BARUERI, Brazil — UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo wants more money.
Coming off an epic five-round title defense against Chad Mendes in the main event of UFC 179 in Rio de Janeiro in October, Aldo host a Q&A before the official UFC Fight Night 58 weigh-ins in Barueri, Brazil, and once again asked for better salaries for MMA fighters.
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Former NBA center Darko Milicic made his kickboxing debut Thursday night in Serbia. The 7-footer, who was the second overall draft pick in 2003, lost to Radovan Radojcic in the second round of their exhibition fight via doctor’s stoppage after suffering a cut on his left leg.
“The next time, it will be better,” Milicic said [translated by The Detroit News]. “I’m invincible.”
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SAO PAULO, Brazil — The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 3 heavyweight winner Antonio Carlos Junior returns to the light heavyweight division after dominating in his reality show bouts, and he’s confident going into his UFC Fight Night 58 clash with Patrick Cummins on Saturday night. In an exclusive interview with MMAFighting.com, the Brazilian grappler explains why he’s called “Shoeface”, says why he will fight better at 205 pounds, breaks down Cummins’ game, his decision to train at Nova Uniao and much more.
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SAO PAULO, Brazil — Mitch Gagnon will be the first fighter to face Renan Barao after the Brazilian lost his UFC bantamweight championship, and he feels he got the gold ticket. Following the UFC Fight Night 58 open workouts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Canadian prospect spoke to MMAFighting.com about his match-up with Barao, why he believes he’s better than Barao “everywhere”, what a win over Barao makes for his career, the UFC-Reebok deal and much more.
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No surprise here, but if you’re fighting on The Ultimate Fighter, it’s better on your wallet to make the finals. UFC strawweight champion Carla Esparza handily out-earned the rest of her fellow TUF 20 castmates at Friday’s The Ultimate Fighter 20 Finale, pocketing $50,000 for her main event win according to figures released to MMAFighting.com by the Nevada Athletic Commission.
Despite being the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed and reigning Invicta FC champion, Esparza entered her finals bout against 22-year-old Rose Namajunas as a betting underdog. It didn’t matter though, as Esparza dominated Namajunas with her wrestling before securing a third-round submission finish to be crowned the UFC’s inaugural 115-pound champion.
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PHOENIX — Stipe Miocic spoke to the media Wednesday about his UFC on FOX 13 main event opposite Junior dos Santos, if he is willing to speak as a way to furthering his profession, whether preparing for a fight this huge felt different than his others, how an ‘habit’ to seeing the sport and comprehending it made him better plus more.
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Gilbert Melendez is confronting UFC lightweight champ Anthony Pettis for that division’s most esteemed title on Saturday. Melendez is definitely a winner in other organizations or highly rated in the UFC. Yet, his present position is one which did not occur organically or by chance. It turned out to be a unified attempt just made possible by contractual openings, the fiscal readiness and skill of some other suitor, and maybe above all, efficient direction.
let us fast piece together the timeline of the important parts of Melendez’s mixed martial arts profession to aid us better comprehend these facts.
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Akira Corassani is going to be trying to find an improved result in his home country this time aroiund.
Corassani, a Sweden native, will meet Sam Sicilia at UFC on FOX 14 on Jan. 24 in Stockholm, the UFC declared Thursday. The card is expected to attract upwards of 30,000 individuals to Tele2 Arena. Corassani is coming off a knockout loss to Max Holloway in Sweden back in October.
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Undefeated strawweight Claudia Gadelha improved to 12-0 in MMA having a unanimous decision over Tina Lahdemaki in her UFC introduction in July. Aside from the triumph, Gadelha’s abs were one of the very discussed issues that night.
Making her return against fellow undefeated possibility Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC on FOX 13 on Dec. 13, Gadelha says her abs will seem even better on weigh-ins.
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With news that UFC middleweight Vitor Belfort had passed the first of assumably several random drug tests, the No. 1 competitor seems happy to be moving forward without testosterone replacement treatment (TRT).
“It was better for me (the ending of TRT) because I made a boring treatment that has been troubling me, and today I am more powerful, lighter and quicker,” Belfort told SporTv (via Bloody Elbow). “So, for Belfort, it was amazing. Does not matter what my blood says, nor the effect of the blood test. What issues is what’s in my head.”
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While Conor McGregor and Cub Swanson debated who had the better right to next face UFC featherweight champ Jose Aldo, former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar was a lost third wheel.
Sadly for Swanson, and perhaps Edgar, the prior winner just got to fight once Saturday night in Austin.
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Wayne Boyd is more passionate about wrestling than almost anyone, and his latest goal is to succeed at something that everyone else that has tried and failed: the idea of running a promotion doing professional amateur wrestling.
Boyd’s new venture, The Global Wrestling Championships, debuts with a Saturday afternoon show with three main event matches, featuring six of the country’s top wrestlers. The event brings four-time NCAA champion Kyle Dake back to Cornell University. It will be a combination of prelim matches streaming for free at 2 p.m. Eastern time on GoFightLive.tv and the championship matches as a $6.95 Internet pay-per-view if ordered in advance, at 3 p.m. ET.
Boyd’s goals are ambitious. He wants to present real wrestling, with the country’s best wrestlers, in a professional sports league team format. He wants to present the shows like MMA, with interviews, storylines and grudge matches. The idea is for the teams to be from the ten to 20 best wrestling clubs in the country, doing dual meets. The goal is to generate enough revenue that 88 of the best wrestlers in the country would be able to earn $50,000 per year with the hope it will help sustain them so they won’t have to work a full-time job while preparing for international competitions. They also want the U.S. team to surpass Iran and Russia for the top spot in the world. It would also gives those so inclined the experience of competing in a sports league and learning to promote matches before moving into MMA.
It’s something that is the reverse of two decades ago, when people like Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Matt Lindland, Mark Coleman and Tom Erikson originally started fighting in MMA as a way to earn money to support their Olympic wrestling dreams.
For Saturday’s event, the prize money will be $7,500 to the winner and $2,500 to the loser, for three championship bouts.
In marketing, Boyd wants to change terminology. He doesn’t like the term amateur wrestling. And he wants to use boxing and MMA terms for weight classes.
When Sam Hazewinkel, a member of the 2012 Olympic team, faces Tony Ramos, who won the NCAA title last year for Iowa, they’ll be battling for the GWC flyweight championship, complete with a title belt. The actual weight of the competitors isn’t even decided, but it will be something in the neighborhood of 126 or 127 pounds.
Dake, the only man in history to win NCAA titles in four different weight classes and the best U.S. college wrestler in recent years, will battle Andrew Howe, a former NCAA champion from Wisconsin, for the welterweight title, which will be at around 163 pounds. The two went into triple overtime last year when they were in a tournament for a spot on the U.S. team in the world championships.
The heavyweight championship will be decided with Tervel Diagnev, who placed fifth at the last Olympics, facing Tyrell Fortune, a former Division II national champion who lost to Diagnev in the finals of the tournament in 2013 to make the U.S. team for the world championships. Both men will be about 285 pounds, and Boyd wants to go back to the past the make the heavyweight division an unlimited weight class, bringing back the days of the behemoth 400-pound heavyweights.
Boyd, 68, won an NCAA title in 1969 while going undefeated in dual meets during his college career at Temple University. He’s finishing his 57th year in the sport, and still trains twice a week. He notes that in 1981, he became the only man to ever pin Victor the Wrestling Bear. After the age of 45, he won seven age group national championships, the most recent being in 2009. He’s also produced movies about wrestling, most notably the 1996 movie, “One More Shot.”
The idea of a professional league for amateur wrestlers isn’t new. A number have sprung up in the last 40 years, usually lasting very little time. The AGON promotion tried it in recent years.
The most visibility any of these projects got was nearly a decade ago, when Real Pro Wrestling had a run on national television. RPW was on both PAX TV (now Ion) and Fox Sports Net, but folded after one season, with minimal ratings and an inability to get sponsors. But that league featured some of the best wrestlers in the country at the time, who a decade later are now names in MMA, including 184-pound champion Muhammad Lawal (King Mo) of the Oklahoma Slam, teammate Daniel Cormier, who won the 211-pound championship, and 264-pound champion Patrick Cummins. Also in the promotion was current Bellator bantamweight champion Joe Warren.
“It’s a real challenge,” said Boyd, about the promotion. “I’m really hoping we can do what UFC accomplished. We’re looking to give wrestling a bigger audience, more entertainment value and get more media interest. That’s what we are looking for. For years, we’ve called ourselves amateur wrestling. If you call yourself amateur, how do you expect to get any attention?”
The amateur wrestling community has constantly been trying to figure out a way for its top stars to be able to earn a sustainable living while full-time training for national and international competitions. And it’s come full circle, because Boyd is in discussion about putting on a second show in conjunction with the annual amateur wrestling spectacular held in New York’s Madison Square Garden, on Dec. 21. He talked about getting Lawal and Warren to wrestle on the show, and wants to get in touch with Tito Ortiz.
Ultimately, he’s talking about major arenas and pay-per-view, and hoping to be a circuit where guys can make some money, make a name, and then some would then transition into the UFC or another MMA promotion.
They are experimenting with rules. On the first show, each match is a series of a best-of-five series of three-minute rounds, calling them rounds and not periods. The rounds will be scored both separately and together. If there is a pin, the match is over. If not, the first person to win three rounds takes it. However, if the loser wins his rounds stronger, enough to where after four or five rounds, he has more cumulative points than the winner, they go into a three round overtime to decide the championship. If that fails, they stand up and have a sudden death, first person to score round. If neither man scores after three minutes, there will be three judges who decide the champion.
“We’re pushing scoring more points, wrestling longer and wrestling harder,” said Boyd. “Our guys, if they go to the world championships, when they wrestle the Russians and Iranians, they’ll have trained for 15-18 minute matches, so they’ll have a little edge in conditioning. We want the U.S. to dominate wrestling and dominate Russia and Iran.”
“I need to see what happens after ten minutes,” he said. “We need to see how it looks when they’re exhausted. I may find the magic number is 12 minutes, not 15, maybe nine, but I want the matches to be longer. Whose ever heard of an entertainment event that lasts six minutes?
He’s talking to NBA owners, with a goal to get exposure by putting on wrestling matches at halftime of games.
“People call me crazy, but without vision, you’ll just do the same things over and over,” he said. “We’ve never been able to pay our athletes. We’re looking at being a bridge to UFC. If I can sit down with Dana White, we can map something out.”
He looks back at the early 1900s, when Frank Gotch was one of the biggest sports heroes of the time, and battled George Hackenschmidt before 29,000 fans at Comiskey Park in Chicago, or when Joe Stecher battled Earl Caddock in Madison Square Garden in legitimate matches for the world championships.
“I’d like to do a match in Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, a big match where the lure is that the winner would get $1 million,” said Boyd. “If people knew two guys were fighting for that much money, they would get interested.”
He thinks that will lead to more participation in the sport.
“The characteristics of being great in any sport are common in wrestling,” he said. “Any ten year-old boy, or ten year-old girl should experience wrestling for at least one season. It’ll make him a better baseball player or a better football player. It builds character. It’s the world’s oldest sport, the original sport of the ancient Olympics, and it’s a natural teacher of life experiences.”
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The UFC’s maiden voyage into Mexico couldn’t have gone better from a finisher’s standpoint. Nor could it have gone quicker.
All five fights on the main card of the UFC 180 pay-per-view in Mexico City ended in finishes on Saturday night. Four of them ended in the first round.
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MEXICO CITY — Jessica Eye talks about her UFC 180 fight against Leslie Smith, how making changes in her personal life led to a better attitude, why she won’t get into a brawl with Smith, and more.
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Conor McGregor observed Jose Aldo overcome Chad Mendes in a dramatic spell on Oct. 25, but former UFC champ Lyoto Machida does not believe McGregor has what it takes to dethrone the reigning champ.
“If you are likely to compare him to Jose Aldo, Aldo is technically better,” Machida told MMAFighitng.com. “(McGregor) is a tough fighter, he is coming out powerful, but you can not say he defeats Aldo. Aldo is overly dominant.”
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At some stage, Barb Honchak is likely to need to make a choice about which particular UFC division may be better for he future: Bantamweight or strawweight.
Until then, she is untouchable at 125 pounds. Honchak made her second successful defense of her Invicta flyweight title on Saturday night, scoring a unanimous decision victory within the match-but-coordinated Takayo Hashi. The judges’ scores were 49-46 as well as a set of 50-45s as Honchak kept her title in the main event of Invicta FC 9 in the River Center in Davenport, Iowa.
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Halloween nighttime means celebrations or trick or treating for most 28-year old couples with three children. For former UFC fighter Matt Riddle, and his wife Lisa, they have been less than two weeks into a fresh path in life – striving to become pro wrestlers. Riddle fought 12 fights in UFC between 2008 and 2013, after coming in through the Ultimate Fighter reality show with zero fighting encounter. He was a New York high school state champ at Saratoga Springs High School in 2004, then wrestled for a couple of years at East Stroudsburg University, before employed as a roofer. He’d no fights nor proper training when he tried out for The Ultimate Fighter.In those days, contestants in the show were decided both from the UFC and Spike. The UFC was deciding based on people that could go on to be combatants in the business. Spike would pick people according to character, or appearances. Among the reasons they began doing the fights to enter the house was to weed out the men who might have now been television characters, but were not actual combatants. Riddle had a great look, as well as a huge grin and appeared to constantly be joyful, however he never fought, even though he’d a strong real wrestling history. He walked to the cage for the very first time and quickly scored such an horrific knockout, breaking the jaw of Dan Simmler in two positions, that he was the next man decided by trainer Rampage Jackson for the seventh season of the show. He lost to Dan Cramer in his next fight, a loss he avenged another year. Those at the UFC understood he’d possible. The truth is, he was a name brought up especially in those days when the thought of a UFC developmental system was talked about, getting men who’d possible and athletic skill, but from an experience point of view, were not prepared for UFC. But no such thing existed. He was in the UFC from day one, and, equipped along with his wrestling, won his first three fights. Subsequently, by his own admission, he showed up out of form to get a fight with Nick Osipczak in Manchester, England, and learned a lesson, being ended late in the 3rd round.”That was a terrible night,” he remembered. He never reached the top in the UFC. However he could have won his last four fights, except two of his triumphs were overturned for testing positive for cannabis. The second one led to his being let go from the corporation after having a run of going 7-3, using the two no contests. Bellator needed him, but he and CEO Bjorn Rebney had a public falling out after he blasted the organization, said he was retiring, afterward came from retirement, subsequently pulled from a fight, and was let go. His only fight since being released by the UFC in early 2013, was on Feb. 28 for Titan Fighting Championships, which he won via guillotine in the second round. Fighting in the UFC was more something he fell into. As a child, he along with his wrestling dummy would spend all day long in the trampoline with him practicing professional wrestling moves and he had do backyard matches.So now he is looking to return to his youth. Three times weekly, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, he is said he along with his wife will travel 90 minutes in every single direction to head to The Monster Factory in Paulsboro, N.J. It is among the earliest professional wrestling schools in the nation, opening up in the early 80s by Larry Sharpe plus among the renowned names in professional wrestling history, the late “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers. One of the stars that have trained there contain the wrestler who set the health club in the map, the late Bam Bam Bigelow, as well as King Kong Bundy and present WWE stars The Big Show and Sheamus.”We get here early,” said Riddle. “At 7:20 p.m., we begin practicing what we understand. Afterward we go over new stuff. I train Tuesday and Thursdays in MMA. I lift daily. That is the next section of my entire life. This is exactly what I am committed to. Tuesday and Thursday I am doing MMA to pay the invoices, also it covers the grocery stores for now. I make an adequate cent doing privates (MMA lessons) and items.”He and his wife on their off days from training in the institution, train at home going over the things they can. “It is his third day, he is every dynamic, and respectful, and that I do not have to get in his ear about things like being rigorous and getting right down to business,” said Danny Cage, a former pro wrestler who now runs the school. “Lots of new pupils may have wandering eyes, and begin daydreaming. He along with his wife come in and get right down to company.”Cage did say during real training he needed to split the two since they were speaking too much to every other during course.”It Is clear, they’ve been wed.”Cage said Riddle is way ahead of the game due to the tools he brings to the table, most notably he does not need to be instructed to get into shape and he is far ahead of most athletically. He is way ahead in cardio training. Plus, Cage considers it is an important advantage to get powerful amateur wrestling encounter, even though there certainly are numerous customs recreational wrestlers have that are not easy to break, including matters nobody would see. In amateur wrestling, you lock up together with your right hand. In American-style professional wrestling, everything is completed in the left side. But lots of the basic moves and reversals come from amateur wrestling.”Some folks prefer to crap on an expert sportsman going into professional wrestling,” said Cage. “As someone who trains these men, if I could take their fire in a single sport into this one, it is an edge. They have a reputation for training difficult. He wished to be a pro wrestler first, but the UFC presented itself. He came in. Every once in a while he really wants to do hardcore wrestling, like anyone who comes in, but I told him, ‘Let Us get a foundation and we’ll take it one step at a time.’ He will be patient.”Right now, they may be still concentrating on simply tying up, headlocks and getting the wrist for the initial fourteen days. They’ll begin in the ring, learning to safely take the lumps off moves like arm drags and hip throws.”We can not speed it up only because he is a great sportsman,” said Cage. “Itis a formula we’ve and we have done it this way for the past 30 years.”,Cage said he could phone the WWE tomorrow and Riddle, together with his appearance and history, could get a tryout, however he believes it is best for him to go there first with training. He does not need him going there as a professional athlete with no principles and no comprehension of the backstage games and accidentally rub somebody the wrong manner. In the WWE developmental, there are men who were strong sportsmen, as well as star athletes like school football players, professional soccer players and top level school as well as ex-Olympic wrestlers. And in another corner, there are men who spent years doing small time professional wrestling shows. There are still those who’ve practiced the trade in areas like Mexico, Japan and Europe and in the ring are truly a lot better in relation to the largest stars on national television. The former group are generally larger, more powerful and much more fit, but the latter group, using their ring encounter, could blow them away in regards to wrestling. It is frequently frustrating for the men who were star athletes in valid sports, that have worked hard to get to be the greatest at the things they do and with all the assurance of star athlete, to be so far behind men that aren’t anywhere close to the same amount of sportsman and sometimes don’t have any sports history at all. Even at The Monster Factory, Cage sees the problems involving both groups, but he views non-sportsmen with no world-wide expertise resenting sportsmen striving professional wrestling.”Someone having any sort of a professional fit history, I Will take that any day,” said Cage. “There is a whole lot of people that are interested in being a pro wrestler. They come in at 24, and they’re out of shape, however they believe since they see WWE on a regular basis, it makes them much more enthusiastic about pro wrestling than someone who played professional sports. However there is a difference between a fanatic and somebody doing professional sport. Itis another creature.””If everything goes as intended, I am expecting he will be gone (signing with a leading firm) in six to eight months, but that is not my call. I can not tell folks to sign him. He is 215 legit, 6-foot-2, shredded, his build reminds me of Steve Cutler (a wrestler Cage coached who’s now in WWE’s developmental system).””I saw ECW, WCW, WWF, I saw it all,” Riddle recalled fondly about the so called Outlook age, the period from 1997 to early 2001, when professional wrestling peaked in U.S. popularity. “My parents hated me. All I did was see professional wrestling and that I wrestled using a hefty bag around the trampoline. That was my youth.” His wife, who isn’t a wrestling fan, but was an All American gymnast at Louisiana State University, and then an exercise competition after school, comes with him.”We met in Vegas, I had been training for a fight and she was running sprints. She enjoyed the way I looked. I enjoyed the way she looked, and today we have three children.””Fitness competition is lots of hard work and there is no pay check in that,” he noted.”She Is doing fantastic,” said Cage. “She is rough. She was a gymnast and has terrific instincts in there. She does not whine. She does not back down. She does everything the men do.”The two went to your seminar two weeks ago put on by Ring of Honor, the nation’s third-biggest professional wrestling promotion, which occurred to create one of Riddle’s favourite wrestlers, Colby Lopez, who’s WWE’s present star villain, Seth Rollins.”My wife does not watch wrestling, but she sees the (Whole) Divas on E!,” he said. “I told her how interested I was and she is quite a physical man, so she was curious. She saw a few of the Divas doing it and she is fairly certain. She is put together quite nicely and she is able to go. I told her, ‘I am planning to check it out, why do not you attempt it?’ She is discovered and she is doing excellent.”Riddle gets the correct look, naturally broad shoulders, a tiny waistline and eight pack abs. He explained his greatest aim isn’t to win tournaments, but to do insane things in the ring that leave people by making use of their jaws hanging open, like places he recalls to this day from his own youth. He said he can already do crazy acrobatics and was a natural at running the ropes, however he is got no foundation.”When I see wrestling now, it is not the mat technicians, but the men who will draw you in with ‘Oh My God’ seconds, ‘Sacred s*** minutes, those will be the minutes I would like to make,” he said. “Even when I fought in the UFC, I needed to get fight of the night time. You get right into a fight and get the fans roaring, I enjoy men like Seth Rollins, for the reason that they are ready to push the pace more difficult than others. If a person does something enormous before in the night time, he is planning to head out as well as take it that much further. I do not understand if it is everyone’s aim in wrestling, but I need folks to get excited.”The one thing that is square one, is becoming in the ring trusting individuals,” said Riddle. “Running off the ropes, bound, that came natural to me. It is the basics I should understand. I have to understand how to not get hurt, and how to not damage others. I am quite certain I already have x, y and z, but I want a, b and c. That is the reason why I came to The Monster Factory. I used to be told that is where you should be to pick up the basics.”I do not need to come off poor, but I ‘ve lots of possible at this,” he said. “I am a world class sportsman and what I desired to do was be a pro wrestler. It was always my love. I am not in the UFC anymore so I am not getting paid decent money to fight, therefore I desired to do something I adore. I had rather wrestle professionally and have pleasure than fight for no reason at all.”It was the professional wrestling that accidentally got him into a twisting road that caused the UFC.”I began wrestling in seventh grade,” he said. “I ‘d about 200 backyard matches under my belt by then. I saw every wrestler, or at least every wrestler who had been great, had an amateur history. I went to school wrestling, subsequently began doing Jiu Jitsu, afterward I was in the UFC for six years.””I did it for a while. It was not something I needed to do, it was something I was great at. They needed me to fight at 170 or 185 pounds. Once I get below 190, my kidneys hurt, my lower back hurts, it is not safe for my body. I do not get enjoyment out of suffering, particularly if I do not get paid. I am no longer 22, I do not care about tough guy competitions. It’s been my aim my whole life. I looked in the mirror four months past. I had been tired of cutting weight, becoming ill, I got the (WWE) network for $9.99 and began reliving the Outlook Age and got that spark that I Have been missing since I was 20. I understood I could generate income doing that. I saw the men I grew up observing, I am observing the newest men and these guys are not larger than me, I am a little more ripped than they’re, I am a cage fighter so I ‘ve abilities, so perhaps this is my chance to make it. If worst comes to worst, they say ‘No.’ Iwill keep striving. I have shown people wrong before.”
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Jose Aldo stays the UFC featherweight champ, but Chad Mendes proved to be an excellent challenge at Saturday night’s UFC 179 in Brazil.
The first and only 145-pound champ, Aldo defended his title for the seventh successive time, the third in Brazil, and he feels even better when performing in the front of his countrymen.
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Michael Bisping is not overly bent out of shape over Cung Le’s drug test play. Had he lost to Le in the key occurrence of the UFC’s Aug. 23 occasion in Macau, China, it might be a different storyline for Bisping.
“I won it in fashion, via stoppage, and that I got a bonus because of it. If anything, it makes me seem better that he was on all sorts of things and that I could defeat him,” Bisping told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto.
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With news that Nate Diaz had ended his holdout to face Rafael dos Anjos at UFC on FOX 13, there were hopes that the former lightweight contender would be on better terms with UFC brass. According to Diaz’ manager, Mike Kogan, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
“No. F**k no. No. We’re not happy,” Kogan told Fight Hub.
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