Amanda Ribas entered the UFC Vegas 89 main event on Saturday against former two-time strawweight champion Rose Namajunas looking to pick up a win over a future Hall of Famer.
Ribas came up short on the judges’ scorecards losing via unanimous decision. Following the fight she was interview inside the octagon by fighter-turned broadcaster Paul Felder.
“Rose is a warrior. I am too,” Ribas said following the fight. “I tried to do my best and I hope the next one will be better.”
Amanda Ribas UFC Vegas 89 Octagon Interview
Ribas entered the match ranked eighth in the division. She likely won’t drop far with the loss, but Namajunas will make her flyweight rankings debut inside the Top 10.
Gilbert Melendez | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
When Strikeforce sold in 2011 and the promotion was later shuttered, Gilbert Melendez never imagined he would end up working with former owner Scott Coker.
For a huge part of Melendez’s career, Coker was his promoter. But now, they’ll team up to help launch a new organization called Fight Night at the Tech, which features a mix of veterans and up-and-coming fighters competing close to where Strikeforce once called home.
Melendez said the chance to wear a different hat as a spokesperson and ambassador for the new brand – plus working with Coker again – really did feel like a dream come true.
“Scott Coker and I have had a great relationship for years,” Melendez told MMA Fighting. “Scott has come to my wedding. He helped promote me as a fighter, but not only me but my wife; my wife before we even knew each other. So we have such a great relationship, and with getting wind of Bellator ending and knowing Scott, he wanted to maybe chill for a little bit. But I’m a fighter, he’s a fighter at heart. He’s a martial artist. We started sitting down, brainstorming. figuring out things we could do, maybe I would fight again, maybe we’ll do some stuff. I was really pressuring him to do something with me, and I even threw in some fight stuff, like I’m really ready to step into that avenue in a little bit and see what I can do.
“After constant meetings and us talking about it, I think it was important for him to bring martial arts back to the Bay Area. We have so much talent out here, and he feels it’s his obligation to revive Bay Area mixed martial arts with all this talent out here. He selected me. He gave me the option saying, ‘I really want you to lead this, I want you to be a spokesperson and ambassador for it,’ and here we are.”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Gilbert Melendez (@gilbertmelendez)
Coker’s official title is executive producer; he co-owned Strikeforce and then served as president in Bellator for nearly a decade. That role ended after the PFL bought out Bellator and absorbed the promotion, but Coker opted not to stick around in a different role with the organization.
Instead, he’ll team up with Melendez on Fight Night at the Tech. The first card is scheduled for May 18 and the hope is to promote at least four cards per year moving forward.
“It feels like I’m returning to my roots,” Melendez said. “I think a lot of people forget what Scott brought to the community. Though we were all competing against each other and trying to kill each other and there were rivalries, it was a very essential and necessary ecosystem created by Scott.
“I think a lot of us don’t remember that or don’t acknowledge that, but it’s something that I understand very well. Scott is really good at creating an ecosystem where we can all compete, we can all eat, we can all challenge each other. It’s necessary.”
Coker scouted, discovered, and offered a lot of fighters a chance to launch their careers, and now, Melendez gets to do the same in his new role with the upstart organization.
“For sure, it’s a full-circle moment,” Melendez explained. “Not only for myself, but it’s a full circle moment for the community. Because now I’m in this giving stage for my community, and I’ve been a coach, and I’m going to these events and I’m there, I look to the right and I see Cain Velasquez, I see Urijah Faber, I see myself, I see Dave Terrell. I see all these legendary warriors, and now it’s full circle and we’re coaches, and I have this other full circle moment, and I get to step into the shoes of Scott Coker. I’ve always recognized what he’s done and how important he is, and I always play the game right.
“I have a great relationship with Scott, and it is a full circle moment. I’ve been a fighter, a coach, an analyst, a commentator, and I’ll tell you what, I love this sport and I want to be in it until the day that I die. I want the best seat in the house, and Scott always has the best seat in the house, so I want to be there with him.”
Melendez said when he first started talking to Coker about working together, he hinted at a potential return to action; he last competed in 2019 prior to his exit from the UFC. He may not want to book a full-time fight schedule again, especially with all the other commitments happening his life, but the 41-year-old veteran still envisions a return to action one day in the future.
“I do want to fight,” Melendez said. “I would love to fight one of these days. I stay in shape all the time. I train with my team but right now, I’m in the giving stage of my life. I know my fight career is done. I would love to fight for myself now, which would be fun, but I’m in a giving stage.”
The giving stage involves the next generation of fighters looking for opportunities like Coker once gave Melendez when he was competing under the Strikeforce banner. Now Melendez wants to do the same for fighters near his home in California.
“We believe there are a lot of diamonds in the rough out here,” Melendez said. “But there are some established fighters, there are some veterans who really paved the way out here, who continues to keep the fire alive for Bay Area martial arts and Scott and I and the team want to highlight them.”
Blachowicz is inching closer to a UFC return now that both of his injured shoulders have been surgically repaired.
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz is hoping to regain that legendary Polish power with the help of a second shoulder surgery procedure.
Blachowicz was forced to pull out of a fight with Aleksandar Rakic in December 2023 after the strength in his arms decreased to the point where he felt “like a two-year-old girl.” A few weeks later he was on the operating table, where surgeons were set to operate on both of his shoulders. Unfortunately it took them so long to fix the right shoulder that they had to leave the left one for another date.
Three months later, and that date has finally arrived.
“It is what it is… Going under the knife again,” Blachowicz wrote on Instagram. “It’s time for the surgery of the other shoulder … Keep your fingers crossed! With the first shoulder it helped.”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Jan Blachowicz (@janblachowicz)
He shared a follow-up after the surgery, which sounds like it was a success. Not only did they fix his left shoulder, but they cleared out the cartilage in his sinuses as well.
“I feel really good. I feel so relieved that I have this process behind me,” he wrote. “With this energy I’m entering the next step! Still want to do something big. For myself. For you guys. #LegendaryPolishPower #WillReturn.”
Jan Blachowicz won the vacant UFC light heavyweight title in 2020 and defended it once when Israel Adesanya moved up a weight class chasing double champion status. He suffered an upset loss in his next defense against Glover Teixeira and has struggled to regain momentum since then. His last bout was a close split decision loss to Alex Pereira in July 2023 — a fight Jan still believes he won.
Hopefully with these surgeries and time off, the 41-year-old Blachowicz can make a splash in the division one more time.
Discuss your favorite fighters, the upcoming card or whatever's on your mind.
Link to rmma's Thick, Solid and Tight Meme Guide
Link to the Noob's Guide to MMA
How to obtain a custom flair:
place and lose a flair bet in the Friday thread
write a haiku or draw a MS Paint-style image for the sub
The rules for the drawing or haiku are simply that it must be a ridiculous MMA-related scenario. If you would like a custom flair, send a message to us with a link to your drawing and your flair request. We'll probably grant it.
Interested in modding? Please fill out the mod application found here. Do not leave a comment about this in the thread. You can send us modmail if you have questions.
Rose Namajunas | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Rose Namajunas has her first win as a UFC flyweight out of the way. A second one could propel her back into championship territory.
There are no shortage of potential opponents for Namajunas, who earned a unanimous decision win over Amanda Ribas in Saturday’s UFC Vegas 89 main event. Namajunas brings plenty of cachet to any matchup, given her history as a two-time strawweight champion, but she likely needs a win over a top-5 contender to earn a title shot at 125 pounds.
Namajunas mentioned the names of a few contenders following her latest win, with Maycee Barber being one that drew particular interest.
“I think she’s a savage,” Namajunas said at the UFC Vegas 89 post-fight press conference when asked why she would like to fight Barber. “She’s a big girl, she’s strong, she’s just a bully in there. I knew her when she was really young, and she’s a lot different now. She used to kind of call me out back when she was younger and things like that – I think it’s kind of funny. But she’s really tough, and that would definitely motivate me and get me going every day, because I know she throws with really bad intentions.
“But anybody else is cool, too. Erin Blanchfield, Manon [Fiorot], title [shot], don’t matter.”
Barber has been on a hot streak since a loss to future champion Alexa Grasso, having won six straight fights. Most recently, she knocked off perennial contender Katlyn Cerminara at UFC 299 to put herself into position for a No. 1 contender’s fight.
Currently, Grasso and former champion Valentina Shevchenko are scheduled to coach the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter 32, which leaves them on the sidelines for the foreseeable future and the flyweight title picture in limbo.
Though Namajunas lost to Manon Fiorot in her flyweight debut, her impressive run at strawweight made her one of the UFC’s most popular fighters, and she’s fine with capitalizing on her notoriety if the matchmakers want to fast track her to a championship fight.
“I think that definitely if they want to give me a title shot, I’m more than happy to do that,” Namajunas said. “I lost to Manon Fiorot and she’s fighting Erin Blanchfield and she was calling for a title shot, so I know how things work and I know that you’ve got to earn things. Had things gone a little bit different of a way [against Manon] I probably would have been in that title shot after Manon.
“It was kind of weird not being ranked too. Can I just get ranked now? So I think that just kind of threw me off a little bit. But it was kind of cool and I was happy to just—Instead of just being the champ and then jumping straight into a superfight, champ vs. champ, go up a weight class, I think it is kind of cool to just work your way up and do it that way. I think becoming the champ this way would be way more impressive in my opinion, but at the same time if they want to give me that, I’ll take it.”
Namajunas is currently No. 14 in MMA Fighting’s Pound-for-Pound Rankings and should expect to have a number next to her name in the UFC’s official rankings after getting past Ribas. “Thug Rose” was able to use her grappling to win portions of her fight against Ribas, but she admitted that she’s still adjusting to competing in a heavier weight class.
“I felt actually pretty good,” Namajunas said. “There was some things to work on. I wasn’t as quick as I wanted, like as snappy as I wanted to be, but my arms are a little bigger, but I also could feel my strength was great. I think everybody thinks that I’m small or weak or something like that, so it’s just good to get better at the grappling aspect of things and just kind of keep all of my skills up at a high level, no weakness anywhere.”
While the UFC’s return to The APEX delivered some epic finishes, Laura Sanko may have scored the biggest knockout of the night.
Sanko returned to the commentary table on Saturday night for a loaded UFC Vegas 89 card featuring the return of former two-time strawweight world champion ‘Thug’ Rose Namajunas. As usual, Sanko was a welcome addition to the broadcast, sharing her expertise through the 13-fight card. However, not everyone was appreciative of her efforts.
Crawling out of whatever hole he lives in these days, former WEC lightweight champion Jamie Varner went on the attack, calling out Sanko and her “annoying” commentary in a pair of scathing posts online.
Varner expressed his disdain for Laura Sanko’s commentary on X, writing: “Leave the commentary to the people that have actually fought. A female UFC fighter should have that job, she is just annoying and it’s obvious she is trying so hard and doesn’t know what she is talking about.” Varner added in a follow-up post that Sanko is “a try-hard that speaks about things she knows nothing about. Talking about blast doubles and how tiring it could be in the first round of the fight, like what do you know about any of those things? Stay in your lane.”
Laura Sanko Reminds Jamie Varner of the time they fought on the same card
Clearly, Varner forgot that Laura Sanko is in fact a former fighter, having amassed a 5-1 overall record while competing for promotions such as Titan FC and Invicta. Responding to Varner’s criticism, Sanko even recalled details of when the two former fighters appeared on the same card together.
“It’s ok that you don’t like my commentary, but respectfully, I’ve been a part of this game and training since 2006,” Sanko wrote. I’m a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu and while I can’t compare my career to yours I have in fact fought. And if UFC had a 105 division I would have fought a lot longer.
“You and I actually fought on the same card in 2011 for Titan FC. We warmed up next to each other in the basement of the Memorial Hall building in KCK. My best friend braided your hair because you couldn’t find anyone to do it. I remember thinking how cool it was at the time to be on a card with you. I had followed your career in the WEC and was a little star-struck to be honest.”
For those curious, the event in question was Titan FC 20 in September 2011. Sanko won her bout against Kyla Potter in less than a minute via armbar while Varner lost his fight with current BKFC standout Dakota Cochrane.
Sanko put her mixed martial arts career to bed in 2013, but she was far from done in the sport. After earning her spot as a roving reporter for the UFC, she was given a shot at the commentary booth in 2021, joining the broadcast team for Dana White’s Contender Series. Two years later, Sanko made history at UFC 293 in Australia by becoming the first woman in the promotion’s Zuffa era to serve as a color commentator.
Sanko’s energetic and insightful commentary has been a welcomed addition to every broadcast she participates in and has quickly become a favorite among fight fans.
File under: Mmaweekly.com | Leave a comment »