Keyboard Kimura Audio Network

No one expected Saturday’s fight card to be a particularly eventful evening, yet alone an historic night inside the Octagon, but with 10 finishes in 10 fights, UFC Vegas 59 served as a reminder of why I love this sport so much, why I approach these athletes and events with the depth and detail I do, and hopefully created a little more optimism in the “This card is gonna suck!” set heading into the...

On this edition of the Keyboard Kimura Podcast (presented by ONE BONE), ESK focuses in on Drew Dober and those like him that consistently deliver entertaining performances and play a vital role in their respective weight class, and why it’s important to recognize them now. The song you’re hearing as the intro and outro for the Keyboard Kimura Podcast is called “That Warning” by Jonezen, and can be...

Series like The Ultimate Fighter and Dana White’s Contender Series are often maligned for being stale or siphoning cheap, young talent into the Octagon at the expense of well-paid veterans. While there is some validity to those criticisms, these programs also offer opportunities for fans and media that often lament not knowing anything about a large percentage of the competitors that make UFC the...

The UFC tried to recreate the near-perfect night from mid-March at The O2 Arena with a hasty return to London on Saturday night featuring many of the same key figures. Unfortunately, a brilliant return was not in the cards, as the main event ended with a bad injury for a second consecutive week and the event as a whole seemed to drag on. Nonetheless, there were plenty of elements and talking point...

When the dust cleared Saturday evening on Long Island and talk of a potential interim featherweight title being introduced bubbled to the surface, most were quick to agree that Yair Rodriguez, who’d just earned a first-round injury TKO win over Brian Ortega, and Josh Emmett, who scored a debated split decision victory over Calvin Kattar earlier this summer, were the obvious choices to battle in th...

Saturday’s return to Long Island ended with an injury to Brian Ortega late in the opening round, creating a lot of questions about how to proceed at featherweight. ESK and Harry dissect the pieces of that conversation, go deeper on the fight between Shane Burgos and Charles Jourdain, question what comes next for Miesha Tate, and have a larger discussion about the bantamweight bout between Ricky Si...

As teased on the latest episode of The Next Day Takeaways , the subject of today’s Keyboard Kimura Podcast (presented by ONE BONE) is changing the way I speak about the men and women that step into the Octagon to compete. Specifically, I want to shift to an even more nuanced and detailed way of discussing these competitors, one that focuses on really breaking down key elements and indicators about...

Following Saturday’s return to the UFC APEX, ESK and Harry sit down to discuss: * Rafael Fiziev’s fifth-round stoppage win over Rafael Dos Anjos * What a win of that caliber means and how it positions Fiziev going forward * How getting to this level and advancing from here are very different challenges * The crucial takeaways from Saturday’s other key fights, including victorious efforts from Caio...

UFC 276 was expected to be the best event of the year, but despite some quality performances and impressive finishes, the way the middleweight championship main event played out resulted in many coming away from the contest feeling let down. On this episode of the Keyboard Kimura Podcast, ESK discusses expectations in MMA — how they’ve continued to escalate, how that impacts reactions to athletes,...

On this edition of The Keyboard Kimura Podcast, presented by ONE BONE … Israel Adesanya is still the middleweight champion, thought opinions on his performance are varied. Alexander Volkanovski turned in a master class against Max Holloway, and even that left some people feeling underwhelmed. Harry and I dive into the muck of it all to discuss the bigger issues — and some of the best performances...

On this edition of the Keyboard Kimura Podcast, presented by ONE BONE … UFC 276 is a loaded fight card from top-to-bottom, but in order for this weekend to be electric, the next couple fight cards are bound to feature fewer established names and major fights. As much as we’d all like the UFC to follow the Kendall Roy ethos of “all bangers, all the time,” it’s not possible and with abundance comes...

ESK and Harry Powell dissect the dynamic efforts from Saturday’s terrific return to the UFC APEX in Las Vegas and the ramifications of them in the latest addition of The Next Day Takeaways . Key topics of discussion include: * The tremendous fight between Mateusz Gamrot and Arman Tsarukyan, and why Harry feels it’s a critical touchpoint in terms of the development of MMA athletes * Shavkat Rakhmon...

Following his win over Tim Means on Saturday night, there were calls for Kevin Holland to garner an opportunity against a Top 15 opponent, with the welterweight calling out Sean Brady in his post-fight interview with Daniel Cormier. Seeing people advocate for Holland to face a ranked opponent in the 170-pound weight class based on wins over Means and Alex Oliveira, coupled with his previously bein...

It was a thoroughly entertaining night (clap-clap-clap) deep in the heart of Texas… Now that we’re a couple weeks into this new dynamic on The Takeaways (read: Harry is here and brilliant), I think we’re figuring out how to approach these shows and what we want to cover, and I love that it’s different than most typical post-fight conversations. I’ll write about those and talk about those and plent...

Today’s podcast turned into a bit of a therapy session, but I hope you’ll understand why I felt necessary for me and that everything comes from a good place. I know there are parts where I sound egotistical and elitist, and there will be arguments I make that you disagree with, but I care about this sport and its athletes so deeply, and want the way they’re covered to be better, and when it’s not,...

Saturday night, Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore, Singapore played host to UFC 275, which delivered a host of entertaining fights that left plenty to talk about here on the latest edition of The Next Day Takeaways. Rather than going through each individual fight, Spencer and Harry shift gears for a larger discussion about the importance of Fight IQ and decision-making in MMA — why it’s becomi...

Valentina Shevchenko has an opportunity to further etch her name in the UFC history books and join an exclusive group on Saturday night. With a victory over Taila Santos at UFC 275, the flyweight champion would pass Ronda Rousey for the most consecutive successful title defences by a female fighter in UFC history, with seven, which would also bring her into a tie for fifth all-time with long-time...

Announcement: effective starting this episode and going forward for every episode from here, the brilliant Harry Powell ( @bjj_harrypowell ) of SevereMMA will be joining me as the co-host of this weekly spin through the previous day’s action. He makes the show better, he makes me think about things in the best ways possible, and you’re going to like this show even more now that he’s around. Coming...

Last week, the UFC announced Arman Tsarukyan and Mateusz Gamrot would headline the June 25 fight card at the UFC APEX, prompting questions about the quality of the bout from a “name value” perspective. After taking a couple days to step away from the thread and cool my Twitter fingers, I wanted to sit down and share my thoughts on the subject, both in terms of the initial tweet that set things off...

Scott Fontana is one of the foremost experts when it comes to speaking about judges, their track records, and the overall quality of the scorecards being turned in at UFC events each week. The New York Post writer and one half of the Couchside Judges Podcast (along with Dan Urban ) joins me to discuss how consistent and consistently good the judging at UFC events has been in recent years, the impo...

With judging and scoring fights in the spotlight, I called upon the foremost expert in the field, SevereMMA’s Sean T. Sheehan, for a discussion about some of the reasons many people make mistakes when it comes to scoring fights, how to remedy that situation, and why — as difficult as it may be to understand and acknowledge at times — listening to the well-known analysts on your broadcasts and some...

Close fights always bring about plenty of discussion and Saturday night’s competitive main event was no different, as fans and media dove into talks of robberies, open scoring, and all number of judging-adjacent elements in the wake of Ketlen Vieira’s split decision victory over Holly Holm. On this episode, ESK dives into the main event discussion with his thoughts on open scoring and the best way...

With so much to digest following Saturday’s UFC 274 pay-per-view, I had to reach out for assistance in breaking it all down and figuring out what it all means. Harry Powell of SevereMMA answered the call and joins me on this episode to parse the takeaways and talking points going forward from Charles Oliveira’s first-round submission win over Justin Gaethje, the perplexing strawweight championship...

Tony Ferguson returns on Saturday, and spent his media session today going in on the UFC for what he views as mistreatment and missed opportunities over the years, prompting others to pile on, questioning how someone could win 12 consecutive fights in the lightweight division and never end up fighting for the undisputed title. How it happens isn’t actually all that difficult to sort out because we...

I love having the ability to fire up the podcast machine whenever something crosses my timeline that gets me thinking or touches on something I’ve talked about before, and this is one of those times. Scrolling through Twitter, I saw the MMA Junkie story embedded below where on the latest episode of “DC & RC,” Daniel Cormier suggested that Vicente Luque would be a great opponent for Sean Brady, the...