Miguel Class

We have an exciting new addition to the welterweight addition, but Roberto Soldic's debut didn't go as smoothy as many expected. Khaos Williams dropped the Croatian KSW double champ twice in the first round. Undeterred, Soldic outpaced and outboxed Williams in the latter rounds and I broke down how

The flyweights delivered yet again! Joshua Van continues to be everything we hoped he could be and more while Pantoja, at 19 years into his career, is an absolute dog. I made a concerted effort to make this video shorter! I know, probably not the fight to do that on, but I know most of you (like me)

It was about as weird of a fight as we could've expected and that's in large part due to Ian Garry being a particularly effective neutralizer at welterweight. Despite limiting the champs offense down to almost nothing, Garry still wasn't able to put enough of a stamp on the fight with his own offens

Flyweight always delivers. There's so much parity in this division and it makes for scrappy, tightly contested fights between contenders, prospects, and veterans. Royval came prepared with the perfect game plan and despite a dicey moment in the second, executed it perfectly. I know, I know. This was

It was supposed to be a routine title defense. Instead, we got a massive upset and a career-best performance from Justin Gaethje, who looked better prepared and fought more intelligently and consistently than we had ever seen before. If you listened to our roundtable discussion you'll recall that we

24 year old versus 26 year old. We're finally getting quality young fighters at the championship level again and it resulted in a spectacular display of skill, will, and violence. Joshua Van wielded a smart gameplan to nullify Taira's best offensive positions on the ground and punish him every minut

We got a Bellator title fight on a UFC undercard and it was one of the more interesting fights from a technical perspective at UFC 327. While a Pitbull KO seemed like a real possibility prefight, what we got was a standout performance by Aaron Pico that thankfully ushers him into the Top 15 for some

An expectedly dominant performance and one that I think helps solidify Charles Oliveira as an all-time great. It wasn't the brawl many expected, but I'm not going to complain about a strategically and tactically perfect fight.

It was a pointless rematch on paper and it played out that way in actuality too, but Lopes did try to make some adjustments (even if they were just the classic MMA gimmicks). Still, any fight with Volkanovksi in it is worth digging into because we have to enjoy him while we have him.

A brutal, gritty, and foul-filled war that also happened to have some notable strategic details and a few in-fight adjustments worth discussing. Overall this left almost everyone feeling like neither of these guys have much to offer Topuria in a future fight, but since the interim title should all b

After getting 50-45d less than three years ago, Petr Yan completely flipped the script and surprised everyone by dominating Merab Dvalishvili to regain his title. A commitment to his jab, stalwart takedown defense, and a renewed confidence all played pivotal roles in this all-time great performance.

Merab continues to all-time great run through the bantamweight elite by clearly besting one of the few contenders remaining. I was impressed with Sandhagen's resilience and ability to take a championship round against the Georgian with endless cardio, but ultimately he never found a way to seriously

You probably didn't expect me to actually spend the time breaking this one down, but I figured it would be helpful to condense the fight down into a video that quickly covers some of the lessons we can learn from this middleweight title fight that nobody will be rewatching in full anytime soon. Even

This was an incredible fight. Violent, high-paced, with both fighters nearly finishing the other. I break down the key dynamics and what made this fight playout so differently than their second fight.

It was a very short and very violent fight, but we got enough interesting exchanges that I thought it still was worthy of a proper breakdown. Topuria is on the greatest three-fight win streak in MMA history and is undoubtedly the best puncher the sport has ever seen. Charles turned out to be a forgi

I said in the picks article for The MMA Draw that I thought Merab was the fighter who had more room for improvement in the rematch, and that proved to be true. By not overly respecting O'Malley's counters and instead just getting after him, Merab was able to snowball his own offensive game sooner wh

Ankalaev had a clever approach that effectively kept a lid on Pereira's best offense, but his inability to build on that to really put his stamp on the fight left me feeling uninspired by the performance.

The first fight was an excellent, back and forth technical battle, but this one only lasted just over one round. Why? Superbon is one of the best kickers in all combat sports, so Tawanchai came in with a strategy to defend and counter his dangerous kicks. I didn't include captions here so let me kno

DDP makes a million mistakes, but if his opponent doesn’t make him pay for them, does it matter? In this fight, DDP made the footwork mistake of bringing his feet together far more times than Adesanya did, but he was never getting attacked when he was doing that. DDP is always doing something, which

Even though the method of victory turned out to be exactly what many had expected, the path to get there was much more circuitous and much more exciting than we could have hoped for.

Why mixing it up isn't always necessary. Steve Erceg wanted to show his well-rounded skillset, and it probably cost him the belt.

My most anticipating fight of the year and it delivered just over three rounds of highly technical action. I went over it with a fine-tooth comb to understand as much as a could about the resistance Holloway offered to the champion and how he overcame it.

The unforgettable ending and everything leading up to it.