The most dangerous part of being a mixed martial artist isn’t fistfighting in a cage, believe it or not. It’s the weight cut that comes beforehand.
Fighters subject themselves to starvation diets and extreme dehydration in order to compete at the lowes…
The most dangerous part of being a mixed martial artist isn’t fistfighting in a cage, believe it or not. It’s the weight cut that comes beforehand.
Fighters subject themselves to starvation diets and extreme dehydration in order to compete at the lowest weight classes possible. This results in some eye-popping, but legitimately scary, body transformations from the day of the weigh-ins to the night of the fight. UFC 212’s Claudia Gadelha is a prime example of that, as the Brazilian strawweight showed what happens to a fighter’s body throughout the process.
(Warning, NSFW language below)
On Thursday night, just hours before the UFC 212 weigh-ins, Gadelha posted a photo on her Snapchat account showing what her body looks like during the cut (which was reposted on Twitter by MMA social media personality Zombie Prophet). Tasked with coming in at 115 pounds on Friday morning, Gadelha‘s torso was visibly shrunken to the point where the individual muscle groups of her abdomen clearly visible.
The specifics of how much weight she cut is unknown, but in 2016 she discussed how she previously cut up to 33 pounds for fights with MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz. A strict year-round diet halved that, but even so, forcibly losing more than 10 percent of one’s body weight in anticipation of a cage fight is no easy task.
That showed at the UFC 212 weigh-ins (check out the video above). While Gadelha made weight on the first attempt, the cut was even more obvious live than in pictures, with the clearest physical marker being a cavernous line down the center of her six-pack.
Of course, while the cut was undoubtedly difficult, Gadelha showed up fresh on fight night.
Rehydrated and looking healthy, she posted the most dominant win of her UFC career, taking out former title contender Karolina Kowalkiewicz in the first round.
But even though the contest is behind her, Gadelha finds herself right back at the start of the next cut. Keeping her weight low and staying ready for a short-notice fight is an unfortunate reality for her and most UFC fighters.
Precedent suggests she’ll be able to make the cut without incident and still perform at a high level. Unfortunately, she has to hope she can also avoid the potential long-term health issues that often come from these cuts.
The mixed martial arts are constantly evolving, techniques coming in and out of favor as fighters discover what works and what doesn’t in the world’s most demented scientific laboratory—the UFC’s Octagon. But sometimes it’s the old standbys that …
The mixed martial arts are constantly evolving, techniques coming in and out of favor as fighters discover what works and what doesn’t in the world’s most demented scientific laboratory—the UFC’s Octagon. But sometimes it’s the old standbys that work best, as Max “Blessed” Holloway proved Saturday night in Brazil, dropping legendary featherweight Jose Aldo with the oldest trick in the book, the old one-two.
A jab opened his defenses. The subsequent right hand dropped him on his backside. The rest was just a matter of time. With his win, Holloway ascended the throne as the top featherweight in the world, perhaps relegating the great Aldo to the history books.
“He had everything I wanted,” Holloway told Fox Sports 1. “But his time is over. Welcome to the Blessed era…The man is the GOAT, but this is my reign now.”
With Aldo’s decline has come an increased focus on his legacy. For six long years after winning the WEC championship from Mike Brown in 2009, he dominated everyone in his path at 145 pounds. As champion of the WEC and later the UFC, Aldo won nine consecutive fights against some of the best competitors in the sport.
While his title reign was defined by the numerous fights he didn’t show up for as much as it was his eventual victories, his exploits when he managed to make it to the cage will live forever with the sport’s hardcore fans. The spectacular eight-second knockout win over Cub Swanson, the brutal destruction of Urijah Faber’s leg and the casual way he wrecked refugees from lightweight like Frankie Edgar and Kenny Florian more than establish his bona fides.
Aldo is without a doubt the most accomplished fighter his weight class has ever known and a first ballot Hall of Famer. His cumulative success cannot be denied, his long reign atop the division proving his greatness to even the most hardened skeptics. But, at the peak of his powers, Aldo was not the best featherweight of all time.
That honor belongs to ConorMcGregor.
You remember ConorMcGregor right? Before devoting his life to auditioning for a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, he was the most popular fighter in UFC history, exploding the dubious, long-held belief that smaller fighters couldn’t draw in mixed martial arts.
As he becomes more caricature than man, it will be harder and harder to recall a time when McGregor was just an athlete. Lost in the snap of paparazzi cameras and the absurdities of his burgeoning celebrity is the key to his considerable appeal—McGregor is an amazing fighter.
In two short years, he wiped out the featherweight division, dropping contender after contender to the mat with his deadly left hand. While Aldo seemed content to outpoint everyone he fought, winning five of his seven title bouts in the UFC by decision, McGregor displayed a killer instinct the likes of which the sport has rarely seen.
Six men entered the cage against him en route to the championship. Five didn’t survive to hear the final bell—only Holloway managed that honor, in part because McGregortore his left ACL during that fight.
Despite the injury, he beat the man who is now champion decisively.
McGregor‘s featherweight journey culminated in an epic fight against Aldo for the championship of the world. Before the bout, the two men toured the world, creating unprecedented interest for a division that had consistently failed at the box office during Aldo’s time on top.
It was here, in front of an adoring press and enraptured fans, that McGregor truly established the persona that would drive his rise to the top of the sport. He was in his element the moment the cameras came on, emasculating Aldo over and over again, his silver tongue turning out to be every bit the weapon his left hand is.
Eventually, however, a prize fight moves from behind the microphone to the center of the Octagon. But the change of venue did little to change the outcome. McGregor remained dominant, knocking Aldo cold in just 13 seconds, a devastating loss that will always linger over any discussion of the Brazilian’s otherwise brilliant career.
McGregor, once champion, never fought at featherweight again. Why bother with a draining weight cut when the 155 pound division was ripe for the taking? The Irishman would go on to take UFC gold in there too, looking even stronger, fresher and healthier than he had at featherweight.
The brevity of his time in the division means McGregor can never be considered the greatest fighter in featherweight history. That remains Aldo until Holloway builds a competing claim of his own.
But, at his apex, McGregor was the absolute best, a brief flicker of light in a division that desperately needed a star’s shine.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
It still feels wrong to see Jose Aldo get beat up.
Somehow, though, there he stood in the closing moments of Saturday’s UFC 212 pay-per-view, bloodied and bruised in the middle of the Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro after losing his men’s featherweigh…
It still feels wrong to see Jose Aldo get beat up.
Somehow, though, there he stood in the closing moments of Saturday’s UFC 212 pay-per-view, bloodied and bruised in the middle of the Jeunesse Arena in Rio deJaneiro after losing his men’s featherweight title to Max Holloway via third-round TKO.
A hematoma the size of a croquet ball was forming on the side of his head, and the expression on his face said he couldn’t quite believe it.
He was not alone. An announced live crowd of 15,412 in his home country were all making the same face. Maybe quite a few people watching at home were, too.
It’s not that it was shocking to see Holloway beat Aldo. On the contrary, the 25-year-old Hawaiian was a chic pick to win this title unification fight and had even spent some time as the betting favorite the week of the event, per OddsShark.com (h/t Bloody Elbow).
It’s just that after nearly seven years and 15-straight fights where Aldo held the featherweight class in his terrifying sway, we got used to seeing him a certain way.
This man was a destroyer. A killer. For a long time, he was the only 145-pound champion the Octagon had ever known, the greatest featherweight fighter ever and one of most dominant titlists in UFC history.
Suddenly, there he was looking like this—again:
The first time we saw Aldo get unceremoniously dethroned, of course, was in his stunning 13-second KO loss to ConorMcGregor at UFC 194 in December 2015.
That time, it was so startling and over so quickly—just a single, devastating left hand from McGregor during the first real exchange of the fight—it took on an almost dream-like quality. The way Aldo’s body dropped lifelessly to the canvas didn’t seem quite real.
This time, arguably, was worse.
This time, we’d already witnessed Aldo’s redemption. In the wake of that mystique-shattering defeat by McGregor, he’d battled back to beat Frankie Edgar at UFC 200 to recapture an interim version of the title. Four months later, after McGregorwas stripped of his featherweight belt by the UFC and embarked on a lengthy paternity leave, Aldo was promoted to undisputed champion.
He’d looked good enough cruising to a unanimous decision over Edgar to convince us that he was still his old, frightening self—but a victory over Holloway was the one Aldo truly needed.
The 5’11” Holloway was the archetype for the modern UFC featherweight—big, young and exceedingly skilled. He rode into this fight atop one of the company’s most impressive win streaks, with 10 consecutive victories and an interim title of his own, after a third-round TKO over former lightweight champ Anthony Pettis at UFC 206.
Aldo dictated the first 10 minutes of the fight, using the crisp, powerful boxing combinations that had been his calling card throughout his UFC career. In the first, he stunned Holloway with a straight right and a left hook, pushing him back against the fence with a flurry of punches and a thudding knee to the face.
At that point, it appeared the old lion would have his day.
Meanwhile, Holloway looked uncharacteristically stiff and timid in the early going. His trademark high-volume pressure style was absent, and he wasn’t alternating stances between orthodox and southpaw, as had been his practice during his run to this title fight.
As the fight wore on, however, Aldo began to slow down, and Holloway’s coaches called for him to ratchet-up his attack. By the third, Aldo looked flat-footed but still dangerous when Holloway dropped him to the canvas with a pair of jab-cross combinations.
Once the fight hit the mat, Aldo fought to survive, weathering some heavy leather and warding off a rear-naked choke attempt from Holloway. Eventually, however, he wound up turtled on the floor with the younger fighter on his back. Holloway rained down punch after punch until referee John McCarthy stepped in to stop the action.
The immediate impression was of a sudden swing in the momentum, leading to a bitter second serving of heartbreak for the once-great champion.
When it was over and the experts parsed through Aldo’s performance, a couple of things stood out. First, that his mid-fight drop-off, which has been his Achilles heel throughout his career, opened the door for Holloway to find his rhythm and put this fight away.
Second, that Aldo fought nearly 15 minutes without throwing a single leg kick, the powerful and disruptive technique that had epitomized his long, successful career.
The mood for Holloway was pure jubilation as he received the title in the cage. He’d waited a long time to get this shot and in the absence of McGregor—who is off chasing a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather—this win marked the dawning of a new era at featherweight.
If there’s a silver lining here, even for Aldo fans, it’s that the new champion is truly likable.
“I went out there, took my time, and it was my night,” Holloway told Fox Sports after the fight, via CBS Sports’ Lyle Fitsimmons. “Slow and steady always wins the race. I’ve got five rounds. I knew he would fade and I took advantage as the shots opened. I was in there to fight. My game plan was to go out there and fight. This [isn’t] a sprint. Everything turned out the way I wanted to.”
Yet Aldo has been such a staple in the MMA world for so long, it’s difficult to see him go out like this. For years, it seemed like a given he would go down as the greatest 145-pound fighter in UFC history. Now, this pair of losses might well end up defining his legacy.
His supremacy over the division was smothering during his heyday, putting up nine consecutive title defenses from 2009-2015 across the WEC and UFC. He beat Urijah Faber in the WEC‘s only PPV bout, beat Chad Mendes twice, beat Edgar twice.
At the same time, however, Aldo never cracked the glass ceiling to become a full-fledged promotional monster for the UFC. His title run was beset by injuries and—after the highlight-filled swath he cut through the WEC before the UFC absorbed the smaller company in 2010—it was somewhat underwhelming by comparison.
He won just two fights in the Octagon by stoppage, while six went to decision. Granted, he was taking on the rest of the best featherweights in the world and in most cases running circles around them, but after seven stoppages in eight WEC fights—including some jaw-dropping highlights, like his eight-second, double-flying knee KO of Cub Swanson at WEC 41—we knew he was capable of greater things.
Now, it’s possible Aldo’s reign will be framed as defining only the early days of the featherweight division. He found much of his success against smaller, grappling-based foes, before longer, better-rounded fighters like McGregor and Holloway showed up on the scene.
It bears repeating that Aldo isn’t done yet. He’s put 13 years and 29 fights into this sport and, if he chooses to carry on, could conceivably have five or six years of prime fighting life left in him. He remains a dangerous matchup for anyone at this weight and could certainly work his way back to contender status.
The waters before him now will be largely uncharted, however, as he makes the transition from perennial champion to aging foil.
Meanwhile, the division opens up for Holloway with the promise of a fresh matchup against Edgar, a potential rematch with Swanson and a possible future meeting with fellow young gun Yair Rodriguez.
Aldo will be locked out of that picture for the time being.
Until he can change his fortunes, our lasting image of him may well be as the guy crouched against the cage with his head in his hands, being consoled by teammates as he tries to make sense of what just happened to him.
And we might never get used to seeing him like that.
Max Holloway won the undisputed featherweight championship with a third-round TKO victory over Jose Aldo in the main event of UFC 212 in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night.
Both Aldo and Holloway entered the matchup with legitimate claim to the title of …
Max Hollowaywon the undisputed featherweight championship with a third-round TKOvictory over Jose Aldo in the main event of UFC 212 in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night.
Both Aldo and Holloway entered the matchup with legitimate claim to the title of best 145-pound fighter in the world. Aldo is one of the greatest mixed martial artists already at the age of 30, with a 26-2 career prior to the bout, while Holloway came into the fight riding a 10-fight winning streak over the last three years.
In the end, Hollowaywas able to prevail and leave no doubt about the best fighter in the division.
UFC 212 Results
Featherweight Championship: Max Holloway def. Jose Aldo via TKO (third round)
Welterweight: Luan Chagas def. Jim Wallhead via submission (second round)
Flyweight: Deiveson Figueiredo def. Marco Beltran via TKO (second round)
Holloway’s win capped off his rise to stardom. The 25-year-old’s last loss was against Conor McGregor in 2013. McGregor’s career exploded after knocking out Aldo in 13 seconds at UFC 194 in December 2015.
This was Holloway’s biggest fight in UFC, and he made it count in grand fashion with a third-round stoppage.
After Holloway disposed of Aldo, social media expressed its respect for the Hawaii native:
Prior to the main event, the biggest story of the show was Vitor Belfort and Nate Marquardt fighting all 15 minutes.
Belfort in particular is not known for having long, drawn-out battles. Saturday marked his first match that went past the second round since his 2012 light-heavyweight title fight against Jon Jones and his first fight decided by the judges since Cage Rage 23 in 2007.
The judges awarded Belfort a unanimous-decision win, with all three scoring the fight 29-28 for the 40-year-old.
Following the win, Belfort didn’t sound like he was going to hang up his gloves anytime soon, per MMA Fighting:
This was Belfort’s first win since November 2015 against Dan Henderson. Retired UFC fighter Patrick Cote thinks this would be the perfect way for Belfort to end his long and storied career:
Whatever Belfort decides to do, getting a hard-fought and emotional win over Marquardt in his native Brazil was exactly what he needed after a difficult two-year stretch in the sport.
Holloway made himself a star on this night, but the entire card made this a highlight of the year for UFC. There were 12 total fights, with nine endings via stoppage.
It was a thrilling showcase for the Brazilian fans, even though their hometown hero was unable to capture the undisputed featherweight title in the main event.
Claudia Gadelha and Karolina Kowalkiewicz entered as the top two contenders in the strawweight division, and their three combined losses all came at the hands of its champion—Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
3:03 would all it take for Gadelha to put a second …
Claudia Gadelha and Karolina Kowalkiewicz entered as the top two contenders in the strawweight division, and their three combined losses all came at the hands of its champion—Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
3:03 would all it take for Gadelha to put a second loss on Kowalkiewicz’s career.
Kowalkiewicz and Gadelha had early exchanges, and Kowalkiewicz’s length allowed her to score more early. Gadelha had to get Kowalkiewicz’s respect, and she did that with elbows from the clinch. Gadelha was able to get the double-underhooks and put Kowalkiewicz on her back.
Gadelha got to the back and sunk in a rear-naked choke for the easy win.
Kowalkiewicz was in tears after tapping, and Gadelha came over to console her opponent. The two embraced as they enter new paths in the strawweight division.
Gadelha had changed camps and moved to the United States to continually improve as she marches back toward a title shot. Saturday’s performance in her home of Rio de Janeiro showed those improvements. Gadelha walked through a true top contender as if she were an unranked foe.
The win for Gadelha should almost assure that Rose Namajunas is next in line for a title shot. Gadelha, having suffered two losses to Jedrzejczyk, will still need another fight or two before she gets her call. In the post-fight interview, Gadelha made no callout, saying only that she plans on moving full-time to Albuquerque, buying a new car and a fancy dog. Fair enough.
Kowalkiewicz will have to go back into the pack as she falls off the pace for her title chance. Meeting Viviane Pereira, who won on the UFC 212 undercard, would be an appropriate fight.
Gadelha will no doubt fight another contender. Of those top contenders, only Tecia Torres is coming off a win. That makes her the logical choice.
Gadelha’s move to Albuquerque paid off in a massive way with one of her most impressive performances to date. No matter who the UFC chooses for both women in their next outings, we can expect both to be perennial contenders for the foreseeable future.
In possibly the final fight of his UFC career, Vitor Belfort went out a winner with a unanimous-decision victory over Nate Marquardt at UFC 212 on Saturday in Brazil.
All three judges scored the fight 29-28 for Belfort, a surprising res…
In possibly the final fight of his UFC career, Vitor Belfort went out a winner with a unanimous-decisionvictory over Nate Marquardt at UFC 212 on Saturday in Brazil.
All three judges scored the fight 29-28 for Belfort, a surprising result simply because the match went the full 15 minutes.
Per USA Today‘s Mike Bohn, this marks Belfort’s first decision since 2007.
Twitter users shared their thoughts on Belfort’s win:
Belfort is one of the UFC’s longest-tenured fighters, as he made his debut with the promotion at UFC 12 in 1997. He bounced around other organizations, including Pride and Strikeforce, but always found his way back to the UFC.
It’s been a rough go for Belfort lately. The 40-year-old entered Saturday’s fight having lost three of his last five bouts, and Kelvin Gastelum knocked him out in a result that was later overturned to a no-contest due to Gastelum’s failing a post-fight drug test for marijuana in March.
Despite his age, and the wear and tear on his body, Belfort is not completely retiring from competition:
Per MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani, Belfort didn’t sound like he was ready to call it a career after his win:
There is nowhere else for Belfort to go in the UFC. He’s still enough of a star to keep fighting because of his history with the promotion, but his pool of potential opponents is small due to his recent failings.
Belfort is leaving an impressive legacy. The Brazilian star holds UFC records for most knockout wins in company history (12) and most first-round finishes in UFC history (13). He also won the light heavyweight title in 2004.
The most dangerous part of being a mixed martial artist isn’t fistfighting in a cage, believe it or not. It’s the weight cut that comes beforehand.