MMA Combat Critique

Today I wanted to highlight some of my own previous UFC related blog posts from the past few months that I think are relevant today or will remain relevant in the future.  UFC 313 Pereira vs Ankalaev prediction Even post UFC 313, I think this post is still very relevant for the future. Firstly, I outlined some things that came to pass once the fight occurred a few weeks ago. All three of the things that I outlined that led me to make the prediction that I made all ended up being major factors in the fight going the way that it did. I also think that with a rematch almost certainly being the next fight for both fighters, all of these things will likely hold true or prove to be places where Pereira can look to improve going into a rematch. What is wrong with the UFC rankings? Unfortunately, I think that this post is going to remain relevant for a long time, as I do not see the UFC doing anything about the rankings and their problems. Dana White has mentioned involving AI to create a ...

Out of nowhere in 2024, the Global Fight League appeared in the MMA space with huge promises and another unique format that had not been seen since the IFL years ago. While some of the things that they are promising such as a 50/50 revenue split, guaranteed fights, and more open contracts are great things that I wish every promotion had. But as of now the GFL has not run an event, and with some of the controversy regarding their launch and draft, it remains to be seen how this plays out. I wanted to talk about two of the problems that I have noticed, that being their formatting and their roster.  The first thing I want to mention is their roster. They have plenty of names and former world champions under their banner, but many of these fighters are well past their primes. Names like Frank Mir, Mauricio Rua and Andrei Arlovski are definitely names, but they are all over 40 years old and were past their best years ago. I actually don't mind a promotion where older fighters can fight ...

The Professional Fighters League and ONE Championship are considered the two promotions in the running for being the second biggest MMA promotions in the world. While I personally think that KSW or Oktagon being excluded from this conversation does not make sense, I want to compare the PFL and ONE on the basis of their presentation and where they stand today as companies. PFL The PFL is different from most promotions, as they heavily use a tournament format for their shows. Recently they dropped their original season format, which I think was for the better as it limited matchmaking and took forever to play out. Now they are doing regular fights alongside tournaments in each weight division with the winners becoming champion and receiving 500 thousand dollars. This is down from the previous prize of a million dollars that was awarded for winning their Season. As for their roster, since buying Bellator the PFL has a much stronger roster than ever. They do not have many huge names, but t...

At the time of me writing this post, UFC Vegas 102 ended about 2 hours ago, which featured Youssef Zalal getting the biggest win of his career over the ranked Calvin Kattar. In recent memory, I can't think of a fighter who has had a bigger career turnaround than Zalal. Getting signed to the UFC in 2020, Zalal went on a 3 fight win streak, with all fights going to a decision. He was a relatively unremarkable fighter which led to him not getting massive amounts of promotion or high billing on cards. His first loss also came in 2020 to the current featherweight champion Ilia Topuria, which started a streak of losses for Zalal. He lost his next 2 fights by decision and had a draw in 2022. At this point Zalal was 3-3-1 in the UFC, with every fight going the distance and none being very memorable. This likely was the reason why shortly after his last fight where he went to a draw, he was cut from the promotion. For some fighters, being cut from the UFC spells the end of their career, or...

Unfortunately, in a sport where fights can very easily not end in a finish, it is not unlikely that when the decision is read, the wrong fighter is given the win. There are plenty of close fights that could go either way, but I am here to talk about robberies, where clearly the wrong fighter is given the win. The robbery I want to talk about in my opinion is not the worst of 2024, but by far the most frustrating. This is in part because it contained one of my personal favorite fighters ever, and the way that the fight unfolded absolutely infuriated me and many other fans. This fight took place at altitude at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City, which also played a part in my frustration. If you have seen this card, you know exactly what fight I am going to talk about, that being Jose Aldo vs Mario Bautista To start, I do not want to direct all of my criticism towards Bautista who was given the decision victory, because Aldo is not blameless. Jose Aldo is one of the greatest fighters of all time...

For my first review on this blog, I wanted to talk about what is likely the most memorable UFC event from the past year, that being UFC 300. This card was hyped up by the promotion to be the greatest event in their history and was a celebration of 30 years of the UFC. I and many other fans were somewhat let down initially when fights started being announced, especially when the entire card had been announced outside of the main events. Many of the planned main events fell through for this card, so the UFC instead moved the main event from the following pay per view to this card. As the card approached however, the sentiment began to shift once people realized their expectations were likely too high, and the card we were getting still had 3 title bouts and almost all ranked fighters competing. But at the end of that day, all the hype becomes irrelevant if the card does not deliver, and this card absolutely did. The preliminary for this card were alone good enough to be a card by themsel...

The UFC rankings in their current form do their job well enough. It gives you a good surface level idea of who is up and coming in the weight divisions, and who is close to the top. However, once you begin to really give them a look the inconsistencies and problems are all over. Firstly, the rankings as they stand now are determined by a panel of media members. This is a good thing, as if the promotion directly controlled the rankings, they would be very biased towards the fighters and fights they want to promote, even though they already are to a degree. The problem with the media that creates the rankings today is that many of the media outlets on the panel are completely unknown and have little presence in the sport. The media also does not have to explain their reasoning for how the rankings are put together, which would at least give some insight into why they are like this. To further explain this issue, I will use the lightweight division as an example, as I think it has had so...