Episode 648: Are Kayla & Merab unbeatable at UFC 316?

The Co-Main Event MMA Podcast

Chad Dundas

Sports, Leisure

4.8 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The odds don’t look very competitive headed into the dueling title fights atop Saturday’s UFC 316. Merab Dvalishvili and Kayla Harrison are both pretty big favorites over their opponents (challenger Sean O’Malley and chalmpion Julianna Peña, respectively). The line on Harrison, in fact, is outlandish — though that fight is admittedly most interesting because of what a Kayla Harrison title reign might look like at women’s bantamweight, not necessarily because we expect it to be close. As for O’Malley, is there anything he can do differently against Merab this time around? Aside from not J’ing the peen? Also, Maycee Barber couldn’t make the walk last weekend. In and of itself, that doesn’t seem like a HUGE deal. Buuuuut … is it indicative of larger, more dire issues with the UFC right now? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Co-Main Event Podcast, and now your host, Ben Folks and Chad Dundas.
0:17.9	That's right. You're listening to another episode of the co-main event Mixed Martial Arts podcast.
0:24.1	I'm Chad Dundas. That's Ben Fulks. We're both longtime MMA journalists and for the last 13 years.
0:32.1	We've been meeting here every week to break down all the action in the wild, weird, and occasionally wonderful world
0:40.3	of mixed martial arts. Ben, we've got UFC 316 coming at us this weekend, obviously with the main
0:48.3	event men's bantamweight title rematch between Marob Dwellish feely and sean o'malley this is all going down out
0:56.8	there in newark at the prudential center of course the co-mainte is juliana pania putting the women's
1:02.0	bantamweight title on the line against kela harrison and honestly in stark contrast to recent weeks on this show it feels like we got a lot of stuff to talk about.
1:14.0	Some odds and ends going on around the outskirts of the MMA world that I think will make for some interesting discussion.
1:22.6	Obviously, also a tragedy this week with the loss of Jordan Breen, longtime MMA commentator, journalist,
1:30.0	all around good guy. You and I both knew Jordan a little bit. So we're going to talk about his loss
1:36.5	coming up a little bit later in the show. That one kind of took the MMA world by surprise yesterday.
1:43.8	Shocked to find out that news.
1:45.9	It's the kind of guy who deserves to get his respect, and we're going to talk a little bit
1:51.4	about his passing later on in the show.
1:54.3	Over the weekend, though, we did have UFC Fight Night, what was originally called Blanchefield versus Barber. Now I see at the top of my page, UFC on ESPN Gamrot versus Klein.
2:08.4	Which, okay, you can't just do that. You can't retroactively change the name of the shit. Can you?
2:15.5	They can't do that.
2:17.7	I don't think you can do that.
2:19.6	I don't know.
2:20.1	Maybe there are no rules.
2:21.6	It seems like there's no rules.
	...

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