(Deja vu all over again all over again: Frankie and Gray strike a familiar pose at the UFC 136 press conference. Photo via MMAMania)
Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail [email protected] for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…
– Fight Nerd Cinema: South Korea’s ‘Champion’ Movie Review (TheFightNerd)
– Underrated Joseph Benavidez Awaits Another Shot (NBC Sports MMA)
– Dana White: Yushin Okami is Best Fighter to Ever Come From Japan (5thRound)
– Start This Morning Off by Watching Skinny Kids Get Beat up by Alistair Overeem (MiddleEasy)
– Jon Fitch Cleared for Competition, UFC 139 Match Against Hendricks Rumored (Five Ounces of Pain)
– David Williams: A Statistical Look at Fedor Emelianenko’s Place in MMA History (FightOpinion)
– Brazilian Reporter Gifts Chael Sonnen a Brazilian Flag (MMA Convert)
– CNN to Air Replays of ‘Mayweather-Ortiz 24/7’ (MMA Payout)
(Deja vu all over again all over again: Frankie and Gray strike a familiar pose at the UFC 136 press conference. Photo via MMAMania)
Some selected highlights from our friends around the MMA blogosphere. E-mail [email protected] for details on how your site can join the MMA Link Club…
Yes, boring fighters exist in combat sports, especially in MMA.Sometimes it’s because they take people down and hold them there, sometimes it’s because they pin opponents against the cage for three rounds and sometimes it’s the fact that they’re just s…
Yes, boring fighters exist in combat sports, especially in MMA.
Sometimes it’s because they take people down and hold them there, sometimes it’s because they pin opponents against the cage for three rounds and sometimes it’s the fact that they’re just so hard to catch.
Now, for some people like myself, guys such as the more-elusive fighters are actually interesting to watch because you never know when they’ll pull the trigger and land their proverbial one-kill-shots on opponents, but if you’re an insomniac and haven’t gotten a good night’s rest since the sixth grade, there’s a good chance that some guys might actually help out with that.
It’s tough to say who would be the biggest cure for insomnia outside of the UFC, but wherever you look, there are guys that are just flat out boring to watch in MMA. The only reason we watch them fight is really in the hopes that whomever they face will be the man to put them in a coma.
Some of the guys you’re about to see will cure your insomnia and there might be some that may actually cause it to linger for some, but all of the men you’re about to see have been accused of being boring fighters.
Filed under: UFCTwo UFC champions will be on hand at the UFC 136 press conference on Tuesday, and we’ll have the live video right here at MMAFighting.com.
With UFC 136 less than two months away, UFC lightweight champion Frank Edgar, UFC featherweight …
Two UFC champions will be on hand at the UFC 136 press conference on Tuesday, and we’ll have the live video right here at MMAFighting.com.
With UFC 136 less than two months away, UFC lightweight champion Frank Edgar, UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo, along with Gray Maynard, Kenny Florian and UFC president Dana White, will take part in the press conference at the Toyota Center.
The press conference begins at 2 p.m. ET and the video is below.
Filed under: DREAM, UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator, Rankings, LightweightsThe UFC’s lightweight division is such a shark tank that it’s incredible that Jim Miller won seven fights in a row against 155-pounders in the Octagon, and won all of them convincing…
The UFC‘s lightweight division is such a shark tank that it’s incredible that Jim Miller won seven fights in a row against 155-pounders in the Octagon, and won all of them convincingly. Even if you’re not fighting the cream of the crop, you’re going to run into trouble at some point when you’re fighting UFC lightweights.
Trouble is just what Miller ran into at UFC on Versus 5, when Ben Henderson hammered him for three rounds on the way to a unanimous decision victory. The Henderson fight was Miller’s chance to earn the next shot at the lightweight title, but instead he gets dropped in the rankings, and it’s back to the drawing board for the UFC, which needs to figure out who’s next for the winner of the upcoming Frankie Edgar-Gray Maynard fight.
So who will it be? We take a look at some of the contenders as we rank the Top 10 lightweights in MMA below.
(Editor’s Note: The fighter’s rankings the last time we ranked the lightweights are in parentheses.)
1. Frankie Edgar (1): The lightweight champion defends his title against Gray Maynard at UFC 136, and one way or the other, we can all hope for a decisive ending so that some new blood can fight for the lightweight strap.
2. Gray Maynard (2): One of the frustrating things about the lightweight division is that we’re going to go two full years with only three men competing for the belt: First Edgar beat B.J. Penn, then he beat Penn in the rematch, then Maynard and Edgar fought to a draw, and now they’re preparing for a rematch. There’s a long line of good lightweights waiting for a title shot.
3. Gilbert Melendez (3): Unfortunately for Melendez, he’s still stuck with Strikeforce, defending his belt against Jorge Masvidal next. Masvidal is a fine fighter, but he’s a step down for Melendez. The sooner Melendez is in the UFC, the better.
4. Clay Guida (6): Edgar, Maynard and Melendez are pretty well established as the Top 3 in the world, but watching the Ben Henderson-Jim Miller fight had me re-assessing the rest of the lightweight division, which is a big jumble of good fighters who are hard to separate from each other. I settled on Guida as the next-best of the bunch because of his current four-fight winning streak, in which he has looked particularly dominant, and especially for his impressive win over Anthony Pettis, who in turn had an impressive win over Henderson. If Kenny Florian or Diego Sanchez were still in the lightweight division, I’d rank either one of them ahead of Guida, as they both beat Guida before his current four-fight streak began. But as it is, I have Guida next in line at lightweight, and probably next in line for a title fight.
5. Anthony Pettis (9): The further we get into the world of the post-UFC-WEC merger, the more impressive it seems that Pettis was the WEC’s lightweight champion. When Pettis beat Henderson to win the WEC lightweight belt, we didn’t know that Henderson was capable of beating a Top 10 UFC lightweight like Miller. Now that we do know, it’s reasonable to re-assess Pettis’s standing in the lightweight division, and that’s what I’ve done in moving him into the Top 5.
6. Ben Henderson (NR): The best thing about Henderson as a fighter? His physical strength, especially in his lower body. He uses those tree trunk thighs to drive right through his opponents, and he completely overpowered Miller — something no one has ever done before.
7. Shinya Aoki (4): Aoki is going to have a tough time staying up high in the lightweight rankings if he doesn’t start beating higher-quality competition. The two guys he’s beaten this year, Rich Clementi and Lyle Beerbohm, are fine, but they’re nowhere near the level of opponents he’d be fighting in the UFC. I still think Aoki is a Top 10 lightweight, but I wish I could see him prove it in the Octagon.
8. Melvin Guillard (8): Guillard is currently on a five-fight winning streak, and if he makes it six in a row against Joe Lauzon at UFC 136, he’d have a good chance of earning the next shot at the Edgar-Maynard winner. It’s hard to believe now that Guillard was once viewed as an example of a guy who had thrown away his talent: Now he’s 7-1 since making his UFC return three years ago, and on the verge of a title fight.
9. Jim Miller (5): Miller is a great jiu jitsu practitioner who’s always looking for a submission, but what he found against Henderson is that he just wasn’t strong enough to deal with a bigger man pounding away at him from the top. He might want to consider a move to featherweight.
10. Eddie Alvarez (7): The longer Alvarez goes without fighting significant competition, the harder it’s going to be for him to stay in the lightweight Top 10. Alvarez is 7-0 since signing with Bellator, which is impressive, but none of his seven opponents is even close to the Top 10. And the last time he did face a Top 10 opponent, Shinya Aoki, he was submitted in 92 seconds. I’d love to see Bellator put Alvarez in the cage with someone who can really let him prove that he’s one of the MMA elite, but the reality is that won’t happen any time soon.
MILWAUKEE – It all could have been so simple. Then Ben Henderson went and messed everything up.
The former WEC lightweight champ won his second straight in the UFC, dispatching Jim Miller – one of the most vocal critics of the WEC’s lightweights at the time of the merger with the UFC – with relative ease on Sunday night.
But Henderson’s win over Miller in the co-main event of UFC on Versus 5 did more than just make a statement about the quality of the former WEC 155-pounders. (Donald Cerrone shared the victory stage with Henderson after improving to 3-0 in the UFC in 2011.) It eliminated Miller and his seven-fighting winning streak, which would have reached eight had he beaten Henderson, as the easy choice for the next No. 1 contender in the UFC’s lightweight division.
Instead of a clear-cut top pick to face the October winner of the Frankie Edgar-Gray Maynard rematch, there’s a tight pack at the top – including Henderson and Cerrone. But Henderson, for the most part, said he would leave that top contender decision in the hands of the UFC and let his win over Miller do the talking for him.
“I just want to make sure I get my hand raised and I’ll do my talking inside the cage,” Henderson said. “But what do you guys think? (I beat) the No. 1 contender, and that kind of a performance? You tell me. What does Dana (White) think? What does Joe Silva think? What does Sean Shelby think?”
Henderson told MMA Fighting at the post-fight press conference he believes there are several fighters clamoring to get the shot now that Miller has to go back to Square One, including Cerrone and his teammates at Greg Jackson’s camp in Albuquerque, N.M.
“Jackson’s camp has some tough 155-pounders,” Henderson said. “I think the top guys are (Clay) Guida, (Melvin) Guillard, probably myself. But whoever. Whatever.”
Cerrone took a quick shot at Miller’s criticism of the WEC lightweights before saying he believes Henderson should be next in line for his domination over the previous presumed top contender.
“We’re not the little brother, right? I think the little brother just beat up the big brother. It feels good for the WEC boys to be back on Versus making it happen,” Cerrone said. “I think Ben is next – unless he wants to fight me. That would be the only other thing.”
A Cerrone-Henderson matchup next would not be out of the question, though the UFC might not want to pair up two of its newest stars-in-the-making so soon. Henderson and Cerrone have fought twice before, each time with the WEC’s lightweight belt on the line. Cerrone’s last two losses have come at the hands of Henderson – once by decision for the interim title, and once by guillotine in their rematch.
Cerrone saw his winning streak hit five with a quick and dominant TKO against Charles Oliveira, one of the UFC’s most highly touted young talents. His five straight wins now stand right next to Guillard’s five straight, though two of Cerrone’s came to close out his WEC career.
Guida has four straight wins, including an upset of former WEC lightweight champ Anthony Pettis in June. Other fighters with four straight in the division include Nik Lentz and Jacob Volkmann, though neither have been as high profile as Guida.
Guillard is scheduled to fight Joe Lauzon at UFC 136 on Oct. 8 in Houston, the same night as the Edgar-Maynard rematch. Guida does not yet have his next fight scheduled.
The 155 pound division has always been one of the deepest in mixed martial arts and right now is no different. At the beginning of the year it seemed pretty clear what direction the lightweight division was going—Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard wo…
The 155 pound division has always been one of the deepest in mixed martial arts and right now is no different.
At the beginning of the year it seemed pretty clear what direction the lightweight division was going—Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard would battle for the prestigious UFC lightweight title with the winner facing WEC’s final lightweight champ Anthony Pettis.
As with most things in life, nothing goes according to plan. Fast forward a mere 227 days later and the lightweight title picture is a tangled web of uncertainty.
Last night, the consensus top contender Jim Miller put his seven bout unbeaten streak on the line against former WEC lightweight champ Ben “Smooth” Henderson.
Keyboard warriors and media aficionados considered this to be a tune-up fight for the AMA Fight Club product, but it appears that Henderson didn’t get the memo.
Both men brought the action with a highly competitive opening 10 minutes. On my unofficial score card they tied it with a round a piece heading into the final stanza.
Henderson made sure there were no questions about the winner with his actions in the final-round battering a tired Miller which earned him a 10-8 round on one of the judges’ score cards.
The MMA Lab product is unbeaten since joining the UFC and after dominating the former top contender can make a serious claim to being the top challenger following the Pettis-Maynard rubber match.
However, he is not alone. Both Clay Guida and Melvin Guillard also have the ability to challenge for the throne.
Guida stretched his winning streak to four bouts with the biggest win of his career spoiling the coming out party of the final WEC lightweight champ Anthony Pettis.
Guillard appears to be in the best shape of his career since hooking up with Greg Jackson—collecting five straight victories, three of them by way of stoppage.
“The Young Assassin” wasted no time looking to get back into the octagon following his July stoppage of Shane Roller taking a bout with jiu-jitsu ace Joe Lauzon.
With their impressive credentials and winning streaks, any of them would be fine challengers for the title. It seems we will have to trim the fat to find the real top contender.
Since Guillard has already agreed to a bout with Lauzon it makes sense to match the other contenders up in a title eliminator.
Both combatants have been known to throw caution to the wind and put on thrilling performances inside the cage and this would be the best way to find the true No. 1 contender.
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MILWAUKEE – It all could have been so simple. Then