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The Question: Does Anthony Pettis Belong on Top of UFC’s Pound-for-Pound List?

If you ask the casual UFC fan about the sport’s top fighters, you’ll typically get a pretty standard list in return. Jon Jones will be somewhere near the top. So will middleweight kingpin Chris Weidman, featherweight standout Jose Aldo and even women’s…

It’s only after rattling off a string of other names that Anthony Pettis (18-2) tends to enter the mix.

Is that fair? Should the UFC’s lightweight champion, a man who won the title from the king of close decisions, Benson Henderson, in a runaway romp, be considered among the elite? Should his every fight, not just Saturday’s tilt against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185, be greeted with more fanfare than this?

Bleacher Report’s lead combat sports writer Jonathan Snowden and Kenny Florian, former UFC lightweight contender and current Fox Sports 1 broadcaster extraordinaire, tackle the issue—but carefully. Kenny didn’t want to muss his hair.

Kenny Florian: He definitely is on my list of elite fighters, and I do think he is undervalued tremendously. However, consistency is key in this sport. And we just haven’t seen him enough.

The hardcores know how good he is. But he’s not sticking in the memory of the general MMA fans. That’s an issue for Pettis, but he’s not alone. I think that’s an issue with Cain Velasquez right now, too. Fortunately, Cain has built much more of a history with UFC fans, so it’s easier to return after time off.

It’s tougher for Pettis. These guys need to be performing on a pretty consistent basis—and Anthony has really struggled with injuries. That’s why we haven’t seen the same praise and attention thrown his way. It’s unfortunate.

Jonathan Snowden: Since splitting his first two fights in the Octagon way back in 2011, Pettis has really come into his own. He’s finished four of the best fighters in the division, winning a Performance of the Night bonus each time out.

But I think you’re right. There’s a more telling statistic hidden in there. In three years, Pettis has only fought four times. Combined, he has less than five total rounds under his belt during that period. That’s just not enough to make the impact you need.

No one would encourage a fighter to come to the cage hurt—but there’s a fine line between injuries everyone accumulates and works through and something that should keep you out of action for months. That’s a tricky balancing act, isn’t it?

Florian: There does need to be a balance. Every three-to-four months, guys should be looking to compete. I do know he wants to get at least three fights in this year. He’s in the prime of his career right now. He wants to fight.

I think Pettis realizes the importance of being out there again and again. Whether it’s sponsors, other opportunities outside of the cage or building that fanbase so people want to see you fight, being active is only going to help you.

Fighters need to compete to make people want to see them compete again. It equals dollars for him if he can attract pay-per-view buys. Not to mention, you want to say sharp. It’s not just economic.

Snowden: What frustrates me the most is that Pettis has shown transcendent ability when he has had the chance to go out and perform. My friend Patrick Wyman from Sherdog calls him a “generational” fighter.

That’s bold praise.

I’m often accused of hyperbole—and that’s fair. I tend to get carried away when a fighter does something worth getting carried away about. But I think we are on to something here. Pettis is a gifted fighter on the mat and one of the smartest we’ve ever seen from range with both kicks and punches.

You’ve been in the cage with one of the consensus greats in the division in B.J Penn. So you have some expertise here. Is it unthinkable that Pettis has the potential to be the best?

Florian: I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility. The skills he’s shown are very impressive. He’s not just beating top guys—he’s making it look easy. He’s finishing them.

The most impressive thing about Pettis is that he carries with him an intuition. When he fights you can see he has this confidence and belief in himself. He has the fearlessness to let his skills truly shine. He can go out there, let go of all the pressure and just compete—and do it with flash and pizzazz.

I think that’s a hard thing for a lot of guys. Jon Jones has it. Conor McGregor looks like he does too. But even Jose Aldo, for as great as he is, feels like he’s holding something back. Like he’s maybe not letting it all go, that he’s not showing all of his skills in the Octagon. With Pettis, I get the sense he feels like he’s in a training session.

His ability to find your smallest mistake and expose you is unlike most fighters out there. He has a killer instinct a lot like Anderson Silva’s. It reminds me of when Silva was on his run.

Anthony Pettis is a special athlete and a superstar in the making. The only things slowing him down are injuries. It’s hard to build a legend when you can’t fight on a consistent basis. But I think he’s a special fighter, and he certainly could go down as the best lightweight of all time.

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.

Kenny Florian fought for the UFC title on two occasions and is currently a color commentator and studio analyst for Fox Sports 1.

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Can UFC Star Ronda Rousey Really Beat Up a Male Fighter? Who Cares?

In her last two UFC title defenses, bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has beaten opponents Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano in a combined 30 seconds.
That is not a misprint.
Matched up with the very best women in world, Rousey has barely managed t…

In her last two UFC title defenses, bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has beaten opponents Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano in a combined 30 seconds.

That is not a misprint.

Matched up with the very best women in world, Rousey has barely managed to break a sweat. It took her longer to explain her armbar win over Zingano than it took her to execute it. She is, without question, a force of nature.

Imagining her against other female athletes, frankly, is becoming a little bit difficult to pull off. What is the best-case scenario for a title challenger at this point? Someone pushes her into a second round? Actually wins a round? Wins a fight?

Each of those results is progressively harder to picture.

Perhaps that’s why on message boards, Twitter and even at press conferences, talk has turned to how well Rousey would do against her male peers. Even UFC President Dana White has considered the issue.

With respect for flights of fancy, we need to stop this. Immediately.

When UFC announcer Joe Rogan says in an interview with ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, via MMA Fighting (h/t Bloody Elbow), that Rousey “might be able to beat 50 percent” of the male fighters in her weight class, he means that as a compliment. It is not.

Instead, it’s a destructive way of saying the best woman in the sport, at her best, is only as good as the worst men. Others, like UFC flyweight Ian McCall, aren’t even willing to go that far.

“Ronda’s definitely not the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world,” McCall said (h/t MMA Fighting; Bloody Elbow). “She’s the best woman on the planet. That’s cute. Cool. Well, we’re doing men things. Different. I get it, you’re really good and all, but to compare her to Jon [Jones] or Jose [Aldo] or Demetrious [Johnson] or Cain [Velasquez]…come on. Any of the champions. It’s a different world. I don’t know. It just frustrates me.”

It frustrates me, too, Ian. And not because it gives Rousey too much credit—but because it gives her too little. She’s not pretty good for a girl. She’s just plain good.

Can Ronda Rousey beat male UFC fighters? I don’t know. Nor does it matter.

In 1998, the 203rd-ranked player on the men’s tennis circuit beat both Venus and Serena Williams by lopsided scores on a single afternoon. That result doesn’t diminish their accomplishments on the court—and the same thing applies to Rousey.

Unlike tennis, this is just an academic exercise in mixed martial arts. No state athletic commission would allow it, and the UFC wouldn’t make a man vs. woman fight even if it could. Too many things could go wrong, and besides, we are all aware that physiological differences between men and women are real.

It’s unfair to compare Rousey to male fighters. It’s a battle no one wins. We created weight classes for similar reasons. No one would suggest, for example, that Anthony Pettis isn’t a worthy lightweight champion. But neither is anyone suggesting he should be next in line for a shot at heavyweight kingpin Cain Velasquez.

Size matters. That doesn’t diminish Pettis any more than Rousey‘s gender diminishes her accomplishments.

Rousey is the best female fighter the sport has ever seen. That is more than enough—if we let it be.

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UFC 184: Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg Are on a Collision Course with Destiny

Cat Zingano came charging out of the corner, launching herself at UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey with a fierce determination, murder in her eyes and weeks of muscle memory twitching in every fiber.
That didn’t end up being the best decis…

That didn’t end up being the best decision she’s ever made.

Fourteen seconds after the bell rang to signal the commencement of the fight, Zingano was tapping desperately, her arm contorted at a horrible angle, her title dreams dashed. She had no hope of beating Ronda Rousey.

Perhaps no woman in the UFC does.

Last week, Jeremy Botter and I discussed Rousey’s place among the most dominant female athletes of all time. But no matter who you pick out of a crowded field of greats, all of them have met defeat. Martina Navratilova, for example, crushed the competition for more than a decade—but she also lost 13 of every 100 games.

When you watch Rousey fight, you’re not watching a typical athletic competition. Her record stands at 11-0. Only one has lasted more than a single round.

The idea of losing never seems to cross her mind. Rousey is an outlier, a fighter without compare. Even the most dominant teams and individuals face the possibility of losing, whether or not it ever comes.

Rousey’s unquestioned excellence makes it hard to compare her, even to someone like the famously undefeated Floyd Mayweather. Floyd has won 47 consecutive fights. A handful of them, however, were close calls. Not Ronda Rousey. Even the most active imagination would be hard-pressed to concoct a case for any of her opponents winning a single round, let alone a whole fight.

Twice an Olympian in her first 21 years, Rousey has improved with age to the point no one seems to remotely be competitive. Within a year, she was fighting the best 135-pounders in the world. Now, nearly four years into an already-legendary career, she’s better than she’s ever been before. Her ferocity, athleticism and single-minded obsession with winning is almost frightening.

The very idea of matching her with any of the UFC’s top contenders seems vaguely ludicrous. Bethe Correia? Come on. Holly Holm? She doesn’t seem close to being ready. A third fight with Miesha Tate? Why bother?

No, there is only one fight that makes sense for Ronda Rousey. Just a single contest worthy of her and capable of making fans’ hearts race. There is one woman on the planet on Rousey’s level—and her name is Cris “Cyborg” Justino.

Like Rousey, Cyborg makes opponents look hapless in the cage. Like Rousey, she appears to be a force of nature. No one has managed to go the distance with her since 2008. And like Rousey she ran through the competition this weekend, dispatching poor Charmaine Tweet in just 46 seconds at Invicta FC 11, blasting her with a right hand before swarming with punch after punch for the finish.

At 145 pounds no one can touch her. Since running through Gina Carano in the first major MMA event headlined by women back in 2009, she’s finished six consecutive opponents by TKO, although a positive test for the steroid stanozolol clouds those accomplishments in the eyes of some.

Performance-enhancing drugs or no performance-enhancing drugs, her path of destruction is impressive on paper. But it’s chill-inducing to actually sit down and watch. Cyborg, true to her nickname, barely seems human.

Watching some poor unfortunates take the long walk down that aisle, certain destruction the inevitable result, is almost sad. They know they have no hope. We know it too. The question isn’t how—it’s when.

Rousey and Cyborg have seemingly been on a collision course for years. One is a grappler, the other a striker. One an American, the other Brazilian. One is a bantamweight and the other a featherweight.

It’s these differences that make them such a compelling potential matchup. This is why mixed martial arts was created. This is a battle of styles and a battle of wills. It’s art versus art and athlete versus athlete, all in a single bout.

It is, in a word, epic.

Of course, it’s also a fight that has been in discussion for years. Rousey dropped to 135 pounds to avoid Cyborg early in her career and has had a hard time forgetting her since. Now the bigger star, Rousey wants the fight on her terms—and at 135 pounds.

Whether Cyborg can make that weight is an open question. She will make an attempt at Invicta’s July 10 card in Las Vegas. After that, in a perfect world, it’s on to Rousey.

“I can’t really say that it will happen this year,” Invicta promoter Shannon Knapp told MMAFighting.com. “But what I can tell you is the fans should not give up, because this fight is closer than it has ever been—ever. If it’s gonna happen, I think we’re gonna see it happen possibly by the end of this year or first quarter of next.”

That’s good news, both for fans and for Rousey. Her goal is to be the greatest fighter ever. You don’t earn that accolade by fighting overmatched opponents like Alexis Davis.

Ultimately others will decide Rousey’s legacy—but her decisions now will decide how she’s perceived in the future. If Rousey really wants to be the best, she’ll prove it against her only peer inside the cage. That’s Cris Cyborg. And the clock is ticking.

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The Question: Does the UFC’s New Drug Testing Policy Reflect Real Change?

On Wednesday, the UFC announced what may be potentially sweeping changes to its performance-enhancing-drug policy. UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, President Dana White and head legal counsel Lawrence Epstein addressed the media from a ballroom at the Red Rock Casino Resort to announce the changes, which follow a string of high-profile test debacles, including the surprising failure of the legendary Anderson Silva.

What does it all mean? Does it indicate substantive change? Or is it just for show? Bleacher Report’s version of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, lead writers Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter, weigh in with their initial thoughts on what may end up being one of the most important decisions in recent MMA history.

Jonathan: Well Jeremy, the UFC held a press conference Wednesday to announce that it is, indeed, serious about eliminating the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs. Good cop Lorenzo Fertitta, calm, collected and professional, set forth what seems likely to be a sweeping program that will change the lives of his fighters forever. Bad cop Dana White yelled at the media and announced a title fight.

It certainly wasn’t boring.

It also wasn’t, once the smoke cleared and the mirrors were put back in storage, super informative. There were scant details provided. The future, though potentially quite bright, can be viewed only through the murky haze of doubt.

Jeremy: Perhaps it was because I was in the room and had the benefit of being able to speak to some of the actual folks who will end up making these changes happen on the ground level, but I came away from yesterday’s news conference thinking two things:

1. This sport just changed, drastically.

2. That the UFC went above and beyond even what I expected it to do.

We all know four-year bans for first-time offenders won’t end up being the actual punishment handed down once the UFC partners with an outside doping agency. It will be two years, which is still a major deterrent and also an improvement over what it currently has. And we don’t know a lot of the specifics about the testing because it hasn’t picked an outside agency to handle it yet, though I would bet my last dollar that it will be the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

I think we got this news conference on Monday because the UFC wanted to send a message, not just to the public at large, but also to its fighters. It said, “hey, you have approximately six months to get all of the crap you’re currently taking out of your system. If you fail after July 1, that’s your fault. We’re giving you the time you need to get clean.”

The fact that White was relegated to a sideshow, the guy who said a few things in his usual style, while the rest of the actual business was handled by Fertitta and Ike Epstein? That says a lot. That says they mean business, and this isn’t just another deal where Dana says words and then goes back later and claims he didn’t say those words. When big daddy Lorenzo alights from his second-floor ruling space in the Zuffa office, you know business, in the immortal words of my friend Jim Ross, just picked up.

Jonathan: The truth is, the UFC has been all over the map on this issue. The intensity of its press conferences doesn’t impress me. I’ll be impressed with the intensity of its testing—should it actually occur.

After its on-again, off-again love affair with testosterone replacement therapy, its inconsistent approach to testing and the way it’s consistently given drug cheats opportunities, to include title shots, immediately upon their return from suspension, UFC has zero credibility in this space. It has to earn it.

We’ll see what happens. But it’s certainly not in the UFC’s interest to cancel fights and suspend top fighters. And with it running its own testing, there will always be questions about just how real its testing is.

This might be a gold-standard program. But it might be a pro wrestling program, a public relations ploy the promotion certainly hopes the athletes don’t take too seriously. We don’t really know—because the most interesting part of the UFC’s announcement was the complete lack of specifics provided.

Jeremy: I think you saw a lack of specifics because it put it together in a hurry. It abandoned the testing program it’d planned, and then Anderson Silva went and took all of the drugs in the world, which forced it to admit it had a problem and that it probably needed to take a strong stance.

And I do think it was a strong stance, despite the lack of specifics. Fertitta even admitted on two occasions that things were going to get worse before they got better. He noted that Joe Silva and Sean Shelby would have to be more creative matchmakers, and that if they lose main event or championship fights because of the new policies they’re putting into places, well, they lose main events.

That doesn’t sound like lip service to me. It sounds like someone who knows his company is about to take a hit. And believe me when I say that the UFC will take a major hit once this policy goes into effect, if the eventual policy is indeed identical to what Fertitta discussed on Wednesday morning.

But you are right in saying it has to earn our trust on this issue. It does. If it puts this program in place, and if it is open and honest about results and failures, it will go a long way toward building that trust.

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Bellator 133: Alexander Shlemenko’s Sick Knockout Propels Him Toward Title Shot

At 38, Melvin Manhoef (29-13-1) is a finished product. You know exactly what to expect when he fights. There will be violence. It will be furious. And someone will end up looking at the ceiling.
Fifty-four times, in a career spanning almost 20 years, i…

At 38, Melvin Manhoef (29-13-1) is a finished product. You know exactly what to expect when he fights. There will be violence. It will be furious. And someone will end up looking at the ceiling.

Fifty-four times, in a career spanning almost 20 years, it’s been his opponent who has been unable to finish the fight, victim of powerful winging punches that are truly frightening to behold.

“I’m a junkie for the knockout,” he said on the Bellator 133 broadcast, moments before walking to the cage. That’s not subtle—but it’s self evidently true.

In recent years, as he’s slowed and grapplers have improved their games, he’s been the victim of his own success, chasing glory too often for his own good. When Manhoef smells blood, all science fades. There is only violence.

As thrilling as it feels, this aggressive approach can backfire, his punches landing just short and his opponent’s counters landing flush in turn. That doesn’t make his fights any less compelling. The narrative will be the same as it was in his youth—it’s just the story’s end that is now followed by a question mark rather than an exclamation point.

It’s what made Manhoef’s fight with former Bellator middleweight champion Alexander Shlemenko (52-9) so interesting. Both men needed a win to reestablish their bonafides and insert themselves back into the Bellator championship scene. The winner would rise to relevance. The loser would be relegated to midcard action fights or “opponent” status.

Shlemenko’s trademark spinning strikes aren’t supposed to work against sophisticated strikers. His impressive record, too, has come under fire from cynics not impressed by his pathetic performance against aging legend Tito Ortiz last year.

But he answered any lingering questions about his ability with a spinning right hand that landed right on Manhoef’s skull. After consecutive losses, both early in the first round by submission, Shlemenko badly needed this—not just a win but a moment.

It was going to take a lot to erase the memory of Ortiz beating him so casually in a one-sided fight or to make people forget about Brandon Halsey’s surprising quick upset win, taking Shlemenko’s title the way Ortiz took his pride.

A spinning-back-fist KO against one of MMA‘s most legendary strikers? That just might do the trick.

“Scott Coker please,” Shlemenko begged the Bellator promoter after the fight. “This is my belt. I make mistake. I’m coming for you, Halsey. I’m coming for you.”

Is a single win against a fading star enough to earn another shot at the title? Probably not in the UFC, where each division is a dozen-solid-fighters deep. But in Bellator, where world-class fighters are at a premium, it certainly put Shlemenko in the conversation.

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MMA Has No Heroes: Anderson Silva Joins a Long Line of UFC Drug Test Failures

Nick Diaz and Anderson Silva capped an impressive month for the Ultimate Fighting Championship on January 31st, headlining a card in front of more than 13,000 fans at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas. Silva, the former middleweight champion and arguably the best fighter in the sport’s short history won a unanimous decision in his first fight since a gruesome 2013 leg break.

After a lackluster 2014 campaign, things finally looked to be back on track. While it stopped short of being a classic, Diaz and Silva delivered what was certainly a memorable fight, most notable for Diaz’s early bout shenanigans and Silva’s post fight tears.

The sport, it seemed, was poised for a comeback. Silva was back where he belonged, Conor McGregor was developing as a star and Ronda Rousey was in the wings, still waiting for her turn to shine.

And then the drug test results trickled in and reminded everyone, yet again, that mixed martial arts is one of the dirtiest sports on Earth. Not only did Diaz test positive for marijuana metabolites post-fight, the great Silva, a vocal anti-steroid voice in the sport, failed a pre-fight drug test for the body building drugs Drostanolone and androstane. Per UFC.com:

On February 3, 2015, the UFC organization was notified by the Nevada State Athletic Commission that Anderson Silva tested positive for Drostanolone metabolites on his Jan. 9 out of competition drug test. UFC’s understanding is that further testing will be conducted by the Commission to confirm these preliminary results.

Anderson Silva has been an amazing champion and a true ambassador of the sport of mixed martial arts and the UFC, in Brazil as well as around the world. UFC is disappointed to learn of these initial results.

The UFC has a strict, consistent policy against the use of any illegal and/or performance enhancing drugs, stimulants or masking agents by its athletes

Though Diaz has been in trouble before, Silva’s test failure is a grim reminder that no one in mixed martial arts is above suspicion. From foundational figures like Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie, both of whom tested positive for steroids once those tests were de rigueur, to modern icons like Chael Sonnen, it’s become clear over the years that MMA doesn’t have isolated drug test failures. It has a drug culture.

The mixed martial arts community is predictably in the middle of a by-now-comfortable outrage cycle over the Silva news. But the fury is a just a mask. The truth, according to Deadspin editor Tim Marchman, is that despite all the bloviating and phony anger, drugs have permeated cage fighting to the point of no return.

No one can truly be surprised by this news. It’s happened too often to have much shock value. MMA shares much in common with cycling and other notorious sports, where drugs are simply part of the equation.

“Ultimately I think fighters define fighting, and they’ve made it pretty clear by their actions that this is part of the game,” Marchman said. “I respect the hell out of the guys who have been vocal about this and have talked about it as a serious problem. But they’re in the minority and that’s just how it is.”

In 2013, UFC President Dana White vowed to “test the s–t” out of his fighters. Owner Lorenzo Fertitta added his voice to the mix, and the promotion’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner pledged the company’s support to a growing anti-PED crusade.

“I think that this year-round testing and out of competition is very important,” Ratner told MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani. “Unlike baseball if you’re taking a performance enhancing drug and you hit the ball further, that’s a big advantage, but in fighting, whether it’s boxing or in MMA—and you’re chemically stronger and you win a fight that you may not of and hurt somebody…So I’m all for out-of-competition testing. I want an even playing field and I believe in it with all my heart.”

Within the insular mixed martial arts community, these bold claims to test out of competition raised eyebrows. Former UFC fighter Krzysztof Soszynski, after all, had estimated that up to 95 percent of all fighters were using some form of performance enhancer.

Only the predictability of the fight night test allowed these fighters to pass drug screenings. Even with these relatively easy to beat tests, a laundry list of the sports legends fell victim to the dreaded urinalysis, Shamrock, Gracie and Vitor Belfort among them.

In an out-of-competition test? Without fight night as the drop dead date to end steroid cycles? Many in the sport expected chaos. And that, quite frankly, is exactly what we’ve seen in 2015 so far. In addition to Silva and Diaz, UFC 182 headliner Jon Jones tested positive for cocaine metabolites, making it seem continued out-of-competition testing by the Nevada Athletic Commission will either finally start cleaning the sport up or finally burn it to the ground.

Promoters have, rhetoric aside, turned a blind eye to the drug problems that permeate the sport, or, worse, aided and abetted abusers. In 2003 UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia tested positive for steroids. He returned to an immediate title shot. In 2007, history repeated itself with lightweight champion Sean Sherk.

Their punishments may have well included a wink along with the slap on the wrist. There is no real penalty for failure, outside that handed out by the offended athletic commission. Fighters, Marchman contends, see a very clear message in the UFC’s behavior after drug test failures—and act accordingly.

“The UFC talks a big game, implements testing, and all that. But Vitor Belfort has had how many title shots?” Marchman asked. “They were letting the guy only fight in non-tested environments, and build toward a title shot on those wins! Fighters aren’t dumb, they see that. It’s like in baseball, where owners were moaning and writing out nine-figure checks to obvious juicers.”

Answers to the conundrum of PEDs aren’t immediately obvious. In the past they’ve been permissible, so long as fighters could clear it out of their system before a fight night drug testing. The Silva result makes it clear those days are numbered. Whether that’s good for the sport—or for the fighters—remains to be seen.

MMA is a brutal sport, both in the cage and in the weeks leading up to a contest. Fighters who want to continue to perform at a high level often need a boost to get them through training camp. That boost won’t be there anymore, at least without significant risk.

It’s a new day in MMA. The sins of the past are being washed away. Will they take the entire sport with them in a tidal wave of recrimination? Will fighters be the scapegoats for the PED culture run amok?

Combat sports faces many difficult questions in the weeks ahead. But two thing are certain—no one is above suspicion and no one, even the greatest of all-time, is above the law.

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