Vince Russo

That was gut wrenching to see happen, especially because Pickett was only 75 seconds away from what would surely have been a unanimous decision victory. On a brighter note, Marc Diakiese broke out of the pack with his spectacular finish and post fight interview. And Jimi Manuwa ended the night on a real high note as well, so things weren't all that bad. But it still sucked to see Pickett go out the way he did.

After laying waste to the walking corpse of Vitor Belfort, Kelvin Gastelum called for a fight with Anderson Silva. And it's a fight he's getting. It'll be on the main card of UFC 212 in Brazil.

UFC 211 on May 13th has gained two fights and lost one. We've now got Eddie Alvarez/Dustin Poirier and Henry Cejudo/Sergio Pettis added to the card. Fabricio Werdum/Ben Rothwell has been scrapped due to Rothwell being flagged for potential USADA anti doping violation. I like the two new fights a lot and it really gives 211 a stacked card. It sucks to lose Werdum and Rothwell, and not just because it's a fight I wanted to see. If either Miocic or Dos Santos fall foul of injury or USADA, Werdum could have been slotted into place to take their spot, presuming all parties agreed to it.

I wouldn't have even bothered trying to make a new fight for Ferguson. I would have just removed him from the card and simply rebooked the fight with Khabib for another time. Yes, you could give Ferguson a replacement fight, but if he loses, it would take a little something off of Khabib getting the Conor fight as he'd be getting it because Ferguson lost to someone else and not because Khabib beat Ferguson. And if Ferguson wins, you're still left with figuring out which one of them gets the Conor fight, and one deserving challenger would not only lose out on a title fight but would likely have to risk his title shot whilst the other guy faces Conor, so he'd be doubly unhappy. By rebooking the fight for a later date, you are not only ensuring that the next challenger for Conor is undoubtedly the most deserving, but from the UFC's perspective, you're also guaranteeing you have a PPV main event in hand, and we've seen lately how the UFC feel about having title fights in the main event. UFC 209 was pretty good until Woodley and Thompson stunk the place out. We'd have great excitement up and down the card, with all sorts of crazy action, and then Woodley and Thompson fought like two guys who simply didn't want to do anything that would give the other guy an opening. As understandable as that strategy may be, it was torture to watch and put a damper on what had been an otherwise top night of action.

Mario Yamasaki must have been hungry because he was out to lunch when it came to stopping the main event.

Not many people put their best foot forward on Saturday night. Whether they were a fighter, a referee or a judge, it seemed like a lot of people were having a bad night all at once.

That's the intention, yes. As for Grisham, he will be doing PBP on some FS 1 cards, which I'm guessing is to take the load off of Anik as he fills in for Goldberg.

Jim Rome is the one most heavily rumoured to be doing so.

The gif is worth a watch, though. You weren't entirely wrong. She hasn't retired. Yet. But I expect she will. The really sad thing about this is that Ronda had the chance to take so much from the Holm fight and use it as a catalyst to change and evolve and she hasn’t done either. Ronda still had her hands up in that stiff, open guard style that invites people to punch her squarely in the face. Once Ronda got tagged, and even before then, she should have looked to take Nunes down but she didn't even try to. Ronda made no attempt to go for the legs of Nunes to try and get her down. It came off like Ronda was determined to fight a certain way and either could not or would not change up her gameplan when it became clear, all too quickly, that things were not going her way. In a similar tone to Asuka’s remarks about how people would react if Ronda won quickly, and they would have reacted how he said they would, people are probably going to jump on Ronda as being one dimensional, and she is, but that’s not Ronda’s problem. Ronda’s problem is that she cannot or will not change the way she does things. She simply refuses to adapt. It cost her in the Holm fight, it cost her in the Nunes fight, and that refusal to adapt will be the epitaph on her career.

As Chris2K said, it's probably her last fight either way, so there is that, but if you're a really big Ronda fan, you may not want to order it because the odds are good that Ronda is getting merked in the first or second round. There has been almost nothing about Ronda’s approach to this fight that gives you confidence in her chances to win. She’s still hitching her horse to Edmund as her trainer despite the fact that he was terrible in the Holly Holm fight and was either completely delusional or just afraid to tell the truth to Ronda about how she was doing between rounds, neither trait being something you want in a cornerman, and he’s not thought of highly as a trainer to begin with it. There has also been nothing to suggest that Ronda has done anything to fix the holes in her game that Holm exposed. She doesn’t seem to have brought in any world class kickboxers or strikers to work on her strike defence or overall striking game, which is still pretty rudimentary, and with Amanda Nunes being a harder puncher than Holm and more technical than Ronda, you’d think that would be considered a necessity. Ronda has also dropped weight and she’ll apparently go into the cage about 10lbs lighter, and while that will probably help with stamina, it also means she won’t have the muscle, literally and figuratively, that she did before, which will affect her clinch work because she won’t have the power to take Nunes down in the manner she did to previous opponents. Holm showed us the strategy on how to beat Rousey and nothing from Rousey’s training for this fight has done anything to suggest that the same strategy won’t work again if Nunes follows it. The only thing in Ronda’s favour is that she is so incredibly driven to win this fight, that even with the errors in her game that will likely lead to her taking a beating, she will simply refuse to die and Nunes, who does get tired if the fight goes long, will gas out and Rousey will then be able to take her down and get the armbar. Unless Nunes pulls a Zingano, I expect Ronda to take a beating in this fight and that this fight will come down to whether Ronda can take that beating and keep going. If she can’t, obviously she’s toast. But if she can and the fight goes into third round, I like her chances.

Josh Barnett is the latest fighter to be flagged by USADA for a potential drug test violation. If confirmed, this will be his fourth known positive test for a banned substance, having previously tested positive in 2001, 2002 and 2009. As for CM Punk, his debut drew money, so given the mindset of the new owners, it would be a surprise if he didn't fight again in the UFC, although this time against a more carefully selected opponent.

Cain Velasquez is out of UFC 207. NSAC won't clear him to fight. Admitting to injuries and scheduling surgery early in the new year probably didn't help Cain in that regard.

This one has absolutely nothing to do with Conor. This is all on the UFC and their belief that they need a title fight to headline a PPV. That's the reason for this. It's also why they stripped Conor of the featherweight title when they did and why they didn't wait for Cyborg over the creation of the women's featherweight title.

Perhaps based on the purses that are publicly disclosed after every card.

People seem to forget that Rebney screwed Eddie Alvarez out of a major payday when he bitched a fit over Alvarez signing with the UFC in early 2013 and somehow convinced a judge that a theoretical Bellator PPV was worth more than an actual UFC PPV and Alvarez was essentially forced to stay in Bellator for a while longer.

At the moment, the plan is Holloway vs. Pettis to be moved up to the main event spot, and it'll be for the interim featherweight title. I don't know what this means for Conor's reign as featherweight champion or Aldo's reign as interim featherweight champion, but the best speculation seems to be that this will speed up the UFC stripping Conor of the featherweight title, with Aldo then being made the official featherweight champion, and Aldo then defending against the winner of Holloway vs. Pettis.

Tony Ferguson absolutely deserves a lightweight title shot now, but he better hope that Khabib Nurmagomedov loses next Saturday night, because if Khabib beats Michael Johnson, there is no chance in hell that Khabib will blow his post-fight interview the way Ferguson did, and Khabib will talk his way into a title fight that really should go to Ferguson. I like Ferguson a lot and I was hoping he would win because he has deserved a title shot for some time, but I couldn't believe that after a big win over the former lightweight champion, he said virtually nothing at all, especially at time when, now more than than ever, a good post-fight interview can play a big part in whether you get the fight you want and deserve. Whether that it is fair or not is immaterial because that's how the game is played now, so you better learn to play it or you'll lose out and Tony Ferguson may have just lost out, big time.

A lot of fighters, especially those with an amateur background, have a pure sports mentality where things like trash talking are considered wrong and something that you just don't do. And because they consider it wrong, they don't try to understand why it works, they just complain that it works and act like isn't necessary.

Why are people still shocked that the UFC runs itself like a business? That would be like getting upset at Bellator for putting on a freak show fight in a desperate grab for ratings, and Bellator are far worse when it comes to the sideshow aspect of MMA than the UFC.

Timing is everything. If Conor was in this situation last year, then Conor, most likely, would have had to bite the bullet and had to either defend the featherweight title or vacate it and move to lightweight. However, not only has the UFC just been sold, but they’re about to make their MSG debut after being shut out of New York for almost twenty years. That means, for a variety of reasons, the UFC needed to put on, not just the best card they could, but the biggest card they could, and right now, there are only a four people that can make a UFC card seem like a big deal, and Conor is one of them. The other three are Ronda, Brock and GSP, and all three, for a variety of reasons, are some way off from coming back, and Brock may never come back. So the timing put Conor in the driving seat and allowed him to get what he wants. Is it fair? No. But life isn’t fair and neither is business, which is what the UFC is, and what any sport is once money becomes involved.

Tyron Woodley will defend the welterweight title against Stephen Thompson at UFC 205 in MSG.

Going to a ratings driven company like Bellator is the right move for Chael, and the kind of fights that are best for Chael are the kind of fights that should draw big ratings.

And based on early estimates, not even including the house, that $500,000 is looking like a bargain for what he drew in return.

Not liking Punk for getting a chance he never should have had is one thing, and even that is stupid because the people to criticize for that are the UFC, not Punk. But anyone actually enjoying Punk getting humiliated, or enjoying anyone getting humiliated, is a sad inadequate who's hiding their insecurities.

Some people are taking way too much delight in Punk losing. Yeah, it was always going to end badly outside of a miracle shot, but I give Punk credit for having the guts to take the kind of chance that most of his armchair critics would be too scared to take themselves.