Issue 176

March 2019

UFC 230 on November 3 saw the promotion stage their third event at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Following the success of the first two events was always going to be a tall task, but with no main event announced four weeks ahead of fight night it was left up to double-weight champion Daniel Cormier to show his worth as a company man.

Hot on the heels of his win at UFC 229, Derrick Lewis was thrown into the main event with Cormier and for the third time in the year, Cormier showed he was a level above the man standing across him in the Octagon. With Cormier announcing earlier in the year that he would retire in March 2019, it was a dangerous match-up taking on Lewis with his expected money-fight showdown with Brock Lesnar on the line as well as his UFC heavyweight title.

Cormier never looked in trouble securing a second-round win, but the fight week was overshadowed by the return of Jon Jones who attended a press conference earlier in the week to promote his fight at UFC 232 with Alexander Gustafsson.

Will Cormier and Jones meet again for the third time? Will they do it at heavyweight? Will Cormier stick around longer than March 2019 to get the opportunity to face Jones again? These will no doubt be some of the biggest questions answered next year.

November 10 marked the UFC’s 25th anniversary and it was a night that will long live in the memory of UFC fans worldwide.

The night was originally scheduled to be headlined by Frankie Edgar taking on Chan Sung Jung, but after Edgar pulled out of the fight with an injury, flamboyant striker Yair Rodriguez stepped up to the plate.

Rodriguez and Jung put on a memorable main event and went blow for blow in a contest that had every MMA fan on the edge of their seat. Jung looked to be heading toward a decision victory as confirmed by the judges’ scorecards after the fight, but with just a single second left in the bout, Rodriguez landed an incredible elbow to render the Korean unconscious and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It was a moment that will forever appear on UFC highlight reels and one that will be etched in the history of the sport.

On November 25 the unthinkable occurred when Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz once again put on the 4-oz. gloves and fought each other for the third time. The 49-year-old Liddell looked a shadow of his former self and Ortiz took full of advantage by brutally knocking him out after four minutes and 24 seconds of the first round.

It was sad to see two members of the UFC Hall of Fame tempted out of retirement for a payday and De La Hoya was widely criticized afterward for being involved in such an event. Pay-per-view estimates released afterward revealed that the fight only did a fraction of the 200,000 buys predicted by Ortiz and De La Hoya with industry insiders suggesting the fight achieved a figure much closer to 30,000.

Over in ONE Championship, BJJ specialist Garry Tonon capped a successful start to his professional MMA career with his third straight win. Tonon defeated Sung Jong Lee via submission and notched up his third successive finish under the ONE Championship banner. Tonon will no doubt be one to watch next year as he continues his MMA journey in a promotion that continues to go from strength to strength in the Far East.

Floyd Mayweather delivered a shock on November 5 when he announced that he would take part in a boxing match with Japanese kickboxing sensation Tenshin Nasukawa at RIZIN Fighting Federation’s New Year’s Eve show. After promising fans a fight “like nothing they’d ever seen before,” Mayweather took to his social media just a few days later and revealed that the fight would no longer be taking place because of a misunderstanding about the rules. Several weeks after, RIZIN announced that the fight was back on and that Mayweather and Nasukawa would compete in a three-round boxing exhibition fight on December 31.

Also this month

• Kamaru Usman defeated Rafael dos Anjos in the main event of The Ultimate Fighter: Heavy Hitters Finale. Juan Espino Dieppa was crowned the heavyweight tournament winner whilst Macy Chiasson won the women’s featherweight tournament after she defeated Pannie Kianzad in the final.
• The International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) hosted their biggest ever amateur world championships in November. Taking place as part of BRAVE International Combat Week, the 5-day, nation vs nation, amateur MMA tournament featured 362 competitors from more than 50 nations across 16 weight divisions. The Junior tournament (for 18 to 20-year-olds) ran concurrently with the Senior Championships (for 18s+) and both events took place under Unified Amateur MMA Rules across four MMA cages at Khalifa Sports City Arena in Manama, Bahrain.
• ACB announced they’d merged with fellow Russian promotional outfit WFCA on November 28 and will in future be known as Absolute Championship Akhmat (ACA). The merger followed a difficult period for ACB which canceled several fight cards in Europe.