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What should have main-evented UFC 300? This poll is closed. |
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| Alex Pereira vs Tom Aspinall |
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2 | 5.88% |
| Georges St-Pierre vs Khabib Nurmagomedov |
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6 | 17.65% |
| Mark Hunt vs Dana White |
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19 | 55.88% |
| Mark Coleman vs A Fire |
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5 | 14.71% |
| Mark Twain vs The Tainted Legacy of Americana |
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2 | 5.88% |
| Total: | 34 votes | ||
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If you want to relive the joys of Chris Weidman removing a man's eyeballs, go back to March here. Welcome to the big month. On one hand, the UFC only has three events in the next four weeks; on the other, the PFL is back and the 2024 season is beginning; on the third, worst hand, it's UFC 300 this month, baby. Prepare for Bo Nickal. This month's title courtesy of LobsterMobster. 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 Yeah, it was a busy and somewhat unfortunate month.  The big, collective antitrust lawsuit against the UFC and its coercive business practices is over. An out-of-court settlement was reached for a grand total of $335 million, which is considerably less than the $1-1.5 billion the suit was addressing, and to rub salt into the wound, the TKO lawyers who announced the settlement made sure to note that it is, they believe, tax deductible. I'll excerpt Nate Quarry, UFC veteran and a key figure in the suit, who posted his thoughts on Reddit in the aftermath: quote:"No, we didn't get everything we wanted. Our goal all along was to change the sport. However, we had quite a few delays that we had to deal with. And to get injunctive relief, ie change the sport, we would have had to refile both lawsuits and combine them, go through discovery all over again, retake depositions, about a five year delay and then hope we get granted class action status again. We'd be looking at another ten years just to be where we are today with no guarantee of winning any punitive amount of injunctive change. And then, because he is a fighter, he devoted an equal-length portion of the comment to telling anyone who criticizes the settlement that they should do it themselves, including the unabridged length of the Teddy Roosevelt 'man in the arena' quote everyone in sports uses to remind you that your opinion is immaterial and every time I read it another part of my soul dies. I'm not going to tell anyone they shouldn't have settled and gotten paid. I get it. But this does represent the loss of maybe the only substantive chance to improve the industry, and however many quotes from dead racists you put on top of it, when 'maybe we can improve the sport' turns into 'lawsuit gets settled for a tax writeoff; TKO stock jumps almost 8%,' heartbreak is an entirely rational response. Congratulations to the plaintiffs getting some of the money they were owed from the UFC. You genuinely do deserve it. Sorry, everyone else.  On a note that started much scarier but ultimate turned out great, Mark Coleman got to be a goddamn hero. The first UFC and Pride Heavyweight Champion was roused in bed by his dog, who was alerting him to the house being on goddamn fire, and Coleman proceeded to carry his mother and father out of the house, one by one, before passing out from smoke inhalation. (He was trying to find said dog, Hammer, who unfortunately did not make it, and is also the real hero of this story.) Coleman wound up in critical condition in the hospital, the MMA community pretty quickly came together out of concern, Coleman made it out alive a couple days later, went BACK to the hospital almost immediately for pneumonia (which you'd think they would have caught before releasing him, but I am not a doctor), and was back in the gym a day later. Good on both Hammer the human and Hammer the dog.  My skepticism about the long-term health of the Professional Fighters League-owned Bellator is still strong, but I have to admit, they're getting off to a real good start. After spending the last years of its life struggling with distribution on Showtime and DAZN, March saw the official debut of Bellator as part of the new live sports section of  Bloody Elbow, one of the only MMA journalism outfits to ever really be worth a drat, is dead. They'd made no secrets about their financial struggles since the venture capital implosion of Vox Media and their attempts to go independent, but Google stapling their ad market shut spelled the end. Founder Nate Wilcox sold the site and its legacy officially came to an end. Well, for anyone who really cares, anyway. Bloody Elbow is still there, it's just run by a lovely British publisher with two employees and is now entirely about using the brand to churn out listicles and clickbait headlines and absolutely no attempt whatsoever to be even remotely oppositional. Or interesting. Or worthy of oxygen. I did not always agree with Bloody Elbow's coverage, but if you always agree with something, it's almost certainly a terrible source for journalism. I had many disagreements with Nate Wilcox (and, uh, still do), but I still appreciate that he made the thing exist in the first place. I absolutely believe the world of MMA journalism is worse off without it and has no replacement for it, and that is a terrible, terrible thing. But mostly I think it's hilarious that right around the time I finally got into doing public nerd journalism on the internet the entire market collapsed. Goddammit.  Also, we're doing this again. The answer to 'are they really going to rematch Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko for a third time' has turned out to not just be an obvious yes, but that they are in fact making it the centerpiece of The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ). The season will not even start airing until June, meaning it will not conclude until August, meaning if we are lucky, the Grasso/Shevchenko war will wind up only taking a year and a half. Unless Shevchenko wins, in which case we're stuck with this for god knows how long.  Oh, and the Francis Ngannou: Boxing Master story came to the only conclusion it probably could have. Francis made waves after stepping out of MMA and into boxing last year, arguably beating and inarguably flooring Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury in his first-ever boxing bout, and his March 8 showdown with Anthony Joshua was seen as his chance to cement his stature as a genuine Heavyweight contender. Unfortunately, reality reasserted itself. Joshua pretty effortlessly destroyed Ngannou, knocking him down once in the second round and twice in the second, the latter a straight-up knockout. It was about as definitive a shutdown as it could have been. The PFL says this is why Ngannou is coming back to MMA; Ngannou, of course, is quite certain he's not done with boxing, and I'm sure the exponentially larger boxing paydays do not help. 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 MARCH We started bright and early on March 1 with ONE 166: Qatar, ONE's attempt at The UFC got off to its start the next day with UFC Fight Night: Rozenstruik vs Gaziev on March 2. It was incredible before it even began, as the card the Saudi Arabian government rejected for being too crappy to participate in their sportswashing PR program had to be shoved into the Apex and run at 10 in the morning PST anyway, and the UFC's argument for its quality proved, uh, questionable. Loik Radzhabov knocked out Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady, Ľudovít Klein effortlessly destroyed AJ Cunningham, Christian Leroy Duncan pounded out an overmatched Cláudio Ribeiro, Aiemann Zahabi ended Javid Baharat's undefeated streak in a genuinely great matchup, Vinicius Oliveira made his debut by concussing a Bernardo Sopaj who'd told his corner he couldn't fight anymore and was sent out for a third round anyway because everything is terrible, and Eryk Anders wrestled an immemorable decision away from Jamie Pickett. Your main card started great with Steve Erceg knocking out Matt Schnell, but it gradually petered out from there. First, Umar Nurmagomedov wrestled a 30-25 decision away from Bekzat Almakhan, a debuting Kazakhstani fighter who was visibly out of his depth abruptly fighting a top guy. Then, Muhammad Mokaev had a ton of trouble with Alex Perez and just barely scraped out a 29-28 that made both guys look less impressive than they were when they started. In your co-main event, Vitor Petrino abandoned his talents to take a tepid, motionless decision from Tyson Pedro, after which Pedro retired because despite having eleven UFC fights he was drat near broke and needed to move on. And in your main event, another Heavyweight prospect fell apart, as Shamil Gaziev gassed in a round and a half and got extremely slowly picked apart by Jairzinho Rozenstruik until the referee had to stop the fight before the fifth round after discovering he'd told his corner he couldn't see and his corner elected not to tell anyone about it. Christ alive. The month's big show, UFC 299: O'Malley vs Vera 2, came on March 9. To the UFC's credit it was a thoroughly stacked card, and for the most part, it delivered. On your early prelims: Joanne Wood got the rare feelgood exit from the sport, retiring on a split decision victory over Maryna Moroz, Assu Almabayev took a decision over a once again overweight C.J. Vergara, Heavyweight megaprospect Robelis Despaigne knocked out Josh Parisian in 18 seconds by wildly flailing his arms, Michel Pereira had a career-best performance after both doing a fun walkout dance and absolutely running through Michał Oleksiejczuk by submission in one minute, and Philipe Lins outworked Ion Cuțelaba to a decision, after which he was released anyway because the UFC hates him. On your regular prelims, Kyler Phillips made his third return to the sport by dominating Pedro Munhoz, Mateusz Gamrot beat a game but outmatched Rafael dos Anjos, Maycee Barber made herself a real contender by beating Katlyn Cerminara, and Curtis Blaydes ended the UFC's Heavyweight hype by knocking out Jailton Almeida. Up on the main, Petr Yan took a competitive but clear decision over Song Yadong, Jack Della Maddalena came less than ninety seconds away from losing his winning streak to Gilbert Burns only to score an incredible comeback knockout, Michael "Venom" Page made his UFC debut with a traditionally weird decision victory over Kevin Holland, and Dustin Poirier turned back the young barbarians by knocking out Benoît Saint Denis in two rounds. Your main event was a headscratcher, as Sean O'Malley defended the Bantamweight title against Marlon "Chito" Vera in a rematch that was considered deeply silly by most, and as he is inexplicably wont to do, Chito was barely active for the first half of the fight and only rarely effective in the second, to the point that he landed his best strike of the fight in the last second before the final bell. Sean O'Malley won a shutout, and immediately called out Ilia Topuria, because weight classes are for losers. We were back to the Apex beat immediately on the 16 with UFC Fight Night: Tuivasa vs Tybura. The whole thing was a big of a clusterfuck, with a rescheduled main, multiple mixed-up fights and three weight misses, but the show went on. Chad Anheliger spoiled Charalampos Grigoriou's debut with a decision loss, Thiago Moisés kicked Mitch Ramirez's legs to death, Jaqueline Amorim submitted Cory McKenna, Danny Silva squeaked by Joshua Culibao, Jafel Filho strangled Ode' Osbourne, Chelsea Chandler narrowly beat Josiane Nunes, and Mike Davis choked out Natan Levy to send off the prelims. On your main, Gerald Meerschaert won a mirror match against Bryan Barberena with a jaw crank, Macy Chiasson choked out Pannie Kianzad, Christian Rodriguez barely beat Isaac Dulgarian, Ovince Saint Preux won one of the least eventful fights of the year against Kennedy Nzechukwu, and Bryan Battle poked Ange Loosa's eye into a No Contest that almost turned into a post-fight brawl when Battle called Loosa a coward who was giving up, which is an awful nice thing to say to someone you just almost blinded. Your main event tilt saw Marcin Tybura choke out Tai Tuivasa in one round, which was a betting upset for reasons I will never understand. The PFL-owned Bellator era officially began with Bellator Champions Series 1, live from Belfast, on March 22. This was, despite the circumstances, the beginning of Bellator's best broadcast deal in a decade, as they officially began streaming live on Rizin took its swing for the month with Rizin Landmark 9 on March 23. As is tradition, it was large and mixed across MMA and kickboxing, but the latter was still fantastic, as a last-minute kickboxing match between Muay Thai legend Buakaw Banchamek and massive steroid cheat Minoru Kimura ended with Buakaw dropping him in two rounds. Over in mixed martial arts, Yuta Kubo narrowly beat Ryogo Takahashi, the sumo Takakenshin finally got a victory after knocking out Cory Jerabek, Yuto Hokamura beat Daiki Tsubota, and Yuya Shibata kneebarred Erson Yamamoto. In your main event slots, Rena Kubota took the nod over Shim Yu-ri, Naoki Inoue outworked Shoko Sato, Koji Takeda beat Kyohei Hagiwara, and in your non-title main event, Roberto de Souza kicked the poo poo out of Keita Nakamura in about a minute and a half. The UFC's penultimate show for the month came later that day with UFC on ESPN: Ribas vs Namajunas. This massively shaken-up card had a big, long night of prelims that included Mick Parkin winning a pretty dreadful match with Mohammed Usman, Darya Zheleznyakova just barely getting a decision over Montserrat Rendon, Jarno Errens beating seven shades of hell out of Steven Nguyen, Miles Johns outfighting Cody Gibson, Julian Erosa choking out Ricardo Ramos and Trey Ogden outwrestling Kurt Holobaugh, but more than any of that, they will be remembered for André Lima, who won his UFC debut by disqualification after Igor Severino bit him on the arm so hard it left a full imprint in his skin, which Lima promptly got tattooed on after the fight. On your main card, Fernando Padilla choked out Luis Pajuelo, Youssef Zalal made his return to the UFC by submitting Billy Quarantillo, Payton Talbott dismantled Cameron Saaiman to a two-round KO, Edmen Shahbazyan came repeatedly close to losing to AJ Dobson before knocking him out just before the first round ended, and Karl Williams outwrestled Justin Tafa to a clear if uneventful decision. In your main event, Rose Namajunas took on Amanda Ribas and ultimately won the decision, but it was, once again, not a particularly memorable fight for the former wrecking machine. We finally finished up the month with UFC on ESPN: Blanchfield vs Fiorot on March 30. It was a weird goddamn card with an unusual amount of weird poo poo on it. Down on the prelims, Caolán Loughran beat Angel Pacheco, Jacob Malkoun somehow knocked out Andre Petroski with his thigh, Ibo Aslan avenged his career loss by knocking out Anton Turkalj, Dennis Buzukja punched out Connor Matthews, Julio Arce TKOed a kind of sad Herbert Burns, Virna Jandiroba took a decision over a very game Loopy Godinez, and Nate Landwehr overcame almost getting knocked out in the first two minutes of his fight to instead knock out Jamall Emmers in the next two. The main card is weird things got screwy. Chidi Njokuani beat Rhys McKee by split decision, except it was so aggressively obvious a decision that the two agreeing judges had Njokuani pitching a shutout. Kyle Nelson took out Bill Algeo in a standing TKO. Nursulton Ruziboev stopped Sedriques Dumas, but it was thanks to an uncalled eye poke. One fight later, Chris Weidman knocked out Bruno Silva, except then the replays showed he had actually poked him in both eyes and that was what made him collapse (minding that Weidman had already poked him in the eye twice earlier in the fight!), but the fight was still ruled a TKO, and then, minutes later, changed to a technical decision even though it doesn't meet the rules for one. Jersey! In your co-main, Joaquin Buckley pounded out a Vicente Luque who just sort of seemed to shut down and stop fighting. And in your main event, Manon Fiorot took a 50-45 over Erin Blanchfield, after which the UFC immediately began wondering if she needed to fight another prospect before her title shot. WHAT'S COMING IN APRIL The PFL season is upon us once again, and with Bellator involved, it is actually sort of talent-rich. PFL 1 kicks the year off on April 4 with Women's Flyweight and Heavyweight. In the former, your season bouts: Chelsea Hackett vs Jena Bishop, Kana Watanabe vs Shanna Young, Taila Santos vs Ilara Joanne, Dakota Ditcheta vs Lisa Mauldin, and in a Bellator championship rematch, Liz Carmouche vs Juliana Velasquez. At the latter: Marcelo Golm vs Jordan Heiderman, Steve Mowry vs Oleg Popov, Blagoy Ivanov vs Sergei Bilostenniy, Daniel James vs Tyrell Fortune, Denis Goltsov vs Linton Vassell, and in your main event, Valentin Moldavsky vs Ante Delija. ONE is up next with ONE Fight Night 21: Eersel vs Nicolas on April 6. Yet again, this is a Lumpinee Stadium card and thus half kickboxing and Muay Thai and I am not qualified to tell you if Vladimir Kuzmin or Suablack Tor.Pran49 is a better Thai fighter, but both of the Ruotolo brothers will have grappling matches including Tye defending his incredibly prestigious grappling championship against Izaak Michell, Jeremy Pacatiw and Wang Shuoi will do the MMA as well Hiroyuki Tetsuka and Valmir da Silva, Ben Tynan and Duke Didier will be big heavyweights at each other, and your main event will have Regian Eersel defending his Lightweight Kickboxing championship against Alexis Nicolas. The UFC's last stop before MMA wrestlemania comes later that evening in the form of UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Curtis 2. Not gonna lie: It's not great. It's very clearly a 'the PPV is next week, just throw whatever on there' sort of card, to the point that the most interesting fight of the night, Norma Dumont vs Germaine de Randamie, is stuck on the prelims while Łucasz Brzeski is main-carding it up. Alexander Hernandez is 1 for his last 4 and Damon Jackson is on a two-fight losing streak, and they are co-main eventing anyway. But special sympathies for Brendan Allen, who was originally facing the #5-ranked Marvin Vettori and is now, instead, facing the #14-ranked Chris Curtis. PFL 2 hits on April 12. This kicks off the Lightweight and Light Heavyweight seasons, and if you're wondering which is more important, remember that big boys always get their way. Your inaugural 155 matchups for the season include Jay Jay Wilson vs Adam Piccolotti, Gadzhi Rabadanov vs Solomon Renfro, Bruno Miranda vs Brent Primus, Mads Burnell vs Michael Dufort and Clay Collard vs Patricky Pitbull. At 205, you've got Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov vs Jakob Nedoh, good ol' Shoeface Antônio Carlos Júnior vs Simon Biyong, Sadibou Sy vs Josh Silveira--if you're going 'wait, wasn't Sadibou Sy fighting 30 pounds down at Welterweight' you're correct, weight classes are meaningless--Impa Kasanganay vs Alex Polizzi, and Rob Wilkinson vs Tom Breese. And then, on April 13, it's the big one. UFC 300 has loomed for months, and for better or worse, we are finally here, and for how anticlimactic the actual main event turned out to be, it is, still, a ridiculous card. Your early prelims: Deiveson Figueiredo vs Cody Garbrandt, Bobby Green vs Jim Miller, Jéssica Andrade vs Marina Rodriguez and Jalin Turner vs Renato Moicano. Your normal prelims: Sodiq Yusuff vs Diego Lopes, Holly Holm vs Kayla Harrison, Calvin Kattar vs Aljamain Sterling, Jiří Procházka vs Aleksandar Rakić. Your main card: Bo Nickal vs Cody Brundage (one of these things is not like the other), Charles Oliveira vs Arman Tsarukyan, a fight for the increasingly silly BMF title featuring Justin Gaethje vs Max Holloway, a Women's Strawweight Championship defense with Zhang Weili vs Yan Xiaonan, and a Light Heavyweight Championship defense as Alex Pereira faces Jamahal Hill. I'll inevitably complain, but boy, it's a hell of a card. And the UFC's taking a week off for the first time in months! God bless. Your only MMA for the next week is PFL 3 on April 19, which will start the year's Welterweight and Featherweight brackets. Your 145-pound matchups: Tyler Diamond vs Otto Rodrigues, Timur Khizriev vs Brett Johns, Ádám Borics vs Enrique Barzola, Bubba Jenkins vs Kai Kamaka III, Gabriel Alves Braga vs Justin Gonzalez, and Brendan Loughnane vs Pedro Carvalho. At 170 pounds, which hilariously does not currently include last year's champion: Romain Debienne vs Thad Jean, Zach Juusola vs Luca Poclit, Don Madge vs Brennan Ward, Laureano Staropoli vs Murad Ramazanov, Goiti Yamauchi vs Neiman Gracie, Logan Storley vs Shamil Musaev, and in your main event, Andrey Koreshkov vs Magomed Umalatov. That much-needed UFC rest comes to an end on April 27 with UFC on ESPN: Nicolau vs Kape 2. I kind of love this card just for how 'gently caress it, UFC 300 just happened and we're tired, throw poo poo into a blender' it is. Austen Lane just finished his unsuccessful 0-1 (1) UFC debut duology? Have him fight Heavyweight kickboxing champion Jhonata Diniz. Rani Yahya is still around? I dunno, put him and Victor Henry together and see what happens. Joel Álvarez is successful and height differences are hilarious, so have him fight Mateusz Rębecki, who is eight goddamn inches shorter. Wait, Tim Means is still here? Send in Uroš Medić. Ryan Spann and Bogdan Guskov! MOGGLY BENITEZ AND MAHESHATE. Ariane Lipski vs Karine Silva should loving rule, though. Oh, and fresh off Manel Kape blowing a weight cut and ruining a fight they're giving him a main event, because honestly, why not. Rizin closes out the month on the 29 with Rizin 46. It's...fine. You get the sense Rizin is holding back for something coming down the pipe, but it's still fine. Yang Ji-yong vs Kazuma Kuramoto should be fun as heck, Sora Yamamoto vs Ilkhom Nazimov and Yoshiki Nakahara vs Viktor Kolesnik will be interesting, Shinryu's back for a tune-up against Jung Hyun Lee, who has 1/4 his experience and could not be more clearly a sacrificial lamb without being chained to a pole in a T-rex pen, Juntaro Ushiku will face the similarly inexperienced Shinobu Ota, Taichi Nakajima faces Kim Soo-chul to hopefully finally get his goddamn Nintendo Switch, and in your main event, Chihiro Suzuki defendthe Rizin Featherweight Championship against the 41 year-old Masanori Kanehara, who is, despite that sentence, a legitimate top contender.
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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. After none of the UFC's other ideas worked out, they announced Alex Pereira will attempt his first title defense against former champion Jamahal Hill in the main event of UFC 300. Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs   Dricus du Plessis - 21-2, 0 DefensesMiddleweight's loving wild, man. Generally when a belt changes hands repeatedly in a short period of time you can blame injuries and strippings and title vacations, but recent history has simply been a case study in how goddamn weird things can get at 185 pounds. As of this writing (February 1, 2024) we've had five separate Middleweight champions in less than fifteen months. Divisional king Israel Adesanya dropped the belt to his nemesis Alex Pereira, Adesanya dropped Pereira himself in an immediate rematch, and in one of 2023's bigger upsets, Adesanya lost his belt to human exclusion zone Sean Strickland. But that shot, initially, didn't belong to him: It belonged to Dricus du Plessis. Dricus joined the UFC in 2020 as one of the international scene's best prospects--a two-division champion in his native South Africa's Extreme Fighting Championship, a Welterweight champion in Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki, and a finishing machine who'd never gone to a decision in his life. The spotlight of the UFC gave him two new reputations: For one, as an exceptionally awkward-looking fighter who could appear shaky and exhausted and still easily knock anyone out, and for two, as a guy with real uncomfortable feelings about his homeland. Shortly after his debut Dricus du Plessis began making comments about becoming the first "real" African champion in the UFC, citing the way fighters like Kamaru Usman, Israel Adesanya and Francis Ngannou had left the country, and, boy, there's just no way to get around the topic that isn't gross as hell. But du Plessis knocked #1 contender Robert Whittaker dead, so it didn't matter. He was in pole position. And then he lost it, because he wanted more than a month to prepare for a world championship fight and the UFC decided that just wouldn't fly. A fully-trained du Plessis stepped into the cage against his replacement and now-champion Sean Strickland on January 20 at UFC 297, and after a close fight and a split decision, du Plessis brought the belt back to South Africa just like he promised. The UFC would really like to make good on their initial du Plessis/Adesanya plans, but we'll see if they can work it out. 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   Ilia Topuria - 15-0, 0 DefensesThe king is dead, long live the king. Everyone paying attention knew Ilia Topuria was a special sort of prospect all the way back in 2020, but it wasn't until he destroyed Ryan Hall that the rest of the world noticed. A man who is equal parts German, Georgian and Spanish, Topuria established himself immediately as a force to be reckoned with: An undefeated wrecking machine with a strong wrestling game, a thoroughly solid grappling game, and the combination of terrifying knockout power and the sheer confidence to use it that can only come from having never lost a fight. Which was tested, thoroughly, when Topuria went up to Lightweight on short notice, fought a man in Jai Herbert who was half a foot taller than him, nearly got knocked out twice, and proceeded to recover, regroup, and fold Herbert in half with a punch in the second round. Suddenly, his prospect status was proven. Not only was he good, he was capable of dealing with adversity. Within the year he'd become the first (non-exhibition) fighter to ever beat Bryce Mitchell after ragdolling him and choking him out, and by the end of 2023 he'd dominated Josh Emmett, proving both his place at the top of the Featherweight contendership ladder and his ability to go five full rounds without falling over. His ascension couldn't have come at a better time. Alexander Volkanovski, one of the greatest champions in UFC history, was finally beginning to show signs of wear--somewhat unfairly, as those signs came from an incredibly inadvisable last-minute fill-in 155-pound fight against Islam Makhachev--but getting knocked out is getting knocked out, and when you've only been beaten once in a decade, getting knocked out in one round makes people ask difficult questions about your age, longevity, and durability. When Volk and Ilia met at UFC 298 on February 17, almost every question people had was, in fact, answered. Can Volk outwork Topuria? Absolutely; he won the first round handily and was dancing around him. Can Ilia keep himself in check? Completely; knowing just how good Volk was, Ilia was uncharacteristically patient and measured and didn't get himself in any real trouble in the first round while he figured out what he wanted to do. Can Alexander Volkanovski stand up to Ilia Topuria's punching power? Buddy: No one can. Three and a half minutes into the second round Topuria successfully trapped Volkanovski against the cage with his footwork, and one combination later, Volkanovski was on the floor. Ilia Topuria's destiny has come. He's the Featherweight champion. And he has, of course, already sworn to try to become a double champion within his next two fights. Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs  Sean O'Malley - 18-1 (1), 1 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. O'Malley dominated him, won a clear shut-out, and then called out Ilia Topuria, because weight classes are for chumps. 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 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--or it would have been, until Albazi got injured. The UFC promoted a Moreno/Royval 2 showdown in hopes of scoring a Moreno rematch, but Royval won, so the UFC decided to forget the whole goddamn thing and book Pantoja against the #10-ranked Steve Erceg on May 4. Sure. Whatever. Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs  Raquel Pennington - 16-8, 0 DefensesThe throne is once again full. Amanda Nunes left a gaping void in the world of women's mixed martial arts when she retired last Summer, and it took the UFC seven months to do something about it. The Women's Featherweight title? That's just gone, man. The patient could not be resuscitated. There's still life in Women's Bantamweight, though, and with Nunes gone and Julianna Peña injured, there was only one sensible match to make. Raquel Pennington should have gotten her title shot more than a year ago. "Rocky" is one of the UFC's longest-tenured women, at this point--her debut came more than a decade ago as a runner-up on The Ultimate Fighter 18 (jesus christ)--and the millstone weighing down her championship aspirations was the fact that more than five years ago she had a title fight, and it saw Amanda Nunes just beat her to a pulp. Despite being on the division's longest winning streak at the start of 2023, this loss was commonly cited as reason enough to deny Pennington the shot, and given that she's a generally affable, no-nonsense fighter with a grinding wrestling style, she is, categorically, the UFC's least favorite kind of person, which meant getting passed up over and over and having to settle for serving as a backup challenger for Irene Aldana--whom Pennington had already beaten. But with the top prospects out and Aldana having just gotten beaten even worse by Nunes than Raquel had, there was nowhere left for the company to hide. Mayra Bueno Silva had established herself as one of the division's most dangerous fighters after tearing apart Lina Länsberg's knee and nearly popping Holly Holm's skull out of her head with a ninja choke, and there were quite a few hoping she'd stop Pennington in her tracks when the two met at UFC 297 on January 20, but they were gratifyingly incorrect. Pennington outwrestled Silva, escaped her submission attempts, outstruck her 265 to 96, and finally, on a night where the UFC loudly celebrated bigotry, sexism and homophobia, took the belt home to her wife. Raquel's the first post-Nunes champion, and godspeed to her. The UFC is almost certainly waiting to see if either Peña gets healthy or the newly-signed Kayla Harrison beats Holly Holm to figure out what's next for Raquel. 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 good news: We’re running it back again. Grasso and Shevchenko are the coaches of The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ), so this Summer, it’s fight #3. 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 a China vs China championship showdown against Yan Xiaonan at UFC 300.
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NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs   Anatoly Malykhin - 14-0, 0 DefensesONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs  Anatoly Malykhin - 14-0, 0 DefensesONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs  Anatoly Malykhin - 14-0, 0 DefensesNothing is real, and we are all a part of the great dream. Anatoly Malykhin, a Master of Sport and international champion wrestler, took to MMA in 2016. Five years later, at the tender professional age of 8-0, he was in ONE. Two fights later, he was the interim Heavyweight champion. ONE's mixed martial arts divisions have always been slim at best and ephemeral at worst, but above 185 pounds, the air got real, real thin. Arjan Bhullar, the actual 265-pound champion, was having contractual issues with ONE and didn't want to fight. In another universe, Malykhin fought other Heavyweights and carried the torch for ONE's big boys. In this one, he dropped to 225 pounds in 2022 and just beat the absolute poo poo out of double-champ Reinier de Ridder, taking his title in the process. But he was still the 265-pound champion, and he still wanted to unify the belts, and thus, in June of 2023, he mauled a finally-present Bhullar to become the undisputed Heavyweight champion. In another universe, he defended either of these titles, lending credibility to ONE's divisional depth. In this universe, ONE didn't have any divisional depth, and thus, on March 1, 2024, Anatoly dropped to 205 pounds to, once again, beat the poo poo out of now single-champ Reinier de Ridder. ONE immediately began astroturfing as much marketing as they could behind the idea of having the first major triple champion in mixed martial arts history, and like all good marketing, that is, technically, true. But he got there by beating the same guy twice, once at a weight class recognized by no other major organization on Earth, and now rules over three divisions with almost no one in them. Anatoly Malykhin is a legitimately good fighter, but it's a shame there's no one who can help him prove it. 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. ONE planned his comeback for February of 2024, but, y'know, that clearly did not happen. ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs  Tang Kai - 16-2, 1 DefenseTang 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 it was delayed by eight full months thanks to an injury. So after more than a year and a half without a fight, Tang Kai finally fought Thanh Le again, and this time, he knocked him out in three rounds. Congratulations, Tang Kai: You are back at square one. 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   Joshua Pacio - 22-4, 0 DefensesIt's been a difficult couple of years for Joshua Pacio. "The Passion" stands as a true veteran of ONE Championship, having made his debut--and his first, unsuccessful attempt at winning the Strawweight title--all the way back in 2016. Pacio established himself as both a fan favorite and a solid promotional favorite for the company, and when he lost his second bid for the title against Yosuke Saruta in 2019, ONE, in a trick they'd become very friendly with over the years, gave him an instant rematch anyway. Pacio knocked Saruta out in the rematch and became easily the greatest 125-pound champion in ONE history, ultimately defending the title three times--including a trilogy match against Saruta. By 2022, Pacio was a crown jewel for ONE's lineup. Which is when he promptly got wrestled into paste by UFC cast-off Jarred Brooks. Rather than having him defend the title, ONE booked Brooks into grappling matches, and in the meantime Pacio fought and defeated undefeated prospect Mansur Malachiev to earn himself a rematch. Multiple delays ensued, but on March 1, the Brooks/Pacio rematch finally came. Fifty-six seconds in, Pacio attempted a standing kimura on Brooks, who hoisted him off the ground, suplexed him, and knocked him out. Unfortunately, this was a problem. Under ONE's ruleset, slams that land headfirst are illegal. ONE has been regularly criticized for this--less for the rule itself as for ONE's tendency to selectively enforce the rule, using it to benefit fighters they would like to succeed. ONE, of course, denies this vehemently. However you draw your own conclusions, at the end of the day Jarred Brooks was disqualified, and thus, by DQ, Joshua Pacio is now a three-time Strawweight champion. Congratulations. 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. Half a year later, her next fight was finally announced, and it is, of course, defending her title against ONE postergirl Stamp Fairtex as the company attempts, once again, to make a double champ at Xiong Jing Nan's expense. Why are we even pretending anymore. 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. Her first defense will come against Denise Zamboanga on June 7, and--win or lose, apparently--she is also booked to fight Xiong Jing Nan in a (maybe?) champ-champ affair in September. Christ alive.  Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs  Roberto de Souza - 16-3, 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. He fought Keita Nakamura at Rizin Landmark 9 on March 23 and put in one of the best performances of his career, battering K-Taro to a TKO in just 1:43--but because this is Japanese MMA it was, of course, a non-title fight, so it doesn't count as a title defense. 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. He’ll make his first title defense against Masanori Kanehara on May 6. 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 - 13-0, 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? And what IS real competition at Atomweight? She choked out Si Yoon Park at DEEP JEWELS 44 to add yet another win and belt to her credit, but the Rizin title wasn't on the line, so she's still only got the one defense.
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THE BELLATOR CHAMPIONSHIP GRAVEYARD Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs  Ryan Bader - 31-8 (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. He also, unfortunately, got his poo poo completely wrecked by Renan Ferreira in thirty seconds, making him the one and only Bellator fighter to lose at PFL vs Bellator. Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs  Corey Anderson - 18-6 (1), 0 DefensesCorey Anderson has been passed over by the sport so many times, but now, finally, his day has come. His success as a college wrestler led him to Ben Askren, and Ben Askren actually tricked him into trying mixed martial arts, and getting outsmarted by Ben Askren might still be the worst loss of his career. Anderson burst into the UFC as the champion of The Ultimate Fighter 19 back in 2014, and as a big, strong, undefeated 5-0 wrestler, he looked like a genuine championship threat. He was, of course, immediately knocked out by Gian Villante, and if you do not know or remnember who that is: That's the point. This sort of derailing became the story of Anderson's career, and by 2017 he had been knocked out twice in a row and was considering retirement. Instead, he launched into a fantastic, four-fight winning streak that included effortlessly destroying the UFC's big hype project Johnny Walker, giving Anderson a #5 ranking and a title eliminator against Jan Błachowicz, whom he'd beaten back in 2015. Unfortunately, this time Jan knocked him out--and despite being 4 for his last 5 and unequivocally one of the best 205-pound fighters in the world, the UFC released him because they didn't want to market a wrestler. Anderson went to Bellator, joined the 2021 Light Heavyweight Grand Prix, knocked out Ryan Bader in less than a minute and made it to the tournament final against reignning, Bellator-undefeated champion Vadim Nemkov--and he almost won. But at 4:55 of the third round, an inadvertent headbutt busted Nemkov's eye, and a doctor ruled him unable to continue. If the fight had lasted five more seconds it would have gone to a technical decision, and Anderson would have won the $1 million tournament purse and his first world championship. Instead, he got nothing, and Nemkov beat him in a rematch seven months later. It took a year and a half and Nemkov's own move up to Heavyweight for Anderson to get another chance, but at the first-ever PFL-owned Bellator Champions Series event on March 22, 2024, Corey Anderson wrestled Karl Moore for five excruciating rounds and won that god damned belt. His future as a titleholder will depend on PFL's commitment to the Bellator brand. Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs  Johnny Eblen - 15-0, 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. Eblen had a scare against Impa Kasanganay but ultimately won his PFL vs Bellator bout. Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs   Jason Jackson - 18-4, 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. He defended Bellator's honor by kicking Ray Cooper III's leg in half at PFL vs Bellator, and he'll make the first defense of his title against Ramazan Kurmagomedov on June 22. 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. And then the company got bought, so it was all forgotten anyway. He'll now face Alexander Shabliy on May 17. Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Patrício Pitbull - 36-7, 2 DefensesPatrício Pitbull had a weird goddamn 2023. 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 it's one who had 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, because MMA is silly. Pitbull did, however, become the first Bellator champion to canonically defend a title under their new PFL ownership: He fought Jeremy Kennedy at Bellator Champions Series 1 on March 22 and mauled him in three rounds. 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. He'll defend his title against Magomed Magomedov on May 17. Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs  Cris Cyborg - 27-2 (1), 5 DefensesYup. It's 2024 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. Cyborg has been open and public about her lack of communication with PFL, and despite being one of Bellator's biggest names, those fences do not appear to be mending. 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. Her status as champion is questionable, though--of all Bellator's titleholders, Liz is the only one taking part in this year's PFL season. She'll kick it off by rematching Juliana at PFL 1 on April 4. What that means for her title reign, I have no idea.
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 97: BEFORE THE STORM SATURDAY, APRIL 6 FROM THE EMOTIONLESS PIT OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 12 PM PDT / 3 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 3 PM / 6 PM We're pretty close to the end of the road, here. UFC 300 is next week, the UFC has put together about as good a card as it is currently capable for the occasion, and we've gone several months without missing a weekend, and that means we're at the 'people who haven't won a fight in four years are on the main card' level of booking on this latest trip to the wonderful Apex. Will it be fun? Honestly, yeah. There are some solid on-paper scraps to be had. Will you recognize most of the people on it? Almost certainly not. But that's okay. Everyone's just sort of holding their breath for 300 anyway. Enjoy the hors d'oeuvres.  you can tell i had to hurriedly add a section this morning because this screenshot is in day mode MAIN EVENT: LOWERED EXPECTATIONS MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brendan Allen (23-5, #6) vs Chris Curtis (31-10 (1), #14) Climbing the ranks just ain't like it used to be, man. Let's get the big point out of the way first: This was supposed to be a different fight. This was, initially, Brendan Allen vs Marvin Vettori. At this point Vettori is more or less the division's retroactive championship gatekeeper: Too good to fall out of the top five, perpetually turned away by champions and top contenders. The UFC really wanted the fight as a way to potentially legitimize Brendan Allen as a top contender. Which feels like an awfully weird sentence. Brendan Allen's on a six-fight winning streak, the second-longest in the division* behind current champion Dricus du Plessis, and he's finished his last four opponents in particularly impressive fashion. Why on Earth would a guy like that not be pretty thoroughly legitimate already? *You could count Khamzat Chimaev, but you really shouldn't. Well, here's the thing about that winning streak.
Is it about the numbers? Outside of the absolute sickos like me with structural fetishes, no. It's about the way the numbers reflect the actual investment the UFC has made in its fighters. Brendan Allen isn't #6 because he won his way to it, he's #6 because the UFC started investing in him and, in turn, asking the fans to invest themselves in him. But because the UFC handles their matchmaking with all the restraint of a child facing down Christmas presents, and because the Middleweight division is in its hot potato phase, Allen's one fight away from title contention but has yet to fight anyone the fans really care about. André Muniz was a fantastic win, but peripheral to the top ten. Bruno Silva was a warm body. Paul Craig had some popularity, but he was also one fight deep into the Middleweight division after getting wrecked at 205. Marvin Vettori was their credibility man. But Vettori can't make it. So instead, we have unfinished business. Chris Curtis is the last man to beat Brendan Allen. This is the UFC's primary justification for the replacement. (You could also say that Sean Strickland is pitching a fit about not getting his title rematch, Israel Adesanya's the next contender, Robert Whittaker just beat Paulo Costa and Jared Cannonier is on the mend, but that's less fun.) When they fought on the Rob Font vs José Aldo card back in 2021 Allen took the first round with kicks and some brief success in the clinch but Curtis punched Allen out midway through the second. It is, easily, the best win of his career. But that didn't seem like the path Chris Curtis was on. Midway through 2022, Chris Curtis seemed all to hell like the next big Middleweight contender, much moreso than Allen. He punched out Phil Hawes, he punched out Brendan Allen, he made Rodolfo Vieira look silly, he'd gone eight fights without a loss and his capacity for violence seemed incredibly, thoroughly promising. I was real, real high on his chances and I was looking forward to what he could bring to the top ten. He never quite got there. He fought Jack Hermansson as a fill-in replacement less than a month after the Vieira fight, he lost, and things never righted themselves. He beat Joaquin Buckley, but only after getting battered for a round. He fought Kelvin Gastelum in a bout that controversially included Gastelum getting away with a big ol' unintentional headbutt, but he was losing the fight regardless. He was a round and a half into getting outworked by Nassourdine Imavov when another unintentional headbutt ended the affair on a No Contest, causing Curtis no small amount of consternation. On the plus side: When we last saw Curtis in January, he won! On the minus: It was against the 5-6 (1) Marc-André Barriault, and it was an extremely close split decision. To once again be succinct: Chris Curtis has two wins in his last five fights, one of them was a contentious decision against a journeyman and the other a victory over a man who immediately dropped to Welterweight. For how definitive their first fight was, these men have taken entirely different paths since. However unlucky it is for Allen to lose his shot at the top five is precisely as inversely lucky it is for Curtis to go from fighting fringe top fifteen fighters to a shot at the top of the ranks by way of a man he already knocked out once. And it is, frankly, an interesting fight. There's an argument to be made that the fortunes both men have received are thanks as much to their skills as their respective opponents. Brendan Allen, whose greatest strength is his grappling, has been largely fighting opponents who are either submission-prone or submission-oriented, either of which is a natural fit for his gameplan; Chris Curtis, as a brawl-friendly counterpuncher, has been dealing with a procession of cleaner, more well-rounded fighters capable of outworking him. Curtis has been exceedingly tough to take down and, more importantly, keep down. It was Allen's inability to ground him in their first fight that forced him to exchange, and it's those exchanges that ultimately doomed him. Has he improved enough since to either get Curtis off his feet or keep him too uncomfortable standing to really land? Middleweight could desperately use a submission-oriented contender: Is Allen the guy? I'm not sure if I'm really judging this fight for the realities of the fight or simply rooting for chaos, but: CHRIS CURTIS BY TKO. This still reads like a bad style clash for Allen: I don't see him getting Curtis down any more than he did the first time around, and I haven't seen much improvement in his standup since, mostly because he really hasn't needed to use it. The last time Brendan Allen had to engage in a lengthy standup battle he went 50/50 with Muniz; going 50/50 with Chris Curtis gets you hurt. CO-MAIN EVENT: UFC 300 IS NEXT WEEK, IT'S FINE FEATHERWEIGHT: Alexander Hernandez (14-7) vs Damon Jackson (22-6-1 (1)) Two fights from the top of the prelims there's a ranked bout between Norma Dumont, who was on deck to fight for the Women's Featherweight Championship before they killed it, and Germaine de Randamie, a former world champion with victories over three other UFC champions, and our co-main event tonight is a battle to see which man who recently lost to Billy Quarantillo is the least bad. I like both of these men. I do! At one point in time I thought both of them had genuine contendership prospects. But Alexander Hernandez got hosed all the way up by Donald Cerrone and Damon Jackson was firmly rejected from the top fifteen by Dan Ige. Now we're closing in on mid-2024, Jackson is on the first official losing streak of his career and Hernandez is 2 for his last 5, 4 for his last 10, and hasn't managed back-to-back wins since 2018. But this is our co-main event, because that, my friend, is the power of the UFC Apex. God bless this hole. Alexander Hernandez was supposed to be a thing, man. He was this big, powerful Lightweight wrecking machine who barnstormed Beneil Dariush and outworked Olivier Aubin-Mercier in his first two UFC fights, both of which have aged astonishingly well, and no one knew at the time that he'd already hit his peak in the company. It's entirely too easy and entirely too unfair to play armchair analyst as to what went wrong--losing to Cerrone hurt his confidence in his power and pressure, swimming in deeper competitive waters made him drown, when he reached his late twenties the FOXDIE virus accelerated his aging--but, objectively, he never quite recovered. His 2022 drop to Featherweight was an attempt at rejuvenating his contendership chances, but he's 0-2 at the weight class thus far, so, uh, it's not going great. Damon "The Leech" Jackson had the inverse experience. His first UFC run all the way back in 2014 was catastrophic: He went 0-1-1 (1) and got fired in just seventeen months. He got picked up again on a short-notice replacement contract in 2020 and--aside from getting knocked out by some recently-debuted guy named Ilia Topuria, whoever the gently caress that is--he established himself as a bit of a spoiler. In just two years he went 5-1, including rather dramatic derailings of well-regarded prospects like Kamuela Kirk and Dan Argueta, and his one-minute pounding of Pat Sabatini gave Jackson the chance to finally see if he was a top fifteen Featherweight. The answer, unfortunately, was an extremely clear No. Dan Ige knocked him cold in two rounds, and seven months later Billy Quarantillo took a decision away from him, and now, after all his work, Jackson is back to square one. It's hard not to read this as a battle of who you believe in less, at this point. When he's on, focused and confidence, Alexander Hernandez is still scary as hell. His punching power is significant. But he gets hit more often than he lands, and his backup plan is clinching and grinding on the cage, and Damon Jackson's opportunism in the clinch is where he does his best work. DAMON JACKSON BY DECISION. MAIN CARD: 75% OF THESE FIGHTERS DO NOT HAVE WIKIPEDIA PAGES FEATHERWEIGHT: Morgan Charriere (19-9-1) vs Chepe Mariscal (15-6 (1)) Morgan Charriere has had a considerable change in schedule. "The Last Pirate" made his UFC debut last September as part of the public works program for French fighters surrounding their big corporate return to Paris, and he made the most out of it, showcasing his striking-centric gameplan by thoroughly thrashing the unbelievably Italian Manolo "Angelo Veneziano" Zecchini. It wasn't even remotely close--Charriere made Zecchini whiff on almost 80% of his strikes and put him down with an exceedingly painful kick to the body in just one round. It may, in fact, have been too good, because the UFC matched him up with Seung Woo Choi, who is not only an exceedingly tough prospect in his own right but a good 4" taller and much bigger. When Choi pulled out, there was likely some level of relief at the likelihood that a fill-in opponent would be a little easier. But it's not, because they gave him Chepe goddamn Mariscal. Mariscal has upset the UFC's apple cart twice, at this point. Last June he was pulled up from the regionals on real short notice to face the UFC's newly-minted brawling machine Trevor Peek, and Mariscal pulled the upset, outwrestling, outworking and even straight-up outbrawling him to take the decision. Two and a half months later he was in Australia as a +200 underdog against rising star Jack Jenkins, and after a tough first round Mariscal threw Jenkins so fast and hard that Jenkins snapped his arm trying to break his own fall. Suddenly the last-minute replacement guy is on a two-fight winning streak thanks primarily to a wonderful mixture of a well-rounded gameplan and an absurd level of grit, and if you have ever read any of these before, you know that makes him one of my instantaneous favorites. He is, however, the betting underdog again, and I get why. Chepe's hittable, his defense tends to be More offense, and that style's gotten him knocked out repeatedly on the regionals. The success Jenkins was having picking away at Chepe in the first round combined with Charriere's striking clinic against Zecchini makes it easy to see Chepe taking a fall. But I believe in the power of grit more than I believe in the power of kickboxing. CHEPE MARISCAL BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Ignacio Bahamondes (14-5) vs Christos Giagos (20-11) It's time for round three of the Ignacio Bahamondes arc. Ignacio got a lot of hype coming off his 2020 Contender Series win, but that hype pretty quickly dissipated when he made his UFC debut five months later, missed weight, and got comprehensively outfought by John Makdessi, despite Bahamondes being 12 years younger and 7" taller. Unlike far too many of his peers, Bahamondes went back to the drawing board and learned from his mistakes. His wrestling improved, his distance control improved, and his control over his own offense improved dramatically, and that led him down a three-fight winning streak that had people all bubbling about his prospects again. Up until last summer, when Ľudovít Klein shut him out. Back to start, yet again. Christos Giagos has had a tougher run of things. Once upon a time his 6-7 record in the UFC could be chalked up to his aborted run back in 2014, but in the last three years Giagos has gone 1-3, and boy, it's been rough to watch. Half of this is because of an absurd strength of schedule. Those three losses came against Arman Tsarukyan, who is right on the precipice of title contendership, Thiago Moisés, who reminded everyone just a few weeks ago that he's a factor in the division, and Daniel Zellhuber, one of the most promising prospects the Contender Series has fielded in years. Not only did he lose to all three, but all three finished him, which is a bad, bad look. He would have been in pink slip territory already were it not for his 2023 knockout over Ricky Glenn inbetween the losses. But Bahamondes is around a -350 favorite, and it's not hard to see why. Giagos has been getting hit more, hurt more and submitted more, and Bahamondes has been proving himself more than capable of all of those things--and he's also still almost half a foot taller, meaning Giagos will have a much, much tougher time pressuring and bullying him in the clinch to get out of trouble. IGNACIO BAHAMONDES BY SUBMISSION. HEAVYWEIGHT: Łukasz Brzeski (8-4-1 (1)) vs Valter Walker (11-0) Every week I have something unkind to say about the Heavyweight division, and baby, I'll stop doing it when they stop giving me so many goddamn reasons. Łukasz "The Bull" Brzeski has been one of the UFC's bigger Contender Series busts, to the point that the win that got him his contract did not, legally, happen, thanks to his pissing hot for clomiphene. But hey: He's a Heavyweight, sign him anyway. And then he managed to lose a split decision to Martin Buday--which he probably should've won, but it's much funnier this way. And then he got outwrestled by Karl Williams in a fight where he gassed to total exhaustion about seven minutes into the fight. And then he got knocked out by Salsa Boy. It's 2024, Łukasz Brzeski is 0-3 (1) during his time with the company, and they are, officially, tired of him. Which is why he's welcoming Valter Walker to the fold. "The Clean Monster" is another of those living testaments to the big boys of the sport. He's undefeated! He's got tons of finishes! He's a regional champion! And the majority of his victories came from guys who, respectfully, aren't that great. His championship victory came against Alex "The Spartan" Nicholson, who is an accomplished Heavyweight, a two-time PFL season competitor, and best known for washing out of the UFC as a Middleweight. But Valter Walker is not only an undefeated crusher of regional Heavyweights, he is the younger brother of everyone's favorite self-injuring knockout machine, Johnny Walker. He is, in fact, ever so slightly smaller than Johnny, but Johnny called Light Heavyweight when they were kids, so what can you do. It's the Nogueira Brothers for a new generation. VALTER WALKER BY TKO.  LIGHTWEIGHT: Trevor Peek (9-1 (1)) vs Charlie Campbell (8-2)This is going to be really, really stupid, and I mean that as the highest form of flattery. One of the best parts of having been a mixed martial arts fan for so long has been charting the evolution of the sport and its level of technique. Trevor Peek is an aberration in this pattern. Trevor Peek slipped into an arctic crevasse during a Spike TV marathon of Stripperella in 2004 and was reconstituted from a block of ice made out of pure Axe Body Spray. Trevor Peek sprung fully-formed from the forehead of Eric "Butterbean" Esch as the rightful champion of the intergalactic toughman league that never was. Trevor Peek learned to throw punches by watching remorseful fishermen throw marlins back into the sea in a desperate attempt to save their families from the wrath of Poseidon. Trevor Peek exists out of step with time and space, and he is working his way back into it one wide, sweeping bolo strike at a time. Charlie Campbell is close, though. He showed up on the Contender Series in 2022 as a hopeful prospect out of the Ray Longo/Chris Weidman anti-eyeball camp, but his plan of throwing all caution to the wind and furiously windmilling his way towards victory ultimately got him knocked out by Chris Duncan. But don't worry, kid: Dana White appreciates your moxie, and he's gonna keep you on the shortlist of people to call up for short-notice last-minute replacement contracts for minimum wage. Hey, look at that! It's a year later and you're in the UFC. Campbell welcomed Alex Reyes back after six loving years away from the sport, and Reyes learned the hard way that fighting at 30 is a lot easier than fighting at 36, particularly when you've been out of pratice the whole goddamn time. Campbell polished him off three and a half minutes and it was not at any point competitive. This is a real, real good fight for Campbell. Peek's going to engage him in exactly the manner Campbell wants to be engaged, Campbell's got a healthy size advantage that should allow him to kite Peek around the cage at will, and a few good counters is all it takes for Charlie Campbell to end any man's night. This should be open and shut, and it shouldn't take long. So, of course, I'm ignoring all of that. TREVOR PEEK BY TKO. I respect and honor the old ways. PRELIMS: MATCHES YOU'D THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED ALREADY WELTERWEIGHT: Court McGee (21-12) vs Alex Morono (23-9) Court McGee has been an institution of the sport for so long, and watching his career seemingly come to an end just has a sense of melancholy to it. McGee's got 14+ years with the UFC, he's just one loss out from a 50/50 record, he's shared the cage with three separate world champions and he even beat one of them. His tough, scrappy, energizer-bunny strategy towards fighting has carried him through drat near two dozen fights on the biggest stage in mixed martial arts. But talent improves, chins crack, and the problem with being known for your toughness is the damage you accumulate eventually catches up with you. Between his debut in 2007 and the dawn of 2022 Court McGee was stopped only once, and it took one of the sport's biggest punchers in Santiago Ponznibbio to do it, and even then McGee wasn't out, just unable to defend himself. Court McGee has fought once every eleven months since then, and that's because in his last two outings he's gotten loving flattened in a single round. The good news is Alex Morono isn't really much of a power puncher; the bad news is he's far enough above McGee's present league that it makes this matchup downright baffling. Morono's an ultra-solid wrestleboxer who's been drat near ranked at Welterweight twice. Where McGee has struggled to scrape together wins to the tune of going 3-7 since 2016, Morono has been a divisional gatekeeper for drat near that entire time. His only losses in almost four years came from Joaquin Buckley, the newly-minted #11 in the world, and a knockout loss to the same Santiago Ponzinibbio who put McGee down--except Morono had beaten him for two and a half rounds before finally falling short. And Buckley couldn't even stop him! Morono may have fallen off the precipice into the chasm of gatekeepers, but he's still a hell of a gatekeeper. In short: ALEX MORONO BY TKO. In some respects McGee's a tough style matchup for Morono, as he's just as much of a hard-nosed pressure machine, but I just don't think he's got enough left in the tank. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Norma Dumont (10-2, #11) vs Germaine de Randamie (10-4, NR) CarlCX posted:Of all my tired catchphrase schticks--from The Ultimate Fighter (jesus christ) to dramatically overabusing 'Unfortunately,' and ', of course,' to my perpetually incorrect fight picks--none of them are as tired as my constant complaints about the bad booking of the women's divisions, because it's actually, genuinely infuriating. I wrote that a week ago. I wrote that a week ago. I know I spoiled that I was going to complain about this already, but come the gently caress on, man. In another reality, this was a championship bout. Norma Dumont was the next title contender at Women's Featherweight, she's 6-2 and she's been successful enough that the UFC ranked her at a weight class she's never made under their banner. Germaine de Randamie was the first-ever UFC Women's Featherweight champion, she was hilariously stripped of the belt for refusing to fight Cyborg Santos at the weight class made specifically for her, and she's making a career comeback after taking three and a half years off to deal with injuries and have a baby. Norma only has two losses in her entire career; Germaine has victories over three separate Women's Bantamweight champions and, just for good measure, PFL's champion at both Lightweight and Featherweight, Larissa Pacheco. Both of these women are fantastic, top-class, best-in-the world fighters at a weight class that no longer exists. Which is even more baffling, because Holly Holm, herself a former Featherweight title contender, and Kayla Harrison, who's spent almost her whole career at 155 pounds, are fighting next week. Both of these things could have easily been used to reignite Women's Featherweight! The UFC, which is currently so precious with its championships as to promote a brand new fake BMF title fight twice a year, could have put a belt on either Kayla Harrison, their first big women's signing in a decade, Holly Holm, whom they are inexplicably obsessed with putting into title matches, Germaine de Randamie, one of the only other women they have that anyone might have heard of, or Norma Dumont, who is, at the very least, extremely credible. Instead everyone's getting shoved into Women's Bantamweight and a fight like this is down on the prelims of a card with an Alexander Hernandez co-main event. poo poo sucks, man. GERMAINE DE RANDAMIE BY DECISION, but that obviously depends highly on how three years on the shelf and having a goddamn child treated her. BANTAMWEIGHT: Victor Hugo (24-4) vs Pedro Falcão (16-3)Victor Hugo is making it into the UFC with all the grace of an angry horse trying to land a Sopwith Camel. When he tore up a man's knee on the Contender Series he seemed all to hell like one of the better prospects the show has managed to field: Well-rounded to the point that his KO/Submission/Decision ratio is a near-even distribution, undefeated since 2014, and while some of his fights are unfortunate regionals, he's proven himself against some real, legitimate competition. Which is why it was deeply unfortunate when he blew weight for his UFC debut in November and got the fight cancelled. To some extent I blame the UFC for this--his Contender Series fight was almost exactly one month beforehand, and asking a fighter to fight, win, go home, recover, cut weight and fight again in four weeks is tough--but he signed the contract and suffered the consequences. His rebooking here was supposed to see him fight Alatengheili, but he got scratched during fight week, and on Wednesday morning, on 72 hours' notice, Pedro Falcão stepped up. "Pedrinho" had racked up a wholly respectable if unspectacular record as a beater of journeymen out in Shooto Brasil when the UFC tapped him for the Contender Series in 2021, but despite pounding out James Barnes and earning his obligatory violent stoppage, Dana White was not pleased, and signed every person that night except Pedro. Pedro more or less threw up his hands and left the sport for two years, but a regional win got him back on the radar last November and the insatiable need for fill-in fighters got him here. Congratulations on making it, Pedro. This is, in theory, actually a very good fight. Both men are genuine prospects and both are good just about everywhere, and I'm tempted to pick Pedro for the big upset here, given how solid his grappling is and how much of Hugo's best work comes from aggressively hunting submissions. But a three-day turnaround is a big, big ask in a situation like this. VICTOR HUGO BY SUBMISSION. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cynthia Calvillo (9-6-1) vs Piera Rodriguez (9-1) I have been a Cynthia Calvillo fan for a very long time, and if I'm being really, truly honest, I'm kind of astonished she's still here. Cynthia was a real successful fighter at Women's Strawweight, but difficulties with the weight cut led her to bump up to 125 pounds, and, boy, it really did not work out for her. Even after dropping back down Cynthia's on a five-fight losing streak, which might actually be a company record for the women's divisions, and her last two losses may have been split decisions, but boy, they really shouldn't have been. After three loses I figured losing to Nina Nunes would get her cut, and after four losses I thought losing to Loopy Godinez would get her cut, and after five losses, I realize she is here specifically to lose to people the UFC likes. Piera "La Fiera" Rodriguez was a 2021 Contender Series baby and they dutifully booked her into real advantageous matchups right up until, after two wins, Gillian Robertson pretty easily outgrappled her and scored an armbar and a verbal submission. Rodriguez still says she didn't tap, but for one, her defense seemed a bit dubious, and for two, she was getting completely mauled on the ground anyhow. Calvillo's still not an easy out! She's still tough, and while those last couple of fights shouldn't have been splits, she did stay competitive for three full rounds in both. I'm still going with PIERA RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION, but counting Calvillo out entirely is a mistake, even at five straight losses. BANTAMWEIGHT: Jean Matsumoto (14-0) vs Dan Argueta (9-1 (2))Sometimes it's not even remotely subtle, and honestly, I've come to appreciate it. Jean Matsumoto is one of the most promising prospects to come through the Contender Series in awhile. I know this is ordinarily where I say withering things about bad competition and stand-and-bang fighting styles and every other thing I have become aggressively tired of complaining about, and I have the week off, because by god, this is the rare instance of the Contender Series actually succeeding at its goal. Matsumoto is one of the best Bantamweights out of Brazil and a genuinely fantastic prospect. He's got an extremely well-rounded gameplan that alternates between chopping leg kicks and quick, powerful takedowns, he manages to move both his head and his guard, and he's not just undefeated, but undefeated against some actual competition. It's a miracle! The sacrificial fight is not. Dan Argueta ain't no fortunate one. Despite being an LFA champion Argueta was not a talent-scouted fighter, he was a late-replacement fighter. The UFC booked him on short notice to keep Damon Jackson on a card, Argueta dutifully lost, Argueta got his revenge against his own short-notice replacement five months later, and since then it has been nothing but legal chaos. Last June saw Argueta fight Ronnie Lawrence and submit him with a guillotine in just two and a half minutes--except Lawrence was actually completely conscious and the referee hosed up, so it was a No Contest. Three months later Argueta got pretty handily outfight by Miles Johns, but Johns failed a a drug test, so that, too, became a No Contest. Dan Argueta is four fights deep into his UFC tenure and half of them didn't technically happen. It's a complication the company does not want to deal with. Dan Argueta is a wholly capable fighter and he is here to put over the new guy, and, in all likelihood, he will. JEAN MATSUMOTO BY DECISION. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Dylan Budka (7-2) vs César Almeida (4-0) I sure am glad I said all those nice things about the Contender Series, because man, gently caress the Contender Series. Dylan Budka--"The Mindless Hulk," which, admittedly, is at least a level of directness I appreciate--is a regional guy who vacillates between winging rear-lead uppercuts and clinching for dear life. He has lots of word tattoos, he was fighting a 2-5 guy just two weeks before his Contender Series appearance, and when I did tape research on him the first strike I saw him land was a punch to the dick. César Almeida has four fights. To be clear: He's an accomplished kickboxer in his native Brazil. He won a bunch of kickboxing fights. But in MMA he's 4-0, two of his opponents were 0-0, and his last fight prior to the Contender Series was against professional jobber Danilo "Guerreiro" Silva, who is 6-33-1, with just a whole bunch of suspicious first-round losses on his record, often within days of each other. But by god, we need our strikers. Can't get enough of those strikers. I am resorting to the hope of the mindless. Save me, Budka. Save us all. DYLAN BUDKA BY SUBMISSION. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Melissa Mullins (6-0, #15) vs Nora Cornolle (7-1, NR) Are we at the point where talking about the tire fire that is Women's 135 is passe? Melissa Mullins (née Dixon) is a talented British grappler who's 1-0 in the UFC, and that one victory was over Irina "Russian Ronda" Alekseeva, who was herself 1-0 in the UFC after beating the extremely unranked Stephanie Egger in a fight where Irina missed weight by five pounds. For beating a 1-0 woman who didn't even make the Bantamweight division, Melissa Mullins is now the #15 Women's Bantamweight in the world. Nora Cornolle is a French striker who made her own debut in Paris last September, and she, by contrast, beat the 4-2 Joselyne Edwards. Edwards had also missed weight in her last two attempts at making 135, but she was, to her credit, on a three-fight winning streak, and Cornolle won what could, arguably, be called a hometown decision, but for one the media scorecards were pretty evenly split between either competitor, and for two, Edwards had just been the beneficiary of one of the biggest robberies of the year in her last fight, so no one was sympathetic. And this is our ranked fight. This is the hole they're trying to dig Women's Bantamweight out of. It's going to take years to repair the damage left by their complete mismanagement of the roster and their inability to promote a single goddamn person, let alone fill in the structure beneath them. MELISSA MULLINS BY SUBMISSION.
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Apr 3, 2024 22:27
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Lobmob you ain't never gotta apologize for art. I am actually kind of excited for the PFLator season and I cannot wait for Liz Carmouche to destroy everyone and reign supreme.
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Apr 4, 2024 09:18
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That video is one of the holy grails of lost forum content. I don't think it's been online for years, so at this point we need someone who does with youtube what people did with VCRs and TV shows in the mid-90s if we want to see it again. Also, Cynthia Calvillo missed weight by two pounds, Melissa Mullins and Nora Cornolle both missed weight by 3 and 3.5 pounds, and Alexander Hernandez came in for a Featherweight fight at 150.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:41
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At risk of being a cynic, being as this is all being done in-house now and thus the UFC does not have to worry about maintaining a healthy relationship with another organization and its employees and Jon Jones only THREATENED to drunkenly murder a piss collector, I would be stunned if the UFC mentions it let alone punishes him even remotely.
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Apr 6, 2024 11:05
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4058043 GDT for Allen/Curtis 2. Fights start in 30, I for once am gonna miss the prelims, someone root for Jean Matsumoto for me.
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Apr 6, 2024 19:37
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 98: MARKING AN AGE SATURDAY, APRIL 13 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM Well, we made it. Over the past few months there have been endless arrays of podcasts and thinkpieces regarding UFC 300's card. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it stacked? Is it a disappointment? The answer to all of these, of course, is Yes, but they're all surrounding a problem they're failing to define: This card is legitimately incredible--by the current standards of the UFC. This is easily the best card the UFC has promoted in years. It's just the greater context of its legacy that makes it impossible to miss how those standards have fallen. In 2009, UFC 100 was a statement card. The sport's big mainstream breakout was still just four years old, giant swaths of sports media had been actively antagonistic towards it to the point of laughing at its fad status and rooting for its inevitable drop into the ashcan of history alongside SlamBall and the XFL, and making the centennial event a blowout was a middle finger to the rest of the world. Jon Jones, who the world was already pretty sure was going to be a huge loving deal, was on the card. Mark Coleman, the first-ever Heavyweight champion, was on the card facing Stephan Bonnar, one half of the Ultimate Fighter finale that got the UFC where it was. Dan Henderson was there. Michael Bisping was there. Georges St-Pierre, who by that point was already ensconced as the greatest Welterweight of all time, was there. Brock Lesnar, the biggest American Heavyweight combat sports star since Mike Tyson, fought Frank Mir in the biggest Heavyweight Championship match the UFC had ever promoted. Hell, it probably still is. 1.6 million people bought the pay-per-view. It was an enormous event. In 2016, the UFC was an accepted fixture of mainstream sports and UFC 200 was intended to be a showcase for their biggest, best stars--and instead, it became a testament to how the focus on those stars had screwed up their booking. The main event wasn't a championship fight, it was the rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, which was, indeed, the biggest fight the UFC could have possibly promoted. But it fell through, because Conor and the UFC couldn't come to terms. So it became the rematch between Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones, their second-biggest fight. But it fell through, because Jon Jones was on steroids. Ultimately the UFC salvaged it by throwing as many of their biggest names as they could at it. Cain Velasquez was back! José Aldo was back from his loss to Conor! Daniel Cormier was still here, and now he was fighting Anderson Silva on about 48 hours' notice, which was hilarous. Brock Lesnar was back after four years in the WWE, and he beat knockout king Mark Hunt! Except the fight was also ultimately ruled a No Contest for steroids and Brock retired again anyway. The main event was supposed to be top female star Miesha Tate running a victory lap, and instead she got choked out by a lesser-known contender named Amanda Nunes. It was a very good card, and 1 million people bought it--but it wasn't quite historic. In 2024, the UFC is owned by an international media conglomerate and broadcast weekly on ESPN, often out of a warehouse, and UFC 300 is once again supposed to be a showcase for the biggest, best stars they can supply, and that's the problem: It is. Years of self-cannibalization and defiance of weight classes and rampant pull-the-trigger attempts at placing marketing over talent have left them nearly devoid of big attractions, and the few that remain are booked elsewhere. Their newly-hyped super-prospects have fallen short and all they have left in the chamber are Bo Nickal and Kayla Harrison. Even the legacy of mixed martial arts itself is no longer there to lift the card, with the Marks Coleman and Hunt long retired; its only connection to the past is Jim Miller, who is here to become the only person to have fought on 100, 200 and 300 alike, because the only history the UFC still cares about is the kind it made after Forrest Griffin walked the Earth. Jiří Procházka vs Aleksandar Rakić is a good fight. Charles Oliveira vs Arman Tsarukyan is a good fight. Justin Gaethje vs Max Holloway is a good fight. Zhang Weili vs Yan Xiaonan is a good fight. Alex Pereira vs Jamahal Hill is a good fight. But they are, in the end, just Good Fights. Nothing here speaks to history. This event's poster doesn't have a single face on it, just a number and a brand, and we'll probably never know how many people bought it. Each of these cards represented the best the UFC could do at the time. UFC 100 was the best of a well-tended sport that was voraciously growing. UFC 200 was a successful plan B after the stars they'd invested everything in fell through. UFC 300 was months of "it's gonna be the biggest fights ever" marketing followed by extremely normal matches announced with less than two months to promote them. And the way the UFC currently operates, that's the best they can do. But, hey: The fights? They're good.  it's a real good card. MAIN EVENT: OF HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alex Pereira (9-2, Champion) vs Jamahal Hill (12-1 (1), #1)This fight may, in fact, be the perfect fight for defining this era in the UFC. Let's get this out of the way up front: Alex Pereira is not a bad fighter. Much as I mock Sean Strickland, you do not immolate him in a single round without being pretty good at what you're doing. You do not trade wins with Israel Adesanya or knock out Jiří Procházka if you don't belong in the cage. Alex Pereira is a skilled fighter with, unquestionably, some of the best striking in the sport. Jamahal Hill, similarly, is not a bad fighter. However hilarious it is to be undefeated except that one time you got your whole poo poo broke by Paul Craig, for one, Paul Craig does that to a lot of people, and for two, beating the hell out of Glover Teixeira is a thing accomplished only by people like Jon Jones, Anthony Johnson and Alexander Gustafsson, and that's great company to be in. Neither fighter is a joke. This fight is not a joke. But the path that got us here, well: That's much tougher not to laugh at. It's easy to forget, but Brock Lesnar joining the UFC was scandalous. The company had spent years establishing itself as the serious business organization with the best, most skilled, most experienced mixed martial artists in the world, and suddenly they were gleefully promoting the debut of a professional wrestler who had just one mixed martial arts fight, and it was against the 2-6 guy who earned half his career victories by beating WCW Power Plant graduate Sean O'Haire. And he was fighting a former world champion immediately, and he would go on to fight for said title just one win later. It was preposterous--but he was a massive crossover star with a successful martial background, so it flew. He didn't have credibility as a mixed martial artist, but no one cared, because he had a hook. Alex Pereira's hook was being The Guy Who Beat Israel Adesanya. He was a prolific and successful kickboxer, but without Adesanya on his record that wouldn't have meant much of anything. It definitely wouldn't have gotten him into the UFC as a 3-1 rookie. And it definitely wouldn't have made him a double champion after just seven fights. But it's not just the length--it's the mileage. When Randy Couture became a double champion he'd fought nine men who were considered to be at the pinnacle of the sport. B.J. Penn had fought multiple Lightweight and Welterweight world champions. Amanda Nunes had defeated five of the best women's fighters of all goddamn time. Even Conor McGregor's rightfully-maligned double-champion reign went through Max Holloway, Dustin Poirier, Chad Mendes, Eddie Alvarez, and José loving Aldo. They fought the best their divisions had to offer and earned their status. Alex Pereira is a good fighter. I would say he's even a very good fighter. He also went from completely unranked to fighting the #4 guy in the division to fighting for the title. He didn't fight André Muniz, or Nassourdine Imavov, or Kelvin Gastelum, or Jack Hermansson, or Derek Brunson, or Robert Whittaker. He beat Bruno Silva, then he beat Sean Strickland, and then it was time for the belt. And when he lost that belt? It was onward and upward to 205, where he had one ultra-close fight with Jan Błachowicz, barely scraped a split decision, and proceeded straight to the history books. And buddy, Jamahal Hill ain't no different. Good fighter! Better head for the sport than he gets credit for! But he got onto the Contender Series as a 5-0 rookie who'd only ever beaten one man with a winning record, and it took three fights before he got matched against someone not coming off a loss. As a matter of fact, this fight--the ninth of Hill's UFC career--marks just the third time he's fought someone coming off a victory. Hill's entire ascension up the ranks and to the title was built off the backs of struggling fighters. Even Hill's championship victory wasn't against the best his division had to offer, just the closest thing available. November, December and January were awash with theories and rumors about the main event of this card. Khamzat Chimaev was getting rocketed to a title fight! Welterweight or Middleweight? As it turns out, both were on the table! Pereira and Adesanya were going to have a UFC rubber match! Or maybe it's Izzy and Dricus. Or maybe it's Dricus and Leon Edwards! My favorite, for sheer absurdity--and apparently closeness to reality, as both fighters were hyping it before it fell apart--was an honest to god attempt to have Alex Pereira fight Tom Aspinall for the Interim Heavyweight Championship, just to give Pereira the chance to be the UFC's first-ever triple champ. Sure, it's ridiculous, and sure, it makes a joke out of three separate divisions, but as I said in the preamble: This is what we're doing now. Since its inception in 1997, in more than twenty-six years of existence, the Light Heavyweight title has been vacated exactly five times. Three of those five all happened after 2020; two were in the last sixteen months. Even people who could be stars like Sean O'Malley and Ilia Topuria were eying cross-divisional double-champion fights the second they won their belts. There is no room for an Anderson Silva or Georges St-Pierre. That's just not what we do here anymore. There's no time to wait for fighters to organically make their way through the ranks or spend years building up cache with a fanbase. This is the era of striking while the irons are lukewarm. Which would be fine if it were a different show. UFC 301 is in Rio! It's one month from now! You could have had two Brazilian champions defending their titles in Brazil, and then you wouldn't have to have a pay-per-view main evented by Steve loving Erceg! This is a great main event for a regular pay per view! But this is not a regular pay-per-view. This is the UFC's biggest show of all time, and it is telling you with all authority that this is, in fact, the best it can do. So the best we can do is guess at who wins. I said Jamahal Hill's head for mixed martial arts is underrated, and that's a lesson I learned the hard way. After watching Jamahal struggle with the takedowns of noted non-grappler Thiago Santos I thought Glover would give him trouble, and that was decidedly wrong. He's good at learning from his mistakes, he's good at fighting from a distance, and he's real good at forcing people to enter his range so he can counter and hurt them. But he hasn't had to do it against truly even competition. Johnny Walker is the only man Hill's ever fought without a size advantage, and not only is Johnny Walker also a man who will abruptly sprint across the cage, throw spinning attacks in duplicate and injure himself doing the worm, he did, in fact, catch Hill and have him in visible trouble. Alex Pereira is not only just as big and rangy as Hill, he is patient to the point of being outright infuriating to watch. For Hill to get his offense going he's almost certainly going to be the one forced to enter Pereira's range. If I am Hill's cornerman, I am telling him to ruin Alex's gameplan by simply refusing to engage in it. No dicking about at range, no trading leg kicks and jabs, no big right hands. You've spent the entire run-up to this fight boasting about how much more of a complete fighter you are: Go prove it. Embrace the grind. Shove this man into the fence and clinch the life out of him. Force him out of his comfort zone and make him defend takedowns all night. Use your purported strength advantage to hang on Pereira like an angry woolen shawl and drag him to the floor. gently caress this striking bullshit. If Mark Coleman cannot fight on the card, you must become him. But for all of his bluster, Hill is a good company man who has yet to even attempt a takedown in his UFC career. I don't expect that to change here, and the more time Hill spends playing Alex's game, the more likely it becomes Alex lands one of those Johnny Walker punches. Eventually: ALEX PEREIRA BY TKO. CO-MAIN EVENT: ADJACENCY CONFLICTS WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Zhang Weili (24-3, Champion) vs Yan Xiaonan (17-3 (1), #1)I've written a lot of extremely long fight breakdowns, but one of my all-time favorites was from Zhang Weili vs Carla Esparza back in November of 2022, which started, simply: CarlCX posted:aaaaahhhhhahaahahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahahaWeili Zhang by TKOahahahahaha. It was a preposterous achievement in what has been a series of preposterous achievements. Since losing her duology to Rose Namajunas back in 2021, Zhang has fought three times: The first time out she destroyed Joanna Jędrzejczyk and retired her on the spot, the second was her shellacking of Esparza, and the third was one of the most dominant victories the sport has ever seen. All of that makes it awful hard to not begin thinking about fighters in hyperbole. When a champion is so thoroughly trashing her competition, it starts to make a competitive division look worse. That mentality gets reflected in the odds. Zhang was a -400 favorite against Esparza and a -330 favorite against Lemos. So here we have Yan Xiaonan, the #1 contender in the division: Are her odds better? Worse! As of this writing, Zhang's at -420. On paper, it's awful hard to disagree. In some ways, Xiaonan's style maps to Zhang's: Very mobile, deceptively hard-hitting, wrestling offense in her back pocket when she needs it. The difference in their level of success, unfortunately, is both sizable and distressingly comparative. Yan Xiaonan and Zhang Weili debuted within a year of one another. They have exactly the same record--8 wins, 2 losses--and both of their losses were a single knockout loss and a single, ultra-close coinflip of a split decision. But the palpable difference is competition. Zhang's losses both came to Rose Namajunas, who is, arguably, the best Strawweight the UFC had. Yan's split decision came against burgeoning gatekeeper Marina Rodriguez, and her violent, one-sided knockout loss came against...who was it? Oh, right. Carla Esparza. It's difficult to reduce the theory of an entire fight to one point of comparison, but if you're wondering why the betting odds are so lopsided: That's why. Carla Esparza's chance to regain her championship only happened because she knocked out Yan--the one and only stoppage by strikes she's recorded in a decade with the UFC. Yan struggled with Carla, she struggled with Marina, she struggled with Mackenzie Dern, and all of those women either got crushed by Zhang Weili, or got crushed by people who were, themselves, crushed by Zhang Weili. Even the win that got Yan here--a 2:20 knockout over Jéssica Andrade, which is legitimately impressive--has to deal with asterisks. Not only was Andrade coming off a loss, not only was Andrade dropping back down after being up at Flyweight, but when Andrade was in her prime four years earlier and the champion of the world, Zhang Weili knocked her out, too--and it only took her forty-two seconds. It's a stupid amount of crossover, and it's a stupid theory for the fight--even as a deeply-seated lover of comparative analysis, MMAth is unreliable at best and silly at worst--but it's impossible not to make those comparisons, and it's impossible not to drag them into technical analysis of the fight itself. What, in theory, does Yan do better than Zhang? She has more one-hit KO power, I guess, but she lands a lot less and has had much less success getting those strikes to stick. She's not much faster, she's historically a worse wrestler and grappler, and she tends to fade in the back halves of her fights. Mostly, I would like Zhang to have a genuinely competitive title defense, because her reign could use one. Unfortunately: I just don't think it's gonna happen here. ZHANG WEILI BY TKO. MAIN CARD: NOT ACTUALLY FOR A BELT LIGHTWEIGHT: Justin Gaethje (25-4, #2) vs Max Holloway (25-7, #1 at Featherweight)If there's an overarching point to the very silly amount of writing I do for this very silly sport, it's the power of stories. Whether it's Kazushi Sakuraba hunting down the Gracie family one by one or Georges St-Pierre coming out of retirement for just one night to prove he could have been a double-champion, what really fires intrigue in the sport are the stories fans create around their favorite fighters--to the point that every fighting organization on the planet tries desperately to manufacture them. The UFC is manufacturing this story. It's Justin Gaethje, the most violent Lightweight of all time! It's Max Holloway, the toughest guy in UFC history! They're fighting for the BMF title, the coolest championship in all of sports! I said UFC 300 lacked the superfight aspect of its forefathers: This is the fight in that slot. This is a fight for the ages. But the BMF belt is not and never has been real. Justin Gaethje and Max Holloway should rightfully be fighting for the actual championships of their actual divisions, and they aren't. And--as much as it genuinely pains me--I think this could be the fight that breaks Max Holloway. We had a sneak preview of this fight back in 2019. By that point Max was already the UFC's biggest Featherweight and he'd already flirted with cross-class competition in his ill-fated bid to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov. It was his meeting with Dustin Poirier that introduced us to 155-pound Max, and the results were...mixed. To be clear: Max did just fine. Going five rounds with Dustin Poirier is a thing very, very few Lightweights can do, and even in loss, Max managed it admirably. He could easily have slotted into the Lightweight top ten. But he wanted #1, and that's where things get murky. The most obvious questions about Max at 155 centered around how well his legendary chin and his volume-punching, chip-away strategy would hold up at a higher weight class, and that's where terms like "admirably" become backhanded. He hung in there with Dustin, but he also got hurt far worse and far more often than he had at 145, and despite landing 208 strikes on Dustin, he had trouble returning the favor. Max's toughness was still there, but so was a visible power differential. That was five years ago--to the day, in fact. Max is closing in on his mid-thirties. Max has absorbed 590 more significant strikes to the head. And Justin Gaethje, at this moment in time, is better than Dustin Poirier. The record, at this point, is ridiculous. Aside from the now-avenged Poirier loss, Gaethje has just three losses in his career: Eddie Alvarez (whose late-stage slide and refusal to let go have really hosed up an otherwise legendary career) Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Charles Oliveira. All three of those men were, at one point, the best Lightweight on the planet. What's worse: He's actually progressively improved. The wildly brawling Justin Gaethje who fought Dustin in 2018 and the measured, accurate, counter-focused Justin Gaethje who destroyed Dustin in 2023 are entirely different beasts. Which is bad news for Max, because 2018 Gaethje wasn't all that favorable a matchup for him, either. Max has always relied on his chin to offer him opportunities to hurt people. It got him in trouble against Brian Ortega, it got him in trouble with Dustin, and it was the key to Alexander Volkanovski fully taking him apart. You cannot tank Justin Gaethje punches. It doesn't work. He hits too loving hard. All of Max's best advantages--his fearlessness, his gas tank, his toughness--are tailor-made for Justin's offense, right down to Max's tendency to sacrifice his front leg to kicks in exchange for a quicker lunge into punching range. I would love to believe in the story of this fight as a brawl for the ages. I'd love to see Max get a run at the Lightweight title just for shits and giggles. But I think about those leg kicks, and I think about how he gets clocked repeatedly in every fight he has, and I know Max has never been knocked out but I can't see anything but JUSTIN GAETHJE BY TKO. LIGHTWEIGHT: Charles Oliveira (34-9 (1), #1) vs Arman Tsarukyan (21-3, #4)This is a loving fight, though. Charles Oliveira's is one of the best stories in fight sports. He came from nothing, he dedicated his life to martial arts, he broke out of the pack as this hyped prospect the world expected great things from when he was barely past 20, and he failed. He almost got fired on three separate occasions. And then, 30 fights into his career, right about the time most fighters call it a day, he suddenly put it all together, achieved his potential, and became the best loving Lightweight in the world. His Muay Thai became incredibly dangerous and his wrestling finally began to complement the submission offense that had already been best-in-class for a decade. He knocked out Chandler, he dropped Poirier, he choked out Gaethje. The one and only man he has not been able to beat is Islam Makhachev--and he would've gotten a second crack at him back in October had he not split his eyebrow during his training camp. He could hang onto that title shot, too. Realistically, he probably should! But Charles does not back down from fights or paydays, and Arman Tsarukyan is both. Arman got his own loss to Islam out of the way early--his UFC debut, in fact--and since then, it's been a steady climb up the ladder. Given that his only other loss was a split decision to the similarly great Mateusz Gamrot that most of the media favored Arman in, arguably, Islam's his only loss in five years, too. His wrestling has been such a standout fixture of his game that it's made people lose sight of his surprisingly deadly hands, and if ground-and-pounding multiple men into stoppages wasn't enough to make his point, his coronation as a big deal last December certainly was. He met the almost-permanent top contender Beneil Dariush and knocked him dead in barely a minute. Which is extremely appropriate, because Dariush, too, had only been knocked out by one man in the last five years--Charles Oliveira. Here's the thing, though: I am not picking against Charles goddamn Oliveira. Arman's usual wrestling is going to be a huge danger for him here, because Charles has made a career out of wrapping up men who thought they could grapple with him. The standup is a bigger question--Arman's the stronger puncher, I'd say--but Oliveira's striking isn't just sharp in its own right, it's bolstered by the fact that he's not remotely worried about winding up on the ground because of it. Arman is going to have to worry in this fight, and I think, as with so many of Oliveira's opponents, it's going to cost him. CHARLES OLIVEIRA BY SUBMISSION. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bo Nickal (5-0) vs Cody Brundage (10-5) And then, there's this. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has been done regarding this fight's placement on the main card; the audacity of putting Bo Nickal up with so many champions and up above so many more. I don't think there is anything wrong with featuring serious prospects on main cards. You've gotta give people exposure if you want the fans to care about them, and we just finished talking about bringing in people like Alex Pereira or Brock Lesnar and giving them big marketing fights. This isn't lame because Bo Nickal is on a main card. It's lame because three fights into his UFC career Brock Lesnar was fighting some of the greatest of all time, and three fights into his UFC career Alex Pereira was already dealing with Sean Strickland. This is Bo Nickal's third fight in the UFC, and so far, his hitlist consists of:
UFC 100 was a jumping-off point for Jon Jones, but he was at least fighting Jake O'Brien, who'd made something of a name for himself. UFC 200 included an attempt to relaunch the UFC's favorite prospect in Kelvin Gastelum, and he had to deal with a former champion in Johny Hendricks. Even Sage Northcutt had to deal with the runner-up of The Ultimate Fighter Latin America 2 (jesus christ). But this is UFC 300 and we're in the gimme-fights game now. Sorry, Cody. BO NICKAL BY SUBMISSION. PRELIMS: KAYLA HARRISON STILL DOESN'T HAVE A PICTURE ON UFC.COM LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Jiří Procházka (29-4-1, #2) vs Aleksandar Rakić (14-3, #5) Time makes fools of us all. Two years ago, Aleksandar Rakić was right on the verge of becoming the #1 contender and Jiří Procházka was winning the fight of the year and taking over as the new Light Heavyweight champion. They took polar opposite approaches to fighting: Where Jiří took pride in his status as a fist-swinging wildman who would stop at nothing to finish anyone unfortunate enough to be placed across the cage, Rakić was a defensive tactician who, when criticized for his style, replied that pretending it matters is pointless, the UFC doesn't care about him and will forget him as soon as he retires, so the more of his health he retains, the better. This is a genuinely refreshing sentiment I wish more fighters shared. Unfortunately, tendons do whatever they're gonna do, and in the biggest fight of his career and on the cusp of beating Jan Błachowicz, Rakić's ACL tore in mid-round. Less than a month later, Jiří rode the UFC's gleeful promotion of his murderous ways to his world championship; just a few months after that he, too, got injured and had to go on the shelf. Jiří was back after a year and a half, but got turned away by Alex Pereira; Rakić is fighting for the first time since his leg imploded back in May of 2022. It's a testament to the quiet, understated value credibility still carries in this sport that despite Jiří's status as a former world champion and fan favorite knockout machine who's only lost once since 2015 and Rakić having been MIA for two years, Rakić is, shockingly, still the betting favorite here. I was all geared up to detail why Aleksandar's better-rounded gameplan and bread-and-butter wrestling and tight, accurate killshots were a bad matchup for Jiří, and for once, I apparently don't have to. It's pointless to say "but Jiří could beat him" because Jiří can beat anyone he lands on. That's just the risk of fighting the man. This does not keep me from picking ALEKSANDAR RAKIĆ BY DECISION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Calvin Kattar (23-7, #8) vs Aljamain Sterling (23-4, #2 at Bantamweight) Boy, I really hate this fight. I understand why it's happening, it's an extremely sensible matchup, but as someone who wants nice things to happen to Aljamain Sterling, it makes me personally unhappy, which is the greatest sin a fight promoter can commit. Calvin Kattar is one of the most popular, fun-to-watch Featherweights the UFC has to offer, and he's made it clear on numerous occasions that he solidly belongs in the top ten. Unfortunately: Many of those occasions involve losing. Kattar's must-see, all-action boxing style put the UFC's promotional engines behind him, and he had a brief flash of contendership possibility when he tooled Giga Chikadze, but every other attempt at the top has seen him turned away. Max Holloway demolished him, Josh Emmett (controversially) outworked him, and when last we saw him back in October of 2022, his leg collapsed in the middle of fighting Arnold Allen. He is, unfortunately, a gatekeeper. Once upon a time Aljamain Sterling had dreams of becoming a UFC double-champion by carrying his Bantamweight title into a Featherweight title fight, but the UFC got their way and fed his reign to Sean O'Malley, and without the bargaining power of a championship, Aljo has to settle for earning his spot the hard way. At 135 pounds his wrestling and grappling were best-in-class, and that was deeply fortunate, because his striking was often loose enough to look awkward in ways that regularly got him in trouble. Like, lots of trouble. Henry Cejudo clipped him at one point and Henry Cejudo had to get his arms back from the LEGO Museum when he came out of retirement. Aljo's creativity fueled a lot of his grappling success, but his physicality and speed did, too. At 145 pounds, that's a much tougher sell. Against a guy like Kattar who's both bigger, stronger, a much cleaner striker, and legendarily difficult to get on the floor? CALVIN KATTAR BY TKO feels real, real likely. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Holly Holm (15-6 (1), #5) vs Kayla Harrison (16-1, NR) It should've been Larissa Pacheco, that's all I'm saying. Ahead of her return to fighting last week, Germaine de Randamie made some controversial comments about how Women's Bantamweight has been a dead division without Ronda Rousey or Amanda Nunes. As much of a diehard Raquel Pennington fan as I am: It's hard to disagree. This fight is here to ideally propel Kayla Harrison directly into title contention. Ordinarily I complain to no end about people jumping the line, but when it comes to Women's Bantamweight, there's no line to jump. If you go down the entire rankings:
And this fight isn't any different. Holly Holm is coming off of a No Contest that should have been a submission loss. Kayla Harrison--the biggest women's prospect outside of the UFC, the Olympic gold medalist, the Ronda Rousey 2.0 multiple companies have now invested in as the solution to their promotional difficulties--is, also, on a one-fight winning streak, having just lost her undefeated record to Larissa Pacheco at the end of 2022. This is the great hope of saving Women's Bantamweight: A fighter who already lost her hype train after spending her entire career fighting at Women's Lightweight, a division that does not actually exist. I hope she wins. I will do an awful lot of awful things to not have to see another Holly Holm championship match in my life. I hope, deeply, that we get KAYLA HARRISON BY SUBMISSION and the division gets a shot in the arm. But even if we make it past the scale, the future is rocky. FEATHERWEIGHT: Sodiq Yusuff (13-3, #13) vs Diego Lopes (23-6, NR)Were it not for personal emotional attachment, this would be my favorite fight on the card. Sodiq Yusuff has been knocking on the door to contendership for years. His debut in the UFC tricked people into filing him away with the other regular power punchers, but he's pretty thoroughly demonstrated just how well-rounded he is in his subsequent victories. His place in the UFC, unfortunately, is coming to be defined more by his losses. He got his shot at the top against Arnold Allen in 2021, and he almost beat him, but he just didn't do enough. He won two more bouts and got his second shot against Edson Barboza this past October, and he drat near killed him in the first round, but Edson's experience helped him survive the onslaught and beat a drained Yusuff across the cage for the rest of the night. He's great! He just hasn't been able to break the ceiling. Diego Lopes almost did it his first time out. Lopes hopped into the UFC on just four days' notice to fight Movsar Evloev, the undefeated super-grappler who's now one win away from a title shot, and Lopes came closer than drat near anyone to beating him. His cardio was astounding for how little time he had to prepare, his bottom game was dangerous as hell, and he made Evloev work for every second of his victory. Lopes has rattled off two 90-second wins since, each more impressive than the last, to the point that he's now a favorite against the comparatively-established Yusuff. Personally, I cannot even pretend to not be in the tank. I love the way Lopes fights, I love his insistence on being a threat in every single aspect of the game, and Yusuff's tendency to fall back on his wrestling when he needs to collect himself or change the pace of the fight is real, real dangerous for him here. DIEGO LOPES BY SUBMISSION. EARLY PRELIMS: THE JIM MILLER SHOW LIGHTWEIGHT: Jalin Turner (14-7, #10) vs Renato Moicano (18-5-1, #13)Both of these men are so goddamn close to being a Thing, and it's heartbreaking that one of them will have to give up the race, because they both deeply deserve to be here. Jalin Turner is a hard-hitting motherfucker who towers over almost everyone in the division, and it shows, because at 6'3" that weight cut visibly kills him. But he was just one changed mind in the judging booth away from winning a split decision against Mateusz Gamrot, and that's technically also true for his loss to Dan Hooker, but the judge who split the verdict was Adalaide Byrd and the mere mention of her name sends paroxysms of rage through veterans of multiple combat sports. Turner is tough as poo poo, he hits like a truck, and he's remarkably difficult to keep on the ground. Which is a problem for Renato Moicano, because his ability to wrap people up and control them on the ground is the main source of his success. Moicano's made himself a fan favorite half through his aggressive self-marketing and half through his propensity for violently strangling people, but he's struggled to stay consistent in the cage. He couldn't control Rafael dos Anjos, he couldn't avoid Rafael Fiziev's reach, and he struggled with the counterpunching Drew Dober put on him during their fight. There's no shame in getting hurt by Drew Dober. He does it to a lot of people. But so does Jalin Turner, and he can do it from half a foot farther away. Eventually, JALIN TURNER BY TKO. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jéssica Andrade (25-12, #5) vs Marina Rodriguez (17-3-2, #6) Jéssica Andrade is one of my favorite fighters of all goddamn time, and I allowed my faith in her to slip. Andrade fought an inexplicable five times in 2023, and that run saw her eat three straight stoppage losses to #1 contenders in just six months, a schedule so unconscionable--particularly with a knockout right in the middle!--that when her matchup with Mackenzie Dern was announced for November I openly called for her to fire her management for attempting to monetize the sawdust in her bones. I was wrong, Andrade was right, her power-punching style flattened Dern in two rounds, and for the eighth or eleventh time, the UFC's attempt to push Mackenzie led to her eating poo poo. But that means Jéssica is still a top contender, and that means she's gotta fight more top contenders. Marina Rodriguez was on track to exit 2022 as the next big Strawweight title contender thanks to her tight jab-and-jog boxing gameplans and her solid defensive wrestling, but an upset knockout loss to Amanda Lemos knocked her out of first place, and a grappling clinic by Virna Jandiroba pushed her all the way down the ladder. They rehabilitated her with a completely nonsensical rematch victory against Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and somehow, by being the #9 fighter beating the #13 fighter, she is right back up near the top five, because math is for babies. Analyzing this fight is a fool's errand. I could relay my concerns about Andrade's recent tendency to wade forward while flailing out haymakers, and I could theorycraft about Marina's capacity for hitting and fading away being the absolute blueprint for dealing with it, but for one, who knows what Andrade you're getting on a given night, and for two, I will not abandon my favorite twice. JÉSSICA ANDRADE BY TKO. LIGHTWEIGHT: Bobby Green (31-15-1 (1), #14) vs Jim Miller (37-17 (1), NR)If Max Holloway vs Justin Gaethje is the superfight of the night, this is the history fight, and make no mistake: It's the Jim Miller show. This is not to demean Bobby Green. I love Bobby Green's fighting. I have been defending it against philistines who think defense is for losers since the days of Shane Carwin. He's been around forever and he's still vital enough to have punched his way into the Lightweight top ten just last October. He's a deserving dance partner for a trip through history. But Jim Miller is the reason for the season. If Bobby Green was relevant when Shane Carwin was a thing, Jim Miller was relevant when Matt Serra was still the best Welterweight in the world. Jim Miller's UFC tenure alone predates more than half its currently active weight classes. He lost years of his career to Lyme disease, the most Oregon Trail-rear end reason a fighter has ever failed. He beat Mac Danzig at UFC 100, he knocked out Takanori Gomi at UFC 200, and fan outcry for recognition of his incredible feat got him this fight at UFC 300. During his walkout for that UFC 200 fight Mike Goldberg called attention to Miller's incredible longevity in the sport, and that was eight years ago, and he's still here. This will be his forty-loving-fourth UFC fight, and he says he wants to retire before 50--after winning the belt. Do I think this is a good match for Jim Miller? No; Bobby Green hits faster, is far more defensively slick, and is awful hard to take down. Am I picking against Jim Miller at UFC 300? Not on your goddamn life. JIM MILLER BY DECISION. BANTAMWEIGHT: Deiveson Figueiredo (22-3-1, #8) vs Cody Garbrandt (14-5, NR)I cannot imagine how much restraint it took not to make this the main event of a Fight Night with a Bogdan Guskov vs Modestas Bukauskas co-main. There were a lot of skeptics about Deiveson Figueiredo's plans to move up to the 135-pound division--including me--but he proved us wrong and shut Rob Font out of their fight last December. He outstruck him at both range and in the pocket, and when Font finally started to catch his rhythm, he began dumping him on the floor just to change it up. It was a fantastic performance and a clear proof that he does, in fact, belong at Bantamweight. Two weeks later, Cody Garbrandt managed to chisel himself back into its books. Garbrandt's fall from the top is the stuff of legends--from an undefeated champion who engineered the total destruction of one of the sport's longest winning streaks by wrecking Dominick Cruz to going 1 for 6 over the next half-decade, including four vicious knockout losses--and, while it frustrated him at the time, Garbrandt being forced to spend a year and a half on the shelf thanks to opponents repeatedly pulling out with injuries was ultimately good for him. He came back in March of 2023 and put forth a workmanlike if unimpressive victory over Trevin Jones, but his one-round, one-punch annihilation of Brian Kelleher in December was his proof to the world that he was back to his old self, and nothing was going to stop him from punching his way straight to the title again. So anyway, DEIVESON FIGUEIREDO BY TKO. There's risk here, Deiveson tends to lead with his head and if Cody pops him it could end his night real early, but he's the same kind of tough, fast and vicious that got Cody crushed by punches four times already. You should be scared of trading in the pocket with Cody Garbrandt, but if you're not, that chin is still right there for the taking, and Deiveson was a hairdresser and thus has no mortal fear left in his body. CarlCX fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 22:25
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Josuke Higashikata posted:Cool post as always. You edit three times and you still miss something. Thanks for the catch. Karate Combat is such a bizarre organization with such a batshit level of attention:production budget ratio that I cannot help admiring it. I hope it does manage to become a real boy, but I feel like it's gonna be one of those things that just sort of vanishes suddenly when the VC money runs out. I still have the new MMA intro/FAQ in my drafts to one day finish and the wildest thing about it is how much more depressing the "relevant mixed martial arts organizations" section has become. Like, I wrote this back in 2022: a text file in a folder posted:Eagle FC is the new kid on the block and the most probable candidate to magically disappear in the next few years. The Eagle experiment didn't even make it out of 2022, and now Bellator's a PFL subsidiary, and ONE is right up against the circling-the-drain point, and man, it's sad.
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Apr 12, 2024 08:13
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Digital Jedi posted:Not sure if this is more a testament to how drat good DJ was, champs now aren't good or if divisions are so much better that's it's just harder to defend. But you also have to remember, by his own admission, he was constantly having to turn down the UFC's attempts to get him to stop defending the title so they could focus on a cross-class fight with Cruz or Dillashaw, to the point that they were threatening to just strip him and close the Flyweight division and he called their bluff. And that's the thing that's happening way more now and fighters are choosing to play into it because a) it's way, way harder to have bargaining strength in the current MMA market and b) maybe you'll make more money/pride/name out of becoming a double champ. Like, Islam is closest to DJ's ratio at 1 title fight per 178 days, but that's gotten hosed up by cross-class stuff and he's talking about waiting out after his next fight to go gently caress around at 170. Leon's at 1 per 199 days, and we just found out about how hard they tried to book Leon vs Khamzat at 185 for UFC 300. Hell, Volkanovski is a great analogue. Volk's arguably the most dominant, well-respected champion of any of the men's weight classes in the modern era and his schedule bears it out--but because the UFC had him loving around at 155 against Islam repeatedly, he only managed one successful title defense in the last 592 days he held the belt.
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Apr 12, 2024 20:09
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4058485 The GDT for UFC 300 is up. Prelims in about half an hour, and boy, it's nice to be unequivocally excited for a card.
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Apr 13, 2024 22:34
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That event ruled rear end and I wish so very much that they would put in anything close to that level of effort more often. Even just one Dynamite!!-style supercard a year would go a long way. Also it's hilarious that Gaethje and Oliveira both put off promised title shots to take an unnecessary fight and both got punched right out of title contention on the same night.
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Apr 14, 2024 21:49
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Absolutely. The magic of MMA is the degree to which wild poo poo can happen, the likelihood just tends to go up when you bring your bigger guns out. For as much as the tournament format is a logistical nightmare that so often ends in disappointment, it's also why it's stayed so powerful. Throw Kevin Randleman, Mirko Cro Cop, Sergei Kharitonov, Fedor and Giant loving Silva into a blender and see what happens.
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Apr 14, 2024 21:58
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Buschmaki posted:Karate Combat 45 This is cool as poo poo and thank you for doing it. I really do hope Karate Combat doesn't flame out what with the crypto funding and the cash it's throwing around, because its production is great and the product is at least unique. I'm all for it getting more attention here. Also, the UFC updated their rankings and it includes Max Holloway being officially ranked at Lightweight! At #9. Justin Gaethje is still #3.
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Apr 16, 2024 09:22
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Yeah, here's a super exciting sneak peek of this week's writeup:quote:So anyway, here's an Apex card where 21 out of 26 competitors are coming off either a loss (17) or a No Contest (1) or have never fought in the UFC before (3). There is one fight on this card where both fighters are coming off UFC wins.
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Apr 22, 2024 18:25
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 99: BACK TO EARTH SATURDAY, APRIL 27 FROM THE RESPLENDENT DEPRESSION OF THE UFC APEX PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM Sometimes a week off feels like a vacation; sometimes it feels like a much-needed smoke break. UFC 300 was a total success. Almost every fight delivered, both championship bouts were memorable, and Max Holloway's last-second knockout of Justin Gaethje is going to be played in highlight reels forever. It could not have gone any better. And Dana White wanted to make sure everyone knew that, so he put together his own vanity video package telling everyone in the media who ever said anything bad about UFC 300 to eat poo poo. Take that, media! You're always stupid, we're always the best, and Dana White and the UFC can do no wrong. So anyway, here's an Apex card where 21 out of 26 competitors are coming off either a loss (17) or a No Contest (1) or have never fought in the UFC before (3). I hope you enjoyed your week off. Remember the good times.  ah, back to normal. MAIN EVENT: THE FLYWEIGHT SITUATION FLYWEIGHT: Matheus Nicolau (19-3-1, #5) vs Alex Perez (24-8, #8) Flyweight is one of the most talent-rich divisions in mixed martial arts, but boy, it seems like it's always stuck in a hole. For once, I don't even just mean the UFC. Bellator tried to inaugurate a Flyweight division, but it got scuttled the day before its title fight thanks to a Ray Borg weight miss, rescheduled for a Rizin card in a Japanese co-promotion and scuttled again when the fight ended with an eyepoke in twenty seconds; Bellator folded and got bought before they could give it a third go. Rizin made their own Flyweight division, Kyoji Horiguchi won it, and his first act as Japan's 125-pound champion was signing up for a 135-pound rematch with Sergio Pettis. ONE Championship has managed one 125-pound title fight in the last 500 days, it was a rematch of the fight from the start of those 500 days, it ended in under a minute thanks to a disqualification, and now the champion is injured and on the shelf for the next year. But the curse has struck most consistently in the UFC. They had maybe the greatest champion of all time in Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson, but they didn't actually want him and spent half his reign trying to force him to take superfights at Bantamweight. Henry Cejudo won the title, defended it once, and threw it in the garbage. Deiveson Figueiredo was supposed to be a generationally dominant champion, but he missed weight in his first shot at the belt and ultimately spent his entire reign trading it back and forth with Brandon Moreno. This past December saw the UFC's first Flyweight title fight to not involve Figueiredo or Moreno in three goddamn years, and now, four months later, the undisputed #1 contender to the title is Brandon Royval, the guy who just lost said title fight. They have, in fairness, been trying to fix this. Kai Kara-France vs Amir Albazi last June was a bonafide contendership match--until Albazi won an incredibly controversial decision and they both, ultimately, got injured before either could take a followup fight. Muhammad Mokaev was positioned for contendership, but he fell short of the UFC's all-action expectations and they slammed on the brakes to the point that the #10-ranked Steve Erceg is getting a title fight next week because he's the only available guy left. This fight, here, was supposed to be a crowning moment for rising star Manel Kape--but Kape is notoriously snakebit, and the first time this fight was scheduled back in January it fell through after Kape missed weight by almost five pounds, and this rescheduled bout fell apart when Kape pulled out at the start of the month. We are left with Matheus Nicolau vs Alex Perez. Both men are extremely solid, talented fighters. And they combine, positionally, for a pretty damning statement about the Flyweight contendership scene. Matheus Nicolau fares slightly better in the conversation. He's 7-2 in the UFC, he's only lost once in the last five years. He beat Manel Kape! Well, sort of. He took what was widely agreed to be one of the worst decisions of 2021 over Kape, and his last win was already a year and a half ago against Matt Schnell, who is currently 1 for his last 5, and his chances at title contention are extremely minimal because the last time Nicolau fought he got blown the gently caress out by Brandon Royval in two minutes. Solid, top ten fighter, but he needs a strong win over a strong competitor to really stake a claim at the top. Alex Perez, respectfully, is not that competitor. He was, once. When he became just the third man to ever knock out Jussier Formiga back in 2020, he looked all to hell like a fighter who would be relevant to the title picture for years. And then the reality waveform collapsed and he ceased to exist as a reliably present competitor. Alex Perez has fought three times in the last four years; in that same timeframe, he has had ten cancelled bouts. Eleven, if you include the fight the UFC originally scheduled him for this Summer but scuttled so he could save this main event. He had a single fight with Matt Schnell get rescheduled three times: Once for UFC scheduling issues, once for Schnell's health, and the third time because Perez blew his weight cut. At this point he's better known for missing fights than taking them. Which is probably in his best interests, because he's also lost all three of those sparing appearances. He got choked out in a single round in Figueiredo's only successful title defense, he got choked out in a single round again by Alexandre Pantoja in the fight that earned him a title shot, and just 56 days before his bout tonight, he got ground into paste by Muhammad Mokaev. All of this makes perfect sense when you remember this fight existed to push Manel Kape into contention. It's a revenge fight for a decision he shouldn't have lost and, coincidentally, he's the only person out of the three the UFC's been promoting. Without him? It's a prospect bout between one guy whose only fight in a year and a half involved getting completely trucked by the division's #1 contender and one guy who hasn't won a fight since All That was still on the air. (No, really. Look it up.) Again: Neither man is a bad fighter. You cannot exist in the top ten at Flyweight without being very good at everything. Nicolau may not have deserved the nod against Manel Kape, but he still took him to the limit. Perez may have lost to Mokaev, but he made him work for it and even took a couple media scorecards. Nicolau has the heavier hands, Perez has the faster kicks; Nicolau has an edge in the grappling, but Perez just showcased improved takedown defense. This could easily be a fascinating grappling match. Or, of course, it could fail to happen completely when Perez's car to the arena falls into the portal from Land of the Lost. But this is a fight Perez isn't just taking on short notice, but is taking less than two months after losing a three-round fight. It's a big ask, and my inkling is MATHEUS NICOLAU BY DECISION, but honestly, flip a coin. Not only is it just as likely to be accurate, it's a great way to simulate the matchmaking experience that got us here. CO-MAIN EVENT: I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD STOP SINGLING THESE OUT LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Ryan Spann (21-9, #11) vs Bogdan Guskov (15-3, NR) You just can't have a discussion about cursed weight classes without Light Heavyweight joining the party. The UFC's multi-year attempt to push Ryan Spann has reached Sisyphean status. They could have stopped when he got beat up by Johnny Walker and went to a split decision with Sam loving Alvey, but they didn't. They could have thought better of things after he was choked out by Anthony Smith, but they didn't. In March of last year Spann got submitted again by Nikita Krylov, somehow got pushed right back up the ladder for a rematch with Smith, and, somehow, lost again. And he's still here! In a co-main event! Are we doomed to run this circle forever? Well, no. This is, if anything, the UFC testing its own faith in their prospect. Ion Cuțelaba was a favorable but credible matchup for Spann, Dominick Reyes was damaged goods the company wanted to capitalize on, and Smith and Krylov were both high-profile, top-ten matchups that could springboard Spann into title contention with an impressive victory. For better or worse, every one of those fights presented a big opportunity for one of their favorite early-gen Contender Series winners. Bogdan Guskov is as far away from those lofty ranks as you can get. He's not ranked, he doesn't have much international renown, he didn't come from the Contender Series, he doesn't have any hype to speak of. He joined the UFC as a late replacement last September, was dutifully dispatched by Volkan Oezdemir in four minutes, and knocked out Zac Pauga three fights into the prelims on an Apex card that happened just two months ago, and I bet you have absolutely no recollection of it or what its main event was. For the record: Joe Pyfer vs Jack Hermansson. Remember that happening? Remember the attempt to make Joe Pyfer a title contender? It feels like a whole-rear end lifetime ago. To his credit, Guskov didn't look awful in his fight with Oezdemir; he stood in the pocket with a real dangerous power puncher and even stunned him--right up until Oezdemir slammed him on the ground and easily demolished him in an extremely one-sided grappling exchange. Ryan Spann's defensive grappling isn't great, but Ryan Spann's offensive grappling is absolutely crushing. Guskov's shown the clear ability to hurt anyone on Earth if he hits them in the face; he's also fighting against a half-foot reach advantage. Guskov could try to pressure Spann into the cage and tee off on him, but that means opening himself up to getting stuck in Spann's clinch, which is where his best grappling offense comes from; Guskov could turn this into a wrestling match, but not only has that never been his forte, it means putting himself at risk of a guillotine choke from Spann's giant seagull arms every time he shoots. This should be a rebuilding fight for Spann. This should be RYAN SPANN BY SUBMISSION. But the UFC needs to see something out of him, and if Guskov upsets the apple cart, it could be the end of a long run. MAIN CARD: A SUCCESSFUL PUSH WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ariane Lipski (17-8, #12) vs Karine Silva (17-4, #13)This right here? This is the best, most interesting fight on this card. Which is fitting, because it's the one and only fight on the card between two people who are both coming off UFC victories. I, and most of the mixed martial arts world, had Ariane Lipski pretty much ruled out of contention at the start of 2023. CarlCX posted:Lipski's 3-5 after four years, and one of those victories came against Mandy Böhm, who's 0-2 and likely fighting to prevent a pink slip this May, and another was double-last-minute injury replacement Isabela de Pádua, who was a strawweight fighting up a weight class on 24 hours' notice who proceeded to test positive for steroids and get kicked out of the company. The optics: They're not great. Karine Silva, by contrast, has been nothing but onward and upward, and in one of the rare instances of the UFC letting a Contender Series winner go up the ladder the right way she's been proving herself in impressive fashion. Silva's ridiculously aggressive grappling has played out perfectly for her in the company thus far. She submitted Poliana Botelho, she tore apart Invicta champion Ketlen Souza's knee in just over a minute and a half, and when last we saw her, she met Maryna Moroz--a woman who has shared the cage with Jennifer Maia, Mayra Bueno Silva and Carla Esparza without ever being finished--and choked her out in the first round. Which is particularly important when you realize that ten years ago, a 20 year-old Karine Silva got armbarred by Moroz just six fights into her career. Her improvement is both visible and literal, and of the many prospects the Contender Series has fielded upon us for better and worse, Karine certainly appears to be the real deal and an absolute wrecking machine. Being a wrecking machine, of course, carries with it the risk of not successfully wrecking someone. Ariane Lipski has been stopped on multiple occasions, but all of them came from fists. In eleven years of competition, she has never been submitted; more typically, she is the one doing the submitting, and Casey O'Neill's elbow joints are a testament to just how good she is at it. Silva's got a fair number of knockout victories to her credit, but she hasn't notched one in almost five years, and Lipski's been kicking motherfuckers in the head. I am still going with my gut and picking KARINE SILVA BY SUBMISSION, but Lipski's looked better than I've seen her in years, and if Karine's gotten too used to first-round victories, the likelihood that Lipski drags her into the back half of a fight could hurt her badly. HEAVYWEIGHT: Austen Lane (12-4 (1)) vs Jhonata Diniz (6-0) Austen Lane is proof that one man's actions can cause untold suffering. In 2018 a 4-0 Austen Lane got his first shot at the Contender Series and the stardom only a minimum-wage fight contract can offer, and his dream was crushed thanks to a first-round knockout by NFL star and domestic violence enthusiast Greg Hardy, forcing UFC fans to cope with the three-year Greg Hardy Experiment. Lane spent his next nine fights cleaning up the best 5-9 fighters the regional scene had to offer, and in 2022 he returned to the ludus league, beat a man whose last victory came against the 22-22 José Rodrigo Guelke, and finally made it to the UFC. And then he got injured and his debut got put off by four months. And then his rescheduled debut ended in a thirty-second No Contest after he poked Justin Tafa in the eye. And then their second rescheduling ended with Tafa punching him silly in less than a minute and a half. Austen Lane has not managed two minutes in the UFC, but the misery he has caused us has stretched across years. Which leaves Jhonata Diniz as the new guy. The UFC has recently been cribbing from the old ways of Japanese MMA and importing retired kickboxers in an attempt to create casual-friendly striking sensations, and Diniz is no different. Up until 2022 he was a semi-successful Heavyweight kickboxer--good enough to be ranked, not good enough to keep himself from getting demolished by champions--and after he turned 30, he decided to branch out into mixed martial arts. On one hand: It's been a great success! He's 6-0 and he's knocked out everyone he faced. On the other: He's basically fought one real guy. His first match was, in fact, against your old buddy from the previous paragraph, José Rodrigo Guelke, who by then was 22-23. If you've read these before, you know how this paragraph goes. The only real challenge Diniz faced was on the Contender Series, and he overcame it, but the guy he beat was also the guy who got choked out by Mick Parkin, so, unfortunately: It's still Heavyweight. That said: Austen Lane got more or less crushed by Justin Tafa, and Diniz has better check hooks and better clinch control. I don't think this lasts long. JHONATA DINIZ BY TKO. FEATHERWEIGHT: Jonathan Pearce (14-5) vs David Onama (11-2) Jonathan Pearce wants his goddamn hype train back. "JSP" was one of the early prospects off the Contender Series, but he was forgotten fairly quickly after his 2019 debut ended with Joe Lauzon punching his face in. Pearce spent the next four years rebuilding his profile, and by 2023 he was on a five-fight winning streak, he'd beaten multiple notable fighters, and he had officially supplanted Darren Elkins as Featherweight's grittiest wrestler. And then Joanderson Brito snatched a ninja choke on him out of nowhere last November, and just like that, all that effort tumbled into the gutter. The UFC doesn't love its wrestlers, and Pearce may be one of the best, but once you fall, you gotta grind like hell to get back on the ladder. David Onama has chosen to get around this by stopping everyone he beats, and it works extremely well for him right up until it doesn't. He was an undefeated prospect with a fair bit of hype from in-the-know fans when the UFC picked him up on a short-notice contract, and, shockingly, a short-notice fight against Mason Jones two weeks after he'd already fought wasn't a recipe for success. His subsequent attempts at launching the Good Ship Onama have been spoiled by circumstance. He scored a real impressive win over Gabriel Benítez, but got stuck with a late replacement no one cared about in his followup and then found himself on the wrong end of Nate Landwehr's refusal to ever die. He was supposed to get higher-profile fights with Jarno Errens and Khusein Askhabov, but both got injured and left him dealing with Gabriel Santos instead. There's a styles-make-fights aspect to this that's awful tough to miss. Pearce can strike, he has it in him, but his comfort zone is on the floor, and every opponent he's attempted a takedown on has wound up there. Onama is a solid grappler in his own regard, but his best success comes from his punches, and unfortunately, he gets taken down an awful, awful lot. If Nate Landwehr can ground him, so can JSP. JONATHAN PEARCE BY DECISION. WELTERWEIGHT: Tim Means (33-15-1 (1)) vs Uroš Medić (9-2)There are some guys you keep around just because they're fun as hell, and for sheer fun quotient, you just can't kill Tim Means. Means has been around so goddamn long he predates Anderson Silva losing his title, and he's been fun as hell for the vast majority of those 28-and-counting UFC fights. Is he relevant to the division? Not really. Is he able to show up and dispose of your Andre Fialhos at will? Absolutely and drat proud of it. Which is, genuinely, pretty loving cool. In a world of fighters who are all desperate to be Conor McGregor, there is something to be said for being a Tim goddamn Means; sticking around forever, having fun fights, leaving memories. God bless 'em. He is, of course, expected to lose. Uroš Medić is a -310 favorite, and after seeing him knock out Omar Morales and Matthew Semelsberger back to back, it's hard to imagine him not punting Tim Means' head into the fourth row. He's ten years younger, he's a whole lot stronger, he hits much harder and he doesn't have several dozen fights of mileage weighing him down with wear and tear or high expectations. He, in fact, has very few expectations, thanks to his getting violently submitted by last-second-replacement Myktybek Orolbai last November. It's hard to hold that against him, though--it's hard to hold any loss against a fighter when they had almost no time to prepare. What I do hold against Uroš is how frequently he gets into bad grappling positions against people he can't bully. Means is very, very tough to knock out and he's been dealing with adverse situations for his entire career. Uroš has some great striking techniques, but he also struggles under pressure, and pressure is where Means excels. So, gently caress it. TIM MEANS BY SUBMISSION. PRELIMS: WEC NEVER DIE BANTAMWEIGHT: Rani Yahya (28-11-1 (1)) vs Victor Henry (23-6 (1)) I said this the last time Rani Yahya fought, and I don't think I could say it better, so I'm just going to say it again. CarlCX posted:If you're a veteran fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who fought in the WEC back in 2010?" the answer is yes. If you're an old-school fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who fought in K-1 HERO'S back in 2006?" the answer is still yes. If you're a primordial fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who was winning jiu-jitsu championships back in the 90s?" the answer is still loving yes. Rani Yahya has been grappling people for so long that all but five of his thirty-eight opponents no longer compete in mixed martial arts and several are dead. Victor Henry was a +400 underdog in his debut against Barcelos. Victor Henry is a -500 favorite to beat Rani Yahya. Just as I said in the Montel Jackson fight, Rani is almost certainly going to lose here. He's kind of slow and awkward on the feet, his chin isn't all it used to be, and as great as his grappling is, getting someone as athletic as Henry on the floor to use it while he's getting punched in the face is going to be difficult. And just as I said in the Montel Jackson fight, I care more about rooting for Rani while I can than watching my pick percentage go up. RANI YAHYA BY SUBMISSION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Austin Hubbard (15-7) vs Michal Figlak (8-1) I'm not sure there's a sign of exactly how far The Ultimate Fighter has fallen in the UFC's estimations than this past season of it. TUF 31 (jc) was built around veterans vs prospects, one of the show's better gimmicks, but its real point was to fire up the Conor McGregor engines all over again. He's back! He's fighting Michael Chandler! Watch him train the next generation of UFC talent! And then his whole team lost and Conor went off to (allegedly!) do enough steroids that the UFC had to kill their USADA partnership over it, and he never actually fought Chandler, and now it's an entire year later and they're promising it'll finally happen this June. And the TUF tournaments? They were finished off in the middle of the pay-per-view prelims for UFC 292. Not even headlining. Austin Hubbard, a seven-fight UFC veteran and potential TUF champion, got choked out by Kurt Holobaugh in a fight that was deemed less important than Gregory Rodrigues vs Denis Tiuliulin. What became of newly-crowned champion Holobaugh? Beaten by Trey Ogden. What about Bantamweight TUF winner Brad Katona? Taken to the cleaners by Garrett Armfield. His runner-up, Cody Gibson? Defeated by Miles Johns. The cat? Choked on the goldfish. Hubbard is the only TUF finalist left to fight, and for his troubles, he gets Michal "Mad Dog" Figlak. Figlak joined the UFC with a fair bit of hype as an undefeated 8-0 Cage Warriors prospect in 2022, his debut against Fares Ziam was one he and his well-traveled counterstriking were widely expected to win, and instead, he got outstruck more than 2:1, outwrestled 3:1, and ultimately lost his undefeated streak to the riotous approval of a particularly partisan Parisian crowd. And, uh, that's it. He was briefly linked to a bout with Chris Duncan last year, but he was pulled from the fight almost as soon as it was announced. It's been a year and a half since last we saw him, he's been rehabbing injuries and preparing for a second chance at a first impression, and this time, rather than the O2 Arena or the Accor, he's doing it in the Apex, where champions are made. This is, all of that said, a genuinely interesting fight. Hubbard was hanging in there against Kurt Holobaugh right up until he got abruptly choked out, but that was thanks to a hard-nosed, wrestling-heavy style that plays into Figlak's own. It's a much less mobile, much more face-forward method, and that gives Figlak more room to use the counterpunching that fell flat against Ziam dancing out of his range and making him pay for overcommitting. My hunch here is AUSTIN HUBBARD BY DECISION after a grueling wrestling performance, but Fiaglak could easily keep pace and sting him given a chance. HEAVYWEIGHT: Don'Tale Mayes (10-6) vs Caio Machado (8-2-1) It's rough times for Lord Kong, but if we're being honest, he hasn't really known any other kind. It took Mayes three cracks at the Contender Series to get into the UFC, he had the misfortune of a debut fight against some guy named Ciryl Gane, and after almost five years with the company his best victory is a tossup between Josh Parisian and mid-forties Andrei Arlovski. Arlovski is, in fact, the only victory Mayes has recorded since 2021. His ability to maul people on the ground is still more than present, but his ability to reliably get people down to do it just hasn't been there for him. When we first saw Caio Machado fight in the UFC last November, I was unkind to him. I was dismissive of his record and frustrated by his ability to land hundreds of strikes without putting his opponents in danger. I speculated that he would get outstruck by noted boxer Mick Parkin. I was wrong, and I must admit that. He, in fact, was outwrestled by noted boxer Mick Parkin. I have nothing unkind to say about Caio Machado that the universe has not already inflicted upon him with that fight. Mayes is an underdog in this fight, and respectfully, I disagree. Machado hasn't exhibited a great deal of stopping power and getting outwrestled by Mick Parkin portends bad things about keeping a guy like Mayes from ragdolling you. DON'TALE MAYES BY TKO. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Ketlen Souza (13-4) vs Marnic Mann (6-2) The trip from Invicta to the UFC was not kind to Ketlen Souza. Like so many before her, Ketlen traded in her championship belt for a ticket to the big leagues, and like so many before her, she was immediately eaten by a bigger fish. Souza managed to record exactly one attempted strike in her UFC debut before Karine Silva threw her on the floor and popped every ligament in her knee. Souza had to be helped to the back and, presumably, the hospital, and after eleven months of recovery and rebuilding, she's ready to try again, which is a pretty scary prospect for a fighter who relies as heavily on kicking and playing the bottom guard game as she does. Marnic Mann is in the tough position of knowing the UFC didn't really want her here. She put up a solid fight on the Contender Series in 2022 before getting her head kicked off by Bruna Brasil, she went back to the regional scene for a single fight, and she got pulled into the big show as a short-notice replacement with less than one week to prepare. Unsurprisingly: She lost. Josefine Knutsson easily outwrestled her for three straight rounds, Mann landed eight significant strikes in fifteen minutes, and one judge scored a particularly terrible 30-24 against her. This, too, is a stylistically awful fight for Mann. Souza's dropping to 115 for the first time in four years and she's carrying a considerable size and strength advantage with her, but more than that, Mann's striking defense is porous and Josefine can attest to her wrestling defense. Worse still, even if Mann were to get Souza on the floor, Souza's bottom game is where a whole lot of her best offense comes from. KETLEN SOUZA BY DECISION and I'm not sure it'll be close. LIGHTWEIGHT: James Llontop (14-2) vs Gabe Green (11-5) James "Goku" Llontop has had a hell of a time staying on this card. His Contender Series victory in September didn't raise too many eyebrows--he was fine, but with how many Contenders you get these days it's just hard to expect the audience to really invest themselves in everyone--but however many 19-16 people he's crushed, he's still a solid Peruvian prospect on a twelve-fight winning streak, and that's pretty rare. Fittingly, it has been goddamn near impossible to keep his fight this weekend booked. He was scheduled to fight the perpetually weird Lando Vannata, but Vannata pulled out well ahead of time. "Gifted" Gabe Green took his place with a solid two months of time to prepare, which meant that he, of course, had to drop out a week before the fight. In his place, with five days' notice, you have Chris "Taco" Padilla, a man who is best known for his one fight in Bellator in 2018, which saw him lose to...uh...Gabe Green. gently caress, man. Chris Padilla is 4 for his last 5 and his victories include such luminaries as the 8-8-1 "Eyes Closed" El J Portée, the 15-12 Serob "Gulo" Minasyan, and in what might well be his highest profile victory, the 17-10 UFC veteran Justin "Guitar Hero" Jaynes. He likes to strike, he likes to fight, and, I can only assume, he's a fan of tacos. Look, every once in awhile this Cinderella story works out. Marcus McGhee was a little-considered last-minute regional pickup last year and now he's 3-0 in the UFC. But Llontop has some actual stopping power and a reasonably well-rounded game, and Padilla's biggest strengths appear to be being tough and down to clown. Could this lead to him upsetting Llontop and becoming a new sensation? Sure. Is it likely? No. JAMES LLONTOP BY TKO. WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ivana Petrović (6-1) vs Na Liang (19-7) Ivana Petrović's debut did not go as planned. She came into the UFC last July as an undefeated champion in France, was booked as a sizable favorite over a smaller, less accomplished fighter in Luana Carolina who was on a two-fight skid and pretty blatantly being used to build a new international prospect, and, as happens so drat often, the ailing veteran took the hyped prospect to the woodshed. Carolina outstruck and outgrappled Petrović to the point of outright frustration on Ivana's part, and frustration rarely wins fights. Unfortunately, "rarely" is still a better winning ratio than Na Liang has found in the UFC. Liang was a wrecking machine out in China's WLF Wars, but unfortunately, she was also persistently matched up with fighters who had at best 1/3 her level of experience, to the point that her last fight prior to joining the UFC saw the 18-4 Liang against the 0-0 Mengnan Liu. When you do not prepare for adversity, adversity tends to crush you, and Na Liang's 0-3 UFC record has been one of repeated crushings. She was outgrappled and punched into paste by Ariane Carnelossi, stopped on the feet by Silvana Gómez Juárez, and had to be rescued by the referee against JJ Aldritch just last August. Liang's a great hammer. Her armbars are still real dangerous. But she is visibly uncomfortable being the nail, and however unfortunate it was to watch Ivana fight frustrated in the third round of her last fight, she was, still, doing it. Liang looks lost after the first round of her fights, and it's hard to imagine that changing. IVANA PETROVIĆ BY SUBMISSION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Maheshate (9-3) vs Gabriel Benítez (23-11) Maheshate is also having some bum luck here. He came over to the Contender Series as another WLF Wars success story, but he averted the bad-competition curse by absolutely crushing the legitimately dangerous Steve Garcia in his UFC debut thanks to long power punches and an absolutely killer right. That is the end of the good news for him. One fight later he missed weight and got beaten around the cage by a better-rounded fighter in Rafa García, and as a followup performance he faced noted kickboxer Viacheslav "Slava Claus" Borshchev, poked him in the eye so badly it bled, and, somehow, still got dropped on his rear end and punched into the fetal position in two rounds. Maheshate had a theoretically easier matchup tonight against Road to UFC 1 champion Anshul Jubli, whose stock fell from "legitimately interesting prospect" to "guy who got TKOed because his opponent started barking at him like a dog" after his knockout loss to Mike Breeden last year, but Jubli had to pull out, and in his stead, Maheshate gets to deal with Gabriel "Moggly" Benítez. Gabriel has had a tough go of it in the UFC--he's exactly 7-7, his best win was probably Jason Knight all the way back in 2017, he's only got two wins in the last five years and one of them was against Justin "Guitar Hero" Jaynes who I cannot loving believe is getting two shoutouts on a single card writeup--but he's also been a perpetually difficult fight for his opponents. Even in his worst loss, a one-round shellacking at the hands of main card participant David Onama, he was blasting him repeatedly with kicks right up until he got knocked silly. To be clear: This is a fight Maheshate absolutely should win. He's 4" taller, he's rangier, he's got knockout power and Gabriel's already paid for his kick-happy gameplan before. Maheshate's the betting favorite and I get why. But I have to have a hunch somewhere on this card, and my hunch is Maheshate's in trouble. GABRIEL BENÍTEZ BY TKO.
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Apr 24, 2024 23:02
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Thank you kindly. We recap what we get.ilmucche posted:Seriously? The man is so petty It's fantastic. It's just clips of people calling the UFC 300 card disappointing--most of them from before they had announced the main event--and then just for shits and giggles it's also just, like, some dude's reddit posts. Skin made of rice paper. Also good news, Dominick Reyes is fighting again, and this time it's against Dustin Jacoby, the guy with knockout victories in three different sports.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:55
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4059517 GDT for Nicolau/Perez is up, prelims in thirty.
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Apr 27, 2024 20:34
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 17:56 |
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 Don't look back in anger. Onto the May thread.
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May 1, 2024 20:30
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