MMA buzz: Newest fights, odds, intel, highlights and extra

The 2024 MMA calendar is formally underway, because the UFC and ONE have main playing cards booked in January. Furthermore, PFL’s acquisition of Bellator ought to make for an fascinating schedule combine for battle followers to get pleasure from.

Because the yr rolls ahead, information and rumors will start with updates on potential matchmaking, promotion updates and battle places. As such, we’ll have all of it lined proper right here, with evaluation from perception from our reporters and writers.

Which fighters will essential occasion at UFC 300? Who will take the problem to be Francis Ngannou’s first opponent in PFL? Will Stipe Miocic or Tom Aspinall be the subsequent challenger for Jon Jones’ UFC heavyweight title? Try our newest updates now and refresh typically for the newest because the yr unfolds.

Key hyperlinks: MMA schedule | P4P rankings

Jan. 23: Do not rule out an Amanda Nunes comeback

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Amanda Nunes pronounces retirement after dominant win at UFC 289

Amanda Nunes leaves her belts and gloves within the Octagon after saying her retirement from preventing at UFC 289.

Brett Okamoto: “The Lioness” was in attendance at UFC 297 to witness the second Raquel Pennington beat Mayra Bueno Silva to assert the ladies’s bantamweight title. Nunes, who held the title for all however seven months between July 2016 and June 2023, relinquished each the bantamweight and featherweight titles throughout her retirement after beating Irene Aldana at UFC 289. However even on the time of her retirement, some believed we may even see her within the Octagon once more quickly.

How seemingly is an Amanda Nunes comeback? On one hand, that is combined martial arts, the place only a few “retirement” bulletins ought to ever be taken utterly to the financial institution. Nunes broached the topic in an interview with Megan Olivi on Saturday after the fights.

“I feel I [made] the fitting determination, you already know [to] retire, relaxation just a little bit, and handle the infants … after which see what occurs,” Nunes mentioned. “I am nonetheless younger [and] recent, you by no means know. We’ve got a number of issues to do … to see what occurs.”

When requested if that meant the door for a return should still be open for her, Nunes mentioned, “I do not know. We by no means know. I am a fighter — that is my job. I get pleasure from not being within the gymnasium every single day and having a standard life. However I am nonetheless wholesome and highly effective [and] sensible. I feel like a champion and I nonetheless really feel like a champion. We’ll see.”

That sort of discuss nearly leads one to consider a return is inevitable.

However there are many causes to consider Nunes will not come again. For one, her spouse, Nina Nunes, may wish to make a comeback of her personal. Nina has stopped her profession twice now to have kids. If she did resolve to a return, one would suppose Amanda may prioritize it over her personal, as she’s already executed all of it. Nunes additionally simply appears very content material in retirement. She had spoken about retirement a number of instances within the years main as much as her really doing it. And she or he has nobody to battle. Anybody who may maintain a UFC belt within the foreseeable future — Pennington, Aldana, Peña, Holly Holm — she’s already overwhelmed.

Nunes is simply 35 years previous and the cash is nice, so we won’t rule it out totally. However as of proper now, it would not really feel imminent.

Jan. 23: Criticism mounts for UFC girls’s bantamweight division and title

Former UFC welterweight and UFC analyst Alan Jouban did not maintain again when giving his opinion on the UFC’s 135-pound girls’s division after Saturday’s title battle between Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva. Pennington received by unanimous determination, turning into solely the second fighter not named Amanda Nunes to carry the title since 2016.

Even after the division topped a brand new champion, Jouban would not like its present standing, and in contrast it to the sunshine heavyweight division for perspective.

“There was some time, perhaps even nonetheless, the place the boys’s gentle heavyweight division simply made no sense,” Jouban mentioned on the podcast “The Fighter vs. The Author.” “When Jon Jones left, and [Daniel Cormier] went up, and all these items occurred and it is simply new champ after new champ and all of the issues that occurred with the attracts and the no-contests, this and that. The division is unnecessary. There isn’t any clear-cut contender or celebrity. Clearly, [Alex] Pereira got here in and now wears the gold. [When] we have a look at the ladies’s division, the bantamweights … it is a wasteland.”

Jouban believes that Julianna Peña is the largest draw within the girls’s bantamweight division. Nevertheless, she would not have the belt and hasn’t fought since shedding to Nunes in her first protection of the title at UFC 277 in July 2022.

Coincidentally, Peña shared her ideas following the ladies’s title battle as nicely, stating that she was not entertained.

“It was a nap fest,” Peña mentioned of Pennington’s win over Bueno Silva on “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani. “I used to be not impressed with their performances, as my pal Georges St-Pierre likes to say. … It was throughout only a full disappointment.”

Jan. 10: Funkmaster staying at 145 kilos

Former UFC males’s bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling is not wanting again.

After holding the UFC’s 135-pound title for over two years, Sterling was dethroned through second-round knockout by “Suga” Sean O’Malley. Following the loss, regardless of Sterling’s callouts for a rematch in opposition to O’Malley, the UFC determined to go in a special path — reserving him to make his first title protection in opposition to Marlon Vera in the principle occasion at UFC 299 in March.

Together with his bantamweight title hopes now within the rearview mirror, Sterling has booked a battle to make his featherweight (145 kilos) debut in opposition to Calvin Kattar at UFC 300. Sterling, who was at all times large for the bantamweight division, hopes that chopping ten fewer kilos might assist prolong his preventing profession.

“There isn’t any extra 135,” Sterling mentioned in an interview with MMA Junkie. “I did not even wish to do it the final time.”

Jan. 6: Cejudo — Belal Muhammad is ‘the closest individual to a man like Khabib’

Few in MMA have been on a roll like Belal Muhammad, as his undefeated 10-fight run contains 9 wins over revered fighters like Gilbert Burns, Stephen Thompson and Vicente Luque. Nevertheless, his one no-contest throughout this era was as a result of an unintended eye poke from present welterweight champion Leon Edwards in 2021, and the UFC will seemingly rebook the 2 in a rematch of their milestone UFC 300 card in April.

Henry Cejudo, a former Olympic gold medalist and two-division UFC champion, analyzed the attainable rematch through his YouTube channel and raised an fascinating comparability to Muhammad — Khabib Nurmagomedov.

“It’ll be an ideal, aggressive battle. Stylistically, the best way that Belal Muhammad — what he did to Gilbert Burns and the way he did it to him, he is solely gotten higher. I’ll say this: The closest individual to a man like Khabib Nurmagomedov, his title is definitely Belal Muhammad. They do the identical sort of cross steps. They sort of run and shoot. They do the identical sort of feints with that lead hand to ultimately stage change for the takedown.”

Of their 2021 matchup, Edwards was a -275 favourite over Muhammad.

“I’ll have to return and rewatch their battle the primary time and see how that really went,” Cejudo mentioned of Muhammad’s first conflict with Edwards. “I’ll say this: They each have gotten higher, but when there’s one person who I might say that has developed greater than the opposite, his title is Belal Muhammad. He is simply gotten so, so freaking significantly better. He is a freestyle fighter.

Jan. 5: Raul Rosas Jr. returns at Noche UFC to face Ricky Turcios

19-year-old bantamweight prospect Raul Rosas Jr. will return to the Octagon at UFC Mexico Metropolis on Feb. 24 to face former Final Fighter standout, Ricky Turcios, first reported by Eurosport’s Marcel Dorff.

Raul Rosas Jr. will battle Ricky Turcios at #UFCMexico on February twenty fourth. #UFC #MMA #UFCESPN #UFC2024 pic.twitter.com/xVWXDez5MI

— Marcel Dorff 🇳🇱🇮🇩 (@BigMarcel24) January 5, 2024

Rosas Jr. is 2-1 since incomes a contract on Dana White’s Contender Sequence in 2022, simply two weeks after turning 18. In his most up-to-date victory, Rosas Jr. scored a highlight-reel TKO over Terrance Mitchell at Noche UFC this previous September.

“El Nino Problema” will tackle Turcios, who, since being featured on TUF again in 2021, can be 2-1, with each wins coming by means of cut up determination.

Jan. 5: Aspinall-Miocic commerce phrases on Twitter as battle with Jones looms

Newly minted UFC interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall has his eyes set on the last word prize within the weight class. So too does Stipe Miocic.

Each heavyweight stars have eyes on Jon Jones, the present heavyweight champion. Miocic was speculated to battle Jones at UFC 295, however Jones suffered an injured pectoral and was pressured out of the match. As an alternative of Aspinall stepping in for Jones to face Miocic, the UFC booked Aspinall vs. Sergei Pavlovich for the interim title. Furthermore, the UFC hit the reset button and can ebook Jones vs. Miocic when the champion is wholesome. With Aspinall’s defeat of Pavlovich, he might have to attend a yr to get his shot on the No. 1 spot.

For sure, Aspinall’s not happy with the lengthy ready recreation, and took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the matter.

Final time Stipe fought and received, GTA: San Andreas had simply come out on PS2. He’ll battle subsequent for the undisputed heavyweight title, forward of me, who’s the interim champ, lively and ranked #1 on the earth proper now. This makes me fairly upset

— Tom Aspinall (@AspinallMMA) January 4, 2024

Whereas GTA 2: San Andreas was launched in 1999, Miocic hasn’t fought in practically three years and hasn’t received a battle in over three-and-a-half years. Miocic defended his place in line, however supplied an olive department to Aspinall, if he can dethrone Jones later this yr.

I’ve by no means induced a delay within the Jon battle.⁰⁰Tom, as soon as I get this win, let’s discuss to unify the belt.

— Stipe Miocic (@stipemiocic) January 5, 2024