MMA

Nov 18, 2022 Khamzat Chimaev wants to fight the UFC’s newly crowned middleweight champion, Alex Pereira. UFC president Dana White has said he would like Chimaev to face welterweight contender Colby Covington. Why not both? Chimaev (12-0) told ESPN this week that he has asked UFC for a middleweight title fight against Pereira at UFC

12:40 AM ET Add yet another championship to the remarkable Nurmagomedov team and family. The undefeated Usman Nurmagomedov, cousin of all-time MMA great Khabib Nurmagomedov, beat Patricky “Pitbull” Freire via unanimous decision (50-45, 50-44, 50-44) to win the Bellator lightweight title Friday night in the co-main event of Bellator 288 in Chicago. Usman is only

12:06 PM ET Fedor Emelianenko, one of the most iconic mixed martial artists of all time, will make the final walk of his career in 2023. Emelianenko, 46, will challenge Bellator MMA heavyweight champion Ryan Bader for the title at Bellator 290 on Feb. 4. The event will take place inside the Kia Forum in

9:15 AM ET The MMA calendar is at its home stretch for the year, with just four UFC events remaining in 2022, along with marquee fight cards in Bellator, ONE Championship and PFL. It would be easy to overlook these next seven weeks, considering we’re fresh off one of the best pay-per-view events of the

3:56 PM ET The Nevada State Athletic Commission is planning disciplinary action against MMA fighter Darrick Minner for failing to disclose an injury ahead of a Nov. 6 UFC bout that was flagged for suspicious betting. Jeff Mullen, executive director of the NSAC, told ESPN on Thursday that Minner will be on the agenda at

11:12 AM ET Corey Anderson got an unexpected text message last month. The sender was his friend and fellow Bellator MMA fighter Anthony “Rumble” Johnson. Anderson and Johnson had not spoken for a few months, but Rumble was known for checking in on his buddies when they were getting close to a fight. This particular

11:11 AM ET Popular heavyweight Derrick Lewis will be looking to get his career back on track when he faces well-rounded Serghei Spivac in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday in Las Vegas. The fights at UFC Apex are on ESPN+, with the 4 p.m. ET main card preceded by prelims at

7:00 PM ET Former UFC champion Israel Adesanya was arrested Wednesday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York for possession of “metal knuckles,” a spokesperson for the Port Authority Police Department confirmed with ESPN. The time of the arrest was 1:57 p.m., per police. According to Adesanya’s manager, Tim Simpson, the UFC star

1:54 PM ET The Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) set a new precedent in its monthly meeting Wednesday. The commission suspended UFC heavyweight fighter Ilir Latifi for three months for not disclosing an illness to commission doctors before his fight Oct. 1 in Las Vegas. Latifi beat Aleksei Oleinik via unanimous decision on the UFC

9:19 AM ET NEW YORK — A well-known MMA coach was sitting up against a locker room wall earlier this year with his fighter and other coaches as the fighter warmed up in preparation for his UFC bout later that evening. There were other fighters and teams in the room as well, a common occurrence

Nov 13, 2022 Just hours after a superfight was booked for the UFC 284 main event, another title fight has been added. Yair Rodriguez will fight Josh Emmett for the interim UFC featherweight title in the co-main event of the Feb. 11 card in Perth, Australia, the UFC announced Saturday night. The UFC is making

Nov 13, 2022 NEW YORK — Zhang Weili became China’s first UFC champion in 2019, when she took the strawweight title from Jessica Andrade. On Saturday, she also became China’s second UFC champion. Zhang (23-3) reclaimed her 115-pound championship by submitting Carla Esparza (19-7) in the second round of their strawweight title fight, which co-headlined

1:36 AM ET Alex Pereira defeated Israel Adesanya by fifth-round TKO in the main event of UFC 281 to become the new middleweight champion Saturday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Adesanya hurt Pereira at the end of Round 1 and then dominated the ground game in the third before Pereira took over in

1:44 AM ET What can we take away from a thrilling slate of title fights and marquee matchups at UFC 281? Jeff Wagenheim, Marc Raimondi and Brett Okamoto offer their thoughts from a highlight-packed event in New York. NEW YORK — Why are we surprised? Alex Pereira had shown us it could be done long

1:00 AM ET NEW YORK — Alex Pereira had Israel Adesanya‘s number in kickboxing. He has it in MMA too. Pereira, the only man to ever knock out Adesanya, stopped him again via TKO at 2 minutes, 1 second of the fifth and final round Saturday night in the main event of UFC 281 at

5:00 PM ET UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski will officially move up in weight to challenge lightweight champion Islam Makhachev for a second title at UFC 284 on Feb. 11 in a fight that could determine the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. UFC officials announced the lightweight title fight Saturday. UFC 284 will

9:30 AM ET Eddie Maisonet III Few athletes are as kind and polite as Georges St-Pierre. St-Pierre, a UFC Hall of Famer and two-division champion at welterweight and middleweight, is regarded as an icon in MMA. Few were surprised with the news that the bona fide bilingual superstar from Montreal was crossing over into the

7:59 AM ET ISRAEL ADESANYA SAT DOWN for an interview with Sporting News Australia two years ago, ahead of his UFC middleweight title defense against Yoel Romero at UFC 248. In that video, published March 3, 2020, Adesanya, wearing a red windbreaker with the collar up and sporting a mid-high-fade haircut, was asked about his