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Perhaps the most noteworthy finish of UFC Fight Night: Burns vs. Brady on Saturday night came in the featured bout of the preliminary card, as Rongzhu suffered a gruesome facial injury at the hands of Chris Padilla. Padilla landed an elbow that went directly to one of Rongzhu’s eyes, swelling it shut and forcing the […]

Continue Reading Update Provided On Gruesome Eye Injury Suffered By Rongzhu In UFC Fight Night Loss at MMA News.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Belal Muhammad is the king of the welterweight division and he believes that his talents extend beyond the octagon.

Though it took Muhammad years to earn his shot at the 170-pound belt, he capitalized in dramatic fashion as he outworked Leon Edwards at UFC 304 this past July to become champion. Muhammad awaits his first title challenger, possibly the undefeated Shavkat Rakhmonov or former champion Kamaru Usman (or maybe both, as Muhammad has playfully suggested), but one name he’s ruling out is UFC superstar Conor McGregor.

McGregor hasn’t fought since breaking his leg against Dustin Poirier in July 2021, which hasn’t prevented speculation that he could leverage his drawing power into an immediate title shot should he return. Most recently, McGregor was scheduled to fight Michael Chandler in a welterweight bout at UFC 303, but even if that matchup is rebooked, Muhammad doesn’t think McGregor is close to No. 1 contender consideration.

“I don’t think he’ll look good at 170,” Muhammad said of McGregor’s welterweight move, in an interview with Submission Radio. “The dude doesn’t look good in life right now. He looks like he’s coked out. He looks like he’s on drugs. If he beats Michael Chandler, I wouldn’t even let him skip the line, because like I said, there’s guys that work for it. There’s guys that got here. And then even with the last fight with Colby [Covington] skipping the line for Leon. I’m like, I would never do that because there’s guys that are actually putting the work in. For legacy-wise, obviously I would want to slap Conor around, but there would be too much for it not to happen, right? It took him this long to fight this fight. It took him this long to make this fight happen with Chandler.

“So for them to even think that, ‘Conor’s going to fight for the welterweight belt,’ then I gotta sit here and wait two years. No, it’s not going to happen. I’ll give it to the guys that are actually fighting, guys that are actually putting the work in and guys that deserve it. Conor doesn’t deserve it. I hope he fights Chandler, because I feel bad for Chandler, that Chandler waited this long for it. So I hope that fight actually happens. But honestly, I don’t think it happens.”

The welterweight division has seen a surge of promising contenders, including Rakhmonov, Jack Della Maddalena, and Ian Machado Garry, plus a handful of fighters who aren’t far off from entering the top-10 such as Joaquin Buckley and Michael Morales. That’s a long list of names to skip over and that’s assuming McGregor and Muhammad’s timelines ever line up.

McGregor’s inactivity hasn’t stopped him from hurling insults at his fellow fighters on social media and recently bringing his popularity to the big screen with a starring role in Road House. Should his box-office muscle be enough to convince the UFC to grant him a title shot upon his return, Muhammad welcomes the opportunity to silence McGregor on the microphone.

“I want that interaction because I want guys that go back and forth,” Muhammad said. “It’s funner for me when guys talk. When Kamaru’s talking, it’s fun, and I love the going back and forth because I love trash talking. I love hearing it and then it makes the fight for me more exciting. When guys are the nicest guys in the world, there’s nothing that I can say and I wouldn’t even want to fake it where I’m talking trash to them. You can’t talk trash to ‘Wonderboy’ [Stephen Thompson]. You can’t talk trash to Demian Maia. So, for me, those types of fights are the ones that are exciting for me. Those types of fights would be fun.

“Conor’s lost his edge in the trash talk game right now. Even with his last couple of fights with [Poirier], it was just like, ‘Bro, what the… this is Conor?’ It’s like a fake version of Conor now. It would be fun to embarrass him on the mic.”

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Demetrious Johnson announced his retirement from fighting on Friday and it looks like he’s got two Hall of Fame inductions in his future.

Just after he revealed that he was calling it a career, ONE Championship announced that Johnson would serve as the inaugural member of the promotion’s Hall of Fame. Now UFC CEO Dana White said the same for the UFC Hall of Fame after learning that Johnson was retiring from the sport.

“Yeah, I didn’t know that [he retired],” White said about Johnson when speaking to Grind City Media.

“Good for him. Incredible career he had. I never had a problem with Demetrious Johnson. Absolutely [he’s a UFC Hall of Famer].”

While Johnson’s announcement made the rounds on Friday, White actually didn’t hear the news until Saturday but he had nothing but glowing praise for the former UFC flyweight champion.

Johnson was not only the first ever 125-pound champion in the UFC but he also holds the record for the most title defenses in promotion history with 11 straight. Johnson also holds the record for the most wins in UFC flyweight title fights with 12, the most UFC flyweight title fights with 13, the most submissions in UFC title fights with five and a laundry list of other accomplishments after spending seven years with the organization.

His UFC run ended after Johnson was traded to ONE Championship in exchange for Ben Askren in a historic deal. Following the trade, Johnson put together an impressive run in ONE as well capturing both the flyweight title and the ONE Flyweight Grand Prix title as well as a victory over striking legend Rodtang Jitmuangon in a mixed rules fight in 2022.

While his career ended elsewhere, White believes he was actually one of Johnson’s biggest supporters, especially when he struggled to gain acceptance from fans in the UFC.

“Listen if you go back to when he was here, I was defending him from the fans,” White said. “Who’s defended Demetrious Johnson more than me?”

There’s no telling when Johnson may actually go into the UFC Hall of Fame but it appears that’s definitely going to happen one day in the future now that he’s retired.

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Title Shot?
| BJPenn.com

UFC

Paul says the UFC is slow-playing McGregor’s contract in order to improve their position during upcoming media rights negotiations.

Jake Paul is shining a light on what he thinks has kept Conor McGregor out of the cage for so long despite the UFC superstar being healthy and ready to go since mid-2023.

We’re still waiting for UFC to announce a new date for Conor McGregor’s return fight. Currently, it’s been penciled in for UFC 310 on December 7th. But the promotion continues to be extremely shifty about locking McGregor in. UFC CEO Dana White regularly shoots down Mac return dates and even suggests Conor may never fight again.

So what’s going on? Why would the UFC continue to delay the return of their biggest superstar? In a new episode of Jake Paul’s BS podcast with special guest Francis Ngannou, “The Problem Child” shared his theory on the situation.

“For the people at home who don’t understand it, they’re like, ‘Why is Conor not fighting?’” Paul said. “So Conor has two fights left on his fight deal, but the UFC is trying to renew their [broadcast] rights deal because they license their content, which are the fights, to platforms. So they’re trying to renew their deal — they’re negotiating to let multiple people, but let’s say they’re gonna go with ESPN. They’re trying to renew the deal and get the most amount of money.”

“A part of that negotiation is, ‘Hey, we have Conor McGregor for two more fights.’ But if you were to fight now, that wouldn’t be a part of the negotiation. The company would be like, ‘Oh, well, you only have Conor for one fight.’ So that’s why Conor is not fighting right now.”

The UFC is set to start negotiating new broadcast deals at the start of 2025 in anticipation of their ESPN deal ending later in the year. Those deals will be worth billions with or without McGregor, but we don’t doubt he could sway the value of a package by hundreds of millions of dollars.

But this could be a much simpler story we’ve seen many times before. In general, the UFC likes re-signing fighters before their contracts expire. And if you’re a big star like Francis Ngannou that has turned down a new contract, they’ll slow-play the remaining fights on your contract as much as possible.

“I feel like they were applying this financial pressure on me [by not booking me] because they know that I need to fight to make money to live,” Ngannou told Paul. “And then by not getting those fights, giving me excuses all the time, I will probably crawl back and say, ‘Okay, I take the contract and I take the money,’ or something like that.”

“I fought once for 20 seconds in the last 16 months,” Ngannou wrote on X (formerly Twitter) back in October 2020. Things wouldn’t get much better. He’d fight just once in 2021, and once in 2022.

Are there similar cut-throat business practices at play with Conor McGregor? “The Notorious” has definitely vented his frustration at return delays multiple times, and the promotion definitely could have gotten him back in the cage earlier if they really wanted to. Back during the pandemic lockdowns they admitted to shelving him because they’d lose too much money without a gate. So financial concerns have already resulted in us getting less Mac fights.

We’ll have to wait and see if his expected December return booking materializes. If it doesn’t, it certainly adds to the evidence that some behind-the-scenes business chicanery is at play.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

The ‘UFC 306 Countdown’ video features the two title fights at the top of the anticipated fight card next Saturday night at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nev.

In the main event, UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley puts his belt on the line against Merab Dvavlishvili. UFC flyweight champion Alexa Grasso meets Valentina Shevchenko in the co-main event.

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