#title fights

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/latest-ufc-220-set-title-fights-font-beats-almeida/71184/

The Latest: UFC 220 set for title fights; Font beats Almeida

BOSTON /January 20, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —  The Latest on UFC 220 in Boston, with the heavyweight and light heavyweight titles up for grabs (all times local):

11:45 p.m.

UFC 220 is set for its championship main events.

Rob Font gave the hometown fans a reason to go wild with a dominant victory over Thomas Almeida in the opening bout on the UFC 220 pay-per-view card on Saturday night. Font crushed Almeida with an overhand right to the temple, a knee to the head and Font pounded away until the bout was quickly stopped at 2:24 of the second round. House of Pain blared during Font’s victory celebration inside the cage.

Gian Villante defeated Francimar Barroso by split decision for his sixth straight victory in a slow-paced 205-pound fight that drew heavy boos from the antsy crowd.

Calvin Kattar, another New England fighter, broke open a close fight against Shane Burgos and via TKO in the third round. Kattar staggered Burgos with a series of blows and nailed an uppercut that put Burgos on his back. Burgos absorbed more blows and briefly escaped until referee Dan Miragliotta stopped the fight.

Kattar, who won his 10th straight MMA fight, wowed the crowd then gave a shoutout to the Patriots to the delight of the crowd.

___

10 p.m.

K-OW!

Abdul Razak Alhassan caught Sabah Homasi flush with a right uppercut in the first round for one of the more spectacular knockouts in recent UFC history to win a welterweight bout at UFC 220 on Saturday night.

Razak Alhassan knocked Homasi cold with a vicious right that brought a gasp from the sellout crowd at TD Garden. Homasi was motionless on his back for a couple of minutes and eventually needed assistance to sit on a stool in his corner. Trainers placed bags of ice on his back and neck.

Razak Alhassan already beat Homasi in a controversial stoppage at UFC 218. UFC granted an immediate rematch and Razak Alhassan left no doubt about this outcome.

Even with ferocious heavyweight puncher Francis Ngannou on the card in the main event, it’s going to be hard for any fighter to top Razak Alhassan’s KO.

Kyle Bochniak, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had the home crowd behind him in a unanimous decision win over Brandon Davis. The crowd roared for Bochniak’s walk to the cage and cheered when the decision was announced.

The UFC had five fights ahead on the UFC 220 pay-per-view card.

___

9 p.m.

UFC 220 has some star power on the sidelines for the opening fights.

Islam Makhachev needed just one left hand and 57 seconds to knock out Gleison Tibau in the first preliminary bout. Khabib Nurmagomedov was in Makhachev’s corner and pounded a wall in celebration of his fellow Russian fighter’s victory on Saturday night. Nurmagomedov is set to fight Tony Ferguson for the interim lightweight title at UFC 223 in New York.

UFC President Dana White has refused to strip inactive champion Conor McGregor of the lightweight title. Nurmagomedov’s second fight in UFC was a victory over Tibau. Tibau made his return following a two-year doping suspension.

Enrique Barzola defeated Matt Bessette by unanimous decision in another of the prelim fights. Julio Arce beat Dan Ige by unanimous decision in a bout between two fighters making their UFC debuts. Dustin Ortiz also snapped Alexandre Pantoja’s 11-fight MMA winning streak dating to 2010 with a unanimous decision victory.

___

8 p.m.

UFC is back in Boston.

The top MMA promotion returned to TD Garden Saturday night with the heavyweight and light heavyweight belts on the line on the same card for the first time since 2003.

Stipe Miocic (17-2) looks to set a UFC heavyweight division record with a third straight successful title defense when he fights Francis Ngannou (11-1). The 31-year-old Ngannou hasn’t needed to go beyond the first round in any of his last four bouts and has never gone past the second in his 12 pro fights. Ngannou fights just seven weeks after his stunning victory of Alistair Overeem at UFC 218.

Daniel Cormier (19-1) defends the light heavyweight title against Switzerland’s Volkan Oezdemir (15-1).

UFC held its fifth card at TD Garden, the first since 2016, and the company said the arena was sold out.

____

By DAN GELSTON, AP Sports Writer,by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

Joey

May 28th, 2016

If you've been a combat sports fan for more than say, six months, you've probably at some point or another been hit up with a title fight that either didn't make sense or didn't feel warranted. Even in the days of boxing's alphabet soup titles or the UFC's "whichever way the wind blows" PPV style of title shot matchmaking, we still allow ourselves to be befuddled, confused and sometimes outraged by who gets what title shot and why. It's amazing to think that of all things we've become desensitized too,  title shots remain the one area where we genuinely have a semblance of rage. I don't necessarily know if that's due to the idea that title shots are still sacred or if it's just a long term feeling/nostalgia about how we think title fights should be approached. Nothing gets an MMA fans blood going like seeing a title fight they simply don't believe is acceptable.

The key thing to understand is that there  are plenty of opportunities or moments where one or more combatants would make for TOTALLY reasonable title contenders. Although just one guy gets to have a title shot, it's totally reasonable to believe someone else is deserving. For instance, Dominick Cruz vs Urijah Faber III to me is the BEST title fight---but TJ Dillashaw vs Cruz II or even Cruz vs Assuncao would've been a good title fight as well. It's always possible and perhaps even required to have options and while we're all drunk on hyperbole sometimes, a part of being an evaluator is to occasionally admit that your preferred choice is not always the BEST one for the job. Anywho let's try to figure out just WHAT is a "good" title fight on paper. Let's try to take all factors into account and find out what constitutes a fair title shot or a good title fight. I'll attempt to do this  by breaking it into three tiers:

Good Reasons For A Title Fight (These are borderline indisputable reasons to put together a title shot. They can be backed up by tangible evidence and sound logic. Every title fight REALLY should have at least two of these)

Acceptable Reasons For A Title Fight (These are fine reasons for having a title fight that may not be the most scintillating examples of logic BUT still hold up under scrutiny. You probably shouldn't have more acceptable reasons)

Questionable Reasons For A Title Fight (These are reasons for having a title fight that will have a tough time passing under a microscope. You better have a lot of good and acceptable reasons stacked up before you get to this point)

NO Reason For A Title Fight (Simply put, these reasons don't make any sense and if your title fight has one or two of these, you're probably in trouble)

Since I imagine this will be time consuming and/or a project I'll probably wind up finishing in 2018, I'm going to break this up into parts. We'll tackle the first tier to kick things off. These are my personal beliefs about what makes a good title fight.

Good Reasons For A Title Fight (These are borderline indisputable reasons to put together a title shot. They can be backed up by tangible evidence and sound logic. Every title fight REALLY should have at least two of these)

1- "It just makes sense"

This is the rarest of rare title fights. The fights where "it just makes sense" simply covers all bases because at the end of the day, it just does make sense. For instance, Rory MacDonald vs Robbie Lawler II at UFC 187 really just made sense. Rory had a long winning streak over top competition, he had just finished a guy in the main event of an FS1 event that did pretty solid numbers across two platforms, he had a ton of buzz, he was a budding (in theory) Canadian star and it would be a rematch of the first fight. The entirety of the picture created something that simply made too much sense to NOT do. These are rare though and most UFC title pictures are too fuzzy to allow for "it just makes sense" to work out.

2- Too many credible wins to dispute.

A guy defeating capable, quality competition in any context is good but certain fighters simply leave no doubt as to who the #1 contender is. If the UFC did Edgar vs McGregor, there'd be no real argument as to why Edgar would be getting the title shot JUST on quality victories alone. We're talking wins over Urijah Faber, Cub Swanson, Chad Mendes and Charles Oliveira off the top of my head. If there are simply too many "big" wins to go through for a guy, there shouldn't be any debate about whether or not he's a worthy title contender.

3- "The Story"

Yeah, this one is a little tougher to explain. Let's use Urijah Faber as an example for this one. Urijah Faber vs Dominick Cruz is arguably the rivalry that helped propel the lighter weight classes into the UFC. Faber won the first fight, Cruz then won the second one and the third one never materialized due to injuries. They coached TUF together, are polar opposites in terms of not just in cage fighting style but out of the cage personality as well. It's a fight that's essentially five years in the making with two passionate and divisive fanbases. It's totally fine to think TJ Dillashaw vs Dominick Cruz II would be the fight to make but "the story" of Faber vs Cruz makes it the preferred option. Sometimes a story is what makes a fight more than just two guys throwing uppercuts and leg kicks at one another.

4- Money Wins Out Ultimately (on PPV)

Frankie Edgar and Conor McGregor were both in line for title fights at 145 lbs. The UFC chose Conor McGregor over Frankie Edgar. Why? Because if this is about selling PPVs, the people who can sell PPVs are going to win out every time. It may sound cruel in a sport where you value W's and L's over all---but nobody wants to take an L selling a PPV. NO promoter wants to be like Bob Arum, grouching about how his biggest fighter lost money on a PPV. This sport is still about money and until there is no PPV, the "good" fight will be the one that generates the most revenue ASSUMING of course it can meet the proper criteria.

5- The Reigning Champion Lost

The challenge inside this I guess is determining just what makes for a reigning champion. Is it longevity in years? Title defenses? Quality of title defenses? Johny Hendricks and Renan Barao were champions for essentially the same length of time. Barao got an instant rematch and even after he failed to miss weight for the first one, the UFC gave him a second one. Johny Hendricks was offfered a rematch but the UFC yanked him from it and he had to take a fight two more times to even get back into that discussion. Hendricks ultimately never got a rematch. Anderson Silva and Jose Aldo were both polarizing yet dominant Brazilian champions but only one got a rematch after losing their titles by emphatic KO. Even though I love Cain Velasquez, he only defended his title twice prior to losing it and being given/gifted a rematch. What makes a dominant champion and what makes said dominant champion worthy of a rematch?

New Post has been published on http://FistofLegends.com/ufc-162-frankie-edgar-pre-fight-interview/

UFC 162: Frankie Edgar Pre-Fight Interview

New Post has been published on http://warriorsinstinctmma.com/its-time-for-cage-wars-20/

Its Time For Cage Wars 20

New Post has been published on http://warriorsinstinctmma.com/its-time-for-cage-wars-20/

Its Time For Cage Wars 20

New Post has been published on http://warriorsinstinctmma.com/its-time-for-cage-wars-20/

Its Time For Cage Wars 20