Check out this week’s “Spinning Back Clique,” MMA Junkie’s weekly live show that takes a spin through the biggest topics in mixed martial arts.
This week’s panel of special guest and UFC Hall of Famer [autotag]Cub Swanson[/autotag], Brian “Goze” Garcia, and Nolan King will join host “Gorgeous” George Garcia live at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) to discuss and debate:
- The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency pulled a stunner when it announced it no longer would be the UFC’s drug-testing partner starting in 2024. The organization specifically singled out Conor McGregor and a presumption that the UFC will try to skirt the rules and let him fight without being in the testing pool for six months with two clean tests. The UFC said USADA is dirty. There is all kinds of stuff to unpack here – including the part we’ve all wondered about for months, which is what will happen when McGregor is ready to return sooner than the USADA standard?
- UFC 294 got a new main event when former lightweight champion Charles Oliveira pulled out of his rematch with champ Islam Makhachev. Instead, featherweight titleholder Alexander Volkanovski will take one more crack at becoming a two-division champ. He lost to Makhachev in February going after the 155-pound belt, and he jumped at the chance for a rematch sooner than he expected.
- To go with that new headliner in Abu Dhabi, the co-main event changed when Paulo Costa pulled out of his fight against the unbeaten Khamzat Chimaev. So ex-welterweight champ Kamaru Usman will move up to middleweight for the first time in the UFC and will try to snap his two-fight skid in perhaps the toughest way possible. We’ll look at the stakes for everyone involved.
- The Logan Paul vs. Dillon Danis boxing match was about what most people expected. It also appears to have drawn a lot of attention. We’ll look at that fight, plus Derrick Lewis’ short-notice shot in Brazil, the UFC’s bonus decisions, the new Sphere in Las Vegas, and much more …