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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Jason Jackson is set to defend his Bellator welterweight title against undefeated Ramazan Kuramagomedov on June 22 in the main event of Bellator’s return to the 3Arena in Dublin.

The promotion announced the matchup during Friday’s event broadcast from Belfast.

Jackson (18-4) is MMA Fighting’s No. 7 ranked welterweight in the world. The 33-year-old TUF veteran rides an eight-fight win streak into his first official title defense after capturing the belt with a stunning knockout of Yaroslav Amosov in November.

Jackson defeated two-time PFL welterweight champion Ray Cooper III via knockout in his most recent appearance this past February at the PFL vs. Bellator event. Jackson also holds notable wins over Douglas Lima, Paul Daley, Neiman Gracie, and Benson Henderson.

Kuramagomedov (12-0) has been perfect in his brief Bellator run, knocking out Jaleel Willis and submitting Randall Wallace.

The 27-year-old Russian talent also owns a notable victory over UFC and PFL veteran John Howard.

Bellator’s return to Dublin is expected to broadcast on streaming service MAX in the United States and DAZN in the United Kingdom.

MMA Fighting – All Posts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Joanne Wood’s 17th walk to the octagon was her last as a professional. It might as well have been her first, though, for how she felt in the moments of cutting weight and backstage before the bout.

“This is stupid — this sucks,” she said of her internal monologue on The MMA Hour. “Why do we do this? Every time, it’s terrible. … You think it would get better, the lead-up. It doesn’t. If anything, it gets worse.”

This past Saturday, Wood closed out a decade-plus career by avenging an earlier loss with a split decision over Maryna Moroz at UFC 299. She made it clear the fight would be her last, and there would be no looking back.

“When you wake up and you’re already tired and sore, it’s just time for the next chapter,” she said. “I have a great life, and I’m just ready to enjoy it.”

Now married to MMA coach John Wood, “Jojo” plans to spend the rest of her days at Syndicate MMA where they train. She’s the mother to Wood’s son from a previous relationship and plans to spend more time with family.

The flyweight UFC vet gets emotional thinking about what it’s cost her to get to this point in her professional and personal life. She found Syndicate after stints in several gyms, including those in her home country of Scotland, went south.

Wood had only just moved to Las Vegas when her entire career was jeopardized by a spike to the canvas at the gym. She didn’t know if she’d be able to move again, let alone fight and be with her future husband.

The decision to retire came easily for Wood, a veteran of Invicta FC who once was in line to fight for the title before an injury forced then-champ Valentina Shevchenko to withdraw from UFC 251. Wood decided not to wait for the champ and suffered a submission loss to Jennifer Maia in her next outing.

“I ain’t a spring chicken anymore, and this is hard, this is hard what we do, training two or three times a day,” Wood said. “The injuries we go through, what we put our bodies and minds through, it isn’t easy, and as you get older, it’s even harder, because you can’t train or as much as when you started. I felt like it was a good time, and go out on a high.”

Wood was transported to the hospital when she passed out backstage after the bout with Maia. Her heart rate dropped precipitously, and she said she “saw the light” in the ambulance. Though she was ultimately OK, she had a “hard think” about whether to continue fighting.

Six fights later, Wood closes her career on a two-fight winning streak. Even the camp for her rematch with Moroz wasn’t trouble-free; she injured her back two weeks beforehand and had to gut out the rest of her work. So hanging up the gloves wasn’t a hard decision.

Wood ends her octagon career with just over a .500 winning percentage at 9-8. She isn’t dwelling on what could have been with Shevchenko.

“There’s a lot I do regret, but I’m not going to live on that,” she said. “I’m happy here in this moment.”

No more agony in the sauna and no more backstage jitters — that’s the present Wood wants to live in.

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Jealous
| BJPenn.com

Sanchez says he’s done running from Fabia, three years after the self-help guru helped destroy “The Nightmare’s” illustrious UFC career.

Diego Sanchez is opening up on the negative impact his former coach and mentor Joshua Fabia has had on his life and career over the past several years.

The original Ultimate Fighter winner was a fixture on UFC cards for 15 years, and while he never managed to win a belt he did engage in some of the most entertaining fights from the Zuffa era of the sport. The wheels would fall off his career not because of age but because of a man named Joshua Fabia. In 2019 he left his longtime team at Jackson-Wink to work with Fabia, who touted himself as a self-help guru running a “School of Self Awareness.”

Fabia had no experience training pro fighters. The training we saw involved him chasing fighters around the cage with a knife and punching an upside-down Sanchez in the head repeatedly. Unsurprisingly, Diego looked out of shape and unprepared in all his fights under Fabia’s tutelage, and his sole victory during that period came via a disqualification. Fabia spread chaos in the background at UFC events, starting arguments with fighters, staff, commentators, and anyone else he felt wasn’t showing him enough respect.

The UFC would end up canceling an upcoming fight with Donald Cerrone and releasing Sanchez in 2021 after Fabia requested all of Diego’s medical records from the promotion, citing ‘the long-term effects of Diego being an MMA fighter.’ Half a year later when Sanchez finally split with Fabia, he said the request was part of a scheme to try and extract a settlement from the UFC.

In a new Instagram video, Diego Sanchez is still clearly suffering from the aftershocks of Fabia’s manipulations.

“For the past 2 years, I have been running from a very traumatic experience,” Sanchez said. “Words cannot even explain how traumatizing this was. It involves a very evil man that manipulated, blackmailed, extorted me, and eventually put an end to my UFC career. And I’ve been dealing with this psychopath for, s—, it’s been 3 years, 4 years. And I paid him out. I paid him money to get out of my life because the situation had become so volatile and so evil and dark that there was no other option.”

Sanchez said he paid ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ to move on, but is still living his life in fear of his former guru.

“I’m dealing with a very unstable mentally unstable sociopathic psychopath, that is basically the best way I could put it,” he said. “You’re dealing with a Charlie Manson type of mind where he’s so far gone that it makes him unstable and dangerous. And the manipulation that was put on, part of it was that he’s an ex-trained hitman, an ex-contract worker for the cartels. And just so much darkness on this guy that it put me in a state of fear that I was worried for the safety of not only my life, but also my daughter, my mother, and even my daughter’s mother too.”

“Dude, I have lost sleep over this. I have gone countless nights with no rest, sleeping in the mornings to to feel safe because there’s a true psychopathic person out there that wants me dead, that believes in his mind that I was the source of ruining his life when ultimately this man came into my life and did the opposite. He ruined mine. But in his opinion, he I ruined his reputation. I ruined his company. And I wasn’t the one that had the greed in my heart. He had the greed in his heart.”

It’s unclear what contact Joshua Fabia still has with Diego Sanchez at this point, but Sanchez declared he was done running from the conflict.

“Now I am in the right state of sound mind where I am ready to move forward, let this past go and move forward,” he said. “But for me to do that, I have to fight this fight. I have to stop running from this guy. I have to go forward, not back. I have to stand up against this evil bully.”

“I have to stand up for this now because if I don’t stand up against this guy, I am going to put other people in a place where he could come into their life, where this guy could manipulate them, blackmail them, extort them as he did me.”

MMAmania.com – All Posts

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Amanda Ribas headlines a UFC event for the first time this Saturday when she battles former champion Rose Namajunas at UFC Vegas 89, and she sees it as an opportunity to reach a different level in the sport.

Ribas said on MMA Fighting’s Trocação Franca podcast that her father and coach Marcelo Ribas is constantly studying UFC rankings at both strawweight and flyweight, sending matchmakers ideas for future bouts. Namajunas was on the list after Ribas knocked out Luana Pinheiro with a spinning wheel kick in November, and that’s what she got.

“The UFC has so many athletes that if you take a step further and offer a name or mention names you’re willing to fight next, it definitely helps,” said Ribas, who is currently ranked in the top 15 of both divisions on both MMA Fighting’s and the UFC’s official rankings. “The opportunity came to fight Rose and I immediately said, ‘Let’s do this’. I didn’t even ask at what weight class. It could be 115 or 125. I would have said yes to either.”

Ribas vs. Namajunas takes place in the flyweight division, where Namajunas isn’t currently ranked. Ribas, however, celebrated the fact that the ex-champ is still considered one of the best pound-for-pound athletes in the UFC as extra motivation for Saturday’s clash.

“Mr. Ribas always says if you want to become a legend, you have to beat a legend,” she said, referring to her father. “I want to become one, and I’m ready for this.”

Namajunas only fought once a year since beating Weili Zhang to reclaim the UFC title, dropping decisions to Carla Esparza and Manon Fiorot in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Ribas is focused at all times, she said, even though she thinks “Thug” Rose does not perform at her best carrying extra 10 pounds of weight.

“I know she has sharp striking and good boxing,” Ribas said. “But I also see that her best quality at strawweight was her speed and explosiveness, and I saw in her last fight at flyweight that it wasn’t all there, so that might be my chance to grab her and do my game. I feel stronger at flyweight.”

“I always study my opponent’s game but also my own,” she continued. “I have good striking, but my background is jiu-jitsu and judo, and that’s something I train a lot. I’ve trained it even more for this camp, so it’s even tighter.”

Ribas has bounced between wins and losses since suffering her first UFC defeat in 2021. She looks to snap that streak at UFC Vegas 89.

If victorious with a clean performance, she is aiming for a quick turnaround on May 4.

“I’ll be in Rio for UFC [301],” Ribas said. “If not for a fight, I’ll watch it. If I have no injuries coming out of this fight, if it’s quick, I do want to fight there. It will be cool.”

MMA Fighting – All Posts

Diego Sanchez is finally opening up about the man he says manipulated him and effectively killed his UFC career.

After struggling to find his way into the win column, Sanchez left longtime gym Jackson Wink MMA to begin working with a man named Joshua Fabia. At the time, nobody had any idea who Fabia was or how he managed to hook himself up with Sanchez. Described as “an accomplished athlete, healer, and trainer,” Fabia was best known for running an institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico known as the School of Self-Awareness. There, he supposedly taught everything from self-defense to meditation to… Human rights?

It didn’t take long for fight fans and those close to Sanchez to recognize that Fabia was a clear fraud who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Sanchez lost two of his last three bouts under the UFC banner before the promotion released him after expressing concerns over his mental health.

Sanchez has since split from Fabia but is just now opening up about his tumultuous relationship with the self-help conman via a video released on his Instagram.

“Everyone knows how my UFC career came to a halting crash in the end,” Sanchez said. “For the past two years, I have been running from a very traumatic experience. Words cannot even explain how traumatizing this was. It involves a very evil man that manipulated, blackmailed, extorted me, and eventually put an end to my UFC career.

“I have been dealing with this psychopath for 3-4 years and it was so evil and dark that there was no other option. Either he was going to kill me, or I was going to kill him. I chose to take the good path. I said I don’t care about money. Money will come. God will provide through his riches and glory everything that I need in my life, but if I kill this guy, I’m gonna have to go to prison and I’m going to miss the last seven years of my daughter’s childhood.”

Diego Sanchez claims Joshua Fabia worked for the cartel and is involved in witchcraft

“I’m dealing with a very unstable, mentally unstable sociopathic, psychopath,” Sanchez continued. “That’s basically the best way I could put it. You are dealing with a Charlie Manson-like mind where he is so far gone that it makes him unstable and dangerous.” 

“The manipulation that was put on me was also that he is an ex-hitman, an ex-contract worker for a cartel. So much darkness on this guy that it put me in a state of fear I was worried about the safety of not only my life, but also my daughter, my mother, and even my daughter’s mother. This guy was completely psycho. He was participating in witchcraft, and a lot of people want to say that it’s mumbo jumbo, but Witchcraft is real. It’s in the bible and it’s very real in this world that we live in.

“This man was incarnating some very powerful demons to do the work that he was doing to bring me against my lord and savior Jesus Christ. In a very vulnerable moment in my life, this man stepped in and basically destroyed me.”

Diego Sanchez attempted to restart his career, taking a fight under the Eagle FC banner against Kevin Lee in 2022. ‘The Nightmare’ came up short via unanimous decision. He then tried his hand at bare-knuckle boxing, signing a one-off deal with the BKFC and debuting at the promotion’s third-annual KnuckleMania event in February 2023. Again, Sanchez lost the bout, this time via doctor’s stoppage in the fourth round.

He has not competed since.

LowKickMMA.com