Fight Study 160: UFC 305 (Plus Transcript) (Patreon)

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On this episode of Fight Study, Coach Jason is back to discuss the main event for UFC 305, Dricus Du Plessis (c) vs. Israel Adesanya. Fight Study is essential listening for thoughtful martial arts fans.

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with fight study and coach Jason is back. Welcome back, Jason. How are you these days? What's been going on?

Hey man, you know, uh, I'm okay. I'm back in, uh, in the lovely city of Pittsburgh. I'm happy, healthy and, uh, Hopefully and possibly ready to make a return to coaching if I can get a gym started up out here. Got some things in the works. So I fight that good fight between my usual,

what do we want to call it, misanthropic sentiments towards the UFC and fight culture in general. And I try to weigh that against... against what is an addiction or an absolute fascination with fight study and fight science.

I think we'll get into that with this fight, but it's been a long stretch since you've been healthy. You've had a lot of health issues, a lot of things going on, but right now you're on a healthy patch.

Yeah, right. I've had like seven months straight of good health. So I'm just trying to temper my expectations and stay a little bit measured, not overdo it. My lungs are clear. I'm sleeping better. I'm feeling better. Oddly enough, I'm back right in my hometown, about six miles outside of where I grew up.

And mental health-wise, that's not always the best for me, but I'm doing okay with it.

I recently had a concussion, a mild one, and It wasn't from being punched or kicked in the head. It was actually from falling. How'd you fall? What happened? We were working on trips. I wasn't resisting. I was just working on my fall, just learning to fall safely. But I was doing it too close to a wall.

I don't have a proper training space. I just use like a little office gym so it's not padded walls. So I always figured if I fall, it's just about my impact with the ground. That's what I got to worry about. So I had mats down, so I was ready. But when I fell,

I fell too close to the wall and I didn't initially hit the wall, but I slid as I fell and then I hit the wall.

I know exactly what you did. I've done it before. So I did it in an office in Brazil, leaning back in a chair like an asshole. Yeah.

And not in a million years did I think it would be the wall. Right. I just thought about like how you hit the ground. And also, I wasn't like super close. I thought I was safe, but I didn't think about the skid. And the mats are kind of slippery, too, because the kind I was using,

I was using rollout mats that are very slick. So it's easy to wipe. I had that going on, but I'm OK now. Well, you're our editor in chief here, so we need to keep that brain healthy. But it's a good reminder. People so often get hurt, especially as you get older, from a fall.

It doesn't even have to be your head. It could just be like you fall and you hurt your knee, your ankle, your rolling ankle, you land weird and you hurt your arm,

all kinds of things. Yeah, without a doubt. And even subconcussive trauma to the brain, like just stopping real quickly. Like even if you get slammed on your back, but your head doesn't hit the mat, the brain is still traveling in one direction and then it stops abruptly.

So it shifts back forward and you get a little bit of a brain wiggle. And, you know, I know some wrestlers who have never fought, but they're cognitively after wrestling for 20 plus years, they're a little bit different.

You know, lately, the most common cause of falls, really bad falls I know of is those damn scooters. I know like five or six people who've fallen off of those things because they hit a bump. and just go flying. So those scooters, watch out.

I'm sure. I'm sure. I see people just boogieing down. When I was living in LA, they just boogie down and they'd swerve to miss speed bumps, but sometimes they didn't see them or anticipate them. And I saw them catch a little bit of air.

And if the first thing that lands is your ass, that means the second thing that lands is your back.

And also because you're paying by the minute or whatever it is, you're incentivized not to stop. Oh yeah, profit mode.

Always putting us in harm's way. So...

With all that in mind, right, we're back together as a team again to discuss the main event for UFC 305. Middleweight champion Dreykus Duplassis versus challenger and former champion Israel Adesanya. Now, MMA, as far as the people and personalities are concerned, is not interesting to me because it's filled with chuds. But MMA,

as far as individual styles are concerned, is very interesting to think about because it can, at times, be a very fun puzzle to see unraveled. And sometimes you think about, can I unravel that? What is a game plan I could come up with? And I think that's what attracts you and me to this sport, right?

Because the characters, the people are awful, but... The collision of different styles, the complexities, the things you have to solve, the dilemmas you can create, right? Absolutely. It's not just like in boxing, right? Body shot versus head shot. It's like the dilemma of defending the takedown versus low kicks to high kicks to punches to the body,

the head, clinching. You have so many dilemmas. It's impossible to defend everything at once. Whereas boxing, Let's say something like boxing where you only have to worry about hands. Yes, it's hard to defend everything. But if you just really shell up, you can defend a lot of things.

And especially if, you know, you got a referee there who breaks stuff up. But MMA, it's so hard to defend everything. And that's what makes this so interesting and complex and fun to think about. Not the people, but the art, the styles.

I'm with you 100%. It's the critical thinking aspect of it and the problem solving aspect of it that really winds my clock and really attracts me and makes it a compulsion for me to have to watch. And it's almost like the more I dislike some of these characters, the more I tune in to see them get beat.

But a lot of times I'm on the other side of things where I'm just sort of sad because the guy who I felt represented... Some semblance of decency just turns into a bigger dick than the original guy that I wanted to root against. I don't know. It's tough for me sometimes.

Other times I just take it for what it is. I'm not looking for a hero or a role model. I just want to see how these guys perform. And so I try as best I can to filter out the nonsense, but it's tough.

I'm inspired by people who are fans of minor league baseball because nobody watches or follows minor league because they care about the stars or anything like that. They just love baseball that much, right? So they don't care about the individual characters.

They just want to see the game and they would just want to see how it goes, right? So I'm trying to apply that mindset. I don't try to get too invested in the people. I just try to see how it all plays out and just the love of martial arts.

I think that's the fairest and healthiest way to go about it at this point. And so as far as styles, I feel like we got to see a very interesting style matchup unfold. If you just did the eye test and watched both fighters, you'd probably think DDP doesn't have a shot.

But on paper, DDP can very much beat Adesanya. You can call the eye test the Drake test because Drake also bet on Adesanya. So his curse continues. Fucking Drake. He curses it, right? Always. But going back to DDP, there is a disconnect between what we see versus the actual results.

Our eyes and Drake are often wrong when it comes to DDP. So we have to kind of reconcile that. First of all, DDP is five years younger than Adesanya. During his ascent, Adesanya was the young guy cleaning out all the older fighters. Then you look at records. DDP hasn't lost since 2018 and is undefeated in the UFC.

Adesanya and DDP share four common opponents, Strickland, Whitaker, Brunson, Tavares. Adesanya has beaten three of those fighters other than Strickland. but DDP has beaten all four. DDP is also the guy on the ascent beating the older fighters, and Adesanya is now one of those older fighters. DDP always looks like he accidentally wins, yet he consistently wins.

He's the common denominator. When Adesanya wins, however, it looks very deliberate. This is part of why our eyes and the results aren't aligned. But Adesanya lost three times since 2021, and now this is his fourth loss in that time. So DDP keeps winning so clearly it's not accidental,

but the reason why it doesn't look right has to do with a few things. One, he always looks so tired, but that never seems to stop his action. His movements often look labored, but again, he keeps going. Third, We don't like the guy. So all of that makes you not want to see the things he is doing.

But if you just looked at, is the guy effective? He is very effective. Does he finish? Yes. Does he land shots? Yes. Does he block a lot of shots? Yes. Does he get takedowns? Yes. At phantom weight, that makes you average, but at middleweight, that's enough to be champion.

So I've made some reads about this fight, and I want to ask you about them, Jason. So first of all, how important is game planning when fighting someone like Adesanya, and do you think a big part of DDP's success is this team's ability to game plan? All right, well, first,

let me just say that I think game planning is incredibly important for any opponent. But especially for a highly skilled striker, very good technical striker like Israel Adesanya, there's an abundance of footage on him as a kickboxer and a championship level MMA fighter, especially in the UFC. Izzy has 28 MMA fights or something like that,

and I think something like 80 Muay Thai and kickboxing fights. So you have over 100 fights combined. And so you'd be an absolute fool to disregard that amount of information. I'd liken it to playing quarterback in the NFL on athleticism alone, ignoring film study or what the other team does defensively.

It'd be a patently absurd proposition to even think that way. I guess I have my biggest problem, and I'll never understand the hubris of any athlete, and I get fighters are just different, how any athlete or team doesn't make game planning an essential part of the training camp process. My old coach, Billy Briski, used to say,

mistakes can be fixed in relatively short order, but habits, habits are a different story. And both good and bad habits are exploitable. So as the saying goes, if you can predict it, you can control it. And at the highest level of fight sport, the more things you can control, the better your chances.

And so as for DDP's game planning, I think they have game planned much better for the Izzy fight than they did with the Strickland fight. Not that the Strickland fight was bad by any means. But by simply keeping his feet moving on some shots, sometimes wild punching combinations, Duplessis was able to find some heavy shots.

And often after some heavy misses. So he'd punch three and four times, and on the fourth miss or third miss, he'd find the fourth shot. Or after the fourth miss, he'd find the fifth shot. Because he's a big, strong fucking guy who keeps his feet underneath him, he can crack. And so he landed at the finishing...

And on some pretty wild combinations. And it's something I think he needed a little more of at times in that fight with Sean Strickland. But I thought he did it rather well against Izzy. And that's always a great question. Because when you come at combat sports from a critical thinking perspective,

I always say that I would love to be a fly on the wall in whatever training camp, right? I want to see what is translated from camp to competition. And that's something that I've always been curious about and something that has always fascinated me.

Because I was very proud of it when I would say I knew Felder was going to just beat some guy up against the cage to his body, a few elbows to the head. Those hands came up high, touched that liver. That got kids pissed in blood the next week.

When we could call that and we could see it knowing that we drilled it, um seeing that unfold as you predicted um it's a it's as impressive to me as it is

fascinating is executing that plan a skill of his own that varies from fighter to

fighter the easy answer the succinct answer is going to be yes right executing a game plan is a skill that varies from fighter to fighter no doubt but there's much more to it than that you know knowing that fighting is, and these are things I say, fighting is an intense and violently chaotic endeavor.

There's so many fucking changes and ebbs and flows and ups and downs and that you have to make decisions in real time while someone else is trying to hurt you. We all know the cliches and the aphorisms about decisions, right? They say sleep on it or consider the pros and cons and Don't grocery shop when you're hungry.

I don't even know if that one works, but you sort of get my drift. With so many variables to consider in mixed martial arts, you don't have time to sleep on it unless you want to get slept yourself. So the question becomes... How well can you execute under duress? Can you stick to a game plan?

Can you stick to that game plan if it's a game plan of attrition but you're not having initial success? Can you trust that that shot that you've missed, maybe just missed three or four times in a row, will be there on the fourth try or the fifth time if that guy's a little bit slowed

down by your wrestling or you're hanging heavy on the head or you get in some grappling exchanges where you know it sort of wore him down. Can you trust it'll be there and you can find it? Or do you just say, fuck it and abandon the game plan? The question is,

can you adapt your game plan yet still implement it if a fighter is faster or stronger or hits harder than you and your camp anticipated? And so I guess what I'm saying is everyone can get, how do I say this? Everyone can get to fucking Sesame Street if it's sunny days, right?

Whatever they say, sweeping the clouds away. But it's not so easy in a fucking hurricane, right? We're talking Cat 5. The better fighters can execute a game plan while dodging those tractors, those fucking mobile homes or trailers just flying through the air. Not every fighter has that ability. They just don't.

But a lot of the great ones do. And until someone proves otherwise, you know... DDP is that cat five hurricane. So, you know, a lot of the decision making that I think fighters are making in real time against him. I mean, I think the only person I saw truly excel in that regard was probably Strickland.

I fucking hate to give him credit. So I guess the middleweight division has some fucking tractor dodging to do.

So Adesanya is known for his feinting game, but it didn't seem to have any effect on DDP. Do you think Adesanya's feints are beginning to have less of an effect because everyone's seen them so often and he does it so often?

Or do you think DDP just prepared well for them and maybe it would have worked on someone else?

Well, I don't think it has to be mutually exclusive, right? I think both things can be true. Adesanya still does some really nice stuff off of his fans, but I think there's too many lulls and lack of volume at times. And I'm not one of those haters. that need that just bleed shit all the time.

I understand Izzy's fight style and I'd never call him boring. But I think there are a lot of lulls and a lack of volume at times. I also think a more technical kickboxing approach to fighting Izzy allows for him to have more success with his feints.

And not that DDP prepared to be unconventional, but Duplessis is very unconventional and very aggressive. So that takes away a little bit of his feint game. And if he's not allowed to build off of that, I think he struggles a little bit.

Actually, let me ask about DDP then. Does he have a feint game also? Because nobody really talks about that.

I was thinking about this when considering some other aspects of the fight that you and I discussed before or some of the questions posed. He has this little bit of hand movement with his high guard. that almost looks like he's beginning a punch combination, but he'll kick.

So you start to see Izzy and some other fighters react with their hands, even if it's just a little bit. They're occupying that line of sight, and they're reacting to those, and he's a big, strong, powerful dude, so you know you have to pay attention to those hands, but he'll just awkwardly kick from that initial movement.

So yeah, if you want to categorize those as feints, and I sort of do, So yeah, he has a little bit of a faint game and because he has such an array of attacks, like he'll wrestle, he'll punch, he'll kick. I say this a hundred times, I'll probably say it two or three times on this podcast.

I don't think there's much athleticism to DDP for a championship athlete, except in his fucking left leg. His left leg seems so athletic and so fast and so dexterous, but the rest of them just seem sort of plodding and meaty. He's tough as shit and he has pretty good balance for a big, strong guy.

He was carrying a lot of muscle and he physically corrects positioning, but I just don't think he's winning a fucking triathlon or I would ever expect much out of him from an agility drill.

And let me borrow something from basketball. There's this move in basketball called the hezi. And I feel like with DDP, he doesn't have a feint game. He does hezis. It looks like he's about to do something, then he hesitates, but it works like a feint because you're like, wait, what was that, right?

It wasn't like he was trying to trick you. He was going to do something, but he changed his mind. But it has the same effect. Or he's about to do something, but he like slows it down. And he's like, nah, maybe not. He does a lot of this with high stepping. He just like lifts his legs.

It looks like, is he going to do a question mark kick, a body kick, a teep? Or is he just going to lunge forward? Because they all look the same. And then he just puts it down. But he gets a reaction from Adesanya when he does these things.

He does. And he's exceptionally powerful. So you sort of have to respect it, right? And he doesn't have to be in a perfect position for him to go. He'll just go when he wants to go. Even if it's one foot's up. He can explode from any leg configuration. Yes.

And it is not pretty, but I think he's one of those heavily boned, densely muscled guys. And whenever he hits you, it just sort of thuds and fucking hurts you. And he knows that. And he trusts his chin and his ability to regain balance. And he's a fucking brick.

So he's all squared up all the time and he just sort of lands back into position. And the only time he ever really gets too far out of position is whenever he overly commits to his winging shots when he's punching or when he does hesitate on one foot, like you said.

But because he's willing to just put that foot back down wherever it is, and continue some offense from there, he tends to do pretty well because he has a good chin. He's got good fighter vision. Um, it's, and there's a lot of slop in there too, but it works because of some other attributes. And, uh,

Some other stuff that, though unconventional, is still pretty good fighting.

He's Euro stepping. I don't even know what that is. It's all these weird ways to step in basketball to avoid the travel rule. So it don't look right. And that's what it looks like with this guy. He does all these kind of movements that look like he's trying to bypass some travel rule. But going back to feints,

how much effectiveness does Adesanya lose when he can't build off of his feints?

A ton. I think he loses a lot of effectiveness. His volume decreases and he struggles to find, what's the word I'm looking for? For lack of a better term, his fight rhythm. That rhythm allows him to control how things unfold. And when that happens, when he's not able to do that,

he's no longer the superhuman sniper and he fights with a lot less confidence. And when he does that, there is some hesitation. When you overly faint, when you just sort of sit and you wait and you wait and you just don't go, that's when I think Izzy is at his worst,

other than when he's against the fence and just can't seem to clear people. But normally he has pretty good hips in cage wrestling or counter cage wrestling and bumping out of that clinch against the cage. Why was DDP having so much success with the low kicks? Another really good question because he's fighting a really,

really world-class level striker, kickboxer who converted to mixed martial arts, right? One of the better kickboxers or strikers to compete in the UFC. And one thing I noted when I watched the fight was Duplessis' willingness to high kick and he'd low kick out of both stances.

And I said this before, only his left leg seems to really have any athleticism. And I don't mean that disparagingly because every once in a while he'll throw a real sweet right kick, but it's almost like he needs to be in better position for that left kick.

But sometimes he doesn't and it still comes fast and out of nowhere. And I think I said this earlier, sometimes it looks like he's about to throw a switch kick. When really he's just sort of shuffling forward and then kicking. I don't think he has that athleticism to do a switch kick. No,

but it looked like his footwork looks like he's beginning to do one, but he just sort of shuffles his feet together and then lunges forward with a bigger push off. Yes. But he carries so much muscle and he isn't really that smooth when he does a lot of things. But with his low kicks, let's just say this.

The brain tends to recognize and look for patterns, especially when it wants to protect itself in anticipation of danger. But with Du Plessis, the brain just sort of says, well, what the fuck is going on here? And you're forced to sort of watch the awkwardness unfold while he kicks you.

Rather than if you engage in a truer kickboxing match with... With Adesanya, I don't think he's going to have much of a problem with that.

It's almost like how beginners can fuck you up sometimes when you're boxing with them or kickboxing with you because their movements are not what you're attuned to. You have no experience making those reads.

The most dangerous person I've ever wrestled with was like the first year wrestler who had no idea what he was doing when I had to, no one else showed up for practice. So I had to drill with him. I'm like, why does this dude keep fucking hurting me? Accidentally elbowing me in the face.

He's just not moving correctly. And so even not reacting to my feints and I'm like, okay, so I'm trying to fake near side and he was supposed to bring his foot back and I would shoot, I transition to a far side high crotch, which is now near side and switch off to my double.

But now that leg is still back there because he didn't react to the first one. So even drilling, I look clumsy and awkward and I just want to foot sweep him and just be done with it. Yeah. But yeah, that awkwardness doesn't elicit the response that you're used to seeing.

And when the brain has patterned itself to see things done at a more correct level or a more conventional technical way, it just sort of like, what the fuck is this?

Okay, so I used the basketball analogy I lost you. Let me go into your wheelhouse, baseball. It's like everything he does is like a knuckleball. Yeah. You're like, how am I supposed to read this thing?

Yeah, and it's not in the place you're expecting it. You're used to sort of interpolating a trajectory. And when it floats a different direction, technically, we're not supposed to be able to hit. I mean, I can't hit 100 mile per hour fastball, but major leaguers can.

And a lot of that is the brain interpolating a route or a trajectory. When shit just starts changing, the brain has... You know, pattern recognition. And you've moved so far from that, that knuckleball. And the thing with fighting is that knuckleball can turn into a fastball in a second. It's beaming inside the fucking head.

Sticking with that analogy, that's a tough thing to contend with. That's why that herky-jerky, even hesitation style that some guys who are born with good chins and natural power don't have to be as technical. It's just sort of the way it is.

You can do a little crow hop like Dan Henderson and land an overhand right off the world's worst inside leg kick. Yes. But for guys who just build a little bit differently and bring a little bit of different physicality to the table, if it works, it works.

It may not be right, but it sure as fuck isn't wrong either. Does DDP have underrated defense? Not by me. He's one of the few assholes in MMA that actually keeps their hands up. So his, his hand positioning, in my opinion, really, really does a good job for what, what he brings to the table again in physicality.

Um, and his ability to persevere when fatigued. So all while staying fundamentally sound, or about as fundamentally sound defensively as far as MMA goes, as you can typically see, right? From him getting caught with anything huge. He also eats a pretty good shot, but he doesn't rely on it.

He's more than just a big, strong guy with a good chin and some power, like I was saying before. Um, he is very, very present until he swings and misses. And I think that's how it's going to get. If he gets knocked out, that's what's going to happen.

He's going to dip real big while someone who has a bit better, you're going to need like a hybrid guy who is real, real, um, confidence in his takedown defense to sort of just be there to find those shots. So he doesn't just wing duck and double.

But if he keeps his hands up and doesn't get it with anything big, he can wing some shots while other guys are defending. He can duck and double. Or if you defend and you get long with your legs or you get slick with some of your

takedown defense and you've got to force him to go again and hope he gets tired and breaks form. But some of his decision-making when he's fatigued allows him to recover. Is defense good when he's fatigued? It's not as good, but it's still pretty decent. And I think in the third round,

um and he or maybe it was part of the fourth round when he was getting it seemed like he was getting picked apart he was really just biding his time and yeah he was getting hit with some stuff and izzy looked good but he was sort of breathing and

refocusing and regrouping so that he could go again and so as long as he wasn't getting it with anything big you know you have you have to determine what is an acceptable level of risk in some of those shots like a little short uppercut and a double jab and a double jab straight right and then

a measured long jab hand to a shot to the body. He determined that that was an acceptable level of risk.

You partially already answered this, but I think lots of analysts and coaches have noticed Adesanya's main defense to strikes is leaning back and retreating. How did DDP capitalize on that?

He was sneaky quick when he needed to be. He was also mixing in some of his wrestling. He's got a sneaky quick left leg kick. And then sometimes the right one looks terrible, and then sometimes it's super fast and powerful. I don't know what the fuck.

He's mixing in some junk, and it's a little bit hard to read. So by doing that and continuing to move his feet, as I said earlier, and sometimes as he marched and fought, sometimes sprinting forward, he was able to continue punching because his feet were underneath him.

And sometimes, as I said before, he missed three or four shots only to find one at the end. And landing a fourth shot or a fifth shot at the end of a three or four punch combination where you might slip one, parry one, but then you're leaning on the other two.

Oh, you got a big, strong guy who brings some fucking heat. And when he was able to touch him on those final shots, they were pretty good. They were thumping shots and they connected well. And when Adesanya continued to give ground like that with his shoulders over his ass,

the only way to improve position was to turn and run while trying to improve position. And that, you know, we all know that's not a recipe for success in mixed martial arts.

I think he was used to being in the clear, right? We talk about habits and what you're used to and what you're used to as far as what your opponents or people in the gym give you, right? When you clear three or four, you feel like, hey, I'm in the clear. I'm good.

And I think Adesanya was like, wait, I'm normally good here. I'm done. Why are there more shots coming?

That's exactly what he was doing. And then when he was getting a little bit labored, Christ, it's got to be very, very tiring to fight DDP, right? He's so big and so strong. He's a big, squared-up body type. So even trying to counter-wrestle him just has to be really exhausting. Plus, he hits hard.

So trying to improve that position when you're tired, your decision-making isn't great. And I think we saw Izzy try to escape very linearly against the cage, which is trying to go in a straight line against the cage on your exit. It's a bad idea because if that's the direction you're going, they know where you're going to be.

And then they're going to find shots. And I thought for a shorter fighter, DDP did a pretty good job of punching to where Izzy was going to be and not just where he was and chasing the entire time.

Do you think leaning back and retreating ages well for fighters as they slow down? No, I fucking hate it.

No matter what the age of a fighter, I think it's much more detrimental to fighters as they slow down. But like I just said before, as a fighter's conditioning begins to fade and fatigue sets in, they become a slower version of themselves. And no matter how good you are at the beginning,

if your stance correction and foot positioning are slower, there's little offense from a lot of those positions. So until you do correct your positioning and your stance, you're very little offensive threat or pose very little risk. And then you got guys like DDP who thump and they can tee off on you.

It's normally Adesanya whose stance switches, but in this fight, DDP was the one initiating a lot of the stance switches. How much did that affect this fight?

I think that's a pretty good question, right? And I'd love to hear Israel Adesanya's answer to how much that affected the fight. I'm certain it did. I think by mixing in wrestling and having such a good left kick, it made Adesanya have to consider so many possibilities.

But there's a lot of other factors that contributed to DDP's success as well. And just his overall well-roundedness was a significant factor.

There's a lot of fancy things fighters can do, but a very simple thing many fighters can't do is punching while blocking. How well does DDP do this? He's really good at it, right?

He's got vision and physicality. when I say he's really good at it, I mean, he's really good at it for an MMA fighter. Yes. It's a little bit different than, than as, than as a boxer. Um, so yeah, let me just caveat that a bit.

Um, so like I said, both of those things, his vision, um, and what did I say? His physicality help him. The man's, he's a bit of a juggernaut. And when he, when he shields or he high blocks a punch, a lot of times he doesn't move much. So he still, he still was able to maintain position.

You add in his natural aggression, um, envision, and you get the ability for those delayed counters that you see him come back with. If you keep punching in sequence and have a continuation of your offense, when Izzy did that, he had some success because it was difficult for DDP to punch in between shots,

but he would punch at the end of shots. You'd throw one and done, he'll come back. Or if you go one and done, reset, one and done, reset, He's like, thanks, man. If there's nothing coming after that first shot, I'm just going to go. There's nothing to dissuade him to do so.

And when Izzy did string together some combinations, he had some success. When he didn't, you saw some of those delayed counters really start working for DDP.

One of the things I've mentioned in the past is what would happen if you just put your hands up in a high guard and just walk toward Adesanya? And we saw DDP do that to close space. but it wasn't like he was a zombie about it. He had responses based on what Adesanya did.

It seemed a bit like old school, I guess, basic MMA, block and counter. So you already started talking about this, but as he was walking towards Adesanya or when he was covering up, right, and Adesanya took opportunities to land body shots, it wasn't like he was passive either.

So what are some of the things DDP did off of that high guard?

Well, the short and sweet answer is he would move his hands from the high guard position and anticipate him punching after blocking by the way his hands were moving. And sometimes he would kick. So whenever you would see a little bit of high guard hand fighting, I liked how... Duplessis would kick off that.

And then there were multiple times when Izzy would just sort of poke out that lead hand and he would see what looked like it was going to be a right hand coming cross counter and he would just come back with a left kick. So keeping that high guard at the same time,

so he's showing some defensive responsibility while keeping himself in good position to bring some of that thumping offense, bring some of the heavy handedness that he brings to the game. And he puts himself in position on, like I said, second, third, fourth shots. And he's punching people out of position and he's finding those shots.

The thing about his kick too is a lot of times, right, when you're blocking and then you kick, you swing out your arm as you're kicking. because you need it to counterbalance. Otherwise, you might lose your balance, right? But what was interesting is he's one of the few people I've seen in MMA where he

can hold his hands up in high guard and still kick even to the body without losing his balance. Caveat that it's still DDP and he often looks herky-jerky and off balance anyway, so it just looked normal. Yeah.

Well, it's not correct technique. It's effective technique. And so at what point, for years, for years, the calf kick, I had a fighter who used to kick, his name was Matt Chaz. He used to kick Felder in the calf all the time and Felder would get pissed. And he's like, it's not even a good kick.

And it looked like shit. But this kid was like a D3 All-American wrestler, so you weren't taking him down. But he really wanted to punch everybody. He was an interesting guy who had an eye injury. Eventually he had to retire. But love the guy, love the kid. But his kicks were ugly and awkward, but they fucking hurt.

So what do you do with that? Do you say don't throw a kick to the calf because it's incorrect and it's the year 2011? Yeah. That was a really effective technique, but it hadn't been really utilized at the time. So most people, even your purists would say it was wrong.

If you are heavy boned and you just sort of keep your hands up high, like you're looking through binoculars and you throw a kick. to the body off of it and it lands and it hurts, or you throw a leg kick off of it and the guy switches his stance, like technically it may have been shit,

but if it works, it works. And so that's, that's the thing. Um, I think with someone like Duplessis, you got to let him be him. I wouldn't really want him to teach my striking classes, um, unless everyone was built like him and brought some of the, the intangibles that he has to the, to the table. But,

It works for him. What do they say? If it's not broke, don't fix it. But he's talking about a disjointed, disconnected, relatively broken rhythm. That's the technical acumen that you get from Duplessis.

Adesanya paused with his lead hand a lot as part of his feinting game. It seemed like DDP and his camp had answers for that. What did DDP do against that outstretched arm?

Well, I think this is when he did some of his best work. Sometimes he would tap that lead hand against Izzy's lead hand and then just kick off of it. Especially when they were in opposite stances. So when they were lined up lead hand to lead hand.

And when Izzy would just constantly paw that left hand when they were both in conventional stances, Duplessis would bomb that right cross. If you weren't going to touch him with that jab, he wasn't just going to sit there and wait. These were really good adjustments and good techniques I saw from Duplessis, even in the first round,

later in the first round. So using some of the first four minutes of the fight to start to process some information. And when he fatigued later in the fight, he wasn't quite as good with it, but it was definitely part of his arsenal and skill set. And you could tell that it's part of his repertoire.

He did a great job of pairing. jab and sliding down Izzy's outstretched jab hand down past that elbow and into a double leg and I think that was at the beginning of the beginning of the second round Izzy does a great job getting back up but if you're in a southpaw or excuse

me an orthodox versus orthodox stance and he just sort of takes that right hand parry and parries that jab over his shoulder and it darts past his shoulder and his elbows now all you got to do is duck and double just Your entry is already made for you.

So again, having your hands up and fighting a little bit, seeing and having that vision is crucial. And mixing in a variety of techniques, having a true skill set, being able to take the fight to where you want it at a given time keeps someone that is as talented as Izzy guessing.

We normally expect Adesanya to land kicks, especially body kicks. But I don't know if I've seen someone land as many body kicks on Adesanya as DDP did. Maybe Jan Blachowicz was close. And if you talk about herky-jerky but solid, strong fighters, Jan is from the same mold as DDP.

How much did those body kicks affect the fight, and how was DDP finding those kicks? Well, one, good comparison to Jan.

Duplessis does a good job of layering, and his variations of strikes make Izzy's body a pretty long target. But it also goes back to his hand movement from the high guard. And maybe it's just me, again, seeing things that aren't there, but it looks to me like he was initiating some punching techniques or punching sequences...

when really he was just sort of rocking his hands and shoulders to throw a kick. And he did that with his lead leg multiple times. And when he was in the orthodox stance, his lead leg, his left leg, and he's pretty fast with it. So it's a pretty simple but very effective technique.

And he appeared to be basically that he was disguising a lot of his body kicks. And, you know, he's got that heavy left hook. And sometimes it looked like he was going to slap out a left hook. And Izzy's reaction seemed to be go protect high right hook.

And when he did, that body was open, and he doesn't switch it. He just sort of shifts his shoulders back and throws an awkward left kick to the body, and those were landed. Like I said, he's a real heavy-boned individual, and his shit seems to thump.

DDP is someone who learned to wrestle as an adult, and it was only after he got into MMA. But how good is his MMA wrestling as far as the middleweight division goes? I mean, fuck, I don't know. Is Brunson even in the UFC still?

As far as active fighters, it might be DDP by default be the best wrestler right now. Yeah, as far as ranked fighters, right? Because the top three, you're going to have what?

Izzy, Strickland, and DDP, and none of them are even JD backups on my high school team. They're just not. Yeah. Well, Duplessis is so physically strong, right? And he's big. And like I said, he's all squared up. He's like basically fighting that weird red-looking monster from Bugs Bunny.

I mean, he's built sort of oddly and somewhat square through the shoulders. And he leads with his head. And sometimes just buries that head in the chest and then comes out of that head in the chest position where he looks a little high.

But I think his arms might be a little bit longer for his size because he still gets underneath the hips with his arms in his head. And his posterior chain is so fucking strongly sort of straightens your body out and you don't defend. You can't get you can't get that wizard and you can't turn down.

to sort of like uh tighten the core bring that chest to lay to quad and then extend you can't really get that with him he just sort of straightens and stretches you out and then just lifts you against the cage and puts you on your back or he beats

you down or he beats you through that long jab or he just comes down and crashes that distance and lets your miss of the jab break down the majority of that distance for him so like he wrestles to his strengths and no pun intended he's a physically strong guy and because he's so

strong some of the things like just lifting a guy up against the cage when finishing against the cage can be problematic even for a lot of good pure wrestlers thinking that normally you would have just run through those hips. And if there weren't a cage there, yes, you would have taken him down.

But this is mixed martial arts. It's not wrestling. And so some of those things change. And the cage dynamics create a lot of different scenarios where if you overcommit and you're not familiar with the finishing sequences, you can gas yourself out. And fatigue is a great equalizer against a wrestler. But again, something you said earlier,

Duplessis does a great job of fighting fatigued. And when he's not fighting fatigued or he loses portions of a round, he's recovering. And taking all those things in consideration and being able to stay dialed in under duress, that's all pretty impressive stuff.

When I rewatched the fight, I noticed a lot of fence grabs by Adesanya. And that's essentially how he was getting up. which gives me pause because without the fence grab, how good has Adesanya developed his wrestling, really?

Well, it's not great. You know, he's still basically just a wizard in a wide stance against the cage. And I'm not trying to be a dick, but because he has some pretty good hip heist and scoots when he does get taken down and he's hard to hold down. But in all things considered, it's pretty effective,

but it's still rather limited wrestling, very limited wrestling skill set. So. Um, he hasn't truly developed it. I still think you want to watch, um, how bad wrestling is at 185 pounds in the UFC. Watch, watch his, um, watch all of his fights against, uh, Paya. So it just, the wrestling looks awkward.

The body locks and the grappling sequences. Um, I mean, awkward is sort of a compliment. They, they, they look like, um, It sort of looked like, like wipeouts or first year wrestlers who learned a body lock and they're pretty strong athletic dudes.

So they make it look not terrible, but it definitely looks wrong if you have a wrestling eye.

Something Adesanya has done in his fights is to crawl to the fence and get on all fours to get up. It seemed like DDP had a game plan that was ready for that because he jumped on the back like someone who was anticipating that moment.

How much do you think it was an eventuality that someone was going to capitalize on that habit of Adesanya's?

That's a good question because you wonder if Adesanya is just really strong, but it doesn't look all that strong. So he has really good hips. Or if people were just sort of approaching it wrong because he's a longer body type. and being able to take the back on someone's a little bit longer normally requires

some hand control and initial controlling of the hips. But I thought, um, I thought Duplessis was masterful and just, he would get a, like a double lock boat, locked both hands around the hips and just hung heavy and let, like you said, he let, uh, Israel Adesanya crawl forward.

But when he was ready and he rebuilt his base, cause his legs were a little far out. Um, Duplessis would rebuild his base as well and continue to crawl up in improving position, but not giving up any until he was ready to go. And when he did,

he was able to get the boots in or drop his legs in and then get wrist control and make it very, very difficult for Adesanya to continue to work back to a standing position or even turn and face. That wrist control was incredibly important, but he locked down any potential scramble just by simply hanging and sagging on

Israel Adesanya's hips. So he was patient and he was strong and he used the appropriate technique when the time was right.

was available to him. So speaking of that, DDP did that several times where he jumped on Adesanya's back, yet Adesanya kept getting on all fours. Adesanya and his team ended up being the ones who couldn't adjust. Now, if your fighter was taken down previously and got his back taken when he got on all fours,

what would be another way you would want your fighter to get back up? Um,

I, he did, I guess Izzy did a variation of the dog collar where you sort of push on the head or C clamp to the back of the neck and push that head away and continue to scoot. I don't like the, the forehands crawling. I just don't. Um, but I understand the effectiveness of it.

And then you go to the more grip and you fight the hands, turn and face. Um, and yeah, wrestling's a little bit harder with MMA, MMA gloves and everything. I understand that. Um, Good, good footwork and an effective in and out jab, a variation of offensive techniques.

All those things sort of build into making it more difficult for you to be taken down. One of the things I see, and this might be a little bit off topic, but Duplessis with his high guard and his heavy punching and his forward walking technique. should be easier to take down.

And if Adesanya just had one double leg in his fucking arsenal, maybe he could have kept DDP at bay. And I think that might be what it takes to keep, because a lot of that diversification and varying offense that you see from Duplessis is all shit that would make him very susceptible to being taken down

because he just sort of marches forward.

There was a moment where DDP even pulled guard and Adesanya just let him up. Yeah. Yep. And DDP, for his part, is not one of those guys who's too proud to pull guard. He will pull guard and Adesanya backed up.

No. Again, you're speaking to the benefits and the advantages of having a very well-rounded game. You can get away with a lot more shit. You really can. The more dynamic your skill set, the better you are in all facets of mixed martial arts, the less pure every technique has to be because you have greater opportunity

because there are multiple things for them to contend with. We talk about it all the time, layering your offense, variations of strikes, striking from different angles. But even if you didn't have a ton of technique, even if you had just basic punches, And basic kicks, all of those are improved by a good wrestling game.

A good wrestling game is improved by good basic striking where you're putting a jab on someone and their hands come up, right? Or their vision is a little bit obstructed. So if their hands are high, constantly swiping some blood from their brow because you'd be able to cut them with a jab or even with an elbow.

They're a little bit easier to take down. So having a well-rounded game, working that aspect of wrestling so where you have quick finishes, quick transitions into your finishes so you're not exhausted from having to scramble or improve position or knee slide or continue to run a double into the cage, lift, try to go, try to tree top,

try to run the pipe, switching off to a double, going again and again. The quicker you are and the more effective and efficient you are with your wrestling and your transitions to finishes, the less of an energy spend, and you're a much more effective combat sport athlete when you're not fucking exhausted. So it all works. It works.

Again, everything sort of works. There's that overlap in the Venn diagram where nothing has to be perfect if it's all really good and complements itself and works synergistically.

Round two, there was an interesting moment where DDP threw a hook, but he threw himself off balance and fell over, but ended up taking Adesanya down in the process. Now, a friend of mine mentioned that in this fight, both fighters looked like they were on ice skates. We're used to DDP looking like he's on ice skates.

But in this fight, we saw Adesanya constantly off balance as well. So clearly, DDP was doing something to Adesanya to make him like that. When I rewatched his takedown, despite DDP throwing himself off balance with a hook, Adesanya was caught leaning back with his feet together.

So it didn't take much for DDP to take him down because basically his feet were together. Just grab the feet. He falls over. So how was DDP off balancing Adesanya like this?

I think a couple things you got to consider. One, just how physically big and strong he is and be able to bump someone out of position. And again, because we're speaking of fighting with multiple techniques and differing skill sets. He's going from wrestling to punching to kicking. It becomes more problematic.

Okay, so we have 35-year-old Israel Adesanya who's had 100-plus fights across combat sports. That's a lot. And add in the hesitance that you get or the hesitation that you have when a guy will either zing you with a left hook, right hand, left hook, right hand, or sometimes you'd see DDP,

remember he had a jab and he'd double it up and he'd walk it in. Or whenever you come back with your own counteroffense, like a nice jab from Izzy. DDP was able to crash it and find that double leg. There's just a lot going through a guy's head. And when he starts to fatigue or hesitate,

You know, sometimes you get caught with your feet together. Earlier, you said bump him. What do you mean by bumping? So watch when Duplessis misses shots, misses punches. I don't mean shots like takedowns. I mean punches. When you throw him big strikes,

he will dip his head and then either correct head position and bump you in the hip with it, or he'll bump you in the chest while sort of sliding down. Battering, right? Absolutely. And yeah, maybe he's sort of walking a fine line into the head-butting space,

but when he's the shorter fighter and the opponent's fighting sort of tall, that's not much of a risk. Now, if you don't like him leading with his head like that, throw some uppercuts or throw some knees. But again, if you miss those in your back, in your shoulders or over your ass,

or you're not in good fundamental position, he's going to crash your fucking hips and take you down because he's really strong. So he's literally bumping you. Yes, he is straight up bumping you. And how you do that is you try to keep your feet wide. But when your feet are wide, only one foot tends to move.

And if it's your back foot, your feet get too wide. And if it's your front foot, they get too close. So you see a lot of that bumping, and unless you're doing a backflip through the air, which Izzy probably can do, but you're not doing mid-fight, your foot position becomes a little bit problematic.

And I think that was one of the times we saw that.

Throughout the fight, when the two exchanged shots to the head, it seemed like DDP was hurting Adesanya more. We can question Adesanya's age, his chin, but how much of a factor was DDP taking most of the shots to his gloves and forearms and Adesanya taking it on the head or chin with his hands down?

When Adesanya was getting hit with those final shots of protracted punch sequences... Um, it was because he was out of position. His chin was up and his hands were a little bit down. Adesanya's chin is still pretty good. Right. Um, is he walking around with the chin he had as a 29 year old? Probably not.

I would say certainly not, but, um, his chin is still pretty good. He got zapped with a fucking right cross, um, early in the fight that I thought would have put down a lot of guys because it was right on the tip of the chin and he just sort of ate it. Um,

And one thing I think the style bender does a little bit too much is style in there. It's like, fuck, if you get hit and you get hurt, how about you just shuffle and move, right? Clear the cobwebs. Are you really going to point to the fucking the mat and try to pull Max Holloway?

Max Holloway is Max Holloway. Let Max Holloway be Max Holloway. You'd be easier out of Sonia. Clear the cobwebs and try to win a fucking fight. Like that's your job. Pointing to the mat whenever you're fighting not all that well Um, and then only to get cracked a couple of times to just sort of turn and run.

Well, I appreciate that the sort of dog in you to want to do that, but you know, how about post clear, get some distance, shuffle, maintain your compose or try to regain your composure, maintain some distance and get back to fighting. Um, when you're, when you're ready, willing and able rather than just sort of

and fuck all the other extraneous showmanship that we've all come to... I mean, I fucking hate it, but the fans have come to want. Just get back to some basics, clear the cobwebs, and try to get back in the fight. What were some of the things you liked from Adesanya?

When he continued to string together some punches, he looked really good. And... It also disrupted any momentum, and I actually mean physical momentum from Du Plessis. I think Adesanya, if he fought with more of a continued kickboxing pace and would just sort of shuffle, shift, get back to taking the lead, would have had a lot more success.

I think he hesitated and waited a little bit too much. Um, when he, he felt like he was scoring, he went to a little more style stuff instead of increasing volume when it mattered too many single shots where he reset when he didn't do that. I think he looked fantastic.

The way that Israel Adesanya currently fights, he's not beating Duplessis. The way Adesanya can fight, and I'm not saying he's even fought like this a lot, but just with his arsenal, with a long pepper jab, good footwork stance, which is, I think he has the tools to beat him,

but he would have to sort of rework some of his strategy in the way he fights. But I don't know if he's going to do that. I think he's going to blame it on age or... Maybe some miles, and now he already has retirement on the brain. But I think if you rework some things,

you could still get a lot of really, really good, high-quality championship fights from Israel Adesanya.

In the fourth round, before the finish, DDP clips Adesanya with a shot, and Adesanya falls over. The commentator said he tripped, but tripping is a problem in a face-punching contest, right? Because if you watch it again, Adesanya is leaning back with his feet together, so any shot would have made him fall over.

Then later, DDP legitimately drops him with a shot to the temple as Adesanya is leaning back again. Then he catches him with four consecutive shots, you mentioned this, as Adesanya tries to lean and roll away, but he's rolling on to DDP's hooks. It reminded me a lot of how Weidman, Chris Weidman,

beat Anderson Silva by coming forward and instead of punching left, right, left, right, attacked him with consecutive shots from the same side when Silva was leaning back. So after hurting Adesanya, DDP took him down and this time immediately went for the choke and finished him. I want to add that before this fight ending,

punching to choke finish happened, Adesanya pointed to the mat, like you mentioned, like Matt Holloway. And I'm bringing this up to say, this is why, in my opinion, Holloway is arguably the greatest of all time. Even others can't hold a candle to Holloway. Only Holloway can do the things he can do in two divisions that are much,

much, much more competitive and deeper than middleweight. Oh, no doubt. No doubt. But with that said, how important was DDP hurting Adesanya on the feet to get that finished that quickly?

Oh, yeah. I mean, the old school jujitsu heads will probably post, and I don't think the fight game is like this anymore, but I remember back in 2016 or 2017, I was at Drysdale's, and everyone was like, jujitsu wins fights.

I'm like, the left hook to the body that dropped a dude to his knees set up the guillotine choke. And if he didn't guillotine choke him and wanted to just punch him in the face, that would have won that individual the fight, right? Fighting wins fights. Yes, submissions are an aspect of it.

But without those punches, Duplessis doesn't get to Adesanya's back. Just like without a takedown, some people who would get a jiu-jitsu finish. There are aspects of fighting that are fighting. And again, a lot of this shit may not be good technical fighting, but it's effective fighting. And you see Duplessis do some really good shit.

Or at least really effective stuff. The stuff he throws hurts. Throwing a double right hand, always the best move. I don't know. I like the technique. But I liked better that he punched Adesanya with a right hand that sent Adesanya sliding even further to Adesanya's left, which would have been to Duplessis' right side.

And then he looped with a little bit of a hook. the same right hand. So he didn't throw the same punch two consecutive times. And he did all this while continuing to move his feet so he could put a little stink on it. And he's a guy that hits pretty hard.

And when you get hit with four shots from him, I imagine that those hurt. So yeah, you see an Adesanya who can defend rather easily when he's not fatigued and he's certainly not hurt. And then you see the difference when he is hurt and he is fatigued, how much easier that choke is to finish.

Now, we talked a lot about how DDP game planned for Adesanya. Could you tell what Adesanya's game plan was for DDP? I couldn't.

I felt like maybe Adesanya was a little bit of a victim of his own success, right? He was doing a lot of the wrong shit when he was getting pieced up by Baheya, but then he found that right hand that starched him, right? And then he was doing a lot of good stuff in the first fight,

but then he got clipped and KO'd in that fight. So rather than continue to do, I think, good stuff and add a more offensive attack, or say a more aggressive offensive attack, he was content with that. fainting and looking for counters, um, and thinking that he would find a shot rather than layering the techniques, um,

with some strategy to eventually find that shot. And again, that's so much fucking easier said than done. And that's Monday morning quarterbacking, but that is what we're doing. So, um, I, I couldn't really figure out what it, what it was that they thought they were going to do. And, uh, the fight footage I saw had, I, um,

translation i didn't i couldn't hear the cornering all that well so i don't have like a a true um window into what they were doing or thinking but there were times where i saw what izzy does it when it comes to some i don't want to call it

technical brawling because no one even knows what that is anymore because the ufc just bleed philosophy and penalization of defense but there's good shit that israel adesanya still has um but a lot of the stuff that he was he was bringing wasn't necessarily working all that well and in a fight where i

think the commentators kept saying it was a lot closer than what it really was i just didn't see it that way there was um I, even when I thought Duplessis was getting pieced up, I could tell his hands were up. He wasn't really hurt and he was just sort of waiting for his moment.

And the second he fucking wanted to go, he'd go and he took the fight momentum back immediately when he wanted to. Again, that's born of strategy, right? That is born of, calculated tactics in order to recover, um, his, um, his aerobic capability to refill that gas tank, right? Let the phosphogenic and lactic, um, uh, energy systems recover.

And that's what he did. Then he went and he had enough in the tank to go again. Um, I sort of didn't see much rhyme or reason for what is he did when, when things worked, it seemed like it worked when they didn't. Um,

They didn't, and I didn't see any sort of layering to get back to the stuff that worked. And most of the time, the commentary was just a little bit shitty and not picking up on that. There was some good commentary throughout some. At times, they would say some really good things. I forget.

I think it was Dominic Cruz who picked up on something. But a lot of the time, it seemed like a bunch of glad handing and fluffing of Israel Adesanya in a fight that I didn't think was all that close.

Is DDP the harder person to plan for? Because you compared him to Hurricane. I think currently he is.

If you don't have really good wrestling, then I... I think that's going to be a bit of a problem. He's good with that blitz stuff. And like I said, if you cover up appropriately, he's going to bump you off balance or he's going to take you down. If you do cover and move and you move straight back,

he's going to kick you and he'll leg kick you and he'll find those shots. Like I said before, I thought Strickland did an excellent job game planning for him. I might even have given the nod to Strickland if I didn't hate him so much. But the things that Duplessis brings to the table,

I think you have to have really good wrestling and really good conditioning to combat and establish a game plan that allows you to beat him. Without that, you're just a little bit vulnerable when you have a lot of other shit to contend with.

He's basically chaotic GSP, kind of built like him, too, in a chaotic way, in a division that's not very well-rounded or even good. So he's the champ.

Yeah, and this is one of those things where I say, let the fighter be the fighter, right? If the goal is to win, he's winning. He said it earlier, he's undefeated in the UFC. And he does have sort of that... Uh, if, if you over commit to his punches, he's going to take you down.

If you over commit to his, uh, to take down defense, then he's going to, he's going to land some strikes and he's going to swarm you. Um, and he's willing to take those risks and some of those risks that he takes in this mixed martial arts.

You said it before, when you try to make it, something's always going to be a little bit wrong, right? Because no sport in its truest sense is optimized for mixed martial arts. All of them you have to have some sort of hybrid, some sort of bastardized adaptation to perform optimally for MMA.

So suboptimal skill sets in every particular discipline actually optimizes you for mixed martial arts. Yes. Right? And that is the beauty of the game planning for it. And some of the guys have some good athleticism where they can just sort of skip back and find a knee no matter how good your double leg is.

Or other guys can piece you up, and if your defense and your head movement is so slick, they sneak that head kick up and they clip you, and maybe they finish you. But the more well-rounded you are and the more threats, the more possible threats a fighter has to contend with, the more opportunity you're going to have,

the more opportunity that presents itself to a well-conditioned championship-level fighter like you get what you get this past weekend. And that's a finish by Duplessis.

Jason, I think we covered everything there is to say about this fight as far as the technical side, as far as what we like to think about the style matchups and the chaotic puzzle that is a mixed martial arts fight, especially at the highest level. So thank you, Jason, for joining me and giving me your insights.

Thank you all for listening. Always a pleasure, my friend.