Welcome back to The Wild World Of Fighting, a series more comforting than a warm blanket, fresh from the dryer.
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The final UFC event of the year has officially wrapped, leaving behind nothing short of a mad week in the Wild World of Fighting, involving UFC Vegas 66 headliner Sean Strickland, Gordon Ryan, and a musically inclined broadcaster.
Sean Strickland and Pornstars Have What in Common?
The final UFC fight of the year is a middleweight content between Sean Strickland and Jared Cannonier. Of course, any fight week involving Strickland is bound to be a wild one with at least one or two hilarious sound bites.
Perhaps the funniest moments to happen this week, as it relates to Strickland, was not actually a line that came from the eccentric middleweight contender.
During the media day, which saw Strickland in rare form, he and Oscar Willis from The Mac Life got into a bit of a discussion about the differences between MMA fighters and adult film stars, when the media member made a joke that left the rest of the room laughing.
“Us, against let’s say, pornstars. What’s the difference?” Strickland asked.
“You do both take shots to the face, I suppose,” Willis said with excellent timing.
Gordon Ryan Chokes The Mountain
This week’s WWOF starts off with a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme, beauty and the beast. Only this time, the beauty isn’t a princess and the beast isn’t a… well, beast.
Instead, we bring the lights down on a fun scene inside the UFC Performance Institute, featuring top BJJ practitioner Gordon Ryan, and World’s Strongest Man winner Hafthor Bjornsson, aka “The Mountain” in Game of Thrones. I’ll let you decide who is the beauty and who is the beast in this scenario.
That said, videos started making the rounds on Twitter this week, showing a training session between Ryan and Bjornsson, taking place at the UFC PI.
They even grappled with one other, and while the pacing and intensity was not particularly high, the much smaller five-time ADCC no-gi gold medalist was able to choke the man who is 7 inches taller than him and weighs over 100lb more than him, proving once again that size does not matter as much as technique when it comes to jiu-jitsu.
This is not the first time that “The Mountain” has dipped his toes in the waters of mixed martial arts and grappling, as he has had training sessions with Conor McGregor in the past, and even has a few boxing fights on his resume. However, his size and experience did not stop him from getting choked by Gordon Ryan, much like fellow World’s Strongest Man winner Brian Shaw fell to Dustin Poirier last year.
Deontay Wilder Punches Really, Really Hard
If you, like myself, grew up ruining controllers by playing EA Sports’s Fight Night video games, then chances are you feel the same level of excitement as I do about the new boxing game, Undisputed, being developed by Steel City. After all, with stars like Tyson Fury, Gervonta Davis, Ryan Garcia, and Canelo Alvarez to name a few, populating the sport now, fans are overdue for the first big-name, semi-realistic boxing game since 2011’s Fight Night Champion.
Undisputed is still in the process of development, but clips and stills from what currently exists have surfaced online, showing the progress the team has made on the game. One such clip showed none other than Deontay Wilder, arguably the hardest puncher in the sport today, who was not satisfied with simply using his power to knock out his training partner, and decided to fist yeet him out of the ring altogether.
Obviously there are still kinks being worked out with the punch and power mechanics in the game, but frankly, if you asked the opponents of Wilder, they would likely tell you that this is only slightly inaccurate. What makes the whole situation even more insane is that this is apparently Wilder’s power without him even having max power stats.
It’s A Fine Line
There are plenty of reasons to be inspired by the youngest fighter in the UFC history, Raul Rosas Jr., not least of which is the fact that he holds a UFC win before even graduating high school. Aside from that, he has also had to overcome some adversity in life, starting fighting at a young age and dealing with a cleft lip.
Unfortunately, the internet is an unforgiving place, and meme artists are not deterred by reasonable medical ailments, so there have been a ton of memes about Rosas Jr., poking fun at the physical appearance of a kid who is living out the dreams of many.
Perhaps the best example of these memes came from Reddit, before being uploaded again on Twitter, showing the fine line that is the difference between flirting with a person and being accused of being creepy.
Grandma is Temporary, MMA is Forever
It can be hard to take time away from watching MMA and spending time with the online community that connects this sport, but sometimes it is an important thing to do in order to take care of your mental health.
That said, the reason there is a tired trope of people announcing they are leaving social media only to return a short time later, is because it is something that actually happens on a routine basis.
Perhaps the best example of this to ever occur came recently, when one user posted online that they would be stepping away from the MMA community on Twitter to take time in order to mourn the death of their grandmother.
Apparently, they did not need long to mourn though, as a mere 14 hours later, this user was back online, asking where a prime Cody Garbrandt would fit into the current bantamweight landscape.
All kidding aside, there is no room to judge someone for the way they choose to mourn the loss of a loved one. If using the MMA community helps you cope, there is no reason to step away.
Brendan Fitzgerald: A Man of Many Talents
As much as Jon Anik is beloved among MMA fans for being the ultimate professional, it is nice to hear the alternative play-by-play man for the UFC, Brendan Fitzgerald, get his time to shine, as was the case for the last UFC event of 2022. However, before fight day even arrived, he was blowing people away at the UFC Vegas 66 weigh-ins.
We close this week’s edition of The Wild World of Fighting, with a video that made the rounds on Friday, showing Fitzgerald alongside UFC producer Mike Ricci, with Brendan playing the keyboard and Mike playing the trumpet. Donning Christmas hats sweaters, the duo serenaded the people attending the weigh-ins with smooth Christmas carols.
That’s all for this week’s edition, tune in next week for another round-up of the bizarre side of MMA in The Wild World Of Fighting.
Were there any wild moments in MMA that we missed for this week?