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What best approximates your holiday experience? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| A time of festivities with family and friends that reminds you of life and love |
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5 | 13.89% |
| A time of rumination and reflection as you consider your year and the next |
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4 | 11.11% |
| A time of quiet, cloudy depression where you fold yourself in shows and video games until it's over |
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17 | 47.22% |
| A time to smoke just so much god damned weed |
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10 | 27.78% |
| Total: | 36 votes | ||
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Are you too stuffed with dinner rolls to make it to December? Take refuge back in November here. We've made it, my friends. Amidst weight misses, broken shoulders and a pandemic that's definitely 100% over, we have made it through another long year of MMA. We lost the big main event for this month before it even started, so kick back, relax, pour yourself a glass of nog big or little depending on preference, stay up late for the JMMA New Year, and look at it as a very, very tired victory lap before we all tuck in for a month-long winter of no UFC. Our final title of the year comes courtesy of your friend and mine, LobsterMobster. 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'm still doing the new one. If you want to talk about MMA or combat sports events that aren't included in this breakdown: Please do. In a world of Road FC and Rizin events that don't actually air in America and the WBC threatening to rank Jake Paul, there's space for everything. And if there's an event you want to make a GDT for, go right ahead, just make sure to link it here so everyone sees it and basks in the joy of violence. THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS 
IS THERE ANY NEWS  Shockingly and abruptly, Anthony "Rumble" Johnson passed away on November 13, 2022. Johnson is one of those people who's surprisingly difficult to write about, in that every story about him paints a different picture of his life. As a person, he's recalled by virtually every peer who ever crossed his path as a kind, wonderful friend they loved dearly, but he also had recurring issues with domestic abuse across multiple partners, anger management across the spectrum and just kind of being a dick in public. As a fighter he was a terrifying knockout artist with an amazing record who fought for the UFC championship twice, but that undeniable fact is also an example of just how insane this sport can be, as despite being a credible light-heavyweight and heavyweight contender Johnson spent the first half of his career fighting 30+ pounds lower at welterweight, where he cut so much water weight he would show up to weigh-ins looking positively skeletal--a habit that stopped only when it became inconvenient for the UFC that he began regularly failing to make weight because his body simply couldn't handle it anymore. But it wasn't his weight-cutting or his mileage that killed him in the end, it was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, because the world is random and cruel. Anthony Johnson was one of the most devastating fighters in the history of combat sports, the kind of impossible powerhouse that could walk off a retirement layoff and destroy a top-ranked contender with a punch so casual it looked like he was brushing dirt off a doily, and there is something deeply strange and incorrect in thinking about him dying from a random disorder in a hospital bed. I didn't know Anthony Johnson, and I cannot tell you if he was a good person. But I can tell you 38 is entirely too goddamn young to die of anything. gently caress cancer and rest in peace.  In a much less tragic but only slightly less surprising bit of news that broke just before the end of the month, Jiří Procházka, the Czech striker who took the UFC by storm, became the top light-heavyweight in the world after a fight of the year candidate and was poised to run the match back and cement his legacy as a defending champion in just a few short weeks, announced that he was instead relinquishing the UFC championship and going on a prolonged injury hiatus. He reportedly tole a hole in the muscles of his shoulder in what the UFC is calling one of the worst injuries they've ever seen thanks to a bad landing on a throw while training, and the timetable for his recovery is almost certainly in excess of a full year. Spirit bomb your well-wishes for a quick recovery to Jiří and hopefully the light-heavyweight division he returns to in 2024 will be friendly.  After spending a year away from competition while fighting the Russian invasion of his homeland, and after successfully recapturing his hometown of Irpin, Amosov will return to mixed martial arts competition and reunify the Bellator welterweight championship with interim champion Logan Storley on February 25th at Bellator 291. This will be a rematch of the very close bout they had in 2020 that Amosov won. Hopefully he gets some time to actually train and prepare.  So James Krause--formerly UFC fighter "The" James Krause--has had kind of a bad month. First, former student Megan Anderson accused the fighter-turned-trainer of cheating on his wife with some of the female fighters he trained. Second, one of his most-heralded fighters, Darrick Minner, was dealt a devastating third consecutive UFC loss after his already-injured leg gave out within seconds of his fight beginning, raising considerable questions about how Krause, the UFC and the Nevada State Athletic Commission allowed him to compete in that state. Third, Krause was formally placed under investigation by two separate state gaming integrity agencies after it arose that in the hours leading up to the fight there was a sudden, substantial betting shift towards Minner's opponent Shayilan Nuerdanbieke to not only win, but win by a first-round TKO, as though someone close to the fight had leaked Minner's injury, whiich is a very bad look when you are, say, Minner's head coach, and you, uh, run your own MMA gambling podcast and Discord network to dispense both overt and surreptitious gambling advice. Krause has been banned from cornering any UFC fighters while the investigation is ongoing and he has quietly closed his discord and his podcast and is no longer updating any social media. Hilariously, this has now snowballed hard enough that just this morning of our beautiful December 1st, the UFC was completely banned from all sportsbook activity in the province of Ontario until the situation is resolved. James Krause, your post-fight career is so much more interesting than your fight career.  On the back of a two-fight winning streak over the last three years--one of them to a visibly overweight Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, the other to Timothy Johnson, the only fighter to ever get knocked out in the UFC by a man wearing a diaper--Fedor Emelianenko, the somewhat tarnished but still-alive legend, is singing his swan song. He'll rematch Ryan Bader for his Bellator Heavyweight Championship and to avenge Bader's thirty-five-second knockout victory over him at Bellator 290 on February 4th, and has vowed that, win or lose, his 48th MMA fight will be the final tilt of his career. As always: I'm rooting for whatever's funniest. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  After seventeen years of competition and one last knockout loss, Frankie Edgar has finally called it a day. I waxed poetic about my personal feelings on Frankie already for the UFC 281 writeup and no one needs to hear me bleed openly about the inspiration I took from him as a fighter, so let us instead focus on the man and say: He did everything. He ground his way through the regional scene before MMA took off, he spent a staggering fifteen years in the UFC and was ranked in the top fifteen for nearly all of them, he destroyed a legend and built his own. He fought a half-dozen world champions across three weight classes. He won the UFC lightweight championship when everyone thought he was too small and too weak and, years after his prime, he went the distance with two of the three best featherweight fighters of all time. He fought on the first UFC card in New York after it was finally legalized again and he main-evented the first time the UFC ever want to Busan and he main-evented the UFC's first trip to the mecca of Japanese mixed martial arts, the Saitama Super Arena, since the dissolution of Pride. It was a legendary career, and while it could probably have ended a little sooner to save him repeated concussions, being too tough to quit was always a Frankie Edgar thing. He leaves the sport at 24-11-1.  Brad Riddell has sort-of retired. The New Zealand-based brawler got off to a thundering start after his 2019 UFC debut, racking up four very impressive victories, enshrining himself as a must-see fighter and punching his ticket to the top fifteen. And unfortunately, that's where things ran ground. Rafael Fiziev knocked him out, and then Jalin Turner choked him out, and this past month the embattled Renato Moicano outclassed him and choked him out again. In the first eight years of his MNMA career he went 10-1; in the last eleven months he went 0-3. After his loss to Moicano, Riddell quietly put a post up on his instagram announcing his intention to step away from mixed martial arts--as he says it, having competed in some form for the past fourteen straight years, he's tired and doesn't have the heart for it anymore, and needs to leave "until the fire comes back." In some ways, I hope it doesn't. Brad Riddell made a name for himself and got out with his health intact; I cannot help hoping he keeps it. Until that day, if ever it comes, Riddell retires with a 10-4 record in mixed martial arts, a 59-10 record in kickboxing, and an 0-1 record in boxing we're going to forget happened.  Zhalgas Zhumagulov is the first fighter in a very long time to retire out of sheer frustration. His UFC signing in 2019 was welcomed by the MMA community--he was a 13-3 regional champion with victories over multiple UFC veterans, and two of his three losses were controversially close split decisions. Which makes it unfortunate that his UFC tenure was primarily defined by controversially close split decisions. Zhumagulov went a distressing 1-5 in the UFC, but three of those five--his bouts with Raulian Paiva, Jeff Molina and Charles Johnson--were nearly unanimously scored for him by the media and met with confusion and anger when judges, as they do, disagreed. After his most recent bout, the aforementioned Johnson fight, Zhumagulov won on 12 out of 13 media scorecards even after getting poked in the eye and kicked in the balls twice, somehow still lost a split decision, and announced his retirement after the show, explicitly calling out terrible judging as the culprit. Unless someone manages to coax him back into competition, he leaves the sport at 14-8. 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, three 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
CarlCX fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Dec 1, 2022 |
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WHAT HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER The month started with November 5th's extra-cursed UFC Fight Night: Rodriguez vs Lemos. The card lost its main event and two main card fights, one of them getting scratched the day of the event, and four people missed weight. (It would've been five, but Shanna Young got under the limit by chopping off her hair.) It was, once again, violent. Tamires Vidal made a successful debut by nuking Ramona Pascual with a flying knee to the liver, Jake Hadley choked out Carlos Candelario, Polyana Viana overcame her grappling urges to instead punch Jinh Yu Frey out in under a minute, Mario Bautista tapped a long-missing Benito Lopez, and Johnny Muńoz Jr. and Miranda Maverick managed decisions. On the main card, Grant Dawson ended Mark Madsen's undefeated streak with a rear naked choke, Tagir Ulanbekov dominated and guillotined Nate Maness, we had silly limb times again when Darrick Minner broke his leg just seconds into a fight with Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, Neil Magny overcame the odds to choke out Daniel Rodriguez, and in the main event, Amanda Lemos scored an upset standing TKO over Marina Rodriguez. We switched over to Japan for Rizin Landmark Vol. 4 later on November 6th. Rizin's b-show series was, well, the b-show, but there was still fun to be had, most notably with Yuta Kubo knocking out Keisuke Okuda, Alan Yamaniha continuing his give-and-take record by beating Yasuhiro Kawamura, Cally Gibrainn knocking out the former sumo Takakenshin, Kiyoshi "Samurai Mark Hunt" Kuwabara sadly knocking out the legendary Ikuhisa Minowa, Chihiro Suzuki defeating vicious leg murderer Masakazu Imanari, and in the main event, the kickboxing-turned-MMA rookie Ron Hiramoto defeated the much more experienced Satoshi Yamasu. And then November 12th brought us the big show for the month, UFC 281: Adesanya vs Pereira, which immediately became one of the best UFCs of all time. You basically have to name every fight to cover the highlights, but I'll try to pick and choose: The prelims saw Carlos Ulberg nuke Nicolae Negumereanu, Michael Trizano flatline Choi Seung-woo, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Andre Petroski win scrappy, impressive decisions, Erin Blanchfield absolutely destroyed Molly McCann, Ryan Spann quite possibly ended Dominick Reyes' career with yet another knockout, and Renato Moicano choked out Brad Riddell in one round. The main card was even better: Dan Hooker won an extremely funny bout against an overmatched Claudio Puelles despite almost getting his leg torn in half in the first round, Chris Gutierrez tragically knocked out Frankie Edgar one last time in his retirement bout, Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler went to war and Poirier wound up with the submission victory. In the co-main event, Zhang Weili fulfilled the expected prophecy by absolutely destroying Carla Esparza to once again become Women's Strawweight Champion, and in the main event, Alex Pereira overcame a two-round deficit and what seemed like sure defeat to knock out Israel Adesanya with just three minutes left in the fight, becoming the new Middleweight World Champion in the process. The five-event sprint of the following week started with Invicta FC 50 on November 16th. To be honest: It was kind of a bummer. Invicta was hoping for a big show and a fabulous one-night tournament to celebrate their 50th event and crown a big new strawweight champion, but unfortunately, it was one of those nights where nothing quite worked the way they hoped, from competitors falling through to almost all of the fights being interminable, clinch-centric decisions to their production itself rebelling, as their lighting rig cast a sickly pallor on the entire event and their onscreen graphics software crashed and refused to work, meaning most of the event didn't even have an onscreen clock. The most memorable part of the night wasn't even the fighting itself, it was undercard curtain-jerker Elise "The Piece" Pone playing mindgames by screaming every time she threw a clinch knee and spending her between-round breaks standing motionless and staring down her resting opponent. But former UFC competitor Talita Bernardo scored a victory by kimura in the co-main event, and the strawweight tournament itself ended with Valesca "Tina Black" Machado taking two decisions and becoming Invicta's new 115-pound queen. Hopefully her first royal decree is a clock that works. The very long and shockingly cursed weekend began on November 18th--rather, I'm picking one of the day's parallel events at random--with Bellator 288: Nemkov vs Anderson 2. The undercard was Bellator's usual morass of people you've never heard of, with fighters like Laird Anderson, Sullivan Cauley, Archie Colgan and Killys Mota, which I promise are all real people, picking up victories that Bellator itself may not even have bothered to record. The main card carried a little introductory interest--Levan Chokheli defeated Roman Faraldo, Daniel James did some heavyweight stuff to Tyrell Fortune and Timur Khizriev defeated late replacement Daniel Weichel in a fight no one will remember in a few days--but everyone was there for the two title matches. The co-main event saw Patricky Pitbull make his debut as a defending champion more than a year after his title victory, and he immediately lost it in an incredibly long, incredibly one-sided fight to your new Bellator Lightweight Champion, Usman Nurmagomedov. No, Bellator at no point shut up about Khabib. The main event was the re-run of Vadim Nemkov's light-heavyweight championship defense AND Bellator's Light-Heavyweight Grand Prix Tournament final against Corey Anderson, and where in their first meeting Anderson was seconds away from clear victory before a foul ended the whole thing, the rematch saw Nemkov dominate the majority of the fight with takedown defense, jabs and leg kicks (and one cool spinning kick). Corey Anderson continues to be one of the unluckiest dudes in the sport. The curses rolled straight on with ONE on Prime Video 4: Abbasov vs Lee, as a bunch of people missed weight and failed hydration including headliner and defending welterweight champion Kiamrian Abbasov, making him the incredibly unlikely third and hopefully final fighter to lose a championship on the scale in 2022. The prelims were something of an anticlimax--Jonathan Haggerty, Ruslan Emilbek Uulu and Liam Nolan all won somewhat disappointingly uneventful decisions and the one submission grappling match of the night saw Danielle Kelly immediately crushing a woefully outmatched Mariia Molchanova--but the main card delivered. Kim Jae Woong destroyed Kevin Belington, Cosmo Alexandre executed Juan Cervantes and Stephen Loman put a hellacious three-round beating on former kingpin Bibano Fernandes, who despite being in his forties and looking progressively more outmatched in recent years announced his intention to stay in the sport for years and years to come. The co-main was a deeply educational study in weight classes, as ONE Strawweight Muay Thai Champion and one of the best in all of Europe in his weight class, Joseph Lasiri, went up to Flyweight to challenge one of the sport's scariest fighters, ONE Flyweight Muay Thai Champion Rodtang Jitmuangnon, who proceeded to beat him handily for five rounds in a method that could almost be called outright disrespectful, as he simply ignored most of Lasiri's offense while walking him down and beating the poo poo out of him. The main event saw ONE's promotional golden boy Christian Lee finally make good on the company's repeated attempts to make someone in his family a double champion. As with everything in ONE, it wasn't without a little controversy--Abbasov had him out on his feet in the first round and could easily have had a standing TKO ruled in his favor--but that makes it all the more impressive that Lee fought back from being essentially knocked out and beat a horribly gassed Abbasov down three rounds later. Lee is now ONE's lightweight and welterweight champion, making him the king of one division where he has yet to fight most of ONE's ranked competitors and another ONE has never bothered to make rankings for despite it existing since 2014. Their double-show tendencies continued, as later that night/very early the following morning depending on your location they held ONE 163: Akimoto vs Petchtanong. As the non-Prime shows tend to be it was lower-key than its predecessor, but that, too, was harmed by the weekend's weight issues, as women's star Seo Hee Ham refused to continue on to her fight with Itsuki Hirata after the latter failed three separate weight and hydration tests. The card went on with ten fights and resulted in a bunch of traumatic finishes: Bianca Basilio choked out Milena Kaori in a grappling match that didn't even last a minute, Ahmed Mujtaba choked out Abraao Amorim, Ahmed Krnjic out-kickboxed Bruno Chaves, and the main card followed with just a mess of knockouts. Kwon Won Il kneed Mark Abelardo to death, Aung La Nsang scored a slightly goofy ref stoppage over 2008's most interesting middleweight Yushin Okami but he was also effortlessly beating him up so it was fine, Saygid Izgakhmaev equally easily punched out aging Pride legend Shinya Aoki in a minute and a half and Roman Kryklia won the ONE Kickboxing Heavyweight Grand Prix--a truly impressive, four-man affair--by TKOing Iran's Iraj Azizpour. The stoppage streak ended in the main event, as Petchtanong Petchfergus took a split decision victory (that really shouldn't have been a split) over Hiroki Akimoto to capture the ONE Kickboxing Bantamweight Championship. And for once, the curse weighed most heavily on the UFC, as November 19th saw the ill-fated The month, and the PFL until its next season starts in April, ended on PFL 10 on November 25th. This was PFL's big and almost certainly ill-advised attempt at moving their finals to a pay-per-view I cannot imagine having sold well, but the show itself, at least, was mostly pretty good. The prelims were a mix of not particularly notable, deeply gratifying, and sad: Dakota Ditcheva knocked out a woefully overmatched Katherine Corogenes, Magomed Magomedkerimov dominated Gleison Tibau, Natan Schulte dominated and choked out the mad, unstoppable and now 29-21 (1) Jeremy Stephens, and Marlon Moraes made his PFL debut, looked pretty good for two rounds, and tragically, inevitably, got knocked out in the third round by Sheymon Moraes, who is now the canonical Moraes. The main card saw the very bland, barely-active split-decision victory debut of Aspen Ladd, but was otherwise focused on the PFL's six championship finals. In the light-heavyweight division, Rob Wilkinson scored a doctor stoppage after punching Omari Akhmedov's face open. In the welterweight division Sadibou Sy, "The Swedish Denzel," which is my new least favorite nickname in a walk, won an outright unwatchably uneventful but unanimous decision over finalist Dilano Taylor. At lightweight, Olivier Aubin-Mercier went two back-and-forth rounds with Stevie Ray before knocking him clean out with a perfectly-placed right hook. Up at heavyweight, Ante Delija somewhat inevitably knocked out Matheus Scheffel for the second time in seven months in a fairly effortless 2:50. In the co-main event, Brendan Loughnane and Bubba Jenkins had what was probably the most technically sound fight of the night, trading back and forth for four and a half rounds before Loughnane finally put Jenkins out to win the featherweight championship. And in the main event, and easily the biggest upset in PFL history, Larissa Pachecho fought a close but decisive war with Kayla Harrison that saw her ultimately win a unanimous decision, taking both the Women's Lightweight Championship and, maybe more importantly, Kayla's 15-fight, 4 1/2-year undefeated record. WHAT'S COMING IN DECEMBER It's gonna be a comparatively sleepier December as we head into the only UFC vacation of the year, with nearly a full goddamn month between Cannonier/Strickland and Gastelum/Imavov, but there's a fun road through it and it's ending with a bang. And it's beginning with a glut. ONE is still on their double-event madness, and this time around it starts on December 2nd with ONE on Prime Video 5: de Ridder vs Malykhin. It's the final Prime Video card of 2022, and ONE is stuffing it as full of championship belts as they possibly can. On the undercard you have atomweight tournament finalist Denice Zamboanga vs Lin Heqin, a Muay Thai bout between England's Amber Kitchen and American Muay Thai champion Jackie Buntan, Dae Sung Park vs Lowen Tynanes and two-time lightweight champion Eduard Folayang vs Edson Marques. The main card has one non-title bout between two-division KSW champion Roberto Soldić and Murad Ramazanov, and from there on out it's all belts, all the time. ONE Muay Thai Atomweight Champion Allycia Hellen Rodrigues is back from a two-year layoff to reunify the belt with interim champion Janet Todd, ONE Submission Grappling Lightweight Champion Kade Ruotolo will look to defend his grappling belt against Matheus Gabriel, ONE Kickboxing Featherweight Champion Superbon Singha Mawynn will kickbox a bunch with Chingiz Allazov, and in the main event, ONE double-champion Reinier de Ridder will defend his light-heavyweight title against interim heavyweight champion Anatoliy Malykhin, because divisions don't loving matter. But we're not done, baby. As always the next day, December 3rd, will see ONE 164: Pacio vs Brooks. The undercard is a little more low-key--three MMA matches, one of which has only one competitor announced, and two Muay Thai matches featuring Lara Fernandez vs Dangkongfah Banchamek and Tagir Khalilov vs Chorfah Tor.Sangtiennoi, but the main card is the show. Jeremy Pacatiw and Tial Thang will fight for contendership prospect status, Geje Eustaquio and Hu Yong will try to carve out a spot at flyweight, the somehow never-gone Brandon Vera is back after a year and a half on the shelf to fight Amir Aliakbari in the hopes of getting another crack at the heavyweight title, ONE's eight-man Flyweight Muay Thai Grand Prix will come to an end as Superlek Kiatmuu9 and Panpayak Jitmuangnon will battle to determine the tournament champion and the next challenger for the ever-terrifying Rodtang. The main event is take two at the title defense originally scheduled for this past summer, as ONE Strawweight Champion Joshua Pacio will defend his title against UFC veteran (and deeply unfairly cut) Jarred Brooks. The UFC kicks off its month later that afternoon with UFC on ESPN: Thompson vs Holland. While there's still yet time for injuries to wreck it, this is currently scheduled to be the longest UFC of the year, with 15 goddamn fights on the books, so I'll save you from having to read about all of them right now. Preliminary highlights include Yazmin Jauregui vs Istela Nunes, Tracy Cortez vs Amanda Ribas, Michael Johnson vs Marc Diakiese, Clay Guida vs Scott Holtzman, Angela Hill vs Emily Ducote and Niko Price vs Philip Rowe. The main card gets off to a rough start with Eryk Anders vs Kyle Daukaus, but proceeds into a series of bangers from there: Roman Dolidze vs Jack Hermansson, Tai Tuivasa vs Sergei Pavlovich, Matheus Nicolau vs Matt Schnell, Bryan Barberena vs Rafael dos Anjos, and in the main event, the perennially unfortunate Kevin Holland is finally getting the non-wrestler main event he's been seeking for years, as he faces karate master Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson in a match of striking experts that could be very, very good, or very, very boring. We're over to Bellator for their home show of the month next: December 9th's Bellator 289: Stots vs Sabatello. I know I always rag on Bellator's prelims, and there's still some of that here--I use Tapology, the most complete MMA database on the internet, for fight research and Bellator has finally found a fighter in the 1-2 Kareem "The Dream" Kline that even they don't have a picture for--but there's some good stuff too, with Kai Kamaka III facing Kevin Boehm, Chris Gonzalez mixing it up with Shamil Nikaev, Mark Lemminger and Michael Lombardo fighting for recognition and Cody Law facing Cris Lencioni. The main card is pinned up by a truly hilarious match between Dalton "Hercules" Rosta, who looks like a living billboard for anabolic steroids, and Anthony "SugaFoot" Adams, who has managed to have ten fight cancellations in just the last four years, followed by a Bantamweight Grand Prix semi-final match between Magomed Magomedov and Patchy Mix, but it's all about the two title fights up top. Liz Carmouche will defend her somewhat oddly-obtained Bellator Women's Flyweight Championship against the woman she kind-of sort-of took it from, Juliana Velasquez, and after months of deeply lame, interminable trash talk, Raufeon Stots will both defend his interim bantamweight championship and fight out the other half of the Bantamweight Grand Prix semi-finals against Danny Sabatello. Our big pay-per-view for the month follows on December 10th, UFC 282: The next week brings us December 17th's UFC Fight Night: Cannonier vs Strickland, and it's a much more subdued end to the UFC's year, with a lower-key card back in the dark, quiet depths of the empty-arena UFC Apex. While there's a touch less relevancy, that's not to say it's bad, by any means: There are, in fact, a bunch of interesting fights as it's basically Prospect Night. Cheyanne Vlismas looks to keep her headkicking streak alive against Cory McKenna, Sergey Morozov and Journey Newson will wrestle each other violently, Julian Marquez and Deron Winn will do a hell of a grapple, Manel Kape will fight for a rank against David Dvořák, Said Nurmagomedov will look to maintain the only non-Khabib-related Nurmagomedov winning streak alive against Saidyokub Kakhramonov, Michael Morales will try to be furious all over Rinat Fakhretdinov, Tafon Nchukwi will desperately defend his job against Vitor Petrino, Jake Matthews looks to follow up the best performance of his career against the insanely tough Matthew Semelsberger, Amir Albazi and Alessandro Costa will desperately seek a claim to flyweight contendership, Rafa García will try to deny the UFC their sacrificial lamb for new star Hayisaer Maheshate and Sean Strickland and Jared Cannonier will meet in the best kind of main event there is: The kind where both fighters have really lovely opinions so no matter who gets hosed up, everybody wins. But it has been a tradition of the sport for nearly twenty years that the MMA year ends on a big, wild New Year's Eve event in Japan, and after a couple unfortunately underwhelming years thanks to the pandemic, we're bringing down the curtain with the rarest kind of showstopper in the sport: An actual, legitimate cross-promotional event. On December 31st Bellator and Rizin are teaming up to bring you, fittingly enough, Bellator MMA vs Rizin, a giant of a card. There's virtually no chaff on the card, which begins with what's technically Rizin 40, a Japan-specific undercard: BeyNoah himself, the wildly popular if recently unsuccessful kickboxing star, faces the up-and-coming Sho Patrick Usami in an MMA match, living legend Hideo Tokoro faces former UFC title contender John Dodson, rising contender Luiz Gustavo takes on Johnny Case, bantamweight Yuki Motoya meets the UFC's most nonsensical release in years, former flyweight top contender Rogério Bontorin, Naoki Inoue faces Kenta Takizawa, sumo turned wild brawler Tsuyoshi Sudario faces the Kiwi kickboxer Junior Tafa, and in the undercard's main event, atomweight queen Seika Izawa will meet the ridiculously tough Si Woo Park in both a rematch of their DEEP fight from last year and the finals of Rizin's Women's Super Atomweight Grand Prix. But then it's time for the big card, and boy, it's a hell of a thing, featuring five well-matched bouts with representatives from each company. Rizin's lightweight contender Koji Takeda will face Bellator's Gadzhi Rabadanov in an opening bout that will probably have a bunch of grappling in it. Kyoji Horiguchi, despite being Rizin's biggest Japanese star, will represent Bellator as its former bantamweight champion when he faces Rizin Bantamweight Grand Prix winner Hiromasa Ougikubo. Soo Chul Kim, Korea's Road FC bantamweight champion and Rizin's newest top contender, will take on former Bellator bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta. AJ McKee, former Bellator Featherweight Champion and newly-minted lightweight star, will meet Rizin Lightweight Champion Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza in what could easily, easily be a main event for either company, but the actual main event slot is instead saved for a dream match: Patricio Pitbull, reigning Bellator Featherweight Champion and arguably their greatest fighter of all time, who has lost only one fight at his weight class in seven years, will meet Rizin Featherweight Champion and absolute jiu-jitsu monster Kleber Koike Erbst in a fight for international pride. It's a hell of a thing, it'll be a hell of a show, and if you want to watch it you'd better be prepared to stay up until 7 AM PST on a pirated stream, because it's only airing in America on tape delay. Don't worry, pirate NYE streams are part of the tradition too.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:02
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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. In response, Francis Ngannou appeared with Tyson Fury after his high-profile destruction of Dillian Whyte and the two hyped a potential boxing vs MMA fight between them. This, of course, did not happen, and now Tyson Fury is fighting Derek Chisora because boxing loving sucks. Predictably, this has become a big, stupid thing. They were hoping to put more pressure on Ngannou by booking Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic for an interim title on December 10, but Stipe wasn't dumb enough to do it for peanuts either. As of now, the UFC is HOPING to get Francis Ngannou vs Jon Jones together for UFC 285 on March 4, but they're still lowballing Ngannou. If they can't come to terms, it'll be Jones vs Curtis Blaydes. Or so they hope. Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   VACANT - The irrepressible doom that always winsWhat, you thought Vacant was done with the UFC in 2022? Bitch, you thought. Just seven days before the end of November, tragedy struck. Jiří Procházka, just seventeen days away from his first title defense and one of the most-anticipated rematches of the year, announced that he was vacating the UFC Light-Heavyweight Championship of the World. He had torn his right shoulder thanks to an errant landing in training, and despite his stated desire to fight one-handed, the doctors convinced him it was better not to potentially cripple himself for life. With the timetable for recovery likely to leave him on the shelf for the entirety of 2023, the UFC made the call to strip him of the belt (and say he'd made the decision himself out of courtesy for the division, which was at least polite of them). Challenger and former champion Glover Teixeira was more than willing to rematch fellow former champion Jan Błachowicz that night--but the UFC wanted him to fight Jan's opponent, Magomed Ankalaev, instead, citing Jan's age and their previous bout, so please remember the UFC's desire for only the most vital, legitimate championship bouts the next time Jorge Masvidal or Conor McGregor gets a scrape at the gold. The title won't be held up for long--the UFC wasn't so concerned that they were unwiling to change Błachowicz vs Ankalaev into a five-round title fight and new main event of UFC 282 on December 10th, which is particularly impressive when you learn Błachowicz wasn't consulted at all and only learned of the change after getting off a plane and turning his phone back on--but that means for two more, wonderful weeks, the most prolific champion in the history of sports reigns supreme in the UFC one more time. Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs   Alex Pereira - 7-1, 0 DefensesSometimes in this sport things that shouldn't really have happened wind up happening perfectly. Alex "Poatan" Pereira getting a title shot was ridiculous on its face: He was only 6-1, he'd only fought three UFC fights, he'd only fought one ranked fighter at all. It was the UFC's most blatant attempt to manufacture a title contender since Conor McGregor scored a comeback title fight after pulling a long-expired bag of Donald Cerrone from the back of the break room fridge. The UFC didn't even try to hide that Pereira was getting the shot solely because he'd beaten divisional kingpin and MMA superstar Israel Adesanya in kickboxing--twice. They ran highlights from an entirely different sport far, far more often than highlights from Pereira's UFC tenure during their monthslong attempt to hype up the title fight between the biggest and most consistent middleweight sensation since Anderson Silva and a mixed martial arts neophyte whose toughest test had been a guy who fought at 160 pounds for five years. Naysayers (like me!) said Pereira's lack of MMA experience would cost him when the fight inevitably turned to grappling, and it did: Israel Adesanya, noted non-wrestler, was able to repeatedly ground, control and almost submit Pereira. Naysayers (it's me again, being wrong!) said Pereira's untested MMA technique and staying power would cost him in a chapmionship-level fight, and it did: Israel Adesanya stung him repeatedly, nearly knocked him out, and was cruising to a broad decision victory on all three scorecards. And then, with two and a half minutes left in a five-round fight, Pereira caught him sleeping, put a string of fists upside his head and battered him to a standing TKO. All of the problems in the world fall before the power of destiny. For the third time and in the second sport of their lives, Alex Pereira defeated Israel Adesanya. Is he going to have serious trouble the second he fights any of the very, very good wrestlers at the top fifteen in his division? Oh, absolutely. Is the UFC going to let him? Probably not! They sound like they want a rematch so as not to deal with Robert Whittaker double-legging him and choking him out in ninety seconds or something. Whatever the future holds, Alex Pereira goes down in history as one of the few to mantle the UFC and stand as the best middleweight in the sport. Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs   Leon Edwards - 20-3 (1), 0 DefensesIt took half a decade to get the world to notice, but everyone sees Leon Edwards now. "Rocky" came from the kind of circumstances sports movies are made of--a poor kid from Jamaica who moved to England, lost his father to gang violence, nearly lost himself to it as a teenager and found a healthy outlet for his anger in mixed martial arts. Edwards made his debut in 2011 as a prime example of the modern generation of fighter, cross-trained from the beginning in every discipline, and in just three years he was the welterweight champion of Britain and off to the UFC. Entering 2016, Leon had suffered the first true loss of his career--he was 10-3, but one of those losses was a DQ for an illegal blow and the other a coinflip decision that could easily have gone either way--at the hands of the newly-crowned Ultimate Fighter 21 winner, Kamaru Usman, making his debut as an official UFC competitor. It took ten fights without a loss for Leon to get his rematch. The UFC seemed especially resistant to his title contendership, pushing him down in favor of the ostensibly more marketable UK star in Darren Till and booking him against numerous other contenders and gatekeepers while repeatedly elevating less deserving fighters to the championship. He wouldn't have gotten it at all, in fact, had Jorge Masvidal not gotten arrested. On August 20, the UFC acquiesced and granted the clear #1 contender his shot at the championship, and at revenge against Kamaru Usman--and after getting dominated for three and a half out of five rounds, with the commentators openly opining on the likelihood that he had given up, with just fifty-six seconds left in the fight, Edwards uncorked a headkick that shocked the world and knocked Kamaru Usman out for the first time in his career. Holding onto the belt won't be easy--Dana White is foaming at the mouth for a Wembley Stadium rematch between the two to end their trilogy--but Leon Edwards is cemented into history as the man who killed the king, and for a beautiful moment, as the best welterweight on the planet. Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs   Islam Makhachev - 23-1, 0 DefensesDestiny has come. When Islam Makhachev made his UFC debut in 2015, Khabib Nurmagomedov, considered by most to be the #1 contender and soon to be the best in the world, swore up and down that Makhachev, not him, would be the best lightweight champion of all time. Coming from him, the praise made sense: Khabib and Islam have trained together since they were children growing up and learning to wrestle in Makhachkala. Islam learned under Khabib's father, trained with Khabib's team and even made the pilgrimage to America to join Khabib at the American Kickboxing Academy. And then, two matches into his UFC tenure, Islam got knocked the gently caress out in the first round by the little-known Adriano Martins, who hasn't won a fight in the six years since. Even as Makhachev racked up wins, the memory of his loss and his wrestling-heavy approach to his fights let people cast doubts on him. Sure, he's good--but he lost, so he's not as good as Khabib. Islam Makhachev, as his trainer tells it, never wanted to be Khabib. He loves fighting, but he doesn't love the spectacle or the glory or the attention. So when, after ten straight wins, Makhachev was picked to challenge Charles Oliveira for the vacant title he never truly lost, a lot of folks just weren't quite sure what to think. Sure, he was an incredible wrestler, but Charles Oliveira is a submission wizard, and sure, he's on a ten-fight streak, but he hasn't fought a single person actually IN the top ten, and Oliveira represents a huge, dangerous step up as a man who's been destroying some of the most accomplished lightweights in the sport's history. Analyst opinion was split right down the middle; the fight, as it turned out, was nowhere near that competitive, and the only analyst who was entirely correct was Khabib. Islam demolished the former champion, outstriking him, taking him down at will, controlling him in the grappling, and ultimately dropping him with punches and choking him out in the second round. The Charles Oliveira story is over, the Islam Makhachev era has begun. Unlike most new champions, there's no question about what's next for him: The UFC is intent on having him defend against featherweight champion and pound-for-pound great Alexander Volkanovski when they go to Perth, Australia for UFC 284 on February 12. Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Alexander Volkanovski - 25-1, 4 DefensesSometimes it takes a lot of work to convince people you're the best. Alexander Volkanovski's rise through mixed martial arts is the kind of thing reserved for the all-time greats of the sport: He lost once, in the fourth fight of his career--at welterweight--and that was nine years ago. He's won twenty-one straight fights since, defeating top talent from around the world before landing in the UFC and proceeding to dominate every fighter placed in his way. There was one, single weight placed around his career's ankle: Max Holloway. Holloway was the UFC's much-lauded and much-marketed featherweight champion while Volkanovski was on his way up, and even as a 20-1 dynamo, he was an underdog against the Hawaiian. Alex beat him--soundly--but because of Holloway's prior dominance, and because the UFC wanted to get the most for its marketing buck, they ordered an instant rematch. Alex won again, but this time it was by a very close split decision, and that left a vocal part of the fanbase even angrier and more certain Max was the real champion. Two years and two fights apiece later, Alex and Max met one last time on July 2, and Volkanovski beat every shade of hell out of Holloway, not just repeatedly wobbling and outstriking him but completely and utterly shutting him out of a fight for the very first time in his career. When the bell rang, there were no questions left: Alexander Volkanovski is the absolute, undisputed best featherweight in the UFC. And now, having more or less destroyed his division, he has his eye on the pound for pound ranks. Volkanovski called his shot at the lightweight title before Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev had even fought, and moments after Makhachev was victorious, Volkanovski was in the cage staring him down. Come February, he'll get his chance at all-time greatness, but Josh Emmett and Yair Rodríguez will be meeting that same night to crown an interim featherweight champion, so whether Volkanovski ends the night with one belt or two, he'll have business to attend to. Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs   Aljamain Sterling - 22-3, 2 DefensesAljamain Sterling is the most simultaneously blessed and cursed fighter I've ever seen. A lifelong wrestler and grappler who started fighting at 19, Aljo took the long road to championship contention, dealing with setbacks and beating half the challengers the division had to offer before getting his shot at the seemingly unbeatable Petr Yan. He left their fight as the new, victorious champion, not because he had defeated Yan--he appeared to be on his way towards a loss--but because Yan had both illegally and outright intentionally kneed him in the head on the ground, resulting in the first-ever title change by way of disqualification. It took thirteen months for the inevitable rematch to materialize, and this time, Aljamain soundly outgrappled Yan and won fair and square--but the judges only gave him a split decision, which Dana White himself got pissy about, and the fanbase that already loved Yan and hated Sterling took it as carte blanche to poo poo on him all over again. Aljamain Sterling had the rare and coveted UFC title defense, and people hated him more than ever. The UFC itself made matters worse when, rather than booking the José Aldo title fight everyone wanted or giving Marlon Vera and his fan-favorite winning streak a shot, they tapped former champion and marketing favorite TJ Dillashaw as the top contender after winning one contentious split decision. Fans were split on whether Sterling would be able to outgrapple the accomplished wrestler, and Sterling made them all look extremely silly by catching a Dillashaw kick and immediately, easily ragdolling and controlling him thirty seconds into their fight. Unfortunately, seconds after that, Dillashaw dislocated his shoulder. Because everything is silly, Dillashaw was allowed to fight for a round and a half with one of his arms clearly not functioning, leading to Sterling getting a very easy ground-and-pound TKO in the second round, and after the fight Dillashaw immediately admitted that his shoulder had popped out dozens of times during camp, to the point that he had forewarned the referee of the injury before the fight so he wouldn't stop it immediately. If everything about that sentence sounds completely insane and backwards to you: Welcome to our fake idiot sport. Aljamain Sterling has three straight victories in championship fights, and through absolutely no fault of his own, most of the fanbase thinks none of them should count. Jesus wept. 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 was seemingly yet another fight with Moreno, this time in Mexico as a big money card. And then: Things fell apart. What at first seemed like an amicable rivalry turned sour when Figueiredo refused to fight Moreno again, citing what he saw as racist disrespect from his corner, and called instead for a fight with top contender Kai Kara-France, only to then say he needed time to rehabilitate hand injuries and couldn't take the fight until later in the year, and the UFC, ever the sensitive organization, responded by booking Moreno and Kara-France for an interim flyweight championship match on July 30 at UFC 277. Interim Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs   Brandon Moreno - 20-6-2, 0 DefensesAnd just like that, we're right back where we started. Moreno and Kara-France put on a furious two and a half back-and-forth rounds, but as he somehow does Moreno became only more vicious and found his combinations as the fight wore on. Four and a half minutes into the third round he stunned Kara-France with a spinning backfist and followed it with a charging liver kick that put him down for good and put gold back around Brandon's waist. Immediately following the fight, Moreno called Deiveson Figueiredo into the cage and attempted to bury the hatchet, and the two appeared to somewhat tensely reconcile enough to agree on the now entirely inevitable rematch. After months of radio silence, the inevitable quadrilogy fight was made official: Deiveson Figueiredo vs Brandon Moreno 4: The Search for More Money will take place during at UFC 283, the company's first event in Rio de Janeiro since 2019, on January 21. I say this as a fan of all three of their previous fights: Please, god, no more. Whatever happens, just let it go. Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs  Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 2 DefensesWomen's Bantamweight, 135 lbs  Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 0 DefensesThings are back as they should be. Up until December of 2021, Amanda Nunes was unquestionably the greatest women's mixed martial artist in history. She held and defended titles at both the signature class of Women's Bantamweight and the arguably real class of Women's Featherweight, and with her mixture of vicious power, aggressive grappling and solid conditioning, she defeated every UFC champion in the history of either class and, for good measure, Valentina Shevchenko, the ultra-dominant champion of Women's Flyweight, twice. What's more, she crushed most of them, taking on legends like Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg and knocking them dead in under a minute. Which is why it was something of a shock when she was choked out by unheralded journeywoman Julianna Peńa. The abruptness of the ending to her streak, and the shockingly sloppy way she was taken out, left the fanbase both demanding a rematch and openly questioning how much of the loss was due to something being wrong with Nunes, rather than Julianna Peńa doing something right, and opinions flew wildly regarding how close the second bout would be. Seven months and one season of The Ultimate Fighter later they met on July 30, and the answer was: Not even slightly. Amanda Nunes dumpstered Julianna Peńa for five straight rounds, dropping her a half-dozen times and elbowing her face entirely open, and barring one touchy moment with an armbar, Peńa was entirely shut out and lost a wide unanimous decision that included an incredibly rare 50-43 scorecard. Back on her throne, Amanda Nunes signaled her readiness to take a goddamn vacation for the first time in years while the UFC figures out where to go from here. Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs   Valentina Shevchenko - 23-3, 7 DefensesSometimes, when you've been untouchably atop your division for too long, any display of weakness seems like a loss. Sometimes, you might actually have lost. Valentina Shevchenko is a martial arts phenom: Multiple black belts, multiple Master of Sports degrees, dozens of kickboxing championships, hundreds of combined fights across all of her disciplines and twenty years of combat sports experience--by 34. Her most internationally popular achievement, of course, is her reign as the UFC Women's Flyweight Champion. She is, in fact, 12-2 in the UFC, and those only two losses came against Amanda Nunes, the champion of both 135 and 145, and the second was a split decision that could easily have gone the other way. This is what made it so shocking for people when the relatively unknown Taila Santos very nearly defeated her at UFC 275. Santos controlled Shevchenko on the ground, spend a good part of the fight in back mount and at one point nearly choked her out, but Valentina fought back and eked out a razor-close split decision victory that, as always, many people disagreed with. While the sport continues its ongoing struggle over what wrestling and positional control do and don't count for anymore, Valentina Shevchenko remains the queen of the hill. It was assumed--and at a couple points outright stated--that her next challenger would be the winner of UFC 280's battle between top contenders Manon Fiorot and Katlyn Chookagian, but despite Fiorot's victory, a number of people--bafflingly including Fiorot herself--called for her to have another fight before challenging for the belt. Which seems aggressively silly, because jesus christ, there's no one else for her to fight. The future is uncertain. Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs   Zhang Weili - 23-3, 0 DefensesAre you really surprised? There's a long tradition of underestimating unlikely champions in mixed martial arts, particularly when they're not the fan-friendliest in style or personality, from Michael Bisping to Frankie Edgar, only to have those demeaned champions remind the world that they didn't reach the peak of their divisions by mistake. Many of the wise, studied scribes of the sport warned the foolish masses against assuming the same about Women's Strawweight Champion Carla Esparza: She was no pushover, they said, and Zhang will have real trouble. And then, come fight day, we unwashed masses pulled them from their ivory towers and forced them to run in the streets amongst the mud and filth so they, too, could feel the unburdened joy of being, because Zhang Weili, as basically every fan had assumed, did, in fact, beat the absolute tar out of Carla. It wasn't particularly close: Carla got outlanded 37-6, hurt several times on the feet, and choked out just a minute into the second round. The inexplicable, season-long Cookie Monster subplot is over, Zhang Weili is now a two-time world champion, and things are back as they should be. What comes next, however, is tricky. Carla was blown out, so a rematch is out of the question. Rose Namajunas, the only person in the UFC to beat Weili, is a likely candidate--but after her disastrous performance against Carla, it remains to be seen how much faith the UFC has in her. Jéssica Andrade has a claim, but she's splitting time between 115 and 125, and probably needs to pick a weight class if she wants a shot. Amanda Lemos is on deck, but she could really use a marquee win first. The UFC is spoiled for almost-but-not-quite contenders: They just need to crown someone.
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ROGUES GALLERY: NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs  Ryan Bader - 30-7 (1), 2 DefensesNo, I will never stop hating on Ryan Bader. I know it's not fair. Objectively, the man's had a pretty great career--he's a huge, action-figure-looking wrestleboxing motherfucker who only ever lost to the best of the best (EXCEPT TITO ORTIZ), when he puts it together he's got some great knockouts to his name and he humiliated Fedor Emelianenko AND Matt Mitrione, which are both things I deeply adore. But Ryan Bader is Ryan Bader, and that is both his blessing and his curse, and the continual ire he gets from the MMA community for daring to exist in the way that he does is as responsible for his career resurgence as his fists. He followed his successful slow-motion nothing of a title defense back in January with an even slower, less eventful defense in his rematch with Cheick Kongo, which for bonus points was in front of a very partisan and very upset Parisian crowd who in no way appreciated his wrestling and his refusal to mix any offense into it. He recently signed a new Bellator deal that he intends to retire under and he's made clear he no longer has any intention of competing at light-heavyweight, and that opened the door for Scott Coker's early-2000s PRIDE nostalgia humiliation fetish to rear its ugly head once again. On February 4th at Bellator 290, Ryan Bader will defend his heavyweight title in a rematch against Fedor, who swears it will be the final bout of his career. When last they met in 2019, Bader knocked him out in thirty-five seconds. Whatever happens: It's going to be very, very funny. Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   Vadim Nemkov - 16-2 (1), 3 DefensesBellator CEO Scott Coker has been complicating title reigns with tournaments for decades and he's not about to stop now. Vadim Nemkov won the Bellator Light-Heavyweight Championship from Ryan Bader in 2020, and his title reign was immediately wrapped up in the Light-Heavyweight Grand Prix that started the following year. Nemkov, a Fedor Emelianenko protege, former Spetsnaz operative and understated wrecking machine who hadn't lost a fight since his early-career days in Rizin back in 2016, continued his Bellator streak by handling the always-game Phil Davis and dealing with some trouble en route to submitting Julius Anglickas, but then the tournament came to a screeching halt. Bellator threw all its marketing cash at the ultimately ill-fated Bellator 277 in April of 2022, and a sizable chunk of that misfortune came from both its championship and tournament-final co-main event. Corey Anderson looked handily en route to defeating Nemkov, only to unintentionally headbutt him while diving in to throw a punch. The headbutt opened an uncloseable gash on Nemkov's brow--and it happened five seconds before round three would've ended and allowed the judges to score a technical decision. It would be seven full months before the final got its re-do, and this time, Nemkov avoided Anderson's wrestling and controlled the fight with distance strikes en route to a unanimous decision victory. It took nearly two years for Bellator to complete an eight-man tournament, but they did it, and Vadim Nemkov is still your world's champion. He has no time to rest and celebrate, though: He'll meet Yoel Romero, winner of 0 fights over currently ranked competitors, at Bellator 290 on February 4th. Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs  Johnny Eblen - 12-0, 0 DefensesThe world did not see this one coming. Gegard Mousasi, widely considered the best middleweight outside of the UFC and arguably better than the majority of those inside, was a -260 favorite to retain his Bellator championship and cruise through his second straight year as a titleholder. And then he got punched in his god damned face. "The Human Cheat Code" Johnny "Diamond Hands" Eblen "Suffix Nickname" dropped Mousasi on his face with a hook out of nowhere just minutes into the fight, and that signalled the beginning not just of an upset but a five-round shut-out, as Eblen dominated Mousasi standing and grappling, earning both Bellator's middleweight championship and, for the first time in his career, his own Wikipedia page. Unsurprisingly, Eblen is a lifelong wrestler out of American Top Team, explaining the power hooks and power doubles alike, and unsurprisingly, Mousasi's achilles heel was a really good wrestler. What comes next for Eblen is anyone's guess. Could be a Mousasi rematch if Scott Coker gets mad about wrestling existing again, could be Yoel Romero dropping back down to 185, could be #2 ranked Fabian Edwards trying to bring a second belt to the family. For the moment, Eblen gets to be on top of the world. 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 the small, unimportant matter of Russia loving invading his home country saw him stay in Ukraine and join the defense efforts. Having fought a war for nearly the entirety of the previous year, Amosov will make his return to competition on February 25th at Bellator 291, where he'll reunify the title with the guy they tapped to take on MVP in his stead. Bellator Interim Welterweight Champion  Logan Storley - 14-1, 0 DefensesStop me if you've heard this one before: A company books a massively-hyped international superstar striking specialist against an American wrestler and the result makes everyone really mad. Bellator has been salivating over the idea of getting a championship on British kickman Michael "Venom" Page for years, and with Amosov no longer available they thought the half-a-foot-shorter Logan Storley would be a good candidate, and shockingly, the 14-1 wrestler whose only loss was a split decision to Amosov himself proceeded to wrestle Page for about 2/3 of their 25-minute fight. He ultimately won a close split decision that should easily have been both broad and unanimous, and as always happens with this script, MVP wants an immediate rematch. Scott Coker, proving every promoter is just one piss-fit away from becoming Dana White, used the post-fight presser to complain about the judging and insist that Storley's choice to just wrestle "isn't MMA" and shouldn't have won him the decision. It's 2022 and it is still the wrestler's fault that their opponent can't wrestle. After a quiet half-year of twiddling his thumbs, Storley's going to be fighting to become the undisputed champion as soon as Yaroslav Amosov is back in a wrestler vs wrestler match for which the grinding will be enormous. Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs  Usman Nurmagomedov - 16-0, 0 DefensesIf there's a single, developing throughline of mixed martial arts in 2022, it's the growing power of the Dagestani wrestling brigade. Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov built himself an army of powerful ultra-wrestlers, and after his passing, the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and his son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world in force. Usman, Khabib's cousin (as well as the younger brother of Umar Nurmagomedov, undefeated and ranked UFC bantamweight), took to Bellator in April of 2021 and proceeded to burn an undefeated path through the Manny Muros and Patrik Pietiläe of the world. His style was a little more eclectic--lots of spinning kicks, lots of stick-and-move jabs and stomps to the leg--but the resemblance became uncanny once he inevitably, and easily, ragdolled his opponents to the canvas and generally choked them out in short order thereafter. When he was announced as the #1 contender to Bellator's lightweight title, I was somewhat miffed: He hadn't beaten any top contenders, Bellator had already held a title eliminator and it was won in a crushing thirty-second knockout by Tofiq Musayev, the whole thing smacked of a pathetic attempt to glom onto some of Khabib's mainstream attention. I at no point said that he wouldn't very, very easily win. At Bellator 288 on November 18th, Usman very, very easily won, defeating Patricky "Pitbull" Freire at every aspect of the game and leaving him sans both his championship and one eyebrow. A Nurmagomedov holds Bellator gold. Who they send after him next remains to be seen. Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Patrício Pitbull - 34-5, 1 DefensePatrício Pitbull has had a weird goddamn year. Pitbull has long been the GOAT of Bellator, sometimes to the company's open chagrin--there were definitely times they would have vastly preferred a Pat Curran or, most particularly, a Michael Chandler to carry their banner, and Patrício had this unfortunate habit of not just beating them but making them look like poo poo. By mid-2021, he was Bellator's dual featherweight and lightweight champion, he was on a seven-fight win streak, and he was a finalist in their Featherweight Grand Prix. And then undefeated rising star A.J. McKee dropped him and choked him out in two minutes. Bellator, clearly, felt they had hit the jackpot and were going to be riding the McKee train for some time, as by their rematch ten months later, McKee was the centerpiece of all of their advertising. It was somewhat awkward when, as he had done to so many before, Patrício took him to a victorious decision that made McKee kind of look like poo poo, neutralizing his offense in the clinch, jabbing under his range, and grinding away the clock. Bellator pushed for a trilogy, but McKee, pissed off, tired of cutting weight and worried about having it happen all over again, declined and moved up to lightweight. Instead of a big-money rematch, Patrício was left to face top contender Ádám Borics, and the match, while hard-fought, was not particularly entertaining or memorable. Unusually, we didn't have to wait long to hear about Pitbull's next fight, and even more unusually, it's a co-promotional matchup against Rizin featherweight champion Kleber Koike, happening in Japan, on New Year's Eve. ...and airing in America only by twelve-hour tape delay. Great job, Bellator. 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 Interim Bantamweight Champion  Raufeon Stots - 18-1, 0 DefensesHe did not waste the opportunity. Raufeon Stots has been looked on as a major bantamweight prospect for years: A two-time DII wrestling champion, a heavy-handed puncher and an exceptionally conditioned grappler with guidance from Roufusport, Jens Pulver and Kamaru Usman thanks to their shared alma mater who won his first regional title just two years into his career. He's 18-1 with his only loss coming via a shock 15-second knockout against one of the best in the world in Merab Dvalishvili. Stots stormed Bellator in 2019 and is on an unbeaten six-fight streak with the organization, and when faced with both the entrance to his first grand prix, the stiffest competition of his career in former champion Juan Archuleta and the interim Bellator championship on the line, Stots did what some of the best in the world couldn't and knocked Archuleta out in the third round. Loudmouth wrestler Danny Sabatello defeated Leandro Higo to reach the next round of Bellator's Grand Prix, and will face Stots at Bellator 289 on December 9 for both a berth in the tournament finals and the interim championship. Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Cris Cyborg - 26-2 (1), 4 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--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Consequently, Cyborg decided her next fight would be a boxing match, and on September 25 she faced Simone da Silva, a jobber to the stars coming off twelve straight losses across multiple combat sports, and won a unanimous decision. However, being as da Silva had been knocked out just one month prior, she was still technically suspended and the fight might not count. Cris Cyborg is the featherweight champion of a company she isn't currently fighting in, in a sport in which she isn't currently interested in competing, and her boxing debut may or may not have legally happened. But undeterred, she’s going to have her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card. She’ll be facing...Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-2 in boxing. Great. Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Liz Carmouche - 17-7, 0 DefensesLiz Carmouche made her own bad Christmas hat photoshop of herself, I feel honorbound to use it. This wasn't a thing most people expected, nor are most people happy about it, but it kind of makes me smile. Liz "Girl-Rilla" Carmouche is a former marine who's been grinding away at mixed martial arts for twelve years, and for the entirety of those twelve years she's been just good enough to touch the top of the mountain but not quite good enough to climb it. In 2011, just one year into her career, she challenged for Strikeforce's bantamweight championship only to get choked out, in 2013 she participated in the first women's fight in UFC history and nearly upset everyone's marketing plans by neck cranking the poo poo out of Ronda Rousey before ultimately getting armbarred, and in 2019 she challenged Valentina Shevchenko for her flyweight title but just couldn't touch her. Her shift to Bellator wasn't met with much fanfare, but three wins with two violent stoppages earned her a shot at champion Juliana Velasquez on April 22, 2022. It seemed to be going Velasquez's way, but just before the end of the fourth round Carmouche muscled her to the ground, put her in the crucifix position and began landing elbows that were, respectfully, pretty visibly inconsequential, but referee Mike Beltran felt differently and called the fight off, leaving Velasquez apoplectic and Carmouche a world champion for the first time in her career. For some reason it took Bellator eight whole months to get around to addressing this: The two will have a rematch on December 9 at Bellator 289. 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. 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. After many, many months of back and forth, and some truly irritating social media posturing, the inevitable unification fight got signed--and somehow, inexplicably, they opted NOT to put the heavyweight championship on the big American Amazon Prime card. No faith in the wrestlers, I suppose. Bhullar and Malykhin were supposed to end the heavyweights curse and reunify the belts at ONE 161 on September 29--and then Bhullar pulled out with an arm injury. So the heavyweight champion hasn't fought in eighteen months and the interim champion has been waiting for him for eight. There was increasing word about the fight getting rebooked for January, but clearly, something went wrong, as Malykhin did get a fight announced--but it was for Reinier de Ridder's 225-pound Light-Heavyweight championship at ONE on Prime Video 5 on December 3rd. Does the heavyweight division still exist? Is Bhullar gone? Who on Earth knows. ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs   Reinier de Ridder - 16-0, 0 DefensesONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs  Reinier de Ridder - 16-0, 2 Defenses"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. While the fight is still expected later this year, de Ridder made a pit stop to defend specifically the middleweight title against former champion Vitaly Bigdash at ONE 159 on July 22, in which Bigdash, fighting a grappling savant, decided it was a good time to jump a guillotine. He was styled on and submitted with an inverted triangle choke. de Ridder was originally to defend the light-heavyweight championship against Shamil Abdulaev at ONE on Prime Video 3 on October 21st, but Abdulaev failed his medicals for as of yet unspecified reasons. He'll be defending his title against interim heavyweight champion Anatoliy Malykhin this month. Weight classes: ONE's not a fan. ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs   Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 DefensesONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs  Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 DefensesIt took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very, very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Favoritism is stupid, but quoting this in the thread for a video game isn't. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE'S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE's repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would by no means have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. I'm sure that Conor McGregor money will come rolling in any day now. ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs  Tang Kai - 15-2, 0 DefensesTang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China's WBK (after investigating, we THINK it's World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz "Ong Bak" Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai's weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai's Dragon Gym and Phuket's legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It's worked out quite well: He hasn't lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China's Rebel FC got ONE's attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he's held for two years. Tang Kai, at the beginning of ONE's worldwide invasion, is suddenly a very visible prospect: A power striker on a 10-fight winning streak and a champion in the world's most competitive weight class. The target on his back is very, very real. ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs  VACANT - The eternal, unbeaten force of entropyIt's said that when God closes a door, they open a window. After six beautiful months, Vacant's reign as the UFC Lightweight Champion had to come to an end. But ONE Championship has made no bones about their intention of bringing competition to the world of mixed martial arts, and they were not about to let the soon-to-be hottest free agent in the sport slip through their fingers. Just two days before Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira fought to claim the empty throne, disaster struck across the globe: John Lineker's reign as ONE Bantamweight Champion ended after 223 days when he came in 3/4 of a pound over the 145-pound championship limit. He was stripped of his title and the following day's match proceeded with only his challenger, Fabrício Andrade, eligible to become champion. But the vengeful spirits that watch over mixed martial arts refuse to let a good opportunity go. The fight was back and forth in the first two rounds, but Lineker began to visible fade in the third thanks to his bad weight cut, Andrade's excellent work in punching his eye shut, and the size and reach differential that saw him getting repeatedly punished. Two and a half minutes into the round Andrade landed a knee to the body that left Lineker reeling, absorbing punishment and seemingly on the verge of the first TKO loss of his career, and sensing the ex-champion was on the ropes and this was his chance to become a hero Fabrício Andrade charged bravely forward, wound up, and landed a perfectly placed, sharply thrust knee on Lineker's balls. It hit so hard it shattered Lineker's cup and left the unbelievably tough man dry heaving into a bucket. The fight could not continue, which meant Fabrício Andrade could not win, which meant that once again, Vacant claimed a world championship. Never before in mixed martial arts history has someone won two championships in two major organizations in one year. Count yourself lucky to have lived at the same time as this generational superstar. Lineker and Camoes will run it back for ONE on Prime Video 7 on February 10th. ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs  Demetrious Johnson - 31-4-1, 0 DefensesThe king has returned. Demetrious Johnson's 2019 debut with ONE Championship was essentially scandalous. "Mighty Mouse" had long been a fan favorite of the lighter weight classes, a 5'3" combat machine who had been going the distance with world champions like Kid Yamamoto and Dominick Cruz while still working a day job in a warehouse, but it was only in 2012 when he dedicated himself to mixed martial arts as his full-time job that he became a star. He won the UFC's flyweight tournament and became its inaugural champion, and his talents are the reason a division that has existed for a decade has only had five champions--three of whom came in the last two years after he left. By 2018, Johnson had one of the longest winning streaks in the UFC, was the all-time recordholder for championship defenses in the UFC and had recorded some of the most outstanding finishes in the history of the UFC. By 2019, he was out of the company. Johnson and the UFC never got along--or, to be blunt, Johnson was one of the few publicly calling the UFC out on its bullshit. When he won the flyweight title and became a world champion while only getting paid $23k/23k he let it be known, when the UFC cut sponsorship money in the Reebok era he noted the raw deal it gave the fighters, and when Dana White tried to force him to take fights up at bantamweight by threatening to kill the flyweight division if he didn't, he told the world. After Henry Cejudo beat him in a razor-close coinflip decision and took the bargaining leverage of his championship away, it was over in a heartbeat. Dana White personally disliked him enough that he traded him to ONE Championship in exchange for their welterweight champion, Ben Askren. Johnson proceeded to immediately win ONE's flyweight grand prix, but took the first stoppage loss of his entire career in his shot at Adriano Moraes and his world championship and engendered a thousand MMA thinkpieces about if his time as a top fighter was over. A year and a half later, he got his rematch, and on August 27 at ONE on Prime Video 1 he returned the favor, handing Moraes his own first stoppage loss after knocking him out with a flying knee. A trilogy rematch seems inevitable, but for the moment, having just turned 36, Mighty Mouse is a world champion in the second weight class of his career and shows no signs of slowing down. 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. 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 at ONE: Reloaded on April 22, former UFC fighter Jared "The Monkey God" Brooks took a decisive victory and lined himself up as the most likely next contender--and then got himself injured and scratched from his title shot a week before it happened. The fight's now scheduled to serve as the main event for ONE Championship 164 on December 3rd. ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs  Xiong Jing Nan - 18-2, 7 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. Xiong has notched three successful title defenses since, which set her up for her greatest challenger yet: Angela Lee, again, apparently. Despite ONE's best attempts, Xiong successfully defended her title against Lee again, nearly finishing her in the first round and ultimately winning a decision. ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs  Angela Lee - 11-3, 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 arguably 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. She got a trilogy fight with Nan on September 30, once again coming to her weight class and challenging for her title, but ultimately fell short and lost a decision. You may be shocked to hear this, but a Lee sibling disagrees regarding the idea that they lost a decision.  Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs  Roberto de Souza - 14-1, 2 DefensesRoberto "Satoshi" de Souza is trying to become the new Gegard Mousasi. On April 17 he had the chance to avenge the only loss of his career, a half-knockout half-injury against "Hollywood" Johnny Case back in 2019, and he succeeded in emphatic fashion, climbing Case's back, locking him in an inverted triangle choke and eventually forcing an armbar. He's now 14-1 and inarguably one of the best lightweights outside of the UFC, but unlike most of the other fighters to bear that title, he has made it clear he has no interest in changing that. Where the A.J. McKees and Michael Chandlers of the world want to test free agency and notoriety, Roberto de Souza is happy in Japan, both because his Rizin pay is fairly lucrative and his entire family jiu-jitsu business is based in the country. This is admirable, but it's also a little unfortunate: Rizin really only has around a dozen lightweights under contract, and "Satoshi" has already beaten a third of them. He may be waiting for a Spike Carlyle or a Luiz Gustavo to work their way into contention, but the Rizin ranks hold few surprises for him at this point. If he's happy, though, he's happy. In mid-October, it was announced he'll be co-main eventing the RIZIN vs Bellator card on New Year's Eve, and he'll have the tall order of facing top Bellator gun A.J. McKee. Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Kleber Koike Erbst - 31-5-1, 0 DefensesRizin has found the solution to Japanese MMA's historical troubles with losing their championships to foreigners: Get Japanese foreigners. Kleber Koike Erbst, while born in Săo Paulo, moved to Japan as a fourteen year-old and, four years later, elected to stay behind and continue training in grappling and mixed martial arts while his parents returned home. He found community with the above-mentioned de Souza family, working odd jobs to fund his continuing study at their school in Iwata, and later that same year he began his career as a professional fighter. His rookie years were somewhat fraught: By his twenty-first birthday he was only 4-3-1 and his prospects seemed somewhat dim. As it turns out, aging into actual adulthood makes a loving difference, as in the following twelve years he has lost only two fights. One was a decision loss to Artur Sowiński, the champion of Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki federation, and he rematched and choked him out two years later; the other, Erbst's final KSW fight, was a loss to Mateusz Gamrot, who is currently the #8 fighter an entire weight class up in the UFC's lightweight rankings. Koike joined Rizin in 2020 and immediately snapped off a five-fight submission streak, leading to his challenging featherweight champion Juntarou Ushiku at Rizin 39 on October 23. It only took six and a half minutes for Erbst to submit Ushiku with his trademark triangle choke, making him, for the second time in his career, a world champion. He won't get to rest on his laurels for very long: He's been tapped for the main event of RIZIN vs Bellator, a champion vs champion match against Bellator's Patrício Pitbull. Neither has to worry about their title being on the line, it's just a matter of organizational pride. Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Kyoji Horiguchi - 30-5, 0 DefensesKyoji Horiguchi is going through a difficult time in his career. Horiguchi is, indisputably, one of the absolute best flyweights on the planet. He's an incredibly fast, powerful striker with very solid wrestling and aggressive grappling to back up his skills, and the streak of incredible knockouts and submissions on his record is a testament to his skills. Trouble is: He's not fighting at flyweight, he's fighting at bantamweight, and it's finally starting to become a problem. His half-decade unbeaten streak ended in 2019 thanks to a first-round upset loss against Kai Asakura, but Rizin rushing him back in mid-knee injury was blamed for that, especially when Kyoji starched Kai in a rematch the next year. And then he lost his Bellator bantamweight championship to Sergio Pettis after winning most of the fight only to walk into a spinning backfist. And now he's lost his berth in Bellator's bantamweight grand prix after just getting grappled to death by Patchy Mix, who, while very good at jiu-jitsu, also had the advantage of half a foot of height and reach on Horiguchi. He continues to be almost certainly the best fighter in Rizin, and inarguably Japan's best at flyweight AND bantamweight, but three years ago he was the nearly-undefeated champion of the two biggest b-leagues in the world simultaneously and now he's 1-3 in said three years and has a Rizin title he's never defended. Last month, this section concluded with the difficult questions about where he goes from here, and Rizin's attempt to help him out by giving him a tune-up fight with Kintaro Masakiri, a 14-11-2 journeyman coming off multiple consecutive losses: Horiguchi won, but not before nearly getting knocked out. During the card's post-fight press conference he said he was coming to the conclusion that he was just too small for bantamweight, and needed to drop down to the 125-pound flyweight class and win Bellator's championship. Bellator doesn't have a flyweight class. Neither does Rizin. Even when Horiguchi was announced as competing on the RIZIN vs Bellator supercard on December 31st, it was a little baffling: He'll be facing Hiromasa Ougikubo. This means, under the theme of the show, Horiguchi is ostensibly representing Bellator, an organization in which he is 1-2, as opposed to Rizin, where he's 11-1. Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs  Seika Izawa - 8-0, 0 DefensesAll hail the new queen. After years of reigning as Japan's best atomweight, the legendary Ayaka Hamasaki fell not once but twice to the rookie Seika Izawa. A 24 year-old who was pushed into judo as a child by a frustrated mother who was tired of her constant fighting with her brothers, Izawa discovered a love for grappling that led her to win junior championships in judo, wrestling and sumo alike. She would still be pursuing judo had the pandemic not shut down much of its competitive scene, but fortunately, mixed martial arts is a terrible sport run by monsters who don't care about things like deadly diseases, which made it a tempting professional prospect. Four months after her formal MMA training began Izawa was winning fights in DEEP, less than a year after that she was DEEP's strawweight champion, and one year later she was dominating one of the best women's fighters in history on Rizin's New Year's Eve special. As Japanese organizations tend to do, frustratingly, the fight was a non-title affair, meaning Izawa had to come back and do it again on April 17. After a scary moment where Hamasaki almost stole an armbar, Izawa resumed her wrestling domination and formally took Rizin's atomweight championship. As entirely fresh blood, the world of Rizin's talent is open to her--but that also means she's got a real, real big target on her back. She's successfully submitted her way through the first two rounds of Rizin's Atomweight Grand Prix, although she had a fair bit of trouble with Anastasiya Svetkivska, and is now set for a rematch of her 2021 battle with Si Woo Park at the tournament finals on the December 31st supershow.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:03
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And finally, since it's this weekend:CarlCX posted:CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 40: THE DECONSTRUCTION OF FALLING STARS Happy holidays, PSP.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:03
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thanks, y'all, glad you like it.butros posted:
I spent a long time thinking about what to do for this because I knew I wanted to use it and wanted to make it christmasy but didn't want to disrespect their faith and I was happy with the eventual compromise. I disrespected Ramzan Kadyrov's faith, but on the other hand, gently caress Ramzan Kadyrov.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:58
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CarlCX posted:The UFC kicks off its month later that afternoon with UFC on ESPN: Thompson vs Holland. While there's still yet time for injuries to wreck it, this is currently scheduled to be the longest UFC of the year, with 15 goddamn fights on the books inevitable jinx https://twitter.com/BigMarcel24/status/1598739395871662081
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Dec 2, 2022 19:16
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BlindSite posted:Cortez was going for her 5th straight in the UFC right? Kinda surprised she hasn't been thrown into title contention given that streak already. The UFC's booking of the women's divisions is generally-speaking completely boned unless you're a former champion already or Mackenzie Dern. Also, the gambling ban is spreading. https://twitter.com/aaronbronsteter/status/1598778275412598785
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Dec 2, 2022 21:58
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Yeah, your big hitters out of Krause's camp are Moreno, Tim Elliot, Jeff Molina, David Onama, and my new personal favorite, the 1-2 Flori Nostasia "Count Cuddles" Neamtu-Moeller.
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Dec 3, 2022 00:15
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a) everyone should watch reinier de ridder vs anatoliy malykhin b) https://twitter.com/FightAnalystLLC/status/1598865153134428161 if brandon moreno sits out next month's figueiredo fight in deference to his coach I'm putting the odds at 1:3 dana starts threatening to close flyweight again
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Dec 3, 2022 06:45
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4018905 Return to lobmob's GDT for UFC in about fifteen minutes. You wouldn't miss Clay Guida, would you?
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Dec 4, 2022 00:47
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Nah, he busted his hand itself up pretty good, he put this on instagram today.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:33
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They've occasionally knocked fighters off the official roster listing without actually cutting them when they knew they were going to be out indeterminately with injury, most notably Joanna, so that'd be my first guess. Could just be straight retiring, though.
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Dec 6, 2022 00:15
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Retirement is also one of the only things that gives you contractual leverage with the UFC, so it's possible they've intentionally not told them. Hopefully clarification is coming. Meanwhile, have another fight scratching! https://twitter.com/guicruzzz/status/1599923445994758146 This is the third person to pull out of fighting OSP on this goddamn card.
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Dec 6, 2022 01:53
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 41: KING NOTHING PRELIMS 2:30 PM PST/5:30 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 7 PM PST/10 PM EST VIA PAY-PER-VIEW I'm not going to lie to you: I'm a bit bummed out. Teixeira/Procházka was one of the most philosophically interesting fights of the year for me and turned out to be one of the most exciting fights of all time, and as much as I dislike instant rematches for fights with definitive endings, I was excited for the runback. Losing that main event is unfortunate. Giving Paddy Pimblett a co-main event is unfortunate. Inexplicably screwing Glover Teixeira out of a championship match is unfortunate. Scratching Robbie Lawler and Ovince Saint Preux at the last minute are...well, I can't say unfortunate, exactly, I like living in a world where 2022 doesn't end with Lawler getting unnecessarily lamped again, but boy, it does give us even less to talk about. But we're here, and this is still a good card, and by god, we're going to put our hip waders on and figure it out.  it's like watching a band perform without their lead singer MAIN EVENT: THE WAR OF ASHES LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Jan Błachowicz (29-9, #2) vs Magomed Ankalaev (18-1, #3) Boy, things sure change fast in this sport. Jan Błachowicz's place in UFC history is apparently destined to be just loving weird. When he made his organizational debut in 2014 it was as one of the top stars of Poland's KSW, having won their Light-Heavyweight Championship and twice defended it, with all three bouts coming against UFC veterans. Even then, the asterisks were apparent--because he'd failed in his first attempt to capture the belt, having had his leg kicked in twain by the man he'd later take the title from in his second crack at it, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, the man who somehow alternated for his entire career between being an unbelievably scary striker and one of the worst underperformers in the sport. But Jan was a no-brainer of a pickup for the UFC. Well-rounded, hard-hitting, champion in one of the most well-regarded international promotions, had only lost one fight since his rookie year. His title contention seemed inevitable. And then he came a hair's breadth away from getting fired. Twice! In the first three years of Jan's UFC tenure, he went 2-4. He knocked out professional fire hydrant impersonator Ilir Latifi in his debut, but immediately got outfought by Jimi Manuwa and Corey Anderson; defeated Igor Pokrajac, only to get turned away by Alexander Gustafsson and, most shamefully, Patrick Cummins. After coming in with all the hype in the world, Jan seemed like a bust. Which may sound harsh, but you have to remember that, contextually, this was all happening over the decade-long drama that was the Jon Jones/Daniel Cormier death grip on the 205-pound title picture. If you didn't look like you had anything to offer the two most untouchable fighters in the division's history, the world got disinterested in you very, very quickly. But then he turned it all around! Jan Błachowicz, 2017's most-likely-to-be-pink-slipped light-heavyweight, snapped off a four-fight win streak in just twelve months, defeating the still-terrifying Jared Cannonier and avenging his loss to Jimi Manuwa in the process. When he beat Russian champion Nikita Krylov, the conversation had changed entirely. Błachowicz was back, baby, and this time nothing was going to stop him. Except, uh, Thiago Santos. Thiago Santos was going to stop him. Thiago Santos, who just ten months earlier had been getting knocked out at middleweight, moved up to a division 20 pounds heavier, knocked out two of its toughest guys, fought the potential #1 contender in the Polish powerhouse and obliterated him in the third round. All of Jan's momentum was gone, all over again. But he was going to get it back, and quickly. Thanks to more middleweights. Thiago's success, mixed with Jones and Cormier's runs through the division and multiple ill-timed retirements, had left a gaping hole at 205 pounds that was being filled by middleweights who didn't want to sit in the back of the sauna anymore. And by god, Jan Błachowicz was going to fight damned near all of them. Luke Rockhold was the first--which was met with skepticism by many, being as Rockhold had just gotten knocked out twice by other actual middleweights, and sure enough, Jan notched his first UFC knockout in five years by flooring him. Then it was Jacare Souza's turn, and Jan barely scraped out a split decision. Suddenly, he was back in position for contendership, and suddenly, his once-vaunted knockout power found its way back into his arsenal. He rematched Corey Anderson, the man who'd dominated him a half-decade earlier, and knocked him cold in three minutes. He met Dominick Reyes, the man who'd taken the once-again-fleeing-the-sport Jon Jones the distance and, most non-judges thought, beaten him, and took him out in two rounds. At last, after a winding, seven-year journey, Jan Błachowicz was the world champion. He'd had to go through the entire division the long way to get there, but by god, he was the king of the mountain, and he was ready to stop loving around with middleweights and fight all the best challengers the light-heavyweight division had to offer. So it was a bummer when his first and only title defense was middleweight champion Israel Adesanya. He beat him, which was cool, but the virtual entirety of the attention for the bout was on Adesanya, to the point that people were more disappointed he lost than impressed Jan had won. And then one fight later Glover Teixeira crushed and choked the belt right off him, and the dream was over. He tried to mount a professional comeback this past May by fighting top contender (which the UFC deeply loathed, considering him incredibly boring) Aleksandar Rakić, and even that wound up doing almost nothing for him--Rakić's knee gave out abruptly in the third round, ending the fight on an anticlimactic injury. And now, Jan's getting the thing he most wanted--a chance to be the champion of the world one more time--and it's in a title fight everyone considers deeply disappointing. He didn't even know about it when it got booked. He found out he was fighting for the championship when he got off a plane and turned his phone on to a thousand texts and voicemails from his manager. Which is deeply unfair, because for the second time in a row Jan is facing the rightful top contender in the division. Magomed Ankalaev has exactly one loss in the UFC, and it was a debut fight wherein he, like so many before and since, dominated and repeatedly hurt Paul "Bearjew" Craig only to inexplicably jump into a triangle choke and lose by submission with mere seconds left. It was a big, silly mistake, the kind born of the jitters almost every fighter feels when they first make the pilgrimage to the UFC and suddenly have to figure out how to adjust to the bright lights. Ankalaev adjusted to them in the best way possible: He never lost again. While his background was in Greco-Roman Wrestling, Ankalaev's hype came from his striking, and he quickly returned to his roots as much for marketability as to avoid being stuck in anyone's loving guard again unless he wanted to be. He started headkicking people. Violently. He faced a Marcin Prachnio who'd just permanently shamed his ancestors by losing to Sam Alvey and entrenched his failure by putting a foot upside his face. He took on UFC rookie Dalcha Lungiambula, ground-and-pounded him for two straight rounds, and put an exclamation point on it with an Anderson Silva front kick knockout. He fought Ion Cuțelaba and headkicked him in half a minute for an easy win, and then, uh. Well, then things got messed up. No matter how regular your story is, no one gets out of the light-heavyweight division unscathed by some form of bullshit. Ion Cuțelaba cried early stoppage, and unlike the vast, vast majority of complaints, he actually had a case. He hadn't been dropped, his wobbling had visibly been played up to open up counterattacks, he was blocking incoming attacks on his forearms and he was actively firing back with punches when the referee jumped in. A near-frenzy ensued as Cuțelaba jumped around the cage screaming at the referee, the cornermen and anyone who would listen, and an instant rematch was ordered to ford off the controversy. And then COVID happened. And suddenly, the rematch took the entirety of 2020 to surface. And when it did, having forced one of the top contenders in the division to lose a year and freeze up the contendership conversation altogether, it was the same exact result--a first-round knockout victory for Magomed Ankalaev--it just took four minutes this time. But it was done, and the light-heavyweight knockout machine was ready to resume his path to the championship. Which he did. Uneventfully. Having made his career on powerful striking and high-level grappling, Ankalaev won his next three fights--bouts with Nikita Krylov, Volkan Oezdemir and Thiago Santos--by deeply, deeply uneventful decisions. So when the UFC had to decide between giving a title shot to Magomed Ankalaev, who had dared to fight to decisions to protect his position or Jiří Procházka, who had only been in the company for two fights and had nearly gotten knocked out both times but produced highlight-reel finishes, well, god dammit, you know what business we're in. But Ankalaev punched out Anthony Smith in his last fight, so, hey, why not. What could it hurt? It's not Jiří's going to explode his shoulder and disappear forever and force us into a deeply uncomfortable position where we have to crown a new champion on two weeks' notice. So let's talk about the elephant in the room: Why on Earth is Glover Teixeira, who was in the main event and is uninjured, not in this fight? As Glover tells it, he was perfectly fine slotting into the main event if it was a rematch with Jan--they'd fought before, he was familiar, Glover would take him on gladly--but Ankalaev was a different beast, and he wanted that potential bout pushed back to UFC Rio in January so he had time to prepare. The UFC staunchly refused. No one wants to see a rematch between you two, they told him, and Jan is too old anyway, so it's Ankalaev or nothing, which is a particularly bizarre thing to say when your openly-stated Plan B still involves Jan fighting for the title. The UFC wanted Teixeira to blink and step in against Ankalaev and would accept no alternative, and when Teixeira held his ground, the UFC booted him off the card altogether. So instead of a pay-per-view headlined by the rematch of one of last year's biggest upsets, featuring a guy who was champion just six months ago and had one of the best title fights in company history, we have this co-main event which is now for a belt. I know running an MMA company is incredibly complicated, but sometimes the choices made just genuinely baffle me. But by god, here we are, and we have what we have. Who's walking away with a world championship? Let's just say it bluntly: Jan hasn't looked great in his last two fights. Teixeira mauled him on the ground in their championship fight, and while Jan won the first round of his fight with Aleksandar Rakić, he was getting grounded and controlled again in the second and looked like a very long few rounds were coming down the pipe. Ankalaev is more than enough wrestler to give Jan exactly those same troubles, and he's also a dangerous striker who's very difficult to hurt. Jan's going to have to either rattle him with power punches and leg kicks early or settle into a pattern of sticking and moving, because Ankalaev can absolutely walk him down behind his kicks and drag him to the canvas once he's against the fence. And what he lacks in Teixeira's top game and submission offense, he makes up for in gas tank. He can out-grapple him all night, and unfortunately for Jan, he probably will. Magomed Ankalaev by decision. CO-MAIN EVENT: THE LAST CHANCE TO RUIN DANA'S YEAR  LIGHTWEIGHT: Paddy Pimblett (19-3) vs Jared Gordon (19-5)I really thought I wouldn't have to do a Paddy Pimblett co-main writeup until sometime midway through next year, but providence chooses, I guess. It's Paddy Pimblett time, and may we all be damned. The UFC has set their marketing giant up very, very well, and honestly, the infuriating part about him isn't that they've done it--it's actually cool and good to effectively utilize and market your fighters--it's that they're so loving choosy about who does and doesn't get that treatment and the choices are always so very Dana White-specific. You could throw millions of marketing dollars behind an Ilia Topuria or a Shavkat Rakhmonov or an Erin Blanchfield, and all would be fantastic future talents with very realistic title aspirations who could pay dividends for years to come. But they don't want them. They want people with lanky arms and bad hair, and by god, no one is lankier or more pageboyed up than Paddy Pimblett. Or, as I put it the last time we saw him: CarlCX posted:Padbert Pamplemousse is the latest and inexplicably most successful attempt by the UFC to desperately make a new Conor McGregor, which is to say taking an international fighter with a pre-existing fanbase, giving them some favorable matchmaking, marketing them to the point of absurdity and then waving their hands and saying "It's just something about him! Padtrick Plumbrog just has that x-factor that makes people care! You can't teach it!" while quietly burying millions of dollars in advertising under the rounding errors in the accounting books that pay for Dana White's exotic skull collection. But once he got a feeling for what they were doing, he neutralized their advantages. He forced Vendramini into a close-range brawl, he suckered Vargas into the clinch where he could bully him to the ground, and he used the fence to frame up Leavitt so as to deny him space to effectively wrestle. He's a slow starter, but he's good at zeroing in on weaknesses in his opponents. Which is why the UFC is easing him a little closer to the deep end of the pool. Vendramini, Vargas and Leavitt are all good fighters, but each fight was stylistically favorable for Paddy. Jared "Flash" Gordon is...well, still kind of stylistically favorable for Paddy, actually. But slightly less! A little! Gordon's had a very difficult run of it in the UFC. He's a very good, very aggressive fighter with an extremely well-rounded game, but he's too ardent a follower of the wild aggression path of combat to gather much career stability. He may be 7-4 in the UFC, but three of those losses came from his choosing to press all-too-recklessly forward behind his strikes, abandoning the timing and technique that made him successful in favor of swinging away, and unfortunately, that's the biggest reason he has three knockout losses in the UFC and his only knockout win--his only stoppage win period--came from sticking to his wrestling and his ground and pound. But it's that fourth loss that's most likely the reason we're here tonight. Gordon won his last fight against a retiring Leonardo Santos quite handily, but just before that he suffered the most thorough loss of his career after being soundly outwrestled, outgrappled and eventually submitted by Grant Dawson, who was just too big, too strong and too thoroughly technically gifted for Gordon. Once it was clear he couldn't stop the takedowns or the top game, there was nothing to do but wait for two and a half rounds of misery to end. In other words: Jared Gordon is a very good fighter with very good skills but he likes to brawl too much for his own good and he has problems with bigger, stronger grapplers with bigger, stronger wrestling games. Sure would be something if he fought a British submission stylist with half a foot of reach on him and knockout power to match, huh? I would love for this to be the night Dana gets one of his Christmas presents taken away, but as much as I do enjoy Jared Gordon, I just don't see it working out well for him. Paddy can brawl with him and hit considerably harder in the process, Paddy's got a real solid chance of avoiding his takedown attempts thanks to his own throw game, Paddy's submission attacks are fast, tricky and very hard to ward off once he's on you, and additionally, if it at any point looks like Jared Gordon might actually win, the production team has been instructed to push the candy-red button that leaks knockout gas into the arena so no one sees them tranquilize Gordon and gently place him in a rear naked choke. Paddy Pimblett by submission. MAIN CARD: WAITING TO SEE WHAT ELSE GETS REPLACED CATCHWEIGHT, 180 LBS: Santiago Ponzinibbio (28-6) vs Alex Morono (22-7 (1)) Santiago Ponzinibbio has had a rough loving time. It is important to understand: Santiago Ponzinibbio was supposed to be the welterweight champion. He won The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 2, he beat odds-on favorite Leonardo Santos, and after taking a couple growing-pains losses during his first year and a half in the UFC he found his stride and began not just defeating but crushing top prospects at welterweight. By the end of 2018 he was #7 in the world, on a seven-fight winning streak, and had just flattened Neil Magny in the biggest fight of his career. He was big and scary and had laser-beam fists and the defensive wrestling to keep fights right where he wanted them, and the entire world saw his title contention as merely a matter of time. Time does not like being taken for granted. Time got mad. Ponzinibbio injured his hand, and then he re-injured it after breaking it on Neil Magny's head, and then he injured his leg, and then his leg injury turned into a bacterial infection that nearly killed him. He was in the hospital for weeks, he spent three months with a catheter pumping antibiotics into his heart, and once he was finally allowed to return to training he experienced excruciating pain that turned out to be a loving bone infection along with horrifying arthritis. He lost most of his muscle, took even more antibiotics and started from square one. He rebuilt his body, he resharpened his skills, and in 2021, after more than two years on the shelf, he made his grand return to mixed martial arts, vowing to pick up right where he left off. He got knocked out in one round. The comeback hasn't gone quite as expected. He managed a victory over rising prospect Miguel Baeza but dropped two split decisions, one to Geoff Neal's straightforward striking arsenal and one to Michel Pereira's eclectic, oddly-angled attacks. Santiago Ponzinibbio was 9-2 in the UFC before his various medical crises; since his return, he's 1-3. His opponent for this card was supposed to be former champion Robbie Lawler--a fight that was supposed to happen back in 2019 before his entire body imploded--ostensibly to give Ponzinibbio a high-profile bout, realistically to give him a stylistically favorable matchup against a fading star. But nothing is going Ponzinibbio's way right now. So Lawler pulled out just four days before the event, and in his place rose Alex "The Great White" Morono. Alex Morono is not a star. It's not his fault--he tries. He really does. He's been in the UFC for almost seven years, he's got sixteen fights under its banner and he's won the vast majority of them, and he tries his best to be memorable. He runs forward and swings hooks and haymakers and he does his damnedest to be a fun, marketable fighter. It just...doesn't work. He doesn't have the knockout power, he doesn't have the dangerous grappling, he barely even completes takedowns. He guts out his wins with grit and aggression and an extremely solid chin. The only people who've made him falter are vastly superior strikers like Anthony Pettis, vastly superior grapplers like Keita Nakamura, and even more vicious brawlers like Jordan Mein and Niko Price. He carries the universal curse of the all-around fighter: He has trouble with specialists. Fighters who match his varied approach to fighting fall immediately into his trap; he suffocates them with voluhme and ferocity, and even though he rarely produces a knockout, he'll outland, outgrind and outlast them. When you throw him at a human missile launcher like Khaos Williams he's at risk of getting his head punched into the third row. And I cannot help feeling like that analysis shortchanges him, because it begs the idea that we're not so much discussing how Alex Morono could win as how Santiago Ponzinibbio can lose. But, truthfully, that's barely about Morono himself. Everything about Santiago Ponzinibbio's career right now is a referendum on how much of his fighting ability is still there. Ponzinibbio vs Lawler was signed specifically because both men have looked depleted and underwhelming, and their ability to compete at this higheust level of competition needed measuring. Alex Morono jumping in with just a few days before the event only amplifies that feeling. People were already uncertain about Santiago's ability to handle a 40 year-old Robbie Lawler who hasn't won a fight against a currently active fighter since 2014. Can he deal with a new opponent, an entirely different style of opponent, who's very much in their prime? Alex Morono by decision. I'm not happy about it. Ponzinibbio could spark Morono--he's got plenty of power and his hands are still very, very dangerous--but even on a full camp Morono is a tough stylistic test for him, an iron-jawed brawler who can and will outlast you. Making that adjustment after preparing for months to fight a patient, conventional striker is the worst-case scenario for this type of fight, especially given Ponzinibbio's trouble with pressure and high-paced fights. If Morono himself is in shape and not just rolling off the couch to take this fight for the money, he'll grind Ponzinibbio down over three rounds. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Darren Till (18-4-1, #9) vs Dricus du Plessis (17-2, #13) As a peek behind the curtain, I started this card's write-up on Saturday the 3rd. As of now, it's Monday and multiple fights have been shuffled on this card. This, thus far, isn't one of them. But by god, I'll be stunned if we get to fight night and it's still on the card. Darren Till's position in the UFC has always been more smoke than fire. Dana had a personal, deep-seated love for Till thanks to his being a) British, b) a striker and c) undefeated, and that's resulted in a UFC career that can best be described as a series of facades that have never really been borne out by reality. The UFC pushed Till as a big, scary knockout artist and he proceeded to pull off exactly two stoppages during his going-on-eight-year time in the organization: One against a quickly-wearing-down Donald Cerrone, who belonged two whole weight classes below him, and one against the stiffest of competition, the Brazilian kickboxer Wendell "War Machine" Oliveira, who 15% of you are currently googling to see if I made up a person. Yup, real guy. Crazy, huh? The UFC did an incredible job hyping Till. He soared to a title eliminator after beating exactly one ranked opponent--the aforementioned Cerrone, who himself barely had a top ten win and was coming off two consecutive losses--and coasted to a title shot after taking one of the worst hometown decisions in MMA history against Stephen Thompson in a fight where Till blew the welterweight limit by five pounds. He barely had a credible victory, he could barely make weight, and there was so much marketing behind him that he still came in at even odds with Tyron Woodley, who'd held the welterweight championship for years. The UFC was just that certain that this was the guy, and he would lead them into the future as a fighter and a celebrity. The pay-per-view was one of the worst-selling of the entire year. Woodley dropped Till on his rear end and choked him out in two rounds. In the four years since that fight Till has pulled out of five fights, competed in four and gotten completely dumpstered in three. And the UFC still will not give up. When Till moved to the middleweight division on the back of his two-fight losing streak he was immediately put on track to contend for the title within two fights. Even now, having won only one bout in four years, the UFC touts him as a top ten middleweight in the world. In other words: Try not to be shocked, but they would really prefer it if Dricus du Plessis were to lose. And it's feasible. du Plessis's only been with the company for a couple years and he's had a Tillesque performance--not in his fighting as in his uncanny ability to have had five separate fights scratched in the time it's took him to only compete three times--and he's undefeated in that run, but not without struggle. Trevin Giles was bouncing punches through his guard and off his face, Markus Perez made it very difficult for du Plessis to find his range, and Brad Tavares, ever the brawler, became the first fighter to ever drag du Plessis to a decision. But du Plessis, in the end, won all of those fights. He turned the corner on Perez, he punched out Giles, and he somehow turned his volume up even more as the Tavares fight wore on and drowned him in strikes. It's what put him on the UFC's radar in the first place and made him a champion in South Africa and Poland: Unless you stop him in his tracks, he will never stop trying to claw his way to a stoppage. He swings away until the bell rings and he jumps on chokes if he thinks there's even a slight chance he'll get them. He will make himself throw 100+ strikes after ten minutes of grueling fighting if that's what it will take. Which is precisely why the UFC wants him against Till. I complained about the UFC pushing Darren Till for the things he's not, but that doesn't mean he's in any way devoid of talent. He IS a very good striker, but his talent is in interception. His best performances come from probing at a distance, forcing opponents to come to him and catching them with long punches over the top as they try to catch him. His drubbing at the hands of Woodley and Jorge Masvidal happened because he deviated from the plan: He charged Woodley and got dropped, he let Masvidal get into the phone booth and got destroyed. Dricus du Plessis is the kind of fighter who will give him innumerable countering opportunities. du Plessis likes to spam leg kicks and toy with distance too, but it's always a setup for the blitz. Those blitzes are Till's opportunity to put a right hand down the pipe and make him pay, and he'll have dozens to work with. It's an eminently winnable fight for Darren Till and the UFC's best opportunity to keep Darren Till in the top ten for another two years. So, uh. Dricus du Plessis by TKO. Sorry. I do not believe in Darren Till. If he couldn't keep up with Jorge Masvidal's pocket entries and punching power, du Plessis's probably going to gently caress him up. FEATHERWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (15-0, #9) vs Ilia Topuria (12-0, #14)Hoo, boy. See, this is what I'm here for. Two or so years from now this could easily be a championship match and we just happen to be getting it ahead of time. Bryce Mitchell's talents as a fighter are directly proportional to his idiocy, which is to say: Vast. And lest you think I am bringing this up just to complain about yet another fighter who's heavy into blood-red fringe Republicanism, COVID denialism and liberal-world-order conspiracy theory--astute, but for once, it's actually relevant to his fighting itself. Bryce Mitchell is so good at wrestling that it enables him to be better than he should be at everything that isn't wrestling, because the awareness that he can bring a fight to his comfort zone at any point lets him get creative and aggressive in areas he probably shouldn't. He came out to fight Edson Barboza, one of the most technically gifted strikers in combat sports history, by walking him down hands-first. And it worked. He dropped him just to prove that he could and then proceeded to wrestle him into paste. But the thing is, that approach only works until it doesn't. Bryce Mitchell is the kind of idiot that finds ways to make it work to his advantage; he's also the kind of idiot who missed a half-year of competition by nearly destroying his own testicles after he left an active power drill inside his own pants. Which makes Ilia Topuria the ball-crusher in this metaphor, I guess. Ilia Topuria is one of my favorite prospects of the last few years: An all-power all-the-time wrestleboxer who constantly flirts with danger by putting himself in unnecessarily bad positions and fighting out of them. Just one fight ago he, as a 5'7" featherweight, jumped to be a last-minute fill-in to fight Jai Herbert, a 6'1" lightweight. Topuria nearly got knocked cold about three separate times in the first round--and then in the second he swam right through a 10" reach disadvantage with a four-punch combination that left Herbert out cold on the mat. After that crushing highlight-reel victory over a British fighter in front of a British crowd, Topuria cut a promo calling out Paddy Pimblett. You will notice that both men are on this card and Paddy Pimblett is, for some reason, decidedly not matched up with Ilia Topuria. In some ways this is a mirror match and in some ways their styles couldn't be more different. They're both hardcore wrestleboxers whose kicks are more for rangefinding and distraction than offensive weaponry, but Mitchell likes to throw in loose, potshotting rhythms punctuated with straights and Topuria likes tight, in-the-pocket combinations with booming hooks. They both use wrestling as their core style, but Mitchell likes moving, rolling fluidity and Topuria likes brute, slamming force. Mitchell likes esoteric submissions; Topuria likes to punch people's faces in. The betting odds are on Topuria's side, and with Topuria's knockout string I understand why, but I think Mitchell should realistically be favored. Ilia's got him beat for power, but Mitchell is extremely durable, extremely tricky and extremely well-conditioned, and Topuria's tendency to use muscle the way he does has a price: He gets a lot of finishes, but we've only seen him go the distance in the UFC once and by the third round he looked like he wanted to die. If he can't get Mitchell out of the fight early, the back half could easily become very, very unpleasant for him. Bryce Mitchell has an awful lot of ways to win this fight, and even as someone who's been banging on endlessly about future champion Ilia Topuria for two years now, it would surprise me if Mitchell didn't walk away with a decision here. So anyway, Ilia Topuria by knockout. Because gently caress Bryce Mitchell, that's why. PRELIMS: EDMOND'S REVENGE HEAVYWEIGHT: Jairzinho Rozenstruik (12-4, #9) vs Chris Daukaus (12-5, #11)Oh, Jairzinho. We had such hopes. "Bigi Boy" was on top of the world just two years ago, having very literally punched his way to the top of the mountain, only to discover the top of the mountain is very, very slippery. He helped eject Junior dos Santos from the UFC and felled Augusto Sakai to maintain his spot in the top ten, but Francis Ngannou, Ciryl Gane, Curtis Blaydes and Alexander Volkov have all turned him away from getting anywhere near the pinnacle again, and it's hard to see Rozenstruik escaping gatekeeper status at this point in his career. Chris Daukaus, meanwhile, is trying desperately to avert his first slide. The former cop had one of the better rookie years in UFC heavyweight history, notching four straight knockouts that culminted in well-ranked wins against Aleksei Oleinik and Shamil Abdurakhimov, and honestly, hey: Nothing to sneeze at. Olenik was only two fights removed from beating Fabricio Werdum, Abdurakhimov had recently taken out Marcin Tybura. Solid victories! And then they threw him in there with Derrick Lewis and Curtis Blaydes in a deeply misguided attempt to rocket their cop heavyweight into the title picture and he got his skull punched all the way out of his face twice in a row. Which makes it more baffling that instead of a Marcin Tybura or Sergei Spivac or Blagoy Ivanov or something, they've decided to book Daukaus to rebound against Jairzinho Rozenstruik, one of the only high-powered kickboxers left in the top ten who hasn't already beaten the poo poo out of him. Either they really, really believe in Chris Daukaus, or they really, really dislike Chris Daukaus. I'm sure he'll show some stylistic improvements and I'm sure he'll land a bunch of good straights, and then Jairzinho Rozenstruik will win by KO. BANTAMWEIGHT: Raul Rosas Jr. (6-0) vs Jay Perrin (10-6) We have arrived at our obligatory Contender Series baby debut, only for once the "baby" part is almost literal. Raul Rosas Jr. got picked up after his chain-wrestling, grappling-heavy style earned him a DWCS win back in September, but they had to wait an extra couple of weeks to actually sign him because he hadn't turned loving 18 yet. No longer troubled by the difficulties of having to wait for his legal guardian to drop him off after school, the UFC is giving him a pretty big softball. Jay "The Joker" Perrin is one of those fighters who's seemingly there to reinforce the barrier between the UFC and the rest of the world. He's 10-3 in the regional circuit, with two regional championships to his name thanks to his heavy hands, his aggressive brawling and his sheer grit; he's 0-3 under the UFC's promotional banner, having gotten grappled to death both in the clinch and on the ground by bigger, stronger and more technical wrestlers. Hey, guess what Raul Rosas Jr. is really good at! That's just such a coincidence. Raul Rosas Jr. by decision. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Edmen Shahbazyan (11-3) vs Dalcha Lungiambula (11-5)Oh, redemption road. Edmen Shahbazyan was supposed to be a thing. As of the end of 2019 he was an undefeated, 22 year-old kickboxer with deeply varied striking offense, fairly sound defense, and the kind of aggressive accuracy that can only come from being young and having never known what losing feels like. There's a common problem in mixed martial arts, though: No matter how much promise you have, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with. Shahbazyan was under the tutelage of Edmond "Ronda Rousey is the best boxer in the world" Tarverdyan, the master of refusing to fill gaping holes in a fighter's defense. So when Derek Brunson proved that you can double-leg Edmen and beat him senseless, he fell into a two-year-long. three-fight-skid from which he has yet to emerge. Even more damningly, in his last fight Edmen was getting tooled on the feet by Nassourdine Imavov, and HE chose to start shooting takedowns--at which point he was effortlessly reversed and once again crushed. And the UFC is hoping Dalcha Lungiambula can help him recover. Dalcha has proven himself incredibly good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He's an exceptionally powerful fighter--to the point that if you see that Magomed Ankalaev guy in the main event who's near-undefeated and fighting for the world championship a whole weight class up, keep in mind that 5'8" middleweight Dalcha Lungiambula knocked him on his rear end with a right hand--and he's got some good power wrestling and some particularly fun suplexes. But the sheer amount of muscle he throws into everything he does saps him, and his own aggression starts getting him trouble. He's seen three straight fights where he's had his opponents hurt and wound up getting overwhelmed and losing anyway. Sometimes it's a superior striker picking him off once he tires; sometimes it's Lungiambula desperately shoving his head directly into a guillotine choke trying for a misguided takedown. Both guys are on three-fight losing streaks, both guys are very likely fighting for their jobs, and both guys have a solid argument. Edmen's the more conditioned fighter, but he wilts under high pressure; Dalcha's pressure is severe but unsustainable. If he can't get Edmen out of there early, he could easily spend the latter two rounds getting picked apart. But I'm going with Dalcha Lungiambula by TKO anyway. The early power and technique will be a big problem and the Imavov fight doesn't convince me Shahbazyan's going to be able to weather them. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Curtis (29-9, #14) vs Joaquin Buckley (15-5, NR) This is the kind of fight that seems like such a no-brainer actionfest that I'm weirdly convinced it's going to somehow be boring. I don't know why. I don't know! Chris Curtis is literally nicknamed ACTION MAN and I have the sinking sensation the awareness both of these dudes have of how easily they could shut one another's lights off will turn this into an at-distance chess match. Curtis is a patient but power-punching guy whom we last saw losing his three-fight winning streak to Jack Hermansson after getting picked off at distance and controlled by kicks and takedowns. So now he's fighting a power striker instead, which he's probably pretty relieved by. Joaquin Buckley is a very powerful, very accurate fighter who is unfortunately cursed by having done one really cool thing two years ago and now it's the only thing anyone wants from him. The jumping reverse screw kick knockout he scored on Impa Kasanganay is one of the best highlights in the sport's history, but it's also impossible to replicate and it's led to him chasing down heavy strikes when a conservative approach might have been better. The difficulty Curtis had dealing with Jack Hermansson's kicks just one fight ago are of particular concern against someone who kicks as hard as Buckley, but Buckley's tendency to overswing is just as liable to get him countered. I'm going on a hunch here: Chris Curtis gets a TKO. EARLY PRELIMS: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY A JOKE ABOUT OVINCE SAINT PREUX FEATHERWEIGHT: Billy Quarantillo (16-4) vs Alexander Hernandez (13-5) Alexander Hernandez reliably making featherweight at all remains deeply concerning to me, honestly. That dude was made of muscle and losing enough to comfortably hit 145 is either going to draw him out badly or force him into a lighter frame altogether that...uh, actually, that could be pretty good for him, if he learns to not swing for the fences and get repeatedly picked off. Billy Quarantillo wants to be the Clay Guida of this decade, a constant hurricane of punches and dump takedowns who never lets his opponent breathe, but unfortunately he actually lost to Clay Guida in a grappling competition last year so now he has to be the next Shane Burgos instead. Wait, he lost to Shane Burgos, too. The next Dong Hyun Kim? Either way, Billy Quarantillo by decision. There's just a lot working against Hernandez here: The pressure and pace Quarantillo will put on him while he's adjusting to a new weight class and the difficulty Hernandez historically has switching between wrestling and striking, which Quarantillo will have absolutely no problem with. It's a rough debut. FEATHERWEIGHT: TJ Brown (16-9) vs Erik Silva (9-1) I THINK this fight is still happening? TJ Brown pretty famously left his camp in Arkansas to train with James Krause and his affiliate camps, and James Krause and literally everyone associated with him are currently banned from the sport as part of the single biggest gambling scandal in MMA history, so I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been some public confirmation one way or another regarding this fight. If it does happen, it's going to be a rough fight for Brown. He's had a lot of historical trouble with stronger, more technical wrestlers pinning him down and teeing off on his face, and that's kind of Erik Silva's whole thing. The competition Silva's faced is thus far decidedly below-tier for the UFC, but watching tape on him, he seems to have more than enough gun to muscle Brown down. Erik Silva by submission. FLYWEIGHT: Vinicius Salvador (14-4) vs Daniel da Silva (11-4) I'm going to quote myself from this past August, because it's unfortunately relevant: CarlCX posted:I feel for Daniel da Silva. He was a hyped talent out of Shooto Brazil whose only loss came from a freak shoulder injury when he signed with the UFC, and in his first stab at the international talent level, he was soundly, thoroughly outfought by Jeff Molina, and suddenly, he was no longer virtually undefeated. He had to follow up by fighting Francisco Figueiredo, one of the most dangerous finishers in the division, and he was submitting to a kneebar in sixty seconds, and suddenly, he was 0-2 and facing a possible release if he loses again. And Daniel da Silva--a man of sufficient desperation that his training partners nicknamed him Miojo after the ramen packets he carried in his backpack because he couldn't afford anything else--took a replacement fight on six weeks' notice against Victor Altamirano, a remarkably well-rounded fighter and Contender Series winner who lost his UFC debut by a razor-close split decision. And where normally I talk about tune-up fights or how you build and market fighters and express sympathy or anger that a fighter I like is getting stiff matchmaking--it's flyweight. There are no tune-up fights at flyweight. Is he still going to win? Probably. Vinicius Salvador by TKO. BANTAMWEIGHT: Cameron Saaiman (6-0) vs Steven Koslow (6-0) Boy, sometimes you get lucky. Cameron "MSP" Saaiman, bantamweight champion of South Africa's EFC and Contender Series baby as of this summer, was supposed to make his UFC debut here against Ronnie Lawrence, which is a hell of a tough draw for a guy like Saaiman--Lawrence is a high-cardio clinch wrestler and Saaiman is so much a striker that his response to getting taken down in his DWCS fight was angrily slapping his opponent's sides. Lawrence pulled out with an injury last week and got replaced on ultra-short notice by Steven Koslow, who I want to lose purely on the basis of his nickname being "Obi-Wan Shinobi The Pillow," which is the equivalent of not knowing what you want your badass wrestling entrance song to be so you just have them blast all three versions of The Undertaker's theme at the same time. Koslow's a warm body: He's got some grappling chops and he could be a problem if he gets on top of Saaiman, but his takedowns aren't great and his top control looks shaky even against the 4-4 fighters of the world. Cameron Saaiman by TKO.
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Dec 7, 2022 18:11
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LobsterMobster posted:Carl bless Nothing puts MMA's cultural baseline in perspective like looking at how quickly Ariel became one of the most rightfully mocked and ignored figures in wrestling media, one of the worst hives of scum and villainy on the internet, and yet five minutes later he's still objectively one of the good guys in MMA and one of the most consistent targets of the worst people in the sport.
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Dec 7, 2022 21:33
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Honestly you don't even need a tl;dr of what Helwani said, all you need to know is at one point Helwani plays a voicemail of Paddy coming to him asking for an interview and then immediately reads the e-mail Paddy had his manager send demanding money first
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Dec 8, 2022 00:45
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The short version of the greater Ariel Helwani discourse is he's an okay journalist with a really annoying habit of focusing on self-marketing. There are Helwani interviews dating back to goddamn near the PRIDE days that are more about "tune in when I discuss my beef with Rampage Jackson" and such than the fighters or whatever they're doing. He's smarmy and kind of a shithead about being the center of attention and it diverts attention from some of the actual good reporting he does. Twitter is maybe the best thing to happen to his career, because its short format has let him become known to a new generation of fans for quick little scoops as opposed to the people who actually listen to the podcast and get to hear him self-promote at length. That being said: The origin of negativity towards Helwani is completely rooted in Dana White bitching about having even the most basic, boilerplate levels of actual journalism in the industry. People didn't really complain that much about Helwani until Dana started pulling the "who is this rear end in a top hat who thinks he gets to break stories before the UFC does" card. Which isn't exaggeration, Helwani got blackballed from UFC coverage because he dared to reveal Brock Lesnar was coming back for UFC 200. Dana was just incensed about the idea of press that wasn't completely deferential, and Helwani started getting so much hate online for it that he decided to play into it. So he's kind of a prick, he habitually self-aggrandizes and his journalism really isn't anything to write home about in any other sport, but by the standards of mixed martial arts, a sport where one of the most-read publications is run by Dana's drinking buddy and multiple accredited journalists are proudly-declared pro-UFC mouthpieces playing bad comedy characters, he's one of the best we've got.
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Dec 8, 2022 01:37
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LobsterMobster posted:once again, i come in after carl's good breakdown with a bad lobmob your breakdowns are a treasure and I appreciate them deeply because trying to keep track of Bellator makes my eyes glaze over I am actually looking forward to this Bellator, which is a weird sentence to type and makes me wonder if I am having a stroke.
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Dec 8, 2022 05:53
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b league preview
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Additionally and also previously in MMA injury ponderance:Southpaugh posted:so was that a dislocated wrist in the holland - wonderboy fight? Nierbo posted:Holy poo poo that looks terrible. This could be a crossroads for him career wise. https://twitter.com/Trailblaze2top/status/1600989461122519040 So, could've been better, could've been worse. Half a year, maybe.
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Dec 9, 2022 00:44
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BlindSite posted:Not to be all if you ain't cheating you ain't trying but I mean... who wouldn't? 
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Dec 9, 2022 05:04
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Oh hey, we're getting off to gently caress 2023 bright and early https://twitter.com/JamesGoyder/status/1601138064633757699
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Dec 9, 2022 09:57
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a) Danny Sabatello is loving terrible, and b) For anyone brave enough to watch today's UFC prelims so as not to miss SAIIMAN, the many cancellations have pushed the entire card back an hour so now it begins at 3:30 PM PST/6:30 EST.
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Dec 10, 2022 19:13
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Lucasar posted:I don't like either guy much (though Chandler is an eminently watchable fighter). I guess I hope Conor makes Chandler look like an idiot at all the press conferences and then Chandler makes Conor look like an idiot in the match. This is just off the top of my head, but I think the shortest UFC welterweight fight ever would be 5'6" Matt Serra vs 5'8" Frank Trigg.
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Dec 10, 2022 22:59
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That was after Sherk had dropped down to 155 pounds, unfortunately. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4019349&pagenumber=1#lastpost Come on back to the GDT for our last goddamn PPV. Prelims start in 30.
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Dec 11, 2022 00:00
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Vacant is the fighter of the year. edit: https://twitter.com/ufc/status/1601830062113841154 what is even happening CarlCX fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Dec 11, 2022 |
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Dec 11, 2022 07:38
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https://twitter.com/shaunalshatti/status/1601829796190617600 The best promoter in mixed martial arts, everyone.
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Dec 11, 2022 08:06
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Just to put a cap on how hosed the light-heavyweight top ten is right now (and I'm definitely not making this picture for purposes of a thread I'm working on), this is the current UFC slate:
So 2 of the top 10 can't fight, 2 just fought and won't be available for months AND the UFC just publicly poo poo all over both of them, 2 have already been so badly beaten by the top five that they have no claim at the top and 2 are permanently stuck at the very edge of the division, and the fresh new blood getting the title shot has zero wins in the top ten and earned his #1 contendership by beating a guy who was 1 for his last 6 and was immediately fired after the fight. Light-heavyweight has always been kind of a garbage fire, but by god, this is stretching it.
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Dec 11, 2022 09:21
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ilmucche posted:How did they end up a draw? Why is Dana so angry beyond his usual level of anger? He's personally embarrassed his plan didn't work and he's taking it out on them for daring to go to a decision. Also:  The UFC Rio main event WAS Figueiredo/Moreno 4. Now it is not. This was going to be the first flyweight main event since December of 2020, but by god, fill that light heavyweight hole
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Dec 11, 2022 17:41
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CarlCX posted:This was going to be the first flyweight main event since December of 2020, but by god, fill that light heavyweight hole I bitch about the flyweight division and its mistreatment constantly, but I've never done/have never seen anyone do the actual comparative analysis of how it's been treated. So I went back to the pay-per-view at which the flyweight championship was inaugurated, UFC 152: Jones vs Belfort on September 22, 2012, and starting that night collated every single main event the UFC has put on for the decade-ish of the flyweight division's history to see how many main events each division has gotten. The rough results:
But people just don't like flyweights, for some loving reason.
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Dec 11, 2022 23:21
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ilmucche posted:Does this mean Vacant, the true champ champ, now has a title defense? How many times had they successfully defended the belt before? Depending on if you define championship life as beginning at conception or not, the first standing championship match in UFC history was Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock fighting to a draw for the UFC Superfight championship and leaving it vacant, so that's either a win or a defense. If you mean just cases where the title was vacant going into a fight and remained vacant afterward, other than last night I think the only UFC case was in 2002; Jens Pulver dropped the lightweight title over pay disputes, the UFC held a tournament to fill the vacancy and it ended in BJ Penn and Caol Uno going to a draw, which the UFC initially said it might do something about and then 'something' wound up being just pretending the belt didn't exist for like four years.
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Dec 12, 2022 00:49
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LobsterMobster posted:Wasn't the belt vacant for the first Figueiredo vs Benavidez fight that Deveison missed weight for, so only Joe could be champ, and Joe got smoked? You're absolutely correct, that one slipped my mind because the fight had a definitive ending, but yup, totally. JOHN CENA posted:i like flyweights you're one of the good ones, JOHN CENA
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Dec 12, 2022 01:19
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Frank Shamrock is holding the true belt anyway, all these other lhw title fights are pretenders.
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Dec 12, 2022 03:12
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Yeah, like, Paddy Pimblett is a dumb rear end in a top hat, but he's made the conscious choice to be a dumb rear end in a top hat. He's long since committed wholesale to the Conor-lite thing, it's not like he can dial it back now. He's going to ride it without ever deviating right up until the moment someone completely breaks his poo poo, and I can only hope that it is Ilia Topuria.
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Dec 12, 2022 21:12
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https://twitter.com/shaunalshatti/status/1602405539706568704 if only these acts of good will and solidarity between fighters facing mutual struggles could somehow be harnessed in some sort of collective
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Dec 12, 2022 21:59
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Bucky Fullminster posted:But he wasn't a dumb rear end in a top hat, was he? He was a loveable happy-go-lucky scouser who spoke up about bullies and stuff. Yeah, Post-Fight Interview Paddy and The Rest Of the Time Paddy have always been very different things. Like, yes, he talked about the terrible effects of bullying and the need for compassion--in relation to people calling him fat. He was then promptly banned from twitter (for the second time; the first was for stoking anti-immigrant hatred) for calling a bunch of other people fat and telling them to kill themselves. Also telling Mohammed Mokaev he would never be British because he wasn't born there, and calling Ilia Topuria a mixed-race mongrel, and at one point calling the entire nation of Georgia idiots who deserve to be killed by Russia, etc. etc. He turns on the charm when it counts, but he's kind of a giant toolbag.
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Dec 13, 2022 00:21
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let's just cram all of this exceptionally lovely championship matchmaking in before 2022 is over https://twitter.com/The_MMA_Media/status/1602433795172573184
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Dec 13, 2022 00:59
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mister posted:I think that's backwards. The media infrastructure grew up around the sport, not the other way around. It's both. The sport obviously predated the media infrastructure but it also required that infrastructure to grow. The UFC played nice with as many journalists and journalistic companies as it possibly could back when it actually needed them because the sport was perceived as a seedy murderhole where guys beat each other to death and no one was going to take the UFC's word that it wasn't. They needed the Karyn Bryants and Ariel Helwanis and even the TapouT shitheads to evangelize and spread the sport for them. It's why Dana making GBS threads on Bryant back in the day got him wrist-slapped so hard by the Fertittas that he had to apologize and (temporarily) shut down all of his media. The UFC wouldn't have gotten where it has if it didn't have an engaged media apparatus supporting it, and its fighters, outside of first-party channels. The whole reason we've seen the UFC turn so hard on every journalist who isn't a completely deferential sycophant is they don't need them anymore, and haven't since the buyout. There's no more positive for them in the relationship, so three's no reason for them to be anything but as antagonistic as it pleases the c-suite to be.
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Dec 13, 2022 04:18
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kimbo305 posted:If y’all got links, link em. I appreciate advancing the narrative but i just wanna see the sources. The DJ on Paddy stuff: https://www.bjpenn.com/mma-news/ufc...nything-either/ Howler Head, I dunno.
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Dec 13, 2022 09:56
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 14:55 |
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 42: LAST ONE OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS PRELIMS 1:00 PM PST/4:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST/7 PM EST VIA ESPN+ We made it. It's over. After one of the weirdest goddamn years in UFC history, after all of the last-minute main-event scratches, after the multiple championship vacations, after the sport spent the entire year ingratiating itself to some of the worst people on the planet and the CEO launched his own loving slapfighting league, we are, at the absolute least, done with 2022. Dissemble your woes and sink into the sweet nothings of the year's final fight night, because it's actually pretty okay, and much like the year as a whole: We could have done worse.  it's just not christmas without bruce leeroy MAIN EVENT: ...AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jared Cannonier (15-6, #3) vs Sean Strickland (25-4, #7) It's somehow deeply freeing that we're ending 2022 with a main event that's more or less meaningless. We don't have to stick to format, here. We don't even have to talk about fighting. Wha'd you think of the new Taylor Swift album? It's good, right? It's good! I mean, I'm told it's good by people who are cooler than me who listened to it. I missed it. In fact, I'm not sure I listened to a single new album this year. I think sometime around the outbreak of the pandemic I barricaded myself into a hole shaped like the Nine Inch Nails discography and fashioned protective armor made of decades-old Now That's What I Call Music CDs. The last song in my Youtube search history is MxPx's "I'm Ok, You're Ok" and internet metrics tell me I listened to White Town's "Your Woman" forty-eight times in the last month. This opportunity for self-reflection has made me realize just how much of my brain subsists on combat sports instead of any other, better form of culture. I am not happy about this, and by god, I'm going to take it out on Jared Cannonier and Sean Strickland. And for once, it makes more sense to talk about the two of them together than to go over each separately, because they both had more or less the same year. Cannonier and Strickland both entered 2022 as formerly embattled, largely-overlooked prospects trying to fight the first real contendership bouts of their careers, both scored the biggest victories of their respective careers and catapulted themselves into the spotlight, and once given their respective shots at the big show, both choked so badly that it's hard to imagine either of them threatening the top of the heap ever again. Jared Cannonier's whole UFC reputation comes from being an inconsistent yet deeply terrifying human bazooka. He could lift Jack Hermansson into orbit with an uppercut, shatter Anderson Silva's leg with a single kick, and also get knocked out by Dominick Reyes and Shawn "Worse Than Matt Mitrione" Jordan back when he was still a heavyweight. He entered the year having just scored a decision victory over Kelvin Gastelum, which was actually helpful because after so many stoppages people had begun to wonder if he had the gas to go five rounds, and a second-round stoppage of Derek Brunson punched Cannonier's ticket to a championship showdown with Israel Adesanya. And he hosed it. He froze, unable to solve the Israel Adesanya puzzle of "I'm going to stand several feet away from you and kick you periodically," and aside from a couple brief, fleeting moments of success where he forced Adesanya into the cage, he was very slowly, uneventfully outworked. The crowd spent the entire fight booing both men, but Adesanya walked away with the title and Cannonier walked away with a lifetime of questions about just how he failed to pull the trigger when it mattered most. Sean Strickland carried a five-fight winning streak into 2022, having made a name for himself as an angry punching machine who would march people down and pound them into submission! Except in hindsight he only actually had one stoppage victory at middleweight and, boy, the UFC really suckered all of us into caring about him, because his fights were deeply uninteresting slogs and his only particularly impressive performances came against people like Uriah Hall, which means that, at best, Sean Strickland was a less interesting, less effective Paulo Costa. But his split decision over Jack Hermansson was enough to get him one fight away from the belt; unfortunately, that fight was against Alex "Poatan" Pereira. This was, to be clear, the UFC trying to give Pereira a tee-ball, having booked him against the one and only guy in the entire middleweight top ten they thought they could trust not to shoot a takedown on a lifelong kickboxer. I actually picked Strickland in that fight, arguing that while Pereira was obviously a much, much, MUCH better striker, Strickland had enough sense and ability to 1-2 Pereira into the fence and waste him away in the clinch for fifteen minutes. That is not what happened. This is what happened: CarlCX posted:...and professional idiocy emitter Sean Strickland, who'd just barely squeaked by Jack Hermansson and was enough of a strategist to fight Alex Pereira, championship kickboxer, by standing in front of him with his hands at his hips as though his brain itself was silently begging from behind his vacant, glassy eyes to be set free from the torment of being stuck in Sean Strickland's body. As a general rule I try to ride the line of being open about the politics of fighters without overly focusing on them, out of some combined sense of a) not wanting to turn these breakdowns into my sociocultural soapbox, b) not wanting to split too much of my focus off stories that get us to each and every fight, and c) the latent awareness that the philosophical spectrum of combat sports is a dark, gaping maw of horrors and if I begin deep-diving on it I will never, ever surface. But it's the last main event of the year, and I'm very, very tired, and I am fully willing to say that I have enjoyed watching Sean Strickland and Jared Cannonier fail miserably in their attempt to grasp history, because man, they're both just deeply unfortunate human beings. Jared Cannonier was ahead of the curve on using his social status to boost conspiracy theories about liberal governmental control, the Democratic pedophile circuit and everything QAnon ever did. He had big thoughts about the George Floyd murder being a hoax, antifa being anti-American terrorists and Barack Obama being part of the Freemason conspiracy. He initially gained some traction with the perennially underserved Jewish fight fans for celebrating his victories by holding up a Tallit and thanking the God of Abraham, and then it turned out he hung out with hardcore hoteps and specifically praised the race-relation thoughts of a guy who described the entire existence of Judaism as a worldwide conspiracy committed by the Jewish elite to control humanity. That's about the point at which his management took away his social media accounts. You will notice his online presence is now just a barely-used instagram that only comes up for canned fight promos and sponsorship shoutouts. The world's probably better that way. But don't sleep on Sean Strickland, because let me tell you, he doesn't suck any loving less. He's yet another in the long line of fighters who tried to overcompensate for their own inherent stylistic forgettability by acting like a massive rear end in a top hat, and luckily for him, he IS a massive rear end in a top hat, so it worked out gangbusters. He thinks every man who isn't a fighter is gay but he loves joking about how he could theoretically rape men who aren't fighters, he's a virulent transphobe and homophobe, and despite having every bit the 'you can't criticize fighters if you aren't a fighter because you don't know what you're talking about' stance he has big, outspoken thoughts about how Palestine isn't real and Ukraine needs to surrender to Russia. He's a bigot, an rear end in a top hat, a walking billboard for the desperate need for a mixed martial arts healthcare plan that includes mandatory therapy, and a human being so utterly lacking in any sort of literacy or sense that he thought American History X was a cool story about badass Nazis. And most of the actual discussion about him in MMA fanbases is just about how much of it is an act, and I have to tell you, it's one of our dumbest, most pointless communal discussions. In the early 2000s people wondered if Tito Ortiz was putting it on or if he was really that big of an rear end in a top hat (as his political career shows: even bigger, actually), at the turn of the decade everyone was wowed by Chael Sonnen's crypto-racism (it turns out there are a whole lot of racist 1970s wrestling promos MMA fans haven't heard), during the big Irish boom the world wondered how much of Conor McGregor's constant bullshit was schtick (we surveyed Italian DJs with inexplicably busted faces and they're pretty sure he means it) and Colby Covington's entire career was built on the back of a questionably authentic Trump Train tribute act (even Jon Jones thought he was an rear end in a top hat). And "sure, but how much is real and how much is smart self-marketing" is always brought up, and people don't seem to get that the vitriol has gotten steadily worse with each new theoretical bigot because it's all real. This isn't a movie, there's no magic moment where J.K. Simmons snaps his fingers and turns back from an abusive teacher into a beloved actor. The sport is the sport, and it makes its best money from right-wing caricatures because the sport sees them as inherently aspirational figures. If it didn't, we wouldn't be constantly discussing the theoretical marketing genius of adopting open, avowed bigotry. There is no secret line separating the real shitheads from the fake shitheads. Whether you're choosing to be a shithead or came into the sport naturally gifted makes no difference to the sum impact of your voice or the UFC's gleeful attempts to market your hatred, and the collective willingness to embrace the gray zone of presumed kayfabe is a big part of how we got from "Frank Mir has been suspended and forced to apologize for saying he wants to break Brock Lesnar's neck" to "Sean Strickland just gave his fourth interview about how murdering someone in the cage would give him a boner and no one even noticed." These things actually used to matter a little. Now Paddy Pimblett says something stupid and racist before and after every fight and it becomes part of his advertising highlight reel. That's what this fight is. It's two guys who will never be world champions fighting to determine if being a boringly obvious toxic jerk or an openly crazy militant conspiracist is worse for the sport. In a better world--not even a good one, because in a good world neither of these men would be on a loving television screen, just a marginally better one--we'd get a double-knockout and everyone would go home arm in arm singing "Fairytale of New York" and Matt Serra would wish us all happy holidays. But this is The Bad Place, and I'm erring on the side of Sean Strickland being secretly but understandably scared of people who hit like trucks. Jared Cannonier by TKO. CO-MAIN EVENT: THE REAL LIGHTWEIGHT PROSPECTS LIGHTWEIGHT: Arman Tsarukyan (18-3, #9) vs Damir Ismagulov (24-1, #12) Remember all of the massive hype last week about how the future of the lightweight division orbits around the combat capacity, personal aesthetics and race relations sensibilities of the British 1970s? This is the stuff that will actually matter. It's just buried on the co-main event of a TV card no one will watch because neither competitor makes Dana White feel alive again. And it's unfortunate, because after this fight, either of these guys could very easily be fighting for a championship with just one good win. Hell, Arman Tsaruykan should arguably already be there. Tsarukyan--which for once is considerably easier to consistently type correctly than his nickname, Ahalkalakets--entered the UFC with a whole mess of hype back in mid-2019. He was a champion in both Russia and China, he was a remarkably well-rounded fighter with an incredible gas tank, and he'd rifled off a twelve-fight winning streak, having only lost in just the second fight of his career, three months after he turned pro, to a man he'd choke out in three minutes just one year later. Journalists had Tsarukyan pegged as a talent to watch, and the UFC knew he had some credibility going into his debut, as they shot him straight into the co-main event. But it wasn't for his benefit. It was so he could fight a little-known guy named Islam Makhachev. Tsarukyan tried as hard as he could. There have been 18 takedowns attempted against Islam Makhachev during his time in the UFC: Only two have succeeded, and one of them was Arman Tsarukyan's. And that's worth being proud of! Unfortunately, 12 of those 18 attempts were Tsarukyan's, so he went 1 for 12. Admittedly: A little less great. But Arman blazed his way through the division from there, and just three years later he was on a five-fight winning streak and getting his first UFC main event against fellow highly-touted international prospect Mateusz Gamrot. It's been unfortunately forgotten thanks to the plethora of insane fights 2022 gave us, but Tsarukyan/Gamrot was one of the best bouts of the year, a masterpiece of both high-level technique, absurd conditioning and outright heart. But it was close, and Gamrot got the nod, and when you reach that top ten prospect vs prospect position, nothing is harder than the tumble you take when you lose and how goddamn hard it is to get your foot back in the door. Because you don't get a gentler fight next. You don't get Jared Gordon or Justin Leavitt. You get Damir loving Ismagulov. If Arman Tsarukyan was seen by the pretentiously smart journalists as a future prospect, Damir Ismagulov was, and is, seen as a nearly-certain future contender. He's a sound, powerful technical striker, he's an exceptional grappler, he's exceptionally tough and he hasn't lost a fight in almost eight goddamn years. He reigned as the unstoppable lightweight champion of Russia's M-1 until he more or less got bored and signed with the UFC. His fortunes didn't change one bit: After four years he was 4-0 and openly agitating for a fight in the top fifteen. And they looked at their 23-1 unbeaten-in-the-UFC propsect and gave him...a ridiculously tough matchup against the unranked Guram Kutateladze. Here's the thing: Damir Ismagulov is an absolutely incredible fighter who could be a champion tomorrow if they gave him a shot. They know this. They just really don't want to. He doesn't speak much English, he doesn't post offensive things on the internet, he doesn't have a mod haircut, and he commits the unforgivable sin of being a tactical fighter. He's not a high-volume striker or a high-amplitude wrestler and the last time he tapped someone out was 2016. He's the UFC's worst nightmare: A very talented guy who could very realistically beat the people they've put years into marketing without even having the decency to assault anyone backstage on his way out. But he (barely) beat Kutateladze. So now they're stuck with him. And now these two exceptionally talented fighters will try to kick one another out of the fringe top ten in the hopes that the numbers by their names force the UFC to stop trying to book Poirier/McGregor 8 long enough for one of them to get a shot at the loving belt. This is going to be a great fight. But it might not be a great fight to watch. Arman Tsarukyan is a cardio machine, and that's his best weapon here. Damir Ismagulov is a very tough out, and banking on stopping him with striking power or muscling him into a submission would be a mistake, but assailing him with the thousand-cuts technique wouldn't. Not only is chipping away at him going to take away his own technical advantage, but it's going to play into Ismagulov's biggest problem: Judges. Damir likes to take his time and pick his shots, and that's gotten him in trouble in three-round fights before, because judges see his lack of output and immediately pay more attention to whatever the other guy is doing. Arman Tsarukyan just showed the ability to maintain a high-energy style for five rounds; in a three-round fight, if Ismagulov isn't trying to take him off his pace, Tsarukyan could simply drown him in judge-pleasing volume wrestling. And yet: Damir Ismagulov by decision. Even as I make the argument for Tsarukyan having the better hand going into this fight, I keep seeing Ismagulov's implacability being a problem for him. If Tsarukyan CAN'T take him down, if he CAN'T control the standup, he's going to get picked apart during his repeated entries, and after Damir's past performances I cannot help thinking he'll manage it. MAIN CARD: DON'T GIVE YOUR KIDS A DOBER FOR CHRISTMAS UNLESS THEY'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO TAKE CARE OF IT FLYWEIGHT: Amir Albazi (15-1, #8) vs Alessandro Costa (12-2, NR)Amir Albazi has had a deeply unfortunate time in the UFC, and boy, you really shouldn't be able to say that about a 3-0 guy in the top ten, but every single fight of his UFC career has been mired in scheduling bullshit. His debut was against Malcolm Gordon, but he had to take it on ultra-short notice. He was booked for a top fifteen fight with Raulian Paiva, but Paiva pulled out, so they sent him to the unranked Zhalgas Zhumagulov instead, but Zhumagulov couldn't get his visa straight, so Albazi had to sit on ice for three months. Victory got a matchup against the momentarily hot Ode' Osbourne--but then Albazi got injured and sat out an entire year. But it's okay, because he gets the top ten ranked Tim Elliott when he gets back! ...but then Elliott pulled out, so Albazi had to fight the once again unranked Francisco Figueiredo. But that's okay, because baby, it all paid off: Amir Albazi gets a showdown on the last card of the year against former title challenger and #5 ranked Alex Perez! poo poo, Perez is injured. Wait, it got even better, now it's Brandon Royval, the #4 ranked guy, so it's practically a title contendership match! Everything's coming up Alba-- Oh. Royval's out. And there's like two weeks to fill the gap. So now, having spent two years attaining his position, Amir Albazi gets to risk it all against a dangerous Contender Series alumnus making his UFC debut. Life is crushingly unfair. Alessandro "Nono" Costa was the standing flyweight champion of Brazil's Lux Fight League up until he traded in his belt for a shot at the Contender Series, but when Dana discovered that he was a) a flyweight and b) a fighter with the temerity to go to a decision, he decided even though Costa won, he hadn't won enough and sent him home. So Costa went right back to Lux and won his belt back with a 12-second knockout, and suddenly, mysteriously, the UFC was interested again. Costa is an interesting fighter and, as strange as this will sound, he's particularly odd because he's ultra-orthodox. Where most fighters and especially most flyweights are fighting with broad, varied gameplans incorporating a ton of movement and a plethora of techniques, Costa is extremely conservative. He CAN wrestle, he CAN grapple, he CAN throw solid leg kicks, but his comfort zone is standing at boxing range with his guard up high, moving as little as possible in the hopes of throwing counterpunches. Which is hilarious, because it wasn't always like that. Dude has twice as many wins by submission as with his hands. Dude has a professional mixed martial arts victory by flying armbar. But over the last couple years, he's changed his style to be much more boxing-oriented. And it got him a 12-second knockout and a shot at the UFC, so as far as he's concerned, it's probably working out just fine. On paper, Amir Albazi should win this. He's a fantastically well-rounded fighter with some really creative methods of chaining techniques together, he's remarkably tough to prepare for, and with a guy coming up on short notice and a puncher's chance, it's really hard not to pick Amir Albazi by decision. But Costa hits real hard, and Albazi was preparing for two different fighters before him, and this is the kind of thing the capricious combat sports gods love to do, and by god, I have this rankling hunch Costa will find Albazi's chin and gently caress up his whole life. I'm choosing my head over my soul, but my soul remains wary. FEATHERWEIGHT: Alex Caceres (19-13 (1), #15) vs Julian Erosa (28-9, NR)We're entering our thirteenth straight year of Bruce Leeroy, and unlike almost everyone you can say that about, he's doing a lot better these days. When Alex Caceres made his promotional debut he was a barely-developed 21 year-old who the UFC threw into a locked house with a bunch of roided-up guys with a bunch of booze, because psychologically devastating its contestants was the secret sauce that made The Ultimate Fighter memorable. He was a quick, scrappy grappler who was very good at backpacking people and forcing them into bad positions, and if you could stop him from doing that, well, you were probably going to win, because he didn't have a lot else going on. But he grew! He never exactly became a broad threat--after fourteen years and 32 fights he still hasn't really stopped anyone on strikes outside of an injury stoppage for a busted eye half a decade ago--but he learned to stick and move, he learned to shoot jabs straight through someone's guard, he learned to chain conventional wrestling into his unconventional clinch attacks, and ultimately became a more dangerous fighter because of it. But he's never been quite good enough, or accomplished enough, to make it to the upper echelon of his division. He is, disrespectful a term as it can be, a gatekeeper. And he is here to once again keep the loving gate. Julian Erosa is the living embodiment of the hot and cold fighter. On one hand, he's 5-1 in a UFC tenure that's included facing extremely tough guys like Charles Jourdain and Nate Landwehr and just blowing them out of the goddamn water. On the other, this is his second tenure; the first saw him get immediately and unequivocally beaten three times in a row and fired in short order. Even now, his hot streak was interrupted by a ninety-second knockout loss to Seung Woo Choi, a struggling fighter who followed up said victory by immediately getting choked out--by Alex Caceres. For most of his career, that was the Julian Erosa problem: Amazing offense, wild, inventive attacks, but no consistency or composure. He put so much energy into his weapons that he had none left for defense or pacing. But his two 2022 appearances have seen him looking better--more controlled, more willing to pick spots for winging high kicks and flying knees than simply spamming. Which is funny, because this is a fight where getting spammy might help. Bruce Leeroy is very, very difficult to knock out. Sodiq Yusuff is one of the hardest punchers in the division, and he couldn't sit Caceres down; barring some perfect headkicks, Erosa's going to have a very tough time doing better. But his ability to force grappling scrambles and force people off their rhythm with the abrupt ferocity of his offense are the two necessary ingredients for defusing the Alex Caceres gameplan. If you keep him off of you and you hit him enough to overcome his low-damage style, you'll win. Erosa shouldn't have trouble with either. Unless he fucks it up again. Julian Erosa by decision. LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (25-11 (1)) vs Bobby Green (29-13-1) It is time for the battle of the angry journeymen. Drew Dober is, in a lot of ways, a throwback to the golden age of the UFC. Everyone remembers the welterweight division for GSP and Matt Hughes and Nick Diaz, but the real lifeblood of the division, the sinew that tied its bones together, was an endless legion of angry, square-jawed wrestle-boxers whose gameplans followed a simple, three-step program: 1) Punch you in the goddamn mouth, 2) Shoot a double, 3) GOTO 1. And the crazy thing is, he fights like that because he is that. He's from that age. Drew Dober's first amateur fight happened in 2006. When Drew Dober first began competing in mixed martial arts the UFC's lightweight champion was None, because Drew Dober predates the reactivation of the lightweight division. He's an evolutionary fluke; a fork of a long-lost species of mixed martial artist who spent the last decade and a half perfecting the old ways rather than adjusting to the new. So he hits really, really loving hard, and he wrestles really, really well. And if you can do either of those things better than he can, he's in serious trouble. I don't think I can summarize Bobby Green any better than I did at the start of this year: CarlCX posted:Bobby Green is entering his fourteenth year of mixed martial arts, and I have been ride or die on him for about nine of those. Green is one of the greatest rarities in the sport: A genuinely talented defensive fighter. He parries, slips and counters better than almost anyone, and it shows, as in 40+ fights and three separate decades of competition he's only been stopped on strikes once, and that was against Dustin goddamn Poirier. Bobby Green's true, crippling weakness is, and has always been, judges. His counterfighting style is so inexplicably poisonous to MMA judging that decisions that should have been clear go against him with shocking regularity. This past August he had a prelim headliner against Rafael Fiziev featuring a third round where he outstruck Fiziev and nearly knocked him out twice, and one of those judges STILL scored the round against him. And I can't help thinking this fight will mark the return of his luck with judging. Bobby Green getting knocked out by Drew Dober is very unlikely: He's too quick for Dober's big, booming outside hooks, he's too slick for the incredibly dangerous work Dober does on the inside when he forces opponents into brawls, and he's too good at counter-wrestling for the power doubles to blast him to the floor. But it is very likely that Dober's forward aggression and constant assault, mixed with Green's high-defense, low-output style, will lead to yet another fight where Bobby Green lands 3/4 of the significant strikes in every round and still loses a unanimous decision. Drew Dober by decision. Make me wrong, King. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cody Brundage (8-2) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (17-5 (1))Oh, look, it's Violence. It's the kind of violence best suited to two fighters who have a subset of useful skills that they tend to overlook in favor of desperately seeking bonus money. Cody Brundage is a wrestler. He wrestled for the NCAA and he made nationals twice. He was good enough at wrestling that before he became a fighter he, in fact, taught wrestling. He's a wrestler. He wrestles. And yet, not a single one of his UFC fights has ended thanks to wrestling. He was seduced by the clarion call of striking, which is funny, because the last two times he tried it he nearly had his head taken clean off. Just one fight back he was getting thrashed to a near-certain stoppage by Dalcha Lungiambula, and won because Dalcha maddeningly shot for a takedown in mid-combination and was immediately choked out for his troubles. On Brundage's official UFC Q&A, he lists his favorite striking technique as "The one that lands." It's a difficult path that he has chosen. Michał Oleksiejczuk is our collective champion. It does not matter that he spent most of his UFC career trading wins and losses at light-heavyweight, it does not matter that he got outwrestled by Jimmy Crute. It does not matter that he has a well-rounded game with a particularly tricky grappling assault he constantly foregoes in favor of winging kicks to the body and swinging haymakers, or that just one fight prior we saw him get ground into the fence and controlled by a stronger, superior wrestler and that portends bad things against Cody Brundage. All that matters is on August 6, 2022, at the otherwise ill-fated Santos vs Hill, Michał Oleksiejczuk became a hero on Earth by vanquishing the eldritch horror that was Sam Alvey's UFC career. Our pastoral mountain village was haunted for years by the Smiling Horror, and it was by Michał's hand that it was finally punched out and returned to its cursed sarcophagus and sunk back beneath the old river, destined to one day rise and plague a new generation of woebegone farmers. Michał Oleksiejczuk by TKO because the power of the demon's soul is still within him. PRELIMS: ON A JOURNEY TO NOWHERE WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cheyenne Vlismas (7-2) vs Cory McKenna (7-2) Hey, look, it's The One Women's Fight. What a fitting way to end the UFC's year. I went back just now to do some Wikipedia math: Presuming this card winds up going on as scheduled, and not counting off-brand events like the Contender Series or Road to UFC or TUF, the UFC will wind up successfully staging 512 fights this year, and 96 of them will have been women's fights, or just about 19%. Only 29 of them made it off the prelims. Only 6 made it to a main event. But by god, we got a Paddy Pimblett co-main event. Cheyenne Vlismas wants to hit you a goddamn lot. She's never submitted anyone, she shoots for takedowns maybe once a year, and her last two UFC appearances involved a) beating the poo poo out of Mallory Martin while easily evading takedowns and b) headkicking Gloria de Paula out of consciousness in one minute. But this is her first appearance this year, and if you're wondering where she's been for all of 2022, or if you're wondering 'wait, I faintly remember a Cheyenne Buys in the UFC, who's this,' congratulations, you are asking the same question. Thanks to a real messy, real social-media-heavy divorce involving accusations of infidelity and claims of a sham immigration marriage that all really, really should have happened anywhere but loving Instagram, Vlismas has been taking personal time for most of the year. Cory McKenna took 2021 off instead, and she's made her 2022 very busy. Owner of the damningly niche title 'the best female fighter from Wales,' McKenna is a solid talent with an almost irritatingly persistent, wrestling-heavy attack, but she likes to wait on good opportunities to hunt for submissions rather than proactively making them happen by inflicting damage and controlling positions. This is also why she's 1-1 for the year: She managed to sucker Miranda Granger into hanging onto a guillotine for too long and getting Von Flue Choked for her trouble, but she dropped a split decision to the laconically effective Elise Reed before that. Cheyenne Vlismas by decision. Vlismas has solid takedown defense, much sharper striking, much more volume, and almost half a foot of reach, here. If McKenna can't force her into the cage and ragdoll her, she's in for a long night. WELTERWEIGHT: Jake Matthews (18-5) vs Matt Semelsberger (10-4)My god, what is it going to take to get a motherfucker on a main card. The main event of Teixeira vs. Procházka was so wild that it wiped the memory of everything that happened before it, which is a shame, because most of that card was incredible and one of its biggest surprises was the picture-perfect performance Jake Matthews put on against the insanely dangerous Andre Fialho. After a career of being known more as a grappler than a striker, and more than a year's layoff between fights, Matthews met the ultra-dangerous boxer and just ran a loving clinic on him, dodging 2/3 of his strikes, landing more than half of his own, and knocking Fialho dead in just two rounds. Matt Semelsberger, by contrast, is coming off a momentum-crushing loss. After spending most of a year building a reputation as a big, bruising wrestle-boxer with incredibly dangerous counters, Semelsberger failed where so many prospects have: The isle of the cruel gatekeeper. Alex Morono outworked and outhurt him, and those are the most devastating types of losses. It's one thing to lose to someone exhibiting skills you don't; it's another to get beat by someone doing what you're doing, only better. Before Matthews' last fight, this would've been looked at as the same story again--two grapplers who are willing to scrap, one bigger and stronger than the other--but after his striking in his last fight, boy, things have changed. Consequently: Jake Matthews by TKO. It's very possible Matthews' striking looked so good because Andre Fialho is a bit too aggressive for his own good and his defense is both lax and predictable, but the thing is, Semelsberger is only moreso. There isn't a ton of variety in his attacks: He wants to walk you down, hurt you, and threaten the takedown if he can. He gets hurt even in fights he's winning, and it's very probable Matthews takes his head off. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Julian Marquez (9-3) vs Deron Winn (7-3) Deron Winn's career is deeply loving uncomfortable. Deron Winn has talked on innumerable occasions about how deeply tired and frustrated he is with fans, analysts and media talking about his choice of weight class, and I sympathize, but he's also a 5'6" middleweight and it's the most notable thing about him as a fighter. His 2-4 UFC career should be enough of an indicator that his plan isn't loving working, and nothing is more indicative of this than his last fight, where Phil Hawes laid one of the most protracted, one-sided beatings of the entire goddamn year on him, outstriking him 126-34 and breaking his entire goddamn face with punches and elbows while Winn swung at the air around his head. On one hand, he's fighting Julian Marquez instead of Phil Hawes, which means he's dealing with a reach disadvantage of 2" instead of 8". That's good! On the other hand, Julian Marquez punched his ticket to the UFC with a Contender Series knockout over, uh...Phil Hawes. Julian Marquez by TKO. But I kind of hope it's a submission instead, because Marquez is real good at jumping on them after his opponent is hurt and I just don't really want to see Deron Winn eat more headshots this year. BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (16-2, #15) vs Saidyokub Kakhramonov (10-2, NR)In a lot of ways this is a mirror match, and I'm banking on that giving us a really cool fight with two evenly-matched fighters, rather than the equally plausible festival of patience where no one does anything. Both Said and Saidyokub are strong wrestlers and grapplers, and both use their wrestling to enable some real fun, creative striking, typically involving a lot of debatably unnecessary yet distinctly appreciated spinning attacks. Nurmagomedov arguably has the tighter, more dangerous hands, but Kakhramonov arguably has the faster movement and ground control. Either guy could easily make it to title contention and it's going to be incredibly interesting to see who better adjusts to whom. My money's on Saidyokub Kakhramonov by decision, but this is as much of a coinflip as you're getting on this card. LIGHTWEIGHT: Maheshate (9-1) vs Rafa García (14-3) Having made his debut as Hayishaer Maheshate, it looks like we're down to a mononym, now. The UFC teed up a perfect opponent for Maheshate's debut this past June and he did not disappoint them: Having displayed his heavy hands and lightning-bolt cross counters on the Contender Series, the UFC sent the too-aggressive Steve Garcia to his death and Maheshate obliged by blowing him up with a right hand in seventy seconds. They're taking the kid gloves off a little, here--but not too much. Rafa García is a tougher opponent, much more well-rounded and much less immediately prone to disaster--he has, in fact, never been stopped in his career--but a) He's a sprinter who fights a very aggressive, energy-heavy style, and b) Maheshate is almost half a loving foot bigger than him. I like Rafa a lot. But this is a bad fight for him, and getting countered by a hard counterpuncher who could be fighting two divisions up from you is a hard, hard sell. Maheshate by TKO. WELTERWEIGHT: Bryan Battle (8-1) vs Rinat Fakhretdinov (20-2) I have no goddamn idea what to do with Bryan Battle anymore, and the good news is the UFC clearly doesn't either. Battle won The Ultimate Fighter 29 after choking out late-replacement finalist Gilbert Urbina, which should theoretically get him some press, but the UFC instead had him wait half a year to fight original finalist Tresean Gore, who was heavily favored to win the whole thing. Battle outworked him and won a clear decision against him. This should, in theory, get him a good fight! It didn't. It got him a match with Takashi Sato in the death slots of the prelims of the doomed Thiago Santos vs Jamahal Hill card this past summer. So Battle made the most of it by facing down Sato, a man who's been in there with top contenders and champions without ever being hurt, and knocking him the gently caress out with a shock headkick in just one minute. So now he's a TUF winner, and then maybe the only TUF winner in history to defend his TUF championship, AND he owns a violent, highlight-reel, first-round knockout over a guy who was on a main card going the distance with Gunnar goddamn Nelson one fight prior. So NOW it's time for a good fight and a good slot, right? No! God drat it, we have been doing this an entire year, now, how on Earth have you not gotten that I ask these questions solely to hurt myself with frustrating answers! Bryan Battle's reward for fighting his rear end off is the same exact prelim spot he had last time, only now, he's fighting a Russian wrestling champion with a 20-2 record AND a successful UFC debut who hasn't lost a professional fight since 20goddamn14. Fakhretdinov beat the hell out of Andreas Michailidis in his first UFC bout, and one fight before that he dropped UFC veteran Eric Spicely with one punch in about a minute, and boy, that just seems like a deeply sadistic bout for Bryan Battle, whose whole gameplan involves exhausting people with his pace and his wrestling. Rinat Fakhretdinov by decision. If Battle actually does turn this around and beat Fakhretdinov at his own game, and he's on the prelims against yet another prospect in his next fight, my entire writeup for it will be the word "gently caress" in monotype repeated 400 times. FLYWEIGHT: David Dvořák (20-4, #9) vs Manel Kape (17-6, #12)  This is a top ten goddamn flyweight contest with two absurdly talented fighters, one of whom is coming off an extremely close fight with a the #5 guy in the world and the other of whom is coming off two consecutive highlight-reel knockouts, one of them a picture-perfect flying knee and the other a TKO by way of a twenty-one punch combination, and they're in the loving second-from-the-bottom preliminary death slot? What does a motherfucker have to do to get some promotional assistance, here? Does Manel Kape have to literally decapitate someone to get a hype video? Because there loving isn't one! If you look for "Kape" on the UFC's youtube channel, you get two results: A lone clip of his flying knee and an episode of their terrible Matt Serra/Jim Norton podcast where he's the opening act for Maycee Barber! And god help you if you try to look for David Dvořák, with or without the graphemes, because despite having fought in the UFC for almost three goddamn years, there isn't even a single youtube video for him. AND THOSE ARE FREE. God bless the UFC's flyweights, because Judge Dana Frollo would burn each and every one of them at the stake if it meant getting closer to understanding his own love for Sean O'Malley. Manel Kape by TKO. BANTAMWEIGHT: Sergey Morozov (18-5) vs Journey Newson (10-3 (1)) Journey Newson very narrowly avoided disaster this year. Like so many before him, he was picked up not as an intentional talent scouting but as a last-minute injury replacement, and like so many replacements, he has been given decidedly tough competition. He did win one of those disfavorable fights--but then the pee police found marijuana in his organs so they sent him to Fight Didn't Count jail. He was 0-2 (1) heading into the treaded pink slip fight with Contender Series baby Fernie Garcia this past May, but he pulled an upset and outworked Garcia to a decision victory, saving his contract in the process. Which is why they're booking him against Sergey Morozov, an exceptional wrestler and powerful striker who went toe to toe with Umar Nurmagomedov and 10-8ed Douglas Silva de Andrade. It's sink or swim for Newson and the UFC's quietly nudging him towards the shark tank. Sergey Morozov by decision.
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Dec 14, 2022 18:28
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