Chael Sonnen makes a case for Sean O’Malley to get an immediate title rematch.

O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili (18-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) by unanimous decision in the UFC 306 main event at Sphere in Las Vegas.

Dvalishvili has two contenders in Umar Nurmagomedov and Deiveson Figueiredo vying for a title shot, but Sonnen argues that O’Malley is worthy of a rematch.

He explains the logic behind his argument, pointing to other stars that have gotten that treatment.

“The very first option is the champion that drops the belt gets a rematch for his belt,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel. “It was a respect that was shown to every single great champion. And by great champion, I’m talking about champions that could also move the needle. All of them were offered rematches, from Conor (McGregor) on down – more recently, Israel Adesanya. Right into it, I’m sharing with you: All the greats except Sean.”

Although it was widely considered a dominant win for Dvalishvili, O’Malley is convinced he won the fight. Upon rewatching the bout, Sonnen sees where O’Malley is coming from.

“Motivation could largely be based upon opportunities – of which I didn’t see any add, I only saw him taken away,” Sonnen said. “I’m just sharing – that is what I saw. But now you’ve got Merab, you’ve got Nurmagomedov, and you’ve got Figueiredo, and they can’t seem to quite figure it out.

“Well, there’s also a final option that should’ve come in front of all of them which is if there’s controversy, we look at a rematch. There’s controversy, go see Rounds 1, 3 and 5. Watch that without commentating. Come back and tell me you don’t see controversy.”

Alex Pereira will have ex-opponent Sean Strickland in his camp for his UFC 307 title defense versus Khalil Rountree, he revealed Sunday on his YouTube channel.

“Poatan,” who knocked out Strickland back in 2022 to earn a shot at the middleweight belt before later becoming friends with the Las Vegas-based fighter, moved his camp to the altitude of Salt Lake City to prepare for UFC 307, which takes place in the capital of Utah on Oct. 5.

“The thing about the altitude is that it’s hard [to train],” Pereira said. “We did this once when I fought [Jan] Blachowicz. We did it for two weeks then, and three weeks now. I think it’s going to be much better.”

Pereira defeated Blachowicz via decision in his first light heavyweight bout inside the octagon, also at SLC’s Vivint Arena, and now returns as 205-pound champion to face Rountree. The challenger earned a shot at gold following five straight wins, including four knockouts.

“We have a great team here,” said Pereira, who usually trains at Glover Teixeira’s team in Danbury, Conn. “We have Glover, Plinio [Cruz], Yousri [Belgaroui], ‘Cesinha’ [Cesar Almeida]. Sean Strickland is also coming next week to train with us here. I’m very happy with this preparation.”

Pereira vs. Rountree serves as the main event for UFC 307, with bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington defending her throne versus Julianna Peña in the co-main event slot.

Meanwhile, Strickland is campaigning for a rematch with UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis next, but the company has yet to make an announcement on who will get the shot at 185 pounds.

Anthony Joshua still has plans to be a champion again.

The British boxing star fell flat against fellow Englishman Daniel Dubois this past Saturday, being thoroughly dominated for the majority of the contest before Dubois put him down for the count in Round 5 in front of a packed house at London’s Wembley Stadium. Joshua was attempting to hold heavyweight gold for the first time since 2021, but it was Dubois that successfully defended his IBF title while earning the biggest win of his career.

On Monday, Joshua released a statement on social media, thanking his supporters and vowing to continue his run back to the top.

“Yes, I know we came up short, but we’ve got to look at all the positives,” Joshua said. “That’s the mindset and that’s the perspective that we have to have, a positive one. Always. Look at what we’ve achieved in the space of 11 years, it’s phenomenal and I want to thank every single one of you that’s been riding with me. What a roller-coaster journey.

“But you know what the problem is? Is that it’s far from over yet. We’ve done it once, we’ve done it twice. Doing it a third time hasn’t been easy, but I believe it’s something I can achieve. It’s about making the right steps forward, working hard, and proving, and it’s got to come from here [taps chest] more than anything. It can’t come from any external voices or influences, it’s got to come from here, and it’s only been a day, but when I sit back and I’m thinking, I know I’ve got a lot of this. I know I’ve got a lot of this.”

Joshua, who turns 35 in October, had rattled off four consecutive victories to rebound from a pair of losses to Oleksandr Usyk. He followed a pair of wins over veterans Otto Wallin and Robert Helenius with a stunning knockout of former UFC champion Francis Ngannou, and an impressive performance against Dubois could have set up a long-awaited matchup with Tyson Fury.

Fury is currently set to rematch Usyk on Dec. 21 after losing to the Ukrainian star this psat May. It’s unclear what path Joshua has to eventually booking a matchup with either of this would-be heavyweight rivals, but it sounds like he’s willing to put the work in.

“Keep your seat belts tight, because deep, deep, deep down in here, I know we’ve got a lot more to bring and a lot more to bring to the game,” Joshua said. “Long may it continue.”

Dan Hooker thinks Conor McGregor has more to gain from fighting him than Michael Chandler.

McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC) was slated to return against Chandler (23-8 MMA, 2-3 UFC), but after he withdrew from their UFC 303 booking in June, Chandler decided to move on. He runs things back with Charles Oliveira in the UFC 309 co-main event Nov. 16 in New York.

Chandler booking another fight left McGregor confused, as “The Notorious” still sees Chandler as a possibility for his return fight.  However, Hooker (24-12 MMA, 14-8 UFC) thinks Chandler no longer make sense for McGregor. “The Hangman” entered the UFC’s top five lightweight rankings with a win over Mateusz Gamrot at UFC 305.

“He’s without a fight,” Hooker told Submission Radio on McGregor. “I know Conor’s hungry to fight, and fight someone that he can get something from and makes a lot of sense. That’s why I feel like Chandler kind of sitting there and waiting, and not staying active, you kind of lose. What does he get out of beating Chandler? He knocks out Michael Chandler in the first round, Conor McGregor doesn’t even get in that top five off of that performance.”

Hooker is confused to see Chandler run things back with Oliveira (34-10 MMA, 22-10 UFC). He understands Chandler’s motivation to avenge his 2021 title loss, but doesn’t see much incentive for Oliveira.

He teased big news coming up for himself, too.

“I get why they kind of put that fight together,” Hooker said. “That’s a big fight for the division. But I don’t know – it’s a weird fight. I was kind of trying to justify the fight, but no, it’s just a weird fight.Yeah, that might be just because I might have something up my sleeve, as well Might have a little something in the fire there, but it must be good if I’m saying nothing.

“I get why Chandler would want the fight. Obviously, if he gets by Oliveira, the UFC has kind of promised him a title shot, I’m sure of it. I don’t know too much about what Charles will get out of it. At our level, when you’re at the top five, top six in the division, it’s any man’s day. All of these fights are a bit of a coin flip.”

Valentina Shevchenko didn’t keep receipts, but she was definitely shocked to see how many professional fighters picked against her in the trilogy with Alexa Grasso at UFC 306.

While she was winning the majority of their first fight until getting caught with a submission late in the fourth round and then by all accounts deserving of a win in the rematch if not for some controversial scoring from the judges, Shevchenko somehow felt like she was being underrated ahead of the third fight.

That’s why she felt the need to put the nail in the coffin when it came to her rivalry with Grasso and what resulted was a one-sided fight from start to finish.

“Surprisingly for me, many UFC fighters, many pro fighters when they had their picks before our third fight they said ‘Grasso … oh Grasso.’ It was kind of one-sided,” Shevchenko told MMA Fighting.

“It was a little bit surprising for me that I would take it from people who don’t know much about martial arts and they just want to see stupid in the striking, like [finding out] who has a stronger chin, a stronger head and it doesn’t involve too much technique, too much fighter IQ, too much of the character of the fighter. I would take it from those people but when pro fighters say that, it was like, oh my God. There’s something wrong with this world. That’s another reason I had to show domination. I had to show I’m superior in every field.”

A big part of the problem that Shevchenko identified was the way her trilogy with Grasso was promoted with the majority of the attention being paid to her opponent.

Shevchenko understood that UFC 306 was billed as a “love letter to Mexico” with the card built around celebrating Mexican Independence Day. Grasso was also the only Mexican champion competing at the event, so shining a brighter spotlight on her made sense.

That said, Shevchenko didn’t appreciate she was somehow forgotten when it came to the highlights from their previous two fights.

“When constantly, over the year, they’re showing the best moments of one fighter and it doesn’t show anything from the other fighter, but the people they don’t watch the full fight,” Shevchenko lamented. “They just see these small clips and they just hear it repeated and repeated. It’s kind of like this is how propaganda works. It’s kind of like [hard] to deal with.

“I knew, for example what had happened in the second fight, for example there is a combination, 10 successful hits from my side and one hit from her side. The media to promote the new champion, to celebrate everything, they get rid of all of my successful combinations and just focus on this one good combination from her. They repeat this over and over. People who didn’t watch the fight, and it’s sad, they don’t watch the fight — they just listen and see all these replays and they start to believe that it’s true.”

To counter that promotional push for Grasso leading into UFC 306, Shevchenko took it upon herself to leave no doubts this time around.

She out-struck Grasso on the feet, took her down eight times and racked up over 16 minutes of control time on the canvas. It was a clean sweep with unanimous 50-45 scorecards across the board as Shevchenko defeated Grasso and reclaimed her UFC flyweight title.

“I knew going into this fight, I cannot let this happen again,” Shevchenko said. “I didn’t have another choice. Don’t let her have these successful combinations, not even one. That’s why I was faster in the striking, she could not respond to my striking and I want to show my skills on the ground game because hearing all people say ‘Valentina you’re a striker, you’re going to be all striking, you don’t have wrestling.’ I don’t know why but they thought she could out-wrestle me. Yeah definitely it’s because of a lucky submission in the first fight when I lost my belt and everyone thought, ‘You are just a striker you don’t have a ground game.’ But I am a martial artist. I am an MMA fighter. I’m a complete fighter. I have to show that you forget, this is my ground game.

“It was no choice for me. They didn’t leave me another one. Just to completely destroy the game plan of Alexa and show that she cannot do anything, not in the striking, not in the wrestling, not in the grappling.”

With Grasso beaten and the UFC title back around her waist, Shevchenko is happy to put the past behind her, which is why she’s not calling out anybody by name when it came to the fighters who picked against her.

She’s happy to let bygones be bygones, although just know, Shevchenko is always watching.

“When you win the fight, you’re already passed it. You never look back,” Shevchenko said. “Every time I try to see the best in people, the good in people because I think this is important.

“Everyone can make errors. If you don’t have a chance to correct these errors for the people, how will it work? It never will work. That’s why there’s no trust for each other. I give people a second chance.”