We’re sad that Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic is off pretty much indefinitely due to Jones’ torn pec, but UFC 295 still looks pretty OK. It’s admittedly a little top heavy – no need to stack the card when you thought you had JBJ vs. Stipe, eh? – but the revamped main and co-main still look pretty cool. Jiri Prochazka returns from the worst shoulder injury in the history of shoulders to take on former middleweight champ Alex Pereira for the vacant light heavyweight title. Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich duke it out for an interim heavyweight title. Seems like a couple good fights that might clean up the messes in the UFC's heaviest weight classes.

Plus, some people were impressed by Jailton Almeida's win over Derrick Lewis and some people weren’t and shit maybe just got really real for the UFC in its antitrust case.

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MMA people, what did we just see? Francis Ngannou went over there to Saudi Arabia over the weekend and DID THE DAMN THING against heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Ngannou out-performed even our most generous expectations, knocking Fury down in the third and taking him to a (kinda bullshit?) split decision. It was, without a doubt, one of the greatest underdog performances in the history of professional sports.

This week on the Proper, we discuss, among other things: My God, Francis showed out. How to even put this fight in historical perspective? So, what's next? Does Francis become a full-time boxer or does he have some MMA left in him? How bad did the UFC fuck up here? And when will we hear from Noted Boxing Fan Dana White about this fight?

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UFC 294 was a weird one. Islam Makhachev and Khamzat Chimaev both scored big victories over short-notice replacements, but the event also was marred by low blows, fence grabs, illegal knees, some super weird ringside doctoring, a couple people showing up with staph, rumors the UFC had once again banned flags from the Octagon and – of all things – Paolo Costa trying to brawl random fans in the stands. So, yeah, it was bizarre.

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So, just a couple weeks before the UFC is set to head to Abu Dhabi with a fairly marquee card, they lose BOTH their co-main event and main event to some unexpected misadventure. In this case, it was a cut to Charles Oliveira and surgery for Paulo Costa that forced them out of their respective bouts. This type of swerve might spell disaster for any other promoter, but not so for the UFC. When you've got the power and influence of an organization that controls more than 90% of your chosen market, you just reload, brother.

The UFC brought in featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski to take Oliveira's place in a lightweight title fight against Islam Makhachev and former welterweight titlist Kamaru Usman to sub in for Costa in a middleweight bout against Khamzat Chimaev. In other words, still pretty awesome.

Damn. Must be nice.

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UFC President Dana White this week confirmed earlier social media posts from Conor McGregor that the fighter had "sent his stuff" to UFC drug czar Jeff Novitsky, but said that McGregor was not back in the USADA testing pool quite yet. "I literally have nothing planned for Conor McGregor right now,” White said. Could this possibly be true? Has White finally realized that it's impossible to plan anything with the wily Irishman? But, if that's so, why did McGregor apply to get back into the pool at the exact six-month deadline he'd need if he were going to headline UFC 300 in April, 2024? It's a mystery.

Plus, Bobby Green KOed Grant Dawson so fast he didn't even know what hand he did it with and ... well, this seems like a VERY Bellator end for Bellator, doesn't it?

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Bellator 300 happens this weekend at Pechanga Arena in San Diego. Three titles on the line. Seventeen fights total. Under normal circumstances you could chalk it down as a gala celebration of Scott Coker's alternative American MMA organization making it to the big Three Double Oh. Unfortunately, with rampant rumors that PFL is about to buy it and that Bellator has one, maybe two events left ... well, that casts a pall, doesn't it?

Plus, the UFC's unstoppable fight engine roars back to life with Grant Dawson vs. Bobby Green and the California State Athletic Commission continues to actually try to do a good job.

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We got more listener mail than we expected coming out of last weekend’s Fight Night card – Thanks, Bryce! – and with no UFC event scheduled for this weekend we thought, what the hell, let’s answer as many of them as we can. So, we take your queries about the bummer ending of Fiziev vs. Gamrot, Bryce Mitchell’s bible thumping, excitement levels for Jiri vs. Pereira, whether ALL fighters will soon be DWCS fighters and a whole lot more.

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Nobody loves a 10-8 round more than Mike Bell. That Mike Bell is a 10-8in' MFer to be sure. Let him out of your sight for even one second and Mike Bell will score a round 10-8. Valentina Shevchenko found that out the hard way on Saturday at UFC Noche, as Bell's 10-8 scorecard in favor of Alexa Grasso in the pivotal fifth round of their title fight denied Shevchenko the opportunity to regain the women's flyweight championship and maybe sent her to the back of the contender line. The split draw that let Grasso hold onto the title, however, should not overshadow the fact she and Shevchenko had a hell of a fight (again). So, where does Mike Bell's 10-8in' ass leave the 125-pound division? We discuss.

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It was no dream. There is no waking up from this one. Sean Strickland really DID show up on Saturday at UFC 293 and take the middleweight title from Israel Adesanya by shocking unanimous decision. This was no lucky punch or freak injury. Nope. Sean Strickland just went out there and did Sean Strickland stuff and Adesanya basically had no answer for it. Un-fucking-believable.

Did we (and by "we" I mean I -- Chad) make this happen? Look, we were just trying to bring some Silly Little Guy energy to our bets on last week's Power Hour, but it seems possible we did spark the wrath of the MMA Gods by including Izzy in all of our parlays. Sorry about that. Now we all have a few months of a Strickland title reign to suffer through before somebody inevitably beats him. What will that be like? Who's next ? And what does the UFC do with the suddenly 1-2 Adesanya? We discourse.

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Hey, Co-Mainiacs, here's a tasty lfree sample of what's going on behind the paywall over at Patreon.com/comainevent. If you like it, you might consider signing up and joining the team? Remember, all our Patreon content appears ad free!

We've wanted to get the big homie Patrick Wyman on the show for a long time. You've all asked for it and we thought we could have a super cool and interesting talk with him, but couldn't get the timing to work out until this week. Once we got Patrick on the ol' Zoom machine, however, it was amazing. We had so much fun, we felt compelled to make this episode of DDT available to everyone. If you like it, well, maybe consider leveling up to the $10 or $20 patronage tier, eh? Then we can all be best friends.

Patrick has just launched his new podcast The Pursuit of Dadliness to go along with his other successful endeavors like the Tides of History Podcast and his great book The Verge. Ben and I will both be guests on upcoming episodes of the new podcast. So, this week, we talk about the idea of dadliness, how to balance work and kids and everything else, and why we lift all those damn weights.

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