Paid Members Supremo Posted May 19 Paid Members Posted May 19 The best MMA show I’ve seen all year because it was also the only MMA show I’ve seen all year. Enjoyable on its own merits though. Huge spectacle. Fun, quick fights between people I know and care about. Fighters of a certain age looked like fighters of a certain age. No-one looked amazing, and only really Nate Diaz looked really bad. Overall, I find the whole thing surreal. Remember when Jake Paul was a loser YouTuber doing a bad Conor McGregor impression? Seems like no time at all he’s now a legitimate name in fighting and arguably beating Dana White at his own game. I’d watch again, especially if they focus on building some newer, younger stars. The UFC seem to have completely abandoned that. All they push is Interim belts and MAGA. Funniest has been hardcore UFC fans trying to downplay it, saying how disgraceful and embarrassing it was. UFC would never book such obvious mismatches. They’d never dream of such a desperate cash grab that denigrates this great sport. CM Punk, James Toney and Kimbo Slice say hi. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 20 Paid Members Posted May 20 That is probably proof that they are gonna run it again. Quote
Dai Posted May 20 Posted May 20 Was shocked at how small the official purses were for this one, unless there's massive sponsorship deals, or unofficial bonuses to bump it significantly. Ronda earned 2 million, Gina 1 million, Francis 1.5 million, and Diaz only got half a million for his pasting. Not exactly the boxing mega money deals this, is it? Not exactly amounts which would tempt UFC fighters to try their luck leaving too Quote
d-d-d-dAz Posted May 21 Posted May 21 15 hours ago, Dai said: Was shocked at how small the official purses were for this one, unless there's massive sponsorship deals, or unofficial bonuses to bump it significantly. Ronda earned 2 million, Gina 1 million, Francis 1.5 million, and Diaz only got half a million for his pasting. Not exactly the boxing mega money deals this, is it? Not exactly amounts which would tempt UFC fighters to try their luck leaving too Depends what UFC fighters. You could probably buy 98% of the roster three tines over with that money. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 21 Paid Members Posted May 21 Apparently the reported payouts were way off to what was actually paid out. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 21 Author Paid Members Posted May 21 Late actually giving my thoughts on this but I ended up watching it all in bits and pieces and in a fucked up order. Not ideal but I ended up waking up early enough Sunday morning to catch the main event live. Watched the rest of the main card on Sunday but never caught up on everything else until later in the week. I enjoyed the show myself. Nothing earth shattering but it scratched a nostalgic itch in some ways, made me sad in others, and most importantly it didn’t bore me at any point. Well, apart from when Helwani had the microphone but that’s what the fast forward button was invented for. Business as usual then. Seeing the result ‘Rousey by armbar in 17 seconds’ was a proper throwback. 2014 vibes. Just a complete squash match. I think anyone with a brain and knowledge of the two fighters and the circumstances surrounding this whole circus didn’t really expect much more from this. Would’ve been great to see a somewhat competitive couple of minutes before Ronda took her arm home but whatever. The nanosecond Ronda hit the takedown, I said “OK, it’s over”. You just knew Gina wasn’t gonna survive on the ground with her. And especially so early in the fight with Rousey being fresh. It was a wrap. Saw the usual from the armchair critics going ‘Carano should’ve trained takedown defence’, which is always laughable. Of course she trained that shit. It was no mystery what Rousey was gonna be looking to do. Unfortunately, simply training defensive grappling (especially in one training camp after a 17 year layoff!) doesn’t mean you automatically can’t ever be taken down at all anymore. Especially when the opponent is strong as fuck and has trained, since childhood, and reached Olympic level in various ways to take people to the ground. It always astounds me how so many fans seem to think MMA training camps are a magic trick or some kind of cheat code where you should be able to train something and instantly level up in that area and see gains right away. Plus, what also probably didn’t help Carano was Ronda didn’t do her usual clinch up and Judo throw thing. She came out and shot in low for a more standard MMA wrestling takedown. Probably not what Carano expected right out the gate. Regardless, it was always the likely outcome. The talk of it being a fix is goofy as fuck. The dumbest people you know think this was rigged. Firstly, if they were gonna fix it, why would they take all the risks of doing that only to work it so you get the outcome that was almost certainly gonna happen anyway? What’s the point? What’s the need? The incentive? Surely if you were gonna rig a fight like this, it’s to have the underdog win? Then you can manipulate the betting system, plus you open up the possibility of doing a rematch and basically double dipping on getting the most mileage out of whatever Rousey vs Carano is in 2026. What is there to gain by doing a ‘work’ and having Rousey win, when she was gonna win anyway? That’d be like booking me against prime Khabib and ‘fixing’ it for Khabib to win. Like there’d be any need when he would legitimately kill me in seconds. Also, these conspiracy theorists who dip into combat sports once in a blue moon and always come away convinced everything was a ‘work’, they clearly never watched any of Rousey’s career. This wasn’t unusual for her at all. Rousey winning by armbar in seconds was a regular occurrence in her prime. Of her 12 previous career wins, 11 of them ended in the first round and 9 of them were over in less than a minute. This wasn’t even her fastest win. She had two quicker finishes than this in the UFC. Then on top of that, you add in that Carano was 44 years old, had been retired 17 years, had lost 100lbs in about 18 months to make it to this fight and was never known for her ground game even in her younger days when she was active. This looked pretty much exactly like a fight like that realistically should have. Why would they even bother concocting some cloak and dagger, elaborate and illegal fix when there was absolutely no need? Not to mention, Rousey was adamant throughout the buildup that this was gonna be her last fight anyway. So again, what would be the incentive to fake it? What would they even be building towards if she’s not sticking around anyway? Could’ve done without this, to be honest. The whole post-fight hugfest was a bit much. I expected some of that. There was clearly never any beef between Ronda and Gina. But the endless hugging and how long the camera stayed on the whole thing, I was begging for them to just go back to the analyst desk after the 15th cuddle. Enough 🤣 Also, Rousey saying to Carano in her post-fight interview “You changed MY world and we changed THE world”. Steady on. I think in her head she really convinced herself this was Ali vs Foreman in Zaire in 1974. On 5/16/2026 at 10:50 AM, Carbomb said: I wonder if Rousey's doing this so she can retire on a win? Pure armchair psychology, of course, but seeing as she was an elite athlete used to winning a lot, and for whom mental health has had a particular influence in life, it may be she really needs a sense of closure so she can move forward with the rest of her life. In this regard, I hope she gets it. Coming back to this from before the show, I thought this myself watching it. Knowing how badly those Holm and Nunes losses messed with her mentally, I think that haunted her for the last decade and this was closure for her. I really think there’s something to that. Obviously she got paid a chunk of change as well but I think she also just wanted to end the MMA chapter of her life on a win. Even though it was a blatant cherry pick against a woman in her mid 40s who’d been gone 17 years and never had much of a ground game even in her prime. As a win itself it’s pretty meaningless but I guess to Rousey, it’s the ending she wanted. That’s fine. But maybe she should’ve left all the shit talking about Kayla Harrison out of it. Basically building up a fight that she obviously never had any intention of doing was some bullshit and smacked of Jon Jones constantly talking crap about Aspinall but then losing his pen every time the contract came his way. Just weak. Sounds like this was definitely it for Ronda then. Usually I take every MMA retirement with vast amounts of salt but I think this one’s gonna stick because 1) the above, I think she just wanted to get out on a win. And 2) there really isn’t another big name cherry pick like Gina Carano out there for Ronda now. If she fought again, it’d probably have to be someone risky like the Holm rematch or, God forbid, Cyborg. And Ronda doesn’t want that shit. She’d rather shag Travis Browne to make more babies, than risk losing again. That says it all. It sounded like Carano is leaving the door open to the possibility of having another fight though. Can see why, even given her age, because she really never got to do anything here. But who do you put her in with? I saw Nakisa mention possibly doing a Carano vs Holm fight and, as much as Holm’s past her prime and it sounds kind of fair on paper with Holm also being 44, I think that’s another awful fight for Carano. We’ll see but I wouldn’t be shocked if we see Gina one more time. I’m almost ashamed to admit it but I did kind of enjoy Mike Perry vs Nate Diaz in a fucked up way. Yeah, it was a mess and Nate looked like shite. But it was one of those car crash fights you just can’t look away from. Nate looked awful though yeah. For someone who built a lot of his career on his cardio and pace, he looked absolutely knackered here very early on. I know he’s 41 now and not regularly active anymore so it’s kind of to be expected. But man, I still didn’t see him fading like that. I actually got all the main card predictions spot on apart from this fight. I picked Nate by late sub, I had a feeling he’d take a beating and basically just outlast Perry and catch him in a guillotine or something in the later rounds. He just did the ‘taking a beating’ bit though and looked spent by the second round. Fair play to Perry. Never been a fan of him outside the cage but I haven’t heard anything bad about him in a while now so maybe he’s finally got his shit together and matured a bit these days. He’s actually done a really great job of rehabbing his fighting career post-UFC in a way few do. He’s beat a bunch of big names now between Bare Knuckle and now this Nate fight in MMA. Yeah a lot of them were past it or on their last legs but he’s done well for himself. I saw a snippet of him on Helwani’s show the other day and he seems to be making noises about a UFC return. If he’s up for that then I’d be surprised if the UFC don’t bring him back. Can’t see him doing well at all in the current UFC Welterweight division but he’s definitely done enough outside the UFC now that there’s something to work with there and he’s earned another crack at it. Definitely some fun fights at 170 for him and some winnable ones before they inevitably feed him to someone in the rankings. Just off the top of my head, imagine something like Perry vs Muslim Salikhov? Would be shit for MVP if Perry does end up back in the UFC, which is another reason why the UFC might do it, but there aren’t exactly a bunch of great fights for him there anyway. I’d like to see Perry vs Jason Jackson though. You never know with Perry. Could just as easily stick with Bare Knuckle but I feel like he’s looking for something else now. Francis Ngannou did what Francis Ngannou does. Just obliterated Philipe Lins in a round as expected and as he should have. I read that Ngannou gifted his $100K bonus to Lins, which is a nice touch if true. We’ve gone into the whole Jon Jones thing enough so I won’t bother again. It’s not happening though. The amount of naive fools I’ve seen acting like and even arguing that the UFC are gonna let Jones out of his contract to “avoid bad PR” is mind numbing. For one, I don’t think TKO give a shite about bad PR. Two, Jones signed an 8 fight deal, he contractually owes them 6 fights. They’ll hold him to that until he’s in the grave. He’s going nowhere. Don’t know what you do with Ngannou now but there are a few fights you can make. None of them as big as those Jones/Aspinall fights would’ve been but what can you do? I can see him fighting Jake Paul at some point but that’ll be Boxing. In MMA, I could see him fighting Despaigne maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix throw a bunch of money at Cain Velasquez to do a rematch either. I’d rather not see that but they don’t have many options. Maybe Ngannou vs Eddie Hall for the freakshow? Liked the performance from Salahdine Parnasse in his first round finish of Kenny Cross. Not a ton to say about it and not sure how to properly rate the win itself because I wasn’t familiar with Cross going in. But I know Luke Thomas was vouching for him as a solid fighter. He wasn’t picking him to beat Parnasse or anything but he seemed to rate him. Parnasse pretty much rolled over him though. Cross was game and he was giving it a go but he was clearly just outmatched here. Robelis Despaigne ironing out poor old Junior Dos Santos was what I feared when the fight was announced and sadly it came true. Fuck me. It’s not even like Despaigne is anything special. Like @Egg Shen said the other day, this is a guy who lost to Austen Lane in the UFC. He’s not much good. But I don’t know if it was just me being pessimistic to prepare myself for the possibility of JDS getting walloped or what, but my confidence in JDS was pretty shot. He was coming off wins but hadn’t fought in a while and that combined with his age and the punishment he’s taken over the years, I had a bad feeling from the off. And if Despaigne has anything going for him, he’s dangerous early. And he’s massive. I’d have loved to have been proven wrong on this one. What a depressing way to kick off the main card. Seen talk of Ngannou vs Despaigne now. It’s gutting that we’re having to entertain stuff like that at this late stage in Ngannou’s career, at a time when we should be seeing him against the likes of Aspinall, Jones and Pereira. But of what’s available, I wouldn’t hate Ngannou vs Despaigne. Would be edge of the seat stuff for the 9 seconds it would probably last. Prelims weren’t really anything to write home about. Nothing stood out as particularly bad but the fights just came and went really. Jason Jackson scoring the 20 second KO was sweet though. It was the first finish of the night and a very welcome one at that point as well after three straight decisions. I’ve never been a fan of Mauro Ranallo as a commentator and if he you want just one example of why, check out his call of the Jackson knockout here. Fucking audio torture. Namo Fazil looked good in his fight. First time seeing him or his opponent though so not sure how much to take away from it. I did see he got into a bit of a confrontation with Arman Tsarukyan backstage though. Who doesn’t Tsarukyan have beef with at this point? Man’s a loose cannon. I felt like Herb Dean once again dropped a bollock in the Adriano Moraes vs Phumi Nkuta fight. Nkuta was up 2-0 on two of the judges scorecards, finds himself in a choke right at the end of the third round, he’s fighting it, the round ends, Moraes holds onto the choke for a couple of seconds longer, fight ends and Nkuta is asleep. But was he out before or after the fight was over? A fight he won at least two rounds in and was probably winning the third before the choke. They called it a submission win for Moraes at 4:59 of the last round but I don’t know. I felt like Nkuta was fighting the choke with his hands when Herb put his hands on them. Regardless, if Herb did his job and got in there quicker, and Moraes hadn’t held on to that choke an extra couple of seconds, maybe Nkuta doesn’t go out at all and none of this is a controversy. If he wasn’t out when the time ran out, they should’ve went to the scorecards. And if they did that, Nkuta clearly wins on points. I’ve seen people calling it a clear cut screwjob but it’s hard to say whether Nkuta was definitely out or not before the clock hit zero. It felt to me like Herb was initially just breaking it up because the fight was over, but then looked at Nkuta sleeping when the choke was finally let go and decided to call it a sub after the fact. Felt like he called an audible after the fight had already ended. I can maybe see how this could happen in the heat of the moment with everything moving so fast. But then they reviewed the footage and still called it a Moraes submission win. Nkuta is swearing that he heard the bell, which would mean he didn’t go out until after the fight was over. And Ray Longo is fuming but he would be, Nkuta’s his guy. Who knows? What a mess though. Nkuta’s stock oddly goes up for me though. He took this fight on just over a week’s notice when Mokaev dropped out, was winning quite comfortably and now has the “I was screwed” storyline to run with. A rematch seems inevitable. Feels like that’s the correct move now and if MVP are gonna do more MMA, the rematch is a no brainer for a future card. Yeah, on the whole, I liked this. Main card was full of mismatches and quick blowouts, apart from Perry vs Diaz, but that was actually probably the right call for their first show. A five fight main card with five finishes featuring recognisable names isn’t the worst way for a debut card to go. Wasn’t all positive, seeing old names trotted out there to get decimated or steamrolled isn’t great but at least it wasn’t wall to wall dull decisions and if nothing else there was plenty to talk about coming out of the show, good and bad, but at least it wasn’t indifference. My main gripe with this show was that there was way too much Helwani on the screen and in my ears. I know they had a bunch of time to kill with all the early finishes but, Jesus Christ. Mrs Wand caught a bit of this show and even she piped up at one point and said of Helwani, “is this bloke with the big nose getting paid by the word or something?” Had to just start skimming through his bits after a while. Insufferable. So glad I didn’t watch the whole thing live. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 22 Paid Members Posted May 22 (edited) It was game over for JDS as soon as Despaigne shrugged off those single leg attempts. Poor fucker. They made a complete balls up of the Nkuta finish, I can't believe they still got it wrong after checking the replay, absolute shit show. As for Namo Fazil, he was the surprise package of fight week. Bit of a tit but he's going to make you pay attention. He's apparently contracted to fight on The Contender Series coming up. Edited May 22 by Egg Shen Quote
John L Posted June 4 Posted June 4 sad to see .. Ronda is great.. but it looked like Gina just didnt do any training for like 10-15 years and now just decided to do one last fight against a fighter that is just going to try to submit her.... but so happy for Ronda that she can finish her career on a win.. I think people forget the damage she took in those last two losses and even her judo career must have been brutal on the body to even get to the olympics... projudo.xyz/fighter/ROUSEY_Ronda_USA so happy for her Quote
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