Tonight’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) blockbuster UFC 217 is in the books from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. In the main event legendary longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre returned to the sport after nearly four years off against middleweight champion Michael Bisping, emphatically winning the title with a third-round submission. The card also […]
Tonight’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) blockbuster UFC 217 is in the books from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.
In the main event legendary longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre returned to the sport after nearly four years off against middleweight champion Michael Bisping, emphatically winning the title with a third-round submission.
The card also featured two other high-profile title fights, with TJ Dillashaw stopping former teammate Cody Garbrandt in the co-main event. Finally, longtime women’s strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk lost her belt to top contender Rose Namajunas in the pay-per-view (PPV) main card’s first title fight.
Obviously, there’s a ton to unpack with an event of this magnitude, so join us for the event’s post-fight press conference streaming live shortly after the main card ends right here:
Well, tonight’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, didn’t take long to get the action started. Unbeaten bantamweight prospect Aiemann Zahabi, the brother of Georges St-Pierre’s famed coach Firas Zahabi, looked to continue his rise in the Octagon when he took on Ricardo Ramos in the […]
Well, tonight’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, didn’t take long to get the action started.
Unbeaten bantamweight prospect Aiemann Zahabi, the brother of Georges St-Pierre’s famed coach Firas Zahabi, looked to continue his rise in the Octagon when he took on Ricardo Ramos in the first bout on the Fight Pass preliminary card.
Unfortunately for him, however, he was handed the first loss of his MMA career when Ramos uncorked an absolutely insane spinning back elbow that knocked him out cold in the third round of the back-and-forth bout. It was only the second such KO in UFC history, joining Dong Hyun Kim’s 2014 spinning elbow knockout of John Hathaway.
With the hour of legendary former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre’s Octagon return nearly upon us, middleweight champion Michael Bisping made one last push at hyping up the biggest fight of his long and decorated career. “The Count” has spent months upon months hyping up his “money fight” with the all-time great. Even though it seemed […]
With the hour of legendary former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre’s Octagon return nearly upon us, middleweight champion Michael Bisping made one last push at hyping up the biggest fight of his long and decorated career.
“The Count” has spent months upon months hyping up his “money fight” with the all-time great. Even though it seemed excitement for the fight wasn’t nearly as much as he had hoped for, he received the fight, so there’s no reason to stop his all-out smack talk assault on the reserved St-Pierre the day before the fight.
So the outspoken champ continued his verbal barrage towards “GSP” at today’s (Fri., November 3, 2017) UFC 217 ceremonial weigh-ins, where Bisping was the opposite of St-Pierre who had merely laughed at him in their faceoff. unleashing a final expletive-laden tirade towards the French-Canadian when asked how he felt about the fight by octagon commentator Joe Rogan:
“Georges is a fucking pussy, that’s my thoughts. All you guys that are booing, unlucky, motherfuckers, because tomorrow night, that fucking pussy’s going down. Four years he steps away. He’s a drug cheat, he’s a pussy, and tomorrow, he’s going to be a loser. Boo me, fuck you!”
That might be considered crass even for “The Count,” who, at this point, has made a long career out of playing the role of heel perfectly, and is one of the top trash talkers in MMA history.
Well, maybe not. In any case, the fighters with the first and second-most wins in UFC history will clash tomorrow in New York City, and the future of the talented UFC middleweight division will depend on it.
Can St-Pierre shake off the ring rust to beat the middleweight king, or is Bisping correct in his assessment of the outcome?
With only one short day remaining until tomorrow night’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, all of the fighters on 2017’s biggest UFC event will step onto the scales for the ceremonial weigh-ins this evening. The fighters made weight with surprising efficiency at today’s official early […]
With only one short day remaining until tomorrow night’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, all of the fighters on 2017’s biggest UFC event will step onto the scales for the ceremonial weigh-ins this evening.
The fighters made weight with surprising efficiency at today’s official early weigh-ins, a rare occurrence for the promotion as of late and a positive sign that UFC 217 should deliver some of the anticipated MMA action the lineup promises. With three title fights including Michael Bisping facing Georges St-Pierre in his UFC return, Cody Garbrandt taking on hated rival TJ Dillashaw, and Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s attempt to tie Ronda Rousey’s record for most female title defenses versus Rose Namajunas, the stage is set for a big night in The Big Apple.
Watch the competitors step on the scale and square off one last time in the ceremonial weigh-ins starting live at 6 pm ET/3 pm PT right here:
Last night (Thurs., November 2, 2017) bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt took his rivalry with former champion and teammate TJ Dillashaw to an all-new level when he posted footage of him allegedly knocking Dillashaw out in training. The two obviously had a heated rivalry pre-installed dating back to their days as Team Alpha Male teammates, where […]
The two obviously had a heated rivalry pre-installed dating back to their days as Team Alpha Male teammates, where Dillashaw supposedly ended Chris Holdsworth’s career with a dirty knee to the head. That was only heightened when the two signed to coach The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 25 opposite one another earlier this year where the rivals’ disdain for one another became apparent.
Although their scheduled bout was delayed until the co-main event of UFC 217 from New York this weekend (November 4, 2017) when Garbrandt injured his back, the hype and trash talk picked up right where it left off this week when Garbrandt claimed Dillashaw couldn’t “condition his f*cking chin” and that he had “showed Team Alpha Male how to use steroids.” But posting the training footage of his alleged knockout over Dillashaw, which is a sort of an unspoken no-no in many MMA gyms, was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back – yet it undoubtedly resulted in some major last-minute push for the bout.
Dillashaw predictably responded with what many online viewers were thinking, that Garbrandt indeed dropped him with a big punch in the video but was far from knocking him out like he claimed, because Dillashaw appeared to get back up to his feet immediately. When presented with that notion on Twitter, Garbrandt quickly responded that Dillashaw “couldn’t even walk” and would have had his skull “pounded in” were it a real fight in the cage:
Lmao he couldn't even walk after that strike hit him ???????? I would of pounded his skull in.
Regardless of the details, however, hype and attention for the already anticipated bout were fostered at just the right time, and that fact may just have pushed the fight into the territory of being the ‘real’ UFC 217 main event.
Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale for USA TODAY Sports
Yes, longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre will return to the Octagon after nearly four years off to face middleweight champion Michael Bisping in the official UFC 217 main event, but for a bout of that magnitude on paper, it’s getting comparatively little buzz or attention.
Part of that may be to the oft-discussed theory that current MMA fans don’t remember St-Pierre as they’ve only recently started watching during the Conor McGregor/Ronda Rousey era, which is a bit ridiculous but could be true nonetheless, part of it could be St-Pierre’s admitted lack of skill at talking trash, something that obviously hurts him in today’s smack talk-centered UFC landscape, and part of it may be the dislike for Bisping’s perceived holding hostage of the middleweight title, as he’s only defended his belt once against an aging Dan Henderson as the wholly deserving top contenders in his division fought each other and eliminated themselves from the running, save for injured interim champ Robert Whittaker.
No matter what, Bisping vs. St-Pierre, although a massive bout featured two of the legitimately best fighters in UFC history, just isn’t getting the heat a fight of that scope should. There is no backstory present like there is with Garbrandt vs. Dillashaw, and there is certainly no knockout video, even though Bisping and St-Pierre did train together in the past, with “GSP” reportedly getting the better of “The Count.”
So with many in the MMA world prognosticating a lack of hype and therefore a lack of quantifiable numbers for UFC 217, Garbrandt may have pushed attention for his bout to the point where people want to tune in for the co-main event more than the main event. It may not prove true, but Dillashaw recently cited an online poll where supposedly 70 percent of responders wanted to see Garbrandt vs. Dillashaw more than any other bout at UFC 217.
If that does become the case this weekend, then Garbrandt’s training footage could have been the perfect stunt to pull at the last minute, and it could result in a decent boost on the final box office receipts.
Based on pure meritocracy and accomplishment, Bisping and St-Pierre obviously hold all the cards over the younger bantamweights, but in today’s UFC landscape, generating the most hype and buzz, usually on social media, is what it takes to push a bout into must-watch territory.
That’s why Garbrandt vs. Dillashaw may have just become UFC 217’s ‘real main event.’
Middleweight champion Michael Bisping and top-ranked welterweight Jorge Masvidal both have two incredibly important bouts on the main card of tomorrow’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, but it’s starting to seem that they’d rather just fight one another instead. After getting into a heated verbal […]
Middleweight champion Michael Bisping and top-ranked welterweight Jorge Masvidal both have two incredibly important bouts on the main card of tomorrow’s (Sat., Nov. 4, 2017) UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, but it’s starting to seem that they’d rather just fight one another instead.
After getting into a heated verbal confrontation in the days leading up to UFC 217 earlier this week, the two brash stars met face-to-face again at a photo shoot, and not surprisingly, the expletives started to fly once again.
The beef appears to be a genuinely real one, as it’s highly unlikely the two would ever fight in the Octagon given Bisping’s tendency to pick and choose his fights, of which he reportedly has very few left in his decorated career, very carefully.
Check out his second run-in with “Gamebred” courtesy of Abraham Kawa on Instagram right here:
