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Which main event fighter are you most looking forward to seeing in July? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
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1 | 3.33% | |
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9 | 30.00% | |
| Holly Holm |
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11 | 36.67% |
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0 | 0% | |
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1 | 3.33% | |
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3 | 10.00% | |
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3 | 10.00% | |
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2 | 6.67% | |
| Total: | 30 votes | ||
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If you want to remember a time when Amanda Nunes walked the Earth, you can return to June here. Welcome to July, a month that has some fantastic cards in store, but boy, you're gonna have to crawl through some poo poo to get to them. We've got five UFCs this month including the very rare double pay-per-views, we've got Bellator X Rizin, and we've got five possible rounds of Holly God Damned Holm. Appease your respective gods and pray. This month's thread title brought to you by kensei. If this is your first time here you should stop and say hi so we know it's not just the same couple dozen of us cussing each other out all the time, but you may want to start with The General Q&A Thread for the basic gist of mixed martial arts. Yes, I'm still doing the new one. If you want to talk about MMA or combat sports events that aren't included in this breakdown: Please do. In a world of Road FC and Rizin events that don't actually air in America and the WBC threatening to rank Jake Paul, there's space for everything. And if there's an event you want to make a GDT for, go right ahead, just make sure to link it here so everyone sees it and basks in the joy of violence. THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS 
IS THERE ANY NEWS  One of the most incredible things about mixed martial arts is how quickly every ostensibly good promoter abandons their scruples when they don't get what they want. The Professional Fighters League has had a very, very rough year. The heavyweight champion was injured, a huge swath of the roster got scratched midway through the season over failed drug tests, their big-ticket UFC pickups all underperformed and failed to make the playoffs or in some cases win at all--they've been under a lot of stress. On June 23rd, the final PFL card before the beginning of their playoffs, the company booked a lightweight showdown between 2021 champion Raush Manfio and 2019 champion Natan Schulte. The match raised a low of eyebrows when it was announced, half because PFL was oddly matching two winning fighters against each other and seemingly playing favorites by giving their most visible UFC pickup still in the tournament, Shane Burgos, an easier match, half because Schulte and Manfio had openly asked not to be pitted against one another. MMA has a long history of promotional difficulty when it comes to training partners being forced to fight one another. In this case, it goes a step further: The two are best friends. After he won the 2019 championship Schulte used his prize money to house, feed and safeguard Manfio while he struggled professionally; after Manfio's daughter was born, he asked Schulte to be her godfather. It's hard to get closer in this sport. The PFL booked them against each other anyway. And when the two turned in a completely uneventful match--not fixed, not predetermined, but clearly two people with a deep love for one another who don't want to hurt each other in the middle of non-televised prelims for pennies--the company jumped at the chance to punish them. For violating their contractual obligations and not fighting to their best, for disgracing the tournament and themselves, Natan Schulte and Raush Manfio were both summarily suspended for the season. And hey, wouldn't you know it: That means Shane Burgos gets into the playoffs. What a strange coincidence. It's a nakedly corrupt move and it lays bare just how worthless the PFL's sense of professionalism is, and just how empty the vows about the integrity of their tournament system really are. They booked a lovely fight in the hopes of getting Burgos into the playoffs--as if the two winning fighters being on the prelims and Burgos being on the main card didn't already give it away--and when it failed, and they just happened to feel disappointed in two of their former champions, they tossed them instantaneously to get their chosen star into their postseason and, they hope, the championship. Let it be your regularly scheduled reminder that the B-leagues aren't actually much better than the UFC. Scott Coker will get mad about wrestling, Chatri Sityodtong will poo poo all over Japanese kickboxing, and the PFL will throw its own format in the garbage as long as it gets them what they want. Good luck, Shane.  You know how we periodically discuss the completely arbitrary horror that is existence? While training for his August showdown with James Gallagher in Bellator, Cris "Sunshine" Lencioni, a 28 year-old featherweight prospect in fantastic shape and ostensibly in the prime of his career and his bodily health, had a heart attack and collapsed in the middle of a grappling exercise. He was resuscitated and survived, but appears to have suffered considerable brain damage from the episode. His recovery has thus far defied expectations--in the sense that he survived and can now do things like move his hands and drink water--but he's still very far from functional, and has, thus far, racked up around $300,000 in hospital bills, and that's before the cost of what will in a best-case scenario be lengthy recovery and therapy. But, hey: This guy's been with Bellator for six and a half years. This was going to be his ninth fight with the organization. You'd expect the #2 MMA promotion in America, backed by a multi-billion dollar giant like the CBS Corporation, would be more than willing to help--not just because it's the ethical thing to do, not just because this happened while he was training for a Bellator fight, but because it was EKGs and physicals under their watch that failed to detect the heart defect that almost killed him and may have ended his career. Good news! They decided to help! By tweeting out the GoFundMe his family put up and asking fans to donate to it. This poo poo is ridiculous and they should all be ashamed. I hope he recovers and I hope his family sues Bob Bakish for a billion dollars.  Antônio "Bigfoot" Silva has long seemed like one of MMA's inevitable stories of tragedy. The one-time UFC title challenger is not only 1 for his last 13 mixed martial arts fights, but between all the sports he's tried--MMA, boxing, bareknuckle fighting--he's been knocked out twelve times in his last sixteen combat sports appearances. And six of those knockouts were consecutive. And a couple were just two weeks apart. His manager openly quit because Bigfoot simply wouldn't stop taking fights and he didn't want to be a part of his entirely plausible demise. But, finally, sanity prevailed. Bigfoot lost one more MMA fight--this time by decision, thank god--to the 5-1 Moroccan heavyweight Salim El Ouassaidi, and he laid his gloves down, admitted it was over, and finally, mercifully, retired. For eight days. His retirement lasted a week. He says he knew he should have won the fight and he's desperate for a rematch to prove himself. I cannot loving imagine watching Bigfoot fight again at this point in time and I hope someone forces him into a quilting class for his own good.  I had individual entries here for the shame categories of the month--Joe Rogan using his platform to rail harder than ever against vaccines, Conor McGregor being accused of sexual assault yet again, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg pretending for a moment that they aren't the most pampered assholes on the planet and challenging one another to a duel, and the UFC jumping on the chance to whip up press about getting them into a cage fight--but it is all, universally, just the worst poo poo on the planet, and the Conor allegations are already seemingly getting buried, and the industry continues to be the worst at every turn. I beg everyone in it to stop using their completely absurd levels of unprecedented privilege and wealth for just the dumbest possible poo poo in the world. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  Amanda Nunes has finally called it a career, and women's mixed martial arts as a whole will be feeling the loss for years to come. Combat sports was more or less Amanda's destiny. Her uncle was a fighter in the early days of Vale Tudo, her mother was a boxer, and she was training in multiple martial arts before she was 8. She moved into Edson Carvalho's gym as a teenager and started winning gold medals in jiu-jitsu a year later, and the rest quickly became history. The fanbase's favorite circular MMA argument has always been greatest-of-all-time determinations. It's always an exercise in annoying abstracts--the differences of time and place, the questions of which champion was or was not in their prime, the innumerable and unknowable answers. This is true in every case save that of Amanda Nunes. The combination of her skills, her power, and the relative youth of women's MMA in the mainstream means Nunes has the best argument ever made for why she is the greatest her divisions have ever seen: She beat every loving one else in them. Amanda Nunes has victories over every UFC Women's Featherweight AND Bantamweight champion--and, just for shits and giggles, the canonical Women's Flyweight champion, too. Even Julianna Peña, the woman who ended her title reign, was immediately destroyed in a comically lopsided rematch. And her retirement might be the best retirement mixed martial arts has ever seen. It's rare that a fighter goes out on top and it's even rarer a fighter goes out on top AND happy. Amanda Nunes is only 35, she has her health, she has her family, she has her own gym, and she has the greatest legacy in women's MMA. Her last moments in the octagon were spent dancing with her wife, friends and children in front of a cheering audience bidding her farewell. If the sport were as picturesque or kind to all its practitioners, combat sports would be a far kinder place. It's a hell of an achievement, and one that belongs right alongside the rest of the monolithic career she left behind. She retires at 23-5.  Marlon Moraes is done, and the world breathes a sigh of relief. It's very hard to remember now, but it was a big loving deal when the UFC signed Marlon Moraes. The bantamweight division was on fire: Dominick Cruz had just been unseated by Cody Garbrandt, TJ Dillashaw had just re-established himself as the #1 contender, Aljamain Sterling was on his way up and Thomas Almeida still looked like a killer. There was a glut of talent, and Marlon Moraes was widely considered the world's best bantamweight outside of the company, the champion of the pre-PFL World Series of Fighting who was not only on a five-year, thirteen-fight winning streak but was savaging almost everyone he encountered. The world was very, very interested in Moraes against the best the UFC had to offer. And then Marlon lost his UFC debut by split decision. It probably should have been a sign. He still had plenty of success--he beat Aljo, he beat Raphael Assunção, he arguably beat Jose Aldo, he earned a title shot on his own merits--but that success has been entirely overshadowed by what came afterward. Mixed martial arts is not kind of aging or insecurity, and when you're Marlon Moraes and you're just too good to not compete at the highest levels of the sport, it will, unfortunately, eat you alive. Between his debut in 2007 and his successful title eliminator in February of 2019, Moraes went 22-5-1; between June of 2019 and his final fight on June 8, 2023, he went 1-8, and all eight of those losses--seven of them consecutive--came by knockout. Moraes briefly retired in 2022 when his UFC contract ended, but decided to go home to the PFL to finish his career on a high note--by going up a weight class, where everyone was bigger and scarier. He got three more knockout losses and the wake-up call he finally needed. After being punched out in one round by Gabriel Alves Braga, Marlon Moraes has finally called it a career. As at one time one of the scariest fighters on the planet I'm relieved to see his legacy end while there's still something recoverable in it, but I'm much more relieved that he won't get knocked out any more. Marlon leaves the sport at 23-13-1.  Stevie Ray didn't quite get the flowers he deserved until the very end of his career, and that's a bit of a shame. One of the precious few fighters to break out of the surprisingly competitive Scottish fight scene and achieved international notoriety--realistically it's basically just him, Paul Craig and Joanne Wood--Ray was notable for his submission abilities, which somehow stayed perpetually underestimated despite almost a decade and a half of strangling people. He held championships with the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts and Cage Warriors alike before making it to the UFC, where he went a respectable 7-4 before being one of the rare fighters cut on a win--supposedly because the UFC was just sort of tired of having him around. He retired, spent a couple years away from the sport, and ultimately joined the PFL in 2022--and it would have been a bigger deal were it not overshadowed by superstar Anthony Pettis, who had failed to make the playoffs in 2021 and was swearing to do better this time. And then Stevie Ray submitted him with an inverted twister, a move most of the MMA audience didn't even know existed. And then he beat him up in the immediate rematch. And that, honestly, was just about enough to make him. He didn't win the championship--he was dispatched by Olivier Aubin-Mercier in the final--but with how visible the Pettis fights were, Ray taking care of him twice in a row made people reevaluate the whole of his career. He was never the best in the world, he never mantled the mountain, but he was an incredibly tough, tricky grappler, and I'm glad he finally got some of the attention he deserved right at the end of the line. He called it a day on June 23rd after Clay Collard stopped him, but there's plenty to be proud of in his body of work. he retires at 25-13 and I hope he teaches a bunch of Scottish kids how to rip arms apart forever. 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 JUNE As a note: We're gonna do something a little different. I don't think this section is the most useful thing in the world. I don't think most people need to know all the prelim participants in a given month! It's probably just making this long and not enormously helpful, since it's actually faster and easier for anyone who wants a real card rundown to click on any of the embedded links and see it in a digestible format. So I'm gonna try just writing the things that seem worth writing about. If it turns out that I'm wrong about this and anyone actually really cares about thorough examination of cards here, please feel free to comment, I'd love to know. But in the meantime: June got off to a quick start with UFC Fight Night: Kara-France vs Albazi on the 3rd. A whole lot of cancellations led to this main and this card in general, and the result was, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag. Jamie Mullarkey got crushed by late replacement Muhammad Naimov, Don'Tale Mayes handed Andrei Arlovski a difficult TKO loss, a returning Elizeu Zaleski managed a tight split decision over Abubakar Nurmagomedov, debuting Invicta champion Ketlen Souza got painfully kneebarred by Karine Silva, and aging warhorse Jim Miller knocked out last-minute replacement Jesse Butler in about twenty seconds. Your co-main saw Alex Caceres scrape by Daniel Pineda, and your main event crowned a new contender in Amir Albazi by everyone's favorite method of victory: An extremely contentious decision almost everyone thought his opponent Kai Kara-France should've won. The second phase of the incredibly embattled Professional Fighters League season began on the 8th with PFL 4. With the cards mor or less in total chaos thanks to the preponderance of drug test failures it was a bit all over the place. At light-heavyweight Impa Kasanganay, Ty Flores, Marthin Hamlet and Josh Silveira all clinched playoff spots, although Silveira got his by a deeply unfortunate knee injury. Featherweight saw Bubba Jenkins, Movid Khaybulaev, Chris Wade and Jesus Pinedo make it through to the playoffs--Pinedo by upsetting last year's champion Brendan Loughnane, knocking him out in just a minute and a half. The card also saw Gabriel Alves Braga hand Marlon Moraes his seventh consecutive loss, which was also his seventh consecutive knockout, at which point Moraes finally, mercifully, retired. ONE kicked off a double-header of a weekend with ONE Fight Night 11: Eersel vs Menshikov on the 10th. It was a touch schizophrenic even by ONE's mixed-card standards, with no two consecutive fights occurring under a single ruleset, but Kwon Won Il scored a knockout over Artem Belakh in MMA, the famous but aging kickboxer Nieky Holzken missed weight AND lost a decision to Arian Sadiković, Superbon knocked out Tayfun Özcan with a horrifying headkick, Kade Ruotolo retained his lightweight submission grappling title by outworking Tommy Langaker to a decision, and in the main event, ONE Lightweight Muay Thai Champion Regian Eersel continued his seven-year undefeated streak by knocking out Dmitry Menshikov in forty-six seconds. But all eyes were on UFC 289: Nunes vs Aldana later that night. A card also ultimately troubled by cancellations, it still wound up a good if bittersweet time. Late replacement Stephen Erceg went from regional talent to top fifteen flyweight by upsetting David Dvořák, Aiemann Sahabi knocked Aoriqileng cold in just one minute, Jasmine Jasudavicius put on a fantastic performance in besting Miranda Maverick, and Nassourdine Imavov was in the process of seemingly dismantling Chris Curtis when a headbutt ended the match in a no-contest. The main card was marked by Dan Ige turning away surging prospect Nate Landwehr, Mike Malott choking out Adam Fugitt in what was inexplicably a pay-per-view match, and Charles Oliveira reestablishing himself as the top contender at lightweight after punching out Beneil Dariush in just one round. The main event marked the end of an era: Amanda Nunes fought a solid contender in Irene Aldana, utterly dominated her for five rounds, laid her gloves and belts down in the ring and announced her retirement before spending her last moments in the octagon dancing with her wife and children. A TRIPLE-header weekend began with Bellator 297: Nemkov vs Romero on June 16th. YOur traditional seven hundred Bellator prelims included Archie Colgan beating Emmanuel Sanchez, Ramazan Kuramagomedov justifying his prospect-watch status by knocking out Jaleel Willis, and Gadzhi Rabadanov taking a competitive but clear decision over Pieter Buist. A short, four-fight main card began with the traditional destruction of a heavyweight prospect, as Bellator's hopes of launching their championship hopeful Daniel James in front of a rabid hometown crowd were crushed by Gökhan Saricam, who wrestled him thoroughly for fifteen minutes. Top light-heavyweight contendership was established as Corey Anderson and Phil Davis had a similarly wrestling-focused match that Anderson took by split decision. The simultaneously compelling and confounding title fight between champion Sergio Pettis and newly-135-pound Patrício Pitbull ended with a reminder that, sometimes, cutting a ton of weight doesn't work out, as Pitbull found himself outsped and outworked to a shutout loss. And your main event was the typical perplexing Yoel Romero performance, with Vadim Nemkov successfully defending his light-heavyweight title by soundly beating Romero and yet also constantly looking terrified he could lose at any moment. PFL stepped up next with PFL 5, showcasing heavyweights, women's featherweights, and yet another appearance of Biaggio Ali Walsh in an amateur bout as PFL keeps desperately trying to make fetch happen. Olena Kolesnyk's victory over Yoko Higashi and Marina Mokhnatkina's decision over Evelyn Martins got them into the playoffs; in one of those ongoing statements about the oddity of this format for mixed martial arts, Aspen Ladd scored a gorgeous armbar over Karolina Sobek yet failed to break the points threshold, but Larissa Pachecho knocked out Amber Leibrock in forty-five seconds and both Pacheco AND Leibrock will continue onto the playoffs because points systems are silly. Up at heavyweight Denis Goltsov and Marcelo Nunes qualified after making first-round work of Yorgan De Castro and Danilo Marques, Renan Ferreira got in by knocking out Matheus Scheffel, and despite Ante Delija being a former champion making an abrupt return to save the ravaged PFL season he won but did NOT qualify; his spot will instead be taken by Jordan Heiderman, who technically scored a first-round stoppage and thus six playoff-qualifying points when his opponent's kneecap randomly came apart in mid-match. It's just a stupid loving system. The UFC was back the next evening with UFC Fight Night: Vettori vs Cannonier. The interims were a loving rollercoaster, with Tereza Bledá redeeming her failed UFC debut by beating Gabriella Fernandes, Kyung-ho Kang choking out Cristian Quiñonez, Alessandro Costa destroying a Jimmy Flick who should really consider returning to retirement, and a massive ref fuckup leading to Dan Argueta and Ronnie Lawrence being rendered a no-contest--the referee, while attempting to determine if a (visibly awake!) Lawrence was conscious, interfered and caused Lawrence's arm to slap Argueta's back, which the referee interpreted as tapping out. It's a silly sport, folks. Your main card was decent from top to bottom: Nicolas Dalby beat up Muslim Salikhov, Manuel Torres knocked out Nikolas Motta, Pat Sabatini choked out Lucas Almeida, Armen Petrosyan put the first loss on Christian Leroy Duncan's record and Arman Tsarukyan survived an early scare to defeat an inexplicably matched-up Joaquim Silva. Your main event was fun if you hate Marvin Vettori: Jared Cannonier beat the absolute poo poo out of him and was stymied by Vettori's ridiculous loving skull, which refused to let him get knocked out, forcing Cannonier to settle for a wide decision victory. ONE Friday Fights 22 took place on June 23rd, and as always it had a ton of excellent Muay Thai I am too uncultured to describe with any expertise whatsoever--except for masters Superlek Kiatmuu9 and Prajanchai P.K.Saenchai winning by brutal knockout, like they often do--but I note it because it had the extremely rare mixed martial arts match. After years of trying to book it, ONE finally succeeded in putting their heavyweight championship unification match on, with champ Arjan Bhullar returning to battle interim champ Anatoly Malykhin--and after years of talking poo poo, Bhullar had absolutely nothing, looking lost for two and a half rounds, at one point receiving a penalty for trying to crawl out of the ring, and ultimately losing a ground-and-pound TKO to Malykhin in the third. Thank Christ that's over. Speaking of things that are over, this section of the PFL season ended with PFL 6 later that day. Welterweights and lightweights ruled the day, and there were cool moments but very few surprises--at least until the card was over. Up at welterweight Magomed Umalatov entered the playoffs with a dominant decision, Carlos Leal made it in by knocking out Dilano Taylor, Magomed Magomedkerimov got in by taking out David Zawada, and last year's champion Sadibou Sy got in by way of an incredibly cool spinning wheel kick knockout. Lightweight is where the controversy lives. 2022 champion Olivier Aubin-Mercier, all-violence superstar Clay Collard, Challenger Series prospect Bruno Miranda and 2019 champion Natan Schulte all clinched berths in the playoff--at first. Natan Schulte made his way in by defeating Raush Manfio, but the two had requested not to fight each other, as they're training partners and incredibly close friends, and when forced to do so by PFL they proceeded to put on a fight that felt more like a sparring session than a bloodsport--which is frowned upon, but not illegal. The day after the event, PFL announced that it found their actions unacceptable and it was suspending them both from the tournament--and replacing Schulte with Shane Burgos, a UFC cast-off they'd very publicly signed last year who hadn't performed well enough to make it in on his own. Late-night MMA fans (or, y'know, people who don't live in America) got to enjoy Rizin 43 that night/morning. It was an incredibly violent event--only two out of the seventeen fights on the card went to a decision--and those, too, were pretty great. It would take a very long time to go over every single highlight, so we'll stick with the big ones: Aoi Kuriyama's faceplant knockout over Marina Kumagai, Joji Goto's inverted twister submission of Trent Girdham, Saori Oshima's scarf hold tapping-out of Pancrase champion Haruka "SALT" Hasegawa, Minoru Kimura's absolutely terrifying knockout of Daryl Lokoku that froze him standing like a goddamn zombie, Hiroki Suzuki's flying knee over Genji Umeno, Mikio Ueda's breaking of Hideki "Shrek" Sekine's face, and Yusuke Yachi's real easy chokeout over Zach Zane. The main event should have been impressive--Kleber Koike Erbst armbarred Chihiro Suzuki in three minutes--but it was overshadowed by drama. Erbst missed weight by just under one pound, meaning not only was he ineligible to win the fight--it's officially a no-contest--but his Rizin Featherweight Championship is void. He won, easily, and he is no longer the champion. June concluded with the UFC's return to network television, UFC on ABC: Emmett vs Topuria. The card was stacked to hell and back with interesting prospect matchups, and while it ran real long, it was, ultimately, a lot of fun. Prelim highlights: Jack Jenkins scored a pretty raw robbery over Jamall Emmers, Chepe Mariscal made his debut by beating an outmatched Trevor Peek, Joshua Van continued the cursed streak of Zhalgas Zhumagulov by dealing him his third split decision loss in a row, Tabatha Ricci beat Gillian Robertson even though they broke my heart by forgoing their grappling chops in favor of a tepid kickboxing match, Mateusz Rębecki demolished Loik Radzhabov with leg kicks and uppercuts, and Neil Magny just barely squeaked past Philip Rowe. Up on the main card: Brendan Allen and Bruno Silva had a one-round classic culminating in an Allen submission victory, David Onama scored a great comeback knockout over Gabriel Santos, Justin Tafa drat near got his eyes gouged out by Austen Lane and ended the card's only heavyweight fight in a no-contest in thirty seconds, and Maycee Barber had the best performance of her career, knocking out Amanda Ribas in two rounds. The main event was a masterclass in prospects arriving: Ilia Topuria, long picked as a favorite to one day become a champion, put an absolutely hellacious five-round beating on former titlist Josh Emmett, scoring one of just four 50-42 decisions in UFC history and establishing himself as a legitimate championship contender. WHAT'S COMING IN JULY It's a very busy month for the UFC and a very sleepy month for literally everyone else. The UFC wants you to suffer immediately, because on July 1st, we're getting UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs Magomedov. Not only is it a Sean Strickland main event, which puts us at pace for a Sean Strickland main event every two and a half months this year, it's a Sean Strickland main event where the other guy is a barely-known Dagestani fighter with one UFC bout who is now fighting for a top ten ranking. Also, Damir Ismagulov is coming out of retirement to fight Grant Dawson to fulfill his contractual obligations, after which he may or may not immediately re-retire, and Ariane Lipski is fighting Melissa Gatto despite their divisional positions being completely different, and Joanderson Brito is fighting Westin Wilson who absolutely should not be in the UFC at all, and Yana Santos went from co-maining against Holly Holm to being buried in mid-prelims with Karol Rosa fighting at a division in Women's Featherweight that might not exist anymore. Nothing matters. Eat Arby's. PFL only has one event for the month, and it's the non-seasonal PFL Europe 2 on the 8th, because an entire continent can be compressed into a singular card as long as you don't actually live or operate a business there. There are three European tournaments going on here--lightweight, bantamweight and women's flyweight--but the tournament events are so scattered across the year (March, July, September and December, rhythm like a Grateful Dead percussionist) that it's drat near impossible to keep track of. If you want to watch Francesco Nuzzi and Geysim Derouiche, this is your card. But later that night we have the big loving deal card of the month: UFC 290: Volkanovski vs Rodríguez. A lot of weakness in surrounding UFC cards can be pinned on this one being stacked: A rematch of the comedy special that was Jimmy Crute vs Alonzo Menifield, rising star Yazmin Jauregui vs Denise Gomes, Sean Brady vs Jack God Della drat Maddalena and Robbie Lawler's retirement fight against Niko Price, and that's just the undercard. Your main card has Bo Nickal vs Tresean Gore, Jalin Turner vs Dan Hooker, a middleweight title eliminator pitting Robert Whittaker against Dricus du Plessis, our first non-Figueiredo flyweight championship match in almost five god damned years as Brandon Moreno defends his title against his other recurring nemesis Alexandre Pantoja, and in your main event, Alexander Volkanovski looks to reunify his featherweight title with interim champion Yair Rodríguez. ONE shows up next weekend on the 15th for their one event of the month, ONE Fight Night 12: Kryklia vs Xhaja. This card has been uprooted a couple times, now--it was supposed to be headlined by the long-awaited Arjan Bhullar vs Anatoly Malykhin heavyweight championship unification bout, only for it to be moved to the midcard of a Friday Fights instead, and then the championship rematch between Tang Kai and Thanh Le was going to happen but Tang got injured, so now, despite being only a couple weeks out, it's got a half-dozen fights announced and not a ton going on. Submission grappling champion Mikey Musumeci's sister Tammi is going to wrestle! Uh, Garry Tonon is here, in a non-submission MMA contest! Can we interest you in a light-heavyweight kickboxing championship match between Roman Kryklia and Françesko Xhaja, winner of one straight fight? No? That's probably fine. But don't worry: The UFC's here to save your soul that evening with UFC Fight Night: Holm vs Bueno Silva! Yes. That is Holly Holm vs Mayra Bueno Silva. In a five-round fight. That is your main event. Your main event is twenty-five mintues of Holly Holm fighting Mayra Bueno Silva. The UFC would like you to give away a half-hour of your life so Holly Holm and Mayra Bueno Silva can do something that may or may not be sensibly interpretable as fighting. You have choices to make, every single day, and one of those choices, on July 15th, is whether or not to let yourself watch five rounds of Holly Holm, who is fighting, and Mayra Bueno Silva, who is fighting her. One week later, it is time for the UFC to pretend to be British again. UFC Fight Night: Aspinall vs Tybura comes to you on July 22nd, and it's the usual attempt at a big ol' appeal to the UK: Paul Craig's middleweight debut against André Muniz, Marc Diakiese tries to wrestle Joel Álvarez, Davey Grant faces Daniel Marcos, Jai Herbert is back, Nathaniel Wood is back, even Molly McCann gets a fight with Julija Stoliarenko even if she'll have to do it without the moral support of a Paddy Pimblett fight on the card. The main event is the big deal: Tom Aspinall, exactly 365 days after his last UFC appearance saw his leg more or less implode just fifteen seconds into the fight, is back to see if his surgically-repaired ligaments can bring him back to the runaway momentum he had leading into 2022, and Marcin Tybura is out to stop him. And the last weekend of the month concludes in a big double-header. The UFC's got the rare two pay-per-views in one month, the second being the 29th's UFC 291: Poirier vs Gaethje 2. This card is an all-violence affair: Trevin Giles vs Gabriel Bonfim, Roman Kopylov vs Claudio Ribeiro, Matthew Semelsberger vs Yohan Lainesse, Michael Chiesa vs Kevin Holland (this one may just be Chiesa wrestling a perpetually angry Holland, in fairness), Derrick Lewis is back to fight Marcos Rogério de Lima, Stephen Thompson and Michel Pereira are going to do some esoteric striking things to one another, Paulo Costa's big new contract means he gets to trade bludgeonings with Ikram Aliskerov, Tony Ferguson and Bobby Green will fight to see who is aging worse (spoiler: it's Tony), Jan Błachowicz is welcoming Alex Pereira to the light-heavyweight division in what is probably a title eliminator, and your main event is a rematch of one of the best violence exhibitions of all time, Dustin Poirier vs Justin Gaethje, but this time, it's for the completely made up BMF title, which obviously makes it more important. But July 30th brings us the end of the month, and it's a doozy: The second full, official co-promotional card, Bellator x Rizin 2. The card's going to be split into two sections, one airing in Japan and by PPV internationally and one airing on Showtime in the US. On the Japanese side, which is officially Super Rizin 2, you've got Kenta Takizawa vs Shinobu Ota, Daichi Abe vs Igor Tanabe, Mikuru Asakura vs Vugar Karamov, Seika Izawa defending the Rizin Super Atomweight Championship against Claire Lopez, and a fight to fill the vacant Rizin Bantamweight Championship throne between Kai Asakura and Bellator's Juan Archuleta. On the Showtime portion of the card, which is officially Bellator x Rizin 2, you've got--mostly Bellator fights, actually. Andrey Koreshkov vs Lorenz Larkin, Kana Watanabe vs Veta Arteaga, Danny Sabatello vs Magomed Magomedov in a Bellator Lightweight Grand Prix Quarterfinal, and, perplexingly, a main event between AJ Mckee and Patricky Pitbull. Your most important fight--and yet, not the main event--is both the only actual crosspromotional fight on this side of the card and a fight to inaugurate Bellator's Flyweight Championship, as Kyoji Horiguchi faces Japanese prospect Makoto Shinryu.
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Jul 1, 2023 19:57
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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 DefensesYair Rodríguez's moment is almost here. "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 - 23-3, 3 DefensesAljamain Sterling is a first-ballot candidate for the best bantamweight champion in UFC history, and his title reign will, one way or another, be ending very soon and he will immediately be buried by history, and it's a tragedy you can see happening in realtime. In nearly a decade of UFC competition, Sterling has only three losses: Two split decisions that could easily have been draws, and one knockout loss to pre-crisis Marlon Moraes. Aside from that it's been nothing but victory. Aside from Aljamain himself, six men have held the UFC Bantamweight Championship: Aljo has personally defeated four of them. By any measure, his has been a hall of fame career. And he is, even as the literal world champion, completely forgotten thanks to bad matchmaking and things entirely out of his control. He won the championship from Petr Yan, but he won it by disqualification--the first time a championship has ever changed hands thanks to a DQ--and despite soundly beating Yan in a rematch he won only a split decision, thus reinforcing the people who already disliked him. Matters were not helped when his first real contender was TJ Dillashaw, himself coming off a dodgy decision victory, and they were made even worse when Dillashaw came into the fight so badly injured that his shoulder came out of its socket within minutes. With a division laden with potential challengers the audience wanted to see, the UFC, once again, selected None Of The Above: Sterling's next defense would be against Henry Cejudo, returning after three years of retirement to an immediate title shot. Once again, Sterling won clearly, and once again, the judges awarded him only a split decision, prompting much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sterling's made clear that win or lose, he's leaving the division and moving to 145 after his next title defense--and the UFC is, once again, putting its thumb on the scale and having him face the company's favorite son, Sean O'Malley. Quickly. The UFC wants Sterling on UFC 292 on August 19th, another three-month turnaround, and in response to his concern about having time as a champion to recover and prepare, the UFC has made it publicly clear that if he doesn't do it, despite having literally just had a successful defense, they'll have O'Malley fighting for an interim title. Thanks, Dana. 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   VACANT - The brand new double championWomen's Bantamweight, 135 lbs  VACANT - Trying to fit onto two thrones at onceIt was a banner month for Vacant, as they claimed three belts in four weeks. Amanda Nunes spent seven years--minus about six really, really weird months last year--as not just the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist on the planet, but the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist of all time. While there are plenty of arguments to be had about the legitimacy of Women's Featherweight in the UFC, factually, she's the only UFC fighter to actually hold and defend championships in two weight classes at once, and she did it for years, and she made all of her opponents look like absolute poo poo. On June 10th she did it one last time, absolutely crushing Irene Aldana for five straight rounds, before officially retiring and passing into legend. This leaves two championships in the shadow-grip of Vacant, but their futures, respectively, are uncertain. Women's Bantamweight remains one of the UFC's more visible divisions, and you can almost certainly pencil in some sort of Julianna Peña vs Question Mark fight to fill the vacancy later this year. But the UFC has already acknowledged Women's Featherweight will, in all likelihood, simply cease to be. They're still promoting a couple fights in the division, but the belt has been taken off the website and it's entirely likely that, before the summer is over, we'll see the first shuttering of a weight class since the UFC gave up on the lightweight division back in 2004. 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. So the UFC solved the problem by picking Amanda Lemos. The assumption was the UFC was waiting for Lemos to get one more big win, but after seven months of silence, it turns out they were fine with her all along, apparently. She'll face Zhang for the belt at UFC 292 on August 19th.
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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 - 17-2 (1), 4 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 scored one more defense after defeating Yoel Romero at Bellator 297 on June 16th, and he followed it up by opining about giving up the division and the belt and moving to heavyweight. gently caress you, 205. 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. Thanks to Fabian Edwards defeating the perennially sleepy Gegard Mousasi in May, the next title defense will in fact be Johnny Eblen vs Fabian Edwards sometime later this year. 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 facing fellow tournament semifinalist Brent Primus later this year. 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, because sports are stupid, he promptly blew his winning streak dropping to 135 to try to win a third title, and Sergio Pettis beat him up. Good job, everybody. Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Sergio Pettis - 23-5, 2 DefensesIt's been a long, strange trip for Sergio Pettis. When the world was introduced to Sergio as part of the UFC back in 2013 he was just the smaller, less visible alternative to his big brother Anthony, who was riding high as the lightweight champion of the world and the face of loving Wheaties. but Anthony's time atop the sport was ultimately short, and Sergio, at seven years younger, had plenty of time to develop. In 2023, Anthony Pettis is seemingly retired from mixed martial arts after losing most of the back half of his career, and Sergio is arguably the best bantamweight in the world outside of the UFC. His move to Bellator in 2020 paid dividends: Within three fights he was a champion, and in his fourth, he knocked out the highly-regarded Kyoji Horiguchi in a huge upset and officially arrived as one of the world's best. And then he got injured and spent more than a year and a half on the shelf, killing all of his momentum. Sergio returned right as Bellator's Bantamweight Grand Prix ended, but rather than fighting the winner, he was given a more esoteric contest: A title defense against Bellator's greatest fighter, Patrício Pitbull, who was making his 135-pound debut and attempting to win a third divisional title. Unfortunately, Pitbull's best features are his speed and power, and cut down to 135 he both lacked his knockout power and was, for the first time in his career, the slower fighter. Sergio won a unanimous decision, retained his throne, and will now, presumably, fight to reunify the title against Patchy Mix later this year. 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 that Sergio Pettis is back, all Patchy has to do is wait for their showdown. 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   Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 DefensesONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs  Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 DefensesAnatoly Malykhin's bizzare two-year journey through ONE Championship has finally come to a place of rest. Ascension in the heavyweight division has never been the longest road in the world, but in ONE, where they don't actually bother with divisional rankings past lightweight and there have somehow only been five undisputed heavyweight championship bouts in eight years, the road is very short and easily traversed through violent punchings. Thus, when Anatoly Malykhin arrived in 2023 and punhed two men out in five minutes, that was more than sufficient. But the standing champion, Arjan Bhullar, just couldn't make it to the cage. They were supposed to fight in February of 2022, but Bhullar was hurt, so Malykhin got an interim title by destroying Kirill Grishenko. They were supposed to unify the belts in September, but Arjan was hurt, so they pushed it to December--and then Arjan played contractual hardball, so in a truly baffling reversal, ONE had Malykhin drop to 225 pounds and destroy double-champ Reinier de Ridder instead. The heavyweight unification got rebooked for March of 2023--and then Bhullar pulled out again. It wasn't until June 23rd, with their bout unceremoniously placed smack-dab in the middle of a Friday Fights Muay Thai card, that the match two years in the making finally happened. And it was...massively underwhelming, with Bhullar seeming alternately frozen and as though he wanted to be absolutely anywhere else in the world. Malykhin used him as a punching bag for two and a half rounds, with Bhullar at one point penalized for trying to escape the ring, and Malykhin put a stamp on it with a TKO in the third round. Finally--mercifully--the heavyweight championship is unified. Anatoly Malykhin is whole. And he immediately began talking about dropping to 205 for Reinier's OTHER belt, because, uh, ONE doesn't have any other loving heavyweights to fight. 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 themselves 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 lost a grappling match to Tye Ruotolo 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. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare. And then Tang Kai busted his knee and announced he was out with no definite return date. Great job, everybody. 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. The trilogy match was inevitable, and on May 5th, Johnson beat Moraes by a comprehensive decision, ending the story--and maybe his career. He says he's not sure if he's coming back yet. Fingers crossed. 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. In June, Chatri said Angela Lee was most likely retiring for good, but is going to take a little more time before the decision is made. Seo Hee Ham and Stamp Fairtex will be fighting for an interim title at ONE 14 on September 1st.  Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs  Roberto de Souza - 15-2, 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. On May 6th, Satoshi beat Spike Carlyle in a fantastic fight--but it was a non-title fight, because Japanese promoters are still real scared of their own belts. Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  VACANT - The intercontinental championRuin has come to our family. Kleber Koike Erbst spent most of 2021 and 2022 enjoying the best run of his career: He was a perfect 6-0 in Rizin, not just winning but submitting everyone he faced, and ultimately claiming Rizin's Featherweight Championship after choking out Juntarou Ushiku. But then he participated in the promotionally disastrous Bellator x Rizin event that saw the Rizin boys get swept by their American-promoted counterparts, Erbst in particular finding himself dominated by Patrício Pitbull, and it prognosticated his true downfall. Japan is even more anal about weight classes than America, and on June 23rd, Kleber became the second champion in a year to lose his belt on the scale after coming in just .8 of a pound over the limit. He still easily submitted Chihiro Suzuki in their scheduled match, but not only was the belt still gone, the fight was a No Contest, as Japan will not even let you record a win if you blow the weight limit. The belt is in the void now, and it remains to be seen if Rizin will give Kleber a crack at regaining it. 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. So it falls to Kai Asakura to try to fill the void, in the second Bellator x Rizin cross-promotional card this July, when he faces former Bellator champion Juan Archuleta. Rizin would probably like it if the new champion, y'know, was natively available in the country. 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. Izawa choked her out, shockingly. She'll be meeting Claire Lopez at Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 30th.
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Jul 1, 2023 19:57
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I love carl and am a dirty little slut for his writeups
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Jul 1, 2023 22:19
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Sean Brady pulled out with an injury, JDM is looking for a replacement for 290 but will probably be pushed given the level of notice. https://bloodyelbow.com/2023/07/01/ufc-290-loses-absolute-banger/
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Jul 1, 2023 22:19
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beep by grandpa posted:I love carl and am a dirty little slut for his writeups I've been drifting away from the sport given all the bullshit and poo poo, Carl's breakdowns are one of my main tethers left.
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Jul 1, 2023 22:20
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I'm thankful for your readership and apologetic for keeping you stuck in this hellhole. Also I forgot to link it but Strickland/Magomedov is live in the GDT at https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4035595 if you're just coming in you really haven't missed much
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Jul 1, 2023 22:34
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Man, gently caress Jon jones
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Jul 1, 2023 23:41
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lets go preachers daughter
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Jul 2, 2023 00:49
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I remember how hard it was to come up with the thread title month after month, happy to help my brother!
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Jul 2, 2023 02:20
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I'm starting to get the feeling Yair is gonna go out and dust Volkanovski. Nothing specific. Yair just seems very on top of his game right now.
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Jul 2, 2023 08:57
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Strickland is so fun to watch, he needs to be fighting like Robert Whitaker next
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Jul 2, 2023 16:06
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FootballFreak2 posted:Strickland is so fun to watch, he needs to be fighting like Robert Whitaker next I think these things are both aggressively untrue.
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Jul 2, 2023 18:32
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Hey, Bobby deserves some easy fights sometimes.
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Jul 2, 2023 19:06
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Caught the whole show from last night on tape, here's my picks: Recommended: Kutateladze vs. Brener Bonfim vs. Saint Denis Also decent: Strickland vs. Magomedov
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Jul 2, 2023 19:25
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beep by grandpa posted:I love carl and am a dirty little slut for his writeups Ditto
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Jul 2, 2023 21:08
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FootballFreak2 posted:Strickland is so fun to watch, he needs to be fighting like Robert Whitaker next Ban this sick filth.
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Jul 2, 2023 22:22
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whittaker probably is the next logical fight for him tbh
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Jul 3, 2023 00:18
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Man, I disagree. And while I do dislike Strickland, it's not even about distaste, it's just that he doesn't have the wins. If you look at their last five fights, Whittaker beat the #5 guy in Darren Till, dominated the #2 guy in Jared Cannonier, dominated the #8 guy (thanks, UFC) in Kelvin Gastelum, lost a real close decision to the champ in Adesanya and dominated the #2 guy in Vettori, and now he's about to fight the #5 guy in Dricus Du Plessis, who also happens to be the only person left in the top 8 Izzy or Pereira didn't kill yet. In Sean Strickland's last five he beat Jack Hermansson, who was #6 and that was good, and then he got murdered to death by Alex Pereira, and then he got worked by the aforementioned Jared Cannonier, and his recovery has been beating the #12 ranked Nassourdine Imavov, a guy who'd been getting hosed up by Phil Hawes a year prior, and stopping Abus Magomedov, an unranked guy who had one UFC fight and it was against the 1-4 Dustin Stoltzfus. Whittaker is a former champ who has only lost to the current champ, has beaten most of the top ten in the division, and is fighting in what has already been labeled a title eliminator next. Sean Strickland has zero top five wins in the UFC in his entire career and he's spent this year fighting guys underneath him. The two times they gave him an opponent with title implications he choked. I think he needs to beat someone who actually matters again before they send him up to a contendership fight. Personally I'd like to see Strickland vs Brendan Allen 2, since Allen's got a lot of momentum and it would be a good launchpad for one of them, but that would probably be unfair to Strickland because he'd be fighting down yet again. I think Strickland vs Paulo Costa would be both a great placement match and an entertaining style matchup, but Costa's booked in ANOTHER top ten-vs-unranked match, because things are stupid. With the people who are currently unbooked, I think Strickland vs Vettori is a good pole position fight. You don't gently caress up the Whittaker/DDP booking, you don't run back Strickland/Cannonier which was just six months ago, and you give Strickland a chance to actually break into the top five again, and if Izzy beats the winner of Whittaker/DDP and Strickland beats Vettori it gives him a challenger in the top five he hasn't already crushed.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:50
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Give Strickland to Bo Nickal after Tresean.
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Jul 3, 2023 01:13
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CarlCX posted:Man, I disagree. And while I do dislike Strickland, it's not even about distaste, it's just that he doesn't have the wins. i forgot bobby has a fight lined up
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Jul 3, 2023 01:16
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I unironically enjoy his fighting style, seems to be a garbage person but I assume that's par for the course when your job is fighting.
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Jul 3, 2023 02:58
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COPE 27 posted:I unironically enjoy his fighting style, seems to be a garbage person but I assume that's par for the course when your job is fighting.
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Jul 3, 2023 03:34
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Yair lost every moment of every moment in his fight against TKZ right up until he didn't.
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Jul 3, 2023 03:52
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Shumagorath posted:Do not accept garbage conduct. Sir, this is the UFC
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Jul 3, 2023 04:35
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Lid posted:Yair lost every moment of every moment in his fight against TKZ right up until he didn't. Yeah this kind of how I see it too. Volk beat the loving breaks off all comers recently. Yair is a very good fighter and very, very dangerous with his kicking game but Volk is the best in the world p4p at the moment.
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Jul 3, 2023 05:12
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Volk has a very defensively responsible style, so I'd be really interested to see anyone beat the breaks off him because I'd love to see how it's possible. The champ a weight class up won by a hair.
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Jul 3, 2023 05:19
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At risk of spoiling this week's writeup I'm obviously picking Volk, but I do think Yair presents a surprisingly interesting challenge. One of Volk's best weapons is his range management, but almost everyone he's fought in the UFC likes to fight up close. The only outside fighters he's really dealt with were Holloway and Aldo, and Holloway's distance weapons were his hands so we saw Volk struggle until he turned the corner in the third fight by just countering and shutting him down with better boxing, and Aldo he just went 'i'm not loving with you' to and spent the entire fight ramming him into the fence. Yair's the first dude Volk's fought in the UFC with a big size advantage AND a good kicking game, and one of Volk's most common tactics is staying at range and pecking with leg kicks until he figures out what he wants to do, and it's feasible if he tries that with Yair he'll get lit up for it because he will probably not win a kicking war at range. But I don't think Volk is dumb enough to not adjust at all.
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Jul 3, 2023 05:32
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Volk also gets to train with Izzy. Maybe not as unorthodox, but if Volk is training and dealing with Izzy's range ever, he should have a decent idea and plan for it.
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Jul 3, 2023 06:01
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CarlCX posted:At risk of spoiling this week's writeup I'm obviously picking Volk, but I do think Yair presents a surprisingly interesting challenge. One of Volk's best weapons is his range management, but almost everyone he's fought in the UFC likes to fight up close. The only outside fighters he's really dealt with were Holloway and Aldo, and Holloway's distance weapons were his hands so we saw Volk struggle until he turned the corner in the third fight by just countering and shutting him down with better boxing, and Aldo he just went 'i'm not loving with you' to and spent the entire fight ramming him into the fence. Not for nothing but Holloway and Aldo are two of the greatest outside fighters in the history of the ufc regardless of weight class. Only fighting two guys doesn't matter when it makes 4 fights and you're 4 and 0.
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Jul 3, 2023 06:48
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Volk vs Yair reminds me a bit of how I felt leading up to GSP vs Condit. Yair can definitely win, as Condit could've, but it's hard to bet against a guy as professional as Volk is and as GSP was.
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Jul 3, 2023 06:49
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i think yair is one of the most athletically gifted fighters i've ever seen and he's been getting incrementally less dumb and silly, and more skilled and focused, in every fight so at some point when he's like 35 he'll probably become champion. imo unless he can really blitz volk with his kicks in rounds 1 and 2 and cause enough damage to seriously impair his ability to fight he's not winning though. but i think he's on the right track. like if yoel had tried to become a good fighter instead of an insanely dangerous silly meme fighter.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:46
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Yair has made himself terrifying on the feet, but we'll have to see if he can stay there. Volk is a much bigger wrestling threat than Holloway who was able to hold him down.quote:UPDATE: Jack Della Maddalena will remain on the UFC 290 fight card. He is now slated to face Josiah Harrell. Harrell has a 7-0 record. His most recent fight was in LFA. Prior to that he had one fight in the CFFC promotion. All his prior fights were in Ohio Combat League. UFC really leaning into this public execution thing. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:48
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i was gonna say that featherweight doesn't have any wrestlers but then i remembered that topuria is like 26 and has the kind of top game that would probably give yair a mid-fight PTSD flashback to the edgar fight
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Jul 3, 2023 17:40
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Lid posted:Yair lost every moment of every moment in his fight against TKZ right up until he didn't. Nah, he didn't. TKZ was winning, but it was a pretty back and forth fight that Yair won in the coolest possible way. Lucasar posted:Volk vs Yair reminds me a bit of how I felt leading up to GSP vs Condit. Yair can definitely win, as Condit could've, but it's hard to bet against a guy as professional as Volk is and as GSP was. Yeah, Volk just does not make mistakes. Like...ever.
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Jul 3, 2023 23:03
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I gave the yair TKO of zombie the grumpiest, most mean spirited flawless report card.
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Jul 4, 2023 00:22
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Marching Powder posted:I gave the yair TKO of zombie the grumpiest, most mean spirited flawless report card. Was it you who described it as 'the best fight/KO that I hated'? because that was a pretty good description.
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Jul 4, 2023 01:02
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Snowman_McK posted:Was it you who described it as 'the best fight/KO that I hated'? because that was a pretty good description. holy poo poo i think it was lol. nice.
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Jul 4, 2023 01:09
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I won't be convinced Volk is capable of losing to another 145er until it happens, and even then, I'll be skeptical as it happens and probably for about 2 hours after the fact
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Jul 4, 2023 01:45
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