UFC 247, Released Fighters & Bellator Middleweight.

I didn't get to see UFC 247 unfortunately. But all the evidence suggests that Dominick Reyes won the main event in everyone's eyes except the judges. I wish I'd seen the fight to be able to make my own call on it. A lot of people were complaining about one judge in particular giving it 49-46 to Jones when it looked like Reyes won the first three rounds. It looks like Valentina Shevchenko will be champion in her division for a long time. She's unrivaled at the moment. The weasle suggested Roxanne Modafferi as her next opponent. I like that fight. Roxanne is good on the ground and her experience might cause a few problems for Valentina, so should make for an interesting fight. I think Derrick Lewis got the home town decision with the judges. I'm told Ilir Latiffi had numerous takedowns and even though he didn't do too much damage, he held Lewis down whereas Reyes got straight back up after Jones struggled to take him down. Yet Jones reckons the takedowns were what got him the decision. So more inconsistency from the judges. It was also reported that one judge wasn't even looking at the Lauren Murphy v Andrea Lee fight for periods of time but that was contradicted by mentioning that they have monitors on the floor to see what's going on in the octagon if their view is blocked. I don't know how true that monitor thing is because commentators have to be observant. I must also mention James Krause. He took a fight on a days notice when Trevin Giles' original opponent pulled out last minute. Giles is a weight division above, even two if you count that Krause has fought at lightweight. He went in against a bigger guy without a proper training camp, no time to prepare, made a good showing of himself and took it to a decision. Giles won but everyone is praising Krause for his "gangster" move.
In the meantime the UFC have quietly released eight fighters:
Heavyweight Junior Albini with a 1-4 record in the UFC (14-6 total in MMA)
Welterweight Nathan Coy 1-2 (15-7)
Bantamweight Brandon Davis 2-5 (10-8)
Women's flyweight Kalindra Faria 0-3 (18-8-1)
Men's bantamweight Grigorii Popov 0-2 (13-3)
Welterweight Ben Saunders 10-10 (22-13-2)
Men's bantamweight Jin Soo Son 0-2 (9-4)
Heavyweight Daniel Spitz 1-3 (6-3)
Credit: MMA Junkie and SBNation for that info.
It was revealed Monday that Douglas Lima is going to go up a division to fight Gegard Mousasi for the Bellator middleweight title vacanted by Rafael Lovato Jr. due to an ongoing medical condition. Well he's ambitious, I'll give him that. Rory McDonald didn't fare too well against Mousasi but maybe Lima has a few tricks up his sleeve. I don't fancy his chances. We'll see though. Speaking of Bellator, only a week and a half to go to the Dublin event. I'll be taking notes and I'll do another extensive post here.
I just want to mention one more thing in relation to Jon Jones before I go. The weasle tweeted: "I see people saying that Jones has declined. This can be true if the whole PED thing is real but I also see that his competition is clearly stronger now than ever before". I replied with: " Stronger competition and more wary of his opponents strengths and less inclined to take risks now that he has to stay PED free". My observation summed up was playing safer against stronger competition rather than decline. The weasle replied with "Very well said". So it seems this casual's observations can mean something to guys who are able to provide a more in-depth analysis into the technical aspects of the sport, when I get the observation right.