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Which Mayn event are you most looking forward to? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs Jailton Almeida |
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3 | 10.71% |
| Raquel Pennington vs Irene Aldana 2 |
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1 | 3.57% |
| Gegard Mousasi vs Fabian Edwards |
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1 | 3.57% |
| Anything that isn't any of those fights |
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23 | 82.14% |
| Total: | 28 votes | ||
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Do you miss the days when Curtis Blaydes was still a potential champion? Relive the April thread here. Welcome to May, and congratulations on making it through another month of mixed martial arts. After a real long April we're in for a shorter, gentler and considerably less interesting May, with just three UFCs and seven major MMA events altogether--and by the time the first week of this month is over we'll already have burnt through four of them. It's gonna be fast and/or furious and then it's going to be quiet and/or sad, and we will all cope with the stillness together, because let me warn you: June is going to loving suck. This month's thread title courtesy of CommonShore. 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. NEW RULE AS OF MAY: After communal discussion, no more clips of slap fights in the MMA thread. Discussion is fine when it touches base with MMA, as it unfortunately often does, but it turns out a lot of folks use this place as a bastion to escape it elsewhere, and we're going to collectively respect that. DO YALL WANT A BOXC has started a fantastically-written thread for the unrestricted discussion of slap fighting and all the other terrible fringes of combat sports, and you can go check it out here. It's also going to live in the thread rolodex from here on out. 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  Y'know, maybe a little. Endeavor, the company that started as a talent agency and grew into a soulless megaconglomerate, announced that it was acquiring World Wrestling Entertainment, the world's biggest professional wrestling company, and that the WWE and UFC were going to be merged into a single corporate entity. In one of those signs of exactly what capitalism prioritizes, the money involved, the new management structure and the reworked hierarchy were all immediately defined, but no one actually knows what the name of the new company that now de facto runs professional wrestling and mixed martial arts will be named. But we do know that Vince McMahon, a racist, alleged rapist and all-around horrible person who has preyed on talent for decades and whose family quite literally runs Donald Trump's SuperPAC money laundering operations and who was very nearly ousted from power in 2022 after it became public that he had coerced subordinates into sleeping with him and paid them hush money out of the WWE's coffers, will be the chairman of the new company that owns the biggest combat sports company in the world. Will it matter? Who knows. The UFC's management is still theoretically in charge of its division, absolutely nothing in the UFC's day to day could change, or it could all go to hell depending on the whims of insane billionaires. For my friends who still regularly watch the WWE: I'm very sorry for what Endeavor is about to do to your company. And for the rest of us: I'm sorry we're stuck in this moneyed loving hellscape where some of the worst people on Earth somehow keep getting richer every day.  Speaking of stuff that sucks, everyone wondered what Nate Diaz was going to do after his time with the UFC came to an end, and the answer is: The most obvious moneymaking choice possible. Jake Paul, the specter who represents every sin of combat sports, social media and the horrifying point at which the two become one, is backing the money truck into the 209, and on August 5, the celebrity boxing match a lot of people care about but no one really wants will finally come to pass. Well, maybe. Here's the thing.  On April 22, having already almost started a fight through his traditional practice of chucking water bottles at people he doesn't like, Nate and his entourage got into another, different brawl with another, different set of people, and it ended with Nate choking out a guy, letting his friend punch him in the ribs, and dropping his unconscious body on the concrete. Nate got a warrant for second-degree battery, turned himself in on the 27, posted bail and left, and his lawyer is claiming self-defense, which, admittedly, seems a little iffy given the multiple-angle video footage of the guy he choked holding up his hands in the universal sign of 'I exceptionally do not want to fight you.' Will it wind up mattering? Probably not, but he did crack the dude's head open on camera, so who knows. The internet has of course already determined that Nate is innocent and the other guy absolutely deserved it, because the Diaz brothers are always right.  Having lost the middleweight championship to rival Israel Adesanya, rather than seeking a rematch, Alex Pereira is moving up to 205 pounds--which is what he was supposedly going to do anyway even if he'd retained the title. The picture above is Pereira standing next to Dominick Reyes, who is tied for second-tallest person in the light-heavyweight division, so, uh, Pereira will probably be just fine.  On the other hand, despite his big, teary-eyed farewell to the flyweight division after losing his lengthy championship series against Brandon Moreno this past January, Deiveson Figueiredo announced he has changed his mind about moving up to bantamweight, he is, in fact, staying at 125 pounds, and he's going to get the belt back even if it means fighting Moreno all over again. He's going to return to the division he never technically left in July, where he'll be fighting #9 contender Manel Kape, and I--oh, wait, hold on, I'm getting an update.  Yeah, the fight's cancelled. Just hours after the UFC made the bout official they scratched it, because Figueiredo's eye won't be healed by then. Thanks, mixed martial arts. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  A number of writers I deeply respect wrote a number of sad tributes to the end of Jorge Masvidal's mixed martial arts career. One of them said that Jorge Masvidal WAS mixed martial arts and the sentence has stuck with me for weeks, because it's absolutely true, but while that writer meant it as an affectionate compliment, I think it's one of the most damning things ever written about both. MMA is, and has always been, a conglomerate of ideas feuding for importance and struggling to stay afloat against the tides of money and corruption that actually surround them. One of the most common complaints you'll hear from longtime fans is a yearning for the older, simpler days, when the sport was more pure and meaningful, but every cycle of combat sports has thrived on consuming that meaning; every source of purity is ultimately just another supply of fuel for marketing. This is why, as gross as it is, combat sports always meander back to amateurs. Street fights. Toughman competitions. Youtube boxing. Even the Contender Series is, in its way, an attempt to monetize young, raw, unfinished fighters who will better connect with an audience--and at much cheaper rates. Audiences crave authenticity and simplicity and reality, and anything that peels back the layers of abstraction added by years of marketing feels real by comparison. But mixed martial arts isn't real. And neither is Jorge Masvidal. Jorge was, however, an OG of combat sports. His martial origins didn't come from kickboxing and tournament medals, they came from street fighting in Miami and battering members of Kimbo Slice's crew. He didn't finish high school, he didn't go to college, he was fighting professional mixed martial arts bouts back in 2003, years before the sport became mainstream, let alone profitable. He wanted fighting to be his entire life--and it was. Jorge fought professionally for twenty straight years, across seven different countries and six major promotions, in a career that saw him go from street fighting for nothing in front of a dozen people to pay-per-view main events in 20,000-person stadiums. For a lot of people, it's a triumph. And I get it. But I cannot help but see it as a tragedy. Jorge Masvidal is held up as a beacon of mixed martial arts, an example of the Old Ways that somehow persisted into excellence in the present and exemplified the traits of A Real Fighter, and respectfully, I think that's bullshit. By the time Jorge retired, everything about his identity had become a modern mixed martial arts sham. He was trying to cling to his tough real-man street fighting persona, but he wasn't street fighting, he was launching unprovoked assaults on fighters like Leon Edwards and Colby Covington--and then he was turning them into marketing catchphrases for t-shirts and inspiring pictures for NFTs. His lines were rehearsed and reshot, his hand-tailored Scarface suits were sponsored, and his Street Jesus attitude was carefully laundered through a Hollywood talent agency so old and enshrined they used to represent Al Jolson. And all of that, all of the fakery and facade, was meant to support his reputation as one of the best welterweights in the world. Except--he wasn't. And if we're being honest, he wasn't ever really close. Jorge Masvidal's entire career is a repeating pattern of beating up middle-of-the-pack opponents, struggling with contenders, and losing every time he encountered the top of the mountain. He got knocked out by Rodrigo Damm in Sengoku, he got choked out by Toby Imada in Bellator. Paul Daley, Gilbert Melendez, even Raphael Assunção: Masvidal could never hang with the second-best, let alone the actual best. But he made it to the UFC, and he scored three straight victories, and that's where everything turned around and he became a main event talent! Except he didn't. He still got crushed by Rustam Khabilov. He still couldn't cope with Benson Henderson or Lorenz Larkin. He still got run through with ease by Demian Maia and Stephen Thompson. He was still Jorge Masvidal. But then he struck gold--by killing the undefeated, recently-signed Ben Askren with a flying knee in five seconds in one of the most famous knockouts in mixed martial arts. Jorge Masvidal, finally elite! I mean, unless you remember how Askren was getting beaten up by Luis Santos, or how he got a screwjob of a win over Robbie Lawler, or how, realistically, he went a 1-2 that should've been 0-3 in the UFC and immediately retired. And the UFC knew it, because they didn't follow Masvidal's signature victory by having him fight top contenders like Tyron Woodley, or Colby Covington, or Leon Edwards. In fact, they didn't have him fight anyone in the top fifteen. They had him fight the unranked Nate Diaz. For a fake title belt named the Bad Mother Fucker Championship. Presented by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. And that earned Masvidal two back to back shots at the top welterweight title in the sport, followed by two back to back #1 contendership bouts. All four of which he lost. Badly. Jorge Masvidal didn't get to the top of the sport by being a bad motherfucker. He didn't get there because of the people he beat, or his credibility as a fighter, or his incredible performances. He got there because a bunch of people in a boardroom ran focus testing and determined his flavor of Street Attitude was marketable. He let the sport turn him into a meme. He changed in all of his years, and all of his accomplishments, to cash out right at the end and get humiliated by the actual best fighters on the planet, who repeatedly, and definitively, proved how thoroughly he didn't belong in the cage with them. And nothing summarizes this better than his last act as a mixed martial arts fighter: Not reflecting on twenty years of martial arts, not standing up for what brought him to the game, but allowing himself to be a marketing pawn for rich, corrupt men one last time, dedicating his career to Donald Trump and leading the crowd in one last chant of the most limp, pathetic political catchphrase in a century: "Let's go Brandon." He was credible, once. He was a respectable fighter. He traded it in to make his cash and become a cartoon character who existed for the benefit of the moneyed forces he used to disdain. He gave himself to the machine and the machine consumed him wholly and gave him a fraction of a percent of the profits he made it, and like any good street fighting rebel he thanked it profusely for its generosity. He is--he was--mixed martial arts. And as someone who watched his career since the BodogFIGHT days, as much as it pains me to say it: I'm glad he's gone. Enjoy your money, Jorge. I hope it was worth what you gave away. He retires after 20 years of competition (minus one month, but who's counting) with a 35-17 record in mixed martial arts and a 1-0 record as a professional boxer.  We had the exceptionally rare double-retirement bout this past month, and in a way, it's sort of fitting.  When he retired, Ed "Short Fuse" Herman ended an unprecedented, unbroken, 17-year run with the UFC. His debut predates instant title contender Anderson Silva, it predates world champion Georges St-Pierre, it predates weight divisions below 170 pounds existing at all. Hell, when he had his first amateur fight in October of 2002 not only was mixed martial arts not yet legal in half of America, most people still didn't actually know what the phrase "mixed martial arts" meant, if they'd even heard it at all. The UFC had just promoted its 44th ever event. Star Wars: Attack of the Clones was still new. Ed Herman would be the runner-up for The Ultimate Fighter 3 four years later, and he never looked back. Aside from one fight in Strikeforce--in what was supposed to one of many UFC vs Strikeforce bouts after the UFC purchased the organization, a plan that ultimately never came to fruition--between his first TUF bout in February of 2006 and his retirement bout last month, Ed fought 28 UFC bouts across seventeen years. And if we're being honest? He never really got as far as he did rising through TUF. He was an unshakable standby of the midcard for his entire career, but--aside from a 2005 victory over a baby Glover Teixeira that has aged extremely well--he never really beat anyone who threatened to rank him.  Zak Cummings didn't get started until 2007, but he took a very similar trajectory--mostly successful but unable to crack his way out of the middle of the pack, cleaning up on the regional scene until The Ultimate Fighter called for him. In his case it was 2012's TUF 17, the season that gave us Kelvin Gastelum and Uriah Hall, that saw Cummings eliminated in the semifinal round. But he made the UFC his home for the next decade, and again, like Herman, he was a respectable staple of the middle of the card. His wrestling, his heavy hands and most particularly his aggressive grappling saw him choke out a solid percentage of the periphery of the middleweight and welterweight divisions, but every time he got close enough to the top fifteen to fight someone within it--or particularly close to it--he got shut down. It may sound like I am saying these things to insinuate these men underachieved or were unimportant to the sport, and to be clear, I mean the precise opposite. Virtually every fighter wants to be the best. It's exceedingly hard to be a fighter if you DON'T secretly believe you're the best, whether you're fighting for world championships or doing smokers at your gym. But the real lifeblood of mixed martial arts comes from the thousands of fighters who form the sport's actual body public. Not being in the main event doesn't mean you're not part of the show, and not being the champion doesn't mean you're not one of the best fighters on the planet. Zak Cummings submitted national Sambo champions. Ed Herman outwrestled NCAA All-Americans. Both spent decades in the biggest combat sports organization in the world and left with winning records. It's insanely hard to do. They are insanely tough human beings. And the two of them embracing and retiring together after bludgeoning one another is just a little perfect. Ed Herman retires from the sport at 24-16 (1). Zak Cummings retires at 25-7.  Ray Borg was supposed to have a better career, man. "The Tazmexican Devil" was very nearly one of the best flyweights in mixed martial arts. He held a regional title in Oklahoma, he made it to the UFC less than two years after his professional debut, and by 2017 he was 11-2, he had victories over multiple national champions, and his mixture of quick striking and tricky submission offense had earned him a shot at the UFC championship--where he would fall victim to what is still one of the coolest finishes in the sport's history, Demetrious Johnson's german suplex/flying armbar combination. And if Borg's sin as a fighter had just been not being the best in the world, he would be remembered incredibly fondly. But it wasn't. His problem was his inability to stay on target. Ray Borg's personal life--a difficult one, including a very public struggle with the health of his child--has always interfered with his ability to make weight. He missed the flyweight limit twice in his run to the UFC championship, breathed a small sigh of relief as his loss allowed him to move up to the 135-pound bantamweight division, and then he promptly blew that limit in his divisional debut. Two fights later he was back at flyweight, and despite winning he missed weight again, so it was back to 135--where, two fights later, he would be released from the UFC after failing to make the weigh-in for one last bout. Borg considered retirement and opted to return to the regional scene again--where he looked great, because he was still Ray goddamn Borg. This past February, Bellator proudly announced that they had signed Borg as part of the inauguration of their long-awaited flyweight division, and that he would be facing former bantamweight champion Kyoji Horiguchi in a fight with immediate title implications. But it never came. The day of the weigh-ins Borg was nowhere to be seen, and it was eventually announced that he wasn't going to be able to make weight--apparently he wasn't going to even come close--and the fight was scrapped. And then his talent management publicly fired him. And then he quietly announced his retirement. And, unfortunately, it's hard to think of a more appropriate coda for Ray Borg. He was always one of the best, and were it not for the whims of judges he'd be 18-3, which is a preposterous record at divisions as competitive as flyweight and bantamweight, but he just couldn't keep himself on track, and that ultimately cost him more than any of his fighting skills did. A day of incredibly anticipated promise that ends in disappointment, concern and unexpected retirement is as accurate a way for his career to end as any. I hope he can finally relax a bit now that he never has to worry about weight management again. He retires with a mixed martial arts record of 16-5.  Some records do not accurately display how valuable a fighter was to the sport, and Kaitlyn Young is way the gently caress up on that list. "The Striking Viking" wasn't quite an OG of women's MMA, but she was part of the first wave of talent to push it into the mainstream, and she was personally there for some of the watershed moments in that push. She won BodogFIGHT's first women's tournament in HooknShoot back in 2007, she fought in one of the first handful of nationally televised women's MMA matches against Gina Carano over at EliteXC in 2008, and she was one of the women competing at the inaugural card for Invicta FC, America's first real all-women's MMA league, in 2012. And much like Ed Herman and Zak Cummings she was never the top of her division, and in the same vein, who the hell cares. Short of a UFC stint, she really did it all. She even turned up in Japan to spurn her responsibility as a gaijin jobber and defeat fan favorite and DEEP Jewels champion Reina Miura, much to the audience's chagrin, and she ended her career in the Professional Fighters League, still competitive with just about everyone save, as with the rest of her career, the best. There are precious few fighters of any gender who went as far or saw as much as she did, and her retirement isn't so much the end of a fighting career as the end of a little piece of women's mixed martial arts history. She leaves the sport at 12-13-1.  The careers that never quite got to be are the saddest. Juan "El Guapo" Espino was a championship grappler across multiple countries and traditions--Canarian wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Tatar, Lucha Leonesa--he was even the first foreigner to win in Laamb, the Senegalese tradition of wrestling, widely considered one of the toughest in the world. In other words: He was a natural fit for mixed martial arts, and he excelled at it. By 2018 he was 8-1, his only loss a 9-second flash knockout to future Bellator champion Vitaly Minakov in what was just Espino's third fight, and The Ultimate Fighter 28 (christ) called his name. Espino outwrestled all three of the heavyweights they put in his way, and after tearing Justin Frazier's arm off in one round, claimed the seasonal championship and his UFC contract. One more first-round submission against LFA champion Jeff Hughes punched Espino's ticket to a ranked fight. It went askew. In the third round of a hard fight against undefeated wrestler Alexander Romanov in 2021, Espino clattered a knee off his cup that left Romanov unable to continue, and left the fight to go to a technical decision, and left with the task of deciding who won a round that had only lasted a minute and had consisted of a right hand and a groin shot, the judges shrugged and gave it to Romanov. Espino was upset, and vowed he would never let it happen again. And...that's the end of the story. Anticlimactic, right? Despite being one of the best grapplers and wrestlers in the division, Espino was also just about to turn 40 when he signed with the UFC, and his body showed the mileage of a lifetime of combat sports. Two years of rehabbing a hand injury passed between winning TUF and the Hughes fight, it took another seven months to get to Romanov, and after that, his body simply wouldn't stay healthy enough to compete. He didn't have a last fight, he didn't have a cage interview, he just announced his injury-frustrated retirement on Instagram and hung up the gloves. It's weird to think about a career being cut short when a fighter is 42, but hey: It's heavyweight. Anything could have happened. But in this reality, Juan Espino leaves mixed martial arts with a record of 10-2. 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 APRIL Japan got to go first, for once, with Rizin 41: Osaka on April 1. The card featured a nearly even 50/50 split between kickboxing and mixed martial arts, and not all of it was particularly recognizable, but in kickboxing, Daichi Akahira knocked out Yuto Miwa, the rising Sota Kimura stopped Shingeki no Yuuki with body shots and Shun Onishi took out Motoki in just barely a minute and a half, and in mixed martial arts, Mehman Mamedov overcame his jobber status by knocking out Yusaku Nakamura in just twenty seconds, Kim Kyung-pyo upset Sho Patrick Usami by submission, Kyohei Hagiwara outfought Kyle Aguon, Makoto Takahashi choked out Pancrase champion Daichi Kitakata, good ol' K-Taro Nakamura soccer kicked Kiichi "Strasser" Kunimoto into oblivion, and Vugar Karamov choked out Yushinori Horie. The main event was a razor-close kickboxing contest that saw Ryusei Ashizawa score an upset, taking a narrow split decision over superstar Kouzi. The Professional Fighters League began its season later that day with PFL 1: Loughnane vs Moraes, the kickoff of the featherweight and light-heavyweight brackets. At 145 pounds, Gabriel Alves Braga narrowly beat Jesus Pinedo, Alejandro Flores outworked Daniel Torres, Bubba Jenkins outwrestled Chris Wade and Movlid Khaybulaev kept Ryoji Kudo at bay; at 205, Impa Kasanganay beat Cory Hendricks, Ty Flores decisioned Delan Monte, Joshua Silveira choked out Sam Kei and Marthin Hamlet cranked Mohammed Fakhreddine's face off, and on the main card, Will Fleury narrowly (and probably incorrectly) got a decision over Krzysztof Jotko and Rob Wilkinson slowly but decidedly beat Thiago Santos. In your incredibly depressing main event, Brendan Loughnane beat the brakes off Marlon Moraes both figuratively and literally, scoring a leg kick TKO in just six minutes. But the train didn't stop there, and PFL 2: Pachecho vs Budd came on April 7. This week's episode started the heavyweight and women's featherweight seasons, and there was a little more violence to be had. At women's 145, Marina Mokhnatkina knocked out Yoko Higashi, Evelyn Martins displeased the gods by decisioning Karolina Sobek, Amber Leibrock kicked off Martina Jindrova's head, and Olena Kolesnyk beat Aspen Ladd, but she came in overweight and only gets 2 points in the standings as a result. At heavyweight, Danilo Marques beat newly-imported Yorgan De Castro, Maurice Greene stopped Marcelo Nunes, Eagle FC champion Rizvan Kuniev outwrestled Renan Ferreira, and Bruno Cappelozza knocked out Matheus Scheffel. Your main event saw 2022 women's lightweight champion Larissa Pacheco turn in another solid performance, scoring a clear victory over Julia Budd. The UFC got on the board the next night with UFC 287: Pereira vs Adesanya 2 on April 8, and it was a hell of a show. Down on the prelims Sam Hughes outwrestled Jaqueline Amorim, Steve Garcia overcame an early scare to knock out Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, Ignacio Bahamondes outstruck Trey Ogden, Lupita Godinez pulled a tight decision out of Cynthia Calvillo, Joe Pyfer punched the poo poo out of Gerald Meerschaert, Luana Pinheiro got a pretty questionable decision over Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and Kelvin Gastelum won an incredibly close fight with Chris Curtis. Up on the main card, the UFC's attempt to push 18 year-old Raul Rosas Jr. into the stratosphere ended with Christian Rodriguez beating the hell out of a teenager on pay-per-view, Kevin Holland knocked out Santiago Ponzinibbio, Rob Font ended the Adrian Yanez hype train in one round, and Gilbert Burns dominated Jorge Masvidal on the feet and ground alike. But the main event was a shocker, as Israel Adesanya finally got a modicum of revenge and reclaimed his middleweight championship after knocking nemesis Alex Pereira out cold in two rounds. The PFL season's first stretch came to an end the next week on PFL 3: Aubin-Mercier vs Burgos on April 14. Lightweights, welterweights and one heavyweight make-up fight took the stage. Your unrelated fights saw Zach Juusola and Brandon Jenkins fight one of the most fun sloppy brawls in years, with Jussola coming out on top, and up at heavyweight Denis Goltsov knocked out former welterweight Cezar Ferreira. At welterweight, Nayib Lopez took a decision over Shane Mitchell, Magomed Magomedkerimov headkicked Ben Egli, Sadibou Sy surgically removed Jarrah Al-Silawi's liver with his knee, Magomed Umalatov knocked out Dilano Taylor, and Carlos Leal punched out David Zawada in one round. At lightweight, Bruno Miranda took a comfortable decision against Ahmed Amir and Raush Manfio did the same against Alexander Martinez, but Clay Collard ensured there was nothing comfortable about his beating of Yamato Nishikawa including nearly losing his own leg in the process, Natan Schulte outwrestled Stevie Ray, and 2022 champion Olivier Aubin-Mercier spoiled the PFL debut of Shane Burgos with a slow but decisive decision. And once again, the UFC got the following night with UFC on ESPN: Holloway vs Allen on April 15. After something of a rough start, it turned into a real, real fun card. On the prelims Joselyne Edwards scored a truly reprehensible decision against Lucie Pudilova, who should definitely appeal, Gaston Bolanos had a much more reasonable decision against Aaron Phillips, and Daniel Zellhuber took an equally comfortable call against Lando Vannata. Meanwhile, Denise Gomes punched out Bruna Brasil, Gillian Robertson submitted Piera Rodriguez, Zak Cummings knocked out Ed Herman in what turned out to be a mutual retirement fight, Brandon Royval crushed Matheus Nicolau with a beautiful knee in one round, and Bill Algeo choked out TJ Brown. On your main card, Rafa Garcia beat a Clay Guida who vowed he was nowhere near retirement, Pedro Munhoz turned back Chris Gutierrez, Ion Cutelaba knocked out a 205-debuting Tanner Boser in one round, Azamat Murzakanov outstruck Dustin Jacoby, and Edson Barboza eliminated Billy Quarantillo with a counter knee in two and a half minutes. The main event was Arnold Allen's audition for title contention, and like so many, he got ate by one of the best, as despite giving Max Holloway one hell of a fight, he still lost a comfortably broad decision. The following week was the month's quadruple-header, and it was an all-action kind of weekend. It started with ONE Fight Night 9: Nong-O vs Haggerty on April 21, and it came into the hangar actively on fire after two cancellations, a rescheduling and multiple weight and hydration misses. The result was still good, though: Jhanlo Mark Sangiao scored a real neat one-minute kneebar over Matias Farinella, Asa Ten Pow knocked out Han Zihao in a Muay Thai bought, Men Bo outfought Dayane Cadoso and Isi Fitikefu choked out Valmir da Silva on the prelims. Up on the main card, perennial atomweight contender Denice Zamboanga outpointed Julie Mezabarba, Felipe Lobo knocked out Saemapetch Fairtex, Bokang Masunyane kept himself in strawweight contention by beating Hiroba Minowa, and Halil Amir got the nod against Maurice Abevi. The main event was the only thing anyone was talking about after the fight was over: Muay Thai superman and dominant ONE Bantamweight Muay Thai World Champion Nong-O Gaiyanghadao, who hadn't lost since 2015, defended his title against Britian's Jonathan Haggerty, a talented but overlooked fighter who had lost repeatedly to Rodtang a weight class down--and Haggerty shocked the world by not just beating Nong-O, but dropping him three times in two and a half minutes and knocking him out. Bellator started its two-event weekend later with Bellator 294: Carmouche vs Bennett 2. On your unusually short preliminary card, Sharaf Davlatmurodov beat two-time Contender Series loser Anthony Adams, Chris Lencioni choked out Blake Smith, Tyrell Fortune took a disqualification victory when Sergei Bilostenniy rabbit-punched him, and Killys Mota submitted Kenneth Cross. Up on the main card, Levan Chokheli outpointed Michael Lombardo, Danny Sabatello grappled the poo poo out of Marcos Breno, a debuting Sara McMann crushed Arlene Blencowe for three rounds, and Timothy Johnson very, very slowly beat Said Sowma. There was some controversy leading into the main event--DeAnna Bennett missed weight, meaning she was ineligible to win the Bellator Women's Flyweight World Championship, but defending champion Liz Carmouche opted to keep the title on the line anyway, meaning it would be rendered vacant if she lost. It wound up not mattering: After losing the first three rounds against Bennett's wrestling game, Carmouche choked her out with an arm triangle in the fourth. The UFC took the stage on April 22 with UFC Fight Night: Pavlovich vs Blaydes. It was a long, weird night--fitting for a fight crowning at a bare minimum the rightful #1 heavyweight contender on a random TV card in the UFC Apex in front of nobody. A middlingly appreciable preliminary card involved Brady Hiestand crushing Danaa Batgerel in the third round, William Gomis getting a real close decision against Francis Marshall, Mohammad Usman slow-motion wrestling Junior Tafa, Norma Dumont slow-motion jabbing Karol Rosa, and then two violent knockouts, as Montel Jackson took out old veteran Rani Yahya and Christos Giagos knocked out Ricky Glenn. The main card is where things got weird. Jeremiah Wells got a decision over Matthew Semelsberger that included two judges scoring rounds for him in which he was repeatedly nearly knocked out, Iasmin Lucindo beat a Brogan Walker-Sanchez who appeared to have actively regressed as a fighter since last we saw her, Jared Gordon's cursed year continued after he went to a No Contest with Bobby Green when Green, in an attempt to throw an elbow, launched himself at Gordon headfirst and headbutted him into semi-consciousness, and Bruno Silva scored a slightly early TKO stoppage over a very upset Brad Tavares. There was nothing unexpected about the main event, though: Sergei Pavlovich, as he does, punched out Curtis Blaydes in three minutes. And Bellator rounded out its month with Bellator 295: Stots vs Mix. Aside from Yancy Medeiros choking out Charlie Leary and Masayuki Kikuiri punching out Alexey Shurkevich, there were a lot of loving decisions. Bruna Ellen got the nod against Ilara Joanne, heavyweight Davion Franklin beat Kasim Aras, who was once disqualified for biting, Aalon Crus beat Bobby King, Sumiko Inaba took the duke over Veta Arteaga, Kai Kamaka III beat Adli Edwards, Mads Burnell wrestled Justin Gonzalez, Aaron Pico outdecisions James Gonzales, and Ilima-Lei Macfarlane got a contentious coinflip split decision over Kana Watanabe. But everyone was there for the main event, which was both a defense of Bellator's interim bantamweight championship and the finals of its year-long bantamweight grand prix, and there was nothing left to the judges this time: Despite his traditional reputation as a submission artist, Patchy Mix knocked Raufeon Stots out cold with a high knee in just eighty seconds, securing himself the tournament, the interim title, and hopefully, a shot at the winner of Pettis/Pitbull this summer. Rizin finished off its month with Rizin Landmark 5 on April 29, and it was one of their smaller cards, but it proved to be a good time. On your prelims, Russian import Ali Abdulkhalikov dropped Tatsuya Saika in three and a half minutes, 40 year-old vet Masanori Kanehara beat Sora Yamamoto, sumo turned fighter Tsuyoshi Sudario looked like an actual heavyweight prospect kicking the hell out of Roque Martinez, Clare Lopez scored the exceedingly rare dogbar submission over Rena Kubota, Kanna Asakura managed to outfight Mei Yamaguchi, and Luiz Gustavo won his fight but lost his 100% finish rate after taking a split decision against Koji Takeda. Up on your main card, Olympic wrestler Shinobu Ota knocked out Kazuma Kuramoto in half a minute, Yutaka Saito took a split decision against Ren Hiramoto, and Mikuru Asakura beat former champion Juntaro Ushiku. But the month ended on the UFC's exceedingly cursed UFC Fight Night: Song vs. Simón later that day. It was a card of a million replacements and reschedulings, and it wasn't even that great before them, and the net result was largely disappointing. On the undercard, Hailey Cowan's long-deferred UFC debut saw her miss weight and lose a decision to Jamey-Lyn Horth, three-days-notice replacement Marcus McGhee choked out Journey Newson, Irina Alekseeva hit a really cool kneebar on Stephanie Egger that was slightly overshadowed by a 4-pound weight miss, Cody Durden outwrestled Charles Johnson, and Martin Buday narrowly beat Jake Collier. Up on the main card, Trey Waters used a half-a-foot reach advantage to decision Joshua Quinlan, Marcos Rogério de Lima almost kicked Waldo Cortes-Acosta's leg off and somehow still only won a 29-28 decision, Fernando Padilla scored a somewhat questionable stoppage over Julian Erosa, Rodolfo Vieira lost a round to Cody Brundage but choked him out in the second after Brundage decided to inexplicably jump a guillotine on one of the best grapplers in the world, and Caio Borralho finally got his first UFC stoppage by choking out Michał Oleksiejczuk. The main event, a bantamweight showdown between Song Yadong and Ricky Simón, wound up being a bit underwhelming, as Simón's typical wrestling and pressure game just wasn't there, and Song played matador, countered him for four rounds and finally knocked him out in the fifth. WHAT'S COMING IN MAY It's a little bit of a shorter, and weirder, month, but it starts with a traffic jam of combat. Invicta FC is starting us off with Invicta FC 53: DeCoursey vs dos Santos on May 3. We've already lost a fight, so as of now the card is seven bouts: Ky Bennett vs Kendal Holowell, Liana Pirosin vs Elise Pone, a pair of atomweight contendership featuring Elisandra Ferreira vs Flor Hernandez and Monique Adriane vs Nicole Geraldo, former atomweight champion Jéssica Delboni's return to strawweight against Danielle Taylor, a bantamweight co-main event featuring Olga Rubin vs Claire Guthrie, and in your main event, Jillian DeCoursey defends the Invicta Atomweight World Championship against Rayanne dos Santos. ONE is up two days later on May 5 with ONE Fight Night 10: Johnson vs Moraes 3. Despite being less than a week away the card still isn't finalized--Marcus "Buchecha" Almeida is announced as fighting with no announced opponent--but ONE has still aggressively populated this card with cool stuff, including former lightweight champion Ok Rae Yoon returning against Lowen Tynanes, former flyweight champion Kairat Akhmetov vs Reece McLaren, former light-heavyweight champion and current middleweight champion Reinier de Ridder in a grappling match against Tye Ruotolo, a women's Muay Thai showdown with Jackie Buntan and Diandra Martin, Aung La Nsang vs Fan Rong, Sage Northcutt returning after a four-year layoff against Ahmed Mujtaba, KSW champion Roberto Soldić getting a do-over on his botched ONE debut against Zebaztian Kadestam, and Stamp Fairtex against Alyse Anderson. The top of the card is three straight flyweight title matches: Mikey Musumeci defends the Flyweight Submission Grappling Championship against jiu-jitsu champion Osamah Almarwai, Rodtang Jitmuangnon defends his Flyweight Muay Thai Championship against Edgar Tabares, and Demetrious Johnson will defend his Flyweight World Championship against Adriano Moraes in a rubber match to end their trilogy. Rizin takes their swing for the month the next day, with Rizin 42 on May 6. It's a real big loving card: Yasuhiro Kido vs Sota Kimura and Kota Miura vs YA-MAN will face each other in kickboxing matches, Ramazan Temirov, Viktor Kolesnik and Boyd Allen will all play foreign villains to Japanese heroes Yuta Hamamoto, Atsushi Kishimoto and Ulka Sasaki respectively, Takuya Yamamoto will face Takeji Yokoyama, family royalty Erson Yamamoto retursn to fight Yuki Ito, Takahiro Ashida faces Kazumasa Majima, and ex-UFC titlist and growing international superstar John Dodson returns to Rizin to face Tatsuki Saomoto. After a long intermission there's a four-fight main card, and it is loving unhinged. Buakaw Banchamek--yes, the 2004 K-1 champion--has a kickboxing match against Rukiya Anpo, one of Japan's best young kickboxers. Roberto Satoshi Souza, Rizin's Lightweight World Champion, is facing shared Bellator/Rizin lightweight wrestler Spike Carlyle--in a non-title fight, because it's Japan. former UFC competitor and Rizin bantamweight standout Naoki Inoue is facing former Bellator champion Juan Archuleta. And in your main event, Kai Asakura, who has not competed in a year and a half, faces Yuki Motoya, who currently owns Bellator's longest bantamweight winning streak. And the long opening week finally concludes with the month's pay-per-view, UFC 288: Sterling vs Cejudo, later that day. If the rest of the month is sedate, it's because they put everything on this loving card. On your early prelims: Daniel Santos faces Johnny Munoz Jr., Joseph "Ugly Man" Holmes fights Claudio Ribiero, Rafael Estevam faces the persistently screwed Zhalgas Zhumagulov, Phil Hawes throws down with Ikram Aliskerov, and Braxton Smith faces Parker Porter, 'cause you gotta have the big boys. On your regular-flavor prelims, Marina Rodriguez meets Virna Jandiroba, Khaos Williams throws hands with Rolando Bedoya, Kennedy Nzechukwu meets Devin Clark in what has a high comedy potential, and Drew Dober and Matt Frevola will punch each other so hard it sunders the ground. Your main card is equally stacked: Kron Gracie is finally done pouting and will face Charles Jourdain, Movsar Evloev and Bryce Mitchell will wrestle one another passionately, Jessica Andrade and Yan Xiaonan will jockey for strawweight contendership and Belal Muhammad and Gilbert Burns, on about three weeks' notice, will make a case for #1 contendership at welterweight. And in your main event, Aljamain Sterling, whose title reign is just determined to be abnormal forever, defends his bantamweight championship against an unretiring Henry Cejudo. And six days into the month, we're done with most of the MMA it has to offer, believe it or not. Bellator wanders to Paris on May 12 with Bellator 296: Mousasi vs Edwards, and I'll level with you: There are 13 prelims, some of them aren't even fully announced yet, a bunch of them are local French talent I've never heard of and that we will likely never hear of again, and if you want to read all of them, click the link, because I Just cannot. Denise Kielholtz is fighting, she's cool. Oliver Enkamp is the guy who did a buggy choke the announcers didn't even recognize the last time we saw him and I hope he does cool poo poo again. Your main card is just four fights long: Thibault Gouti vs Kane Mousah, a once-again-middleweight Douglas Lima vs Costello Van Steenis, Mansour Barnaoui vs Brent Primus, and in your main event, Gegard Mousasi rebounds from last year's title loss against Fabian Edwards. The next day on May 13 the UFC makes its return to network television with UFC on ABC: Rozenstruik vs Almeida. It's not a bad card, but it is a weird one, particularly given that it's, y'know, in front of a potential audience of millions. Carlos Ulberg avenges Shogun against Ihor Potieria, Kim Ji-yeon tries desperately not to get hosed by the judges again vs Mandy Bohm, Jessica Rose-Clark meets Tainara Lisboa, Matt Brown and Court McGee will have a grizzle-off, Bryan Battle faces "Gifted" Gabriel Green, and Alex Morono will have a brawl with Tim Means. Up on the main card, Cody Stamann faces Douglas Silva de Andrade--which is a REAL weird choice of a fight to open a network television card, but whatever--Daniel Rodriguez faces Ian Garry, Karl Williams will try to wrestle CHASE GOD DAMNED SHERMAN, Mackenzie Dern will desperately hope to take down Angela Hill, Anthony Smith will face Johnny Walker, and in your main event, Jairzinho Rozenstruik is to be served up as a sacrifice to Contender Series product Jailton Almeida. And the month limps to a close with UFC Fight Night: Pennington vs Aldana 2 on May 20, and it's, uh, boy, it's a loving card. This truly baffling collection of fights has a couple high points--most notably Emily Ducote vs Polyana Viana--but it's mostly just a series of matchups that feel like they were drawn out of a hat. Abdul Razak Alhassan vs Brunno Ferreira? Hayisaer Maheshate vs Viacheslav Borschev? Carlos Diego Ferreira, last seen submitting not to strikes or submissions but to the knee-on-body position, vs Michael Johnson? Ilir Latifi is out of retirement and he's facing Rodrigo Nascimento, who was last seen barely scraping by Tanner Boser? Recently resurgent Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs Vanessa Demopoulos? Kickboxer Edmen Shahbazyan, who's still trying to put it back together, vs grappling specialist Anthony Hernandez? Even the main event is bizarre--a rematch between Raquel Pennington, the unquestionable top contender, and Irene Aldana, the woman Pennington already beat a few years ago. It's a baffling end to a baffling month.
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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   Israel Adesanya - 24-2, 0 DefensesThe Last Stylebender has finally exorcised the ghosts of his past. Combat sports fans who considered themselves In The Know had long heralded Adesanya as a potential crossover superstar based on his extremely successful kickboxing career, which had seen him win multiple championships and lose only by decision, and it was an open secret that the UFC was already taking a good look at him as he prepared to leave his home sport behind and transition entirely into mixed martial arts--so it was a bit of a shock when, instead of his last kickboxing match being a victory lap, he was knocked out cold by one of the very few men to eer beat him, Alex Pereira. Izzy kept to his word, left kickboxing, joined the UFC and became a superstar nearly overnight, and a year after his UFC debut he was already the middleweight champion of the world. A misguided trip to the light-heavyweight division to chase the double-champ dream proved to be a step too far, but the only blemish on his record came from a separate weight class, and after three more title defenses he was still perfect at middleweight and, easily, the second-best middleweight champion of all time. And then the UFC brought in this one guy named Alex Pereira. The UFC desperately wanted an all-striking showdown between the two rivals, and after the easiest path to the title since Brock Lesnar, they got it, and on November 12, 2022, Alex Pereira etched his place in the history books by stopping Adesanya once again, this time taking his MMA championship home with him in the process. This being the UFC an instant rematch was, of course, inevitable, and the world looked on with considerably more worry this time--but the Israel Adesanya who showed up at UFC 287 on April 8, 2023 was a smarter, better fighter who'd learned from his mistakes. After baiting Pereira into throwing caution to the wind, Izzy flatlined him with a counterpunch in just two rounds. There will be no MMA rubber match--the UFC doesn't want it, Izzy doesn't want it, and Pereira is done with middleweight altogether. So Israel Adesanya is back on his throne, even if he has to start his defense counter from 0 again. His war of words with Dricus du Plessis over who is and is not truly African (sigh) bore fruit, as du Plessis inadvertently talked himself into a title eliminator against Robert Whittaker this July, with the winner facing Adesanya at the end of the year. 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. Leon says he won't fight Colby, Colby and Dana seem convinced the championship fight is happening this summer with or without Leon, it's a big, lovely mess. 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. Volk says he was offered a rematch later this year, but he wants to keep his kingdom secure, so at UFC 290 on July 8 he'll face Yair Rodríguez and attempt to reunify his championship. 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. He'll try to erase that asterisk on July 8, when he meets Volkanovski to figure out who the real champion is. 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 back 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. 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. And his first order of business is defending his title against the only man who beat him twice, Alexandre Pantoja, at UFC 290 on July 8. 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. After ten months of silence, the UFC announced that the only logical thing to do next...was a second rematch. Amanda Nunes and Julianna Peña will meet for the third time in less than two years at UFC 289 on June 10. God help us all. 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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May 1, 2023 18:17
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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  Patchy Mix - 18-1, 0 DefensesThere's something to be said for how silly it is to have an interim championship last so long that it not only has multiple defenses but multiple titleholders, but there's nothing silly about the path Patchy Mix took to get it. Long one of Bellator's best bantamweights and arguably one of the best in the world altogether, Patchy "No Love" Mix has torn people apart across the globe, be it his five fights as the King of the Cage champion, his ninety-second submission of Yuki Motoya in Japan, or his 7-1 run in Bellator. The only loss in his entire career was a 2020 decision against Juan Archuleta, where the first five-round fight of Mix's life saw him exhausted and ultimately outworked. But he rebuilt, and he took Bellator's bantamweight grand prix by storm, and on April 22, 2023, he didn't just defeat Raufeon Stots, he knocked him out cold in eighty seconds. Mix won the grand prix, the million-dollar pot and the interim championship--and now he has to wait to see what happens with the Pettis vs Pitbull dust settles. 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 - 19-7, 2 DefensesIt 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. The weirdness didn't stop there: Liz's next title defense against Deanna Bennett also hit the skids, as Bennett missed weight and was thus ineligible to win the championship. Carmouche put it on the line anyway, and fortunately, she choked Bennett out in the fourth round. She's most likely defending against Ilima-Lei MacFarlane later this year. 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 have scheduled it, yet again, for ONE Fight Night 12 on July 15. 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 unseen departure of meaningTHAT'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 was supposed to face Miyuu Yamamoto at Rizin 42, but after Yamamoto had to pull out with an injury, Izawa was instead scheduled to face...the last person Yamamoto beat, the 5-3 Suwanan Boonsorn, at DEEP Jewels 41 on July 28.
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May 1, 2023 18:18
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let's go bigi boy
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May 1, 2023 18:22
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beep by grandpa posted:https://twitter.com/mmamania/status/1653057235470123010?t= Ariel talking abou it. Says he is close to signing to another promotion and already had the ONE meeting schedule and kept to it. Ariel is saying it's ONE getting ahead of the story to spin it in their favor https://twitter.com/jedigoodman/status/1653086813840617472?s=20 I still hope it works out the best for him and he gets that big boxing fight he wants.
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May 1, 2023 18:32
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Crossposting from last month's thread because everyone needs to see what Platinum did to Rockhold:Mr. Nice! posted:triple posting because people need to see this. The still for the video is not too bad but be warned Rockhold's mouth is hosed up if you click play.
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May 1, 2023 18:43
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Oof that rockhold poo poo is like rory "i can't fly in airplanes or my eyeball will pop out" level of skull fracture
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May 1, 2023 18:53
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bkfc is pretty much my line where mma goes from entertaining to difficult to watch. If you want to permanently damage someone's face and brain, you should do it with your shins, not your knuckles.
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May 1, 2023 18:54
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I personally don't mind bare knuckle generally as a sport, yeah it gets a bit grotesque with the blood at times but so does MMA. I mostly don't care for all the bums and completely shot guys they bring around for it.
TheKingslayer fucked around with this message at 19:18 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 18:56
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I get what y'all are saying, but seriously the bare knuckle card this weekend top to bottom was really good. I watched the whole card yesterday and enjoyed every fight. When Eddie Alvarez vs Chad$ is one of the least exciting fights on the card, you know you have a banger. I really enjoyed a Ben Rothwell fight. Also, Perry would have hosed up Rockhold in that ruleset even if they were wearing gloves. The clinching they allow makes the fight better than a lot of boxing rulesets that restrict throwing strikes while clenching.
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May 1, 2023 19:11
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BKFC has compelling story lines, fun fights, and has stars. UFC has Dana White.
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May 1, 2023 19:15
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Also, as hosed up as Rockhold looks, he didn't get knocked out or anything. Perry socked him one time really good in the mouth in the second and he immediately just turned around, trotted away, and then told the ref he was done. Also apparently Perry is trying to fight Conor McGregor next and McGregor had a BKFC belt on his shoulder for some reason.
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May 1, 2023 19:20
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I've been sincerely entertained by the last few BKFC cards I've seen. Maybe UFC would have something if you took the five best fights on the card and only showed those but as it is sitting through hours of Contender Series bin men ain't a great time.
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May 1, 2023 19:23
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BKFC is by far the largest beneficiary of slap bullshit, because it's just as gross and uncomfortable and often reckless as it was this time last year, and it's still the company that got one of its fighters killed, but boy, the immediate visuals aren't nearly as shocking on average anymore and it's amazing how much that winds up mattering to people. Also, we made it less than half a day into June before bad poo poo happened; Felipe Colares, who spent three years in the UFC, was a pretty solid feather/bantamweight and only got released last summer, walked out of his gym and got run over by a loving bus.
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May 1, 2023 20:22
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https://twitter.com/mrsmmacasual/status/1653101031570677760 happy for ben
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May 1, 2023 20:28
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Mr. Nice! posted:I really enjoyed a Ben Rothwell fight. This is normal and correct, though
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May 1, 2023 20:37
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Did imgur finally delete everything because I don't see any photos in the OP even tho there is reference to photos
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May 1, 2023 20:37
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CarlCX posted:BKFC is by far the largest beneficiary of slap bullshit, because it's just as gross and uncomfortable and often reckless as it was this time last year, and it's still the company that got one of its fighters killed, but boy, the immediate visuals aren't nearly as shocking on average anymore and it's amazing how much that winds up mattering to people. i don't agree. i can't equivocate striking a defenceless opponent and a boxing match. even the oildome was a fairer fight than slapping. i won't accept loss of life as a cost of doing business, but i'd hazard a guess that the sad event would be less to do with the bare knuckle aspect of it and more to do with the safety protocols, officiating, access to medical attention etc that comes with the territory of low budget affairs. cuts are grizzly, but better a little bit of blood now than a shitload of further trauma thanks to padding imo.
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May 1, 2023 20:41
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Marching Powder posted:i don't agree. i can't equivocate striking a defenceless opponent and a boxing match. even the oildome was a fairer fight than slapping. Yeah but don't you watch BKFC now and go "drat this poo poo is bad but iat least it's not slap fighting"? I kinda do.
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May 1, 2023 20:42
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CommonShore posted:Yeah but don't you watch BKFC now and go "drat this poo poo is bad but iat least it's not slap fighting"? I kinda do. honestly, no. if the safety aspects of it were on par with pro boxing / mma, i'd have the equivalent level of critique for it.
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May 1, 2023 20:44
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And just to make sure we aren't talking past each other in just a bit. Yeah the sport of bare knuckle isn't in the same league of bullshit as slapping as a concept. BKFC... they let some poo poo go by sticking around places where commissions are gonna give them tons of leeway or barely exist at all. I could certainly do without that aspect.
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May 1, 2023 20:44
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Marching Powder posted:i don't agree. i can't equivocate striking a defenceless opponent and a boxing match. even the oildome was a fairer fight than slapping. I personally agree, but I'm more speaking to the tenor of the conversation that seems to go on around BKFC in the combat sports public. I noticed a lot more "it's gross/barbaric' talk before power slap and now it seems like people are less fussed even though BKFC's profile hasn't really grown that much, and I can't help thinking people are directly contrasting the two. Here's my problem with the bareknuckle vs padding thing, though: Instead of bareknuckle MMA it's bareknuckle boxing, so while you're getting rid of some of the subconcussive impact issues with padding you're also going back to fighters getting hosed up badly enough to lose the ability to stand and just getting a standing count before being thrown right back in, so I kind of wonder if it makes any difference. butros posted:Did imgur finally delete everything because I don't see any photos in the OP even tho there is reference to photos It all looks fine to me, anyone else having problems?
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May 1, 2023 20:57
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CarlCX posted:I personally agree, but I'm more speaking to the tenor of the conversation that seems to go on around BKFC in the combat sports public. I noticed a lot more "it's gross/barbaric' talk before power slap and now it seems like people are less fussed even though BKFC's profile hasn't really grown that much, and I can't help thinking people are directly contrasting the two. ah. jesus that's depressing but i'd bet you're right. CarlCX posted:Here's my problem with the bareknuckle vs padding thing, though: Instead of bareknuckle MMA it's bareknuckle boxing, so while you're getting rid of some of the subconcussive impact issues with padding you're also going back to fighters getting hosed up badly enough to lose the ability to stand and just getting a standing count before being thrown right back in, so I kind of wonder if it makes any difference. standing 8s should be a war crime personally i absolutely understand if you prefer your violence with a veneer of respectability. my missus can't stand mma / boxing but likes sumo. i've had a long time to accept that i'm the type of person who will get in the ring in a pub car park and try and kill a guy while knowing full well the the event doctor is a drunk guy that said he used to teach first aid in the military. consent and fair play is my standard, but i'm under no delusion that it's 'correct'.
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May 1, 2023 21:06
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Oh the pics are back. Unless maybe my work network blocks Imgur now?
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May 1, 2023 21:26
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it's time for a  b league preview Invicta FC 53 - Wednesday, May 3, 2023 Main Card - 8:30 PM ET, Youtube, AXS TV Atomweight Title - “Lionheart” Jillian DeCoursey vs Rayanne dos Santos DeCoursey is 6-3, with 2 wins by TKO and a sole sub victory. She is 5-2 in Invicta, and is currently on a two fight win streak including her title clinching submission win last year. Dos Santos is 13-6 with 2 TKO and 8 submissions. She is also on a two fight win streak, including her Invicta debut back in January. Dos Santos has gotten a bit of an easy schedule, though. Out of her last 7 wins, none had a record above 0.500, 5 had never won a fight, and three of those were making their pro debuts. This is going to be a big step up in competition for Rayanne. I was very surprised that DeCoursey beat Delboni last year, but Jillian is pretty solid. Bantamweight - “Big Bad” Olga Rubin vs “Grizzly” Claire Guthrie Rubin is 8-3, with 3 TKO wins. She is 1-1 in Invicta, notching her first win earlier this year. As I’ve noted previously, she had some easy matchups on her come up, with her first four wins coming against fighters who had yet to taste victory themselves on a professional level. Guthrie brings a record of 5-1 to the cage, with one submission win. She is 4-1 in Invicta, and not counting exhibition bouts, she’s on a 4-fight win streak. I think this will be a solid test for both fighters, with the winner inching closer to a title shot. Strawweight - Jessica Delboni vs Danielle “Dynamite” Taylor Delboni is 12-4, with two TKO victories. She is 4-3 in Invicta, most recently losing the Atomweight belt to Jillian DeCoursey. This is her first trip back to 115 lbs since 2020. Taylor is 11-8 with 3 TKO and one sub wins. She is 1-3 in Invicta, having dropped her last three fights. Taylor will have a rare reach advantage despite giving up an inch of height to Delboni. Will it be enough to give Danielle an edge? In my personal opinion, I hope not. Atomweight - Monique Adriane vs Nicole Geraldo Adriane is 5-2 with one win by TKO. She is 1-1 in Invicta, taking a decision over Pauline Granados last year. Geraldo is a perfect 5-0, with one win by TKO. Neither fighter has faced much in the way of top competition, though Adriane did lose a decision to Loma Lookboonmee back in 2019. Guess we will see if regional Brazilian or Mexican can crushing is better. Flyweight - Liana “Li” Pirosin vs “Piece” Elise Pone Pirosin is 8-5 with 3 wins by TKO. She is 1-3 in Invicta, most recently getting submitted by Kristina Williams last July. Pone is 2-1 with one TKO stoppage. All of her bouts have been inside the Invicta cage. Pone is about 8 years older than Pirosin, but she has quite a bit of height and reach advantage. She’s also most notable for staring at her last opponent between rounds like a complete psychopath, refusing to sit on the stool or even drink water. Atomweight - Elisandra “Lili” Ferreira vs Flor “Compean” Hernandez Ferreira is 5-2, with one win by TKO on her record. She is 1-0 in Invicta, taking a split decision win back in January. Hernandez is 4-0 with one TKO and one submission win. Both fighters haven’t really been challenged yet, though I suppose Ferreira has a touch more experience. Should be good to see if either of them develop as prospects. Flyweight - Ky “Kobra” Bennett vs Kendal “The Crocodile” Holowell Bennett is 2-2, with one win by submission. She’s 1-2 in Bellator, and 1-0 in LFA, with that decision win in 2021 being her most recent fight. Holowell is also 2-2, with one win by TKO and one by sub. She made her pro debut in Invicta back in 2020, losing by first round armbar to Juliana Miller. Someone’s two is gonna be a three, and I guess also the other person will have a two turn into a three as well.
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May 1, 2023 23:39
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Rockhold actually stunned Perry pretty good at one point on the 1st, just wasn't able to keep it at the range he needed.
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May 2, 2023 00:41
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:Rockhold actually stunned Perry pretty good at one point on the 1st, just wasn't able to keep it at the range he needed. he stunned perry at least three times by my count. all with the straight down the pipe. i'm convinced that if he just spammed that perry would have knocked himself out.
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May 2, 2023 00:55
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Much as the tooth injury and head punches hurt him I think body shots Perry landed really hurt him.
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May 2, 2023 01:03
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Digital Jedi posted:Much as the tooth injury and head punches hurt him I think body shots Perry landed really hurt him. this is what i thought. perry landed two brutal body shots and rockhold fled to the other side of the ring and perry landed one more and rockhold said he was done. sure it would be stupid to say it wasn't the extremely hosed up face if that's what rockhold says but i literally winced at those shots.
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May 2, 2023 04:45
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beep by grandpa posted:https://twitter.com/mmamania/status/1653057235470123010?t= Isn't Francis with CAA? I thought that was one of the reasons that the UFC kept messing with him before the final breakup since there's beef between them and WME.
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May 2, 2023 04:51
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Ngannou did an interview afterwards in which he more or less confirmed being verbally committed to PFL and Chatri insisting on the negotiations anyway, so it sounds more like Chatri saying 'nah, we walked away from the table but it totally wasn't about money' to save face vs the inevitable PFL OUTBIDS ONE FOR NGANNOU narrative.
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May 2, 2023 05:05
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I just wish fight circus happened more regularly. I get to learn about things like lethwe watching it
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May 2, 2023 05:23
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It's like how BKFC made a statement about Ngannou asking for unrealistic money as if they were ever in real contention.
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May 2, 2023 06:11
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francis is so cool.Tom Clancy is Dead posted:It's like how BKFC made a statement about Ngannou asking for unrealistic money as if they were ever in real contention. lol
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May 2, 2023 06:51
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I have 0 qualms about BKFC as a concept versus any other full combat sport. It’s probably even better, in the abstract, than boxing with gloves. The problem is just in the execution in that they seem to only get guys whose very participation in BKFC is depressing, but then again I guess that’s the nature of bare knuckle boxing. Also respect to Rockhold for just saying “gently caress this” after his teeth got jacked up. At first I thought his jaw/tooth alignment was hosed, but the video just looks like he lost a big chunk of his front tooth.
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May 2, 2023 07:04
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I'm down with Bare Knuckle Fried Chicken and have been for like the last couple of years. I don't find it gruesome at all since fghts end pretty quickly but when they don't they tend to lean towards entertaining slug fests. Like I said in the last thread it really blows me away that Nevada won't sanction it when they're totally cool with White Power Slap. I guess we all know why... 
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May 2, 2023 07:12
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they've also killed a guy with their matchmaking which even bellator hasn't managed
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May 2, 2023 11:25
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How quickly we forget the death and resurrection of Dada5000
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May 2, 2023 11:48
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 02:36 |
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at least in that fight both guys were dying of exhaustion and unable to harm each other, just themselves. instead of one guy being a legit prospect and one guy being a schlub like in the BKFC death.
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May 2, 2023 11:56
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