Author: mmafighting
UFC lightweight star Dustin Poirier feels “great” about where he stands with the promotion one week after his UFC 299 booking with Benoit Saint Denis was cast into doubt. Poirier was tight-lipped on the specifics of what went on behind the scenes to jeopardize the fight, which co-headlines the March 9 pay-per-view in Miami. More important to him was that everything worked out. “I don’t want to dive too deep into it,” he said Monday on The MMA Hour. “There was some miscommunication — not everybody was on the same page, and I couldn’t get a hold of somebody, and…
Mark Zuckerberg loves MMA, but his passion for the sport resulted in a warning to investors about how that could adversely affect business at Meta. In a new financial disclosure for 2024, Meta — the parent company to social networks like Facebook and Instagram — addressed potential risk factors to the business, which included a note about Zuckerberg’s increased interest in combat sports. Zuckerberg, 39, started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and eventually MMA when he teased a potential fight against fellow billionaire Elon Musk. Zuckerberg suffered a torn ACL in his knee during training, which likely prompted the warning to…
Ilia Topuria has big goals for 2024. Later this month, Topuria challenges Alexander Volkanovski for the featherweight title in the main event of UFC 298. The bout is one of the most heavily anticipated fights of the year, with oddsmakers having it as a near pick’em, but “El Matador” is supremely confident that things won’t be nearly that close come fight night. “It’s going to be a first-round knockout. You will see,” Topuria said Monday on The MMA Hour. “He’s saying a lot of bulls***, ‘There’s levels, I have this and I have that, dah, dah, dah.’ You’re right, there…
Quinton Jackson is indeed making his professional boxing debut this summer. An MMA legend and former UFC light heavyweight champion, “Rampage” takes on ex-WBO heavyweight champ Shannon Briggs in an eight-round boxing match on June 1 in Qatar. “It’s real,” Jackson confirmed Monday on The MMA Hour. “I’ve done everything else — I’ve done wrestling, I’ve done jiu-jitsu, and I’ve done kickboxing. I’ve put them all together, but I’ve never done boxing. So now all my four martial arts, I will have done at least one fight in that martial art. So that’s a personal goal of mine, and I’m…
Raquel Pennington is excited to finally settle her business with Julianna Peña. At UFC 297, Pennington claimed the vacant women’s bantamweight belt with a unanimous decision win over Mayra Bueno Silva, finally becoming a champion after 10 years in the UFC. It’s the crowning achievement of her career, but Pennington barely had time to enjoy the belt before Peña began to take shots at her. And now Pennington is ready to finally make her pay. “At the end of the day, it’s exactly what I told Mayra when we were getting ready to fight at the press conference: we were…
Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk have nothing but love for each other. Past rivals who competed in a pair of memorable bouts at UFC 248 and UFC 275, Zhang and Jedrzejczyk recently met up and they shared a brief video of the reunion in which they showered each other with respect. Watch the clip below. “We are each other’s opponent in the octagon, we all want to chase our dreams to win the fight, but outside of the octagon we are friends,” Zhang said in Mandarin. “We can have dinner together, we can talk to each other, we can be…
Bellator MMA is making a comeback in 2024. On Monday, the PFL announced plans for the Bellator Champions Series, which premieres with an event on March 22 at The SSE Arena, Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Bellator 302 card is headlined by a previously reported bout between Corey Anderson and Karl Moore for a vacant light heavyweight title, and top featherweight contender Leah McCourt fighting Sinead Kavanagh. Watch a trailer for the announcement below. This news comes four months after the PFL’s blockbuster acquisition of Bellator, which raised questions as to the future of the long-running promotion. The first…
Nassourdine Imavov got it done in the headliner of UFC Vegas 85 with a majority decision victory over Roman Dolidze on Saturday night at the UFC APEX. With the middleweight division being in a very intriguing place at the top, where does Imavov go following his first main event win inside the octagon? On an all-new edition of On To the Next One, MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck and Alexander K. Lee discuss what’s next for Imavov following his first UFC win since September 2022 and whether he will fight someone ranked higher or lower in the rankings. Additionally, future matchups…
The Mixed Martial Arts Hour is back in your life! Below is a rundown of Monday’s show, which begins at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. UK time. 1 p.m. ET: Recapping the weekend with Fury vs. Usyk new date, Dustin Poirier news, UFC APEX 85 and more. 1:50 p.m.: UFC APEX 85’s Themba Gorimbo reacts to his big win. 2:15 p.m.: Former boxing champ Teofimo Lopez previews his Thursday clash with Jamaine Ortiz. 2:45 p.m.: Former UFC champ Quinton Jackson returns to talk about his boxing match with Shannon Briggs. 3:30 p.m.: UFC APEX 85…
The bantamweight division will hold the first UFC title fight rematch of 2024. Sean O’Malley’s crowning moment against Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292 this past August was one of the highlights of the year. The reigning bantamweight champion fulfilled his personally long-expected dream after launching to superstardom through season one of Dana White’s Contender Series in July 2017. Along the way, there was only one setback of the “Sugar Show,” which came opposite Ecuador’s Marlon “Chito” Vera in August 2020. Vera TKO’d the future champion in round one and went on to remain one of the division’s most violent finishers,…