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Which rumored fight are you most looking forward to in 2024? This poll is closed. |
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| Alex Pereira vs Tom Aspinall for the Heavyweight title |
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4 | 8.89% |
| Conor McGregor vs Michael Chandler at Middleweight |
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0 | 0% |
| Francis Ngannou vs Ryan Bader to break the sport's skull ejection record |
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8 | 17.78% |
| Manny Pacquiao vs Floyd Mayweather Jr. in some kind of amateur MMA match |
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1 | 2.22% |
| Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic in a double retirement bout |
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4 | 8.89% |
| The UFC vs The American Legal System in an antitrust fight |
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28 | 62.22% |
| Total: | 45 votes | ||
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Do you miss the halcyon days of 2023? Go back to the December thread here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eetIgGXH6DA Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. It's a new year in combat sports, one that's beginning with a ONE superfight that may or may not actually be happening, the UFC getting rid of its stringent drug testing, and its first pay-per-view of the year being marketed with footage of one of its participants illegally assaulting the other. It's going to be a great 2024, everyone. This month's thread title courtesy of TheKingslayer. 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  On December 1, Jamahal Hill, the UFC's previous 205-pound champion, was arrested for assaulting his brother James. According to the police report, the two were engaged in an argument about Thanksgiving, family, and James not cleaning Jamahal's house, and right around the time James accused Jamahal of abandoning his daughter, Jamahal repeatedly punched him in the face, knocked him down and busted out one of his teeth. And, honestly, reporting on it here feels less like talking about some scandal of note and more like remembering a time when a UFC champion knocking the poo poo out of someone outside of the cage would've mattered. The only real discussion about it in the MMA community was anger at TMZ for reporting it as a "domestic assault" when Jamahal only hit a man and not a woman, which, gently caress, that's cynical. I hope the two of them work it out and I hope Jamahal calls his daughter.  Oh, hey, about fighters assaulting people. At one point during UFC 296 on December 16 Sean Strickland and next title challenger Dricus du Plessis, who had dutifully been talking ethically abhorrent poo poo to one another during the weekend's press conferences, started chirping at each other in the audience. Sean Strickland promptly attacked du Plessis and started punching him in the head. Of course, being Sean Strickland, none of the punches did anything and they were broken up moments later. And, much as above, reporting on it is less about the incident and more about the way the UFC began marketing it so loving fast that they played footage of the assault at the end of the pay-per-view. When the Cesar Gracie squad and Jason "Mayhem" Miller got into a fight on a 2010 Strikeforce broadcast it was a massive corporate embarrassment that led to Strikeforce getting pulled off network television. When Paul Daley punched Josh Koscheck after their UFC 113 co-main event, Dana White blackballed Daley from the company. But one day Jorge Masvidal suckerpunched Leon Edwards and Conor McGregor chucked a dolly at a tour bus and now we're firmly in Market The Fighters Being Shitheads territory. Enjoy seeing Strickland/du Plessis fight footage for the next three weeks.  Oh, hey, about fighters who've assaulted people. Conor's back! Again! The UFC swears it, this time! He says he's going to headline the UFC's annual International Fight Week this Summer! He's going to finally have that fight with Michael Chandler! It's going to be contested at 185 pounds! Don't ask me about steroids or I'll suckerpunch you at a bar/on a yacht/while you're doing your DJ set! I dislike it when poo poo this dumb is news, but I cannot deny Conor McGregor is news. I look forward to writing more news posts over the next seven months about Conor being arrested for beating up a harp seal at a Bar Mitzvah and the fight being pushed back to next year. Congratulations to Michael Chandler on his future main event against last-minute replacement Ramiz Brahimaj.  Oh, hey, about fighters who've assaulted people OR played roles in politically supporting terrible things. Rizin's been teasing having Manny Pacquiao do something silly for years, now--at one point he was going to fight Kota Ibushi, for some reason--and at the big annual New Year's Eve special, they announced he will, in fact, be rematching his highest-profile boxing opponent, Floyd Mayweather, Jr.! Probably. Maybe. We don't have a date, or a statement from Floyd, or even a finalized ruleset. Realistically, who knows if we'll ever hear about it again. But it's just too goddamn silly an idea not to root for. MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER  I confess to feeling slightly unqualified when it comes to talking about Miyuu Yamamoto's career. You can't really talk about her life in mixed martial arts without going down three separate stories. In one, she's one of the best freestyle women's wrestlers in Japan's history. Her father was a wrestler, her sister was a wrestler, her brother was a wrestler, and by god, she was a wrestler, too. She won national championships, she won three separate world championships and came in second place on her fourth try, and she would have been a top candidate for an Olympic medal--if they had existed in her prime in the 90s. By the time the Olympics finally added women's wrestling divisions in 2004 Miyuu was already past 30, a mother, and had been retired for four years. She tried to make a comeback, but it was just too late. Her wrestling career was star-studded, but it was over. The second story, nested in the first, is her family. The Yamamoto family was already multigenerational in wrestling competition, but in the 21st century, they became the rare multigenerational mixed martial arts family. Miyuu's son Erson began competing in Rizin in 2015, and Miyuu joined him a year later. But they were both broadly overshadowed by Miyuu's younger brother Norifumi, better known to the world as KID Yamamoto. KID was one of Japan's biggest mixed martial arts stars, a huge celebrity with a laundry list of knockouts and stardom so powerful the UFC's policy of airing preliminary fights online began because they booked KID vs Demetrious Johnson in 2011, Spike TV wouldn't air it, and they thought it was too important and expensive to waste. KID tragically and unexpectedly died of cancer in 2018, and the outpouring of support, and Miyuu's desire to fight in his memory, made her even more of a star. That brings us to the third story, her career as a mixed martial artist, where she was, in all honesty, just Okay. Which, honestly, is kind of a miracle. When Miyuu made her MMA debut in 2016 she was 42, she'd returned to amateur wrestling in her mid-thirties in the failed hopes of another shot at the Olympics, and she'd never fought a mixed martial arts bout in her life. These conditions, unsurprisingly, are not normally conducive to success. That Miyuu succeeded at all is, frankly, nuts. But that success was pretty moderate. The best win of her career was an upset against Rizin tournament champion Kanna Asakura. Outside of that her victories were all over the journeywomen of the world and her style was all wrestling, all the time, leaving few highlights in the greater consciousness of the fanbase. Which makes it hard to categorize her. She shouldn't have succeeded as a fighter at all, but she did. Her career was only seven years long, but she spent it as a featured fighter in one of the world's biggest MMA organizations. You only have to look at the reactions of female grapplers and fighters in Japan to know how much of an impact they felt she had, but I am entirely removed from that bubble to know just how important she was. Instead, I'll say this: In her position, she could have subsisted solely on scrubs and become a culturally-celebrated killing machine for disposing of nobodies, but she didn't want that. She could have taken a retirement fight against a dozen women she would easily have defeated; she asked for Seika Izawa, the best Atomweight on the planet. Miyuu spent her career wanting to be the best, even when it was insane things like trying to become an Olympic medalist in her forties, and neither age nor tragedy nor getting repeatedly choked out did a drat thing to stop her, and boy, that's pretty cool. She retires at 49 and leaves a 6-8 record. WHERE ELSE CAN I TALK TO LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE ABOUT VIOLENCE? Any of the following hangouts:
DO WE HAVE OTHER COMMUNAL THREADS? So many.
WHERE ELSE DOES FIGHT CHAT EXIST? Our community output has grown enough that we've got a few other places things get posted:
 Disclaimer: These are unofficial offsites, somethingawful's rules and liability do not extend to them, and complaining about discord stuff is still offsite drama posting
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WHAT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER Our short, cold month began with the white-hot UFC Fight Night: Dariush vs Tsarukyan on December 2. IT was one of the UFC's best fight nights in quite awhile on paper, and, boy, it delivered. Down on your prelims: Veronica Hardy took a close split decision against Jamey-Lyn Horth, Jared Gooden won a great comeback victory over Wellington Turman, Rodolfo Bellato TKOed Ihor Potieria after a back-and-forth battle, and somehow we had two consecutive huge, violent first-round slam knockouts, first with Drakkar Klose dropping Joe Solecki on his face in mid-armbar and then Cody Brundage powerbombing Zachary Reese out of a triangle choke. Your prelim headliner was Miesha Tate very slowly grinding out a third-round submission against Julia Avila, but hey, they can't all be winners. The main card opened with Dustin Stoltzfus overcoming a tough first round to stun and submit Punahele Soriano in the second, Joaquim Silva winning a shockingly competitive bout with Clay Guida by decision, Sean Brady absolutely dominating Kelvin Gastelum before submitting him with a kimura in the third round, and Deiveson Figueiredo making a successful jump to 135 pounds with a 30-27 decision over Rob Font. Your co-main event was the night's unfortunate low, not for the fight itself--Jalin Turner knocked out Bobby Green in a little under three minutes, it was great--but for referee Kerry Hatley's abominable stoppage, which saw a helpless Green getting pounded on for an excruciatingly long and unnecessary time. Your main event was short and sweet: Arman Tsarukyan passed his top five exam and announced himself as a top contender by absolutely flattening Beneil Dariush in one minute. ONE came up next with ONE Fight Night 17: Kryklia vs Roberts on December 9, which was short as hell in both intention and execution. Four of its eight fights ended with a first round knockout, with the most notable being former title challenger Edgar Tabares getting trucked in thirty-six seconds by Johan Ghazali and Mohamed Younes Rabah knocking out Saemapetch Fairtex in two and a half minutes, but your co-main event also included Jo Nattawut laying a prolonged beating on Luke Lissei en route to a fun but clear decision, and your main event say Roman Kryklia knocking out Alex Roberts in the second round to become ONE's inaugural Heavyweight Muay Thai World Champion, which is about as silly a title as you get. The UFC pulled up the weekend with UFC Fight Night: Song vs Gutiérrez, a card that had to be hastily cancelled and reassembled after the UFC pulled out of its original booking in Shanghai. DOwn on your prelims: Talita Alencar won a close split decision over Rayanne Amanda dos Santos, Tatsuro Taira knocked out Carlos Hernandez, Luana Santos won a very slow decision over Stephanie Egger, Steve Garcia overcame a tough first round to knock out Melquizael Costa in the second, Park Hyun-sung stopped Shannon Ross in just under nine minutes, and Kevin Jousset scored an upset decision over Song Kenan. On your main card, André Muniz got a narrow split decision over Park Jun-yong, Tim Elliott choked out Sumudaerji and Nasrat Haqparast made short work of Jamie Mullarkey with a TKO in just 1:44. Your co-main event between Khalil Rountree Jr. and Anthony Smith was ultimately a fairly depressing affair, with Rountree repeatedly stinging a Smith who's only getting more aimless before finally knocking him out a minute into the third round. Your main event showdown between Song Yadong and Chris Gutiérrez was, to be honest, about what that fight looked like it would be on paper. A game Gutiérrez made the first couple rounds competitive, but Song still won them, and then he took over midway through the fight through wrestling and punches in the pocket and never looked back. It was a shutout decision, and it may have consigned Chris to gatekeeper status. And the UFC's year came to an end with UFC 296: Edwards vs Covington on December 16. Despite its idiotic main event it was a great card on paper, and for the most part it thoroughly delivered. On your early prelims, Shamil Gaziev made a successful debut with a TKO over an outmatched Martin Buday, Andre Fili stopped Lucas Almeida in three and a half minutes, and Tagir Ulanbekov dominated and submitted Cody Durden in two rounds. On your regular-flavor prelims, Ariane Lipski put forth the best performance of her career in beating and submitting Casey O'Neill, Cody Garbrandt recaptured some of the magic by knocking out Brian Kelleher, Irene Aldana and Karol Rosa had a fight-of-the-year candidate with Aldana coming out on the right side of a decision, and Alonzo Menifield and Dustin Jacoby had a fun back-and-forth that Menifield narrowly edged out. The main card opened with Josh Emmett absolutely trucking Bryce Mitchell, knocking him into unconscious convulsions with a right hand in two minutes. Unfortunately, that was followed by a depressingly slow, grinding deconstruction of the ghost of Tony Ferguson by Paddy Pimblett. But Shavkat Rakhmonov pulled out a fantastic submission over Stephen Thompson to cement himself right up there with Belal Muhammad as a top contender. The co-main event was a fantastic Flyweight Championship fight that saw Alexandre Pantoja fight through his own exhaustion to beat an exceedingly game Brandon Royval and notch his first official title defense. And then, in your unexpectedly gratifying Welterweight Championship main event, Colby Covington just completely poo poo the bed and got dominated--and, at one point, outwrestled--by Leon Edwards for four out of five rounds, leaving Leon with two title defenses and Colby 0-3 in title challenges. But the year cannot end without a giant, weird Japanese MMA New Year's Eve event, and Rizin 45 did not disappoint. It was a staggering 17 fights that took about eight and a half hours--let the record show that I was sick and my body finally crapped out around 4 AM, with just two fights left--and it was, on the whole, pretty great. Except for the part where Bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta, who was also sick, missed weight by six pounds and lost his belt on the scale. The early portions of the night were dominated by striking affairs and rookies like Ryujin Nasukawa getting their first big tastes of the spotlight, with highlights including bad boy Tatsuki Shinotsuka repeatedly dropping Daichi Tomizawa, Yuta Kubo answering Rukiya Anpo's "MMA is inferior to kickboxing" challenge by choking him out in one round, Hiroya Kondo stopping Jo Arai's four-year winning streak with a headkick, Igor Tanabe choking out UFC and Bellator veteran Shinsho Anzai, and Kouzi soccer-kicking the poo poo out of Kota Miura. If you survived the first intermission, you were then treated to Shinobu Ota knocking out Ryusei Ashizawa, Vince Morales running a clinic on Yuki Motoya, Hiromasa Ougikubo pulling an uneventful but clear upset over John Dodson, Mikio Ueda knocking out Tsuyoshi Sudario, and Seika Izawa's inevitable submission victory over Miyuu Yamamoto in the latter's retirement match. Those who survived the second intermission got to see the main events: Ren Hiramoto taking a decision over YA-MAN, Kleber Koike Erbst beginning his journey back to the title by choking out Yutaka Saito, Kai Asakura taking the Bantamweight title after knocking out Juan Archuleta in one of those weight-miss fights where Archuleta was literally not allowed to win, and Kyoji Horiguchi becoming the inaugural Rizin Flyweight Champion by choking out Shinryu Takahashi. WHAT'S COMING IN JANUARY It's a short fuckin' month. Rizin's on its usual year-starting break until the end of February, the PFL is at rest until its new season begins in April, Bellator's new existence has yet to be established and Invicta is a mystery. So we've got four events: Two from ONE, two from the UFC. Temporally, ONE goes first. ONE Fight Night 18: Superlek vs Mahmoudi comes to us January 12, and as of this writing their are exactly five fights announced. Three of them are prelims: Artem Belakh vs Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu, Shamil Gasanovs vs Oh Ho-taek, and Kwon Won-il vs Shinechagtga Zoltsetseg. Your co-main event is a fight designed just to drive me, personally, loving insane, as John Lineker, a lifetime mixed martial artist who is 5'3", used to fight as a Flyweight, and has never fought outside MMA In his life, faces Liam Harrison, a Muay Thai kickboxer and multiple-time champion who is 5'7" and has been doing this his entire life, in a Muay Thai match. In your main event, Superlek Kiatmuu9, ONE's Flyweight Kickboxing World Champion, defends his title against Elias Mahmoudi, who has not won two fights in a row in almost five years. The UFC is up next with a return to the loving Apex for a rematch of a fight that just happened a couple months ago: It's UFC Fight Night: Ankalaev vs Walker 2 on January 13. Your prelims are lengthy and, in part, not that bad: Felipe Bunes vs Denys Bondar, Gabriel Santos vs Westin Wilson, Farid Basharat vs Taylor Lapilus, Yana Santos vs Norma Dumont, Marcus McGhee vs Gaston Bolanos, Bassil Hafez vs Preston Parsons, and Andrei Arlovski vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta, a fight I would have sworn already happened if you asked me. Up on the main card: Phil Hawes vs Bruno Ferreira, Ricky Simón vs Mario Bautista, Ketlen Vieira vs Macy Chiasson, Jim Miller vs Gabriel Benítez (why?), Matheus Nicolau vs Manel Kape, and the titular rematch between Magomed Ankalaev and Johnny Walker, which will hopefully have an ending this time. The UFC's short month ends on UFC 297: Strickland vs du Plessis on January 20. It's the UFC's return to Canada, which makes it weird that it, uh, barely has any Canadians on it, but you get two title fights, so hey. Fights include Malcolm Gordon vs Jimmy FLick, Jasmine Jasudavicius vs Priscila Cachoeira, Yohan Lainesse vs Sam Patterson, Gillian Robertson vs Polyana Viana, Serhiy Sidey vs Ramon Tavres, Charles Jourdain vs Sean Woodson, and Brad Katona vs Garrett Armfield. On your main card--right now, anyway--is Chris Curtis vs Marc-André Barriault, Dominick Reyes vs Carlos Ulbert, Neil Magny vs Mike Malott and Arnold Allen vs Movsar Evloev. The co-main event will finally fill one of the UFC's title vacancies, as Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva fight to win the UFC Women's Bantamweight World Championship, with the 145-pound belt probably slowly decomposing in the trash as we speak. In the main event, Sean Strickland efends the Middleweight title agaisnt top contender Dricus du Plessis, the man who was suppsoed to get his shot against Israel Adesanya in the first place. And our incredibly short month comes to an end with ONE 165: Rodtang vs Takeru on January 28. This is a huge night for ONE, as they return to Japan for the first time since 2019 and do it featuring the biggest free agent they've signed in years, as ONE kickboxing superstar Rodtang Jitmuangnon battles one of the best kickboxers in Japanese history, Takeru Segawa--maybe. Sports press says Rodtang is injured! His manager keeps teasing that Superlek Kiatmuu9 will replace him! Will we know what's on the card before it happens? Stay tuned. Otherwise, you've got Shinya Aoki vs Sage Northcutt, Garry Tono vs Martin Nguyen, Itsuki Hirata vs Ayaka Miura, Danny "Bit My" Kingad vs Yuya Wakamatsu, Bokang Masunyane vs Keito Yamakita, and Hiroba Minowa vs Gustavo Balart.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:39
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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. And in the most predictable thing possible, some bullshit happened, he got injured, he's going to be gone for at least eight months, and the UFC is not only not stripping him of the title like they've done to everyone else, they've already gotten out ahead of themselves and made clear that when he comes back, he will be fighting Stipe Miocic, not whoever the interim champion is at the time. Funny, that. Interim Heavyweight Champion   Tom Aspinall - 14-3, 0 DefensesThe UFC's Heavyweight division got itself into a weird spot in 2007. Randy Couture was the rightful, reigning, defending champion, but he and the UFC had a dispute that stretched out more than a year. The UFC couldn't strip him--it would have made it easier for him to get out of his contract--so they made an interim title. By the time Randy came back they had already made big plans for him and Brock Lesnar, but the interim title had gotten wrapped up in The Ultimate Fighter 8 (jesus christ) and it, too, had to be defended, meaning there were two championships being defended simultaneously: The Undisputed Championship, which was the 'real' belt despite being held by a guy trying to leave the company and contended for by someone with only two victories in the sport, and the Interim Championship, which was being fought over by the actual, legitimate top contenders. At UFC 295 on November 11th, 2023, Tom Aspinall, the rightful #4 contender, fought Sergei Pavlovich, the rightful #2 contender, for a new interim championship. And he won. On two weeks' notice! Aspinall's been one of the most promising heavyweight prospects in the world for years, his only loss in the UFC came from his knee tearing itself apart fifteen seconds into a fight, and he went toe-to-toe with one of the scariest punchers in the history of the sport and knocked him flat in just barely over a minute. He is, indisputably, the real deal. And now he gets to be the interim champion of a Heavyweight division in which the real champion, Jon Jones, is going to be out injured well into next year and, the UFC has made clear, will be returning to defend his title against Stipe Miocic, who by that time will have been on the shelf for 3+ years and will be going on 42. So congratulations, Tom. You're the real Heavyweight champion. I hope you get some credit for it. Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs   Alex Pereira - 9-2, 0 DefensesConflicting things can be simultaneously true in this sport. It is true that Alex Pereira was brought into the UFC as a 3-1 rookie based on his history as a kickboxer rather than his accomplishments in the sport. It is true that he was fast-tracked to a title shot against the primary focus of that history, megastar Israel Adesanya, after beating just three fighters, none of whom had any hope of testing his grappling. It is also true that he rendered that discourse ultimately irrelevant by not just beating but stopping Adesanya in his title shot anyway, in the process becoming the fastest Middleweight to go from debut to champion since Anderson Silva. It was more or less an open secret that he wasn't going to stay there: Being bigger than most Heavyweights in the UFC, the weight cut to 185 was always a short-term thing. Luckily for the UFC, he got knocked out by Adesanya and gave him the title right back on his way up to 205. Once again, he got fast-tracked, this time by happenstance. A split decision victory over Jan Błachowicz made Pereira a top five contender, and when Jamahal Hill was forced to vacate his title thanks to an ankle injury--and the previous champion, Jiří Procházka, was back from his own title vacation and injury--Pereira was slotted right back into championship place. They met at UFC 295 on November 11th, and after two back-and-forth rounds, Pereira punished a Jiří who dared to grapple by elbowing his skull until he briefly stopped moving. The commentary and audience thought it was an early stoppage, but Jiří Procházka didn't, so gently caress 'em. It is true that Alex Pereira has fought seven UFC fights without having to fight an actual grappler, and that was an intentional choice by matchmaking. It is true that getting the chance to win championships in two weight classes within just two years and seven fights in the UFC is not a thing that happens to most fighters. But it is unavoidably true that Alex Pereira is a two-division champion and no one can take it away from him. But because Light Heavyweight cannot be allowed to be good or stable, Alex Pereira, despite being the champion, called out his first desired contender: Israel Adesanya. Congratulations, everyone. 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. Sean Strickland, god help us all, is a world champion. He is, thankfully, smart enough to know he has leverage, which came in handy when the UFC tried to get him to defend his title against Khamzat Chimaev with one week of preparation. Instead, he'll make his first title defense against Dricus du Plessis at UFC 297 on January 20. Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs   Leon Edwards - 22-3 (1), 2 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 found himself dealing with the UFC's bullshit insistence that his first defense came not against the top contender, but rather, the UFC's favorite bigot, Colby Covington. Edwards dominated him and sent him away 4-1, finally ending the bullshit. At which point he, immediately, brought the bullshit back by talking down a fight with #1 contender Belal Muhammad, after naming him repeatedly as the man he should be fighting instead of Colby. Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs   Islam Makhachev - 25-1, 2 DefensesDestiny 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. Or, at least, it was. In one of those funny moments of sport deterioration, his title defense against Charles Oliveira got scratched thanks to Oliveira busting his eyebrow in training, and on less than two weeks' notice the UFC ran Makhachev/Volkanovski 2, and with no hype, no marketing and no time to prepare, a visibly depleted Volkanovski got dropped by a headkick in the first round. Having now abruptly vanquished his rival, Islam Makhachev is...calling out the winner of the Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington welterweight title bout. God dammit. Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs   Alexander Volkanovski - 26-3, 5 DefensesSometimes, things get ruined for no good reason. Three things are true. 1: Alexander Volkanovski is one of the best fighters on the planet, and has proven it, repeatedly, over the last near-decade. His featherweight reign is second only to José Aldo in history, and he stands a great chance of surpassing him. 2: Alexander Volkanovski had one of the best performances of his career in February of 2023, when he met lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev, took him to his limit and nearly knocked him out in the fifth round. Even though he lost a decision his stock rose considerably, and a rematch between the two seemed inevitable. 3: When the UFC called Volkanovski to step in and make that rematch happen as a short-notice replacement 13 days before fight night, he should have said no. For every fantastic story in mixed martial arts there are a thousand dreams crushed by reality. In reality, Islam Makhachev got most of a year to recover before training his rear end off to fight Charles Oliveira for months, and Alexander Volkanovski had just fought three months prior despite having a crippling arm injury, had just gotten surgery for said injury, and had only just finished his post-op recovery in mid-September. The Alexander Volkanovski who stepped into the cage on October 21st could have beaten up 9/10 of the planet, but he still looked diminished, and unfortunately, a fully-healthy, fully-trained, fully-prepared Islam Makhachev is firmly in that 1/10 even on a good day. It wasn't competitive, it wasn't dramatic, and it didn't take long. Islam domed Volk with a headkick and pounded him out in three minutes. In the post-fight interview an emotional Volkanovski talked about taking the replacement thanks to the psychological need to get back out there and fight again, and insisted that despite rushing back into the cage, and despite getting concussed, he still wanted to defend his featherweight title against Ilia Topuria at UFC 297 on January 20th. I say this as an enormous fan of the man: I really, really hope there's someone in his camp who can talk him out of it. It would be his fourth top-level world title fight in eleven months, and it would be his second in a row that would leave him with barely any time to prepare--given that, having been knocked out, he shouldn't have any sparring contact until the end of December. We all need time to get healthy. UPDATE: Well, I kind of got what I wanted. Volkanovski's defense got pushed back one month: He'll now face Ilia Topuria at UFC 298 on February 17th. 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. Just in case his status as a marketing favorite had not been made abundantly clear, the UFC announced he will have his first title defense not in a rematch with Sterling, or a meeting with top contender Merab Dvalishvili, or even a bout with the streaking Cory Sandhagen, but--of course--a rematch with Marlon "Chito" Vera, the #6 contender on a one-fight win streak who knocked O'Malley out back in 2020. Neat. They'll fight at UFC 299 on March 9th. Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Alexandre Pantoja - 27-5, 1 DefenseSometimes, 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 came against Brandon "Raw Dawg" Royval as the co-main event to UFC 296 on December 16th, and it was a wild affair with a couple scary moments, but Pantoja emerged victorious and notched the first successful defense of the title in three years. His next contender is, in all likelihood, the winner of the Brandon Moreno/Amir Albazi fight this February. Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs   VACANT - The land left buriedWomen'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. With Julianna Peña still recovering from her injury, the UFC is finally filling the Women's Bantamweight void: Raquel Pennington will face Mayra Bueno Silva at UFC 297 on January 20th, and whoever wins gets the unenviable task of trying to rebuild the division. No word on Women's Featherweight, though. I wonder how long I'll even keep it here. 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 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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NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD 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 punched 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. And now he's going to fight de Ridder for his 205-pound belt in March. Jesus wept. 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. And now he's going to do it again! On March 1, de Ridder will defend his remaining belt against Anatoly Malykhin. Again. 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. After the passing of his younger sister Victoria, Christian took the whole of the year to, understandably, grieve. He's planning his comeback for February of 2024. 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 Interim Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs  Thanh Le - 14-3, 0 DefensesWell, we're right back here again. Thanh Le was considered a potential breakout star for ONE during their own breakout in 2020: A genuinely skilled, hard-punching, well-rounded, charismatic, American star who only won by stoppage and almost never lost. Moreover, he was a black eye for the UFC, as they had him not once, but twice--first on The Ultimate Fighter 22 (jesus christ), where he lost in the semifinals, and second on the Contender Series in 2017, where he scored a vicious headkick knockout. But they only offered him short-notice replacement debuts, and when ONE came calling, they simply let him go. Within a year, Thanh Le was 4-0 and had knocked out Martin Nguyen to become the new featherweight champion. And then, as ONE does, they fumbled the ball. Thanh twiddled his thumbs for a year and a half for a fight with the 6-0 Garry Tonon, whom he dispatched in less than a minute. Five months later, he lost his title to Tang Kai. He waited an entire year for a rematch--and when Kai got hurt, he took an interim title fight with Ilya Freymanov on October 6, 2023, and tapped him out in 1:02. He's back. He has a belt again. And nobody knows when he'll fight next. 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. He promptly skipped away from MMA completely and faced Jonathan Haggerty for ONE's Featherweight Kickboxing Championship on November 3rd, where he was immediately destroyed. Haggerty wants an MMA fight next. 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 inadvertent 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 grappled Mikey Musumeci for his submission championship, and lost, 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   Chihiro Suzuki - 12-3 (1), 0 DefensesChihiro Suzuki has had a very fortunate year. Suzuki rose to Rizin's notice not through MMA, but after winning Japan's KNOCK OUT Super Lightweight Kickboxing championship. He made his Rizin debut six months later--and got knocked out in twenty seconds. He spent the next two and a half years simultaneously rounding out his MMA game and annually defending his kickboxing gold, and by 2023, he was one of Rizin's top Featherweight contenders, more than ready for his shot at Kleber Koike Erbst's Rizin championship. And--he got armbarred in three minutes. However, hilariously enough, Erbst lost his belt on the scale after missing weight, meaning the title was vacant and the fight, by Rizin rules, was a No Contest, so Suzuki didn't even technically lose. He then proceeded to get the biggest break of his career. At Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 30th, 2023, despite having just lost a five-round fight to Sergio Pettis a month prior, Patrício Pitbull was thrown onto the card against Suzuki on four days' notice--and Suzuki not only beat him, he became the first person to ever knock out Bellator's GOAT. Rizin immediately booked Suzuki in against new champion Vugar Keramov for their debut in Keramov's home country of Azerbaijan, and Keramov looked poised and powerful and was in the process of ragdolling Suzuki like he does everyone else--and Suzuki caught him with an upkick on the jaw and punched him the rest of the way out from his goddamn back. Chihiro Suzuki, you are Rizin's new star. Hold onto it as long as you can and pray they don't book a Kleber rematch. Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Kai Asakura - 21-4, 0 DefensesRizin's Bantamweight title is snakebitten as hell, and, somehow, so is Kai Asakura. Kyoji Horiguchi was the first man to win it back in 2018, and a year later he gave it up, having been too injured to compete--in part thanks to fighting while injured and being defeated by, in fact, Kai Asakura, but only in a non-title fight. Asakura was a lock and a favorite to win the vacant belt that December--so he got immediately knocked out by Manel Kape. Manel Kape left Rizin for the UFC, leaving the belt once again vacant, and Kai won it after knocking out Hiromasa Ougikubo, meaning Kai was not only the champion, but he also got his rematch with Kyoji Horiguchi--only this time, Kai was defending his belt, and could finally show Horiguchi it wasn't a fluke! And then Horiguchi knocked him out in three minutes, and then the belt went into torpor for two whole years, after which Horiguchi gave it up to go be a Flyweight instead. Luckily, Rizin knew this was coming, so they booked a Bantamweight Grand Prix to crown a successor, with the explicit intention of crowning Kai Asakura. And he made it to the finals! Where he got revenge-stomped by Hiromasa Ougikubo, who then went on to lose badly to former Bellator champion Juan Archuleta, who became Rizin's first American titleholder. Archuleta was oddly at home in the pomp and circumstance of JMMA, and he promised big things for his future, and then he came into his New Year's Eve match sick, missed weight by six pounds, lost his belt on the scale, and thanks to Rizin's rules, was left with a fight where not only was he ineligible to win the title, he was ineligible to win the fight. And as sick as he was, he probably shouldn't have fought anyway! But he did, and Asakura dropped him in two rounds. Thus, for the second time, Kai Asakura is the best Bantamweight in Japan. I beg him not to walk under any dangling pianos. Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Kyoji Horiguchi - 32-5 (1), 0 DefensesWell, this was a long time coming. Before Rizin even existed, Kyoji Horiguchi was the consensus #2 Flyweight fighter on the planet. He'd won Shooto's 125-pound title, he'd come to America half to face the best in the world and half because Japan's MMA scene was in a real, real bad place at the time, and by mid-2015, he was 15-1 and ready to fight for a world championship. Unfortunately, said championship was held by Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson, the best Flyweight of all time. Johnson dealt Kyoji his second-ever loss and first-ever stoppage, and it stopped Horiguchi's dream of being the best, but it also opened him up to becoming a star. A year later he was out of the UFC, back home in Japan, and, immediately, one of Rizin's top attractions. But Rizin didn't have a 125-pound division--so he settled for just winning is 135-pound belt instead. When Rizin began cross-promoting with Bellator, he went and took their belt, too, just for good measure. But his strength of schedule and his own injuries caught up with him: He ultimately vacated both belts without ever recording a title defense. By the time he came back in 2021, things had changed. He'd been knocked out for the first time in Kai Asakura back in 2019, but he was fighting hurt and on short notice, so that was excused. When Sergio Pettis knocked him out in his 2021 return fight, it was a warning; when Patchy Mix dominated him in his first match in the Bellator Grand Prix of 2022, it was a sign. Horiguchi needed to be back at 125. Bellator opened a Flyweight division more or less just for him, and at Bellator x Rizin 2 in the summer of 2023, Horiguchi faced Rizin star Makoto "Shinryu" Takahashi to crown the company's inaugural champion--and the fight ended in a No Contest after Horiguchi poked Shinryu in the eye twenty-five seconds into the first round. And then Bellator got sold and stopped operating as an independent entity. Whoops! Rizin decided to just make the goddamn belt themselves, and on New Year's Eve of 2023, Horiguchi and Takahashi had their rematch, and this time, Horiguchi choked him out. Eight years after his first attempt, Kyoji Horiguchi has a Flyweight world championship. Now, let's see Rizin give him some competition. Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs  Seika Izawa - 12-0, 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. Seika scored one more win on New Year's Eve, choking out Miyuu Yamamoto in her retirement bout, and while it was an honor, it does sort of emphasize the problem with Seika's position. She's unquestionably the best Atomweight in the world, but the last real top fighter she faced was more than a year ago. Will Rizin bring her real competition, or are they trying to simply build a star?
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Jan 1, 2024 20:39
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THE BELLATOR CHAMPIONSHIP GRAVEYARD 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. He was to defend his title against Linton Vassell at Bellator's series finale-sounding Bellator 300, but Vassell got injured and, as Bader himself put it in a reddit post, Viacom is done with Bellator and didn't want to pay for a replacement. Ryan Bader is the best heavyweight champion outside of the UFC, and it's anyone's guess if he'll still be champion of anything by January. 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   Jason Jackson - 17-4, 0 DefensesGetting in right before the buzzer is one of the best times to get in. Jason Jackson does not win any points for having "The rear end-Kicking Machine" for a nickname, but his successes speak for themselves. Jackson actually had two run-ins with the UFC early in his career--since he got his start training with the short-lived Blackzilians team, he was part of The Ultimate Fighter 21 (jesus christ): American Top Team vs Blackzilians, where he was choked out in the second round. He didn't get invited to the UFC, but two years later he was on the third episode of the Contender Series, which saw him spend the first round mostly cage-clinching before breaking his ankle out of nowhere twenty seconds into the second round. He was in Bellator a couple years later losing a decision to Ed Ruth, and that was about the point the world decided to ignore him. As it turns out: A mistake. His path through Bellator was slow--to the point that he's only had one fight a year for the last three years--but by this year he was on a six-fight winning streak and a sensible opponent for Yaroslav Amosov. Very few people gave him a chance, but having not knocked anyone out since mid-2018, absolutely no one expected him to knock Amosov, the best Welterweight outside of the UFC, the gently caress out in the third round. Jason Jackson is, officially, the Bellator Welterweight Champion. Whether there will still be a division for him in a month, we'll have to wait and see. Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs  Usman Nurmagomedov - 17-0 (1), 2 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 faced fellow tournament semifinalist Brent Primus at Bellator 300 on October 7th, and it was as one-sided and yet uneventful as you can imagine. Until Usman failed his drug test. Bellator says it was for medication rather than PEDs and thus he won't be stripped, but the fight's a No Contest and they need a rematch, which seems awfully selective. 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  Patchy Mix - 19-1, 0 DefensesIt took a long goddamn time, but Patchy Mix is finally getting the credit he deserves. Fans had already singled out Patchy as a uniquely talented fighter by 2019, when he signed to Bellator as the 10-0 King of the Cage Bantamweight Champion who'd submitted almost everyone he faced, but it wasn't really until he choked out Yuki Motoya at Bellator's first co-promotion with Rizin that people really paid attention. Which was unfortunate, because his next fight was a shot at Juan Archuleta for the vacant Bellator Bantamweight Championship and Archuleta schooled him on their feet, ending both Mix's title hopes and his undefeated streak. It didn't help matters when, two fights later, he blew his weight cut for a big Dublin match against James Gallagher. But Mix kept winning, and when he entered the Bantamweight Grand Prix and promptly stormed the bracket by beating Kyoji Horiguchi and choking out Magomed Magomedov, suddenly, people paid attention again. When he fought interim champion Raufeon Stots and knocked him out cold with a knee in less than a minute and a half, people began wondering if maybe he was the real champion and Sergio Pettis, who'd been out for a year and a half and returned to a vanity fight with Patrício Pitbull, wasn't the fake. The two met at Bellator 301 on November 17th, and Mix left no doubt: He outwrestled Pettis and choked him out in the second round. Patchy Mix is, finally, the undisputed Bellator Bantamweight Champion. It remains to be seen if his division continues to exist. Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Cris Cyborg - 27-2 (1), 5 DefensesYup. It's 2023 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a Muay Thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Cyborg decided her next fight would be a boxing match, and on September 25 she faced Simone da Silva, a jobber to the stars coming off twelve straight losses who had been knocked out just one month prior. Undeterred, she had her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. After a year and a half of inactivity, Cris Cyborg returned to MMA to defend her title against Cat Zingano at Bellator 300 on October 7th. It lasted four minutes. She'd like to go back to boxing now, if you don't mind. Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs  Liz Carmouche - 20-7, 3 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 defended her title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane at Bellator 300 on October 7th, and it was one of those fights where friends don't really want to hurt each other--until Ilima got kicked enough that her leg collapsed in the fifth round.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:39
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That's right, we now need five loving posts, because Rizin adding a Flyweight belt made the b-league championship roll too big to fit under the characters-per-post limit. Also, LobsterMobster did a great thing right at the end of the thread so go read it: LobsterMobster posted:My 2023 recap/review is up
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Jan 1, 2024 20:40
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There was this initial story to the Duplessis x Strickland brawl, but it wasn’t quite as bare-minimum courtesy as it initially came off, ABs that I’m sure the UFC promoted https://www.mmafighting.com/2023/12/19/24007600/gilbert-burns-wife-reacts-sean-strickland-dricus-du-plessis-ufc-296-brawl
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Jan 1, 2024 21:51
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Happy new year. Who's your early pick for fighter of the year?
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Jan 1, 2024 21:53
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kimbo305 posted:There was this initial story to the Duplessis x Strickland brawl, but it wasn’t quite as bare-minimum courtesy as it initially came off, ABs that I’m sure the UFC promoted Is that a bemused chuck lidell shaking his head in that video?
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Jan 1, 2024 22:13
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I'm ready for 2024 to be the year of the return of muscle golems and Johny Hendricks
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Jan 2, 2024 03:01
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heavyweight yoel romero, please ufc
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Jan 2, 2024 03:43
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Lid posted:I'm ready for 2024 to be the year of the return of muscle golems and Johny Hendricks your dart missed https://twitter.com/MMAJunkie/status/1742010329125519522
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Jan 2, 2024 03:46
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CarlCX posted:your dart missed it must be hard to go from being a bigoted weirdo and getting loads of adulation and applause and media to being a bigoted weirdo getting 21 likes on twitter.
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Jan 2, 2024 04:52
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Just make Covington and Masvidal fight only each other and keep them away from any belt. They get to fight and everyone gets to watch them punch each other in the face.
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Jan 2, 2024 05:22
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Jorge on the juice got bodied in bellator this is a death rattle
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Jan 2, 2024 06:17
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BlindSite posted:Happy new year. Khamzat, if only by virtue of probably winning the belt and beating Israel on the way rather than having a high number of stand out wins
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Jan 2, 2024 08:25
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I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel.
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Jan 2, 2024 10:27
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel. Legit lol. I wonder if TJ Dillashaw will make a comeback, he was looking juicy AF and yolked out the other day now he's had his 50 surgeries and is back on the supps. Gotta be honest, i wouldn't mind seeing him back.
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Jan 2, 2024 11:10
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gently caress, I completely forgot Dillashaw existed. With UFC's new drug testing policy (i.e none) maybe he might somehow rediscover the spark that mysteriously disappeared when he had to be clean.
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Jan 2, 2024 11:17
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It looks like UFC light heavyweight Tyson Pedro got released coming off a win in September because... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Sh7jO22rs 
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Jan 2, 2024 11:29
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel.
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Jan 2, 2024 13:01
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel. 
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Jan 2, 2024 14:04
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Lid posted:Jorge on the juice got bodied in bellator this is a death rattle Good kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel.
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Jan 2, 2024 14:15
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What’s the condition of Dillashaw’s shoulder, though? Seemed pretty hosed last time we saw him, but I don’t know the full power of post-surgery Secret Juice.
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Jan 2, 2024 14:53
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:49
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My fave image from the year
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Jan 2, 2024 21:06
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FishBowlRobot posted:What’s the condition of Dillashaw’s shoulder, though? I was just speculating just because he was a massive drug cheat, but man was he an incredible fighter when he was fully healthy and in full flight. If he never went to 125 I think he cements a legacy. That being said he'll be 38 next month and has been in competitive sports his whole life, that's a lot of miles on the tyres so I doubt he comes back.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:40
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel. everyone's told you already but this is a good rear end post. kimbo305 posted:My fave image from the year lol
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Jan 3, 2024 00:41
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BlindSite posted:I was just speculating just because he was a massive drug cheat, but man was he an incredible fighter when he was fully healthy and in full flight. If he never went to 125 I think he cements a legacy. That being said he'll be 38 next month and has been in competitive sports his whole life, that's a lot of miles on the tyres so I doubt he comes back. Gotcha. Yeah, he was fun to watch. I agree it would have been interesting to see what happened if he didn’t try for the 125 belt. Maybe it happened in the same “what if X fighter didn’t throw that spinning poo poo” alternate universe.
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Jan 3, 2024 01:49
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Lid posted:Rizin announced tgat Manny is fighting Floyd in a Rizin mma exhibition thing and I laughed heartily The Anvil is back!
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Jan 3, 2024 01:54
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FishBowlRobot posted:Maybe it happened in the same “what if X fighter didn’t throw that spinning poo poo” alternate universe. There's two American middleweights this could apply to.
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Jan 3, 2024 02:13
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Snowman_McK posted:There's two American middleweights this could apply to. Yep. I was thinking of Chael, Weidman, and Shevchenko. I wonder how many more examples of “when spinning poo poo goes wrong” there are.
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Jan 3, 2024 03:25
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BlindSite posted:I was just speculating just because he was a massive drug cheat, but man was he an incredible fighter when he was fully healthy and in full flight. If he never went to 125 I think he cements a legacy. That being said he'll be 38 next month and has been in competitive sports his whole life, that's a lot of miles on the tyres so I doubt he comes back. I had some memory that Dillashaw retired because he was looking at a multi year comeback from his shoulder injury, so I went and googled him to confirm that. And god drat lmao wouldn’t you know that he posted a pic of himself yolked out of his loving mind and talking about a comeback.  Just look at it. He must weigh 190lbs and has a clear hgh gut. E: oh god he’s rapidly going bald, too. This is my favorite mma thing in a while. blue footed boobie fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 05:28
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drat lol. Conor broke down the USADA door so TJ could walk through.
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Jan 3, 2024 05:32
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UFC turning into the Saints Row 2 Fuzz minigame where you have to bust the steroid ring and they can punch your character into fractional orbit 00’s Japan has nothing on this muscle pharm
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Jan 3, 2024 05:35
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TEE YOU EEE
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Jan 3, 2024 05:37
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blue footed boobie posted:I had some memory that Dillashaw retired because he was looking at a multi year comeback from his shoulder injury, so I went and googled him to confirm that. Didn't even recognize him, I was like, huh, Ryan Bader's looking slimmer... TJ should have to bareknuckle box all the ex Team Alphamale guys.
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Jan 3, 2024 06:37
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god i think it was the first fight with barao where he landed something like 30 odd unanswered punches before the ref called it off. i remember pausing and counting them and it was something like 32. absolutely crazy. those two fights with barao were some of the most brutal beatings i've ever seen. it's rare to see a champ get absolutely embarrassed.
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Jan 3, 2024 08:05
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kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel. thread title
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Jan 3, 2024 08:05
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Marching Powder posted:god i think it was the first fight with barao where he landed something like 30 odd unanswered punches before the ref called it off. i remember pausing and counting them and it was something like 32. absolutely crazy. those two fights with barao were some of the most brutal beatings i've ever seen. it's rare to see a champ get absolutely embarrassed. Wonder what gave Barao a worse beating, TJ or the bathtub.
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Jan 3, 2024 09:17
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