Floyd Mayweather Jr. defeated Conor McGregor via tenth round ref stoppage in a curiosity-fueled money heist which will go down as a major event in boxing, MMA and sports culture.

The end result was no surprise. Even at 40 and clearly past his prime, Mayweather had a lifetime of boxing ring experience and skill drummed into him from childhood that overcame that his legs weren’t what they used to be.

The fight was more entertaining than most Mayweather fights, a strategic win where Mayweather laid back for the first four rounds, expecting that McGregor would fade. McGregor did exactly that, and Mayweather took over. McGregor was barely hanging on in the ninth round, and was about to be put out in the tenth before the ref stepped in and called the fight.

The match, making a joke out of the World Boxing Council, was actually sanctioned for their newly-created and likely never to be heard from again World Money Championship.

McGregor did better than most boxing experts expected. Part of it was Mayweather’s strategy of giving up the early rounds to take advantage later. He clearly won the first three rounds, and two other rounds were close, while Mayweather won five rounds, with the ninth round the only round where one fighter had the other in jeopardy. He landed more punches on Mayweather (111), even if he never hurt him, than Manny Pacquiao did in 2015 (81) and almost as many in less than ten rounds than Canelo Alvarez (117) did in 12.

Given it was McGregor’s first pro boxing match, it was impossible to knock his performance, but he had also claimed with eight ounce gloves he would score a first round knockout, and so many people bet on him that the odds ended up being ridiculously close given there was very little chance Mayweather could lose.

It was a moot point, but the judging was horrendous. Judge Dave Moretti had it 87-83, giving McGregor the first three, Mayweather the next six and a 10-8 ninth round, which was the only defendable card.

Burt Clements gave McGregor only the first round, even though Mayweather didn’t even start fighting until the fourth, having it 89-82 going into the tenth. Judge Guido Cavalleri had it 89-81, giving Mayweather every round but the first, and giving him a 10-8 ninth round.

As far as punch stats went, McGregor’s edge in the first three rounds were 9-2, 8-5 and 9-5. The fourth round saw both men land 16 punches, making it close, although Mayweather’s shots were stronger. From there, Mayweather took over and the longer it went, the more dominant he became.

Most media sources, including us, had it 86-85 going into round ten. Scores of 87-83, 87-84, 86-84 or 86-85 were all reasonable.

If there were key takes, it was that even though he was game and came to fight a strategic fight, McGregor was a non-boxer going into a boxing match with someone, who even older, was an expert mentally at the game. McGregor’s punches didn’t have great power, which is funny because he’s been a knockout artist in MMA, but the smaller gloves changes the game and power. The fight was sold on the idea that if McGregor could hit him, he could hurt him. The reality is that Mayweather’s strategy was about letting McGregor hit him early, to tire him out, feeling that he couldn’t hurt him, and that turned out to be correct.

McGregor was clearly concerned about his own stamina, and about being countered, so fought a careful fight, and never tried to throw big punches that would tire him out. He still hit the wall in the ninth round. He complained after, noting that happens in a lot of his long MMA fights but he has the ability to get a second wind, noted he was never knocked down and that the fight shouldn’t have been stopped. It is true he was just about finished early in the second Nate Diaz fight, but came back to win and he won the fifth round of that fight. But he was really tired in the ninth and being hit with solid shots, and he was about to go down in the tenth when it was called off.

Mayweather after the fight said that he felt he owed the people a good show after the Pacquiao fight, so his strategy was to win via knockout instead of decision. To do that, he had to fight a style where the goal was to let McGregor win rounds and expend energy, so he could take him out later. The plan was to let McGregor throw heavy stuff early, figuring he would tire at the 25 minute mark, since MMA fights are 25 minutes.

The strategy worked out perfectly. While MMA rounds are harder because they are five minutes, so in a ten round MMA fight, you have 30 minutes of fighting and 9 minutes of rest, while a five round MMA fight has 25 minutes of fighting, but only four minutes of rest. Still, McGregor has gotten tired in five round fights. Plus, the bigger gloves and less experience under the rules were going to tire McGregor out as well.

Mayweather made it clear this was his last fight, and it should be. While he was in tremendous visual shape at 149.5 pounds, he was not the fighter he was even two years ago and couldn’t beat the top fighters today.

Unless he changes his mind, and he shouldn’t, he’ll finish his career with a 50-0 record. Rocky Marciano retired at 49-0 and that is one of the most treasured records in boxing history, although there have been other fighters who have won 50 straight, but all ended up losing before retiring. There were boxing purists who hated that the record was broken in this fight, but the reality is that Mayweather throughout his career fought more championship-level fighters than Marciano, who had some non-fighters in his 49 wins.

He’ll have earned close to $1 billion in the ring, the most money any athlete in history is believed to have earned from sports, and this was expected to be the single biggest one day payoff in sports history.

McGregor, who weighed in at 153, and went into the ring in the 168-170 pound range, giving him roughly a 20 pound weight edge, made his big score. He could box again, but to make big money, he’d have to face one of the few big names, perhaps only somebody like a Miguel Cotto or Canelo Alvarez, to draw any kind of a big number, and there’s no more curiosity in that people have seen him box, and he wouldn’t fare well against either.

The reality is every fighting sport is different and at the top level, skills are specific to the rules of the sport. You can use skills in one sport to be a base for another sport with those same skills, but trying to do two sports at the same time is not a good way to reach the top in either. High-level freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers who tried to do MMA at the same time saw their wrestling success compromised because they are different sports. The same goes in the other direction, and the same goes with kickboxers. Concentrated boxing training competition training will only hurt McGregor’s all-around MMA game and make him less successful in the sport he’s best at.

McGregor, at 29, made it clear that even with the huge payday, he wants to still fight. He opened the door to box again or to do MMA, and in specific, noted that he wanted a trilogy fight with Nate Diaz for the UFC lightweight title. With the possible exception of Georges St-Pierre, Diaz would be the opponent he would draw the best against. But Diaz, who doesn’t care if he fights again because he’s already won based on having enough money to live comfortably, will also be the hardest UFC fighter to get to agree, and he’d have to be guaranteed huge money, since he doesn’t care about championships or notoriety a this point.

McGregor also talked about having money to where he’ll never have to worry about money again, and opening up companies, mentioning a clothing line and an Irish Whiskey line.

As far as the big questions, the money numbers, there is nothing official at press time. The announced attendance was 14,623, so ticket sales were slower than had been reported. No gate was announced. Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s manager, claimed it would break the $72 million mark set by Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. Mayweather himself claimed it was $80 million, although no gate was announced and the Nevada Athletic Commission didn’t have any official numbers at press time.

It wasn’t an issue with interest as much as pricing. The lowest price to get in for the tickets that were remaining was $2,718, and even on a secondary market where ticket brokers did not do well, you still couldn’t get in for less than $1,716.

Dana White claimed 6.5 million PPV buys, which would have to be a worldwide number to even have a shot at being accurate. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao did about 4.6 million in the North American market and its worldwide total was closer to 5.5 million.

Early indications were this fight handily beat Mayweather vs. Pacquiao in the U.K. and Ireland, as was expected, as well as in Canada, which is no surprise since MMA is much stronger than boxing in Canada. The indication we had gotten from the cable industry and others with access to numbers were that it did not beat Mayweather vs. Pacquiao’s 4.6 million North American figure.

Mayweather was guaranteed $100 million while McGregor was guaranteed $30 million. If PPV numbers are even close to what White claimed, Mayweather will end up with about $300 million, McGregor with more than $100 million and UFC with more than $50 million.

Unlike most events, where the cable company or satellite company gets 50 percent of the revenue, this fight saw 70 percent go to the promoters and fighters and 30 percent to the cable or satellite companies. The hope was also that there would be more streaming buys, in which case there was no split with the cable companies and a much higher revenue percentage to the promoters and fighters.

It was said to have easily set the record for the most-streamed iPPV in history, although that was a disaster, since both UFC and Showtime had issues due to the number of orders, particularly coming in at the same time. Showtime, which was already sued in Oregon over its stream not working, said that servers went down in California and Florida, and the start of the show was delayed by 20 minutes.

The biggest problems were with UFC.tv. NeuLion, who was handling the streaming for UFC, had said they had scaled up to triple redundancy and added support assistance. But it still crashed. Before fight time, they sent messages to those who ordered but couldn’t get it to work to try and order it through Showtime.

Both UFC and Showtime announced they would refund the money to anyone who ordered but wasn’t able to watch it.

“We always try to put on the biggest and most exciting fights,” said White in a statement to the media. “We want our fans to have the best experience when watching our events. Unfortunately, we didn’t deliver the way we wanted to on Saturday because of NeuLion’s technical issues on UFC.tv. As usual, we always take care of our fans and will fix this. We have started processing refunds immediately for anyone that could not access the fight after purchase.”

Essentially UFC threw NeuLion under the bus and it wouldn’t be surprising that if another event of this magnitude comes up that UFC will stream, that they will get a different partner.

Comcast had issues with people who ordered the show but couldn’t get the show. The problem was they were so understaffed that to get through the prompts to reach a customer service rep was a nightmare, and once you got past the prompts, it was a 90 minute wait to reach a rep. Some gave up and ordered it another way. Others waited and did get through and were able to watch all or most of the fight, but missed the prelims.

We did a story on that aspect, and the key was that a lot of people had issues, but virtually all of them found another to watch it, either Comcast customers ordering it streaming or going to a friends house, those ordering it streaming and having problems then ordering it through cable or satellite providers, or some finding local clubs. A few said they pirated it, but that percentage was low, but virtually nobody who wanted to see it didn’t figure out a way to see it.

Sports bars in many cities were sold out well in advance. In some cities, it was literally impossible to find a place to watch it at an establishment. The Golden One Center in Sacramento sold out in advance for a viewing party at $40, although they didn’t open up the entire arena.

Fathom Events broadcasted the fight in 532 movie theaters which grossed $2,620,183, which would have made it the No. 3 grossing event that day at the theater, and the two movies that beat it were in 3,377 and 3,565 screens respectively and had multiple airings.

It also set a record for most pirated PPV event in history, as there were at least 2.93 million homes or individual devices watching on pirated streams worldwide.

From a gambling standpoint, the amount of money taken in on the fight was the biggest of any sports event in history, beating the Super Bowl. More people bet on this fight, and, because Mayweather won, it was the biggest single winning event for a lot of gambling sites in their history.

While more than 90 percent of the bets were on McGregor, the biggest money bets, including two of more than $1 million, were on Mayweather.

The prelims on FOX for the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing match did about double the usual level of viewers for boxing on the network.

The two hours leading to the pay-per-view broadcast, airing 7-9 p.m. Eastern time and 4-6 p.m. Pacific time, averaged 2,438,000 viewers. FOX broadcasts of boxing, usually with much bigger name fighters, have averaged 1,427,000 viewers so far this year. It was FOX's most watched boxing show in 20 months, dating back to the Danny "Swift" Garcia vs. Robert "Ghost" Guerrero headlined show, which did 2.5 million viewers.

There were another 130,000 viewers watching the show between Fox Deportes and the Fox Sports Go streaming platform.

FOX also aired the pre-fight show, building Mayweather vs. McGregor, which did 1,463,000 viewers, far more than pre-fight shows for any UFC events have done, although they are usually on FS 1.

FS 1 coverage of the post-fight show and weigh-ins did strong numbers, but nothing that would indicate far more interest than one of the bigger UFC shows.

The post-fight show on FS 1 did 368,000 viewers, which was up from 320,000 viewers that the second McGregor vs. Nate Diaz did.

The weigh-in show on Friday did 287,000 viewers, the third most-watched weigh-in for a combat sports event ever on FS 1.

But as compared with a major UFC event, there were far more platforms to watch the weigh-ins and post-fight coverage, including ESPN, which ran the weigh-ins and extensive post-fight coverage.

HBO competed with Mayweather vs. McGregor on pay-per-view with a show that was headlined by Miguel Cotto winning a 12-round unanimous decision over Yoshihiro Kamegai of Japan. The fight from start-to-finish averaged 730,000 viewers and peaked at 805,000. The main event ended about 20 minutes before Mayweather vs. McGregor started, but the show went against the pay-per-view itself.
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There is the distinct possibility that the rivalry between Kyle Snyder of the U.S. and Abdulrashid Sadulaev of Russia may go down as one of the biggest in the history of the actual sport of wrestling.

Both prodigies, world champions as teenagers against adults, gold medalists at 20, and perhaps the pound-for-pound best wrestlers in the world met in what amateur wrestling officials were calling the match of the century on 8/26 in Paris, France.

Sadulaev, 21, nicknamed The Russian Tank, was, until this past weekend, considered the best freestyle wrestler, regardless of size, in the world. He took world championships in his age group at the ages of 15 and 16, even though he didn’t start in the sport at a competitive level until the age of 13. He was competing in the open division by the age of 17, where he took third in the Russian nationals. Competing in the biggest tournaments all over the world, he hadn’t lost a match since the age of 17, winning world championships at 18 and 19, and last year, took the gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Snyder, also 21, about seven months older than Sadulaev, a two-time NCAA champion at Ohio State, came into the tournament with his own set of impressive credentials. Competing internationally at 213 pounds, he won his first age group world championship at 17, became the youngest American ever to win an open division world championship at 19, and also took an Olympic gold medal.

Sadulaev moved up to 213 pounds this year with the expressed purpose of beating Snyder. Both men blew away the competition to set up a championship match with even more at stake.

Not only was the individual title at stake, as well as the unofficial title of the best pound-for-pound wrestler , but as the main event, with the U.S. and Russia tied for first place, the winner would also capture the team championships for their country. Russia has dominated the world freestyle championships, winning every year but one (Iran won in 2013) since 2005. In history, the U.S. has only won two freestyle world championships, in 1993 and 1995 (which Snyder noted was the year he was born), but most experts felt the country was fielding its strongest team in years, paced by Snyder, Jordan Burroughs, Thomas Gilman, James Green and J’Den Cox.

Sadulaev got first blood with a takedown to go up 2-0. The crowd was on fire watching this as Snyder got a takedown to tie the score at 3-3. In international wrestling, a key is that if the score is tied, the person who scores last is the winner. But then Sadulaev got a takedown to go up 5-3 with two minutes left. Snyder closed it to 5-4 with a push-out with 40 seconds left, and then got a takedown with 24 seconds left, and held on to win 6-5.

Given the ages of both competitors, and just how close and competitive the match was, there is a very good chance this could be a multi-year rivalry, with this being the first of many chapters.

“I lost the battle, but not the war,” said Sadulaev, translated to English. “I don’t make excuses. Congrats to Snyder. He was the better man tonight, but I’ll be back. See you soon.”

“Just happy man, I’d have been happy with that performance even if I lost, because I wrestled really hard,” said Snyder. “I’m really happy with my performance. I felt stronger than him. I think he was smaller for the weight class so that was the first thing I thought of.

“This was the match I was least nervous for,” he said. “I was so excited, so thankful for the challenge and opportunity. He was a great opponent. Hopefully we can continue to compete against each other because the match was fun for everybody.

“The only thing that would have made this better was if it was in Moscow, in front of his home crown. No. 2 would have been if it was in the United States.

“It was the greatest moment of my wrestling career, for sure,” he said putting it ahead of winning the Olympic gold medal last year.

Earlier in the day, Burroughs defeated Russia’s Khetik Tsabolov 9-6 to win his fourth world championship to go along with his 2012 gold medal. Like with Snyder, this was a come-from-behind win in the closing seconds as Tsabolov was up 6-5 with one minute left. Burroughs went up 7-6 with a takedown with 47 seconds left, and then got one more takedown seconds before time expired. After not medaling in the Olympics, where he was the gold medal favorite (he’d only lost one match in many years leading up to the Olympics, and that was his fourth match on the day of the 2014 World championships after in his first match, he sprained his MCL).

At 154 pounds, American James Green captured a silver medal, losing the gold medal match to Frank Chimizo by an 8-0 score.

At 125.5 pounds, Thomas Gilman captured a silver medal, losing to Japan’s Yuki Takahashi 6-0 in the finals.

Two other Americans picked up bronze medals. J’den Cox took bronze at 189 pounds and Nick Gwiazdowski, who is expected to sign with WWE in 2020, took a bronze medal at 275 pounds.

Hassan Yazdani of Iran, 22, who has considered pro wrestling and has been mentioned on WWE broadcasts several times as a guy Ariya Daivari was dedicating matches to, captured the gold medal at 189 pounds after winning the Olympic gold last year at 163 pounds. He and Cox were on opposite sides of the bracket and never met, as Cox lost to Boris Makoev of Slovakia, 6-3, in the semifinals, while Yazdani dominated Makoev to win via 10-0 tech fall.

The U.S. women’s team, led by Helen Maroulis, tied for second place with Belarus, behind Japan in the team standings. It was the best finish for the U.S. women since 2003, when they equaled Japan for first in points, but ended up in second based on the first tie-breaker criteria of most champions.

The U.S. had three medalists on the women’s side, with Maroulis winning gold at 128 pounds, Alli Ragan winning a silver medal at 132 and Becka Leathers winning a bronze medal at 121.

The U.S. Greco-Roman team didn’t have any medalists. Robby Smith, in the 286 pound division, has been scouted by WWE and been to the performance center and there has been talk of him after his amateur career is over.
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UFC: While this is not a direct UFC story, it very much is an indirect story. ESPN and Top Rank have reached an agreement that would include Top Rank fights on ESPN, streaming and ESPN would partner with Top Rank to promote PPV shows as well. The deal makes ESPN and ESPN Deportes in Spanish in the U.S., as well as TSN in Canada and RDS in Canada for French language broadcasts, as the home of Top Rank (Bob Arum’s promotion). Fights will also air on ESPN’s new streaming service. The contract calls for 18 live events. They will also have the rights to the Top Rank library and ESPN will air all PPV shows on a tape delay like HBO and Showtime do with the big fights. The key is that with the UFC television deal up at the end of 2018, obviously the hope was for ESPN to be involved in bidding. The keys to ESPN are not just making a financial deal, but if you are an ESPN sports property, they will push you harder on SportsCenter and when the talking heads on their various talk shows as well as SportsCenter push something as major, like Mayweather vs. McGregor, it greatly helps in terms of buys and making the events bigger. This deal doesn’t necessarily mean ESPN won’t be interested in UFC, which is considered the biggest sports deal up next year, but it does change the dynamics and it could be a sign they went with a much cheaper fight sports deal with Top Rank, given their own economic issues with the huge NFL & NBA contracts for years to come that guarantee bigger money each year while subscribers are falling at a fast rate, meaning shortfalls in revenue. I’ve read some insiders who still believe that UFC will get a substantial increase in television rights fees next year, even with the ratings being way down this year. While WWE, not being sports, doesn’t directly fall in line, I’d still say that a big increase for UFC would indicate WWE will do well when it’s deal with USA is up in September 2019. Television rights fees are the key money driver for WWE and most sports, and second only to PPV for UFC. PPV is a harder and less consistent business these days with people picking and choosing and mostly only ordering big marquee shows. So for UFC, WWE and most everyone, it’s the life blood. In every era there are people who believed the bubble will burst and it would be devastating to the sports franchises, but that never happened. But in a process with media changing so much, the UFC & WWE deals are a lot less secure if television stations have falling revenues, and obviously the deal with Top Rank includes streaming, while UFC and WWE deals would have to be negotiated when it comes to streaming given their own streaming services, or with WWE, the existing Hulu deal

Chael Sonnen on the MMA Hour said that he’s been led to believe that a third fight between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz is being looked at for the year-end show on 12/30. Chael says a lot of things, but McGregor was openly talking about defending his title and a trilogy fight with Diaz in specific after the loss, and everything we’d heard was that if McGregor was to return and Diaz was willing, that would be the next lightweight title fight even though they are doing an interim lightweight title fight with Tony Ferguson vs. Kevin Lee on 10/7 in Las Vegas

Ronda Rousey, 30, and boyfriend Travis Browne, 35, were married in Hawaii on 8/26. It’s Rousey’s first marriage and Browne’s third. The wedding date may have been planned for at least eight weeks even though the news of the wedding didn’t get out until the day before, when Dana White spoke about it on the Rich Eisen show, saying he was called and asked if he could come to the wedding and said he absolutely would, and then was told it was on 8/26, at which point he said there was no way that he could. The two were engaged in April but never announced wedding plans publicly, which was probably for the best. We were told that in early July, Shayna Baszler canceled an indie date on 8/26 and told the AWS promotion in Southern California that Rousey was getting married that day but the news never got out until the day before the wedding, when White talked about it, while some of Rousey’s friends (including Roderick Strong) posted photos of themselves in an airplane en route to Hawaii

Derrick Lewis has been spending this week trying to help people in the Houston area and has shown videos of him helping people out of flood conditions. He said he’s helped at least 100 people to safety and was looking at heading to Beaumont with some buddies to do the same there

Jose Aldo, who has four fights left on his UFC contract, is looking to fight out his contract and then go into pro boxing. His coach, Andre Pederneiras, said Aldo was looking at next fighting Cub Swanson in the fall

Germaine de Randamie pulled out of her 9/2 fight in Rotterdam, Holland with Mario Reneau (who, in a trivia note, will be the first-ever woman past the age of 40 to compete in a UFC event), due to an injury and was replaced by the debuting Talita de Oliveira

The 9/2 show is the first UFC show in several weeks, a Fight Pass card that starts at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time Saturday. Currently scheduled is Abdul-Kerim Edilov (16-4) vs. Bojan Mahajlovic (10-5), Francimar Barroso (19-5) vs. Aleksander Rakic (8-1), Desmond Green (20-5) vs. Rustam Khabilov (21-3), Mads Burnell (8-1) vs. Michel Prazeres (22-2), Mike Santiago (21-9, replacing the injured Nick Hein) vs. Zabit Magomdshapirov (12-1), Felipe Silva (8-0) vs. Mairbek Taisumov (25-5), Darren Till (14-0-1) vs. Bojan Velickovic (15-4-1), Bryan Barbarena (13-4) vs. Leon Edwards (13-3), Siyar Bahadurzada (21-5-1) vs. Rob Wilkinson (11-0), Talita de Oliveira (5-1) vs. Marion Reneau (7-3) and Stefan Struve (28-8) vs. Alexander Volkov (28-6). De Oliveira is a late replacement for Germaine de Randamie, who was really the big local star on the show being from Holland and her featherweight title win got a lot of national media publicity, but she pulled out due to an injury in the last few days

Daniel Cormier was on the MMA Hour talking about the Jon Jones situation. He said that he knew it would be tough, but his goal was to get another match with Jones. Had there not been a drug test failure, that would be extremely difficult since UFC has avoided people who have lost twice to the champion no matter how well they do, most notably Joseph Benavidez not getting another shot at Demetrious Johnson as the clear No. 1 contender, and really that’s why Holly Holm got her title shot at Ronda Rousey even though Miesha Tate had won a match to earn a title shot. But if Jones is suspended, even for two years, by that time Cormier will be 40, and if it’s longer, he’ll be even older. The other problem is that everything has to be on hold. The UFC can’t strip Jones of the light heavyweight title until the Jones gets his due process, and this could take months. They probably could book Cormier with either Alexander Gustafsson and Volkan Oezdemir for an interim light heavyweight title, but no matter who wins, that title from a marquee standpoint isn’t going to mean much. We’ve already seen with Cormier, that with Jones out, he never drew like a usual light heavyweight champion and that’s with a guy who is more visible than most champions and who does work hard at promotion. No matter what, because Jones won the first time, people weren’t buying Cormier as champion in big numbers, even with very legit contenders like Anthony Johnson and Gustafsson. If Jones is suspended for three of four years, the reality is that Cormier is not likely to get that third fight, or that “fair” fight (provided the Jones B sample comes back the same as the A sample) and it really leaves his legacy in a weird state. But it’s going to take years for that division to likely draw again if Jones is on the sidelines

Joe Rogan and Brendan Schaub on Rogan’s podcast talked about the Jones case. Rogan said that he was told Turinabol isn’t delectable in blood, but is in urine. Urine is usually the tests that catch most steroids. Schaub claimed he hard from people in the UFC that USADA had a new test that people weren’t aware of. Schaub said Turinabol is a drug that is used in powerlifting and because it gets in and out of the system so quickly, you can use it right up through competition. Before his fight with Ovince Saint-Preux, Jones was hanging with powerlifters and doing heavy powerlifiting, against the wishes of Greg Jackson, who saw Jones’ showing against Saint-Preux as the evidence the powerlifting was negative to his fighting ability. I don’t know how accurate that time frame is since I was told it can stay in the system and be detected as long as six weeks. But if detection time really is a matter of hours in some cases, that at least could explain someone risking using it, but for Jones, it’s so stupid because why take the risk with so much on the line. Schaub said the drug would have immediate effects on aggression and power. There was an argument from Jones’ side thrown out that since Jones had passed tests a few weeks earlier, with the idea it takes weeks for steroids to take effect, it would make no sense to start using that late before the fight. But even passing tests prior tests being used a defense really doesn’t prove anything. Schaub said the drug is nearly impossible to obtain legally and Jones would have had to get it off the black market. There are a lot of possibilities and the problem is it will probably take a few months before this is all sorted out and the entire light heavyweight division will have to be on hold until it is

UFC and 7-Eleven reached a sponsorship deal where 7-Eleven Big Gulp cups will feature UFC, whether it be gloves, an Octagon and top UFC stars including Tyron Woodley, Cody Garbrandt, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes and Yair Rodriguez and 7-Eleven 20 ounce travel mugs will feature the UFC Logo, and there will be contests and prizes and peel-to-win games with various prizes

Francis Ngannou is officially off the 9/9 PPV show in Edmonton. He was to face Junior Dos Santos, but Dos Santos was provisionally suspended due to failing a test for a diuretic. They weren’t able to get a new opponent for Ngannou in time for the show

UFC announced a mostly full card for its 10/17 PPV show in Las Vegas, which is the next PPV after Edmonton. Tony Ferguson vs. Kevin Lee for the interim lightweight title is the main event, which sounds like a great fight, but it sounds like a 150,000 to 200,000 buy show. The other bouts announced are Fabricio Werdum vs. Derrick Lewis at heavyweight, Paige VanZant vs. Jessica Eye at 125 pounds, Walt Harris vs. Mark Godbeer, Beneil Dariush vs. Evan Dunham, Will Brooks vs. Nik Lentz, Tom Duquesnoy vs. Cody Stamann, Pearl Gonzalez vs. Poliana Botelho, Lando Vannata vs,. Bobby Green, John Moraga vs. Magomed Bibulatov, Thales Leites vs. Brad Tavares and Matt Schnell vs. Marco Beltran

VanZant vs. Eye at 125 means VanZant is moving up a division and Eye is moving down. I don’t know that VanZant moving up is a good idea as she’s not that big. It could be that UFC wants desperately to get her in a title match, and she’s far away from that spot at 115, plus with Joanna as champion, it’s not like she’d have a prayer of winning. With the talent at 125 almost all unsigned fighters who weren’t in most cases good enough for the roster, that would be a far easier division for upward mobility, at least at first. Still, I’d favor Eye in this fight

The 9/9 show is probably going to be less than 150,000 and could fall well under that given it’ll be only two weeks after almost every regular PPV buyer had just made the $100 PPV purchase. So UFC isn’t doing anything on PPV until 11/4 with Michael Bisping vs. Georges St-Pierre’s middleweight title bout from Madison Square Garden. GSP was the biggest draw in UFC when he retired four years ago, but it’s a different era now

A match of two long-time favorites at lightweight with Joe Lauzon vs. Clay Guida was announced for the 11/11 show in Norfolk. Tatiana Suarez returns on that show to face Vivianne Pereira. Suarez, who won the early 2016 season of the Ultimate Fighter, has a great back story. She placed third in both the 2008 and 2010 world championships in freestyle wrestling at 121 pounds, during the era of Saori Yoshida. She was training for the 2012 games when she discovered she had thyroid cancer. She beat cancer, and then started training in Jiu Jitsu to get back into shape. She ended up in MMA, won her first three fights and the TUF tourney and looked to be a future major star, and appeared to be someone who could be one of the top strawweights. She came off like she had star power to go along with her back story that would have gotten her a lot of pub, but she hasn’t fought in 14 months

Thiago Santos vs. Michael Materia has been added to the 10/21 show in Gdansk, Poland.
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BELLATOR: Bellator ran a show on 8/25 in Verona, NY that had one of the deepest pre-shows as far as names went in recent memory. Joey Davis, who was an incredible college wrestler (133-0 at Division II Notre Dame College with four national titles) went to 2-0 with a 1:35 win over Justin Roswell with elbows at 1:35. Chris Honeycutt, a two-time All-American wrestler at Edinboro, who was one of the company’s top prospects, but his hype fizzled to a degree, beat former UFC fighter Kevin Casey (the son-in-law of Muhammad Ali) at 2:06 of the second round to move to 10-1, 1 no contest. Colleen Schneider, who has done pro wrestling and was an Invicta title challenger, lost via injury stoppage at the end of the first round to Kate Jackson. Georgi Karakhanyan beat Daniel Pineda in a battle of fighters who have been around for a while at 4:05 of the second round. Talita Nogueira, considered a top women’s prospect, beat Amanda Bell via choke at 3:44. In the TV fights, A.J. McKee (9-0) dominated Blair Tugman (10-7) on scores of 30-27, 30-26 and 30-26. This was McKee’s ninth straight win in Bellator, tying a record set by Ben Askren, who immediately noted that while McKee’s wins were against nobodies, that he had already won the Bellator welterweight title by his fourth fight with the promotion. Bruna Ellen (4-1) beat Veta Arteaga (3-2) via split decision in a women’s fight at 29-28, 28-29 and 29-28. Fernando Gonzalez (27-14) upset local favorite Brennan Ward (14-6) via guillotine at 1:02 of the third round. Ward had won the first two rounds, but when he shot in for a takedown, he got caught. In the main event, Andrey Koreshkov, (20-2), looking to get back in the welterweight title picture as a former champion, stopped Chidi Njokuani (17-5) with a takedown and about two dozen punches elbows on the ground at 4:08

The next show isn’t until 9/23 in San Jose, with Benson Henderson vs. Patricky Pitbull Freire and Roy Nelson’s debut against Javy Ayala.

Bellator on 8/25, a show that got little attention given all the MMA interest was on Mayweather vs. McGregor, did 481,000 viewers for a main event of Andrey Koreshkov beating Chidi Njokuani, which peaked at 655,000 viewers. Including DVR viewership, the average was 565,000 viewers (a 17 percent increase which is unusually high for a live sports show) and peak was 825,000 viewers, so the main event itself was up 27 percent with DVR viewership, which is because of the word of mouth that it was an exciting short fight. As far as live went, it was among the lowest rated prime time Bellator shows to date.