The Co-Main Event MMA Podcast

So, Jon Jones is out. Like, OUT out. As in Jon Jones is retired. Or … should we say … “retired,” because ain’t nobody thinks we’ve seen the last of this dude in a cage, a ring, or a dusty circle of dirt at some county fairgrounds. In any case, Jones’ career ended (for now) the way all the great ones go out — with Dana White making a halfhearted announcement at the postfight press conference for UF...

So, there’s still some fight left in this old dog, Kamaru Usman — as Joaquin Buckley found out the hard way in their UFC Fight Night main event on Saturday. The 38-year-old Usman defied the odds and many expectations with a vintage performance that saw him use the ol’ wrestling game to take a unanimous decision over the seemingly incredibly ill-prepared up-and-comer. Then Usman got on the mic and...

Not sure how you’re supposed to beat this guy Merab Dvalishvili at this point. Poison? Blow darts? The Dark Arts? Regular-ass fighting ain’t working, as Sean O’Malley found out at UFC 316 on Saturday. Looked like O’Malley was trying to do the right things — stay off the cage, work the body, show improved takedown defense, get up when Merab put him on the mat. Didn’t matter. Merab is just too good...

The odds don’t look very competitive headed into the dueling title fights atop Saturday’s UFC 316. Merab Dvalishvili and Kayla Harrison are both pretty big favorites over their opponents (challenger Sean O’Malley and chalmpion Julianna Peña, respectively). The line on Harrison, in fact, is outlandish — though that fight is admittedly most interesting because of what a Kayla Harrison title reign mi...

The CME’s 13th birthday is coming up, and you know what that means: it’s pledge month! Now through June 1, get 50% off a new monthly or annual Patreon subscription when you use the code CME13 at checkout! Get on it! Join the team! Support the community! Stick it to the man! Merab Dvalishvili broke his toe on the dome of a training partner this week, which seems like poor timing, considering his me...

The CME’s 13th birthday is this month, and you know what that means: It’s pledge month! Now through June 1, GET 50% OFF A NEW MONTHLY OR ANNUAL PATREON SUBSCRIPTION when you use the code CME13 at checkout! Get on it! Join the team! Support the community! Stick it to the man! First you've got Jon Jones riding on the back of a motorbike looking zooted out of his gourd over there in Thailand. Then yo...

The CME’s 13th birthday is coming up, and you know what that means: It’s pledge month! Now through June 1, GET 50% OFF A NEW MONTHLY OR ANNUAL PATREON SUBSCRIPTION when you use the code CME13 at checkout! Get on it! Join the team! Support the community! Stick it to the man! Did Jack Della Maddalena ruin everything? Well, it’s a fluid situation. As we recorded this episode of the Proper, the MMA wo...

The CME’s 13th birthday is coming up, and you know what that means: It’s pledge month! Now through June 1, GET 50% OFF A NEW MONTHLY OR ANNUAL PATREON SUBSCRIPTION when you use the code CME13 at checkout! Get on it! Join the team! Support the community! Stick it to the man! Belal Muhammad said he doesn’t care what you think anymore. He knows he’s good, even if you don’t. Well, I mean, yeah, he is...

The CME’s 13th birthday is coming up, and you know what that means: It’s pledge month! Now through June 1, GET 50% OFF A NEW MONTHLY OR ANNUAL PATREON SUBSCRIPTION when you use the code CME13 at checkout! Get on it! Join the team! Support the community! Stick it to the man! Ya boi Ian (Machado) Garry commands a lot of attention in MMA. If the most difficult thing a UFC fighter can do in the year o...

The two-night extravaganza that was Wrestlemania 41 went down over the weekend in Las Vegas, much to the delight and consternation of marks and smarks everywhere. Yeah, yeah, we know the CME ain’t a rasslin’ podcast, but one thing caught our attention that may be of interest to the combat sports audience: Dana White got booed. Yep. They showed Dana White on the broadcast and on the big screen insi...

Your boy Alexander Volkanovski is champion again, besting a fairly valiant effort by Diego Lopes at UFC 314 Saturday to claim the vacant UFC featherweight title. Volk looked pretty good, too, beating Lopes at range and mixing up the takedown attempts en route to the unanimous decision win. For The Fall Out Boy, well, it seemed like he just got started too late — spent too much time fighting Volk’s...

Look, we’re just being honest. After back-to-back KO losses to Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, and a 1-3 record dating back to 2023, we couldn’t help but wonder if we’d already seen the best of Alexander Volkanovski. Then, lo and behold, Topuria moves up to lightweight, and suddenly Volk is right back in the mix — going off as a slight betting favorite against Diego Lopes in their 145-pound titl...

Joe Pyfer got food poisoning — or maybe it was altitude sickness — and now he’s, like, furious. He had to call off his fight with Kelvin Gastelum because his tum-tum hurt, and he’s pissed that he slept in a tent on the floor for nothing. In a tent! On the floor! Obviously, this is Mexico’s fault. It’s a shithole, Joe Pyfer says. Joe Pyfer is never going back to Mexico. Mexico can suck Joe Pyfer’s...

Big Tommy Gas Hands brought his rubber ducky to UFC London. See what he did there? That’s a little elbow to the ribs of Jon Jones, who we know Aspinall has been chasing all over God’s green earth trying to get a shot at unifying the heavyweight title. That’s got to be frustrating. Weirdly, however, Aspinall emerged from a meeting with UFC brass last week saying he was excited, that he felt great,...

If we told you going into UFC 313 that Magomed Ankalaev would go 0-for-12 on takedown attempts in his light heavyweight title fight against Alex Pereira, would you have thought that shaped up as a win for Ankalaev? Yeah, we wouldn’t either. That’s what happened, however, with Ankalaev using a surprisingly effective striking attack coupled with a suffocating clinch game to take the strap from Poata...

What’s the worst kind of fight? A tough-ass matchup against an opponent nobody cares about. That’s exactly what Pereira has on his hands against Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313 on Saturday, so much so that everybody involved (except Ankalaev) appeared put it off as long as they possibly could. But, here’s Poatan, at 37 and sitting on the brink of cleaning out the light heavyweight division, facing his...

Doesn’t Henry Cejudo know that when somebody tries to go full Moe Howard on you (looking in your direction Song Yadong) all you gotta do is throw the hand up in front of your face to block it? Guess he missed that day in Greatest Combat Sports Athlete of All Time School. We kid, obviously. Still, though, shoutout to Cejudo, Song and Jason Herzog for reminding us this week that sometimes the shorte...

Would somebody please get this goddamn Jon Jones a hobby already? You can just about set your watch to this shit. Give Jones a fight, give him something to train for, some structure, some direction in his life, and it seems like this man is unstoppable. Give him like EVEN ONE SECOND of downtime and he’s liable to get intoxicated and film an Instagram live video about how he wants to kill somebody....

UFC 312 seemed to signal a community-wide awakening on Sean Strickland. After watching him go out with a whimper against Dricus Du Plessis (again!) it felt like everybody had kind of had enough of his bullshit. Sure, the visionaries on this podcast have been saying for AWHILE that what Strickland advertises prefight (a bloodthirsty maniac!) is quite different than what you actually get inside the...

Sure, Dricus du Plessis’ middleweight championship win over Sean Strickland back at UFC 297 was a close one. Split decision. Could’ve gone either way, maybe. But, be honest, were any of us really sitting around trying to quench an unquenchable thirst to see them run it back? No. Nobody had that thirst. Nobody except one man. Unfortunately, it was the one man who makes all the decisions, so … here...

Since we missed the Proper yesterday, we feel obligated to offer up today's episode of the Patreon Live Chat for free. We hope this satisfies your bloodlust for unfettered discourse on the wild, weird and occasionally wonderful world of mixed martial arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Islam Makhachev and Merab Dvalishvili both retained their titles on Saturday at UFC 311. In truth, Merab stole the show in the co-main event, finally emerging with the unanimous decision win over Umar Nurmagomedov after an insane, exciting, back-and-forth fight. In the main event, well, it wasn’t totally Islam’s fault that he couldn’t put on a similarly inspiring showing, after Arman Tsarukyan dro...

Oddsmakers really like Islam Makhachev and Umar Nurmagomedov to win their respective title fights this weekend at UFC 311. Maybe that’s understandable since, along with ya bois Khabib and Usman, the former students of Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov are a combined *checks notes* 91-1 in professional MMA fights. That’s pretty good! Hold on, though. Arman Tsarukyan (who fights Makhachev for the lightweight...

Does Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall happen? Can Alex Peieria continue his run? What will the new UFC broadcast deal look like? Does Conor McGregor do anything MMA related, and do we care? These are the questions we wrestle with this week as we don our prognosticating hats and try to divine what will go down in the UFC in 2025. Also, Dana White has joined the board of directors at Meta. We are well and...

It's the show where we honor the most notable achievements in combat sports -- for better and for worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices