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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

UFC is heading back to Kentucky for the first time in more than a decade.

On Wednesday, the world’s leading MMA promoter announced it will return to Louisville, Ky., for a Fight Night card on June 8 at the KFC Yum! Center.

This will be the only the third UFC event ever to take place in Kentucky. The first was UFC on Versus 3 in 2011, also at the KFC Yum! Center, headlined by a welterweight fight between Diego Sanchez and Martin Kampmann. The most recent event in the Bluegrass State took place back in 2013 at UFC Fight for the Troops 3 in Fort Campbell, headlined by a middleweight bout between Tim Kennedy and Rafael Natal.

While the card does not currently have a main event, a number of matchups have already been reported, including a bantamweight bout between Raul Rosas Jr. and Ricky Turcios, a welterweight contest between Punahele Soriano and Miguel Baeza, a strawweight fight between Eduarda Moura and Denise Gomes, a middleweight tilt between Julian Marquez and Zach Reese, and a bantamweight fight between Cody Stamann and Taylor Lapilus.

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Planning a hasty return to action off the back of his close, contentious split decision loss to Arman Tsarukyan over the weekend at UFC 300, former lightweight champion, Charles Oliveira has expressed his interest in a re-run with newly-minted BMF titleholder, Max Holloway in the future.

Oliveira, a former undisputed lightweight kingpin, who slipped to number two in the official lightweight pile over the course of the weekend, found himself on the wrong side of a close, debated split judging (29-28, 28-29, 29-28) defeat to Armenia native, Tsarukyan failed to lock up a slew of close submission attempts in each round.

And arguing his case for a potential victory on the judge’s scorecards against the newly-ranked number one contender, Oliveira claimed that his active in hunting for submissions should likely have gotten him the nod in a close back-and-forth. 

“I had to finish him,” Charles Oliveira explained during an interview with Canal Encarada. “It went to the judges, and it’s their call, there’s nothing we can do. If you go back tot the first round, you’ll see I tired to finish him more and they scored it for me. The second one was closer and I ended up with a triangle choke locked in, and they gave it to him. The third, he was on top, holding me there, but wasn’t doing Jiu-Jitsu or anything, and I finished with a choke locked in, and they still have it to him. There’s not much we can do.”

And in terms of an ideal return time – it’s as soon as possible according to Sao Paulo finisher, Oliveira, who also noted his interest in sharing the Octagon with the above-mentioned, Holloway in the future – who himself turned in a viral, buzzer-beating KO win over common-foe, Justin Gaethje.

Charles Oliveira weighs up Max Holloway rematch

“We don’t need to get desperate,” Charles Oliveira explained. “I want to come back as soon as possible. Of course, a fight with Max Holloway would be wonderful, but he will definitely go back to his weight class to fight for the 145 [pound] title. Justin Gaethje hurt his nose, so we have to think.” 

First fighting Holloway atop a UFC Fight Night Saskatoon main event back in 2015, Oliveira saw a four-fight unbeaten streak come to an end in unique circumstances, suffering a first round TKO loss after he injured his esophagus during a scramble at the Octagon fence.

Would you like to see Charles Oliveira rematch Max Holloway?

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

UFC 303 caps off International Fight Week 2024 with Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler in the main event, and more fights are now being added the summertime event.

Middleweight prospect Joe Pyfer makes his return after suffering his first UFC loss to Jack Hermansson back in February, which ended his five-fight win streak overall.

Pyfer faces Canadian powerhouse Marc-Andre Barriault, who comes into the fight with a 2-2 record in his past four fights, including wins over Julian Marquez and Eryk Anders.

In the strawweight division, submission specialist Gillian Robertson looks to build on her recent win over Polyana Viana when she faces longtime veteran Michelle Waterson-Gomez.

Waterson-Gomez has been a mainstay on the UFC roster since 2015, however she’s fallen on harder times lately. The 38-year-old veteran has dropped her past four fights in a row, and sports a 1-6 mark overall in her past seven fights.

The upcoming fight against Robertson might be a make-or-break moment for Waterson-Gomez to continue moving forward with her UFC career.

Pyfer vs. Barriault and Robertson vs. Gomez-Waterson join the UFC 303 lineup, with the card set to take place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. More matchups are expected to be announced for UFC 303 in the coming weeks.

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Former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling made his featherweight debut at UFC 300 against eighth-ranked Calvin Kattar.  If he had lost, Sterling may have retired.

“Fight day in the backroom is when I really started to second guess a lot of everything.  I was just having doubt of like, man, if this doesn’t go well I don’t know where I go from here,” Sterling said on The MMA Hour.  “Do I continue to keep fighting?  Do I just call it quits kind of thing?  Those are real thoughts I had.

“At the end of the day, I’m not just trying to collect a check.  There’s so many guys that stick around just to do that.  I respect them, but I’m here to be number one,” Sterling continued.  “If it’s just like I’m going to be in the pack, I’ve made enough money.  I think I’ve done enough in my career where I’m like, alright, it’s probably time to find a new job.  That’s kind of the way I look at things.  If you’re not first, you’re last.”  

Sterling kept his inner monologue to himself.  He didn’t tell his coaches, teammates, or his fiancé that he was thinking about retiring if he lost.  

“It depends on how it would have happened,” he said.  “If I had got my a** completely kicked by Calvin Kattar, I was probably done.  No one knew about that.  I didn’t share those sentiments with anybody.”

Fortunately for “Funk Master,” he defeated Kattar by unanimous decision and replaced Kattar in the eighth spot in the featherweight rankings. He expects to be back in the octagon this fall and wants to fight the highest ranked opponent that he can get.    

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Mike Perry isn’t spending much time thinking about Darren Till these days, but he’s admittedly still confused about why that fight isn’t happening.

Perry has become must-see television since transitioning from MMA to emerge as the face of bare-knuckle boxing, where he now serves as the biggest star of BKFC. He’s engaged in back-to-back viral fights with ex-UFC champions Luke Rockhold and Eddie Alvarez, but a showdown with Till seemed like the perfect matchup to make for his first fight in 2024.

Perry and Till have traded shots back and forth in interviews and over social media for the past few years, and with both men no longer in the UFC, a fight between them seemed to be inevitable. Unfortunately, BKFC president David Feldman said that after matching Till’s financial demands, the Liverpudlian ultimately decided that he wanted to take a boxing match or two before taking off the gloves to go to war with Perry.

While Feldman didn’t reveal how much the promotion offered for the fight, Perry claimed on The MMA Hour that Till said no to “over $ 2 million” to fight him.

“What’s he doing?” Perry told MMA Fighting when addressing Till. “What is he doing? I know they gave him a hell of an offer. Respect that you don’t care about that type of offer and you want what you want. When you want what you want, that’s respectable.

“But that’s one thing about BKFC too — at the end of the day, screw the gloves. Test yourself for real. Up against the bone. Skin and bone, baby, that’s what’s in there. Test yourself.”

For now, Perry sits just days away from a fight against UFC veteran and former BKFC champion Thiago Alves, which headlines the BKFC KnuckleMania IV card from Los Angeles on April 27.

Perry had no problem accepting Alves as an opponent, but he assumed Till would sign the dotted line until he got word that the one-time UFC title challenger turned down the offer.

For his part, Perry promises there’s really no bad blood from his side, although he doesn’t understand why Till continues sending him private messages about a possible fight.

“People want that fight to happen and it may happen,” Perry said. “He’s still talking. He jumps in my DMs, he’s out drinking with his buddies and he’s like, ‘You s*** house, blah, blah, blah,’ talking s***. I’m like, it’s a brick s*** house, boy. I’m here. I’m at the arena. I’m at the fight. I’ve got an event. I’m going to get this money and you’re out here trying to make things happen. Well, stop.

“We’re slaves to the fight game, that’s what we signed up for when we became fighters. If he wanted to fight me, I think he would have had the opportunity and the chance. What? He wants to fight me with the gloves on? He wants to fight somebody else with the pads on his hands? It’s all good. I think maybe after this we can make it happen.”

Perry doesn’t discount Till as a legitimate challenge, but he understands that there’s a lot of risk for anyone who faces him in a bare-knuckle fight with no prior experience in the sport. Rockhold found that out the hard way, losing a couple of teeth while fighting Perry in 2023.

To add to that, Till departed the UFC on a 1-5 run that culminated with three straight losses. A fourth straight loss — even in a bare-knuckle fight against Perry — wouldn’t exactly be confidence inspiring for the future.

Still, Perry acknowledges that Till deserves the praise he’s received over the years, but it remains to be seen if they’ll ever meet in the ring to settle their differences.

“Darren’s a good fighter,” Perry said. “Maybe even great. Because he point fought [Stephen] ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson to a decision victory. It was a close fight, but he won. He had a very close fight with Robert Whittaker. I thought it could have gone either way, but it didn’t go his way. Dricus du Plessis has proven himself and become the champion, and he’s obviously some type of strong that they haven’t seen at 185. It’s nothing to hang his head on.

“Maybe he’s just too busy having fun in life, just f****** around. I’m too busy trying to get this money while I can, while I’m strong, coming into the prime of my athletic career. I’m using my time as wisely as I possibly can to set myself up better.”

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Don’t Come!
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Former UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway captured the “BMF” crown with a sensational, fifth-round knockout victory over longtime lightweight contender Justin Gaethje as part of the UFC 300 pay-per-view (PPV) event last weekend in Las Vegas.

But “The Highlight” may have already been cooked by the time that happened.

“We can’t shy away from the fact that this man took the kick to the nose,” Gaethje’s friend and teammate, Kamaru Usman, said on his “Pound 4 Pound” podcast (transcribed by MMA Junkie). “Was it the end of the first round, just seconds left or if not zero time left, took that kick to the nose, which plays a huge, huge part in potentially moving on in the fight because now you can’t breathe the way you want to breathe in that fight. And on top of that, we have to see the two eye pokes. I mean, they were clear-cut legit eye pokes, and it wasn’t that Max was doing it maliciously or on purpose. They happened, and these are the type of things that can alter the outcome of a fight.”

Perhaps the promotion’s fancy new gloves can help prevent a repeat of that situation.

“I think the place where things kind of might have went sideways is making the necessary adjustments in the fight,” Usman continued. “I think Justin is such a freaking good guy, which is why he is your favorite fighter’s favorite fighter. He loves to entertain so much to where it’s, ‘Okay, you paid to see this type of fight; I’m going to give you that type of fight.’ He’s that type of guy and to where I thought he could have made some adjustments. He is a wrestler. This fight is completely different had Justin changed levels and took Max down once or twice, and he can do it. He can 100 percent do it.”

Holloway is expected to return to featherweight for an Ilia Topuria title shot later this year.

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