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At UFC 257, Ottman Azaitar was scheduled to face Matt Frevola in a bout that was supposed to move the highly-touted prospect up the ladder towards ranked opposition. However, the bout never ended up taking place because before the official weigh-ins for the event, Azaitar was removed from the card for violating COVID-19 health and safety protocols, a situation that went on to become one of the great mysteries in MMA.
According to UFC President Dana White, Azaitar and his team were caught removing the wrist-bands that indicated they were properly vetted and allowed in “The Bubble” in Abu Dhabi and gave them to somebody outside of it. That person then entered the bubble with a bag of unknown contents, “shimmied across four balconies, went in his room dropped the bag off, changed his clothes, and then left.” As a result, Azaitar was released from the UFC and the legend of Azaitar�
Stephen A. Smith is in hot water after expressing his disinterest in seeing women compete in mixed martial arts and boxing.
Smith recently appeared on the “Black on the Air” podcast, where he expressed his objection to women fighting men in combat sports, and later, his disinterest in seeing women fight at all.
“I think that there’s an awful lot of women that are incredibly qualified to do the jobs that they’re doing. Where I jump off the bandwagon is when they try to engage physically,” Smith said (h/t MMA Junkie). “For example, I don’t ever want to see a woman boxing a man. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see a woman in the UFC fighting a man even though there are some women out there that’ll kick a dude’s butt. We get all that. When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all. I just don’t like it. I wouldn’t promote legislating laws to prohibit them from doing so, but I don’t want to see women pun
Photo via UFC 220 weigh-ins
UFC president Dana White says the UFC is targeting April for the rematch between UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou.
Dana says Stipe vs. Ngannou will probably happen in April #AskDana
Dana White says Stipe vs. Ngannou will probably happen in April #AskDana (h/t Amy Kaplan).
Miocic and Ngannou first met back at UFC 220 in January 2018. At the time, Ngannou looked to be unstoppable coming off of an insane KO win over Alistair Overeem at UFC 218 and White granted him a title shot a month later to take on the champion. But Miocic pulled off the upset win as he was able to evade Ngannou’s power shots early in the fight only to use his grappling advantage to take the fight on the floor and wrestle Ngannou for a unanimous decision win.