Author: Anton Tabuena

Family time at the Silva household is interesting.

Both of Anderson Silva’s sons are fighters, with Kalyl and Gabriel regularly competing in kickboxing and having 2-0 and 5-1 records, respectively. They’ve started to follow in their father’s footsteps and have actually shown some good skill in their young amateur careers.

This apparently makes for some interesting family bonding time at the Silva household, with 46-year-old UFC legend recently deciding to spar them both — at the same time.

Kalyl, the younger of the two siblings, posted a video of the playful sparring session. Even in a 2 vs 1 situation, the longtime UFC middleweight king still styled on both of his sons and flashed some of that trademark elusiveness he’s been known for. At one point, the elder Silva even pulled off a slick no-look catch kick to sweep.

Watch their entertaining session below:

The 46-year-old’s UFC stint ended in 2020, but he has been active and finding some real success in the boxing ring as of late. In 2021, Silva notched two wins as a professional boxer: an impressive decision over former champ Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in March, and an effortless KO over Tito Ortiz last September.

Charles Oliveira still wants to go back down to featherweight.

Charles Oliveira is fresh off his impressive UFC lightweight title defense against Dustin Poirier, with the submission victory marking his 10th straight win at 155 lbs.

He used to struggle making 145 lbs a few years back, having missed weight on four separate occasions. Oliveira went 9-7 with one No Contest in the UFC, before finally moving up to 155 lbs, where he’s having a career resurgence. His record at lightweight speaks for itself, but it looks like Oliveira isn’t ready to give up on the featherweight division just yet.

One of his motivations is to be the first Brazilian man to hold UFC belts in two divisions.

“I really thought I couldn’t drop to 145 anymore,” Oliveira told MMA Fighting, “but this last weight cut, I was really [close to] 155 before the fight with this work we’ve been doing, with lots of water in the body, and we believe we could easily make 145.

“If I had the opportunity to go straight for the 145 belt, I’d move down to fight,” Oliveira said. “Becoming a two-division champion, a Brazilian man, would be awesome.”

Oliveira says he’s even willing to move up to 170 lbs to achieve that goal, but admits it’s “more viable” to just drop back down to featherweight.

As it stands, UFC featherweight champion Alex Volkanovski currently needs a dance partner after Max Holloway pulled out of their title rematch due to injury. Will Oliveira be given that opportunity to go for a second belt this early into his lightweight title reign? It seems unlikely at this point, but it looks like Volkanovski currently has a lot of options.

UFC and Top Rank both have broadcast deals with ESPN.

UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has stated that he must have a boxing clause in his next contract. There’s also been some social media chatter about a possible mixed rules bout with Tyson Fury, which the boxer and MMA fighter seemed to both be interested in.

Interestingly enough, Top Rank is reportedly also open to the crossover super-fight. Company President Todd DuBoef reportedly told Sports Business Journal that they’re willing to co-promote the event with the UFC.

DuBoef said “I think it’d do really well,” and that Top Rank and UFC both having media rights deals with ESPN could help make it happen.

If the UFC is somehow even interested in making this happen, it still seems very unlikely at this point as there are some major hurdles to getting any deal done. This includes the purse split, the ruleset, Dana White and Bob Arum’s tumultuous relationship, and perhaps more pressing, Ngannou’s contract status with the UFC.

The UFC did co-promote with Floyd Mayweather for the crossover bout with Conor McGregor though — and took a sizable chunk of the MMA fighter’s share — so I guess it also isn’t the most impossible thing in the world.

Watch Francis Ngannou spar ahead of UFC 270.

Much have been made about the old sparring footage between former teammates Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane, with another UFC champion even chiming in about the questionable timing and release of it. Ahead of their clash at UFC 270, the heavyweight champion decided to release some less controversial sparring video of his own.

Ngannou shared a glimpse of how he sparred with two of his training partners, the #13 ranked UFC heavyweight contender in Blagoy Ivanov, and Santino Zurita, a Muay Thai fighter and 1-0 amateur MMA fighter. Watch the clip above to take a peek at the heavyweight champion’s training in Las Vegas.

Ngannou and Gane will face off in a title unification bout at UFC 270, on January 22nd.

Ngannou won the belt by knocking out Stipe Miocic last March, while Gane won a controversial and seemingly unnecessary interim title that was put on just give months after Ngannou’s huge win.

Francis Ngannou did not like private training sessions being released to make Ciryl Gane look good.

Ahead of their heavyweight title unification bout at UFC 270, sparring footage was released between former teammates turned opponents Francis Ngannou and Cyril Gane.

Ngannou says they sparred in 2019, but didn’t really train together often. He also took offense to the clips that were released, saying they were edited and chopped up to make it look like Gane was getting better of the gym sparring sessions.

“When I saw that footage, my first reaction was laughing. Because I know exactly what happened at those training sessions,” Ngannou said on his YouTube channel. “But this is the thing. When they want to like, do some highlight, they always choose the part of the video that they use. And they have a lot of videos like that because, at the time, they were filming our training session to promote him, his fight, and everything. So, there was a lot of footage from those few training sessions. But a lot of them never came out and would never come out. And I know for a fact that they will never come out.

“It’s about to make him look better and make me look bad, to prove that he’s the man,” Ngannou said. “I really get intrigued by those stuff sometimes. And then how they just control people’s mind, conditioning them to think. And they just think like, suddenly they just shift from one way to other way of thinking. And I’m like, ‘wow, how easy is that to manipulate people,’ which they’re really good at manipulation. But at the end of the day, as I said, we both know, everyone knows for a fact.”

Ngannou did give Gane some props, while also maintaining that he’s the better fighter.

“Ciryl is pretty good and I knew that from day 1. He’s good, he’s really good, and will just get better,” Ngannou said. “He’s good. He’s talented, that’s for sure. That’s the reason why he’s there, where he’s at right now. I’m just better. I’m just the man that’s gonna stop the hype.”

Ngannou isn’t the only one who didn’t like this training footage being released. UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman also commented on Instagram, calling it a “dirty” move.

“Wait how does training footage all of a sudden appear smh,” Usman wrote. “This is dirty.”

A 43-year-old former PRIDE champ will face a much younger but also smaller kickboxing superstar.

Although Japan shutting down its borders again has limited their options to locally-based talent, Rizin will still be pushing through with the country’s tradition of hosting huge combat sports events on New Year’s Eve.

The event will have quality bouts between some of Japan’s top MMA stars, including a lightweight title bout between Roberto Souza and Yusuke Yachi, and a bantamweight grand prix that features Kai Asakura, Naoki Inoue and others. Typical NYE events still have freakshow-type bouts based more on spectacle than sport though, and that’s exactly what Rizin just announced Saturday afternoon.

Following the news of the much anticipated kickboxing mega-fight between Takeru and Tenshin in June, it was revealed that the latter will apparently have one more fight before that. Former PRIDE and current RIZIN head Nobuyuki Sakakibara announced a short notice boxing match between Tenshin Nasukawa and Takanori Gomi for New Year’s Eve.

Not only was this announced just six days before the event, there are also massive disparities in age and weight between the two.

Kickboxing superstar Nasukawa is 23-years-old and typically weighs around 127 lbs. On the other hand, the former PRIDE champ and UFC vet in Gomi is already 43-years-old, and gone are the days where he used to make 155 lbs. Gomi weighed 172 lbs for last year’s RIZIN NYE event, where he won another “special rules” bout over Koji Tanaka.

This Tenshin vs Gomi bout is branded as another “special standing bout rules,” and will actually be a two-round exhibition boxing match.

To add to the weirdness of this all, Gomi revealed that as part of his conditions to accept this short notice contest, he asked to also be booked for the massive June event that will have Tenshin vs Takeru.

The bout will also close out Tenshin’s Rizin career. Nasukawa, who infamously got fed to Floyd Mayweather in 2018’s year ender, will reportedly move to boxing full-time after his kickboxing super-fight against Takeru.