Elsalvajeloco

I'm assuming this makes Zabit vs. Calvin Kattar the main event and turns it into a five rounder.

I think Tecia peaked way too early if we're talking about just strictly fighting in a division the UFC actually has. She showed she was high level early on, and it was hard for other fighters to get a beat on her. Just like Holly Holm for awhile, she had this formula where she was athletic enough and strong enough that she could systematically outstrike usually anyone she was against and dominate in the clinch as it relates to in fighting and takedowns/takedown defense. Then, when she was trying to juggle life outside fighting with going to college and getting post secondary degrees, we had this rapid decline in her ability. Here is where I think the atomweight thing doesn't apply. We saw with Sage Northcutt that trying to do the college thing doesn't work all too well if you're trying to develop as a fighter. Sure, he had other issues but that contributed to his growth being stunted as a fighter. With Tecia, she was in a much better place even though she came into the UFC with only 3 or 4 pro fights. Strawweight is loaded but it's loaded by female MMA standards if you compare it to the heavier women's divisions. It's nothing like men's lightweight and welterweight where Sage was competing. Furthermore, she's fighting other women who still aren't finished products as fighters too. However, just like Paige VanZant, the whole social life outside the UFC was a big part of the decline. Going to Colorado to follow Raquel Pennington and leaving American Top Team was the worst career move she could have made. Not only did she look markedly less focused, but she seemed a step or two behind in fights that were winnable for her. I picked Weili Zhang to win, but if Tecia was more prepared and was with a real MMA team, Jessica Andrade vs. Weili Zhang for the title doesn't go down in China. Weili Zhang wasn't that much better than her in that fight. Tecia just looked absolutely lethargic. She was a little bit better in the Marina Rodriguez when she went back and did her camp at ATT, but I still thought Marina Rodriguez won that fight and so did the judges. Maybe she can put it on her mental health state, but I don't think it's a coincidence she started to look less than herself when she decided to focus on education and then left to go to Colorado. Besides Nina Ansaroff, I can't think of one fighter who has benefited from the being with another fighter and building an entire relationship around that. Even with Ansaroff though, I think she knew realistically that once you have a baby that eventually you might have to sacrifice your career. If it's between her and Amanda on that, it's going to be Nina. So that will motivate you to go on one great run. However, this should tell you how individual of a sport this is. Tecia Torres should not be on a four fight losing streak even at 5'1". She is a much better fighter than that. However, if you don't balance your priorities correctly though, you will pay the price. That goes for everyone whether it's Tecia Torres, Raquel Pennington, Paige VanZant, Luke Rockhold, etc. Also speaking of Rockhold and the like... "When you come at the king, you best not miss." - Noted Baltimore street scholar Omar Little

There is a reason Maycee is calling Paige out and it isn't just because Paige's heart might not be in it. Even in fights with like Jessica Rose-Clark who is solid but not spectacular, Paige tends to make those fights look like wars of attrition. If she isn't fighting career .500 fighters like Kailin Curran, Alex Chambers, and Bec Rawlings, it's a struggle for her. Here is where I agree with @supremebve. Maycee can easily beat fighters a tier above that which Paige has failed to do in recent fights in between injuries and reality shows. Paige went to Team Alpha Male. Got slightly better. Left there and went back home to Reno or w/e. Lost all the progress she made. She went to Oregon to train w/ Fabiano Scherner at Gracie Barra Portland with her fiance. Somehow, she became worse than what she was when she came to the UFC five years ago. Whether her heart is in it or not, she has regressed as a fighter and it's not like she was the best to begin with. Maycee is licking her chops because if Paige is a fringe level UFC fighter now, Maycee would straight up posterized her. And if you're Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard as UFC matchmakers or Dana White, that's the matchup to make. You can see why Paige isn't too anxious to come back and why she's talking about how she makes more money outside the UFC. The UFC found an upgraded Paige VanZant and wants to use the new one to trounce the old one up and out of the UFC.

Unless she faces a Viviane Araujo or KGB, I don't really think this is a division she is in danger of getting stopped by strikes. I worry moreso about her fighting a Liz Carmouche where she will get grappled for 15 minutes in a snoozer. I think after what happened with Valentina vs. Carmouche back in Uruguay, they're not going to let Carmouche be the Jon Fitch of the division. It was such a shameful performance that if Carmouche loses again or even worse, loses in a boring fight, there is a solid chance she gets cut. I think if she fights Alexis Davis (who seems to be in the gatekeeper role now), there is a chance she gets caught by a slick submission but there are much better odds Maycee beats Alexis up and gets the best win of her career. I saw she wants Antonina if she can't get PVZ. That's a good fight on paper. Antonina is a good striker and improving as an MMA fighter overall, but she is about as flawed as Maycee is. The UFC might want to keep them separate for right now though.

That damn Penta

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention but if they haven't given an explanation yet for the injury, they can possibly work it in at some point.

Din Thomas has been in MMA before the unified rules existed and has cornered countless fighters since he retired as an active fighter. He somehow doesn't know you cannot use an inhaler in the corner. To make it worse, NOBODY from the commission intervened. Somebody (who was later deemed not to have the authority or w/e that means) okays it. Then, they let it go to the judges. Are we sure the UFC ran in Massachusetts and not in like Latvia or Moldova? You would never think UFC runs there semi regularly/annually.

Man, Beterbiev beat the shit out of Gvozdyk. I mean I picked Beterbiev to win by stoppage, but I expected Gvozdyk to dominate the first half of the fight. What happened was the first five or six rounds, they were basically even on total punched landed with either guy being ahead by 1-4 punches in any given round. Gvozdyk would land some flashy combos here or there, but outside a few headsnapping punches in the middle of the fight, nothing seemed to affect Beterbiev. He just continued to march forward and forward. Once Beterbiev started going to the body and caused Gvozdyk to slow down, it was just a matter of time. In between the ninth and tenth round, Teddy tried his best to summon whatever Gvozdyk had left, but it was pretty apparent Gvozdyk was absolutely done. I hate to second guess Teddy, but why send him out for the tenth to take an epic beating? Gvozdyk kinda had his head down in the corner as Teddy was giving his fire and brimstone speech. That should tell you his spirit is broken. If he wasn't able to keep Beterbiev off him at the beginning of the fight and the middle rounds when he was close to full strength, the likelihood Gvozdyk would do that in round ten was slim to none. Beterbiev just savaged him, and Gvozdyk was just looking for a nice spot on the canvas to fall.

I don't think it's just his chin. That left hand that dropped him was wicked. Weidman is super hittable. Besides the Jacare fight, he has shown himself to be susceptible to big power shots. If you're moving up a weight class and facing a much bigger fighter (and a southpaw at that), the last thing you wanna do is come in on him in a straight line. Reyes stepped to the side beautifully and just piledrove his fist into Weidman's face. You can't teach a fighter to do it any better.

She BARELY got past JJ Aldrich. Robertson was a favorable style matchup. If she didn't get the fight down to the ground, she was going to get fucked up. And that's what happened.

They haven't had a TV card in two months and college football is all day on Saturday on ESPN platforms. The next one (and last one for the year) for the year is in December. Top Rank is doing their LHW title unification tonight on ESPN as well.

She is probably going to be against Alexis Davis, Lauren Murphy, Mayra Bueno Silva, Jennifer Maia, and Veronica Macedo. That's just the ones off the top of my head. Just because she is ranked doesn't mean every fight has to be against another ranked person or a higher ranked person.

I would say Andrea Lee and Viviane Araujo are the best prospects (although Andrea is probably no longer a prospect seeing as she just faced someone who could fight Valentina next). Molly McCann can go either way but she is super tough FWIW. Maycee Barber is going to be given all the chance in the world to get better. I think they probably see her a year and half away from doing something significant.

They're going bring up Maycee Barber as slow as possible. I'm not really all that worried about how she looks right now.

Molly McCann might be the dark horse for the women's flyweight division. She actually improves every fight.

Even though it looks well done, Sean Brady's giant backpiece is still freaky looking.

That was a very fun fight. We also have a new guy to watch out for in Brendan Allen.

The first round of Holland vs. Allen made up for how lackluster the opening bout was.

Canadian guy with epic mullet. Impossible.

The gloves (and handwraps) are signed off by the commission once the fighter's hands are wrapped and then the gloves are placed on. The commission rep will put their initials on the tape that was applied on the gloves to make sure the gloves don't come off. Prior to that, the initials will be placed below the knuckles of the handwraps in fairly large writing. You see how boxers struggle to take off their gloves at the end of a fight in the ring. You (or one of your corner men) would have be a magician and a hand writing expert to take the gloves off in the lockerroom, put something in the gloves, and then placed them back on with the signature identical on both the handwraps and tape around the gloves. I've seen someone from the commission do the once over inspection on the handwraps once a fight is over but that's usually it. If there was something irregular with the gloves and handwraps, it usually comes up right there and then.

I would say I was a casual fan from about 96 to early 99ish, then got into PRIDE around 01, got back into the UFC around late 2001 until about 2004. Then, it was mostly PRIDE and other stuff. I watched the early seasons of TUF off on, but I didn't really pay attention again to late 2005 to UFC. I would watch the Fight Nights but I didn't really give a shit about stuff like Arlovski vs. Buentello and Rich Franklin icing Nate Quarry. I saw highlights and that was enough. Also, we finally got a Blockbuster in our little ass town around 02/03. So anything I missed in the meantime, I could catch up on. Plus, the internet community was pretty strong as far videos of the major fights whether it was UFC, PRIDE, or w/e. I would say from TUF 3 Finale on, I have watched every UFC live save for UFC 69 (was out of town on a trip) and a handful of the ones in Asia that I overslept on. There was also a couple this year on ESPN+ I had to go back and watch. I think ALOT of people came in at UFC 40. I vividly remember every wrestling site (especially the ones w/ the clickbait links like "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THESE OUTRAGEOUS CANDID SHOTS OF TRISH STRATUS" & "AN EX WCW SUPERSTAR WAS SEEN BACKSTAGE AT TONIGHT'S RAW") doing PBP for Ortiz/Shamrock I like it was goddamn Wrestlemania. In boxing and MMA, personality is utilized much differently. If you're cutting great promos, but you cannot fight (see: Brooks, Phil) or you can be easily exposed, it ultimately doesn't matter how good you are with public speaking. When I fully got invested back into UFC, I remember Brandon Vera was guy that I legit thought could be their next superstar. That was in 2006. Once he took that long hiatus and then lost to Tim Sylvia, that took a lot of the wind of his sails and he really never recovered from that. I don't think pro wrestling just has a bunch of great personalities. If they did, wrestling wouldn't be in the spot it is in now. It's about fitting into a certain dynamic, and with MMA it's much tougher because the UFC has engineered a ready made formula. I love what they did at the last UFC PPV in Melbourne because that looked like a real, big time event, but they rarely do that. I think Brock did get over on his personality because he is one of the few people who legit carries himself as a star no matter if the sport is real or fake. As I indicated above, Punk could not do that because he knew this is a different deal than having a WWE script. If Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, or Alexa Bliss had to go fight someone for real in the UFC, they're not going to be cutting promos at all. It doesn't mean they don't have personality or charisma, but the dynamic has changed dramatically. It's no longer pre determined. There are no bullet points to memorize. That same vigor and mannerisms you carry going down a ramp in wrestling looks out of place. Jake Hager/Jack Swagger tries to do that in Bellator fights, and it doesn't work because that doesn't fit the framework of fighting another person for real. With GSP, I feel that he was one of those guys who could serve as some sort of ambassador for the sport. You usually have those guys more in boxing with Alexis Arguello and Manny Pacquiao. Once he got rid of Shari Spencer, he showed a little bit more personality but that was towards the end of him fighting regularly. Conor is/was a great talker, but him believing in his own shit ruined him for me. Not knowing when to reel it back in hurt him more than anything else. Hell, what Conor has to say is 150% more cringe than any of the guys or girls that have been brought up and he was the biggest star in combat sports (boxing, kickboxing, MMA, and wrestling) for several months. He is a great talker that doesn't know what to say and when to say it. When he was coming up, there was real legit reason why everyone went to the UFC to tell them they need to sign this guy. The "we're here to take over" speech he did was great. Once we get to when he "retired" on Twitter and he got like a gajillion retweets, it became clear he is not in the same reality we are a part of. If he had stayed on a path (minus some of the racism and xenophobia) where he knew what line to straddled and cross, he could have had a bigger run than Tyson post prison. But he didn't. Ronda had some of the same troubles with reeling in, but her main problem was she legit believed that her (or her mom's) philosophy was the only one. She wasn't a great talker, but she had a presence where she was marketable. However, once people realize that they are marketable, they can either go down two paths: they can flaunt it but still have enough self awareness to realize what it is that pays the bills (ex. Floyd Mayweather) or literally have no self awareness outside being self aware that they are indeed marketable. Unfortunately, Ronda fits into the second category. Once we had stuff like "Do Nothing Bitches", that was our point of no return for Ronda Rousey. Now, you have to win EVERY fight in negative nine seconds. If you face ANY type of adversity, people won't be impressed with what you do. So when she fought Holly, that was a recipe for disaster.

I don't think it's that at all. When Tito became big, it was in the early 2000s. What was happening then? People leaving pro wrestling in droves especially if WWF wasn't their thing or WWF now being the only game in town drove them away. Despite the nu-metal, broey vibe UFC had then (and began to develop year over year), they presented Tito as a superstar. He was winning fights, and they were showing him slamming Evan Tanner into oblivion. They went big on Tito and you can't say there was just a bunch of no charisma guys because BJ Penn had star written all over him. I mean someone could say size had a part in that, but Penn didn't have that aura that Tito had. They could show him braining Caol Uno all day and running out of the cage, but it just wasn't the same. If Penn was THAT guy, they would have kept him and the UFC lightweight division. Tito was perfect for that era of MMA (same with Ronda later on) and had foils (which is something every fighter needs to make their career worth something) in Randy, Ken, and Chuck. If WWE was in different place then, the first guy they would poach is Tito Ortiz and have him go to promo class with Jim Cornette in OVW. So that's where we part on that. As for Joanna, she clearly has something you can't teach. The first time she cut a promo (IIRC after the Juliana Lima fight), I knew the UFC was going to put rocket boosters on her. The cocky, foreign tweener stuff works because that's genuinely her. Everytime she has a post-fight interview, the fans respond in kind which is rare because half the time everyone is trying to gather their thoughts since they just got finished fighting another grown person inside a cage or were just recently concussed. Thus, the fans either don't really do anything or only make noise for someone going for a cheap pop (9/10 winning fighters even in enemy territory compliment the city, state, and/or country the event is in). It also helps that she has the perfect style to compliment her personality. When she was carving up Jessica Penne and then beating the brakes off Carla Esparza before that, I was thinking the UFC should trademark the Polish Hammer for her because she was only one worthy of that name who wasn't Ivan Putski. Just like Tito, when you have that aura around you and have just the right amount charisma and dominance, you are star and best case scenario, a mega star. I think what Joanna is/was lacking because she has everything else in spades is the right foil. People thought Valentina was it, but I think that's water and oil in terms of buildup especially dealing with two people whose first language isn't English. Rose would have been it, but she is really anti-social. Hence, why I felt Joanna had to hype herself up. I mean everytime they had a presser, Rose would say she isn't about talking trash and doesn't believe in it. If you put Joanna in NXT or AEW with enough training, she would hold her own. It's not like everyone in wrestling is Arn Anderson on the stick to begin with.