Category Archives: Mmafighting.com

Conor McGregor is anything but an owner in name only when it comes to his investment in BKFC.

The former two-division UFC champion—who became a part owner in BKFC back in April—is so serious about his passion for bare-knuckle fighting that he’s promising to eventually take the gloves off and set foot in the ring for a fight himself. With only two fights remaining on his current UFC contract and the chance to act as his own promoter, BKFC president and founder David Feldman is taking McGregor’s declaration seriously.

“Unless he’s the best salesman in the world, the talks that we’ve had it’s like ‘I’m fighting here,’” Feldman told MMA Fighting. “I’m like yeah, OK. He [said] ‘I’m fighting here.’

“I go, ‘Why wouldn’t you fight here?’ Because you have equity in the company and if you fight here, you’ll probably make more money than anywhere else in the world because of what it’s going to do for the company. So I truly believe what you said — I think 100 percent he fights here.”

The UFC recently announced that Michael Chandler would fight Charles Oliveira in November after he spent nearly two years waiting for a matchup against McGregor, which prompted the Irish superstar to suggest a co-promotion with BKFC so he could get back in action sooner rather than later.

While there’s no doubting McGregor’s immense drawing power and the influence he holds with UFC, Feldman knows there’s no chance UFC would ever co-promote with him but it’s not because there isn’t mutual respect between the promotions.

“The UFC doesn’t need us,” Feldman said. “They don’t need us. We need to [co-promote] with them, they don’t need to [co-promote] with us, which would be phenomenal — they’re not going to do it. If they do Conor McGregor with anything, he don’t need to [co-promote] with us.”

That means McGregor would need to leave UFC to fight for BKFC, but Feldman has stopped doubting his new business partner after seeing his commitment over these past few months.

McGregor could have easily injected some cash into BKFC, called himself a co-owner and then faded into the background after grabbing a few headlines. Feldman says that interpretations of McGregor’s involvement couldn’t be further from the truth.

“He’s been unbelievable,” Feldman said about McGregor. “He’s really been a partner so far. Blew away my expectations. Doing the interviews, he did the post-fight press conference, he’s meeting the guys. He’s going over and hugging the fighters and telling them, ‘Come on let’s do this!’ He’s sitting there ringside cheering for them. He’s posting all the time about it. He’s all in.

“We had a great talk this weekend, it was just me and him talking and I said to him ‘I don’t know if you really believe me, but this is going to be the biggest thing in the world in a few years, there’s nothing that’s going to be bigger than this, trust me.’ He goes, ‘It’s going to be two years.’”

Considering that just about everything McGregor touches turns to gold, it’s tough to imagine he won’t find a way to build BKFC into a powerhouse that will go toe-to-toe with just about any other combat sports organization out there.

Feldman is realistic when it comes to size and scale because he knows the UFC is a promotional juggernaut that won’t be toppled. Still, he admits that the exponential growth of BKFC over these past few years has blown away even his biggest expectations and he expects McGregor to help them grow even bigger in the future.

“[Conor] sees the vision,” Feldman said. “Are we ever going to be the biggest combat sport in the world? Probably not honestly but we’re definitely going to be one of the biggest. Absolutely. The numbers just keep going up.”

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Alex Pereira will have ex-opponent Sean Strickland in his camp for his UFC 307 title defense versus Khalil Rountree, he revealed Sunday on his YouTube channel.

“Poatan,” who knocked out Strickland back in 2022 to earn a shot at the middleweight belt before later becoming friends with the Las Vegas-based fighter, moved his camp to the altitude of Salt Lake City to prepare for UFC 307, which takes place in the capital of Utah on Oct. 5.

“The thing about the altitude is that it’s hard [to train],” Pereira said. “We did this once when I fought [Jan] Blachowicz. We did it for two weeks then, and three weeks now. I think it’s going to be much better.”

Pereira defeated Blachowicz via decision in his first light heavyweight bout inside the octagon, also at SLC’s Vivint Arena, and now returns as 205-pound champion to face Rountree. The challenger earned a shot at gold following five straight wins, including four knockouts.

“We have a great team here,” said Pereira, who usually trains at Glover Teixeira’s team in Danbury, Conn. “We have Glover, Plinio [Cruz], Yousri [Belgaroui], ‘Cesinha’ [Cesar Almeida]. Sean Strickland is also coming next week to train with us here. I’m very happy with this preparation.”

Pereira vs. Rountree serves as the main event for UFC 307, with bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington defending her throne versus Julianna Peña in the co-main event slot.

Meanwhile, Strickland is campaigning for a rematch with UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis next, but the company has yet to make an announcement on who will get the shot at 185 pounds.

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Valentina Shevchenko didn’t keep receipts, but she was definitely shocked to see how many professional fighters picked against her in the trilogy with Alexa Grasso at UFC 306.

While she was winning the majority of their first fight until getting caught with a submission late in the fourth round and then by all accounts deserving of a win in the rematch if not for some controversial scoring from the judges, Shevchenko somehow felt like she was being underrated ahead of the third fight.

That’s why she felt the need to put the nail in the coffin when it came to her rivalry with Grasso and what resulted was a one-sided fight from start to finish.

“Surprisingly for me, many UFC fighters, many pro fighters when they had their picks before our third fight they said ‘Grasso … oh Grasso.’ It was kind of one-sided,” Shevchenko told MMA Fighting.

“It was a little bit surprising for me that I would take it from people who don’t know much about martial arts, and they just want to see stupid in the striking, like [finding out] who has a stronger chin, a stronger head and it doesn’t involve too much technique, too much fighter IQ, too much of the character of the fighter. I would take it from those people but when pro fighters say that, it was like, oh my God. There’s something wrong with this world. That’s another reason I had to show domination. I had to show I’m superior in every field.”

A big part of the problem that Shevchenko identified was the way her trilogy with Grasso was promoted with the majority of the attention being paid to her opponent.

Shevchenko understood that UFC 306 was billed as a “love letter to Mexico” with the card built around celebrating Mexican Independence Day. Grasso was also the only Mexican champion competing at the event, so shining a brighter spotlight on her made sense.

That said, Shevchenko didn’t appreciate she was somehow forgotten when it came to the highlights from their previous two fights.

“When constantly, over the year, they’re showing the best moments of one fighter and it doesn’t show anything from the other fighter, but the people they don’t watch the full fight,” Shevchenko lamented. “They just see these small clips and they just hear it repeated and repeated. It’s kind of like this is how propaganda works. It’s kind of like [hard] to deal with.

“I knew, for example what had happened in the second fight, for example there is a combination, 10 successful hits from my side and one hit from her side. The media to promote the new champion, to celebrate everything, they get rid of all of my successful combinations and just focus on this one good combination from her. They repeat this over and over. People who didn’t watch the fight, and it’s sad, they don’t watch the fight — they just listen and see all these replays and they start to believe that it’s true.”

To counter that promotional push for Grasso leading into UFC 306, Shevchenko took it upon herself to leave no doubts this time around.

She out-struck Grasso on the feet, took her down eight times and racked up over 16 minutes of control time on the canvas. It was a clean sweep with unanimous 50-45 scorecards across the board as Shevchenko defeated Grasso and reclaimed her UFC flyweight title.

“I knew going into this fight, I cannot let this happen again,” Shevchenko said. “I didn’t have another choice. Don’t let her have these successful combinations, not even one. That’s why I was faster in the striking, she could not respond to my striking and I want to show my skills on the ground game because hearing all people say ‘Valentina, you’re a striker, you’re going to be all striking, you don’t have wrestling.’ I don’t know why but they thought she could out-wrestle me. Yeah definitely it’s because of a lucky submission in the first fight when I lost my belt and everyone thought, ‘You are just a striker you don’t have a ground game.’ But I am a martial artist. I am an MMA fighter. I’m a complete fighter. I have to show that you forget, this is my ground game.

“It was no choice for me. They didn’t leave me another one. Just to completely destroy the game plan of Alexa and show that she cannot do anything, not in the striking, not in the wrestling, not in the grappling.”

With Grasso beaten and the UFC title back around her waist, Shevchenko is happy to put the past behind her, which is why she’s not calling out anybody by name when it came to the fighters who picked against her.

She’s happy to let bygones be bygones, although just know, Shevchenko is always watching.

“When you win the fight, you’re already passed it. You never look back,” Shevchenko said. “Every time I try to see the best in people, the good in people because I think this is important.

“Everyone can make errors. If you don’t have a chance to correct these errors for the people, how will it work? It never will work. That’s why there’s no trust for each other. I give people a second chance.”

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Colby Covington’s last submission win in the UFC came with a rear-naked choke against Jonathan Meunier back in 2016 but he dusted off that move for a new video he made with rapper Lil Pump.

For some reason, a great number of athletes and influencers who are not trained mixed martial artists love to feel what it’s like to get choked out by a professional fighter. So Covington obviously granted Lil Pump’s wish when he applied a submission to put the 24-year-old rapper to sleep.

In the video, the three-time UFC title challenger applies the choke and initially uses a Gable grip to lock up the submission but Lil Pump ends up tapping his own chest rather than Covington’s arm to signify he’s done.

So Covington then switches to the more traditional rear-naked choke with his arms wrapped around Lil Pump’s head and neck to secure the submission. A moment later, the rapper falls unconscious from the choke and Covington finally releases the hold when he’s told Lil Pump is out.

“Look at his eyes,” Covington said in the video. “He’s out.”

Lil Pump is soon revived with a look of confusion on his face that eventually gives way to a smile when he realizes what happened. He also posted the video on his social media with a comment about getting choked out by Covington.

“Don’t miss my next kick stream It’s getting crazier by the day,” the rapper wrote on his Instagram account. “Don’t try this at home. I got put to sleep.”

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Damir Ismagulov might not be far off from a UFC return.

The veteran lightweight closed the show in style on Saturday at Alash Pride 100 in Aktobe, Kazakhstan, delivering a spinning kick knockout that left opponent Oberdan Tenorio frighteningly still on the canvas.

Watch the highlight-reel KO below.

Tenorio appeared to bite hard on a fake before Ismagulov spun his hips and unleashed the powerful KO strike.

This was Ismagulov’s second win since parting ways with the UFC in 2023. Ismagulov (26-3) ended his UFC run with back-to-back losses to Grant Dawson and Arman Tsarukyan, which dropped his record with the promotion to 5-2.

He began his UFC career with five consecutive victories, including decision nods over Guram Kutateladze, Thiago Moises, and Joel Alvarez. The 33-year-old scored the 13th knockout win of his career and his first since June 2018.

Tenorio (36-16-1) suffered his third loss in his past four fights. The Brazilian veteran stepped in on short notice for former UFC fighter Adriano Martins, who withdrew for undisclosed reasons.

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There’s a long list of great color commentators who have called boxing matches and MMA fights but Dana White believes there’s one person who stands heads and shoulders above the crowd.

Ever since he first debuted with the UFC as a backstage interviewer all the way back in 1997, Joe Rogan has been a mainstay with the promotion. These days he’s the lead color commentator for most of the major pay-per-view broadcasts and the UFC CEO offered him high praise when addressing Rogan’s contributions to combat sports.

“I consider him the greatest to ever do it,” White told the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast. “F*ck all these guys that have ever done any type of commentating on combat sports before this. Rogan is by far [the best].”

While there’s obviously subjectivity when calling anybody the greatest of all-time, White explained one of the many reasons why he believes Rogan has cemented himself at the top — at least where MMA is involved.

When Rogan first started calling fights for the UFC after Zuffa purchased the organization back in 2001, MMA was barely a blip on the overall sports radar. Fans tuning into watch a UFC broadcast didn’t really understand all the nuances of the sport but especially when it came to the ground game that blended wrestling, striking and grappling.

White credits Rogan with finding a way to explain those positions to a general audience that didn’t know the first thing about what was actually happening when a fight landed on the ground.

“To go in and call fights is not easy to do. It’s very hard to do,” White said. “Rogan came and right off the bat started doing it. What was brilliant about Joe and why he was so instrumental in helping us build this sport, nobody was ever going to f*cking understand the ground game.

“Rogan would walk you through in detail while it was happening, he would be one step ahead of the fighter actually as it was taking place, walking you through … and Rogan would f*cking lay it out. We couldn’t have hired anybody else that would have done it.”

White also considers Rogan a true fan of the sport, which comes across during the broadcasts and that makes a real difference with both the audience and the fighters competing in the octagon.

“Every time you would see him on camera and he would be talking about the fights that night, you knew — you felt it in your f*cking soul this guy was not a paid talking head,” White said. “This motherf*cker loves this shit. It came through at every event that we did.”

There have been times in the past where Rogan has openly contemplated stepping away from the UFC, especially when rigorous travel got to be too much for him.

As a result, Rogan now only calls domestic pay-per-view events but he doesn’t travel outside the United States and he only works those major cards that take place 12 to 13 times per year.

Judging by White’s comments, he’s going to do everything possible to ensure that Rogan continues calling fights as long as he’s involved with the UFC.

“It was meant to be,” White said about working with Rogan. “This relationship with me and Rogan and all the other things that have come together in my life and his life and other people’s lives, it’s f*cking crazy when you think about it.

“Rogan is the best to ever do it. The best to ever do it.”

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It seems almost like a lifetime ago when Jorge Masvidal got involved in a backstage fight with Leon Edwards that resulted a catchphrase that just became part of the MMA vernacular afterwards.

“I gave him the three-piece with the soda”

That was Masvidal’s way of telling the story about popping Edwards with a couple of punches after the fighters came face-to-face following a UFC event in London back in 2019. Given the bad blood between them, it seemed like Masvidal and Edwards would eventually settle their grievances in the octagon but somehow the UFC never pulled the trigger on the matchup.

Despite that incident happening over five years ago, Masvidal and Edwards still get asked about it to this day because the rivalry between them born that day never got settled.

For his part, Masvidal claims he accepted a fight against Edwards, but the future UFC champion declined so the matchup never came together.

“I know he wouldn’t fight me,” Masvidal told MMA Fighting. “He got offered and turned it down. He don’t want this.”

“I tried [to fight him]. Leon Edwards don’t want this. He had other options, he went for other things except fight me, basically. I’ll tell you that much.”

Could that potentially change now that Masvidal is planning a comeback to the UFC and Edwards needs an opponent after losing the welterweight title to Belal Muhammad in July?

Masvidal isn’t opposed to the idea because he knows there’s still some unfinished business there and the disdain shared between them didn’t just disappear.

While nothing has been decided yet about his comeback fight, Masvidal welcomed the chance to face Edwards, and he’s throwing down the gauntlet to meet sooner rather than later.

“I’ll tell you right now, Leon, I will whoop your f*cking ass,” Masvidal said. “Let’s f*cking go. I don’t know maybe Dec. 7 in Vegas, maybe next year at the Super Bowl. I don’t know but I’ll beat the f*ck out of your little skinny ass.”

Of course, Edwards hasn’t fought since falling to Muhammad in July, although he’s hinted at a potential return before the end of the year.

While he didn’t have any skin in the game during that welterweight title fight, Masvidal confessed that he was incredibly impressed by Muhammad, who effectively shut down Edwards for the majority of the five-round fight.

Muhammad has now gone undefeated in 11 consecutive fights and Masvidal had nothing but praise for the new UFC welterweight champion.

“For starters, Belal has [improved] so much since I first saw him,” Masvidal said. “I saw him fight live before in the UFC and it’s like he’s not the best athlete, he doesn’t have the craziest skill set. But slowly but surely, this guy just got better and better and better. There’s a lot of times where I was like he’s not beating that guy. Wrong! He beat the f*ck out of that guy. He did that multiple times.

“Now to see him as the champion, I think he’s one of the guys that’s improved drastically the most. Truly amazing. Great journey.”

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Henry Cejudo wants Sean O’Malley next.

This past weekend, O’Malley lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili, losing a unanimous decision in the main event of UFC 306. Cejudo has a long-standing rivalry with O’Malley and also predicted Dvalishvili to win, so “Triple C” was quite please with how things turned out at UFC 306.

“What can I say? I predicted these things,” Cejudo said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast. “Sean is not accustomed to going five rounds, and he is not accustomed to people on his legs. I just felt like – I still go back and say, hey, that fight with Aljamain Sterling, that was a fluke too.

“Aljamain was still in that fight, and people thought I was just hating. No, I’ve been in there with Merab. I did a whole lot better than Sean did when I fought Merab. I mean, I took down Merab. Merab is lucky that I had that groin injury… And I still plan on running it back.

“Either way, Sean O’Meth-ly got his ass kicked for five rounds and I can’t wait to get him next!”

Cejudo and O’Malley have exchanged social media insults for a while now, with O’Malley even trolling Cejudo’s podcast ahead of UFC 306. And now that O’Malley is no longer champion, a fight between the two is substantially more possible. But Cejudo has his doubts it will happen.

“I personally would love to fight him,” Cejudo said. “I think with all the trolling that we have done to each other — we both live in the same damn city — but I just don’t think that he’s going to want to fight me. Particularly right after this performance that Merab did to him.

“Like I said, Merab was lucky that I was hurt in that fight. I had no conditioning due to not being able to wrestle because of a torn groin. But I took my chances because I wanted to fight him, I wanted to fight at the Sphere, I wanted to beat him up in front of everybody. But that’s not the case.

“So I think moving forward, if Sean O’Malley is willing and wants to fight this troll who’s the true king of Arizona, well then here I am. But if not, I’m making my way back down to 125 pounds, because I’m not going to waste my time.”

But if Cejudo really wants to fight O’Malley, he’ll have to wait quite a while. Following his loss, “Sugar” revealed he intends to take an extended break from fighting to repair a torn labrum in his hip he suffered ahead of UFC 306.

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Jon Anik got a sneak peek of Sphere before UFC 306, and knew that his broadcast partners were going in cold — which made it all that more special for the longtime lead commentator.

“So all week, I was sort of marinating in the fact that Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier, and my twin brother [Jason], and all of these people weren’t going to have seen any of this until they walked in there on Saturday night,” Anik said on Between the Links. “And given all that my Saturday holds, I’m thankful that I was privy to some of this because spectacular doesn’t even begin to describe it. A broadcasting experience of a lifetime for me.

“And it sounds ungrateful to say, ‘Please give us another shot in there,’ but that’s all, I think, a lot of us kept feeling. It was just so amazing. I mean, Diego Lopes putting his hands in the air — my brother captured it — if there’s a coliseum behind him. Bro, it was absolutely unbelievable, start to finish, and I do think 10 fights is the right way to do it. I’d be fascinated to see how the UFC, and how our live production team would approach a second chance in there when it comes to fight card, and thematically what you would do, whether it was a celebration of the UFC, or as Daniel Cormier would like, the Stars and Stripes, but just incredible. Just incredible.

“I think a lot of people are suggestive with this sort of merging of sports, art, and entertainment, that with venues in the future, there’s a lot of things that could happen from here in terms of venue construction and everything. But to be a part of it, very special, and just give us another shot. Just one more shot.”

Rogan returned for his first event since June’s UFC 303 card for the Noche UFC themed event, capped off by Merab Dvalishvili’s bantamweight title win against Sean O’Malley. Anik says his good friend, color commentator, and host of one of the biggest podcasts on the planet — like everyone else — was absolutely stunned by what he saw at Sphere.

“So he’s seen it all, he’s a renaissance man, far more that than me,” Anik said about Rogan. “I still felt convicted in the fact that he would be effectively blown away, and yeah, just jaw-dropped, and ‘Oh my gosh,’ and sort of one visual upstages the one that came before it.

“We went all the way up to the 400 section — as high as you can go — which [are] some of the best seats to do our pay-per-view open, and I actually didn’t quite get down in time. So we had a little bit of lead navigation in terms of our throw to the next piece, but it was insane to see [Rogan and Cormier’s] reactions for the first time and you think you know what you’re walking into, but you really don’t.”

UFC 306 came with several interesting fights and storylines, but there were naysayers having issues with the overall card quality for an event that was hyped up as much as this was.

While everything was unforgettable and a landmark telecast for the history of sports, Anik wants one more chance at being the lead voice for another event, something resembling the depth of the upcoming October pay-per-view cards.

“When you look at the fight cards for UFC 307 and UFC 308 on paper, Jose Aldo’s fighting on the prelims in Salt Lake City, UFC 308 — I don’t say this hyperbolically — maybe the best fight card I’ve ever been assigned,” Anik explained. “Go to Wikipedia and look up UFC 308. So just imagine, for a second, UFC 307 or UFC 308, on paper, Khamzat Chimaev vs. Robert Whittaker, at Sphere f*cking Vegas, and tell me we couldn’t effectively change the game forever.

“This was an amazing experience, I just think we need one more shot.”

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Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler might not be dead just yet.

The road to that matchup has seen numerous bumps over the course of the past two years, with the rivals serving as opposing coaches on The Ultimate Fighter 32 and then being scheduled for UFC 303 this past June, only to see their fight fall through when McGregor withdrew due to injury.

Chandler has since been booked for a rematch with Charles Oliveira, which takes place at UFC 309 on Nov. 16. As for McGregor, he and UFC CEO Dana White finally seem to be in agreement that “The Notorious” won’t be seen in the octagon again until next year.

“It will be 2025,” McGregor said in an interview with DAZN during the Joshua vs. Dubois broadcast. “We’ll see. My opponent that I had scheduled, Chandler, has gotten matched. It is what it is. I just take it on board and just rock on. My job is just to go to the gym, be in the gym, be in shape, and one thing is for sure, whenever it is and wherever it is, I’ll be 100 percent ready. That’s all I can focus on right now.”

With Chandler occupied for the moment, it appears that McGregor has to set his sights on a new opponent. While he’s keeping his options open, he wants it to be known that Chandler is not out of the picture.

“Who knows nowadays?” McGregor said. “It doesn’t matter, it does not matter. Just as long as I can get back, whoever. I’d like it to be Chandler. I’d like to get that squared away, so I wish him well against Oliveira, but let’s see how it goes.”

McGregor, 36, has spoken openly about having only two fights left on his UFC contract, and once those bouts are completed he’ll be free to pursue any other combat sports interests that he wants. In addition to being a member of the UFC roster, McGregor also currently serves as a part owner of BKFC, a bare-knuckle boxing promotion he has expressed interest in competing for as well.

All he can say for sure is that he would like to conclude his time with the UFC in 2025. After that, it’s anybody’s guess as to what MMA’s biggest draw will do next.

“I must,” McGregor said. “It’s the promised land, so we’ll see. I don’t even know. No one in the space knows. I’m the highest-generating fighter on planet Earth right now in today’s space and what happens afterwards, as I’m a free agent, I’m not so sure.”

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