Author: mmafighting
Tatiana Suarez did not have a great birthday in 2023. The TUF 23 winner and top UFC strawweight contender suffered a knee injury while training on her 33rd birthday this past December. Suarez was slated to face Amanda Lemos in a pivotal bout on Feb. 17 at UFC 298, but her initial diagnosis was an optimistic one — she expected to be healed enough by fight night to compete in what was ostensibly her final test before a shot at the UFC strawweight title. Unfortunately, however, her knee had other ideas. “The inflammation just never went down,” Suarez revealed Wednesday…
UFC 300 is expected to deliver a loaded lineup for the promotion’s historic April event. Following one of the most chaotic years in recent memory, the UFC will bring UFC 300 to its home base of Las Vegas on April 13. UFC CEO Dana White has promised one of the most stacked, and perhaps, unpredictable lineups in company history. With four title fights already on the books for the first quarter of the year, including Sean Strickland vs. Dricus Du Plessis for the middleweight title, and Mayra Bueno Silva vs. Raquel Pennington for the vacant women’s bantamweight title at UFC…
Jon Anik’s UFC contract runs until 2026, and he hopes to renew. Recent accusations of bias from angry UFC fans haven’t changed his timeline for remaining in the sport. He’d like it to change the way he reacts to those fans on social media, though. One week after Anik’s impassioned retort to MMA fans who attacked him for scoring the UFC 297 headliner for Dricus du Plessis over Sean Strickland, the longtime UFC play-by-play man said he learned a lesson about when and what to engage online. It was not an employer-mandated lesson, he adds. “I think for me as…
The UFC women’s bantamweight division has the potential to get hit with a splash of intrigue at UFC 300 in April. That would be the best-case scenario, anyway. Therefore, the promotion’s newest big-name acquisition Kayla Harrison will have to get the job done against the division’s former champion, Holly Holm. The debut will be more than just Harrison’s first fight in the octagon overall, but the PFL staple has never fought south of 145 pounds in her 17-fight career (16-1). As much of a hurdle as many are expecting the weight cut to be for the former two-time PFL lightweight…
Payton Talbott and Cameron Saaiman will meet in a battle of bantamweight prospects at the UFC Fight Night card set for March 23 at the UFC APEX in Las Vegas. Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion’s plans confirmed the matchup to MMA Fighting on Wednesday. Verbal agreements are in place from both fighters. Undefeated with a perfect 7-0 record, Talbott will make his second UFC appearance after dispatching Nick Aguirre in impressive fashion with a third-round rear-naked choke submission this past November. That served as Talbott’s UFC debut after he scored a unanimous decision win over Reyes Cortez on…
Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk is set to be one for the ages. It’s only fitting that the promotion for the titanic heavyweight championship contest, which takes place Feb. 17 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is appropriately cinematic — and that’s exactly how the fight is framed in a newly released trailer for the matchup. Watch the epic clip below, which was released on social media by Saudi adviser Turki Alalshikh. The long-awaited undisputed heavyweight battle #RingOfFire between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk is set to unfold Let’s get ready to RUUUUUMBLLEEEEEEE النزال التاريخي المنتظر لبطولة الوزن الثقيل #RingOfFire بين تايسون…
RIZIN Fighting Federation’s upcoming schedule has undergone a slight change. RIZIN 46 and 47 were previously announced for March 23 and May 6, respectively, to take place in Japanese cities Kobe and Tokyo. However, the company has not only changed the events’ names, but also their dates — RIZIN 46 will now be labelled RIZIN Landmark 9, and the following show will now go by the name RIZIN 46 on April 29. Featherweight champion Chihiro Suzuki was already booked to defend his belt versus veteran Masanori Kanehara in May, and will now compete a week earlier on the April event.…
After a week off following UFC 297, the No Bets Barred Boys are back with a full breakdown of this Saturday’s UFC Vegas 85, headlined by a middleweight matchup between Roman Dolidze and Nassourdine Imavov. This week, hosts Conner Burks and Jed Meshew jump right into things by discussing what can only be described as an underwhelming fight card, featuring a limited number of name fighters. But you know what they say, sometimes those cards end up being the most fun, and even if it doesn’t, there are still 13 opportunities to get some money down this weekend, so the…
Raquel Pennington did not agree with just about anything Sean Strickland said before UFC 297, but she did her best not to get caught up in all the drama. In the main event of UFC 297, Strickland put his middleweight title on the line against Dricus du Plessis, with Pennington facing Mayra Bueno Silva for the vacant women’s bantamweight title in the co-main event. But on fight week, the two title fights quickly took a backseat to drama surrounding Strickland when the then-champion showed up to media day wearing a shirt that read, “A woman in every kitchen, a gun…
On paper, Cory Sandhagen knew fighting Umar Nurmagomedov really made no sense. When the bout was announced as a main event of the UFC Nashville card this past August, Sandhagen was already cemented near the top of the bantamweight division. Nurmagomedov, on the other hand, was only four fights into his UFC career and didn’t hold a significant win over anybody ranked in the top 15 in the world. Still, Sandhagen signed to take the fight and it was Nurmagomedov who ultimately dropped off the card due to injury. Now, months removed from that situation, Sandhagen admits he wasn’t all…