As a result of the mess that is the originally planned UFC 196 pay-per-view on February 6th, Conor McGregor vs. Rafael Dos Anjos will now no longer be headlining the UFC 197 event scheduled for March.
UFC announced on Wednesday that due to the cance…
As a result of the mess that is the originally planned UFC 196 pay-per-view on February 6th, Conor McGregor vs. Rafael Dos Anjos will now no longer be headlining the UFC 197 event scheduled for March.
UFC announced on Wednesday that due to the cancellation of the Cain Velasquez vs. Fabricio Werdum fight, and then the cancellation of the Werdum vs. Stipe Miocic replacement fight, the UFC 196 pay-per-view, which was originally announced as being headlined by Johny Hendricks vs. Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, will now be referred to as UFC Fight Night 82.
UFC 197, which was scheduled for March 5th, will now be called UFC 196, but will still be headlined by the aforementioned McGregor vs. Dos Anjos UFC Lightweight title fight.
How this affects future events, such as the landmark UFC 200 event scheduled for July 9th, remains to be seen. It’s worth noting that while the fights, dates and venues will remain as scheduled, the name of the events coming up in the next few weeks and months could be a disaster to try and follow.
It looks like ‘The Eagle’ will be flying at ‘El Cucuy’ in a UFC on FOX event later this year…. Originally linked to a UFC 197 rematch with Michael Johnson until ‘The Menace’ withdrew, streaking lightweight Tony Ferguson gets moved to another big fight. The Ultime Fighter 13 winner ‘El Cucuy’ has gone unbeaten in seven
It looks like ‘The Eagle’ will be flying at ‘El Cucuy’ in a UFC on FOX event later this year….
Originally linked to a UFC 197 rematch with Michael Johnson until ‘The Menace’ withdrew, streaking lightweight Tony Ferguson gets moved to another big fight. The Ultime Fighter 13 winner ‘El Cucuy’ has gone unbeaten in seven straight fights, with only two going to the judge’s scorecards, and a four submission/one knockout kicker. So far in the UFC, Ferguson is 10-1 (13 if you count his TUF house fights) with his only loss coming to Michael Johnson.
Improving with every fight, ‘El Cucuy’ has gone from dangerous TUF winner, to a legitimate title contender in just over four years. He’ll be inked in for the biggest fight of his life in his next octagon appearance though, as some big news has emerged and been confirmed by MMAFighting.com, check it out:
The UFC is targeting a matchup between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Fergusonfor an April 16 UFC on Fox event.
Sources confirmed the news to MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani after Michael Johnson, who was expected to face Ferguson March 5 at UFC 197, withdrew from their affair for undisclosed reasons.
It was originally thought that Khabib Nurmagomedov would replace Johnson at UFC 197, but apparently March was just a little too soon for ‘The Eagle.’ The undefeated wrestler from Russia has gone 22-0 as a professional, but injury woes have seen him sidelined since his April 2014 win over current champion Rafael dos Anjos.
This is undoubtedly the number one contender fight for the division, meaning a fight with either Rafael dos Anjos or Conor McGregor is on the table. Given their current booking at UFC 197, either one of those would be an absolutely huge fight. If RDA claims McGregor’s scalp, he’ll easily be the hottest fighter in the world, and of course ‘The Notorious’ legend would simply grow to astronomic levels if he becomes the first two weight champ.
18 months out, and straight back in at the deep end for Khabib. Who you got?
UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos didn’t like what he saw at the UFC 197 presser, and he says it shows the Irishman is ‘scared’…. Last week the stars of UFC 197 gathered for a press conference that turned in to another edition of ‘The Conor McGregor Show.’ Much like the Go Big presser in
UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos didn’t like what he saw at the UFC 197 presser, and he says it shows the Irishman is ‘scared’….
Last week the stars of UFC 197 gathered for a press conference that turned in to another edition of ‘The Conor McGregor Show.’ Much like the Go Big presser in Australia, ‘The Notorious’ took over the presser and made sure he blasted Rafael dos Anjos during his time on the mic. For his part, the Brazilian champion remained calm and collected, if a little quiet. Once again the stage has been set by McGregor.
It’s obvious by now that the UFC featherweight champion likes to pile the pressure on both the opponent and himself during the pre fight hype, he says it helps him perform better, and who are we to argue? After all he did just surgically remove Jose Aldo’s chin with a single precise punch at UFC 194, but will it be the same with the lightweight champion on March 5?
In case you missed it, McGregor blasted RDA as a traitor to the Brazilian people and claimed he would behead the lightweight boss and drag his corpse through the streets of Rio.
Talking during a media scrum in his home nation of Brazil, the lightweight champion revealed how he felt watching McGregor talk trash during the 197 presser, as quoted by MMAFighting.com:
“When I saw him with that shirt I thought he had lost it. What was up with that? It’s horrible,” dos Anjos said. “A friend of mine showed me a video of ‘El Chapo’ later, and then I understood about the drug dealer.
“He thinks he’s the boss, he thinks he’s God,” he added. “Like I said, the next step is his fall. He will get scared.”
“I speak English, but he has an accent that is hard to understand sometimes. But I believe I was able to get in a debate with him,” dos Anjos said. “I believe it was worse for Aldo because he listened to what he said and watched everybody laugh but couldn’t understand a word. Press conferences aren’t the best thing to do, but it’s part of the job. It’s not fun to be there and listen to this clown do his comedy show.”
So here we are again, the champion trying to ignore Conor McGregor’s antics, ‘The Notorious’ promising a first round knockout, deja vu?
Featherweight champion Conor McGregor said that he’d be the bigger fighter in his lightweight championship bout against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 197 on March 5, and from the looks of a recent photoshoot, he wasn’t kidding. McGregor, who declared that we’ve ‘seen him on the salads, now we’ll see him on the steaks’
Featherweight champion Conor McGregor said that he’d be the bigger fighter in his lightweight championship bout against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 197 on March 5, and from the looks of a recent photoshoot, he wasn’t kidding.
McGregor, who declared that we’ve ‘seen him on the salads, now we’ll see him on the steaks’ at last week’s UFC 197 press conference has apparently been enjoying not having to put his body through the taxing cut down to featherweight’s 145-pound limit. He posted photo to his Instagram account of him looking rather huge and ripped in preparation for his bid to become a two-division champ.
No division in the UFC boasts a deeper roster of talented fighters than lightweight.
The promotion’s 155-pounders run the gamut from brutal pressure fighters to suffocating wrestlers to flashy strikers and everything in between. Fights between the ligh…
No division in the UFC boasts a deeper roster of talented fighters than lightweight.
The promotion’s 155-pounders run the gamut from brutal pressure fighters to suffocating wrestlers to flashy strikers and everything in between. Fights between the lightweight elite are MMA as its pioneers could never have dreamed, a smorgasbord of slick technique and incredible athleticism that blends together into a sport that is worth more than its component arts.
Ninety-six fighters, the most of any weight class in the UFC, grace the promotion’s roster at lightweight. With Rafael dos Anjos’ surprising run to the top, the division is a mess of established names, rising youth and skilled but stagnant veterans.
Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff and see where the lightweight division lies at the beginning of 2016.
The Champion
Rafael dos Anjos
Anybody who says now that he or she expected Rafael dos Anjos, who was best known for being on the receiving end of a thunderous Jeremy Stephens uppercut, to pound golden boy Anthony Pettis into dust and become champion in 2015 is probably lying.
It was as surprising a run to the top as this sport has seen, and even more so for its dominance. Dos Anjos blasted Benson Henderson, dominated Nate Diaz, dismantled the slick and talented Pettis with awe-inspiring ease and made it look effortless to crush Donald Cerrone’s liver and finish him off with punches in only 66 seconds in December.
Dos Anjos won’t win many points for charisma, but there’s no denying his effectiveness as a fighter. No-nonsense pressure, relentless aggression and well-rounded skills make him a rugged monster in a division filled with smooth outfighters who want to keep their distance.
A matchup with newly crowned featherweight sensation Conor McGregor looms in March at UFC 197. If dos Anjos can get past the Irishman—the oddsmakers have pegged him as a slight underdog, according to Odds Shark—there will be no denying his status as a pound-for-pound king.
The Contenders
Conor McGregor
It was something of a surprise that McGregor announced his intention to move up to 155 pounds immediately following his 13-second knockout win over Jose Aldo in December and even more of a surprise that he chose to do so against dos Anjos following his victory over Cerrone the following week.
The champion would seem to be a difficult matchup for McGregor, but the Irishman is in a win-win scenario. If he defeats dos Anjos, he will be the first simultaneous two-division champion in UFC history, which would give him literally unprecedented bargaining power. With two entire divisions under his thumb, the promotion would need to hand him a blank check and make his dream of co-promotion a reality.
Even if he loses, McGregor would still be the featherweight champion with a marketable fight against Frankie Edgar on deck for UFC 200.
The matchup with dos Anjos is compelling on many levels. It’s the first champion vs. champion matchup since B.J. Penn vs. Georges St-Pierre more than six years ago, and stylistically it’s an outstanding fight. It should do huge numbers as well and cement McGregor as the top draw in the sport.
Khabib Nurmagomedov
The oft-injured Dagestani has the distinction of being the only man to beat the champion during his current run at the top of the division, taking a clear decision from dos Anjos back in April 2014. Nurmagomedov hasn’t fought since, and has nursed a variety of injuries.
There is still no clear indication of when Nurmagomedov will be ready to fight. He recently implied that he would be ready for an April bout with Eddie Alvarez, and that sounds about right; slotting him directly into a title fight with so much time having elapsed since his last fight would be a mistake both for Nurmagomedov’s development and from the perspective of marketability.
Whenever the Dagestani returns, it won’t be soon enough. He has real charisma and the skills to be the best in the division.
Should McGregor defeat dos Anjos, it’s hard to think of Nurmagomedov as anything other than a nightmarish-style matchup for the Irishman, and the trash talk would be some next-level intercultural dialogue.
Tony Ferguson
Despite running off seven straight wins in a ridiculously deep division, Tony Ferguson is still somehow flying under the radar. Abel Trujillo, Gleison Tibau, Josh Thomson and Edson Barboza have all fallen to “El Cucuy” in the last 14 months, and it’s high time he got either a top contender matchup or a title shot.
Instead, McGregor’s decision to move up and fight dos Anjos has left Ferguson in a bind. With no title fight on the horizon, he’ll be fighting Michael Johnson, who’s riding a two-fight losing streak, at UFC 197. This booking has the benefit of a storyline, in that Johnson handed Ferguson his last loss back in May 2012, but that’s a weak narrative in the context of the fighters’ diverging fortunes in the division.
Of course, Nurmagomedov couldn’t resist needling Ferguson about it on Twitter:
Should he win that fight, Ferguson should get the winner of dos Anjos-McGregor. Whether he has the heat to make that happen is another story.
Eddie Alvarez
Alvarez is riding a two-fight winning streak by the thinnest of margins. After the former Bellator champion lost his debut to Donald Cerrone in September 2014, he rebounded with a slim decision win over Gilbert Melendez, and he scraped by Pettis in January 2016 by virtue of some well-timed cage wrestling.
That might be enough to snag a title shot for Alvarez depending on what happens at UFC 197, but that scenario seems less likely than a matchup with Nurmagomedov or Ferguson for the next shot at McGregor or dos Anjos.
The Prospects
Dustin Poirier
It’s strange to think of Poirier as a prospect given that he debuted in the WEC way back in 2010, but the 23-fight veteran is just now coming into his own at 155 pounds after moving up from featherweight. The Louisiana native has only been a professional for seven years and just turned 27, which means he still has time to get better.
Poirier has looked awesome at lightweight. Finishes of Carlos Diego Ferreira and Yancy Medeiros preceded a thorough drubbing of quick-rising Irishman Joseph Duffy, and with only one fight left on his contract before free agency, Poirier stands to make a lot of money on the open market.
Despite blooming just a bit later than many of his contemporaries, Poirier is coming on strong, and he’s a real threat to make an impact at the top of the division.
Beneil Dariush
A product of Kings MMA and a training partner of champion dos Anjos, Dariush is on an outstanding run. He suffered an upset loss at the hands of Ramsey Nijem in April 2014 but has run off five straight wins since then, a streak that culminated in a contentious decision win over Johnson last August.
Slick and borderline world-class jiu-jitsu—he had a competitive match with Kron Gracie before retiring from competitive grappling—combine with an aggressive southpaw striking game and solid wrestling to make Dariush a real threat. He’s technical, smart and only getting better under the direction of Rafael Cordeiro.
Likely due to the close nature of his fight with Johnson, the UFC booked Dariush against Mairbek Taisumov in January in something of a step back, but neither fighter made it to the date. A booking like that makes sense, but he isn’t far from matchups with the division’s elite.
Michael Chiesa
The Ultimate Fighter 15 winner Chiesa has drastically improved his game over the last several years, transforming himself from a lanky, tricky grappler into a well-rounded and threatening fighter in every facet.
The Washington native had a bit of bad luck in suffering a cut stoppage loss against Joe Lauzon in a competitive fight, and that’s the only blemish in his last five outings.
Wins over Mitch Clarke and Jim Miller have positioned him for a run at the top 10, and while he might not be a future champion, he does seem like a lock to have fun and competitive fights with the division’s elite. Perhaps more importantly, the UFC seems to like him, and he fancies himself a company man.
Rashid Magomedov
Another native of Dagestan, Magomedov has ran his record in the UFC to 4-0 with a convincing win over fellow prospect Gilbert Burns in November. Slick striking skills make him a real threat against anybody in the division, especially on the counter.
The only real problem is a lack of finishes, but the combination of near-flawless takedown defense and smooth, dangerous kickboxing is a potent one. It’s only a matter of time before he puts a hurting on top-15 lightweights.
A Long Way to Go
Anthony Pettis
While his loss to Alvarez was contentious and one many observers thought he won, there’s no denying how uninspiring it was for long stretches. Pettis has to learn to consistently get off the fence and show some urgency in doing so, or he won’t have a prayer against the division’s upper echelon, all of whom are capable of executing a pressure game plan.
Having a serious weakness exposed for a weight class full of talented and well-coached fighters isn’t ideal, and neither is dropping two in a row when there are so many potential options at the top. Moreover, his demolition at the hands of dos Anjos was so one-sided that it will be hard to justify a rematch in the near future.
Pettis has a long road back to relevance, and while he’s still fairly young, his constant injuries and defined weaknesses bode poorly for the future.
Donald Cerrone
After a pair of losses to dos Anjos and the snapping of his latest long winning streak, Cerrone will move up to 170 pounds to take on Tim Means at a Fight Night event in February. While Cerrone will likely return to lightweight afterward, it seems that his time as a top contender is mostly over.
The combination of losses to elite fighters in the form of Pettis and dos Anjos and the desire to keep an active schedule mean Cerrone will have a lot of trouble reaching the top, especially in a division with so many other options.
The Best of the Rest
Nate Diaz: He’s probably not going to be a title contender at this point, but he’s a strong candidate for money fights with the likes of McGregor, Pettis and potentially others.
Michael Johnson: It was a rough decision against Dariush, but Diaz gobsmacked him and showed the limits of his game. He could still rise high, but there seems to be a ceiling.
Edson Barboza: Same deal as Johnson. Despite looking great against Ferguson and showing real improvements, he might have a ceiling. That doesn’t mean he can’t be in a ton of fun matchups, though.
Francisco Trinaldo: His age (37) is the biggest concern, but a five-fight winning streak capped with a decision win over Ross Pearson is impressive. He’s a talented fighter and deserves a step up.
The Last Word
The lightweight division is bursting with talent, perhaps too much for any one weight class to contain. There are so many skilled and athletic fighters that even the UFC’s top 15 misses some of the real gems, such as Magomedov and Trinaldo.
It’s a strange division in that lightweight doesn’t have many anointed youngsters who seem poised to dominate the future at 155: There’s no Mirsad Bektic, Thomas Almeida, Aljamain Sterling, Warlley Alves or Albert Tumenov at lightweight, and that stacked roster is a big reason why. It’s simply difficult to crack the elite at a young age.
That level of talent creates the potential for a vast array of compelling matchups. Dos Anjos-McGregor is as good a fight as the sport has to offer right now, and the fighter who emerges victorious will have his pick of entertaining and meaningful scraps. Ferguson and Nurmagomedov are the cream, but hardly alone at the top.
In the best-case scenario, McGregor will shine a bright light on some of the overlooked talent in the UFC’s deepest division and allow for many more marketable fighters to emerge.
Jose Aldo unfortunately put forth what was by far the worst performance of his legendary mixed martial arts (MMA) career when Irish megastar Conor McGregor knocked him out with one fateful left hand in the main event of December 12s UFC 194 from Las Vegas. However, apart from the surprisingly swift nature of his
Jose Aldo unfortunately put forth what was by far the worst performance of his legendary mixed martial arts (MMA) career when Irish megastar Conor McGregor knocked him out with one fateful left hand in the main event of December 12s UFC 194 from Las Vegas.
However, apart from the surprisingly swift nature of his loss, Aldo simply won’t accept any other fight except for a rematch or some form of championship bout. The decorated former champion was undefeated for an unprecedented 10 years, and based on those merits, he told Irish site Independent.ie that the plan was for him to rematch McGregor, so he won’t take another bout unless it’s for the belt:
“That was the idea [re-match] when the fight was over. If someone asks me what I want, it’s the rematch, of course. I don’t see another fight for me besides a title fight or a rematch.”
While it could be quite some time before McGregor defends his featherweight belt given that he’s moved up to lightweight to take on champion Rafael dos Anjos in the main event of March 5’s UFC 197, Aldo could also be slated for a rematch for the title with Frankie Edgar if the ‘Notorious’ decides to stay put at 155.
The whole situation of allowing McGregor to hold onto the featherweight belt and fight for another title a weight class up has never been allowed in the UFC up until now, and Aldo’s head coach and longtime trainer Andre Pederneiras is understandably upset by it.
Jump to the next page to find out how Nova Uniao’s headman blasted the UFC….
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No division in the UFC boasts a deeper roster of talented fighters than lightweight.
