THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR SEPTEMBER
THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR SEPTEMBER
It's September, the month before the best month of the year. Welcome to what's going to be an extremely laid-back four weeks in mixed martial arts: The UFC's still taking a week off, PFL's done until November, Rizin has an event whose broadcast is still up in the air and Bellator's only got their Irish showing.
THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
Kind of a lot, actually.
The UFC, thinking no one would bid real money for him, neglected to lock down Shane Burgos once his contract ran out and he understandably asked for a better one. PFL swooped in, and the UFC, in a rare loss, gave up a top 15 featherweight and one of their most exciting fighters. This being PFL and their ridiculous format, of course, they're capitalizing on the hype of this signing by having him sit on his hands until their next season begins in April 2023.
Bellator’s women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg will be making her debut as a professional boxer this month on September 25. It's a remarkably silly card: The woman she's fighting is a professional jobber to the stars who between boxing and MMA has lost her last 12 consecutive fights, Wanderlei Silva's son Thor is making his amateur MMA debut, and the co-main event of the night is a boxing match between Brazilian boxing legend Acelino "Popó" Freitas, who hasn't boxed in five years and turns 47 the week before the fight, and Brazilian MMA legend Jose "Pelé" Landi-Jons, who has never boxed, hasn't fought MMA in seven years, and turns 49 two weeks before the fight.
ONE has been in the Muay Thai business for awhile, but it looks like they're going to be taking an active role in the national backbone of the sport by getting involved with promoting fights at Lumpinee, the heart and national capitol of the sport. This could get very interesting.
Bellator allowed star Michael "Venom" Page, one of the most irritatingly protected fighters for how genuinely talented he is, to take a bareknuckle boxing fight against MMA’s favorite village idiot "Platinum" Mike Perry. He lost, because God is real and wants us to be happy.
After yet another loss and a grand total of nine consecutive fights without a win, Sam Alvey was, finally, cut from the UFC. Lest you think the evil is defeated, he's vowed to fight his way through the b-leagues and make his way back to the company. Keep your garlic and crosses dry.
Nina Nunes became the rare fighter to go out on a win, retiring following her split-decision victory over Cynthia Calvillo citing her age, her desire to spend more time with her daughter and her desire to get Amanda Nunes to have more children with her. Nina never quite reached the top of the mountain, but she stayed fiercely competitive with the top fifteen of the division for a solid decade and nearly knocked out uncrowned champion Tatiana Suarez, and none of that is easy. She retires at 11-7 and may her family have many years of health and happiness.
A month after his loss against André Muniz, Uriah Hall called it a day. It's a testament to his talents that in a career that saw him score wins over multiple world champions, defeat his idol and become the only man to ever knock out Gegard Mousasi, he's still going to be looked at as a What If based on the way his incredible technique was regularly stifled by his trouble adapting to pressure. He retires with a 17-11 record and remains tied with Anderson Silva and Thiago Santos as the UFC's all-time middleweight knockout leader.
Following his first-round knockout loss to Dilano Taylor, Rory MacDonald's retirement was first announced by his wife and later confirmed in an interview. It's hard to overstate the hype that existed behind Rory if you weren't there for his career; he was seen as a future champion as far back as 2010 when he was just barely 20 years old, his fluid combinations and his fantastic grappling made him a threat to everyone, and his title challenge against Robbie Lawler is one of the best fights in UFC history and, unfortunately, the turning point of his career. He was a Bellator champion and a PFL standout, and he retires with a record of 23-9-1 at just 33 years old, as a reminder of how much mileage you can accrue in this sport.
In his losing interview immediately following one of the most ridiculous fights in UFC history, Luke Rockhold retired from mixed martial arts because, quote, "I'm fucking old." Rockhold's retirement closes the book on one of the weirdest careers in the sport: A guy with no childhood martial education and no particular interest in the sport who walked into the American Kickboxing Academy and was a top-ranked fighter a few years later. He held world championships in Strikeforce and the UFC, he scored victories over a half-dozen champions, and even as a 37 year-old with one functional leg coming off three years on the shelf, he nearly knocked out top middleweight Paulo Costa several times. His time ends at 16-6 and he looks forward to a long future of smoking weed and surfing.
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST
The month opened on PFL 7 on August 5, which was, respectfully, not a lot of fun to watch. PFL's playoffs began with an awful lot of decisions, few of them particularly competitive, with Rob Wilkinson punching his ticket to the light-heavyweight final with the only finish on the main card and slotting himself against the similarly successful Omari Akhmedov, and in the lightweight bracket, Olivier Aubin-Mercier slowly but definitively decisioned his way to a showdown with Stevie Ray, who soundly defeated Anthony Pettis for the second time in as many months.
An unnaturally violent month for the UFC got underway the following day thanks to UFC on ESPN: Santos vs Hill. One of the extremely rare cards where every fight ended in a finish, the resulting highlights were endless and sometimes weird: Mayra Bueno Silva's controversial armbar victory over Stephanie Egger that was called on a judge's say-so, Bryan Battle's violent knockout over the durable Takashi Sato, Michał Oleksiejczuk doing the world a service and ridding the UFC of Sam Alvey, Sergey Spivak's battering of Augusto Sakai, the women's flyweight and men's heavyweight TUF tournaments ending in knockout victories for Juliana Miller and Mohammed Usman, Geoff Neal crushing Vicente Luque after uppercutting him at least ninety-four times in a row, and Jamahal Hill, after some adversity, doing what multiple light-heavyweight world champions could not and knocking out Thiago Santos.
Khabib Nurmagomedov's Eagle FC followed that up with Eagle FC 49: Busurmankul vs Magomedov on August 10, and, uh, I'll be honest, I don't think anyone watched this. It wasn't even one of their major events, it was a local Kyrgyzstani card, and I'm self-consciously including it because I put it on the calendar last month. Irgit Oveenchi knocked out Magomedrasul Gadzhiev. I'm sure it was fine.
Bellator 284: Gracie vs Yamauchi followed up on August 12, and it was, as with so many things in Bellator, fucking hilarious. Former title contender Austin Vanderford was knocked out in just over a minute by late replacement and gloriously mulleted Aaron Jeffery, Gokhan Saricam took a grindingly slow heavyweight decision over Said Sowma, Ilima-Lei Macfarlane ground out a decision after missing weight by 3+ pounds, Valendin Moldavsky's campaign for heavyweight contendership ended after he gouged his opponent's eye and drew a No Contest just fifty seconds into the co-main event, and in the main, Goiti Yamauchi continued the mixed martial arts tradition of humiliating the Gracie family by knocking Neiman Gracie out cold with an uppercut.
August 13 brought us two events, and the first was PFL 8, the playoffs for the heavyweight and welterweight divisions. Where the previous week's event was nearly all decisions, this largely saw finishes and largely saw substitutions. Both the contender and challenger in one half of the heavyweight bracket were replaced in the week leading up to the card, meaning a Bruno Cappelozza vs Denis Goltsov bout for a berth in the finals wound up instead turning into Matheus Scheffel punching out UFC cast-off Juan Adams, and Ante Delija made quick, one-round work of Renan Ferreira to set up their final match. In the welterweight division, Sadibou Sy took a clear decision over Carlos Leal and, with top contender Magomed Umalatov injured, Rory MacDonald instead faced last-minute replacement Dilano "The Postman" Taylor, who knocked him out in the first round, meaning both tournament finals are half-represented by alternates who had already lost.
Immediately thereafter, it was time for UFC on ESPN: Vera vs Cruz. Another banger in a month of good UFC cards, it saw a bunch of highlights: Tyson Nam violently knocked out Ode' Osbourne in mid-flight, Nina Nunes retired on the back of a victory over Cynthia Calvillo, Angela Hill pulled an upset by not just beating but outwrestling the wrestling machine Lupita Godinez, Gerald Meerschaert did that thing he does again and outstruck and choked out a seemingly faster striker, Priscila Cachoeira crushed Ariane Lipski in a minute, Yazman Jauregui and Iasmin Lucindo put on a deeply entertaining prospect battle, Nate Landwehr scored an impressive comeback win over David Onama, and Marlon Vera cemented his place in the top five at bantamweight by becoming the first man to knock Dominick Cruz the fuck out, dropping him cold with a head kick after four and a half rounds.
PFL's playoffs came to an end on August 20 with PFL 9, which wrapped up the men's featherweight and women's lightweight seasons. On the undercard submission machine Marcin Held got his first win in more than a year and Simeon Powell scored a very pretty leg kick TKO, and in the tournaments, Bubba Jenkins choked out Ryoji Kudo without much difficulty and Brendan Loughnane won an absolute war against Chris Wade to secure their featherweight final, and over in the women's bracket, Larissa Pacheco scored her fifth first-round knockout in a row to secure her second rematch with entirely inevitable finalist and promotional centerpiece Kayla Harrison, who fairly effortlessly choked out Martina Jindrová in one round.
The UFC's month ended on UFC 278: Usman vs Edwards 2 later that evening. The undercard was equal parts good and weird: Career-best performances from Aoriqileng and Amir Albazi in their victories, a career-worst performance from Sean Woodson in his split draw with Luis Saldaña and one deeply gassy heavyweight bout that saw Marcin Tybura barely squeak past Alexander Romanov. The main was just plain weird: Tyson Pedro and Lucie Pudilová winning matches against the extremely visibly outmatched Harry Hunsucker and Yanan Wu, Merab Dvalishvili defeating José Aldo in a fight that saw Aldo inexplicably unable to pull the trigger and Luke Rockhold came out of retirement long enough to lose a decision to Paulo Costa in a fight that had near-knockouts on both sides, multiple foul stoppages, a massive uppercut to the balls and Rockhold rubbing his bloody face all over Costa's in an extremely unusual sign of affection before immediately retiring again. The main event, however, was the weirdest of all: Leon Edwards shocked the world by taking down Kamaru Usman in the first round and nearly choking him out, then proceeded to spend three and a half rounds getting absolutely destroyed in every aspect of the fight, and then, with one minute left before he would have lost a lopsided decision, he uncorked a headkick that knocked Usman clean out for the first time in his career and ended the second-longest reign in welterweight history.
ONE Championship took the end of the month with a celebratory double-header. First up was August 26th's ONE 160: Ok vs Lee 2, a surprisingly momentous card. Martin Batur and Paul Elliott had a big, roided-out heavyweight fight that Batur ultimately won by having gas for three and a half minutes of fighting, Keanu Subba took out Amir Khan (not that one) with a big Dan Henderson right, over in Muay Thai Saemapaetch Fairtex got his win back against Rittewada Petchyindee, and two MMA titles changed hands, as China's Tang Kai scored an upset win over Thanh Le to win ONE's featherweight championship and, in the main event, Christian Lee got his long-awaited and promotionally-desired revenge by destroying Ok Rae Yoon to reclaim the lightweight championship, although it involved soccer kicks that are technically illegal under ONE's rules but, being as their guy won, ONE has elected to not care.
But the big deal was the following day. ONE on Prime Video 1: Moraes vs Johnson 2 was ONE's biggest swing yet, their second chance at an American re-debut after their TNT cards fizzled out and the first show of their big distribution deal with Amazon. It seemed for a moment that it might not happen, too--half the card failed their weight and hydration tests, including the defending champion--but, as somehow, funnily seems to happen, in ONE's closed-door tests later that day, all but one of the fighters passed with flying colors. Even the ones who were previously too dehydrated to cut more weight. Don't ask how. Our payment for accepting the corruption of our sport was an incredibly fucking fun event. Zebaztian Kadestam crushed Iuri Lapicus in less than a minute, Itsuki Hirata and Diandra Martin won fun decisions and Superlek Kiatmoo9 knocked out Brazilian Muay Thai champion Walter Goncalves with an incredibly cool pair of vertical elbows on the undercard; over on the main, steroid golem Amir Aliakbari and Mauro Cerilli had a hilarious heavyweight gas-out, multiple-time jiu-jitsu world champion Marcus "Buchecha" Almeida heel hooked Kirill Grishenko in about a minute, Panpayak Jitmuangnon penciled himself into a showdown with Superlek in the Muay Thai grand prix finals by headkicking Cypriot champion Savvas Michael dead in two rounds. In the co-main event, Nong-O Gaiyanghadao showcased the levels of Muay Thai by facing British champion Liam Harrison and rendering one of his legs completely motionless in two minutes with just two kicks, and in the main event, Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson avenged last year's loss and put gold around his waist for the first time in four years by knocking out Adriano Moraes with a flying knee and becoming ONE's flyweight champion.
WHAT'S COMING IN SEPTEMBER
It's a real gentle month, for once.
UFC Fight Night: Gane vs Tuivasa kicks us off on September 3, and it's a Paris card, which means it's thoroughly international. Khalid Taha's back against Cristian Quiñónez, Charles Jourdain meets Nathaniel Wood, John Makdessi is back to fight Nasrat Haqparast, Alessio Di Chirico is coming down from Italy to face Roman Kopylov, Robert Whittaker will try to beat some sense into Marvin Vettori, and Ciryl Gane, one of the best strikers in heavyweight history, will fight Tai Tuivasa, a brawler who was getting choked out by Sergey Spivak a couple years ago, in what is almost certainly a title eliminator, because heavyweight is incredible.
The UFC continues to bat first with UFC 279: Chimaev vs Diaz, the best Fight Night card they've ever asked people to pay pay-per-view prices for. As of now there are 16 bouts theoretically happening on this card, so expect a lot of last-minute scrambling, but the 7-2 Norma Dumont will face the 1-0 Danyelle Wolf in a match that will unironically crown the #2 women's featherweight in the UFC because the current #2, Macy Chiasson, is dropping back to bantamweight to face Irene Aldana, Johnny Walker tries desperately to snap his losing streak against Ion Cuțelaba, Chris Barnett will do more heavyweight wheel kicks against Jake Collier, Daniel Rodriguez and Kevin Holland will try to kick each other to dust, Tony Ferguson is going to massively depress us all by going up to welterweight to face Li Jingliang, and in an act of promotional malfeasance, the main event is the straight-up sacrificed-on-the-altar-of-Mammon matchup that is Khamzat Chimaev, #3 welterweight in the world, vs Nate Diaz, whose last win over a real welterweight was twelve years ago and who is conveniently about to leave the UFC. Welcome to putting over young talent on your way out of the territory, buddy.
And the UFC finishes its month early with UFC Fight Night: Sandhagen vs Song on September 17. Aspen Ladd and Sara McMann will wrestle each other to a stop, Tone Graveyly will try to do another act of horrifying violence against Javid Basharat, Canadian heavyweight mullet machine Tanner Boser meets Rodrigo Nascimento, Gregory Rodrigues and Chidi Njoukuani will revive the unstoppable force vs immovable object debate, Giga Chikadze will try to get back on track against the ever-dangerous Sodiq Yusuff, and Cory Sandhagen, who is quite frankly getting a bit of a bum deal matchmaking-wise, is defending his spot in the top five against insurgent Song Yadong.
Bellator returns to Dublin for yet another "please like us, Ireland" card, September 23rd's Bellator 285: Henderson vs Queally, a night of fights so tuned to the market that Irish boxer Sinead Kavanagh is advertised for the card even though, less than a month out, they have no idea which outmatched jobber she's fighting. What we do know is Georgi Karakhanyan is still trying to turn back the clock on the undercard, Karl Albrektsson will continue to pad his sneaky winning streak, Welsh star Brett Johns will head up the prelims, and the main card will see Leah McCourt facing an outmatched Dayana Silva, Mads Burnell and Pedro Carvalho hopefully tearing the house down, an absolutely absurd matchup between Yoel Romero and Melvin Manhoef, and Irish Peter Queally--that's not my statement of his nationality but his actual nickname--against Benson Henderson.
On September 25, we have a very weird Rizin double-header. Super Rizin and Rizin 38 will both be broadcast on September 25, but the card will be split into two sub-events, with Super Rizin starting earlier in the day and theoretically being intended for the international market and Rizin 38 being a traditional event. I say theoretically, because despite this being the biggest swing Rizin has taken in a long time, and despite this being two cards in one day, with less than a month to the card there's maybe half a card announced altogether and it features things like Rizin 38's Hiromasa Ougikubo vs Soo Chul Kim, Shrek victim Shoma Shibisai doing battle with a 4-1 heavyweight kickboxer, a boxing exhibition between Mikuru Asakura and Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Kyoji Horiguchi, possibly Japan's best fighter, facing Kintaro, a 14-11-2 journeyman who's lost 3 of his last 4 fights. And Rizin's supposed to hold the next round of the women's super atomweight grand prix, but they haven't said shit about it yet. JMMA, I try so hard to love you.
Before the rush at the end of the month, we all get to take a nice, pleasant breath with Invicta FC 49: Delboni vs DeCoursey on September 28. As always, it's a great, short youtube card: Kaytlin Neil and Hannah Guy, both fresh off The Ultimate Fighter 30, will do battle, grappling ace Liz Tracy will face Contender Series runner-up Valesca "Tina Black" Machado, just-released UFC fighter Poliana Botelho will meet Helen Peralta, Brittney Cloudy will test Mexico's undefeated Montserrat Rendon, rookie prospects Nadia Vera and Shauna Bannon will hit each other a bunch, former Bellator winner Kristina "Warhorse" Williams will try to get her third win of the year against Brazilian champion Ketlen Souza, and in the main event, atomweight champion Jéssica Delboni defends her belt against Jillian DeCoursey.
And then, it's time for ONE to close out the month with another double-header. First up is ONE 161: Bhullar vs Malykhin on September 29, and, uh...look, there's no nice way to put this: ONE is so (understandably!) focused on their Amazon Prime shows that despite being one month away this card, as of now, has literally two fights booked on it: A featherweight Muay Thai championship bout that sees Petchmorakot Petchyindee defending his title against Tawanchai Pk.Saenchai, and the long-belated heavyweight championship unification in the main event, as estranged champion Arjan Bhullar puts his strap against that of interim champion Anatoly Malykhin. Will there be more fights? Most definitely. Will they be fun to watch? Probably! Will you know any of the people on them? I doubt it, or they'd be putting them on the next card.
...which is the next day's ONE on Prime Video 2: Xiong vs Lee 3 on September 30. It's a fun card with some real potential bangers and some real weird stuff: Violence machine Timofey Nastyukhin faces Turkey's best lightweight Halil Amir, Martin Nguyen battles Ilya Freymanov, Stamp Fairtex tries to get back to winning against Malaysia's Jihin "Shadowcat" Radzuan. What follows is, uh, a championship triple-header, kind of. First, ONE is introducing a Flyweight Grappling championship, as Caio Almedia black belt Cleber Sousa will battle Mikey "Darth Rigatoni" Musumeci--no, seriously, I'm not making that up--followed by ONE's reigning lightweight Muay Thai champion Superbon Banchamek defending his belt against lightweight tournament champion Chingiz Allazov, and in the main event, women's MMA flyweight champion Xiong Jing Nan will battle women's MMA strawweight champion Angela Lee in a rubber match. Unsurprisingly, Xiong's title is on the line and Lee's is not.
CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Francis Ngannou - 17-3, 1 Defense
After getting dicked about by the UFC for most of 2021, Francis "The Predator" Ngannou met both the biggest challenge of his career and the nexus of his promotional challenges in the form of a championship unification match against heavyweight striking savant and (bullshit) interim champion Ciryl Gane. For all of his punching prowess, Ngannou found himself getting pretty soundly outstruck and on the road to a decision loss--and he adjusted by channeling Mark Coleman and repeatedly tossing Gane on his ass with double-legs and powerslams. In what was somehow a simultaneously incredible and disappointing performance, Francis Ngannou won a unanimous decision, notched his first title defense, turned away his stiffest challenge, and went home with his future one great big question mark. He's made a lot of noise about going into boxing thanks to the UFC's refusal to stop paying him peanuts, but his contract situation is complicated by his standing as a champion, particularly as he's now had knee surgery to repair his ACL and MCL and will be sitting out the remainder of the year on medical leave, which could mean dealing with a contract freeze. It all depends on how shitty the UFC decides to be to him, but the best gauge for that is Dana White's auspicious absence at the post-fight belt ceremony and post-card press conference. In response, Francis Ngannou appeared with Tyson Fury after his high-profile destruction of Dillian Whyte and the two hyped a potential boxing vs MMA fight between them. The UFC is pinning its hopes on a Jon Jones/Stipe Miocic interim championship match later this year, but that requires relying on Jon Jones.
Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Jiří Procházka - 29-3-1, 0 Defenses
After a solid decade of being one of the most consistently weird people in mixed martial arts, Jiří Procházka is the champion of the world. Where most fighters get inspired by the Gracies or Bruce Lee, Jiří's interest in martial arts originated in playing Tekken with his fellow 90s kids and the turning point in his life was his viewing of the 2008 Jeff "Remake Fantasy Island as a horror movie, what could go wrong" Wadlow classic, Never Back Down. Where most of his peers embraced the athletic future of martial arts, Jiří rejected modernity and fashioned himself as The Czech Samurai, living by the code of bushido and training in The Old Ways and fashioning himself as a sometimes-berserk striker. It works wonders: He was a champion in the Czech Republic, he was a runner-up in the 2015 Rizin Grand Prix, he took the (short-lived) Rizin light-heavyweight championship, and after just two UFC fights he found himself in the cage with UFC champion Glover Teixeira. The result was an instant classic, widely hailed as the best UFC light-heavyweight title fight of all time and one of its best ever in any division, as Jiří and Glover beat the sense out of each other, trading intense if occasionally sloppy offense back and forth for four and a half rounds before Jiří finally put an exhausted Glover on the floor and, shockingly, choked him out. Ten years after his journey began, "Denisa" is on top of the world. While initially assumed he'd be defending against top contender Jan Błachowicz, it's now looking like the UFC is trying to set Jiří/Glover 2 for this December.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
After his successful if poorly-received title defense against Robert Whittaker earlier this year, I wrote that Israel Adesanya was emulating idol Anderson Silva's career not just in meteoric rise or martial arts technique, but in their mutual capacity for winning fights in ways that make people angry. Adesanya, who rode a successful kickboxing career into mixed martial arts and became one of its fastest-rising phenomenons, is just as cursed by expectation: His technique is so clean and his striking advantages so pronounced that when he turns in a fight like his July 2 title defense against Jared Cannonier and earns a wide, obvious decision against a dangerous contender, it's considered disappointing. He set the pace of the fight and pecked Cannonier apart from the outside while waiting for Cannonier to come in and get countered, but after Cannonier learned his attacks wouldn't work he settled on not trying much else, and Adesanya was content to jab him for the remainder of the fight. The mixed martial arts community whines and has the same argument it's been having about defensive fighting for twenty years, and people wonder why Adesanya gets more of the blame than Jared Cannonier, and we move on with our lives. Izzy will be making his next defense against former kickboxing rival Alex Pereira at UFC 281 on November 12.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Leon Edwards - 20-3 (1), 0 Defenses
It took half a decade to get the world to notice, but everyone sees Leon Edwards now. "Rocky" came from the kind of circumstances sports movies are made of--a poor kid from Jamaica who moved to England, lost his father to gang violence, nearly lost himself to it as a teenager and found a healthy outlet for his anger in mixed martial arts. Edwards made his debut in 2011 as a prime example of the modern generation of fighter, cross-trained from the beginning in every discipline, and in just three years he was the welterweight champion of Britain and off to the UFC. Entering 2016, Leon had suffered the first true loss of his career--he was 10-3, but one of those losses was a DQ for an illegal blow and the other a coinflip decision that could easily have gone either way--at the hands of the newly-crowned Ultimate Fighter 21 winner, Kamaru Usman, making his debut as an official UFC competitor. It took ten fights without a loss for Leon to get his rematch. The UFC seemed especially resistant to his title contendership, pushing him down in favor of the ostensibly more marketable UK star in Darren Till and booking him against numerous other contenders and gatekeepers while repeatedly elevating less deserving fighters to the championship. He wouldn't have gotten it at all, in fact, had Jorge Masvidal not gotten arrested. On August 20, the UFC acquiesced and granted the clear #1 contender his shot at the championship, and at revenge against Kamaru Usman--and after getting dominated for three and a half out of five rounds, with the commentators openly opining on the likelihood that he had given up, with just fifty-six seconds left in the fight, Edwards uncorked a headkick that shocked the world and knocked Kamaru Usman out for the first time in his career. Holding onto the belt won't be easy--Dana White is foaming at the mouth for a Wembley Stadium rematch between the two to end their trilogy--but Leon Edwards is cemented into history as the man who killed the king, and for a beautiful moment, as the best welterweight on the planet.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
VACANT - Permanently undefeated being as they are an abstract concept of space and time, 5-time heavyweight champion, 5-time light-heavyweight champion, 1-time middleweight champion, 2-time welterweight champion, 5-time lightweight champion AND 1-time lightweight tournament champion, 2-time bantamweight champion, 1-time flyweight champion, 1-time women's featherweight champion, 1-time women's flyweight champion
1-time women's featherweight champion, 1-time women's flyweight champion
Charles Oliveira dusted Justin Gaethje in one round at UFC 274, but he weighed in half a pound over the 155-pound divisional limit. Initial hopes and fears about a commission fuckup wound up not panning out, meaning his historic rise to the title and historic run through the division is at least temporarily capped off by an equally historic feat: He is the first UFC fighter to officially lose their title on the scale. The world lightweight championship is vacant, and that means the most decorated competitor in mixed martial arts history is back. No one has defeated more top stars than Vacant. Vacant is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Vacant has held every UFC belt except featherweight and women's strawweight. Vacant is 3-0 over Jon Jones, and it WOULD be 4 if the UFC hadn't felt bad for him and given one of the victories to Daniel Cormier instead. Vacant has held championships in every combat sport, is a crossover star with nearly incalculable professional wrestling belts, and to this day holds the Olympic gold medal for the women's 100m run at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Vacant even has a couple successful UFC title defenses. Barring something silly happening all over again, however, Vacant's days are finally numbered: Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev will do battle to fill the void at UFC 280 on October 22.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 25-1, 4 Defenses
Sometimes it takes a lot of work to convince people you're the best. Alexander Volkanovski's rise through mixed martial arts is the kind of thing reserved for the all-time greats of the sport: He lost once, in the fourth fight of his career--at welterweight--and that was nine years ago. He's won twenty-one straight fights since, defeating top talent from around the world before landing in the UFC and proceeding to dominate every fighter placed in his way. There was one, single weight placed around his career's ankle: Max Holloway. Holloway was the UFC's much-lauded and much-marketed featherweight champion while Volkanovski was on his way up, and even as a 20-1 dynamo, he was an underdog against the Hawaiian. Alex beat him--soundly--but because of Holloway's prior dominance, and because the UFC wanted to get the most for its marketing buck, they ordered an instant rematch. Alex won again, but this time it was by a very close split decision, and that left a vocal part of the fanbase even angrier and more certain Max was the real champion. Two years and two fights apiece later, Alex and Max met one last time on July 2, and Volkanovski beat every shade of hell out of Holloway, not just repeatedly wobbling and outstriking him but completely and utterly shutting him out of a fight for the very first time in his career. When the bell rang, there were no questions left: Alexander Volkanovski is the absolute, undisputed best featherweight in the UFC. And now, having more or less destroyed his division, he has his eye on the pound for pound ranks. Volkanovski has taken the unusual step of calling for an interim title fight in his own division between top contenders Yair Rodríguez and Josh Emmett while he waits for the result of Charles Oliveira vs Islam Makhachev so he can issue a champion vs champion challenge--and if successful, he says, he wants to do what Conor McGregor said he was going to do and defend both at the same time. Inadvisable, but at this point, the man's earned the right to call his shot.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Aljamain Sterling - 21-3, 1 Defense
Vindication has rarely pissed off so many people or been so fucking funny. Aljamain Sterling is a tough man and an exceptional grappler, but when he became the bantamweight champion of the world on March 6, 2021, it was not because of his talents but because the undisputed king of the division Petr Yan was a huge idiot and intentionally fouled him, leading to the first time a championship has changed hands by disqualification in MMA history. The MMA world, being a smart, balanced community, placed almost universal blame on Sterling for this. After thirteen months of anticipation, two reschedulings and an absolutely endless raft of shit-talk from Yan about Sterling being a fake champion, the rematch finally came on April 9, 2022, and against almost everyone's predictions (including mine!), Aljamain Sterling beat Petr Yan fair and square, controlling him in the grappling and neutralizing his striking for most of the fight and ultimately taking a split decision. People are of course even more upset at him now, but fuck 'em. Yan is foaming at the mouth for a rubber match, but Sterling, rightly pointing out that a rubber match when you're 0-2 is stupid, eyed a fight with TJ Dillashaw, Jose Aldo or Dominick Cruz later this year, and the UFC, being the UFC, picked Dillashaw. The fight's going to co-main event UFC 280 in Abu Dhabi on October 22.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Deiveson Figueiredo - 21-2-1, 0 Defenses
We have come so far, and yet we are still where we were. On December 12, 2020, Deiveson Figueiredo shockingly went to a draw with heavy underdog Brandon Moreno. On June 12, 2021, Moreno even more shockingly dropped and choked him out, wrestling the flyweight championship from his hands. On January 22, 2022, the two met for the third time and the result was an instant fight of the year candidate that saw both men trade the advantage in striking, grappling and wrestling alike back and forth, but Figueiredo's smart adjustments from their second fight won him a razor-close but still unanimous decision and the return of the flyweight championship. And now, having fought each other three times in thirteen months and finally finished their trilogy, the next stop for new champion Deiveson Figueiredo was seemingly yet another fight with Moreno, this time in Mexico as a big money card. And then: Things fell apart. What at first seemed like an amicable rivalry turned sour when Figueiredo refused to fight Moreno again, citing what he saw as racist disrespect from his corner, and called instead for a fight with top contender Kai Kara-France, only to then say he needed time to rehabilitate hand injuries and couldn't take the fight until later in the year, and the UFC, ever the sensitive organization, responded by booking Moreno and Kara-France for an interim flyweight championship match on July 30 at UFC 277.
Interim Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Brandon Moreno - 20-6-2, 0 Defenses
And just like that, we're right back where we started. Moreno and Kara-France put on a furious two and a half back-and-forth rounds, but as he somehow does Moreno became only more vicious and found his combinations as the fight wore on. Four and a half minutes into the third round he stunned Kara-France with a spinning backfist and followed it with a charging liver kick that put him down for good and put gold back around Brandon's waist. Immediately following the fight, Moreno called Deiveson Figueiredo into the cage and attempted to bury the hatchet, and the two appeared to somewhat tensely reconcile enough to agree on the now entirely inevitable rematch. In theory, Moreno/Figueiredo 4 will happen towards the end of the year. After the roller coaster this whole thing has been, I will hold my breath.
Women's Featherweight, 145 lbs
Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 2 Defenses
Women's Bantamweight, 135 lbs
Amanda Nunes - 22-5, 0 Defenses
Things are back as they should be. Up until December of 2021, Amanda Nunes was unquestionably the greatest women's mixed martial artist in history. She held and defended titles at both the signature class of Women's Bantamweight and the arguably real class of Women's Featherweight, and with her mixture of vicious power, aggressive grappling and solid conditioning, she defeated every UFC champion in the history of either class and, for good measure, Valentina Shevchenko, the ultra-dominant champion of Women's Flyweight, twice. What's more, she crushed most of them, taking on legends like Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg and knocking them dead in under a minute. Which is why it was something of a shock when she was choked out by unheralded journeywoman Julianna Peña. The abruptness of the ending to her streak, and the shockingly sloppy way she was taken out, left the fanbase both demanding a rematch and openly questioning how much of the loss was due to something being wrong with Nunes, rather than Julianna Peña doing something right, and opinions flew wildly regarding how close the second bout would be. Seven months and one season of The Ultimate Fighter later they met on July 30, and the answer was: Not even slightly. Amanda Nunes dumpstered Julianna Peña for five straight rounds, dropping her a half-dozen times and elbowing her face entirely open, and barring one touchy moment with an armbar, Peña was entirely shut out and lost a wide unanimous decision that included an incredibly rare 50-43 scorecard. Back on her throne, Amanda Nunes signaled her readiness to take a goddamn vacation for the first time in years while the UFC figures out where to go from here.
Women's Flyweight, 125 lbs
Valentina Shevchenko - 23-3, 7 Defenses
Sometimes, when you've been untouchably atop your division for too long, any display of weakness seems like a loss. Sometimes, you might actually have lost. Valentina Shevchenko is a martial arts phenom: Multiple black belts, multiple Master of Sports degrees, dozens of kickboxing championships, hundreds of combined fights across all of her disciplines and twenty years of combat sports experience--by 34. Her most internationally popular achievement, of course, is her reign as the UFC Women's Flyweight Champion. She is, in fact, 12-2 in the UFC, and those only two losses came against Amanda Nunes, the champion of both 135 and 145, and the second was a split decision that could easily have gone the other way. This is what made it so shocking for people when the relatively unknown Taila Santos very nearly defeated her at UFC 275. Santos controlled Shevchenko on the ground, spend a good part of the fight in back mount and at one point nearly choked her out, but Valentina fought back and eked out a razor-close split decision victory that, as always, many people disagreed with. While the sport continues its ongoing struggle over what wrestling and positional control do and don't count for anymore, Valentina Shevchenko remains the queen of the hill. Her most likely next contender will come either in another cross-class fight with Amanda Nunes or from her own class with the winner of Katlyn Chookagian vs Manon Fiorot this October.
Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs
Carla Esparza - 19-6, 0 Defenses
Carla "Cookie Monster" Esparza is the top strawweight in the world again, and most of the MMA world is pissed. This is not a new phenomenon for her career. When Carla Esparza won Invicta's strawweight championship it was against "Rowdy" Bec Rawlings and people were upset, because Rawlings was both a fan-friendly brawler and a huge underdog. When Carla Esparza won the UFC's inaugural strawweight championship it was against "Thug" Rose Namajunas and people were upset, half because Esparza's stifling wrestling turned them off and half because the TUF editors did an excellent job making her look like an asshole. When Joanna Jędrzejczyk butchered her in her next fight it was hailed by the entire MMA internet as the birth of the 'real' strawweight championship and everyone just kind of consigned Esparza to the dustbin of martial arts history. (Including me. I am guilty.) It took seven years, several tough losses and the UFC publicly sabotaging her championship aspirations, but Esparza made her way back to title contention and threw the gauntlet down at her once-defeated now-undisputed rival. And in 2022, when Carla Esparza won the UFC strawweight championship back from Rose Namajunas people were upset because it was quite possibly the worst title fight in UFC history. Even weirder: It wasn't entirely Esparza's fault. If anything, she was comparatively the aggressor--if very sparingly and typically ineffectually--and Rose spent the entire fight refusing to engage and being inexplicably reassured by her corner that she was executing a perfect gameplan and everything was fine. By the end the two combined for 68 landed strikes in five rounds and no one was happy save Carla Esparza, two-time champion of the world. Having knocked out Joanna Jędrzejczyk, Zhang Weili is booked to challenge Carla for the belt at UFC 281 on November 12. Weili Zhang is already a -300 favorite. For the above-pictured reasons, I will be rooting for the challenger. Fuck Carla Esparza.
NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD
Bellator Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Ryan Bader - 30-7 (1), 2 Defenses
No, I will never stop hating on Ryan Bader. I know it's not fair. Objectively, the man's had a pretty great career--he's a huge, action-figure-looking wrestleboxing motherfucker who only ever lost to the best of the best (EXCEPT TITO ORTIZ), when he puts it together he's got some great knockouts to his name and he humiliated Fedor Emelianenko AND Matt Mitrione, which are both things I deeply adore. But Ryan Bader is Ryan Bader, and that is both his blessing and his curse, and the continual ire he gets from the MMA community for daring to exist in the way that he does is as responsible for his career resurgence as his fists. He followed his successful slow-motion nothing of a title defense back in January with an even slower, less eventful defense in his rematch with Cheick Kongo, which for bonus points was in front of a very partisan and very upset Parisian crowd who in no way appreciated his wrestling and his refusal to mix any offense into it. He recently signed a new Bellator deal that he intends to retire under and he's made clear he no longer has any intention of competing at light-heavyweight, and that means his likely next contender is either Linton Vassell, who himself only returned to heavyweight three years ago, or a Fedor rematch, which would be fucking hilarious no matter what happens.
Bellator Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Vadim Nemkov - 15-2 (1), 2 Defenses
All the success in the world cannot stop the curse inherent to being in Bellator. Vadim Nemkov is a four-time sambo world champion, a former Spetsnaz operative, a 6'0" steroid golem and the light-heavyweight champion of Bellator, but his main contribution to the MMA world right now is unintentional comedy. Bellator held the finals of its light-heavyweight grand prix on April 15, and after twelve months of competition including six titlists it came down to standing champion Nemkov and top contender and professor emeritus of Beastin' Corey Anderson, and while Anderson was well in control an inadvertent headbutt opened a huge gash on Nemkov's brow--and as the fight was paused just five seconds before the end of the third round it was too early for a technical decision. So the tournament ended in a No Contest, and Bellator's championship is held by a champion who was clearly beaten, and the tournament final will need a do-over later this year, and Scott Coker continues to live a life cursed by his participation in Surf Ninjas. After months of delay, the do-over will take place at Bellator 288 on November 16.
Bellator Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Johnny Eblen - 12-0, 0 Defenses
The world did not see this one coming. Gegard Mousasi, widely considered the best middleweight outside of the UFC and arguably better than the majority of those inside, was a -260 favorite to retain his Bellator championship and cruise through his second straight year as a titleholder. And then he got punched in his god damned face. "The Human Cheat Code" Johnny "Diamond Hands" Eblen "Suffix Nickname" dropped Mousasi on his face with a hook out of nowhere just minutes into the fight, and that signalled the beginning not just of an upset but a five-round shut-out, as Eblen dominated Mousasi standing and grappling, earning both Bellator's middleweight championship and, for the first time in his career, his own Wikipedia page. Unsurprisingly, Eblen is a lifelong wrestler out of American Top Team, explaining the power hooks and power doubles alike, and unsurprisingly, Mousasi's achilles heel was a really good wrestler. What comes next for Eblen is anyone's guess. Could be a Mousasi rematch if Scott Coker gets mad about wrestling existing again, could be Yoel Romero dropping back down to 185, could be #2 ranked Fabian Edwards trying to bring a second belt to the family. For the moment, Eblen gets to be on top of the world.
Bellator Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Yaroslav Amosov - 26-0, 0 Defenses
Yaroslav "Dynamo" Amosov is in that very strange place where he's simultaneously one of the most successful prospects in the sport and a fighter almost no one feels a need to pay attention to. He's a four-time world champion in sambo, he's undefeated in nearly a decade of mixed martial arts competition, he has a 26-0 record at just 28 years old and he dominated the very tough Douglas Lima to become the first Ukrainian MMA world champion (you came so close, Igor), and he has a total of 1,253 Twitter followers. Some of it is exposure--it probably doesn't help that Amosov was on Bellator's prelims just before his title eliminator--and some of it is a very tactical and sometimes control-centric style that does not lend itself well to attracting viewers, as seen in a 7-0 Bellator record with only two stoppages, one of which was a doctor's stoppage on cuts between rounds. The fact that he's a 26-0 world champion and is still mostly being looked at as a prospect is a testament to both the amount of talent he very clearly has and the way everyone's still kind of waiting for something big to happen to him, which, uh, also indicates where Bellator is in the pecking order of the collective MMA consciousness. Bellator had been planning to finally cash in on their many years of can-crushing by having Amosov defend his title against weirdo striker Michael "Venom" Page on May 13, but Amosov is fighting in the ongoing war in his homeland Ukraine, which doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon. Consequently:
Bellator Interim Welterweight Champion
Logan Storley - 14-1, 0 Defenses
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A company books a massively-hyped international superstar striking specialist against an American wrestler and the result makes everyone really mad. Bellator has been salivating over the idea of getting a championship on British kickman Michael "Venom" Page for years, and with Amosov no longer available they thought the half-a-foot-shorter Logan Storley would be a good candidate, and shockingly, the 14-1 wrestler whose only loss was a split decision to Amosov himself proceeded to wrestle Page for about 2/3 of their 25-minute fight. He ultimately won a close split decision that should easily have been both broad and unanimous, and as always happens with this script, MVP wants an immediate rematch. Scott Coker, proving every promoter is just one piss-fit away from becoming Dana White, used the post-fight presser to complain about the judging and insist that Storley's choice to just wrestle "isn't MMA" and shouldn't have won him the decision. It's 2022 and it is still the wrestler's fault that their opponent can't wrestle. In theory a unification match between Storley and Amosov is next, but with no sign of an end to the invasion of Ukraine, who knows. I'm sure Bellator would love to give MVP a rematch.
Bellator Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Patricky "Pitbull" Freire - 24-10, 0 Defenses
Bellator's lightweight division is in a deeply unfortunate place right now. Bellator's canonical best fighter, for a very long time, was the reigning Featherweight and Lightweight double champion Patricio Pitbull, who knocked out some guy you may have heard of named Michael Chandler to win the latter. He's one of the best fighters on the planet. This is not him. This is his twin brother Patricky, who is one inch taller and also less good. Patricio held the lightweight championship without defending it for two years until the moment Bellator agreed to put Patricky in a championship main event, at which point he coincidentally decided to vacate the belt and focus on 145. Patricky also got the title shot coming off two consecutive losses, one of which was a somewhat absurd cut stoppage in a fight he was winning against Peter "The Showstopper" Queally, who himself was only 11-6 at the time and was delivered into title contention based on a victory over a guy who never won a Bellator fight. (The secret: He was Irish and the title fight was in Dublin.) Patricky won the rematch handily and is now the champion of a lightweight division where the two top contenders are 4-1 and 3-0 respectively and when you talk about him most people think you're talking about his brother. He was supposed to defend his title against Sidney Outlaw at Bellator 283 on July 22, but a last-minute injury, which for comedy's sake I'm assuming is a reaggravation of his groin tear, forced him out. Outlaw was instead knocked out by debuting Tofiq Musayev in thirty seconds. You might think this would give Musayev dibs on a title shot; you would be wrong. Patricky will instead be defending his title against Usman Nurmagomedov, Khabib's younger cousin, at Bellator 288 on November 18.
Bellator Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Patrício Pitbull - 33-5, 0 Defenses
One fight after being violently dethroned, Patrício Pitbull is back on top of the world. Patrício Pitbull has long been considered Bellator's GOAT, as a two-division champion with a 21-5 record across twelve years in the organization that's staggering not just for its breadth but for the way he had only ever been defeated by hard-fought decision or freak injury until July 31, 2021, when the meteorically-rising A.J. McKee knocked him loopy and choked him unconscious in one round. Pitbull protested the stoppage, as fighters always do, but he didn't have a case. By their rematch on April 15, 2022, Bellator had already anointed McKee as their new top star to the point of making him the central feature of their new promo packages--which made it very awkward and very funny when, after five hard-fought if tentative rounds, Patrício emerged with a unanimous decision victory. It has since been McKee's turn to complain and cry foul about bad judging, despite the fight actually being fairly clear, but he's also declared his intention to leave the division and move to lightweight, so Patrício is once again the undisputed king of his division. He'll be defending that crown against Bellator's top contender the 18-1 Ádám Borics at Bellator 286 on October 1.
Bellator Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Sergio Pettis - 22-5, 1 Defense
So Sergio Pettis is good now, apparently. It's not that he was ever bad, exactly, it's that he was more or less forever in big brother Anthony's shadow. Sergio had a long five years in the UFC where he on several occasions seemed poised to break out into the top ranks and vie for a title, but he always managed to fall just short, building a strong win streak before getting controlled by Henry Cejudo, barely squeaking past Joe Benavidez only to get dominated by Jussier Formiga, moving up to 135 and getting shut down by Rob Font. He went to Bellator just a few months before his brother left for the PFL, and now, in a stunning turnaround, Sergio is the successful one in the family. He won Bellator's bantamweight championship in his third fight with the organization, and in the biggest fight of his career, an interpromotional match pitting his title against Rizin bantamweight champion (and former Bellator champion himself, who vacated due to injury) Kyoji Horiguchi, Pettis shocked the world by battling through four difficult rounds he was fairly clearly losing and knocking out the heavy favorite with a painfully pretty spinning backfist. Sergio Pettis is no longer an also-ran. Unfortunately, as these things always go, he followed this up by getting injured. He's out of this year's Grand Prix and his timetable for return is iffy enough that Bellator immediately booked an interim championship between Raufeon Stots and Juan Archuleta for Bellator 279 on April 23.
Bellator Interim Bantamweight Champion
Raufeon Stots - 18-1, 0 Defenses
He did not waste the opportunity. Raufeon Stots has been looked on as a major bantamweight prospect for years: A two-time DII wrestling champion, a heavy-handed puncher and an exceptionally conditioned grappler with guidance from Roufusport, Jens Pulver and Kamaru Usman thanks to their shared alma mater who won his first regional title just two years into his career. He's 18-1 with his only loss coming via a shock 15-second knockout against one of the best in the world in Merab Dvalishvili. Stots stormed Bellator in 2019 and is on an unbeaten six-fight streak with the organization, and when faced with both the entrance to his first grand prix, the stiffest competition of his career in former champion Juan Archuleta and the interim Bellator championship on the line, Stots did what some of the best in the world couldn't and knocked Archuleta out in the third round. Loudmouth wrestler Danny Sabatello defeated Leandro Higo to reach the next round of Bellator's Grand Prix, and will face Stots at Bellator 289 on December 9 for both a berth in the tournament finals and the interim championship.
Bellator Women's Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Cris Cyborg - 26-2 (1), 4 Defenses
Yup. It's 2022 and Cris Cyborg is still out there. For those who don't know, Cris Cyborg was the canonical women's featherweight fighter, a muay thai wrecking machine who didn't just beat but brutalized essentially all of her opponents, including ex-Star Wars Gina Carano, and her popularity as a destroyer of humans is the only real reason women's featherweight even exists as a division, to the point that the UFC added it when she was the only actual fighter at the weight class they employed. She was 20-1 (1) when she passed the torch to Amanda Nunes, who slew her in just fifty-one seconds. She took one more fight in the UFC to complete her contract, but left for Bellator almost immediately afterward with uncharacteristic cooperation from the UFC itself--after all, they'd gotten what they wanted out of her. Her first Bellator fight was a one-sided destruction of their featherweight champion, and she's defended it three times since. At this point in Cyborg's career the problem isn't her or her fighting or her age, but simply that there's no one in Bellator for her to fight--after just five fights she's already hitting rematches, having just recorded her second one-sided bludgeoning of a very game but outmatched Arlene Blencowe. Consequently, Cyborg decided she wants her next fight to be a boxing match, not MMA, which Bellator is more than happy to oblige being as it's apparently always been an option in her contract and they couldn't stop her if they wanted to. She's now going to be boxing professional loser Simone da Silva for a made-up championship on a completely insane card on September 25.
Bellator Women's Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Liz Carmouche - 17-7, 0 Defenses
This wasn't a thing most people expected, nor are most people happy about it, but it kind of makes me smile. Liz "Girl-Rilla" Carmouche is a former marine who's been grinding away at mixed martial arts for twelve years, and for the entirety of those twelve years she's been just good enough to touch the top of the mountain but not quite good enough to climb it. In 2011, just one year into her career, she challenged for Strikeforce's bantamweight championship only to get choked out, in 2013 she participated in the first women's fight in UFC history and nearly upset everyone's marketing plans by neck cranking the shit out of Ronda Rousey before ultimately getting armbarred, and in 2019 she challenged Valentina Shevchenko for her flyweight title but just couldn't touch her. Her shift to Bellator wasn't met with much fanfare, but three wins with two violent stoppages earned her a shot at champion Juliana Velasquez on April 22, 2022. It seemed to be going Velasquez's way, but just before the end of the fourth round Carmouche muscled her to the ground, put her in the crucifix position and began landing elbows that were, respectfully, pretty visibly inconsequential, but referee Mike Beltran felt differently and called the fight off, leaving Velasquez apoplectic and Carmouche a world champion for the first time in her career. Velasquez is appealing the decision, which is aggressively silly and will go nowhere, but Bellator will almost certainly put together a rematch.
It's worth noting that a) ONE uses different weight classes and b) ONE also has a dozenish various kickboxing champions, and for the moment, for sake of my sanity, we're just going to stick to the MMA champions. Maybe later we'll change this. FOR NOW:
ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Arjan Bhullar - 11-1, 0 Defenses
It's Arjan Bhullar, the man ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong swears is better than Francis Ngannou. Bhullar, the first Indian world champion in the sport, was a big deal as a wrestler in his native Canada, won multiple collegiate championships at heavyweight, took a Commonwealth Games championship and ultimately achieved his dream of representing Canada at the 2012 Olympics where he was eliminated in the first round. He made his MMA debut two years later as, you may have already guessed, predominantly a wrestler. He was picked up by the UFC in 2017 at 6-0, and had a respectable 3-1 record with the organization, but chose not to sign a new contract after feeling the UFC was lowballing him. He signed with the then-growing ONE Championship in 2019, won his debut fight, took a year and a half off for the pandemic and returned in May of 2021 to TKO the baddest heavyweight in ONE, its reigning champion of almost six years, the man, myth, legend and Truth, Brandon Vera. And then, much like Vera, he promptly refused to sign a new contract and sat out for a year so he could play hardball. Chatri publicly shat on him and his management and set up an interim championship.
ONE Interim Heavyweight Champion
Anatoliy Malykhin - 11-0, 0 Defenses
For all things, there is a Russian punchman. Anatoly "Spartak" Malykhin is both an undefeated mixed martial arts fighter, a punching machine, and an avowed wife guy who credits her with his career, which he was about to give up as a 5-0 regional champion before meeting her. He promptly moved to Phuket, upped his game, met ONE's talent scouts and got signed directly into co-main event status. He is not only 11-0, and not only has finished all eleven fights, no one has yet made it further than the second round with him, including noted steroid elemental Amir Aliakbari, whom he starched in three minutes, and interim championship contender Kirill Grishenko. After many, many months of back and forth, and some truly irritating social media posturing, the inevitable unification fight got signed--and somehow, inexplicably, they opted NOT to put the heavyweight championship on the big American Amazon Prime card. No faith in the wrestlers, I suppose. Bhullar and Malykhin will instead reunify the belts at ONE 161 on September 29.
ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs
Reinier de Ridder - 16-0, 0 Defenses
ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs
Reinier de Ridder - 16-0, 2 Defenses
"The Dutch Knight" Reinier de Ridder is probably ONE's most successful MMA fighter and he was recently deemed insufficiently important to merit a Wikipedia page. ONE prides itself on creating the 225-pound cruiserweight class many MMA fans have wanted for years, but it almost immediately fell victim to the problem many had theorized: A sufficiently skilled 205-pounder will probably also just win at 225. Aung La N Sang was the first to hold both titles simultaneously, but Reinier, a childhood judoka turned all-around adult grappling monster, choked him out in one round to win his middleweight title. Curiously, Sang was scheduled to defend his remaining title against someone else, but COVID put the seemingly more logical Reinier in, who promptly took the other belt home too. Because ONE is very, very silly, Reinier then made his first defense of the 205-pound title against Kiamrian Abbasov, ONE's 185-pound champion (whose own title was not on the line) whom he also choked out, meaning Reinier de Ridder is now the lineal titleholder of 1/3 of ONE's entire men's MMA program. To further make this more ridiculous, his first post-triple-champ fight was not a fight, but a grappling match against all-time BJJ great André Galvão, and upon wrestling him to a draw, he challenged him to an MMA fight which Galvão accepted. André Galvão's last mixed martial arts bout was twelve years ago, it was at 170 pounds, and he was knocked out in two minutes by Tyron Woodley. While the fight is still expected later this year, de Ridder made a pit stop to defend specifically the middleweight title against former champion Vitaly Bigdash at ONE 159 on July 22, in which Bigdash, fighting a grappling savant, decided it was a good time to jump a guillotine. He was styled on and submitted with an inverted triangle choke.
ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs
Kiamrian Abbasov - 23-5, 1 Defense
It's Kyrgyzstani wrestleboxing time, baby. Kiamrian "Brazen" Abbasov came up in the Russian regionals and took home both the Tech-Krep FC championship and the MixFace championship, which is much, much funnier. He was picked up by ONE as an ultra-promising middleweight prospect, and lived up to that promise by immediately getting outworked against living legend Luis "Sapo" Santos. He was back in ONE nine months later, and was its new welterweight champion ten months after that. He's a smart, tactical fighter with a well-rounded skillset, but he has a tendency to get manhandled by superior wrestlers, which made it all the more baffling when ONE booked him against Reinier de Ridder, who pretty easily controlled and ultimately submitted him. Admittedly, ONE kind of has a proto-WEC thing going on--their lower weight classes are dangerous and interesting, their higher weight classes are so much less important that ONE doesn't even have rankings above lightweight on their own website. Abbasov is a champion, but what he is a champion of, no one knows.
ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs
Christian Lee - 16-4, 0 Defenses
The house always wins. Christian Lee is one of ONE Championship's centerpiece fighters, a star 170-pounder with an incredibly aggressive style who stops almost everyone he fights and has been under contract to ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong since he was 17. He is also, helpfully, the younger brother of one of ONE's biggest stars, Angela Lee. For this reason, and so many others, ONE was deeply displeased when, two years into his reign, Lee lost his title to South Korean champion Ok Rae Yoon in a shocking decision--both in terms of Yoon's status as an underdog and in the general consensus on the wisdom of the judges' decision itself. Christian Lee pitched a fit about it and demanded a rematch, and ONE, entirely content to get the belt back on their star player, was happy to oblige, sitting Yoon out for 11 months and throwing him right back in with Christian Lee, who proceeded to absolutely wipe the floor with him and knock him out in just six minutes. It wasn't without controversy--Christian Lee should, technically, have been disqualified for soccer kicking the shit out of Yoon's face--but ONE holds the right to use their discretion in deciding if an illegal blow matters or not and, shockingly, their massively-marketable 24 year-old English-speaking wunderkind who also happens to be a head coach at the CEO's martial arts academy got the benefit of the doubt. Christian Lee has his championship back and ONE has their preferred star back, and he will assuredly figure into plans for next year's Prime Video cards.
ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Tang Kai - 15-2, 0 Defense
Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China's WBK (after investigating, we THINK it's World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz "Ong Bak" Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai's weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai's Dragon Gym and Phuket's legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It's worked out quite well: He hasn't lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China's Rebel FC got ONE's attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he's held for two years. Tang Kai, at the beginning of ONE's worldwide evasion, is suddenly a very visible prospect: A power striker on a 10-fight winning streak and a champion in the world's most competitive weight class. The target on his back is very, very real.
ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
John Lineker - 35-9, 0 Defenses
John God Damn Lineker, world champion. "Hands of Stone" is a 5'3" ball of muscle with lunchboxes attached to it. Our own LobsterMobster very accurately described him as someone who hits like a truck made out of a train. Lineker's been fighting since 2008, but he ran up a fairly unimpressive 6-5 record in the first year of his career and briefly considered retiring. And then, settling into his style of gritting his teeth, stomping forward and never, ever ceasing in his attempts to punch you as hard as he possibly could, he started murdering everyone. After thirteen straight victories and two regional bantamweight championships he was picked up by the UFC for its then-nascent 125-pound weight class, which was problematic given his love of being a giant muscle golem. He went 6-2 at the weight class, but he also managed to miss weight in half of those fights, resulting in his being forced up to bantamweight, where he was noticeably undersized and often gave up half a foot of height, and it didn't fucking matter because he was John God Damn Lineker. He went 6-2 again, with his only losses being a unanimous decision to two-time champ TJ Dillashaw and a razor-close split against top contender Cory Sandhagen. And staring at this massively marketable multiple-bonus-winning top contender who was knocking dudes dead at 135 pounds, the UFC decided to release him. Dana White said it was his lack of professionalism and weight misses, which seems like a strange thing to get mad about three years later; it is somewhat more likely ONE FC was trying to sign him and he rationally asked why he, as an eight-year, 16-fight UFC veteran, was only getting paid $46k to show. Three months later he was destroying people at 145 pounds in ONE, and three years later he fought reigning champion Bibiano Fernandes, one of the best featherweights of all time and arguably the best fighter outside the UFC period, and became the first person to ever knock him out. John Lineker is a violence machine, his fights are must-see television, and he's a goddamn 145-pound champion at 5'3".
ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs
Demetrious Johnson - 31-4-1, 0 Defenses
The king has returned. Demetrious Johnson's 2019 debut with ONE Championship was essentially scandalous. "Mighty Mouse" had long been a fan favorite of the lighter weight classes, a 5'3" combat machine who had been going the distance with world champions like Kid Yamamoto and Dominick Cruz while still working a day job in a warehouse, but it was only in 2012 when he dedicated himself to mixed martial arts as his full-time job that he became a star. He won the UFC's flyweight tournament and became its inaugural champion, and his talents are the reason a division that has existed for a decade has only had five champions--three of whom came in the last two years after he left. By 2018, Johnson had one of the longest winning streaks in the UFC, was the all-time recordholder for championship defenses in the UFC and had recorded some of the most outstanding finishes in the history of the UFC. By 2019, he was out of the company. Johnson and the UFC never got along--or, to be blunt, Johnson was one of the few publicly calling the UFC out on its bullshit. When he won the flyweight title and became a world champion while only getting paid $23k/23k he let it be known, when the UFC cut sponsorship money in the Reebok era he noted the raw deal it gave the fighters, and when Dana White tried to force him to take fights up at bantamweight by threatening to kill the flyweight division if he didn't, he told the world. After Henry Cejudo beat him in a razor-close coinflip decision and took the bargaining leverage of his championship away, it was over in a heartbeat. Dana White personally disliked him enough that he traded him to ONE Championship in exchange for their welterweight champion, Ben Askren. Johnson proceeded to immediately win ONE's flyweight grand prix, but took the first stoppage loss of his entire career in his shot at Adriano Moraes and his world championship and engendered a thousand MMA thinkpieces about if his time as a top fighter was over. A year and a half later, he got his rematch, and on August 27 at ONE on Prime Video 1 he returned the favor, handing Moraes his own first stoppage loss after knocking him out with a flying knee. A trilogy rematch seems inevitable, but for the moment, having just turned 36, Mighty Mouse is a world champion in the second weight class of his career and shows no signs of slowing down.
ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Pacio - 20-3, 3 Defenses
Joshua "The Passion" Pacio, thusly named after his passion for hotel and restaurant management. A childhood student of both kickboxing and wushu, Pacio quickly established himself as one of the best 125-pound MMA fighters in the Philippines and, ultimately, was too good to stay there. He signed on with ONE in 2016, and his combination of solid grappling, spinning kicks and quick, darting punches got him up to a strawweight title shot within the year, which led to the first loss of his career and the discovery of his primary weakness: Strong wrestling games. Fortunately, this being 125 pounds and a striking-centric promotion, there aren't that many threats out there for him. He's on his second title reign now, his first having been ended during its first defense in a split decision by the greatest rival of his career, grappler Yosuke Saruta, but he wrested the championship back from him in a rematch and this past September defeated him again in a rubber match. Pacio is among the longest-reigning champions in ONE, having notched 1000+ days and 3 title defenses, but as ONE's profile has risen it has begun attracting international talent, and at ONE: Reloaded on April 22, former UFC fighter Jared "The Monkey God" Brooks took a decisive victory and lined himself up as the most likely next contender--and then got himself injured and scratched from his title shot a week before it happened. Better luck later this year.
ONE Women's Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Xiong Jing Nan - 17-2, 6 Defenses
Xiong Jing Nan dreamed of lifting weights. She'd enjoyed sports as a child, and when China started its national push for Olympic supremacy she began training heavily in hope of joining the national weightlifting team. But then she met aspirants for its boxing team and fell in love with the idea of living out a martial arts movie and getting to hit people for fun and profit and she never looked back. She turned pro in 2014 and immediately became a standout, going 9-1 in China's Kunlun Fight promotion with wins across three separate weight classes. What made her truly dangerous wasn't one-punch power, but the ability to break her opponents with constant pressure striking, scoring TKOs with combinations stretched out across dozens of consecutive, unending strikes. The story was no different when she moved to ONE in 2017, and she was strawweight champion within two fights. ONE's women's MMA divisions have been its most stable, each having had exactly one champion, and they were so dominant that they inevitably had to fight each other--and, hilariously, traded wins back and forth in the process. 115 lbs champion Angela Lee went up to 125 to challenge for Xiong Jing Nan's belt but Nan stopped her with body kicks in the fifth round, and half a year later Nan dropped down to 115 to challenge for Lee's belt only for Lee to choke her out with twelve seconds left in the fight. Xiong has notched three successful title defenses since, which sets her up for her greatest challenger yet: Angela Lee, again, apparently.
ONE Women's Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs
Angela Lee - 11-2, 5 Defenses
Angela Lee is one of ONE's biggest stars and has been widely called its postergirl, and while the metrics may be debatable, she's an extremely solid choice. Her background is varied both culturally and martially: Born in Canada in a Singaporean-South Korean family made entirely of martial artists who all collectively moved to Hawaii when she was a child, she was not only training alongside them as a child, but training in multiple disciplines. By 15 she was a national Pankration champion, by 18 she had been signed by ONE before having a single professional fight, and by 20 she had two black belts and three defenses of ONE's atomweight championship. Lee is an extremely versatile fighter, capable of backing up her aggressive if sometimes loose striking with very solid defensive and offensive grappling, and her only two losses have come when fighting up a class at 125 pounds, against both its champion Xiong Jing Nan--whom she later choked out in a rematch at 115--and world jiu-jitsu champion Michelle Nicolini in a very, very close decision. Lee went on hiatus at the end of 2019 to have a baby and intended to be back by the end of 2020, but then the pandemic happened and she decided to use her cache within the company to just sit it out, making her arguably the smartest fighter in the world. ONE declined to make an interim championship, so she returned to competition this past March as a defending champion and main-evented the ONE X supercard against its atomweight queen in her absence, Stamp Fairtex, and notched her fifth title defense after choking her out in the second round. ONE has its star player back, and they're not done trying to get a second belt on her: She'll have her trilogy fight with Nan on September 30, once again challenging for Xiong's flyweight title.
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Roberto de Souza - 14-1, 2 Defenses
Roberto "Satoshi" de Souza is trying to become the new Gegard Mousasi. On April 17 he had the chance to avenge the only loss of his career, a half-knockout half-injury against "Hollywood" Johnny Case back in 2019, and he succeeded in emphatic fashion, climbing Case's back, locking him in an inverted triangle choke and eventually forcing an armbar. He's now 14-1 and inarguably one of the best lightweights outside of the UFC, but unlike most of the other fighters to bear that title, he has made it clear he has no interest in changing that. Where the A.J. McKees and Michael Chandlers of the world want to test free agency and 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. If he's happy, though, he's happy.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Juntaro Ushiku - 21-8-1, 0 Defenses
Japan has always had an extremely strong regional MMA scene, and occasionally top competitors somewhat abruptly pop out of it. The Fighting Bull Juntaro Ushiku is the latest, and one Rizin didn't quite seem to expect. One of Rizin's primary stories has been its love of the Asakura brothers, Kai and Mikuru, both of whom have made big impacts and gotten some perhaps occasionally favorable matchmaking to speed along their route to Japanese stardom. It was somewhat counter to Rizin's plans when Mikuru got outfought and controlled by a lesser-known wrestler in Yutaka Saito, and even moreso when Saito promptly got his face kneed off by Ushiku, the featherweight champion of DEEP. Ushiku did, in fact, immediately return to DEEP two months later. He's a scrappy fighter--well-rounded, no enormous standout skills, lots of split decisions, very difficult to finish--and Rizin wanted the title back on Saito enough that they gave him a rematch despite having only lost a fight in the interim. The resulting fight was very close, but off the strength of having dropped Saito with a headkick, the judges gave Ushiku the unanimous decision. I had assumed Ushiku would be defending against Mikuru, but Mikuru is instead fighting, uh, Floyd Mayweather Jr. So who the fuck knows.
Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Kyoji Horiguchi - 29-5, 0 Defenses
Kyoji Horiguchi is going through a difficult time in his career. Horiguchi is, indisputably, one of the absolute best flyweights on the planet. He's an incredibly fast, powerful striker with very solid wrestling and aggressive grappling to back up his skills, and the streak of incredible knockouts and submissions on his record is a testament to his skills. Trouble is: He's not fighting at flyweight, he's fighting at bantamweight, and it's finally starting to become a problem. His half-decade unbeaten streak ended in 2019 thanks to a first-round upset loss against Kai Asakura, but Rizin rushing him back in mid-knee injury was blamed for that, especially when Kyoji starched Kai in a rematch the next year. And then he lost his Bellator bantamweight championship to Sergio Pettis after winning most of the fight only to walk into a spinning backfist. And now he's lost his berth in Bellator's bantamweight grand prix after just getting grappled to death by Patchy Mix, who, while very good at jiu-jitsu, also had the advantage of half a foot of height and reach on Horiguchi. He continues to be almost certainly the best fighter in Rizin, and inarguably Japan's best at flyweight AND bantamweight, but three years ago he was the nearly-undefeated champion of the two biggest b-leagues in the world simultaneously and now he's 1-3 in said three years and has a Rizin title he's never defended. For someone who wants to be the best in the world, there are questions to be answered about where he goes from here, and Rizin's answer, thus far, is on September 25 at Rizin 38 he's going to be facing Kintaro Masakari, a 14-11-2 journeyman who's 1 for his last 4 and is coming off two straight losses. It is hard to imagine a more blunt tune-up fight.
Rizin Women's Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
Seika Izawa - 7-0, 0 Defenses
All hail the new queen. After years of reigning as Japan's best atomweight, the legendary Ayaka Hamasaki fell not once but twice to the rookie Seika Izawa. A 24 year-old who was pushed into judo as a child by a frustrated mother who was tired of her constant fighting with her brothers, Izawa discovered a love for grappling that led her to win junior championships in judo, wrestling and sumo alike. She would still be pursuing judo had the pandemic not shut down much of its competitive scene, but fortunately, mixed martial arts is a terrible sport run by monsters who don't care about things like deadly diseases, which made it a tempting professional prospect. Four months after her formal MMA training began Izawa was winning fights in DEEP, less than a year after that she was DEEP's strawweight champion, and one year later she was dominating one of the best women's fighters in history on Rizin's New Year's Eve special. As Japanese organizations tend to do, frustratingly, the fight was a non-title affair, meaning Izawa had to come back and do it again on April 17. After a scary moment where Hamasaki almost stole an armbar, Izawa resumed her wrestling domination and formally took Rizin's atomweight championship. As entirely fresh blood, the world of Rizin's talent is open to her--but that also means she's got a real, real big target on her back. She's taking part in this year's Rizin Atomweight Grand Prix, and got through the first round with a submission victory over Brazilian champion Laura Fontoura at Rizin 37 on July 31. The rest will most likely be on New Year's Eve.