MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Volk Reclaims Title, Paddy Shines, Mitchell Choked Out, UFC 314 Recap | Morning Kombat

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

On today’s show, the fellas recap all things UFC 314, including Volk reclaiming the featherweight title, Paddy big brothering Chandler and Jean Silva’s dominant win over Bryce Mitchell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm gonna do a little more combat. Do you want to? Doing what we love. It's time to bang. Oh, we haven't slept and we're old. It's going to be a cranky edition of UFC three 14 morning combat. Hi everybody. My name is Luke Thomas. I am merely one half of your hosting duo joined by a shaved Brian

can't know. Wait a second. I know that face. It's the ice man, Chuck Mindenhall. What's up Chuck Mindenhall that BC takes a lot of vacations, man, but I'm not complaining. That's all. That's the only reason I even get in here is one of you guys has to be vacationing. So I'll take it, man. We love you welcome back nice to see you I asked before the show you were you were in Miami, but just not for the fights I was in Miami early fight week before anybody else got there, so I was I'm working on a piece So I got out there early for it. When is this piece going to debut it will debut not this not this week, but next week Yeah, it's about it's on the fighting nerds. I can talk about that. I can't wait to see it.

But not everybody was there, so I kinda had to push it off. All right, very good. Well, welcome. Nice to have you. Thank you, sir. And we have a lot to get to today. Obviously, we all know the score here. It's gonna be, am I looking at this one or this one?

This one. UFC 314 extravaganza. We're gonna get through all of the main card, the big parts of the prelim card, and everything else in between be now now now Let's set this up if I can first of all Hello like and subscribe if you haven't already here on the morning combat channel. We appreciate that you can follow us on social You can follow Brian Campbell the Brian Campbell experience if you if you're so inclined. What is your preferred social?

I mean, it's just X is the primary one where I post the pieces, so it's just at Chuck Mendenhall. Alright, there we go. And you're at Uncrowned for folks who don't know. I should have set that up at the beginning. Yes. Yep. Very good. Did you enjoy the fights, Chuck?

I did. You know, sometimes you get these fight cards on paper that look like they're going to be really good, and sometimes you're like, well, I was maybe over-hyping this type of thing, but I thought this one really delivered, man. I thought that we saw a little bit of everything, some old guns that resurfaced, some old guns that just looked old, and then you had some guys who really broke through.

So I thought we had everything, you know? We certainly, we certainly, you know, up until the main event, I'm like, dude, the elderly are just getting hammered here. But then obviously in the main event, Volk was able to turn things around. Let me remind everyone, so how about this? Long Island Luke and I, yes, the two of us, the two Luke's Luke squared.

We're going to do a mailbag episode for morning combat. So if you got anything you want to send to us, questions for me or for Long Island Luke, there it is. Yeah. I got the hip hop horn. Morning combat at gmail.com morning combat at gmail.com. Let us know what you got on your mind. We're going to record that this week, actually pretty soon. So get combat at gmail.com let us know what you got on your mind we're going to record that this week actually pretty soon so get those in asap if you would be so inclined we'd love you for that as well also want to remind everyone today's episode is presented by our friends at draft kings draft kings the crown is yours uh chuck i'm ready to talk about uh rnc 314 sorry did I say RNC you did I meant? Maga 314 sorry did I say ma ga 314 I meant I meant

Cpac 314 sorry did I say that I meant gop? 314 oh no wait a second. I meant you FC. I knew you'd get it sometimes It's hard to tell the difference like a slot machine. You're just waiting for the right ones They'll line. I'm just saying I gotta get my glasses on I'm like in my Okay, there are fights. Sorry. I'm just saying, I gotta get my glasses on. I'm like, am I? What about, okay, there are fights. Sorry, I couldn't quite tell sometimes. Put these back on after all my skits. Oh no, my thing fell off.

I'll have to get that later. Hang on, here we go. All right. Speaking of aged. Yeah. And washed. It's like, my hook for my bifocals came off. All right, with that out of the way

Let's get this show started if we can all right topic number one. Let's get right to it Let's start with that main event which of course We saw an impressive and important result on Saturday night as Alexander Volkonovsky reclaimed the UFC featherweight title with a unanimous And I would say decisive decision victory over Diego Lopez Chuck in so doing he broke the over 35 year old barrier. They called it a curse. It's not a curse. It was just a stat line I feel like did you introduce this stat or you least made it popular? I made it popular

I did not come up with it. Okay, but I signal boosted it. I just know I got got associated. Everybody references this now, which is a good thing because it's a legit stat. It's still like, we run up against it a lot. And even though he broke it, even though Volt broke it on Saturday, it's still a pretty useful measurement. But he broke that and he also became the first UFC fighter to win an undisputed title after back-to-back losses. So I gave you those two kind of milestones. Chuck, how do you contextualize the significance or the importance of this win in Volkanovsky's career? I think it's a testament, honestly, to first of all, to not get too into those types of numbers, right? If you're an older fighter, maybe you need to just believe in what you

got to believe. But the bigger issue here for me, and this was something that Volk had not done through the previous bunch of years of his career. He was averaging two and a half to three fights even through his title run. And I think that taking that 14-month period to just kind of let everything pass, get his mind right. Because if you recall, even going into those back-to-back knockouts when he was going into I think it was the the second fight there He was just saying or maybe it was right after he was basically saying that his mind was Didn't want to be idle. He liked to have something when he he feared almost kind of not having something to do

That's always a red flag for these fighters. I felt like he got his mind right. That was the, it was a crazy thing. Mind and spirit, you know, he kind of took that time off. I think he heard all the criticisms and he just, he took it in stride. He kept pointing out like, you have every right to be doubting me going into this fight, you know. To me, that was just a very realistic approach. I did not expect him to show up in the form he did.

But the fact that he did, I think really is kind of a testament to like just how good of a fighter and how strong he is mentally to come back and not just put on that performance. I was wondering if there'd be a feeling out period if he'd worried about his chin, if he'd be a little gun shy, things like that. Did you see any of that in evidence? I thought he looked like vintage Volkanovsky from the opening bell all the way to the end. We have a comment that he makes on overcoming adversity. I want you to get to react to it, but let's hear what he had to say.

This is not the one from Joe Rogan. This is the one that came afterwards at the post-fight press conference. I mean, it was funny. Before I went out, I was saying, I promised I'd do my walk around the mat while I'm warming up. And I always say, you know, there's no way they're taking this away from my family, is what I'd say, like, you know, when I had the belt.

And I'm like, and I sort of said that at the start today, like while I was walking around, I was like, I promised my girls I'd bring the belt back. And then I'm like, it's not about bringing the belt back. Like I even said it in there, I go, well, it's not about bringing the belt back. Like I even said it in there, I go, well, it's not about bringing the belt back. It's about overcoming this adversity, you know, these two losses, the break I had.

You know, a lot of people are gonna think I'm done. You know, 36 years old, that is more important. You know, me, you know, showing my kids, you know, what you could be capable of when people are counting you out. And I said to you, it's all week, everyone has every right to count me out. Coming off two losses, big break, 36 years old, young, hungry, dangerous guy. And I told you, hey, I'm the guy to, you can definitely think that,

you have every right until I change your mind. Hopefully I changed your mind. And yeah, I think there's more of a message in all of that than just taking the belt back to the family. The best champions that I've ever covered in my entire life, they have a couple of things going for them, Chuck. One is keen self-awareness, including their own limitations, right? Including their own mortality, not literally, but including their own

failure and what that has done to them. But the same ones also just have this relentless optimism about, okay, those things can be true and we cannot ignore them. But those are not reasons to stop. Those are not reasons to give in. Those are not reasons to detour here or be deterred. Okanowsky's got all of that and then some. And you've talked about this a lot too. Guys delude themselves in this fight game a lot. To the point that they actually believe the delusion, they believe the lie at some point along the way, and they can't get back to whatever got them into a good position to begin with. There was

no delusional, there was nothing delusional about what he just said. That means he was fully aware of his situation and he understood how he looked to the public, right? You hear all of these kind of proverbs about like, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. He was a living example of that, right? Like, I think that that really is when you talk about, I know we always talk about like Muhammad Ali, guys like that who suffered at some point along the way but yet still went on to become Muhammad Ali. They didn't do that without the adversity.

You know what I mean? They did. They had to go. The reason that they built themselves into who they became was because of this type of moment. And I think it carries that kind of significance. For a guy who's 36 years old, and I mean we've seen this play out the opposite way a million times.

Guy gets knocked out twice after a big run. You think of guys like Henin Morau? Or just the guys who are just looking unbeatable until they got beat and then they were gone They just kind of skidded off the face of the earth. This was the fear with Volkonovsky for me I was like this could be it where he gets touched. He's going down And we just don't see him in that form. This was a huge defiant moment for him, man It was it was it was a crazy sort of declaration of his own self-belief, too Yeah, I mean, here's the thing like he had a very big celebration. I don't want to say his celebration was muted

That's not really true, but I thought it'd actually be a little bit bigger for how triumphant the moment It was and it was Relative to that subdued, but you brought up something I would like to like touch on here a little bit further which is you know how it is you talk to some of these fighters when they're in their early to mid 20s, and they are out of occupational necessity, brainwashing themselves, I'm the best, I'm the best, I cannot be hurt, I will not be defeated, and that works for a while. But then something will happen to them where now they realized everything that they had told themselves about

who they were or at least big parts of it was simply not true. It's easy to coast when you're living off the lie, when you actually believe the things that you're saying, but then when the world shatters it, how do you pivot? Guys like that can pivot and you saw a great example of that. Now, I do want to say- And that might extend, by the way to like even a microcosm of like you broke down his fights before. How he pivots within a fight. Like sometimes you'll see him say like okay wait this thing's not working. You've seen him do this where he just kind of changes up methods a little bit or starts to level change more or he just you see him make those adjustments. I think that's just his mind is really to like figure out the full puzzle

You know what I mean as a whole even the criticisms the scrutiny is all that stuff I think he factors all of that in until the point you raised there It's I'm glad you brought that up because to me like my major takeaway about all of this is one I'm so glad you said it there is the psychological component like would he you know? Cuz it'd be one thing if he was going for like a wrestling heavy, right? You know like our law ski did when he got knocked out all those times. Which by the way, listen, adapting even to that is hard. Adapting to this new kind of safe style, not everybody can even do that.

Some guys just cannot get away from who they are. To pivot in that kind of way is actually pretty impressive, but that's not winning titles. That's not being in main events. That's a very, very different thing. In the case of Volkanovsky, for me, what sets him apart is obviously we've just talked about his psychological makeup, but the thing that also marries it alongside is one, I don't know if you saw that there was a backstage video of him talking to Teofimo Lopez, Fight Week, and Lopez was like, how long was your camp? And he said 16 weeks. 16 weeks. That's

a fucking insanely long camp. It's like two and a half camps for most people. It's absurd, it's at least two for most guys. And the other part I wanted to say was beyond that, he is a technical marvel. And I really wanna home in on this one for just a second. Now, what folks are gonna say is- This is your wheelhouse, I like this.

Well, it's important to understand, because what a lot of folks will say is, well, you know, and they always talk about it, I know it's a meme at this point. Oh, he was a rugby player. He is physical for the weight class despite being somewhat diminutive in stature, but he's not beating these guys because he has overwhelming fire power. He's not beating them because he has Charles Oliveira level jujitsu. Right. He's not beating them because he's, you know, the, the, the reincarnation of Dan Gable. Now, obviously he's good at all of those things

But what he's really good at is the glue that holds all of it together an absolutely Masterful sense of timing his ability to manipulate real estate distance rhythm disruption Dude, I said this on my post fight show and I want to bring it up here I'm not saying that there are identical comparisons for many many reasons and bar that Volk was trying to get back here after two losses, but hear me out The way in which he fights to me is very Mayweather esque Yeah, you know Mayweather not a dominant puncher right not as fast as Zab juda Zab was faster than him But his ability to outsmart, create openings, and

then just tool guys late into his 30s, it looked like this a little bit. The outsmarting thing can't be understated because you could see it in this fight, certainly see it in this fight. Diego Lopez at some point, early, started to be like, I don't know, I'm overwhelmed on how to, it was like a computer overloading. Like he just didn't know what to do. Is he coming, is he gonna shoot in on me? Oh, I just ate another jab. The escalation of the moment, it was all playing into this role of suddenly he looks like he's gun shy and he's not in the fight. But so much of that had to do with Volkonovsky, and I think that's what's kind of crazy. I always think back to that third, I think it was the third Holloway fight,

where obviously Max at this point, you'd already seen him for 50 minutes, Max, who's one of the more cerebral fighters and knows what he's doing too, it was like he had him so solved that he was just beating every punch, kind of confounding him in every exchange, you know, like, and almost predicting, like it was almost like he knew what Max was going to do at every exchange, you know, like, and almost predicting, like, it was almost like he knew what Max was going to do at every move, you know. That sort of outsmarting is just, you don't see it in MMA too much. That's a guy who's a student in the game who knows how to execute it once they're in the cage. And I saw that against Diego, man. It was like he was, it was like he had him solve before they ever made the first exchange. He already kind of knew what to do.

It's Neo reading the code in the Matrix. Yeah, it is. That's what it seems like. He can see the code. And you can see him when he's snapping off those quick counters and stuff right away, he knew what to expect, he knew how to counter. It's just, it's a brilliant thing to watch. And that's when I say vintage, I'm like, that's what he does.

At him, his best, that's what he does, right? And I started off by asking about these questions, breaking the over 35 barrier, breaking the two losses into a title, undisputed title anyway, barrier, because obviously, Randy Couture did it at UFC 43 under an interim title. But this is the point I want to make on top of that, of course, is like, how do you get to that position where you're breaking these records, by the way, in the exact same fight? You have to be ahead of the game. You have to be ahead of the game. And I know that Toporia has caught up with him. But relative to the rest of the field that's out there, look at what you got. Lopez was as deserving a contender as this division has surged up there, beat the bags

off of Brian Ortega in the fight just before this one and looked deeply out of his element here. And I was like, you know, I was one of those guys saying like, if I'm Diego Lopez, I go into this fight and I try to test his chin immediately. I try to overwhelm him immediately because maybe that's your best route. I kept thinking, you know, if Diego goes past the second round,

it starts to favor Volkanovsky. We've seen him do this before. That means he's dialed in. He probably, he's probably dictating what's happening now in this fight. But I was like, those first two rounds mean everything to Diego. He never really had a chance, man. I mean, I know he got like the knockdown late in the second.

He had a couple of moments there, but this was one way traffic. Other than the danger of those big shots, that's what it became down to. You know, it was like 99% one way, 1% chance of late or whatever. And it just, it was, it was, it was, I kept saying masterful because that's what it seemed to me.

It was like a master class in how to fight a guy, you know, like in that situation. So I was one of those guys who was like, I don't know why, you know, you watch something like that and he goes back to his business and you're one of those guys that's like, how could I have ever thought that somebody was going to overwhelm Volkanovsky in a fight like this, you know?

I don't know. I kind of felt like, long on, overwhelm Volkonovsky in a fight like this? I don't know. I kind of felt like, long on, Luke, let's bring him in here, our friend from the main card minute, an intrepid producer. By the way, how'd you do on the betting, you degenerate? I did all right. Went three for five on the main, had Yair, had the over one and a half in Patti Chandler, and had the over two and a half in the main event.

Okay, so that's not too terrible. What did you think of Volkonovsky's performance? Anything we've missed here? So I thought he looked good. You're right He looked vintage vulk, but someone I think Jed Mishu was saying on the MMA fighting post fight show. He was like It's still that balance of he's either gonna get fucking flatlined or he's gonna look like veteran It's like dude. He's either gonna get knocked out or he's gonna look fucking awesome. And it's such a weird Conundrum to be like I don't know how he's gonna do tonight but I

thought he looked great. I thought our pre-fight assessment was pretty correct I mean I thought that Lopez would eventually catch him yeah and that would be the end of it but that's what I thought you know when you look at the tape it was like dude one of these is better than the other right it's not very difficult to figure that out and that's exactly what you got and he got clipped in the second the scoring How did you score this one? I had it four to one So the tour to one is probably what I'd lean yes round two

He gets dropped and round four is the one where he kind of got the knuckle right eye and it was kind of scrambling around A little bit for a little while only for that reason like the damage done in the fourth That's the round right that you'd go the other way, but the other three the other four were fairly convincing I know the second round was the one that was getting people confused but if you watch it around he beats Diego's ass the whole way until that until that moment was that moment enough to steal the round I don't think so so I had a four one yeah four to one for me as well I thought that that was the judging was kind of silly I mean right guy once I'm not complaining too much but I hated it I

hated it now well for me I want to talk about Diego in just a second all right cuz I fucking hated his performance And I feel like I'm the only one everyone was like they did a great job. He did not he did not however I'm with you hold on There is a bit of a separate conversation Lopez excuse me. I'm sorry Volkanovsky and Aldo and now it's re-raising these questions because again as I just mentioned he broke these kind of two barriers That had held up against all relevant weight classes in the 55 and down case for the 35 and over stat How do you evaluate who the best featherweight ever is?

It's tough because of the max Holloway Kind of exchange rate. Yeah, and also Volk beat Aldo too. I know true that is true but you know toward the end I don't want to put too many asterisks on all those things he did beat him and you also have to look how both guys are handling themselves that have passed a certain age the 35 marker for instance well now Volk kind of moves into another space because he was able to now navigate it and come back and win the belt the second time. I don't want to be one of those dudes who just dismisses Aldo, you know what I mean? Because for the longest time he stood as just such, like what was it like nine years he was undefeated. I think it was almost ten. He had nine defenses. If you go back to the WEC I think he had

a couple there and then all of those for like the first seven in the UFC. He was Mr. Featherweight and some of those fights man were just so vicious and you you've been watching him forever There was something about him that really was like good luck man So when Conor McGregor the reason Conor McGregor that thing was so huge because we couldn't conceive of that happening to Jose Aldo You know I think down the stretch beyond that is probably where it gets murky because Aldo was not able to... He's been fine, like he's had some good fights and he's still fighting and still making a career, but at the same time, he never really kind of recaptured that mystique. Whereas Volk just did. I think if Volk is able to kind of run this a little ways, maybe have a defense or two,

I would have no problem calling him the best. That's how good he is. I think he's that good now where he's at least in the conversation I was always hesitant to put him in that that Aldo sphere because I have so much respect for what he did Aldo That it seemed kind of impossible, but I think Volk is now on that cusp of passing him I feel like I'm taking a cop out here because I'm splitting the difference Yeah Which is to me like when we're evaluating who the best ever is in a weight class that the answer is gonna be down to weight class dominance

And obviously Aldo has had some losses since his peak, but to the point you raised I watched every fight I did I watched Aldo when he fought Picanha Noguera Wow who the fuck saw that one I saw that one did not see that right and he beat the shit out of him Picanha Noguera We had a lot of hype coming into that fight cuz he had one of the nasty guillotines and was this You know high prospect coming out of Brazil and Aldo smashed him and then went on one of the most legendary runs I've ever seen a fighter go on it's hard for me to overlook that but I will say this You know Aldo had amazing leg kicks and you know wasn't but Aldo was just you know a Primo level athlete when he was at his peak and focus too

But not the kind of explosive like springy like feline like you know Yes, you'll El Romero athlete in the way that I was that Mendes knockout where he went like went into the crowd afterwards Yeah, Brazil. Yeah, he didn't have he doesn't have that right in terms of the the thing We mentioned seeing the code in the game. I think Volk is the most talented featherweight I've ever seen I think he's that I think he's like the, I've never seen a guy who can master the, it's not just strategy. It's not just tactics. It's not just the specific skills.

It's the manipulation of the conditions under which they are engaging. And that is so difficult to do. And in a world, and I mean, obviously the parody, I guess, or the well-roundedness of guys who now train in all disciplines and get good at everything, Volk's been in that era. That's a lot tougher.

I know that, like, I don't wanna, that's what makes it hard sometimes to do, like, who's better, this guy or this guy? Aldo fought the best guys, some of those guys were beasts, you know, and seemed like they would have his number. Like, Mendes felt like one of those guys who might have his number just the way he fought, but he couldn't beat him. But you look at, like, Volk and some of those guys who might have his number just the way he fought but he couldn't beat him

But you look at like Volk and some of the guys he's beating especially in the in the trilogy obviously with Holloway Just the way that he got better in those trilogies and when Max is a cerebral fight himself I mean that's got to stand for something man and the fact that Max went on to have post Yeah, post volk right glory exactly. I mean he wasn't he didn't he didn't just ride off into the sunset that guy got back On the horse, you know, so it ages extremely well, right? But you know, but although I give him I give him his flowers for as long as he stayed in there and all those You know, we think about this a lot with GSP. It takes a lot to stay in there for nine title defenses, man We just talked about diluting yourself. That's what happens a lot of these guys. They think they're invincible at some point. Somehow his upbringing and everything over and you know the coaches and everybody who's around at Nova and Yao and his story

kept him grounded to just show up in the most vicious form every time. I think Volk is there. You have to kind of look at it from two different prisms right? Yeah I mean the thing for Aldo is like Aldo's the kind of guy, I don't want to say he doesn't have high level skill. Obviously, he's got extraordinary skill, but he's a little bit more stand to post and then welcome attacks. Yeah. Whereas Volk is like, right. So we're not going to play that game. The game we're going to play is I'm going to define the terms of engagement

and you're going to respond. That's exactly what he does. Completely different order of fighting. All right. With that being said, we have to talk. Oh, by the way, actually, we have Volk paying respect to Aldo. Let's see that. All right, here we go. Here we go. You know, it's been talked about many times over the years, like the featherweight goat

discussion and where you fit in. I know you've kind of always deferred it to other people to talk about that. But with this win tonight, you now trail Jose Aldo by just one title fight victory. And for so long, that record felt unattainable, right? If you can have the second title reign, get a defense, something he did not do, do you think that closes the discussion? Again, that's not up to me. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I got this new title reign and yeah, put it so I'll just make it hard for people to not choose me, I guess, you know what I mean Ben? So I'll just, it's not me, I'm not gonna call for anything. Aldo is an absolute legend, he's done great things.

I know I've done great things, I've fought absolute legends. You know, the resume I have is pretty impressive. Same as Aldo's, but I mean, he's obviously had so many defenses, I'd love to get that many. But yeah, having like, you know, free wins over Max and all that is just bloody, that's uh, that's what's something that I'm like, do I need so many defenses? I don't know, but I

will get the defenses and then we'll see. But again, Aldo, I don't like talking about it because I've got so much respect for Aldo and I say he's the goat because that's the respect I have and I'll let other people choose who they think. Yeah, pretty fair. Yeah. I like the, that's a good way to split the difference there. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Diego Lopez here. Oh, you know what? We'll come back to Vulcan just a minute. Let's talk about Diego Lopez. I fucking hated this performance from him. Now, understanding he's up against a technical marvel. You know, we have to be forgiving and I'm trying to be forgiving. Can I tell you what bothered me so much

about this performance? All right, number one. Glasses are off. The glasses are off because I was just watching this like so frustrated. Even if he had made some of the adjustments that I wish he had, it still would not have been any kind of guarantee of victory because again,

you're talking about a guy in Volk who is a master engagement manipulator, right? He's going to manipulate the terms. Like we're never going to fight 50-50. We're always going to fight 70-50. Yeah, he's going to make you look bad in most cases. Yes. Yeah. So like understanding that that's the game, but there is something that Volk does and you have to challenge it in order to win. Otherwise you simply have no shot.

And this is something that we saw in the third Holloway fight in particular, and then this one as well. Volk uses space, stepping, circling as a way to get you to follow and chase. Not just that, but as you follow and chase, he begins to set up different attacks and then builds differences from there based on what you're giving him and then everything begins to flow He circled Diego Lopez. There were times where he was cage-cutting himself But he mostly circled and had Diego Lopez following him. So first of all People being like Volk ran the people who say Volk, I'm trying to be as nice as I can. You're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking idiot.

You have zero clue about what you're looking at. I just cannot state that any clearer. Secondly, as he circles, I'm trying to explain what the importance is. If you and I are on 50-50, right, and I take a step over, you have to take time to follow because obviously I don't want you

to create an angle on me. So he does this with a system. Again, it's not just sidestepping, it's up, it's high, low, it's I reach with the jab, I touch with the glove, I might switch stance, it's got a whole system. But as he creates these angles, Lopez is starting to follow the whole time and when he does, there's a little window where he has no defense. And this is where he's getting popped with the jab. This is where he's getting hit with the leg kick. This is where he's building this entire attack. He's making every time he does that, he's making Diego reset, reset, reset. You're literally constantly resetting having to do this. And he never adjusted for it once.

So you would have been better in his corner than his corner just saying, get more aggressive. Dean Thomas, I went back and I watched the fight. Dean Thomas, who I love, shouts to Dean. Dean Thomas, after the first round, you know how the commentary booth goes to him. And the commentary booth is like, all right, Dean, what are you seeing?

He's like, going slow like this, technique for technique. I don't know if you're gonna beat a bulk. I do, yeah. He saw it in the first five minutes. Yeah. And I'm like, guys, how did you not know this was going to be something? And again, how you solve that problem. There's, there's a, there's a bunch of different ways to do it, but that he didn't even fucking attempt it. It's like, dude,

I don't know how to explain this. It is like trying to go scuba diving with, you know, half a tank, right? You're just automatically starting off before you go underwater with a complete deficiency. What did you make of this? Because I saw people saying, hey, his stock rose with this performance. I'm not here to say I'm gonna I'm gonna like smash it down. That would not be fair. He fought a very, very historically talented guy. It sure as fuck didn't go up for me. Stock maybe look, so I think people see it from the aspect of, well, he was able to show that he, if he can just land that shot, like he's dangerous, right? And he was able

to hang in there. Like he not, he was able to knock him down and he had the moment in the fourth. I'm guessing that's where it comes from. But I'm with you. There was no suspense because you could see those patterns that you've eloquently put out. You could see them developing and you could see there was really no response coming. And I think they did kind of zoom in on his corner a little bit. It was really surprising that there wasn't more technical talk that way. I didn't hear it. Maybe you heard it.

I didn't hear anybody saying, you know Hey, stop doing this start doing this whatever I didn't hear that How many times can you remember Volkanovsky? He would purposely kind of circle with his back towards the cage not every time it would depend on this dude Sometimes here's what he does. He'll fade into the power hand of Lopez Lopez would follow him But now Lopez is creating space behind him and then he'd go back to the counterclockwise circling. He would retake center and he would let him have it. Dude, how are you going to beat someone technically superior?

If you are consistently for 25 minutes, surrendering position. Yeah. It cannot be done unless you get lucky. And I think in the second round, he got a little close close But like you're waiting for Volk to make a mistake Volk is making you make mistakes Big fucking difference is it when you when you see something like this from a technical aspect do you say like? How did you not know the Volk is going to do this like when you're watching this unfold because I feel like What started to develop there and what you're describing is one of those things you could see him doing this in previous fights it's not like he this was new

that he the progressions that he'd go through to set things up but it didn't feel like Diego kind of was prepared for that which is kind of nutty man. I talked to Anthony Pettis after he knocked out Stephen Wonderboy Thompson which a lot of people forget that actually happened, but he did. It was a vicious KO. In his first 170 fight, was it? Yeah, yeah. It was a vicious KO.

And I actually asked him, like, how come you weren't cage cutting? And what he told me at the time, because he was following, he wanted to do that on purpose. So that was purposeful. And the reason why he did that is because he felt like when you pressure Wonderboy, you would, for him, you would get into scenarios he just didn't want to be in that he thought were too risky. So he actually felt like following and then following a little bit, even though he would be playing catch-up positionally,

he would have the speed advantage being the naturally smaller guy so it wouldn't make a big difference. Now, it didn't quite work out that way in the end, except he was able to finally land the big bomb, okay, all's well as that ends well. The point I'm trying to make is there can obviously be scenarios where you want to follow

like that, of course. But after fucking 20 minutes of it, you're still doing it in the fifth round. I don't know what the... And it's like, people think when I make this argument that I'm like, oh, I'm making myself out to be some kind of tape watching genius. Quite the opposite. It's actually if a dumbass like me, I'm like, you can't do this. Like this just is, this is a very suboptimal way to compete. How is it?

They aren't seeing that. That's the one that drives me fucking insane. So I take it you don't want to see the rematch if it's on the pike. What is the point? What is the point? I mean, who knows how much longer he's going to last doing this? And I don't know what the answer is, but, oh my God, I hated this performance from him. Now he had a couple of nice things that he did, that uppercut, the uppercuts were nice. Obviously, there's the other part too. I interviewed Ivan Flores.

It either was, I think it was after the Gachey win. This is the striking coach of Max Holloway. And I asked him, hey, like this movement that Volk did in the third fight, like what was so troubling about that? And his answer was, you know, the circling didn'tay and I asked him, hey, like this movement that Volk did in the third fight, like what was so troubling about that? And his answer was, you know, the circling didn't help and blah, blah, blah, but it was that Volk goes first and third. He'll either throw something or faint something,

get a reaction and then he goes third. And he was doing that constantly to Diego Lopez. And I'm like, guys, how did you not know this is what he was going to do to you? So then shoot a takedown. And obviously Volk might stuff it. Pull guard. I don't know.

Listen, something, something. Some disruption. You mentioned him being a master disruptor in terms of Volkanovsky. You would have to return that. You have to return the favor. If you let him have this, you're fighting at a disadvantage the entire time. It just drove me nuts. And so to me, it's like, I'm not going to back on him

because how many guys can do what Volk does. Brian Ortega is just going to run right into your punches, it looks like. In the case of Diego Lopez, it literally happened. But Volk is a special case. But at the same time, it's one... And Ortega almost got a submission of Volkanovsky, which is sometimes a strange game, isn't it?

Funny math. But the thing for me is like, because Volk is such a unique case, I'm not gonna dock Lopez too much. But I am gonna kind of reevaluate exactly how high I might place him in terms of his upside, because this was one of those performances that to me was just like, you got a long way to go.

Well, that old win or learn type thing, and guys saying that, you know, we learn more from our losses than we do from our victories. I think this would be the prime example saying that, you know, we learn more from our losses than we do from our victories. I think this would be the prime example of that because what you're mentioning is, you know, in a game of chess and you're out there trying to play checkers, it's a learning experience and you would hope that Diego will take from it,

like a little bit more of a sophisticated approach to it. Right? Yeah. Well, there's some work to be done. BC is texting me. He's watching, he's some work to be done. BC is texting me. He's watching, he's watching from San Diego and he said, this is what his son, he's with his family obviously and his son goes, dad, Luke sure does swear a lot. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Very realizing that, huh? Very quickly, Lopez put out a statement. If we could put it on the

screen, we'll read it here. If you could take off the lower third always with my head held high obviously it's translated I think from Spanish or Portuguese a smile on my face. I fell short last night. I failed in a few things I'll get back to work improve correct the mistakes and move forward. Thank you to thank you for all your support as I always say Nothing happens. I don't quite I don't know if that quite translating happens English in the way that it might very nihilistic approach to Just what just happened in the bathroom, I mean it was a disaster last thing Do you have a clear sense of who you want Volk to fight next very quickly? Let's see it Volk said hey move sore whoever but you know he wants to be fair to the process Let's see what he says. Yeah, you look great

but you know he wants to be fair to the process. Let's see what he says. Yohi looked great. As I was saying that, I'm like you know people talking about you know million dollar fight and you know all this stuff. I'm like man just you got a tough tough guy ahead of you man just focus on that you get a good performance all right you might get the shot. With Yohi I hear that he was saying get the title shot. Look he's a good dude. I like him a lot. If the UFC want to give it to him I ain't gonna stop that for him. he was saying get the title shot. Look, he's a good dude. I like him a lot. If the UFC wanna give it to him, I ain't gonna stop that for him. But yeah, I'll be honest, I did before that fight,

I didn't think if he won, he would be getting the shot. I'll be honest, that didn't come to mind. But now that he's calling, I'm not gonna be the one to say no, but I'm gonna leave everything to the UFC. Obviously you've got guys like Mosvah who's undefeated. That's, I mean, I'd love to take that zero. You know what I mean?

Like we've got to see what the UFC say. I heard, you know, I've seen him trying to get other fights. I don't know, is that right? Like- There was rumors that he was gonna fight Pete. But I even heard, I even seen him tweeting that he wants to fight someone in May and doing all this sort of stuff.

So maybe he's had the chats and they want him to have one more fight. I don't know. So I don't know that situation, but I'll see how things are. I'd love to say, and I told you I want to get straight back in there. I still do, but I'm going to have to maybe look at a couple of things. Yeah, you seem to think you would go to Mexico to fight him in that big Guadalajara show in September. Is that something you'd be willing to do? September. I mean, if everything's good, I'd probably like to go soon,

quicker than that, to be honest. That's probably the second fight. So maybe it can be, you know, if I'm good, maybe I get the fight, maybe July. Or September. Oh yeah, we can maybe, did it? I mean, Mosvah, you know what I mean? I'll take, if they want to do that, if they want to quickly go and I feel good, maybe quick turnaround with Mosvah

if I don't have busted hands. We'll see, we'll see. Like I said, that was my plan, bang, bang, bang, bang. But... You get the idea. Do you have a preference if you want him to fight? I love that he's making like a tour. I think that's great.

And he's not even worried about the Mexico element of that, by the way. He's just like, tour. I think that's great. And he's not even worried about the Mexico element of that, by the way. Like he's just like, oh, go into the guys back. Yeah, that's great. I don't think they should make that fight next. I think the Mosfar fight makes the most sense because how do you deny him at this point? He's deserved it.

I think that would be a very compelling fight just given watching the two guys stylistically. I think that'd be the best fight. I would do Yair versus... Tiego? Yeah. Yeah, because if they both want to hold off until September, that's the fight to make.

I'm with you a little bit, like, don't get me wrong, because of how matchmaking works and how the calendar works, Vulk might end up fighting Yair next in September, I guess we'll see. But like, that is not a pay-per-view, is it? I guess it is. It is a pay-per-view. It's an announced pay-per-view is it I guess it is it is right? It's a it's an announced pay-per-view Yeah, UFC 320. Okay, as long as it's a pay-per-view then that could happen. I thought for some reason it was a fight night so

Then they might do that, but I still think that the the heat I mean watching this part of this card the part of the heat went to Yair versus Diego I mean, that's kind of what they built so you got to capitalize on that Yeah, I mean the thing for me is like I rewatched the first went to Yair versus Diego. I mean, that's kind of what they built. So you got to capitalize on that. Yeah, I mean, the thing for me is like, I rewatched the first fight to prepare for Saturday. I rewatched Yair and Volk and Volk. Seven takedowns, right? It was like seven takedowns and he held,

he had like seven or eight minutes of control time. Pillar to post, I don't have a big interest. Beat him everywhere. I was like, what has changed? And it was just a one fight win streak to me. Lopez just came off the title fight, give him Yerisi's surging and you can kind of sort that. I guess we'll see. I want to remind everyone, hey, now is a good time to remember where Tequila's story truly began. In 1795, Cuervo invented tequila. Since then, Cuervo has stayed true to its roots, the same family, the same land, and the same passion.

230 years later, we're still there in every pour, in every margarita, in every celebration. So, enjoy the tequila that started it all. Cuervo, the tequila that invented tequila. Proximo, cuervo.com. Please drink responsibly. See, that's what hurts about comingo, cuervo.com. Please drink responsibly. See, that's what hurts about coming in on the Monday show. If it's the Friday show, we have the bottles right here.

They take good care of us. I do love those. I do love Cuervo. It's been great. Next time, next time. Well, you know, listen, we could always drink on a Monday too. I could just be a terrible husband and father.

Just come home hammered. My wife would just have to tolerate it, I suppose. All right, with that in mind, let's move down the card if we can because there is so much meat on this bone to chew on Let's talk about now topic number two in the co main event. Oh, I've got some crow to eat Chuck Mendenhall Patty Pemblit he didn't just defeat Michael Chandler He big brother him on route to a third round kind of vicious stoppage if I do say so myself Chuck this was by far the best performance by Patty and certainly on the biggest stage.

Is it time for critics of Patty Pimlet to admit he's a legitimate title threat? Chandler's washed. That might also be true. You know how that kicked up immediately though, as soon as this fight happened. Okay, Chandler did look bad It's like you don't look bad. I think so because this has been a kind of escalation I guess For Pimblitt and he's went through the last two guys like, you know, Bobby King green

Like he's supposed to maybe maybe we're gonna have to see him put in some deep wire No, didn't happen and then he goes into this one and like you said I it was like a big brothering right like he just Did you ever feel like he was in trouble in this fight every time there was a scramble? it felt like he was big brother and like he was just end up in a in the dominant position and and just kind of squaring off on him and Nobody really I mean not too many dudes do this to Chandler whether he's washed or not not too many dudes do this He made him look bad, you know, he made him look bad And I think it is time for the UFC to take him serious. I said going into this

I'm like if Pimblit is able to kind of do this kind of performance It's not just in the mix you could put him against any of those guys because he's the big enough name, right? like they've had other guys that they've They've kind of like expedited into big, big fights. They could do that if they wanted right now. Or they could go the Justin Gagey route, a guy who's kind of hovering in that top space still and would make sense.

But like they could put him against Ilya. They could do anything that they wanted right now. Dana White is, oh excuse me, no I have the wrong clip. We'll skip that one. Let's bring in Long Island Luke. Long Island Luke, we talked about this before the show. Okay. How are we supposed to interpret Patty?

And what I mean by that is I started out when he came to the UFC, I'm like, he's got nearly 25 and he's not any good. You know, I was very dismissive of him, but dude, he's legitimately Improved. My question is was the skepticism about him when he first got to the UFC justified Skepticism is definitely fair. I watched like Patty's last maybe five or six cage warriors fights. I used to have to do that and Dude, he definitely lost to Julian Arosa. He also threw up in the page after that fight He lost to Soren Bach. That's an actual loss There was times in cage warriors where he looked human so you think oh now he steps it up to the UFC He's definitely gonna look human, but he looked damn impressive

But I don't want to jump on the Chandler's washed bandwagon But you know word not not exactly facing the real top ten if you know what I mean yes I need one more fight I need him versus Armin or Charles, but not my money But not you don't want that's fine, but dude when he was fighting the whoever the Luigi vertebrae whatever the guy's name was Yeah, Luigi Vendramini Nice guy, but like when he was fighting that level of competition and he got he got kind of rocked in that fight Immediately remember I was like I was like, this guy.

There's a video floating around of me where I was doing some post-fight show, and someone asked, this is years ago, so this is like when they were both relatively new to the UFC, and someone was like, what about Patti versus Ilya Tuporiya? And I was like, put him in front of Ilya if you want to fucking kill him.

I remember you saying this, yes. And at the time, I felt very confident in that. And for years after, I felt confident in that and I would still pick I was gonna say no I would still pick him, but I have to take that's a different fight today. Yeah, that's a completely different fight today No question about it like are you surprised how good he's gotten. I think he has gotten better That's what that's the thing. He came in with a lot of hype, and we were talking about diluting yourself earlier. He seemed like one of those guys who was going to be very susceptible to diluting himself into being a bad fighter at some point.

That hasn't happened. He's actually met the escalation and the brighter spotlights really well. He's looked better than he has in the first bunch of fights in his last two against better competition. So, is he one of those risers who like, when it gets, you know, the bigger the stakes, the more he dials in and the more he knows what to do? It could be the case. And I think you've got to kind of, if you're the UFC, you've got to play that out as far

as it'll go. I still don't know how he'd do against a guy like Tapori. I mean, I still suspect it would go the way that you initially did. I don't think that'd be a great fight for him. But could he beat Gachey? Like these are the questions I had before. And I'm not sure. Those are impossible to even think of before. I know. But I would have probably said no, Gachey would buzz song. But now I'm sort of like, it might be a bad matchup for Gachey. You know, that's how much he's improved. Like it's become a different scenario for him.

He was always good at the back He's gotten yeah now he's not just good at the back He's good at transitioning the back to three-quarter mount to ground and pound to mount itself You're gonna be like he's got a whole system there. But dude, how about on the feet? The leg kicks, punishing, punishing. There are times in fights where people say to me So-and-so got kicked in the leg, you know, shouldn't that count for something? And my answer to that is, well, of course,

it has to matter to some degree, but here's what I'm looking for, Chuck. If we're fighting and you kick me in the leg and I start limping or I change stances or my offense kind of hurries up because I am now under threat, that to me is a sign it's working. If you're kicking me in the leg and it's not deterring me in any way, I have a hard time knowing the value.

His leg kicks had immediate effect on Chandler. People just don't want to... They never seem to want to give credit to those leg kicks. You know, it's like the least glaring thing for people to pick up on. But man, when you see it effective like that, it does change it, doesn't it? It changes everything. And it's not just that. He had Chandler right at the end of his punches so often.

And then how about this? Timing that knee on the entry, waiting for him. Dude, that's good timing. That's good anticipation. These are hard. They make it look so easy. These are very difficult skills to learn. And also to teach a young fighter to leave their feet like that Is it not everyone is kind of suited for it? I gotta tell you he's fucking good Did you think he lost the Gordon fight that happened like I did so I mean you the criticism was in things like this You know, well, he couldn't even clear that hurdle, although he did in the Wikipedia sense, like he won the fight. I think people have just been kind of stuck on him saying like, I don't think he has beyond like a, you know, like maybe right at top 15, you know, maybe that's his ceiling.

But obviously he's went right through that. It's now fun, and you know, this is an era, we talk about this a lot, where you're like, who are the stars in the UFC? Who are these guys? He certainly could be one and that's why that's why you almost think that the ufc would play him against a guy like Gageynex and not feed him to like a guy like armand or somebody like that who could Kind of steal the thunder armand our armin is

I would pick armin to win. But you think it would be a close fight? I think that on the ground, Patty can give him some serious problems. It is an interesting thing. I can't believe I'm saying that shit. I know, that's what I'm saying. Like it's a completely different perception, right, than we were like a year ago, and especially after this last fight.

Does he not look big to you in this weight class? He looks huge. His traps are like ridiculous. I couldn't believe how, because if you watch him when he first gets to the UFC, you know, he's in shape, but he looks relative to how he is now, a little scrawny. So it's not just like, did his game get better? He physically matured and like leaned into it and it's just paid dividends the whole way through. And correct me if I'm wrong. He's not like, people sometimes think that he's like 20 something,

but he's like 30 now, isn't he? I think he's 30 now. I'll double check that real quick. So it's not like, I mean, he should be, it's just he had this boyish looks, but he should be in his prime right about now. 30, he just turned 30. Just kinda coming into his prime. So I mean, we'll see what happens,

but it does feel like he kinda grew into his body and he looked huge in there against Chandler. I mean, massive compared to him. Let's talk about who makes the most sense next for Paddy Pimlet. Let's do it this way. We got a couple of comments from Paddy. Let's go to this one first.

Paddy is not even thinking about Toporia. Called him irrelevant. And then one day down the line, we get the press tour with Ilya Toporia. Oh, yeah, yeah, we want that. I forgot to mention Ilya in the case, to be honest. That's how irrelevant he is in my life I forgot to even mention El Tritso, you know what I mean? I didn't even think of him. I'm ranked higher than him at Lightweight

Okay, so that's BC is- BC stop texting me That's hilarious. So there's that one. The next one is Patty says He's more conf- excuse me. He's Patty is confident. He's got better subs than Olivera. Let me hear that one I didn't feel tired one bit there and Chandler was blowing out of his ass. So I Don't think I would have put on a much better performance to be honest Dana was here and we asked him, you know is is does Patty get one more fight and then he's a title contender and Dana Said well, this was a big win. so he could be a title contender right now.

You named a few guys there you would want to fight. You also said you wouldn't mind fighting Charles Olivera in Abu Dhabi. So is that the plan? One more fight title shot for you? I hope so. You know what I mean? I do. I want to I want to be a world champion. I've always said that I am going to be a world champion and beating a former champion like Charles

Olivera who had two title defenses He gets called the best submission artist the UFC has ever seen so I'd love to Go up against that because I think I've got better submissions than Charles Olivera last one for me one year from now Do you think you have the UFC title? I fucking hope so 2026 lot of want that belt wrap around my waist. He's got nerve, he's got moxie, and now he's got size and ability. I'm telling you, this is a great thing for the lightweight division, is it not, Chuck? Yes, and that Olivera fight, especially considering these are two guys who are submission artists and know what to do on the ground, like,

this has got to be your wet dream, on the ground like this is gotta be your Wed dream right like this is like you want to see that fight. I just want to be perfectly honest I just want to see him tested against anybody in the top five. I don't really I don't Looks like that would be your fight. So so I have a weird This is like the one like weird part about my fandom. I'm like a hardcore fight fan and I have been almost all my life Yeah, I part about my fandom. I'm like a hardcore fight fan and I have been almost all my life. I know after big fights, the first thing that everybody loves to do is what are the next big fights you can make. And I like doing that exercise. But to me, it's like, I'm not going to say irrelevant, but I think people play into it too much when I think there's a lot of,

I always believe in rare exceptions. Yeah, you know, John versus Tom at heavyweight. That's the only one I want to see but it With exceptions like that. I'm like there's almost like a range of good fights that they have I don't have to see like his situation Yeah, exactly. He hasn't been there. He's the fresh blood to that scenario. There's one more of these I want to get to very quickly Colby Covington and Patti Pimblitt had a bit of a flare up backstage backstage let's take a look two and six remember that remember that you on a three fight using stick? You need projects so quick! A and A AHHHH AHHHH Keep putting your act on your ass Mute out cuss words on morning

combat? What's going on here? I gotta tell you I love scouser insults I know. Helmet Sausage. Sausage. Mushroom I know. You know what I mean? I know. These are things Sausage. Sausage. Mushroom. I know. You know what I mean? I know. These are things in American English

that mean nothing other than like. It sounds so insulting when he's like, you're a sausage. Yeah, you're a helmet. Yeah. What the fuck does that mean? Okay, neither here nor there. He is on everybody's radar.

Yeah. He is injecting fucking life into all of these rivalries. And we've talked about it on this show before, Chuck, which was like, I thought like the Demir Ismagulovs and the Kutateladze were gonna come and replace everyone with the Fizeves. Dude, it was Patti Pimlet before it was maybe any of those guys.

Can you fucking believe it? But you have to give him props. He has earned this spot. Now again, people are gonna say he got favorable matchmaking early in his run, which of course is true, but Chuck, you know this as well as I do. You want a promoter to deftly handle a situation like this so you can maximize it. There are any number of fights they could have given him that would have ruined him and never made this day possible. But they played it and he got a little lucky, but they played it just right. And now look at the results.

I guess that's the question. Like we're saying, maybe he's closer to some of these guys that seemed untouchable than we think. And I think that that's part of the intrigue. Like if he goes up against a Surukhian, maybe it's a closer fight than we first would have thought. Or does the UFC say the Gachey fight just because we know that that build would be fun, we know that it would deliver, and there's a good chance that Patty just keeps, the Patty train just keeps rolling along, right? Like, it'd be interesting to see what they do,

because a lot of times what they want to do is kind of knock off a guy who seems invincible. They love to do that, but usually when they have the title, right? But like, sometimes the matchmakers have different ideas, but I'd be a little surprised if they wanted to put him in a boring like you know a guy who's just not gonna bring out that natural a side of him at this point I know I fully agree I lost my train of thought I had something to add there but I think that's fine let's talk about

Michael Chandler yeah okay 39 on April 24th of this month. So in 10 days, 10 days, he'll be 39 years of age. Let me tell you what I saw in this fight, Chuck. Tell me if I'm on to something. Patty has a very different style than Chandler. Yeah. But to me, he looked like the next evolution of whatever Chandler's era of fighting represented. I'll give you some examples. Okay. In the first round he gets behind him and he's able to like, mat return him. Lift him and then return him to the mat. They counted as a takedown but it's a mat return. Right. When he does that, Chandler never threads the legs. If in order to generate power off the floor, a movement off the floor, your feet have to attach

and then you push. That's how all movement happens. But, and that's you see Habib, Islam, they get you take down, they're threading the legs immediately so you cannot move or put some kind of turk, something to put on there. He doesn't do that so Patti is simply able to get right back to his feet or how about in the second round he tries to take the back but he's not really a backtaker. It's not a position right got great skill in so of course Patti's able to, I think was the the third maybe, Patty's able to reverse it and then he finishes the fight from there. There are things that Chandler was able to do with boxing and wrestling and just pure grit and brawn that got him pretty far. But there are technical limits to it. And now that he's

old, it all came apart for me. It's like, dude, if you don't have those other things tightened up, Volk can compete late into his run because every screw is tightened down. Right. Man this thing, this is one of those jalopy planes he was trying to land. You ever seen those Red Bull competitions where they people make homemade airplanes and they see if they can go like 50 feet? Yeah. It felt like that to me. That definitely had that feel and you know going into this I would have said, you know, Chandler's probably more interested in just collecting bonus money And I'm not trying to be you know, there's certain guys. Gachey for a little while I think was just kind of like hey, man, I just want to like load up on bonus money. Joe Lozano used to have that mindset

He was like, you know, I'll fight Midland guys and just kind of Survive on the bonus money that comes through. I think Chandler, you know, if you followed him in Bellator He he's still I mean he had but I think you mentioned the grit and the metal and that sort of thing He got a lot of what he did was that right? That was just so much of his what he brought that fight he had with Alvarez Back then it was one of the greatest. Yeah, but the first, I think it was the first one that was just like, it was the same night as Hindo. Just a fucking-

Hindo and who else? Just a big cat being unleashed on prey. And that's what I think that he, his mindset defaults to that, you know? And it was not, there was not gonna be like this major evolution. I know some people are like, hey man, he was a standout wrestler at Mizzou,

maybe one time he's going to, you know, kind of revert more back to his wrestling and start to, it just isn't part of what he wants to do. Like you're saying, technically, he doesn't even want to, I don't think he really wants to fight that way, you know? People think that's like, oh, why can't you just train an old fighter to do new things? And it's like, dude, that's harder than it looks. He went pretty far.

Like he made a lot of money. He's had a great career. He's done a lot with what he's done. But to me, this fight felt like the bookend of legitimacy. This is the end. I agree. That's how it looked to me too. I mean, and I think that even with the matchmaking, a lot of times they'll do this, but they'll give the guy that they are trying to get over and the old dude stands in his way and then they kind of baton pass. That's what it felt like a little bit. When Patty had him in, uh, there was up against the fence and Patty was trying to sneak his rear knee to take the back

But in but it was so waiting was pinning with the forward knee and then turkey in the leg So so Chandler's like this Yeah And Patty's got one leg kind of over and on top of him and he was just beating the fuck out of him with like again Modern best practices and Chandler who is still a physical beast, certainly the way he looks, was technically overwhelmed and getting flattened and beaten up. I was like, it just felt to me like that skillset

for that era that he built, it came to an end on Saturday. It's tough too, man, because you've covered him a long time. You've probably, have you talked to him quite a bit in your career? I have talked to him recently, but I've probably interviewed him 20 times or something. That's what I was gonna say, I've talked covered him a long time. You've probably, have you talked to him quite a bit in your career? I have talked to him recently, but I've probably interviewed him 20 times or something. That's what I was going to say. I've talked to him a lot.

I remember doing a piece when he adopted his children and it was like, you know, he's a great guy and there's a point when you're like, you see that kind of beating and you're like, I don't want to see you take too many of those. It's easy for me to say, like I know the fighters themselves have their own lives and they have their own goals and stuff like that, but there is a point in time, man, where you're like, you've been in a lot of wars. And if you're not seeing, if you're seeing a younger guy like that go through them too easily, it's just a sign, right? Like it wasn't a good look because usually if anything Chandler, it's not one sided.

Chandler always has his moments in fights. Like he has a moment where he comes flurrying back and like, Oh my God, this is berserk. Fifth round against the Lavera in the last one. So it and like, oh my god, this is berserk fifth round against right here Exactly. So it's like we didn't get that on this one. And that's just you think it's going one way now I don't think it's coming back Dana White still has a lot of nice things to say about Chandler. Let's hear it Michael Chandler is now one in five in his last six, but he's always been exciting in the fan favorite What do you make of his performance tonight and where he's always in the fight? I mean, he's always in the fight You know What do you make of his performance tonight? And he's always in the fight. I mean, he's always in the fight.

Tonight was a big night for Patti Pemblit. Like we were just talking about, people have been doubting Patti Pemblit every single fight he fights, and he's undefeated in the UFC. But Chandler is like our Arturo Gotti, man. Every time that guy goes in, you know you're in for a good fight. You know it's gonna be a war. And you don't know whether he's gonna win or lose. Okay, I mean, I like the Arturo Gotti comparison, except Arturo's life didn't end that great

after fighting. Yes. So maybe we can keep it at a limit to that comparison. Rest in peace to Arturo Gotti But and I think you do know sometimes. I mean I certainly thought that Patty would I thought Patty would win this fight. I don't know how you felt about it going in I did I did think he was gonna win Yeah, I mean to say like we don't know if he's gonna win or lose I think that that's what was compromised in this fight like I if Chandler's fighting anybody in that top space on his next one

If he returns I Think you'd probably predict he's gonna lose you know so that that component is a little off I thought it would be kind of close, but maybe Patty would kind of you know yeah You know edge him or maybe look good. I didn't think Patty was gonna like no I didn't fuck him up that way. I mean that's exactly what that was the reveal right like so yeah All right, let's go to topic number three, if we can. This one was a weird fight for me. Let's talk about it. Yair Rodriguez defeating Patricio Pitbull. Of course, Patricio Pitbull, the best fighter in Bellator history, but 37 years of age. We all here on MK tried to

have some managed expectations. I was a little excited for this fight. In fact, I was very excited for this fight, but at the same time, there was something at the back of my mind being like, well, he's 37. He got that last one over Jeremy Kennedy. What really is left? So Chuck, you scored what I would consider to be a very important victory over Pitbull. We'll talk about Pitbull in a second. But for Rodriguez, did he show you enough to merit a title shot despite only being on a one-fight win streak? Then we talked about what some of the other choices are, but I guess my question is more about how good did he look to you? He looked pretty good. I mean, his kicks are always going to be an aesthetic value to the OC.

He goes in there and he just does these things and you can hear it, jam, slam, slam, and you're like, man, this is crazy. I was pretty positive it was not going to be a finish. The way the fight kind of played out, it obviously went in Yiger's favor. But I don't think, I don't know, maybe it's just I wasn't holding him in that title spot to begin with. Because he'd lost his last couple of fights prior to this.

And I always have hard times I would not have held him but for the fact that they're going to Guadalajara Yeah, to me was the thing that was like I mean he did it right by like getting on the mic too and just being like I want the winner of that fight the Main event and I want it in Guadalajara. He did everything correct In fact, let's let's let's hear him. Let's hear him say that. I was maybe a title shot You wanted that in Guadalajara. How confident are you that you can get Volkonoski to go to Mexico to fight you? Brother, Volkonoski has fought like all over around the world.

He hasn't fought in Mexico. Guadalajara is not super high elevation. I think it makes sense for the UFC to bring a huge event, a numbered event in Guadalajara. And I think Volkonoski will be able to like run it back with me. I think he will be happy to do that. bring a huge event, um, numbered event in Guadalajara. And, um, I think what can Oscar will be able to like run it back with me. I think he will be happy to do that. Okay. He says, hold on one second.

I gotta see this cause I didn't look this up before the show and now I want to see it. He's like, Oh, Guadalajara doesn't have high elevation. It's the same as Denver. Mexico city is much higher than that. So it's less than Mexico City. Yeah, it's less than Mexico City. But it's like, it's still well above 5,000 feet. Like it's fucking high. I got to tell you, I thought he looked.

Here's what I liked about this performance. The one fight win streak doesn't give me like big confidence to make it, but I understand they've got to fill a calendar and there are many factors that go into who gets title shots. I like this performance for how disciplined it was. There are times where he gets overzealous. There are times where he leans into that acrobatic recklessness. And he didn't do that this time.

He was a little boring, but in a totally forgivable way because he was much more methodical. He knew he had a guy who was probably past it, but still has got dynamite punching power. You can see the respect there. You had to be careful, and he was. And to me, it was still exciting because he knocked him down on the third

and had that terrifying ground pound. But he was disciplined about what he was doing up until that point. And for me that was like, okay, I didn't see anybody who's gonna beat Volk, necessarily, but I definitely saw a guy who understood that correcting for some of your errors is gonna take you a little bit further.

Yeah. I just have a hard time with the competitiveness of the first fight. We talked about this a little bit. I'm like, if you're going to throw Volk into that situation and have him travel to Mexico, it feels like you're kind of catering at this point to Jair Rodriguez in every capacity. But not to say that Volk wouldn't just go in there and do the exact same thing, but it seems a little weird to your champion to just kind of do this. That's why I just think, I mean, even people-

I know, a champion being the B side almost is kind of weird. I know, exactly. And I know Volk probably wouldn't put up much of a stink about it, which is to his credit, but I just think that that Diego thing, there's such good, bad blood there, you know? And you got a guy who, you know, I think feels more Mexican than Brazilian at this point,

you know what I mean? Because he's lived in Mexico for a long time now that wants to represent Mexico, and you have a guy telling him, like, you're not a Mexican, you know what I mean? Because he's lived in Mexico for a long time now, that wants to represent Mexico and you have a guy telling him, like, you're not a Mexican, you know what I mean? I think that you put those two guys into a scenario in Guadalajara, that's going to be a fun fight, right? Like that atmosphere is going to be ridiculous. I was at a Mexico City fight when Jair stepped in against Jeremy Stevens and that eye poke happened and the place went berserk. And I have to say like that crowd was on another level.

Like sometimes people are like, what's the best crowd you've ever been in? And I'm like none of them are more raucous than that crowd. Like that was a crazy crowd. So you have tried to imagine the scenario of him fighting Diego and I think that would be ridiculous, man. That just seems like a slam dunk to me. It does to me. Bong Island Luke, where are you on this one? Who should be next for Yair and is it Volk? Now you got to do Diego. I don't need to see a Yair-Volk rematch yet Let Yair-Volk fight Devoeva, do Yair-Diego, winners get winners I think that's about right. That would make sense. Now unless you want to stick John Silva into the scenario anywhere We'll get to him in a minute

People are like you should get a title shot. I'm like guys he went into that fight unranked. I know unranked I know like don't get me wrong. You look great. Hold the fuck on. I know before we move on to that Let's look at pitbull. Pitbull put out a statement. Let's take a look at the statement here if we can it's it's a couple of them I'll read it out for the audio listeners. Thank you UFC for everything. I felt very welcomed. Great treatment from all the staff towards me and my team and my family. I heard International Fight Week is amazing and the card is still open. I've got a few names in mind. Would you guys like to see me fight next? And then he also says congratulations to the tags. Yeah, I hear. We'll see each other again. I'm injury-free and ready to go, UFC. Thank you to all the fans. I'll make you all proud.

You can count on that. I was hoping we were going to get something better than what we got, but at the same time I'm really not mad at what we got. Pitbull is 37. He is well past his prime. I watched his prime. It was fucking great, but we're past that now. And you know, one of my viewers on my personal channel brought this up and it's true

Which is ever since he got rocked and it got a shit rocked by AJ McKee. Yeah, it's been a little bit more hesitant That's true. And you felt that you felt that in here. Also, the octagon is so big It's hard to corner guys who've got fleet footwork like Yair It was an uphill climb for him on Saturday, was it not? It was and I think that for him, you know, I think he was looking at like, you know, I have one more belt that I haven't got and I'm getting a pretty good, so I think he wanted to be as strategic and tactical and try to bend the fight to his will as he could. He just couldn't get it done and I think that's just the product of age. When he came over to the UFC, I had the same thing as you.

You're like, dude, if this happened five years ago, this would be ridiculous. That partition coming down and you get to see these fights you're never able to see. But there was a feeling of maybe too little too late. But I had talked to him in the fight week and he's kind of infectious with what he's telling you. It's like, I have this one goal left, man, and I want to do this to complete my legacy. And the guy has overcome so much in his career. So many times where he kind of left a run where he'd get close, he'd lose, he'd get close, he'd lose.

Then he wins the bell, he loses it, you know what I mean? Wins it back. It's like he's constantly just battling. So I don't want to bury him, but I do think that it's going gonna be very difficult for him to kind of do that in the UFC at this point I think this was the critical fight. He needed to kind of come in there and show something I'm not sure he showed enough to do that, but If you followed pitbull, which I know you have and I'm sure a lot of the viewers have like a resume review Yeah, I'm like it's one of those things if you followed his career

He really has nothing to prove. He was in a different way. He was the face of that organization. He was the greatest they had. And I think his legacy is set one way or another. I have two things I want to say about Pitbull. One is I hated, I hate, I, shots to, listen, I'm not one of these guys that's going to

constantly bitch about the commentary at these shows Oh, first of all, I love John I think DC can be good or bad depending on who he's with I really did not like Rogan saying, you know, what's what happens when he steps up to a new level. It's like guys Yeah, that's guys. I'm not telling you that Bellator was on par with strike force or WEC, right? What I can tell you is I lived through the UFC absorbing pride Absorbing WEC and absorbing strike force what happened everybody was psyched about pride because their roster was obviously Ridiculous, okay, that was incredible blah blah blah everybody thought the strike force fighters were frauds and

Everybody thought or not everybody but you know There's a vast array of opinions around that. And there was a lot of people who thought the WEC guys were gonna be a tear down, especially a 155. And what happened? They came over and fucking kicked everybody's ass. Getting people who are past their prime in tough fights like this, stylistically on top of it, and then declaring, oh, well this is what happens

when you step up, it's so shitty. It's so shitty to a guy like Patricio who has been in the fucking trenches in this sport. He deserved a little bit better than what he got from Rogan and I really, really did not like that. That's the first thing I wanna say. The second thing I wanna say is, well, that was most of what I wanted to say.

I don't know, I had another point here. I'm getting worked up about it, but I really didn't know that was that was Aaron Pico to me is a little bit of a better test case. Yeah, because he's still he's 30. Yeah. So okay, right. This is now he's also but this is the other part. It's like one or two guys don't make up the whole thing. Right. Eddie came over and got a title Eddie Alvarez like, you know, okay, Will Brooks didn't work out. But Will Brooks had other issues. and Michael Chandler came over at 30 fucking four dude 34 was is old I know and he came over at 34 And the whole thing drives me nuts the disrespect that he suffered from this. I hate this is ridiculous, too. It's really tough. I mean

Rogan's mailing it. Oh, I remember my second one How about this at 45 now? I don't know where UFC's head is at on this. Pitbull versus Aldo. How about we just make that fight? Wow. No? I mean you should. It's kind of like one of those ones

that you had imagined at some point, right? If you're following their trajectories, you probably have imagined that fight taking place. Why not? I mean, where's Aldo going? You know what I mean? Like it's a 75. Yeah, exactly. He has to cut an enormous amount of weight or whatever it is. I mean, where's Aldo going? You know what I mean? Like it's so sad to see. 35. I mean, he has to cut an enormous amount of weight or whatever it is. I mean, I realize

he can make it, but like, get him back at 45. Let him be healthy. Let these two duke it out. This is what I mean about two guys, you know, Volk and the way he manipulates the engagement would be a tough matchup for Pitbull. But Aldo will plant and wait. That is much more my speed for these two to match up that way. You're right. That would be great. I hope they do something like that. Kind of a legacy fight. I guess we'll have to see. Before we go to our next topic, let me remind everybody guys that, well, we've talked about them before on this, on this, this year show. And we do

that because we love them. I've used them, BC has used them, and I really recommend that you guys use them. I'm talking of course about our friends at Gold Belly. This is the most incredible, unforgettable gift that you can get your mom for Mother's Day, which is coming up, jabronies, don't forget about this. Have you heard of Gold Belly? You should have, of course, because you watch this show.

This is how it works. It's an amazing site that I order from BC orders from. You can get the most iconic, famous foods from restaurants all across the United States, and they'll ship anywhere across the country ready for this for free in time for Mother's Day. Now, I don't know how everyone celebrates their Mother's Day, but the good news is, Chuck, wide variety of options. BC got the trash can nachos from the Guy Fieri joint. Loved it. I got wings from Anchor Bar. Tremendous. But the good news is, you can get other things. Have you had, and Gold Belly will deliver this, have you had the banana

pudding from Magnolia Bakery here in New York City? I have not yet. Oh brother. You tried it though? Oh brother. Yeah. It will blow your socks off. All right. And the good news is you can get it shipped even if you don't live in New York City. Goldbelly will ship gift worthy cakes as I mentioned from Ina Garten and Martha Stewart and Magnolia Bakery. That bread pudding, Oh my God, it's so freaking good. New York bagel brunch directly from the city or even authentic Chicago deep dish style pizza. So if your mom would love something sweet from one of the country's best bakeries or meals from famous chefs, Gold Belly has you covered.

And to me, when they sent it, Chuck, it was all in a nice box. This is ingenious. I love it. Everything was set up. They had instructions on how to cook everything. By the way, they sent me a nice t was all in a nice box. This is ingenious. Everything was set up, they had instructions on how to cook everything. By the way, they sent me a nice T-shirt from Anchor Bar. Thank you for that, I will use that thing, and I have been. Just everything, the food was packaged carefully,

the delivery was on time. You know, sometimes you get the package and like it's leaking and the cardboard, there was none of that. Everything was exactly the way that we wanted it. We had a great meal with our family. So if you're looking to make Mother's Day perfect and want to impress your friends and family

with an epic meal, next time you host, go to goldbelly.com, get free shipping and 20% off your first order with the promo code COMBAT, that's COMBAT with with a K one more time gold belly dot com code combat free shipping and 20% off your first order okay let's get to the hitler part of the show how about that i've been waiting i didn't i didn't include it but someone found a picture of like like one moment where he's scrambling

and he's literally in the shape of a swastika and they're like, John Silva got him doing this. Oh my Lord. Before we even get to this, before I even ask this question, separate question. I found, and I didn't even really weigh in on it because you know, how often do you want to fight the third Reich in your mentions? It just becomes taxing after a little while. But I found this weird desire to turn him into some kind of like misunderstood victim

of the woke mob. I'm like, guys, it's almost illegal to be woke right now. If you are getting killed in the media for something you're saying, it has to be particularly heinous and stupid and utterly irredeemable. And they tried to turn him, not they, but there was a faction of the fandom that tried to turn him into some like, you could never make me hate Bryce. I don't care if you like or hate him, but turning him into some kind of sympathetic figure, some victim of an oppressed elite class going after him. You have to have the same level of brain damage that like, you know, I don't know, pick someone else out there who you don't like. I don't want to make the comparison. Something has to be wrong with you to think something so absurdly in contradiction

to the reality as we understand. Were you surprised? Did you hear the pop? You heard the pop out there in Miami? I get it. It's crazy. There's a lot of really confused young men in this world. Young men in this world need much better role models than they have.

Holy shit. Okay, let's talk about the fight. Jayon Silva absolutely toying in the end, really, with Bryce Mitchell, who, whatever else you want to say about him, Chuck, is a good fighter. Yes, he is. There's no question about that. He's a good fighter, but he gets submitted in the second round via ninja choke. Chuck, Silva was unranked heading into this contest, which we alluded to earlier, but

was this victory enough, in your mind, to mark him as a future title contender? I think so. It's just the ease of which he handled him. I didn't even feel like he feared him anywhere. Did you? I felt like he was just like, wherever this fight goes, I'm gonna beat your ass.

I actually found it annoying how little he cared. You know what I mean? I thought it was dangerous what he was doing. He went in there, he was taking some leg kicks. There was just this feeling out moment, and he's in there just kind of hamming it up a little bit. And I was like, this is the wrong way to go about this. But it ended up working just the way he wanted it to.

I talked to him on what was it, the Monday of fight week. And he's one of these guys, brings a ton of energy. And they're like, he's gonna switch by guys, brings a ton of energy, and you know, they're like, he's gonna switch by like Thursday where he takes on this Lord demeanor and he starts like, you know, gets very fixed on the fight, becomes almost like an animal and we don't like to like mess with him. They're kind of being serious with me, like they're just kind of, he changes and becomes this weird possessed thing and I was like, okay cool.

And so like I see him out there barking this whole time and just doing that gets it He fits he gets the finish and he's barking over him It's just it's a crazy. It's it's crazy to watch somebody handle a moment like that I'm not sure that he thinks about like maybe the like maybe the Scrutiny that this fight was under show that picture. Well, yeah, go ahead and talk over. Yeah, look at this picture Chuck Yeah, exactly. So he's barking over. I mean, that was a that was a hell of a performance. And a lot of times you're waiting like this guy's been finishing everybody. But like you wait for that performance where everybody's paying attention. I felt like this was that

moment. Everybody's paying attention because this fight had so much heat on it because of Bryce Mitchell and all that. But dude, if you didn't walk away thinking that Silva was like tomorrow, like tomorrow's contender, you know. I don't know what to do. Nobody has really, other than maybe the Josh Shimmett knockout, which he caught him with a big shot, not too many people are handling Bryce Mitchell that easily. No. Even Toporia didn't handle him quite. Toporia pounded him out in the end, but Toporia got taken down and then kind of elected to

stay down in that fight, at least for the end of that first round. They mentioned on the broadcast like it's too bad that Ilya Toporia has left the division. I agree with them. And because you think of that matchup and it's like that's what's fun, right? Once that that's when you know that he's already starting to enter that contender space. When you start to contemplate how he'd handle himself against those types of guys. I will say this, people who are watching my, I did a watch along for this fight, and there were some folks who thought I was cheering for Silva because I was actually annoyed

at the way he was fighting. And what I mean by that is, I don't mind clowning around at all. I don't care about that. But to me, it only really works if you're marrying it with an action before or after. So I'll give you an example. You can do it where you style on them like Silva would do like this and then when Forrest Griffin wants to blitz them, he's just crushing them.

Amazing. Or the opposite, where you land something nice or make somebody miss and then you do what Garbrandt does against Dominic Cruz. But then you're right back on the horse. You're right back on the horse. And the reason why I feel that way- This was closer to Silva Maya. Like when he was kind of messing around but not doing anything. Which I was like, dude, fucking stop this shit. I know what you're saying. To me it's like, you can do that against guys where if you know you're better than them,

of course you can get away with it. I have a feeling there's going to be guys in this division where he might try that on and it's not going gonna be a good idea And then you're gonna underperform and then that's gonna be really annoying to me I hate when very good guys under that form. So that was what that was what really annoyed me But to the point you raise The ease with which he dispatched price was shocking to me. Yeah, was it for you the ease? Yes, the ease. Yes, given everything we're talking about you know

You know sometimes you talk to the team too, and you're like you guys are you know We've been in the fight game long enough. What are they 18 and oh the fighting nerds something like something nuts and they have like a crazy finish rate and you think that can't continue and then you kind of hear them and You start to spot overconfidence at some point where you're like They might be getting to that point where you're like, oh, they might be getting to that point where they think they're invincible. And that's usually when some kind of humbling aspect happens.

I didn't think that would happen. But I was a little worried, I guess, that Silva would make this fight harder on himself than he needed to. I thought he would win the fight. So when he was able to kind of, you know, after he's kind of hamming it up and stuff and then he starts to turn the fight and you see him, a couple of those exchanges, his, the power, like he was loading up on a couple of those shots. They were snapping out of there so fast.

After you see everything play out and then he leaves this cross-eyed Bryce Mitchell on the canvas and barking at him, I was pretty shocked. I was shocked. I thought the barking was a little much for me. It was a little much. A lot of barking. A lot of barking a lot of our guy is just I guess we're gonna have to get used That's his personality, but you don't on the feet He's a dynamo which we already kind of knew but dude the fact that he was stuffing the single legs like nothing The fact that he was able to scramble to his feet and they weren't worried about

Nothing down at all. They weren't I think that he just thought like yeah if we end up wherever we end up I'm gonna beat your ass. That's what he thought. And it turned out he was right. I can't believe I'm saying that. I thought it would be so much more competitive because the whole framing pre-fight was, okay, classic striker versus grappler. That's what we got here. And you thought if Bryce, who has not just good take downs, but good submissions and he's fast acting on them as well. I mean, this guy has a twist or submission for fuck's sake. Well, let me turn it to you.

You saw the same thing and you're pointing this out. Now that you've seen him in that sort of situation, do you see him as a contender? Or do you think that he's going to be in that space soon? I think I would be shocked if he doesn't fight for a title. I would be shocked if he doesn't fight for a title. I would be shocked. Now, as I mentioned, his discipline issues, you know, just barking at your opponent all the time. It's fun to inject life. But if that gets in the way, like, like, for example, you know, he's unranked. Imagine trying that with Mozart. And I don't know if

Mozart will have better take down, but imagine he does. And you're treating him like that. This will go real bad for you. You know what I mean? You cannot do that to everybody. You have to be so let's again, it's a, it's like making a dish. You got to sprinkle just the right amount of salt on top, just the right amount of sugar in that dish. You can't just dump that shit in there.

Because if he keeps, this is fun for a, in the novel sense, like you're watching him do it once or twice. You're like, Oh, okay, this guy's different, you different you know whatever but if you keep doing that it can get annoying very fast because there's something that's played out you know. People were talking after this fight I saw Aaron Pico saying this and some other folks they're like give Silva a title shot after that and we talked about it that seems like like crazy. That'd be me trogging some people would yeah. That'd be crazy crazy premature but it goes to show you how much he proved on this night. Now the question is not can he exhibit good takedown defense or some of these other questions we were asking.

Now it's just, okay, well he's got a lot going for him. How far can he push this? And I don't know if he'll win a title or have multiple defenses. He's gonna fight for a title I don't know mark me down if the official rankings came out or the UFC's rankings I don't know where he's ending up, but I'm guessing he broke into that space It'd be nice to see him. He doesn't need to be thrust into like a huge You know title type fight, but like there's so many dudes in that top 10 So should him versus giga chikazi. That would be great I think that that would be the proper

Type of fight for him next right like a guy who has that kind of resume and a veteran like that That would be a great fight. Let me pull up the rankings. They're not updated yet, but just to get a sense of Who's where Bryce was sitting at 13 as I mentioned Silva was Silva was unranked, but around that space, 10 is Josh Emmett, that would be a sick fight. 11, Giga Chikazi, 12, by the way, also a sleeper good fight, Yusef Zalal. Oh yeah, that would be good. All of those would be good. That would be good too.

All of them, and you could do Kater and Ige too, I would go a little bit higher. Sterling sitting at nine, Lerone Murphy at eight. I mean, some of these names, I feel like you'd go through. Listen to Featherweight, we already mentioned Pico is going to be out there. We already added Pitbull.

You have Volk, Lopez, Evloev, Rodriguez, Ortega, Allen, Murphy, Sterling, Emmett, Chakazi, Zalal, Mitchell, Cater, Ege, and now you're adding Jayon Silva. Imagine if Toporia was there, and imagine if Max were there. That would be be without question Your best division in the UFC and it might already be even with my feet It might be because the guys like where's the Lerone Murphy and that like something like eight or nine eight I mean you look at a guy like that who's just done nothing but win and he's not even in their top five I mean that top that five that five or that six to ten is pretty deadly that might be the best six six to ten

In all divisions. You know what I mean? Like in terms of like, that's a lot of monsters. And they're not even- Yeah, 6 to 10 at 35 is Song Yedong, Vera, Font, Sahudo, and Bautista. 6 to 10 at featherweight is Brian Ortega, Arnold Allen, Lerone Murphy,

Aljamain Sterling, Josh Emmett. Yeah, it's a little bit better. Yeah. It's crazy. That could be a top five, you know? Yeah, and so this is what I mean. I don't think we need to rush him. Yeah, but somewhere in that space anywhere from Murphy all the way down to cater I would I would prefer maybe Emmett even so interesting

But I would give him another striker next I would actually stay away from Sterling I'd give him another striker next something like one would make sense of like both the Bryce killers You know like facing off with each other who if he fought Emmett like I'm it all right. Oh, yeah, it's like the both both guys who gave the b-roll You know, um, so let's talk about Bryce for a second. Let's just try to be as fair to him as a fighter as we can be This is a bad loss because he's got he's young young ish He's got enough of a skill set where it's really silly to count him out. But I don't know, he seemed, was he just fighting a guy who's going to go on to do great things or did he look a little behind the eight ball to you in terms of keeping up with the Joneses

in this division? It might be that because you're going to have to have a good stand up at some point, right? Or at least an adequate, like you're going to have, like a good stand-up at some point, right? Or at least an adequate, like you're gonna have, like if you, if your whole thing is to take a guy down and just put him in the deep water, put him on his back, you better be very good at that. I mean, so good that you're in the top space of that if you have not, no good striking. I'm not saying he doesn't have no striking, but it doesn't, the deficiency is there. I didn't think he shows you enough on the feet to make you think that he can go against a lot of the guys in the division. I don't know if he's hit his ceiling.

Like you mentioned, he's kind of a, he's a younger guy. He's still training in Arkansas. Yeah. So I mean, that's also, you never know what kind of. How far you can go with that, yeah. Sometimes you gotta get out of it. Even if you're very good. That's what I mean.

You might need to, he's a very unique guy. It was very What do we say like he's very genuine to his convictions But I'm like at some point you may have to be uncomfortable like he keeps himself very comfortable where he's at very nestled into his Culture, but I'm like maybe you need to go out Put yourself in a gym where there's some other killers and stuff like that because you're only going to learn your deficiencies in that situation Right like a lot of times guys go in those situations like man I thought I was good here until I started sparring every day with this guy, you know You know, I this is why I always give credit to Max Holloway, you know, Max is like

I mean, is there any other guy out of his camp that has made it to the UFC? That's a good point. It's not only did he make it, he became a champion and now a BMF champion and never left Hawaii. Yeah. And that's true. By the way, I'm told that there's a lot of teams that wanted him to come train and he was like, nah, I'm going to stick it out in Hawaii.

You know, obviously Hawaii is going to be even with their limitations. It's going to be better than seriously Arkansas. I'm not trying to be like this, but I'm not trying to be even with their limitations, it's going to be better than seriously Arkansas. I'm not trying to be like this. I'm not trying to be shitty about Arkansas, but like, you know, but like you have to have something very special if you're going to say I'm never going to leave this place where I'm from. There have to be a lot of other factors that normally aren't there to make that work. Like, you know, I was talking to Peyton Talbot before his fight, right? Like he trains in Reno at a pretty small gym.

He's got his people, they all love each other, and they train hard, but he needs to go, like I think he goes to Northern California, maybe Alpha Male, I forget where he goes. He goes somewhere else where he gets the looks with the other guys, and I think it's necessary. If you don't do that at some point, you may be the best in your gym,

or you may be like, you know, styling on these guys. I just don't know that at some point, you may be the best in your gym, but or you may be like, you know Styling on these guys. I just don't know if you have a full gauge of what's wrong like what you can't do you know, yeah, and that's where if you go into those kind of bigger places like syndicate or You know in Florida all these places You see that the guys are they're pretty humble They have to be you know what I mean? Because they know that the guy over there will beat his ass if he's not you know I mean like it's just I think that at some point you need to do that

there's the rare exception of guys who can skip it but but to your point it is very I think Bryce would benefit specifically I think Bryce would benefit from it's hard to see how his game would get worse yeah you know what I mean hard to see that all right with the time we have remaining let's go quickly to a bit of a rapid-fire here for topic number five, which is simply the rest of the UFC 314 card. I've got five questions. Let's go through these as rapidly as we can. How impressive was Dominic Reyes' ability to build himself back into what appears to be a legitimate title contender? Three wins in a row, but after four consecutive defeats, three by stoppage, two were vicious. Can you believe it?

I know. Well, that's the thing. I was like shoveling dirt on this guy. I wanted him out. I couldn't understand. For his own sake? For his own sake. That's why. I mean, you see guys get knocked out to that level and you're like, man, you can't do it. You can't do it. This is dangerous. I never thought he'd be able to turn this corner, man. And then that's three straight knockouts for him too. Krylov kind of ran into that. It was very it was it was like a collision. The strike with the he was going right into it. It was impressive. I still I guess I still have the little bit of like a

little bit of that caution in my mind but I would like I think that Reyes is like he said incredibly one fight probably away from being able to talk about being in the top of that division, which is a stunning turnaround. I can't believe it. Yeah. But MMA is full of these stories where you're like, oh, this guy's done. And usually you're right, but you got to be careful sometimes because the guys like Reyes refuse to quit.

Reyes and Bulkanovski in the same night, both guys been knocked out, you know, in points and grids, and they both, they were kind of the stars, right? Like a couple of the stars of the night. So you never know. Yeah. I don't know if you saw it, Chuck, but how concerned should we be about the health of Darren Elkins?

Elkins in this fight was taken on. Julian Arosa, he got hit with something and for minutes on end, simply could not get his balance back. That was really weird. I rarely say this on this. Yeah. It was against Julian Arosa. Yeah. I rarely say this on shows like this. I don't know if he should fight again. I know your hesitancy in saying that, but he's 40 years old and the guy is called the damage. I know because a lot of times he does take the damage and

it's just you can't build a reputation off your chin forever. Like 40 years old, the dude's been in a ton of fights. That looked off, man. They were saying that it looked like in slow motion. It felt like it was in half speed. It was almost like a Rosa was like, I don't wanna hurt him too, it was weird, wasn't it? It was like, I need to put him away. I need the referee to stop it, but.

I've seen, I remember, dude, I've seen fights where, typically more in boxing, where somebody gets hit with a shot and they can either survive that round or even the next round, but they can never quite get their balance back. That's when bad shit happens, man. That's bad shit and that's a bad sign

that you're just staggering around. He did that for a full couple minutes. I hated it. The referee could have stopped that a lot earlier. Like Beltran just watching him waddle around. I hated it, I hated it. It's like at some point, like when you talk about intelligent defense,

you've got to take stuff like that into account. So that one really bothered me. I did not like that one at all. What did you think about Verna Jangirova getting a title? Well, did you think she earned a title shot with the shutout of Yan Xiaonan? I mean- Nearly submitted her, nearly submitted her.

Nearly submitted her. It was a solid showing. It was never in doubt, was it? I mean, was it the most exciting- Yan Xiaonan's tak take down defense has gotten better? Yeah, you know what I mean? I can't you had she I didn't think she had a better ground game than ginger over right, but I didn't know exactly How it was gonna go she? Ginger oba did well. I thought she looked great. It wasn't the most exciting fight, but was she something like 36 She's in her she's in that age group where you're like if you're not going to get a title

shot never both are definitely over 35, so I think you know and I think Jean on was number one like the number one contender so beating her should put her in that spot I'm strictly speaking on merit because there aren't a ton of challenges in that division and She makes the most sense for that. Yes, even though it wasn't the grits like it was almost like the Oldberg fight She I don't know if she made this big exclamation mark, like, here I am, emphatic statement, but. But you're next. But you're next, yes.

How bad was the stoppage in the Dan Ege, Sean Woodson bout? What are your feelings on it? I know that we were talking about this before, and it's like, is it the worst stoppage you've ever seen? And it's like, it might be among the most inexplicable I've ever seen because What was the reasoning for the stoppage? I don't get it. It was You like that stoppage you thought it was great right you did like oh, yeah, I was raving about it No, I was saying that like it was obviously a bad stoppage

But I felt like you put ten more seconds on that fight It might continue to go you know ten more seconds is a lot Yeah, what's it might continue to take unanswered strikes. You're right, he was like mounting to stand up. It was weird timing, but I feel like you stop at five seconds earlier, it might not look as weird. I don't know.

The two parts were interesting. One was that Ege was up on both judges, or excuse me, on all judges' scorecards on all the rounds, which I think that there is a case for him winning two, but there's also a case for him losing both actually. Yeah. But that- He lost the second round. Not even over there.

He was clearly bombing on Woodson. He had rocked him hard and he was following up and Ige is a devastator. Like Ige was clearly close to winning that fight. But if some, like what you're always looking for is coordinated movements to build height. Yes. And he was doing that. Exactly right.

Literally in the middle of that. And you know how sometimes referees will jump in right as they're moving? Yeah. And it's like, oh, if you just wait another second. But Woodson was already moving and then he jumped in. I was like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? I don't know what was happening there, man. And Woodson's- Very weird, you don't. I was like, dude, what the fuck are you doing?

I don't know what was happening there, man. And Woodson- Very weird. You don't need an asterisk on a fight like that. I mean, the fight was going- Florida. I know, I know. It was going the direction it was going.

It would have probably ended this way, but it's like, let it just get to it. It's natural. Nobody should have to be talking about this afterward. Last but not least, we've kind of covered almost the entire thing. Anybody else on this card that stood out to you? Chase Hooper, you know, granted his last two opponents and Clay Guida and Jim Miller are 84 years old combined. Like

this dude's fighting. He's fighting my dad. He's fighting the dads of the division. But dude I got a hand it to him. No he looked good. He looked good man like he and I think from where he started to where he is now what 25 I don't know how like how what is he now? I'm 25. Yeah, he's somewhere in that range But I think he has 25 he has shown I'm like that he made let's throw him in that he made the perfect callout He said give me a Tom Nolan. I think he said it wasn't that the guy he called out Yeah, and I was like, that's a great fight another 25 year old You have two young guys put them together like that would be great

So I want to see him against somebody like that, but I think he's kinda shown that he's turned that corner and you can take him a little more seriously. He's looked very good his last five fights. These guys who come to the UFC so freaking early, like Hooper and you know, Rosas appears to be like a good athlete and still very, very early in his life.

It's hard to matchmake them in the UFC because you gotta be delicate about it. And people have said this before about Patty. They're like, you know, he got preferential matchmaking. People think preferential matchmaking means you're a fraud. They think it means, oh, we're going to give you something easy because we know you're shit. But that's, that's, that's a great point. That's really exactly what the subtext. But I'm like, dude, sorry. I lived through Conor McGregor getting the Dennis Siever fight when Frankie Edgar was like, hello!

Turned out pretty fucking well for him. So yes, are there Paige Van Zantz or Sage Northcuts where you clearly got favorable matchmaking and then flamed out? Yes, that happens. It's an inexact science. But just, my point is, just because they're getting it and Hooper has gotten, you know, kid gloves in terms of the matchmaking for the most part,

that is appropriate. That is appropriate for where he's at if you want him to be anything down the line. Yeah, he wants to. And I mean, he's committed to it. Like, I feel like you gotta reward that kid now by actually giving him those challenges. He wants it, I'm like like it's time, right?

No, it certainly it certainly is time with that said it's time for DMS from the diggity dogs. Let's go Now listen, there's good people who work on this show yes They love tilting us with that thing. They love tilting us. Alright, here we go. Let's go to question number one. Chuck, this one will go for you. Should Volk retire with the belt like Habib? Retiring with the belt seems like a good investment for the future versus losing the belt and retiring. This comes from MyCoprime. What do you think? No. I mean, this is- How much longer do you think he's got left? At least a couple fights. I think he's got at least a couple fights. What is he? He's 36.

36 and a half. Right. September I believe. I think it's July but I'll double check. Okay so anyway he's not quite there. I think he's got a couple of fights left in him and I also... You're right. September. Seeing like basically seeing how good he looked, I don't see any reason to retire. He's not washed. Yeah, he's not washed and I also, I do believe like he's a guy who is very smart and he'll figure out his next move because he loves fighting. He'll figure out his next move, just like he went from rugby to, what will it be?

Will it be coaching or something else? I don't know, but he'll have a plan, but he'll have to hatch that plan. He'll fight in the meantime. Yeah, I think um, I think two-ish three-ish fights something like that You know, but like yeah, I always say this like is he beat Poetan in that incredible win and then lost his belt in the next one like part of how long he hangs around He's not going to hang around if he loses the belt in the next one I mean again, he still might do too true, but if he loses in the next one. I mean, again, he still might do two. True.

But if he loses in the next one and gets like, let's say, KO'd again, it's going to hasten his exit. He's not going to fuck around. That is true. And what are you going to do? Like, what are you doing it for at that point? You've already done everything in the sport, so. Winning this on Saturday was literally historic.

How much bigger can the highs be at this point? Not that high. Let's go to the next question here if we can from XAL underscore nine thousand nine. Well, these are the worst names Is patty versus justin gagey really the fight to make or Could patty versus connor connor spelled wrong be a top three all-time paper view all time How fucking high are you? Even though it's quite clear that Patty dominates him.

First of all, Connor versus Patty wouldn't be in the top 10 of pay-per-views, much less the top three. Yeah. No, Connor's star has faded and Patty is not a pay-per-view star yet. I mean, now he's becoming one. Yeah. But you gotta headline those.

That's true. You gotta win at the highest level of those. Don't get get me wrong Connor versus Patty sells it sells. Yeah top three all-time No, I don't about out of here. Although Connor did say he was gonna keep an eye on this fight I just realized that we didn't touch on that not that not that we should Connor bet 500k on Chandler and Patty was like, what was that? Why did you do that? It was in the post fight press conference kid can't even went out of the ring And it's like well, you know, him. He's once again hardly a sympathetic figure You know like a bond. People are cheering for a bond villain at this point, you know I

BC has been very high on the Connor Patty idea and I poo-pooed it and I poo-pooed it and I poo-pooed it But I gotta say it's looking it and I poo-pooed it and I poo-pooed it, but I gotta say It's looking more and more right. But the Patty From the other from okay So the original side of that was the Patty probably wouldn't deserve that fight that would be the first side of that But now it's the opposite it's kind of like I think that he's like he's like he's like past it now Well kind of because it's like now you've entered a space That's like, you know, you're in the rarefied era of like kind of the contenders or you're gonna put yourself there. I don't know where Connor is. I mean at this point

he's I don't know if he's coming back. That's what I mean I don't know if he's coming back. It's exhausting to even contemplate his life anymore because it's just it's usually bad headlines you know speculations come out I'm watching this fight watching nothing happens we go on to the next thing until he's actually signed to something It's like who cares at this point. Yeah, okay You know five years out of the I think it's five years out of the octagon this time So it's like what form are you getting him in anyway? You know let me look that up actually I think Connor is

37 as it stands let me see and I think he turns 38 in July no excuse me He's 36, but he does turn 38 in July. We're like Foreman-esque time off at this point. He's gonna come back in his 40s. Was Foreman downing pints at the Black Forge Inn? No, he's preaching to his faithful, come on. Like he was eating a lot of tasty food, I'm sure, by the judgment of his belly, but Jesus, come on.

All right, next from burner 239 is Lopez versus Yair at UFC Mexico the best next fight for both guys. We kind of been over this show with the drama. I say, yes, let me add a little dimension to this. Okay. Which is the fact that there's like this rivalry about who what constitutes a real Mexican. I have no way of weighing in on this debate, but that's going to be powerful for the fight sports. So one, two, you know, I'm not here to say

that I loved having to watch Bryce Mitchell on Saturday per se, but what I will say is, in general, fights where there is rivalry, where guys are trying to like fuck with each other and or hate it. Now, when they force it and it doesn't work, it's even worse than not forcing it. So I understand why a lot of guys don't.

What I will say is, I don't feel like there's enough rivalry in the modern fight game. In the modern MMA scene, and this is true for PFL too, especially true for PFL. Oh, big time. Where it's just transactional.

You're here, you're here, you fight, you go. Almost like it's an assembly line rather than like a curated experience. We're going to put that guy against that guy for these reasons and they can't stand one another. I'm missing a little bit of rivalry. For those reasons, among others, I love this fight. Same here. And I agree with you 100%. They've been talking about like kind of just tapping into the Mexican market for what, 12 years? I don't know, like you go back to when they had Cain Velasquez fighting there and stuff. Dude, this is the perfect kind of thing for it.

I think that both guys are high profile enough. Sometimes they would go there when Yair was fighting like Jeremy Stevens. When I was there, it's like sort of like, I don't know, who cares? But they still got behind it. If you have a fight like this, you know, that's really based around, you know,

the Mexican Independence Day like they did at the Sphere, but this time it's in Guadalajara, I just can't think of a better situation. I really felt like, that felt like genuine bad blood. Like the way they were arguing, it was, like Diego Lopez especially is just kind of this really mild demeanored fellow, ultimately, you know, but he was heated I'm like, I love it. I love that stuff and also like not for nothing, but the style contrast

I agree is both guys are like, you know, oh lanky idle Yeah, all action affair between those guys like so there's like I mean every reason they were selling I was out that's for cut They were selling so much that and you know, the Mexican spirit, the fighting spirit, dude, you're gonna put on an exhibition of what that means if you put those two guys together, right? Yeah, no question about it.

All right, next. From Fahey Liam, Campion American. We have a bit on this show. What a stadium Muay Thai champion, so that would be Rajadamnern or Lumpini, with incredible takedown ability slash defense, be the most dominant fighter in MMA? No. Or would an NCAA wrestling champion with fantastic boxing have his or her way with them?

Yeah, I think so too. I'm always going to pick somebody who's got natural wrestling who learns hands. That's the best base. Over the opposite the opposite yeah I still think that's the best base you can get champions in either way true I think if you have a very solid wrestling base and you're able to add above-average striking usually you can have a career in MMA you know like guys have done that like if you can just kind of take the fight where you need to take it at any given time, I think that you're always going to have a better chance, right? So if you have a Muay Thai guy-

Also the strength that those guys have in these positions- I know. Because they've been doing it- And they're used to competing. They're used to competing at the ridiculous levels. Well, Muay Thai guys compete a lot, too. That is true. But I mean, in terms of collegiate wrestlers, they've had hundreds of meets, and the really

good ones, like Bo Nicol, for instance, he's already been kind of celebrated within that sport. So this doesn't feel like a big step for him to go into the UFC. It almost feels like, oh, this is just another Sunday at the park. But I mean, if anything, the Poetan and Izzy and those guys have kind of showed that There's a little bit of a changing of the guard if you can learn good take down defense and you can you know put yourself into advantageous situation You know these this stuff too like a lot of these guys are shining these days, too So I would just say though like when people are like, oh, what if you're a good strike put the question up one more time

question one more time Ability slash defense. Yeah, look at the way he wrote the question with incredible takedown ability. Well, he got ability in there too. Okay. Yeah. Typically, the way it's framed is if they have good defense. And one of the issues that Poetan ran into is I guess, I guess he was sick and he had a busted hand. But one of the issues that he ran into in that on Kalaya fight was that he could only defend the takedown. Right. Now I know he went for it against Izzy, but against somebody who is a little bit more nimble with it, he was much more reserved, right? And to me it's like you got to have two-way wrestling in the sport unless you've got like that's true

I mean you have to have some completely insane skill set to get around that and Even as good as Poetan is he doesn't have that so it takes a determination to to want to add Wrestling because it's nobody wants to be Nobody when you get to the MMA level like when you're trying to make an inmate, that's like the least, people don't want to be training wrestling, you know? It's exhausting. I know, it's exhausting.

It's hard. The defense of wrestling especially, people are like, not that, you know? It's frustrating, you know, and you're just constantly getting manipulated. I remember, this is a true story, I think I've told this before, you know, the music that I listen to

is like very aggressive, like, you know, fuck your life and all that kind of stuff. And I remember one time I had an unusually bad wrestling practice, like I got fucking hammered. It was bad. And this was when I first started too, like when I was like, oh, I'm gonna take wrestling classes. And I was in my 20s, so like, you know,

I was late to it when a lot of guys in that class had laid a bare minimum, wrestled four years in high like, you know, I was late to it when a lot of guys in that class had laid a bare minimum wrestled four years in high school, you know, and here I am coming into it and I don't know shit. And there was a guy, you know, there's also division one guys in there. And dude, I remember there was one class dude, where I got absolutely crashed. Okay. Humiliated. And I remember our class was over and I've showered, I grabbed my shit and everyone was cool. You know, like some days it's not your day. And I remember I put on my headphones to get on the metro to go home. And my music was like, you know, fuck your mom's, you know, eat shit. And I was like, I can't even listen to this because of what a what a phony I am. How weakling I am. I would not let myself listen to that music for how humiliated I felt

I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it in good conscience. I was like I'm living a lie by listening to this, you know, that's interesting So it'll do that to you and I've had bad days I had I had a couple bad days in the boxing gym to where like the haze you and stuff But I never felt like I did after a wrestling Render you helpless like it makes you feel like you're feeble and Don't know what you're doing. Yeah, totally totally and like there's something psychological about just being manipulated that way All right, last but not least. I think we have one more Nan to sore

USC 314 showcased five featherweight bouts out of 13 fights should the UFC organized more cards around particular weight classes For example have a full card with primarily lightweights or welterweights? What are your thoughts? Now you might recall years ago they did that all heavyweight card, which I was skeptical of ahead of time. It's like a Memorial Day weekend one. I remember that. I was skeptical of that card and in retrospect it actually worked. It worked. I gotta say I think they should be careful about it, but I like the idea. I do like the idea too because a lot of times so much about what happens in matchmaking is timing. So if you have guys on the same card and you know, they're all in the same kind of areas,

you can kind of find out who should be facing who coming out of it. You know, like that's one of the reasons we're talking about Diego and Yair is because they were both on the same card I kind of dig that sort of aspect of it if you have guys that are similar or there might be Stakes in that sense at least in that, you know, at least the timing should shake out unless somebody gets hurt You know, so that aspect of it has always been good They've had a few of these cards recently where they have the same weight class at least like in three of the main card fights I've seen this happening more and more so I don't know

if that's a conscious decision by the matchmakers or if that's just coincidental but I dig it. And obviously there's a separate question but like Invictus being a woman's only promotion they have only women's fights but I think that there are a bunch of ways you could do it. You could have you know like I don't know what's gonna happen in the next television deal. Yeah. We live through the Fox deal where the main card were only four fights Yes, that gives you some ways to play with the roster a little bit You could do all women's fights if you again the current state of women's MMA, I think makes that a little hard

But you know, I'm just saying weight class Whatever there's different ways to do that when you have a limited main card and you're looking for a big punch You know speaking of the women. How are you going to induct? There's different ways to do that when you have a limited main card and you're looking for a big punch. Yeah. Speaking of the women, how are you going to induct Amanda Nunes into the Hall of Fame and yet still have a comeback? Well that Hall of Fame is not a traditional Hall of Fame. True.

Also, you know, I mean, here's the thing. It's the UFC's, it's the UFC's Hall of Fame. They can just do whatever they want. That's that's the first thing I guess that's true. We all hold it to some weird standard like the NFL. We're gonna be five years. They gotta be The NFL Hall of Fame, it's the football Hall of Fame. It's different exactly in the case of this one though I will say like of all the ones to go to the mat on Yeah, she's obviously going to get in true. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, fine, it's a little premature, but whatever.

I guess it feels like they should at least be out of the game. For folks who don't know how this works, who don't watch other sports like Long Island Luke, there's a waiting period that you have to wait typically. I watch a shitload of sports. I just don't watch football. He loves baseball. We had a whole conversation before we started. If you watch, are you a Jets fan? I just I just don't watch football. He loves baseball. We had a whole conversation before we started. Are you a Jets fan?

I just said I don't watch football. I know people who love... I am a Jets fan though. That's why he doesn't watch football. Yeah, I mean if I was a Jets fan I would also claim... I'm also a Nixon Islanders fan. I mean life hasn't been easy, guys. Islanders are all... How are the Islanders this season? They're all right.

They just got fucking eliminated from the playoffs two games ago. Yeah. I think the Capitals clutched first place in the Eastern Conference. Yeah they did. Thank you for that for the trade though Luke. The Avalanche are looking really good because the the Islander they picked up. Brock Nelson. Yeah yeah that's it that's all the questions we're done. Yeah that's it. Hey let's one more reminder speaking of questions put it up on the screen if you can Long Island Luke. Morning Combat gmail.com. There's going to be a Luke Squared edition. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. It's going to be me and him. Well, BC is- You're going to give him a share of a t-shirt? This is- BC is just sitting out there, you know, just like, BC, can you come to work? And he's like, fuck off. You know, we can't get him to do anything.

See, I can't crack into any of the swag yet, man. Eventually. Well, I mean, I don't think I've been featured. I wore the para wig for you guys once as a judge. Oh, right. Yeah, we'll get you some. Dude, they said, you know who is generous about the clothing?

Well, actually everybody who works on this. Draft Kings has been good about it. Cuervo's really good about it, too. They send us boxes of shit. It's amazing. Including the booze, or is it just them? Including the booze. So there's like another package coming one time, and I was like, okay guys, don't get me wrong, I'm gonna take the liquor but I've already gotten like six bottles. And

then it was a full of clothes, hoodies, like all kinds of cool shit. Wearable. Amazing. My hair brother. And by the way, I want to remind everyone, of course, today's episode is presented by our good friends at DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. Chuck, anything you want to plug before we get out of here? Not too much. I mean, I'm riding over to Uncrowned, as we mentioned off the top. Got a bunch of stuff coming out over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye for the byline. I did want to do a short version of, have you seen this shit? In the absence of, okay, I'm not going to, but I sent one video to BC on vacation.

And have you guys seen it? It's this like giant silverback gorilla at some zoo. Oh no. And he's like actively in his Palm. And then immediately he eats it. Like, like, dude, I want to be clear. Like no hesitation. Like he, he wanted that dish served warm.

I'll put it that way. And I sent it to BC and I was like, BC, you're not going to believe this. There's video of you eating Arby's in high school. And I sent it to him. He liked it. He liked it. It was a good bit. I was going to play that. But then I was like, you know what? I don't know if I can show gorillas eating pieces. I think it was even worse that you explained it. If you haven't seen it, it's great. It's a great video. That gorilla just went to work on that. All right. As I mentioned, morningcombat.gmail.com for all the questions. Get those in as soon as you possibly can. Don't forget.

Thank you to all of our sponsors, Quero, Goldbelly, Huell, Draft Kings, the whole nine yard. Don't forget about Mother's Day. Get your flowers too. You fucking, you fucking apes out there. Get it done. Um, but we're done today. We're done. That's it for Brian Campbell, who's on vacation for the whole crew here for Bong Island Luke for Chuck Mendenhall. I'm Luke Thomas. Thank you guys so much for watching today's MK. We'll see you later. And until next time, may all of your gains be loyal. you