Fighters of the Week

1. Spencer Lee/Nick Suriano/Yianni Diakomihalis/Anthony Ashnault/Jason Nolf/Mekhi Lewis/Zahid Valencia/Drew Foster/Bo Nickal/Anthony Cassar: Your 2019 NCAA Division I Wrestling champions. For Nolf and Nickal, it’s their third championship and yet another team win for Penn State.

2. Anthony Pettis: Just when you thought the candle was extinguished on Pettis, he goes and pulls THIS off. Good lord.

3. Charlie Edwards: Edwards defended the only men’s world boxing championship of the weekend, and defended it successfully, retaining his WBC World Flyweight title via UD over contender Angel Moreno in a DAZN main event from London.

4. Sergey Lipinets: Got all he could handle from Lamont Peterson, but weathered the storm, got seriously tested in a battle, and had enough left at the end to get the win on Sunday’s PBC main event.

5. Kubrat Pulev: Stayed alive in the heavyweight title picture, and is still the IBF mandatory challenger, after surviving a scare against Bogdan Dinu, getting busted wide open, but coming back to send him to the canvas three times and earning a TKO.

6. Cleber de Sousa/Hiago Santos/Matheus Pinheiro Barros/Levi Jones-Leary/Isaque Braz/Gustavo Batista/Kaynan Duarte/Felipe Leandro Silva/Ricardo Evangelista/Lucas Barbosa/Mayssa Bastos/Amanda Nogueira/Ffion Davies/Gabrielle Lima/Ana Carolina Vieira/Luiza Monteiro/Nathiely Karoline de Jesus/Gabi Garcia: Your 2019 IBJJF Pan World Champions. Bonus kudos to Barbosa and Gabi Garcia for winning their openweight tournaments, as well.

7. Curtis Blaydes: Justin Willis talked a lot of shit about Blaydes being bored, and while it certainly wasn’t an exciting win by Blaydes, it was definite.

8. Anatoly Tokov: Made the rebound of the weekend after being floored by Gerald Harris, then climbing off the canvas, narrowly avoiding a TKO, eating punches left and right, then fighting his way to a dominant position and winning by submission.

9. Casey Kenney: Now is the proud (?) owner of Legacy Fighting Alliance’s flyweight AND bantamweight interim championships. It’s an accomplishment, but I don’t know what the hell it’s gonna result in.

10. Maycee Barber: Continues to elbow, punch, and knee her way through the UFC flyweight division, this time finishing JJ Aldrich. Barber is a desperately needed fresh, exciting fighter in the women’s side.

11. Emmanuel Sanchez: Downed Georgi Karakhanyan for the second time, this time in the main event of Bellator 218.

12. Philip De Fries: Retained his KSW Heavyweight title over Tomasz Narkun, who was coming off of defeating the best fighter in KSW history back-to-back, in Mamed Khalidov.

13. Jessie Magdaleno: It was a successful move up to featherweight, defeating veteran gatekeeper Rico Ramos in the co-main on ESPN.

14. John Makdessi/Jussier da Silva: Grouped together because they were gatekeepers in back-to-back bouts at Fight Night: Nashville going up against red-hot up-and-commers at lightweight and flyweight, respectively, and in both instances, they kept the gates shut with unanimous decisions over Jesus Pinedo and Deiveson Figueiredo.

15. Lamont Peterson: Went out like every great fighter, on his shield. Fought a valiant fight against Sergey Lipinets and emptied the tank, but Lipinets just had a little more left late. I know boxers never truly retire, but if it’s the last time we see the former world champ, congrats on a hell of a career.