The entire UFC on FOX 14 main card was officially announced on Wednesday.
The event, which will be headlined by Alexander Gustafsson vs. Anthony Johnson, will take place at the 30,000-seat Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, Sweden on Jan. 24. If all goes to plan, it will be the second-biggest event in UFC history behind 2011’s UFC 129, which drew 55,724 fans.
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History was produced in Las Vegas Friday night as the UFC crowned its first strawweight winner. Following the remaining TUF 20 cast fought each other in the undercard, the show’s finalists tangled for the crown. Former Invicta FC strawweight winner Carla Esparza survived a scrappy opening round from Rose Namajunas, but would use her wrestling to fix a third-round rear-naked choke to become UFC champ.
See in what way the experts responded to every one of the night’s activity.
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Johny Hendricks and Las Vegas judges seemingly simply do not get along. A little over annually after Hendricks fell a controversial split decision to then-champ Georges St-Pierre, history repeated itself at UFC 181 as Hendricks disappeared late and lost another contentious split decision, this time to deliver his UFC welterweight title to Robbie Lawler.
“I say to these men most of the time: do not leave this in the hands of these judges,” UFC President Dana White said of the decision on FOX Sports 1. “You’ve gotta stand up and you have gotta go for this. Hendricks believed Johny looked great standing up. Johny was getting off, he was landing some punches. But then he’d go for that shot and simply sit there and waste time.
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LAS VEGAS – UFC 181 was the 300th occasion in business history. It was likewise the very first in which a former professional wrestler with no MMA expertise got his own press conference.
Phil “CM Punk” Brooks was declared as the UFC’s latest signee on Saturday night. The Chicago native and former World Wrestling Entertainment winner, who had been extremely popular in wrestling groups, step down the WWE early in 2013.
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UFC ‘cash weight’ Nick Diaz might be the most effective and worst portrayal of a martial artist in modern MMA.
The expletive hurling, nunchuck twirling Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt is not above breaking out the ole Stockton Salute on occasion, but Diaz says he had never critically target an adversary’s harm.
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Frankie Edgar understood he needed to create an impression on Saturday night, and he did only that, blowing the doors off Cub Swanson to stop the streaking featherweight competition in his tracks in UFC Fight Night 57’s main event.
Swanson entered the bout having a standing guarantee from UFC officials that his six-fight win streak would get cashed in to get a title shot against reigning 145-pound champ Jose Aldo if he toppled Edgar, but in the previous lightweight titleholder, he he met an immoveable force. Edgar commanded the competition for 24 minutes before scoring the most recent finish in UFC history, then let it be understood that his remarkable performance deserved the prize that was cursed to Swanson.
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Rickson Gracie, one of the greatest names in jiu-jitsu and vale tudo history, is a fan of Metamoris.
The legendary Gracie, who is undefeated in MMA and jiu-jitsu matches, was always critical of what jiu-jitsu has become over the years, with the change of rules and the way BJJ fighters compete today. With submission-only 20-minute matches, Metamoris founder Ralek Gracie got his attention.
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The most anticipated superfight in mixed martial arts history went down on a cold Monday night in Las Vegas… kinda.
Fresh from appearances at the UFC’s ‘The Time is Now’ press conference, light heavyweight champ Jon Jones and former middleweight great Anderson Silva collided in a two-hour long sparring session at UFC headquarters, and afterwards both men were all smiles as Silva sung the praises of this “f*cking crazy guy.”
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Well, the UFC’s Friday Fight Night event in Sydney proved to be quite a hard act to follow along with. Everything came to your head when Ovince Saint Preux pulled off among the more upsetting upsets in recent MMA history by putting Mauricio Rua down early in round one. Here’s the way the MMA world known as the activity.
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Two of the greatest names in the history of Brazilian MMA will function as opposing trainers on this nation’s following version of The Ultimate Fighter.
UFC.com’s Brazilian website reported on Wednesday that longtime middleweight winner Anderson Silva and former UFC light heavyweight champion and PRIDE Grand Prix winner Mauricio “Shogun” Rua will serve as trainers to the fourth TUF: Brazil season, which airs in the Globo network.
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There was much to love about Saturday’s UFC 179: Aldo vs. Mendes 2. The main event was among the greatest fights of the entire year, maybe even the very best in the section’s history. Gilbert Burns took another turn as a developing possibility. The devotees in Rio de Janeiro were as amped to get a UFC event as ever.
Yet, there was also quite a bit to not adore. The card beyond the primary occasion left a lot to be desired, there was an officiating snafu and honored combatants endured possibly career-changing losses.
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The critics said Jose Aldo Jr. had a poor gas tank (This, despite ending in the fourth round against Chan Sung Jung, winning the fourth against Ricardo Lamas, the fifth on two of three cards against Frankie Edgar, and so on).
They said the UFC featherweight champ’s killer instinct was missing (Despite a highlight reel to match anyone in the annals of the sport as evidence to the contrary).
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Jose Aldo, Chad Mendes as well as the other stars of UFC 179 stepped about the Maracana field for the work outs this Thursday, also it turned out to be a historic moment for the sport. With this day 63 years past, among the greatest fights in the annals of the sport happened in the soccer stadium, when Masahiko Kimura delegated Helio Gracie having a entry that was later named after him.
With MMA returning to Maracanazinho at its finest with UFC 179, the promotion fosters the pre-fight events in Rio de Janeiro. The UFC’s office in Brazil developed the idea to market a quiz show about MMA called “Voce Sabia?” (which means “Did you understand?” in Portuguese).
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Bethe Correia needs a chance at UFC bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey, and she is ready to fight every girl in the UFC roll to show she is the No. 1 competitor.
“Whoever they need. If I must fight every girl in the UFC to earn my chance in the champ, I ‘ll,” Correia told the media in Brazil. “I am going to fight because of this chance. I established with my performances that it is time for me personally to fight the winner. I ‘ve a history together with her, and that made the UFC supporters to look at me with different eyes.”
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Former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir has unfinished business with Brock Lesnar.
The pair were critical to the sport’s boom period emphasized by UFC 100 in 2009. With Lesnar’s help, Mir considers he is able to recapture some of this momentum despite riding an 0-4 skid since 2012.
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If there is a lesson of the week, it’s that quick main events are usually great for the fans, even better for the guy on the winning side of the fight, but for television broadcasters, they are far from the best thing.
This past weekend saw Bellator’s Friday night main event, where Brandon Halsey won the middleweight title from Alexander Shlemenko, only last 35 seconds. The next night on FS 1, for the prelims of UFC 178, what many considered the strongest TV main event on a prelim show to date, Dominick Cruz returning after a three-year absence against No. 5 bantamweight contender Takeya Mizugaki, saw Cruz finish the fight in 61 seconds.
The result is that both shows, due to no time to build up numbers for the main event, is they did below average numbers.
Bellator’s Friday night average was 656,000 viewers, very slightly below the 670,000 range the Friday night shows have averaged since the move, but down 12 percent from the prior week’s show that didn’t have a championship match, nor have as strong of an undercard. The first minute of Halsey vs. Shlemenko did 942,000 viewers, a number that would have likely started the growth of the show, peaking when the fight was over. If the fight had gone three rounds, while it may not have brought the average up to the previous weeks number of the Melvin Manhoef vs. Doug “The Rhino” Marshall fight, it would have pushed the show average past the 700,000 mark.
For the UFC 178 prelims, the story was even more pronounced. The show averaged 698,000 viewers, down 12 percent from the 2014 average, even with the Cruz fight that should have been a difference maker. Minute by minute ratings are not available for the show, but the highest quarter hour was for the Brian Ebersole vs. John Howard fight, at 774,000 viewers. Cruz’s fight didn’t have the time to draw the highest quarter, and the average was below usual partially because the last 20 minutes of the broadcast had no fighting.
Still, that figure was the highest for any event that day on the station, which included Major League Baseball, college football and NASCAR truck racing.
The number was up from the 436,000 for the prelims from UFC 177, but that was the lowest prelim audience before a pay-per-view ever on FS 1.
The issues at UFC 178, whether it was the wins by Cruz, Demetrious Johnson, Donald Cerrone, Conor McGregor and Cat Zingano, or the controversy stemming from the Yoel Romero vs. Tim Kennedy stool-gate finish, saw the post-fight show do 206,000 viewers on FS 1, which was 13 percent above the average.
The Ultimate Fighter rating for Wednesday was not good live, doing only 433,000 viewers, by far the lowest of the three episodes this season. The show featured a first-round match in the women’s strawweight title tournament where Jessica Penne beat Lisa Ellis. However, the first airing of the episode was also viewed by 358,000 people via DVR between Thursday and Saturday. The DVR viewership was the second largest for any episode of the show on FS 1. The 83 percent increase from DVR viewership to first night viewership was a record for the series and likely the largest for any UFC show in history.
For gross numbers, the prior week’s show did 574,000 viewers the night it aired and the record-setting total DVR viewership of 372,000.
The mentality for this season, and really the last three seasons of Ultimate Fighter, is that unlike the live events, where most viewers watch them as they take place, an increasing percentage of the Ultimate Fighter viewers are watching at their convenience.
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Few combatants in history will find yourself having as complicated a heritage as Wanderlei Cesar da Silva, who announced his retirement on Friday in a videotaped interview that came across a nasty assault in the UFC and, four days after, may have close the door on a return.
The Nevada Athletic Commission’s indefinite suspension of Silva, that was outright categorized he would never be permitted to be licensed in the state again, looks to have been an administrative ending to his career, at least in the UFC, and probably America.
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After Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole reported on Thursday that Mark Hunt still had 19 pounds to cut before Friday’s UFC Fight Night 52 weigh-ins, there was concern that Hunt would become the primary colossus in modern UFC history to miss weight. Nevertheless, Hunt told MMAFighting.com soon afterwards that he was certain he would not have any problems.
Before in the day Hunt said, “I am great. I am just several kilos off now.” Less than two hours after he afterward said, “I ‘m on weight at this time, I believe.”
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