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The MMA Report Podcast: May 10, 2017

The MMA Report Staff

The UFC is entering the women’s flyweight (125 pounds) business as the promotion revealed this week that the next season of The Ultimate Fighter will crown the inaugural UFC women’s flyweight champion and Jason Floyd gives his take on what this means for MMA.

Other main topics on this week’s edition of the podcast include the piece written by Ben Fowlkes of MMA Junkie about regional MMA, Kelvin Gastelum’s win over Vitor Belfort being overturned to a no-contest, and Daniel Cormier’s comments on the Edge and Christian podcast about Jon Jones.

On the interview portion of the podcast, Jason chats with CES MMA featherweight champion Matt Bessette (56:27) about his title defense on Friday against Rey Trujillo. Up next is Titan FC flyweight champion Jose Torres (1:09:18), who is moving up to bantamweight to challenge Titan FC champion Farkhad Sharipov in the main event of next week’s Titan FC 44. After Torres interview, Jason has another Titan FC 44 interview as he is joined by DeMarques Jackson (1:22:52) to preview his fight next week against Paulo Thiago.

After chatting with Jackson, Jason turns his attention to next week’s Shamrock FC 289 event as he is joined by Bobby Voelker (1:33:16) to preview his welterweight title fight against Zak Bucia in the main event of the fight card. And the final two interviews of the podcast will be with fighters competing this weekend as Karl Reed (1:45:08) comes on to preview his fight against Charles Gamble at Stellar Fights 34 on Saturday and Julien LeBlanc (1:58:04) previews his fight against Mike Kent at Prestige FC 8.

To wrap up this week’s episode of The MMA Report Podcast, Jason talks about how excited he’s for Saturday’s UFC 211 and what you can expect on the preview podcast on Friday.

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Previous Bellator 179 Media Conference Call with Scott Coker, Rory MacDonald, and Paul Daley
Next Ratings Report: 3rd episode of The Ultimate Fighter 25 draws 497k viewers in +3 DVR viewership

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4 Responses

  1. The way Scott Coker has been putting his stamp on Bellator, I don’t think the UFC announcement of starting a Women’s Flyweight division is going to stop the piece meal growth of the way Scott Coker is building up the Bellator Women’s Flyweight division. Scott Coker’s way seems to be find and develop prospects by putting them in the Bellator cage in SHOWCASE fights to build each woman before having them fight each other. Building their experience level, building their familiarity with the Bellator audience, resulting in a more polished fighter. The UFC seems to want to buy the finished product and not build them up in front of the UFC audience, resulting in throwing them all in against each other with no one really building any momentum. I think Invicta is really going to be affected by the UFC announcement of starting a Women’s Flyweight division. Mackenzie Dern, according to Ariel Helwani, is already under the UFC stiffened pay without actually being under a UFC contract. I don’t know how that works, but if that is what is helping her dreams come true, then more power to her.

    1. As I stated on the podcast, the biggest winners of UFC getting into the women’s flyweight business is current flyweights signed by Bellator. Prior to this news, they did not have leverage in contract negotiations. Now, they have leverage since they can get at least 2 offers. The only way to find out what you are worth is to have multiple companies bidding for your services.

      1. Competition in like businesses is always good for the worker and the consumer. But I was referring to the type of women Flyweight fighters Bellator is going after is different from the type of women Flyweight fighters that the UFC is targeting, and that is a good thing. Bellator, under Scott Coker seems to be building their Women’s Flyweight division from inexperienced, unpolished MMA fighters, and based on the way the UFC is with their fighters, the UFC is going to be targeting experienced, and much more polished women Flyweight fighters.

  2. From the news I saw yesterday of Michael Venom Page pulling out of the Bellator London fight card, I can somewhat understand why Bellator hasn’t pushed Michael Venom Page very fast because he can’t be trusted. He has pulled out of Bellator 82, Bellator 90, Bellator 102, Bellator 109, and Bellator 134 all because of injury, and he pulled out of Bellator 151 because of a prior commitment. It’s just not feasible to put Michael Venom Page in big fights or put him in main events because of his factual history of pulling out of fights. I know that he has two fights left on his Bellator contract, but no matter what happens with his MMA career, he must first deal with doing something to prevent practice injuries that keep causing him to pull out of fights. Jason Floyd, can you imagine if Bellator would have put Michael Venom Page in the main event against Paul Daley for this card? That would have been a total disaster for Bellator. I wonder what Sam Caplan opinion on that (smiling).

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