The UFC goes back to its Fight Night series with a light heavyweight contender bout where the winner could find themselves in the top five of the division. The card also features other contender bouts in the women’s bantamweight division and…
The UFC goes back to its Fight Night series with a light heavyweight contender bout where the winner could find themselves in the top five of the division. The card also features other contender bouts in the women’s bantamweight division and men’s lightweight.
What: UFC Fight Night 72 (UFC Fight Night: Teixeira vs. St. Preux)
Where: Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, Tenn.
When: Saturday, the three-fight preliminary card kicks off on Fight Pass at 6:30 p.m. ET, the four-fight preliminary card starts on Fox Sports 2 at 8 p.m. and the six-fight main card begins at 10 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
This feels like a fairly tough call. On the one hand, Teixeira didn’t look great against Phil Davis, but he claims that was aberrant performance. He points to him cutting less weight this time around, being more mobile and changing things in training for the first time. Maybe that’s true. On the other hand, I’m inclined to believe momentum in MMA is real. More importantly, Teixeira is a go-forward striker while OSP is a clean counter puncher. I’m not suggesting OSP has the perfect style to beat Teixeira. He is loose with positioning and can be countered himself. But OSP does have enough going for him with the way they pair to like his chances.
This seems like a very close call. Dariush can make trouble for any lightweight anywhere, but I’d give the edge in striking to Johnson. His movement and fluidity makes his striking much more natural than Dariush’s good if labored version. On the ground, Dariush is miles ahead and while he does have great takedowns, yet Johnson’s takedown defense and/or scrambling is probably good enough to keep the fight on Johnson’s terms long enough to get the win. I do worry about the layoff for Johnson, but I’ll side with him nonetheless.
Alvey’s been out there boxing the ears off everyone of late, but I’m not sure that’s going to work against Brunson. I like Brunson’s odds of avoiding a big punch while he works relentlessly for the takedown. Perhaps Alvey will show us a wrinkle to his ground game we aren’t aware or appreciative of. Short of that, though, Brunson’s quick level changes and stifling top control is enough to get the job done.
Johnson’s a huge guy with a big punch. He also has decent ground control and ground and pound from there. Rosholt has shown susceptibility to precisely this kind of fighter. The fact that so many of his opponents stick around in fights always creates a tense moment or two. That said, he’s the better wrestler and once he establishes the takedown, he can work from a variety of control positions to make life hell for opponents underneath. I suspect that’s the fate Johnson’s going to find for himself.
Nunes’ early aggression can derail the best laid plans of any fighter, but McMann’s responsive takedowns are better than anyone in that division save Ronda Rousey. If Nunes presses early, and unless she turns in an aberrant performance will almost certainly do that, then McMann has the opportunity to change the terms of the fight more easily. McMann lacks Cat Zingano’s ground and pound or passing, but she may not need it if she doesn’t concede an early lead.
Herrera is a certified beast with abilities everywhere. He’s much more of a ground technician, but probably not enough to overwhelm the extremely versatile Borg. This one will be competitive early with Borg looking to establish either back control from a scrambling sequence or strikes mixed with positional sparring. Either way, though, I expect him to chip away at the game, but likely overmatched Herrera.
Reebok’s direct participation in the sport of mixed martial arts, and with the UFC specifically as their official apparel provider, hasn’t been long. A matter of months, really, and while there have been some notable highs or milestones, the…
Reebok’s direct participation in the sport of mixed martial arts, and with the UFC specifically as their official apparel provider, hasn’t been long. A matter of months, really, and while there have been some notable highs or milestones, their participation hasn’t come without controversy either.
From fighters being unable to retain sponsors during UFC-sanctioned events to lower sponsor pay for some to misspelled names on fight kits to the firing of noted cutman Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran, the July launch of Reebok’s UFC line of products has faced some withering criticism.
Still, the Reebok train has left the station and Michael Lunardelli, Reebok’s point man for their combat division, believes while the bumps in the road should be acknowledged, so should the positives that have happened and is yet to come.
“The UFC’s a perfect fit for us, for a lot of different reasons,” told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s The MMA Hour, reiterating the case for why he believes Reebok and UFC have a strong alliance. In the face of UFC fan pushback, some have wondered whether that’s strained the partnership between the two companies. According to Lunardelli, everything is full steam ahead.
“The first thing is and I think I told you this before, we’re a fitness and training brand. We’re already really good at that and we want to be the best in the world. That’s really the modus operandi for why we’re doing this and which way we’re going here.
“We’re looking at this thing and we’re going, ‘Wow, there’s 35 million plus people who train like fighters whether it’s boxing classes or kickboxing classes or they’re doing MMA, partly for fitness.’ 10 million of them are in the U.S. and that kind of aligns with our brand. In order to be validated or authentic in this space, we’re good at making fitness and training products. We’re great at that, but we need to be specialists in combat and that’s different. To be specialists we’ve got to get access to people that can help us with this. We’ve gotta come in somewhat humble. We’ve got to know there’s things to learn. We gotta know, yeah, we do certain things great in the fitness realm, but this is a little bit different.
“We gotta work with coaches, we gotta work with trainers and we gotta work with fighters,” he continued. “The UFC was out there and they were pitching a deal. They wanted someone to come in and help elevate the sport. We all want the sport to be elevated. Everybody wants that. It was a perfect fit.”
For Lunardelli, context matters. The context from which he operates requires an understanding of two things. First, this is an iterative process of learning on the part of Reebok. They know they don’t have it all figured out yet, Lunardelli notes, but he believes they’re on the right path. Second, timeline matters. What some might see as an inability to do everything expected of them, Lunardelli sees it as an ability to do an astounding amount of work in a narrow amount of time.
“There’s things we’re going to learn from the fighters and learn from the coaches and trainers that we can only get when we’re involved all the way. We gotta be all the way in, we can’t just be on the outside trying to work with one or two here or there. I think UFC affords us an opportunity to do that,” he noted, commenting on the first of his two central arguments.
“The day-to-day stuff where we’re working with fighters and we’re learning how to build the best products out there, that’s what our focus is on,” Lunardelli explained. “That’s it.”
As for the second argument, this is where Lunardelli views matters positively for his apparel brand.
“I think, again, we signed a deal in December. It’s August. Call it eight, nine months later. Our normal process to build products is 18 months to two years. You want to talk about having to fast break this thing. We had design, develop, produce and deliver products in the shortest time frame we’ve ever tried to do for some of the best athletes in the world. You don’t want to screw that up.
“So, our focus, to be quite honest with you, has been just on get the product right, get it to the fighters, get it on them on time for all these events that are happening, now until the end of the year,” he said. “That’s it. There’s not a lot outside of that we’ve really been doing.”
The head of Reebok’s combat division didn’t just provide general context, but weighed in on a number of specific issues or questions circulating the mixed martial arts community, from how they’re handling criticism to the future of the fight kits and more.
On the the volume of criticism:
“I don’t live under a rock. We know there’s been some criticisms of this thing. We expected it at some level. It’s OK. The way I look at it is this: MMA in general and the UFC specifically as an organization, have fans that are incredibly passionate about this. Super dedicated and they feel like they’re protectors of it. They’re going to defend it, they’re going to defend its honor, if you will. And we’re on the outsides coming in right now. That’s OK.
“We’re going to have to win over people and we’re going to have to do it by building great products and by showing we’re dedicated to it, focused on it and on some level, we’re listening.
“You talk to one fighter at a time. You talk to one coach at a time. You talk to one UFC employee at a time, you talk to one fan at a time. That’s how you do it. It’s a process and it’s going to take us a period here to get through al that.
“I’d say the vast, vast majority of fighters feel great about what we’re doing and we’re building really good relationships with these folks very quickly. We got a long way to go. We’re at the starting line.”
On Reebok’s involvement in UFC’s decisions about sponsor payouts:
“Also to be really clear, we don’t determine fighter pay scales, how they’re paid, where does sponsor money go, any of that. None of that has anything to do with us.
“We’ve never once had a conversation about any of that. That extends out to other things: Some of the people around the game, how they’re paid, how they structure it. We don’t have anything to do who the UFC hires, fires, any of that. That’s on them.
“The good news is we’re investing in the sport. We’re investing heavily, heavily in the sport. Not only did we do a deal with the UFC – which is a multi-year deal worth a lot of money – but we’re signing UFC fighters. We’re making deals with gyms. We’re outfitting fighters, not only for their fights, but a lot of times for the gear they’re wearing outside of fight week. We’re in this thing, man.”
On the ‘Stitch’ Duran situation:
“The whole thing’s disappointing because I’ve been a fan before I was actually working in the business. I’ve known Sitch from way back, I didn’t know him personally, but everybody who has ever watched a UFC fight has seen Stitch.
“In his own way, he’s an icon of the sport. Everybody recognizes him…I called him and spoke to him recently after everything went down, had a good chat for a while.
“I don’t think he was being necessarily disparaging towards Reebok. It wasn’t what he was saying. Basically what he was saying was that, ‘Hey, in this deal I lost my sponsorships. It was a part of how I made my money. How I live.’ And I think he was being open and honest about it. I think he felt like he had to stand up to other people in this.
“We never even had a conversation about what the stitch men are wearing, whether they were losing their sponsors or not. It wasn’t like we forgot about them, but that was going to be phase 2 of this deal. We didn’t have enough time to think about the Octagon girls, to be quite honest, or the referees or the cut man or what Joe Rogan’s wearing on stage at the weigh-ins.
“We haven’t even had time to talk about any of that stuff. We haven’t gotten there yet because we spent our first seven months desperately trying to get fight kits to fighters and training gear to fighters and all the product to get this deal kicked off. We didn’t have 18 months to two years.
“I told Stitch, ‘We were probably going to have a conversation with you somewhere down the road,’ but that many not happen now. We don’t make decisions as to who the UFC hires and fires.
“We never once had a conversation with UFC about Stitch Duran. Never once. Hadn’t gotten there yet. It maybe something we talk about now, down the road but unfortunately, this all happened with Stitch. It’s a matter for them.
“I actually talked to Stitch before anyone in my own organization….I did. I just called him man to man. I got his phone number and dialed him up myself. I was on the road and just said, ‘I’m going to call him and talk to him, see what’s going on’. We had a great talk. We talked for about 40 minutes or so. It was man to man, just between him and I. It was a good discussion. It was great, I wish none of this happened, but it did and again, it’s not something that’s in our control.
“I had a very brief conversation with Dana. Dana was great about it as he always is. He’s like, ‘That’s not for you guys to worry about. That’s between us. You guys shouldn’t be taking any heat for that. Basically, that’s our situation with our cutman. We’re handling that’. That’s basically what he said. That was it. You gotta find your place here. There’s a place where you can speak up about things, and there’s a place where you can’t. We’re focused on what our job is.
“If something happens there and he comes back, then we’re going to have a conversation with him. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t. We’ll move on and start talking about the other cut men who are here.”
Website spelling mistakes about fighter names:
“The UFC has somewhere between 580 and 600 rostered athletes. It’s the same for MLB and NFL and NHL and NBA. All of these sports have rostered athletes that the league takes care of. The league’s in charge of who they sign, who is under contract and who isn’t. That list fluctuates very quickly.
“The game plan very simply for us was, we decided very relatively close to the launch date that we were going to try to go live with every fighter in the UFC – which is a good thing – so we could offer every single fighter’s jersey.
“The UFC came to us and asked us if we could do it. We said we could try. So, we were moving very quickly to get to that PR launch. The way it works is, we get a list from the organization. The organization provides the list. I don’t know who the 560th fighter is in the UFC. How would I know that? How would my team know that?
“The list was vetted out by the organization and passed to us in a very short period of time. They were moving quickly as well. Again, it’s a partnership. We don’t want to mess up anybody’s name, nor does the UFC.
“We took that list and put it up live, but no products were ever made that were incorrect, so really, it was just a rendering thing on the website.
“Our fault for not going through it and putting it up, but at the same time, it’s hard to go through a list; what’s my reference point with 600 fighters? Where am I supposed to check to see what it is and how do I know what every fighter wants to have on their jersey? That has to come from them. The league gets that, the league puts the list together, gets it over to us and we put it up online. That’s how it works.
On not having more time:
“I wish we had more time, but you don’t. I can’t be a revisionist here. What happens, happened and we move fast. Honestly, I told my team and everybody we worked with or through on this deal how proud I am of what everyone’s done in such a short period of time. We’ve created the first ever fight kit, for UFC fighters and the entire league. We did it in seven months and we were able to actually get a lot of feedback from the fighters. Not all the fighters. There’s 600 fighters. It was a very small percentage of the fighters that we actually worked with on this. Some of the ones we had signed, some of the ones that did some fit or wear testing with us.
“But very proud of what we did in a small period of time. We got fan gear products out there. We’ve got head wear that’s making it’s way out shortly here. I actually think we’ve done a really good job of doing it.
“I also think we’ve got our own products in our combat training line for those people taking boxing, kickboxing, MMA classes and it’s selling like crazy right now. In a seven-month period to be able to do that, I actually feel good about what we’ve been able to do.”
On the future of the fight kits:
“Yeah, there’s going to be more iterations of the fight kit. This is the first version. Some people, they either like or don’t like the UFC logo on the front. We can’t please everybody, but the first ever fight kit should be playing up the UFC logo in my mind, at least on of the three pieces. But the piece that most fighters are wearing into the Octagon is actually just the shorts, and the shorts plays up the fighters name in a big way.
“To me, the fighters are always kinda first in this thing. We wanted to have one item that played up on the UFC logo because it’s that first kit, but the hood and shorts played more up on the fighters themselves. We felt pretty good about that as a starting point for the first two to three seasons.
“I think by either season 3 or season 4, we’re going to come out with something new. We haven’t designed it yet. We’re in conversations about it and, of course, we have to work with the league, with the UFC, our partner, on what that’ll be. We’ll work together on that, but there’s a lot more to come. We’ve got a whole team of people here are just fired up for this business and designing new products and changing it up and keeping this thing exciting.
“We’ll be working with more and more fighters as we go forward as we get into this, make more relationships, get to know more people in this business. It’s an evolving process. Definitely just a start and a lot more great stuff to come.”
On the future for Reebok in the sport:
“You stay humble. You take the criticism and you make sure it makes you better, not going the other way with it. We’re excited, man. I think there’s been way more good that’s happened than bad. It’s been a really good start for us. A lot of products are selling really well. We’re hearing great things from the fighters. We’re hearing great things from our partners at the UFC. We’re super excited about what’s to come.
“We still have more fighters to sign, we still have more announcements to make, we still have more products to build and even the fight kits themselves – which are the first versions of them – we’ll have more versions of those coming out in the future. We’re excited to release those. There’s a lot of good things still to come.”
This is the Promotional Malpractice Live Chat.
What an insane month it’s been. As I wrote prior to the fight in my What’s At Stake column, UFC 189 and 190 feel an awful lot like UFC 100 and 101. This time, though, the reasons are different and it’s…
This is the Promotional Malpractice Live Chat.
What an insane month it’s been. As I wrote prior to the fight in my What’s At Stake column, UFC 189 and 190 feel an awful lot like UFC 100 and 101. This time, though, the reasons are different and it’s all about Ronda Rousey. I’m just not sure I’ve seen an MMA fighter this part as much of the sporting and larger pop culture consciousness as her. We’ll break down her win over Bethe Correia and the event as well, but there’s something really interesting going on in the sport right now. Is she MMA’s top draw as well as its most visible star? She might be and that’s not something a lot of us were saying after UFC 189. Her popularity – at this level – appears to have snuck up on everyone.
Boxing’s consensus pound-for-pound fighter Floyd Mayweather, Jr. has his next fight set. Mayweather will face off against Andre Berto on September 12th in a fight available via Showtime PPV. Showtime Sports confirmed the news with a tweet on Tuesday.
Mayweather, 38, last fought in May where he defeated Manny Pacquiao via unanimous decision in the most successfully lucrative fight in boxing history. Mayweather’s record stands at 48-0.
Berto, 31, most recently competed in March of this year, besting Josesito Lopez via sixth-round TKO. His professional record stands at 30-3.
There was some suggestion this bout would take place on CBS, but those plans have not materialized. Little else is known about this bout at the time of this writing, including purse split. It is believed the bout will be contested at welterweight or 147 pounds. While no location for the fight has been given, Mayweather’s contract with the MGM Grand in Las Vegas all but certifies this bout will take place there.
Boxing’s consensus pound-for-pound fighter Floyd Mayweather, Jr. has his next fight set. Mayweather will face off against Andre Berto on September 12th in a fight available via Showtime PPV. Showtime Sports confirmed the news with a tweet on Tuesday.
Mayweather, 38, last fought in May where he defeated Manny Pacquiao via unanimous decision in the most successfully lucrative fight in boxing history. Mayweather’s record stands at 48-0.
Berto, 31, most recently competed in March of this year, besting Josesito Lopez via sixth-round TKO. His professional record stands at 30-3.
There was some suggestion this bout would take place on CBS, but those plans have not materialized. Little else is known about this bout at the time of this writing, including purse split. It is believed the bout will be contested at welterweight or 147 pounds. While no location for the fight has been given, Mayweather’s contract with the MGM Grand in Las Vegas all but certifies this bout will take place there.
The mania surrounding UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey continues to grow, both as a celebrated sports figure and endorsement machine. In terms of the latter, a spokesman confirmed to Eater.com on Monday that Rousey will be the new face of U.S. burger chain Carl’s Jr.
Specific terms of the deal are not known, but her national television ad is reportedly set to debut in a few weeks. The fast food retail chain also Tweeted about Rousey and her impending advertisement on Sunday:
Rousey most recently competed at UFC 190 on Saturday where she defended her title in a mere 34 seconds, knocking out Bethe Correia in the first round. Her MMA record stands at 12-0.
The mania surrounding UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey continues to grow, both as a celebrated sports figure and endorsement machine. In terms of the latter, a spokesman confirmed to Eater.com on Monday that Rousey will be the new face of U.S. burger chain Carl’s Jr.
Specific terms of the deal are not known, but her national television ad is reportedly set to debut in a few weeks. The fast food retail chain also Tweeted about Rousey and her impending advertisement on Sunday:
Rousey most recently competed at UFC 190 on Saturday where she defended her title in a mere 34 seconds, knocking out Bethe Correia in the first round. Her MMA record stands at 12-0.
On this week’s episode, we take a look at two events: UFC 190 and WSOF 22. We’ll examine Ronda Rousey’s win over Bethe Correia, Claudia Gadelha’s defeat of Jessica Aguilar and more. We’ll also look at the battle between Jake Shields and Rousimar Pa…
