THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR JANUARY
THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR JANUARY
Welcome to another year in our beautiful, broken sport.
It's the dawn of a new year. Thank you for coming along on the beginning of another twelve months of one of the best, dumbest non-sports in the world, although it will thankfully always be better than slap fighting. As has been the sport's tradition for some time we're in for a January that's both sleepy and congested--there are only two UFCs and five major events this month, but all five of them are happening in one seven-day period. Good luck!
THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
STEPHAN BONNAR - 4/4/1977 - 12/22/2022
The world didn't find out about it until almost a week later, but Stephan Bonnar died on December 22, 2022, and boy, it's fucked up.
It's hard to be a fan of the sport in the modern era and not be at least partially aware of Stephan Bonnar's career. He was a lifelong martial artist, an early believer in cross-training and a finalist on the original Ultimate Fighter tournament. His finale fight with Forrest Griffin has been mythologized a bit by the company as the saving grace of the UFC and the sport, and that's not exactly true--Spike had already greenlit a second season of the show, the UFC was already booked for more TV cards, life would have gone on--but the fight's afterburner effect on the sport's mainstreaming was very, very real. And it was big enough that it overshadowed the entirety of his career.
Which isn't really fair, because Stephan Bonnar was a hell of a fighter. In twenty-four fights across just over a decade, outside of a contrversial cut stoppage thanks to a headbutt, he was only ever defeated by world champions. He took Forrest Griffin to the limit twice, he gave a rookie Jon Jones hell, and he was only truly stopped once in his entire career and it took Anderson goddamn Silva to do it. He should, by all rights, be a legend of the sport.
But it's hard to not remember stories for their endings. He fought Anderson Silva on a month's notice, but he tested positive for drostanolone and retired in the shadows. He had an ill-advised Bellator revival just to lose to Tito Ortiz. He tried professional wrestling and showed up in TNA but kept injuring himself. He spiraled into addiction in his personal life, got arrested for DUIs and public disturbances, and was publicly visibuly mainly for video rants about COVID being a hoax and why no one would give him more pain pills.
And that's the thing that makes these deaths all the more tragic: The need for help was plainly visible. Dying of heart failure as a world-class athlete at 45 is not a thing that should happen, and it begs anger--at the UFC for not taking care of its legends, at Bonnar himself for playing chicken with life-destroying diseases, at the sport as a whole for the continual reminder that there's no retirement plan for fighters. It's a rough fucking life and when you look at the alumni of TUF 1--two dead too young, two fighting far past their prime, half of them broke--it's impossible not to want the sport to do better.
Stephan Bonnar leaves behind a 15-9 fight record, a UFC hall of fame ring, a widow, and a son named Griffin in tribute to the other half of his most famous fight.
On the topic of the UFC's money-grubbing, pay-per-view prices have once again risen. Starting with this month's 283, every pay-per-view will now cost $79.99. Ask yourself if you would have paid eighty dollars for Colby Covington vs Jorge Masvidal and adjust your plans accordingly.
Tatiana Suarez was fucking up the entire Women's Strawweight Division and was pegged by almost everyone as a future champion up until a series of neck and knee injuries put her on the shelf for three and a half god damned years. Presuming she does make it into the cage this time, the big question will be how she's held up after so many injuries and so much time off, but if she's anything like her old self, it could immediately shake up the title picture.
Also in women's MMA news: Sara McMann, Olympic silver medalist and one-time UFC Women's Bantamweight title challenger, is going to Bellator to round out their featherweight division. The UFC didn't release her, exactly--her planned bout with Aspen Ladd was the last on her contract and when Ladd failed to make weight and was medically ruled out, the UFC decided to not fight McMann's contract having been fulfilled. Good luck to her and her inevitable campaign to get a Cyborg fight.
The PFL Challenger Series is back. Just like last year, the talent-scout competition will be airing every Friday at 9 PM EST on FuboTV, with eight planned episodes. If you want to see some regional competition and you're bored on Friday nights, you know where to go.
MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER
TJ Dillashaw called it a career on December 5, 2022. It's a weird ending to a weird career--at one point Dillashaw seemed like an absolute lock for greatest-of-all-time conversations regarding the bantamweight division and was a sure-thing hall of famer, and then he tested positive for EPO, got knocked out by Henry Cejudo, served a two-year drug suspension, barely scraped by Cory Sandhagen and lost to Aljamain Sterling because his shoulder refused to stay in its socket. And now he's retired.
I have to be clear: I'm biased on this one. TJ Dillashaw's career-defining upset destruction of Renan Barão is one of my favorite fights of all time, and almost nine years later it still stands as one of the prettiest displays of striking in MMA history. I have an affection for the man's work and it would be dishonest to say it doesn't impact my opinion of him. But the total torpedoing of Dillashaw's career has always felt profoundly weird. As far as public allocution goes, his crimes were a) doing PEDs, b) being a dick in sparring and c) making Urijah Faber sad. And I'm all for calling people out for hurting people in sparring and sneaking PEDs into their creatine, but that's also most people in the sport, and I've never been able to shake the feeling that Dillashaw's reputation for villainy was in some part scapegoating.
But he still concussed Chris Holdsworth in training, so fuck 'im. TJ Dillashaw retires at 17-5 as a two-time UFC bantamweight champion.
Brandon "The Truth" Vera retired in the cage after a first-round knockout loss to Amir Aliakbari on December 3rd, and if you started following MMA anytime in the last decade and a half, you will have no idea that he was, at one point, the single hottest prospect in the sport.
When the UFC was blowing up into the mainstream, Brandon Vera was one of its most-hyped phenomenons. The heavyweight division in 2006 was still the land of awkward giants and lumbering brawlers, and then you had Brandon Vera, a fast, svelte kickboxer who wasn't just beating everyone placed in front of him but making them look like they weren't even playing the same sport. When he knocked out former champion Frank Mir in just over one minute he established himself as the next heavyweight contender--which he insisted he would follow by becoming the first man to hold the heavyweight and light-heavyweight titles at the same time, a claim that was, at the time, surprisingly feasible.
Instead, he became the first man to show the new mainstream audience just how badly contract negotiations could go. Unable to come to terms on money for his title fight, the UFC elected to simply remove Vera from contendership, freeze him for a year and replace him with Randy Couture, and when Vera finally compromised, a return to contendership eluded him. He lost decisions he arguably should've won--Tim Sylvia, Keith Jardine, Randy Couture--and could, potentially, have made it back to contendership were it not for those failings. But by 2010 Jon Jones had arrived, and he ended Vera's title hopes by cracking his skull with an elbow, and hhe was simply never the same.
He left the UFC in 2013 and moved to the nascent ONE Championship, where he within two fights was the heavyweight champion he'd always dreamed of being--but it was against opponents like Hideki "Shrek" Sekine and Mauro Cerilli. Aung La Nsang knocked him out of his double-champion hopes, Arjan Bhullar took his heavyweight title, and Amir Aliakbari took his last fight, and that is the end of a career that once seemed poised to be legendary. Vera retires at 16-10 (1).
December 3rd also saw the swan song of Scott "Hot Sauce" Holtzman. It feels profoundly unfair to write a eulogy for Scott Holtzman's career under multiple-time champions and title contenders, but that is, in its way, also a summation of his career. Holtzman entered the UFC in 2015 as the undefeated lightweight champion of the XTREME FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIPS, but over seven years in the company he ultimately became a gatekeeper. Everyone he lost to was a top talent--the worst blemish on his career was Nik Lentz, which is nothing to sneeze at--but the fights were the kind of one-sided affairs, and eventually outright knockouts, that make it clear a fighter isn't destined for the top fifteen.
And there's nothing wrong with that! Not every career is a championship career, and it's damned impressive to be such an effective crusher of the up-and-coming ranks that you hang out in the biggest company in the sport for most of a decade. He had a winning record in the UFC, he knocked a man cold on the undercard of Khabib vs Conor, he won a Fight of the Night award and defeated a legend in Jim Miller. He wanted to go out on a win, but he got a hard-fought, split decision loss to another legend in Clay Guida instead, and hey--that's better than BJ Penn did.
Scott Holtzman retires at 14-6. Have a nice future, Hot Sauce.
WHAT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER
The month kicked off with ONE on Prime Video 5: de Ridder vs Malykhin on the 2nd. ONE was running a bit out of steam as the year wound down, and it wasn't helped by the Muay Thai Lightweight Championship getting bumped from this card to January. Denice Zamboanga took a split decision over Heqin Lin, Oumar "Reug Reug" Kane won a very slow restling decision against Zhasur Mirzamukhamedov, the Ruotolo brothers took grappling victories again, with Tye wristlocking Marat Gafurov and Kade taking a decision victory to retain his Lightweight Grappling Championship over Matheus Gabriel, Edson Marques knocked out Eduard Folayang, Lowen Tynanes took a split decision over Dae Sung Park, and Jackie Buntan beat up Amber Kitchen in a Muay Thai bout. oh, and the much-ballyhooed debut of KSW champion Roberto Soldić ended in a no-contest after he took a knee to the junk. The main event was both the biggest and most seemingly inevitable story: ONE put arguably their most-hyped fighter, double champion Reinier de Ridder, up against interim heavyweight champion Anatoly Malykhin. de Ridder, as both an exceptional grappler and an undefeated fighter, had been cited as proof they had the best talent. To be clear, there's no shame in losing, and there's especially no shame in losing to someone who fights a weight class up from you. But de Ridder looked absolutely lost, with no visible gameplan or an idea how to defend against things like "being punched," and lost both his undefeated streak, his Light-Heavyweight championship, and his hype train after getting knocked out in the first round.
ONE's year ended later that day (or the following morning, depending on your time zone) with ONE 164: Pacio vs Brooks. A longer and more kickboxing-heavy card ensued, with the highlights being Tagir Khalilov's knockout of Chorfah Tor.Sangtiannoi and ONE's Flyweight Muay Thai Grand Prix ending with Superlek Kiatmuu9 taking an extremely close decision over Panpayak Jitmuangnon. The MMA side of things was a mixture of fun, silly and sad. Chinese champion Meng Bo, who is 20-6, destroyed Jenelyn Olsim, who is 6-4, Jeremy Pacatiw choked out Tial Thang and Hu Yong knocked out Geje Eustaquio. In the penultimate MMA bout, one of MMA's best what-if pieces of performance comedy finally came to an end, as Amir Aliakbari ground-and-pounded out the 45 year-old breakout MMA star of 2006 Brandon Vera, who promptly tearfully retired, and in the main event, rescheduled from six months prior, Jarred Brooks ground out Joshua Pacio with uneventful but dominant wrestling to claim ONE's Strawweight Championship.
The UFC's punctuated month began the evening of December 3rd with UFC on ESPN: Thompson vs Holland, which wound up massively overdelivering. On the prelims: Yazmin Jauregui continued her growth as a prospect by overcoming an early knockdown to destroy Istela Nunes, Francis Marshall knocked out Marcelo Rojo, Natan Levy won an incredible, high-paced brawl with Genaro Valdèz, Jonathan Pearce outclassed and busted up Darren Elkins but could not finish him, Michael Johnson turned in a solid performance to best Marc Diakiese, Clay Guida won a decision over the retiring Scott Holtzman, and Angela Hill turned away Emily Ducote with a dominant decision. The main card was just hilariously violent. Philip Rowe had an incredible back-and-forth fight with his eventual knockout victim Niko Price, Eryk Anders made his contractually obligated one good performance per decade and knocked out Kyle Daukaus, Roman Dolidze upset Jack Hermansson after pinning him to the mat with a calf slicer so he couldn't escape getting his head caved in, Sergei Pavlovich disposed of Tai Tuivasa in just fifty-four seconds, Matheus Nicolau knocked out Matt Schnell with what I can only refer to as teleportation punches, and in the co-main event, Rafael dos Anjos easily outgrappled Bryan Barberena and choked him out in the second round. The main event was an absolute fight of the year contender, as Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson and Kevin Holland engaged in an incredibly fun, incredibly well-matched karate vs kung fu battle that started with Holland in the driver's seat and ended with Wonderboy wearing him down and forcing a corner stoppage before the final round could begin.
December 9th kicked off Bellator's big month with their last home event of the year, Bellator 289: Stots vs Sabatello. The prelims, while still pretty difficult to follow unless you're a particularly hardcore kind of fan, were a touch better than Bellator's typical fare: Cass Bell eked out a victory over Jared Scoggins, Michael Lombard and Christian Echols both knocked their opponents cold, UFC cast-off Kai Kamaka III scored his first stoppage victory in eight years Cody Law couldn't get past Cris Lencioni, Jaleel Willis dominated Kyle Crutchmer, and Ilara Joanne narrowly beat one-time title contender Denise Kielholtz. The main card was short, but important. First, undefeated muscle golem Dalton Rosta pushed himself into Bellator's middleweight top five by grounding out Anthony Adams. Second, Patchy Mix became the first finalist in Bellator's Bantamweight Grand Prix by choking Magomed Magomedov compeltely unconscious. Third, Liz Carmouche ended the controversy regarding her somewhat questionable Women's Flyweight Championship victory over Juliana Velasquez by rematching her and armbarring her in two rounds. And finally, in a main event that determined both the second Bantamweight Grand Prix finalist and the current Interim Bantamweight Champion, after months of some of the most irritating and yet abjectly boring trash talk, Danny Sabatello turned in a positively Volkmannesque performance by wrestling Stots for five rounds without ever attempting a submission or even really trying to hit him all that much, and Stots, who was repeatedly smacking him all night, won a split decision (that exceptionally should not have been split) and retained his title.
The last UFC pay-per-view of the year came with UFC 282: Błachowicz vs. Ankalaevon December 10th, which is one of the most incredibly cursed cards in mixed martial arts history. The main event fell apart two weeks out, multiple fights were scratched, poor Ovince Saint Preux had three separate opponents drop out, and when it finally took off with duct tape on its engines the thing still managed to impress with how ultimately messed up it was. But before its ignoble end, it was fun as fuck, with all but the final two fights going to finishes. Cameron Saaiman entered the UFC with a comeback knockout, T.J. Brown and Billy Quarantillo righted their losing streaks with impressive finishes, Chris Curtis and Edmen Shahbazyan knocked out ultimately overmatched opponents, Jairzinho Rozenstruik crushed Chris Daukaus in twenty seconds, and 18 year-old Raul Rosas Jr. successfully joined the UFC by cranking Jay Perrin's face off. The first three fights of the main card were also absolute barnburners. Ilia Topuria fought huge asshole Bryce Mitchell and managed to punch him silly, ragdoll the superior wrestler and choke him out in two rounds, Dricus du Plessis had a great back-and-forth with Darren Till that ended in a decision-averting half-rear-naked-choke-half-neck-crank submission, and Santiago Ponzinibbio, down two and a half rounds against late replacement Alex Morono, scored a huge right hand and his first UFC stoppage victory in four years. And then, after all of that fun, things got really, really stupid. First, a co-main event showdown between the UFC's posterboy Paddy Pimblett and the sacrificial lamb Jared Gordon resulted in Gordon outstriking and outwrestling Pimblett, winning 23 out of 24 media scorecards and somehow still losing a unanimous decision so gross that even the thoroughly pro-Paddy audience that had booed Jared all night got kind of uncomfortable about it. Second, in a main event to fill the abruptly vacant light-heavyweight throne, Jan Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev had a back-and-forth war, with both men breaking their faces, Jan nearly getting multiple leg kick TKOs and Ankalaev gritting his way through it to make a fantastic comeback and take an even clearer decision that media scorecards unanimously gave him--and the judges scored it a split draw. No winner. No champion. Dana White blamed both men for being boring, because he is a piece of shit. What a great event ruined by a horrible, souring ending.
And the UFC's year came to an ignoble end with December 17th's UFC Fight Night: Cannonier vs Strickland. It was a card the UFC seemingly threw together without a lot of thought--top ten fights n the curtain-jerking prelims, prospects eating each other alive, Sean Strickland somehow in another main event--and it felt like it, with a whole bunch of fights going somewhat unremarkably. On the prelims: Sergey Morozov wrestled Journey Newson to death, Manel Kape beat the shit out of David Dvořák but still took a decision, Rinat Fakhretdinov, Rafa García managed to upset Maheshate despite having one of his arteries severed by an elbow, Said Nurmagomedov choked out Saidyokub Kakhramonov, Matthew Semelsberger ended the short-lived Jake Matthews hype train, and Cory McKenna took a very clinchy decision over Cheyenne Vlismas. The main card was much more violent, at least at first. Michał Oleksiejczuk overcame three minutes of being wrestled by Cody Brundage, swept him and pounded him unconscious in about fifteen seconds, Drew Dober got picked apart by Bobby Green for two and a half rounds only to pin him to the fence with a combination that culminated in a vicious knockout punch, Alex Caceres scored the first KO of his fourteen-year career with a beautiful headkick over Julian Erosa, and Amir Albazi, a top ten featherweight on a four-fight UFC streak, unsurprisingly knocked out Alessandro Costa, a last-minute regional replacement who'd never fought internationally before. The co-main event, which really could have used two more rounds, was a technically fascinating bout between Arman Tsarukyan and Damir Ismagulov, with Tsarukyan's power wrestling and fast positional changes overcoming Ismagulov's defense and ultimately ending his 19-fight unbeaten streak by decision. The main event, which really could have used two less rounds, was a middleweight bout between Jared Cannonier and Sean Strickland that you can't exactly call disappointing because anyone not drinking the Kool-Aid knew exactly what it was going to be, but boy, commentary sure did spend twenty-five straight minutes talking about how Sean Strickland is a twisted psychopathic violence machine who's going to be spurred into action any second now while he quietly shadowboxed a Jared Cannonier who was visibly tentative and still did enough to beat him. Cannonier won a split decision, it really should've been unanimous, but no one could possibly care enough about the fight to be mad.
But the world of Japanese MMA always brings down the curtain on the year, and 2022 ended with the biggest New Year's Eve special in a long time: Rizin 40: Rizin X Bellator. Presented as two separate cards for very strange branding reasons, the undercard--Rizin 40--was an absolute slaughterhouse, with eight out of ten fights ending in violent stoppages, including Sho Patrick Usami's demolition of Beynoah, Johnny Case's 36-second knockout of Nobumitsu Osawa, Yuki Motoya's upset victory against the just-released-from-the-UFC Rogério Bontorin, John Dodson's effortless destruction of living legend Hideo Tokoro, Junior Tafa's ninety-second punchout of Sudario and Naoki Inoue's submission victory over Kenta Takizawa. The headliner was the end of Rizin's Women's Super Atomweight Grand Prix, as reigning queen Seika Izawa had a razor-close fight with her previous toughest challenge, Si Woo Park, and just barely scraped out a split decision. And then it was time for the fireworks factory: The five-fight main card, pitching a series of co-promotional dream matches pitting the best of Bellator against the best of Rizin to see which promotion was really the king of the b-leagues. And this was a lesson in why companies should fear co-promotion, because on the biggest, holiest day of the Japanese MMA calendar, Bellator pitched a 5-0 shutout on their home turf. Gadzhi Rabadanov outfought an extremely game Koji Takeda, Juan Archuleta got all he could handle from Soo Chul Kim but still took a split decision, Kyoji Horiguchi repeatedly almost knocked out Hiromasa Ougikubo but had to settle for the judges, Bellator GOAT Patricio Pitbull took the broadest decision of the night by completely shutting out Kleber Koike Erbst, and in the main event, AJ McKee beat back an outmatched but extremely game Roberto de Souza. Great night, great experiment: Probably not the ending Rizin wanted for their year.
WHAT'S COMING IN JANUARY
MMA has developed a January tradition of starting the year at a slow, sleepy cadence, and 2023 is only slightly different. Much like last January, there are only five events this month; unlike last January, all five are crammed into one seven-day period.
You have to wait until January 14th for the month's fights to start, but they start with a double-header. I flipped a coin to decide which to list first and I came up with ONE on Prime Video 6: Superbon vs Allazov. ONE has been doing a good job of really mixing up their martial arts on their Prime video cards thus far, giving new viewers a soft balance of MMA, striking and grappling. They extremely do not give a crap about that anymore. There are nine fights on this card, five of them are either kickboxing or muay thai and a sixth is a mixed-rules half-MMA half-kickboxing bout. There's one grappling match and two MMA prelims and that's all you're getting. In your MMA bouts, former middleweight and light-heavyweight champion Aung La Nsang meets Fan Rong and strawweight Lito Adiwang meeds Mansur Malachiev; Muay Thai bouts include Ekaterine Vandaryeva vs Anna Jaroonsak and Liam Harrison vs Pongsiri P.K.Saenchaimuaythaigym, and despite being ONE's Muay Thai champion, Rodtang is fighting in a kickboxing bout against Daniel Puertas. Stamp Fairtex and Anissa Meksen will face each other in the aforementioned mixed rules bout, which will alternate rounds between Muay Thai and MMA rulesets. Your championship tripleheader is Mikey Musumeci defending his flyweight submission championship against Sayan Khertek, Ilias Ennahachi defending the flyweight kickboxing title against Superlek Kiatmuu9, and Superbon defending the featherweight kickboxing title against Chingiz Allazov, a match that has been rescheduled three goddamn times.
Also happening that day is the beginning of the UFC's year, UFC Fight Night: Imavov vs Gastelum. There's very little name power on the card, but the talent is extremely solid: Javid Basharat is back in action against Mateus Mendonça, Abdul Razak Alhassan is fighting for his job against Claudio Ribeiro, Umar Nurmagomedov and Raoni Barcelos will fight to close in on a ranking, Punahele Soriano and Roman Kopylov will hit each other in the head very hard, Jarno Errens and David Onama are going to play punchies and it should be a good time. The closest thing the card has to names are clustered up at the top. On one hand, the tragically fallen Dan Ige is now fighting to defend his job against the surprisingly streaking Damon Jackson; on the other, the recently-surging Ketlen Vieira looks to get in the top ten by facing Raquel Pennington. Jimmy Flick is facing late replacement Charles "InnerG" Johnson and Allan Nascimento is battling Carlos Hernandez for our rare double flyweight fights. In what probably SHOULD be the main event but unfortunately isn't, the newly reinvigorated Geoff Neal is going to try to get to the top by facing the undefeated Shavkat Rakhmonov, which is going to be fucking fascinating. In what actually IS the main event, Franco-Russo Nassourdine Imavov is jumping the line and facing Kelvin Gastelum, who is somehow still in the top fifteen despite having one victory in the last four years. Catch the fever!
Invicta is up next on January 18th with Invicta FC 51: Tennant vs Bernardo. As Invicta's been doing a remarkably good job of recently it's a solid mixture of rookies, solid prospects and top talents, with some of those rookies getting the exceptional "we don't even have a picture" treatment in MMA databases across the internet. Tanya Nijjar vs Sayury Canon and Fatima Kline vs Laura Gallardo make up your rookie class for the night, Katie Saull vs Rayanne Amanda, Marisa Messer-Belenchia vs Elisandre Ferreira and Claire Guthrie vs Auttumn Norton form your prospect caste and Serena DeJesus vs Olga Rubin make your on-deck contender fight. The co-main event will fill the flyweight championship throne that's been empty since Karina Rodriguez left the company to join Bellator, with Kristina Williams facing Ketlen Souza; the main event sees defending bantamweight champion Taneisha Tennant trying to hold the house together against UFC alumnus Talita Bernardo.
ONE's second event for the month comes on January 20th, and it's a bit different. Rather than the last six months of double-events with Prime cards and regular ONE cards, this is ONE at Lumpinee 1: Nong-O vs Ramazanov. Lumpinee is the center of Muay Thai and ONE's had their eyes on running events there for quite some time--they would very, very much like to make ONE's Muay Thai division one with the national and international consciousness of the sport, and doing that within Lumpinee is the philosophical and corporate dream. And thus, one month away from their first official Lumpinee event, they are taking it very seriously because there is, uh, one fight announced, and it's the main event, where Nong-O Gaiyanghadao will defend the ONE Muay Thai Bantamweight Championship against Alaverdi Ramazanov. If this paragraph still says this by the time you're reading it, either I fell out of a train before December ended, or it's January 1st and ONE still hasn't announced any more shit.DATELINE, DECEMBER 30TH: They added eleven more fights. Outside of a co-main event featuring Prajanchai P.K. Saenchai against Kompetch Sitsarawatsuer, I promise it's no one you've ever heard of.
And the MMA month ends early on January 21st with UFC 283: Teixeira vs Hill. A lot of things are falling on this card: The UFC's first trip to Rio since 2019, the retirement fight of the legendary Shogun Rua, the (hopeful) end of the flyweight quadrilogy that has been Figueiredo vs Moreno, and the UFC's second attempt in as many months to end the light-heavyweight championship vacancy. Being a Brazilian card, the whole thing's stacked with Brazilian vs Everyone Who Isn't Brazilian fights: Josiane Nunes vs Zarah Fairn Dos Santos (no, really, she's French), Warlley Alves vs Nicolas Dalby, Ismael Bonfim vs Terrance McKinney, Jailton Almeida vs Shamil Abdurakhimov, the list goes on and on. Your big bouts for the night are Brad Tavares vs Gregory Rodrigues, Thiago Moises vs Guram Kutateladze, Gilbert Burns vs Neil Magny, Jéssica Andrade vs Lauren Murphy, the aforementioned Maurício "Shogun" Rua retirement bout with Ihor Potieria, Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno reunifying the flyweight title and settling their hash once and for goddamn all, and in the main event, Glover Teixeira fights the exceedingly unlikely Jamahal Hill to crown a new light-heavyweight champion.
CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Francis Ngannou - 17-3, 1 Defense
After getting dicked about by the UFC for most of 2021, Francis "The Predator" Ngannou met both the biggest challenge of his career and the nexus of his promotional challenges in the form of a championship unification match against heavyweight striking savant and (bullshit) interim champion Ciryl Gane. For all of his punching prowess, Ngannou found himself getting pretty soundly outstruck and on the road to a decision loss--and he adjusted by channeling Mark Coleman and repeatedly tossing Gane on his ass with double-legs and powerslams. In what was somehow a simultaneously incredible and disappointing performance, Francis Ngannou won a unanimous decision, notched his first title defense, turned away his stiffest challenge, and went home with his future one great big question mark. He's made a lot of noise about going into boxing thanks to the UFC's refusal to stop paying him peanuts, but his contract situation is complicated by his standing as a champion, particularly as he's now had knee surgery to repair his ACL and MCL and will be sitting out the remainder of the year on medical leave, which could mean dealing with a contract freeze. It all depends on how shitty the UFC decides to be to him, but the best gauge for that is Dana White's auspicious absence at the post-fight belt ceremony and post-card press conference. In response, Francis Ngannou appeared with Tyson Fury after his high-profile destruction of Dillian Whyte and the two hyped a potential boxing vs MMA fight between them. This, of course, did not happen, and now Tyson Fury is fighting Derek Chisora because boxing fucking sucks. Predictably, this has become a big, stupid thing. They were hoping to put more pressure on Ngannou by booking Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic for an interim title on December 10, but Stipe wasn't dumb enough to do it for peanuts either. As of now, the UFC is HOPING to get Francis Ngannou vs Jon Jones together for UFC 285 on March 4, but they're still lowballing Ngannou. If they can't come to terms, it'll be Jones vs Curtis Blaydes. Or so they hope.
Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
VACANT - The shadow-face of despair
Honestly, the Vacant parts of my write-up are my favorite gag I've ever done and I cannot believe we're still here. Jesus. Okay, so: In June of 2022, Jiří Procházka, the Czech Samurai, won a fight-of-the-year victory over Glover Teixeira, wresting the belt from the ludricrously tough but ultimately outgunned quadragenarian. Despite the definitive victory, the sheer quality of the bout led to the UFC booking them into a rematch for the end of the year. Tragedy struck: Jiří tore his shoulder apart in training, reportedly because his trainers tried to jam it back into place and made it worse. The UFC made the call for him to vacate the title, and Glover gleefully offered to rematch former champion Jan Błachowicz, but the UFC didn't want Glover vs Jan 2, they wanted Glover vs #3 contender Magomed Ankalaev. Glover wanted one month to prepare for Ankalaev, and the UFC told him to pound sand. The new main event of December 10th's UFC 282 became Jan Błachowicz vs Magomed Ankalaev for the vacant belt. It was a good, dramatic fight, with Jan nearly TKOing Ankalaev with leg kicks multiple times only for Ankalaev to make a huge comeback and thoroughly trash Jan on the ground, putting in a performance that every media outlet scored for him. And the judges, as they do, ruled the fight a split draw. No one won. No champion. Dana White, the delicate flower that he is, spent the post-fight press conference inexplicably shitting all over Jan and Magomed for being boring and immediately announced that on January 21st, at UFC 283, when he originally wanted to fight in the first place, Glover Teixeira will battle the #7-ranked Jamahal Hill to once again fill the hole. Vacant merely laughs at the machinations of men.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Alex Pereira - 7-1, 0 Defenses
Sometimes in this sport things that shouldn't really have happened wind up happening perfectly. Alex "Poatan" Pereira getting a title shot was ridiculous on its face: He was only 6-1, he'd only fought three UFC fights, he'd only fought one ranked fighter at all. It was the UFC's most blatant attempt to manufacture a title contender since Conor McGregor scored a comeback title fight after pulling a long-expired bag of Donald Cerrone from the back of the break room fridge. The UFC didn't even try to hide that Pereira was getting the shot solely because he'd beaten divisional kingpin and MMA superstar Israel Adesanya in kickboxing--twice. They ran highlights from an entirely different sport far, far more often than highlights from Pereira's UFC tenure during their monthslong attempt to hype up the title fight between the biggest and most consistent middleweight sensation since Anderson Silva and a mixed martial arts neophyte whose toughest test had been a guy who fought at 160 pounds for five years. Naysayers (like me!) said Pereira's lack of MMA experience would cost him when the fight inevitably turned to grappling, and it did: Israel Adesanya, noted non-wrestler, was able to repeatedly ground, control and almost submit Pereira. Naysayers (it's me again, being wrong!) said Pereira's untested MMA technique and staying power would cost him in a chapmionship-level fight, and it did: Israel Adesanya stung him repeatedly, nearly knocked him out, and was cruising to a broad decision victory on all three scorecards. And then, with two and a half minutes left in a five-round fight, Pereira caught him sleeping, put a string of fists upside his head and battered him to a standing TKO. All of the problems in the world fall before the power of destiny. For the third time and in the second sport of their lives, Alex Pereira defeated Israel Adesanya. Is he going to have serious trouble the second he fights any of the very, very good wrestlers at the top fifteen in his division? Oh, absolutely. Is the UFC going to let him? Probably not! They sound like they want a rematch so as not to deal with Robert Whittaker double-legging him and choking him out in ninety seconds or something. Whatever the future holds, Alex Pereira goes down in history as one of the few to mantle the UFC and stand as the best middleweight in the sport.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Leon Edwards - 20-3 (1), 0 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. Holding onto the belt won't be easy--Dana White is foaming at the mouth for a Wembley Stadium rematch between the two to end their trilogy--but Leon Edwards is cemented into history as the man who killed the king, and for a beautiful moment, as the best welterweight on the planet.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Islam Makhachev - 23-1, 0 Defenses
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. The Charles Oliveira story is over, the Islam Makhachev era has begun. Unlike most new champions, there's no question about what's next for him: The UFC is intent on having him defend against featherweight champion and pound-for-pound great Alexander Volkanovski when they go to Perth, Australia for UFC 284 on February 12.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 25-1, 4 Defenses
Sometimes it takes a lot of work to convince people you're the best. Alexander Volkanovski's rise through mixed martial arts is the kind of thing reserved for the all-time greats of the sport: He lost once, in the fourth fight of his career--at welterweight--and that was nine years ago. He's won twenty-one straight fights since, defeating top talent from around the world before landing in the UFC and proceeding to dominate every fighter placed in his way. There was one, single weight placed around his career's ankle: Max Holloway. Holloway was the UFC's much-lauded and much-marketed featherweight champion while Volkanovski was on his way up, and even as a 20-1 dynamo, he was an underdog against the Hawaiian. Alex beat him--soundly--but because of Holloway's prior dominance, and because the UFC wanted to get the most for its marketing buck, they ordered an instant rematch. Alex won again, but this time it was by a very close split decision, and that left a vocal part of the fanbase even angrier and more certain Max was the real champion. Two years and two fights apiece later, Alex and Max met one last time on July 2, and Volkanovski beat every shade of hell out of Holloway, not just repeatedly wobbling and outstriking him but completely and utterly shutting him out of a fight for the very first time in his career. When the bell rang, there were no questions left: Alexander Volkanovski is the absolute, undisputed best featherweight in the UFC. And now, having more or less destroyed his division, he has his eye on the pound for pound ranks. Volkanovski called his shot at the lightweight title before Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev had even fought, and moments after Makhachev was victorious, Volkanovski was in the cage staring him down. Come February, he'll get his chance at all-time greatness, but Josh Emmett and Yair Rodríguez will be meeting that same night to crown an interim featherweight champion, so whether Volkanovski ends the night with one belt or two, he'll have business to attend to.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Aljamain Sterling - 22-3, 2 Defenses
Aljamain Sterling is the most simultaneously blessed and cursed fighter I've ever seen. A lifelong wrestler and grappler who started fighting at 19, Aljo took the long road to championship contention, dealing with setbacks and beating half the challengers the division had to offer before getting his shot at the seemingly unbeatable Petr Yan. He left their fight as the new, victorious champion, not because he had defeated Yan--he appeared to be on his way towards a loss--but because Yan had both illegally and outright intentionally kneed him in the head on the ground, resulting in the first-ever title change by way of disqualification. It took thirteen months for the inevitable rematch to materialize, and this time, Aljamain soundly outgrappled Yan and won fair and square--but the judges only gave him a split decision, which Dana White himself got pissy about, and the fanbase that already loved Yan and hated Sterling took it as carte blanche to shit on him all over again. Aljamain Sterling had the rare and coveted UFC title defense, and people hated him more than ever. The UFC itself made matters worse when, rather than booking the José Aldo title fight everyone wanted or giving Marlon Vera and his fan-favorite winning streak a shot, they tapped former champion and marketing favorite TJ Dillashaw as the top contender after winning one contentious split decision. Fans were split on whether Sterling would be able to outgrapple the accomplished wrestler, and Sterling made them all look extremely silly by catching a Dillashaw kick and immediately, easily ragdolling and controlling him thirty seconds into their fight. Unfortunately, seconds after that, Dillashaw dislocated his shoulder. Because everything is silly, Dillashaw was allowed to fight for a round and a half with one of his arms clearly not functioning, leading to Sterling getting a very easy ground-and-pound TKO in the second round, and after the fight Dillashaw immediately admitted that his shoulder had popped out dozens of times during camp, to the point that he had forewarned the referee of the injury before the fight so he wouldn't stop it immediately. If everything about that sentence sounds completely insane and backwards to you: Welcome to our fake idiot sport. Aljamain Sterling has three straight victories in championship fights, and through absolutely no fault of his own, most of the fanbase thinks none of them should count. Jesus wept.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Deiveson Figueiredo - 21-2-1, 0 Defenses
We have come so far, and yet we are still where we were. On December 12, 2020, Deiveson Figueiredo shockingly went to a draw with heavy underdog Brandon Moreno. On June 12, 2021, Moreno even more shockingly dropped and choked him out, wrestling the flyweight championship from his hands. On January 22, 2022, the two met for the third time and the result was an instant fight of the year candidate that saw both men trade the advantage in striking, grappling and wrestling alike back and forth, but Figueiredo's smart adjustments from their second fight won him a razor-close but still unanimous decision and the return of the flyweight championship. And now, having fought each other three times in thirteen months and finally finished their trilogy, the next stop for new champion Deiveson Figueiredo was seemingly yet another fight with Moreno, this time in Mexico as a big money card. And then: Things fell apart. What at first seemed like an amicable rivalry turned sour when Figueiredo refused to fight Moreno again, citing what he saw as racist disrespect from his corner, and called instead for a fight with top contender Kai Kara-France, only to then say he needed time to rehabilitate hand injuries and couldn't take the fight until later in the year, and the UFC, ever the sensitive organization, responded by booking Moreno and Kara-France for an interim flyweight championship match on July 30 at UFC 277.
Interim Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Brandon Moreno - 20-6-2, 0 Defenses
And just like that, we're right back where we started. Moreno and Kara-France put on a furious two and a half back-and-forth rounds, but as he somehow does Moreno became only more vicious and found his combinations as the fight wore on. Four and a half minutes into the third round he stunned Kara-France with a spinning backfist and followed it with a charging liver kick that put him down for good and put gold back around Brandon's waist. Immediately following the fight, Moreno called Deiveson Figueiredo into the cage and attempted to bury the hatchet, and the two appeared to somewhat tensely reconcile enough to agree on the now entirely inevitable rematch. After months of radio silence, the inevitable quadrilogy fight was made official: Deiveson Figueiredo vs Brandon Moreno 4: The Search for More Money will take place during at UFC 283, the company's first event in Rio de Janeiro since 2019, on January 21. I say this as a fan of all three of their previous fights: Please, god, no more. Whatever happens, just let it go.
Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs
Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 2 Defenses
Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs
Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 0 Defenses
Things are back as they should be. Up until December of 2021, Amanda Nunes was unquestionably the greatest women's mixed martial artist in history. She held and defended titles at both the signature class of Women's Bantamweight and the arguably real class of Women's Featherweight, and with her mixture of vicious power, aggressive grappling and solid conditioning, she defeated every UFC champion in the history of either class and, for good measure, Valentina Shevchenko, the ultra-dominant champion of Women's Flyweight, twice. What's more, she crushed most of them, taking on legends like Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg and knocking them dead in under a minute. Which is why it was something of a shock when she was choked out by unheralded journeywoman Julianna Peña. The abruptness of the ending to her streak, and the shockingly sloppy way she was taken out, left the fanbase both demanding a rematch and openly questioning how much of the loss was due to something being wrong with Nunes, rather than Julianna Peña doing something right, and opinions flew wildly regarding how close the second bout would be. Seven months and one season of The Ultimate Fighter later they met on July 30, and the answer was: Not even slightly. Amanda Nunes dumpstered Julianna Peña for five straight rounds, dropping her a half-dozen times and elbowing her face entirely open, and barring one touchy moment with an armbar, Peña was entirely shut out and lost a wide unanimous decision that included an incredibly rare 50-43 scorecard. Back on her throne, Amanda Nunes signaled her readiness to take a goddamn vacation for the first time in years while the UFC figures out where to go from here.
Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs
Valentina Shevchenko - 23-3, 7 Defenses
Sometimes, when you've been untouchably atop your division for too long, any display of weakness seems like a loss. Sometimes, you might actually have lost. Valentina Shevchenko is a martial arts phenom: Multiple black belts, multiple Master of Sports degrees, dozens of kickboxing championships, hundreds of combined fights across all of her disciplines and twenty years of combat sports experience--by 34. Her most internationally popular achievement, of course, is her reign as the UFC Women's Flyweight Champion. She is, in fact, 12-2 in the UFC, and those only two losses came against Amanda Nunes, the champion of both 135 and 145, and the second was a split decision that could easily have gone the other way. This is what made it so shocking for people when the relatively unknown Taila Santos very nearly defeated her at UFC 275. Santos controlled Shevchenko on the ground, spend a good part of the fight in back mount and at one point nearly choked her out, but Valentina fought back and eked out a razor-close split decision victory that, as always, many people disagreed with. While the sport continues its ongoing struggle over what wrestling and positional control do and don't count for anymore, Valentina Shevchenko remains the queen of the hill. It was assumed--and at a couple points outright stated--that her next challenger would be the winner of UFC 280's battle between top contenders Manon Fiorot and Katlyn Chookagian, but despite Fiorot's victory, a number of people--bafflingly including Fiorot herself--called for her to have another fight before challenging for the belt. Which seems aggressively silly, because jesus christ, there's no one else for her to fight. The future is uncertain.
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. Amanda Lemos is on deck, but she could really use a marquee win first. The UFC is spoiled for almost-but-not-quite contenders: They just need to crown someone.
ROGUES GALLERY: NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD
Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Ryan Bader - 30-7 (1), 2 Defenses
No, I will never stop hating on Ryan Bader. I know it's not fair. Objectively, the man's had a pretty great career--he's a huge, action-figure-looking wrestleboxing motherfucker who only ever lost to the best of the best (EXCEPT TITO ORTIZ), when he puts it together he's got some great knockouts to his name and he humiliated Fedor Emelianenko AND Matt Mitrione, which are both things I deeply adore. But Ryan Bader is Ryan Bader, and that is both his blessing and his curse, and the continual ire he gets from the MMA community for daring to exist in the way that he does is as responsible for his career resurgence as his fists. He followed his successful slow-motion nothing of a title defense back in January with an even slower, less eventful defense in his rematch with Cheick Kongo, which for bonus points was in front of a very partisan and very upset Parisian crowd who in no way appreciated his wrestling and his refusal to mix any offense into it. He recently signed a new Bellator deal that he intends to retire under and he's made clear he no longer has any intention of competing at light-heavyweight, and that opened the door for Scott Coker's early-2000s PRIDE nostalgia humiliation fetish to rear its ugly head once again. On February 4th at Bellator 290, Ryan Bader will defend his heavyweight title in a rematch against Fedor, who swears it will be the final bout of his career. When last they met in 2019, Bader knocked him out in thirty-five seconds. Whatever happens: It's going to be very, very funny.
Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Vadim Nemkov - 16-2 (1), 3 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 was initially planned for a quick turnaround against Yoel Romero on February 4, but it was scratched just before New Year's for as-yet unstated reasons. The future is uncertain.
Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Johnny Eblen - 12-0, 0 Defenses
The world did not see this one coming. Gegard Mousasi, widely considered the best middleweight outside of the UFC and arguably better than the majority of those inside, was a -260 favorite to retain his Bellator championship and cruise through his second straight year as a titleholder. And then he got punched in his god damned face. "The Human Cheat Code" Johnny "Diamond Hands" Eblen "Suffix Nickname" dropped Mousasi on his face with a hook out of nowhere just minutes into the fight, and that signalled the beginning not just of an upset but a five-round shut-out, as Eblen dominated Mousasi standing and grappling, earning both Bellator's middleweight championship and, for the first time in his career, his own Wikipedia page. Unsurprisingly, Eblen is a lifelong wrestler out of American Top Team, explaining the power hooks and power doubles alike, and unsurprisingly, Mousasi's achilles heel was a really good wrestler. After Vadim Nemkov was forced to pull out of Bellator 290 on February 4, Fedor's team wanted another of his proteges in a title fight for the night and they found their man in Anatoly Tokov, who's riding a 7-fight undefeated streak over a sedately-paced six-year run in Bellator. He'll fill the void for Eblen's first title defense.
Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Yaroslav Amosov - 26-0, 0 Defenses
Yaroslav "Dynamo" Amosov is in that very strange place where he's simultaneously one of the most successful prospects in the sport and a fighter almost no one feels a need to pay attention to. He's a four-time world champion in sambo, he's undefeated in nearly a decade of mixed martial arts competition, he has a 26-0 record at just 28 years old and he dominated the very tough Douglas Lima to become the first Ukrainian MMA world champion (you came so close, Igor), and he has a total of 1,253 Twitter followers. Some of it is exposure--it probably doesn't help that Amosov was on Bellator's prelims just before his title eliminator--and some of it is a very tactical and sometimes control-centric style that does not lend itself well to attracting viewers, as seen in a 7-0 Bellator record with only two stoppages, one of which was a doctor's stoppage on cuts between rounds. The fact that he's a 26-0 world champion and is still mostly being looked at as a prospect is a testament to both the amount of talent he very clearly has and the way everyone's still kind of waiting for something big to happen to him, which, uh, also indicates where Bellator is in the pecking order of the collective MMA consciousness. Bellator had been planning to finally cash in on their many years of can-crushing by having Amosov defend his title against weirdo striker Michael "Venom" Page on May 13, but the small, unimportant matter of Russia fucking invading his home country saw him stay in Ukraine and join the defense efforts. Having fought a war for nearly the entirety of the previous year, Amosov will make his return to competition on February 25th at Bellator 291 where he'll reunify the title with the guy they tapped to take on MVP in his stead.
Bellator Interim Welterweight Champion
Logan Storley - 14-1, 0 Defenses
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A company books a massively-hyped international superstar striking specialist against an American wrestler and the result makes everyone really mad. Bellator has been salivating over the idea of getting a championship on British kickman Michael "Venom" Page for years, and with Amosov no longer available they thought the half-a-foot-shorter Logan Storley would be a good candidate, and shockingly, the 14-1 wrestler whose only loss was a split decision to Amosov himself proceeded to wrestle Page for about 2/3 of their 25-minute fight. He ultimately won a close split decision that should easily have been both broad and unanimous, and as always happens with this script, MVP wants an immediate rematch. Scott Coker, proving every promoter is just one piss-fit away from becoming Dana White, used the post-fight presser to complain about the judging and insist that Storley's choice to just wrestle "isn't MMA" and shouldn't have won him the decision. It's 2022 and it is still the wrestler's fault that their opponent can't wrestle. After a quiet half-year of twiddling his thumbs, Storley's going to be fighting to become the undisputed champion in a wrestler vs wrestler match for which the grinding will be enormous.
Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Usman Nurmagomedov - 16-0, 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 himself an army of powerful ultra-wrestlers, and after his passing, the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and his son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world in force. 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. A Nurmagomedov holds Bellator gold. Who they send after him next remains to be seen.
Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Patrício Pitbull - 35-5, 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, most particularly, 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.
Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Sergio Pettis - 22-5, 1 Defense
So Sergio Pettis is good now, apparently. It's not that he was ever bad, exactly, it's that he was more or less forever in big brother Anthony's shadow. Sergio had a long five years in the UFC where he on several occasions seemed poised to break out into the top ranks and vie for a title, but he always managed to fall just short, building a strong win streak before getting controlled by Henry Cejudo, barely squeaking past Joe Benavidez only to get dominated by Jussier Formiga, moving up to 135 and getting shut down by Rob Font. He went to Bellator just a few months before his brother left for the PFL, and now, in a stunning turnaround, Sergio is the successful one in the family. He won Bellator's bantamweight championship in his third fight with the organization, and in the biggest fight of his career, an interpromotional match pitting his title against Rizin bantamweight champion (and former Bellator champion himself, who vacated due to injury) Kyoji Horiguchi, Pettis shocked the world by battling through four difficult rounds he was fairly clearly losing and knocking out the heavy favorite with a painfully pretty spinning backfist. Sergio Pettis is no longer an also-ran. Unfortunately, as these things always go, he followed this up by getting injured. He's out of this year's Grand Prix and his timetable for return is iffy enough that Bellator immediately booked an interim championship between Raufeon Stots and Juan Archuleta for Bellator 279 on April 23.
Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion
Raufeon Stots - 19-1, 1 Defense
He did not waste the opportunity. Raufeon Stots has been looked on as a major bantamweight prospect for years: A two-time DII wrestling champion, a heavy-handed puncher and an exceptionally conditioned grappler with guidance from Roufusport, Jens Pulver and Kamaru Usman thanks to their shared alma mater who won his first regional title just two years into his career. He's 18-1 with his only loss coming via a shock 15-second knockout against one of the best in the world in Merab Dvalishvili. Stots stormed Bellator in 2019 and is on an unbeaten seven-fight streak with the organization, and when faced with both the entrance to his first grand prix, the stiffest competition of his career in former champion Juan Archuleta and the interim Bellator championship on the line, Stots did what some of the best in the world couldn't and knocked Archuleta out in the third round. After spending most of the year dealing with the constant presence of top contender and endless loudmouth Danny Sabatello, the two met in both the first defense of Stots' championship and the semifinal of the grand prix, and Stots took a split decision--and the decision being split instead of unanimous was so egregious that Doug Crosby, one of the worst judges in history, finally got admonished for his crimes. At some point in 2023, Stots will face the toughest test of his career: The tournament final, against fellow superstar Patchy Mix.
Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Cris Cyborg - 26-2 (1), 4 Defenses
Yup. It's 2022 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. Consequently, 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, so he was still technically suspended and Cyborg's win might not count. Cris 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?
Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Liz Carmouche - 18-7, 1 Defense
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. Liz Carmouche, at last, is a world goddamn champion.
It's worth noting that a) ONE uses different weight classes and b) ONE also has a dozenish various kickboxing champions, and for the moment, for sake of my sanity, we're just going to stick to the MMA champions. Maybe later we'll change this. FOR NOW:
ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Arjan Bhullar - 11-1, 0 Defenses
It's Arjan Bhullar, the man ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong swears is better than Francis Ngannou. Bhullar, the first Indian world champion in the sport, was a big deal as a wrestler in his native Canada, won multiple collegiate championships at heavyweight, took a Commonwealth Games championship and ultimately achieved his dream of representing Canada at the 2012 Olympics where he was eliminated in the first round. He made his MMA debut two years later as, you may have already guessed, predominantly a wrestler. He was picked up by the UFC in 2017 at 6-0, and had a respectable 3-1 record with the organization, but chose not to sign a new contract after feeling the UFC was lowballing him. He signed with the then-growing ONE Championship in 2019, won his debut fight, took a year and a half off for the pandemic and returned in May of 2021 to TKO the baddest heavyweight in ONE, its reigning champion of almost six years, the man, myth, legend and Truth, Brandon Vera. And then, much like Vera, he promptly refused to sign a new contract and sat out for a year so he could play hardball. Chatri publicly shat on him and his management and set up an interim championship. As of this writing, Arjan Bhullar has not fought since May 15, 2021, and has no fights announced for the immediate future. At this point it seems just as likely that he'll be stripped and released as booked.
ONE Interim Heavyweight Champion
Anatoly Malykhin - 12-0, 0 Defenses
ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs
Anatoly Malykhin - 12-0, 0 Defenses
It was a very good, but very strange, 2022 for Anatoly Malykhin. With Bhullar out indefinitely, the undefeated Russian bruiser was placed in the driver's seat of the heavyweight division, and after quickly dispatching of an outmatched Kirill Grishenko, Malykhin took home an interim championship. ONE planned to reunify the championships fairly quickly, with Bhullar vs Malykhin tentatively planned for ONE's debut on Amazon Prime Video in August, but Bhullar needed more time to recover from his injury layoff. The match was finally, formally announced for ONE Championship 161 on September 29--and then, the day of the aforementioned Prime debut, Bhullar announced he was pulling out with another injury. The match was once again tentatively planned for December, but the two sides couldn't come to terms, and after ten months, ONE was tired of doing nothing with their big, angry punchman. The new announcement was even more surprising: Malykhin, while remaining the interim heavyweight champion, was also dropping down to light-heavyweight and challenging the undefeated double champ and promotional kingpin Reinier de Ridder. The result was quick and brutal, as Malykhin bludgeoned de Ridder to a bleakly one-sided first-round knockout. Now, Anatoly Malykhin is entering 2023 as a double champ, but his future is still a question mark; ONE doesn't even HAVE light-heavyweight rankings, and Arjan Bhullar remains AWOL. Anatoly Malykhin reigns in a kingdom of ONE.
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 thesmelves 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 continue defending his singular middleweight championship.
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, 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 by no means 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. I'm sure that Conor McGregor money will come rolling in any day now.
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. Tang Kai, at the beginning of ONE's worldwide invasion, is suddenly a very visible prospect: A power striker on a 10-fight winning streak and a champion in the world's most competitive weight class. The target on his back is very, very real.
ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
VACANT - The darkness that fills a dying heart
It's said that when God closes a door, they open a window. After six beautiful months, Vacant's reign as the UFC Lightweight Champion had to come to an end. But ONE Championship has made no bones about their intention of bringing competition to the world of mixed martial arts, and they were not about to let the soon-to-be hottest free agent in the sport slip through their fingers. Just two days before Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira fought to claim the empty throne, disaster struck across the globe: John Lineker's reign as ONE Bantamweight Champion ended after 223 days when he came in 3/4 of a pound over the 145-pound championship limit. He was stripped of his title and the following day's match proceeded with only his challenger, Fabrício Andrade, eligible to become champion. But the vengeful spirits that watch over mixed martial arts refuse to let a good opportunity go. The fight was back and forth in the first two rounds, but Lineker began to visible fade in the third thanks to his bad weight cut, Andrade's excellent work in punching his eye shut, and the size and reach differential that saw him getting repeatedly punished. Two and a half minutes into the round Andrade landed a knee to the body that left Lineker reeling, absorbing punishment and seemingly on the verge of the first TKO loss of his career, and sensing the ex-champion was on the ropes and this was his chance to become a hero Fabrício Andrade charged bravely forward, wound up, and landed a perfectly placed, sharply thrust knee on Lineker's balls. It hit so hard it shattered Lineker's cup and left the unbelievably tough man dry heaving into a bucket. The fight could not continue, which meant Fabrício Andrade could not win, which meant that once again, Vacant claimed a world championship. Never before in mixed martial arts history has someone won two championships in two major organizations in one year. Count yourself lucky to have lived at the same time as this generational superstar. Lineker and Camoes will run it back for ONE on Prime Video 7 on February 10th.
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. A trilogy rematch seems inevitable, but for the moment, having just turned 36, Mighty Mouse is a world champion in the second weight class of his career and shows no signs of slowing down.
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. The future is bright.
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.
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Roberto de Souza - 14-2, 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.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Kleber Koike Erbst - 31-6-1, 0 Defenses
Rizin has found the solution to Japanese MMA's historical troubles with losing their championships to foreigners: Get Japanese foreigners. Kleber Koike Erbst, while born in São Paulo, moved to Japan as a fourteen year-old and, four years later, elected to stay behind and continue training in grappling and mixed martial arts while his parents returned home. He found community with the above-mentioned de Souza family, working odd jobs to fund his continuing study at their school in Iwata, and later that same year he began his career as a professional fighter. His rookie years were somewhat fraught: By his twenty-first birthday he was only 4-3-1 and his prospects seemed somewhat dim. As it turns out, aging into actual adulthood makes a fucking difference, as in the following twelve years he has lost only two fights. One was a decision loss to Artur Sowiński, the champion of Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki federation, and he rematched and choked him out two years later; the other, Erbst's final KSW fight, was a loss to Mateusz Gamrot, who is currently the #8 fighter an entire weight class up in the UFC's lightweight rankings. Koike joined Rizin in 2020 and immediately snapped off a five-fight submission streak, leading to his challenging featherweight champion Juntarou Ushiku at Rizin 39 on October 23. It only took six and a half minutes for Erbst to submit Ushiku with his trademark triangle choke, making him, for the second time in his career, a world champion. Kleber had the shortest turnaround of all the Rizin talent competing at Bellator x Rizin, and the stiffest competition in the form of the legendary Patrício Pitbull, and that proved to be a bad combination. Erbst was unable to muster any effective striking or grappling and spent fifteen minutes getting calmly picked apart by one of the greatest fighters in the sport.
Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Kyoji Horiguchi - 31-5, 0 Defenses
Kyoji Horiguchi is going through a difficult time in his career. Horiguchi is, indisputably, one of the absolute best flyweights on the planet. He's an incredibly fast, powerful striker with very solid wrestling and aggressive grappling to back up his skills, and the streak of incredible knockouts and submissions on his record is a testament to his skills. Trouble is: He's not fighting at flyweight, he's fighting at bantamweight, and it's finally starting to become a problem. His half-decade unbeaten streak ended in 2019 thanks to a first-round upset loss against Kai Asakura, but Rizin rushing him back in mid-knee injury was blamed for that, especially when Kyoji starched Kai in a rematch the next year. And then he lost his Bellator bantamweight championship to Sergio Pettis after winning most of the fight only to walk into a spinning backfist. And now he's lost his berth in Bellator's bantamweight grand prix after just getting grappled to death by Patchy Mix, who, while very good at jiu-jitsu, also had the advantage of half a foot of height and reach on Horiguchi. He continues to be almost certainly the best fighter in Rizin, and inarguably Japan's best at flyweight AND bantamweight, but three years ago he was the nearly-undefeated champion of the two biggest b-leagues in the world simultaneously and now he's 1-3 in said three years and has a Rizin title he's never defended. Nothing best expresses how stuck in the middle he is as his participation on the Bellator x Rizin New Year's Eve special, where he represented Bellator, where he has a record of 1-2, against Rizin, where he has a record of 11-1, in a flyweight bout, which neither company has committed to promoting. He won, and fairly easily, but he remains a fighter without a home.
Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
Seika Izawa - 9-0, 0 Defenses
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, in no mood to slow down, has called for a fight with Invicta's atomweight champion Jillian DeCoursey.