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What's the worst thing Dana White has ever done? Vote for as many as you want. This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| End sponsorships so fighters are completely dependent on the UFC's pay |
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62 | 10.56% |
| Ban elaborate entrances and custom gear unless you're a company favorite |
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43 | 7.33% |
| Align himself and the UFC with Donald Trump |
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53 | 9.03% |
| Abuse his wife and somehow guilt MMA media for reporting about it |
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60 | 10.22% |
| Go on a homophobic, misogynist rant about Loretta Hunt and play free speech martyr thereafter |
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48 | 8.18% |
| Compare pay-per-view pirates to Osama bin Laden |
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40 | 6.81% |
| Argue so poorly that he somehow made Jake Paul the good guy |
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46 | 7.84% |
| Allow Logan Paul to own the colors Red and Blue |
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36 | 6.13% |
| Create Conor McGregor |
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36 | 6.13% |
| Blackball the entire American Kickboxing Academy until they signed away lifetime likeness rights |
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49 | 8.35% |
| Use Marlon Vera's daughter's medical needs for advertising, then make fans crowdfund it |
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49 | 8.35% |
| Create the Power Slap League |
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54 | 9.20% |
| Post your own and then vote for it |
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11 | 1.87% |
| Total: | 84 votes | ||
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I wanted to leave this part out for once because, seriously, gently caress this past January, but it's tradition, so if you want to go back, do so here. Boy, for a month with so few MMA events, January sure was a long, horrible slog of a time. Fortunately, it's February, and nothing bad will happen ever again! We're back to normal with three UFCs this month, but one of them starts at like one in the morning for the core American constituency, for which I'm sure the entire global audience is very, very sympathetic. This month's title courtesy of a passing moment of ancient forum nostalgia. 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 gently caress me, was there. January was one of the worst months for MMA news in a long time, to the point that were it not for one notable exception it would be hard to know where to even start.  Victoria "The Prodigy" Lee, younger sister of ONE champions Christian and Angela Lee and herself a multiple-time grappling champion with a 3-0 MMA record in ONE, died on December 26 at the age of 18. The family chose not to announce her passing to the world until early January and have elected not to reveal her cause of death, which has resulted in their also having to beg people to stop hiring private investigators and contacting the family in the hopes of confirming that she died because of the evil COVID vaccine and the government/Anthony Fauci/the Bilderberg Group are forcing them to cover it up, because we live in Hell. But it would be too easy, and too disrespectful, to get as angry as those particular fucks deserve and miss the actual point of this story, which is gently caress, an 18 year-old died. It was, what, two months ago that I wrote about Rumble Johnson's passing and how 38 was a tragically young age to die? 18 is devastating. 18 is the age where being a professional fighter at all was insane, which she knew, because she'd put her career on hiatus to finish high school, because she was 18. I cannot even pay my respects to her the way I have with other eulogies in these reports that went into the depths of fighters' careers, lives and memories, because she was 18. The Lee family, which has lived and breathed martial arts since before their current generation of star fighters was even born, has permanently closed their MMA academy, and ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong isn't sure if Christian or Angela will fight again in the near future or at all. It's hard to blame them. I quite frankly hope the family's privacy is respected and we never find out what happened, but there's no eventuality that won't take a long time for things to feel in any way okay again. I hope they find peace and I hope I never write one of these again.  Yeah, we're not getting any better. "The New York Bad rear end" Phil Baroni was a star of the 200s era of the sport who made a name for himself as a road-warrior journeyman in the UFC, Pride and Strikeforce who was famous for three things: Wild, punch-heavy brawling, losing virtually all of his big fights, and shithead charisma that he used to cut promos about how people needed to do more steroids and have more sex. Some had sounded alarms about Baroni's behavior becoming erratic, with its most public example being his ride-or-die support of War Machine, formerly known as Jon Koppenhaver, after he was given a life sentence for raping and nearly killing his ex-girlfriend Christy Mack, and that proved unfortunately prescient, as Baroni was arrested in Mexico just after New Year's for brutally murdering his girlfriend. Baroni's side of the story is that he didn't mean to kill her and simply threw her into the shower too hard after an argument. This will probably not help him. Multiple colleagues of his have taken to Twitter in the weeks following his arrest to discuss the visible toll CTE had taken on him and how difficult he had become to know let alone work with, but, boy, that doesn't really help matters now. His victim has been identified only by the name Paola.  But why stop there? Conor McGregor, whose assault record threatens to outstrip his fight record, is the suspect in an assault investigation in Spain, stemming from an incident last July where a woman states she was invited to a party on Conor's yacht because of their shared origins in Ireland only for Conor to begin berating her for her appearance midway through the party before kicking her in the stomach, punching her in the face and threatening to drown her, at which point the woman jumped the gently caress off the yacht to get away. McGregor, through his lawyers, has denied all allegations.  And now, the elephant in the room. On January 2nd, TMZ published video footage of Dana White and his wife Anne arguing at a Vegas bar on New Year's. In the video, which is somewhat cut up and jumbled--which, I want to be abundantly clear, I am saying not to downplay its self-evident contents but to register my anger that an outlet as bad at its job as TMZ got this story--there's a visible shouting argument, Anne turns away as if to leave, Dana pulls on her wrist to force her to stay and she slaps him, at which point Dana slaps her much harder and then, still holding on to her, slaps her again, and appears to be going back for a third before a bystander jumps in to separate them. In an interview thereafter, Dana White said he's unequivocally apologetic and there was no excuse for his actions, but offered no restitution or punishment for himself. In 2008, Jesse "JT Money" Taylor was removed from his Ultimate Fighter finalist spot and fired from the UFC for breaking a limousine window and causing a scene in a hotel lobby. Dana White, when asked about the lack of any ramifications for his actions, replied that the ramifications were being considered a domestic abuser by the public. Matt Riddle was fired from the UFC in 2013 after testing positive for marijuana twice and making an off-color joke about using it to make sure he doesn't beat his kids. Dana White, after facing no consequences for being caught on video assaulting his wife except being ardently defended by the worst fans on the internet who see this as a victory for gender equality and the right for men to beat women if they feel it's justified, promptly resumed doing press for Dana White's Power Slap League, which had its debut pushed back 7 days for sensitivity reasons. Highly-touted 18-4 prospect Jason High was banned from the UFC for life in 2014 after lightly shoving referee Kevin Mulhall after a fight, for which he immediately apologized. Dana White has elected to no-comment further inquiries about the assault, and an editor for ESPN, which airs the UFC, obliquely noted on social media that they were encouraged not to comment on the issue.  After its one-week long delay, which definitely solved the problem of people thinking about Dana White slapping his wife, Dana White's Power Slap League debuted on January 18th, using the tried-and-true partnership of professional wrestling and violent sports that helped the UFC take off back in 2005. AEW Dynamite, the third-highest-rated show on cable, gave it a lead-in of nearly one million viewers. Almost 70% of them turned it off immediately, leaving slap-fighting with 295,000 viewers and a final cable ranking of the 45th most-watched show of the night, exactly ten slots below 1000-Lb. Best Friends, but two slots above season four of Moonshiners: Master Distiller.  On January 8th a mob formed by thousands of militant supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the recently-defeated right-wing authoritarian President of Brazil, stormed the Three Powers Plaza in Brazil's capital in a mirror of America's January 6th riots that somewhat aimlessly attempted to, through violence and occupation, restore Bolsonaro to power. While this happened, Jair Bolsonaro, who DEFINITELY had no hand in any of this, was staying with MMA legend José Aldo at his home in Orlando, Florida, posing for kitschy pictures and letting the world know about Aldo's Minions-themed bedroom. Bolsonaro was so busy at Aldo's house that he barely had time to meet with the capital's head of security Anderson Torres, who also just happened to be there, by some strange coincidence. Certain stories make me taste pennies in the back of my mouth.  It'd be great if we were done there, but of course, we aren't. Bolsonaro, like many authoritarian strongman politicians across history, has enjoyed the support of scores of prominent Brazilian fighters--a dozen of them, including Royce Gracie, Wanderlei Silva, Rafael dos Anjos and Fabricio Werdum, recorded Youtube advertisements for him in this past election--but the true faithful were unearthed when the rubber hit the road, with then-UFC Flyweight Champion Deiveson Figueiredo taking the grand prize as the most notable fighter to use all of his social media channels to actively post directions and instructions for would-be coup participants and encourage the military to arrest the newly-elected President and congress. A sitting UFC champion using his fame to aid an attempted overthrowing of his country was, of course, met with barely any response and absolutely no consequences or even comment from the UFC.  It seriously took us this long to get to news about the actual sport of mixed martial arts, and it's terrible, too. After two years of friction and contract negotiations, the UFC officially stripped and released undisputed heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in January. If you believe Francis Ngannou, which you should, the UFC balked at demands like health insurance, a return to allowing fighter sponsors and an advocate for the fighters at UFC board meetings, as well as the freedom to pursue a boxing match with Tyson Fury. If you believe the UFC, which you should not, Francis Ngannou was greedy, had unrealistic money expectations and, in the chestnut I cannot believe Dana White still actually says every time a contract dispute happens, was intimidated by competition and simply afraid to fight the top heavyweights in the world. Francis Ngannou is a free agent, the UFC no longer has its own undisputed heavyweight title in its lineage, and the vacant belt will be filled by Ciryl Gane vs Jon Jones on March 4th, banking on the 50/50 chance Jon Jones makes it into the cage.  Bellator announced their 2023 Lightweight Grand Prix, and they are, in fact, throwing basically their entire top 8 at it. The tournament will kick off on March 10th, as Usman Nurmagomedov defends both a semifinal berth and his lightweight championship against Benson Henderson and Tofiq Musayev meets Alexander Shabliy on the other side of the bracket; on May 12th, Sidney Outlaw and Mansour Barnaoui will meet to determine the Henderson/Nurmagomedov opponent, and at an as-yet unannounced date, Patricky Pitbull will face A.J. McKee for the last semifinal spot.  For the third time, ONE has booked the continually cursed heavyweight unification bout between champion Arjan Bhullar and interim champion Anatoliy Malykhin. This time around, it is supposed to happen on March 25. I have even less faith in this than Jon Jones.  Jake Paul signed a multi-year deal with the Professional Fighters League to compete in mixed martial arts in its Super Fights division. This deal presumably cost more than their entire annual tournament budget. gently caress this dumb sport.  Logan Paul signed a deal with the UFC to make PRIME its new sports-drink sponsor. The UFC is renaming the traditional red and blue corners to the Prime Hydration Recovery Zones, replete with new octagonal PRIME-sponsored stools. I will say it again: gently caress this dumb sport. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  After losing to Jamahal Hill in the main event of UFC 283 on January 21st Glover Teixeira laid down his gloves and announced his retirement in the cage, admitting that he had finally realized he was, perhaps, a little too tough and stubborn for his own health. It's deeply fortunate that his last-minute championship reign made people recognize his place in the annals of the sport, because his run is, genuinely, pretty incredible. 33-9 in just shy of twenty-one years of competition, the second-oldest UFC champion in history, victories over six world champions, fights in eight different countries, went the distance with Jon Jones in his prime. He was ridiculously tough, incredibly powerful and a terrifying grappler, but the single best testament to just how good he was is this: When the first issuance of the UFC's modern, official rankings came out on February 5, 2013, Glover Teixeira was ranked #4 at light-heavyweight, and in the final official rankings update of Glover's career just weeks shy of a decade later on January 17, 2023 every other fighter from that original list was gone save for Glover, who was ranked #2. He was ranked as one of the best light-heavyweights on the planet for ten god damned years--and even that is only his UFC ranking, prior to which he had won eighteen straight fights. Glover Teixeira was the real goddamn deal. He helped legalize MMA in his home state of Connecticut, he immigrated to America twice, he used his platform to lobby for gun control laws after his niece survived Sandy Hook and he completed one of the sport's longest tenures without accruing any of the horrors the sport likes to inflict on its participants. I'm deeply glad he got his long-deserved, long-belated moment in the sun before he called it a day, and I hope he gets to enjoy a well-deserved retirement.  Maurício "Shogun" Rua also called it quits after UFC 283. For once I'm going to spare the career eulogizing here, partially because I already wrote a lengthy retrospective for him in last month's preview of the show, partially because I have since researched his deep support for Jair Bolsonaro and feel disinclined to write nice things about him. If you by some chance are reading this and did not read my Shogun career retrospective, you can find it here. He retires at 27-14-1 with a Pride Middleweight Grand Prix championship and a UFC Light-Heavyweight Championship to his name.  Seemingly out of nowhere, #12 lightweight Damir Ismagulov announced his retirement on New Year's Day, claiming 'circumstances and health problems' he didn't want to go into detail about had forced an end to his career. The abrupt end to his time in mixed martial arts, his relatively young age at 31 and his subsequent instagram posts about training back at his home in Russia have many fans hoping he'll return sooner than later, but honestly, if something spooked him enough about his health to quit that quickly, I hope he stays away and keeps himself safe. UPDATE: On January 30th, Ismagulov announced he was uanware he had one fight left on his UFC contract and intends to come back, fight his last fight (which he would like to be a rematch with Arman Tsaruykan, which he absolutely will not get) and go back to retirement.  Leah "Nidas" Letson announced her retirement from mixed martial arts on January 9th. At one point she was a promising prospect in the eternally-suffering women's featherweight division, a hard-hitting fighter who punched her ticket to the UFC with a violent knockout over veteran Elizabeth Phillips, got eliminated in the semi-final round of The Ultimate Fighter 28 by eventual winner Macy Chiasson and came back with a hard-fought decision over Invicta champion Julija Stoliarenko but, at the apex of her career, she found herself forced onto the shelf. Three straight years of medical problems--the UFC's doctors said a combination of overtraining and poor nutrition had very nearly killed her--meant she missed the entirety of Amanda Nunes' takeover of the division, and when she finally returned to competition in November of 2021 she ran into a brick wall, as Felicia Spencer stopped her in the third round after outstriking her 227-69. Neither woman would ever fight again: Spencer retired less than a month later for her mental health, and after more than a year of inactivity, a failed attempt to return at bantamweight and her own struggles with her health and future, Letson decided it was time to leave the sport behind. She retires at 5-2.  Cláudio "Hannibal" Silva also joined the army of fighters calling it quits in January. Silva's is one of the oldest stories in the sport--grew up as a gang kid in a favela of Rondonópolis (that someone on wikipedia, as of this writing, has quietly vandalized to instead read Minas Morgul), went to prison for armed robbery and ultimately saved his life through a dedication to martial arts. He moved to England, entered competition in 2007 and ran up a 9-1 record before getting picked up by the UFC, and two fights later was on the cusp of a top fifteen ranking after defeating a then-debuting Leon Edwards, but a score of injuries sidelined him for almost four years, and while he came back still successful, he'd lost a bit too much of his prime. After twelve years without a loss, Silva dropped three fights in a row in the 2020s, first to James Krause, then Court McGee, and finally, Nicolas Dalby. They were all hard-fought decision losses, and a 14-4 welterweight is still damned impressive, but the UFC gave him his pink slip in August of 2022 and with his 40th birthday just one month away, the conclusions were hard to ignore. Godspeed to his post-combat future. WHERE ELSE CAN I TALK TO LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE ABOUT VIOLENCE? Any of the following hangouts:
DO WE HAVE OTHER COMMUNAL THREADS? So many.
WHERE ELSE DOES FIGHT CHAT EXIST? Our community output has grown enough that we've got a few other places things get posted:
 Disclaimer: These are unofficial offsites, somethingawful's rules and liability do not extend to them, and complaining about discord stuff is still offsite drama posting
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WHAT HAPPENED IN JANUARY The combat sports year began with ONE Fight Night 6: Superbon vs Allazov on January 13th, a kickboxing-heavy card with a bunch of funny stuff and horrific violence. The list of scratched, rescheduled and otherwise compromised fights is twice as long as the card itself, but fun was still, ultimately, had. Stamp Fairtex lost her mixed-rules bout after her opponent missed the weigh-ins entirely thanks to family issues, leading her to instead barely scrape by Anna Jaroonsak in a kickboxing bout, supergrappler Garry Tonon came back from his first career loss by tapping out warm body Johnny Nuñez in two minutes, Rodtang Jitmuangnon missed weight but sitll beat up Jiduo Yibu, Aung La Nsang torched late replacement Gilberto Galvão in ninety seconds, Mikey Musumeci retained his flyweight grappling championship by going to a surprising decision against Bayanduuren Gantumur, in the co-main event Superlek Kiatmuu9 narrowly took the flyweight kickboxing champion with a controversial decision against Daniel Puertas, and in the main event, the long-delayed bout between two of the best kickboxers in the world ended definitively: Chingiz Allazov stormed Superbon Singha Mawynn, knocked him cold in two rounds, and took his featherweight kickboxing championship. But the UFC's year began with January 14th's UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs Imavov, an exceedingly cursed card that lost eight fights, including its main and co-main events, and wound up instead putting Sean Strickland, who'd just main evented the UFC's last card of 2022, in pole position instead. What we wound up with was a Frankenstein's Monster of a card that managed some good times amidst the weirdness. On the undercard, Charles "InnerG" Johnson finally recorded a UFC win by pounding out an unretiring Jimmy Flick, Daniel Argueta beat an outmatched Nick Aguirre, Allan Nascimento got a super-cool choke over Carlos Hernández, debuting Polish champion Mateusz Rębecki dominated Nick Fiore but looked a little unpolished in the process, Abdul Razak Alhassan crushed Claudio Ribeiro, and Javid Basharat successfully bullfought Mateus Mendonça. On the main card, Umar Nurmagomedov knocked out Raoni Barcelos so violently he apologized and lovingly cradled him afterwards, Raquel Pennington scraped a split decision from #1 Women's Bantamweight contender Ketlen Vieira, Roman Kopylov put on a clinic destroying Punahele Soriano with liver shots and Dan Ige got his mojo back with a walkoff KO over the streaking Damon Jackson. The main event, just like the one before it, was five rounds of Sean Strickland walking down Nassourdine Imavov and somehow widely outstriking him without ever putting him in actual danger, while the commentators gushed about how, any minute now, he would turn up the pace. Invicta took the stage on January 18th with Invicta FC 51: Tennant vs Bernardo, which was as long as it could possibly have been. 25 rounds across seven fights, each a hard-fought decision. Fatima Kline continued her climb from rookie to prospect, Rayanne dos Santos and Elisandra Ferreira both won their way into atomweight contendership, and Claire Guthrie and Olga Rubin both set themselves up for shots at the 135-pound crown. The co-main event saw Ketlen Souza soundly outfight Kristina Williams to take the vacant flyweight championship left behind by the endless churn of fighters signing with bigger companies, and in the main event, UFC cast-off Talita Bernardo had a close but ultimately decisive grappling victory over a very game Taneisha Tennant, wrestling her belt away to become the new bantamweight champion. After an awful lot of confusion regarding when it was airing, who was fighting and if the main card would even be broadcast outside of Thailand, ONE's Lumpinee series wound up broadcasting as ONE Friday Fights 1 on January 20th. As one would expect from their Lumpinee debut, there were only a couple MMA fights--one a split decision victory for lightweight Richard Godoy and the other a one-minute submission for the wonderfully named Colton Kielbasa--and the rest of the card was all Muay Thai. Rodtang ally Sakaengam Jitmuangnon knocked the poo poo out of Suayai Chor.Hapayak, Sonrak Fairtex, Khomarwut F.A. Group and Khunsueklek UFABoomdeksean all won decisions to round out the midcard, Prajanchai P.K.Saenchai outstruck Kompetch Sitsarawatsuer in a swing bout, and in the main event, bantamweight champion Nong-O Gaiyanghadao destroyed the Russian national champion Alaverdi Ramazanov, retaining his title with a third-round knockout. The short month, but a very busy week, concluded on January 21st with UFC 283: Teixeira vs Hill. It was the UFC's first trip back to Rio de Janeiro in almost four years, and it was just as violent as the last one, but it was also a banner night for UFC rookies. On the prelims, first-timers Daniel Marcos and Ismael Bonfim both recorded tremendous knockouts, and last-minute replacement Brunno Ferreira upset the middleweight top twenty by viciously knocking out Gregory Rodriguez. Josiane Nunes drummed Zarah Fairn out of the UFC (in all likelihood, anyway), Cody Stamann edged out Luan Lacerda, Nicolas Dalby took an incredibly close split decision over Warlley Alves, Jailton Almeida predictably crushed Shamil Abdurakhimov and Thiago Moisés submitted a game but overmatched Melquizael Costa--and in the somewhat sadder end of the prelims, Ihor Potieria knocked Maurício "Shogun" Rua out in the last bout of his mixed martial arts career. The main card saw Johnny Walker and Gilbert Burns make very short work of Paul Craig and Neil Magny respectively, and human wrecking ball Jéssica Andrade beat an irresponsible amount of tar out of Lauren Murphy. The co-main event saw the end of the legendary Moreno/Figueiredo quadrilogy, but somewhat fittingly, it had one last bit of (silly) controversy, ending on a third-round doctor's stoppage after Moreno punched Figueiredo's left eye shut. The main event, and the end of three months of very silly light-heavyweight vacancy, saw a comically tough Glover Teixeira refuse to stop fighting despite being battered for five rounds by new champion Jamahal Hill. Teixeira, too, laid down his gloves and retired after the fight. WHAT'S COMING IN FEBRUARY February starts with a double-header, and we're gonna give those crazy kids at Bellator first billing, because for once, their offering makes more sense if you're in the western hemisphere. Bellator 290: Bader vs Fedor 2 comes to us the evening of February 4th, and it's a weird card in a lot of ways, and not just for the main event. This is Bellator's debut on American network television, thanks to CBS, home of such wonderful shows as Survivor, So Help Me Todd and Young Sheldon. On the other hand, as with every MMA network television debut in history, this means the main card is ultra short and weird. So your free, youtube/pluto-aired prelims are eleven goddamn fights long and feature stars like Darrion Caldwell, Alejandra Lara, Karl Albrektsson, Henry Corrales, Lorenz Larkin and Neiman Gracie, and then your main card is Sabah Homasi vs Brennan Ward in what Bellator hopes will be an all-action affair to keep everyone tuned in despite the second fight, followed by Johnny Eblen defending the middleweight championship against Anatoly Tokov in what will almost certainly be less actiony. The main event sees Ryan Bader defending the heavyweight championship against Fedor Emelianenko in what is both a rematch of the 2019 tournament final where Bader knocked him out in thirty-five seconds and Fedor's retirement fight, which is, I think, the third time he's said that. The UFC starts the month later that night with UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Spivak, which is one of the profoundly weirdest cards they've put on. This event was initially planned to be the UFC's return to Korea after more than three years of absence, but scheduling and Chan Sung Jung getting injured ruined their plans. So this is still a profoundly Korean card--six of its twelve fights star Korean fighters like Da Un Jung, Doo-ho Choi and Jun-yong Park and the finals of last year's all-Asian Road to UFC tournament will finally be held on the undercard--but the event is airing live from the empty Apex Arena in Nevada, BUT the main card begins at 10 PM PST/1 AM EST because they want Korean fans to watch it. AND the main event is the Derrick Lewis vs Sergey Spivak showdown that was supposed to happen back in November only to get cancelled midway into the card after Lewis turned out to have been hospitalized the night before. It is very, very rare for me to say this: If you only watch one card that day, and you're in America and thus beholden to our time zones, you should probably pick Bellator. Go to bed at a reasonable time. For your health. But the UFC is back on its game 8 days later--yes, 8, this UFC is on a Sunday, don't panic--with February 12th's UFC 284: Makhachev vs Volkanovski. It's the company's first show in Australia since before the pandemic and they're capitalizing on the local marketing: It's a big, wild card with a bunch of brawls and a hell of a main event. Loma Lookboonmee and Elise Reed will hit each other a whole bunch, both of the Tafa brothers are in action at heavyweight, Tyson Pedro returned, somehow, Joshua Culibao and Melsik Baghdasaryan will have a great fight, Jamie Mullarkey and Francisco Prado will beat each other around the head and face, Jimmy Crute and Alonzo Menifeld will fight for a top 15 spot, and Jack Della Maddalena will finally get a stiff, rankings-potential test as he takes on Randy Brown. Your co-main event will fill the featherweight throne until its king returns in either victory or defeat, as wild kickboxer Yair Rodríguez meets the fighting Falmer himself, Josh Emmett, to crown an interim featherweight champion. This is because, of course, of the main event, one of the only champion vs champion matches the UFC has put on that I don't hate: Newly-crowned lightweight champion Islam Makhachev defends his title against the UFC's best male champion, featherweight kingpin Alexander Volkanovski, in a fight that will either once again reinforce the reason weight classes exist or make it really, really hard to deny Volkanovski pound-for-pound great status. Because of that weird scheduling, we return to the UFC just six days later with Saturday, February 18th's UFC Fight Night: Vera vs Sandhagen. The card is a sort of Frankenstein's Monster of fights that got rescheduled from other cards coming together into a big, weird showcase that's half prospects and half aging veterans. On one hand you have fighters with names I only wish I could've made up like Juancamilo Ronderoes, Clayton Carpenter, Evan Elder and Themba Gorimbo; on the other you have Joe Solecki taking on Benoît Saint-Denis, Gerald Meerschaert scraping his bones on Abusupiyan Magomedov, William Knight having a muscle-off with Marcin Prachnio, Lina Länsberg taking on Mayra Bueno Silva and the twice-rescheduled Ovince Saint Preux vs Philipe Lins, and somewhere in the middle of that Josh Parisian will heavyweight as best he can against Jamal Pogues and Jim god damned Miller will try to continue turning back the clock against Gabriel Benítez. Your main and co-main events, however, are very interesting contendership battles. Taila Santos, the woman who just went to a split decision with champion Valentina Shevchenko, is up against the runaway stampede that is Erin Blanchfield, and it's hard not to see it as the UFC trying to strap a rocket to Blanchfield, as the fight could take her from #10 to #2. In your main event, #4 Marlon Vera is taking on #5 Cory Sandhagen, and that, too, has some real interesting connotations, particularly with champion Aljamain Sterling injured and Henry Cejudo jockeying for a championship return. And we end the month on February 25th with a triple-header. First-off, we have Bellator 291: Amosov vs Storley 2. This is yet another attempt by Bellator to corner the Irish market, which means it's in Dublin, it's full of Irish fighters, and it has an absolutely preposterous 20 fights announced. 15 of those are prelims with a lot of local-tier talent, as Bellator is wont to do, but there are still a few interesting fights buried in the ocean--a heavyweight showdown between Gokhan Saricam and Oleg Popov, Greek champion Elina Kallionidou vs grappling ace Jena Bishop, Charlie Ward vs Mike Shipman, Karl Moore vs Maciej Różański and Oliver Enkamp vs Luca Poclit--but, as always, the relevant and/or 'relevant' stuff is on the main card. After getting him thwomped in his last two Dublin appearances Bellator is trying to get top Irishman Peter Queally a hometown win against the equally embattled Bryce Logan, the ongoing rehabilitation of top Irishwoman Sinead Kavanaugh continues as she meets the 6-6 Janay Harding, Pedro Carvalho and Jeremy Kennedy will do battle in a what-are-you-doing-here-neither-of-you-are-Irish co-main event, and in your main, Bellator reunifies its welterweight lineage, as champion Yaroslav Amosov is back from fighting the Russian invasion of his home in Ukraine, and is looking to reunify his belt against Logan Storley's interim championship. The second part of that doubleheader comes with ONE Fight Night 7: Lineker vs Andrade 2. It's another of ONE's big Amazon Prime swings, with just a few prelims currently announced--the biggest of which is a women's atomweight bout between Linda Darrow and Victória Souza--and a main card with a bunch of action. Andrei Stoica and Françesco Xhaja will have big-man kickboxing times, Saemapetch Fairtex and Zhang Chenglong will have small-man kickboxing times, Eko Roni Saputra and Danny Kingad will try to climb the flyweight MMA ranks, Danielle Kelly and Ayaka Miura will have a grappling match, Martin Nguyen and Shamil Gasanov will jockey for a claim to Tang Kai's featherweight MMA title, and in the co-main event, Tawanchai P.K.Saenchai defends the featherweight Muay Thai title against Jamal Yusupov. The main event is the reason anyone cares. ONE's first attempt at this all-action bout this past October was disastrous; John Lineker lost his bantamweight championship on the scale after a botched weight cut and showed up to the fight looking preemptively exhausted, but the fight ended in a no-contest after Fabrício Andrade hit Lineker in the groin so hard it shattered his cup. Hopefully, this time, both men make weight and no one engages in CBT. And finally, we have the UFC with UFC Fight Night: Krylov vs Spann, which they helpfully chose not to announce until after I had already written my draft up, for which I am deeply grateful and not at all annoyed. Thankfully it's at least an interesting card, even if the main event is pretty weak. You've got prospects like Ode' Osbourne and Trevor Peek in action, Jordan Leavitt is getting booked again now that the UFC has extracted a Paddy Pimblett win out of him, Ailin Perez drops down to bantamweight in record time, Mike Malott and Yohan Lainesse will hit each other a bunch, André Muniz and Brendan Allen will have a very cool grappling match and Augusto Sakai is going for the extremely rare fifth consecutive UFC loss, somehow. Honestly, the big story of the card isn't even the main event, it's the theoretical return of undefeated women's flyweight Tatiana Suarez, who looked like an absolute monster and a lock for title contention until injuries kept her on the shelf for almost four goddamn years. The UFC is wisely taking it a bit easy and pitching her a bout against the unranked Montana De La Rosa, presumably to see if Tatiana still has it in her. The main event is a light-heavyweight tilt between Nikita Krylov and Ryan Spann, because big guys get better booking.
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Feb 1, 2023 20:02
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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   VACANT - From past the stars and beyond the moonThere is a hole in the hearts of man where nothing but vice and greed can survive, and from that hole, Vacant finds purchase. We had exactly one month in the last seven that saw no title vacancies in the UFC and those days looked to finally, mercifully, be over, but thanks to corporate mismanagement Vacant went up from light-heavyweight to heavyweight without missing a beat. After two solid years of contractual friction between the UFC and its undisputed heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the dam broke. Francis Ngannou's side of the story, which seems likely, was the UFC's refusal to accept his desire for health insurance, sponsorship rights, a fighter advocate and the chance to pursue boxing superfights the way Conor McGregor did. Dana White's side of the story, which seems less likely, is the 17-3 Francis Ngannou who beat five UFC champions is scared of fighting real competition and doesn't have it in him anymore. Either way, as it always does, the money won: On January 14th, during the post-fight press for Strickland/Imavov, Dana announced Ngannou had been stripped of his title and released from the company. The UFC, which is a very smart company, is pinning the future of the heavyweight championship on a March 4th, UFC 285 showdown between the man they already tried to use to scab Ngannou once, Ciryl Gane, and the only man who has somehow been stripped of or vacated a championship belt more times than he's held one, Jon Jones. The UFC, because they are jerks, made sure to emphasize that the new champion would be the undisputed champion, because there is absolutely nothing disputable about cutting your victorious heavyweight champion and replacing him with either the last guy he soundly defeated or a fighter making their heavyweight debut. MMA: It's never not silly. I'll see you again in the April Punchsport Report when the belt is still vacant because Jon Jones crashed his car into an elementary school the day before the fight. Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   Jamahal Hill - 12-1 (1), 0 DefensesThe dread prophecy has been fulfilled: After five years Dana White's Contender Series has produced a UFC champion, and all it took was the complete and utter collapse of a division. After half of the light-heavyweight top ten retired or left the UFC in the span of just two years the division scrambled for a new frontrunner, and after Jan Błachowicz, Glover Teixeira and Jiří Procházka all won and lost the title in the space of just four fights and a draw between Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev failed to fill the throne, the division was left in dire straits, with half of the top ten ruled out through loss, draw or injury. So the UFC pulled the trigger, went past their own higher-ranked Anthony Smith, and booked #2 Glover Teixeira vs #7 Jamahal Hill for the vacant belt. It is, in many ways, Dana White's dream: Hill won his way to the UFC through the Contender Series in 2019, just a year and a half after his professional debut, he's a big, tall, American striker who doggedly pursues knockouts and he's a staunch company man to the point of getting in hot water on social media for brave stances like "my boss slapping his wife is fine" and "Andrew Tate is good, actually." A lot of people, myself included, picked Glover to submit Hill--the only blemish on his record (not counting the No Contest one of his victories was swapped for because he dared to smoke the devil weed) is a grotesque submission loss against Paul Craig and just one fight prior he'd struggled visibly with the grappling of Thiago Santos--but the Jamahal Hill who showed up against Glover Teixeira was massively improved, stuffing 15 of 17 takedown attempts and giving up only three and a half minutes of ground control across five rounds against one of the most feared top games in the sport. He wobbled but wasn't able to finish Glover, but he did batter and control him, and however many questions there are about how much he deserved the title shot itself, there are no questions about how much he deserved his 50-44 shutout victory. What happens from here, who knows. Jiří wants to fight for the title again this Spring but doctors aren't sure if he'll be ready, Jan and Ankalaev are in a tenuous position and Aleksandar Rakić is still injured. For the moment, Dana has his personal champion. 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 championship-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? Nope! As predicted, rather than risking their kickboxer against any grapplers, the UFC is going back to the well of instant loving rematches with Pereira vs Adesanya 2 at UFC 287 on April 8, and rather than another contender waiting in the wings, they've started hyping a superfight--I cannot use the term loosely enough--between Pereira and light-heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill if Pereira wins. Divisions: They're not real. 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   Brandon Moreno - 21-6-2, 0 DefensesThe war is over. Brandon Moreno has one hell of a career arc in the UFC. He was brought in as part of 2016's The Ultimate Fighter: Tournament of Champions, where he represented Arizona's World Fighting Federation as its flyweight titleholder, only to get eliminated in the first round by Alexandre Pantoja. The UFC kept him on, but cut him two years later despite a 3-2 record after two consecutive losses to future Bellator champ Sergio Pettis and, once again, Alexandre Pantoja. He was backo in the UFC just one year later, and just one year after that he was fighting Deiveson Figueiredo, the man the entire world thought was the new unbeatable flyweight king, for the UFC championship. Their feud became the first thing to make the UFC give a poo poo about the flyweight division in years, and as the UFC does, it showed it by re-running it over and over. In December of 2020, Moreno fought Figueiredo to a shocking draw--primarily because Figueiredo was docked a point for groin strikes. An instant rematch was ordered for June of 2021, and this time, a Moreno who'd learned and adjusted to Figueiredo's power and timing outfought him, dropping him with jabs and choking him out in three rounds. The UFC decided to roll the dice again, seeing the fight as insufficiently determinative given their previous bout, and booked the two against each other again in January of 2022, and this time it was Figueiredo who had made the necessary adjustments, dropping Moreno three times en route to a unanimous decision victory. With the series now 1-1-1, the UFC, of course, needed a closing chapter. The fourth fight was originally booked for the summer, but a hand injury forced Figueiredo out and led to an interim title fight between Moreno and top contender Kai Kara-France instead, but destiny would not be denied, as Moreno exploded Kai's liver with a kick, handing him his first knockout loss in a decade. The final chapter, an unprecedented Figueiredo/Moreno 4, was rebooked for January 2023 as a title unification match--and because the gods of violence love jokes, the concluding fight ended on a doctor's stoppage. It SHOULDN'T be controversial, as the stoppage only happened because Moreno punched Figueiredo in the god damned eye so hard it was left swollen completely shut within a round, but Figueiredo's inability to tell he hadn't been poked, the confusion of the commentary team, and a partisan Brazilian crowd so angry Moreno had to be rushed backstage while being pelted with cups and garbage all conspired to make the fight seem somehow invalid. In the end, it didn't matter anyway; after the fight was over Deiveson Figueiredo announced he was leaving the 125-pound weight class and moving up to bantamweight because the cut was ruining his life. The longest series in UFC history is over, Brandon Moreno stopped the scariest flyweight on the planet twice, and he is, at last, the undisputed champion of the world. 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 Peña. 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 Peña 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 Peña for five straight rounds, dropping her a half-dozen times and elbowing her face entirely open, and barring one touchy moment with an armbar, Peña 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. So Manon Fiorot is currently not booked to fight anyone, and Alexa Grasso, despite being ranked four spots lower, is going to fight Valentina for the championship at UFC 285 on March 4th. 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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Feb 1, 2023 20:02
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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. Nemkov was initially planned for a quick turnaround against Yoel Romero on February 4, but it was scratched just before New Year's for as-yet unstated reasons. The future is uncertain. 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 forehead 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. After Vadim Nemkov was forced to pull out of Bellator 290 on February 4, Fedor's team wanted another of his proteges in a title fight for the night and they found their man in Anatoly Tokov, who's riding a 7-fight undefeated streak over a sedately-paced six-year run in Bellator. He'll fill the void for Eblen's first title defense. 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 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 an army of ultra-grapplers, and after his passing the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and Adulmanap's son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world. 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. Next up for him is not just a challenger, but a field: Bellator's Lightweight Grand Prix for 2023 kicks off on March 3rd at Bellator 292, where he'll be both defending his belt and fighting for the next round against former UFC champion Benson Henderson. Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Patrício Pitbull - 35-5, 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 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. Pitbull's next fight was the rare cross-promotional bout, facing Rizin's featherweight champion Kleber Koike Erbst on the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin special. It was the only fight on the card that wasn't particularly competitive: He shut Kleber down completely and won a wide decision. There is only one featherweight king outside the UFC. 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 - 19-1, 1 DefenseHe 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 seven-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. After spending most of the year dealing with the constant presence of top contender and endless loudmouth Danny Sabatello, the two met in both the first defense of Stots' championship and the semifinal of the grand prix, and Stots took a split decision--and the decision being split instead of unanimous was so egregious that Doug Crosby, one of the worst judges in history, got admonished for his crimes. At some point in 2023 Stots will face the toughest test of his career: The tournament final against fellow superstar Patchy Mix. 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. 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 who had been knocked out just one month prior. Undeterred, she had her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. It's kind of tiring to watch the second-best women's featherweight in MMA history take repeated nothing boxing matches, but on the other hand, what on Earth is there better for her to do right now, other than, uh, use her instagram account to call for a military coup of her home country in the hopes of restoring fascism to power? Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Liz Carmouche - 18-7, 1 DefenseIt took more than a decade and some controversy, but Liz Carmouche got her flowers. "Girl-Rilla" was just as present a figure in establishing women's MMA in the mainstream, but she's the most consistently forgotten because she was the losing fighter in all of those establishing moments. She was a challenger for the early, pre-fame Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship, and was winning on the scorecards before Marloes Coenen choked her out. She was a central part of the inaugural Invicta FC card, and was planned as a title contender before the big show came calling. She became one half of the first women's fight in UFC history, and at one point had Ronda Rousey in a nearly destiny-defying neck crank, but was ultimately submitted in the first round. She's one of two women to ever defeat Valentina Shevchenko, but when given a second chance at the now-UFC champion Shevchenko, she fell short. Despite her powerful wrestling and submission skills, she was eternally denied the top of the mountain. So it was both particularly appropriate and particularly cruel when she finally won a championship on April 22, 2022--in a way that displeased everybody. Standing champion Juliana Velasquez was winning on every scorecard, but Liz Carmouche got her in the crucifix position and landed a number of, respectfully, small elbows, but referee Mike Beltran called a TKO to the immediate chagrin of the entirely safe ex-champion. The controversy made a rematch all but mandatory, and it took Bellator most of the year to do it, but the two met in the cage to run it back at Bellator 289 on December 9, and this time there was no controversy, as Velasquez submitted to an armbar two rounds in. Liz Carmouche, at last, is a world goddamn champion. 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   Anatoly Malykhin - 12-0, 0 DefensesONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs  Anatoly Malykhin - 12-0, 0 DefensesIt was a very good, but very strange, 2022 for Anatoly Malykhin. With Bhullar out indefinitely, the undefeated Russian bruiser was placed in the driver's seat of the heavyweight division, and after quickly dispatching of an outmatched Kirill Grishenko, Malykhin took home an interim championship. ONE planned to reunify the championships fairly quickly, with Bhullar vs Malykhin tentatively planned for ONE's debut on Amazon Prime Video in August, but Bhullar needed more time to recover from his injury layoff. The match was finally, formally announced for ONE Championship 161 on September 29--and then, the day of the aforementioned Prime debut, Bhullar announced he was pulling out with another injury. The match was once again tentatively planned for December, but the two sides couldn't come to terms, and after ten months, ONE was tired of doing nothing with their big, angry punchman. The new announcement was even more surprising: Malykhin, while remaining the interim heavyweight champion, was also dropping down to light-heavyweight and challenging the undefeated double champ and promotional kingpin Reinier de Ridder. The result was quick and brutal, as Malykhin bludgeoned de Ridder to a bleakly one-sided first-round knockout. Now that he has another, stable championship, ONE is taking its third swing at the constantly-rescheduled heavyweight championship unification match. Bhullar vs Malykhin has been booked, yet again, for ONE Fight Night 8 on March 24th. Keep your fingers loving crossed. ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs   Reinier de Ridder - 16-1, 2 DefensesThere's a long tradition of B-league hype in mixed martial arts. The hardcore fanbase chafes under both the total ubiquity of the UFC as a product and the way they set thesmelves up as the end-all be-all of the sport. As the B-leagues create dominant champions of their own, the fanbase inevitably rallies behind them as equal to, if not greater than, the UFC's equivalent titleholder, and further, as evidence of other companies having even better talent. And once or twice a generation, they're right! But most of the time, they're not. Fighters who destroy their B-league equivalents will commonly take a step outside their comfort zone and get immediately rolled by reality. Reinier de Ridder, more than any other competitor, was the popular argument for ONE's supremacy over the UFC: An undefeated ultra-grappler with belts at two divisions, one of which happened to be the UFC's permanently embattled light-heavyweight class. The remarkable ease with which he ragdolled and submitted his opponents, and the shaky nature of his UFC peers, led to wide exultation of his skills and regular comments from ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong about his prospects against the best the world had to offer. It was consequently something of a bummer when he fought Anatoly Malykhin, the first opponent in years he didn't have a strength or grappling advantage over, and looked immediately lost when his takedown attempts did nothing. He had no visible striking defense to speak of and was ultimately, and distressingly easily, destroyed. The cycle has played out once again, the latest idol has lost, and now Reinier de Ridder will have to continue defending his sole championship. 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 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. 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 not 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. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. With the death of his 18 year-old sister and fellow ONE competitor Victoria Lee, the future of the entire Lee fighting family is both up in the air and the last possible thing that could matter at this moment in time. For now, they have to grieve. 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 darkness that fills a dying heartIt'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  Jarred Brooks - 20-2 (1), 0 DefensesJarred Brooks dealt with some crap on his way to a title. By 2017 he was one of the most-heralded flyweight prospects in the sport: An undefeated 13-0 multi-champion as an amateur, an undefeated 12-0 as a professional with fights across three separate weight classes, his heavy wrestling-and-grappling grinding style ground most of his opponents to dust. He took the moniker of "The Monkey God" thanks to his unorthodox striking and wrestling entries--when you're not afraid of grappling, you can get creative with the striking. And then he hit the UFC in 2017 and everything kind of went to hell. Three of his four UFC bouts went to split decision: A debut victory against Eric Shelton Brooks probably should've lost, a followup loss against future champion Deiveson Figueiredo Brooks probably should've won, an intervening bout where Brooks was easily dominating Jose Torres only to score the rare MMA own goal and knock himself out after smacking his head on the ground doing a big, showy slam, and a third and final split decision victory over Roberto Sanchez that really, really shouldn't have been split at all. And then the UFC cut him, despite being 2 and 2 and having gone the distance with the biggest new prospect in the division, because the UFC Doesn't Like Flyweights. So Brooks went over to Rizin, where he intended to build his way up as the next big foreign threat to top star Kyoji Horiguchi--and it was over in eleven seconds, after an inadvertant headbutt cut his opponent's eyebrow open and the blood-unfriendly Japanese network called a no-contest. His international comeback was further destroyed by COVID, and Brooks found himself iced for two straight years as he waited for the dust to settle. By November of 2021, he was making his long-delayed ONE debut; by June of 2022, he was 3-0 and the top contender. And then, of course, his title fight got delayed another six months thanks to an injury. On December 3rd, 2022, he finally got his long-belated shot at a major title, and shocking no one, he wrestled the poo poo out of Joshua Pacio for five straight rounds. Four years later than expected, Jarred Brooks has international gold. And because ONE's weight classes don't matter, he immediately called out 135-pound champ Demetrious Johnson. 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. In the wake of her 18 year-old sister Victoria's tragic passing, Angela and the rest of the Lee family have shut down their gym and are focusing on much more important things than fighting.  Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs  Roberto de Souza - 14-2, 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. It was thus of particular interest when the main event for the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin card was announced as Roberto de Souza vs AJ McKee--a test of where Souza ranks with the rest of the world's competition. Unfortunately for him and Rizin, the answer was "under them." He positionally threatened McKee and was able to land some solid strikes in the final round, but was otherwise controlled and lost a decision. Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Kleber Koike Erbst - 31-6-1, 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 São 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. Kleber had the shortest turnaround of all the Rizin talent competing at Bellator x Rizin, and the stiffest competition in the form of the legendary Patrício Pitbull, and that proved to be a bad combination. Erbst was unable to muster any effective striking or grappling and spent fifteen minutes getting calmly picked apart by one of the greatest fighters in the sport. Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Kyoji Horiguchi - 31-5, 0 DefensesKyoji Horiguchi is going through a difficult time in his career. Horiguchi is indisputably one of the 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 them. Trouble is: He's not fighting at flyweight, he's fighting at bantamweight, and it's finally 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. 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 2-3 in said three years and has a Rizin title he's never defended. Nothing best expresses how stuck in the middle he is as his participation on the Bellator x Rizin New Year's Eve special, where he represented Bellator, where he has a record of 1-2, against Rizin, where he has a record of 11-1, in a flyweight bout, which neither company has committed to promoting. He won, and fairly easily, but he remains a fighter without a home. Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs  Seika Izawa - 9-0, 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. Rizin's Superatomweight Grand Prix was both a big coming-out party for Izawa and a series of opportunities to look shockingly mortal: She had a fair bit of trouble with Anastasiya Svetkivska in the semifinals before ultimately submitting her, but her berth in the finals against former rival Si Woo Park proved the toughest fight of her career, ending in a split decision victory she easily could have lost. Seika, in no mood to slow down, has called for a fight with Invicta's atomweight champion Jillian DeCoursey.
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Feb 1, 2023 20:02
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Trillhouse posted:Posting my own: Created the White Power slap league, one of the most disgusting and exploitive "sports" I've ever seen. this was the thing i had originally intended to start the poll with, and then my text file went 'i need to come up with ten examples that aren't power slap,' and then I never actually added power slap, like a dingus; this is now fixed.
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Feb 1, 2023 20:36
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 45: WAIT, WHAT TIME IS IT FEBRUARY 4TH, 2023 FROM THE UFC APEX ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA  hosed UP STARTING TIME WARNING: PRELIMS 7:00 PM PST/10:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 10 PM PST/1 AM EST VIA ESPN+So here's what happened. Towards the end of November, news surfaced that the UFC was targeting their first card back in Seoul, South Korea since the pre-pandemic days, with international superstar "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung headlining. Unfortunately, on December 7th, Jung announced he had dislocated the poo poo out of his shoulder and wouldn't be able to compete. The UFC, uncertain about their ability to fill a stadium without their regional hero, cancelled their not-yet-even-announced travel plans but decided to keep the Korean-appeal card they'd planned intact--along with its original, Korea-friendly broadcast time. And that is how we arrive at this weird Frankenstein's Monster of a card: An American show, airing out of the Apex arena in Vegas, with a card almost entirely populated by non-American fighters except for a main event plucked out of its last-minute scratching two months ago, and its main event will be starting around the time its home state goes to bed. 2023, everyone. It's only going to get weirder from here.  iron turtle, you were done dirty MAIN EVENT: THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS HEAVYWEIGHT: Derrick Lewis (26-10, #7) vs Serghei Spivac (15-3, #12) This fight was originally scheduled to headline the Fight Night on November 19th of last year, but the fight was scratched while its own card was airing after Lewis was hospitalized with stomach issues. Reportedly Lewis checked himself out of the hospital and tried to come back to the arena to fight regardless, but saner heads prevailed and the world just had to make due with UFC Fight Night: Nzechukwu vs Cuțelaba. So who cares that it's February, we still have some Thanksgiving turkey wrapped up in the back of the fridge and we're reheating it whether you like it or not. Neither the circumstances nor analysis of this fight have changed, so I'm joining the UFC and airing a re-run. Here's the breakdown I wrote for the fight: CarlCX posted:Two weeks ago, in recognition of a fight that ultimately wound up not actually happening, I wrote this about the heavyweight division: CO-MAIN EVENT: FINDING THE CEILING LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Da-Un Jung (15-3-1) vs Devin Clark (13-7) Sometimes you test a prospect to see how they rank against the top fifteen of a division and they just don't make it. When they fail, you're left with a choice: Try to rehabilitate the prospect, or extract as much value from them as you can on their way down. This fight is, unmistakably, the UFC sending a one-man team into the deep jungles of the Apex with a singular mission in mind: Save Da-Un Jung. Da-Un Jung, who got the nickname "Sseda" from his trainers at Korean Top Team (it means "Strong," which, IJ have to be honest, is disappointingly normal and non-animal-based for a roster that sports monikers like "Mr. Shark," "Iron Turtle" and "Diadem Spider") was one of the top prospects out of the entirety of Korea until a couple of years ago. Aside from two losses during his rookie year of competition, Jung had rattled off ten straight victories across heavyweight and light-heavyweight alike across South Korea, China and Japan. On one hand, ten wins in a row and a regional championship are difficult under any circumstance. On the other, the competition above 170 pounds gets very, very thin when you get to the regional scene of the Eastern Hemisphere, and when you're eight fights into your professional career and doing battle with the 0-3 Hyun Soo Lee, or the 0-5 welterweight Yuto Nakajima, or a debuting fighter who never competed again known only as Hulk, it's easy to doubt your skills. So when the UFC flew him over in 2019 and he immediately choked out M-1 champion Khadis Ibragimov and beat the stuffing out of Contender Series winner Mike Rodriguez, the world breathed a sigh of relief. Da-Un Jung looks like the kind of light-heavyweight prospect everyone loves: 6'4", defensively sound, technically sensible boxing, quick grappling. The UFC had stars in their eyes at the prospect of a Korean contender in their favorite weight class, and as with so many prospects before him, they booked Jung against their favorite springboard, the at the time 0-4 Sam Alvey. And Sam Alvey did the only thing he does better than losing: Ruining everything. Alvey's leg kicks and footwork outpaced Jung for the first two rounds, and while Jung dropped and wobbled him in the third, Alvey had a fairly clear claim to a decision--but some unusually generous judging handed down a split draw. Sam Alvey got screwed. I take no pleasure in reporting this. But Jung was still, technically, undefeated in the UFC. Management, minding the speedbump, gave him a gentle step up with muscle golem William Knight in his next bout, but after passing that test, Jung scored his best UFC performance yet by meeting a solid prospect in Kennedy Nzechukwu, who at 9-1 had never been knocked out, and crushing him in three minutes with standing elbows. It was a huge victory, it announced him as one of the stiffest knockout threats in the division, and it punched his ticket to a top fifteen matchup. And he got it last July when Dustin Jacoby dropped him for the first knockout loss of his career in, funnily enough, three minutes. Jung and his corner protested an early stoppage, but no one bit. Suddenly South Korea's top prospect, who went five fights in the UFC's premier division without a loss, is fighting on his back foot for the first time in seven years. And that's where Devin Clark comes in. "Brown Bear" has been bouncing around the UFC since mid-2016, giving him a longer tenure than half the male champions in the company, and it's been an eclectic run that's seen him compete as low as middleweight and as high as heavyweight. He's battled jobbers and top contenders, he's dined with saints and sinners, he even won a round against a world champion once. And after that long, winding journey through the waving tides of martial combat, he is a perfectly balanced 7-7 in the UFC. He is so committed to that centralized balance that he has continually fought to protect it: After most of a decade of competition in the biggest combat sports organization on the planet, Devin Clark has somehow managed to never string together more than two consecutive wins or losses. He is the take-a-penny, give-a-penny of facepunching. Which is, quite frankly, a perfect encapsulation of his identity as a fighter, not just for his place in the canon but his style. Devin Clark relies on physicality. He's okay at a distance--his leg kicking game is a little underrated--and he's very good up close, where he can bully people into the pocket, shoot power doubles and beat them up in the clinch. But filling the distance between them is an exercise in wild, swimming hooks and awkward approaches. He's gotten absolutely chewed up in exchanges in the middle distance in a half-dozen fights--even a couple that he won!--because once he's in motion, he plows forward even if it means getting his face punched shut, or diving into a guillotine, or having his liver surgically removed by a left hook. His fights are, most often, pass/fail bullying exams. If he can force someone into the fence, if he can drag them to the ground, if he can bother them with half-aimed haymakers, he can win. In 2018 he almost stopped future top contender Aleksandar Rakić in what would have been by far the best victory of his career, but he couldn't stop himself from wading forward and throwing wildly and it got him backfisted and dropped facefirst to the canvas. That is Devin Clark in a nutshell: Durable, gritty, but too predictable for his own good. That's why the UFC keeps putting him up against the prospects they care about. Ryan Spann, Alonzo Menifield, Azamat Murzakanov; Clark is a fighter they can count on to lose to most of the really good people while carrying enough credibility to boost people they want to market. Da-Un Jung could have fought Marcin Prachnio or Nicolae Negumereanu or Maxim Grishin. But that wouldn't have served the right purposes. And it should work. Clark has trouble with distance and Jung is a distance fighter. His best performances come from sticking out the jab, frustrating people into coming forward and cracking them with his back hand. He's tough to take down, he's tough to control in the clinch and he's a much more dangerous boxer. Clark's durable as hell and his mobility could give Jung fits if he gets the chance to use it, but honestly--I doubt it. Da-Un Jung by decision. MAIN CARD: MEN OF VARYING SIZE HEAVYWEIGHT: Marcin Tybura (23-7, #10) vs Blagoy Ivanov (19-4 (1), #14) I know I regularly say heavyweight fights are going to be bad just by virtue of being at heavyweight, but that would be shortchanging these fighters. This fight is going to be dreadful to watch and they're accomplishing it all on their own. Marcin Tybura is somehow both on the best run of his UFC career and on a skid. The first half of Tybur's UFC tenure was a less than stellar 4-5--it turns out being a big, physical wrestler whose success is almost solely tied to getting people down and pounding on them doesn't work nearly as well when you're fighting Fabrício Werdum or Derrick Lewis--but thanks to the slightest tightening of his standup and some shaky competition, Tybura is 6-1 over the last three years. The only blemish on his record comes from an overmatched performance against Alexander Volkov, but Tybura also got a gift decision in his last fight against Alexandr Romanov, which was near-unanimously scored a draw by media. This is the zero-sum nature of the Marcin Tybura gameplan. If he can drag you to the floor and get on top of you, he'll almost always win. If he can't, he's left clinching you against the cage and hoping to run out the clock before you hit him too much. Blagoy Ivanov is destined to never get his roses. "Baga" has, objectively, had an incredible career. Before Fabrício Werdum made it fashionable, Blagoy Ivanov was ending Fedor's undefeated streak by beating him in Combat Sambo. He was en route to becoming Bellator's heavyweight champion when he was stabbed in the chest during a bar fight, nearly died twice, was in a coma for two months and ultimately lost almost all of his muscle mass; just over a year later he was winning mixed martial arts fights again. He made it to the Bellator tournament finals before taking the first loss of his career, he dominated the World Series of Fighting, and as a UFC heavyweight in his mid-thirties he's defeated a top contender in Tai Tuivasa, taken Derrick Lewis to a split decision and gotten screwed out of another. There is a world where Blagoy Ivanov was a world champion more than a decade ago. Instead, he is a borderline-ranked fighter struggling to stay afloat, and his athleticism has deteriorated enough that his primary offense is clinching. In other words: We have two grapplers, both of whom are almost certainly good enough to not get taken down by the other, both of whom are visibly uncomfortable with prolonged striking exchanges, and both of whom have a Plan B of cage clinching to run out the clock. This is, almost certainly, going to be a very difficult fight to sit through. Blagoy Ivanov by decision, as I believe his clinch game is a bit stronger, but I'm not expecting anything, here.  FEATHERWEIGHT: Doo Ho Choi (14-4) vs Kyle Nelson (13-5)This, on the other hand, should be fun. But I cannot sufficiently stress the 'should,' because no one will know what Doo Ho Choi we're getting until he's in the cage. "The Korean Superboy" Doo Ho Choi was at one point a massively, massively hyped featherweight prospect, a 13-1 wrecking machine with a six-year undefeated streak and a laser beam for a right hand. He had a wrestling and judo background that could theoretically help him deal with grappling challenges, but after three straight UFC victories by effortless first-round knockouts, he really didn't seem to need them. But it was his fight-of-the-year candidate against Cub Swanson, a back-and-forth battle that saw both men repeatedly nearly finishing one another, that made Choi a real name in the mixed martial arts community. Even in finally losing, the world was open to him. And then he got injured and disappeared for more than a year, and got knocked out twice in a row while struggling to schedule his state-mandated military service, and then said service kept him out of action for two years, and then he got injured on the comeback trail and was out of action for another year and a half. In other words: He's Schrodinger's Superboy. He looked like an incredible fighter in 2016, but 2016 was three Presidents ago. Doo Ho Choi's last mixed martial arts fight was more than three years ago. It's not enough to say no one he's beaten is in the UFC anymore: No one he's beaten has been in the UFC for the past six years. The last time Choi was in the cage, Joker was taking the cinematic world by storm. The last time Choi was successfully relevant, George Michael was alive. And that's why the UFC is giving him a tune-up. Kyle "The Monster" Nelson was brought to the UFC in 2018 as a last-minute replacement FOR a last-minute replacement, and like so many before him, he took the deal because it meant a contact with other, better opportunities in the biggest combat sports organization on Earth. Four and a half years later, he's gone 1-4, his career's saving grace a 2019 knockout over the briefly promising but brawling-addicted Polo Reyes. Nelson's defining feature in the UFC is his ability to take punishment, which is, as always, the single worst defining feature any fighter can have. Ironically, Nelson's last appearance was by far the best he's looked in the UFC--a three-round fight with the bigger, scarier Jai Herbert, where Nelson worked behind leg and body kicks and managed to avoid getting dropped or stopped against a legitimate knockout puncher. But he still lost. The UFC is hoping he's going to lose again. On paper, it's a solid bet. Choi's got better boxing, better grappling and more than enough stopping power to put Nelson on his face. Or--he did. Does he still have that now, three years of inactivity later? I have no Earthly idea, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. It's fully feasible Choi looks like he never missed a step and this fight is over in ninety seconds. It's fully feasible that Doo Ho Choi was getting lit up by Jeremy Stephens and Charles Jourdain before his departure and that trend will only worsen after his three years on Monuriki. I'm still picking Doo Ho Choi by TKO, but I'd be lying if I told you it was from an analytical perspective. I just want him to be as good as he promised to be when I was still in my twenties. WELTERWEIGHT: Yusaku Kinoshita (6-1) vs Adam Fugitt (8-3)Yusaku Kinoshita's great flaw is being too in love with hitting people. He's a big-punching welterweight who was on the verge of a shot at the King of Pancrase championship in his native Japan, but passed it up to instead fight on the much more prestigious Dana White's Contender Series, and to be honest, that sentence is factually accurate and it makes me want to cry. Logistically, Kinoshita is a perfect 7-0; his one loss comes from a disqualification in his sole appearance with Rizin, where he destroyed Ryuichiro Sumimura, punched him into near-unconsciousness and finished the job by repeatedly stomping on his head. To be clear, the head-stomping was perfectly fine--but while slamming his entire bodyweight down onto a man's head with his heel he maintained his balance by steadying himself with a grip on the fence and that is just unacceptable. The UFC still hasn't quite figured out what they're doing with Adam Fugitt. He's a regional talent who was barely on the UFC's radar--in ten professional bouts he'd only actually fought one person with a winning record who wasn't a rookie--but he was picked up as a last-minute replacement for major prospect Michael Morales, and he put up a solid fight and at one point even scored a takedown on the seemingly superior grappler, but, uh, it was 1 out of his 8 attempts, and he got knocked down twice in the process before getting stopped in the third. As happens so often, Fugitt is a warm body on the roster to test people the company finds interesting, and the UFC doesn't really have any great plans for him unless he begins trashing their marketable prospects. It's not likely here. Fugitt is gritty and tenacious, but he's also hittable. He spams kicks to the body and gets sniped for them on a regular basis, and against someone who hits as furiously as Kinoshita, that's going to get him caught all over again. Yusaku Kinoshita by KO. PRELIMS: THE ROAD TO UFC STARTS IN ABU DHABI AND ENDS IN LAS VEGAS This is a little different than usual. Last summer the UFC ran a tournament series named Road to UFC intended to scout talent out of the eastern MMA scene. Now, months later, it is coming to an end on this random card in Las Vegas because of scheduling conflicts. Your top four prelims, consequently, are the finals for each of the four Road to UFC brackets: LIGHTWEIGHT FINAL: Anshul Jubli (6-0) vs Jeka Saragih (13-2) It's very likely this is a mismatch. Anshul "King of Lions" Jubli is one of the best MMA prospects India has to offer, the kind of all-around fighter whose broad focus carries the potential for a very, very high ceiling, and his bout against South Korean prospect Kyung Pyo Kim demonstrated this. It also, unfortunately, demonstrated how he hasn't quite seasoned any of those skills specifically enough to be threatening. The striking was dead even, Jubli landed big right hands that didn't seem to carry a great risk of ending the fight, and he ultimately walked away with a very close split decision. Jeka Saragih did not have this problem "Si Tendangan Maut"--The Deadly Kick--is one of the best fighters out of Indonesia, and he showed it by mauling the poo poo out of his two Road to UFC opponents, knocking the first out with a spinning backfist and the second with the internationally accessible Big Right Hand. He came up fighting in the bareknuckle Pencak Dor scene, and his vicious power and surprising suplexes are a testament to just how many people he left laying on his way up. Jubli's much bigger, undefeated, and considerably more well-rounded. He's also most likely getting punched in the head until he falls over. His defense leaves a lot to be desired and Jeka is poised to make him pay for it. Jeka Saragih by knockout. FEATHERWEIGHT FINAL: Zha Yi (22-3) vs Jeong Yeong Lee (9-1)Zha Yi was pegged as the favorite to win this tournament, thanks to his massive experience advantage. As often happens in Chinese MMA, however, that record is a bit of a mirage. 16 of Yi's 22 victories came against people with records that were at best 50/50 and at worst openly deplorable. When it's your 16th professional fight and you're facing a guy who's 0-3-1, the value of your evaluation is specious at best. This played out in the tournament, as Yi's grappling-centric style got him in trouble and forced him to settle for a split decision victory over karateka and former ONE championship titlist Koyomi Matsushima. Jeong Yeong Lee, meanwhile, didn't really get tested for a single second during his two tournament bouts; he pulled off a 36-second armbar from the guard in the first round and followed it with an only marginally longer, 42-second knockout in the second. On one hand: He's clearly got power and grappling chops. On the other: He didn't have to deal with much in the way of adversity, and Zha Yi is, if nothing else, a tough, aggressive fighter who will be happy to get in his face. This is, I believe, destined to become a grappling war. Lee's hands are dangerous and Yi would be wise to avoid them, but Lee's guard game clearly isn't safe either. This is going to be a race to see if Yi can get to back control before Lee can buck him off or threaten him with a submission. That said: Jeong Yeong Lee by TKO. I think Yi's going to have too much trouble keeping Lee down and advancing position, I think the grappling will return to the feet repeatedly, and I think one of the exchanges ends with Yi getting got. BANTAMWEIGHT FINAL: Rinya Nakamura (6-0) vs Toshiomi Kazama (10-2) Welcome to what will almost certainly be a squash match. Both of these fighters are grappler-type pokemon, with Kazama's strength laying in a background in judo and Nakamura's coming from freestyle wrestling, and their results are, uh, drastically different. Kazama is an inexhaustible grappler, but that's because he desperately pursues reckless takedowns and tries as hard as possible to avoid exchanges on the feet, and that lack of discipline shows in his Road to UFC victory (he only needed one, he got a bye in the second round when his opponent missed weight), as he dominated the grappling, but only actually landed two out of thirteen takedown attempts. Rinya Nakamura will engage on the feet, use hooks and front kicks to set up his shots, and hits almost all of them once he picks them out, which is how he tore his first-round opponent's arm off with an Americana and knocked the second out. In some ways, it's destiny--Nakamura's father was Kozo Nakamura, one of the architects of the 1990s Japanese MMA scene. He was raised in the bloodsport. He's been preparing for it his whole life. The real irony is Nakamura's vulnerabilities were also made abundantly clear by his fights. He throws hard, but he leads with his head, his defense is very lax, and his primary method of avoiding strikes is jumping directly backwards. At a weight class as good as bantamweight, that's inevitably going to get him in trouble. But today is not that day. Rinya Nakamura by submission. FLYWEIGHT FINAL: Hyun Sung Park (7-0) vs Seung Guk Choi (6-1)This should be very, very good. Park and Choi are two of the best flyweights in South Korea--Tapology's algorithm even has them ranked #1 and #3, respectively--and while like all flyweights they're good at everything, their applications of skill are very different. Park likes to work behind sharp jabs and a refreshingly defensive guard, hunting, pecking and looking for reversals to sneak his ultra-quick positional passes into--in fight research I watched him reverse a belly-to-belly suplex into back control in midair and it loving ruled--and it works fantastically for him, but leaves openings for opponents to dictate pace. Seung Guk Choi, in a stark and quite frankly disrespectful refutation of his teacher, Chan Sung Jung, moves forward behind those darned hands of the legs, his feet. He whips out kicks to the legs and head with reckless abandon, using them to both keep fighters on their back foot and force them into the cage, which is where his best takedowns come into play. This has also been a wildly successful tactic, but it is almost entirely offensively-oriented and leaves him open to being picked off by counters. Betting odds have picked Park as a solid favorite, but I think this is a pick 'em. Park's technique is more defensively sound than Choi's, but it leaves him open to Choi's offensive spam. Choi's reliance on kicks is thoroughly vulnerable to Park's crisp boxing. I'm siding with Hyun Sung Park by decision but this feels like it could go either way. And now, preliminary programming as usual. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ji Yeon Kim (9-6-2) vs Mandy Böhm (7-2 (1)) Poor, poor Ji Yeon Kim. Kim was on the wrong side of a very close decision against Joselyne Edwards in her last fight and got out-and-out screwed against Priscila Cachoeira right before that. In an adjacent reality, 2022 was Kim's best year in the UFC and a showpiece for her striking-focused attacks; in this one, she's on a four-fight losing streak and almost certainly facing a pink slip if she loses here. Mandy Böhm, too, has had a deeply unfortunate time in the states. She left Germany as one of its best female fighters, became a champion up in Canada's TKO and slid down to the UFC as a late replacement only to have her replacement bout and her following two reschedulings of said bout cancelled, and once she finally got some god damned fights, she was immediately overwhelmed by KSW champion Ariane Lipski and Contender Series winner Victoria Leonardo. Böhm's just visibly had difficulty adjusting to UFC-level competition; her all-around attack gets her outgrappled by stronger wrestlers and outstruck by better strikers. Ji Yeon Kim is, definitively, a better striker. Böhm could smother her with clinch attacks, but Kim's offensive output is more than enough to stifle her. Ji Yeon Kim by decision. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jun Yong Park (15-5) vs Denis Tiuliulin (11-6) Jun Yong Park does not have fights that aren't complete struggles, and it's part of what makes him so memorable. "The Iron Turtle" isn't much of a standup threat--he's got a decent jab, but his gameplan centers entirely around using it to dig into clinch range and drag people to the ground where he can grapple them to death. This has taken him to a 5-2 UFC record, but it also gets him in trouble in virtually every fight he has, even when he ultimately wins anyway. Dennis Tiuliulin occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. He desperately wants to walk his opponents down behind his hands so he can finish them in the pocket, and unsurprisingly, five of his six career losses have come against people who saw this tactic coming and tanked the damage en route to taking Tiuliulin down and overwhelming him on the floor. Jun Yong Park is good at two things: Absorbing punishment and forcing fights to the floor. They made this fight for a reason. Jun Yong Park by submission. FLYWEIGHT: Tatsuro Taira (12-0) vs Jesus Aguilar (8-1)Our opening fight is either going to be a completely one-sided styling-upon or it's going to be really, really fun. Tatsuro Taira is a well-hyped prospect out of Japan, and the UFC clearly sees an investment to be made because they're taking their sweet-rear end time building him, as this will be his third fight in the company and, rather than stepping him up to the shark tank that is flyweight, they're setting him against a debuting Contender Series baby. Jesus Aguilar is a wonderful throwback to the bulldog style that was real, real popular in mid-2000s mixed martial arts meta: Hunched shoulders, tight, high guard, wild, sweeping hooks, power doubles and guillotine chokes, and by god, nothing else is allowable. For him, the violent lunging style is a necessity, as his 62.5" reach gives him the second-shortest range in the entire UFC--and the only fighter shorter is 5'1" women's strawweight Jéssica Andrade. Aguilar has to aggressively close distance or his attacks will never land. But they may not land here at all. We've seen Taira snipe people with straight punches and we've seen Taira use his ground game from both top and bottom to submit people extremely quickly. Aguilar's standup style is made for walking into punches and his aggressive wrestling nearly got him submitted multiple times on the Contender Series. Tatsuro Taira by submission. CarlCX fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Feb 2, 2023 |
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Feb 2, 2023 19:00
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Michael Chandler is 2-3 in the UFC, and those two victories were against Dan Hooker, whose best win was a shaky decision over a retiring Paul Felder, and Tony Ferguson 3/4 of the way through his career collapse, and yet Chandler is the #5 lightweight in the world, has had two title eliminator opportunities, and is now the winner of the Conor McGregor sweepstakes.
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Feb 4, 2023 19:21
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reeg posted:It's because his fights are good  twice the action, half the price
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Feb 4, 2023 19:44
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If the fight doesn't happen until the Fall at earliest it will have been almost four years since that fight, and honestly, if your last ranked win was four years ago and you're on a two-fight losing streak, from a divisional standpoint, I feel like you should be fighting Renato Moicano or Grant Dawson and not the #5 guy perennially on the edge of another title shot. But this fight has everything to do with money and nothing to do with matchmaking anyway, so.
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Feb 4, 2023 20:24
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If you read the fine print the UFC's striking average stats are stupid because they only average significant strike ratios. So Islam can, say, ground Thiago Moises and throw hundreds of punches, but they'll only count the significant strikes and say he had a 66% average.
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Feb 5, 2023 03:37
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 This might be the new worst main card I've seen.
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Feb 5, 2023 08:10
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Previously, in the GDT:CarlCX posted:I'm actually in favor of that point deduction but it's contingent on them taking points for fouls all the loving time, like they should, as opposed to what's going to happen here, which is Chris Tognoni will get bitched out by Dana White and refs will let people get away with fouls for another six months until we start the process again. And now, the conclusion: https://twitter.com/mma_orbit/status/1622159173914959872 Like clockwork.
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Feb 5, 2023 10:39
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Jared Rosholt fought on the card where Doo Ho Choi made his UFC debut. Two weeks beforehand Shogun was knocked out by a skateboard. Johny Hendricks was still the welterweight champion. There was only one women's division. The top-grossing film in America was Dumb & Dumber To.
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Feb 5, 2023 11:33
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"Dana White, angrily clutching a can of Monster Energy© at a post-fight presser, cannot name the UFC lightweight champion" is what shitposting dreams are made of.
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Feb 5, 2023 23:27
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Lucasar posted:I know he got ko'd recently, but I still think of Usman as one of the current top p4p guys. Unless he wins the belt back and has another lengthy reign, which is fully feasible, I think Usman's place in pound-for-pound history is ultimately going to be held back by the UFC's matchmaking. A reign that lasted three and a half years involved only three people, and between the three of them they have exactly three top ten victories during said title reign combined, and they're 1) a washed Tyron Woodley who retired to get murdered by Jake Paul one fight later, 2) a Ben Askren who, somehow, also retired to get murdered by Jake Paul one fight later, and 3) Demian Maia, who rules but was visibly at the end of the line. Usman was obviously one of the best fighters in the history of welterweight during his reign, but he presided over the same period of time as contenders like Leon, Khamzat, Stephen Thompson, Vicente Luque and even non-UFC folks like Yaroslav Amosov, he kept fighting Colby and Jorge instead, and the first time he got matched with a rightful top contender he got his skull kicked off. He's not inherently RESPONSIBLE for the UFC's matchmaking, but it hangs a big weight around his reign's neck.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:13
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Totally, hence theCarlCX posted:he wins the belt back and has another lengthy reign, which is fully feasible, but until he does, it's still this. And while I do obviously favor Usman to win the rematch, before you write the Serra/GSP 2 obituary don't forget Edwards won the first round and had Usman desperately fighting off an RNC for like ninety seconds. Usman SHOULD win, but Edwards is a very, very live dog.
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Feb 6, 2023 08:55
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On the topic of constantly losing, let's check in on how Bellator's big network television debut, anchored by two championships, their biggest beltholder and the retirement of their most famous fighter went! https://twitter.com/lthomasnews/status/1622613999899533316 Well, that seems not great, but on a typical Friday evening CBS is just airing re-runs of their other poo poo, so it's gotta have improved on that, right?  Fedor's retirement fight did 1/3 the viewership of a rerun of S.W.A.T.
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Feb 6, 2023 19:34
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Brut posted:Does it matter for your comparison that it wasn't Friday? This is what I get for posting while half-awake, but hilariously enough, no, not really; CBS's programming for that timeslot on Saturdays is a rerun of 48 Hours followed by a new episode of 48 Hours, which have been doing about 2 and 3 million apiece respectively.
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Feb 6, 2023 20:07
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beep by grandpa posted:I just realized the volk super fight is THIS WEEK after a coworker mentioned it and I haven't heard poo poo about this fight being promoted whatsoever, am I crazy??? I've heard way more about dana's white power and other poo poo (jon jones, conor, etc) than i would like. Nothing about this fight at all. Anyone else??? In the last two weeks there have been five videos on the UFC's youtube channel regarding UFC 284, and they are:
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Feb 6, 2023 23:32
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The 2011 roster is almost certainly the canonically correct answer, but I think there's a surprisingly good argument to be made for mid-2019. Stipe Miocic, Jon Jones, Robert Whittaker, Kamaru Usman, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Max Holloway, Henry Cejudo, Henry Cejudo, Amanda Nunes, Amanda Nunes, Valentina Shevchenko, Zhang Weili. (honorable mention, mid-2017: Stipe Miocic, Jon Jones (or Daniel Cormier if you don't count that stricken-from-the-record reign), your choice of Robert Whittaker or GSP which is a fight I'm still mad we never got, pre-crisis Tyron Woodley, Conor McGregor at the height of his power, Max Holloway, TJ Dillashaw, Demetrious Johnson, Cris Cyborg, Amanda Nunes, but then you hit the skids with Nicco Montaño and try to recover with Rose Namajunas.)
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Feb 7, 2023 00:51
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pet week rules and mullarkey's dog makes me feel bad about picking against him so often Also in the inevitable, Kevin Lee is back in the UFC after a lengthy and notable free agency that included such wonders as "beating 2022 Diego Sanchez by decision at a weight class that doesn't exist" and "nothing."
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Feb 7, 2023 03:11
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On one hand: Prime Cain might actually be the best heavyweight of all time talentwise and he made both Brock and Pride fans incredibly unhappy, and he also knocked Junior dos Santos out with a Diamond Cutter in real life. On the other hand: His injuries were a plague, his prime was wasted on rematches and he almost killed a bunch of people and then shot a guy near my friend's house. I am averaging these out and sticking with Stipe.
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Feb 7, 2023 04:11
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Now that I am done writing (but not editing) this week's card and can catch up with the thread a bit:Marching Powder posted:Retro thread recap: UFC 200 These loving rule and I hope you never stop doing them. I also wish I posted more during them instead of just doing IRC. ilmucche posted:that zingano roll is pretty cool Cat Zingano was good as poo poo and if she hadn't thrown that dumb flying knee I still think she would've beat Rousey. cagliostr0 posted:Aljo is lame as poo poo and he can scramble all over people but he did nothing with it against Yan and just looked bad. If you can spend that long in back mount and not get a finish you aren't a top p4p fighter. Aljamain Sterling has more top ten bantamweight finishes than any other bantamweight champion in history. Dominick Cruz had one top ten finish in his entire UFC career (if you include the WEC, it goes all the way up to two!), Renan Barao had three (four if you want to go back and count Brad Pickett before the UFC started doing rankings, which you should), TJ Dillashaw had two unless you count Cody Garbrandt twice, Cody Garbrandt had two, Henry Cejudo had two, and Petr Yan only actually has one top ten finish in his entire UFC tenure. Aljamain Sterling has five. Including choking out Cory Sandhagen, whom no one else including Yan has been able to finish, in ninety seconds. I will expect an essay about why Aljamain is the pound for pound best bantamweight of all time on my desk in the morning.
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Feb 8, 2023 11:27
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A note to anyone who read this month's schedule: I, obviously, hosed up. I could have sworn that the ESPN schedule had this card on Sunday instead of Saturday when I wrote up the event schedule and its subsequent blurbs midway through January, but clearly, it is not. I'm guessing while exhausted I saw the Australian poster and my brain told me the ESPN schedule page said Sunday when it didn't. I'm sorry for the error. Future fight writers: Do not attempt to make event schedules after putting your dog down. CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 46: THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH FROM THE RAC ARENA IN PERTH, AUSTRALIA PRELIMS 3 PM PST/6 PM EST VIA ESPN | MAIN CARD 7 PM PST/10 PM EST VIA PAY-PER-VIEW Would you believe me if I told you this was, easily, one of the most important cards the UFC has booked in years? Seriously. The biggest champion vs champion match the UFC has promoted in half a decade, the crowning of a new featherweight champion outside of the Aldo/Holloway/Volkanovski triumvirate for the first time since 2015 and the attempted launching of an important welterweight contender! And almost no one is talking about it, because the UFC, having truly abdicated any form of responsibility, has done almost no promotion for it. At the last post-fight press conference Dana White remembered to repeatedly plug his slapfighting league, but he could not remember the UFC Lightweight World Champion's name. Some of the brightest stars in the sport are shining during one of its darkest times. This is the incredibly rare chance to watch two of them crash into each other. Don't ever miss out on enjoying the stars just because no one else is looking up.  this card was going to have robert whittaker on it, god dammit MAIN EVENT: THE STUDY OF SEA CHANGE LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Islam Makhachev (23-1, Champion) vs Alexander Volkanovski (25-1, NR at Lightweight, Champion at Featherweight)The simplicity of one-must-fall combat is the greatest strength of mixed martial arts. At its original, emotional core, before the term "mixed martial arts" was invented, the sport--whether you called it vale tudo, no holds barred, or ultimate fighting, the namesake that still anchors the UFC today--was the direct art of putting two people in a cage and watching what happened. Fights were won when opponents submitted or were rendered unconscious, and there were very, very few restrictions on the hows and whys. Martial artists who'd trained in highly technical arts for decades emerged victorious because they squeezed their opponent's crotch until they gave up. Igor Vovchanchyn, one of the sport's toughest stars, once submitted because Mikhail Ilyukhin was burying his chin in his eyeball. It was wild, and brutal, and it could never last--should never have lasted. Whatever joy there is in the purity of combat, the necessities of regulation outstrip it. Beneficial abstractions--rounds, fouls, weight divisions, rankings, even the often-confounding world of judges all serve to create a better sport. Vale Tudo is fascinating in its brutality; Mixed Martial Arts is safer, more accessible, and, counterintuitively, more competitive. When fighters can focus on honing their craft against a field of equals rather than the possibility of fighting a 6'11" kickboxer at a 100-pound weight disadvantage, the fighter, audience and sport all benefit. And yet, however true any of this is, there remains a certain yearning. The introduction of rules creates the desire to see them broken. Competitors look at opponents a ten-pound fence away and think yeah, but I could win. The same way MMA exists as a simulation of a real fight, a theoretical killing, the simple act of a fighter crossing the boundaries of a weight class exists as a simulation of the old ways. In one small moment, in one small way, the abstractions are peeled back and we once again attempt to ask the question that defined an entire sport: Who's really better? I've written reams of complaints about the UFC's gradual cheapening of its matchmaking and even its championships, and this is no different--in the first twenty years of the existence of UFC weight divisions there were exactly two champion vs champion bouts and in the post-McGregor era of the last four and a half years there have been five--but the fights are, without fail, fascinating. Sometimes the reality of weight classes sinks in and you see Georges St-Pierre battering BJ Penn or Jan Błachowicz big brothering Israel Adesanya and sometimes a Conor McGregor or Amanda Nunes annihilates the bigger champion so effortlessly you wonder why they were ever a weight class down in the first place. There is no greater peak in sports than the best fighting the best. And this fight is, unequivocally, two of the absolute best. There were still whispers of doubt about Islam Makhachev when he stepped into the cage against Charles Oliveira for the lightweight championship last year. For all of his hype, for the incredible wrestling and grappling he'd displayed in his career, he was fighting the best lightweight in the world after one top ten bout. It wasn't for lack of trying, he'd been scheduled against top dogs like Rafael dos Anjos and Beneil Dariush, but injuries kept scratching his chances to prove himself. His technique looked nigh-unto unbeatable in his fights leading up to the title bout, but there's a world of difference between looking good against Kajan Johnson and looking good against the best lightweight on the planet, and in a sport as rooted in experiential example as mixed martial arts, it was easy to foresee Makhachev running into trouble for just the second time in a twenty-three fight career. Easy, that is, for anyone but the people who knew him. His training partners in Dagestan, his time-share comrades at the American Kickboxing Academy, his previous opponents: Not a single one of them doubted that Makhachev would not only win, but win decisively and easily. They had all the example they needed. The fanbase, which is often extremely prickly about seemingly unearned opportunities, was almost entirely just fine with Islam jumping straight to the belt. Everyone shared the feeling that for all he lacked in ranked experience, Islam had proven himself by sheer skill alone. And they were absolutely right. Against the toughest threat to his career, a man who'd faced down, survived and defeated some of the toughest competitors in the sport, Makhachev turned out the best performance of his life. He outpaced, outpunched, outgrappled and ultimately submitted the UFC's most prolific submission artist of all time. Having fought no contenders, having had only one championship bout, his display of skill was so overwhelming the discourse immediately turned to wondering if there was anyone at lightweight who could even challenge Islam Makhachev. As it turned out, we needed to search one weight class lower. Alexander Volkanovski has had a very different path through combat sports. Islam Makhachev was a betting favorite in every fight of his career: Alexander Volkanovski was an underdog for his entire run through the top ten. In some markets, Volkanovski's first title defense--against a champion he'd just soundly beat--was an underdog affair. When he was booked into a trilogy match against that champion he'd now beaten twice, he was only barely a favorite. He's the most dominant male champion the UFC has to offer, he's entering his fourth calendar year as the best featherweight in the world and his tenth straight year without a defeat. Where most champions begin to decline and suffer after a few years on top 2022 was the best year of his career, a twelve-month period of such total domination that the entire world began wondering just how serious he could be at lightweight. And now he's doing it. And he's a +300 underdog. It's not hard to understand why. We've seen Alexander Volkanovski in trouble on multiple occasions. Chad Mendes and Max Holloway stung him on the feet, Darren Elkins took him down, Brian Ortega was centimeters away from strangling him. Against a nearly-flawless fighter like Islam, particularly given his proclivity for throwing every single person he faces on their back and submitting them, it's hard not to find concerns in his history. But those concerns belie Volkanovski's greatest strength. He's laden with talent--his jab is an exceptionally accurate piston, his boxing is as vicious as it is defensively sound, his leg kicks are severely underrated, his wrestling is rock-solid and his cardio is the best in the business--but his greatest talent is his ability to adjust and simply not lose. He'll get wobbled only to hit back even harder, he'll nearly get submitted and be vengefully punching his attacker's face in seconds later. He's proven, time and time again, that he's the best featherweight on the planet. But he's also the shortest featherweight in the UFC. And this is the kind of fight where that starts to matter. The last time Volkanovski had to face a true wrestling threat it was Chad Mendes, the only wrestler in the division his size, and that still saw Volkanovski on his back three times. He got up--just as he did against Ortega--but inarguably, none of them have the kind of crushing top game Islam does. The same way that certain simplicity I spoke about separates the weight classes, it speaks to the intractable certainty that a bigger, stronger wrestler is a bigger, harder problem to solve. And yet that, too, is an oversimplification. Islam isn't the biggest opponent Volkanovki's fought in the UFC; Max Holloway is. Islam doesn't have the complete size advantage; despite giving up almost half a foot in height Volkanovski has a slight reach advantage, because the human body is silly. Chad Mendes outwrestled Volkanovski; that was more than four years ago, and the only man to take him down since got beaten so brutally for his efforts that it took six months just to recover from the damage. Islam Makhachev should win this fight. It is my responsibility to tell you, as someone who at least pretends to have some idea how MMA works, that the statistically probable outcome is an anticlimactic wrestlefest where Makhachev turns Volkanovski into a pretzel as yet another reminder that weight classes exist for a reason. But Volkanovski's get-up game is continually shocking. Islam Makhachev should win this fight. He's a larger striker with powerful hooks and no fear of takedowns keeping him from using them. But I have seen Volkanovski's timing turn from good to preternatural, and I have seen him study fighters so thoroughly he was able to shut down the sport's best boxer without breaking a sweat. Islam Makhachev should win this fight. The first two rounds are going to be very, very scary, but his output lowers after that opening rush. If he cannot stop Volkanovski in the first ten minutes, the back half of the fight could become very, very problematic. Islam Makhachev should win this fight. Alexander Volkanovski by TKO. CO-MAIN EVENT: STUMBLING TOWARDS GLORY INTERIM FEATHERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Yair Rodríguez (14-3 (1), #2) vs Josh Emmett (18-2, #5) It'd be impossible for this fight not to be overshadowed by the main event, but in some ways it's even more unfair that this fight is overshadowed by the way both fighters got to it. Yair Rodríguez has been one of the UFC's most interesting fighters for just shy of a decade. His victory on The Ultimate Fighter Latin America immediately marked him as one of the sport's eclectic stylists, a striker whose primary martial background came from Taekwondo, leading to a striking method no one shy of Stephen Thompson could emulate: A stance that bounced fluidly between squared-up kickboxing orthodoxy and sideways martial arts traditionalism, enabling him to throw strikes from angles no one saw coming and kicks at angles no one had seen before at all. When he dropped Andre Fili with a jumping switch kick straight from the bowels of Tekken the UFC started pushing him to the moon. He got the first main events of his career against fan favorites Alex Caceres and (the horribly outmatched) BJ Penn, and suffered the first loss of his UFC tenure in a gutsy peformance against a former champion in Frankie Edgar. And then a funny thing happened: They fired him. They wanted him to fight Zabit Magomedsheripov, he didn't like their terms, and Dana White got to revisit his favorite chestnut, telling reporters that one of the best martial artists on the planet was a coward too afraid to fight real competition. A month later Yair was back on the roster, the two sides having worked out their differences and returned to pretending nothing was wrong, but Zabit's own injuries kept the fight from ever happening. Yair would, instead, fight Chan-sung Jung and knock him out with one of the most ridiculously improbable strikes ever thrown in any combat sport: An upside-down, no-look elbow-uppercut with two seconds left in a twenty-five minute fight. It was a viral, starmaking performance. And then he spent an entire year dealing with Jeremy Stephens, after months of scheduling problems and an errant eyepoke forced a rematch that Yair won easily. And then he was suspended by USADA for half a year because he failed to update his address in their smartphone app. And then his return was pushed back another six months because Max Holloway got injured. Three years! After scoring one of the most incredible knockouts in the history of the sport it took three years to get his career back on track, between Max Holloway's dumb injuries and USADA's dumb phone app and the dumb totality of Jeremy Stephens' existence. Holloway proceeded to hand Yair just his second loss, but it was a match so competitive that Holloway, the best boxer in the business, was forced to begin taking Yair down to avoid getting a shin upside the head. Yair's stock rose even in defeat, and a top contender match with returning titlist Brian Ortega made all of the sense in the world. It was, once again, the chance to launch Yair into the championship picture. And then Ortega's shoulder popped out of its socket in the first round. Josh Emmett had a much more traditional path to the UFC, which is fitting, as he's a much more traditional fighter. He broke out in the Sacramento fight scene of 2013 as a living avatar of the beachhouse Urijah Faber built, Team Alpha Male, carrying every aspect of their style into his bouts. High guard, big hands, big wrestling, big guillotines, not a lot of kicks. It fit him perfectly. Despite being the smaller man in every fight he was in at 5'6", Emmett crushed everyone on the regional scene, took a regional championship, and within a year of his inevitable UFC pickup was 2-0 in the organization and a perfect 10-0 overall. The world was his oyster. And then future alleged multiple-manslaughterer Desmond Green outpunched and outwrestled him and ended his undefeated streak on a split decision. Everyone loses eventually. Emmett--who had since embraced the unofficial nickname "The Fighting Falmer" thanks to his resemblance to the deformed cave elves of Skyrim--didn't even take time off. He had a championship to win. He was back in the gym a week later and back in the cage six months later, warding off a tough prospect in Felipe Arantes, taking the big ask of jumping into a top-three fight as a last-minute replacement, and beating the brakes off former titlist and perennial contender Ricardo Lamas in the process. Josh Emmett was in the top five and his dreams were coming true. And then he got knocked out by, of all people, Jeremy Stephens, who would never win a UFC fight again. Emmett only fell two places in the rankings, but in practice, he went all the day down the ladder. It would be four more fights before the topic of contendership was so much as raised again. In June of 2022, Emmett got his first main event since the loss to Stephens four and a half years prior: A showdown with fan favorite Calvin Kattar. It wasn't exactly a title eliminator, but it wasn't too far off--the whole world was waiting to see what happened with Volkanovski/Holloway 3 the next month before the title picture could even begin to make sense. And then Josh Emmett--won! Sort of. It was an extremely close fight, the kind of bout that either fighter could realistically lay claim to winning. The official and media scorecards were both split. Josh Emmett winning the fight was not the problem. The problem was Josh Emmett's victory hinged on notoriously bad judge Chris Lee somehow awarding him a round in which he was dropped once, wobbled twice, had his entire face broken open, and was ultimately outstruck 2:1. It was an impossible card, and it was the most important of Josh Emmett's life. And thus, we're here. Both Yair Rodríguez and Josh Emmett are incredible fighters, indisputably two of the best in the world. Both men deserve to be in the conversation for championship contention. Both men took such circuitous and uncertain roads to get here, and are only now getting this interim championship opportunity because the undisputed champion is challenging a weight class up, that it inevitably diminishes them whether it's fair or not. And make no mistake: It's not. This is a great match between two evenly-matched competitors. Yair unquestionably has the advantage on the feet, but his takedown defense is a weakness Emmett can ruthlessly exploit. Emmett overcommits on strikes and gets cracked upside the head for it on a very regular basis, and a fighter like Yair who can connect a shin to his forehead within a second could easily destroy him. This is, like so many fights, a question of who is most likely to make a mistake. Yair has a solid bottom game, but it's not likely to threaten Emmett, and having to use it too often will cost him a decision. Emmett's faith in his hands lets him land devastating power punches, but every exchange he allows is a liability. Unless one of these men pitches a perfect game, the fight will be decided by who loses focus. Josh Emmett by decision. Yair's striking is a world beyond Josh's, but his pacing isn't, and while he was able to push very impressively against Max Holloway, he also got himself taken down and controlled every time he gained momentum. Josh Emmett is a fantastic pressure fighter and a much, much better wrestler. Unless he gets too open and loose and allows Yair to potshot him to death, he should be able to grind him out. And then the main event will determine what on Earth happens next. MAIN CARD: ALL MY ROWDY FRIENDS WELTERWEIGHT: Randy Brown (16-4) vs Jack Della Maddalena (13-2)It's violence time, baby. Until last year, Randy "Rudeboy" Brown was a fighter perennially on the cusp of prospect status, a 6'3" knockout striker with powerful hands, a murderous clinch game and submission chops to be a persistent threat on the ground. What he lacked was consistent defense. He could stop anyone in the division given a chance, but those chances tended to come because of his aggression, and that aggression meant for the first five years of his UFC career he couldn't string more than two victories together at a time without getting outwrestled, or outboxed, or, somehow, knocked out by hammerfists from the bottom position, which is still an incredible feat of physics. But he's won four fights in a row since the beginning of 2021, and is only now, finally, being considered as a potential contender--but three of those four victories came against people who were cut from the UFC in short order. Jack Della Maddalena might never get cut. Della is the precise thing Dana White's Contender Series was built to find: An international talent with a no-nonsense attitude towards combat sports who cannot, and will not, ever stop punching people. He made his UFC debut in 2022 and went 3-0 in just under eleven months, not just winning but knocking every single opponent dead in one round. Slip counters, atomizing punches to the liver, perfectly fluid boxing combinations; in his last bout he met Danny Roberts, a man who once took power punches from Mike Perry for three rounds without falling, and dropped him twice in three minutes. Even in his brief appearances he's visibly improved, having gone from leading with his head to approaching behind a high guard and picking spots to lower his defenses. In terms of pure, simple offense, he might be the scariest striker in the welterweight division. In other words: Brown's gotta wrestle. Despite having 4" of height, 5" of reach and knockout power all his own, Brown is at a distinct disadvantage striking at range in this fight. His wrestling and his ability to force Maddalena to fight him in the clinch are his best chances for success here; forcing Maddalena to expend energy fighting takedowns and dealing with clinch strikes will lower his speed, and that's Brown's best chance of finding openings for offense. But he's gotta get close to do it, and with the way Brown tends to get cracked in almost every fight, I don't think he'll get the chances he needs. Jack Della Maddalena by TKO. HEAVYWEIGHT: Justin Tafa (5-3) vs Parker Porter (13-7) You know, the best thing about heavyweight fights is how much easier, comparatively, it is to get picked up as a heavyweight in mixed martial arts. We just discussed multiple fighters who struggled through dozens of fights to get anywhere. Justin Tafa was an Australian heavyweight champion in his second fight and a UFC fighter in his fourth. Hell, he was supposed to be fighting alongside his brother Junior Tafa tonight--who is, also, 3-0--but injuries forced him out. It's heavyweight, man. Did you kickbox any? Can you hit people? You'll be fine. Come on in. Justin Tafa is 2-3 in the UFC and he's on the main card of a goddamn pay-per-view, don't worry about it. It's a head trauma party. And your party host is Parker Porter! Who could ask for more. Porter is 3-2 in the UFC, but two-thirds of those victories came against my personal nemesis Chase Sherman and Alan Baudot, a top-ballot contender for the worst UFC heavyweight of the twenty-first century. If Justin Tafa is defined by his kickboxing, Parker Porter's sphere of influence is the fine art of moving forward. His punches aren't great, his kicks rarely rise above the knee and his takedowns are middling at best, but they work more often than they don't, simply because he can do all three of those things while exerting forward pressure on an opponent, and by god, that's more than most heavyweights. This is an Australian card and Tafa is a New Zealand heavyweight, so the promotional intentions here are very clear. Consequently: Parker Porter by decision. Tafa's been stifled by fighters like Josh Parisian who can push through his kicks and take his space away, and unless he can get his feet on Porter's head before he closes range, he's in danger of falling into that trap again. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Jimmy Crute (12-3, #12) vs Alonzo Menifield (13-3) Jimmy Crute was supposed to be a thing. A tall Australian fighter with multiple generations of boxing in his blood, a childhood history in martial arts and the personal tutelage of kickboxing legend Sam Greco, Crute was seen as a slam-dunk pickup for the UFC, a sure prospect with championship potential. And now he's fighting not to drop three in a row. Crute made it to 2020 with an 12-1 record, his only blemish a submission loss to the hot-and-cold grappling of Misha Cirkunov, but the late pandemic era has not been kind: He took the first (technical) knockout loss of his career when he broke his ankle trying to get away from Anthony Smith's jab, and eight months later, his injury comeback was ended by current champion Jamahal Hill knocking him cold in under a minute. "Atomic" Alonzo Menifield's last couple fights were much more successful, but also much weirder. A devotee of the most holy of all martial arts, American Football, Menifield turned to mixed martial arts to pursue more fun and innovative ways to harm people, and it was going quite well for him right up until Devin Clark and Ovince Saint Preux fed him back-to-back losses in 2020. The UFC hasn't really known what to do with Menifield in the subsequent years, and on June 4, 2022, they unintentionally found the funniest possible answer: Matching him against Askar Mozharov, a hot new 25-7 knockout machine out of the Ukrainian fight scene. And then people dug and realized he was actually 21-12. And then people dug more, and it turned out they were wrong and he was 19-12. And then Tapology chimed in, and discovered he was 17-13 and may have fought under a different name to mask further losses. Having somehow lied his way into the UFC, Mozharov won the grand prize: Getting loving obliterated on international television by Actual Professional Fighter Alonzo Menifield, who destroyed him in one round. The UFC released Mozharov immediately, which he immediately took to social media to deny, insisting that he had chosen to retire from mixed martial arts. Alonzo Menifield shrugged and proceeded to destroy Misha Cirkunov four months later. This fight is, by necessity, a statement on Jimmy Crute's future in the sport. He's two fights in the hole, one of them involved a violent injury and the other his first true knockout loss, and he stayed away from the sport for almost a year and a half afterward. Crute has the tools to win this fight--he's bigger, he hits just as hard, and his grappling is tricky enough to give Menifield fits. What Crute looks like coming back from his time in the darkness is the big question mark. If he's recovered and he's learned lessons about his defense, he should be able to outfight Menifield. If not, there are visible, gaping holes for Menifield to drive a haymaker through. But I'm siding with faith. Jimmy Crute by TKO. PRELIMS: NO MULLARKEY LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Tyson Pedro (9-3) vs Modestas Bukauskas (13-5) Oh, boy. We're in aggressively silly territory, here. Tyson Pedro disappeared from the sport after Shogun Rua felled him in 2018--the last person Shogun ever finished, canonically--and the world didn't really notice, as having lost three of his last four fights, his spotlight had dimmed considerably. His big combat sports comeback launched in 2022, and he's not just 2-0 since his return, he's 2-0 with two first round knockouts, which is great! Except they were over Ike Villanueva and Harry Hunsucker, who combine for a truly impressive 1-9 record under the UFC's banner. Modestas Bukauskas was a rising star when he joined the UFC in 2020, but he very quickly went 1-3 and got cut--somewhat rudely, right after Khalil Rountree kicked his goddamn kneecap in half in one of the most grotesque knockout finishes of 2021. Bukauskas went back to Britain, recaptured the Cage Warriors title in just two fights, and now the UFC has come calling to see how his leg's feeling. I have never been a Tyson Pedro believer. Even in his comeback fight against Ike Villanueva, one of the biggest gimme fights in the sport, he managed to win only after drilling him with so many groin shots Villanueva abandoned all strategy in favor of charging at him like Bald loving Bull. Bukauskas and his bionic leg looked solid in his return to Cage Warriors, and I am choosing to believe that his skills will still be a touch too much for Tyson. Modestas Bukauskas by decision. FEATHERWEIGHT: Joshua Culibao (10-1-1) vs Melsik Baghdasaryan (7-1)Welcome to what will very likely be your fight of the night. Joshua Culibao is another local boy, a former featherweight champion in three different Australian promotions, a man who was a beautiful 1-1-1 in the UFC until he had the ruthless temerity to dare to win and upset the balance, and so specifically an adherent of the standup arts that he is a perfect 0 for 11 takedown attempts in the company, the universe having rejected his attempts to make friends with wrestling. Melsik "The Gun" Baghdasaryan has had a rocky time in the UFC, not for his performances but for the difficulties of booking him; he's 2-0 in the company, not including his contract-winning performance on the Contender Series, but his last fight was in 2021 and was thrown into chaos with a last-minute replacement who then proceeded to miss weight and, as a tribute to the blown weight, most of his attempted strikes, and Melsik's been on ice for the subsequent 14 months thanks to a persistent hand injury. Both of these men are in love with the finer points of Standing and Banging, but where Melsik likes to kick, throw combinations and orbit, Culibao's a fan of wading in behind leg kicks, uncorking right hands, and resetting to begin the process all over again. Melsik's the much more consistently active striker, and I haven't picked enough anti-hometown fights yet, so Melsik Baghdasaryan by decision. FLYWEIGHT: Kleydson Rodrigues (7-2) vs Shannon Ross (13-6) I wrote a lengthy love letter to Jungle Fight champion Kleydson Rodrigues when he made his UFC debut last May, citing his ridiculously versatile kicking game and the quick, scrambling grappling he employed when need be. He proceeded to lose a split decision to C.J. Vergara, one of the most-disputed decisions of the year, after getting outgrappled for the entire second round. This, presumably, is why the UFC is softening things up for him. "The Turkish Delight" Shannon Ross is, despite the nickname, another Australian local, and he actually lost his bid for a UFC contract after getting knocked out on the Contender Series this past Summer, but his Fighting Spirit impressed the Emperor, so Dana shortlisted him for a future look. One need for local stars later, and Ross is getting his shot at the big time. ...and, uh, Kleydson Rodrigues by TKO. Sorry, man. Ross is a tough, scrappy motherfucker, but Kleydson is much faster and kicks much harder, and unlike C.J. Vergara, Ross is a fellow brawler and deeply unlikely to try to take him down. Kicks to the ribs, kicks to the head, go home and be a family man. LIGHTWEIGHT: Jamie Mullarkey (15-5) vs Francisco Prado (11-0)And now, the real main event. Jamie Mullarkey is 3-3 in the UFC, which means 33% of his fights have won Fight of the Night, because Jamie Mullarkey does not know how to do anything but push. Sometimes it's wild brawling, sometimes it's throwing fifteen takedown attempts just to land three, but whatever he's doing, he's going to keep loving doing it until either he or his opponent stops moving. Francisco Prado, his non-union Argentinian equivalent, is coming out of the vaunted halls of Samurai Fight House, the promotion that keeps on giving. SFH became an unofficial feeder league for the UFC by a) booking boxing-style squash matches and b) booking fighters who will swing like the dickens and to hell with everything else. Prado's all aggression, all the time; sometimes that means angrily pursuing Von Flue chokes or dump takedowns, but mostly, it manifests in the form of spamming the poo poo out of hooks. These two are, in all likelihood, going to beat the piss out of each other. And in a piss-beating contest, I'm favoring Jamie Mullarkey by TKO. He's bigger, he's stronger, and more importantly, he's fought much better piss-beaters. Getting punched by Jamie Mullarkey is very different than getting punched by 4-13 Fernando "El Tito" Silveira. EARLY PRELIMS: A SHOW WITH EVERYTHING PLUS ELVES BRENNER FEATHERWEIGHT: Jack Jenkins (10-2) vs Don Shainis (12-4) Back in October, "Shameless" Don Shainis, while referring to himself in the third person, predicted that he would not only win his UFC debut against the #12-ranked Sodiq Yusuff, but would crush him and announce himself to the world. Yusuff, who was very, very mad about losing the high-profile match with Giga Chikadze he was supposed to have, busted Shainis up with knees, flipped him over by his neck and choked him out in thirty seconds. And that's why Shainis--who also fought the man who constantly cameos in my writeups, the 16-106 super-jobber Jay Ellis--is matched up against "Phar" Jack Jenkins, an Australian standout who won a Contender Series contract this past September. Shainis likes to brawl, but Jenkins is a thoughtful counterstriker with a quick, popping jab, painful leg kicks, and a desire to stay off the mat as much as possible. And that's probably enough. Shainis likes to get overaggressive and it cost him once. Jenkins isn't the type to snatch a guillotine on him, but he's very good at springing up to his feet and punishing takedown attempts with knees and kicks on the way in. I'm not sure that he'll stop him, but I think he'll do more than enough to win. Jack Jenkins by decision. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Loma Lookboonmee (7-3) vs Elise Reed (6-2) Nothing Elise Reed does in this fight matters. I could tell you about my suspicions that her tentative speed and poor reactions to aggression will hurt her against Loma's fluid assaults, but truthfully? That doesn't matter either. Loma Lookboonmee has been fighting for five years, and those five years have established a simple, universal pattern: Two wins, one loss. Every time, without fail. She will defeat two women only to be felled by a third, and the universe will send the Reapers to take her and return her to the dark, unknowable space between spaces, and after time has readjusted itself she arises, better than before, to reap the wheat and return order to the universe. Fourteen months ago, Loma was outwrestled by Lupita Godinez. Five months ago, Loma returned and dominated Denise Gomes. This is the fourth galactic cycle. The harvest cannot be stopped. The spirits must be consumed. Loma Lookboonme by decision. FEATHERWEIGHT: Blake Bilder (7-0-1) vs Shane Young (13-6) The house must feed. "El Animal" Blake Bilder is yet another shiny new Contender Series toy, a featherweight champion out of New Jersey's Cage Fury Fighting Championships who, like so many before him, traded in his belt to Uncle Dana for a shot at one of those sweet $12k/$12k contracts. "Smokin" Shane Young was actually Alexander Volkanovski's third UFC opponent, all the way back in November of 2017. He, shockingly, did not win. He eventually racked up two UFC victories by the old-fashioned 'fighting people who are about to be cut from the roster' method, but followed it with two consecutive losses, and now he is positioned not as a fighter, but as fodder for the great machine. It's a more interesting match than most of these gimme fights, though. Bilder's victories come far more from his grappling than his striking, and Young's victories come from walking his opponents down and peppering them with punches and kicks until they break. If Bilder can't assert his own rhythm in this fight, it's very feasible Young could out-touch him. Still: Blake Bilder by submission. FEATHERWEIGHT: Zubaira Tukhugov (20-5-1) vs Elves Brenner (13-3) Zubaira Tukhugov cannot catch a loving break, but unfortunately, most of his misses are his own fault. Tukhugov has actually been signed to the UFC since the start of 2014, but in nine years of competition he's only managed eight fights--and that's largely because in that same timeframe he's had eight other fights pulled. He would get injured, he would be forced to withdraw thanks to COVID, he would get yanked at the last minute after botching his weight cut. In 2016 he tested positive for ostarine, missed two years, came back and promptly got suspended for another year thanks to his teammate Khabib jumping on a man's head and causing all hell to break loose. He's an extremely solid fighter with extremely solid striking and grappling, but he cannot stay healthy and active for the god damned life of him. Even here, he was supposed to battle lightweight standout Joel Alvarez, but one late-term pullout later and he's stuck with "Seen Any" Elves Brenner, a 16-fight veteran whose last bout was against guys with records like 3-1 and 7-5 in mostly-empty amphitheaters with maybe two dozen spectators and some very bored ring girls. Zubaira Tukhugov by decision. Elves Brenner seems very capable, but that capability comes from fighting regional journeymen. Every real test he's had in the last several years, he has failed. Zubaira Tukhugov is too big a test. CarlCX fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 20:09
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Shumagorath posted:
Just to be clear so I'm not committing Forums Fraud, the sad dog times were last month, hence the messed up event schedule at the start of February. The writeup I actually forced out through it was Teixeira/Hill, which is why it was a little more on the overly analytical side and less on the funny side. I just didn't really wanna talk about it at the time. But thanks, y'all. Picks Queen Rosie loved this place, not because she knew what it was or what I was making her choose between, but because it meant she got shitloads of treats. Her understudy will one day take over her work.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:29
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 What up, sluts. You know what's awesome? Fighting. Hitting people in the head. Confronting your problems straight on, like a fuckin' man, except women can do it now too I guess whatever. Confrontation! Not like those internet losers. But you know what's not awesome? Being mean to me on the internet. It's like super hosed up that people think it's my fault my wife made me hit her, which was totally wrong, but also, gently caress you, you know? There's no excuse for what I did, but it was fine, and if you're talking about it instead of My Dana White's Power Slap Slap-Per-View Slapspecial you're hurting the fighters, which makes you the real abuser, and abuse is never okay unless Conor does it in which case I have no comment.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:13
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MassRafTer posted:Art responds that he didn't watch UFC 9 and stopped watching UFC because there were too many rules getting in the way. I was sad to know that Art would probably never get to see Mark Coleman. He got to see Tank Abbott and Dan Severn, so at least he got out while the getting was good. The contracts, like everything related to UFC contracts, are loving disgusting.
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Feb 10, 2023 18:06
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Jose Aldo's boxing debut was tonight, and it is notable for four things: 1) Aldo got two belts from his first professional fight https://twitter.com/guicruzzz/status/1624216474893049859 2) Aldo could not actually hurt an 0-3 guy who hadn't fought in three years and fought all his bouts at 125-130, where he was knocked out by a guy who is 5'4" 3) Aldo did, however, give him a full on uppercut to the balls that was briefly in jeopardy of stopping the fight 4) The professionalism of the very real, very legitimate Shooto Boxing Brazil 
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Feb 11, 2023 03:52
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Previously, on fight previews, including my apparently boning up the weight class:CarlCX posted:FEATHERWEIGHT: Zubaira Tukhugov (20-5-1) vs Elves Brenner (13-3) CarlCX posted:he would get yanked at the last minute after botching his weight cut And now, the conclusion: https://twitter.com/MMAFighting/status/1624207498549899270
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Feb 11, 2023 05:16
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:P.S. Carl your pick writeup is fantastic. Are you getting paid to write? You should be getting paid Thank you very much. I am getting a bit from the people wonderful enough to have substack subs, but no one has yet barged through my door to pay me to write professionally about Dana White's cocaine habits and why the sport I love is bad. But I am barging through your doors to tell you that the UFC 284 GDT is up and you should all post in it.
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Feb 11, 2023 23:05
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Marching Powder posted:Retro thread recap: UFC 200 - Part 2 This was fun as gently caress and thank you for doing it. As chaotic and ill-informed as the threads were, I absolutely miss MMA being hot enough that there were people who knew absolutely nothing about it posting about it anyway. We're almost all crusty veterans now. COPE 27 posted:I think most fans just don't understand what "effective grappling" is or that it's weighted equally to striking. I genuinely think this is becoming a big problem in MMA right now. The rules were changed to deemphasize scoring positional control in favor of damage (which I don't feel great about because it seems much more about promotional pressure for stand and bang than the health of the sport but it's already done so whatever), but the way the new rules were written, and the way they are being interpreted by the commentary teams and promoters who drive fan opinion, are all contributing to a sense that effective grappling ONLY matters if you're finishing the fight or doing damage. We're barely a week removed from a fight in Caldwell/Mikhailov where commentary was openly wondering if Darrion Caldwell holding back control and repeatedly threatening rear naked chokes was going to be enough to win a round when Nikita Mikhailov was landing hammerfists while in back control, and they were actually right, which is insane. It is at this point arguable that effective grappling ISN'T weighted equally to striking anymore, and that is a loving issue.
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Feb 13, 2023 00:40
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Digital Jedi posted:Yea 300 would be May if they kept it at 1 per month which seems likely. This past July. 276 was Adesanya/Cannonier on the 2nd and 277 was Pena/Nunes 2 on the 30th.
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Feb 13, 2023 06:02
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Josuke Higashikata posted:i think there's also a problem of effective defense being weighted less valuably than ineffective offence. Oh, yeah, just ask Bobby Green. MMA has never scored defense worth a poo poo. Also in uh-oh:  I'm assuming this will be deleted in the morning and we'll never hear about it again.
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Feb 13, 2023 10:32
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Pet week is best week and Andrade continues to be great.Lid posted:In the early 2000s Chuck and Tito were at some club and a fight broke out, maybe it was the famed Tito fight maybe another one no one knows, but what is known is Chuck's fighting technique in that situation. I did a deep dive on Liddell for the Pride project forever ago, and discovered that while he had a whole childhood of martial arts immersion, he didn't actually discover MMA until he got into the Santa Barbara college party scene and discovered he was really good at beating the poo poo out of drunk frat boys, which in hindsight explained a lot about his not knowing how to block anything.
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Feb 15, 2023 04:19
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 47: BUT HERE IT GOES AGAIN SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18TH FROM THE FORBIDDEN SHADOWS OF THE UFC APEX IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA PRELIMS 1 PM PST/4 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST/7 PM EST VIA ESPN+ I wrote this last November for Lemos/Rodriguez. CarlCX posted:Much like Grasso/Araújo last month, this is another card that was supposed to have a big main event--in this case, undefeated fighters and potential title contenders Bryce Mitchell and Movsar Evloev--but it got scratched thanks to injury, and the UFC decided to, once again, move a women's fight they had never intended to main or even co-main into the top spot with virtually nothing supporting or advertising it. It irritates me to complain about this, because I want more top spots for women in the UFC. I just wish they happened because they actually chose to put them on and promote them as opposed to deciding they just don't give enough of a gently caress about a card to bother and letting women have the scraps. You don't get an advertising blitz, you don't get promotional appearances, you don't get a UFC Embedded on the loving Youtube channel, but hey: You get to share a main card with Chase Sherman. Women make up roughly 25% of the Ultimate Fighting Championship roster. There were 42 UFC events in 2022, 6 of them were main evented by women, and 2 of those main events were co-mains that got bumped up on short notice after men were either hurt or rescheduled. The women got 14% of the main events for the year, but that's only because of booking errors--it was supposed to be 9%. In January, this card was announced as UFC Fight Night: Vera vs Sandhagen, with a co-main event featuring former title challenger Taila Santos against rising challenger Erin Blanchfield. Two weeks before the event Vera and Sandhagen were moved to late March for no given reason, promoting Santos vs Blanchfield to the main. One week before the fight Santos pulled out when her coaches couldn't get working visas. So now, on one week's notice, your main event and almost certain title eliminator is Erin Blanchfield, the #10 fighter in the division, against Jéssica Andrade, the #3 fighter in the division, who two fights ago won top contendership at 115 pounds, then went back to 125, won, and used her post-fight interview to call for a 115-pound title shot, which she is now delaying to take this late-notice fight against an opponent nowhere near title contention at the weight class she just said she wanted to leave. Their co-main event is between two unranked light-heavyweights coming off losses and the card underneath them is one of the worst the UFC has ever assembled. I love the UFC, but I loving hate the UFC.  yeah, i wasn't kidding. MAIN EVENT: WHOSE WEIGHT CLASS IS IT ANYWAY WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jéssica Andrade (24-9, #3) vs Erin Blanchfield (10-1, #10) And the worst part is, it's a fantastic fight! Jéssica Andrade is the wrecking ball of women's mixed martial arts, to the point that her nickname, Bate Estaca, very literally means Pile Driver. At 5'2" she's one of the smallest women in the sport--she's fought at a size and reach disadvantage in all but one of her 33 professional fights--and she has violent, dominant stoppage victories over contenders and champions not just in every women's division in the UFC, but even bigger ones outside. Larissa Pacheco, the current #1 woman at 155 pounds in the Professional Fighters League, was in the UFC back in 2014 getting choked out by future 115-pound champion Andrade in one round. That's her thing. She doesn't just beat people, she destroys them. And she destroys people who don't get destroyed. Larissa Pacheco had never lost before Jéssica Andrade surgically disabled her neck. Karolina Kowalkiewicz went five rounds with and at some points outstruck the best in the world, Joanna Jędrzejczyk; a few fights later Andrade flatlined her in two minutes. Katlyn Chookagian, the seemingly constant flyweight top contender, has been stopped only twice in her career: Once by the greatest women's flyweight of all time, Valentina Shevchenko, who had to chip her down over three rounds and force a referee's stoppage because she simply couldn't get out of a disadvantageous position, and once by Jéssica Andrade, who punched her in the body so hard she dropped into the fetal position. Rose Namajunas is a two-time strawweight champion with seven title fights under her belt who's faced down some of the most fearsome strikers in the sport's history, and only once in her career has she been knocked out, and that was Jéssica Andrade deadlifting her and dropping her on her god damned skull. In the last year alone she did it at two different weight classes. After taking most of a year off and two years away from the weight class, Andrade returned to 115 pounds back in April, fought the 11-1 top contender Amanda Lemos, and effortlessly choked her out--standing--in one round. After a mid-year injury derailed her plans she returned again just last month, this time against one of the top contenders at 125 pounds in Lauren Murphy, and she outstruck her so badly that even the blood-drinking mixed martial arts fanbase got angry at her corner for not throwing in the towel. It's been almost four years since Jéssica Andrade held a title, but it only took her nine months to get into pole position for two separate championship fights. And now she's putting them at risk against Erin Blanchfield, a newcomer who's never even fought a top ten opponent in her entire life, and a lot of people think Blanchfield is actually going to win, and by god, they could be right. Because Erin Blanchfield is one of the UFC's most interesting contenders at any division. She walked into the company as Invicta's top flyweight contender, a 5-1 fighter whose only loss was a controversial split decision to fellow Invicta contender turned perfect UFC flyweight prospect Tracy Cortez, and proceeded to run up a 4-0 record of devastatingly one-sided victories in just fourteen months. Yet, somehow, despite this path of destruction she's left in her wake, Erin Blanchfield is now a potential title contender almost no one outside of hardcore fans has even heard of. How? Let's ask Carl from last November again. CarlCX posted:Hey, guess what: It's a relevant, interesting, exciting women's fight! With ranking implications and one of the most-hyped women's fighters in the entire UFC!! In the middle of the prelims!!! I WILL NEVER STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS PHENOMENON. "Never" never ends. Erin Blanchfield is 4-0 in the UFC and every one of those four fights has been on the prelims. Not the cool, primetime prelims, either. Two fights ago she was curtain-jerking as the first fight of the night. One fight ago, despite facing "Meatball" Molly McCann, quite possibly the most-publicized women's fighter of the year, she was third from the top of the prelims--just slightly more important than Andre Petroski, but not nearly as important as Ryan Spann. Despite having one of the longest winning streaks in her division, the average UFC fan has never heard of Erin Blanchfield, the main event contender who is fighting for a title shot. And that's a shame, because she's loving great. She hasn't just won her four UFC bouts, she's dominated almost every second of them. Her ability to switch abruptly from power punches and headkicks to driving takedowns and clinch assaults has left her opponents completely incapable of adjusting to her attacks. She scored a rare 30-25 victory over Sarah Alpar after crushing her in the standup and grappling alike, she ragdolled the exceptionally tough Miranda Maverick, she faced down the always-game JJ Aldrich, dropped her and choked her out in just two rounds, and in her last fight, facing down the runaway momentum of the woman they call Meatball, she ran through her effortlessly, outstruck her 93-7 and tore her arm off in three and a half minutes. Everyone who's paid attention knows how good Erin Blanchfield can be, and everyone who's watched her wants to know how far she can go. But shooting from #10 in the rankings to fighting one of the best women's fighters of all time is about as far as one can conceivably jump in search of a trial by fire. Everyone knows Jéssica Andrade can be a champion. Erin Blanchfield is fighting to prove she can, too. But this is a tough matchup for her--not just in terms of record, but style. It would be deeply unfair to Erin Blanchfield to say she succeeds by physicality, her technique both striking and grappling is very good, but it's also very pressure-focused. Her slinging headkicks, her hard crosses, all of her attacks serve to get her into close range where her clinch assaults and takedowns allow her to take over. This is, arguably, a very bad idea against Jéssica Andrade, who does her best striking in the pocket and is strong enough to compact someone's skull with one hand. There are only two fighters who've successfully beaten Andrade in the pocket: Valentina Shevchenko, who was able to take her down and break her face with elbows, and Weili Zhang, the only person to ever brutalize her. Everyone else has kept her at arm's reach. The long jabs of Rose Namajunas, the in-and-out combos of Joanna Jędrzejczyk and the driving takedowns of Raquel Pennington were all gameplans centered around hurting her while staying as far away from danger as possible. If this fight is about testing Erin Blanchfield, that test is multiple choice. Does she stick to her traditional strengths, even though they're also Andrade's? Does she play to Andrade's distance-based weaknesses even though it's out of her own comfort zone? Or does she cement herself as a contender and run through her like she's run through everyone else? JÉSSICA ANDRADE BY SUBMISSION. It's not that I don't believe in Erin Blanchfield; it's that I really believe in Jéssica Andrade. So much of Blanchfield's core offense comes at Andrade's strongest ranges and I cannot help seeing a slightly tired Blanchfield getting choked out going for a takedown in the back half of the fight. CO-MAIN EVENT: NO, REALLY, THIS IS THE CO-MAIN EVENT LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Zac Pauga (5-1) vs Jordan Wright (12-4 (1)) When the UFC broke into the mainstream on the backs of Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture and The Ultimate Fighter back in 2005, the concept of oversaturation was practically aspirational to a fight-starved fanbase. The UFC promoted five cards in 2004, in 2005 it doubled to ten, 2006 saw a dramatic rise to eighteen, and it wouldn't hit twenty until 2008. That was the first time I really remember fan complaints about the constancy of UFC events leading to a watered-down product, and in hindsight, with co-main events featuring then-top guys like Brandon Vera, Mike Swick and Frankie Edgar, it's pretty funny. The UFC's output has more than doubled since then. It's more notable when a week passes without an event. Some of those cards feature assembled talent unlike anything the sport has seen. Some of them do not. This is a co-main event between the runner-up for the last season of The Ultimate Fighter and a 2-4 fighter on a three-fight streak of getting violently finished. I will let you decide for yourself which side of the great coin of fate this card occup--it's Not. This is Not. This is, to paraphrase Al Iaquinta, a great co-main event on loving Pluto. I cannot tell you how well the last two seasons of The Ultimate Fighter did, because the UFC moved them completely onto ESPN+'s streaming platforms from which no metrics ever emerge. I can tell you the last time TUF was on television it averaged just about 140,000 viewers per episode, which, in the annals of cable television in 2018, put it around #140 in the top 150 cable shows of a given week--above Colin Cowherd and below programming luminaries like the NFL Network's Fantasy Football Assistance show. And by god, ALL of them got wiped off the face of the Earth by heavy hitters like Hallmark's #130-ranked Hero Dog Awards of 2018. In 2023, as a streaming exclusive on a service everyone seems to use at best begrudgingly, I cannot imagine it's doing better rather than worse. "Carl," I hear you saying, "this sounds a lot like you're reading Showbuzzdaily ratings reports from half a decade ago instead of talking about this fight." To which I would say: Yes. Of loving course I am. How else do I ward off the existential despair of light-heavyweight? Zac Pauga was a heavyweight on a heavyweight season of The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights and he's not actually a heavyweight. His entire career up until TUF took place at 205 pounds, he jumped at the chance to do TUF and have a few fights in the house without cutting weight, and after fighting his way through the Nyle Bartlings of the world he achieved his dream of getting knocked out cold by a slow-motion punch from a heavyweight who only sort of has functioning knees. At 5-1, turning 35 a week after this fight and with his best victory being a choice between either a guy who washed out of the UFC's middleweight division or a guy who went on to be defeated by the champion of Nebraska Bradan "Lunchbox" Erdman, Zac "The Ripper" Pauga is, truly, the future of the light-heavyweight division. But don't sleep on "The Beverly Hills Ninja" Jordan Wright, a man so bent on his pop culture bonafides that his career is equal parts tribute to Dragon Ball Z and Chris Farley. Wright, too, is so thoroughly the future of the light-heavyweight division that this is his first fight at it in almost three years. He popped into the UFC as a last-minute replacement against the notoriously unsuccessful Ike Villanueva, but dropped right back down to his native middleweight, where he promptly went 1-3, having been just thoroughly shellacked by everyone save Jamie "The Night Wolf" Pickett, who was, in fairness, still getting over the heartbreak of not making the Mortal Kombat X roster. Wright's down three fights in a row, every one of them was a brutal stoppage, and in an attempt to rescue his career he's solving this by moving up to a weight class where everyone has twenty more pounds of punching power, so he can be, truly, the future of the light-heavyweight division. Which, in fairness, is actually a pretty solid career move. Light-heavyweight is a particularly iffy division and it's rife for exploitation from faster, more technically sound fighters. Is Jordan Wright that fighter? Probably not. ZAC PAUGA BY TKO. Jordan has a very quick, in-and-out darting style, but he doesn't actually carry a lot of power. His two UFC striking victories have come from Travis Browne in-the-pocket elbows and, perhaps most damningly, the aforementioned Ike Villanueva fight where he hit Villanueva flush with a spinning heel kick to the head followed by ten knees in the clinch, and Ike, who would ultimately be knocked out more traditionally in four of his five other UFC bouts, was actually completely fine and was prevented from fighting only because his eyebrow was gone. Pauga has solid hands when he actually uses them, and given Wright's love of darting into range, he's getting pasted sooner or later. MAIN CARD: VINCE MCMAHON JUST LOSING HIS poo poo OVER GARY STRYDOM, BUT IN MMA HEAVYWEIGHT: Josh Parisian (15-5) vs Jamal Pogues (9-3) This may be the meanest thing I have ever said about a pair of fighters: This is a battle between two fighters who had to win on Dana White's Contender Series twice to get UFC contracts, because the first time around they were so insufficiently impressive that the habitually blood-drinking Dana White who thought Greg Hardy and a slap fighting championship were good ideas looked at these big, wrestling-deficient heavyweight strikers, his favorite genre not just of fighter but human, and went "ehh, maybe not." It's not Josh Parisian's fault that someone taught him spinning was faster than walking. He won his first Contender Series appearance in 2018 by spamming more spinning attacks than an Eddy Gordo main, which earned him a shot on The Ultimate Fighter rather than the UFC itself, and after getting knocked out in the first round of competition he was thrown out on the street. He returned to the Contender Series in 2020 and once again scored a knockout victory, and only then, at last, was he allowed past the golden gates of the UFC, where he's racked up a 2-2 record. Which doesn't seem that bad on paper! Unfortunately, those two victories were
Pogues said he was going back to light-heavyweight, but this booking would seem to disagree. Still: He can definitely throw jabs, and he's more than CAPABLE of shooting a takedown. I do not have a great deal of faith in Josh Parisian. He struggles with striking, he struggles with wrestling, even when he wins a fight he looks like he's about to drop from sheer exhaustion, and when we saw him last year he got outgrappled by a heavyweight who was once violently thrown into a moat by this man:  JAMAL POGUES BY TKO. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: William Knight (11-4) vs Marcin Prachnio (15-6) William Knight has fallen on difficult times. The first year of his UFC tenure was fairly promising, a 3-1 run through the light-heavyweight division that established him as a powerful if slightly limited wrestleboxer--that limitation in large part coming from his almost comically musclebound 5'10" body. On one hand: Great look, clearly working for him, and I'm sure it makes taking people down a little easier. On the other: When you're the shortest light-heavyweight in the company and you miss weight by 13 pounds, even in a short-notice fight, that becomes the only thing anyone will ever remember you for again. The last year of Knight's career was the aforementioned weight miss, the largest in UFC history, which presaged an outwrestling loss to Maxim Grishin, followed by an even less advisable trip up to the heavyweight division, where fellow divisional part-timer Devin Clark knocked him out in the third round. Knight's two in the hole and could desperately use a win. Marcin Prachnio is a perpetual enigma. He's a legitimately talented striker who was at one point the #1 contender for ONE Championship, the second-biggest mixed martial arts organization in the world, and in one of the most damning things ever said about the cruelty of differential competition, he joined the UFC in 2018 and was immediately knocked out in one round by the eldritch beast himself, Sam Alvey, in what might well be the final stoppage of his career. Prachnio has gone on to a 2-4 record in the UFC, with one of those wins coming against, yet again, Ike Villanueva, and the other the forever hot-and-cold Khalil Rountree. After ten months on the shelf he returned against former PFL champion Philipe Lins this past April--remember him, we'll come back to him later--and looked solid in the first round before getting more or less mauled in the second and third. That fight feels like a bellwether for this one. Prachnio's successes come from keeping people at the end of his many, many kicks, but the UFC has demonstrated his persistent problems with pressure. William Knight does not want to stay at range with you because he can't. His torso is too broad for his arms to move in straight lines. Having seen Prachnio lose clinch battles with fighters who wouldn't make Lou Ferrigno gently ask if everything was okay at home, this does not seem like a difficult call. WILLIAM KNIGHT BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Jim Miller (35-16 (1)) vs Alexander Hernandez (13-6) I have been ride or die on Jim Miller for almost fifteen goddamn years now, and that's a weird, weird sentence. Jim Miller has been doing this for so god damned long his first on-the-map performance, and his UFC debut, involved choking out David Baron, a French grappler who'd just scored a huge upset win over an all-time great in Hayato "Mach" Sakurai over in Pride's sub-brand, Bushido, and statistically speaking, 60% of the people reading this have no loving idea who or what any of those things were. David Baron's retirement fight was almost a decade ago! Georges St-Pierre's entire UFC tenure lasted twenty-two fights; Jim Miller is making the cagewalk for his forty-loving-first. UFC 100 was main-evented by Brock Lesnar in 2009, UFC 200 was main-evented by Miesha Tate in 2016 and UFC 300 will probably be main-evented by Sean O'Malley in 2024: Jim Miller fought on both of the former two and has sworn he'll be on the third, and his ability to persist across those incredibly disparate eras of the sport is a testament to just how goddamn tough he is and how quickly he will choke you to death if you give him a chance. Alexander "The Great Ape" Hernandez may finally be up against the wall. Hernandez came into the UFC with a lot of hype back in 2018, and he set that hype on fire by taking on the incredibly tough Beneil Dariush as a last-minute replacement and knocking him out cold in less than a minute, then followed it up by pitching a shut-out against the then-streaking Olivier Aubin-Mercier. It was a sensational debut year for a 10-1 prospect. And since said year he is 3-5 and has not been able to string together a back-to-back win. Donald Cerrone knocked him out, Drew Dober knocked him out, just two months ago Hernandez tried an experimental drop to 145 pounds and got knocked out on his feet by Billy Quarantillo for his trouble. In 2023, Alexander Hernandez is a question mark: An undeniably talented fighter with fast, powerful hands, strong counter-wrestling and enough composure to use them for about a round before things begin to fall apart. For Jim Miller, this is just another bout in the world tour of the UFC's greatest veteran. For Alexander Hernandez, this is a test to see if he has anything left in the tank. And it's not a great one for him. Miller's tough, scrappy refusal to go away has been a staple of his style across three separate decades of competition. Given the tendency Hernandez has to struggle with fights that get out of the first round--and how much harder it is for Hernandez to work his bullying, overwhelming gameplan against someone as big and seasoned as Miller--this seems fated to end poorly for him. JIM MILLER BY SUBMISSION. PRELIMS: HOW LOW THE ST. PREUX DOTH FLOW WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Lina Länsberg (10-7, #12) vs Mayra Bueno Silva (9-2-1, #14) Last April, when Lina Länsberg returned from her pandemic hiatus, I noted how unfortunate a statement it was about women's bantamweight that a fighter who hasn't competed since 2020 and hadn't won since 2019 could still be ranked as the #11 fighter in the world. At the end of 2022, Lina had fought, and lost, two more times. This has dropped her to a catastrophically low #12. Women's rankings are forever a mystery. Lina "Elbow Queen" Länsberg is, in all likelihood, on her way out. The UFC brought her in as a warm body for Cris Cyborg back in 2016 and after seven years she's 4-6, with three of those losses coming in her last three fights which at this point span the entirety of the last three years. The nickname isn't for show: Her gameplan revolves around elbowing the crap out of her opponents, be it in clinch range or from full guard. Failing that, she tends to falter. Mayra Bueno Silva, the artist also known as "Sheetara," is coming off a particularly strange night at the office. She's an absolute monster of a grappler with three submission wins in the UFC--four if you count the ninja choke she used to get her contract on the Contender Series--but her last fight, instead of being a showcase, wound up being a controversial anticlimax. As she so often has, Silva snatched an armbar from bottom position and scored a submission victory in barely over a minute, at which point her very confused opponent Stephanie Egger claimed not to have tapped out, and in fact there was no video showing her tapping out, nor did she give any verbal indication of submitting. The referee had to poll the judges, and Ron McCarthy, son of Big John and a judge who would months later score the great Paddy Pimblett robbery of 2022, swore he saw her invisible tapout, leaving Mayra with an exceedingly dissatisfying win. So this is the UFC helping her right the ship. Lina is an incredibly tough fighter who has never once been submitted in her seventeen-fight career, but she's also never faced anyone with jiu-jitsu as aggressively dangerous as Silva's, and her proclivity for armbars is custom-made to mess up Lina's full-guard elbow game. MAYRA BUENO SILVA BY SUBMISSION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Jamall Emmers (18-6) vs Khusein Askhabov (23-0) It's time to open the mystery box again. Jamall Emmers is a known quantity, at this point, having been in three UFC fights since his 2020 debut, but the promise he displayed in that debut, going to a close split decision loss against burgeoning hype train Giga Chikadze, hasn't quite panned out. He wrestled his way to an underwhelming victory over Vince Cachero, who retired one fight later, had to pull out of a fight after his opponent had already entered the cage because his back wouldn't stop spasming uncontrollably, returned half a year later only to get heel hooked in two minutes, and that's been it for a year and a half. Khusein "Nohcho" Askhabov is a great big question mark of a fighter. On one hand, he's one of the top prospects out of Russia, an undefeated champion at two weight classes who's well-regarded by teammates at big camps like Tiger Muay Thai and American Top Team and there's video footage enough to see his vicious leg kicks, driving takedowns and elbow-heavy top game in action. On the other: As a Russian regional fighter, most of his opponents weren't much competition at all, to the point that in his last fight, which was the 23rd of his career, he faced a 3-0 fighter who had never competed against anyone with a single win to their name. Even more mysteriously, that was also Askhabov's last fight for three years. He's been in limbo, waiting on the UFC, since March 3rd of 2020. What do you do with that, exactly? On paper Askhabov is more than a match for Emmers, but Emmers is also the stiffest test of his career and Askhabov hasn't fought in three years, and hasn't fought a real competitive test since Stan Lee walked the Earth. I'm still going with KHUSEIN ASKHABOV BY DECISION, because his speed on the feet and his counter-grappling seem legitimate, but boy, anything could happen here. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Ovince St. Preux (26-16) vs Philipe Lins (15-5) It's sad to see Ovince St. Preux down here. St. Preux was a mainstay of the light-heavyweight's top ten for most of a decade, a perennial contender who crushed a number of former champions, went the distance with Jon Jones and holds victories over top contenders like Corey Anderson, and now he bounces between heavyweight and light-heavyweight on a whim and doesn't get a lot of success at either. His best win in the last six years was an atomizing knockout over Alonzo Menifield in 2020; otherwise you have to choose between a 2022 decision over the retiring ghost of Shogun, a 2019 submission over middleweight Michał Oleksiejczuk, or a 2018 armbar over Tyson Pedro. Philipe Lins is, at this point, a full-time non-fighthaver. He was unable to follow up his PFL heavyweight championship win in 2018 thanks to an arm injury, he was snatched up by the UFC in 2020, he lost two fights in six weeks, and in the nearly three years since he has pulled out of seven fights and competed in only one, a victorious effort against an overmatched Marcin Prachnio. This is the third time across two years Lins has been meant to fight Ovince St. Preux, and I am not convinced the forces of the universe won't crash an asteroid into the Apex arena to keep it from happening one more time. All of that said: PHILIPE LINS BY TKO. OSP has long punches, solid kicks to the body and more than enough counter-wrestling to shut down anyone on a good day; OSP also hasn't had a lot of good days for a long while. When last we saw him, he barely scraped by a Shogun whose bones are filled with sawdust. Philipe Lins barely competes thanks to the corrupting influences of evil wizards, but when he does, he's a solid, aggressive, physically powerful fighter who mauls opponents in the clinch. Unless OSP can catch him with one of his trademark shovel hooks on his way in, he's getting pinned to the fence and punched apart. LIGHTWEIGHT: Nazim Sadykhov (7-1) vs Evan Elder (7-1) Nazim Sadykhov is the latest prospect out of LAW MMA, the Longo-Weidman school born out of the end of the love story that was Serra-Longo, the house where dreams were built. Sadykhov cut his teeth out in the wastelands of Fury FC, meaning, like essentially everyone, at this point, he's a Contender Series baby, having won his contract by showing his dedication to the stand-and-bang arts back in August and scored a knockout. Evan Elder is another I-wasn't-even-supposed-to-be-here story: He was a top competitor for the Shamrock Fighting Championships, and would have kept up his regional development were it not for his willingness to step into a UFC fight against Preston Parsons, who is not Parker Porter, on three days' notice an entire weight class up. Unsurprisingly, Elder lost. Will he look better with a full training camp? Almost certainly, but more than that, he'll look better with an opponent who likes to stand and trade. Sadykhov won his Contender Series bout, but he relied on a lot of head movement rather than pure evasion for his striking defense, and respectfully, his head movement got him clipped a fair bit. EVAN ELDER BY DECISION. WELTERWEIGHT: AJ Fletcher (9-2) vs Themba Gorimbo (10-3) Hey, international prospects who didn't come from the Contender Series! What a loving concept! AJ Fletcher, of course, is not one of them: He entered the UFC as a 9-0 prospect with a Contender Series win and promptly got rolled twice in 2022. His fights have a sort of predictable rhythm to them: He'll win one round per fight, sometimes through his power punching and sometimes through his power wrestling, but immediately afterward he'll gas out and spend the rest of the bout unable to mount significant offense. Themba "The Answer" Gorimbo is the fighter with all the press, this time out: A welterweight champion from South Africa's Extreme Fighting Championship and a top contender for Fury FC before the UFC finally snatched him up. Gorimbo's a very offensively-minded fighter, prone to swinging heavy body kicks and wide haymakers, but his athleticism lets him turn the corner on sharp double-leg takedowns when called for and his six submission wins are a testament to his grappling credentials. But despite the hype Gorimbo is an underdog here, and it's not hard to see why. Fletcher is a big step up in competition and a fighter who hung with hardcases like Matt Semelsberger and Ange Loosa for fifteen minutes without getting finished. Gorimbo's bottom game is dangerous, but Fletcher's a seasoned grappler with an equally dangerous top game. I'm ultimately siding with AJ FLETCHER BY SUBMISSION, but I'd like to be wrong, it'd be a lot more fun if Gorimbo won. FLYWEIGHT: Juancamilo Ronderos (4-1) vs Clayton Carpenter (6-0) Sometimes the UFC just kind of lets crimes happen. Back in May of 2021, David Dvořák, the #11 flyweight in the world, lost his #12 ranked opponent just one day before the card, and instead of doing the responsible thing and cancelling the fight, the UFC tapped Juancamilo Ronderoes, a 4-0 fighter whose entire career took place within the hallowed walls of WARRIOR XTREME CAGEFIGHTING'S WARRIOR WEDNESDAYS, to face the eleventh-best flyweight on the planet. This may shock you: He got choked out in two minutes. "But Carl," I assume you are saying, "it was a late replacement, what do you expect?" Here's the thing: They already had him under contract for a Contender Series bout. In their ideal circumstances he was going to get thrown in the deep end of the flyweight division after just one more fight anyway, because god drat it, we need warm bodies because for some reason we spent three years trying to kick everyone out of flyweight so we could close the division and now we suddenly have ground to make up. "Concrete" Clayton Carpenter, which is one of the biggest wastes of a nickname opportunity I've ever seen, is what Ronderos very nearly was: A 5-0 rookie who got a Contender Series bout in 2022, won, and is now trying to wade into one of the most dangerous oceans in the fight game. Except he's not, because he gets to fight Ronderos instead. Do you see how this works? This, what you're seeing now, is the future. Demetrious Johnson, Kyoji Horiguchi, Jarred Brooks, Bokang Masayune and Dustin Ortiz are all out there being some of the best flyweights in the world outside of the UFC, but it's okay, because we have rookies with a half-dozen fights if you're lucky fighting each other for $10k a pop, and they are already becoming the norm. Brands are the poison in our veins and we are doomed to decay to the tune of a thousand commercial jingles. CLAYTON CARPENTER BY DECISION. Eat fresh.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:13
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Mekchu posted:Follow up to the Dan Hooker tweet about Islam using an IV after weighing in. so, funny story, guess what Ali Abdelaziz tweeted and then hastily deleted yesterday 
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Feb 16, 2023 18:35
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That ruled and I wish it wasn't on at five in the morning. Also, I have started a thread so we can answer once and for all where Fedor belongs. The month's Socrates tribute is complete.
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Feb 17, 2023 19:01
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Boco_T posted:Everyone's rightfully talking about the cool poo poo from the BKFC main card, but the first fight on the prelims, Anthony Sanchez vs. Derek Perez, is absolutely insane and worth your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teKc5j6rHtg&t=4311s (1:11:51) It's weird how, of all things, that fight makes me uncomfortable. Like BKFC is a mixed bag for me in general but I actually appreciate its higher-level fighters (and Greg Hardy getting gadooshed), but there's something that makes me feel abjectly gross about an 0-2 guy and a 3-21 guy just sort of windmilling at each other until their faces break for a couple thousand bucks. I know this is the sport and it's a me problem, but oof. Lid posted:A Brazilian called out Krav Maga as trash and fought two Krav Maga fighters at the same time to prove it. this is absolutely perfect, though, no notes
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Feb 18, 2023 20:55
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4024513 GDT for Andrade/Blanchfield is up. Prelims begin in half an hour.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:31
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nate was always kind of a quiet super-evangelical so it's unfortunately not surprising
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Feb 19, 2023 05:49
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