The opening round of the UFC flyweight tournament is over. The flyweight rankings for March are therefore that much clearer. However, the UFC doesn’t have the same monopoly over the high-end talent at flyweight that it does in the other weight cla…
The opening round of the UFC flyweight tournament is over. The flyweight rankings for March are therefore that much clearer.
However, the UFC doesn’t have the same monopoly over the high-end talent at flyweight that it does in the other weight classes. In flyweight, there are more ranked fighters outside the UFC than in any other promotion.
So who are all of these guys, and where are they ranked in the grand scheme of the 125-pound division? Read and find out!
These rankings are the combined effort of some of Bleacher Report MMA’s best writers, as we continue to try to provide you with the best content on the web.
Stop watching MMA. Pride is dead, Fedor’s mystique is gone, the unified rules are awful and the UFC is a haven for “lay and pray” artists and fighters who avoid real fighting at all costs. That’s what some misguided “fans” would have you believe.&…
Stop watching MMA. Pride is dead, Fedor’s mystique is gone, the unified rules are awful and the UFC is a haven for “lay and pray” artists and fighters who avoid real fighting at all costs.
That’s what some misguided “fans” would have you believe.
If there’s one thing that’s hurting MMA, it’s nostalgia run amok.
For some reason, fans across the Internet keep forgetting that it isn’t the early 2000s. Fedor Emelianenko is not the world heavyweight champion, the best fighters at 205 are not in Japan, there are no yellow cards and knees/kicks to the head of a grounded opponent are not legal—deal with it.
When bad things happen in modern MMA, people look back to Pride Fighting Championships as if it was some kind of paragon for the sports world. But Pride had its demons; it was far from the pure and perfect organization people would have you believe.
Pride did bad things. They allegedly fixed fights (if you go buy Gary Goodridge’s estimate, 90 percent of fights in the promotion were fixed, tried to influence the results of fights by giving the preferred fighter more time to train and they also allegedly didn’t pay fighters.
The UFC treats me better than Pride. I don’t know what [Pride’s] problem was but they wouldn’t promote me at all, they cheated me out of money from dolls and t-shirts, not paying me…
When my contract was up and we were negotiating and I wanted more money and they were telling me ‘Oh, but you’re a nobody.’ This was after I had fought in the Grand Prix and beat Igor Vovchanchyn. Even after I went to that K-1 fight and represented them in K-1, they were mad I won that K-1 fight! Just stuff like that…
Igor Vovchanchyn, I got two weeks notice [for the fight]. Ninja, two weeks notice. It was bad. The tournaments were fixed. They said they drew numbers from a hat. It was all set up for Wanderlei to win. It was really bad. Even in some fights they would stand you up when you were winning, different stuff like that.
Pride did bad things. More bad things than fervent Pride fans accuse UFC president Dana White and Zuffa of doing. While Zuffa cares enough about fighters to offer them insurance and—before insurance was implemented—pay for injuries received while fighting. Pride simply shrugged their shoulders.
Rampage Jackson again shed light on the subject of Pride’s failings the same interview with Fighters Only:
Yeah, take yourself to the hospital. I remember my people taking me to the hospital. I think they used to have a van there sometimes. But in the UFC if you get hurt even in practice in a fight, Dana will say ‘Come on, come to my doctor’ and they will pay for it. The UFC is really good about that. That’s one thing I really like about the UFC compared to Pride, the UFC is really good like that. But if you got hurt in practice getting ready for a Pride fight…[laughs]. And if you got hurt in a fight, like I got my hand broken over there, they don’t care.
It was just the way they treated you. Not all the fighters got treated like that. The Brazilian fighters got treated well, and Cro Cop and stuff like that they got treated well but a lot of the American fighters probably feel the same as me. They probably wouldn’t say anything but I don’t care.
It seems that for every good point about Pride (their generally higher level of talent, rules more conducive to exciting fights, theatrical entrances, grand prixs), there was a bad point to offset it.
Hindsight is not only 20/20, but it’s viewed with selective memory; the “old days” are always better for some reason.
So some fans might be longing for the “good old days” of MMA, but the truth of the matter is that those days never existed.
The finest hour of MMA is here and now.
Fighters who will be referred to as “the greats” of our generation are putting on amazing fights for us, the UFC is extending is reach across the globe with international versions of The Ultimate Fighter and the sport is emerging into the mainstream and has made it onto FOX.
Silver-tongued Judoka Ronda Rousey has taken women’s MMA by storm as of late, and she plans on doing more.Her fight with Strikforce women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate is just the next big step on her journey. The fight is the most hyped fig…
Silver-tongued Judoka Ronda Rousey has taken women’s MMA by storm as of late, and she plans on doing more.
Her fight with Strikforce women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate is just the next big step on her journey.
The fight is the most hyped fight in the short history of women’s mixed martial arts.
It’s quite an amazing fact since some believed that WMMA was dead after Gina Carano was battered at the hands of Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos back in 2009.
You won’t find Rousey disagreeing with her fight against Tate being of historic significance.
“I think that’s part of what makes this fight so exciting and so anticipated,” Rousey said at the Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey media conference call at which Bleacher Report was present.
“We’re pretty much getting into unarmed combat where anything’s possible, someone could die, you know.
“If you see two girls who basically look like warrior princesses—that was a show on TV for a reason—people want to watch it.
“This is gonna be a huge fight and change women’s MMA for a long time.”
Part of what has made the fight so talked about is Rousey’s incredible “trash talk” ability.
WMMA was in dire straits in the post-Carano, post-Cyborg’s failed drug test era, but Rousey has rekindled interest in it by her words outside the cage and by her deeds inside the cage.
Regarding those words, they may sound venomous, but to Rousey they’re benign.
“I never said that I had anything personal against [Tate],” Rousey said.
“I kind of created this rivalry on purpose because I had enough friends and could really use a few enemies.
“It’s not personal to me and I understand why she doesn’t like me and why she might take it personal because I’ve been being pretty much overtly rude.
“But yeah, I don’t feel bad about it. She can take it personal if she wants—I don’t.”
Rousey isn’t a disrespectful upstart but rather a sly businessperson. She understands how marketing works and that bigger draws get bigger fights.
But the woman who is now fighting for a world title wasn’t always so famous or popular.
When she started, she had to work her way up from nothing.
“This day one year ago I was working three jobs and struggling to train and do all this stuff, and I just wanted to be done with all that,” she said.
“I wanted to be able to support myself through fighting and do that as quickly as possible…I knew that I could win the title the day that I started and the quicker I could get it the better.
“If giving more entertaining interviews than the other girls helps me out, then I want to do that.”
Rousey’s critics may contend that it’s only her witticisms and good looks that got her a title shot, but her Olympic level judo abilities also had something to do with it.
She’s had four pro fights and four submissions—all by armbar in under a minute.
That’s impressive no matter what you think of her and it helps make Judo more respectable, which was one of Rousey’s goals all along.
“One of my major goals when I started doing was not only to push Women’s MMA but also to promote judo, because judo has been kind of going down hill for the past few decades,” she said.
“But it’s really cool to see really respectable athletes, like I see Jon Jones doing judo throws all the time and I freak out.”
Rousey has had an incredible impact on the MMA world and she’s only been here since March 2011 and had four fights.
Can you imagine what she can do given even more time?
When you look at it that way, changing women’s MMA for a long time doesn’t seem like that far off a goal.
Rousey has already changed it for the better and the fight with Tate hasn’t happened yet.
Mixed martial arts is one part sport, and one part sports entertainment. Yes, people tune in to watch the world’s greatest fighters compete, but they also tune in for excitement, for thrills and chills, twists and turns, and more “brawling” than y…
Mixed martial arts is one part sport, and one part sports entertainment.
Yes, people tune in to watch the world’s greatest fighters compete, but they also tune in for excitement, for thrills and chills, twists and turns, and more “brawling” than you can shake a TapouT shirt at.
There is a fine line between sport and sports entertainment and the UFC walks right on it, sometimes veering to one side or the other.
In the case of men like Dan Hardy, they veer towards sports entertainment. Dan Hardy has lost four straight in the UFC and is only .500 in the organization yet he’s still employed with them.
The reason why? Hardy was exciting and was a fighter who liked to “stand and bang” with the opponent. Or, as UFC owner Lorenzo Fertittaput it in a tweet, “I like guys that WAR!!!”
If the UFC was purely about sports, Hardy would’ve been long gone after losing four straight.
But the fact of the matter is that the UFC is a business and it needs to make money to survive. They couldn’t do well financially by just playing to the sport aspect because not all the fans appreciate the intricacies of MMA.
This is where men like Jon Fitch come in. Jon Fitch is the cosmic opposite of Dan Hardy. Hardy is an exciting striker but loses more often than Fitch, who is an allegedly boring wrestler but wins more often than Hardy.
Fitch’s style has cost him fans and cost him promotion. He grinds down on his opponents in a masterful display of wrestling’s true power in the Octagon but fans don’t appreciate that. It’s sport at its finest, but many don’t consider it entertainment and they won’t separate from their cash to see it.
Because the fans don’t want to see him, the UFC doesn’t want to see him do well; they know he’ll kill ratings and pay-per-view buys.
As much as people want to malign the shunning of fighters like Fitch and the promotion of “bangers” like Hardy, the basic truth that the majority of people tune in to be entertained cannot be denied.
The UFC has to be part sports entertainment or it can’t succeed. It has to appeal to the lowest common denominator—the casual fan. And if that means not firing Dan Hardy after four straight losses or shoving Leonard Garcia down our throats so that the finest sport in the world can grow more popular, then so be it.
Zuffa has finally acknowledged Fedor Emelianenko—in trading card form. And it’s not even a card of him; it’s a card of Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva beating him up.The card is part of a recent series of Topps cards that also promote Strikeforce fighter…
Zuffa has finally acknowledged Fedor Emelianenko—in trading card form. And it’s not even a card of him; it’s a card of Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva beating him up.
The card is part of a recent series of Topps cards that also promote Strikeforce fighters along with their UFC counterparts.
Zuffa (the company that owns the UFC) and Fedor Emelianenko have a long history of never getting along.
After the fall of Pride in 2007, Emelianenko and his management couldn’t come to terms with Zuffa. This helped earn the ire of UFC president Dana White.
Emelianenko, therefore, went to the emerging Affliction promotion, left after it became defunct and then wound up in Strikeforce, where he went 1-3.
The loss to Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva was particularly devastating to fans because they thought that Fedor’s previous loss to Fabricio Werdum was a fluke and that the Russian would destroy Silva. They were wrong.
Silva dominated the smaller Fedor and forced a doctor stoppage between the second and third rounds.
Now, thanks to Zuffa, the moment where “Bigfoot” got mount on Emelianenko and pounded his face in is immortalized forever on a playing card.
Thus, it seems that Zuffa has never gotten over Fedor not signing with them and are still seeking to bury the man even though the evolving MMA game and his terrible management team have already done that.
At best, the card is a bit distasteful. At worst, it’s kicking a man while he’s down.
We’ve all seen them. They wear TapouT or Affliction shirts, “watch UFC,” only know the big name fighters and get bored when fights go to the ground.There are reasons why these people (the much-maligned “casual fans”, as they are called) are worthy of r…
We’ve all seen them. They wear TapouT or Affliction shirts, “watch UFC,” only know the big name fighters and get bored when fights go to the ground.
There are reasons why these people (the much-maligned “casual fans”, as they are called) are worthy of reproach, and there are reasons why they be treated like kings.
They are reprehensible because they don’t have a true understanding of the sport; they don’t enjoy it on as many levels as “hardcore” fans do. That is to say that a casual fan watches just to see violence while a hardcore fan watches to see the human chess match that is mixed martial arts.
This propensity toward seeking violence is perhaps why the casual fan is such a problem. They only want to see action, they only want to see a brawl. And they sure are vocal about it.
Go to a bar showing a UFC event and you’ll be able to pick out the casual fans by how they act and what they say.
It’s also possible that casual fans only watch the UFC and wear MMA “lifestyle” brands to elevate their own sense of self-esteem or perceived societal standing; wearing a standard T-shirt doesn’t convey the same message as wearing a $60 shirt with ornate depictions of skulls, wings, and other manly symbols.
However, the casual fan, for all his lack of knowledge, has one important thing: Money.
The money of the casual fans isn’t something that can be ignored.
Look at the growth of the UFC and MMA after the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter”. The show created the casual fan (as well as an insult on MMA forums, TUF noobs, as people who came to MMA from The Ultimate Fighter were pejoratively known as, or sometimes TUFers), and in doing so created a societal niche for the UFC that didn’t previously exist.
The UFC now had a presence in culture, thanks to the casual fan who wasn’t “loyal” to the sport and didn’t painstakingly hunt for Pride video tapes or watch UFC 1. This created resentment in MMA fandom that still exists until this day.
For example, some MMA forums judge your worth by your join date. The earlier your join date, the more respected you are since you have been a verifiable MMA fan for longer. While a more recent join date is seen as a bad thing. “The Underground” even uses it as an insult, insulting some posters by calling them an “11er” or a “10er”
The vast division between the casual and hardcore fan is a product of the UFC and MMA’s unique upbringing. While MMA and the UFC were growing up, so too was the Internet. Thus, “hardcore” fans had places to congregate en masse and these places were eventually “ruined” by the hordes of casual fans.
While casual fans may annoy the hardcore fans and sometimes matchmaking might be tailored towards the casual fan, the casual fan is the foundation on which the current expansion of the UFC is built.
The casual fan may not train, may not know that much about MMA, and may be bored by the ground game but their money is still good, and money makes the sport go ’round. Fighters can get paid more and the UFC can have insurance because there are now legions of casual fans ready to part with their cash upon hearing “GSP” (or formerly “Lesnar” but he’s now retired).
The hardcore fans may have kept the sport alive in the dark ages but it’s thanks to the casual fan that the sport will enter a golden age.
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