Heading into UFC Fight Night 89 in his home country of Canada, former UFC title contender Rory MacDonald took a hell of a gamble on himself.
MacDonald went into the fight against Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson as the final fight of his existing UFC co…
Heading into UFC Fight Night 89 in his home country of Canada, former UFC title contender Rory MacDonald took a hell of a gamble on himself.
MacDonald went into the fight against Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson as the final fight of his existing UFC contract, as he opted not to re-sign with the promotion, but instead wait until after the Thompson fight. The belief is that MacDonald was going to be the latest legitimate contender to test the free agency market in the modern MMA landscape.
Unfortunately for MacDonald, however, he would go on to lose to Wonderboy Thompson via unanimous decision after five hard fought rounds in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Despite the fact that he lost his last fight, Bellator MMA appears to be interested in the Canadian contender.
Following the Bellator 157 post-fight press conference on Friday night, Bellator MMA President Scott Coker spoke about the promotion’s interest in Rory MacDonald with MMAFighting.com.
“It really comes down to, we’re Bellator, and we’re going to go after all free agents,” Coker said. “When [MacDonald’s] contract is up, and I think he might have some contingencies in the negotiation period, and we’re not going to breach any contracts. But when they are ready to talk, we’re here and Rory’s somebody we’d definitely be interested in when he’s free.”
When asked if MacDonald losing his last fight matters, Coker simply shook his head and replied, “One fight doesn’t paint the whole picture.”
Maybe Rory’s gamble will end up paying off after all.
The legendary career of the once undefeated women’s bantamweight queen Ronda Rousey was all head-kicked away by the now-former 135-pound champion Holly Holm, in their main event title clash at UFC 193 last November. Rousey was once viewed as the baddest chick on the planet and you would be lucky enough to have escaped the first round
The legendary career of the once undefeated women’s bantamweight queen Ronda Rousey was all head-kicked away by the now-former 135-pound champion Holly Holm, in their main event title clash at UFC 193 last November.
Rousey was once viewed as the baddest chick on the planet and you would be lucky enough to have escaped the first round of a bout with ‘Rowdy’ back in her heyday.
Lower down in the MMA promotion’s ladder, however, was another women racking up a rather impressive first round finish rate of her own, as Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Justino ruled (and still rules to this very day) the Invicta FC featherweight division.
A bout between Rousey and ‘Cyborg’ has been heavily discussed amongst MMA fans throughout the years, but sadly it has never come to fruition given the Brazilian’s reluctance to drop down to 135-pounds for the then-champion’s title.
‘Cyborg’ has since made her UFC debut, successfully defeating Leslie Smith via knockout in the first round of their bout at UFC 199 in Justino’s hometown of Curitiba, Brazil.
In a recent interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, courtesy of MMA Fighting, ‘Cyborg’ discussed the possibility of finally meeting Rousey inside the Octagon given she is no longer champion and no longer has the leverage to dodge a catchweight stipulation:
“I think this fight has to happen,” Cyborg said. “I think Ronda (said) a lot of things about me, a lot of bad things. A lot of fans forget about, but I never forget about.
I would like to fight her in the cage. I think we have a lot of things to talk in the cage, and not outside the cage. I hope she’s coming back. I want to fight soon. I don’t have time to wait.
I think it would be an amazing fight and all fans would see it,” she said. “I think it would be the biggest fight ever. Me and Ronda Rousey. Everybody wanna watch.”
Justino was then asked if she or her team has reached out to the UFC for a possible bout with Rousey:
“This is something you don’t need to ask,” Cyborg said. “They already know this is the biggest fight in women’s MMA. I think I don’t have to ask it. They know I don’t choose opponents. They already know.”
The timing for a potential super-fight with Rousey couldn’t be more perfect, according to Justino, as all of the other elite 135-pound women already have dancing partners. If a bout with Rousey does fall through, ‘Cyborg’ and current women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate could potentially throw-down next:
“The biggest fights will happen now, Holly Holm (vs. Valentina Shevchenko) and Miesha Tate (vs. Amanda Nunes). I think, probably, I’ll fight that biggest fight,” Cyborg said.
“We have to see what happens. We have to see who wants to fight me. Miesha Tate said she wants to fight me at 140. Let’s see. A lot of people like to say but no one signs the contract. I’m ready. Who my fans want to watch, I’ll fight and I’m ready.”
While it’s been well noted that ‘Cyborg’ despieses cutting weight bellow her usual home of 145-pounds, the Brazilian is still holding onto hope that the UFC will one day introduce a women’s featherweight division in the near future:
“When you think about, I say man, I don’t want,” Cyborg said. “When you really think, I don’t want because it’s really hard, really stressful. I love training,
I train a lot, but for 140 it’s worse. You have to run every day. I ran six miles in the morning, six miles at night, and train MMA and other arts, too. It’s a lot of work, a lot of work. … Man, it’s no easy.
George Lockhart is very good. I think I need some more time between fights at 140. I think 140 all the time is not good for my body.
I think I’m asking for this for a lot of years, for my division (in the UFC),” she continued. “They say they don’t have a lot of girls at 145. I would think they have a lot of girls.
But they say it’s hard to make one division of 145 for now. They opened for me at 140. I’m open for big fights and it would be my dream to make my division in the UFC.
It makes me sad that I don’t have my division, but they can make the biggest fights for all my fans. ESPN says I’m the number one pound for pound in women’s MMA, and I think if the UFC wants to invest in women’s MMA, I think I have to be in the UFC.”
You can check out Justino’s full interview here bellow:
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is fresh off a win over Satoshi Ishii at Bellator: Dynamite 2 by split decision following a long layoff. After years of talk, a fight between Jackson and UFC Hall of Famer/Bellator star Tito Ortiz appears to be in the works. “‘King Mo’ wants me to fight my boy Tito,” Jackson said
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is fresh off a win over Satoshi Ishii at Bellator: Dynamite 2 by split decision following a long layoff. After years of talk, a fight between Jackson and UFC Hall of Famer/Bellator star Tito Ortiz appears to be in the works.
“‘King Mo’ wants me to fight my boy Tito,” Jackson said at the post-fight press conference. “He must really not like Tito. King Mo told me that if I fight Tito, then he’ll fight Ishii, because I think that’ll be a good fight, King Mo vs. Ishii. Because they both fight the same. Just sayin’.” Jackson was supposed to face Ortiz in both of their Bellator debuts back in 2013. However, Ortiz got hurt and the fight never happened.
“Tito, we were supposed to fight,” Jackson said. “I really didn’t want to fight him then, but it’s my job to fight. If Tito wants to fight, I think we’ll come in and put on a good show. It’ll suck to knock my friend out, but I gotta get a knockout. I gotta get a knockout. I’ve gotta knock somebody out. I’ve gotta knock somebody out. If Tito gets in the cage with me, you know I’m gonna try to knock him out. It would suck to beat up one of my friends, but if Tito wants to do it, then we can do it. If not, I ain’t gonna cry.”
Jackson (37-11) is currently on a five fight winning streak. In his last six bouts, he’s 5-1. Ortiz (18-11) is currently on a two fight winning streak. In his last six bouts, he’s 2-4.
“What you guys don’t know about me, not only did I not fight for a year, but I didn’t train for a year,” Jackson said. “All I did was play video games, man. I was so depressed, I’m not gonna lie. I was so depressed, man, I was just sitting at home playing video games and drinking beer. That’s all I did for a whole year. You can’t be a professional athlete doing stuff like that.”
It would make sense for Ortiz and Jackson to fight looking at their age and their status in the fight game but time will tell.
According to newly crowned UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping, Nick Diaz wants to fight him at a catchweight of 178 pounds.
The latter half of 2016 looks set to entertain another year of vintage Nick Diaz. The Californian was suspended for five years – reduced to 18 months – by the Nevada Athletic Comission after one of his three drug tests at UFC 183 came back positive for marijuana metabolites. His opponent Anderson Silva, who won the fight via unanimous decision (overturned to No Contest), tested positive for steroids but only received a 12-month ban.
Diaz is eligible to return to competition by August and, according to Michael Bisping, the proud Stockton local wants to fight him – but not for the middleweight title. ‘The Count’, who became the first British champion in UFC history after stunning the world with a knockout over heavy favorite Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, said Diaz approached him in New York and offered a catchweight fight.
“I’ll tell you something as well, another possible opponent that hasn’t been spoken about, and I was with him a couple of nights ago in New York,” Bisping said on his Sirius XM podcast ‘The Countdown’ (h/t BJPenn.com). “I bumped into him in New York and we got talking. Nick Diaz. Yeah, he’s like, ‘Man, we should fight, we should fight.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m down to fight you no problem.’ And then he says, ‘But we have to do it at 178.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean 178?’ Yeah, yeah, he said we do a catchweight at 178. I’m like, ‘Let’s just do 185.’ He’s like, ‘Nope. 178.’ So anyway, I had a good time with Nick, by the way, we had a couple of drinks and hung out, he’s a good dude.”
Bisping did find it strange that Diaz suggested a catchweight bout instead of a title fight, but says he didn’t think to ask why in the moment.
“I don’t know, he didn’t elaborate and to be honest I’d had a couple of drinks, so I didn’t really think to ask the question. He definitely wanted to fight at 178, which is kind of a curious weight. But there you go, there’s another potential name.”
Although many fighters have put themselves forward, it’s likely that Bisping will defend his 185 pound title against Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza by the end of the year.
According to newly crowned UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping, Nick Diaz wants to fight him at a catchweight of 178 pounds.
The latter half of 2016 looks set to entertain another year of vintage Nick Diaz. The Californian was suspended for five years – reduced to 18 months – by the Nevada Athletic Comission after one of his three drug tests at UFC 183 came back positive for marijuana metabolites. His opponent Anderson Silva, who won the fight via unanimous decision (overturned to No Contest), tested positive for steroids but only received a 12-month ban.
Diaz is eligible to return to competition by August and, according to Michael Bisping, the proud Stockton local wants to fight him – but not for the middleweight title. ‘The Count’, who became the first British champion in UFC history after stunning the world with a knockout over heavy favorite Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, said Diaz approached him in New York and offered a catchweight fight.
“I’ll tell you something as well, another possible opponent that hasn’t been spoken about, and I was with him a couple of nights ago in New York,” Bisping said on his Sirius XM podcast ‘The Countdown’ (h/t BJPenn.com). “I bumped into him in New York and we got talking. Nick Diaz. Yeah, he’s like, ‘Man, we should fight, we should fight.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m down to fight you no problem.’ And then he says, ‘But we have to do it at 178.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean 178?’ Yeah, yeah, he said we do a catchweight at 178. I’m like, ‘Let’s just do 185.’ He’s like, ‘Nope. 178.’ So anyway, I had a good time with Nick, by the way, we had a couple of drinks and hung out, he’s a good dude.”
Bisping did find it strange that Diaz suggested a catchweight bout instead of a title fight, but says he didn’t think to ask why in the moment.
“I don’t know, he didn’t elaborate and to be honest I’d had a couple of drinks, so I didn’t really think to ask the question. He definitely wanted to fight at 178, which is kind of a curious weight. But there you go, there’s another potential name.”
Although many fighters have put themselves forward, it’s likely that Bisping will defend his 185 pound title against Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza by the end of the year.
Although he is 54 years old, retired NFL star Herschel Walker is apparently getting the itch to fight again.
Walker spoke with celebrity-gossip website TMZ Sports about his desire to fight again, possibly in the Bellator MMA promotion.
“I’m a lit…
Although he is 54 years old, retired NFL star Herschel Walker is apparently getting the itch to fight again.
Walker spoke with celebrity-gossip website TMZ Sports about his desire to fight again, possibly in the Bellator MMA promotion.
“I’m a little different. I’m not like everyone else,” said Walker. “There’s no doubt in my mind that I can fight again. I would love to do it. Scott Coker’s a good friend of mine. When Scott get ready he’ll give me a deal, and I told him I want to do something by the end of the year.”
In fact, Walker might even be interested in fighting the winner of Friday night’s Bellator 157: Dynamite 2 main event, MMA legend Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
When it comes to fighting at the highest level, you can never completely count out even the heaviest underdogs. No matter the odds, no matter the stylistic mismatch, no matter the difference in athleticism, there is always a chance a fighter can spring the upset. Unlike other professional sports leagues like the NFL, in which
When it comes to fighting at the highest level, you can never completely count out even the heaviest underdogs. No matter the odds, no matter the stylistic mismatch, no matter the difference in athleticism, there is always a chance a fighter can spring the upset.
Unlike other professional sports leagues like the NFL, in which the Patriots of the world almost always beat the Browns of the league, when men and women who throw fists for a living strap on the four-ounce gloves, no one is completely safe.
The latest list from LowKick MMA is here to illuminate the most unlikely, most jaw-dropping, most shock-inducing UFC victories of all time. These were the moments that made us jump out of our seats, made us exclaim “Holy sh*t!,” or left us utterly speechless.
In a recent interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, courtesy of 
While it’s been well noted that ‘Cyborg’ despieses cutting weight bellow her usual home of 145-pounds, the Brazilian is still holding onto hope that the UFC will one day introduce a women’s featherweight division in the near future:
