The Afternooner for December 12

(The Afternooner is your daily dose of news and tidbits from across the combat sports landscape.)

-Contributor: Ben Kohn

Hey guys! Today is my brother’s birthday, he’s now 22. He’s also going to be married in a few months. Cool story right? Anyway happy birthday bro. Now welcome to the Afternooner, I’m your host Ben Kohn and I’ll be sexing you today with the combat sports world news stories you need to know about.

• TUF 20 Finale weigh ins happened and two fighters missed weight, Charles Olieveira and Aisling Daly. Oliveira has missed weight before in his fight with Swanson so it’s not a good look for him.
• Rafael Dos Anjos talked about Anthony Pettis and how he has the weapons to beat Pettis, but Pettis is a great fighter. Standard stuff from basically every contender.
• Bantamweight champion TJ Dillishaw discussed Dominick Cruz and how he can see the holes in Cruz’s game to beat him. He said it’s the fight he wants as well. That’s all, not much worth talking about here since it’s always the same crap.
• CM Punk was interviewed recently and spoke about the perception of whether he deserves to fight in the UFC or not. He was quite candid about the fact that he likely didn’t and that he has to earn the respect of the fighting fans and fighters too. Good to hear he’s not being a dick about all of this.
• Nate Diaz gave an interview explaining why he missed the open workout, saying he overslept and thought it was optional to show up, otherwise he would have. Ok, probably not true but he also talked about CM Punk stating that he wouldn’t want to fight him. Punk hasn’t earned that. He also discussed the uniform deal saying it’s good for the sport but time will tell if it’s good for the fighters.
• Caio Magalhaes was going to face Mark Munoz at UFC 184 but was almost immediately pulled due to a required surgery for an infection in his teeth. No replacement has been announced as of yet.
• Three time NCAA champion at 86kg Ed Ruth trains/trained with Jon Jones at Greg Jackson’s. Ruth appeared in an Instagram video kicking a pad Jones was holding and saying he’s coming for the MMA world. This is amazing news as he’s just 24 years old currently. While he will obviously make a run for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, after that he will be just 26, still a hell of a lot younger than Cormier was. I hope he wins Gold so he comes in with even more hype.
• Overeem commented on a possible return by Brock Lesnar to the UFC and said he would doubt it and that Brock would get his ass kicked. Makes no sense for Overeem to say that in my opinion though. Overeem hasn’t looked great and if anything, he should praise Lesnar so his win looks better in retrospect.

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