If there’s one thing the UFC can credibly claim, it’s that for the better part of the past 25 years, it’s given its fans almost every big fight they could ask for.
Almost.
No, this isn’t another article about dream matchups we wish Uncle Dana had moved heaven and earth to make happen, these are fights that the organization was one step away from making a reality were it not for a few mischievous spoilers.
With UFC 307 on Saturday seemingly designed to set up Alex Pereira and Kayla Harrison for more high-profile bouts, we figured now is a good time to look back at times when the dominoes didn’t fall in the UFC’s favor, and potentially great fights were lost forever in the chaos vortex that is MMA.
OK, technically this one could still happen, but assuming it doesn’t, our best shot at seeing it was a few years ago.
Amanda Nunes had run through the competition at 145 and 135 pounds, including legendary featherweight champion Cris Cyborg. There wasn’t much left for her to accomplish in the UFC, so eyes searched elsewhere for a viable challenger and lo and behold, there was two-time Olympic judo champion Kayla Harrison tearing it up in the PFL SmartCage. Even better, she was approaching free agency at the end of 2021 and all Nunes had to do was run through Julianna Peña—viewed as little more than a mandatory challenger—to set up a superfight.
Whoops.
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Peña submitted Nunes at UFC 269 to cap off a once-in-a-lifetime performance, Harrison reacted to the loss in real time and re-signed with the PFL, and Nunes went on to stomp Peña in the rematch nine months later before retiring in 2023.
Maybe Harrison can still wow us enough to bring “The Lioness” out of her den?
By the time Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson squared off for an interim lightweight title in 2020, most fans had probably given up on the highly touted Ferguson-Khabib Nurmagomedov fight ever happening. But it would have if Ferguson beat Gaethje, for reals this time!
Simply put, Nurmagomedov and Ferguson were the two best lightweights in the world for much of the 2010s (sorry, Conor), and the UFC tried and tried and tried to get them into the cage, to no avail. So much misfortune befell this matchup that at one point we had to write a feature called Timeline of Destruction to recap it all. Dana White even promised they’d fight at UFC 249, which went about as well as most of his other promises.
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Sure enough, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Nurmagomedov from traveling, so Gaethje stepped in as his replacement and thoroughly drubbed Ferguson. This wasn’t just the final nail in the coffin for Tony-Khabib, it was the start of Ferguson’s seemingly interminable losing streak that goes on to this day.
With each passing day, it becomes more difficult to explain to newer fans just how tantalizing it was to imagine the stars of PRIDE crossing over to battle the UFC’s best in the 2000s. And one of the most intriguing possible matchups was PRIDE’s heavyweight knockout machine Mirko Cro Cop going toe-to-toe with “Captain America” himself, Randy Couture.
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Cro Cop’s path to a title shot went through Gabriel Gonzaga, a talented but untested contender in just his ninth pro bout. Everyone expected Cro Cop to kick Gonzaga to the curb and set his sights on the UFC heavyweight title.
Someone got kicked, alright.
In one of the best knockouts ever, Gonzaga head-kicked the bejeezus out of a man known for head kicks, and staked his own claim to Couture’s title, albeit an unsuccessful one. Eight years later, Cro Cop earned a measure of revenge over Gonzaga with a third-round TKO in their rematch, but the Couture fight remained the one that got away.
We all remember the broken foot that forced then-lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos out of UFC 196, which set up the 2016 Conor McGregor-Nate Diaz feud that sent combat sports hurtling uncontrollably into the chortling void that it is today. But could the timeline have corrected itself if McGregor had just beaten Diaz in their first fight?
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Keep in mind, dos Anjos was later scheduled to defend his title against Eddie Alvarez at a UFC Fight Night on July 7, with McGregor rematching Diaz at UFC 200 on July 9. It’s safe to say that dos Anjos vs. McGregor would have headlined UFC 200 were it not for McGregor demanding his chance to avenge the Diaz loss (in reality, McGregor vs. Diaz 2 landed on UFC 202, for reasons that are hardly worth rehashing).
What we ended up getting was dos Anjos dropping the belt to Alvarez, Alvarez dropping the belt to McGregor, McGregor booking a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather Jr., a bunch more weirdness after that and now Jake Paul is boxing Mike Tyson next month.
Michael Bisping became middleweight champion with a shocking first-round knockout of Luke Rockhold (on short-notice, no less) and then proceeded to defend his title against a 46-year-old Dan Henderson. The wonky matchmaking could be forgiven due to Henderson’s popularity and the history between the two, but after Bisping escaped with a narrow decision win, fans were eager to see him take on a hungry challenger like Gegard Mousasi, Robert Whittaker, or Yoel Romero.
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It was Romero that whet the appetite the most as the Cuban juggernaut built up a healthy rivalry with the champ, capped off by this unforgettable moment:
Unfortunately, a lingering knee injury kept Bisping out for months after the Henderson fight, so Whittaker and Romero were booked to battle for an interim belt at UFC 213. Whittaker beat Romero, and then Bisping lost at UFC 217 to a returning Georges St-Pierre, who likely had no intention of sticking around after capturing his second UFC belt.
That was the disappointing end of Bisping vs. Romero, and to this day there are still fans sour it never happened because they’re convinced Romero would have mashed Bisping into British pudding.
One of the great travesties in modern MMA is that Yoel Romero will never be recognized as even an interim champion. This is a man who, for at least a couple of years, was the best middleweight alive and wasn’t given his chance to prove it. When he finally did, the judges robbed him (I believe Romero beat Whittaker the first time around in a very close fight, but there is no debate he deserved to win the rematch at UFC 225).
In a world where MMA was even marginally meritocratic, Bisping wouldn’t have been allowed to do his backyard nonsense of calling his own title challengers, and I truly cannot imagine a worse fight for “The Count” than Romero would have been. They’d still be mopping up the pieces today.
It’s a stretch to say that Aljamain Sterling and Jose Aldo were on a collision course, but it’s not a stretch at all to say that fight should have happened instead of Sterling defending his bantamweight title against a one-shouldered T.J. Dillashaw. A one-shouldered T.J. Dillashaw coming off of a knee injury, a controversial decision win over Cory Sandhagen, and a drug suspension.
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I’m still so, so, so angry about this.
Aldo, one of the five greatest fighters of all time, was right there. The featherweight GOAT was coming off of three straight wins over ranked 135ers and deserved one more chance to become UFC champion. For whatever reason, the matchmakers felt that they just had to do Sterling vs. Dillashaw (how’d that one turn out, guys?), so that was booked for UFC 280 and Aldo had to fight Sterling’s buddy Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 278.
Dvalishvili won a dreary decision, a result so uninspiring that Aldo said “f*ck it I’m going to take a couple of boxing matches” before returning to the UFC earlier this year.
This one doesn’t count because we eventually got to see “The Iceman” and “The Axe Murderer” throw down at UFC 79, and it totally ruled, but there was an insane amount of buzz when these two first entered each other’s orbits in 2003.
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PRIDE set up an eight-man tournament to manufacture a Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva final, but Rampage Jackson had other plans. He knocked Liddell out in the semifinals to set up an epic rivalry with Silva and also scared then-UFC commissioner Dana White from venturing to other promotions with his fighters.
UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar vs. WEC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis wasn’t exactly the most hyped matchup of 2010. Still, it feels weird these two lifers never fought after it seemed like a guarantee they would.
Pettis was hot off of a Fight of the Year-win over Benson Henderson, capped off by the “Showtime Kick” that had Pettis on the cusp of superstardom. As luck would have it, his shot at UFC gold would have to wait as Edgar and Gray Maynard fought to a draw at UFC 125 and their rematch didn’t take place until UFC 136. Pettis couldn’t keep waiting, so he booked a fight with veteran Clay Guida.
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Guida wrestled Pettis into oblivion, forcing Pettis to battle his way back to contention. Ironically, Henderson—the man Pettis beat in the last-ever WEC event—went on to defeat Edgar for the title instead. Pettis eventually defeated his rival again to become UFC champion, but Edgar had dropped to featherweight by then so this intriguing pairing was gone for good.
Unquestionably one of the most talked-about fights that never happened, Ronda Rousey vs. Cris Cyborg doesn’t make the cut due to the fact that you can’t pin down one result to change that would have sealed the deal.
It always felt like so much bluster between these two, with Rousey challenging Cyborg to make an impossible cut down to 135 pounds and Cyborg attempting to coax Rousey into a catchweight bout that Rousey had no incentive to take. Maybe you can blame Holly Holm for derailing Rousey at UFC 193, but Cyborg was yet to make her UFC debut and Rousey wasn’t waiting for her even if she had escaped Holm.
Once upon a time, Jon Jones was supposed to fight Anthony Johnson at UFC 187. A month before that May 2015 event, the light heavyweight champion was involved in a hit-and-run where he crashed into a car containing a pregnant woman, and was subsequently stripped of his title and suspended. That resulted in Johnson fighting for a vacant title at UFC 187, where he came up short.
So why doesn’t this make the list? Because the fighter Johnson lost to was Daniel Cormier.
The Jones-Cormier rivalry was always going to define that era of the 205-pound division, so while it’s fun to imagine how Jones would have fared against Johnson’s fearsome punching power, fans ended up getting the fight they really wanted anyway.
SALT LAKE CITY – UFC 307 ceremonial fighter weigh-ins take place Friday, and you can catch a live video stream of the proceedings here on MMA Junkie at 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT).
The weigh-ins take place at Delta Center in Salt Lake City. The same venue hosts Saturday’s event (pay-per-view, ESPNews, ESPN+). In addition to the video stream above, you can check out the official UFC 307 weigh-in results from earlier in the day.
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 307.
Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram page and YouTube channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.
Harrison (17-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC) takes on Vieira (14-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) on Saturday’s UFC 307 (pay-per-view, ESPNews, ESPN+) main card at Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
Although Cejudo ultimately picked Harrison to win, he thinks Vieira’s black belt in judo, as well as her striking, could pose problems for Harrison. The two-time Olympic gold medalist judoka did not hold back when returning fire at Cejudo.
“I don’t know why the hell they’re talking about a judo black belt making a difference. There are levels,” Harrison told Submission Radio. “That would be like me telling Henry, ‘Oh this kid wrestled in varsity in high school, so you’re going to struggle to take him down.’ Benign. Asinine. It’s all right. I look forward to showing once again why Henry is a jealous little man.”
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Harrison doubled down on her remarks towards Cejudo during Episode 4 of “UFC Embedded.”
“Bro, you better get your boy f*cking Henry,” Harrison told Ali Abdelaziz, who represents both fighters. “I’m going to f*ck him up. After he talked all that sh*t, he was like, ‘But, I’ve got to go with Kayla.’ Oh yeah. I f*cking watched it. I’m telling you, he’s jealous because I have more gold medals than him. He can’t handle it – his little fragile ego.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 307.
Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram page and YouTube channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.
Welcome to the latest edition of Missed Fists where we shine a light on fights from across the globe that may have been overlooked in these hectic times where it seems like there’s an MMA show every other day.
Compared to the outlaw days of the early ‘90s, MMA technique has come so far that it’s almost unrecognizable to the O.G. cagefighting fan. Overall, your average fighter is more technical, more prepared, and more well-rounded, but one can’t help but feel like we’ve lost that spark of improvisation at the heart of some of the game’s best moments.
That comment mostly applies to the higher levels of competition, so thankfully we still have the outskirts of MMA to provide us with some truly insane moments.
(Big thanks as always to @Barrelelapierna for their weekly lists of the best KOs and submissions, and to @Grabaka_Hitman for uploading many of the clips you see here. Give them a follow and chip in on Patreon if you can.)
To this day, it inspires fighters, or at least that’s what I’m assuming happened with Leandro Jobu at a Brothers Fight Championship event in Sao Paulo:
Hopping on one leg, Jobu just let it rip and flung his foot into the sky. It landed with brutal precision on Fernando Cesar Silva’s head and the referee probably could have jumped in for the stoppage right there. Fortunately, Jobu didn’t go for any follow-up strikes, opting instead to finish with a rear-naked choke (which probably didn’t feel all that great either).
Call it a fluke if you want, but Jobu’s team isn’t hearing it.
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Mironshokh Khusenov vs. Didar Nagmoldanov Ruslan Kasymaly uulu vs. Anar Azizli
At an Octagon League event in Almaty, Kazakhstan, poor Didar Nagmoldanov suffered brain freeze at the worst possible moment.
Mironshokh Khusenov popped Nagmoldanov with a right hand that made him temporarily forget where he was. As he attempted to fix his mouthpiece like he was in the middle of a training session, Khusenov mercilessly finished him off with a jumping knee to the face. It’s hard to protect yourself at all times when you have no clue what the hell is happening.
In the main event, Ruslan Kasymaly uulu put an absolute beatdown on Anar Azizli.
Azizli wasn’t all the way out, but the referee had no choice but to step in there. That was a lot of unanswered strikes, just stretched out over half a round as opposed to the kind of flurry we’re used to seeing end fights. Kasymaly pitched a shutout.
Speaking of shutouts and shutdowns, Daniel Delgado battered Eduar Perez to score one of the nastiest knockouts of the weekend.
That lunging uppercut seemed to have Perez out on his feet and then Delgado knocked him out, like, three more times before he hit the ground.
More fights from Strike Warrior 11 are available for free on YouTube.
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Alessandro Martinez vs. Jorge Juarez
One more from the “Frozen Like Elsa” (ugh) department:
Alessandro Martinez and Jorge Juarez met in a Budo Striking rules match (essentially Muay Thai with MMA gloves), which ended with Martinez hitting Juarez’s off-switch. They might need to check Juarez’s wiring though, because it took an extra second or two for his body to respond.
Budo Sento Championship 25, which was actually comprised of a striking-only card and an MMA card, is available on UFC Fight Pass.
Bilal Hasan vs. Jose Leon Frank Rayford vs. Jeramy Titsworth
We talked about creativity at the top of this feature, so let’s close with another fun display from a Cage Fury FC flyweight title fight.
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Bilal Hasan, all of 23 years old, stepped over beautifully into this choke and now owns a shiny belt in just his fifth pro bout.
As for the post-fight dance-off, I’ll call that one a draw.
Bravo, fellas!
And we can’t go without mentioning Frank Rayford’s fast finish of Jeramy Titsworth.
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According to commentators Geena Lucille and John Morgan, Rayford wasn’t even supposed to be fighting on the card. He was in North Dakota to corner a teammate, but threw on a pair of gloves when a spot opened up.
Lucille later added that Rayford actually lost his job ahead of the fight.
Maybe we’re not as far off from MMA’s outlaw days as I thought.
Lastly, ICYMI, make sure to check out the unbelievable battle between Lewis McGrillen and Dean Garnett that took place at a PFL Europe event this past Saturday. Now free on YouTube!
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Without exaggeration, that might be the best fight of 2024 so far.
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What was the most memorable Missed Fists moment this week?
If you know of a recent fight or event that you think may have been overlooked, or a promotion that could use some attention, please let us know on X — @AlexanderKLee — using the hashtag #MissedFists.
This week, the UFC returns to the US for a pay-per-view event after taking the show to France for UFC Fight Night 243.
UFC 307 takes place at Delta Center in Salt Lake City, featuring two title fights. In the main event, light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira looks to defend his title against Khalil Rountree Jr. In the co-feature, Raquel Pennington puts her title on the line for the first time against former champ Julianna Pena.
Elsewhere, many other combat sports events are taking place, featuring several familiar names who have competed under the UFC banner.
Check out which veterans of the global MMA leader are competing Oct. 4-5.
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Scroll below to see how the UFC veterans fared last week, and see the names and details of this weekend’s competitors.
Upcoming event information from Tapology.
Last week’s results
Ronny Markes: TKO win vs. Lawrence Phillips at XFC 51
Dan Moret: Technical submission loss vs. Sidney Outlaw at XFC 51
Zac Pauga: TKO loss vs. Alex Nicholson at XFC 51
Alex Nicholson: TKO win vs. Zac Pauga at XFC 51
Yui Chul Nam: Knockout loss vs. Eoh Jin Park at Black Combat 12
Roger Huerta: Unanimous decision loss vs. Robert Whiteford at PFL Europe 3
Robert Whiteford: Unanimous decision win vs. Roger Huerta at PFL Europe 3
Stevie Ray: Submission win vs. Lewis Long at PFL Europe 3
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