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Albeit for very different reasons, we’ve been looking forward to both Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic and Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul for a while now. Both fights have experienced lengthy delays (one owing to Jones’ torn pectoral, the other owing to Tyson “vomiting blood and defecating tar” on an airplane) and now they are going to share a single weekend. The spectacle that will be Tyson vs. Paul airs Friday night on Netflix, and perhaps even more than the fight itself, we’re keen to see what the reaction will be on that platform.
Jones and Miocic do the damn thing for the UFC heavyweight title the next night from Madison Square Garden in the main event of UFC 309. It’ll be Jones’ second foray into the big boy division, while Miocic returns for the first time since 2021. What will happen? Well, oddsmakers think they know. Is there any chance we might be surprised?
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Belal Muhammad is out of his scheduled title defense against Shavkat THAT BOY GOOD Rakhmonov at UFC 310, owing to an infected bone in his toe. Say what? An infected BONE? We didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen. The hunt is now on for a replacement and you KNOW who the UFC is going to call first. Alex Pereira, that’s who. Honestly, though, hasn't Poatan done enough? Can’t we just leave this guy a lone for a few months? Meanwhile, Rahkmonov has called out Kamaru Usman for an interim title fight. Hmmmm … not sure what we think about that.
Plus, Brandon Moreno reminds us who the F he is and Conor McGregor proves for the 1,073rd time that he is a bad person.
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What a strange mix of emotions we felt watching UFC 308. On one hand, it was cool to see guys like Ilia Topuria and Khamzat Chimaev score big wins to solidify themselves among the next wave of MMA’s great fighters. But why, oh why, did it have to happen at the expense of our beloved Max Holloway and Robert Whittaker? In the end it was another stark reminder that fighting is not like other sports. In football or baseball or soccer, your favorite player gets old and gets cut from the team. Maybe they embarrass themselves by signing as a free agent somewhere else and hanging on too long before sailing away into a cushy retirement. No biggie. But, in combat sports, JFC, we have to watch them get brutally knocked out or, in some cases, get their teeth broken and their jaws CRUNCHED.
But also maybe … that’s why we watch?
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There are a lot of lean times in MMA. A lot of times where it feels like, for lack of a better term, ain’t shit goin’ on. This is not one of them. With Francis Ngannou making his return to MMA last Saturday with a first-round KO over Renan Ferreira in PFL and this Saturday offering us Ilia Topuria vs. Max Holloway at UFC 308, well, that’s about as good a couple of weekends as we’re gonna get in the year of our lord 2024.
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This Saturday in Saudi Arabia, Francis Ngannou returns to the cage for the first time since January 2022. A lot has transpired since then, as we all know: Big Fran left the UFC amid a bitter contract dispute, he made a lot of money boxing, he suffered unthinkable personal tragedy … and now, he’s going to show up to fulfill his obligations to PFL by fighting Renan Ferreira on the fight company’s “Battle of the Giants” pay-per-view.
Seems like a lot could go wrong here, both for the now 38-year-old Ngannou and the PFL, which frankly has a pretty good PPV card here it hasn't promoted very well. So, does Battle of the Giants come up big … or small?
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UFC 307 was not one for the record books. In fact, right up to the point that Alex Pereira and Khalil Rountree Jr. took the cage for the light heavyweight title fight main event, it was sort of a stinker. But then Pereira and Rountree went to war – and it was pretty glorious. Shoutout to Rountree for showing up and showing out better than we had any right to expect. Ultimately, though, it was Pereira once again proving that not only is he the best 205-pounder on the planet, but he's also the UFC's MVP.
Seriously, though, don’t call him again for a while. He sounds like he needs some time off.
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Alex Pereira sure fights a lot. Saturday’s light heavyweight title defense against Khalil Rountree Jr. at UFC 307 will be Poatan’s fourth fight in the last calendar year and also his 10th in the UFC since his promotional debut in Nov. 2021. Especially at the championship level, that’s a fairly absurd output. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that we’ve seen come back to bite people in the past. This weekend, however, Pereira is almost a 5-to-1 favorite against the surprise challenger. So … that should be good enough to get him through. Right?
Plus, it’s unfair, but we’re all just sort of waiting for Raquel Pennington and Juliana Pena to get this one over with so one of them can fight Kayla Harrison (assuming Harrison ALSO wins on Saturday).
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The UFC’s long-awaited, much hyped debut at Sphere in Las Vegas finally went down Saturday and – you know what? – it was actually pretty cool. The visuals were stunning, the atmosphere was unique and it was refreshing to see the fight company break out of its cookie-cutter mold and take some chances. Now, was it the greatest night in the history of combat sports or whatever? Probably not. Did the venue itself largely overshadow the fights (some of which were kinda meh)? Yeah, it did.
But, long story short, we’d like to see more Sphere. We’d like the UFC to continue to Sphere. Added Sphering seems like it would be cool.
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Well, Main-iacs, the time is finally here. This is the week the UFC heads across town to (the) Sphere for UFC 306. Dana White has convinced himself that the dummies on the internet said he couldn’t do it, so a lot is riding on how things come out. The UFC is promising short films between fights and that the fights themselves will take place in “different worlds.” What’s that mean? We don’t know!
Oh, also, Sean O’Malley defends his men’s bantamweight title against Merab Dwalishvili and Alexa Grasso looks to settle her feud with Valentina Shevchenko.
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Since we missed the Proper yesterday, we thought we'd go ahead and put this episode of the Live Chat out on the regular free CME podcast feed. For you free listeners, think of it as a view behind the curtain at what's going on at our Patreon Page. Seriously, it's wild! It's weird! Is it sometimes wonderful? Only one way to find out. Join the team: https://www.patreon.com/comainevent
For those of you who are already with us, please enjoy an ad free version of the show.
This week: the UFC's obsession with Jon Jones being the GOAT gets even weirder, Alex Pereira thinks about going back to middleweight (?), and women's MMA experiences a lull. Plus, one patron will play in the international box lacrosse championship, one patron is about to have his first BJJ match and one patron pulls off his most devious heel move yet.
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Caio Borralho and Jared Cannonier actually had themselves an entertaining scrap on Saturday in the main event of the UFC's latest offering on ESPN. In the end, it was Borralho notching the unanimous decision win … after coming as close as humanly possible to knocking out Cannonier without them actually scoring it that way on the official record. It was clearly the biggest win of Borralho’s career and rocketed him up to No. 5 on the UFC’s official middleweight rankings. But did it also make him the most interesting title contender for DDP?
Plus, Borralho is a product of the Fighting Nerds MMA team. Say what now?
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How does Dricus du Plessis keep doing this shit, man? This is a guy who fights like he’s in PRIDE in like 2005. He rushes in, throwing them haymakers, seemingly just hoping for the best — and somehow it’s still working for him. This he proved Saturday at UFC 305, defeating Israel Adesanya via fourth round submission (!) to retain his middleweight title. It really and truly boggles the mind.
Plus, Carlos Prates looks like a bad man and Ariel Helwani is on the move.
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We’re going to Perth for UFC 305 and Dricus Du Plessis vs. Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight title. It’s both a fight and a fight card that are flying under the radar just a little bit here. There’s a lot on this show that seems like it might be of, uh, local interest. Hold on, though, are we giving this card short shrift? Does this fight between DDP and Izzy actually have bigger implications than we are giving it credit for?
Plus, Francis Ngannou’s MMA return is on the books. Too soon?
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The UFC this week made good on its promise to book a men’s featherweight title fight between Ilia Topuria and Max Holloway and we … are … stoked. For hardcore fans, this might be the best fight available right now (if we’re really going through with Jones vs. Stipe instead of Jones vs. Aspinall) and actually getting it is cause for celebration. It’s going down at UFC 308 in October. Only question is, will Holloway’s BMF belt be on the line, too, or are we finally admitting the BMF title is just some shit we hand out to whoever, whenever it fits our needs?
Plus, Dana White would like us to believe the judge denying the settlement in the UFC antitrust lawsuit is rooted in some high school bullshit and Conor McGregor showed up to cosplay at Stugis of all goddamned places.
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Belal Muhammad went and did it. The man the UFC forced to go 10 fights without a loss between 2019-2024 before finally granting him a title shot. The man who came into Manchester a significant underdog to champion Leon Edwards. The one we all thought faced a terrible matchup of styles behind enemy lines. That guy. He walked out of UFC 304 the new welterweight champ on Saturday. So, shows what we all know. The so-called experts. Something tells us Muhammad’s not going to be the UFC brass’ favorite champ. But at least now we’re all damn sure going to remember the name.
Plus, Tom Aspinall upholds his end of the bargain as far as any of these potential heavyweight superfights are concerned. And Muhammad Mokaev won his big grudge match against Manel Kape and still pretty much got fired. That’s actually kinda hard to do.
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Oops! … He did it again. Jake Paul played with our hearts, got lost in the game on Saturday, as he dispatched Mike Perry via sixth round TKO. Things went a little off the rails after that, with Conor McGregor trying to “fire” Perry on social media and calling Paul a “pissbag.” Meanwhile, Paul called out Alex Pereira in a fight which seemed both interesting and also impossible.
OK, so hear us out, guys. Paul is now 10-1 as professional boxer. He’s proven himself to be a compelling draw. He’s also a pretty good boxer. Though he’s clearly not championship level, would it ever be possible for him to – let’s say if he wins five or six more fights – to compete for some lesser boxing title? Like, the IBWQZF cruiserweight belt or something? I mean, he probably wouldn't win, but it seems like insane every day to ponder if he might at least get the opportunity.
Also, UFC 304 is this weekend, where Belal Muhammad finally gets his welterweight title fight against Leon Edwards and Tom Aspinall accomplishes the dubious achievement of actually defending the “interim” heavyweight championship against Curtis Blaydes.
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Things Jon Jones has done on Twitter over the last few weeks include, but are not limited to: Announcing he gained 50/50 custody of a son we (maybe?) didn’t know he had. Posted a picture with his new cybertruck. Forgot his own birthday (maybe?). And also posted that he cut half his finger off at the Las Vegas airport. Maybe? Hard to know. After Jones did the old tweet-and-delete of his finger tweet, he pretty much went back to business as usual. Like, tweeting about how magic is real, and Jesus Christ is the strongest magic of all. Shit like that. Also, like getting charged with a couple misdemeanors in the wake of his recent weird alleged confrontation with drug testers.
So, truth is, we don't know the status of any of Jones' fingers at the moment. But, like, if Jon Jones lost a finger, we'll find out about it eventually, right? Maybe? Plus, the UFC is really leaning into the Just Some Fights ass shit this summer and … hey … Jake Paul vs. Mike Perry is this weekend!
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Well, you know what they say about sunshine and the proverbial dog’s ass. Hard to believe, but Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal went out there and had an (allegedly) entertaining boxing match over the weekend. We guess the law of averages says it was bound to happen eventually. Question is, though, now that we’re this far down the road into the overwhelmingly disappointing “old MMA guys try to box” period of our declining society, did anybody watch?
Plus, Jon Jones says he and Stipe finally have something on the books and Reug Reug wins a fight against a guy named Ketchup that was even more ridiculous than it sounds.
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Turned out, Alex Pereira didn’t need the dark arts to defeat Jiri Prochazka. He just needed Prochazka to continually rush at him with little to no defenses around his face until Pereira could start landing his bombs. Next thing you know, Jiri was standing there making his sad samurai face while Poatan was getting his hand raised. But now that Pereira is ensconced as UFC light heavyweight champion and one of the UFC’s most interesting draws, what’s next for him? I mean, if you’re the UFC and you want to create a huge spectacle AND make tons of money, it’s got to be Jon Jones, right? Right?
Plus, Diego Lopes is now the champion of the 1-6-5 and Andrei Arlovski – who has been with the UFC longer than Dana White – is done. At least inside the octagon.
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So, now we know. It was the toe. The pinkie toe, to be exact. The littlest pig. That’s what kept Conor McGregor out of the fight of the year, his grudge (?) match years in the making against Michael Chandler. And lo, what irony of all ironies it was the original SLG himself, Chael Sonnen, who trolled Conor into posting pics of the injured digit online which … yeah, that went about like you’d expect.
With McGregor and Chandler off (perhaps for good), this weekend we get a revamped UFC 303 card that looks, well, just fine.
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