Chris Weidman Plans To Retire As UFC Middleweight Champion
Chris Weidman (Photo: Chris Unger/Zuffa)
Chris Weidman is expecting both a reunion and a farewell that is centered around the middleweight championship belt being wrapped around his waist again.
It has been over five years since Chris Weidman has called himself the undisputed UFC middleweight champion. Prior to losing the title, he was the undefeated Spider killer, riding high and waving Ol’ Glory along his routing of division rivals. But after dropping the title to Luke Rockholdat UFC 194, things have not been the same for Weidman. He has now lost five of his last seven bouts and even took a sabbatical from the division to try his hand at light heavyweight, only to be knocked right back down with what was his second consecutive knockout loss.
Justin Gaethje Vows To Get Revenge Against Dustin Poirier
Image Credit: Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
Justin Gaethje has no intentions of leaving the UFC without getting retribution for his loss to Dustin Poirier three years ago.
Justin Gaethje has had a stellar UFC run thus far. Since jumping over from the World Series of Fighting in 2017, he has truly lived up to his nickname of turning in one highlight after another, racking up a performance bonus in every single fight up until his loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 254. The loss to Nurmagomedov surely burns a competitor of Gaethje’s degree, but there is another opponent whom he is adamant about facing again: victor of last Saturday’s UFC 257 main event Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier.
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Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
2020 was a wild year for MMA, that feels like it lasted a lifetime. With all the action that took place over the year, it’s hard to remember what took place. This series looks to help out with that, providing an overview on what happened in each weight class, and a look at what we can expect to come in 2021.
Year in Review
Because MMA is such a relatively new sport, various aspects of it are constantly evolving, specifically with regard to weight classes. For the sake of simplicity, this series has used the eight core men’s weight classes (flyweight-heavyweight) and the three core women’s weight classes (strawweight-bantamweight, when the UFC actually puts together some featherweight rankings, then we’ll talk about adding it as its own piece) as the benchmark for discussion. However, there are obviously a number of other weight classes with varying levels of participation from organizations ac
MMA Fighting
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Photo by Harry How/Getty Images
2020 was a wild year for MMA, that feels like it lasted a lifetime. With all the action that took place over the year, it’s hard to remember what took place. This series looks to help out with that, providing an overview on what happened in each weight class, and a look at what we can expect to come in 2021.
Year in Review
The Good
There’s a good case to be made that strawweight is the marquee division in women’s MMA, and early on in 2020, that certainly looked to be the case. In March, UFC champion Weili Zhang and former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk put on what can only be described as the single greatest fight in women’s history and maybe the greatest fight ever, period. For 25 minutes, the two women went hammer and tongs with one another, actually