The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 With no card this past week, we are going to need some more creative posts to fill out most of the week. I have some pretty important personal things happening this week, so I need some ideas that I can get out a little more quickly without having to do too much research and put in a ton of time. I was thinking about just going the week without posting, but I figured you guys would rather have some shorter, simpler posts than nothing at all, so I'll be doing some refinement to my pound for pound rankings. We're going to start with the women because I think that is how I did it at the year end. I know it isn't truly the mid point of the year, but circumstances are taking most of my time away from this for the rest of the week. I'll include the movement up or down for any fighters who change spots as well. As a reminder, the rules for this was that someone had to be on the schedule during 2021 and I'll now extend that to 2022. If someone was on the schedule in any wa...

 Given that there is no card this week, we don't have our normal previews and fallout posts, so we're getting creative with the topics. This is one that was in the news cycle a few weeks ago after Charles Oliveira defeated Justin Gaethje to become the number one contender for his belt after he was stripped due to missing weight. I don't think there's a ton of people who think Oliveira has passed Khabib yet and I think there's a heavy portion of the MMA world that would say that he probably never could. I think being one of those people who say someone could never be caught is a bit silly and that isn't a leap that I take very often. While Khabib is the pretty clear GOAT at 155 lbs right now, I certainly don't think his resume is bullet proof or unmatchable by any means. I'm just going to go through both of their resume's briefly and kind of give the main advantages that Khabib has and then go through the same with Charles. From there, I am going to t...

 In this post, I want to try and have a bit of a lighter topic after such a long stretch of serious posts or previews and fallouts and that stuff. We haven't taken a moment to have some fun on this blog in awhile and I figured now was as good a time as any. I saw something about this earlier in the week, I think from the MMA On Point twitter account? I'm honestly not sure, but they had a little graphic and I immediately didn't read the rest or any of the replies because I knew I wanted to turn this into a post. All I saw was the headline or topic and then stopped because I liked the idea and wanted to explore it myself without anyone else's ideas clouding my judgment. I hadn't thought about double champ status in a minute, but it is always an interesting concept when it comes up. I'm going to list off all of the champions first and then go from there. HW - Francis Ngannou LHW - Glover Teixeira MW - Israel Adesanya WW - Kamaru Usman LW - Charles Oliveira FW - Ale...

 This is a post that I've put off for awhile, but with the break in action this weekend, we're in need of some topics and the open scoring question came up again this past weekend. If you don't know what open scoring is, let me explain. Essentially, MMA is one of the only sports that I know of (along with boxing) where the athletes don't know the score of the fight (game, match, etc) until after it is over. This means that the fighters can't make any in fight adjustments based on the score. They simply have to trust their plan and trust that the judges are scoring the fight properly. That's where this idea mostly stems from. MMA judging has been unreliable at best and it is costing fighters both money and opportunities. That brings the fighter pay issue and system into play, but discussing all of these and how interconnected they are is way too much for one post of a reasonable size. I'm going to try and keep this nailed down to only the open scoring issue. ...

 I say this every week, but I have really come to enjoy doing these posts. I like being able to talk about and give shine to everyone on the card and not just the notable names or important fights that everyone talks about. All champions and contenders have to start somewhere, so we're likely seeing some of the next generation of potential challengers before our very eyes. I thought this card probably outperformed the very low expectations that it had. I'm just going to take some time to talk about some notable performances very briefly and then try to play a bit of match maker for their next fight. The first fighter I want to mention is Sam Hughes. After an 0-3 start to her UFC career, it wasn't looking good for her, but now she's won two in a row and picked up the finish on Saturday, which is the kind of progression you want to see as a fighter gets more and more experienced. I think as she fights in the UFC more, she's starting to realize what her advantages are ...

 Overall, I think UFC Vegas 55 exceeded the expectations of most fans. While expectations were as low as they've been for a UFC event in 2022, I think this card was able to at least hold its own against the standard Fight Night card by and large. Unfortunately, the main event really didn't live up to even the middling expectations that it had. The fight was pretty slow, which wasn't that shocking, but then the judges came away with an interesting opinion on the decision. I can't say that I was especially locked in to every second of the fight trying my best not to blink, but I was watching the fight and it was certainly less than entertaining to watch. Not every fight is a barn burner though and I can appreciate that to a certain degree. I haven't rewatched the fight, but in real time, I disagreed with the decision and I didn't really even expect to hear a split let alone a Vieira win. Unfortunately, this story happens way too often in MMA and it is something th...

 After about a month or so of some pretty mediocre weeks, we're looking to turn it around. The problem is this card is just weird enough that I think it might be a tough one to get things turned around with. We're going to try our best though and try to really lock in on some of these fights. I feel like my process has been good and I've gotten the wrong side of variance a lot recently, but I've also had some really not great looking picks. This card has the potential to either be really chalky or get weird and I feel like no matter which way I go, it will be the opposite.  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 get back on track. Sam Hughes defeats Elise Reed                         Result: Hughes by KO (1-0)          This is the first fight of the night an...

 We've come to one of those UFC cards where everyone just kind of looks around and shrugs their shoulders. I think it is unfortunate that the UFC always does this when they have women in the main event. Obviously, the strength (or lack there of) of the main event has a lot to do with the generally down opinion of the card as a whole, but if the rest of the card was fun and/or exciting, it would be a great opportunity to elevate women's MMA. Instead they opt to put some of their worst main events of the year on some of the thinnest cards overall and create a few Fight Nights a year where the whole event is pretty hard to get excited for. It isn't even that I think this card is completely void of anything interesting at all, but it never really feels like the card is building to anything. Outside of the final two fights, it feels like the 9 other fights could have taken place in any order and nothing would change. Maybe its just me, but I like when the card feels like each fi...