Martial Arts News

Our Main Event is locked in! 🔒@BrendanAllenMMA is in at 186lbs for tomorrow's #UFCVegas82 Main Event! pic.twitter.com/PPveKbHoSi

— UFC (@ufc) November 17, 2023 The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to Las Vegas for its latest card, which is now set after the UFC Fight Night 232 weigh-ins took place.

Headlining the 14-fight card is an intriguing battle between Brendan Allen and Paul Craig. Both middleweight fighters successfully made weight for the five-round fight. As for the rest of the card, two fighters came in heavy. Both Lucas Alexander and Rafael Estevam were both two pounds over for their fights against Jeka Saragih and Charles Johnson, respectively. Meanwhile, Ailin Perez initially checked in half a pound over for her fight against Lucie Pudilova, but she returned to make 136 pounds with extra time. Alexander and Estevam were fined as a result.

This marks the first UFC main event for Allen (22-5), who is riding a five-figh…

[embedded content] After taking some time away from in-cage activity, referee Mario Yamasaki is ready to get back down to business.

The longtime referee will be returning to the sport to officiate the Professional Fighters League Finals on Nov. 24 in Washington, D.C. The 59-year-old born in Sao Paulo currently resides several miles outside of the U.S. Capitol, where he and his brother operate Yamasaki Academy. Its main stable located in Rockville, Maryland, he splits time between the U.S. and Brazil. Yamasaki spoke to Sherdog about his past career as well as his comeback.

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“I’ll be with my brother Fernando and Jerin [Valel], who is coming from Canada,” Yamasaki explained about his upcoming event coverage. “The rules are basically the same except for the elbows which are not allowed in PFL. Very anxious to ref some of those six finals. The promotion here in Washington is huge after all, the show will pay six million dollars for six finalists that night.…

Ruslan Satiev showed he could swim in deep waters.

The undefeated Dobryna Gym prospect made a successful One Championship debut with a split decision over Galaktic Sports rep Farid Alibabazade in a three-round ONE Friday Fights 41 flyweight showcase on Friday at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand. Two of the three ringside judges sided with Satiev (5-0, 1-0 ONE), who was forced beyond the first round for the first time in his career.

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Alibabazade (8-6, 0-1 ONE) answered repeated takedowns with an active bottom game and nearly sprang the upset. However, Satiev successfully navigated the Azerbaijani’s spidery guard, more often than not dictated the terms of their engagement and racked up points with positional advances and intermittent ground-and-pound. Knees to the head proved to be his most effective weapon on the mat.

Further down the undercard, Satiev stablemate Gadzhimurad Amirzhanov kept his perfect professional record intact and did s…

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Even the undefeated, undisputed Chael Sonnen is man enough to shed tears at a powerful story.

On Thursday, Paramount+ released the documentary series of Ultimate Fighting Championship great Anderson Silva. The five-part series, currently out in Brazil and titled “Anderson ‘Spider’ Silva,” spans five episodes and chronicles much of Silva’s life. The show begins in his childhood and showcases his accolades in competition including winning and defending the UFC middleweight title.

To hype up the release of the docuseries, Paramount+ also posted a video of Silva and Sonnen getting together to watch it together. Sonnen famously posted on Tuesday a few photographs of a tattoo on his shoulder of former rival Silva, and the video took fans behind the scenes. As it turned out, this tattoo resulted from a bet between the two fighters.

“If [Sonnen] cried [while watching the series], he would have to tattoo my face on his arm,” Silva revealed. “If he didn’t, I would have…

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Brendan Allen doesn’t agree with Khamzat Chimaev being ranked in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s middleweight division.

Chimaev (13-0) made his long-awaited permanent move to middleweight at UFC 294 last month against short-notice replacement Kamaru Usman (20-4), who also made his debut at 185 pounds. A -300 favorite on some sportsbooks going into the fight, “Borz” managed to eke out a majority decision.

While the fight was widely believed to be a middleweight title eliminator, Chimaev was allegedly not even discussed as a potential opponent while booking Sean Strickland’s upcoming defense against Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 297 on Jan. 20.

However, “Borz” landed directly at No. 8 on the middleweight ladder as per the newly updated UFC rankings.

No. 10 ranked middleweight Brendan Allen slammed the UFC ranking system for giving Chimaev a spot in the Top 10 of the division, despite him having not fought a true middleweight, let a…

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Bellator MMA bantamweight champion Sergio Pettis is finally coming into his own as a mixed martial arts star and out of the shadow of his elder brother Anthony Pettis.

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Despite making his professional debut back in 2011, Sergio for the longest time felt he was known solely as the younger brother of former World Extreme Cagefighting and Ultimate Fighting Championship king Anthony. It was back-to-back losses against Rob Font and Jussier Formiga in his UFC days that changed things for “The Phenom.”

After exiting the UFC with a win over Tyson Nam, Pettis went on to rack up five consecutive wins under the Bellator banner, which includes three title fights. Pettis returned to action in June after an 18-month layoff due to an ACL surgery and successfully defended his throne against featherweight champ Patricio “Pitbull” Freire.

Pettis is now scheduled to defend his throne at Bellator 301 on Nov. 17 against Patrick Mix (18-1), who …

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Feared knockout artist Patricky “Pitbull” Freire is extremely confident going into his clash against striking ace Alexandr Shabliy.

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Freire (25-11) and Shabliy (23-3) will meet in the semi-final of Bellator MMA’s lightweight grand prix, which will open the action at Bellator 301. The event will go down at Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Nov. 17.

One of the biggest fan favorites in the world of mixed martial arts, Pitbull is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who has scored 17 of his 25 career wins via knockout or technical knockout.

Training out of Pitbull Brothers gym in Brazil alongside younger brother Patricio Freire, Patricky is confident of pulling off a first-round stoppage against Shabliy.

“Of course, I am ready. I have the best team in the world full of world champions,” said Patricky at the Bellator 301 pre-fight press conference. “I trained with this team for more than 10 years and I believe in my wrestling, my strikin…

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Welterweight contender Jason Jackson will draw from lessons learned by his teammate Logan Storley’s losses against Yaroslav Amosov when he challenges the reigning champ in the Bellator 301 headliner at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Nov. 17.

Storley has faced Amosov (27-0) twice so far, dropping a closely-contested split decision loss in 2020 before suffering a lopsided unanimous decision this past February. Nevertheless, Storley’s Kill Cliff FC teammate Jackson (16-4) is registering every bit of information from those losses as he goes into his title bid against the undefeated Ukrainian.

“Logan told me everything. He left nothing out. I have been studying Amosov for years because I have always wanted to fight him since he is the best in the division,” Jackson said at the Bellator 301 pre-fight press conference. “If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.”

Currently riding a six-fight win streak with wins over the likes o…

A middleweight showdown pitting Gregory Rodrigues against Brad Tavares has been booked for UFC Fight Night on Feb. 10.

Rodrigues announced the pairing on social media. The UFC Fight Night event doesn’t currently have an official location or headliner.

The 31-year-old Rodrigues has won three of his last four Octagon appearances. Most recently, “Robocop” knocked out Denis Tiuliulin with elbows in the opening stanza of their encounter at UFC 292. The Kill Cliff FC representative is 5-2 during his tenure with the Las Vegas-based promotion, with all but one of those victories coming by knockout or technical knockout.

Tavares, meanwhile, is a 23-time Octagon veteran who made his first UFC appearance in 2010. Most recently, the 35-year-old Hawaiian snapped a two-fight skid with a unanimous decision triumph over former middleweight champ Chris Weidman at UFC 292.

It appears that UFC Fight Night 233 will be headed to the promotion’s home base.

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The card, which was originally supposed to be held in Shanghai, China, on Dec. 9, is changing locations to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas for reasons that are currently unknown. Multiple outlets confirmed the news following an initial announcement from MMA manager Shu Hirata on social media.

According to a report from MMAjunkie.com, the four Road to UFC bouts scheduled for UFC Fight NIght 233 will no longer take place on the card. Additionally, a light heavyweight bout pitting Brendon Ribeiro against Mingyang Zhang has been scrapped due to travel issues related to the change in location.

UFC Shanghai was slated to be the first event in China since 2019, when Weili Zhang defeated Jessica Andrade to capture the strawweight crown in the UFC Fight Night 157 main event.

Barring any further changes, UFC Fight Night 233 is expected to be headlined by a bantamweight cl…

In a somewhat controversial move, Francis Ngannou has been ranked by the World Boxing Council at heavyweight.

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As reported by Reuters, Ngannou has entered the WBC poll at No. 10 following a split-decision defeat to Tyson Fury on Oct. 28 in Saudia Arabia. The former UFC heavyweight champion scored a knockdown of Fury and was competitive throughout the fight, which allowed him to receive a 95-94 scorecard from one ringside judge. Fury, meanwhile, received tallies of 96-93 and 95-94 to get the split-decision nod.

While many observers believed Ngannou deserved to win the fight, it is rare for the WBC to rank an athlete with no professional wins on his record. “The Predator” was making his pro boxing debut after parting ways with the UFC earlier this year. Fury, meanwhile, will move on to an undisputed heavyweight championship fight against Oleksandr Usyk, which has been targeted for Feb. 17.

Ngannou is also signed to Professional Fighters League,…