them while you can. We have the autographed posters as well. Let's see. We have memberships, badges, emojis and more other fun stuff to come. And I think that's about it. But as a last one reminder, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday,

live at 11 a.m. in the east, join us when we're in New York City together for that show. All right? All right. For Chuck Mindenhall, for Long Island, Luke. I'm L. and everyone else here on the show. We appreciate you. See you on Wednesday. And until then, may all of your gains be loyal.