Tag: Caged In

UFC Fight Night 89 Bout Could Shape Futures of Steven Thompson, Rory MacDonald

There is certainly no shortage of intrigue surrounding Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 89 main event.
For starters, the winner of this bout between Steven “Wonderboy” Thompson and Rory MacDonald would be the obvious choice as the next No. …

There is certainly no shortage of intrigue surrounding Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 89 main event.

For starters, the winner of this bout between Steven “Wonderboy” Thompson and Rory MacDonald would be the obvious choice as the next No. 1 contender for the welterweight title—except for one thing.

It remains very much unclear if MacDonald will still be a UFC fighter come next week and that’s just one reason why the outcome here might shape the futures of two of the sport’s most promising 170-pounders.

At just 26 years old, it already feels as though MacDonald has been in the UFC for a lifetime. Since his debut in early 2010, he’s fought in the Octagon 12 times, putting up a record of 9-3 (he’s 18-3 overall).

All those years and all those fights for such a young guy gives spectators the impression we’ve watched him grow from child prodigy into full-fledged title contender. For as long as we can remember, he’s been considered the most likely heir apparent to Georges St-Pierre as the UFC’s next big Canadian star.

Throughout the journey, MacDonald has appeared to be a solid company man for the UFC. He broke in with the promotion when he was just 20 years old, so perhaps he felt as though he owed it for giving him his professional life.

Much of that changed rather suddenly, however, after MacDonald fought Robbie Lawler for the welterweight title last January at UFC 189, losing via TKO a minute into the final round. The bout was a brutal one and lauded as an instant classic—it was the consensus pick as 2015’s fight of the year—and MacDonald paid a tremendous physical price for going toe-to-toe with the champ for 21 minutes.

He hasn’t fought since and when he appeared on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour in March, he sounded every bit the disgruntled employee (h/t Shaun Al-Shatti at MMAFighting.com). MacDonald said negotiations for a new contract with the UFC had failed and that he expected to test free agency after his current deal expired with the Thompson fight.

“I want to make the most money I can. I want to get paid for what I bring to the table,” MacDonald said at the time. “I’ve sacrificed a lot to get to the top, to the world title. I really sacrificed and I took a lot of chances. I did a lot of favors, I felt like, for the UFC and I don’t think it got returned. So now it’s all about making money and whoever wants to pay me the most is where I’ll go.”

There’s no overstating what it would mean for MacDonald to leave the UFC at this stage in his career. He would be the youngest, most talented, most recognizable fighter to hit the free agent market during the modern era. He’d be a championship-level prize; one that potentially comes with a legion of Canadian fans ready to follow him from one company to another.

It would be huge, especially if he beats Thompson this weekend.

A victory would reaffirm MacDonald’s position as the best fighter in the division besides the champion. Presumably—along with all the factors mentioned above—that would give him added leverage in any contract negotiation.

Meanwhile, a loss might mean he gives up much of his ability to dictate terms.

“This fight is definitely going to make a huge difference in my career, one way or another…,” MacDonald told ESPN.com’s Brett Okamoto this week. “I think thousands or even millions of dollars are on the line.”

There’s another, slightly more unseemly aspect to MacDonald’s appearance in the cage this weekend. Eleven months have passed since that grueling bout against Lawler and analysts will be looking to see if he can return as the same guy as when he left.

Fights as violent as that one have been known to change people. Despite MacDonald’s youth, he’s already put a lot of mileage on his body, so he’ll have to prove he’s still on the upswing.

If he can do that, and if he decisively trumps Thompson on Saturday, it’s difficult to fathom that the UFC would simply let him walk. Then again, there is so much uncertainty surrounding the fight company right now—including reports of an “imminent” sale of the entire UFC from FLO Sports’ Jeremy Botter—it’s impossible to predict what might happen.

Meanwhile, the stakes are also fairly high for Thompson.

Compared to a divisional mainstay like MacDonald, the Wonderboy is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately. Despite being 33 years old and having eight fights in the UFC, the karate master didn’t really hit the big time until his destruction of former champion Johny Hendricks back in February.

At this stage, however, Thompson has won six straight fights over an increasingly difficult gauntlet of competition. If he is able to tack on a seventh with a win over MacDonald—who is currently the top welterweight contender according to the UFC’s official rankings—it would be tough to deny him his own title shot.

“A win over Rory, I’m putting my foot down,” Thompson told Fox Sports’ Damon Martin this week. “They’ve got to give me that title shot. I’m definitely going to put my foot down and I’m going to demand it. Maybe in a very respectful way, but I’m going to demand it.”

A fight between Thompson and the heavy-hitting Lawler would be madness. The sort of exposure that would come along with a dynamite championship bout might also be just what the doctor ordered for Wonderboy’s career.

You don’t exactly have to be Don King to see how the smiling, positive-minded guy who fights like he lives inside a video game could be a promotable entity for the UFC. His status as both a next-gen MMA fighter and traditional martial artist makes him the perfect prototype for what future UFC athletes might look like.

Provided he beats MacDonald, of course.

If Thompson loses, he shuffles back to the crowd of 170-pound hopefuls. It wouldn’t totally kill his upward mobility in the welterweight rat race, but it would certainly delay it. As he treks into his mid-30s, it’s not as though he has an unlimited amount of time to reach his full potential in the UFC.

You want another layer of intrigue?

These guys also know each other well—and Thompson has called MacDonald a friend—after training together on-and-off at Montreal’s Tri-Star gym alongside the legendary St-Pierre.

So there you have it. Each of these men has something specific to prove and everything to lose headed into the biggest fight of their lives.

Both might look back on it as an important turning point in their careers.

From the outside looking in, you couldn’t ask for anything more.

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The State of the UFC Men’s Bantamweight Division

These bantamweight dynasties—they don’t last forever.
Just ask T.J. Dillashaw.
On Sunday, it was Dominick Cruz bringing Dillashaw’s reign to a crashing halt after 20 months on top of the men’s 135-pound division. Like Renan Bara…

These bantamweight dynasties—they don’t last forever.

Just ask T.J. Dillashaw.

On Sunday, it was Dominick Cruz bringing Dillashaw’s reign to a crashing halt after 20 months on top of the men’s 135-pound division. Like Renan Barao and Cruz before him, the previously dominant Dillashaw is suddenly cast into rebuilding mode.

The good news is that the champion’s loss could mean new life for nearly everyone else in the weight class. Cruz’s resurgence not only put an exclamation point on one of the greatest comebacks in MMA history, but it might open some doors for a few guys previously locked out of the title picture.

Here’s a look at where the UFC men’s bantamweight division stands as we verge into 2016.

 

The Champion

Dominick Cruz

New boss, same as the old boss.

There is simply no way to overstate how impressive it is to see Cruz (21-1 overall, 4-0 UFC ) return from years of injury-induced strife and still looking like his old self. He’s fought just twice since October 2011 and was forced to vacate the title in early 2014 because he just couldn’t stay healthy enough to defend it.

Now suddenly here he is, back on top after a split-decision win over Dillashaw at UFC Fight Night 81. Cruz remains unbeaten at bantamweight and his skill set—particularly his mobility, footwork and counterpunching—is enough to give anyone in the division nightmares.

Having him back should inject the division with some excitement for the new year. The biggest question mark may be whether Cruz can remain healthy enough to meet a crop of relatively fresh challengers.

The Contenders

Who’s got the inside track to challenge Cruz for the gold?

T.J. Dillashaw

It would be a sad end for Dillashaw (12-3, 8-3) if it turned out he was just keeping Cruz’s seat warm for him while the real champ got healthy.

Fortunately for him, his bout with Cruz was close enough that—if it doesn’t result in an immediate rematch—he shouldn’t have to do too much to get a chance to get back his belt. One win, (tops) and Dillashaw should be right back in a championship opportunity.

The former Team Alpha Male product recently decamped for Colorado’s Elevation Fight Team to be closer to head coach Duane Ludwig and to be where he was offered a compelling financial package.

Can Dillashaw be just as good training in the Rockies as he was at the West Side Cool Guy Club on the shores of the Pacific? Only time will tell.

 

Renan Barao

Barao (33-3-1, 8-2) arguably benefits more than anyone else from Cruz’s fledgling second title reign. After two losses to Dillashaw during 2014-15, he was as far from relevance as he’d been since winning the interim title in 2012. Now Cruz reclaiming the throne might suddenly thrust him back into the mix.

That could be very good news for the fading former champion, who looked down-and-out for much of the last two years. Just 1-2 in his last three bouts and maybe still in the doghouse after pulling out of UFC 177 at the last minute due to weight-cut issues, Barao‘s career badly needed a lift.

Now maybe he’s got it. 

The other good news, if there is any, is that he’s still just 28 years old and, therefore, should still have some good years left. The bad news is there’s already a lot of MMA miles on that body, so 2016 shapes up as a make-or-break time for him.

Let’s see what he has left in the tank.

Urijah Faber

Crafty old Urijah Faber (33-8, 9-4) is unexpectedly back in serious title contention for 2016. Owe that sudden upward mobility to his 2015 falling-out with Dillashaw, not to mention a blood feud with Cruz that dates back to their WEC days in 2007.

The Dillashaw mess made 2015 a questionable year pr-wise for The California Kid, but in between coaching a season of The Ultimate Fighter opposite Conor McGregor, he’s quietly gone 3-1 in his last four. 

After falling short in six consecutive UFC/WEC title bouts, will Faber finally once again wrap the gold around his waist at age 36? Crazier things have happened. He remains one of the more marketable fighters under 155 pounds, so don’t be surprised if he at least gets a seventh chance to win a major championship this year.

 

Raphael Assuncao

Raphael Assuncao (23-4, 7-1) fell off the radar of all but the closest observers, owing to 15 months on the shelf from a troublesome broken ankle. He missed out on a scheduled bout with Faber in March 2015 but will be right back in the contender mix whenever he is healthy enough to return.

With a seven-fight win streak in the Octagon and one win already over Dillashaw, it’s hard to deny the 33-year-old Brazilian’s claim to top-challenger status. At this point, only his own health and conceivably more lucrative matchups for the new champ could get in his way.

 

A Long Way to Go

These guys could still make a run at the title, but they’ve got some work to do.

Michael McDonald

Happy birthday to Michael McDonald (17-3, 6-2), who turned just 25 years old this week. It was probably a pretty good one for “Mayday,” considering he’s back on the cusp of contender status after spending all of 2014-15 sidelined with various injuries.

Even before that, high-profile losses to Barao and Faber had taken some of McDonald’s shine—but he remains one of the names to know in this weight class.

Questions persist about whether he can compete with the best in the world, but his second-round submission win over Masanori Kanehara at UFC 195 was a good way to re-enter the fray. With Cruz’s reign offering new life to a host of top contenders, another win or two will easily bump McDonald back into the list of contenders. 

Bryan Caraway

Bryan Caraway (20-7, 5-2) is the 135-pound man his peers (and fans) love to hate—mostly based on the fact that he dates longtime women’s bantamweight contender Miesha Tate—well, that and unconfirmed allegations that he’s been a bit too choosy in picking his next fight.

In any case, the jury is still out on exactly how good Caraway can be. His record is above-average, but he hasn’t beaten a ton of top competition since graduating from season 14 of TUF. A win over Eddie Wineland in July 2015 was a good start, but Caraway has some strides to make if he aims to be taken seriously as a contender.

 

Takeya Mizugaki

It seems like forever now that Takeya Mizugaki (21-9-2, 8-4) has been the guy UFC matchmakers will call when they need a credible comeback win for someone else.

Who got the call to fight Faber immediately after he lost to Jose Aldo at WEC 48? Mizugaki. Who fought Cruz in his first bout back in nearly three years? Mizugaki. Who got tabbed to face Aljamain Sterling after Sterling had four consecutive fights fall through? Any guesses?

Mizugaki is 32, and his window is rapidly closing. If he ever wants to make a run, the time is now.

 

Johnny Eduardo

Johnny Eduardo (27-10, 2-2) is certainly the most anonymous man on this list of top fighters in one of the UFC’s more anonymous weight classes. Part of that is due to his status as a relative newcomer. The 37-year-old Brazilian has fought only four times since arriving in the Octagon in 2011.

On top of that, he’s sandwiched wins over Jeff Curran and Wineland with a pair of losses to Assuncao and Sterling. As of this writing, he’s still clinging to the No. 10 spot in the UFC’s official bantamweight rankings, but Eduardo needs to move quickly if he wants to be considered more than just an also-ran.

 

The Prospects

Who’s the next next big thing at 135 pounds? Probably one of these dudes:

Aljamain Sterling

Undefeated and ranked No. 5, the 26-year-old Sterling (12-0, 4-0) is obviously the hottest prospect in the 135-pound class right now. There’s just one catch. We don’t know if Sterling will remain in the UFC’s men’s bantamweight division.

He became a free agent near the end of 2015 and is intent on testing the open market to get the best price for his services. Sterling has been outspoken about the comparatively low compensation for athletes in MMA as well as how the UFC’s new exclusive outfitting deal with Reebok hurt his bottom line.

Sterling could have the goods to one day become bantamweight champion, but depending on which way his free agency breaks, the 135-pound class might soon have to soldier on without him.

 

Thomas Almeida

If you’re looking for breakout fighters of 2015, you might as well begin your search with Almeida (20-0, 4-0). The 24-year-old Chute Boxe Academy fighter made his promotional debut in November 2014 and—after a decision win in his first fight in the Octagon—has rattled off a string of three impressive stoppage victories.

2016 shapes up as a big one for Almeida. He’s already cracked the bantamweight top 10 and has shown considerable star power. All that’s left is for him to demonstrate he can hang with the top talent in the division.

 

John Lineker

Considering his eight-fight run in the flyweight division, it’s admittedly unorthodox to lump John Lineker (26-7, 7-2) in with the prospects. We already know he’s a pretty good fighter, and we know what he brings to the table: crushing power punches.

On the other hand, the Brazilian slugger is still just 26 years old and has yet to prove he can hurdle his biggest limitations (i.e., his weight), so perhaps the shoe fits—especially since we haven’t seen much of him at 135 pounds yet.

Lineker won his UFC bantamweight debut with a first-round submission of Francisco Rivera in September 2015. To become a player in his new division, however, he’ll have to do two things during 2016: prove he can consistently make the poundage limit and show that his fearsome power translates to this division the way it did at 125 pounds.

If he can do both, the future is bright.

 

The Last Word

Nobody is going to confuse men’s bantamweight with deep, talent-rich classes like lightweight and welterweight. Still, things have come a long way since the UFC brought 135-pounders into the fold in 2011. As we forge into a new year with Cruz back as champion, things actually stand to get pretty interesting.

There is no McGregor on the above list—that is, no polarizing figure who will suddenly launch bantamweight into the pay-per-view stratosphere the way the Irishman did for featherweight.

But seeing if Cruz can ditch his previous injury woes and remain dominant against a solid crop of veteran challengers and some exciting prospects should be fascinating.

Clearly the 135-pound class still has a ways to go before it can be considered among the UFC’s more marketable weight divisions. But bantamweight is on the rise. To paraphrase wrestling announcer Jim Ross, business might just pick up in 2016.

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Dominick Cruz’s Amazing UFC Comeback Continues to Keep Us on Pins and Needles

Dominick Cruz certainly has a flair for the dramatic.
With Cruz at the helm of the greatest comeback story in MMA history on Sunday at UFC Fight Night 81, you just knew it was going to come down to the wire.
He wasn’t going to make this easy on u…

Dominick Cruz certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

With Cruz at the helm of the greatest comeback story in MMA history on Sunday at UFC Fight Night 81, you just knew it was going to come down to the wire.

He wasn’t going to make this easy on us—or himself.

And least of all on TJ Dillashaw.

In this way, Cruz’s bid to recapture the UFC men’s bantamweight title he vacated nearly two years ago was vintage “Dominator.”

He started his main event fight against Dillashaw like a house of fire but in the end hung on for a razor-close split-decision victory. From start to finish, it was exactly the sort of performance we expected—maybe felt too nervous to hope for—from Cruz.

It firmly established him as the greatest men’s 135-pound MMA fighter of all time and gave him a dozen victories in a row, nine of them by decision.

Perhaps most important of all, it proved that after a rash of injuries allowed him to fight just twice since October 2011, he’s still himself. Still a technical wizard endowed with Fred Astaire footwork, bottomless heart and the mental toughness of a Cold War diplomat.

Yet even with the UFC belt back in hand and the judges’ verdict in his favor (48-47, 46-49, 49-46), it felt as though Cruz couldn’t resist adding a little extra intrigue.

“I don’t want to talk about [injuries] I came in with, but I’ve had problems with my left foot,” he told UFC color commentator Joe Rogan in the cage when asked about Dillashaw’s leg kicks and the pronounced limp he showed late in the fight. “It just got really bad in the fifth round … The kick to my leg [was hard]—I felt it, but it’s really my foot. It’s torn in half right now.”

Hearing this news, we caught our collective breath.

We’ve already been down this excruciating road with Cruz more than once.

We’ve already seen his career devastated and nearly cut short by injuries. We’ve read about his three ACL surgeries, his gruesome quad injury and the debilitating matching damage to both hands.

We witnessed the UFC step in and take away his title because he simply couldn’t stay healthy enough to defend it. We cheered his return against Takeya Mizugaki in September 2014 and then sat through the protracted lead-up to this fight on pins and needles, dreading the moment we’d hear of another health-related delay.

We chuckled when last week he turned his open workout entrance into a wonderful bit of performance art. We winced and laughed again on Sunday when he was so excited he jogged down the aisle instead of walking to the cage. “Be careful, Dom!” we all might have called out in our living rooms.

We’ve heard every joke:

Now, here he was—in the immediate aftermath of his greatest triumph—telling us he was already injured again.

This guy really knows how to keep us in suspense.

And so we confront all over again the double-edged sword of having Cruz at the head of the bantamweight table. Watching him do his thing in the cage is one of the greatest pleasures in the sport.

Sitting through the delays in between is downright nerve-wracking.

No matter who you thought should have gotten the decision on Sunday, it was breathtaking watching Cruz step back into the cage and out-flank, out-maneuver and ultimately out-point Dillashaw.

Knowing that at 30 years old and after all the abuse heaped on his body, Cruz could defeat the man who had been the class of bantamweight for the last 20 months, it almost didn’t make sense. If you aren’t inspired by Cruz’s comeback, you may want to admit yourself to a hospital and get checked for a pulse.

But now he’s the champion again, and the hard truth is that we’re going to spend the rest of his career feeling a little bit anxious for him. We’re eternally going to be waiting for the next injury announcement, the next delay. We’re going to wonder each time if this injury is going to be the last.

So, yeah, seeing Cruz return to run circles around Dillashaw, reclaim his title and immediately announce that his foot was “torn in half”?

There was a certain sense of “oh, here we go again” to all of it.

That’s grossly unfair, but it’s how we’ve taught our minds to work after two decades of watching this deeply cruel, unapologetically heartbreaking sport.

We should note we have no idea how serious Cruz’s foot injury might be. For the time being, he’s referring to it as just a bit of tendinitis and is hoping it won’t keep him out for long. If there’s any justice in this world at all, he’ll turn out to be right. He’s already been through enough on that front.

“I’ve just got to get an MRI on it. I think it’ll be fine,” he told MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani after the fight. “Plantar fascia tendinitis is one of those things that you can just rest it, I think, and it’ll be fine. I’ve got a small, 180-day [medical] suspension so over that time I’ll rest it, I’ll rehab it. If anybody knows how to rehab an injury, it’s me, so I’ll be OK.”

We certainly hope so.

Now that he’s finally back on top, a number of big-ticket fights will come calling for Cruz.

He might rematch Dillashaw. He might take a third fight with longtime nemesis Urijah Faber. He might talk of superfights with flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson or former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar.

To make any of them happen, he’ll have to stay healthy.

That’s the one task Cruz hasn’t been able to accomplish during his amazing, logic-defying career.

Here’s hoping this is just one more worry, one more piece of doubt that Cruz can erase from our minds.

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Anthony Pettis and Eddie Alvarez Battle to Regain Lost Luster at Fight Night 81

Anthony Pettis and Eddie Alvarez have both known better days.
While they aren’t quite down to desperation mode just yet, if either Pettis or Alvarez means to prove he belongs among the lightweight elite headed into 2016, then the co-main event bo…

Anthony Pettis and Eddie Alvarez have both known better days.

While they aren’t quite down to desperation mode just yet, if either Pettis or Alvarez means to prove he belongs among the lightweight elite headed into 2016, then the co-main event bout at UFC Fight Night 81 on Sunday isn’t one either can afford to lose.

Depending on how things go, this could be a fairly meaningful crossroads in MMA’s most competitive weight class.

Once roundly considered the future of the 155-pound class, Pettis returns to the Octagon this weekend for the first time since March 2015, when he lost his lightweight title to Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185.

Since coming over from the WEC on a wave of hype in 2011, Pettis has seemed like exactly the type of fighter the UFC would want to use as its poster boy. Unfortunately, due largely to being perennially waylaid by injury, he’s never quite ascended to the lofty superstar status we granted him early on.

He was among the first fighters to score an individual sponsorship deal with Reebok when the apparel company became the UFC’s official outfitter last year. With his custom suits, Wheaties box cover and literally off-the-wall highlight reel, he appeared poised to be the sport’s next big thing.

And yet it was not to be.

As far back as December 2014, you can find UFC president Dana White lamenting the heights Pettis might reach if he could just stay healthy. During 2015, it was the loss to dos Anjos and then an elbow injury that kept him off our radar.

A proposed comeback bout with Myles Jury had to be scrapped in May, and Pettis spent much of the year as he’s seemingly spent the lion’s share of his tenure in the Octagon—just trying to get his body right.

In the vacuum he left behind, Conor McGregor announced plans to invade the lightweight division and promptly hogged the entire spotlight. Because of all these factors, it feels like it’s been a minute since Pettis has been a relevant part of the title picture.

The former champ seems to know it, too.

“2015 definitely wasn’t my year,” he said last week during the Fight Night 81 media conference call. “In 2016, I’m looking forward to getting back to where I was at and staying where I was at.”

Alvarez, meanwhile, is coming off a split decision win over Gilbert Melendez at UFC 188, but he somehow still hasn’t been able to completely rebuild his reputation from a stinging loss to Donald Cerrone in his Octagon debut at UFC 178.

For years, Alvarez was regarded as one of the best fighters in the world outside the UFC. He spent the early part of his career trekking between promotions like Bodog, ShoXC and Dream before finally landing in Bellator MMA and winning its 155-pound title in 2009.

All told, Alvarez put up a 25-3 record by the time he signed with the UFC in 2014, on the heels of a lengthy battle with Bellator over his contract. Unfortunately, things haven’t been all gravy for him since then.

In that battle with Cerrone in September 2014, he looked so outsized and outgunned that spectators began to wonder if the buzz around him was more hype than substance. In the wake of it, he also had to pull out of a scheduled bout with Benson Henderson in January 2015.

Owing to his contract battle and his injuries, Alvarez fought just once each year in 2013, 2014 and 2015. That must have been frustrating for a guy who spent those formative years fighting three or four times a calendar turn, as he bounced between promotions and built his mystique as a headhunting boxer with a never-say-die attitude.

All of Alvarez’s good qualities were on display when he met Melendez at UFC 188 in Mexico City last June.

Melendez got the better of the opening stages, closing Alvarez’s left eye with a standing elbow and edging him in many of the sporadic early exchanges. But Alvarez never quit. As Melendez faded in the later rounds, Alvarez turned up the heat, using some timely takedowns and his trademark high-pressure boxing style to take control.

The judges’ verdict was a close one, but most observers agreed Alvarez deserved the come-from-behind victory. In the wake of it, Melendez tested positive for synthetic testosterone and was suspended by the UFC.

Now, Alvarez gets a much bigger test and a much bigger opportunity against Pettis. It sounds as though he’s anticipating another lengthy, back-and-forth battle, and he believes that will play to his strengths.

“I love the matchup for myself,” Alvarez told MMA Noise’s Mike Straka recently. “I feel like every guy [Pettis] has fought who was like me—who was not even as good of a version as me—has beaten him. I feel like I’m going to exploit where he needs work and not only that, stand-up wise, my ability to take damage and continue to give damage will overwhelm him.”

It shapes up as a high-stakes battle for both men—and one fans are lucky to get on free TV.

For Alvarez, it’s the chance to erase any doubts about him as a guy who can challenge for the UFC title. If he can defeat Pettis, the misgivings we had about him following the Cerrone loss will likely evaporate. He could go right back to being the highly touted 155-pound slugger who spent the bulk of his career beating the best the rest of the world had to offer.

On the other hand, a loss makes him 1-2 since inking the deal to finally come to the Octagon. Just a few days removed from turning 32 years old, it wouldn’t be impossible for Alvarez to pull himself out of a hole like that, but you can bet he doesn’t want to wind up in the hole in the first place.

Meanwhile, Pettis faces even more risk and even bigger potential rewards.

Somehow, after all of his struggles, he remains the No. 1-ranked lightweight contender on the UFC’s official rankings. A win over Alvarez puts him in the pole position to face the winner of dos Anjos’ upcoming title defense against McGregor at UFC 197.

There’s simply no way to overstate how big a bout between Pettis and McGregor might turn out to be. With UFC 200 looming in July, you could make the argument Pettis should gun for McGregor as his next opponent no matter how Mystic Mac fares against the champion in March.

Even without McGregor in the mix, Pettis would make a compelling opponent for many of the other current contenders at 155 pounds. Who wouldn’t want to see him against someone like Tony Ferguson, Nate Diaz or Dustin Poirier?

A loss, though, leaves Pettis on the heels of back-to-back defeats for the first time in his career. He’s still just 28 years old, at least for another couple weeks, but he can’t afford to fall any further off the pace in the shark tank of the lightweight division. There are just too many big opportunities floating around right now for him to allow any more slippage.

Is it too much to say this fight is make or break for Alvarez and Pettis?

Maybe, but only by degrees.

It’s certainly very important for both of their career trajectories. It’s the chance to prove they are who we assumed they were during the good times and not who we suspected them to be during the bad.

It’s a chance to prove their best days are still ahead.

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Teaming with Conor McGregor Makes Miesha Tate the Smart Choice for Holly Holm

Since capturing the women’s bantamweight championship from Ronda Rousey at UFC 193, much of the discussion about Holly Holm has focused on how much she now has to lose.
Conventional wisdom dictated that Holm should wait for Rousey to lick her wou…

Since capturing the women’s bantamweight championship from Ronda Rousey at UFC 193, much of the discussion about Holly Holm has focused on how much she now has to lose.

Conventional wisdom dictated that Holm should wait for Rousey to lick her wounds and return before taking another bout. A rematch with Rousey—most likely at the enormous UFC 200 event scheduled for July—would be so lucrative that Holm wouldn’t want to risk losing it by accepting a different fight in the interim.

Her bosses appeared to agree.

“If we didn‘t make the [Holm vs. Rousey] rematch, [we] should probably lose our promoters’ license,” UFC President Dana White said on ESPN’s Mike and Mike in early December (via MMAFighting.com’s Hunter A. Homistek). “That fight’s going to happen. I don’t know when, but that’s the fight that will happen.”

Credit Holm, then, for sticking to her guns. The new 135-pound champion said all along she didn’t want to sit on the sideline waiting for Rousey, and now she won’t. We learned this week Holm will instead take on former Strikeforce champion and longtime Rousey nemesis Miesha Tate at UFC 197 on March 5, according to an initial report by Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter.

Their matchup will be the co-main event of the Las Vegas-based card, along with Conor McGregor’s bid to move up to lightweight and take the 155-pound crown from Rafael dos Anjos.

So, all in all, not a bad landing spot.

UFC 197 was originally scheduled for HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, with a rematch between Brazilian stars Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort rumored as the main event, according to the Jornal O Globo‘s Lauro Jardim (via Bloody Elbow’s Nick Baldwin). But then Silva unexpectedly got booked to fight Michael Bisping at UFC Fight Night 83 and spilled the beans during a recent conference call that UFC 197 in Rio had been canceled.

We didn’t know if the event had any future at all until Botter broke the news of Holm’s and McGregor’s returns last week. In one fell swoop and on very short notice, the promotion turned a struggling, possibly doomed pay-per-view into an out-and-out blockbuster.

And maybe—just maybe—all the chaos surrounding UFC 197 worked in favor of Holm and McGregor, too. Perhaps the company’s desperate need to book promotable fights on a more or less emergency basis left UFC brass with no choice but to give them both exactly what they wanted.

And you know what? It seems like it’s going to work out just fine.

Now that we all sit back and squint at this thing a little bit, maybe it’s not quite as big a risk for Holm as we first thought.

For starters, some of us have come around to the new champ’s way of thinking. Maybe fighting Tate actually makes more sense than sitting around waiting for Rousey to decide when and where (let alone if) she ever wants to come back.

At 34 years old, Holm entered the MMA ranks fairly late in her athletic career. She’d already had an entire career as a professional boxer before ever donning four-ounce gloves. She’s not exactly dealing with an unlimited window of opportunity here, and that was sort of her point all along.

“The only thing about July is that it’s eight months away from my last fight,” Holm told MMA Junkie’s Steven Morrocco in December. “That’s the biggest thing. I don’t like to wait that long. … A fight in between now and then, I feel like, yes, let’s stay active. In boxing, I did 10 years straight of having four fights a year, and so to wait eight months, it’s out of my norm.”

The prevailing logic said a potential bout with Rousey at UFC 200 would be worth so much money—to Holm, to Rousey and to the UFC itself—that it didn’t make sense for Holm to jeopardize it with any other booking. With the top of the revamped UFC 197 card now looking the way it does, that’s not entirely true anymore, either.

Teaming up with McGregor is as close to a guaranteed financial windfall as there is in this sport right now. His battle with dos Anjos is going to be huge in its own right. Having Holm on the card as well makes UFC 197 a bona fide mega-event. It’s not going to be as big as UFC 200, but it stands to be among the organization’s top-selling PPVs of the year.

If Holm can catch a piece of that, then it will be worth her while.

Also, this fight with Tate? Early indications from oddsmakers are that Holm is probably going to win it.

She opened as more than a 3-1 favorite, according to Odds Shark. While Tate has the tools to be a handful for anyone in the division, if the version of Holm who dropped Rousey in November also shows up to this fight, it’s a good bet the belt is staying right where it is.

Lastly, let’s discuss Holm’s doomsday scenario, which—now that we really think about it—doesn’t seem all that bad after all.

Let’s pretend she loses her shiny new women’s bantamweight title to Tate at UFC 197.

Cue dramatic music.

What happens then?

Our previous way of thinking led us to believe this would be a disaster, but maybe that’s not the case in practice. Losing to Tate wouldn’t be as good as beating her, but it might not be the end of the world.

There is plenty of evidence—in the form of two previous fights—to suggest that Tate most likely turns around and loses the title right back to a returning Rousey. If that happens, what opponent immediately makes the most sense for Rousey as she begins her second reign atop the division?

Why, Holly Holm, of course.

In any world where both Holm and Rousey go on being active fighters in the same organization at the same weight, they’re going to fight again. Nothing Tate can do to Holm on March 5 likely changes that.

In fact, once you consider the entire equation here—Holm, McGregor, Tate, the odds and inevitability of a Rousey rematch no matter what happens—it starts to feel like we have focused too much on what Holm has to lose and not nearly enough on what she has to gain.

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What, If Anything Is Next for Fedor After New Year’s Eve Squash Match?

Credit Bellator announcers Sean Grande and Jimmy Smith for saying what the MMA world was thinking last week immediately following Fedor Emelianenko’s squash match with Jaideep Singh.
Well, our part of the world, anyway.
Emelianenko was still in t…

Credit Bellator announcers Sean Grande and Jimmy Smith for saying what the MMA world was thinking last week immediately following Fedor Emelianenko’s squash match with Jaideep Singh.

Well, our part of the world, anyway.

Emelianenko was still in the ring, getting his hand raised in victory by referee John McCarthy when Grande and Smith hit the fast forward button. The two American broadcasters understood that Fedor’s three-minute, two-second dismantling of the overmatched kickboxer would elicit little more than shrugs on our side of the Pacific, so they wasted no time spinning things forward.

“In his return to MMA Fedor Emelianenko leaves the Internet just one question to begin discussing,” Grande said. “Who’s next?”

“It can’t be another softball,” Smith responded. “He has to step up.”

Muhammed Lawal apparently agreed with that assessment. The winner of the Rizin Fighting Federation’s heavyweight grand prix took to social media this week to invite Emelianenko back to America to meet him in the Bellator MMA cage.

On Thursday, he reiterated that challenge (of sorts) to MMA Junkie.

“Bellator let me go out there [to Japan] and showcase my skills,” Lawal said. “So now, I want to do them a favor. I want to help them out by bringing Fedor over here and fighting free on Spike TV … Fedor’s a legend. People want to talk bad about him and say he’s fighting nobodies, but Fedor’s a legend and me versus Fedor would do numbers.”

And so we once again return to the defining question—and principal disconnect—in the long, twisting saga of the greatest MMA heavyweight of all time: What, if anything, can we expect from Fedor?

Now that he’s really, truly back, American fans want to see Emelianenko tested against a relevant opponent. Lawal—a natural light heavyweight who will clearly go anywhere he thinks he can find a big fight—fits that bill nicely.

But what of Emelianenko himself? And what of his new/old bosses at Rizin? As usual, their wants and desires remain as inscrutable as ever, though, it seems plausible their goals don’t mesh much with our own. At this stage of his career, it’s hard to believe Fedor will trouble himself at all with what fans in the West think.

In America, the announcement of Singh as Emelianeko’s first opponent since 2012 was met with disappointment. Likewise, watching the inaugural broadcast of RFF on New Year’s Eve morning felt like eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation.

The event kicked off at 10 a.m. ET and from the moment Rizin general manager Nobuhiko Takada whipped off his black druid robe and pounded a drum with a baseball bat, the message was clear: This wasn’t for us.

Even with Grande and Smith talking us through the action on the tape-delayed SpikeTV broadcast, it was obvious this show (and, make no mistake, it was a show) was aimed at a largely Japanese audience.

With its over-the-top pageantry, nonsensical subtitles and nostalgic matchmaking, Rizin was likely right in the wheelhouse of Japanese families who traditionally gather at home on New Year’s Eve to watch hours-long fighting and pro-wrestling cards. If fans stateside had nothing better to do before our own, likely quite different New Year’s plans jumped off, we were welcome to tag along.

But nobody was going to hold our hand.

Emelianenko’s cakewalk against Singh made a fitting climax to the morning/night of high-concept fights. It somehow just felt right to see Fedor back in a big, white ring, blasting some handpicked fall guy while a crack team of officials in latex gloves tried to keep them from grabbing the ropes and/or tumbling out.

How did it feel to Emelianenko? Impossible to know, since he almost never breaks from his stoic, unreadable stare. Still, it’s easy to imagine that Rizin feels like home to him. This is his scene, and these are his people.

Now reunited with the old honchos from Pride FC, it’s possible he wants nothing more than to distance himself from his foray into American MMA from 2008-11, which ended with a trio of disastrous losses.

Maybe he was always going to wind up back here, picking the bones of the once-great Japanese MMA scene in front of an international fanbase that doesn’t seem to want much more for him. The Last Emperor is suddenly riding a four-fight win streak now—all of them against overmatched or fading competition in either Japan or his native Russia.

The idea that Emelianenko would journey back to the United States to fight Lawal in the Bellator cage might make American eyes light up, but you can’t really blame him if he takes a pass.

At 39 years old, he might have no business fighting MMA’s current generation. He might know that. He might be perfectly happy continuing to make big bucks cleaning up scraps in front of an appreciative audience in Rizin. All seems possible in the world of Emelianenko.

But if Fedor is interested in fighting again—and even interested in fighting someone most MMA fans have heard of before—his return certainly comes at an interesting time. The UFC still holds a death grip on most of the world’s top talent, but there is better opportunity to find saleable fights now than anytime since the death of Pride in 2007.

There is obviously no shortage of suitors and out-of-the-box possibilities for Fedor’s next fight.

In addition to Lawal, Bellator possesses a wealth of talent that could interest Emelianenko. Kimbo Slice got himself back in the win column during 2015 with a first-round knockout of Ken Shamrock. Shamrock is slated to fight Royce Gracie on February 19, and the winner (or loser) could easily find himself headed to Japan, where weight classes seem like mere suggestions and recent resumes aren’t all that important.

Alistair Overeem recently fought his way out of his UFC contract and into free agency. Signing him and slating him against Emelianenko in a main event in the spring would likely be the biggest and most relevant heavyweight fight Rizin could pull off right now.

It also might be the most competitive, which is a good reason why it may not happen.

Former UFC heavyweight Shawn Jordan also threw his hat into the ring this week on his Intagram account.

Then there is the Holy Grail of nostalgia opponents for Emelianenko—Randy Couture. Couture is involved in a production and “brand ambassador” deal with Bellator and might be closer to a bout with Fedor now than when he held out of his UFC contract to try to make it happen in 2007-08.

Of course, it would also require Couture to return to the cage after a five-year absence and at 52 years old. Still, crazier things have happened.

Rizin also appears to control enough of its own talent to keep Emelianenko flush with bouts as long as he wants them. Of the 27 fights the company put on during its first two events last week, 13 of them were either heavyweight or open-weight affairs.

Bob Sapp is there and coming off a win over sumo legend Akebono. Tsuyoshi Kosaka is there, as well as Satoshi Ishii (both of whom Emelianenko has already defeated). James Thompson fought there and so did UFC retread Goran Reljić. Former UFC and Pride fighters Mark Coleman and Heath Herring appeared at ringside while Emelianenko dispatched Singh.

Then there is Baruto Kaito. The 6’6”, 400-pound Estonian former Sumo star was rumored early on to be Emelianenko’s opponent at Rizin. When the Singh fight was announced, Baruto was scheduled to make his MMA debut against former K-1 star Jerome Le Banner. After LeBanner pulled out at the last minute, he defeated Peter Aerts on very short notice—and over a trio of three-minute rounds.

If Rizin wants a bout that Emelianenko can probably win and that would create a stir in Japan, Baruto is probably the guy.

No matter what happens, we can rest assured that it will happen on Fedor’s terms. He has always and will continue to march to music no one else can hear. As he begins to negotiate the twilight of his career, don’t expect that to change.

Sentiments like the ones expressed by Grande and Smith are nice. They likely echo what many stateside MMA fans are thinking right now.

But expecting Emelianenko to hear or care about our cries is foolhardy.

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