The Punchsport Report: February 2023
Carl returns with the January rundown and a preview for February in MMA
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Boy, for a month with so few MMA events, January sure was a long, horrible slog of a time. Fortunately, it's February, and nothing bad will happen ever again! We're back to normal with three UFCs this month, but one of them starts at like one in the morning for the core American constituency, for which I'm sure the entire global audience is very, very sympathetic.
THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
Fuck me, was there. January was one of the worst months for MMA news in a long time, to the point that were it not for one notable exception it would be hard to know where to even start.
Victoria "The Prodigy" Lee, younger sister of ONE champions Christian and Angela Lee and herself a multiple-time grappling champion with a 3-0 MMA record in ONE, died on December 26 at the age of 18. The family chose not to announce her passing to the world until early January and have elected not to reveal her cause of death, which has resulted in their also having to beg people to stop hiring private investigators and contacting the family in the hopes of confirming that she died because of the evil COVID vaccine and the government/Anthony Fauci/the Bilderberg Group are forcing them to cover it up, because we live in Hell. But it would be too easy, and too disrespectful, to get as angry as those particular fucks deserve and miss the actual point of this story, which is fuck, an 18 year-old died.
It was, what, two months ago that I wrote about Rumble Johnson's passing and how 38 was a tragically young age to die? 18 is devastating. 18 is the age where being a professional fighter at all was insane, which she knew, because she'd put her career on hiatus to finish high school, because she was 18. I cannot even pay my respects to her the way I have with other eulogies in these reports that went into the depths of fighters' careers, lives and memories, because she was 18. The Lee family, which has lived and breathed martial arts since before their current generation of star fighters was even born, has permanently closed their MMA academy, and ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong isn't sure if Christian or Angela will fight again in the near future or at all. It's hard to blame them. I quite frankly hope the family's privacy is respected and we never find out what happened, but there's no eventuality that won't take a long time for things to feel in any way okay again. I hope they find peace and I hope I never write one of these again.
Yeah, we're not getting any better. "The New York Bad Ass" Phil Baroni was a star of the 200s era of the sport who made a name for himself as a road-warrior journeyman in the UFC, Pride and Strikeforce who was famous for three things: Wild, punch-heavy brawling, losing virtually all of his big fights, and shithead charisma that he used to cut promos about how people needed to do more steroids and have more sex. Some had sounded alarms about Baroni's behavior becoming erratic, with its most public example being his ride-or-die support of War Machine, formerly known as Jon Koppenhaver, after he was given a life sentence for raping and nearly killing his ex-girlfriend Christy Mack, and that proved unfortunately prescient, as Baroni was arrested in Mexico just after New Year's for brutally murdering his girlfriend.
Baroni's side of the story is that he didn't mean to kill her and simply threw her into the shower too hard after an argument. This will probably not help him. Multiple colleagues of his have taken to Twitter in the weeks following his arrest to discuss the visible toll CTE had taken on him and how difficult he had become to know let alone work with, but, boy, that doesn't really help matters now. His victim has been identified only by the name Paola.
But why stop there? Conor McGregor, whose assault record threatens to outstrip his fight record, is the suspect in an assault investigation in Spain, stemming from an incident last July where a woman states she was invited to a party on Conor's yacht because of their shared origins in Ireland only for Conor to begin berating her for her appearance midway through the party before kicking her in the stomach, punching her in the face and threatening to drown her, at which point the woman jumped the fuck off the yacht to get away. McGregor, through his lawyers, has denied all allegations.
And now, the elephant in the room. On January 2nd, TMZ published video footage of Dana White and his wife Anne arguing at a Vegas bar on New Year's. In the video, which is somewhat cut up and jumbled--which, I want to be abundantly clear, I am saying not to downplay its self-evident contents but to register my anger that an outlet as bad at its job as TMZ got this story--there's a visible shouting argument, Anne turns away as if to leave, Dana pulls on her wrist to force her to stay and she slaps him, at which point Dana slaps her much harder and then, still holding on to her, slaps her again, and appears to be going back for a third before a bystander jumps in to separate them.
In an interview thereafter, Dana White said he's unequivocally apologetic and there was no excuse for his actions, but offered no restitution or punishment for himself. In 2008, Jesse "JT Money" Taylor was removed from his Ultimate Fighter finalist spot and fired from the UFC for breaking a limousine window and causing a scene in a hotel lobby. Dana White, when asked about the lack of any ramifications for his actions, replied that the ramifications were being considered a domestic abuser by the public. Matt Riddle was fired from the UFC in 2013 after testing positive for marijuana twice and making an off-color joke about using it to make sure he doesn't beat his kids. Dana White, after facing no consequences for being caught on video assaulting his wife except being ardently defended by the worst fans on the internet who see this as a victory for gender equality and the right for men to beat women if they feel it's justified, promptly resumed doing press for Dana White's Power Slap League, which had its debut pushed back 7 days for sensitivity reasons. Highly-touted 18-4 prospect Jason High was banned from the UFC for life in 2014 after lightly shoving referee Kevin Mulhall after a fight, for which he immediately apologized. Dana White has elected to no-comment further inquiries about the assault, and an editor for ESPN, which airs the UFC, obliquely noted on social media that they were encouraged not to comment on the issue.
After its one-week long delay, which definitely solved the problem of people thinking about Dana White slapping his wife, Dana White's Power Slap League debuted on January 18th, using the tried-and-true partnership of professional wrestling and violent sports that helped the UFC take off back in 2005. AEW Dynamite, the third-highest-rated show on cable, gave it a lead-in of nearly one million viewers. Almost 70% of them turned it off immediately, leaving slap-fighting with 295,000 viewers and a final cable ranking of the 45th most-watched show of the night, exactly ten slots below 1000-Lb. Best Friends, but two slots above season four of Moonshiners: Master Distiller.
On January 8th a mob formed by thousands of militant supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the recently-defeated right-wing authoritarian President of Brazil, stormed the Three Powers Plaza in Brazil's capital in a mirror of America's January 6th riots that somewhat aimlessly attempted to, through violence and occupation, restore Bolsonaro to power. While this happened, Jair Bolsonaro, who DEFINITELY had no hand in any of this, was staying with MMA legend José Aldo at his home in Orlando, Florida, posing for kitschy pictures and letting the world know about Aldo's Minions-themed bedroom. Bolsonaro was so busy at Aldo's house that he barely had time to meet with the capital's head of security Anderson Torres, who also just happened to be there, by some strange coincidence. Certain stories make me taste pennies in the back of my mouth.
It'd be great if we were done there, but of course, we aren't. Bolsonaro, like many authoritarian strongman politicians across history, has enjoyed the support of scores of prominent Brazilian fighters--a dozen of them, including Royce Gracie, Wanderlei Silva, Rafael dos Anjos and Fabricio Werdum, recorded Youtube advertisements for him in this past election--but the true faithful were unearthed when the rubber hit the road, with then-UFC Flyweight Champion Deiveson Figueiredo taking the grand prize as the most notable fighter to use all of his social media channels to actively post directions and instructions for would-be coup participants and encourage the military to arrest the newly-elected President and congress. A sitting UFC champion using his fame to aid an attempted overthrowing of his country was, of course, met with barely any response and absolutely no consequences or even comment from the UFC.
It seriously took us this long to get to news about the actual sport of mixed martial arts, and it's terrible, too. After two years of friction and contract negotiations, the UFC officially stripped and released undisputed heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in January. If you believe Francis Ngannou, which you should, the UFC balked at demands like health insurance, a return to allowing fighter sponsors and an advocate for the fighters at UFC board meetings, as well as the freedom to pursue a boxing match with Tyson Fury. If you believe the UFC, which you should not, Francis Ngannou was greedy, had unrealistic money expectations and, in the chestnut I cannot believe Dana White still actually says every time a contract dispute happens, was intimidated by competition and simply afraid to fight the top heavyweights in the world. Francis Ngannou is a free agent, the UFC no longer has its own undisputed heavyweight title in its lineage, and the vacant belt will be filled by Ciryl Gane vs Jon Jones on March 4th, banking on the 50/50 chance Jon Jones makes it into the cage.
Bellator announced their 2023 Lightweight Grand Prix, and they are, in fact, throwing basically their entire top 8 at it. The tournament will kick off on March 10th, as Usman Nurmagomedov defends both a semifinal berth and his lightweight championship against Benson Henderson and Tofiq Musayev meets Alexander Shabliy on the other side of the bracket; on May 12th, Sidney Outlaw and Mansour Barnaoui will meet to determine the Henderson/Nurmagomedov opponent, and at an as-yet unannounced date, Patricky Pitbull will face A.J. McKee for the last semifinal spot.
For the third time, ONE has booked the continually cursed heavyweight unification bout between champion Arjan Bhullar and interim champion Anatoliy Malykhin. This time around, it is supposed to happen on March 25. I have even less faith in this than Jon Jones.
Logan Paul signed a deal with the UFC to make PRIME its new sports-drink sponsor. The UFC is renaming the traditional red and blue corners to the Prime Hydration Recovery Zones, replete with new octagonal PRIME-sponsored stools. I will say it again: They cannot hurt you unless you let them.
MONTHLY RETIREMENT CORNER
After losing to Jamahal Hill in the main event of UFC 283 on January 21st Glover Teixeira laid down his gloves and announced his retirement in the cage, admitting that he had finally realized he was, perhaps, a little too tough and stubborn for his own health. It's deeply fortunate that his last-minute championship reign made people recognize his place in the annals of the sport, because his run is, genuinely, pretty incredible. 33-9 in just shy of twenty-one years of competition, the second-oldest UFC champion in history, victories over six world champions, fights in eight different countries, went the distance with Jon Jones in his prime. He was ridiculously tough, incredibly powerful and a terrifying grappler, but the single best testament to just how good he was is this: When the first issuance of the UFC's modern, official rankings came out on February 5, 2013, Glover Teixeira was ranked #4 at light-heavyweight, and in the final official rankings update of Glover's career just weeks shy of a decade later on January 17, 2023 every other fighter from that original list was gone save for Glover, who was ranked #2. He was ranked as one of the best light-heavyweights on the planet for ten god damned years--and even that is only his UFC ranking, prior to which he had won eighteen straight fights.
Glover Teixeira was the real goddamn deal. He helped legalize MMA in his home state of Connecticut, he immigrated to America twice, he used his platform to lobby for gun control laws after his niece survived Sandy Hook and he completed one of the sport's longest tenures without accruing any of the horrors the sport likes to inflict on its participants. I'm deeply glad he got his long-deserved, long-belated moment in the sun before he called it a day, and I hope he gets to enjoy a well-deserved retirement.
MaurÃcio "Shogun" Rua also called it quits after UFC 283. For once I'm going to spare the career eulogizing here, partially because I already wrote a lengthy retrospective for him in last month's preview of the show, partially because I have since researched his deep support for Jair Bolsonaro and feel disinclined to write nice things about him. If you by some chance are reading this and did not read my Shogun career retrospective, you can find it here. He retires at 27-14-1 with a Pride Middleweight Grand Prix championship and a UFC Light-Heavyweight Championship to his name.
Seemingly out of nowhere, #12 lightweight Damir Ismagulov announced his retirement on New Year's Day, claiming 'circumstances and health problems' he didn't want to go into detail about had forced an end to his career. The abrupt end to his time in mixed martial arts, his relatively young age at 31 and his subsequent instagram posts about training back at his home in Russia have many fans hoping he'll return sooner than later, but honestly, if something spooked him enough about his health to quit that quickly, I hope he stays away and keeps himself safe. UPDATE: On January 30th, Ismagulov announced he was unaware he had one fight left on his UFC contract and intends to come back, fight his last fight (which he would like to be a rematch with Arman Tsaruykan, which he absolutely will not get) and go back to retirement.
Leah "Nidas" Letson announced her retirement from mixed martial arts on January 9th. At one point she was a promising prospect in the eternally-suffering women's featherweight division, a hard-hitting fighter who punched her ticket to the UFC with a violent knockout over veteran Elizabeth Phillips, got eliminated in the semi-final round of The Ultimate Fighter 28 by eventual winner Macy Chiasson and came back with a hard-fought decision over Invicta champion Julija Stoliarenko but, at the apex of her career, she found herself forced onto the shelf. Three straight years of medical problems--the UFC's doctors said a combination of overtraining and poor nutrition had very nearly killed her--meant she missed the entirety of Amanda Nunes' takeover of the division, and when she finally returned to competition in November of 2021 she ran into a brick wall, as Felicia Spencer stopped her in the third round after outstriking her 227-69. Neither woman would ever fight again: Spencer retired less than a month later for her mental health, and after more than a year of inactivity, a failed attempt to return at bantamweight and her own struggles with her health and future, Letson decided it was time to leave the sport behind. She retires at 5-2.
Cláudio "Hannibal" Silva also joined the army of fighters calling it quits in January. Silva's is one of the oldest stories in the sport--grew up as a gang kid in a favela of Rondonópolis (that someone on wikipedia, as of this writing, has quietly vandalized to instead read Minas Morgul), went to prison for armed robbery and ultimately saved his life through a dedication to martial arts. He moved to England, entered competition in 2007 and ran up a 9-1 record before getting picked up by the UFC, and two fights later was on the cusp of a top fifteen ranking after defeating a then-debuting Leon Edwards, but a score of injuries sidelined him for almost four years, and while he came back still successful, he'd lost a bit too much of his prime. After twelve years without a loss, Silva dropped three fights in a row in the 2020s, first to James Krause, then Court McGee, and finally, Nicolas Dalby. They were all hard-fought decision losses, and a 14-4 welterweight is still damned impressive, but the UFC gave him his pink slip in August of 2022 and with his 40th birthday just one month away, the conclusions were hard to ignore. Godspeed to his post-combat future.
WHAT'S COMING IN FEBRUARY
February starts with a double-header, and we're gonna give those crazy kids at Bellator first billing, because for once, their offering makes more sense if you're in the western hemisphere. Bellator 290: Bader vs Fedor 2 comes to us the evening of February 4th, and it's a weird card in a lot of ways, and not just for the main event. This is Bellator's debut on American network television, thanks to CBS, home of such wonderful shows as Survivor, So Help Me Todd and Young Sheldon. On the other hand, as with every MMA network television debut in history, this means the main card is ultra short and weird. So your free, youtube/pluto-aired prelims are eleven goddamn fights long and feature stars like Darrion Caldwell, Alejandra Lara, Karl Albrektsson, Henry Corrales, Lorenz Larkin and Neiman Gracie, and then your main card is Sabah Homasi vs Brennan Ward in what Bellator hopes will be an all-action affair to keep everyone tuned in despite the second fight, Johnny Eblen defending the middleweight championship against Anatoly Tokov. The main event sees Ryan Bader defending the heavyweight championship against Fedor Emelianenko, in what is both a rematch of the 2019 tournament final where Bader knocked him out in thirty-five seconds and Fedor's retirement fight, which is, I think, the third time he's said that.
The UFC starts the month later that night with UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Spivak, which is one of the profoundly weirdest cards they've put on. This event was initially planned to be the UFC's return to Korea after more than three years of absence, but scheduling and Chan Sung Jung getting injured ruined their plans. So this is still a profoundly Korean card--six of its twelve fights star Korean fighters like Da Un Jung, Doo-ho Choi and Jun-yong Park and the finals of last year's all-Asian Road to UFC tournament will finally be held on the undercard--but the event is airing live from the empty Apex Arena in Nevada, BUT the main card begins at 10 PM PST/1 AM EST because they want Korean fans to watch it. AND the main event is the Derrick Lewis vs Sergey Spivak showdown that was supposed to happen back in November only to get cancelled midway into the card after Lewis turned out to have been hospitalized the night before. It is very, very rare for me to say this: If you only watch one card that day, and you're in America and thus beholden to our time zones, you should probably pick Bellator. Go to bed at a reasonable time. For your health.
But the UFC is back on its game 8 days later--yes, 8, this UFC is on a Sunday, don't panic--with February 12th's UFC 284: Makhachev vs Volkanovski. It's the company's first show in Australia since before the pandemic and they're capitalizing on the local marketing: It's a big, wild card with a bunch of brawls and a hell of a main event. Loma Lookboonmee and Elise Reed will hit each other a whole bunch, both of the Tafa brothers are in action at heavyweight, Tyson Pedro returned, somehow, Joshua Culibao and Melsik Baghdasaryan will have a great fight, Jamie Mullarkey and Francisco Prado will beat each other around the head and face, Jimmy Crute and Alonzo Menifeld will fight for a top 15 spot, and Jack Della Maddalena will finally get a stiff, rankings-potential test as he takes on Randy Brown. Your co-main event will fill the featherweight throne until its king returns in either victory or defeat, as wild kickboxer Yair RodrÃguez meets the fighting Falmer himself, Josh Emmett, to crown an interim featherweight champion. This is because, of course, of the main event, one of the only champion vs champion matches the UFC has put on that I don't hate: Newly-crowned lightweight champion Islam Makhachev defends his title against the UFC's best male champion, featherweight kingpin Alexander Volkanovski, in a fight that will either once again reinforce the reason weight classes exist or make it really, really hard to deny Volkanovski pound-for-pound great status.
And we're ending the UFC's month just six days later with Saturday, February 18th's UFC Fight Night: Vera vs Sandhagen. The card is a sort of Frankenstein's Monster of fights that got rescheduled from other cards coming together into a big, weird showcase that's half prospects and half aging veterans. On one hand you have fighters with names I only wish I could've made up like Juancamilo Ronderoes, Clayton Carpenter, Evan Elder and Themba Gorimbo; on the other you have Joe Solecki taking on Benoît Saint-Denis, Gerald Meerschaert scraping his bones on Abusupiyan Magomedov, William Knight having a muscle-off with Marcin Prachnio, Lina Länsberg taking on Mayra Bueno Silva and the twice-rescheduled Ovince Saint Preux vs Philipe Lins, and somewhere in the middle of that Josh Parisian will heavyweight as best he can against Jamal Pogues and Jim god damned Miller will try to continue turning back the clock against Gabriel BenÃtez. Your main and co-main events, however, are very interesting contendership battles. Taila Santos, the woman who just went to a split decision with champion Valentina Shevchenko, is up against the runaway stampede that is Erin Blanchfield, and it's hard not to see it as the UFC trying to strap a rocket to Blanchfield, as the fight could take her from #10 to #2. In your main event, #4 Marlon Vera is taking on #5 Cory Sandhagen, and that, too, has some real interesting connotations, particularly with champion Aljamain Sterling injured and Henry Cejudo jockeying for a championship return. And we end the month on February 25th with a triple-header.
First-off, we have Bellator 291: Amosov vs Storley 2. This is yet another attempt by Bellator to corner the Irish market, which means it's in Dublin, it's full of Irish fighters, and it has an absolutely preposterous 20 fights announced. 15 of those are prelims with a lot of local-tier talent, as Bellator is wont to do, but there are still a few interesting fights buried in the ocean--a heavyweight showdown between Gokhan Saricam and Oleg Popov, Greek champion Elina Kallionidou vs grappling ace Jena Bishop, Charlie Ward vs Mike Shipman, Karl Moore vs Maciej Różański and Oliver Enkamp vs Luca Poclit--but, as always, the relevant and/or 'relevant' stuff is on the main card. After getting him thwomped in his last two Dublin appearances Bellator is trying to get top Irishman Peter Queally a hometown win against the equally embattled Bryce Logan, the ongoing rehabilitation of top Irishwoman Sinead Kavanaugh continues as she meets the 6-6 Janay Harding, Pedro Carvalho and Jeremy Kennedy will do battle in a what-are-you-doing-here-neither-of-you-are-Irish co-main event, and in your main, Bellator reunifies its welterweight lineage, as champion Yaroslav Amosov is back from fighting the Russian invasion of his home in Ukraine, and is looking to reunify his belt against Logan Storley's interim championship.
The second part of that doubleheader comes with ONE Fight Night 7: Lineker vs Andrade 2. It's another of ONE's big Amazon Prime swings, with just a few prelims currently announced--the biggest of which is a women's atomweight bout between Linda Darrow and Victória Souza--and a main card with a bunch of action. Andrei Stoica and Françesco Xhaja will have big-man kickboxing times, Saemapetch Fairtex and Zhang Chenglong will have small-man kickboxing times, Eko Roni Saputra and Danny Kingad will try to climb the flyweight MMA ranks, Danielle Kelly and Ayaka Miura will have a grappling match, Martin Nguyen and Shamil Gasanov will jockey for a claim to Tang Kai's featherweight MMA title, and in the co-main event, Tawanchai P.K.Saenchai defends the featherweight Muay Thai title against Jamal Yusupov. The main event is the reason anyone cares. ONE's first attempt at this all-action bout this past October was disastrous; John Lineker lost his bantamweight championship on the scale after a botched weight cut and showed up to the fight looking preemptively exhausted, but the fight ended in a no-contest after FabrÃcio Andrade hit Lineker in the groin so hard it shattered his cup. Hopefully, this time, both men make weight and no one engages in CBT.
And finally, we have the UFC with UFC Fight Night: Krylov vs Spann, which they helpfully chose not to announce until after I had already written my draft up, for which I am deeply grateful and not at all annoyed. Thankfully it's at least an interesting card, even if the main event is pretty weak. You've got prospects like Ode' Osbourne and Trevor Peek in action, Jordan Leavitt is getting booked again now that the UFC has extracted a Paddy Pimblett win out of him, Ailin Perez drops down to bantamweight in record time, Mike Malott and Yohan Lainesse will hit each other a bunch, André Muniz and Brendan Allen will have a very cool grappling match and Augusto Sakai is going for the extremely rare fifth consecutive UFC loss, somehow. Honestly, the big story of the card isn't even the main event, it's the theoretical return of undefeated women's flyweight Tatiana Suarez, who looked like an absolute monster and a lock for title contention until injuries kept her on the shelf for almost four goddamn years. The UFC is wisely taking it a bit easy and pitching her a bout against the unranked Montana De La Rosa, presumably to see if Tatiana still has it in her. The main event is a light-heavyweight tilt between Nikita Krylov and Ryan Spann, because big guys get better booking.