Author: Dave Doyle

For one round, it was as if Anthony “Rumble” Johnson was trying to prove to the world he could wrestle.

Then he came out and gave the fans in Las Vegas what they expected to see.

Johnson knocked out London’s Jimi Manuwa with a ferocious right hand to the jaw in the second round of their UFC 191 fight on Saturday night. The time of the stoppage was 0:31.

“That’s just muscle memory,” said Johnson (20-5), who won for the 10th time in his past 11 fights. “You don’t train for that.”

Johnson tagged Manuwa (15-2) early in the opening round. And while the crowd at the MGM Grand Garden Arena sensed the kill, Johnson instead went to the ground, where he easily outworked Manuwa for the bulk of the stanza.

In the second, he set Manuwa up with a leg kick before landing his vicious right hand for his 14th career KO.

After the bout, Johnson said he hadn’t planned on showing off his ground game.

“I saw an opening and I took it,” Johnson said. “This fight is for all the people who supported me through thick and thin, and for those that didn’t, this was for you, too.”

John Lineker went up to the bantamweight division Saturday night. And he remembered to bring the power he showed in the flyweight division with him.

Lineker (26-7) got into a wild brawl with Francisco Rivera (11-5 1 NC) at UFC 191 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, then sealed the deal with a guillotine choke. The time of the whirlwind fight was 2:08.

The Brazilian standout landed several big blows at the outset as the fighters stood and traded, which knocked Rivera to the mat, then continued to land punches to the downed Rivera.

Rivera, however, was determined to make a comeback or go out on his shield. He got back to his feet and managed to land a couple of impressive shots of his own. The two winged punches at one another until Lineker pulled guard and got the winning choke.

“He wasn’t intimidated because I was coming up from a lower division,” Lineker said. “I’m glad he did that.”

Lineker has won three straight and seven of his past eight. However, he consistently missed weight in the 125-pound division, necessitating his jump to 135.

It didn’t take too long for UFC 191’s first controversy to brew.

Veteran Joe Riggs was awarded a disqualification victory over Ron Stallings in the second round of their middleweight fight on the Fight Pass prelims Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Referee Jason Herzog waved off the bout at 2:28 on the advice of the cageside doctor after the downed Stallings landed an upkick to the the head of Riggs, who was on one knee and attempting to move into top position on the ground.

Riggs’ right eye was swollen shut, and when he told the doctor he was unable to see, the fight was called off.

However, Riggs’ eye was initially injured in the opening round of what was a back-and-forth fight, when he was on the receiving end of Stallings’ jabs. And the video replay showed that Stallings’ upkick landed on the jaw, not on Riggs’ previously injured eye.

Herzog, however, treated the upkick as the cause of the closed eye, and awarded the fight to Riggs as the result of a foul.

Riggs improved to 41-16 (1 NC) with the victory. It marked his first UFC win since defeating Jason Von Flue at UFC Fight Night 6.

The historic UFC 200 now has an official date and location.

The card will be held on July 9, 2016, and will be the company’s first event at Las Vegas Arena.

UFC president Dana White formally announced the event Friday at the end of the Go Big press conference in Las Vegas.

While the UFC has made the MGM Grand Garden Arena and the Mandalay Bay Events Center the home for most of their major Sin City events over the years, the city’s state of the art new arena is scheduled to open next April. Las Vegas Arena, which is currently being constructed on a lot behind the New York, New York casino near Interstate 15, will have a seating capacity of about 20,000 for combat sports events.

No fights have been announced for the card, although White did say the card will be in conjunction with next summer’s International Fight Week.

Bellator will have both a cage and a ring at their Sept. 19 combined show with Glory kickboxing in San Jose. So they’ve decided to maximize use of both.

The company announced Friday that some MMA and kickboxing bouts on the undercard of a 20-fight event will take place simultaneously.

Three MMA fights are scheduled for this portion of the card: featherweights Victor Jones (0-0) and David Blanco (1-0) a women’s flyweight bout between Gloria Telles and Alysia Cortez,  and a middleweight bout between Brandon Hester (1-0) and DeMarco Villalona (1-0). On the kickboxing side, there will be a Glory lightweight bout between Jose Palacios (7-7) and TJ. Arcengal (4-1);

Jones-Blanco and Hester-Villalona will be conducted in the Bellator cage, while the Glory fight and Telles-Cortez, which is an amateur bout, will take place in the ring.

The card, headlined by Liam McGeary defending his Bellator light heavyweight title against Tito Ortiz, also features a one-night, four-man light heavyweight tournament, and a Glory title fight.

LOS ANGELES — Something will look a little different when Demetrious Johnson steps into the Octagon at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday.

The UFC flyweight champion will attempt to make his seventh successful title defense when he rematches John Dodson in the main event of UFC 191.

But this will be his first fight since the UFC’s Reebok deal kicked in. Which means 1. He’ll be wearing Reebok’s UFC champion kit to the cage for the first time and 2. He’ll no longer be sponsored by Microsoft’s Xbox in the Octagon.

At a recent media event in downtown LA, Johnson told MMAFighting.com essentially, that his Xbox sponsorship is in limbo.

“I’m still in touch with them,” Johnson said. “If any opportunities come up, then if I fit that role I’ll be reached out. Other than that, it’s just not there.”

The problem with maintaining outside sponsorships in the Reebok era is that the sponsor’s big payoff came when their brand was displayed on television. While fighters can still do things like personal appearances outside of fight week, the sponsorship loses value if there aren’t hundreds of thousands of people watching.

“All the sponsors out there, they’re looking for that prime-time spot, that’s what they’re paying for,” Johnson said. “So if any, Bad Boy, Hayabusa, whatever’s out there, they’re looking for that prime spot. Of course they can do stuff outside the Octagon, but they’re going to make their big money inside the Octagon, that’s where they get the most viewers.”

That held true for “Mighty Mouse,” who implied he made more money from Xbox for his UFC on FOX fights than he did for his pay-per-view bouts.

“I’m happy about the Reebok thing,” Johnson said. “Just because at the end of the day, even though the Xbox deal was there, at the end of the day, I’d still have to negotiate stuff with those guys. Because, ‘is it going to be on PPV or is it on FOX?’ Believe it or not, Xbox loved it more when I was on FOX than PPV. Because there’s more viewers on FOX, it’s a bigger platform.”

In the end, Johnson is looking on the bright side, as chasing down sponsor money was a headache of the fight game most fans didn’t see. He knows he’s getting $40,000 from Reebok when he steps into the Octagon and that the checks won’t bounce.

“It’s a little more legit, where in the past, you hear from fighters,’ I haven’t gotten paid by my last sponsor,'” Johnson said. “There were times in the WEC I didn’t get paid from my sponsors. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”