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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

The year was 2015. Quemuel Ottoni was entering the Jungle Fight cage to face a man called Alex Pereira. “Poatan” was a talented kickboxer making his MMA debut, and Ottoni won via third-round submission after an exciting contest. Pereira would go on to eventually become two-division champion in GLORY and the UFC—a path that also changed Ottoni’s life.

Ottoni returned to Jungle Fight after traveling around his native Brazil — and a trip to Chechnya — and captured the welterweight title before signing with PFL. Injuries led to the cancellation of that deal and he now fights for a major opportunity Tuesday night, facing the undefeated Kody Steele at Dana White’s Contender Series at UFC APEX in Las Vegas.

Those big opportunities were definitely helped by the fact he tapped out a man that has become one of UFC’s biggest stars in 2024, but Ottoni says it also brought negatives.

“It has obviously helped me, but I don’t know if [that win] is good or bad,” Ottoni said in an interview with MMA Fighting. “The past two years were full of criticism, a lot of bad things came with it. It was good, of course, because it has given me this chance [at DWCS], but it has brought a ton of bad weight along with it.

“Alex has a lot of fans, and there are good and bad fans. They couldn’t see a highlight or any of that, a MMA website posting about me, that they tagged and attacked me. Or someone from my family would comment on my post and they would reply with prejudice. It’s not Poatan’s fault, but one of his fans attacked my brother with prejudice. And that has bothered me for years. I was very upset about it.”

“But I managed to get one of them,” he continued. “My mom commented on a photo I posted and this guy started to attack her. I was born on the East Zone [of Sao Paulo], brother, and we know a lot of people. I was not born a playboy, you know? Some people there said, ‘We’ll find the guy and talk to him face to face.’ He apologized, but a lot of it upset me. These past two years were a mix of emotions.”

Ottoni is now a lightweight, distant to Pereira by 50 pounds, but the UFC hopeful doesn’t expect that online hate to ever go away. Ottoni said there’s no ill will towards Pereira—nor friendship—but he’s working on being “more mature” on how he deals with fan interactions.

The dream of fighting on U.S. soil comes true Tuesday night in Las Vegas and Ottoni said he welcomed all challenges at DWCS — and the same for a possible UFC future, if he convinces Dana White to award him a deal with a victory.

“I never picked easy opponents,” said Ottoni, who won his past five fights on the Brazilian circuit. “The first opponent they gave me on the Contender was an 8-0 guy that was beating everybody up but he pulled out, and now they gave me [Steele]. I can’t choose. We’re going to the world’s biggest promotion and I can’t choose. I know a lot of people that picked fights in Brazil and made it to the UFC but couldn’t stay there. I know I’ll impress them with a win. If it’s a knockout or a submission… I know he’s a jiu-jitsu guy but I’ve fought grapplers before and caught them when they made mistakes. I know it’s a good fight and fans will love watching it.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Dana White is getting closer to pinning down a return date for Conor McGregor’s comeback.

Tuesday marks exactly 38 months since McGregor’s most recent fight, a loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in July 2021 that was made all the worse by “The Notorious” breaking his leg in the contest. The injury sidelined McGregor for an extended period of time and he hasn’t competed since, raising questions as to the state of his competitive future.

McGregor has filled his time starring in movies (including the 2024 hit Road House), as well as signing on for an executive position in the fast-rising BKFC promotion. He was scheduled to fight rival Michael Chandler at UFC 303 this past June, but withdrew from that date due to injury. As of now, UFC CEO Dana White is optimistic that his biggest box office draw will be back at the start of next year.

“Let me tell you this, I was the one this year saying I don’t think he’s going to fight this year, amid all the talk and everything else,” White told New York Post Sports. “Even the fight being set up in the press conference.

“Conor McGregor will fight next year, early 2025. He’s had so much time off, as far as the hunger, he’s a very wealthy guy. We’ll find out. We’ll find out when he comes back, but he is definitely one of the big superstars of the sport that elevated the UFC all throughout Europe and other parts of the world. He’s been a big star and a great partner for us.”

Should McGregor step back into the octagon as planned, he seeks his first win since a 40-second knockout of Donald Cerrone at UFC 246 in January 2020. Since that victory, he has suffered back-to-back losses to his longtime rival Poirier.

Despite the fighter frequently mentioning that he would like to fight in December, White has held firm that it’s unlikely we see McGregor return soon, and he told reporters this past August that the former two-division champion will not fight this year.

“We talked. We talked,” White said following the Aug. 13 episode of Dana White’s Contender Series. “We didn’t meet up but we talked, and yeah, he wants to fight. So we’ll figure it out.

“[But] not this year. He won’t fight this year.”

McGregor responded shortly after in a later-deleted tweet, writing, “Ah Dana, December is the date! Bring the calendar year home with a winning event! Come on now, what’s this? I am off to altitude next month to prepare. DECEMBER! Tell Dana and UFC WE WANT DECEMBER! WE DESERVE DECEMBER!”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Classic Henry
| BJPenn.com

Joshua has done a lot of rebuilding after some tough losses, and now we’re seeing the results of his hard work in his last four dominant wins.

After a tough stretch that saw Anthony Joshua lose his heavyweight boxing belts to Andy Ruiz Jr. and drop two decisions to Oleksandr Usyk, “A.J.” is looking back in top form with four wins in a row. His next challenge comes from Daniel Dubois on September 21st, and Joshua is feeling confident because he’s put the work into rebuilding himself from the ground up following those losses.

“You always believe in yourself, but it’s hard when people stop believing in you as well,” he said in a new interview with DAZN. “You have, like, an over-pressure from people saying that you’re not that same person anymore, so you go back and rebuild.”

“I went through that rebuilding process. And, if you look at the consistency, I’m not saying I’ve beaten world champion after world champion, but in order to get to the world championships, I’ve had to take steps. And each fight has led me here. Each fight has been a good progression: from going 12 rounds with Franklin, 7 with Helenius, down to 5 with Wallin, then to 2 with Ngannou.”

Joshua credits his easy second round KO win over Francis Ngannou back in March to working smarter.

“I look at the Ngannou fight — the guy was a juggernaut, he was massive,” he said. “And I thought to myself, ‘If I only depended on strength it would have been a lot tougher fight.’ But due to the fact that I’ve gone through a process where I’ve tried to improve my IQ, I was able to dispatch a Goliath in quick fashion.”

“I’m not saying he was an elite boxer, but I took it on the premise of what he did versus Tyson Fury, who was the WBC champion. He gave Fury one of his toughest nights in the ring. So I thought this guy, he knows what he’s doing. And due to the fact that I went away and I studied, I learned some different tricks. I was able to dispatch of him in two rounds when the WBC heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury struggled to take him in ten rounds.”

At 34 years old, “A.J.” believes he’s only getting better.

“Yeah, the best is always gonna be yet to come,” he said. “To me as a boxer, as I am giving a service to my fans, I’m giving a service to the sport. I should never sit back and be like, ‘Yeah. I’m the best I can be. I always got to look at myself and sit down on my team. How can we make this better? So yeah, I try and improve in every in every aspect.”

He’ll have a chance to show off his latest improvements in Wembley Stadium against Daniel Dubois on September 21st, in front of a record crowd of 96,000 fans.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

At her peak, Ronda Rousey was the only person on the UFC roster who could rival Conor McGregor in sheer popularity and attention but her rapid fall from grace almost matched her ascension to superstardom.

In less than a four-year span, Rousey helped usher women into the UFC. She became a six-time defending champion but then suffered a brutal knockout loss to Holly Holm and only made one more appearance getting blitzed by Amanda Nunes in 48 seconds before leaving the sport forever. While she did get inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, Rousey rarely addressed her losses or her exit from the sport until more recently when she revealed that a severe history of concussions really left her no choice but to stop fighting.

Her complicated legacy left Rousey believing that if she attended a UFC event these days that she would face a hostile audience rather than fans waiting to greet her with open arms.

Kayla Harrison, who counted Rousey as a roommate and a teammate when both were competing in judo for the United States, understands that feelings are mixed when it comes to the former UFC bantamweight champion, but her impact on the sport is undeniable.

“I think for me, no matter who Ronda is as a person and no matter what she says or thinks or how she does things or how she handles losses, how she handles any of it, no matter what, you cannot deny the fact that she shattered a ceiling for women,” Harrison told MMA Fighting. “Dana White went on record multiple times saying that he would never have women in the UFC. She f*cking blasted right through that.

“To me, that’s her legacy. No matter what she says or what she does, of course humans are going to be humans, people deal with things the way they deal with things but she paved the way when there was no way. That I am eternally grateful [for].”

Long before she was conquering the PFL, and becoming a high-profile free agency addition to the UFC roster, Harrison looked up to Rousey as the gold standard when it came to her dreams of becoming an Olympic champion.

While she didn’t win gold, Rousey was the first American woman to win a medal in judo when she captured bronze at the 2008 games in Beijing, China. Four years later, Harrison surpassed Rousey by becoming the first American to ever win gold in judo and then she did it again at the 2016 Olympics.

Much like their shared history in judo, Harrison eventually followed in Rousey’s footsteps when it came to MMA as well.

“At one point, she was my role model and I lived with her, I trained with her,” Harrison said. “Anything she did, I wanted to do better. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do after the Olympics. I didn’t know where I was going to go. She showed me this path and then she made that path really wide.”

Harrison can’t say for certain what would have happened in her post-Olympics career if Rousey hadn’t stormed into the UFC and became a massive draw for the company.

While women’s MMA existed long before Rousey arrived, her impact changed the game, especially where the UFC was involved.

That’s why Harrison still holds Rousey in such high regard regardless of how she retired or the way she handled herself on the way out.

“[Women’s MMA] went from like oh maybe you could make a little bit of money and maybe girls can fight, too, to like there are young girls all over the world right now that are training MMA and who are asskickers and who are not afraid to be big and strong and powerful and confident,” Harrison said. “Ronda is a part of that. That’s history. That’s powerful.

“That just goes to show it doesn’t matter who you are, you can do great things. Again, no matter how she deals with it, or what she says about it, the end of her career, she made a way when there wasn’t a way. That’s to me, her legacy.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion Alexa Grasso wants to become a member of the two-division titleholders’ club, but not at the expense of her teammates and fellow countrywomen. Grasso’s next fight is one of the main attractions on offer at this weekend’s Noche UFC (UFC 306) pay-per-view event, set to go down inside the unique surroundings […]

Continue Reading Alexa Grasso Explains ‘Pausing’ Double-Champ Ambitions Ahead Of Noche UFC Title Defense at MMA News.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts