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Former UFC star Paige VanZant felt she deserved to get her hand raised on Saturday.

VanZant faced Elle Brooke in the main event of Misfits Boxing 15 on Saturday night in Houston. After getting dropped by Brooke early, VanZant rallied back in the fight and fought to a split draw.

A day later, VanZant reacted to the bout, and plans on facing Brooke again, this time in London.

“Obviously we didn’t get the results we predicted [on Saturday],” VanZant said on her Instagram. “I really thought that we did enough at the end. My whole team thought we did enough, I think a lot of people did. The judging, a little bit nuts, but it looks like it sets up a perfect rematch.

“I just have to go on her turf and take her belt there. So I’ll see all of you guys in London.”

Moments after the dust settled, VanZant called for the rematch at the O2 Arena.

Brooke also believes the U.K. would be the correct place to hold their second meeting, as she stated in her reaction on Twitter.

VanZant has competed three times since parting ways with the UFC, including a pair of BKFC bouts that she lost via decision. The 30-year-old hasn’t had her hand raised in a bout since a submission win over Rachael Ostovich at UFC on ESPN+ 1 in January 2019.

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Jon Jones is tired of Tom Aspinall’s begging.

With ‘Bones’ sitting as the undisputed UFC heavyweight world champion and Aspinall carrying around the interim strap, you’d think it would be a foregone conclusion that the two would step inside the Octagon to unify their titles. Unfortunately, that’s not the case — no matter how much Aspinall begs for it.

“Even though it’s flattering to be begged, I’m done with the distractions,” Jones wrote in X. “Got the biggest fight of my life coming up.”

In reality, nobody is begging Jon Jones to do anything — except maybe retire. All Aspinall and MMA fans are asking is that he do the right thing and unify his title with the interim champion and top-ranked contender. Instead, ‘Bones’ insists on moving forward with a meaningless fight against 41-year-old Stipe Miocic who hasn’t seen his hand raised in four years.

Tom Aspinall moves on from Jon Jones

Tired of waiting around for Jones to do what has been done by practically every other undisputed champion, Tom Aspinall will instead defend his interim belt, becoming the first fighter to do so since Renan Barao more than a decade ago.

The UK-based star will head to Manchester on July 27 for a showdown with Curtis Blaydes, the winner taking the interim title home and setting the stage for… something.

The fight between Aspinall and Blaydes at UFC 304 will be a rematch of their brief encounter in July 2022. Aspinall went down 15 seconds into the scrap due to a freak knee injury, handing him his first and only loss inside the Octagon. Aspinall has been chomping at the bit to run it back ever since.

Aspinall will get that chance later this summer while Jon Jones focuses on his fight with Miocic, slated to go down on November 9 when the UFC makes its annual stop in Madison Square Garden.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Charles Oliveira expects Islam Makhachev to remain UFC lightweight champion against Dustin Poirier — and, potentially, Arman Tsarukyan.

Makhachev is slated to face Poirier in the main event of UFC 302 on Saturday, and Oliveira doesn’t favor “The Diamond” in a five-round clash. Poirier has only lost four times since moving up to lightweight in 2015, three of those being championship bouts against Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje (for the BMF title), and Oliveira.

“Every striker that faces Islam is going to be the same thing, [Makhachev] will take you down and have bigger chances at winning,” Oliveira told MMA Fighting. “But we’re talking about MMA, and one hand, one strike that lands can definitely get you the victory.

“Dustin Poirier has shown that in his last fight, he’s shown that many times already. He has heavy hands and hits hard, so he definitely can knock him out, but I think Islam remains as champion.”

Oliveira, who holds a submission win over Poirier back when he was the 155-pound champion and is coming off of a close split decision loss to Tsarukyan at UFC 300, doesn’t see Tsarukyan as a big threat to Makhachev “because Islam is evolving on the feet and is dangerous on the ground with submissions.”

“Arman is a guy that takes you down and holds you there the entire time,” Oliveira said. “No way. It’s not a fight he can win.”

“Of course, I’ve just said this and I can’t backtrack, we’re talking about MMA and it’s very unpredictable,” he continued. “A guy closes his eyes and throws a hand that lands, you’re knocked out. He throws a kick that lands, you shoot for a takedown and end up in a submission. MMA is unpredictable, but I think Islam is way more experienced, has more focus, more hunger, and is much stronger than Arman.”

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Daniel Cormier admits that he’s not a fan of the headlines surrounding Dustin Poirier’s potential retirement ahead of UFC 302, but that’s mostly because Cormier remembers having similar thoughts.

“The problem with bringing up the retirement is it becomes the story of the fight,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel.

Poirier will challenge Islam Makhachev for the lightweight title in the main event of Saturday’s pay-per-view event in Newark. To be fair, “The Diamond” isn’t the one bringing up retirement on his own, as he has been asked about it in nearly every interview he has done over the last couple of years — although with it being Poirier’s last chance to capture undisputed gold, the topic is obviously at the forefront of storylines.

Although Poirier has time and time again said that a decision won’t be made until after the fight, the possibility can’t be ignored, and it makes Cormier realize that the end is almost near for his fellow Louisianan.

“I hate that, I honestly cannot stand that,” Cormier said. “I can’t stand hearing that it’s almost over for a guy that we all universally love and enjoy when he’s inside the octagon.

“I also hate it for another reason: I hate it for the idea that it could be almost over, and he recognizes that. I don’t like when athletes — because I did it myself, so I’m almost judging myself — I don’t love when athletes put a timeline, or a finishing point on a career that’s still actively going on. That is a hard thing to do, because I will tell you this right now: The life after the fight, while it may be hard to adjust to initially, when you look at it from the inside and you’re going through those training camps and everything’s so tough, and you’re exhausted, and you’re fighting one of the most dangerous people in the world, the other side seems very nice. The other side’s even better than you could ever imagine.”

Cormier was in the same shoes as Poirier heading into his heavyweight championship trilogy bout with Stipe Miocic at UFC 252 in August 2020. After losing a unanimous decision, it didn’t come as a shock that “DC” was going to call it a career with so much ahead of him outside of the octagon.

After knocking out Benoit Saint Denis in a thrilling win at UFC 299, Poirier got the call to face the sport’s current pound-for-pound best fighter for the title. Poirier came up short against Khabib Nurmagomedov and Charles Oliveira in his first two opportunities to capture lightweight gold, and considering how deep the division is — outside of a short notice emergency situation — Poirier will unlikely get another chance.

Cormier understands Poirier’s position in life and the sport, but the former two-division champ and current color commentator hopes Poirier isn’t looking too deep into what life after fighting might look like days away from a super tough fight.

“When you start looking to the other side, when you start looking to a time when you don’t have to get up every morning and run seven miles, or you when you don’t have to spar, you don’t have to grapple, you have to wrestle, you have to do all of these things, it really does open up a world that the active fighter should never really think about,” Cormier explained. “And again, he may just be different than me, but I know what it did to me at the end of my career, because I started looking to the time where I don’t have to worry about cutting the weight, doing all of this other stuff. That’s miserable.

“Life after that there’s vacations, beaches, eating what you want, doing whatever you want. I don’t love that there’s so many references to ‘my last chance,’ or ‘my last dance, I’m not committing to retirement.’ It’s like, if you have any desire to fight, you’ve got to be so in the fight that there is no thought of what comes next.”

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Jones thinks Miocic is playing possum in new training footage that shows the aging heavyweight looking slow and out of shape.

Jon Jones isn’t buying what Stipe Miocic is selling as legit training footage on Instagram.

Miocic has caught a lot of strays in a fan backlash against Jon Jones, who refuses to unify the UFC heavyweight title against interim champ Tom Aspinall. Instead, Jones insists on fighting Miocic in November, barring more injuries or scandals.

But Stipe Miocic is old! He’s slow! After three years without a fight, he’s barely relevant any more! Or so fans say as they push “Bones” to fight Aspinall instead. And in a new video uploaded to his Instagram, Miocic looks every bit as bad as social media haters have been saying.

Watch the former two time heavyweight champion hit the mitts and tell us he looks like the toughest opponent Jones could face!

Jones has watched the video, and he doesn’t see a broken 41-year-old opponent. Instead, he believes the clip is a ruse designed to lull him into complacency.

“I’m not a historian of war or anything, but I have learned a thing or two in my day,” Jones wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “A big part of combat strategy is timing, and deception. To make a long story short, if your opponent appears weak, prepare even harder. Complacency is the greatest enemy to a fighter like myself.”

Complacency is what Jon Jones was fighting towards the end of his light heavyweight reign. He got sick of fighting further down the 205 pound rankings as no great challenge appeared on the horizon. His move up to heavyweight was partially to cement his legacy as GOAT and partially to re-invigorate himself against worthy opponents.

As the heavyweight champion with the most title defenses, Stipe Miocic represents that. Alex Pereira as well, somehow. Tom Aspinall? Sadly, not so much in Jones’ opinion.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Dustin Poirier got back on the winning track in a big way at UFC 299.

Coming off of a devastating loss to Justin Gaethje, Poirier was paired up with white hot lightweight prospect Benoit Saint Denis this past March in Miami. Few would have been surprised if Saint Denis ran through the former interim champion en route to a title shot, but the more experienced Poirier refused to go down easy.

Watch Poirier’s thrilling clash with Saint Denis in the video above.

Saint Denis entered the contest having finished his past five opponents and he fearlessly took the fight to Poirier. “The Diamond” weathered the storm and outlasted Saint Denis before leaving the Frenchman out cold with a series of knockout punches in Round 2.

Up next for Poirier, he gets a third crack at becoming undisputed UFC lightweight champion. He fights Islam Makhachev in the main event of UFC 302 on June 1 in Newark, N.J.

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