The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 This Saturday will be the first Pay Per View card in the month of July for the UFC. On paper, it is the best card of the year and I'm really looking forward to it. We'll see two title fights, with the first being Max Holloway vs Alexander Volkanovski, in the third installment of their trilogy. In my opinion, this will also be the best fight on the card and is the one I'm looking forward to the most. This trilogy started back in 2019 when Volkanovski first defeated Holloway to become the champion. That was a unanimous decision that I thought pretty clearly should have went in Volkanovski's favor. Given how long Max had been champion before then and his overall popularity, he was given the immediate rematch, which came on the original Fight Island card at UFC 251. Volkanovski would pick up the win again, this time by split decision. That decision was hotly contested by a lot of people in the media and even Dana White, who said in the immediate aftermath of the event that

 We've had a string of MMA retirements over the last few weeks and given the way the MMA news cycle works, it isn't always easy to give those fighters the recognition that they deserve. While it is a bit removed from the actual announcement, we're finally catching up on the retirement of UFC featherweight contender Zabit Magomedsharipov. This is truly one of the most interesting retirement stories that we've seen in MMA at least in a long time. All retirements are sad to an extent as we come to know these athletes over the years and not being able to see them compete anymore and knowing they will have to find something to fill the void left in their lives is something that everyone has to deal with to some degree. The Zabit retirement feels a bit more sad since we never got to see him fully realize his potential as he has walked away much younger and much earlier in his career than we typically see in this sport. MMA is a sport that we see far more athletes retire sever

 This past Saturday was a pretty good UFC Fight Night. It wasn't the most amazing card I've ever seen, but it was a really nice event in the lead up to what is probably the best card, on paper, of the year to this point. I didn't walk away from this card being blown away from many fights as a whole outside of the main event, which I talked about yesterday, but there were enough individual performances to warrant one of these posts. I have quite a few fighters that I want to talk about, so I'm not going to waste time. In these posts, we essentially do a condensed version of the "Fallout" format. I'll say a little about the fighter's performance and then suggest possible future opponents for them. From the start, congratulations to Vanessa Demopoulos, Shayilian Nuerdanbieke, and Josh Parisian on big wins, but I won't be going into detail about them in this post as I just don't have enough to say about their fight.  The first fighter that I do wan

 This will be coming out late as I didn't have Sunday to get ahead like I normally do this week, but it is coming out nonetheless. This past Saturday ended up being a pretty fun event and provided a good mix of styles from start to finish. There weren't a ton of amazing fights that were really back and forth, but there were some impressive individual performances. The main event though was about as close of a fight as we've seen in a minute. Almost every round was really close and could have gone to either Mateusz Gamrot or Arman Tsarukyan. That ended with a unanimous 48-47 in Gamrot's favor with the scorecards online sort of being all over the place. I saw anywhere from 48-47 Gamrot to 49-46 Tsarukyan. I personally had 48-47 Gamrot after watching in real time, but I definitely wasn't convinced that was the undoubtedly correct score. It was an incredible fight and I'm so glad the UFC went in this direction. Their decision making for main events has been disappoi

 After some down weeks, we're looking to bounce back and put together a solid night of picks from start to finish. If I'm being honest, this card doesn't feel like one that is going to be easy to do well on, but I'm still trying to put forth a solid night. While the card may end up being a tough one, it should be a good one to watch. It isn't the best card I've ever seen, but there are plenty of interesting fights that I'm looking forward to. With the UFC, any card that is headlined by two fighters who are actually trending in the right direction is good enough for me. The main events have been a lot better recently, but I know we have another Thiago Santos main event coming up, which I haven't understood the last three times we've gotten it. Anyways, the last couple of fights on this one are really interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing how they play out. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font , and  the real results will

 The UFC is back to cap off a busy week in MMA. At the time this is posted, PFL and Bellator will be tonight with the UFC tomorrow. It is nice to finally have that full slate of MMA action back all at once. All of the cards have their highlights as PFL will feature the return of Anthony Pettis as well as some other names that non-PFL watchers may recognize. The Bellator card will feature some interesting names as well, including former UFC middleweight and current Bellator champion Gegard Mousasi. The UFC finishes the weekend off with a really interesting main event that I'm really looking forward to. Mateusz Gamrot and Arman Tsarukyan don't necessarily carry the name value to the more casual portion of the audience, but they are both as talented as it gets. I really wish that the UFC would make more main events like this one instead of the constant Thiago Santos or Alexander Volkov main events. While the names may not carry the same value, the fight itself will actually be goo

 Following her loss to Zhang Weili at UFC 275, Joanna Jedrzejczyk placed her gloves down in the center of the cage and announced that she would be stepping away from MMA competition. She had a lot to say in the cage about how she felt like she let people down and disappointed so many people, which we can chalk up to the emotions of the situation. Given how she was finished, Joanna probably felt like she didn't live up to the expectations she set for herself coming in, but also maybe felt like the fight didn't live up to the first because she got knocked out instead of going to decision. Now that all of that has worn off, I would think that Joanna doesn't believe that she actually let anyone down. I know that none of the fans feel that way. She is one of the greatest fighters in the history of women's MMA and just UFC history in general. She is one of the greatest champions that the UFC has ever seen. I think the influx of newer fans since the pandemic may not realize th

 If you're a returning reader, then you know that I was on vacation all of last week. I made picks for UFC 275 and UFC Austin, but I didn't do any reaction to the PPV or anything in the build up to this past weekend. Normally I would have done a separate fallout post for each of the title fights as well as Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs Zhang Weili, but because we are so far removed, I just don't have the space for individual posts unless I wanted to drag them out over the next couple of weeks. That would have me posting reactions to fights that are multiple weeks old and start running into the UFC 276 build up and I don't think that is the best way to go. I guess if anything worked out, it is that besides those three main fights, there really wasn't a whole lot to say about the card. There were some nice performances from Jack Della Maddalena, Jake Matthews, and others, but not really enough to make a full "roundup" post like I normally would. This version of the