Welcome to Midnight Mania!

Let’s start the night off by taking a look back over the three biggest stories of Wednesday, July 30, 2025.

1. Report: ‘Fed up’ Tank Davis retired from boxing ‘till his money runs low’: There is absolutely zero chance that Davis manages his money well enough to never fight again.
2. Ilia Topuria ‘pulling a Jon Jones’ by ducking Arman, creating ‘new version’ of UFC’s Aspinall ‘saga’ — ‘It’s not a good look’: If Topuria refuses to fight Arman after Tsarukyan’s next victory, it’s a problem.
3. Please stop calling Tom Aspinall UFC’s best heavyweight until he survives ‘deep waters’ of Jailton Almeida: Jailton Almeida deserves to be taken more seriously as a title threat simply by being a Heavyweight who doesn’t gas out after seven minutes.

Insomnia

Is anyone feeling confident in Tai Tuivasa’s comeback run? “Bam Bam” is still only 32 years of age, but he doesn’t seem that concerned about his current five-fight losing streak.

Jon Jones will be in court explaining away that pesky phone call audio sooner than later.

This peewee Capoeira class is simultaneously very cute but also mildly traumatic given my own (rather different and more chaotic) experience teaching children’s martial arts.

I like the concept, but all I really got from this is that Islam Dulatov is too polite to call his fellow athletes ugly.

I wrote a bit about this fight in my career recap of Dustin Poirier, but Josh Grispi was supposed to fight Jose Aldo for the UFC title! Instead, some relatively unheralded young punk from Louisiana front kicked the unholy crap out of him.

Michael Morales vs. Leon Edwards next?

This goofing around has no bearing on a real fight, but it’s still wild to see Stipe Miocic manhandled!

Slips, rips, and KO clips

Even though there are undeniably Strickland aspects to his game (the parrying, the jab), Welterweight Sean Strickland is almost unrecognizable at 15-0, 23 years of age. It’s hard to believe he’s a pre-Reebok deal fighter, the Strickland we know and love (or not) showed up in 2020 ... I was around the whole time, but it feels fake watching back the pre-COVID clips!

Compare these two clips to see why falling forward/shifting into the cross is both a bad idea defensively and why so many MMA fighters are willing to take that gamble.

Random Land

Thor Bjornsson continuing to throw gigantic weights around.

Midnight Music: Trap, 2019

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.