Martial Arts News

Magomed Ankalaev shifted ever closer to another shot at the Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight title and perhaps boosted the rhinoplasty market in the process.

The stoic 31-year-old Russian turned away Johnny Walker with punches in the second round of their UFC Fight Night 234 headliner on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, likely closing the book on their brief but eventful head-to-head series. Referee Marc Goddard rescued Walker (21-8, 7-5 UFC) from further damage 2:42 into Round 2.

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A little less than three months after their initial encounter resulted in a controversial no contest, neither man made much headway in the first round of their rematch. Ankalaev (18-1-1, 10-1-1 UFC) was content to stay at a safe distance while his volatile counterpart unleashed flashy, inefficient attacks. Midway through Round 2, the Gorets Fight Team product dropped Walker to a seated position against the fence with a brutal right hook. The right upp…

Sherdog's live UFC Fight Night 234 “Ankalaev vs. Walker 2” coverage will begin Saturday at 4:15 p.m. ET. BETTING PREVIEW | SCOUTING REPORT | ODDS: Van (-218), Bunes (+180)Round 1 It’s showtime! The UFC is back, and the Apex is its home for its first card of the year. With no further introductions necessary, we get right into the action. Flyweights take center stage first as the surging Van (9-1, 2-0 UFC) welcomes the well-traveled Brazilian Bunes (13-6, 0-0 UFC) to the promotion. The former has won seven straight, while the latter claimed the LFA flyweight strap by punching out Yuma Horiuchi at the beginning of January. The referee for the first UFC bout of 2024 will be Mark Smith, and he clocks in the fight as the two men touch gloves. Van takes the middle of the cage first and ignores an inside leg kick as he tries to find his range. Bunes is a bit more jittery out of the gate, pawing out jabs and low kicks. Van advances and pushes out a front kick, only to be met by a sla…

Farid Basharat answered a lot of questions regarding his status as a future contender in the Ultimate Fighting Championship bantamweight division.

Repeated takedowns, time-consuming clinches and superior activity in the standup exchanges carried the undefeated Xtreme Couture standout to a unanimous decision over former TKO Major League MMA champion Taylor Lapilus in a featured UFC Fight Night 234 prelim on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. All three cageside judges scored it the same: 30-27 for Basharat (12-0, 3-0 UFC).

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Lapilus (19-4, 4-2 UFC), who suffered his first setback in almost 2,000 days, was a difficult nut to crack but had no real answer for his adversary’s relentless tenacity. Basharat pursued takedowns in all three rounds, even as many of them were negated, and kept his foot on the accelerator for 15 minutes. He ducked into a takedown behind an overhand right in the third round, set up in side control and eventually threatened the …

Germaine de Randamie Returns Against Norma Dumont at UFC Fight Night on April 6 Former women’s UFC featherweight champion Germaine de Randamie is set to return to the Octagon following a nearly four-year hiatus from the sport.

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The 39-year-old de Randamie will face Norma Dumont in a three-round affair on the April 6 UFC Fight Night card. The news was first reported by Laerte Viana, with Dumont subsequently confirming the match-up in a social media post.

De Randamie will enter the Octagon against Dumont on the back of a technical submission victory against Juliana Pena back in October 2020. Since then, “The Iron Lady” has been sidelined by injuries and also gave birth to a son in March 2023.

Meanwhile, Dumont is currently on a three-fight win streak. She most recently defeated Chelsea Chandler via unanimous decision in July 2023.

The UFC Fight Night event will be headlined by a middleweight meeting between Marvin Vettori and surging con…

Mark Hunt recently revealed some alarming news.

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In an appearance on “The MMA Hour,” the former Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor told Ariel Helwani that he’d been offered a lucrative check by an Australian promotion to take a dive in a fight.

Shocked at the proposition, Hunt was quick to clarify that he never once considered the offer.

“I’ve always been one that says if things aren’t right, they aren’t right,” Hunt said. “I was offered three or four million dollars to take a dive in a fight here in Australia and I said, ‘Are you serious?’... I said no because that’s just not me. Although I could have done with the money, I was going through some hard times with the separation and s—t, but I could have done with three or four million dollars. It’s just not my character. It’s not me. I’d rather just go out on my shield and then lose or die."

Following his departure from the UFC in 2018, Hunt has competed in two boxing matches, mo…

Kegan Gennrich secured the Legacy Fighting Alliance lightweight championship in the final frame of his LFA 174 main event with Jacobi Jones on Friday at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in Prior Lake, Minnesota. Jones missed weight by 0.2 pounds and was ineligible to compete for the title.

The first round saw both fighters feel each other out and exchange strikes on the feet, with Jones arguably getting the better of Gennrich with his leg kicks. As the fight progressed, Gennrich (8-2), known for his grappling prowess, continued with his forward-pressure strikes and eventually racked up a considerable amount of control time with his superior grappling in the following rounds. In the fourth frame, Jones (6-3) managed to land a few shots on the feet and even came close to securing his opponent’s back, only to be reversed and threatened with submissions and vicious ground-and-pound for the remainder of the frame.

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Having come very close to the finish in the p…

ONE Championship’s Shamil Gasanov rebounded from his first career loss and put himself back on track to a 155-pound mixed martial arts title shot with a unanimous decision win over Ho Taek Oh in the ONE on Prime Video 18 main event Friday night at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok.

Gasanov (10-1) was stunned to be kneebared by Garry Tonon last July, but that wouldn’t deter the former world grappling champion. Gasanov attacked Ho’s legs early. Ho, who is also a skilled grappler, struggled to keep the Dagenstani wrestler off his back but was disciplined enough to defend against the submissions. In the few moments the fight stood, Oh was too tired to keep Gasanov from him. Oh pushed through the final bell, but Gasanov was the clear winner. Postfight, Gasanov shared that he went into the bout feeling sick from food posioning. He didn’t call out ONE 155-pound MMA champion Tang Kai; he was simply concerned with getting some much-needed rest.

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Tigers are sa…

Sherdog's live ONE Fight Night 18 coverage kicks off Friday at 8 p.m. ET. Round 1

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Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 The Official Result

The Ultimate Fighting Championship now has a main event for every fight card to April besides its Saudi Arabia show.

Via the promotion on Friday, UFC Atlantic City, also likely called UFC on ESPN 53, now has its main attraction. Welterweights will take center stage at the Boardwalk Hall, as Sean Brady (15-1) takes on Vicente Luque (22-9-1). The two will collide on March 30 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Brady successfully rebounded from his first defeat—a knockout loss to Belal Muhammad where he appeared to completely run out of gas—by tapping Kelvin Gastelum in the third round of their December match. Brady began his professional career by racking up 15 straight wins, including five in the Octagon. The Philadelphia native claimed notable victories over Jake Matthews and Michael Chiesa to put himself in top-10 contention.

Always-entertaining Luque also broke out of a skid by topping Rafael dos Anjos on the scorecards last year. Before then, he fell short to Muhamm…

The Ultimate Fighting Championship loves heavyweight headliners, and fans will be getting one in mid-March.

Per the organization on Friday, Tai Tuivasa (14-6) will throw bombs for five rounds or less against Marcin Tybura (24-8) on March 16. The heavyweights will now headline the currently unnumbered Fight Night event on that date, likely to be coined UFC Fight Night 239 should the main card air on ESPN+. The two big men were booked against one another at UFC 298, but the promotion elected to slide them back a month to put on the marquee of this UFC Apex show.

Tuivasa will be looking to get out of a slump, as he has suffered three straight stoppage losses since September 2022. Those defeats came against the upper echelon of the division, as Ciryl Gane, Sergei Pavlovich and Alexander Volkov all dispatched him in a little over one year’s time. Before then, the boisterous Aussie slugged his way through the opposition, racking up five straight knockouts from 2020 to early…

🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/TGReZ4W0Kq

— マネル・ケイプ Manel Kape (@ManelKape) January 12, 2024 The Ultimate Fighting Championship is down one huge fight ahead of its Saturday show.

At the UFC Fight Night 234 weigh-ins on Friday morning, Manel Kape hit the scales at 129.5 pounds. He was slated to rematch Matheus Nicolau (126), and when he came in heavy and decided to stop cutting, he was assessed a 25% fine of his purse. Before the fighters could square off for their faceoffs, the promotion canceled the fight altogether. According to Kape, Nicolau elected not to receive the fine and accept the match.

“Guys, I couldn’t make the weight this time,” Kape wrote, “two weeks ago I was extremely sick due to a virus that happened here in Las Vegas, and I had to stay out of training for five days and filling myself with antibiotics; [it] not only affected me but many of my training partners. My coaches and manager thought it was better for me to cancel …

Former Ultimate Fighting Championship champ Charles Oliveira is not buying into Islam Makhachev’s perceived bluster.

On Wednesday, Makhachev called his shots on social media, where he stated his preferred upcoming schedule. According to the champion, his first appearance would be on June 8 against Justin Gaethje, then he wanted to return in November in New York City against the winner of Charles Oliveira and Arman Tsarukyan. After that, he would make another defense in February 2025 against anyone. Count Oliveira among those that do not believe things will play out as Makhachev has planned.

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The reason for Makhachev’s late start to the year was two-fold: he sustained an injury, and Ramadan will be taking place from March 10 to April 9 in 2024. This meant that the Dagestan native would need some time to rehab his injuries and train properly, thus the June start time. Oliveira does not buy it, and on Thursday, he explained why to Ag. Fight.

“What came…