THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR JULY
THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR JULY
Now in Substack flavor.
Welcome to July! Some wild shit happened in the sport last month and hopefully we'll get some more over the next four weeks.
THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
Mostly retirements. Some too early, some too late, and some right on time.
A lot of people had assumed Felice Herrig had more or less retired already having had one fight in the past four years, but after her comeback saw her defeated by Karolina Kowalkiewicz she announced her official retirement. She ends her career at 14-10 and is sadly underappreciated as an OG of the sport.
After three years of will-he won't-he Zabit Magomedsheripov, at one point one of the most highly-rated contenders at featherweight, confirmed his retirement from the sport in June, reportedly to instead pursue a career in medicine. He leaves behind an 18-1 record and a lot of what-ifs.
Joanna Jędrzejczyk ended her two-year hiatus by getting knocked out by Zhang Weili, after which she laid down her gloves and announced her retirement from combat sports, noting that after twenty years of continuous competition she was ready to stop. The strawweight GOAT's career ends at 16-5 and godspeed in her future endeavors.
Eddie Wineland, at one point known for his great WEC performances and more recently known unfortunately for having a mustache and losing repeatedly, retired after getting knocked out by Cody Stamann in roughly one minute. The first true bantamweight champion in American history, Wineland retires at 24-16-1.
WHAT HAPPENED IN JUNE
Unprecedented mayhem. Genuinely one of the most entertaining months of cards the UFC has ever put on. And some other stuff happened.
June 3 started us off with ONE 158: Tawanchai vs Larsen. This was supposed to be a big 125 lbs championship showdown between Joshua Pacio and Jarred Brooks but the main event got scratched a week out for reasons that actually still aren't entirely clear. But one-time Derrick Lewis victim Guto Inocente got a kickboxing knockout and Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai put a beating on Danish kickboxing champion Niclas Larsen.
The UFC began its month the following day with Fight Night: Volkov vs Rozenstruik, the first in what would be a month of overdelivering cards. Most of the card was fun, Karolina Kowalkiewicz snapped a five-fight losing streak, Ode' Osbourne crushed Zarrukh Adashev, Movsar Evloev put up a dominating performance against the thoroughly embattled Dan Ige, and Alexander Volkov put on one of the best performances of his career by punching out kickboxing master Jairzinho Rozenstruik in two minutes.
We then got the rare, weird experiment from the UFC: The Road to UFC: Singapore series, two straight days of two late-night (if you're an American, anyway) cards per night live from Singapore featuring the opening rounds of tournaments at flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight intended to find and sign top Asian talents. It was an interesting if oddly-formatted experiment, and it produced a few neat fights, but it was also a little hard to get invested given both the odd timing and the current lack of any scheduling for the remainder of the tournaments more specific than "later this year."
But it didn't matter, because right after they ended we got UFC 275: Teixeira vs. Procházka live from Singapore, an intensely entertaining card with a bunch of wild shit on it. Hayisaer Maheshate won his squash-match UFC debut, burgeoning favorite Jack Della Maddalena took out Ramzan Emeev, perennially forgotten Jake Matthews absolutely slaughtered André Fialho, Zhang Weili retired Joanna Jędrzejczyk with a spinning backfist, Valentina Shevchenko very nearly lost her title in a split decision against Taila Santos, and in one of the wildest main events of the year and one of the best light-heavyweight championship matches in UFC history, Jiří Procházka took Glover Teixeira's title after a 24:32-long war that saw both men nearly die about a dozen times.
PFL returned from their break with PFL 4 on June 17. In an inversion of their other cards for the year it was a night of great prelims followed by a fairly unfortunate main card: Five of six prelims ended in dramatic finishes, including Delan Monte punching out Emiliano Sordi for his second straight knockout loss and Omari Akhmedov choking Teodoras Aukštuolis unconscious, but a ponderous main card saw Jeremy Stephens, Olivier Aubin-Mercier, our favorite fighter Shoeface and Alexander Martinez all take semi-forgettable decisions.
The UFC's great month continued with UFC on ESPN: Kattar vs Emmett. Roman Dolidze, Cody Stamann and Ricardo Ramos all knocked out their opponents in roughly a minute, Phil Hawes broke Deron Winn's entire face with standing elbows, Jeremiah Wells became the first man to ever knock Court McGee out cold, Natália Silva dominated Jasmine Jasudavicius with her grappling, Adrian Yanez notched a fantastically gratifying knockout over noted shithead Tony Kelley, Gregory Rodrigues and Joaquin Buckley both did some excellent violence on their opponents' faces, inexplicably unranked prospect Damir Ismagulov took a razor-tight decision over Guram Kutateladze, Kevin Holland continued his welterweight quest by submitting Tim Means, and Josh Emmett entered the featherweight top five with a controversial but very close decision over Calvin Kattar.
But for once, all eyes turned to kickboxing, because it was time for THE MATCH. It caused a major broadcasting scandal, it may have killed Rizin's TV deal, it wasn't even broadcast internationally because our world is sin-cursed and mad, but K-1 and RISE got together and successfully promoted the biggest kickboxing card of all time. There were sixteen separate fights and I'm not going to begin to get into all of them, because everyone was there for one: The fight almost a decade in the making, Tenshin Nasukawa vs Takeru Segawa. Tenshin dropped Takeru in the first round and went on to win a unanimous decision, claiming the rivalry, the undisputed title as the best kickboxer of the generation, and an end to his undefeated 44-0 record as he transitions to boxing. Takeru, himself, is currently talking as though he's done and is going to switch to MMA and pursue the UFC.
The fun shocks continued with Bellator 282: Mousasi vs Eblen on June 24. Bellator's traditional thousand preliminary fights included James Gonzalez defeating CODY LAW, Ilara Joanne outgrappling one-time titlist Alejandra Lara, Cat Zingano winning probably title contention but possibly also injuring her knee and Alexander Shabliy knocking out Brent Primus; the main card saw Brennan Ward take out Kassius Kayne with punches, Magomed Magomedov choke out Enrique Barzola and Danna Sabatello very slowly outwrestle Leandro Higo to both proceed in the bantamweight grand prix, and the main event was a massive upset, as little-renowned Johnny Eblen did not just defeat but dominated Gegard Mousasi, nearly knocking him out in the first round and outboxing and outwrestling him for the following four to win Bellator's middleweight championship.
PFL came back for PFL 5: Scheffel vs Cappelozza, or its other subtitle, Why Don't Any Of Our Promotional Desires Work Out. It was a long night of PFL's personal favorites getting toasted: Lance Palmer, Denis Goltsov, Bubba Jenkins, Ante Delija and Klidson Abreu all very slowly outwrestled their more marketable counterparts, which included PFL's big knockout success story Renan Ferreira completing the heavyweight prophecy by looking entirely helpless against someone who knew how to shoot doubles, and former heavyweight champ Bruno Cappelozza was outclassed by the pocket punching of Matheus Scheffel, but the real main event of the night was, uh, the co-main event, where the man PFL desperately wants to be a star, Anthony Pettis, received a berth against low-seeded, 23-10 UFC castoff Stevie Ray, who proceeded to submit him in two rounds with a body triangle/spine crank from hell. Because PFL is a very silly organization, by defeating Anthony Pettis, Stevie Ray secured himself a playoff spot against PFL's #1 seed: Anthony Pettis.
June came to a close on UFC on ESPN: Tsarukyan vs Gamrot, which, while not as insane as the other cards of the month, was still a pretty good time. Vanessa Demopoulos got a very shaky decision over Jinh Yu Frey, Mario Bautista, Cody Durden and Carlos Ulberg all made short work of their opponents, Chris Curtis punched Rodolfo Vieira in the chest while Vieira failed to take him down on twenty separate attempts, Umar Nurmagomedov outwrestled Nate Maness, Thiago Moisés backpack-choked Christos Giagos, Josh Parisian and Alan Baudot put on a showcase in just how terrible the fringes of heavyweight in the UFC can be, Shavkat Rakhmonov finally put himself on the map by dominating and choking out Neil Magny, and in the main event, Mateusz Gamrot and Arman Tsarukyan put on an absolute clinic in high-level lightweight mixed martial arts, with Gamrot eking out an ultra-close decision.
WHAT'S COMING IN JULY
PFL strikes first on July 1, with PFL 6: Why Are We Even Here Anymore. It's no secret that this season has not gone to plan, and the last card of their regular season is a solid example: Carlos Leal, who destroyed Ray Cooper III, is on the prelims as an injury-replacement alternate, while Ray Cooper III is fighting on the main card to make it into the playoffs, while fellow welterweights Magomed Magomedkerimov and Rory MacDonald face João Zeferino and Sadibou Sy to ensure at least one promotional favorite gets through. Genah Fabian and Larissa Pacheco also do battle to see who gets to fight Kayla Harrison again, while in the main event, where Harrison was supposed to have an at least potentially interesting bout against former Bellator featherweight champion Julia Budd, she will instead be facing late injury replacement the 12-12-1 Kaitlyn Young. PFL: They're not having a good year.
Rizin is up next with Rizin 36: Okinawa on July 2, and to be entirely honest, I don't know if Rizin is just taking a break after The Match or something but it's really not a great card. Maybe the most interesting fight is what will likely be a wrestling match with Miyuu Yamamoto fighting JEWELS atomweight champion Saori Oshima; otherwise it's such a middling and underbaked fight card that the main event is top bantamweight Kai Asakura fighting 4-0 Ji Yong Yang, a Korean Road FC fighter who's never fought anyone higher than 3-0. Just baffling. The day after I finished writing all of this, Kai Asakura got injured and pulled out. The new main event of Rizin 36, a major card put on by Japan's biggest MMA organization, is shootboxers-turned-mixed-martial-artists the 2-1 Hiroaki Suzuki vs 0-2 Ren Hiramoto. Yeah. Yeah.
But that will be immediately forgotten by the first of a rare two UFC pay-per-views for the month: UFC 276: Adesanya vs Cannonier, also on July 2. It's a stacked fucking card, with Jessica Eye vs Maycee Barber in the latest attempt to jetpack Barber into contention, Uriah Hall meeting arm collector André Muniz, Jim Miller vs Donald Cerrone, Robbie god damned Lawler vs Bryan Barberena and Brad Riddell vs Jalin Turner, and on your main card, Pedro Munhoz is the shortest credible bantamweight they could find for Sean O'Malley, Sean Strickland and Alex Pereira will fight in a middleweight title eliminator, Alexander Volkanovski defends his featherweight title for the second time in three months in an incredibly dangerous trilogy fight against Max Holloway and Israel Adesanya defends the middleweight gold against Jared Cannonier.
The UFC then tempts fate by resurrecting a cursed card: UFC on ESPN: dos Anjos vs Fiziev on July 9. A main event originally built around that it's funny two people are both named Rafael, the card has a lot of fun if weird shit on it: Maryna Moroz and Sijara Eubanks will see who is the more implacable wrestler, Karl Roberson and Kennedy Nzechukwu will do battle to try to regain relevance, Jared Vanderaa and Chase Sherman will make a mockery of heavyweight, Michael Johnson will try to maintain a winning streak against Jamie Mullarkey, Said Nurmagomedov and Douglas Silva de Andrade will do a grappling violence to one another, and the two Rafaels will battle for Rafael supremacy.
The UFC THEN returns to network television: It's UFC on ABC: Ortega vs Rodríguez on July 16. This 14-fight monster is oddly cerebral for a network television card, with only one single fight above 185 pounds; Dustin Jacoby and Da Un Jung will punch each other a bunch, Bill Algeo and Billy Quarantillo will have a likely unorthodox fight, Lauren Murphy and Miesha Tate are rescheduled for the third time and Dalcha Lungiambula will play conkers with Punahele Soriano. The main card is a flurry of punches and grapples: Shane Burgos vs Charles Jourdain, Ricky Simón vs Jack Shore, Matt Schnell vs Su Mudaerji, Li Jingliang vs Muslim Salikhov, a returning Michelle Waterson against Amanda Lemos, and in the main event, Brian Ortega's face has finally healed and he and Yair Rodríguez are going to see if tae kwon do or Brazilian jiu-jitsu are more fake.
We take a brief break from the UFC and instead shift over to Invicta FC 48: Tennant vs Rubin on July 20. Invicta's been quietly doing a great job with their return-to-youtube era and this is a similarly tightly-written card, a mixture of rookie prospects, established veterans and a high-level championship: The infuriating-to-type rookie Auttumn Norton fights Maria Djukic, Amber Leibrock and Morgan Frier try to make women's featherweight exist, Liana Pirosin and former Bellator standout Kristina Williams jockey for position, former UFC fighter Mallory Martin makes her Invicta return against Kyra Batara, embattled boxer Katharina Lehner meets recent UFC cast-oiff Talita Bernardo and bantamweight champion Taneisha "Triple Threat" Tennant defends her newly-acquired title against "Big Bad" Olga Rubin.
We're over to ONE 159: De Ridder vs Bigdash next on July 22. As is ONE's tendency these days it's a big ol' mixed card with MMA, kickboxing, Muay Thai and submission matches, including the old google-confounding favorite Anderson "Braddock" Silva returning to MMA competition, but the card is anchored by a bantamweight Muay Thai contendership match featuring Muangthai P.K.Saenchai vs Vladimir Kuzmin, an interim women's Muay Thai atomweight title fight between Pan-Am champion Janet Todd and ISKA champion Lara Fernandez, and a middleweight championship bout featuring double-champ Reinier de Ridder defending against former titleholder Vitaly Bigdash.
Our blissful time outside the UFC concludes with Bellator 283: Pitbull vs Outlaw on July 22. Tofiq Musayev continues his wrecking ways against Adam Piccolotti, Davion Franklin and Marcelo Golm will have a hilarious heavyweight slopfest, Lorenz Larkin will have a potentially tough bout with Mukhamed Berkhamov, Usman Nurmagomedov meets Chris Gonzalez, Douglas Lima tries to work his way back to title contention against Jason Jackson, and in your main event, Patricky Pitbull--as in the Pitbull brother you're not thinking of but he's still good so give him a chance--defends agasinst Sidney "Da Gun" Outlaw, a name I still generaly refuse to believe is real.
And then we're not just back in the UFC, we're back in insanely British UFC, as Fight Night: Blaydes vs Aspinall comes to you on July 23. The UFC had great promotional success with their giant London card back in March and they're basically just trying to do that again, featuring a ton of the same people: Jai Herbert vs Kyle Nelson, Muhammad Mokaev vs Charles Johnson, Makwan Amirkhani vs Jonathan Pearce, Marc Diakiese vs Damir Hadžović, Paul Craig vs Volkan Oezdemir, and promotionally-winnable matches for the golden British children, as Molly McCann gets striking-deficient Hannah Goldy, Paddy Pimblett gets perennially weird Jordan Leavitt and Darren Till gets a greatly tarnished Jack Hermansson. Curtis Blaydes vs Tom Aspinall is a great fucking heavyweight fight, though.
The UFC's very long month closes with an unsual second pay-per-view: UFC 277: Peña vs. Nunes 2 on July 30. The undercard is a little thinner this time out, but there's still some good stuff: Ignacio Bahamondes and Ľudovít Klein will have a very interesting striking match, Justin Tafa and Don'Tale Mayes should be very, very funny, Drew Dober and Rafael Alves will have an intensity-off, Anthony Smith and Magomed Ankalaev will try to stay relevant at 205, Derrick Lewis will try to get another home-state win against Sergei Pavlovich, Brandon Moreno and Kai Kara-France will fight for an interim flyweight title that may become undisputed because it sounds like Deiveson Figuereido is very sick of cutting weight, and in a rematch of the fight that shocked the world, Julianna Peña defends the women's bantamweight title against Amanda Nunes, who comes into an MMA bout as challenger rather than champion for the first time in six years.
...and then we sort of anticlimactically end the month on Rizin 37: Saitama on July 31. This card isn't even fully-baked yet, as only eight fights have been announced, but former UFC fighter Ulka Sasaki will meet ONE Championship's former contender Yoshiki Nakahara, Hideki "Shrek" Sekine will have an either funny or sad heavyweight scrap with 4-1 sumo Sudario, forty-fight veteran Yuki Motoya Olympic silver medalist Shinobu Ota in the latter's fourth-ever MMA fight, Hideo Tokoro is back and doing his duty as a veteran by battling 13-1-1 top prospect Makoto Takahashi, and bantamweight grand prix runner-up Naoki Inoue will meet Kenta Takizawa.
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. The UFC is pinning its hopes on a Jon Jones/Stipe Miocic interim championship match later this year, but that requires relying on Jon Jones.
Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Jiří Procházka - 29-3-1, 0 Defenses
After a solid decade of being one of the most consistently weird people in mixed martial arts, Jiří Procházka is the champion of the world. Where most fighters get inspired by the Gracies or Bruce Lee, Jiří's interest in martial arts originated in playing Tekken with his fellow 90s kids and the turning point in his life was his viewing of the 2008 Jeff "Remake Fantasy Island as a horror movie, what could go wrong" Wadlow classic, Never Back Down. Where most of his peers embraced the athletic future of martial arts, Jiří rejected modernity and fashioned himself as The Czech Samurai, living by the code of bushido and training in The Old Ways and fashioning himself as a sometimes-berserk striker. It works wonders: He was a champion in the Czech Republic, he was a runner-up in the 2015 Rizin Grand Prix, he took the (short-lived) Rizin light-heavyweight championship, and after just two UFC fights he found himself in the cage with UFC champion Glover Teixeira. The result was an instant classic, widely hailed as the best UFC light-heavyweight title fight of all time and one of its best ever in any division, as Jiří and Glover beat the sense out of each other, trading intense if occasionally sloppy offense back and forth for four and a half rounds before Jiří finally put an exhausted Glover on the floor and, shockingly, choked him out. Ten years after his journey began, "Denisa" is on top of the world. His first defense will likely come against Jan Błachowicz towards the end of the year.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Israel Adesanya - 22-1, 4 Defenses
Israel Adesanya has described Anderson Silva as his idol, a man who shaped the path of his life in martial arts and mixed martial arts alike. He has long aped Anderson Silva's evasiveness, flamboyance and striking acumen, and now, in a bid to further take his throne, Israel Adesanya has learned to imitate Anderson's habit of winning fights in ways that make people really mad. Adesanya's big February rematch with Robert Whittaker wound up feeling almost like a stalemate: Whittaker couldn't get solid strikes in on him so he primarily clinched and took him down but failed to control him on the ground, Adesanya touched Whittaker up and landed a couple stiff counters but largely kept his distance and stayed light on his feet to avoid more grappling exchanges. Adesanya walked away with a close but unanimous decision and some amount of grumbling from the fans who expected another amazing striking performance from the amazing striker (or who just wanted Rob to win). With Whittaker most likely going to have to put a lot of work in to justify a third shot, Adesanya's sights now turn to Jared Cannonier, whose murderous performance against Derek Brunson earned him a title shot that is scheduled for UFC 276 on July 2.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Kamaru Usman - 19-1, 5 Defenses
"The Nigerian Nightmare" had to work harder than anticipated in November. Usman/Covington 2, a rematch very few people outside of the UFC's top brass wanted, seemed at first like the one-sided beating most people had hoped for, but Colby Covington's shitheadedness is matched only by his toughness and he was able to give Usman serious trouble in the back half of the fight. Usman won a hard-fought but clear decision, and now stands as unquestionably the UFC's greatest male champion, an incredibly tough, well-rounded and cerebral fighter who now holds the second-longest reign in welterweight history. The UFC appreciates him, kind of, but not enough to not repeatedly try to get him to drop the title to Jorge Masvidal or Colby Covington. They spent several months dicking around regarding his next contender, but after years of trying to deny his existence and desperate attempts to buy time for Khamzat Chimaev, the UFC has finally acquiesced and admitted Leon Edwards and his 19-3 record deserve the next shot at the belt. Usman claimed to want more time to rehabilitate his hand injury, but either it was a bargaining chip or the UFC successfully pressured him, as Usman and Edwards are officially on deck for UFC 278 on August 20.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
VACANT - Permanently undefeated being as they are an abstract concept of space and time, 5-time heavyweight champion, 5-time light-heavyweight champion, 1-time middleweight champion, 2-time welterweight champion, 5-time lightweight champion AND 1-time lightweight tournament champion, 2-time bantamweight champion, 1-time flyweight champion, 1-time women's featherweight champion, 1-time women's flyweight champion
Charles Oliveira dusted Justin Gaethje in one round at UFC 274, but he weighed in half a pound over the 155-pound divisional limit. Initial hopes and fears about a commission fuckup wound up not panning out, meaning his historic rise to the title and historic run through the division is at least temporarily capped off by an equally historic feat: He is the first UFC fighter to officially lose their title on the scale. There will almost certainly be a championship match later this year featuring Oliveira against Islam Makhachev, Michael Chandler or a one-legged Conor McGregor, but for the moment, the world lightweight championship is vacant. And that means the most decorated competitor in mixed martial arts history is back. No one has defeated more top stars than Vacant. Vacant is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Vacant has held every UFC belt except featherweight and women's strawweight. Vacant is 3-0 over Jon Jones, and it WOULD be 4 if the UFC hadn't felt bad for him and given one of the victories to Daniel Cormier instead. Vacant has held championships in every combat sport, is a crossover star with nearly incalculable professional wrestling belts, and to this day holds the Olympic gold medal for the women's 100m run at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Vacant even has a couple successful UFC title defenses. There has never been a more dominant athlete, and we should all be privileged we had a chance to watch Vacant's career flourish.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 24-1, 3 Defenses
Alexander Volkanovski, as it turns out, is really, really fucking good at fighting. Volkanovski has been criminally underrated for the near-entirety of his time in the UFC, in part due to his generally amiable and unassuming personality and in part because he doesn't have singular, standout traits as a fighter like so many other champions, but unlike those peers he's only improved since reaching the top of the mountain. This was both impressively and depressingly exemplified in his title defense against The Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung, who despite being a legendarily tough fighter and enormous striking threat was dismantled like never before in his career: Volkanovksi outstruck him 152-51, battered him to a 10-8 in the third round and scored a merciful standing TKO in the fourth. Or, as Jung put it:
While Volkanovski has beaten Max Holloway twice already and trilogy fights when one fighter is 2-0 are generally grating, in this case the two are so far above and beyond the rest of the division that it's impossible to not run it back one more time. Volkanovski/Holloway 3 will be the co-main event of UFC 276 on July 2, which frankly seems kind of weird because that fight could clearly carry a PPV on its own, but hey, more power to them.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Aljamain Sterling - 21-3, 1 Defense
Vindication has rarely pissed off so many people or been so fucking funny. Aljamain Sterling is a tough man and an exceptional grappler, but when he became the bantamweight champion of the world on March 6, 2021, it was not because of his talents but because the undisputed king of the division Petr Yan was a huge idiot and intentionally fouled him, leading to the first time a championship has changed hands by disqualification in MMA history. The MMA world, being a smart, balanced community, placed almost universal blame on Sterling for this. After thirteen months of anticipation, two reschedulings and an absolutely endless raft of shit-talk from Yan about Sterling being a fake champion, the rematch finally came on April 9, 2022, and against almost everyone's predictions (including mine!), Aljamain Sterling beat Petr Yan fair and square, controlling him in the grappling and neutralizing his striking for most of the fight and ultimately taking a split decision. People are of course even more upset at him now, but fuck 'em. Yan is foaming at the mouth for a rubber match, but Sterling, rightly pointing out that a rubber match when you're 0-2 is stupid, eyed a fight with TJ Dillashaw, Jose Aldo or Dominick Cruz later this year, and the UFC, being the UFC, picked Dillashaw. The fight isn't official yet but it's expected for UFC 279 on September 10.
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. In turn, Figueiredo has begun talking about leaving flyweight altogether and moving up to bantamweight.
Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs
Amanda Nunes - 21-5, 2 Defenses
I really did not expect to have to rewrite either of these sections, and doing it still feels wrong. Amanda "The Lioness" Nunes is the undisputed greatest women's fighter of all time, having demolished not just every contender placed in front of her but every previous champion at both women's bantamweight and featherweight. Her 135-pound defense against Julianna Peña at UFC 269 was looked at by most as an afterthought. And then, she lost. Not only did she lose, she lost and looked so bad in doing so that most of her fans are left wondering if COVID-19 ruined her. A rematch against Peña is already in the books for later this year, but for the moment, Amanda Nunes is only the women's featherweight champion, and if she DOES win a rubber match is a virtual necessity, meaning the featherweight division could be on hold for a year or more. Which is even funnier now, because it appears the UFC, rather than rolling straight into a fight, picked Nunes and Peña as the opposing coaches for this year's 30th season of The Ultimate Fighter, delaying the fight for months and giving us lots of forgettable fights and faux-drama instead. The rematch will headline UFC 277 on July 30.
Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs
Julianna Peña - 11-4, 0 Defenses
Julianna Peña shocked the world. Absolutely no one gave her a chance against Amanda Nunes, as my previous threads are now embarrassing evidence of, and the precious few people who did thought her only chance involved avoiding direct exchanges as much as possible and dragging Nunes into the deep waters in the clinch until she wore down in the later rounds. The first round seemed to bear this out entirely, as Nunes dropped her twice and seemed fairly in control of the match, and then somehow in the second round Julianna Peña, who was once on the wrong end of the striking of 4-3 flyweight Nicco Montaño, outboxed and repeatedly wobbled Amanda Nunes, and somehow, Julianna Peña, who was once choked out by noted non-grappler Germaine de Randamie, submitted Amanda Nunes with a rear naked choke. The world is still in such absolute disbelief about the fight's outcome that despite having walked Nunes down, punched her silly and choked her out in eight minutes, betting for the rematch opened with Nunes still a -250 favorite to regain her crown. Julianna Peña is the biggest story in MMA right now, and the UFC's intention to capitalize on it by parlaying her victory into a new season of The Ultimate Fighter let her have a few extra months in the spotlight to give interviews about how she doesn't know how old she is, COVID is a conspiracy, Amanda Nunes isn't a real mother and Ronda Rousey has fat arms. The rematch is now booked for UFC 277 on July 30. Please root correctly.
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 unnkown 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. Her most likely next contender will come either in another cross-class fight with the winner of Peña/Nunes 2, or from her own class with the winner of Jéssica Andrade vs Manon Fiorot this September.
Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs
Carla Esparza - 19-6, 0 Defenses
Carla "Cookie Monster" Esparza is the top strawweight in the world again, and most of the MMA world is pissed. This is not a new phenomenon for her career. When Carla Esparza won Invicta's strawweight championship it was against "Rowdy" Bec Rawlings and people were upset, because Rawlings was both a fan-friendly brawler and a huge underdog. When Carla Esparza won the UFC's inaugural strawweight championship it was against "Thug" Rose Namajunas and people were upset, half because Esparza's stifling wrestling turned them off and half because the TUF editors did an excellent job making her look like an asshole. When Joanna Jędrzejczyk butchered her in her next fight it was hailed by the entire MMA internet as the birth of the 'real' strawweight championship and everyone just kind of consigned Esparza to the dustbin of martial arts history. (Including me. I am guilty.) It took seven years, several tough losses and the UFC publicly sabotaging her championship aspirations, but Esparza made her way back to title contention and threw the gauntlet down at her once-defeated now-undisputed rival. And in 2022, when Carla Esparza won the UFC strawweight championship back from Rose Namajunas people were upset because it was quite possibly the worst title fight in UFC history. Even weirder: It wasn't entirely Esparza's fault. If anything, she was comparatively the aggressor--if very sparingly and typically ineffectually--and Rose spent the entire fight refusing to engage and being inexplicably reassured by her corner that she was executing a perfect gameplan and everything was fine. By the end the two combined for 68 landed strikes in five rounds and no one was happy save Carla Esparza, two-time champion of the world. Joanna Jędrzejczyk and Zhang Weili had a rematch of their all-time-great fight at UFC 275, and this time Weili controlled and ultimately knocked Joanna out in two rounds, making her almost certainly the next contender. The fight has not yet been announced; Weili Zhang is already a -300 favorite.
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 means his likely next contender is either Linton Vassell, who himself only returned to heavyweight three years ago, or a Fedor rematch, which would be fucking hilarious no matter what happens.
Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Vadim Nemkov - 15-2 (1), 2 Defenses
All the success in the world cannot stop the curse inherent to being in Bellator. Vadim Nemkov is a four-time sambo world champion, a former Spetsnaz operative, a 6'0" steroid golem and the light-heavyweight champion of Bellator, but his main contribution to the MMA world right now is unintentional comedy. Bellator held the finals of its light-heavyweight grand prix on April 15, and after twelve months of competition including six titlists it came down to standing champion Nemkov and top contender and professor emeritus of Beastin' Corey Anderson, and while Anderson was well in control an inadvertent headbutt opened a huge gash on Nemkov's brow--and as the fight was paused just five seconds before the end of the third round it was too early for a technical decision. So the tournament ended in a No Contest, and Bellator's championship is held by a champion who was clearly beaten, and the tournament final will need a do-over later this year, and Scott Coker continues to live a life cursed by his participation in Surf Ninjas. The rematch is expected for late July or August.
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. What comes next for Eblen is anyone's guess. Could be a Mousasi rematch if Scott Coker gets mad about wrestling existing again, could be the winner of Larkin/Berkhamov, could be Yoel Romero dropping back down to 185. For the moment, Eblen gets to be on top of the world.
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 Amosov is fighting in the ongoing war in his homeland Ukraine, which doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon. Consequently:
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. In theory a unification match between Storley and Amosov is next, but with no sign of an end to the invasion of Ukraine, who knows. I'm sure Bellator would love to give MVP a rematch.
Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Patricky "Pitbull" Freire - 24-10, 0 Defenses
Bellator's lightweight division is in a deeply unfortunate place right now. Bellator's canonical best fighter, for a very long time, was the reigning Featherweight and Lightweight double champion Patricio Pitbull, who knocked out some guy you may have heard of named Michael Chandler to win the latter. He's one of the best fighters on the planet. This is not him. This is his twin brother Patricky, who is one inch taller and also less good. Patricio held the lightweight championship without defending it for two years until the moment Bellator agreed to put Patricky in a championship main event, at which point he coincidentally decided to vacate the belt and focus on 145. Patricky also got the title shot coming off two consecutive losses, one of which was a somewhat absurd cut stoppage in a fight he was winning against Peter "The Showstopper" Queally, who himself was only 11-6 at the time and was delivered into title contention based on a victory over a guy who never won a Bellator fight. (The secret: He was Irish and the title fight was in Dublin.) Patricky won the rematch handily and is now the champion of a lightweight division where the two top contenders are 4-1 and 3-0 respectively and when you talk about him most people think you're talking about his brother. He'll be defending his title against Sidney Outlaw at Bellator 283 on July 22.
Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Patrício “Pitbull” Freire - 33-5, 0 Defenses
One fight after being violently dethroned, Patrício Pitbull is back on top of the world. Patrício Pitbull has long been considered Bellator's GOAT, as a two-division champion with a 21-5 record across twelve years in the organization that's staggering not just for its breadth but for the way he had only ever been defeated by hard-fought decision or freak injury until July 31, 2021, when the meteorically-rising A.J. McKee knocked him loopy and choked him unconscious in one round. Pitbull protested the stoppage, as fighters always do, but he didn't have a case. By their rematch on April 15, 2022, Bellator had already anointed McKee as their new top star to the point of making him the central feature of their new promo packages--which made it very awkward and very funny when, after five hard-fought if tentative rounds, Patrício emerged with a unanimous decision victory. It has since been McKee's turn to complain and cry foul about bad judging, despite the fight actually being fairly clear, but he's also declared his intention to leave the division and move to lightweight, so Patrício is once again the undisputed king of his division. What comes next is presumably a match with Adam Borics later this year.
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 - 18-1, 0 Defenses
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 six-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. Congratulations on finding the hidden update line, quote this to win. Loudmouth wrestler Danny Sabatello defeated Leandro Higo to reach the next round of Bellator's Grand Prix, and will face Stots later this year for both the championship and the first berth in the finals.
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 has stated she wants her next fight to be a boxing match, not MMA, which Bellator is more than happy to oblige being as it's apparently always been an option in her contract and they couldn't stop her if they wanted to. Who or how this will happen is anyone's guess.
Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Liz Carmouche - 17-7, 0 Defenses
This wasn't a thing most people expected, nor are most people happy about it, but it kind of makes me smile. Liz "Girl-Rilla" Carmouche is a former marine who's been grinding away at mixed martial arts for twelve years, and for the entirety of those twelve years she's been just good enough to touch the top of the mountain but not quite good enough to climb it. In 2011, just one year into her career, she challenged for Strikeforce's bantamweight championship only to get choked out, in 2013 she participated in the first women's fight in UFC history and nearly upset everyone's marketing plans by neck cranking the shit out of Ronda Rousey before ultimately getting armbarred, and in 2019 she challenged Valentina Shevchenko for her flyweight title but just couldn't touch her. Her shift to Bellator wasn't met with much fanfare, but three wins with two violent stoppages earned her a shot at champion Juliana Velasquez on April 22, 2022. It seemed to be going Velasquez's way, but just before the end of the fourth round Carmouche muscled her to the ground, put her in the crucifix position and began landing elbows that were, respectfully, pretty visibly inconsequential, but referee Mike Beltran felt differently and called the fight off, leaving Velasquez apoplectic and Carmouche a world champion for the first time in her career. Velasquez is appealing the decision, which is aggressively silly and will go nowhere, but Bellator will almost certainly put together a rematch.
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, and after many, many months of back and forth Bhullar agreed to a new deal, setting himself up against his stiffest competition yet.
ONE Interim Heavyweight Champion
Anatoliy Malykhin - 11-0, 0 Defenses
For all things, there is a Russian punchman. Anatoly "Spartak" Malykhin is both an undefeated mixed martial arts fighter, a punching machine, and an avowed wife guy who credits her with his career, which he was about to give up as a 5-0 regional champion before meeting her. He promptly moved to Phuket, upped his game, met ONE's talent scouts and got signed directly into co-main event status. He is not only 11-0, and not only has finished all eleven fights, no one has yet made it further than the second round with him, including noted steroid elemental Amir Aliakbari, whom he starched in three minutes, and interim championship contender Kirill Grishenko. The fight hasn't been formally signed yet, but the heavyweight championship unification is expected sometime this summer.
ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs
Reinier de Ridder - 15-0, 0 Defenses
ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs
Reinier de Ridder - 15-0, 1 Defense
"The Dutch Knight" Reinier de Ridder is probably ONE's most successful MMA fighter and he was recently deemed insufficiently important to merit a Wikipedia page. ONE prides itself on creating the 225-pound cruiserweight class many MMA fans have wanted for years, but it almost immediately fell victim to the problem many had theorized: A sufficiently skilled 205-pounder will probably also just win at 225. Aung La N Sang was the first to hold both titles simultaneously, but Reinier, a childhood judoka turned all-around adult grappling monster, choked him out in one round to win his middleweight title. Curiously, Sang was scheduled to defend his remaining title against someone else, but COVID put the seemingly more logical Reinier in, who promptly took the other belt home too. Because ONE is very, very silly, Reinier then made his first defense of the 205-pound title against Kiamrian Abbasov, ONE's 185-pound champion (whose own title was not on the line) whom he also choked out, meaning Reinier de Ridder is now the lineal titleholder of 1/3 of ONE's entire men's MMA program. To further make this more ridiculous, his first post-triple-champ fight was not a fight, but a grappling match against all-time BJJ great André Galvão, and upon wrestling him to a draw, he challenged him to an MMA fight which Galvão accepted. André Galvão's last mixed martial arts bout was twelve years ago, it was at 170 pounds, and he was knocked out in two minutes by Tyron Woodley. While the fight is still expected later this year, de Ridder will be making a pit stop to defend specifically the middleweight title against former champion Vitaly Bigdash at ONE 159 on July 22.
ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs
Kiamrian Abbasov - 23-5, 1 Defense
It's Kyrgyzstani wrestleboxing time, baby. Kiamrian "Brazen" Abbasov came up in the Russian regionals and took home both the Tech-Krep FC championship and the MixFace championship, which is much, much funnier. He was picked up by ONE as an ultra-promising middleweight prospect, and lived up to that promise by immediately getting outworked against living legend Luis "Sapo" Santos. He was back in ONE nine months later, and was its new welterweight champion ten months after that. He's a smart, tactical fighter with a well-rounded skillset, but he has a tendency to get manhandled by superior wrestlers, which made it all the more baffling when ONE booked him against Reinier de Ridder, who pretty easily controlled and ultimately submitted him. Admittedly, ONE kind of has a proto-WEC thing going on--their lower weight classes are dangerous and interesting, their higher weight classes are so much less important that ONE doesn't even have rankings above lightweight on their own website. Abbasov is a champion, but what he is a champion of, no one knows.
ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs
Ok Rae Yoon - 16-3, 0 Defenses
Ok Rae Yoon was not supposed to be here. A lifelong part of Team MAD, the South Korean chain of MMA gyms that boasts superstars like Seo Hee Ham, Kyung Ho Kong and Doo Ho Choi under its wing, Ok Rae Yoon, despite being a very tough striker and counter-wrestler, flew mostly under the radar for most of his career. It wasn't until his mid-2020 capturing of South Korea's regional Double G Lightweight Championship that ONE took an interest. He was booked against former ONE featherweight champion Marat Gafurov, whom they seemingly expected to win, and he instead shut him down and took a decision. ONE promptly booked him into another match seven days later against Eddie Alvarez, whom they OPENLY expected to win, only for Yoon to shut him down, too. So they gave him a shot ONE's lightweight champion and one of its biggest stars, Christian Lee, and in the funniest thing yet, Ok Rae Yoon won an extremely controversial decision and upended everything. Christian Lee called the decision bullshit and demanded it be overturned and he be given a rematch. It was not overturned, and the fight happened back in September of last year and there's still no word about what happens next. If you want to know how ONE feels about having one of their golden boys knocked off, Ok Rae Yoon has been a champion in ONE for more than half a year and they have yet to give him a written profile on their website.
ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Thanh Le - 13-2, 1 Defense
Demetrious Johnson was once asked which ONE fighter would have the best shot in the UFC, and without hesitation he answered Thanh Le, which is particularly funny because they had two shots at him and passed each time. A Vietnamese-American by way of New Orleans, Thanh Le took to Taekwondo as a child and MMA after graduation, and five fights into his career he was on ill-fated The Ultimate Fighter: McGregor vs Faber that left us stuck with Artem Lobov forever. Despite scoring a knockout victory on the show, he was eliminated in the second round and not brought back. Two years later he was 6-1-0 and invited onto the second-ever episode of Dana White's Contender Series, and even knocked his opponent out with a violent headkick, but that was also the episode that debuted Sean O'Malley so nothing else mattered. Two years later he was an 8-2 prospect getting his shot in ONE, and five violent knockouts later he's a defending champion who has stopped every fight he's ever won. The culmination of his career came this past March, when undefeated MMA fighter, multi-time BJJ champion and total asshole Garry Tonon came in against him as a betting favorite and got ground and pounded into unconsciousness in fifty-six seconds instead. Thanh's knockout streak makes him one of the most exciting fighters on ONE's entire roster. But, y'know, the UFC got Sean O'Malley, so really, who won?
ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
John Lineker - 35-9, 0 Defenses
John God Damn Lineker, world champion. "Hands of Stone" is a 5'3" ball of muscle with lunchboxes attached to it. Our own LobsterMobster very accurately described him as someone who hits like a truck made out of a train. Lineker's been fighting since 2008, but he ran up a fairly unimpressive 6-5 record in the first year of his career and briefly considered retiring. And then, settling into his style of gritting his teeth, stomping forward and never, ever ceasing in his attempts to punch you as hard as he possibly could, he started murdering everyone. After thirteen straight victories and two regional bantamweight championships he was picked up by the UFC for its then-nascent 125-pound weight class, which was problematic given his love of being a giant muscle golem. He went 6-2 at the weight class, but he also managed to miss weight in half of those fights, resulting in his being forced up to bantamweight, where he was noticeably undersized and often gave up half a foot of height, and it didn't fucking matter because he was John God Damn Lineker. He went 6-2 again, with his only losses being a unanimous decision to two-time champ TJ Dillashaw and a razor-close split against top contender Cory Sandhagen. And staring at this massively marketable multiple-bonus-winning top contender who was knocking dudes dead at 135 pounds, the UFC decided to release him. Dana White said it was his lack of professionalism and weight misses, which seems like a strange thing to get mad about three years later; it is somewhat more likely ONE FC was trying to sign him and he rationally asked why he, as an eight-year, 16-fight UFC veteran, was only getting paid $46k to show. Three months later he was destroying people at 145 pounds in ONE, and three years later he fought reigning champion Bibiano Fernandes, one of the best featherweights of all time and arguably the best fighter outside the UFC period, and became the first person to ever knock him out. John Lineker is a violence machine, his fights are must-see television, and he's a goddamn 145-pound champion at 5'3".
ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs
Adriano Moraes - 20-3, 2 Defenses
Adriano Moraes was one of MMA's best-kept secrets until very recently. His is a hard luck story that almost ended tragically; abandoned by his mother in an alley at 3, learning capoeira and judo at 7, running with street gangs by the time he was 12 and narrowly escaping death on several occasions until his friends and his adoptive mother convinced him to channel his energy into learning jiu-jitsu. He made his MMA debut at the end of 2011, and by the summer of 2013 he was 9-0 and a Shooto Brazil champion. His ultra-aggressive grappling, his quick, accurate crosses and his willingness to throw his entire body at you to take you down made him an incredibly dangerous grappler. It also made him occasionally too wild to retain control over his fights. Moraes is 17-3, and all three of those losses were close split decisions--two of which he's since avenged. This has also made him ONE's most recurrent champion, as he's actually now on his third flyweight title reign, with one successful defense in each previous period. But most people only really started paying attention to him this past April when he met the greatest flyweight of all time in Demetrious Johnson and not only defeated him, but became the first man ever to knock him out. Now he's in the weird if enviable position of having cleaned out ONE's flyweight division: Every successful contender they've signed, he's turned away. This makes him really, really fucking good, but unless they want to run more champ vs champ matches, it also means he doesn't really have much to do at the moment.
ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Pacio - 20-3, 3 Defenses
Joshua "The Passion" Pacio, thusly named after his passion for hotel and restaurant management. A childhood student of both kickboxing and wushu, Pacio quickly established himself as one of the best 125-pound MMA fighters in the Philippines and, ultimately, was too good to stay there. He signed on with ONE in 2016, and his combination of solid grappling, spinning kicks and quick, darting punches got him up to a strawweight title shot within the year, which led to the first loss of his career and the discovery of his primary weakness: Strong wrestling games. Fortunately, this being 125 pounds and a striking-centric promotion, there aren't that many threats out there for him. He's on his second title reign now, his first having been ended during its first defense in a split decision by the greatest rival of his career, grappler Yosuke Saruta, but he wrested the championship back from him in a rematch and this past September defeated him again in a rubber match. Pacio is among the longest-reigning champions in ONE, having notched 1000+ days and 3 title defenses, but as ONE's profile has risen it has begun attracting international talent, and at ONE: Reloaded on April 22, former UFC fighter Jared "The Monkey God" Brooks took a decisive victory and lined himself up as the most likely next contender--and then got himself injured and scratched from his title shot a week before it happened. Better luck later this year.
ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Xiong Jing Nan - 17-2, 6 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. Having ultimately accomplished nothing both returned to their own divisions, and Xiong Jing Nan now has six defenses to her name, the most of any champion in the company.
ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs
Angela Lee - 11-2, 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 aguably 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. ONE has its star player back, and in all likelihood she'll be facing her next challenge in Hamderlei Silva herself, Seo Hee Ham, later this year.
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Roberto de Souza - 14-1, 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 notoreity, 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. If he's happy, though, he's happy.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Juntaro Ushiku - 21-8-1, 0 Defenses
Japan has always had an extremely strong regional MMA scene, and occasionally top competitors somewhat abruptly pop out of it. The Fighting Bull Juntaro Ushiku is the latest, and one Rizin didn't quite seem to expect. One of Rizin's primary stories has been its love of the Asakura brothers, Kai and Mikuru, both of whom have made big impacts and gotten some perhaps occasionally favorable matchmaking to speed along their route to Japanese stardom. It was somewhat counter to Rizin's plans when Mikuru got outfought and controlled by a lesser-known wrestler in Yutaka Saito, and even moreso when Saito promptly got his face kneed off by Ushiku, the featherweight champion of DEEP. Ushiku did, in fact, immediately return to DEEP two months later. He's a scrappy fighter--well-rounded, no enormous standout skills, lots of split decisions, very difficult to finish--and Rizin wanted the title back on Saito enough that they gave him a rematch despite having only lost a fight in the interim. The resulting fight was very close, but off the strength of having dropped Saito with a headkick, the judges gave Ushiku the unanimous decision. It's presumably a matter of time before Ushiku has to defend against Mikuru.
Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Kyoji Horiguchi - 29-5, 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. For someone who wants to be the best in the world, there are questions to be answered about where he goes from here.
Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
Seika Izawa - 6-0, 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.