7:09 PM ET Conor McGregor went into last year with the desire to fight at least three times before the calendar turned to 2021. Now, the former UFC double champion has even more ambitious goals: seven fights in the next 18 months, he said Thursday on Stephen A’s World. “The truth is the fight game
MMA
1:42 PM ET One of the greatest MMA fighters ever is currently hospitalized in Russia after testing positive for COVID-19. Fedor Emelianenko, the former PRIDE FC heavyweight champion and long considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, revealed the news Thursday morning. Sources close to Emelianenko confirmed he is still in a Russian hospital.
6:50 AM ET THE ONLY TIME Dustin Poirier wanted to fight an opponent outside of the cage was the week of UFC 178. Poirier remembers standing behind a curtain at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas in September 2014, waiting to get on the scale. He recalls seeing a few scuffles in the
9:10 AM ET A few big bets have already shown up on Conor McGregor and his odds are on the move ahead of Saturday’s UFC 257 main event that’s expected to draw significant betting interest at sportsbooks. McGregor is a consensus -315 favorite over Dustin Poirier and attracting the bulk of the action, including a
Jan 18, 2021 UFC welterweight Neil Magny was not the fighter of the year in 2020, OK? Let’s make that clear right now. There were only two possible answers for fighter of the year in 2020, and they were UFC men’s flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo (who went 3-0-1) and middleweight Kevin Holland (who went 5-0).
6:30 AM ET Conor McGregor laid on the mat of the UFC Octagon looking toward the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. It was March 5, 2016, and McGregor’s chest was heaving with deep breath after deep breath. The mixed martial arts superstar had just suffered his first UFC loss, a second-round submission defeat
12:54 PM ET A woman has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against UFC superstar Conor McGregor for alleged personal injury, her lawyer confirmed Tuesday with ESPN. Dave Coleman, the attorney for the woman, said the suit, over events that allegedly took place in 2018, was filed Monday in the High Court in Dublin, Ireland. In addition,
10:32 PM ET Paul Varelans, a well-known name from the UFC’s early days, died Saturday after a battle with COVID-19, his live-in girlfriend, Kim Watson, confirmed to ESPN on Monday. He was 51 years old. Varelans was admitted in December to Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta, Georgia, with coronavirus and was subsequently put into
10:33 AM ET The UFC featherweight title will be defended on March 27, as the promotion has booked champion Alexander Volkanovski vs. Brian Ortega for UFC 260, sources told ESPN. The hope is for the 145-pound title fight to serve as the co-main event for a card headlined by Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou 2
6:55 AM ET Jeff Wagenheim MGM GRAND GARDEN Arena was packed with great fighters that night. It was Sept. 27, 2014, and the headline bout of UFC 178 had a championship at stake. The Las Vegas spotlight was also shining on the return of a long-gone former champ. There were even three future titleholders sprinkled
8:37 AM ET The last time I spoke to Conor McGregor in person was on Jan. 18, 2020. It was moments after his electrifying 40-second TKO of Donald Cerrone in Las Vegas. We were in his locker room inside the T-Mobile Arena. He was happy, but not overly so. Excited. Somewhat emotional. Most of all,
6:29 PM ET With 90 seconds left in his fight Saturday, Max Holloway turned away from his opponent, Calvin Kattar, and told the broadcast team cageside that he is the best boxer in the UFC. On ABC, the network that has been a home for boxing since the 1940s, Holloway more than proved his point
3:43 PM ET Undefeated UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov left the door open for a return to the Octagon. Promotion president Dana White said that if the two lightweight fights next week — Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier and Dan Hooker vs. Michael Chandler — are spectacular, Nurmagomedov would consider coming back to fight one
8:21 PM ET The UFC’s 2021 debut on ABC was big news for everything that happened inside the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday, and everything that didn’t. Max Holloway put on one of the most punishing, one-sided displays of boxing in UFC history, landing a record 445 significant strikes in
7:24 PM ET Maybe Allen Iverson was right after all. Maybe practice is overrated. Or, in the case of MMA, maybe sparring is overrated. Max Holloway told me Wednesday that for the second straight fight, he didn’t spar leading up to it. While other fighters have done this, it’s not common in the sport. Most
11:10 AM ET The former featherweight king is looking for a path back to the crown. Max Holloway will face Calvin Kattar in a pivotal featherweight bout in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It is the first UFC show of the year, and the main
8:00 AM ET One of the endearing — or perhaps maddening — facts about MMA is there is no set path to a UFC championship. Some paths are very traditional, basically following a straight line up the rankings. Others are unpredictable and at the mercy of a billion factors outside of a fighter’s control. When
3:31 PM ET Ryan Garcia believes he’ll be done with boxing early. He plans to retire at the age of 26. But the red-hot prospect is not saying he’ll give up all combat sport at that time. The popular Garcia said on The Rich Eisen Show on Thursday that he will consider moving over to