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Who should get the next welterweight title shot? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Colby Covington |
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2 | 3.51% |
| Belal Muhammad |
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17 | 29.82% |
| Shavkat Rakhmonov |
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3 | 5.26% |
| Matt Serra |
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26 | 45.61% |
| Marius Zaromskis |
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4 | 7.02% |
| Ben Quadrinaros |
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5 | 8.77% |
| Total: | 57 votes | ||
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Do you want to remember a time when we had hope for a Jon Jonesless future? Return to March here. Welcome to April: Time is no longer on our side. Mixed martial arts always takes a little while to wake up in the new year, but it is fully awake now. The UFC is back to four events a month, Bellator's throwing double-headers, Rizin's finally kicking off their year and the PFL is starting its season with three straight weeks of semi-memorable violence. We have multiple events almost every week and, on the 21st-22nd, a truly unconscionable four events in two days. Buckle up. This month's title brought to us by Tweak. 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  IURI LAPICUS - 10/22/1995 - 3/20/2023 Iuri Lapicus died in a motorcycle accident on March 20th. It's a little tough to say goodbye because it felt like we didn't really get much of a chance to say hello. Lapicus was already on his ninth year of mixed martial arts despite being only 27 years old, but most of the world only became aware of him after his debut in ONE championship. His 2020 upset of Marat Gafurov put him on the lightweight map, but he rapidly receded from the limelight after dropping his next three fights--most famously including a clusterfuck on ONE's big American debut on TNT when Eddie Alvarez was disqualified for rabbit-punching him. And it's hard to say more than that, because despite a decade's worth of combat and eight years of instagram posts, Iuri never really left that much out there. He did rare interviews, he would every once in awhile post a picture of himself on vacation or with his brother, but he kept his personal life personal. Somewhat morbidly, his only real public posts in the last several months that weren't professional were excited pictures and videos of his new motorcycle--which would, eventually, be in the accident that killed him. It's a tragedy he's gone so senselessly, it's a tragedy he's gone so young, and it's a tragedy we'll never get a chance to know him better both as a fighter and a person. He leaves behind a 14-2 (1) record and a lot of heartbroken training partners.  Oh, good, it's this dumb rear end in a top hat again. In what in hindsight really should not have been a surprise, the UFC trotted out Colby Covington as the backup for March's welterweight championship match and immediately set about making it adamantly clear that he was the #1 contender to the title. This made a lot of people mad, given his complete lack of schedule or, indeed, his having not fought a single contender, to the point that welterweight champion Leon Edwards has publicly stated his refusal to face Colby. That said, the UFC has already gotten true #1 contender Belal Muhammad to back down, so, unfortunately, the fight seems like an inevitability.  Oh, good, it's this dumb rear end in a top hat again. Because he has to be the protagonist of mixed martial arts even while not actually participating, a lot of March was dominated by the Conor McGregor press cycle. This time around, it's because despite currently coaching on The Ultimate Fighter against Michael Chandler, and despite being expected to face Chandler in a fight this August or September, Conor still hasn't been tested by USADA, the US Anti-Doping Agency, which handles all the UFC's drug testing. Which is bad, because according to USADA's rules, an athlete has to be tested for a minimum of six months before they can compete. So now it's a Thing. USADA is intimating they'll need Conor to play ball, Conor is intimating USADA should go to hell, and the UFC is intimating they'll exercise their ability to exempt fighters if they really want to. What's the point of a drug testing policy you can make convenient exceptions for? That's a very good question.  After the success of 2022's pan-Asian talent scouting tournament, the Road to UFC is opening up again for 2023. They're boasting an even greater array of participants from a greater array of countries, but have yet to detail who or where. The opening round is scheduled for May 27-28, so they'd better figure it out fast. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  "Smooth" Benson Henderson called it a career this March, and this has provoked equal amounts of grief and relief. Benson Henderson is, unequivocally, one of the most accomplished lightweights in the history of mixed martial arts. Back when World Extreme Cagefighting was a lightweight crucible he ran it with ease, choking out goddamn near everyone in the division and becoming the second-to-last man to hold its championship. He lost it to Anthony Pettis in what would be both an all-time classic of a contest and the very last fight of the WEC's existence, but unlike Pettis he rolled straight into the UFC as a top contender and, within a year, a champion. Benson Henderson is, in fact, tied for the most title defenses in lightweight history alongside BJ Penn and Khabib Nurmagomedov, in a run that saw him beat Frankie Edgar, Nate Diaz and Gilbert Melendez, and even after losing his UFC title--fittingly enough, once again, to Anthony Pettis--he went on to beat people like Jorge Masvidal and Patricio Pitbull, challenge for three different Bellator championships, and have what is, by any measure, one of the better lightweight careers the sport has seen. At least, according to two out of three judges on any given night. Benson got the nickname "Bendo" partially as a riff on his flexibility--beating a Nate Diaz grapple by doing the splits remains an all-time MMA highlight--but mostly as a reference to all-time hall of famer Dan "Hendo" Henderson who, before he was known for the deadliest right hand in the sport, was mainly remembered for getting some of the most-derided decision victories in Pride. Benson may have beaten an entire generation of lightweights, but a lot of those victories were real contentious split decisions and people are still mad about them to this day. 3/4 of media outlets scored his first title defense against Frankie Edgar for Edgar, half scored his final defense against Gilbert Melendez for the Strikeforce champ, a whopping 80% of the media scored his first post-championship performance for Josh Thomson, but Benson walked away with every one of those pivotal fights, and that reputation followed him. Even in his later years in Bellator he was scoring contentious decisions. It soured the fanbase on him, and it soured the perception of his career. And while I cannot say I think the judging in all of those fights was fair, I can say the degree to which it's sullied his reputation as an all-timer is decidedly unfair. Benson was so ahead of the curve that some of the things he was doing, most famously his love of calf kicks, were so unusual as to be perceived as errors in his style at the time and would in the years that followed become staples of the sport. He beat up Nate Diaz before it was cool, he made every Strikeforce fan furious, he managed victories over a half-dozen world champions, and in a career spanning three decades at the toughest division in mixed martial arts he was only stopped five times in forty-two fights. He fought with toothpicks hidden in his mouth, he was cloyingly earnest about Jesus, and he lost by submission only three times in his career: Once in his rookie year, once exactly midway through his career, and one last time in his retirement fight. Judges or no, it was a hell of a run. He leaves the sport at 30-12.  We're not done saying goodbye to WEC veterans just yet, though. Raphael Assunção also called it quits after a submission loss this month, and in doing so ended one of the most irritatingly underrated careers in the sport. One of the most common trivia questions for hardcore MMA fans is "who's the best fighter to never win a world championship," but Raphael Assunção is, almost unquestionably, the best fighter to never even get a chance to win a world championship. Assunção was a complete fighter back when the sport didn't even know what jabs were. Between his amateur debut in 2003 and his retirement twenty god damned years later he fought, was competitive against and in most cases beat three different generations of mixed martial artists across three different weight classes, with his gritty chin, his black belt jiu-jitsu and the sheer difficulty nearly everyone had at just keeping him loving down. And his record shows just how well it worked. Jorge Masvidal, Joe Lauzon, Issei Tamura, Pedro Munhoz, Bryan Caraway, TJ Dillashaw, Rob Front, Marlon Moraes, even current champion Aljamain goddamn Sterling--he beat all of them. When he dropped down to the bantamweight division in 2011 he went on a seven-fight winning streak that, in a sign of what the UFC thought of his style, took place almost entirely on the prelims, and culminated not in a title shot, but in a rematch with TJ Dillashaw. He was too gritty, he was too boring, he was too old, and the UFC never quite shook off the sense that he was just a stepping stone fighter. But by 2019, he was. After losing just five of his first thirty-two fights, as with anyone who stays in the sport too long, Assunção hit the unfortunate combination of reaching his late thirties and still fighting the best of the best. Four straight losses led to the awareness that retirement loomed, and while he turned back the clock with a genuinely impressive thrashing of Victor Henry last year, after getting choked out by Davey Grant on March 11th, it was time. His career ended where the UFC ensured it lived: On the prelims. He leaves the sport at 28-10.  A long time ago I wrote that one of the greatest curses of combat sports is being defined by the coolest thing that happened to you, whether it was giving or receiving. David Branch, much to his personal chagrin, spent most of his career being defined by a 2010 UFC debut where Gerald "Hurricane" Harris knocked him out with what was basically a professional wrestling spinebuster, which is, admittedly, pretty cool. But maybe not as cool as the run he went on after the UFC released him. In the mid-2010s, there were three canonical middleweight champions: Robert Whittaker, who had reigned over the UFC during its troubled Bisping period, Gegard Mousasi, who had killed most of the UFC's middleweight division before leaving for Bellator, and David Branch. Branch was there for the beginning of the World Series of Fighting--now known as the Professional Fighters League, several acquisitions later--and he quickly became one of its kingpins, taking its inaugural middleweight tournament and defending his crown for a year before jumping up to light-heavyweight, winning ITS inaugural tournament, and taking that belt home with him, too. What's more, he became one of the only double-champions in history to fulfill the promise of bouncing between the two divisions, defending both in alternating fights. All told, he went on a ten-fight winning streak with the WSOF, and when the UFC picked him up again in 2017 he was seen as a potential game-changer for its middleweight division. Which...did not happen. He went 2-3 in his second UFC run. Hilariously, one of the two was a violent knockout of soon-to-be 205-pound #1 contender Thiago Santos, but after getting trounced three times and pissing hot for an ersatz form of human growth hormone that saw him suspended through mid-2021, the UFC let him go. He went to Russia for one more fight, but after getting choked out he decided to serve the rest of his suspension in peace, and after an attempt at fighting for ONE Championship ended with his not being medically cleared, he looked at his new life in his forties and decided it was time to move on. Which is the right decision, because even with that last UFC slide, David Branch still had a hell of a career. He beat title contenders, he beat world champions, and while he never reached the top of the mountain, but he never stopped climbing the drat thing. He leaves the sport at 22-7.  Steven "Ocho" Peterson surprised people by laying down the gloves after his loss to Lucas Alexander on March 25th, and some of that surprise was a retirement at his relatively young 32, and some was simply that people didn't know who the hell he was. Peterson was brought to the UFC's attention as an early participant on the Contender Series, and he had the unfortunate luck of having a journeyman's level of success in a time of oversaturation. He fought in the UFC for five goddamn years and ran up a record that included a knockout of the night and a fight of the night, but as someone who obsessively follows this sport, if you asked me to name the guy he knocked out off the top of my head, I would have stared blankly into space. Maybe it's a testament to where the sport is now, or maybe it's a testament to Peterson's career. It's hard to make UFC memories when you're 3-5. But he was a good fighter, and he stuck around awhile, and he deserves his recognition, and my favorite retirements are the ones where people get out young and healthy so they can enjoy the rest of their lives. He leaves the sport at 19-11.  On the very last day of the month, John Salter decided to head off to the retirement home. Salter is one of the very few people the UFC ever invested in early in their career, and he might be a bit of a cautionary tale as to why they don't do it more often. When Salter turned pro in 2009 he was already an intercollegiate wrestling champion, a multi-time North American Grappling Association champion and an amateur MMA champion, which is presumably why the UFC decided it was a good idea to sign him back in 2010 when he was only 4-0 and have him fight guys with almost ten times his experience. He went 1-2, the 1 was a leg injury, he was released in less than a year and he never came back to the UFC. But he carved out a hell of a run on the b-leagues. He cleaned up on the regional circuit, he joined Bellator in 2015 and over the next eight years he beat everyone who wasn't an active or future middleweight champion. He was never the best, but he was a Bellator contender for most of a decade and he picked up wins over current UFC fighters like Chidi Njokuani and Dustin Jacoby on his way up, and that's a big ask for anyone. He leaves the sport at 18-6, and he even got to leave on a win. WHERE ELSE CAN I TALK TO LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE ABOUT VIOLENCE? Any of the following hangouts:
DO WE HAVE OTHER COMMUNAL THREADS? So many.
WHERE ELSE DOES FIGHT CHAT EXIST? Our community output has grown enough that we've got a few other places things get posted:
 Disclaimer: These are unofficial offsites, somethingawful's rules and liability do not extend to them, and complaining about discord stuff is still offsite drama posting
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WHAT HAPPENED IN MARCH The mixed martial month began with UFC 285: Jones vs Gane on March 4th, which wound up being a night of surprises both welcome and unwanted. On the early prelims Loik Radzhabov and Farid Basharat won their UFC debuts, Tabatha Ricci became the first woman to submit Jessica Penne in a decade, Cameron Saaiman once again repeatedly fouled his opponent into a point deduction but won anyway, and Ian Garry overcame an early scare to knock out Song Kenan. On the on-time prelims, Marc-Andre Barriault knocked out Julian Marquez, Amanda Ribas outfought Viviane Araujo, Dricus du Plessis stopped and possibly retired Derek Brunson, and Cody Garbrandt made his latest comeback with an incredibly uneventful decision over Trevin Jones. The main card was five straight fights of crazy poo poo. Bo Nickal won his UFC debut, but only after the referee missed him kneeing Jamie Pickett in the groin. Mateusz Gamrot, on a week and a half's notice, just barely outworked Jalin Turner despite getting repeatedly stung. Shavkat Rakhmonov fought a war against Geoff Neal and wound up getting the very rare standing rear naked choke in the third round. Alexa Grasso ended one of the UFC's longest title reigns, upsetting Valentina Shevchenko with a comeback submission in the fourth round. The main event saw Jon Jones meeting Ciryl Gane for the vacant heavyweight championship, and after ten years of theorycrafting, after Gane's entire career of being elusive and tricky, the fight was two minutes long and saw Gane throw all of nine strikes before getting immediately taken down and guillotined. Jon Jones is the heavyweight champion. Hell is real. Bellator was up next with an unusually short card in Bellator 292: Nurmagomedov vs Henderson on March 10th. Preliminary fighters you've never heard of like Theo Haig, Laird Anderson and Dovietdzhan Yagshimuradov won solid fights, Khalid Murtazaliev continued his winning ways, Josh Hill squeaked past Cass Bell and Enrique Barzola dominated Érik Pérez. The main card was four fights, but each was simple and definitive. Michael "Venom" Page, fresh off his loss to Logan Storley, was given a fight that was simultaneosuly a reasonably matched piece of competition in Bellator's welterweight division and a bout against career featherweight half a foot shorter than him who's been at 170 pounds for less than a year, Goiti Yamauchi, because Bellator's welterweight division is more of a suggestion. Page broke his kneecap with one kick in twenty-six seconds. Linton Vassell punched his ticket to a heavyweight title shot after knocking out Valentin Moldavsky in three minutes. Alexander Shabily made himself a new top contender at lightweight after dropping Tofiq Musayev with a kick to the body. And in the main event, Usman Nurmagomedov handed Benson Henderson the final loss of his career, dropping him and choking him out in just two and a half minutes to both defend the Bellator lightweight championship and lead Benson to retire. The UFC came back the next day with March 11th's UFC Fight Night: Yan vs Dvalishvili. Down in the preliminary card, Carlston Harris outworked late replacement Jared Gooden, Bruno Silva choked out Tyson Nam, Ariane Lipski made a comeback against JJ Aldrich, Victor Henry swarmed Tony Gravely to a close decision, Josh Fremd made everyone happy by choking out Contender Series prospect and domestic violence enthusiast Sedriques Dumas, Davey Grant overcame a two-and-a-half-round deficit to choke out a retiring Raphael Assunção and Karl Williams wrestled the crap out of a visibly frustrated Łukasz Brzeski. Up on the main card, Vitor Petrino scored a decision victory over Anton "The Pleasure Man" Turkalj, Mario Bautista choked out Guido Cannetti, Jonathan Martinez managed to scrape a decision over Said Nurmagomedov that could best be described as 'kind of sketchy,' Nikita Krylov strangled Ryan Spann and Alexander Volkov destroyed Alexandr Romanov. The main event saw a dismissive Petr Yan get absolutely drowned by Merab Dvalishvili, who never once let him breathe, breaking the UFC's previous takedown attempts-in-a-fight record of 34 with 49 and outstriking Yan 202-87 en route to a shutout decision victory. And then Invicta brightened our doorsteps with their bimonthly check-in thanks to March 15th's Invicta FC 52: Machado vs McCormack. Kendra McIntyre won the rookie showcase by successfully beating Diana Sanchez in her professional debut, Colombia's Sayury Cannon beat Amanda Macioce, Fatima Kline outfought Olympic medalist judoka Natasha Kuziutina, Mayra Cantuária secured the first finish in an Invicta fight since last November by choking out Calie Cutler, Shauna Bannon began a good night for Ireland by dominating Minna Grusander, and former EFC champion Karolina Wójcik just barely scraped past Ediana Silva. The main event was a surprising if lengthy affair, as strawweight champion Valesca "Tina Black" Machado dominated the first round and dropped Danni McCormack twice, only for McCormack to gather herself and spend the next four straight rounds embracing the grind, forcing Machado into the cage and simply overwhelming her with takedown attempts and short punches until she couldn't muster a lick of return fire. Tina Black's championship reign ended on her first defense, and Danni McCormack is your new Invicta FC Strawweight World Champion. The UFC's penultimate event for the month, UFC 286: Edwards vs Usman 3, came and went on March 18th. It was, figuratively and literally, brutal. The early preliminary fights saw Veronica Hardy return from a three-year layoff and dominate Juliana Miller, Jai Herbert go to a draw with Ľudovít Klein and Joanne Wood and Lerone Murphy both score split decision victories; on the more painful side of things, Jake Hadley gutpunched a Malcolm Gordon who was reportedly pissing liver tissue before the fight and Christian Leroy Duncan made a successful UFC debut when Duško Todorović's leg spontaneously imploded while pivoting for a throw. The regular-flavor prelims weren't any more merciful: Muhammad Mokaev overcame having his knee hyperextended by a kneebar to submit Jafel Filho, Yanal Ashmoz scored an upset knockout over Sam Patterson, Chris Duncan scraped a split decision over Omar Morales, and Jack Shore put Makwan Amirkhani out to pasture with a rear naked choke. The main card started out as a slog but ended well. Marvin Vettori scored a lackluster and pretty questionable decision over Roman Dolidze, Jennifer Maia outfought Casey O'Neill and then accused her of greasing, Gunnar Nelson pretty easily submitted Bryan Barberena, and in the co-main event, Justin Gaethje overcame getting repeatedly hurt to win a majority decision over Rafael Fiziev. The main event was the much-anticipated ending of a welterweight trilogy, and it was both interesting and thoroughly messy. Leon Edwards fouled Kamaru Usman enough that he sacrificed one point and arguably should have lost another, but his takedown defense, leg kicks and striking in the pocket still got him a majority decision and the first welterweight championship defense of his career. ONE took the stage for ONE Fight Night 8: Superlek vs Williams on March 25th. It got repeatedly cut down by circumstance, having been initially billed as the repeatedly delayed heavyweight championship unification match between Arjan Bhullar and Anatoly Malykhin, and the replacement main event, a superfight between kickboxing champion Superlek Kiatmuu9 and Muay Thai champion Rodtang Jitmuangnon, was spiked just days before the event thanks to Rodtang getting injured. The eventual card was, unfortunately, pretty underwhelming. Tammi Musumeci and Bianca Basilio had an uneventful grappling match, Iman Barlow, Keiyo Yamakita, Aslanbek Zikreev and Seo Hee Ham won lackluster decisions, and Akbar Abdullaev, Zhang Peimian and Eddie Abasolo tried to pull the event up with their respective wins. The co-main event wound up being the more interesting fight of the night, as Women's Atomweight Muay Thai champion Allycia Rodrigues, coming off a layoff of nearly three years, reunified her title with a decision over interim champion Janet Todd. The main was, well, perfunctory: Superlek was pitted against Danial "Mini T" Williams, who was taking the fight on two days' notice, in his first kickboxing appearance in two years, a full class above his typical weight. Unsurprisingly, he was knocked out in two rounds. The UFC's March ended on March 25th's UFC on ESPN: Vera vs Sandhagen, which was an absurdly cursed card. Already something of an afterthought by typical UFC standards, by showtime injuries had driven the card down to 11 fights and the potential fight of the night, Manel Kape vs the unfathomably snakebitten Alex Perez, was cancelled midway through the program, making it the UFC's shortest card since...last month, when the same goddamn thing happened. On the prelims, Victor Altamirano and C.J. Vergara won very fun if kind of sloppy flyweight fights, Trevin Giles scraped a split decision away from Preston Parsons, and Lucas Alexander dominated a retiring Steven Peterson. On the main card, Daniel Pineda choked out Tucker Lutz, Albert Duraev managed an exceedingly close split decision against Chidi Njokuani, Maycee Barber got an equally close call over Andrea Lee, and Nate Landwehr rounded them out by crushing Austin Lingo. Your co-main event saw Holly Holm decide to simple wrestle Yana Santos for three rounds, which almost endeared her to me until she used her post-fight interview to say some real dumb poo poo about right-wing groomer rhetoric, and in the main event, Marlon "Chito" Vera's championship dreams came to an end after Cory Sandhagen shut him out of their fight almost completely. Somehow, the the judges still turned it, too, into a split decision; luckily, Sandhagen still won. And our month came to an end with Bellator 293: Golm vs James on March 31st. I already get miffed anytime I have to alter these writeups on the last day of the month thanks to how long they take to proofread and edit, and I would like to give Bellator my additional thanks for making me do so for what might be, on paper, the worst card they've promoted. A field of thousands of preliminary fights yielded Randi Field beating Ashley "Smashley" Cummins, Vladimir Tokov ending the undefeated streak of Lance Gibson Jr., Sara Collins taking out Pam Sorenson with a scarf hold, Mike Hamel headkicking Nick Browne and Rakim Cleveland choking out Christian Edwards.; Your main card was equally low: Luke Trainer choked out Sullivan Cauley and Archie Colgan punched out Justin Montalvo, then longtime middleweight gatekeeper John Salter derailed one last prospect in Aaron Jeffrey before immediately announcing his retirement, and Cat Zingano just barely made it past Leah McCourt to maintain her top contendership in the assuredly real Women's Featherweight division. Up in your main event, Bellator's #5 heavyweight Marcelo Golm fought Daniel James, who was main eventing after exactly one single Bellator win because heavyweight is stupid, and James proceeded to knock Golm out with a Mortal Kombat uppercut in three rounds, because heavyweight being stupid is both an insult and a compliment. WHAT'S COMING IN APRIL The martial arts year is hitting cruising speed and we are all going to begin holding on for dear life. After three months of licking their Bellator-induced wounds, Rizin is finally kicking off their 2023 with Rizin 41: Osaka on April 1st. In a strange reversal of style, this event is considerably more focused on kickboxing while their MMA stars are largely being held back for the typically-smaller Landmark event later in the month. The night opens with four kickboxing fights featuring people like Shin Sakurai and Yuto Miwa that most will never have heard of, the middle of the card returns to mixed martial arts with some familiar faces like Sho Patrick Usami, Yusaku Nakamura and everyone's favorite Rizin loser, Mehman Mamedov. The top of the card sees a veteran battle between Kiichi Kunimoto and Keita Nakamura, former Pancrase champion Daichi Kitakata vs Makoto Takahashi and Vugar Karamov vs Yoshinori Horie. But the main event pops us back into kickboxing, where Ryusei Ashizawa will try to get back on the winning path against your friend and mine, Kouzi. But they're not the only ones getting out of bed that day. The Professional Fighters League is ready for their 2023 season, and it starts with PFL 1: Loughnane vs Moraes. Week one focuses on the featherweights and light-heavyweights, with five fights in the former and six in the latter. The prelims are primarily notable for the debut of UFC cast-off Impa Kasanganay and returning-from-hiatus South Korean featherweight Sung Bin Jo; your main card sees Chris Wade vs Bubba Junkins, Movlid Khaybulaev vs Ryoji Kudo, newly-released UFC fighter Krzysztof Jotko meeting Will Fleury and former title competitor Thiago Santos facing 2022 PFL champion Rob Wilkinson. Your main event is what will very likely be a very depressing matchup between 2022 PFL featherweight champion Brendan Loughnane and Marlon Moraes, who hasn't won a fight since 2019, retired, unretired, debuted for PFL last year and got knocked out by Sheymon Moraes, who, somehow, is not competing in this season. With the UFC taking a week off, PFL gets to go twice. April 7th brings us PFL 2: Goltsov vs De Castro. This week brings us the opening rounds for Women's Featherweight and Heavyweight, and also one single amateur bout at lightweight for some strange reason. In your former bracket: Maris Moknatkina vs Yoko Higashi, Amanda Leve vs Karolina Sobek, Martina Jindrova vs Amber Leibrock, Olena Kolesnyk vs Aspen Ladd, and because women apparently don't deserve to be off the prelims, only one fight made it onto the main card: 2022 lightweight champion Larissa Pacheco vs Julia Budd. At heavyweight, we've got the debut of Michal Andryszak, Marcelo Nunes vs Maurice Greene, Renan Ferreira vs Rizvan Kuniev, Bruno Cappelozza vs Matheus Scheffel, and since 2022 champion Ante Delija is injured, he's been replaced by Denis Goltsov against Yorgan De Castro. The next day, April 8th, the UFC is back with UFC 287: Pereira vs Adesanya 2. Or 3. Or 4, depending on how you're counting them. On your early prelims: Jacqueline Amorim debuts against a struggling Sam Hughes, Shayilan Nuerdanbieke is back for Steve Garcia, Ignacio Bahamondes meets Nikolas Motta, Cynthia Calvillo faces Lupita Godinez and Gerald Meerschaert fights Joe Pyfer. Up on ESPN: Chris Barnett and my man Chase Sherman do heavyweight battle, Michelle Waterson-Gomez fights Luana Pinheiro, Michael Chiesa meets Li Jingliang, and Kelvin Gastelum faces Chris Curtis. Despite the number of fights there that could be up top, your main card opener is Raul Rosas Jr. facing Christian Rodriguez, followed by Kevin Holland vs Santiago Ponzinibbio, Rob Font vs Adrian Yanez, and a co-main event featuring Gilbert Burns and Jorge Masvidal, much to my chagrin. Your main event is, of course, Alex Pereira looking to run his series against Israel Adesanya up to astronomical blowout levels by defending his middleweight championship. PFL ends its first phase the following week with PFL 3: Aubin-Mercier vs Burgos on April 14th. This night's for the Lightweights and Welterweights: The first group gets Clay Collard (ON THE drat PRELIMS) vs Yamato Nishikawa, Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov vs Ashmed Amir, Raush Manfio vs Alexander Martinez and Natan Schulte vs Stevie Ray, and the second group gets Magomed Umalatov vs Dilano Taylor, Carlos Leal vs David Zawada, Magomed Magomedkerimov vs Don Madge, Shane Mitchell vs a mystery opponent and 2022 champ Sadibou Sy vs Jarrah Al-Silawi. Your main event is also a lightweight tilt, as 2022 champ Olivier Aubin-Mercier welcomes the rare ranked UFC competitor released more or less by mistake, Shane Burgos, to the PFL. The UFC is back on ESPN the next day for UFC on ESPN: Holloway vs Allen. It's a big, long card: Joselyne Edwards vs Lucie Pudilova, Lando Vannata vs Daniel Zellhuber, Aaron Phillips vs Gastón Bolaños, Br--honestly, is there any real utility value in me listing all of these? I wonder each month if anyone reads these for these actual event descriptions, or if anyone who actually wants to know what's on the card wouldn't just click through instead to see it in a much more digestible view. Let me know, I guess. Uh, Bruna Brasil vs Denise Gomes, Brandon Royval vs Matheus Nicolau (HALFWAY DOWN THE GOD DAMNED PRELIMS), Zak Cummings vs Ed Herman, Gillian Robertson vs Piera Rodriguez, and Clay Guida vs Rafa Garcia. Your main card is a little low on ranked importance, but the banger potential is high. Bill Algeo vs TJ Brown will probably rule, Pedro Munhoz vs Chris Gutierrez will probably rule, Ion Cutelaba vs Tanner Boser will, well, probably be very funny, and Dustin Jacoby vs Azamat Murzakanov is anybody's guess. Your co-main is the deeply embattled Edson Barboza vs Billy Quarantillo, and in your main event, Arnold Allen finally gets his top-level test when he faces former champion Max Holloway. A long, four-fight weekend begins on April 21st with Bellator 294: Carmouche vs Bennett 2. Bellator likes to run Hawaiian double-headers with one short card, and this is that short card. You've still got your traditional prelims, but for once it's a short five fights and it's populated by people Bellator fans will recognize, like Anthony Adams, Tyrell Fortune, Killys Mota and Alex Polizzi. Your main card sees Levan Chokheli meet Michael Lombardo, Danny Sabatello tries to get back to winning against Marcos Breno, Arlene Blencowe welcomes Sara McMann to both Bellator and the featherweight division, and Timothy Johnson and Said Sowma will probably clinch a lot. Your main event sees Liz Carmouche defending her no-longer-disputed Women's Flyweight Championship against DeAnna Bennett, whom she choked out back in 2020. April 22nd brings us three events in one day, and I rolled a die and it told me to pick ONE Fight Night 9: Nong-O vs Haggerty first. You've got three Muay Thai bouts, with Han Zihao vs Asa Ten Pow, Ferrari Fairtex vs Felipe Lobo and Black Panther vs Jacob Smith, and you've got six MMA bouts: Jhanlo Mark Sangiao vs Matias Farinelli, Meng Bo vs Dayane Cardoso, Isi Fitikefu vs Valmir da Silva, Denice Zamboanga vs Julie Mezabarba, Bokang Masunyane vs Hiroba Minowa and Halil Amir vs Maurice Abevi. Your main event sees Bantamweight Muay Thai champion Nong-O Gaiyanghadao defend his belt against British champion and former ONE Flyweight Muay Thai champion Jonathan Haggerty. Second up, it's Bellator 295: Stots vs Mix. This is the traditionally longer Bellator card, and it shows, with nine preliminary fights that feature a bunch of people you absolutely do not know, followed by a top-card featuring Sumiko Inaba vs Veta Arteaga, Kai Kamaka III vs Adlio Edwards, Yancy Medeiros vs Charlie Leary and Mads Burnell vs Justin Gonzales. Your main card's a barnburner, though. Kyoji Horiguchi returns to American flyweight to meet the debuting Ray Borg, Aaron Pico tries to get back to winning against Otto Rodriguez, Ilima-Lei Macfarlane fightgs a possible title eliminator against Kana Watanabe, and in your main event, Raufeon Stots both defends his interim bantamweight championship and fights the final of the Bantamweight Grand Prix against Patchy Mix. Finally, our marathon day ends with UFC Fight Night: Pavlovich vs Blaydes. It's, respectfully, a big, weird card. Your prelims: Brady Hiestand vs Danaa Batgerel, Priscila Cachoeira vs Karine Silva, Francis Marshall vs William Gomis, Mohammad Usman vs Junior Tafa which will be hilarious, Rafael Estevam vs Carlos Candelario, Karol Rosa vs Norma Dumont, Rani Yahya vs Montel Jackson and Ricky Glenn vs Christos Giagos, which is a featured prelim headliner if ever I've seen one. But don't stop the train, because we're opening up the main card with the star power of Iasmin Lucindo vs Brogan Walker-Sanchez, followed by Bobby Green against recent robbery victim Jared Gordon, Jeremiah Wells vs Matthew Semelsberger, Brad Tavares vs Bruno Silva and Song Yadong vs Ricky Simon. And after all of that weirdness, your main event on this otherwise low-key fight night is...arguably a fight to determine the actual best heavyweight in the UFC and inarguably a fight to determine the rightful #1 heavyweight contender, as Sergei Pavlovich faces Curtis Blaydes. All's quiet until the next weekend, with Rizin Landmark 5 on April 29th. Weirdly, despite Landmark being Rizin's b-tier label, this is a bigger, more international and more contender-laden card than their big-brand show for the month, with international points of interest like Callyu Gibrainn fighting Mikio Ueda, long-running veterans like Masanori Kanehara in action, former top contender Johnny Case welcoming Ali Abdulkhalikov to the ring, Kanna Asakura AND Rena Kubota both getting hopeful victories, goddamn Tsuyoshi Sudario facing superheavyweight Roque Martinez, Koji Takeda fighting streaking Luiz Gustavo, and Yutaka Saito facing Ren Hiramoto. Your main event is Rizin running a revenge fight, as perennial fly in their ointment Juntaro Ushiku faces favored son Mikuru Asakura, last seen getting crushed by Floyd Mayweather Jr. And finally, mercifully, our long months ends with that evening's UFC Fight Night: Tsarukyan vs Moicano. The UFC's weird-rear end cards for the month don't let up at all--you've got things like the weight classless Chelsea Chandler vs the impossible-to-prove-exists Danyelle Wolf, Journey Newson vs Brian Kelleher, Cody Brundage vs Rodolfo Vieira, all kinds of matchups that only really make sense if you think of it as the UFC trying to cut away some of their losses. Your big fights for the night inclkude Michael Oleksiejczuk vs Caio Borralho, Emily Ducote vs Polyana Viana, Marcos Rogerio de Lima vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta, and our main event, Arman Tsarukyan vs Renato Moicano.
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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Jon Jones - 27-1 (1), 0 DefensesVery few things in combat sports reach the crossroads of awe-inspiring and unfathomably frustrating as Jon Jones. In 2020, Jon Jones notched the third defense of his second light-heavyweight championship reign after an exceedingly contentious decision against Dominick Reyes, only to abdicate the title because the UFC wasn't paying him enough, and he was bored of 205 pounds and wanted to move up to heavyweight like he'd been planning to for nearly a decade, and he needed more time to cement his place as not just one of the sport's greatest pound-for-pound fighters, but one of its biggest pound-for-pound pains in the rear end. On September 23, 2021, Jon Jones was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame; on September 24, 2021, he was arrested (for the fifth time!) after his daughter called the police on him for beating her mother, during which he antagonized the police and, inexplicably, headbutted a police car. Because this is Jon Jones, of course, the primary charges were dropped, he paid $750 for the hood of the police cruiser, and got a stern warning to stay out of trouble, young man, because there is a money-powered reality-distorting field around Jon Jones whereby nothing matters. After a year of rumors, and after the unconscionable firing of heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the UFC gleefully announced Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane to fill the vacant heavyweight throne. Did it matter to the matchmaking that there were more deserving candidates? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He deserves the spot for his earlier success. Did it matter to his public appearances that when last we saw him he was arrested for beating his fiancee? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He was, if anything, more up his own rear end with self-righteousness than ever before. Did it matter to the fight that he hadn't competed in more than three years and looked terrible at the time? Of course not, because it's Jon loving Jones. Ciryl Gane looked too nervous to use footwork let alone throw anything, and he should have been, as Jones effortlessly threw him to the canvas and choked him out in two minutes. The longest-running, most dominant and yet most persistently annoying show in mixed martial arts is back. Jon Jones is your heavyweight champion, and we are all damned. He's theoretically fighting Stipe Miocic next, but honestly, who the hell knows. 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 - 21-3 (1), 1 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 inevitable, and once again, Edwards opened as an underdog, and once again, he proved everyone wrong. Instead of a last-minute comeback Leon simply shut Usman down for the majority of the fight, stuffing eleven of his takedown attempts, outstriking him in four out of five rounds and landing an absolutely wild 75% of his strikes in the process. It was an incredible performance against one of the greatest welterweights of all time, marred only by Leon losing a point for fence grabs. The decision was unquestionably his, and now legitimized as the champion of the world, Leon's first move is...getting into a big, public spat with the UFC, because instead of any of the working contenders of the division Dana White is demanding he defend the belt against Colby Covington. Fantastic. 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  Alexa Grasso - 16-3, 0 DefensesEvery once in awhile someone gets to shock the combat sports world, and in 2023, it's Alexa Grasso. The UFC has been high on Grasso since she left Invicta for her company debut back in 2016--she's been one of the most consistently featured fighters in ANY women's division, be it her time at strawweight or her move up to flyweight--but her two bids at the top of the mountain at 115 pounds met with disaster, once in Tatiana Suarez handing her the only stoppage loss of her career and once in Carla Esparza outwrestling her to a decision, and watching her manhandled by 115-pound fighters left the world doubting her 125-pound chances. But thanks to her solid boxing and her ever-improving ground game she ran up a four-fight winning streak, and when the UFC announced that she'd be taking on divisional queen and one of the greatest of all time in Valentina Shevchenko, the collective fan reaction was a unanimous "sure, okay," because Valentina disposing of people was a generally accepted phenomenon and she needed a warm body. The first round was a slight surprise, with Grasso stinging Shevchenko on the feet, but as so often happens, by the fourth round Valentina had taken over the fight, was ahead on every judge's scorecard and looked poised to cruise to her her eighth title defense. And then, she was struck down by the bane of the sport: Spinning poo poo. Backed into the fence, Shevchenko did what she does entirely too often--a spinning back kick--and in the half-second she was turned away Grasso leapt to her back, dragged her to the floor, and became the first person to ever submit Valentina Shevchenko. Alexa Grasso, after years of work, is the Women's Flyweight Champion of the World. But after six undefeated years and the longest women's title reign in UFC history (not counting Women's Featherweight which, as we all know, is Not Real), a rematch with Shevchenko later this year seems inevitable. 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 an undisclosed injury saw him pulled from the card; the fight is now scheduled for Bellator 297 on June 16th. 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 - 17-0, 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. Usman's first fight as champion was both a defense and an entry into the first round of Bellator's Lightweight Grand Prix on March 3rd at Bellator 292, where he met, crushed, and retired former UFC champion Benson Henderson, handing him just the third submission loss of a 17-year, 42-fight career. He'll be waiting for the winner of May 12's tilt between Mansour Barnaoui and Brent Primus. 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. And now, on June 16th, he'll be facing Sergio Pettis in an attempt to claim a third divisional championship. 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 was out long enough that Bellator crowned an interim champion and held the entirety of a Bantamweight Grand Prix, which wound up being one of their more successful and highly-lauded tournaments in quite awhile, so of course, when they announced Sergio would be returning on June 16th, months after the tournament's conclusion, they also announced that he would be fighting...Patrício Pitbull, who is trying to become a three-class champion. Thanks, Bellator. Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion  Raufeon Stots - 19-1, 1 DefenseRaufeon Stots did not waste his opportunity. 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 2023 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. After his undisputed championship victory, ONE took its third swing at the constantly-rescheduled heavyweight championship unification match. Bhullar vs Malykhin was booked, yet again, for ONE Fight Night 8 on March 24th, and yet again, it fell apart. They want to try for the fourth time this summer. 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 move forward. He'll be facing Tye Ruotolo in a grappling match on May 5th, because ONE is silly. 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. He'll be facing Spike Carlyle--in a non-title match, because, after all, this is Japan--on May 6th. 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   VACANT - The unavoidable doom of everything you loveTHAT'S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS. You thought Vacant was done? VACANT IS NEVER DONE. On March 5, 2023, just one single day after Jon Jones closed the door on the long, multi-national title reign of Vacant, God opened a window. Kyoji Horiguchi, who has long struggled with feeling undersized at the 135-pound bantamweight division, announced he was moving back to the 125-pound flyweight division for good, and that he could not in good conscience hold onto a championship he could not defend. Fundamentally, admittedly, it barely makes a difference to Rizin--he won the bantamweight championship back in 2018 and, because Japanese MMA hates ever putting its treasured champions at risk, despite having five Rizin fights in the time since his championship victory he'd only actually defended the title once, and that was in a rematch with Kai Asakura, who'd knocked him out a year earlier in, of course, a non-title fight. Horiguchi will be fighting Ray Borg at flyweight in Bellator on April 22nd, and Rizin is supposedly spinning up a flyweight championship for later this year, but no one knows what's going to happen with any of Rizin's championships, quite frankly. So Vacant will sit in his new apartment in Japan and wait, at peace, with his shiny new toy, confident that no matter what happens, he will always have a throne somewhere in this sport. 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. But before that, she’ll face Miyuu Yamamoto in a non-title fight on May 6th.
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Apr 1, 2023 18:18
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lotsa champs
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Apr 1, 2023 18:31
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valentina shevchenko, kumaru usman, israel idesanya and charles oliviera are no longer champions but jon jones is sure is post i'm making on april 1st 2023 that's not an april fools joke
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Apr 1, 2023 18:38
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If you're up for kickboxing, last weekend's Krush show went up on Youtube today and RISE ELDORADO goes up tomorrow. Here's my recommended fights for Krush: https://bocot.substack.com/p/tape-delay-kickboxing-19-krush147
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Apr 1, 2023 21:31
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I do not have the time to read all of the write up before I go to bed but I would like to put forth this opinion to the thread: gently caress Jon Jones Ciryl gane should've kicked harder
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Apr 2, 2023 01:17
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Someone bust a good rear end joke so we can get jake paul name out of the thread title.
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Apr 2, 2023 03:04
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CarlCX posted: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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Apr 2, 2023 05:33
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I think sitting Zhang out til either Lemos or another contender's name comes up works best. Last I saw she was in Thailand training with Josh Hinger (ADCC bronze medalist who has a super sick guillotine game) and she seems to just be improving constantly.
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Apr 2, 2023 06:06
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Not that she'd be in line for a rematch, but Carla is out till next year due to: pregnant
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Apr 2, 2023 06:15
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Transcription of a sizzle reel the ufc has got in the can in case Pereira / Izzy 2 doesn't happen. [Joe Rogan] Man loving Pereira stands no loving chance against a wrestler. His deal with the Zoroastrian or whatever God means he gets these giant mits that will just demolish a skull, but he dies if you hug him beneath the rear end. Insane genes tho... Everybody's wife... You know what I mean? [Bill Nye] No. [Ariel] So how do you plan to deal with wrestling champ? [Bigfoot, confused] Uh, well, his head goes there, knee. Yes? Knee.
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Apr 2, 2023 06:34
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Tatiana Suarez being back in the mix changes things up considerably, too. Going to be real interesting to see how they matchmake her into the mix. Also, it's only the first of the month and April is already ruined. https://twitter.com/mma_orbit/status/1642312601768951809
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Apr 2, 2023 07:25
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Steve-o went to Aus and had Volk take a shot of his hot sauce, and he ended up throwing up. I have to say, Volk's puking stance is on point. https://youtu.be/ivZz_fVSvf0?t=294
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Apr 2, 2023 17:49
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https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1642625159168430080 Wow
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Apr 2, 2023 21:38
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I guess this will be the Endeavor subforum
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Apr 2, 2023 21:38
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CarlCX posted:Tatiana Suarez being back in the mix changes things up considerably, too. Going to be real interesting to see how they matchmake her into the mix. jesus christ x2 edit: tweet w/ more deets https://twitter.com/solomonster/status/1642627030389800967
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Apr 2, 2023 21:39
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and who wrestled for wwe last night? that’s right, jake paul
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Apr 2, 2023 21:40
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Tweak posted:and who wrestled for wwe last night? that’s right, jake paul That was Logan Paul you buffoon
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Apr 2, 2023 21:45
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CommonShore posted:That was Logan Paul you buffoon gently caress
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Apr 2, 2023 21:46
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Who's ready for the Logan and Rogan podcast??!
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Apr 2, 2023 21:49
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jim norton and The Miz talk about punchsports
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Apr 2, 2023 21:52
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Time to merge the threads further UFC/MMA/WWE April: nobody will save us
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Apr 2, 2023 21:59
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Spaced God posted:jesus christ x2
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Apr 2, 2023 22:09
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I am not adding WWE champions to the thread intro.
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Apr 2, 2023 22:24
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the funniest outcome to this is vince mcmahon getting a say in how ufc operates
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Apr 2, 2023 22:46
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KungFu Grip posted:the funniest outcome to this is vince mcmahon getting a say in how ufc operates "fighters now must be oiled up until glistening before fights"
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Apr 2, 2023 22:53
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KungFu Grip posted:the funniest outcome to this is vince mcmahon getting a say in how ufc operates "Wait, USADA? You guys actually drug test your people? And tell the truth to the public? And even have punishments for them?"
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Apr 2, 2023 23:01
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Spaced God posted:jesus christ x2 Wait what? Doesn't Endeavor own a ton of random poo poo, why would them buying WWE specifically somehow directly merge it with UFC? Like even UFC is technically a double subsidiary because there's Zuffa in between (not that this detail is meaningful in any practical sense). That part sounds like a misunderstanding.
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Apr 2, 2023 23:12
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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/business/media/endeavor-wwe-vince-mcmahon-ari-emanuel.htmlNYT posted:Endeavor, the Hollywood entertainment colossus that owns the Ultimate Fighting Championship, is close to a deal that would combine that league with World Wrestling Entertainment, two people familiar with the negotiations said on Sunday. The combination would mean a behemoth in combat entertainment, both real and scripted.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:05
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Chris James 2 posted:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/business/media/endeavor-wwe-vince-mcmahon-ari-emanuel.html Yeah, but they don't have a blue check mark, so why should I believe anything they write?
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Apr 3, 2023 00:18
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Digital Jedi posted:"Wait, USADA? You guys actually drug test your people? And tell the truth to the public? And even have punishments for them?" calling it that within the next 3 years USADA is phased out.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:19
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Yeah, but they don't have a blue check mark, so why should I believe anything they write? fake news strikes again
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Apr 3, 2023 00:21
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Digital Jedi posted:"Wait, USADA? You guys actually drug test your people? And tell the truth to the public? And even have punishments for them?" usada is a thin tarpaulin to cover the ufc's rear end, iirc you get to miss 3 random drug tests per year with no consequences so if you're doing roids in cuba or whatever and get called in mid-cycle you can just go whoops, i'll come in for the next one, i promise.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:26
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Oh yea USADA isn't perfect and has lot of holes. But with Vince and WWE's policy is a pure joke. It only exists on paper since Orton popped so many times they just stopped reporting it to the public at all (iirc).
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Apr 3, 2023 00:28
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Brut posted:Wait what? Doesn't Endeavor own a ton of random poo poo, why would them buying WWE specifically somehow directly merge it with UFC? Like even UFC is technically a double subsidiary because there's Zuffa in between (not that this detail is meaningful in any practical sense). That part sounds like a misunderstanding. Zuffa hasn't existed meaningfully in years - that was the Fertitias. Endeavor is the parent company.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:33
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Does this mean they’re kicking dana to the curb in favor of vince?
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Apr 3, 2023 00:54
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Mods please change threat topic to April: maybe vince will save us
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Apr 3, 2023 01:07
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Mr. Nice! posted:Does this mean they’re kicking dana to the curb in favor of vince? Dana will probably stay as president of UFC until Vince convinces his bosses to get rid of Dana in favor of retired wrestler Road Rager.
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Apr 3, 2023 01:07
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