The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Daniel Cormier TV - Instant Reaction to UFC 284: Islam Makhachev defeats Alexander Volkanovaki in historic main event fight

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Daniel Cormier breaks down the main event at UFC 284 and how Islam Makhachev was able to defend his lightweight championship. Plus, don’t miss why he thinks it’s the best champion-versus-champion fight we’ve ever seen in the history of the UFC. #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes,

creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok's podcast network on TikTok. The volume.

All right, guys. So I'm in my hotel room. UFC 284 was last night. You got me a full-on vacation mode. But the fights were done so late on the East Coast. It's actually crazy how East Coast. East Coast fight fans can go through this every single time. We were done at 1.30.

It was actually a fast pay-per-view. So late night, I got some rest, got my mind cleared, and I wanted to talk about all that happened last night. You know, very rarely do I get to sit back and watch a fight as a fan because I'm generally calling the fights. But last night, I sat here with my son, a few of my friends, and we watched the fights on my computer. And I'll be honest with you,

we have seen now multiple champion versus champion fights. We have seen guys chase double champion status. We have seen guys achieve double champion status. We have seen women achieve double champion status. But I don't know, or I can say pretty surely, that that was the best champion versus champion fight that we have ever seen. And I took part in one. Kana McGregor was a wipeout against Eddie Alvarez.

Steve and I were competitive until the knockout, but it was a one-round fight. Manda Nunes knocked out Chris Seidwork in the first round. Henry Suhudo showed guts to come back and beat Marlava Rice, but it was a very quick fight. It wasn't 25 minutes, and it wasn't back and forth. one of the things we said a lot in the bill to this fight was Alexander Volkanowski is the number one powerful fighter in the world for a reason and last night he showed that he was the first person since uh I mean even martin's right he didn't make Islam look human he just knocked them out

Alexander Volkanowski was the first person to make Islam Makashv look human granted he made a man look human but he still didn't win the fight and I think I think because of the praise and the admiration that Alexander gets for his performance I think it speaks to how special Machachev is now first round very competitive round Machachev gets knocked down uh gets back up and knocks Volcanozky down gets a take down has some ground control round one goes to Makachev round two makachov jobs Volkanowski again or if not drops him he hurts him. Volkanowski and round three comes back like a bad out of hell wins that round round

round four. Makajem gets another take down on a beautifully time shot controls him the vast majority of the round round round ends with Machiajave on top. At that point I take three one going into round five round five Alexander Volkanowski goes this corner tells him, acknowledges hey I'm behind I got to go for it and that's exactly what he does. He goes into that round five and once a against shows that he never gets tired.

I don't understand how this guy fights at the face that he fights at, and he never gets tired. And he ends the fight on top. It was amazing to see the lack of respect that people gave Volkanowski going into the fight considered his status in the game. I thought he did one thing very, very well. When he would get taken down, Volkanowski would immediately give his back against Sondiakhani so he could write to the hand control. These guys prepared very, very well for the game of Makachem.

He was not trying to grapple. He was not trying to do Jiu-Jitsu. He was saying to himself right away, up. Up, hand fight, get back to my feet. He did it beautifully. The entirety of the fight, every time he got taken out, he went right to give his back, got to the hands, got to the defenses, and got himself away from Islam Makachem.

But I think one of the things we kind of are missing in this is that for as great as Volkanowski fought, right? And he did fight great. For as great as he fought, Makachov fought for extended periods of time on his feet. And for so many people, and for so long people talk about, it's Russell or Nothing for Makachev.

But it wasn't just rustle or nothing for Makachev. It was wrestle, if you could, but then it was stand and strike if you needed to. And that's exactly what he had to do for long periods of time in this fight. He was forced to stand with Alexander Volcanowski and did very well. He had an outstanding strike percentage. He was landing a lot of real damages shots, and he won the fight. So the famed outrage that was online was unfair because it's not real. It's not real.

There was no reason for people to seem upset at the result of that fight because Makachchev won. He won the fight three rounds to two, in my opinion. The judge that scored at 4946, this is a bad scorecard. He didn't win all four. He didn't win four to five rounds. But there were close rounds. But Volcanowski won round five going away. Makachchev started strong in round five, but he won round five going away.

And in round three, Makachev lost that round. It felt like a Volkanowski round. Now, maybe that's because we felt like Islam was winning. And when you're in one of these fights and it seems like one more competitive than the rest, you want to kind of score one for the other guy. But I thought I thought Alexander won that round. I thought he won round three. and I thought that he won round five,

pretty convincing. Round five pretty convincingly for sure. Round three was still a competitive round, but I thought Alexander O'Konowski won it. All in all, great fight. This is a tremendous fight. And to be this early in the year, this one has potential because of who they are

to still be in the mix for fight of the year by the end of the year, which was amazing. But I tell you this much. The people that were closest to Makachev expected a very tough fight. This did not surprise him. But he won that fight.

Three rounds to two. And I think the praise that Alexander is receiving is warranted, but it also speaks to the greatness of Islamakashv. Co-made of him. Gary Rodriguez looked like a world beater. You know, he went out there against Josh's image, and honestly, I knew, or at least I thought, going into the fight, this is a stylistic,

tough match for Josh because I knew that he had to get to Yair and Yair's not very easy to get to. Yair's so creative, he's so diverse, he can switch. But the moment he started going South Point digging those body kicks, I was like, oh man, Emmett's in trouble. I knew right away

Emmett was in trouble because he didn't seem to have an answer. And when that first body kick landed, it folded him over very quickly. When you get folded over on the first body kick and you have a 24, 23 minutes left to go in the fight, that's a very bad sign.

Very bad sign. And this guy was mixing up his attacks. Then when he would get to Josh and he would hit him with a body shot or he'd heard him and he'd fold him over a little bit, he would go elbow, bam. And for the amount of time that was left in the round for Emmett to tap, it tells you that he recognized that there was nothing he was going to do against Shaday. Rodriguez that was going to change the way that the fight was playing out because he could have survived honestly he could have survived to the end of the round and and went back out there and took more of a beating

but I think he understood I mean the submission this guy's on a different level tonight and I don't think I'm gonna get I'm better get to him tap late in the round not calling not saying he just gave up but I'm saying recognize man this is going sideways I don't know what I'm going to change because he hit him with his best shot it's not like him didn't land. Emmett landed big shots. But, I here was just, he was just on his game last night.

But you can tell right away, guys, I coached on the ultimate fight of Latin America with King Velasquez, and you can tell that this kid was special. He just had something about him. He had a star quality about him.

He had a fighting ability about him. You could just tell that this kid was a little different than the rest. And now he finds himself as the UFC interim champion. And immediately, I mean, there's group messages, everybody's going,

wow, does Alexander beat Ja'ir? Yeah, he looks amazing. Like, does he really beat Yair? But then 10 minutes later,

Alexander fights and you go, this is why he's the best featherweight in the world. Like, I mean, are these guys really going to be able to beat him? So it makes for an interesting matchup between these two. And that's what we need, right? Especially following the trilogy that was Max Holloway versus Alexander Volcanowski. It seemed like the division was tied between those two for a long time.

To get a I. Herr Rodriguez in that form tells you that there's viable contenders for the champion going back down. But after last night, I mean, you got two great fighters, but I'm still looking at Alexander Volcanowski. Like, man, this dude is the real deal. Jack Delah Mata Lena. That's how you say his name. Knocking out Randy Brown. This kid has a ton of hype behind him, and he is warranted. He looked fantastic.

He looked like that since he started into the USC. I remember his first fighter meeting, and they were telling me, John Anakin is the smartest guy. He knows everything about everybody, even when these guys are debuting, he just knows him. And he goes, this kid, D.C., this kid can fight. And I watched him. I called his fight, and I go, wow, he's pretty good. And then he fought again.

I'm like, this dude's pretty good. And last night, what he did to Randy Brown was super impressive. That was amazing to watch Alonzo Minifield and Jimmy Crute. That was a good fight, but, you know, I enjoyed watching those guys fight, but sometimes with these young athletes, they get a little bit excited, and they just kind of, first off, they enter the gas tank when they shouldn't. But Jimmy Crude needed to be a little bit more patient than his approach, but it was good because the lines of middlefield showed improvements.

Because before, his fatigue would get so great that he couldn't even operate anymore. He was able to operate yesterday and give himself an opportunity. He won the fight. Without the point deduction, he won the fight. But I do agree with the point deduction. You don't need a warrant. You don't need to go, oh, hard-warned. You grab the fence in that way.

That hard? Ding him, right away. It'll make guys stop doing this shit. Because the reality is, it's too easy to stop a position from occurring, get a hard warning, and just go back to work. And then we saw it late in the round. Minifield never got back up. If he got that take down there, maybe Krupe wins that,

that round. So love that. I love the point deduction right away. You don't mess around when it comes to that. Look, overall, just a fantastic fight card. I mean, just on top about killed my man, Parker Porter. I mean, just the top of my man, Parker Porter. Like Parker Porter has been knocked out clean a lot of times. And that one last night was crazy. How about these Australian guys? How do they have so much power? These Australian guys have some tremendous power. full display last night with Justin Taffa. Look, when you get a fight card that speeds the way it did last night, it's always tremendous. But I'm telling you, my lasting impression of last night was, will we ever get a champion versus

champion better than this? Because it was evenly matched. Alexander Volcanowski told anyone that would listen, hey, I'm going to beat this guy. And he went in there with the intentions to do that. But at the end of the day, Islam Akatsya won the fight. He did what he needed to do and showed improvements and showed that he's better in every aspect of mixed martial arts than he was prior. And it'll be very difficult. And I got some text messages from managers last night telling me they got a few lightweights that are going to challenge Makachov.

I'll be honest with you, man. I don't know if those guys will challenge him to the degree that he got challenged last night because Alexander Volkovsky is. the man and Islam Akachel is the man we saw the two best pop-fam fighters in the world last night and it was on full display guys there's a world in which Alexander would stay number of pop-a-pong and nobody would complain because he showed last night his fighting style translates weight classes we just have to see if Islam can do the same thing as he ages in his career overall a great night I'm gonna go and finish my vacation luda starting to get mad in the in the room next door so I got to go and see what

which she's doing. But tremendous night from Australia. And what about that crowd? That crowd was on fire last night from start to finish. Unbelievable. Guys, like, subscribe. Tell your friend, tell you friend that I got a YouTube channel. For recaps, interviews, everything, go to D.C.'s YouTube.

And I'm so following the volume. Until next time, guys. Peace. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David, Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter

Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashed. Others say it's unleashed. reaching human potential. Either way, the podcast, Superhuman, documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me.

Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes,

creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast.

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