UFC veteran Junior dos Santos has revealed that he is interested in a fight with fellow MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko — Fightful has you covered on this story and all of the other news in the world of combat sports.
Junior dos Santos interested in a fight with Fedor Emelianenko
Recently, UFC veteran Junior dos Santos was released from the promotion following a four-fight losing streak with all of those losses being either by knockout or TKO.
Now that "Cigano" is no longer with the UFC, he has started planning his future about where he may be fighting and who he may be fighting. He has revealed that he is open to fighting in Bellator and that he is interested in a fight with fellow MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko.
Off of the back of dos Santos' release from the UFC on the same day of Alistair Overeem's release, Bellator two-division champion Ryan Bader made a suggestion that Bellator should bring both heavyweight veterans into their heavyweight division which Bader is currently the champion of.
Speaking to AG Fight, dos Santos spoke about his itch to carry on fighting as well as who and where he would like to fight next.
Dos Santos said “I am a big fan of Fedor and it would be something really cool to be able to face him. I don’t know what his situation is if he’s still fighting and I know he’s at Bellator. Bader who called us, who would welcome us, would be very interesting. He’s a really tough guy too. A rematch against Alistair Overeem himself, who always finds a way to get away from this issue. It can be at Bellator, wherever it is."
A fight between dos Santos and Emelianenko would certainly be a few years past its sell-by date but it would still get fans fairly interested.
Walt Harris and John Gooden break down Stipe Miocic vs Francis Ngannou 2
Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou will meet once again this coming weekend at UFC 260 in arguably the most highly anticipated heavyweight rematch in history.
UFC heavyweight contender Walt Harris and UFC commentator and analyst John Gooden have broken down the fight in the latest episode of "Inside the Octagon."
Check out the video below.
Vicente Luque believes that even though Tyron Woodley is not in a good spot but he still "remains highly dangerous"
Vicente Luque and Tyron Woodley will meet in the co-main event at UFC 260 and Luque has spoken about the challenges which Woodley will bring to him and what he expects when they meet inside the Octagon.
In an interview with MMA Junkie, Luque said “This is a great fight, it makes sense for this bout to happen now. Woodley is an ex-champion. He’s not in a good spot right now, but he remains highly dangerous. He has several great wins in his career, and I’m on a new winning streak. I’m hungry to get a title shot."
Luque also spoke about his performance against Stephen Thompson and what he has learned from his most recent fights.
“Now I’m coming off two good wins,” Luque said. “Before that, I lost a decision to Stephen Thompson. I learned a lot about sticking to a strategy. I made mistakes against Thompson, mainly in the second and third rounds. I ended up not doing things in the fight which we had planned for."
“It was a big learning experience. I was able to apply those lessons during the rematch against Niko Price, and especially against Randy Brown. I had good results because I followed our game plan. There were lessons I needed to learn. Now I’m back to my winning ways. I’m looking forward to another great fight.”
Gordon Ryan signs with ONE Championship
The latest addition to the growing ONE Championship roster is grappling star Gordon Ryan.
It was announced on Monday that Ryan had signed with the promotion and will compete in both MMA and grappling.
Ryan is a black belt under fellow ONE star Garry Tonon who has a record of 6-0 in MMA and is quickly becoming one of the sports hottest prospects.
Ryan has also won multiple no-gi championships with victories over multiple MMA veterans such as Dillon Danis, Josh Barnett, Rousimar Palhares, and Gabriel Gonzaga.
Charles Oliveira expects to KO Michael Chandler
Charles Oliveira is extremely confident that he will defeat Michael Chandler and become the new UFC lightweight champion at UFC 262.
It was announced last week that Oliveira and Chandler will meet for the vacant title at UFC 262 following Khabib Nurmagomedov's official retirement and vacation of the belt.
In an interview with Sherdog, Oliveira gave his thoughts on how the fight will go down.
“If he takes me down, he will do me a favor. I believe he will pretty much try to keep the fight standing and repeat what he did with Dan Hooker, but if he has one good punch, I have many more combinations,” Oliveira said. “Furthermore, I’ll not run from him as Hooker did. On the contrary, for each of his attempts, I will have a stronger answer. Of course, Chandler deserves credit for that debut win. But, if Hooker were not so concerned to talk bullshit about me in the week of the fight, I’m sure that he could have done better.”
Oliveira also spoke about how well-rounded he has become and that he can win the fight by either knocking Chandler out or by taking him down and wrestling him.
“He improved my wrestling a lot,” Oliveira said. “If you see my last fights, I took down all my opponents and of course will focus on that discipline against Chandler.”
“He always comes very strong, and I’ll catch him with a counter hit,” Oliveira said.
How do you think the main event at UFC 262 will play out?
Jim Miller talks about how much he was paid for his cancelled bout at UFC 258
At UFC 258 in February, UFC veteran Jim Miller was scheduled to fight fellow UFC veteran Bobby Green in an exciting bout.
Unfortunately, the bout never happened as Green passed out whilst cutting weight and the fight was therefore forced to be cancelled.
Miller was left disappointed that he could not fight and take home a full paycheck as he trained hard and cut a lot of weight.
“The hurdle is making weight and it sucks that is the way the sport is. I would fight every weekend if I didn’t have to cut weight,” Miller said on an upcoming episode of Just Scrap Radio on BJPENN.com. “The fight not going on after I made the weight, and I had it on short notice, too sucked. I had a decent cut as well. If you aren’t going to fight you might as well have a shitty cut so you don’t have to fight in that state. At the same time, it’s not like I suffered because it was a pretty easy cut. It sucks. I don’t want my opponents to get sick or hurt before the fight.”
Miller also spoke about what he was paid for making weight but not being able to fight.
Miller said "They gave me a percentage. A fraction. You waste a week out in Las Vegas basically stuck in your hotel room and it’s like I made a couple of thousand dollars for it. It sucks."
Josh Emmett opens up about his injury struggles
The last time Josh Emmett was inside the Octagon he was involved in one of the best fights of the year against Shane Burgos, which is incredible considering Emmett fought a large majority of the fight on one leg having completely torn his ACL.
In an interview with Mike Heck, Emmett spoke about his uncertainty if he will fight again this year.
He said, "In my mind, I will fight this year, I just don’t know yet."
“Unless the MRI comes back and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s 100 percent healed,’ then I know it’s just a mental thing, and I’ll push through whatever to keep it going,” Emmett said. “But I don’t think that’s the case, because when I do certain things, I feel pain in my knee.”
Emmett is currently on a three-fight win streak with impressive wins over Shane Burgos, Michael Johnson, and Mirsad Bektic and his injury scrapped his plans to fight for a title in 2020 or even this year.
Emmett also spoke about his plans for when he does eventually return to fighting.
“If they have a 1 through 6 in front of them, OK, let’s do it,” he said. “But I’m not fighting behind me. I made that clear. I’m not fighting anyone behind me, because, in my last handful of fights, I’m always fighting back, I’m never going anywhere. I’ll stay stagnant, and I do want to get closer to that title.”
Francis Ngannou's head coach talks about his conditioning and wrestling ahead of rematch with Stipe Miocic
Francis Ngannou's head coach Eric Nicksick has spoken about Ngannou's wrestling and conditioning ahead of his rematch against Stipe Miocic.
Ngannou's conditioning and wrestling were the two main things that majorly let him down in the first fight against Miocic but Nicksick believes that Ngannou has massively improved since the first fight.
“I think he understands at this level, the title level, you’re not going to just cut through everybody like they’re soft butter,” Nicksick explained. “There are guys out there who are going to look to outsmart you. They’re going to have a better fight IQ. His approach to that fight [against Stipe], in a lot of ways and he’ll tell you this by his own admission, he thought he was going to just walk in there, knock him out and take the belt."
Nicksick also spoke about how the loss to Miocic ignited a new fire under Ngannou.
“Sometimes you need those Stipe Miocic ass whoopings and the Derrick Lewis fights to really make you understand who and what you are but also to make you understand what you’re capable of overcoming,” Nicksick said. “So all those things are the maturations of this man’s career but when you boil it down and look at everything this guy’s been through, this is kind of one of those parallel storylines for what he’s gone through in his life."
“The rejections, how long it’s taken to actually get here, to get to Europe, to travel across Africa, he was told no or rejected many times but it’s his perseverance or his resiliency that kind of makes him who he is. It wouldn’t have right if he didn’t have a hiccup to get there. A little push back. It shouldn’t be that easy for him. I’m glad we have the rematch. I’m glad we have the time and he really had to right the ship to get back in there and do it again.”
Do you think Ngannou can beat Miocic in the rematch?
Islam Makhachev believes he will fight Rafael dos Anjos next but he is also open to a fight against Justin Gaethje
Now that his teammate and friend Khabib Nurmagomedov has officially retired from MMA, Islam Makhachev can now target the UFC lightweight title.
Following his impressive win over Drew Dober at UFC 259, Makhachev is now planning to fight a step up in competition.
In an interview with RT Sport, Makhachev spoke about the state of UFC matchmaking and that he believes he will probably end up fighting dos Anjos next.
He said, "I don’t know what’s going on with the UFC matchmaking but I think that’s what will end up happening, most of the top-10 fighters are busy but I’m 90 percent sure they’ll give me a top-10 guy..."
Makhachev also went on to say "We know that Felder doesn’t want to fight often. He has other things going on with the UFC and isn’t eager to fight anymore. As far as Hooker, I saw that he recently came home. He was quarantined for a long time so I don’t think he’ll want to come back soon. He’ll probably want to rest after getting knocked out, so I think they’ll give me dos Anjos.”
Who do you think Makhachev should face next?
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