The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 In the middle of last week, long time World Series of Fighting and UFC veteran Marlon Moraes announced that he was retiring from MMA competition. I said this not too long ago when I talked about Ben Rothwell, but I want to take the time to acknowledge the older fighters on their way out and this is an opportunity to do so. Moraes had been having a really rough go of it over the last couple of years and it had led a lot of people to suggest that retirement was near. I think after his last fight that even I hoped that he would call it a career in order to preserve his long term health. These are the type of early retirements that make me sad in a different way. A lot of times in MMA, we see older fighters who just don't have it any more and the fights themselves are really sad to watch. Someone like BJ Penn comes to mind. Marlon Moraes was not one of those fighters. What was sad about watching Marlon is that he still had a lot of the skills required to be a very high level fighter. ...

 I don't get to talk too much about Bellator on here, so I'm glad that I get to mix it in today. I've said before that I don't do too much Bellator, especially picks, because I'm not as familiar with the back end of their roster as I am with the UFC. When I talk about the UFC and I suggest future opponents for certain fighters outside of the rankings, I have a decent feel for where they are in the top 30 or even lower and what other fighters are in their same range. I wouldn't be able to do that for Bellator and instead of just making things up or having to basically copy what someone else already said, I just leave that for someone who is more familiar with the roster from top to bottom. With that said, I do watch quite a bit of Bellator, especially when they aren't overlapping with the UFC. I think Bellator needs to keep their Friday night time slot and stop trying to compete on Saturday nights, though. There's plenty of days in the week to hold events...

 Well, I had a final on Monday and procrastinated my studying until Sunday night, so this is probably coming out on Tuesday instead of Monday, but it is what it is. Saturday's card overall wasn't the best card I've ever seen, but there were some good performances and solid fights. Belal Muhammad proved me wrong once again and I really couldn't be happier about it. I've always found myself rooting for Belal and the fact that he's gotten himself so close to the title is a fun story. I honestly think I just need to reevaluate my views on him, but I'll get into that more in his section. I did also watch the Bellator card, I think I'll have something about that coming out on Thursday, so if you want my thoughts on that, it is coming. Let's just start. Belal Muhammad turned in his second performance in a row that was really impressive to me. To some degree, every winning performance in the UFC is impressive, but his last two have me asking questions about ...

 Going to be a little later with this one, but it will be out before the card starts. We're coming off of a very mediocre week for the first time in awhile. Hopefully, we can put an end to that slide today. We have a pretty large card, so it should be a fun night of fights. What the card lacks in name value, it should bring in some relatively even fights that are fun watches even if you're unfamiliar with the athletes. I'm already up against the clock, so I'll stop rambling and get into the picks. 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.  Alatengheili defeats Kevin Croom                                    Result: Alatengheili by KO (1-0)           First fight and I'm already stuck on what to do. Alatengheili has 2 wins in the ...

 It isn't normal that I don't talk about this weekends card until the Friday post, but this is one of those situations. This weekends UFC event lacks the name value outside of few fighters beyond the main event, but I still think it should be a decent card. While none of the prelims or basically any fight beyond Luque vs Muhammad will have any major impact on a division, the fights should still be relatively competitive. In my opinion, a good fight is when both competitors are at the same relative level of ability. Of course, it is a lot more fun when the opponents are ranked or are fighting in a title eliminator or something like that, but that doesn't mean we can't get good, solid, fun competition outside of the rankings. I think this card will have a decent bit of that. Honestly, the Bellator card on Friday (the day this comes out, but I'm typing on Thursday) should be just as good. AJ McKee vs Patricio Pitbull was as excited as I had ever been for a Bellator car...

 Based on the amount of views, this post format has quickly become a pretty popular one and I'm happy that is the case. If you're new around here and don't know what this is, I'll try my best to explain it. If you go back to the main page, you will see that I have some longer, detailed posts about the fallout of the biggest fights from each card. UFC 273 had three longer breakdowns. That keeps the headlines on the biggest and most important fights each week, which is fine, but there's quite a few fights that I don't get to talk about much other than the few sentences I write when I make my pick. Basically, this post is going to be a condensed version of those long "fallout" posts. I'll take a look at some of the biggest or most important wins from the rest of the card and discuss what we could or should see from them in the future. I like giving some shine to the fights that don't get talked about as much, so I'm glad these have become so p...

 For as fun as the entire card was, Khamzat Chimaev vs Gilbert Burns was very clearly the fight of the night. It was the people's main event all week and it lived up to the hype in a big way. I came into this one hoping to see Chimaev pushed in ways we had never gotten to see before so that we could actually see where his entire MMA skillset is and we got exactly that. I am so happy with how this fight played out. Also, what a performance for the both of them. It is a bit of a cliche in MMA these days, but I think it is the truth when I say that this fight probably improved the stock of both men. Obviously, this gets Chimaev multiple steps closer to a title shot, but I think this fight helped Gilbert Burns a lot too. Public perception was a bit down on him after a knockout loss to Kamaru Usman and his win over Stephen Thompson wasn't exactly the most interesting MMA fight to watch. This was much more of the version of Burns that we saw surge up the welterweight division all the...