THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR AUGUST 2023

Good news: It's Max Holloway fight month! Bad News: It's Sean O'Malley fight month. Neutral news: It's PFL playoff month.

Welcome to August. We're three months into our fights-every-week marathon and we're not done yet, and it's Max Holloway fight month AND the end of the PFL playoffs, so strap in and get ready for fisticuffs and promotional malfeasance, because baby, we got 'em in spades.

THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC Fight Night: Sandhagen vs Font, August 5

• UFC on ESPN: Luque vs dos Anjos, August 12

• UFC 292: Sterling vs O'Malley, August 19

• UFC on ESPN: Holloway vs The Korean Zombie, August 26

• Bellator 298: Storley vs Ward, August 11

• ONE Fight Night 13: Allazov vs Grigorian 3, August 4

• PFL 7: Jenkins vs Pinedo, August 4

• PFL 8: Ferreira vs Nunes, August 18

• PFL 9: Collard vs Burgos, August 23

IS THERE ANY NEWS

Francis Ngannou bet on himself and won.

After years of teasing the idea and years of being soundly mocked and derided by Dana White, the UFC's marketing engine and the entire combat sports world for chasing an impossible dream, Francis Ngannou was right and literally everyone else was wrong. Ngannou will, in fact, get his boxing match against WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, one of if not the world's most popular boxers, in a non-title fight in Riyadh on October 28th, and it will be a real, honest to god ten-round non-exhibition match. Should it be happening? No, Fury should be fighting Oleksandr Usyk, but he super, duper does not want to do that. Does Ngannou stand a chance? He really shouldn't, and the many comparisons to Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs Conor McGregor are probably portentous. Is Ngannou going to make more money in this one boxing match than he did in his entire MMA career combined? You'd better fucking believe it. Even if Fury makes him look stupid--which is the most likely outcome--he'll look stupid all the way to the bank.

Bellator's flyweight division is cursed and it doesn't even technically exist yet. At the turn of the year Bellator announced it was formally opening a men's 125-pound division and it would be anchored by Kyoji Horiguchi vs Ray Borg. Borg then proceeded to miss weight so badly he straight-up retired over it, scratching the fight and his career all in one. The inaugural title fight was shifted to an interpromotional bout at Bellator x Rizin 2, with Horiguchi taking on Rizin's nascent star Makoto Shinryu, which absolutely ruled as a concept.

The fight ended in a No Contest after twenty five seconds when Horiguchi inadvertently poked Shinryu in the eye.

Will the flyweight title launch before Bellator gets sold? Place your bets.

After a decade of torpor, K-1 is awake.

There's a good chance most of today's combat sports fans don't even know this, but for a long time the biggest fighting organization on the planet wasn't Strikeforce, Pride or the UFC--it was K-1. K-1 kickboxing was a genuinely global enterprise with monstrous ratings in Japan, numerous pop culture icons, and for a couple of years it even had its own MMA brand. K-1's annual World Grand Prix tournament was the single biggest recurring event in all of combat sports. But K-1--like so many martial arts organizations--was chronically mismanaged and continually hurt by its association with criminal enterprise. K-1 nearly went bankrupt and had to be bought out, and within ten years the company that bought it went bankrupt and had to sell its assets to another company, which was then, itself, bought out again. If you became a combat sports fan anytime in the last decade, you've probably only heard of K-1 as being a weird shell of its former self that is constantly beset by money problems.

But apparently the hype of the Tenshin Nasukawa/Takeru match set a bunch of things in motion, because midway through July, K-1 announced it is once again targeting global expansion. The Kyokushin Karate talent sharing is back, Kazushi Sakuraba is working with K-1 to bring back the Quintet team grappling tournament series, the international partnerships and higher weight divisions are back, and most importantly, the K-1 World Grand Prix, for the first time since 2010--no, the 2012 one didn't count--is back. MMA is the only game they're NOT coming back to, and honestly, that's probably for the best.

I don't know if this is news so much as an editorial, but boy, the UFC sure has started quintupling the fuck down on right-wing insanity.

Donald Trump was, once again, given presence and a spotlight at UFC 290. Which is terrible and could easily be construed as free advertising for a preferred presidential candidate slash criminal traitor, but, hey, at least it's just a brief cameo. Grit your teeth and move on.

And then they released an exclusive episode of the UFC Unfiltered podcast that was just a 40-minute puff piece where Matt Serra and Jim Norton talked to Trump about his super cool and great background with sports and combat sports. Okay, so now we're in deeply, thoroughly gross territory, but at least that's as bad as it's going to get this month!

And then Dana White started using his social media and the UFC to repeatedly advertise Sound of Freedom, the Qanon propaganda movie about how anti-leftist child trafficking conspiracy theories are totally real and all of your political enemies are blood-drinking satanists. Which is, even by the UFC's incredibly low standards, pretty fucking out there in terms of what's acceptable to identify with your company in public. Honestly, I don't know how much lower you can go with that?

And then Dana White set up an appointment to go on world-renowned shithead, avowed rapist and indicted sex trafficker Andrew Tate's podcast, which was averted at the last second when his bosses asked him what the fuck he was doing.

It's not like the UFC hasn't always been right-wing--hell, it's not like combat sports haven't always been right-wing. There's a historic link between conservative authoritarians and the appearance of strength and masculinity combat sports let them pretend to have, and lord knows it's not going anywhere anytime soon. And it's not like it's going to change anytime soon, either. But as we drift further into the bottomless pit of bullshit that includes things like advertising Qanon, trying to put a spotlight on Elon Musk and openly propagandizing for some of the dirt worst people on the planet, it becomes more and more important to reiterate just how fucking bad things are getting so it doesn't start seeming normal.

MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER

I started doing the monthly retirement corner because our sport doesn't really do anything to properly celebrate and say farewell to its fighters when they go. If you're lucky, you get a brief interview and a moment in front of the camera, and then your career is over, and fighters deserve better than that.

For the first time, I do not have to do that. "Ruthless" Robbie Lawler was one of the best to ever do it, and for once, the UFC recognized that and gave him an actual, honest to god sendoff. You can watch it here:

It was a genuinely wonderful moment, and if the UFC gave ever fighter that level of respect, the sport would be in a much, much better place.

Robbie Lawler retires at 30-16 (1). If he comes back and does bareknuckle boxing, I will never forgive him.

There are a lot of fighters in this sport who were supposed to be champions but never quite got there.

Kevin Lee was an undefeated regional lightweight champion when he joined the UFC back in 2014, and he was already hyped as a super-prospect with best-in-class wrestling, vicious ground-and-pound and an aggressive submission game. And then he lost his debut fight to Al Iaquinta. And that became the model for the rest of his career.

Kevin Lee went 9-2 in his first four years with the UFC--everything about his grappling was accurate--and reached the highest point of his career when he met Tony Ferguson in the main event of UFC 216 for an interim championship bout. He nearly won, too--he dropped Tony in the first round, outgrappled him and was punching his face off when the bell rang, demonstrating every bit of promise the world saw in him. And then he got hurt and tired and choked out, and just like that, his time on top was over. After an incredible 16-3 run in the first half-decade of his career, Lee proceeded to win only three of his last eight fights.

In 2021 he fought out the last bout on his contract and left for the theoretically greener pastures of free agency, and within a couple months, he became one of the biggest signings for Khabib Nurmagomedov's upstart Eagle FC, which was touting Lee and former heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos as their top new fighters and main-eventers for years to come.

Kevin Lee fought for Eagle FC once, won his fight but blew out his ACL, and went on the shelf indefinitely. Junior dos Santos fought for Eagle FC once and ripped his shoulder completely out of its socket. The company released all its international talent and never ran an international card again. A year later, Kevin Lee was back in the UFC with a big new contract and a promise to come get the welterweight championship.

The UFC matched him against the almost-undefeated Russian champion Rinat Fakhretdinov. Rinat dropped him and choked him out in under a minute. Kevin Lee retired a little over a week later.

Things just never quite worked out for him anywhere he went. He was too good a grappler to not be ranked but not good enough to beat the best, too powerful a striker for his own occasionally iffy chin. He could never find a way to cut to the lightweight division with his frame that didn't leave him feeling drawn out and reduced, but he was just too small to fight at welterweight.

He was great. But he was never quite one of the best, and that's what he felt he needed to be or there was no point in competing. So he got the hell out with his health, and sometimes that's all one can really hope for. He retires at 19-8.

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WHAT HAPPENED IN JULY

The month kicked off right on the 1st with UFC on ESPN: Strickland vs Magomedov, a tortured and deeply unnecessary card with one of the least compelling main events the UFC has ever promoted. It was a slog with a few highlights. On the prelims, Elves Brenner scored a big upset with a last-minute comeback knockout over a visibly unwell Guram Kutateladze, Karol Rosa took a split decision over Yana Santos in what is likely the second to last women's featherweight fight in the UFC, Joanderson Brito knocked out a woefully outmatched Westin Wilson, and Kevin Lee made his big UFC comeback, was booked to lose immediately, and was dropped and choked unconscious by Rinat Fakhretdinov in under a minute. On the main card, Nursulton Ruziboev knocked Brunno Ferreira out in a round, Benoît Saint-Denis choked out Ismael Bonfim, Ariane Lipski managed to just squeak past Melissa Gatto, Michael Morales passed the prospect test by taking Max Griffin to a decision, Grant Dawson dominated a briefly unretired Damir Ismagulov with his wrestling, and in the main event, the unranked Abusupiyan Magomedov, main eventing after just one fight because the UFC got tired of matchmaking, gassed out in a single round and got beat to shit by Sean Strickland in the second.

PFL Europe 2 aired on July 8th, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you probably did not watch it. Is this because you're philistines who can't bring themselves to care about international culture? No: It's because PFL literally did not air it in America. This isn't FOR you, Americans. You don't get to watch Ali Taleb knock out Kenji Bortoluzzi. You don't GET to see Francesco Nuzzi headkick Farbod Iran Nezhad in front of a couple hundred people. Y--where are you going? COME BACK FOR THE PLAYOFFS, I BEG YOU

And then the UFC promptly erased everything else from memory with UFC 290: Volkanovski vs Rodríguez, a card that was amazing both on paper and in execution. Almost everything on it was good, but in short: Jesus Aguilar punched out Shannon Ross in seventeen seconds, Cameron Saaiman finally got a UFC victory that wasn't tainted by fouls, Alonzo Menifield ended a deeply unnecessary rematch by submitting Jimmy Crute in two rounds, Denise Gomes pulled a hgue upset by knocking out Yazmin Jauregui in twenty seconds, Tatsuro Taira overcame some scary moments to take a decision over Edgar Cháirez, and Robbie Lawler, the champ, ended his MMA career with one last perfect knockout over Niko Price in less than a minute. The main card didn't disappoint, aside from a thoroughly unnecessary opener where Bo Nickal knocked out 5'8" regional replacement Val Woodburn in about forty seconds, but Dan Hooker won a barnburner against Jalin Turner by split decision and Dricus du Plessis shockingly knocked out Robert Whittaker in two rounds. In the co-main event, Alexandre Pantoja and Brandon Moreno had a fight-of-the-year candidate that left scores all over the place, but ultimately--and with the consensus of most of the media--Pantoja took a split decision and the flyweight championship. The main event was much more traditional, as Alexander Volkanovski returned to his featherweight throne and reunified its championship by just crushing Yair Rodríguez, ragdolling and pounding on him for two rounds before engaging him in the standup during the third and ultimately dropping and TKOing him.

July 15th brought us UFC Fight Night: Holm vs Bueno Silva, a truly cursed card in a number of ways. Two headliners fell through, three fights were rescheduled, a main card bout got scratched three days before the event, and then the card, itself, was a real, real mixed bag. Most of the prelims were both very slow and on-paper disinteresting; your main points of interest include Ailín Pérez dominating a returning Ashlee Evans-Smith, Azat Maksum squeaking past Tyson Nam, Melquizael Costa pulling an upset on Austin Lingo, and, unfortunately, the debuting Viktoriya Dudakova scoring one of the fastest finishes in Women's Strawweight history after Istela Nunes horrifyingly dislocated her elbow defending a takedown. The main card saw Nazim Sadykhov choking out Terrance McKinney, Norma Dumont winning what might be the final Women's Featherweight fight in UFC history, Jun Yong Park submitting ALbert Duraev, Francisco Prado breaking Ottman Azaitar's face with a reverse spinning elbow, and Jack Della Maddalena having the fight of his life with late replacement and debuting regional fighter Bassil Hafez, who wrestled him thoroughly and just barely lost a split decision. But it was all worth it for the main event, as Holly Holm, having gone four years without being stopped, got choked out by Mayra Bueno Silva in just five and a half minutes. Thank you, Mayra.

But we also got ONE Fight Night 12: Superlek vs Khalilov, which was something of an exceedingly cursed card. Three separate main events wound up scratched by the time the event actually happened, and the replacement was a giant mismatch where the overwhelming favorite also happened to miss weight along with two other people on the card. Fantastic work. But Phetjeeja Lukjaoporongtom continued growth into ONE's good graces by destroying the (woefully outmatched) Lara Fernandez in twenty-six seconds, Akbar Abdullaev got a real neat spinning back kick knockout, Yuya Wakamatsu snapped his losing streak by beating Xie Wei, Amir Aliakbari ground-and-pounded an equally helpless Dustin Joynson, and in the best actual fight of the night, supergrappler Garry Tonon spent two and a half rounds having serious trouble and at one point nearly getting finished by Shamil Gasanov before suddenly snatching a kneebar out of nowhere and ripping Gasanov's leg apart, because he is Garry Tonon and he can do that. And in your deeply unnecessary main event, Superlek crushed Tagir Khalilov, who just exceptionally should not have been there.

The UFC pulled up to London again for UFC Fight Night: Aspinall vs Tybura on the 22nd. It was a very long card both in make and performance: With 15 fights on the card, 9 went the distance, and a bunch of them were pretty thoroughly forgettable. But Jafel Filho choked out Daniel Bárez in a real impressive comeback after getting violently dropped, Chris Duncan got a decision over Yanal Ashmouz who inexplicably fought 2/3 of the round with only one functional arm, Ketlen Vieira got the nod over Pannie Kianzad down on the prelims, Joel Álvarez choked out Marc Diakiese, and Jonny Parsons knocked Danny Roberts flat. The main card was a big give-and-take for the hometown crowd. Daniel Marcos outfought Davey Grant, but Lerone Murphy dominated Joshua Culibao; Farès Ziam beat Jai Herbert, but Paul Craig TKOed André Muniz; Nathaniel Wood edged out Andre Fili, but Julija Stoliarenko broke Molly McCann's arm in just under two minutes. But the main event is what matters, and hero Tom Aspinall finished his dinner with ease, knocking out Marcin Tybura in just seventy-three seconds.

The big show's month ended on UFC 291: Poirier vs Gaethje 2 on the 29th, and last-minute scratches brought it down to a minimal 11 fights, but boy, what a card it was. Down on the prelims Miranda Maverick dominated Priscila Cachoeira and armbarred her in three rounds, Uroš Medić stopped Matt Semelsberger with a spinning backfirst, Jake Matthews choked out an overmatched, short-notice-debut Darrius Flowers, Roman Kopylov shut Claudio Ribeiro down with a headkick, C.J. Vergara won a less eventful decision over Vinicius Salvador, and Gabriel Bonfim choked out Trevin Giles in just over a minute. Up on the main card, Kevin Holland crushed a returning Michael Chiesa and tapped him out in two minutes, Bobby Green controlled a Tony Ferguson who can't seem to fight age anymore and choked him unconscious with six seconds left in the fight to make a point and Derrick Lewis, who has abs now, dropped Marcos Rogério de Lima with a flying knee three seconds into the fight and pounded him out after about thirty. The co-main event was the least eventful fight of the night, as Alex Pereira and Jan Błachowicz largely neutralized each other and, if we're being honest, neither really looked great, but Pereira came away with a split decision. The Dustin Poirier vs Justin Gaethje rematch in the main event promised the fireworks of their first bout, and that was true for the first round; a minute into the second, Gaethje shut Poirier's lights off with a headkick.

The big Bellator x Rizin 2 crossover ended the month on the 29th/30th thanks to the magic of midnight fights, but between injuries, replacements and unfortunate finger placement, most of the main events didn't go as planned. Bellator's segment came up first, and it was a little bit of a trainwreck. Andrey Koreshkov and Lorenz Larkin fought to a split decision that tilted Koreshkov's way, Magomed Magomedov choked out Danny Sabatello in one round, which was pretty gratifyting, and Kana Watanabe took a 2-1 decision over Veta Arteaga. But the long-awaited, twice-rescheduled debut for Bellator's Flyweight Championship finally, finally happened--and went to a No Contest after Kyoji Horiguchi inadvertently eye-poked Shinryu Takahashi in twenty-five seconds. Because that is, of course, exactly what would happen. And the main event of Bellator's side of the card, which also lost half of its competition when AJ McKee pulled out, turned instead into a last-minute, interpromotional Lightweight Grand Prix bout between Rizin champ Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza, by leaps and bounds Rizin's best 155-pound fighter, and Bellator's Patricky Pitbull, who is, respectfully, like #4 or #5. And Patricky beat the absolute brakes off Satoshi, dropping him twice and finishing him with a leg kick TKO.

But Rizin got a modicum of revenge on Super Rizin 2, their half of the card. Sure, you had a fair number of Rizin-only fights--Yuki Ito taking a split over Hiroya Kondo, Igor Tanabe's heel hook of Daichi Abe, Shinobu Ota knocking out Kenta Takizawa--and sure, two of the five big fights on the card were Rizin vs Rizin championship bouts, as Seika Izawa defended her atomweight title by choking out Claire Lopez in a minute and Vugar Karamov disposed of Mikuru Asakura for the featherweight championship in one round--and sure, with Tofiq Musayev crushing Akira Okada and Juan Archuleta grinding Hiromasa Ougikubo for three rounds to win Rizin's bantamweight title, the actual scoreboard for the night was 3-1 in Bellator's favor. But the thing most people are going to remember is Bellator's best fighter, Patrício Pitbull, getting absolutely fucking starched by Rizin fighter and Japanese kickboxer Chihiro Suzuki. Was it a fight at 155 pounds on four days' notice a month after Pitbull fought at 135 pounds? Yup. Will that un-punch Pitbull's face? Nope. Congrats on the new star, Rizin.

WHAT'S COMING IN AUGUST

We've got nine shows this month, and I hope you like the PFL, because they're back, baby.

But before any of that, we get our dose of ONE for the month with ONE Fight Night 13: Allazov vs Grigorian 3 on August 4th, and I've gotta be honest, man, I'm struggling with ONE. It's no secret that they're pitching much harder into kickboxing--it's regionally popular, it differentiates them in the market, and boy, kickboxers are even cheaper than mixed martial artists--but this is a nine-fight card with only three MMA fights on it, and boy, I just don't feel attuned to ONE anymore. Your three MMA bouts are Jhanlo Mark Sangiago facing Eknh-Orgil Baatarkhuu, jiu-jitsuman Bucheca taking on musclewrestler Reug Reug, and former champion John Lineker getting what seems like a pretty soft target in Kim Jae Woong. Otherwise, uh, Tawanchai, one of the world's best Muay Thai fighters, is kickboxing a guy who's 39-20-1? Mikey Musumeci is defending his submission grappling championship against strawweight MMA champion Jarred Brooks, who won the title eight months ago but for some reason he's doing this instead of defending it? Chingiz Allazov is having a threematch with Marat Grigorian, a rivalry consisting of one No Contest and one Grigorian win almost a decade ago? Is any of this doing it for you?

And then we're off to PFL for the semifinal rounds of this incredibly, painfully tortured season. PFL 7: Jenkins vs Pinedo is up first, featuring the semifinals for the Light-Heavyweight bracket, as Marthin Hamlet meets Impa Kasanganay and Josh Silveira faces Ty Flores, as well as the Featherweight bracket, which includes Chris Wade vs Gabriel Alves Braga and your main event, Bubba Jenkins vs Jesus Pinedo. I'd tell you that there are also some special attraction bouts down at 170 pounds and 155 pounds and even at Women's Flyweight, but that would require me believing that you are emotionally invested in watching Thad Jean fight Ali Omar, and I just don't believe that's true.

The UFC's month begins the following day with UFC on ESPN: Sandhagen vs Font on August 5th. It looks like an awful lot of fun on paper, at least. Cody Durden and Jake Hadley will try to have an angry-off, Sean Woodson is back to face Jsse Butler, Kyler Phillps and Raoni Barcelos are going to have a barnburner, and Billy Quarantillo and Damon Jackson are both trying to rebound and need to take someone's head off to do it. Your main card has Ignacio Bahamondes vs Ľudovít Klein, Tanner Boser vs Aleksa Camur, Diego Lopes vs Gavin Tucker, Dustin Jacoby vs Kennedy Nzechukwu, a real scary bout featuring Jéssica Andrade vs Tatiana Suarez, and up in your main event, Cory Sandhagen and Rob Font will meet in a short-notice, 140-pound catchweight affair thanks to Umar Nurmagomedov busting his shoulder.

Bellator takes its single swing for the month with Bellator 298: Storley vs Ward on August 11th, and like every Bellator card, the prelims alone are the size of an extra-big fight card and you will know almost no one on at least one half of them. Like, I know and appreciate Josh Hill, and Leandro Higo, and Dayana Silva, and Kai Kamaka III, and Enrique Barzola. They're all cool. I have no idea who Jaylon Bates or Alberto Rodriguez are. Will the fights be good? Some of them, probably! Should you watch 5 hours of Bellator prelims? That depends on if you have anything you'd rather do. Your main card sees Sidney Outlaw vs Islam Mamedov, a James-off between James Gallagher and James Gonzalez, Dalton Rosta vs Aaron Jeffery, a potentially horrifying heavyweight matchup between Valentin Moldavsky and Steve Mowry, and in your main event, Logan Storley tries to turn away Brennan Ward in the hopes of getting another title shot.

The next night on August 12th, it's UFC on ESPN: Luque vs Dos Anjos. The UFC's put a bunch of potential bangers up for this one: Polyana Viana vs Iasmin Lucindo, Cub Swanson vs Hakeem Dawodu, Jacqueline Amorim vs Montserrat Ruiz, Da'Mon Blackshear vs Brady Hiestand, Josh Fremd vs Jamie Pickett, Lando Vannata vs Mike Breeden, Khalil Rountree Jr. vs Chris Daukaus--well, maybe that one's more of, like, a potential murder. Seriously, I don't get what the deal is with the UFC, but they either really believe in Chris Daukaus or they really hate him, because he got booked against three straight hard-punching murderers at heavyweight, got crushed every time, is dropping to 205, and is facing another big-punching power striker. Good luck, I guess. Your main event is five rounds of Vicente Luque vs Rafael dos Anjos, which has the potential to be absolutely fucking stellar or deeply depressing. I'm rooting for optimism.

On the topic of optimism: PFL 8: Ferreira vs Greene on August 18th. This one's got the semifinals of Women's Featherweight, with Marina Mokhnatkina meeting Amber Leibrock and Larissa Pachecho fighting Olena Kolesnyk, a woman she has violently knocked out once a year since 2021. Hey, Larissa, remember how you beat PFL's top star? That does not get you a main event, because the Heavyweight playoffs take precedence, apparently. They've got Denis Goltsov vs Jordan Heiderman and Renan Ferreira vs Maurice Greene, and just to be clear, that means two semifinalists for PFL's heavyweight season are a last-minute replacement who advanced because his opponent's knee randomly blew out and Maurice Greene, who is 3 for his last 9. Thanks, heavyweight. Also, Olympic gold medalist and one-time MMA prospect Satoshi Ishii is returning to PFL after four years away to face Danilo Marques on the undercard. Why not!

The next day on the 19th we get our big show for the month, UFC 292: Sterling vs O'Malley. This is, to be honest, kind of a hell of a card. There isn't really any chaff on it. Karine Silva and Maryna Moroz will be a fun grappling match, Gregory Rodrigues will try to robo-punch Dennis Tiuliulin out of his wrestling mode, Andrea Lee will try not to get spinkicked in the head by Natália Silva, Andre Petroski and Gerald Meerschaert will out-grit one another, Chris Weidman is back to face Brad Tavares and we're all going to be biting down on our cheeks the whole time, Cody Garbrandt is up against Mario Bautista in what should be a lot of fun, Geoff Neal is going to try to repel Ian Machado Garry from the welterweight top ten, and Marlon Vera will fight to keep his spot against Pedro Munhoz. And then we get two title fights, and the first is pretty great! Zhang Weili is finally back, defending the Women's Strawweight Championship against Amanda Lemos. Unfortunately, the actual main event is Bantamweight Champion Aljamain Sterling basically being forced to fight a three-month turnaround against Sean O'Malley, who has been sitting around since last October waiting for the UFC to give him a title fight.

We're finishing off the PFL playoffs on August 23rd with PFL 9: Collard vs Burgos, the most controversial of the bunch. This time around we've got the Welterweight semifinals, where Magomed Magomedkerimov faces Magomed Umalatov and Sadibou Sy meets Carlos Leal, and the Lightweight semifinals, where the PFL not only threw two people out of the bracket for extremely specious reasons, and not only promoted their big-money pickup to the semifinals, but gave him a match against the guy who, you know, didn't already beat him. So last year's champ Olivier Aubin-Mercier is fighting Bruno Miranda, and Shane Burgos, the guy he beat and who PFL desperately, desperately wants to win the title, is facing Clay Collard. Oh, and the weird Ali family side project in Biaggio Ali Walsh has another vanity amateur fight on the main card. End that season in style, baby.

And we're closing the month on August 26th with UFC on ESPN: Holloway vs The Korean Zombie, which, boy, I wish they'd just use his name. This is the UFC's belated return to Singapore after its intention to do so earlier this year had to wait on their main eventer's body getting better, which is why you've got a lot of Asian representation on it because, y'know, just throw all the Asian people of varying ethnicities on the Singaporean card, I guess: Seung Woo Choi vs Jarno Errens, Yusaku Kinoshita vs Billy Goff, Toshiomi Kazama vs Garrett Armfield, Rinya Nakamura vs Fernie Garcia, and Song Kenan vs Rolando Bedoya. Get 'em all. Junior Tafa is also going to try to beat up Parker Porter faster than his brother did, Waldo Cortes-Acosta is back against Łukasz Brzeski, and Chidi Njokuani is going to throw hands with Michał Oleksiejczuk. Your main card, however, has a lot of real interesting stuff on it. Derailed hype train Giga Chikadze is back from a year and a half off to face the tricky Alex Caceres, Anthony Smith is going to see what he has left in the tank against Ryan Spann, Taila Santos and Erin Blanchfield are fighting for what's almost certainly the next crack at either Alexa Grasso or Valentina Shevchenko, and in your main event, Max Holloway is fighting Chan-sung Jung, and yeah, it's probably going to be a battering that leaves me feeling hurt and dead inside, but let me believe for a minute.

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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS

Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Jon Jones - 27-1 (1), 0 Defenses

Very few things in combat sports reach the crossroads of awe-inspiring and unfathomably frustrating as Jon Jones. In 2020, Jon Jones notched the third defense of his second light-heavyweight championship reign after an exceedingly contentious decision against Dominick Reyes, only to abdicate the title because the UFC wasn't paying him enough, and he was bored of 205 pounds and wanted to move up to heavyweight like he'd been planning to for nearly a decade, and he needed more time to cement his place as not just one of the sport's greatest pound-for-pound fighters, but one of its biggest pound-for-pound pains in the ass. On September 23, 2021, Jon Jones was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame; on September 24, 2021, he was arrested (for the fifth time!) after his daughter called the police on him for beating her mother, during which he antagonized the police and, inexplicably, headbutted a police car. Because this is Jon Jones, of course, the primary charges were dropped, he paid $750 for the hood of the police cruiser, and got a stern warning to stay out of trouble, young man, because there is a money-powered reality-distorting field around Jon Jones whereby nothing matters. After a year of rumors, and after the unconscionable firing of heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the UFC gleefully announced Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane to fill the vacant heavyweight throne. Did it matter to the matchmaking that there were more deserving candidates? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He deserves the spot for his earlier success. Did it matter to his public appearances that when last we saw him he was arrested for beating his fiancee? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He was, if anything, more up his own ass with self-righteousness than ever before. Did it matter to the fight that he hadn't competed in more than three years and looked terrible at the time? Of course not, because it's Jon fucking Jones. Ciryl Gane looked too nervous to use footwork let alone throw anything, and he should have been, as Jones effortlessly threw him to the canvas and choked him out in two minutes. The longest-running, most dominant and yet most persistently annoying show in mixed martial arts is back. Jon Jones is your heavyweight champion, and we are all damned. The UFC finally, formally announced his fight with Stipe Miocic on November 11th; I'll believe it when we get there.

Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

VACANT - The spectre of our sins

That's right, baby. No one can stay away from Vacant, and Vacant sure can't stay away from you. Or the light-heavyweight division. Last year, 205 was thrown into chaos after brand-new champion Jiří Procházka was forced to give up the belt thanks to a shoulder injury. The UFC, for what it's worth, tried to fill the void with two of the rightful top contenders, but after Jan Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev fought to a draw they decided to just put their guy up instead. Jamahal Hill fulfilled the dread prophecy and became the first-ever world champion from Dana White's Contender Series, thus giving him everything he'd ever wanted to crow about. Sure, it took half of the division falling apart, and sure, they had to leapfrog everyone above him in the rankings, but hey: He beat Glover Teixeira, he got the belt, and nothing can take that away from him--except, as it turns out, the irrepressible need to ball. Midway through July, Hill announced that he'd torn his achilles tendon apart during a basketball game with Daniel Cormier. He's looking at, potentially, an entire year on the shelf. So once again, the belt has been lost, and once again, its future is uncertain. For the time being, all we know is what we already knew: No force on Earth can stop Vacant.

Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Israel Adesanya - 24-2, 0 Defenses

The Last Stylebender has finally exorcised the ghosts of his past. Combat sports fans who considered themselves In The Know had long heralded Adesanya as a potential crossover superstar based on his extremely successful kickboxing career, which had seen him win multiple championships and lose only by decision, and it was an open secret that the UFC was already taking a good look at him as he prepared to leave his home sport behind and transition entirely into mixed martial arts--so it was a bit of a shock when, instead of his last kickboxing match being a victory lap, he was knocked out cold by one of the very few men to eer beat him, Alex Pereira. Izzy kept to his word, left kickboxing, joined the UFC and became a superstar nearly overnight, and a year after his UFC debut he was already the middleweight champion of the world. A misguided trip to the light-heavyweight division to chase the double-champ dream proved to be a step too far, but the only blemish on his record came from a separate weight class, and after three more title defenses he was still perfect at middleweight and, easily, the second-best middleweight champion of all time. And then the UFC brought in this one guy named Alex Pereira. The UFC desperately wanted an all-striking showdown between the two rivals, and after the easiest path to the title since Brock Lesnar, they got it, and on November 12, 2022, Alex Pereira etched his place in the history books by stopping Adesanya once again, this time taking his MMA championship home with him in the process. This being the UFC an instant rematch was, of course, inevitable, and the world looked on with considerably more worry this time--but the Israel Adesanya who showed up at UFC 287 on April 8, 2023 was a smarter, better fighter who'd learned from his mistakes. After baiting Pereira into throwing caution to the wind, Izzy flatlined him with a counterpunch in just two rounds. There will be no MMA rubber match--the UFC doesn't want it, Izzy doesn't want it, and Pereira is done with middleweight altogether. So Israel Adesanya is back on his throne, even if he has to start his defense counter from 0 again. His war of words with Dricus du Plessis over who is and is not truly African (sigh) bore fruit, as du Plessis inadvertently talked himself into a title eliminator against Robert Whittaker this July, with the winner facing Adesanya at the end of the year. And du Plessis won! And then he turned down the title fight to heal up. The word is Israel Adesanya vs Sean Strickland is most likely; I would rather eat a shoe.

Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs

Leon Edwards - 21-3 (1), 1 Defenses

It took half a decade to get the world to notice, but everyone sees Leon Edwards now. "Rocky" came from the kind of circumstances sports movies are made of--a poor kid from Jamaica who moved to England, lost his father to gang violence, nearly lost himself to it as a teenager and found a healthy outlet for his anger in mixed martial arts. Edwards made his debut in 2011 as a prime example of the modern generation of fighter, cross-trained from the beginning in every discipline, and in just three years he was the welterweight champion of Britain and off to the UFC. Entering 2016, Leon had suffered the first true loss of his career--he was 10-3, but one of those losses was a DQ for an illegal blow and the other a coinflip decision that could easily have gone either way--at the hands of the newly-crowned Ultimate Fighter 21 winner, Kamaru Usman, making his debut as an official UFC competitor. It took ten fights without a loss for Leon to get his rematch. The UFC seemed especially resistant to his title contendership, pushing him down in favor of the ostensibly more marketable UK star in Darren Till and booking him against numerous other contenders and gatekeepers while repeatedly elevating less deserving fighters to the championship. He wouldn't have gotten it at all, in fact, had Jorge Masvidal not gotten arrested. On August 20, the UFC acquiesced and granted the clear #1 contender his shot at the championship, and at revenge against Kamaru Usman--and after getting dominated for three and a half out of five rounds, with the commentators openly opining on the likelihood that he had given up, with just fifty-six seconds left in the fight, Edwards uncorked a headkick that shocked the world and knocked Kamaru Usman out for the first time in his career. The rubber match was inevitable, and once again, Edwards opened as an underdog, and once again, he proved everyone wrong. Instead of a last-minute comeback Leon simply shut Usman down for the majority of the fight, stuffing eleven of his takedown attempts, outstriking him in four out of five rounds and landing an absolutely wild 75% of his strikes in the process. It was an incredible performance against one of the greatest welterweights of all time, marred only by Leon losing a point for fence grabs. The decision was unquestionably his, and now legitimized as the champion of the world, Leon's first move is...getting into a big, public spat with the UFC, because instead of any of the working contenders of the division Dana White is demanding he defend the belt against Colby Covington. Leon says he won't fight Colby, Colby and Dana seem convinced the championship fight is happening this summer with or without Leon, it's a big, shitty mess.

Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Islam Makhachev - 24-1, 1 Defense

Destiny has come. When Islam Makhachev made his UFC debut in 2015, Khabib Nurmagomedov, considered by most to be the #1 contender and soon to be the best in the world, swore up and down that Makhachev, not him, would be the best lightweight champion of all time. Coming from him, the praise made sense: Khabib and Islam have trained together since they were children growing up and learning to wrestle in Makhachkala. Islam learned under Khabib's father, trained with Khabib's team and even made the pilgrimage to America to join Khabib at the American Kickboxing Academy. And then, two matches into his UFC tenure, Islam got knocked the fuck out in the first round by the little-known Adriano Martins, who hasn't won a fight in the six years since. Even as Makhachev racked up wins, the memory of his loss and his wrestling-heavy approach to his fights let people cast doubts on him. Sure, he's good--but he lost, so he's not as good as Khabib. Islam Makhachev, as his trainer tells it, never wanted to be Khabib. He loves fighting, but he doesn't love the spectacle or the glory or the attention. So when, after ten straight wins, Makhachev was picked to challenge Charles Oliveira for the vacant title he never truly lost, a lot of folks just weren't quite sure what to think. Sure, he was an incredible wrestler, but Charles Oliveira is a submission wizard, and sure, he's on a ten-fight streak, but he hasn't fought a single person actually IN the top ten, and Oliveira represents a huge, dangerous step up as a man who's been destroying some of the most accomplished lightweights in the sport's history. Analyst opinion was split right down the middle; the fight, as it turned out, was nowhere near that competitive, and the only analyst who was entirely correct was Khabib. Islam demolished the former champion, outstriking him, taking him down at will, controlling him in the grappling, and ultimately dropping him with punches and choking him out in the second round. His first defense was a different story. Islam faced featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 284 on February 12th in a rare best-of-the-best, champion vs champion match, and this time, his team's prediction of domination was thoroughly incorrect: It was a pitched battle that ended with Makhachev visibly exhausted and Volkanovski pounding on his face. Islam took an extremely close decision and the divisions will remain separate, but his aura of invulnerability has been thoroughly punctured. He'll be defending his title against a lightweight for the first time in exactly the way he got it: A matchup with Charles Oliveira in Abu Dhabi at UFC 294 on October 21st.

Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Alexander Volkanovski - 26-2, 5 Defenses

Coming off of his cross-divisional bout against lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev, Alexander Volkanovski found himself in both the highest esteem and one of the most complicated positions of his career. Volk put up a fantastic fight against Islam, took the champ to his limit and, in the opinion of some, even won their bout--but the judges didn't agree, meaning Volk not only lost the fight, but his undefeated streak in the UFC. To make matters worse, there were wolves at the door: While he experimented at lightweight, Yair Rodríguez had become the new interim champion after injuring Brian Ortega and kicking Josh Emmett's ribs apart. Volkanovski not only had to reunify his title, he had to drop back down to his home weight class, face the most versatile striking threat of his life, deal with his first-ever UFC bout coming off of a loss, and fight through the world's incredibly high expectations of him after his last championship performance. Many champions have fallen under the pressure. Alexander Volkanovski, somewhat unsurprisingly, was not one of them. He ran a clinic on Yair, wrestling him virtually at will, outstriking him 149-57, and ultimately finishing him off in the third round by outboxing him just to prove that he could. Alexander Volkanovski's throne is no longer disputed--but his next move is. The UFC has made it clear Volkanovski can have another crack at the lightweight belt if he wants it, but Islam Makhachev is defending his title against Charles Oliveira in October. On one hand, Volkanovski could put a quarter down on the arcade cabinet, wait to see who emerges victorious, and claim the next shot. On the other, Ilia Topuria has emerged as a serious contender at featherweight, and has been relentlessly calling Volkanovski out and preemptively accusing him of fleeing a real fight. I'm not sure you can accuse someone of cowardice when they're lining up to fight Islam Makhachev or Charles Oliveira, exactly, but I do know Volkanovski/Topuria would be a hell of a fight too. Whatever Alex's next move is, it's going to be interesting.

Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Aljamain Sterling - 23-3, 3 Defenses

Aljamain Sterling is a first-ballot candidate for the best bantamweight champion in UFC history, and his title reign will, one way or another, be ending very soon and he will immediately be buried by history, and it's a tragedy you can see happening in realtime. In nearly a decade of UFC competition, Sterling has only three losses: Two split decisions that could easily have been draws, and one knockout loss to pre-crisis Marlon Moraes. Aside from that it's been nothing but victory. Aside from Aljamain himself, six men have held the UFC Bantamweight Championship: Aljo has personally defeated four of them. By any measure, his has been a hall of fame career. And he is, even as the literal world champion, completely forgotten thanks to bad matchmaking and things entirely out of his control. He won the championship from Petr Yan, but he won it by disqualification--the first time a championship has ever changed hands thanks to a DQ--and despite soundly beating Yan in a rematch he won only a split decision, thus reinforcing the people who already disliked him. Matters were not helped when his first real contender was TJ Dillashaw, himself coming off a dodgy decision victory, and they were made even worse when Dillashaw came into the fight so badly injured that his shoulder came out of its socket within minutes. With a division laden with potential challengers the audience wanted to see, the UFC, once again, selected None Of The Above: Sterling's next defense would be against Henry Cejudo, returning after three years of retirement to an immediate title shot. Once again, Sterling won clearly, and once again, the judges awarded him only a split decision, prompting much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sterling's made clear that win or lose, he's leaving the division and moving to 145 after his next title defense--and the UFC is, once again, putting its thumb on the scale and having him face the company's favorite son, Sean O'Malley. Quickly. The UFC wants Sterling on UFC 292 on August 19th, another three-month turnaround, and in response to his concern about having time as a champion to recover and prepare, the UFC has made it publicly clear that if he doesn't do it, despite having literally just had a successful defense, they'll have O'Malley fighting for an interim title. Thanks, Dana.

Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Alexandre Pantoja - 26-5, 0 Defenses

Sometimes, you just have someone's number. Brandon Moreno spent years fighting through a quadrilogy with Deiveson Figueiredo, and unfortunately for him, he had another trilogy waiting for him the second it was over. Alexandre "The Cannibal" Pantoja was Moreno's personal bogeyman, a man who'd fought and beaten him twice. But one of those fights was an exhibition on The Ultimate Fighter, and the other was against a Moreno with five less years of evolution and growth. Surely, a third fight in 2023 would be different. And it was--unlike the previous, one-sided dominations it was a fight-of-the-year candidate that took both men to their limit and led to a split decision--but its ending was not. Alexander Pantoja scored a third victory over Moreno, and with it, after sixteen years of competition, he finally became the clear, unequivocal best in the god damned world. Which was made even more poignant when he used his post-fight interview to ask if his absentee father was proud of him--and was made even more irritating when he also revealed that despite having eleven fights in the UFC at the time, he was paid so little that he'd been part-timing as a Doordash driver just to make ends meet right up up until 2022. The idea that one of the absolute best fighters on the planet, after years and nearly a dozen fights in the world's biggest, most profitable fighting organization, would need to take on a gig-economy job to make money is outright offensive, and in a better world, it would have launched a furor. In this one, all we can do is be happy he's got the belt and will, hopefully, make some actual fucking money. His next bout is up in the air--there's an argument that the split decision should give Moreno a rematch, but his 0-3 record against Pantoja would seemingly say otherwise, and with Deiveson Figueiredo uncertain which weight class he's even at anymore, who knows where we go from here.

Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs

VACANT - The silent queen of a dead land

Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs

VACANT - The hole where memory still lives
June was a banner month for Vacant, as they claimed three belts in four weeks. Amanda Nunes spent seven years--minus about six really, really weird months last year--as not just the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist on the planet, but the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist of all time. While there are plenty of arguments to be had about the legitimacy of Women's Featherweight in the UFC, factually, she's the only UFC fighter to actually hold and defend championships in two weight classes at once, and she did it for years, and she made all of her opponents look like absolute shit. On June 10th she did it one last time, absolutely crushing Irene Aldana for five straight rounds, before officially retiring and passing into legend. This leaves two championships in the shadow-grip of Vacant, but their futures, respectively, are uncertain. Women's Bantamweight remains one of the UFC's more visible divisions, and you can almost certainly pencil in some sort of Julianna Peña vs Question Mark fight to fill the vacancy later this year. But the UFC has already acknowledged Women's Featherweight will, in all likelihood, simply cease to be. They're still promoting a couple fights in the division, but the belt has been taken off the website and it's entirely likely that, before the summer is over, we'll see the first shuttering of a weight class since the UFC gave up on the lightweight division back in 2004.

Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs

Alexa Grasso - 16-3, 0 Defenses

Every once in awhile someone gets to shock the combat sports world, and in 2023, it's Alexa Grasso. The UFC has been high on Grasso since she left Invicta for her company debut back in 2016--she's been one of the most consistently featured fighters in ANY women's division, be it her time at strawweight or her move up to flyweight--but her two bids at the top of the mountain at 115 pounds met with disaster, once in Tatiana Suarez handing her the only stoppage loss of her career and once in Carla Esparza outwrestling her to a decision, and watching her manhandled by 115-pound fighters left the world doubting her 125-pound chances. But thanks to her solid boxing and her ever-improving ground game she ran up a four-fight winning streak, and when the UFC announced that she'd be taking on divisional queen and one of the greatest of all time in Valentina Shevchenko, the collective fan reaction was a unanimous "sure, okay," because Valentina disposing of people was a generally accepted phenomenon and she needed a warm body. The first round was a slight surprise, with Grasso stinging Shevchenko on the feet, but as so often happens, by the fourth round Valentina had taken over the fight, was ahead on every judge's scorecard and looked poised to cruise to her her eighth title defense. And then, she was struck down by the bane of the sport: Spinning shit. Backed into the fence, Shevchenko did what she does entirely too often--a spinning back kick--and in the half-second she was turned away Grasso leapt to her back, dragged her to the floor, and became the first person to ever submit Valentina Shevchenko. Alexa Grasso, after years of work, is the Women's Flyweight Champion of the World. But after six undefeated years and the longest women's title reign in UFC history (not counting Women's Featherweight which, as we all know, is Not Real), a rematch with Shevchenko later this year seems inevitable.

Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs

Zhang Weili - 23-3, 0 Defenses

Are you really surprised? There's a long tradition of underestimating unlikely champions in mixed martial arts, particularly when they're not the fan-friendliest in style or personality, from Michael Bisping to Frankie Edgar, only to have those demeaned champions remind the world that they didn't reach the peak of their divisions by mistake. Many of the wise, studied scribes of the sport warned the foolish masses against assuming the same about Women's Strawweight Champion Carla Esparza: She was no pushover, they said, and Zhang will have real trouble. And then, come fight day, we unwashed masses pulled them from their ivory towers and forced them to run in the streets amongst the mud and filth so they, too, could feel the unburdened joy of being, because Zhang Weili, as basically every fan had assumed, did, in fact, beat the absolute tar out of Carla. It wasn't particularly close: Carla got outlanded 37-6, hurt several times on the feet, and choked out just a minute into the second round. The inexplicable, season-long Cookie Monster subplot is over, Zhang Weili is now a two-time world champion, and things are back as they should be. What comes next, however, is tricky. Carla was blown out, so a rematch is out of the question. Rose Namajunas, the only person in the UFC to beat Weili, is a likely candidate--but after her disastrous performance against Carla, it remains to be seen how much faith the UFC has in her. Jéssica Andrade has a claim, but she's splitting time between 115 and 125, and probably needs to pick a weight class if she wants a shot. So the UFC solved the problem by picking Amanda Lemos. The assumption was the UFC was waiting for Lemos to get one more big win, but after seven months of silence, it turns out they were fine with her all along, apparently. She'll face Zhang for the belt at UFC 292 on August 19th.

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NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Ryan Bader - 31-7 (1), 3 Defenses

Ryan Bader is the greatest Bellator Heavyweight Champion of all time, and on a dairy farm somewhere in Wisconsin, Cole Konrad feels a pang of regret. Bader made his name as the winner of The Ultimate Fighter: Nogueira vs Mir all the way back in 2008, but his UFC career proved to be one of Sisyphean torment and humiliation that included, somehow, impossibly, being the only man to lose a UFC fight to Tito Ortiz during his last six years in the company. Bader left for free agency and Bellator in 2016 and became its light-heavyweight champion on his first night with the organization, and just two years later he became its first-ever simultaneous double-champion after knocking out the legendary Fedor Emelianenko and taking the heavyweight title. Bader would go on to lose his 205-pound crown, but Fedor never forgot his 35-second drubbing at the American wrestler's hands, and for his retirement fight, he demanded a rematch. Thus it was that the entire mixed martial arts community watched with bated breath as on February 4th, 2023, Fedor Emelianenko walked into the cage one last time and promptly got the absolute crap beaten out of him again. Ryan Bader remains undefeated at heavyweight. Who comes next, we'll have to see.

Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

Vadim Nemkov - 17-2 (1), 4 Defenses

Bellator CEO Scott Coker has been complicating title reigns with tournaments for decades and he's not about to stop now. Vadim Nemkov won the Bellator Light-Heavyweight Championship from Ryan Bader in 2020, and his title reign was immediately wrapped up in the Light-Heavyweight Grand Prix that started the following year. Nemkov, a Fedor Emelianenko protege, former Spetsnaz operative and understated wrecking machine who hadn't lost a fight since his early-career days in Rizin back in 2016, continued his Bellator streak by handling the always-game Phil Davis and dealing with some trouble en route to submitting Julius Anglickas, but then the tournament came to a screeching halt. Bellator threw all its marketing cash at the ultimately ill-fated Bellator 277 in April of 2022, and a sizable chunk of that misfortune came from both its championship and tournament-final co-main event. Corey Anderson looked handily en route to defeating Nemkov, only to unintentionally headbutt him while diving in to throw a punch. The headbutt opened an uncloseable gash on Nemkov's brow--and it happened five seconds before round three would've ended and allowed the judges to score a technical decision. It would be seven full months before the final got its re-do, and this time, Nemkov avoided Anderson's wrestling and controlled the fight with distance strikes en route to a unanimous decision victory. It took nearly two years for Bellator to complete an eight-man tournament, but they did it, and Vadim Nemkov is still your world's champion. Nemkov scored one more defense after defeating Yoel Romero at Bellator 297 on June 16th, and he followed it up by opining about giving up the division and the belt and moving to heavyweight. Fuck you, 205.

Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Johnny Eblen - 13-0, 1 Defenses

There's an old combat sports tradition whereby a champion isn't really a champion until they defend their title. Gegard Mousasi has been established as the best middleweight outside the UFC that, despite the one-sided nature of their fight, Johnny Eblen's victory over him was treated as an aberration rather than the passing of a torch. It didn't matter that Eblen was undefeated, widely considered one of the absolute best by his cohort at American Top Team or that he'd dropped Mousasi on his face with his bare hands, the world needed verification. On February 4th at Bellator 290, they got it. Fedor Emelianenko's team was intending to pull one big, beautiful night of success out of the ether for their leader's retirement fight, but it was not to be: Vadim Nemkov had to pull out of the card thanks to an injury, Fedor himself was crushed for the second time by heavyweight champion Ryan Bader, and middleweight hopeful Anatoly Tokov was competitive for the first couple of rounds but was subsequently washed out by Eblen's overwhelming assault. Johnny Eblen is a defending champion now, and as things always seem to go, the conversation changed overnight from his being overrated to his being better than everyone in the UFC. Nuance escapes our fanbase. Thanks to Fabian Edwards defeating the perennially sleepy Gegard Mousasi in May, the next title defense will in fact be Johnny Eblen vs Fabian Edwards sometime later this year.

Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs

Yaroslav Amosov - 27-0, 1 Defense

There may not be a fighter alive who's had a tougher year than Yaroslav Amosov. Bellator picking Amosov up in 2018 was an obvious choice: He was already a world champion in Sambo and an MMA champion in Russia, already 19-0 with 17 finishes, and already being talked up by his training partners as quite possibly the best welterweight in the world. By 2021 he'd run up a six-fight winning streak in Bellator and earned a shot at world champion Douglas Lima, and he didn't waste a second of it, dominating Lima in every round. His success far outstripped his fame, but a scheduled title defense against superstar Michael "Venom" Page in May of 2022 promised to finally give him the spotlight. That, obviously, did not happen. In the wake of Russia's invasion of his homeland Ukraine Amosov returned home to evacuate his family and, once they had passed the border, notified Bellator he was pulling out of the fight and fighting in the war. Six months later, having liberated his home city of Irpin, he posted video of his troop returning to his mother's home to retrieve his Bellator championship belt, which he'd kept hidden in a closet. Amosov's return bout, a title unification against interim champion Logan Storley, was announced for February 25th, just barely one year after the invasion began, and after a year and a half not just away from competition but actively fighting in a war, there were many questions about how much like his old self Amosov could realistically look. As it turned out: He looked even better. When they'd first fought back in 2020, Storley gave Amosov all he could handle and the fight came down to a split decision; in 2023, Amosov wiped the floor with him, repeatedly hurting him standing and winning the entirety of the wrestling war. His home may still be in crisis, but Yaroslav Amosov is, at least, back on his throne.

Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Usman Nurmagomedov - 17-0, 0 Defenses

If there's a single, developing throughline of mixed martial arts in 2022, it's the growing power of the Dagestani wrestling brigade. Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov built an army of ultra-grapplers, and after his passing the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and Adulmanap's son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world. Usman, Khabib's cousin (as well as the younger brother of Umar Nurmagomedov, undefeated and ranked UFC bantamweight), took to Bellator in April of 2021 and proceeded to burn an undefeated path through the Manny Muros and Patrik Pietiläe of the world. His style was a little more eclectic--lots of spinning kicks, lots of stick-and-move jabs and stomps to the leg--but the resemblance became uncanny once he inevitably, and easily, ragdolled his opponents to the canvas and generally choked them out in short order thereafter. When he was announced as the #1 contender to Bellator's lightweight title, I was somewhat miffed: He hadn't beaten any top contenders, Bellator had already held a title eliminator and it was won in a crushing thirty-second knockout by Tofiq Musayev, the whole thing smacked of a pathetic attempt to glom onto some of Khabib's mainstream attention. I at no point said that he wouldn't very, very easily win. At Bellator 288 on November 18th, Usman very, very easily won, defeating Patricky "Pitbull" Freire at every aspect of the game and leaving him sans both his championship and one eyebrow. Usman's first fight as champion was both a defense and an entry into the first round of Bellator's Lightweight Grand Prix on March 3rd at Bellator 292, where he met, crushed, and retired former UFC champion Benson Henderson, handing him just the third submission loss of a 17-year, 42-fight career. He'll be facing fellow tournament semifinalist Brent Primus later this year.

Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Patrício Pitbull - 35-7, 1 Defense

Patrício Pitbull has had a weird goddamn year. Pitbull has long been the GOAT of Bellator, sometimes to the company's open chagrin--there were definitely times they would have vastly preferred a Pat Curran or a Michael Chandler to carry their banner, and Patrício had this unfortunate habit of not just beating them but making them look like shit. By mid-2021, he was Bellator's dual featherweight and lightweight champion, he was on a seven-fight win streak, and he was a finalist in their Featherweight Grand Prix. And then undefeated rising star A.J. McKee dropped him and choked him out in two minutes. Bellator, clearly, felt they had hit the jackpot and were going to be riding the McKee train for some time, as by their rematch ten months later, McKee was the centerpiece of all of their advertising. It was somewhat awkward when, as he had done to so many before, Patrício took him to a victorious decision that made McKee kind of look like shit, neutralizing his offense in the clinch, jabbing under his range, and grinding away the clock. Bellator pushed for a trilogy, but McKee, pissed off, tired of cutting weight and worried about having it happen all over again, declined and moved up to lightweight. Instead of a big-money rematch, Patrício was left to face top contender Ádám Borics, and the match, while hard-fought, was not particularly entertaining or memorable. Pitbull's next fight was the rare cross-promotional bout, facing Rizin's featherweight champion Kleber Koike Erbst on the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin special. It was the only fight on the card that wasn't particularly competitive: He shut Kleber down completely and won a wide decision. There is only one featherweight king outside the UFC. And he's now on a two-fight losing streak, with one of those fights being a bantamweight loss to Sergio Pettis and the other a lightweight knockout to Chihiro Suzuki that he took on four days' notice. Bellator: Please stop killing Pitbull.

Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Sergio Pettis - 23-5, 2 Defenses

It's been a long, strange trip for Sergio Pettis. When the world was introduced to Sergio as part of the UFC back in 2013 he was just the smaller, less visible alternative to his big brother Anthony, who was riding high as the lightweight champion of the world and the face of fucking Wheaties. but Anthony's time atop the sport was ultimately short, and Sergio, at seven years younger, had plenty of time to develop. In 2023, Anthony Pettis is seemingly retired from mixed martial arts after losing most of the back half of his career, and Sergio is arguably the best bantamweight in the world outside of the UFC. His move to Bellator in 2020 paid dividends: Within three fights he was a champion, and in his fourth, he knocked out the highly-regarded Kyoji Horiguchi in a huge upset and officially arrived as one of the world's best. And then he got injured and spent more than a year and a half on the shelf, killing all of his momentum. Sergio returned right as Bellator's Bantamweight Grand Prix ended, but rather than fighting the winner, he was given a more esoteric contest: A title defense against Bellator's greatest fighter, Patrício Pitbull, who was making his 135-pound debut and attempting to win a third divisional title. Unfortunately, Pitbull's best features are his speed and power, and cut down to 135 he both lacked his knockout power and was, for the first time in his career, the slower fighter. Sergio won a unanimous decision, retained his throne, and will now, presumably, fight to reunify the title against Patchy Mix later this year.

Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion

Patchy Mix - 18-1, 0 Defenses

There's something to be said for how silly it is to have an interim championship last so long that it not only has multiple defenses but multiple titleholders, but there's nothing silly about the path Patchy Mix took to get it. Long one of Bellator's best bantamweights and arguably one of the best in the world altogether, Patchy "No Love" Mix has torn people apart across the globe, be it his five fights as the King of the Cage champion, his ninety-second submission of Yuki Motoya in Japan, or his 7-1 run in Bellator. The only loss in his entire career was a 2020 decision against Juan Archuleta, where the first five-round fight of Mix's life saw him exhausted and ultimately outworked. But he rebuilt, and he took Bellator's bantamweight grand prix by storm, and on April 22, 2023, he didn't just defeat Raufeon Stots, he knocked him out cold in eighty seconds. Mix won the grand prix, the million-dollar pot and the interim championship--and now that Sergio Pettis is back, all Patchy has to do is wait for their showdown.

Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Cris Cyborg - 26-2 (1), 4 Defenses

Yup. It's 2023 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a muay thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Cyborg decided her next fight would be a boxing match, and on September 25 she faced Simone da Silva, a jobber to the stars coming off twelve straight losses who had been knocked out just one month prior. Undeterred, she had her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. It's kind of tiring to watch the second-best women's featherweight in MMA history take repeated nothing boxing matches, but on the other hand, what on Earth is there better for her to do right now, other than, uh, use her instagram account to call for a military coup of her home country in the hopes of restoring fascism to power?

Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Liz Carmouche - 19-7, 2 Defenses

It took more than a decade and some controversy, but Liz Carmouche got her flowers. "Girl-Rilla" was just as present a figure in establishing women's MMA in the mainstream, but she's the most consistently forgotten because she was the losing fighter in all of those establishing moments. She was a challenger for the early, pre-fame Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship, and was winning on the scorecards before Marloes Coenen choked her out. She was a central part of the inaugural Invicta FC card, and was planned as a title contender before the big show came calling. She became one half of the first women's fight in UFC history, and at one point had Ronda Rousey in a nearly destiny-defying neck crank, but was ultimately submitted in the first round. She's one of two women to ever defeat Valentina Shevchenko, but when given a second chance at the now-UFC champion Shevchenko, she fell short. Despite her powerful wrestling and submission skills, she was eternally denied the top of the mountain. So it was both particularly appropriate and particularly cruel when she finally won a championship on April 22, 2022--in a way that displeased everybody. Standing champion Juliana Velasquez was winning on every scorecard, but Liz Carmouche got her in the crucifix position and landed a number of, respectfully, small elbows, but referee Mike Beltran called a TKO to the immediate chagrin of the entirely safe ex-champion. The controversy made a rematch all but mandatory, and it took Bellator most of the year to do it, but the two met in the cage to run it back at Bellator 289 on December 9, and this time there was no controversy, as Velasquez submitted to an armbar two rounds in. The weirdness didn't stop there: Liz's next title defense against Deanna Bennett also hit the skids, as Bennett missed weight and was thus ineligible to win the championship. Carmouche put it on the line anyway, and fortunately, she choked Bennett out in the fourth round. She's most likely defending against Ilima-Lei MacFarlane later this year.

ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 Defenses

ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs

Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 Defenses

Anatoly Malykhin's bizzare two-year journey through ONE Championship has finally come to a place of rest. Ascension in the heavyweight division has never been the longest road in the world, but in ONE, where they don't actually bother with divisional rankings past lightweight and there have somehow only been five undisputed heavyweight championship bouts in eight years, the road is very short and easily traversed through violent punchings. Thus, when Anatoly Malykhin arrived in 2023 and punhed two men out in five minutes, that was more than sufficient. But the standing champion, Arjan Bhullar, just couldn't make it to the cage. They were supposed to fight in February of 2022, but Bhullar was hurt, so Malykhin got an interim title by destroying Kirill Grishenko. They were supposed to unify the belts in September, but Arjan was hurt, so they pushed it to December--and then Arjan played contractual hardball, so in a truly baffling reversal, ONE had Malykhin drop to 225 pounds and destroy double-champ Reinier de Ridder instead. The heavyweight unification got rebooked for March of 2023--and then Bhullar pulled out again. It wasn't until June 23rd, with their bout unceremoniously placed smack-dab in the middle of a Friday Fights Muay Thai card, that the match two years in the making finally happened. And it was...massively underwhelming, with Bhullar seeming alternately frozen and as though he wanted to be absolutely anywhere else in the world. Malykhin used him as a punching bag for two and a half rounds, with Bhullar at one point penalized for trying to escape the ring, and Malykhin put a stamp on it with a TKO in the third round. Finally--mercifully--the heavyweight championship is unified. Anatoly Malykhin is whole. And he immediately began talking about dropping to 205 for Reinier's OTHER belt, because, uh, ONE doesn't have any other fucking heavyweights to fight.

ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs

Reinier de Ridder - 16-1, 2 Defenses

There's a long tradition of B-league hype in mixed martial arts. The hardcore fanbase chafes under both the total ubiquity of the UFC as a product and the way they set themselves up as the end-all be-all of the sport. As the B-leagues create dominant champions of their own, the fanbase inevitably rallies behind them as equal to, if not greater than, the UFC's equivalent titleholder, and further, as evidence of other companies having even better talent. And once or twice a generation, they're right! But most of the time, they're not. Fighters who destroy their B-league equivalents will commonly take a step outside their comfort zone and get immediately rolled by reality. Reinier de Ridder, more than any other competitor, was the popular argument for ONE's supremacy over the UFC: An undefeated ultra-grappler with belts at two divisions, one of which happened to be the UFC's permanently embattled light-heavyweight class. The remarkable ease with which he ragdolled and submitted his opponents, and the shaky nature of his UFC peers, led to wide exultation of his skills and regular comments from ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong about his prospects against the best the world had to offer. It was consequently something of a bummer when he fought Anatoly Malykhin, the first opponent in years he didn't have a strength or grappling advantage over, and looked immediately lost when his takedown attempts did nothing. He had no visible striking defense to speak of and was ultimately, and distressingly easily, destroyed. The cycle has played out once again, the latest idol has lost, and now Reinier de Ridder will have to move forward. He lost a grappling match to Tye Ruotolo on May 5th, because ONE is silly.

ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs

Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses

ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs

Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses

It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE'S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE's repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. With the death of his 18 year-old sister and fellow ONE competitor Victoria Lee, the future of the entire Lee fighting family is both up in the air and the last possible thing that could matter at this moment in time. For now, they have to grieve.

ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs

Tang Kai - 15-2, 0 Defenses

Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China's WBK (after investigating, we THINK it's World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz "Ong Bak" Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai's weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai's Dragon Gym and Phuket's legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It's worked out quite well: He hasn't lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China's Rebel FC got ONE's attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he's held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare. And then Tang Kai busted his knee and announced he was out with no definite return date. Great job, everybody.

ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs

Fabricio Andrade - 9-2 (1), 0 Defenses

The second time was the charm. When Fabricio "Wonder Boy" Andrade joined ONE Championship back in 2020 he was a virtual unknown in the mixed martial arts world, a 20-3 kickboxer but only a 3-2 mixed martial artist who'd been fighting out in the regional circuit of China. His association with Tiger Muay Thai put him on ONE's radar, and his visible striking skills despite being just 21 at the time made him interesting enough for a developmental contract. Said contract proceeded to develop into Andrade going on a five-fight winning streak that only got more dominant as he met tougher competition, and three straight first-round knockouts punched his ticket to the championship picture. His first appearance in the spotlight, unfortunately, went a touch awry. First, bantamweight champion John Lineker lost his title on the scale after missing weight, meaning only Andrade was eligible to become champion, and he was well on his way to doing so before hitting Lineker with an errant strike to the groin so hard it shattered his cup, and with the fight not yet halfway complete, it had to be rendered a No Contest. It took four months to get to the rematch, and it was much more closely contested, but after four rounds Lineker threw in the towel, his face having been punched too swollen to continue. Fabricio Andrade is 25 and a world goddamn champion.

ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs

Demetrious Johnson - 31-4-1, 0 Defenses

The king has returned. Demetrious Johnson's 2019 debut with ONE Championship was essentially scandalous. "Mighty Mouse" had long been a fan favorite of the lighter weight classes, a 5'3" combat machine who had been going the distance with world champions like Kid Yamamoto and Dominick Cruz while still working a day job in a warehouse, but it was only in 2012 when he dedicated himself to mixed martial arts as his full-time job that he became a star. He won the UFC's flyweight tournament and became its inaugural champion, and his talents are the reason a division that has existed for a decade has only had five champions--three of whom came in the last two years after he left. By 2018, Johnson had one of the longest winning streaks in the UFC, was the all-time recordholder for championship defenses in the UFC and had recorded some of the most outstanding finishes in the history of the UFC. By 2019, he was out of the company. Johnson and the UFC never got along--or, to be blunt, Johnson was one of the few publicly calling the UFC out on its bullshit. When he won the flyweight title and became a world champion while only getting paid $23k/23k he let it be known, when the UFC cut sponsorship money in the Reebok era he noted the raw deal it gave the fighters, and when Dana White tried to force him to take fights up at bantamweight by threatening to kill the flyweight division if he didn't, he told the world. After Henry Cejudo beat him in a razor-close coinflip decision and took the bargaining leverage of his championship away, it was over in a heartbeat. Dana White personally disliked him enough that he traded him to ONE Championship in exchange for their welterweight champion, Ben Askren. Johnson proceeded to immediately win ONE's flyweight grand prix, but took the first stoppage loss of his entire career in his shot at Adriano Moraes and his world championship and engendered a thousand MMA thinkpieces about if his time as a top fighter was over. A year and a half later, he got his rematch, and on August 27 at ONE on Prime Video 1 he returned the favor, handing Moraes his own first stoppage loss after knocking him out with a flying knee. The trilogy match was inevitable, and on May 5th, Johnson beat Moraes by a comprehensive decision, ending the story--and maybe his career. He says he's not sure if he's coming back yet. Fingers crossed.

ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Jarred Brooks - 20-2 (1), 0 Defenses

Jarred Brooks dealt with some crap on his way to a title. By 2017 he was one of the most-heralded flyweight prospects in the sport: An undefeated 13-0 multi-champion as an amateur, an undefeated 12-0 as a professional with fights across three separate weight classes, his heavy wrestling-and-grappling grinding style ground most of his opponents to dust. He took the moniker of "The Monkey God" thanks to his unorthodox striking and wrestling entries--when you're not afraid of grappling, you can get creative with the striking. And then he hit the UFC in 2017 and everything kind of went to hell. Three of his four UFC bouts went to split decision: A debut victory against Eric Shelton Brooks probably should've lost, a followup loss against future champion Deiveson Figueiredo Brooks probably should've won, an intervening bout where Brooks was easily dominating Jose Torres only to score the rare MMA own goal and knock himself out after smacking his head on the ground doing a big, showy slam, and a third and final split decision victory over Roberto Sanchez that really, really shouldn't have been split at all. And then the UFC cut him, despite being 2 and 2 and having gone the distance with the biggest new prospect in the division, because the UFC Doesn't Like Flyweights. So Brooks went over to Rizin, where he intended to build his way up as the next big foreign threat to top star Kyoji Horiguchi--and it was over in eleven seconds, after an inadvertant headbutt cut his opponent's eyebrow open and the blood-unfriendly Japanese network called a no-contest. His international comeback was further destroyed by COVID, and Brooks found himself iced for two straight years as he waited for the dust to settle. By November of 2021, he was making his long-delayed ONE debut; by June of 2022, he was 3-0 and the top contender. And then, of course, his title fight got delayed another six months thanks to an injury. On December 3rd, 2022, he finally got his long-belated shot at a major title, and shocking no one, he wrestled the shit out of Joshua Pacio for five straight rounds. Four years later than expected, Jarred Brooks has international gold. And because ONE's weight classes don't matter, he immediately called out 135-pound champ Demetrious Johnson, and because ONE's sport classes don't matter, he's grappling Mikey Musumeci for his submission championship on August 4th.

ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Xiong Jing Nan - 18-2, 7 Defenses

Xiong Jing Nan dreamed of lifting weights. She'd enjoyed sports as a child, and when China started its national push for Olympic supremacy she began training heavily in hope of joining the national weightlifting team. But then she met aspirants for its boxing team and fell in love with the idea of living out a martial arts movie and getting to hit people for fun and profit and she never looked back. She turned pro in 2014 and immediately became a standout, going 9-1 in China's Kunlun Fight promotion with wins across three separate weight classes. What made her truly dangerous wasn't one-punch power, but the ability to break her opponents with constant pressure striking, scoring TKOs with combinations stretched out across dozens of consecutive, unending strikes. The story was no different when she moved to ONE in 2017, and she was strawweight champion within two fights. ONE's women's MMA divisions have been its most stable, each having had exactly one champion, and they were so dominant that they inevitably had to fight each other--and, hilariously, traded wins back and forth in the process. 115 lbs champion Angela Lee went up to 125 to challenge for Xiong Jing Nan's belt but Nan stopped her with body kicks in the fifth round, and half a year later Nan dropped down to 115 to challenge for Lee's belt only for Lee to choke her out with twelve seconds left in the fight. Xiong has notched three successful title defenses since, which set her up for her greatest challenger yet: Angela Lee, again, apparently. Despite ONE's best attempts, Xiong successfully defended her title against Lee again, nearly finishing her in the first round and ultimately winning a decision.

ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs

Angela Lee - 11-3, 5 Defenses

Angela Lee is one of ONE's biggest stars and has been widely called its postergirl, and while the metrics may be debatable, she's an extremely solid choice. Her background is varied both culturally and martially: Born in Canada in a Singaporean-South Korean family made entirely of martial artists who all collectively moved to Hawaii when she was a child, she was not only training alongside them as a child, but training in multiple disciplines. By 15 she was a national Pankration champion, by 18 she had been signed by ONE before having a single professional fight, and by 20 she had two black belts and three defenses of ONE's atomweight championship. Lee is an extremely versatile fighter, capable of backing up her aggressive if sometimes loose striking with very solid defensive and offensive grappling, and her only two losses have come when fighting up a class at 125 pounds, against both its champion Xiong Jing Nan--whom she later choked out in a rematch at 115--and world jiu-jitsu champion Michelle Nicolini in a very, very close decision. Lee went on hiatus at the end of 2019 to have a baby and intended to be back by the end of 2020, but then the pandemic happened and she decided to use her cache within the company to just sit it out, making her arguably the smartest fighter in the world. ONE declined to make an interim championship, so she returned to competition this past March as a defending champion and main-evented the ONE X supercard against its atomweight queen in her absence, Stamp Fairtex, and notched her fifth title defense after choking her out in the second round. She got a trilogy fight with Nan on September 30, once again coming to her weight class and challenging for her title, but ultimately fell short and lost a decision. In the wake of her 18 year-old sister Victoria's tragic passing, Angela and the rest of the Lee family have shut down their gym and are focusing on much more important things than fighting. In June, Chatri said Angela Lee was most likely retiring for good, but is going to take a little more time before the decision is made. Seo Hee Ham and Stamp Fairtex will be fighting for an interim title at ONE 14 on September 1st.

Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs

Roberto de Souza - 15-3, 2 Defenses

Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza is trying to become the new Gegard Mousasi. On April 17 he had the chance to avenge the only loss of his career, a half-knockout half-injury against "Hollywood" Johnny Case back in 2019, and he succeeded in emphatic fashion, climbing Case's back, locking him in an inverted triangle choke and eventually forcing an armbar. He's now 14-1 and inarguably one of the best lightweights outside of the UFC, but unlike most of the other fighters to bear that title, he has made it clear he has no interest in changing that. Where the A.J. McKees and Michael Chandlers of the world want to test free agency and notoriety, Roberto de Souza is happy in Japan, both because his Rizin pay is fairly lucrative and his entire family jiu-jitsu business is based in the country. This is admirable, but it's also a little unfortunate: Rizin really only has around a dozen lightweights under contract, and "Satoshi" has already beaten a third of them. He may be waiting for a Spike Carlyle or a Luiz Gustavo to work their way into contention, but the Rizin ranks hold few surprises for him at this point. It was thus of particular interest when the main event for the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin card was announced as Roberto de Souza vs AJ McKee--a test of where Souza ranks with the rest of the world's competition. Unfortunately for him and Rizin, the answer was "under them." He positionally threatened McKee and was able to land some solid strikes in the final round, but was otherwise controlled and lost a decision. On May 6th, Satoshi beat Spike Carlyle in a fantastic fight--but it was a non-title fight, because Japanese promoters are still real scared of their own belts. Satoshi fought Patricky Pitbull at Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 29th--in another non-title fight, naturally--and took the first definitive beating of his career, getting utterly outclassed and ultimately stopped on leg kicks in three rounds.

Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Vugar Karamov - 19-4, 0 Defenses

Rizin needed a new champion after Kleber Koike Erbst lost the featherweight title on the scale, and they were by no means done punishing him yet, so the fight to fill the void did not in any way involve him. This was, of course, also part of Rizin's secret hope that promotional superstar Mikuru Asakura could fill the void--but it was not to be, as Azerbaijani grappler Vugar Karamov, who's been slowly whittling away at Rizin's 145-pound division over the last three and a half years, finally got his shot at the belt and he did not waste a goddamn second. Karamov chucked Asakura down, controlled him and choked him out in just two minutes and forty-one seconds. Another Asakura falls, and Vugar Karamov is now a world goddamn champion. Which probably has something to do with Rizin announcing its first-ever event outside of Japan--in Azerbaijan. Congratulations, Vugar. You're an international representative of the sport. A match with Kleber seems outright inevitable, but Kleber also managed to get into a scuffle with both Pitbull brothers at the show, so Rizin may pursue a bad blood fight and leave Karamov to fight a rematch with the only man to beat him in Rizin, Yutaka Saito.

Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Juan Archuleta - 29-4, 0 Defenses

Rizin has its first-ever American champion, and it happens to be a fighter with their partner and rival, Bellator. Seven months after Kyoji Horiguchi vacated it--and almost three years since its last defense--the vacant bantamweight throne was finally filled. Rizin had hoped to have Kai Asakura fight for the belt (do you notice a pattern, here?) agaisnt Archuleta at Bellator x Rizin 2, but Kai busted his knee in training and Rizin's 2021 Bantamweight Grand Prix Champion, Hiromasa Ougikubo, stepped in. And he was promptly ground down into dust by Archuleta's wrestling game. A lot of Rizin fans took to social media to register their displeasure at Archuleta's victory--I saw him called artless and passionless and a pox on the spirit of fighting--to which I say, my friends, I was there when the truest expression of mixed martial arts was a Gracie holding someone in full guard while hitting them in the ribs with their heel for forty-five minutes. If you don't LIKE wrestling, that's perfectly fine, but if you think teeth-grittingly long grappling exhibitions without a climax are counter to the spirit of mixed martial arts, you have never truly understood it. Juan Archuleta finished his celebration by yelling at Kai Asakura to get his shit together and find him, and I'd be shocked if Archuleta/Asakura wasn't the main event of Rizin's New Year's Eve special this year.

Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs

Seika Izawa - 11-0, 1 Defense

All hail the new queen. After years of reigning as Japan's best atomweight, the legendary Ayaka Hamasaki fell not once but twice to the rookie Seika Izawa. A 24 year-old who was pushed into judo as a child by a frustrated mother who was tired of her constant fighting with her brothers, Izawa discovered a love for grappling that led her to win junior championships in judo, wrestling and sumo alike. She would still be pursuing judo had the pandemic not shut down much of its competitive scene, but fortunately, mixed martial arts is a terrible sport run by monsters who don't care about things like deadly diseases, which made it a tempting professional prospect. Four months after her formal MMA training began Izawa was winning fights in DEEP, less than a year after that she was DEEP's strawweight champion, and one year later she was dominating one of the best women's fighters in history on Rizin's New Year's Eve special. As Japanese organizations tend to do, frustratingly, the fight was a non-title affair, meaning Izawa had to come back and do it again on April 17. After a scary moment where Hamasaki almost stole an armbar, Izawa resumed her wrestling domination and formally took Rizin's atomweight championship. As entirely fresh blood, the world of Rizin's talent is open to her--but that also means she's got a real, real big target on her back. Rizin's Superatomweight Grand Prix was both a big coming-out party for Izawa and a series of opportunities to look shockingly mortal: She had a fair bit of trouble with Anastasiya Svetkivska in the semifinals before ultimately submitting her, but her berth in the finals against former rival Si Woo Park proved the toughest fight of her career, ending in a split decision victory she easily could have lost. Seika was supposed to face Miyuu Yamamoto at Rizin 42, but after Yamamoto had to pull out with an injury, Izawa was instead scheduled to face...the last person Yamamoto beat, the 5-3 Suwanan Boonsorn, at DEEP Jewels 41 on July 28. Izawa choked her out, shockingly. It took more than an entire year, but Izawa finally had a title defense against the 8-4 grappler Claire Lopez, and Izawa scored the fastest championship victory in Rizin history, choking her out in just barely one minute.