Author: Jeremy Botter

McGregor vs. Malignaggi Will Be a Train Wreck That None of Us Can Turn Away From

Let’s say you’ve got a stray cat in your neighborhood.
You’ve seen the cat scrounging around your house and your neighbor’s house for food. You feel sorry for the cat and, one day, you decide to leave a little bowl of milk on the back porch. You watch …

Let’s say you’ve got a stray cat in your neighborhood.

You’ve seen the cat scrounging around your house and your neighbor’s house for food. You feel sorry for the cat and, one day, you decide to leave a little bowl of milk on the back porch. You watch dutifully from your kitchen window as the cat cautiously makes its way to the milk and laps it up.

The next day, you forget to put milk out, but the cat still comes around. You feed it again. The cat keeps coming back, every day, until you can’t get it to leave. You’re annoyed because you never wanted a cat in the first place.

Congratulations. You have adopted a cat.

 

Paulie Malignaggi is that cat. We let him around the house. We fed him. And now we’re tired of him, but he won’t leave.

Malignaggi, who perhaps became more famous as a short-term training partner of Conor McGregor than he ever did as a boxer, told Fight Hype on Monday night that over a potential McGregor boxing match:

“I know Al Haymon’s talking with Dana White. I know they’re speaking so if they want the fight, they’ll make it. You know, I don’t need to do all that because Al Haymon makes anything he wants happen, happen. The only way this doesn’t happen—once I spoke to Team Haymon and they told me they were on board to make this fight, I knew they only way it wouldn’t happen is if this guy doesn’t have absolutely any balls to make it.

“But this fight would pay him more, this fight would get him more exposure, this fight is a bigger fight than anything else he has. There’s no more [Floyd] Mayweather fight, this fight is the biggest fight there is. So once they told me that I said, ‘All right, the only way this doesn’t happen is if this guy has no balls—which wouldn’t surprise me because he has no balls—but what I’m saying is, the way they’re going to present it to him, it’s going to be presented in a way where he really shouldn’t turn it down.

“Even if it’s not the next fight, even if it’s an MMA fight in his next fight, there’s no way he should be walking away from this fight unless he has no balls.”

If this news surprises you one iota, you haven’t paid close attention to McGregor’s career arc. You really thought McGregor was itching to return to the UFC and defend his title against Tony Ferguson? Or that he cared one iota about his legacy in the UFC or about vanquishing the notion that he isn’t a real champion because a real champion defends his title?

Nah.

If it hasn’t become apparent by now, McGregor has historically cared about one thing: finding his way into the biggest money fight possible. He doesn’t care about defending his championships. He doesn’t care about the UFC. McGregor is a businessman at his core with a layer of a good fighter painted on top, and Malignaggi, like it or not, is the biggest money fight possible. That’s partially due to the beef between the two, but mostly it’s due to the fact that McGregor can make a whole lot more money in boxing than he can in mixed martial arts.

So, of course, this news just had to come out. It was a certainty. Even if the fight ultimately doesn’t come to fruition right now, it’s going to remain there, bubbling under the surface. A lot of that is because Malignaggi seized his moment after that whole training camp brouhaha, and he refused to let it die. Even while serving as a commentator for Showtime, Malignaggi was a pest, and he’s never really stopped doing his act. He knows a good thing when he sees one, especially when that good thing is the biggest payday of his career.

The good news from all of this is that if you loved the buildup to Mayweather vs. McGregor, well, this will be pretty much the same thing, except a whole lot more annoying. Malignaggi just has a way of getting under everyone’s skin, and I’m already dreading any official interactions between the two men. I have no desire to see the fight, but even more than that, I have no desire to hear either man talk to each other. Nothing good can come from it.

But I’ll still watch. I can sit here and tell you I won’t, but the truth of the matter is that I’m a sucker for wild, out-of-control fight buildup, even when I can only handle both parties in small doses. McGregor has proved to be at his best in small doses, and Malignaggi is best in no doses at all.

And yet, I know I’ll lap it all up. I imagine a lot of you are the same way.

And that’s OK. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I don’t think. It’s something of a guilty pleasure, in a way, because maybe you’d rather be watching anything else instead of McGregor vs. Malignaggi, and yet you can’t avert your eyes, and you can’t avoid parting with your hard-earned money to see it.

And since eyeballs and money are McGregor’s sole ambition, well, maybe we should’ve seen this coming all along.

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Tony Ferguson Sets Up Conor McGregor Title Fight, but Will We Ever See It?

The weird thing about UFC 216’s main event between Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee?
The difficulty we had in figuring out the point of it.
On the surface, it’s easy: Ferguson and Lee are two really good lightweights. They’re two of the best in the division…

The weird thing about UFC 216‘s main event between Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee?

The difficulty we had in figuring out the point of it.

On the surface, it’s easy: Ferguson and Lee are two really good lightweights. They’re two of the best in the division. Conor McGregor is the champion, but who knows if he’ll ever defend the belt or even fight again. Caught up in the stasis McGregor often leaves in his wake, Ferguson and Lee were the best options available for the UFC to try to keep the division moving along.

They were the last men standing.

And the interim lightweight title was up for grabs, which makes it seem important at first glance. Ferguson won it in dramatic fashion, using a sweet triangle choke after nearly ripping Lee’s arm from the socket.

But interim titles are a standard fallback for the UFC these days. They don’t really mean anything, and that’s because the real championships don’t mean much either. If they meant something, Demetrious Johnson would’ve been in Saturday night’s main event, setting the record for most consecutive UFC title defenses with an utter shellacking of Ray Borg.

That was a historic moment. A true accomplishment.

But instead of being in the main event, Johnson was relegated to supporting act for a title that isn’t even a real thing. And then he finished the very good and yet somehow still hapless Borg with a German suplex that he turned into an armbar in midair. It was literally the greatest submission I’ve ever seen, and one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in sports. But it wasn’t the main event. And that’s dumb.

Yeah, the interim title might just turn into the lightweight title down the road, which makes it feel kind of important. But really, it’s more like you’re getting a free meal size upgrade at your favorite fast food place. Conor McGregor is the lightweight champion (on paper, at least), and we’ve all seen what happens after he wins a championship. Max Holloway, for instance, was interim featherweight champion right up to the point when he wasn’t, when the UFC said some words and instantly made him the actual champion. The odds of the same thing happening at lightweight are pretty good, I’d say.

And maybe, then, this was the Battle to Decide Who Might Get to Face McGregor? Maybe that’s why it was elevated to main event status over Johnson: because it’s a chance to set up the next domino for McGregor, the undisputed biggest draw in UFC history and the man who will likely help WME-IMG decide next year if they’re happy they purchased this UFC thing, or if they made a huge mistake.

But let’s be real: Can you imagine McGregor being super enthused about the idea of facing Ferguson? T-Ferg is a dangerous opponent, and he’s a dangerous opponent without the ability to help boost McGregor’s pay far beyond the UFC norm. And then there was Ferguson’s post-fight callout of McGregor, which consisted largely of shouting expletives and calling McGregor “McNugget,” which is an insult better left on the cutting room floor.

Make no mistake about it: Ferguson was as deserving of this chance as it gets. He had a legitimate winning streak and had beaten some tough competition. Truth be told, he probably should’ve already been in this position at least once, if not twice. Lee? Well, maybe he wasn’t quite as deserving. But the Octagon is the ultimate decider, and Lee went in the cage and proved he belonged in that championship mix. He’s young, he’s brash, he’s got a hell of a personality, and he’s a very good fighter. He’ll be back, and hopefully next time he’ll be back without being accompanied by the staph infection that drained him this time around.

So, another UFC pay-per-view down. To tell you the truth, I still haven’t really recovered from McGregor vs. Mayweather. Nothing feels important. Nothing feels like it’s worth anticipating. We’ve got Georges St-Pierre returning next month to face the middleweight champion, and my anticipation meter is peaking at roughly six out of 10.

But that’s the modern UFC. Things are different these days. Instead of building up anticipation for a big fight that becomes a community gathering point, we’re force-fed an endless stream of fight cards filled with people we’ve never heard of. Everyone gets a championship, so long as it means the UFC gets to put the word “championship” on the fight poster.

And the real shame of it all is that guys like Tony Ferguson, questionable post-fight promo skills aside, aren’t given the spotlight or importance they should be.

Welcome to the new UFC.

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Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz 3: The Only Fight to Make

Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz?
In the words of Diaz, I’m not surprised.
This is destiny, or at least something like it.
I’ve long written that McGregor would never return to the Octagon after his Mayweather payday. McGregor himself hasn’t been shy about…

Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz?

In the words of Diaz, I’m not surprised.

This is destiny, or at least something like it.

I’ve long written that McGregor would never return to the Octagon after his Mayweather payday. McGregor himself hasn’t been shy about his mantra: Get in. Get Rich. Get out.

He’s rich beyond measure now, so it seems like a good time for the third part of that plan.

And besides, how could he go back to making a few million dollars for a single fight? He just pulled in well over $100 million in the easiest payday he’ll ever receive. The idea of McGregor going back to the UFC and facing the likes of Tony Ferguson, Kevin Lee and Khabib Nurmagomedov? For 1/10th of what he received for his last fight?

It’s silly.

Of course, that was before Dana White started talking about granting McGregor an ownership stake in the UFC, per MMAjunkie.

White’s admission was the latest sign that in this new WME-UFC world, the old rules can be broken. Genuine stars are treated differently than the rank and file. Exceptions can be made.

If the rumor mill is correct, McGregor‘s getting another special exemption.

The Irish tabloid Sunday World reported over the weekend that McGregor vs. Diaz 3 was set for December 30 in Las Vegas, Nevada, which makes all the sense in the world. Tabloids, in general, aren’t exactly known for the accuracy of their reporting; you take their copy with a whole bottle of salt.

But then White tweeted that the story wasn’t true. Which essentially confirmed that it was, in fact, true. Any UFC fan will tell you that it’s best to just believe the opposite of whatever White says. Veteran journalist Ariel Helwani—a much more dependable source than White these days—noted that the fight wasn’t a done deal, but that it was still the plan.

Whether it happens in December or sometime in 2018, it’s clear that McGregor‘s next fight in the UFC will be against Diaz. It’s the fight that makes sense, both for McGregor and for the UFC. Yeah, the winner of Ferguson vs. Lee on October 7 will be a much more deserving title fight candidate than Diaz. The Stockton kid hasn’t fought at lightweight in two years, and his record in the division isn’t stellar.

But records don’t matter. The idea that someone is deserving of a title shot being passed over has no place in mixed martial arts, and yet it’s the one concept a subsection of fans have the most trouble grasping. From its inception, mixed martial arts has been about drawing money. Hardcore fans like to speak of PRIDE and how good things were in the old days; some of them would be wise to read up on the founder of PRIDE and why that company came about in the first place.

The modern UFC has been wrapped in the veneer of sport, with a network television sheen and high-gloss vibe that makes it more palatable to a wider audience. But in truth, it’s the same old business it has always been, and the point of the thing is the same as it’s always been: maximize eyeballs and pull in dollars by the fistful.

Ferguson vs. Lee is a sublime fight. The winner will be interim lightweight champion, and in a perfect world, they would move on to a unification match with McGregor. They’d get the chance to show the world that they, not the loud-mouthed Irish guy who talked his way to the top, are the best in the world at what they do.

But winning the interim lightweight title will put them no closer to McGregor than they are right now, because they’ve already been leapfrogged by Diaz. For McGregor, Diaz represents the biggest payday possible. The biggest chance to continue filling his coffers.

McGregor has never once cared about proving that he’s the best in the world, at least not for the reasons everyone else cares about proving they’re the best. If that was his goal, he would’ve given Jose Aldo a rematch. He would’ve faced down the top featherweights in the UFC before moving to lightweight. He would’ve competed against Nurmagomedov and the very best at lightweight and not even considered a bout against Mayweather, regardless of the money it represented.

But none of those things happened, because what McGregor cares about is being wealthy. Which is absolutely fine, because he’s been honest about his goals and the path he’ll take to reach those goals from the start. It’s not like we’re seeing an unexpected personality change. This is who he has been from the very beginning.

Which is why nobody should be surprised that he’s returning to the Octagon not against a legitimate contender who can help him cement a legacy, but against the man who will help him earn the biggest payday possible.

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Luke Rockhold Wins but Stays in Middleweight Shadows

Last June, Luke Rockhold defended the UFC middleweight championship against Michael Bisping.
Bisping, a seasoned veteran who had never even earned a title shot, took the fight against Rockhold on late notice. Bisping was an afterthought. A placeholder …

Last June, Luke Rockhold defended the UFC middleweight championship against Michael Bisping.

Bisping, a seasoned veteran who had never even earned a title shot, took the fight against Rockhold on late notice. Bisping was an afterthought. A placeholder for Rockhold to beat while he waited for other, more deserving contenders.

Of course, mixed martial arts is a weird and unpredictable thing. Bisping beat Rockhold from pillar to post, stripping the belt from Rockhold’s clutches. It was one of those improbable upsets that mixed martial arts sometimes throws your way just to keep you from getting too comfortable.

In the 15 months since that night, Rockhold has stewed. He’s grown bitter, and who can blame him? Bisping, never a portrait of sportsmanship or class, has taunted Rockhold from afar. Perhaps Rockhold began to feel what some of us felt: that Bisping would rather retire as champion than face Rockhold again.

Bisping is still champion. He faces former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre in November at Madison Square Garden. And, truth be told, Rockhold may be no closer to the rematch he desperately wants than he was before Saturday night. But now, at least he put a scratch back in the win column.

Rockhold’s second-round TKO win over David Branch was nothing to write home about. Branch, the former World Series of Fighting two-division champion, stepped in the Octagon riding an 11-fight winning streak. His career can be summarized in two easy parts: There was the David Branch who washed out of the UFC on his first go-round, and then there’s the new David Branch who went out and found himself and became the best middleweight on Earth not fighting in the UFC.

This fight against Rockhold was a reckoning for Branch. It was a chance to prove he belonged, that his career rebound was the real deal and not just the end result of facing lesser competition.

And in the first round, Branch looked well on his way to doing just that. Rockhold looked sluggish. All of the things he used to do better than anyone, well, he just didn’t do them quite as well. And Branch caught him with a few solid punches, solid enough that it was easy (in the moment) to see a big-time upset unfolding before our eyes.

But Rockhold survived, and then came the second round, and then came the old Luke Rockhold. The one who is an absolute destroyer of souls on the ground. He scored a takedown, quickly shifted into mount, and before long there he was, on Branch’s back, punching the helpless New York native until the referee stepped in. Rockhold stood and started walking away but continued glowering at Branch on the ground.

If you thought a win over a tough opponent was enough to satiate the festering wound in Rockhold’s soul, you’re wrong.

After the fight, Rockhold took the opportunity to send a message to St-Pierre.

“You better get out of this thing while you still can. You better back out,” Rockhold. “Don’t embarrass yourself GSP. Just back out.”

It was a case of Rockhold attempting to use his moment on the microphone to will into existence the future he desperately wants. Rockhold has always been something of an entitled athlete; that’s the sort of thing that comes along with growing up with money, good looks and superb athletic traits. And it’s always better to use that microphone time to say what you want, rather than take the path of so many others and let Jon Anik know you’ll fight whoever the UFC puts in front of you.

Still, as much as Rockhold may imagine himself deserving of jumping the line, it’s laughable to imagine the UFC choosing him as an injury replacement should St-Pierre pull out of the Bisping fight. Weidman is coming off a fantastic win over a top middleweight in Kelvin Gastelum, and more importantly, Weidman is a local New York boy. The UFC does a lot of dumb things, but picking the rich California surfer over the Long Island kid at Madison Square Garden? Yeah. That won’t happen.

And besides, what was true a year ago is true today. Bisping won’t fight Rockhold. He’ll retire before he ever gives Rockhold the rematch. In fact, I’d be surprised if the St-Pierre fight isn’t Bisping’s curtain call in mixed martial arts.

So Rockhold will go on being unhappy. He’ll scowl and glower over a loss that he won’t get to revenge.

Which, come to think of it, might be a real bad thing for the rest of the UFC’s middleweight division.

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Nunes, Shevchenko Prove Nothing in UFC 215 Rematch

So what, exactly, are we supposed to do now?
Saturday night’s UFC 215 main event would help us determine the better fighter: Amanda Nunes or Valentina Shevchenko?

They had fought once already, in March 2016. The only thing we learned back th…

So what, exactly, are we supposed to do now?

Saturday night’s UFC 215 main event would help us determine the better fighter: Amanda Nunes or Valentina Shevchenko?

They had fought once already, in March 2016. The only thing we learned back then is that neither had a significant edge over the other. I guess we learned that if the fight could have somehow gone seven rounds, Shevchenko would have won. She just ran out of time, is all, much like Nunes ran out of energy.

After that, Nunes went out and beat the world and assumed control of the UFC’s Ronda Rousey Memorial Championship before putting her own bloody stamp on Rousey’s career.

We won’t get into the machinations again of what happened back in July, when the rematch was first booked. So let’s just jump straight ahead to Saturday’s contest.

To the fact, in regard to Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko, we are no wiser than we were on Saturday morning.

Most fighters will find a nemesis, provided they stick around long enough. I guess that’s what Nunes and Shevchenko are to each other, though it seems likely this rivalry won’t find a place among the great blood feuds of mixed martial arts.

It seems a lot more personal for Shevchenko. That makes sense because it was she who lost a close decision to Nunes. Again.

Saturday night’s shenanigans turned Shevchenko into a ball of fury, raging about the unfairness of it all and repeatedly telling the world Nunes had not even punched her, not even once and that if you don’t believe her, just look at how there were no scratches on her face. And Nunes? You best believe she got punched in the face because just look at her face.

To Shevchenko, the evidence was as clear as day. Alas, mixed martial arts contests are not judged on cosmetic facial damage. But in her defense, who knows how these things are decided? I had Nunes winning the fight. But it was close enough I felt the need to inform my wife just how unsurprised I would be if it went the other way.

What I didn’t tell her was how little I cared either way or how, once I shut the laptop after finishing this column, it’s likely I will never give it another thought.

And I suspect a lot of you feel the same. Because while it was close, this was the rare UFC title fight that wasn’t great or awesome or terrible or boring.

It was just…forgettable.

We saw Nunes exhibit vastly improved cardio. Finally. But what we didn’t see was a champion making a case that she is the best, which seems to be the way she views herself. Shevchenko is still a terrifying force of nature on her feet. But she’s been that way for a long time.

There’s no separation between these two. Not before the fight, and not now. If they fought 10 times, they might each win five. Or one of them might win all 10. This kind of scenario usually leads to a singular thrilling fight that then evolves into a long-term trilogy, with each fighter trying to eke out a win as the fans go wild in the arena and at home.

Nunes and Shevchenko have the same neck-and-neck skills as the greatest rivalries in the sport. This feels like something that should be awesome. Something we should look forward to. Something we tell our friends about.

So why is “please don’t make us watch this again” the only thought creeping into my head right now?

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Not Interested in UFC 215? Blame Dana White.

If there existed a Promoter’s Rulebook, somewhere among the first few rules listed would be:”Do not bury your athletes, no matter how angry they make you.*”And down at the bottom of the page, in a tiny yet readable font, you’d find:*especially if they …

If there existed a Promoter’s Rulebook, somewhere among the first few rules listed would be:

“Do not bury your athletes, no matter how angry they make you.*”

And down at the bottom of the page, in a tiny yet readable font, you’d find:

*especially if they hold a championship in your organization.

Back in July, Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko were set to do their thing at UFC 213.

Nunes was, from a promotional sense, hotter than she’d ever been. She’d won five straight in the Octagon, including two dominant victories over Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate. She was good at everything in the Octagon and a force of nature on her feet. She is openly gay, giving the UFC a brand new group of fans to market to. With a little effort, the UFC had a chance to create a new star, something it needs these days.

But then, a day before the fight, Nunes got sick and withdrew from the card.

How sick? It depends on who you talk to. Nunes said she’d been stricken with sinusitis. That seems like a pretty good reason for not going in the Octagon against someone who’s trying to take your head off.

“I have chronic sinusitis, I have fought with it before but this time it didn’t work out,” Nunes said in a statement issued to the media. “During the weight cut I was unable to breathe and felt off balance from the pressure in my sinuses. I was taken to the hospital after the weigh-ins and they only checked my blood and dehydration and only cleared me based on that.”

Of course, UFC President Dana White, relying on his years of medical training, threw Nunes under the bus and implied that Nunes could’ve fought if she wanted to…she just didn’t want to.

“It’s not like she was like ‘I’m absolutely refusing to fight’,” White said. “She said ‘I don’t feel right, I don’t feel good.’ I think that it was 90 percent mental and maybe 10 percent physical. I think a lot of fighters have had times where they don’t feel right.”

The fans who somehow still believe the words that come out of White’s mouth (despite years of alternative facts and failed promises) followed along, parroting White’s words. In the blink of an eye, Nunes was branded a coward. Someone who didn’t want to fight. Someone who was scared. Which is ridiculous, of course, as it has always been ridiculous when White has turned on one of his athletes in the past.

“I don’t know why people are thinking I am scared,” Nunes recently said on a conference call.

We know why.

My argument at the time was the logical one: Despite its dude, bro roots, mixed martial arts is a professional sport. Today’s fighters are professional athletes who must look out for themselves. The idea that the UFC will show any loyalty to those who do them a “favor” is an outdated one, a part of a time gone by. In the modern UFC, under the watchful eye of WME-IMG, there are no permanent post-career desk jobs waiting for favored athletes.

“When you’re starting to see what this life can do for you, and your family has had nothing, you realize ‘Why risk it?'” Nina Ansaroff told ESPN.com this week. “No one puts anything out there for you until you reach a certain level, so why take that risk for them? No one is going to pay our bills or take care of our family. [Without a title], you’re going from potentially $1 million per year to $60,000 per year. And you want to put that on the line when you’re feeling 50 percent?”

Which leads us to this weekend and to UFC 215, where Nunes and Shevchenko will finally fight.

Outside of the devoted hardcore fans who will watch everything the UFC broadcasts, nobody cares. With a win over Ray Borg, Demetrious Johnson is going to set a record for the most consecutive UFC title defenses.

It is a historic moment, and nobody cares.

Two of the best women’s bantamweight fighters on earth are clashing. Nobody cares.

I’m sure it is a coincidence that White has buried both Johnson and Nunes in recent months. Right?

I understand why White offloads blame when something like UFC 213 happens. Since the earliest days of the Fertitta brothers/White reign, the promotion has always placed itself above all else.

Those three initials are the most important thing; the athletes are secondary. They are cogs in a wheel, replaceable and forgotten. It was a fine strategy for many years, enabling the UFC to keep athletes in their place, to keep pay low and to place their brand above all else.

But a sea change is occurring in mixed martial arts. We are beginning to see more emphasis placed on the athlete. Only Conor McGregor can get away with it right now, but others will follow through the hole he has created.

With this sea change must come a change in the way White operates. His days of reacting badly and creating fan backlash towards UFC fighters he is angry with must come to an end.

Otherwise, he’ll continue to be nothing more than a hindrance to the growth of his company, his athletes and the sport as a whole.

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