Ireland’s finest is often imitated, but never replicated — for better or worse. McGregor, 35, is the biggest star in mixed martial arts (MMA) history, transcending sport unlike any other fighter has before. If any skepticism remained about that notion, his recent appearance as an actor in Road House will put that to rest.
No matter how divisive of a figure he’s become, McGregor has still demanded and gained the respect of his peers as he gets set to return to action against Michael Chandler at UFC 303 next month (Sat., June 29, 2024). Amongst those excited for “The Notorious” return is UFC Middleweight champion, Dricus du Plessis, who believes everyone should be thankful in some way for McGregor.
“I mean, that guy, everything he touches, he’s such a legend in this sport,” du Plessis said on The Sias du Plessis Show (h/t MMA Junkie). “What he’s done for the sport, he’s transformed it into such a mainstream sport.
“I can understand disliking the persona but knowing — I don’t know him personally but meeting him, different person,” he continued. “And even if you don’t like him, you can’t ever, ever discredit what he’s done for this sport because every single fighter needs to thank him, in my opinion, for the raise in pay, the raise in awareness of this sport because I think Conor McGregor might be one of the most famous people on earth.”
du Plessis, 30, has been flawless in his UFC career thus far (7-0, 21-2 overall). His last time out saw him capture the 185-pound title with a hard-fought split decision nod over Sean Strickland at UFC 297 this past January 2024 (watch highlights). The South African expects his first title defense against the former two-time champion, Israel Adesanya.
Islam Makhachev defends his UFC lightweight title against Dustin Poirier in the main event of UFC 302. | Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images
Islam Makhachev defends his UFC lightweight title against Dustin Poirier on June 1 in the main event of UFC 302, which takes place at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.
Makhachev (25-1) is MMA Fighting’s No. 1 ranked lightweight and No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter in the world. The protege of UFC legend Khabib Nurmagomedov and owner of a 13-fight octagon win streak, Makhachev will tie the all-time record for consecutive lightweight title defenses (3) with a win over Poirier. He previously captured the belt with submission over Charles Oliveira, then twice defended it against Alexander Volkanovski.
Poirier (30-8, 1 NC) is MMA Fighting’s No. 6 ranked lightweight in the world. A former interim champion and two-time challenger for the undisputed belt, Poirier is one of the most battle-tested lightweights of his era, holding wins over former champs Max Holloway (x2), Conor McGregor (x2), Eddie Alvarez, Justin Gaethje, Anthony Pettis, and more. Poirier scored a second-round knockout of Benoit Saint Denis at UFC 299 in his most recent bout.
Poirier has teased ahead of UFC 302 that this will be his final run toward the belt.
UFC 302 is co-headlined by a five-round, non-title middleweight matchup between former UFC champion Sean Strickland and one-time title challenger Paulo Costa.
The official UFC 302 fight card can be seen below.
While reflecting on his UFC career, Jorge Masvidal has one major regret.
After a mostly middling career in combat sports, ‘Gamebred’ seemingly turned a corner in 2019, starting with a knockout of Darren Till at UFC on ESPN+ 5. He followed that up with perhaps the most-watched highlight in MMA history.
Returning to the Octagon four months later, Masvidal dispatched former Bellator and ONE world champion Ben Askren in five seconds with the flying knee heard around the world.
Adding a win over Nate Diaz to claim the inaugural BMF belt that same year, Jorge Masvidal went from midcarder to superstar overnight.
Unfortunately, Masvidal’s star fizzled out almost as fast as it grew, kickstarting with a short-notice welterweight title fight at UFC 251 against then-champion Kamaru Usman.
“It’s a regret, but also not a regret,” Masvidal said during an appearance on The TimboSugarShow with Sean O’Malley and Tim Welch. “When I got the call to fight [Kamaru] Usman on six days’ notice, me and the UFC had been going back because I wanted more pay-per-view money. I wanted a bigger distribution on the pay-per-views than I was bringing in. They weren’t budging on that. If I bring in money, I want to get paid money. If I sell 100 thousand pay-per-views, then don’t give me sh*t, but I wanted to get f*cking paid.
“That was going on for a while and then we came to a halt and I was like, ‘F*ck, whatever bro. I guess it’s not meant to be.’ In Strikeforce, I fought for the lightweight world title, and the UFC had already purchased the company, but I got a sh*t deal. The fight kept getting pushed back and I made $ 16,000 to challenge for the world title, against the guy who was top-rated in the world. Then I had all of the chips on my side, because who was going to cut all this weight in six days, make weight, and at the time I was number one.
“So they didn’t have any choice. I fought for everything I could, I made more money than I ever had in my career, but I didn’t get the decision I wanted in that fight. It would’ve been completely different [if it was seven weeks’ notice]” (h/t BJPenn.com)
Jorge Masvidal turns to boxing to snap four-fight losing skid
After five rounds, Jorge Masvidal lost on all three judges’ scorecards, handing Usman a unanimous decision victory. The two would run it back the following year with the ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ scoring a vicious second-round KO against ‘Gamebred’ at UFC 261, bringing their rivalry to an end emphatically.
Masvidal would go on to lose his next two fights against Colby Covington and Gilbert Burns before walking away from the promotion on a four-fight losing skid.
Despite not seeing his hand raised in nearly five years, Masvidal continues to be a notable name, parlaying his ‘Gamebred’ brand into a successful fight promotion that features both bare-knuckle MMA and professional boxing bouts. On July 6, Masvidal will lace up the eight-ounce gloves for a rematch with Nate Diaz inside the squared circle.
Emanating from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, the fight will be a co-promotion between Masvidal’s Gamebred Boxing and Diaz’s Real Fight Inc. You can purchase the event for $ 79.99 through the Fanmio app.
Dakota Ditcheva might be the future of the flyweight division. But if you ask her, she’s the present.
The undefeated Englishwoman has already captured a PFL Europe title and now seeks to add a 2024 PFL championship—and its $ 1 million prize—to her list of accolades. In 11 pro bouts, Ditcheva has been a wrecking machine with just one of her fights going the distance.
Inevitably, fans will want to know if the 25-year-old Ditcheva plans to ever challenge some of the bigger names in the UFC, such as Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko. Asked about those matchups on The MMA Hour, Ditcheva didn’t blink.
“I could have the title if I went there,” Ditcheva said. “Yeah, I think I could [beat Grasso and Shevchenko]. I definitely think I’d be up there.”
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So far, Ditcheva has impressed against lesser known competition, with her most recent win against Lisa Mauldin ending in under four minutes. The rest of the 2024 flyweight tournament roster includes several veteran names, including Bellator champion Liz Carmouche and one-time UFC title challenger Taila Santos (who lost a razor-close decision to Shevchenko at UFC 275).
Ditcheva hopes to take on the league newcomers and silence the doubters.
“I think we’ll see that when I win this season now and I can say I beat someone like Liz Carmouche and Taila Santos,” Ditcheva said. “As soon as I’ve beat them, what else can people expect other than greatness for the rest of the year?”
“You’ve got to be like that and it’s about time that I actually believe in what I can do,” Ditcheva added. “People say to me, ‘She’s not fought this person, she’s not fought that person’ or they say to me, ‘She’s running through all these girls because they’re not very good.’ But if you put these girls against other people, they have close fights. Whereas when you put them with me, I finish them early, so I make it look easy sometimes.”
When or if Ditcheva gets her chance to take on the likes of Grasso, Shevchenko, or any other fighter on the UFC’s talented flyweight roster is anybody’s guess, but it won’t be happening anytime soon as long as she continues to dominate her competition in the PFL.
Ditcheva mentioned that as long as she’s winning tournaments, she doesn’t expect to fight elsewhere, but she trusts the league to do right by her.
“With the tournament now, I know I’m going to win this tournament, and that automatically puts me into another year anyway,” Ditcheva said. “If I keep winning the tournament, I’m going to be here making my money and cashing all the checks.”
“I think there’s probably—I’m not 100 percent sure so I can’t comment, but I would like to win the tournament and then they’ve got loads of opportunities going on,” Ditcheva added. “It would be good to fight on a champ vs. champ card or even box if they were to do that. I don’t want to just stay in the States all the time, I want to be able to move around and try different things. I feel like they’re bringing the opportunities now. They’re involved in so many different things.
“I’ll win this tournament. If I go into another one next year, that’s fine, but if they come up with some other ideas I’m happy to do those as well.”
Tom Aspinall | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Tom Aspinall is excited about where he’s fighting next. It’s the time of his walkout that has him concerned.
The interim heavyweight champion—No. 1 in his division in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings—defends his belt in the co-main event of UFC 304, which takes place in Manchester, England. Though Aspinall gets a home date, the broadcast schedule for the card has been set to accommodate North American pay-per-view buyers, which means Aspinall’s fight will take place in the early hours of the morning local time.
It’s a decision that officials aren’t budging on as Aspinall learned firsthand.
“No apologies,” Aspinall told Submission Radio when asked if he’d spoken to anyone about changing the event start time. “I don’t expect an apology either, this is the UFC we’re dealing with. I just kind of put the feelers out there a little bit, to see like, this is a bit of a shitter for me and the other fighters and the U.K. fans who want to come watch it live. The thing is, I’ve got all kinds of friends coming. I was with my friend today and he was saying, he’s got child care for the night, but obviously the show is going to finish at 6 a.m. So he’s essentially going to have to stay up all night and then he’s only got childcare until, like, 9 a.m., so he’s going to get literally an hour or two of sleep in there. Just stuff like that.
“I was putting the feelers out, ‘Listen, is there any chance we can switch that?’ And they were just like, ‘Nope. Absolutely not.’ … There was no play on that at all. Just straight-up, no, that was it.”
Aspinall has headlined in his native England several times for the UFC, though this will be the first time that he fights there on PPV. He takes on Curtis Blaydes in a rematch of their July 2022 encounter that saw Aspinall go down with a knee injury just 15 seconds into the fight. Aspinall was sidelined for a year, but made a triumphant return in 2023 with first-round knockouts of Marcin Tybura and Sergei Pavlovich, the latter victory earning him an interim UFC belt.
Defeating Blaydes is a tall challenge as it is and now Aspinall has to factor in how he’s going to put on a peak performance under less-than-ideal circumstances.
“In all honesty, I have no idea right now,” Aspinall said. “I’m a bit lost at the thought of it. My original thought was I’m going to go to Vegas, I’m going to train in Vegas, and I’m going to get on Vegas time and I’m going to stick with that. Then I was, like, shit, Vegas is like 18 hours away. For me to be on Vegas time and then five, six days before the fight come back to Manchester and travel 18 hours, that’s exhausting just within itself whether you’re on a time difference or not. So I pushed that to the side.”
“I f*cking—I don’t know,” he continued. “I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m doing at this point. I’m going to speak to a couple of people probably who are a lot smarter than I am and see if I can have some kind of compromise. I was thinking something like maybe I try and sleep at 9 p.m., wake up about 1, 2, just be awake for a couple of hours and then maybe work out at 5. Maybe go back to sleep for a couple of hours at 7, 8, I don’t really know.”
Blaydes remains Aspinall’s lone loss in his eight-fight UFC run. His other seven opponents all failed to go the distance with Aspinall, with only Andrei Arlovski making it to Round 2.
Aspinall will be hoping for another quick night at UFC 304, but at this point, he is prepared for anything.
“There’s some weird stuff going on with it and as someone who has traveled a fair bit and been on different times, I know that it can affect you,” Aspinall said. “Definitely. So obviously I want it to affect me as little as possible. I’m the type of guy that I’ll do everything I can to win, everything I can, and if that means changing my sleep time to whichever way I can to the best advantage, I absolutely will do. But I don’t know what that looks like at this point.”
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