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Elle Brooke shares at least one thing in common with Paige VanZant when it comes to their Misfits boxing match on Saturday.

Thanks to endeavors outside the ring, neither of them actually need to fight — at least from a financial perspective — but both choose to compete. For Brooke, she came to fame as a social influencer and adult entertainer, while VanZant earned a household name after competing in the UFC and then eventually BKFC before launching her own modeling site that has reaped huge benefits for her.

But as much as it might seem like money isn’t the driving factor behind their fight, Brooke argues that VanZant returned from a nearly three-year old hiatus to ensure the combat sports world didn’t forget about her.

“I think she fights to keep relevant, whereas that’s not the reason why I fight,” Brooke told MMA Fighting. “My bread and butter is entertainment and entertaining people, but that’s not what she does. Yeah, she probably does love it, but it’s probably for the bag as well.”

Brooke felt like she learned a lot about VanZant and her intentions during their first encounter to begin promoting the upcoming fight. With her focus only on the fight, Brooke says VanZant was still cordial and playing nice, and she just didn’t understand that.

“I think we’re different in that aspect,” Brooke explained. “People are invested in me like I do crazy shit. Now I’m known as a boxer, but I’m known for doing things for views, where she’s known for being a fighter, especially like you can tell in our faceoff, she’s being nice. I’m there for the game.

“We’re having a fight. Why are you being nice to me? I think perhaps we share some similarities but we’re different at the same time.”

No matter why VanZant is fighting or her intentions to cross over into boxing, Brooke knows she’s the underdog heading into Saturday night.

She may have beaten some social influencers and reality show stars, but VanZant is a legitimate professional fighter with a lot of experience in her past. Brooke promises she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into and she feels like she still has some distinct advantages over VanZant.

“I know that she’s had a couple of bare-knuckle [fights] but it’s still a little bit more awkward in the stances, it’s not exactly the same sport,” Brooke said. “I think that I probably have the advantage in the boxing ring.

“I am confident that I will win, but she is the hardest opponent to date. She’s a mixed martial artist. She’s been fighting her whole life. So she’s definitely more experienced than me, but I definitely feel I have the edge when it comes to boxing.”

The explosion of influencer boxing has brought a lot of people into combat sports with no actual background in fighting, which included Brooke when she first started.

She says the biggest difference between her and so many other people operating in the same space is that she’s truly fallen in love with the sport.

That’s what Brooke expects to carry her through the fight against VanZant and anybody else that Misfits throws her way in the future.

“Boxing is like the only thing I wake up in the morning for, in terms of my mental health and routine,” Brooke said. “It stresses me out and it kills me at the same time, but it gives me that discipline to do better in all aspects of my life. Like, I work hard in and out of the ring and I love what it’s taught me. It’s taught me to be confident about myself. I’ve learned several things about myself that I would have never known. It’s really testing me.

“I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the sport. I don’t even box for the money. The money’s good but I make way easier money elsewhere! That’s a piece of cake compared to boxing!.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Cédric Doumbé had a thrilling knockout in front of a raucous home crowd at Bellator Paris, but there was only one problem. He wasn’t in the main event.

That spot belonged to Bellator bantamweight champion Patchy Mix, who defended his title against Magomed Magomedov. But after seeing and hearing the kind of reception he received from his hometown fans, Doumbé believes PFL and Bellator officials made a mistake putting him lower on the card.

“I didn’t really enjoy being the co-main event,” Doumbé said recently on The MMA Hour. “Even after my fight, some people left the arena. It’s better [if I’m the main event]. I think they will not do the same mistake [again]. Even if there is a belt on the card, they will put Cédric Doumbé at the end of the night.”

Doumbé said the whole experience threw him off because he didn’t even get the chance to embrace the crowd as he was being rushed through his post-fight interview to make way for the main event.

“I even missed [the chance] to say my famous sentence,” Doumbé said. “Always, all the time when I win the fight, I say in French, ‘What did I tell you? KO, first round, nobody can test me.’ Now, I forgot to say because the speaker was really quick, it wasn’t the same.

“When you’re the main event, you take your time. You can play with the crowd, with the audience, with everybody.”

After scoring a vicious knockout of Jaleel Willis, Doumbé faced off with his next opponent in the cage. Former UFC champion Anthony Pettis flew to France specifically for that opportunity, and has tentative plans to fight Doumbé later this year.

While early talks have placed the fight on a PFL pay-per-view card in Saudi Arabia, Doumbé said the promotion would be making another fatal error by not returning to Paris.

“I wasn’t surprised that Pettis came into the cage and said that he wanted to fight me in Paris,” Doumbé said. “For sure, in Saudi Arabia, it’s not going to be the same crowd.

“At the moment he mentioned that, that he wanted to fight me in Paris and the French crowd agreed with him, it changes everything. I think we will make it in France if the PFL agrees with that, Bellator agrees with that. We’ll make it in France. It don’t make any sense in Saudi Arabia.”

Doumbé often says he’s the face of French MMA and the only person capable of selling out arenas in the country in record time. Doumbé feels as fif a fight as big as his against Pettis could draw an even bigger crowd than the 20,000 seats inside Accor Arena.

“It could be in a stadium, really,” Doumbé said. “It could be in a stadium. We can sell it out.”

As a former UFC lightweight champion, Pettis has the name and the credentials to sell a fight alongside Doumbé.

Assuming that fight gets finalized, Doumbé takes a decided step up in competition with only seven professional bouts on his MMA résumé. Pettis is a vastly more accomplished fighter, who even scored a win over boxing legend Roy Jones Jr. in his most recent outing.

That being said, Doumbé knows the Pettis he’ll likely fight isn’t the same young savage who won titles in both UFC and WWE. Since 2019, Pettis holds a 4-6 record in MMA and is currently riding a two-fight losing streak, with back-to-back losses to Stevie Ray in PFL.

“I think he’s not of course in his prime,” Doumbé said. “He’s not the Pettis we knew in the UFC. But he’s still Anthony Pettis. He’s not done yet, still very strong. He has all the weapons to beat me, so it’s still a dangerous opponent.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s not the same as before. It’s still Anthony Pettis, the great Anthony Pettis that we knew before and still a very dangerous opponent for me.”

Doumbé takes nothing lightly, especially after a splinter in his foot ended his previous fight in disappointing fashion. Whether Pettis is the same guy who won UFC gold back in 2013 is inconsequential to Doumbé, because he’s still facing a legend of the sport.

“For me, that’s a small dream coming true,” Doumbé said of fighting Pettis. “A former UFC champion in front of Cédric Doumbé, who is coming from kickboxing, from full-contact even, and for me, it’s like a dream. To beat Anthony Pettis on my record, it’s going to be really amazing. I can’t wait.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

A fair point
| BJPenn.com

Jake Paul is expecting big viewership numbers for his upcoming boxing match with Mike Tyson on July 20 from Dallas, Texas. In fact, “Problem Child” is claiming that “hundreds of millions” of people will watch his clash with “Iron Mike.”

The combat community is still on the fence about the legitimacy of a Paul vs. Tyson boxing match considering Tyson is pushing 60 years of age, but it’s happening nonetheless. The massive Netflix event is expected to produce a sell-out crowd and one of the most memorable boxing cards of 2024. Whether or not you agree with the professionally sanctioned bout, Paul vs. Tyson will play out in dramatic fashion.

Earlier this week, Paul was asked about potential viewership numbers for his clash with one of boxing’s all-time greatest fighters. Since the superfight will air LIVE on Netflix for current subscribers there won’t be any pay-per-view (PPV) buys to tally up when it’s all said and done. Instead, Netflix will need to count all of the households that streamed the Paul vs. Tyson fight when it goes down this July.

According to Paul, that number could be in the “hundreds of millions.”

“The global viewership could be in the hundreds of millions like you said,” said Paul. “It’s wild. It doesn’t make any sense, but the fact that Netflix is a part of this is the perfect piece of the puzzle. It makes this trifecta of Netflix’s audience, my audience, and Mike Tyson’s audience.”

What do you think, Maniacs? Is Paul out of bounds or will his boxing match with Tyson really produce these types of numbers?

Let’s discuss!

For much more on the upcoming “Paul vs. Tyson” showdown on Netflix click here.

MMAmania.com – All Posts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Ronda Rousey never wanted to be anything less than the best.

That mentality was drilled into her from a very young age. She first wanted to be a swim champion and then eventually followed in her mother’s footsteps to become one of the top judokas in the United States. She finally achieved her ultimate dream when she became the first ever UFC women’s bantamweight champion, then defended that belt six consecutive times.

However, her reign ended with an emphatic thud once Holly Holm knocked her unconscious at UFC 193 back in 2015, and that was the last time Rousey touched gold as a professional fighter. Nearly nine years later, Rousey reflected on that moment and explained why losing that night affected her so profoundly.

“I cared about that title more than anybody ever has,” Rousey said at a Q&A during her recent book tour. “It hurt me more than anybody that’s ever been hurt by losing it. That’s why I was able to defend so much for so long.”

As much as it pained her losing that fight, Rousey knew that was always a possibility, but that’s a price she was willing to pay to achieve her dreams.

She knows it’s hard for somebody on the outside looking in to really sympathize with the level of agony she endured after losing that fight. Of course, Rousey knows she’s not alone in feeling devastated after such a crushing defeat, but not everybody operates at that same level, which is why it’s hard for those people to understand how much it hurt her.

“It’s hard for a lot of people to understand, to have something mean that much to you,” Rousey said. “It’s like, ‘Why are you so upset? It’s just a fight.’ Well, it’s just somebody else’s fight to you, but I think one thing that’s really important if you’re going to be a fighter at an extremely high level, or an athlete, or someone who runs a business, or anything like that, you have to be willing to get your heart broken in order to put every fiber of your being into something.

“You’re going to know whether everything you have is good enough. I think that a lot of people have this tendency to preserve themselves and not put everything out there, and when it doesn’t work out, you’re like, ‘Well, it wasn’t everything I had, I could have done it if I gave it everything I had.’”

Rousey’s willingness to sacrifice everything allowed her to become a dominant UFC champion, but that same passion drove her into a deep depression after the loss.

“It’s because I care that much,” Rousey said. “Caring more than the other person. Caring more than anybody else is an advantage, but it will be what comes back to bite you if it doesn’t work out.”

Following that loss, Rousey essentially disappeared from the public eye. That was definitely by design.

She didn’t want to see anyone or have anyone see her in that state, but Rousey credits her husband, veteran UFC heavyweight Travis Browne, for pulling her out of that pit.

“It was a lot of crepes and chocolate and crying and World of Warcraft, and just not rushing it,” Rousey said of how she dealt with the loss. “I just allowed it to suck for as long as it needed to, but I also would have become a Golem cave creature if it wasn’t for my husband.

“He was like, ‘You need to go outside and get some coffee.’ I’m like, ‘There’s TMZ cameras,’ and he made me go outside and have all the TMZ pictures taken. He made me go outside and bite the bullet and get their damn pictures, because they were like camping outside my house for two weeks.”

Even after she ventured outside again, Rousey didn’t escape reminders about the fight, her loss, or the knockout, but at least she can talk about it now.

“While I was getting my root canal because I got all my teeth knocked out, I was forced to lay there and watch TV, getting four root canals at once, and TMZ comes on blasting me going to get coffee,” Rousey said with a laugh. “Like, ‘Look at this loser getting her coffee!’ I was like, ‘This is hell.’”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Jon Jones may be the greatest mixed martial artist the sport has ever seen.

‘Bones’ ruled the light heavyweight division for more than a decade, dispatching legend after legend, including Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Vitor Belfort, Chael Sonnen, Alexander Gustafsson, Glover Teixeira, and Daniel Cormier.

But as impressive as Jones’ run at 205 was, his reign as the undisputed heavyweight champion has been the exact opposite. Returning from a three-year-long layoff, Jones captured the vacated crown with a two-minute submission victory over Ciryl Gane at UFC 285.

He has not defended the belt since.

Jones was originally scheduled to defend the title against consensus heavyweight GOAT Stipe Miocic last November, but a pectoral injury forced him to bow out. That promoted the promotion to book an interim title fight between Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich. Aspinall won the bout via a 69-second KO and expected to unify his title with Jones later this year. However, ‘Bones’ and the UFC had other plans.

Instead, Jones will move forward with his fight against Miocic, completely bypassing a unification clash with Aspinall.

Tom Aspinall Respects Jon Jones despite their heavyweight predicament

Even once that bout is in the book, there’s no guarantee that the winner will want to fight Aspinall, prompting the UK star to move on to an interim title fight with Curtis Blaydes at UFC 304. There, Aspinall will become the first fighter in more than a decade to defend an interim belt.

In the time since his title victory and subsequent snub, Aspinall has been critical of Jones and the UFC’s handling of the heavyweight division. Recently, the Salford, England native suggested that Jon Jones is irrelevant to anything he’s doing at the top of the division — with all due respect, of course.

“I honestly think Jon Jones is a legend,” Aspinall said in an interview with TheMACLife. “I respect what he’s done in the Octagon, but right now he’s quite irrelevant to what I’m doing.This is said with a lot of respect; I have nothing against Jon regardless of what he says. It’s all bollocks.“

There are plenty of fight fans who side with Aspinall, believing he should be promoted to undisputed status since Jones is unwilling to face the interim champion, instead opting to fight the 41-year-old Miocic who hasn’t won since his August 2020 trilogy bout with Cormier.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

In 2011, Jon Jones won the light heavyweight title and defended it twice.  He had captured the title in March of that year by stopping Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and defended it against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson six months later in September.  In December, he was paired against former champion Lyoto Machida.    

The event took place at Air Canada Centre in Toronto.  Jones defeated Machida late in the second round via guillotine choke.

Jon Jones vs. Lyoto Machida Full Fight Video 

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