The Co-Main Event MMA Podcast

We thought it was weird from the start that Fedor Emelianenko wanted to have his retirement fight against Ryan Bader. It was. Friends, Fedor looked every single day of his 46 years on this planet on Saturday in the Bellator 290 main event. The greatest MMA heavyweight of all time barely threw a punch en route to a first-round TKO victory for Bader. Yep. Sad. And strange. But at least Bellator seem...

We are led to believe that Saturday's Bellator 290 will include the last fight for The Last Emperor. The 46-year-old Fedor Emelianenko will do the damn thing one more time in a rematch against Ryan Bader. Do we really believe this will be it for him? That's hard to say. If we had our druthers would Fedor's swan song be a rematch with Bader? Nah, not really. But this man was once a phenomenon and h...

Jamahal Hill answered all our questions against Glover Teixeira on Saturday night at UFC 283. Could he handle the step-up in competition? Yes. Was he ready to go hard for the full 25 minutes? Indeed. Would he be cowed by having 13,000 Brazilians chanting for his death? Hell no. Hill emerged with the clean sweep unanimous decision over Teixeira and -- sort of out of nowhere -- also the UFC light he...

Well, he did it. Francis Ngannou waited-out his UFC contract while rehabbing from knee surgery during 2022 and now he's a free man. There's never been a better time to be a free agent in combat sports and Ngannou seems like he's in a unique position to capitalize on it. What will he do next? Where will he go? And how much will he make? Meanwhile, Dana White is still sitting in front of microphones...

Well, fuck, you guys. We had just hit "export" on the latest episode of the CME when we refreshed Twitter to see the planned UFC main event between Nassourdine Imavov and Kelvin Gastelum is off and now SEAN STRICKLAND is in for an injured Gastelum. That's certainly unfortunate ... but a lot of this week's episode still stands up. It's still fight week and we still feel a weird pressure to stop tal...

With video of Dana White slapping his wife in the face in a club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on New Year's Eve now spreading across the internet, we are forced to frame this week's discussion around whether MMA is edging ever closer to a world without the longtime UFC president. Regardless if White skates on this incident the same way he's skated without any real consequences so much in the past, it...

Conor McGregor didn't fight. Jon Jones didn't fight. Francis Ngannou fought once, in January, and then spent the rest of the year rehabbing from injury with perhaps one foot out the door. Nate Diaz left. Israel Adesanya lost the title. It was a weird year for stars in the UFC. But was it also a preview of times to come? We discuss on the last CME Proper of the 2022. This episode is brought to you...

Paddy Pimblett somehow messed around and was awarded a unanimous decision victory over Jared Gordon on Saturday at UFC 282, in a co-main event bout almost everybody who watched live thought Gordon won. To say there was some, um, discussion about that afterward would be a bit of an understatement. Basically people lost their shit--and they hadn't even seen the main event yet, where Jan Blachowicz a...

Score one for the old dogs at Saturday's UFC on ESPN event. Not only did Stephen "Wonderman" Thompson emerge victorious over an injured Kevin Holland in the main event, but Clay Guida, Rafeal dos Anjos and Angela Hill also got wins. So that'll teach these young whippersnappers a thing or two! Plus, it's UFC 282 fight week and we are sad to report that Robbie Lawler is out and his fight against San...

Well, this is a new one. After months of speculation on exactly what he was up to when the UFC apparently let him opt out of the USADA testing pool while recovering from the horrible leg injury he suffered at UFC 264, Conor McGregor appeared to admit in a flurry of tweets that he took a bunch of PEDs. He also appeared to say "how dare you" to anybody who questioned him about it. Frankly, we're not...

We have once again reached an odd inflection point where Bellator MMA could lay conceivable claim to having the best fighter in the world in a particular weight class. This time it's light heavyweight champion Vadim Nemkov, who put on a remarkable performance Friday night against Corey Anderson in the delayed final of the Bellator light heavyweight grand prix. Nemkov went and did the thing we're a...

This week, we take listener questions on all things UFC 281. Will Israel Adesanya get an immediate rematch against Alex Pereira after dropping the middleweight title in a fight he was probably on his way to winning on the cards? Should we actually be giving two-time UFC champion Carla Esparza more credit, despite this most recent drubbing at the hands of Zhang Weili? Did Michael Chandler earn his...

As has become customary for pay-per-views, two title fights are on the docket Saturday at UFC 281. One is a hotly anticipated middleweight championship match between Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira that everybody is stoked for and where nobody seems to know what will happen. The other one? Not QUITE so much intrigue. In the evening's co-main event, Zhang Welli challenges Carla Esparza for the str...

Two things can be true at once: Is Jake Paul just using these aging MMA fighters to make himself a series of huge paydays from relatively easy fights? Yes, obviously. But did Paul and Showtime also celebrate Anderson Silva better both before and after their scrap on Saturday night than the UFC did at the end of Silva's MMA career? Also yes. So, that seems notable. On top of everything else, Silva...

We did not think it was going to go like that. Both figuratively and literally, our money was on Charles Oliveira to once again become lightweight champion at UFC 280. As it happened, Islam Makhachev was absolutely dominant, rolling to a second-round submission victory. Now, it seems the powers that be will set him up with a champ-champ fight against Alexander Volkanovski. That sucks for all the o...

Let's face it, Charles Oliveira vs. Islam Makhachev seems like a heck of a fight for the "vacant" UFC lightweight title. Factor in that this event goes down in the middle of a Saturday afternoon (can't argue with mid-day fights!) and the UFC has efficiently increased our hunger by feeding us a steady diet of garbage Fight Nights in recent weeks and we are pumped. Are we actually a little bit TOO p...

It's been a few weeks now since news originally broke that Conor McGregor apparently hadn't been drug tested by USADA since the third quarter of 2021. Yet ... still nothing. It doesn't appear those reports served as a wake-up call that perhaps the UFC's anti-PEDs partner should put some agents on a dingy and have them motor out to McGregor's yacht with a sample cup. And in the absence of more robu...

So, Dana White lied right to our faces and it turned out the reason no fans or media could attend Saturday's UFC Fight Night event WAS because Mark Zuckerberg wanted to be there, after all. And even if Dana White tries to claim later that he didn't lie due to some semantic bullshit, we all know the truth now. Zuck just had to be there to watch Mackenzie Dern ... who unfortunately lost a majority d...

Ben Rothwell is set to make his first post-UFC appearance this weekend, taking on -- say it with us now -- Bobo "The Bible Belt Brawler" O'Bannon in BKFC. You know what, call us crazy, but considering his size, skills and experience, we kinda think Rothwell might do OK in BKFC. Plus, Melvin Manhoef calls it a career (but not before getting pounded into the Black Lands by Yoel Romero) and this week...

If we remember UFC Fight Night 210 at all, it'll likely be as a damn bloodbath. Cory Sandhagen got a much-needed win in a men's bantamweight contender bout against Song Yadong, after springing open an early cut that had multiple ringside officials nearly peering into Yadong's brain. There was also a grusome cut in Gregory Rodrigues' comeback win over Chidi Njokuani in the co-main and in his win ov...

Well, that was fuckin' crazy, eh Mainiacs? Here we thought Nate Diaz and Tony Ferguson were both headed for demoralizing losses in odd match-ups against heavily favored opponents and then -- Boom! -- Khamzat Chimaev screws the whole shit up. Instead of seeing Diaz ragdolled by Chimaev, Nate lucks into a far more advantageous bout against Tony Fegurson ... which Diaz WINS and now exits the UFC into...

It's pledge month over at the CME Patreon. If you haven't yet signed up to join the team, we'd love it if you'd consider lending us your support at: https://www.patreon.com/comainevent This week, we set about getting primed for Saturday's UFC 279 fight card. Or, rather, we set about trying to guard ourselves against heartbreak, as Nate Diaz vs. Khamzat Chimaev AND Tony Ferguson vs. Li Jingliang BO...

The UFC touches down for the first time in Paris, France this Saturday, with Ciryl Gane and Tai Tuivasa set to do the damn thing in an allegedly important heavyweight contender bout. Is it still a big deal when the UFC is able to break into new territory, as it will do this weekend? And if so, a big deal for whom, exactly? Plus, in Power Rankings, everybody keeps talking like Big Fran will be back...

One Championship took advantage of a UFC-free weekend and made its debut on Amazon Prime Video over the weekend. You know what? It was pretty good. Can recommend. Would do again. Plus, One maybe kinda lucked out getting a resurgent Demetrious Johnson as its flyweight champion at this event. Now, the biggest question is, can One and Prime make a splash in the American MMA market? And how much of th...

In what has to be the most shocking ending to a UFC pay-per-view card in recent memory, Leon Edwards kicked Kamaru Usman right in his damn face with less than a minute remaining in the fifth round of a fight Usman was about to win on the cards. Thus, UFC 278 and Usman's title reign both came to a close. We're almost certainly running this one back, so gird your loins for a third fight between thes...