The Co-Main Event MMA Podcast

The fights themselves were not necessarily the story for either Jake Paul or Jon Jones, during what has to be considered one of the biggest combat sports weekends in recent memory. For Jake Paul, it wasn’t really that interesting that he went out there on Friday and beat the Ghost of Mike Tyson at Cowboy Stadium in front of a reported 65 million households on Netflix. The story was how many people watched, and how they reacted. Meanwhile, for Jones, his UFC 309 heavyweight championship fight against 42-year-old Stipe Miocic also went about as expected. The big plotline, though, is what Jones will do next.

Also, HEY, did you know we’re running a 50% off holiday special over at the CME Patreon? Right now through Dec. 15 you can get half off a monthly or annual membership if you head over to patreon.com/comainevent and enter the code 20E37 at checkout. Isn’t that something? Sounds like you should probably do that.

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Albeit for very different reasons, we’ve been looking forward to both Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic and Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul for a while now. Both fights have experienced lengthy delays (one owing to Jones’ torn pectoral, the other owing to Tyson “vomiting blood and defecating tar” on an airplane) and now they are going to share a single weekend. The spectacle that will be Tyson vs. Paul airs Friday night on Netflix, and perhaps even more than the fight itself, we’re keen to see what the reaction will be on that platform.

Jones and Miocic do the damn thing for the UFC heavyweight title the next night from Madison Square Garden in the main event of UFC 309. It’ll be Jones’ second foray into the big boy division, while Miocic returns for the first time since 2021. What will happen? Well, oddsmakers think they know. Is there any chance we might be surprised?

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Belal Muhammad is out of his scheduled title defense against Shavkat THAT BOY GOOD Rakhmonov at UFC 310, owing to an infected bone in his toe. Say what? An infected BONE? We didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen. The hunt is now on for a replacement and you KNOW who the UFC is going to call first. Alex Pereira, that’s who. Honestly, though, hasn't Poatan done enough? Can’t we just leave this guy a lone for a few months? Meanwhile, Rahkmonov has called out Kamaru Usman for an interim title fight. Hmmmm … not sure what we think about that.

Plus, Brandon Moreno reminds us who the F he is and Conor McGregor proves for the 1,073rd time that he is a bad person.

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What a strange mix of emotions we felt watching UFC 308. On one hand, it was cool to see guys like Ilia Topuria and Khamzat Chimaev score big wins to solidify themselves among the next wave of MMA’s great fighters. But why, oh why, did it have to happen at the expense of our beloved Max Holloway and Robert Whittaker? In the end it was another stark reminder that fighting is not like other sports. In football or baseball or soccer, your favorite player gets old and gets cut from the team. Maybe they embarrass themselves by signing as a free agent somewhere else and hanging on too long before sailing away into a cushy retirement. No biggie. But, in combat sports, JFC, we have to watch them get brutally knocked out or, in some cases, get their teeth broken and their jaws CRUNCHED.

But also maybe … that’s why we watch?

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There are a lot of lean times in MMA. A lot of times where it feels like, for lack of a better term, ain’t shit goin’ on. This is not one of them. With Francis Ngannou making his return to MMA last Saturday with a first-round KO over Renan Ferreira in PFL and this Saturday offering us Ilia Topuria vs. Max Holloway at UFC 308, well, that’s about as good a couple of weekends as we’re gonna get in the year of our lord 2024.

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This Saturday in Saudi Arabia, Francis Ngannou returns to the cage for the first time since January 2022. A lot has transpired since then, as we all know: Big Fran left the UFC amid a bitter contract dispute, he made a lot of money boxing, he suffered unthinkable personal tragedy … and now, he’s going to show up to fulfill his obligations to PFL by fighting Renan Ferreira on the fight company’s “Battle of the Giants” pay-per-view.

Seems like a lot could go wrong here, both for the now 38-year-old Ngannou and the PFL, which frankly has a pretty good PPV card here it hasn't promoted very well. So, does Battle of the Giants come up big … or small?

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UFC 307 was not one for the record books. In fact, right up to the point that Alex Pereira and Khalil Rountree Jr. took the cage for the light heavyweight title fight main event, it was sort of a stinker. But then Pereira and Rountree went to war – and it was pretty glorious. Shoutout to Rountree for showing up and showing out better than we had any right to expect. Ultimately, though, it was Pereira once again proving that not only is he the best 205-pounder on the planet, but he's also the UFC's MVP.

Seriously, though, don’t call him again for a while. He sounds like he needs some time off.

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Alex Pereira sure fights a lot. Saturday’s light heavyweight title defense against Khalil Rountree Jr. at UFC 307 will be Poatan’s fourth fight in the last calendar year and also his 10th in the UFC since his promotional debut in Nov. 2021. Especially at the championship level, that’s a fairly absurd output. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that we’ve seen come back to bite people in the past. This weekend, however, Pereira is almost a 5-to-1 favorite against the surprise challenger. So … that should be good enough to get him through. Right?

Plus, it’s unfair, but we’re all just sort of waiting for Raquel Pennington and Juliana Pena to get this one over with so one of them can fight Kayla Harrison (assuming Harrison ALSO wins on Saturday). 

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The UFC’s long-awaited, much hyped debut at Sphere in Las Vegas finally went down Saturday and – you know what? – it was actually pretty cool. The visuals were stunning, the atmosphere was unique and it was refreshing to see the fight company break out of its cookie-cutter mold and take some chances. Now, was it the greatest night in the history of combat sports or whatever? Probably not. Did the venue itself largely overshadow the fights (some of which were kinda meh)? Yeah, it did.

But, long story short, we’d like to see more Sphere. We’d like the UFC to continue to Sphere. Added Sphering seems like it would be cool.

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Well, Main-iacs, the time is finally here. This is the week the UFC heads across town to (the) Sphere for UFC 306. Dana White has convinced himself that the dummies on the internet said he couldn’t do it, so a lot is riding on how things come out. The UFC is promising short films between fights and that the fights themselves will take place in “different worlds.” What’s that mean? We don’t know!

Oh, also, Sean O’Malley defends his men’s bantamweight title against Merab Dwalishvili and Alexa Grasso looks to settle her feud with Valentina Shevchenko.

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