UFC on ABC 5 – Syndication Server

Josh Emmett ‘would’ve been pissed’ if corner stopped bloody loss to Ilia Topuria

Josh Emmett is relieved his corner kept faith in him during a one-sided loss to Ilia Topuria at UFC on ABC 5.

LAS VEGAS – [autotag]Josh Emmett [/autotag] is relieved his corner kept faith in him during a one-sided loss to Ilia Topuria at UFC on ABC 5.

After falling short of the interim featherweight title vs. Yair Rodriguez in February, Emmett (18-4 MMA, 9-4 UFC) struggled in his bounce-back fight when he suffered a lopsided unanimous decision defeat to Topuria (14-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) on June 24 in Jacksonville, Fla.

With the fight seemingly decided by the midway point, some spectators called for Emmett’s corner at Team Alpha Male to throw in the towel and save him from further damage. It didn’t happen, and Emmett’s face was a reflection of 43 significant strikes landed to the head.

Not once did Emmett think about quitting though, he said. If his corner had intervened, he wouldn’t have taken it well.

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“I would’ve been pissed,” Emmett said. “My coaches know me great. They know me so well. Especially Joey Rodriguez. Man, at no point – optically it looked worse. I wasn’t rocked by it. I wasn’t – even when he was on me it wasn’t like hard, hard shots. It just looked worse than it actually was. I would’ve been pissed. They know that.

“There’s no quit. I’ve been in fights that I’ve won where I’ve been concussed, I had a lot more damage and I won the fight. I’m completely fine. They know I can finish a fight at any moment (and I tried to do that), and it just didn’t work out.”

Emmett said he plans to take a little more time off in the aftermath of the fight before deciding his next move. He’s on the first two-fight losing skid of his nearly 12-year career, and at 38, his next trip to the octagon will be an important one.

He said he isn’t thinking about specific opponents just yet, but he will talk to his manager and UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby before deciding what’s best.

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 5.

MMA Junkie’s Fight of the Month for June: Middleweight title contenders go to war

With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best fights from June 2023.

With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best fights from June 2023: Here are the five nominees, listed in chronological order, and winner of MMA Junkie’s Fight of the Month award for June.

At the bottom of the post, let us know if we got it right by voting on your choice.

Nominees

Burmese fighter: Joshua Van details pioneering journey to plant Myanmar’s flag on UFC turf

From Myanmar to Malaysia to Houston, it was an improbable journey for Joshua Van to make UFC history.

[autotag]Joshua Van[/autotag] remembers asking his mother why they had to live in Houston. Why couldn’t they just go back home where things were familiar?

He was 12 years old at the time, and Van wanted to go back to where he lived the first decade of his life, in Myanmar. Life wasn’t easy for an undersized pre-teen who spoke little English and was picked on during school for both of those attributes.

Looking back, the math adds up that he’d become the first Burmese fighter to compete in the UFC.

“I was a small kid,” Van recently told MMA Junkie. “From where I come from, you get picked on. It’s kind of like I fight everyday, and I got to the point where I enjoyed fighting. I watched clips on street fights and how to win street fights. I tried it in my next fight and things like that. That’s what got me into my career.”

Van grew up one of five siblings in Myanmar, a country ridden with military and political conflict. When things increasingly worsened, Van’s parents decided to move to Malaysia. Van was 10 years old.

“The military in Myanmar is always bad,” Van said. “It got worse. At that time, my parents were looking for a better education and a better job, things like that. They were thinking about us, the kids. They wanted to come over here and were looking for a bigger education and freedom.”

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Three years later, Van and his family moved to the United States and settled in Houston, where he still resides today. Bullying and his love for Bruce Lee formulated a love for MMA.

In 2020, Van made his amateur debut before he turned professional in 2021.

After a 2-1 start to his pro tenure, Van went on an atypical run up the regional ladder. He won Fury FC gold in December and was signed for a short-notice bout UFC on ABC 5 in June.

The signing was historic as Van became his native country’s first to make the UFC walk. But the history didn’t stop there. Van also notched Myanmar’s first win in promotion history June 24 when he defeated Zhalgas Zhumagulov via split decision.

The Burmese love poured in.

“It meant a lot of things for me,” Van said. “It meant everything to me, to be able to represent my country on the biggest stage. It felt amazing, man. The only thing was I can’t have my flag in there, man. If I was able to have the Myanmar flag in there, that would be amazing. That’s the only thing that was going on.”

While the endearment and pride was felt across borders and bodies of water, Van knows for the time being he cannot experience it in person until Myanmar becomes safer.

For the time being, Van will hold fond memories of the first 10 years of his life close to his heart as he continues to be Myanmar’s most prominent MMA flag bearer outside of ONE Championship star Aung La Nsang.

“It was amazing, my memory from Myanmar. I lived there until I was seven or eight and then I moved to Malaysia. Then Malaysia, from there, I came here. Every memory I have over there was amazing, man. Everybody loved everybody. Everybody supported everybody. Everybody was respectful and stuff like that.

“… This platform that I have right now, I feel like the UFC is the biggest platform you can have. I want to the world to see what’s really going on. The military be cutting off our internet and stuff like that. It’s hard for the other part of the world to really know what’s going on and stuff like that. I will use this platform to know what is really going on over there.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 5.

MMA Junkie’s Knockout of the Month for June: Sadibou Sy wheel kicks his way to PFL playoffs

With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best knockouts from June 2023.

With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best knockouts from June 2023: Here are the five nominees, listed in chronological order, and winner of MMA Junkie’s Knockout of the Month award for June.

At the bottom of the post, let us know if we got it right by voting for your choice.

UFC’s Damir Ismagulov eyes future matchup against Justin Gaethje: ‘I’ll play with him like a little kitten’

If he gets the chance, Damir Ismagulov thinks a fight against former UFC interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje would be an easy fight.

LAS VEGAS – UFC lightweight [autotag]Damir Ismagulov[/autotag] wants to mix it up with strikers, and has his eyes on a fan-favorite former interim champion.

First things first, Ismagulov (24-2 MMA, 5-1 UFC) has business against Grant Dawson (19-1-1 MMA, 7-0-1 UFC) in the co-main event of UFC on ESPN 47. The event takes place Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, and airs on ESPN and also streams on ESPN+.

Ismagulov believes a matchup against an exciting striker would help show off his skillset to the UFC fanbase, while also getting away from a string of matchups against opponents who prefer to grapple.

“I would love to fight against stand-up fighters in the UFC, because that could be a fun fight, an interesting, firey fight, and I could get my bonus,” Ismagulov told reporters through an interpreter at Wednesday’s media day. “Really, I’m like (Vasily) Lomachenko, but he’s in boxing and I’m in MMA.”

If Ismagulov can rebound from a loss in his previous outing, a co-main event spot against Arman Tsaruykyan, he would love a future match up with [autotag]Justin Gaethje[/autotag], who is set to take on Dustin Poirier at UFC 291 for the “BMF” title. However, the highlight reel means nothing to Ismagulov, who believes he would make things look easy against the former interim UFC lightweight champion.

“Gaethje’s considered to be one of the best strikers in the lightweight division,” Ismagulov said. “He thinks that he’s one of the best. But if I get to fight against him, I’ll play with him like a little kitten. I’ll show him what a Kazakh school of boxing is like. It’s the easy fight for me.”

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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 47.

Teddy Atlas says Ilia Topuria’s striking reminds him of UFC champ Alexander Volkanovski

Legendary boxing analyst Teddy Atlas was very impressed with Ilia Topuria’s performance at UFC on ABC 5.

[autotag]Ilia Topuria[/autotag] has gotten the attention of legendary boxing analyst Teddy Atlas.

Topuria (14-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) battered Josh Emmett for five rounds in this past Saturday’s UFC on ABC 5 headliner at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla. The fight marked the first time Topuria has gone 25 minutes.

Topuria put a heavy pace on Emmett and never let his foot off the gas pedal, which impressed Atlas, who sees a resemblance between the striking style of Topuria and UFC featherweight champion [autotag]Alexander Volkanovski[/autotag].

“Topuria, he reminds me with his striking a little of Volkanovski, where he’s so solid technically, he’s so buttoned-up with his approach, his overall approach, that it just reminded me of him a little bit,” Atlas said on his show, “THE FIGHT with Teddy Atlas.”

Atlas lauded Topuria for his composure. The unbeaten 26-year-old never got overzealous when seeking the finish against Emmett.

“Topuria was always in control,” Atlas added. “Never ahead of himself, never got reckless. Like I said, he’s a technically solid, buttoned-up striker who has good timing, uses his jab very well to set up punches and to control range while stabilizing his opponent with his jab on the outside.

“Topuria dominated the rounds after the first. … Topuria was calm, collected. He forced Emmett to work a lot harder at a much faster pace to stay in the fight, expending a lot of energy and gas. While Topuria was cautiously aggressive, he was always looking for counters, did some really good counters in there. When Topuria throws, he makes everything count.”

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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 5.

Video: Has Maycee Barber changed the narrative about her UFC title chances?

After suffering back-to-back losses, Maycee Barber has reeled off five straight wins in the UFC women’s flyweight division.

[autotag]Maycee Barber[/autotag] delivered the most emphatic performance of her octagon tenure thus far with a statement victory over Amanda Ribas at UFC on ABC 5.

Barber (13-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) extended her winning streak to five consecutive fights when she put Ribas (11-4 MMA, 6-3 UFC) away with a second-round TKO in Jacksonville, Fla. The effort yielded an extra $50,000 in Performance of the Night bonus money, and opened the eyes of many about Barber’s ceiling.

After debuting in the UFC in November 2018 as a 20-year-old, Barber claimed she would be the youngest champion in company history. She ran into consecutive defeats, however, and the window passed, killing some of the hype around her.

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Now 25, Barber’s recent performance have restored faith in the eyes of many, though, and she said following her win over Ribas that she sees the title in her future. But can she get there?

MMA Junkie’s “Spinning Back Clique” panel of Brian “Goze” Garcia, Nolan King and Farah Hannoun joined host “Gorgeous” George Garcia to discuss Barber’s future.

Check out the video above, and the latest complete episode of “Spinning Back Clique” below.

USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings, June 27: Ilia Topuria takes big leap at 145 pounds

UFC on ABC 5 winners Ilia Topuria and Maycee Barber made the biggest moves in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings update.

There was some notable movement in the MMA landscape over the past week, particularly coming out of UFC on ABC 5 in Jacksonville, Fla.

In the main event at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, [autotag]Ilia Topuria[/autotag] continued his emergence as a featherweight contender when he handed a historic beatdown of Josh Emmett en route to a unanimous decision, extending his impressive undefeated record and proving he’s a name on the rise at 145 pounds. The performance claimed him the No. 5 spot in the newest weight class rankings.

The co-headliner, meanwhile, saw another young potential star take another important career step when [autotag]Maycee Barber[/autotag] emerged victorious from a blood-soaked battle with Amanda Ribas by second-round TKO. “The Future” has now won five consecutive fights, and proving with each performance she belongs near the upper echelon in the women’s flyweight division. With the victory, she advances to No. 15 in the latest divisional rankings.

Check out all the latest pound-for-pound and divisional USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings above.

UFC on ABC 5 medical suspensions: Josh Emmett out indefinitely from damage sustained

Josh Emmett and Justin Tafa suffered graphic injuries at UFC on ABC 5 and are among those suspended indefinitely by the Florida commission.

UFC on ABC 5 took place Saturday at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla. and featured 13 fights.

There were back-and-forth battles, knockouts, an eye gouge, and a submission. Through these fights, the athletes involved sustained injuries that will put them on the shelf for some time, unless cleared by a doctor.

Tuesday, MMA Junkie acquired a list of athlete medical suspensions from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), the sanctioning body that oversaw the event. The DBPR does not disclose injury specifics, but does show the durations of the suspension.

Atop the card, [autotag]Ilia Topuria[/autotag] proved he’s a premiere contender when he dominated [autotag]Josh Emmett[/autotag] en route to a unanimous decision, including a rare 10-7 scorecard. The two headliners were suspended indefinitely by DBPR afterward.

Seven fighters total were handed indefinite suspensions, while two were handed terms of specific durations and the rest of the card was cleared on fight night. Fighters are permitted to return prior to the end of their assigned durations if they are cleared by a doctor.

Scroll below to see the suspensions for the full UFC on ABC 5 card.

Nominees

The defeated