Do you have a hot MMA story or news item that you have found and would like to share?
Then read our guidelines then post it to our MMA News Share Forum to have it display here for the community to read on this page.
The inevitable became a reality on Wednesday as Jon Jones was stripped of his interim UFC light heavyweight just days after receiving a one-year suspension in the arbitration case for his failed UFC 200 drug test. ESPN first reported the news, which marked the second time in the past two years that Jones has been stripped of a UFC title.
A middleweight bout between Rashad Evans and Tim Kennedy is officially off Saturday’s UFC 205, but both fighters will receive their show money.
Unfortunately for Kennedy (18-5 MMA, 3-1 UFC), a replacement opponent will not be sought after Evans (19-5-1 MMA, 14-5-1 UFC) was forced off the event.
George Sullivan has accepted a one-year suspension from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
Officials today announced the sanction, which is retroactive to Jan. 31 of this year, despite the fighter not actually failing a drug test.
The Top 10 ranked bantamweight had some comments regarding the “uncomfortable“ statements made by Cerrone.
During a joint appearance on The MMA Hour on Monday, the Long Island trio of Gian Villante, Al Iaquinta and Aljamain Sterling closed out the show with a long segment filled with hijinks. Many items were discussed, including their upcoming fights as well as the forthcoming UFC 205, for which they offered their predictions.
Yet when the topic turned to Donald Cerrone vs Kelvin Gastelum, Villante was surprised at Sterling’s choice as Sterling favored Cerrone to win.
Sterling “I’m going with Cerrone. He had that liver thing...”
Villante: “You ARE?!”
Helwani: “What happened?”
“Cerrone almost beat up Al - I mean Alj... (breaks into laughter)”
Helwani then asked for clarification as to what took place between Cerrone and Sterling, which Sterling delved into after some prodding, recounting an incident that took place at a promotional event (at around 4:00:40).
Jon Jones wanted to be back in the cage sooner, but was happy the decision acknowledged he didn't knowingly cheat.
The UFC interim light heavyweight champion released a statement Monday following the decision came down from arbitrators that Jones would be suspended one year in his USADA doping case. The crux of the arbitrators' decision was that Jones was "reckless" in taking a sexual-performance pill given to him by a teammate and didn't do enough to comply with the UFC anti-doping policy.
In the statement, Jones said he was "hopeful for a better outcome," but happy he was cleared of intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs.
For the third time, Kevin Ferguson Jr. will attempt his professional MMA debut later this month.
Ferguson Jr. (0-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) is set to take on Aaron Hamilton (0-2 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) in a welterweight fight on the prelims of Bellator 165, which takes place Nov. 19 at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif. The main card airs on Spike following prelims on MMAjunkie.
Bellator officials announced the new booking today.
Despite getting destroyed by what he called a “lucky punch,” Kharitonov will return to combat sports action in less than a month when he battles Francisco Sandro da Silva Bezerra in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) lightweight and welterweight champion, BJ Penn, was recently cleared of all wrongdoing after one of his ex-employees filed a police report earlier this year accusing "The Prodigy" of sexual assault.
On Saturday night, Tony Ferguson put on one of the best performances of his career taking a unanimous decision victory over former lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos. It was the ninth straight victory for Ferguson - a record in the UFC for consecutive divisional wins as well as for consecutive wins without a title shot - and possibly (probably? one can never tell where Conor McGregor is involved) sets him up for the next lightweight title shot.
But Ferguson isn't only gunning for the lightweight strap, he's got multiple divisions in mind. Speaking with MMAJunkie in a post-fight scrum, Ferguson outlined his plan to vie for three UFC titles.
Jon Jones has received the full ban in his doping case.
An independent arbitration panel handed down a one-year suspension on Jones, the UFC interim light heavyweight champion, on Monday. Jones had his USADA case heard by three arbitrators from McLaren Global Sports Solutions last week and the decision came back to give him the full sanction.
Veteran Tom Lawlor has been provisionally suspended by the UFC following a potential USADA violation following an out-of-competition drug test administered on Oct. 10, the company announced Wednesday. Per policy, the nature of the potential transgression was not made public.
Ireland's McGregor, who is currently scheduled to fight Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title in a champion vs. champion superfight at UFC 205, went off on the entire UFC roster on Monday in a video posted on his YouTube channel – The Mac Life.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) interim featherweight champion Jose Aldo was hoping to retire from mixed martial arts (MMA) to pursue other interests, even going so far as to threaten his promoters with legal action.
That didn’t exactly pan out.
Manager Andre Pederneiras talks to Combate (via Bloody Elbow):
"Right now we have this Pettis vs. Holloway fight, and there's Conor's decision, too. We can only know what's going to happen after that. Aldo wants to retire in order to do other things, but in these talks we had with the UFC, it became quite clear that they will not let him go to pursue that. There's no choice but to fight. It'll depend on the outcomes of these two fights. Pettis vs. Holloway and Conor vs. Alvarez. I don't know what Conor will decide, but I believe February or March would be a good date to face him. They are fighting now, so there would be a good three, four month break."
Though it will have been over 13 months between fights for Ronda Rousey, the galvanizing former bantamweight champion says fans might want to catch her while they can.
Rousey, who has a chance to regain her title on Dec. 30 against Amanda Nunes at UFC 207, was a guest on Ellen on Tuesday. She broke her relative silence on the issue of what the future has in store when asked how long she was going to stick around the fight game.
"Not that long, I’m wrapping it up," the 29-year old Rousey said. "This is definitely one of my last fights.
"So everyone better watch. The show isn’t going to be around forever."
The Luke Rockhold - Ronaldo Souza rematch will have to wait.
According to multiple sources, Rockhold has been forced to withdraw from the Nov. 26 fight due to a knee injury. As of this writing, the promotion has yet to decide who Souza will fight next, but it appears as though he will not remain on the card.
A pair of interesting featherweight fights have been added to the RIZIN New Year's Eve card.
Kron Gracie and new signee Tatsyua Kawajiri will square off in Saitama, Japan, on Dec. 31, and a rematch will go down when Charles "Krazy Horse" Bennett and Minoru Kimura face off for the second time in 2016.
Former UFC middleweight and The Ultimate Fighter veteran Kevin Casey has signed with Bellator MMA on a multi-year, multi-fight deal and is eyeing a promotional debut in early 2017. Bellator officials confirmed the signing on Monday.
Former UFC lightweight champion, Rafael dos Anjos, feels like he has peaked at Kings MMA, the very gym that got him to UFC gold. Now, as he tells Combate he’s leaving his comfort zone, dos Anjos dreams of starting his own place.
