Celebrate MMA Junkie Radio’s 3,500th episode with “Gorgeous” George and “Goze” as they welcomed in a plethora of big-name guests.
Thursday’s episode of MMA Junkie Radio is like no other!
Hosts “Gorgeous” George and “Goze” celebrated their 3,500th episode with a special live stream of the show.
A plethora of big-name guests joined the show, including UFC stars of the past and present: [autotag]Jorge Masvidal[/autotag], [autotag]Michael Chandler[/autotag], [autotag]Randy Couture[/autotag], Chael Sonnen, [autotag]Rashad Evans[/autotag], [autotag]Gilbert Melendez[/autotag], [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag], [autotag]Johny Hendricks[/autotag], and [autotag]Frank Trigg[/autotag]. Also joining the show were Xtreme Couture head coach Eric Nicksick, UFC reporter Megan Olivi, commedian/actor Joey Diaz, the legendary Burt Watson, as well as members of the MMA Junkie staff. Tune in!
You can watch the live stream of episode #3500 in the video above.
Keep up with the BKFC KnuckleMania 4 official results and watch the prelims live on MMA Junkie.
BKFC KnuckleMania 4 took place Friday, and you can check out the official results and watch a replay of the preliminary card below.
The 12-fight bareknuckle boxing event takes place at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The main card airs live on fuboTV and the BKFC app.
Headlining the event was a clash between UFC veterans [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag] and [autotag]Thiago Alves[/autotag]. The co-main was a title fight between BKFC heavyweight champ [autotag]Mick Terrill[/autotag] and former two-division BKFC champ [autotag]Lorenzo Hunt[/autotag]. In addition, another UFC veteran matchup was on the docket, a heavyweight matchup with No. 1 contender status on the line, [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag].
You can watch the prelims in the video above and check out the live and official results below.
BKFC KnuckleMania 4 official results include:
MAIN CARD (fubo TV/BKFC)
Mike Perry def. Thiago Alves via TKO (punches) – Round 1, 1:00
Mick Terrill def. Lorenzo Hunt via TKO (injury) – Round 1, 1:48 – for heavyweight title
Ben Rothwell def. Todd Duffee via TKO (injury) – Round 1, 0:43
It goes down as a victory for Ben Rothwell, but his anticipated BKFC KnuckleMania 4 showdown with Todd Duffee wasn’t what he wanted.
LOS ANGELES – It goes down as a victory for [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag], but Saturday’s anticipated BKFC KnuckleMania 4 showdown with [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] wasn’t what he wanted.
Rothwell (3-0) and fellow former UFC heavyweight Duffee (0-1) came out firing after the opening bell, with Rothwell knocking down Duffee twice in the first 0:43 seconds of their bout at Peacock Theater. The second time proved to be the finish as Duffee suffered an apparent right shoulder injury when he fell to the canvas. He immediately pointed to it, forcing referee Dan Miragliota to wave off the fight.
Rothwell, whom Duffee laid into verbally after he fell ill and pulled out of their originally scheduled bout last December, expressed his frustration afterward.
“No, I came here to knock him the f*ck out for all of you,” Rothwell said during his post-fight interview. “He clipped my nose, and I was about to get my payback. He got hit the first time he got knocked down, and the fight was already over there. I just needed to get one good connection, and this would’ve been a good, clean knockout. I can’t control my opponent.
I’m sorry to everybody, man. I came here to perform. You can see the work I put in. I came here to get myself into a title fight.”
[lawrence-related id=2737168]
Whether or not that’ll happen after a victory earned because of an injury remains to be seen, but Rothwell took his shot on microphone.
“Of course, (a title shot) is what I want,” Rothwell said. “But the performance got taken away from me just now. I think everybody knows what I’m about and what I was going to do. Thank you. The fans of BKFC know because I’m fighting for all of you. I’m going to get that belt. I’m going to go in there and sign every autograph and take every photo I can with all of you. This is what I do it for.”
In addition to a disappointment for Rothwell through no fault of his own, the fight was even more so for Duffee, whose return to MMA after a four-year hiatus didn’t go well last year as he lost by first-round TKO to KSW champion Phil De Fries in February 2023. Now he’s followed that up with an unfortunate injury defeat in his BKFC debut.
Watch the ceremonial weigh-ins for BKFC KnuckleMania 4, which features Mike Perry vs. Thiago Alves in the main event.
The BKFC KnuckleMania 4 weigh-ins takes place Friday, and you can watch a live stream of the event right here on MMA Junkie beginning at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT).
The ceremonial weigh-ins take place at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, the same venue that hosts the event Saturday night. BKFC KnuckleMania 4, one of the promotion’s biggest cards of the year, takes place Saturday at Peacock Theater. The main card airs on fuboTV and the BKFC App.
Headlining the event is a clash between UFC veterans [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag] and [autotag]Thiago Alves[/autotag]. The co-main is a title fight between BKFC heavyweight champ [autotag]Mick Terrill[/autotag] and former two-division BKFC champ [autotag]Lorenzo Hunt[/autotag]. In addition, another UFC veteran matchup is on the docket, a heavyweight matchup with No. 1 contender status on the line, [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag].
Watch the ceremonial weigh-ins for BKFC KnuckleMania 4, which features Mike Perry vs. Thiago Alves in the main event.
The BKFC KnuckleMania 4 weigh-ins takes place Friday, and you can watch a live stream of the event right here on MMA Junkie beginning at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT).
The ceremonial weigh-ins take place at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, the same venue that hosts the event Saturday night. BKFC KnuckleMania 4, one of the promotion’s biggest cards of the year, takes place Saturday at Peacock Theater. The main card airs on fuboTV and the BKFC App.
Headlining the event is a clash between UFC veterans [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag] and [autotag]Thiago Alves[/autotag]. The co-main is a title fight between BKFC heavyweight champ [autotag]Mick Terrill[/autotag] and former two-division BKFC champ [autotag]Lorenzo Hunt[/autotag]. In addition, another UFC veteran matchup is on the docket, a heavyweight matchup with No. 1 contender status on the line, [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag].
Check out the fighter faceoffs that followed the BKFC KnuckleMania 4 press conference in Los Angeles.
The BKFC KnuckleMania 4 pre-fight news conference took place Thursday, and fighters from the top fights came face-to-face for the first time during fight week.
The event set to go down Saturday at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, features [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Thiago Alves[/autotag] in the main event. The co-feature will see BKFC heavyweight champ [autotag]Mick Terrill[/autotag] take on former two-division BKFC champ [autotag]Lorenzo Hunt[/autotag], who is chasing a third title. In addition, both sides of a UFC veteran matchup, [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] and [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag] will field questions from the media in attendance.
Following Thurday’s press conference, fighters from the top four bouts on the card got up close and personal, and you can watch the faceoffs in the video above.
BKFC KnuckleMania 4, one of the promotion’s biggest cards of the year, takes place Saturday at Peacock Theater. The main card airs on fuboTV and the BKFC App.
What better time than the end of the year for UFC and MMA notables to reflect on who they appreciated most in 2023.
‘”As real as it gets” is the UFC’s slogan to describe just how realistic MMA combat can be. But before fighters get to any of the face punching, they typically share a moment of respect, a moment of peace that represents their mutual acknowledgment for the struggle to arrive at the moment: the touch of gloves.
Fighters might beat each other up for as much as 25 minutes, but the respect for one another and the sport seldom goes away and the martial arts spirt is always with them.
In this year’s edition of “Touch of Gloves,” we see that spirt come to life as fighters, coaches and more show appreciation to the people they think especially deserve a shoutout for what they did in 2023:
[autotag]Anthony Pettis[/autotag] on [autotag]Francis Ngannou[/autotag]
[autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag] on [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag]
[autotag]Beneil Dariush[/autotag] on [autotag]Merab Dvalishvili[/autotag]
[autotag]Cain Velasquez[/autotag] on [autotag]Islam Makhachev[/autotag]
[autotag]Manel Kape[/autotag] on [autotag]Patchy Mix[/autotag]
Ben Rothwell points to his track record in response to anyone questioning the circumstances around his fight-week withdrawal at BKFC 56.
[autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag] points to his track record in response to anyone questioning the circumstances surrounding his fight-week withdrawal at BKFC 56.
Rothwell was announced to be out of his scheduled heavyweight matchup with fellow former UFC heavyweight Todd Duffee this past Saturday just two days before the event. He came down with an illness early in the week, and despite trying to find a path to a quick recovery and the chance to compete, it simply wasn’t in the cards.
“Right now in my area of Wisconsin, we’re facing the highest cases of COVID and the flu ever,” Rothwell told MMA Junkie Radio. “Not just for the year, but ever. I got, not quite a 3-year-old, but a little baby. He does daycare. No blaming him, either, but everyone with children knows it increases your chances, so just doing our best to be healthy. I’ve been good, I’ve been doing awesome, and then Sunday night rolls around, he starts getting sick. I get worried; I panic. Monday, it’s starting to get worse. So I call my management, and we talked to Dave (Feldman) and they’re like, ‘Let’s just see. Maybe it passes.’ So we’re trying.
“Tuesday rolls around and I’m like, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ I was a wreck. All I know is on Tuesday we’re trying, and David Feldman’s like, ‘Here’s some options. Let’s try to do this and see if we can still make the fight.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I want to do it more than anything.’ This was all happening in the morning. By the afternoon it was like, there’s no way. We called it. All day Wednesday and Thursday I had the flu. I was laid out. No commission on the planet was going to OK me to fight in that condition anyway.”
As Rothwell sat at home trying to get himself physically right, Duffee attended the BKFC 56 pre-fight press conference and used the platform to trash his opponent. Duffee claimed Rothwell “lost to Thanksgiving” and ate too much to make weight for the fight, then also indicated Rothwell was weak for not fighting with COVID-19, which he claims to have done himself during the pandemic.
Rothwell, 42, didn’t take the comments personally or get upset with them but said everything to come out of Duffee’s mouth was quite outrageous.
“I know Todd made a comment about fighting with COVID,” Rothwell said. “I don’t know why he said that. Why would you say you knowingly fought with COVID? No you didn’t. And if you did, that sucks for your opponent. Not only do I want to fight at my best, obviously. I’ve fought with injuries. I’ve probably fought with colds before. But there’s just some things where it’s not going to work, then risking affecting everybody on the plane, everybody at the fight, all the BKFC staff. It just feels pretty selfish if you just knowingly subject everyone to that anyway, pretty irresponsible. I don’t do any of those things. And I wasn’t moving. Wednesday and Thursday, it was a mess.
“Todd Duffee made comments like, ‘Oh I lost to Thanksgiving with my weight.’ It’s hilarious. It’s like, dude, I have more than 50 fights, and I weighed in at 265 for those fights. I walk around big all the time. I’ve always cut weight. Everybody knows I’ve been doing this for a long time, always cut weight, and I made 265. This fight was at 275. That ain’t a f*cking problem, man. I’ll make the weight. But when you have the flu and you’re laid out sick, that doesn’t f*cking matter. I think he’s mostly just upset. I’ve been there too. I’ve been on both ends of this. I’ve had guys pull out not just a week out – I got on the scale, I weighed in and UFC officials came to me and go, ‘Yeah, your guy is out.’ So it’s like, I’ve been there.”
Rothwell admits he was “heartbroken” by the entire situation but thinks the fight with Duffee will be salvaged, potentially in February. He also expressed interest in facing newly crowned BKFC heavyweight champion Mick Terrill but said he will oblige to whichever direction BKFC brass want to take him.
“This is only the second time I’ve pulled out (in) 24 years, over 50 professional fights, only the second time I’ve pulled out with illness,” Rothwell said. “The other time was against Cro Cop in like my second UFC fight. Then I’ve had two injuries, one was my shoulder then something random over the years. That’s pretty good. If you look at all the fights I’ve got, I’ve still got a pretty good record of being there and showing up. So it just sucks. It was really bad timing.”
The co-main event between [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag] and [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag] has been postponed after Rothwell came down with an illness, BKFC president David Feldman announced Thursday at the BKFC 56 news conference.
“Ben Rothwell actually came down really, really sick this morning, and he’s not going to be able to compete,” Feldman said. “We tried to get a last-minute replacement for Todd Duffee, and we just couldn’t line it up, so we’re going to push that for February. Sorry to the fans for that one, but we still have a stacked card.”
Duffee, who still attended the BKFC 56 news conference, wasn’t happy with the development and took a shot at Rothwell for withdrawing.
“I fought with COVID my last fight, so I really think Ben’s real fight is happening with the scale,” Duffee said. “I think Thanksgiving was his biggest opponent. I don’t know what else to really add to that. Again, I fought with COVID, I understand what it’s like, but you make a commitment, you try to get out there and make it happen. I don’t think Ben by any means is a weak man. Maybe he’s going through something I don’t understand, but I think his biggest fight was Thanksgiving. And I think that’s where he lost.”
This was supposed to be Duffee’s debut in bareknuckle boxing, but now he’ll have to wait until the first quarter of next year. Rothwell was set to make his third BKFC appearance since his UFC departure in March 2022. Rothwell is 2-0 in bareknuckle.
Watch the final news conference ahead of BKFC 56, which features 12 fighters, including headliners Mike Perry and Eddie Alvarez.
The BKFC 56 fight-week news conference takes place Thursday, and you can watch a live stream of the festivities right here on MMA Junkie beginning at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT).
The news conference is set to go down at Bucked Up National Headquarters in American Fork, Utah with 12 fighters and BKFC president David Feldman expected to be in attendance. Former UFC champion [autotag]Eddie Alvarez[/autotag] and former UFC standout [autotag]Mike Perry[/autotag], who headline the event, will be there, as well as co-headliners [autotag]Ben Rothwell[/autotag] and [autotag]Todd Duffee[/autotag], both former UFC heavyweights. The event also features three championship bouts and another pair of former UFC standouts throwing down, [autotag]Jeremy Stephens[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Jimmie Rivera[/autotag].
BKFC 56, one of the promotion’s biggest cards of the year, takes place Saturday at Maverik Center in Salt Lake City. The main card airs on FITE and the BKFC App.
You can watch the fight-week news conference in the video above.
