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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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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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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. As much as I love MMA I don't rewatch it (outside of research/writing projects) all that often, but I rewatched that fight so many times. Just one of the most beautiful performances in the sport. kimbo305 posted:I too wish for a controversial Muslim force to defeat Israel. gonna be hard to beat this for february, yeah Also on the topic of Khamzat, looks like things might not be great! https://twitter.com/mmamania/status/1742446965659730003
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Jan 3, 2024 09:47
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BlindSite posted:I'm changing my pick for 2024 fighter of the year to Bo Nickal. Tatsuro Taira after Bo Nickal's shocking upset loss to Caio Borralho. https://twitter.com/arielhelwani/status/1743384336416514495 I guess we're about to see how much of Ngannou/Fury was Fury taking him lightly. Either way, Ngannou getting loving paid again.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:08
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Dana just announced the co-main for 299 is a five-rounder between Dustin Poirier and Benoit Saint-Denis, and UFC 300 will have Charles Oliveira vs Arman Tsarukyan in a title eliminator. Aside from the slight bullshit of Charles having to fight to keep a title shot he already had, those are great fuckin' fights.
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Jan 8, 2024 06:10
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Anyone who does not sign that petition is not a real mixed martial arts fan. This is the new line. Alright, let's get this loving year started.
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Jan 10, 2024 23:15
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 86: LET'S GIVE IT ANOTHER TRY SATURDAY, JANUARY 13 FROM THE VILLAINOUS CREVASSE OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM So, did you enjoy your Winter break? Going into year three of doing these writeups and, thus, the second time I've had a writing vacation: Coming back is weird. I've been trying to draft an editorial about the philosophical logistics of being an MMA fan in the modern era, but something about it hasn't quite gelled, and the sense of returning to the UFC after a month off is a great, abstract expression of the conflict. I missed you, combat sports! I missed your weirdness and your excellence. I missed your combination of silliness and seriousness. I missed the nonsensical combination of incredible discipline and the dumbest poo poo in the world. What do you have for me, now that we're back? How are we reigniting the passion that fires our souls? An instant rematch of a three-minute No Contest from two and a half months ago? At Light Heavyweight? In the Apex? Boy, you really shouldn't have.  by the by, the UFC is selling autographed prints of that poster for $200 MAIN EVENT: WATCHING RERUNS IN THE DARK LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Magomed Ankalaev (18-1-1 (1), #3) vs Johnny Walker (21-7 (1), #7) Hey, didn't we just see this fight? Yes! Sort of. If you can't remember the UFC of three months ago--which, speaking as someone who writes weekly essays about it, same--this fight originally took place third from the top at UFC 294 back in October. At the time, I had this to say: CarlCX posted:LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Magomed Ankalaev (18-1-1, #2) vs Johnny Walker (21-7, #7) Unfortunately UFC 294 was an incredibly cursed card, featuring things like 'Russian kickboxer with one functioning eye who somehow gets licensed anyway' and 'woman gets medically cleared only to spend her post-fight interview talking about her active, bleeding staph infections' and 'Khamzat Chimaev vs noted Welterweight Kamaru Usman in a 185-pound title eliminator' and 'Alexander Volkanovski rematches Islam Makhachev with one week to prepare.' Did that curse extend to our Light Heavyweight tilt? To answer that, let me give you some at-the-time reactions to the fight from our fight community: Gumball Gumption posted:oops all fouls JHomer722 posted:dude lol DoombatINC posted:just a remarkably dumb card CarlCX posted:just loving close light heavyweight Magomed Ankalaev was checking leg kicks and landing shots to the body, Johnny Walker was playing possum and trying to catch him with flying knees and heavy kicks, Ankalaev threw him to the floor and tried to use his grappling advantage, and three minutes and thirteen seconds into the fight Ankalaev threw a knee at Walker while he still had a knee on the floor, which is illegal because, as any martial artist knows, if your kneecap is making contact with the ground you get an unfair health debuff. This has been the story of Magomed Ankalaev's UFC career. Back in 2020 he lost an entire year of his prime being forced into a repeatedly-rescheduled rematch with Ion Cuțelaba after a referee screwed up their first fight. Ankalaev went undefeated across four years and nine fights and only got a title match because Jiří Procházka's shoulder exploded and the belt was vacant. Ankalaev pretty clearly won that fight, but Michael Bell, one of my least favorite judges, stuck him with a draw. Ankalaev went on ice for almost an entire year and came back not to a title fight, or even a promised title eliminator, but rather, the ill-fated Johnny Walker fight. Once again, things went wrong--though, in fairness, it's his fault this time--and once again, Ankalaev is in stasis, and he can't move on until we re-do yet another fight. Have my feelings about this fight changed at all? Not really. They only had three minutes to play with, but Ankalaev was striking effectively and grounded Walker on his first attempt at a takedown. Has the likelihood that Ankalaev will get his richly-deserved championship fight with a victory here increased any? Well, Jamahal Hill says he's coming back around May and the UFC has promised him an immediate title shot, and being a crown jewel of the Contender Series, that's probably a safe bet. And the #5-ranked Aleksandar Rakić is fighting the formerly-shoulderless former champion Jiří Procházka at UFC 300 in April, which would almost certainly crown a new #2 in the division. And the rumored main event of UFC 300 is Light Heavyweight champion Alex Pereira against interim Heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, meaning the champion may not even be available until the Fall. MAGOMED ANKALAEV BY DECISION, but look forward to seeing him fight Jan Błachowicz in yet another rematch later this year because, y'know, he just hasn't earned it yet the way people the UFC likes more inexplicably have. CO-MAIN EVENT: WHY DON'T YOU TWEET ABOUT IT FLYWEIGHT: Matheus Nicolau (19-3-1, #5) vs Manel Kape (19-6, #6) This fight is happening thanks to a combination of bad luck, bad timing and being a weird shithead, and nothing is as emblematic of this era of the sport as that sentence. There are two elephants competing for space in this room, and we're going to deal with the more respectable of them first: This is a rematch. Three years ago Manel Kape dropped the Rizin Bantamweight Championship in the garbage and made the pilgrimage to the UFC--which was fantastic timing, to be honest, as COVID was about to destroy Rizin's ability to book international talent anyhow--and lost his hype by taking two losses in as many months. The first fight was an entirely uncontroversial unanimous decision loss to future champion Alexandre Pantoja; the second was an incredibly close split decision loss against Matheus Nicolau. Kape, of course, called both losses bullshit injustices committed by bad judges and insisted he deserved better. This will come up later. Nicolau's career over the following years has been one of quiet, ultimately failed contendership. He didn't have any huge highlights or fight-of-the-night awards or fun internet meltdowns that could be used as marketing material. He was just--shockingly--a very good fighter. After four straight UFC victories he got his title eliminator against Brandon Royval last April, Royval knocked him out in the first round, and just like that, Nicolau was back to defending his position against lower-ranked fighters. Over that same timeframe, Manel Kape has become known for two things. One of them is being absolutely snakebitten. At this point, Kape has lost multiple years of his career to fights not panning out. He signed with the UFC in 2020 but didn't debut until 2021 thanks to opponents getting injured, he spent almost all of 2022 on the shelf thanks to failing a steroid metabolite test and Rogério Bontorin loving up his weight cut, and he only fought once in three scheduled 2023 fights: First Alex Perez pulled out after having a seizure while warming up for their fight in March, then Deiveson Figueiredo wasn't medically cleared for their July showdown, and Kai Kara-France pulled out of a September match after getting concussed in training. Which would, one would think, engender an incredible amount of sympathy for Manel Kape, who keeps getting screwed through no fault of his own! Unfortunately, he's responded to it primarily by being a huge rear end in a top hat. His love of insane screeds is more famous than his fights--Alex Perez didn't have medical issues, he was just a coward and his DNA is an abomination, Deiveson is fat, weak and old and too scared to fight a killer like Kape, and when Kape beat replacement opponent Felipe dos Santos this past September, he used his post-fight victory interview to insult Kara-France and call him and his entire training camp gay slurs. Remember when using slurs on UFC broadcasts was a bad thing fighters got punished for? Boy, I miss those days. The fighters themselves haven't changed much at all, but Kape's profile has, and despite their first fight being exceptionally close, Kape is a big favorite here. I get why: He's a more popular quantity, he's a harder hitter, and Nicolau's coming off a KO loss. Kape blitzing him and moving on to contendership is the logical throughline, and you could make an entirely sensible argument he should've won that split decision in the first place. But he also likes to fight cocky, and he also paces himself really oddly, and his biggest opponent in fights tends to be his own bullshit. Or maybe I just think it'll be funny if Kape fumbles it again. Either way, MATHEUS NICOLAU BY DECISION. MAIN CARD: IF THIS RUINS UFC 300 I'LL BE PISSED LIGHTWEIGHT: Jim Miller (36-17 (1)) vs Gabriel Benítez (23-10) There were eleven fights, for a total of twenty-two fighters, on the supercard that was UFC 100 back in 2009. Unless you count bareknuckle MMA--which you shouldn't--there are only two fighters from that card still competing in mixed martial arts. One of them is Jon Jones, who is more of an ephemeral spirit of malice that occasionally passes back through our sport to see if he left any cash and/or weed in its glove compartment. The other is Jim Miller. Jim Miller is seventy-two years old. His professional record is 576-270. His first UFC bout was a TKO victory over 19th-century judoka Mitsuyo Maeda and was memorialized in daguerreotype, purchasable for twelve pence with proof of attendance. He fought at UFC 100, he fought at UFC 200, and he has vowed to fight at UFC 300, a concept for which the fanbase is rabid. This fight night takes place 91 days before UFC 300. The average concussion suspension is 90 days long. If Gabriel Benítez fucks this up for everyone, I will be impotently furious. But, funnily enough, Gabriel's been around loving forever too. "Moggly" is just a few months away from crossing a solid decade under the UFC's promotional banner--he got his start on The Ultimate Fighter Latin America Season 1 all the way back in 2014 (jesus christ). In that ten-year span, Jim Miller has fought in the UFC 26 times. Gabriel stands at exactly 13. Like most fighters, he had a high-paced 3-4 fights a year for the first half of his career, and like an awful lot of fighters and/or human beings, once he neared 30 years old, things started to fall apart. Between COVID, injuries and weight management problems, Gabriel Benítez has cancelled as many fights as he's participated in over the last five years. Even this fight is a rescheduling; it was supposed to happen last March. Benítez has always been an unpredictable fighter, sometimes coming in technical, measured and clean, sometimes wild and dangerous, and the long layoffs haven't helped. The last time we saw him he took Charlie Ontiveros apart--but that was almost a year and a half ago. My prediction doesn't really matter here, does it? If you are a fan of this sport, can you bring yourself to pick against Jim Miller at this point in your life? Are you more invested in Gabriel Benítez having a good year than the undying soul of our sport? The world is dark and terrible. Allow yourself to believe and be hurt. JIM MILLER BY TKO.  BANTAMWEIGHT: Ricky Simón (20-4, #13) vs Mario Bautista (13-2, NR)Poor Ricky Simón is coping with his second derailing. His first hyped run came to an end in 2019 after a briefly-unretired Urijah Faber knocked him out in forty seconds, but the bizarre nature of Faber's reappearance let most of the sport dismiss it (and his forgotten loss to Rob Font afterwards) as a fever dream. One five-fight win streak later, Ricky walked into 2023 as a top Bantamweight prospect and his title aspirations seemed more secure than ever. And then he fought Song Yadong. It's one thing when a hall of famer rolls out of his Capri Sun-themed coffin and sparks you with a right hand; it's another when you fight an established, higher-ranked contender and he dominates you. Song outstruck Simón nearly two to one, stuffed 78% of his takedowns, and knocked him out in the fifth round. No more title aspirations, no more contendership: Now you get to go fight the unranked men snapping at your heels. Mario Bautista has been on his way up for the last two years, and a big part of that ascent comes from awfully good timing. He tapped out reliable divisional gatekeeper Brian Kelleher just three months after Kelleher's first submission loss in four years. He drew Benito Lopez one of the first prospects out of the Contender Series, after he'd spent three years on the shelf. Guido Cannetti made a huge splash in 2022 by putting together back-to-back upset wins for the first time in nine years with the UFC; Bautista was there to choke him right out of the company. Most famously, he struck gold this summer when Cody Garbrandt dropped out of their fight and was replaced by Da'Mon Blackshear, who'd made headlines with an amazing Twister submission victory just one week prior and was filling in on four days' notice. Say, how'd I feel about that at the time? CarlCX posted:Da'Mon Blackshear just fought last weekend, and he won in the first round by way of one of the rarest submissions in the sport, the Twister, and hey, he only took a handful of strikes from a world-class athlete, so gently caress it, why not take a fill-in fight on four days' notice one week later? It's great! The UFC will love you for it, and everyone will talk about what a badass you are. And all it costs is letting management know that you're more than happy to take no-notice, no-preparation fights for barely any pay, because hey, you're a warrior, and who ever went bust being a good company man for the UFC? Blackshear lost a close decision. Mario Bautista is fighting for a top fifteen ranking. Da'Mon Blackshear is unbooked. Please know your worth. RICKY SIMÓN BY DECISION. I think Mario Bautista is better than he gets credit for, but I think Ricky is, too, and given how much of Bautista's success comes from grappling, which is arguably where Ricky's at his best, I think he gets outworked here. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Phil Hawes (12-5) vs Brunno Ferreira (10-1)The man once named Megatron has fallen on hard times. Phil Hawes adopted "No Hype" as a copyright-friendly expression of how legitimate his skills are, but in 2024 it's become more of a descriptor for the state of his career. His face-blasting power and aggressive punching style made him a solid prospect back in 2021! In 2024 he's 1 for his last 4, all three of those losses were brutal knockouts, and the sole victory came against Deron Winn, who was, with all of the respect in the world to anyone who puts on the gloves, a 5'6" Middleweight. It's not that Hawes is by any means a bad fighter--it's that he's been getting thrown in with killers. He was giving Chris Curtis hell for four minutes of their fight, but twenty seconds is all Chris Curtis needs. Roman Dolidze should arguably a top five fighter. Ikram Aliskerov is on the fast track to contendership. Brunno Ferreira was, too, right up until he very abruptly wasn't. "The Hulk" got his Contender Series contract in 2022 based on his capacity for very quickly, very powerfully punching people in the face until their face no longer resembled a face, and when he made his UFC debut as a fill-in fighter, met a man in Gregory "Robocop" Rodrigues so durable he once fought with one of his arteries hanging out of his skull, and knocked him the gently caress out in one round, the world paid attention. Unfortunately, sometimes, the bone bones for thee. This Summer Ferreira had to face a late replacement in the debuting, much-hyped Nursulton Ruziboev, and this time it was Ferreira's turn to get laid out, losing his undefeated streak after Ruziboev knocked him cold in just over a minute. The phrase "this fight will not leave the first round" is one of the most cursed in combat sports, but it would be shocking if this made it past five minutes. As much as I like Phil Hawes and would personally like to see him get another bite at the apple, BRUNNO FERREIRA BY TKO feels likely. Hawes keeps getting hurt by his own aggression and his own faltering chin, and few people hit as hard as Ferreira does. PRELIMS: DON'T FEED YOUR DOG SALSA HEAVYWEIGHT: Andrei Arlovski (34-22 (2)) vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta (10-1) I used up so many old-age jokes for Jim Miller and I was a fool. Andrei Arlovski is just part of the building, now. In three months, Andrei Arlovski's career will have lasted a quarter of a century. He has fought the best of the best. He has been a champion, a star, and a Universal Soldier. He has dined with kings and done battle with emperors. And now, with his forty-fifth birthday just a few weeks away, his career brings him to the doorstep of the Salsa Boy. Waldo Cortes-Acosta, for some inexplicable reason, had a bit of hype coming off his 2022 Contender Series victory. He's a former boxer! He's undefeated! He's one of the next big things! And then he almost got leg-kicked to death by Chase Sherman and lost his undefeated streak to Marcos Rogério de Lima one fight later, and suddenly, he was just another Heavyweight. But he got past fellow hype victim Łukasz Brzeski last Summer, and Andrei Arlovski is a popular veteran on a two-fight losing streak, and god drat it, if Salsa Boy can't put away a Pitbull that's more than doubly past its life expectancy, what good is he to Dana White? Do you know how much I miss Chase Sherman? Do you realize everything went wrong after the UFC lost him? The last time we saw Chase Sherman: Brand new Heavyweight champion! Jon Jones promises he's going to be active again! Sergei Pavlovich murders everybody! And then they let Chase Sherman go, and now Tom Aspinall has to bother people on Twitter because the only fight the UFC will give him is against Alex Pereira. The wrong kid died. ANDREI ARLOVSKI BY DECISION because I just don't believe in Waldo. WELTERWEIGHT: Matthew Semelsberger (11-6) vs Preston Parsons (10-4) One of the greatest pleasures of combat sports is becoming overly, foolishly in the tank for a fighter for no reason you could explain if anyone really asked you to. It's like a duck imprinting on a parent: You watch a fighter and you know, through the demands of your soul, that you are irrationally invested in their future and it will interfere with every judgment you make of them. It has been almost two full years since I correctly predicted a Matthew Semelsberger fight, and that includes the one time I thought he was going to lose and he beat the stuffing out of Jake Matthews instead. I cannot judge the man fairly. I like his knockdowns, I like his style, and I will follow him as he descends into 50/50 record hell. Preston Parsons has been slightly less successful. He hopped into the UFC as a last-minute replacement back in 2021 and got annihilated by Daniel Rodriguez, he got his own late replacement victim by defeating Evan Elder the following year, and in 2023 he managed a respectably close but ultimately losing effort against Trevin Giles. Another year has passed, it is time for our annual Preston Parsons check-in, and we hope the alliterative wonder can do better this time. Well, maybe you do. You know what the gently caress I'm going to say. Preston's a solid wrestler with some power in his hands, but he's also got real awkward defense that earns him a lot of punches to the face, and Semelsberger has dropped goddamn near everyone he's shared the cage with--he just never manages to keep them down. Hopefully, he'll manage it here. MATTHEW SEMELSBERGER BY TKO. Semelsberger for champ in 2025. BANTAMWEIGHT: Marcus McGhee (8-1) vs Gaston Bolaños (7-3)Marcus "The Maniac" McGhee has had an unusually fortunate time in the UFC. He popped into the company as a three-days-notice fill-in against Journey Newson, one of the Bantamweight division's most continually struggling fighters, and successfully picked him off with a left hand and a rear naked choke in two rounds. McGhee was supposed to go on to a tougher matchup, but an injury gave him his own late replacement--JP Buys, one of the statistically least successful fighters in UFC history. McGhee knocked him out in two minutes. One year and one week ago, Marcus McGhee was fighting in a casino in front of a crowd of dozens; now he's 2-0 in the UFC. But he has unfinished business. Gaston Bolaños was the man McGhee was supposed to meet instead of Buys, and Bolaños wants to return the timeline to its intended course. His debut came last April against Aaron Phillips, and to recap exactly how odd a matchup it was: CarlCX posted:A Bellator kickboxer with one fight in the last three years is making his UFC debut against a two-tenure UFC competitor we haven't seen since July of 2020. Bolaños is a much cleaner striker. He hits straighter, he's got better timing, and he's a pretty tough out. McGhee is meaner, and arguably a visibly more complete fighter. He's fast as hell and he's very good at capitalizing on his openings, and if Gaston comes out looking like he did agast Phillips, this almost certainly ends up with him on the floor. MARCUS MCGHEE BY SUBMISSION. BANTAMWEIGHT: Farid Basharat (11-0) vs Taylor Lapilus (19-3) Every week we get a fight that is oddly buried in the prelims for now theoretically notable it is, and let the records show that, for 2024, this is the first. Farid Basharat is the younger, smaller half of the undefeated Basharat brothers, he's 2-0 in the UFC, he just put forth the best performance of his career by shutting down the kicking time bomb that is Kleydson Rodrigues and choking him out in one round, he's remarkably technically clean and he could be fighting for a top fifteen berth without anyone complaining. Taylor Lapilus was an extremely promising 3-1 in the UFC back in 2016, his grappling was extremely impressive, and he had just scored a dominant victory over former ONE titlist Leandro Issa--and the company released him for reasons he still doesn't understand seven years later. The UFC knocked on his door again in 2022, less for his success and more because they were going to Paris to take advantage of Ciryl Gane, and Lapilus is one of the better French MMA fighters out there. It wound up taking an additional year and a second trip to France, but Lapilus got his ticket, dealt with a last-minute replacement, and handily defeated Caolán Loughran, the latest in the world's innumerable attempts to clone Conor McGregor. So it's an incredibly promising prospect on a winning streak and an incredibly promising prospect who was inexplicably cut, and now they are here, fighting midway through the prelims on an Apex card, sharing air with Westin Wilson. Ask me anything about the UFC's trouble making stars. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Westin Wilson (16-8) vs Jean Silva (11-2) Part of the reason it's so nice to see someone like Marcus McGhee succeed is, far more often, your regional-scene late replacements wind up more like Westin Wilson. Wilson got tapped as a fill-in for Khusein Askhabov against Joanderson Brito last July, and to recap exactly how that looked: CarlCX posted:But Askhabov got injured, and the only person the UFC could find to fill the void was Westin Wilson. I have immense respect for anyone who fights. It's tough as poo poo and deeply underappreciated. But we also have to be realistic about strength of schedule and preparation, and objectively, Westin Wilson has spent the last two years fighting in can-crushing federations against guys with 9-19 records. Brief internet sensation Teruto Ishihara, who got cut from the UFC after losing three in a row--at bantamweight--knocked Wilson cold in one round less than a year ago. I would like to pick against Silva. For one, I would like something nice to happen to Westin Wilson, for two, Wilson's got a half-foot size advantage and that's going to make things real tricky, and for three, Silva's nickname is "Lord Assassin" so I reflexively want him to lose. But Wilson's already demonstrated trouble with pressure, and JEAN SILVA BY TKO feels almost academic. LIGHTWEIGHT: Tom Nolan (6-0) vs Nikolas Motta (13-5 (1)) Rarely does a fight feel quite so much like a setup as this. Tom "Big Train" Nolan is, unmistakably, the kind of fighter the company would love to get behind: A loving 6'3" Lightweight from Australia who's an undefeated 6-0 at just 23 years old and has four straight knockout victories, including the genuinely impressive, 83-second dusting of Bogdan Grad on the Contender Series that got Nolan his contract. Nikolas Motta is 5'9", 1-2 (1) in the UFC, got knocked the gently caress out by Jim Miller and Manuel Torres, and should, with all respect, be out of the company already. His last fight in November was a one-sided loss to Trey Ogden--at least, it should have been. Two minutes before the fight ended, with Ogden winning almost every second of the fight, referee Mike Beltran screwed up and ruled that Motta had passed out in an arm triangle when he was, in fact, fully conscious. For some reason, despite the fight being nearly over, it was waved off as a No Contest instead of a Technical Decision, and that saved Motta from a loss and a 1-3 record. And it earned him the chance to come here and fight a hyped knockout artist half a foot bigger than him (which is two half-foot differences in subsequent fights, and boy, that's weird) one fight away from curtain-jerking the prelims. Congratulations, Nikolas. TOM NOLAN BY TKO. FLYWEIGHT: Felipe Bunes (13-6) vs Joshua Van (9-1)And now, a long-belated debut. Felipe Bunes was supposed to fight in the UFC last June--he was actually the main event of the Legacy Fighting Alliance card that got Marcus McGhee scouted--but Bunes was scratched from his bout with Zhalgas Zhumagulov at the last minute for 'unnamed medical reasons.' Those 'unnamed medical reasons' turned out to be 'tested positive for drugs.' Which drugs? We'll never know! The UFC didn't say and Bunes declined to elaborate. Which, paradoxically, is fine. We only know it was a failed drug test because Bunes said so, and fighter privacy is important, and I hope for everyone else's sake it doesn't mean Bunes is secretly on ultrasteroids. What happened to Zhalgas? He took a replacement fight the following weekend against Joshua Van. Van was the Flyweight champion for Texas' Fury Fighting Championship, he had a quiet amount of internet hype, and, like Zhumagulov's last two opponents, Van won a split decision against him thanks to his takedown defense, his combination striking, and his ability to get a foot in his opponent's face really, really fast. Van stamped his place in the division by taking on Kevin Borjas in November, and after a shaky first round he ran a clinic for the back 2/3 of the fight, ultimately outstriking him more than 2:1 and winning an entirely uncontroversial decision. It feels silly to say this will be great. It's Flyweight, it's almost always great. That's why it opens cards and goes completely unloved by its corporate masters. I'm leaning towards JOSHUA VAN BY DECISION but this could go either way.
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Jan 10, 2024 23:16
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Not gonna lie, it bothered me in the early days when the effort it took to do it was still new, but these days I am not going to be mad at anyone for not reading 5,450 words about why I think Phil Hawes will lose a fight.
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Jan 12, 2024 08:49
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I also got https://www.punchsport.report/ because I'm a fancy lad. They just updated, thanks to the weight miss Kape/Nicolau has been scratched from the card. I hope Manel enjoys his return to complaining about getting cancelled on by a bunch of #12-ranked guys.
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Jan 12, 2024 21:45
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Strickland's best offense comes from hypnotizing opponents into being too frustrated/concerned to really get in on him while he quietly crosses them up for three to five rounds, and Dricus du Plessis has basically modeled his style after being here for a good time rather than a long time.
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Jan 13, 2024 12:11
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4051714 GDT is up. Broadcast begins in half an hour, although I have to imagine we'll have dead air.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:28
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kalensc posted:I've never followed MMA, never watched an event, and have really only watched content that I was linked to via these threads. That's kind of awesome, and I'm very glad you found the engagement niche for you. Please lurk and post however you see fit. Also I'm just gonna use this to say thank you to everyone for the compliments. I don't always respond to them because I have a weird complex about it and not wanting to make the thread more about me, but I hope you know they are always appreciated and used in the eternal war against my own brain.
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Jan 15, 2024 10:56
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https://twitter.com/BigMarcel24/status/1747379017219522667
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Jan 16, 2024 23:27
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I'm gonna have to put more thought into it, but my instinctual reaction is thinking Gaethje/Holloway is one of those fights that's going to be a lot more one-sided than anyone wants it to be.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:33
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 87: THE STRENGTH TO ACCEPT SATURDAY, JANUARY 20 FROM THE SCOTIABANK ARENA IN TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PST / 6:30 PM EST | PRELIMS 5 PST / 8 EST | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM This is a card of firsts. The first pay-per-view of the year! The first Middleweight championship match not to involve Israel Adesanya since 2019! The first Women's Bantamweight Championship match not to involve Amanda Nunes in almost eight years! And, of course, the first title defense of Sean Strickland's career. Last week, I talked about the quiet, internal ponderance I did regarding my relationship with mixed martial arts during our long, cold month without a UFC. Some of that pondering, knowing this event was coming, centered around Sean Strickland and his place in the sport. Whether I like it or not--if you've been reading, you already know the answer--Sean Strickland is the world champion. I have focused so much on his bigotry and shitheadedness and his symbolizing this particular cultural era in America, and all the while, he has successfully etched his name into the living history of combat sports. He is, at this moment, the top Middleweight on the planet. So I sat in my office, and I stared at the blinking caret in Notepad, and I wondered if it was time to stop writing about Sean Strickland the person and, instead, focus on writing about Sean Strickland the fighter. I wondered if it was time to accept him as a champion. I wondered if it was time to let it go. CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 87: A NEW NOPE  SATURDAY, JANUARY 20 FROM THE FUTURE HOME OF AMERICAN ASYLUM SEEKERS SOME FIGHTS 3:30 PM PST / 6:30 PM EST | OTHER FIGHTS 5 PST / 8 EST | FIGHTS THAT COST MONEY 7 PM / 10 PM I didn't wonder for very long.  one day canada will have main eventers again MAIN EVENT: GRADUALLY DEGRADING MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Sean Strickland (28-5, Champion) vs Dricus du Plessis (20-2, #2) I mean, honestly. Before we get into anything else, let's just recap the last year-ish that brought each fighter here. Sean Strickland:
I spend a lot of words on the deterioration of the UFC's championship scene, and a lot of that goes into favoritism--who's getting the good matchups, who's getting the jetpack--but arguably a bigger part of that conversation is the general standard it takes to get there. Why, in my day, Robert Whittaker had to drat near clear out the division and Georges St-Pierre had to beat up BJ Penn! Here's the harsh truth: That rule has never reliably applied over 170 pounds. Rich Franklin got his shot at the belt in 2005 for knocking out Ken Shamrock at a different weight class. Michael Bisping was one fight removed from a coinflip split over Thales Leites when he played spoiler to Luke Rockhold. Alex Pereira is a double champion after just seven total UFC wins and he may be fighting for the Heavyweight title in a few months. Brock Lesnar's first championship match for that selfsame belt came when he was 2-1 in his entire goddamn career. These are the marketing belts. The good times are the aberrations and you should enjoy them, particularly because, as world champion Sean O'Malley shows, the days of non-marketing belts existing are dwindling. Having said all of that: Sean Strickland deserves to be the champion, and Dricus du Plessis deserves his shot. He hasn't lost a fight in going on five years, he's stopped five out of his six UFC opponents, as much as I mock Brunson he WAS a top ten opponent and Dricus punched him out, and he knocked out Robert Whittaker. I had full faith in ol' Bobby Knuckles outfighting du Plessis fairly easily, and I, and most of the world, was exceptionally wrong. He outworked him, he outwrestled him, and he brutalized him. In fifteen fights over a full decade at 185 pounds, exactly two men have stopped Robert Whittaker: Israel Adesanya and the guy who keeps saying crypto-racist stuff about him. Oh, goddammit.  I said the secret word and now we have to talk about everything else. Everything else about this fight loving sucks. It sucked when Sean Strickland wasn't even involved and Dricus was going to fight Adesanya--not just because he deserved it, but because the UFC was really, really into Dricus deciding to start talking trash about how Israel Adesanya, a Nigerian-born man whose parents moved to New Zealand when he was ten, wasn't a real African. Dricus has criticized the characterization of these comments as inaccurate, and that's true! It would be more accurate to say Dricus said Adesanya, Kamaru Usman and Francis Ngannou weren't real Africans. Not like him and Cameron Saaiman. You know, for reasons. Definitely not racist reasons! Dricus du Plessis is very, very mad you think there's anything at all racist about an Afrikaner calling himself a "real African" in comparison to multiple men born in Ghana and Cameroon. But Dricus cannot hang with Sean Strickland, who is, undoubtedly, the pound-for-pound champion of saying dumb poo poo all of the time because no one even pretends to care about there being standards anymore. Transphobia? Without a doubt. Homophobia? Plenty. Sexism? Constantly, including to the women co-main eventing this card! But the brand new card in his deck this time around is self-victimization, because now he is unhappy that Dricus has said things about his personal life and his trauma with his father that he thinks should be off-limits. Has Sean Strickland said these things about opponents in the past, you may ask? No. You didn't ask. You know already. I don't, generally, talk about other MMA media in these writeups. For one, I think intra-media beef is the lamest thing in the world, for two, I have several dozen readers so who could possibly care what I think about someone who actually gets paid to do this, and for three, most MMA media, like most enthusiast media, is pretty unfortunate. But Bloody Elbow has for quite some time been one of the best sources of journalism in combat sports, and that's why it bugs the poo poo out of me when I think they post something dumb. In this case, it was grand poobah Nate Wilcox's article about Mayra Bueno Silva taking umbrage with Strickland's insults about their drawing power: quote:UFC middleweight champ Sean Strickland epitomizes the TKO era star: he talks constantly via his own platforms and says all kinds of crazy stuff. Now that he’s champ he has even more opportunities to get press with cheap soundbites. The access yuppies are lapping it up for controversial clickbait headlines. But you get tired of it. I get tired of it! Everybody gets loving tired of it. It's so rankly transparent and stupid that, at a certain point, it's easier to make it into a joke. Colby Covington showed up to a pre-fight presser dressed like George Washington. How on Earth is anyone supposed to take any of this loving seriously? So you don't. And then, before you realize it, you're writing articles like this:  Whoops! You stopped taking it seriously and now you're both-sidesing the bigot. Crazy how that happens! Crazy how, when you stop caring, lovely things suddenly become normalized. Crazy how not taking things seriously means serious things suddenly stop mattering. And that, inevitably, is the problem. You should take it seriously. It should matter that nothing matters anymore. It should matter that the UFC's heavily-marketed Middleweight champion is saying sexist poo poo about his coworkers and co-main event contenders. There's this constant urge to self-distance from the bullshit and point and laugh at the idea that someone else fell for the outrage marketing, but the thing is, you should be outraged by bigotry, and the more it's just accepted with a sigh and a shrug in this sport, the easier it is to get to a point like this fight, which is being marketed around Sean Strickland actually assaulting Dricus du Plessis in the crowd at the previous UFC. Things used to matter! We used to think it was kind of racist that Chael Sonnen said Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira tried to feed a carrot to a bus because he thought it was a horse! Matt Mitrione had to release a public apology for his horrible transphobia and that was just a decade ago! And now the Middleweight champion says women belong in the kitchen and jokes that gay children come from weak men and hey, we're all shitposters here, so what's a little idiot bigotry in our sport? What, the female fighters got offended that there's absolutely no pushback on their male counterpart saying they shouldn't exist? How silly of them. If ANYONE is going to care--if anyone is going to remind people that it's actually cool and good to care about the standards of this sport--it has to be the media, because god knows the UFC is riding this flaming train wreck all the way to Hell. At least, that's probably better than tut-tutting one of the best female fighters on the planet for being mad someone said sexist bullshit about her. Which just about covers the Everything Else aspect of this fight. You may notice that everyone's coverage--mine, the media's, even the UFC's--focuses on the Everything Else instead of the Fight. That is because the is-it-real-or-not non-argument the MMA communtiy always has about fighters being assholes to each other (while ignoring footage of them laughing and hugging in their off-time) is the much more interesting side of things. Sean Strickland's specialty is hypnotizing people into letting him gently cross them up for three to five rounds. He knocked Israel Adesanya down and hit him in the head eighty-five times, and Izzy barely had a mouse under his eye after the fight. The UFC tries very, very hard to get you to focus on Sean Strickland's personality because his fighting style is exactly the kind of technically sound but casually uninteresting boxing they otherwise try to discourage. Dricus du Plessis wins fights by being a weird madman. I wrote this before du Plessis/Brunson: CarlCX posted:It's hard to say this without feeling like I am insulting the man, so I want to be clear that the following is a compliment: He is remarkably adept at looking terrible and somehow still completely winning fights. He'll spam leg kicks and get repeatedly countered, he'll blitz wildly forward and get torn up on entry, and even while winning striking exchanges he eats fists upside the head. The two times we've seen him reach the third round of a fight, he's looked exhausted. And he wins anyway, and I cannot overstate how impressive that is. He's so determined in his approach to fighting that his appearance of weakness becomes itself a strength, allowing him to draw opponents in only to overwhelm them and drown them in offense. If du Plessis can interrupt Strickland's idiot cobra technique he's got a real good shot at flattening him. If Strickland can circle him and jab him until he forgets he can breathe through his other nostril now, he's got a real good shot at wearing him down the way he has worn down a legion of reporters. And maybe, one day, I can move on to talking about completely unproblematic Middleweight contenders like Khamzat Chimaev, Jared Cannonier, Marvin Vettori, and Brendan Allen. gently caress. DRICUS DU PLESSIS BY TKO. CO-MAIN EVENT: REFORGING A CROWN WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Raquel Pennington (15-8, #2) vs Mayra Bueno Silva (10-2-1 (1), #3) I am going to do the most self-indulgent self-quoting these writeups have yet seen. This was last January. CarlCX posted:But after a couple years of aimlessly wandering in the woods, Pennington is back in the top ten on the strength of a four-fight winning streak. She beat up Marion Reneau, she beat up Pannie Kianzad, she went up to 145 pounds on short notice to choke out a then-surging Macy Chiasson and she gave Aspen Ladd what would ultimately be her last UFC bout. While it had to span across two weight classes, Pennington's on the longest winning streak in the top fifteen of the division. CarlCX posted:Two months ago, Raquel Pennington was supposed to fight Irene Aldana. The UFC wound up rescheduling the fight and booking the (also rescheduled) Marlon Vera vs Cory Sandhagen fight as a headliner instead, with Pennington and Aldana rebooked as this card's main event. Logically, it was a sure-thing title eliminator--Raquel Pennington is ranked #2 at Women's Bantamweight and has its longest winning streak, and Irene Aldana, at #5, is coming off two knockout victories. CarlCX posted:It didn't matter that Nunes absolutely crushed (Julianna Peña) in their rematch. The third fight was inevitable--because what on Earth does the UFC have left? They haven't built anyone. They don't have any contenders. The clearest top contender is Raquel Pennington, and the UFC was tripping and falling all over itself to keep her away from the belt in favor of more marketing-friendly fighters with more marketing-friendly fighting styles. Which isn't the fault of any of the fighters. There's plenty of talent here. Raquel and Mayra are top-class. Ketlen Vieira's great. Irene Aldana just had a fantastic battle with Karol Rosa last month. Germaine de Randamie is finally coming back in April. Julianna Peña, once she heals, will be an immediate title contender. The fighters exist. The fights exist. But the UFC is remarkably disinterested in supporting them. And the universe sure isn't doing them any favors. Mayra Bueno Silva's first couple years in the UFC were deeply troubled--get derailed by COVID, drop a couple bad decisions at Flyweight, fail to get past Montana de la Rosa--and then, in 2022, she stopped cutting down to 125 and settled on 135 instead, and suddenly, she was a wrecking machine. She beat Yanan Wu, she (somewhat controversially) armbarred Stephanie Egger, she retired Lina Länsberg after tearing her knee apart. A year prior she'd been 2-2-1 and on the verge of getting cut; now she had one of the best winning streaks in the division and was ready for her contendership test against Holly Holm. There are many, many things one can say about Holly Holm. Fortunately, she's not fighting tonight, so I won't! Instead, I will simply celebratorily record that after twelve years of mixed martial arts competition, Holm took her second submission loss--and only her third stoppage loss overall--when, twenty seconds into the second round, Bueno Silva squeezed her head off with a standing ninja choke. Beating Holm is a prerequisite for an awful lot of title challengers, but the only person to ever crush Holly Holm was Amanda Nunes, the greatest of all time. Miesha Tate submitted Holly, but it took four rounds of struggling. Mayra choking her out that easily made her an immediate title challenger. Which is why it's deeply unfortunate that it no longer technically happened. Mayra Bueno Silva failed a drug test for Concerta. It's a medication she takes for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. She provided documentation and prescriptions to the point that USADA, an organization almost universally derided by fighters for its draconian policies, had no problem with it. But Concerta is an extended-release form of Ritalin, and Ritalin is considered a performance-enhancing drug, and for whatever reason, Nevada's athletic commission decided to make an example of her. So Mayra Bueno Silva never beat Holly Holm. It's the (1) in her record. The UFC cared so much that they ignored it and gave her the title fight anyway. At this point you've probably seen me wail and gnash my teeth about people getting undeserved title fights a half-dozen times, so the fact that I don't care about someone getting a championship bout on the heels of a No Contest is testament to just how silly this poo poo is. But it's not as silly as how long it took to get Raquel Pennington here. If that trip down memory lane was insufficient, Raquel Pennington is on a five-fight winning streak, the longest in her division, her only losses in the last ten years came against world champions, she beat the last woman to fight for the title, and no one goddamn else had a better claim. But the UFC did not want her. She's a wrestler, she wrestles, she wins most of her fights by wrestling-based decisions or--offensively--split decisions. And there's only room for one woman who only wins by anticlimactic decision to get contendership around here, and goddammit, it's Holly Holm. Raquel Pennington was supposed to fight Irene Aldana. Despite being ranked higher than her and despite having beaten her, when the UFC needed a new title challenger for Amanda Nunes, they picked Aldana and made Pennington the backup. When Amanda Nunes demolished Aldana and retired, leaving the throne vacant, despite Pennington being right there, the UFC spent half a year pursuing other options. Erin Blanchfield could come up to 135! Julianna Peña could come back from injury early! Or, you know, we could've just treated the sport like a sport and done this in the first loving place. Now that we're here, at last, it's a potentially fascinating fight. Both women prefer to take grappling approaches, both women win through submission far more often than their striking, but where Raquel is a grinder who wants to wear her opponents down and choke them out once they're vulnerable, Mayra is an opportunist. She dives on armbars, she dives on kneebars, she dives on chokes. And she's so goddamn good at getting them that Raquel, having been submitted just once in her career--more than eleven years ago--is still a betting underdog. Which, frankly, makes sense. Mayra's younger and faster, she's got better and more recent finishes, she seems to hit an awful lot harder when she does deign to punch people, and, y'know, people know who she is. Thanks to the UFC's certainty that Raquel can't draw attention she's been sitting on the shelf for an entire year. No tune-up, no marketing, just twelve months of nothing and then, congratulations, here's your title shot; go fight the lady who keeps tearing everyone's body parts off. On paper, Mayra being the favorite is entirely correct. In practice, it is, still, fairly correct. But in my heart? A buddy I've known since kindergarten has a friend who trained with Raquel Pennington. He, and through him my friend, have been adamant that Raquel would be a world champion since just about 2018. I can see Raquel not getting choked out. I can see her forcing Mayra to work for three rounds and drowning her in the fourth and fifth. I would like it to happen. I would like my friend to be happy. RAQUEL PENNINGTON BY DECISION. MAIN CARD: ARNOLD ALLEN'S ATTEMPT AT AVERTING ANGUISH WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (28-11, #13) vs Mike Malott (10-1-1, NR) Poor Neil Magny has entered the 'extracting value' stage of his UFC career. The last time we saw Neil Magny I wrote about how legitimately great his career has been and how few people have ever had longevity like him to stay ranked and relevant for a whole decade; I also wrote about how he was visibly deteriorating and Ian Machado Garry was going to beat seven layers of hell out of him, and unfortunately, both things were correct. Magny didn't get knocked out, he made it to a decision, but he was outstruck 3:1 and even outwrestled just to add to the humiliation. This is, unfortunately, the new normal for Neil Magny. He's no longer credible as a challenger, so he's become the gatekeeper who tests--or rebuilds--the company's prospects. Max Griffin's on a three-fight streak? Send in Magny. Shavkat Rakhmonov is eating the world? Call Magny. We're in Canada, we desperately need a relevant Canadian fight, and there's literally only one single Canadian fighter in the Welterweight division on any kind of winning streak? God dammit, man: Get Me Magny. It's a big leap for Mike Malott, though. Ian Machado Garry had already made a pretty solid claim to a ranking when he fought Neil Magny. Mike Malott is 3-0 in the UFC, but, respectfully, those three are Mickey Gall, the winner of the CM Punk sweepstakes, Yohan Lainesse, who is 1-2 and way down on the early prelims this week, and Adam Fugitt, who is 1-2 and holds that victory over someone who actually managed to get disqualified in Rizin, the land of headstomps and grounded knees. None of which is to say Mike Malott is bad! He's very technically clean, he's showcased some real solid defense, he's got some surprisingly tricky entrances off an aggressive kicking game and the time he's spent learning from the shirtless masters of Team Alpha Male have given him some fantastic chokes. His offense is great! We just haven't really seen his defense tested since his time in Bellator and the World Series of Fighting, and at this point those fights were most of a decade ago. He's not the same fighter and this is his first chance to demonstrate himself against a Welterweight of record. As usual, Neil Magny has a huge reach advantage, and as usual, Neil Magny should have a big advantage in the clinch, and as usual, I want to vote for Neil Magny winning the day and returning to glory, and as usual, I am picking against him. Malott may have a 7" range deficit, but he hits a lot harder and he closes distance much faster, and Neil just seems like he is, unfortunately, slowing down. As wild as it is to say it after he survived three rounds with Garry, I have a sinking feeling about a MIKE MALOTT BY TKO result here. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Curtis (30-10 (1), #13) vs Marc-André Barriault (16-6 (1), NR)Sometimes, man, you just have a bad loving year. Midway through 2022 Chris Curtis was on a three-fight winning streak and looked for all the world like a hot new contender, and even when Jack Hermansson upset his momentum like he's done to so many before--please earmark this sentence for next month--Curtis beat the stuffing out of Joaquin Buckley and got it right back. 2023 was supposed to be the year of the Action Man! And then his big coming-out party against Kelvin Gastelum got upset, half because of Gastelum having a good night and actually outworking Curtis, half because Gastelum (unintentionally) headbutted the poo poo out of Curtis in the second round and almost knocked him out. Curtis tried to rebound again, this time against Nassourdine Imavov, and once again, he was having trouble, and once again it wound up not mattering, because once again, in the second round, Imavov rammed an unintentional headbutt right into Curtis and busted his right eye too badly to continue. What was supposed to be a banner year for the man wound up being a loss, a No Contest, and two headbutts to the face. Marc-André Barriault, by contrast, had a fantastic year. After a shaky 2022 saw Barriault go 1-2, including getting blown out in sixteen seconds by Chidi Njokuani and choked out by the ever-tricky Anthony Hernandez, Barriault spent 2023 putting together the best pair of victories of his career. In March, he took on Julian "The Cuban Missile Crisis" Marquez, a fighter known less for his octagon success than for his somehow, inexplicably, fumbling the bag with Miley Cyrus, and Barriault added insult to cocaine-tinged injury by stopping Marquez on the feet in two rounds. That Summer Barriault moved on to face the living void of memory and feeling that is Eryk Anders, and he not only beat Anders, he escaped the event horizon into which all things fall by defying the laws of physics and nature and getting Eryk Anders to fight a genuinely memorable, entertaining slugfest of a bout. If we gave out medals of valor in mixed martial arts, by god, "Powerbar" would get a dozen. But I'm not convinced this is a great matchup for him. Barriault is at his best when he's dragging people into brawls and punishing their attempts to escape them; escaping brawls isn't really a thing Chris Curtis does. Curtis is one of the hardest punchers in the division and his chin is still solid enough that multiple charging headbutts to the face didn't actually take him out, and I just don't see Barriault managing to chip him down before Curtis makes him pay for trying. CHRIS CURTIS BY TKO. FEATHERWEIGHT: Arnold Allen (19-2, #3) vs Movsar Evloev (17-0, #9)Boy, if either of these guys were Canadian this would've been an incredibly obvious top-of-the-card fight. I introduced this event as a night of firsts, and that's true here, too: After almost nine years in the company, this is the first time Arnold Allen will have to defend his position after a loss. Thanks to the bad luck and inactivity that plagued his career, despite being undefeated in the company, despite having knockout power, fantastic defense and underrated grappling, it took 2,856 days for Arnold Allen to get his shot at the top of the ladder. His fight with Max Holloway last April was his chance to cement his place as a top Featherweight once and for all by felling the undisputed second-best 145-pound fighter in the world. Unfortunately: Max Holloway is really, really good at fighting. Allen put up a solid performance, but like every goddamn Featherweight not named Alexander Volkanovski, Max still styled on him and outstruck him almost 2:1. Now Allen is stuck in the morass with every other contender-in-waiting. And that means having another contender breathing down his neck. Movsar Evloev, in some ways, is a good modern cipher for Allen. He joined the UFC in 2019 already regarded as one of the best Featherweights in his country and had the regional championship to prove it, he established himself as a serious prospect almost instantaneously, he racked up an undefeated record right off the bat, and then he proceeded to have his momentum repeatedly chopped out from under him when circumstance ruined his strength of schedule. A motorcycle accident meant he only fought once in 2020, COVID kept him on the shelf for another half-year afterward, injuries saw him back to only fighting once in 2022 and he only made the single cagewalk in 2023, and it was against a last-minute replacement after Bryce Mitchell's spine collapsed under the weight of his terrible opinions. What's more, said replacement was Diego Lopes, whom we NOW know to be an awfully impressive fighter and a prospect in his own right, but at the time, it looked like Evloev almost getting pantsed by a guy no one had ever heard of. Arnold Allen needs to win this fight if he wants to stay in the title mix he spent nine years clawing his way into. Movsar Evloev needs to win this fight to jump the line and become a top contender overnight. Both of these men are fantastic fighters and their styles make for an exceptionally interesting matchup. Evloev is every bit a grappler and his success comes predominantly from working through his opponent's guard on the ground; Allen hasn't been taken down since 2018. Allen is a defensively-minded fighter with deceptive power in his hands; Evloev has never been stopped (or beaten!) in his life. Neither man is likely to let the other operate in their comfort zone, and that's what makes this fight so goddamn interesting. I'm leaning towards ARNOLD ALLEN BY DECISION just because he's so good at being a granite block and stifling his opponents, but Evloev could break him. He'll almost certainly have to get him down first, though, and that's not in any way a guarantee. PRELIMS: THE REST OF THE CANADIANS BANTAMWEIGHT: Brad Katona (13-2) vs Garrett Armfield (9-3) 2023 saw the birth, life and death of the doleful journey that was The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ), a pair of tournaments between previously unseen prospects and veterans who'd all been cut from the UFC within the last few years in which every single prospect got eliminated before the semi-finals were over, the broad favorites won in thoroughly expected fashion, the coach-fight between Michael Chandler and Conor McGregor got postponed for an entire year and, ultimately, the UFC killed its drug testing program. But it wasn't without value, because we got Brad Katona back. Katona actually won The Ultimate Fighter 27 (jesus christ) back in 2018, but he was cut after dropping back-to-back decisions to Merab Dvalishvili, maybe the best Bantamweight on the planet, and Hunter Azure, who, himself, would get cut despite being 2-2 shortly thereafter. It was a silly decision based less on Katona's worthiness and more on the UFC's antipathy towards wrestling-style Pokémon, but hey, now Katona's not only back, he's the only two-time TUF winner in history, which is maybe the most dubious honor in mixed martial arts. Garrett Armfield is a beneficiary of the I Wasn't Even Supposed To Be Here Today program. He was brought into the UFC as a last-minute fill-in against David Onama back in the Summer of 2022--which was particularly funny because Onama had already defeated him as an amateur--and after being disposed of in fairly short order, he proceeded to go on the shelf for more than a year. A staph infection scratched him for the rest of 2022, an opponent in the beginning of 2023 fell through, and the UFC just didn't rebook him until last August, where he beat the absolute poo poo out of Road to UFC runner-up Toshiomi Kazama. Which was, honestly, more than I thought he'd get out of his time in the UFC. He did a fantastic job of neutralizing Kazama's offense and brutalizing him with boxing. But Katona is an entirely different league of fighter. BRAD KATONA BY SUBMISSION to finally, after seven years, give Katona a UFC stoppage. FEATHERWEIGHT: Charles Jourdain (15-6-1) vs Sean Woodson (10-1-1)It took Charles Jourdain three years to build some real traction in the UFC, but by god, he made it. Jourdain's aggressive style cost him as many fights as it won him, but it also made him fan-friendly enough that the UFC didn't dare cut him, and after spending 2022 racking up back-to-back losses for the first time he rebounded with the two highest-profile victories of his career. Last May he put a prolonged, one-sided beating on Kron Gracie, and in September he welcomed the long-missed Ricardo Ramos back from a year on the shelf by out-scrambling him and catching him in a guillotine choke in just three minutes. Sean Woodson is my Schrödinger's Fighter. When I think about Sean Woodson, I think about the 6'2" boxer with really good reach management and timing I thought he was back in 2021. But when I watch Sean Woodson--which isn't too often, because he's only made it to the cage once a year since--I see a guy who had trouble dealing with Luis Saldaña kicking him repeatedly and struggled enough with Dennis Buzukja's forward pressure that he resorted to outwrestling him instead. Sean Woodson, to be clear, is still good. But even though, in my heart, I still think of him as a future championship contender, in my head I'm starting to ask unfortunate questions. I still favor him here. A fair bit of Jourdain's success comes from stinging opponents at range and catching them in the ensuing chaos, and 9" is a whole lot of range to cover and a whole lot of clinch advantage to negate. SEAN WOODSON BY DECISION after pecking at him for three rounds. BANTAMWEIGHT: Serhiy Sidey (10-1) vs Ramon Taveras (9-2) We have reached the point in this sport where the preliminary bouts of a UFC card are being used to settle beef from Dana White's Contender Series. This is the way things have inverted. The rain falls upward, and we are damned to watch it flee our Earth. Last September, Serhiy Sidey and Ramon Taveras fought on the Contract Mill Variety Hour. Just about two and a half minutes into the first round, Sidey jabbed Taveras in the face and, in a very slick exchange, parried his return fire and countered it with a 1-2 that sent Taveras assfirst to the floor. Sidey jumped on Taveras and began hammerfisting, and veteran referee Kevin MacDonald immediately stopped the fight, which Taveras equally immediately protested. It wasn't a great stoppage, but honestly, we see worse at least a couple times a year. But those stoppages don't interfere with Dana White's Weekly Eat poo poo Bitch Bloodfest, and that cannot be allowed. Dana called it the worst stoppage he'd ever seen and rebooked Sidey for an appearance on the show just four weeks later, and after knocking out Cortavious "Are You Not Entertained" Romious in twenty-nine seconds, which is just a delightful arrangement of words, Taveras was in the UFC. That's right: Welcome to Sidey vs Taveras 2, the hotly-anticipated rematch. Those dastardly refs aren't there to save Serhiy Sidey anymore! But Sidey's also a pretty smart, controlled fighter and Taveras is more of a Bart Simpson windmill technique kind of guy, and honestly, this rematch feels a lot more Ankalaev/Cuțelaba than Serra/GSP. SERHEY SIDEY BY TKO. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Gillian Robertson (12-8) vs Polyana Viana (13-6) At this point, my being in the tank for Gillian Robertson is a matter of public record. I like grapplers, I like underdogs, I like people who upset the UFC's plans, and by god, she consistently ticks all three boxes. When last we saw Gillian, unfortunately, she was continuing her career-long trend of never racking up more than two consecutive wins. I picked Gillian to beat Tabatha Ricci in the hopes that she'd pull out a grappling upset, and she put up a hell of a fight and neutralized most of Ricci's attempts, but she still got outworked for most of the fight. Polyana Viana presents the opposite problem. "Dama de Ferro" is not an outworker. Over a nineteen-fight career, Polyana has, in fact, only won a fight outside of the first round once--and that was her second-ever bout all the way back in 2014. She has crushing power in her hands and an intensely dangerous squeeze when she jumps on submissions, but in every other fight in her career, if she does not win within the first five minutes, she loses. Gillian Robertson is real, real tough to stop. It's only happened twice: Once an armbar against your co-main event title challenger Mayra Bueno Silva, once a standing TKO against Maycee Barber that was more than a little dubious. Viana can knock out anyone in the division if she catches them cleanly, it's always possible, but if Robertson survives the first round and grinds her down from the top, it won't matter. GILLIAN ROBERTSON BY SUBMISSION. EARLY PRELIMS: LITERALLY EVERYONE HERE IS COMING OFF A LOSS WELTERWEIGHT: Yohan Lainesse (9-2) vs Sam Patterson (10-2-1) This is a battle of lanky prospects whose enormous limbs could not catch enough branches to avert their falls from grace. Yohan Lainesse is the regular flavor of tall, a 6'1" Welterweight who fought his way through the contract show only to have a UFC tenure that has, as of yet, been less than ideal. He got knocked out by Gabe Green, he just barely scraped a split decision win off of Darian Weeks, and Mike Malott ragdolled and choked him out in a single round. Sam Patterson was supposed to be one of the UFC's Next Big Things in 2023--a 6'3" Lightweight from the UK who virtually always won by stoppage and is so on-the-nose poised for marketing that he's one of thirty-four fighters currently nicknamed "The Future"--and the UFC did their best to give him a soft target in his debut, matching him up with Yanal Ashmouz, a regional fighter who, at 5'9", was giving up almost a foot in reach. And Ashmouz crushed him. Patterson pumped a couple jabs, threw a few kicks, and then got loving smashed. His UFC debut ended in 1:15 and he spent almost as long trying to half-consciously pull the referee into half-guard. Oddly, this is the fight I feel the least certain about on the card. I'm fully accustomed to being frequently incorrect, but typically, that incorrectness stems from having a solid feeling about a fight. Here, I dunno. Both guys have tended to look sort of bad, and Yohan's tendency to let opponents pace his fights is just as self-destructive as Patterson's tendency to ignore his own defense. But Patterson's fighting up a weight class for the first time in his life, and Yohan's got some solid kicks in his back pocket, and if that's all the hunch my brain will give me, I am obligated to take it. YOHAN LAINESSE BY DECISION. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jasmine Jasudavicius (9-3) vs Priscila Cachoeira (12-5) Down here, second from the bottom, we have the most lopsided odds of the entire card, and, honestly: Yeah. Jasmine Jasudavicius is a deeply underrated fighter with an incredibly tough, scrappy grappling game. She's never been stopped, she's rarely even been in danger, she went the distance with rampaging killing machine Natália Silva, and while she lost her last appearance against Tracy Cortez it was an extremely close fight that had a third of the media scores split, meaning Jasudavicius was a couple changed minds away from having a top ten ranking right now. Priscila Cachoeira, by contrast, has not. She joined the UFC back in 2018 and took an absurd beating from Valentina Shevchenko, she went on to drop three in a row and somehow not get cut, and she scored back-to-back TKOs in her next two fights, which is real impressive until you remember they were against Shana Dobson and Gina Mazany, who were, respectfully, two of the least successful fighters in the UFC. Things have been up and down since then--get choked out by Gillian Robertson here, screw Ji Yeon Kim out of a decision there--but her modern career is justified by her inexplicably flattening Ariane Lipski in a minute, which I cannot say a single bad thing about. That was awesome. But this is one of the few fights dictated by MMAth. "Fighter X beat Fighter Y who beat Fighter Z, therefore X will beat Z" is a long-standing bit of spitball logic in this sport, and it's usually very silly. Fights happen across years, fighters change over time, styles make fights, etc. etc. But, every once in awhile, it proves reliable. In this incredibly unusual edge case, both of these women fought Miranda Maverick, in 2023, forty-nine days apart. On June 10, Jasmine Jasudavicius comprehensively outfought Maverick, outgrappling her on the ground and outstriking her on the feet en route to a unanimous decision victory. On July 29, Miranda Maverick put a ludicrously one-sided beating on Priscila Cachoeira, outstruck her 105 to 13, outgrappled her for two and a half rounds and submitted her midway through the third. As an English student I'm not supposed to say this, but sometimes math is good. JASMINE JASUDAVICIUS BY DECISION. FLYWEIGHT: Malcolm Gordon (14-7) vs Jimmy Flick (16-7) Every card needs a 'the loser is probably getting cut' fight, and unfortunately for these two extremely talented fighters, this is it. Malcolm "X" Gordon is a fast, technically skilled Flyweight who ran the table in his native Canada, but since hopping over to the UFC in 2020 he's been struggling heavily. He's been choked out twice and knocked out twice, and while he managed to sandwich two solid wins in the middle, that doesn't keep him from coming into this bout on a two-fight losing streak, and both losses were stoppages, and he missed weight in the most recent one, which the UFC especially hates. Jimmy "The Brick" Flick looked like a tremendous Flyweight prospect back in 2020 when he was the Legacy Fighting Alliance champion who debuted in the UFC with a flying goddamn triangle choke, but then he, uh, retired. His heart wasn't in it, his personal issues with his family were legion, he was turning 30 and fighting for peanuts, the joy was gone. Which was tragic, but understandable. And then he unretired in 2023, and it proved to be tragic for entirely different reasons, as his unretirement comeback tour has, thus far, consisted of getting repeatedly knocked out. Charles Johnson and Alessandro Costa both put vicious beatings on him, and now he's 0-2 since 2020 and his retirement might be imposed rather than chosen. But Malcolm Gordon has this knack for getting himself into really poor positions that wind up costing him submissions, and Jimmy Flick is still very, very good at finding them, and I'm banking on it happening again. JIMMY FLICK BY SUBMISSION.
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Jan 17, 2024 21:22
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People are allowed to care and people are also allowed not to care. When you like people getting punched in the face for money, you engage in whatever way your fevered brain allows.
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Jan 18, 2024 02:10
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I know I spend a lot of time complaining about divisions, so if I had to go down the list of people I personally care about :
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Jan 18, 2024 22:52
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BlindSite posted:I don't think he even said "real". https://www.reddit.com/r/ufc/comments/14wd082/dricus_duplessis_controversial_interviews_for/ "I want to be the first real African champ" so, uh
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Jan 20, 2024 05:44
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4052277 GDT is up. I am both eager for this event to happen and eager for it to be over. Prelims in thirty.
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Jan 21, 2024 00:06
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In the last 18 months:
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Jan 21, 2024 09:56
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Datsik's denying it on his Telegram channel and saying he was bit by a dog, and on one hand it's Datsik and he's always full of poo poo, but on the other hand it's Datsik so I would fully believe a dog sensed he was evil. Also, today in the ongoing adventures of being the best promoter in the fight business: 
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Jan 21, 2024 19:55
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:?? I thought Evloev vs. Allen was a good fight The new meta of the UFC is if you wrestle at all you are a bad person.
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Jan 22, 2024 02:16
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I'm genuinely shocked they aren't making that fight for the vacant women's 145 belt. Like, yeah, they don't give a poo poo about that division, but we're at a point where they have multiple BMF title fights a year now, they still have people like Norma Dumont and Karol Rosa on the roster that would be happy to fight there, and it would finally fulfill their endless mission to get another loving belt on Holly Holm, so making Kayla go down to 135 is just weird. I mean, it's not weird, they're panicking about how they have absolutely no one at women's 135 to promote because they spent a decade not putting in any effort and they're hoping Kayla can fix it, but c'mon.
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Jan 24, 2024 09:48
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So people found it suspicious that John Lineker weighed in (at lightweight!) yesterday for what was stated to be an unspecified, general-purposes alternate slot, and one fight into ONE's pay-per-view, they announced Sage Northcutt was out due to issues with his cornerman, and Shinya Aoki was going to fight John Lineker instead. I am continually impressed by how ONE manages to be more shady than the UFC. It's not fuckin' easy. I hope I wake up to Lineker having a lightweight win. edit: Sage's update: https://twitter.com/scmpmartialarts/status/1751559085529632769 CarlCX fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 11:31
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That is correct, yes. USADA administered Mayra's test but hadn't put in for a suspension, as they wanted to talk about TUEs instead being as Mayra had post-facto supplied them with her prescriptions. The NSAC were the ones who threw a fit. gently caress Holly Holm is an evergreen sentiment. Also, for old time's sake, let's have a doublepost before we kill this thread tomorrow anyway.
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Jan 31, 2024 20:23
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 88: BACK TO BUSINESS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 FROM THE INCONCEIVABLY EXTANT UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM Just so we're clear, that isn't one of my funny 'haha look I scribbled on it' poster photoshops. They did that, not me. I don't even know anymore. I hope you enjoyed our big lazy January, because the year has officially begun and there are no brakes on this Yukon. We're back to an event every single weekend and we will be until at least May, and in all likelihood, into the Summer. And seven of those events are scheduled for the god damned Apex, including the next two fight cards of our lives. We're back, baby. God help us all.  it could be worse, but it could be better, too. MAIN EVENT: THE CO-MAIN EVENT MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Dolidze (12-2, #8) vs Nassourdine Imavov (12-4 (1), #11) You know, for all the time I spend talking about the sociopolitics of combat sports and the greater corporate issues of the UFC and the inevitable heat death of the universe, this is what home is like. It's a fight! It's just a fight! It's a pretty well-matched, rankings-relevant fight! No one has said anything about the other's dead dad, no one's called into question the rights of minorities to exist, it's just a pair of people in leather gloves consensually battering one another for not enough money. What an incredible concept. Roman Dolidze might feel less happy about this matchup and, honestly, it's hard to blame him. 2022 was Roman's breakout year: After a fairly unmemorable start to his time in the UFC and the loss of his undefeated streak at the merciless hands of Trevin Giles, Roman spent 2023 murdering everyone. In a span of just six months, he knocked out the never-before-stopped Kyle Daukaus, punched out the punching machine Phil Hawes, and in the best win of his career, stopped Jack Hermansson after putting him in a pro-wrestling STF and punching him until the referee realized the three-arm-drop rule doesn't exist outside of kayfabe. It was an absolutely stellar run, and it established Dolidze as a potential contender, and it got him a fight with the inexplicably always relevant Marvin Vettori for a top five slot. The result was a fight that evenly split the media scorecards--14 for Vettori, 14 for Dolidze--but not the judges, who scored it unanimously for Vettori. Paul Sutherland, who also scored Justin Gaethje vs Rafael Fiziev a draw, gave Vettori a round that 27 of those 28 media scores had for Dolidze. Roman was, to say the least, displeased. He would be further denied his chance at a rebound: His November fight with Derek Brunson fell through after Brunson left the UFC, and his December showdown against Jared Cannonier fell through after Cannonier tore his MCL. A fight with Jared Cannonier is a big deal! A fight with Jared Cannonier is a chance at a title shot! Instead, Roman Dolidze is now fighting Nassourdine Imavov. Nassourdine Imavov is not on the cusp of title contention, but he is Dolidze's brother in having had a terrible loving year. Imavov, too, looked like an interesting prospect. He, too, had a shaky start to his UFC tenure, and he, too, had a close but failing scrape with the judges in a fight that could have gone either way, and he, too, came back and rallied to an impressive three-fight winning streak by bulldozing other prospects. He knocked out Ian Heinisch, he put Edmen Shahbazyan in the crucifix and elbowed his face off, and he outworked the ever-dangerous Joaquin Buckley to a unanimous decision. He was set to main-event the first UFC card of 2023 alongside former title contender Kelvin Gastelum, and a win could have given Imavov his highest-profile berth yet. And then Kelvin pulled out a week before the fight and got replaced with Sean Strickland. Imavov couldn't handle the jabs and, unknowingly, ushered in the thousand years of darkness that was the 2023 UFC title picture. It took five months for Imavov to resurface, and this time, it was against Chris Curtis, and this time, Imavov unintentionally slammed a headbutt into Curtis's eye and the fight was waved off as a No Contest. The UFC tried to get Imavov back in the cage one last time in October as a Which is where we leave the periphery of the Middleweight top ten. Both of these men are worthwhile prospects, both have some solid strengths, both came within spitting distance of contendership, and now both are a year removed from anything resembling victory and desperately trying to get some momentum back. The odds have Imavov as the narrow favorite here, and I get why: Dolidze looked sluggish and unimpressive against Marvin Vettori. He threw giant winging hooks, he failed to adjust his gameplan when things went poorly, and he didn't have any particular answer for getting jabbed across the cage. Imavov's a clean, mobile striker, and he's a solid grappler in his own right, which means Dolidze's secret "throw you on the ground and remove your joints" techniques won't save him here. The logic makes sense. But the thing is: Despite looking sluggish and unimpressive against Marvin Vettori, Dolidze arguably still beat Marvin Vettori. He awkwardly slugs his way in because he's learned from experience that it's effective. Imavov's faster and more accurate, but he's also demonstrated trouble dealing with that kind of pressure against Strickland, Buckley and Curtis. Over five rounds, ROMAN DOLIZE BY TKO feels right. CO-MAIN EVENT: THE MAIN EVENT LIGHTWEIGHT: Renato Moicano (17-5-1, #13) vs Drew Dober (27-12 (1), #15)It's always difficult when you don't want either fighter to lose. The last time we saw Renato Moicano, I said this. CarlCX posted:Renato Moicano is one of those heartbreaking fighters to love. He's got all the tools--his striking is fast and multifaceted, his grappling is deadly and he's got heart to spare--but like so many before them, he just can't quite put them together with a solid defense, and it's gotten him nuked every time he fights someone in the top five. That was, unfortunately, almost a year and a half ago. He was scheduled to get another crack at the top ten against Arman Tsarukyan, but Moicano's knee exploded, he had to get surgery, and now no one's seen him since November of 2022. Whether that's better or worse than what might have happened if he'd fought Arman is up to your imagination and your belief in Moicano's ability not to get repeatedly hit in the face. I would like it noted on the record that I, personally, believe in Renato Moicano. Some folks have tried to write him off as a gatekeeper based on his losses, but when the worst loss on your record is Chan Sung goddamn Jung, I think underrating you is a mistake. Underrating Drew Dober has, historically, been the fall of many a fighter. I've spoken of Dober in the past as a bizarre, time-displaced anomaly of modern mixed martial arts--a man who's been around so long that people either overlook him as a lost veteran or repeatedly forget his near-twenty years of combat or his time on The Ultimate Fighter 15 (jesus christ) alongside folks like Dakota Cochrane and Chris Tickle--and he is forced to remind everyone of his existence by violently detonating the contents of a man's skull. It has been five and a half years since Drew Dober won a fight by anything other than a horrifying knockout. The last man he beat by decision retired before Joe Biden took office. But that tactic only works until you meet the man you cannot punch. It was Beneil Dariush in 2019, it was Islam Makhachev and the aforementioned Brad Riddell in 2021, and after spending all of 2022 working himself back into the mix with three more devastating knockouts, he went to war with Matt "The Steamrolla" Frevola in one of the most-anticipated gunfights of 2023 and he just plain got outshot. After four minutes of back-and-forth brawling Frevola dropped and finished Dober, and while Dober took umbrage with the stoppage, his visible wobbliness and the eighteen unanswered punches he took meant few were sympathetic. He returned to form by crushing Ricky Glenn in October, but he wants back in the relevant rankings. This is an unpredictable fight. Renato Moicano has better range and better kicks, but he's no match for Dober's power, and Moicano's tendency to get hit is a real red flag for his chances. Drew Dober can stop the fight with a single punch, but his takedown and grappling defense have both failed him repeatedly in the past, and Moicano is fantastic at scrambling and snatching chokes. But Moicano's also fighting fifteen months of ring rust and he has a bad habit of fighting like he's got something to prove, and that pride gets you killed in combat sports. But I said I believed in him, and I meant it. As easy as it is to see a Dober hook shutting him off just like Rafael Fiziev did, I believe in Moicano's ability to kick into the clinch and get this on the ground. RENATO MOICANO BY SUBMISSION. MAIN CARD: WARS OF ASCENSION WELTERWEIGHT: Randy Brown (17-5) vs Muslim Salikhov (19-4) This is my favorite kind of fight: One I already wrote several months ago. Randy Brown and Muslim Salikhov were supposed to fight on the prelims of the sin-cursed card that was Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington last December, but Brown fell ill 48 hours beforehand and the fight had to be cancelled. For as much as the UFC complains about the perception that Apex cards are less important or less stacked than any of their other cards, it sure is telling that a prelim-opener from just six weeks ago is suddenly a top-of-the-main-card fight, but, y'know, gently caress the fans. I give you Carl circa the halcyon days of last December. CarlCX posted:We'll call this the Please Watch The Prelims fight, because boy, this is awful low on the card for how notable both of these men are and how much fun it could really be. Randy Brown has been so close to a top fifteen ranking that the UFC actually used him to springboard rising star Jack Della Maddalena into the rankings at the start of 2023. It makes sense; Brown's tall and rangy and dangerous as hell, but the UFC's also seen him just fail to crack the ceiling and break out of the dreaded 'he's got so much potential' damning-with-faint-praise status three times, now, and eventually, they start feeding you to people. Muslim Salikhov is on his own first real run-in with the glass ceiling. He, too, had a great five-fight winning streak that got him to the cusp of the rankings, and he, too, got blown out of the water by Li Jingliang, ending his hopes on the spot. He's 1-1 since, having joined the long line of UFC fighters who knocked out Andre Fialho but failed to get past the somehow-once-again-relevant Nicolas Dalby this past June. One of them will consume the other's momentum and return to grace; one will be cast into the pit. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Viviane Araujo (12-5, #7) vs Natália Silva (16-5-1, #9)This is a straight-up fight of ascension, and I am wholly here for it. Viviane Araujo's last few years have been a constant back-and-forth struggle, with her stiff punches and solid defense keeping her perpetually stuck between the end of the top fifteen and the beginning of the top ten where the truly world-class fighters would inevitably defeat her, and midway through 2023 she was on a two-fight losing streak and coming up on the dreaded potential third consecutive loss against sizable betting favorite Jennifer Maia. But Araujo pulled out the upset, won a decision, and rocketed into the top ten as a big new contender! Well, kind of. Sort of. Actually, it was a really close decision that saw Maia outland her on significant strikes almost 2:1 and a lot of people think Maia should have taken it. Generally, when something like that happens, you can tell what the company thinks of the decision and the winner's prospects by the way they book them in their next fight. Are you getting an upward trajectory? Are you being set up for success? Or are they, say, making you fight two positions in the rankings down against an undefeated prospect on a winning streak that most betting markets have as just about a -300 favorite against you? Natália Silva is one of the UFC's big new hopes, and unlike the majority of those hopes, they've been bringing her up in steps. She spent her rookie year in 2022 fighting fellow newcomers, and after outworking Jasmine Jasudavicius and spinkicking Tereza Bledá to death off they spent 2023 bumping her up to the embattled veteran circuit, where she promptly dropped Victoria Leonardo and thoroughly outfought the terminally underrated Andrea Lee. Silva's entirely earned her berth in the top ten, her kicks might be the most dangerous strikes Women's Flyweight has to offer, and a 92% takedown defense rate has kept her easily beating people about the face and legs with them in her four fights thus far. I don't see that changing here. I underrated Viviane's chances against Maia, but even though she won, she showcased exactly the kind of hittability that made me doubt her in the first place. Silva hits much harder, much faster and much more accurately than Maia, and unless Viviane can catch her kicks, plant her on the ground and refuse to let her up, she's going to take a beating. NATÁLIA SILVA BY DECISION. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Aliaskhab Khizriev (14-0) vs Makhmud Muradov (26-8) You are witnessing a battle between men who barely exist. When Aliaskhab Khizriev won his contract on the Contender Series he was considered a solid get for the UFC: An undefeated champion out of Dagestan with crushing wrestling and a serious finishing rate who'd just beaten the stuffing out of Rousimar Palhares! ...two years beforehand. Khizriev sat out nine months of 2018, all of 2019, and nine months of 2020 before his one-minute-long submission victory for Dana White's Private Fights. You may be noticing that 2020 is, in fact, four years ago. Well, don't worry! Aliaskhab Khizriev has fought in the last four years! It'd be silly if he hadn't! Granted, y'know, it was only once. After four reschedulings, Khizriev finally made his UFC debut in March of 2022. He choked out Dennis Tiuliulin, who was also making his debut, and then he dusted off his hands, smiled, and vanished in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again. It has been almost another two full years since we saw Aliaskhab Khizriev. He's an undefeated Dagestani superstar and I assume he will, in fact, show up this weekend, but statistically-speaking, I'm wrong. Makhmud Muradov isn't quite as bad, but the numbers are against him, too. He's 4-2 in the UFC! That's a good number! That's six whole fights! It's also one less than the amount of UFC fights he's had cancelled. He only made it out once in 2022, he only made it out once in 2023, and he's getting an early start on 2024 because, by god, he has a Summer vacation to plan for. Muradov is a striker through and through, as his admittedly impressive seventeen knockouts indicate, and he's also got almost half a foot of height going for him, as, at 5'9", Khizriev is the shortest Middleweight in the company. It feels way more likely that something happens between the time of this writing and the time of this fight that keeps it from actually taking place. Someone will But if they do, ALIASKHAB KHIZRIEV BY SUBMISSION. WELTERWEIGHT: Gilbert Urbina (7-2) vs Charles Radtke (8-3) Sometimes you get into the UFC through extenuating circumstances. Gilbert "The RGV Bad Boy" Urbina, which is a nickname I refuse to let him forget he willingly goes by, was a finalist on The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ). This is not because he won; he, in fact, got knocked out by Tresean Gore. But Gore injured his knee training for the final, and the UFC needed a body, and thus, Gilbert. He put up a solid fight against Bryan Battle, but ultimately got choked out midway through the second round. And then--and, boy, this seems like a real recurring theme on this card--he vanished for two loving years. It wasn't until May of 2023 that we saw Urbina again, and it earned him his sole UFC victory after he front-kicked Cosce's ribs into dust. Orion Cosce, of course, was only still in the UFC thanks to his victory over Israel Adeanya's training partner, the inexplicably-pushed Mike "Blood Diamond" Mathetha, who Cosce wrestled into paste. Why do I bring this up? Because Charlie "Chuck Buffalo" Radtke, too, is in the UFC thanks to his winning the Blood Diamond sweepstakes. Radtke was just a few months removed from winning the Cage Fury Fighting Championships Welterweight Championship in front of a crowd of dozens when he got the call up to the UFC because Blood Diamond needed another opponent. Radtke took the chance, and he won, and now he's got a contract! But it sure wasn't pretty. He went 1 for 6 on his takedowns, he managed no submission attempts, and he actually got outstruck en route to his decision victory. And, if you pull down tape on Radtke, that's kind of a recurring theme. Even that championship victory saw Raheam Forest freezing him up with punches and dragging him to the mat. Gilbert Urbina is not only an equally tenacious wrestler and a less touchy striker, he's also 6" taller and much more adept at breaking bones with his feet. GILBERT URBINA BY TKO. PRELIMS: RIP SHANE MCGOWAN WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Molly McCann (13-6) vs Diana Belbiţă (15-8) Oh, Meatball Molly. I'm going to take you back to when we last saw Molly McCann, the long, long-ago time that was July of 2023. CarlCX posted:Molly did her job and crushed Goldy in a single round. She was on a three-fight winning streak, she was getting one of the UFC's biggest marketing pushes--everything was going her way. You have her fight someone she already dominated. That's right: This is, in fact, Molly McCann vs Diana Belbiţă 2. They fought in 2019--in Diana's UFC debut!--and thanks to a point deduction for cheating and a 10-8 round for just generally getting the absolute crap beaten out of her, Molly won a unanimous 30-25 decision. It wasn't competitive, it wasn't close, and in Diana's four fights since then she's gone 2-2 and really hasn't looked all that different. This isn't a fight to see who's best; that was pretty definitively proven quite some time ago. This is a fight to see if the UFC thinks Molly McCann is still worth a marketing investment. If there is an x-factor here, it's the weight cut. After being bounced from contention and rankings alike at her Flyweight home this will be Molly's first attempt at dropping to 115 pounds. It's by no means an impossible cut for her--she was one of the smaller 125-pound women in the company--but it's the only real question mark on a fight that otherwise seems fairly cut-and-dry. If Molly has trouble with the cut, if she's weakened by it too much to outwrestle Diana the same way she did the last time around, it could get messy. If not? MOLLY MCCANN BY DECISION. FLYWEIGHT: Charles Johnson (13-6) vs Azat Maksum (17-0) Charles Johnson, welcome to the chopping block. The UFC didn't have a great deal of investment in "InnerG" and his future at any point, honestly--when your promotional debut is against Muhammad Mokaev in London, they know exactly what they're doing--but after beating Zhalgas Zhumagulov and Jimmy Flick, Johnson seemed to have some life left in him despite his sacrificial status. The entirety of 2023 was spent having that light furiously snuffed out. Johnson went 0-3 on the year, with each loss getting just a touch sadder than the last. In his most recent fight with Rafael Estevam he actually outstruck Estevam 116 to 35, and he still lost a unanimous decision, and it wasn't even remotely controversial. The UFC has absolutely no interest in helping him avert his tailspin: Azat "Qazaq" Maksum was brought into the company last year as a heralded, internationally-relevant prospect, he remained undefeated despite a real, real close split decision over Tyson Nam in his debut, and this fight was in fact supposed to be Maksum's strike at the top twenty against the more successful Nate Maness, but an injury laid him low. Arguably, if you're on three losses in a row, you shouldn't be taking late replacement bookings against highly dangerous undefeated competitors, but unfortunately, if you're on three losses in a row, you probably know you don't have much of a choice. AZAT MAKSUM BY DECISION and I hope we see Johnson again in the PFL or something. WELTERWEIGHT: Themba Gorimbo (11-4) vs Pete Rodriguez (5-1) It's been a wild ride for Themba Gorimbo and it hasn't even been a year since his UFC debut. Themba came over as the Welterweight kingpin of South Africa's Extreme Fighting Championship, had a fair bit of hype going for him as one of the best prospects out of one of the most ignored continents in the sport, and promptly got choked out by AJ Fletcher. He came back with a workmanlike victory over Takashi Sato three months later, but honestly, less people noticed that than his being gifted a house by wrestler/movie star/future dystopian political leader The Rock after Gorimbo informed the world that, as a two-fight UFC veteran, he had $7.49 in his bank account and slept on a couch in a storage room at his team's gym. Christ, this loving sport. It's not that Themba is bad; he's actually quite well-rounded. But it's the sort of well-rounded that's preyed upon by specialists like Fletcher. Pete "Dead Game" Rodriguez was the winner of the late replacement sweepstakes two years ago: The legendarily cursed UFC 270 saw a dozen fights fall through on its way to the air, and among them was rising star Jack Della Maddalena's tilt against Warlley Alves. The 4-0 regional rookie Rodriguez was willing to fill in and get dutifully knocked dead in one round. His reward was the opportunity to play hitman against one of Dana White's most hated fighters, noted CM Punk slayer Mike "The Truth" Jackson, whom he ejected from the UFC after crushing his face with a knee. And, uh, that's it. Rodriguez was supposed to fight Natan Levy at Lightweight a few months later, he was too ill to fight, they rescheduled for May, and the fight was called off when it became clear Rodriguez was going to miss weight by almost ten pounds. And now--say it with me, you know this song by now--we haven't seen him since 2022. Which is why he's here. This was supposed to be Gorimbo facing Kiefer Crosbie, but Crosbie couldn't make it, and a late replacement is the best chance Rodriguez has at getting booked after his 2023 debacle. I'm glad he's getting another chance and I'm glad to see him again; that said, THEMBA GORIMBO BY SUBMISSION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Blake Bilder (8-1-1) vs Jeong Yeong Lee (10-1)I'm cautiously optimistic about this fight. Both of these men were supposed to be real big hyped prospects for the Featherweight division, and both ran into some real big speedbumps the last time we saw them. Blake Bilder traded in his Cage Fury championship belt for a shot at the contract mill, won his way into Dana White's good graces, and hopped over to the UFC last year, where his mixture of hard kicks and gritty wrestling earned him a debut victory, but cost him in his sophomore appearance. He couldn't take down Kyle Nelson, and having lost the ability to disguise his striking with his wrestling, he got picked apart for two rounds and lost his undefeated streak. Similarly, Jeong Yeong Lee put his Road FC championship on the shelf and left South Korea to enter 2022's Road to UFC tournament, and he was, easily, the most impressive fighter in its first two rounds. He cut through his quarter and semi-final opponents in under a minute apiece, and coming into the championship final against China's Yi Zha, he was a heavy, heavy favorite. And he won! Kind of. He outstruck Yi Zha to a split decision, but he also spent almost 2/3 of the fight being outwrestled and would, almost certainly, have lost that decision were it not for a referee error: When Lee illegally upkicked Zha during a grappling exchange, referee Mark Smith inexplicably punished Zha by taking away his grounded position and restarting the fight on the feet, where Lee had the clear advantage. But that wrestling weakness is going to haunt him here. Bilder isn't quite as fast as Yi Zha, but he is bigger, stronger, and even more doggedly persistent, and his chin has held up to some fairly stiff assaults. Jeong Yeong Lee is very good at hurting people and he could do it again given a chance, but BLAKE BILDER BY DECISION after wrestling the poo poo out of him seems entirely plausible. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Julija Stoliarenko (11-7-1) vs Luana Carolina (9-4) I wonder what it's like to be a UFC fighter, look at your booking on a card, and see that someone you just absolutely destroyed in your last fight is booked into a more prominent position than you. I have to imagine that loving sucks. We already went over it a few paragraphs up when we discussed Molly McCann, but to recap, Julija Stoliarenko was the 1-for-her-last-5 veteran the UFC was counting on to reheat their leftover meatballs for them, and despite being a +200 underdog Julija pulled an upset, threw Molly on the ground and drat near broke her arm in front of a deeply unhappy London crowd. It was the best victory of her career, it was easily the most visible fight of her career, and to capitalize on it, the UFC has buried her three fights from the bottom of an Apex card against Luana Carolina, who is most famous for, hilariously enough, getting knocked out by...Molly McCann. Are these things just put together by nearest-neighbor word clouds or something? Does the UFC book women's MMA through stream of consciousness? Is that why McCann got fed to Erin Blanchfield in the first place? Luana Carolina had a fair bit of early success in the UFC, including a victory over Lupita Godinez that has aged extremely well, but her last two and a half years have been characterized primarily by struggle. She got soundly outfought by McCann for two rounds before being destroyed with a spinning elbow, she got thoroughly worked by Joanne Wood (to what was still a split decision, because judges exist to make life irritating), and she was saved from a possible cut after upsetting the debuting Ivana Petrović last July. Luana has picked up a reputation for winning through ineffective strike and clinch spam. As much as I want to defend her--and there are some decent defensive wrinkles to her game--it's been almost five years since she really visibly hurt someone with her strikes and we're closing in on a decade since her last actual finish. But Julija Stoliarenko is almost entirely a ground specialist, and Luana's flightiness and grappling defense make her difficult to pin down for long. I'd really love to see the Stoliarenko recovery tour continue, but LUANA CAROLINA BY DECISION seems more accurate. LIGHTWEIGHT: MarQuel Mederos (8-1) vs Landon Quiñones (7-2-1) There's something about this that leaves me feeling intensely depressed. MarQuel Mederos is a perfectly cromulent fighter, but he carries all the targeted-marketing signs of the Contender Series: Big for his weight class, still in his twenties, allergic to takedowns, never got a submission in his life, not even a year removed from fighting the 8-11 Justice "The Gavel" Lamparez on the regional circuit. To be clear, I don't dislike him! He's got power and timing, and those two traits don't cross over often, and I can see him doing some real cool poo poo in the UFC. But the Contender Series has done such a thorough job grinding the unmarketable grapplers out of the UFC's rookie roster that I cannot help having a knee-jerk reaction against it. I am not immune to bias, just like Landon Quiñones is not immune to chokes. The ostensible format of The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ) was fresh-faced prospects against old, hardened veterans, but that format flew out the window when seven of the eight prospects got skunked in the first round and the last (godspeed, Rico DiSciullo) fell in the semi-finals. Landon was no different: As a Lightweight prospect he got matched up with Jason Knight, whom a friend of mine used to affectionately refer to as Hick Diaz, and Knight choked him out in under a minute. Rather than giving Quiñones a gentle landing for his actual UFC debut the company booked him against the formerly top fifteen-rated Nasrat Haqparast, and Quiñones put up an extremely respectable fight and badly hurt Nasrat with leg kicks, but he didn't hurt him enough to avert a wide, 30-27 decision loss. So it's depressing, but at least it's also interesting. Both guys are big power punchers, Mederos has shown a little more historical patience about picking his shots, Quiñones has demonstrated a little more of a well-rounded approach to his striking. I'm leaning towards LANDON QUIÑONES BY DECISION, but this could go about a million different ways. HEAVYWEIGHT: Thomas Petersen (8-1) vs Jamal Pogues (10-4) I am not unaware that I struggle to talk respectfully about the Heavyweight division. I try very hard to be respectful when I talk about fighters, because, boy, fighting loving sucks. Being a professional mixed martial artist means willingly participating in a mostly-disrespected sport that's treated like a joke by most of its own promoters where your most realistic hope is mortgaging your health for a fraction of its worth in front of a fanbase that will turn on you the second you lose or, worse, win in a way that does not personally please them. The fighters are very rarely the problem with professional fighting, and even the unsuccessful fighters are some of the toughest people on Earth. Harry Hunsucker dedicated his entire life to martial arts and spent years honing his skills and it earned him an 0-3 UFC record that lasted less than four minutes. Fighting is hard. But god, the Heavyweight division is just a deeply unfortunate place, and when two of your touted Heavyweight prospects are the guy who got knocked out by Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta and the guy who looked barely mobile by a third round against Mick Parkin last year, I cannot stop the flow of negativity. I'm sorry, Thomas and Jamal. You deserve better, but I just don't have the love in my heart for this. Let's say THOMAS PETERSEN BY SUBMISSION and hope we're right.
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Jan 31, 2024 20:23
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:48 |
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 Chatri would like to make it clear to you that Takeru/Rodtang went off without a single hitch and this thread is closed for further discussion on the topic. To February, and beyond.
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Feb 1, 2024 20:08
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