THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 2023
THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 2023
One last ride for Bellator before its brave new world of brand acquisition.
Welcome to November! The year is winding down and we're almost at the end, but before we get there, we've got two UFC title fights (well, one and a half since it's an interim belt), the 2023 season finale for the Professional Fighters League, and what will be at best the last Bellator event before it is acquired by yet another company or, at worst, the last Bellator event period. Get excited!
THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
Oh, boy, is there. But we're gonna start with a feelgood moment.
Remember that whole "Francis Ngannou is going to fight Tyson Fury in a celebrity boxing match" thing most of the entire world thought was a joke? After months of taking shit, Ngannou went in there and almost did the damn thing. In the first professional boxing match of his life, he entered the ring with the undefeated WBC heavyweight champion and gave him one of the toughest fights of his life, dropping him on his ass in the third round and hanging with him all the way to a one-point-differential split decision loss.
Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating. The lineal heavyweight champion of essentially all of mixed martial arts, a man who has never boxed before and who was roundly mocked by virtually every MMA business expert for leaving the UFC to pursue an assured embarrassment on an international stage, took his first boxing match against at worst the second-best heavyweight boxer on the planet and knocked him down, and in the eyes of a judge and most of the audience, won. The UFC had the best heavyweight in the world and rather than getting a piece of the pie for a real-life Rocky movie they let him go.
After every stupid thing Dana White said about him, after every time anyone mocked him, Francis Ngannou shocked the fucking world. I don't know that MMA's ever getting him back, at this point, but honestly, more power to him. You're a star now. Go enjoy it.
And now, your regularly scheduled negativity. You know my constant yammering about the UFC mortgaging away the credibility it spent years building now that it no longer needs it to make money? Within one month of the WWE/UFC merger officially closing, they announced that as of the new year the UFC will no longer have the United States Anti-Doping Agency carry out its drug testing.
To be clear: There is nuance to this. USADA runs one of the most comprehensive drug testing programs in the world, but they're also known for being uneven at best and draconian at worst. They don't always apply their punishments evenly, they've had extremely public instances of caving to UFC pressure--hello, Jon Jones--and there are some fighters, most notably Tom Lawlor, who had their careers irreparably harmed by USADA decisions they disagreed with. There are very valid reasons to dislike USADA and celebrate their departure from the sport.
The UFC, of course, did not get rid of them for any of those reasons. After years of trying to put their thumb on the scale, the final straw wasn't any of USADA's imperfections, but rather, the fact that USADA demanded Conor McGregor, you know, take a drug test. Most of 2023 was spent with a slowly growing public acrimony between McGregor and USADA over the former's insistence on fighting again and the latter's insistence on McGregor taking part in the most basic levels of steroid testing.
And you don't fuck with McGregor money. The deal was inevitably doomed anyway--the UFC has no use for USADA, they don't need the credibility, so it no longer makes sense to pay for legally unnecessary drug testing that exists only to maintain respectability, which the UFC stopped giving a shit about awhile ago--but putting barriers around Conor hastened the process.
As of January, USADA is gone. While I don't share in the feelings of the people celebrating, I understand them. Besides, the UFC's going to be instituting new drug testing to take its place. So everything's going to still be great and respectable and on the up and up, right?
Well,
The new drug testing will be managed in a partnership with Drug Free Sport International, best known as the company that does drug testing for the National Football League, which, as we all know, is doing just a bang-up job over there. The UFC's side of the program will be overseen by George Piro, best known for being the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein, but most connected to MMA for being a longtime student at MMA supercamp American Top Team, which is as famous for its success as its number of steroid busts. But don't worry--George promises to administrate everything fairly, and he changed his Instagram handle from georgepiro_att to georgepiro_bjj, and when UFC executive Jeff Novitzky was asked during the announcement about program oversight, he had this to say.
Sounds airtight to me. Oh, as a bonus? The guy hired to run the UFC's side of doping science, Dr. Dan Eichner, used to be a higher-up at the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency. Up until around 2013, when he left just before a bunch of e-mails surfaced showing he was privately communicating with and seemingly on the take from supplement manufacturers he was supposed to be holding to task and investigating.
But, y'know. I'm sure it will all be just fine.
Oh, and we also got less than one month into the merger era before the UFC announced that, much like their new family the WWE had, they, too, were going to start taking incredibly lucrative trips to Saudi Arabia to hold crown-financed events that double as propaganda for how great the KSA is and how they have never done anything wrong, ever.
But don't worry, it's not all bad UFC news this month--it's bad news for the rest of the sport, too.
Bloody Elbow got their hands on Adriano Moraes' old contract with ONE Championship and did an excellent dissection of just how crappy it was. You can read the contract yourself at the link, but in short, it includes:
Likeness rights that belong to ONE for unrestricted use in merchandising and advertising, superseding all other company contracts and continuing in perpetuity even after you die
A championship clause whereby, if you win a title in ONE, you are automatically locked into another two-year, four-fight contract that is frozen at your current pay level
No sunset clause of any kind for declining fights, meaning even in the event of injury or retirement ONE can extend your contract for your entire natural life if they so choose
The inability to book any media, interviews or self-promotion of any kind without ONE's direct permission and approval, nor can you change anything about your identity or your name or any way in which you are promoted
A permanent non-disparagement clause by which you cannot say anything bad about ONE, their networks, their sponsors or anyone they do business with, which continues in perpetuity for the rest of your life after the term of the contract concludes
Also for some weird reason if you file for bankruptcy or have some other tax issue requiring wage garnishing ONE can and will fire you rather than letting outside creditors access their finances
Also if you want to fight any legal disagreement with ONE you can only do it through arbitration specifically in Singapore
Your fight expenses are an economy-class ticket for you and one cornerman, one hotel room with specifically twin-sized beds, and a S$40 (so about $30 US) per diem for food
ONE has of course stated this controversy is scumbag muckraking journalists getting it wrong, but, much as when they said the same regarding ONE's own publicly-released financials over the last several years, they have yet to actually contract the story with any new information.
And, finally--putting sense to the as yet not-officially-confirmed reports of Bellator's desperate need to sell itself off--the Showtime network announced that after almost forty years of programming that included a huge chunk of Mike Tyson's career, the final tour of Floyd Mayweather Jr., the crowning of Anthony Joshua, the rise and fall of EliteXC and Strikeforce MMA and, apparently, the last two years of Bellator's time as an independent company, come January, Showtime Sports will no longer exist. At a time when seemingly every other television network is chasing down live sports as one of the last bastions of profitable viewing metrics, Showtime is kicking boxing and MMA to the curb.
It's a tragedy, not just for the end of a huge part of combat sports history but for the closing of one of the few remaining berths in the already-monopolized world of combat sports. We don't yet know what Bellator's final fate will be, but whether they get folded into another company or just fold altogether, even less choice for fighters is a terrible thing.
MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER
After just one year shy of a quarter-century of competition, Alistair Overeem officially retired from combat sports. This wasn't exactly news--he'd more or less retired back in July--but his management disagreed, and he walked it back, and there was some uncertainty left over. Now it's official, which means now, we can talk about it. Which is good, because boy, it's a complicated legacy.
Let us be wholly clear: Alistair Overeem is one of the best heavyweights in mixed martial arts history. He was already one of the best light-heavyweights before he discovered how to pump himself up like a cartoon character, and as a heavyweight, he was a force of nature. He has thirty-three knockouts across MMA and kickboxing, he won world championships in both, and he stopped damn near everyone he ever beat. He's got victories over a dozen world champions and even more contenders. Despite having only one kickboxing match in the last four years he walked into a fight with one of the best heavyweights on the planet, Badr Hari, and knocked him cold in two minutes. Sergei Pavlovich is fighting for a UFC championship this month: Alistair Overeem is the 1 in his 18-1 record. And he did that in 2018, just shy of two full decades after his professional debut. He won the last real K-1 World Grand Prix. He ended Brock Lesnar's MMA career. He was, at one point, almost certainly the best heavyweight in mixed martial arts.
But you cannot honestly talk about Overeem's career without discussing the elephant in the room. Alistair Overeem is the poster boy for steroids. His rapid expansion from a skinny 205-pounder getting knocked out by Chuck Liddell to a 265-pound muscle monster bullying Mark Hunt was the basis of half the memes you could find on the mid-2000s MMA internet. He pumped himself up so thoroughly and ridiculously that when he officially signed with the UFC the first question on everyone's mind wasn't who he would fight or when he would be champion, but rather, if he could pass a drug test. And the answer was, of course, no. He failed immediately. The UFC let him fight anyway, but he promptly failed again in his next fight--with a testosterone ratio more than double the legal limit. When he finally emerged again in 2013, he was, while still huge, noticeably smaller. And he got knocked the fuck out.
And that's the real patch on Alistair Overeem. He was a giant bag of steroids, but an awful lot of fighters are, and when he was winning all the time no one cared. But when his moment came in the UFC, he just couldn't break through the top. Bigfoot would outlast him, or Travis Browne would beat him by just spamming front kicks to the face, or Ben fucking Rothwell would knock him out. Overeem still got close--he got a shot at champion Stipe Miocic in 2016 by beating Andrei fucking Arlovski, of all people--and he hurt Stipe, and he almost submitted Stipe, and then he got knocked out anyway. In 2008-2010, Alistair Overeem could have been the man to beat Fedor and prove he was the best. But he didn't get the chance, and the moment passed, and by the time he got another one it was just too late.
I'd like to say Alistair Overeem got out with his health and his youth, but he didn't; he's in his mid-forties, he's already visibly deflated the hundred extra pounds he carried for a decade and a half, and he's been knocked out nineteen times in his fights alone. I'd like to say he left the sport with his reputation intact, and he kind of did--in the sense that he came back for one last kickboxing fight with Badr Hari, beat him, and then had the win overturned after he tested positive for too many steroids for Dutch kickboxing, which is absolutely in line with his legacy. I'd like to wish him well in his post-fight career like I do for almost everyone, but I can't do that, either, because he's already dedicated his future to right-wing politics like, uh, saying he's going to cure his daughter's trans identity by changing her diet.
So, mostly, I hope his heart gets both figurative and literal help. He retires with an MMA record of 47-19 (1), a kickboxing record of 10-4 (1), a place in the history books as both a K-1 World Grand Prix champion and the first (and probably only) fighter to hold simultaneous MMA and K-1 championships.
WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER
The month began immediately with Rizin Landmark 6 at midnight on October 1st, which was presumably a better time if you do not live in a sin-cursed country like America. It was a big ol' 16-fight card and most of that went to decision, but there were still some good highlights, including Joji Goto getting the rare twister submission over Junya Hibino, Yusaku Inoue's flying knee knockout over Kohei Tokeshi, Rogério Bontorin's first victory in four years after outfighting Yutaro Muramoto, former sumo Takakenshin getting stopped in two rounds by Hidetaka Arato, and Shooto Women's Atomweight Champion Ayaka Watanabe losing a split decision to Machi Fukuda. Up on your main card, Genji Umeno got a decision over Yuto Saito, Yuki Ito beat Road to UFC celebrity Topnoi Kiwram, Tsuyoshi Sudario overcame an early scare to knock out Lim Dong-hwan, Shoko Sato got a split decision against Shinobu Ota, and in your main event, Alan Yamaniha beat the living legend Hideo Tokoro, who is now just two losses away from a 50:50 ratio.
We had a three-event Saturday, and ONE was up first with ONE Fight Night 15: Le vs Freymanov on October 7th. As usual, ONE put up a mixed card of fighting styles. You had two Muay Thai bouts, with Shakir Al-Tekreeti beating Bampara Kouyate and Phetjeeja Lukjaoporongtom getting a doctor's stoppage against Celest Hansen. You had four undercard MMA bouts, including Hiroyuki Tetsuka armbarring Jin Tae-ho, Hu Yong knocking out Eko Roni Saputra, Zhang Lipeng knocking out Timofey Nastyukhin and former champ Joshua Pacio getting a decision over Mansur Malachiev. There was a single submission grappling special attraction squash match, as Mikey Musumeci met legend Shinya Aoki and tapped him out in three minutes with a move Aoki himself innovated. There were two straight kickboxing matches, including Tawanchai defeating Jo Nattawut and Jonathan Di Bella defending his strawweight championship with a decision over Danial Williams. The main event, rarely, was MMA, and it didn't take long: Thanh Le returned from losing the featherweight title more than a year ago by, uh, winning the interim featherweight title after heel hooking Ilya Freymanov in just barely a minute.
And then it was time for Bellator's big swing: Bellator 300, a mega-event that Bellator definitely didn't invent as a possible corporate farewell in case they went under before they could hold 301. It was a huge thing and, in a perfect tribute to Bellator, it went pretty poorly. As always the preliminary card was huge and as always I won't cover it all, but if you didn't watch it you missed Davion Franklin breaking his leg, Kai Kamaka III taking a split decision over Henry Corrales, Grant Neal beating Romero Cotton, and Bellator's big recent featherweight signing, UFC vet and former title contender Sara McMann, getting dropped in one round by Leah McCourt. The main card was intended to be just four matches, being as each was a title fight, but that, too, got fucked up: Ryan Bader's heavyweight title defense was cancelled when Linton Vassell pulled out and Bellator couldn't afford a replacement--no, really--and Ilima-Lei Macfarlane missed weight and was thus ineligible to win Liz Carmouche's Women's Flyweight Championship, leaving Carmouche doing the aggressively silly thing Bellator does where a champion defends against themselves. It didn't matter: Carmouche and Macfarlane, friends and training partners in real life, had a pretty forgettable fight where neither seemed to really want to commit to hurting the other, which was hilarious because Carmouche busted her leg with kicks in the fifth round. Cris Cyborg made her return to MMA after a year and a half spent chasing boxing, and it ended predictably, as the years of wondering if Cat Zingano was a good match for her ended in a tentative Zingano getting taken apart in four minutes. And your main event was both completely one-sided and pretty uneventful, as Usman Nurmagomedov both defended his lightweight championship and secured a spot in the finals of the lightweight grand prix after outwrestling an overmatched Brent Primus.
The UFC kicked off its month that evening with UFC Fight Night: Dawson vs Green, a particularly oddly-matched card with some hilarious results. In the prelims, JJ Aldrich beat Montana De La Rosa and likely drummed her out of the company, Aoriqileng outworked a too-tentative Johnny Muñoz Jr., Vanessa Demopoulos won an inexcusably bad decision against Kanako Murata, Nate Maness knocked out Mateus Mendonça in one round, and Karolina Kowalkiewicz continued her comeback tour with a decision against Diana Belbiţă. On your undercard, Bill Algeo proved just too much for Alexander Hernandez, Drew Dober made short work of Ricky Glenn, Joaquin Buckley managed to outstrike Alex Morono, and Joe Pyfer choked out Abdul Razak Alhassan in two rounds. Your main event was a real, real weird matchup, with long-suffering but finally-established top ten prospect Grant Dawson facing off against the unranked Bobby Green--and, because this sport is never not hilarious, Green absolutely nuked Dawson, knocking him cold in thirty-three seconds.
We were back one week later for UFC Fight Night: Yusuff vs Barboza on October 14th. It, too, was somewhat oddly-matched, but it was ultimately a fun night. Emily Ducote took a decision over Ashley Yoder, an inexplicably underbooked Chris Gutiérrez beat up Alatengheili, Melissa Dixon outgrappled Irina Alekseeva, Terrance McKinney finished another in his diet of squash matches by beating last-minute replacement Brendan Marotte in twenty seconds, Tainara Lisboa turned away Ravena Oliveira, and Darren Elkins turned in another vintage performance by getting beat up, outwrestling T.J. Brown anyway, and choking him out in the third round. On your main card, Christian Rodriguez came in overweight--for the second time in a row and the third time overall, counting his Contender Series appearance--but still dominated Cameron Saaiman, Michel Pereira made his middleweight debut by dropping Andre Petroski in just over a minute, Jonathan Martinez cemented himself as a bantamweight prospect with a leg kick TKO over Adrian Yanez, and Viviane Araújo won a close decision against Jennifer Maia, who was promptly drummed out of the company. The main event between Edson Barboza and Sodiq Yusuff was a great, back-and-forth fight-of-the-year contender, with Yusuff nearly finishing Barboza in the first round only for Barboza to mount a slow, four-round comeback culminating in a fantastic decision victory.
But October 21st brought the big event for the month, UFC 294: Makhachev vs OliveiraVolkanovski II, and boy, it was a clusterfuck in conception and a clusterfuck in practice. Main event challenger Charles Oliveira and co-main event star Paulo Costa were both pulled from the card, resulting in both being replaced on two weeks' notice--one by Kamaru Usman, notably not a middleweight, and the other by Alexander Volkanovski, meaning the UFC's most anticipated title rematch was a short-notice replacement. The undercard was a weird mess: Shara Magomedov, a fighter with one eye, got cleared and beat Bruno Silva, Victoria Dudakova scored a victory over Jinh Yu Frey, and Muhammad Naimov beat Nathaniel Wood in what would be the last relatively normal fight of the night. Then Mike Breeden scored a comeback TKO over Road to UFC champion Anshul Jubli after successfully psyching him out by barking at him and chanting "USA" while punching him. Sedriques Dumas got a victory over Abu Azaitar, despite Azaitar repeatedly cheating and at one point pulling Dumas around the cage by his hair, which somehow went unpunished. Javid Basharat was left with a No Contest after kicking Victor Henry in the groin--which the ringside doctor didn't think happened, and which Javid Basharat holds was Henry faking a foul because he was afraid, despite Henry going straight to the hospital with testes reportedly swollen to the size of various fruits. Trevor Peek scored an inexplicably low-violence decision over Mohammad Yahya, and Muhammad Mokaev choked out Tim Elliot to end the prelims. The main card was, uh, not much less weird. The first two fights were squash matches: Said Nurmagomedov choked out Muin Gafurov in 1:13, and Ikram Aliskerov, a middleweight, knocked out Warlley Alves, a welterweight, in two minutes. Magomed Ankalaev, making his first appearance since last year's inexplicable championship draw, met Johnny Walker for a 205-pound contendership match--and it ended in a No Contest three minutes in, after Ankalaev blasted Walker with an illegal knee and Walker had trouble communicating with the same ringside doctor who had previously missed the worst groin shot in years, which nearly turned into a post-fight brawl. Khamzat Chimaev beat Kamaru Usman, a man who'd never fought at the weight class, in a 185-pound title eliminator that, somehow, was only a majority decision. And in your main event, the huge title rematch of the probable fight of the year, a rolled-off-the-couch, just-had-surgery-six-weeks-ago Alexander Volkanovski came in looking decidedly not like himself and got crushed by an Islam Makhachev who was fighting with murder in his eyes. No questions left this time: Makhachev scored a headkick knockout in just three minutes.
Finally, on October 27th, it was time to end the month with our quarterly Invicta check-in, courtesy of Invicta FC 54: McCormack vs. Wójcik. Two fight cancellations for Valesca "Tina Black" Machado meant Invicta's already-punctuated cards fell to an even shorter five fights, which makes recapping them real simple. At bantamweight, Maria Djukic pushed Fernanda Araujo further into the zone of negative records by decision, and at featherweight, undefeated prospect Riley Martinez choked out Julia Dorny. Down at strawweight, Andre Amaro scored a rear naked choke over Hilarie Rose, and in the flyweight co-main event, Kristina Williams scraped out a split decision over Dee Begley. In the main event, strawweight champion Danni McCormack cemented her reign by scoring her first title defense, choking out Karolina Wójcik and handing her the first stoppage defeat of her career.
WHAT'S COMING IN NOVEMBER
It's another fairly short month as the year of combat sports winds down, and once again, half the month is crammed into its first weekend. Rizin is up first with Rizin Landmark 7 on November 4th. Unlike their recent Landmark events, this one's a fairly constrained five prelims and five main card bouts, all of them are MMA, and the event, thanks in no small part to their top-card competitors, is in Azerbaijan, making this the Rizin card with the fewest Japanese fighters ever. This also means a lot of competitors are coming from the regional fight scene--I'm not going to even pretend I know Israel's Harel Cohen or Georgian heavyweight Shota Betlemidze--but Nariman Abbasov is fighting Ali Abdulkhalikov, and that should be cool, and former UFC standout Justin Scoggins is meeting Mehman Mamedov, and that should be cool, and Rizin Lightweight Grand Prix winner Tofiq Musayev is facing Koji Takeda, and that should be real cool, and Vugar Karamov is defending the Rizin Featherweight Championship he won four months ago against Chihiro Suzuki, the man who knocked out Patrício Pitbull, and that's extremely cool.
And then it's time for ONE Fight Night 16: Haggerty vs Andrade, which is less cool to me. There are only four MMA bouts scheduled for the card--men's strawweights Jeremy Miado and Lito Adiwang, women's strawweights Meng Bo and Ayaka Miura, heavyweights Kang Ji-won and Ben Tynan, and lightweights Halil Amir vs Ahmed Mujtaba--but you've got Supergirl Jaroonsak vs Cristina Morales and Zhang Peimian vs Rui Botelho in kickboxing, and Sinsamut Klinmee vs Liam Nolan in Muay Thai. Your co-main event is a welterweight submission grappling championship match, as Tye Ruotolo faces Magomed Abdulkadirov to give ONE yet another in its endless array of progressively less meaningful title belts, and on that note, your main event is a match to fill the vacant ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Championship, featuring Jonathan Haggerty, who is already ONE's Bantamweight Muay Thai Champion, and Fabrício Andrade, who is already ONE's Bantamweight MMA Champion. Just chuck all the fucking belts into the ring and let God sort them out.
The UFC is off to the races that evening with UFC Fight Night: Almeida vs Lewis. It's the UFC's return to Brazil for the first time since January, and the card is, unsurprisingly, stacked with Brazilians. Kauê Fernandes faces Marc Diakiese, Eduarda Moura meets Montserrat Ruiz, Lucas Alexander faces David Onama, Angela Hill tries to keep the magic alive against Denise Gomes, Vitor Petrino will punch Modestas Bukauskas if he can, Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos drew the short straw and has to fight Rinat Fakhretdinov, Victor Hugo faces Daniel Marcos, and the upset-ranked Elves Brener faces Esteban Ribovics. On your main card: The Bonfim Brothers ride again, as Ismael faces Vinc Pichel and Gabriel meets Nicolas Dalby, Rodolfo Vieira faces Armen Petrosyan, Caio Borralho faces Abus Magomedov, and Rodrigo Nascimento faces Don'Tale Mayes. The main event, too, is heavyweights, as Jailton Almeida tries to leap into the top five by beating Derrick Lewis, a short-notice replacement for Curtis Blaydes.
The following weekend, the UFC gets their PPV for the month in November 11th's UFC 295: Jones vs Miocic. It's a PPV and a return to Madison Square Garden, so they're throwing a mix of big-ticket items, fighters they would like to push, and prospects who could use eyes at the card. So you've got your Joshua Van vs Kevin Borjas and Jamal Emmers vs Dennis Buzukja fights, but you've also got Matt Schnell vs Steve Erceg, and John Castañeda vs Kyung-ho Kang, and Jared Gordon vs Mark Madsen, and Tabatha Ricci vs Loopy Godinez because the UFC wants to get some pushes going. That goes for the main card, too. Diego Lopez vs Pat Sabatini, Matt Frevola vs Benoît Saint-Denis and Mackenzie Dern vs Jéssica Andrade are all fights that have a very clearly desired winner. Your co-main event, to once again fill the vacant 205-pound throne, is Jiří Procházka, the main who gave up the belt, vs Alex Pereira, who has the chance to become a double champion in just seven UFC fights, which is hard to imagine being topped anytime soon. Your main event is a heavyweight showdown that demonstrates just how busted the division has become, as Jon Jones, the heavyweight champion with a heavyweight record of 1-0 who may or may not be retiring after the bout, looks for his first title defense against Stipe Miocic, who has not fought since losing the title two and a half years ago and has not won a match in more than three.UPDATE: Jon Jones could not, in fact, make it a year without some bullshit happening. Thanks to an injury he's out for at least 8 months. Procházka vs Pereira is now the main, and Sergei Pavlovich is meeting Tom Aspinall for an interim heavyweight championship.
We move on to the now-zombified Bellator card for the month, Bellator 301: Amosov vs Jackson, on November 17th. This card is even more baffling now that we know, one way or another, that Showtime Sports will cease to operate at the end of the year, meaning Bellator's either getting bought or ceasing to exist. Bellator is dying as it lived: 13 fucking preliminary fights, including a bunch of people who probably deserve to be higher. Islam Mamedov? Prelims. Timur Khizriev? You better believe he's on the prelims. Marcelo Golm main evented a Bellator this year, and here he is on the prelims with Tyrell Fortune. Former champion Juliana Velasquez who's fighting her first non-championship fight in almost four years? Get thee on the fucking prelims. Your main card? Patricky Pitbull vs Alexandr Shabily, AJ McKee vs Sidney Outlaw, and, despite having already beaten him and the latter coming off of a loss, fuck it, why not do Raufeon Stots vs Danny Sabatello again. Your co-main is the long-overdue bantamweight title unification between standing champion Sergio Pettis and interim champion Patchy Mix, and your main event sees welterweight champion Yaroslav Amosov defending the throne against Jason Jackson.
The UFC's month closes up with UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Craig on November 18th. After the other cards of the month, it's a comparatively low-impact affair. Lucie Pudilová vs Ailin Perez, Charles Johnson vs Rafael Estevam, Jeka Saragih vs Jesse Butler--honestly, you get it. You get it! I don't think anyone actually reads these and I don't know why I do them, exactly, except out of some weird idea of recording a time capsule for future reference as to what was happening in MMA. It is important that future generations know that Jonny Parsons was scheduled to fight Uroš Medić, I guess. But Luana Pinheiro vs Amanda Ribas should be cool, and Jonathan Pearce vs Joanderson Brito should be cool, and Chase Hooper vs Jordan Leavitt should at least be funny. The top of the card is great, though. Michael Morales vs Jake Matthews has banger written all over it and Brendan Allen vs Paul Craig will almost inevitably become a real interesting grappling match.
And the month, and the 2023 Professional Fighters League season, both end on the day after Thanksgiving. PFL 10, the annual pay-per-view finale, brings to you a dozen fights of varying import. On your prelims: Jesse Stirn faces Josh Blayden, Phil Caracappa faces Khai Wu, Bubba Jenkins meets Chris Wade, it just wouldn't be a PFL card without Biaggio Ali Walsh fighting a nobody (this time it's Joel Galarza Lopez), and the PFL welcomes Derek Brunson to its ranks by having him fight Ray Cooper III, which could be very, very funny. Your main card has seven fights, and the only one that isn't a tournament final is your obligatory Kayla Harrison match, as she faces Julia Budd. Otherwise, it's finals all the way down. At light-heavyweight: Josh Silveira vs Impa Kasanganay. At featherweight: Jesus Pinedo vs Gabriel Alves Braga. At welterweight: 2021 finalist Magomed Magomedkerimov vs 2022 champion Sadibou Sy. At women's featherweight: Larissa Pacheco looks to become a two-time winner against Marina Mokhnatkina. Up at heavyweight: Renan Ferreira meets Denis Goltsov. And, in your main event, the lightweight final: Olivier Aubin-Mercier vs the eternally punching warrior, Clay Collard.
CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Jon Jones - 27-1 (1), 0 Defenses
Very few things in combat sports reach the crossroads of awe-inspiring and unfathomably frustrating as Jon Jones. In 2020, Jon Jones notched the third defense of his second light-heavyweight championship reign after an exceedingly contentious decision against Dominick Reyes, only to abdicate the title because the UFC wasn't paying him enough, and he was bored of 205 pounds and wanted to move up to heavyweight like he'd been planning to for nearly a decade, and he needed more time to cement his place as not just one of the sport's greatest pound-for-pound fighters, but one of its biggest pound-for-pound pains in the ass. On September 23, 2021, Jon Jones was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame; on September 24, 2021, he was arrested (for the fifth time!) after his daughter called the police on him for beating her mother, during which he antagonized the police and, inexplicably, headbutted a police car. Because this is Jon Jones, of course, the primary charges were dropped, he paid $750 for the hood of the police cruiser, and got a stern warning to stay out of trouble, young man, because there is a money-powered reality-distorting field around Jon Jones whereby nothing matters. After a year of rumors, and after the unconscionable firing of heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the UFC gleefully announced Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane to fill the vacant heavyweight throne. Did it matter to the matchmaking that there were more deserving candidates? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He deserves the spot for his earlier success. Did it matter to his public appearances that when last we saw him he was arrested for beating his fiancee? Of course not, because it's Jon Jones: He was, if anything, more up his own ass with self-righteousness than ever before. Did it matter to the fight that he hadn't competed in more than three years and looked terrible at the time? Of course not, because it's Jon fucking Jones. Ciryl Gane looked too nervous to use footwork let alone throw anything, and he should have been, as Jones effortlessly threw him to the canvas and choked him out in two minutes. The longest-running, most dominant and yet most persistently annoying show in mixed martial arts is back. And in the most predictable thing possible, some bullshit happened, he got injured, he's going to be gone for at least eight months, and the UFC is not only not stripping him of the title like they've done to everyone else, they've already gotten out ahead of themselves and made clear that when he comes back, he will be fighting Stipe Miocic, not whoever the interim champion is at the time. Funny, that.
Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
VACANT - The gaping maw of eternity
That's right, baby. No one can stay away from Vacant, and Vacant sure can't stay away from you. Or the light-heavyweight division. Last year, 205 was thrown into chaos after brand-new champion Jiří Procházka was forced to give up the belt thanks to a shoulder injury. The UFC, for what it's worth, tried to fill the void with two of the rightful top contenders, but after Jan Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev fought to a draw they decided to just put their guy up instead. Jamahal Hill fulfilled the dread prophecy and became the first-ever world champion from Dana White's Contender Series, thus giving him everything he'd ever wanted to crow about. Sure, it took half of the division falling apart, and sure, they had to leapfrog everyone above him in the rankings, but hey: He beat Glover Teixeira, he got the belt, and nothing can take that away from him--except, as it turns out, the irrepressible need to ball. Midway through July, Hill announced that he'd torn his achilles tendon apart during a basketball game with Daniel Cormier. He's looking at, potentially, an entire year on the shelf. So once again, the belt has been lost, and once again, its empty throne must be filled. The UFC put us all out of our collectively-wondering misery by announcing the co-main event for Jones/Miocic on November 11th, will, in fact, be returning former champion Jiří Procházka vs former middleweight champion Alex Pereira, with the winner getting the vacant title. This means we have two potential statistical outliers: Either Jiří will become the first person to ever be a two-time UFC champion after just four fights in the organization, or Pereira will become the first person to ever be a double-champion after just seven fights in the organization. Either way, we can all agree: Light-heavyweight isn't real.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Sean Strickland - 28-5, 0 Defenses
Yup. Against all reason, we're here. The UFC has been gleefully pushing Sean Strickland for awhile--half because he's their favorite kind of shitty, bigoted white guy, half because he takes fights basically every ninety days and costs way less money. Is he anything close to the violent knockout machine they market him as? No, not really: He has two finishes in the last half-decade and all his other finishes came back when he was still a welterweight. Has he enjoyed a long tenure as a top contender in the making? Well, not exactly: He's been fringe top ten for quite awhile, but he spent most of 2022 losing repeatedly and was 2 for his last 4. Did he earn his title shot by vanquishing top contenders and establishing himself as their better? Not even remotely: He has two top fifteen-ranked wins in his entire career, he got beaten by actual top contenders like Jared Cannonier and Alex Pereira, and he got his shot at the champion thanks to his victory over Abusupiyan Magomedov, veteran of one single, unranked, 19-second UFC fight. But Dricus du Plessis didn't want to take his well-earned championship match while he was injured, so the UFC sent Strickland to Australia, and he did the damn thing anyway. Israel Adesanya turned out a deeply baffling performance where he proved completely unprepared for Strickland's orthodox 1-2 pressure game to the point that Strickland almost finished the fight in the first round, which, admittedly, would have been hilarious in a the-ending-of-In-the-Mouth-of-Madness kind of way. The UFC's already made clear a rematch is all but inevitable, but, god help us all, for this moment in time, Sean Strickland is the middleweight champion of the world, and we just get to deal with that and pretend things are normal.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Leon Edwards - 21-3 (1), 1 Defenses
It took half a decade to get the world to notice, but everyone sees Leon Edwards now. "Rocky" came from the kind of circumstances sports movies are made of--a poor kid from Jamaica who moved to England, lost his father to gang violence, nearly lost himself to it as a teenager and found a healthy outlet for his anger in mixed martial arts. Edwards made his debut in 2011 as a prime example of the modern generation of fighter, cross-trained from the beginning in every discipline, and in just three years he was the welterweight champion of Britain and off to the UFC. Entering 2016, Leon had suffered the first true loss of his career--he was 10-3, but one of those losses was a DQ for an illegal blow and the other a coinflip decision that could easily have gone either way--at the hands of the newly-crowned Ultimate Fighter 21 winner, Kamaru Usman, making his debut as an official UFC competitor. It took ten fights without a loss for Leon to get his rematch. The UFC seemed especially resistant to his title contendership, pushing him down in favor of the ostensibly more marketable UK star in Darren Till and booking him against numerous other contenders and gatekeepers while repeatedly elevating less deserving fighters to the championship. He wouldn't have gotten it at all, in fact, had Jorge Masvidal not gotten arrested. On August 20, the UFC acquiesced and granted the clear #1 contender his shot at the championship, and at revenge against Kamaru Usman--and after getting dominated for three and a half out of five rounds, with the commentators openly opining on the likelihood that he had given up, with just fifty-six seconds left in the fight, Edwards uncorked a headkick that shocked the world and knocked Kamaru Usman out for the first time in his career. The rubber match was inevitable, and once again, Edwards opened as an underdog, and once again, he proved everyone wrong. Instead of a last-minute comeback Leon simply shut Usman down for the majority of the fight, stuffing eleven of his takedown attempts, outstriking him in four out of five rounds and landing an absolutely wild 75% of his strikes in the process. It was an incredible performance against one of the greatest welterweights of all time, marred only by Leon losing a point for fence grabs. The decision was unquestionably his, and now legitimized as the champion of the world, Leon's first move is...getting into a big, public spat with the UFC, because instead of any of the working contenders of the division Dana White is demanding he defend the belt against Colby Covington. After fighting about it in public all year, the UFC got its way: Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington will headline UFC 296 on December 16th.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Islam Makhachev - 25-1, 2 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. His first defense was a different story. Islam faced featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 284 on February 12th in a rare best-of-the-best, champion vs champion match, and this time, his team's prediction of domination was thoroughly incorrect: It was a pitched battle that ended with Makhachev visibly exhausted and Volkanovski pounding on his face. Islam took an extremely close decision and the divisions will remain separate, but his aura of invulnerability has been thoroughly punctured. Or, at least, it was. In one of those funny moments of sport deterioration, his title defense against Charles Oliveira got scratched thanks to Oliveira busting his eyebrow in training, and on less than two weeks' notice the UFC ran Makhachev/Volkanovski 2, and with no hype, no marketing and no time to prepare, a visibly depleted Volkanovski got dropped by a headkick in the first round. Having now abruptly vanquished his rival, Islam Makhachev is...calling out the winner of the Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington welterweight title bout. God dammit.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 26-3, 5 Defenses
Sometimes, things get ruined for no good reason. Three things are true. 1: Alexander Volkanovski is one of the best fighters on the planet, and has proven it, repeatedly, over the last near-decade. His featherweight reign is second only to José Aldo in history, and he stands a great chance of surpassing him. 2: Alexander Volkanovski had one of the best performances of his career in February of 2023, when he met lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev, took him to his limit and nearly knocked him out in the fifth round. Even though he lost a decision his stock rose considerably, and a rematch between the two seemed inevitable. 3: When the UFC called Volkanovski to step in and make that rematch happen as a short-notice replacement 13 days before fight night, he should have said no. For every fantastic story in mixed martial arts there are a thousand dreams crushed by reality. In reality, Islam Makhachev got most of a year to recover before training his ass off to fight Charles Oliveira for months, and Alexander Volkanovski had just fought three months prior despite having a crippling arm injury, had just gotten surgery for said injury, and had only just finished his post-op recovery in mid-September. The Alexander Volkanovski who stepped into the cage on October 21st could have beaten up 9/10 of the planet, but he still looked diminished, and unfortunately, a fully-healthy, fully-trained, fully-prepared Islam Makhachev is firmly in that 1/10 even on a good day. It wasn't competitive, it wasn't dramatic, and it didn't take long. Islam domed Volk with a headkick and pounded him out in three minutes. In the post-fight interview an emotional Volkanovski talked about taking the replacement thanks to the psychological need to get back out there and fight again, and insisted that despite rushing back into the cage, and despite getting concussed, he still wanted to defend his featherweight title against Ilia Topuria at UFC 297 on January 20th. I say this as an enormous fan of the man: I really, really hope there's someone in his camp who can talk him out of it. It would be his fourth top-level world title fight in eleven months, and it would be his second in a row that would leave him with barely any time to prepare--given that, having been knocked out, he shouldn't have any sparring contact until the end of December. We all need time to get healthy.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Sean O'Malley - 17-1 (1), 0 Defenses
The house always wins. I have spent years being mad about Sean O'Malley. Very few people get the red carpet rolled out for them without having some other previous success to draw on, but Dana White seemingly hand-selected Sean O'Malley as The Guy back in 2017 when he won a contract on the second-ever episode of the Contender Series, and from the second he first stepped into the octagon, he was treated like a Big Fucking Deal. His matchmaking was favorable, his marketing was endless, and even when he fucked up--getting his leg broken against Andre Soukhamthath, pissing hot for ostarine and missing a year, getting knocked out by Marlon Vera--the UFC was there to pick him up and keep pushing him up the ladder. He went from fighting regional fighters and flyweights to a top ten matchup, and when that match ended with him poking out Pedro Munhoz's eye, he was catapulted into a title eliminator against the #1-ranked Petr Yan, and when he got one of the year's worst decisions against Yan, he was allowed to sit on his hands for almost a year to wait for a title shot against a champion who was given three months and no injury recovery time to prepare. Is it fair for me to dislike Sean O'Malley for decisions the UFC made? Absolutely not, and I don't blame him for them whatsoever. Fortunately for me, Sean O'Malley also has a great love of making public hot takes like "here's my power ranking of my female coworkers by how fuckable I think they are" and "publicly avowed rapist Andrew Tate is a great guy I want to co-promote and advertise with" and "convicted child molester Tekashi69 is my homeboy" and "I have an open relationship with my wife where I get to bang other people but she doesn't because I'm the man" that make me feel deeply, thoroughly at peace with disliking him for other reasons. But none of that means he isn't a hell of a fighter or he didn't absolutely fucking flatten Aljamain Sterling with a picture-perfect counterpunch in their title fight. Did he deserve the shot? Not even a little. Did he prove he belongs at the top? Undeniably. However much of a shithead he may be, he's the champion of the goddamn world.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Alexandre Pantoja - 26-5, 0 Defenses
Sometimes, you just have someone's number. Brandon Moreno spent years fighting through a quadrilogy with Deiveson Figueiredo, and unfortunately for him, he had another trilogy waiting for him the second it was over. Alexandre "The Cannibal" Pantoja was Moreno's personal bogeyman, a man who'd fought and beaten him twice. But one of those fights was an exhibition on The Ultimate Fighter, and the other was against a Moreno with five less years of evolution and growth. Surely, a third fight in 2023 would be different. And it was--unlike the previous, one-sided dominations it was a fight-of-the-year candidate that took both men to their limit and led to a split decision--but its ending was not. Alexander Pantoja scored a third victory over Moreno, and with it, after sixteen years of competition, he finally became the clear, unequivocal best in the god damned world. Which was made even more poignant when he used his post-fight interview to ask if his absentee father was proud of him--and was made even more irritating when he also revealed that despite having eleven fights in the UFC at the time, he was paid so little that he'd been part-timing as a Doordash driver just to make ends meet right up up until 2022. The idea that one of the absolute best fighters on the planet, after years and nearly a dozen fights in the world's biggest, most profitable fighting organization, would need to take on a gig-economy job to make money is outright offensive, and in a better world, it would have launched a furor. In this one, all we can do is be happy he's got the belt and will, hopefully, make some actual fucking money. His first title defense will officially come against Brandon "Raw Dawg" Royval as the co-main event to UFC 296 on December 16th, marking the first flyweight championship fight not to include either Deiveson Figueiredo or Brandon Moreno since January of 2019.
Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs
VACANT - The quiet of the land
Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs
VACANT - The last seat at musical chairs
June was a banner month for Vacant, as they claimed three belts in four weeks. Amanda Nunes spent seven years--minus about six really, really weird months last year--as not just the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist on the planet, but the undisputed best women's mixed martial artist of all time. While there are plenty of arguments to be had about the legitimacy of Women's Featherweight in the UFC, factually, she's the only UFC fighter to actually hold and defend championships in two weight classes at once, and she did it for years, and she made all of her opponents look like absolute shit. On June 10th she did it one last time, absolutely crushing Irene Aldana for five straight rounds, before officially retiring and passing into legend. This leaves two championships in the shadow-grip of Vacant, but their futures, respectively, are uncertain. Women's Bantamweight remains one of the UFC's more visible divisions, and you can almost certainly pencil in some sort of Julianna Peña vs Question Mark fight to fill the vacancy later this year. But the UFC has already acknowledged Women's Featherweight will, in all likelihood, simply cease to be. They're still promoting a couple fights in the division, but the belt has been taken off the website and it's entirely likely that, before the summer is over, we'll see the first shuttering of a weight class since the UFC gave up on the lightweight division back in 2004.
Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs
Alexa Grasso - 16-3-1, 1 Defense, Sort Of
Every once in awhile someone gets to shock the combat sports world, and in 2023, it's Alexa Grasso. The UFC has been high on Grasso since she left Invicta for her company debut back in 2016--she's been one of the most consistently featured fighters in ANY women's division, be it her time at strawweight or her move up to flyweight--but her two bids at the top of the mountain at 115 pounds met with disaster, once in Tatiana Suarez handing her the only stoppage loss of her career and once in Carla Esparza outwrestling her to a decision, and watching her manhandled by 115-pound fighters left the world doubting her 125-pound chances. But thanks to her solid boxing and her ever-improving ground game she ran up a four-fight winning streak, and when the UFC announced that she'd be taking on divisional queen and one of the greatest of all time in Valentina Shevchenko, the collective fan reaction was a unanimous "sure, okay," because Valentina disposing of people was a generally accepted phenomenon and she needed a warm body. The first round was a slight surprise, with Grasso stinging Shevchenko on the feet, but as so often happens, by the fourth round Valentina had taken over the fight, was ahead on every judge's scorecard and looked poised to cruise to her eighth title defense. And then, she was struck down by the bane of the sport: Spinning shit. Backed into the fence, Shevchenko did what she does entirely too often--a spinning back kick--and in the half-second she was turned away Grasso leapt to her back, dragged her to the floor, and became the first person to ever submit Valentina Shevchenko. Alexa Grasso, after years of work, is the Women's Flyweight Champion of the World. A rematch was inevitable, and it came at UFC Noche on September 16th, and, like everything does, it ended in controversy. After an incredibly close fight that the media had split almost cleanly down the middle, the judges ruled the contest a split draw. Which wouldn't be crazy--were it not for said draw hinging on Mike Bell, who is typically one of MMA's most reliable judges, giving Grasso a completely, utterly inexplicable and inexcusable 10-8 score in the final round, without which Valentina Shevchenko would have won a split decision. So Grasso did not win, in the end, but she did defend her title, technically. But unless Valentina turns out to need an extended break for hand surgery, we're going right back to the rematch well.
Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs
Zhang Weili - 24-3, 1 Defenses
Are you really surprised? There's a long tradition of underestimating unlikely champions in mixed martial arts, particularly when they're not the fan-friendliest in style or personality, from Michael Bisping to Frankie Edgar, only to have those demeaned champions remind the world that they didn't reach the peak of their divisions by mistake. Many of the wise, studied scribes of the sport warned the foolish masses against assuming the same about Women's Strawweight Champion Carla Esparza: She was no pushover, they said, and Zhang will have real trouble. And then, come fight day, we unwashed masses pulled them from their ivory towers and forced them to run in the streets amongst the mud and filth so they, too, could feel the unburdened joy of being, because Zhang Weili, as basically every fan had assumed, did, in fact, beat the absolute tar out of Carla. It wasn't particularly close: Carla got outlanded 37-6, hurt several times on the feet, and choked out just a minute into the second round. The inexplicable, season-long Cookie Monster subplot is over, Zhang Weili is now a two-time world champion, and things are back as they should be. What comes next, however, is tricky. Carla was blown out, so a rematch is out of the question. Rose Namajunas, the only person in the UFC to beat Weili, is a likely candidate--but after her disastrous performance against Carla, it remains to be seen how much faith the UFC has in her. Jéssica Andrade has a claim, but she's splitting time between 115 and 125, and probably needs to pick a weight class if she wants a shot. So the UFC solved the problem by picking Amanda Lemos. In a surprise to no one, Zhang absolutely dominated Lemos, outstriking her 296-29, smashing her to the tune of multiple 10-8 rounds, and winning a very, very wide decision. The next step is, in all likelihood, a China vs China championship showdown against Yan Xiaonan.
NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD
Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Ryan Bader - 31-7 (1), 3 Defenses
Ryan Bader is the greatest Bellator Heavyweight Champion of all time, and on a dairy farm somewhere in Wisconsin, Cole Konrad feels a pang of regret. Bader made his name as the winner of The Ultimate Fighter: Nogueira vs Mir all the way back in 2008, but his UFC career proved to be one of Sisyphean torment and humiliation that included, somehow, impossibly, being the only man to lose a UFC fight to Tito Ortiz during his last six years in the company. Bader left for free agency and Bellator in 2016 and became its light-heavyweight champion on his first night with the organization, and just two years later he became its first-ever simultaneous double-champion after knocking out the legendary Fedor Emelianenko and taking the heavyweight title. Bader would go on to lose his 205-pound crown, but Fedor never forgot his 35-second drubbing at the American wrestler's hands, and for his retirement fight, he demanded a rematch. Thus it was that the entire mixed martial arts community watched with bated breath as on February 4th, 2023, Fedor Emelianenko walked into the cage one last time and promptly got the absolute crap beaten out of him again. Ryan Bader remains undefeated at heavyweight. He was to defend his title against Linton Vassell at Bellator's series finale-sounding Bellator 300, but Vassell got injured and, as Bader himself put it in a reddit post, Viacom is done with Bellator and didn't want to pay for a replacement. Ryan Bader is the best heavyweight champion outside of the UFC, and it's anyone's guess if he'll still be champion of anything by January.
Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Vadim Nemkov - 17-2 (1), 4 Defenses
Bellator CEO Scott Coker has been complicating title reigns with tournaments for decades and he's not about to stop now. Vadim Nemkov won the Bellator Light-Heavyweight Championship from Ryan Bader in 2020, and his title reign was immediately wrapped up in the Light-Heavyweight Grand Prix that started the following year. Nemkov, a Fedor Emelianenko protege, former Spetsnaz operative and understated wrecking machine who hadn't lost a fight since his early-career days in Rizin back in 2016, continued his Bellator streak by handling the always-game Phil Davis and dealing with some trouble en route to submitting Julius Anglickas, but then the tournament came to a screeching halt. Bellator threw all its marketing cash at the ultimately ill-fated Bellator 277 in April of 2022, and a sizable chunk of that misfortune came from both its championship and tournament-final co-main event. Corey Anderson looked handily en route to defeating Nemkov, only to unintentionally headbutt him while diving in to throw a punch. The headbutt opened an uncloseable gash on Nemkov's brow--and it happened five seconds before round three would've ended and allowed the judges to score a technical decision. It would be seven full months before the final got its re-do, and this time, Nemkov avoided Anderson's wrestling and controlled the fight with distance strikes en route to a unanimous decision victory. It took nearly two years for Bellator to complete an eight-man tournament, but they did it, and Vadim Nemkov is still your world's champion. Nemkov scored one more defense after defeating Yoel Romero at Bellator 297 on June 16th, and he followed it up by opining about giving up the division and the belt and moving to heavyweight. Bellator hasn't yet confirmed this, possibly because Bellator doesn't know in what fashion it will exist this time next year.
Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Johnny Eblen - 14-0, 2 Defenses
There's an old combat sports tradition whereby a champion isn't really a champion until they defend their title. Gegard Mousasi has been established as the best middleweight outside the UFC that, despite the one-sided nature of their fight, Johnny Eblen's victory over him was treated as an aberration rather than the passing of a torch. It didn't matter that Eblen was undefeated, widely considered one of the absolute best by his cohort at American Top Team or that he'd dropped Mousasi on his face with his bare hands, the world needed verification. On February 4th at Bellator 290, they got it. Fedor Emelianenko's team was intending to pull one big, beautiful night of success out of the ether for their leader's retirement fight, but it was not to be: Vadim Nemkov had to pull out of the card thanks to an injury, Fedor himself was crushed for the second time by heavyweight champion Ryan Bader, and middleweight hopeful Anatoly Tokov was competitive for the first couple of rounds but was subsequently washed out by Eblen's overwhelming assault. Johnny Eblen is a defending champion now, and as things always seem to go, the conversation changed overnight from his being overrated to his being better than everyone in the UFC. This mindset only grew again after Bellator 299 on September 23rd, as Eblen faced Fabian Edwards, knocked him out in the third round, and nearly got into a post-fight brawl with his brother, UFC champion Leon Edwards. Eblen admits he has no idea what his future is or if Bellator will still be around, but he's considering a move to light-heavyweight with Vadim Nemkov leaving the division wide open.
Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Yaroslav Amosov - 27-0, 1 Defense
There may not be a fighter alive who's had a tougher year than Yaroslav Amosov. Bellator picking Amosov up in 2018 was an obvious choice: He was already a world champion in Sambo and an MMA champion in Russia, already 19-0 with 17 finishes, and already being talked up by his training partners as quite possibly the best welterweight in the world. By 2021 he'd run up a six-fight winning streak in Bellator and earned a shot at world champion Douglas Lima, and he didn't waste a second of it, dominating Lima in every round. His success far outstripped his fame, but a scheduled title defense against superstar Michael "Venom" Page in May of 2022 promised to finally give him the spotlight. That, obviously, did not happen. In the wake of Russia's invasion of his homeland Ukraine Amosov returned home to evacuate his family and, once they had passed the border, notified Bellator he was pulling out of the fight and fighting in the war. Six months later, having liberated his home city of Irpin, he posted video of his troop returning to his mother's home to retrieve his Bellator championship belt, which he'd kept hidden in a closet. Amosov's return bout, a title unification against interim champion Logan Storley, was announced for February 25th, just barely one year after the invasion began, and after a year and a half not just away from competition but actively fighting in a war, there were many questions about how much like his old self Amosov could realistically look. As it turned out: He looked even better. When they'd first fought back in 2020, Storley gave Amosov all he could handle and the fight came down to a split decision; in 2023, Amosov wiped the floor with him, repeatedly hurting him standing and winning the entirety of the wrestling war. He'll be defending his title against Jason Jackson at Bellator 301 on November 17th.
Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Usman Nurmagomedov - 18-0, 2 Defenses
If there's a single, developing throughline of mixed martial arts in 2022, it's the growing power of the Dagestani wrestling brigade. Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov built an army of ultra-grapplers, and after his passing the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and Adulmanap's son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world. Usman, Khabib's cousin (as well as the younger brother of Umar Nurmagomedov, undefeated and ranked UFC bantamweight), took to Bellator in April of 2021 and proceeded to burn an undefeated path through the Manny Muros and Patrik Pietiläe of the world. His style was a little more eclectic--lots of spinning kicks, lots of stick-and-move jabs and stomps to the leg--but the resemblance became uncanny once he inevitably, and easily, ragdolled his opponents to the canvas and generally choked them out in short order thereafter. When he was announced as the #1 contender to Bellator's lightweight title, I was somewhat miffed: He hadn't beaten any top contenders, Bellator had already held a title eliminator and it was won in a crushing thirty-second knockout by Tofiq Musayev, the whole thing smacked of a pathetic attempt to glom onto some of Khabib's mainstream attention. I at no point said that he wouldn't very, very easily win. At Bellator 288 on November 18th, Usman very, very easily won, defeating Patricky "Pitbull" Freire at every aspect of the game and leaving him sans both his championship and one eyebrow. Usman's first fight as champion was both a defense and an entry into the first round of Bellator's Lightweight Grand Prix on March 3rd at Bellator 292, where he met, crushed, and retired former UFC champion Benson Henderson, handing him just the third submission loss of a 17-year, 42-fight career. He faced fellow tournament semifinalist Brent Primus at Bellator 300 on October 7th, and it was as one-sided and yet uneventful as you can imagine. Theoretically, Usman is set up for the $1 million tournament final next year. Realistically, uh, don't hold your breath, buddy.
Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Patrício Pitbull - 35-7, 1 Defense
Patrício Pitbull has had a weird goddamn year. Pitbull has long been the GOAT of Bellator, sometimes to the company's open chagrin--there were definitely times they would have vastly preferred a Pat Curran or a Michael Chandler to carry their banner, and Patrício had this unfortunate habit of not just beating them but making them look like shit. By mid-2021, he was Bellator's dual featherweight and lightweight champion, he was on a seven-fight win streak, and he was a finalist in their Featherweight Grand Prix. And then undefeated rising star A.J. McKee dropped him and choked him out in two minutes. Bellator, clearly, felt they had hit the jackpot and were going to be riding the McKee train for some time, as by their rematch ten months later, McKee was the centerpiece of all of their advertising. It was somewhat awkward when, as he had done to so many before, Patrício took him to a victorious decision that made McKee kind of look like shit, neutralizing his offense in the clinch, jabbing under his range, and grinding away the clock. Bellator pushed for a trilogy, but McKee, pissed off, tired of cutting weight and worried about having it happen all over again, declined and moved up to lightweight. Instead of a big-money rematch, Patrício was left to face top contender Ádám Borics, and the match, while hard-fought, was not particularly entertaining or memorable. Pitbull's next fight was the rare cross-promotional bout, facing Rizin's featherweight champion Kleber Koike Erbst on the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin special. It was the only fight on the card that wasn't particularly competitive: He shut Kleber down completely and won a wide decision. There is only one featherweight king outside the UFC. And he's now on a two-fight losing streak, with one of those fights being a bantamweight loss to Sergio Pettis and the other a lightweight knockout to Chihiro Suzuki that he took on four days' notice. Bellator: Please stop killing Pitbull.
Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Sergio Pettis - 23-5, 2 Defenses
It's been a long, strange trip for Sergio Pettis. When the world was introduced to Sergio as part of the UFC back in 2013 he was just the smaller, less visible alternative to his big brother Anthony, who was riding high as the lightweight champion of the world and the face of fucking Wheaties. but Anthony's time atop the sport was ultimately short, and Sergio, at seven years younger, had plenty of time to develop. In 2023, Anthony Pettis is seemingly retired from mixed martial arts after losing most of the back half of his career, and Sergio is arguably the best bantamweight in the world outside of the UFC. His move to Bellator in 2020 paid dividends: Within three fights he was a champion, and in his fourth, he knocked out the highly-regarded Kyoji Horiguchi in a huge upset and officially arrived as one of the world's best. And then he got injured and spent more than a year and a half on the shelf, killing all of his momentum. Sergio returned right as Bellator's Bantamweight Grand Prix ended, but rather than fighting the winner, he was given a more esoteric contest: A title defense against Bellator's greatest fighter, Patrício Pitbull, who was making his 135-pound debut and attempting to win a third divisional title. Unfortunately, Pitbull's best features are his speed and power, and cut down to 135 he both lacked his knockout power and was, for the first time in his career, the slower fighter. Sergio won a unanimous decision, retained his throne, and will now, presumably, fight to reunify the title against Patchy Mix on November 17th.
Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion
Patchy Mix - 18-1, 0 Defenses
There's something to be said for how silly it is to have an interim championship last so long that it not only has multiple defenses but multiple titleholders, but there's nothing silly about the path Patchy Mix took to get it. Long one of Bellator's best bantamweights and arguably one of the best in the world altogether, Patchy "No Love" Mix has torn people apart across the globe, be it his five fights as the King of the Cage champion, his ninety-second submission of Yuki Motoya in Japan, or his 7-1 run in Bellator. The only loss in his entire career was a 2020 decision against Juan Archuleta, where the first five-round fight of Mix's life saw him exhausted and ultimately outworked. But he rebuilt, and he took Bellator's bantamweight grand prix by storm, and on April 22, 2023, he didn't just defeat Raufeon Stots, he knocked him out cold in eighty seconds. Mix won the grand prix, the million-dollar pot and the interim championship--and now that Sergio Pettis is back, all Patchy has to do is wait for their showdown.
Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Cris Cyborg - 27-2 (1), 5 Defenses
Yup. It's 2023 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a Muay Thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Cyborg decided her next fight would be a boxing match, and on September 25 she faced Simone da Silva, a jobber to the stars coming off twelve straight losses who had been knocked out just one month prior. Undeterred, she had her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. After a year and a half of inactivity, Cris Cyborg returned to MMA to defend her title against Cat Zingano at Bellator 300 on October 7th. It lasted four minutes. She'd like to go back to boxing now, if you don't mind.
Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Liz Carmouche - 20-7, 3 Defenses
It took more than a decade and some controversy, but Liz Carmouche got her flowers. "Girl-Rilla" was just as present a figure in establishing women's MMA in the mainstream, but she's the most consistently forgotten because she was the losing fighter in all of those establishing moments. She was a challenger for the early, pre-fame Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship, and was winning on the scorecards before Marloes Coenen choked her out. She was a central part of the inaugural Invicta FC card, and was planned as a title contender before the big show came calling. She became one half of the first women's fight in UFC history, and at one point had Ronda Rousey in a nearly destiny-defying neck crank, but was ultimately submitted in the first round. She's one of two women to ever defeat Valentina Shevchenko, but when given a second chance at the now-UFC champion Shevchenko, she fell short. Despite her powerful wrestling and submission skills, she was eternally denied the top of the mountain. So it was both particularly appropriate and particularly cruel when she finally won a championship on April 22, 2022--in a way that displeased everybody. Standing champion Juliana Velasquez was winning on every scorecard, but Liz Carmouche got her in the crucifix position and landed a number of, respectfully, small elbows, but referee Mike Beltran called a TKO to the immediate chagrin of the entirely safe ex-champion. The controversy made a rematch all but mandatory, and it took Bellator most of the year to do it, but the two met in the cage to run it back at Bellator 289 on December 9, and this time there was no controversy, as Velasquez submitted to an armbar two rounds in. The weirdness didn't stop there: Liz's next title defense against Deanna Bennett also hit the skids, as Bennett missed weight and was thus ineligible to win the championship. Carmouche put it on the line anyway, and fortunately, she choked Bennett out in the fourth round. She defended her title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane at Bellator 300 on October 7th, and it was one of those fights where friends don't really want to hurt each other--until Ilima got kicked enough that her leg collapsed in the fifth round.
ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 Defenses
ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs
Anatoly Malykhin - 13-0, 0 Defenses
Anatoly Malykhin's bizarre two-year journey through ONE Championship has finally come to a place of rest. Ascension in the heavyweight division has never been the longest road in the world, but in ONE, where they don't actually bother with divisional rankings past lightweight and there have somehow only been five undisputed heavyweight championship bouts in eight years, the road is very short and easily traversed through violent punchings. Thus, when Anatoly Malykhin arrived in 2023 and punched two men out in five minutes, that was more than sufficient. But the standing champion, Arjan Bhullar, just couldn't make it to the cage. They were supposed to fight in February of 2022, but Bhullar was hurt, so Malykhin got an interim title by destroying Kirill Grishenko. They were supposed to unify the belts in September, but Arjan was hurt, so they pushed it to December--and then Arjan played contractual hardball, so in a truly baffling reversal, ONE had Malykhin drop to 225 pounds and destroy double-champ Reinier de Ridder instead. The heavyweight unification got rebooked for March of 2023--and then Bhullar pulled out again. It wasn't until June 23rd, with their bout unceremoniously placed smack-dab in the middle of a Friday Fights Muay Thai card, that the match two years in the making finally happened. And it was...massively underwhelming, with Bhullar seeming alternately frozen and as though he wanted to be absolutely anywhere else in the world. Malykhin used him as a punching bag for two and a half rounds, with Bhullar at one point penalized for trying to escape the ring, and Malykhin put a stamp on it with a TKO in the third round. Finally--mercifully--the heavyweight championship is unified. Anatoly Malykhin is whole. And he immediately began talking about dropping to 205 for Reinier's OTHER belt, because, uh, ONE doesn't have any other fucking heavyweights to fight.
ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs
Reinier de Ridder - 16-1, 2 Defenses
There's a long tradition of B-league hype in mixed martial arts. The hardcore fanbase chafes under both the total ubiquity of the UFC as a product and the way they set themselves up as the end-all be-all of the sport. As the B-leagues create dominant champions of their own, the fanbase inevitably rallies behind them as equal to, if not greater than, the UFC's equivalent titleholder, and further, as evidence of other companies having even better talent. And once or twice a generation, they're right! But most of the time, they're not. Fighters who destroy their B-league equivalents will commonly take a step outside their comfort zone and get immediately rolled by reality. Reinier de Ridder, more than any other competitor, was the popular argument for ONE's supremacy over the UFC: An undefeated ultra-grappler with belts at two divisions, one of which happened to be the UFC's permanently embattled light-heavyweight class. The remarkable ease with which he ragdolled and submitted his opponents, and the shaky nature of his UFC peers, led to wide exultation of his skills and regular comments from ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong about his prospects against the best the world had to offer. It was consequently something of a bummer when he fought Anatoly Malykhin, the first opponent in years he didn't have a strength or grappling advantage over, and looked immediately lost when his takedown attempts did nothing. He had no visible striking defense to speak of and was ultimately, and distressingly easily, destroyed. The cycle has played out once again, the latest idol has lost, and now Reinier de Ridder will have to move forward. He lost a grappling match to Tye Ruotolo on May 5th, because ONE is silly.
ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs
Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses
ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs
Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses
It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE'S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE's repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. With the death of his 18 year-old sister and fellow ONE competitor Victoria Lee, the future of the entire Lee fighting family is both up in the air and the last possible thing that could matter at this moment in time. For now, they have to grieve.
ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Tang Kai - 15-2, 0 Defenses
Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China's WBK (after investigating, we THINK it's World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz "Ong Bak" Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai's weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai's Dragon Gym and Phuket's legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It's worked out quite well: He hasn't lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China's Rebel FC got ONE's attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he's held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare. And then Tang Kai busted his knee and announced he was out with no definite return date. Great job, everybody.
ONE Interim Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Thanh Le - 14-3, 0 Defenses
Well, we're right back here again. Thanh Le was considered a potential breakout star for ONE during their own breakout in 2020: A genuinely skilled, hard-punching, well-rounded, charismatic, American star who only won by stoppage and almost never lost. Moreover, he was a black eye for the UFC, as they had him not once, but twice--first on The Ultimate Fighter 22 (jesus christ), where he lost in the semifinals, and second on the Contender Series in 2017, where he scored a vicious headkick knockout. But they only offered him short-notice replacement debuts, and when ONE came calling, they simply let him go. Within a year, Thanh Le was 4-0 and had knocked out Martin Nguyen to become the new featherweight champion. And then, as ONE does, they fumbled the ball. Thanh twiddled his thumbs for a year and a half for a fight with the 6-0 Garry Tonon, whom he dispatched in less than a minute. Five months later, he lost his title to Tang Kai. He waited an entire year for a rematch--and when Kai got hurt, he took an interim title fight with Ilya Freymanov on October 6, 2023, and tapped him out in 1:02. He's back. He has a belt again. And nobody knows when he'll fight next.
ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
Fabricio Andrade - 9-2 (1), 0 Defenses
The second time was the charm. When Fabricio "Wonder Boy" Andrade joined ONE Championship back in 2020 he was a virtual unknown in the mixed martial arts world, a 20-3 kickboxer but only a 3-2 mixed martial artist who'd been fighting out in the regional circuit of China. His association with Tiger Muay Thai put him on ONE's radar, and his visible striking skills despite being just 21 at the time made him interesting enough for a developmental contract. Said contract proceeded to develop into Andrade going on a five-fight winning streak that only got more dominant as he met tougher competition, and three straight first-round knockouts punched his ticket to the championship picture. His first appearance in the spotlight, unfortunately, went a touch awry. First, bantamweight champion John Lineker lost his title on the scale after missing weight, meaning only Andrade was eligible to become champion, and he was well on his way to doing so before hitting Lineker with an errant strike to the groin so hard it shattered his cup, and with the fight not yet halfway complete, it had to be rendered a No Contest. It took four months to get to the rematch, and it was much more closely contested, but after four rounds Lineker threw in the towel, his face having been punched too swollen to continue. Fabricio Andrade is 25 and a world goddamn champion. And, like almost all ONE's MMA champs, he is promptly going to skip away from MMA completely and face Jonathan Haggerty for ONE's Featherweight Kickboxing Championship on November 3rd.
ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs
Demetrious Johnson - 31-4-1, 0 Defenses
The king has returned. Demetrious Johnson's 2019 debut with ONE Championship was essentially scandalous. "Mighty Mouse" had long been a fan favorite of the lighter weight classes, a 5'3" combat machine who had been going the distance with world champions like Kid Yamamoto and Dominick Cruz while still working a day job in a warehouse, but it was only in 2012 when he dedicated himself to mixed martial arts as his full-time job that he became a star. He won the UFC's flyweight tournament and became its inaugural champion, and his talents are the reason a division that has existed for a decade has only had five champions--three of whom came in the last two years after he left. By 2018, Johnson had one of the longest winning streaks in the UFC, was the all-time recordholder for championship defenses in the UFC and had recorded some of the most outstanding finishes in the history of the UFC. By 2019, he was out of the company. Johnson and the UFC never got along--or, to be blunt, Johnson was one of the few publicly calling the UFC out on its bullshit. When he won the flyweight title and became a world champion while only getting paid $23k/23k he let it be known, when the UFC cut sponsorship money in the Reebok era he noted the raw deal it gave the fighters, and when Dana White tried to force him to take fights up at bantamweight by threatening to kill the flyweight division if he didn't, he told the world. After Henry Cejudo beat him in a razor-close coinflip decision and took the bargaining leverage of his championship away, it was over in a heartbeat. Dana White personally disliked him enough that he traded him to ONE Championship in exchange for their welterweight champion, Ben Askren. Johnson proceeded to immediately win ONE's flyweight grand prix, but took the first stoppage loss of his entire career in his shot at Adriano Moraes and his world championship and engendered a thousand MMA thinkpieces about if his time as a top fighter was over. A year and a half later, he got his rematch, and on August 27 at ONE on Prime Video 1 he returned the favor, handing Moraes his own first stoppage loss after knocking him out with a flying knee. The trilogy match was inevitable, and on May 5th, Johnson beat Moraes by a comprehensive decision, ending the story--and maybe his career. He says he's not sure if he's coming back yet. Fingers crossed.
ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Jarred Brooks - 20-2 (1), 0 Defenses
Jarred Brooks dealt with some crap on his way to a title. By 2017 he was one of the most-heralded flyweight prospects in the sport: An undefeated 13-0 multi-champion as an amateur, an undefeated 12-0 as a professional with fights across three separate weight classes, his heavy wrestling-and-grappling grinding style ground most of his opponents to dust. He took the moniker of "The Monkey God" thanks to his unorthodox striking and wrestling entries--when you're not afraid of grappling, you can get creative with the striking. And then he hit the UFC in 2017 and everything kind of went to hell. Three of his four UFC bouts went to split decision: A debut victory against Eric Shelton Brooks probably should've lost, a followup loss against future champion Deiveson Figueiredo Brooks probably should've won, an intervening bout where Brooks was easily dominating Jose Torres only to score the rare MMA own goal and knock himself out after smacking his head on the ground doing a big, showy slam, and a third and final split decision victory over Roberto Sanchez that really, really shouldn't have been split at all. And then the UFC cut him, despite being 2 and 2 and having gone the distance with the biggest new prospect in the division, because the UFC Doesn't Like Flyweights. So Brooks went over to Rizin, where he intended to build his way up as the next big foreign threat to top star Kyoji Horiguchi--and it was over in eleven seconds, after an inadvertant headbutt cut his opponent's eyebrow open and the blood-unfriendly Japanese network called a no-contest. His international comeback was further destroyed by COVID, and Brooks found himself iced for two straight years as he waited for the dust to settle. By November of 2021, he was making his long-delayed ONE debut; by June of 2022, he was 3-0 and the top contender. And then, of course, his title fight got delayed another six months thanks to an injury. On December 3rd, 2022, he finally got his long-belated shot at a major title, and shocking no one, he wrestled the shit out of Joshua Pacio for five straight rounds. Four years later than expected, Jarred Brooks has international gold. And because ONE's weight classes don't matter, he immediately called out 135-pound champ Demetrious Johnson, and because ONE's sport classes don't matter, he grappled Mikey Musumeci for his submission championship, and lost, on August 4th.
ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Xiong Jing Nan - 18-2, 7 Defenses
Xiong Jing Nan dreamed of lifting weights. She'd enjoyed sports as a child, and when China started its national push for Olympic supremacy she began training heavily in hope of joining the national weightlifting team. But then she met aspirants for its boxing team and fell in love with the idea of living out a martial arts movie and getting to hit people for fun and profit and she never looked back. She turned pro in 2014 and immediately became a standout, going 9-1 in China's Kunlun Fight promotion with wins across three separate weight classes. What made her truly dangerous wasn't one-punch power, but the ability to break her opponents with constant pressure striking, scoring TKOs with combinations stretched out across dozens of consecutive, unending strikes. The story was no different when she moved to ONE in 2017, and she was strawweight champion within two fights. ONE's women's MMA divisions have been its most stable, each having had exactly one champion, and they were so dominant that they inevitably had to fight each other--and, hilariously, traded wins back and forth in the process. 115 lbs champion Angela Lee went up to 125 to challenge for Xiong Jing Nan's belt but Nan stopped her with body kicks in the fifth round, and half a year later Nan dropped down to 115 to challenge for Lee's belt only for Lee to choke her out with twelve seconds left in the fight. Xiong has notched three successful title defenses since, which set her up for her greatest challenger yet: Angela Lee, again, apparently. Despite ONE's best attempts, Xiong successfully defended her title against Lee again, nearly finishing her in the first round and ultimately winning a decision. An entire 364 days later, she had her next fight: A special rules match, with MMA gloves but only punches and no takedowns or clinching allowed, against Muay Thai champion Nat "Wondergirl" Jaroonsak. Xiong knocked her out in the third round. What are we fucking doing here?
ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs
Stamp Fairtex - 10-2, 0 Defenses
It was slightly awkward when Seo Hee Ham and Stamp Fairtex were booked to meet at ONE Fight Night 14 in an interim atomweight title match, given the longstanding rumors of Angela Lee's retirement, and boy, it didn't get any less weird when ONE, which clearly knew what was going on, had Angela Lee announce that retirement just minutes before said match, which was promptly changed to an undisputed championship bout. But that's just part of how ONE rolls, as is their blatant attempts at favoritism, and boy, Stamp Fairtex is their most successful case study thus far. ONE signed her back in 2017 as a Muay Thai stadium champion, and within one fight in ONE she was their Atomweight Kickboxing Champion, and within two fights she was their Atomweight Muay Thai champion. Is this a statement about how quickly they push people they want or how thin their divisions can be? The answer, as always, is Yes. But none of that stopped Stamp from being really fucking good at fighting, and as she transitioned to mixed martial arts she ran up a great record--with the sole exception of a two-fight series with Alyona Rassohyna, where she tapped out in the first and attempted to deny it, then won a real close split decision in an immediate rematch. ONE did not feel the need to book a rubber match, for some odd reason. Stamp won the 2021 Atomweight Grand Prix, got her shot at Angela Lee, and got choked out for her troubles, but a year and two wins later, she was good to go for another championship showdown. It wasn't easy--Seo Hee Ham dropped Stamp in the second round and, for some mysterious reason, when recapping the round, ONE chose to highlight Stamp's offense and not show it--but she stopped Ham with body shots in the third round, and in doing so became not just the undisputed champion, but the first person to ever actually knock Ham out in a fight. (Before you say it: No, Ayaka Hamasaki doesn't count, that was a corner stoppage.) ONE has their new star, and she's a hell of a striker. The question is: Will they actually book more MMA fights for her?
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Roberto de Souza - 15-3, 2 Defenses
Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza is trying to become the new Gegard Mousasi. On April 17 he had the chance to avenge the only loss of his career, a half-knockout half-injury against "Hollywood" Johnny Case back in 2019, and he succeeded in emphatic fashion, climbing Case's back, locking him in an inverted triangle choke and eventually forcing an armbar. He's now 14-1 and inarguably one of the best lightweights outside of the UFC, but unlike most of the other fighters to bear that title, he has made it clear he has no interest in changing that. Where the A.J. McKees and Michael Chandlers of the world want to test free agency and notoriety, Roberto de Souza is happy in Japan, both because his Rizin pay is fairly lucrative and his entire family jiu-jitsu business is based in the country. This is admirable, but it's also a little unfortunate: Rizin really only has around a dozen lightweights under contract, and "Satoshi" has already beaten a third of them. He may be waiting for a Spike Carlyle or a Luiz Gustavo to work their way into contention, but the Rizin ranks hold few surprises for him at this point. It was thus of particular interest when the main event for the New Year's Eve Bellator x Rizin card was announced as Roberto de Souza vs AJ McKee--a test of where Souza ranks with the rest of the world's competition. Unfortunately for him and Rizin, the answer was "under them." He positionally threatened McKee and was able to land some solid strikes in the final round, but was otherwise controlled and lost a decision. On May 6th, Satoshi beat Spike Carlyle in a fantastic fight--but it was a non-title fight, because Japanese promoters are still real scared of their own belts. Satoshi fought Patricky Pitbull at Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 29th--in another non-title fight, naturally--and took the first definitive beating of his career, getting utterly outclassed and ultimately stopped on leg kicks in three rounds.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Vugar Karamov - 19-4, 0 Defenses
Rizin needed a new champion after Kleber Koike Erbst lost the featherweight title on the scale, and they were by no means done punishing him yet, so the fight to fill the void did not in any way involve him. This was, of course, also part of Rizin's secret hope that promotional superstar Mikuru Asakura could fill the void--but it was not to be, as Azerbaijani grappler Vugar Karamov, who's been slowly whittling away at Rizin's 145-pound division over the last three and a half years, finally got his shot at the belt and he did not waste a goddamn second. Karamov chucked Asakura down, controlled him and choked him out in just two minutes and forty-one seconds. Another Asakura falls, and Vugar Karamov is now a world goddamn champion. Which probably has something to do with Rizin announcing its first-ever event outside of Japan--in Azerbaijan. Congratulations, Vugar. You're an international representative of the sport. Karamov’s going to attempt his first title defense against Chihiro Suzuki on November 4th.
Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Juan Archuleta - 29-4, 0 Defenses
Rizin has its first-ever American champion, and it happens to be a fighter with their partner and rival, Bellator. Seven months after Kyoji Horiguchi vacated it--and almost three years since its last defense--the vacant bantamweight throne was finally filled. Rizin had hoped to have Kai Asakura fight for the belt (do you notice a pattern, here?) agaisnt Archuleta at Bellator x Rizin 2, but Kai busted his knee in training and Rizin's 2021 Bantamweight Grand Prix Champion, Hiromasa Ougikubo, stepped in. And he was promptly ground down into dust by Archuleta's wrestling game. A lot of Rizin fans took to social media to register their displeasure at Archuleta's victory--I saw him called artless and passionless and a pox on the spirit of fighting--to which I say, my friends, I was there when the truest expression of mixed martial arts was a Gracie holding someone in full guard while hitting them in the ribs with their heel for forty-five minutes. If you don't LIKE wrestling, that's perfectly fine, but if you think teeth-grittingly long grappling exhibitions without a climax are counter to the spirit of mixed martial arts, you have never truly understood it. Juan Archuleta finished his celebration by yelling at Kai Asakura to get his shit together and find him, and I'd be shocked if Archuleta/Asakura wasn't the main event of Rizin's New Year's Eve special this year.
Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
Seika Izawa - 11-0, 1 Defense
All hail the new queen. After years of reigning as Japan's best atomweight, the legendary Ayaka Hamasaki fell not once but twice to the rookie Seika Izawa. A 24 year-old who was pushed into judo as a child by a frustrated mother who was tired of her constant fighting with her brothers, Izawa discovered a love for grappling that led her to win junior championships in judo, wrestling and sumo alike. She would still be pursuing judo had the pandemic not shut down much of its competitive scene, but fortunately, mixed martial arts is a terrible sport run by monsters who don't care about things like deadly diseases, which made it a tempting professional prospect. Four months after her formal MMA training began Izawa was winning fights in DEEP, less than a year after that she was DEEP's strawweight champion, and one year later she was dominating one of the best women's fighters in history on Rizin's New Year's Eve special. As Japanese organizations tend to do, frustratingly, the fight was a non-title affair, meaning Izawa had to come back and do it again on April 17. After a scary moment where Hamasaki almost stole an armbar, Izawa resumed her wrestling domination and formally took Rizin's atomweight championship. As entirely fresh blood, the world of Rizin's talent is open to her--but that also means she's got a real, real big target on her back. Rizin's Superatomweight Grand Prix was both a big coming-out party for Izawa and a series of opportunities to look shockingly mortal: She had a fair bit of trouble with Anastasiya Svetkivska in the semifinals before ultimately submitting her, but her berth in the finals against former rival Si Woo Park proved the toughest fight of her career, ending in a split decision victory she easily could have lost. Seika was supposed to face Miyuu Yamamoto at Rizin 42, but after Yamamoto had to pull out with an injury, Izawa was instead scheduled to face...the last person Yamamoto beat, the 5-3 Suwanan Boonsorn, at DEEP Jewels 41 on July 28. Izawa choked her out, shockingly. It took more than an entire year, but Izawa finally had a title defense against the 8-4 grappler Claire Lopez, and Izawa scored the fastest championship victory in Rizin history, choking her out in just barely one minute.