Before we get to see a fight between Cris “Cyborg” Justino and UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, we’ll first get some sweet temptation.
Justino will defend her Invicta FC featherweight title on Friday, February 27 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, while on Saturday, February 28, Rousey will defend her 135-pound belt against Zingano at the Staples Center at UFC 184. Twenty-four hours, 10 pounds and a single mile is all that separates the two most dominant champions in women’s MMA history from coming together.
Is next weekend perhaps a table setter for a future clash?
While appearing on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the Brazilian Justino said she certainly hopes so.
“I think this fight will happen,” she told Ariel Helwani. “I think all the fans want to watch it, and the UFC wants to make this fight. But I am focused on my next fight now. Charmaine Tweet is my next opponent now.”
Justino (12-1) will stake her 145-pound belt against Tweet (6-4) at Invicta FC 11. The last time she competed in an MMA fight was back in 2013, when she defeated Marloes Coenen to take home the inaugural featherweight belt. In the meantime, she has competed in a couple of Muay Thai matches, and came up on the losing end in her last one against the Dutch fighter Jorina Baars during a Lion Fight event last March.
Justino was supposed to compete as a bantamweight in December to lay down a foundation for a fight with Rousey, but was forced off the card with an ankle injury. Unable to cut the weight in the meantime, she’ll make another appearance at 145 pounds and see what happens from there.
At one point, news came out that Justino would no longer pursue 135 pounds. Since then, however, there has been some sentiment through UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta that the UFC would like to sign Justino. He told ESPN that there’s interesting in a big fight between Justino and Rousey. The UFC doesn’t have a featherweight division, so the inference was still that Justino would need to make the weight cut for the sides to come together.
Asked if it was possible that can make the 135-pound maximum for a fight with Rousey, “Cyborg” said she thought so.
“You know, I believe anything is possible,” she said. “I don’t know. I’m trying a diet now, and [I was] before too, but before I had an injury. I’ll try. If it doesn’t happen at 135, we can make 145. I don’t know. But I’m excited for this fight so I’m going to try my best for this fight to happen for all my fans, and for me and my family.”
Another contention about Justino fighting in the UFC — which has raised concerns with Rousey and UFC president Dana White — was Cyborg’s history with performance-enhancing drugs. The last time she fought in California, back in 2011 against Hiroko Yamanaka, she popped for the anabolic steroid stanozolol. Justino was suspended as a result of the test, and coming into next Friday’s fight she’s been subjected to random testing by the California State Athletic Commission.
Asked if she was okay with the random testing and thought it was fair, Justino said she was fine with it.
“Yeah, I went and did the tests, and I don’t have any problem about this,” she said. “I did four surprise tests, and I don’t have a problem about this. It is my work. Everybody makes mistakes and I make one time.
“Now I know I did a mistake, but now, now I don’t have any problems, any time, or anywhere.”
Even though there is still a lot of uncertainty in terms of an eventual fight between Cyborg and Rousey, the fact that they are fighting on consecutive nights in the same city — and that both are being promoted by Zuffa and the UFC — makes a fight between the two feel like a coming attraction. And Justino said she wants to make the most of her showcase.
“I think it’s a big opportunity for me again, and I’m very excited to defend my belt at 145 for Invicta,” Justino said. “I feel very blessed to fight next weekend for a big promotion in LA, and I feel ready.”
Before we get to see a fight between Cris “Cyborg” Justino and UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, we’ll first get some sweet temptation.
Justino will defend her Invicta FC featherweight title on Friday, February 27 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, while on Saturday, February 28, Rousey will defend her 135-pound belt against Zingano at the Staples Center at UFC 184. Twenty-four hours, 10 pounds and a single mile is all that separates the two most dominant champions in women’s MMA history from coming together.
Is next weekend perhaps a table setter for a future clash?
While appearing on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the Brazilian Justino said she certainly hopes so.
“I think this fight will happen,” she told Ariel Helwani. “I think all the fans want to watch it, and the UFC wants to make this fight. But I am focused on my next fight now. Charmaine Tweet is my next opponent now.”
Justino (12-1) will stake her 145-pound belt against Tweet (6-4) at Invicta FC 11. The last time she competed in an MMA fight was back in 2013, when she defeated Marloes Coenen to take home the inaugural featherweight belt. In the meantime, she has competed in a couple of Muay Thai matches, and came up on the losing end in her last one against the Dutch fighter Jorina Baars during a Lion Fight event last March.
Justino was supposed to compete as a bantamweight in December to lay down a foundation for a fight with Rousey, but was forced off the card with an ankle injury. Unable to cut the weight in the meantime, she’ll make another appearance at 145 pounds and see what happens from there.
At one point, news came out that Justino would no longer pursue 135 pounds. Since then, however, there has been some sentiment through UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta that the UFC would like to sign Justino. He told ESPN that there’s interesting in a big fight between Justino and Rousey. The UFC doesn’t have a featherweight division, so the inference was still that Justino would need to make the weight cut for the sides to come together.
Asked if it was possible that can make the 135-pound maximum for a fight with Rousey, “Cyborg” said she thought so.
“You know, I believe anything is possible,” she said. “I don’t know. I’m trying a diet now, and [I was] before too, but before I had an injury. I’ll try. If it doesn’t happen at 135, we can make 145. I don’t know. But I’m excited for this fight so I’m going to try my best for this fight to happen for all my fans, and for me and my family.”
Another contention about Justino fighting in the UFC — which has raised concerns with Rousey and UFC president Dana White — was Cyborg’s history with performance-enhancing drugs. The last time she fought in California, back in 2011 against Hiroko Yamanaka, she popped for the anabolic steroid stanozolol. Justino was suspended as a result of the test, and coming into next Friday’s fight she’s been subjected to random testing by the California State Athletic Commission.
Asked if she was okay with the random testing and thought it was fair, Justino said she was fine with it.
“Yeah, I went and did the tests, and I don’t have any problem about this,” she said. “I did four surprise tests, and I don’t have a problem about this. It is my work. Everybody makes mistakes and I make one time.
“Now I know I did a mistake, but now, now I don’t have any problems, any time, or anywhere.”
Even though there is still a lot of uncertainty in terms of an eventual fight between Cyborg and Rousey, the fact that they are fighting on consecutive nights in the same city — and that both are being promoted by Zuffa and the UFC — makes a fight between the two feel like a coming attraction. And Justino said she wants to make the most of her showcase.
“I think it’s a big opportunity for me again, and I’m very excited to defend my belt at 145 for Invicta,” Justino said. “I feel very blessed to fight next weekend for a big promotion in LA, and I feel ready.”
Right now there’s a lot of fun to be had in weight-class jumping within the UFC. Before the evil shroud of asterisks gathered over Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz’s fight at UFC 183, there were two guys from wholly different everythings coming together to see what shakes. That fight was less a collision course than it was a course in creativity. Even their drugs couldn’t agree.
A few days ago, the UFC took two greats in limbo — former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and former WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber — and booked them against each other, just for the hell of it.
“This one is for my fans,” Edgar wrote on his Twitter. That fight will headline a show in the Philippines in May. It doesn’t even matter if the rest goes down as the “Filla in Manila,” because Frankie and Urijah captivates more than enough imagination.
And in Broomfield, when radar welterweight Brandon Thatch was in need of an opponent, it took Benson Henderson about “thirty seconds” to accept the fight, even though — as a lightweight — he would be the Lilliputian in the matter, straight out of the bleachers in left field. So far in 2015 it’s been a lot of fun to set fire to the weight-class partition, and Bendo was the latest to strike the match.
Yet in Henderson’s case, this really did feel like a career misstep. He just fought Donald Cerrone in Boston less than a month ago, and lost on the scorecards. He had flirted with the idea of welterweight in the past, but to debut in a new weight class on four week’s notice, against a guy with a case of stifled greatness, fighting in that guy’s hometown, at altitude, well…none of this felt like something you might call smart. It felt more like wild impulse. Admirable, yes, but also a little reckless.
In other words, just the right kind of ballsy.
The circumstances being what they were sort of made the fight a drama-grab on Saturday night. The former champion Henderson was glaringly smaller than Thatch, and there were a couple sequences where he was just kind of manhandled. Two examples of this came in the second round, when Thatch tripped Henderson in close and dropped him on his shoulder blades. He also had moments where he used the reach advantage to strafe Henderson from other orbits. Henderson, though, was just elusive enough to avoid any real damage, and just aggressive to initiate (and win) his share of the exchanges.
Then it got wild.
Henderson took Thatch down (!) and snatched his back (!!). Though he couldn’t secure the choke, the smaller man took the third round. When Thatch came out in the fourth, he had a mouse under each eye and a look of bewilderment. What makes a fight like this fun is when the man giving up the advantages has the tables turning for everyone to see. It’s that he has intercepted the narration. Crazy? No, Henderson wasn’t crazy to take the fight with Thatch. When he got the call from matchmaker Sean Shelby he simply leapt and counted on the net to appear.
Here he was proving it. He sank the rear-naked choke late in the fourth round, defiant of any trepidation people had, and tapped Thatch out. He did it all with a toothpick in his mouth, like the whole thing was taking place at a billiards parlor. If there are to be repercussions for taking the fight, it’ll be because of that toothpick, not because he was outmatched by the bigger fighter. We were on Henderson’s terms.
You know what that fight did, too? It earned Henderson a new level of respect. Back in the day he was the champion, but on Saturday night he showed the heart of one. Sometimes you need to see something beyond technique to get a point across, and that’s what “Smooth” did in Colorado. He gave power to the blowhard concept of “no hesitation.” Afterwards he even called out welterweight contender Rory MacDonald, because why not? When the barriers are down, might as well treat possibility as the important thing that it is.
Possibility, after all, is oftentimes all you need when thinking about fights.
Right now there’s a lot of fun to be had in weight-class jumping within the UFC. Before the evil shroud of asterisks gathered over Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz’s fight at UFC 183, there were two guys from wholly different everythings coming together to see what shakes. That fight was less a collision course than it was a course in creativity. Even their drugs couldn’t agree.
A few days ago, the UFC took two greats in limbo — former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and former WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber — and booked them against each other, just for the hell of it.
“This one is for my fans,” Edgar wrote on his Twitter. That fight will headline a show in the Philippines in May. It doesn’t even matter if the rest goes down as the “Filla in Manila,” because Frankie and Urijah captivates more than enough imagination.
And in Broomfield, when radar welterweight Brandon Thatch was in need of an opponent, it took Benson Henderson about “thirty seconds” to accept the fight, even though — as a lightweight — he would be the Lilliputian in the matter, straight out of the bleachers in left field. So far in 2015 it’s been a lot of fun to set fire to the weight-class partition, and Bendo was the latest to strike the match.
Yet in Henderson’s case, this really did feel like a career misstep. He just fought Donald Cerrone in Boston less than a month ago, and lost on the scorecards. He had flirted with the idea of welterweight in the past, but to debut in a new weight class on four week’s notice, against a guy with a case of stifled greatness, fighting in that guy’s hometown, at altitude, well…none of this felt like something you might call smart. It felt more like wild impulse. Admirable, yes, but also a little reckless.
In other words, just the right kind of ballsy.
The circumstances being what they were sort of made the fight a drama-grab on Saturday night. The former champion Henderson was glaringly smaller than Thatch, and there were a couple sequences where he was just kind of manhandled. Two examples of this came in the second round, when Thatch tripped Henderson in close and dropped him on his shoulder blades. He also had moments where he used the reach advantage to strafe Henderson from other orbits. Henderson, though, was just elusive enough to avoid any real damage, and just aggressive to initiate (and win) his share of the exchanges.
Then it got wild.
Henderson took Thatch down (!) and snatched his back (!!). Though he couldn’t secure the choke, the smaller man took the third round. When Thatch came out in the fourth, he had a mouse under each eye and a look of bewilderment. What makes a fight like this fun is when the man giving up the advantages has the tables turning for everyone to see. It’s that he has intercepted the narration. Crazy? No, Henderson wasn’t crazy to take the fight with Thatch. When he got the call from matchmaker Sean Shelby he simply leapt and counted on the net to appear.
Here he was proving it. He sank the rear-naked choke late in the fourth round, defiant of any trepidation people had, and tapped Thatch out. He did it all with a toothpick in his mouth, like the whole thing was taking place at a billiards parlor. If there are to be repercussions for taking the fight, it’ll be because of that toothpick, not because he was outmatched by the bigger fighter. We were on Henderson’s terms.
You know what that fight did, too? It earned Henderson a new level of respect. Back in the day he was the champion, but on Saturday night he showed the heart of one. Sometimes you need to see something beyond technique to get a point across, and that’s what “Smooth” did in Colorado. He gave power to the blowhard concept of “no hesitation.” Afterwards he even called out welterweight contender Rory MacDonald, because why not? When the barriers are down, might as well treat possibility as the important thing that it is.
Possibility, after all, is oftentimes all you need when thinking about fights.
Right now there’s a lot of fun to be had in weight-class jumping within the UFC. Before the evil shroud of asterisks gathered over Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz’s fight at UFC 183, there were two guys from wholly different everythings coming together to see what shakes. That fight was less a collision course than it was a course in creativity. Even their drugs couldn’t agree.
A few days ago, the UFC took two greats in limbo — former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and former WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber — and booked them against each other, just for the hell of it.
“This one is for my fans,” Edgar wrote on his Twitter. That fight will headline a show in the Philippines in May. It doesn’t even matter if the rest goes down as the “Filla in Manila,” because Frankie and Urijah captivates more than enough imagination.
And in Broomfield, when radar welterweight Brandon Thatch was in need of an opponent, it took Benson Henderson about “thirty seconds” to accept the fight, even though — as a lightweight — he would be the Lilliputian in the matter, straight out of the bleachers in left field. So far in 2015 it’s been a lot of fun to set fire to the weight-class partition, and Bendo was the latest to strike the match.
Yet in Henderson’s case, this really did feel like a career misstep. He just fought Donald Cerrone in Boston less than a month ago, and lost on the scorecards. He had flirted with the idea of welterweight in the past, but to debut in a new weight class on four week’s notice, against a guy with a case of stifled greatness, fighting in that guy’s hometown, at altitude, well…none of this felt like something you might call smart. It felt more like wild impulse. Admirable, yes, but also a little reckless.
In other words, just the right kind of ballsy.
The circumstances being what they were sort of made the fight a drama-grab on Saturday night. The former champion Henderson was glaringly smaller than Thatch, and there were a couple sequences where he was just kind of manhandled. Two examples of this came in the second round, when Thatch tripped Henderson in close and dropped him on his shoulder blades. He also had moments where he used the reach advantage to strafe Henderson from other orbits. Henderson, though, was just elusive enough to avoid any real damage, and just aggressive to initiate (and win) his share of the exchanges.
Then it got wild.
Henderson took Thatch down (!) and snatched his back (!!). Though he couldn’t secure the choke, the smaller man took the third round. When Thatch came out in the fourth, he had a mouse under each eye and a look of bewilderment. What makes a fight like this fun is when the man giving up the advantages has the tables turning for everyone to see. It’s that he has intercepted the narration. Crazy? No, Henderson wasn’t crazy to take the fight with Thatch. When he got the call from matchmaker Sean Shelby he simply leapt and counted on the net to appear.
Here he was proving it. He sank the rear-naked choke late in the fourth round, defiant of any trepidation people had, and tapped Thatch out. He did it all with a toothpick in his mouth, like the whole thing was taking place at a billiards parlor. If there are to be repercussions for taking the fight, it’ll be because of that toothpick, not because he was outmatched by the bigger fighter. We were on Henderson’s terms.
You know what that fight did, too? It earned Henderson a new level of respect. Back in the day he was the champion, but on Saturday night he showed the heart of one. Sometimes you need to see something beyond technique to get a point across, and that’s what “Smooth” did in Colorado. He gave power to the blowhard concept of “no hesitation.” Afterwards he even called out welterweight contender Rory MacDonald, because why not? When the barriers are down, might as well treat possibility as the important thing that it is.
Possibility, after all, is oftentimes all you need when thinking about fights.
Right now there’s a lot of fun to be had in weight-class jumping within the UFC. Before the evil shroud of asterisks gathered over Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz’s fight at UFC 183, there were two guys from wholly different everythings coming together to see what shakes. That fight was less a collision course than it was a course in creativity. Even their drugs couldn’t agree.
A few days ago, the UFC took two greats in limbo — former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and former WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber — and booked them against each other, just for the hell of it.
“This one is for my fans,” Edgar wrote on his Twitter. That fight will headline a show in the Philippines in May. It doesn’t even matter if the rest goes down as the “Filla in Manila,” because Frankie and Urijah captivates more than enough imagination.
And in Broomfield, when radar welterweight Brandon Thatch was in need of an opponent, it took Benson Henderson about “thirty seconds” to accept the fight, even though — as a lightweight — he would be the Lilliputian in the matter, straight out of the bleachers in left field. So far in 2015 it’s been a lot of fun to set fire to the weight-class partition, and Bendo was the latest to strike the match.
Yet in Henderson’s case, this really did feel like a career misstep. He just fought Donald Cerrone in Boston less than a month ago, and lost on the scorecards. He had flirted with the idea of welterweight in the past, but to debut in a new weight class on four week’s notice, against a guy with a case of stifled greatness, fighting in that guy’s hometown, at altitude, well…none of this felt like something you might call smart. It felt more like wild impulse. Admirable, yes, but also a little reckless.
In other words, just the right kind of ballsy.
The circumstances being what they were sort of made the fight a drama-grab on Saturday night. The former champion Henderson was glaringly smaller than Thatch, and there were a couple sequences where he was just kind of manhandled. Two examples of this came in the second round, when Thatch tripped Henderson in close and dropped him on his shoulder blades. He also had moments where he used the reach advantage to strafe Henderson from other orbits. Henderson, though, was just elusive enough to avoid any real damage, and just aggressive to initiate (and win) his share of the exchanges.
Then it got wild.
Henderson took Thatch down (!) and snatched his back (!!). Though he couldn’t secure the choke, the smaller man took the third round. When Thatch came out in the fourth, he had a mouse under each eye and a look of bewilderment. What makes a fight like this fun is when the man giving up the advantages has the tables turning for everyone to see. It’s that he has intercepted the narration. Crazy? No, Henderson wasn’t crazy to take the fight with Thatch. When he got the call from matchmaker Sean Shelby he simply leapt and counted on the net to appear.
Here he was proving it. He sank the rear-naked choke late in the fourth round, defiant of any trepidation people had, and tapped Thatch out. He did it all with a toothpick in his mouth, like the whole thing was taking place at a billiards parlor. If there are to be repercussions for taking the fight, it’ll be because of that toothpick, not because he was outmatched by the bigger fighter. We were on Henderson’s terms.
You know what that fight did, too? It earned Henderson a new level of respect. Back in the day he was the champion, but on Saturday night he showed the heart of one. Sometimes you need to see something beyond technique to get a point across, and that’s what “Smooth” did in Colorado. He gave power to the blowhard concept of “no hesitation.” Afterwards he even called out welterweight contender Rory MacDonald, because why not? When the barriers are down, might as well treat possibility as the important thing that it is.
Possibility, after all, is oftentimes all you need when thinking about fights.
One of the better fights of 2013 was the darkly lit basher’s ball that Alexander Shlemenko and Brett Cooper put on at Bellator 98 at the Mohegan Sun. Both guys stood in the pocket chin-checking for five magnificent rounds, with no detectable regard for self-preservation, each turning the tables on the other ever so often.
That’s why Shlemenko’s main event against the notorious headhunter Melvin Manhoef on Friday night at Bellator 133 feels like a guilty temptation. If both guys decide to stand in front of each other — which they will, you know they will — heads will roll.
The fight with Cooper was Shlemenko’s 55th pro fight, and his first middleweight title defense in Bellator, having knocked out Maiquel Falcao exactly seven months earlier. The Russian would defend the title twice more against Doug Marshall — who Cooper was a late replacement for that night in Uncasville — and Brennan Ward, before he stepped in the cage against Tito Ortiz last May.
That fight, which was contested at light heavyweight under carnival-like conditions, didn’t go his way. It was his next fight, though, the one against Brandon Halsey in September where he lost his belt, that the Russian fighter figuratively left his body.
“The only thing those two losses have in common is that, when I lost to Ortiz, I didn’t correct my mistakes after that fight,” he tells MMA Fighting through an interpreter. “I thought, that’s not my weight class, that’s all. So when I entered the next fight with Halsey, basically I came to the fight with the same attitude as I did to the Tito Ortiz fight.
“But my loss to Halsey, man — I can say that I died in that fight. And now I feel reborn as a fighter. I corrected all my mistakes, I worked hard after that, I changed my diet and everything. I can’t wait to show the world.”
Being 30 years old and having 60 professional fights is a hell of a place to start over from. But with Shlemenko, who brings his young daughter to the fights, nothing has ever been altogether conventional.
And part of what there is to love about Shlemenko (51-9) is his willingness to fight at the drop of a hat. Yes he lost his title to Halsey in September, but he eased the memory of it by beating Yasubey Enomoto in a side gig at Fight Nights: The Battle of Moscow 18 in December. Less than two months later, Shlemenko will mix it up with Manhoef, who himself has been busy between fighting in Glory and Bellator.
This one is for fight lovers. And it’s for fighters who just can’t fight enough for their own liking.
“I love to compete as often as possible,” Shlemenko says. “And I’m capable. I’m always in shape, and I’m always training. For me, if you take a look at my career, I used to fight very often. Before getting my Bellator title I used to fight like six times per year. And I love it, and would like to keep this pace. I really hope to keep this pace in the future. I hope Bellator will give me the chance to fight that often.”
It’s doubtful (and impossible) the new Scott Coker era of Bellator will afford Shlemenko six fights a year, but that sort of enthusiasm is hard to come by for a fighter of his caliber. Even when he was the champion, Shlemenko wanted to stay busier than he was. And now as a contender making his way back to Halsey, he talks as if he’s bursting at the seams to accelerate things.
Part of that comes from the sting of coughing up his title in a fight that he never truly competed in. He was submitted via rear-naked choke just 35 seconds into the fight at Bellator 126.
“I was very upset that I lost the belt, but the thing that upsets me the most isn’t that I lost it, but how I did it,” he says. “It wasn’t even a struggle. It wasn’t even a fight. I lost without showing anything. I didn’t have time to show anything, and that’s what makes me feel so bad about things.”
In the wake of that loss, Shlemenko found himself turning to his idol, Fedor Emelianenko. Not so much for a pep talk, but to re-observe his stoical demeanor in defeat.
“I can say that Fedor, he always kind of helps me, because he’s an example not only in how he wins, but in how he dealt with his losses as well,” he says. “After my loss, what I did was look at his old interviews after his losses. And when I did, I looked at them with a completely different set of eyes, and I understood him completely different. Because now I was in the same position as Fedor was in, and I didn’t understand that before. But after my loss, I understood it. I understand what he meant with his words. And that really helped me. I am very thankful for that.”
And thankful, too, that he was dealt Manhoef next, a fighter tailor-made for his brand of fighting. Manhoef knows that Shlemenko has only been stopped once via knockout in his entire career. Of course, Shlemenko knows that Manhoef knows, and — in this new incarnation, same as the old — it excites him to think of his own head as a rare collectible.
“I think that my fight with Melvin, I think it’s a great idea by Bellator and the Bellator matchmakers,” he says. “I think this fight won’t leave anybody, any fan uninterested. Everybody will look forward to this fight, because you won’t see a stalemate. You won’t see two guys trying to win on points. You will see two guys who will literally try to kill each other in this fight. That’s what makes it a great fight.”
One of the better fights of 2013 was the darkly lit basher’s ball that Alexander Shlemenko and Brett Cooper put on at Bellator 98 at the Mohegan Sun. Both guys stood in the pocket chin-checking for five magnificent rounds, with no detectable regard for self-preservation, each turning the tables on the other ever so often.
That’s why Shlemenko’s main event against the notorious headhunter Melvin Manhoef on Friday night at Bellator 133 feels like a guilty temptation. If both guys decide to stand in front of each other — which they will, you know they will — heads will roll.
The fight with Cooper was Shlemenko’s 55th pro fight, and his first middleweight title defense in Bellator, having knocked out Maiquel Falcao exactly seven months earlier. The Russian would defend the title twice more against Doug Marshall — who Cooper was a late replacement for that night in Uncasville — and Brennan Ward, before he stepped in the cage against Tito Ortiz last May.
That fight, which was contested at light heavyweight under carnival-like conditions, didn’t go his way. It was his next fight, though, the one against Brandon Halsey in September where he lost his belt, that the Russian fighter figuratively left his body.
“The only thing those two losses have in common is that, when I lost to Ortiz, I didn’t correct my mistakes after that fight,” he tells MMA Fighting through an interpreter. “I thought, that’s not my weight class, that’s all. So when I entered the next fight with Halsey, basically I came to the fight with the same attitude as I did to the Tito Ortiz fight.
“But my loss to Halsey, man — I can say that I died in that fight. And now I feel reborn as a fighter. I corrected all my mistakes, I worked hard after that, I changed my diet and everything. I can’t wait to show the world.”
Being 30 years old and having 60 professional fights is a hell of a place to start over from. But with Shlemenko, who brings his young daughter to the fights, nothing has ever been altogether conventional.
And part of what there is to love about Shlemenko (51-9) is his willingness to fight at the drop of a hat. Yes he lost his title to Halsey in September, but he eased the memory of it by beating Yasubey Enomoto in a side gig at Fight Nights: The Battle of Moscow 18 in December. Less than two months later, Shlemenko will mix it up with Manhoef, who himself has been busy between fighting in Glory and Bellator.
This one is for fight lovers. And it’s for fighters who just can’t fight enough for their own liking.
“I love to compete as often as possible,” Shlemenko says. “And I’m capable. I’m always in shape, and I’m always training. For me, if you take a look at my career, I used to fight very often. Before getting my Bellator title I used to fight like six times per year. And I love it, and would like to keep this pace. I really hope to keep this pace in the future. I hope Bellator will give me the chance to fight that often.”
It’s doubtful (and impossible) the new Scott Coker era of Bellator will afford Shlemenko six fights a year, but that sort of enthusiasm is hard to come by for a fighter of his caliber. Even when he was the champion, Shlemenko wanted to stay busier than he was. And now as a contender making his way back to Halsey, he talks as if he’s bursting at the seams to accelerate things.
Part of that comes from the sting of coughing up his title in a fight that he never truly competed in. He was submitted via rear-naked choke just 35 seconds into the fight at Bellator 126.
“I was very upset that I lost the belt, but the thing that upsets me the most isn’t that I lost it, but how I did it,” he says. “It wasn’t even a struggle. It wasn’t even a fight. I lost without showing anything. I didn’t have time to show anything, and that’s what makes me feel so bad about things.”
In the wake of that loss, Shlemenko found himself turning to his idol, Fedor Emelianenko. Not so much for a pep talk, but to re-observe his stoical demeanor in defeat.
“I can say that Fedor, he always kind of helps me, because he’s an example not only in how he wins, but in how he dealt with his losses as well,” he says. “After my loss, what I did was look at his old interviews after his losses. And when I did, I looked at them with a completely different set of eyes, and I understood him completely different. Because now I was in the same position as Fedor was in, and I didn’t understand that before. But after my loss, I understood it. I understand what he meant with his words. And that really helped me. I am very thankful for that.”
And thankful, too, that he was dealt Manhoef next, a fighter tailor-made for his brand of fighting. Manhoef knows that Shlemenko has only been stopped once via knockout in his entire career. Of course, Shlemenko knows that Manhoef knows, and — in this new incarnation, same as the old — it excites him to think of his own head as a rare collectible.
“I think that my fight with Melvin, I think it’s a great idea by Bellator and the Bellator matchmakers,” he says. “I think this fight won’t leave anybody, any fan uninterested. Everybody will look forward to this fight, because you won’t see a stalemate. You won’t see two guys trying to win on points. You will see two guys who will literally try to kill each other in this fight. That’s what makes it a great fight.”
The much anticipated middleweight bout between Yoel Romero and Ronaldo Souza has been rescheduled. The two will now meet in the co-main event at UFC on FOX 15 on April 18.
UFC Tonight reported on Wednesday night that the fight has been offic…
The much anticipated middleweight bout between Yoel Romero and Ronaldo Souza has been rescheduled. The two will now meet in the co-main event at UFC on FOX 15 on April 18.
UFC Tonight reported on Wednesday night that the fight has been officially rebooked for that card in Newark, New Jersey.
“Jacare” and Romero were supposed to fight on Feb. 28 at UFC 184 in Los Angeles, but the fight was postponed when it was learned that Souza had come down with pneumonia.
In the ever-changing land of the UFC middleweights, this fight could produce a contender for the winner of Vitor Belfort–Chris Weidman, which is being looked at for May. Currently “Jacare” sits at No. 2 in the media-driven UFC rankings, while the Cuban Romero sits at No. 6.
The fight isonly potentially a No. 1 contender’s bout because UFC on FOX 15 will be headlined by two other top middleweights, Luke Rockhold (No. 5) and Lyoto Machida (No. 3), both of whom have cases for a title shot as well. The April 18 card will go a long way in clearing up the middleweight title picture.
Stretching back to his Strikeforce days, Souza (21-3-1) has won seven straight fights, including four in the UFC. In his last fight against Gegard Mousasi at UFC Fight Night 50, “Jacare” scored a performance of the night bonus with a third-round submission (guillotine). The last time Souza tasted defeat was back in 2011 when he lost the Strikeforce middleweight belt to Rockhold in a close decision.
Romero (9-1) is coming off of a controversial win over Tim Kennedy at UFC 178 in September, in which he appeared to linger in his corner between rounds long enough to recover from a near TKO. Confusion ensued, and when the 37-year old Cuban did come out, he was able to put Kennedy away via strikes just 38 seconds later. Overall, he’s won five fights in a row, all of them in the UFC.
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans won’t be returning to action anytime soon.
As reported on UFC Tonight on Wednesday, Evans underwent a second procedure to correct the torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his knee. Evans…
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans won’t be returning to action anytime soon.
As reported on UFC Tonight on Wednesday, Evans underwent a second procedure to correct the torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his knee. Evans was scheduled to face Glover Teixeira on Feb. 22 at UFC Fight Night 61, but that fight was cancelled in early January when it was learned that Teixiera had suffered a knee injury.
According to UFC Tonight’s Ariel Helwani, Evans realized in mid-December that his body had rejected the cadaver tissue from an operation to repair his knee last year, but he was still planning on going through with the fight. Once Teixeira withdrew, he opted to have a second surgery to correct the ACL.
Evans originally suffered the torn ACL just a couple of weeks before he was to meet Daniel Cormier at UFC 170 last February, and has been rehabilitating his knee with the cadaver tendon since having surgery later that month. All had been optimistic, as he was briefly linked to a fight with Alexander Gustafsson for January, and then later against Teixeira.
But according to the report, Evans heard a pop while training about a week before Christmas. Much like with what happened with then-bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz, the cadaver tendon didn’t take, and he was forced to undergo a second corrective surgery. In the second surgery they took a piece of his patella tendon to fix it.
Even though he’s competed as a wrestler and a fighter his whole life, these were two surgeries he’s ever undergone.
Evans last competed at UFC 167 in 2013, when he scored a first round TKO victory over Chael Sonnen in Boston. No immediate timetable was set for his return, though Evans — who was initially depressed about the situation — said he won’t let this latest setback get him down.
He hopes to be back in action within six to seven months.
“I decided I won’t let this beat me,” he said. “I won’t be held down by this. I decided I will get 100% healthy.”
