The former Olympic wrestler is still light heavyweight champion but the division continues to struggle while Jon Jones’s exile continuesDaniel Cormier thinks he broke Anthony Johnson twice when they were matched in the spring of 2015 for the UFC light heavyweight title. Cormier took possession of the vacant belt partway into the third round, when Johnson tapped to a rear-naked choke, but he walked away from that contest feeling as if his opponent’s will had been snapped in the previous frame.When they were paired after Johnson stormed through three straight 205lb contenders since losing to the defending champion Cormier, a former Olympic wrestler, said if he made it past seven minutes with “Rumble” the fight would be his again.Johnson blew...
From Carl Froch’s controversial victory over George Groves to Matt Hughes’s implausible recovery against Frank Trigg in Dana White’s favourite ever UFC fightBoxing is a phenomenally complex to-do. Both proactive and reactive, it demands the minute, synchronised adjustment of torso and limbs, in states of excitement and exhaustion, on pane of death and embarrassment. Related: Cracks in Gennady Golovkin’s armour give hope to Álvarez and Saunders | Kevin Mitchell Related: The Joy of Six: Valentine's Day sporting massacres | Barry Glendenning Continue reading...
The potential meeting of the seasoned boxer and the mixed martial arts star under Queensberry Rules is likely to be an embarrassingly one-sided contestFor all the talk that has built up around the putative showdown between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor being about the best pound‑for‑pound boxer of the past quarter of a century taking on the brightest star in the history of mixed martial arts, it is not. It has all the hallmarks of a mismatch. This one, like nearly all the others, is about the money.Unless there is an accident or a miracle, Mayweather will bamboozle the Irish cage fighter to the point of embarrassment with skills that carried him unbeaten through 49 professional boxing matches and garnered...
Conor McGregor won’t get a fight with Floyd Mayweather unless Mayweather believes the fight will make him very, very rich. Therein lies the impasseIf there is ever a fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, it won’t be nearly as much fun as Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor talking about a fight.Who knows if the two biggest names in MMA and boxing will actually step into a ring? They talk and talk about money and talk and talk about a deal but they never sign a contract. This is how Mayweather works, stretching the conversation, turning up the rhetoric and adding zeros to the guaranteed purses for a fight that he might not even want. It took more than five...
UFC should be doing everything to get the Brazilian destroyer into the octagon if it wants its latest ‘world title’ to be anything more than a shiny beltNo matter how hard promoters attempt to convince the public otherwise, there is no such thing as a world champion in mixed martial arts.The sport is structured in such a way that it produces promotional titleholders who are often labeled world champions regardless of how provincial they are because, of course, it sells better on a poster and sounds far more prestigious. But that’s created a strange situation in which there are multiples upon multiples of “world” champions across a multitude of weight classes. Related: Ronda Rousey is 'probably done', UFC president Dana...