Tag: UFC 189

Robbie Lawler, Rory MacDonald UFC 189 title rematch set for induction into UFC Hall of Fame this summer

Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald title rematch inducted into UFC hall of Fame UFC 189Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald can now officially label themselves UFC Hall of Fame inductees, with their memorable UFC 189 undisputed welterweight title fight rematch inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame as part of the ‘Fight Wing’. Co-headlining UFC 189 during International Fight Week back in July 2015 beneath an interim featherweight title fight […]

Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald title rematch inducted into UFC hall of Fame UFC 189

Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald can now officially label themselves UFC Hall of Fame inductees, with their memorable UFC 189 undisputed welterweight title fight rematch inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame as part of the ‘Fight Wing’.

Co-headlining UFC 189 during International Fight Week back in July 2015 beneath an interim featherweight title fight between Chad Mendes and Conor McGregor, Robbie Lawler and Canadian star, Rory MacDonald shared the Octagon in a rematch of a prior November 2013 clash.

Turning in a re-run for the ages in an instant classic and memorable showcase, then-undisputed welterweight champion, Lawler managed to successfully defend his crown for the first time as part of his undisputed title run, eventually finishing MacDonald with a fifth round TKO in their co-main event slot.

Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald receive UFC Hall of Fame inductions

And during the official broadcast for UFC 287 tonight in Miami, Florida, the promotion confirmed how the championship rematch between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald would be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame during an official ceremony during International Fight Week in July.

“An ICONIC moment in UFC history,” UFC tweeted. “Lawler vs. MacDonald 2 is headed to the #UFCHOF for good reason.” 

Joining a long-list of inductees this year, Lawler and MacDonald will go down in the annals alongside former lightweight champion, Jens Pulver, former featherweight kingpin, Jose Aldo, former middleweight icon, Anderson Silva, and veteran former title challenger, Donald Cerrone as the latest additions to the Hall of Fame hosted by the UFC this summer. 

[ARCHIVES] Wife Says UFC Tried To Get Aldo To Fight McGregor Hurt

[MMA NEWS ARCHIVES]

Tonight, José Aldo will be headlining UFC Vegas 44 opposite Rob Font, and hopefully he’ll be doing so at 100%. The following is an article about a time his wife accused the UFC of trying to get Aldo to fight arguably the biggest fi…

Jose Aldo, Jose Aldo's Wife, Dana White

[MMA NEWS ARCHIVES]

Tonight, José Aldo will be headlining UFC Vegas 44 opposite Rob Font, and hopefully he’ll be doing so at 100%. The following is an article about a time his wife accused the UFC of trying to get Aldo to fight arguably the biggest fight of his career while injured. The following article is presented to you in its original, unaltered form, courtesy of the MMA News Archives.

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 8, 2015, 6:13 PM]

As we draw closer to this Saturday’s UFC 194 pay-per-view featuring the UFC Featherweight Championship unification bout between José Aldo and Conor McGregor, controversy over their originally scheduled fight at UFC 189 is starting to come to light thanks to the wife of the linear UFC 145-pound champion.

Aldo’s wife, Vivianne Pereira, recently spoke with Brazilian media outlet Combate and made the claim that UFC President Dana White called her husband and tried to get him to fight McGregor at UFC 189 as scheduled, despite the fact that he was suffering from a painful rib injury.

“Dana [called], talking about numbers. ‘It’s millions of dollars that you’re losing. You have to fight. You’ve never made this in your life’. [Jose] trying everything, doing everything. They didn’t want to announce it because who else would they put in the fight? They spent millions on the fight. How would they say he broke his rib? They didn’t want to admit they held it back, threw that on us, and we were saying it was broken.”

UFC has since responded to the claims made by Aldo’s wife. A UFC official issued the following statement to MMAFighting.com.

“Jose’s health and safety were always a priority and we worked closely with he and his team to ensure that he had access to the best medical care and consultation after sustaining the injury. We respect and understand that he could not proceed with the fight at UFC 189 due to the injury. Both fighters have now arrived in Las Vegas for this historic event, and we’re excited that UFC 194 is just days away.”

Fans know the rest of the story. Aldo pulled out of the fight on very short notice and top contender Chad Mendes, who was paid by UFC to be on standby in case either fighter had to pull out, stepped in and fought McGregor in an interim title fight. “The Notorious” one went on to knock out Mendes in the second round to set the stage for another Aldo-McGregor show to close out the year.

And we’re almost there!

UFC 194: Aldo vs. McGregor takes place this Saturday, December 12th from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada and will air live on pay-per-view. Make sure to visit MMANews.com on Saturday evening for the absolute best UFC 194 live results on the web!

Continue Reading [ARCHIVES] Wife Says UFC Tried To Get Aldo To Fight McGregor Hurt at MMA News.

ARCHIVES: Jose Aldo: “I Will Always Complain [About Fighter Pay]”

The UFC Featherweight Champion talks about the issue of fighter pay in MMA.
Continue Reading ARCHIVES: Jose Aldo: “I Will Always Complain [About Fighter Pay]” at MMA News.

The UFC Featherweight Champion talks about the issue of fighter pay in MMA.

Continue Reading ARCHIVES: Jose Aldo: “I Will Always Complain [About Fighter Pay]” at MMA News.

Chad Mendes Has No Regrets About Taking Conor McGregor Fight On Short Notice

Former UFC featherweight Chad Mendes is now retired and has no regrets about how his mixed martial arts (MMA) career went — including facing Conor McGregor on short notice. Following his loss to Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 232 in December, it was reported that Mendes had called time on his career. However, it was never […]

The post Chad Mendes Has No Regrets About Taking Conor McGregor Fight On Short Notice appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Former UFC featherweight Chad Mendes is now retired and has no regrets about how his mixed martial arts (MMA) career went — including facing Conor McGregor on short notice.

Following his loss to Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 232 in December, it was reported that Mendes had called time on his career. However, it was never confirmed by “Money” until earlier this month when he revealed he was done on Instagram.

While he wasn’t able to hold UFC gold during his time with the company, Mendes certainly established himself as one of the best featherweights in the world. And he has no regrets about his career either. That includes his UFC 189 interim featherweight title fight with McGregor, which he took on just over a week’s notice:

“Yeah, I mean I think about that stuff all the time [if I had a full camp vs. McGregor] but I don’t have any regrets as far as taking a fight,” Mendes said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday. “That obviously was a 10-day notice fight. Of course I would rather have had a full training camp. [But] I would have been stupid to turn that fight down.

“Who knows? I could have went out there and knocked him out in the first 30 seconds. I could have won that fight. But it helped grow my brand. It’s just something that’s so cool to be able to look back on. My daughter’s going to look back on that one day and be like that’s a huge fight. I mean, being able to walk out to Aaron Lewis playing my walkout song. I don’t think the UFC’s even done that again. But that was just something I’ll never forget and I’ll always have that.”

McGregor Loss Happened For A Reason

McGregor would eventually knock Mendes out in the second round, before going on to knock Jose Aldo out in 13 seconds to become the featherweight champion. Still, Mendes believes things happen for a reason:

“As far as regrets, taking that fight, I definitely don’t have any,” he added. “But obviously, I wish I could have gotten a full training camp and I think about that. Like how would life be different had I won that fight. But like I said, everything happens for a reason, maybe things would have happened for the worse.“

What do you make of Mendes’ comments?

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Dana White: Rory MacDonald Isn’t The Same Fighter He Was Before Robbie Lawler Fight At UFC 189

Rory MacDonald hasn’t struggled much since departing the UFC. “The Red King” left the Las Vegas-based promotion back in 2016. Eventually, MacDonald signed with Bellator MMA, quickly capturing the promotion’s welterweight title. His only loss under the promotion’s banner came against Gegard Mousasi, another former UFC star, while challenging for Mousasi’s Bellator middleweight title. MacDonald […]

The post Dana White: Rory MacDonald Isn’t The Same Fighter He Was Before Robbie Lawler Fight At UFC 189 appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Rory MacDonald hasn’t struggled much since departing the UFC.

“The Red King” left the Las Vegas-based promotion back in 2016. Eventually, MacDonald signed with Bellator MMA, quickly capturing the promotion’s welterweight title. His only loss under the promotion’s banner came against Gegard Mousasi, another former UFC star, while challenging for Mousasi’s Bellator middleweight title.

MacDonald is currently in the midst of a Welterweight Grand Prix Tournament. In his quarterfinals bout against Jon Fitch, the pair fought to a draw at Bellator 220 in April. Due to the draw, however, MacDonald, the champion, automatically moved on in the tournament. In his post-fight press conference, MacDonald expressed doubt about his fighting career, noting his newfound Christian faith has softened his heart.

He returned to action this past weekend (Fri. June 14, 2019) at Bellator 222 when he defeated Neiman Gracie in their semi-finals main event. However, it’s very noticeable that MacDonald no longer fights with the same drive and aggression that he once did. UFC President Dana White was recently asked about this during an interview on Sirius XM radio.

White admitted that he doesn’t believe MacDonald has been the same fighter after his war with Robbie Lawler at UFC 189 – which to this day remains one of the greatest fights of all time:

“I think that, different situation in that when, guys say they want to retire and then walk away,” White said. “And then there’s guys that I let go of – or girls – that I let go of because I think that it’s time. But there are other places that they can go and make money. But yeah, I think that Rory is not the same guy that he was going into the [Robbie] Lawler fight.”

Lawler and MacDonald collided back in July of 2015. MacDonald seemingly out-classed Lawler for the majority of the fight, but both men beat each other bloody. MacDonald’s nose was broken during the bout, and the pain was too much for him to withstand in the fifth round. Had he been able to make it through the pain, MacDonald likely would have won the title on the scorecards.

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Rory MacDonald Explains Why He Thinks Robbie Lawler Was On PEDs For UFC 189 Bout

Former UFC welterweight title contender and current Bellator star Rory MacDonald has explained exactly why he thinks that former UFC welterweight champion was on performance-enhancing drugs when the two met at UFC 189 for the UFC welterweight title in 2015. If you recall, in August during a Reddit AMA, MacDonald was asked by a fan […]

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Former UFC welterweight title contender and current Bellator star Rory MacDonald has explained exactly why he thinks that former UFC welterweight champion was on performance-enhancing drugs when the two met at UFC 189 for the UFC welterweight title in 2015.

If you recall, in August during a Reddit AMA, MacDonald was asked by a fan if he believes Lawler was on PEDs for the fight, to which he responded that he is ‘convinced’ he was.

MacDonald explained that conclusion in an interview with MMA Fighting on Tuesday. As seen in the fight, MacDonald seemed to have the fight won heading into the fifth round on the judges’ scorecards. But, after suffering a broken nose and taking repeated shots to the face from Lawler, the pain was too much to endure, which led to him being finished just a minute into the round.

“He never slowed down,” MacDonald said. “I would hurt him, and his output was high, high, high and he never really lost power and endurance. He just kept the pace and kept the power no matter how hurt or tired he was. He always was recovered very fast. It made me very suspicious.

“Obviously, I think Robbie is a tank of a person. He’s got that fire and that will and the rage and that anger in him that burns and pushes him through those hard moments. He’s an absolute warrior. I’m not disagreeing with that. But I do believe he was taking some sh*t.”

Make no mistake about it, MacDonald wants everyone to know that he doesn’t think everyone at American Top Team is cheating.

“I didn’t call so and so and so and so someone who was on performance-enhancing drugs,” he said. “I don’t have an issue with whatever. Someone asked me, ‘Do I think Robbie Lawler is on steroids?’ Yeah, I do. That’s it.”

It should be noted that Lawler has passed all 21 USADA drug tests that he has taken dating back to 2015. If you recall, their bout at UFC 189 was right after the UFC brought in USADA to run its anti-doping program.

“I’m totally not crying about it,” MacDonald said. “If you’re gonna ask me, do I think Robbie Lawler takes performance-enhancing drugs? Absolutely, I do. And I absolutely think he was on something when we fought.”

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