Maverick D'Souza

🚨 Islam Makhachev explains why he turned down the Carlos Prates fight in January "They offered me a fight with Prates, who recently lost to [Ian Garry], someone I beat. If I beat him, Morales would already be next in line, who's not fighting and waiting for [a title shot]. Just let them fight and we will figure out who's the real challenger." (via pound4padel/IG)

Jon Jones says Ilia Topuria was the first fighter he saw as a threat to his status as the greatest of all time: "Honestly I thought that Ilia would be the first threat to being considered the greatest of all time. And then we saw what happened to him." (via Prince St. Pizza/YT)

🚨 Islam Makhachev's manager says a fight between Islam and Carlos Prates in January at UFC 336 in Toronto is currently "not close to becoming a reality" "As of now, it's not close to becoming a reality. It's all just rumors and talk. Negotiations are ongoing, but confirming he'll fight on a certain date and against a certain opponent is still far from realistic." (via Ushatayka)

🚨 Dricus du Plessis' coach says they turned down a UFC offer to move up to 205 for a grand prix featuring DDP, Jiri Prochazka, Navajo Stirling and Magomed Ankalaev "They wanted four guys to go into the pool and fight in one night. Then the winners of that fight each other, and the winner of that fights Ulberg. I said no... we will do it gradually. But we want our belt back, and we want to defend it once." (via @FForecastShow)

Magomed Ankalaev calls Alex Pereira’s win a “lucky punch” and believes Pereira rushed him because he knew about his injury 😬 “His business with me isn’t settled at all. You could call what happened a lucky punch. That’s how he beat me. I think they knew I had some kind of injury. I don’t think any fighter had ever rushed at me like that before. If he hadn’t known I was injured, I don’t think it would have ended so quickly.” (via Bostanov MMA)

Alexander Volkanovski is interested in a superfight against Justin Gaethje for the lightweight title 👀 "Let's do a superfight, lightweight title on the line and then we can both [retire]. Then, straight after that, let the division sort themselves out. Let's make that happen." (via @WhoTheFookPod)

Khamzat Chimaev linked up with Charles Oliveira in Chechnya 🤝

🚨 Sean Strickland just released a video saying he's done with the UFC and wants to transition to boxing 😳 "I'm gonna say the quiet part out loud that nobody says... the [UFC] just doesn't care anymore. They don't pay you enough money to walk away. The UFC builds a legacy, they don't pay you enough so you have to come back and ruin your legacy. This goyslop, repackagaed, McDonalds straight to the head. I'm not doing it anymore. I want to fight, I want to box. We're trying to work that out, but if the UFC says 'we're not gonna do that', well I'm gonna stick and move." (via @SStricklandMMA)

🚨 Sean Strickland is considering vacating his belt and moving up to 205 to fight out his UFC contract 😬 “Unless things change with the UFC thing I’m kinda over it. Contemplating just going to 205, knocking out my contract and scrapping with Jake Paul.”