One thing you learn very quickly about this sport is that it can get weird. Really, really weird at times. Any given year will contain many bizarre happenings both in and out of the cage, and 2024 was certainly no exception.
While the below is by no means an exhaustive list, it is a quick rundown of some of the strangest, wildest, or just plain most memorably odd things that happened in our sport over the past year.
Jiri Procházka accuses Alex Pereira of employing the dark arts … and he might have a point?
Before their light heavyweight title rematch at UFC 303, former champ Jiri Procházka accused “Poatan” of using “magic” and “shamans” to improve his performances. Seemed silly at the time. Alex Pereira kept laying waste to the entire 205-pound division, but we figured that was due to him being an amazing fighter.
But you know what’s weird? We kept seeing Pereira pop up in photos with other, supposedly larger fighters. Here he was with Jon Jones. There he goes next to Tyson Fury. And every time, without fail, Pereira managed to appear roughly the same size as whoever he was next to. Fury is supposed to be five inches taller and like 50 pounds heavier! You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, though.
Is this proof that Pereira is being aided by powerful supernatural forces? Possibly. Which makes it a bad idea to run up on him in the gym if you’re aren’t ready to throw hands.
A dude bites another dude, and then the second dude gets the bite mark tattooed on his body
Here’s how wild one calendar year in MMA can be: I almost totally forgot that this happened and I’ll bet you did too. All the way back in March, at one of those random UFC Fight Night events in the UFC Apex, Igor Severino was disqualified for biting Andre Lima. We knew he’d bitten him because we could see the bite mark on Lima’s arm very clearly.
So how did Lima celebrate after picking up a victory in this most unusual of ways? Naturally he got that bite mark permanently inked on his skin. And then UFC CEO Dana White gave him a $50,000 bonus simply because he thought that was a rad move.
Tony Ferguson has a fittingly weird non-retirement
“El Cucuy” lost a record-breaking eighth consecutive fight in the UFC.
Then, instead of leaving his gloves in the center of the cage to signify his retirement, he explained that he was only leaving one glove in case he decided to use the other in a comeback attempt.
Then he didn’t even make it to the locker room before throwing that remaining glove into the crowd and announcing, actually, he wasn’t retiring after all.
What else should we have expected from a guy who’s always been, shall we say, unique among fighters?
Fans reminded it’s a bad idea to antagonize UFC fighters in person
If we learned anything in 2024, it’s that Merab Dvalishvili can hear you when you mouth off to him at a UFC event and he will take umbrage if you disrespect him.
But it wasn’t just him. You may recall that Arman Tsurukyan got himself into trouble for taking a swipe at a fan during his UFC 300 walkout. Here’s what he had to say afterward:
“He showed me ‘f*** you’ and he wanted to punch me and I wanted to punch him back. That’s it. So guys, no one show me ‘f*** you.’ It doesn’t matter who you are, I’m going to punch you in the face. You can show me ‘f*** you’ from like 200 meters, I’m not going to punch you. But when you’re close to me, it’s like automatically. I’m from Russia. Don’t do that, please. Or I’m going to go to prison in U.S.”
You know what? Fair.
Fighter misses weight, has to fight opponent and opponent’s dad at the same time
Don’t think you’ll roll up in the FAME MMA organization and escape a weigh-in miss by simply coughing up a portion of your purse. Nope, instead you may have to fight your opponent and his dad.
In some places, that’s just called Thanksgiving.
UFC spends years creating new gloves, then ditches them a few months later
At the UFC 300 weigh-ins in April, I sat with the other credentialed media and watched a presentation about the new UFC gloves. There was a whole video package about the lengthy research and development process. We were shown all sorts of visual aids to confirm that this was a great leap forward in MMA glove technology.
The new gloves went into effect on June 1 at UFC 302 in Newark. By the time the UFC returned to the vicinity for UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, it was back to the old gloves.
All that research. All that development. Just to end up saying: Actually, never mind.
Muhammad Mokaev sucker-punches opponent before fight, wins fight, then gets bounced
The wild thing about this one is how, after the incident and the fight, Mokaev basically admitted that he did exactly what he’d been accused of doing. He acted like he wanted to take a picture with Manel Kape a few days before their fight at UFC 304. Then, once Kape agreed, he sucker-punched him right there in the hotel. All of which followed a did-they-or-didn’t-they UFC Performance Institute incident that may or may not have occurred.
This sparked a whole thing, but the fight stayed intact. Mokaev even won a decision, though the fight was not exactly the crazed thriller one might expect amid such circumstances.
Afterward, Mokaev was sent packing, despite the fact that he’s undefeated as a pro. If he does make it back, hopefully the experience has taught him … something.
A former World’s Strongest Man fights two dudes at once
Where were you when the famed strongman Eddie Hall fought two opponents at once and hit one of them with an actual pro wrestling powerbomb?
It has to be a different kind of experience when you and a friend team up to fight a guy who’s famous for his extreme physical strength. The kind of thing where, by the end, either you’re better friends than ever or else you never speak again.
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UFC turns events into Trump rallies
Back in August, UFC CEO Dana White told me that he wasn’t trying to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election when he highlighted Donald Trump on UFC pay-per-view broadcasts. It was purely about respect for the office, White said, and he’d do the same for Joe Biden if he attended an event.
Well. We all saw where things went from there.
Personally, I’m no fan of Trump (or Biden, if we’re making a list). But it’s really beside the point. The extent to which the UFC has turned some recent events into all-out Trump love fests is bizarre. They do a full walkout for him, as if he’s one of the fighters. They keep a camera trained on him at cageside and cut to it at least once per fight. The commentators can’t stop talking about him.
It’s some real North Korean Dear Leader-style stuff, and we should not lose sight of how very, very strange it is. No other pro sports property does this for any political candidate or elected official.
Know why? Because that’s not what people watch sports for.
Funny, that didn’t used to be a remotely controversial take.
