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Islam Makhachev finishing the most decorated grappler in UFC history secured him lightweight gold and MMA Junkie’s Submission of the Year for 2022.
With another action-packed year of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie takes a look at the best submissions from January to December 2022.
As voted on by our entire staff, here are the top 10 and winner of MMA Junkie’s Submission of the Year.
“Pound-for-pound. Headshot. Dead.” Leon Edwards’ stunning finish of Kamaru Usman at UFC 278 is MMA Junkie’s Knockout of the Year for 2022.
With another action-packed year of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie takes a look at the best knockouts from January to December 2022.
As voted on by our entire staff, here are the top 10 and winner of MMA Junkie’s Knockout of the Year.
The UFC has narrowed its list of top 2022 knockout candidates down to a four-KO shortlist of super highlight-reel finishes.
The UFC has narrowed its list of top 2022 knockout candidates down to a four-KO shortlist.
The promotion this week unveiled the four finalists on its list for Knockout of the Year. Fans can vote for their favorite of the four through the UFC’s YouTube channel or social media platforms.
Two women and two men make up the final four, and more than they were brutal – and they all were – all the candidates seemed to come out of nowhere, making them nearly impossible to defend against.
Check out the four finalists on the UFC’s list below, as well as looks back at their aftermaths. In addition, you can see a recap of all four highlight-reel finishes in the video above.
Check out a full recap of 2022’s most significant footnotes and milestones from the events, the fights and individual performances.
Now that the year has come to a close, and with a major assist from UFC research analyst and live statistics producer Michael Carroll, here are some of 2022’s most significant milestones from the events, the fights and individual performances in the octagon.
Ahead of his showdown against Dustin Poirier, relive Michael Chandler’s knockout of Tony Ferguson at UFC 274.
[autotag]Michael Chandler[/autotag] delivered one of the greatest knockouts in UFC history against Tony Ferguson.
Chandler’s explosive power was on full display when he faced Ferguson at UFC 274 in May.
Round 1 saw Chandler getting dropped by a Ferguson left hook in the opening minutes. Ferguson tried to swarm Chandler, but Chandler was able to recover. Ferguson kept throwing heat, but Chandler surprised him with a perfectly timed double-leg takedown. Ferguson cut Chandler with an elbow from bottom, and continuously threw up submission attempts.
Just when it looked like the Ferguson of old was shining through, he was blasted with a front kick by Chandler just 17 seconds into Round 2 which knocked him out cold. In 32 professional fights, Ferguson had never had his lights shut out like that.
Chandler (23-7 MMA, 2-2 UFC) returns to action on Nov. 12 when he faces former interim champion [autotag]Dustin Poirier[/autotag] (28-7 MMA, 20-6 UFC) on the main card of UFC 281, which takes place at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Before he faces Poirier, relive Chandler’s finish of Ferguson in the video above.
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Ahead of his lightweight title fight against Islam Makhachev at UFC 280, relive Charles Oliveira’s finish of Justin Gaethje at UFC 274.
[autotag]Charles Oliveira[/autotag] was a man on a mission at UFC 274.
Oliveira was stripped of his lightweight title when he missed weight by 0.5 pounds for his title fight against Justin Gaethje at Footprint Center in Phoenix in May, which only fueled him.
Oliveira was not eligible to stay champion with a win, but the Brazilian got to work regardless. He met Gaethje right in the middle and walked him down. Oliveira ate some solid leg kicks, but threw hard knees to the body as he continued to pressure.
But Gaethje was able to drop Oliveira with an uppercut and connected with a right hand after which wobbled him. Oliveira tried to lure Gaethje to the ground, but “The Highlight” was wise to it. Despite getting hurt multiple times, Oliveira remained unfazed. He eventually found a home for a big right hand, which dropped Gaethje, and he was able to slice through him on the ground before he submitted him with a rear-naked choke in Round 1.
Oliveira (33-8 MMA, 21-8 UFC) returns to action Oct. 22 when he takes on [autotag]Islam Makhachev[/autotag] (22-1 MMA, 11-1 UFC) for the vacant lightweight title in the UFC 280 main event at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi.
Before he faces Makhachev, relive Oliveira’s finish of Gaethje in the video above.
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Justin Gaethje isn’t done chasing the UFC lightweight championship, but is taking care of a lingering issue first.
LAS VEGAS – [autotag]Justin Gaethje[/autotag] isn’t done chasing the UFC lightweight championship.
Gaethje (23-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) has fallen short of undisputed gold on two occasions against Khabib Nurmagomedov, and more recently, Charles Oliveira at UFC 274 in April. He’s remained silent in the fallout of his second title loss, but now he’s ready to speak about his future.
The former interim UFC titleholder said he’s going to be out of action for several more months as he prepared for an upcoming nose surgery, which is a nuisance he’s been dealing with for well over a decade, he said. Once he’s healthy and ready to start a training camp, Gaethje said he intends to make a final push toward the top.
I’m going to get nose surgery July 14,” Gaethje told MMA Junkie and other reporters Thursday on the UFC Hall of Fame red carpet. “Take a good month to recover, and get back to work. I think end of the year, most likely early next year (I’ll be back). There’s a few fights that are going to happen, so I’ll let those happen. I want to clear a two or three-fight path back to the title fight. I want to earn it, like I should, but I have a great manager so I’m not worried about it too much. I’ll be ready to fight.
“I’ve been waiting for 13 years for someone in MMA to break my nose and it hasn’t happened. I broke it in wrestling practice 13 years ago, and life’s been hell since then. I have to wear a nose drip tonight, every night to bed every single night. Eating, sleeping, living, training, fighting. I’m not sure. I don’t even know what my f*cking voice sounds like. I’ve been waiting a long time to get this broken. No one has done it, so I’m going to do it myself and give it one last run toward the title.”
Gaethje was on the verge of capturing the title from Oliveira during a wild fight at UFC 274. He knocked the Brazilian down in the early going, but said he got too wild and made some costly errors en route to being submitted.
Fighting in front of a home-state crowd in Phoenix, Gaethje said the moment overcame him, and it resulted in his downfall.
“It’s a crazy game we play,” Gaethje said. “It’s the reason I love it. It’s a game of inches. At the end of the day, being at home in front of my crowd – sometimes you lose control of your emotions. I’m not exactly sure what happened. I had the time of my life. It’s a crazy game.”
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UFC veteran Joe Lauzon revealed how he was compensated for the fight against Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone that fell apart on the day of UFC 274.
[autotag]Joe Lauzon[/autotag] fulfilled all of his UFC 274 pre-fight obligations to step into the cage, but at the last minute, his opponent Donald Cerrone was unable to compete.
When a fight gets canceled hours before the scheduled time, the focus turns to sort out what portion of their purse, if anything, the fighter that was ready to compete will receive. Cerrone (36-16 MMA, 23-13 UFC) came down with a non-COVID-related illness on the day of the fight, thus forcing the bout to be scrapped at the last minute. The announcement was made during the early prelims of the pay-per-view event, leaving Lauzon (28-15 MMA, 15-12 UFC) without an opportunity to compete on the main card in what could have been one of the final fights of his lengthy professional career.
Ultimately, Lauzon was compensated but did not receive his full show and win money for the last-minute cancelation. Speaking with MMA Junkie Radio, Lauzon explained the situation and why he was happy with what he received.
“So, if the fight didn’t happen, I would have pressed very, very aggressively to get my win money,” Lauzon told MMA Junkie Radio. “But they rescheduled the fight six weeks later. They gave me my show money, I got my Venum money, so I got that. If they rescheduled for six weeks later, I was OK with that because I started thinking about it: If he pulled out on Tuesday, I get zero.”
UFC 274 took place in Phoenix, and the Arizona Boxing & MMA Commission does not reveal official fight purse figures to the public. Lauzon also did not disclose the specific amount he received for his show money. Based on the UFC Promotional Guidelines tiers, he would have received $21,000 in Venum pay for an athlete with over 21 fights with the promotion, which is the highest tier for a non-champion or title challenger.
“I made weight, I got my show money, and we’re gonna get our show money and everything again, so I’m okay with it. If the fight didn’t happen, I would have very aggressively pushed to get my win money. But, if it’s gonna happen, then I’m OK with just getting show. …It’s the way it goes, I understand. Cowboy has never pulled out of a fight before, I don’t think.”
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The fight has since been rescheduled for UFC on ESPN 37 in Austin, Texas on June 18. While Lauzon is happy to keep the fight together a few weeks down the road, he can’t help but wonder what could have happened at the pay-per-view event had the fight gone as scheduled.
“It could have easily been a double bonus. We could have got Fight of the Night and then I could have got like a spectacular finish. Could have easily been an extra $100,000 in bonuses, but it didn’t happen. So, we’re not gonna worry about it. We’re gonna focus on June 18 and maybe – I don’t want any more Fight of the Nights. We’ll take the performance bonuses, we don’t need Fight of the Nights. We’ll just keep all my blood inside, not have to go the E.R. would be nice.”
“There was some shenanigans with the scale. Some people had messed with the scale.”
Joe Rogan sees the controversy in the weight miss that [autotag]Charles Oliveira[/autotag] his UFC title.
Oliveira (33-8 MMA, 21-8 UFC) was stripped off his lightweight belt when he missed the 155-pound championship mark for his UFC 274 title fight against Justin Gaethje by 0.5 pounds in Phoenix earlier this month.
Despite the Arizona commission rules giving him an 60 minutes beyond the initial two-hour window, Oliveira still weighed in at 155.5 pounds on his second attempt, and as a result the strap became vacate. It came as a surprise to many, because Oliveira tweeted the night prior to weigh-ins that he was already at his required limit.
Information has since come to light that pre-check scale had been tampered with during fight week, and therefor it did not align with the official scale. UFC commentator Rogan expressed his disappointment in the situation.
“He’s a very, very nice guy, and he got screwed in his last fight,” Rogan said on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Spotify. “There was some shenanigans with the scale. Some people had messed with the scale. Here’s a problem with these digital scales: Foreign fighters, they use kilograms and in America, obviously we use pounds.
“These scales are calibrated and then the foreign fighters would reset the scale so they could switch it back to kilograms. So it f*cks up the whole calibration. He weighed in the night before the weigh-ins, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m good to go.’ And then in the morning, he goes and shows up for the weight cut, and it’s a pound plus off, and that is directly related to this calibration thing.”
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As a result of the scale controversy, UFC president Dana White announced that moving forward, the promotion plans on having security to monitor the scale.
“Now the UFC has a new policy because of this, where they have a guard who watches over the scale 24 hours a day,” Rogan added. “Like, they have shifts where no one can f*ck with the scale. If you’re gonna get on that scale to try yourself, they’re gonna watch you like a hawk, and you don’t press any buttons. You just get on, what’s your weight, get off. That’s it. These guys were monkeying around with the scale.”
He continued, “It’s Phoenix. That’s what it is, and it’s not a knock on Phoenix. I love Phoenix. It’s just that the people that are there don’t do high-level world championship MMA fights on a regular basis. They do a few. We’ve had a good time there. They’ve had some good events there, but they just made a mistake. They’ll let these guys do it. There should have been someone watching the scale, and the scale was off, and that’s a fact. Look, it’s not the best excuse because Justin Gaethje made weight. Everybody else made weight except one of the women that fought earlier in the night, but that’s it.”
Oliveira ended up submitting Gaethje in the first round and with the lightweight title currently vacant, he will challenge for it in his next fight.
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Tony Ferguson has clarity about his career after his viral knockout loss to Michael Chandler at UFC 274.
[autotag]Tony Ferguson[/autotag] has clarity about his career after his viral knockout loss to Michael Chandler at UFC 274.
Ferguson (25-7 MMA, 15-5 UFC), a former interim UFC lightweight champion, was stopped by strikes for the first time in his career this past weekend when Chandler (23-7 MMA, 2-2 UFC) caught him with a highlight-reel front kick to the face. The outcome extended Ferguson’s losing skid to four fights, and raised questions about his future.
Although it might seem like a grim situation from the outside, Ferguson is internalizing it well. He knows he had a strong first round before being halted by Chandler’s epic kick just 16 seconds into the second frame, and he thinks minor mistakes not only cost him the victory – but also led to his defeat.
“I got knocked the f*ck out,” Ferguson told MMA Junkie in his first interview since UFC 274. “I don’t want that sh*t to ever happen again. It could’ve, one – been prevented – and two, I should’ve had him finished in the first round. As soon as I knocked him down. The little basics that I could’ve did to make sure I could’ve got out in the first round, and everybody would be kissing my ass. But God works in mysterious ways, and he’s not ready yet, son. He had me sit down and take a nap and rest for a second, because I work my ass off this camp with this humility that people want to present to me. I’m a new man. I don’t care. I’ve been to hell and back and I’m here now. Reborn again. And I’m here to take over.
“There’s only so much humility a man can go through. I’ve been through it all, right? I’ve had my belt stripped – I don’t have to go back and refurbish all that stuff. But going back and looking at it, the first round I didn’t do too bad. I was having fun in there, I had a good fight week. I started loosening up in there more toward the fight, which was fun. It was really good to be back in there, I’ll be real. Except for the second round. The second round, I’m still kind of flabbergasted why I was backing up.”
Ferguson’s primary goal moving forward is to right the ship. He thinks that starts with his preparation.
For the majority of Ferguson’s tenure as a top-ranked lightweight in the UFC, he has not been part of what would widely be considered a traditional training camp. He has not been engrained with one of the well-known mega-gyms across the United States, and has followed a more boxing-style route where he works with a hand-selected group of coaches and training partners.
Ferguson said he believes it’s time for that to change, though. He said he’s spoken to a number of high-profile individuals about training together, and sees an opportunity to change his ways.
“I’ve had ‘Pit Master’ reach out to me – John Hackleman,” Ferguson said. “You have Jackson-Wink, as well. You have Syndicate out in Vegas. You have the UFC P.I. You have many, many people. But I haven’t put myself out there. I put myself away from the interviews, I put myself away from the teams thinking I could do this by myself. And I did it. I’ve done this by myself for a very long time with the help of a select few individuals, and I’ve been very fortunate to have that. But I’m ready to be part of a team again. It was only when my team broke up that I felt really hurt that I moved areas, that I moved situations, switched management and all the above. I have to open myself up again to being coached at a high level. Especially in my sport.
“It’s very important that you have a very good relationship with (coaches) so they’re not sending you into battle to get hurt. I’ve been very fortunate the last couple of camps, and I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve walked out OK. And I pray to God every day that I walked out of that cage. Not coherent, but I was able to wake up. I didn’t remember sitting on the stool. I didn’t remember barely the second round. I don’t remember talking to Chuck Liddell, and I don’t remember walking out and seeing the fans. All I remember was looking at my coach and the lights kind of went to fade in, like a movie director. I’m walking with my coach and I look at him and I already knew it. I’m like, ‘F*ck, I lost.'”
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Ferguson, 38, was issued a 60-day medical suspension by the Arizona Boxing & MMA Commission in the aftermath of his loss to Chandler at UFC 274 in Phoenix. UFC president Dana White said post-fight that he would like to see Ferguson take an extended layoff from competition.
It remains to be seen when “El Cucuy” will step back into the octagon. However, it’s something that’s going to happen.
Ferguson knows there are critics who question the current state of his career, despite all his losses coming to the elite at 155 pounds in Chandler, Beneil Dariush, Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje. He was unequivocal in stating that his passion for the fight game is at an all-time peak, and he has no intentions of walking away.
Once Ferguson finds a training situation that he believes in, the conversation about when he steps back into the octagon can begin.
“What I’ve always done is call my shots with the UFC,” Ferguson said. “I’m a shot-caller with the UFC. Any time I want a fight I always bring myself presentable. My relationship with Dana is decent. I might say a couple things and act on it, but that’s not me retaliating. That’s me defending myself. That’s me being able to speak and have balls. Be a man. For a while there I felt like I had to be quiet and earn my respect and earn my value, but I stopped worrying about all that sh*t.
“When I’m ready to fight I will let the UFC know, and I guarantee you they’ll let me know, too, ‘Hey, this is who we have.’ I was ready for (Islam) Makhachev in Abu Dhabi if some things would’ve been a little bit different. But I try to take these opportunities and present them so I’m there for the company. They know I’m a company man, and that’s why they said I’m not going anywhere.”
To hear more from Ferguson, check out his full interview with MMA Junkie.
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