In a lot of the classic markets around the world, it feels like the UFC is a bit of a fading concern. The Canada boom is long over, the J-MMA glory days have been gone for more than a decade. Even the UFC’s trips to Brazil feel like no real big deal anymore. Ireland’s MMA craze came and went with the McGregor era, and experiments with regular UFC cards in Germany and Sweden produced absolutely nothing.
There are still markets where the UFC looks like it has room to expand, however. China seems to be a steady partner, for one, and Middle East is hungry for all the combat sports it can get right now. Most notably, though, if UFC Noche was any sign last year, MMA is starting to gain a real fanbase down in Mexico.
The promotion’s first trip back to the country since 2019 this past Saturday highlighted how much it needs to keep putting on cards for its Hispanic fanbase. Cain Velasquez may not have been the crossover star that the UFC had hoped for, but a steady diet of raiding Combate and Entram gym has provided Dana White & co. with a healthy stable of Mexican and Mexican-American talent that get real national support. Fans showed up in droves.
UFC at altitude is not good MMA
That said, despite clear signs that the company had learned from past forrays to the CDMX, it’s clear that Mexico City is not built for MMA. The UFC didn’t put on a single fight over the lightweight division for their Moreno vs. Royval 2 fight card, but it didn’t seem to matter. At 7,349 feet in elevation the climate was still brutally punishing for multiple five minute rounds of action…
It’s a fact that was clear in the results all night. Fighters up and down UFC Mexico City struggled with pace and cardio. Most notably, unfortunately, in the main and co-main events, where both Brandon Moreno and Yair Rodriguez looked like they were trying hard to measure their exertion. There were a couple standout fights and performances, but most of the evening felt like it was marked by lackluster action. The crowd was hyped, but the fighters couldn’t match it.
Even events in places like Denver and Salt Lake City have been notable for the rate at which fighters gas out—add an extra 2,000 feet of elevation on that and it wasn’t pretty. Hell, Mexico City is only 600 feet closer to sea level than Machu Picchu. It’s a massive metropolis; I get that the promotion doesn’t want to write it off—hell they’re even building a new performance institute there—but surely there has to be better options.
Can UFC find other options?
Guadalajara may still be at a mile, but Monterray’s elevation is only 1,700 feet, and the UFC went there back in 2015. I’m only spitballing, but there’s gotta be something they can do to get cards out of the literal stratosphere and back down on solid ground. It seems absurd to think that the UFC is going to make a base of operations in a city where they can’t even book 1/3 of the roster without risking a heart attack.
They’ve got the fans, they’ve got the talent, even a healthy portion of their American-born fighters identify strongly with their Mexican roots. It’s clearly a market that the world’s largest MMA promotion needs to pour themselves into. But fight cards where bantamweights look like they’re sucking wind just six minutes into the bout are no bueno.
Maybe a future will come along where a sizeable portion of fighters train out of Mexico City year around, I think that’s honestly what it would take to make this altitude reasonable. But as veteran sports broadcaster Rodrigo Del Campo González recently noted speaking of this card on social media, even the Mexican fighters here weren’t routinely using the city as a home base. Will that change with the construction of a UFC complex? Or will it just remain a place that the UFC only visits once every few years, when they feel they really have to? Either way I can’t help but think fans deserve something better.
Every week a different lesson. Some good, some bad. MMA is not just a sport of chaos, it seems to throw up odd results in all areas. Everything from politics, to corporate branding, to philosophy, mixed martial arts finds a way in and a way to make things weird.
This week, we’ve got Alexander Volkanovski farming a little free range humility, and the UFC finding something of interest for their blockbuster PPV. We’ve also got Ian Garry working outside the box, and Rampage Jackson chasing ghosts. Storm clouds and silver linings aplenty.
LOVE TO SEE IT
Volk has no excuses for UFC 298 loss
If fighting is in our DNA, as Dana White likes to say, then excuse making is—at the very least—a well embraced tradition handed down from our ancestors. That’s especially true in the fight game, where maintaining an unbreakable confidence is every bit as important as reckoning with mistakes, learning, and improving. The fighter who steps into the cage thinking about how they might lose, often already has.
That said, it’s always nice to see a little public humility in the face of defeat, especially from an all time great like Alexander Volkanovski. So many people in combat sports can’t resist the urge to make their private thoughts about how they were done dirty, had a bad camp, were dealing with some injuries, or just plain ‘didn’t actually lose’ part of the public conversation.
Speaking to reporters after UFC 298, Volkanovski made his case for a rematch with Ilia Topuria. A fight he even believes he’ll win (really can’t beat fighters for self confidence). But he also made sure in that request to make it absolutely clear that when it came to his opponent’s work at UFC 298, the new champ earned every ounce of his victory.
“You can’t take anything away from Topuria,” Volkanovski admitted (transcript via MMA Fighting). “If he puts a hand on you like that, you’re going to go down. I don’t care, that’s just that.
“That was a clean right hand and I think no matter who you are, you let one of those land on your chin while you’re caught there, you’re probably going down. Don’t let him catch you, that’s what that was. He caught me, so I won’t take nothing away from him. I’m not going to sit there and say it was this or it was that. I felt great. Camp was great. I felt good in there.”
I’d argue that it’d be nice if Volkanovski’s coach could find a little of that energy too—Joe Lopez recently told the Daily Mail that all Topuria did was capitalize on a “puncher’s chance”—but then again part of his job is to keep his fighter pumped up and confident. Who wants to train under someone that firmly believes their upcoming opponent is going to beat their ass?
I hope Volk takes some time off after this loss, maybe even takes another fight before running back to a rematch. But, there’s no question he’s earned the right to get one. At least in the meantime he’s willing to give Topuria his moment in the sun. It truly was well earned.
Edwards vs. Muhammad never on the UFC 300 radar
I know this seems like it should be a ‘hate to see it’ post, since Belal Muhammad has unquestionably earned his UFC title shot. But I can’t pretend that I’m unhappy the UFC wasn’t trying to book this fight for the UFC 300 main event.
A co-main? Sure. A future PPV headliner? Absolutely. But the UFC is one of the most creativity and fun bereft fight promotions to ever grace God’s green earth. This company can barely put a 4-man tournament together without courting disaster. They’ve built their reputation on structure and dependability—as well as the biggest roster of fighting talent ever assembled under one roof—getting wild isn’t in their lexicon.
That said, the least fans should be able to expect is that for a few rare PPV cards, the world’s largest MMA promotion will do its best to go all out. UFC 100, UFC 200? These were cards where the UFC tried their best to pull out all the stops; to book the biggest, wildest, and most interesting fights they could. Sure UFC 200 hit some stumbling blocks, ultimately, but not for any lack of trying.
Otherwise, at least once a year, fans expect that the International Fight Week card will be a ‘can’t miss’ event. Now that the UFC is going to Madison Square Garden every fall as well, that seems like it’s becoming another major target. The rest of the schedule can be business as usual. But the big shows should feel big.
Say what you will about Leon Edwards vs. Belal Muhammad, but that is not one of the most exciting fights the UFC can make. It’s not even all the fault of ‘Remember the Name’ either. Edwards’ penchant for considered caution and patient outfighting has rarely made him a must-see action fighter. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been ‘hyped’ for a Leon Edwards fight, even if I was sure it would be interesting.
It’s under that frame that I’m happy to see a recent report from the Schmo—which was retweeted by Muhammad himself—confirming that while Edwards was offered multiple fights for the UFC 300 main event, none of them were against the longtime Roufusport product.
🚨Can confirm Belal Muhammad was NOT one of the 3 fighters offered to Leon Edwards for #UFC300
Is Jamahal Hill vs. Alex Pereira anywhere near the level of Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir, Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier 2, or Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor 2? Hell no, it absolutely is not. But Edwards vs. Muhammad 2 is the kind of main event that the promotion used to put on Fox. It’s almost an active detriment as a headliner for a card where the UFC is expected to actually try and deliver something more than just ‘guys fighting’. It’s honestly a relief they found something else after a 2023 where it often felt like they settled for less.
HATE TO SEE IT
Rampage Jackson has more big plans
A big portion of Rampage Jackson’s MMA career popularity was wrapped up in the juxtaposition between the violence he was capable of displaying in the cage, and the comedy he was capable of manufacturing outside of it. For a man best known for powerbombing an opponent into unconsciousness, he was a complete ham in press conferences and interviews.
If his late career was anything to judge from, however, the success he experienced as a competitor was a key component to making his personality work. Win a couple of major titles and most MMA fans were willing to excuse the repeated public groping or the energy drink fueled recklessness. By comparison his late career run in Bellator was mostly just boring, both in and out of fighting.
It was something of a surprise then, when Jackson emerged with a hit podcast last year in partnership with JAXXON.com (an apparently unaffiliated jewelry company). The company seems to be taking good advantage of the former fighter’s charismatic personality, which in turn seems to be stoking a return to the ring.
Jackson is all set to box Shannon Briggs on June 1st in Qatar. From the sound of things, however, that’s just the first in a number of old grudges the former UFC champion hopes to hash out.
“I can’t believe Wanderlei said that,” Rampage said, responding to some recent trash talk from Wanderlei Silva, where the recent UFC Hall of Fame inductee quipped that he would “hang [Jackson] on the ropes again” if they were to rematch (interview via MMA Mania). “I might have to talk to Rashad Evans. I might have to push Wanderlei’s ass whooping up some. I’mma beat his motherf—king ass for saying some s—t like that.
“That was totally disrespectful. When I called him out, I called him out very respectfully. I’m gonna talk to S.D.K. (Suleyman D. Khan) and Hossama [Khan] about getting the fight over in Qatar after I knock the s—t out of Shannon. I’m gonna ask them, ‘Can I beat the f—k out of Wanderlei next after I fulfill my fulfilments with ‘Titties’ (Schoonover)’? I want f—kin’ Wanderlei in Qatar.”
Shannon Briggs, Wanderlei Silva, Darrill Schoonover, Rashad Evans??? Does anyone want to see this 45-year-old man’s personal petty business tour? We saw Rampage vs. Wanderlei 4 six years ago at Bellator 206, and it sucked. Just 2 rounds of swing-n-cling from a couple dudes that looked like they’d only barely gotten back in shape to take the fight before Wanderlei got TKO’d.
I’m glad Rampage has found a spot, post-fighting, where he can make use of his voice and charisma. But for a guy who could barely find the motivation to compete into his late 30s, it’s really hard to get hyped to see him jump on the celebrity boxing circuit in his mid-40s. Especially not if it’s just to extend his media beefs from past glory days.
Ian Garry studying NFL footwork
Cross training has become something of a fad, not just in MMA, but across the sporting landscape. Tales of NBA players learning to kickbox, NFL players getting in some MMA rounds, all sorts of insanity. I suppose it makes sense, really. Few athletes grow up playing just one game, and all of them love to put their bodies on the line in physical competition.
Whether it actually does them any good or not? That’s a whole different question. One of the notable things about classic sports training is the focus on raw repetition and discipline. Want to learn how to dribble a basketball? Spend a whole hell of a lot of time dribbling. Want to learn how to throw punches in combination, get on that pad work. There’s no better way to learn than to learn by doing, and it has to be wondered how much outside influence just becomes distraction—even if it’s technically getting someone a good workout.
Which brings me to UFC 298 and Ian Garry’s recent reveal that one of the things he did in prep for fighting Geoff Neal was to study NFL footwork. I can’t help but wonder why.
“It’s like, I gotta keep moving and keep on my toes, because the minute he gets planted, he has so much power,” Garry told the MMA Hour in a recent interview (transcript via MMA Fighting). “So that movement has to be constant the entire fight, shifting from left to right, left to right. … I was studying a lot of NFL wide receivers, people like [Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver] Ja’marr Chase and [Minnesota Vikings wide receiver] Justin Jefferson, and the way they get off the line, and they throw off the corners, purely based on the ability of trying to trick the movement, or trick the eyes into which direction you’re going to move and you’re going to go, and I used that a lot in this fight of, just switching really quickly to make them think I’m going to go right, then go left.
“And next time I’ll change it up a little bit differently, maybe still go left, throw him a lot of feints. That was really important for me, to just keep that consistent, constant movement to unsettle Geoff and make it hard for him to have success.”
The goals of footwork off the line in the NFL (or downfield) and the goals of footwork in combat sports are entirely different. A wide receiver is all about creating as much space and time as possible to become and remain an open receiver or at least a solid decoy. Fighting is all about the maintenance of ideal range. It’s not enough just to get away from someone, a fighter has to stay close enough to hit their opponent as well.
On those terms, it has to be said that Garry’s fight against Neal hardly felt like a footwork masterclass. The back-and-forth movement he created did well to keep Neal from drawing an easy bead on him, but when Neal did rush in, Garry often retreated in a straight line before exiting late on an angle with his chin up and hands down. When Neal extended a combo, he tended to find the target.
I don’t think Neal won that fight at all, but it’s hard not to look at Stephen Thompson’s very sport specific footwork against ‘Handz of Steel’ back in 2020—which lead to Neal getting outlanded at a 2-1 clip—in comparison to Garry’s broad strokes, space-creating movement that led to him scraping out a split decision. Part of that difference was down to Neal’s ability to create more offensive angles on his entries than he did 4 years ago, but a lot of it was just Garry getting caught out of position.
MMA has a habit of leaping to creative problem solving when there are tried and true solutions already there. Fighting footwork has a long and storied history. It may take a little extra work to adapt it to takedown defense and the intricacies of MMA, but the answer for that probably isn’t coming from the Cincinnati Bengals.
This article originally appeared on the Bloody Elbow Substack on February 18th, 2024. Consider supporting Bloody Elbow with a paid subscription to get first look at all our top stories.
I hate to paraphrase a classic Joe Rogan talking point, but the man has said a whole hell of a lot over the years, every now and then he has to hit the mark. In this case, that mark is all about how tough it is to be the longtime champ; for a fighter to ‘carry a target on their back’ year after year after year.
Eventually, any fighter that finds themselves at that level, usually four-plus title defenses into their reign starts to encounter a very particular phenomenon.
The path to UFC greatness
Early on in their time with the UFC, they’re the one making the charge, the one nobody is prepared for. Remember Anderson Silva coming to the Octagon and his fights against Chris Leben and Rich Franklin? They had no idea at all what was about to hit them. Most talents may not have that kind of shock value these days, where the promotion is much bigger and the path to the belt longer—but then again we’re not too far removed from Alex Pereira blitzing MW and LHW on his way to two different belts.
After that, the new champ has to claim their space. Most likely they’ve been merely one of several contenders, usually a group consisting of other former belt holders and talents who have been rising right up along side them. Their first few defenses, then, are going to be bouts of mutual interest. They’ll know just as much about their opponent as their opponent knows about them. Maybe these fighters have been side-eyeing one another for a bit, but for the bulk of their careers they’ve been focused on the stars of a previous era…
We’ve seen a whole truckload of UFC champions that have cut their way through those challenges. Guys like Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, Dominick Cruz, and Max Holloway had no trouble taking out their share of former and current top talent around them. Where things have gotten tricky however, has been in the new blood.
Topuria as Volkanovski’s final boss
When Alexander Volkanovski first won featherweight gold, Ilia Topuria hadn’t even set foot inside the Octagon. ‘The Matador’ has spent literally his entire career inside the UFC focused at least in part on defeating one Australian man. Contenders like Yair Rodriguez and Brian Ortega couldn’t say that, having both joined the UFC when Conor McGregor and/or Jose Aldo still held claim to the crown. They passed through the whole Max Holloway era before facing Volkanovski.
This was new territory for ‘The Great’. He’d beaten the old guard, beaten his peers, now he had to stamp out this young lion. As we saw in Anaheim, he couldn’t make it happen.
There’s no shame in that. As I said before, even many of the best fighters in MMA history never achieved that goal. And those that have achieved it have often done so only barely hanging on by a thread.
The short list
At one time the MMA world was neck deep in arguments that Jon Jones actually lost to both Dominick Reyes and Thiago Santos at the end of his light heavyweight run. Younger fans may not remember, but Georges St-Pierre’s final welterweight title fight against Johny Hendricks was anything other than a clean cut victory for the Canadian legend.
It’s a huge credit to Demetrious Johnson that he beat both Kyoji Horiguchi and Henry Cejudo decisively before losing that narrow decision in the ‘Triple C’ rematch and getting sent packing off to Singapore. It’s just too bad that ‘Mighty Mouse’ didn’t have more flyweight forerunners to test himself against early on (although victories over Miguel Torres and Ian McCall certainly should count for something).
As it stands, that sort of makes up the entire list—at least as far as men go. Aldo went on to have remarkable success at 135 after Holloway ran him out of featherweight but he could never gain gold again. For the women, Amanda Nunes is the one fighter to really and truly grasp this claim to fame, having beat Tate, Rousey, Cyborg, and Holm, alongside Pennington, GDR, and Shevchenko. Adding later era defenses against Pena and Aldana. For Shevchenko, her victory over Taila Santos is probably her most clear pushback of what would have been considered the ‘new generation’, and that came with its own controversy.
Long story short, there’s a very small (and only lightly sketched out by yours truly) subcategory of all time pinnacle champions. It’s a list that includes Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre, Demetrious Johnson, Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko. This was Volk’s chance to join that illustrious club and he couldn’t make it happen.
A truly great fighter and a dominant force in his own time, but not one of the true multi-generational championship gods of the UFC.
A new week, a new batch of MMA headlines to warm your heart or make you palm your face. This time around we’ve got more good works from Jared Gordon and a little advocacy from Loma Lookboonmee. But, we’ve also got Max Griffin with MMA judging complaints and Henry Cejudo stealing the spotlight from everyone with a whole bunch of unnecessary drama.
As always, I’m doing my best to sort through it all and try to separate the wheat from the chaff, the gold from the fools.
LOVE TO SEE IT
Jared Gordon stays on message
One of the things that MMA does like few other sports out there is to connect fans to real, honest to god hard luck stories. In a world where more and more athletes find themselves in private schools and top flight programs from an early age, preparing them for potential future stardom, Mixed Martial Arts remains a true home for misfits.
In point of fact, it’s nearly cliche at this juncture to turn on Dana White’s Contender Series and hear multiple tales of child abuse, neglect, crime, and addiction. The people that find their peace in cage fighting often come to it through fire and brimstone.
That said, it’s not every fighter that finds their way from a tragic past to advocacy for a positive future. For many, the mistakes they’ve made—the harm they’ve caused to themselves or others—are things they’d rather put firmly behind them. It’s can feel a lot easier to start a new chapter in life by severing all association to the person someone used to be.
I’d argue it takes a special kind of strength to make past mistakes as big a part of someone’s reformation as their current successes; to not forget who they used to be and what trials bought them here.
It’s great then to see the level of advocacy that Jared Gordon does regularly for drug addiction awareness and recovery. A self-described heroin user starting at age 19, Gordon was left legally dead from a drug overdose in 2015. An incident that pushed him to finally kick the habit and turn his life around.
Now 35 and with a 13-year MMA career under his belt, he’s still doing PSA work and public outreach to try and help others fight addiction.
Life ain’t about you! It’s about service to other’s. Nothing is better than helping people with whatever they need. If you’re struggling with addiction I literally have the tools and resources to help you. Just give me a shout and I will do what I can⚡️ pic.twitter.com/boctuKev11
There are plenty of fighters out there that get involved with charitable causes, but few seem to do so with the level of consistency and self reflection that Gordon shows. The man is setting a great example and his advocacy should be lauded at every turn.
Loma Lookboonmee campaigns for UFC atomweight division
It has to be said—despite Dana White’s past sexism—no promotion has done more to build the public perception of women’s combat sports than the UFC. The conversation around women’s MMA may have started with things like HOOKnSHOOT, JEWELS, EliteXC, and Strikeforce, but the UFC is what really brought it main stream. In a day and age where sports like boxing and kickboxing are still entirely struggling to create any amount of interest in their best and brightest performers, the UFC is an industry leader.
Currently, the Octagon is the only place where combat sports fans can routinely see women headlining not just smaller Fight Night events, but even PPVs. Nothing else out there compares.
That said, the promotion’s dedication to female athletes still often feels slipshod and halfhearted. Having once put all its eggs in the Ronda Rousey basket the UFC has struggled to bring forward a new generation of stars, especially in higher weight divisions.
But, if a venture into women’s featherweight has entirely failed to pay dividends, the women’s strawweight division has maintained a position of relative strength. Fighters like Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Rose Namajunas, and Weili Zhang may have never risen to superstar prominence, but have proven popular commodities capable of bringing high level MMA to the UFC’s biggest stages.
If it’s clear right now that there’s more talent to be found at 115 lbs than there is at 135, then shouldn’t the UFC be setting its sights lower rather than higher? That’s a question Thai UFC talent Loma Lookboonmee would like answered as well.
“The big surprise for me was just how big [Bruna Brasil] was,” Lookboonmee reporters after her latest victory (transcript via MMA Junkie). “She was so much taller than me. I really hope they open 105.”
“I think that if the UFC opens 105, No. 1, I’ll be the first fighter in there. No. 2, I think it would open up a lot of opportunities for Asian women—not just from Thailand, but from all over Asia. So I really hope they do it. People message me from time to time asking me if they’re going to do it, but obviously I don’t know.”
At 5′ 1″, competing in the strawweight division is always going to be a struggle for Lookboonmee. But with talents like Carla Esparza (5′ 1″), Tecia Torres (5′ 1″), Brianna Fortino (4′ 11″), and Tabatha Ricci (5′ 1″), it feels like the promotion already has a collection of athletes under contract to build from.
The UFC has found repeatedly over the years, that fighting is a great opportunity for smaller athletes. Despite their reluctance to open divisions downward, every time they’ve done so, the quality of their product increases.
There are many parts of the world, including those where the UFC would love to see more expansion, where women tend to be much more in line with a potential atomweight division. It’s not hard to think that Lookboonmee would be proven correct in pretty short order. The featherweight division has failed, but that doesn’t need to mean fewer spots on the roster. Time to try something new.
HATE TO SEE IT
Max Griffin picks the exact wrong time to complain about judging
At this point, complaints about MMA scoring feel nearly as old as MMA itself. Whether it’s the idea that a takedown steals the round, or that guard work is underappreciated, or Dominick Cruz insisting that there’s no more decisive sign of damage than a cut on the eyebrow, it feels like no fight card goes by without some level of controversy.
This past weekend was no exception. We had Bolaji Oki experiencing the dread of a mysterious split score for what should have been a reasonably clear victory over Timothy Cuamba and, earlier in the evening, we had Max Griffin’s fight against Jeremiah Wells.
After his bout, Griffin sat down with reporters to lodge a complaint against one judge in particular, noted longtime MMA official Sal D’Amato. Only, given the fact that Griffin won a fight most observers felt he should have lost, it’s very difficult to figure out exactly what is the man’s damage?
“I cannot stand Sal D’Amato,” Griffin told reporters at his post-fight presser (transcript MMA Junkie). “He has me on Neil Magny losing, he has me on numerous fights. … He picks against me every single time. I don’t know if I did something in a past life to him, if I did something to him, but Sal D’Amato hates me.”
Of course, faced with a claim like that, pundits were quick to fact check Griffin, finding that—far from being a victim of systemic abuse—the longtime welterweight has had exactly four fights judged by D’Amato in his career. Of those four, D’Amato scored two for Griffin and two against him.
I get it, it’s MMA—thin skinned-ness is practically a packaged deal for athletes, along with bad knees and staph infection. At some point, though, I have to wonder if it’s all performative. Ever fighter can’t just be picking the weirdest reasons to get mad all the time can they?
I like Max Griffin, he’s a solid, nose-to-the-grindstone kind of talent who has made a lot of consistent small improvements in his game over the years. But he’s also a decision machine who goes nip-tuck with everyone. He has no one to blame but himself for a lack of clear and easy victories. Especially not a judge that happened to get the last one right.
Henry Cejudo pranks himself?
Unexpectedly, one of the biggest topics in MMA news this past week has been around Henry Cejudo. But rather than a focus on his potential future retirement plans—or on the difficulty of facing Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 298 after losing to Serra-Longo teammate Aljamain Sterling—fighters, fans, and pundits have found themselves faced with an odd bit of UFC shoulder programming.
UFC 298 Countdown cameras appeared to capture what should have been a private moment from Cejudo’s fight camp. In it the former Olympic gold medalist and two division champion dismissed his longtime coach Eric Albarracin.
“I’m getting rid of specific coaches, man, and that’s you included, dude,” Cejudo said, clearly playing the moment for the cameras before explaining that he knew he could publicly strip Albarracin of his duties like that because of the man’s natural humility.
Not because getting some new coaches might not be the right move for Cejudo. Fighters, after all, need to be selfish to a pretty high degree. They take the risk, they take the loss. If ‘Triple C’ felt he needed a new camp to win his next fight, he’s well within his rights to make that move. But to make it a public spectacle the way he did just smacked of unnecessary tactlessness—an unfortunate byproduct of a man often called the ‘King of Cringe.’
With blowback from the video seemingly unabating, Cejudo took to Instagram on Tuesday to announce that the initial video of him firing his coach was, in fact, just a prank for the cameras.
If that whole thing really was a joke (and this isn’t just some attempt to save face), then Cejudo has to know that the joke was on him, right?
People don’t care if he’s working with Albarracin or not, that’s his business. Some fighters trade coaches like Dana White changes P4P GOAT proclamations, a new one every week. Nobody cares. All Cejudo did was make himself look like an jackass in public for nobody’s gain. The whole discussion will be forgotten in a couple months time to no result beyond the fact that for a few days people thought, “Wow, that guy’s a jerk.”
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The UFC’s run to regulation has become a cornerstone of the Zuffa story. It’s probably less spin than Dana White gives most of his memory when he talks about how the Fertittas bought a promotion not just one the brink of collapse, but one that could barely find a state that would sanction their brand of ‘no holds barred’ violence.
Truthfully, of course, the UFC had started running toward regulation well before White & Co. stepped in. It didn’t take many events for the SEG owned version of the company to realize that their dojo-heavy tournament style wasn’t going to last. The increasing number of wrestlers and professionally trained athletes opened up the likelihood that some member of the strip mall Karate black belt contingent would get seriously hurt in a no-rules tournament format.
As such, figures like ‘Big’ John McCarthy and Jeff Blatnick and Joe Silva started putting together rules and regulations for the Octagon in conjuction with the ABC and State Athletic Commissions. No Groin strikes, no headbutts, no fish hooking. Gloves became more the norm, etc. etc.
The Zuffa era of MMA
What Zuffa brought, more than anything, was an understanding of the politics of regulation. An ability to lobby. The right money, connections, and a set of new rules already in place paved the way for MMA to become an officially recognized sport and eventually a normal part of the American sporting landscape (if still something of a niche interest).
Along the way, however, there was another, less celebratory outcome from the UFC’s success and eventual market dominance. Namely, the blanding of mixed martial arts. NHB, for all its faults, really was the true sandbox of combat sports. Fighters with limited understandings of the potential for true fighting given room to test themselves with few limitations. Can the TaeKwonDo guy really stay off the ground? Can the BJJ guy force someone to grapple? Can the ninjitsu guy actually disappear?
Insistance on gloves and wraps, credit for top control, and a flat playing surface with cage walls all helped emphasize a wrestle-boxing archetype. Nevermind that wrestlers were also training at a much higher level than most traditional martial arts.
I don’t want to say that the MMA meta would have looked dramatically different had the UFC taken a different path—or not have become the market dominating juggernaut that they ended up as—but it’s hard not to feel a bit like we’re in the most McDonalds version of MMA possible today.
Dogfight Wild Tournament
That’s what made Dogfight Wild Tournament such an amazing breath of fresh air this week. If you haven’t already seen it, you can watch the whole thing for free, right here. A once-annual fight promotion from Spain that ran their second ever grand night of wild action riffing on an MMA theme. In a lot of ways, it feels like a Fight Circus sister, but where the Thailand-based organization really goes off the deep end using combat sports as inspiration for wacky fun & games, Dogfight is built on much more simple lines.
However it might be categorized, it ran on one important ideology: What if fights were unpredictable and fun?
Of course, it goes without saying that a big part of what allowed the promotion to get as weird as they did this past Friday was Spain’s lack of regulation. We got a 1 vs. 5 ‘survival mode’ fight where one trained fighter had to take on five opponents one at a time. There was a 3-on-1 fight that just might go down as the most fun fight of 2024. We had 2 vs. 2 action, and a ‘Bloodsport’ tournament, complete with curved fighting platform. The kind of stuff that state regulations would almost certainly put the kibosh on if this card had been in the US.
Did all of it come off perfectly? Absolutely not. One of the opening round winners got hurt and the Bloodsport finale had to be cancelled. The no-rules MMA fight ended with a bevvy of unanswered blows to the back of the head and an insistance from the loser that he get an immediate rematch (which the winner totally should have taken, but wussed out on). And there were some pacing and production issues standard to a company only barely getting off the ground.
MMA needs to be fun
But, the important thing was that it felt like an experiment. It felt like an attempt to do something new and fun with fights again. A big part of what made MMA the thrill it used to be was its circus aspect. Modified rules fights, combat sports legends from other disciplines trying their hand against seasoned MMA pros. Shootboxing, combat jiu jitsu, Senegalese wrestling, hand-to-hand combatives? The world is full of creative opportunities that create entertaining chaos.
This isn’t an argument against plain old MMA. I still like what the sport is as it exists now plenty. It’s been codified enough to start growing some real high level technique all its own and a meta that’s unique to MMA. But moments like these are something of a wakeup call. A reminder that there’s a whole other reason I got into this stuff and it’s one I’d almost entirely forgotten.
I’m not just here for the power or the violence or the beatiful expression of form. I’m also here for the hijinks and the fun. Boxing has been owning that lately with their celebrity fight cards and the MMA/boxing crossover bareknuckle arena (which I have other problems with). It was hard not to think, when Jake Paul and Nate Diaz fought in 2023, that 15 or 20 years ago MMA would have gotten that fight, but it doesn’t have the cajones for that kind of fun anymore and it shows.
I don’t need it every day, but it’d be awfully nice to see a little more weird come back to this sport. Dogfight Wild Tournament was exactly the right cure for what ails my MMA soul.
For those who missed out on last week’s edition, I have a somewhat sheepish revelation. Far from cancelling the column, cutting back on my workload, or just feeling like I couldn’t find the right stories, I simply forgot about the damn thing until it was too late.
I won’t be doing anything to make it up to anyone, sometimes that’s just the way it is. But I hope everyone enjoys this week’s column nonetheless. We’ve got Dustin Poirier giving back to the lightweight community, Weili Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk palling around, as well as a Matt Brown revelation and a Colby Covington update. So, let’s dig in…
LOVE TO SEE IT
Dustin Poirier giving back with Benoit Saint Denis fight
Over the many years since its inception it’s become clear that the UFC created something of a monster with their in-house rankings system. A panel composed almost entirely of fringe media figures has, over the past decade, turned itself into a key element of both the matchmaking and negotiating process. Once something that fighters openly derided and rejected as a useless gimmick, today few cards pass by without multiple calls for a ‘top 15 opponent’ after an especially thrilling victory.
But it’s not just a goal to aim for that’s reshaped the UFC’s weight classes, it’s also a recognition that as a fighter rises in the rankings, their position as a future title contender becomes more and more undeniable. The UFC may not want Belal Muhammad in a title fight, they may not be interested in letting Curtis Blaydes fight for gold. But if these men simply refuse to go away, sooner or later they’ll get their chance. The UFC’s own system demands it.
The fallout of that logic is that, once a UFC talent reaches top 5 status, much of their priority turns away from getting to fight as often as possible, and turns toward getting just the right fight to compete for a belt. More and more, fans see elite MMA talents who are loath to fight anyone who isn’t already in title contention. After all, what’s the point of taking on someone down in the rankings if a loss means exiting ‘the mix’ and a win means nothing more than treading water.
Despite the fact that it may have taken a little extra negotiating to get there, that makes Dustin Poirier’s recent statements on his upcoming bout against #12 ranked Benoit Saint Denis something entirely refreshing. With a only a little tread left on the tires, and with a firm grip on the #3 spot in the lightweight division, the ‘Diamond’ had every reason not to want to fight the former French paratrooper. As he revealed in a recent MMA Hour interview, however, Poirier wanted to give Saint Denis the same chance he got earlier in his career.
“I thought the offer in the UFC would be something more like that,” Poirier said, revealing that he had been looking for something like a ‘legacy’ fight against RDA (transcript via MMA Junkie). “I needed something to get me up in the morning. I respect this sport, and I honor this sport, and I’m 35 years old now. This guy is a young, hungry lion who is on a streak. I think he finished five fights in a row. Somebody gave me my shot to crack in, so I respect the game. That’s what I’m doing. Let’s see if I still (can do it). March 9, buy the pay-per-view and we’ll see. We’ll find out.”
Indeed, go back to 2017, and Dustin Poirier was sitting at the #9 spot in the lightweight division coming off a majority decision win over Jim Miller. Just a few months prior, he had been cold-cocked by Michael Johnson in the first round for a knockout loss. That fact didn’t stop #3 ranked former champion Eddie Alvarez from giving Poirier a chance to secure the biggest win of his career to date.
An illegal knee turned that bout into a no contest, unfortunately. But Poirier’s action forward style and thrilling exchanges up until that moment put him firmly into the elite from that moment forward. Fights with Anthony Pettis and Justin Gaethje followed, as well as the Alvarez rematch. Long story short, the Louisiana native has been a top attraction ever since.
Maybe he can pass on the same kind of shine to Saint Denis? Maybe he’ll slam the door on a next-gen talent looking to use the ATT fighter as a stepping stone. Either way, it should be a hell of a lot of fun. Credit to Poirier for taking a cool fight that he absolutely did not need.
Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Weili Zhang share some quality time
Such is the way of Google these days, and perhaps also of my increasingly foggy memory, that I can only half remember the anecdote I’m about to relay—and can see no easy way to track it down. If that sounds like something your dad would do to drive you crazy, please note that I have no children, so the best I can do is inflict myself up on my readers.
Anyway, years ago now, I recall some fighter who was asked one of the more banal kind of media questions our industry tends to feed fighters when we have nothing more topical on which to latch on. The question went, approximately, ‘What advice would you give to other young fighters?’
I may not remember whether it was MMA or boxing, but the answer always stuck with me. The advice was simple enough: Don’t be afraid to make friends with your competition.
Combat sports, as a rule, tend to run on aggression and isolationism. The person you trained with yesterday might be your opponent tomorrow. For many, the desire to fight breeds its own hostility just for the sake of maintenance.
But the point this old guy had to make was a great one. Essentially, that this kind of lifestyle is lonely. Most other people won’t get it and can’t relate to it. But your opponents can and will. These are the people that will understand what you’ve been through and who can share your experiences. Don’t push them away.
That said, it’s cool to see now-retired former UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk hanging out with current champion Weili Zhang. The two women put on an all time classic war in 2020. Even if their 2022 rematch didn’t live up to that level, they created a piece of MMA history together. A couple years later they’re on social media chumming it up, and the vibes couldn’t be more positive.
Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk hanging out together over the weekend. 😁
Maybe one of these days we’ll get to see Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal out to dinner together at Papi Steak. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?
HATE TO SEE IT
Matt Brown reveals career disinterest in negotiating with the UFC
I guess I’ll start this out with a pretty simple statement. If any pro fighter is happy with their fighting career, I’m happy for them. I’m especially always happy for a guy like Matt Brown, who has made his reputation by being an action-first badass, even if it never brought him particularly close to title contention.
Matt Brown sounds like someone pretty content with what their time in the UFC and MMA in general has brought them, so I can’t knock that. All that said, however, I really do hate to see that that satisfaction has come with little to no pushback against UFC brass and the contracts he’s had from them over the years.
In a recent interview with MMA Fighting, Brown gave his insight on the recent kerfuffle between Dustin Poirier and Dana White. Mostly noting that he doesn’t really understand the idea of negotiating contract terms from one bout to the next. As far as he’s concerned, the UFC gave him a fight, he took it. Negotiations over.
“They ask me if I want to fight this guy and I say OK. I’ve never really negotiated or asked for a different guy, it’s not really been my style. For me, it’s been pretty simple. I’ve always been happy with the way they treated me and the pay they give me and everything. I don’t really know what they mean when they say they didn’t come to terms. The terms are, you’re going to fight a guy on this date, go do it.”
“I probably should have negotiated more than I have,” Brown said with a laugh. “I can only speak to my own personal experience here. When they have offered me a new contract, I said, ‘Thank you, let’s go. Who am I going to fight?’ I never really negotiated that either. Maybe I should have. Maybe in retrospect I should have, but I never did. I’ve always just been happy to fight.”
There was a point in the interview where Brown does admit that he once negotiated one contract with Dana White directly. Saying that the process more or less involved he and White having a friendly chat, White asking him to throw out a number, and immediately agreeing to that number. “I probably should have asked for more,” Brown recalled, “but I thought I got my worth and it was pretty simple.”
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m lamenting this position just for the sake of spiting the UFC. As much as I may think they take advantage of the fact that most talent seems happy just to be there, the truth is that sports in general (but fighting in particular) are one of the few professions out there where the longevity of the most necessary talent is most severely capped.
With a nearly 20 year career under his belt (17 of which have been spent with the UFC), Brown is one of a very rare few who get to make up for a lack of short term earnings with long term staying power. For so many others, they Octagon will chew them up and spit them out, leaving their time as athletes over before they know it. Sometimes even leaving them unable to even take part in that which they’ve built their whole lives around.
For every Matt Brown or Andrei Arlovski there’s a TJ Grant, Alex Reyes, or Chris Holdsworth. Which is to say that, whether it’s the UFC or Bellator or PFL or RIZIN, I want to see fighters squeeze every penny they can out of their time as fighters. Once they’re done fighting, who knows what work will be left for them. Coaches, managers, and promoters can all move on to the next hot talent. Fighters can’t. I’m glad Matt Brown is happy, I just hope other fighters don’t follow that lead.
One legged Colby Covington
There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Colby Covington’s performance against Leon Edwards at UFC 296 was no good. It was butt, plain and simple. Already a two time title contender, Covington looked edgy from the moment go, and it was only after several rounds that he found his way into the contest, securing the final frame on every judges scorecard.
That was close to two months ago. Plenty of time for ‘Chaos’ to synthesize the loss and figure out what his next move was going to be. Only, this is MMA, and like most other high level combat sports, the most important part comes not from learning or correcting, but from the maintenance of the ego. Covington couldn’t have lost to Leon Edwards because Edwards was just a better fighter on the night, more prepared and more ready to perform. There must be another reason. Something that guarantees if they ran back the fight, Covington would win.
“I couldn’t plant or explode off it to use the wrestling and pressure I planned to use,” Covington said in a recent interview with Submission Radio (transcript via MMA Fighting), in which he disclosed an injury to his left foot. “I didn’t want to disclose this information until I had the X-rays back home, but here they are.
“I knew straight away it was bad. It was the first kick I threw, it landed right on his elbow. He was in orthodox so I kind of got a little overzealous and I wanted to rip a high kick to his orthodox side because I didn’t know if he’d be defensively sound from southpaw. So, the first kick I threw, a high kick, it was kind of like a middle kick, it landed on his elbow.”
“Haters will still find a way to hate on me for fighting 25 minutes on one leg while landing over 100 more strikes than Leon,” Covington added. “But you know what, my haters are so broke they can’t even pay attention so f*** them.”
For the record, Covington got out-landed 57 to 44 by Edwards over 5 rounds. Although he did hold a 44 strike advantage (109 to 65) in total strikes, almost all of which came from round 5, where Covington secured three full minutes of top control against the champion.
I don’t want to come off overly harsh on Covington (I already got a chance to take my shots in the immediate aftermath of his loss), but sooner or later fighters gotta realize that this kind of disclosure doesn’t help them much at all. Fighting is dangerous, and people get injured all the time. MMA history is writ large with tales of top talent fighting through gruesome pain to seal a victory. Say what you will about Jon Jones, but his toe was basically falling off when he beat Chael Sonnen to defend his light heavyweight title.
If Covington wants to believe that his injury is the only reason Leon Edwards beat him back in December, that’s his business. But trying to sell it to everyone else more than a month later, after well all watched that fight? No sir, I can’t buy it.
Hitting the news this week, we’ve got a couple of comments for the commentary booths from both the UFC and Bellator/PFL. Plus we’re diving in on Khamzat Chimaev’s new trust issues, and Miesha Tate giving fans the hard sell on UFC 297.
The combat sports world is a constant circus of good news and bad. I’m just here trying to sort through it all to find those items that spark something a little more than ‘okay, that’s good to know.’ Join me for the latest Love/Hate to See It column…
LOVE TO SEE IT
Chris Curtis takes a shot at Dominick Cruz
Maybe time has dulled my memory, after all I’ve always felt that nostalgia is the most toxic of all emotions. It pulls us not to enjoy (or simply cope with) the world around us as it is, but to try and recapture some imagined past. Usually an era where we either weren’t even alive to experience it, or had no real sense of the multitude of problems surrounding us even then.
Did things really used to be better, or were we just younger and more foolish and free of woes?
What I’m trying to say is, that Dominick Cruz might be the worst regular UFC commentary booth member since Zuffa took ownership of the company back in 2001. Yes, even including Mike Goldberg.
Known for his long running Team Alpha Male feud during the height of his championship reign/injury epidemic, it turns out that the very feistiness that fueled his trash talk (and very likely his fighting career) is a personality trait that he can never turn off. When in the booth, calling that action, that often surfaces as a tendency for petty bickering, and an inability to let a singular observation go once it’s crept into his mind.
Lately, Cruz’s biggest fixation has been on the idea of ‘damage’ as a principal scoring criteria. Namely, in his mind, that the clearest (and perhaps only) signifier of damage in a fight are cuts. Every time a fighter gets cut, Cruz goes on a mini-rant about how they’ve now lost the fight because they’ve suffered the most damage. Never mind that it’s supposed to be an indicator of impact more than anything else.
Did a fighter get knocked down? Dazed? Wobbled? Were they slammed hard? Did the shots they took look heavier? Those are all measurements of damage too. Cuts and bruising are certainly a secondary or tertiary part of that scale, but to hear Cruz tell it, you’d think they made up the entire rubric.
It seems like fighters are getting tired of Cruz’s fixations as well. In a recent interview following his UFC 297 win, middleweight Chris Curtis took the ‘Dominator’ to task.
“I get s—t on by ‘DC’ and Dominick Cruz every time I fight,” Curtis said on The MMA Hour (transcript via MMA Fighting). “No matter what’s happening. DC was kinder than before, but Dominick Cruz is just like, ‘It looks like he’s sparring,’ and blah blah blah. Bro, [Barriault is] a solid man. He’s been knocked out once, I have been knocked out once. It’s not going to be easy to knock the other down, it’s just not.
“I hit him with some s—t that I’ve dropped people with, and he just kind of looked at it. I elbowed him a few times, I went to move in, he’s just staring at me like he’s back there. I hear Dominick Cruz say, ‘It’s just like a sparring match,’ and then, not to be a dick, but people are going to latch on to what the commentary says, and now I hear, ‘He didn’t even fight hard. It was a low-energy sparring match.’ Stand in front of me and let me hit you the same way.”
“Dominick Cruz, stand here Dominick Cruz, and let me hit you the way I was hitting him and see if it’s just sparring. No, we’re two large, solid men. I promise you guys, I was hitting him f hard, he was hitting me hard, I feel it since the fight. [Cruz] is like, ‘It looks like sparring.’ I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, the narrative is glorious.’ So I’m proud of myself, I’m very proud of myself.”
Here’s the thing. As he’s shown in several incidents over his UFC career, Chris Curtis can be a pretty sensitive guy. He seems to take criticism to heart, and doesn’t let go of it easily. To the point that we’ve even seen him get frustrated with opponents in the cage, when they don’t give him the fight he wants.
And, to be fair to Cruz, much like his teammate Sean Strickland, the ‘Action Man’ has a style that seems like it’s been born out of a ton of hard sparring. Where Strickland chooses a volume jab style, meant to score points and stay safe, Curtis chooses a back-foot, selective counter-striking style.
But I can’t help it, maybe I’m just petty too. Cruz’s work in the commentary booth is a continual drag. If the result of that is that he’s gonna catch a few strays, even when he might not be wrong, I’m here for it. Go off Curtis.
Big John McCarthy exits the booth
Probably one of the most surprising and strangest idiosyncrasies to pop up in the MMA world has been the commentary work of legendary MMA referee John McCarthy. A co-author (and sometimes outright creator) of many of the rules that define modern mixed martial arts, McCarthy has been a fixture in the North American MMA world essentially since day 1.
I’ve spoken to ‘Big’ John a couple times in my time working for Bloody Elbow. He’s a gregarious, generous speaker who will always give straight answers to questions, can fill in details whenever needed, and has a fantastic memory for the history of the sport.
He’s also just absolutely no fun as a play-by-play/color commentary figure in a broadcast booth. I don’t know why it is, I don’t know how it is, but the work just doesn’t seem to fit his style. His time with Bellator has come off as a mix of unfocused and low energy, seemingly often downplaying major swings in action, or simply missing key moments with off topic stories.
It has to be said, as well, that it feels like he’s had enough of a runway at this point that if he were going to improve a lot in the roll, he already would have. I’m not surprised Bellator kept him on in the position as long as they did. Like I said before, my experience of the guy is that he’s wonderfully easy to work with. But over time it felt like a marked downgrade of the product from its glory days with Jimmy Smith and Sean Wheelock calling the action.
“I am going to be staying with the PFL because I had a contract with Bellator, and it still has a year on it, so the PFL picked that up,” McCarthy explained. “Will my role be the same? I don’t think it’s going to be the same.
“I think it’s going to be more towards rules and regulations, scoring the fights and doing those things – making sure everyone understands what’s being done, if it’s being done in the correct way and what options do the officials have.”
McCarthy is definitely an asset that PFL would do well to keep. But if they can find a role for him that’s not one where he’s constantly on the mic, calling the fights? That seems like it’s the best idea for everyone involved.
HATE TO SEE IT
Khamzat Chimaev learns not to trust the UFC
It’s one of the most enduring factors of the UFC’s business model. Ever since the promotion took its first steps away from the tournament model in the mid-90s, there are no guarantees in the Octagon. Yesterday’s promise is today’s maybe and tomorrow’s change of plans.
It’s a fact that has driven a whole generation of rival companies. From Bellator and PFL, to PRIDE and now RIZIN, other organizations look to lay down a path to contendership, a way to be Pepsi to the UFC’s Coke. It’s also a lament that fighters find themselves singing time and time again, ‘What do I have to do to get a title shot around here?’
At some point it really does feel like this lesson should get learned. There is no fight booking promise the UFC would make that they would feel honor bound to keep. Nonetheless, Khamzat Chimaev is still very disappointed to find out that he’s not in consideration for the middleweight title.
“I heard Dana White said that, ‘I don’t think Khamzat is next for the title,’ that’s the bulls—t, man,” Chimaev told ESPN in a recent interview (transcript via MMA Fighting), after Dana White told media he didn’t think the Chechen-born fighter would be healthy enough to compete at UFC 300.
“If you promised me something, you have to answer for your words, and I’m the guy who always answers for my words. I don’t care if it’s some president, or a king, if you give me [your] word, you have to answer for that.”
“I will be surprised if that happens—if somebody fights [for the title] next, and not me. We’ll see, I didn’t talk with Dana, and I don’t know what he’s thinking. He knows better than me.
“In my mind, it should be me,” Chimaev added. “I asked Hunter [Campbell] to let me fight at UFC 300, so we’ll see what they say.”
I honestly can’t believe I’m about to say this, but realistically, the UFC is right not to guarantee these kinds of bookings. Combat sports always has been and always will be just as much about the grandeur and sizzle as it is about finding out who’s the ‘baddest man on the planet’. These aren’t team events and they aren’t golf or tennis where impact is low enough and repetitions are high enough that you can more or less guarantee a certain number of stars will shine at every event.
Even at its best, fighting is wild and chaotic and filled with the possibility of upset and injury. Maybe three months ago Chimaev looked like a great title fight option. But now a possible Adesanya vs. du Plessis fight looks like a better one.
Hate to see another fighter learning this lesson the hard way, but anyone who wants to compete in the Octagon is going to find themselves rolling with the punches—whether they want to or not.
Miesha Tate makes case for ‘dynamic’ UFC 297 co-main event
I know women get a hard time of things from MMA fans. Far too many of their fights are dismissed out of hand as a ‘bathroom break’ and comments are filled with the listless braindead droning of men who don’t think women should be competing, no matter how competent or entertaining they are. I don’t want to add to that noise. So just to start off, I’ll go ahead and say that I don’t really think Raquel Pennington vs. Mayra Bueno Silva was any worse than Alexandre Pantoja vs. Brandon Royval.
That said, I also seem to be one of the only people out there who thinks that the most recent UFC flyweight title fight was more dud than dynamic. In both cases, the first time challenger looked dramatically unprepared for their first real taste of the big stage. In both cases one of the title competitors seemed to gas out horribly early, and in both cases the winning champ looked hardly a half-step better than their competition.
That said, let’s not try to sell the co-main event of UFC 297 as some kind of resounding piece of entertainment.
Well didn’t we know that would happen, Mayra is young and doesn’t really pace herself which I think is very exciting but hard to hold that over 5 rounds. She did well for her first 5 round fight it’s not easy and a lot of pressure https://t.co/XV7m9ekJfP
Well no disrespect but you can’t claim the main event was any more exciting. Solid fights but if we must compare I thought the co main was much more dynamic and much closer to finishes multiple times https://t.co/lvPncYBvTi
Truly no sport has trouble with numbers like MMA. Mayra Bueno Silva is 32. Miesha Tate is 37. Raquel Pennington is 35. Nobody here is ‘young.’ I’m sure ‘Sheetara’ will be back to the top of the mountain soon, but she’s been in this business for 9 years. Relative to her division, she’s a top tier athlete in her prime, and she absolutely was not prepared.
This isn’t me trying to talk up Strickland vs. du Plessis either, as a main event. It was a totally reasonable, solid title fight. Nothing electrifying. But at least both fighters looked prepared. Du Plessis is younger and has never fought five rounds either, he was still ready for the task at hand. There have been plenty of great fights from women in the Octagon, fights we can all laud as entertaining. This wasn’t one of them.
This article first appeared on the Bloody Elbow Substack on January 21, 2024. For early access to exclusive content become a paid subscriber!
The UFC has been leading the way for mixed martial arts in North America for more than 30 years now. In that time, the promotion has seen a whole slew of title holders. Since the first heavyweight champion was crowned in 1997, 98 different men and women have worn UFC gold.
Some of those have become all time legends. Fighters like Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, Amanda Nunes, and Valentina Shevchenko set new standards for their divisions—defending their belts for years on end, while the competition struggled to keep up with greatness.
Others have fallen far to the wayside. The Ricco Rodriguezes, the Murilo Bustamantes, the Johny Hendrickses. No shame in it—the chances for anyone to win a title belt in the UFC are incredibly slim. Not everyone can become a legend, sometimes it’s just enough to get your name in the history books at all.
The curse of the dominant UFC champ
One of the the hallmarks of lesser title reigns are often that they come directly in the shadows of greatness. Part of the price of having truly dominant figures in combat sports is that they can create a power vacuum around them. Suddenly the ‘champ’ is gone and the 4-5 top contenders that seemed a mile away from ever beating them only have one another to deal with.
We’ve had 5 light heavyweight champions since Jon Jones vacated his title in 2020. Yesterday Sean Strickland was middleweight champ, today it’s Dricus Du Plessis. Come 2025 would anyone be that shocked if Israel Adesanya was wearing gold again?
Much more than ‘Stillknocks’ however, it’s hard not to see Raquel Pennington’s performance in the UFC 297 co-main event and think that the belt likely belongs to whoever steps up next. She looked slow and cumbersome in a fight where her opponent gassed badly before the championship rounds, and then very clearly quit on herself before the final bell.
Pennington deserves all the credit
I don’t want to deny Pennington the thrill of victory. A lifetime of hardwork went into this moment. She deserves her flowers. And hopefully she’ll get enough decent paydays out of this that she’ll be secure in retirement no matter how her title reign shakes out. But, it has to rank up there with Bas Rutten’s guard game and Nicco Montano TUF Finale for ‘yeah, but…’ moments in UFC title fight history.
Say what you will about Matt Serra’s victory over GSP, but there was no doubt about why he won that belt. Somehow, inexplicably, even Carla Esparza beating Rose Namajunas had more feel that Esparza was the champion of the moment. Mostly, I think because her win streak included victories over Alexa Grasso and Yan Xiaonan.
The actual win over ‘Thug Rose’ might have been comical and her downfall inevitable, but there was no denying that, for one shining moment, she was the clear top contender who went through the right fights to be there.
Still in Ronda Rousey recovery mode
Pennington went on a hell of a win streak herself to get to UFC gold, but even in a division as paper thin as women’s bantamweight Ketlen Vieira’s the only really relevant win on the path. A little unfair, to be sure, given that Pannie Kianzad and Macy Chiasson are still ranked. It’s also the price of a division that has never really recovered from the end of the Ronda Rousey era—which Amanda Nunes extended.
The women who made up those prime years—Holly Holm, Nunes, Miesha Tate—are no longer near their prime, if they’re even competing at all. And unfortunately for fans, they haven’t been replaced by a following wave of talent. There doesn’t seem to be a next generation of elite performers who can clearly stand above their peers, either at the top of the UFC, or at the bottom of the division starting their climb. A ton of competitive fights, but no outliers to define greatness.
In that pack, Pennington has been the lucky one. Too tough to get finished by any but the best, and busy enough to win six decisions in her last eight fights—with one submission win and a controversial loss to Holm as well. For an athlete that was barely treading above .500 a few years back, it’s a remarkable testament to her heart and determination. A reminder that there truly is great value in never giving up on a dream.
Context is key
And, if we’re being entirely honest, I wouldn’t automatically pick her to lose to most likely next contender (and former champion) Julianna Pena either. After all, Pena is still only three fights removed from getting handily out-grappled by then 36-year-old Muay Thai stylest Germaine de Randamie. It could happen again.
That alone probably means that Pennington doesn’t deserve the mantel of ‘least dominant UFC champion’. Relative to her competition, she’s right in the thick of things. Moreso than Esparza was against Zhang, or Serra was in the inevitable GSP rematch—or more than Michael Bisping after he took his victory lap against Dan Henderson. Still, it’s a dubious honor when the owner of a UFC title still seems like they have so much left to prove.
Sean Strickland triggers huge backlash with pre-fight remarks
UPDATE by Nate Wilcox: I’m jumping into Zane’s post to add the latest Sean Strickland shenanigans. He was confronted about his past homophobic remarks by Alex Lee of MMA Fighting and attempted to turn the tables by attacking Lee in the strongest possible terms.
Here’s the video of their exchange:
Sean Strickland went off on journalist @AlexanderKLee simply for asking about his comments on the LGBTQ+ community
Mediaite has the transcript (obscenities removed because we have a deal with MSN):
Before the reporter even asked the question, Strickland asked him if he was “part of the opposition” when the reporter informed him he was Canadian. The reporter was confused by the question, prompting Strickland to clarify and ask him if he voted for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. When the reporter declined to answer, Strickland claimed it was proof that he did vote for him. He also called the reporter “the enemy of Canada.”
Finally, the reporter asked Strickland about something he said in the past about disapproving of his son being gay. Strickland cut him off and asked if he was gay, to which the reporter claimed he’s an ally. Then, Strickland asked what he would do if his son was gay. When the reporter said he’d be OK with it, Strickland went off.
“You’re a weak man, dude,” Strickland said. “You’re part of the problem. You elected Justin Trudeau when he seized the bank accounts. You’re just pathetic. And the fact that you have no backbone as he shut down your fucking country and seized bank accounts, you asked me some stupid **** like that? Go **** yourself. Move the **** on, man. (Effing) coward.”
Then, the reporter followed up by asking Strickland about past comments about the trans community. When the UFC announced its partnership with Bud Light, Strickland voiced his disapproval for that, as well.
“Here’s the thing about Bud Light,” Strickland said. “Ten years ago, to be trans was a mental fucking illness; and now, all of sudden, people like you have weaseled your way in the world. You are an infection. You are the definition of weakness. Everything that is wrong with the world is because of (effing) you.
“And the best thing is the world’s not buying it. The world’s not buying your (effing BS) you’re (effing) peddling. The world is not saying, ‘You know what? You’re right. Fucking chicks have *****.’ The world’s not saying that. The world’s saying, ‘No, there are two genders.’ I don’t want my kids being taught about who they could **** in school. I don’t want my kids being taught about their sexual preference.”
Strickland then continued to direct his fury at the reporter for asking the question.
“This guy is the enemy,” he continued. “You wanna look at the enemy to our world? It’s that ******** right there, asking me stupid questions.”
“I come from a city that has a very strong LGBTQ community,” Lee told Outsports after the encounter with Strickland. “I’ve never been comfortable with a lot of fighters’ stances on LGBTQ issues, and he’s been worse than most. I felt it was my responsibility to communities in the city of Toronto to ask these questions.”
Mainstream sports figures, as well as MMA media were quick to condemn Strickland’s statements.
UFC used to have a code of conduct. Then came the lawsuit and there went the code of conduct (can't fine an "independent contractor", see?).
And not one sponsor has a word to say about Dana's conduct. Meanwhile, get ready for UFC's to use Gay Pride month to sell t-shirts again.
This being MMA, Strickland has plenty of defenders:
Is that this is what Sean wants. He wants to be able to express himself and make everyone who is offended be offended. So while you guys keep crying and patting these reporters on the back for stirring the pot Sean is literally just laughing in his hotel room because he got what
This week in our regularly schedule Love/Hate to See It rundown, we’ve got Mayra Bueno Silva talking plans for the UFC title and Renato Moicano keeping it absolutely 100% on fighting at the UFC Apex. We’ve also got Sean Strickland still in the feelings he tells other people not to have and that Logan Paul impersonator trying to plea his case for a shot at Nate Diaz.
As always, I’m trying to sift through the MMA’s smaller stories for news that pulls some kind of gut reaction. Love it or hate it, combat sports is never short on drama.
LOVE TO SEE IT
Mayra Bueno Silva has plans for her UFC belt
This coming weekend Mayra Bueno Silva faces off against Raquel Pennington for the women’s UFC bantamweight title. It’s a competitive booking for both women that should provide for a lot of back-and-forth action, with Pennington being the more determined, round-winning grinder and ‘Sheetara’ the more proven, dangerous finisher.
It’s a goal both women have been striving for over multiple years, and could provide either of them with life changing money. If Bueno-Silva captures gold, however, it sounds like it could also provide life changing funds for a lot of other people too.
“It’s hard to talk about this,” Silva said in an interview with MMA Junkie. “But I’m born in a community where some days I don’t eat. I don’t have water and other things. It’s hard for me to talk about this. I don’t want the kids in my community to stay in this same position. I want to change lives. I want to show for everybody if you work hard, if you believe in God, everything can happen.
“When I get the belt, I will start everything. I will start the project in my city. When I put on my belt, everything starts in my life. It’s not only about the belt, it’s about my life. This is about my dream. This is about my kids. This is about my community. This is about everything I believe in.”
Back in the days when I did more interviews, one of the questions I used to ask fighters was ‘What are your plans for the belt?’ So many fighters talk about becoming champion as the entire goal of their career, as though the world stops once they’ve got a title around their waist. But, the belt is just a means to an end. It’s official recognition of skill, an opportunity to make more money, and leverage to negotiate.
It seems like a small thing, but I can’t help feeling like it helps fighters a lot to have plans beyond just ‘becoming champ.’ Having an idea of what that title can do is having extra motivation to go out and win. And maybe, hopefully, the foresight to make better choices with the opportunities that come along.
Maybe none of what Mayra Bueno-Silva wants to do will come to fruition, maybe she’ll lose on Saturday night. But for now it’s great to see her have a cause to fight for. Especially one that seems like it could do some real good for the community around her.
Renato Moicano, on the other hand, has been a revelation. The Brazilian has made a habit lately of getting on YouTube to post rants, highlighting problems with referees, problems with the UFC, and his own desire, of course, to make more money.
In a recent interview , Moicano talked about his upcoming bout against Drew Dober, where he’ll be playing co-main event to a middleweight bout between Nassourdine Imavov and Roman Dolidze. So is the 34-year-old excited to get some prominent card placement after sitting in the featured prelim spot last time out?
“This is a Fight Night. Nobody gives a s—t about Fight Nights,” Moicano told MMA Junkie. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the co-main event, main event, or the prelims. Who gives a f—k? It’s just a s—ty way to put UFC on ESPN. So hey, Dana White, I’d rather be on UFC 299. But I don’t make the rules. I’m an employee. Feb. 3, I will beat Drew Dober. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the Apex. Nobody likes the Apex, my brother. You can ask anybody. The fans hate the Apex. The fighters, I’m pretty sure they don’t like the Apex, too.”
“… “I know the UFC has so many fighters right now and have to make so many fights. It makes sense for the Apex and ESPN. If you’re asking me if I’m happy to fight at the Apex, no way, brother. No way. Imagine UFC 299 in Miami, a lot of people, you have a great performance and then you can talk in a mic with a great guy like Joe Rogan or even Michael Bisping, DC, and you can express yourself.”
A couple years ago, when the UFC first established their run of APEX events, at the height of the pandemic, I felt pretty sure they’d never leave. The promotion had created a cheap and easy way to put on filler content in a location they control, that doesn’t require travel coordination, site fees, or a need to attract a live gate. In 2024, it seems clear that’s just the reality fans will have to accept. The promotion might be traveling more than it was during the height of the pandemic, but there’s little desire or necessity from the promotion to leave.
In that kind of environment, the best anyone can do is call it like it is. There may be no changing the UFC’s course, but there’s no reason to be happy about it either. Can’t help but appreciate Moicano being willing to speak his mind.
HATE TO SEE IT
Sean Strickland can’t pick a lane
I suppose I’ll start this out by saying that, just like Strickland’s insinuations that Ian Machado Garry’s wife is a pedophile, or Colby Covington trash talking Leon Edwards’ dead dad, Dricus du Plessis’ comments about Stricklands abusive childhood genuinely suck ass. It’s part of the current ‘f— your feelings’ MAGAfied era of the UFC, and it seems to be something that more fighters are willing to embrace.
A recent piece on MMA Fighting highlighted the exact culture at play, talking to a whole bunch of Strickland’s current and former teammates about his behavior in the gym. The narrative, without exception is one that the current middleweight champ is a fantastic teammate, as long as training partners aren’t sissies who can’t handle a little tough talk.
“I think he’s a great teammate,” Xtreme Couture team captain Brad Tavares told Fighting. “If you’re sensitive and your f—ing feelings get hurt, then you’re not going to like Sean. Simple as that. If you’re not a p—y and you can get past what he’s saying—not even what he’s saying, but how he’s saying it, that’s just how he is—if you can get past that, then you really see he’s actually trying to help you. He really is an addition and a plus for the team.
“If you can get past that, you’ll like Sean. If you’re sensitive and your feelings get hurt, you’re not going to like it. That’s just how it goes.”
At least to hear the likes of Tavares, Sam Alvey, Max Roshkopf, and Eric Nicksick tell it, problems people have with Strickland are largely a matter of being too soft. All this nasty rhetoric flying around is just the way fight culture is. (They aren’t all that far wrong either, considering how long fighters have been going after their opponents through the media.)
Of course, then there’s Strickland’s latest tough talk, where he says he’ll stab Du Plessis if he brings up Strickland’s trauma in Toronto.
“I’m not telling you I don’t want to fight you, Dricus,” Strickland said in a video on his YouTube channel (transcript via MMA Junkie). “I’m not saying you’re not a good fighter. I’m just saying that’s a line that, when crossed, it transcends fighting. If I go to Canada and you bring that up, guess what? I’m going to go to jail, they’re going to deport me, and we spent eight weeks of training for no f—ing reason.”
There are pretty much two ways that can skew. Either his absolutely BS-ing and isn’t about to stab anyone, least of all his PPV opponent (seems most likely), or he’s coming to grips with the reality that all these fighters just seem unwilling to face. The reality that there are actually a whole bunch of things that people aren’t interested in talking about, dragging out in public, or having used as cheap heat for a sporting contest.
Either way it makes all these dudes look like they’re entirely full of crap. People set boundaries for a reason, and those have nothing to do with how tough they are in a fight. Playing pretend on emotional vulnerability is pretty sad all around. Whether it’s pretending that he’s going to commit murder, or pretending that he’s too much of a stone cold badass to be bothered—Strickland’s just acting out a fantasy he can’t maintain. Doing both at the same time? That’s just a little hysterical.
Fake Logan Paul calls out Nate Diaz after brush with death
Hey everybody, remember that guy who was pretending to be Logan Paul for likes on Instagram? If you said ‘no’ congratulations on living a healthy, well balance life, free from the sin that is carnival combat sports.
If you said ‘yes,’ then boy have I got an update for you! In a recent video uploaded to the Misfits Boxing YouTube channel Rodney ‘Not Logan Paul’ Petersen wove a tale of shocking violence over his ill fated encounter with Nate Diaz out in the streets. To hear Peterson tell it, after getting choked unconscious and dropped on the concrete by the former UFC title contender, he’s lucky to be alive.
“I walked up to him, I was like, ‘Hey dude, calm down,’” Petersen said. “I would have bought him a drink. I did not think that he was … he walks up to me, grabs both my hands, I’m like, ‘Whoa, dude, calm down.’ He grabs both of my hands, tosses it down, throws a hook, lands on my jaw, pulls me down into a guillotine choke.
“Not only am I being choked out by Nate freaking Diaz, but I have two of Nate’s friends — one of them’s in the UFC — blast me in my ribs. At this point and time, I’m pretty sure I was already asleep. That choke was tight…”
“I’m on the ground, the back of my head hits the street. I end up with eight staples and a severe concussion. I am lucky to be alive.”
We already know the case isn’t going to criminal court, since the New Orleans Parish has declared Diaz’s actions a case of self defense and declined to pursue the case. But surely, if Petersen feels he was dealt potential life threatening injuries and never acted in aggression toward Diaz he could pursue some kind of civil case? It all sounds pretty bad, right?
Or maybe all he wants out of the whole thing is to turn it into another celebrity boxing payday. With a current pro boxing record of 0-6, Petersen claims he’d be more than happy to meet the Cesar Gracie black belt inside the ring.
“If he wants to fight me in the ring, yeah. But as far as the street goes, there was no money to be made in that,” Petersen admitted. “If he wants to box, for sure, I’d box him tomorrow.
“If he wants to do an MMA match, you’re going to have to give me some time to train … so maybe five or six years?”
Fortunately for Diaz, it seems he already has his next spectacle in hand. The 38 year old is reportedly set to face Jorge Masvidal inside the boxing ring. The two men met in the UFC already, back in 2019—with ‘Gamebred’ walking away with a third round doctor’s stoppage. Maybe once that plan’s wrapped up he’ll pick up the phone and give Petersen a ring.
Sports (yes the UFC is a sport) are, by their nature, a transitory medium. Today’s stars are always on the verge of getting replaced. The next generation of talent isn’t somewhere way down the line in the distant future, more often than not they’re right around the corner, constantly working to claw their way to relevancy.
More so perhaps than boxing the UFC especially knows and relishes this fact. For the bulk of the promotion’s history, the Octagon has been a place where fighters might get a flash of success, a few brief years, before being cast off for the next hot commodity. A threshing machine more interested in sorting potential PPV sellers than protecting anyone’s legacy.
That’s less the case now, where fighters are getting more and more chances to put together extended runs in the Endeavor-owned organization even without a lot of highlight successes to their name (see my recent editorial on Andrei Arlovski). But even in that atmosphere, Jim Miller feels like something special.
Over 15 years of bouts inside the Octagon, Miller has put together a 26-16 record. He’s never fought for a title, and the raw numbers may not look like much on paper, but has stayed an action fight mainstay for every minute of that run. At his worst Miller was losing to the likes of Dustin Poirier, Anthony Pettis, Francisco Trinaldo, and Dan Hooker—and battling the prolonged effects of Lyme disease. Outside of that run he’s never lost two fights in a row and has won five of his last six, with all victories coming by finish. The last time Jim Miller won a decision was 2016.
Truly, Miller’s maintained success has been notably astounding. Unlike so many fighters his age, Miller has neither succumbed to chinniness, diminishing output, or a notable drop in cardio. He may not be quite as fast as he was a decade ago, but outside of that he seems like a fighter resisting so many of the ravages of time that plague his cohorts.
In short, Jim Miller is an old dude who has taken all the time and experience and lessons of a life of fighting and put them to practice. He’s been competing at or near the highest levels of MMA for year after year after year, and somehow he’s still a fun fighter to root for. Outside of pure contrarianism, it’s hard to think of any reason fans would have not to pull for Miller and his succes. (Maybe that ‘A-10’ nickname? It ain’t great.)
Stumbling into the co-main and maybe the UFC Hall of Fame?
This past Saturday, Miller found himself in the co-main event of the opening fight night card for 2024. A position more or less stumbled into after Manel Kape saw his rematch with Matheus Nicolau go up in smoke due to a busted weight cut. Scheduled to face off against fellow veteran talent Gabriel Benitez, the two men delivered a fantastic scrap—trading hard shots for the better part of three rounds before Miller finished the fight with a face crank.
In the process, he picked up his fifth performance of the night bonus, making 15 for his career. He has the most wins in UFC history, the most bouts in UFC history and the second most finishes in UFC history. It’s a damn shame that he has never—and seemingly will never—get to fight for gold, but even if he weren’t in a sport where the Hall of Fame felt like a glorified employee of the month club, Miller has built a solid case to be a true ‘Hall of Famer’. In the UFC’s current iteration, his inclusion is practically a guarantee.
Next stop UFC 300? Brock Lesnar?
Assuming all the stars align, he will go on to fight at UFC 300 in three months time, making him the only man to fight on every centennial card (unless that Brock Lesnar fight he asked for comes to fruition). Like most of Miller’s accolades, it’s a testament to his remarkable longevity first and foremost. But he has truly done more over the years than simply survive. For just about as long as I’ve been an MMA fan, he’s always found a way to thrill.
Hat’s off to him. For as long as Jim Miller wants to keep competing, I’ll be compelled to cheer him on.
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