Thanksgiving Special: Who are the biggest turkeys in MMA and what are we most thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving!

The day that officially starts “the holiday season” in the United States is traditionally enjoyed with family, friends, and a laden table, where folk gather to celebrate what they are most thankful for. And we here at MMA Fighting have much to be thankful for!

Not only do we have the best readers and fans in the world, but we also get to spend our time covering the wild, wonderful, and sometimes woeful sport of MMA. Personally, we wouldn’t trade it for the world.

And so with 2024 winding down, Jed Meshew, Damon Martin, and Mike Heck gathered around the digital dining table to share the things we are most thankful for this year, and also admonish the biggest turkeys.

Biggest Turkeys of the Year

PFL/Bellator merger

Mergers and acquisitions as a whole in MMA might get fans excited, but it’s often a bad thing for fighters, because it gives them less options/negotiating power when it comes time to sign a new deal or potentially just finding somewhere to compete when for whatever reason the UFC might not be an option. But there was generally a lot of enthusiasm when PFL bought Bellator — and bought is a generous word considering PFL basically just took ownership of a promotion losing money off the books from Paramount — because it seemingly created a clear-cut No. 2 organization behind the UFC.

Almost exactly one year later, the whole thing seems like an absolute mess.

First off, Bellator was kept as a separate entity for some unknown and confusing reason, perhaps through a contractual obligation or maybe just because PFL was so dedicated to its season-long format that this was the only way to book fights that didn’t involve a tournament and a bizarre point system to determine rankings. That just made things confusing for the casual fan when PFL would make a grand announcement like “we just signed top prospect Paul Hughes” and then his first fight actually happened in Bellator.

But second and most important, just days away from PFL crowning a whole bunch of new champions and handing out $1 million checks to each of them, some of the most prominent fighters on the Bellator roster are lashing out about inactivity. Patricio Pitbull, Patchy Mix and Corey Anderson all complained recently about not being booked for several months with no sign when they might actually fight again. While it’s impossible to know for sure why these fighters are being iced, it’s difficult not to assume it has something to do with money because everybody’s contracts from Bellator were still in effect after the PFL purchase.

Something needs to be fixed and fast because PFL was in a rare spot to really make an impact in the sport with an impressive roster — that still doesn’t rival the UFC but it was a really good runner-up — and excitement to see what the organization could build for the future. Right now, it seems like there’s far more concern that PFL is going to be dismantled rather than blossom after buying Bellator. - Damon Martin

Netflix

I thought long and hard about putting Conor McGregor here given what a horrendous 2024 he’s had, but it’s the holiday season and frankly, I’ve written all I care to on the subject. And at this point it would be beyond beating a dead horse to bring Jon Jones back up, so instead let’s talk about Netflix and the disaster that was Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul.

When Tyson vs. Paul was originally announced, most of us had the same reaction: that’s awful but streaming on Netflix is a pretty big deal. And it was. Tyson vs. Paul was by far the biggest combat sports event of the year and very likely the biggest combat sports event of the decade in terms of raw viewership numbers. Over 100 million people tuned in to watch this grand event and what they got was mostly awful.

The fight itself was the worst combination of sad and uninteresting, with Paul either being unwilling or unable to finish off a nearly 60-year-old man whose legs didn’t work (thank Thor he didn’t though because watching a senior citizen get killed was not on my to-do list). That would be bad enough but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Not only was the fight bad, but it was so bad that a lot of people thought it was rigged. Those people are silly geese, but there were enough of them that Most Valuable Promotions felt the need to address the accusations of collusion, and if you’re having to justify your product to millions of viewers, well, that’s not exactly ideal.

And then, of course, there were the production issues. Netflix, the largest streaming platform on Earth, was simply unable to stand up to the strain of 100 million people tuning in, leading to the stream repeatedly crashing. As much as people talked about the terrible fight afterward, they were all roasting Netflix during the event. The idea that “all publicity is good publicity” is foolish and Netflix botching this big of an event undeniably hurt them in the future when they start trying to move in on the NFL or NBA.

And again, all of this was in service of a carnival sideshow event where a 58-year-old man is lucky to have not been seriously injured. Buncha turkeys, I say. - Jed Meshew

Merab Dvalishvili

Let me start off by saying that I really like Merab Dvalishvili. I was interviewing him well before he was a top-15 fighter, and he didn’t have to give me the time of day, and since then, he’s always been incredibly gracious and nice to me. I respect the man to no end, and it was a cool moment watching him jump over hurdle after hurdle get to the proverbial promised land of the UFC bantamweight division.

Having said that, Dvalishvili, perceptually, may have the worst two months of a title run in UFC history.

The MMA community wants to see if Umar Nurmagomedov is the dude at 135, and the vast majority want to see him fight Dvalishvili for the title. In fact, that’s a matchup fans have been calling on On To the Next One since he nuked Raoni Barcelos nearly two years ago. The UFC CLEARLY wants the fight, because after Dvalishvili beat Sean O’Malley, Nurmagomedov was sitting cageside and when asked about giving the fans the fight they want, Dvalishvili put over Dana White — who by the way, has been publicly blasting him for years. Although it looked bad, I somewhat understood the no-sell.

But since then, it’s been, “Umar doesn’t deserve this,” and, “Sean O’Malley deserves a rematch” (he doesn’t), and if “Deiveson Figueiredo beats Petr Yan, he should get the shot” (didn’t totally disagree with that, but still would’ve favored Umar), to the guy he absolutely ran over for 25 minutes 18 months ago, he should get the shot. Don’t get me wrong, Petr Yan is awesome, but he’s 2-3 in his past five fights, and his wins are against our No. 15 and No. 7 ranked fighters. Great wins, but not enough to get a rematch and a title shot.

There’s only one guy that makes sense. It’s not O’Malley and it’s not Yan. To quote the great Jed Meshew, Umar is coming, and Dvalishvili should embrace this challenge to no end. Also, going with the, “If the UFC wants me to fight Umar, I will” mentality is not what fans want to see or hear from a fighter who scratched and clawed to a title shot, a championship win in a fight that didn’t knock any socks off, and who has yet to defend the belt. I, in no way, am accusing Dvalisvili of being “scared” to fight Nurmagomedov, he’s just doing the complete opposite of prize fighting.

Let’s just take this latest example as exhibit Q.

If this ultimately is a work, or a troll job, please stop! Go fight Umar, and if you beat him, if he truly has overachieved as you’ve led us all to believe, then prove yourself right. Then, call for O’Malley, or Yan, or whoever you want. Just please, please, please, pump the brakes on this whole thing. It’s not working. - Mike Heck

Thing You Are Most Thankful For

Max Holloway

They just don’t build them like Max Holloway much anymore and that’s why he deserves all the praise for his crazy year in 2024.

A consummate professional inside and outside the cage, Holloway built his popularity through sheer will power as one of the most exciting and vicious fighters on the entire UFC roster while staying out of negative headlines. Holloway is just an incredibly likable guy, who always goes out there and fights his ass off while oftentimes taking on challenges that seem almost too daunting to tackle. Remember the time he volunteered to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov on short notice? Yeah, Holloway is just that dude.

This year was filled with the highest of highs and arguably the lowest of lows when you look at Holloway’s record. At UFC 300, Holloway gave the sport what I’ve called the single most stunning moment in the history of the sport when he pointed to the ground with just seconds remaining in his fight against Justin Gaethje and then he unloaded a shot right before time expired that face-planted the former interim lightweight champion. It’s a highlight for the ages and one that will almost undoubtedly lead or finish the reel when Holloway is inevitably inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.

But his return a few months later didn’t go his way when Holloway suffered the first knockout loss of his career after falling to Ilia Topuria with the featherweight title on the line. That fight effectively ended Holloway’s career at featherweight because he knew getting back to the championship would take a whole lot of time that frankly he just doesn’t have right now. Still, Holloway’s desire to jump into the fire against a young, hungry champion like Topuria was exactly why everybody adores this guy. And he was giving as good as he was getting right up to the final blow.

Now he’s undoubtedly going to return to lightweight where Holloway is still ranked among the best in the sport and he’ll almost certainly give us another fight for the ages when he returns in 2025. Holloway is special and it can’t be overstated enough just how much he means to the sport because he can’t fight forever and we’re going to miss him fiercely when he’s gone. - Martin

Alex Pereira

UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira sits at the head of the table, because what this man continues to do for the UFC and — way more importantly — the fans of this great sport should be celebrated.

“Poatan” will not be my Fighter of the Year in 2024. That distinction will go to Ilia Topuria, but if there’s a category for the UFC and MMA’s MVP, Pereira should win that one unanimously. The man stepped in to save UFC 300 and created one of the best moments of the year when he booped Jamahal Hill in the main event. He, again, saved the promotion’s annual International Fight Week card to face Jiri Prochazka in a rematch at UFC 303, and again, booping occured — this time with an incredible head kick.

Then, Pereira did it again at UFC 307, saving a pretty rough pay-per-view slate to face Khalil Rountree, and despite the injuries, the somewhat broken down body, the mileage he had accumulated this year, travel issues, etc., Pereira had a banger of a fight with Rountree, overcame adversity, and put on one of the most vicious round-long beatdowns you’ll ever see in the fourth round.

I’m thankful for what Pereira has, and continues to accomplish, and I’ll also be thankful if he takes a well-deserved breather — as hard as that may be for him. - Heck

UFC Class Action Lawsuit Settlement

In light of the holidays, we’re looking to keep things positive and while I could spend literal days waxing on my issues with the UFC and fighter pay, that’s not what this holiday is about. And while I am certainly thankful for the likes of Max Holloway and Alex Pereira, what I’m really thankful for is that this holiday season, over 1,000 fighters are going to get paid a big chunk of money.

Yes, $375 million is just a drop in the bucket for the UFC and yes, this settlement does nothing to curtail the promotion’s near-total control over the MMA market and its practices that I believe to be draconian and exploitative, but sometimes it’s not about that. Sometimes it’s just about hundreds of fighters who are facing real struggles and are in desperate need of assistance. It’s about fighters who will see dramatic improvement in their everyday lives because of this settlement. And even for those who are not in financial dire straits right now, it’s about receiving a little bit of justice, a small order of recompense for their hard work.

It’s certainly not enough, but even if it just means a few fighters that we watched put their lives on the line for our entertainment get to have a slightly happier holidays than they otherwise would have, I’m thankful for that. - Meshew