MMA

7:27 AM ET Brett Okamoto Close Brett Okamoto ESPN Staff Writer MMA columnist for ESPN.com Analyst for “MMA Live” Covered MMA for Las Vegas Sun Mike Coppinger After more than a year of unsuccessful negotiations with the fight promotion, Francis Ngannou is officially no longer the UFC heavyweight champion. Ngannou (17-3) fought out his UFC

10:51 PM ET Jon Jones, arguably the greatest fighter of all time, will fight Ciryl Gane for the heavyweight championship at UFC 285 on March 4, UFC president Dana White said Saturday. The announcement came after the UFC was unable to come to terms with its now former heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. It will mark

12:15 AM ET A welterweight title trilogy bout between Leon Edwards and former champion Kamaru Usman will take place in the main event of UFC 286 on March 18 in London, UFC president Dana White said Saturday night. Edwards won the title by knocking out Usman in the fifth round of their UFC 278 main

Jan 14, 2023 LAS VEGAS — The UFC finished its event schedule in 2022 on a Sean Strickland loss, and now it has started its event schedule in 2023 on a Sean Strickland win. Strickland (26-5) defeated France’s Nassourdine Imavov (12-4) by unanimous decision in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday. It

12:38 AM ET Jon Jones has been talking for years about fighting at heavyweight. For much of his dominant reign as UFC light heavyweight champion, he had one eye fixed on the big boys. Even during the week leading up to his 205-pound title defense against Dominick Reyes in February 2020, Jones seemed more focused

7:29 PM ET The UFC is finalizing a lightweight bout between Justin Gaethje and Rafael Fiziev to its UFC 286 lineup in London. Contracts have not been signed, but the 155-pound contest is expected to be shored up shortly, multiple sources told ESPN on Saturday. The UFC 286 pay-per-view is scheduled for March 18 from

1:09 PM ET Sara CoelloESPN Close Sara Coello is a writer in ESPN’s investigative and enterprise unit. Before joining, they wrote about legal issues and crime for The Charlotte Observer, The Post and Courier and The Dallas Morning News. Coello studied sociology, journalism and Spanish at The University of Dallas. The public is unlikely to

8:52 AM ET The 2023 MMA calendar gets underway this weekend, and it intensifies next week when UFC 283 is headlined by a pair of championship fights. But a truly game-changing moment for the sport arrives next month in a collision of ESPN’s No. 1 and No. 2 pound-for-pound fighters. When UFC men’s featherweight champion

4:45 PM ET A suspended MMA coach at the center of an ongoing betting scandal in the UFC has acted as an agent for an offshore bookmaking operation for years, multiple sources who placed bets with him told ESPN. James Krause, 36, has worked as an agent — the term for a middleman between offshore

Jan 9, 2023 Nassourdine Imavov meets short-notice replacement Sean Strickland in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday in Las Vegas. The fights at the UFC Apex are on ESPN+, with the 7 p.m. ET main card preceded by prelims at 4 p.m. Both fighters typically compete at middleweight — Strickland is No.