Author: mmafighting
2023 closed out on an extremely personal note in the MMA world. I’ll be the first to admit that last year was far and away one that I’m beyond ready to move on from for a variety of reasons. Hopefully, one of those can be the clouds of negativity brought into the MMA sphere, specifically with the UFC’s headliner bouts, as cascaded into the ether at the final pre-fight press conferences of the calendar. From Leon Edwards vs. Colby Covington to Sean Strickland vs. Dricus Du Plessis, and Ian Machado Garry vs. … the whole internet, to be honest ……
ONE Championship featherweight king Tang Kai and current interim champ Thanh Le will meet in a rematch and title unification bout at ONE 166. The fight, scheduled to take place in Qatar on March 1 and air live in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video, comes over a year after their first encounter ended with Tang winning a unanimous decision over Le to become the ONE featherweight champion. That victory extended Tang’s overall winning streak to 10, including seven straight in ONE; injuries prevented him from defending the belt. With Tang out of action since August 2022, ONE moved forward…
Logan Paul will attempt to right the wrongs of a failed cryptocurrency game that eventually led to a class-action lawsuit getting filed against him and his former business partners. On Thursday, the 28-year-old social influencer, boxer, and WWE superstar announced a new buyback program involving his CryptoZoo game, where users could buy and hatch “egg NFT’s,” which would then reveal an animal that that players could collect. Paul initially pitched CryptoZoo as a “game that earns you money,” but an online investigation revealed numerous issues with the program, which eventually led to a lawsuit being filed in Federal court in…
Tom Aspinall believes he deserves to fight Jon Jones instead of Stipe Miocic. This past November, UFC heavyweight champion Jones was supposed to defend his title against Stipe Miocic in the main event of UFC 295. Unfortunately, Jones was forced out of the fight due to injury, and instead, Apinall stepped in on short notice to face Sergei Pavlovich for an interim title, while the UFC planned to rebook Jones and Miocic at a later date. Aspinall ended up winning the interim belt with a 69-second knockout, and while the UFC seems to still be on board with Jones defending…
Ben Askren is ready to join Jorge Masvidal in un-retirement. On Monday, Masvidal kicked off the new year by announcing he is ending his eight-month retirement. At the moment, there are no details on the when Masvidal will return. But whenever it happens, Askren said he’d be happy to un-retire and fight him again, particularly if the UFC needs a big fight for its upcoming UFC 300 show. “Listen, if Dana called me and said, ‘Jorge Masvidal, UFC 300,’ I don’t give a damn – I’m out of retirement,” Askren said on Daniel Cormier’s YouTube channel. “I’ll fight him. I…
Conor McGregor announced his octagon return against Michael Chandler, but according to the former two-division world champ, it will not be happening at UFC 300 as many were predicting. With the UFC’s 2024 calendar filling up rapidly, what fight will headline one of the promotion’s biggest and monumental events? On an all-new edition of Heck of a Morning, MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck reacts to the McGregor vs. Chandler announcement for June 29, if it is a mistake by the UFC to not have the fight headline UFC 300, and what the UFC could do in order to make that all-important…
Ilia Topuria plans to beat Alexander Volkanovski and then challenge another big name, but it won’t be Sean O’Malley. O’Malley hinted on social media that a future clash could take place between he and Topuria, with both men scheduled for title fights in the coming months. “Sugar” goes for the first defense of his bantamweight title when he takes on rival Marlon “Chito” Vera at UFC 299 in March, while Topuria challenges longtime featherweight champion Volkanovski at UFC 298 in February. “Ilia’s my Eddie,” O’Malley wrote, seemingly alluding to Conor McGregor famously becoming a two-division champion by defeating Eddie Alvarez…
According to Conor McGregor, his return is set against Michael Chandler at the UFC’s International Fight Week in June. Although the promotion has yet to officially announce the matchup, it appears as if we’ll see the sport’s biggest star before the second half of 2024. On an all-new edition of Between the Links, MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck and Jed Meshew react to McGregor’s announcement that his bout with Chandler will not take place at UFC 300, but on June 29, along with the opening odds giving McGregor a slight edge. Additionally, the panel takes your questions about the bouts currently…
Rising heavyweight Jailton Almeida has another fight booked ahead of his UFC 299 clash with Curtis Blaydes – and it’s one he’ll happily lose. Brazilian MMA promotion Demo Fight announced Wednesday that “Malhadinho” will take on Alvaro Borges, an athlete with Down syndrome, in a MMA exhibition at its upcoming show Demo Fight 18 in Salvador, Brazil, on Jan. 27. “I’m very happy to be part of this event and help Alvaro’s dream come true of fighting MMA again,” Almeida said. Borges competes regularly in special jiu-jitsu tournaments in Brazil and internationally, and he’s entered the cage before for a…
UFC featherweight Bryce Mitchell has called his own concussion protocol after a brutal knockout loss at UFC 296 and revealed more fallout from the fight. “The worst part is dealing with everybody afterward, because they all thought I was dead,” Mitchell told ESPN.com. “Everybody that I knew was crying. “On the bright side, that was the easiest fight for me. I’ve never had a fight where I’ve come out feeling so great. I just woke up in the ambulance and barely remembered what happened. There’s no pain, I’m telling you. But everybody was crying, and they thought I was dead;…