The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 Alright, it's another Saturday, which means we have another UFC card ready to go. This is the final card in what has felt like a long month between pay per view cards. Luckily, next week is UFC 274 and we'll get Charles Oliveira vs Justin Gaethje and Rose Namajunas vs Carla Esparza. Until then, we have to get through this card and of the three events since UFC 273, I think this is probably the most competitive card from beginning to end. The betting lines suggest as much. Most of these fights are very evenly lined and that tells us that most of these fights could actually go either way and are going to be interesting to see which ways it goes. Last week was a little better than the week before, but this one actually has fights that provide intrigue all throughout and not just at moments. It's hard not to look past this and just want to get on with UFC 274, but I think this should provide for a nice afternoon. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font , and  ...

 It's that time of the week again and this card should be a little better than last week's in my estimation. Hopefully there's no more nonsense with eye pokes, illegal knees, DQ's, and technical decisions that sort of suck the air out of the event like has happened during the last two weeks. This main event feels a little bit bigger as well. Rob Font comes into this fight ranked 5th and Vera is 8th in the bantamweight division. I'm looking forward to this fight because I think the style matchup should deliver not only a competitive fight, but one that is exciting to watch. Belal vs Luque a couple of weeks ago wasn't the most exciting from an entertainment standpoint and last week's didn't last very long, so there wasn't much to really get into before it was already over. This could potentially be Marlon "Chito" Vera's route into the top 5 towards a potential title shot and serves as a chance for Rob Font to bounce back after his first l...

 I didn't really get to talk about the double Bellator events last Friday and Saturday, so I figured I would mention them now, even if it is a little late. I think the first thing I want to talk about is the fact that there were two cards to begin with. Bellator cards are known for being notoriously thin to begin with, but then to try to scrap together enough fights for two separate cards was an interesting decision. The Saturday card had 13 total fights including the rare postliminary card and the Friday card only had 8 fights with only a few of them being even remotely interesting. I know that Bellator is the UFC's main competition and they have the second best roster in MMA, but the UFC isn't in a position to put on 21 fights in a weekend, let alone Bellator. I'm really not sure why the Friday card needed to happen. They should have just put the Carmouche/Velasquez fight and Danny Sabatello on the Saturday event and taken off some of the random prelim fights and been...

 The second biggest talking point coming out of Saturday's boxing action centered around what Tyson Fury is going to do next. He's said that he is retiring from serious boxing competition, but has left the door open to doing other types of fights and events. "Leaving the door open" is a generous way to put things. He's basically confirmed that he is planning on doing other types of special fights or major events, but it is unclear on what exactly those plans entail. The first one that seems to be on the docket is some sort of mixed or hybrid rules fight with current UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. Some of you may have read the title of this post and thought I was implying that no one is interested. That really isn't the case and I'm genuinely asking whether people want to see this fight or not. I don't have many close friends who are also into combat sports, so my reach is limited beyond just my own thoughts. My current stance before diving i...

 Look, this isn't a boxing blog and I find it highly unlikely that it will ever be anything close. I don't really even consider myself much of a boxing fan. I would say I'm on the upper end of a casual and that is really best case scenario. With that said, I do like to at least keep my eye on the boxing world and tune in to the big fights when I can. Tyson Fury most certainly qualifies as one of those guys and now that he is retiring from serious boxing competition, I wanted to take a moment to recognize his greatness like I've started doing for some others. We'll get into what his future may hold tomorrow, but this is going to be strictly limited to Tyson Fury as a world champion boxer. I'm not informed or qualified enough to speak on the entire history of the sport and rank everyone across generations, but I think I am safe in saying that Tyson Fury is most certainly on the list of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. I'll go as far as to say, from...

 The main event of Saturday's UFC Vegas 52 card didn't last particularly long, but it was kind of fun while it lasted. I mentioned in my update to my picks that after the way the card started I struggled to get emotionally invested, but looking back on it now, it really wasn't as bad as I felt in the moment. The main event was setting itself up to potentially push one of the women towards a title shot and with her milestone submission, Jessica Andrade did just that. First round standing arm triangle wasn't on my MMA bingo card for the weekend, but it really was a solid way to cap it off. I did catch the Bellator main card after the fact, but I just couldn't get invested in that either for some reason, except for Raufeon Stots, that guy is must see tv. Let's get into this fight a bit. Because this fight didn't last very long, I don't have as much to say or breakdown as normal, but I think there are still some takeaways. When it comes to Andrade, she was m...

 After starting off the year really well, we've started to regress back towards the middle of the pack the last two weeks. We're looking for a bounce back week and I think this might be the week for it. There's a few fights where the result seems to be pretty clear, but this is still MMA so I don't want to get too confident. This admittedly isn't the best card ever, but at the same time, I can't help but look forward to it. Clay Guida and Jessica Andrade are almost guaranteed to put on interesting fights every time they're out there, so I don't think this card can be a complete dud. There's some other interesting fighters that I'm looking forward to seeing including Alexandr Romanov and Charles Jourdain. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font , and  the real results will be listed next to it in italics  after the fight is official. Let's go. Dean Barry defeats Mike Jackson                    ...

 This Saturday's UFC card may not be the most interesting card of the year, but I am looking forward to it nonetheless. Call me a UFC apologist if you must, but any weekend with fights is a good weekend in my book. The main event that has so many underwhelmed is the rare women's main event and it will be in the strawweight division. Strawweight is probably the strongest women's weight class in the UFC right now and Saturday's main event serves as a title eliminator fight of sorts. Lemos comes into the fight ranked 10 and that honestly seems a bit low, but I'm not someone who really parses the rankings to a huge degree. Andrade is the more well known of the two and she is making her return to strawweight after making a brief run at flyweight. She's currently ranked 1 at 125 lbs, but I imagine that she would slot somewhere between 3 and 5 if she were placed back into the strawweight rankings. The winner of this fight is one step closer to a title shot and probably...