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What will cause the heavyweight title to stay vacant this time? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Jon Jones goes on a pre-fight bender in Vegas |
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3 | 8.11% |
| Jon Jones goes on a post-fight bender in Vegas |
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1 | 2.70% |
| Jon Jones goes on a mid-fight bender in Vegas |
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4 | 10.81% |
| Jon Jones tests positive for supercocaine, which USADA spends the next three months pretending is normal |
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18 | 48.65% |
| A well-fought majority draw |
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1 | 2.70% |
| No Contest on account of simultaneous dick kicks |
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10 | 27.03% |
| Total: | 37 votes | ||
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Do you want to go back to the month we all hoped Alexander Volkanovski would win? Defend takedowns to get back to February here. Welcome to a busy loving month. We've got six (MMA) championship fights, we've got nine cards, we've got a new season of The Ultimate Fighter taping, and we've all got to deal with Jon Jones and his bullshit all over again. Strap in because traffic accidents are 45% less likely to kill you if you're wearing your seat belt and let's finish this road trip together. This month's title was a joint production of LobsterMobster and Shumagorath. 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  During February, news broke that the UFC had completed an internal review and decided it was just being too kind to its fighters, so they've decided to make their contracts even worse. Under the new contracts fighters waive the right to sue the UFC over their contracts, either individually or as a class-action, in favor of corporately-friendly private arbitration. Coincidentally, having just lost heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou to a contract expiration, the UFC has reinstituted their old policy of adding six months to a contract every time a fighter declines a match, and the previous five-year limit on contract length can now be extended based on medical suspensions, periods of injury or anything the UFC decided to argue counts in, y'know, a privately arbitrated proceeding the public will never get to see. As I say every month: gently caress this sport.  God help us, he's back. After a three-year retirement, former flyweight and bantamweight champion Henry Cejudo is returning to competition and is jumping straight into a bantamweight championship fight against Aljamain Sterling at UFC 288 on May 6th.  Conor McGregor, who is coaching the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter against future opponent Michael Chandler, arrived for taping and reportedly demanded multiple contestants be kicked off the show to make room for his SBG Ireland training partners. The UFC neither confirmed nor denied this, but multiple fighters, most notably Chris Curtis and Kris Moutinho, corroborated it on social media. When Dana White was asked for comment on the story during a pre-fight media scrum for Krylov vs Spann, he replied, and this is a quote, "I have no idea. Who gives a poo poo?" The level of importance and respect is truly inspiring.  Tenshin Nasukawa, the world's greatest kickboxing alien, passed all his boxing tests (this isn't a funny rejoinder, in Japan you have to actually pass a written test and successfully spar three rounds in front of officials) and is officially a professional boxer. He'll make his debut on April 8th against the 12-4-1 Yuki Yonaha, currently ranked as the #4 bantamweight in Japan. It will be broadcast on Amazon Prime. I hope he wins, but also, I kind of hope he loses, because boy, I'd like to see him kick more people before I die.  After a solid six months of constant, ceaseless evangelizing of the power, beauty and runaway success sure to come to his Dana White's Power Slap, after boasting about its future as a powerhouse of sports and the rumored plans to sell the show's season finale as a pay-per-view and after mortgaging what last smidges of credibility he had remaining to popularize the worst sport on the planet, we have the world's verdict on slapfighting: The ratings were garbage, the public hated it, and the season finale, instead of a much-vaunted pay-per-view, will now be broadcast for free on Rumble, the unfathomably lovely ultra right-wing youtube alternative best known for not just platforming but celebrating Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Tate. There has never been a more apt partnership. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  This one's been a long time coming. Grab a snack: We need to talk about Fedor. Fedor Emelianenko's legacy in the sport is a point of contention in the mixed martial arts fanbase. Everyone has their own take on it, and I am no different, so it's important to establish things that are, objectively, true. Between his debut in mid-2000 and his fall from grace a decade and 33 fights later, Fedor was, essentially, undefeated in mixed martial arts. There's only one blemish in the first ten years of his career, and it was due to a cut caused by an illegal elbow in a format where one competitor absolutely had to advance to the next stage of a tournament. In the rest of that ten-year period he won Pride's heavyweight championship, defended it three times, defeated the consensus #2 heavyweight in the world twice, stopped four different former UFC heavyweight champions and took part in some of the most memorable fights in heavyweight history. But anyone who sticks around in the sport too long inevitably suffers. Shortly after joining the American b-league Strikeforce, Fedor's streak wasn't just broken, but shattered. He went from a decade of dominance to getting finished three times in a row--and the third was a first-round knockout at the hands of career middleweight Dan Henderson. Fedor would return to Russia, fight a few gimme fights and retire, only to come out of retirement three years later and try for one last relevant run as a fighter in his forties. That run somewhat further damaged his legacy, as while he did pick up a few more wins, he was also repeatedly knocked silly by top competition. And it's the "top competition" phrase that brings us to the contentious part of the retrospective. Fedor's undefeated run, while legendary, was also deeply uneven. For every truly competitive top-contender fight he took Pride matched him against a professional wrestler, or an aging, popular but unranked veteran, or worse. In August of 2005, Fedor fought the biggest fight in the world at the time, a showdown against legitimate #2, 16-2-2 heavyweight Mirko Cro Cop; in his next fight that December, Fedor fought Zuluzinho, the obese, 6'7", 5-0 joke who'd only had one real fight in his career. When Fedor moved to America, and began facing consistent top competition for the first time in his career, he, shockingly, began losing. Even his un-retirement comeback isn't immune: He won six fights and lost three, but all three of his losses were against top competition, four of his six wins were thoroughly pointless mismatches, and one of them was a fight that saw him get essentially knocked out in the first round, only to be openly protected by the referee and somehow wind up winning a decision from judges who were assigned by the Russian MMA Union, the president of which at the time was, uh, Fedor Emelianenko. And this, even more than his record, is the real problem with the legacy of Fedor: Everything around him. From the basics, like the fans who hold him up as a shining example of the sport who would beat any and everyone in any era even though he already tried it and didn't, to the abstracts, like three different MMA organizations actively harming themselves and in two cases hastening their own demise in their desperately expensive attempts to make him the centerpiece of their companies, to the outright uncomfortable, like his brother the convicted rapist, ultra-right-wing neo-nazis like Roman Zentsov with whom he shared camps for years, his management's history of deeply weird racism against fighters they deemed too savagely Brazilian or notably Slavic, and his role both in boosting Vladimir Putin's international image as a paragon of badass masculinity and an apologist for the repeated invasion of Ukraine. I think Fedor was unequivocally the best heavyweight of the 2000s. I think any UFC champion after 2010 would have made him look silly. I think Fedor was right to know his worth and not give into the UFC's lovely contracts, and his example there is one fighters should follow; I think it also harmed his legacy, but not as much as repeatedly losing in the UFC would have, and I think, at some level, he knew that, too. I think his combination of speed, power, striking and grappling was a revelation back in his prime; I think there are heavyweights in Pride he never fought who would have given him a lot of trouble. I think I enjoyed watching him fight, but I'm going to enjoy the Fedor story being over more. I think if he ever comes out of retirement again it will be the biggest mistake of his life not involving siding with horrible authoritarians over vulnerable people. Fedor Emelianenko officially retires, hopefully for good, at 40-7 (1).  The world of women's mixed martial arts is still very small, and while she never reached the top, Lina Länsberg earned her place in its records. Long before she tried MMA, Lina was one of and sometimes the singular best Muay Thai kickboxer in the world at her weight class. She went to the world championships of Muay Thai for five consecutive years between 2007 and 2012, and she came away with two gold medals, two silver medals and one bronze. The community nicknamed her "Elbow Queen" because, while she was proficient with all of the eight limbs of Muay Thai, she delighted particularly in destroying people with just those two. After her second gold medal, she decided to move on and try a bigger, more lucrative combat sport. And like so many, it was going very well until it wasn't. She went 6-1 competing in Sweden, Denmark and Jordan, but once she reached the UFC and began fighting some of the best competition in the mixed martial world, things got rocky. Over her seven years with the company she would record back to back wins only once: Otherwise it was win one, lose one, right up until the four-fight losing streak that culminated on February 18th, 2023, with Mayra Bueno Silva handing her the first and only submission loss of her entire combat sports career. But that by no means makes it a bad career. She shared the ring with multiple world champions, she even beat one of them, she was ranked at Women's Bantamweight for most of a decade, and she was very, very rarely an easy fight for anyone. Twenty years of competition is more than enough. Lina retires at 37-11 in Muay Thai and 10-8 in mixed martial arts. 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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Mar 1, 2023 19:56
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WHAT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY A very long day of combat sports began with Bellator 290: Bader vs Fedor 2 on February 4th. It was Bellator's debut on network television thanks to CBS, the channel that brought Young Sheldon up from the bowels of Hell, and like all MMA organizations, that debut was marked by terrible pacing, a lot of wrestling, and a big ol' anticlimax. Over the course of 11 pre AND postliminary bouts Nikita Mikhailov took a dodgy decision over Darrion Caldwell thanks to disagreements about what is and isn't effective grappling, Grant Neal scored a split decision over Karl Albrektsson (because Karl cut the afro off), Diana Avsaragova took a split over former champion Alejandra Lara, Henry Corrales outfought Akhmed Magomedov, Neiman Gracie outgrappled Dante Schiro, and in the rarest of birds, Steve Mowry and Ali Isaev had a someone's-0-must-go match where no one actually lost their undefeated record, as some truly lamentable heavyweight grappling ended in a draw. But Chris Gonzalez killed Max Rohskopf and Lorenz Larkin slept Mukhamed Berkhamov, so it was fine. The main card was three fights and each was exactly what you'd expect on the tin. Brennan Ward won out in a big, wild brawl over Sabah Homasi, Johnny Eblen retained his middleweight championship after embracing the grind against Anatoly Tokov, and in the main event, the entire world and its collective refusal to acknowledge reality gathered to see one last vintage Fedor Emelianenko heavyweight championship performance in his retirement bout and then a 46 year-old man got squashed into dust by defending champion Ryan Bader in two and a half minutes. We proceeded directly into a very late night with UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Spivak, which started late in the evening for American fans because the card was initially intended for South Korea, but after plans failed, they elected to just hold the card as-is but out of the Apex in Las Vegas and at its original broadcast time. Business: It's weird. The prelims were a lot of fun, having been split: In the regular UFC portion, Tatsuro Taira continued his rise as Japan's most interesting stateside prospect by tapping Jesus Aguilar and Jun Yong Park ragdolled and choked out Dennis Tiuliulin, and in the rest, the finals of last year's East Asian talent search tournament Road to UFC saw South Korea take two prizes, with Hyun Sung Park winning the flyweight tournament and Jeong Yeong Lee scraping a split decision to win at featherweight; Japan took bantamweight, with solid-gold prospect Rinya Nakamura destroying his opponent in thirty seconds, and Anshul Jubli won the lightweight tournament for India. The main card was considerably less fun. Adam Fugitt started it off well by upsetting Yusaku Kinoshita, pounding him out for a first-round TKO, but returning hero Doo Ho Choi fought a deeply underwhelming fight with Kyle Nelson that was ultimately scored a deeply underwhelming majority draw thanks to a point deduction for an unintentional headbutt, Marcin Tybura won a very uneventful heavyweight decision against Blagoy Ivanov, Devin Clark outfought Da Un Jung to a shut-out decision, and in the main event, the collapse of Derrick Lewis continued, as Sergey Spivac effortlessly ragdolled him a half-dozen times and choked him out in the first round. Next week brought the exceedingly rare superfight: UFC 284: Makhachev vs Volkanovski on February 12th. It was a hell of a card, anchored by a rabidly energetic Australian crowd, and managed to hit just about every note a fight card can. The prelims got off to a start with one of the worst decisions of the year helping Elves Brenner beat Zubaira Tukhugov, but Blake Bilder outfought Shane Young, Loma Lookboonmee destroyed Elise Reed, Jack Jenkins won an extremely fun fight against Don Shainis, Jamie Mullarkey ran a clinic on Francisco Prado, Kleydson Rodrigues blitzed Shannon Ross in under a minute and hit him with a jumping, spinning rear end to the face in the process, Joshua Culibao choked out Melsik Baghdasaryan and Modestas Bukauskas spoiled Tyson Pedro's UFC comeback by fighting him to a decision. The main card started equally hilariously, with Jimmy Crute and Alonzo Menifield fighting to a draw in one of the most gloriously sloppy fights in memory, followed by Justin Tafa knocking out an uncharacteristically flailing Parker Porter in a minute, and then rising star Jack Della Maddalena punched his ticket to a ranked opponent after absolutely running through a historically difficult opponent in Randy Brown. In the co-main event, Yair Rodríguez won the interim featherweight championship after choking out Josh Emmett, who executed a truly baffling gameplan involving letting Yair kick him to death. The main event was an absolutely incredible bout and the rare superfight to live up to the name, as featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski gave lightweight champion Islam Makhachev everything he could handle, but Makhachev ultimately won an incredibly close decision. The weight classes will remain separate. February 18th saw the arrival of UFC Fight Night: Andrade vs Blanchfield, a cursed card that left the fields fallow. Originally Vera vs Sandhagen before that fight was postponed for no reason, then Blanchfield vs Taila Santos before Santos pulled out after her coaches had visa trouble, Jéssica Andrade stepped in a week before the card to save its main event, despite having vowed to return to 115 pounds after her last fight. The preliminary fights were quite good, with newcomer Clayton Carpenter looking great, AJ Fletcher outgrappling a promising Themba Gorimbo, Philipe Lins getting the fight with Ovince Saint Preux he'd been chasing for years and knocking him cold in under a minute, Jamall Emmers outfighting Khusein Askhabov, Mayra Bueno Silva becoming the first woman to submit Lina Länsberg and Nazim Sadykhov winning a fantastic fight with Evan Elder after cutting his eyebrow off. The main card had a good start, as Alexander Hernandez and Jim Miller put on a great fight, but the middle was one of the darkest hours in UFC programming. Marcin Prachnio pecked at the leg of an almost completely immobile William Knight in one of the single worst performances in mixed martial arts history, Jamal Pogues and Josh Parisian had an eventless slog of a heavyweight bout, and Zauc Pauga and Jordan Wright combined to land almost nothing in fifteen minutes at light-heavyweight. But the main event was a fantastic moment of prospect realization, as Erin Blanchfield outboxed Jéssica Andrade in the first round with quick, straight counterpunching before taking her down early in the second round and choking her out about fifteen seconds later. A long final weekend of MMA began with ONE Fight Night 7: Lineker vs Andrade 2 on February 24th, ONE's attempt to fill its bantamweight vacancy and avenge is failed main event from last October. By ONE's typical high-octane standards it was a bit more of a sedate affair--Françesco Xhaja beat Andrei Stoica in a fairly uneventful kickboxing match, Danielle Kelly went through a couple tough spots but ultimately beat Ayaka Miura by decision in a submission grappling contest, flyweight grand prix finalist Danny Kingad beat Eko Roni Saputra by decision, Saemapetch Fairtex out-kickboxed Zhang Chenglong by decision, and Martin Nguyen beat last-minute double-injury replacement Leonardo Casotti, also, uh, by decision. The co-main event was consequently abruptly shocking, as Tawanchai P.K.Saenchai retained the Featherweight Muay Thai Championship by stopping Jamal Yusupov with a single leg kick in forty-nine seconds, and the main event was, unsurprisingly, a war. Fabrício Andrade dominated John Lineker back in October only to lose his chance at a championship after breaking Lineker's cup, but expectations of a similar domination were thrown out the window quickly as a much more prepared Lineker went to war. Andrade survived some monstrous shots and wobbled Lineker a couple times himself, and by the fourth round Lineker was beaten, swollen and exhausted. In a rare moment of sanity Lineker and his corner elected to call the fight off before the fifth round could begin, making Fabrício Andrade the new ONE Bantamweight MMA Champion. Bellator closed its month off with Bellator 291: Amosov vs Storley 2 on February 25th. As their latest in an endless series of desperate attempts to chip off the Irish fanbase for themselves, it was a Dublin card and thus had 13 god damned preliminary fights, many of which were between random Irish fighters meant to appeal to local fans with incredibly Irish names like "Richie Smullen" and "Darragh Kelly" whom even in victory there's a good chance you'll never see again, but there were still some highlights: Jena Bishop outfought Elina Kallionidou, Norbert Novenyi scored the rare "the referee is tired of you falling down" TKO over Andy Manzolo, Oleg Popov won an extremely heavyweight decision against Gokhan Saricam, Mike Shipman dominated Charlie Ward and Karl Moore outworked Maciej Różański. The main card was a better start for Ireland, as Ciaran Clarke and Sinead Kavanagh beat their respective jobbers (although Kavanagh had a lot of trouble with Janay Harding and nearly lost the decision), but Bellator's top Irish star Peter Queally got crushed by Bryce Logan and the co-main event saw Jeremy Kennedy outworking Pedro Carvalho. The main event was, for once, actually a big deal. Yaroslav Amosov, after being out for a year fighting a goddamn war, came back to reunify Bellator's welterweight championship against Logan Storley, a man who'd taken him to a split decision back in 2020, but on this night Amosov beat him from pillar to post, wobbling him repeatedly, winning the wrestling war and taking a shutout decision. And the month itself concluded that evening on UFC Fight Night: WHAT'S COMING IN MARCH The MMA year has finally reached cruising speed, which also means if you want to watch all of March's events legally, it will cost you at least $200. Thanks, UFC price increases! March is going to hit the ground running: UFC 285: Jones vs Gane hits us on March 4th, and it's a doozy. The UFC has chosen to put its promotional future back in the hands of Jon Jones, and by god, we're all along for the ride. There are a few prospect showcases on the prelims--Tabatha Ricci vs Jesse Penne, Cameron Saaiman vs Mana Martinez, Ian Garry vs Song Kenan, Viviane Araújo vs Amanda Ribas, Derek Brunson vs Dricus du Plessis--but this is very much a main-card card. Bo Nickal makes his inexplicably long-awaited UFC debut against Jamie Pickett, Geoff Neal faces Shavkat Rakhmonov to determine the one true welterweight prospect, Valentina Shevchenko defends the UFC Women's Flyweight Championship against the always-game Alexa Grasso, and in the main event, after cutting the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, the UFC looks to fill its last title vacancy as Jon Jones finally makes good on a decade-long promise and moves up to the heavyweight division, where he will face former interim champion Ciryl Gane to crown a new, definitely not in any way thoroughly disputed, kingpin, and start a new championship lineage over the 30-year legacy the UFC chose to sever. Bellator takes the stage six days later with Bellator 292: Nurmagomedov vs Henderson on March 10th. As is tradition the preliminaries are an endless march of madness, but for every Theo Haig or Wladmir Gouvea on the card, there's a highlight: Islam Mamedov is back in action against Shamil Nikaev, Khalid Murtazaliev is facing Tony Johnson, Julius Anglickas is having a consonant battle against Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov, Keri Taylor-Melendez continues her rise up the Bellator ranks against Bruna Ellen, and on-and-off fighter Érik Pérez faces Enrique Barzola. There are only four fights on the main card, but they're pretty loving solid. Michael "Venom" Page, having been beaten by mutliple men in his own weight class, is back to facing dramatically smaller competition in former featherweight Goiti Yamauchi, Valentin Moldavsky battles Linton Vassell to see who gets a rematch with Ryan Bader, Tofiq Musayev fights Alexander Shabily to potentially grasp lightweight contendership, and in your main event, lightweight champion Usman Nurmagomedov attempts the first defense of his title against UFC champion Benson Henderson, who is, somehow, a championship contender in 2023. We slide back to the UFC a day later for UFC Fight Night: Yan vs Dvalishvili on March 11th. This is the UFC catching its breath in an otherwise busy month and the result is a card that's a little low on name power, but there's still some good stuff in there. Tyson Nam and Bruno Gustavo da Silva are going to have a knockout contest, "Violence Queen" Ariane Lipski meets the unstoppable force JJ Aldrich, Victor Henry and Tony Gravely are going to do bad things to each other, Guido Cannetti attempts to continue his late-career renaissance against Mario Bautista, Said Nurmagomedov faces down Jonathan Martinez, living legend Raphael Assunção meets Davey Grant, and heavyweights do something stupid to each other when Karl Williams fights Łukasz Brzeski. On the main card, Vitor Petrino meets Anton Turkalj, Ricardo Ramos fights Austin Lingo, Alexander Volkov and Alexander Romanov fight to see who has to change their first name, Ryan Spann and Nikita Krylov run back their previously scheduled contest, and in your main event, former champion Petr Yan, who is now 1 for his last 4, faces Merab Dvalishvili to see who stays on-deck as a contender. Invicta is back for the month a few days later, thanks to Invicta FC 52: Machado vs McCormack. I don't know that it was intentional, but it's a big ol' international special. Colombia's Sayury Canon meets America's Amanda Macioce, New York's own Fatima Kline fights Russian rookie Natasha Kuziutina, my hometown girl Amber Leibrock meets recent UFC cast-off Ramona Pascual from Hong Kong, a rare battle of Mexican mixed martial artists sees "Monster" Montserrat Rendon face Maria Jose Favela, fighting Finn Minna Grusander faces Ireland's Shauna Bannon, Polish strawweight Karolina Wójcik battles Brazil's Ediana Silva, and in your main event, Rio de Janeiro's champion Valesca "Tina Black" Machado defends her strawweight championship against SBG Ireland's own Danni "Mac" McCormack. And then it's Muay Thai time again. ONE Friday Fights 9: Eersel vs Sinsamut 2 hits two days later on March 17th, and honestly, I think I should probably just stop listing these. There's one every weekend, there will be for the forseeable future, ONE doesn't even bother posting most of the match listings until a couple days before the cards happen--this is the only one listed for March even though there are two more scheduled for the month, BEFORE this card's week, with no official match listings. Hell, I'm writing this sentence on February 17th, earlier today Friday Fights 5 happened and its card wasn't announced until the 15th, and Friday Fights 6 is booked for next week on the 24th and ONE doesn't even list the card on its own website, let alone have any fights announced for it. I'm glad they're trying to bring attention to Muay Thai, and the fights themselves rule as Muay Thai fights tend to, but the promotion isn't even half-assed, it's quarter-assed. Regian Eersel is defending the welterweight Muay Thai championship against Sinsmut Klinmee. It's a rematch of their last fight in October. Have fun. We get the rare second UFC pay-per-view in a single month on March 18th, UFC 286: Edwards vs Usman 3. A British champion means we are, of course, going back to London, which means we have, of course, a card stuffed to the gills with marketable UK fighters. Your prelims include Chris Duncan vs Omar Morales, Jennifer Maia vs Casey O'Neill, Juliana Miller against Veronica Macedo, Malcolm Gordon vs Jake Hadley, Jai Herbert vs Ľudovít Klein, Muhammad Mokaev vs Jafel Filho and Jack Shore vs Makwan Amirkhani. The main card is, in all likelihood, going to be hilarious. Endless wrestler Marvin Vettori is facing Roman Dolidze, Gunnar Nelson will try to out-stoic Daniel Rodriguez, Joanne Wood is hunting for her first win in two years against last year's London-card victim Luana Carolina, Justin Gaethje and Rafael Fiziev are going to figuratively (but maybe literally) kick the poo poo out of each other, and your main event is a rematch of 2022's most shocking knockout: The rubber match between UFC Welterweight Champion Leon Edwards and, for the first time in three years, challenger Kamaru Usman. ONE rounds out its month with ONE Fight Night 8: Bhullar vs Malykhin on March 25th. This card is a Frankenstein's Monster of previously attempted and forcibly rescheduled bouts. Itsuki Hirata, former atomweight contender, faces down one of the best atomweights of all time, Hamderlei Silva herself, Seo Hee Ham. Allycia Rodrigues, the atomweight Muay Thai champion, comes back from injury to reunify the title against interim champion Janet Todd. Superlek Kiatmuu9 puts his flyweight kickboxing championship on the line against superstar Rodtang Jitmuangnon, recently returned from learning to be a monk. And the main event--booked for at least the third and possibly fourth time, and by god, hopefully this one sticks--is the long-awaited heavyweight title unification bout between standing champion Arjan Bhullar, who won the belt just shy of two years ago and has yet to fight again, and double-champion Anatoly Malykhin, who has been so impatient he knocked a Dutchman out about it. The UFC's month comes to a close later that evening with UFC on ESPN: Vera vs Sandhagen. This inexplicably-rescheduled February Fight anchors a card that--like, it's not BAD, but it sure is weird. You've got some real serious prospect fights like Trevin Giles vs Preston Parsons and C.J. Vergara vs Daniel da Silva and Alex Perez vs Manel Kape on the prelims, but then Andrea Lee and Maycee Barber are on the main card alongside Chidi Njokuani vs Albert Duraev and Alex Caceres vs Nate Landwehr. Irene Aldana and Raquel Pennington have a fight that could genuinely have title eliminator consequences at women's bantamweight, but it's booked under Holly Holm vs Yana Santos (née Kunitskaya), despite neither having a win in years. The main event is, of course, a loving barnburner, as Marlon Vera will face #3 bantamweight Cory Sandhagen in an incredibly interesting fight. And we end the month on Bellastor 293: Golm vs James which, respectfully, is kind of a big ol' stinker. There are twelve prelims and you've heard of very few people on any of them--Sullivan Cauley vs Luke Trainer, Joey Davis vs Jeff Creighton, Pam Sorenson vs Sara Collins and Lance Gibson Jr. vs Vladimir Tokov are your big name bouts--and the main card really isn't much better. Rustam Khabilov, who has not fought since leaving the UFC in 2019, meets a 1-for-his-last-3 Jaleel Willis, former titlist John Salter tries for his first victory in two and a half years against relative Bellator injury replacement Aaron Jeffery, despite having been Bellator's top contender for like three years already "Alpha" Cat Zingano continues waiting out her title shot by facing Leah McCourt, and in your main event, the more-idle-than-active Marcelo Golm meets Daniel James, because, uh, they're heavyweights.
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Mar 1, 2023 19:57
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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   VACANT - The destination of your favorite artistThere 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. The rubber match was more or less inevitable, and will go down this month at UFC 286 on March 18th. Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs   Islam Makhachev - 24-1, 1 DefenseDestiny 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. His first defense was a different story. Islam faced featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 284 on February 12th in a rare best-of-the-best, champion vs champion match, and this time, his team's prediction of domination was thoroughly incorrect: It was a pitched battle that ended with Makhachev visibly exhausted and Volkanovski pounding on his face. Islam took an extremely close decision and the divisions will remain separate, but his aura of invulnerability has been thoroughly punctured. Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Alexander Volkanovski - 25-2, 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. At UFC 284 on February 12th, in front of a rabid hometown crowd, Volkanovski gave Islam the fight of his life and was smashing him by the end of the final round--but it wasn't quite enough, and he lost a close, but unanimous, decision. He got the moral victory of going toe to toe with the heavier champion, but it cost him his winning streak. What happens next is in flux. Yair Rodríguez is the interim champion and title unification looms, but Volkanovski, incensed at how close he came, is clamoring for a rematch. Interim Featherweight Champion   Yair Rodríguez - 15-3 (1), 0 DefensesIt's been a long, strange trip for Yair Rodríguez. "El Pantera" was just 21 when he first appeared on UFC television and barely 22 when he won The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America, making him explicitly the UFC's great hope for breaking into the Mexican market. The reasoning wasn't hard to see: Yair's Taekwondo background gave him a fighting style unlike anyone else in the UFC, one that mixed attacks at odd angles with wild varieties of kicks. When he knocked out Andre Fili with a jumping switch kick, the world abruptly took notice and the UFC started giving him main events. And then, as they do, things fell apart. He took his first UFC loss to Frankie Edgar in 2017 and was fired and quickly rehired shortly thereafter as part of the UFC's attempt at strongarming him into accepting fights, and then he almost lost a fight against Chan-sung Jung only to knock him out with a blind, reverse, upwards elbow in the very last second of the fight, and then he fought Jeremy Stephens twice in two months after an eyepoke ended their first bout in just fifteen seconds, and then he disappeared for two years thanks to a USADA suspension--not for testing positive for drugs, but for insufficiently updating his address in their smartphone app. In November of 2021 Yair took the second loss of his career in a fight against Max Holloway, and, oddly, that loss boosted him higher than his previous win--the world had expected Holloway to blow him out, and instead Yair gave him an incredible fight and very nearly won, proving he'd matured far more than people gave him credit for. And through that bout he got a title eliminator against Brian Ortega, which--ended in one round when Ortega's shoulder popped out while they were grappling. Through yet another freak occurrence, Yair found himself fighting for the interim featherweight title against Josh Emmett, who, himself, was there largely through chance, and Yair battered and submitted him in two rounds to etch his name in the has-an-asterisk side of the history books. And now, befitting his always-weird circumstances, the interim champion has to wait to see if the completely healthy, actively competing undisputed champion is going to unify the titles or wait for another shot at the lightweight title instead. 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. It's not getting any less weird, either: His next title defense was announced for UFC 288 on May 6th, where he will face a returning Henry Cejudo. 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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NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs  Ryan Bader - 31-7 (1), 3 DefensesRyan Bader is the greatest Bellator Heavyweight Champion of all time, and on a dairy farm somewhere in Wisconsin, Cole Konrad feels a pang of regret. Bader made his name as the winner of The Ultimate Fighter: Nogueira vs Mir all the way back in 2008, but his UFC career proved to be one of Sisyphean torment and humiliation that included, somehow, impossibly, being the only man to lose a UFC fight to Tito Ortiz during his last six years in the company. Bader left for free agency and Bellator in 2016 and became its light-heavyweight champion on his first night with the organization, and just two years later he became its first-ever simultaneous double-champion after knocking out the legendary Fedor Emelianenko and taking the heavyweight title. Bader would go on to lose his 205-pound crown, but Fedor never forgot his 35-second drubbing at the American wrestler's hands, and for his retirement fight, he demanded a rematch. Thus it was that the entire mixed martial arts community watched with bated breath as on February 4th, 2023, Fedor Emelianenko walked into the cage one last time and promptly got the absolute crap beaten out of him again. Ryan Bader remains undefeated at heavyweight. Who comes next, we'll have to see. 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. The future is uncertain. Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs  Johnny Eblen - 13-0, 1 DefensesThere's an old combat sports tradition whereby a champion isn't really a champion until they defend their title. Gegard Mousasi has been established as the best middleweight outside the UFC that, despite the one-sided nature of their fight, Johnny Eblen's victory over him was treated as an aberration rather than the passing of a torch. It didn't matter that Eblen was undefeated, widely considered one of the absolute best by his cohort at American Top Team or that he'd dropped Mousasi on his face with his bare hands, the world needed verification. On February 4th at Bellator 290, they got it. Fedor Emelianenko's team was intending to pull one big, beautiful night of success out of the ether for their leader's retirement fight, but it was not to be: Vadim Nemkov had to pull out of the card thanks to an injury, Fedor himself was crushed for the second time by heavyweight champion Ryan Bader, and middleweight hopeful Anatoly Tokov was competitive for the first couple of rounds but was subsequently washed out by Eblen's overwhelming assault. Johnny Eblen is a defending champion now, and as things always seem to go, the conversation changed overnight from his being overrated to his being better than everyone in the UFC. Nuance escapes our fanbase. Eblen will likely see the winner of May's showdown between Gegard Mousasi and Fabian Edwards this Fall. Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs   Yaroslav Amosov - 27-0, 1 DefenseThere may not be a fighter alive who's had a tougher year than Yaroslav Amosov. Bellator picking Amosov up in 2018 was an obvious choice: He was already a world champion in Sambo and an MMA champion in Russia, already 19-0 with 17 finishes, and already being talked up by his training partners as quite possibly the best welterweight in the world. By 2021 he'd run up a six-fight winning streak in Bellator and earned a shot at world champion Douglas Lima, and he didn't waste a second of it, dominating Lima in every round. His success far outstripped his fame, but a scheduled title defense against superstar Michael "Venom" Page in May of 2022 promised to finally give him the spotlight. That, obviously, did not happen. In the wake of Russia's invasion of his homeland Ukraine Amosov returned home to evacuate his family and, once they had passed the border, notified Bellator he was pulling out of the fight and fighting in the war. Six months later, having liberated his home city of Irpin, he posted video of his troop returning to his mother's home to retrieve his Bellator championship belt, which he'd kept hidden in a closet. Amosov's return bout, a title unification against interim champion Logan Storley, was announced for February 25th, just barely one year after the invasion began, and after a year and a half not just away from competition but actively fighting in a war, there were many questions about how much like his old self Amosov could realistically look. As it turned out: He looked even better. When they'd first fought back in 2020, Storley gave Amosov all he could handle and the fight came down to a split decision; in 2023, Amosov wiped the floor with him, repeatedly hurting him standing and winning the entirety of the wrestling war. His home may still be in crisis, but Yaroslav Amosov is, at least, back on his throne. 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, 2022. 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. On April 22nd at Bellator 295, Raufeon Stots will once again put his interim title on the line in the grand prix final against 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  Fabricio Andrade - 9-2 (1), 0 DefensesThe second time was the charm. When Fabricio "Wonder Boy" Andrade joined ONE Championship back in 2020 he was a virtual unknown in the mixed martial arts world, a 20-3 kickboxer but only a 3-2 mixed martial artist who'd been fighting out in the regional circuit of China. His association with Tiger Muay Thai put him on ONE's radar, and his visible striking skills despite being just 21 at the time made him interesting enough for a developmental contract. Said contract proceeded to develop into Andrade going on a five-fight winning streak that only got more dominant as he met tougher competition, and three straight first-round knockouts punched his ticket to the championship picture. His first appearance in the spotlight, unfortunately, went a touch awry. First, bantamweight champion John Lineker lost his title on the scale after missing weight, meaning only Andrade was eligible to become champion, and he was well on his way to doing so before hitting Lineker with an errant strike to the groin so hard it shattered his cup, and with the fight not yet halfway complete, it had to be rendered a No Contest. It took four months to get to the rematch, and it was much more closely contested, but after four rounds Lineker threw in the towel, his face having been punched too swollen to continue. Fabricio Andrade is 25 and a world goddamn champion. 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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Mar 1, 2023 19:58
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CarlCX posted:We are moving on from these dark times. Join us in March. Oh, because its BLACK history month, its "dark times"? 
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Mar 1, 2023 20:01
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The OP chokes Awful App into a forever-spinning  which I will blame on the Jon Jones curse.
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Mar 1, 2023 20:08
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CarlCX posted: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. UFC never stripped Ngannou of the heavyweight title, so technically he's still it? e:Oh nevermind, I didn't fully read, they DID strip him.
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Mar 1, 2023 20:14
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Amazing thread as always Carl But for true good stuff here is this https://twitter.com/shaunalshatti/status/1631012992459636737?s=20
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Mar 1, 2023 20:27
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Chad Mendes looking rough. That nose.
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Mar 1, 2023 20:33
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lmao @ that first picture in the OP
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Mar 1, 2023 20:35
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https://twitter.com/ChaelSonnen/status/1630714284685549568
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Mar 1, 2023 20:36
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Super excited for Daniel Cormier to be the UFC Heavyweight Champion again by the end of this weekend! 
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Mar 1, 2023 20:38
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Digital Jedi posted:Amazing thread as always Carl Do they not have a fight lined up for Big Ben yet and that's why it just says "also featuring" or is he doing a half hour lounge set between the main and co-main
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Mar 1, 2023 20:39
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DoombatINC posted:Do they not have a fight lined up for Big Ben yet and that's why it just says "also featuring" or is he doing a half hour lounge set between the main and co-main its gonna be francis, but shh, dont tell anyone, its a secret
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Mar 1, 2023 21:17
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There are freaks out there that think JBJ will have the striking advantage against Gane.
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Mar 1, 2023 21:37
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I've never wished covid on someone, but if Gane couldn't fight and they needed to save the card on short notice...
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Mar 1, 2023 22:14
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We were rooting for Volko? I always thought his attitude after the Holloway decisions were bitch made and I've disliked him since
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Mar 1, 2023 22:36
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Oh, because its BLACK history month, its "dark times"? My vision was clouded by my joy at slap fighting almost being over Pwny_Xpress posted:We were rooting for Volko? I always thought his attitude after the Holloway decisions were bitch made and I've disliked him since I personally always liked him but there was definitely a 50/50 split between people here who liked and hated him after the Holloway fights, but then some people switched over because of the way he gritted out the subs against Ortega and beat him insensible for it, and some more people switched over because of how he completely shut Holloway down in their last fight, and practically everyone was pro-Volkanovski against Islam because rooting for underdogs is cool. Also in news: 
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Mar 1, 2023 23:03
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CarlCX posted:
There was a moment where they tried Rampage on as a movie star and now he's in the Fight Circus
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Mar 1, 2023 23:07
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COPE 27 posted:I've never wished covid on someone, but if Gane couldn't fight and they needed to save the card on short notice... And NEW! Sergei Pavlovich https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/sergei-pavlovich-tabbed-as-official-backup-for-jon-jones-vs-ciryl-gane-at-ufc-285/ar-AA180Xm4
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Mar 1, 2023 23:14
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Oh, because its BLACK history month, its "dark times"? it's march now and michael chandler can focus on his coaching commitments now that he doesn't have to do all of the ufc's black history press
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Mar 1, 2023 23:48
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:And NEW! Sergei Pavlovich Why can't we have nice things 😔
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Mar 2, 2023 00:01
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Absolutly amazing write up, loving hell. I swear that's like half a magazine's worth of text. On fedorCarlCX posted:Fedor Emelianenko's legacy in the sport is a point of contention in the mixed martial arts fanbase. Is such a beautiful understatement. There was a good decade where it was impossible to have a conversation about him. People who didn't like him couldn't approach the subject reasonably because they had too much hyperbole ringing in their ears from the last time they spoke to one of his fans, and his fans, who had a pretty rose tinted view of him anyway, were reacting even more effusively to that criticism. It's probably best summed up by Socrates saying, immediately after Fedor's one sided thrashing from Bigfoot "oh, I'd still favour Fedor over any heavyweight in the world" reeg posted:There was a moment where they tried Rampage on as a movie star and now he's in the Fight Circus I thought he was actually a pretty decent actor. It seemed like he could have had a decent niche as a character actor/heavy. Kind of like Lavell Crawford: someone who's intimidating looking but also has plenty of personality. Wonder what happened.
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Mar 2, 2023 00:10
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Is there a particular reason the rizin belt is 156 as opposed to 155 most other organizations use?CarlCX posted:Also in news: Oh hell yeah
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Mar 2, 2023 00:19
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I would have guessed the Rizin belt would be at 154 because that's what 70 kg translates to.
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Mar 2, 2023 00:21
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I don't judge fighters for their fanbases but holy poo poo Fedor's fanbase is (was?) the worst in the sport's history and probably always will be That said I enjoyed him as a fighter and I still don't think calling him the heavyweight GOAT is all that crazy (even if I disagree)
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Mar 2, 2023 01:01
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https://twitter.com/BloodyElbow/status/1631095252655259649 and so I become trashweight, destroyer of cards
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Mar 2, 2023 02:28
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Fight Week, Pet Week - UFC 285 Edition Mateusz Gamrot's big dog  Jalin Turner's also big dogs  Jamie Picket's Cane Corso, Khan  Bo Nickal and Saint  Cody Garbrandt and his dog  Marc-Andre Barriault and Nixon  Jessica Penne with Astraea and Grace 
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Mar 2, 2023 03:56
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Fozzy The Bear posted:https://twitter.com/BloodyElbow/status/1631095252655259649 thought you said destroyer of carbs, look at that belly welly 
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Mar 2, 2023 04:38
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I'm ashamed to admit I've missed all of Jon Jones' Heavyweight fights that earned him this title shot, which top ranked competitors did he beat? Actually I don't need you to be that specific, just what competitors at Heavyweight has he beaten? Actually scratch that, I'll make it easier, I just need to see one of his Heavyweight fights, which of the heavyweight fights that the fighter about to wrestle for the Heavyweight Title has fought should I watch?
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Mar 2, 2023 04:43
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I gave GSP a pass when he got the immediate middleweight shot, but he also wasn’t a rampant cheat.
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Mar 2, 2023 04:45
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LobsterMobster posted:Fight Week, Pet Week - UFC 285 Edition https://twitter.com/boco_t/status/1602511754445160451
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Mar 2, 2023 04:49
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Jerusalem posted:I'm ashamed to admit I've missed all of Jon Jones' Heavyweight fights that earned him this title shot, which top ranked competitors did he beat? Actually I don't need you to be that specific, just what competitors at Heavyweight has he beaten? Actually scratch that, I'll make it easier, I just need to see one of his Heavyweight fights, which of the heavyweight fights that the fighter about to wrestle for the Heavyweight Title has fought should I watch? The same ones as Volk and Izzy
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Mar 2, 2023 05:05
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COPE 27 posted:The same ones as Volk and Izzy Starting to get the vague impression that the integrity of the ranking system in UFC may be very slightly unsound!
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Mar 2, 2023 05:42
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With three years between bouts, talk about a heavy wait!! Thank you for loving my joke, anything is possible through christ
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Mar 2, 2023 05:44
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Jerusalem posted:I'm ashamed to admit I've missed all of Jon Jones' Heavyweight fights that earned him this title shot, which top ranked competitors did he beat? Actually I don't need you to be that specific, just what competitors at Heavyweight has he beaten? Actually scratch that, I'll make it easier, I just need to see one of his Heavyweight fights, which of the heavyweight fights that the fighter about to wrestle for the Heavyweight Title has fought should I watch? Turns out all of the heavyweight contenders lost in their battles against Dana White for a payday that makes it worth getting your brains bashed in, and that’s the most important battle.
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Mar 2, 2023 05:50
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DoombatINC posted:With three years between bouts, talk about a heavy wait!! 
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Mar 2, 2023 06:34
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This ad made me feel like I was having a stroke https://twitter.com/DisneyPlus/status/1630968640991555585?t=
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Mar 2, 2023 06:47
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and vampire sexuality
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Mar 2, 2023 06:58
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Jerusalem posted:I'm ashamed to admit I've missed all of Jon Jones' Heavyweight fights that earned him this title shot, which top ranked competitors did he beat? Actually I don't need you to be that specific, just what competitors at Heavyweight has he beaten? Actually scratch that, I'll make it easier, I just need to see one of his Heavyweight fights, which of the heavyweight fights that the fighter about to wrestle for the Heavyweight Title has fought should I watch? Far be it from me to defend Jones, but he does have two wins over former HW champ Daniel Cormier which is the same amount of wins over Daniel Cormier that the most successful UFC HW of all time has. You could argue DC's fights with Stipe were closer as well. It's the lay-off more than the lack of legitimate competition that makes Jones' shot harder to justify.
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Mar 2, 2023 07:41
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