MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Yan Dethrones Merab at UFC 323 | Van Becomes Champ After Injury | Talbott-Cejudo | PBC Weekend Recap

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

It was an action-packed weekend in combat sports, and BC and LT are with you to go over it all. Starting with the main event at UFC 323, where Petr Yan managed to become a two-time UFC bantamweight champion in something of a route of Merab Dvalishvili. Just how special is this victory and what makes it such a noteworthy achievement? In Saturday's co-main event, Joshua Van became the new UFC flyweight champion, but in a very unusual way as Alexandre Pantoja injured his elbow/shoulder just 30 seconds into the bout. What, if anything, is there to glean from the situation? There's more to go over from UFC 323, plus, the guys discuss the draw between Lamont Roach and Isaac Cruz.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Us doing what we love. It's time to bang. Oh, yeah, let's do this thing. A lot to recap from the weekend that was. Welcome on in. This is Morning Combat Monday, December 8, 2025, fresh off. The final pay-per-view of the ESPN UFC era, a changing of the guard atop the two lowest men's weight classes, and yet another draw for Lamont Roach Jr. on the PBC side.

Brian Campbell, your host today on the right side of the screen, representing Connecticut and the Quebec qua, okay? You know what I'm saying right there? Because I'm barely pronouncing it. On the other side of me, D.C.'s finest Luke Thomas, yes, Luke Franklin Thomas, LFT in the house. Luke, how is your your testosterone at this levels at this moment?

I mean, it's been declining for years and probably at states that are pathetic and largely undetectable with medical science, but I'm fucking here. Okay, all right. Yeah, did you? Hey, hey, I didn't watch it live. I did catch up on everything I needed this morning,

but UFC 323. Did you enjoy it? Man, I'll tell you what. Prelims were insane. Open her on the main card. It was whatever. I didn't, you know, but I thought everything after that was pretty great

and as we'll talk. Well, you know what? The co-made event was real anticlimactic. That was a problem. Yeah, we have a new Aljo Sterling in his name is Joshua Van. Yeah, seriously. But that main event was special. That was really, really special. So, you know, I enjoyed that a lot. Shout out to Peter, Jan,

Piotr, Piotte. Fantastic stuff. Let's introduce a man who is very well versed in Piotay. He is a producer, director. the third man of our team, a bong enthusiast and good Lord was his dad horny about three decades ago coming from Australia. It's Luke no seat of the main card minute. I'm sure, Luke, you were live streaming like a mofo on Saturday. I was and I was very disappointed when Maraub lost, you know, we're still mourning today, B.C.

I'm not, not too happy about it. Josh Van didn't seem to mind to get the Aljo win there. He was beating his chest on top of the cage like he just won it all. I mean, hey, big moment for Myanmar. Don't call it Burma, all right? Yeah, I won't call it Burma. He wasn't alive when it was called Burma. So there you go.

All right, there you go. Special thank you to all the consistent viewers, the hodhors. I'm looking at you right now. Thank you for tuning in today. Shout out to everybody watching on the Draft Kings Network. If you could like and subscribe here on YouTube or if you're an audio-only-divorced dad, currently grocery shopping, we'd appreciate that. Follow our extended YouTube channels, Long Island Luke's main card minute as well.

Oh, quickly, L-I-L.L. how did it go with uh gc versus old uh new york rick over on the uh prop prop quiz i mean i don't want to give any spoilers in case people haven't caught it yet you know i like to give these some life but uh it was very close came down to the last one very entertaining episode gonna have a new one this week so everyone stayed wow a phenomenon luke thomas that he's built you and i we suck at it but what a phenomenon he's built you know oh i suck the most but indeed yeah i mean i could have told you that you know whether we're talking about trivia or not luke but uh also So if you want to dress like us and feel like us and maybe even look like us,

how about you go to morningcombat. shop? December exclusives are in the building. Average Joe R. cooking up another winner here with our Masters of the Universe inspired t-shirts, signed posters available. And of course, with the holiday season kicking in here, mixing match colors, evergreen items available. Order by December 11th. And you should have a sporting chance of receiving it by Christmas.

No update on Kwanza. however, it's more of a wild card on our end. So good luck to everybody playing. Thank you for supporting the show. All the dollars go directly in our pockets, Long Island, Luke included. Luke Thomas, before we dig so damn deep, right? So deep into the, into the combat of the weekend. How are you doing personally?

I'm tired, bro. I'm so glad that these pay-reviews are moving to 9 a.m. And I know every European person is going to go, well, fucking get over. It's like, dude, I've been doing this. I've been giving up my Saturday nights for 20 years, like more than that actually uh i'm tired i'm tired it's actually the thing is when i was single you just sleep in you know get up when you want but uh dude that the toxter is up at seven a m and she is ready to play so it's you know i'm i'm tired dude the tukes don't even need meldonium she's just

going at all right 24 she needs no meldonium at seven a m and she is you know a bucking bronco yeah yeah i only slept a couple hours saturday an early flight and you You know, it's harder and harder to bounce back, not to complain about a fantastic life, but I slept a lot of yesterday and this morning, and I'll probably sleep again after this, because we are old pieces of shit. Yeah, people keep tuning in, so God bless them. All right, let's do it. Let's get fired up.

Let's unwrap what went down this past Saturday night, Las Vegas, UFC 323. And as we mentioned, ESPN Plus era, goodbye, except for next week's fight night. we will welcome in the launch and start of the Paramount CBS era. But in the main event on Saturday night, looking to create history for himself was Bannon White champion Marab de Valsvili. But four training camps in one calendar year. Did it all catch up with him? We'll have Luke Thomas here to break it down in the second.

Either way, what a night for former champion, Piotr Yan, who came out and stuff takedowns from Marab, switch dances outboxed him, and really used that stiff jabbed. mark up his face, becoming a two-time champion. And what turned into a route of Marab, four to one on most score cards, except for Daniel Cormier,

who just could not believe that anyone would score those early rounds against him. Luke, just how special was this victory for Piotrion, and what made it ultimately such a noteworthy achievement here? Years removed from being decued against Aljo, came back from a three-fight losing skid, built up a three-fight win skid but yet the performance we saw on Saturday

none of us predicted there was a stat by a friend colleague of mine Ovin I don't know how pronounce his last name Please forgive me They call him OSP yeah No Ovin Vithinage I might be saying it wrong

He is a great sort of member of the online MMA community He does some work I think for MMA point And he's on some he's helped me a little bit as well he found a crazy stat BC and I think it really speaks to just how brilliant and special Saturday night was. I did not

know this. One thing that we have talked about pretty consistently on this show BC is, you know, when someone has a UFC title, then they lose it for the most part they never get it back and if they do get it back BC it tends to happen relatively quickly, sometimes with an immediate rematch or trilogy, whatever the case may be

or they move a weight class right within relatively short order like you know i think of poetan for example doing something along those lines those tend to be the scenarios but the sort of maxim is that a you don't get it back and then be you know if you do it has to happen very very quickly but there are very very very rare cases in mma where it can last years before someone reclaims it Carlos farza is actually holding the record but i think we can all agree that that's not the kind of authoritative win to reclaim it that we got from Piotr-Yon, but it actually goes much further than that, B.C.

I think Yon is third all-time in terms of distance between losing a title and then regaining it. But, but here is where he stands utterly alone. He is the first fighter to have a UFC title, then go on a three-fight losing streak, and then reclaim the title. That has literally never been done

until Saturday night in any era, any gender, any weight class, period. He's the only guy that holds that distinction. You see, you asked about how special it was to be able to defy the virtual laws of MMA gravity in this way is by itself its own kind of achievement. But to do that against a guy who was, I know we're going to talk about how drained he was, but I'm sorry, we don't need to undercut Yon's win. And I picked Marab to win. We all said we're going to pick him until we have a reason not to.

He has put together the most impressive bansomweight career of any bansomweight that's ever been there. To do it against a guy like that with those circumstances, BC, and to do it with the kind of technical and strategic mastery that he put into it, it's just, I'm serious. It's one of the all-time best UFC title winning performances. I am not saying it's number one. I haven't ranked it in that way, B.C. But it's on the very, very shortlist. This guy proved tons of people wrong, me and others included, and defied all the known laws of the MMA universe to accomplish that with the longest journey to get back to that date. This is just magisterial, truly that.

And the losing skid that he did incur was obviously against super elite competition on basically the title level. And there were some split decisions, as we talked about, coming into this week. But no, I didn't necessarily expect the command, the increase in the striking. We knew head to head if it was a five-round boxing match, Jan would have an edge. But you're not going to be able to create that kickboxing match unless you're able to stuff the takedowns, stuff the spamming, and then provide a takedown threat of his own, taking down Marab three times. The mental journey that Jan went on. uh it's incredible it's incredible watch i was actually hoping his his sons were going to be allowed

in the cage do you remember when morabs or when yon scored his third straight win on this comeback tour his son was in there and gave like a you know emphatic emotional you know i love my dad you know kind of reversed mr wyedman there uh but what a performance but but luke i now go through a lot of things marab said or did during fight week and i know that we did did plant that seed Friday, as we should have with all the comments he made about the weight cut. I do have to ask you this question before we get any further. Congratulations. Did Barra play himself?

Like, was this the, as much as we were identifying this as such a daring to be great, capitalizing on your prime, looking to make history. Did he ultimately, I mean, I don't know if greed is the word, greedy is the word, but like, in hindsight, this was this a horrific decision? or did he just straight up get beat in a second chance by a fighter who was injured the first time, healthy this time, and upped his game along the way? Yeah, I mean, remember, dude, you can make an argument that Yon won five to nothing. It's not crazy. I did think that Marab won the first round. All three judges gave Marab the first round.

One judge gave him the second round as well, and that's it. So he basically won four to one, and you could have argued it five to nothing. Could the fight have been closer, B.C.? and maybe even gone the other way if this had happened under somewhat different circumstances. I think that that's a fair thing to consider, and Marab will get an opportunity to prove such a thing. Well, actually, we don't know how that will go, but probably we'll get a way to prove that. Like, there's no way, listen, here's the reality, right? I have seen fighters who, even in cases where they won fighter of the year, 2009, Josialdo,

2011, John Jones, they had four fights in a year. Josie Aldo, though, only one of those was a title fight in 2009. In 2011 for John Jones, he went four and O and had four finishes, by the way, but three of them were title fights. One was not, the Ryan Bader fight. Then you have 2020, where Deveson Figuero does have four title fights, although he missed wait for the first one, so he was ineligible to win it, but it still was a five-round title fight.

But he went 3-0-1. He had a draw in his last one. to my knowledge, certainly in the modern era, no one has done this, not at the UFC level, maybe in other organizations, but not, it's just never been done. It is very, very difficult to do that kind of a thing. You can't ignore that, B.C. You can't. But we also just have to kind of be honest, like when you get a prediction right, cool, when you get it wrong, the time to think about why.

In this particular case, I don't think it was necessarily wrong to maybe default to Jan the guy, or sorry, default to Marab. The guy had beaten him before he was on. the run of all runs, you know, that's, I think that's pretty fair. At the same time, BC, you know, he's human too. We've just been coasting in this world where, oh, there are rules for everybody else, and Marab just defies them. But we finally found a spot where the rules began to apply to him to, and he looked a lot

more human as a consequence. He did. And I'm not saying that's the reason why, because ultimately, Jan stuffing the takedowns, Yon's scoring. I was wrong. Long Island, Luke correcting me in real time, dead wronging me on a Monday. Yeah, five of nine. Five of nine. So that all matters. The wrinkles in his boxing game matters. And I don't, I'm not going to piss on Marab for for ambition and trying to be great. But now in hindsight, I do have to say, not just the four training camps in a year and all that talk about the weight cut. And we played that video Friday of D.C. talking to Shaq on CBS Sports HQ and saying

Marab cuts it in an old school style that, you know, leave him depleted. Again, I don't think that was the reason why he lost. They said on the broadcast he sparred five full rounds the morning of the fight. Like Marab has that Dennis Rodman level gas tank where after an NBA game, Rodman would go back on the cardiovascular machines for another two hours just to get that out of his system. But when I look back specifically the interview I had with Marab, and it's weird, they played

a quote of it on UFC Embedded Episode 3 last week. And I was kind of wondering why they played the quote, because it was a quote that when Marab said it in real time, I sort of went like, wait, wait, like that doesn't sound like super confident champion. And the quote was he said, he said heading into the first Yon fight, which wasn't a title fight, he wanted to win so badly because of the personal trash talk back and forth between them that in his mind, he was fighting to the death. He was fighting for a title, even though it wasn't one, and that it was all personal and that's what fueled them.

And he goes, I don't know why, but in this rematch, I don't feel the same emotion. He's like, I'm not even nervous. I just feel like this is sport. And, you know, so I'm now starting to wonder if, you know, Mara, was he being a little greedy trying to fit this in to end the calendar year? I mean, maybe, but that fire didn't seem to be the same. It didn't seem to be on that same level. I don't know. Maybe it became a job this year to try to get to that level of history and do this.

And I don't know what would happen if Marab had had six months off, you know, full camp, everything healthy, what have you. a lot of this was Piotr Yan rising to the occasion and that's what happens and oh by the way let's give Marab credit I mean he took a beating he made that a a crazy fun fight it was a very good title fight but in hindsight I think there are a few different lanes where you can look at how marab handled this whole thing and and kind of picked that apart and I'm not going to do the jedmishu and post the tweet and say by the way Marab was never the go and you guys all fell for it but we did see a great fighter in a time we thought was the the absolute apex peak of his career looking to double down on history over extend himself.

I think we can say that firmly at the very least. He chased greatness. And sometimes you're going to get it and sometimes you're not. And this is the part of the stretch that is the most difficult. And he came up short. I am perfectly. What is Jed's argument? Who is the Bantan Way Goat according to him?

I don't know. But you remember on pregame preview, Jed gave a long rant about him. Rob's just a, you know, decision machine. just out you know like not he's not the best his argument was marab may have accumulated the type of wins that could make you the bannam weight go but because he's not a finisher because he just sort of leans on that cardio and the wrestling that he's not the actual best fighter in bannam waders he's not he's definitely not the best pure fighter that's true um like he doesn't like what is he the best wrestler is he the best wrestler he's a very good

wrestler he's maybe not the best he's certainly not the best striker he's not the best submission guy you know there's guys who have more developed skills than him but his level of accomplishment is i don't think really debatable but getting back to the point bc the guy chased greatness and and i think for the most part bc found it for the most part he did find greatness he just wanted to go to a level that had truly never been gone to before not successfully and that's a really difficult thing to do i'm also going to say this bc um this is not necessarily the case with volk versus lopez although I take Lopez as a dangerous threat. You know, he could still very much win that one,

given that Vox older and Cheney now, right? But in general, what I want to say was, this is why rematches are important for long title reigns. Like, giving these fighters another crack, another world-class guy, another crack at you, particularly years later, I hope everyone can appreciate that's a daunting task. And, you know, for a guy like St. Pierre to fight Penn twice,

Koshchek twice, you know, he really went out there and gave a lot of these elite guys an opportunity to get like another run at him and he was still able to defeat basically all of them. It's important in a guy's title reign that he get newcomers as well as other standouts who get to retool and give it another go because you just never know what's going to happen in the sport. Rematches under the right circumstances are very important. Yeah, just the final thing I want to say is in my interview, I was kind of glazing

Marab, like playing up the history he's making, the fact that he's kind of already being called the Bannamway Go, you know, if he keeps up that streak of consecutive wins, he could break the record. And it was weird. He was almost interrupting me to be like, hold on, brother, like, I'm just human. You know what I mean? I just work hard. So I don't know. I was, I just got these weird feelings during the interview. But shout out to Jan, the way he pulled it out. Let's hear from Peotor Jan on a, just a beautiful comeback victory to ascend the throne of one of the sports best divisions. I was very,

kind of very very quickly came to I'm very much

I've done in their past in their good I'm very really I'm

know and I'm to be able to I'm wrong you know not exactly

but it was more of like I streamlined myself to the belt really quick you know I kind of

thought that I already knew everything I got all the skills for everything you know and and

and I underestimated how much goes into to this championship mentality and the preparation to be a champ. I know what I've done I've got to make mistakes before them poedink of me.

I know that I'm not I'm not quite a command of work. And we've it's probably. I know which mistakes I allowed myself to make before that first fight. And I know that the big thing that was missing was teamwork. And this is something that we fixed.

We are now a team. Look, you can argue looking back on the losses he suffered at the highest level that, like, maybe one was clean and clear. So what do you believe this comeback, the way that he's raised his game at age 32 here? What does it say about his potential upside moving forward? Well, what's kind of interesting to me, and I think this is something I've not seen discussed enough, which is in many ways, the way he rushed to the title so quickly ended up causing him to not be able to hold on to it. On the other hand, the fact that he lost it so early into his athletic prime, despite having, as we've talked about, the three subsequent losses back to back to back,

it actually enabled him during his prime to reconstitute himself and then reclaim the belt towards the end of his prime. He's 32 BC. I think he's going to be 33, I think around February. I could be wrong. You can double check that. Hold on. I got to sneeze. Excuse me. yeah thank you but it actually is kind of interesting most people they you know a lot of guys they don't get the title until they're almost in the middle or the end of their prime or least some title opportunities but because he got it so early he was able to reconstitute himself and then recapture it still within the late end anyway of the prime version of himself that unusual early detour bc and and with the right changes in his teamwork the right changes in his game

leveling up all the other things that go into it but being able to channel that back and enable him to have success on this back end. Again, everything about this is unusual. He's not supposed to be in this position but by the virtue of all of the many things that have happened to him and his considerable talent,

here he is bucking the trend. You're asking about where it goes upside. He's still got some good time left. Do you favor him against Umar? Do you favor him against Mara rematch? These are really difficult fights. It's going to be hard for either of those guys to win. Or I should say, any of the three, but he is going to make it tough for any of them, and I can't wait to see.

Yeah, before we get into what's next, I also needs mentioning that he learned the lesson that a lot of people learn against Marab, that that cardio is just a different beast inside of Davao's really. So if you want to contend with him, right, I always make that comparison back to Steve, who lost that very competitive five-round main event against Junior Dosatos, part impartially, because he had to learn in that moment, well, five-yard cardio, really was, and boy, did Steepay turn that around for the future of his career, you got to give Yon a ton of credit for the cardio he had in this rematch to be able to keep it up at that level, especially in the championship rounds when normally Marab just turns

it up to another gear and just overwhelms you. Like taking away from the grind of Marab doing four camps, the weight cut, all of that, I think you can take it away because Jan raised his game so much that even if Mara, Rob was 75% of himself, if that's true. That 75% could still win on most nights against almost anybody in the world, but Jan knew what he was up against. He retooled. So on the flip side, Luke, I did want to sneak this question in, you always talk about

when someone's on top for a long time, that the tape study just gets built up and up and up. And yes, we kind of fell into that same groove when someone's so dominant for so long, where we both kind of said it heading into this fight, that like until Marab, until he doesn't i'm going to believe in him and i'm going to pick him how much of this victory do you think was the idea that for as great as marab is and he raised up his striking in recent fights he's become a legitimate top three pound for pound fighter coming into this fight how much was it that like all of those things that made him great you give the opponents enough time to study it and figure it out that in some cases his style was almost solved by yon in this

perform there's there's no question in my mind and this is the most important i want to say something too because as marab has gotten hotter and hotter hotter obviously came to a conclusion on saturday but during this long incredible run he's been on where he's basically defeating every style with what can be described as labor i mean you know he obviously nearly knocked out san hagen he submitted sean o'malley but in general we kind of know what the score is so i've been doing a lot of thinking like what kind of style beats marab you know what do you have to have and And one of the things I've been thinking about was that, you know, I don't know how much sense it makes to try and out labor the guy.

And, you know, yes, you want to fight takedowns, but not super hard. Like, what you want to do is be able to, at times super hard. But in general, what you want to be able to do is just score maximum damage, right? Because otherwise, he's just going to be able to keep working. And to me, what is so impressive about what Yon did was, Yon actually was like, no, that's actually not the game plan. The game plan is we're going to outrest, him first and then we're going to worry about the damage that comes later and there was so other other

adjustments that he made i don't know if anyone picked up on this he got his legs battered by marab in the first fight marab tried it this time and he checked him early and marab never really went back to it like that is an important adjustment and it leads me to say the following not only did he show what you actually have to have which is you know otherworldly level of wrestling but it doesn't start with damage first and don't worry about the wrestling it's worry about the wrestling and then let the damage take care of itself um and more to the point point. I think that they kind of knew what his offensive system is. BC, he's got head inside singles, head outside singles, doubles, different setups for all three. And against the

fence, he has different ways in which he goes to try and trip out, Cosotto hooks, all different things he uses. He has some kind of judo throws as well. He's got an Uchimata, things like that. They had him dead to rights. They figured out all of the places that you need to stop or reverse it to utterly kill it in the process, and it had a pronounced effect on the whole thing. I mean, understand, you know, 49 takedowns attempted in their first fight. He only got 11 of them, which I know, 11 is a lot, obviously, but relative to 49 is not very high. Yon did a really good job the first time, but to reduce him to two, and not just reduce him to 2, he didn't get off nearly as many attempts either.

They knew what his offensive system was, and by the way, I haven't mentioned how this goes to the front head, He couldn't make effective use of the front headlock in this fight. He got two cradles in the first fight. They figured him out. And to your point, B.C., about looking at the tape, they clearly, clearly game planned around the specific scenarios that Maraub puts you in, work those out, and I thought he did a brilliant job. Yeah, and I thought there were two significant moments where Jan really planted the flag

to say this will not look like the first fight. The first one was in round one when he landed that huge, I think it was a, counter left hand that you know visibly stung morab and showed him that like if you're just going to spam me like you're going to pay for it and then obviously the second one was round three when he picked him up and slammed him on his damn head luke never never would have guessed that in that moment i felt like had a profound shift and like this is yon's night from that moment forward it really felt like this was going to be yon's right it takes it takes the right positioning it takes a little moxie but it's also them understanding position if i'm going for a guillotine

on UBC. What is protecting me from getting slammed? I mean, could be positioned if I'm putting enough stress on your low back or something like that, but my hands are occupied. So if your hands are occupied and you're in a good enough position to be able to get to an angle to do it, dude, give him frequent flyer miles. And that's exactly what he did. He had no way to brace himself. So he went crashing first, a face first into the mat. Just amazing situational awareness because they knew to plan for that front headlock series. Now, I did feel bad watching the clip that that was posted online after of Marab, like in tears, apologizing to his family in his country. I mean, he's been such a decorated champion.

He's got a hilarious personality. I know the pride he has for Georgia and all of that. So I certainly felt bad. Here's Marab in the ambulance afterwards, though, with his buddy Aljo, where it felt like they were lightening the mood. I am in the hospital with my brother, Alja, my Sterling. And then my brother drinking his funk harbour rum. I'm on the phone with my mother.

Did you? I'm on the phone with my mother. Hey, he's got it. Hey, get you. Oh, did you? Oh, did you? You know, did you? I, did you?

I, did you? Oh, got. Oh, got. Oh, got. You know, I'm here. You know, I'm here. You know, and every one. You know,

Burrissan, you, All right, a lot of Georgian in that one, but there was a caption, too, being like, you know, thanks for everyone for their support, and I'll be back in all. And by the way, Marab did go to the post-fight party at the club. He did go back with Nina Drama to eat all those donuts. I don't know if anyone saw that video as well. So Marab took it in stride as he always does. Luke, let's close his discussion by talking about what should be next.

Marab used his time in the post-fight interview with Joe Rogan to push for the idea of an immediate trilogy should that be the direction UFC goes or should they tell him to take some time off Maropt had told me this week that he's got some trip planned where he's going to go train with Zuck you know and but he wanted to come back in March

no matter what I mean look it's hard to deny a guy that's won 14 in a row and we were calling him the Bannam Wake goat but I really want to see Umar if he gets by Davis and Figuero in the next couple months against Peotryon. That's a fight we almost saw leading up to this. I would love to see that. What do you want next? What will happen next? Uh, so the issue is we've got next month we've got basically two bantamweight fights that might have a claim on the title. Now,

that's a little crazy to say, BC, because I actually don't think that we have two bansomweight fights that have a claim on the title, but I have to admit that we probably will. Here's what I mean. First, you've got umar versus figgy now what's interesting about that five bc is it's on the prelims which kind of tells you what they think about umar a little bit here maybe that's the that's the first one but if umar wins bc i think he's got a decent case for a fresh title shot that's one then you have the other one which is much more interesting to me which is sean o'malley at least as a weird attraction sean o'malley versus song yodong great fight what i mean is bc can we really sit here and say that if Sean O'Malley, and I'm going to make something up, knocks out

Sean, Son Yadong, he's not in the picture for a title. I'm not saying that he should be. I'm not saying I think, oh, that's the best argument. I'm saying, just look how they're booking title fights. No, look, to be fair, they're booking fights to make stars, which is kind of what we asked of them to do in this new era, right? Sort of. I mean, you can do the strike force thing a little bit where you give guy people misunderstand the strike force model the strike force model is as follows if there is a really deserving contender they didn't they didn't really fuck with them too much but what they did was they gave them gimmies in between right they'd give them a deserving guy two deserving guys and then the third one would be like you know just a walk in the park and it wasn't just for champions

it was for anyone with a big name they would give them tune-up fights all the time and this did wonders for them it was an important thing pride did something similar People look at Fedor's resume, they're like, okay, I know this guy, I know that guy. Who the fuck is this guy? This was done on purpose, and it also in part to satisfy the Japanese market. But, you know, that can be a thing. That's different than, you know, we've got, like, massively deserving contenders, which I'll come back to a ban to wait in a second.

We're just going to ignore that. We're going to give guys title shots off of one win, you know. I mean, again, Strike Force might have done a little bit like that, but this feels a little more heavy-handed. It's more about giving guys gimmies. between hard fights, rather than just ignoring the hard fight altogether. What I want to make, though, is BC, okay, you got O'Malley, maybe, Umar, maybe, but Marab is the consensus, I think, best bansom weight, too, it's a hobby, too, it's a hobby.

Amin Zahubi's in this discussion, correct? He's on the outside, but I don't think he's too far from it, fair enough. But, but Marab, you know, if you're going to give anyone a title rematch, or I should say a trilogy in this case, it would be someone like Marab, but here's what I'm going to say this is a little different. In addition to mention these other two names, B.C., what you also have here is a case where it was not a close fight, and it's

already their second one. Like, there's no controversy about this one. The guy just fucking lost. What I think they should do, B.C. is give one of the two winners from UFC 324, a shot against Yon. Marab gets the winner of that.

How about Marab's a hobby, and Umar, if he wins, gets I don't get a lot, I don't hate it. I don't have a ton of interest in Mara's a hobby. It'd be hard for me to get fired up about, look, I'm not saying I'm supporting sort of the shameless matchmaking style that they're already employing for next year. I'm a CBS Paramount guy.

I want them to use this new non-paper-view platform to build stars. Believe me, I'm not supporting all the choices I don't like Diego Lopez in the spot on, you know, again and again. But for O'Malley to go from two dominant losses against the champion, I get, I agree. He's not my choice. He's not my choice. If Umar wins, it should be Umar. Yeah, you're setting up a scenario where he would knock out Song Yadong. And I'm not saying that's not worth nothing. But yeah, I wouldn't love that. I'm also an Umar guy. I'm just going to say, like, I believe this guy is championship ready right now. I believe you can plug him into the title fight right now is a little. Were you not surprised that they,

put umar in another fight i just i thought he was going to fight the winner of this fight regardless bautista's hard to look good against so for that reason i'm not like utterly shocked but they're definitely they're making them take a little bit of a longer road right i think that's fair to say all right all right we'll see how they roll that out but congratulations to peodorian a no we got we got to get uh long island like how distraught were you oh yeah as each round first round i thought was pretty competitive obviously but after that brother it the fight was gone it's crazy how the fight was scored because even after round one i was like damn man i kind of think yon won that round it was close but i i actually gave it to yon and then

obviously the next four were very clearly yon so i thought it was five nothing yon i didn't even when i heard 48 47 i was like oh shit are we going to get some corrupt score in here what do we got yeah i don't know what dc was on thinking that marab was up to two to nil one complaining about dc's commentary and i was doing the watch along so hard for me to pay attention to it what was so bad about it he just was kind of matter of fact that that it should be two nothing marab so whenever they were putting the journalist tweets up of people saying like two nothing yon he was just like that's crazy whereas there's a really strong argument for round one to be a yon round it could go either way i didn't think round two was was all that close no but uh yeah uh the other thing i want to say

is too many voices in marob's corner easy to point out now that he lost but three different voices competing with each other in Rob's corner in between each round. Yeah, that's a lot. That was a lot. All right. Let's go into topic number two, which was Saturday's co-main event. Yeah, we didn't learn that much in the end as Joshua Van looking to become the second youngest champion in UFC history behind John Jones accomplished the feat, but not in the way that we would have hoped or wanted here in a round one TKO win via injury. As after exchanging a very high-paced exchange for both fighters in that first minute, you had a very unusual ending as champion Alexandria Pantoza reached out his arm to catch himself on the fall and injured

his elbow, his shoulder. There was a little bit of debate to that. Just 30 seconds into the fight resulting in a title change. Very reminiscent, by the way, Luke, when you and I were caged side for Bellator, NYC, and Michael Chandler lost his title to Brent Primus on that injured foot where you're just like, why do the rules mean that the title has to change hands on there? Just my I can tell you the answer. There's actually a very good reason for it. Why shouldn't it? Understand. He threw a head kick to Josh Van, who caught it, and then he tries to escape, and

Van actually kind of releases him, and on the landing, he, whatever, whatever happened there, he had the injury. That's fighting. Nobody fouled him. Sometimes you do a spinning kick and you twist your ankle. Sometimes you get your jaw broken by, you know, you ran into his hip. You know, or some kind of weird, a medical event, an injury happens just in the course of fighting itself, independent of someone, you know, landing a knockout blow. That's part of fighting.

The part where it becomes an issue is if it's from a foul. That's when you bring in the doctor, when you cause time, you're kicked in the balls, you get raked in the eyes, break, you know, whatever the arm, elbow, whatever, that's just fighting. That's regular fighting. I just feel like I know why you wouldn't change the rule because then people could potentially, you know, fake injuries and try to get out of fight. in which they're losing, I just wish, you know how boxing has that rule pertaining to fouls, where if a foul happens before the first four rounds are completed, an accidental foul, the fight would go to a, it wouldn't go to the scorecards, it would be a no contest. I almost wish there was some sort of, whether it's a half round or a full first round,

where if one of those, you know, mysterious injuries happened, where you can cause an injury, I get that. I think we can all agree this was just bad luck. Either way, Joshua Van is the new champion, and he sells. celebrated like one. So Luke, while there's very little to glean or take away from the situation because we just had 20 to 30 seconds of some fun exchanges, are we allowed to say at age 35 that Pantosia might never be the same after an injury like this? And for all we know, may not get back to the title level. I hate even asking you that because I almost wish they pressed pause into the division until he was healthy because this is such bad luck. But it is what it is, Luke. I think it'd probably be a little premature to be like, oh, he'll never get back, especially if it's a dislocation. Now, even with a dislocation, a break can occur or a tear of a ligament, some kind of connective

tissue can happen as well. If that's the case, then BC, and then we've got some real quality of movement issues that are going to have an impact. If it's just a dislocation and there's no surgical intervention that's really required, I'm not saying that's a great injury, but that by itself BC should not be disqualifying as a way to consider him,

not really eligible for a rematch or whatever, but to win, to be competitive. That would not tell me that. But there's obviously these other factors, B.C. One is, does he heal it properly? Does he come back too quickly? Does he try to like reassert himself because he doesn't want Van out there

with the title parading like he's somebody that in his view probably is not? There are ways of, which that even if the injury itself is not so severe, accompanying factors after the fact can make it difficult for him to ever regain full function. I would just say, from what we know so far, which is a big caveat, but for what we know so far, I've not seen anything that tells me he can't get back there. But BC, this is the other part of the conversation, which is the guy's 35, I don't think he's too far from being 36. You know, the lighter you go, that becomes more and more

of a death sentence, is it possible that this is an injury that is a function of the fact that he's not 25, then he is 35, and then he's put his body through hell over the years to pursue this occupation? That is something that I kind of worry about. Like, is this by itself, BC, a disqualifying medical event? Maybe not. However, does it underline and highlight the fact that this guy is aging in front of us and that even if he does have some glory days in front of him, that window is closing rapidly?

I kind of wonder about that a little bit. Yeah, I do. I do too. It reminds me, you know, a friend of the program, Rashad Evans, so I used to do a podcast with, and we would go back and do story time over his career. I always bring up, Luke, I think you remember this, when Rashad, after losing the title, losing to John Jones,

came back in that comeback, went over Chelsana, neying him to the stomach and finishing him. He looked like he was ready to be champion again, like he had completely retooled, and then he suffered the type of injury that he was never the same from again. And you just hope for Pantosia that doesn't happen considering the run he had been on, the fact that in the past two years he had completely turned his legacy reputation around by improving his game so much.

But you can't control these things. They are what they are. Before we get into this whole hullaboo over Van celebration, did you see that tweet from Dominic Cruz who said that fighters should be allowed to continue, even if their limbs are hanging off? I mean, this is the same great decorated champion, who by the way i love i love his his snarkiness his you know all that who said like he should be allowed to fight to the death in the cage he said someone's going to die in mama eventually we should

be allowed to do that he also thinks keith peterson smells like cold cuts and cheap women what do you make of that statement he put up yeah i mean this is why it's regulated by the government you know fighters deserve to have a very very important contribution to i think all of the rules to the way in which they are governed by them how they're paid like their perspective here very much matters but they're not the final arbiters of anything neither are we but they're not and this is why they're not i cannot tell you how many fighters i know who i've talked to who have told me stuff mostly off the record but not always about some kind of medical risk that they're willing to endure either to train for a fight or to even compete during it or surgical intervention to allow

them to compete in some kind of hobbled state. I mean, I've literally had guys talked about having their fingers removed. I mean, just you can't imagine. This is why they can, this is why it's regulated by the government, because in addition to they're being unscrupulous promoters, there are fighters who will absorb and accept and engage with a level of risk that is simply untenable. If this is going to be a practice that we allow to happen in society, there have to be very clear rules. If you have an orthopedic injury in the middle of the fight, B.C. The fight is fucking over. It's over.

By the way, I thought, you know, credited Dom Cruz's new podcast. I thought the one he did with T.J. Dillishaw, where they talked about the injury against algae with the shoulder. Like, that was very good content. Check that out. And if Cruz thinks Peterson smells like that, he should meet Jedmishu. I mean,

we've done plenty of pregames with that guy. Yeah, wow. All right. Dog, Mad Dog, 50, 50, butt sweat. Yeah, indeed. First, Let's get an injury update from the former champ Pantosia, if you can, Long Island, Luke. Hello, guys. That's what happened, you know, accidents. When I go to the UFC today, I think I have my best ship on my life.

When I see Joshua run out on the other side of the October, I believe I can finish him in the first round. That's what I try to do. Best camp on my life, best catch weight, best everything. everything, you know. I feel so comfortable in the octagon. That's my octagon. That's my belt. That's everything I did in my life, in my whole life to that moment, you know?

And I just, Joshua just can win this belt. I talk with my wife about that, like, it's not just about myself today, it's about Joshavan, you know. Josh Van, that's his destiny to win this belt tonight. And he just can win this belt with my injury. today, you know? And I talk with God, God giving the message. And I really believe in God in all the message. I pray a lot. And I want to work very hard. I work very hot all my life and I'm going to work again and I'm going to take my belt again, you know. I really

appreciate all the message. Everybody know about myself. Everybody in the sand. I'm very respectful guy. I respect first, my family, then everything, you know, I'm never going to say bullshit about anyone. I just want to work very hard and bring my belt to my home again, you know. I appreciate everybody. Tomorrow, fly back to home Monday. I'm starting to follow my dream again. Thank you so much. Dude, that's heartbreaking. I stand for pants, as Ms. you would say. Luke, people I don't wear him during strawweight fights. They're wrong. But seriously, the way that guy carries himself, a lot of love and respect.

So by the way, on the flip side, as much as I don't love seeing him lose his title under these circumstances, I don't love seeing Van win the title under these circumstances, even though it's not his fault to become the second youngest champion. He celebrated like none of it mattered. A lot of people took umbrage. We made sort of a fun Al Joe Sterling joke. but Van he don't care about the haters

in fact he was so absolute about it we dialed them for murder we called up our friends over there at Cuervo for a little bit of shots fired folks core shots fired is brought to you by Cuervo now's a good time to enjoy the tequila that invented tequila

here is Josh Van reacting to sort of the negative reaction to how happy and aggressive he celebrated this breakthrough moment. What plan is champion? I want to be the, yeah, active champion for sure, but I'm taking this month off. A month off, nice.

And I guess last thing for me would be, you know, what would you say to somebody says, I can't count that guy as a real champion? That fight didn't really play out. Like, what would you say to him? Fuck them. Yeah, if you do good, they would talk shit. And if you do bad, they would talk shit,

so do what makes you happy, you know what I mean? so it don't matter what they think, man, I won. Luke, in summation, fuck him, bro. Yeah, insubation, mispaylota's estanaki. I mean, is there any, is there any validity, amigo to people criticizing him, jumping on the cage, you know, doing all that whole beef, that whole... Look, obviously it's going to look weird to,

the fans at home who were robbed of a great fight who were probably very you know hey people who paid for pay-per-view bc it might have been the last one i know there was some pirates but there was a lot of people who paid i'm sure as well and it was like you know this is fucking annoying for that to happen and like you know he's pounding his chest like a gorilla and like he did something you know i understand that this is going to piss people off i i sort of get it at the same time the guy's life has been nothing but a very difficult struggle and it changed and the last year culminating in this magic moment that probably to him feels like destiny bc if you put yourself in his shoes like he just must feel like he's on top of the world let him

have some celebration he'll have to fight someone to keep it we'll worry about it then you know indeed indeed we've got dana white talking about what will be next for this title given everything that happened let's listen to the ceo the tuesday answer as well but i mean given the way that thing played out. If he's okay, do you run that one back right away? Do you see what he's doing? I don't think he's, no matter what happens, listen, I'm no fucking doctor or anything, but I don't see him coming back anytime soon. I think that there would be a defense before he comes back. I think he's going to need some time. You know, the healing process and sometimes, or most of the time, I would say, ligaments are worse than a break. So he's got to come back

from that. And then how long until he starts striking again and stuff like that? that. So, yeah, there'll probably be a defense before. Last thing. Well, look, it's going to take time for people to really see Van as the champion, although one more thing on that, I will say. Van talks so much coming into this fight about what this, what his success will mean to his country of Myanmar, that it would put it on the map in people's minds.

And that's not a country that we talk about regularly, especially not in mixed martial arts. So I definitely agree with Van's posture from the standpoint. of what he's saying, that the criticism is going to be there no matter what. So let me do me and enjoy my moment. But I'll also say this is a big-ass moment for him, his extended family, his culture, his country. So I know he came to the U.S. as a teenager, grew up in Houston,

but that means a lot in that regard. And I'll give him that. So also, also don't forget, don't forget Burmese Python, uh, on la Nseng, the, uh, the guy out of, uh, extreme couture. Yeah, I've met, I've met him a couple times, uh, real nice dude. he comes from he calls himself the Burmese python but you know for me and more so that little country is still got some you know

it's got some heavy hitters for sure yeah yeah me and Mar what was I saying I don't know well anyway it doesn't matter uh Luke in terms of what's next you've got the newcomer the old comer he's coming Luke Kioji Horaguchi you've got Tatsura Tira who had a breakthrough stoppage win over Brandon Moreno you've got the Manel cop versus Brandon Roy Val contender fight next weekend who would you like to see next for joshua van um i i mean in in theory a rematch right

i mean that seems like the most important one but obviously that is going to be medically very difficult uh perhaps improbable to pull off i don't have a better answer than the winner of this week's main event. I don't know what the, I don't know what it would be. No one's moving around. There's not, I mean, especially if Manel Cop wins. Like, that's kind of a, I mean, the Royville fight was cool, B.C., but I don't, I don't need to see it run back right away. What do you make of Joe Rogan basically editorializing during the interview and saying that Tyra could be, should be next? So that's an interesting one to BC because he looked also. I know we're going to talk a little bit more about that in the next topic. But I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, Long Island, where are you on this one? To me, it seems a little rush to put Tyra in there, especially when Horaguchi. Let's go Go Go, Goch. I'm not high on Tyra either just because he just lost the Royval, and I feel like Pantosha's probably out at least six months. And because Van is so active, just get him in there in three months against Horeguchi. Also, don't you think it's ironic Horeguchi called out Pantosia,

and then Pantosia ends up losing? He should have just called out Josh Vann the whole time. Didn't even need to call out his teammate. Yeah, LRBC, how about this? Yeah. Remember, Dana White said at the Post-Fi Presser, they were considering taking a show to Japan. Could you do Gooch, Tyra, winner of that gets it, you know,

depending if they can make that in short order, you know? I do think if cop thoroughly beats Roy Vall, then that could change the discussion because he has been on a run. You got to give cop that credit. Cop killer, Ice-T. What was the name of that band that I see had? Body count. Body count.

And also, do you notice how long out looks like, I'm not high on Tyra. Dude's high as shit right now in general. Okay, let's give him that. Respect. No, Luke, Luke, Luc Nucida, our guy. All right, Luke, so to close on this topic, by the way, two decorated top five pound-for-pound champions getting their titles flipped upside down,

which makes an interesting scenario for the UFC. Valentina Schochenko on her second reign at flyweight with two defenses on the second reign is the longest reigning UFC champion at the moment. Here's a graphic of some of that turnover. In one way you expect it because the sport's crazy, but in another way, Luke, it's weird to see the old guard just chopped down one by one. Man, I mean, there's some of these you could have seen coming.

You probably didn't think the wall was going to end the year as champ, you know, but the Yon one just didn't see coming. I mean, I don't know. There's just a bunch of these. You're like, wow, this is here. I mean, you're here one day. gone the next, brother. It is a very And Pereira regained the title to his credit

and both Tuporia and Mahachav moved up so they won titles of new weight divisions. But I didn't necessarily see a lot of this happening. By the way, Chimayev is now saying he's going to fight one more at middleweight than he's going up to 205. So it could continue Luke for all we know. Yeah, which means

Poeton's going to go to heavyweight. You know what I mean? It's a rotating door. All right, before we get into the rest of the UFC 323 undercard, it's history less in time. Professor Campbell's here to tell you that now's a good time to remember what where tequila's story truly began because in 1795 quervo invented tequila and since then all quervo's been doing is staying true to their roots we're talking about the same family the same land

yes that same passion 230 years later can you believe it quervo is still right here and every poor and every margarita in every celebration in every pregame pre preview on MK. So enjoy the tequila that started at all, Cuervo. The tequila that invented tequila, proximo quervo.com. Please drink responsibly. And Luke Cuervo has been such a fantastic partner for us. I really want to shout them out over the past year doing the pregame previews. Checking out that devil's reserve. Shout out to the makers, the inventors of tequila themselves. I'm talking about quervo. All right. Thank you very. I'm right. all right let's go on over new topic number three elsewhere on the ufc 323 main card

how about bannam weight prospect peyton talbot during the same year in which he had his balloon popped by veteran hyoni barcelos and a lot of talk about whether he was on his way to becoming more of a bust what is this some kind of bust yeah it's very impressive uh or or could he turn it around he bounced back from the barcelos lost with a big win and he came out against Henry Sehudo, and I'll let it tell you a lot. He looked like the finished product, the absolute real deal. What did Peyton Talbot who beat up Henry Sehudo in the legend's final fight earning a unanimous decision?

What did he ultimately prove to ULT about his upside after taking Suhudo to the woodshed man and putting it on him? B.C., if Josh Van is excluded from the category of of Breakthrough Fighter of the Year, I honestly might have to give it to Peyton Talbot. And that's a little bit crazy because I know there's some other guys who have had some great breakout years. But I actually feel like his loss almost sets the table for what has been so amazing. BC, he fought three times this year.

He looked like shit against Howney Barcellus, who we all recognize is also having a great year. So credit to him. But he looked kind of bad in that fight. He looked like he was unprepared for the moment. And I was kind of, excuse me. I want to thank my daughter for sneezing right into my mouth the other day. It's been a great couple days since then. Anyway, he looked good against Felipe Lima in his rebound.

In fact, it looks very good against Felipe Lima. And you're like, okay, we're definitely not in emergency territory. And I know what everyone's going to say. They're going to say, all right, but Henry was literally at the end. He was washed to shit. And that's true. However, what I'm going to point out is, number one, BC, he got beaten everywhere. number two he got taken down twice in the same round and once with henry's signature inside

trip takedown henry has in my judgment or at least up to this point anyway has had the best inside trip in all of mma and peyton hit him with it and then had composure at the end of the fight bc pointing down at the mat and exchanging with him in that place like dude he came alive this year and i think he got a little bit of cold water splashed in his face by barcelos in january and it woke him up and now look at him how far he can go i think is certainly an important debate to have and we're going to have it but i've never not just i'm not just hired because of the state of the win i'm inspired by the speed of the development and clearly he's got a fire under his ass that is motivating him and look at the rewards of it we are that this was so much fun and

so great to see a young prospect really take a big turn in his career so huge because when this fight was announced and we all loved the matchmaking, we all said the same thing. I think Suhudo gets this done. I mean, I remember hearing him, you know, plus 200 something, whatever the odds were. And I'm thinking, so Hudo still got enough game planning, mindset, you know, IQ, all of that. But Talbot took it away looking like the next generation Bannamway. It reminded me of the moments leading into the eyepokes against Song Yadong, where I felt like Suhudo for the first time was just didn't have enough on his fastball, had to do too much.

fainting shenanigans just to get a shot off like he had taken that step behind and while i thought suhudo looked better this fight the fact that talbot looked great in every aspect switching stances kicking punching the the wrestling i mean it was incredible i give henry a lot of credit for being willing to take this fight for being willing to brawl to the end like the true warrior he is despite you know i mean yeah he's cringe as shit we could argue he shouldn't have taken that much time off in his prime all that stuff but he handled himself like a real fighter i even like the exchange after the loss when he talked to dana sort of pleaded for the 50k thank dana for giving him the opportunity for him and his family they played the video package it was all a nice moment yet that was the

subplot to the true story of patent talbot climbing through an up and down year and returning to being looking like that guy the future of this division i mean let's show the damage that he put on a true legend in Sehudo. Good Lord, Luke Thomas. Whoa. Dude, he beat him up. He beat him up everywhere. There was nowhere.

I mean, again, I thought Sehudo fought back with real spirit, and I think that's real. But in the end, like, what did he materially do to Peyton Talbot? Not much. Not much in the end. He got run over in that fight. Also, I do want to say this, B.C., you know, we kill them when they don't do stuff like this, but when they get it right, it's worth saying. The promo package, it wasn't a promo package, but like the thank you package at the end,

the video package for Suhudo that they had ready where they're showing all these highlights and he's climbing this hill the whole time. Dude, this was, this was fantastic. When they're ready for those kinds of things, they kill it. It was great. They did. And I have loved the career of Henry Sehudo mostly because I never believed in him early on and he won me over over that time.

And Luke, when you look back at everything he, has accomplished. I mean, I'm not willing to say he's the, you know, combat goat of all time, but to win the Olympic gold medal in wrestling to make that transition to the sport, to upset Demetrius Johnson, even though I didn't like the scoring in that rematch, hey, he got it done. He won the championship. He won a championship in a second division and probably saved 125. And since then, he's pretty much only sought the best fights he could possibly make. He damn near regained the Bannamweight title against Aljo off of that long layoff. In your eyes, how should we remember what Suhudo gave to the sport?

One of the very best smaller weight fighters ever in company history. Somebody whose athletic pedigree from a previous composite sport and the unbelievable success they had there only made MMA look better, especially when he struggled at first. But then, of course, being triumphant also makes MMA look better. It's sort of like a ying and a yang kind of thing. And, you know, one of these guys who, you know, people have said BC, like, oh, is he a what if? And I don't think that's, maybe you disagree.

I just don't think that's quite right. Because if you win two world weight, if you win two titles, you know, it's hard to say you underachieve was the idea that he was going to win. He's not a what if. Come on. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean, but he did leave during the middle of his prime for a big chunk. And let's be honest, BC.

he never won when he came back his career literally never recovered from that never ever got back to the right moment and so there is a story to be told about that bc but for me easily one of the better not the best but certainly one of the better lower weight fighters we've ever had in the sport one of the early champ champs uh as well to a degree and a credit to the sport of wrestling if nothing else i give them ultimately the credit of being one of the smartest game planners as I've ever seen. And that's what won me over. You know, I didn't think he was all that great coming up. You know, he got humbled by DJ that first time.

When he won the second championship, you know, and put himself at a very high level historically with the other, you know, at that point, there wasn't many two division champions. I felt it was almost premature. And he had sort of figured out how to sidestep his way to becoming an all-time name. And then I really dialed into who he really was and watched how smart. And a lot of that, look, I give credit. it to the bedazzled captain,

our guy who was in the cage afterwards, Luke, coach Eric, right? What's his last name? Yeah, Albarocene. Albaracine, our guy, shout out to him. But seriously, Henry evolved, it took him time, but he evolved into one of the smartest fighters, game planning-wise, well-roundedness.

And as we saw on Saturday, when he needs to fight down, he'll get it for you. Like when he out-slugged Joseph Benavides in one of his early UFC fights, you know, a fight-of-the-year campaign. Fantastic stuff. right there from Henry Suhudo. But shout out to Peyton Talbot.

Let's see the takedown celebration pick. This made the rounds on Twitter. The huge smile, the tongue out. Who would have thought that he would have done exactly what you said, reversed that trip into a position where, you know, he had Sehudo in control, although they did point out on the broadcast that Suhudo isn't active enough when he's on the bottom there,

but that was surprising to see, Luke. Yeah, celebrating this wave. He got another one, like a hard blast double as well. you know and the fact that it looks homo erotic bc is just probably icing on the cake for for talbot relative to to sohudo but no it's incredible dude i mean that's what i mean man he beat him literally everywhere the fact that henry survived is a credit to his fighting spirit but that's the only thing that was saving him in that fight and his skills weren't getting the job done anymore let's hear from patent talbot after this truly breakthrough win this is how

aging names should hand it off right not Sirson Silva against Derek Brunson, this is the type of fight. Let's hear from Talbot. I thought I did pretty good. I need to watch it back, as always. But to take down a former Olympic champion twice is pretty major, especially with his bread and butter. So it's surreal, pretty cool, putting down old yellow and retiring a goat like that.

Your striking look fantastic as well, but is it the two takedowns that you're going to take the most pride in tonight? I need to rewatch the striking. I felt like I was a little sloppy. I was having a little too much fun. You certainly had him heard a number of times. Were you surprised at just how durable it was? Because it looked like there were a couple times

where he was going to break and he just kind of refused to go away. Yeah, Henry's tough, man. I think he only got finished once by Demetrius, right? Yeah. So I knew he was going to be pretty tough to finish. I knew it was probably going to be late, late in the fight if I did get one. But I was hitting him really hard.

man like that's the hardest that's up there on how hard I've hit people and I saw I saw the decision in him when he was like I could go out right now or I could fight through this and he had the decision to fight through it. Will you seek his advice you know in the future and train with them and yeah he's going to make a phenomenal coach you know wherever he moves through this you know if he chooses to stay in it and coach a little bit he's going to be phenomenal at it so yeah I'd go and seek his knowledge Last thing for me, you know, there's a point where it looked like you were going to be fast-tracked that you have the setback, but you looked amazing, and this is a signature win. So where do you see your career progressing at this point?

I mean, do you want, I know you said you're learning and getting better and improving, but do you like, hey, throw me in the rankings, throw me in the top now? Or is it still like just a steady progression for you at your young age? I don't think I have a choice. I think I'm going to have a number of my name now either way. But, I mean, this is where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the top ten and just swimming with the sharks. so that's kind of what I wanted out of this and I was super calm all week

because I felt at peace with that that if I did my job in the cage then I would have a number by my name at the end of this so yeah I'm at peace with that and that's what I've wanted from the get-go. I'm not super fixated on the belt I just want to put on banger fights and fight the toughest guys

Luke he just turned 27 years old I'm not trying to say he should fight for the title next but this is a great step forward if he's looking for a ranked guy maybe somebody in the back end of the 10 to 15 are we thinking like a rob faugh marcus mcgee what is the best time yeah yeah i mean this is this is where he's at he's in should be either in the top 10 or pretty close to it long island luc is saying chito vera that seems a little i don't know if i'm i don't know so who's number 10 right now so Peyton's going to be number 10 i know i know that the numbers make sense i'm saying those eight

coming off a couple losses i feel like that's i think he's They did push him. Him getting the Suhudo fight on the main card is a push. Yeah. He got the push. Maybe Long Island's right. Maybe that's a good fight for him. And again, it's not that it's a bad fight for us.

I'm saying it's a good fight for him. That's a different question. But yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe that is. Maybe that it is. I will have to see. But certainly that's the company that he's in now, BC. We'll see if he can go from there. Let's move down to the flyweight division.

Two-time champion Brandon Moreno entered this fight against Tatsuro Taira as a betting underdog. and we were very surprised by that. Boy, was I surprised to see the way the fight ultimately went as the Sharps knew what they were talking about. Tyra is so happy for sure, and he has reason to be stopping Moreno for the first time in the great Mexican former champion's career

and really making a statement two consecutive wins after that main event brawl against Brandon Royval in which Tyra lost and although he fought well at times, he looked incomplete. in that fight two fights later this is a different story luke was this fight more about tyra surging or did you see elements of moreno showing that the the beginning of the end is here so i will tell you morano's not old but he might be in dog years you know um first of all tyra looked better physically than i've ever seen him he's always obviously been

great at finding, you know, lead positions, particularly the back in grappling. So that's part what's not new, but B.C. I mean, I look, I would, no, I'm doing this a lot, but I really want to do one more time because I haven't talked to him yet. Long Island, let me ask you a question. Did Tyra look physically more imposing than he had in the past and then they operate that way? And then two, is it my imagination or did it look like Moreno wasn't taking the punches as well as he normally does? I got to be honest. I didn't notice either. those things that much i just remember round one moreno off his back almost had that triangle and i thought

he was going to get that and then before i know what the fights over i didn't think it was a weird stoppage do you guys think it was a weird stop quick a little quick for the for the i thought it was a little little early exactly it was almost just like in a in a matter of moments oh shit the fight's over and then i i don't it just felt like anticlimactic i don't know maybe i again i bet on moreno so that's probably why but yeah dude i don't know he looked a little like he couldn't take punches that well not so much in the standing but definitely like from the back when tyra was unloading on him he wasn't scrambling with the same kind of force that you saw him at least in my view get in the figurado fight now part of that is the pinning pressure that tyra was applying okay but

even then it just seemed like he was a little bit dare i say manhandled you know what i mean it kind of looked like he manhandled him dude the the the odds makers where we were all like oh these are crazy odds no they weren't they were right on the money you know yeah those guys tend to know what they're doing to protect the house it turns out but you look tyro was in insanely great shape as well he looked like he was ready to go five hard rounds even though this was a three round fight so breakthrough performance for him i'm not ready yet for him at the title level i think he needs one more i'd rather have horaguchi or the winner of royval cop and i maybe i don't know does this

does Royval reenter the title picture because Pantosia who beat him twice is now out as champion or is it the fact that Royval lost to Jan or so to Vann earlier this year

would that disqualify him or would you say well that was a fight of the year contender where you know Royval was in it until the final 30 seconds when he got knocked down how do you review Royval's title chances if he gets by cop pretty good if van is there because you can run that one back they may not want to because they

just saw it but they could still do it um i mean he i mean they're definitely not better with pantogia at the top right at least with van you got one more shot at it so he has to feel like he's got a little bit of a boost as a consequence and luke in the pay-per-view opener in the light heavyweight division and it was some sisters kissing in the end with the draw, a tie, as in aging and injured Jan Blahovitch was unable to ultimately get past Bogdan Guskov. You're telling me you are not entertained. What does this mean for the former champion Jan moving forward?

Um, I mean, dude, they were literally saying on the broadcast that he can't lift weights much anymore in camp because of his shoulder injury. And I'm like, brother. If your shoulder can't tolerate even moderate weight training, your time's almost up. You know, like your time's almost up. You can't be that physically infirm and expect to be able to commit physically to the fight itself when you need to, if you have that kind of self-imposed handicap as a consequence.

Like it just, it doesn't work. And the fact that he can't really seem to get right. you can look at his fights that he's had this terrible streak on and you can say he should have beaten poetime he should have beaten olberg and maybe like when i say should have i mean like everything should have gone his way you know uh but they just didn't and now they're accumulating and now his body is failing and now he's 42 it's like he's not getting beat up in these fights bc he's not getting his ass whipped you know that's not really what's happening but i think his best days are very inarguably behind him if he's trying to go for another title run he's wasting his time And unfortunately for the division, if this fight was set up potentially to sort of pass the torch to Gouskov as a new contender, the good news is he's 4-0 and 1 now since losing his UFC debut to Vulcan Oostomere. The bad news is he didn't look like a title contender in the performance. Is that too harsh to say? No, he didn't.

Light heavyweight sucks ass. That's a true fact. Yeah. I want all the light heavyways to just go up to heavyweight anyway. We'll just pause the division right now. Yeah, just get rid of it and have them fight the big old fat fucks. All right. Before we get into the rest of the UFC 323 card along with the reaction to the recent updates as the Paramount schedule continues to take shape for 26, I want to tell you something. UFC's not just hot. The NBA season right now is rolling. In fact, picture it rolling in your 500 bends.

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Call 8887-8-9-7-77 or visit ccpg.org in Connecticut must be 18-plus agent eligibility restrictions vary by jurisdiction. Pick-6 not available everywhere, including New York and Ontario void where prohibited. One per new customer bonus awarded as non-withdrawable pick-6 credits that expire in 14 days. terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos limited time offer. Yeah, ride the upside or ride the lightning. Luke, did you see Caleb Presley's Sunday conversation on Barstall with Dana White, where he was pitching a fight of John Jones versus Connor McGregor,

pound for pound or for the Euro fans, Kilo for Kilo. I did not. That's a very funny show, but I try not to listen to Dana White if I don't have to. You know what I'm saying? There we go. Okay, let's go to topic number four on the prelims of UFC 323. There were seven finishes, five by KOT, KO, 2 by submission. Luke Thomas, pick off the menu, your choice.

What was the most impressive or maybe even most important victory from the prelims, which featured a ton of names on Saturday night? All right, got to give big shouts, big shouts. I mean, it's not the very best of MMA, but it's some ways the very very, best of MMA. I'm sure I'm saying these names wrong. I don't know how you say his name. The Polish gentleman versus Ibo

Osloon 90 seconds BC of the crack pipe. That's what that was. That was Hunter Biden coming over with a big old rock. And he was like, I cooked up this rock. Let's smoke this shit. And a laptop that the Russians gave him, Luke. Yeah, probably so. That was just 90 seconds on the hit of the crack pipe.

It was phenomenal. But they were not the only ones that were offering you something like that. as Chris Duncan defeating Terrence McKinney with the Anaconda about halfway into the first round. Get or get God. It's the Terrence McKinney way, right? That's it. I mean, again, we called him the evil caneval of MMA, brother.

He shot out of a cannon. Either you're ready for it or you're not. That's the way he fights. It's, uh, it's, he's just guaranteed excitement. But I have to say, B.C., you know, there's a bunch of directions you can go. I think most people are going to spotlight Macy Barber having a pretty great performance against Karine Silva. I was moved.

Okay. Well, I'll let you go then. got kicked twice while she was down what what would move to you about it 21 months away riding a what six fight win streak we'd sort of been waiting for her through scheduled fights against blanchefield nami unis that never took place she what had a seizure and fainted trying to cut weight last time she's had undiagnosed issues injuries and to put it all together against a tough opponent and koreen sylva and get that type of victory she was emotional afterwards look this i was starting to believe she was never going to be the same. I think a lot of us were. So to see her

score this victory and slay those demons, it felt good. All right, I've never been a huge fan of her, you know, stick or whatever, but like she's proving to be a legitimate fighter in this division. I had wondered what all that time off and all those physical setbacks would do. Did you not get the feeling like she's all the way back? She's not all the way back until she can put together a streak. and I mean like consistent activity where we're not having these derailed episodes I'm not that I'm blaming her I'm just saying that's what has to happen

but this certainly was I mean what could you call it BC a step in the right direction a big one it was it was really great to see I got to go Jalen Turner Jalen Turner yeah retires from the sport looks like he's completely done with it comes back okay you're going to say he's fighting a washed

Borboza he is but he looked awesome doing it he he found his range immediately he had vicious weapons he beat the shit out of barboza very quickly without mercy which is exactly what you want in the sport but with a but with technical precision that was such a big you're talking about triumphant returns bc that was a great one itself also not for nothing mansor abdul malik okay Antonio tricoli might be one of the worst fighters in ufc history i'm not even doing a bit with that like that might be real the champion's ex-boyfriend you're

talking about all right yeah fair enough but mansor abdililic who wrestled i think at the university of Maryland smoked him so that was fun to see as well but dude you can go Manuel Torres in the main Long Island Luke your standout on the prelim card I mean now that you named every fight I got Ewo versus Ebo is the clear giveaway

here that was the best round of the year and it was only 90 seconds what's the only fight we didn't mention Bruno Faheda Marvin Vittori was probably the worst fight on the prelims but it was actually still the dude that killed Mepravola yeah he also killed his 2-0 against Saralongo beat Nazim

Saddykov too I mean yeah dude the prelims were fun as hell I the last two fights on the main for me from fandom standpoint just killed it for me but the card was really fun up until that point for me is Grant Dawson done being relevant I mean that was a tough loss that was a bad one I mean his problem is he's obviously great at grappling he's great from the back he can put you through the cycle but the parts of the game leading up to that just are not where they need to be to win consistently at a high level in the sport I mean I'm not trying to a dick he seems like a great guy but it's tough it's tough and also torres was had a good game plan right they were talking about on the broadcast real patient took his time

and when it was time to go boxed him up i like the depth on this card i like the excitement early on some stories we talked about we do have some sound from macy barber here about the comeback journey and i hope she gets a huge fight off of this let's hear it um congratulations on the win but i guess how can you put into words what you're feeling right now after you know 21 months of not being able to do this? I don't know if I have a lot of words. Honestly, it's, yeah, there's been so long. I don't know if there's a lot of words to put into that much time.

A lot of fans and even media were saying, you know, the second Macy even enters the octagon, that's the win. Did you, were you viewing it that way too, or were you just viewing this as like, all right, we're past that part. Like, I'm just here to do, to fight and do what I like again. Sam, now you made me cry. Yeah, I think that was the win. I think that that was exactly what I,

I think that that's exactly how I kind of felt, you know. Even in the interview with Joe, I was like, you know, I'm just really happy to be here. I'm just really blessed to just, walk out do what I love I mean yes when the when I was walking out I mean at the end of the day like this is a job that I have there's another woman standing in front of me and and I have to I have a goal and a dream you know that I am chasing and and she's in my way uh there's nothing that that is going to get in the way of that but at the same time there is a girl inside of me that just loves

to go in there and and chase a dream too you know good stuff there from Macy Barber. By the way, Jose Young's in the same two-week period, making me rage quit and making women cry. This guy's just on a run right now. It's just a, an all-timer of a run. Look, we've got a bunch of announcements to go through as the UFC was busy with one of those seasonal press conferences on Friday, along with continuing to fill out this schedule for the new era, which begins January 24th with the UFC 324 pay-per-view. Before we do that, though, Dana, you know, finally met with the media. He didn't host any of these. press conferences during the week.

He was there for the post-fight press conference, so he was pressed on some important items, everything from the Ali Act to what have you. One of those items was the fallout for Armand Saruky, and as we already know and have broken down, it will be an interim lightweight title fight kicking off the main event of the first pay-per-view of the UFC Paramount era, whereas Ilya Teporia steps away with personal issues, Patty versus Justin Gaci. So now, what does that mean for Armand? Is he still persona nangrata with the company?

Here's Dana talking about it. Armand Srukin, obviously, the odd man out now. We expect Ilya to be unifying against the interim title winner, which would make a long runway for his title. I wouldn't say that he's the odd man out, you know. He had an opportunity, and you guys know how that played out, and he's going to have to work his way back. I don't give a shit what the number says.

He's going to have to work his way back. It's just too much goes into. this for those type of things to happen you know we were at we had a little uh we're talking back uh in my room tonight and we're talking about uh you know all the crazy shit that's happened over the last 20 something years um but you you can't do that you can't get the opportunity and then you can't end that way so he's got to work his way back look i don't like that at all Can I just say something? Can I just say something? I was on that hearing on Capitol Hill, and I watched all of the accompanying media that

Nick Con did, whether it was on with Max Kellerman on the pro-Saudy boxing show, or whether it was pro-corporate Monopoly, Pat McAfee show, whatever, where they're just, they'll say anything for a dollar, right? I mean, I'm talking about Max and Pat McAfee. And then Nick Con gets on these shows and is absolutely explicit, explicit, that the aim of Zufa boxing is to have, and this is his words, for example, on the Pat McAfee show, the champion is going to fight the number one contender.

If the number one contender's not ready, he'll fight the number two contender, just like it is in UFC. Lawrence Epstein, who is the chief operating officer of the UFC, said something virtually identical on Capitol Hill in some of the remarks that he gave. And then Dana White goes out there and says the exact contradictory, complete and unambiguous opposite of that, that he just doesn't care about the rankings. They will literally say anything to any audience about this as long as it is either satisfying some demand or meeting some. some other need. But their story about what their plan to do is, at a bare minimum, inconsistent. It is fucking crazy to me that all last week, the story from every executive in that

company was the exact opposite of this. Yeah. It's indefensible, especially with the Volk versus Diego Lopez rematch. That'll be UFC 325. The week after, literally the weekend after 324, so we'll get back to back. PLEs in the new era. but I agree with you. It feels petty.

I mean, look, was it because UFC 311 was at that Clippers arena and it was supposed to be this like very big deal? I don't know who famous was supposed to be their cage side, you know, in terms of like, did that let him and the company down that so you can pull that? I mean, people have done that before. Famously Amanda Nunes couldn't make wait for the initially scheduled Chivchenko rematch and Dana said she'd never headline again and, you know, she won back that reputation. but is this just you pulled out of the wrong card at the wrong time or is it even deeper?

Does it have to play into the fact that Sarukin isn't motivated by the need for money that it makes, does it make it a tougher negotiation? I mean, what is like the deeper transgression? Is it just you had a title fight and you didn't make it to the to the cage? Is that it? So that's the interesting part to me, BC. I was talking about this Long Island look before the show. if it's that he had a late injury due to some kind of accident from, you know,

the day before, fight prep or two days before, whatever it was, you know, why would they punish him so severely? Like, Chayev did not get punished or talked bad about at all for missing weight by seven pounds against me. It doesn't make any sense. Like, why would you go after him? I understand that they would be pissed that something fell apart at the last minute for them and that maybe they thought he was a little bit reckless about it because remember

he did punch a fan one time and like he remember he head budded uh dan hooker he's done some the fan thing the punch the fan thing is is a thing that's a thing yeah okay i mean he's done some boneheaded stupid shit but he lost on that opportunity he had to make wait for one fight and then he just headlined the the guitar fight against dan hooker my question is if you're mad at him cool what is the punishment because just sidelining him outside of the rankings makes every single thing you are telling lawmakers a total lie. So which is it? Which is it?

Like I asked this after the Qatar thing, BC, if we're mad at him, okay, we're mad at him. When is the punishment over? What does that look like? Set the map for me because if it's just he suffered a freak injury, you know, late while that is unfortunate, the level of punishment here just seems to be onerous relative to that. Is there more to the story that we do not know?

That's the part I'm trying to figure out. The way that he handled it, do they not believe that he had any physical issues? Again, I don't know if I'm like, was that a certain close-up card where they were going to have like the paramount exec's case? I don't know. I'm thinking like, what was it that made him so angry? Either way, Sarukin, out of the mix for a bit. We did get at that seasonal press conference, both Patty and Gaichi saying that they thought they were, each of them thought they were fighting Elia, basically up until the announcement was made that they would instead be fighting each other.

So it did feel like Saruky, and despite that big win against Hooker, despite the call out afterwards where he was ready to turn around on two months, that he was never in that equation. So that won't happen. We do know, though, as they filled out more of the 324 card, and now the main event of the UFC 326 card, because 325 will be Volk versus Lopez. but how about all the way into Mark for UFC 326 in Las Vegas, March 7th,

a rematch for the BMF title, Charles Dobrunks Olavera, against the current belt holder Max Holloway. Luke, I got popped for this. I'm down for it. I love that every once in a while we can have a pay-per-view main event that doesn't necessarily need to be a traditional title fight. That could be just two great names that you want to see against each other. and in this case against each other again

because the first one had that weird injury ending so long ago. I did see some people upset at it, not loving it. Where do you fall in this? I'm more than fine with this. I'm fine with this. Yeah, this is totally fine. Everyone's going to say, oh, the titles made up. All the titles are made up. I mean, some are more clearly defined than other ones. But this is a great fight. It's a great rematch. Especially we all know, hey, everyone wants that White House car to be big.

well if you want that fight house at the uh excuse me if you want that fight at the white house bc to be big you got to make some sacrifices on events before and after now listen we should actually talk about that for just the second bc because it is relevant i don't think it's necessarily political to say that the president of the united states says a lot of things and sometimes they are true and sometimes they are not he said that today or yesterday bc that um he's expecting eight or nine fights that are title fights at the White House card, which if you do the math would be all the men's divisions and one or two of the women's divisions. Now, that sounds like he's got, that just, that seems like a lot, right? I don't know if that's correct. That would,

that would just kill your schedule on either side of these. And they've got 43 events to deliver. That being said, you know, you're probably going to get three, maybe four title fights. Hell, maybe even five, right? You could potentially get a whole main. card of them, which means BMF fights are going to have to be headliners to make that kind of thing possible. So my response to fans would be just, you know, make sure you understand what you want. If you all want a big White House card that's a grand, you know, festival and given what the president is potentially saying about it, you're going to have to make some sacrifices on the front and back in. Yeah, I like the fights that they've added up and down to UFC 324 to make

that first opening card even deeper. I think it's going to hit hard. Let's look at what 325 got announced below that Volk v. Lopez. Wow, quick turnaround, Dan Hooker in what can only be a better. Yeah, I don't love it either against Benoit St. Denis. You've got, we'll talk about that in a second. You've got Fiziv against Maricio Huffy, who needs to come back with a big performance. This should be sloppy and fun at heavyweight, Tuivasa against Tish, what's that, what's Tallison, Tashara? And then Jimmy Crue, Dustin Jacoby, and, oh, the new Australian guy.

What is it, Quinn, Salkil? Yeah, Quillin, Salkil. versus wrong zoo um so there's some bangers on this one but luke i agree with you it feels too much too soon for hooker who was just stopped by arm and sarukin and kind of dominated uh what gives here i hate this i mean well okay i don't hate the fight as such right it's a like oh dan hooker uh uh bsd okay well that's violence that's that's gonna be great dude dan hooker just got the shit beaten out of him his face was all fucked up how was he back in camp for this kind of a fight that's not that far from now. Like, I don't love that. I don't love that it's so quick on the turnaround.

It's not the quickest turnaround I've ever seen, but remember, he's been, maybe that Edson Barbosa fight, there was controversy after Hooker's Edson Barbosa fight because of how much damage he took and then the ref didn't intervene. Daniel Cormier was yelling at the ref, essentially on the broadcast itself, quite rightly in my judgment. Like, the dude has taken a metric ton of abuse. I don't love the turnaround here, to be honest with you. And it makes BSD's chances even greater. Yeah, but that Fiziv-Hoofie fight bangs, I like a lot of the supporting fights. February, there will be, I believe, three UFC fight night cards, no official PLE slash pay-per-view because they're going back-to-back pay-per-view weekends to kick off the new Paramount

era. But one of those has a very good middleweight main event. I think we have a graphic to support it here. As Fluffy Hernandez, who had a pull out of that RDR number one contender fight, will come back quickly here against former champion, Sean Strickland. Luke Thomas, this This division just recently was very bottlenecked, but do you feel like this could be a number one contender fight? I think it has to be. I mean, I guess Imovov is the guy, but do the winner of this, I mean, even Shemayev was saying, well, he's Dagestani, I'm Chechen,

and I'll fight him if I have to, but you know, I've got a lot of respect for him and it could cause a lot of tension and make things weird. It was essentially what he was saying. He doesn't want to, so I don't know what the UFC's going to do about that, but if they want, they can just slot the winner of this one. on NBC, especially if it's Strickland and he could talk a gang of shit, you know, but at the same time, um, Fluffy's also a great fight. So like I feel like they're, you know, this fight is a good

fight. Would I rather have seen Fluffy? Actually, I tell you what, B.C. Given the state that RDR was in, I guess I really wouldn't have rather seen that. I'm glad I get this one. You're going to get Hernandez against, uh, ready to go, maybe, maybe past prime, but are ready to go Sean Strickland, who's got good takedown defense and usually pretty great cardio this is a fun ass fight that's a good fight and the winner of that one will be very much deserving of a big opportunity from that and uh what city will that take place in because sean houston houston okay he originally said he turned down of chance to fight fluffy in australia so uh they're going to fight in houston instead very good main event need to see fluffy back and healthy and see whether he's ready to climb that ladder

and we'll see how long chimae stays atop this division as he's flirting with a move to 205 let's go to topic number five, it's boxing. It was a pay-per-view, PBC Prime Video in San Antonio over the weekend. Your boy, B. Sizzle, on the call. And in the main event, the two gentlemen, the only two in boxing who have taken Tank Davis to the 12-round limit and both performed very well against him fought one another

as Tank continues to sit out with personal issues, although the result of this fight did seem to tease a comeback pretty soon. In the end, Lamont Roach Jr. moved up. up to a new weight class for the for the third time in three fights here gave up his 130 pound title took on isaac pit bull cruise the mexican star at 140 and by the way luke you want to talk about pit bull being in line to take the baton from canelo as the next most beloved mexican star that arena 10,000 people inside where the spurs NBA spurs play dude that thing was electric like you couldn't hear yourself think after he scored a third round knockdown

But despite knocking Roach down for the first time in Lamont's career, the second half of the fight was much different. Lamont operated within Pitbull Cruze's preferred phone booth style and area and actually made the great pit bull back up and circle away. In the end, however, I had scored the fight eight rounds to four in favor of Roach. The judges saw it differently. One judge scoring it by five points for pit bull. Two judges scoring it, even 113, 113, 1.3.1.

13 pit bull was doctor point in round eight for holding he would go on to blame the draw on the referee afterwards look i do have to believe though the bigger story here is for roach who in a different reality could be your fighter of the year in 2025 by doing what he did to tank doing what he did to pit bull crews making him back up out of his a game yet can we run the tweet here from dan canobio over 24 rounds against two of the best fighters in this in these divisions Lamont Roach did not get a single scorecard in his favor over two fights. He only has two draws to show for it. Luke, what does this say about Roach in what could have been his breakout year

that as good as we thought he fought, the judge is still in the end, didn't think he did enough. Man, this one was heartbreaking. Shouts to Lamont Roach, who, as you indicated, overcame a third round knockdown. And I thought dominated down the stretch, except for the 12th round BC. I thought Pitbull probably did enough to take the 12th round. But I thought he got thoroughly outboxed, certainly in the second half of that fight,

you know, and maybe the middle parts too. But BC, I kind of go back to the same problem. It's like, okay, is Lamont Roach good enough to be at 140 and give guys up their problems? Clearly, clearly, is he good enough to give guys problems at 135? Again, he should have won that one outright because Tank took the knee. I mean, for no other reason, he got job there. But like, I'm just not convinced these are places. as he should be in right now. I mean, I understand he's chasing big fights and big names and big

opportunities and he's done that. But it's come with, you can say unfair, but mixed results. It's come with, you know, again, we can have a conversation about boxing judging. We can have a conversation about boxing officiating, particularly as related to the tank fight. But at the same time, he just seems like at 1.30, and maybe you think Shakur would beat him, maybe you think, Oshaki Foster would beat him at 130 BC, who also had a great performance. on that main card. Maybe that's the case, but I just feel like those are fights where he's going to be not up against some of the circumstances where he doesn't have big power. He is a slickster. He can get the job done, but not physically completely outmatched, but not physically

maximized BC. I think that's the kind of thing that's holding it up. It's not a question of skill. It's definitely not a question of will, but it might be a question of, you know, the sturdiness of what he's got to offer at these weight classes. You were ringside. So I'd be more curious to hear what you have to say. I do slightly disagree with that. I mean, look, I rewatch the tank fight, which I also called, you know, a lot heading into this rematch. And I'll say, each time I watched it, I was more and more impressed with what Roach did because Tank came back in those middle rounds in five and six and put it on him and looked like he was on his way to doing something big. And Roach just stopped it. He stood in the middle. He took a big shot from Tank, countered with a bigger one that wobbled him.

and they actually went at it for a few rounds after that. But in hindsight to that decision, was he screwed by the no knockdown call? 100%. But there were so many close rounds in which neither man either tank or roach through a lot of punches where I think, and we were saying that during the broadcast back in March, it felt like both fighters were taking a gamble

that the judges would prefer what they were doing when they were like single digit lands and they were playing a lot of chess except for those exciting rounds. I think it was different in the rematch. And I know a lot of fighters pick Cruz. I was talking to Stephen Espinoza. He had thought Cruz won, but, you know, he was in the crowd. And Cruz had such a crowd advantage there in San Antonio that any time he did anything,

they were going nuts. So you knew it had the potential to be a close fight. But you also had a lot of people predicting that Roach was going to box from the outside against Cruz to try to deal with that pressure. And instead, he parked right in front of him. And although he got knocked down for the first time in his career, dude, when he surged back in those middle routes, cannot believe he turned Pipple into a boxer.

He made him circle away. He made him do a lot of things that we've never seen him have to do before, even against Tank Davis. And now we find out that Roach broke his hand in round five in this fight and still put on that performance down the stretch. Remember, when Pipple on late notice after they pulled Roley, gave that performance against tank where he lost basically 115, 113 on two of the three cards, it was said that for as good as he fought, Tank injured his hand halfway three.

and if they had rematch it, it would look differently. Roach did the same thing, and I thought he won comfortably. Now, the official score, Larry Hazard, had it close the whole way and had it just barely for Roach in the end. I'm not upset for anyone that had crews closer because the first half of the fight had some very close rounds where even from a CompuBoc standpoint, it was even. But in totality, when you look at those stats, it was all Roach.

And I think when you add up the rounds, Roach did everything you would have wanted it in my opinion. He didn't rely on the boxing. He stood in there, landed the bigger shots, backed people up, and I don't know if it's just bad luck, or if it's the fact that he's facing a very popular fighter in Texas, or maybe it's just Texas, which is renowned for having such a horrible commission, one that you can't rely upon. You just have to feel bad for him. Like he said in the post-fed interview, what the hell do I have to do ultimately to get this done? Let's hear from Lamont Roach, and then we can react to this. Here's him at the press conference after the fight.

And Antonio, thank you very much to all the fans. Thank you to the media. As we welcome up one half of our main event of the evening, the fight ended in a draw. He fought his part out and again showed the true champion that he truly is. Ladies and gentlemen, Lamont Roach Jr. Give him a round of applause. Lamont,

you've blessed an hour room from your fight. What's going through your mind? Man, I hope everybody in and enjoy it. oh yeah um honestly you know obviously i proved that i'll fight anyone again this is not my knack away and um i moved up again and fought a tough competitor and uh and i was a cruise but two times in a row it's great i can't fight my opponent and fight the judges um it's just it's something we got to to do about it. It's something we got to do about it. I think I won. I think I definitely outboxed them. All I need is an even playing field. That's all. I'm going to come out there and show my

skills. I'm going to show my grit, my will, everything else. And not to mention, I think I broke my hand in like the fifth round or something like that. If we have questions for Lamont Roach, raise your hand. Look, here's what I have to say. At 1.30 where he was a title holder, he beat Luis Garcia by knocking him down in the final round. He had one title defense. I thought he was a good fighter, never looked great. He moved up to 35, was clearly the bigger fighter against Tank and gave Tank the hardest fight of his life,

then moved up to 140 and gave Pitbull Cruz the hardest fight of his life. He kind of deserves to come out of this year as a star, in my opinion, for the way that he raised his game on the brightest stage. I have nothing but respect for him. In some ways, this is boxing. You got close fights that could go. either way if you don't finish him, but I believe in him as a true elite now, either at 35 or 40, and I think he might have the body to go to Welterway, too, eventually.

Tough draw here, ultimately, but Lamont Roach has had an incredible year, and I almost think he deserves Fighter of the Year votes coming off of two majority draws. It's crazy to say that, too, and this is the other part of BC, I'll say in defensive Roach, who, again, I like him and his father very much, a couple of D.C. guys, you know, I'm going to be biased towards them. But BC, he, he didn't just dare to be great here and going to 35 and then 40 respectively, you know, fighting big time A sides. And people are going to say, okay, well, tanks in A side, but how much is Pipple Cruz? B.C., tell the truth. Pipple Cruz is one of the best ticket movers in boxing, particularly in these Mexican-American markets like San Antonio.

He was, I mean, he was the A-side and he was the hometown favorite by a gazillion miles, even though he wasn't from San Antonio. So this guy is going up and weights into the lion's den against big names or big names in certain markets, which again, when they land, the crowd roars and when the, when Roach lands, you know, there's just a bunch of silence. Correct me if I'm wrong. Like this to me also feels like how hard it is to really upset the powers that be Applecart, so to speak, in boxing when you try to make a name for yourself.

Very, very difficult to do. They both at the press conference afterwards sort of argued over who won. Both agreed to a rematch. Like I said, Pitbull sort of blamed it. on the referee for taking a point away for holding. But Pippel had been dirty. A lot of this fight and had been warned a lot. As much as I'd like to see a rematch here, Luke,

this fight did wake up Tank Davis, whether you want to see him again or not. And he had replied to some fans, told a lot of the fans to F off, but ultimately said when his knee is healthy, I didn't know he had a knee setback, that he wants to rematch Pipple. Now, if Tank Davis doesn't see jail time

over the continued transgressions in domestic abuse, would you rather see Tank in a rematch with Pitbull or Roach or just see those two fight each other again? I don't know what to say about Tank Davis. I guess of all worlds, I'd like to see that more because that one he felt to me the Pitbull fight was close, I thought.

Tank fight was close too, but then with the knee, not really, right? He really should have won that one. He got fucking jobbed in that one. I don't feel like he necessarily. got jobbed against crews, although I also had them winning. But yeah, 35, I think, is better. And the tank fight to me feels like the bigger wrong of the two,

although I can understand an argument for the reverse. That's the one I'd like to see. But tank is so freaking unpredictable. I don't know what to say about that. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'd love to see Tank Roach, too. That'd be my choice out of all those three. But, heck, if you had to do Tank Pipple, too,

and then you put Roach on the Coal Main, maybe against a Frank Martin who had to break the win or whatever. Like, I think there's ways you can build toward this if Tank is committed again to the sport. We'll see what happens. Quickly on that, Colmain, boxing insiders were fired up about this fight. It was a virtual pick-um betting-wise.

Unfortunately for Stephen Fulton, Jr., the featherweight title holder, he had tried to move up to 1.30 to challenge Oshaki Foster for his belt, looking to become the first three-division champion in Philadelphia history, and he had said coming in, this will cement him for the Hall of Fame, and he wanted to move up to lightweight afterwards. Then he goes out and misses weight by two pounds, and because of alphabet shenanigans, the WBC then floats a completely unnecessary vacant interim lightweight title fight. It kept the fight alive, but in the end, dude, Oshaki Foster looked like an absolute complete champion with a like borderline virtuoso drubbing.

Now, he didn't get all 12 rounds from all three judges. He got all 12 rounds on my score sheet. Luke, how impressed were you with Foster making Fulton look? like he didn't belong in the ring with him i was shocked by this uh first of all i was shocked that fulton missed weight going up to 30 i was like what the fuck is this dude he got he got no one would argue and i'm not arguing bc that the in a way loss isn't worse the in a way loss is worse he got finished and you know was really never in that one either i don't know how to explain this bc maybe i'm maybe i'm just completely out of my mind i almost almost

I'm not saying it is. I almost feel like this one is worse because it went the full distance and he got, dude, this was a master class when Foster was in Southpaw. Like how to fight as a rangy Southpaw? I thought this was like, you could teach a class on how well he did it.

But then of course, going back to Orthodox at various points, including down the stretch as well. Man, dude, this was, Fulton just was made to look lesser than from beginning to end in this one. Domination is what I would call it. He didn't, I don't think Fulton got like super beat up in this one, but he got outboxed.

He got thoroughly outboxed in this one. Foster's best win to date in many ways, BC. Yeah, and Foster had come off three straight split decisions, a controversial loss in between Robson Conceau, and I think he really felt the criticisms people had given him for being a slow starter, a defensive fighter, He was full offense all the time. I was proud of him, seriously,

given what he's been through in his life, to have a victory like this. I think Fulton needs to go back to 26 if he can make it or almost step away. And I hate to say that, Luke, he's still got great ability and he tried hard for 12 rounds, but he doesn't have the power to be a track you down guy, and he didn't have the speed to outbox, or Foster here,

so he almost had nothing to miss weight to have a video that was out there during the week at the press conference where he was bragging about eating two Thanksgiving meals. because he didn't have to cut so hard and then he missed weight. It's a bad look overall. And shout out, of course, to Jesus Ramos Jr. for getting that secondary middleweight belt against Shane Mosley Jr. That was a very competitive fight.

Quick highlight, though, of the featured prelim, the ghost Frank Martin, who hadn't fought since that loss to Tank Davis on pay-per-view, moved up and wait 17 months later and sent Rances Bartholome to hell. Luke, that was a breakthrough performance. Are you a believer in the ghost in the new weight class now? I'm a believer that he ghosted on me five times for an interview, as I brought up now, because I'm definitely not bitter about it. He did the same thing to me, dude.

Yeah, the exact same thing. And he followed me on Instagram, like when we were setting it up. I was like, oh, great, this will be cool. And then just kept not showing up. I'm like, oh, my fucking God. But, dude, that was great. And also, Rances Bartholomey has stunk up the joint a million times. So, you know, he kind of had this one.

You kind of had this one coming a little bit. But Frank Martin, you know, he was overmatched against Tank, but he looked fantastic here. Again, great South Paul fighter. BC, how about Frank Martin versus Lamont Roach? Wouldn't hate that one either. I would love that. I hope we get a chance to see that.

He's now with Buddy McGirt, by the way, after falling out with Derek James. So good win right there. That wraps up the BBC pay-per-view from over the weekend. Let's go now to our next segment here. We give you the chance every Sunday night on social media at Morning Combat on Instagram and X to get your questions heard.

This one's called DMs from the dogs. All right, our boy, a man and his cat leads off. What has been some of your favorite rematches that had extremely different outcomes than expected? Because I guess he's referencing, of course, the Jan Devalis-Ville main event on Saturday. I'm thinking in boxing, of course, when Mani Paco, after losing the first fight to Eric Morales,

came back and stopped him and just ran through him after a very close start to that fight. That blew my mind. I'm trying to think in M.MA, Luke, where it just goes... Shogun having that long battle with Machita, and then they rematch them, and he just bulldozed him right away. That was kind of interesting. You know,

a little more like this one, which was the first time Couture and Liddell thought Liddell got out-wrestled, even though he came from a wrestling background. Everyone knows that Cal Poly, and then in the second fight, Couture couldn't get shit going and got iced. And then, obviously, the third time, too.

But I don't know if that's exactly like it was a big upset as much as it just went very differently than the first time. How about Fury Wilder too? That was pretty surprising. That was crazy. That was definitely crazy um in a shitty way joshua um uh ruiz um i'm not sure i don't think about that one a little

bit more because a lot of times we did see it coming it just went differently it's different than like oh my god i'm so surprised you know yeah yeah interesting what you what are you doing over there with your left hand i was petting my cat reggie jackson just just arrived he's here he's let me see if i can get him on the camera. Reg, say hi, buddy. Yeah, there we go. There we go. You know, Luke, he's making so many enemies in the house during Christmas season,

hanging from the Christmas tree, beating up the girl cats, keeping everyone up at night by just screaming, running down the hallway screaming, you know. He'll be the last one that I euthanize. Oh, my God. That's wild. All right. Thank you for the question of man and his cat. I'm also one of those.

Let's hear from flannels and jits. He says with how Suhudo's career ended, how much did his last comeback impact his legacy. It's a good question because Sudo walked, Suhudo walked away in his prime, two division champ, high on the pound for pound list, took three years off. He's 0 in four since that comeback, even though he fought well against Al Joe in a split decision title loss. Luke, if he did not take that time off, what does his legacy look like? Well, that's a different question. Put this one back up. How did the way his career ended, how did his last comeback impact his MMA legacy? So this is more

about okay once he did come back what did it add does it does it change his legacy losing four in a row at the end it changes it a little bit but it doesn't really undercut the fact that the guy was a fucking olympic gold medalist and a two-way world i mean that's what i mean dude that is such an overwhelming achievement that like you have to go on a bj pen ask run for there to be like people just to lose sight of what you did this doesn't do that but it clearly just um what it did to me, B.C. was it underscored what a tragic error in strategic thinking it was to take those three years off like that in the middle of his prime. The last five fights before he left the sport in May of 2020 was a decision went over Sergio Pettus, a very quality win, an upset of

Demetrius Johnson for the title, split decision over five rounds, a knockout of T.J. Dillishaw for the flyweight title, and then goes up for the vacant Banimate title, gets beat up by Marlon Moraish, and comes back and stops him in round three, and then defends the title. against Dominic Cruz and Keith Peterson by TKO in round two. That's, I mean, obviously, that's the run that made him a Hall of Famer, but he's got some other wins earlier in his career with that. But that run alone, dude, that's legendary. That was a sick-ass run.

Yeah, he had a great moment there. All right. Let's go to our third one from Tori O'Neill. Now that Marab has lost, who is your fighter of the year? Now I'm sure we're going to break that down as we get closer to the new year. but Luke, this changes because every discussion I've had about this with my editorial colleagues at CBS was always, well, it's going to be Marab. It's not going to be Marab now.

Yeah. So is it Islam, even though the Moikano victory in January isn't, you know. You can lose and still be a fighter of the year contender. So for example, in the same year, Robbie Lawler lost a very controversial fight to Johnny Hendrix and then won a little bit and then rematched him later that year and then beat him. him so he was three and one that year technically bc like marab is three and one but it's a little different when you avenge that loss later that year does that compare to to connor mcgregors 2016 where he lost to nate beat him in a classic and then knocked out eddie to win the

right same kind of thing where you can avenge it that's different you can say josh van because you know he didn't lose and he fought four times and he won a title technically um i feel to me the most the most i'll say this the single most impressive of victory to me might be Yon. You could say Yon has a clear cut case for it to B.C. He didn't have bad here. What were his other wins? Let me see. Marcus McGee. And what was the other one? He had

one more, I think. Well, maybe it was just those two, actually. It was just those. I can't remember if it was this year. All right. Well, what about this? What about Islam might be the answer? Islam might be. Islam's going to be high up there. What about Valentina? What about Manon Faroe, undefeated,

physically tough and then Zhong Wei Li in a fight that we thought was 50-50 and she beat the bad... She's up there. Yeah, she's up there. Yeah, those were both

what... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could make a case for her too. Did Tcha Maia just fight once? Just once. He beat the living... Well, I mean, he controlled, I should say, DDP to the worst extent possible,

but not much more than that. We'll see if... We'll see where the votes go as we figure it out toward the end. And to Poria, great win over Olivera, but he fought just one time. So that's not really, that's not enough. And you can't give it to Marab.

You can't. No, you can't. Again, not just not because he went three and one, but because of the way that it ended. Dude, if he had called it off, he would be the winner. Three title defenses, that is fucking incredible. Would Pantosia have been it if he had beaten Van straight up?

Say again? If Pantosia had defeated Van, would he have been it. Maybe. Who's WCA? What am I not thinking of? Saucer Boy, Cortez-A Costa. Oh, he went four and one.

Yeah, okay, but at heavyweight. I mean, let's be serious. I'm just saying, I mean, he had a good year. He had a good year. He had a good year. He definitely had a good year. All right, all right. Let's keep it going right here.

The next one comes from Antonio M. Alvarez. What's a modern MMA trend that you'd love to see left behind in 2020? say that one more time what's a modern MMA trend that you'd like to see end this year is it buying people on Twitter talking about their favorite fighters as we oh that's bad that's pretty lame what about dealing with ESPN plus we're going to leave that behind aren't we well I still have to watch PFL you know okay okay uh what about Mr. P paramount over there is like I don't have to worry about that bullshit anymore we still gotta watch a little PFL

my phone uh what a long outlook you got any MMA trends we should leave behind I guess it's an MMA trend I always hate when people say someone's a lock to win a fight like oh they're a lock they're gonna like no one's a fucking lock man it's a fight so leave that behind you sound like an old Luke Thomas going we don't know who's gonna win

nobody knows who's gonna win how can I give a prediction nobody knows nobody knows everyone pretends they know no one knows I like when they used to be like, Luke, what's your best bet of the weekend? You're like, well, I mean, minus 1,400 favorite, he's going to win. That's the best bet. Yeah. I like how you think that this is not a sound way of advising people.

Everyone who gets it right is also just doing a guessing game. They mostly don't even know. And half the time, more than half the time, that they get it right. Their reasoning isn't even very good. They're just guessing. They're just guessing. Take it for what it is. Our final question comes from Sticks plays time.

If you could talk to the mid-30s version of you right now, what would you say to them? So let's say the 35-year-old version of Luke Thomas. That would be 11 years ago. That would be 2014. What are you saying to that man? You're not going to believe this, but you should change careers immediately.

Get the frick out of here. That's what I would tell. If I was 35, that's what I would, or I had a chance to talk to that 35. Yeah, that's what I would tell them. okay okay uh i would tell the 35 year old me to believe believe believe believe it's possible believe the doors can open believe that just because something falls apart that you had a big opportunity and doesn't mean that it's the end of your run in that field believe

believe looks like actually i would tell myself don't follow your dreams you're only going to be disappointed terrible mistake to make yeah All right. Anything else? You want to tell the 35-year-old version of you, Luke? Just that. Just that. Like, you've got a certain kind of sophomoric idea about how you think your life's going to go, and it's not going to go that way. It's better to be a very cold but calculated realist about it. And, yeah, that's what I want to do. People that are realists end up in nine to fives that they hate, Luke. I'd rather believe, all right? That doesn't sound so bad. Yeah. You ask you, it's a very weird that you.

ask me my opinion and then don't like it when I tell you something that's unpleasant, I suppose. But people have a lot of bad ideas. I mean, dude, this is a terrible industry to be involved in. And I don't fully regret it. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. But yeah, if I had, if I had 11-year window to make a lap move, I would have done it. All right, then, the very honest musings of one, Luke Thomas. Let's go to our final segment. Thank you for your questions, fans. Where I scoured the globe yesterday for the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs and lows, and in between, and the world of combat sports and beyond, there's kernels in my shit.

Have you seen them? Luke, PBC over the weekend. Pitbull Cruz was acting like a freak in the ring. It came when he was most frustrated by Roach. What do you make of this move? Did you see that? One more time. He gave him the tongue, the full tongue.

You end to that? I've given some people that tongue before. Okay. All right. Who knew? He was a freak. All right, big week from Marab. Here's an interesting soundbite that came heading into 323.

If I lost against him, the Peterian, I will kill myself, you know? What the fuck? Well, okay. Okay, there's that. Yep. Also, Marab ran into a fan who tried to do the Bruce Buffer bit. It was great. The Olympics martialist record of 19 wins with more losses.

He's 10. My feet 60s is tall weighing in. That's awesome. I now think Marab is the best fighter in the world. Yes. Long out, Luke, let's skip the Marab ambulance clip. Let's go to our regional MMA highlights of the week. Luke, where what?

anything can happen? Anything can happen, brother. All right, this is ACA. This man is Mirza Bekhov. He gets the submission win, but watch the celebration. The thing about celebrating is you don't want to pass out, right? Wow, he is jacked. What the fuck? Okay.

Wow. Okay. He passed out during the celly. Dude, if you beat the opponent, don't let gravity beat you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Let's go to FFC 99.

check out this ending okay you know what's so funny about this the the KO is incredible this guy who won Lucas Korbaji uh I called the fight just before this of him he fought an XFC and he got smashed in like I don't know maybe seven seconds like one of the shortest fights you've ever seen like something crazy the dude who beat him is like waiting to be signed by the UFC and they haven't signed him yet and I don't know what they're waiting on because you can see the guy we beat is pretty quality. We're probably waiting on him to accept a 12 and 12. Look, look, you've been an active man in your life.

What's your favorite form of birth control? The old pull-out method, you know what I'm saying? You've got to roll that dice, brother. Never fails until it does. Let's check out a new option. This is the most effective birth control on the market. If you use this, your chances of getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant drops to zero.

So it's called Magic the Gathering and it's this card game. all right uh luke it is the holiday season let's go back and receive some love from one o j simpson covering up the white meat i mean i don't think that that actually said that i think someone put that on there but that's a funny bit you know all right uh your jersey of the week let's shout out to number eight here wow wow why would you ever go to a football game honestly i don't know I don't know, with your family. What would be the point? I don't know.

Luke, there ain't no holiday like Thanksgiving. You know, I've said that before. Let's bring in Boston, be a man. Invite a hookah to your family dinner and tell everybody she's your girlfriend. Be a man. I've gotten pretty close at times, BC. You know what I mean? Oh, Luke, let's do a Thanksgiving special of Would You Eat?

They call this the Franksgiving dog. So you take a glizzy. You put some cranberry on, all right? you get some stuffing dude this is brilliant how gravy how have I never tried this would you eat it Luke no oh come on dude that's the best part of Thanksgiving why would I eat gravy with cranberry jelly and stuffing and stuffing

that looks like a yes also can I say something yeah as a lot of people constantly seek how do I say this exactly? They want too much balance in their food. I want it sweet and sour. I want sweet and savory. Some combination of that at times is great. Sometimes I don't want to mix sweet with my savory.

I just want savory. And I feel like we have too much of the, oh, I want opposites in my food. And I don't necessarily always need that. Some people want a dream job that's in line with their passions. Luke is like, don't do it. Don't do it. That's a gig.

gigantic mistake. Oh, we have a bonus. Would you eat? Luke? It's called the Moby Dick Burger. Keep an open mind. Would you eat this? Is that an egg?

Is that cheese? That's cheese. And there's like some kind of pink sauce. Bacon. Oh, my God. They're going to wrap this motherfucker up? Yeah. It's a, it's, wow.

All right, they're going to, oh, okay. All right, let's see the insides. Oh, my God. Yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I eat that in a second.

This guy's gross. and I hope he dies, but that's a good-looking burrito. All right. Luke, let's go to one more, would you eat? Some people have different things for their wedding. How about a glizzy wedding cake? Okay. This is, I'm on board with this.

This is, it's like a jenga tower of shitty hot dogs. Hell yeah, bro. By the way, I've been on that. By the way, it honestly looks like Han Solo is at the top of that fucking glizzy cake, you know? The best wedding I ever went to about five years ago. My uncle got married in his front yard. He had a hot dog stand in ice cream truck and cases full. of uh jenny light beer i mean it was that is i'll say this too for the president i'm being serious

about this do you remember when he invited all like i think it was clemson he had at the white house and he had that vast array of fast food yes remember it was like all like the the the the um big mac boxes and everything i was like i'm not super mad at that can i be can i be else i'm not super mad at that they say that guy d t 45 47 loves some mickey ds loves it i mean let he who is without sin cast a first stone who doesn't you know Luke we always want Aspin all to fight through blindness but you know

mixing sports with injuries can be dangerous same thing with bowling let's watch this gentleman good form so far oh you idiot wait on the broken arm that's not going to be good keep fucking up the surgery you get dumbasses yeah uh grid iron time in the NFL our cock punch of the week

comes from this 49ers game look at this with the cat Oh, damn. Dude. And these guys often have like some kind of protective coating on it, you know? So it's like brass knuckily, you know. It's like margarito in the mostly fight. You know what I mean?

It's wild. All right. Luke, the Yo-O-Romero Bellator bit will never not make me laugh. Check this out. Yeah. Ha, ha, har, heart, heart. Yeah. That's great bit.

Luke let's check in on the WWE you big Paul Heyman guy Luke watch this kid try to come up for some love Get out of it. He's now my favorite person in the way. Also Anybody who tells other strangers To get the fuck out of their face

Yeah Is my kind of guy. You know what I'm saying? Check out your boy Brock Lesner Let's see if he fights at the White House But watch your footwork here, Brock. All right, all right. He recovered a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, he ate it. That dude is on a lot of things, Luke. Speaking of Brock, it's time for MMA fighters in the wild. Here's Sean Strickland running up on some kids. Very relatable. Well, I ran to this fucking guy, and he's buying fucking drugs from that guy. Real bad. Get it, bro.

Get it. My man. That was a decent interaction. Come on. A man among his people, I suppose. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I understand. Oh, let's go to Chetchinao, Luke.

Rate the dancing skills of Boni and Chimayev. Now, is this when they're doing dictator games? Yeah, there's the kid of Ramzan Khadirov. Yes, yes, Luke. This is a negative $8 billion out of zero out of that. Okay, you know, people get down, Luke, okay? Also, here's Derek Lewis with the soundbiter the week. The biggest shit I ever taken, you know, I really can't remember,

but the biggest shit I ever took was probably 2016 on a cruise ship eating all them down burgers probably stacked the shit this high in the toilet one day

at one time that's probably like the biggest and the tallest wasn't even that bed actually it started coming up it was piling up so high started coming up almost taking away my balls

but I had to get that shit out of there I had a buddy of mine once who told me he had a he took a dump and it was in a foreign country so like the hole that flushes it was not in the back it was in the front and so what ended up happened was he would take a dump and it would be slapping his balls it took a ball slap that's why he told me about it was like i took a ball slapping dump so yeah i want out of this conversation speaking you're the one who put this in here i didn't i didn't arrange this you did it's time to get flatchel and i've got a great christmas gift idea for

you check out this action figure me leaving a party because i shit my pants action figure I mean, it's relatable, right? I don't need to shit my pants to leave a party, but I definitely would if I did. Yeah, I'd give them the Lithuanian exit. At least be respectful and tell them, right? I'm out of here, you know what I mean? Let's hear from this lady. I like to shit.

You like to shit. We like to shit. This is shitting. I piss, you piss, we piss. This is piss. Yeah. I mean, you know, it was poetic. How high were you when you put this list together?

Luke, our toilet of the week takes us to this construction site. Would you drop here? I like how this show is just pee-p-poo-poo-and we're nearly 50. Okay. Let's go to Wheel of Fortune for our ha-ha of the week. Corrine. Miners and hoes. No.

It's tasty. Fingers and toes. That's it. They're like, what was the category? Things you'd bang. He's like, minors and hos, you know? Luke, we've been running clips every once in a while of Jay Aaron getting in the best shape of his life over 40. You remember?

Yeah, SEAL Team 6, Jay Aaron. Yeah, he went to the high rocks Dallas. Is this CrossFit? I don't know, but he put out a- for people who are not in shape. He put out a highlight video. He's pretty built, right? No.

He looks as middle-aged and shitty and average as ever. All right. Well, he put this out on his IG a lot, Luke. There was a lot of this on there, okay? All right. You'll never be in that shape again, will you, Luke? No, I'll be dead before I'm in this kind of shape. All right.

I mean, shout out to old three. I'll still beat his ass, though. Know that. All right, look, it's time to rate that tat. One to 10, 10 being awesome. Up first, let's go glizzy time. I'll give it a five for funniness. Okay, there's some respect there, all right?

Let's go to this head tat. That's not bad, dude. That is a lot. Yeah, but can you run that one more time? I mean, rate the art here, Luke. The art itself is not that great. That's the problem. All right.

The colors are saturated, but it's six. So what does it get? A six? All right. This next tattoo is a political thing, but rate the artistry, Luke. It's no, no.

As a tattoo, the thing is, it's a little too light. You know, six, five, something like that. Okay, okay. We got one more for you, Luke. You ever get drunk and like, then you hurt yourself, but you don't realize it? yeah yeah let's watch this guy oh boy oh come on oh my god that is just snapping his ankle i don't even think he knows though just too drunk oh oh god he'll never walk again wow wow all right that's that's all the shit we can handle today have you in fact seen it wow you're

like, hey, this guy is now on crutches for the remainder of his time on her. He's eating good though. You know that. Hey, MorningCombat.git.gmell.com. You can reach the show this Friday. We will be addressing your fan subs, your dead wrongs, maybe even the pictures of your bare pipe. Send it to Mikey at MorningCombat at Gmail.com.

Reminder, our merch is here. Morningcombat.combat. Shop, December exclusives from average Joe Art Romero. It is the Masters of the Universe. Get your t-shirt. Get your autograph poster. Mix and match colors. Evergreen items available for the holidays.

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It's the best time. Total wireless, too. I mean, we got great. We got great people. In about two hours at 3 p.m. East Coast time today. I'm going to be doing a live tape study of the main event from Saturday. That's for paid subscribers only on my substack. But if you're so inclined or you're available and you already pay,

be on the lookout 3 p.m. 3 p.m. Long Island, Luke, thank you for your efforts today. What can we look forward to on the main card minute this week as we build to the final ESPN card in UFC history? I know. It's bittersweet. I was going to say, I'll have a bet breakdown out for that tomorrow. new prop quiz on Friday but you know we'll talk about them on Friday show all right I'm thinking of uh of doing a live this week first time in a while so stay tuned to the BCX for the for the

final card no no just to just to you know talk shit and catch up with people all right catch up mustard all that stuff uh all that and then some tall pale and handsome your boy bc for the LT for the LL it's been fantastic recapping the fights with you this week hope you enjoyed it have a great week until then we Alrighty. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.