Author: Anton Tabuena

Watch the UFC Hall-of-Famer choke out an MMA promoter.

Clay Guida managed to do what many fighters through the years probably wished they could: choke out their promoter.

It’s not UFC boss Dana White in this case, of course, but Guida had a match against the guy responsible for promoting his most recent grappling event. As part of the Fury Pro 4 last weekend, Alex Caceres withdrew from his match against his fellow UFC vet in Guida due to a back injury. To save his own co-main event, Cage Fury Fighting Championships President Brad Boulton decided to step in on just three hours notice.

The BJJ and MMA promoter has a background in jiujitsu himself, but taking on a tenured UFC fighter on extremely short notice was obviously a tall task. Boulton had some decent submission attempts from his guard, but in the end, Guida was able to choke him out.

“When a fighter falls off, and a slot needs to be filled, you just say yes. I came off the couch,” Boulton said about facing Guida. “This is a bit of a wake up call for me. I may be a black belt, but I’m out of shape. I think it’s time to get back to training, so when stuff like this happens again, I’m ready to perform the best that I can.”

The Fury Pro 4 main event featured two UFC veterans, with Sean Brady submitting Ben Saunders with a kimura.

Triller reportedly hasn’t paid fighters from an event in May.

Triller is in the middle of yet another controversy.

They’ve already had a terrible reputation due to issues such as blatant mismatches and dangerous bookings involving old retired boxers, dodging athletic commissions, and falsely advertising exhibition matches as professional bouts. Now they’re reportedly adding not paying their fighters to that list.

According to a report from veteran boxing insider Dan Rafael, Triller still owes money to boxers from their May 14 event, including both “TrillerVerz 5” headliners Sergey Kovalev and Tervel Pulev.

The four fighters on the top two bouts and their respective promoters reportedly weren’t paid by Triller on fight night. Triller Fight Club president David Tetreault was said to have asked for an extension, but still missed sending payment on the agreed May 31st deadline.

Pulev’s brother, Kubrat reportedly hasn’t been paid either for his co-headlining bout, with his opponent Jerry Forrest only being “partially paid.”

California State Athletic Commission purse figures have Kovalev at $500,000, Tervel Pulev at $195,454, Kubrat Pulev at $204,545 and Forrest at $140,000, but their actual contracts involve side deals and more money owed to them.

The promoters of Kovalev and Pulev are reportedly now seeking interest on the delayed payments.

According to Rafael’s report, the CSAC is aware of the issue and “could take measures to suspend Triller from putting on events in the state.” Other athletic commissions typically honor and follow suit on such sanctions, which could prove disastrous to Triller, which only entered boxing in 2020.

Former champ Kovalev returned from an almost three-year hiatus, moving up in weight and taking a unanimous decision over Tervel Pulev on the main event of TrillerVerz 5. Pulev’s older brother Kubrat beat Jerry Forrest by decision.

Also on the undercard was Evander Holyfield’s son Evan, who was upset and badly KO’d by a journeyman.

Apart from boxing matches, TrillerVerz 5 also featured rap battles and artists such as Cypress Hill and Onyx on the same evening.

UPDATE: According to promoter Lou DiBella, Triller has fully paid his fighter on June 2. Triller also sent Bloody Elbow a statement from Kovalev’s promoter Kathy Duva, saying they “have come to an agreement with Triller Fight Club that resolves any issues that may have existed.”

Duva also states that “the agreement paves the way for Sergey, Klimas and Main Events to continue working with Triller Fight Club going forward.”

“Main Events, Sergey Kovalev and Egis Klimas have come to an agreement with Triller Fight Club that resolves any issues that may have existed with regard to Triller’s promotion of Kovalev’s Cruiserweight debut held on Saturday, May 14th in Los Angeles. This agreement paves the way for Sergey, Klimas and Main Events to continue working with Triller Fight Club going forward. Our dealings with Triller Fight Club have all been handled in a most professional manner and we look forward to working with them in the future.”

Nobuyuki Sakakibara lost another major TV deal, possibly after being accused again of having supposed ties to organized crime.

Dubbed as “The Match,” the massive fight between kickboxing superstars Tenshin Nasukawa and Takeru Segawa had been teased and planned out for years. After seeming as though it might never come together, it was eventually booked for June 19. Unfortunately, it seems that controversy has struck just a couple of weeks before the event, resulting in one of Japan’s biggest fights in recent history losing their major TV deal.

Fuji TV, which was scheduled to carry the fight, announced Tuesday in Japan that it did not finalize a contract with the organizers and will not be broadcasting “The Match 2022.”

Shortly after Fuji TV’s announcement, an emergency press conference was held by Nobuyuki Sakakibara, the head of RIZIN and the now defunct PRIDE, along with the two other promoters involved from RISE and K-1.

As Karaev Paul reported and translated on Twitter, no clear and official reason was given by Fuji TV, but Sakakibara apparently mentioned tabloids from May, that accused him once again of having ties to organized crime, as a possible reason.

Sakakibara, who was handling negotiations with Fuji TV, has denied the allegations and revealed that he even offered to resign as producer if it would help secure the broadcast deal. Talks didn’t advance, however—with Sakakibara apologizing to RISE and K-1 for the eventual, significant fallout.

Assuming all goes forward as reported, both Fuji and the promoters are set to lose a major chunk of revenue from the decision. Fortunately for fans—at least for the moment—the super-fight will still push through, albeit with a far smaller reach on PPV with Abema.

The fight should still garner plenty of interest from longtime kickboxing and combat sports fans, but won’t reach the same market initially intended—most notably a younger, mainstream audience. In the build up to the fight, both Takeru and Tenshin had expressed how they hoped this massive showdown would reach a wide market and inspire the next generation of combat sports athletes in Japan.

They reiterated this on their brief tweets immediately after Fuji TV’s announcement.

“I’m sorry everyone,” Tenshin wrote in Japanese. “This (fight) is not for the money, it’s for the future. What about the kids?”

“I want you to understand the meaning of this match. I haven’t given up yet,” Takeru wrote.

Photo by Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

This isn’t the first time Sakakibara has been involved in such a scandal. Back in 2006, when he was running PRIDE at its peak, reports about alleged Yakuza ties within the promotion cost them their Fuji TV broadcast deal along with other lucrative contracts. The loss of revenue streams significantly undercut the PRIDE business model, and the organization was eventually purchased in 2007 by ZUFFA and previous UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta.

In 2016, Bloody Elbow obtained copies from the UFC’s old background checks on Nobuyuki Sakakibara from the PRIDE purchase. The company they hired couldn’t find concrete evidence of ties to organized crime, but cited various red flags that led them to conclude there was “some validity” to the reports.

The company noted that Sakakibara had refused to cooperate or act in good faith, concluding that “as a result or all of the aforementioned issues, we have been forced to determine that [Sakakibara] is not a person of suitable character.”

After sitting out a 7-year ‘non-compete clause’ agreed upon during the UFC purchase, Sakakibara officially returned to mixed martial arts with the launching of RIZIN in 2015. From the sound of things, this most recent scandal could affect that organization as well.

Jorge Masvidal says Conor McGregor is shooting up steroids.

Conor McGregor has put on quite a bit of weight during his time away from the Octagon, and said he doesn’t see himself ever coming back to 155 lbs again. Jorge Masvidal seems to think that increase in mass comes from the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Masvidal, who welcomes a potential fight against McGregor, accused the Irishman of steroid use in a recent interview. Gamebred called McGregor “fake” and says he will always be a “little boy” to him, despite his supposed attempts to get bigger through banned substances.

“He is fake,” Masvidal told ESPN Deportes in Spanish. “He knows that I am a man who hits hard and that I come to kill. I don’t come to hug in the cage. I’m going to give everything inside me to kill him.

“I’m a little bigger. Although now he’s shooting up and putting steroids and all kinds of things, but he’s still a little boy,” he said.

“I would love to fight at 170 pounds, but I don’t wait for anyone. If he wants to do it, I will break his face. If he doesn’t want to, let the next one come.”

The 37-year-old veteran is on a three-fight skid against the elite of the division, and vows to improve his conditioning and be in the “best shape of my life” in order to get back on track. Masvidal “guaranteed” a return later this year, and believes that he’ll only need two wins to get him back in title contention.

McGregor is currently recovering from his shin break last year, and is already back to sparring. Although he is progressing and called for a title fight at 170 lbs, there is still no date on his return.

“If Sambo was easy… it’d be called Luke Rockhold.”

While both men have a lot of different things going on right now, longtime teammates Luke Rockhold and Khabib Nurmagomedov were able to reunite and train together again at the AKA gym in San Jose.

Short clips of their grappling session have been making the rounds on social media, and it shows a much bulkier post-retirement Khabib holding Rockhold down and giving him some problems.

It’s also funny to see their banter as the longterm teammates got to train together again.

“If Sambo was easy… It’d be called Luke Rockhold,” Khabib said with a laugh. “It’s okay. Ask Luke what happened today.”

“I just miss you, I hug you brother,” Khabib said on the second training clip that Rockhold posted.

In that clip, Rockhold also talked some smack in return, yelling “keep practicing!” as he managed to get up. Instead of resetting the drill, this only prompted Khabib to continue going after a laughing Rockhold, running over people’s things and taking him down by the edge of the mats.

It’s obviously not wise to make conclusions on training drills that lack context, especially based on very short clips of playful training sessions. That being said, it is entertaining to see Khabib working with a former champion from two divisions higher.

Khabib though, revealed that they aren’t far apart in weight anymore.

“205 vs 210,” Khabib wrote on an Instagram Story about the training video. “If you don’t know, now you know.”

Rockhold has also always given Khabib props through the years.

“I’ve never had a ‘55 pounder come and chase me around the gym and want to grapple me — and actually compete with me! Khabib is a real competition for me in a grappling match,” Rockhold said about Khabib last year. “As opposed to any other ‘55 pounder, most ‘70 pounders, I play with all of them.”

Here’s a longer clip of the duo training together from back in 2014, long before either of them won their respective UFC belts. Watch a 29-year-old former Strikeforce champ in Rockhold prepare for his third UFC bout by grappling with a 25-year-old Khabib below.

There was a stampede at the Barclays Center, with people running for their lives thinking there was another shooting.

Shortly after the Gervonta Davis vs Rolando Romero boxing match ended and fans started leaving, chaos ensued at the Barclays Center, with multiple reports of possible gunshots being heard by those in the arena. Police say it was a false alarm with no active shooter, but the panic still caused a stampede with hundreds of people running for their lives.

At least 10 people were reportedly injured and brought to the hospital after the incident.

People in the arena such as tennis star Naomi Osaka and media members Chris Mannix and Mike Coppinger tweeted about the frightening situation as it was happening.

More details came in soon after, with Police telling Coppinger that “there was no gun whatsoever.” Detective Dave Navarro of the NYPD called it a “sound disturbance,” saying there were “no shots fired” and no arrests that were made.

“No shots fired, nobody injured by shots fired. Sound disturbance,” Detective Navarro told ESPN. “No arrests. Nobody seriously injured. What that sound disturbance was, I do not know, but it got to the point people started running back into Barclays.”

“It’s a large crowd condition. No shots fired. No one shot outside the Barclay’s Center,” another NYPD spokesperson told The New York Post.

Whatever the sound was, it scared a lot of people at the arena, causing a panic and a stampede that reportedly had at least 10 people transported to the hospital.

“We’re used to brawls at boxing events but recent headlines and the panic of the crowd made many of us worried that our worst fears would come true,” boxing writer Songalia told the New York Post.

“(People were) definitely frightened, it wasn’t like they were just moving back inside to get away from a few people throwing punches. It was as if they were running for their lives.”

This incident comes on the heels of the Uvalde school shooting just four days ago, along with several other mass shootings in the US this year.