Fight Study 162: UFC 308 (Plus Transcript) (Patreon)

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Coach Jason and Sam discuss UFC 308, Francis Ngannou's success outside of the UFC, and the challenges of coaching. Fight Study is essential listening for thoughtful martial arts fans.

Transcript

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We are back with Fight Study. I am Sam, and I am once again joined by Coach Jason Sargus. Nice to have you back, Jason. Good to be back, Sam. Good to be back. So from boxing to MMA to PFL to UFC, there has been no shortage of fights.

But today we are here to discuss UFC 308, headlined by the featherweight showdown. champion Ilia Topuria and former champion and one of my all-time greats, Max Holloway. But before we get to that, let's just talk a little bit about the success Francis Ngannou has had since leaving the UFC.

He just fought on PFL Superfights, Battle of the Giants, getting an emotional win after his loss to Anthony Joshua, but also more importantly, and much more deeply tragic, the loss of his son, Kobe. And he made the fight look easy. And Henan Ferreira is actually bigger than Francis Ngannou and just poses a lot of physical threats.

And there was a lot riding on the line and Ngannou came through. And how could you not be rooting for him to win this fight, knowing how much he had on his shoulders? If he walks away now, he walks away a legend and a rich man.

Even his boxing fights, he lost both, but he made a lot of money. And if he continues, he has options on the table, and I'm sure more ways to find success and get his name out there. He can just be a brand at this point. He doesn't even need to fight.

Well, I think like you said, Francis lost a child barely six months ago. And by making the switch over to boxing, I believe he made nearly $20 million, if I'm not mistaken, for what was a significant beating he took from Anthony Joshua, and another $10 million for just a really impressive showing against Tyson Fury.

I don't know what he made against Ferreira, but I believe it was around $10 million for that as well. But Ferreira also made $2 million plus the $1 million he made for winning the PFL tournament. So that's life-changing money. That extra $2 million on top of that $1 million is really life-changing.

And he did that because he went and stood his ground against the almighty UFC machine. And how do I say this? All right. I'll just come out and say it. Dana White pushing any anti-Francis Ngannou narrative bullshit propaganda is propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels fucking blush.

It now seems more accurate and appropriate to call the UFC the Dana White Ministry of Public Enlightenment and propaganda. But anyway, if you've seen anything that he said about Francis. Just recently, too.

Even after his son died.

Exactly. It's as dishonest and factually incorrect as it is silly, juvenile, and fucking ignorant. And to make those statements that are just false and not wish a man who fought and made his name in your organization success in the face of losing his son less than six months ago, is utterly grotesque.

And I wouldn't expect that even from Dana White. So it's just a shame that once again, Dana White shows himself to be who he truly is. And that's an absolute piece of garbage.

Now, let's talk about UFC 308. You couldn't book a better fight than Ilya Toporia versus Max Holloway. It's a fight in one of the deepest divisions between two of the pound-for-pound bests. As shitty as Dana White is, he's not the matchmaker, and he has been lucky to have such generational talent. He didn't make these people.

These people like Max Holloway, like Ilya Tapuria. It's just them. They're just different. They could have had the worst training. They would have still been special. They would have still made it here. It just happens like that. These are just special people who came up around MMA at the right time, and we get to see them fight.

And they're both relatively close to each other's age, both close to their primes. Hardcores could not ask for anything better, and the fight did not disappoint. Jason, however, you've been saying Toporia is special in a division that is special. Yeah, I've been saying that for years.

And that he's a future champ since you first saw him fight in the UFC. There's a lot of people who look special in 145 because 145 is good. It's just deep. So what made you think that, especially so early in a fighter's UFC career in one of the deepest divisions?

Well, I think, number one, I have a pretty good eye for talent. But before I say anything about that and pat myself on the back for what I think is being ahead of the curve, and I really was, Ilya receives a lot of hate from fans, at least from what I see on Twitter and whatnot.

Wait, let me add some context too.

When he fought Ryan Hall, a lot of people thought Ryan Hall was going to beat him and then make his path to the title because he had, quote unquote, such an unusual style, nobody would figure him out. And then Teporia figured him out and made it look easy.

So that's where we were at when you were saying this guy was a future champ.

Oh, yeah. And everyone was saying, well, he's fighting a guy who can't strike at all. Anyway, even with all the hate that the man gets, Ilya Tapiria, here's why he's hated. He doesn't need to be fucking clever. He doesn't need one-liners or the good guy, bad guy shtick that everyone's trying to work.

He doesn't need that bullshit Tony Robbins WWE amalgamation, the disingenuous bullshit that Michael Chandler throws at us. It makes my fucking ears bleed. He doesn't need the gift of gab and he doesn't need to sell fights. He sits in disdain of the whole process. At least that's how it appears to me.

And he acts like that selling fights is the promoter's job. Well, he just stays the course, getting better and better at fighting. He walks and talks like he's the best in the world and above most of the foolishness that the UFC has brought continuously with their marketing creations and from the fucking Contender Series. Here's what I'll say.

I get a little bit loose-lipped and I can run on a little bit, but I'll just say this, and I honestly believe it. Max and Volk, are my two favorite fighters of all time and two of the best fighters. Yes, bar none. And Ilya Tepury is simply better than the best version of either.

Wow. So not just who they are now, but the best version of them.

He is. He is just simply better. If he was giving you problems on your feet, you wouldn't want to take him down and you probably couldn't. If he was having trouble with you standing, he could take you down pretty much whenever he wanted to.

So his ability to mix it up and become a mixed martial artist at the age of whatever he was when he first started doing this thing showed some really impressive skills. And even in the first couple minutes of the holloway fight when he decides to you know uh throw a few upstairs level change get

that takedown and then always throw that little faint jab and faint level change to keep uh keep max a little bit heavy on that lead foot and then chop away at it just showed brilliant game planning in a higher level understanding uh of this of this

fight game but that's what you see now right what did you see early on, though, because we didn't get to see him fight Max yet. So you didn't get to see that footage of him even fighting contenders yet. You said you have a good eye for talent.

What was it you were seeing? He was doing all the basics correctly, right? He was staying in his stance. If he would punch himself out of his stance because he swings big and he misses, he would bring his feet with him and he'd stay in his stance. He would faint. He could counterpunch.

He could punch heavy offensively and take the lead. He could punch in between punches. He kept his shoulder up, always pretty high, fighting behind his shoulder with his chin down. He threw punches correctly and when he started to get tagged and started to always

dip to his right like wrestlers or people who have a good wrestling background or shorter fighters tend to do to avoid a jab and started paying for it with some left head kicks. He corrected some of those little things early on and it's that continued improvement I hear it all the time.

There's so much hubris in... I've used the word disingenuous multiple times in the show. I use it again. This disingenuous attempt at... You're tougher than the game and you don't have to know the basics and you don't have to drill the base. The game's bigger than you and it's built around foundational skill sets.

He started doing that early. He didn't talk about his power. All he talked about was how good he was at wrestling and jiu-jitsu and that his striking might be better. Because he started grappling first. Yes, he did. And he decided to learn how to box and box the right way and then sort of modify it

for mixed martial arts. And he paid attention to the little things, the things that became avant-garde and were problematic, like the calf kick, like stance switches, like neo-footwork. And he's got a recipe for success when people try just about any and everything against him, which tells me he's well-prepared and he really understands his game.

And he's followed it from a coaching perspective or from a coach's eye. And he's just as well-coached as he is intelligent.

There were people who heard about Tuporia before he even got to the UFC, not because they were paying attention to the MMA scene in Europe, but because Ilya Tuporia as a teenager was already making a name for himself as just a jiu-jitsu guy. So when he was going to UFC...

None of us even knew that he was a good striker. And because he was a jujitsu guy, you know, you don't know what the top end is. You don't know how good this guy is going to be. Maybe just like one of those guys who punches his way into Clinch Paul's guard or

like has to take him down. And if they can't, they're in trouble. But then all of a sudden he comes out and it's like, you don't even know that he's a jujitsu guy.

You'd have no idea from his last couple of fights against elite UFC talent.

I mean, the elite of elite all time. We don't know what his MMA grappling is like per se, but that potential is in his pocket. That experience, that person that was really good at jiu-jitsu, that's still him. So he still has that for backup. So that's what makes him even more mysterious because he's the champion and you

don't have that footage yet.

Yes, but he did toy with Bryce Mitchell on the ground after he punched the living shit out of him for however many minutes. I don't know if you can punch your way into an arm triangle and that tells you how good of a grappler he is, but he's definitely not lost there.

I think he is abnormally strong and an excellent athlete. I don't know if any of the UFC commentators listen to us, but I've said multiple times, there are certain athletes... in MMA that if they wanted to do a ball sport, they could. They probably have that sort of hand-eye coordination, vision, acuity,

and reaction time and reflexes to do something like that. I think when John Anik said the guy might be able to play shortstop in Major League Baseball, He's not wrong that this guy has really, really high level athleticism. And that matters too. The days of just technique in jujitsu, big weight cuts, techniques in jujitsu,

it's athleticism will carry you a long way in this game. And he's got it in spades.

Because if you've both trained in the gym the same amount of time, you're both working hard, then what is the difference?

Absolutely. And let me say, yeah. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work. It depends how fucking talented they are. Because I can work pretty hard and I'm not beating a lot of these guys, even though no matter how hard I would work.

Now, having watched the fight as a coach, what was your read of this fight? What were the things that were important?

Well, first let me say, I think it was my favorite fight of all time. I'd never been more excited for a fight. I was sick throughout the whole day. I had some sort of flu bug. I felt terrible, fell asleep early and I woke up and it was the only fight that I saw of that night.

And I Everything that a mixed martial artist should want to know about the fight game, should want to see visually how a fight and a fighter should comport themselves, how a fight corner and team should carry themselves in cornering their fighter, the effectiveness of communication in between rounds. chin, cardio, technique,

everything you want in mixed martial arts at an elite level was demonstrated in this fight. And it was, I'll say it again, my favorite fight of all time. And getting an Ilya Tepurya that just knocked out Alexander Volkanovsky, fighting someone who is as problematic from both the stance switching, height, just durability. A chin on Max Holloway.

Even though Max was the underdog, I had a feeling that he might be able to pull this off. I really did.

It was not lopsided. It was competitive. And it seemed like it was pretty close until it wasn't. The thing is, Toporia, once he runs away with it, he just runs away with it.

He does, right? And then there's little things you start to see as the fight unfolds and you watch it a second time. But when I watched the first time, if anyone would have said they scored it two rounds to none either way, I'd have said you're a dick because it should easily be split one to one because

they were both that close. If you had to pick, you'd have to pick, right? Seeing it in real time. When I watched it a second time, I started to notice some things a little bit differently. I noticed about midway through the first round,

Max was having a lot of success with the jab or really the left hand from the orthodox stance. And then Ilya would look for the same technique again in counter, usually ripping a heavy calf kick. Because to throw that lead hand, you've got to be a little bit heavy on that lead foot.

And even with that, that early problem solving from Tepuria, I think Max looked pretty sharp. I really liked his volume, and he seemed to push off after exchanges like he did against Aldo when he was like, always pushing him off and getting back to distance and then peppering him with the jab and controlling space.

And even when he missed or didn't land cleanly, the push-offs from reset to distance put him in a good position to come back with a nice jab. And that kind of volume, it does. It pays off. It pays dividends long-term over the course of five rounds. And it also gives the judges something to look at. Also,

the left head kick, which I think people have seen the way some shorter fighters tip to the right, especially when they have a bit of a boxing style. When you've got to contend with the jab and you're parrying, that works. power hand or right hand is occupied, that left head kick can sneak in there.

I think Max threw it and saw some possibilities with it.

That seemed like a new wrinkle too, right? He's still improving. That was something that I hadn't seen a lot of before in fights. And he's like, oh, here's a new toy. I'm still getting better. Exactly.

And I was worried that that sort of volume, I wouldn't have cared who won this fight. Like I said, it's my two favorite. The only thing I had really riding on Ilya was that I said that like how great I think he really is. But I certainly wouldn't have put money on him knocking out Max Holloway.

And it did hurt my heart a little bit that that's how the fight unfolded but go back to some of the things max really did well he counterfeit countered very effectively throughout the fight um and when tapiri would swing big um and miss i

think it was at the end of the first round with like a big two three combo um max snapped back in nice one two right adam and then then that was basically the end of the round you know or estimate like towards the end of the round and

Max looked really strong with the jab at the beginning of the second round. A nice hook off the jab, and then he'd come back with a 1-3-2 and good movement, even though that leg was getting chewed up a little bit. It definitely wasn't a knockdown,

but I think part of the reason his feet were a little bit all over the place at times and he caught himself square-stanced in some of those stance switches was because Ilya was chewing up that lead leg a bit. Some of the things the commentators were saying I thought were a little bit

incorrect when they were saying Max was getting the better of the boxing exchanges. Anyone who disagrees with me, first hear me out. Again, I watched this a couple of times and also re-watched the fight. It's the times that Max looks really fantastic with volume and some nice combinations working off the jab. But, you know,

Taperius Champ was able to sort of lure out some of those good boxing combinations from Max and counter with really heavy calf kicks after only eating a jab, you know, or pairing a jab. And then after some of those calf kicks, he'd put a solid right hand on Max.

So like at 348, Tapir lands a strong calf kick in multiple combinations. In the commentary, DC specifically was just sort of stuck in his own stream of consciousness and missed. He hit a 132 and hits a nice dance switch and fade off, but the other guy throws a throwaway hook and comes back and snaps your head back

with a big two while you're on the retreat. Well, I'm scoring that big two that has you running and sweat flying into the crowd a little bit heavier than I have a slap jab, a slap hook, and a two that just grazes you. So I was seeing things a little bit differently.

Again, I have the benefit of watching it a second or third time. But even on initial listen, I thought the commentary was a bit all over the place.

Now, do you think Holloway going up to 155 and coming back down to 145 and being as big as he is and now as old as he is hurt him? Because usually fighters, as they age and keep growing, right, because he started really young, they move up a division. But Max is staying at 145.

Actually, he did move up and went back down. So do you think that affected his performance at all?

I don't know if it affected his performance, but I would not want to fight Ilya Taperia having fought at 155 and then come back down to 145. I'm like the chin tends to suffer. Um, I'm not saying that has any bearing because I mean, when you get blasted, you get blasted,

but we've seen Max wear it pretty well. Um, and by pretty well, I mean better than anyone in this fucking sport ever. So, um, The weight cut can make a difference. I don't know if it did. Again, I don't have the insight into his weight cut or his camp. And I'm not a neurologist.

I haven't seen his brain scan. But like I said, I wouldn't want to be fighting Ilya Tapiria. having an extra 10 pounds to cut when I already looked pretty big fighting Gage at 55.

So you mentioned earlier that you think Toporia would beat the best version of Max. So now having watched it, right, with the benefit of hindsight, was this also a bad style matchup for Holloway?

Max, with his volume, his conditioning, and his chin, really has no bad style matchups unless someone can continually crack him, right? And for someone to continually crack him, they have to have speed and power and a chin. I think most people, and cardio.

And I think most people fade in some of those departments or else you don't have the power to put Max out. And he's just that volume and that conditioning is going to overwhelm you.

That's why he points to the ground at the very end because that's safest because he knows he still has cardio. He's going to keep hitting about as hard as he has been since round one. It's a trick, right? They're a sloppy mess, right? They're a sloppy mess.

He's still got it nice and tight and he's putting it on you while you're just swinging for the fences. It's calculated. But now he finds this young kid, 27 years old, Comes in and he's got a chin too. If you think I'm mistaken, take a look at the head kick he took from Hebert.

The kid can basically get hit with a baseball bat, come back and double leg you. So when you start considering the chin, the problem is 145 is the deepest weight class with probably three of the best fighters, in my opinion, of all time in mixed martial arts. And Ilya Tepurya just beat two of them.

And I think Taperia is probably the third. People are going to say it's too early to say that. I disagree. And I think the facts will bear it out long term when he continues to dominate pretty much whoever you put in front of him. You're not going to out-wrestle him.

Your best hope is that he either takes a bad step and blows out a knee at this point or gets cut with a... headbutter and elbow. He's just better than everybody else in this sport because he's taken a different approach. Again, I'll say it.

He's gotten great at fighting while these guys got good with their PR and marketing push. It's a different thing. When you're the best fucking fighter in the world and you fully understand that you have the goods, yeah, you're going to sit through some of those press conferences and look a little bit aloof.

and not be as engaged because he's so good he's actually above it and he knew it ahead of time, but he still had to play the game and he did a little bit of the talking. And I'll say it again, in my opinion, it's a promoter's job to sell the fight.

It's a fighter's job to be a great fighter. And now we have what I think is a kid who's a generational talent among a couple of other generational talents at the weight class, and we got to see some pretty amazing stuff. If anyone says that Volk is washed, I promise you he is not.

If anyone says that Max is washed, I promise you he is not. These are three of the best fighters in the world, and they just happened to fight each other in the last two fights.

Now, Toporia has a way of slowly moving his opponents to the cage. It's slowly but surely, which is sort of unique.

How does he do it? Pressure and composure. Good defense, ridiculously hard power shots, feints, the threat of his wrestling, the fear of both his power and his grappling. So when you're a fully complete mixed martial artist with... with real power in your hands in legit boxing-level boxing and legit NCAA-level wrestling and true Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, well,

you are a real problem. And so there's a lot of things for them to consider. And when the power and the wrestling are both there, It's got to make you at least think and be a little bit hesitant.

If you want to just try to throw hands, he's going to beat you to your hips and put you on your back. If you try to fight with your hands low in anticipation of the wrestling, he's going to put that overhand right on you. What do you do?

You better hope you got the chin and the reflexes to deal with him. Max did pretty well until he didn't.

Part of why I feel like Max lost his footing and fell early in the fight and often looked like he didn't have his feet underneath him even before he got rocked was because I think Toporia hit so hard that even when Max blocked or it hit Max's shoulders or forearms or chest, even though you blocked it, right?

Like you're like not taking it to the face. There's so much power. It just knocks you off balance.

Oh, yeah. And it'll give you the blinky eyes too and make you just take a moment.

So I think that's why he fell over was because the guy could have hit him to the hip and he would have just fallen over because he hits so hard. And I think Toporia even says something like that in the lead up that people back up not because... they want to back up,

but once they feel his power, either they're knocked back or even if they feel it off of their forearms, they're just like, I don't want to get cracked with that. And they start backing up. So part of that backing up is, a product of his power, the threat. They talk about getting the respect.

I think he just gets that respect early on. He doesn't need to crack you in the face. He could hit you in the glove and that'll get your respect. That's what I noticed about this fight because Holloway has an iron chin and for him to just back away and move the way he did just from like

parrying the punches was like, okay, what he was feeling off the gloves, it was something different. And the way he was just being knocked off balance by that stuff. And I think there's one other aspect is when he gets people to the cage, it's not just that he's walking them down and walking forward.

It's more like he takes a step And then that becomes his new spot and he won't give up that ground. That means that even when he comes forward, sometimes he'll jump back, but not further than that spot. So he'll take and keep, take and keep. He keeps creeping, right? He keeps inching.

So that's why I think it takes like a while for him to get them to the fence because it's not him just like walking them down. He holds the position for a while. He's like, this is the position. I'm not going to back up from here. further than this, right?

I might come forward and I might go back to this position, but I'm not going to go further back than this. He keeps that for a while. He protects that geography and then he inches a little bit forward. And I think because it's so slow and methodical,

his opponents don't even notice that they're being pushed back to the fence.

Well, yeah, I think when you speak to someone's power and how they just inchworm in their way into your space and And your body and brain understands that. I've seen it not just in this Max fight, but in other fights where he's hit people to the body.

And they do a good job of getting their right elbow down and protecting. But it almost looks like he hits them so hard, it hurts their fucking elbow and then their body a little bit. Even the blocking arm looks like it's getting...

taking a bit of a sting and so you start to you start to do that enough your body has to process that pain and then the pain is potential for injury and when you do that like that there's a moment where your body just sort of pauses and he's able

to make up that ground and if you if you have that little bit of fuck you as a fighter to crash the distance in against him and swing back heavy if he wants to he's going to beat you on the counter punch or he'll beat you to your hips and take

you down like that's what he does that's the beauty of him being as well-rounded as he is um and being a threat in those positions. But again, he's a guy. He's a fighter that likes to punch. He enjoys hitting people and hitting people hard. He puts full torque on it, but he also has some educated defense.

He keeps his hands up. He knows how to roll with a punch. He knows how to typically keep his chin tucked. But like I said, there's a risk and reward when you punch as hard as he does and coming out of position, but he does a good job of keeping his feet with him.

So in doing those things, keeping your feet within this all forward movement and the ability to maintain your stance, and then it becomes up to the other individual to either make that ground back up and make it a firefight, which no one seems to want to do against such a heavy handed kid.

Or you try to give up some ground and he does a really good job of cutting people off and sort of staying in their face without being wild, overly aggressive, or most importantly, fucking predictable. He's just not predictable and he just does the right things the right way.

And his lack of predictability has a lot to do with just how fast he is. So, I mean, you may be able to predict he's going to throw a right hand because everyone's going to throw a right hand in a fight at some point, but it's his little pause and hesitation or faint and little level change.

And then you flick out a jab and he sees that jab coming and is Natural inclination is to bomb it over hand right and then a left hook to the body and then a left hook to the head after you try to step back and hit that jab straight. And he's putting that three-piece on you.

And I don't know if one, two, or three hit, but it doesn't really matter because if one does, it always seems to be problematic, especially when he backs you up towards that fence.

I'm sure there are going to be MMA pundits who analyze the ending and will pick apart everything about how Holloway moved near the fence. But in watching it again, I realized Holloway never recovered from the initial strike that knocked him back into the cage. So the ending didn't happen against the cage.

It was actually when they were near the center of the octagon. At two minutes and 48 seconds, that throwaway hook to the straight right hand. Yes, yes. After that, his feet were all over the place and that's the shot that really did Holloway in.

So rather than analyzing the final punch that put Holloway down and why he was moving that way, it's like he was moving that way because he had rubber legs. So how did Toporia land that right straight onto the Granite Chin Max so hard that it gave Max rubber legs?

Well, there were some good shots earlier in that round that weren't really picked up on because, again, some of the stream of consciousness you hear from the commentary team is if they have certain talking points they have to hit while real action is actually happening, they seem to miss.

There was a huge right leg kick and a nice right hand from Tepuria. And if you look at how Max moves when he gets hit with that right hand, he looks like he's shifting stances to a southpaw position, which puts him perfectly in line.

Not even perfectly in line, horribly exposed, getting caught in that transition with a right hand. I don't know if he was working off that left hook to... take that little drop step and stance switch, that little stance shift and come back with a straight left.

But he just put himself in a bad position and just ate that right hand flush.

Something else I noticed about that final sequence and also other sequences where Max got hit was that going back to power and how power plays into strategy, even what Max blocked or parried or the shot didn't land clean and grazed something else, Max was feeling that power.

So when those shots were coming in, Max's hands were so out of place. And it's like, why was it so out of place? It's because if he keeps it where it's supposed to be, Toporio will just punch through his hand and knock him out anyway. That's how hard he hits.

So you know how like sometimes when you're parrying or you're blocking, you have to kind of really smack that hand away because if you don't meet it with equal force, you will just hit yourself and then you will like hurt yourself because they will punch through your hand into you, right?

that momentum, something has to come back, right? His glove, you have to meet it with some kind of equivalent force so that it doesn't hit you, right? So Max was reaching for that shot so hard, right? Normally, Max doesn't flail like that, but he had to because that's how hard Toporia was punching.

So my point is sometimes when you hit hard, it's not even that, oh, the guy doesn't know how to parry or the guy's hands were all over the place. It's like, no, they have to often parry or block like that just because you're hitting that hard, right? Otherwise they will just break through your defense.

They will break through your guard. And so Toporia knows that about himself. He knows how hard he hits. So he just flicked it out. He knew Max would have to respect it. Otherwise he's, it's like, okay, if you don't do that, I'm just going to punch right through you anyway.

So it's like, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Max flailed and then the right hand came through. And I was like, why would he do that? And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah. That guy must hit that hard that you have to parry or you have to block that much harder.

yeah and but i mean even going back to the things that that max was doing very well he was doing that little stop kick um and then as he was scoring with it he started to see to puria start to pick up on it a little bit even to the point where he gave

him like the no no no and then like at 48 seconds later he knocks him out um or like you almost got it and that's what i mean about Ilya Topuria taking in information, when he starts to lose in exchange, I don't think he loses it because when you go to it again,

he's picking up on your timing and your rhythm and the success you're having. He's starting to be able to predict and counter. He's a massively powerful counter puncher. Then he keeps his foot on the gas once he stings you. Just like you said, even when he misses or he doesn't land clean, this is both...

like a strength and a bit of a deficit. When he gets tangled up, he still punches. Now, that sort of set him up for an elbow, and he almost got clipped with another one on the inside that I think just missed. And the one that did land didn't land,

and it almost landed like the meaty part of where you get tennis elbow or epicondylitis or whatever they call it. It just didn't seem to land like it could have. But because Ilya hits so hard and he gets tangled from that sort of aggression, it makes you sort of

I don't know, have to regain your proprioceptors and figure out where you are in that space. And I think he's a little bit better in terms of athletic prowess and proprioceptive awareness of resetting himself and coming back in with massive shots. And even his fast right hand that he doesn't load up on is still incredibly powerful.

And it landed often. And it wasn't commented on enough by the commentary team because it wasn't his bombing overhand, right? And Max wears it so well. But when you start wearing six, seven, or eight in a fight, especially in a fight where your lead leg is a little bit compromised, well, I mean,

there's only so many of those that you can chew on. And a five-round fight is 25 minutes to be taking that kind of punishment. So you started to see him wear it a bit not quite as well as we're used to seeing him wear it.

And I think when you get a guy who actually puts that kind of mustard on a shot, that's what you're going to get no matter how otherworldly your chin is.

When they did exchange, Toporia is much more planted down than Holloway. And Holloway is a little bit more uprooted, so he could kind of bounce around. So That also means Max isn't going to off-balance Teporia, but Teporia will knock Max around. So we saw that. Even in those kind of exchanges where they get tangled up, yeah,

you're equally tangled, but it's not going to be like Teporia losing his footing. It's going to be Holloway losing his footing, and that's what we kept seeing happen over and over.

Oh, you're 100% correct, especially even before the final exchange when he caught him with the right hand. Again, his footwork was a little bit all over the place because you have a 5'7 juggernaut, which is a bit of an oxymoron,

but that kind of power coming with that kind of force with that kind of speed is a problem, and it's going to put you on your heels, and you're going to have to adjust, and you're going to have to try to reset your stance. When you're doing that multiple times, you're going to be caught off balance.

When the other guy is a little bit more explosive – then you get what you get in that kind of fight. You better hope that it doesn't land. And unfortunately for Max, Ilya did.

My final thought for Holloway is that Holloway is an MMA guy who can do everything if you make him. Like if you take him down, he has jiu-jitsu, he can wrestle back to his feet. But if you just let him do what he wants, he's just a striker. When you're studying him or when you're fighting him,

it's not an infinite MMA universe to try to comprehend, right? He's constrained himself to this one thing. So for new people like Toporia, young guys coming up, that makes Max... much easier to study because there's so much footage of him in that one aspect of MMA,

and you don't really need to do as much homework in the other aspects. So my point is, even though he was so good, and I think he's one of the all-time greats, he was so good in that one area, but that also means that that's the only one area that anybody needs to study.

And because you fought so many times now for the UFC, there's so much footage of just that one area. Let's say there was just as much footage of you, this many fights, but you did everything, every fight, then they'd have to like try to break down every aspect. So the homework is so much more difficult.

So this is where now in his career, his lack of well-roundedness, the fact that he doesn't fight in all these different facets of the MMA game is working against him. I think that's what worked against Volkanovski, who studies a lot of tape. And it's like, oh, well, Max, I'm only going to think about his striking.

I don't have to worry about anything else, right?

Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. But with that, you get the legend that is Max Hathaway, right? That's what it's become. But he certainly would be a little bit tougher of a problem to solve. But he also had those fights against Volkanovski, which is a shorter fighter who has got a good right hand.

And that's a lot of footage from a guy who's about, I don't know, the same height as Taperia for him to have studied. So when you talk about a volume striker who has fought as often as he has against elite talent. That's a lot of footage for you to study,

not against throwaway fighters who you could have done anything you wanted to and you could have done. You are seeing tendencies that are actual true habits that are going to be very difficult to break and you're also seeing a fighter who has the ability to continue to learn

and evolve even with as many fights as Max Holloway has had. So you sort of know what you have to contend with, but not to stand firmly on just the fact that this is who he is, that though he may not have shown that left head kick a ton,

that it might be a new wrinkle he may bring. And I think as well coached as that team is. And I think one of the tweets was like, these guys are both making each other look vulnerable. I mean, vulnerable is probably not the best word. I think they were both just bringing out the best in each other.

And that's why I say it's one of my favorite fights that I've ever seen because of the way they've handled each other. Neither of them really had it going their way 100% after the first two rounds, but you could see moments where you thought the fight could be a little bit

problematic for one and then a little bit problematic for the other. And I think the commentary had no ability to pick it up. Again, they got a job to do, so it's not quite as easy. But when you watch it, you see that these guys are masterful decision makers under duress when shit's going down.

And they have the cardio and the technical goods and proficiency to back it all up. And they did. And when shit was going bad for Max, he didn't just brawl. And that's what I liked about that because you could say, yeah, he just laid it all on the line.

I actually appreciate that he didn't just go wild when hurt and try to comport himself, get a little bit of distance and kind of come correct whenever he can get it together and survive and fight and give me more as a fight fan to watch rather than say he went out on a shield.

No, man, let's win this motherfucker. Let's do that. Let's show me that you can. You can recover in between rounds. But the average fight fan, like I said, is silly and ignorant and probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway. But what they were able to give us was what I've been looking for as a fight fan for a long,

long time and what I complain about on this show most often.

There's one thing you reminded me of when you said true habits. Because if you're a young fighter, you might have some habits that disappear, right? You could grow out of it. You could get trained out of it. But maybe, yeah, there are some habits now because Holloway has been fighting long enough where

they're just true as in permanent features because I'm reminded of something he said after his fight with Arnold Allen. He said, Allen was doing good in that he kept catching him by taking a big step forward after the one and coming in with a big two. I think Max said something like,

my dumb ass would just lean back every time he did it and I would still get caught. And he's like, I'm aware of it. And I'm working on it and you're not going to see that anymore. And then we saw it over and over again in this fight.

I remember Cormier said something similar years ago before he got knocked out with a head kick by Jon Jones, where he said he knows he tends to dip to that side. He's working on it. He's aware of it. He's going to stop doing it. So even if you're aware of it, to your point,

maybe there are some habits that are just true, meaning they're just permanent features of who you are. It's late in the game, right? Maybe if it's early on, you could change it.

Yeah, and that's what Ilya kept doing throughout the fight. When he would miss on his three, he'd step through on his two, or he'd miss on his two, he'd step through on his three and come back with another two. And he kept his feet underneath him. And my old boxing coach, Billy Briscoe, said,

I forget the exact words, but mistakes, I'll take them because you can fix those. Habits, tough fucking thing to break.

Good point, because it's like they didn't just become aware of it. They've been aware of it for years, and it's just like... Nope, it ain't changing. Well,

it's one of the things you can do when you have a great chin and you are almost always the taller or longer fighter. You can get away with some of that stuff. And he has that nice little lean back hook that he hits people with.

Yeah, he threw that several times against Teporia. And I think each time they missed meaning, Teporia knew that was coming.

Yeah. And I will say this about Max's effort. If Teporia didn't have the chin that he had, it would have been an early night for any other version of Tepuria. And if Max didn't have the chin he had, it would have been an earlier night for any other version of Max Holloway.

That's how good these two were. There were like many versions of that ending in rounds one and two as well. Meaning he just didn't get hit as hard, but he got hit pretty hard He fell into the cage, shoulder rolled, and then got out. And that's what he did in the end,

except that punch was much harder and much more flush than all the previous ones. The sound, the sound was disgusting.

Yeah, I didn't like it. Again, I like being correct in how I call an athlete's development or trajectory in their career, but not really against Max Holloway. Sometimes you could hear a good shot. It doesn't just have to be about how you visually perceived it. But watch the left hook towards the end to the body,

where I think it goes off of Max's elbow and into Max's body behind the liver, but still like a body shot that's going to, that I think probably hurt him.

You could hear that too.

You could hear it from Max kind of gasping. Yeah. And that punch is hard. He whips it and torques it. Everything is like a perfect home run swing when he throws it like that.

Now let's talk about the co-main event between Robert Whitaker versus Hamza Chimaev, much shorter fight. I saw Whitaker fight Yoel Romero twice. I never saw Whitaker get out grappled like this. How did Chimaev do it? I mean, how strong is this fucking guy? I don't know. For the record, Whitaker's camp or Whitaker himself said,

His jaw is broken and clearly in the pictures, he lost several teeth.

I broke my face like that as a child. I ran out of the corner of a wall and I broke my jaw on the gum line and the teeth just fell into my mouth. They were still connected to the gums. I didn't lose any teeth. I broke it on the jawline. I've got plates all throughout.

in some screws. It's really, really ugly, but it took me running as fast as I can as like, I don't know, a nine or an 11 year old.

As a kid, we're not fully formed bones yet.

Yes. Um, Yeah. This is an adult ripping another person's, another adult fighter's face off. No velocity either, right? None. Just squeezing. Quick, too. Yeah. So, yeah, you just have to wonder. And that's not even a pretty shot. His takedowns aren't pretty. And he gets to your back and he just grabs you by the hips.

The counter-wrestling that Whitaker was trying to implement was the correct stuff to do. It was right. But I just don't know how strong Kamzat is.

I guess that's the hard part to prepare for is you don't know how strong he is until you get in there with him.

Yeah. When you saw how easily he grappled, when he grappled Usman, you're like, Jesus Christ, I know how good of a wrestler Usman is and how strong he is. We've seen his body of work. The first couple of minutes of that fight, he out-wrestled him like it was nothing.

So thank the fight gods that this guy has a limited gas tank or else he'd be killing people. So, I mean, I hope he never gets his cardio right because I'm looking for some healthy competition.

Like if he just had a pure wrestling match, I don't know how well he would do Against even like some of the MMA fighters, I think it's the fact that it's not even like MMA style. It's like a jujitsu style, right? It's like so much of it is constantly threatening submissions that makes his wrestling so good.

So it's like part of it is his strength, but part of it is his submission attacks and also his ground and pound. Without those things, if it was like a wrestling match with no submissions allowed, I've seen him. Do those. He's not as good in what is pure wrestling.

But the fact that when he can start attacking the neck, attacking the arm, and also start hitting you, that's what makes his wrestling special. Yeah. So I think it's just the fact that once he gets you to the ground, he could use those other tools to keep you there.

Absolutely. He's also a bit of a piston puncher too. Like he has that nice straight punching where it always sounds like it hurts when he hits you. So, I mean, that'll make you pause a little bit. But it's funny. He doesn't fight like from a crouched stance.

He fights really tall and then just basically does an odd squat and dives in and just takes you down like you're nothing, which is very strange to see.

I want to add to that because this isn't even my read. I was randomly listening to an interview with Eric Nixick. And I was listening to it just because I was like really curious about what's going on with Francis Ngannou, you know, everything that happened in that camp emotionally. I wanted to hear more about that.

But then the interviewer asked him about what he thought about this fight because Chimaev has been to Extreme Couture before. And so this is a read that Nixick had. And I think it's pretty spot on. They know once he gets you to the ground, Chimaev is really good. But What Nixick said is like,

what people don't realize and underestimate about him is he's really good at feints. And he saw that firsthand, I guess, when he was in the gym, he's really good at feints. And what he said about his feints specifically was the way he bounces up and down.

Like he bounces up and down and that's how he sets up not only his shots, but his strikes. And that's his main feint. Isn't like, you know, these kind of feinting with the hands for the shots or feinting with the hips for the kicks. He bounces up and down. It's like very simple.

And so knowing that from what Nick Six said, because Nick Six had spent a lot of time watching him, I was looking for that in his fight against Whitaker. And he was bouncing, like Nick Six said. And then what did I see Whitaker do? Whitaker bounced with him too.

Whitaker went up and down because he didn't know where the level change was. And then I looked at what Chimaev was doing and Chimaev was looking at him bouncing and he's timing the bounce for, for when to shoot. So he's basically like, ah, you're thinking what my rhythm, you're going up and down.

So you don't know what I'm going to shoot. Nice. Sneaky bastards. All right. Yeah. So he's timing the shot off of that bounce because like, I guess it's just psychological, right? If he goes out there, he starts bouncing. The opponent bounces with them. And, The thing about Whitaker, Whitaker likes to bounce anyway.

So I think he just easily gets caught into that sink anyway. And that was it. He timed that shot. And so that's why the shot didn't have to be that good because he was shooting in

while Whitaker was standing up. That's really interesting because bouncing in that sort of karate stance with only a thought of striking, when you're looking at an opponent doing that, you're looking at your opponent and comes out, that would be the world's worst wrestling stance, right? That tall with your hands that high.

And when he catches you bouncing too, he's like, all right, now you've just taken the world's worst wrestling stand.

Oh, I didn't even think about that. He gets you to take the worst stance to defend a shot.

And he's just going to feint his nice jab straight or hook straight. And he hits pretty hard or maybe he'll throw a couple. And then he just beats you to your hips. That's interesting. I'm going to have to watch some of that stuff again.

It's not that he has a good shot. He pulls you into taking a bad stance. Yeah, because he fights so goddamn tall. All right. The last fight I want to talk about is the light heavyweight fight between Nagamed and Goliath and Alexander Rocket.

Now, why would I talk about this fight when the first two are so good and has such big names? And these are like the fights for the hardcores, right? But it's because... I am fascinated by Rocket. In so far as he seems to have all the potential in the world. He's gigantic for the division.

He looks like a goddamn superhero figurine. Not even the actors, like the figurines. Yes, he does. And now having watched this fight, Rockets could have won this fight unanimously, but it got away from him because he's timid, in my opinion. That's what I'm calling it. That's my read of it. But the thing is, it's not,

just my read of it from this fight. That's been my read of him since his early fights in the UFC or even fights he's winning. That's been the frustration of him because when he first came in, because he's so athletic, everybody thought he was going to be like the next big thing,

but like he's winning a fight and he would just like kind of back away or look visibly nervous that he would still somehow lose this fight against somebody he's clearly beating. So, This ties into a conversation we had before we even got on air about how every time you try to leave the fight game,

you feel the pull to come back, right? You want to work with fighters, right? Yes. There is something about working with fighters. So when you see a fighter like this, right, with all this potential, you as somebody who keeps getting pulled back into the fight game,

you keep having an interest in working with fighters and working and developing them. What do you see with a guy like Rokic? What is going on there? Because he has all the tools that you want.

And he's beautiful on the pads. And every technique he throws, when he throws it individually, is fantastic. But you'll notice that he never exchanges. He doesn't fight him. He doesn't punch him between punches. He doesn't slip a punch and immediately counterpunch with three initiatives, right? You got your lead, you got your simultaneous counter, and your delayed counter.

He doesn't delay counter or rarely does. And he typically only takes lead off of several thousand feints. And it's feint, feint, feint, feint, right hand, feint, feint, feint, right kick, feint, left, cut, kick to the inside.

I think he's constantly hesitating in his mind, like, should I do it? And he's like trying to convince himself, do it. It's just fucking fight, kid. Like, you got the tools. Go out there and fight. The thing is, he also has a chin, right? We saw that against his fight against Brohaska.

Yeah, he's got a good chin. And he ate some flush left hands from Akhlaev. So I don't know what is causing him to have this inability to pull the trigger, but he doesn't look like he wants to fight in the gritty, dirty exchanges. He doesn't seem to want to.

That's why anyone who says that he had a shot at beating Peja is crazy because Peja loves those dirty exchanges. He'd absolutely eat him up. He's not just going to sit there, paw, paw, paw, let him faint that jab and then just get blasted with a right head kick because he's never seen that before.

Rokic has to understand that you have to actually fight. in an MMA fight, like fighting needs to take place. And that means attempting to hurt your opponent. And if you can't do it with pretty technique from the outside, you have to do something else. And he doesn't, he just doesn't. So with that,

I don't know what to say other than like your pad holder will stay at pad holding distance for you, but your fucking opponent won't. And if you can't deal with that, like train differently, like figure that out. They said they brought in some of the best like wrestlers and that's fine, but it's not a wrestling match.

Like, what were you doing in sparring? Where was your, like, where are your elbows on the exit against the cage? When's your bump and create a little bit of distance or create a little bit of an exit and send someone out and high kick. Where's your ability to pick someone out? Like, In between shots,

he didn't take a takedown attempt until the third round when it was relatively irrelevant. I don't know why his corner told me it was up two rounds to none. If that was a misinterpretation or something, I don't know. All of it just seemed odd that he came to a fight looking like he was disinterested in actually fighting.

Yeah, his corner didn't seem like they were doing him any favors. Like they seem to be making that type of timidity worse because they're like, yeah, now take it off. Take the foot off the gas because you were winning. So let's just be safe now.

Yeah, just don't do anything crazy. All right. Even if it were a kickboxing bout, it would have been a boring kickboxing bout, but it was an MMA fight and it really didn't look like one. It just looked like a very mediocre kickboxing bout where one of the individuals who might have been the better one

decided not to really try to win. And that's just how it looked. He looked disinterested and a little bit lazy. And I wonder if that comes from fear.

And Goliath said it was the most awkward fight he's ever been in.

I've never seen someone faint so much. I say race into a red light. I stole that from Matthew McConaughey. But that's what it seems like he's doing. Where are you going from there? What is the end game from all that fainting? A right high kick? All he's doing is covering hard high left, man.

That's like, all right, try it again. Try it again. Or to get overextended on a right hand because you fainted them outside of your right hand distance for so long that everyone just sort of bored in a little bit. You're so predictable and people were just sort of bored to sleep.

That's okay if you have that sort of fuck you kind of explosiveness that you can come up with out of nowhere. But he's fairly explosive, but not that kind of offensive prowess where he's wowing anybody. He's just not exploding like that. I think he might have it in him.

I don't know because he'd have to actually try it in a fight.

He has shown that in other fights, but then sometimes it looks like he scares himself after he explodes.

Yeah, sometimes being afraid of losing is the easiest way to lose, right? You think your way out of a win. I had a fighter named Anthony Terrell Smith. Normally he goes by Anthony Terrell. He's a great kid, a great young man now. I don't really speak to him anymore. It typically happens with me and fighters.

But this kid was probably the best natural talent of any fighter I've ever worked with. And he didn't have timidity. He wasn't ever scared. He lacked self-belief. He just didn't understand how good he was. How do you differentiate the two? I've seen this kid get mad and just put it on individuals.

I've seen him get mad and punch himself into an easy takedown, even against me. And I've seen him just pitter-pat, touch spar with people and accidentally knock them out with a left-head kick or a switch kick. out of nowhere. He sparred Felder for years. He was one of Felder's chief sparring partners.

This kid was 4-0 with four knockouts, I think, all in the first round. Then he lost against a kid who was a better wrestler because he did an improved position. My point is, if you can get someone who just doesn't have self-belief to understand if they turned it on and they actually fought,

that 99% of the fighting world couldn't compete with them. that's what this kid was and i wonder if rockets is is that sort of fighter because he's still pretty good when he does nothing because it's not like he's fighting the number one contender and he was basically a combination or two away from winning

that fight if he'd have done anything that's what i mean right he does the rocket stand where he barely does anything except he's pretty close to winning yeah you

know he's never given up anything huge except against yuri um So he stays in it, but they do a little more, come to fight, make it a little bit ugly. They'll make it a pad session because it's not a pad session. Not every punch is going to be at that absolute extension striking distance.

You got to learn to fight in the in-between spaces, in the muck and fray of it all where it gets ugly, muddy, bloody, and blurry. And when you can do that, you can start scoring and then people try to reset at distance and then you can find that stuff.

But no one's just going to stand there and be your highlight reel head kick knockout off eight feints. The sport's evolved too much and with as many contender series shitheads as coming in, There's only a few more of those going around once you're in the top five or whatever he's ranked in the world.

So I'm sure a lot of fans don't care about this fight, but the reason why I cared about it was just specifically from the coaching perspective. And I would say probably most of the listeners of this podcast, they are just fans, but there are quite a few coaches who listen too.

So I'm sure they might not care about Rockets per se, but they might have similar situations, right, to this. And so- I wanted to pick your brain a little bit more because earlier you said you had a good eye for talent. And one of the notes I wrote down while watching Rockets was baseball scout.

I wrote old school baseball scout. And the reason why I wrote that is because old school baseball scouts, they just look for bodies. They're like looking for just athletes. And they're like, you know, you got all the physical tools. I could teach you all the rest, right?

That's what the pre-Moneyball old school baseball scouts were known for, right? But fighting is different, right? It's not just about physicality. So when you think about your eye for talent and you're looking at talent and you see somebody young and green and you see somebody like Rockets who seems to have all the physical tools,

do you feel like, oh, this is a prospect that you could build into something? Or do you feel like timidity or lack of self-belief or whatever you want to call it is too hard to overcome?

See, it's really tough, right? because there's guys that are C-class fighters that fight their way up to the A-level just on self-belief and grit and guts.

Matt Frivola, right? A lot of it was just grit got him so far.

Yeah. Dedication to the actual ugly aspects of fighting hit and hit back. That was the part of the Rakic fight where I didn't understand because there was no hitting back. He would get hit and then he'd retreat or he'd try to land. And if he didn't land,

he would retreat and go back into a stance and do this nice bouncing where he looked smooth and athletic. I brought up Anthony Terrell. Anthony Terrell was by far, if Terrell's a 10, athletically, Felder's a seven and a half. And I believe Felder's probably a seven and a half and Favola's a 7.2.

And that's how good Anthony Terrell was. I mean, he really was something special. Felder's one of the best fighters I've ever seen because with what he had, he had heavy bones and he knew conditioning. He would never tire again because he tired in a fight and he would learn how to

anti-wrestle and then he actually learned how to actual wrestle. His hatred of losing was probably stronger than any other emotional impulse I've seen from another human being ever, drug addict, sex addict, anyone. His hatred of losing drove him to where as a 7.5 you can put him in there with a tenor if that tenor

doesn't have what he's got he's gonna find a way to fucking hurt them you give them enough time you give it you put him in there for 25 minutes you'll find a way to hurt you make you pay make you feel it he hates losing that much so i mean i love to see raw talent

And I enjoy working with them and being a part of that, the developmental process. But there's something about a kid who has that fuck you for losing where he hates it to the point where he would rather die than fucking ever be put on his fucking heels ever again. Like that kind of guy, man.

And fun to work with.

Building self-belief in some ways might be harder than building physical skills, right? You've done strength and conditioning and that type of performance coaching before, right? You can make people more athletic, right? That is doable. That is scientifically doable. But trying to get somebody to be more confident... That I think in some ways is a lot harder.

It is. It is. Whether you can overcome it, I don't know. You know, you can still do some pretty great things with a lot of self-doubt, but it'd just be amazing if you could flip a switch and make some of these individuals just truly believe in themselves and see what they could really, really do.

I guess we could tie this all back to your earliest read of Teporia where he not only had the physical tools, but you talked about that self-belief that he had from day one. So he was that combination where he had the physical goods and he had that composure. He had that belief.

So it's like, okay, what do we need to work on then?

Not much. He almost seems bothered by the shtick that is the UFC PR push and marketing push for the fighters because he's like, dude, they're not as good as me. I don't want to say what you guys want me to say or I'm not going to say anything clever because I'm going to beat them.

They are not that good. There's a reason why this asshole has to dye his hair purple.

I don't. When they asked him about Max saying he's the best boxer in MMA, he just said simply, let's see. That's it. And the camera's just on like, say some more, please. And he's just like, let's see. I have my doubts. That's it. That's all he said. So it speaks to what you're talking about, right?

Where he just... Believes in himself and he doesn't need to overstate it because if he overstates it, it would have to come from a place of he needs to convince himself. And he doesn't seem like he needs to use US proxy to convince himself that he's good.

Absolutely. And is there anyone that's knocked out Volkanovski? And does anyone else have a back-to-back title win in title defense that is as impressive as knockout wins over both Max Holloway and a championship win against Alexander Volkanovski? I know of none. And I've thought long and hard about it over the last 24 hours.

And I know of none.

I mean, there's a lot of UFC records, but as far as most impressive back-to-back wins, that's probably it.

I mean, we're looking at 145 pounds where the talent pool is just always so goddamn deep. And to do what he's done against both of those guys is just incredibly impressive. Yeah. And I think we're seeing a true generational talent. Eventually, he's going to fight someone who's tall or someone's going to give him some sort of problems.

He'll lose. And then they'll have the haters and the naysayers coming out. But until then, what he's done and I think will continue to do should be appreciated.

Diego Lopez is in his division. And if you're talking about a tall, super fast, explosive, powerful striker grappler, there's that guy. So that's how deep that division is.

Yeah. I just think about the 45ers that aren't in the top five anymore. I mean, there's so many good ones, right? Moffsar Evloev. He's undefeated. He's a monster. Yeah. I mean, even the ones that just... The ones that Ilya had to go through to get there. I mean, how good is Emmett still?

I mean, I feel like he could cause a lot of problems for some people. He's a great big power puncher. Man, there's some fun matchups to make. And even if Max goes to 55, there's some fantastic matchmaking to be done there.

There really is. That might be more of like extending his career. I don't know about him being champion at that weight division just because of the size.

Agreed. I think they should pick some specific fights. If some things happen to fall into place where he can make a title run, Um, maybe take a fight that, that might seem a little bit dangerous, but yeah, I would take some, uh, gaugey style fights where, uh, he can just, again,

put another exclamation point on an already stellar career.

All right. I think that's enough fight talk for this one. Thank you so much for your time, Jason. You got it, brother. Always a pleasure. Thank you all for listening.

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