Renan Barao was supposed to take another step toward greatness at UFC 173.
However, TJ Dillashaw had other ideas. Avenging teammate Urijah Faber’s losses to Barao, Dillashaw surprisingly dominated the Brazilian from start to finish on Saturday.
With a …
RenanBarao was supposed to take another step toward greatness at UFC 173.
However, TJ Dillashaw had other ideas. Avenging teammate Urijah Faber’s losses to Barao, Dillashaw surprisingly dominated the Brazilian from start to finish on Saturday.
With a loss to Raphael Assuncao only seven months ago, Dillashaw wasn’t even the first option to challenge Barao. Nonetheless, he’s now the best in the 135-pound division.
Where does that put Dillashaw in the pound-for-pound rankings?
With UFC 173 in the books and multiple events coming up on May 31, here are the latest official UFC rankings, which were voted on by various members of the MMA media via UFC.com.
It appears even Daniel Cormier knows his upcoming fight against light heavyweight champion Jon Jones is going to be something special.
That’s why on Saturday at UFC 173, the normally laidback Cormier couldn’t resist putting a little extra s…
It appears even Daniel Cormier knows his upcoming fight against light heavyweight champion Jon Jones is going to be something special.
That’s why on Saturday at UFC 173, the normally laidbackCormiercouldn’t resist putting a little extra spin on the softball he tossed to Jones and the rest of the mixed martial arts world.
“Jon Jones,” he announced, holding up a finger to cut short Joe Rogan’s first post-fight question. “You can’t run away from me forever. I’m the kid at the wrestling tournament that is always in your bracket. No matter where you go, boy, I’m coming. You better hurry (and fight me), because I’m getting better.”
If the sudden outburst seemed a tad out of character, perhaps Cormier was still riding high on the emotion of roughhousing Dan Henderson for nearly 14 minutes in the evening’s co-main event. Their bout wasn’t close—on paper or in practice—but in the process of slamming, pounding and eventually choking Henderson into the Land of Nod, Cormier had erased the final doubts about his qualifications as No. 1 contender.
No, the cut to 205 pounds does not negatively affect his cardio. No, it does not deprive him of the speed, power or wrestling prowess that were his calling cards at heavyweight, where he jetted to a 13-0 record prior to dropping a weight class to begin 2014. Yes, he’s going to be a problem for anyone and everyone at this weight, including the champion and world’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter.
Critics will no doubt attempt to impugn Cormier’s fitness as top challenger in coming weeks. They’ll question the gravity of wins over the 43-year-old Henderson and replacement fighter Patrick Cummins. They’ll wonder aloud if he shouldn’t be asked to prove it one more time, against a “legitimate” or “Top 10” light heavyweight before we hand him the keys to the kingdom.
Don’t be fooled by these feeble protestations. Cormier has already done more than enough to be considered the top contender in this division. His heavyweight success coupled with back-to-back wins at 205 duly cast him as a foe for Jones—a guy who’s defended his title against middleweights in two of his last four appearances.
Previous to this weekend’s action, the only conceivable knock against Cormier was his inexperience, but even that point no longer stands. He’s 15-0 now, including 10 stoppages, and the ease with which he’s marched through his first four UFC tests recalls, well, Jones himself.
This is to say nothing of the tournament championship Cormier won in Strikeforce in 2012, or the amateur wrestling pedigree that made him a surefire prospect before he even set foot inside a cage. Now, the prospect tag is gone. Anyone who looks at what he’s done since arriving in Strikeforce in 2009 and still can’t bring themselves to concede he’s the No. 2 or No. 3 light heavyweight in the world is either kidding themselves or playing some ulterior motive.
This guy is ready. It’s time to fast-track him.
“I know nobody can wrestle me, so it doesn’t matter,” Cormier said on Saturday. “If I decide to take Jon Jones down 100 times, I’ll take him down a 100 times. This is my Octagon. I’m the man.”
Naturally, UFC President Dana White poured cold water on this notion almost immediately. During an appearance on Fox Sports 1 following Cormier’s victory, White implied that he should “probably take another fight” prior to getting a shot at Jones. The boss later repeated that belief at the post-fight press conference.
For his part, Jones hasn’t responded to Cormier’s challenge, but the two are rumored to have some history. Given that the champion is currently negotiating a new contract with the UFC and that his upcoming rematch against Alexander Gustafsson was tentatively confirmed for UFC 177 the same night as Cormier’s win, the silence is understandable. Safe to say he’s got a lot on his plate right now.
Nonetheless, as we pick our way through the fallout of Saturday night’s pay-per-view, the thing that is most clear is this: Cormier vs. Jones is the fight we want, and the fight this division needs.
Cormier knows this, and that’s why he used UFC 173 to begin laying the foundation for a future feud with the titlist. It was a simple, but actually pretty shrewd move. That atypical, strangely scripted-sounding stuff he said to Rogan was simply the 35-year-old former Olympian ensuring that, when their fight does finally come around, it’s going to be the most anticipated one of the year.
White knows it, too, but his hand will likely be forced into goading Cormier back into the cage by a packed UFC schedule and a roster littered with injuries. This is an organization that badly needs bodies to fill its slate of upcoming events, preferably those belonging to people who also have familiar names. With at least seven months before Jones and Cormier could potentially get together, you better believe the UFC will try to convince DC to fight in the interim.
The obvious problem will be finding him a worthy adversary. He was booked to fight Rashad Evans in February before Evans was injured. Putting that matchup back together for early fall feels like the only option that wouldn’t be viewed as a dramatic step backward for Cormier, but Evans is still ailing, and Fox Sports’ Marc Raimondi wrote last month that he’s hoping for a December return.
That just won’t work.
Even under the current timetable, a lot could still go wrong in setting up Cormier-Jones. The winner of Jones vs. Gustafsson could emerge with an injury, their second fight could be too close to call, or Gustafsson could win a squeaker, prompting the obligatory calls for an immediate rematch.
No, there’s no point in putting this thing off any longer than we absolutely must. There’s only one proper path for Cormier now. It’s a title fight, and it’s next.
Team Alpha Male striking coach Duane Ludwig’s name is making headlines left and right after one of his pupils, T.J. Dillashaw, shocked the world and dominated Renan Barao at UFC 173 on Saturday.
Fans, fighters and analysts alike appear to be…
Team Alpha Male striking coach Duane Ludwig’s name is making headlines left and right after one of his pupils, T.J. Dillashaw, shocked the world and dominated Renan Barao at UFC 173 on Saturday.
Fans, fighters and analysts alike appear to be split on whether or not “The Baron” deserves an immediate rematch.
Nova Uniao teammate Marlon Sandro blames the loss on a tough fight schedule that is nearly impossible to keep up with as a UFC champion, but Ludwig isn’t buying that excuse, based on his comments to Bloody Elbow.
“His last fight was with Faber, and it was a fairly quick fight. It’s not like he came out with injuries. It wasn’t like he came from a hard fight straight into another hard fight … I don’t think it’s fair for Barao to get an immediate rematch. That fight wasn’t even close, but then, who else is T.J. going to fight? Who is the Number 1 contender? It’s still Barao. I know he’s gonna need some time to recover, so I doubt he’ll be the next guy to challenge for the belt.”
Prior to getting outstruck and just plain outworked by Dillashaw, Barao boasted an unheard of 33-fight unbeaten streak, including a 7-0 mark inside the Octagon.
UFC President Dana White hasn’t ruled out the possibility of booking Barao vs. Dillashaw II, but has also acknowledged that contender Raphael Assuncao deserves a crack at the belt, per FOX Sports.
Dillashaw is 6-1 in his past seven fights, with his sole setback being a highly controversial split decision loss to Assuncao at UFC Fight Night 29 in October.
Assuncao, the No. 3 bantamweight in the UFC’s official rankings, has been on a tear since dropping down to 135 pounds, winning six consecutive bouts in his new weight class.
Barao has yet to comment on the stunning TKO loss, but his manager is already calling for a rematch in Brazil at UFC 179 in October, per MMA Fighting.
Does Barao deserve a chance to prove he had an off night? Or should he go to the back of the line and give other contenders a shot at UFC gold?
John Heinis is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA editor for eDraft.com
Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.
There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.
In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.
Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.
Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120’s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173’s.
Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.
There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.
In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.
Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.
Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120′s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173′s.
Other random insights:
The time spent on page, an important and overlooked metric, was “virtually identical” for both Bellator 120 and UFC 173. Referral sources, too, were identical, with much of the traffic coming from search (Google) and social (Facebook and a bit from Twitter). This isn’t terribly surprising.
What does all of this mean, then?
At a glance, people are probably saying “The best Bellator has to offer only barely edges out a lower-level UFC card!” And that’s fair to an extent. But it’s worth noting that before the card, most of our UFC 173-related content wasn’t doing too well. There was very little hype around the event. Fans had a “how dare the UFC charge us for this crap” attitude about it. Even the live-blog was sub-par during the event. Once it was updated to reflect the huge upset that was TJ Dillashaw defeating Renan Barao, however, traffic on it exploded. The massive upset could’ve definitely helped UFC 173.
Alas, web traffic means little in terms of PPV buys. It’s highly likely that many people who read our post-fight Bellator coverage wanted to see if the event was a train wreck without having to pay for it. Furthermore, we’re just one website. A sample size of one isn’t much to go on. When asked on Twitter, some sites reported that their Bellator 120 traffic was far below expectations.
So, to get a clearer picture, we ran a Google trends comparison:
Interestingly, the search term “Bellator 120″ peaked the day after the PPV, indicating our theory above about most of the traffic coming from people who didn’t watch the PPV. And UFC 173′s peak was slightly higher than Bellator 120′s.
If anything is to be taken from this, it’s that Bellator is capable of generating at least as much Internet-interest (even if it derives from schadenfreude) from the fans as the UFC. Whether that’ll hold true for their future PPV outings is impossible to tell.
Some are calling TJ Dillashaw’s victory over Renan Barao at UFC 173 the biggest upset in UFC history. Others are chalking it up as simply an off night for the Brazilian. Marlon Sandro, on the other hand, believes there were greater forces at…
Some are calling TJ Dillashaw’s victory over RenanBarao at UFC 173 the biggest upset in UFC history. Others are chalking it up as simply an off night for the Brazilian. Marlon Sandro, on the other hand, believes there were greater forces at work, like the UFC forcing Barao into taking a fight before he was ready.
An 8-to-1 underdog, Dillashaw entered the cage on Saturday night as nothing but “Scooby snacks” for the UFC’s bantamweight lion. Barao was arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world riding an otherworldly streak of 32 wins and a no contest.
Not even the greatest psychic in the West could have predicted what would unfold on Memorial Day weekend at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
After cracking Barao early with a big overhand right, Dillashaw left any notion of serendipity in the dust by tactfully picking the champ apart on the feet for five rounds. There was hardly walking space due to the many jaws left hanging on the floor as Dillashaw landed a massive left hook followed by ground strikes to net a TKO stoppage at 2:26 of the fifth round.
A bloodied and battered Barao could do little more than pick up the pieces of his shattered world-beater image and head back to the locker room.
Sandro, Barao’s teammate, appeared disgusted by the outcome of the UFC 173 main event. In a post on Instagram, the former Sengoku featherweight champ pointed the finger at UFC scheduling as the sole reason for Barao being upended.
Tenhocertezaque você vaivoltarmais forte irmão, farei o que for precisopra você pegar o que e seudenovo. Tremendasacanagemquefizeram com você acaboude defender o cinturão e nemdeu tempo de você descansar e teobrigaram a lutarcambadadesafadosisso e injustiça , mas Deus não dormevamosvoltarmais forte !!!
I’m sure you will come back stronger brother, will do whatever it takes to take what you and your back. Tremendous romp that you just did to defend the belt and you do not have time to rest and forced you to fight this bunch of crooks and injustice, but God does not sleep we come back stronger!
It appears as if Sandro attempted to use Google translate to transfer his words over to the English language. A source was able to provide Bleacher Report with a clearer translation of Sandro’s post on Monday.
I’m sure that you will come back stronger brother. I’m going to do what I can for you to get back what is yours. Not fair on you, you just defended your belt, there was not enough time to rest and they made you fight again. Bunch of silly people, this is injustice. But god doesn’t sleep, we will come back stronger.
Sandro is obviously alluding to the quick turnaround for Barao after just defending the UFC title against Urijah Faber in February.
Barao, who was rumored to have had a difficult weight cut, came out flat against Dillashaw. He had already slowed down considerably just two rounds into the fight.
But credit has to be given to that overhand right Dillashaw landed in the first round. It seemed like Barao was never able to recover from that one punch.
In the coming weeks, the MMA world may come to realize that the UFC bantamweight title bout propagated more questions than answers.
Did we see the best RenanBarao at UFC 173? Was this fight TJ Dillashaw’s coming out party, or did he merely catch Barao on an off night? Would a rematch play out the same way?
According to MMAFighting.com, Barao’s coach, Andre Pederneiras, recently made an appearance on the Brazilian radio show MundodaLuta, where he asked the UFC for an immediate rematch at UFC 179 in Rio deJaneiro, Brazil.
While UFC President Dana White wouldn’t harp on specifics, he did tell media members at the post-fight scrum that he wasn’t opposed to doing an immediate rematch.
“I’d want to see this rematch. Hell yeah, I’d want to see it. I want to see which Barao shows up for the next fight, and I think that’s a great fight,” said White.
JordyMcElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon. Translated by Ronaldo Da Silva Lima.
TJ Dillashaw dethroned former bantamweight champion Renan Barao at UFC 173, and just like that, Jose Aldo became the last UFC champion waving the Brazilian flag.
If we go back less than two years to July 2012, there were four Brazilian champions …
TJ Dillashaw dethroned former bantamweight champion RenanBarao at UFC 173, and just like that, Jose Aldo became the last UFC champion waving the Brazilian flag.
If we go back less than two years to July 2012, there were four Brazilian champions in eight divisions.
Junior dos Santos ruled the heavyweight division, Anderson “The Spider” Silva was still the greatest fighter in the world at middleweight and Jose Aldo and RenanBarao stood tall above the rest of the featherweight and bantamweight divisions, respectively.
Dos Santos was the first to lose his strap.
In December 2012, dos Santos was battered for five rounds by Cain Velasquez at UFC 155. He would challenge Velasquez again at UFC 166 in October 2013, but the Brazilian would come up even shorter this time around, getting stopped in the fight’s final frame.
Between those two heavyweight title fights, Silva was famously knocked out by Chris Weidman at UFC 162. It was a win that nobody saw coming—not like that, at least—and it prompted an immediate rematch.
Like dos Santos, Silva would fail in his second bid at regaining the title.
That left only Barao and Aldo, and neither man looked remotely vincible during his run as champion. These two guys were here to stay.
Barao hadn’t lost in nine years going into his UFC 173 showdown with Dillashaw, and even though the Team Alpha Male product had looked good during his UFC career, he didn’t appear to be the man to defeat the inhuman Barao.
Dillashaw had good wrestling and knockout power, so what? The Brazilian had already defeated arguably the hardest puncher in the division in Michael McDonald via submission, and he dispatched one of the division’s finest grapplers and Dillashaw‘s teammate, Urijah Faber, twice, each time with little effort.
What did Dillashaw have to offer that Barao hadn’t already seen?
At UFC 173, we found out.
Dillashaw had a perfect game plan, complex footwork, huge power and the will to succeed. It was too much for Barao to handle, and Dillashaw finished the fight via TKO in the fifth round.
The win was shocking, and it was equal parts devastating for Brazilian fans, as an American once again snagged one of their coveted titles.
MMA is an undeniably volatile sport, and in just two years, Brazilians went from owning half of the UFC titles to owning just one out of eight (12.5 percent of them for you math people out there).
And now Jose Aldo, the last Brazilian standing, is booked to fight another Team Alpha Male product in Chad Mendes at UFC 176 in August.
Like Dillashaw, Mendes boasts huge knockout power and incredible athleticism. “Money” is, in many ways, a featherweight version of Dillashaw. We haven’t seen the kind of footwork Dillashaw showed against Barao from Mendes, but then again, we hadn’t seen it look that good from Dillashaw himself until he fought for the title.
There’s no telling how much Mendes has improved since his last fight, and there’s no doubt that he presents a significant challenge to Aldo as they head toward their much-anticipated rematch.
Aldo won the first fight via knockout in Round 1, but Mendes has won five straight since that time, scoring a knockout in four of them.
If Aldo is not on top of his game, Mendes‘ streak might get pushed to six, and Brazil will lose its last titleholder.
It appears even Daniel 
