A battle of welterweight strikers has officially been added to the upcoming UFC Brasilia card.
Per UFC Brasil, striking specialist Elizeu Zaleski will take on former M-1 Global champion Alexey Kunchenko.
On January 18th, at UFC 246, Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone is slated to welcome the ‘Notorious’ Conor McGregor back to the Octagon. It’s the biggest fight of Cerrone’s long and storied career.
The welterweight contest with McGregor will likely earn Cerrone the biggest payday of his 13 year tenure in professional fighting. For McGregor, who hasn’t fought since October 2018 — in a lopsided loss to Khabib Nurmagomodev — the fight is viewed as an opportunity to wrestle back some relevance inside of the eight-sided cage.
The top of the UFC 245 billing just saw the promotion’s welterweight champion, Kamaru Usman, successfully defend his crown with a late fifth round stoppage of the #2 ranked Colby Covington. This was quite the war! Both men stood and traded strikes for the whole fight, with zero takedowns attempted. Usman knocked down Covington twice in the fifth frame, and was able to land ground strikes to get the job done. Usman has now won 11 UFC fights in a row. Who will be next up to challenge for the belt?
The best thing that could have happened to the UFC heading into UFC Busan was a definitive win in the main event to deliver a potentially definitive #1 contender to new featherweight champion, Alexander Volkanovski. The organization got it’s wish. The Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung, delivered a violent beatdown of former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar, giving him enough of a potential pedigree to call for the title shot… something he called for after the fight. Given the cult status of Jung, it’s hard to believe the UFC won’t give him that shot. There may not have been many waves coming out of UFC Busan, but the waves that did come appear to be pretty damn sizeable.
If there was ever a chink in Donald Cerrone’s armor, it’s probably his defensive boxing.
‘Cowboy’ has fantastic kicks, knees and elbows, but the UFC veteran has struggled against boxers in the past, losing fights to Nate Diaz, Jorge Masvidal and Robbie Lawler to name but a few.
Henry Cejudo’s days as UFC flyweight champion are coming to an end.
Following an initial report from BJPenn.com, Mike Bohn of MMA Junkie says that the UFC intends to strip Cejudo of his title, and vying for the vacant belt will be Joseph Benavidez and Deiveson Figueiredo. It’s expected that the matchup will headline UFC Norfolk in Virginia on February 29th, with ESPN+ broadcasting the event.
“As long as my goal and his goal is the same, we’re gonna run into each other some time, and that’s being the greatest fighter of all time.”
Despite suffering a major setback in his UFC lightweight debut against Dustin Poirier at UFC 236, Max Holloway is still confident he will one day cross paths with undefeated lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Chris Weidman isn’t exactly known for his trash talk, but ‘All-American’ says he was pressured into channelling his inner-Chael Sonnen and talk smack ahead of his middleweight title bout with Anderson Silva at UFC 162.
According to Weidman, UFC president Dana White called him up a few weeks out from the event and instructed him to make more of an effort to promote the fight.
The UFC DC main card is underway and the promotion’s #9 ranked strawweight, Marina Rodriguez, and the #10 ranked Cynthia Calvillo went the distance in a competitive affair, resulting in a majority draw. Rodriguez had a strong first-two rounds, but Calvillo came on strong in the final act, landing all sorts of ground strikes.
