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Recently retired MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko would love to test out his boxing skills against former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.

After more than 20 years and nearly 50 fights, ‘The Last Emperor’ hung up his gloves following a first-round knockout loss to Bellator MMA heavyweight champion Ryan Bader in February 2023. Emelianenko has essentially slammed the door shut on a potential return to the cage, but the Russian combat sports icon would love to opportunity to step inside the squared circle.

As for who he would like to face in a potential boxing match, Emelianenko had only one name in mind.

“I’d like to fight Francis Ngannou,” Emelianenko said in an interview with Red Corner MMA. “I want to box him. I can’t do MMA anymore, but I’d like to box him. Yes, I’d like to fight him. Maybe it’s not overconfidence, but it’d be interesting to fight him.”

After making a name for himself under the UFC banner, Francis Ngannou parted ways with the promotion in January 2023. Since then, his star power has skyrocketed following a brilliant performance against reigning WBC heavyweight king Tyson Fury. Ngannou may have lost the bout via a very questionable split decision, but his performance against ‘The Gypsy King’ landed him a spot on the WBC’s top 10 heavyweight rankings.

Next, ‘The Predator’ will fight the No. 1 ranked heavyweight contender in the world, Anthony Joshua, on March 9 in Saudi Arabia. If Ngannou pulls off the victory, it will likely set the stage for a championship rematch with Tyson Fury — assuming the British boxing star handles his business with Oleksandr Usyk later this year.

Would you be interested in seeing Fedor Emelianenko strap on the eight-ounce gloves for a clash with Francis Ngannou in the sweet science?

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Sean O’Malley had a cageside view of a future opponent at UFC 298, one way or another.

O’Malley makes the first defense of his UFC bantamweight title on March 9 in a rematch against Marlon “Chito” Vera at UFC 299, and if victorious, he could find himself fighting one of the two stars from Saturday’s card. Ahead of UFC 298, O’Malley proposed a champion vs. champion match against Ilia Topuria if the Spaniard defeated Alexander Volkanovski, which he did with a stunning second-round knockout to capture the UFC featherweight strap. Fellow bantamweight Merab Dvalishvili also dominated Henry Cejudo at UFC 298 to extend a division-best 10-fight win streak, then called out O’Malley for a shot at the 135-pound belt.

O’Malley reacted to the two performances on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour.

“Volk coming off that nasty KO not too long ago, Ilia’s confidence that high, how dangerous he is — I had a feeling that Ilia was going to win,” O’Malley said on The MMA Hour.

“He knocked out the featherweight GOAT in Round 2. I knocked out [Aljamain Sterling], bantamweight GOAT, in Round 2. I’ve kind of pushed that fight a little bit. I’ve been getting a lot of hate for it, a little pushback saying that I’m ducking Merab. I’m like, Merab just barely — not barely, he whooped Henry, but Henry is like 42 or something. He looked horrible. I would’ve knocked Henry out four times that fight. And then Ilia goes out there and knocks out Volk, the greatest featherweight of all-time in Round 2 in a beautiful performance, and I’m calling him out, and I’m getting s*** from the MMA fans, saying, ‘Oh, you’re ducking Merab.’

“I’m trying to call out a fight that I feel is exciting, that’s like holy s***. But I got a lot of pushback on it. I don’t know if people actually want me to fight Merab as much as they just hate the confidence that I have that I would go out there and knock out Ilia. But I decided, I’ve said what I needed to say, I’ve sent my message to Ilia. If Merab is next, Merab is next. I can get Ilia whenever, whenever the time comes. I haven’t talked to the UFC because obviously there’s nothing to talk about. I’ve got Chito Vera, March 9. That’s what’s next. That’s what I need to focus on.”

While O’Malley, 29, and his coach Tim Welch have both campaigned for a potential superfight between the bantamweight champ and Topuria, that interest has thus far been unrequited. Topuria threw cold water over the idea ahead of UFC 298, telling MMA Fighting that O’Malley still has “a lot to prove” at 135 pounds and predicting that Vera will beat O’Malley again at UFC 299 after previously winning via first-round knockout in 2020.

In addition, UFC CEO Dana White anointed Dvalishvili as the next No. 1 bantamweight contender at UFC 298’s post-fight press conference after the Georgian winning machine moved into a tie for the longest win streak in the history of the UFC bantamweight division.

But O’Malley is not deterred.

“I’ve said what I need to say to those guys. And really, what it comes down to is, I go out there and put on the performance that I say I’m going to put on against Chito — a beautiful, masterful performance — and I call out whoever I want on that mic, I think I can get what fight I want,” O’Malley said. “But I’ve got to go out there and do what I do.”

O’Malley and Dvalishvili have traded shots at one another from afar since Dvalishvili stole O’Malley’s jacket this past May during an in-cage faceoff with Sterling. O’Malley on Monday conceded that he was “a little bit” surprised by the ease with which Dvalishvili outclassed Cejudo, though less so after certain whispers reached him about Cejudo’s preparation.

“I was hearing rumors up to fight day that, ‘Hey, Henry didn’t have a great camp, Henry hurt his groin, Henry didn’t get as good of sparring and training as much as he wanted to,’ so with that being said, you can’t go into a fight not 100 percent against Merab,” O’Malley said. “Merab is a machine, he has a 10-fight win streak. He’s f****** good.”

Ultimately, O’Malley knows the entire debate is moot if he fails to exact his revenge against Vera at UFC 299, so he’s not counting his chickens before they’re hatched.

But whether it’s Dvalishvili waiting for him afterward or Topuria or someone else entirely, O’Malley likes his chances to continue his hot streak, even if others don’t.

“There’s Merab, there’s Cory [Sandhagen], there’s Ilia. Those all have potential for next,” O’Malley said. “Again, I’m — boom — laser focused, dialed into March 9. Whatever happens after that, I’m very confident in. Merab is very beatable. Henry about knocked him out, Marlon Moraes about knocked him out. Merab’s got a crazy good gas tank, he’s got good wrestling, and he’s a dangerous opponent. When I think of a scary opponent, like what makes me [shiver], that’s Ilia. Ilia gives me that [feeling of], ‘He could put your f****** lights out and change your life.’

“That’s a scary opponent. Merab is a dangerous opponent, he’s just got that good cardio and he could eventually put your lights out after you gas out, but he’s not like [a finisher]. He didn’t finish Henry. So we’ll see. I like big, big fights. Merab, I’m not saying that wouldn’t be up there, but what it comes down to is, what do the people really, truly want to see? If they want to see Merab, that’s what’s next. But again, I hate even talking about that, I’ve got Chito in front of me.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Watch the UFC 298 highlights video and recap from Saturday’s UFC 298 main event between Alexander Volkanovski vs Ilia Topuria.

UFC 298 took place on Saturday, February 17th, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

UFC 298 is in the books and we have a new featherweight champion! That’s right, Ilia Topuria became the man to finally unseat Alexander Volkanovski and he did it in spectacular fashion — a brutal knockout that seems very likely to take home Knockout of the Year honors. On top of that, UFC 300 finally has a main event as Dana White announced that Alex Pereira vs. Jamahal Hill will headline the biggest event of the year. So let’s talk about all that and the rest of the fallout from the first great event of 2024.

The Ilia Topuria Era

I lumped all of these together because they’re speaking to the same topic, just from slightly different angles.

Ilia Topuria just turned 27 years old and he’s the undisputed featherweight champion of the world. For comparison, Volkanovski won the title at 31, Max Holloway won it at 25, and Jose Aldo won the WEC belt (functionally the UFC featherweight title) at 23 (youngest champion in Zuffa history). Looking at this, you realize that Volk is actually an outlier in terms of putting together an extended title run as he started late. Topuria is right in the sweet spot as he won’t hit his athletic peak for another year or two, and his true prime should last for the next five to seven years. That’s a problem for everyone else at 145.

But that doesn’t mean we should just pencil Topuria in for nine title defenses and GOAT status. I’ve said it 100 times but defending a title over and over, for years on end, is by far the most difficult thing to do in MMA. It’s that speech from Avon Barksdale in The Wire:

“You’ve only got to f*** up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain’t never gonna be slow, never be late?”

You have to be perfect, every time out, for years on end, against the best possible opponents giving you their absolute best shot. Every. Single. Time. You get sick? You lose. You have an off night? Done. Break your hand on the first punch of the night? See ya. You can do everything perfectly and still, sometimes life just happens at you in there.

Not only that, but the task gets harder every time out. There’s more tape on you, your opponents know more about you, and if you truly hold the title for years, then your existence simply shifts the MMA metagame so that the new challengers have developed a style specifically to defeat you, and they’ve been working on it for years. An endeavor which already had zero margin for error now has even less. It’s an impossible task, and only the John Wick’s of the world can pull it off.

Now, is Topuria a John Wick 3.0? If I had to guess I would say no, strictly on principle, but at the same time, it’s tough to see who out there will take it from him right now. Then again, when Max won the belt, nobody saw Volkanovski coming, at least not yet. That may well be the case for Topuria. But of the crop of most likely challengers waiting, I like his chances against all of them.

A rematch with Volkanovski would go the same way, Yair Rodriguez has too many holes in his game, and Brian Ortega isn’t good, so they’re all out. The only two men right now who could have a shot are Holloway and Movsar Evloev, but I’m skeptical on both. Evloev is a great fighter but appears to be physically incapable of finishing any opponent, which means he has to go 25 minutes against Topuria, and good luck with that. To me, Holloway is the most difficult fight for the new champ as Max has one of the greatest chins in MMA history and the volume and boxing to work Topuria over. The issue is that Max is 32 going on 45 and he’s about to fight Justin Gaethje, a man who ends careers. At some point, even the Mark Hunts of the world have their chins cracked, and I just don’t think Max can keep this up forever.

So, long story short, I’m guessing four title defenses.

Featherweight, the division of kings

Here is the list of UFC featherweight champions: Jose Aldo, Conor McGregor, Max Holloway, Alexander Volkanovski, and now Ilia Topuria. That’s two top-15 all-time greats, one top-25 all-time great, and the biggest star in the history of the sport, with absolutely zero chaff in between. Featherweight will never be the best division in the sport (that will always be lightweight) or the most historically significant (light heavyweight and welterweight), or even the most fun (right now it’s bantamweight, but that changes), but thus far it has been the division of kings.

Maybe that changes with Topuria, but as mentioned above, he has a really good shot at carrying on that legacy.

UFC 300

The funniest thing that happened this past weekend was the UFC 300 announcement, which Dana White buried by dropping it immediately after 298 ended. That was not a coincidence. White knew that for as good of a fight as Pereira vs. Hill is, it falls well below the mind-blowing announcement he promised, and so he didn’t want to give it a full news cycle by putting it out on a Tuesday. It was legitimately smart promotion because at the end of the day, UFC 300 is an insane card and once people get over the build-up to the main event, no one will care that it’s not the big one we all wanted.

And no, they couldn’t do any better. We know this because Hill came out and said this only came together on Friday. White and UFC were in full scramble drill to find something, anything other than Leon Edwards vs. Belal Muhammad. This was pretty clearly not their first choice, nor even their fifth choice. It was the one they could make happen and felt the best about. A good promotion would have — and should have — done better, but for the last few years UFC has completely cratered any long-term planning in service of solving the immediate problem. But, oh well.

The issue with UFC 300

There is one major issue with the UFC 300 main event though, and that it came on the heels of UFC announcing that 301 is going to Brazil. That’s right, the sport’s leading promotion is heading to Rio de Janeiro just three weeks after UFC 300, and instead of bringing one of its two Brazilian champions to headline the card, they put Alex Pereira on 300 in Las Vegas. Truly an astonishing level of fail.

To go back to the previous answer, this all boils down to UFC’s inability to plan even a little bit. Pereira in Brazil with Alexandre Pantoja in the co-main event is the most obvious home run you could ask for. A literal third grader could have figured that out. But instead, because the UFC did not plan ahead of 300, that all gets burned to the ground, the same way that half the Australian fighters on the roster were booked to fight a month before the promotion went to Australia (and Dricus du Plessis was scheduled too soon to turn around and fight Israel Adesanya despite being the obvious challenger).

There is no reason that Sean O’Malley vs. Chito Vera shouldn’t headline 300. Or (Mike) Heck, Gaethje vs. Holloway is a fine main event, if it was just announced as that originally. Instead, we get this and Brazil gets screwed. I’m sorry for y’all.

Best guess is they give Brazil Tom Aspinall vs. Jailton Almeida as the main event, if Almeida can beat Curtis Blaydes. But still, this is dumb.

Robert Whittaker vs. Paulo Costa

I will not go long on this but several people got in my mentions to be quite upset that I called them stupid for scoring Round 1 for Whittaker. I regret nothing. If you scored that first round for Whittaker, you are a dummy. This is not hard.

MMA scoring criteria prioritizes Effective Striking and states unequivocally that IMMEDIATE impact weighs more heavily than cumulative impact. Robert Whittaker was winning Round 1. Then he got kicked in the head and stumbled around like a drunken frat boy. Costa wins the round. If Costa had landed literal zero strikes before that, he still wins the round on criteria. But he didn’t, he landed plenty and it was a competitive — if clear — Whittaker round, until it wasn’t.

If you need more help on this, check out this wonderful series to learn how to be smarter about judging.

Merab Dvalishvili

This is the only correct take coming out of Saturday. Merab is the best bantamweight on Earth and deserves his day in court. Sadly, if Sean O’Malley beats Chito Vera, I’m not sure he gets it. I wouldn’t want to fight Merab if I was O’Malley, either.

Henry Cejudo

Sadly, the thing I’ll probably remember the most about Henry Cejudo is the oddness of his retirement and the pivot to “King of Cringe.”

Cejudo is/was an exceptional fighter. He was not the greatest combat sports athlete of all-time but his career has been unique and magnificent and better than 99.99 percent of fighters across any discipline. Unfortunately, his MMA achievements have not aged particularly well.

He should not have beaten Demetrious Johnson in the rematch, T.J. Dillashaw should never have fought at 125 pounds, Marlon Moraes went on a losing streak to rival Bigfoot Silva, and Dominick Cruz was ancient when they fought. All of his biggest wins look pretty hazy in hindsight, and even a few of them didn’t look great at the time. So instead we’re left with the thing that has been the most notable about him for the past several years, and that’s his attempt to become marketable with a bad gimmick and his ill-conceived retirement and subsequent return.

Cejudo made a severe miscalculation by retiring as a leverage play for more money. It cost him the prime of his career. Then he came back, which was somehow an even bigger misstep because now instead of retiring as a champ-champ, he will leave the sport with at least a few more losses.

If Francis Ngannou fumbled the bag, Henry Cejudo punted the whole thing to the moon.

Ian Machado Garry

Garry took home split decision win over Geoff Neal in by far the least entertaining main card fight that Garry nonetheless tried to sell as some masterclass in fight I.Q. and execution. My man, it was a split decision. I scored the bout for you, but you were one bad judge away from losing the undefeated record. Perhaps don’t try to convince us this was a brilliant accomplishment. It was a fine win, but it was deeply unmemorable, and for as self-aware as Garry can be, his inability to accept that this was a dud was annoying. Particularly when, as Jordan points out, Shavkat Rakhmonov had a Fight of the Year contender with Neal and then a Submission of the Year contender to end it. You’re compared to your peers, and you just got a C.

As for what comes next, Colby Covington seems to be correct. Covington will probably accept the fight as it’s winnable for him and he would actually be the babyface. It will be a truly heinous build-up, I’m sure, but alas, that’s the world we live in.

Mark Zuckerberg

Except the people Mark Zuckerberg supports lose, while Taylor Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs just won the Super Bowl.

Wanderlei Silva

And last but certainly not least, during UFC 298, Wanderlei Silva was announced as the latest addition to the UFC’s Hall of Fame. If you haven’t listened to the DAMN! They Were Good we did on “The Ax Murderer,” I encourage you to give it a listen, but in the simplest terms possible, this is an unimpeachable induction. Did Wanderlei have the best UFC career? No. But he’s an all-timer of an MMA fighter and one of the few fighters who truly ascended to living legend status. Well deserved.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for everyone who sent in Tweets (Xs?)! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your Tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again and see y’all next week.

MMA Fighting – All Posts

A tough watch
| BJPenn.com

UFC

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” — Mackenzie Dern on Instagram

Mackenzie Dern suffered a unanimous decision loss against No. 3-ranked strawweight contender Amanda Lemos as part of the UFC 298 event last weekend in Anaheim, a three-round shellacking that sent the former jiu-jitsu champ to her second straight defeat.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is, the UFC 298 commentary team didn’t make her cry for her losing performance (unlike last time). Still, this marks Dern’s fourth loss across her last six fights, so it’s clearly time to reject conventional wisdom for her Octagon return later this year.

“The results weren’t what I was hoping for,” Dern wrote on Instagram. “Thank you everyone for all the support! I love doing what I do! Now, it’s time to correct the mistakes and keep up the hard work! Congrats to Amanda Lemos for an amazing fight! FOTN for us!”

The 13-5 Dern, who turns 31 in just a few weeks, somehow survived her Lemos beating without any significant damage. That’s according to UFC CEO Dana White, who praised the one-time Invicta fighter for her toughness after the dust settled in “The Golden State.”

“We were convinced that she had a broken orbital,” an incredulous White remarked at UFC 298’s post-fight press conference (watch it here). “When she went down with the eye thing, we were convinced it was a broken orbital and she fought through it. I’m shocked that it’s not [broken]. She’s so tough — so tough. She’s awesome.”

A “little badass” indeed.

Dern is likely to remain in the No. 7 spot at 115 pounds, simply because she lost to a fighter ranked much higher than her in the division. No word yet on when the recently-divorced grappler will make her return to UFC, but third quarter 2024 seems like a realistic timeline.

For more results and fallout from UFC 298 click here.

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