Martial Arts News

Brendan Loughnane is one who embraces the grind of the Professional Fighters League season.

Advertisement

The format isn’t for everyone, but the 34-year-old Manchester native keeps coming back. He’ll begin his fourth season with the promotion when he faces Pedro Carvalho at PFL 3 on Friday night at Wintrust Arena in Chicago.

“I am a fighter to my core,” Loughnane said during a PFL media event on Wednesday. “I love fighting. I love cutting weight. I love, I love training. I love competition. iIt's what gets me up in the morning — it's the spark, and that means more to me than money or any belt.

“[It] gives me purpose, and I absolutely love this s—t. I choose to do this. I made some good investments, now got a belt [but] I am choosing to be here and still fight the best guys in the world in the hardest tournament in the world because I love it.”

One thing that stands out among Loughnane’s comments is his enjoyment of cutting weight, a process that is typic…

Andrey Koreshkov and Magomed Umalatov may come from the same country, but this won’t be a friendly sparring match.

Advertisement

Koreshkov and Umalatov will square off in the evening’s featured bout at PFL 3 on Friday at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Friday night. The Russian athletes will be vying for points in the regular season standings at welterweight, and Koreshkov is expecting an intense confrontation in the cage as a result.

“I would say that there will be no compromises in this fight, even though we both come from Russia, but it doesn't mean that we will feel sorry for each other in the fight,” Koreshkov said through a translator during a PFL media event on Wednesday. “We are going to fight like we are going to fight anybody else, so it's going to be a very spectacular, very brutal, very exciting fight — so don't blink.”

A former Bellator MMA champion, Koreshkov has 31 bouts of professional experience to his credit. Meanwhile, the undefeated Uma…

For the first time in almost 13 years, we’re headed back to The ‘Ville. We’ll see you on June 8th for #UFCLouisville. @ufc pic.twitter.com/ogIMo5nYbY

— KFC Yum! Center (@kfc_yumcenter) April 17, 2024

The Ultimate Fighting Championship will venture outside the confines of the UFC Apex for its June 8 event.

Advertisement

The Las Vegas-based promotion announced on Wednesday that UFC Fight Night card will take place at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky. It will be the UFC’s first trip to the city since March 3, 2011.

The promotion’s last card at the venue was UFC Live 3, which saw Diego Sanchez take a controversial unanimous decision win against Martin Kampmann in the evening’s headliner. The event also saw the likes of Chris Weidman, Mark Munoz and Rousimar Palhares earn victories.

The upcoming UFC Fight Night event doesn’t currently have a headliner, but multiple bouts have been announced or reported. This includes t…

Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight Lyman Good, and his partner, Micka Nugent, were involved in a car accident on Saturday.

Advertisement

While Good is reportedly recovering well from a few sustained injuries, Nugent is still critical and currently in a medically-induced coma. The news was first announced on the official Instagram page of Team Tiger Schulmann, where Good is an instructor.

Any messages or wishes for Good and Nugent are to be directed to the fighter-turned-coach.

“If you would like somewhere to direct your love and support, you can send a dm to [Good] and any messages meant for Micka he will read to her, as he is by her side,” read a statement on the Team Tiger Schulmann Instagram page. “He is not in a place to be bombarded with questions and might not respond anytime soon but he will surely appreciate the prayers and well wishes.”

Good kicked off his professional mixed martial arts career with a 10-fight winning streak befor…

[embedded content]

French light heavyweight standout Oumar Sy is set to make his debut on the big stage against Rodolfo Bellato in May.

Advertisement

Sy (9-0) will make his Ultimate Fighting Championship debut against Bellato (12-2) at UFC Fight Night 241 on May 18 at the Apex in Las Vegas. The matchup was reported by Eurosports_Nl’s Marcel Dorff in a post to X (formerly known as Twitter). Sy later confirmed the booking on social media.

Sy will be making his promotional debut almost seven months after his UFC signing in October 2023. The French prospect sports a perfect 9-0 record which includes seven stoppage wins. The Bulgarian Top Team representative last competed in June 2023, when he stopped Brazilian UFC alum Ildemar Alcantara in the first round at King of Fighters 1 .

The Frenchman will face a huge step up in competition in Bellato, who is riding a four-fight winning streak that includes three finishes. “Trator” got his first Dana White’s Contend…

Weili Zhang took a potentially difficult moment and turned it into a positive at UFC 300.

Advertisement

While it appeared that Zhang had rendered opponent Xiaonan Yan unconscious with a rear-naked choke before the end of the opening round in their strawweight title fight, the bout was allowed to continue. The fight ultimately went the full 25 minutes, but Zhang was able to persevere — even surviving a knockdown in Round 3 — to emerge with a relatively clear-cut unanimous decision triumph.

Zhang came away impressed with Yan’s ability to recover, but outside of that, she claims to not have much memory of the rest of the fight.

“I really thought that she was out, and I did not know how the referee was going to handle that. But she bounced back very quickly in the second round,” Zhang said through a translator at Saturday’s post-fight press conference.

“I felt like I was in a dream. I blanked out during the fight. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

The UFC…

It was a rough night for Cody Garbrandt at UFC 300.

Advertisement

Not only did the former bantamweight champion suffer a second-round submission defeat to Deiveson Figueiredo, but he also experienced vertigo during the bout, which was the first prelim on Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

“I felt great in my fight until I started to experience vertigo,” Garbrandt wrote on X. “I couldn’t control the spinning once it was to the ground. Hats off to Deiveson and his camp! I ended up going to the hospital where I was still experiencing the vertigo, throwing up until 4 a.m.

“… I’ll get this corrected. I’ve dealt with vertigo since 2012. Thank you to the fans that came out to support. It wasn’t my night, but I love doing what I do. I’ll be back in there before the year is up.”

UFC 300 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/Lt2uRwObQg

— Cody Garbrandt (@Cody_Nolove) April 16, 2024

Garbrandt did well on the feet in the opening stanza again…

Jorge Masvidal claims to have received special permission from the Ultimate Fighting Championship to return to the promotion after a brief boxing stint.

Advertisement

Masvidal announced his retirement at UFC 287 in April 2023 after a decision loss against Gilbert Burns, which marked the Miami native's fourth defeat in a row. However, the former BMF champ soon declared that he would be returning to competition for a boxing match against Nate Diaz, who chose not to re-sign with the promotion after completing his contract in 2022. Masvidal and Diaz are scheduled to compete in a boxing match on June 1 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, under the Fanmio Boxing banner.

While the UFC hasn’t traditionally allowed signed fighters to compete in boxing — with the exception of Conor McGregor — Masvidal claims to have received a similar exemption. According to "Gamebred," Solomon Engel, Fanmio CEO, was able to move a few pieces to let the UFC loan him “Gamebred” for three f…

The ending of the UFC 300 BMF title fight between Max Holloway and Justin Gaethje elicited a once-in-a-lifetime reaction from referee Marc Goddard.

Advertisement

Goddard was the third man in the cage as Gaethje and Holloway delivered the “Fight of the Night,” living up to every bit of BMF hype. Holloway put on arguably his career-best performance, piecing “The Highlight” apart gradually before knocking him out cold in a wild, last-second exchange.

Like most viewers, Goddard also reacted involuntarily to the finish, which has already etched its place in the history books. The veteran Ultimate Fighting Championship referee later requested the promotion to release his mic audio to reveal his genuine reaction to the jaw-dropping finish.

“I’d love the UFC to release the mic’d audio from me, “ Goddard wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). “I literally screamed out at that ending, first time in 20 years. It was an automatic reaction I guess. I’m still speechle…

Aljamain Sterling was admittedly at somewhat of a crossroads in his career going into his UFC 300 clash against Calvin Kattar on Saturday.

Advertisement

Sterling made his featherweight debut against the New England Cartel standout, earning a dominant unanimous decision victory with a stifling grappling display. While “Funk Master” nullified all offense from Kattar, many believe he would have done better to aggressively seek a finish. The former bantamweight champion insists he is in the game to be on top of the ladder, which made him consider retirement leading up to the fight in case of a loss.

“I think if I got my ass completely kicked by Calvin Kattar, I was probably done. And no one knew about that, I didn’t share those sentiments with anybody. Even my fiancé. It’s just one of those things,” Sterling said on “The MMA Hour”.

“I mean, I mentioned it to her like, ‘Well if I can’t beat him, I don’t know.’ But I didn’t really go into detail what that actual…

Renato Carneiro appears to be a vocal advocate of the Austrian-inspired economic libertarianism movement in Brazil.

Advertisement

“Moicano” survived an early scare to score a come-from-behind stoppage win against Jalin Turner in arguably his toughest test to date at UFC 300 on Saturday. “Money” gave a shoutout to Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises in his post-fight Octagon interview.

“Moicano” advised people who love their country to read “Economic Policy: Thoughts For Today And Tomorrow” by Mises which was republished in Portuguese as “Six Lessons, Economic Policy.” The book, which is one of Mises’ most popular, discusses capitalism, socialism, inflation, etc. in a series of six lectures he delivered in Argentina. Carneiro explained his shoutout on “The MMA Hour.”

“Because I’m very concerned. A lot of people talk to me about money,” he said. “But, the problem is, it’s not about how much money you get, it’s about how much money you can keep. And …

Just three bouts into his Ultimate Fighting Championship tenure, Bo Nickal has already set a pretty high bar.

Advertisement

That’s probably why his second-round submission of Cody Brundage in his third outing at UFC 300 was met with a collective shrug from the MMA community. After all, Nickal’s first five professional appearances all ended inside of a round. For whatever it’s worth, the former NCAA national champion wrestler wasn’t too impressed with his performance, either.

“I feel good, but it’s definitely mixed emotions because I felt like I could have performed better,” Nickal said in a backstage interview with the UFC. “I don’t judge based on wins and losses, I judge based on how I feel I performed. i could have done a lot better in certain areas. Given the time off, I was a little too amped up. And given the fact that I finished everybody pretty fast, I was trying to knock the guy out. So it’s just a good lesson and stuff that I’ll be appreciative of movi…