Yep UFC on Fox April 15, I'll be there

rousey isnt going to fight again ROFL

Holly Holm exposed her, but Nunes just destroyed her.

The W145 division may not survive for very long past UFC 208. Dana White all but confirmed that they created the division for Cyborg and they regret doing it now. The UFC has not signed anyone from invicta or anywhere else for 145 and aren't letting anyone move up yet.

Anyway, the Korean Zombie is finally back this weekend after serving out his required military service. For those who don't remember, he's a fun fighter to watch: granite chin, shrugs off clean shots, and brawls.

Friday

I think there may be a Muay Thai promotion on tonight on AXS? Nothing else.

Saturday

6pm - (Fightpass/7pm FS1) - UFC Fight Night, Bermudez vs. Korean Zombie

This card is pretty weak even by free TV standards, but its headlined by an interesting fight. If you have nothing better to do, then its still MMA, otherwise tune in a bit before 11:30pm for the last fight. Some of the "weak" cards lately have produced amazing fights though, so who knows.

midnight - (Fightpass) - Pancrase. Sure its sunday, but this basically counts as saturday night. Pancrase is the top Japanese promotion, but their shows are in the middle of the night for us.

LOL, wow. I guess Korean Zombie is back yall, 3.5 years of ring rust isn't shit to him.

Bermudez landed clean strong shots to the head or chin 4 times, nothing, zombie just kept walking forward until he KO's him.

Schedule

Friday

nothing

Saturday

5:30 pm - (Fightpass/7pm FS1/9pm PPV) - UFC 208: Holm vs. de Randamie Silva vs Brunson

The way to look at this is if you are paying for this, then the main event is the Spider fighting 3 rounds against a young talented and dangerous prospect. After that fight is over, the post-fight chatter will be interrupted with some silly bullshit about a title fight in a division that might not exist in 6 months between fighters who do not deserve to be anywhere near a title fight.

The PPV buys for this is going to really suck bad because casual fans are going to look at the top of the card, laugh, and make other plans. There will be other PPV's later this year which have better buys but end up being a lot worse than this PPV, because there's a couple fun and interesting fights on this card, but even for the hard-core fight fan, its tough to pay $50 or $60 for this. This should have been a FS1 card or maybe a UFC on FOX. I plan to watch this at a BWW or something because its good enough that I don't want to just skip it, but I'm not buying this.

Sunday

nothing

Is Holm vs de Randemei off? Or is it just not rally main event worthy?

You may want to read my summary again ;)

This weekend, Bellator is actually relevant

Thursday

8pm - (Fightpass) - Combate Americas, *shrug* low-level promotion, whatever

Friday

8pm - (AXS) - Legacy Fighting Alliance

Saturday

3pm - (Fightpass) - Cage Warriors
8pm - (Spike) - Bellator 172 - Fedor vs Mitrione

Main event is obviously interesting, and the rest of the main card is decent by Bellator standards

Sunday

5:30 pm - (Fightpass/6pm FS1) - UFC Fight Night Lewis vs Browne

The prelims are underwhelming, but the main card (which starts at 8pm) is pretty good by free TV standards.

The next installment of TUF is a "redemption" season. Some of the contestants are pretty interesting including Joe "Daddy" Stevenson and Lee's Summit native James Krause.

News today:

GSP just signed a new contract with the UFC.

USADA granted a retroactive TUE to Cyborg, so she is now clear to fight.

edit:

lolololol

Mitrione is ill, and out, the main event for Bellator tonight is cancelled. The CSAC is forcing Bellator to give full refunds to any fans who ask for it before the main event.

Chael Sonnen tried to volunteer to fight Fedor with just hours notice and Bellator tried to make it happen, but it didn't come together.

edit: It was a kidney stone. Mitrione still wanted to fight, but the commission pulled him.

Un****ing real.

I was looking forward to this.

GSP should fight Cyborg....

now that's a match !

Just imagine...they roll around and grapple for 2 rounds and then F*** for the entire 3rd.

now that's a Pay-Per-View !

Who would pay to see Cyborg ****? Hell, who would even watch for free?

Well, she's no Paige Van Zant I'll give you that, however, everybody and their mother watched(or attempted to) 2 girls and a cup, for free...

I would venture to say that a lot of people that watched that video had no knowledge of what it was before clicking on it. Luckily I caught wind of it from friends before someone was like "hey watch this!"

Right. In my case somebody dared me even bet me $20 that I couldn't watch it for 2:00 minutes without looking away in disgust. I lost that bet by the way:-)

Schedule

Thursday

10am - (Fightpass) - EFN 59, I guess you can watch this if you have the day off?

Friday

7pm - (Fightpass) - Glory 38 (kickboxing)
8pm - (Spike) - Bellator 173

Saturday and Sunday

nothing

So, one good resource you can use when looking at cards from B-level promotions and/or fighters you never heard of is tapology.com

Those guys go really deep on rankings, I'm not sure how they do it, but they have a top-100 world list for every division, and then beyond the top 100 in the world they also have lists for every region. (Southwest USA, Midwest, UK, Japan, etc) For small regions you might have a top-10 and for large regions you might have a top-100. If you want to know, say, the #8 welterweight in Illinois who is not ranked worldwide, they have that guy. (just looked it up, its some dude who went pro after going 4-0 as an amateur and fought 3 times in 2016 as a pro, going 1-2)

Anyway, I don't recognize hardly anyone on that Bellator card, and judging from Tapology its a very, very bad card even by Bellator standards. Impressively bad. The main event is mildly interesting with the #16 LHW fighting some can who is only regionally ranked, but the rest of the card has nothing. Bellator events usually have a lot of top-100 fighters with the occasional regional fighter, and this card is way worse than that.

I guess there's boxing on Saturday, but this is a good weekend to completely ignore combat sports, next weekend will be a lot better.

edit: just for laughs, I checked to see how deep the regional rankings go for what is probably a deep pool: LW fighters in Brazil. Holy crap, they have a top-793 list for that group. The very worst pro Brazilian LW fighter, at #793, is a guy who fought 6 times in 2016, going 0-6, finished every time with 3 KO's and 3 subs.

Honestly, the crappy fight weekend couldn't be at a better time for me. We're celebrating my wife's birthday and while she likes the larger cards, she wouldn't want to watch a low grade show.

The question there would be who's pitching and who' catching?

Bisping will defend his MW title against GSP this year, date TBD

For real? GSP is going to hump him for 5 rounds and win the 185 belt

Ferguson/ Khabib has me excited for this weekend. That should be a good fight.

Thinking a lot about this today, this really shows how much of a sham the UFC matchmaking is. There are a handful of really good 185 lbers on the roster who deserve a title shot. Shit, Yoel Romero was PROMISED one. Rockhold, Jacare, or even Kelvin Gastellum but GSP????

Bisping knocking out Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 screwed up everything. There's no way Rockhold would have fought Hendo. 1 or 2 of the contenders would have contested the belt by now, and if the belt was held by some monster like Romero or if Rockhold was looking good, they probably would have eased GSP in against someone like... well, Bisping.

If Bisping wins, he'll almost definitely have to fight a real contender, but if GSP wins, we may have another money fight against a McGregor or something.

This is a solid weekend with a well above-average PPV.

Friday

8pm - (Spike) - Bellator 174

Not really excited about the main event since it is the inaugural Bellator women's FW title, but whatever. The main card as a whole is pretty good by Bellator's low standards, with lots of top-100 fighters.

Saturday

3pm - (Fightpass) - Cage Warriors, local promotion with regional talent, no one ranked. If you can't wait for the evening, then I guess its still live MMA.

7pm for TV - (5:30pm Fightpass/FS1/PPV) - UFC 209 Woodley vs Thompson 2

On paper, this is a very good PPV. In the main card we start with a fun heavyweight match that will likely end in a 1st round KO, and we end with two very good title fights. In between..... eh, whatever, those other 2 fights aren't why we're watching this. The prelims aren't great, which makes sense, they are probably saving their good non-PPV fights for FOX. They don't need a good prelim to sell this.

The co-main is only for an interim title, but its probably more important than most interim title fights because who knows if Conor will ever defend his belt, so this may end up being a real championship fight. The Eagle is 24-0, a solid favorite to get win #25, and could be a nightmare matchup for Conor. Obviously Conor could get the early KO again if they ever fought, but Khabib quickly wrecks almost anyone he takes down. Anyway, he's got to get by Ferguson first.

Sunday

8pm - (Fightpass) - EBI 11: The Welterweights

I love the Eddie Bravo Invitational, and its the welterweight tournament this time around. EBI is a submission-only grappling tournament with no judges, no scoring, and very clever overtime rules if it goes too long.

EBI always has a gimmick between the rounds of the main tournament, and this time they are going to try a small 4-man "combat jiu-jitsu" tournament between rounds where open-hand striking will be permitted.

Thurman vs Garcia is going to be a very good fight too for the boxing fans.

There will be 3 commentators Saturday: Anik, Rogan, and Dominick Cruz

Not a huge fan of Anik. I'm hoping he wins me over, though.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2017/3/3/...n-fox-in-april

Mighty Mouse is dropping hints that he might be the headliner for UFC on FOX in Kansas City.

Tickets for the event at the Sprint Center go on sale next week so I assume they'll announce what the headline fight will be during the PPV tomorrow night.

Anyone else planning on going?

Khabib Nurmagomedov went to a hospital this morning. The fight has not yet been called off, but he's reportedly having trouble making weight. He has a bit under an hour left, weigh-ins close at 1pm Central.

edit: The reason he went to the hospital is unrelated to his weight cut, and he is still at the hospital. 45 minutes left, it doesn't look good.

Well, shit.

Khabib is off the card, and the interim lightweight championship bout has been cancelled. That is a massive hit to this PPV, its now maybe a little below average.

Nurmagomedov was released from the hospital, but the UFC's doctors told the UFC to cancel the fight.

edit: UFC statement

I'm still buying this PPV, but this is why you never, ever preorder a UFC PPV until the afternoon on fight day. Wait as long as possible, you never know what will come up. Hell, Woodley could wake up violently ill tomorrow morning, and you'd be kicking yourself if you already bought it.

So sick of the weight cutting bullshit....the UFC and commissions need to abolish it...

Have weight ranges for each division that allow fighters to fight at weights comfortably and stop them from killing themselves...

I get what you're saying, but adding weight classes will only water down the talent at each weight.

There is really not a good way to eliminate the practice of weight-cutting. The only thing the UFC or commissions could do I guess would be to punish fighters who miss weight with fines and suspensions to the point where its not worth attempting a cut that you aren't certain about.

They won't do that, though.

I didn't mean add more classes....just expand the weight ranges each are at now.

We just need 3 weight classes.

170, 205 and 260.

Bisping showed up to the press conference 30 minutes late and completely blasted, yelling shit at GSP.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bisping: Hey Georges, where&#39;s your belt? While you were gone, the sport moved on.<br><br>GSP: My job is to beat up that drunk man over there.</p>&mdash; MMAFighting.com (@MMAFighting) <a href="https://twitter.com/MMAFighting/status/837793949519486977">March 3, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The UFC has announced a long-term deal with T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The UFC is now an anchor tenant of the arena, and no UFC bouts can be held in Vegas outside of that arena. The UFC will also have priority scheduling, meaning other events and shows would have to verify that the UFC doesn't want the arena for that date. In exchange for this, the UFC agreed to a minimum of 4 events a year at the arena, but they'll probably have a lot more events there annually than just 4.

No Khabib vs. Tony? This is #1 bullshit.

Dana White said that Khabib's team probably could have saved the fight, but they ****ed up.

Reading between the lines, I assume the doctors at the hospital saw a dehydrated patient, gave him IV's, and when he was trying to get out to weigh in, the doctors who know nothing about fighters told the UFC he can't fight. At that point, its a liability issue and they had to pull him.

The UFC doctors, who have experience with fighters cutting weight, probably would have monitored him closely and got him to the scale.

The prelims have been incredible tonight. Two different fights featured guys who were getting beaten up really badly pull off a miraculous 3rd round comeback finish.

HELL YEAH!

Mighty Mouse vs Reis will headline the card in Kansas City with a flyweight championship bout

edit: and Jacare will fight Robert Whittaker in KC as well.

Good fight.
USA.

Headline and Co-main for KC. Also an important strawweight bout on the main card.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A title fight is heading to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UFCKansasCity?src=hash">#UFCKansasCity</a>! <a href="https://twitter.com/MightyMouseUFC">@MightyMouseUFC</a> defends his belt against <a href="https://twitter.com/wilsonreis7">@WilsonReis7</a>! ALSO: <a href="https://twitter.com/JacareMMA">@JacareMMA</a> vs <a href="https://twitter.com/RJWhittaker1990">@RJWhittaker1990</a>!!! <a href="https://t.co/oGAufa37UV">pic.twitter.com/oGAufa37UV</a></p>&mdash; #UFC209 (@ufc) <a href="https://twitter.com/ufc/status/838215880534155264">March 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Booooring

Marc Goddard has been excellent tonight

Next TUF will be Garbrandt and Dillashaw.

The gimmick will be fighters who were cut by the UFC trying to fight their way back in.

That random strawweight bout that was inexplicably elevated to PPV was surprisingly entertaining.

If that is the play by play guy he was awesome. Made the guy before him look like a bafoon

No, Marc Goddard is the British ref. He's the guy who took the point for the illegal knee without warning and was right on top of the Overeem Hunt stoppage.

Anyway, that was a great card overall, but it was tarnished by one of the worst, maybe THE worst championship fights I've ever seen. Very disappointed in wonderboy, I don't know where that exciting karate fighter from last year went, you can't be that cautious and point-fighting against a champion to try and eke out a decision when you were given the gift of an immediate rematch.

LMAO

Agreed, I'm disappointed.

It got so bad, that in the 4th round the crowd was chanting "fight".

I think in the first 2 rounds combined the stats showed that there was something like 9 significant strikes. Total, from both fighters.

Yeah, Rogan (who I usually love) was wearing me out with the observation that he LOVED the fight. C'mon dude, we get that you know a lot about the sport, but that was awful.

It's crazy that the fights that were on Fox last night were SO much better

By contrast, the prelims on FS1 were absolutely incredible, except for maybe the last fight.

I hope GSP literally beats Bisping to death

For those with fightpass, EBI 11 starts in a few minutes

I really don't like Bisping, but I hate the idea of GSP coming back from his self imposed hiatus and getting an immediate title shot in a weight class he's never fought at.

In an interview today Mayweather said "conor says he's boss? Then sign the paper."
And also told him to stop blowing smoke up everybody ass.

It would be 5 minutes before the UFC had an injunction to stop that fight

I'm pretty sure they just want to get their cut. Lol

No doubt, but I bet they worry if Conor loses it would look bad for their golden goose.

But god damn if he even made it a fight...

I know, and Floyd would be the guy to fight as he's not really a knock out artist.

Honestly I think if the fighters want to fight it's gonna happen.

I hope that's how it works, it would have to be a joint UFC/Money promotion. Dana wouldn't settle for less.

I think a ton of conor's side of the money would go to the ufc too.

The hangup is probably the money that the UFC would get. Who knows what is going on, but it could be that Floyd wants the headliners to get like 80% of the total revenue (with Floyd getting most of that 80%) and the UFC gets 20%, and the UFC might want it 50/50. (promotors usually get 30-40%, but Mayweather would probably want to co-promote and split that portion) Also, the UFC absolutely would want to control the rest of the main card and the undercard.

Floyd is basically mocking Conor by saying he's not really the boss and Conor doesn't really control his future like Conor has been claiming because he still has to get approval from the UFC.

Yeah, Conor thinks he's running shit, but in this case he has zero leverage. He may be the highest paid fighter in the UFC but that doesn't mean Dana doesn't still own him.

The UFC fight night this weekend is pretty damn good by free TV standards. There will be no Bellator for the next 3 weekends, not that many would notice.

This weekend's schedule:

Friday

nothing

Saturday

10am - (Fightpass) Fight Nights Global 61, whatever that is. Judging by tapology, its a typical regional card, and well below Bellator standards. No top-100 fighters.

7pm TV - (6pm Fightpass/FS1) UFC Fight Night Belfort vs. Gastelum

This may end up being one of the best free cards of the year, definitely better than a bad PPV. The main event is not special, but its a very deep card. The entire main card is good, and even the prelims have some interesting fights. This is one of the 1 or 2 big free shows that the UFC always tries to put on in Brazil every year.

midnight - (Fightpass) Pancrase 286

Pretty good by regional show standards, there's a couple world top-100 ranked fighters but its in the middle of the night. Cool thing about Pancrase is they don't waste time, when a fight ends they go straight to the next fight. If there's a lot of early stoppages, then its just a short show.

Sunday

Nothing if you don't count Pancrase

Just ordered my tix to the April 15th UFC event!

Ditto, got row 18 for me and my brother. Thats a fantastic card too, hopefully the MMA Gods are kind and let them reach the cage on weight and (mostly) injury-free.

This seems to be a minor miracle these days. Everyone made weight, that entire solid Brazil card is good to go for tomorrow.

Me too, I'm pretty hyped. It should be a fantastic event.

I totally agree, he should have to earn it like everyone else