Martial Arts News

Sherdog’s coverage of DWCS 2023, Week 6 will begin Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET. Round 1 Mark Smith will referee the evening’s first bout. Tanner jabs the body and Matsumoto answers with a low kick. Matsumoto continues to drill his opponent with low kicks early, while Tanner pumps his jab in his opponent’s face. Tanner pressures behind a couple right hands and a knee to the midsection before backing off. Matsumoto moves in with a 1-2 followed by a low kick. Tanner puncutates a four punch combination with a low kick, but Matsumoto continues to land snapping low kicks of his own. Tanner lands a right then angles out, but another low kick follows a Matsumoto combination. A high kick gets through for Matsumoto, who is mixing up his attacks now. Matsumoto moves in behind a combination, then backs off when Tanner returns fire. Tanner ducks under a bunch and forces the clinch, turning his man into the fence. Tanner looks for a short elbow, and then the bantamweights trade knees in close. M…

The NYSE welcomes TKO Group Holdings Inc. in celebration of its listing! $TKO @TKOGrp | @ufc | @WWE | @Endeavor | @danawhite | @TripleH | @BiancaBelairWWE | @dc_mma pic.twitter.com/55SSVlQpdw

— NYSE (@NYSE) September 12, 2023

The merger between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment is now official.

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TKO Group Holdings debuted on Tuesday as a publicly traded company at the New York Stock Exchange. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel rang the bell to open trading for the day, and he was accompanied by UFC president Dana White, WWE executive chairman Vince McMahon, WWE executive Paul Levesque and ex-UFC two division champ Daniel Cormier – among others -- during the proceedings.

Endeavor Group Holdings has a 51% controlling interest in the company, while WWE shareholders have a 49% stake. Emanuel will be chief executive of TKO, while McMahon will serve as executive chairman – his same role with WWE. …

Danni McCormack will put her strawweight belt on the line against Karolina Wojcik when Invicta Fighting Championships makes its first-ever trip to Boston on Oct. 27.

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The all-female promotion announced the bout, which will serve as the headliner for Invicta FC 54, on Tuesday. Invicta FC 54 takes place at the Citizens House of Blues and will also see former 115-pound champ Valesca Machado face Isis Verbeek in the evening’s co-main event. The card will air at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on the Invicta FC YouTube channel, the Invicta FC Facebook page and AXS TV.

McCormack captured strawweight gold with a five-round verdict over Machado at Invicta FC 52 on March 15. The SBG Ireland representative owns a 7-2 career record that includes a 4-1 mark under the Bellator MMA banner.

A former competitor on Dana White’s Contender Series, Wojcik has been victorious in two of her first three Invicta FC appearances. Most recently, the 28-year-old Pole garnered a spli…

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Sean Strickland was on a six-fight winning streak and on the cusp of title contention when he was brutally knocked out by a surging Alex Pereira at UFC 276 in June 2022. The dominant nature of the KO was enough to earn Pereira a title shot against Israel Adesanya.

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Subsequently, “Poatan” went on to win the belt against “The Last Stylebender” at UFC 281 before losing the immediate rematch at UFC 287.

Meanwhile, Strickland suffered a split decision loss against Jared Cannonier in December 2022, only to bounce back and register back-to-back wins and earn a shot at the belt, albeit due to a stroke of luck.

Interestingly, instead of being negatively affected by his loss against Pereira, “Tarzan” was game enough to train with the Brazilian in the subsequent months.

Following Strickland’s upset win over Adesanya at UFC 293, some fans believe his training sessions with Pereira must have played a vital role in his impressive pe…

Terrance McKinney will make a quick return to the Octagon this October after securing a highlight-reel knockout over Mike Breeden in August.

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McKinney will take on surging Dana White’s Contender Series Season 6 graduate Chris Duncan at the UFC Fight Night on Oct. 14. McKinney announced the pairing via Instagram. The card takes place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas and is headlined by a featherweight clash between Sodiq Yusuff and Edson Barboza.

Renowned for his exciting fighting style, McKinney has never gone the distance in his entire professional career. Going into his fourth outing of the year, the 28-year-old will look to build a solid win streak which has eluded him since a KO loss to Drew Dober in March 2022.

Meanwhile, Chris Duncan made his first Contender Series appearance in October 2021, where his undefeated record was marred by a brutal KO loss to Viacheslav Borshchev. However, “The Problem” returned to the show the next year and secu…

Israel Adesanya was a massive -600 favorite going into his UFC 293 title defense against Sean Strickland on Sept. 9.

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Mixed martial arts fans watched in awe as the odds steadily changed after every round with Strickland emphatically outclassing the Nigerian-born Kiwi to the point where the challenger was a -125 favorite going into the final frame.

Adesanya looked out of his wits, especially after getting dropped in the first round of the bout, en route to a lopsided unanimous decision loss in one of the greatest title fight upsets in the history of the sport.

Adesanya’s head coach at City Kickboxing in Auckland, Eugene Bareman, has come under somewhat undue criticism in the aftermath of the championship loss for "The Last Stylebender" against Strickland.

While Bareman is credited with forming an elite MMA hub in that part of the world, honing the likes of Alexander Volkanovski and Kai Kara-France, one upset loss was seemingly enough to earn hi…

Khusein Askhabov’s sophomore Octagon appearance has been scrapped after the Russian was arrested in connection with a home invasion and robbery in Phuket, Thailand, earlier this month.

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The Las Vegas-based promotion announced Askhabov’s removal from his UFC Fight Night 229 bout against Daniel Pineda on Monday evening.

“UFC is aware of the recent arrest and allegations regarding Khusein Askhabov,” the statement read. “The organization will continue to gather additional details regarding the incident. UFC will allow the legal process to play out before making any additional statements, however, his scheduled fight on October 7 has been canceled.”

According to a report from the Phuket News, Asksabov and his twin brother, Khasan, were arrrested in connection with three Kazakh nationals forcing their way into an Italian man’s villa at a Thailand resort, where the man was bound, gagged, beaten and eventually robbed. According to a police report, As…

Comparisons between Anderson Silva and Israel Adesanya have been common in fan middleweight GOAT debates in recent years.

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Those discussions intensified after Adesanya defeated “The Spider” via unanimous decision at UFC 234 in February 2019 and then captured the middleweight belt later that year — this despite Silva having twice as many title defenses as his counterpart overall. On Saturday, after Sean Strickland defeated “The Last Stylebender” to claim the belt in a massive upset at UFC 293, Silva sent a strong message regarding the GOAT debate to his 4.9 million Instagram followers.

“I'm the one in charge of this s—t here, and you're not going to open your mouth again to compare yourself to me in this s—t,” Silva wrote in a message that has since been deleted. “Do you understand? I'm the one in charge of this s—t here.”

Shortly after posting, “The Spider” changed the caption to some skull and hawk emojis and shared a video from one of his fa…

City Kickboxing coach Eugene Bareman sounded just as surprised as the rest of the MMA world by Sean Strickland’s upset victory over Israel Adesanya at UFC 293.

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“The universe does things. I think Sean is a great fighter and I never thought that Sean wasn’t capable of beating Israel, but I thought if Israel performed to the fullest of his capabilities, that it would be hard for Sean,” said Bareman, who fielded questions from the media after UFC 293 in place of Adesanya, who only made a brief statement before leaving the podium.

“There was an alternate kind of universe where Israel performs his poorest or poorly where Sean could win, and I’m sitting in that universe right now. Training camp was great. I’m not going to make any excuses in regard to that,” Bareman continued. “Leading up to the fight was great, sparring partners, everything. All the technical things that have to do with the camp were perfect. No excuses there. He came in, he had an off n…

Jack Jenkins dislocated his elbow during a technical knockout loss to Jose Mariscal at UFC 293.

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The Melbourne, Australia, native suffered the injury while defending a takedown from his opponent in their preliminary featherweight bout at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney. Jenkins’ arm bent gruesomely when he attempted to post on the mat, ending the contest at the 3:19 mark of Round 2.

Jenkins provided an update on his status in a video post on social media. While Jenkins avoided any fractures, he did confirm the dislocation. It is currently unclear whether he’ll need surgery.

“Dislocated my elbow yesterday, went straight to the hospital,” Jenkins said. “No fractures or anything like that, but I’m going to need an MRI. They’re a little bit worried about some of the ligaments having ruptured. So, best case scenario, none of them are ruptured, and I can get back pretty soon. Worst case scenario, I’m going to need surgery but not much we can do about tha…

It’s all systems go for Week 6 of Dana White’s Contender Series, as all 10 athletes hit their contracted marks at Monday’s weigh-ins.

The Contender Series takes place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on Tuesday and airs on ESPN+ beginning at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The evening’s featured bout is a lightweight clash pitting James Llontop (156) against Malik Lewis (156).

Llontop takes an 11-fight winning streak into his matchup with Lewis. He is the reigning welterweight champion in the Peru-based Fusion Fighting Championship, where he has earned 10 of his last 11 victories.

Lewis, meanwhile, will be making his second appearance on the Contender Series after suffering a second-round TKO loss to Trevor Peek in September 2022. He returned to the win column with a third-round stoppage of Paulo Silva at Peak Fighting 26 this past February.

Contender Series Weigh-in Results:James Llontop (156) vs. Malik Lewis (156)Eduardo Jose Neves (263.5) vs. Jhonata Diniz (254)A.J. Cunn…

Carlos Ulberg has emerged as an intriguing talent in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s light heavyweight division.

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The 32-year-old Auckland, New Zealand, native earned his fifth consecutive triumph at UFC 293, as he submitted Da Woon Jung 4:49 into Round 3 of their featured bout at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney on Saturday night. The fight initially made it to the final horn, but after a video review, it was determined that Jung tapped to a rear-naked choke in the waning seconds.

“I felt the tap,” Ulberg said in an interview with the UFC. “I knew he tapped somehow. I heard my coaches yell out that he was tapping. I thought that he went out, but he continued to fight. I’m glad that the fight ended so quickly, and the way that it did was amazing.”

After defeating his previous three opponents by knockout or technical knockout, Ulberg was able to earn his first career submission victory against a veteran opponent.

“I’ve seen how he takes down his…