The UFC returned to Brazil Saturday for UFC Fight Night 137, or UFC Sao Paulo, from the Ginásio do Ibirapuera in São Paulo, Brazil. The second fight of the main card saw former UFC Bantamweight Champion and Brazil’s own Renan Barao return to the octagon for the second time this year to face hungry UFC newcomer Andre Ewell. Originally scheduled as a bantamweight contest the fight was moved to a catchweight of 140 lbs after Barao missed weight for the second time in his UFC career. Missed weight badly, in fact, weighing in 5 lbs over the bantamweight non-title limit of 136 lbs.

As the fight got underway, Barao pressed the action but Ewell landed a strong counter punch. Barao walked into that blow, and it dropped him. Ewell pounced, they scrambled, and both men made it back to their feet. Barao recovered quickly and worked in the clinch. The action moved to the fence, where Barao was able to get the takedown. He worked from side control and then half guard, landing knees on Ewell. Barao started to unload with his hands from the top. More often than not, they hit their mark. Ewell worked his way to the fence to try to explode out, but Barao was onto his plan, and adjusted position. The former champ stepped over and took full mount, landing a few punches then jumping into and armbar attempt. Ewell defended and rolled but Barao held on and kept the armbar in place. Ewell exploded again, escaping the submission but Barao stayed on top as the round came to an end.

Barao opened the second with some body kicks to keep Ewell at range, but Ewell moved in with a 1-2 combo that hit the mark. Both men looked a little more tentative compared to the first. Ewell continued to land, and pushed Barao back with a leaping left hand. He continued to land strikes, while Barao answered back with kick. Ewell started to change levels with his punches landing to Barao’s body and Barao answered back with more kicks. Barao moved in, changed levels, and went for the take down that Ewell initially defended, but Barao held on to finish it. Barao worked from half guard then, and landed a few punches as the horn sounded to end the round.

In the third, Ewell jumped in with left, right combo that made Barao back away. Ewell landed a hard left, and right again that pushed Barao back once more. Ewell looked like he was landing every left hand that he threw. Barao whiffed on a front kick and Ewell leaped forward again and just missed the mark. Ewell rushed in landing a right, and Barao fired back. Then, Ewell landed another left that looked to hurt Barao! The two exchanged and Ewell landed a front kick that appeared to hurt Barao again. Barao fired off a spin kick that just missed the mark, and the two exchanged in a flurry to end the round and the fight.

Left hand after left hand for @Daii24_Dre stuns Barao! #UFCSP pic.twitter.com/e66JhDRUQS

— UFC (@ufc) September 23, 2018

Come the scorecards, Ewell had done the unthinkable: won a split decision, in Brazil, against a former Brazilian UFC champion, and one of the all-time bantamweight greats!

Andre Ewell def. Renan Barão by Split Decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)

The post UFC Sao Paulo Results: Newcomer Andre Ewell Shocks Ex-Champ Renan Barão, Wins Split Decision appeared first on Cageside Press.

Lincoln, NB — Nebraska native Anthony Smith didn’t get to partake in the UFC Lincoln card over the weekend. While a couple of other fighters from the cornhusker state took part, Smith, instead, will be fighting at UFC Moncton in October. It’s a big pairing for Smith, a chance to knock off former title challenger Volkan Oezdemir.

Smith, however, still stopped by UFC Lincoln to take in the show, and spoke to reporters back stage about the card, and his recent success at light heavyweight.

“I wanted to fight on this card,” he admitted Saturday. “But it is cool to kind of be able to enjoy the UFC being in Lincoln, just seeing the crowd and the atmosphere and taking it all in a little bit.” While he didn’t get to fight at home, “I think everything happens for a reason, I think that the Shogun fight was obviously a much better opportunity, and that’s what it’s all about to me,” he said. “Me fighting in Lincoln would have been a strictly personal thing, because we wouldn’t have been able to get anybody who would have propelled my career.”

Smith’s career has skyrocketed of late thanks to a move to light heavyweight, and a pair of victories over former champions Rashad Evans and Shogun Rua. Smith said of his newfound success that he knew that “when I finally put it together, it was going to be crazy.”

“I knew that I was capable of, just wasn’t sure what the missing piece was,” he explained. “Now I think a little bit of it is my, I don’t want to say necessarily my maturity, but definitely my experience. I think my physical capacity and my mental capacity finally matched up, and not cutting the weight makes a huge difference. I can go in there with a clear mind, and focused.”

So it was the weight cut then, at least mostly. “I think that was the missing piece,” he said. “I think that everything was really, really close to coming together, but I think I was just wrecking myself. Just mentally, the stress and anxiety that I put on myself.”

“When I was in the Shogun fight, I noticed that I was able to really open up my vision a lot, and started to set traps for him, and was able to see what he was doing, and really start to read all the tells that he was giving,” Smith explained. “I’ve never been able to do that before, because I’d wrecked myself the night before, I’d feel like dogs*it, half the time I was like ‘ahh,, it kind of is what it is.'” In comparison, things are vastly different these days. Now, “I’m just hyper focused, and I don’t have to do all that weight cutting anymore, and my mindset is totally different. I honestly think that that’s probably just the missing piece.”

Smith summed the change up by saying “now the picture’s clear.”

The lack of a weight cut has left Smith physically able to string together more fight camps, though fighting so frequently has taken something of an emotional toll on the family man. However, it’s a case of being careful what you wish for, since he’s “been begging for short turnarounds for a long time.”

As for the match-up with Oezdemir at UFC Moncton, there’s one theme that Smith feels will at least matter to those watching: age.

“I think for the fans, it’s going to make a difference. Because as much as I think it’s bullsh*t, everyone pretends like I’m out here beating up children that can’t defend themselves anymore,” he said. “We know that’s not the case, but it is what it is. Now it’s someone who’s younger, that’s closer to my age. I think this will really shut people up and say ‘alright, maybe he’s for real.'”

Smith credits much of his recent success to Factory X, his current home. “Marc Montoya is an unsung hero. I wish he would get a little bit more of the push that some of these other big name coaches get. But a little bit of that is on me, I think I need to do my job to show people what Mark’s really capable of.”

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Lincoln, NB — Heading into UFC Lincoln, James Krause was on a four fight win streak. And after dabbling at welterweight once or twice before, the lightweight decided to move up once again. An odd choice for a fighter on a winning streak, but weight cuts are grueling. During fight weight, he consistently said that 70 was his home, though he later admitted that if the fight went badly, he might have been forced back down.

With a finish of Warllley Alves, however, the proof is in the pudding: James Krause can hang at welterweight. Not that it’s about proving anything, at least not to anyone else.

“I don’t really care about proving to anybody else,” he said following the fight at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, NB on Saturday. “This is all about me. I don’t owe anybody. I’ve been doing this for twelve years. This is my fifty-sixth fight, pro and amateur. I don’t need to prove anything to anybody.”

Krause isn’t worried about any of that, since, as he put it, “I do this for me, my team, my family.” That having been said, at least to himself, “this fight was all about proving that I could be at 170.”

Krause told reporters after the fight that he feels like “more of an athlete” at welterweight. “I’m not overly strong in the weight class, but my cardio’s good, and I think my speed! I was fast at 155. Whenever I was out there, he couldn’t find me. I was too fast, my feet are too good for him, and everything I threw seemed to land.”

Pointing out that Alves had never been finished, and owns a win over interim welterweight champ, Krause sees the victory as a quality win. The keys will continue to be speed and cardio moving forward. And swag, apparently.

“I found my swag out there. My coach Mark, he was telling me ‘you gotta find you swag, you got to talk some s*it!'” I’ve done it before,” he recalled, “and I just seem to fight better when I do. I don’t know if you guys could hear me — I called him a p*ssy a couple times, told him he didn’t have no power when he kicked me. It’s not about him, he’s not a p*ssy, he’s really good. It’s about me.”

“It’s about finding my flow, finding my swag out there, getting in a groove. I think I did a really good job of doing that early tonight.”

Watch the full UFC Lincoln post-fight interview with James Krause above!

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Lincoln, NB — Bryan Barberena made his return from injury and a loss to Leon Edwards at UFC Lincoln. Heading into enemy territory against hometown hero Jake Ellenberger, the fight couldn’t have gone any better for ‘Bam Bam,’ one of three MMA Lab fighters on the UFC Fight Night 135 card. Barberena finished Ellenberger within a round, sending the longtime welterweight contender off into the sunset, as ‘The Juggernaut’ retired following the bout.

That’s the circle of life in the MMA world, however. And while the door closes on Ellenberger’s career, Barberena improves to 4-3 in the UFC, and 14-5 overall. Coincidentally, Barberena also holds a TKO win over Jake Ellenberger’s brother Joe in the UFC. MMA is funny like that.

Speaking to reporters after the fight, ‘Bam Bam’ said that “I was happy with it. I’ve been out for a while. I knew I was going to bounce back right away and be good in the cage. I’ve had long layoffs before earlier in my career, and never had a problem with it. I fought every day when I went into the gym, I’m in there with tough guys. No different.”

The win, meanwhile, went mostly according to plan. “I honestly pictured a starch, KO finish, but hey, a TKO works, and I’m happy with it.”

Opponent Jake Ellenberger, who Barberena quickly finished, retired after the bout. It’s not something that Barberena was really concerned with either way. “It doesn’t matter. I knew this was going to be his last fight,” Barberena said. “He was kind of on his way out, I knew that, he was on a skid and everything. The fact that I was the guy he would fight next, I knew he was going to be retiring afterward.”

He had some kind words for his vanquished foe, however. “I wish him the best of luck in pursing future ventures, and I know he’s going to be successful in whatever he decides to do. He’s done a lot for this sport, and I just respect the hell out of him. It was an honor to fight him.”

Looking ahead, Barberena singled out two fighters he’d love to get in the cage with: Mike Perry or Donald Cerrone. “Either one of those, I’d love that fight,” the MMA Labs fighter said. However, both are tied up at the moment, so that might have to wait. Which might work out in the end, as, citing a back issue, Barberena might need a bit of time to heal up.

Watch the full post-fight press scrum with Bryan Barberena from UFC Lincoln above!

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Lincoln, NB — Middleweight standout Eryk Anders entered UFC Lincoln off the first loss of his career, against the biggest opponent of his career. Back in February, in the main event of UFC Belem, Anders faced Lyoto ‘The Dragon’ Machida, and came up just short. The split decision loss certainly taught Anders some lessons, and at UFC Lincoln, he was focused on getting back in the win column.

It took a little bit for Anders to get going. “You want to get wins, you want to get finishes. I definitely lost that first round,” Anders said after the fight. “So coming out after that second round, I knew it was imperative to set the tone, establish dominance, make him break a little bit.”

Anders did more than break opponent Tim Williams in the end. “He hit the ground a few times, he got back up, so I think there at the end of that third round, I think he thought he’d be safe with that technical stand-up,” Anders recapped. “I just saw his head there, I waited for his knee to come off the ground, and the extra point was good.”

It was a huge head kick victory for Anders.

The former football player admitted that he “just felt a little flat,” at the start of the fight. But it’s something that he overcame, something that he’s used to. “Sometimes I start off slow. But it’s not about how you start, but how you finish.”

Anders called for a bonus back stage at UFC Lincoln, and later in the night, the UFC granted him just that, as he picked up one of the two Performance of the Night bonuses. He also called for a fight with Canada’s Elias Theodoreau at UFC 231 in December. Whether it happens remains to be seen, but it’s certainly feasible.

And no, that head kick, almost soccer-kick style, was not something Eryk Anders trained for. As Anders put it, “sometimes when you’re in a fight, you’re just flying by the seat of your pants. I can’t head kick my training partners. You break all your toys, you ain’t gonna have nothing to play with.”

Despite the issues at UFC Belem (a fight that could have gone Anders’ way), he didn’t feel any urge to change things up even when it looked like the fight against Tim Williams might go to the scorecards. After all, he feels it was clear he was up two rounds. Besides which, “no one wants to watch boring point fighting. The fans love to see knockouts, I love to deliver knockouts.”

Watch the full post-fight press scrum with Eryk Anders at UFC Lincoln above.

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Lincoln, NB — TUF 23 light heavyweight winner Andrew Sanchez got back in the win column for the first time in over a year and a half at UFC Lincoln on Saturday. Over that stretch, he’d dropped two straight fights. ‘El Dirte’ admitted after the bout, a unanimous decision win over Markus Perez, that he had to quiet some doubts during that rough stretch.

Yet more than anything, he missed the feeling of winning. “I was thinking about this before the fight,” Sanchez said back stage at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, NB. “I miss that f*cking feeling where you’re doing a camp, you’re thinking about it like ‘I want to win so bad,’ and you’re worried about the loss and all the bad things that can happen. And finally you win, it’s just amazing, you’re just overcome with relief. You get a week, two weeks, whatever you want, to do whatever you want.”

“Anyway I just miss that feeling,” he added. “I wanted to feel it so bad, and I’m feeling it right now.” Basking in the glow of victory, in other words.

“It’s been a year and a half since I got a win. I had two hard losses,” Sanchez explained. “Took a long time between each one, because I knew something was wrong. Last fight was eight months ago, I’ve been training since, up at TriStar. Eight month camp, man. Just to fix whatever was wrong. It feels good to know I’m on the right path.”

No question, there were doubts during his losing streak, even if it was just a pair of fights. After all, it doesn’t take much to lose your spot in the UFC. “Your mind starts to play tricks on you,” said Sanchez. “‘Did I lose it? Did I get lazy, because I got to the UFC?’ Anything you can think of, to doubt yourself, that pops into your mind, you’ve got to just block that out.”

One of the keys to blocking that out is having the right people around you, Sanchez suggested, which he feels he has with TriStar.

As for opponent Markus Perez, at least one thing surprised Sanchez in the fight Saturday night. “I’ve seen his past tapes, and with really heavy pressure, he freaks out, he runs, sprints across the cage, so we knew he didn’t deal well with pressure,” he explained. However, “he was holding his ground a little more than I expected. In the clinch, he had good takedown defense, he was incredibly slippery and scrambly.”

Sanchez, however, knew he didn’t have to force it. And in the end, he did exactly what he needed to do. That earned him a 29-28 score on all three judges scorecards, improving his record to 10-4 overall.

Watch the full UFC Lincoln post-fight interview with Andrew Sanchez above!

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Lincoln, NB — Deiveson Figueiredo maintained his perfect record at UFC Lincoln, knocking out John Moraga. Moraga, who fought Demetrious Johnson for the flyweight title back in 2013, had been on a three-fight win streak heading into the night. It was the fourth straight win in the UFC for Figueiredo. And as the opponents get tougher, the Brazilian is certainly making a case.

The only problem is, the division has been blown wide open after Henry Cejudo dethroned long-time champ Johnson. That’s great news for those at the top of the division who Johnson had defeated repeatedly. Not so good for someone like Deiveson Figueiredo, however, who may have to take a few more fights before reaching the top.

Still, his resume is impressive, as he pointed out (via interpreter). “15-0. Four in the UFC. 4-0. Three knockouts. And he wants Cejudo. If not Cejudo, then Demetrious Johnson.” The best of the best, in other words.

“He comes to make history, not play around,” was the next response. In other words, Figueiredo is all business. “I just knocked out the guy [that] fought for the belt. I deserve the champion, or the ex-champion,” he added.

Check out the full UFC Lincoln post-fight interview with Deiveson Figueiredo above!

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Lincoln, NB — Cortney Casey finally, mercifully, had a decision go her way Saturday night at UFC Lincoln. It was another close one, an excellent back-and-forth battle between herself and Angela Hill. One judge gave the fight to Hill, but the remaining two sided with Casey. That snapped a two-fight skid that saw her on the wrong side of a pair of split decisions.

After the bout, Casey admitted to breathing a little sigh of relief when the call went her way. “Every time it goes to the judges, man, my heart’s just like ‘okay…’ So I just thought positive,” she told media members backstage after the bout, “and really focused on just staying positive and hoping I got that W. And I ended up getting it. So I’m happy about that.”

“I needed that win for sure,” she admitted. “Coming off those two losses, [they] were a little bit rough. But I’m definitely happy to be back in the win column.” On the down side, however, Casey believed she’d broken her hand during the fight. “Hopefully the hand’s not too banged up, definitely broke it, I think in the second round for sure. But hopefully I can get back in there and get another one in before the end of the year.”

“I kind of knew right away when it happened that it was bad,’ she said of the hand injury.

After the bout, she had a potential opponent in mind for her next fight: BJJ ace Mackenzie Dern.

“No disrespect to her, I just know she’s looking for a fight,” Casey said. The pair are former teammates. There’s no bad blood between them, however. “I just want to fight. If she’s looking for a fight, come November, December, I’m ready to fight. I know Tecia [Torres] is coming off a loss too, I know she wants to get back in there, so I’m ready. I just want to fight again before the end of the year for sure. Whether it’s Tecia, whether it’s Mackenzie, whether it’s one of these girls that have fights coming up in the next couple months.”

A top ten fighter is what Casey would like. Torres would certainly fit the bill, but Dern also has star power. “I have all the respect [in the world] for Mackenzie. I know a lot of people don’t want to fight her because of who she is, but I do know she’s looking for a fight,” Casey explained. “And if she needs a fight, I’m ready to fight. But it’s not a callout or a bash to Mackenzie at all, I love her to death. But yeah, it was just more or less, she wants a fight, no one will fight her. And you guys know me, I’ll fight anyone, anywhere, at any time.”

Once the hand is healed up, anyway. But Casey was sure to add that “it’s just a hand. I’ve got another one I can use.”

The post UFC Lincoln’s Cortney Casey Talks Broken Hand, Fighting Mackenzie Dern appeared first on Cageside Press.

Lincoln, NB — There was a time when UFC Lincoln’s Jake Ellenberger was considered a real threat in the welterweight division. A potential title challenger, in the days when Georges St. Pierre lorded over the division, seemingly infallible. A six fight win streak from 2010 to 2012 saw ‘The Juggernaut’ talked about as a possible foil for GSP. Yet he was never quite able to make the step up to the next level.

A brief setback came in a loss to Martin Kampmann. Ellenberger bounced back, stringing together a pair of wins over Jay Hieron and Nate Marquardt. Then, against the division’s elite, he dropped fights to Rory MacDonald, Robbie Lawler, Kelvin Gastelum, Stephen Thompson, and others. GSP left the division, and the sport, for years.

Despite being just thirty-three years old heading into UFC Fight Night 135 in Lincoln, NB, Ellenberger had plenty pf mileage on him. So it was no surprise that after suffering a tough TKO stoppage against Bryan Barberena on Saturday that Jake Ellenberger announced his retirement. The Nebraska native was at home, more or less. The timing seemed right.

He spoke about the decision after the fight with the media, saying that the call was an emotional one. That said, time with his kids “encouraged that decision. It’s the toughest sport in the world, things don’t always go your way. It came a little shorter than I would have liked it to have. But that’s what it is right now. I’m just in the process of moving forward, and grateful for all the opportunities.”

Ellenberger admitted that he likely would not have retired had he won against Barberena. There’d been no plan to retire either way. “Not really, to be honest,” he said of the possibility. “I had a lot of progress and progression in the last six or eight months. So not really, to be honest, I really didn’t.”

“He caught me. It’s one of those things, you’ve just got to keep moving forward,” he summed up the fight.

Looking back, Ellenberger picked a handful of top memories from his time in the sport. “When I fought Marquardt in Montreal was one of my favorites. [Jake] Shields, that was the main event down in New Orleans, that was another,” he recalled. “There’s a few. The Omaha main event, 2012, against Diego Sanchez, that will forever be one of my favorite moments.”

“There’s a lot, but I feel like, just the relationships with people I’ve made along the way, it’s really what I’m proud of,” Ellenberger said. “The UFC’s always been great to me, everyone on the staff, like I said, it’s been a privilege and an honor.”

On the possibility of him returning somewhere down the line, “I don’t know. There’s a lot going on right now. For now, no.”

Moving forward, however, he would like to stay involved with MMA. He alluded to opportunities that might allow for that. “Potentially, potentially yeah. I can’t really talk about it yet, but I would love to stay in this sport, stay involved. There is the potential for that.”

Ellenberger finishes his career at 31-15, with wins over Diego Sanchez, Matt Brown, Nate Marquardt, Jake Shields, John Howard, and many others.

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Lincoln, NB — Rani Yahya entered UFC Fight Night 135 in Lincoln, Nebraska on a bit of a run, having won two straight. He came out of the UFC Lincoln card with a third victory, and an impressive submission, with a heel-hook win over Luke Sanders. It’s a move he trained for coming into the fight, knowing that Sanders had been submitted by a leg lock before. And it was the culmination of changes he made to his training that he initiated over a year ago.

Now, Yahya told the media following the bout at UFC Lincoln, he’s performing at his best.

“He had a loss [from] a knee bar. It’s kind of weird, he didn’t really resist too much,” Yahya said of his game plan against Sanders. “So we worked a lot on that, at American Top Team, I trained a lot on that with the Jiu-jitsu coach there.”

“As long as I’m on the ground, man, if I’m on top, I feel very good,” he admitted. But he’s not just a ground guy these days. “Striking too. Many people say, I’m a one dimensional fighter, that I only go to the ground. But you tell me, who has the advantage on me in the UFC? It’s even, or I have the advantage. Tonight I had the advantage. I landed a good leg kick, I made him dizzy, I landed a very good punch on him that put him against the fence. So here I am.”

The usually reserved Brazilian called out some big names following his win, mainly the champ, T.J. Dillashaw. Asked what’s changed that he’s now willing to call his shot, Yahya said that “for a long time I wasn’t able to perform at my best. I was performing at 50, 60 percent. More than a year ago, after the last time I lost, I made a few changes.”

Those changes included a move to American Top Team, where he feels he had the “perfect training camp, and now I’m performing at my best, so I have the confidence. I have the confidence now. So I want to go against the best.”

On what ATT brings to the table, well, “everything is different now,” Yahya said. “First of all, it’s an evolving process. I have fun in my training camps now. Before, I used to be my own head coach. I wasn’t as comfortable in Brazil where I was training. Every time I was fighting I over-trained. I used to train three or four times a day, every single day, hard. I wasn’t able to perform. Now, they [ATT] know how to do it. Every day I learn a new thing, new technique, new concept.”

The key, Yahya is now evolving. “I was reborn after I made those changes.”

And while Yahya is open to fighting one of the top Brazilians in the division, such as Raphael Assuncao, “I’m actually focused on these guys — Dillashaw, Garbrandt.”

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