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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

When Belal Muhammad defeated Leon Edwards to win the Welterweight crown, “The Bully” revealed some grand aspirations. Muhammad announced his intentions of defending the title often, taking on all comers, and jumping up to 185-pounds to dethrone Dricus Du Plessis.

According to most fight fans, the most logical next contender is Shavkat Rakhmonov. The undefeated Kazakh talent has finished all his opponents, and he’s riding a six-fight win streak opposite quality opposition like Geoff Neal and Stephen Thompson. There are other good options like Ian Garry and Jack Della Maddalena, but Muhammad has spent most of his time online talking trash with Kamaru Usman. The former Welterweight kingpin is a great fighter, but he’s lost three in a row and shouldn’t be considered until back in the win column.

Rakhmonov is frustrated. “Nomad” is actively campaigning for his title shot, and based on his recent social media post, it’s not going very well.

He wrote, “After all the talk about being an active champion, truth is Belal isn’t even ready to defend his title this year.”

At the moment, the Welterweight title picture is very up in the air. It could simply be that UFC already has plans for their December pay-per-view (PPV) and needs Muhammad to defend in January, regardless of whether the planned opponent is Usman or Rakhmonov.

Insomnia

This throwback photo of future Polish champions Jan Blachowicz and Joanna Jedrzejczyk is my favorite social media thing I’ve seen in weeks.

Pannie Kianzad lost three in a row to solid competition, but she was still ranked in the Bantamweight Top 15. A somewhat surprising cut?

Take a look at the full undercard for UFC Vegas 98:

Who should Israel Adesanya fight in his return? I think a reasonable step back — like a Brendan Allen or so — would make the most sense.

Demetrious Johnson takes us inside the world of Street Beefs:

Stop sending Ben Askren your Laura Sanko fan mail!

Luke Rockhold and Craig Jones are enjoying that post-competition glow.

Slips, rips, and KO clips

I always enjoy when a fighter too lanky for overhands still has a good overhand.

A close range onslaught produces a nasty cut and stoppage victory.

Ducked directly into a full power knee …

Random Land

After and before Korean BBQ.

Midnight Music: Rock, 1973

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling has always had a somewhat rocky relationship with certain parts of the MMA fanbase.

“Funkmaster” has an awkward striking style and a strong grappling game which means that his fights aren’t always the most exciting to watch, even if he’s incredibly effective at what he does.

Aside from this, another point that saw some of the UFC’s audience take a dislike to Sterling was what happened at UFC 259, where he challenged Petr Yan for the 135-pound title.

Yan landed an illegal knee to Sterling’s head whilst he was a downed opponent in the fourth round which the challenger couldn’t recover from.

As a result, Yan was disqualified, meaning that the title changed hands in disappointing fashion.

Eric Nicksick Recalls How Aljamain Sterling Had No Memory Of UFC 259 On His Journey Home

Despite the knee strike being a clear and obvious foul on Yan’s side, some fans didn’t like the way Sterling won the title as a result, and questioned whether he actually couldn’t continue or if he was looking for a way out because the fight wasn’t going his way.

This was cleared up during a recent episode of the Verse Us podcast where Sterling joined Xtreme Couture head coach Eric Nicksick, who was in his corner on that night.

Nicksick provided more details about how that decision was made to not continue and what the aftermath of that knee landing was like.

He recalled how, after nominating himself to stay with Sterling and take him back home from the hospital, it was clear that he had no memory of what had just happened.

“I said to Ray [Longo], I’ll go to the hospital with him and I had to sit in the f****** parking lot. You didn’t get to sit in the waiting room, this is COVID era so I get a text from him or whoever was kind of there, one of the nurses or UFC personnel, ‘Hey, he’s ready, you can come around the back, you can pick him up.’

“We get in the car and what, 30-minute ride home and this is why I know, from a personal level, that this dude wasn’t faking. 30-minutes of him asking round after round after round. I say this because guys that I know that have been knocked out or have had head trauma have asked the same questions. ‘What happened in round one? What happened in round two?’ Going through everything in their head.”

Sterling returns at UFC 307 where he faces Movsar Evloev in search of his second consecutive win at featherweight.

Read also: Aljamain Sterling Accuses Sean O’Malley Of Being Given The ‘Jake Paul Route’ By The UFC: “Stacking The Deck Against His Opponent”

Continue Reading Aljamain Sterling’s Cornerman Clarifies Any Doubt Over Faking Petr Yan Disqualification & Title Win at MMA News.

MMA News

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Dana White has given up on trying to figure out Merab Dvalishvili.

The No. 1 contender at 135 pounds has developed a reputation for posting viral videos on social media, but his latest efforts have caused White some major frustration. Dvalishvili recently revealed a nasty cut over his left eye, which happened just weeks ahead of his main event bout with bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley at UFC 306 on Sept. 14.

White was confounded by Dvalishvili’s decision to share that injury with the public, so one can only imagine how he felt when Dvalishvili subsequently posted a follow-up in which he was seen snipping away at stitches with a large pair of scissors.

“Isn’t he awesome?” White said when asked about the clip following Tuesday’s Contender Series event at UFC APEX in Las Vegas. “I think he’s just f*cking with me now, to be honest with you.”

The extent of Dvalishvili’s injury is unknown, though it’s been cause for concern for the UFC and its fans as cuts have often led to bouts being cancelled in the past or to fighters entering their matchups with a significant handicap given that the cut could presumably be easily reopened. Dvalishvili appears to be confident that the cut is a non-issue ahead of his title challenge.

Since beginning his UFC run with back-to-back losses, Dvalishvili has rattled off 10 consecutive victories. The Georgian standout likely would have fought for a title earlier were it not held by his close friend Aljamain Sterling, who dropped the title to O’Malley at UFC 292 in August 2023.

White trusts that Dvalishvili knows what he’s doing and isn’t jeopardizing his long-awaited championship opportunity, not to mention the headlining bout of an event that White and company are promoting as the “greatest live sporting event of all time.”

“Do what you want,” White said. “You ever see the scissors they take stitches out with? They’re tiny and they have that thing on there so you don’t cut yourself. You can slide them up under the stitches, you don’t cut yourself. This guy had f*cking bush shears that he was using, that you trim your f*cking bushes with, that gardener’s use. Whatever. Good for him.”

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Imminent
| BJPenn.com

Ilia Topuria is pretty darn good.

The undefeated 15-0 Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Featherweight champion has risen to superstardom just as he anticipated. While all have fallen before him, Topuria still has plenty left to accomplish at age 27.

Regarding his technical prowess and overall skillset, “El Matador” is one of the planet’s more dangerous and complete fighters. For longtime UFC commentator, Joe Rogan, there’s not much, if anything, Topuria does wrong.

“One of the things that is phenomenal about him is his technique,” Rogan said on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast (h/t MMA Junkie). “His technique is perfect. There’s no fat in his technique. There’s no wasted movements, so when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined.

“Look at how he hits the pads, and when you watch how he hits pads — [Floyd] Mayweather is a great example of that, as well,” he concluded. “Some of the best hands in the sport. Current UFC featherweight champion and knocked out [Alexander] Volkanovski, who is maybe the greatest of all time.”

Match ups in mixed martial arts (MMA) don’t get much better than Topuria’s first title defense. He’ll take on the former Featherweight champion and current Baddest Motherf*cker (BMF) champion in UFC 308’s main event on Oct. 26, 2024.

Rogan, who is also a big Holloway fan, surely can’t wait for the likely epic clash

“See how he’s moving his head when a guy throws punches? Slipping just slightly? The speed, man,” Rogan said. “The f*cking speed of that. Look at the hand speed. F*cking incredible. If you know how difficult that is to do and do it that fast. I mean, these are like five, six punches a second and just phenomenal technique.”

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

It’s no secret that former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier always keeps a watchful eye on the best wrestlers coming up in the United States.

As a two-time Olympian and current coach of a high-school wrestling team, Cormier stays close to the sport he grew up loving before becoming a fighter, but it turns out he actually interacted with a future American gold medalist several years ago and didn’t even know it. Primarily training out of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Cormier crosses paths with a lot of fighters, Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners, and wrestlers who also work out at the gym — and that included future 2024 Olympic gold medalist Amit Elor.

“A little backstory, Amir Elor used to always be around the Bay area with a woman named Carolyn Wester, she coached at a club called Wrestling Prep and she teaches wrestling,” Cormier said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “She’s a lady that coaches and she’s a tremendous coach, very smart lady.

“She would bring Amit into [American Kickboxing Academy]. I didn’t know who she was but she would wrestle with the boys. I have all these pictures of Amit, and Carolyn would take pictures of Amit with the team. That’s one thing they do in MMA gyms. At the end of practice, everybody gets together for a photo. Amit’s in a lot of those pictures.”

Elor’s work obviously paid off. She captured gold at 68kg with a stunning run through the 2024 Olympics, ultimately outscoring her opponents by a ridiculous margin of 31-2. At 20 years old, she also became the youngest American to ever win a gold medal in wrestling — a record once held by Henry Cejudo, who won his gold medal in 2008.

None of it came to a surprise to Elor’s coach, who told Cormier before the Olympics started that she was going to dominate the field.

“Carolyn goes, ‘Amit’s wrestling [at the Olympics],’ and I go, ‘The little girl from the gym?’” Cormier recounted. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, and she’s going to win.’ I’m like, ‘She’s that good?’ And she was like, ‘She’s going to win.’”

Not only did Elor win in emphatic fashion, she shared that glory with her teammates after the U.S. women went home with two gold medals — the other won by Sarah Hildebrandt — a silver from 20-year-old phenom Kennedy Blades, and a bronze for Helen Maroulis.

“She killed it,” Cormier said of Elor. “That first match, talk about bad luck. The World Champion from the year before from that weight class gets the World Champion from the weight up in her very first match. [Elor] destroys her. She went onto kill the rest of the field after that.”

While Elor’s focus remains on wrestling, especially with the 2028 Olympics happening in her home state of California, she has a lot of time left to accomplish even more goals.

Elor could potentially wrestle across at least three Olympic cycles and would only be 28 when it was all over.

When the day comes that she hangs her singlet up for the final time, Cormier believes Elor is destined to make waves in MMA.

“She’s going to fight,” Cormier said. “She’s going to be a fighter. For as good as she is in wrestling, she does really well in judo, she does tremendous in jiu-jitsu. If she does start doing [MMA] competitively, they’re going to be in trouble.”

First things first, Cormier wants Elor to stick with wrestling because she’s going to remain a huge asset to the American team. As much as Cormier loved his UFC career and the money and accomplishments that came along with it, he knows there’s nothing quite like chasing Olympic glory.

“We can’t lose Amit Elor,” Cormier said. “I love when great wrestlers come into mixed martial arts, but I’m always for them doing it after they’re done chasing their Olympic dreams. You don’t get to do that again. If you have an opportunity to be the best in the world, you chase that as long as you can and then you go do something different. I don’t think it should be coming earlier than needed.

“You go and wrestle as long as you need to wrestle, and then you come to try and make the money as the UFC fighter.”

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