Get caught up with everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours with today’s edition of the Daily MMA review with notes from The Ultimate Fighter 19, UFC, the World Series of Fighting and much more.
TUF 19 Episode 3 Recap
The episode started with Cathal Pendred and Hector Urbina discussing their fight took place last episode, in which Pendred won to give Team Penn the first win of the season.
After that, the direction of the show went towards the fight on this episode which pitted Team Penn’s Dan Spohn against Team Edgar’s Todd Monaghan in a light heavyweight tilt.
For this episode, Edgar brought in Renzo Gracie to train with his team and also serve as an additional cornerman for Monaghan’s fight. There wasn’t much too Gracie’s scenes in the show other than fighters on Team Edgar embracing the opportunity to meet with Gracie and train their jiu-jitsu with him.
Todd Monaghan talked about how he is a Christian preacher and evangelist, and he actually held a service for the fighters in the house. Afterwards, Team Penn doubted Monaghan’s intentions, talking about how he just wanted TV time.
In the Team Penn training session, BJ Penn talked about Dan Spohn as a contestant that is flying under the radar who could possibly make waves on the show.
Spohn gave a little bit of a backstory. Prior to the house, he juggled his MMA career with his full-time job of being a construction worker. Spohn would wake up at 4:30 in the morning for a run, spend the bulk of his day working and then get in a training session before going home to spend some time with his family and getting some much-needed sleep.
Team Penn brought some mats into the house, so that they could put some extra training time under the belt and get an upper-hand on their rival.
In the last training session before the fight, Todd Monaghan works on his striking with Frankie Edgar, which Monaghan described as his strength. Edgar agrees with that sentiment, citing that Monaghan has a relentless pace, but Edgar does admit that Monaghan has a few issues on the feet that can be corrected.
Up next was the fight between Dan Spohn and Todd Monaghan. Spohn used a measured approach takedowns and grappling to control Monaghan for two rounds from a positional standpoint, earning a unanimous decision. Monaghan had no answer for Spohn and spent the vast majority of the fight off of his back.
The fight left Dana White underwhelmed, who in the post-fight package critisized Spohn for not punching or looking to finish when he was in advantageous positions, and he complained about Monaghan not listening to his corner whatsoever.
The episode concluded with BJ Penn make the fight selection for the next episode’s middleweight bout, and he chose Tim Williams on his team to take on Team Edgar’s Dhiego Lima.
The News
1. Yesterday, several fights were announced for the UFC Fight Night Card in Dublin on June 4th, and today, the main event for that card was announced. The long-talked-about featherweight fight between Conor McGregor (14-2) and Cole Miller (21-8) is officially on to headline that event.
McGregor, who will be fighting in his hometown, will look to extend his ten fight winning streak and improve his UFC record to 3-0, while
2. World Series of Fighting was in the news today for both positive and negative reasons.
On the positive side of things, it was announced that three title fights will take place on the June 21 World Series of Fighting 10 card. Two of those championships bouts were announced yesterday, with a middleweight title fight between Jesse Taylor (27-9) and Dave Branch (13-3) being set up as well as a featherweight championship tilt between Georgi Karakhanyan (21-3-1) and Rick Glenn (14-2-1).
Now, on to the negative. The Rousimar Palhares (16-6)/Jon Fitch (25-6-1, 1 NC) welterweight championship bout at WSOF 11 was scrapped after Palhares pulled out of the fight. The withdrawal left WSOF executive vice president Ali Abdel-Aziz irate. Abdel-Aziz voiced his frustrations to MMAFighting.com, saying, “If a fighter is not going to respect this promotion, he is going to be shelved for a long time. I will not release anyone to another promotion. Fighters must honor their contracts.”
MMAFighting.com talked to Palhares’ manager Alex Davis, who would shed some light on the situation. According to Davis and a statement that was later released by the WSOF welterweight champ, Palhares is taking some time away to help his mother, who is currently facing some serious health issues.
Abdel-Aziz would go on to tweet later Wednesday, “Just to be clear I wasn’t frustrated w Palhares not taking fights. I was just disappointed he couldn’t fight and I wish his mother well.”
3. Jason High (18-4) will be dropping down to the lightweight for his next UFC fight, but he’ll be taking a major step up in competition. Earlier yesterday, the announced that High is scheduled to take on 8th-ranked lightweight Rafael Dos Anjos (20-7) at UFC Fight Night 42 on June 7th in Albuquerque.
High is coming off two straight UFC victories over Anthony Lapsley and James Head, and he has won nine times in his last ten outings. Dos Anjos will be looking to rebound after he had a five fight winning streak snapped by Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on FOX 11.
4. Another UFC fight that was announced yesterday was a women’s bantamweight scrap between Germaine da Randamie (4-3) and Milana Dudieva (10-3) that will take place at UFC 174 on June 14th.
5. According to a report by The Orlando Sentinel, ZUFFA LLC has given $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association in January that coincided with their lobbying efforts in Florida to alter the boxing and MMA regulations in the state.
To learn more about what exactly ZUFFA LLC is lobbying for, read Jason Floyd’s article on these developments.
6. Fans of the old one-night PRIDE, UFC or K-1 tournaments will be delighted to find out that the idea is returning in June. BattleGrounds MMA CEO Kenny Monday informed MMAFighting.com that BattleGrounds will host an eight-man, one night welterweight tournament on June 27. Five of the eight fighters in the field have already been confirmed, and those five are Cody McKenzie (15-4), Dennis Hallman (53-14-2, 1 NC), Luigi Fioravanti (24-11), Josh Bryant (14-4) and Chris Honeycutt (4-0).
Stuff I Enjoyed
1. Two Bloody Elbow pieces that I really enjoyed were continuations of a pair of fantastic series’. John S. Nash released his latest look at “The Secret History of Strikeforce,” and Trent Reismith put out the third part of his time spent with Jim Miller in the lead-up to UFC 172.
2. Mike Chiappetta of Fox Sports wrote a strong column on what Vitor needs to do before he fights again.
3. FightOpinion’s Zach Arnold wrote about the business side of things of the Velasquez/Werdum fight in Mexico City.