MMA Junkie Radio #3575: UFC Atlanta recap, Kevin Lee and Marcus McGhee interviews, more
Monday's episode of MMA Junkie Radio with "Gorgeous" George and Goze is here.
On Episode 3,575, the guys look back at UFC on ESPN 69 in Atlanta, and they welcome PFL World Tournament 6 headliner Kevin Lee to the show, as well as UFC fighter Marcus McGhee.
Tune in!
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Paulo Costa confident he has way to beat 'anxious' Khamzat Chimaev: 'This is pretty easy'
Paulo Costa won't let go of his beef with Khamzat Chimaev. Costa (15-4 MMA, 7-4 UFC) is irate at Chimaev for allegedly sending his girlfriend "nasty" DMs, and is dead set on fighting him after their UFC 294 booking fell through. The former title challenger returned to the win column with a unanimous decision win over Roman Kopylov this past Saturday at UFC 318. Chimaev (14-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) challenges middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis Aug. 16 in the UFC 319 headliner from Chicago. Win or lose, Costa wants a piece of Chimaev, and is confident he has the blueprint to take out the undefeated phenom. "This is pretty easy, and I'm going to break down this, OK?," Costa told Submission Radio. "I can see this very clear in my mind right now, how it's going to happen. He'll be very stressful, anxious, and anger against me. Once the fight start, he will come, faint some punches, and then he going to shoot on my legs. So, I'm going to spend some time defending his takedown, he's going to try to push, push, push, and I think after one minute, maybe one and a half, he will be exhausted. "His arms and shoulders will be heavy. Heavy like a heavyweight. Then he will realize he don't put my back on the mat, and he will be heavy and slow Maybe I'm not going to finish him in the very first round. I'm going to let him gas out everything that he had until he be like a dead man walking in the second round. Then I'm going to hit his belly as much as I can with front kicks, with body shots until I see he wants to give up. When I see that, I'm going to start to hit his face and make him uglier than he is." Leading up to his fight with Kopylov, Costa couldn't contain his emotions when asked about Chimaev during his media obligations. He sent a stern message to "Borz." "I'm coming for you, you know that," Costa concluded. "I will not lie to anyone. I don't need that. You know who I am, and I know who the f*ck c*nt you are. I'm coming for you."
Yahoo
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Petr Yan, UFC's forgotten man at 135, is quietly building back toward the title
On Tuesday night, UFC CEO Dana White served up a full party tray of new fight bookings, including a UFC 320 bantamweight title fight between Merab Dvalishvili and Cory Sandhagen. It's the kind of fight that is both gratifying and remarkable. Sandhagen is finally getting his shot, and yet … didn't Merab just defend his title in June? Guess that's why they call him 'The Machine.' One interesting spectator come October will be Petr Yan, the forgotten man at 135 pounds. He has a fight of his own Saturday in Abu Dhabi against Marcus McGhee. It's an important one. As Merab goes about destroying everyone in his general vicinity, Yan has been quietly making his way back toward him. One slip up, and he'll fall entirely out of earshot of Merab's great rumbling. Or, if there's an upset in the cards this fall, of Sandhagen's soft-spoken philosophies. 'I believe after the win I should be the one fighting for the belt,' Yan told Uncrowned this week. 'I already beat Sandhagen before. For example, if he wins the fight with Merab, there's a rematch for him. And then if it's Merab who's holding the belt, then I believe this fight will be different, because last time I fought him I was just 50%, I was injured, my hand was injured and I couldn't even punch.' The old proverb goes that excuses have stayed in business for a long time. But in Yan's case, that's a particularly hard pill to swallow. Not only did he have the injury, but the optics were troubling. Merab took Yan down 11 times in the fight. He doubled him up in striking with preternatural pace and pressure. It was Yan's fourth recorded loss in five fights, which meant he had effectively fallen from the topflight ranks at bantamweight and was rapidly hurtling down to earth. If the split decision losses against Aljamain Sterling and Sean O'Malley looked like heists in the eyes of the public, the Merab loss was thorough. It didn't leave a lot to the imagination, but a lot of holes to address. 'Losses are hard to take, but sometimes they also teach you stuff,' Yan says. 'They give you opportunity to work on your mistakes, to improve, to become better. And I believe I'm a better version of myself right now. And with the winner, I believe I deserve to fight for the belt.' The proof he's learned from his mistakes might be in the more recent results. Back at UFC 299, Yan took two out of three rounds against the hard-hitting Song Yadong to get back on track. Within that performance there were obvious flashes of the Yan who blasted his way through the likes of Jose Aldo and Urijah Faber in his championship heyday. Yan followed that up with a super-impressive thrashing of Deiveson Figueiredo this past November in China, a victory that wasn't nearly as subtle. He swept the scorecards over the course of five rounds. That one felt like a declaration that Yan, whose nickname of 'No Mercy' matched his Mugsy-like demeanor, was back. Still, he enters Saturday's fight on virtual tiptoe, which might have more to do with the relatively unsung McGhee than Yan. McGhee has won all four of his UFC fights since debuting in 2023 and finds himself in a spot to catapult himself toward the top of the division in one fell swoop. Yan knows he is being viewed — at least from the McGhee camp — as the stepping stone. 'At some point, all of us are unknown,' he says. 'At some point, I got the chance and now I'm giving the chance to Marcus. But he's a good guy, a good opponent. He deserves to be in this position.' Here the 32-year-old Yan turns back into the cold specimen that distinguished him from 2016-2020, when he won 10 fights in a row, including all seven to that point in the UFC. 'He is a good fighter, an orthodox fighter, fast, explosive, he tries to do a lot of different stuff," Yan says. "But skill-wise, I think I'm on a different level, and this Saturday night I think I'm going to show you for the real martial artists. And I'm going to show him there's levels to this and make sure he's going to regret accepting this fight.' If he does regain his entire mojo and emerges as the top option for the winner of Dvalishvili vs. Sandhagen, Yan's story will become one of perseverance. Those were some rough losses he suffered. When he lost the title with an illegal knee against Sterling in 2021, it turned Sterling into a persona non grata for taking the title in that way. When he lost the split decision rematch 13 months later, after beating Sandhagen in his rebound fight, it was insult to injury. Then came O'Malley, which made him believe the universe was against him (or at least the three cageside judges) and question why he was bothering. Then Merab, which turned a former champion into a forgotten man altogether. Siberia is considered one of the most isolated places on earth. Yan would know. He was born there, and — though he now calls Sverdlovsk Oblast home — the newest wrinkle he has to his game is the understanding of banishment. He got sent to the figurative Siberia during that losing skid, and the man who sent him there is at large. Merab's defending his title for a third time this year in October. He's the tyranny of the division. And if Yan intends to do anything about it, there's one obstacle left to get through: Marcus McGhee. 'I'm mentally and technically at my peak right now,' Yan says. 'I'm just going to create some bumps and fireworks.'
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an hour ago
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Former title challengers Amanda Lemos, Tatiana Suarez meet at Noche UFC in San Antonio
Un enfrentamiento de peso paja de alto riesgo entre Tatiana Suarez 🇺🇸🇲🇽 y Amanda Lemos 🇧🇷 se lleva a cabo en Noche UFC 🤩Los boletos salen a la venta este viernes 25 de julio ➡️ | Sáb 13 de septiembre 🇲🇽 | @tatianaufc vs @LemosAmandaUFC Amanda Lemos and Tatiana Suarez will try to build toward a second strawweight title fight opportunity when they meet at UFC Fight Night 259, also known as Noche UFC. The promotion announced Thursday that Lemos (15-4-1 MMA, 9-4 UFC) and Suarez (10-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) are booked to clash in a three-round bout on the Sept. 13 card, which takes place at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas (ESPN+). Lemos, No. 6 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie strawweight rankings, has won two of three fights since unsuccessfully challenging reigning champ Zhang Weili for the belt in August 2023. She's defeated Mackenzie Dern and Iasmin Lucindo on the scorecards while being submitted by Virna Jandiroba. She will have the chance to elevated her spot against No. 3-ranked Suarez, who was upset by Weili in her bid for the belt at UFC 312 in February. The standout grappler has only competed twice in the past two years, but will start the pursuit of consistency against Lemos. The latest UFC Fight Night 259 lineup now includes:
