Tag: UFC 223

Rose Namajunas Refuses Conor McGregor’s Online Apology: ‘F**k That’

Rose Namajunas wasn’t about to accept Conor McGregor’s apology on Instagram:

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Many prominent MMA personalities were affected by Conor McGregor’s chaotic Brooklyn outburst two days before April 7’s UFC 223.

The attack, where the former champion threw a metal dolly threw a bus containing rival Khabib Nurmagomedov, left two fighters injured and unable to compete on the event and also forced a third fight off the card when McGregor friend (and accomplice) Artem Lobov was pulled from his scheduled fight with Alex Caceres.

But the incident, which eventually saw McGregor incarcerated for assault charges overnight and awaiting court this June, almost had a far more impactful effect on the event, as UFC women’s strawweight Rose Namajunas was in the bus and visibly shaken by the events, to the point where she even considered not fighting Joanna Jedrzejczyk on the card.

While “Thug” Rose did decide to fight on and beat her rival by unanimous decision, things are still not good between her and McGregor. According to Outside the Cage on Twitter, Namajunas had a seething reply to “The Notorious” when he tried to apologize to her on Instagram, simply saying, “F*** that, call Pat,” in reference to her longtime partner Pat Barry.

Namajunas also addressed the incident during a recent appearance on The Jim & Sam Show (via MMA Mania), noting that the situation is far from ideal because even though she picked up a second victory over a woman who just months ago was talked up as the best female MMA fighter of all-time, she’s only asked about the attack, so that accomplishment will always be overshadowed by what McGregor did:

“It just sucks because that’s the question that’s always gonna be asked. And it’s like, ‘Look what I did.’”

A fair point from “Thug” Rose to be certain because her second consecutive win over a historic women’s champion is undoubtedly being overshadowed by a needless, violent event that not only injured innocent people but forced three fights off of the most anticipated pay-per-view of the year thus far.

The focus will likely always remain on McGregor and his antics from the weekend, however, and it’s hard to look past Namajunas’ desire for her efforts in the cage to be focused on rather than a crime committed by a superstar who has shown he cares about little else than going off the rails in his post-Mayweather period of debauchery.

In that sense, you can see why she isn’t accepting McGregor’s apology.

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Top Lightweight Claims UFC 223 Showed Khabib’s Weakness

Former Bellator lightweight champion and perennial contender Michael Chandler may not compete in the UFC’s lightweight division, but that doesn’t stop him from keeping an eye out on their talent. Chandler specifically spoke about newly-minted UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov’s performance at UFC 223 and how it exposed his perceived weaknesses during a recent appearance […]

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Former Bellator lightweight champion and perennial contender Michael Chandler may not compete in the UFC’s lightweight division, but that doesn’t stop him from keeping an eye out on their talent.

Chandler specifically spoke about newly-minted UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov’s performance at UFC 223 and how it exposed his perceived weaknesses during a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (via Bloody Elbow):

“If all he has is wrestling, how do you beat a man that can’t be taken down?”

“(UFC 223) showed chinks in (Khabib’s) armor, and showed what happens when Khabib can’t take you down. It’s tough whenever the one thing that you’ve always been used to dominating with isn’t working, and then you’re stuck throwing punches.”

Nurmagomedov took on Al Iaquinta at UFC 223 after his original opponent Tony Ferguson was forced to pull out with an injury the week of the fight. Iaquinta’s wrestling, while strong, isn’t on par with Nurmagomedov but he was still able to stuff several takedowns and keep the fight on the feet, especially in the later rounds.

Because of that fact, Khabib was forced to exercise his striking for much of the fight, so Chandler stated that he was a little behind in that aspect. But he stopped his criticism short to note that ‘The Eagle’ has often appeared unbeatable as well:

“He’s a little bit behind in the striking aspect,” he continued. “I’ve got a ton of respect for the guy, (he’s a) mauler. At certain times, he looks unbeatable. He has looked unbeatable where I’ve looked at it, and other people looked at it, and people that have fought him that I’ve talked to.”

Chandler (18-4) then compared his style to Nurmagomedov’s in how both men make their opponents quit and that unspoken quality that has made both men champions of their respective promotions:

“It’s a battle of wills, man. I knew I could outpace people, I knew I could out-cardio them, I could out-tough them. Certain people get to that breaking point, and they break and they concede, and they go into their shell, and they say ‘I did a good job.’”

Does the former Bellator champion have a point about Khabib’s performance at UFC 223?

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Full Details Behind Conor McGregor’s Brooklyn Bus Attack Revealed

UFC 223 will forever be remembered for Conor McGregor’s gang assault on a bus containing fighters attending a media day for the card. Lightweight contender Michael Chiesa and flyweight Ray Borg were forced off of the card at the last minute after glass from the broken bus windows cut and damaged their face and eye […]

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UFC 223 will forever be remembered for Conor McGregor’s gang assault on a bus containing fighters attending a media day for the card.

Lightweight contender Michael Chiesa and flyweight Ray Borg were forced off of the card at the last minute after glass from the broken bus windows cut and damaged their face and eye respectively. The whole scene was complete bedlam, and McGregor is still dealing with the legal process of it. The former two-division champ will appear in court on June 14 in the next step to possible legal ramifications.

The whole scene erupted from a beef between Khabib Nurmagomedov and McGregor’s longtime teammate Artem Lobov.

There was so much at work going into what was essentially an issue between McGregor and Nurmagomedov, who had physically accosted his SBG friend Lobov days earlier.

See the timeline and the full details for McGregor’s bus attack in Brooklyn last month in this revealing video via MMA Mania:

McGregor will return to court in Brooklyn on June 14th as his case for charges of felony assault is adjudicated.

Considering the full details, does McGregor’s actions here make any more sense? Or is he still just an egomaniac running around going completely unchecked?

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Colby Covington Sounds Off On ‘Coked-Up Leprechaun’ Conor McGregor

UFC welterweight Colby Covington has made nearly every big name in mixed martial arts his target as of late. And now he’s focused on the biggest name out there. Heading into his interim title fight versus Rafael dos Anjos at June 9’s UFC 225 from Chicago, Covington clapped back at the circling suggestions that he […]

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UFC welterweight Colby Covington has made nearly every big name in mixed martial arts his target as of late.

And now he’s focused on the biggest name out there.

Heading into his interim title fight versus Rafael dos Anjos at June 9’s UFC 225 from Chicago, Covington clapped back at the circling suggestions that he was simply copying former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion Conor McGregor’s style in an interview with BJ Penn Radio, and to no surprise, he claimed he was here to be his own unique supervillain – not to make friends:

“People, they wanna say I’m mimicking McGregor, I’m mimicking Chael Sonnen. I’m not trying to be anything like them. Does it look like I’m trying to get followers or I’m trying to get fans? I don’t care. I’m not trying to make people happy. I don’t care. You’re gonna be mad, but you will tune in to see me fight ’cause you wanna see me lose. At the end of the day, all these people that wanna say I’m trying to mimic another person, no. I’m unique in my own way. No one’s ever done and went the route I’ve went, full supervillain here.”

Covington then went full-on “Chaos” on McGregor, claiming he used a certain substance. The top-ranked welterweight recently offered to bring McGregor in for his assault charges stemming from his April 5 bus attack on Khabib Nurmagomedov and others in Brooklyn, New York, an over-the-top outburst Covington claims McGregor only did to get back the headlines he was stealing from him:

“He’s a coked-up little Leprechaun. He’s making stupid mistakes, but the thing is, Jason, is that he noticed that King Colby was in the media a lot and in the headlines, and he was losing attention, so he was just trying to steal the headlines back. But at the end of the day, as soon as I put out my tweet that King Colby the bounty hunter was looking for him, he turned himself in. He knows he didn’t wanna get his hands dirty with me.”

Regardless of if he admits he’s copying notorious trash talkers like McGregor and Sonnen, however, he is, just as they built upon the legacies of prominent combats sports smack talkers before them.

It’s a big part of the fight game, and Covington is fully embracing the role of heel to wildly successful results, something that almost assuredly propelled him to title contention much faster than playing a babyface role would have.

Saying he’s stealing McGregor’s headlines is a bit of a stretch, of course, but that’s how he’s gotten this far, so no need to stop now. After so many callouts and so much smack, the pressure’s now on Covington to win the title versus the surging ‘RDA’ in Chicago next month.

If he can back it up, look out.

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MMA Legend Defends Conor McGregor’s Recent Actions

It’s been exactly one month since former UFC champ Conor McGregor stormed UFC 223 media day in Brooklyn, New York and threw a metal dolly through a bus containing current lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov. The attack injured both fighters and employees, resulting in three fights being called off UFC 223 and leading to McGregor’s arrest […]

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It’s been exactly one month since former UFC champ Conor McGregor stormed UFC 223 media day in Brooklyn, New York and threw a metal dolly through a bus containing current lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov.

The attack injured both fighters and employees, resulting in three fights being called off UFC 223 and leading to McGregor’s arrest and detainment on assault charges, for which he’ll next appear in court on June 14.

A clear black eye on the sport of mixed martial arts, the incident was met with the predictable mix of disgust, doubt, and bewilderment after MMA’s biggest star essentially went off the rails to assault a man he could have confronted almost anywhere and injuring innocent bystanders in the process. Indeed, UFC president Dana White derided the attack as the ‘most disgusting thing’ to ever happen in the UFC, but he’s since backtracked on that a bit with it being painfully obvious the UFC needs him to fight, and fight soon.

While it’s not a straightforward approval from White, yet another prominent MMA personality gave some much more forceful support of McGregor.

In a recent interview with Submission Radio (via Bloody Elbow) when former UFC heavyweight champion Bas Rutten stuck up for the Irish star by saying we weren’t his shoes and he simply got caught in the moment:

“We are not in Conor McGregor’s shoes. You know? People can shout what they want, they have no clue what goes on,” Rutten said. “I think once people realize that you have 50 million dollars – he gets mail all day long from people with sick babies and sick kids and my grandma and everybody wants him to give money and so on.

“I mean, he doesn’t only have money, he is super famous on top of that. I know the stupid stuff I did when I was 28 – I didn’t do that, okay, but you know, he has a group around him and he was already angry going in because they wanted to strip him of the title and he’s angry and now the partner, his friends, start saying, ‘hey, maybe we should throw something against them’. Like, ‘yeah,’ everybody starts agreeing. Yeah, you get caught up in the whole moment and you start doing it.”

Maybe being filthy rich isn’t the best excuse for attacking innocent fighters and people trying to make their living, even if others are asking McGregor for money on a regular basis after his monstrous purse to box Floyd Mayweather.

That’s exactly what has left McGregor out of the octagon and causing trouble in public, however, so it would seem the key to redemption for him would simply lie in returning to the octagon and finally fighting for the first time since November 2016. He’s accomplished a ton for the UFC and MMA, that much is true, and Rutten cautioned that even despite the backlash he received online, we should focus on what he’s done rather than his recent mistakes:

“That’s why I said when I was with Joe Rogan, I said, guys, we should give him a pass. And people online, they were like, is he crazy? I’m not saying that (you excuse everything),” Rutten explained. “I’m saying, yes, he’s going to have to pay for what he did, he goes to court, he has to do all that. I’m not saying that (he doesn’t do those things). Of course, he has to – and I said that on Joe Rogan as well – but give him a pass as a fan. Don’t kick the guy while he’s down. Don’t throw him under the bus. He did so much good for MMA. He just needs to find his way in this world.”

“I hope they just … give him a pass, don’t spit him out yet. Let him see if he cleans up. I mean, you give Jon Jones a lot of passes. And me too, I love Jon Jones, I want to see him back. He’s such a talent that is gone and I want to see him fight. This could be a guy that could literally go undefeated his entire life. So yeah, I would love to see a guy like that back.”

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Dana White Reacts To Reports Of Nate Diaz’ Return

The mixed martial arts (MMA) world has been abuzz this week with the news that Nate Diaz will reportedly return to action at August’s UFC 227. As usual, however, Dana White is cautioning us to pump the brakes. According to the UFC president via Yahoo’s Kevin Iole, the news of Diaz is no news, because the […]

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The mixed martial arts (MMA) world has been abuzz this week with the news that Nate Diaz will reportedly return to action at August’s UFC 227.

As usual, however, Dana White is cautioning us to pump the brakes.

According to the UFC president via Yahoo’s Kevin Iole, the news of Diaz is no news, because the promotion has been offering him a fight every three to four months as they have been since he faced Conor McGregor at UFC 202 in 2016, and it’s the same denial it’s always been:

So White insists that Diaz isn’t coming back anytime soon and that there’s nothing to see here.

Interesting.

So interesting, in fact, that some would interpret that as an almost certain confirmation that Diaz will indeed be returning to the octagon sometime very soon. If and when he does, it would seem likely he’s matched up with one of a trio of top-ranked lightweights consisting of Kevin Lee, Dustin Poirier, and Eddie Alvarez.

All three of those fighters are elite lightweights who have won recent bouts by stoppage; Diaz hasn’t fought at lightweight since late 2015.

That may have Diaz rating as the underdog in all three match-ups due to his inactivity. To see how he matches up with all three, check out our match-up breakdowns involving Diaz right here.

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