Tag: Breaking News

Frank Mir vs. Alistair Overeem Is Do or Die for Both Fighters

Frank Mir and Alistair Overeem are facing the worst runs in their extensive mixed martial arts careers. The two will be battling for their futures when they face each other at UFC 167 in November.
UFC president Dana White has spoken of how important th…

Frank Mir and Alistair Overeem are facing the worst runs in their extensive mixed martial arts careers. The two will be battling for their futures when they face each other at UFC 167 in November.

UFC president Dana White has spoken of how important the fight is for both heavyweights.

According to MMA Fighting, when asked whether the fight was “do or die” for both men, White answered, “Definitely.” 

Both fighters are riding career-threatening losing streaks, although Mir, with three straight losses to Overeem’s two, is in a much more precarious situation.

Mir has been fighting in the UFC since 2001 and is a former heavyweight champion. However, he hasn’t won a match since submitting Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in 2011. The three losses he’s stacked up—to Junior dos Santos, Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett—amount to the worst streak of his career.

Overeem, by contrast, only joined the UFC two years ago, riding a formidable run in Strikeforce, Dream and the K1 kickboxing tournament. He quickly established himself in the promotion by finishing former champion Brock Lesnar in the first round. But after a failed drug test and two KO losses to Antonio Silva and Travis Browne, the Dutch fighter could become the biggest bust in UFC history.

Per Tom Ngo of 5th Round, Overeem made $264,285 (with about half coming from a win bonus) for beating Lesnar and $285,714 in his loss to Silva. Mir took home $200,000 in each of his last two fights. That’s enough for both fighters to buy a whole range of tv stands.

The pair will fight on the UFC 167 undercard taking place in Las Vegas on Nov. 16. The card will be headlined by a title fight between welterweights Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Ryan Bader Meets Anthony Perosh at UFC Fight Night 33 in Australia

Add another hometown boy to the mix when the UFC returns to Australia in December. The Herald Sun is reporting that light heavyweights Anthony Perosh and Ryan Bader have agreed to a matchup at UFC Fight Night 33.
Perosh has fought on three of the UFC’s…

Add another hometown boy to the mix when the UFC returns to Australia in December. The Herald Sun is reporting that light heavyweights Anthony Perosh and Ryan Bader have agreed to a matchup at UFC Fight Night 33.

Perosh has fought on three of the UFC’s four previous trips to his home country. With a record of 2-1 fighting at home, Perosh was dominated by Mirko Cro Cop at UFC 110 but earned first-round stoppages over Tom Blackledge and Nick Penner in followup appearances.

The Australian fighter has competed inside the Octagon six times during his current stint and has yet to have a fight go out of the second round. Recently, Perosh rebounded from a seven-second knockout loss by delivering a 14-second knockout to jiu-jitsu wizard Vinny Magalhaes.

That’s right. Two fights in 21 seconds.

Ryan Bader is also not a fighter who wastes much time once the cage door closes. Not only does The Ultimate Fighter winner own the record for fastest submission in light heavyweight history, but four of his past six fights have lasted less than three minutes.

Most recently, Bader competed in the main event of UFC Fight Night 28. Although he found early success against top contender Glover Teixeira, he was ultimately knocked out by his wobbled opponent.

A loss for “Darth” would be catastrophic for his career. Despite opening his UFC tenure with a flawless 5-0 record, the wrestler has dropped four of his last seven contests.

Headlined by a heavyweight battle between Mark Hunt and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, UFC Fight Night 33 takes place on Saturday, December 7 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Due to the time difference, the event will air in the United States on Friday, December 6. 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC News: First Photo of Ronda Rousey in ‘Expendables 3’ Revealed on Instagram

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has had a busy few months, coaching Season 19 of The Ultimate Fighter, gearing up to fight rival Miesha Tate at UFC 168 and filming two major motion pictures simultaneously. 
Rousey stars in&nbsp…

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has had a busy few months, coaching Season 19 of The Ultimate Fighter, gearing up to fight rival Miesha Tate at UFC 168 and filming two major motion pictures simultaneously. 

Rousey stars in The Expendables 3 and Fast and Furious 7 next year, with the first photo of her on the Expendables set surfacing on Instagram a couple weeks ago: 

“Rowdy,” seen holding a pistol in the back right corner of the photo, is seen with the “who’s who” of the action-film world. 

Also in the shot are Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Eric Roberts, former UFC champ Randy Couture and pro boxer Victor Ortiz. 

While their faces are obstructed in the photo, Dolph Lundgren, who starred opposite Stallone in Rocky IV back in 1985, and Terminator film star Arnold Schwarzenegger are unmistakably present as well. 

Stallone, one of the writers of the testosterone-driven Expendables series, tweeted in July that the former Olympic-level Judoka would be joining the cast. 

Despite only one fight inside the Octagon, Rousey‘s uncanny finishing ability, brash personality and good looks have made her one of the most recognizable active fighters on the UFC roster. 

Thus far, the 26-year-old has yet to taste defeat as a mixed martial artist, defeating all of her seven opponents via first-round armbar. 

While Rousey was in trouble early in the round, giving up her back, she made Liz Carmouche another victim at UFC 157 in February. 

Rousey-Tate II is the co-headlining bout at UFC 168, which takes place on December 28 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

While Rousey decisively beat “Cupcake” in their first encounter in March 2012, Tate recently said she expects to break the champion’s jaw in the rematch. 

According to online movie database IMDB, The Expendables 3 is targeting a release date of August 15, 2014, with Rousey playing the character “Luna,” with no other details of her role provided. 

 

John Heinis is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA Editor for eDraft.com.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Transgender Fighter Fallon Fox Accepts Matt Mitrione’s Apology

Fallon Fox has accepted Matt Mitrione’s public apology five months after the UFC heavyweight’s on-air rant led to his suspension.
Mitrione’s personal attack against transgender fighter Fox saw a swift response from the UFC in April, w…

Fallon Fox has accepted Matt Mitrione’s public apology five months after the UFC heavyweight’s on-air rant led to his suspension.

Mitrione’s personal attack against transgender fighter Fox saw a swift response from the UFC in April, which labelled his outburst as “offensive” and “wholly unacceptable.”

Now, on the eve of his return to the Octagon, he told gay sports site, Out Sports, that he was “sorry for using the words” when he spoke “off the cuff.”

“I spoke freely and I made a mess,” Mitrione said. “I made a fool of myself. I spoke really poorly and I had to answer for that.”

Until 2006, when he underwent gender reassignment treatment, Fox was legally a man named Boyd Burton who had grown up in Dallas and gone to Texas colleges for his education.

In May 2012, he stepped into the cage as a woman and went on to win her first two professional MMA fights by way of first round stoppage.

Controversy erupted in March when Fox came out publicly as transgender. Critics said it was unfair for a person who’d spent most of their life with the hormones of a man to start fighting women.

Although Mitrione’s comments were the most forceful, they weren’t uncommon.

Still, the UFC has been known to act tough on these issues, and more recently suspended Nate Diaz for using the slur: “fag.”

Mitrione’s suspensions is now lifted and he’s preparing himself to fight Brendan Schaub at UFC 165 this Saturday.

He told Out Sports that his issue with Fox wasn’t that he considered her a man fighting women, but that the women Fox had fought were unaware of her gender reassignment.

Fox, for her part, took this as an apology and thanked Mitrione.

He made little mention of transsexual women in his apology. However, he did apologize for his words. So, it’s a very good start. Apology accepted, Matt. Thank you for being strong enough to come forth with this. Continue fighting, and kick ass!

Fox is due to fight Ashlee Evans-Smith at CFA 12 on Oct. 12.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Uriah Hall vs. Chris Leben, Dustin Poirier vs. Diego Brandao Slated for UFC 168

The madness continues, ladies and gentlemen, with two more big fights announced for this December. The UFC, via Twitter, have announced two fights for the already-stacked UFC 168 year-end card.

Welcome Thursday with big #UFC168 slugfests: @DustinPoiri…

The madness continues, ladies and gentlemen, with two more big fights announced for this December. The UFC, via Twitter, have announced two fights for the already-stacked UFC 168 year-end card.

That’s right! Diego Brandao vs. Dustin Poirier and Uriah Hall vs. Chris Leben. Both fights, on paper, are almost certainly going to be barn-burning slugfests.

Diego Brandao and Dustin Poirier are two featherweights jockeying for position on the UFC’s rankings.

Brandao, who won The Ultimate Fighter season 14’s featherweight tournament with a shocking first-round armbar, owns a solid 4-1 record thus far, but has been struggling with cardio trouble in his recent fights. Still, he is riding a three-fight winning streak and, in spite of some imperfections, he really does leave it all in the cage.

Poirier, meanwhile, went far in the featherweight division from 2010 through 2012, racking up a five-fight winning streak over some solid competition. However, that streak was ended in spectacular fashion as he was dissected by Chan-Sung Jung, and lost again just months later to Cub Swanson. There is no shame in that, though, and he has bounced back most recently with an exciting back-and-forth decision win over Erik Koch.

This featherweight tilt will either cement Poirier‘s spot in the division’s top-10, or send Diego Brandao rocketing into that group.

While Brandao and Poirier are moving up, Chris Leben and Uriah Hall have been heading in precisely the opposite direction.

Leben, a veteran of The Ultimate Fighter season 1, experienced something of a career renaissance in 2010, but has since gone into a hard free fall, experiencing two lopsided beatdowns at the hands of Brian Stann and Mark Munoz. This was followed by a year-long suspension for painkillers and two ugly, sloppy decision losses.

Hall has also been harshly falling. After achieving overnight stardom on The Ultimate Fighter season 17, he ended up suffering a huge upset loss at the hands of Kelvin Gastellum in the season’s finals. He followed this up with a heavily-marketed, but much-maligned, decision loss to previous welterweight washout John Howard. This left many speculating if he was mentally capable of handling a professional fighting career.

So why is this an exciting bout? Well, both fighters have shown themselves capable of putting on an amazing show, and both have their backs to the wall. That will likely mean fireworks.

UFC 168 is headlined by two huge title rematches in Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva 2, and Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate 2. The event takes place December 28.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC 166 Fight Card: Luke Rockhold Injured, Tim Boetsch Now Meets CB Dollaway

Luke Rockhold has been forced out of his UFC 166 matchup with Tim Boetsch. Replacing the former Strikeforce champion will be CB Dollaway.
The switch was reported during Wednesday’s episode of UFC Tonight on Fox Sports 1.
In May, Rockhold made…

Luke Rockhold has been forced out of his UFC 166 matchup with Tim Boetsch. Replacing the former Strikeforce champion will be CB Dollaway.

The switch was reported during Wednesday’s episode of UFC Tonight on Fox Sports 1.

In May, Rockhold made his UFC debut against the surging Vitor Belfort and suffered a knockout loss. Though still in search of his first UFC win, Rockhold remains the No. 8 contender in the middleweight division.

A bout with No. 10-ranked Boetsch would have given Rockhold a chance to bounce right back into the race for the 185-pound championship. However, the American Kickboxing Academy fighter will now have to sit out and recover from his knee injury.

Former light heavyweight, Boetsch became a contender in the middleweight class by winning his first four fights at 185 pounds. However, “The Barbarian” has since been slumping, losing to Costa Philippou and Mark Munoz in his past two outings.

While a matchup with Rockhold would have given Boetsch an opportunity to move upward in the middleweight division, a bout with Dollaway could be seen as a much-needed step down in competition for a fighter in danger of losing three in a row.

As Boetsch has been slipping, Dollaway is coming off of back-to-back wins. Decision wins over Jason Miller and Daniel Sarafian haven’t put Dollaway very near title contention, but beating Boetsch on short notice could put the TUF 7 runner-up within striking distance of the top 10.

UFC 166 will be held at the Toyota Center in Houston on Oct. 19. With Boetsch‘s change in opponents, here is how the fight card now looks:

 

UFC 166 Main Card 

  • Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos
  • Daniel Cormier vs. Roy Nelson
  • Gilbert Melendez vs. Diego Sanchez
  • Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Shawn Jordan
  • John Dodson vs. Darrell Montague

 

UFC 166 Fox Sports 1 Prelims 

  • Tim Boetsch vs. CB Dollaway
  • Hector Lombard vs. Nate Marquardt
  • Jessica Eye vs. Sarah Kaufman
  • KJ Noons vs. George Sotiropoulos

 

UFC 166 Online Prelims

  • Adlan Amagov vs. TJ Waldburger
  • Tony Ferguson vs. Mike Rio
  • Jeremy Larsen vs. Charles Oliveira
  • Kyogi Horiguchi vs. Dustin Pague

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com