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Sean Strickland world championship match. This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| No. |
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2 | 4.88% |
| gently caress you. |
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22 | 53.66% |
| I'm going to stop watching the UFC. |
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8 | 19.51% |
| I stopped watching the UFC years ago. |
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9 | 21.95% |
| Total: | 41 votes | ||
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Return to August and enjoy Chan Sung Jung one last time here. Congratulations on making it to September. After a long, busy summer, we're finally running out of steam on the year--the UFC's taking a week off, Bellator is limping to their three hundredth and possibly final event before a merger, PFL's playoffs are over so all they've got is a Europe event that may or may not even be airing in America. Add a Sean Strickland world championship fight to the pot and Grasso/Shevchenko 2 being demoted to a television card, and it's a baffling month altogether. Thread title is courtesy of our collective appreciation for The Korean Zombie. 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  Remember my news story a couple months back about the global reboot of K-1 Kickboxing? They announced a global broadcasting deal with DAZN towards the end of August, which, to be honest, is already considerably better than I expected them to do. Japanese martial arts have basically sucked at broadcasting outside of Japan for years. Rizin has almost been around longer than Pride, and they still vacillate constantly on international broadcasting rights. THE MATCH, the Tenshin Nasukawa vs Takeru superfight that was practically the series finale of Japanese kickboxing, was a massive clusterfuck of broadcasting rights. Hell, Bellator x Rizin is a literal copromotion with an American company, and its first card didn't even get broadcast live in America. DAZN isn't even the most stable of carriers, but it is a carrier, so brother, I'll take it. Here's hoping the K-1 revival actually works out after all.  Let's call this a pre-news story. A bunch of ex-UFC fighters have, for quite some time, been going through the exceptionally long process of suing the UFC for antitrust violations--namely using unfair practices to depress fighter worth, monopolize the market and generally make it impossible for promotions to compete with the UFC and fighters to have chances to compete for other promotions--and given that the first suit was filed by Cung Le all the way back in 2010, it had more than slipped off the radar for most of the world. It is suddenly very loving much back on the radar. Judge Richard Boulware, presiding over the suits, dealt several blows to the UFC's hopes of burying them forever, first granting class certification and thus turning the suit into a class-action suit open to an awful lot of ex-fighters, then preemptively agreeing that the UFC's "brutal, coercive tactics" were clearly egregious, and, most distressingly for the company, agreeing to push the case along at a fast enough clip that it will begin in earnest next year. So: Watch this space. It may be awhile before we have another real update, but this is suddenly a very, very real problem for the UFC, which could make it a very, very real boon for the sport. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  I'm not sure newer fans fully understand the way lower weight classes--the best weight classes in mixed martial arts--almost ceased to exist. We take them for granted now, but the UFC didn't even promote formal weight divisions below 170 pounds until fully reactivating Lightweight in 2007. Featherweight, Bantamweight and Flyweight were pipe dreams that existed only to wild-eyed degenerates who watched international fight streams at three in the morning. Unless, of course, you knew about World Extreme Cagefighting, the one American company with an actual TV deal that broadcast fights in the lighter weight classes. The UFC, eventually, purchased the WEC, and merged its bones into their own, and some of the best fights in the sport followed suit. But a lot of those early fighters have been forgotten. If you came to the UFC and flourished, you were fine, but a lot of the veterans that built those weight classes--your Cole Escovedos and Jeff Currans, your Chase Beebes and Miguel Torresi--either didn't make it to the top of the UFC or didn't make it to the UFC at all. I tell you this story so as to properly emphasize just how unusual Chan Sung Jung's success was, and just how much he deserves his place as a legend of the sport. He had a laundry list of career-killers working against him--the casual fanbase doesn't like smaller guys, the American fanbase doesn't like foreigners, the sport itself doesn't like it when people disappear for years--and he fought through it all to become one of the biggest, most enduring names in featherweight history. Some of those problems were solved with marketing. The issue of a predominantly American fanbase's trouble with Korean names let alone identities was sidestepped by way of aggressive branding. Chan Sung Jung very quickly distinguished himself as a preposterously tough, nigh-unstoppable fighter, and suddenly, he wasn't Chan Sung Jung, a name a bunch of westerners inexplicably have trouble with, he was The Korean Zombie. It actually actively bothered me to write about his fight cards and see a million posters that didn't have his actual goddamn name on them, but boy, it worked out just fine for him. He came to the ring to "Zombie" by The Cranberries, he tried to bludgeon someone to death with his hands, and the fans lost their poo poo every time. But he was more performance than posture. There's really only one bad loss on Jung's entire record, and it's getting his head kicked off by terrifying beef jerky man George Roop. Every other person was either a world champion or someone who would, or already had, fought for one. He beat Mark Hominick, he beat Dustin Poirier, he beat Frankie Edgar, and even when he lost, he made a fight of it. He came one second away from beating Yair Rodriguez, he went five rounds with Brian Ortega despite being essentially knocked out in the first, and he fought José Aldo so hard that his own arm came out of its socket. He was fast, and he was accurate, and more than anything, he was tough. But as I've said too many times, having a reputation for being tough means you're regularly eating enough punishment that it becomes conspicuous, and unfortunately, inevitably, that adds up. Between getting chinned by Roop, between having his body fall apart against Aldo, and between missing almost four years of his prime--half to the mandatory military service South Korea requires of its male citizens, half to injuries--the mileage packed onto Jung's career in an all-too-visible way. And it's a testament to how good he was that he still wound up fighting for the goddamn title anyway. He was never the best, and maybe it's fitting that his career ended with him getting slaughtered by the fighters who were the best, the same way it had happened in his prime, but it never once dimmed the affection his fans had for him, nor did it take away from his achievements. He's a featherweight legend, he's one of the UFC's first and biggest South Korean stars, and the audience singing his song back to him as he walked out of the cage for the last time is a greater testament to his being one of the sport's most beloved fighters than anything else I could say. Jung--gently caress it, Zombie--retires at 17-8, and at just 36 years old, I hope he gets to enjoy his health for a long time to come.  Carlos Candelario called it a career, and it feels almost disrespectful to him to write him up in the shadow of someone like Chan Sung Jung, but for one, that's the unfortunate reality of the sport, and for two, I think it's important to tell the stories of the folks that come and go, as a reminder that not only do most folks in this sport not actually make it, but that often, it's by no fault of their own. Because Carlos Candelario did everything right. He took to mixed martial arts as a teenager after a lifelong interest in competition, he cross-trained and gave himself time to develop, and by the time he made his professional debut he was a grappling tournament champion, a Golden Gloves champion, and a 5-0 amateur MMA champion. He didn't rush, he took his career responsibly, and he turned pro in his mid-twenties with a world of potential ahead of him. Carlos did his best to realize that potential. He fought through the CES MMA feeder league, he got noticed by the UFC, and he was one of the very first winners on the Contender Series, right alongside folks like Geoff Neal and Sean O'Malley. Unfortunately, he also tore his ACL, and right around the time it healed, the pandemic started, and for four years, that was it. But he came back, and earned another shot. Which he lost--but Dana liked him, so he signed him anyway. After seven long years, Carlos Candelario achieved his dream and made it to the UFC. And then he ran into Tatsuro Taira, one of Japan's best prospects, and he got destroyed. And then he ran into Jake Hadley, one of England's best prospects, and he got destroyed. And then the UFC pointed out that Candelario missed weight in both fights, and that was a real, real bad look, and gave him one more chance that he had to pull out of after getting hurt during training. And then Carlos Candelario announced his retirement at 32, because he just didn't have it in him anymore. Honestly: Good. The same way I constantly hope for corners, referees and doctors to be more judicious about the well-being of their fighters, I constantly hope for fighters to be more judicious about themselves. Too many fighters hang on and take unnecessary punishment and ruin their later years in pursuit of a dream that is quickly escaping them. If you're 32 and you realize your body, heart and brain aren't in this anymore, and you make the distressingly unusual choice of listening to them, you're already outperforming an awful lot of the fighters you're leaving behind. Carlos Candelario retires at 8-3. I hope he has a long, wonderful life to come, and I hope the fact that he made it to the UFC stays with him. 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 AUGUST The last stage of the PFL's playoffs kicked off the month with PFL 7: Pinedo vs Jenkins on August 4th. The undercard was a fun experiment in grappling repetition, as three of its five consecutive fights ended in rear naked chokes, with the most notable being Contender Series veteran Chelsea Hackett coming back from three years on the shelf to choke out Ky Bennett. The main card, aside from an exhibition where lightweight Elvin Espinoza beat Keoni Diggs, saw the final playoffs for Light-Heavyweight and Featherweight. In the former, Impa Kasanganay knocked out Marthin Hamlet and Josh Silveira took out Ty Flores with knees, both in under a round, penciling themselves in against each other for the finals. Down at 145 pounds, Gabriel Alves Braga took a split decision over Chris Wade and Jesus Pinedo knocked out Bubba Jenkins, giving PFL a thing they assuredly desperately wanted: A featherweight final where neither guy is big enough to have a Wikipedia page. ONE took the stage for their only event with mixed martial arts on it for the month--by which I mean there were ten fights on the card and three of them were MMA, and only two of them were at an actual weight class--with ONE Fight Night 13: Allazov vs Grigorian on August 5th. I really wish ONE would stop pretending they aren't a kickboxing organization. Either way, Tye Ruotolo choked out Dagi Arlanaliev in a grappling match, Elias Mahmoudi knocked out Edgar Tabares in Muay Thai, Supergirl continued her run as ONE's new poster child by taking a kickboxing decision over Lara Fernandez, and Tawanchai kicked David Kiria's arm into pieces in three rounds. Down in the MMA salt mines, Eknh-Orgil Baatarkhuu submitted Jhanlo Mark Sangiao, Oumar Kane--the man known as REUG REUG--took a decision over jiu-jitsu ace Marcus "Bucheca" Almeida in what was a canonical new entry in the annals of unintentional heavyweight comedy, and John Lineker managed to come in a full six pounds over the 145-pound weight limit, but knocked out Kim Jae-woong in the third round anyway. Your co-main event saw Flyweight Submission Grappling champion Mikey Musumeci submit Flyweight MMA Champion Jarred Brooks in a grappling match for the former's title, and in your main event, Featherweight Kickboxing Champion Chingiz Allazov successfully defended his belt against on-and-off rival Marat Grigorian. The UFC's month started later that day with UFC on ESPN: Sandhagen vs Font, which was, in many senses, kind of a shitshow. A half-dozen fights got scratched or replaced, some of them multiple times. My personal favorite: Sean Woodson was going to fight Steve Garcia, and then Garcia got injured and was replaced by Jesse Butler, and then the Nevada Athletic Commission legally scratched the fight from across the country because Butler had been knocked out two months ago and wasn't even off suspension yet, so six days before the fight he was replaced by Mairon Santos, who was then promptly scratched because he couldn't get a visa in time, for which he was then replaced with Dennis Buzukja, who promptly missed weight and lost anyway. Mixed martial arts, baby. The card wasn't bad, but it was mostly decisions, which makes fans deeply unhappy. Down on the prelims Assu Almabayev made a successful upset debut by choking out Ode' Osbourne, Cody Durden beat up Jake Hadley, Billy Quarantillo edged out Damon Jackson, Carlston choked Jeremiah Wells unconscious, and Kyler Phillips broke my heart by beating Raoni Barcelos. Up on the main card Ľudovít Klein took a call over Ignacio Bahamondes, Tanner Boser snapped his losing streak by being Aleksa Camur (after which Boser was cut anyway), Diego Lopes managed to submit Gavin Tucker, Dustin Jacoby knocked out Kennedy Nzechuwku in a minute and a half, and Tatiana Suarez dominated and choked out Jéssica Andrade. The main event, however, was...uh, bad. Cody Sandhagen was supposed to fight Umar Nurmagomedov, he instead wound up facing Rob Font on a few weeks' notice, and additionally it turns out Sandhagen was fighting through injuries and probably shouldn't have been there. But he's a much, much better wrestler than Font. The result was one of the lowest-action main events in UFC history, both in terms of subjective enjoyment and objective statistics, with almost twenty minutes of grappling control time and a final significant strike count, across 25 minutes, of 34 to 9. Despite being a company man, and despite doing his job while injured, Sandhagen probably cost himself cache with the company, because this sport is not real. There were no Fight of the Night bonuses. Not to be outside, Bellator made its appearance for the month on August 11th with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellator_298]Bellator 298: Storley vs Ward[/url], which was, somehow, even less eventful. As with all Bellator cards there were a dozen goddamn prelims and I'm not going to begin to tell you about all of them, but LFA champ and Bellator titlist Leandro Higo returned for his annual appearance to choke out Nikita Mikhailov, rising prospect Lucas Brennan knocked out Weber Almeida, Enrique Barzola outworked Jaylon Bates, and Justine Kish upset the undefeated Diana Avsaragova by decision. The main card, somehow, was less eventful. Four out of five top-card bouts went to decision: Sidney Outlaw managed to outwrestle Islam Mamedov, Irish Conor McGregor impersonator #814 James Gallagher outwrestled James Gonzalez only to cut a promo as though he'd just knocked out Francis Ngannou, middleweight Aaron Jeffery also outwrestled Dalton Rosta, and in your co-main event, former heavyweight champion Valentin Moldavsky--try to maintain your composure--very, very slowly outwrestled Steve Mowry. And then in the main event, which saw grinding career wrestler Logan Storley face career brawler Brennan Ward--can you guess what's going to happen, here--Storley outwrestled Ward! Shockingly! But he at least ended the fight in two rounds after pounding Ward into the fetal position. There's a rumor going around that Bellator 300 in October is going to be the company's last event before going into hiatus as they merge with the PFL, and if that winds up being true, I blame this card. The UFC went up to bat again for UFC on ESPN: Luque vs Dos Anjos on August 12th, which was a significantly weird but ultimately fun night of fights. The prelims were an all-action, all-finishes affair: Luana Santos knocked out Ultimate Fighter champ Juliana Miller, Da'Mon Blackshear scored an insane Twister submission over Jose Johnson, Jaqueline Amorim ground-and-pounded out an overmatch Montserrat Ruiz, Martin Buday just ragdolled Josh Parisian and submitted him with a kimura in less than a round, Isaac Gulgarian pounded out Francis Marshall in just barely five minutes, Terrance McKinney clocked an overmatched Mike Breeden in ninety seconds, and in your prelim headliner, Marcus McGhee continued his Cinderella run by knocking out JP Buys in one. The main card was slower on the finishes, but most of the fights were still pretty decent. Josh Fremd outgrappled Jamie Pickett, A.J. Dobson won a real close fight with Tafon Nchukwi, Iasmin Lucindo continued her rise at Strawweight by choking out Polyana Viana, Khalil Rountree Jr. knocked out a confusingly-booked Chris Daukaus and possibly sent him into retirement, and in the co-main event, Cub Swanson won a somewhat iffy decision against Hakeem Dawodu that most of the world forgave anyway on account of his being Cub Swanson. The main event was, funnily enough, the least eventful fight of the night, as Vicente Luque just sort of big-brothered Rafael dos Anjos for five rounds en route to a unanimous decision, cementing the point that, while lightweight might be too much of a weight cut for RDA at this point in his career, welterweight just really isn't his size. PFL 8: Ferreira vs Greene came the next week on August 18th, and very few things I can say about PFL are as indicative of how well their season has gone than their penultimate playoff event only having seven fights on it. After multiple scratches--including one fight that had a weight miss so bad it was briefly rebooked as a superheavyweight contest before being removed altogether--you wound up with just two preliminary bouts, as Maira Mazar took a split decision over Kaytlin Neil and Danilo Marques outworked Satoshi Ishii, who, somehow, still exists. As always, there was one exhibition bout--in this case, Nathan Kelly getting a decision over Damion Nelson--and then it was playoffs, this time Women's Featherweight and Heavyweight. The women got their work done fast: Marina Mokhnatkina snagged an armbar on Amber Leibrock in a minute forty-five, and 2022 champion, who has been fighting and knocking out Olena Kolesnyk once a year for the past three years, successfully optimized her speedrun strats, as her 2021 Kolesnyk knockout took 4:48, her 2022 knockout took 2:09, and her 2023 knockout took just 14 seconds. The heavyweights didn't take much longer: Denis Goltsov scored an arm triangle on Jordan Heiderman in 4:16, and Renan Ferreira knocked out Maurice Greened in 4:46. To be clear, if you don't count the 15-minute exhibition bout no one watched, that means the actual playoffs for the event had a grant total of just under 11 minutes of fight time in a 2-hour block. And then it was August 19th's UFC 292: Sterling vs O'Malley, the day Dana White won. There was a lot of good stuff on the undercard--women's flyweight prospects Karine Silva and Natalia Silva both announced their permanent presence in the division by taking out Maryna Moroz and Andre Lee, Brad Katona and Kurt Holobaugh became the champions of The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ), Gregory Rodrigues elbowed Denis Tiuliulin out cold in one round and Chris Weidman returned from his two-year leg injury layoff only to immediately get kicked in the leg a bunch by Brad Tavares, lose a 30-27 decision, and quite possibly go right back into rehab for leg injuries. The main card was a mixed fuckin' bag. Marlon "Chito" Vera took a pretty shaky, questionable decision over Pedro Munhoz, Da'Mon Blackshear fought just a week after his previous fight like a good company man and got controlled and decisioned by Mario Bautista, thus ending his momentum, Ian Machado Garry laid a hellacious beating on Neil Magny but couldn't actually put him away, which Garry swears was an intentional attempt to show off how great he is, and your co-main event, a statistically lopsided bout where Zhang Weili defended her Women's Strawweight Championship against Amanda Lemos, was, shockingly, statistically lopsided, with Weili dominating Lemos, handing her multiple 10-8 rounds, and ultimately outstriking her 296-29. But everyone was there for the main event, and it worked out exactly the way management wanted: After a tight first round that was mostly leg kicks and probing jabs, Sean O'Malley did the thing, caught Aljamain Sterling lunging, and dropped him with a right hand in the second round. Sean O'Malley, unfortunately, is the new UFC Bantamweight Champion of the World. And they didn't even get out of the event before making it clear they're going to skip the rankings again and have O'Malley fight Marlon Vera instead of any of the actual top contenders. God bless America. PFL ended their playoffs with PFL 9: Collard vs Burgos. This time around--aside from our requisite exhibition bout, in this case yet another in their ongoing attempt to make a big deal out of Biaggio Ali Walsh, who, hey, did you know he's Muhammad Ali's grandson, as yet another amateur bout of his made it onto the main broadcast despite no one really giving a gently caress. The main card was there to finish out the welterweight and lightweight brackets, and the former went exactly as intended, with Magomed Magomedkerimov dominating Solomon Renfro en route to a lopsided decision victory and 2022 champion Sadibou Sy scoring a much closer split decision over Carlos Leal, leaving the two slated to face each other out in November. At lightweight, 2022 champ Olivier Aubin-Mercier overcame a close first round and knocked out Bruno Miranda in the second, leaving himself a chance for a repeat championship performance. And then there was the main event, which somewhat controversially had been reconfigured to And the month itself ended with UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs Jung on the 26th. AN awful lot of folks missed this one, being as it ran at 2 in the morning if you lived in the Pacific time zone, but it wasn't a bad card, even if it was a bit of a downer. JJ Aldrich recorded her first stoppage victory since 2016 by putting away Na Liang, Billy Goff knocked out Yusaku Kinoshita, Michał Oleksiejczuk counter-sniped Chidi Njokuani, Garrett Armfield put down Toshiomi Kazama, and your friend and mine, Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta, took out Łukasz Brzeski in one round. Up on the main card, Junior Tafa knocked out Parker Porter just like his older brother had earlier this year but took twenty extra seconds to do it, Erin Blanchfield outgrappled Taila Santos, Rinya Nakamura dominated Fernie Garcia, Giga Chikadze took a wide decision from Alex Caceres, and Anthony Smith scraped a split decision away from Ryan Spann. But your main event was the bittersweet swan song for The Korean Zombie, Chan-sung Jung, as Max Holloway dutifully knocked him out in the third round to finally, officially, end his career. WHAT'S COMING IN SEPTEMBER We're kicking off September nice and early on the 2nd with UFC on ESPN: Gane vs Spivak. The second in what's becoming an annual tradition of Ciryl Gane-based September visits to Paris, this card isn't quite as strong as last year's, but it's still pretty decent. Farid Basharat vs Kleydson Rodrigues, Zarah Fairn Dos Santos vs Jacqueline Cavalcanti, Taylor Lapilus vs Muin Gafurov and Ange Loosa vs Rhys McKee should all be solid preliminary bangers, and while your main card has a couple weird ones like William Gomis vs Lucas Almeida, Yanis Ghemmouri vs Caolan Loughran and Volkan Oezdemir vs Bogdan Guskov, it also has a strong top three: Benoît Saint-Denis vs Thiago Moisés, Manon Fiorot vs Rose Namajunas in her first fight at 125 pounds, and of course, Ciryl Gane vs Sergey Spivak in what is basically a pass/fail test to see if Gane has learned to defend a takedown yet. Next week on September 9th, the UFC hits its pay-per-view for the month, and much to my chagrin, it's UFC 293: Adesanya vs Strickland. Not gonna mince words: This card, as of the end of August, is kind of weak. It's already been hit by several cancellations and reschedulings, but it is pretty loving dire. There are a few fights that should be real good scraps--Jamie Mullarkey vs John Makdessi and Jack Jenkins vs Chepe Mariscal stand out in particular--but it's real, real low on fights of consequence and is instead shooting for Australia/New Zealand locals. Blood Diamond is back to face Charlie Radtke, Shane Young meets Gabriel Miranda, Carlos Ulberg is fighting Da-un Jung, Tyson Pedro vs Anton Turkalj, Justin Tafa vs Austen Lane, Manel Kape is fighting a newcomer in Felipe dos Santos--it's pretty fuckin' dire. Your co-main event sees Tai Tuivasa trying to knock out Alexander Volkov, and in your main event, unfortunately, Israel Adesanya is defending the middleweight title against Sean loving Strickland. But not quite as dire as the following week. UFC Fight Night: Grasso vs Shevchenko 2 was booked for September 16th as an attempt to market itself around Mexican Independence Day--and just to be clear, this isn't one of my bits of tea leaf analysis, the UFC was very open about this being the plan, and stacked the entire card with all their top Mexican talent. And then half the fights fell apart. And now you have a card for Mexican independence day where Kevin Holland vs Jack Della Maddalena is co-main eventing. But you've still got Lupita Godinez and Daniel Zellhuber and, uh, Raul Rosas Jr.? So, y'know. Be happy! Alexa Grasso will be trying to justify her shock-the-world upset title victory back in March by beating flyweight GOAT Valentina Shevchenko one more time, and that's what most people are going to actually be there for. The UFC is, again, back the following week, for its fourth and final card of the month: UFC on ESPN: Fiziev vs Gamrot on September 23rd. The month is closing out with another big set of prospect showcases alongside a couple veteran battles. On one hand, you've got Mizuki Inoue vs Hannah Goldy, Ricardo Ramos vs Charles Jourdain, Miles Johns vs Dan Argueta, Bryan Battle vs AJ Fletcher, Montserrat Rendon vs Tamires Vidal and Javid Basharat vs Victory Henry; on the other, you've got Tim Means vs André Fialho, Mohammed Usman vs Jake Collier, and, well, you WERE going to have Jacob Malkoun and Aliaskhab Khizriev wrestle each other for fifteen minutes, but now Khizriev is out, so who knows what's going to happen. But Bryce Mitchell vs Dan Ige is a hell of a fight, and Marina Rodriguez vs Michelle Waterson-Gomez is a good fight with a high depression potential, and Rafael Fiziev vs Mateusz Gamrot will be very illuminating with regards to who has actual title prospects at 155 pounds. And then, it's Bellator. Bellator 299: Eblen vs Edwards comes our way also on September 23rd, and it's just sort of...a big potential sendoff for this company. It's an open secret that Bellator is in trouble and trying to get sold off, and a big rumor that Bellator 300 is going to be its last event as either an independent company or, possibly, a company, and boy, you just couldn't really ask for a fight that's a bigger symbol of the rut modern Bellator found itself in. We're back in Dublin, we're back doing Irish appeal cards, and we, once again, are currently scheduled to have 13 preliminary bouts and 4 main card bouts, because that's just how Bellator loving rolls. All the stars are here! Darragh Kelly! Chiara Penco! Przemysław Górny! Peter Queally! And then, on your main card, you've got Mads Burnell vs Daniel Weichel, Sinead Kavanagh vs Sara Collins, Aaron Pico vs Pedro Carvalho, and, in your main event, Johnny Eblen defending the Bellator Middleweight Championship against Fabian Edwards. The long-rear end MMA weekend continues into the long hours of the morning, depending on your time zone, with Rizin 44. The card, as of now, is one of Rizin's more restrained efforts with just 8 fights booked, but one of those is Tsuyoshi Sudario vs Todd god damned Duffee, and you cannot possibly miss that. Shoma Shibisai is also out to fight Janos Csukas, and Yoshiki Nakahara is facing Rikuto Shirakawa, which should be fun. But your top two fights are both about making the future concrete and kind-of sort-of exerting punishment. Kleber Koike Erbst, who lost the Rizin Featherweight Championship on the scale this past Spring, is NOT fighting for the title, and is instead battling twenty-year veteran Masanori Kanehara--in the co-main event. In the main event, Juntarou Ushiku, the man Erbst beat to win the title, is fighting...the 7-7 Kyohei Hagiwara, to determine who else might challenge for the belt. Rizin: It's not subtle. And, finally, the month ends with ONE Fight Night 14: Stamp vs Ham on September 29th. This is actually ONE's MMA-heaviest card in months, with six out of ten scheduled fights being contested under mixed martial arts rules, which, hey, that's almost novel at this point. You have three Muay Thai bouts--Rambolek Chor.Ajalaboon vs Asa Ten Pow, Sinsamut Klinmee vs Dmitry Menshikov, and Smilla Sundell defending the strawweight title against Allycia Rodrigues--and you have one submission grappling bout, as Danielle Kelly faces Jessa Khan to determine the first Women's Atomweight Submission Grappling Champion, which is a mouthful. In MMA, you've got Maurice Abévi vs Blake Cooper, Mauro Cerilli vs Paul Elliott, Eduard Folayang vs Amir Khan, John Lineker vs Stephen Loman--which is a bit weird to me since Lineker just fought at the start of August, but okay, I guess--and Xiong Jing Nan in a weird, semi-MMA semi-striking match that might actually just be small-gloves boxing. But your main event is Stamp Fairtex vs Seo-hee Ham in a match that, in all likelihood, will determine a new ONE Women's Atomweight MMA Champion, as Angela Lee is expected to announce her retirement from the sport at the start of the month.
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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Jon Jones - 27-1 (1), 0 DefensesVery few things in combat sports reach the crossroads of awe-inspiring and unfathomably frustrating as Jon Jones. In 2020, Jon Jones notched the third defense of his second light-heavyweight championship reign after an exceedingly contentious decision against Dominick Reyes, only to abdicate the title because the UFC wasn't paying him enough, and he was bored of 205 pounds and wanted to move up to heavyweight like he'd been planning to for nearly a decade, and he needed more time to cement his place as not just one of the sport's greatest pound-for-pound fighters, but one of its biggest pound-for-pound pains in the rear end. On September 23, 2021, Jon Jones was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame; on September 24, 2021, he was arrested (for the fifth time!) after his daughter called the police on him for beating her mother, during which he antagonized the police and, inexplicably, headbutted a police car. Because this is Jon Jones, of course, the primary charges were dropped, he paid $750 for the hood of the police cruiser, and got a stern warning to stay out of trouble, young man, because there is a money-powered reality-distorting field around Jon Jones whereby nothing matters. After a year of rumors, and after the unconscionable firing of heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the UFC gleefully announced Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane to fill the vacant heavyweight throne. Did it matter to the matchmaking that there were more deserving candidates? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He deserves the spot for his earlier success. Did it matter to his public appearances that when last we saw him he was arrested for beating his fiancee? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He was, if anything, more up his own rear end with self-righteousness than ever before. Did it matter to the fight that he hadn't competed in more than three years and looked terrible at the time? Of course not, because it's Jon loving Jones. Ciryl Gane looked too nervous to use footwork let alone throw anything, and he should have been, as Jones effortlessly threw him to the canvas and choked him out in two minutes. The longest-running, most dominant and yet most persistently annoying show in mixed martial arts is back. Jon Jones is your heavyweight champion, and we are all damned. The UFC finally, formally announced his fight with Stipe Miocic on November 11th; I'll believe it when we get there. Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   VACANT - The gaping maw of eternityThat's right, baby. No one can stay away from Vacant, and Vacant sure can't stay away from you. Or the light-heavyweight division. Last year, 205 was thrown into chaos after brand-new champion Jiří Procházka was forced to give up the belt thanks to a shoulder injury. The UFC, for what it's worth, tried to fill the void with two of the rightful top contenders, but after Jan Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev fought to a draw they decided to just put their guy up instead. Jamahal Hill fulfilled the dread prophecy and became the first-ever world champion from Dana White's Contender Series, thus giving him everything he'd ever wanted to crow about. Sure, it took half of the division falling apart, and sure, they had to leapfrog everyone above him in the rankings, but hey: He beat Glover Teixeira, he got the belt, and nothing can take that away from him--except, as it turns out, the irrepressible need to ball. Midway through July, Hill announced that he'd torn his achilles tendon apart during a basketball game with Daniel Cormier. He's looking at, potentially, an entire year on the shelf. So once again, the belt has been lost, and once again, its future is uncertain. For the time being, all we know is what we already knew: No force on Earth can stop Vacant. 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 ever 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. And du Plessis won! And then he turned down the title fight to heal up. The word is Israel Adesanya vs Sean Strickland is most likely; I would rather eat a shoe. 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. But it's September now, so, hey: It's a fuckin' 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. He'll be defending his title against a lightweight for the first time in exactly the way he got it: A matchup with Charles Oliveira in Abu Dhabi at UFC 294 on October 21st. Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Alexander Volkanovski - 26-2, 5 DefensesComing off of his cross-divisional bout against lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev, Alexander Volkanovski found himself in both the highest esteem and one of the most complicated positions of his career. Volk put up a fantastic fight against Islam, took the champ to his limit and, in the opinion of some, even won their bout--but the judges didn't agree, meaning Volk not only lost the fight, but his undefeated streak in the UFC. To make matters worse, there were wolves at the door: While he experimented at lightweight, Yair Rodríguez had become the new interim champion after injuring Brian Ortega and kicking Josh Emmett's ribs apart. Volkanovski not only had to reunify his title, he had to drop back down to his home weight class, face the most versatile striking threat of his life, deal with his first-ever UFC bout coming off of a loss, and fight through the world's incredibly high expectations of him after his last championship performance. Many champions have fallen under the pressure. Alexander Volkanovski, somewhat unsurprisingly, was not one of them. He ran a clinic on Yair, wrestling him virtually at will, outstriking him 149-57, and ultimately finishing him off in the third round by outboxing him just to prove that he could. Alexander Volkanovski's throne is no longer disputed--but his next move is. The UFC has made it clear Volkanovski can have another crack at the lightweight belt if he wants it, but Islam Makhachev is defending his title against Charles Oliveira in October. On one hand, Volkanovski could put a quarter down on the arcade cabinet, wait to see who emerges victorious, and claim the next shot. On the other, Ilia Topuria has emerged as a serious contender at featherweight, and has been relentlessly calling Volkanovski out and preemptively accusing him of fleeing a real fight. I'm not sure you can accuse someone of cowardice when they're lining up to fight Islam Makhachev or Charles Oliveira, exactly, but I do know Volkanovski/Topuria would be a hell of a fight too. Whatever Alex's next move is, it's going to be interesting. Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Sean O'Malley - 17-1 (1), 0 DefensesThe house always wins. I have spent years being mad about Sean O'Malley. Very few people get the red carpet rolled out for them without having some other previous success to draw on, but Dana White seemingly hand-selected Sean O'Malley as The Guy back in 2017 when he won a contract on the second-ever episode of the Contender Series, and from the second he first stepped into the octagon, he was treated like a Big loving Deal. His matchmaking was favorable, his marketing was endless, and even when he hosed up--getting his leg broken against Andre Soukhamthath, pissing hot for ostarine and missing a year, getting knocked out by Marlon Vera--the UFC was there to pick him up and keep pushing him up the ladder. He went from fighting regional fighters and flyweights to a top ten matchup, and when that match ended with him poking out Pedro Munhoz's eye, he was catapulted into a title eliminator against the #1-ranked Petr Yan, and when he got one of the year's worst decisions against Yan, he was allowed to sit on his hands for almost a year to wait for a title shot against a champion who was given three months and no injury recovery time to prepare. Is it fair for me to dislike Sean O'Malley for decisions the UFC made? Absolutely not, and I don't blame him for them whatsoever. Fortunately for me, Sean O'Malley also has a great love of making public hot takes like "here's my power ranking of my female coworkers by how fuckable I think they are" and "publicly avowed rapist Andrew Tate is a great guy I want to co-promote and advertise with" and "convicted child molester Tekashi69 is my homeboy" and "I have an open relationship with my wife where I get to bang other people but she doesn't because I'm the man" that make me feel deeply, thoroughly at peace with disliking him for other reasons. But none of that means he isn't a hell of a fighter or he didn't absolutely loving flatten Aljamain Sterling with a picture-perfect counterpunch in their title fight. Did he deserve the shot? Not even a little. Did he prove he belongs at the top? Undeniably. However much of a shithead he may be, he's the champion of the goddamn world. Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs   Alexandre Pantoja - 26-5, 0 DefensesSometimes, you just have someone's number. Brandon Moreno spent years fighting through a quadrilogy with Deiveson Figueiredo, and unfortunately for him, he had another trilogy waiting for him the second it was over. Alexandre "The Cannibal" Pantoja was Moreno's personal bogeyman, a man who'd fought and beaten him twice. But one of those fights was an exhibition on The Ultimate Fighter, and the other was against a Moreno with five less years of evolution and growth. Surely, a third fight in 2023 would be different. And it was--unlike the previous, one-sided dominations it was a fight-of-the-year candidate that took both men to their limit and led to a split decision--but its ending was not. Alexander Pantoja scored a third victory over Moreno, and with it, after sixteen years of competition, he finally became the clear, unequivocal best in the god damned world. Which was made even more poignant when he used his post-fight interview to ask if his absentee father was proud of him--and was made even more irritating when he also revealed that despite having eleven fights in the UFC at the time, he was paid so little that he'd been part-timing as a Doordash driver just to make ends meet right up up until 2022. The idea that one of the absolute best fighters on the planet, after years and nearly a dozen fights in the world's biggest, most profitable fighting organization, would need to take on a gig-economy job to make money is outright offensive, and in a better world, it would have launched a furor. In this one, all we can do is be happy he's got the belt and will, hopefully, make some actual loving money. His next bout is up in the air--there's an argument that the split decision should give Moreno a rematch, but his 0-3 record against Pantoja would seemingly say otherwise, and with Deiveson Figueiredo uncertain which weight class he's even at anymore, who knows where we go from here. Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs  VACANT - The quiet of the landWomen's Bantamweight, 135 lbs  VACANT - The last seat at musical chairsJune 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 Peńa 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 - 24-3, 1 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. In a surprise to no one, Zhang absolutely dominated Lemos, outstriking her 296-29, smashing her to the tune of multiple 10-8 rounds, and winning a very, very wide decision. The next step is, in all likelihood, a China vs China championship showdown against Yan Xiaonan.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:46
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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. His next challenge will be at Bellator's ominous-sounding Bellator 300, as he defends his title against Linton Vassell. 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. Bellator hasn't yet confirmed this, possibly because Bellator doesn't know in what fashion it will exist this time next year. 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 at Bellator 300 on October 7th. Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Patrício Pitbull - 35-7, 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 he's now on a two-fight losing streak, with one of those fights being a bantamweight loss to Sergio Pettis and the other a lightweight knockout to Chihiro Suzuki that he took on four days' notice. Bellator: Please stop killing Pitbull. 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 10ths Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle Gabanator Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. After a year and a half of inactivity, Cris Cyborg will be returning to MMA to defend her title against Cat Zingano at Bellator 300 on October 7th. 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'll be defending her title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane at Bellator 300 on October 7th. ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 DefensesONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs  Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 DefensesAnatoly Malykhin's bizarre 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, and because ONE's sport classes don't matter, he's grappling Mikey Musumeci for his submission championship on August 4th. 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 - 15-3, 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. Satoshi fought Patricky Pitbull at Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 29th--in another non-title fight, naturally--and took the first definitive beating of his career, getting utterly outclassed and ultimately stopped on leg kicks in three rounds. Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Vugar Karamov - 19-4, 0 DefensesRizin needed a new champion after Kleber Koike Erbst lost the featherweight title on the scale, and they were by no means done punishing him yet, so the fight to fill the void did not in any way involve him. This was, of course, also part of Rizin's secret hope that promotional superstar Mikuru Asakura could fill the void--but it was not to be, as Azerbaijani grappler Vugar Karamov, who's been slowly whittling away at Rizin's 145-pound division over the last three and a half years, finally got his shot at the belt and he did not waste a goddamn second. Karamov chucked Asakura down, controlled him and choked him out in just two minutes and forty-one seconds. Another Asakura falls, and Vugar Karamov is now a world goddamn champion. Which probably has something to do with Rizin announcing its first-ever event outside of Japan--in Azerbaijan. Congratulations, Vugar. You're an international representative of the sport. A match with Kleber seems outright inevitable, but Kleber also managed to get into a scuffle with both Pitbull brothers at the show, so Rizin may pursue a bad blood fight and leave Karamov to fight a rematch with the only man to beat him in Rizin, Yutaka Saito. Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Juan Archuleta - 29-4, 0 DefensesRizin has its first-ever American champion, and it happens to be a fighter with their partner and rival, Bellator. Seven months after Kyoji Horiguchi vacated it--and almost three years since its last defense--the vacant bantamweight throne was finally filled. Rizin had hoped to have Kai Asakura fight for the belt (do you notice a pattern, here?) agaisnt Archuleta at Bellator x Rizin 2, but Kai busted his knee in training and Rizin's 2021 Bantamweight Grand Prix Champion, Hiromasa Ougikubo, stepped in. And he was promptly ground down into dust by Archuleta's wrestling game. A lot of Rizin fans took to social media to register their displeasure at Archuleta's victory--I saw him called artless and passionless and a pox on the spirit of fighting--to which I say, my friends, I was there when the truest expression of mixed martial arts was a Gracie holding someone in full guard while hitting them in the ribs with their heel for forty-five minutes. If you don't LIKE wrestling, that's perfectly fine, but if you think teeth-grittingly long grappling exhibitions without a climax are counter to the spirit of mixed martial arts, you have never truly understood it. Juan Archuleta finished his celebration by yelling at Kai Asakura to get his poo poo together and find him, and I'd be shocked if Archuleta/Asakura wasn't the main event of Rizin's New Year's Eve special this year. Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs   Seika Izawa - 11-0, 1 DefenseAll 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. It took more than an entire year, but Izawa finally had a title defense against the 8-4 grappler Claire Lopez, and Izawa scored the fastest championship victory in Rizin history, choking her out in just barely one minute.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:46
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4041044 Head to the GDT and discover if he does, in fact, gently caress up Cyril Gane. Prelims in 30.
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Sep 2, 2023 17:05
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That's pretty accurate on Weidman, yeah. Funnily enough, while USADA was definitely a part of it, I think Johny Hendricks can also be explained by the impact of time and success on his personal habits. When he won the belt he was already entering his thirties, and he was real, real public about issues with his team, like, say, their desperate attempts to get him to stop eating fast food all the loving time. He straight up changed nutritionists from Mike Dolce to a guy who told him eating Whataburger was fine as long as he didn't eat the french fries. The combination of success means I'm right + I got rid of the people telling me I'm wrong + what do you mean bodies start breaking down in your thirties has ruined many an athlete. Also, Rampage has announced his return to MMA. https://twitter.com/mmamania/status/1698365707686150460 He's fighting Darrill Schoonover, who also hasn't fought since 2015, because he used to call him Titties on a season of The Ultimate Fighter that aired a few months after Barack Obama first took office.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:15
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Marching Powder posted:actually, no, gently caress it, my opinion is that what weidman did to gastellum was the most impressive thing he did in his career. it was an absurd mismatch in action, but unlike tj / barao, this one weidman just treated kelvin like he was a child. not even in the same stratosphere. of course kelvin did loving crack him a good one lol but still, weidman mauled him in a way i can only describe as humiliating. and honestly i did not think that could happen to someone as proven as kelvin was at that point. I have weird and occasionally conflicting feelings about Gastelum and I think Weidman might be just kind of a terrible matchup for him. Gastelum's big strengths are fluid combination punching and the way his underused but persistent threat as a wrestler forces otherwise good strikers to let their guard down so he can hit them repeatedly. But he's also a fuckin' welterweight in denial. Compared to him Weidman was huge and had something like a 7" reach advantage, and worst, Weidman was as good if not better at wrestling. So suddenly Kelvin not only couldn't rely on the thing that opens his opponents up to his striking, he was actively getting wrestled to death because he just isn't at a wrestling disadvantage often enough to be good at dealing with it. Which really makes me wonder how he'll actually do if he ever makes it back down to welterweight, because, uh, there sure are some good, large wrestlers there.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:59
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Darren Uyenoyama choked me the gently caress out a bit before he did it to Kid Yamamoto, which made me feel much less bad about it. Also,
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Sep 6, 2023 20:03
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 74: STILL NOPE SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 FROM THE QUDOS BANK ARENA IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PDT / 6:30 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM VIA PAY-PER-VIEW Yeah. They're doing this again, so we're doing this again.  nah. MAIN EVENT: NOT EVEN AS A JOKE MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Israel Adesanya (24-2, Champion) vs Sean Strickland (27-5, #5) Seventy days ago I wrote about the UFC pitting Sean Strickland, a middleweight who was low but present in the top ten, against Abusupiyan Magomedov, an unranked guy with very little hype and a UFC tenure that was 19 seconds long. After a lot of rambling, angry words, I eventually arrived here: CarlCX posted:If criticizing the cards doesn't matter, it means the cards don't matter. If the cards don't matter, the matchmaking doesn't matter, and you're free to put anyone you want to market anywhere you want them to be. It did, in fact, not matter. Abus won the first round, came out for the second already completely, hopelessly exhausted, and didn't make it to a third. One week later, essentially permanent top middleweight contender Robert Whittaker met the quickly up-and-coming Dricus du Plessis, and while du Plessis winning wasn't considered that huge of an upset, du Plessis winning by flattening Whittaker very much was. Israel Adesanya vs Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight championship was a foregone conclusion. As odd as du Plessis's travel up the ladder had been, and as deeply irritating as his I'm-not-racist-you're-the-racist-for-thinking-I'm-racist self-promotion had been, there are exactly two middleweights who've beaten Robert Whittaker in nearly a decade, and both of them would have been in that fight. The UFC wanted the fight just two months later in September, and this was too fast of a turnaround for an injured du Plessis. You would think, ideally, that this wouldn't be a problem: There's an extremely clear #1 contender and one of the UFC's most popular champions for him to fight, wait another couple months, it'll be fine. But the UFC really wanted the fight just two months later in September. They wanted their Australia show. They wanted their champion on it. And by god, if they had to go to the next contender down the list to do it, they would. Which is how Sean Strickland, fresh off an incredible victory over an unranked opponent with nineteen seconds of UFC fight time and one round of gas, got his shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship of the World. Which is a problem for me, because this was my conclusion about Sean Strickland's last fight. CarlCX posted:Maybe Sean Strickland will win another decision. Maybe Abusupiyan Magomedov will drop him in a round. I don't know. I know this is where I always make a prediction, but this time, all I can really tell you with genuine assurance is I DON'T loving CARE WHO WINS THIS BULLSHIT FIGHT. It was comforting. It was accurate! It's a luxury I don't have with this fight. Make no mistake: This loving sucks, and the UFC knows that it sucks. As much as I complain about a Strickland/Magomedov, at the end of the day, it's a Fight Night card. It goes down in the history books with such incredible main events as Anthony Smith vs Devin Clark, Ketlen Vieira vs Miesha Tate and Rashad Evans vs Sean Salmon. Yeah, it's a dumb, lovely fight that angry people on the internet will say sucks, because it does, but it's a random television card and thus the equivalent of eating Jack in the Box for dinner and feeling bad about yourself for an evening before forgetting you were supposed to learn a lesson. This is a pay-per-view card. The UFC wants you to spend at least $80 to watch it. This is a world championship match. This is the belt Anderson Silva held. And the UFC is putting on a main event they didn't even want in the first place because they'd rather give Sean Strickland a shot at a world title than miss out on the pay-per-view buys and ticket sales putting a belt on the line and getting Izzy into the cage will grant them. Which means that you, the audience, are obligated to care. It's the world championship! It matters! The UFC champion is automatically the best fighter in the world because the UFC is the best, this is the holy accord and it shall not be broken. Sure, we fired the heavyweight champion and replaced him with a guy who'd never fought at heavyweight, and sure, the last two light-heavyweight champions had to abdicate the belt over injuries, and sure, the last middleweight champion was a kickboxer with minimal MMA experience who got his shot by beating--hey, Sean Strickland, what a coincidence!--and sure, the next welterweight title challenger has only fought one person in the welterweight top fifteen and lost to him twice, and sure, the lightweight champion's next prospective fights are more rematches with people he already beat, and sure, the featherweight champion just happens to be one of those people, and sure, the bantamweight champion didn't actually earn his title shot by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, and sure, the flyweight championship is still recovering from three straight years of rematches, and sure, the women's featherweight championship is just going to be tossed in a dumpster offscreen without ever being mentioned again because one woman retired, and sure, the women's bantamweight championship is a vacant throne because that same one woman retired and we only had one person we cared about to potentially fill the void, and sure, the women's flyweight championship's top contenders keep being inexplicably buried by completely, utterly disinterested promotion to the extent that most folks don't even know who the current champion is, and sure, the women's strawweight championship has been a giant source of promotional strife for years that somehow keeps skipping its own contenders in favor of money matches that don't actually make money, and sure, we invented a fake championship named the Bad Mother Fucker title that doesn't really exist and also we can't say its name on-air because our broadcast deal is owned by Disney and heaven forfend our rah-rah gently caress-your-feelings gives-speeches-at-the-Republican-National-Convention-about-what-it-means-to-be-a-real-man organization dare to perturb the mouse. But it's the UFC title. So whoever owns it is the best. Eat poo poo and pay for the privilege of watching Sean Strickland fight on pay-per-view while we pretend he's an exciting high-pressure fighter because he beat up a guy who got exhausted after fighting for just slightly less time than it takes to listen to the album cut of "We're In This Together" by Nine Inch Nails and completely ignore every other fight he's ever had, especially the top contender ones where he accomplished nothing and then whined incessantly about the judges being incompetent for deciding against him. Quick, look at this highlight of him concussing one of his amateur training partners! Watch this clip of the podcast interview where he joked about opening sweat shops and told Kevin Holland he could rape him! Aren't you mad and invested now? Don't you want to watch this man get cathartically assaulted for being a bad person and/or victoriously defeat another man and in doing so justify the beliefs you, and the UFC's management, may happen to share? The UFC spent decades building its place in the world of sports and it's been mortgaging that position in bits and pieces ever since Conor McGregor taught them just how much loving money they could make if they chose to simply stop caring about anything. But that was understandable, because it was Conor McGregor. If you're going to completely sell out whatever meaning you had left, at least you're selling it for the biggest ticket in the sport. But every sale since has been cheaper and steadily less meaningful. Jorge Masvidal wasn't worth it. Sean O'Malley wasn't worth it. Colby Covington, when the time inevitably comes, won't be worth it. Sean Strickland is worth drat near nothing. And whichever Contender Series winner with a single UFC fight inevitably gets a title shot two years from now will be worth even less. This fight is bullshit, but unlike the last time around, I cannot say I don't care about who wins this bullshit fight, because the idea of Sean Strickland losing two fights, beating two guys so comically irrelevant that I said one of their names three times in this essay and I bet you've already forgotten what it was, and becoming the world champion because the UFC didn't want to wait another month for a title fight and the #1 guy forgot to duck? That would mean more of these writeups. And I actually prefer it when I can stand this stupid loving sport I love. ISRAEL ADESANYA BY TKO. Let's move on from this loving fight. It turns the guts. CO-MAIN EVENT: BRAWLER REHAB HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (15-5, #6) vs Alexander Volkov (36-10, #7) During one of my first fight writeups, I spoke the legend of the Tank Abbott Curse. CarlCX posted:Tank Abbott was one of the UFC's first fan favorites. He was a big, pudgy, bearded brawler who had just enough technical skill to know he didn't want to use a single bit of it because his greatest success came from focusing on just punching people in the mouth as hard as he could. His adulation earned him a heavyweight title shot, which he lost badly. In doing so, he placed a curse on the UFC's heavyweight division. No matter how the sport grows, no matter how technical or accomplished the fighters, each heavyweight generation must have a pudgy brawler--each generation must have a Tank Abbott--and the curse cannot be lifted until one of them wins the belt. That was for Derrick Lewis vs Tai Tuivasa--a bout between the two great brawlers of the heavyweight division, men who had condition and had technique and regularly chose to throw both out the window in the name of violence. Tuivasa battered Lewis, took the Tank Abbott Curse from him, and for one brief, shining moment, looked as though he might finally be the chosen one who breaks it and sets us all free. Two rounds into a one-sided butchering at the hands of championship kickboxer Ciryl Gane, Tai bullied his way in and dropped his far more technically proficient opponent with a big, sweeping hook, and came seconds away from scoring a deeply unlikely victory. But, of course, he didn't. The butchering resumed, Tai was dispatched, and the curse lived on. The aftermath hasn't been any friendlier: When we saw him last December he was challenging Sergei Pavlovich, the UFC's new knockout king, to prove he could brawl with the best brawler in the division. Tuivasa hit the canvas in less than thirty seconds and the fight was over in under a minute. Two knockout losses in a row by no means ends Tuivasa's time in the sun--when you're as tough as he is and hit as hard as he does, you're only ever a couple good punches away from being back in the conversation--but it does make the top ten look much less favorable to him. Alexander Volkov is here to reinforce that feeling. Volkov, who's spent most of the last five years hanging around the bottom edge of the top ten, is on the opposite trajectory. His pair of losses--a dominant decision to Ciryl Gane and a first-round submission to Tom Aspinall, with just a tiny beating of Marcin Tybura separating them--shoved him all the way back down the ladder, and Volkov elected to climb his way back up by committing himself to violence in a much less patient manner than his fans had become accustomed to. Volkov is eternally dangerous--but he's never been a sprinter. He hadn't scored a first-round finish since his TKO of career 205-pounder Attila Végh (and fellow former Bellator champion) back in 2016. It was a considerable surprise, coming off a bad stoppage loss and entering his mid-thirties, when Volkov not only rattled off two first-round finishes in a row but did so by beating his opponents at their own strengths. He met kickboxing knockout artist Jairzinho Rozenstruik and punched him out on his feet, and followed it up by facing murderously strong grappler Alexandr Romanov, reversing a takedown and pounding him out from his back. Which makes the optics of this fight real hard to ignore. Volkov's a big favorite, as is inevitable for anyone coming off two stoppage wins vs someone coming off two stoppage losses, but Volkov also isn't an incredibly deft kickboxer nor a ludicrously powerful knockout puncher. Volkov is, however, a guy who's gotten clipped in both of his victories, and getting clipped by Tai Tuivasa is an incredibly dangerous prospect. Can he pick Tai apart, or will Tai catch him against the fence? I think the odds are a little more unforgiving than they should be, but I still ultimately agree with them. ALEXANDER VOLKOV BY TKO. Volkov's always had good distance-management jabs and good push-kicks to the body, both of which have repeatedly given Tai fits. If he lets Tai footwork him into the cage he's going to have to clinch real fast so as not to get quickly and brutally hosed up, but I think he'll manage. MAIN CARD: KAPE CURSES, EYEPOKE REMATCHES AND THE LAST STAND OF THE PLEASURE MAN FLYWEIGHT: Manel Kape (18-6, #10) vs Felipe dos Santos (7-0 (1), NR) Years ago, there was a flyweight fighter named Ian "Uncle Creepy" McCall who was known half for his fighting and half for his moustache. He was unquestionably one of the best flyweights on the planet--he arguably beat Demetrious Johnson in the first 125-pound fight the UFC ever promoted and inarguably was screwed out of the contractually mandated extension round the athletic commission forgot existed--but he was equally unquestionably the most cursed fighter in the sport. Over the course of five years in the UFC Ian McCall put together a 2-3-1 record, but his most galling statistic was an incredible ten cancelled fights. He'd be sick, or he'd get injured, or his opponent would miss weight. McCall, himself, made weight and still got pulled from fights on the day they were to take place three goddamn times. He eventually left the UFC, having not successfully fought in two years, to go try his luck in Japan. In his Rizin debut, he fought Manel Kape. He lost in less than two minutes after he somehow managed to tear his eyebrow open on the ring ropes, which are very, very round. Manel Kape didn't know it, then, but that day, the curse selected him as its new host. Manel Kape is a very, very good fighter. He's incredibly fast, he's fantastically well-rounded, and he carries genuinely unusual knockout power for a division that typically struggles with stoppages. And he's been losing his mind and posting progressively more unhinged things on his Twitter account about masculinity, his heritage and the weakness of everyone but him, because he can't keep a fight for his loving life. He was supposed to debut against Rogério Bontorin; the fight was cancelled when Bontorin broke his ankle. His bout with now-champion Alexandre Pantoja got pushed back a quarter of a year thanks to COVID. In April of 2022, Kape had to pull out of a fight with Sumudaerji three days beforehand; two months later, his rescheduled Bontorin match was scrapped a day ahead of time thanks to a failed weight cut. In this year alone Kape lost out on an April fight with Alex Perez when Perez suddenly had a seizure backstage, a July fight with Deiveson Figueiredo thanks to the former champ failing his medicals, and this fight, this weekend, was supposed to be a contendership-implications bout with former titlist Kai Kara-France, only for Kara-France to suffer a concussion during training. Manel Kape had three separate scheduled bouts with three separate top-ten contenders and every single one fizzled. And now, instead, he's fighting Felipe dos Santos, a 22 year-old Chute Boxe prospect who was expecting to get on the Contender Series, who has never fought anyone with more than six wins in his life, because he, himself, has just barely surpassed six wins in his life. He's almost a throwback in his adherence to the old norms of Chute Boxe, Brazil's most enduring camp of rough-and-tumble mixed martial artists: He keeps a constant high guard, he bounces forward in a traditional Muay Thai stance, he throws lots of round kicks that leave him open to right hands down the pipe, and he'd rather throw a running, flying knee than shoot a double-leg takedown. He's fun. He's young. And he's in over his head. MANEL KAPE BY SUBMISSION. If this fight happens at all. HEAVYWEIGHT: Justin Tafa (6-3 (1)) vs Austen Lane (12-3 (1)) I get to indulge in a rare pleasure: Reposting a prediction. This is a straight-up rebooking of a fight that happened--technically--this past June, only to end with Lane nearly gouging out Tafa's eye in thirty seconds. The UFC is just running it back, so enjoy this rerun from the early days of Summer. CarlCX posted:That's right, baby: This is third from the top of the card. Multiple top fifteen fights on the card? Tatsuro Taira, one of the best flyweight prospects in the world? Neil By God Magny? We don't need any of that poo poo on television, WE HAVE HEAVYWEIGHTS. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Tyson Pedro (9-4) vs Anton Turkalj (8-2) Man, being marketable must be nice. Tyson Pedro has long been one of the UFC's favorite acts in Australia, and nothing proves it like his absolutely incredible booking. He was co-main eventing cards despite going 1 for 4 back in 2018, he went on hiatus, he came back four years later and was immediately given two of the least successful, most knockout-prone fighters in UFC history and dispatched of them both with ease, and the UFC tried very, very hard to follow that up by having him fight Mingyang Zhang, a Chinese brawler with a pretty dubious pedigree, and after the fight fell through, rather than booking any of their existing roster, they brought in Cage Warriors champ and UFC washout Modestas Bukauskas in to And he gets Anton "The Pleasure Man" Turkalj, who is 0-2 in the UFC, and whose greatest contribution to the sport remains, and may well always remain, his Tapology profile picture.  Anton Turkalj has been a punching bag for the UFC since day one. They threw him in as a replacement opponent for Jailton Almeida and a warm body for Vitor Petrino, two of their favorite Brazilian Contender Series victors, and Anton obliged by getting completely crushed against Almeida and surviving against Petrino primarily by grabbing the fence a half-dozen times while inexplicably never losing a point. He hasn't won a fight, he hasn't come close to winning a fight, he loses most of his stand-up exchanges, he has a takedown defense rate of 16%, and he's on Tyson Pedro rehab duty because the UFC knows they can trust him to lose. So, of course, I'm picking ANTON TURKALJ BY SUBMISSION. Because I believe in comedy, but I do not believe in Tyson Pedro. PRELIMS: WHEN YOU REALIZE THEY PUT ALL OF THE SOUTH KOREAN FIGHTERS ON A CARD EXCEPT YOU LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Carlos Ulberg (8-1) vs Da Un Jung (15-4-1) Genuinely, what must that be like? You're Da Un Jung, you're a fighter the UFC kind-of sort-of cared about and was trying to highlight not too long ago, and two weeks ago the UFC promoted a card in Singapore with as many Asian fighters as they could possibly manage to fit into one night just to ensure they got the market they were looking for--but you? You weren't booked there. No, you were booked two weeks later. On the Australian card. Against the guy from New Zealand. Who the UFC has been repeatedly highlighting and giving favorable matchups that grant him chances to score huge, sexy knockouts. How do you mentally adjust to that, as a fighter? Do you get discouraged because the company that was pushing you just a year and a half ago is now serving you up on a silver platter to their new favorite guy? Or do you get mad and try to take it out on your opponent? However you slice it, it can't feel good. This fight probably won't, either. Jung's once-scary standup has looked particularly vulnerable in his last couple of fights, and Ulberg, albeit with soft targets, has looked exceedingly on point. Jung's attempts to turn the fight into an up-close-and-personal brawl are going to run into a lot of trouble with Ulberg's timing. CARLOS ULBERG BY TKO.  FEATHERWEIGHT: Jack Jenkins (12-2) vs Chepe Mariscal (14-6 (1))The Australian hype machine is real, but it carries consequences. Jack Jenkins came up through the Contender Series, but was saved for a promotionally convenient debut out in Perth, where he made good on his reputation for horrifyingly powerful leg kicks and a particularly tough chin by kicking the poo poo out of Don Shainis and his poor, poor calves. After repeatedly dropping him with just his feet, Jenkins seemed to be a very, very live prospect. And he is! But he also got a pretty egregious gift of a split decision in his last fight against Jamall Emmers, where out of the ten media scores recorded for the bout, more of them gave Emmers a 30-27 shut out (5) than gave Jenkins a win at all (0). Chepe "Machine Gun" Mariscal was a much less intentional pickup: He came in as a late injury replacement against Trevor Peek this Summer, a man who became a fan favorite based on his visible allergy to throwing straight punches, and proceeded to batter Peek to a wide, 30-27 decision victory, because as it turns out, straight lines tend to beat wide arcs. You'd think there would be some kind of historical information about this in the history of combat sports. I cannot help feeling this is an iffy style matchup for Jenkins. His big strengths are his leg kicks and his back-pocket wrestling; Chepe's got real solid leg kicks and defense and his grappling both offensive and defensive looked pretty solid against Peek. Jenkins, of course, is not a wild-eyed caveman with lunchboxes attached to clotheslines for arms, but still: CHEPE MARISCAL BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Jamie Mullarkey (16-6) vs John Makdessi (18-8)Jamie Mullarkey's fights have been must-see television for most of his UFC career, but boy, that career is in a real rough spot right now. For all of Mullarkey's wrestling offense and aggressive punching and face-first style, after four years, he's 4-4 in the UFC but that, if we're being honest, should be 3-5 courtesy of a split decision over Michael Johnson that really should have gone the other way. Which would make Mullarkey 1 for his last 4, with two of those losses coming by vicious second-round knockouts, with the most recent being a June loss to the debuting Muhammad Naimov, who is strong, tough, and, uh, a featherweight. Generally-speaking, if you're losing more UFC fights than you're winning and you're getting your clock cleaned by fighters from lower weight classes, that's Bad. John Makdessi, by contrast, feels like he's become more of a simple fact of life in the UFC. This will be his twentieth fight with the organization, earned over the course of almost thirteen goddamn years, and in all that time, he's never once threatened to achieve a ranking let alone established himself as a contender. Nor has that ever seemed to particularly bother him. He comes out, he throws technically proficient if undersized kickboxing techniques, he wins about 60% of the time. Which is better than 50%! But still not great. This feels like a rebuilding, home-court-advantage fight for Mullarkey. Makdessi's a much cleaner striker but he's much smaller, and unlike his size-disadvantage bout with Ignacio Bahamondes a couple years back Mullarkey is inevitably going to forego striking in favor of bullying him with wrestling and clinchwork, and that's going to matter. JAMIE MULLARKEY BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Nasrat Haqparast (14-5) vs Landon Quińones (7-1-1) How low the mighty. Two years ago Nasrat Haqparast was staring down the possibility of a top fifteen ranking; now he's 1 for 3 and the UFC is trying to use him to get their new guys over. He was supposed to fight the aforementioned Jamie Mullarkey earlier this year but had to pull out; this was supposed to be Nasrat playing the willing victim to Sam Patterson, the giant 6'3" Contender Series star the UFC had eyed as a big British attraction right up until Yanal Ashmouz nuked him in just barely over a minute during his debut, but this time Patterson was the one bowing out, which means we're getting Landon "The Lone Wolf" Quińones instead, a Titan FC champion most famous for getting choked out in under a minute on The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ) earlier this year. Which means we're right back in the position of a newly-signed lightweight trying to drum up hype for himself after getting crushed by a featherweight--which is even better when you realize the only professional loss on Landon's record is, in fact, also to Muhammad loving Naimov. Small world! Quińones isn't bad, and I think there's a potential future for him in the UFC, but this seems like too much, too fast. Yeah, Haqparast is 1-3, but those two losses were Dan Hooker and Bobby Green, neither of which is anything to be ashamed of. NASRAT HAQPARAST BY DECISION. EARLY PRELIMS: BLOOD DIAMOND'S BUS TICKET WELTERWEIGHT: Blood Diamond (3-2) vs Charlie Radtke (7-3) Do you have, or are you, yourself, one of those members of a friend group who doesn't really do a lot, and doesn't really fit in, but they're so beloved within the group that they get brought along anyway? That's Blood Diamond. A year and a half ago, MMA camp City Kickboxing put the undefeated, 3-0 fighter they called Blood Diamond forth as the next Israel Adesanya--as endorsed by Adesanya himself, who helped train him. He proceeded to get thoroughly outwrestled and submitted by Jeremiah Wells. So they turned the dial down a notch and gave him a less accomplished grappler in Orion Cosce, who would be released from the UFC a year later, but not before he, too, wrestled the poo poo out of Blood Diamond. You would think CKB might want to give him a few more regional fights so as to gain some experience and improve his game, but--well, we're here. So instead they've turned the dial down yet again and found the debuting Charlie "Chuck Buffalo" Radtke, a Cage Fury Fighting Championships titleholder who has mostly fought similarly-experienced men, has yet to score a solid, marquee win, and has been violently knocked out before by a better, slicker puncher. So he's perfect to finally give Blood Diamond the win he and his training camp have wanted for years! CHARLIE RADTKE BY SUBMISSION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Shane Young (13-7) vs Gabriel Miranda (16-6) Shane Young's career is deeply puzzling to me. He's what I can best describe as a part-time fighter, and to be clear, I mean that not as an insult to his skills, as he's actually quite good, but as an objective measurement of his schedule. 14 of his 20 professional fights happened in the first four years of his career, and then he joined the UFC, and it has consequently taken him almost six years to get the following six. This fight is, in fact, the first time since 2017 he will have multiple fights in a single calendar year--but he skipped 2022 entirely, meaning he's still only averaging one per every twelve months. Because of this, his last professional victory was almost four and a half years ago. Gabriel Miranda only debuted in the UFC last September, where he immediately distinguished himself by a) having a very thoroughly groomed moustache, b) being unexpectedly dangerous off of his back, and c) getting the absolute poo poo beaten out of him by Benoît Saint-Denis anyway. Some people gave him flak for gassing out after the first round, but after getting dropped twice in one round and suffering through a horrifying beating and a near-submission, I don't really blame him. But I do favor him here. Young is a solid all-around fighter, but Miranda's considerably more vicious and a much bigger threat on the ground. GABRIEL MIRANDA BY SUBMISSION. WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Jousset (8-2) vs Kiefer Crosbie (10-3) Sometimes I don't know what to do with the information I receive from fight research. Sometimes I am still a big dumb American who sees that Kevin Jousset just fought a guy named Priscus Fogagnolo and I want to giggle even though "this foreign name is funny to me" is Rob Schneider levels of humor and I should know better. But then I see that the fight that put Kiefer Crosbie on the map, yet another Irish hopeful of out John Kavanagh/Conor McGregor's SBG Ireland, was a mid-2022 bout with Brian Lo-A-Njoe. Which is a name I recognize not because of silly anglophile name humor, but because I've been seeing it for decades! Because Brian Lo-A-Njoe has been fighting since 1998, and is now drat near 50 years old and 6-13-3 and getting concussed by prospects who were watching cartoons when he was fighting in Japan. And I remember that sometimes, in MMA, you laugh at the lowest common denominator stuff because the reality of the sport is incredibly loving depressing. KEVIN JOUSSET BY TKO.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:03
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Lid posted:Minor nitpick Carl - in your rant about the middleweights you make appointments this fight is bullshit for many reasons but note "this is Anderson Silva's belt". It probably isn't the best comparison given there was so many lovely challengers they put up against Silva - Patrick Cote and Thales Leites. Especially Thales who got a title shot after "winning" a split decision over Nate Marquardt who had two points deductions in the fight. I agree that Cote and Leites were both pretty unfortunate title challengers, but I would also argue they were both immensely more deserving than Strickland. Cote hadn't lost in years, had knocked the gently caress out of Kendall Grove when he looked like an actual contender, and had just beaten Ricardo Almeida, who was absolutely a Guy and came one fight away from a title shot at two different weight classes. Thales Leites had one loss in his career and was on a 5-fight winning streak, and while it sucks that he beat top contender Marquardt because Marquardt was a huge cheating idiot, that's Marquardt's fault, and Leites did, still, beat him. And those things were true while middleweight was, if we're being fair, a giant loving shithouse of a division the UFC barely even employed ten fighters to fill out. Middleweight, as much as we mock it, does actually have a fairly solid roster now. Sean Strickland is 2-2 in the last year and a half, one of those wins is the #12 guy and the other is a guy who is not and probably never will be ranked, and those two losses were to actual title contenders, and one of them was Strickland getting completely, effortlessly shithoused. He's a worse, far less deserving challenger than Cote or Leites ever were, and I don't think it's close.
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Sep 7, 2023 03:19
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hey siri, what's a good visual encapsulation of how pathetic everything related to sean strickland is https://twitter.com/mma_orbit/status/1699258784969900531
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Sep 7, 2023 20:05
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I looked out of curiosity and the victim in that video is 3-0 except he's 2-0 because his last fight was from a promotion that doesn't document its own fights and also this was his first fight in two years.
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Sep 8, 2023 21:52
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4041551 GDT for the UFC is up. Prelims in roughly 30.
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Sep 9, 2023 23:04
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Kragger99 posted:Unfortunately I didn't see the fight, just a couple highlights on the sports news, but was Izzy rocked pretty hard in the first round? Did he shell up after that, or was the fight different from that? He was messed up in the first round, but it didn't seem like it compromised him in the fight. Hell, the second round was by far his best round and he won it on every card.
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Sep 11, 2023 01:43
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Josuke Higashikata posted:The journalists could simply stop asking about Conor and we'd all hugely benefit. Let him stick to trying to get Volkanovski to murder him on Twitter. Honestly, I want them to keep asking. It's not like this is a case where they should be ashamed of giving a UFC project free publicity, it's Conor and that's a lost cause, so why not harass Dana about it, half to keep hammering on how loving stupid it was to run a season of TUF predicated on a big coach showdown fight they had to know had almost no chance of actually happening, half to keep a spotlight on the whole thing in case the UFC pulls a Jon Jones and just gives Conor a get-out-of-drug-testing-free card. BlindSite posted:One of my friends was speculating today that Israel might be a little over fighting. His fight with Alex was the last L he had on his record that he wanted to overcome, he went pro something like 13 years ago and has talked openly about wanting a family one day. I thought on the weekend that while Strickland looked the best he's ever looked, Izzy just didn't seem to have prepared or have much of a gameplan - or one that I would have expected and father time is undefeated. I've wondered about this, but a big part of my wondering is connected to the total clusterfuck that was booking the match in the first place. Adesanya was supposed to be preparing for du Plessis, the UFC was apparently initially turning down the Strickland fight, by the time everyone finally agreed to it they were just a month out from fight day, Strickland's a real easy guy to get cocky about and overlook--there was a lot of poo poo going on that I could see, in theory, contributing to how completely gormless and unprepared Adesanya and his corner looked for a fight where Strickland did all of the most predictable things he could have done. If they do an instant rematch with actual prep time and Adesanya comes out looking exactly the same, I think you're right and he's just kind of done.
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Sep 13, 2023 10:13
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 75: PANDERING ON AN EMPTY TANK SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA PRELIMS 4 PM PDT / 7 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM VIA ESPN+ This was supposed to be the UFC's attempt to finally lock down a market they've been pursuing for decades. Nationality-based markets have been a major branding strategy for years--say hi to Conor McGregor, Michael Bisping, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Chan Sung Jung and Zhang Weili, the very talented spearheads in helping the UFC get entirely new countries to give them money--but try as they might, the UFC has struggled repeatedly to lock down the Mexican market. The first season of The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America crowned Yair Rodríguez as the UFC's heir apparent almost a goddamn decade ago. But then something funny happened: The UFC suddenly almost had two Mexican champions! Yair Rodríguez won the interim featherweight title, which, well, it sort of counts, but Alexa Grasso won the real thing! She choked out Valentina Shevchenko in a giant upset! Their moment came and by god, they would not let it slip. This was the pandering opportunity they've been building for ten years, and the time was right to cash it right the gently caress in. They made clear: This is NOCHE UFC. The traditional Stemm butt-rock in the commercial bumpers has been replaced by mariachi music. The UFC booked every single fighter on the roster they could possibly directly OR indirectly associate with the market. It was a full-scale assault. And then Kelvin Gastelum broke his face in training. And then Cynthia Calvillo got sick. And then Iasmin Lucindo got injured. And then Daniel Rodriguez failed a drug test. And then Anthony Hernandez tore his ligaments apart. Hell, Santiago Ponzinibbio isn't even from Mexico, he's Argentine, and they still tried and failed to rebook him. So now the new co-main event of the Mexican-focused NOCHE UFC is Kevin Holland vs Jack Della Maddalena. Marketing, you tried so hard.  prelim main event loopy MAIN EVENT: STRIKING WHILE THE IRON IS HOT BUT NO ONE'S LOOKING AT IT WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexa Grasso (16-3, Champion) vs Valentina Shevchenko (23-4, #1) I feel like I've spent at least ten hours a month complaining about the disservice the UFC does to its female competitors by constantly undermarketing them, and here we are, with the big breakout Mexican champion the UFC has wanted for so long, and they're having her defend her title on a card that isn't even being broadcast on ESPN (but it is going out on ESPN Deportes, which, y'know, fits the rest of the theme). Which would be deeply unfortunate were it not so deeply, irritatingly normal. In the entire history of the UFC's belts over 155 pounds, there have been exactly two title defenses held on free TV. Once you get to the lower weight classes you get a big crop of them, as they were the most common features during the salad days of network television and UFC on Fox--but after that deal ended, they, too, become almost solely the domain of pay-per-view fees. Women's Flyweight and Women's Strawweight have not been so lucky. This will be the tenth title fight for the Women's Flyweight division: It is the third offered up as a random non-pay-per-view card. 30% of the division's title fights have been sacrificed to the airwaves. And the last one to main event a card was more than four years ago. Lack of care doesn't dissolve, it compounds. And now that the UFC finally has what they've always wanted--Alexa Grasso, a project they've worked on for years, holding a title belt, the fighter who finally felled the greatest 125-pound woman in MMA history, Valentina Shevchenko--all they can do is put her on free television. They haven't made people care about the belt, they haven't made people care about Alexa, hell, Valentina had one of the longest title reigns in UFC history and they didn't even succeed in getting people to care about her. Which sucks. Not just because fighters deserve more from the UFC, and not just because Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko are both world-class fighters who deserve their laurels from the world, but because the underpinnings of this fight are genuinely fascinating. Valentina Shevchenko has always struggled with the perception of her dominance. She is--was--unquestionably the best women's fighter at 125 pounds, and having beaten the best women's 115er in Joanna Jędrzejczyk, submitted a 135-pound champ in Julianna Peńa and taken the greatest fighter at both 135 and 145 and arguably the greatest in women's MMA history period, Amanda Nunes, to a coinflip of a decision that could easily have gone the other way, there was a solid argument to be made that Valentina was the best female mixed martial artist on the planet. But right around the time people began making that observation, they also began observing that Valentina had a tendency to look kind of underwhelming. This is the problem with being a dominant champion: Anything less than dominance begins to look openly bad, and anything openly bad begins to look like a prognostication of your inevitable downfall. Should the greatest women's mixed martial artist be struggling in the pocket with Jennifer Maia? What about almost losing her title after getting outgrappled for two rounds by Taila Santos? And what on Earth is the deal with the spinning back kicks she's constantly throwing but almost never landing? Those seem like disaster waiting to happen. Very, very few people thought Alexa Grasso would be the source of that disaster. In some markets she was a +600 underdog. But she, clearly, had been doing her homework. She made Shevchenko uncomfortable in the clinch, she forced her into bad positions, and when she finally made a crucial error--that god damned spinning back kick, thrown from nowhere, aimed at nothing--Grasso both figuratively and literally jumped on the opportunity and finished the job Taila Santos began by submitting her within seconds. The same way the high expectations for Valentina made her foibles more galling, the low expectations for Alexa made her performance even more stunning. She's rarely looked bad in a fight--with the singular exception of getting crushed by Tatiana Suarez, but she does that to everybody--but she's been very conservative and tactical and, for most of the audience, unremarkable. Crisp boxing, but rarely put opponents in danger; solid grappling, but rarely used to gain significant advantages. She simply fought smart, waited for opportunities to capitalize on, and won. And turning a full circle and leaving your back completely exposed right up against the fence? That's just too good an opportunity to pass up. Our problem, then, is the rest of the goddamn fight. She won--obviously. But she had been outstruck in every round, outgrappled for most of the fight, had clearly lost the second and third rounds and was a minute away from losing the fourth when Shevchenko made her grave error. Every judge had Shevchenko cruising to another clear decision victory. And that begs the question you can only answer in a rematch: Did Alexa Grasso win the fight, or did Valentina Shevchenko lose it? I'm very rarely a fan of instant rematches, but when you have fighters of such significant gravity within a division, the desire to make sure is understandable. Does Matt Serra have Georges Saint-Pierre dead to rights? No, he gets crushed in a rematch. Does Julianna Peńa know the secret to defeating Amanda Nunes? Nope, she drops multiple 10-8 rounds and gets completely destroyed. Did Chris Weidman really beat Anderson Silva at his own game, or did Anderson just make a critical mistake at a terrible time, and in a rematch he'll thrash Weidman and retake what's so obviously his rightful throne? Well. I can't help seeing VALENTINA SHEVCHENKO BY DECISION. Grasso had her stumbled in the first round, but she was losing the rest of that fight right up until Shevchenko threw it away. I don't think the internal logic of the fight has changed--if anything, I envision Shevchenko curbing her own bad habits by just making as much of this fight take place in the clinch and on the ground as is humanly possible. I'd love it if Alexa Grasso pulled another knockout or submission out of the ether, and, hell, I'd love it even more if she just comprehensively outboxed Shevchenko, kept her at the end of her jab and countered her for five rounds. But I'm just not sure we live in that world. CO-MAIN EVENT: MEXICO BY WAY OF PERTH WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Holland (25-9 (1), #13) vs Jack Della Maddalena (15-2, #14)I'm glad I got all of my cracks about this fight not fitting the nationalist theme out of the way in the introduction, because it's an awesome loving fight. This is the perfect fight for both men. Their skillsets, their positions in the division, their prospects as challengers to the top ten: A lot of good timing has coalesced for this match, and even if it came together on short notice, it's nice to see the UFC jump on it. It took three years, but Kevin Holland has put his poo poo back together. After seeing him get repeatedly outwrestled at 185 pounds I had considerable doubts about his 2022 drop to welterweight, what with it being the division of Leon Edwards, Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Belal Muhammad and the dozen other people in the top fifteen who are very, very good at tying people up in pretzels. Holland getting thrown around like a potato sack and choked out by Khamzat Chimaev in two minutes didn't help. But, good news: Khamzat can't make 170, so that'll never happen again! Sure, following that up by getting beaten silly by Stephen Thompson isn't great either, but in fairness, it's Stephen Thompson and he's been doing that to people for years. Knocking out Santiago Ponzinibbio? That's pretty good. Choking out Michael Chiesa, one of the division's more imposing wrestlers? That's real good. Putting to rest at least some of the fear that the welterweight division offers you nothing but an inevitable death by wrestler? That's what makes someone a prospect again. Jack Della Maddalena has spent his first year and a half in the UFC trying to establish himself as the definitive new welterweight prospect, and boy, he's been doing a bang-up job of it. The UFC's fed him a gradually more difficult diet of victims, and he's been blasting through all of them with some of the cleanest striking in the entire company, dropping people with check hooks, power jabs and body shots alike. By this summer he wasn't just 4-0, he was 4-0 with first-round stoppages in every single fight. His ranking was thoroughly earned. But it was also about to be tested. He was supposed to fight former top ten fighter Sean Brady; Brady got hurt. He was given the considerably less dangerous, debuting Josiah "Muscle Hamster" Harrell; Harrell's pre-fight medicals revealed a potentially fatal brain condition. With three and a half days to fight time, regional fighter and black belt Bassil Hafez stepped in--and he drat near ended the hype train. Hafez wrestled Maddalena to the ground, repeatedly threatened him with submissions, and put up a far greater fight than anyone expected. Maddalena took over down the home stretch and ultimately won, but it was a close decision and the first true sign of weakness in his UFC career. Of course, it's a lot easier to be weak when you've had three changes of opponent and barely any time to prepare. Still, it's hard not to see parallels. Maddalena made his name in the UFC as a vicious striker who could knock out anyone, and he was very nearly derailed the same way Derek Brunson, Marvin Vettori and Khamzat Chimaev derailed Kevin Holland. It's kind of fascinating. It's probably also largely irrelevant to this fight. Kevin Holland is probably not going to come out shooting power doubles on Jack Della Maddalena. If he does, it will be very, very funny, and I will personally enjoy it a great deal, and honestly, with his size advantage, it's really not the worst idea. But Kevin likes to strike, and Jack likes to strike, and this will, almost certainly, be a kickboxing match. And, honestly: Tough call, man. Jack's technique is a lot cleaner, his hands are crisper and his timing is better. He's also giving up 8" of reach and aiming at a chin that's going to be almost half a foot higher than he's comfortable with. We saw Della fight through a reach disadvantage against Randy Brown, but for one, Brown's reach was still smaller than Holland's, and for two, Holland hits much, much harder. My gut instinct is to go with Maddalena. In my heart, I see him timing out Holland's wilder swings, catching him overextending, and hurting him the same way Stephen Thompson did. In my head, I see Maddalena getting kicked repeatedly in the legs during his attempts to get into boxing range, gradually slowing down, and eventually getting picked off. I am a foolish man of many emotions, so I'm still picking JACK DELLA MADDALENA BY TKO, but this fight could go either way and it could tip very, very fast. MAIN CARD: THIS IS WHAT'S LEFT, OKAY BANTAMWEIGHT: Raul Rosas Jr. (7-1) vs Terrence Mitchell (14-3) The favored son returns. Raul Rosas Jr. was one of the UFC's new pet projects, an undefeated, 18 year-old wrestler who rode into the UFC on the back of beating the 11-7 Jay "The Joker" Perrin and swore he would destroy Aljamain Sterling and be the new champion before he was even in his twenties. The UFC tried to serve him another softball with the regularly-outgrappled Christian Rodriguez, and Rodriguez instead handed him a beating that got downright uncomfortable to watch, with Rosas going 3 for 16 on his takedown attempts and ending the fight outstruck by 83 to 2. It's not a great look! When your big hyped prospect gets outstruck by a ratio of just about 40:1, that is, generally speaking, bad for your marketing plans. Which is why Christian Rodriguez is curtain-jerking a main card next month against a hugely touted undefeated prospect and Raul Rosas Jr. is at the top of a main card fighting a guy who got called up from the Alaska regionals a couple months ago to get mauled by said undefeated prospect. To be honest, this fight makes me profoundly loving uncomfortable, because Terrence Mitchell ate a TKO loss in that aforementioned fight after Cameron Saaiman sat on top of him and punched him in the head dozens of times, and that should result in a commission-mandated 30-to-60-day no-contact no-sparring medical suspension, and this fight is--look at that, exactly 70 days after said violent stoppage loss. So either he was responsible and obeyed the rules and had less than a month to actually spar and train for this fight and everyone is acting good and above-board, or the UFC is pushing a regional fighter on a minimum wage contract into a fight right after he got the crap beaten out of him so they can rehab one of their favorite guys. Completely unrelatedly, hey, remember last month when the UFC got a fight cancelled because the Nevada State Athletic Commission wanted to know why the hell they booked Jesse Butler to compete just 63 days after he got knocked flat by Jim Miller? That was nice. RAUL ROSAS JR. BY TKO. LIGHTWEIGHT: Daniel Zellhuber (13-1) vs Christos Giagos (20-10) Daniel "Golden Boy" Zellhuber is another of those guys the UFC had high hopes for--big, 6'1" lightweight kickboxer, good look, good for marketing, allergic to wrestling--but their plans got sidetracked right out of the gate when he failed his promotional introductory test after getting controlled and outfought by Trey Ogden. In fairness: Tough draw. Ogden's a scrappy, multifaceted guy and Zellhuber, while deeply promising, is young, green, and not yet prepared to be dragged through hell. Which is why they had him rebound by beating the crap out of Lando Vannata, who just wasn't quite able to get his own striking game going against a guy who could jab him from halfway across the cage. Christos Giagos is a step back in the scrappy direction. This is his second stint in the UFC; his first was all the way back in 2014-2015, where he was dusted in a single round by some unknown rookie named Gilbert Burns, and after a brief journey through the Russian circuit he and his wild takedowns-but-also-flying-knees ways came back to the UFC spotlight in 2018. He's 5-4 since coming back, which isn't a great ratio, but those losses were against guys like Arman Tsarukyan and Charles loving Oliveira, which is a whole lot more forgivable. His upset one-punch knockout of Ricky Glenn in his last fight probably saved his UFC career, but it also put him on the radar for this please-put-our-prospect-over match. After watching Zellhuber get tripped up by Lando Vannata's takedowns, I'm wary of his prospects against Giagos. Zellhuber's tendency to work from the outside and let opponents come to him plays quite well into the pressure game Giagos likes to play, and ultimately, I think he's going to get outworked for it. CHRISTOS GIAGOS BY DECISION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Fernando Padilla (15-4) vs Kyle Nelson (14-5-1) It took years, but Fernando Padilla is finally getting his UFC career off the ground. He got signed all the way back in the summer of 2021 on the strength of his championship win in the Fury Fighting Championships, but thanks to COVID and visa issues he sat on the shelf for two whole years before his UFC debut came together this past April. I underestimated him--both his striking and the impact the layoff would have on him, especially after the UFC gave him the consistently dangerous if inconsistently successful Julian Erosa as his opponent. Padilla dropped Erosa twice in ninety seconds and had him out of the cage before two minutes had elapsed, which is, admittedly, a hell of a way to announce yourself to the world. Kyle Nelson is a little longer in the tooth. He, too, is tough as nails, and he too, is a difficult fight for everyone he faces, but he's also 2-4-1 in the UFC--and that draw really, aggressively should have been a loss. By any measure Kyle Nelson is a well-rounded fighter with a hell of a chin and a level of tenacity that makes him a live dog in any fight, but as long as you're measuring, you have to add up all the red on his record. He's 2 for his last 7. That's not great. But he's being buffeted by one of those two victories coming just three months ago after upsetting Contender Series signee Blake Bilder, which doubles as, realistically, the best victory of his career. Kyle Nelson isn't a bad fighter. There's this consistent mindset in the MMA fanbase that reduces fighters to binary always-good or always-bad, but very, very few people make it to the UFC without being very, very good. The whole reason I get mad about the Contender Series is its role in beginning to lower that bar. When I say "Kyle Nelson is 2 for his last 7" it's real easy to interpret that as "Kyle Nelson is a bad fighter," but he's hung on for almost five years for a reason. But as tough as he is and as well-timed as his toe kicks can be, this is probably not going his way. FERNANDO PADILLA BY TKO. PRELIMS: FREMDS IN LOW PLACES WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Lupita Godinez (10-3) vs Elise Reed (7-3) This fight is a bit of a clusterfuck. Lupita Godinez, fresh off her victory over Emily Ducote, was supposed to take a lateral step and fight Sam "Sampage" Hughes, but Hughes withdrew--the second time she's been scheduled to fight Godinez and not made it, which Godinez is very unhappy about. Elise Reed, having just defeated Jinh Yu Frey, was supposed to be a last-ditch effort to save Cynthia Calvillo, but Calvillo pulled out, which left Reed dancing with the up-and-coming Iasmin Lucindo, and then Iasmin got re-slotted into another, different fight on this card which was, itself, cancelled after she got hurt. So neither of these women has had time to prepare, both have repeatedly had to adjust to newer opponents with even less direction, and now, having struggled to build winning streaks again, they have to risk them against one another. I'll say the same thing I always say when Loopy fights: If she uses her chain-wrestling, which is legitimately some of the best in the division, she's going to grind Reed down into nothing and win a wide decision. If she does as she's done in her last three fights, shirks her biggest advantage and tries to engage in fisticuffs at length, she's going to have a really rough loving time. Reed's takedown defense isn't great, but her chin and her ability to walk people down on the feet is. I'm choosing to have faith in LUPITA GODINEZ BY DECISION, but please, for god's sake, remember the joy of the single-leg takedown. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Kopylov (11-2) vs Josh Fremd (11-4)This, too, is a clusterfuck fight. Originally, neither of these men was on the card: Chris Curtis, the #14 middleweight, was defending his spot against Anthony "Fluffy" Hernandez. Curtis got hurt and pulled out, and what with the while NOCHE UFC business, Hernandez was kept on the card by way of kickboxing maniac Roman Kopylov, at which point Hernandez tore a ligament in training, and he, too, was out. So now Roman Kopylov, a striking contender on a three-fight winning streak who's beginning to brush the underside of the top fifteen after kicking Claudio Ribiero's head off at the end of July, is facing Josh Fremd. I like Josh Fremd--I like scrappy fighters and I like people who beat Sedriques Dumas--but Fremd is a sort of awkward, loping fighter whose standup is based more on tenacity and brutality than tactics, which is a real unfortunate stylistic choice against someone like Kopylov who does liver surgery with his feet. Moreover, though, Josh Fremd just fought, like, a month ago. It's already bad enough that Roman Kopylov is fighting again when his last bout was July 29th, but that, at least, was a knockout after five and a half minutes: Josh Fremd fought three full rounds and absorbed several dozen strikes from a professional fighter thirty-five days before this loving fight. And that was after having a lovely weight cut and missing weight by four pounds. This fight is already pretty one-sided on paper; it graduates to feeling outright irresponsible by the numbers. ROMAN KOPYLOV BY TKO. FLYWEIGHT: Edgar Cháirez (10-5) vs Daniel Lacerda (11-5) Sometimes, you get a great matchup for your UFC debut and you get to flourish in the spotlight as you dispatch your competition with style and ease. Sometimes, you get served up to a monster. Edgar Cháirez is a good, solid flyweight with quick striking and real aggressive chokeholds, and that ultimately meant nothing, because his debut came against the undefeated Tatsuro Taira, one of the most promising prospects in the entire division. It's a credit to Cháirez that he gave Taira his most consistently competitive fight in the UFC thus far, but that wasn't enough to stop him from dropping a 10-8 round and losing a decision. He did, however, come back from that 10-8, win the third round, and almost choke Taira out, which is even more impressive. Daniel Lacerda, unfortunately, has not impressed. After two years he's 0-4 in the UFC, and not only has he lost every fight, he's been stopped every time. In his last appearance this past March he looked poised to finally end the losing streak, dropping C.J. Vergara with a spinning wheel kick and almost choking him out, but Vergara survived the round and Daniel was dead tired in the second and incapable of making it to a third. He's fast, and he's powerful, and he's athletic, and he just can't seem to control himself well enough to win a fight in the UFC. I don't anticipate this being different. He's too loose, he's too open, and against a guy like Edgar who jumps on every opportunity presented it will, eventually, cost him. EDGAR CHÁIREZ BY SUBMISSION. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Tracy Cortez (10-1, #14) vs Jasmine Jasudavicius (9-2, NR)I know this is ordinarily where I complain about ranked women's fights being so low on the prelims, but for once, I'm cool with it. This is primarily because we haven't seen Tracy Cortez fight in 16 months, and that is primarily because Tracy Cortez has been struggling with getting her mental health in order. It's very rare for fighters to acknowledge the mental and emotional difficulties of life in mixed martial arts, and when Cortez pulled out of a December fight with Amanda Ribas the UFC simply said it was "a medical issue" and didn't discuss it further. Cortez, herself, was the one who opened up about it on her social media, admitting how hard she'd struggled with depression through her entire fight camp and the breakdown that ultimately forced her to withdraw. Honestly: Good for her. It's not easy to talk about it when no one else is doing it. Jasmine Jasudavicius has been extremely loving active in the interim, this fight in particular marking her third walk to the cage since this past February. Her inexplicably underrated grappling has been serving her well, as opponents keep somehow failing to anticipate her controlling them both against the cage and on the ground, but her last fight against Miranda Maverick displayed her willingness to mix her own strengths up with repeated boots to the head and angry, yelling combination boxing, because, as anyone who's watched Dragonball can tell you, yelling makes you stronger. I've been beating the "Jasmine Jasudavicius is underrated" drum long enough to feel weird about saying this: TRACY CORTEZ BY DECISION. Cortez is enough of a grappler to be a match for Jasudavicius and fast enough on her feet to avoid the big swings; unless ring rust gets to her, she should be able to comfortably win both aspects of this fight. Should. LIGHTWEIGHT: Charlie Campbell (7-2) vs Alex Reyes (13-3) This fight takes us back to clusterfuckville, but boy, even by its regular population standards, this is a weird one. First off, Alex Perez has been signed to the UFC since 2017: This will be his second-ever UFC fight. He came in as a late injury replacement for Thiago Alves, got his face kneed off by Mike Perry in seventy-nine seconds, and up until this weekend, that was his entire UFC career. Seventy-nine seconds in two thousand, one hundred and ninety-one days. Alex Perez's hiatus from the sport is, at this point, 1/3 the length of his entire tenure as a professional fighter. He was supposed to fight Trevor Peek back in February but got hurt; he was supposed to fight Natan Levy here, and this time, Levy got hurt. So after more than half a goddamn decade of waiting, Alex Reyes, a 13-3 fighter who only has 3 career opponents who are still active in the sport, is making his grand return against Charlie "The Cannibal" Campbell, a guy who got on the Contender Series last year, threw all defense to the wind in the name of stinging his opponent with uppercuts and hooks in an attempt to please Shao Kahn in the stands, and, inevitably, ran in with his hands down and his opponent hurt, for which he was, of course, immediately destroyed with a right hand. But his love of brutality put him on Dana's radar, and a year and a win later, here he is, ready for his close-up. Look, it's a loving coinflip. "How will they look after a year/two years/three years on the shelf" is a phrase I find myself saying surprisingly frequently in these writeups; the last time we saw Alex Reyes was almost six goddamn years ago. The last time we saw Alex Reyes, "Despacito" was new. And that Alex Reyes hadn't seen a fight last longer than a minute since 2015. Your guess is as good as loving mine; I'm going with CHARLIE CAMPBELL BY TKO because, boy, coming back to the UFC just a few weeks before your 37th birthday after six years in the freezer against a guy who likes to throw as hard as possible as fast as possible seems like a real good way to get blitzed. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Josefine Knutsson (6-0) vs Marnic Mann (6-1) And here, we have our last rescheduling of the card. Josefine Knutsson is in the particularly funny position of being here despite knowing, without a doubt, that the UFC didn't actually want her. She just won on the Contender Series, like, two and a half weeks ago, a wide, 30-27 decision over Invicta veteran Isis Verbeek that left absolutely no doubt who the better fighter was, and Dana White, because she used the dread art of grappling, simply shrugged and sent her home. For a week. Then the UFC suddenly desperately needed warm bodies for the flailing NOCHE UFC, and they wanted someone they were pretty sure would get hosed up by Iasmin Lucindo, and Knutsson was their girl. But then Lucindo dropped out thanks to an injury, and well, hell, now you've got Josefine Knutsson signed when you didn't want her AND the card only has ten fights on it. What do you do? You sign up another Contender Series second-stringer, "The Sawed-Off Savage" Marnic Mann. She was on the great contract mill variety show last September, where she put up an acceptable first-round effort before getting her head kicked off by Bruna Brasil in the second. She took her all-around assaults back to the regional circuit, picked up a win no one really watched or cared about, and would probably have remained under the radar had the UFC not been so desperate to bail out this card that they called in loving everyone they could. So, on one week's notice, it's Josefine Knutsson vs. Marnic Mann. Which, uh, JOSEFINE KNUTSSON BY DECISION, I guess. I don't know that she's going to be able to stop Knutsson's takedowns or grappling control, and Knutsson actually does have some kickboxing chops that will keep her from simply getting outworked on the feet.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:24
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The fun other thing going around twitter today: https://twitter.com/mma_orbit/status/1702389803449307427 Between Australian taxes, the UFC only paying airfare for one cornerman, medical expenses and drug testing, John Makdessi, who has 20 fights across 13 years with the UFC, only made $28k to fight. Not to be missed in this: John Makdessi, who has 20 fights across 13 years with the UFC, is only getting paid $58k show money before all taxes and deductions.
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Sep 15, 2023 03:11
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Marching Powder posted:I'm away from my computer so I can't be bothered checking if this was a dream or not but this is funny enough to relay anyway. I have a slightly kooky neighbour who is well into fitness and alternative medicines and whatnot and the dude starts talking about an extract from spinach taken orally at high enough quantities was producing measurable muscle mass and hypertrophy gains over a control group with zero kidney or liver toxicology. I brought up Google scholar and everything he said was true and if I recall the study was funded by WADA popeye tried to fuckin show people but the sport wasn't ready blue footed boobie posted:He pays for his teams travel and board out of this, right? Probably nets a few thousand bucks after their cut and all the other expenses. kimbo305 posted:Is the airfare deduction cuz the UFC books it for you? I imagine most people who elect to just roll with it and focus on camp instead of trying to save a couple hundred on fares. But to Australia certainly stings extra. https://twitter.com/chase_hooper/status/1702422069005410373 So if you have more than one person in your corner, which absolutely every fighter in the UFC does, it comes out of your check.
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Sep 15, 2023 17:02
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STONE COLD 64 posted:i miss strikeforce We mocked Scott Coker and Tom Atencio and all the other fools of the mid-2000s, but once upon a time we had the UFC, the WEC, Bellator, Strikeforce, Affliction, EliteXC, Dream and Sengoku all running simultaneously and by god we didn't know how good we had it.
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Sep 16, 2023 06:54
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Affliction was a magical, short-lived nightmare. They had no idea what they were doing, they had enough money to put on crazy stuff but not enough to realize how dramatically quickly they would burn through it, and their margins were so slim that a single fiasco would, and did, ruin them. It was an MMA company run by Ed Hardy knockoffs who were doing wild poo poo like putting Vitor Belfort on the start of their prelims. They were always destined to die within a few events even before Barnett killed them, but like YAMMA Pit Fighting, some of our most beautiful stars burn the fastest.
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Sep 16, 2023 18:34
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4042062 GDT for NOCHE UFC is up. Don't miss this historic occasion, prelims in 30.
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Sep 16, 2023 23:32
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 76: TREADING WATER IN A SHARK TANK SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 FROM THE GAPING CHASM OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM VIA ESPN+ Boy, that last month sure was wild, huh? Five crazy events, four separate countries, three title fights, two new champions, one legendary retirement--what a fun, globetrotting adventure through the highest echelons of mixed martial arts! Did you have fun? Good! Because we have only have three fight cards in the next four weeks, all of them are airing from the UFC Apex's empty arena, and one of them doesn't even have two ranked fighters in the main event. Just look at that poster up above. Look at the amount of effort they put into it. This is the real UFC. This is what we're really about. Welcome back to cards the marketing team isn't given a budget for. Welcome back to the real poo poo.  but it does mean you get a few ranked fights, at least MAIN EVENT: THE CONTENDER PARADOX LIGHTWEIGHT: Rafael Fiziev (12-2, #6) vs Mateusz Gamrot (22-2 (1), #7)The UFC's lightweight division is simultaneously one of the premiere weight classes in all of mixed martial arts and one of its biggest ongoing traffic jams. Lightweight is, and has always been, one of the best hotbeds of talent in the world. This is in no way untrue now. There isn't a single fighter in the top fifteen who's a step below world-class. Championship grapplers, star wrestlers and world-class kickboxers litter its ranks. They're all amazing. They're all killers. And not a single one of them can actually break through to title contention, because a combination of skill, timing and marketing means no one can break the iron loving grip four men have on the entire division: Islam Makhachev, Charles Oliveira, Justin Gaethje, Dustin Poirier. It has been five years--all the way back to Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Conor McGregor in October of 2018--since a 155-pound title match did not involve one of those four men. For Makhachev, of course, that's natural--he's the goddamn champ and he won the belt less than a year ago--but the rest have kept this tight triangle of power that freezes everyone else out of contention. Only one man has managed to break into those ranks--and it was Alexander Volkanovski, and he did it by bypassing the division entirely and getting a shot based on his prowess at 145 pounds. And he, too, is extremely likely to get the next shot at the belt, meaning he, too, has become a part of this block. That block is built on top of every contender in this division, and both of these men have fallen victim to it. Rafael Fiziev is a great fighter who overcame a loss in his UFC debut and tore his way through the division en route to a potential contendership fight with Justin Gaethje this past March, but despite the momentum of six straight wins, he couldn't get past the block. He came incredibly close--Justin Gaethje, a man with an 84% finishing rate, just barely scraped out a majority decision against Fiziev--but not close enough. That win propelled Justin Gaethje into a successful rematch with Dustin Poirier, and now Justin is the man waiting for his turn back atop the triangle. Mateusz Gamrot is no different. He, too, lost his UFC debut, he, too, rifled off four gradually more impressive wins, and he, too, was being talked about as a possible next entry into the pantheon of title contendership. But his chance at the top came against the man most recently crushed by the pyramidal roadblock: Beneil Dariush, who despite an insane, seven-fight win streak over three undefeated years could not get the UFC to book him into a title eliminator. Instead, they gave him Gamrot. Dariush made an example of Mateusz, outwrestling him and at one point even dropping him just to make clear that the triangle's time was over, and he, Beneil Dariush, was the true, uncrowned #1 contender to the lightweight title. Until this past June, when Charles Oliveira flattened him in one round and secured his own rematch with Islam Makhachev. When it comes next month, it will mean Charles Oliveira has been in four of the last five fights for the lightweight title. Not Beneil Dariush. Not Mateusz Gamrot. And definitely not Rafael Fiziev. And it's precisely because of that massive stranglehold on the top of the division that the justifications for new contenders begin to grow thin. Doubts creep in; records get picked apart. Sure, Rafael Fiziev had a six-fight winning streak, but who was the most impressive victory within it? Renato Moicano, an unranked former featherweight? Brad Riddell, who was starting a three-fight skid that led to a hiatus from the sport? Rafael dos Anjos, a legend nearing 40 who won't even make 155 pounds anymore? And what of Mateusz Gamrot? Two of his best victories came over Scott Holtzman and Jeremy Stephens, who would retire from MMA or leave the UFC within a year. He beat Diego Ferreira, but Ferreira, too, was on a three-fight skid and wound up spending a year and a half away from the sport recovering from injuries afterwards. The biggest feather in Gamrot's cap is unquestionably his decision over Arman Tsarukyan--but it's a decision the majority of media scorecards disagreed with. Since his shellacking at Dariush's hands, he managed to barely survive and get a split decision against Jalin Turner, but where does that really leave him? If Charles Oliveira has the next title shot, and after that it's either Justin Gaethje, Alexander Volkanovski, or one followed by the other, how many times will the bottom five have to beat each other before one of them gets a title shot--and will the inevitable contender come about because of their victories, or because the triangle of death finally ages out of the sport and retires? And what's going to happen here, in this actual, literal fight, instead of whatever abstract divisional crap I'm talking about instead of these two men who are going to hit each other for money? Truthfully, I think it's a bad matchup for Rafael Fiziev. Gamrot is plainly no match for him in a striking battle, but while Fiziev ultimately beat Rafael dos Anjos, RDA gave him seven kinds of hell having to fight out from under his constant clinching pressure. Mateusz is not only a better wrestler than RDA, he's got an even better gas tank and he's far better at chaining his takedowns together. He'll work through four takedown attempts just to land one, and statistically speaking, he will get it. Fiziev's takedown defense is very good, but it hasn't stopped him from still, inevitably, getting dragged down by his high-level opponents. This is the most focused, highest-level grappler he'll have faced in his career. If he can keep Gamrot off of him and punish him with leg kicks and left hooks, well, we've seen Jalin Turner nearly shut Gamrot's lights off--but Turner was a whole lot bigger, stronger and rangier than Fiziev. In a prolonged battle, I cannot help seeing Gamrot's wrestling eventually grinding Fiziev away. MATEUSZ GAMROT BY DECISION. CO-MAIN EVENT: PICKING YOURSELF UP AFTER FALLING OFF A LADDER FEATHERWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (15-1, #10) vs Dan Ige (17-6, #12) We have two very different redemption stories here, and only one of them involves a man who put a spinning power drill through his own testicles by mistake. Come on down, Bryce Mitchell! Aside from that aforementioned drill mishap and a fight on The Ultimate Fighter, which doesn't count on your official record because legally considering them exhibitions keeps the UFC from having to publicly disclose their results before the seasons air on television because our sport is fake as poo poo, Bryce Mitchell spent the last eight years riding the most popular hype train you can get in the sport: The hype of the undefeated. Mitchell combined a great gas tank, a solid chin, and the kind of outright stubbornness that leads to both a persistent desire to walk people down with your fists and be a real, real big fan of Flat Earth conspiracy theories. In mixed martial arts, that's all you need. At least, it is right up until you meet the guy who kills you. Mitchell's years of contendership momentum came to a screeching halt this past December when he ran into the brick wall that is Ilia Topuria. To his credit, Bryce put up a good fight for the first half of the first round, but the moment Topuria started putting hands on him, the fight was over. He was hurt, wobbled and bleeding in short order, and in the second Topuria simply big brothered him and choked him out. Just like that, Mitchell's undefeated streak, his contendership hopes, and his hype train were gone. Dan Ige already went through that process a few years back. Ige was one of the original Contender Series winners, and after a stumble in his debut against the forever-underrated Julio Arce, Ige rifled off a six-fight win streak. It got a bit shaky near the end--he really, really should have lost that split decision to Edson Barboza--but he had the victories, he had the ranking, and he had the shine of a brand new contender. And then he spent the next two years going 1 for 5. There weren't any lucky decisions waiting for him in the top ten. Calvin Kattar, Chan Sung Jung, Josh Emmett, Movsar Evloev--every one of them a potential contender, every one of them a stop sign. By the dawn of 2023 Ige was seen as a divisional afterthought, and the UFC began matching him up with new prospects they wanted to see succeed. And Dan Ige beat the crap out of them. He knocked the streaking Damon Jackson out cold in two rounds on the UFC's first card of the year, and this past June saw him face Nate "The Train" Landwehr, a prospect who'd established himself as a brand-new fan favorite thanks as much to his overwhelming toughness as his profoundly weird charisma, and Ige staggered and even dropped him repeatedly. He wanted to make clear that he was no one's stepping stone, and he'd crush every prospect they threw at him until he got his own chance to truly cement himself back into the top ten. This is that chance. And, much like the main event, I don't see it going his way at all. We're barely a year removed from watching Movsar Evloev put an absolute wrestling clinic on Ige. There are exactly three fighters in the featherweight top 15 I can see having that level of wrestling dominance against him: Bryce Mitchell is the third. It's possible Topuria cracked his chin and his confidence, we won't know until we see him get back in the cage, but as long as he doesn't stubbornly insist on a stand-up war with a much better boxer, Mitchell should be able to drag Ige down and control him. BRYCE MITCHELL BY DECISION. MAIN CARD: BRYAN BATTLE ON A MAIN CARD, BY GOD WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Marina Rodriguez (16-3-2, #9) vs Michelle Waterson-Gomez (18-11, #13) If you find yourself having an odd sense of deja vu, no, it's not you. This is a rematch of a fight that happened just barely two years ago, back when it was an actual main event. It wasn't controversial; it wasn't even close. And it is pretty unequivocally happening again solely because they want to make hay on Marina Rodriguez. At the end of 2022 she was the clearest title contender for the aftermath of Namajunas/Esparza 2, because, well, here's me getting angry about the UFC loving everything up: CarlCX posted:Here is the reason I am belaboring this point: Marina Rodriguez is, as of this card, the one and only person in the entirety of the UFC's Women's Strawweight rankings with multiple consecutive--intentional--wins. [...] Of course, Marina promptly got TKOed by Amanda Lemos--with one of those oddly quicker-than-usual standing TKO stops that seem to happen a lot more often when women are fighting for some strange reason we definitely shouldn't do any social introspection about--and her momentum ended on the spot. A dominant grappling loss to Virna Jandiroba this past May gave Marina the first back-to-back losses of her career, and dropped her all the way down the ladder to the periphery of the top ten. You might think this is an opportunity for a newly-rising Michelle Waterson-Gomez, laden with momentum and lifted by victory, to avenge her loss. And, uh--actually, no. Michelle has in fact lost twice since the first fight with Marina. Amanda Lemos actually earned her shot at Marina by choking Waterson-Gomez out a year and change after their fight. After another near-year off, Michelle came back to face Luana Pinheiro this past April, and she lost that fight by an all-too-familiar split decision a lot of folks think was a robbery. For once, I am not one of them, but it could easily have coinflipped the other way. But it didn't. Marina's just fallen far enough after her two losses that the UFC wants to either rehab her by letting her beat Waterson-Gomez again, as she's still one of the division's more popular fighters, or get Michelle the kind of victory that could leave her one good marketing fight away from a title shot in a division that stopped making sense awhile ago anyway. MARINA RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION. The thing is, that fight really wasn't that long ago, and neither fighter's methods, strengths or weaknesses have particularly changed. Marina's still a bigger, better, rangier boxer, and unlike Virna Jandiroba, Michelle doesn't have the power or physicality in her wrestling to force Marina to the canvas. Second verse, same as the first. WELTERWEIGHT: Bryan Battle (9-2) vs AJ Fletcher (10-2) I've been mad about Bryan Battle being stuck on the prelims for so long, and now that he's off of them the shock has rendered me speechless. Bryan Battle was the UFC's seemingly forgotten winner of 2021's The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ), and despite proving himself to be a profoundly weird fighter who could drop people with headkicks and check hooks, the UFC decided the best use of their knockout artist TUF champion was getting buried on the earliest side of the prelims of TV cards and offered up as a short-notice sacrificial lamb against 21-2 monsters like Rinat Fakhretdinov. Because if you can't beat a Russian middleweight champion on a week's notice, why bother even pretending it's worth it to invest in you? It's only after dropping Gabe Green in 14 seconds this past May that Battle is now, finally, getting off the god damned prelims again. His main-card dance partner is AJ "The Ghost" Fletcher, a Contender Series winner who hopped into the UFC with his fancy new contract in 2022 and got immediately, repeatedly outworked. Fletcher's a power-wrestler who tends to live and die by his physicality. He's got a great blast-double of a takedown, he's more than willing to toss it out repeatedly if it will mean wrestling his opponent to the floor, and he, uh, tends to do it hard enough that he gets visibly tired midway through the second frame. His fights with Matt Semelsberger and Ange Loosa both saw his output wane in the back half of the fight, which ultimately cost him decisions. It wasn't until his fight with Themba Gorimbo this past February that Fletcher finally notched a UFC victory, but it was a bit on the scrappy side--he was actually getting outwrestled by Gorimbo until an elbow in the clinch discombobulated Themba enough to give up the advantage. Which makes this tricky. Battle, historically, does not have the best takedown defense. Fletcher unquestionably has a wrestling advantage. But Fletcher tends to have a lot of trouble maintaining top control, and Battle is scrambly enough that even while the aforementioned Fakhretdinov was beating him senseless, he was able to repeatedly scramble out of danger and to his feet. Ultimately, I'm siding with BRYAN BATTLE BY SUBMISSION. Fletcher's never been finished, and I think he's too adept at grappling to not get Battle repeatedly to the floor, but he's going to be forced to work constantly for fifteen minutes, and Battle's aggressive submission-hunting will only get more dangerous as Fletcher tires. FEATHERWEIGHT: Charles Jourdain (14-6-1) vs Ricardo Ramos (16-4)This, I am looking forward to. Charles Jourdain has long been one of the UFC's most consistently entertaining fighters, the kind of technical brawler who fights with the kind of palpable tension that comes from knowing he is constantly seeking opportunities to completely abandon his well-managed gameplan in favor of swinging leather and jumping on guillotines if he thinks a finish could materialize out of it. He has, unfortunately, not been the most successful at establishing himself as a real threat to the rankings--after four years and ten fights in the UFC he's a perfectly split 5-5, and every fight that could have gotten him rankings-adjacent has seen him summarily rejected. But he did, however, beat the crap out of Kron Gracie a few months ago, and boy, it's hard not to appreciate that. Ricardo Ramos is one of the more underrated fighters in the featherweight division, but unfortunately, he's played a pretty active role in guiding the fanbase's expectations. The problem with Ramos has never been talent. He's extremely well-rounded, he hits hard, he's a dangerous grappler and he's more than willing to engage in the kind of aggressive gunfights the company tends to enjoy. But he's gotten routed--definitively--by all of his top-ranked competition. He can beat Journey Newson and Bill Algeo, but Said Nurmagomedov, Lerone Murphy and Zubaira Tukhugov are just a bridge too far. Those losses count less against him than his committing the cardinal sin of mixed martial arts, however--he was supposed to fight Austin Lingo this past March, and instead, thanks to complications from an injury in training, he missed weight by eight pounds, one of the biggest misses in UFC history. Combine his losses, his having fought only once in the last two years and blowing weight by an entire division, and you have a solid recipe for bad will with the fanbase. All of that being said: If Ramos is healthy and on-target, this should be a hell of a fight. Both men are great, technically sound brawlers, although I'd give Jourdain's kicking range an edge of Ramos and his boxing. Ultimately, I think RICARDO RAMOS BY DECISION feels more likely, given the likelihood he pressures Jourdain down behind his power punches, but after the year he's had, Ramos is going to have a lot of ghosts to exorcise, and his looking terrible is by no means off the market. PRELIMS: THE CHASE SHERMAN-SHAPED HOLE IN MY HEART BANTAMWEIGHT: Miles Johns (13-2) vs Dam Argueta (9-1 (1)) This being our prelim headliner is a little on the weird side. Miles Johns is taking his first fight in almost a year, which is enough time to forget said fight was an effort against Vince Morales that somehow made the bantamweight division boring and involved less attempted strikes or successful grappling than the average heavyweight fight (1 for 12 on takedown attempts!) and that, too, was a follow-up to a loss. At this point, Johns is 1-2 over the last 25 months and his most memorable accomplishments are getting destroyed by Mario Bautista and scoring a knockout over Anderson dos Santos, which, if we're being REALLY honest, was mostly notable for all the "tee hee Anderson dos Santos" jokes we made on the internet to cover for the fact that we're still pining for fighters from years ago. Dan Argueta isn't in a much better position: He was 1-1 in the UFC heading into his last fight, a wrestler vs wrestler showdown with Ronnie Lawrence, which infamously ended in referee "No Nonsense" Keith Peterson loving up and thinking Lawrence was tapping out to a guillotine choke when he was, in fact, pulling his hand away because Peterson kept loving yanking on it while he was trying to defend himself. The fight was changed to a No Contest before they finished reading out the results, and Dominick Cruz is still slowly alienating all of his friends and family by talking about Keith Peterson while everyone else is just trying to have a nice dinner together. DAN ARGUETA BY DECISION. I think he's a better, stronger wrestler, and I don't think Johns will have great answers for his top game. WELTERWEIGHT: Tim Means (32-15-1 (1)) vs Andre Fialho (16-7)We're an extremely rare position, here. This is a) one of the longest-tenured fights of the night, b) one of the absolute best, most promising fights of the night, and c) very likely a loser-leaves-town match, all at once. Tim Means has been one of the UFC's most consistent fight-of-the-night machines for more than a decade; his combination punching, his vicious clinch elbows and the occasional grappling assaults that, years later, still seem to take opponents completely by surprise have kept him vital, if never anywhere close to being ranked, since Minecraft was new. Andre Fialho's only been kicking around the UFC for a touch over a year and a half, which makes it completely insane that that this is already his seventh fight. On average, every ninety days, you've seen Andre Fialho punch someone in the face. His existence as a stand-and-bang elemental, and his innate willingness to throw himself into fire even when a tactical approach probably would have fared better, made him a midcard staple. Unfortunately: Both of these guys are on three-fight losing streaks, and five of those six collective losses saw them getting finished. In Fialho's case this could easily be chalked up to living and dying by the fist-shaped sword, but Means is getting ragdolled by bigger, younger guys, and as he nears his 40th birthday this February it becomes progressively harder not to have progressively more uncomfortable conversations about aging out of the sport. Which is funny, because I think TIM MEANS BY SUBMISSION is a surprisingly plausible outcome, here. Means has spent his entire career abusing people with straightforward, no-variation gameplans, and Fialho is as straightforward and aggressive as fighter as it gets. I think Means hurts him and gets a choke in the clinch. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jacob Malkoun (7-2) vs Cody Brundage (8-5) Wrestling. WRES-TUL-ANG. Do you like technical kickboxing and fast-flowing jiu-jitsu and chess matches? gently caress YOU, THIS IS WRESTLING. Jacob Malkoun arguably should've gotten a decision over now-top-ten middleweight Brendan Allen back in mid-2022, but this was right in the deepest, darkest parts of our great international discussion on scouring all memories of wrestling from the mixed martial arts judging criteria, and he was damned for his love of the double-leg and minimal offensive output. Cody Brundage, once cursed by the Contender Series for his wrestling ways being unable to win the day against the weight class-agnostic William Knight, chose to simply embrace oblivion and start losing repeatedly. 60% of his career losses have all come in the last nine months, as he enters this fight down three in a row thanks to either stronger strikers, cannier grapplers, or his own irrepressible need to repeatedly jump loving guillotines on Sedriques Dumas. On one hand, Brundage is finally back on the positive side of the size game, as Malkoun is a much smaller 5'9" to his 6'0" and won't be able to physically manhandle him the way other opponents have. On the other: I think he's probably better at the actual wrestling, and, well, that's the game. JACOB MALKOUN BY DECISION. HEAVYWEIGHT: Jake Collier (13-9) vs Mohammed Usman (9-2) What have we lost, truly? What did we give away in the heavyweight division, that this is where we are today? Mohammed Usman is your The Ultimate Fighter 30 (jesus christ) champion and he's already 2-0 in the UFC and I defy anyone to name either of those fights without surreptitiously googling it first. Jake Collier was here to welcome 11-0 Brazilian prospect prospect "The Clean Monster" Valter Walker to the UFC, and I bet you have absolutely no idea if I'm just loving with you right now. I'm not! Valter Walker is, in fact, Johnny Walker's brother, meaning--you guessed it--this entire match was just an excuse for the UFC to put two younger yet larger brothers of two more notable, successful fighters into a match with each other. Because that's what heavyweight is, now. Here are your prospects: We have so few of them that it doesn't matter how they got here, they're just going until someone knocks enough people out that we decide to give them advertising. The knockout guy can't fight anymore? gently caress it, call Jake Collier. What I'm saying is this: It's all been downhill since they fired Chase Sherman. Francis Ngannou? Gone. The longest title lineage in the sport? Severed. The contenders? Falling apart. Jon Jones? Running rampant. Did Jake Collier beat Chase Sherman? Easily. Does that mean I wouldn't rather have him here? Not on your goddamn life. MOHAMMED USMAN BY DECISION. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Mizuki Inoue (14-6) vs Hannah Goldy (6-3) I cannot even pretend to be unbiased, here. Shootboxing is the wonderful, magical world of half-grappling kickboxing, with all sorts of progressively sillier rules about what techniques are and are not allowed, and it is one of the great jewels of combat sports and the weird, silly world they inhabit. Mizuki Inoue was a Shootboxing champion and I cannot ever root against her because doing so would be like removing my own blood to curse at it. She is, however, coming off three years on the couch, which always introduces unpredictability into the mix. And Hannah Goldy will need that unpredictability, because she's a pretty fuckin' big underdog here and that's an entirely fair assessment. Goldy won her way into the UFC through the Contender Series back in 2019, and over the subsequent four years she's managed to go 1-3, with that sole victory coming over the 4-5 Emily Whitmire which, historically speaking, is not doing her any favors. This is in fact Goldy's first attempt to drop back down to 115 after Molly McCann loving flattened her last Summer. But the odds are against her for a reason. Hannah's always had trouble keeping her style together, she tends to get hosed up by people who can successfully pressure her on the feet or outwork her on the ground, and truthfully, I don't think Mizuki will have much trouble with either. MIZUKI INOUE BY DECISION. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Montserrat Rendon (5-0) vs Tamires Vidal (7-1) And we're rounding out the card with one more weird one. Montserrat "Monster" Rendon is a relative rookie who's just now passing her third year as a pro, except she hasn't actually fought at all in the last year. Her last appearance was almost exactly one year ago, in fact: A September 28, 2022 split decision victory over the now 6-5 Invicta veteran Brittney Cloudy. Which most of the media thought Cloudy should have won. One year and one cancelled Invicta fight in March later, and, uh, congratulations, you're in the UFC now, because boy, Women's Bantamweight needs the bodies. Which is also why Tamires Vidal is here. Vidal was hired to fight at Women's Featherweight, the division the UFC would like you to quietly forget ever existed, and after exactly one fight--a really cool flying knee knockout over Ramona Pascual--they told her the fun was over and it was time to cut down to 135. She, too, was supposed to fight this past March, and undisclosed medical issues ultimately scratched her from the UFC's attempt to feed her to Hailey Cowan, but by god, you'd at least better fight at the only weight class we're still willing to give you. TAMIRES VIDAL BY SUBMISSION. Rendon's bigger, but I don't think she's stronger, and Vidal's shown the same kind of applied pressure Cloudy used to make her life difficult. Add in Rendon's 0-finish record and lack of having really ever staggered or threatened an opponent before and I cannot help but see someone as tough as Vidal walking through her offense.
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Sep 20, 2023 20:55
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LobsterMobster posted:
This is awesome and thank you for helping me understand Bellator for years. Digital Jedi posted:Jiri vs Alex is for the vacant title This sucks, but it's hilarious that Pereira could be a double champ within 7 UFC fights. Now that Women's 145 no longer exists I'm legitimately not sure that record would ever be broken. kimbo305 posted:Maximize girl power by sending Kim Winslow in there. Jan Finney should've loving sued. Majkol posted:My memory is failing me - can someone remind me of a Japanese fighter who had great front body kicks? He digged his toes right in the gut and I think knocked some people out with them. For some reason I thought it was the Gooch but I guess I was wrong? Katsunori Kikuno. https://twitter.com/DanTomMMA/status/1431783599800561669
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Sep 21, 2023 07:44
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B-League Round-Up :siren
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Remembering these things is what I'm here for. Say, on the topic of gut-destroying kicks, how's ONE's rejection of MMA in favor of becoming the home of Muay Thai's hottest stars and biggest fights going? https://twitter.com/muaythaichai/status/1704775561699365304 oh
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Sep 21, 2023 09:33
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LobsterMobster posted:Look, I realize and accept I am a rabid fan of Jun Yong Park, but when is a dude who is 7-2 in UFC, on a 4 fight win streak with 3 RNC finishes in a row gonna get some ranked opponents I mean, has he even tried saying anything racist yet
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Sep 21, 2023 21:30
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MMA is by no means responsible for or unique to the disinformation vortex, but I do think it shares a uniquely strong bond to it. The might-makes-right impact of martial arts has been a tool of authoritarianism for a reason. Also on the topic of people who suck doing things that suck: https://twitter.com/BloodyElbow/status/1705384785500373243
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Sep 23, 2023 02:07
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 you're right, talking about politics and the effects of disinformation on mixed martial artists is definitely in no way relevant to UFC discussion
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Sep 24, 2023 05:50
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Thank you for sharing, even if that is a little far afield from MMA-specific politics chat. Also I felt a little bad about mitchellposting and wanted to make the point a little more constructively: If you do not want to see the thread talking about a thing or if you'd rather the thread be talking about another thing, post another thing. We have like 40 posters and we get at most 20 pages a month. There is always room for more posts. Post the stuff you want to talk about. Digital Jedi posted:No UFC card next week. This is the first week off from UFC since the start of June. I am relieved to get the time off except I'll spend half of it searching for silly pictures of fighters in Halloween costumes for next month's thread. kimbo305 posted:Awkward double post, but John Howard's kids got shot while hanging out near some other gathering that turned violent. His daughter is in really bad shape. Also on the topic of america.txt, gently caress.
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Sep 24, 2023 19:09
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I had always been interested in MMA, but Ken Shamrock in the WWF plus parents who had recently given up on content bans were what got me to finally rent UFC tapes from Blockbuster. But the guy that wound up sticking with me most? The Ninja Cop, Steve Jennum, who despite looking incredibly physically unimposing and having no apparent standout skills managed to win UFC 3, a tournament that included Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock. Except Royce exhausted himself fighting Kimo in the first round, so he had to pull out, and Shamrock hurt himself in the second round, so he had to pull out, meaning the tournament final was between Harold Howard, with one win in the first round, and Steve Jennum, a tournament alternate who had not fought that night and in fact had never fought before at all. In hindsight, the way I watch the sport for its complete bullshit now makes a lot of sense.
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Sep 25, 2023 22:10
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The shoddy video streaming reminds me, I had at least three friends who didn't give a single gently caress about the sport ask me how to watch Bob Sapp fights because of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7wUeUNKgDY god you can straight up count the pixels
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Sep 26, 2023 05:34
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As long as we're doing bad industry news, the house wins and Mark Hunt's gonna be broke again. https://twitter.com/Jason_Morrin/status/1706752553499734173
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Sep 26, 2023 21:22
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Rooting against Seo Hee Ham should be against the forum rules.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:55
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I know ONE and favoritism are inseparable but they seriously cannot stop talking about how Stamp is looking amazing and winning every second of this fight and they managed to somehow just skip replaying Ham laying her the gently caress out.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:18
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Hell of a job by Stamp even if I was rooting for Ham.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:31
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 14:09 |
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 Let's get the gently caress out of this month and move onto one that at least promises to give us candy. Onto the October thread.
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Oct 1, 2023 17:53
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