Mike O’Hearn is beginning to put plans into motion and is now ramping up his training for his upcoming clash against Rampage Jackson.
O’Hearn is a man of many talents. Model, bodybuilder, actor, and viral internet sensation are just a few ways to describe the Washington native. Despite excelling in the things he’s passionate about in life, that seemingly isn’t enough to keep the man satisfied.
While some people would pick up a new hobby or take a vacation, O’Hearn has decided to step into the ring against the powerhouse Rampage Jackson to fulfill his ambitious urges.
Rampage has long been competing in combat sports and has the accolades to show for it. The fan-favorite held UFC gold after knocking out Chuck Liddell at UFC 71. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest light heavyweights of his generation.
As the bout moves closer, Mike O’Hearn has released a short snippet of what he’s been working on ahead of his meeting with Rampage Jackson.
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It looks like Mike O’Hearn is training under the tutelage of pro wrestling legend Billy Gunn. Gunn is 1/3 of the current AEW World Trios Champions but is best known for his work in the WWF/WWE.
Related: Viral bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn confirms fight against Rampage Jackson
On June 22nd, O’Hearn will collide with Rampage at Bloodsport Bushido. Bloodsport is essentially a mix between mixed martial arts and professional wrestling.
Each winner is pre-determined and the entirety of the fight is scripted. However, instead of winning by pinfall, competitors will get their hands raised by either knocking out or submitting their opponent.
The Bloodsport Bushido event will be the promotion’s first international venture. For those interested in watching Mike O’Hearn take on Rampage Jackson inside the Bloodsport ring, you can do so when it airs live on Trillertv.com.
Go ahead and call her Nate Diaz, because Manon Fiorot was not surprised in the slightest by how effortlessly she shut down Erin Blanchfield at UFC Atlantic City.
“It was an easy fight to prepare for,” Fiorot said through a translator on The MMA Hour.
“To be honest, it was the fight I expected. Perhaps, in my mind, it was [going to be] tougher than this fight, but I really think this fight [was matched up stylistically in my favor] when I think about it, and that was the fight you saw Saturday.”
Fiorot, 34, dominated Blanchfield from pillar to post to earn a lopsided unanimous decision in Saturday’s main event and become the first woman in the UFC to beat the American. Blanchfield had previously racked up six consecutive wins to start her octagon run and was being generally hailed as a future champion of the women’s flyweight ranks, but Fiorot shut down her grappling attack and easily outclassed on her the feet to pull off the upset.
The win put Fiorot at a perfect 7-0 under the UFC umbrella and cemented her as the unquestioned No. 1 contender at 125 pounds, however her future remains uncertain because of the division’s hazy timeline — UFC champion Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko are slated to coach The Ultimate Fighter32 this summer, with a trilogy bout expected to be booked sometime for the third or fourth quarter of the year.
Fiorot isn’t interested in waiting around.
“To be honest, I can fight anybody in the division for a belt, an interim belt,” Fiorot said. “But perhaps I can do the backup [role] for the title fight too. For now, I don’t know, but I really want to be active and I really want to fight for a belt.
“I really think I deserve that title shot, but I don’t want to wait one year and I really want to be active, so now we have to discuss with UFC and we will see.”
Fiorot’s ascent is yet another highlight of the recent rise of French MMA. Her impressive UFC run includes wins over one-time title challengers Mayra Bueno Silva, Jennifer Maia, and Katlyn Cerminara, as well as a hard-fought victory over two-time champ Rose Namajunas.
Fiorot said Wednesday that she takes inspiration from former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and wants to “be like Khabib” by retiring with no UFC losses. It’s part of the reason she fights as carefully as she does, which has led to the only real criticism of her UFC career — her past five wins have all gone to decisions.
“When I think about my career, I really think about legacy,” Fiorot said. “I know a lot of great champs fight like that [and don’t] take a lot of risks, and I really want to win and get the title. And perhaps when I become champion, I’ll take more risks, but for now I just want to win.”
Fiorot targeted the UFC’s rumored return to Paris in September as a potential landing spot for her next bout. She knows the mystery of her next opponent is a more difficult question to answer considering her circumstances, however she expects to ultimately face both of the women involved in the current title trilogy before all is said and done.
“When I arrived in the UFC, Valentina was undefeated in the division. And when I think about a dream fight, it’s Valentina, for sure,” Fiorot said. “But for now she lost against Alexa, so I don’t have a preference, but I really think I have to fight both. And if I fight one for the title, I have to defend the title against the other, so I think I have to win against both.”
Sean O’Malley is such a fan of marijuana, he’s even got his own custom strain.
But the UFC bantamweight champion may be too stoned to intelligently defend himself against Merab Dvalishvili, who is expected to get the next crack at the 135-pound crown at some point later this year.
That’s why “The Machine” is teaching fake “Suga” a lesson in losing.
“It’s hard to recognize him because he’s smoking too much,” Dvalishvili said. “We have lots of work to do. Sean, listen bro, you have a big fight. You’re fighting me. You gotta stop smoking, my friend.”
O’Malley (18-1, 1 NC) captured the crown by stopping Aljamain Sterling in the UFC 292 main event last August, then returned at UFC 299 in Miami to whoop Marlon Vera. As for Dvalishvili (17-4), he’s coming off a dominant performance against Henry Cejudo at UFC 298 last Feb. in Anaheim, which also came with a pre-fight lesson from the inimitable Professor Merab.
UFC is expected to announce a date and location in the coming weeks.
From the day Ronda Rousey first arrived in WWE, Shayna Baszler couldn’t wait to work with her longtime friend.
Unfortunately, Baszler didn’t have much chance to work with Rousey until the ex-UFC champ’s WWE career was coming to an end. Outside of a couple random moments, including a 30-person, over-the-top rope battle in the Royal Rumble, the two hardly crossed paths. Then, following the birth of her daughter, Rousey decided to leave pro wrestling. She was disenchanted with constant travel and the direction she was headed.
Before Rousey left, however, she and Baszler became WWE tag team champions. That set up the ultimate pro wrestling move, a double-cross that promised a confrontation of epic proportions. The following week on TV, Baszler let loose a scathing promo, claiming unlike Rousey, she paid her dues to earn a spot on the roster. Baszler added nothing had been handed to her – like a main event spot in WrestleMania Rousey earned barely a year after her debut.
It felt all too real, because that’s exactly how Baszler and Rousey planned it.
“Obviously with television and WWE, there’s still some restraints, and things we wish we could have done, but the promo work, you hear wrestlers say it all the time, if you can make it come from somewhere real, it’s going to come across as genuine,” Baszler told MMA Fighting. “We were writing our own promos.
“We’re friends, so we’re like, ‘Gloves off, let’s just say all the stuff people think we should say to each other.’ It made people interested.”
*mic drop*#WWERaw pic.twitter.com/04N6gnypgM
— WWE (@WWE) July 4, 2023
Baszler received rave reviews for the promo, but the bigger moment came weeks later when she got matched up against Rousey at Summerslam, an annual tentpole event for WWE.
By that time, Rousey knew she was on her way out. But the multi-time WWE champion wanted nothing more than to put her friend over — wrestling terminology for making it look good so the crowd will care — in a final match.
As much as it stung to see Rousey leave, Baszler appreciated being the person on the other side of that ring for her friend’s last appearance in WWE.
“The match we had, we knew going in, it was this huge stadium, and there wasn’t a jumbotron like normal, above the ring so everyone could see,” Baszler explained. “We knew going in wanting to have a more MMA style match that the stadium crowd was maybe going to get lost. Because this isn’t an MMA audience. This is a pro-wrestling audience. They’re used to motion, and they’re not used to seeing grappling in the one spot.
“We kind of knew going in what the reception was going to be, and we hoped that it’s a legacy we leave that perhaps years down the road people are going to see.”
In her new autobiography, Our Fight, Rousey documented those last moments spent alongside Baszler. She felt sheer elation leaving the ring as the crowd cheered for her friend, who won the match.
“The crowd booed and jeered at me as I walked away from Shayna celebrating in the ring with my hands on my hips and my head down,” Rousey wrote. “As I headed toward backstage, I wanted so badly to look back, to cheer for her right along with the fans as she raised her arms victoriously.”
In a perfect world, Baszler hopes she’ll get the chance to work with Rousey again, though the former UFC champion has seemingly made it clear that she’s put WWE behind her for good.
Regardless, Baszler was proud she got the share that moment with Rousey.
“People that maybe haven’t done sports, maybe won’t understand this, but I’m the first person to submit Ronda Rousey in a combat sport,” Baszler said about her rear-naked choke win over Rousey at Summerslam. “It’s fitting that it was me. Friends.
“If that had been someone else, I don’t think it would have been the same. There’s a lot to say. I wish we could have another. I wish we could tell this story over a longer time period. Like you said, never say never, but if that was it, I’m glad that it went that way for sure.”
Baszler hopes to experience another huge moment in her career on Thursday night when she performs at the Bloodsport pro-wrestling event in Philadelphia. The show is promoted by former UFC champion Josh Barnett, who also happens to be Baszler’s coach, mentor and lifelong friend.
Because she’s still under contract with WWE, Baszler actually never imagined she would have the chanced to share a card with Barnett. But the powers that be at the pro wrestling powerhouse suggested the idea to her.
“On my end, I talk to Josh all the time obviously, and I know he had been talking to some WWE higher ups about possibly using some talent,” Baszler revealed. “I just assumed it was going to be like newer NXT recruits that hadn’t been used or something and it was just never a thought in my mind.
“I get pulled in the office, and they’re like, ‘Would you like to wrestle on Josh’s Bloodsport?’ I’m like yeah, is everything cool? They’re like yeah, he was just looking for people, and there’s only a few wrestlers that we have that know how to wrestle that style, and you’re one of them, so are you interested? I said yes, 100 percent. It was a complete surprise on my end.”
Considering Baszler learned from Barnett, she’s honored to compete on a card with him. More importantly, she’s excited to return to her roots for a shoot-wrestling style that’s vastly different than a typical WWE broadcast. It’s a style that she adapted when she got into WWE, but she’ll get to display everything she knows in her next match.
“It’s definitely a full-circle moment,” Baszler said. “It’s not just about wrestling on a card, obviously Josh being a huge influence on my career and my life, being my mentor, but for people or MMA fans that don’t know a lot about pro wrestling, the style of pro wrestling that Josh’s event Bloodsport is very much in the lines of old-school Pancrase, old-school RINGS. If everything is done right, you should watch it and go, ‘Holy smokes.’ Understand, back in the old PRIDE days, those guys would claim pro wrestling as their martial art when they were fighting in PRIDE.
“That all comes from UWFI (Union of Wrestling Forces International), which was started partially by Billy Robinson and Billy was Josh’s coach and I also learned directly under Billy for a little bit while he was still around. It’s not just about Josh. It’s about the entire lineage.”
Welterweights Ian Garry and Colby Covington have hurled insults back and forth on social media, called each other out, and Covington has gone so far as to insult Garry’s wife with some pretty disrespectful allegations.
Garry is undefeated and climbing the 170-pound ranks. He’s currently ranked inside the Top 10 at seventh. Covington, a perennial contender, is ranked fourth in the weight class. It’s a matchmakers dream, and former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier doesn’t understand why it hasn’t been booked yet.
“We have a guy in Colby Covington and another guy in Ian Garry who seem to be doing the dance. The dance that says, I want to fight you. We just don’t have a specific date where they’re going to fight, or at least they say they want to fight. They just don’t know when and they don’t know where,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel.
“What’s the hold up? Because we have made social media posts. We have called each other out. We have grabbed the microphone wherever the microphone is located and we have spoken that other man’s name. Why have we not come to some sort of conclusion, or start moving in a direction of a fight date and a fight location? I don’t get it,” Cormier continued. “Ian Garry said that he wants to leave this man in a pool of blood.”
Garry has made it clear that he’s willing to fight Covington anywhere. He just needs a date. Covington has not committed as of yet. Cormier believes it’s time for that to change.
“If there is anything in the world that points to two guys that need to fight each other, it’s all the actions being displayed by these two gentlemen: Ian Garry and Colby Covington,” said Cormier. “When you look at them in terms of matching up, this would seem to be the ideal path for Ian Garry while it would seem to be very dangerous for Colby Covington.”
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“Colby Covington, after the fight with Leon Edwards, may not be looking forward to being in there with another long, rangy striker. He just might not be, but the actions say let’s fight. Now it’s time to put pen to paper. We have got to find a way now to get these athletes locked into an octagon to fight each other. That’s just the way it is. They have to fight,” Cormier continued.
“I believe that we’re at a point now where Colby’s got to fight. I think Colby has to fight,” Cormier added. “I think we’re at a point now with this Ian Garry thing where he has to fight him because with all the insults, with all the things he said personally, professionally now you’ve got to go and fight him.”
“Colby’s got to stand up on his words now and go fight that man. And if he beats him, now we’ll still continue to think he’s in the championship picture.”
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