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March was a weird goddamn month, and you can relive it here. For better or worse, my friends, it is April. Congratulations on making it through another four weeks of punchsports. This month's thread title courtesy of LobsterMobster, who is jinxing things as hard as she can. If this is your first time here you should stop and say hi so we know it's not just the same couple dozen of us cussing each other out all the time, but you may want to start with The General Q&A Thread for the basic gist of mixed martial arts. Yes, I am still working on the new Q&A thread, although it's actually getting pretty close now. Hopefully this month. If you want to talk about MMA or combat sports events that aren't included in this breakdown: Please do. Go nuts. I will never be able to get everything and I have only watched like two or three KSW cards in my life. THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS 
IS THERE ANY NEWS  PFL's 2022 season is upon us. Weekly shows will officially kick off on April 20 with lightweights and light-heavyweights, including Anthony Pettis' attempt to stop getting his rear end kicked and Jeremy Stephens taking his first fight outside the UFC in fifteen years not counting things that happened in a bar. https://twitter.com/oocmma/status/1506328187306926089 Jorge Masvidal drove up on Colby Covington at a restaurant and suckerpunched him. He's being charged with felony assault. Expect the #freecain and #freejorge movements to coalesce. https://twitter.com/Beyond_Kick/status/1505293140391088128 GLORY Kickboxing held its first event in half a year and cancelled the card in the middle of the co-main event when fans started a between-rounds riot after Badr Hari got knocked down. Kickboxing: Still doing just fine. WHERE ELSE CAN I TALK TO LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE ABOUT VIOLENCE? Any of the following hangouts:
DO WE HAVE OTHER COMMUNAL THREADS? So many.
WHAT IF I HATE FORUM SOFTWARE? Through the magic of instant messaging and 40 year-old technology, you have, at a minimum, two exciting options!
 Disclaimer: These are unofficial offsite chatrooms, somethingawful's rules and liability do not extend to them, and complaining about discord stuff is still offsite drama posting
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Apr 1, 2022 17:19
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WHAT HAPPENED IN MARCH Violent knockouts, inevitable decisions and Paddy Pimbletts. UFC 272: Covington vs Masvidal started us off on with a subset of gross notes, from Tim Elliott's constant cheating to Umar Nurmagomedov choking a man to death to Rafael dos Anjos electing to cool it on punching Renato Moicano because his corner refused to stop it, to Colby Covington's completely inevitable shutdown of Jorge Masvidal and subsequent lovely post-fight interview. But in the midst of all of that, the true main event of the night happened: Sergey Spivak beat the poo poo out of Greg Hardy so hard it got him fired from the UFC and won jase1 a $200,000 bet. It is our greatest victory. Invicta was up next with Rodriguez vs Torquato 2, which had its main event swapped when the title challenger pulled out four days before the show. It was as solid and fun a time as Invicta always is, with one hilariously violent finish in Denise Gomes kneeing Milana Dudieva to death and Karina Rodriguez notching her first title defense in the headliner. We began two days of double-headers with ONE Championship: Lights Out. It was a hilariously violent card where all but one fight ended in a stoppage, most notably including John loving Lineker knocking out the legendary Bibiano Fernandes to win ONE's bantamweight championship and Thanh Le putting an abrupt end to the massively hyped megagrappler Garry Tonon by ground-and-pounding him comatose in under a minute. This was followed later that afternoon by the diametrically opposed Eagle FC 46: Lee vs Sanchez, which, as far as attempts to break into the mainstream go, may have been one of the worst. Nine of eleven fights went to decision, typically fairly ponderous and unfortunate ones, and the two that didn't featured 18-11 Anthony Hamilton getting choked out in a minute and infamous domestic violence case Irwin Rivera scoring a TKO before cutting a promo blaming his mental breakdown and subsequent attempted murders on not sleeping enough. The main event was a particularly sad affair, with Kevin Lee having to take 2022 Diego Sanchez to a decision after Diego potentially busted his leg with his, uh, powerful kicking game. Double-header day two began with Bellator 276: Borics vs Burnell, which can be best described as a Bellator card with Phil Davis on it. The highlight of the night was Cody Law continuing his knockout streak on the undercard; the main was four consecutive decisions, including Johnny Eblen punching his ticket as Bellator's next middleweight title contender and Phil Davis having exactly as unpleasant a victory as you're imagining in the co-main event. Borics/Burnell, however, was fun as hell, with both guys trading the advantage so often they at one point had a dance battle in mid-striking exchange, but Borics took the decision and set himself up as next in line for the McKee/Pitbull winner. This pattern was then inverted with UFC Fight Night: Santos vs Ankalaev, an extremely fun card with a lame main event. drat near the entire card is worth watching or at least recapping: Azamat Murzakanov's 205-pound flying knee, Guido Cannetti coming back from four straight years of losses to make Sean O'Malley look stupid by dusting Kris Moutinho in two minutes, Cody Brundage and Drew Dober both getting abrupt comeback wins in the middle of getting the crap beaten out of them, Khalil Rountree Jr. kicking Karl Roberson in half--it is genuinely worth going back and watching if you're bored and want some violence in your night. The co-main saw Song Yadong very likely deleting Marlon Moraes from the UFC with a two-minute knockout and the main saw Magomed Ankalaev taking a tepid but unanimous decision from Thiago Santos. The UFC rolled back into London for the first time in three years with Fight Night: Volkov vs Aspinall as one big giant promo for its British fighters, and though the matchmaking was a little shaky, it achieved its goal of being fun as gently caress. Muhammad Mokaev choked out shithead racist Cody Durden in under a minute, Paul Craig somehow managed to do that thing again where a talented, top ten fighter who's beating his rear end decides to stay in his guard and get triangled, Sergei Pavlovich returned from three years of layoff to reclaim his spot at heavyweight's top ten, Makwan Amirkhani saved his job with a one-minute choking of Mike Grundy, Ilia Topuria fought up a weight class and knocked the gently caress out of a guy with an 8" reach advantage on him, Gunnar Nelson returned from his permanent vacation and it wasn't very fun but we love him anyway, and the British squash squad of Paddy Pimblett and Molly McCann both secured stops that mean we'll never stop hearing about them. In the co-main, Arnold Allen made his contractually obligated annual appearance and had one of the most frenetic two-and-a-half-minute fights in MMA history by ultimately brutalizing Dan Hooker, and in the main event, heavyweight prospect Tom Aspinall did what Fabricio Werdum could not and submitted Alexander Volkov in one goddamn round. RIZIN then held its first full event of the year, RIZIN 34: Osaka, which featured a hilariously violent undercard with flying knee knockouts, soccer kick knockouts, multiple kickboxing bludgeonings, Yuto Uda defending an armbar by stepping on a man's face repeatedly and the debuting Grachan bantamweight champion getting choked out by Alan Yamaniha. And then the main card was a lot of much less fun decisions and a squash match main event that saw former top contender Satoshi Yamasu, shockingly, choke out the 6-4 guy. Their sense of spectacle was then promptly outdone by ONE Championship: X, ONE's attempt at a huge, Dynamite-style supercard, with twenty fights across nine hours deciding five championships across four disciplines. There consequently was just a loving ton of poo poo, most of which is worth watching or at least catching highlights of, but Chingiz Allazov upset Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong to win ONE's kickboxing grand prix, Yoshihiro Akiyama knocked the gently caress out of Shinya Aoki in a fight that happened for some reason, Adriano Moraes retained ONE's flyweight championship, Mighty Mouse choked out Rodtang Jitmuangnon in a mixed muay thai/MMA fight, and Angela Lee (not the UFC one) defended ONE's women's atomweight championship. Later that day the month ended on UFC Fight Night: Blaydes vs Daukaus, which was a real rollercoaster of less great stuff and impossibly great stuff. Matheus Nicolau took a razor-close decision over David Dvořák to stay in the flyweight top 10, Kai Kara-France took an even closer decision over Askar Askarov to most likely become the next contender, Alexa Grasso got the first submission win of her career over Joanne Wood, Neil Magny rode again with a split decision over Max Griffin, and in the main event, Curtis Blaydes knocked Chris Daukaus the gently caress out without ever attempting a takedown and then politely called him fat. WHAT'S COMING IN APRIL We're kicking off the month on April 8 with ONE Championship: Reloaded. What is ONE Championship: Reloaded, you ask? That's a great question! I'm writing this on March 22 and the only announced fight is the main event, where 170-pound kickboxing champion Regian Eersel will defend his title against Arian Sadiković. Do I know who either of those people are? Absolutely not! But Masakazu Imanari is having a grappling match too, so something horrible is going to happen to someone's leg! Thankfully, we're moving on from there to the biggest card of the month: UFC 273: Volkanovski vs The Korean Zombie on April 9. Is it weird that they keep saying "The Korean Zombie" in official press instead of using his name? Extremely. But the card should still rule. Irene Aldana will try to drum Aspen Ladd out of the UFC, Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Marcin Tybura will battle to see who the real prospect disappointment is, and in a fairly loaded main card Kelvin Gastelum will inexplicably stay at middleweight against Nassourdine Imavov, Mackenzie Dern is right back on a main card against Tecia Torres, Gilbert Burns will put the stiffest test yet to Khamzat Chimaev, and in a championship double-header, the long-awaited bantamweight title unification/rematch between Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan is lead-in for Alexander Volkanovski's featherweight title defense against Chan Sung loving Jung. Bellator will be throwing their own big party the next week with Bellator 277: McKee vs Pitbull 2 on April 15. As usual the undercard is full of a bunch of people you've never goddamn heard of, but the main card is a series of fights that could be either very good or very, very funny. Timothy Johnson rebounds from getting nuked by Fedor to face former light-heavyweight Linton Vassell, perennial prospect Aaron Pico will meet Jeremy Kennedy, Vadim Nemkov will defend his light-heavyweight championship against Corey Anderson and his innumerable hours of Beastin', and in the main event, A.J. McKee will try to turn away Bellator GOAT Patrício Pitbull one more time. The next day, we turn back for UFC Fight Night: Luque vs Muhammad 2 on April 16. The card is stacked from top to bottom with fights that have as much potential to be incredible bangers as incredibly, horrifyingly boring. Miguel Baeza meets André Fialho, Uriah Hall fights armbar king André Muniz, Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos goes for most-ever-Zs-in-a-fight against Mounir Lazzez, and Belal Muhammad tries to get his win back against Vicente Luque in what might, incredibly, determine who's on deck for the next title shot after Leon Edwards. In yet one day more, we're off to Japan for Rizin 35 on April 17, which uncharacteristically does not have a subtitle. Which is particularly crazy, being as this is one of their most top-loaded cards ever. I rhetorically asked if they were holding off their fights that matter for Tenshin/Takeru this summer, and as it turns out, no, they were holding off for this random card two months beforehand. Three goddamn championships are up for grabs, and each fight is a rematch. Ayaka Hamasaki will rematch Seika Izawa, who absolutely ran through her at the last New Year's Eve special, but this time her belt is on the line. Featherweight champion Juntaro Ushiku will rematch Yutaka Saito, the man he took the belt from, and possibly the best measurement of how much Rizin would prefer Saito have the belt is his getting the rematch despite having done nothing but lose in the intervening time. And in your main event, Brazilian-Japanese ace and lightweight champion Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza will look to avenge his one and only loss against "Hollywood" Johnny Case, making his return to MMA after taking the entire pandemic off. On April 20th, the Professional Fighters League kicks off its 2022 season with PFL 1, featuring the first fights in its lightweight and light-heavyweight brackets. Former UFC welterweight Omari Akhmedov is now a light-heavyweight and will be facing former UFC heavyweight Viktor Pešta, former standout Scot for the UFC Stevie Ray is returning from retirement to face Alexander Martinez, Olivier Aubin-Mercier is back to make a better run of it this year against Natan Schulte, and former PFL champion Emiliano Sordi is somehow on the prelims; on your main card Clay Collard welcomes Jeremy Stephens to the company in what will likely be a punchfest, Shoeface Antônio Carlos Júnior is back, Anthony Pettis is co-headlining again as they try desperately to get a return on the six figures they spent on him, and last year's champion Raush Manfio will try to repeat against Don Madge. Bellator holds the first of two straight nights of events on April 22 with Bellator 278: Velasquez vs Carmouche, a benefit show specifically for Our Military Heroes And Also First Responders. Thanks to standing champion Sergio Pettis and d-grade Conor McGregor impersonator James Gallagher getting scratched from the upcoming Bantamweight Grand Prix with injuries, the event is now anchored by two wildcard fights, as two under-the-radar contenders in Jornel Lugo and Danny Sabatello meet for the first berth and former WSOF titlist Josh Hill meets TUF winner Enrique Barzola for the other. Your main event sees women's flyweight champion Juliana Velasquez defending her belt against the legendary Liz Carmouche. Then the next day, once all of Our Military Heroes And Also First Responders are gone, they put on the card they actually care about. Bellator 279: Cyborg vs Blencowe 2 hits us April 23, and it's one of those cases where the main event is the least interesting part. On the prelims Yancy Medeiros makes his Bellator debut against two-time titlist Emmanuel Sanchez, the always amazing Goiti Yamauchi is back in action, "King" Kai Kamaka III figths Justin Gonzales, and Lance Gibson Jr. faces Nainoa Dung. On the main card, dethroned champion Ilima-Lei MacFarlane returns in a squash match against Justine Kish, the bantamweight grand prix kicks off with Kyoji Horiguchi vs Patchy Mix and Juan Archuleta vs Raufeon Stots, which is also an interim bantamweight championship match because everything is very silly, and in the main event Cris Cyborg defends her title against Arlene "Angerfist" Blencowe, whom she already choked out in eight minutes a year and a half ago. Because we know nothing of rest, April 23 will also see UFC Fight Night: Lemos vs Andrade! Canadian heavyweight sensation Tanner "The Hoser" Boser meets undefeated 15-0 Moldovan murder artist Alexander Romanov! Montana de la Rosa fights Maycee "The Future" Barber! Clay Guida is back, and this time he's fighting a 25 year-old grappling specialist in Claudio Puelles! Lando Vannata and Charles Jourdain do battle to see which one can still be considered a prospect! Tyson Pedro and Ike Villanueva fight to see which one of them is getting fired! Manel Kape fights Su Madaerji! Amanda Lemos attempts to defend her spot in the top ten against the newly-returned-to-strawweight former champion Jessica Andrade! On April 28, which is awkward because it's eight days rather than seven but whatever, it's PFL 2! This time we're kicking off the heavyweight and featherweight brackets, with the latter dominating the prelims and the former the main card because people like big dudes. Sheymon Moraes will face Boston Salmon who I cannot believe is still a thing, Ali Isaev and Klidson Abreu will have either an incredible grappling match or a terrible boxing match, Bubba Jenkins is back, Lance Palmer is back, Ante Delija is back, Brendan Lougnane is back, it's a who's who of people you may have seen once if you're a giant nerd. Your main event is 2021 champion Bruno Cappelozza facing UK heavyweight standout Stuart Austin, who was recently TKOed by a middleweight. Good luck! We're closing out the month on UFC Fight Night: Font vs Vera come April 30. It's a much more low-key note to go out on, but there's still some potentially fun stuff: Jared Gordon vs Grant Dawson, an assuredly silly heavyweight scrap between Jake Collier and Justin Tafa, the UFC debut of hyped Japanese flyweight prospect Tatsuro Taira, Gerald Meerschaert will try to wrest another unlikely victory from Krzysztof Jotko, and the main event should actually be a very frenetic bout between Rob Font and Marlon "Chito" Vera.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:20
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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Francis Ngannou - 17-3, 1 DefenseAfter getting dicked about by the UFC for most of 2021, Francis "The Predator" Ngannou met both the biggest challenge of his career and the nexus of his promotional challenges in the form of a championship unification match against heavyweight striking savant and (bullshit) interim champion Ciryl Gane. For all of his punching prowess, Ngannou found himself getting pretty soundly outstruck and on the road to a decision loss--and he adjusted by channeling Mark Coleman and repeatedly tossing Gane on his rear end with double-legs and powerslams. In what was somehow a simultaneously incredible and disappointing performance, Francis Ngannou won a unanimous decision, notched his first title defense, turned away his stiffest challenge, and went home with his future one great big question mark. He's made a lot of noise about going into boxing thanks to the UFC's refusal to stop paying him peanuts, but his contract situation is complicated by his standing as a champion, particularly as he's now had knee surgery to repair his ACL and MCL and will be sitting out the remainder of the year on medical leave, which could mean dealing with a contract freeze. It all depends on how lovely the UFC decides to be to him, but the best gauge for that is Dana White's auspicious absence at the post-fight belt ceremony and post-card press conference. For now, Francis Ngannou is taking the belt home to heal and the UFC has already begun talking about a Jon Jones vs ? interim title fight later this year. Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   Glover Teixeira - 33-7, 0 DefensesMost folks did not see this one coming, and I was definitively one of them. Glover Teixeira is MMA's new old-man punching champion, a fighter with 20 years banked in the sport who won his first world championship just two days after his 42nd birthday. Teixeira was actually first scouted by the UFC back in 2008, but illegal residency meant having to return to Brazil for three years while awaiting a work visa. He made his UFC debut in 2012, immediately rattled off five dominant wins thanks to heavy hands and a terrifying top game, and promptly got his poo poo hosed all the way up by Jon Jones. He settled into a role as a reliable, aging gatekeeper--a win over OSP here, a mauling by Alex Gustafsson there--but in the smoking crater that is the post-Jones, post-Cormier light-heavyweight division he put together a five-fight winning streak that included breaking former title challenger Anthony Smith's teeth and choking out Thiago Santos, and despite being a +300 underdog, he shocked the world by dominating and submitting standing champion Jan Błachowicz in just two rounds. He was originally scheduled to defend his moment in the sun against genuine madman Jiří Procházka at UFC 274 on May 7, but for no reason the UFC bothered to tell anyone it got bumped down a month to UFC 275 on June 11. Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs   Israel Adesanya - 22-1, 4 DefensesIsrael Adesanya has described Anderson Silva as his idol, a man who shaped the path of his life in martial arts and mixed martial arts alike. He has long aped Anderson Silva's evasiveness, flamboyance and striking acumen, and now, in a bid to further take his throne, Israel Adesanya has learned to imitate Anderson's habit of winning fights in ways that make people really mad. Adesanya's big February rematch with Robert Whittaker wound up feeling almost like a stalemate: Whittaker couldn't get solid strikes in on him so he primarily clinched and took him down but failed to control him on the ground, Adesanya touched Whittaker up and landed a couple stiff counters but largely kept his distance and stayed light on his feet to avoid more grappling exchanges. Adesanya walked away with a close but unanimous decision and some amount of grumbling from the fans who expected another amazing striking performance from the amazing striker (or who just wanted Rob to win). With Whittaker most likely going to have to put a lot of work in to justify a third shot, Adesanya's sights now turn to Jared Cannonier, whose murderous performance against Derek Brunson almost certainly guaranteed him a title match later this year. Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs  Kamaru Usman - 19-1, 4 Defenses"The Nigerian Nightmare" had to work harder than anticipated in November. Usman/Covington 2, a rematch very few people outside of the UFC's top brass wanted, seemed at first like the one-sided beating most people had hoped for, but Colby Covington's shitheadedness is matched only by his toughness and he was able to give Usman serious trouble in the back half of the fight. Usman won a hard-fought but clear decision, and now stands as unquestionably the UFC's greatest male champion, an incredibly tough, well-rounded and cerebral fighter who now holds the second-longest reign in welterweight history. The UFC appreciates him, kind of, but not enough to not repeatedly try to get him to drop the title to Jorge Masvidal or Colby Covington. They spent several months dicking around regarding his next contender, but after years of trying to deny his existence and desperate attempts to buy time for Khamzat Chimaev, the UFC has finally acquiesced and admitted Leon Edwards and his 19-3 record deserve the next shot at the belt. The fight has yet to be officially announced, but is being targeted for UFC 276 on July 2nd. Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs  Charles Oliveira - 32-8 (1), 1 DefenseThe resurgence is real. Charles Oliveira was in the UFC for eleven years before he received and won a title shot, and that's not a thing that happens. A BJJ specialist with an extremely tricky, aggressive style, Oliveira was seen by many as a future champion at the start of his UFC tenure and was securing top-card PPV berths after just two fights--and then the inconsistence and lack of focus that would define his career for most of a decade set in. He'd pull off incredible victories, vault back toward contendership, and get hosed up by gatekeepers like Cowboy Cerrone or Cub Swanson. He'd take down incredible grapplers like Hatsu Hioki one minute, then get guillotined by Ricardo Lamas the next. Around 2018, as Oliveira entered his tenth year of fighting at the wizened old age of 28, he apparently figured out his poo poo: He's won his last nine straight fights, culminating in violently knocking out Michael Chandler to win the Khabib-vacated lightweight championship. Hey, look, you found the hidden bullshit, good job. First person to quote this gets something dumb from Steam. As of now, he has the most submissions in UFC history, the most FINISHES in UFC history, the highest finishing ratio in UFC history, and his name in the books as the best in the world. His December showdown with Dustin Poirier saw him suffering a couple of scary knockdowns in the first round, but he rebounded immediately, butchered Poirier in the clinch, controlled him on the ground and ultimately choked him out in three rounds. The lightweight division has an undisputed champion again, and he'll be defending his title against Justin Gaethje on May 7. Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Alexander Volkanovski - 23-1, 2 DefensesFeatherweight, in its decade of existence, has been one of the biggest divisions for the UFC. Out of four champions in total, three were almost mythical figures in the sport: Jose Aldo, the poor kid from the slums who slept in his gym and became the best fighter on the planet, begat Conor McGregor, the biggest star in the history of the sport, whose poo poo-talking was second only to his ability to back it up (until the cocaine years), begat Max Holloway, a force of nature so prolific in his violence that it broke the UFC's striking differentials. Alexander Volkanovski, by contrast, isn't an insanely talented kickboxer, or a swaggering racist counterpuncher, or the best volume striker in the sport's history. He's just really, really loving good at mixed martial arts. He's rock-solid in every aspect of his game, so much so that the only loss in his career came four fights in--at welterweight. He broke down Aldo, he turned away Max Holloway twice--though some disagree with the second time--and just last week he had an absolute war with Brian Ortega that showcased maybe the scariest aspect of his game: The way that, when put in bad positions like chokes that would finish almost anyone in the sport, he finds his way out of trouble, adjusts his tactics, and gets bloody, painful revenge. Max Holloway defeated Yair Rodriguez in what was looked at as a potential title eliminator, making Volkanovski/Holloway 3 an inevitability this year--until they jinxed the fight by daring to actually book it, at which point it was scratched within a day thanks to a Holloway injury. With Brian Ortega and Yair Rodriguez having just lost Chan Sung Jung won the short-notice sweepstakes, so at UFC 273 on April 9 it'll be Rugby Volko vs The Korean Zombie for the featherweight championship. Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs   Aljamain Sterling - 20-3, 0 DefensesAlright, this one's gonna be kind of a Thing. Aljamain Sterling is an exceptional fighter. After rifling off five straight wins at bantamweight he earned a shot at Petr "No Mercy" Yan, the undisputed king of the weight class. Sterling made a good accounting for himself, and was actually up on one judge's scorecard heading into the fourth round, but he was also visibly fatigued and getting the poo poo kicked out of him. Unfortunately, Petr Yan is an enormous jackass, and threw a grounded knee at Sterling's face that was as illegal as it was hilariously intentional. Having been cracked in the head by one of the best fighters in the world Sterling was deemed unable to continue, and in doing so earned the ignominious honor of becoming the first person to ever win a UFC championship by disqualification. The entire internet very quickly decided the problem wasn't the trained world champion throwing illegal strikes, but the 20-3, decade-tenured fighter who was actually a huge coward who should be ashamed of himself, because the internet makes you stupid. Interim Bantamweight Champion   Petr Yan - 16-2, 0 DefensesYan and Sterling were supposed to have their rematch at UFC 267 this past month, but when Sterling pulled out over medical issues, Cory Sandhagen stepped in for an interim championship bout. After a grueling fight of the year contender, thanks to his ridiculous toughness and even more ridiculous boxing, Yan emerged victorious. UFC ring announcer Joe Martinez pointedly left out the "interim" when pronouncing him the two-time bantamweight champion. Yan and Sterling immediately resumed jawing on twitter, and at last, barring any further injury, Sterling and Yan will reunify the titles at UFC 273 on April 9. Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Deiveson Figueiredo - 21-2-1, 0 DefensesWe have come so far, and yet we are still where we were. On December 12, 2020, Deiveson Figueiredo shockingly went to a draw with heavy underdog Brandon Moreno. On June 12, 2021, Moreno even more shockingly dropped and choked him out, wrestling the flyweight championship from his hands. On January 22, 2022, the two met for the third time and the result was an instant fight of the year candidate that saw both men trade the advantage in striking, grappling and wrestling alike back and forth, but Figueiredo's smart adjustments from their second fight won him a razor-close but still unanimous decision and the return of the flyweight championship. And now, having fought each other three times in thirteen months and finally finished their trilogy, the next stop for new champion Deiveson Figueiredo is...probably his fourth consecutive Brandon Moreno fight, because they're now a hilariously even 1-1-1 and they were talking about a final match in Mexico before they even left the cage. Ten years from now people will speak with hushed reverence of the Figueiredo/Moreno wars and how amazing the back take in their fourteenth rematch was. Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs  Amanda Nunes - 21-5, 2 DefensesI really did not expect to have to rewrite either of these sections, and doing it still feels wrong. Amanda "The Lioness" Nunes is the undisputed greatest women's fighter of all time, having demolished not just every contender placed in front of her but every previous champion at both women's bantamweight and featherweight. Her 135-pound defense against Julianna Peńa at UFC 269 was looked at by most as an afterthought. And then, she lost. Not only did she lose, she lost and looked so bad in doing so that most of her fans are left wondering if COVID-19 ruined her. A rematch against Peńa is already in the books for later this year, but for the moment, Amanda Nunes is only the women's featherweight champion, and if she DOES win a rubber match is a virtual necessity, meaning the featherweight division could be on hold for a year or more. Which is even funnier now, because it appears the UFC, rather than rolling straight into a fight, is going to have Nunes and Peńa be the opposing coaches for this year's 30th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which means we in all likelihood won't get to their rematch until the late summer. Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs  Julianna Peńa - 11-4, 0 DefensesJulianna Peńa shocked the world. Absolutely no one gave her a chance against Amanda Nunes, as my previous threads are now embarrassing evidence of, and the precious few people who did thought her only chance involved avoiding direct exchanges as much as possible and dragging Nunes into the deep waters in the clinch until she wore down in the later rounds. The first round seemed to bear this out entirely, as Nunes dropped her twice and seemed fairly in control of the match, and then somehow in the second round Julianna Peńa, who was once on the wrong end of the striking of 4-3 flyweight Nicco Montańo, outboxed and repeatedly wobbled Amanda Nunes, and somehow, Julianna Peńa, who was once choked out by noted non-grappler Germaine de Randamie, submitted Amanda Nunes with a rear naked choke. The world is still in such absolute disbelief about the fight's outcome that despite having walked Nunes down, punched her silly and choked her out in eight minutes, betting for the rematch opened with Nunes still a -250 favorite to regain her crown. Julianna Peńa is the biggest story in MMA right now, and the UFC's intention to capitalize on it by parlaying her victory into a new season of The Ultimate Fighter means she'll get to enjoy the spotlight quite a bit longer. Look forward to even more podcasts about how COVID is fake and she doesn't know how old she is. Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs   Valentina Shevchenko - 22-3, 6 DefensesValentina "Bullet" Shevchenko has multiple news articles and interviews about denying that she is a spy. She has multiple black belts, holds national titles in boxing, kickboxing, muay thai and judo, speaks four languages, has been personally recognized by the President of Kyrgyzstan, and is an excellent dancer, motorcycle enthusiast and trained pistol marksman who was knocking out adults at 12. But she is definitely not a spy. She is, however, a problem for the UFC. Valentina Shevchenko is an exceptionally good fighter. She has always been an exceptionally good fighter, and she has only gotten better. The UFC established women's flyweight as a marketing engine for The Ultimate Fighter, ultimately stripped its inaugural champion after she refused multiple fights and was physically incapable of cutting weight, and Valentina immediately won the vacant belt, and that was 1,176 days ago and she has shown no sign whatsoever of letting it go. Her game is so well-rounded and her technique so well-executed that she has opened a gulf so wide between herself and her challengers that they've entered sacrificial lamb territory. She's already successfully defended the title against half of the top ten of the division, and the other half have been beaten by the people she smashed. Until this past December, the internet was deeply invested in a third match between Shevchenko and Nunes. Then Nunes got got. With nothing to do but continue to crush her own division, Valentina will defend her title against the 19-1 Taila Santos, who got her title shot thanks to a victory over 1 for her last 5 Joanne Wood, at UFC 275 on June 11. Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs  Rose Namajunas - 11-4, 1 Defense"Thug" Rose Namajunas is still on top of the world. Her UFC 268 rematch with Weili Zhang was controversial both in conception and execution, and Zhang's strength and wrestling consistently gave the champion trouble, but Rose's versatility and adaptability ultimately won her a split decision victory and the first successful defense of her new reign. CarlCX fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Apr 1, 2022 |
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ROGUES GALLERY: NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs  Ryan Bader - 29-7 (1), 1 DefensesMy anti-Bader agenda must wait awhile longer for satisfaction, and I must confront the likelihood that I, too, am a Bader hater. After winning The Ultimate Fighter 8 with his powerful wrestle-boxing abilities, coming one Jon Jones away from a 205-pound title shot and amassing a total record of 15-5 within the organization, Ryan Bader left the UFC on a two-fight win streak and they allowed him to go off to Bellator essentially unimpeded, seeing him as no great loss. In some ways they were wrong, and in some ways, they were very, very right. Ryan Bader stormed Bellator, winning his first five straight fights, becoming its simultaneous heavyweight and light-heavyweight champion and earning himself a modicum of the respect and attention that he felt he deserved. Having gotten his spotlight, he promptly went to a no-contest when he poked Cheick Kongo in the eye, and then lost his light-heavyweight title when Vadim Nemkov beat the absolute poo poo out of him, and then he had to wrestle a decision away from a 43 year-old Lyoto Machida, and then he got knocked out of Bellator's 205-pound grand prix when Corey Anderson smoked him in fifty-one seconds. In January Bader held onto his one remaining accolate in Bellator's heavyweight championship by the skin of his teeth, barely taking a decision over interim champion Valentin Moldavsky. Because of the incredibly silly way Bellator works, it was his first successful title defense after more than one thousand days as champion. He'll be attempting to get his second in a long-belated rematch with Cheick Kongo come Bellator 280 on May 6. Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs  Vadim Nemkov - 15-2, 2 DefensesOne of the most successful fighters to come out of Fedor Emelianenko's training camp, Vadim Nemkov is a four-time sambo world champion, a former Spetsnaz operative, a 6'0" steroid golem and definitively the best light-heavyweight outside of the UFC today. Which is funny, because he has two losses in his 15-2 career and the most definitive of them was a loss at the hands of the UFC's current top contender, the Czech samurai Jiří Procházka. Nemkov has rattled off 9 straight wins since 2015, including two victories over Phil Davis, a submission victory over former middleweight champion Rafael Carvalho, and his crowning achievement, a headkick knockout that wrested Bellator's 205 title away from Ryan Bader, avenging his master and returning the universe to its rightful configuration in the process. He's currently two rounds deep in Bellator's light-heavyweight grand prix, and will be facing Corey Anderson later this year to determine its victor. Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs   Gegard Mousasi - 49-7-2, 2 DefensesGegard Mousasi is in a very weird spot. He is, definitively, one of the best middleweights in the world: After almost twenty years in the sport he's 49-7-2 with victories over a dozen world champions across multiple organizations and with the exception of Uriah Hall, every one of his losses has been against world champion, hall of fame-level talents, and all of this by his 36th birthday. He may still be the single most egregious talent departure from the UFC thanks to its abusive stances on figher pay and sponsorships, and he's been a great player for Bellator over the last half-decade. And now it's 2022, and he kind of doesn't have anything to do. Bellator's middleweight division is kind of a wreck, maybe most evidenced by his bout with top contender Austin Vanderford in February, who reached Bellator's #1 spot by defeating exactly one ranked fighter, whom Mousasi dusted virtually effortlessly in 90 seconds. Mousasi says he has six fights left in Bellator and is adamant about retiring within the organization, so he's presumably not going anywhere, but the contender crop is pretty dire and his next on the list is 11-0 "The Human Cheat Code" Johnny Eblen, whom he'll defend against at Bellator 282 on June 24. Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs   Yaroslav Amosov - 26-0, 0 DefensesYaroslav "Dynamo" Amosov is in that very strange place where he's simultaneously one of the most successful prospects in the sport and a fighter almost no one feels a need to pay attention to. He's a four-time world champion in sambo, he's undefeated in nearly a decade of mixed martial arts competition, he has a 26-0 record at just 28 years old and he dominated the very tough Douglas Lima to become the first Ukrainian MMA world champion (you came so close, Igor), and he has a total of 1,253 Twitter followers. Some of it is exposure--it probably doesn't help that Amosov was on Bellator's prelims just before his title eliminator--and some of it is a very tactical and sometimes control-centric style that does not lend itself well to attracting viewers, as seen in a 7-0 Bellator record with only two stoppages, one of which was a doctor's stoppage on cuts between rounds. The fact that he's a 26-0 world champion and is still mostly being looked at as a prospect is a testament to both the amount of talent he very clearly has and the way everyone's still kind of waiting for something big to happen to him, which, uh, also indicates where Bellator is in the pecking order of the collective MMA consciousness. Bellator had been planning to finally cash in on their many years of can-crushing by having Amosov defend his title against weirdo striker Michael "Venom" Page on May 13, but Amosov is fighting in the ongoing war in his homeland of Ukraine so MVP will now meet Logan Storley for an interim championship, hopefully to be unified when this horror is over. Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs  Patricky "Pitbull" Freire - 24-10, 0 DefensesBellator's lightweight division is in a deeply unfortunate place right now. Bellator's canonical best fighter, for a very long time, was the reigning Featherweight and Lightweight double champion Patricio Pitbull, who knocked out some guy you may have heard of named Michael Chandler to win the latter. He's one of the best fighters on the planet. This is not him. This is his twin brother Patricky, who is one inch taller and also less good. Patricio held the lightweight championship without defending it for two years until the moment Bellator agreed to put Patricky in a championship main event, at which point he coincidentally decided to vacate the belt and focus on 145. Patricky also got the title shot coming off two consecutive losses, one of which was a somewhat absurd cut stoppage in a fight he was winning against Peter "The Showstopper" Queally, who himself was only 11-6 at the time and was delivered into title contention based on a victory over a guy who never won a Bellator fight. (The secret: He was Irish and the title fight was in Dublin.) Patricky won the rematch handily and is now the champion of a lightweight division where the two top contenders are 4-1 and 3-0 respectively and when you talk about him most people think you're talking about his brother. Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  A.J. McKee - 18-0, 0 DefensesBad trees can bear amazing fruits. There was once a fighter named Antonio "Mandingo" McKee who at 24-3-2, despite a very viewer-unfriendly style, laid claim to being the best lightweight in the world and proclaimed the UFC too scared of him beating their favorite fighters to sign him. They signed him. He was promptly defeated by living garbage elemental Jacob "Christmas" Volkmann in one of the worst fights in the promotion's history. They released him immediately. Then he got punched out by Shinya Aoki and retired in disgrace. A.J. McKee is his 26 year-old son, and somehow, he is really, really loving good. A tall, lanky featherweight at 5'10" with a 73.5" reach, McKee has gone a perfect 18-0 over the first six years of his career and proven himself a threat as both a striker, wrestler and grappler. His crowning achievement came over the very long two years of Bellator's featherweight grand prix as he stormed the bracket, not just winning but stopping all four of his opponents, culminating in a victory over defending champion and unquestionably Bellator's best fighter Patrício "Pitbull" Freire that saw him headkick, punch and choke Pitbull unconscious in two minutes. As is traditional, having officially made a name for himself in Bellator, McKee immediately began publicly agitating for the chance to go to the UFC. Asked for comment on the situation, his father Antonio McKee replied: quote:“It’s out of my hands now,” he said. “I couldn’t get what I needed across. One, he’s my son. Two, I’m his trainer, so it seems like a conflict of interest, but when did you know for a Black man to go ask a Jewish man to pay his Black son money. When has that ever worked? When have they ever wrote a check to another Black man for the value of his self? No, I have to let wolves dance with the wolves. I’m a lion. I can’t be in the same place. Antonio McKee: Retired, still the worst. McKee will look to cement his status as the new #1 with a rematch against Patricio at Bellator 277 on April 15. Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Sergio Pettis - 22-5, 1 DefenseSo Sergio Pettis is good now, apparently. It's not that he was ever bad, exactly, it's that he was more or less forever in big brother Anthony's shadow. Sergio had a long five years in the UFC where he on several occasions seemed poised to break out into the top ranks and vie for a title, but he always managed to fall just short, building a strong win streak before getting controlled by Henry Cejudo, barely squeaking past Joe Benavidez only to get dominated by Jussier Formiga, moving up to 135 and getting shut down by Rob Font. He went to Bellator just a few months before his brother left for the PFL, and now, in a stunning turnaround, Sergio is the successful one in the family. He won Bellator's bantamweight championship in his third fight with the organization, and in the biggest fight of his career, an interpromotional match pitting his title against Rizin bantamweight champion (and former Bellator champion himself, who vacated due to injury) Kyoji Horiguchi, Pettis shocked the world by battling through four difficult rounds he was fairly clearly losing and knocking out the heavy favorite with a painfully pretty spinning backfist. Sergio Pettis is no longer an also-ran. Unfortunately, as these things always go, he followed this up by getting injured. He's out of this year's Grand Prix and his timetable for return is iffy enough that Bellator immediately booked an interim championship between Raufeon Stots and Juan Archuleta for Bellator 279 on April 23. Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Cris Cyborg - 25-2 (1), 3 DefensesYup. It's 2022 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a muay thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--she faces luminaries like the 13-7 Arlene Blencowe, or the 7-4 Sinead Kavanaugh, or the 12-8-1 Leslie Smith, who's fought as low as flyweight. She seems to be content to do so until she decides she's done, and at this point, that's an extremely smart career move, being as the best Bellator can do is have her fight Arlene Blencowe for a second time, also at Bellator 279 on April 23. Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Juliana Velasquez - 12-0, 1 DefenseJuliana Velasquez's MMA career started because Shooto Brazil tried to promote an intergender fight between her and an 0-1 male fighter and upon receiving a firestorm of criticism for the publicity stunt instead announced that the fight was never real and was a publicity stunt to raise awareness about domestic violence and you are actually the real assholes. How that was ever supposed to actually work was never quite figured out, and it's that sort of confused indifference that has come to sum up Velasquez's Bellator run. On paper, she's very impressive: 12-0, childhood judoka, regional champion. In practice, she's surprisingly hard to get into. She's a very solid, well-rounded fighter, but she has the kind of style that leaves you waiting for her to start fighting; the kind of style where the official Bellator highlight reel of the apex of her career, her world championship victory, includes things like "here is where she took two steps backward" and "here is where she got underhooks in the clinch." She'll be defending her title against Liz Carmouche at Bellator 278 on April 22. It's worth noting that a) ONE uses different weight classes and b) ONE also has a dozenish various kickboxing champions, and for the moment, for sake of my sanity, we're just going to stick to the MMA champions. Maybe later we'll change this. FOR NOW: ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Arjan Bhullar - 11-1, 0 DefensesIt's Arjan Bhullar, the man ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong swears is better than Francis Ngannou. Bhullar, the first Indian world champion in the sport, was a big deal as a wrestler in his native Canada, won multiple collegiate championships at heavyweight, took a Commonwealth Games championship and ultimately achieved his dream of representing Canada at the 2012 Olympics where he was eliminated in the first round. He made his MMA debut two years later as, you may have already guessed, predominantly a wrestler. He was picked up by the UFC in 2017 at 6-0, and had a respectable 3-1 record with the organization, but chose not to sign a new contract after feeling the UFC was lowballing him. He signed with the then-growing ONE Championship in 2019, won his debut fight, took a year and a half off for the pandemic and returned in May of 2021 to TKO the baddest heavyweight in ONE, its reigning champion of almost six years, the man, myth, legend and Truth, Brandon Vera. And then, much like Vera, he promptly refused to sign a new contract and sat out for a year so he could play hardball. Chatri publicly shat on him and his management and set up an interim championship, and after many, many months of back and forth Bhullar agreed to a new deal, setting himself up against his stiffest competition yet. ONE Interim Heavyweight Champion   Anatoliy Malykhin - 11-0, 0 DefensesFor all things, there is a Russian punchman. Anatoly "Spartak" Malykhin is both an undefeated mixed martial arts fighter, a punching machine, and an avowed wife guy who credits her with his career, which he was about to give up as a 5-0 regional champion before meeting her. He promptly moved to Phuket, upped his game, met ONE's talent scouts and got signed directly into co-main event status. He is not only 11-0, and not only has finished all eleven fights, no one has yet made it further than the second round with him, including noted steroid elemental Amir Aliakbari, whom he starched in three minutes, and interim championship contender Kirill Grishenko. The fight hasn't been formally signed yet, but the heavyweight championship unification is expected sometime this summer. ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs   Reinier de Ridder - 15-0, 0 DefensesONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs  Reinier de Ridder - 15-0, 1 Defense"The Dutch Knight" Reinier de Ridder is probably ONE's most successful MMA fighter and he was recently deemed insufficiently important to merit a Wikipedia page. ONE prides itself on creating the 225-pound cruiserweight class many MMA fans have wanted for years, but it almost immediately fell victim to the problem many had theorized: A sufficiently skilled 205-pounder will probably also just win at 225. Aung La N Sang was the first to hold both titles simultaneously, but Reinier, a childhood judoka turned all-around adult grappling monster, choked him out in one round to win his middleweight title. Curiously, Sang was scheduled to defend his remaining title against someone else, but COVID put the seemingly more logical Reinier in, who promptly took the other belt home too. Because ONE is very, very silly, Reinier then made his first defense of the 205-pound title against Kiamrian Abbasov, ONE's 185-pound champion (whose own title was not on the line) whom he also choked out, meaning Reinier de Ridder is now the lineal titleholder of 1/3 of ONE's entire men's MMA program. To further make this more ridiculous, his first post-triple-champ fight was not a fight, but a grappling match against all-time BJJ great André Galvăo, and upon wrestling him to a draw, he challenged him to an MMA fight which Galvăo accepted. André Galvăo's last mixed martial arts bout was twelve years ago, it was at 170 pounds, and he was knocked out in two minutes by Tyron Woodley. It'll still happen later this year. ONE Championship: It's a very silly place. ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs   Kiamrian Abbasov - 23-5, 1 DefenseIt's Kyrgyzstani wrestleboxing time, baby. Kiamrian "Brazen" Abbasov came up in the Russian regionals and took home both the Tech-Krep FC championship and the MixFace championship, which is much, much funnier. He was picked up by ONE as an ultra-promising middleweight prospect, and lived up to that promise by immediately getting outworked against living legend Luis "Sapo" Santos. He was back in ONE nine months later, and was its new welterweight champion ten months after that. He's a smart, tactical fighter with a well-rounded skillset, but he has a tendency to get manhandled by superior wrestlers, which made it all the more baffling when ONE booked him against Reinier de Ridder, who pretty easily controlled and ultimately submitted him. Admittedly, ONE kind of has a proto-WEC thing going on--their lower weight classes are dangerous and interesting, their higher weight classes are so much less important that ONE doesn't even have rankings above lightweight on their own website. Abbasov is a champion, but what he is a champion of, no one knows. ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs   Ok Rae Yoon - 16-3, 0 DefensesOk Rae Yoon was not supposed to be here. A lifelong part of Team MAD, the South Korean chain of MMA gyms that boasts superstars like Seo Hee Ham, Kyung Ho Kong and Doo Ho Choi under its wing, Ok Rae Yoon, despite being a very tough striker and counter-wrestler, flew mostly under the radar for most of his career. It wasn't until his mid-2020 capturing of South Korea's regional Double G Lightweight Championship that ONE took an interest. He was booked against former ONE featherweight champion Marat Gafurov, whom they seemingly expected to win, and he instead shut him down and took a decision. ONE promptly booked him into another match seven days later against Eddie Alvarez, whom they OPENLY expected to win, only for Yoon to shut him down, too. So they gave him a shot ONE's lightweight champion and one of its biggest stars, Christian Lee, and in the funniest thing yet, Ok Rae Yoon won an extremely controversial decision and upended everything. Christian Lee called the decision bullshit and demanded it be overturned and he be given a rematch. It was not overturned, and the fight happened back in September of last year and there's still no word about what happens next. If you want to know how ONE feels about having one of their golden boys knocked off, Ok Rae Yoon has been a champion in ONE for more than half a year and they have yet to give him a written profile on their website. ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs   Thanh Le - 13-2, 1 DefenseDemetrious Johnson was once asked which ONE fighter would have the best shot in the UFC, and without hesitation he answered Thanh Le, which is particularly funny because they had two shots at him and passed each time. A Vietnamese-American by way of New Orleans, Thanh Le took to Taekwondo as a child and MMA after graduation, and five fights into his career he was on ill-fated The Ultimate Fighter: McGregor vs Faber that left us stuck with Artem Lobov forever. Despite scoring a knockout victory on the show, he was eliminated in the second round and not brought back. Two years later he was 6-1-0 and invited onto the second-ever episode of Dana White's Contender Series, and even knocked his opponent out with a violent headkick, but that was also the episode that debuted Sean O'Malley so nothing else mattered. Two years later he was an 8-2 prospect getting his shot in ONE, and five violent knockouts later he's a defending champion who has stopped every fight he's ever won. The culmination of his career came this past March, when undefeated MMA fighter, multi-time BJJ champion and total rear end in a top hat Garry Tonon came in against him as a betting favorite and got ground and pounded into unconsciousness in fifty-six seconds instead. Thanh's knockout streak makes him one of the most exciting fighters on ONE's entire roster. But, y'know, the UFC got Sean O'Malley, so really, who won? ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs   John Lineker - 35-9, 0 DefensesJohn God drat Lineker, world champion. "Hands of Stone" is a 5'3" ball of muscle with lunchboxes attached to it. Our own LobsterMobster very accurately described him as someone who hits like a truck made out of a train. Lineker's been fighting since 2008, but he ran up a fairly unimpressive 6-5 record in the first year of his career and briefly considered retiring. And then, settling into his style of gritting his teeth, stomping forward and never, ever ceasing in his attempts to punch you as hard as he possibly could, he started murdering everyone. After thirteen straight victories and two regional bantamweight championships he was picked up by the UFC for its then-nascent 125-pound weight class, which was problematic given his love of being a giant muscle golem. He went 6-2 at the weight class, but he also managed to miss weight in half of those fights, resulting in his being forced up to bantamweight, where he was noticeably undersized and often gave up half a foot of height, and it didn't loving matter because he was John God drat Lineker. He went 6-2 again, with his only losses being a unanimous decision to two-time champ TJ Dillashaw and a razor-close split against top contender Cory Sandhagen. And staring at this massively marketable multiple-bonus-winning top contender who was knocking dudes dead at 135 pounds, the UFC decided to release him. Dana White said it was his lack of professionalism and weight misses, which seems like a strange thing to get mad about three years later; it is somewhat more likely ONE FC was trying to sign him and he rationally asked why he, as an eight-year, 16-fight UFC veteran, was only getting paid $46k to show. Three months later he was destroying people at 145 pounds in ONE, and three years later he fought reigning champion Bibiano Fernandes, one of the best featherweights of all time and arguably the best fighter outside the UFC period, and became the first person to ever knock him out. John Lineker is a violence machine, his fights are must-see television, and he's a goddamn 145-pound champion at 5'3". ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs  Adriano Moraes - 20-3, 2 DefensesAdriano Moraes was one of MMA's best-kept secrets until very recently. His is a hard luck story that almost ended tragically; abandoned by his mother in an alley at 3, learning capoeira and judo at 7, running with street gangs by the time he was 12 and narrowly escaping death on several occasions until his friends and his adoptive mother convinced him to channel his energy into learning jiu-jitsu. He made his MMA debut at the end of 2011, and by the summer of 2013 he was 9-0 and a Shooto Brazil champion. His ultra-aggressive grappling, his quick, accurate crosses and his willingness to throw his entire body at you to take you down made him an incredibly dangerous grappler. It also made him occasionally too wild to retain control over his fights. Moraes is 17-3, and all three of those losses were close split decisions--two of which he's since avenged. This has also made him ONE's most recurrent champion, as he's actually now on his third flyweight title reign, with one successful defense in each previous period. But most people only really started paying attention to him this past April when he met the greatest flyweight of all time in Demetrious Johnson and not only defeated him, but became the first man ever to knock him out. Now he's in the weird if enviable position of having cleaned out ONE's flyweight division: Every successful contender they've signed, he's turned away. This makes him really, really loving good, but unless they want to run more champ vs champ matches, it also means he doesn't really have much to do at the moment. ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs   Joshua Pacio - 20-3, 3 DefensesJoshua "The Passion" Pacio, thusly named after his passion for hotel and restaurant management. A childhood student of both kickboxing and wushu, Pacio quickly established himself as one of the best 125-pound MMA fighters in the Philippines and, ultimately, was too good to stay there. He signed on with ONE in 2016, and his combination of solid grappling, spinning kicks and quick, darting punches got him up to a strawweight title shot within the year, which led to the first loss of his career and the discovery of his primary weakness: Strong wrestling games. Fortunately, this being 125 pounds and a striking-centric promotion, there aren't that many threats out there for him. He's on his second title reign now, his first having been ended during its first defense in a split decision by the greatest rival of his career, grappler Yosuke Saruta, but he wrested the championship back from him in a rematch and this past September defeated him again in a rubber match. (Look at you, reading past Adriano Martins. Good job. First person to quote this gets a stupid computer game.) Pacio is among the longest-reigning champions in ONE, having notched 1000+ days and 3 title defenses, but as ONE's profile has risen it has begun attracting international talent, and two of those fighters, America's Jarred "The Monkey God" Brooks and South Africa's Bokang "Little Giant" Masunyane, will be meeting at ONE: Reloaded on April 22 to determine his next challenger. ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs   Xiong Jing Nan - 17-2, 6 DefensesXiong Jing Nan dreamed of lifting weights. She'd enjoyed sports as a child, and when China started its national push for Olympic supremacy she began training heavily in hope of joining the national weightlifting team. But then she met aspirants for its boxing team and fell in love with the idea of living out a martial arts movie and getting to hit people for fun and profit and she never looked back. She turned pro in 2014 and immediately became a standout, going 9-1 in China's Kunlun Fight promotion with wins across three separate weight classes. What made her truly dangerous wasn't one-punch power, but the ability to break her opponents with constant pressure striking, scoring TKOs with combinations stretched out across dozens of consecutive, unending strikes. The story was no different when she moved to ONE in 2017, and she was strawweight champion within two fights. ONE's women's MMA divisions have been its most stable, each having had exactly one champion, and they were so dominant that they inevitably had to fight each other--and, hilariously, traded wins back and forth in the process. 115 lbs champion Angela Lee went up to 125 to challenge for Xiong Jing Nan's belt but Nan stopped her with body kicks in the fifth round, and half a year later Nan dropped down to 115 to challenge for Lee's belt only for Lee to choke her out with twelve seconds left in the fight. Having ultimately accomplished nothing both returned to their own divisions, and Xiong Jing Nan now has six defenses to her name, the most of any champion in the company. ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs  Angela Lee - 11-2, 5 DefensesAngela Lee is one of ONE's biggest stars and has been widely called its postergirl, and while the metrics may be debatable, she's an extremely solid choice. Her background is varied both culturally and martially: Born in Canada in a Singaporean-South Korean family made entirely of martial artists who all collectively moved to Hawaii when she was a child, she was not only training alongside them as a child, but training in multiple disciplines. By 15 she was a national Pankration champion, by 18 she had been signed by ONE before having a single professional fight, and by 20 she had two black belts and three defenses of ONE's atomweight championship. Lee is an extremely versatile fighter, capable of backing up her aggressive if sometimes loose striking with very solid defensive and offensive grappling, and her only two losses have come when fighting up a class at 125 pounds, against both its champion Xiong Jing Nan--whom she later choked out in a rematch at 115--and world jiu-jitsu champion Michelle Nicolini in a very, very close decision. Lee went on hiatus at the end of 2019 to have a baby and intended to be back by the end of 2020, but then the pandemic happened and she decided to use her cache within the company to just sit it out, making her aguably the smartest fighter in the world. ONE declined to make an interim championship, so she returned to competition this past March as a defending champion and main-evented the ONE X supercard against its atomweight queen in her absence, Stamp Fairtex, and notched her fifth title defense after choking her out in the second round. ONE has its star player back, and in all likelihood she'll be facing her next challenge in Hamderlei Silva herself, Seo Hee Ham, later this year.  Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs  Roberto de Souza - 13-1, 1 DefenseRoberto Satoshi de Souza is one of the last notable foreign talents Rizin has left, which is kind of hilarious, because he's been living in Japan for more than a decade. The entire de Souza family works together in one giant jiu-jitsu business, most famously running Bonsai Jiu-Jitsu out of Shizuoka, which is how Rizin found him. Roberto justified the investment by steamrolling basically everyone in front of him: In 3 years he's 6-1 in Rizin, with every fight ending in a stoppage no later than the second round. (The single loss was a one-minute TKO loss to former UFC competitor Johnny Case, who was going to start fighting for the PFL last year before he got arrested.) Grappling is the core of his game, but he is not above punching a motherfucker out. Rizin appreciates him and his knowledge of the culture and his fighting style, and would also respectfully like him to lose the title to a more marketable Japanese fighter, which is why they have booked him against popular lightweight Yusuke Yachi twice. This has resulted in his getting punched stupid once and triangle armbarred once. When they book a third match for next year's NYE event and Satoshi completes the hat trick by soccer kicking him to death he gets a free body pillow. Until then, he'll be trying to avenge his sole career loss by defending his title against Johnny Case at Rizin 35, April 17. Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Juntaro Ushiku - 21-8-1, 0 DefensesJapan has always had an extremely strong regional MMA scene, and occasionally top competitors somewhat abruptly pop out of it. The Fighting Bull Juntaro Ushiku is the latest, and one Rizin didn't quite seem to expect. One of Rizin's primary stories has been its love of the Asakura brothers, Kai and Mikuru, both of whom have made big impacts and gotten some perhaps occasionally favorable matchmaking to speed along their route to Japanese stardom. It was somewhat counter to Rizin's plans when Mikuru got outfought and controlled by a lesser-known wrestler in Yutaka Saito, and even moreso when Saito promptly got his face kneed off by Ushiku, the featherweight champion of DEEP. Ushiku did, in fact, immediately return to DEEP two months later. He's a scrappy fighter--well-rounded, no enormous standout skills, lots of split decisions, very difficult to finish--and you can basically bet the farm that the next time you see him, it will be because Rizin has booked him to defend the title against Mikuru Asakura again in the hopes their star wins it back. Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Kyoji Horiguchi - 29-4, 0 DefensesUntil one month ago, Kyoji Horiguchi was the fighter the entire world most wanted back in the UFC. An extremely impressive wrestle-boxer who went 7-1 in the UFC, with the 1 being good ol' Demetrious Johnson, he was released despite 3 straight victories when Dana White had his snit with the champ and decided to pull the very sensible power move of attempting to close the entire flyweight division, because he is the best promoter in the world. Horiguchi left for the still-nascent Rizin Fighting Federation and immediately became one of its biggest stars, taking their inaugural bantamweight grand prix with ease and winning its first-ever bantamweight championship, which he followed up on by cross-promoting with Bellator and winning THEIR bantamweight championship. Unfortunately, he was also a physical wreck after fighting nine times in just two years and badly needed surgery, but Rizin pressured him to fight their young new star Kai Asakura before he went under the knife--which saw a clearly compromised Horiguchi get knocked out in one minute. 16 months of recovery later, a healthy Horiguchi returned on the 2020 new year's supershow and destroyed Asakura in two minutes in a rematch and vowed to regain his Bellator title, too. He was close, and had dominated three and a half rounds against Sergio Pettis--and then he ducked into a spinning backfist that knocked him out cold. Kyoji is back to the drawing board, now, but he remains one of the most thoroughly sound fighters in the world and one of Rizin's most important players. Whether he continues to try for international expansion is anyone's guess. Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs  Ayaka Hamasaki - 23-4, 1 DefenseAyaka Hamasaki is an underrated all-timer in women's mixed martial arts. She's been a standout at the lower weight classes since long before they even existed in mainstream mixed martial arts, winning her first 115-pound championship in 2010 just a year after her professional debut, she's competed in multiple countries, including a two-year reign as the atomweight champion of Invicta FC, and her extremely smart, technical grappling style has seen her outgrapple and submit some of the most notable women's fighters in the world, including Rizin star Kanna Asakura, leading to her greatest career achievement as Rizin's inaugural super atomweight champion. The problem is: She really shouldn't still have the belt. One year and two fights after her win, on the 2019 New Year's Eve supercard, she was narrowly unseated by Seo Hee Ham, the best women's fighter in Korean history, who after ten months of failed negotiations with Rizin on her return gave up the belt and signed with ONE instead, leading Hamasaki to once again have a title fight on NYE 2020 where she regained the vacated belt. Unfortunately, once again, one year and two fights later, on the 2021 NYE supercard, she met 24 year-old, 4-0 grappling phenom Seika Izawa and got completely loving worked, dominated like she hadn't been in years and ultimately TKOed in the second round...in a non-title fight, because that's how Japan rolls. The two will meet again, this time for the championship contest it should have been in the first place, at Rizin 35 on April 17, and Hamasaki will have to figure out how to fight someone who already destroyed her. CarlCX fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Apr 1, 2022 |
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Apr 1, 2022 17:20
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Tremendous UFC champions gallery, Carl
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Apr 1, 2022 17:30
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Great OP! Pretty funny how Valentina's picture looks like she's at a routine dentist checkup or something, also I think she's up to at least 5 languages now, assuming she didn't suddenly stop learning Thai. How old is that Oliveira picture? I don't remember seeing that at all.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:58
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Guessing the Oliveira one is from the Holloway fight where it ended abruptly because of some weird esophagus(?)-related injury.
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Apr 1, 2022 18:03
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Skjorte posted:Guessing the Oliveira one is from the Holloway fight where it ended abruptly because of some weird esophagus(?)-related injury. Ah that makes sense
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Apr 1, 2022 18:13
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mousasi is slated to fight johnny eblen in june. e: as always, fantastic thread, forums friend carl LobsterMobster fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Apr 1, 2022 |
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Apr 1, 2022 18:20
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CarlCX posted:Heavyweight Champion, 265+ lbs 
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Apr 1, 2022 18:48
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Paddy Pimblett
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Apr 1, 2022 19:29
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CarlCX posted:(Look at you, reading past Adriano Martins. Good job. First person to quote this gets a stupid computer game.) Surprised the stupid computer game hadn't been grabbed up yet; gimmie.
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Apr 1, 2022 20:04
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Thanks, y'all. Yeah, the Oliveira shot is from the Holloway fight. I was at a Buffalo Wild Wings when that happened and everyone was very, very disappointed. Also: It's hard to find injury pictures of people like Nunes and Shevchenko that never goddamn lose.LobsterMobster posted:mousasi is slated to fight johnny eblen in june. Thanks for the catches. That + in the heavyweight header has been there since the start, so it slipped through the cracks for a long fuckin' time. NuclearPotato posted:Surprised the stupid computer game hadn't been grabbed up yet; gimmie. PMed.
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Apr 1, 2022 20:41
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CarlCX posted:
I appreciate these awesome writeups you do for us and the pictures routinely make me laugh my rear end off- Just to be clear I hope I didn't come off as some rear end in a top hat redditor "um actually" scumbag, I was just being cute 
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Apr 1, 2022 21:47
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Unperson_47 posted:Paddy Pimblett lol
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Apr 1, 2022 22:02
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beep by grandpa posted:I appreciate these awesome writeups you do for us and the pictures routinely make me laugh my rear end off- Just to be clear I hope I didn't come off as some rear end in a top hat redditor "um actually" scumbag, I was just being cute cuties always welcome as far as im concerned  also, jon jones now follows me on twitter 
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Apr 1, 2022 22:05
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Eat This Glob posted:also, jon jones now follows me on twitter Please be the cool jon jones
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Apr 1, 2022 22:22
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beep by grandpa posted:I appreciate these awesome writeups you do for us and the pictures routinely make me laugh my rear end off- Just to be clear I hope I didn't come off as some rear end in a top hat redditor "um actually" scumbag, I was just being cute Nah, I did not take it that way at all, don't worry. Besides, I want this poo poo to be correct, so corrections big or small are always welcome.
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Apr 1, 2022 22:58
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mewse posted:Please be the cool jon jones i was trying to set up an april fools joke poorly. oh well. it is the cool jon jones
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Apr 1, 2022 23:46
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Someone CTRL + F "hidden" in this thread so I don't get more Bad Rats on my Steam Account
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Apr 2, 2022 00:00
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Yes, as last month's winner of "Enforcer: Police Crime Action" I recommend the Easter Egg hunt
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Apr 2, 2022 00:07
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lmao what was the game this time potato
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Apr 2, 2022 00:21
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When I started doing the hidden keys I vowed to give everyone who wins a choice between something that might actually be good or something that's just stupid, and no one has ever chosen the former option
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Apr 2, 2022 00:33
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Boco_T posted:lmao what was the game this time potato It was The Deadly Tower of Monsters, which seems like an actually decent game! Please note, however, that I didn't ask for a good game; just a randomly chosen game; therefore the streak of nobody choosing something that might actually be good still stands.
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Apr 2, 2022 01:29
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reeg posted:"Enforcer: Police Crime Action" It's a good example of a terrible name anyway
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Apr 2, 2022 01:32
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reeg posted:"Enforcer: Police Crime Action" sounds like jon jones' next opponent
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Apr 2, 2022 01:48
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them pushing chris daukaus so hard suddenly makes more sense as an interim title opponent for jones
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Apr 2, 2022 02:01
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For the kickboxing minded, tomorrow April 3 starting at 12pm noon Japan time and going all day is K-1 K’Festa 5 where there will be a one day openweight tournament. Should be fun as the one day tournaments usually are. I assume a couple weirdos in the discord will be watching it as well. I’ll chat about it there as it’s going on
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Apr 2, 2022 02:16
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In other kickboxing news, "tonight" (Saturday afternoon Japan) is Rise El Dorado, featuring Tenshin's final Rise fight. Here's the description from the Beyond Kickboxing Discord: Tenshin Nasukawa vs Kazane Nagai in the main event. The undercard will feature a number of current and ex-champions, such as Kento Haraguchi, Naoki, Kosei Yamada, etc. It's described as a "major event" and it is in terms of being in an arena rather than in Korakuen Hall, but it doesn't even have any other fights notable enough to get a "X vs. Y" description on a kickboxing Discord. I'll watch it whenever it goes up on Bilibili because I can't stay up all night to watch fights and I'll post recs in this thread... at some point. code:code:https://twitter.com/Beyond_Kick/status/1509996775079399427 Very excited for the tournament because the "open weight 8-man one night tournament" is so rare in the last decade, it's a true throwback to classic K-1 and I hope the fights are sloppy and the knockouts are plentiful. Also a major arena show with another 13 non-tournament fights on it, so expect if you're a VOD watcher to have two 6-7 hour long shows to catch up on after this weekend.
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Apr 2, 2022 02:39
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I'm returning on a different account when the last time I psp posted was almost a decade ago... what happened to Duncan?
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Apr 2, 2022 02:48
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Boco_T posted:Key note for the card is that Satoshi Ishii is fighting in the tournament as a member of "Cro Cop Team" hah, that's cool. also, wtf, ishii is a croatian citizen now (giving up his japanese citizenship in the process)
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Apr 2, 2022 02:49
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NeatHeteroDude posted:I'm returning on a different account when the last time I psp posted was almost a decade ago... what happened to Duncan?
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Apr 2, 2022 02:51
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A black belt professor of mine is/was (i'm not sure anymore) in a relationship with Ishii so I have to root for him or she will snap my limbs if we roll together.
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Apr 2, 2022 02:51
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https://twitter.com/ScottCoker/status/1509978326256930818
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Apr 2, 2022 02:52
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Is Tenshin still going to fight takeru?
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Apr 2, 2022 04:04
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That is a lot of good loving kickboxing. I wish kickboxing were a little easier to actually watch regularly.NeatHeteroDude posted:I'm returning on a different account when the last time I psp posted was almost a decade ago... what happened to Duncan? He got tired of the internet and decided to go focus on having an actual life as a Korean superhero. Marching Powder posted:Is Tenshin still going to fight takeru? Yup. https://twitter.com/k1wgp_pr/status/1509817863590187011 June 19. Don't gently caress it up, universe.
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Apr 2, 2022 04:14
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Oh yeah I meant to attach that tweet to my kickboxing post but forgot, thanks Carl. Pretty funny that this weekend is billed as Tenshin's "last Rise fight." As far as I know the 6/19 match is actually promoted by Rizin as a neutral ground between K-1 and Rise.
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Apr 2, 2022 04:27
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It's not really crazy for Japanese combat sports, but still crazy to me that they have a fight planned within a couple months of a fight whose consequences / post-recovery haven't even been reckoned.
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Apr 2, 2022 06:47
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And to make matters weirder, Tenshin’s last bunch of fights have gone the distance. My 100% casual speculation is he’s lost a step due to putting too much time into boxing. I think Takeru will hand him his first loss and a T/KO at that. But I would have said that any way, I just like Takeru’s fighting more to begin with.
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Apr 2, 2022 15:03
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The Hammer looking... alive
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Apr 2, 2022 16:47
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