THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR OCTOBER 2023

It's spooky season, and nothing is spookier than corporate mergers.

Welcome to October, a month of candy, secrets, and a comparatively gentler slate of mixed martial arts. We've got three UFCs, we've got sort of one MMA event between the half of ONE and Rizin that aren't kickboxing, we've got Invicta's first show in half a year, and we've got what might, in a way, be the last Bellator ever. Get excited.

THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC Fight Night: Dawson vs Green, October 7

• UFC Fight Night: Yusuff vs Barboza, October 14

• UFC 294: Makhachev vs Oliveira II, October 21

• Bellator 300, October 7

• ONE Fight Night 15: Tawanchai vs Superbon, October 7

• Rizin Landmark 6: Inoue vs Ota, October 1

• Invicta FC 54: McCormack vs Wójcik, October 27

IS THERE ANY NEWS

The eldritch forces of finance have finished their foul work: The merger that fused the Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment into one shambling entity known as TKO officially closed on September 12, 2023. Ari Emanuel, a longtime mogul who successfully marketed his own shitheadedness as a public persona, now sits atop a power structure executive-directed by Vince McMahon, who was briefly ousted from the WWE over his history of sexual assaults earlier this year, and that gives him authority over the now official CEO of the UFC, Dana White, who celebrated the new year by slapping his wife on camera. Coincidentally, all three men have also played sizable roles in the rise of Donald Trump. Isn't it crazy how these things just randomly come together?

The merger was celebrated with the traditionally-mandated sacrifice to Mammon, as mass layoffs resulted in 100+ people losing their jobs. But their misfortune means we are now entering a brave new world of Brand Synergy and Shareholder Returns, so, honestly, it was all worth it. Fuck everything.

In a thing that's awful hard not to read as a part of the greater story around a career-worst performance that cost him his world championship--for the second time--Israel Adesanya admitted and plead guilty to driving under the influence after being caught by a random checkpoint on August 19, just a few weeks before his title defense against Sean Strickland. Does it seem like a bad sign for a bunch of factors in Izzy's life? Sort of hard for it not to. Do I feel like a shithead that my first reaction to the news, rather than concern for him as a human or thoughts for his community and the people who look up to him, was analysis of how the incident fits into his fighting performance? Boy, you have no idea.

He won't be sentenced until January, but between the low severity of the incident, his being a first-time offender and his cooperation, he'll almost certainly just be paying his fine and going on his way.

Remember that weird fucking thing from way earlier this year where Nate Diaz voluntarily arrested himself because he choked out a guy who looked like Logan Paul in a street fight, and then it turned out it was an entirely different social media influencer weirdo because we live in Hell, and Nate's claim of self-defense seemed weird given the public footage but also no one really cared because everyone involved seemed like a shithead?

The district attorney came to the legal conclusion that everyone involved was, legally, a shithead, and all charges against Nate have been dismissed. Fly free, man of Stockton.

Mark Hunt was not so lucky. Hunt has been in the process of suing the UFC since 2017, having alleged that the UFC knew Brock Lesnar was on hilarious amounts of steroids when they booked him against Hunt for UFC 200 back in 2016, and charging fraud, battery and conspiracy. The suit was already dismissed back in 2019, but an appeal brought it back to life in 2021.

That life is now extremely gone. It wasn't even a verdict: Judge Dorsey, who presided over and dismissed the initial lawsuit, decided Hunt had not provided sufficient evidence for his claims and entered a summary judgment for the UFC. Did they do it? Of course! Is there any way to prove it? Definitely not. Did Mark Hunt blow all of his savings on a lawsuit he lost twice? Boy, I hope not.

MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER

After very understandably taking her time, Angela Lee Pucci, top star for ONE Championship as well as their Women's Atomweight MMA Champion, retired this month after publishing an article in The Players' Tribune about the loss of her teenaged sister Victoria Lee last year. After a lot of incredibly gross internet speculation she confirmed that Victoria took her own life, and opened up not just about that tragic loss, but her own struggles with mental health, self-harm and attempted suicide.

There's nothing I can add to it other than echoing what everyone with a soul has already said, which is it's an incredibly difficult and brave thing to put out there to the public, let alone in a world as regularly awful about mental health as martial arts. If you haven't read it--and if you, y'know, feel up to reading an honest but difficult article about suicidal ideation--you can find it here, and I highly recommend it.

Honestly: It's a better, braver coda to her career than me recapping her fighting could be anyway. She was a tough, talented fighter who only really struggled with the burden of being a promotional favorite given preferential treatment, and that's Chatri Sityodtong's fault, not hers. Even in these circumstances, I'm glad she made her name and her money and got out young, and I hope if a silver lining can come from all of the tragedy her family has dealt with, it's a renewed dedication to enjoying her life.

Angela Lee retires as the reigning ONE Atomweight World Champion and leaves behind an 11-3 record.

Daniel Weichel called an end to a 21-year MMA career this past month, and it's one of those retirements that no one really noticed because a) he was never in the UFC, b) it happened in Bellator and c) it happened on a Dublin card no one was watching. But it's well worth observing, because he's one of the best mixed martial artists Germany ever produced, and in a world where Pascal Krauss was somehow in a decade of UFC video games, there's room to recognize Daniel Weichel.

Because that boy got around. He made his debut in 2002, he fought in more than a dozen countries, he mixed it up with future 170-pound title contenders like Dan Hardy and Paul Daley--which is particularly crazy when you realize Weichel ended his career fighting at featherweight. He even choked out the UFC's favorite German, Dennis Siver, but somehow never got the call to the big show that Siver ultimately did.

So he fought everywhere goddamn else. He won multiple fights in Shooto, he hit up legendary regionals like King of the Cage and BAMMA, he made his international name by fighting through Russia's M-1 Global and briefly holding their lightweight championship, and he finally landed in Bellator, where he spent the second decade of his career. And it was a hell of a decade. He beat former titlists and champions, he won Bellator's 2014 Featherweight Tournament, he even fought Bellator GOAT Patrício Pitbull twice and lost a razor-close split decision the second time that arguably should have gone his way. Hell of a career!

But when he got eliminated from the 2020 tournament and realized how quickly he was closing in on 40, he saw the writing on the wall. After one last failed run at the top, and one last loss to Mads Burnell in Dublin, Weichel called it a day on September 23. He retires at 42-15.

WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER

We got off to a quick start with UFC Fight Night: Gane vs Spivak on September 2nd. A big French regional card featuring a bunch of French fighters along with a couple fights that were just plain weird. Down on the prelims, Jacqueline Cavalcanti finally ended Zarah Fairn's UFC tenure, Farid Basharat choked out Kleydson Rodrigues, Nora Cornolle outworked Joselyne Edwards, Ange Loosa beat out Rhys McKee, and Taylor Lapilus ended the undefeated streak of Irish prospect Caolán Loughran. On the main card, Morgan Charrière stopped Manolo Zecchini, William Gomis kicked out Yanis Ghemmouri's liver, Volkan Oezdemir choked out an overmatched debuting Bogdan Guskov, and Benoît Saint-Denis pounded out Thiago Moisés. Your co-main event was a tactical but clear decision victory for Manon Fiorot over Rose Namajunas in the latter's flyweight debut, and your main event was hometown hero Ciryl Gane taking a real easy knockout victory against Sergey Spivak, who chose to suddenly forget he was a wrestler, for some reason.

And then it was UFC 293: Adesanya vs Strickland, the day we all got a little sadder. All the way down on your early prelims, Kevin Jousset choked out Kiefer Crosbie, Gabriel Miranda choked out Shane Young, and Charlie Radtke outworked Mike "Blood Diamond" Mathetha, who also kicked him in the groin just a whole bunch. On your regular-ass prelims, Nasrat Haqparast outlanded Landon Quiñones, Jamie Mullarkey got a pretty shaky hometown decision over John Makdessi, Chepe Mariscal straight-up broke Jack Jenkins' goddamn arm, and Carlos Ulberg choked out Da-un Jung. On your main card, Tyson Pedro made short work of Anton Turkalj, Justin Tafa avenged his eyeball by making even shorter work of Austen Lane, Manel Kape outworked an outmatched but game Felipe dos Santos, and Alexander Volkov hit an Ezekiel choke on Tai Tuivasa. In your main event, Israel Adesanya turned in one of the most baffling performances in title defense history, looking utterly lost and unprepared for Sean Strickland, who took a 49-46 decision and, with it, the middleweight championship of the world.

We went all the way down to the extremely Mexican city of Paradise, Nevada for NOCHE UFC: Grasso vs Shevchenko 2 on the 16th, an event themed entirely around Mexican Independence day and desperately appealing to the Mexican market, except the fight card lost half its Mexican competitors so it got real funny. Preliminary action included Josefine Knutsson defeating Marnic Mann by a hilarious 30-24 decision, Charlie Campbell knocking out Alex Reyes, with the latter having spent six years on the shelf, Tracy Cortez beating out Jasmine Jasudavicius by decision, Roman Kopylov punching Josh Fremd's insides out, Lupita Godinez choking out Elise Reed, and Édgar Cháirez going to a no-contest with Daniel Lacerda after the referee fucked up and thought Lacerda was unconscious in a chokehold. On your main card, Kyle Nelson upset Fernando Padilla, Daniel Zellhuber choked out Christos Giagos, Raúl Rosas Jr. made easy work of Terrence Mitchell, and Jack Della Maddalena took an inexplicably split decision over Kevin Holland. The main event saw Alexa Grasso defending the women's flyweight title against the woman she took it from, Valentina Shevchenko, and it was a really, really good, evenly-matched fight! And no one will remember that, because the fight wound up being scored a split draw after judge Mike Lee gave an absolutely indefensible, inexcusable 10-8 final round to Grasso, without which she would have lost the title back to Shevchenko by split decision. We are doomed to repeat all of our mistakes.

Bellator took up its event for the month on the 23rd with Bellator 299, aka Eblen vs Edwards or Bellator Dublin part 43 depending on your preferred angle. As always there were fifty prelims, but there were some fun highlights--Sergey Bilostenniy destroying Kasim Aras with a heavyweight spinning wheel kick, Domaine Debienne dropping Nicolò Solli in forty seconds, Luca Poclit hitting a brabo choke, Grégory Babene tapping Charlie Ward in one minute, Jay-Jay Wilson upsetting Mansour Barnaoui--but unfortunately, they also ended in a no-contest after Daniele Micelli managed to illegally soccer kick Peter Queally in the face and slice his eyelid in half with a toenail. Close fucking calls. Up on the main card, Levan Chokheli knocked out Sabah Homasi with a front kick, Mads Burnell retired Daniel Weichel, Sara Collins eked out a split decision against Sinead Kavanagh and Aaron Pico stopped Pedro Carvalho in the first round. Johnny Eblen's middleweight title defense against Fabian Edwards started competitive, but twenty seconds into the third round he dropped Fabian and pounded him out. Where we go from here depends largely on Bellator's future.

The UFC ended its month over the course of the evening with UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs Gamrot, a slightly cursed card. There were a number of uneventful decisions on the prelims--Montserrat Rendon, Mizuki Inoue (or just MIZUKI now, apparently) and Mohammed Usman got wins, though the Apex wasn't happy about it--but Miles Johns won a remarkably weird performance against Dan Argueta, Tim Means knocked out a likely pink-slipped André Fialho, and Jacob Malkoun, despite easily being on his way to a 10-8 first round, elbowed Cody Brundage in the brainstem and lost by disqualification. On your main card, Charles Jourdain managed to choke out Ricardo Ramos, Bryan Battle got an RNC in on AJ Fletcher, Marina Rodriguez pounded out Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and Bryce Mitchell, wielding a bible and a bunch of conspiracy theories, scraped a close decision away from Dan Ige. The main event, unfortunately, was the most cursed of all: After an incredibly interesting, entertaining first round, Mateusz Gamrot beat Rafael Fiziev when Fiziev's left knee gave out in the middle of a kick. God damn it.

Rizin showed up on late that night for Rizin 44, which wound up being one of Rizin's longer cards at least from a subjectively experiential standpoint--ten fights, seven decisions, one third-round stoppage. The violence was still there, though: Ramazonbek Temirov dropped Takaki Soya in one round, Shoma Shibisai continued his reign as one of Japan's two best heavyweight fighters by getting the crap beaten out of him by Janos Csukas before snatching a heel hook anyway, and Ryuya Fukuda won a hard-fought battle with Erson Yamamoto thanks to a cut stoppage. Rukiya Anpo also won his bad-blood kickboxing match against Sho Patrick Usami, which turned into near-brawling multiple times, and Yoshiki Nakahara rebounded from his loss to Pitbull slayer Chihiro Suzuki by beating Rikuto Shirakawa. The main card wound up being a real good night for Rizin's top Japanese talent: Yoshinori Horie outworked Spike Carlyle, former champion Juntarou Ushiku beat a mystifyingly-matched Kyohei Hagiwara, and in the main event, while it admittedly wasn't a ton of fun to watch, 20-year veteran and 40 year-old Masanori Kanehara pulled an upset, defeating fellow former champion Kleber Koike Erbst.

And the month ended on ONE Fight Night 14: Stamp vs Ham on the 29th. It was a pretty violent affair for ONE, with all but two of its bouts ending with a stoppage. Some of them were technical--Mauro Cerilli managed to drag a doctor's stoppage out of Paul Elliott, and Dmitry Menshikov scored the three-knockdown Muay Thai TKO over Rungrawee Sitsongpeenong--but you also had Eduard Folayang knocking Amir Khan the fuck out, and Asa Ten Pow punching out Rambolek Chor.Ajalaboon, and Maurice Abévi taking Blake Cooper's face home with him. But the big fights are, as always, the story. John Lineker scored a decision over Stephen Loman, ending his seven-year undefeated streak in the process. Danielle Kelly took a decision over Jessa Khan to become the inaugural One Women's Atomweight Submission Grappling Champion, which is a thing that exists. Smilla Sundell defended the Women's Strawweight Muay Thai World Championship by knocking out Allycia Rodrigues. And up in the main event, after Angela Lee officially retired from the sport and abdicated her belt, Stamp Fairtex overcame a rough second round and knocked out Seo Hee Ham in the third, becoming ONE's new Women's Atomweight Champion in the process.

WHAT'S COMING IN OCTOBER

It's a pretty light month, but it's real crammed together.

Rizin's up first with Rizin Landmark 6 on the 1st. As part of Rizin's lower-tier Landmark series it's a bit understated--lots of rookie fighters without so much as Tapology profiles--but with Rizin's more punctuated schedule as of late, they've packed a little more meat onto the Landmark bones than usual. Yutaro Muramoto is facing Rogério Bontorin, the UFC castoff who got knocked out in his Rizin debut last December, Joji Goto has a real top-vs-bottom bantamweight rankings battle against Junya Hibino, last year's debuting sumo Takakenshin is facing Hidetaka Arato, Viktor Kolesnik is fighting Ryo Takagi, Genji Umeno and Yuto Saito are having a kickboxing shotdown, living legend Hideo Tokoro will face Alan Yamaniha, and in your main event, near-titlist Naoki Inoue battles Olympic medalist Shinobu Ota.

And then, half of the month's martial arts happens in one 24-hour period over the course of the 7th. ONE is up first with ONE Fight Night 15, but at the time of this writing--and I'll keep coming back to this to re-check it, but, boy, we're running out of September pretty fast--this card currently does not have a main event and only barely has a co-main. Ther's still some cool stuff--Timofey Nasyukhin returns against Zhang Lipeng, Supergirl kickboxes Cristina Morales, Eko Roni Saputra faces Hu Yong, Joshua Pacio fights Eagle FC's old champ Mansur Malachiev, Mikey Musumeci is going to (non-title) grapple Shinya Aoki which should fucking rule, and Jonathan Di Bella will defend his strawweight kickboxing championship against Danial Williams. But Thanh Le was supposed to have a title rematch here and instead he's now facing Ilya Freymanov, and Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai was supposed to defend his featherweight kickboxing title against Superbon, but Superbon busted his leg, and with a couple weeks to go, there's still no word on a replacement.

The day then moves to Bellator 300, a card that feels an awful lot like a series finale for Bellator, which is rumored to be getting sold off to the PFL any minute now. There's your traditionally required 13 preliminary bouts with only a few of note--Davion Franklin vs Slim Trabelsi, Henry Corrales vs Kai Kamaka III, and Sara McMann vs Leah McCourt, primarily--but the main card is all championships. Liz Carmouche will defend the women's flyweight title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane in what's expected to be Ilima-Lei's retirement bout, Ryan Bader will defend the heavyweight title against Linton Vassell, Cris Cyborg is finally back and will finally defend her featherweight title against Cat Zingano, and in a somewhat oddly-chosen top fight, Usman Nurmagomedov defends the lightweight title against Brent Primus, which should be very, very funny.

And the UFC, showing how truly threatened they feel by their competition, is counterprogramming with UFC Fight Night: Dawson vs Green, a main event where both fighters aren't even ranked. It's by no means a bad card, though--almost everything is a potential banger, to be honest. Your preliminary card has Montana De La Rosa vs Stephanie Egger, Kanako Murata vs Vanessa Demopoulos, Nate Maness vs Mateus Mendonça, Aoriqileng vs Johnny Muñoz Jr., Chris Gutiérrez vs Montel Jackson and Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs Diana Belbiţă. Up on the main card, Alexander Hernandez will bash heads with Bill Algeo, Philipe Lins faces Ion Cuțelaba, Drew Dober throws hands with Ricky Glenn, Alex Morono tries to stifle Joaquin Buckley, Joe Pyfer faces Abdul Razak Alhassan, and in your main event Grant Dawson puts his winning streak on the line against Bobby Green.

Everything slows way, way down after that. October 14th brings us UFC Fight Night: Yusuff vs Barboza, a somewhat understated but similarly propmising card. Darren Elkins is back! Rani Yahya wants another shot and he gets to try to beat Alatengheili to get it! "Russian Ronda" Irina Alekseeva wants to armbar Melissa Dixon! Edgar Chairez and Daniel Lacerda get to run back their fight from a couple weeks ago after the ref fucked it up! Cameron Saaiman is facing Christian Rodriguez, David Dvořák tries to deny Tatsuro Taira a ranking, Marc-André Barriault faces Michel Pereira, Jonathan Martinez and Adrian Yanez are competing for the same bit of hype, Jennifer Maia wants to continue her comeback against Viviane Araújo, and in the main event, Sodiq Yusuff goes for the biggest win of his career against Edson Barboza.

And then we're off to the UAE for UFC 294: Makhachev vs Oliveira 2 on the 21st. It's a big one and the UFC is trying to throw a bunch of regionally appropriate fighters at it. Sharabutin Magomedov faces Bruno Silva, Victoria Dudakova will try to finally get Jinh Yu Frey out of the UFC, Abu Azaitar looks to stop Sedriques Dumas, Mohammad Yahya will trade lunchbox punches with Trevor Peek, Javid Basharat will meet Victor Henry, and Muhammad Mokaev looks for a big win against former titlist Tim Elliott. The main card is similar pumped up: Nathaniel Wood vs Muhammad Naimov, Said Nurmagomedov vs Muin Gafurov, Nassourdine Imavov vs Ikram Aliskerov, Magomed Ankalaev vs Johnny Walker, Khamzat Chimaev is finally back and faces Paulo Costa at 185, and in your main event, Islam Makhachev finally defends his lightweight title against an actual lightweight, except it's Charles Oliveira, the guy he beat to win the belt last year.

But the month comes to an end just a few days before Halloween with Invicta FC 54: McCormack vs Wójcik, Invicta's first event in almost half a year. As they've been doing, it's short and sweet: July Dorny vs Riley Martinez at 145, Kristina Williams vs Dee Begley at 125, a pair of 115-pound fights featuring Hilarie Rose vs Andrea Amaro and former champion Valesca "Tina Black" Machado vs Isis Verbeek, and in your main event, new champion Danni McCormack defends her title against Contender Series winner and strawweight tournament finalist Karolina Wójcik.

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CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

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

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

Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

VACANT - The 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 - 24-1, 1 Defense

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

Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Alexander Volkanovski - 26-2, 5 Defenses

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

Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

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 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.

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NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

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

Ryan Bader is the greatest Bellator Heavyweight Champion of all time, and on a dairy farm somewhere in Wisconsin, Cole Konrad feels a pang of regret. Bader made his name as the winner of The Ultimate Fighter: Nogueira vs Mir all the way back in 2008, but his UFC career proved to be one of Sisyphean torment and humiliation that included, somehow, impossibly, being the only man to lose a UFC fight to Tito Ortiz during his last six years in the company. Bader left for free agency and Bellator in 2016 and became its light-heavyweight champion on his first night with the organization, and just two years later he became its first-ever simultaneous double-champion after knocking out the legendary Fedor Emelianenko and taking the heavyweight title. Bader would go on to lose his 205-pound crown, but Fedor never forgot his 35-second drubbing at the American wrestler's hands, and for his retirement fight, he demanded a rematch. Thus it was that the entire mixed martial arts community watched with bated breath as on February 4th, 2023, Fedor Emelianenko walked into the cage one last time and promptly got the absolute crap beaten out of him again. Ryan Bader remains undefeated at heavyweight. His next challenge will be at Bellator's ominous-sounding Bellator 300, as he defends his title against Linton Vassell.

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. His home may still be in crisis, but Yaroslav Amosov is, at least, back on his throne.

Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Usman Nurmagomedov - 17-0, 0 Defenses

If there's a single, developing throughline of mixed martial arts in 2022, it's the growing power of the Dagestani wrestling brigade. Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov built an army of ultra-grapplers, and after his passing the American Kickboxing Academy's Javier Mendez and Adulmanap's son and protege, the now-retired Khabib Nurmagomedov, unleashed them on the world. Usman, Khabib's cousin (as well as the younger brother of Umar Nurmagomedov, undefeated and ranked UFC bantamweight), took to Bellator in April of 2021 and proceeded to burn an undefeated path through the Manny Muros and Patrik Pietiläe of the world. His style was a little more eclectic--lots of spinning kicks, lots of stick-and-move jabs and stomps to the leg--but the resemblance became uncanny once he inevitably, and easily, ragdolled his opponents to the canvas and generally choked them out in short order thereafter. When he was announced as the #1 contender to Bellator's lightweight title, I was somewhat miffed: He hadn't beaten any top contenders, Bellator had already held a title eliminator and it was won in a crushing thirty-second knockout by Tofiq Musayev, the whole thing smacked of a pathetic attempt to glom onto some of Khabib's mainstream attention. I at no point said that he wouldn't very, very easily win. At Bellator 288 on November 18th, Usman very, very easily won, defeating Patricky "Pitbull" Freire at every aspect of the game and leaving him sans both his championship and one eyebrow. Usman's first fight as champion was both a defense and an entry into the first round of Bellator's Lightweight Grand Prix on March 3rd at Bellator 292, where he met, crushed, and retired former UFC champion Benson Henderson, handing him just the third submission loss of a 17-year, 42-fight career. He'll be facing fellow tournament semifinalist Brent Primus at Bellator 300 on October 7th.

Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Patrício Pitbull - 35-7, 1 Defense

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

Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Sergio Pettis - 23-5, 2 Defenses

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

Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion

Patchy Mix - 18-1, 0 Defenses

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

Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

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

Yup. It's 2023 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a muay thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Cyborg decided her next fight would be a boxing match, and on September 25 she faced Simone da Silva, a jobber to the stars coming off twelve straight losses who had been knocked out just one month prior. Undeterred, she had her second boxing match on the undercard of December 10th’s Crawford/Avanesyan card, taking a unanimous decision over Gabrielle “Gabanator” Holloway, who is 6-6 in MMA and 0-3 in boxing. After a year and a half of inactivity, Cris Cyborg will be returning to MMA to defend her title against Cat Zingano at Bellator 300 on October 7th.

Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Liz Carmouche - 19-7, 2 Defenses

It took more than a decade and some controversy, but Liz Carmouche got her flowers. "Girl-Rilla" was just as present a figure in establishing women's MMA in the mainstream, but she's the most consistently forgotten because she was the losing fighter in all of those establishing moments. She was a challenger for the early, pre-fame Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship, and was winning on the scorecards before Marloes Coenen choked her out. She was a central part of the inaugural Invicta FC card, and was planned as a title contender before the big show came calling. She became one half of the first women's fight in UFC history, and at one point had Ronda Rousey in a nearly destiny-defying neck crank, but was ultimately submitted in the first round. She's one of two women to ever defeat Valentina Shevchenko, but when given a second chance at the now-UFC champion Shevchenko, she fell short. Despite her powerful wrestling and submission skills, she was eternally denied the top of the mountain. So it was both particularly appropriate and particularly cruel when she finally won a championship on April 22, 2022--in a way that displeased everybody. Standing champion Juliana Velasquez was winning on every scorecard, but Liz Carmouche got her in the crucifix position and landed a number of, respectfully, small elbows, but referee Mike Beltran called a TKO to the immediate chagrin of the entirely safe ex-champion. The controversy made a rematch all but mandatory, and it took Bellator most of the year to do it, but the two met in the cage to run it back at Bellator 289 on December 9, and this time there was no controversy, as Velasquez submitted to an armbar two rounds in. The weirdness didn't stop there: Liz's next title defense against Deanna Bennett also hit the skids, as Bennett missed weight and was thus ineligible to win the championship. Carmouche put it on the line anyway, and fortunately, she choked Bennett out in the fourth round. She'll be defending her title against Ilima-Lei Macfarlane at Bellator 300 on October 7th.

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 punhed two men out in five minutes, that was more than sufficient. But the standing champion, Arjan Bhullar, just couldn't make it to the cage. They were supposed to fight in February of 2022, but Bhullar was hurt, so Malykhin got an interim title by destroying Kirill Grishenko. They were supposed to unify the belts in September, but Arjan was hurt, so they pushed it to December--and then Arjan played contractual hardball, so in a truly baffling reversal, ONE had Malykhin drop to 225 pounds and destroy double-champ Reinier de Ridder instead. The heavyweight unification got rebooked for March of 2023--and then Bhullar pulled out again. It wasn't until June 23rd, with their bout unceremoniously placed smack-dab in the middle of a Friday Fights Muay Thai card, that the match two years in the making finally happened. And it was...massively underwhelming, with Bhullar seeming alternately frozen and as though he wanted to be absolutely anywhere else in the world. Malykhin used him as a punching bag for two and a half rounds, with Bhullar at one point penalized for trying to escape the ring, and Malykhin put a stamp on it with a TKO in the third round. Finally--mercifully--the heavyweight championship is unified. Anatoly Malykhin is whole. And he immediately began talking about dropping to 205 for Reinier's OTHER belt, because, uh, ONE doesn't have any other fucking heavyweights to fight.

ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs

Reinier de Ridder - 16-1, 2 Defenses

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

ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs

Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses

ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs

Christian Lee - 17-4, 0 Defenses

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

ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs

Tang Kai - 15-2, 0 Defenses

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

ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs

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

The second time was the charm. When Fabricio "Wonder Boy" Andrade joined ONE Championship back in 2020 he was a virtual unknown in the mixed martial arts world, a 20-3 kickboxer but only a 3-2 mixed martial artist who'd been fighting out in the regional circuit of China. His association with Tiger Muay Thai put him on ONE's radar, and his visible striking skills despite being just 21 at the time made him interesting enough for a developmental contract. Said contract proceeded to develop into Andrade going on a five-fight winning streak that only got more dominant as he met tougher competition, and three straight first-round knockouts punched his ticket to the championship picture. His first appearance in the spotlight, unfortunately, went a touch awry. First, bantamweight champion John Lineker lost his title on the scale after missing weight, meaning only Andrade was eligible to become champion, and he was well on his way to doing so before hitting Lineker with an errant strike to the groin so hard it shattered his cup, and with the fight not yet halfway complete, it had to be rendered a No Contest. It took four months to get to the rematch, and it was much more closely contested, but after four rounds Lineker threw in the towel, his face having been punched too swollen to continue. Fabricio Andrade is 25 and a world goddamn champion. 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's grappling Mikey Musumeci for his submission championship on August 4th.

ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Xiong Jing Nan - 18-2, 7 Defenses

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

Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Juan Archuleta - 29-4, 0 Defenses

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

Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs

Seika Izawa - 11-0, 1 Defense

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