The Silver Fern

@MiketheSnow Agree on all points I still haven't seen the prelims, Fightpass for whatever reason only has the early prelims twice, like the vettori fight finishes and then the early prelims start again, super weird. Might have to sail the high seas for a download.

Have to say this sport is about to get huge with this paramount deal. For USA subscribers the cost to watch everything just dropped by like 90%, sadly Oz will still have PPV with Kayo.

I wonder if you can get a USA account from Oz? Definitely heard of that with Netflix a while back

Love this sport. The drama, the sportsmanship, the unpredictability. Some absolute banger events coming up.

Jainlin Turner's return is a weird one, his retirement interview with Ariel Helwani was quite moving a few months back. The dude couldn't deal with hurting guys. Seeing Dan Hooker in hospital triggered something and prevented him from finishing Moicano when he dropped him hard before eventually losing to a submission. Admittedly I haven't seen his followup interview on his return but surely if you don't have that killer instinct surely you're in the wrong business.

Who have we all got for 323?

Santos
ABdul-Malik
Aslan
Barboza
Vettori
Ziam
Silva
Duncan
Torres
Blachowicz
Talbott
Pantoja
Dvalishvili

@Duluth Actually don't mind where he is in the rankings now just the way he got there, if he'd moved up after the others dropped fights it would be more palatable. Arman not being involved in the interim title does seem like bs but Paddy has some good points on that which is hard to disagree with.

“On his way out of the cage, he punched a fan. Got banned.

*“UFC probably had to pay a huge f—ing fee for the fella not to sue them. He then got his title shot and ‘oh I’ve got a bad back’ he f—ing got beat by back pain when really he probably just couldn’t make weight.

“Sits out for f—ing 11 months, got offered a fight against Gamrot and says no. If I got offered a fight against someone who has beaten me, I’d be taking that fight immediately. Then fights Dan Hooker, headbutts him at the weigh in, nearly ruined another main event.

“You can understand why he’s not in that position and as much as I like Dan Hooker, he’s sound – he’s s—. He can’t grapple to save his life, he can’t grapple if his mam’s life depended on it. If I had that guillotine on Arman, he’s going unconscious. If Dan Hooker is nearly guillotining you, you’re s— at jits.”*

@Duluth said in UFC / MMA:

@Rembrandt said in UFC / MMA:

I know Pimblett is 'officially' #5 but they've been pushing him up the rankings from #8 without fighting.

I don't have a problem with his ranking. He looked very good in April. He's moved because people ahead of him deserved to drop places after recent losses (Gamrot, Dariush etc)

Did he move up before or after those fights? I know he jumped Hooker before hookers fight which suggested he was getting the title shot before the announcement.

Weird matchups alright. Would love to know what is going on behind the scenes. No guarantee Lopes will win..so a loss then volks retirement surely wont see Lopes fight for the title a 3rd time. Cant imagine other contenders refusing a title shot either, doesnt make sense.

Also mental having interim lightweight fight between #4 and #8 ranked fighters (I know Pimblett is 'officially' #5 but they've been pushing him up the rankings from #8 without fighting.

Classic

Bit of a shame with the result, he was talking abit about using 'offensive grappling' as opposed to the defensive grappling he used against Gamrot..just not a good idea with someone at Arman's level. Good to see Arman giving him his flowers for fighting, was a real life-line to Arman's title chances.
https://x.com/RedCorner_MMA/status/1992365161064329322

Would be so awesome if he can get the upset. 3 fight win streak ...over 3 years...just a cool down-to-earth dude, breath of freshair compared to some of these guys who are trying to be someone they aren't and come across cringey as all hell

@Duluth Kinda weird how he or the UFC didn't announce it before hand. Everyone suddenly just saw the flyweight rankings shift massively despite no fights. All sorts of rumours were flying.

Glad he is still about but yeah very tough spot for title aspirations, will be interesting where he moves to in rankings on return, plenty of fighters go for over a year without fights anyway and remain in rankings. Hell you get fighters moving up the rankings regularly without even fighting (Pimblett #8 to #5) for example

Probably my favourite kiwi athlete at the moment

Well now that the appetiser is out of the way its time for the real main event of the year

https://www.ufc.com/event/ufc-fight-night-november-22-2025

Hooker's path to UFC gold is clear...assuming Dana doesn't go back on his word. Super important welterweight fight too

What an awesome event. Clearly high on hopium for the main events on my picks. 8/14...So much of this event was decided on size. Ridrigues dwarved Kopylov, Morales dwarved Brady, Valentina/Weili..and even Islam looked bigger than JDM.

How good was the Ewing/Wellmaker match? When they said it was a late notice call-up (48 hours) I'd assumed they just paid the local janitor $10K to get knocked out my the the hype machine Wellmaker.

Nikal looking quality, RDR loss has aged well, guy has a lot of potential still.
How good was the non-main events on the main card?! Some absolute monsters coming through. Masterclass by the Valentina and Makhachev..kinda sucks for the welterweight division. Like we have so make absolutely awesomely skilled highly entertaining athletes coming through..but really do any have even half a chance against islam? Also can't see Tuporia coming up..well at least I hope not, dude is way too small.

Maybe Morales might be the best of the lot, guy is an absolute giant with a solid grappling background that I'd previously been unaware of..still give Islam an 80% of a win though

@MiketheSnow Oh we're going deep with our picks aye,

Alright:

Camilo
Susurkaev
Kline
Mariscal
Daukaus

Huuuuge card this weekend!

Naturally the Mrs has organised some meetup with her family to coincide with the maincard..quietly cheering on my daughters developing cough which might see me babysitting at home - fingers crossed.

My picks:

Wellmaker
Blanchfield
Kopylov
Nickal
Saint Denis
Prates
Brady
Weili
JDM

(A few coinflips there and maybe some bias for the main-event)

Cannot wait, hoping like hell I can watch it live.

I haven't watched the Chael/Smith footage in context but have listened to Chael on both Good guy/Bad guy and Ariel's show and he was fully defending Aspinall claiming the context of the earlier comments were in regards to how part of their training was to fight with one eye to try and replicate this potential situation. Could be just back tracking now due to the reaction of course, immediately I thought we was just doing his 'I'm the badguy' routine. Haven't heard anything from Gane but that would be a shocker, it is interesting that there really isn't a downside to rake guys eyes in the ring. You might (but likely won't) get a point taken off and your opponent is more often than not to severely injured to have a chance at beating you and in most situations will resume fighting for ego or whatever. I do think immediate point loss for eye pokes is the way to do this, maybe 2 and its a forfeit, something like that.

@MiketheSnow Is it real though? Posters on social media are incentivised to make retarded 'hot takes' and that appears more prevalent. Decent folk seem to be in agreement that Tom did the right thing. A bit of disagreement on what to do about this in the future though. Hope they do act on it, first main event canned because of an eye poke?

Tom still can't see out of one eye and the other is about 50% visibility as per latest update from his Dad.

Pretty scary, a lot of talk about whether anything can and will change. Looks like Cyril had 4 almost contacts with Tom's eye before the final poke along with one warning from the ref before the final double poke.

Surely there has to be some sort of change here. Zero downside for raking fighters eyes up till now.

3-3-1...

Disappointing taste at the end but some awesome fights.

Walkers' 4 heel-hooks in a row? How on earth is that possible? Definitely keeping an eye on him
Glad of Volkov's win even though it didn't look like he won. Big guys just lean on an opponent for 15 mins and expect to win only harm the sport overall so great to see that scoring emphasis change.

Some great decisive officiating in regards to fouls completely different from the last couple of events. Glad to see this improving.

This one actually had me feeling a little ill at the sound. Commentators got pretty quiet there too. Amazing that folk get up from this.