What if there was a better way to talk to all your friends than through a thousand different messaging apps on a thousand different platforms?

What if you could just find the show you wanted without browsing through infinite tiles in a hundred different streaming apps?

What if you could have all of your stuff everywhere without dealing with some crummy user interface on some unknowable file sharing platform?

This month on the Vergecast, we're looking into connectivity. How we talk to each other, how we talk to our stuff, how we find things online.

All this month, on the Vergecast, available wherever you get podcasts.

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.

All right, everybody, it is Thursday, October 12, 2023, and it is indeed a heck of a morning.

We are live on the MMA Fighting Twitter Space, as you can hear the show in its entirety, shortly thereafter on the MMA Fighting Podcast Network.

What is going on, everybody? I am Mike Heck. Back again, for the third day in a row, we popped in yesterday, had an emergency edition of Heck of a Morning because we had some changes to UFC 294, brand new main event.

Is the Makachev no longer defending the lightweight title gets Charles Olivera? He will now defend the title against Alexander Volkanovsky.

They're going to run it back again, rematch of one of the fights of the year, if not the fight of the year, from February.

And one of the big topics was, on yesterday's show, what's going on with Hamzat Shamayev versus Polkosta? Is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen?

Dana White had teased after Dana White's contender series on Tuesday. The fight was in jeopardy. They would know something in a few hours.

It was a lot more than a few, but we got our answer yesterday afternoon.

Polkosta announced on Twitter. He would not be fighting. Gilbert Burns jumped on Twitter earlier in the day, posted a video of Kamara Usman training.

Burns teasing it, saying, someone's getting ready.

And he was right. Kamara Usman will step in on a week and a half notice to fight Hamzat Shamayev at middleweight in the Colmeid event of UFC 294.

Now, this is a pretty big deal, ladies and gentlemen. And when we talked about it yesterday, I didn't even really think about Usman being an option.

Honestly, but after Burns posted that video, I'm like, huh, that actually makes a lot of sense.

But Kudos to Usman for stepping in. Kudos to Hamzat Shamayev for taking this fight.

I think it was imperative that he competes on this card. Dana White told Kevin Ayoli, at least this is what Kevin reported that the winner will go on to fight for the middleweight title against Sean Strickland.

I'm sure people have some feelings about that one. I think it's kind of cacao, but I understand the business at this point.

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