About This Episode
We welcomed Scott Holburn into the conversation. We discussed UFC 249, 250 looked ahead UFC 251. Scott started talking about the bantamweight division in the UFC. He said the division is stacked with a "murders row of contenders and Sean O'Malleys performance as an example. O'Malley was not in the top 15 until his performance at UFC 250. Scott expressed disappointment at Jose Aldo getting a title shot coming up at UFC 251 against Petr Yan. He pointed to Jose Aldo's debut in the bantamweight division being a decision loss to Marlon Moraes the #1 ranked contender in the division. Our team at Complete Sports thought Aldo won that fight until the decision was read out in the cage. There is some questioning if Aldo deserves it and Scott mentioned Cody Garbrandt, Aljimain Sterling and Marlon Moraes as possibly better opponents for Petr Yan. When Petr Yan was discussed Scott said he was very deserving and looked like a machine. We spoke about Cody Garbrandt"s huge knockout being one of the best finishes we had ever seen. Scott said he has to be one of the fastest punchers in the division and controlled the fights with his calf kicks on Raphael Assuncao. We chatted about the great submission win by Aljimain Sterling who quickly took Cory Sandhagen"s back and sunk in the rear naked choke to get the tap out victory. Scott reiterated how he thinks jujitsu and Muay Thai kicks are dominating the sport at this time in hisory. He reflected on Conor McGregor arguably beating Nate Diaz with those kicks in their second fight. Henry Cejudo beat Dominick Cruz in UFC 249 to retain his belt. We had some big laughs at Cejudo calling himself the greatest of all time. Scott was very accurate in bringing up Jon Jones as a fighter who had really cleaned out his division with no argument and was one of the greatest of all time. Anderson Silva was also brought up as one of the fighters who legitimately can claim that he beat all comers in his division for a lengthy run at the top. Cody Stamann had entered the cage with a heavy heart as his 18 year old brother had just lost his life the previous week. Cody got a huge emotional win over Brian Kelleher. "Martial Arts is Violent Meditation" is one of Holburns favorite sayings and he said it could have been exactly what Cody needed. We then shifted gears to speak about UFC 249 and the discussion started speaking about Justin Gaethje and his dominating performance against Tony Ferguson. Scott had predicted that Gaethje would win and had won a bet with Mike Church(Churchy to most) to have some bragging rights. We both referenced how difficult a matchup this was for Ferguson as he had spent the last few years constantly training for Khabib Nurmagomedov and the fight had been postponed 5 times. Gaethje brings a completely different skill set to the cage and it gave Tony all sorts of troubles in a terrible beating. The conversation shifted to UFC 251 that had just been announced for Fight Island on July 11th and specifically the three title fights on that card. We spoke about the main event that pits Kamara Usman vs Gilbert Burns and how he deserves the title shot. Jorge Masvidal had been rumoured to be the deserving next challenger but it sounds like he might face Conor McGregor and make his money and get the notoriety he wants. Jorge Masvidal had beat Darren Till and knocked out Ben Askren with a flying knee. We then broke down the Max Holloway vs Alex Volkanovski 2 title fight. We both wonder and sort of doubted that Holloway can figure out how to avenge his loss from last time. Scott kind of wrapped it up perfectly about how the UFC has made us feel human again after not having any sports to watch for months!
