#love that the welshman never uses his title either

[on-a-lucky-tide]

I think I've reached some kind of teaching nirvana.

a) the two roughest girls you have ever met in your life, when asked if there is any teacher and subject they like, saying to a harried assistant head, "yeah, that Mr. [redacted], he's always fair, like, yous can't mug him off, like, he's fair and always respects us even he's mugging us off, like. He has standards."

b) being told by two sets of parents of nerdy, quiet kids at parents evening that they love my lessons and think I'm "cool" because I know so much, and that they can actually learn cause I "don't take any rubbish from the loud ones".

Me, every October: I hate this fucking job I'm gonna fucking resign and become a fucking accountant or analyst because it fucking sucks. Fuck you and you and ALL of you wankers.

Me, by the time we hit summer: They will have to remove my corpse from my classroom at the age of 97, still clutching a board pen and a copy of History Now.

[jamesginortonblog]

He's just broken the nation’s hearts as the tragic anti-hero of BBC One’s Sunday-night sensation The Trial Of Christine Keeler – but James Norton’s next role has made the heartthrob actor ��proud to become an honorary Welshman”.

In the title role of new film Mr Jones, Norton – already a favourite with bookmakers to be the next James Bond – takes on one of the most challenging projects of his career, playing a real-life yet forgotten hero from Wales who dared to combat and uncover one of history’s most shameful episodes of “fake news” from nearly a century ago.

James Norton at the Mr Jones screening at the London Film Festival

“Playing Gareth Jones was sometimes a tough call,” says 34-year-old Norton, known to millions from small-screen hits Grantchester and Happy Valley.

“In fact, when I first got the part and they told me it was going to be a Welshman who spoke both fluent Welsh and Russian, and all of it in a Welsh accent – that felt a bit scary!”

He needn’t have worried. As Gareth Jones, the mild-mannered young Western Mail reporter who travelled to Russia in 1933 and ended up blowing the whistle over the appalling truth about Stalin’s “Utopian” regime – and a hushed-up famine that killed untold millions – Norton presents us with a charming, softly-spoken hero with just a hint of a refined Welsh lilt.

It’s a million miles from those cliched, grating attempts at Welsh accents so often taken on by other English actors. ( Stephen Graham’s DCI “Taff” Jones in ITV’s White House Farm, anyone?).

Reports have emerged this week of Gareth’s great-nephew attacking the film for having “invented multiple fictions” – but as far as Norton is concerned, he feels the film stands as an honest and heartfelt reflection of Gareth’s character and incredible yet fatefully short life.

“We decided it was important to respect and honour Gareth’s journey – this Welshman from a small coastal town who ended up on this huge, bizarre and brave mission taking on one of the pillars of the 1930s political landscape in a very dangerous, pre-war Communist Russia,” says Norton, who worked with two Welsh dialect coaches to perfect his accent.

“So it made sense that Gareth would have maybe intentionally softened his Welsh accent, having been educated at Cambridge, in order to ingratiate himself in the community and then travelling the world. We wanted to keep it there without making it too distracting.”

Nevertheless, Norton – London-born but raised in North Yorkshire – was still required to speak Welsh in a few scenes, and Russian as well.

“I’ve never spoken either language before and I’m not a linguist – so I had my work cut out,” says Norton, who can also currently be seen on the big screen in the Oscar-nominated hit movie Little Women.

“But for those few months, I was very proud to become an honorary Welshman. My scenes with Julian Lewis Jones as my dad – when Gareth goes home to Barry – were challenging, but Julian was amazing helping me with my Welsh.

“Julian occasionally texts me in Welsh now, which is hilarious, as I think he’s forgotten I don’t actually speak a word!

“It’s pretty nerve-racking doing scenes where you’ve got to speak in a particular accent opposite someone who’s completely fluent in that language, so to have Julian put his hand on my shoulder and say, ‘You’re doing good, kid!’ was so reassuring.”

Learning dialogue for his Russian scenes was even harder.

“I had to learn all the Russian phonetically – it’s like learning music,” he explains. “I’d spend hours walking around wearing earphones and I’d look like a crazy person talking to myself, repeating phrases animatedly. But now I have Russian people coming up to me in the street, speaking Russian at me!

“Weirdly, I’ve done three jobs where I needed to speak Russian – War And Peace, McMafia and now this. I seem to have become the go-to guy for English-speaking Russian roles!”

The new film Mr Jones, directed by internationally-renowned Polish film-maker Agnieszka Holland, begins with Gareth Jones gaining fame in the early 1930s after his report on being the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler.

Gareth, who’d graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1929 with a first-class degree in French, German and Russian, has also landed the job of foreign affairs advisor to former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

With the Russian “utopia” all over the news, Gareth is intrigued as to how Stalin is financing the rapid modernisation of the Soviet Union and in March 1933 he decides to travel to Russia in an attempt to get an interview with Stalin himself.

However, on hearing murmurs of a government-induced famine – a secret carefully guarded by the Soviet censors – Gareth travels clandestinely to Ukraine, where he witnesses the atrocities of man-made starvation, as all grain is sold abroad to finance the Soviet empire’s industrialisation.

Deported back to the UK, it’s the Western Mail that publishes Gareth’s article revealing the horrors he has witnessed, but the starvation is denied by Western journalists based in Moscow, all under pressure from the Kremlin. As death threats mount, Gareth has to fight for the truth – and, meeting a young author called George Orwell, Gareth shares his findings... helping to inspire Orwell’s great allegorical novel Animal Farm.Gareth’s great-nephew Philip Colley made headlines recently, accusing the film’s scriptwriter of “inventing multiple fictions”, including wrongly suggesting he was an accidental cannibal.

Colley told the Sunday Times: “In the film, they have got [Gareth] up a tree eating bark, eating human flesh, tripping over dead bodies. They’ve made Gareth a victim of the famine, rather than a witness.”

Norton, however – interviewed prior to Colley’s remarks – says he received plentiful support from a number of Gareth’s surviving relatives, who came to early screenings of the film.

“They were all lovely in their support and they gave us their seal of approval, which was very touching,” recalls Norton.

“Our film’s screenwriter, Andrea Chalupa, was in touch with a lot of them early on. There’s so much literature and academia about Gareth’s work as a journalist, but Andrea found out some lovely titbits about his more private character.

“For example, when he went home to Barry he’d love being with his nieces and nephews and he became a big kid. His great-aunt told Andrea about one day when he came back home and he was rolling around with them like a labrador. That kind of story was invaluable to me.

“He wasn’t just this very earnest, principled man, there was a childlike, playful quality to him and he was almost a little bit gauche, a little bit awkward. You also want to honour his memory for his family.”

The main source of the film is a biography of Jones entitled More Than A Grain Of Truth, written by Gareth’s niece Dr Margaret Siriol Colley (Philip’s mother) and his great-nephew Nigel Colley (Philip’s brother), both of whom share a credit as the film’s historical advisors.

The book sparked Chalupa’s interest and she started corresponding with Margaret Colley soon after its publication. When Margaret died in 2011, aged 85, Chalupa remained in contact with her son Nigel, who became “heavily involved” in discussing ideas for the film. Nigel died in 2018.

Filmed predominantly in Poland, homeland of Warsaw-born director Agnieszka Holland, Mr Jones does contain some breathtaking snowbound scenes shot in Ukraine, where Gareth gets first-hand sight of the horrendous famine.

“We filmed in a tiny little place called Doch, which is three hours north of Kiev, in the middle of nowhere,” says Norton. “We’d drive for hours on these very unsafe roads, jangling your bones around. It was freezing cold in the snow.

“It was so remote that we had to put the word out to local farmers to come along as extras and we had a strict cut-off time – we had to wrap up at 5pm because they all had to go back and feed their animals!”

When it came to filming the scenes in Wales – notably Barry and the Western Mail’s offices in the film’s gripping finale when Gareth’s whistle-blowing scoop hits the presses – Norton reveals: “I’m really sorry to say they’re all filmed in Scotland! About an hour north-east of Edinburgh. A lot of those villages there have a quality of that small fishing town, for the Barry scenes.

“The other reason is that the film is partly funded by Creative Scotland and there’s that responsibility you feel to film there. But I think it worked well. It was a shame not to film in Wales, but we had a fantastic collection of Welsh players there, including Julian, so it felt home from home.”

Agnieszka Holland, of course, is not the first female director to work with Norton. He acted under the helm of Greta Gerwig on Little Women and with a largely female crew on the six-part TV drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler, which finished last Sunday, earning him rave reviews for his heartbreaking performance as Stephen Ward, the tragic scapegoat figure in the Profumo affair which brought down the UK government in the early 1960s.

“I’ve not gone out of my way to work with female directors, but I have great agents who always look for the best projects – but I really hope it’s a sign of the times,” he says. “The Christine Keeler story has never been properly told from a female perspective before, so that was the real attraction. Agnieszka, meanwhile, is the best of the best – the fact that she’s a woman is almost irrelevant.”

How does he feel about the fact that Greta Gerwig has been denied a Best Director Oscar nomination for her lauded version of Little Women, in which Norton plays eligible suitor John Brooke to Emma Watson’s Meg March?

“I can stand as witness to Greta’s brilliance and the fact that Little Women is up for Best Film and Screenplay is testament to her brilliance,” says Norton. “She singlehandedly redefined the story for a modern generation and it would have been wonderful to honour that in the nominations for direction – so it’s a horrible and unfortunate omission.”

It was while starring in McMafia, the gritty 2018 BBC1 thriller series with scenes of him bow-tied and gun-toting, that Norton’s name was first added to the list of contenders to play James Bond when Daniel Craig retires from the role after the next 007 movie No Time To Die. Remind him of that now and he laughs it off.

“It’s very humbling, it’s lovely and bizarre to be included in that conversation, but beyond that it’s all very speculative,” he says. “I think at the moment everyone’s concentrating on Daniel Craig in his final Bond film – for me, he’s a fantastic Bond and I’m sad he’s retiring.”

Right now, however, it’s Mr Jones and the legacy of that film’s largely unsung Welsh hero that are uppermost in Norton’s agenda. Tragically, Gareth Jones’ life was cut short on the eve of his 30th birthday in 1934, when he was allegedly shot by Mongolian bandits while travelling in Japanese-occupied China on a fact-finding tour.

“There’s much speculation about Gareth’s death at such a young age and there was a lot of evidence suggesting that it was orchestrated by the Soviet forces as revenge for his blowing the whistle on the hidden famine,” says Norton.

“His stories in the Western Mail were incredibly important. The more we can learn about Gareth Jones and recognise his extraordinary legacy, the better. And the fact is that right now, as politics becomes more polarised, we need more people like Gareth – investigative journalists to uncover the truth, with no ideological agenda attached.

“If this film encourages any future young Gareth Jones, then that’s fantastic. It’s a crime we don’t know more about these forgotten events and hopefully this film will remedy that.”

[rxbbstarks]

jonsa / war of the roses meta

[footballghana]

Thomas Partey among 20 stars who could be on the move this summer

The transfer window is open and there are A-list players in demand and whose futures are uncertain. We take a look at some of the big names who will be the centre of attention during the transfer window...

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: The value of a goalscorer

They say first-class strikers are hard to find but Arsenal certainly have one in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He has hit the 20-goal mark in each of his two full seasons in the Premier League and his record of 54 goals in 84 top-flight games in England is a remarkable return, especially given Arsenal's struggles over that time.

So why the delay over handing him a new deal? Aubameyang's current contract is up in 11 months and after watching the striker fire Arsenal into the FA Cup final, boss Mikel Arteta implored the Arsenal board to extend his deal.

At 31, the hierarchy may have reservations about tying themselves into an expensive contract for a player who may be beyond his absolute peak. Mesut Ozil, anyone? Meanwhile, a transfer fee from one of the many major clubs reportedly interested in signing him would be a financial boost in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

But putting a price on Aubameyang's goals surely weighs in favour of keeping him at the club. Success on the pitch will drive Arsenal's recovery off it and ensuring Arteta - who has made an impressive, encouraging start to his project - has the firepower to get Arsenal back to where they want to be must be the priority during this transfer window.

Arsenal can still qualify for Europe if they win next week's FA Cup final. How important might that result be in determining the player's future?

Peter Smith

Jack Grealish: Decision time looming

Jack Grealish has admitted he is "not too sure" about his Aston Villa future - and that is little surprise with the hype surrounding him. Only Kevin De Bruyne made more chances across the entire Premier League season, and the Villa captain made almost a quarter of the club's scoring opportunities on his own. That sort of creativity is difficult to teach, which is something clearly not lost on long-term suitors Manchester United, who appear to be leading the chase for his signature.

Although he has spent the season largely cutting in from the Villa left flank, it appears there could be a Grealish-shaped hole on the right of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's front three; after a bright start, summer recruit Dan James' form has faded, while Mason Greenwood's future could be more central.

But United's end-of-season surge has reportedly cooled their interest and a question mark may lie in Grealish's price tag. United chief Ed Woodward has admitted the club has not been exempt from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and with Villa now safe from relegation, Grealish's age and the often-inflated price tag on English players, his signature could make a significant dent in their transfer kitty.

Ron Walker

Jadon Sancho: Can Man Utd match Dortmund's valuation?

Few players are generating as much interest and intrigue as Jadon Sancho ahead of the transfer window. The 20-year-old, who turned his back on Manchester City to join Borussia Dortmund in 2017, has produced another stellar season in the Bundesliga, with City's rivals Manchester United now believed to be at the front of the queue for his signature.

In league games alone this season, Sancho scored 17 goals and provided 16 assists. It is an extraordinary return for any player, let alone one who only waved goodbye to his teens in March. Across Europe's major leagues, there are only five players who have had a hand in more goals in 2019/20. That list includes Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Cristiano Ronaldo.

It places Sancho in esteemed company and it explains why he is in demand. Dortmund had previously placed a £100m asking price on his head, but Manchester United hope to pay considerably less in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with Sky Sports News reporting they will seek to do a deal at around £50m. It would be a steal if they can pull it off.

Nick Wright

Mesut Ozil: What's the exit plan?

How do you solve a problem like Mesut Ozil? It is a long running saga that never seems to end, with Arsenal's highest earner appearing happy to see out his £350,000-a-week contract in north London.

Gunners head coach Mikel Arteta has appeared to draw a line under the saga. Ozil, who has a year left on his Arsenal contract, does not look to be part of the Spaniard's plans. The stark fact of the matter is that Ozil didn't play a minute of football after the Premier League restarted and wasn't even on the bench for their final two matches.

It is no secret Arsenal would love to get Ozil's mammoth wages off their wage book but will Arteta's strong management be enough to convince the German it is time to leave the Emirates Stadium? Are there even any clubs interested in signing him and paying his mammoth wages after the financial strain of the coronavirus pandemic? Will Arsenal even pay some of his wages to finally get the World Cup winner away from the club?

These are the questions the Gunners will finally hope to have answers to as they look to solve their Ozil conundrum.

Oliver Yew

Wilfried Zaha: Time up at Palace?

It was no secret that Wilfried Zaha wanted to leave Crystal Palace last summer, but the move didn't happen and despite his initial disappointment he managed to get his head right and focus on doing his best for Palace. But a year on, and Zaha finds himself in the same situation.

Palace haven't matched his on-field ambitions, he's changed agents and he recently said he wanted to win trophies. Palace held firm on their £80m valuation last summer but that sort of asking price will be unlikely with the current Covid-19 pandemic expected to affect spending. Arsenal were interested last season - as were Everton.

Crystal Palace signed off with a 1-1 draw against Tottenham but manager Roy Hodgson admits he faces another battle to keep hold of Zaha.

"It's a dilemma for the club and for him if he is so set on leaving," he said.

"We still like him very much, we can't make him like us. It's obviously affected him because his form in the last few weeks has been quite poor considering what he is capable of doing. I don't have an answer."

Another summer of speculation awaits.

Lewis Jones

Kai Havertz: Germany's young star on his way to the Premier League?

There is considerable hype surrounding Germany's hottest prospects, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz. Chelsea have already snapped up the former from RB Leipzig and they are eager to prise the latter away from Bayer Leverkusen as well.

But at just 21 years old, Havertz will cost a premium price - reportedly in the region of £70-90m. Why so much? The versatile forward set a Bundesliga record for most goals by a teenager with 17 last season and became the youngest player to reach 100 league appearance in the German top-flight this season.

What will Frank Lampard be getting? According to Statsbomb, Havertz is strikingly similar to fellow youngster Christian Pulisic - who began to look capable of filling Eden Hazard's boots as the season progressed this season. Chelsea appear to be in the hunt for even more youthful flair - as if they needed any more.

Adam Smith

Gareth Bale: Will he settle for fringe role at Real?

Gareth Bale's spell at Real Madrid has descended into a soap opera. During their recent charge towards La Liga glory, he was most commonly seen joking around in the stands, an unused substitute with little prospect of winning back his place in the team. When the squad threw Zinedine Zidane into the air in celebration after the 2-1 win over Villarreal that sealed the title, Bale watched quietly from the fringes.

His relationship with Zidane has been fractured since the 2018 Champions League final win over Liverpool, when he was left out of the starting line-up only to come off the bench and score the decisive goals, and recent evidence suggests it is now broken beyond repair. Bale has only started five games since the turn of the year and one since the restart.

The problem for Real Madrid, of course, is that Bale has a contract - and an extraordinarily lucrative one at that - until 2022. The Welshman was close to sealing a move to China last summer, but the deal fell through and his agent, Jonathan Barnett, now insists he has no plans to leave. It remains to be seen whether any Premier League sides could try to change his mind.

Nick Wright

Lionel Messi: The beginning of the end of his time at Barca?

There is no chance of Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona this summer. The Argentina star has vowed to stay at least until the end of his current contract in 2021. But this window could mark the beginning of a lot of speculation over his future after a tumultuous campaign at the Nou Camp.

Messi is unsettled and frustrated at Barca and - for the first time - is seriously thinking of leaving next year, having broken off from new contract talks. He is fed up of conflict with the board, and of widespread rumours that he is the one that calls the shots at the club.

Inevitable links will be made with Manchester City for as long as Pep Guardiola, whom he considers to be the best coach he has worked with, is still the manager, while Inter Milan boss Antonio Conte has labelled their link with Messi as "fake news". Regardless, there is a lot of time still to pass before his contract expires, so a lot of time to either work things out or widen the rift even further.

Lyall Thomas

Harry Kane: Sticking with Spurs?

Remember the stir created during lockdown when Harry Kane told Sky Sports he would be prepared to leave Tottenham if he felt the club wasn't progressing?

"I love Spurs, I'll always love Spurs. But it's one of those things - I've always said if I don't feel we're progressing as a team or going in the right direction, then I'm not someone to just stay there for the sake of it," said Kane. "It all depends on what happens as a team and how we progress as a team. So it's not a definite I'm going to stay there forever - but it's not a no either."

His talent up front needs no debate. He is an outstanding striker and would certainly bring goals to any team he plays for with Golden Boots from the Premier League (twice) and World Cup as proof. Any forward who performs well will be loved by the fans, but there would be the same relationship between player and another club that Kane currently has with Tottenham?

This will likely be on his list of considerations but so will trophies and a player of his calibre deserves to be lifting them. Mourinho is often described as a serial winner but with Tottenham being that 'almost, but not quite' club, can he instil a winning mentality that will convince Kane to stay with his boyhood side? And would he have a better chance of winning silverware with the likes of Manchester United? Or should he be aiming right for the top where trophies are a requirement - not an aim - such as Real Madrid, who have been linked with Kane in the past.

This season has been the antithesis of progress for Tottenham with a dramatic change of manager and a first finish outside the top four since the 2014/15 season. Kane has once again had his injury problems and may want to wait a little longer to see if Mourinho can inspire an improvement at Spurs. But there would certainly be plenty of suitors willing to meet his demands...

Charlotte Marsh

Declan Rice: West Ham star would not be cheap

Declan Rice's future at West Ham depended a great deal on what division the club would find themselves playing in next season. With the Hammers' Premier League status now assured they have at least guaranteed Rice will not be leaving on the cheap. That is if he even moves at all.

Despite interest from Chelsea - the club that released Rice at the age of 14 - West Ham have been clear they have no desire to sell the England international. "He's under contract...he's not going anywhere unless you get one of those steel vans that have the cash in it," Hammers boss David Moyes said after the final day of the Premier League season.

Moyes is keen to build his team around young players such as Rice and, with the likes of Ben Johnson and Grady Diangana also at the club, the Scot's plan for a new, youthful and vibrant West Ham could begin to take shape quite quickly.

If Chelsea do decide to follow up their interest this summer, there is no doubt they will need deep pockets - West Ham value Rice at around £80m. In previous years, West Ham have experienced the likes of Dimitri Payet and Marko Arnautovic trying to force through moves away from the club. They were successful in doing so. However, Rice is unlikely to deploy such tactics.

History tells us that there will come a time when West Ham will eventually part ways with their very best talent - but, for now at least, they can demand the utmost amount for their star man.

Nick Lustig

Ben Chilwell: Can Chelsea or City convince Leicester to sell?

Could Chelsea's summer spending spree continue with a move for Leicester's Ben Chilwell? Frank Lampard is known to be a keen admirer of the left-back, who has impressed for the Foxes for the last three seasons and become a regular starter for England in the process.

Chelsea are unlikely to be the only side who register an interest, however, with Sky Sports News reporting that Manchester City are also eager to secure his services. Pep Guardiola even went out of his way to compliment the 23-year-old at the Etihad Stadium on the pitch following City's win over Leicester last season. "He just said he thought I was a really talented player," revealed Chilwell afterwards.

Leicester, however, are unlikely to allow him to leave cheaply. Chilwell was ruled out of the season finale due to a foot injury, but manager Brendan Rodgers insists he has not played his last game for the club and says he is confident of keeping him. "There's no intention to sell Ben Chilwell and absolutely no need to sell," he said recently. "The message is: He's not for sale."

Nick Wright

Paul Pogba: Will Frenchman put pen to paper?

Paul Pogba's timely return to form and the Manchester United first team coincided with the club's post-lockdown resurgence that secured Champions League qualification on the final day of the Premier League season.

But for those thinking Pogba's revival finally puts an end to speculation surrounding the Frenchman's future, well, things are not as simple as that.

For all the talk that Pogba's recent form will be rewarded with a lengthy new contract at Old Trafford, speculation over potential moves to Real Madrid or Juventus will rumble until his future is secured.

It is a situation agent Mino Raiola will look to take advantage of as he seeks the best deal for his client, and whether Pogba signs an extension or leaves United, you can almost guarantee he will be at the centre of a transfer saga that could define this window.

Jack Wilkinson

Adama Traore: The Plan B everyone wants?

After a quiet first campaign at Wolves in which he made only eight league starts, Adama Traore enjoyed a stunning second season, not only wowing Wolves fans but emerging as the neutrals' favourite. He is the Premier League's most explosive player.

Traore saved some of his best work for the biggest occasions - scoring at home and away in wins over Manchester City - but he has been a consistent performer too. As well as topping the dribbling charts, his nine Premier League assists ended all talk of a lack of end product.

Who should be interested? Just about every team in the world. Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool is an admirer. Part of the attraction is that coaches need not have a ready-made role for him in their line-up - he is a one-man plan B. An option from the bench capable of changing any game.

If there is a problem it could be the price. At 24, and under contract until 2023, Wolves are well aware of his value. One fee floated is as high as £135m. It might not take anywhere near that much to prise him away from Molineux, but expect big numbers involved.

Adam Bate

Nathan Ake: Could the Dutchman solve City's defensive problems?

Manchester City are reportedly in the hunt to snap up Bournemouth centre-back Nathan Ake this summer.

Of the current Premier League defenders aged 25 or under, only Hector Bellerin and Luke Shaw have racked up more top-flight appearances. Ake's positional development - from defensive midfielder to left-back, to centre-back - also provides a versatility which would appeal to the likes of Pep Guardiola.

Since his permanent switch in 2017, the Cherries' win percentage jumps 17 per cent with him in the team and they concede fewer goals. That blend of youth, experience, versatility and effectiveness bodes well for any suitor...and there will inevitably be a thought that the Cherries are ripe for picking following their relegation.

Adam Smith

Philippe Coutinho: Back to the Premier League?

Another summer, another guessing game of where Philippe Coutinho will end up playing next as his season-long loan spell with Bayern Munich draws to a close.

The Bundesliga champions have the option to sign the Brazil international from Barcelona for €120m this summer but are thought unlikely to take that up after an underwhelming campaign in Bavaria that has often seen Coutinho left out of the club's key fixtures.

With the 28-year-old having spent five hugely successful years with Liverpool, though, do not be surprised to see him back in the Premier League next season, with the likes of Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and even his former club reportedly weighing up moves for the playmaker.

Richard Morgan

James Rodriguez: Who will take the risk?

The name James Rodriguez epitomises a long-running transfer saga. For five years and counting, his future at Real Madrid has been up for much debate, coming in and out of the transfer headlines when he has been linked with a handful of Premier League clubs, with a two-year loan at Bayern Munich wedged in.

Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, and even Everton, Newcastle and Wolves: they have all been linked with the Colombian at some point over the past half a decade as James found himself on the periphery of Zinedine Zidane's plans. With his contract up next summer, now might be the time for a permanent move and for James to feel loved by his employers. At Real, he simply has not been.

At 28, he still has plenty to offer - he scored 15 and made 20 assists in 67 games at Bayern - but his wages will be a problem for many, reported to be around £160,000-a-week. Even if James leaves for a cut-price deal, let's say £20m, he represents a risk for many Premier League sides. It will be intriguing to see where he finally goes, and whether a change of scenery can prompt him to recreate the form that saw him one of the world's most-wanted players at the 2014 World Cup.

Gerard Brand

Kalidou Koulibaly: Finally on his way to the Premier League?

False peaks have long been found on the path to signing Napoli's man-mountain Kalidou Koulibaly, dubbed 'K2', but the stubborn Italian club are set to make the world's most sought-after defender available if they finalise a big-money deal for Lille forward Victor Osimhen.

Liverpool's strict transfer policy prohibits them spending more than £60m on a 29-year-old. But Manchester City, equipped financially and untethered from a Champions League ban, could ditch their usual age-profile and begin an ascent.

Nathan Ake would be cheaper, but the authority, speed and experience of Senegal captain Koulibaly makes him an ideal partner to Aymeric Laporte, and Pep Guardiola's long-awaited replacement for Vincent Kompany.

James Dale

Allan Saint-Maximin: Will Newcastle hold onto prize asset?

Transfer plans at St James' Park remain in torturous limbo as takeover silence continues to exhaust and deflate but, whatever the eventual outcome, Newcastle fans will be desperate to see Allan Saint-Maximin dancing through defences in the black and white again next term.

Tyneside has a new great entertainer - only Adama Traore and Wilfried Zaha completed more dribbles in the Premier League season - but more of those edge-of-seat slaloms are starting to yield end product: the Frenchman has added four assists to his three goals and has created more big chances than any other team-mate.

Steve Bruce might have served him a string of fines for "earrings, headbands and all sorts" but he reckons the £17m arrival from Nice last summer is the "best pound for pound signing in the Premier League" and has warned suitors - PSG, Napoli and Arsenal have been linked with a move - that "there is no chance" of him leaving. Bullish talk, but this is Newcastle, where anything can happen.

Kate Burlaga

Thiago Alcantara: In search of a new adventure]

It appears as though Thiago Alcantara's time in Germany is at an end after Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told Bild: "Alcantara wants to leave. It looks like he may want to do something new at the end of his career."

What that new adventure will be is still to be decided, but the Spain international will not be short of suitors after seven trophy-laden years at the Allianz Arena and a knocked-down transfer fee with his Bayern contract expiring next year.

It was Man City boss Pep Guardiola who took the Barcelona youth product with him when swapping Catalonia for Bavaria in 2013, shortly after his hat-trick saw Spain crowned European U21 champions, so do not rule out the pair being reunited at the Etihad next season.

Meanwhile, Liverpool are also reportedly interested in signing the 29-year-old - whose father is Brazil World Cup winner Mazinho - in order to add some flair to the champions' workmanlike midfield.

Richard Morgan

Thomas Partey: Finances could see Atletico ace depart

Arsenal are reportedly ramping up their summer pursuit of Atletico Madrid's Thomas Partey, and it is clear to see why he is a player in such high demand. Partey's intentions and his reachable £45m-buyout clause make him one of Europe's most sought-after players.

Atletico are willing to offer Partey double his current £65,000-a-week wages and are keen to insert a new £91m-buyout clause in his contract to fend off interest from elsewhere. But Arsenal are not the only European club to have been linked with the player plucked from Ghanaian club Odometah FC in 2012. Juventus and Manchester United are also said to be paying close attention to developments.

Atletico accrued £178m in debt with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's company Inbursa in order to facilitate their move to the Wanda Metropolitano - and that is not due to be paid off in full until 2028. Diego Simeone is the world's highest-paid manager, and while he has taken a 70 per cent pay cut from his £36.2m salary, Atletico will be feeling the financial strain of the pandemic more than most clubs - less than a year after Joao Felix's arrival for a club-record £113m from Benfica.

The emergence of Marcos Llorente as Partey's potential successor in the Atletico midfield looks like softening the blow of any sale this summer.

Ben Grounds

Source: skysports.com

source: https://footballghana.com/

[writingsubmissions]

UFC 209 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *Fight Night from Halifax pretty much followed the same script as most of UFC's offerings this year, that terrible UFC 208 card aside - nothing was particularly amazing, but the card was filled with pretty solid, well-matched action from top to bottom. The best fight of the night was probably the main event, which saw Derrick Lewis get stunned early by some body kicks but come back to score a TKO stoppage over Travis Browne in the second round - in fact, this was the kind of crazy brawl that UFC 208 really could've used, which is somewhat bittersweet, since this fight was in fact initially slated for that card. But all's well that ends well, since being in the main event slot here gave Lewis a platform to be the guy everyone would be talking about the next day, and boy did he give people something to talk about. Lewis kicked things off by explaining that he wasn't actually hurt by Browne's body kicks early in the fight, but just suddenly needed to, well, drop a deuce, then went on about being happy he could knock Browne out because of previous domestic violence allegations against Browne. Somewhere in there was a weird comment asking where Travis Browne's current girlfriend, Ronda Rousey's "fine ass" was, along with some distaste for the snow in Halifax, and then in the post-fight interview on FS1, Lewis apparently had a toy UFC belt and was proclaiming himself interim heavyweight champ. So yeah, Lewis will probably eventually say the wrong thing at some point - assuming something in this interview wasn't already it - but for now, just enjoy the ride, I suppose. Also, Lewis suddenly finds himself as fresh blood near the top of the heavyweight division, as despite a pretty limited game, his sheer physicality means he's probably one or two fights away from a title shot and should probably be fighting contenders from here on out. While Lewis will probably be overmatched against all those guys, he hits hard enough and seems to do a solid enough job of just surviving that there's actually a chance he could knock out pretty much anyone in the division. As for Browne, this marks three straight losses, and I have no idea where he goes from here - he apparently spent parts of this camp with three different teams, and he looked more comfortable than he had in his last few fights, but one fears that Edmund Tarverdyan's coaching may have broken Browne's game for good. *The co-main event was a weird one going in, with Johny Hendricks and Hector Lombard both trying to revive their careers in the former's middleweight debut, but it wound up being a pretty solid bout. Things went back and forth, and both guys probably looked the best they have in a while as far as the latter stages of their careers; both are obviously diminished, but there's enough veteran craft and bursts of violence that it was a fine nip-tuck three rounds. Hendricks wound up getting the win, and it was pretty nice in the aftermath to see him actually being happy about fighting again, as he finally found a weight class he could make and just seemed overjoyed with how much energy he was able to fight with now that he wasn't training himself to attempt making welterweight. Sadly, I'm not really sure how well things are going to go going forward, since Hendricks is still quite undersized for the weight class, but he should be able to hang around as sort of a top-ten gatekeeper of sorts, as long as UFC doesn't feel pressured to put him into bigger fights. *Outside of the top two fights, the biggest result probably took place about halfway through the undercard, as Randa Markos got a stunner of an upset over former strawweight champ Carla Esparza. Esparza's been looking to get back into action for a while, as she's been sort of the forgotten woman at the top of the strawweight division, while Markos's career seemed to be careening downwards after some camp changes and a few losses. But Markos looked better than she has in a while here, using a weird, hunched-over striking stance to just keep Esparza at bay on the feet, then holding her own in the grappling department with one of the best wrestlers in the division. Honestly, I still thought Esparza won, but it was a narrow affair, and that alone was impressive from Markos - and getting the decision win has suddenly given her career new life, while it's suddenly Esparza that's looking for answers. *Running through the rest of the card, the most important result was probably Sara McMann pretty much running through late injury replacement Gina Mazany, as expected. McMann then gave the world's most polite callout to the winner of the assumed Nunes/Shevchenko bantamweight title fight, and honestly, McMann has suddenly revived her career and probably become the top contender; it's either her or Raquel Pennington, and that may be the fight to make in order to officially crown a top contender. Two Canadian prospects both made solid debuts, and it was actually the much less-heralded Gavin Tucker that had the more impressive one, outclassing a solid vet in Sam Sicilia on the feet and looking like someone UFC could make a priority in the Canadian market. Meanwhile, Aiemann Zahabi, brother of Tristar coach Firas and considered one of the top Canadian prospects out there, was merely solid in a win over Reginaldo Vieira; Zahabi was obviously the better fighter, but he just seemed to struggle a bit when faced with Vieira's aggression and forced to counter, enough so that Vieira easily could've stolen the fight through sheer activity. Canadian favorite Elias Theodorou got a big win over Cezar Ferreira, even if the fight wasn't all that pretty, as a grappling-based struggle. Two striking matches saw brutal finishes, as Paul Felder destroyed Alessandro Ricci's nose with a vicious up-elbow for a first-round stoppage, and Thiago Santos got a bit of a comeback win over Jack Marshman with a beautiful spinning wheel kick. Marshman's ridiculously tough, as while he was in no position to defend himself and the fight was rightfully stopped, the Welshman actually stayed awake and seemed to merely be stunned rather than unconscious from such a ridiculously violent blow. Santiago Ponzinibbio beat Nordine Taleb in another fun fight between two action welterweights, and midwestern vet Gerald Meerschaert opened up the card with a slick armbar submission over Ryan Janes. *UFC officially announced that Georges St. Pierre is back in the fold, and this week, Dana White went to ESPN to announce his comeback fight, and people...are not happy. There isn't a date or a venue, but St. Pierre will be making his comeback against Michael Bisping for the middleweight title, because...because. I'd say it's a fight that fans want to see, but is it? St. Pierre against Anderson Silva seemed to be the obvious win/win fight in terms of starpower and interest, playing off the years where the two were the consensus best fighters in the sport, and while I think Bisping's among the most entertaining personalities in the sport, he's never been a particularly big box office draw. I guess this all boils down to the squeaky wheel getting the grease once again, as Bisping has basically asked for the St. Pierre fight whenever he's had a public platform to do so, and much like the Dan Henderson fight, it seems management has eventually decided to let him call his shot. This also throws a wrench into the middleweight division, which already had a backlog of contenders after Bisping/Henderson, and I'm kind of of two minds: on the one hand, it is complete bullshit that guys like Yoel Romero and Jacare Souza have to wait things out for Bisping to fight a retiring non-contender and a career welterweight, but on the other, the pro wrestling fan in me does kind of love the storyline of Bisping dodging legitimate opponent after legitimate opponent and building to him finally getting his comeuppance. But it's just like, there were much better options for St. Pierre here, and if Bisping's such a draw, you'd think they'd try to get another fight out of him before late 2017. It's really unclear now when the fight is going to be - one would think it's a natural for UFC 213 over UFC's big July weekend in Vegas, but word is already out that GSP won't be ready by then; and UFC's September pay-per-view date in Canada is apparently out, since Dana White has already said the fight won't take place in St. Pierre's native country. So, I guess it'll be in Vegas at some date to be determined. *So, Cris Cyborg actually got her retroactive TUE, and is amazingly free and clear to fight, per USADA. While Cyborg didn't actually bother to disclose any of the drugs she was taking until she was actually notified of the failed test, USADA ruled that the treatment she was receiving was in fact the standard care for her depression issues, and that outweighed the fact that those drugs are banned out of competition. Okay then. I'd imagine similar stuff to this has happened in the past, and at the very least there probably should've been a brief suspension since she didn't disclose any of this beforehand, but...yeah. It's not like we figured she wasn't on the juice anyway, so I guess we'll just go on with our lives as she fights in a division that doesn't really exist. *Speaking of USADA, a few changes are going into effect on April 1st when it comes to UFC's drug testing policy. Essentially, the main change will close the loophole that basically prevented once-cut fighters like Ben Saunders and Angela Hill from returning to UFC on short notice - now, rather than a mandatory four-month drug testing window for anyone returning to UFC, it'll be six months, but only apply to those who left UFC involuntarily. So, essentially, if you're cut, you're free to be re-signed and return, but if you retire, you'll theoretically have to re-enter the drug testing pool for half a year before allowed to fight again. Also, the "in-competition" window will now be considered closed after a fighter's post-fight drug test; this basically clears up the controversy that happened at UFC 202, where Nate Diaz was smoking cannabis oil after his drug test, but nobody seemed to be sure if he was technically still "in competition" at the time. *A few years back, a Zuffa presentation to investors infamously said that their goal was "Global Fucking Domination" - and it looks like for the first time in a while, UFC's starting to roll that back, at least financially. Off the huge cuts a few weeks back, a few more fighters have left the promotion, and in an interesting bit of synergy, they're all doing so because of better opportunities back home. The big one is flyweight contender Kyoji Horiguchi, who was reportedly set to be a free agent, and did indeed sign with RIZIN in his native Japan shortly after that leaked out. As one of the best Japanese fighters in the world, Horiguchi figured to get a big offer from whatever Japanese company was willing to pay him, and despite Horiguchi being a young, exciting fighter near the top of a thin division, they didn't see the offer as worth matching. One would think this would've been a problem in the past, but it really hasn't been, and part of that has been UFC being fairly proactive as far as letting fighters not even reach free agency; but that's one of the side effects of corroding the goodwill between fighters and management, whether it be the Reebok deal or just UFC's management style in general - guys are going to be willing to see if there are greener pastures. Similarly, the promotion surprisingly cut light heavyweight contender Nikita Krylov, who was another rising young talent in a thin division, albeit one coming off a loss. But this wound up being a case of UFC being proactive in the completely other direction - Krylov had apparently made it clear he was going to sign with a promotion in Russia once his UFC deal was done, and with one fight remaining on his deal, UFC just decided to cut him loose. Krylov's already signed with Fight Nights, and it's unsurprising that he'd get a big deal with the promotion - long story short, MMA promotions have become a way for Russian oligarchs to basically try and curry favor with the national government, and Krylov, as a Russian-sympathetic Ukrainian with a high UFC profile, is a big get. And lastly, while he's nowhere near as big a name as the other two, Korean fighter Dongi Yang also asked for and was granted his release to join Korean start-up promotion Gleamon FC. Yang was somewhat surprisingly brought back for a second UFC run when UFC ran Seoul in November of 2015, but he had trouble getting booked since - his only other slated fight was against Ryan Janes on the Manila card which wound up getting scrapped. So it's somewhat unsurprising that Yang decided to go somewhere where he could actually fight, but it's also a sign of the times that guys are willing to ask for their release from the biggest promotion in the world. *On the plus side, after Dana White said he was done with the promotion, UFC did in fact wind up re-signing top light heavyweight prospect Misha Cirkunov. When White said that negotiations had fallen apart, it seemed like WME-IMG cheaping out once again, but then word got around that UFC had actually made Cirkunov a pretty competitive offer in line with what you'd expect a rising young fighter with some promotional upside to get. Cirkunov looked poised to be one of UFC's Canadian stars going forward after a big win over Nikita Krylov in his adopted hometown of Toronto, so it's nice to see that at least in one case, everyone came to their senses. *Bellator gonna Bellator, as nothing went right for the promotion at Bellator 172. The card was slated to be headlined by Fedor Emilianenko returning to face Matt Mitrione, but that fight got called off hours before the event was slated to start, as Mitrione suddenly came down with a case of kidney stones. After some scrambling for a replacement - with Chael Sonnen apparently being one of the options - Bellator just ran out of time to get a deal done, and the card went on with local favorite and UFC vet Josh Thomson facing Patricky Pitbull in the main event. Bellator has been building for a fight between Thomson and lightweight champion Michael Chandler for a while now, so, of course, Patricky knocked Thomson out in the second round, becoming the first man to finish Thomson since Yves Edwards all the way back in 2004. And the other big UFC veteran on the card was also a complete bust, as Josh Koscheck finally made his Bellator debut...only to get knocked out by Mauricio Alonso, a Brazilian journeyman pretty much signed as a showcase opponent for Koscheck. Koscheck's chin is completely done at this point, and I really hope he retires, to be quite frank about it. *And as seemingly always, we end things with a note on a drug test or a suspension, as Tom Lawlor has been suspended for two years after a failed test for ostarine. Lawlor, who's been a fan favorite for years running now, has pretty much stopped just short of saying he's retired, as he'll be 35 by the time he can fight again and seemed close to ending his career due to injuries anyways. Lawlor's test failure was a surprising once, since he's been a pretty vocal anti-steroid voice for years running, and he's been pretty open about the fact that he has no idea how the ostarine got in his system. But, well, that's not an excuse, so a two-year suspension it is. ------ BOOKINGS: *Well, the big news is the GSP/Bisping fight mentioned above, but UFC also added a bunch of interesting stuff to the slate over the last two weeks, the highlight of which is probably them really stacking up the UFC 211 card in Dallas this May. Already announced for the card were two big heavyweight fights, the main event title fight between Stipe Miocic and Junior dos Santos, as well as a tilt between Fabricio Werdum and Ben Rothwell, and it looks like they've filled out the rest of the main card. After some rumors of the fight taking place on a few different cards, the expected Joanna Jedrzejczyk/Jessica Andrade strawweight title fight, which should be a good one, will co-main the card here, and somewhat surprisingly, Demian Maia and Jorge Masvidal will square off in what might be a #1 contender's fight at welterweight. After tapping out Carlos Condit and making it look easy last August, Maia, somewhat rightfully, was sitting out waiting for a title shot, though there was some talk that he could face Donald Cerrone in a fight to crown the top contender. But with Masvidal beating Cerrone, well, it looks like he's taking Cowboy's spot. Weirdly, the Maia/Masvidal fight was initially rumored to be taking place on the Nashville card, which threw into question exactly what was going on, since Cub Swanson and Artem Lobov were already announced as the main event for that card. But the bout eventually landed in Dallas, and it's unclear what that means for the Eddie Alvarez/Dustin Poirier fight that was also expected for that card, but hasn't officially been announced. If it's indeed at UFC 211, that's a pretty ridiculously stacked main card, but one wonders if Maia/Masvidal heading there means it's being moved to a different date - after all, that Fox show from Kansas City still needs a main event... *UFC was expected to run Copenhagen for the promotion's debut in Denmark over Memorial Day weekend, but it looks like those plans are off - but UFC will still be making its way to Scandinavia, as May 28th will mark their return to Stockholm, Sweden. And we have a main event - unsurprisingly, the card will be headlined by Sweden's own Alexander Gustafsson, this time taking on Glover Teixeira. UFC tried to make the bout once before, in June of 2015, but things fell through due to injury and that card instead saw Joanna Jedrzejczyk beat the piss out of Jessica Penne in her first title defense. They also added a few other bouts featuring Swedish fighters, as Magnus Cedenblad will take on Chris Camozzi, and Jack Hermansson will take on Alex Nicholson, both at middleweight. There was also the brief rumor of top heavyweight prospect Francis Ngannou taking on Stefan Struve, but Struve ended those rumors in short order, as he's apparently still recovering from surgery. That does seem to be a slated fight for sometime later in the year, though, which makes one wonder exactly why UFC seems to hate Stefan Struve. *Some other fun fights are taking place, so let's run through them. UFC 212, the Aldo/Holloway card in Brazil, got a fun main card fight, as the rumored Claudia Gadelha/Karolina Kowalkiewicz bout between Joanna Jedrzejczyk's toughest tests to date will take place there. UFC 210 in Buffalo added some interesting fights, even if the main card isn't particularly stacked - after a one-off attempt to make lightweight, Thiago Alves heads back up to welterweight to face Patrick Cote. And two New Yorkers get to fight on the card - top lightweight prospect Gregor Gillespie takes on Andrew Holbrook, and Bellator vet Desmond Green makes his UFC debut against Josh Emmett. Nashville added three fights to a card that's shaping up nicely - John Dodson and Eddie Wineland square off in what should be a fun as hell bantamweight fight, native Tennesseean Ovince St. Preux takes on Marcos Rogerio de Lima in a fight St. Preux badly needs to win, and Cindy Dandois makes her UFC debut against fellow grappler Alexis Davis. Belgium's Dandois has been a pretty solid featherweight in Invicta, so one would think they'd sign her to join a division that needs, you know, fighters, but nope - this one will see Dandois cut down to 135, which she's also fought at in the past. And while the Fox card in Kansas City still needs a main events, some solid fights got added, headlined by Jeremy Stephens taking on featherweight prospect Renato Moicano. Stephens had been rumored to take on Gilbert Melendez on this card, but Moicano's a fine replacement violence-wise, even if he doesn't have the name value. Talented lightweights Rashid Magomedov and Bobby Green will square off, veteran grapplers Nathan Coy and Zak Cummings will take each other on, and in what might be the most interesting fight of them all, uber-prospect Tom Duquesnoy makes his UFC debut against Patrick Williams. And to wrap things up, UFC 211 also added one more fight, between TUF: Latin America alums Enrique Barzola and Gabriel Benitez. *And lastly, UFC added two more events to the schedule. UFC 214 got moved up a week, as UFC will now head to Anaheim on July 29th. And the company announced their return to Singapore for a card on June 17th - no fights have been announced, outside of the expected debut of top Chinese fighter Guan Wang, as UFC is suddenly trying to promote Chinese talent again. Hopefully it goes better this time around. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Kyoji Horiguchi (18-2 overall, 7-1 UFC, last fought 11/19/16, W vs. Ali Bagautinov): As mentioned above, Horiguchi is the most surprising name UFC has let get away in recent memory, since he's an exciting, young fighter that still has a bunch of upside while being a top contender in a thin division. It was kind of absurd that Horiguchi got a title shot when he did, in April of 2015, coming off of wins against Darrell Montague, Jon Delos Reyes, and Louis Gaudinot, but options were scarce, and UFC just decided to throw a talented prospect to the wolves. Horiguchi was unsurprisingly outclassed there, but he's continued to improve and looked excellent in his last fight over top veteran Ali Bagautinov, even mixing in some clinchwork and grappling to go with his typical powerful striking style. That fight was the last on his contract, and as possibly the best Japanese fighter in the world, Horiguchi must've known the big offers were coming, and he signed with RIZIN pretty much right after becoming a free agent. He's already slated for a fight in April, and honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if RIZIN soon had a flyweight division roughly the same level as UFC's, Johnson aside. 2) Nikita Krylov (21-5 overall, 6-3 UFC, last fought 12/10/16, L vs. Misha Cirkunov): Farewell to Nikita Krylov, owner of one of the most bizarre UFC careers in recent memory. The Ukrainian came into UFC as a pudgy, 21-year old heavyweight with an undefeated record (because his losses had mysteriously not yet been reported), and put on an instant classic in his UFC debut against Soa Palelei for all the wrong reasons, as the two giants just tired immediately and then just sort of flopped around at half-speed until Palelei won after Krylov essentially got too tired to defend himself. That earned Krylov instant cult favorite status among the MMA hardcores, and his subsequent two fights just helped that right along - Krylov came out of nowhere to uncork a head-kick knockout of Walt Harris in just 25 seconds, but then cut down to 205 and got immediately tapped out by Ovince St. Preux with a basic choke. That seemingly established Krylov as a joke for the rest of his career, but then he suddenly went ahead and became an actual prospect, further trimming down and becoming a weird fighter who wasn't all that good, but was ridiculously tough and aggressive and had just enough of an idea of what he was doing to put away his opponents. Krylov then faced off with Misha Cirkunov in a rare prospect-versus-prospect fight at light heavyweight, and finally found his match in another top-tier athlete who was able to weather the storm and take advantage of the openings Krylov provided, eventually clamping on a choke for the submission. Cirkunov's future was still fairly bright, so it was a surprise when UFC cut him, until it came out that Krylov only had one fight left on his deal, and made it apparent he was going to sign back in Russia. And indeed, Krylov signed with Fight Nights shortly thereafter. 3) Valerie Letourneau (8-6 overall, 3-3 UFC, last fought 12/10/16, L vs. Viviane Pereira): Letourneau confirmed her release from UFC on social media, and she had a weird run - frankly, I'm still unclear if she was actually all that good. Letourneau was a bit of a surprise choice for a late-notice slot on a card in 2014 - while the Montreal native is a pioneer in Canadian women's MMA, her lone UFC exposure was a loss on TUF to Roxanne Modafferi, whose career seemed all but over at that point. But Letourneau got a debut win in a fairly trash fight over Elizabeth Phillips, and then surprisingly made the cut down to strawweight, where she looked absolutely brutal and drained on the scale. Still, she made weight for another win over Jessica Rakoczy - in another fight where neither woman looked all that good - and then scored a win over Maryna Moroz where Letourneau's game suddenly looked fairly impressive. Still, it was a shock when she was chosen to fight Joanna Jedrzejczyk for the strawweight title after that win - the thought was seemingly, since this was the big Rousey/Holm show, that Letourneau would be a solid opponent for Jedrzejczyk to have a showcase win over. But to her credit, Letourneau managed to hang in there for all five rounds, which was far from expected, and seemingly had cemented herself as a top-ten or so strawweight. And then the wheels fell off. Letourneau faced Joanne Calderwood in a one-off flyweight fight and had a competitive loss, albeit one where Letourneau struggled with an ill-fitting top and then got knocked out, and once UFC decided not to add Letourneau's natural division, it was back down to 115, where she drained herself once again, but still missed weight against Viviane Pereira. And that Pereira fight wound up being absolutely awful - Letourneau had a comical size advantage, but was too drained to do anything with it, and the result was just a terrible fight where nobody really deserved to win. After that performance, I kind of don't blame UFC for cutting Letourneau, and hopefully she can now fight somewhere where she can be at flyweight, and not put herself through such a rough weight cut. 4) Dongi Yang (13-3 overall, 2-3 UFC, last fought 11/28/15, W vs. Jake Collier): As mentioned above, Yang requested his release after basically not being booked, instead choosing to latch on with a new promotion in his native Korea. In his initial UFC run from 2010 through 2012, Yang was one of those mid-tier guys who had a bad record due to some tough matchmaking, as UFC decided to keep feeding him to what were then top prospects like Court McGee and Brad Tavares. But he was still a surprising signing when UFC decided to hold an event in Korea, since in the intervening three and a half years, Yang had only fought twice. But he got a win in that return fight over Jake Collier, and then...nothing. UFC didn't run Asia in all of 2016, and Yang's lone booking was on a card in Manila that wound up getting scrapped. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa, Alan Jouban vs. Gunnar Nelson 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Daniel Cormier ( c ) vs. Anthony Johnson, Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 4/15 - UFC on Fox 24 - Kansas City, MO - Rose Namajunas vs. Michelle Waterson, Gilbert Melendez vs. Jeremy Stephens 4/22 - UFC Fight Night 108 - Nashville, TN - Artem Lobov vs. Cub Swanson, Al Iaquinta vs. Diego Sanchez, Sam Alvey vs. Thales Leites 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic ( c ) vs. Junior dos Santos, Joanna Jedrzejczyk ( c ) vs. Jessica Andrade, Ben Rothwell vs. Fabricio Werdum, Demian Maia vs. Jorge Masvidal, Eddie Alvarez vs. Dustin Poirier 5/28 - UFC TBA - Stockholm, Sweden - Alexander Gustafsson vs. Glover Teixeira 6/3 - UFC 212 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - Jose Aldo (c) vs. Max Holloway (ic), Claudia Gadelha vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz ----- UFC 209 - March 4, 2017 - T-Mobile Arena - Las Vegas, Nevada It's pretty crazy to think that this card essentially marks the one-year anniversary of Nate Diaz's win over Conor McGregor, a fight that helped establish 2016 as pretty much the peak year in UFC history, as well as more or less upend the entire way that the company promotes fights. And while this isn't that level of a card, this show does sort of serve as a tentpole for the beginning third or so of 2017, as this features two of the best fights that UFC can put on at the moment. And they actually did a pretty solid job of loading this card up - pretty much every fight on this card should be fun, and frankly, UFC's matchmaking has been excellent lately, as even the fights that may not be that great to watch (Evans/Kelly, maybe Bektic/Elkins) are really interesting fights to see where certain guys stand at the moment. After a rough two months to start the year, it looks like UFC is finally shaking out of their doldrums, and this card is really kickstarting that into motion. Whee. MAIN CARD (Pay-Per-View - 10:00 PM ET): Welterweight Championship: ( C ) Tyron Woodley vs. (#1) Stephen Thompson Interim Lightweight Championship: (#1) Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. (#2) Tony Ferguson Middleweight: Rashad Evans vs. Daniel Kelly Lightweight: David Teymur vs. Lando Vannata Heavyweight: (#3) Alistair Overeem vs. (#8) Mark Hunt PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 8:00 PM ET): Heavyweight: Luis Henrique vs. Marcin Tybura Featherweight: (#13) Mirsad Bektic vs. (#14) Darren Elkins Bantamweight: (#15) Iuri Alcantara vs. Luke Sanders Heavyweight: Mark Godbeer vs. Daniel Spitz PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 6:30 PM ET): Light Heavyweight: Paul Craig vs. Tyson Pedro Women's Strawweight: Cynthia Calvillo vs. Amanda Cooper Bantamweight: Albert Morales vs. Andre Soukhamthath THE RUNDOWN: Tyron Woodley (16-3-1 overall, 6-2-1 UFC, 8-1 Strikeforce) vs. Stephen Thompson (13-1-1 overall, 8-1-1 UFC): UFC 205 will rightfully be best remembered for Conor McGregor becoming UFC's first simultaneous two-weight champion, or for being the promotion's big debut in Madison Square Garden, but the best fight of the night was the welterweight title bout, a majority draw between champion Tyron Woodley and challenger Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson. It took a bit to get going, but it was a pretty great, back and forth affair; for being a fairly stout wrestler going against a highly decorated kickboxer, Woodley did an excellent job of hanging with Thompson on the feet, and had the best moments of either fighter in a one-sided round four, where Woodley pretty much beat Thompson pillar to post and clamped on a tight guillotine that Thompson was lucky to survive. And as it turns out, Woodley needed that one-sided fourth round, as even though many thought Woodley won the fight (and, to be fair, a bunch also had it for Thompson), that 10-8 round was enough to tie it on two out of the three scorecards. So, of course, a draw necessitates a rematch, and UFC runs it back here, about four months later. Even though the draw was probably frustrating, the first Thompson fight was the sort of great bout and great performance that Woodley seemingly needed to be taken seriously as welterweight champion; before this, Woodley was sort of seen as an unworthy title-holder, who had some high-profile failures, beaten some weaker names, and then basically just waited things out until he got a title shot, as more interesting fighters were booked in other fights. And when Woodley knocked out Robbie Lawler in fairly sudden fashion once he got his shot, Woodley was just sort of seen as a boring spoiler in the division, and most assumed Thompson would be able to take the title from him and move on to more fun, violent things. But as mentioned above, Woodley held his own, and given that consensus has seemingly crystallized that he probably got the better of things in the first fight, it's nice to see him now taken seriously as one of the top welterweights in the world, even if he seems to be filling the role of well-spoken, somewhat cocky, black athlete that irrationally arises the ire of parts of the fanbase that Rashad Evans used to fill. And that's made for a solid contrast against Thompson, who's pretty much as white-bread as they come, as a karate practitioner from South Carolina. These two really do make for an excellent matchup in terms of frame and style - again, Woodley's a short, compact wrestler who's learned how to leverage the knockout power in his fists, and he has a ridiculous ability to cover distance in a short amount of time when going for that finish. Woodley also tends to use a weird strategy where he actually starts to back himself up against the cage, seemingly in the hopes that his opponents will open themselves up for either a takedown or an overhand, and you can see why many thought Thompson would just pick him apart in his first fight. Thompson's done an excellent job of rounding himself out where other karate guys have faltered, leveraging his long frame into some excellent distance management, keeping active, and improving his takedown defense to the point that he can - typically - keep fights where he's most comfortable. Appropriately enough, given that it was a draw, their first fight has given a lot of insight as to how those styles will interact, but not so much in terms of who will actually win it this time around. Woodley, as mentioned, did a much better job on the feet than anyone probably could've expected, but Thompson should still figure to have the advantage there. And while Thompson could easily finish the fight with a well-placed kick, again, it was Woodley that came the closest to finishing things a few times both on the feet and on the ground. I really don't see anything less than a back and forth war, but I do always tend to favor wrestlers, since they can control where the fight takes place, and for that reason, I'll take Woodley to win a decision, since he had some success taking things to the ground in the first fight, and that should be able to serve as a safety valve, if not a way to just outright win the fight, as needed. Still, it's an excellent rematch of a fight that was surprisingly fun and helped establish Woodley's title reign, so hopefully whatever the result is, it sets things up so that we can get a trilogy fight in the coming years. Khabib Nurmagomedov (24-0 overall, 8-0 UFC) vs. Tony Ferguson (22-3 overall, 12-1 UFC): With all due respect to the main event, which is an excellent fight in its own right, I think people are most excited about this fight, which is one of the best UFC can put on at the moment - in fact, it's apparently the first fight between two guys each riding an eight-fight UFC win streak. And while it's somewhat ridiculous that they're fighting for an interim belt, I don't think anyone will complain about this being a five round fight; and as an added bonus, that belt theoretically acts as a golden ticket for the winner to face Conor McGregor, which should be a hell of a fight either way. Khabib Nurmagomedov's sort of loomed over the lightweight division as an uncrowned champion for a few years now - one of the first fighters to come into UFC of this recent wave of Dagestanis, Nurmagomedov has pretty much been the best, destroying opposition with his ridiculously stifling wrestling; hell, in his fight against Abel Trujillo, Nurmagomedov managed to hit a UFC-record twenty-one takedowns, despite it only being a three-round fight. Honestly, looking back on Nurmagomedov's first five fights, you could've made the case that his competition was rather weak, as a lot of his early opponents started trending south right after they faced Khabib - but all that's moot, since he really became a contender in fight number six, against future division champ Rafael dos Anjos. Both Nurmagomedov and dos Anjos were riding five-fight win streaks, and the winner seemed set to be a title contender if they weren't already, which made it all the more impressive when Nurmagomedov just stifled dos Anjos like he had every previous opponent. But while dos Anjos rebounded from that loss to start another five-fight win streak that led him to the UFC championship, Nurmagomedov instead headed into surgery, as he tore up his knee over the summer of 2014. And as mentioned before, once dos Anjos won the title, Nurmagomedov's presence just loomed over the division, since by proxy, he figured to be the actual best lightweight in the world, but was just too hurt to compete. After a few teases of a return - the last of which was actually against Ferguson - Nurmagomedov finally came back in April of last year against late replacement Darrell Horcher, after another attempt to re-book the Ferguson fight fell through. And after taking about a round to shake off two years of rust, Nurmagomedov just simply picked up where he left off, dominating Horcher and setting his sights on lightweight gold. Khabib took out another contender, this time Michael Johnson, at UFC 205, and provided one of the best out-of-the-cage highlights of the night, stirring the mostly Irish crowd into a frenzy as he called Conor McGregor a chicken, and then talked about how he was going to make said chicken tap and win lightweight gold. Great stuff. But for everything Nurmagomedov has done, Ferguson has pretty much been right there with him, right down to beating dos Anjos in a hell of a five round fight just a week before Nurmagomedov's win over Johnson. Ferguson won season 13 of TUF back in 2011 and reeled off three quick wins, but after a flat loss to Johnson where it turned out that Ferguson had broken his arm, Ferguson was pretty much out of sight, out of mind for a good year and a half while he recovered. And when he came back at the tail end of 2013, Ferguson seemingly was starting over from scratch, working his way slowly up the ladder, against a lot of the same people Nurmagomedov faced, in fact. But while Nurmagomedov wins with just hard-nosed, straight-ahead wrestling, Ferguson instead does so with style; Ferguson is lanky for a lightweight, and he uses that frame to great effect, just sort of bouncing around everywhere, pecking away from distance, and occasionally doing some crazy things with movement, like doing a weird ninja roll or striking from an unorthodox angle. And his grappling game is fairly similar - despite having a background in wrestling, Ferguson never really uses it, instead choosing to hop on all sorts of chokes, particularly a D'Arce that has become a bit of a signature after his crazy win over Edson Barboza. And it's that contrast in styles that makes this a ridiculously fun fight on paper, even past the talent of both guys; Nurmagomedov has never faced someone as dangerous and active as Ferguson, while a hard-charging Russian who just wants to cut through the shit and take Ferguson down is probably his toughest test yet. Honestly, for being such a fascinating fight on paper, this seems to be a pretty binary fight, and we'll probably figure out how it's going to go within the first few minutes, since it really comes down to if Khabib can catch Ferguson or he can't. We saw it briefly in the Johnson fight before Khabib took over, but Nurmagomedov's striking still isn't all that great, and is pretty much just a means to an end of getting close to take his opponent down and maul them. That could be a huge problem against someone with one-hitter quitter knockout power, like, say, McGregor, but despite being having some power, I don't really think of Ferguson as that type of guy. But what Ferguson is is evasive, and even worse for Khabib, Ferguson also seems to have one of the best gas tanks in MMA; he just always fights at a ridiculous pace, and if doing so for five rounds against Rafael dos Anjos at the elevation of Mexico City doesn't tire him out, a fight with Nurmagomedov probably won't. Unless, of course, Nurmagomedov just takes over and out-wrestles Ferguson to wear him out, but at that point, the question of if Ferguson can keep avoiding him is moot. I could see a scenario where Ferguson just pecks at Nurmagomedov from outside and then takes over as the Russian tires out, but honestly, I have the feeling it's only going to take one takedown for Nurmagomedov to take over the fight, and things should go downhill for Ferguson after that, since once Khabib gets into a groove, pretty much every fight to date has been over. So I'll take Khabib via decision, with a chance of a late finish if Nurmagomedov is able to take over early enough in the fight, but I do expect some trouble before the Russian figures things out and gets his hands on Ferguson. Either way, though, woohoo, what a fight. And I can't wait for the winner to face McGregor. Rashad Evans (19-5-1 overall, 14-5-1 UFC) vs. Daniel Kelly (12-1 overall, 5-1 UFC): While I'm happy that Dan Kelly has somehow had enough success to get such a big fight, it is kind of sad that it's come to this to see if Rashad Evans has anything left. Evans was never really been the biggest star, but he's been a UFC stalwart for over a decade, became UFC light heavyweight champion, and gave us some of the better rivalries in the history of the sport with Quinton Jackson and Jon Jones. But, for all intents and purposes, Evans's dominant win over Chael Sonnen in late 2013 was pretty much the end of his high-level career, or so it seems. Slated for a fight against Daniel Cormier that would've put the winner firmly in the title picture, Evans went down with a knee injury that was supposed to only keep him out for a month or so, but instead turned into a two-year ordeal of surgeries. And once Evans finally returned against Ryan Bader, he looked pretty much done - Evans went from 34 to 36-years old during his layoff and showed every year of it, just looking slow, getting out-struck by Bader, and not even having much success implementing his reliable wrestling game. And things went even worse in an attempted rebound fight against Glover Teixeira, as Evans did even less before getting obliterated via knockout in just under two minutes. And so Evans turned to the last resort of the fading fighter - changing weight classes, in this case cutting down to middleweight, though getting a fight booked at 185 became a bit of an ordeal itself. Thanks to privacy laws, it's unclear exactly what happened, but some sort of medical issue that Evans has apparently had throughout his entire career got flagged by the New York commission right before Evans was slated to fight at UFC 205. So his bout against Tim Kennedy was shifted a few weeks later, to UFC 206, only for Ontario to basically follow suit and refuse to clear Evans. But thankfully, there's always Nevada, so Evans can finally make his middleweight debut against, of all people, Australia's Dan Kelly, one of the unlikelier success stories of the last few years. A four-time Olympian in judo, Kelly didn't really take up MMA until he was 35 years old, and when he showed little on a Canada/Australia season of TUF a little over a year later, that figured to be that. But UFC was in full global expansion mode, signed Kelly to a contract anyways, and after two ugly wins over lower-level foes, Sam Alvey destroyed him under a minute and seemingly put an end to a fun little story to those who bothered to watch UFC's Australian shows. But then things took a bit of a crazy turn - after knocking off prospect Steve Montgomery, Kelly suddenly became a going concern in the middleweight division, scoring a come-from-behind finish over top prospect Antonio Carlos Junior in one of the bigger upsets of 2016, and then taking out solid vet Chris Camozzi on UFC's most recent card down under. It's a wonder to behold, as Kelly, who's been an underdog in all six of his UFC fights, just continues to win - he's kind of plodding and creaky on the feet, often wearing a giant knee brace, but he just bites down on his mouthpiece, wades in with some wild punches, and just hopes he can get close to his opponent. And to his credit, when he does, age goes out the window, and judo takes over, as Kelly just uses a combination of technique and sheer dad strength to take over his foes and just beat the piss out of them as they wonder how exactly this all happened. Amazingly, given all of Evans's accomplishments and given that Kelly's pretty much mostly been a curio during his UFC career, this is a somewhat hard fight to call, given that it's unclear exactly what Evans has left, as well as questions about how he'll look at a new weight class. If Evans was more of a finisher, I wouldn't have much of a problem picking him - Kelly tends to wear down his opponents through sheer tenacity, and Alvey showed that if you can just blast him early, you can score a quick knockout before tiring out. And hey, maybe Evans is just enough more of a powerhouse at middleweight to make that happen. But I could easily see a fight where Evans has some success early, tires due to the weight cut, and, once again, Kelly takes over the late stretches of a fight over an exhausted opponent to steal another win. But I kind of have to take Evans to win a decision - he has the size, the veteran wiles, and enough of a wrestling background that one should hope he should be able to neutralize Kelly, if not just outbox him for three rounds to keep him at bay. Still, to come full circle, as much as I love Dan Kelly's unlikely success, it's still sort of sad that it's come to this. David Teymur (5-1 overall, 2-0 UFC) vs. Lando Vannata (9-1 overall, 1-1 UFC): When Michael Chiesa was forced to back out of a main event against Tony Ferguson, and newcomer "Groovy" Lando Vannata stepped in, it was viewed as a bit of a disappointment, but instead, it may have been a launching pad for someone who may become a future star. First of all, the fight itself wound up being absolutely awesome - Ferguson seemingly finally met his match and faced someone with enough swagger as he has, as Vannata just sort of let things flow, played the evasion game on defense, and hit enough crazy counter-shots to actually have Ferguson briefly on the ropes before succumbing to a second-round submission. And rather than wind up as some one-hit wonder, Vannata instead followed that up by taking out John Makdessi with possibly the most aesthetically pleasing knockout of 2016, a walk-off spinning wheel kick that dropped Makdessi like a bird being shot out of the sky and established Vannata as a prospect to watch. Rather than rush Vannata back against high-level competition, UFC instead did a fascinating lateral move here, matching Vannata up against Swedish striking prospect David Teymur. Teymur wasn't particularly memorable on the McGregor/Faber season of TUF, but he's looked good since making it to the UFC roster proper, knocking out castmate Martin Svensson and then doing the same to newcomer Jason Novelli, both in rather brutal fashion. Like Vannata, Teymur hasn't shown much outside of dynamic, violent striking skill, but hey, that's more than enough to make you someone people want to see. This could be a bit of a tricky matchup for Vannata, but frankly, he's looked the better of the two and done so against much tougher competition. So while Vannata could dick around and get himself knocked out, and while I could see Teymur going fairly well early on as both guys feel the other out, I'll say Vannata eventually hits a groove (pun not intended, I swear) and scores a second round knockout. Alistair Overeem (41-15 [1] overall, 6-4 UFC, 4-0 Strikeforce, 7-7 PRIDE) vs. Mark Hunt (12-10-1 [1] overall, 7-4-1 [1] UFC, 5-3 PRIDE): It's an interesting fight between two late-career heavyweights, but UFC pretty much has to be screwing with Mark Hunt at this point by booking him against Alistair Overeem. Hunt's sudden career resurgence in UFC was a ridiculous one - even though he was pretty much just a super-heavyweight oddity, Hunt refused to be bought out of his PRIDE contract, and after a quick submission loss to Sean McCorkle, Hunt suddenly flashed some takedown defense and rode knockout after knockout all the way to an interim title shot. And since, he's been a fairly reliable hand - while a one-sided loss to Stipe Miocic pretty much confirmed a title won't be in his future, Hunt's been someone UFC can feature on a lot of shows in Australia or his native New Zealand, and he'll probably give you a fun as hell brawl and a knockout while doing it. But one of the sidebars of Hunt's career is that his opponents keep failing drug tests - Antonio Silva did so after their 2013 war, and Hunt's last two opponents did so, as Frank Mir flunked a drug test after the fight, and, well, then there was the whole Brock Lesnar mess. Lesnar came out of retirement to face Hunt at UFC 200, but UFC waived a mandatory four-month drug testing period to get Lesnar on the card, which caused the conspiracy theories to fly after Lesnar pissed hot following a surprising win over Hunt. Hunt, for his part, refused to fight unless UFC would guarantee him that he would receive his opponent's purse if they failed a drug test, and then sued the company; and while that lawsuit is still going on, Hunt basically needed the money and decided to take a fight that, of course, is against Overeem, one of the sport's most notorious drug cheats. Overeem exploded from a reedy light heavyweight to an absolute monster of a heavyweight over the course of his career, which mostly took place in Japan and other areas without drug testing, and whenever the Dutchman was prompted about the change, he'd knowingly give the credit to a diet of horse meat. Sure, horse meat. When UFC finally brought Overeem over from Strikeforce to debut against Lesnar, getting a drug test was, unsurprisingly, a bit of a hassle - Overeem just wound up getting a conditional license without having to pass one, as he submitted two samples that, for various reasons, weren't able to be tested, and pretty much waited out the clock. But the Nevada commission was finally able to catch him with a surprise drug test at a press conference, and Overeem finally pissed hot now that he didn't have any notice, which kept him out of action for all of 2012. And when Overeem returned, he was obviously a much diminished fighter without his horse meat - there was still some violent offense, but once opponents were able to weather the storm, Overeem would gas out and was pretty much a sitting duck for knockouts at the hands of guys like Antonio Silva, Travis Browne, and Ben Rothwell. But Overeem turned to Jackson-Wink in a last ditch effort to save his career, and the Albuquerque camp worked wonders, reinventing Overeem's game from a power striker to sort a combination outside boxer and grappler that was able to both leverage his physical gifts as well as keep his suddenly diminished chin safe. And Overeem rode that change to a four-fight win streak and a title shot, even though he fell short in a crazy brawl against Stipe Miocic. I really hope this fight is fun - if it stays on the feet, it's a really awesome battle of former top-flight kickboxers, pitting Overeem's athleticism against Hunt's durability. But in fights against one-dimensional opponents, Overeem has shown a willingness to just take things to the ground and play it safe, and I fear that's what happens here. Lesnar showed that while Hunt's takedown defense is much improved, and Hunt's short, squat body type makes him hard to take down, it can be done, and I see this fight playing out a lot like this one, with Overeem taking things to the ground and just keeping them there, much to the chagrin of the crowd. That said, there's still a chance at any moment that Overeem could just get lamped, and I'd love to be wrong just for entertainment's sake, but my pick is Overeem by fairly one-sided, disappointing decision. Luis Henrique (10-2 [1] overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Marcin Tybura (14-2 overall, 1-1 UFC): Let's try this again. Much like Rashad Evans above, a minor medical issue made a skittish New York commission refuse to clear Luis Henrique, so rather than being on UFC 208, this fight will instead take place at 209. Henrique's an interesting talent - the Brazilian started his UFC run by getting his head knocked off by Francis Ngannou, but he's rebounded quite well, using aggression and wrestling to pretty much overwhelm some lower-level giants of the division, scoring submission wins over Dmitrii Smoliakov and Christian Colombo. Add in the fact that Henrique is somehow just 23 years old in a division where 30 is considered young, and the sky is pretty much the limit. But for now he has an interesting test in Poland's Marcin Tybura, who's in pretty much the opposite situation, coming in as a fully-formed vet. Despite coming in with a really solid regional record, Tybura disappointed in his UFC debut against Tim Johnson, where he pretty much got out-wrestled, but he rebounded in a huge way with a beautiful head kick knockout of Viktor Pesta. That Johnson fight, though, is representative of what I think might be Tybura's big problem in the UFC; while he's a skilled fighter, he's just not particularly large for a UFC heavyweight, and the company is basically filled with the biggest, toughest guys from every smaller promotion. Against another mid-sized heavyweight like Pesta, Tybura styled out, and what makes this interesting is that Henrique is somewhere in the middle - he's not quite cutting to 265 like some guys, but he's fairly big, and just wrestles like an absolute powerhouse. I'll lean towards the side of saying that Henrique's physicality winds up being too much for Tybura, and that the Brazilian wins a wrestling-heavy decision with a chance of a finish. Still, if Tybura can neutralize that wrestling game, his experience and striking skill might actually make Henrique a sitting duck. And that's really why UFC matchmaking has been wonderful lately - while I favor one guy, there's a chance the other could just as easily make that pick look stupid - ah, the wonders of this sport. Mirsad Bektic (11-0 overall, 4-0 UFC) vs. Darren Elkins (21-5 overall, 11-4 UFC): Mirsad Bektic was topping prospect lists in fairly short order after coming onto the MMA scene - a Bosnian refugee whose family fled to Germany and eventually wound up into Nebraska, Bektic is a top-flight athlete and an explosive wrestler who's quickly picking up the striking game, which, well, adds up to pretty much everything you'd want. He's still there to be hit a bit, but that hasn't really come close to hurting him yet, particularly when he can rush into a takedown at the first sign of danger. After beating some low-level competition, UFC finally looked ready to push Bektic up the ranks by matching him up against Tatsuya Kawajiri, but Bektic wound up tearing his ACL and missing the greater part of 2016. But when Bektic made his return at UFC 204 this past October, he pretty surprisingly picked up right where he left off and showed little, if any, rust, running through Russell Doane for a first-round finish. The one knock on Bektic at this point is his weak competition in the UFC - outside of Chas Skelly, everyone else is either out of the UFC or about to be - and this fight is going to fix that in a big way, as Darren Elkins is a perennially tough out. Since about 2012, Elkins has been a prospect-killer supreme; the Indiana native's game isn't pretty, but it works, as he just sort of goes after takedowns and gets his opponents to the mat through sheer force of will, basically staying on them and preventing them from getting any offense in. Elkins has lost enough fights to guys like Chad Mendes and Jeremy Stephens that a title run almost definitely isn't in the future, but Elkins can hang with pretty much anyone outside of the elite. Frankly, this fight really comes down to whose wrestling is better, and while Bektic has been a prodigy to date, we have yet to see him against someone who'll probably just ignore the hype, charge forward, and try to put him on his back. Elkins is currently about a three-to-one underdog, which seems wide to me, since while Bektic's offensive wrestling game is frightening and vicious, offensive and defensive wrestling seem to be two different skillsets, and again, there's always the chance that Elkins can put his opponent on their back first. But while there's way more upset potential than seemingly expected, I'll favor Bektic to take the decision - even after the ACL tear, Bektic's athleticism still seems otherwordly, and the Bosnian also should have the better striking to work with. But, that said, I don't really think it'll be a mauling like a lot of Bektic's other wins - this should be a pretty solid fight that sets Bektic up for bigger and better things. Iuri Alcantara (34-7 [1] overall, 8-4 [1] UFC, 1-0 WEC) vs. Luke Sanders (11-0 overall, 1-0 UFC, 1-0 Strikeforce): Well, Iuri Alcantara's back at the gatekeeper game, as Luke Sanders finally gets to follow up on an impressive debut and fight at his natural weight class. Alcantara's pretty much been a top-fifteen mainstay since cutting down to bantamweight in 2013, as he's won a great majority of his fights, and even in his losses, he's pretty much always put up a game performance as a jack of all trades, master of none. And it's that skill set that has pretty much made Alcantara UFC's go-to prospect test at 135, as a great part of his career in recent years has been spent fighting guys coming off impressive debuts. Jimmie Rivera outclassed Alcantara about a year ago as part of his rise up the division, which led some to think Alcantara's best days might be behind him, but the Brazilian followed up by blowing the doors off of Brad Pickett, so Alcantara seems to be far from done. This time around, Alcantara's test is Tennessee's Luke Sanders, who was a top prospect on the radar for a while before getting the late call-up from UFC last January. There, Sanders fought up a weight class and got a surprisingly quick win over Maximo Blanco and established himself as a name to watch...before dropping off the radar after not being booked for over a year. Anyway, Sanders is a similarly well-rounded guy who's good everywhere, but with no particular standout skill, which makes for an interesting fight, since it's unclear who should have the advantage where in each aspect of the fight. I could just flip a coin, but I'll actually slightly favor Sanders to win a decision, just because he seems more active and I trust him to win more rounds. Still, this figures to be a nip-tuck fight, and should either establish Sanders as yet another rising young bantamweight, or keep Alcantara as the big veteran test in the division. Mark Godbeer (11-3 overall, 0-1 UFC, 0-1 Bellator) vs. Daniel Spitz (5-0 overall): Heavyweights! British vet Mark "The Hand of" Godbeer made his UFC debut this past November, and, welp, it didn't go well at all, as what figured to be a striking match against Justin Ledet turned into Ledet getting an unlikely first-round submission. So Godbeer, who's pretty much a one-dimensional kickboxer, tries to rebound here against newcomer Daniel Spitz. Spitz is a former Washington State lineman training at Sikjitsu, the same team that's churned out Julianna Pena and Michael Chiesa, and gaining a rep as a camp where the coaching is pretty dumb (choosing not to focus on things like altitude and defense), but where you can become a pretty solid submission expert. The only fight of Spitz's that's really out there is against "Cabbage" Correira of all people, and while Spitz does look decent when it goes to the ground, most of the fight is spent with Spitz using his giant frame - at 6'7", he's a tall dude - to just sort of peck away and keep Correira at bay with single strikes. I think Spitz has a shot if he gets it to the ground - and Godbeer's grappling defense looked bad enough against Ledet that he just might be able to - but if this remains on the feet, Spitz just looks way too slow and defensively open for Godbeer to not just track him down and crack him. So my pick is Godbeer by first-round knockout, with the caveat that this is low-level heavyweights, and pretty much anything can happen. Paul Craig (9-0 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Tyson Pedro (5-0 overall, 1-0 UFC): It remains to be seen exactly what the hell UFC is doing with the light heavyweight division as they continue to let good talent walk, but on the plus side, this is a real interesting fight between two prospects coming off impressive debuts. Four first names enter. Only two will survive. Scotland's Paul Craig made a memorable debut this past December - the "Bearjew" nickname alone was probably enough, but Craig used an impressive wrestling and submission game to put away rising prospect Henrique da Silva within two rounds, and then gave a charming post-fight interview in an often-incomprehensible brogue. And, well, the debut also went pretty similar for Australia's Tyson Pedro - facing Khalil Rountree in his home country, Pedro ate some strikes early on, but got Rountree to the ground in short order, earning the tap to go to 5-0 with five first round finishes. It's an interesting fight since, well, both guys are pretty similar fighters, which is particularly fascinating since you rarely see submission experts in the higher weight classes. Either guy could easily win this, but I'll favor Craig to take over the fight and earn, let's say, a second round submission, mostly since Pedro's faced way weaker competition, both pre-UFC and when comparing da Silva and Rountree. Cynthia Calvillo (3-0 overall) vs. Amanda Cooper (2-2 overall, 1-1 UFC, 0-1 Invicta): UFC threw together two fights at the bottom of this card to help fill it out, and this does feel sort of thrown together, since both women are fairly unproven. Amanda Bobby Cooper didn't really impress in her lone Invicta fight, but she still managed to make it to the finals of TUF 23 before getting dominated by Tatiana Suarez. Cooper rebounded with her first UFC win over the since-retired Anna Elmose, but the whole package is just sort of...eh; Cooper's a solid enough boxer, but still sort of a sloppy grappler who gets herself into bad positions, which is probably trouble against the debuting Cynthia Calvillo. Calvillo probably sets some sort of record as far as a normal prospect goes, as she just started her pro MMA career this past August, so she's making her UFC debut about six months after officially starting. But the Team Alpha Male product has an amateur career going back to 2012 that includes a big win over current top prospect Aspen Ladd, who's actually the woman that beat Cooper in that aforementioned Invicta fight. Calvillo's film shows about what you'd expect from a raw Alpha Male fighter - the striking is still a work in progress, but she looks like a natural wrestler who's comfortable going for chokes or just mounting and beating the piss out of overmatched competition. Cooper's almost surely her toughest test to date, particularly on the feet, but given that I've never really been impressed by Cooper, I feel comfortable saying Calvillo can impose her game and get, let's say, a second-round stoppage on the ground. Albert Morales (6-1-1 overall, 0-1-1 UFC, 2-0 Bellator) vs. Andre Soukhamthath (11-3 overall): The second of two fights thrown on this card at the last minute, this one should be a barn-burner. Albert Morales has had a weird, brief UFC career thus far - the Californian was a ridiculously raw prospect when UFC scooped him up last year, and after a debut against Alejandro Perez that was called a draw thanks to some iffy refereeing, Morales was thrown in against top bantamweight Thomas Almeida in what wound up being a rebound fight for Almeida. UFC matchmaking has gotten better in terms of handling prospects, but Morales is a reminder that sometimes they don't really seem to have a plan in mind. But this is finally a well-matched fight against the debuting Andre Soukhamthath, a Laotian-American from New England who's been training at Combat Club, which is essentially the former Blackzilians. Soukhamthath really got on the prospect radar with a beautiful knockout knee over Kody Nordby about a year ago, but he's faced a solid slate of competition over the last few years. Both guys are essentially exclusively strikers, so this should be a really fun fight, and it's a hard one to call - Morales definitely has the athleticism advantage, and seems to handle getting in a firefight more, but Soukhamthath seems to be much more technical, has a vicious clinch game in close quarters, and as his last few fights have shown, can put away opponents with a dynamic finish. I favor Morales to take a decision, but this could easily be a narrow split decision type of fight in a good way, where both wind up looking good.

[womanonthe111]

A Weekend Idyll

Maggie was 26 years old but looked much younger.   When she felt happy she was beautiful with her bony Irish features and her long straight hair, that she hardly ever managed to brush.  She was tallish and thin and always wore denim trousers and tee shirts with interesting little jackets she picked up from jumble sales.

She had been working in a University bookshop for a year after finishing her anthropology course. The bookshop was busy for a week  or two at the beginning of term when the students got their     book lists and before they got their overdrafts . The rest of the time it was usually empty apart from the usual compulsive book buying loonies.  She wanted to do  English but a friend  had persuaded  her to sign  up for  anthropology  because they  gave you the  papers two weeks  before finals  and that way  it was less work.  He added that the only way to put people off books was to read English.  So she signed up with a crazy looking old white haired man who turned out to be a rip roaring alcoholic  and great fun.   In between selling the odd book she read the whole of the three year English course, starting with Beowolf and ending with Martin Amis. She still read books written by men at the time.

Now it was time for her to move on. She read an advert in the Guardian education pages about a job teaching English in Paris. It sounded an interesting way to say goodbye to the lover and the beautiful but boring life in the small town by the sea.

Two weeks later she was in London beginning a ten day crash course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language . She stayed with a friend’s sister in a squat on Liverpool Road in Islington. The friend’s  sister was  into Aikido,  meditation  and brown rice.  Like her squat mates, who were  either on the dole or teaching at the free school down the road. They were all taking courses with   outlandish titles….“Brown Rice and the Radical Temperament”, “Transcendental Meditation, Marijunana and the Revolution in Central America”,“Touch Therapy, the  I Ching and their  relationship to Vietnam  and the  English Public  School”

The house was a large Georgian terrace, crumbling under the weight of years of neglect.  Some  original features,  as the estate agent  of  later years were to say, were  left but most of them  had  been ripped out  by the  inhabitants.  The fireplace had gone to an  Irish actor cum property developer from the local pub. The thirty pounds he had given them had gone into the houses dope kitty.  It was just as well for Maggie that her stay wasn’t a cold January.

Maggie thought the course was a little too easy considering she was going to be dumped into a Paris classroom the following Wednesday. The only embarrassing moment came when she was asked to take part in a word game.  She had never heard the word kitsch before and she didn’t   have a clue what the pimply Welshman was going on about as he tried to mime it.  She thought   she had been living in the country too long. Unfortunately that incident labelled her a first class Dumbo for years afterwards.

On the last Friday of the fortnight, she was sitting at the kitchen table, looking through her notes in the gloom of the basement.  She was off to Paris on the Sunday afternoon and she was getting a little apprehensive about the French students. She declined accompanying Jane to the Aikido workshop and turned down the gay benefit at the Fox.

He just appeared in the door of the kitchen.

He was a bit taller than her with lovely dark clear eyes and he looked so much more healthy and wholesome than the people who lived in the house.  He probably ate red meat and cooked with lard. He said he was looking for Rudolph, the bearded old German philosopher, who lived at the top of the house.

She told him that they had all gone out and offered  him a cup of earl grey tea.  Over tea he looked    at her with his shiny black hair and smooth skin and found she was beautiful. He asked her if she wanted to go to a party. She hesitated for a few seconds, then, damned the French and decided to  go.

He had a car outside that looked not only as if it were taxed and insured but that it really moved as well. They went to two parties that were both held in dark houses smelling of petunia oil and dope. They talked flippantly in serious voices and laughed a lot whilst they drank bitter white wine and flat beer out of barrels.  Life seemed amusing, exiting and easy as she smiled her Madonna like smile,   the one she used to get people to bear their souls to her. He held her hand and she didn’t take it a away because  it felt so warm  and right to be touching  him, and then she brushed his cheek  with   her other  hand to show that she didn’t  mind.  She felt her body responding to his.

It was after midnight and he asked her back to his place for coffee.  She thought of the lover she     had left standing on the platform. She had been faithful to him for three years, but her ever present guilty conscience,  donated generously  by the nuns of  her childhood  made her feel like an  adulteress   sleeping with a stranger two weeks after leaving the woeful face at the station. She     didn’t want to leave the stranger so she said she would  love coffee, but decided  inside herself  not   to make love to  him.

Maggie didn’t know London at all, so she had no idea where she was when she arrived at the flat.    It was very smart, “posh” her mother in Manchester would call it. There was lots of habitat furniture,  not one single orange box.  There was a large bed low near the floor covered by a leopard skin    over blanket. “Christ” she thought inwardly, he’s probably a white slave trader.  Seven years as a hippy in Wales  had led her to suspect  any sign of wealth.

Then she saw it, a bath. The squat only ran to one cold water tap in the kitchen. She hadn’t had a real wash since she said goodbye to the principality.

“Would you mind if I had a bath, I feel a little bit dirty. There is nowhere to wash at Jane’s. Do you mind?  He made the coffee whilst she ran the bath full to the top with steaming hot water.   She   threw her clothes onto the floor and climbed into the tub looking at the thick clean towels folded neatly in piles on a shelf on the wall.

She was lying in the water  luxuriating when  he came  back into the  room holding two mugs of  coffee and a joint.   "Shall  I wash  your  back” ? He said quietly, putting the mugs down and handing her a joint. She smiled at him from the mellowness of the water  and watched  him undress, noticing  the shape of his body with its small tight bum. He washed her back slowly with the Johnson’s baby soap that he used, and then he poured shampoo into his hands and massaged her hair whilst she closed her eyes and just enjoyed the  beauty of  it all.

They got out of the bath together and went to bed w with the towels still on. It was warm in the bed and they made love slowly. God! I don’t even remember his name she thought, but he was caressing her breasts again and she sank back into the wonder of his body.

Later they drank German liqueur out of big red glasses and he read her tarot cards.   Perhaps he is    a black magician and I am under his spell, she mused lying on the smooth surface of the leopard   skin.   He told her that she was doing the right thing for her karma, whatever  that was , going over the water  and that she would  begin to know more about   herself.

She wondered about those years later when she looked back over the time in Paris. The French city had been one long pleasure, booze, French food and talk until the early hours of the morning. She didn’t know anything about Karma but she learnt that  if she didn’t get out of the place she would    end up a complete  and utter  alcoholic.

They slept peacefully in each other’s arms for the few hours that were left of the night. The next morning he took her for breakfast in Alfredo’s cafe at the corner of Upper street and Essex Road where the seventy three turns right for  Hackney.  After two weeks on brown rice she ate the whole of Alfredo’s  greasy  offering with relish.

He kissed her quietly on the lips outside the squat.  She had already told him that she was going to   the Royal Festival Hall to hear some Beethoven that evening, so they said goodbye because she  was going away the following  day.

She went to Chapel Market to buy a few last minute things for Paris. She packed them in the new suitcase that her rich sister had given her before she had left.  She had to be careful with her   money because she wouldn’t get paid for a month.

They played the “Pastoral” that night, one of her favourites. She had two beers in the interval because it was so hot and stuffy in the auditorium. After the concert finished she came out of the theatre with the crowds, sleepily breathing in the cool breeze of the night air.  She was going to walk across the foot bridge towards the tube station.  As she made her way to the river, she saw   him standing there, waiting for her with some white flowers in his hands. He smiled at her as he gave her the lilies, “Would you like some coffee?”

She took the black magician-cum- slave trader back to bed again that  night.  The night was warm and filled with peace and London smells.  The big window was open and a cool breeze trickled   round the bed. The noise of car sirens and police sirens were far away in the other world. The only light was the shaded beam coming through the curtains from the lamppost outside.

She undressed him first slowly, savouring every second, looking at his brown body that wasn’t skinny like the one at the seaside saying goodbye. She brushed her hands gently over his breasts and shoulders. When he was naked, she kissed his navel and then his ear lobes, first one and then the other, rubbing his breasts and his chest. She sat on the bed and took off her jeans and knickers, watching him whilst he stood waiting for her. Then she took him by the hand: They didn’t pull the sheets over them because of the wonder of it all. They made love all night, beautifully and thoroughly again and again. Finally they held each other until it was time to go.

He took her to Victoria to catch the boat train. He handed her the new suitcase and hugged her softly. She kissed him on the stubbly smooth cheek and walked off to find the platform, not looking back.

She never knew his name and they didn’t exchange addresses. It was to remain a Weekend Idyll with a stranger that she cherished all her life.