Midnight Mania: Pot Meet Poatan Kettle

Bringing you the weird and wild from the world of MMA each and every weeknight!

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

Elite Light Heavyweight contenders are beefing once again.

Magomed Ankalaev, Jamahal Hill, and Jiri Prochazka make up most of the division’s Top Five. The latter two are former champions, while Ankalaev is favored by odds makers to defeat current champion Alex Pereira. There’s been words exchanged between all three, but “Sweet Dreams” in particular took offense to Prochazka’s recent demand that Hill quiet down.

Given that the two are expected to fight in January, it’s not a huge surprise that Hill is talking trash towards Prochazka. His angle of attack, however, is a little odd. In a recent YouTube video, Hill addressed Prochazka’s comments by trashing “BJP” for getting knocked out in his last fight by “Poatan” … despite the fact that Hill also lost his last fight to Pereira in the very first round via KO as well (watch here).

“Bro, are you kidding?” Hill responded incredulously. “So we had the same opponent in our last fight, right? In your last performance, you got dominated. Dominated, and knocked out, completely shut down, completely exposed, and then got done bad. I got caught, you got dominated — there’s a huge difference … My man literally had your ponytail leaning to the left. I hope you wear that same ponytail in LA so I can lean that motherf—ker back to the right for you.”

It’s a strange argument. Pereira knocked out Hill in about three minutes, and it’s not like Hill ever landed anything significant prior to getting floored. Prochazka’s second fight versus Pereira did indeed go terribly, but he did manage to make it to the second round at least. Plus, he won the first round in their first fight, which is worth … something?

The other half of Hill’s argument is comparing their respective performances against Glover Teixeira, which has more merit. Hill definitely beat up “Hands of Stone” rather than going life-and-death with the Brazilian great, but he did also have the advantage of facing Teixeira after Prochazka landed 120 significant strikes on the aging legend.

Either way, I wouldn’t expect this to be the last verbal exchange between Hill and Prochazka before their January showdown.

Insomnia

I hope that bottle was plastic …

I feel like Israel Adesanya and Leon Edwards could really compliment one another as training partners, their approaches to combat overlap in significant ways.

So much cool Wushu Sanda on display at UFC Macau! It was neat to see a more regional martial art highlighted to such a degree in the Octagon.

Speaking of UFC Macau, Petr Yan consistently does the coolest stuff and neatest techniques.

The good old Flying Squirrel!

Carlos Prates’ Muay Thai coach considers him a son and opted to celebrate his success in a unique manner.

Zhang Weili throwing some weight around!

Slips, rips, and KO clips

How long until one of these lands in the Octagon?

Alonu hurt his opponent then followed up with a crazy combo.

BKFC is simply built to produce instantaneous finishes.

Random Land

Happy Thanksgiving!

Midnight Music: A holiday classic.

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.