mma news

Sengoku Raiden Championship promoter World Victory Road added two final fights on Monday to its "Soul of Fight" end of year event, bringing the total to 28 fights.

UFC and Pride veteran Ryo Chonan will look to back up a dominating victory over an outclassed Jun Hee Moon at Deep 50th Impact against Bellator welterweight tournament finalist Dan Hornbuckle and Megumi Fujii attempts to rebound from the first controversial loss of her 23 fight career when she takes on Emi Fujino, who recently snapped a four fight loosing streak with a 24-second submission win at Valkyrie 8.

The mammoth event, which will be held at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo, Japan, is planned to be a family friendly and festival-like atmosphere with fight-fans free to come and go throughout the day. Selected bouts from the December 30th event will air in North America on HDNet.

Georges St. Pierre remains the best fighter in all of mixed martial arts, regardless of weight class.

There are arguments, to be sure, for other fighters, namely middleweight champ Anderson Silva or featherweight champ Jose Aldo, getting the No. 1 spot. Most of those arguments center around the fact that Silva and Aldo are finishers, while St. Pierre tends to win decisions.

I'm sympathetic to those arguments, but what St. Pierre does in his decision victories is amazing: In his four decisions as the UFC welterweight champion, the 12 judges have turned in scorecards of 50-45, 50-45, 50-45, 50-43, 50-44, 50-45, 50-44, 50-45, 50-45, 50-44, 50-44 and 50-43. It doesn't get more dominant than that.

So St. Pierre remains on top. Find out the rest of the Top 10 below.

When Strikeforce attempted to put on a middleweight title tournament in Houston to fill the belt vacated by Jake Shields, Robbie Lawler figured he was only one night and two wins away from having a piece of hardware again.

But because of commission rules, the one-night tourney couldn't take place, and instead Strikeforce put the 185-pound strap around the waist of Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza in August when he beat Tim Kennedy.

Though Lawler told MMA Fighting last month before his fight with Matt Lindland that his lack of opportunities with Strikeforce following the collapse of EliteXC, where he was middleweight champion, was frustrating, he said when it comes to the middleweight title picture, he thinks of himself as "just one of the guys."

He doesn't have to worry about that distinction anymore. After a 50-second knockout of Matt Lindland in St. Louis earlier this month, sources close to Lawler's camp confirmed to MMA Fighting that Lawler will get a shot at Souza's middleweight title. And on Saturday, a source close to Strikeforce confirmed to MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani on Saturday that the bout will take place on the promotion's Jan. 29 card at the HP Pavilion in its home base of San Jose, Calif.

If Shooto's 2010 Rookie Tournament Finals are any indication, Japan has a bright future in MMA as the newcomers put on one of the events of the year at Shinjuku Face in Tokyo on Saturday. The sports oldest promotion crowned champions in six divisions including rookie MVP and Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto teammate Kyoji Horiguchi.

Japan isn't exactly known for grooming its prospects, but few have been put through the paces like 2000 freestyle wrestling Olympian Kazuyuki Miyata. After facing Royler Gracie in his debut, and then top 10 lightweights Genki Sudo, Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto, Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro and Joachim Hansen all within his first eleven fights, Miyata's record was left in tatters.

It was the Kick Heard 'Round the World, a climbing, twisting, off-the-cage, out-of-the-video-games-and-into-Ben-Henderson's-face, mind-scrambler of a strike in the 25th and final minute of a WEC championship match that shot Anthony Pettis into the consciousness of sports fans everywhere.

While his aim is to stay there for more than just one night, it's safe to say that regardless of his future, the 23-year-old cemented himself a place in MMA history by authoring one of the sport's most incredible moments.

According to his striking coach, kickboxing great Duke Roufus, it was no accident. Roufus told MMA Fighting that it's a kick that was conceived a few years ago and practiced weekly by Pettis during training camp.

World Extreme Cagefighting is over, and its fighters are heading to the UFC -- which means the UFC now has, by far, the strongest bantamweight division in mixed martial arts.

In fact, although Japan was once home to most of the sport's best small fighters, in 2011 just about every single significant 135-pound fight will take place inside the Octagon.

The biggest fight will be the first UFC title defense for bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz, who's No. 1 in our bantamweight rankings and ready for a rematch with No. 2 Urijah Faber. See how the rest of the bantamweights stack up below.

Only days after being KOed by the hands of Singh Jaideep at the K-1 World Grand Prix Finals, Sergei Kharitonov has agreed to fight DREAM light heavyweight GP finalist Tatsuya Mizuno at Dynamite!!, MMA Fighting has learned from sources.

The Dec. 31 bout will be the first MMA fight of the year for Kharitonov. The Russian was once considered one of the top heavyweights in the world but his last mixed martial arts appearance was an unimpressive submission loss to Jeff Monson in April 2009. Kharitonov looked as though he had found some form in K-1, with an impressive win over Takumi Sato in Seoul and a good start against Singh "Heart" Jaideep, but that was put to an end as the Indian found a home for his hands.

So let me get this straight: J.R. Smith dunks a basketball and it's named the day's top play in all of sports by ESPN's Sportscenter. Meanwhile, at WEC 53 Anthony Pettis pulls off a head kick that would make Jackie Chan blush, and that's No. 2?

Now, I don't want to act like a jerk about something that's relatively minor (which is, of course, what you say right before you act like a jerk about something that's relatively minor), but seriously? What Pettis did was practically superhuman. Just to even think you could pull off a kick like that is so ambitious that it borders on delusional. To actually do it against the WEC lightweight champion in the fifth round of a title fight, that's a once in a lifetime moment.

Then again, I suppose it doesn't compare to a slam dunk. That only happens every single night during basketball season, and that doesn't even count the "And 1" tour.

Megumi Fujii student Ayaka Hamazaki indicated that she may be following in the footsteps of her mentor as she stood toe-to-toe with one of the best kickboxers in women's MMA in Seo Hee Ham, and battered and bruised Miku Matsumoto's former teammate Sakura Nomura to become the first Jewels lightweight champion at the promotion's end-of-year event on Friday night at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo.

In the finals of "Rough Stone" rookie tournaments, Kikuyo Ishikawa and Hiroko Kitamura edged past their respective opponents to bring home the gold ,but it was 16-year-old Mizuki Inoue that really impressed. The young kickboxer-turned-mixed martial artist dominated and finished a much older opponent for the second time in two outings to win her first MMA title.