This is our life. This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show I'm look Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is morning combat.

Oh, yeah, levity, levity indeed folks. It's time for the best damn combat sports show. Period. Yes, it's morning combat. It's Friday, May 21st, 2000 and 21. I did get that date correctly.

Oh, my name is Brian Campbell of CBS Sports and Showtime. A very beige bastard himself right here. You know me. Do you like me? It's up to you. But I know you like this show morning combat. The best thing going today and a lot of that is because of that.

It's literally bastard next to me. He only drinks coffee at midnight when the moment is not right. It's timing is quiet. Yes, unusual. It's Luke Thomas of the same channels. Luke, we're back at it. Orange background. No, Jay Friday. Ready to set the stage for the fight weekend to come. How the hell are you brother?

Okay, I actually saw two friends of mine. I hadn't seen in two years yesterday. Partly the pandemic was one issue. One of them moved to Europe. It was only back because well, you know, it's right. It's not a great time to live in Europe. Well, depending on where you live, I suppose where he lives in Switzerland. It blows. And so he was like, you know what, why don't I just go back to Los Estados Unitos for the summer. Let's just go back for the summer. Get vaccinated. See some friends. See some family. I saw him for the first time in two years.

Last night. So you know what, man? Doing good, bro. Doing really good. I hope you don't get to. It does replenish the soul when you connect with old friends. Although full disclosure, when you said two friends, you hadn't seen in a while. I know you've been losing weight. I thought you were talking about your, your, your twig and berries there. I know when you said, you know, I was going to, I was going to shut you out right there. But, uh, nothing quite like that. Nothing quite like that. But I'm doing good, man. I hope you're doing good too. Yeah, fired up for a great show. Luke, I'm not going to throw stones at any glass houses because how many times

does my wife do the laundry and say, I'm not seeing a lot of your clothes. I know you work from home. Are you showering? But Luke, I did wear the shirt last night. I know you wore the same shirt for Wednesday's MK and Thursday's live chats. No, no, no, this is new. This is new. It's the same company. Shout out to notorious bastards. But it's a new shirt. All right. Hopefully you, you deodorized and you're ready for action today. Look, it is morning. Come back light. We mentioned like and subscribe. Please this video because, uh, wow, what a time to be alive. This is the greatest year.

Of your life. The world's opening back up. Luke and I are going to hit the road for some big time fights in the near future. Make sure you are getting in on what we're doing. Three live shows per week. The best interviews in the game. Live chats. Fight breakdowns. Dice dissected. Wow. Remember that. A lot of great things. Okay. You're going to be in your face in your face hole. So follow us on the socials below. And wow. Just get ready for what's coming your way. Um, I didn't want to talk about merch until these people come through. But it's not all these people.

People's fault. All right. It's sitting on the desk of someone in legal at the moment. But we are very close to the launch of Merch 2.0. So when it happens, you'll know about it first. I am sorry for this extended tease. Right. It's like when you're, you know, watching a 90s B movie on cinema at night. And you're like, you know, if only someone could tell me how much longer I have to wait for the good scenes here. You know what I'm saying? Luke, soon. But for now, go to store.show.com. And you can wear great stuff. Great fitting stuff like this that you can sleep in and not shower and wear the next day.

Get that merch 1.0 when you can. Also, uh, do are we still pedaling Showtime subscriptions? Minich, can you, can you update me on that? Yeah. I don't know if we saw, I don't, I think they get rid of the URL for the Bellator. Five bucks a month. I don't know about that. Don't quote me on that. But, uh, get a taste test of 30 days free on Showtime. Just the same at showtime.com. What do you get in there? Come on, bro. You already know this great shows, movies, documentaries, uh, outcry. Remember that jam right there.

How about you're also getting championship boxing, the only place in the world where you can catch, or at least in the States where you can catch Bellator MMA. So please jump on board with where our folks are going there. Uh, they got, they got some new people come into Showtime soon too as well. So, uh, if that's your cup of tea, buckle up. We'll find out if it's Luke's cup of tea here at the end of this show. Just the same, uh, LT anything else I should be publicizing here. I don't always read the rundown. Um, I think that's it. We're going to have a busy week next week.

So, you know, we'll have a fun show today. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sorry. There will be no live show on Memorial Day. So we're going to do a mail bag episode. How do you get a question into the mail bag? Simply, you leave a review on Apple Podcasts for us. We know that we are gaming the system when we do that. We know that we know that we know we are. Have we proven that that doesn't work anymore, Luke? Are we still going on? So the producer Mikey told me that while we did have only the four for room service diaries, we didn't put it out in the

head enough time because later on, we had another 20 that showed up or something like that. And we missed it because we didn't give it enough lag time. Now we're going to give it enough lag time. Apple podcasts. Leave a question for us. They're in a review. Five stars would be nice. And when you do, we'll pick that out. We'll do a whole mail bag episode around it. Love it. Love it. There. Love it. Look, I was hoping you were going to wear your Royal Madrid jersey today just to try to. Yeah, I was supposed to, but I forgot, but maybe on Monday. Okay. Okay. Shout out to that. Just the same there. Um, all right.

That's about it. I'm BC and I'm ready to get you fired up for the weekend to come. We love it when BC host on Friday, right? So smooth and efficient. There's less arguing. It's very handsome. Yeah. It's like arguing is good for the show. Arguing is good for the show. All right. All right. Uh, we're going to start off. Of course with the fights coming your way Saturday. How about this UFC fight night from Las Vegas? A very good ban them. Wait. Main event that maybe has gone under the

pandemic. They are a bit this week with other big headlines in the world of combat sports. Cody Garbrant is back fresh from an aborted mission down to fly weight for the title. And obviously a well documented and extended battle with COVID-19, the former band and weight champion. We'll be taking on a red hot rob font. And Luke, we talked a bit about the storylines coming in on Wednesday. You know Friday's more about the X's and O's and there's nobody. I respect more than you in that regard.

There's a slight favorite here in the betting odds, both in the negative, both in the mind is so to speak here from our friends at William Hill. How does rob font win this fight, which you can argue would be the biggest of his career and continue this March toward ban and weight title supremacy? I think two different things are going to be key in this matchup BC. One, the jab for rob font. That's just if he can't get the jab going. I think it's going to be very, very hard for him to win. Why?

He's often comes from his jab. So naturally, it's just a way he fights to win. But more than that, you can do look at the differentials, not a huge difference in height. They've got them listed both at five eight, not a huge difference in average fight time. They both go about nine minutes 906 for rob font 857 for Cody Garbrant right in the same line. Not too far apart in age four years, but nothing too significant. There are some other differences in the numbers, but the big one that stands out to me BC a 71 inch reach for rob font, a 65 inch reach for Cody Garbrant.

Now he can make that up by explosive hand speed by getting in and out of the pocket quickly, but he does have a six inch reach disadvantage there for a guy with a good jab and that kind of advantage. And, and this is the key for rob font. Great footwork, good lateral movement. Do that's a winable scenario behind which you could put your own offense. Disrupt his rhythm, set the tone. The other part BC is I didn't realize this Cody Garbrant has a 100% take down defensive rate. Now I was like,

that's weird because I, I know he's got good wrestling, but I didn't know is that good. So I went through his record. It all comes from basically three fighters dominant crews tried seven and he failed. TJ Dillshall tried once zero, Pedro Muñoz tried once and zero. What's the common denominator there? The last two, of course, they won the fight. I don't think there's anything to do with the take down or not. But I'm just pointing out if you look at the totality, no one even attempted to take down on this guy until he fought dominant crews in his UFC career. It's kind of wild. So I'm not going to say it's like completely untouched.

But I will say rob font averaging 1.2 takedowns per 15 minutes. I wonder if that might play a role a little bit here. So I use you mentioned it. It's a damn near pick. We're pretty close. I can see why do big tradeoffs on either side. But Rob font has a winable situation. I'll say. And look, whatever you believe Cody Garbrant's current stock to be. And obviously that could be all over the place. You know, he had the three fight losing skid and the whole idea of is the chin gone and the confidence gone.

And then he comes back and blows away a sunsow and you're like, I think he's back. Then he battles COVID and he's out for a long time and has legitimate physical things to overcome. So regardless, his name still matters a lot. If funk gets a win here, I mean, that's, that's the kind that you make those big leaps deep into the front end of the top 10. He's one three in a row, Rob font. He's one four or five. There are big names in that win streak. And what I really like look is he seems to want. He wants to be great. You can really see it in him. You know,

confidence in a willingness to do what it takes to get to that level. It makes him a very dangerous out coming into this fight. It's hard to focus on Garbrant obviously without bringing up those same questions I mentioned. When you watch and obviously look, the COVID thing and a lot of that in the time away, we have no idea what version of Cody Garbrant we're going to see on Saturday. But he's still on the good side of 30 at 29. And we did see a return of a commanding powerful performance against a sunsow delivering one of the best.

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