MMA Roundtable: TUF 14 Finale, Strikeforce’s Future, and More

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, BellatorWith season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter drawing to a close and the big finale fight between the coaches drawing near, now seemed like as good a time as any to go head-to-head with my buddy and colleague Michael Dav…

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With season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter drawing to a close and the big finale fight between the coaches drawing near, now seemed like as good a time as any to go head-to-head with my buddy and colleague Michael David Smith over a few of the more pertinent questions of our day.

Questions like, what’s up with Strikeforce? Also, what’s up with Bellator? And, if you’re not into this TUF Finale business, just what are you into, smart guy? All that — only, you know, slightly more artfully rendered — awaits you below. MDS, why don’t you start us off.

1. A big part of TUF is supposed to be hyping the fight between the coaches. Has anything on The Ultimate Fighter this year made you any more interested in Michael Bisping vs. Mayhem Miller than you were three months ago?

MDS: I’m kind of surprised by how little the Bisping-Mayhem feud has moved the needle because Bisping and Mayhem are both engaging characters who know how to sell a fight. I assume part of the issue is that there’s been less promotion for the fight because it’s on Spike, and Spike and the UFC have ended their relationship. If this fight were going to be on pay-per-view, as most coach vs. coach fights have been, I’m sure the UFC would be doing a lot more to promote it.

But the larger issue seems to be that Bisping vs. Mayhem doesn’t seem to do a lot for fans in terms of its relevance to the UFC’s middleweight division. Both guys are solid fighters, but the winner of this fight will still be behind Chael Sonnen and Mark Munoz in line for a title shot, and if either Bisping or Mayhem did get a title shot, it’s not like anyone would pick either one of them to beat Anderson Silva. So it doesn’t have the feel of a really important fight.

Fowlkes:
While I don’t disagree that this fight lacks the promise of an immediate impact on its division, I have a hard time accepting that that’s why there’s not more heat behind it. Yes, the UFC seemed to choose these two as coaches based on force of personality alone, but didn’t that work as well as anyone could have hoped? They laughed, they yelled, they pranked, and they even coached. They had their obligatory tense and borderline violent moments, but they also had some fun. That’s got to be better than “Rampage” Jackson sleeping on the mat, right?

The TUF franchise did its job on this one, at least according to its own abilities, and its stagnant formula. It’s the UFC that decided not to go hard in the paint when it came time to push it on fans. Maybe that’s a consequence of the brewing feud between White and his soon to be ex-TV partners. Maybe it’s collateral damage from a crazy couple of months worth of events. Maybe it’s a little of both.

I just know that this is, on paper, a pretty good fight. I was interested when I first heard about the pairing, and I’m interested now. I can’t say that watching them trade expletives or kick through a couple flimsy cardboard doors on the TUF set did a whole lot to get my heart rate up (after fourteen seasons, I’ve seen all the meaningless property damage and half-bleeped arguments I can take), but so what? It’s still an interesting fight, and I still genuinely want to see it.

2. Bellator’s season has come to an end. Do you think MMA fans cared? What do you think needs to happen to make fans pay attention in 2012?

Fowlkes: Here’s an instance where we must resist the temptation to think of MMA fans as one monolithic slab. Did fans care? Sure. Some of them, anyway. Bellator gets a small, though consistent slice of the MMA pie with every event, and that slice is big enough to spread the word when there’s an awesome finish or a great fight. And yet, there’s another side to that coin. I suspect there’s a healthy segment of the MMA fan population that is aware of and maybe even mildly interested in Bellator, but nonetheless doesn’t feel the need to watch every weekend because, hey, if something worthwhile happens, it’ll be on YouTube in the morning.

Part of the problem is the Bellator schedule. It’s cool to have a fight every weekend as the season plows forward, but it also makes it difficult to convince fans that one fight night is bigger or more important than any other. Oh, there’s a Bellator event on Saturday? Well, there’ll be another one next Saturday, and the Saturday after that, so no big deal.

The schedule also makes it difficult for Bellator, as an organization, to focus on building a select few stars. As soon as one show ends, the Bellator crew has to turn its attention to the next one. Meanwhile, the champ in each weight class can either sit around and wait for the next tournament winner, or he can engage in a completely non-sensical non-title bout. Neither is a particularly attractive option for the champ or the organization.

These are all problems that arise as a result of Bellator’s main selling point, which makes them especially difficult problems to resolve. How do you keep the tournament structure without taking the spotlight off your champs for too long? How do you keep a season rolling forward without it feeling routine? I’m not sure I know, but Bellator is going to have to figure it out eventually.

MDS: I agree with you that there’s a problem with the Bellator schedule, but I don’t think the problem is that they run every week during their two “seasons.” I actually like the weekly format of knowing you’re going to have a certain night of the week when Bellator is going to be on, just as I like knowing that The Walking Dead comes on every Sunday while it’s in season and Modern Family comes on every Wednesday while it’s in season.

My suggestion to Bellator is they should choose a night other than Saturday. I just don’t think it makes sense for a No. 2 MMA promotion to go on Saturday nights, the territory that the UFC has already staked out. To me, that makes about as much sense as a startup football league scheduling its games for Sunday afternoons in the fall.

I love the tournament format and want Bellator to keep it, but it does create major problems with the champions: What are they supposed to do while they wait around for the next No. 1 contender to emerge from the next tournament? The “superfights” haven’t really worked out very well, as Bjorn Rebney himself has acknowledged.

I think the answer is that the champions should be in the tournaments. You win the Season 5 tournament? Congratulations. You’re the Season 5 tournament champion. Now Season 5 is over, so it’s time for you to enter the Season 6 tournament. That’s what every sport that uses a seasonal format does — the defending champion goes right back into the mix. And that’s what Bellator should do, too.

3. Strikeforce is back this month with its first non-Challengers show since the Heavyweight Grand Prix semifinals more than three months ago. Do MMA fans still care about Strikeforce? Should they?

MDS: I don’t get the sense that fans care much about Strikeforce. If anything, fans wish the UFC would hurry up and absorb all the best fighters so guys like Gilbert Melendez (who fought only once in 2010 and only once so far in 2011) could fight elite opposition more often. Melendez is defending his title against Jorge Masvidal in the main event, and the overwhelming reaction I’ve heard has been disappointment that Melendez isn’t in the UFC fighting a better opponent than Masvidal.

The reason I still care about Strikeforce is, more than anything, my affinity for women’s MMA. Cris Cyborg vs. Hiroko Yamanaka is going to be a very good women’s fight, and if Strikeforce disappears there’s going to be an uncertain future for women’s MMA.

But the bottom line is that the UFC is currently stripping Strikeforce for spare parts and will eventually do away with it. Given that, it’s hard to fault fans for losing interest in the promotion.

Fowlkes:
Well MDS, you just confirmed my suspicion that it’s impossible for a dude to type the phrase “my affinity for women’s MMA” without it feeling just a little bit creepy for some reason. But okay, I have to agree with the sentiment even if the phrasing conjures images of an evil villain making women fight for his amusement on a secret island somewhere. I would also like to see women’s MMA survive, and Strikeforce is the best bet for that right now. Pulling the plug immediately would probably put a lot of very dangerous women out of work, and that’s not good for anybody.

But as for whether fans do and/or should care about Strikeforce in general, I have to say ‘not really’ and ‘probably not.’ Sorry, but that’s what happens when the UFC pillages your roster, taking almost every significant draw and leaving you with a couple champions who are all but begging to be the next ones sucked up by the UFC tractor beam. The heavyweight GP still has a legitimately compelling final between Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett, and a middleweight title fight between Luke Rockhold and Tim Kennedy is one I wouldn’t sneeze at, but after that it starts to look pretty thin.

The Strikeforce fighters — the ones who have options, anyway — don’t really want to be there, and few can even be bothered to maintain the illusion anymore. Everyone knows this thing is running out of road, and nobody particularly wants to be there to ride it all the way to its sad end in a nearly empty arena, with a home audience that’s just waiting for Dexter re-runs to come on. Who can blame them? Not me, brother.

4. December features the TUF Finale, a Strikeforce card and two UFC pay-per-views. What’s the best fight of the bunch?

Fowlkes: Without a doubt, the biggest fight in December is the UFC 141 main event between Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem. And I don’t just mean big in terms of total combined weight, though there’s that too. It’s just, from a media buzz/pay-per-view sales perspective, nothing in the coming month can top the combination of Lesnar’s name and Overeem’s experience. It’s smart of the UFC to have that on the night before New Year’s Eve, when people will be more likely to stay home and rest their livers anyway, and you have to think the end result will be plenty of eyeballs on that one fight.

But then, biggest doesn’t necessarily equal best. That distinction I save for another fight on the UFC 141 card: Donald Cerrone vs. Nate Diaz. Cerrone’s been on a one-man paper-stacking mission this year, racking up win purses and post-fight bonuses like a man in hock to the IRS. Diaz struggled at welterweight, but looked downright scary when he took Takanori Gomi apart as a lightweight at UFC 135. Both these guys have the sort of tough-first mentality that involves taking no crap off of nobody, and when they get in the cage together I expect a technical, though ruthless fight.

It’ll be sort of like a demolition derby featuring half-drunk Nascar drivers: a whole lot of engine-revving and middle finger-waving, no small amount of profanity before, during, and after, and absolutely no regard for safety or long-term repercussions. How can you not like that?

MDS: Lesnar-Overeem is without a doubt the biggest draw, and I don’t know if there’s any other fight in December that will give me butterflies in my stomach when the cage door closes like Lesnar-Overeem will. That fight is going to be awesome.

But for pure entertainment value, I don’t think there’s a better fight on the docket than Mark Hominick vs. Chan Sung Jung at UFC 140. Remember how often we used to say after WEC cards that there was no promotion putting on great fights as consistently as the WEC? Hominick vs. Jung is exactly the kind of fight that made us love the WEC, with two featherweights who will relentlessly batter each other for 15 minutes or go down swinging if they can’t.

If Hominick vs. Jung is the best fight in December, I won’t be the least bit surprised. If it’s not, that probably means we’re in for an amazing month.

 

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MMA Top 10 Middleweights: Mark Munoz Rises

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, MiddleweightsCould Mark Munoz be a future contender to Anderson Silva’s middleweight title? That’s a question few people would have asked before UFC 131. But after Munoz beat Demian Maia, it’s a serious question…

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Could Mark Munoz be a future contender to Anderson Silva‘s middleweight title? That’s a question few people would have asked before UFC 131. But after Munoz beat Demian Maia, it’s a serious question.

After defeating Maia, Munoz is 6-1 since moving down to middleweight, with the only loss coming by split decision to Yushin Okami, the UFC‘s current No. 1 middleweight contender. Munoz is probably only one more win away from being the UFC’s best option to fight Silva, assuming Silva beats Okami.

Munoz would be a huge underdog to Silva, of course, but every middleweight is a huge underdog to Silva. And Munoz, a former NCAA champion wrestler, at least has the tools to threaten Silva where he’s weakest. Munoz and Silva are friends and training partners, and they might not wish to fight each other. But if both of them win their next fights, we could be heading toward a situation where fighting each other is what the UFC asks them to do.

See where I have Munoz ranked among the middleweights in MMA below.

(Editor’s note: The individual fighter’s ranking the last time we did middleweights are in parentheses.)

1. Anderson Silva (1): The last time Silva lost, it was by disqualification when he illegally kicked Okami in the head on the ground. Since then Silva is 14-0, with half of those wins coming by first round knockout or technical knockout.

2. Chael Sonnen (2): Sonnen still deserves to be ranked No. 2 because of his impressive win over Okami and his tough fight with Silva, but soon he’s going to start dropping because of inactivity. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for Sonnen’s problems getting an athletic commission to license him.

3. Vitor Belfort (3): Belfort’s 19-9 record really doesn’t do his career justice, as the nine losses are to a who’s who of great fighters: He’s lost to Randy Couture twice, Alistair Overeem twice and Kazushi Sakuraba, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva. Up next for Belfort is Yoshihiro Akiyama.

4. Yushin Okami (4): Although Okami does technically have a victory over Silva on his record, Silva was getting the better of Okami before he was disqualified for the illegal kick. If Okami can beat Silva in their August rematch in Rio, it would probably be the biggest upset of the year in MMA.

5. Mark Munoz (NR): Getting knocked cold by Matt Hamill might have been the best thing to ever happen to Munoz. That fight made him decide to move down from 205 pounds to 185, and he’s much more impressive at the lighter weight.

6. Demian Maia (5): The Maia-Munoz fight could have gone either way, and even in defeat Maia showed that his striking is continuing to improve. However, the fight also showed that Maia can’t just submit anyone he gets to the ground. In his first five UFC fights Maia submitted all five opponents, but in his last six fights he hasn’t submitted anyone.

7. Brian Stann (6): A matchup between Stann and Munoz would make a lot of sense as a next step for the UFC, and the winner would have a strong case for being the next No. 1 contender in the middleweight division.

8. Ronaldo Souza (7): Jacare, the Strikeforce middleweight champion, will defend his title against Luke Rockhold in September. Rockhold is 7-1, and all seven wins are by first-round stoppage, but he’s not on the same level as Jacare, who should be able to make Rockhold tap.

9. Wanderlei Silva (8): The soon-to-be 35-year-old Silva isn’t the fighter he once was, but his UFC 132 fight with Chris Leben promises to be an all-out war. And if he wins in spectacular fashion, it’s possible that the Axe Murderer could get the next shot at the middleweight belt.

10. Michael Bisping (10): With no UFC events in England this year, Bisping will not have any fights in his homeland for the first year since 2006, when he was an Ultimate Fighter contestant. Instead Bisping will coach on The Ultimate Fighter and take on Jason “Mayhem” Miller in December.

 

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Michael Bisping, Mayhem Miller to Headline TUF 14 Finale Card

Filed under: UFC, NewsLAS VEGAS – The UFC made its coaches for Season 14 of “The Ultimate Fighter” official on Friday. And after UFC 130, it was revealed they’ll fight each other on the reality series’ live finale card and not on a pay-per-view, as has…

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LAS VEGAS – The UFC made its coaches for Season 14 of “The Ultimate Fighter” official on Friday. And after UFC 130, it was revealed they’ll fight each other on the reality series’ live finale card and not on a pay-per-view, as has become customary.

UFC president Dana White said after the post-fight press conference that Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller will headline the TUF 14 Finale, which is likely to take place in early December.

“What we’re going to do this season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ is, the coaches will fight on the finale,” White said. “It’s what we were planning on doing anyway. We’ve done it before.”

White said the decision was made for just the upcoming season of TUF and wouldn’t necessarily apply to future seasons. For instance, if future coaches were going to fight for a title, it likely would not take place on a TUF Finale show. After Season 4 of the reality series, coaches BJ Penn and Jens Pulver fought on the finale.

White said the process of selecting the next coaches had plenty of bumps in the road, not the least of which was Chael Sonnen’s current suspension by the California State Athletic Commission. Sonnen was rumored to coach against Bisping on the show, which will feature bantamweights and featherweights and will begin taping this summer.

“When we go through the process of making coaches, there are all these different guys we look at,” White said. “People were talking about some of the lighter weight champions (as coaches), but a lot of things play factor in what happens – the Chael Sonnen incident, fights, schedules, injuries.

In the end, he settled on Bisping, who coached on Season 9 against Dan Henderson, and Miller, who signed with the UFC after leaving Strikeforce earlier this spring. Miller, the host of the “Bully Beatdown” program on MTV, is a famous talker – plenty outlandish and brash. But White said it wasn’t just about making good television with wars of words between coaches.

“There’s more that goes into it than just, ‘Are these guys going to act goofy and talk to each other?'” White said. “I’m not really into the coaches acting goofy. It’s going to happen with the (contestants) anyway.”

Season 13 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” with coaches Brock Lesnar and Junior dos Santos, finishes its broadcast run on Wednesday with the semifinals. On Saturday, the live finale takes place at The Pearl at The Palms in Las Vegas. Lesnar and dos Santos were scheduled to headline UFC 131 on June 11, but Lesnar had to pull out with a relapse of diverticulitis. He had surgery to remove a portion of his colon on Friday, though doctors say he may be back fighting by January.

 

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Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller, Michael Bisping to Coach ‘The Ultimate Fighter’

Filed under: UFC, NewsJason “Mayhem” Miller and Michael Bisping have been selected as the coaches of the 14th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which will begin taping this summer and air in the fall.

The selection of Bisping, who won Season 3 of The Ul…

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Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Michael Bisping have been selected as the coaches of the 14th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which will begin taping this summer and air in the fall.

The selection of Bisping, who won Season 3 of The Ultimate Fighter and previously coached on Season 9, is no surprise: Bisping is well known to the Ultimate Fighter audience and had been discussed as a likely coach for the upcoming season.

However, the news, that first appeared first on The Underground, that his opposing coach will be Miller comes as something of a surprise. Miller only recently signed with the UFC after leaving Strikeforce, and the UFC usually chooses longtime UFC veterans as the coaches of its reality show.

But Miller makes a lot of sense after Chael Sonnen, who was believed to be the UFC’s first choice to coach next season, ran into problems with the state athletic commissions in both California and Nevada. Miller is gregarious and talkative and already has experience with reality television as the host of Bully Beatdown.

Miller had been slated to fight Aaron Simpson in July, but now he’ll wait until December, when he takes on Bisping, to step into the Octagon. His fight with Bisping — and his banter with Bisping — should be entertaining, although it isn’t the middleweight No. 1 contender fight that a Sonnen-Bisping bout would have been.

Miller and Bisping are expected to coach a cast of bantamweights and featherweights in the upcoming season.

 

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Michael Bisping Discusses Chael Sonnen’s Suspension, What’s Next

Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive, NewsWednesday’s news that Chael Sonnen’s suspension was upheld by the California State Athletic Commission will most likely ruin any chance of seeing Sonnen fight Michael Bisping in the near future.

That’s a fig…

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Wednesday’s news that Chael Sonnen‘s suspension was upheld by the California State Athletic Commission will most likely ruin any chance of seeing Sonnen fight Michael Bisping in the near future.

That’s a fight many MMA fans were looking forward to, including both Sonnen and Bisping.

Sonnen was unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but Bisping shared his thoughts with MMA Fighting on Sonnen’s suspension and what’s next for him.

Ariel Helwani: What’s your reaction to Wednesday’s news about Chael Sonnen?
Michael Bisping: I’m disappointed. I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a while now and I think pretty much everybody can work out that I was hoping to fight Chael Sonnen, and we were waiting to hear if he was going to clear up his personal problems. Obviously today we found out that he’s been indefinitely suspended.

It’s a shame for the guy. I really do feel for him. We’re all human beings; we all make mistakes. He’s being punished, and OK, he’s made some very, very bad decisions lately, but no one’s perfect — I’m certainly not perfect — and I feel for the guy. By the sounds of it, he’s stuffed in his career as a realtor and he’s also screwed as an MMA fighter at the moment. He’s an exciting fighter, and I think it’s a shame for him; it’s a shame for mixed martial arts.

What do you think you’ll do next then?
Well, I’ll probably go to bed in the next few minutes (laughs). Then after that, I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for a call from the UFC. I’m very, very eager to know when I’m going to fight again or whether I’m going to coach The Ultimate Fighter. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m very, very eager. I still have been training for a while. I love to fight and I can’t wait to fight again.

Did the UFC tell you about any other plans they had for you in case Sonnen’s suspension was upheld?
No, they didn’t. I’ll be honest, I haven’t actually spoken to the UFC. My manager actually spoke to the UFC about all of this, and I’ve just been waiting on the sidelines waiting for this to clear up. I knew there was a little red tape to go through and today we have the combination of all that. It’s a shame for Chael Sonnen, it’s a shame for the fans, and all in all, a bad turn of events. And for me as well, it was a big opportunity. You know, Chael Sonnen, a fight with him would have been a big deal for me and a No. 1 contender fight, so obviously, I’m disappointed as well, but yeah, I’m not sure what is going to happen now.

Are you still interested in coaching TUF without Sonnen?
Yeah, absolutely. The Ultimate Fighter did fantastic things for me as a fighter and my career. If it weren’t for The Ultimate Fighter, it’s possible we might not be having this conversation now. So, I’m very grateful for my time on The Ultimate Fighter as a contestant and as a coach. So if the UFC were graceful enough to give me another shot on the show, then who am I to turn it down? The UFC have been the best employees a man can ever wish for. If that’s what they want me to do, then I’m their man.

It feels like every other day someone is calling you out. So now that it looks like you won’t be fighting Sonnen, who do you want to fight next?
I did fancy a fight with Nate Marquardt, but to be honest, the fight that I really wanted more than anything, and I said straight after the Jorge Rivera fight, and that was before any of the rumors of The Ultimate Fighter started, I wanted to fight Chael Sonnen. I think I’ve paid my dues, I’ve proved who I am as a fighter and my skills, and I wanted to fight for the title. Chael Sonnen was ranked No. 2 and that’s the guy who I wanted to fight. Not only because of that, I mean, the guy certainly does bring a lot of hype to a fight rightly or wrongly, and I thought the guy used to be hilarious in his pre-fight trash-talk. So I wanted to fight him. Other than that, I haven’t really given too much thought about it. As I said, Nate Marquardt, but he dropped down to 170.

Yeah, you’re right, there’s a bunch of guys who have been calling me out. They’re all just jumping on the bandwagon and trying to get a name for themselves. It seems popular to talk sh** about me. They can all go f**k themselves as far as I’m concerned. If they’ve got a problem with me, come and say it to my face, as opposed to over the Internet like a f**king spineless a**hole. But we’re talking from middleweight to lightweight to heavyweight, I’ll fight anyone of those guys. I try to keep it professional. You never see me calling guys out on the Internet. You’ve never seen me once call a guy out on the Internet or on my Web site or via Twitter. But people say I’m the a**hole.

Who do I want to fight? I don’t know, anyone that is going to get me closer to a title shot.

I noticed Tim Kennedy called you out via Twitter on Tuesday. Where did that come from?
It’s completely weird. He actually sent me a Tweet. It was directed to me, @bisping, ‘Bisping you’re an a**hole,’ or something, ‘You disrespected the sport and Jorge Rivera for the illegal knee.’ Normally, I never, ever respond to negative Tweets because, you know, all you’re doing is confirming to this person that you’ve actually read it and it may have gotten to you, so I never usually respond. But on this occasion, I thought, Here you’ve got another fellow professional of the sport that should know better, and he’s directing it at me. I’ve never met the guy, he doesn’t even fight in the UFC, and I just said, You know what, Tim Kennedy? Go f**k yourself. You’ve missed the train. That bandwagon left two months ago. I don’t know what his problem is. Again, he’s another one in a long list of people who’s trying to make a name off my back.

If you were to guess, when do you think we will see you fight again?
If I was to guess, for me, I’m training hard right now. Obviously, it’s been a few months since the fight, so I’ve gained a few extra pounds but nothing too crazy. I’m not as fat as I have been at some stages, but I want to fight as soon as possible. I’m a fighter, this is what I do. I’ve literally been crawling the walls since my last fight. I’ve been doing my best to maintain my fitness and improve my skills and stay in shape, but without a fight lined up, it’s been pretty hard. It’s hard to maintain motivation.

This is what I do. I truly love the sport and I’m a student of the game. Without a fight lined up it has been hard. So for me, ASAP. If the UFC were to call me up and say, We’ve got a fight for you in the next few weeks, I would be very happy. But I couldn’t put a time as of right now.

 

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UFC’s UK Chief Says More European Events on Horizon

Filed under: UFC, NewsThe UFC continues to find increasing success in Europe, and on Wednesday, the promotion’s UK president, Marshall Zelaznik, said all signs point toward even more events in England next year.

Saturday’s UFC 120 event has received a…

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The UFC continues to find increasing success in Europe, and on Wednesday, the promotion’s UK president, Marshall Zelaznik, said all signs point toward even more events in England next year.

Saturday’s UFC 120 event has received a mixed reaction from fans. But Zelaznik confirmed at Wednesday’s press conference in London that the card is the largest grossing event for the promotion in the UK and will set a new UFC European attendance mark.