The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 I don't typically talk about Dana White's Contender Series on here and now I'm talking about it two days in a row. We've gotten some legitimately interesting prospects over the last couple of weeks with Raul Rosas Jr. and now the second appearance of the season for Bo Nickal. Contender Series has lost a bit of it's luster in recent seasons with so many fighters being given contracts just to be able to fill out the bottom half of Fight Night cards, but I really don't mind it too much. It does take away slightly when you see a fighter given a contract and you're already planning to fade them against the first veteran fighter they face, but it is what it is. When we get prospects who seemingly have a championship level ceiling, it is exciting and that is what we have with Rosas and Nickal. Much like I did yesterday with Rosas, I just want to talk about what I thought of Nickal's performance and where I can see him going in the future. To start, I think it

 I've been really struggling with content the last few weeks. Between having a lot going on in my personal and professional life and a general lack of motivation, my posting schedule has gotten very inconsistent. Pair that up with a some strange booking recently and I feel like topics have been lacking outside of my main formulaic posts, but this one actually peaked my interest. Last week on Dana White's Contender Series, we saw 17 year old prospect Raul Rosas Jr earn a UFC contract. He was the talking point of the early part of the MMA week and rightfully so in my opinion. There were a lot of opinions flying around about what his future may hold and exactly what caliber of fighter that he is, so I wanted to throw in my own two cents. As for the performance that we saw against Mando Gutierrez last Tuesday, I thought Rosas looked very impressive. I don't want to make everything about his age because now that he's in the UFC, "for his age" doesn't really mat

 UFC Vegas 60 turned out to be a pretty fun event with a lot of fights that were competitive and entertaining. It all culminated with a pretty important fight in this sort of bantamweight grand prix that the UFC has set up. This title eliminator fight saw Cory Sandhagen fend off the young up and comer Song Yadong after the doctor stopped the fight in between the 4th and 5th rounds due to a cut in the eyebrow of Song. The fight was pretty competitive for the most part, but I thought Sandhagen was consistently just getting the better of Song. The judges were seeing it a bit differently as two of the three had it 38-38 going into the final round even though most people had it 39-37 in favor of Sandhagen at that point. The doctor finally had seen the cut get bad enough and close enough to the eye to put a stop to the fight though and Sandhagen moves on to the next round of the tournament so to speak. This was a pretty interesting fight to watch and I feel like I have a fair amount to say a

 UFC Vegas 60 should be a pretty fun card and it brings a lot of interesting matchups. It may not bring forth the really well known names that casual fans recognize, but I think we should be in for a pretty solid afternoon of action. A few hours before I am beginning to type this out, we lost the Aspen Ladd vs Sara McMann fight. Ladd missed weight again and has had another fight removed from a card and I'm really not sure how the UFC justifies booking her at bantamweight anymore. I can't believe they did it again to be honest. If Ladd isn't just released, she will likely be forced to move to featherweight. I'm not sure why she's so committed to fighting at bantamweight in the first place as she could probably earn a featherweight title shot with only a couple of wins. Anyways, a pretty solid card of action from top to bottom will be capped off by a really big fight in the men's bantamweight division between Song Yadong and Cory Sandhagen. Just to be clear,  my p

UFC Vegas 60 is shaping up to be one of the best Apex Fight Night's of the year, at least on paper. There isn't really a clear second best fight on the card for me, but there are no fewer than 5 fights that could conceivably end up being that after the fact. It's all capped off with another leg in this run of important fights at men's bantamweight with Cory Sandhagen defending his number 4 spot against one of the top prospects in the entire sport in number 10, Song Yadong. This will be, by far, the biggest step up in competition of Song's career and a win here would have him right in the mix for a title shot. Sandhagen is trying to get back on track after a pair of tough losses and get himself back into the title picture. This should be a pretty solid night of competition and will likely be capped off by a tremendous display of talent and skill by two of the best that 135 lbs has to offer.  Song Yadong comes into this fight on a nice three fight winning streak and h

 UFC 279 ended up working out as a pretty solid night after the card got shuffled around. If you didn't read my write up for the main event yesterday, I'm not so into the idea of giving the UFC all of this credit for making a better card when they were the one's responsible for making the initial, lesser card in the first place. What I do give them credit for is having the ability to get everyone on the same page and actually get the contracts agreed to for the updated card, but not for the matchups they chose because everyone knows that should've been the initial layout the whole time. The card as a whole was just ok. It probably didn't really ever feel like a PPV, but it was a pretty standard card. As a PPV, it will be on the weaker ones of the year, but overall, it was just another event. It ended up being special because the main event felt like it should. It should have always been a celebration of Nate's run in the UFC and that is what we got. Tony Ferguso

 UFC 279 was a very strange event that had so many things happen that some of them feel like they were a year ago. Having the press conference cancelled on Thursday doesn't even feel noteworthy anymore. By now, you know the whole story with Khamzat Chimaev missing weight badly and causing the entire event to be rearranged at the last second. Ultimately, the UFC got everyone on the same page and ended up finding matchups for everyone involved that were probably more interesting than the initial set up. I saw a bunch of people praising the UFC and saying how "the UFC does it again" and I think that is a pretty stupid take to be honest. I'm not sure why the UFC really needs to get credit for making the card better, when they were responsible for making the card bad in the first place. The only reason that Tony vs Li and Holland vs D-Rod were on the card in the first place is because it was so bad that no one was buying it and no one was buying tickets to attend in person