According to his long-time City Kickboxing training partner, Dan Hooker, former two-time middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya has ballooned up to 230lbs ahead of his title fight at UFC 305 next month – and his putting some serious power behind his shots in sparring.
Adesanya, a former two-time undisputed middleweight gold holder, is slated to make his return next month in the main event of UFC 305, taking on arch-rival, Dricus du Plessis in his quest for a third title reign as he features ‘Dowunder’ for the second straight fight.
Last time out, the Nigerian-Kiwi headlined UFC 293 in September of last year, dropping a one-sided unanimous decision loss to the outspoken current number one contender, Sean Strickland, in a massive upset victory for the now-former champion.
Israel Adesanya gains huge weight pre-UFC 305
Returning to action next month in tandem with Hooker – who is booked to take on Polish lightweight star, Mateusz Gamrot at the RAC Arena, Israel Adesanya has put on huge size ahead of his return in a championship setting, according to the Kiwi.
Mandatory Credit: Zuffa LLC
“Israel (Adesanya) is – I can’t even bother sparring him at the moment,” Dan Hooker told Submission Radio. “Like the way he’s hitting me, I think he’s like 105 kilos (230lbs). “I’m just like, ‘F*cking just kick like, just kick me in the leg’. And I was like, ‘Ah get f*cked’. I was just like, nah. Yeah, like that. He’s had some time off, he was carrying some injuries. He spent a lot of time just packing on some size and like a lot of strength, bro.”
“And he’s just hitting like a truck, man” Hooker continued. “Yeah, I can’t even be bothered sparring him, like he’s hitting too hard. So, I can’t wait until he can get out there. So if you think you can just walk in his front door and raid his fridge, I think you’re in for a rude awakening.”
Who do you think wins at UFC 305 next month: Dricus du Plessis or Israel Adesanya?
Tyrell Fortune is in the heavyweight alternate | Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images
PFL decides its 2024 finalists next month across three events, and those cards feature alternate bouts with fighters looking for an opening into the $ 1 million finals.
PFL 7, scheduled for Aug. 2 in Nashville, now includes Tyrell Fortune vs. Sergei Bilostenniy as a heavyweight alternate. PFL 8 lands in Hollywood, Fla., two weeks later, when former champion Antonio Carlos Junior battles Karl Albrektsson in the 205-pound alternate. The card also features Elvin Espinoza vs. Mads Burnell in a lightweight alternate.
PFL 9 goes down on Aug. 23 in Washington with one-time Bellator title contender Neiman Gracie taking on Luca Poclit for a potential spot in the welterweight final, while Tyler Diamond fights Enrique Barzola for backup status in the featherweight division.
Check the playoff semifinal matchups and updated fight cards below.
PFL 7 — Aug. 2 in Nashville, TN
Main Card
Denis Goltsov vs. Tim Johnson — HW semifinal
Dakota Ditcheva vs. Jena Bishop — FlyW semifinal
Oleg Popov vs. Linton Vassell — HW semifinal
Liz Carmouche vs. Taila Santos — FlyW semifinal
Preliminary Card
Tyrell Fortune vs. Sergei Bilostenniy — HW alternate
Alexei Pergande vs. Daniel Boehle
Cody Law vs. Zachary Hicks
Sergio Cossio vs. Dedrek Sanders
Jaleel Willis vs. Anthony Ivy
PFL 8 — Aug. 16 in Hollywood, FL
Main Card
Impa Kasanganay vs. vs. Josh Silveira — LHW semifinal
Rob Wilkinson vs. Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov — LHW semifinal
Gadzhi Rabadanov vs. Michael Dufort — LW semifinal
Brent Primus vs. Clay Collard — LW semifinal
Biaggio Ali Walsh vs. Korey Taylor
Preliminary Card
Antonio Carlos Jr. vs. Karl Albrektsson — LHW alternate
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Burt Watson is finally telling his side of the story.
The former event coordinator, who spent more than a decade in a backstage role with the UFC, opened up Wednesday on The MMA Hour about his split with the promotion back in 2015. At the time he left the UFC, Watson only stated that an unnamed “person of authority” in the UFC questioned his work and how Watson handled things following confusion surrounding transportation for middleweight fighter Mark Munoz back to the fighter hotel after Munoz needed additional time to make weight for his bout.
Watson, who just recently released his autobiography Being Burt Watson, addressed the situation Wednesday and revealed the UFC executive he butted heads with before ultimately leaving the promotion.
“There was a situation with Mark Munoz, I’m mentioning names, and Mark had missed weight, and he doesn’t normally do that but he missed weight and he had an hour or so to make weight,” Watson said. “They gave me an extra half an hour, meaning the commission, for him to make weight. They gave me that, which they don’t normally do, they gave it to me, he made weight.
“At the time, the UFC had this young man who was a sponsorship manager from a legal standpoint, where they were just letting guys wear patches and stuff, and now they can’t because they’ve got a certain sponsor that everybody wears. That young man was not a very nice person. Mike Mersch was not a very nice person.”
Michael Mersch was the senior vice president of business, legal, and government affairs at the UFC for eight years before leaving that role to become the chief operating officer at World Series of Fighting. According to his Linkedin, he now owns his own legal and consulting firm.
“He was very disrespectful to some people when he spoke to them,” Watson said. “I knew that so I tried to keep people away from him. That night, after Mark made weight, I went back to the hotel, stopped at the bar and got myself my typical shot of Grand Marnier, just to kind of ease me down a little bit, and I went up to the room and the next thing I know my phone rings.”
It was after returning to his room that he received a call from Mersch that led to a heated conversation, which ended with him quitting his job at the UFC.
“The phone rings and somebody says, ‘Where are you?’ in a tone that I felt was disrespectful right away,” Watson said. “I’m from Philly, I kind of let that go, but I backed up a little bit. I said, ‘Well, I’m up in my room, why?’ He said, ‘Well, I need to see you.’ I said first off, you need to take that bass out of your voice and stop talking to me in a disrespectful manner.’ Right now, I’m being nice with the way I said it. He said, ‘Well, if you don’t get down here…’
“When he said that, I stopped. I went — and I say this in the book — in one shot he got mad Burt, Black Burt, hood rat Burt, and upset Burt, all in one shot. I cursed him O-U-T, and I said to him, it got to a point where I was feeling that he and I could not function in the same space, and if he didn’t like that, one of us needed to go in a different direction.
“He said to me, no one was going to side with me on some silly shit like that. I went off on him. At the end of that conversation, I said to him, ‘You know what? You can take this job and put it on a seat of a chair and sit on it.’ That was nice, what I just said, the way I said it. But I said that, and somehow within the next three minutes or five minutes or so, he must have gone to Dana [White] to explain that. He went to Dana with his story.”
Watson said the next morning he went downstairs and ran into members of the UFC staff who apparently had been informed that he abruptly quit and was no longer working for the company.
Rather than argue or making a scene, Watson decided to just change his flight plans and return home, but he believes Mersch ultimately told his version of the incident to UFC CEO Dana White and that was the nail in the coffin.
“Dana had gotten the story and they had gotten the story that I had just quit, bad mouthed everybody, talked about everybody and I had gone home,” Watson said. “That’s the story that they got. That was not true.
“Yes, I did tell him to take that job and stick it up his rear. But not that I expected anyone to come to me and smooth things over, but I expected a conversation, which I did not get.”
After Watson returned home, he said days passed without any contact from the UFC, and that really was end of that relationship.
“I never got a phone call,” Watson said. “I was never asked why or anything. But he questioned my integrity, he questioned my work ethic, and he did it in a way that was disrespectful, and I went to the left.
“Now, I had two Grand Marniers, which might have helped it a little bit, but I’m going to tell you, I cursed him out from what they say ass to appetite, I just went on and I expressed myself and I told him what to do with that job and I left.”
While he doesn’t regret his actions, Watson admits it still hurt that nobody from the UFC ever reached out to him to at least get his side of the story.
With that, his time with the UFC officially came to a close.
“I was probably more struck that I hadn’t [gotten a call] because of the fact that I had spent 14 years there,” Watson said. “Fourteen good years, I thought, that I was not asked what happened or how it happened.
“So right away in my head, it said that they took whatever explanation he gave as me disrespecting him and me quitting on him, the company, the organization, the brand and everything else. That’s the way I took it. I heard nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Jones’ latest legal drama is not expected to interfere with his (eventual) return to the Octagon in November … unless things take a dramatic turn at his upcoming bench trial.
UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones entered a plea of not guilty on Wednesday, appearing virtually for Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court (alongside attorney Christopher Dodd) to answer for a pair of misdemeanor charges filed against him back in March.
“Bones” was released on his own recognizance and will return for a bench trial within the next two months, according to MMA Fighting.
That said, the judge did not let Jones go scot-free, handing down a laundry list of pre-trial conditions including a ban on firearms (or other dangerous weapons) as well as restrictions on drug and alcohol use.
Jones routinely posts videos of his gun collection and has previously admitted to drug and alcohol abuse. There was also that stint in rehab that didn’t stop the former light heavyweight kingpin from getting “black-out drunk” before fights.
Today’s court appearance was the result of Jones’ altercation with drug-testing agents earlier this year, though “Bones” insists the incident was blown way out of proportion and that police reports reflect a situation that “simply did not occur.”
We’ll see if the judge agrees when Jones returns to court.
I never saw him fight live as this past year I'm only getting into MMA but from I've seen in highlights he was a legend so ive made it a mission to watch all his fights starting with his first one.
One thing I noticed is he has amazing offensive wrestling and flatlining ground and pound but he seemed to not use it as nearly as much as he could've. I know he loved to stand but man I'm thinking every fight if he just added the offensive wrestling like GSP did he'd be much more unstoppable. Especially since his ground and pound is scary.
I mean it's not like he'd be a decision wrestling guy at all since his finishing is so good.
Getting to the era of his Rashad fight I'm thinking Chuck just take everybody down and KO them there! No point risking your chin
When Amanda Serrano heard the news that her rematch against Katie Taylor was being postponed until November, her first thought was still fighting on July 20.
The long-awaited second fight between two of the top boxers in the world was set to serve as the co-main event to Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson, but the entire card was scrapped after Tyson suffered health complications that forced him to delay his return to action. As a result, Paul vs. Tyson and Serrano vs. Taylor were both moved to Nov. 13.
But despite the massive attention surrounding her rematch against Taylor later this year, Serrano insisted that she get a new opponent so she could still compete on July 20.
“My team with [Most Valuable Promotions co-founder] Nakisa Bidarian, we voiced to him that we needed a fight,” Serrano told MMA Fighting. “Because they pushed it back to Nov. 13 and that’s going to be over a year since I fought.
“My last fight was Oct. 27, so I said we need to fight somewhere — MMA, boxing, we need to go in there and fight. Because my fight in March got cancelled.”
Serrano said Bidarian got to work right away on securing her a new opponent, with plans to build a card around her headlining.
As it turns out, Paul didn’t want to be left out of the fun either, so he also requested to stay on the July 20 date, which is how Paul was ultimately matched up against bare-knuckle boxing superstar Mike Perry on the same night.
“[Bidarian] was working on a fight for just me and Jake was like, ‘I need to fight too!’” Serrano said. “Then they decided to put us together again, which I love fighting on the co-main event with Jake Paul. He just brings so many different types of people to see the fights. I get to steal one or two of his fans, so I’m excited.”
Of course, taking any fight with another bout already scheduled is an incredibly risky proposition.
Just recently, Deontay Wilder was assured a future showdown against Anthony Joshua in what would’ve been a massive fight, but the American boxer ended up suffering an upset loss to Joseph Parker that scrapped those plans.
Serrano recognizes she’s taking the same kind of risk with her new fight against Stevie Morgan — a veteran lightweight with a 14-1 record and 13 knockouts — but there was no hesitation requesting that matchup rather than just waiting to face Taylor in November.
“I wanted to feel comfortable at 140 [pounds],” Serrano said. “Obviously going up another division — once I’m out of featherweight, I’m taking risks. I know fighting Katie Taylor, the last one was at 135 and now she wants to bring me up another division at 140. It is what it is with Katie. But I wanted to fight a big girl because I wanted to test my power and test my endurance for that fight.
“Stevie Morgan is a good girl, she’s a tall girl, she has a lot of knockouts. She fights different than Katie Taylor, obviously. She has 13 knockouts. I just want to be able to go in there and be comfortable at 140.”
The same goes for Paul, who is still expected to face Tyson no matter what happens on July 20, but the narrative around his career completely changes if he gets torched by Perry.
In some ways, Serrano feels like Paul could deal with an even tougher fight on July 20 than what he expects against the 58-year-old Tyson.
“This is I think a little bit scarier than the Mike Tyson fight,” Serrano said. “Because Mike Perry is a lot younger than Tyson and he has a lot more experience. He can punch with bare knuckles. That hurts! But to be in this sport or any combat sport, you have to be a little not all the way up there. This isn’t easy. No one wakes up in the morning and goes, ‘I want to get punched in the face for a living.’
“Mike Perry is a dangerous fight, but I know Jake Paul. He’s a hard worker. He’s just an amazing person, an amazing fighter. He’s going to do good. I think he’s a bigger fighter, stronger fighter, he’s going to do good.”
As for her November fight against Taylor, Serrano isn’t putting much thought into that right now. She’s staying focused on the task at hand on July 20, but that rematch never strays too far from her mind.
“Even though I fought Katie Taylor and didn’t feel no power from her at 135, but obviously [Morgan] has 13 knockouts so I’m going to feel some power from her,” Serrano said. “It’s not the same power I felt with Katie. I won’t know until we fight on July 20 but I did it because I want to be comfortable at 140.”
“[After this fight it’s] right back into camp. The week following on July 26, I have my fighter fighting so maybe I’ll take a week off and then it’s right back. I have that big fight so I need to make sure I get that win this time.”
It should come as no surprise that Conor McGregor is backing Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship’s golden boy Mike Perry to come out on top in his highly anticipated clash with YouTube sensation Jake Paul.
On Saturday, July 20, ‘Platinum’ will strap on the 10-ounce gloves for a boxing match with Paul at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. It will be Perry’s first traditional boxing match in nearly a decade.
Since then, the Flint, Michigan native has made a name for himself in both the UFC and as the premiere bare-knuckle brawler for BKFC, securing wins over a slew of former world champions, including Eddie Alvarez, Luke Rockhold, and Thiago Alves.
McGregor, who shocked the combat sports community in April by announcing that he’d purchased a piece of the BKFC, offered his support to ‘Platinum’ on social media while sharing a clip from Perry’s face-to-face interview with Jake Paul from earlier this week.
“@bareknucklefc in the house!” McGregor wrote on his Instagram stories.
Conor McGregor and ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson see their summertime returns delayed
Originally, ‘The Problem Child’ was scheduled to square off with former unified heavyweight world champion ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson. Unfortunately, Tyson was forced to bow out of the bout due to a medical emergency during a cross-country flight in May.
Luckily, the medical issue turned out to be nothing more than an ulcer flare-up. Still, Tyson was advised to discontinue training for the time being, forcing the pair to push their fight to November.
Meanwhile, Conor McGregor is still on a quest to take his “greatest comeback in combat sports history” from fantasy to reality. The former two-division titleholder was booked to headline UFC 303 on June 29 against former Bellator MMA champion Michael Chandler. However, McGregor withdrew from the bout after suffering a broken pinky toe in training.
Only needing a few short weeks to heal, McGregor suggested an August or September return date would be optimal. But with the UFC’s dance card pretty much full for most of 2024, who knows when or if we’ll actually see ‘Mystic Mac’ meet MMA’s version of ‘Iron.’
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