The Afternooner for November 26

The Afternooner is your mid-day news roundup from across the combat sports landscape.

Contributor: Ben Kohn

Hello my friends, welcome to another edition of the Afternooner. As always, I’m your host Ben Kohn and will be guiding you on your tour through Willy Wonka’s chocolate facto….wait sorry you’re not that lucky. You’re actually just going to read combat sports news and my stupid thoughts that come out of my stupid head about them. So follow me along this magical journey if you’re bored of sitting alone and crying will eating Ben and Jerry’s brownie chunks ice cream and distract yourself a bit. Wow, that was a long-ass tangent.

• John Lineker and Ian McCall has been rebooked for UFC 183 in Las Vegas after being cancelled because of a blood infection that forced McCall out of the bout the day of the fight. This fight will likely determine a title contender and many hope Lineker is the winner so that champion Demetrious Johnson will have a fresh opponent as opposed to a rematch.
• John Moraga is now set to fight Willie Gates, who’s replacing Jussier Formiga due to an injured knee, at UFC on Fox 13 in Phoenix on December 13th. Gates is 11-4 and is coming off a Tachi Palace 125 pound title fight which he won in 83 seconds by TKO. He’s won five fights in a row with five finishes in the first round. Moraga has looked hot and cold in his three fights since his title fight and finally looked good in his fight with Scoggins, although his takedown defense is still horrendous.
• Another fight announcement, Nik Lentz and Thiago Tavares will rematch at UFN 60 in Broomfield, Colorado on January 14th. Their previous match ended in a majority draw and was contested at LW. Lentz has fought seven times since then before deciding to drop to FW, going 4-2 with one no contest mixed in. At FW, he’s gone 4-1 with wins over Hacran Dias and Diego Nunes and his sole loss being a decision to Chad Mendes. Tavares went 4-2 following his fight with Lentz, tested positive for steroids in his loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov, and dropped to FW in his last fight finishing Robbie Peralta by submission in the first round. It’s interesting to see them rematch as both seem to have hit their stride at FW so I’m looking forward to this rematch.
• The ratings are in for UFN 57 and the numbers are pretty good. The main card averaged 903k viewers with the peak being 1,021,000 million viewers during the main event. These are good numbers considering the competition at had to deal with in a Manny Pacquiao fight, and two big College Football games. The prelims also did well, drawing 777k viewers on average which is well above the usual UFN prelim average of 468k. Good job UFC, see what happens when you stack a card? People fucking watch it!
• Legacy FC signed one-legged fighter Matt Betzhold, who’s riding a four fight winning streak and is 6-3 overall. His first fight with the promotion will be February 27th in Houston with no opponent announced as of yet. Interesting situation for Legacy because there could be backlash if they put him on TV and he gets seriously hurt. I’ll be keeping up with his next fight for sure.
• Rory MacDonald says that no amount of money would motivate him to fight his teammate and mentor Georges St. Pierre. When asked what GSP would do if Rory won the title, Rory answered “I think he would just do superfights”. This is understandable as the mentor-protégé relationship between the two is well documented and personally, I’m all for teammates not wanting to fight each other. Forcing fighters at the top of the game to fight each other makes no sense to me since they usually train together to become better. If they want to, awesome go ahead, but I’m ok with it if they don’t.
• Joe Lauzon has another fight scheduled and it’s for UFC 183 against the surging Al Iaquinta. Lauzon is fresh of his TKO victory over Michael Chiesa by cut (doctors stoppage) and Iaquinta is fresh off knocking out Ross Pearson. Lauzon has won his last two fights over Chiesa and Mac Danzig while Iaquinta is on a two fight win streak as well with his wins over Pearson and Rodrigo Damm. This is a big fight for both men, with the young prospect trying to knock off the old veteran and take his place among the upper echelons of the division. Lauzon is in need of a win to stay relevant in the LW division and a loss essentially makes him nothing but a mid-tier action fighter. Cannot wait for this fight.

-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten on Twitter.