Former UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub recently claimed that all the best fighters are on the UFC roster. Unsurprisingly, this comment generated a torrent of backlash — including a retort from MMA referee turned Bellator commentator John McCarthy.

Hear what McCarthy had to say about Schaub’s claim below (via Twitter):

⁦@BrendanSchaub⁩ made a statement on the ⁦@joerogan⁩ podcast that if your not fighting in the ⁦@ufc⁩ you are not as good a fighter???? I talk about that statement with ⁦@THEREALPUNK⁩ on Weighing In pic.twitter.com/LfQtOZJHz7

— Big John McCarthy (@JohnMcCarthyMMA) January 28, 2020

“Brendan, you fought in the UFC,” McCarthy said. “Congratulations, that was great. You had a couple of good fights. But I can point out fights that he had against guys that beat him that lost to guys outside of the UFC.

“Back when [Schaub] was fighting, if they had brought Fedor Emelianenko over, because Brendan is a UFC fighter he’s better than Fedor Emelianenko?” McCarthy continued. “He’s going to win? Does that make sense? You’re a UFC fighter, you’re better? It just doesn’t add up.”

It’s really hard not to side with McCarthy on this one. At this very moment, Demetrious Johnson, Cris Cyborg, Patricio Freire, Bibiano Fernandes, Kyoji Horiguchi, Douglas Lima, Lance Palmer, Ryan Bader, Aung La N Sang, AJ McKee, Michael Chandler, Martin Nguyen and countless others all fight outside of the UFC. Are we supposed to believe that they’re not as good as their UFC counterparts?

Furthermore, we’ve seen countless fighters come from other organizations to the UFC and do extremely well, such as Daniel Cormier, Fabricio Werdum, Alistair Overeem, Eddie Alvarez, Yoel Romero, and Luke Rockhold. After all, almost every UFC fighter started their career outside the Octagon…

While it’s possible that Schaub simply misspoke when he made this comment — he’s been known to do that — it’s hard to argue with this response from John McCarthy.

Where do you stand on this debate?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 1/28/2020.