Cris Cyborg has collected a championship in just about every major promotion – except ONE.
[autotag]Cris Cyborg[/autotag] has collected a championship in just about every major promotion – except ONE.
Cyborg (28-2), a former UFC, Bellator, Strikeforce, and Invicta FC champion, claimed the PFL superfights women’s featherweight title when she defeated Larissa Pacheco in October. Could she add a sixth belt under the ONE Championship banner? Vice president [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag] thinks the promotion would certainly entertain that idea.
“I think this is a Chatri (Sityodtong) conversation. Chatri and Matt Hume, because Matt Hume is head of competition, but I think that’s definitely a conversation that they would at least be interested in having,” Franklin told MMA Junkie Radio. “It’s not one of those things where it’s like, ‘No, we’re not interested in that.’ That’s something that would for sure intrigue them,
“And I say that because as a fan, I would personally be intrigued. If I was outside this organization, I would be willing to watch and say, ‘Oh, can Cyborg capture … she’s making her way up the ranks in ONE Championship.’ I would be willing to watch that as a fan. So, I think that’s something that they would definitely be open to having a conversation about.”
However, in MMA, ONE Championship doesn’t currently have a women’s featherweight division for Cyborg to compete in. Cyborg has predominantly competed at 145 pounds throughout her career and holds notable wins over Gina Carano, Holly Holm, Julia Budd, Cat Zingano, and Pacheco.
Given one of the worst defeats of his UFC career, Rich Franklin has an idea of Sage Northcutt’s struggle before ONE Fight Night 10.
When [autotag]Sage Northcutt[/autotag] was in the hospital, [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag] made sure to visit him.
“It was a pretty devastating shot,” Franklin recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “The injuries were fairly severe. It wasn’t like he broke an arm and had to get casted, in and out. He spent some time there, so I stopped in.”
Northcutt, a UFC veteran once highly touted as a prospect, finally makes his return to competition Friday at ONE Fight Night 10 in Broomfield, Colo. Northcutt takes on Ahmed Mujtaba in a lightweight bout (170 pounds under ONE Championship rules) in his first fight in nearly four years. The card streams on Amazon Prime Video.
Franklin, a former UFC middleweight champion and current ONE Championship VP, can only imagine what Northcutt, 27, has endured to get back to this point. In another sense, Franklin also feels like he can relate.
In 2006, Franklin was beat up badly by Anderson Silva, who claimed the UFC middleweight title with a vicious first-round knockout. Franklin remembers how “gun shy” he was in his next fight vs. Jason MacDonald and understands the nerves Northcutt might be feeling ahead of his return.
“I would imagine some of this is a bit of a mental exercise for him. After I lost my match to Anderson Silva, I was a little gun shy in that first match back,” Franklin said. “Until I got hit in the face one time, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what it feels like.’ Even though I had sparred and been hit a couple times sparring, but still, I can remember when I was slipping and overcompensating on my slips, slipping too far out of the way of the punch. … I can remember moving my head all over the place. Then finally like midway through that round I started settling in.”
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Franklin went on to beat MacDonald in that 2007 fight by second-round TKO when MacDonald’s corner threw in the towel.
Perhaps Northcutt (11-3), who left the UFC on a three-fight winning streak before signing with ONE, can return to similar success, but Franklin knows it won’t be easy.
“Some of that will be a bit of a mental exercise for him. This is not an easy matchup, much like the Jason Macdonald matchup was not an easy matchup (for me) either. That guy was a killer,” Franklin said. “And so (Sage) is coming back, and this Mujtaba (guy) that he’s competing against, he’s legit as well. This is gonna be a fun one to watch.
“Sage obviously is an amazing athlete. You see what he can do acrobatically and everything. If he performs the way that he can and should and gets his head moving and puts his combinations together, this will be a good match to watch. Because Mujtaba is a tough, tough guy.”
Check out the latest episode of MMA Junkie Radio with “Gorgeous” George and “Goze.”
Thursday’s edition of MMA Junkie Radio with “Gorgeous” George and “Goze” is here.
On Episode 3,358, the boys bring on guest [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag], a former UFC middleweight champion who now is an exec for ONE Championship. Plus, they preview UFC 288, discuss Conor McGregor and Francis Ngannou news, and more. Tune in!
Stream or download this and all episodes of MMA Junkie Radio over at OmnyStudio. You can also catch it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and more. A new episode of the podcast is released every Monday and Thursday.
Ahead of his One Championship rematch, Demetrious Johnson had to have learned from his Adriano Moraes loss, says Rich Franklin.
If [autotag]Demetrious Johnson[/autotag] didn’t learn from his mistakes, he wouldn’t be who many consider to be the greatest flyweight fighter of all time, says former UFC middleweight champion [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag].
Franklin, who currently serves as vice president of ONE Championship, recently weighed in on the upcoming title rematch between Johnson (23-4-1) and [autotag]Adrian Moraes[/autotag] (20-3). The first meeting saw Moraes become the first man to finish Johnson when he did so with a violent combination and ground-and-pound.
Their rematch headlines ONE on Prime Video 1, which takes place Friday, Aug. 26 at Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, Singapore and streams on Prime Video.
In the short term, a loss is never good. Luckily for him, Johnson has only done so four times in his career. In the long term, however, Franklin thinks for a fighter of the caliber of Johnson, the loss will likely lead to improvement.
“As a fighter ages, one thing that you gain is experience and knowledge as you get older,” Franklin told MMA Junkie Radio. “At this stage of Demetrious’ career, and I say this tongue and cheek because I know DJ, at this stage of his career if he hasn’t learned how to deal properly with a loss and utilize what useful information that you can from that loss and discard the rest and move on, then I don’t think he’d be in the position that he’s in having as many title defenses and the accolades and everything he’s accomplished in his career.
“You have to get to a point where you can take the loss and move on with something like that. I do believe he’s coming to come into this fight with a clean slate sort of speak and perform at a top level where he’s not afraid to pull the trigger, sort of speak.”
As he added to his estimation of an improved “Mighty Mouse,” Franklin also speculated the fight will have a similar vibe to what the first did, prior to the finish. Moraes can’t get overconfident and bask in the flashback familiarity of victory – or he’ll pay the price, added Franklin.
“The first round is going to feel like an extra round,” Franklin said. “Adriano, his body type and fighting style, is a difficult matchup for Demetrious. Both of these guys know what the other is capable of. Adriano, he obviously shocked the world last time. To walk into the circle with the kind of confidence and swagger that, ‘I’m going to repeat, or take control of this match,’ Demetrious is not the kind of guy you want to do that with. He’s a strategist. He’s going to come in with a new game plan, so I think there will be a feeling-out process for the first round.
“… I think his key to victory in this if he’s going to win the match is to play with ranges and keep Adriano guessing. Adriano is so tall and long with those arms with good striking. With that height disadvantage Demetrious has, he’s going to have to play with his ranges and get to the inside.
Johnson has competed once since the loss, in a special hybrid rules match against muay thai superstar Rodtang Jitmuangnon. The first and third rounds were scheduled as muay thai, and the second and fourth rounds were scheduled as MMA. Johnson submitted Jitmuangnon in Round 2 with a rear-naked choke. Meanwhile, Moraes has also only competed once since their first meeting. He successfully defended his title when he submitted Yuya Wakamatsu in March.
Thursday’s edition of MMA Junkie Radio with hosts “Gorgeous” George and “Goze” is here.
Thursday’s edition of MMA Junkie Radio with hosts “Gorgeous” George and “Goze” is here.
On Episode 3,202, the fellas welcome guest [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag], a former UFC middleweight champion. They also break down Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 196 card and Bellator 269 in Moscow, which features the return of Fedor Emelianenko.
Stream or download this and all episodes of MMA Junkie Radio over at OmnyStudio. You can also catch it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and more. A new episode of the podcast is released every Monday and Thursday.
It’s not easy to walk away from fighting, but Rich Franklin has made a smooth transition.
Unlike many fighters, [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag] seemingly ended his professional fighting career and never looked back.
Even though the former UFC champion and current UFC Hall of Famer never made a comeback to MMA after hanging up his gloves, Franklin admits it wasn’t an easy transition to make. Franklin officially retired in the fall of 2015 with his last fight being in late 2012 – a knockout loss to Cung Lee in the main event of UFC on Fuel TV 6 in Macau.
“Theres a couple of things in play here,” Franklin recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “First of all, as an athlete, that is my first love. As a young boy, I dreamt of becoming a professional athlete, and I was able to fulfill that dream. When you get to an age where you can’t compete at a top level anymore, at least consistently at a top level, you have to look at doing something else and you have to remember that second thing you’re doing at the time is not your first draft pick, so to speak. It’s your second love, and that’s a difficult adjustment at first for a lot of people. Fortunately for me, I was able to secure a good career in the industry working for ONE Championship.”
Franklin has been serving as vice president for ONE Championship for several years now.
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On top of being an ambassador for the promotion, Franklin is also in change of the company’s Warrior Series, which is a set of events that host cards in different parts of the world in search of up-and-coming talent for the major ONE Championship events.
“Ace” said his work at ONE Championship has helped him replace his passion for getting in the cage.
“Within the umbrella of ONE Championship, we created the Warrior Series, and I run that project,” Franklin explained. “I’m the CEO of that particular company here in Singapore, so the good thing about that is that I pretty much have full creative control of what I want to do, where I want to go, the athletes we’re recruiting, the card that I put together with my matchmakers, and I work extensively with my team.
“The way that I run my team, it’s kind of like the knights at the round table because I believe everyone has something to contribute on the team, and it’s been a beautiful thing because I’ve taken that product specifically and treated it like my martial arts career. Every day, I sit there and think of how can I make the content that I’m putting out better, how can I be a better host for a travel show, and I treat it all the same. It’s the refinement process that I really I guess miss about competition, so I apply that to my role as an executive, and that’s what really keeps me motivated.
“So initially the transition was difficult, but once you take a look at something at a different angle and take the same approach with something else, it almost in a different kind of way feeds those competitive juices that I felt as an athlete.”
It’s getting close to a decade since Franklin was last seen in action, meaning there’s quite a few newcomers to the sport that don’t remember his time on top. It’s a measure the former UFC champ uses to distinguish the hardcore MMA fans.
“I think when you run into fans, the reality is that I haven’t competed live in a numbers of years now, so when I run into somebody that actually recognizes me, I’m like, ‘OK, you’re a true fan to recognize me seven or eight years after having competed,'” Franklin said.
Check out the full interview with Franklin in the video below.
Rich Franklin says Michael Bisping and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira are two fighters he would have liked to face during his UFC career.
UFC Hall of Famer and former middleweight champion [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag] has fought a who’s-who in MMA.
But despite being satisfied with his star-studded resume, Franklin (29-7 MMA, 13-7 UFC) said if there were two fighters he could have competed against, it would be fellow former UFC 185-pound champ [autotag]Michael Bisping[/autotag] and [autotag]Antonio Rogerio Nogueira[/autotag].
Franklin, who now works as an executive with ONE Championship, was scheduled to fight at UFC 133 in 2011, but Nogueira was forced off the card due to injury and the fight was scrapped.
“There’s some fun people – there’s some people that would have been a fun matchup, for sure,” Franklin told MMA Junkie. “I think Bisping and I would put on a really entertaining match. There was talk about that for some time. I was, at one point in time, matched up with Nogueira and he got injured. I think that would have been a fun fight to watch, as well.”
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But few have accumulated the fight resume of Franklin, who’s been in there with the likes former UFC middleweight king Anderson Silva, former UFC light heavyweight champ Chuck Liddell, Wanderlei Silva, Vitor Belfort and an array of other legends and champions.
“When you look at my career, from the moment I stepped into the big stage there in the UFC, my first match in the UFC was Evan Tanner,” Franklin said. “He was 8-1 at the time and his only loss was to Tito Ortiz. So from the moment I stepped into the big league, I was really swimming with the sharks.”
Franklin was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame this past July. Throughout his UFC career, only two of his fights weren’t part of pay-per-view events.
“After I won the title, from that moment on, this sport in particular, you don’t get any tomato cans,” Franklin said. “Everybody that you’re matched up against in mixed martial arts is the No. 1 contender every single time. And even after I lost my title, I still maintained main event status all the way till the end of my career. I was always fighting either top-five guys or former champions from the UFC or some other organization. My entire career was swimming with the sharks.”
ONE Championship’s VP isn’t concerned about wins and losses in the cage when assessing the trade with the UFC one year later.
The MMA world was taken by surprise last year when former UFC flyweight champion [autotag]Demetrious Johnson[/autotag] was “traded” to ONE Championship for former ONE welterweight titleholder [autotag]Ben Askren[/autotag].
And just over a year later, many have questioned the UFC for giving up one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time for Askren, who’s had a rough start to his UFC tenure.
Since joining the UFC, Askren (19-2 MMA, 1-2 UFC) picked up a controversial submission win over Robbie Lawler in March, and then was brutally knocked out by Jorge Masvidal in record time at UFC 239, suffering his first career loss as a pro. He then faced Demian Maia in a battle between two of the sport’s best grapplers. Askren lost that fight via fourth round submission last month, suffering his second straight loss.
Johnson (30-3), on the other hand, picked up three wins since departing from the UFC, en route to winning the ONE Championship flyweight grand prix.
But former UFC middleweight champion and current ONE vice president [autotag]Rich Franklin[/autotag] says despite how things have transpired for both fighters, he still views the trade as a win-win situation.
“It was a pretty straight forward trade from the business side,” Franklin told MMA Junkie. “Just kind of flip-flopped from one organization to the next, and so nothing tricky about it. And I’ll say this: Askren goes to the UFC, he’s competing against some of the top level guys obviously with Masvidal and what not, and then DJ comes over to ONE Championship and is competing against some of the top guys. People will make a comment like that based on athlete’s performance, but the reality, what you have to ask yourself: What kind of return on investment did the organization get on the trade?”
For Johnson, who was never a big UFC pay-per-view draw, he wasn’t given his due for his record number of title defenses and running through the flyweight division. Askren, who came out of retirement, never got a chance to show his true personality, which shined since he joined the UFC, making him one of its biggest stars.
That’s why Franklin sees the trade as beneficial for both parties, regardless of whether they’re winning or losing fights.
“DJ, for us, who maybe didn’t get the respect that he deserved in another organization, is going to do really well over here in ONE Championship,” Franklin said. “There are many fans on this side of the planet that gravitate towards the smaller athletes, and he puts on exciting matches. There’s no doubt about that, so for us, regardless if he’s winning or losing, that’s not as important as he’s a big draw. And likewise for Ben Askren moving to the UFC. Regardless of whether he’s winning or losing, he’s a big draw because people are going to be curious.”
“Even though he lost his last match to Demian Maia, when they find him for another match, people are still going to be interested in seeing how he performs,” Franklin added. “To see if, ‘Oh, maybe he had a rough start out of the gates or whatever,’ so they’re still getting a return on investment in that respect, and I think it was probably smart for both organizations because the UFC wasn’t getting a return on investment in Demetrious.”
