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Last week, the UFC announced that top-10 welterweights Leon Edwards and Jorge Masvidal will meet on Dec. 11. This announcement was a long time coming — as in, more than 2½ years.
It was way back in March 2019 that Edwards and Masvidal had a confrontation backstage after both had won bouts at a UFC Fight Night event in London. Masvidal ended up bloodying Edwards’ face with a quick flurry of punches — which he iconically labeled afterward “the three-piece with the soda.”
Now, finally, they will meet in the Octagon. Does the grudge still have heat? Or did the UFC wait too long to match up Edwards, who is No. 4 in the ESPN welterweight rankings, with the 10th-ranked Masvidal?
Elsewhere in the MMA world last week, Colorado became the second state to employ open scoring in MMA and boxing matches, which makes the judges’ scorecards public after each round. This flies in the face of decades of combat sports tradition. Is it an idea whose time has come?
One of the biggest headlines of the week was the decision of Jon Jones’ coach, Mike Winkeljohn, to ban Jones from his longtime gym, Jackson Wink MMA in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the wake of Jones’ latest arrest — this time for charges including misdemeanor battery domestic violence.
ESPN’s MMA writers, Brett Okamoto and Marc Raimondi, along with editor Jeff Wagenheim, weigh in on these topics of interest — starting with the Edwards vs. Masvidal booking.
Raimondi: I have to be honest with you both. I have mixed feelings about this fight. In a vacuum, it’s obviously fantastic. The backstory is rich, with the 2019 scuffle between the two in London. I just think Edwards vs. Masvidal should have happened already, when the proverbial iron was hot. I’m not so much in love with the timing of this one. I’m not trying to complain — again, I badly want to see them fight — but what does Edwards have to gain here?…
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Source : espn
