I made my feelings pretty clear about what I though of the latest UFC event in Las Vegas in that I was quite disappointed with the performance of almost everyone on the main card. The matches were either boring dancing and hugging contests or the fight was stacked so heavily against one fighter that it was always going to end in a KO/ finish of some sort. UFC regularly "Stacks the deck" on cards so that the fans can get some of that bloodlust satisfied in case the other fights are terrible. This time they mostly were terrible with one shining exception and that was the Justin Gaethje vs. Rafael Fiziev fight, which should have been a co-main-event but wasn't, and ended up being the fight of the night.
These two guys traded barbs for a full 15 minutes with both of these cardio juggernauts looking absolutely exhausted by the ending bell. Above you can see the exact moment where Fiziev went from winning the first round, to not really being able to do a lot of offense from that point forward. This uppercut really hurt Fiziev and he would later admit that he felt "like I was in Disneyland" for the rest of the fight.
I truly admire when someone can get hit that hard and continue on all the way to the final bell and even land a few hard shots of his own.
By the end there was really no doubt who won the fight, but the two of them were quite respectful of one another and you can see that there was a lot of admiration for Fiziev on the part of the fans as well as Justin.
A loss is still frustrating though and even though Fiziev has made no excuses about his loss he also said that cutting weight this time was "too easy" and that he actually struggled to get back UP to weight the few days before the fight. Because of this he is seriously contemplating a move to featherweight because he believes that the additional weight cut would be easy for him. While this isn't an excuse he did mention that Justin was just a lot stronger than him and this can possibly be because there is a certain weight class where a fighter can excel, and there is a strong possibility that flyweight might be a more natural choice for Fiziev. The fact that flyweight also kind of seems "easier" might also be a good thing for Fiziev, since after this loss he is unlikely to get a top-tier fight at lightweight in the near future.
This might be the most stacked division in the entire UFC so while he likely doesn't want to admit it, he stands a much greater chance of making some noise in another division where the likes of Aljamain Sterling are still in the top-10 despite pathetic performances as of late.
I think it would be a wise move both professionally and financially for Fiziev.
In other news, UFC has been talking about how they are going to unify boxing by starting a new boxing league bankrolled in part by a Saudi Prince with seemingly unlimited amount of money to throw at it. Tentatively named "TKO Boxing" - a name I hope they reconsider because it sounds like an off-brand video game from the 80's - is meant to launch in 2026 and will do so right in the face of the already existing WBC, IBF, WBA, as well as other promotions that make having a definitive world champion a difficult thing to determine.
I don't know how to feel about this because there are a lot of things that Dana and co have done incorrectly in the world of MMA such as favoring crowd favorites over the fighters that genuinely deserve fights. I would hate to see boxing turn into a WWE style of "whoever has the best microphone skills gets good fights."
There is nothing to say that they would absorb the other boxing promotions although they certainly would have the money and clout to do so.
What do you think?