CombatSports.org

submitted by /u/SokoudjouFan [link] [comments]

MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Colby Covington sees plenty of big fights ahead when he returns to action.

December will mark a year since Covington’s most recent fight, a loss to then-welterweight champion Leon Edwards in the main event of UFC 296. Since then, Covington has been relatively quiet, though he has spent much of 2024 campaigning for President Donald Trump. With Trump once again having been elected to office, Covington is free to focus on his own career.

And he already has a few names in mind, including top welterweight contender Jack Della Maddalena.

“We’ve been talking about this fight with Jack Della Maddalena,” Covington told Submission Radio (transcription via Denis Shkuratov). “I think it makes a lot of sense. He got a big win in my hometown in Miami last time he was out here so he has a little bit of a name out here. He’s undefeated. He’s hungry. He’s fearless. He’s an exciting fighter.

“I think that’s a fight that the fans would be intrigued with. I think it’s a high-level fight. It’s a top contender fight that establishes who’s the next contender for the belt.”

Della Maddalena is one of the hottest names at 170 pounds, with seven straight wins to kick off his UFC career. Overall, he has won 17 straight fights after beginning his pro career 0-2. This past March, the Australian slugger defeated one-time UFC title challenger defeated one-time UFC title challenger Gilbert Burns by third-round knockout and he currently stands at No. 4 in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings.

While Covington is eager to climb back up the charts, he’s also entertaining grudge matches. One fighter who Covington has gone back and forth with in the media is lightweight contender Paddy Pimblett. If Pimblett wants to jump up in weight, Covington is eager to slap him back down.

“He’d never fight again,” Covington said. “It’d be the last fight that he’d ever have in the Octagon. I would beat him silly from pillar to post. I’d beat him so bad it’d be one of the worst beatings in UFC history. I don’t think the athletic commission would be able to sanction a fight for him ever again after the damage I would do to Paddy f*cking Pimblett. The guy’s an absolute joke and it’s just hilarious because last time I saw him on Fight Week, he’s walking down, literally walked by me, like, three times. Every time he puts his head straight down, doesn’t make any eye contact, but now he wants to talk a big game. So Paddy, if you’re really about that life, come see me. Come see the ‘King of Miami.’

“Call [UFC executive] Hunter [Campbell]. You know what? You probably don’t even have the boss’s number. You probably have to go through, like, the matchmakers or something. Don’t worry, I’ll put in a call to the boss. We can get this fight going if you’re really about that. And you know what? More importantly, you don’t got to cut weight. I know you’re a big guy. You’re bigger than me anyways. So come up to welterweight, eat as much food as you want, and bring your A-game and pack a lunch because it’s going to be the last time you ever fight again.”

Long term, Covington still believes he can fight for UFC gold. Though Covington’s performance against Edwards was forgettable, he was previously part of two entertaining title fights with Kamaru Usman, and the urge to prove himself against the best remains.

He’s eager to fight undefeated welterweight Shavkat Rakhmonov, who is looking for a dance partner now after UFC champion Belal Muhammad was forced to withdraw from their UFC 310 main event meeting due to a toe infection. If Rakhmonov finds a new opponent for the Dec. 7 card, regardless of the result, Covington wants a piece of him.

“I think I can walk him down and pressure him and he’s not going to like my pressure,” Covington said of the Rakhmonov matchup. “He doesn’t do very well with southpaws. We saw how he did with the busboy, Geoff Neal, that was a very competitive fight. He hasn’t really fought a top, top contender yet. He’s fought some gatekeepers in the division, some some guys right on the cusp of the top 10, but he’s never fought a champion like me and a guy who’s just going to come at him for for five straight rounds and just walk him down.

“So I think I match up well with him. He stands very tall. I don’t know, I don’t see anything special with him. You know, he has some good submissions, he’s slick, but that’s when he can control the wrestling. He’s not going to control the wrestling on me. I think I can beat him pretty easily and I think it’s a favorable fight. It’s a fight that I want in the future whether he wins or loses in December.”

Watch Covington’s interview with Submission Radio below.

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Good old Islam
| BJPenn.com

145 pound fighters better work on their rolling heel hook defense, because Ryan Hall is returning in 2025 after a litany of injuries put him on the shelf for three years.

Watch out, UFC featherweight division: Ryan Hall is on his way back to competing.

Hall is an elite level grappler and IBJJF world champion known for his nasty leg locks. In the UFC he is known as that weirdo who spammed Granby rolls endlessly in an attempt to grab heel hooks. The gameplan was odd but effective — he went 5-1 in the UFC with it, beating Artem Lobov, Gray Maynard, BJ Penn, and Darren Elkins.

He did not beat Ilia Topuria with it … “El Matador” sent him to the shadow realm with a blistering KO when they fought in 2021. After that, Hall earned one more win over Darrick Minner before disappearing for three years.

Now in a new interview with BJPenn.com he describes what’s kept him off cards, “Basically the most serious string of of unfortunate health stuff that I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

“I’ve had 21 general anesthesia surgeries since my last fight,” Hall said. “Hold on … 19 since that fight. There were two prior. So yeah man, it’s kinda been a bit of a journey.”

“I got fallen on, tore my ACL, had to fix a plantar plate that was torn under my foot, got fallen on again, had to have a tightrope surgery — the one that Pat Mahomes and a couple of other people have had. The ACL got infected, had to have a couple of emergency septic arthritis [surgeries]. The tightrope, I was actually allergic to the hardware they put in me somehow, so that had to be re-done.”

“The big one recently is I had a torn shoulder,” he added. “I had a 270 degree tear in my labrum, my torn rotator cuff, big old cyst in my shoulder that was causing weird nerve stuff too. Getting that all fixed as well, you know, has has been huge.”

“Finally on the back end of it, and doing a heck of a lot better,” he concluded.

With all of Hall’s stretches of inactivity you’d think he’s just too fragile to compete in the rough and tumble world of MMA. But he clarified that this was the first stretch of serious injuries he’s ever had over a lifetime of combat sports competition. It all started leading into the Topuria match.

“I went 15 years completely bulletproof,” he said. “I ended up getting fallen on and tore my hip right before that fight and I didn’t know how much that really affected me … About half the surgeries that I had more than half the surgeries that I had were actually, ‘Oops. We screwed that one up. Sorry, dude. Let’s run it back. Didn’t mean to goof up’ … I had 6 elbow surgeries, 5 knee surgeries.”

Now he’s with a new doctor who fixed his knee properly and took care of his shoulder. He’s looking to make a comeback in 2025, although the exact date and even weightclass is in question. There’s a chance he could drop from featherweight to bantamweight. Hopefully he won’t have the same issues securing a fight.

“I’ve been in the UFC for 9 years, and I had long stretches of time where nobody would fight me,” Hall said. “This is the third separate two-plus year period during my time in the UFC of no fights. This one was on me, though, because that’s just injuries. The other two were nobody would fight.”

“I had fight after fight after fight get declined or fight after fight fall through. And then it turns out that your only loss is [to Ilia Topuria] under really difficult circumstances. I had a bunch of injuries going into that fight … he’s a great fighter anyway, and the only fight I lost is [to] the current champ.”

MMAmania.com – All Posts

submitted by /u/SugarShow37 [link] [comments]

MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

BKFC champion Kai Stewart wasn’t necessarily looking for a fight against fellow Montana native Sean O’Malley, but now he actually likes that idea.

As he prepares to defend his title on home soil against UFC veteran Jimmie Rivera on Saturday, Stewart addressed his beef with O’Malley, which dates back to UFC 292, the night that the flamboyant Contender Series veteran first captured the bantamweight championship. It was an odd interaction when O’Malley was asked about the rise of combat sports in Montana and when Stewart’s name was mentioned, he responded by saying “that kid sucks … he’s in my DMs talking shit, I don’t even know this kid.”

It turns out the direct message was from four years ago but apparently O’Malley never forgot.

“So the DM in question was from 2020, this was 2023 when he beat [Aljamain Sterling],” Stewart told MMA Fighting. “It’s from 2020, he posted something about wrestlers and one of my really good friends is Myles Mazurkiewicz, if you type that name versus Sean O’Malley on YouTube, you’ll see what happens.

“My only negative DM to him was, ‘What about Myles Mazurkiewicz, the only wrestler you’ve ever faced?’ Apparently that stuck because three years down the road he hit me with that.”

The fight in question came when O’Malley was still an amateur and he suffered a loss to Mazurkiewicz, was a standout wrestler at the University of Providence in Montana. Stewart says that was the only private message he ever sent to O’Malley and that seemingly innocuous interaction led to some ill feelings between them.

In addition to that incident, Stewart revealed he also received an opportunity from O’Malley’s team to face off with one of his training partners with the now-former UFC champion offering up a bonus to make the fight happen. While Stewart does have a pro MMA bout on his résumé, he’s now a reigning and defending BKFC champion and he has no plans to burn the promotion by trying to pursue a grudge match against one of O’Malley’s boys.

“They said, ‘Sean O’Malley will give you $ 20,000 if you can sign up and fight against our guy and win,’” Stewart said. “I was like obviously I’m not giving up my world title to fight a 1-0 pro fighter in MMA. Absolutely not. It’s just little things like that. They’re just trying real hard to see a downfall in me because I think they’re just scared that I’m coming, especially after that Merab [Dvalishvili] fight.”

Despite the simmering bad blood between them, Stewart says he still openly roots for O’Malley whenever he competes because he always wants to show support to his fellow fighters from Montana.

“I’ve rooted for him every single fight,” Stewart said. “People said Merab was just going to do what he did to O’Malley and I thought it was possible but also I saw how chinny Merab is. If I was going to put my money down on the fight, I would probably put my money on Sean. That’s what I was telling people. Sean is a sniper. Then Merab went out and did that.

“I still supported him through everything because Montana to the moon. But eventually the forces are going to clash and it’s going to be good. If there’s any beef, it’s the Montana way, let’s just take care of it.”

It might seem impossible to imagine a fight between Stewart and O’Malley considering they don’t compete in the same promotion much less the same sport. That said, Stewart knows new BKFC owner Conor McGregor has already pitched the idea of doing crossover fights with the UFC and he doesn’t rule out the possibility that a showdown against O’Malley could actually happen one day.

“Conor posted recently about doing crossovers with Dana [White], Conor is still super marketed through the UFC, he’s in every commercial that they have so that holds weight,” Stewart said. “I definitely slid up and hopefully we can get that fight set up one day no matter where we do it.

“I’m leaving the door open. I’m in the position where I’m willing to go to 135. I’m willing to go to MMA. I’m willing to do it in bare-knuckle. I’m willing to do it at 145. I’m willing to do it at a catchweight. The ball is entirely and literally in O’Malley’s court. That’s what I wanted. As long as I remain king of BKFC, it’s way more likely we can get a fatter payday over here than we could over there.”

Stewart maintains he really doesn’t have anything against O’Malley but he also loves the idea of two top fighters from Montana squaring off to settle whatever beef exists between them.

“If there’s any beef, it’s the Montana way, let’s just take care of it,” Stewart said. “I will fight O’Malley in MMA, bare knuckle, we can do whatever he wants. I’m going to take it home.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

With Belal Muhammad now reigning as the welterweight champion and his next challenger already lined up for the first quarter of 2025, it doesn’t look like Islam Makhachev will be making the jump to 170-pounds anytime soon. The pound-for-pound number one has spoken about wanting to challenge himself up a weight class many times.

Having fought and defeated Alexander Volkanovski, who was the featherweight champion at the time, on two occasions, Makhachev wanted his opportunity to try and win a second belt. Instead, he’s now gearing up for a rematch with Arman Tsarukyan in the near future.

One fighter that was very outspoken about the idea of Makhachev moving up was the former interim welterweight champion, Colby Covington. Given his trash talking public persona, a fight between him and the lightweight king would’ve been a huge fight.

He recently criticized Makhachev for going back on his plans during a recent interview with Submission Radio where he accused the champion, and Khabib Nurmagomedov, of being weight bullies who don’t commit to anything they say.

“Not really, you know. We saw the same thing with Khabib. He talked a big game his whole career, ‘Oh I’m going to go to 170, I’m going to stop cutting all this weight,’ because both those guys are legitimately cutting chromosomes off their bodies. Those guys are huge lightweights. I mean they’re bigger than me and I’m a weight class up so those guys are walking around at 190 plus, probably closer to 200. So, you know, they’re just weight bullies and that’s what they do best.

“They talk a big game like they’re going to come up to welterweight but they’ve never actually done it so if he wanted to come up and look for big fights, look no further than me. USA versus Russia, this is the biggest fight you could possibly get. I mean it’s a mega blockbuster fight but I think Islam’s all talk just like Khabib. They’re never actually going to come up to welterweight, they’re just going to stay at lightweight and throw stones from the lightweight division.”

Continue Reading Colby Covington: ‘Weight Bully’ Makhachev’s Champ-Champ Plans ‘All Talk’ Like Khabib at MMA News.

MMA News

submitted by /u/SugarShow37 [link] [comments]

MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Think you can figure out which UFC fighter we’re talking about? You’ll get five clues to figure him out.

We’re back for another day of the SB Nation UFC in-5 daily trivia game, and we’re switching to a system of a new article each day for the game.

We tried using a single article for the game, updated with the latest game each day, but it was creating a bit of an unwieldy experience in the comments. So, we’ll have the current day’s game plus the previous three days in each new article. That way, you can catch up if you miss a day.

Game instructions are at the bottom if you’re new to the game!

What we need from you

1. Play the game
2. Share your result in the comments and on social media
3. Provide feedback (Google Form or in comments below)

Today’s UFC in-5 game

Wednesday’s UFC in-5 game

Tuesday’s UFC in-5 game

Monday’s UFC in-5 game

The goal of the game is to guess the correct random UFC fighter player with the help of up to five clues. We’ll mix in BOTH ACTIVE AND RETIRED FIGHTERS. It won’t be easy to figure it out in one or two guesses, but some of you might be able to nail it. It will be a mix of well-known players and some “that guys” that we haven’t thought of in some time. The game will appear in slot #3 of the MMA Fighting layout each morning, with occasional movement later in the day.

After you correctly guess the player, you can click “Share Results” to share how you did down in the comments and on social media.

MMA Fighting – All Posts

UFC