April wasn’t the busiest month of MMA action, but it did feature a few big fights.
Former UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson made his debut in Bellator and suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of welterweight champion Andrey Koreshkov. Junior…
April wasn’t the busiest month of MMA action, but it did feature a few big fights.
Former UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson made his debut in Bellator and suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of welterweight champion Andrey Koreshkov. Junior dos Santos returned to form against Ben Rothwell. The long-lost Khabib Nurmagomedov returned after a two-year absence and annihilated the overmatched Darrell Horcher. Edson Barboza announced his arrival as an elite lightweight with a victory over Anthony Pettis.
Most importantly, Jon Jones put his legal troubles behind him and scored a one-sided win over Ovince Saint Preux at UFC 197.
Bleacher Report MMA is here with a new batch of rankings to reflect the April action, analyze what happened last month and look ahead to each division’s biggest stories in May.
The world of MMA prospects is really opening up.
Hardcore fans know the usual suspects—those smaller shows that incubate up-and-comers for the big time. Deep-cable organizations like Legacy and Titan, overseas promotions like One Championship and…
Hardcore fans know the usual suspects—those smaller shows that incubate up-and-comers for the big time. Deep-cable organizations like Legacy and Titan, overseas promotions like One Championship and M-1 Global, and South American stages like Jungle Fight all are reasonably familiar names.
But now, that roster is expanding. Great Britain’s Cage Warriors promotion—early home of Conor McGregor, Michael Bisping and a slew of others—recently returned from an extended hiatus, even as local competitor BAMMA comes into its own with some of the sport’s brightest young talents. Russia-centric promotions like ACB and Akhmat help showcase the fighting wealth of their own region.
Options abound, and we here at The Beaten Path are on top of them all. These are the five best prospects in action this month.
If you’ve been with us before, you know the drill: No UFC fighters are allowed on this list. Bellator and WSOF competitors are included only sparingly.
What follows are vital statistics, viewing coordinates and information capsules for each competitor. Let’s get it on.
Into every life, a little rain must fall. And sometimes the roof is a little leakier in MMA.
Like a major league pitcher with a million dollar fastball, when a fighter’s skills go, they go. Even when natural gifts are still fully in place, a bad …
Into every life, a little rain must fall. And sometimes the roof is a little leakier in MMA.
Like a major league pitcher with a million dollar fastball, when a fighter’s skills go, they go. Even when natural gifts are still fully in place, a bad night can easily turn into a bad year with the right (or wrong, I suppose) matchmaking.
It can be hard to deal with for fans, not to mention the fighters themselves. But that’s the business, and everyone understands the risks, even if that doesn’t make them easier to swallow once they come home to roost.
OK, enough idiom mixing. These are the active UFC fighters who have currently fallen on hard times. Since falls are worse when they occur from higher heights, most of these fighters are ex-champs or contenders. They are ranked mainly on performances inside the cage, as well as their career pinnacles compared with their current state of affairs.
Finally, this isn’t a list of fighters with the longest losing streaks. These are fighters whose careers have taken a fairly sharp turn for the worse in the relatively recent past.
No need to dance around the elephant in the room here. UFC 197 is the event that saw Jon Jones return to the MMA cage. Done and done. That is it.
Not to say there weren’t other interesting points on the card—you can never say that when Demetrious…
No need to dance around the elephant in the room here. UFC 197 is the event that saw Jon Jones return to the MMA cage. Done and done. That is it.
Not to say there weren’t other interesting points on the card—you can never say that when Demetrious Johnson is involved—but Jones’ return from an extended suspension was the unquestioned calling card Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Too bad a grudge and title match with light heavyweight champ Daniel Cormier had to be scuttled because of a Cormier injury. Into the breach stepped Ovince Saint Preux, a former University of Tennessee linebacker with a solid but unspectacular record. With Cormier out, the all-important interim light heavyweight title was on the line.
In the co-main event, Johnson defended his flyweight strap against Henry Cejudo, an Olympic gold-medal wrestler. The challenger has enormous physical tools and talents, but it might be too much, too soon against perhaps the best MMA fighter in the sport today.
There was plenty of intrigue up and down the 12-fight card. Did you miss the Fight Pass or Fox Sports 1 portions of the program? As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers of UFC 197.
And for the literal-minded among us, full results are available on the final slide.
As if you needed any help getting excited for the return of Jon Jones.
The former light heavyweight champion and pound-for-pound kingpin begins the in-cage portion of his redemption tour Saturday when he faces what appears to be an in-over-his-head opp…
As if you needed any help getting excited for the return of Jon Jones.
The former light heavyweight champion and pound-for-pound kingpin begins the in-cage portion of his redemption tour Saturday when he faces what appears to be an in-over-his-head opponent, Ovince Saint Preux at UFC 197.
With his well-publicized suspension costing Jones more than a year of his prime, it’s probably fair to say he’s eager to get back to fighting. Fans are eager, too. And as we get set for Saturday, it makes sense that we might while away that time by looking back on his UFC high points to date.
In fact, let us rank the top five of his nine finishes in the UFC. We will rank them based on the skill and viciousness of each maneuver, the stakes of the fight and the quality of opponent. And you know what else? We’ll even include some video as circumstances permit. Should those circumstances fail to cooperate, you can always head over to UFC Fight Pass, the UFC’s pay subscription service, to check out full fight video.
The UFC is failing its strawweight fighters. There is no other way to look at its handling of the division.
In the time since Bleacher Report rolled out the State of the Flyweight Division (the first in the State of the UFC series), there has been prec…
The UFC is failing its strawweight fighters. There is no other way to look at its handling of the division.
In the time since Bleacher Report rolled out the State of the Flyweight Division (the first in the State of the UFC series), there has been precisely two strawweight fights in the UFC. For the sake of comparison, there has been 10 in the light heavyweight division and 11 in the heavyweight division.
It most certainly isn’t because the division lacks talent or excitement. One hundred and 15 pounds has the strongest crop of fighters in women’s MMA and is overrun with finishers. It also isn’t because the fighters aren’t looking to stay active, either, since the easiest retweet on Twitter is fantasy matchmaking.
There is a sliver of hope for the division, however, given how The Ultimate Fighter season 23 will feature UFC champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk coaching a team of 115-pound women (and 205-pound men). That said, TUF18did little to buck the UFC’s indifference toward the women’s bantamweight division so WMMA fans ought not hold their breath.
The Champion
Joanna Jedrzejczyk
When Jedrzejczyk debuted she was, functionally, an afterthought. The UFC’s promotional efforts were focused on The Ultimate Fighter season 20, a special installment of the long-running reality series based around crowning the inaugural strawweight champion, made possible by a mass acquisition of the Invicta FC strawweight roster.
Jedrzejczyk was signed by the UFC to compete with one of the Invicta FC fighters who didn’t get slotted on the show, Juliana Lima. Both women unceremoniously debuted at UFC on Fox 12 on the Fight Pass portion of the card, with Jedrzejczyk taking the win via unanimous decision. She would earn a shot at the title by edging out Claudia Gadelha at UFC on Fox 13 and, from there, set her sights on TUF20 winner and reigning strawweight champion Carla Esparza.
To say Jedrzejczyk won easily would be an understatement. Jedrzejczyk bullied Esparza around the cage, stuffing takedowns and tagging her with strikes before putting her out of commission in the second round. It was a serious upset that forced fans to take notice of a woman not named Ronda Rousey.
While her win over Esparza was impressive, she one-upped herself in a big way at UFC Fight Night 69. Facing Jessica Penne, Jedrzejczyk put on a striking clinic, boxing up the former Invicta FC champion and slowly turning her into a bloody, broken mess. It was a genuinely horrific sight that sent a clear message—Jedrzejczyk is the scariest woman in the UFC.
The Contenders
Claudia Gadelha
Gadelha is officially next in line for a title shot, and will face Jedrzejczyk in July. She is easily the most well-rounded fighter in the division, combining wrestling, striking and clinch work with a physicality not many in the division can match. She came a hair shy of beating Jedrzejczyk last year, and is easily the greatest threat to her throne.
Tecia Torres
The Tiny Tornado had a rough start to her UFC career, losing twice on The Ultimate Fighter season 20 to Randa Markos and Esparza, but it’s impossible to deny her overall body of work. She combines a diverse striking background with a smothering clinch game, enabling her to contend with anyone in the division at any range. Unfortunately, she has absolutely no stopping power, which is a serious liability when she is at a serious reach disadvantage to much of the roster.
Rose Namajunas
Rose Namajunas transformed from a submission specialist to a one-woman wrecking crew in the 18 months between her final fight in Invicta FC and her official UFC debut. Her most recent win over Paige VanZant, where she beat the Dancing with the Stars contestant into a bloody mess, showed a rare combination of excellent submissions, brutal striking and legitimate athleticism. If she continues to improve, she will quickly become a pound-for-pound great.
Carla Esparza
The UFC put no effort into promoting Esparza as champion and it most likely has no interest in fast-tracking her back to a title shot. That said, she still owns wins over both Namajunas and Torres (though she “only” beat Torres on TUF20) and that puts her on strong footing should either of them end up with the belt. In the meantime, she should be able to run through the competition with her wrestling.
Long Way to Go
Joanne Calderwood
The Scottish knee machine was upended by MarynaMoroz at UFC Fight Night 64 and she is still recovering from that. She is a fighter the UFC would like to capitalize on but she will need a few more wins before she returns to the title picture.
MarynaMoroz
Speaking of Moroz, she is probably the most underrated fighter in the division. A coach for the Ukrainian Olympic boxing team with a penchant for locking up armbars, there’s no doubt she has the skills to compete both standing and on the ground. Unfortunately, she lost her chance to challenge for the belt when she came up short against Valerie Letourneau last year and will need to add a couple of impressive wins in order to get back on track.
Karolina Kowalkiewicz
Jedrzejczyk isn’t the only top-10 fighter coming out of Poland. Kowalkiewicz racked up a solid 7-0 record in KSW and Invicta FC before making the jump to the UFC. She debuted with a win over Markos in December and, if she can keep that up, should be able to get into title contention by year’s end…assuming the UFC doesn’t just bench her for a year.
Final Word
The strawweight division could be one of the UFC’s best. There are so many fresh matchups to be made and so many interesting rivalries that could be developed. It’s genuinely saddening that the UFC plain and simple isn’t interested in keeping fighters active, never even mind making it a featured division.
The UFC is failing its