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Which ghost of MMA still haunts you? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Diaz |
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1 | 3.57% |
| Chuck Liddell |
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5 | 17.86% |
| Matt Serra |
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0 | 0% |
| Matt Serra |
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2 | 7.14% |
| Matt Serra |
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0 | 0% |
| Oh no you said his name three times |
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8 | 28.57% |
| Run |
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1 | 3.57% |
| RUN |
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11 | 39.29% |
| Total: | 28 votes | ||
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Go back to September and enjoy a terrible month for world championships here. Welcome to October, a month of candy, cobwebs, and a comparatively gentler slate of mixed martial arts. We've got three UFCs, we've got sort of one MMA event between the half of ONE and Rizin that aren't kickboxing, we've got Invicta's first show in half a year, and we've got what might, in a way, be the last Bellator ever. Get excited. Thread title is courtesy of just, like, loving reality, man. 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  The eldritch forces of finance have finished their foul work: The merger that fused the Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment into one shambling entity known as TKO officially closed on September 12, 2023. Ari Emanuel, a longtime mogul who successfully marketed his own shitheadedness as a public persona, now sits atop a power structure executive-directed by Vince McMahon, who was briefly ousted from the WWE over his history of sexual assaults earlier this year, and that gives him authority over the now official CEO of the UFC, Dana White, who celebrated the new year by slapping his wife on camera. Coincidentally, all three men have also played sizable roles in the rise of Donald Trump. Isn't it crazy how these things just randomly come together? The merger was celebrated with the traditionally-mandated sacrifice to Mammon, as mass layoffs resulted in 100+ people losing their jobs. But their misfortune means we are now entering a brave new world of Brand Synergy and Shareholder Returns, so, honestly, it was all worth it. gently caress everything.  In a thing that's awful hard not to read as a part of the greater story around a career-worst performance that cost him his world championship--for the second time--Israel Adesanya admitted and plead guilty to driving under the influence after being caught by a random checkpoint on August 19, just a few weeks before his title defense against Sean Strickland. Does it seem like a bad sign for a bunch of factors in Izzy's life? Sort of hard for it not to. Do I feel like a shithead that my first reaction to the news, rather than concern for him as a human or thoughts for his community and the people who look up to him, was analysis of how the incident fits into his fighting performance? Boy, you have no idea. He won't be sentenced until January, but between the low severity of the incident, his being a first-time offender and his cooperation, he'll almost certainly just be paying his fine and going on his way.  Remember that weird loving thing from way earlier this year where Nate Diaz voluntarily arrested himself because he choked out a guy who looked like Logan Paul in a street fight, and then it turned out it was an entirely different social media influencer weirdo because we live in Hell, and Nate's claim of self-defense seemed weird given the public footage but also no one really cared because everyone involved seemed like a shithead? The district attorney came to the legal conclusion that everyone involved was, legally, a shithead, and all charges against Nate have been dismissed. Fly free, man of Stockton.  Mark Hunt was not so lucky. Hunt has been in the process of suing the UFC since 2017, having alleged that the UFC knew Brock Lesnar was on hilarious amounts of steroids when they booked him against Hunt for UFC 200 back in 2016, and charging fraud, battery and conspiracy. The suit was already dismissed back in 2019, but an appeal brought it back to life in 2021. That life is now extremely gone. It wasn't even a verdict: Judge Dorsey, who presided over and dismissed the initial lawsuit, decided Hunt had not provided sufficient evidence for his claims and entered a summary judgment for the UFC. Did they do it? Of course! Is there any way to prove it? Definitely not. Did Mark Hunt blow all of his savings on a lawsuit he lost twice? Boy, I hope not. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  After very understandably taking her time, Angela Lee Pucci, top star for ONE Championship as well as their Women's Atomweight MMA Champion, retired this month after publishing an article in The Players' Tribune about the loss of her teenaged sister Victoria Lee last December. In the face of an awful lot of incredibly gross internet speculation she confirmed that Victoria took her own life, and opened up not just about that tragic loss, but her own struggles with mental health, self-harm and attempted suicide. There's nothing I can add to it other than echoing what everyone with a soul has already said:It's an incredibly difficult and brave thing to put out there to the public, let alone in a world as regularly awful about mental health as martial arts. If you haven't read it--and if you, y'know, feel up to reading an honest but difficult article about suicidal ideation--you can find it here, and I highly recommend it. It's a better, braver coda to her career than recapping her fighting could be anyway. She was a tough, talented, lifelong martial artist who only really struggled with the burden of being a promotional favorite given preferential treatment, and that's Chatri Sityodtong's fault, not hers. Even in these circumstances, I'm glad she made her name and her money and got out young, and I hope if a silver lining can come from all of the tragedy her family has dealt with it's a renewed dedication to enjoying her life. Angela Lee retires as the reigning ONE Atomweight World Champion and leaves behind an 11-3 record.  Daniel Weichel called an end to a 21-year MMA career this past month, and it's one of those retirements that no one really noticed because a) he was never in the UFC, b) it happened in Bellator and c) it happened on a Dublin card no one was watching. But it's well worth observing, because he's one of the best mixed martial artists Germany ever produced, and in a world where Pascal Krauss was somehow in a decade of UFC video games, there's room to recognize Daniel Weichel. Because that boy got around. He made his debut in 2002, he fought in more than a dozen countries, he mixed it up with future 170-pound title contenders like Dan Hardy and Paul Daley--which is particularly crazy when you realize Weichel ended his career fighting at featherweight. He even choked out the UFC's favorite German, Dennis Siver, but somehow never got the call to the big show that Siver ultimately did. So he fought everywhere goddamn else. He won multiple fights in Shooto, he hit up legendary regionals like King of the Cage and BAMMA, he made his international name by fighting through Russia's M-1 Global and briefly holding their lightweight championship, and he finally landed in Bellator, where he spent the second decade of his career. And it was a hell of a decade. He beat former titlists and champions, he won Bellator's 2014 Featherweight Tournament, he even fought Bellator GOAT Patrício Pitbull twice and lost a razor-close split decision the second time that arguably should have gone his way. Hell of a career! But when he got eliminated from the 2020 tournament and realized how quickly he was closing in on 40, he saw the writing on the wall. After one last failed run at the top, and one last loss to Mads Burnell in Dublin, Weichel called it a day on September 23. He retires at 42-15. 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
CarlCX fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Oct 5, 2023 |
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WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER We got off to a quick start with UFC Fight Night: Gane vs Spivak on September 2nd. A big French regional card featuring a bunch of French fighters along with a couple fights that were just plain weird. Down on the prelims, Jacqueline Cavalcanti finally ended Zarah Fairn's UFC tenure, Farid Basharat choked out Kleydson Rodrigues, Nora Cornolle outworked Joselyne Edwards, Ange Loosa beat out Rhys McKee, and Taylor Lapilus ended the undefeated streak of Irish prospect Caolán Loughran. On the main card, Morgan Charričre stopped Manolo Zecchini, William Gomis kicked out Yanis Ghemmouri's liver, Volkan Oezdemir choked out an overmatched debuting Bogdan Guskov, and Benoît Saint-Denis pounded out Thiago Moisés. Your co-main event was a tactical but clear decision victory for Manon Fiorot over Rose Namajunas in the latter's flyweight debut, and your main event was hometown hero Ciryl Gane taking a real easy knockout victory against Sergey Spivak, who chose to suddenly forget he was a wrestler, for some reason. And then it was UFC 293: Adesanya vs Strickland, the day we all got a little sadder. All the way down on your early prelims, Kevin Jousset choked out Kiefer Crosbie, Gabriel Miranda choked out Shane Young, and Charlie Radtke outworked Mike "Blood Diamond" Mathetha, who also kicked him in the groin just a whole bunch. On your regular-rear end prelims, Nasrat Haqparast outlanded Landon Quińones, Jamie Mullarkey got a pretty shaky hometown decision over John Makdessi, Chepe Mariscal straight-up broke Jack Jenkins' goddamn arm, and Carlos Ulberg choked out Da-un Jung. On your main card, Tyson Pedro made short work of Anton Turkalj, Justin Tafa avenged his eyeball by making even shorter work of Austen Lane, Manel Kape outworked an outmatched but game Felipe dos Santos, and Alexander Volkov hit an Ezekiel choke on Tai Tuivasa. In your main event, Israel Adesanya turned in one of the most baffling performances in title defense history, looking utterly lost and unprepared for Sean Strickland, who took a 49-46 decision and, with it, the middleweight championship of the world. We went all the way down to the extremely Mexican city of Paradise, Nevada for NOCHE UFC: Grasso vs Shevchenko 2 on the 16th, an event themed entirely around Mexican Independence day and desperately appealing to the Mexican market, except the fight card lost half its Mexican competitors so it got real funny. Preliminary action included Josefine Knutsson defeating Marnic Mann by a hilarious 30-24 decision, Charlie Campbell knocking out Alex Reyes, with the latter having spent six years on the shelf, Tracy Cortez beating out Jasmine Jasudavicius by decision, Roman Kopylov punching Josh Fremd's insides out, Lupita Godinez choking out Elise Reed, and Édgar Cháirez going to a no-contest with Daniel Lacerda after the referee hosed up and thought Lacerda was unconscious in a chokehold. On your main card, Kyle Nelson upset Fernando Padilla, Daniel Zellhuber choked out Christos Giagos, Raúl Rosas Jr. made easy work of Terrence Mitchell, and Jack Della Maddalena took an inexplicably split decision over Kevin Holland. The main event saw Alexa Grasso defending the women's flyweight title against the woman she took it from, Valentina Shevchenko, and it was a really, really good, evenly-matched fight! And no one will remember that, because the fight wound up being scored a split draw after judge Mike Lee gave an absolutely indefensible, inexcusable 10-8 final round to Grasso, without which she would have lost the title back to Shevchenko by split decision. We are doomed to repeat all of our mistakes. Bellator took up its event for the month on the 23rd with Bellator 299, aka Eblen vs Edwards or Bellator Dublin part 43 depending on your preferred angle. As always there were fifty prelims, but there were some fun highlights--Sergey Bilostenniy destroying Kasim Aras with a heavyweight spinning wheel kick, Domaine Debienne dropping Nicolň Solli in forty seconds, Luca Poclit hitting a brabo choke, Grégory Babene tapping Charlie Ward in one minute, Jay-Jay Wilson upsetting Mansour Barnaoui--but unfortunately, they also ended in a no-contest after Daniele Micelli managed to illegally soccer kick Peter Queally in the face and slice his eyelid in half with a toenail. Close loving calls. Up on the main card, Levan Chokheli knocked out Sabah Homasi with a front kick, Mads Burnell retired Daniel Weichel, Sara Collins eked out a split decision against Sinead Kavanagh and Aaron Pico stopped Pedro Carvalho in the first round. Johnny Eblen's middleweight title defense against Fabian Edwards started competitive, but twenty seconds into the third round he dropped Fabian and pounded him out. Where we go from here depends largely on Bellator's future. The UFC ended its month over the course of the evening with UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs Gamrot, a slightly cursed card. There were a number of uneventful decisions on the prelims--Montserrat Rendon, Mizuki Inoue (or just MIZUKI now, apparently) and Mohammed Usman got wins, though the Apex wasn't happy about it--but Miles Johns won a remarkably weird performance against Dan Argueta, Tim Means knocked out a likely pink-slipped André Fialho, and Jacob Malkoun, despite easily being on his way to a 10-8 first round, elbowed Cody Brundage in the brainstem and lost by disqualification. On your main card, Charles Jourdain managed to choke out Ricardo Ramos, Bryan Battle got an RNC in on AJ Fletcher, Marina Rodriguez pounded out Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and Bryce Mitchell, wielding a bible and a bunch of conspiracy theories, scraped a close decision away from Dan Ige. The main event, unfortunately, was the most cursed of all: After an incredibly interesting, entertaining first round, Mateusz Gamrot beat Rafael Fiziev when Fiziev's left knee gave out in the middle of a kick. God drat it. Rizin showed up on late that night for Rizin 44, which wound up being one of Rizin's longer cards at least from a subjectively experiential standpoint--ten fights, seven decisions, one third-round stoppage. The violence was still there, though: Ramazonbek Temirov dropped Takaki Soya in one round, Shoma Shibisai continued his reign as one of Japan's two best heavyweight fighters by getting the crap beaten out of him by Janos Csukas before snatching a heel hook anyway, and Ryuya Fukuda won a hard-fought battle with Erson Yamamoto thanks to a cut stoppage. Rukiya Anpo also won his bad-blood kickboxing match against Sho Patrick Usami, which turned into near-brawling multiple times, and Yoshiki Nakahara rebounded from his loss to Pitbull slayer Chihiro Suzuki by beating Rikuto Shirakawa. The main card wound up being a real good night for Rizin's top Japanese talent: Yoshinori Horie outworked Spike Carlyle, former champion Juntarou Ushiku beat a mystifyingly-matched Kyohei Hagiwara, and in the main event, while it admittedly wasn't a ton of fun to watch, 20-year veteran and 40 year-old Masanori Kanehara pulled an upset, defeating fellow former champion Kleber Koike Erbst. And the month ended on ONE Fight Night 14: Stamp vs Ham on the 29th. It was a pretty violent affair for ONE, with all but two of its bouts ending with a stoppage. Some of them were technical--Mauro Cerilli managed to drag a doctor's stoppage out of Paul Elliott, and Dmitry Menshikov scored the three-knockdown Muay Thai TKO over Rungrawee Sitsongpeenong--but you also had Eduard Folayang knocking Amir Khan the gently caress out, and Asa Ten Pow punching out Rambolek Chor.Ajalaboon, and Maurice Abévi taking Blake Cooper's face home with him. But the big fights are, as always, the story. John Lineker scored a decision over Stephen Loman, ending his seven-year undefeated streak in the process. Danielle Kelly took a decision over Jessa Khan to become the inaugural One Women's Atomweight Submission Grappling Champion, which is a thing that exists. Smilla Sundell defended the Women's Strawweight Muay Thai World Championship by knocking out Allycia Rodrigues. And up in the main event, after Angela Lee officially retired from the sport and abdicated her belt, Stamp Fairtex overcame a rough second round and knocked out Seo Hee Ham in the third, becoming ONE's new Women's Atomweight Champion in the process. WHAT'S COMING IN OCTOBER It's a pretty light month, but it's real crammed together. Rizin's up first with Rizin Landmark 6 on the 1st. As part of Rizin's lower-tier Landmark series it's a bit understated--lots of rookie fighters without so much as Tapology profiles--but with Rizin's more punctuated schedule as of late, they've packed a little more meat onto the Landmark bones than usual. Yutaro Muramoto is facing Rogério Bontorin, the UFC castoff who got knocked out in his Rizin debut last December, Joji Goto has a real top-vs-bottom bantamweight rankings battle against Junya Hibino, last year's debuting sumo Takakenshin is facing Hidetaka Arato, Viktor Kolesnik is fighting Ryo Takagi, Genji Umeno and Yuto Saito are having a kickboxing shotdown, living legend Hideo Tokoro will face Alan Yamaniha, and in your main event, near-titlist Naoki Inoue battles Olympic medalist Shinobu Ota. And then, half of the month's martial arts happens in one 24-hour period over the course of the 7th. ONE is up first with ONE Fight Night 15, but at the time of this writing--and I'll keep coming back to this to re-check it, but, boy, we're running out of September pretty fast--this card currently does not have a main event and only barely has a co-main. Ther's still some cool stuff--Timofey Nasyukhin returns against Zhang Lipeng, Supergirl kickboxes Cristina Morales, Eko Roni Saputra faces Hu Yong, Joshua Pacio fights Eagle FC's old champ Mansur Malachiev, Mikey Musumeci is going to (non-title) grapple Shinya Aoki which should loving rule, and Jonathan Di Bella will defend his strawweight kickboxing championship against Danial Williams. But Thanh Le was supposed to have a title rematch here and instead he's now facing Ilya Freymanov, and Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai was supposed to defend his featherweight kickboxing title against Superbon, but Superbon busted his leg, and with a couple weeks to go, there's still no word on a replacement. The day then moves to Bellator 300, a card that feels an awful lot like a series finale for Bellator, which is rumored to be getting sold off to the PFL any minute now. There's your traditionally required 13 preliminary bouts with only a few of note--Davion Franklin vs Slim Trabelsi, Henry Corrales vs Kai Kamaka III, and Sara McMann vs Leah McCourt, primarily--but the main card is all championships. Liz Carmouche will defend the women's flyweight title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane in what's expected to be Ilima-Lei's retirement bout, Ryan Bader will defend the heavyweight title against Linton Vassell, Cris Cyborg is finally back and will finally defend her featherweight title against Cat Zingano, and in a somewhat oddly-chosen top fight, Usman Nurmagomedov defends the lightweight title against Brent Primus, which should be very, very funny. And the UFC, showing how truly threatened they feel by their competition, is counterprogramming with UFC Fight Night: Dawson vs Green, a main event where both fighters aren't even ranked. It's by no means a bad card, though--almost everything is a potential banger, to be honest. Your preliminary card has Montana De La Rosa vs Stephanie Egger, Kanako Murata vs Vanessa Demopoulos, Nate Maness vs Mateus Mendonça, Aoriqileng vs Johnny Muńoz Jr., Chris Gutiérrez vs Montel Jackson and Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs Diana Belbiţă. Up on the main card, Alexander Hernandez will bash heads with Bill Algeo, Philipe Lins faces Ion Cuțelaba, Drew Dober throws hands with Ricky Glenn, Alex Morono tries to stifle Joaquin Buckley, Joe Pyfer faces Abdul Razak Alhassan, and in your main event Grant Dawson puts his winning streak on the line against Bobby Green. Everything slows way, way down after that. October 14th brings us UFC Fight Night: Yusuff vs Barboza, a somewhat understated but similarly propmising card. Darren Elkins is back! Rani Yahya wants another shot and he gets to try to beat Alatengheili to get it! "Russian Ronda" Irina Alekseeva wants to armbar Melissa Dixon! Edgar Chairez and Daniel Lacerda get to run back their fight from a couple weeks ago after the ref hosed it up! Cameron Saaiman is facing Christian Rodriguez, David Dvořák tries to deny Tatsuro Taira a ranking, Marc-André Barriault faces Michel Pereira, Jonathan Martinez and Adrian Yanez are competing for the same bit of hype, Jennifer Maia wants to continue her comeback against Viviane Araújo, and in the main event, Sodiq Yusuff goes for the biggest win of his career against Edson Barboza. And then we're off to the UAE for UFC 294: Makhachev vs Oliveira 2 on the 21st. It's a big one and the UFC is trying to throw a bunch of regionally appropriate fighters at it. Sharabutin Magomedov faces Bruno Silva, Victoria Dudakova will try to finally get Jinh Yu Frey out of the UFC, Abu Azaitar looks to stop Sedriques Dumas, Mohammad Yahya will trade lunchbox punches with Trevor Peek, Javid Basharat will meet Victor Henry, and Muhammad Mokaev looks for a big win against former titlist Tim Elliott. The main card is similar pumped up: Nathaniel Wood vs Muhammad Naimov, Said Nurmagomedov vs Muin Gafurov, Nassourdine Imavov vs Ikram Aliskerov, Magomed Ankalaev vs Johnny Walker, Khamzat Chimaev is finally back and faces Paulo Costa at 185, and in your main event, Islam Makhachev finally defends his lightweight title against an actual lightweight, except it's Charles Oliveira, the guy he beat to win the belt last year. But the month comes to an end just a few days before Halloween with Invicta FC 54: McCormack vs Wójcik, Invicta's first event in almost half a year. As they've been doing, it's short and sweet: July Dorny vs Riley Martinez at 145, Kristina Williams vs Dee Begley at 125, a pair of 115-pound fights featuring Hilarie Rose vs Andrea Amaro and former champion Valesca "Tina Black" Machado vs Isis Verbeek, and in your main event, new champion Danni McCormack defends her title against Contender Series winner and strawweight tournament finalist Karolina Wójcik.
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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 empty throne must be filled. The UFC put us all out of our collectively-wondering misery by announcing the co-main event for Jones/Miocic on November 11th, will, in fact, be returning former champion Jiří Procházka vs former middleweight champion Alex Pereira, with the winner getting the vacant title. This means we have two potential statistical outliers: Either Jiří will become the first person to ever be a two-time UFC champion after just four fights in the organization, or Pereira will become the first person to ever be a double-champion after just seven fights in the organization. Either way, we can all agree: Light-heavyweight isn't real. Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs  Sean Strickland - 28-5, 0 DefensesYup. Against all reason, we're here. The UFC has been gleefully pushing Sean Strickland for awhile--half because he's their favorite kind of lovely, bigoted white guy, half because he takes fights basically every ninety days and costs way less money. Is he anything close to the violent knockout machine they market him as? No, not really: He has two finishes in the last half-decade and all his other finishes came back when he was still a welterweight. Has he enjoyed a long tenure as a top contender in the making? Well, not exactly: He's been fringe top ten for quite awhile, but he spent most of 2022 losing repeatedly and was 2 for his last 4. Did he earn his title shot by vanquishing top contenders and establishing himself as their better? Not even remotely: He has two top fifteen-ranked wins in his entire career, he got beaten by actual top contenders like Jared Cannonier and Alex Pereira, and he got his shot at the champion thanks to his victory over Abusupiyan Magomedov, veteran of one single, unranked, 19-second UFC fight. But Dricus du Plessis didn't want to take his well-earned championship match while he was injured, so the UFC sent Strickland to Australia, and he did the drat thing anyway. Israel Adesanya turned out a deeply baffling performance where he proved completely unprepared for Strickland's orthodox 1-2 pressure game to the point that Strickland almost finished the fight in the first round, which, admittedly, would have been hilarious in a the-ending-of-In-the-Mouth-of-Madness kind of way. The UFC's already made clear a rematch is all but inevitable, but, god help us all, for this moment in time, Sean Strickland is the middleweight champion of the world, and we just get to deal with that and pretend things are normal. 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. After fighting about it in public all year, the UFC got its way: Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington will headline UFC 296 on December 16th. 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 first title defense will officially come against Brandon "Raw Dawg" Royval as the co-main event to UFC 296 on December 16th, marking the first flyweight championship fight not to include either Deiveson Figueiredo or Brandon Moreno since January of 2019. 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 - 16-3-1, 1 Defense, Sort OfEvery 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. A rematch was inevitable, and it came at UFC Noche on September 16th, and, like everything does, it ended in controversy. After an incredibly close fight that the media had split almost cleanly down the middle, the judges ruled the contest a split draw. Which wouldn't be crazy--were it not for said draw hinging on Mike Bell, who is typically one of MMA's most reliable judges, giving Grasso a completely, utterly inexplicable and inexcusable 10-8 score in the final round, without which Valentina Shevchenko would have won a split decision. So Grasso did not win, in the end, but she did defend her title, technically. But unless Valentina turns out to need an extended break for hand surgery, we're going right back to the rematch well. 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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Oct 1, 2023 17:52
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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 - 14-0, 2 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. This mindset only grew again after Bellator 299 on September 23rd, as Eblen faced Fabian Edwards, knocked him out in the third round, and nearly got into a post-fight brawl with his brother, UFC champion Leon Edwards. Eblen admits he has no idea what his future is or if Bellator will still be around, but he's considering a move to light-heavyweight with Vadim Nemkov leaving the division wide open. 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. And, like almost all ONE's MMA champs, he is promptly going to skip away from MMA completely and face Jonathan Haggerty for ONE's Featherweight Kickboxing Championship on November 3rd. 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. An entire 364 days later, she had her next fight: A special rules match, with MMA gloves but only punches and no takedowns or clinching allowed, against Muay Thai champion Nat "Wondergirl" Jaroonsak. Xiong knocked her out in the third round. What are we loving doing here? ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs   Stamp Fairtex - 10-2, 0 DefensesIt was slightly awkward when Seo Hee Ham and Stamp Fairtex were booked to meet at ONE Fight Night 14 in an interim atomweight title match, given the longstanding rumors of Angela Lee's retirement, and boy, it didn't get any less weird when ONE, which clearly knew what was going on, had Angela Lee announce that retirement just minutes before said match, which was promptly changed to an undisputed championship bout. But that's just part of how ONE rolls, as is their blatant attempts at favoritism, and boy, Stamp Fairtex is their most successful case study thus far. ONE signed her back in 2017 as a Muay Thai stadium champion, and within one fight in ONE she was their Atomweight Kickboxing Champion, and within two fights she was their Atomweight Muay Thai champion. Is this a statement about how quickly they push people they want or how thin their divisions can be? The answer, as always, is Yes. But none of that stopped Stamp from being really loving good at fighting, and as she transitioned to mixed martial arts she ran up a great record--with the sole exception of a two-fight series with Alyona Rassohyna, where she tapped out in the first and attempted to deny it, then won a real close split decision in an immediate rematch. ONE did not feel the need to book a rubber match, for some odd reason. Stamp won the 2021 Atomweight Grand Prix, got her shot at Angela Lee, and got choked out for her troubles, but a year and two wins later, she was good to go for another championship showdown. It wasn't easy--Seo Hee Ham dropped Stamp in the second round and, for some mysterious reason, when recapping the round, ONE chose to highlight Stamp's offense and not show it--but she stopped Ham with body shots in the third round, and in doing so became not just the undisputed champion, but the first person to ever actually knock Ham out in a fight. (Before you say it: No, Ayaka Hamasaki doesn't count, that was a corner stoppage.) ONE has their new star, and she's a hell of a striker. The question is: Will they actually book more MMA fights for her?  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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Oct 1, 2023 17:52
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Lid posted:They're both always full of poo poo but Dana's poo poo is more intolerable these days. I think they're both straight up awful, to be honest. Dana is objectively worse by virtue of being an open, avowed supporter of evil poo poo outside of the sport, but Chatri also crossed over to being kind of overwhelmingly annoying as a promoter for me as ONE transitioned into being kickboxing-focused, half because it made him double down even harder on his poo poo-talking, half because it's actively hurting his own company. Tons of fighters in his organization have spent years complaining in public about Chatri's refusal to either book them so they can fulfill their contracts or let them go fuckin' fight somewhere so they can make money to live. Even the champions complain incessantly on their goddamn instagrams about ONE being unable or unwilling to get them fights. There are eleven MMA champions in ONE, and it's October, and they've successfully promoted 4 MMA championship fights in 2023. But Reinier de Ridder is doing inter-weight-class grappling matches for peanuts, and Andrade is about to kickbox Haggerty, and Xiong Jing Nan is doing tiny-gloves boxing-only fights with Muay Thai fighters? And in the middle of that Chatri is doing stuff like alienating entire stables of kickboxers, poaching Takeru and then immediately pissing him off by talking about how the Japanese kickboxing scene is poo poo and K-1 is a joke and no one else can promote fighters the way ONE can, and meanwhile you've got people under contract with ONE who wait a year and a half to get booked to get squashed by Amir Aliakbari in ninety seconds. Dana White loving sucks, in a who's-the-worse-person war there's no contest, but as an MMA promoter Chatri's the loving pits.
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Oct 2, 2023 21:55
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It's a big day for insider info, because, in hilarious timing for our conversation about Chatri, Bloody Elbow (legally!) got their hands on the contract ONE signed with Adriano Moraes for his title fight with DJ in 2021 and it is, in what may shock and dismay you, probably the worst baseline for contracts in the entire sport. They scanned the entire thing and did a 40-minute podcast breaking it down that you can peruse if you want, but aside from all the normal lovely stuff the UFC and Bellator already do, your more egregious highlights include:
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Oct 3, 2023 22:04
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Alright, let's get this month going. CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 77: THE NADIR OF THE APEX  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7 FROM THE UNCARING PIT OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM VIA ESPN+ Corporate problemsolving is one of society's most underrated sources of comedy. The UFC has been getting flak for its matchmaking since the end of the pandemic--or, rather, the point at which the world's economic engines collectively decided it was tired of even pretending to care about the pandemic--when they announced they would keep running cards out of the Apex, its bubble-dome home. It was cost-conscious, it was easy to deal with travel, and it made the logistics of fulfilling their exhausting ESPN schedule much simpler. And that meant cards with little to no value in name or rankings. This card is no different: There are Last week, the UFC announced its prospective solution: Making the rankings a top 20 instead of a top 15, so that more fighters are ranked and, therefore, more ranked fighters are fighting. I don't miss my days of being in corporate boardrooms. I don't miss the bad solution. But I am incredibly glad I have enough distance now that I get to laugh at them. To the UFC employees who don't have that option: I feel your pain.  kid kvenbo. MAIN EVENT: KING FISHING LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (20-1-1, #10) vs Bobby Green (30-14-1, NR) Three months ago, I summarized the inherent weirdness of Grant Dawson's status in the UFC like this. CarlCX posted:If there is a weird aspect to Dawson's career, that's the one. He's a Contender Series baby, he's only got one loss on his record, he's been killing people in the UFC--all but two of his seven wins were stoppages--and he's just #15, and he's only now getting a chance to move up the ladder. At a time when other promotional darlings were playing rankings hopscotch, Grant Dawson, who has not lost a fight since 2016, is divisionally less important than Matt Frevola and Jalin Turner. Hold onto that a moment, and allow me to be self-indulgent and quote myself again. Two weeks ago, I wrote this regarding the lightweight showdown between Rafael Fiziev and Mateusz Gamrot: CarlCX posted: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's one event later, and we're about to have this same conversation again, because we have another lightweight main event and it is, in some ways, even worse. Grant Dawson is in the best position of his career. He's still a favored Contender Series winner, he's still undefeated in the UFC (albeit including a draw against Ricky Glenn, which we'll come back to later), and now he's finally, officially one of the ten best lightweights in the world. For all of the UFC's trouble booking Dawson, that coronation fight fell right in their laps: Damir Ismagulov, a top-ten lightweight, wanted to retire but had one fight left on his contract, and he had historical trouble against bigger, stronger wrestlers, and, conveniently, the company just happened to have one they'd been trying to figure out how to fit into the picture for years. One dominant mauling and one rear-naked choke later, Grant Dawson has his #10 and the UFC has their new American wrestleman in the rankings. Sure, it took them years to get him there, but they finally managed. How do you follow up on that momentum? Do you get Dawson in there against someone in the top ten? Do you give him a nearest-neighbor fight against one of the potential contenders beneath him? Of course not! That would be stupid. You book him against Bobby Green. I like Bobby Green. I have said this many times and I hope I get to say it many more: Bobby Green has long been one of my favorite fighters to watch. His defensive instincts, his speed, his movement and his pinpoint counterpunches all make him an exceptionally unusual and exceptionally interesting style matchup for anyone in the sport, and that's been true for almost two decades, now. He's fantastic! He also spent the last year and a half going 1-2 (1). He got the poo poo beat out of him in an incredibly ill-advised last-minute fill-in fight against Islam Makhachev, which, hey, it's Islam Makhachev. And then he got knocked out standing by Drew Dober, which, for a guy known for his striking defense, is less than ideal. And then he rebounded against Jared Gordon, except that rebound took the form of Green human-torpedoing his skull into Gordon's jaw and getting the fight thrown out over the unintentional foul. How DID Green get this fight? Oh, that's right--he choked out the ghost of Tony Ferguson, marking the sixth straight loss for ol' T-Ferg. That's enough to get you back into top ten contendership, I suppose. Say, what's Tony doing next? Why, he's fighting Paddy Pimblett in December. So, just to recap: It took Grant Dawson eight wins to get into the top ten, and now he has to defend his spot against Bobby Green, who's coming off a No Contest against Jared Gordon and a victory over Tony Ferguson, and Tony Ferguson, who has lost six fights in a row, has a big, splashy pay-per-view matchup with Paddy Pimblett, who got that match because he received the worst judges' decision of 2022 in his victory over Jared Gordon, the man Bobby Green also failed to beat. And Jared Gordon is fighting Mark Madsen on the prelims next month. This is the reason fans are unhappy. It's not about who does or doesn't have a number next to their name, that's just the way you keep things organized. It's about the matchmaking not loving mattering. Did Jared Gordon's win over Damir Ismagulov really matter? Sure, he was ranked, but he was also retired right up until a lawyer told him the UFC still had him on paper. And now he could turn his number over to Bobby Green, winner of one straight fight, because Green beat the shambling remains of Tony Ferguson, who, on a six-fight losing streak, is now about to be blatantly used by the UFC to prop up their biggest marketing story of the last two years in Paddy Pimblett, who will, without a doubt, be jetpacked over all these poor fuckers if he wins. And that's not even a controversial statement anymore! Once upon a time it would be the kind of whiny bullshit internet thing you said about the UFC before your scathing hot takes about how Hector Lombard was actually the best middleweight on the planet, but now it's just--normal. They did it with Sean O'Malley. They did it with Sean Strickland. In a couple months they're doing it again with Colby Covington. How many fights do you think Bo Nickal will have before he gets a title shot? If the UFC brought Brock Lesnar back and gave him an immediate shot at Jon Jones and the heavyweight championship, would you even bat an eye anymore? Islam Makhachev is about to fight a rematch with Charles Oliveira. Justin Gaethje just fought a rematch with Dustin Poirier. If Alexander Volkanovski defeats Ilia Topuria next January (I'm guessing that's when they'll do it, anyway), he will almost certainly get a rematch with Makhachev himself. Gaethje will almost certainly fight whoever's left. Michael Chandler is chasing a match with Conor McGregor. Rafael Fiziev is out indefinitely pending the severity of his knee injury. Half of the top ten is frozen in amber and the other half is spinning its wheels, fighting each other and trading numbers over and over while they wait for someone to get injured, go on a skid, or straight-up retire. So if you're a fan, unless you're specifically a big Grant Dawson or Bobby Green guy--what are you hoping for, here? If Dawson wins, it does nothing for him. If Green wins, he's a #10 who got knocked stiff by the #14 less than a year ago, meaning more rematches. Nothing can do anything for anyone's momentum because there's nowhere for that momentum to carry them. It's no longer earned, it's granted by marketing. Because--of course--if you're the kind of loving weirdo who gives a poo poo about divisional momentum, well, you're already watching, so they don't need to appeal to you anyway, and can put their energy into figuring out how to convince people to care about Paddy Pimblett instead. Loving this stupid loving sport is deeply loving frustrating. If you're wondering if I'm talking so much about the surroundings of this fight because I don't have much to say about the fight itself, gold star. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION. Green's a better wrestler than he gets credit for, but he's not good enough to stop Dawson. He likes to footwork himself back into the cage to make space for his slips and counters, and that's exactly where Dawson's going to tie him up and drag him down. Green's defense is solid--the only person to finish him on the ground since 2008 is Islam loving Makhachev--and I don't think Dawson's going to be able to crack it enough to get a stoppage. So it's five rounds of grind. Congratulations. CO-MAIN EVENT: TECHNICALLY A CO-MAIN EVENT  MIDDLEWEIGHT: Joe Pyfer (11-2) vs Abdul Razak Alhassan (12-5)This is the co-main event we're going with? Not the fight with the ranked strawweights? Not Drew Dober, who's right there, two fights away? I mean, if you're sure, man, but we just finished talking about the final triumph of marketing, do we really have to put a stamp on it already? It's not that either of these guys are bad. They're good! But Joe Pyfer just joined the UFC a year ago after his second shot at the Contender Series--he got his arm broke on a slam the first time around in 2020--and he knocked out the 0-4 Alen Amedovski and the 10-9 Gerald Meerschaert, and, uh, that's enough now, I guess. What's even crazier is--by Pyfer's own admission!--this is a smaller showing than the UFC had targeted for him. They wanted Joe Pyfer to fight Nassourdine Imavov, the #11-ranked middleweight in the world. After two fights! We just loving talked about this! Christ. The only reason Joe Pyfer is not fighting to be in one-or-two-fights-away-from-the-title position is because Pyfer, himself, told the UFC he wasn't ready yet. Which is a hell of a thing, honestly. Having enough self-awareness about yourself as a fighter to say you know you need more time to prepare before you fight the absolute best of the best--and, more importantly, you value yourself enough to know you're not letting the UFC push you into the deep end while you're still on their entry-level pay--is extremely unusual in any era of MMA, let alone the Contender Series Gold Rush present. Joe Pyfer's a hard puncher and a solid wrestler and a potential top talent, but it's okay to take your time getting there. So the UFC is giving him someone who is, respectfully, nowhere near a ranking. Abdul Razak Alhassan's been kicking around the UFC since 2016, and he's almost been cut twice already. By the end of 2020 he was 4-3, which isn't great, but it's not terrible, and at the UFC's level of competition, nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately, he was fighting at 170 pounds, he missed weight in two consecutive fights, he lost both of those fights, and in the latter he got knocked cold in thirty seconds. That, generally, is the point at which you accept one of two changes in career direction: A step up to the next weight class, or a quick walk to the door. Alhassan chose to move to middleweight, counting on his power and his defensive grappling to carry him through. It didn't; he was immediately wrestled to death by Jacob Malkoun. But the UFC gave him one last shot, and he put his foot through Alessio di Chirico's temple in seventeen seconds, and by god, that was enough to keep him. Alhassan's still not out of the woods--he dropped a split decision to Joaquin Buckley in 2022, but came back this past January to knock out the man I called ol' lunchbox hands before Trevor Peek took the nickname from him, Claudio Ribeiro. It'd be disingenuous to say the UFC isn't setting him up as a fall guy here, though. Pyfer's a huge favorite, both in marketing and in betting, and it's not hard to see why. He's much bigger, he hits even harder, his chin is much more reliable, and he's a talented enough wrestler that Alhassan's pocket judo isn't going to give him the space he needs to avoid Pyfer's punches. JOE PYFER BY TKO. Maybe next time he'll decide he's ready for Imavov. MAIN CARD: ALL PUNCHES, ALL THE TIME WELTERWEIGHT: Alex Morono (23-8) vs Joaquin Buckley (16-6) There is no fighter more dependable than Alex Morono. For almost eight years, now, Alex Morono has delivered a consistent, persistent level of performance within the UFC: Not a ton of wrestling, not much kicking, just walk the gently caress forward, aim a 1-2 down the pipe, and repeat until someone stops you. Unfortunately, someone very recently and very violently stopped him. Morono was on the cusp of his best win in years last December after outboxing Santiago Ponzinibbio for two and a half rounds, only to get dropped on his face by a right hand midway through the third. But he rebounded against Tim Means, and he did it--try to be surprised--by 1-2ing him until he could choke him. This style has been enough to rack up 12 wins in the biggest mixed martial arts company in the world, because, as Sean Strickland proved, striking expertise is a collective delusion. When the apocalypse comes, and seedy neo-paleolithic businessmen get tired of hunting and gathering and begin charging people nuts and berries to watch other people fight for their amusement, the new welterweight division will have only two constants: Colby Covington will still be getting unearned title shots thanks to his scandalous comments about The Guys From The Other Cave, and Alex Morono will still be throwing 1-2s. Consistency has been tougher on Joaquin Buckley. After rocketing straight to viral stardom thanks to his Tekken-rear end one-legged screw-kick knockout over Impa Kasanganay back in 2020 Buckley found himself cast in a series of fights put together in the hopes of getting him chances to build a big, media-friendly highlight reel. But you cannot put lightning in a bottle, and the repeated attempts to do so have hurt him as often as helped him. For every Jordan Wright or Antonio Arroyo they've had Buckley violently murder, he's gotten his head kicked off by Alessio Di Chirico, or gotten countered and dropped by Chris Curtis, or simply been strictly outfought by well-rounded guys like Nassourdine Imavov. Some part of this, counterintuitively, is the greater difficulty Buckley's had enforcing his wrestling game against higher-level opponents. His dangerous kicks and counters work in part because he's smartly mixed takedowns into his striking, and once he has his opponents uncertain if they're defending a right hook or a single-leg takedown, they're easier to pick off. When he can't get that half of his gameplan working effectively, he becomes easier to time, and that gets him into trouble against the Imavovs of the world. I cannot help feeling that's going to make a difference here, too. Buckley's a more varied striker than Morono, he hits harder and he swings a lot more weapons, but he's going to have considerable trouble wrestling Morono down to interrupt his timing and if he can't get Morono out in the first two rounds, he'll be tired by the third. ALEX MORONO BY DECISION, even with the awareness that Buckley could turn his lights out at any time. LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (26-12) vs Ricky Glenn (22-7-2)Drew Dober has been dancing this dance in the UFC for an entire goddamn decade. Win fights, look great, get smashed by a top guy. It was Olivier Aubin-Mercier in 2016, it was Beneil Dariush in 2019, it was Islam Makhachev in 2021, and in 2023, after a fantastic three-fight winning streak that culminated in Dober becoming the only man not named Dustin Poirier to ever stop Bobby Green on his feet, when Dober looked more prepared than ever to finally take his place in the rankings, it was Matt "The Steamrolla" Frevola who punched him down the ladder yet again. Dober's hard-nosed old-school wrestle-boxing style is ageless and beautiful and effective, but it's also predictable, and against better wrestlers like Makhachev or better brawlers like Frevola he's predestined to run into trouble. Ricky Glenn is trouble, but he's incredibly weird trouble. On his good days Ricky Glenn is one of the best fighters in the world. He's fast, he's got heavy hands, his counter-wrestling is tremendous and he has enough of a gas tank to punish people for an entire fifteen minutes. On his bad days, he gets controlled and outworked by fighters he should, on paper, destroy. I said we'd come back to Ricky Glenn in the main event writeup: He's the one man in the UFC who kept Grant Dawson at bay. He stuffed 8 of Grant's 11 takedowns, he staved off all of his attempts at ground-and-pound, and in the final round he outlanded an exhausted Dawson 66 to 3, nearly finishing the fight twice in the process. It only earned him a draw, but Grant Dawson's a hell of a draw to have on your record. And then, to follow the best performance of his career, Glenn went on the shelf for a year and a half. We didn't see him again until this past April, when he came back looking weird again and Christos Giagos knocked him out in a minute and a half. So is it Good Ricky or Bad Ricky? Either way, I cannot help thinking Dober's a difficult matchup for him. Glenn succeeds in large part on his strength and endurance, but Dober is a much, much harder puncher, and he only needs one or two chances to take you out. If Ricky Glenn is fully back on his bullshit, he could turn Dober inside out anyway. But, personally? DREW DOBER BY TKO. FEATHERWEIGHT: Bill Algeo (17-7) vs Alexander Hernandez (14-6) Bill Algeo had a real weird 2022. After spending his first year in the UFC slipping beneath the radar while somehow getting beaten up by multiple men named Ricardo there was virtually no awareness of, let alone expectations for, Algeo. And then he beat the brakes off Joanderson Brito, a top featherweight prospect and Contender Series winner. And then he met Herbert Burns, the smaller Burns brother, and beat him so badly he scored a TKO (Exhaustion) victory, a result rarely recorded since the end of the old days where you could win by testicular claw, or by the other guy forgetting he couldn't kick you because he wore shoes. After all the struggle, Bill Algeo had the attention he deserved! And then he dropped a decision to Andre Fili and, whoosh, right back down to the ground floor you go. A submission victory over "Downtown" TJ Brown this past April got a modicum of momentum back, but the road ahead is rough. Particularly when it's paved with people like Alexander Hernandez. "The Great Ape" was considered the next big thing at lightweight when he made his UFC debut by murdering Beneil Dariush and beating down Olivier Aubin-Mercier--but that was all the way back in 2018. Donald Cerrone shut him down with a headkick in January of 2019, and in the almost five years hence, Hernandez has not managed to string two wins together. Over the last year, thanks in no small part to the UFC's periodically funky matchmaking schedule forcing him to not cut weight, he's been hopping back and forth between 145 and 155 pounds--a lightweight submission loss to Renato Moicano here, a featherweight TKO loss to Billy Quarantillo there, a lightweight decision victory over Jim Miller because the universe can't let Jim Miller have nice things, and now, here he is, right back at 145 again. It doesn't seem like great career planning, and this doesn't seem like a great fight for him, either. Normally Hernandez has a power advantage over his opponents that carries his strategic striking plans to fruition, but Algeo's strong enough to ragdoll people and, to boot, a much bigger fighter. BILL ALGEO BY DECISION unless Hernandez can pin him in the pocket and tee off. PRELIMS: LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Philipe Lins (17-5) vs Ion Cuțelaba (17-9-1 (1)) It's time to swing and bing. Stand and band. Sprawl and brawl. Wait, gently caress, that one still works. Like so many light-heavyweights, Philipe Lins is a BJJ black belt with a bunch of very impressive skills under his belt, and like so many light-heavyweights, essentially none of them carry any cache in the greater public memory of his career. Jim Varney could do Shakespeare, but the people wanted Ernest. Lins will go forth, and he will punch like only a light-heavyweight can, and if that means every once in awhile Tanner Boser knocks him out so goddamn hard the universe intervenes and sees to it that every fight offered to Lins falls through for two straight years just to give his cerebral fluids time to congeal again, by god, that is how it has to be. Ion Cuțelaba just doesn't really give a gently caress about anything. If a fight goes longer than seven minutes, it typically means Ion Cuțelaba is having a bad time. Typically, when you make some veiled reference to a fighter being a berserker, you're trying to communicate something about their tendency to swing big right hands or their preference for avoiding the ground game. Ion is a berserker in the sense that he will expend himself completely in the first three minutes of a fight if he feels that is appropriate, and he will do it with giant slam takedowns and spinning backfists and gassing himself out breaking someone's face with mounted elbows. Which is why he's still here despite being 6-8-1 in the UFC. But he beat Tanner Boser last April, so in terms of MMAth, he's a lock, right? PHILIPE LINS BY TKO. Lins is a stiffer, cleaner puncher, and he's demonstrated an ability to use the fence to stay on his feet, and those two things alone, executed successfully, can neutralize half of Ion's offense. If Lins stays off the mat and keeps Ion off of him, he stops him by the third. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Karolina Kowalkiewicz (15-7, #15) vs Diana Belbiţă (15-7, NR) The return of Karolina Kowalkiewicz was one of the few feelgood stories of the last year in mixed martial arts. KK was an early standout in the strawweight division, and the earliest woman to make then-ascendant Joanna Jędrzejczyk look mortal, but she ultimately lost her title fight and, uh, almost every fight she had for the next half-decade. Some of it was harder competition, some of it was a lack of personal focus, but after a 10-0 start to her career she entered 2022 at 12-7 with most of the world wondering what she was still doing in the UFC. And now she's on a three-fight winning streak, because sports are great. Diana Belbiţă got herself into the theoretical chopping block much faster--relatively speaking, anyway, as she's actually been in the UFC for four years already, but only managed a fight once per year. This will, if she makes it to the cage, be the first two-fight year of her UFC tenure. Which is good, because by god, she needs the momentum. Her first three years saw her go 1-3, which is an awfully bad ratio, and it only gets worse when you realize two of the three women who beat her proceeded to get cut from the UFC afterwards. Diana managed to save her job by beating Maria Oliveira this past June--for which Oliveira got cut instead, having gone 1-3. In fact, the only other person Diana beat, Hannah Goldy, is now, also, 1-4 in the UFC. It's so weird how this keeps happening! If you're picking up that I think this fight seems one-sided, you're astute. Belbiţă's got a big size advantage, and given a chance she could use it to bully Karolina, but she's also proven herself real vulnerable to good grapplers, and Karolina's awful good at finding positions on people. KAROLINA KOWALKIEWICZ BY SUBMISSION after eventually finding the rear naked choke. FLYWEIGHT: Nate Maness (14-3) vs Mateus Mendonça (10-1) Man, one fight can make a world of difference. Midway through last year, Nate Maness was one of the biggest prospects the UFC had at 135 pounds. Sure, he got beaten by Umar Nurmagomedov, but for one, Umar's undefeated and already hand-picked by the UFC as a future title challenger, and for two, while he did not win a single round, he did become the only person to actually make it to a decision against Umar in the UFC, which is worth an awful lot. When Maness announced he was taking his heavy-handed choke-jumping talents down to the flyweight division I wasn't a fan--I am rarely a fan of going down in weight--but having been bounced definitively from contendership, I understood, and was very curious to see how Maness would do at 125 pounds. And then Tagir Ulanbekov, who was himself bounced from contendership in his previous fight, choked Maness out in one round. Suddenly, Nate Maness is on the outs at an entirely new division. Mateus Mendonça, by contrast, is just trying to get a second chance at a first impression. Mateus had what is becoming a progressively more familiar path to the UFC--fight a bunch of iffy-looking fights on the regional filler scene, beat a veteran, get on the Contender Series, kill a man with your bare hands for the pleasure of your lanista--but in his UFC debut this past January he ran into the undefeated Javid Basharat and got trounced so thoroughly that by the end of the fight he was just throwing up hail mary submissions and an entirely indifferent Basharat was shrugging and punching him in the face. But that makes this fight oddly tricky. I think, on the whole, Nate Maness is a better fighter than Mateus Mendonça. He punches straighter and he's got a better chin and he's got a deeper gas tank. However: His aggressive style leaves openings for people to jump on him, which is exactly how Ulanbekov forced him to the ground, got him on defense, and choked him out. Mateus is so hyper-aggressive as a grappler that he can and will jump on a half-dozen submission attempts if he thinks one will work, and Maness, historically, is willing to hand them over. My heart says Maness, but my head says MATEUS MENDONÇA BY SUBMISSION. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Kanako Murata (12-2) vs Vanessa Demopoulos (9-5) Every once in awhile the MMA internet gets a new Japanese fighter to root for in the desperate and in no way problematic hope that they can feel like Pride is alive again, and when Kanako Murata started making fight walkouts in the mask Kazushi Sakuraba gave her, she slid immediately into place. When she won Invicta's strawweight championship people were jazzed, when she won her 2020 UFC debut people were excited, and when she fought Virna Jandiroba in 2021 and within two rounds got stopped thanks to a busted face and an entirely broken arm, well, anyone who's gone through the Pride cycle knows how it inevitably ends. Murata's been gone for almost two and a half years, but that's not just because of Jandiroba; while training out in Thailand, Murata managed to eat a knee to the face that tore her upper lip in half, broke her jaw, and cost her four teeth. Growing teeth back takes time. Vanessa Demopoulos has, in fact, fought her entire five-fight UFC career in the time Murata's been out of action. After joining the UFC as a last-minute injury replacement against JJ Aldrich, Demopoulos unexpectedly established herself as one of the strawweight division's more threatening grapplers, a little double-leg takedown tank that aggressively threw out armbars as soon as contact with the ground was made. This was enough to get her three straight wins in the UFC, which threatened a ranking, but she got completely outfought by Karolina Kowalkiewicz this past May, and combined with having missed the strawweight limit for the fight, she's now back to paying her dues at the bottom of the ladder. This fight is more interesting than it's going to get credit for. Murata was forcing Virna Jandiroba to work her rear end off on the ground, and Jandiroba's one of the scariest grapplers at 115 pounds--it took Jandiroba's striking and strength advantage to really beat Murata. Vanessa's determined and tenacious, but Murata's grappling is going to be a tough nut to crack, and it may behoove her to try to keep the fight standing in the hopes that her speed advantage will wear Murata down. Here's the problem, though: I'm an MMA internet person, so KANAKO MURATA BY DECISION. BANTAMWEIGHT: Johnny Munoz Jr. (12-3) vs Aoriqileng (24-11) I've watched Johnny Munoz Jr. fight a half-dozen times, now, and I've watched a bunch of his fights repeatedly during the fight research I do to pretend any of my predictions mean anything, and every time I see him my brain goes through an Oprah-Uma-style comedy routine with itself about his nickname. Kid Kvenbo? Kid Kvenbo. It's not like the nickname is a mystery, he's talked openly about it: Kvenbo is a tribute to his father, and "Kid" is because once you become a man you get comfortable, so as a Kid, he will stay forever hungry. Kid Kvenbo. Typically, when you're about to half your sixth fight in the UFC and people primarily remember your somewhat goofy nickname, that's a bad sign. Aoriqileng, on the other hand, I've just sort of given up on. I got emotionally invested in his potential as a real tough, hard-hitting wrestler, and, hey, you burned me once by getting beat by Cody Durden, I can cope with that level of sadness. But when Aiemann Zahabi knocks you cold in sixty-four seconds? By god, I turned on Drako Rodriguez and I'll turn on you, too. Do you think I won't root for Kid Kvenbo, Aoriqileng? Do you think I won't do it? How far do you think you can push me before I jump off the train? It's too late. I can't let myself be hurt again. Much like Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva, I just can't let you get close. JOHNNY MUNOZ JR. BY DECISION. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Montana de la Rosa (12-8-1) vs JJ Aldrich (12-6) This fight, on background, feels like an example of just how wild the swings in the rankings can be. Montana de la Rosa is riding a two-fight losing streak, including a loss to Maycee Barber, who's now the #8 Women's Flyweight in the world, and Tatiana Suarez, who could be fighting for the 115-pound championship any second the UFC wants her to. Before that? She beat Ariane Lipski, which will become important momentarily, and she went to a majority draw--one she arguably should have won--against Mayra Bueno Silva, who just choked out Holly Holm to become the #3 fighter at Women's Bantamweight, a whole class up from here. But she's 0-2 in the last year, meaning this could be a pink slip fight for her. JJ Aldrich, a longtime hype train recipient who's just never quite put the pieces together, is coming off a successful win that ended her own 0-2 slide--but that first loss was to Erin Blanchfield, the #2 Women's Flyweight in the UFC, and Ariane Lipski, the woman her opponent knocked out just two years ago. To put that more plainly: Within their last four fights, these two women have done battle with top contenders at all three women's weight classes in the UFC, and they shared one common opponent who they split a win and loss against, and now, having gone on that odyssey, they're curtain-jerking a preliminary card with the possibility that one--or even both--could have their jobs in jeopardy should they lose. Fighting: It's loving weird. MONTANA DE LA ROSA BY DECISION.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:23
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4043790 GDT for Dawson/Green and Bellator 300 is up. UFC starts in 25-30 pending the prelim cancellations making poo poo late, Bellator starts in about three hours.
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Oct 7, 2023 20:38
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Hey, remember how nice it was that Derrick Lewis got a really cool win and we were happy about it and kind of sort of wanted him to retire before someone else made him look terrible again? https://twitter.com/mma_orbit/status/1711430851156676964
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Oct 10, 2023 03:00
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Man. Props to Volk for taking it, but given he wasn't even supposed to be done recovering from surgery until the start of September, taking the Makhachev rematch a month and a half later on ten days' notice is, uh. Well, it's exactly the kind of thing Alexander Volkanovski would do. Now let's wait for Paulo Costa to pull out of the Khamzat fight.
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Oct 11, 2023 03:54
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STONE COLD 64 posted:I know this sounds crazy but i kind of wish it were non title? Just a true clash of the champs It'd be nice, but the UFC demands the marketing and I bet part of the scramble for this is, being a UAE event, you'd fuckin' BETTER have a title fight in the main event or they're gonna get real, real upset. Also how much does this suck for Mateusz Gamrot, who was just announced as the backup fighter like two days ago
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Oct 11, 2023 04:32
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Yeah, Costa is reportedly officially out. Marvin Vettori apparently turned down the short-notice fight so now it's scramble time to see who they can get to fight Khamzat in a week and a half.
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Oct 11, 2023 05:55
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I think Oliveira's still real upset that the beginning of the end of their first fight, after all the preparation he did for wrestling, was Islam just loving braining him with a right hand. Also, you know who's gotta be really mad? Ilia Topuria. They were just about to announce his title shot for January and now who the gently caress knows when it happens.
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Oct 11, 2023 08:39
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Before we move on completely to next week's wild clusterfuck, we have one more week of Apexing to deal with. CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 78: KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14 FROM THE SCREAMING QUIET OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM VIA ESPN+ It's another week and we're still here, in the Apex, having fights for nobody. I feel like this event has barely gotten marketed, to be honest. Even last week's Dawson vs Green got SOME attention, but we're here in fight week and thus far even the UFC's Youtube channel has a thirty-second teaser and a three-minute Yusuff/Barboza preview and buddy, that's it. Their eyes are already on next week's pay-per-view. We are here to die in silence. But we will die together. And hey, this card only has one fight above 155 pounds on it, so that's pretty cool.  boy all the drama for next week sure is making it hard to focus on this MAIN EVENT: HE'S RIDING HARD TO CATCH THAT HERD BUT HE AIN'T CAUGHT 'EM YET FEATHERWEIGHT: Sodiq Yusuff (13-2, #11) vs Edson Barboza (23-11, #13) This is a hard luck story. This is an unfortunate booking story. This is a story about the intersection of favoritism and kicking people as hard as you loving can. "Super" Sodiq Yusuff has been very good for quite awhile. He got picked up off the Contender Series back in 2018, right around when we all began accepting the unfortunate inevitability of its place in the sport's future, and he was, for a time, one of its top prospects. He punched like a truck, his wrestling was decent if not great, he was a strong, solid all-around fighter. And the UFC really wanted to push Contender Series veterans to the top, and they saw a top ten star in Yusuff, and they wanted him to prove it. So they booked him against Edson Barboza. It is important to put Edson Barboza in perspective. Once upon a time, Barboza, too, was seen as a top prospect in the sport. He had some of the fastest, most violent Muay Thai kicks in the sport, he was shutting people off with leg strikes, body strikes and head strikes sometimes in sequence, he crushed Terry Etim with the most famous wheel kick in the history of the sport--he was signed to the UFC at 6-0, which was, at the time, almost unheard of. But that time was 2010. Ten years later in 2020 Barboza was 20-9 and had lost five of his last six fights. Sure, two of those were universally derided split decisions, but the other three were vicious, one-sided beatings from top lightweights. Barboza wasn't the shining star he used to be. Normally, this is where the UFC tries to rehab you if they can. Edson Barboza, unfortunately, had two things working against him: He was enough of a name to hold value, and he was enough of a problem to be on management's bad side. Edson famously--publicly--asked the UFC to release him from his contract in early 2020. It was the culmination of years of struggles with the UFC: His unhappiness with his matchmaking, his low pay, and the persistent feeling of being set up to lose. Seeing how people like Gegard Mousasi and Ryan Bader and Kyoji Horiguchi and Demetrious Johnson were flourishing in other organizations, Edson wanted to go ply his trade somewhere--anywhere--else. And then he re-signed. He got his money, they kept a marketable fighter, and they immediately threw Dan Ige and Sodiq Yusuff at him in the hopes of continuing to build their young new stars. But Yusuff had to pull out with an injury, and that cancellation sent both men down an entirely new trajectory. Edson Barboza wound up meeting and dismantling popular, up-and-coming prospects like Makwan Amirkhani and Shane Burgos. The wins breathed new life into his career. Sodiq Yusuff wound up meeting Arnold Allen, one of the best featherweights on the planet. Allen ended Yusuff's winning streak and killed his momentum on the spot. Yusuff has been struggling to get that spot back for the last two and a half years. He beat Alex Caceres, but it wasn't a hugely memorable fight and barely moved the needle. He was promised a big showdown with Giga Chikadze, only for Chikadze to withdraw and leave Sodiq fighting "Shameless" Don Shainis, a regional fighter who'd been up against the 16-104 Jay Ellis just a few months prior--so Yusuff popping his head off with a guillotine in thirty seconds meant so little that Yusuff was visibly angry about it afterwards. Barboza, meanwhile, was given a chance to shine--a huge, flashy, striker-vs-striker matchup with the UFC's newest kickboxing featherweight, Giga Chikadze--and Chikadze destroyed him. The UFC, ever-sympathetic to Edson and in no way holding his contract negotiations against him, followed it up by immediately resuming booking him into fights with power wrestlers he stood no chance of defeating. Bryce Mitchell turned him into a pretzel with almost no effort. They weren't done, either: They planned to once again feed Barboza to an up-and-coming star, this time Ilia Topuria, an even better wrestler with even more dangerous hands, but Edson was saved by blowing out his knee in training and needing half a year to return to competition. I mean, "saved" may be the wrong word, but pick your poison between a knee injury or Ilia Topuria sitting on your chest and caving your skull in. So, almost three years to the day they first scheduled this fight, we're giving it one more try. Sodiq Yusuff wants to fight someone more important than Don Shainis; Edson Barboza, having just finished kneeing Billy Quarantillo's face off this past April, wants to string two wins together for just the second time since March of 2017. Can he do it? This one's tough. Sodiq's much physically stronger than Barboza and his gameplan revolves around similar tactics--kill the leg with kicks, sling the headkick when you've got it, hit the body when you've gotta get someone's hands either up or down to put them where you want them--but Barboza's longer, faster, and much more technically sound. That said, Yusuff can and will pick him up and throw him on the loving ground if he needs to. He's done it to better wrestlers before. I'm choosing to believe in Barboza's speed ultimately making the difference and, ultimately, chipping Yusuff out of the fight. EDSON BARBOZA BY TKO. CO-MAIN EVENT: SUPPOSE THE ELEVATOR GUY SHOULD FORGET TO CLOSE THE DOOR WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jennifer Maia (21-9-1, #9) vs Viviane Araújo (11-5, #11) This is maybe the purest #10 or #10-adjacent fight the UFC has ever made. Really, both of these women are in extremely similar positions. They both came in as women's champions in other promotions--Jennifer Maia as the flyweight champion of Invicta, Viviane Araújo as the strawweight champion of Pancrase--and they both lost their prominent winning streaks within their first few UFC fights to former title contenders, with Liz Carmouche outworking Maia and Jessica Eye decisioning Araújo. They both rose up the ranks! They both beat Roxanne Modafferi! And immediately after beating Roxanne Modafferi, they both got kicked back down by the inevitable fighter of blondes, Katlyn Chookagian. Their last couple years are close, if time-displaced. Jennifer Maia took her turn first: After getting an exceedingly silly title shot at Valentina Shevchenko and rebounding by beating Jessica Eye, she took two contendership losses in a row--first, once again, to Katlyn Chookagian, and second to potential next title challenger Manon Fiorot. She's rebounded by taking out Maryna Moroz and Casey O'Neill, but she's not back up the ladder yet. Viviane Araújo came back from her Chookagianing by outfighting Andrea Lee, but then she, too, dropped a pair of contender fights, this time to future champion Alexa Grasso and persistent contender Amanda Ribas. Just to put a loving exclamation point on the alternate universe reality iterations of each other these two women are, Viviane was, just like Maia, supposed to fight Casey O'Neill last month. But an injury means these matter-and-antimatter versions of one another must collide. I, along with most of the world, am picking JENNIFER MAIA BY DECISION. Araújo has the stronger punches, but she rarely gets the chance to really uncork them. Maia's distance strikes tend to be cleaner and her body kick is a weapon Viviane's going to have trouble with. If they do wind up on the floor, it'll get interesting very fast. MAIN CARD: SIXTEEN TONS BANTAMWEIGHT: Jonathan Martinez (18-4, #13) vs Adrian Yanez (16-4, #14)This is my favorite fight on the card, but it also feels a bit unfair to Jonathan Martinez. "Dragon" is currently on the hottest streak of his career. After half a decade of going back and forth in the UFC he's finally on a two-year, five-fight winning streak and he's finally got a number by his name, thanks to winning the two biggest bouts of his life. One year ago Martinez welcomed superstar Cub Swanson to the 135-pound division by immediately ejecting him right back out of it after a second-round leg-kick TKO. He was promptly served up as a sizable underdog to Said Nurmagomedov, who was getting the hard push from the company, this past March--and he won an incredibly close coinflip of a decision after gritting out multiple near-finishes. But he did it. He made it into the top fifteen the hard way. I'm still, admittedly, a little lost on how Adrian Yanez made it into the top fifteen. That has nothing to do with Yanez as a fighter--I'm a huge fan. He punches like an absolute motherfucker, he's got fantastic timing on his counterpunching, and he rattled off a five-fight win streak between his post-Contender Series debut in 2020 and this past April. He's great! But four of his five UFC victories came against people who got cut anywhere from 3 to 0 fights after Yanez beat them. None of them have winning UFC records. None of them were anywhere close to ranked. But somehow, by beating them, Adrian Yanez suddenly became the #12 bantamweight in the world. That put him in the perfect position for the UFC, as they could throw him against the flagging, two-losses-in-a-row Rob Font in the hopes of getting their exciting new knockout artist in the top ten. And Font flattened him in three minutes. It's a bizarre juxtaposition. Both men had to win five straight fights to get ranked, but Martinez, y'know--beat ranked people. Even as a fighter I love watching fight, Yanez is a reminder that the rankings are more like commercially viable suggestions. JONATHAN MARTINEZ BY DECISION. Yanez is still one of the scariest power-punchers in the division and if he gets in close and uncorks a right hand at the right time this fight could be over in seconds, but Martinez is clean and solid enough at distance management that I think he keeps him at the end of his kicks for three rounds. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Michel Pereira (28-11) vs Andre Petroski (10-1) Michel Pereira has been having a very difficult time. How difficult? This difficult.  Pereira is--was--one of the best welterweight fighters in the company, but by sheer dumb luck he just couldn't get the fights going to prove it. It took years to finally make his way into a bout with perennial almost-contender Stephen Thompson, and then it took months of waiting and a full rescheduling to get there, and when the moment finally came to, after four years, prove that he belonged with the top contender at 170 pounds, Michel Pereira...blew his weight cut by four pounds. Didn't even come close. Stephen Thompson, the rare fighter who understands his worth, politely exercised his right to decline the fight. The UFC is still withholding his pay. Pereira got banished to the middleweight division for his crimes. He was supposed to be making his debut against Marc-André Barriault, a pleasantly brawly Canadian with a 5-5 UFC record. Barriault got hurt. Now, he gets Andre Petroski. Andre Petroski is 5-0 in the UFC. His only professional loss (not counting getting tapped out by Bryan Battle on The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ)) came against Aaron Jeffrey, a top contender in Bellator. Petroski fought the never-submitted Nick Maximov, choked him out in one minute, took on grappling champion Wellington Turman, mounted him and punched him stupid, met the absolute titan of wrestling that is Gerald Meerschaert and barely scraped a split decision from him because MMA is very funny. He's a great grappler with a monstrous top game and great, opportunistic chokes. I don't like this as a middleweight debut for Pereira. We haven't seen him fight at the weight class, he was preparing for a different, less-specialized fighter, and he hasn't had to fight a wrestling-specific fighter since Diego Sanchez. Pereira's got great takedown defense, but he's been using it against fighters who aren't great at taking people down. ANDRE PETROSKI BY DECISION feels like the coda to Michel Pereira's no good, very bad year. FLYWEIGHT: Edgar Cháirez (10-5) vs Daniel Lacerda (11-5) Boy, this is fun. This is an instant rematch--like, an instant rematch. They fought last month, and at the time I wrote this. CarlCX posted: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. But, uh. I already predicted this fight and it basically ended the way I thought it would, the ref just messed it up. My math on this hasn't changed. EDGAR CHÁIREZ BY SUBMISSION. Again. BANTAMWEIGHT: Christian Rodriguez (9-1) vs Cameron Saaiman (9-0) Sometimes, the UFC gets mad at you and punishes you for ruining their plans. Christian "CeeRod" Rodriguez was a 1-1 fighter with a visible vulnerability for power-grapplers and he was supposed to be a nice, solid victim for Raul Rosas Jr., the UFC's youngest hype project and Dana White's personal child soldier, an undefeated 18 year-old that is 100% inexhaustible wrestling all the time. First, Rodriguez pissed the UFC off after missing weight by two pounds, and second, he laid an absolutely uncomfortable beating on their teenaged wunderkind. By the end of the fight Rosas had whiffed 13 of his 16 takedown attempts, landed 0 strikes in the first two rounds, and ultimately been outstruck 83 to 2. Raul Rosas Jr., of course, is still a marketing darling, which is why he got a primetime television slot at Noche UFC last month against the does-not-belong-here, brought-in-to-lose Terrence Mitchell. Christian Rodriguez is curtain-jerking the main card of an under-advertised Apex fight night against the UFC's favorite South African, Cameron Saaiman. Saaiman has had his own difficulties within the UFC, but it's not for lack of talent or success--as you can see, he's undefeated overall and 3-0 in his UFC fights thus far. The problem is he keeps fuckin' cheating. He almost lost his UFC debut by disqualification and did eat a point deduction after blasting Steven Koslow with an illegal knee, and in his follow-up fight with Mana Martinez he only won a majority decision--thanks to losing ANOTHER point after repeatedly kicking Martinez in the groin. He could easily have lost a second for poking Martinez in the goddamn eye in the third round, too, but we don't do that, I guess. It wasn't until his last UFC fight that he finally scored a simple, un-controversial first-round TKO. Of course, that required a change of opponent, as his originally scheduled opponent withdrew. Who was that, again? Oh, right, it was Christian Rodriguez. Who did Saaiman wind up mauling in three minutes? Terrence Mitchell. How truly odd. CAMERON SAAIMAN BY DECISION. PRELIMS: FOR I WILL BE THE FIRST ONE THAT YOU'LL SEE FEATHERWEIGHT: Darren Elkins (27-11) vs TJ Brown (17-10) Darren Elkins, your candle burnt so bright. "The Damage" built an entire career on the back of repeatedly getting the poo poo beaten out of him and winning regardless, because when you're near-impossible to knock out and you've got the gritty wrestleboxing necessary to punch people stupid after they've exhausted themselves from physically harming you, you can go real, real far. Well, you can go pretty far. You can go about as far as the edge of the top fifteen. Once upon a time Elkins actually made it into the top ten, but that was half a decade ago. In the present Elkins is 3 for his last 9, none of those three victories came against people who are still employed by the UFC, and he's at the stage of his career where both cagey veterans like Cub Swanson and rising prospects like Jonathan "JSP" Pearce are eating him alive. "Downtown" TJ Brown exists in the gray space between those two categories. He's not a prospect, exactly--he's in his mid-thirties, this is his eighth UFC fight in four years, he's 3-4, he just finished GETTING finished by Bill Algeo back in April. He's not young, he's not old, he's not a nobody nor is he established. But he, too, is a wrestleboxer, and he, too, succeeds by being too tough for his own good, whether it's winning a fight despite Charles Rosa nearly kicking his legs to pieces or elbowing Erik Silva's face open. But you know me. If you give me an option, I prefer original recipe. DARREN ELKINS BY DECISION. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Tainara Lisboa (6-2) vs Ravena Oliveira (7-1-1) When last I wrote about Tianara Lisboa, it was for her UFC debut back in May. I was a bit perplexed by her signing--perplexed as to why, with all the women out there the UFC could sign, they were chasing down a 5-2 kickboxer who was fighting 1-4 and 0-1 and 0-0 people. Where exactly the UFC saw her fitting into the roster somewhat mystified me. She proved my prediction wrong: After struggling a little with Jessica Rose-Clark's clinch-wrestling she shut her down, outstriking, outgrappling and ultimately submitting her in the third round. Which is great, not just for showing she belongs, but as a demonstration of how well-rounded her skillset really is. Unfortunately, the "where does she fit into the roster" thing seems to still be a problem, because she's had two opponents on this card and neither of them works here. She was originally scheduled to welcome Russian prospect Darya Zheleznyakova to the UFC, and when Darya couldn't make it, rather than pulling out any of their bantamweight roster, the UFC pulled Ravena Oliveira out of her job as the flyweight champion of Brazil's Livramento Kombat Championship. If you're afraid you've missed another major MMA organization, don't worry: It's yet another in the seemingly endless procession of record-padding institutions, where 1-0 rookies fight 4-22-1 jobbers. It's now Ravena Oliveira's turn--her nickname is "Kenoudy" and by god I refuse to find out why--to be the baffling roster addition. Until her last fight, which would be her ninth professional contest, Ravena had fought exactly one person with a win on their record. Not a winning record--a single win. Only one of Ravena's opponents, in fact, has gone on to win a fight. And it's the one who beat her. So what do you really say? Ravena swings big right hands and clinches aggressively on the fence, but how do you gauge the skills of someone who's fighting people with minimal resistance? Let's start here: That one woman I mentioned Ravena fighting and beating who had more than one win? Her name is Simone da Silva, and this is the record of her last twenty professional combat sports bouts.  You may, subtly, notice a pattern. It took Ravena almost three full rounds. TAINARA LISBOA BY SUBMISSION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Terrance McKinney (14-6) vs Brendon Marotte (8-1) Oh, Terrance McKinney. I've gone through quite a journey with you. At one point I thought Terrance McKinney was jetpack-to-contendership material, and the UFC clearly agreed, and they very nearly got there when he almost punched out Drew Dober. But he overcommitted, got winded, and lost. And then he did it again. My faith in McKinney fell to the point that, when he fought this past July against a seemingly overmatched Nazim Sadykhov, I predicted thusly: CarlCX posted:Doctor stoppages are perfectly legit. Getting hosed up by Evan Elder for two rounds is slightly more concerning. TERRANCE MCKINNEY BY TKO, based on just how many strikes Sadykhov was taking to the face in that fight, but if he can make it out of the first round McKinney's slowing down will be a big problem for him. Marotte seems like a perfectly respectable bread-and-butter fighter. Single-legs, right hands, very little head movement, the way you live on the regional circuit. Do I think he's a bad fighter? No! He seems fine. Do I think he's above the you-must-be-this-tall-to-get-out-of-round-one-with-Terrance-McKinney line? I am afraid not. TERRANCE MCKINNEY BY TKO. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Irina Alekseeva (5-1) vs Melissa Dixon (5-0) It was a bit of a mixed debut for "Russian Ronda" Irina Alekseeva. On one hand she walked into the octagon this past April, took on one of the division's better grapplers in Stephanie Egger, and tore her knee apart in roughly two minutes. High marks! Unfortunately, on the other, she made said octagon walk after blowing her weight cut by five pounds, or half an entire weight class. Which is especially dangerous now that the UFC doesn't even have a featherweight division they could banish her to if they wanted. Being a genuinely dangerous grappler is great! Making weight is unfortunately also necessary. Melissa Dixon is something of an obligatory pickup for the UFC--as stated above, they were bringing in Darya Zheleznyakova, so it would've been a bit weird not to bring in the only woman to beat her. Great feather in your cap! Sure, Darya was beating the crap out of her on the feet, but honestly, that just makes it more impressive that Dixon toughed it out, got her in the clinch, chucked her and punched her until the fight ended. Dixon's big coming-out party on the international stage, unfortunately, was not to be: In a karmically appropriate moment for this fight, her big Ares FC championship match with Gisele Moreira got cancelled when Dixon missed weight and Moreira took her bag and went home. So I hope both women have their weight cuts in hand now, because boy, this could be a very fun fight. Alekseeva's a very creative grappler and we've seen just how quickly she can end a fight; Dixon's a tough, tricky wrestler with some real good trips out of the clinch. I hope this hits the ground and I hope we get a fun grappling match out of it. Ultimately, though: IRINA ALEKSEEVA BY SUBMISSION. BANTAMWEIGHT: Chris Gutierrez (19-4-2, #15) vs Alatengheili (16-8-2)What the gently caress are we doing down here? Chris Gutierrez was on a four-year unbeaten streak (it included a draw against Cody Durden he probably should have won) until this past April, and not only was he winning those fights, he was stopping people half the time. Hell, the UFC decided in its infinite wisdom that after his hall of fame-worthy career, Frankie Edgar's very last appearance as a professional fighter should be getting knocked into infinity by Gutierrez in front of a deeply unhappy Madison Square Garden crowd. But they did it! They gave him that rub! And then Gutierrez loses a decision to Pedro Munhoz, a guy who came a coinflip away from beating next title contender Marlon Vera, and boom, all the way down to the bottom of the preliminary barrel with you. We're only here at all because Gutierrez was supposed to fight Montel Jackson last week, and Jackson couldn't make it, and Alatengheili, the "Mongolian Knight," was supposed to fight our old WEC friend Rani Yahya here, and Yahya couldn't make it. Does it make a lot of sense to have a top fifteen bantamweight fighting Alatengheili at the rear end end of a TV card in the Apex? Of course not. Does it matter? You know as well as I do that the first rule of the internet is nothing matters. CHRIS GUTIERREZ BY DECISION. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Ashley Yoder (8-8) vs Emily Ducote (12-8) Ashley Yoder. By god. Ashley Yoder showed up in the UFC all the way back in 2016 on The Ultimate Fighter 23 (jesus christ), where she beat Jodie Esquibel, who ultimately retired at 6-7 a couple years ago, and lost in the second round against Kate Jackson, who somehow never made it to the UFC and wound up in Bellator. Over the course of almost eight years in the UFC Yoder's gone 3-7, and those three victories, respectively, were against Amanda Cooper, Syuri Kondo and Miranda Granger, all of whom wound up cut shortly after. If you happen to be a professional wrestling nerd and you find yourself going "wait, like the Joshi wrestler Syuri Kondo?" the answer is, yes, that is the same person. It's been a real fuckin' strange career. Emily Ducote's time in the UFC has been a lot more conventional--win a title in Invicta, immediately trade it in for a bus ticket, score a win over an old veteran (in this case, Jessica Penne), immediately get fought to decision losses by the inimitable decision queens of the division, Angela Hill and Lupita Godinez. We're looking at two grappling-type Pokemon, here. Yoder has a real size advantage, but admittedly, I can't help thinking that's the only advantage she has here. EMILY DUCOTE BY DECISION.
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Oct 11, 2023 20:40
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We're one month into the TKO era and the biggest title rematch in the company is happening on a week's notice as a late replacement fight, Khamzat Chimaev is fighting Kamaru Usman for a top ranking at middleweight, the UFC is preparing to enter Saudi Arabia and strict drug testing is dead.
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Oct 11, 2023 22:31
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https://twitter.com/KevinI/status/1712210085555093648 it just gets better
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Oct 11, 2023 22:52
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Conor was the catalyst but I think more than anything, now that the merger is officially over we're just going to see more and more of the UFC's real goal, which is getting rid of as much friction as possible between them and just doing whatever they want all the time. That's the real goal of all of it. The matchmaking being poo poo isn't people being bad at their jobs, it's the ongoing attempt to shift the focus of matchmaking away from fans and toward whatever marketing wants. The Contender Series isn't a talent scouting competition, it's a way to flood the roster with low-cost, fan-friendly fighters so they can bargain more expensive guys out of the picture. Getting rid of USADA not only means removing another check between the UFC and whatever it wants at any given time, it means moving back to an industry where the UFC can expect you to be on the good recovery drugs so they can book you again next month.
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Oct 12, 2023 00:22
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The UFC is partnering with Drug Free Sport International for their new drug testing program, and also, USADA has to retract their statement about Conor McGregor and issue an apology within the next 75 minutes or the UFC is going to sue them.
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Oct 12, 2023 23:42
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gently caress all the drug testing, let's talk about the story that really matters today https://twitter.com/AlexBehunin/status/1712892398177865941
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Oct 13, 2023 19:22
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4044722 GDT for Yusuff/Barboza is up. Prelims start in half an hour, but there will probably be dead air thanks to cancellations.
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Oct 14, 2023 20:32
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Head Bee Guy posted:Did the discord disappear? Mekchu wants the discord to go in a different direction and asked that it be taken off SA. I think he's also on vacation right now but you could drop him a PM if you want an invite, his call.
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Oct 15, 2023 03:36
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blue footed boobie posted:Discord gatekeeping is a very particular type of flex. Josuke Higashikata posted:Obviously not directed at you Carl but gently caress me this is one of the most fart huffing sentences I've ever read.  Mekchu's not a big SA fan anymore and even if I disagree I get it.But let's not post about posters/ex-posters and stick to the great news about our great sport, like the discovery that the guy in charge of the UFC's new drug testing initiative trains with ATT, one of the most notorious steroid camps in mixed martial arts! https://twitter.com/SpinninBackfist/status/1713215608135774550
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Oct 15, 2023 19:21
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Posting about posters is half of what we do these past 5-10 years. At this point posting about oildome and dunc is more like posting about mythology. It's all of us sitting in rocking chairs at the retirement home talking about posting gags from like twelve years ago when we still had functional hips.
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Oct 15, 2023 20:36
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CarlCX posted:But let's not post about posters/ex-posters and stick to the great news about our great sport, like the discovery that the guy in charge of the UFC's new drug testing initiative trains with ATT, one of the most notorious steroid camps in mixed martial arts! So this actually got funnier today. Previously, during the initial announcements, it turned out one of the former higher-ups at the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency was going to be in charge of the UFC's in-house drug assessments:  Mike Russell, who is an excellent reporter who does not get nearly enough credit, dug this up from a decade ago: quote:Emails reveal former ASADA official Daniel Eichner privately obtained supplements from Darren Hibbert Turns out he was on the take from at least one supplement manufacturer he helped shield from investigation, left ASADA before he could face any consequences, and no-commented the whole thing. So the two people in charge of the UFC's drug testing program are going to be a Bush FBI agent who trains with one of the sport's biggest steroid camps and a lab scientist who already helped tip the scales in favor of PED manufacturers. It's gonna be a great year.
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Oct 16, 2023 08:28
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Street Horrrsing posted:Why is AKA one of the biggest steroid gyms? Has there been some high profile pops or is this some inside baseball talk? What kimbo305 said, but there have also been various stories of fighters coming out of ATT talking about the fairly open steroid culture, with Julianna Pena's being one of the more famous mostly for Dan Lambert's reaction: quote:UFC bantamweight contender Julianna Pena claims an unnamed coach at American Top Team (ATT) told her that most of the female fighters at the famed MMA gym, which is run by Dan Lambert in Coconut Creek, Fla., were shooting their butts with steroids when she spent a week on location back in 2013.
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Oct 16, 2023 19:25
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LobsterMobster posted:been out of commission due to ~stuff~ Most of the card wasn't bad, actually. Barboza/Yusuff, Martinez/Yanez and Elkins/Brown were the most fun altogether fights, Pereira/Petroski and McKinney/Marotte were the most fun fights that could've been gifs. Also, on the topic of Bellator being sold off, I guess this is probably why: https://twitter.com/KevinI/status/1714312198150070541 Kind of wild to be one of the only networks getting OUT of the live sports model in 2023, but go with god, I guess.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:51
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Also, Mayra Bueno Silva's been suspended until the end of November and had her win over Holly Holm turned into a no-contest. One more of those awful Ritalin abusers off the streets.
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Oct 17, 2023 22:50
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On the topic of Big Volk: CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 79: HALF FULL VS HALF EMPTY  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 FROM THE ETIHAD AREA IN ABU DHABI, UAE  EARLY START WARNING | PRELIMS 7 AM PDT / 11 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 11 AM / 2 PM VIA PAY-PER-VIEWBoy, this sure got nuts. For those who do not obsessively follow this sport: Up until last week, this card looked very, very different. Not terrible--but different. Your co-main event was Khamzat Chimaev's return to 185 pounds against Paulo "Cake_-_Never_There.mp3" Costa in a kind-of sort-of top five fight, and your main event was the rematch between lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and #1 contender Charles Oliveira. Which was simultaneously great, because Oliveira rules and is absolutely the rightful challenger, and underwhelming, because Makhachev absolutely destroyed him in their first fight. It's not that people weren't looking forward to the fight, it's that people--justifiably--saw it as a foregone conclusion. And then: Chaos. Paulo Costa pulled out of the fight--his sixth rescheduling in his last five bouts--to deal with medical issues and get surgery, and Charles Oliveira split his eyebrow in half in training. Suddenly the card's big attractions were gone, and this being an Abu Dhabi card, which the UAE very handsomely pays the UFC for, that's a problem. Luckily, there are plenty of contingencies. The UFC had already announced #6 lightweight Mateusz Gamrot as their official backup fighter, and #7 middleweight Roman Dolidze made it clear he was absolutely willing to step in against Khamzat on short notice. No problems! No problems except the UFC not wanting to do either of those things. No, the man they wanted facing Khamzat Chimaev? Former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, who's never competed at middleweight in his life, with the winner getting an immediate title shot. And for Islam Makhachev? The much-hyped theoretical rematch with featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, who came inches from beating him back in February. Does any of it really hold muster? Not enormously. Does it matter? Not even slightly. Does it make the card more interesting? Do you like watching things burn?  is this the most Vs ever in a UFC main event MAIN EVENT: TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Islam Makhachev (24-1, Champion) vs Alexander Volkanovski (26-2, NR)I love this fight, and I hate this fight, and I don't think you can extricate the love from the hate without missing a key part of the greater tapestry of mixed martial arts. Combat sports, more often than not, are disappointing. They're wonderful and there's nothing else on Earth like them, but god, they fall short. Dream matches fall through, unscrupulous promoters push down deserving contenders, talented fighters underperform their abilities, drug tests and weight misses and bad judges and backstage shenanigans torpedo the things that should have been. Dominick Reyes didn't get the decision over Jon Jones. Khabib Nurmagomedov never fought Tony Ferguson. José Aldo never got his rematch with Conor McGregor. Jerome Le Banner never won a K-1 World Grand Prix. Guy Mezger got screwed out of Pride's 2000 Grand Prix. It's a frustrating and often outright insufferable world to follow. But when combat sports are good, they're great, and when combat sports are great, they're amazing. And if you stick with them, every once in awhile, you will get a perfect moment. The best of the best will fight each other, and the promoter will line up behind them to actually make it matter, and they'll both come in at the top of their game and give the world a fight for the ages, and for a moment, as a fan, you get to remember why you started watching this cruel, beautiful sport in the first place. When Islam Makhachev and Alexander Volkanovski met in the cage this past February it was, unequivocally, one of those moments. Islam was the newly-crowned lightweight champion, an incredibly dominant fighter with only one loss in his career who'd just won the title by destroying a man who hadn't lost a fight in almost half a decade. Alexander Volkanovski was the featherweight champion and pound-for-pound best, a man who hadn't lost a fight in an entire decade, and never in the UFC. There were considerable doubts about his ability to perform against Makhachev: It was a new weight class, it was a much bigger, stronger opponent, and said opponent happened to be one of the best grapplers in the sport. As the fight began, those fears appeared entirely warranted. Makhachev grounded Volkanovski, held him down and wore on him with elbows for minutes at a time, and, as in so, so very many champion vs champion matches over the years, the smaller fighter simply got bullied. But as the fight wore on, something began to turn. Volkanovski began to pick up on Makhachev's timing. He got harder to get down; harder to keep down. And he punished Islam for every attempt. By the third round Volkanovski was suddenly piecing him up, by the fourth, Islam was desperately holding back control for position but unable to get his offense straight, and by the fifth, Volkanovski was shrugging an increasingly flagging Makhachev off and slugging him in the face. In the waning minute of the fight he dropped Islam on his face with a right hand and, for one brief moment, looked poisoned to score an impossible TKO. But Islam is still Islam. He held on, he survived, and ultimately, he won. It was a close--but correct--decision. By the rules, he'd won three out of five rounds. But the world had been waiting to see if Alexander Volkanovski could beat the unstoppable lightweight champion, and the answer, clearly, was Yes. Before either man was out of the cage the commentators were bubbling about a rematch. Both men needed to return to their divisions and take care of their business, but one day, inevitably, the two best fighters were going to fight again. I have heavily anticipated that day. The entire MMA world has been eager for that day. And now, suddenly, unexpectedly, it's here. And boy, that loving sucks. This is a great fight. In a company that is absolutely addicted to rematches it is, easily, the most anticipated rematch they could possibly promote. And the fact that it is happening here and now is an absolute failure on the UFC's part. There's a lightweight division. There are other lightweight contenders. The UFC straight-up announced that, should Islam Makhachev or Charles Oliveira be unable to fight, Mateusz Gamrot, one of the UFC's best lightweight contenders, would step in to take their place. Alexander Volkanovski, too, had already been confirmed to be defending his featherweight championship against top 145-pound contender Ilia Topuria in January. The fight was going to be officially announced this very week. All of that was immediately thrown out the window in favor in the name of this rematch, because divisions are, of course, meaningless, and we need to get the bigger names in there if we can. Which is insane, from both a fight quality perspective and a marketing perspective. Ideally, ethically, you should want fighters to be able to prepare! You shouldn't have championship matches on a week and a half's notice unless you absolutely have no choice! This is only more important for a best-of-the-best fight! But even if you discount that, even if you accept that the UFC very clearly has not given a crap about those kinds of matters in quite awhile and will do whatever gets them the most money, this is a huge money match with a ton of hype, and the UFC as a fight promoter is throwing away their chance to actually, say, promote a loving fight. Instead of months of run-up, anticipation and time to get fans excited to spend pay-per-view money, we now have a week and a half and barely enough time for the interns to even drum up new promo packages. Amidst all of that, in the middle of the matchmaking and the marketing and the defiance of weight divisions altogether, it sucks because it introduces doubt into the equation. Islam vs Volkanovski 1 was a best-of-the-best fight in every sense of the term: The two best at the top of their game with ample time to prepare. But, as Volkanovski himself pointed out, taking the fight on short notice entirely changes its expectations. If Islam beats him again, it'll be handwaved away as Islam beating an unprepared fighter rolling off the couch. There's a flip side to that: If Volkanovski wins, after Islam beat him the first time, Islam's lack of time to adjust and prepare for him will, inevitably, be cited as a differencemaker. Which is bullshit. It's bullshit that a fight this good and important is getting thrown together this way, it's bullshit that fighters who were promised things by the UFC had them taken away, and it's bullshit that half the consideration for this fight is no longer how much Islam learned about wrestling Volkanovski the first time around, or how much confidence Volkanovski got from going the distance and nearly knocking Islam out, or how Islam's adjusted his cardio, or how Volkanovski's prepared for yet another rematch, one of his specialties. It sucks to have this rematch in any way compromised when it was completely, totally unnecessary. But we're here. And I'm still excited for this fight. And I still don't regret picking Alexander Volkanovski to win the first time around, and I'm not going to change course based on something as silly as his having lost. I hope he's in five-round shape, I hope he's healed up from the surgery he had just a few months ago, and I hope he's sharpened his counter-wrestling even more, because ALEXANDER VOLKANOVSKI BY DECISION is a course from which I will never be moved. CO-MAIN EVENT: DANA WHITE'S CONTENDER SERIES MIDDLEWEIGHT: Khamzat Chimaev (12-0, #4 at Welterweight) vs Kamaru Usman (20-3, #1 at Welterweight) Fortunately, I don't have to couch my anger with love this time because this fight just sucks. To discuss it, we're gonna have to digress for a second. The UFC's middleweight division is unique. Every other weight class has drifted between periods of dominance and instability, long, singular champions interspersed with councils of top-flight fighters all beating each other and trading the belt back and forth. For every monolithic Jon Jones or Georges St-Pierre title reign, there's a period of Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida all killing each other. But outside of its very first opening gasps of life, this has never been true at 185 pounds. Rich Franklin was one of the UFC's most constant stars during their breakout. Anderson Silva had one of the greatest title reigns in the history of the sport. Chris Weidman took his title and reigned as a champion for years. When Weidman finally fell, there was hope this pattern might change, thanks to the rapid-fire reigns of Luke Rockhold and Michael Bisping--but then things fell apart. Bisping wouldn't fight top contenders, just Dan Henderson and Georges St-Pierre, who won the belt and immediately retired. Robert Whittaker, the true king of the era, spent all that time with an interim title and never recorded an actual, technical, title defense. And then Israel Adesanya came along, and suddenly, the entire division was his. Alex Pereira could have been a thorn in his side--but he was already planning to leave the division, even as its champion. When Israel Adesanya beat him and won back his title, it was perfect for the UFC. Their king was back on his throne, his conqueror was up at a new weight class, and everything could go back right to the way it was. And then Sean Strickland beat Izzy on a month's notice. And then, this past week, Izzy announced he was taking a long hiatus from the sport to recover from his ultra-heavy strength of schedule. And, suddenly, the UFC no longer had either of the only two middleweights it had invested any marketing energy into whatsoever for the last four years. Welcome to the instability era, motherfuckers. We finally got here, and boy, it's starting as stupidly as it possibly can. The UFC has stated, on the record, that the winner of this fight will get the next shot at the middleweight championship. And, boy, that's exceptionally loving dumb, but not in any way surprising. Khamzat Chimaev, after all, has been the heir apparent for years. The UFC loves him: He's an undefeated, weirdly charismatic wrecking ball of a fighter with a lot of marketing promise for an international market the UFC would love to corner and he's willing to do things like fight twice in ten days for pennies if it makes him look good. They've wanted a belt on Khamzat for three years, as proven by the way that Leon Edwards, the clear-cut #1 contender at welterweight on an eight-fight win streak, was booked to fight Khamzat three times despite Khamzat having only one 170-pound fight in the UFC at the time. But Khamzat couldn't get over COVID, and the difficulty getting him back in the cage would prove to be prophetic. He nearly retired thanks to his illness, the UFC had to pull the dump truck of money to his door to get him back, and his return ended in one of the biggest debacles of 2022 after he missed weight so ludicrously badly for a fight with Nate Diaz that an entire card had to be shuffled around him. That was a full year ago. The UFC, understandably, demanded Khamzat move up to 185 pounds. The UFC, understandably, wanted him fighting in the top five immediately. And when Paulo Costa, shockingly, dropped out of this fight, the UFC had plenty of middleweights to tap as replacements. They, of course, picked Kamaru Usman. Kamaru Usman has never fought at 185 pounds in his life. Kamaru Usman was, famously, the owner of the UFC's second-longest welterweight championship reign right up until Leon Edwards kicked him in the head in the summer of 2022. After losing a rematch this past March, Usman talked about a possible jump up in weight, which makes sense: He's turning 37 next year, cutting weight isn't getting any easier, and after two straight title losses he's out of championship contention unless he goes through all its contenders or someone else gets the belt. There's nowhere to go but up. Conveniently, it repurposes someone the UFC already marketed. Funny how that goes. Besides, Kamaru Usman already fought and beat Sean Strickland once! Sure, it was seven years ago and at a different weight class, but hey, since when does that matter? Khamzat Chimaev hasn't fought at middleweight in three years, and has never fought a ranked middleweight in his life. His last intentionally scheduled fight was supposed to be against Nate Diaz. Kamaru Usman has never fought at middleweight, period. His last victory of any kind was two years ago. When this fight ends, one of these men will be the #1 contender for the middleweight division. Everything is silly. Nothing matters. And Kamaru Usman, who has already seemingly been slowing down an awful lot and had a whole mess of trouble trying to wrestle Leon Edwards and Colby Covington, is going to fight a bigger, stronger, faster, younger middleweight with vicious knockout power and ridiculously dangerous submissions. If Usman survives into the third round he'll have a major advantage, because Khamzat got tired as hell against Gilbert Burns. I don't think we're getting that far. Kamaru's been showing his mileage and KHAMZAT CHIMAEV BY TKO after chucking him to the floor and punching him into paste feels too depressingly likely. MAIN CARD: MAYBE ALSO TITLE ELIMINATORS, WHO REALLY KNOWS LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Magomed Ankalaev (18-1-1, #2) vs Johnny Walker (21-7, #7) Magomed Ankalaev has had a rough year. It took a nine-fight winning streak for Magomed Ankalaev to get a shot at the light-heavyweight title, which is an absolutely absurd number for a weight class that barely has a top fifteen, and even then, his opportunity only came because champion Jiří Procházka had to abruptly relinquish the belt. Ankalaev did the UFC a favor, stepped up to a five-round main event on short notice, fought the top contender in Jan Błachowicz, and should have won the fight--only for the judges to instead score a good ol' Nobody Wins split draw. The UFC, in its eternal sensitivity, responded in the form of Dana White making GBS threads all over Błachowicz and Ankalaev in the post-fight presser for leaving it up to the judges in the first place. Both men were thrown aside and the next title shot was given to Jamahal Hill, who won the belt--by decision--and, six months later, gave it up after blowing out his ankle playing basketball. It's been almost an entire year since we last saw Magomed Ankalaev; almost a year since he was robbed of the world championship he rightfully deserved. Is he facing a top contender? Is he getting a shot at the somehow once again vacant belt? No! He's fighting Johnny Walker, because gently caress you, that's why. Walker is one of the UFC's favorite guys--a 2018 Contender Series winner who, much like Khamzat Chimaev, had a weird charisma, a penchant for fast finishes and a willingness to take fights on extremely quick turnarounds--and they were happily jetpacking him straight to a title shot right up until Corey Anderson knocked him out in one round. Anderson, of course, would be cut one fight later, but Walker spent three years working his way into relevancy again after constant, repeated setbacks. It wasn't until this year that he finally managed to string back-to-back wins together again, thanks half to slightly less stiff competition and half to a renewed focus on taking his time, executing more tactical gameplans and finding his way to power shots rather than trying to force the finish as fast as possible. Which, for a fighter so built on impulsiveness that he once dislocated his shoulder doing The Worm during a post-knockout celebration, is no small accomplishment. A year ago I would've had this marked as an easy night for Ankalaev. Today, I'm significantly less certain. When last we saw him, while he still should have won the fight, he nearly got his legs kicked in half by Jan Błachowicz. His inability to find Jan's timing let alone defend himself ably is already concerning against Johnny Walker's greater speed, power and range; the Johnny Walker we saw in his last fight out who hobbled Anthony Smith with calf kicks is particularly concerning. But Walker still has trouble with pressure, and Ankalaev is more than willing to grind him into the fence until he can drag him to the floor, and I'm still going for MAGOMED ANKALAEV BY DECISION at the end of the day. But Walker kicking Magomed's legs off is an entirely real possibility. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ikram Aliskerov (14-1) vs Warlley Alves (14-6, NR) So, here's a funny thing. According to the UFC's card listing, Ikram Aliskerov, who made his UFC debut this past summer by blitzing and destroying Phil Hawes in two minutes, is listed as the #11 middleweight in the company. But according to the UFC's official rankings, he's not! Nassourdine Imavov, the man he was supposed to fight this week, is. Did the UFC pull a fast one, or is their stylesheet so screwed up they couldn't take the number out of it? Whichever case it is, they can't be that bothered, because they were very happily trying to get him to fight for that number up until Imavov pulled out. It's no real wonder why, either. Ikram's a Contender Series baby, he's a big Russian fighter, he's a strong first-round finisher and his one and only career loss came against Khamzat Chimaev back in 2019. Just like Khamzat, he's threading the needle on marketable traits the UFC currently holds in high regard, and I'm sure they would absolutely love to book a rematch between the two. If it sounds like this is all disrespectfully overlooking Warlley Alves, that's because it is. I've liked Warlley ever since he won The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3 (jesus christ) back in 2014, with his ultra-aggressive tendency to hunt for chokes and his deceptively dangerous striking in the pocket, and I particularly liked him for choking Colby Covington the gently caress out in ninety seconds, because even then, I was pretty sure he sucked. Unfortunately, that was also the last time Warlley managed to do anything divisionally relevant. In the eight years since that fight he's 4-6, he's only managed two back-to-back wins and he's suffered the first knockout and submission losses of his career. Alves just hasn't managed to develop into a world-class fighter. He's very, very good--no one has an easy night against Warlley Alves and even now he's only been blown out of the water once--but he just hasn't been able to rise up to the threats posed by people on the periphery of the rankings. In other words: He's a late replacement because the UFC's pretty sure he's going to get thrashed by Aliskerov, and they're probably right. Ikram's faster, stronger and a much more dangerous striker. As quick as Alves can be when he thinks he has a choke, jumping a guillotine on Ikram will get him pounded on the floor for the remainder of the round. IKRAM ALISKEROV BY TKO feels inevitable. BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (17-3) vs Muin Gafurov (18-5)Here, we have the battle of massively hyped prospects who are trying to get back on the tracks. Said Nurmagomedov--this is your contractually obligated reminder that he's the one who isn't related to Khabib--was brought into the UFC back in 2019 as one of the best bantamweights outside of the company, and after scraping by Justin Scoggins and dropping Ricardo Ramos in a round he seemed poised to jump the rankings. And then Raoni Barcelos outwrestled him and ended his streak. Said weathered the speedbump, resumed his winning ways, and scored four more wins over the next two years, and once again, he was poised to take his well-mixed offense into the top ten, and once again he was rejected, this time by Jonathan "The Dragon" Martinez. Said was supposed to make his comeback against Kyler Phillips this past August, but he couldn't make the fight. Conveniently, The Tajik Tank himself Muin Gafurov had also just pulled out of a September clash with Taylor Lapilus, and he, too, needed a rescheduled dance partner. Gafurov got his first real international notoriety out in ONE Championship, where he destroyed Leandro Issa and made it a full three rounds against John Lineker, even if he ultimately lost the decision. His toughness and his passionate love of throwing unnecessary spinning poo poo all got him noticed by the UFC--which earned him a split decision loss on the Contender Series and got him kicked right back to the regionals. But two good knockouts and a Legacy Fighting Alliance championship later got him right back in the dance! And then his much-hyped UFC debut ended in double disappointment: Gafurov lost a point for what was deemed intentional headbutting, and while Gafurov protested both during and after the fight, he also lost by a wide enough margin that the point made no difference. Both guys need a win to prove their relevance to the division, and both guys are sharp, aggressive fighters with styles that veer into fun spinning poo poo, which could make this an excellent showdown. Said likes a little more lateral movement, Gafurov likes to charge and brute force his way in, both guys like to throw enough that they're kind of uncomfortable by the third round. SAID NURMAGOMEDOV BY DECISION feels appropriate, given his greater control of his distance and weapons, but Gafurov could run him down and simply refuse to let him breathe. PRELIMS: THE LAST STAND OF JINH YU FREY FLYWEIGHT: Tim Elliott (19-12-1, #10) vs Muhammad Mokaev (9-0, #11)Tim Elliott is a fighter in search of a space. His life over the few years hasn't been easy: He went on a three-fight losing streak, he nearly got cut, he survived a pink slip by way of a particularly dodgy decision over Tagir Ulanbekov, and this past summer he discovered his wife (a UFC fighter!) had cheated on him (with another UFC fighter!). Truthfully, the dodginess of his career's trajectory only stands out if you followed him outside of the UFC. In the Resurrection Fighting Alliance and Titan FC Tim Elliott wasn't just an undefeated champion, he was one of the sport's most fun fighters to watch, an incredibly weird, eclectic fighter who punched like he was dancing and threw out chokes like missing a guillotine would end his life. But within the walls of the UFC, he's 8-10 and his best achievement is putting up a better-than-most fight against Demetrious Johnson most of a decade ago. He's there as a measuring stick for the new, and Muhammad Mokaev is the absolute shock of new. Mokaev was already one of those people internet MMA nerds were excited about thanks to his unusually lengthy, 22-0 amateur career, but after the UFC pitched him a legitimately tough challenge in Cody Durden for his 2022 debut and Mokaev dropped him with a flying knee and squeezed his head off in under a minute, the hype train officially hit the tracks. It's been a great 4-0 run altogether, save for one moment in his last outing against Jafel Filho where Mokaev got his MCL torn up by a kneebar, but the stubborn refusal to tap meant he fought on and, even more impressively, choked Filho out just thirty seconds before he almost certainly would have lost a decision. Everyone has him pegged as a future contender and an awful lot of folks have him holding the belt before 2024 is over. Fighting Tim Elliott is a very good way to test exactly how close he is. Hell, this is just a great stylistic matchup in general. Both men have power and speed but tend to get loose and loopy with their strikes, both men are incredibly aggressive grapplers with great submission offense but a problem with losing position chasing down a finish. Either man finding an opening could end this fight immediately, but I cannot help thinking, at this stage in their careers, Mokaev's fast enough and vicious enough to catch Elliott with one of those guillotine chokes while he pushes for a takedown. MUHAMMAD MOKAEV BY SUBMISSION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Mohammad Yahya (12-3) vs Trevor Peek (8-1-0 (1)) I cannot communicate to you how excited I was by the possibility that there was another member of the Rani Yahya fighting family I had somehow missed for more than a decade, nor how disappointed I was to discover they were not, in fact, related. I'm sorry, Mohammad. I know how unfair that is to you. You seem like a perfectly capable fighter. But for one, I love Rani Yahya more than I enjoyed watching tape on your fights, for two, said tape mostly made you seem like a pretty normal bread-and-butter fighter with very little to make you stand out, and for three, your championship out in Abu Dhabi's UAE Warriors federation doesn't do a lot for me when they had you fighting guys who are 5-4-1. But, mostly? Despite your attempts to keep a high boxing guard you sure do get hit with a lot of big, slinging haymakers, and that's basically the only thing Trevor Peek does. That's what Trevor Peek is. Trevor Peek is what happens when a child builds a robot, gets bored after finishing the torso, and just gives it clotheslines with boxing gloves attached for arms. Trevor Peek throws punches like he's hucking a garbage bag full of bad romantic memories off a bridge in an early-90s Meg Ryan film. Trevor Peek throws punches like someone is puppeteering him from the audience using a remote control made out of a spirograph. Trevor Peek is going to punch you by making his arm travel through the Mariana Trench before it reaches your chin and the additional weight of fish he hits you with will only make him happier. TREVOR PEEK BY TKO. I don't think it will take long. BANTAMWEIGHT: Javid Basharat (14-0) vs Victor Henry (23-6) The UFC's pretty sure they have something in the Basharat brothers. Javid and Farid both made their way through the Contender Series, hopped into the UFC proper and tore off on immediate undefeated winning streaks. Javid's 3-0, having used the family's traditional mixture of evasive defense, sharp outside striking, and positionally-focused grappling to stifle all three of his opponents and leave them more or less lost. I would like to say this fight is a step up in competition for Javid, and Victor Henry is by no means a slouch, but truthfully, I'm not convinced. Henry is a tough-as-nails motherfucker who's made it through 29 fights and 13 years without ever being stopped, and his gas tank and grit are both impressive, but he's also had a real rough go of it in the UFC thus far. He walked down Raoni Barcelos in his short-notice debut, which is by far his best performance, but he followed it up by getting outworked completely by a 40 year-old Raphael Assunçăo one fight away from retirement and followed THAT up with an incredibly close coinflip of a split decision over Tony Gravely that could very easily have gone the other way. And that's bad, because Javid Basharat fought Tony Gravely and manhandled him. The transitive property doesn't exactly carry--Henry's got more endurance and an even harder head--but there is a direct analogue in the wrestling, and that's where Javid's going to have a very, very big advantage. JAVID BASHARAT BY DECISION. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sedriques Dumas (8-1) vs Abu Azaitar (14-3-1) And here, we have the requisite squash match, because no pay-per-view is complete without one. Sedriques Dumas is a pet project in process: A Contender Series winner with a huge height and reach advantage, a tendency to finish almost all of his fights, and a collection of bad takes, lovely attitudes and domestic assaults, just the way Dana White likes them. The company's attempt to give him a soft debut against the 0-2 Josh Fremd failed, as Fremd choked him out in two rounds. Dumas went back to the drawing board and looked better against Cody Brundage this past June--but it was an uneventful, unimpressive win, mostly spent with Dumas riding out top position and mustering little in the way of effective offense. Lucky for him, the UFC has a fighter at an even greater disadvantage to throw into the cage, and conveniently, it's a contract they're trying to get rid of. Abu "Captain Morocco" Azaitar has been in the UFC for more than five goddamn years: This will be his third fight. He made his debut in 2018, he beat Vitor Miranda--who retired and never fought again--and, for three and a half years, that was it. In early 2021 he showed up again at middleweight, put up one good round against Marc-André Barriault, and then took an absolutely murderous beating that went on for minutes more than it should have. And that was it. Two and a half years on the shelf again, and Abu Azaitar is back to fight in Abu Dhabi. Abu Azaitar is 5'9". Abu Azaitar had almost all of his real career success at welterweight in the World Series of Fighting. In his one UFC contest at middleweight, Abu Azaitar received a life-altering beating. Abu Azaitar is turning 38 next March. Abu Azaitar is being set up to make a favored prospect who is half a foot taller than him look good, and given that Abu Azaitar's success comes from just viciously punching people to death up close and Dumas does a lot of his best work in the clinch, Abu Azaitar, unfortunately, is almost certainly going to do the job. SEDRIQUES DUMAS BY SUBMISSION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Anshul Jubli (7-0) vs Mike Breeden (10-6) In mid-2022, in the brief window of time the UFC perceived ONE Championship as a threat, they launched the Road to UFC tournament as a great big talent-scouting experiment across most of Asia. Anshul Jubli was both its lightweight champion and one of its luckiest participants, as his first-round opponent, the highly-touted Japanese kickboxer Sho Patrick Usami, screwed up his weight cut badly enough to have to pull out of their fight, giving Jubli a free pass to the semifinals. Jubli made the most of the opportunity, won an absurdly close split decision over Kyung Pyo Kim, and made short work of Jeka Saragih to take the finals. Impressive performances and well-rounded skills made him, officially, the first Indian fighter to get a UFC contract. The UFC would really like to give him a chance to establish himself, because Mike Breeden, respectfully, is here to get hosed up. He was brought into the UFC on a late replacement contract because Alexander Hernandez needed a body, he's 0-3 in the company, everyone he's been matched against--Hernandez, Natan Levy and Terrance McKinney--was a company favorite who needed to right the ship after taking a hard, unexpected loss, and 2/3 of those losses were violent knockouts in under ninety seconds. Just to hammer the point home? That McKinney TKO was 70 days before this goddamn fight. He got outstruck 30-1 and stopped on his feet with his arms over his head just barely two months ago, but hey, wouldn't you just know it: The UFC has this big, strong wrestler they'd really like him to fight in Abu Dhabi. Not subtle and not hard to predict. ANSHUL JUBLI BY TKO. FEATHERWEIGHT: Nathaniel Wood (19-5) vs Muhammad Naimov (9-2) Okay, look, Nathaniel. You're 30 now. You're about to have your twenty-fifth professional fight. You've been in the UFC for more than five years. As a representative of the anal-retentive mixed martial arts internet police, I have to confiscate your "The Prospect" nickname. I'm sorry! I'm sorry. It's just too silly to keep going. We let BJ Penn be "The Prodigy" right up until his thirtieth consecutive loss and now he's spreading flat earth conspiracies and we can't do anything about it. We can't risk another containment-breach event like that. But it's fine! You're on a three-fight winning streak, you don't need to be The Prospect anymore. You could be Pitbull! Or The Soul Assassin! I mean, Muhammad Naimov's nickname is "Hillman" and he's doing loving fine. Hell, he walked into the UFC as a last-minute replacement no one had ever heard of, he was just a few months removed from fighting 4-3 guys for Tuff-n-Uff (which is called Dead Dance Fighting Championships in Japan, and if you understood that joke I'm very sorry) and he knocked Jamie Mullarkey the gently caress out! Take inspiration from your competition and embrace a brave new world of alias-based wonder. NATHANIEL WOOD BY DECISION. Wood's got real good takedowns and he should keep Naimov defending them for the duration of the fight. Please consider "Teak" or "Ply" when you put in your name change application. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jinh Yu Frey (11-9) vs Victoria Dudakova (7-0) In another reality, Jinh Yu Frey was a pretty big deal. Believe it or not, 11-9 Jinh Yu Frey has competed for three different, relevant world championships across South Korea's Road FC, Japan's Rizin, and America's Invicta. She even won Invicta's! Here's the thing, though: All of those fights were at the 105-pound atomweight division, which the UFC does not promote. Which is, still, loving crazy. When they're so desperate to market belts that they periodically make them up to pop buyrates, and so eager to push fighters like Michelle Waterson-Gomez who excelled at atomweight, and were more than willing to run a 145-pound women's division that only ever had five or six people in it, it's absolutely wild to me that it's 2023 and we still don't have a 105-pound UFC championship. In this reality, Jinh Yu Frey is 2-5 in the UFC's strawweight division. One of those losses really should have been a win were it not, as usual, for judging--but the fact remains, her power, her grappling threat and her ability to control opponents simply hasn't been there at the higher weight class. Victoria Dudakova is one of the UFC's new prospects, a young, undefeated Contender Series-winning grappler with a world of promise and years to capitalize on it. Dudakova's debut against Istela Nunes this summer was intended to be as much showpiece as test--Nunes, while tough, is 0-4 in the UFC and if you can't beat her there's a good chance you're not going to go very far in the company--but, through no fault of Dudakova's own, it proved very little, as Nunes blew her elbow out defending a takedown thirty-four seconds into the fight. Frey is the UFC's second take at establishing Victoria as a prospect. It's probably going to work. Frey is, as ever, tough as nails, but she's always struggled with stronger grapplers. Victoria might be her strongest yet. It's been real, Jinh. I hope you kick some more rear end in Invicta. VICTORIA DUDAKOVA BY SUBMISSION. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bruno Silva (23-9) vs Sharabutdin Magomedov (11-0) Very few fighters have had UFC tenures as wildly swingy as Bruno Silva's. He got on the radar for The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3 (jesus christ), got eliminated in his first fight, and wasn't touched again until five years later, when the UFC signed him as the 19-6 world champion of Russia's M-1. Which is great! And then he pissed hot for steroids before his first fight and got legally suspended for two years. But he did his time, came back, and rifled off three fantastic knockouts in a row! And then, as one of the scariest punchers in the division, he promptly went 1-3 over the next year and a half and at his lowest point got dropped by Gerald goddamn Meerschaert. One fight ago, Silva was opening a network television broadcast in a top-fifteen matchup against Brendan Allen. Now he's curtain-jerking in Abu Dhabi against Sharabutdin Magomedov, an undefeated, one-eyed kickboxer from Russia who once beat BLOOD DIAMOND and fought a full third of his career under weird pseudo-World Combat League rules where you got stood up automatically if you spent more than thirty seconds on the ground. Do I want a guy with one functioning eye fighting in major mixed martial arts? Not really, it seems like a massive liability. Am I going to pick against a guy who lost an eye to Muay Thai training, shrugged, and continued fighting for another four years anyway? Not on your life. SHARABUTDIN MAGOMEDOV BY TKO.
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Oct 18, 2023 20:07
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He gets paid a bunch of money, he gets a crack at an Islam who hasn't prepared for him this time around too, and he's Alexander Volkanovski, so he very much thinks he can win. Plus he's wanted the Islam rematch and he wasn't sure he'd get it otherwise, which is apparently a well-founded fear, as Islam's already calling out the winner of Leon/Colby for his next fight.
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Oct 20, 2023 05:40
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https://twitter.com/BloodyElbow/status/1715436435707224133 just the UFC trying to pressure out two separate world title fights as last-minute replacements and also an instant championship match for khamzat chimaev, no big deal
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Oct 20, 2023 22:00
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Gumball Gumption posted:One of my favorite things about MMA is how often you get to watch top level athletes intentionally do the stupidest things possible because they "have that dog in them" or feel the need to prove they can win the opponents game or whatever dumb insecurity wormed into their head. No other sport like it like clockwork, https://twitter.com/marcraimondi/status/1715836513001627981
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Oct 21, 2023 22:08
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Marching Powder posted:as far as excuses go i completely get this and he still accepts responsibility for it. he's a cool dude. I absolutely agree, and I also hope someone in his camp has his ear enough to tell him not to fight Ilia Topuria in January so he can have actual time to really recover and prepare after getting his poo poo wrecked.
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Oct 21, 2023 23:39
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Javid Basharat, maybe, kind of sucks.
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Oct 22, 2023 09:50
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I cannot help noticing unlike the last two light-heavyweight champions with injuries on similar timeframes jon jones is not being required to vacate his title for some reason
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Oct 25, 2023 06:22
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So off the top of my head, this is the fifth attempt the UFC has made at a world championship fight on <= a month's notice this year?
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Oct 25, 2023 07:52
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Josuke Higashikata posted:Also no one wants to see Bones versus Pavlovich or Aspinall so when Jones is back and they set him back up with Miocic, it further under values their interim title. 10/10 business decision really. https://twitter.com/marcraimondi/status/1717050104522350603 Oh yeah. I'd put the odds pretty high Pavlovich/Aspinall is to crown whoever takes over after Jones/Miocic ends in double retirement.
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Oct 25, 2023 08:22
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Jones vs Stipe wasn't really about the heavyweight division, it's about name value and Jones/Stipe wanting to be considered the best UFC heavyweight ever. There's a reason they immediately plotted the rescheduling rather than even entertaining the idea of either dude fighting Pavlovich. We're pretty firmly in the Couture/Nogueira, Bisping/Whittaker territory where there are going to be two champions, where one is the real champion and the other is the vanity champion who's around for a good time instead of a long time. Also, that whole "PFLW" thing from a couple months ago is, as it turns out, going to be an entirely separate organization where all the women go, meaning PFL's main seasons will no longer promote women's fights. https://twitter.com/BloodyElbow/status/1717661692019024101 I wonder which side will get more fights scheduled.
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Oct 27, 2023 01:57
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BlindSite posted:Conor might have hung around for longer at FW, but I don't think he would have been able to hold out the mature Holloway we've seen for the last 5 years or Volk who's at this point the best 145 pounder in history. There's a reason why Conor who poo poo talks everyone regularly just says "well done sir" when it comes to Volk. https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMMA/status/1700712033467924931 do not ever underestimate how many cocaine tweets conor mcgregor has made
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Oct 27, 2023 10:40
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I deeply love Invicta, but if you're not really, really into MMA, those cards can be rough watches these days. They used to be better, but Invicta has fallen on some hard loving times. Even just a few years ago they were still a great hotbed for women's talent and you've still got a few real good fighters there, but between bigger companies picking them clean of talent and their own internal strife meaning they're down to just barely managing four events a year, it ain't what it used to be.
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Oct 28, 2023 08:40
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Even if he dies next round, he has the moral victory now.
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Oct 28, 2023 23:57
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