A new bantamweight champion will be crowned at BKFC 20 on Friday night, Aug. 20, as Johnny Bedford clashes with Reggie Barnett Jr. in the main event. Bedford previously held the bantamweight title before losing a close decision to Dat Nguyen at BKFC Knucklemania back in February. Nguyen was then stripped of the title after he couldn’t come to terms with BKFC on a new contract so now a new champion will be crowned in the wake of his absence. Bedford previously faced Barnett back in 2019 and he earned a unanimous decision victory that night. Now after winning three fights in a row, Barnett will look to exact revenge while earning a shot at the BKFC bantamweight title. Meanwhile, former UFC fighter Alan Belcher will return from retirement for a fight against Tony Lopez on the upcoming card on Aug. 20. Belcher hasn’t fought since 2013 when he lost a decision to Michael Bisping, which ended his run with the promotion that dated back to UFC 62 in 2006. Now Belcher will get back in the ring as a heavyweight when he faces off with Lopez in August. The BKFC 20 card will also feature the return of Quentin Henry as he looks to bounce back from a loss to Chris Leben in his last outing as he takes on Jason Fish in a featured bout on the card. BKFC 20 will take place at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum from Biloxi, Miss. with the card airing on FITE TV as well as the BKFC app.

Esther Lin, MMA FightingFormer UFC champion Holly Holm will return to featherweight for her next fight as she’s expected to clash with Norma Dumont at the upcoming UFC event scheduled on Oct. 16. Multiple sources confirmed the matchup to MMA Fighting on Wednesday with verbal agreements in place from both athletes. Holm will be making her return to action for the first time since Oct. 2020 when she notched a decisive win over Irene Aldana to mark her second victory in a row. She was originally scheduled to compete earlier this year in a fight against Julianna Pena but Holm was diagnosed with a hydronephrosis — a urinary tract condition — and was forced out of the matchup. Now she’ll return with a fight at 145 pounds for the first time since 2018, when she won a lopsided decision over former Invicta FC champion Megan Anderson. Prior to that fight, Holm fought a pair of title bouts at featherweight with battles against Cris Cyborg and Germane de Randamie. Meanwhile, Dumont will take a step up in competition when she returns in October as the Brazilian looks to build on her own two-fight win streak, which includes an impressive performance over former title contender Felicia Spencer in her most recent bout. Overall, Dumont has gone 2-1 over three fights in the UFC with a 6-1 resume during her career. Holm vs. Dumont is the latest addition to the growing card on Oct. 16 with a main event still to be determined.

Few people know Khabib Nurmagomedov better than Daniel Cormier, and that’s why the former two-division UFC champion placed a call to him after seeing a recent message posted by Conor McGregor. In a series of since-deleted tweets, McGregor took aim at Dustin Poirier over the results of their UFC 264 encounter where he suffered a broken leg at the end of the first round. But McGregor also took a veiled swipe at Nurmagomedov for a separate message he sent after the Irish superstar lost his fight. Following Poirier’s win, Nurmagomedov tweeted “good always defeats evil, very happy for Dustin Poirier,” and while it took McGregor some time to respond, he finally countered by saying “COVID is good and father is evil?” McGregor’s message obviously referenced Nurmagomedov’s father Abdulmanap losing his life due to complications after contracting COVID-19 during the global pandemic. While McGregor deleted the tweet, Cormier already saw the damage done and he felt the need to reach out to Nurmagomedov over the situation. “I get shock value and I get trying to get people to talk but way too far,” Cormier said on his ESPN show with co-host Ryan Clark. “To the point that I immediately called Khabib last night and said, ‘Are you OK?’ Asking him if he’s OK after having to see that, especially with no ability to do anything about it again. He spoke to my kids at my wrestling program the other day and said he was never happier than when he got to fight McGregor on the day. Because for so long, he wanted to get his hands on Conor and beat Conor up. “Well, he can’t do that no more cause he’s not a prizefighter anymore. So now he just has to kind of swallow that. Way too far. Honestly, when Conor does stuff like that, it’s hard to understand how there’s still this mass amount of people that support that type of behavior.” McGregor has received a lot of criticism in recent weeks for out-of-bounds trash talk that also involved insults aimed at Poirier’s wife Jolie both before and after UFC 264. Poirier previously blasted McGregor for making death threats against him and his family even as he laid on the octagon floor with a broken leg. Cormier admitted he already had a problem with some of McGregor’s trash talk surrounding the Poirier fight, but referencing Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov following his death was just a bridge too far. “After the fight with Dustin Poirier, a lot of people questioned whether or not Conor McGregor was reaching to try and get in the head of Dustin Poirier,” Cormier said. “Reach back to a time where he had trash talk that could affect people. It didn’t seem to work against Poirier. I feel like from him talking about Dustin’s wife to now Khabib’s father, he is just taking it way too far. “When you’re dealing with death and COVID and all these other things that we’ve dealt with over the last year and a half, that’s all off limits. We talked about wives and families being off limits, but when you’re talking about a man’s everything — Khabib’s dad was his everything — and you’re talking about him being gone today due to something that has been so terrible for our entire world, you use that in a sense to get back?” Perhaps the biggest issue that Cormier has with McGregor’s trash talk is that he’s not just doing it in the heat of the moment during a press conference or a media obligation. Instead, McGregor is taking aim at Nurmagomedov and his father weeks later, which means many of these horrific messages had to be premeditated even if they were eventually deleted. “You know what’s most disturbing? This wasn’t done the day after the fight or the same night of the fight,” Cormier explained. “This was done weeks after the fight, so it feels like it was thought of and it was thought through for Conor to tweet something like that. “Absolutely crossed the line. I think when stuff like that is being said, it’s a cry for help. Conor has all the money in the world, he has all the fame, but now when you start to dig at that level, it’s like somebody needs to get to McGregor and help him to start to kind of re-shift his mind and his focus and get him back to a better place. It’s unfortunate.”

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLCT.J. Dillashaw’s road back to a shot at the bantamweight title could take longer than he had initially hoped following a successful return to action this past Saturday. The former 135-pound champion picked up a split decision win over Cory Sandhagen in the main event of UFC Vegas 32 at the APEX, his first fight since his USADA suspension came to an end. Dillashaw is one of two fighters from the card facing a potential six-month sit, according to the list of medical suspensions from the Nevada Athletic Commission acquired by mixedmartialarts.com. The 35-year-old will need an MRI of his left knee and, if positive, he will need clearance from an orthopedic doctor or he’ll be forced to sit until Jan. 21, 2022. Sandhagen received a 30-day suspension and is eligible to return on Aug. 24. Adrian Yanez, who picked up his third straight octagon finish after earning a contract on Dana White’s Contender Series over Randy Costa, is also facing a potential six-month suspension. Yanez will need clearance from an ear, nose and throat doctor following an X-ray on his nasal bones or be out until January 2022. See the full list of UFC Vegas 32 medical suspensions below: T.J. Dillashaw: Must have a left knee MRI. If positive, must have orthopedic doctor clearance or no contest until Jan, 21, 2022. Minimum suspension no contest until Sept. 8, no contact Aug. 24 for left eyebrow laceration Cory Sandhagen: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 Raulian Paiva: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 for nose and left eye lacerations Kyler Phillips: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 Darren Elkins: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 for forehead laceration Darrick Minner: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 Miranda Maverick: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 Adrian Yanez: Must have nasal bones X-ray. If positive must have ENT doctor clearance or no contest until Jan. 21, 2022. Minimum suspension no contest until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 for nasal bridge laceration Randy Costa: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 Punahale Soriano: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 Ian Heinisch: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 for left eyebrow laceration Jordan Williams: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 for left eyelid laceration Julio Arce: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 for right upper cheek laceration Andre Ewell: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 Elise Reed: Suspended until Sept. 8, no contact until Aug. 24 Hannah Goldy: Suspended until Aug. 24, no contact until Aug. 15 for left eye contusion

Esther Lin, MMA FightingFormer UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman will have to undergo another surgery on the broken leg he suffered in a fight against Uriah Hall back in March. Following promising progress on his recovery including some golf outings and light sparring at his gym in South Carolina, Weidman revealed that one particular bone in his leg is not healing as expected and that’s going to force him to go under the knife again. “I’m actually getting another surgery, I just found out,” Weidman said when speaking to MMA Today on Sirius XM on Wednesday. “I’m getting another surgery, most likely on Aug. 11. They’re going to have to plate the fibula bone because I guess it’s considered a non-union so the bones aren’t healing the way it’s supposed to, which kind of sucks. “But I did expect setbacks and some issues with this type of traumatic injury. I’ve been through a lot. At the end of the day, I’m a positive person to begin with. Not that I don’t have moments of negativity and just laziness, lack of motivation but I’m usually a glass half-full type of person. So I think that helps.” While this news is unfortunate, it’s not exactly unexpected. Weidman told MMA Fighting back in June that for all the tremendous strides he had already taken in his recovery, there was still the possibility that he could be forced into another surgery. As he explained at the time, the fibula bone was still completely broken but because it’s not weight bearing, he could still stand on his leg without the use of crutches. “My fibula bone is still completely broken,” Weidman said at the time. “It’s displaced. The goal is it starts getting closer and closer and mends together. Then my tibia bone is completely fractured so I’m relying on that rod that is going through the middle of it to deal with the weight bearing. “There’s a butterfly fracture that fragmented off that causes inflammation. It’s annoying. He might — hopefully he doesn’t, but he might — have to do a quick surgery to get that out if it doesn’t heal with the tibia bone.” From the day he left the surgery, Weidman understood that there would be plenty of ups and downs during his recovery as he looked to bounce back from an incredibly traumatic injury. Long term, Weidman has said he absolutely plans on fighting again but he knows there’s going to be a lot of time spent rehabilitating his broken leg and this latest surgery is just another example of that. Despite the setback, the New York native isn’t allowing the situation to bring him down, especially when he thinks about his own situation when compared to others who have suffered through so much more. “If I ever feel bad for myself it’s very easy to look at someone else who has it worse and realize you have nothing to complain about and you can’t feel sorry for yourself,” Weidman said. “The second guest I had my podcast was a guy named Omar ‘Crispy’ Avila, he is a war veteran who got blown up by an IED (improvised explosive device), he lost his leg, he got burned, 75 percent of his body had third and fourth-degree burns and he had 104 surgeries. “Now I’m going to be heading into my 25th surgery, they just keep coming and I don’t want any more surgeries. I’m done with surgeries. 25 but the other guy has 104, so who am I to complain?” ️"It's very easy to look at someone else who has it worse and then realize you have nothing to complain about and you can't be feeling sorry for yourself." -- @chrisweidman reveals to @MieshaTate and @RyanMcKinnell that he'll unfortunately need another leg surgery ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/1usdAZcPly— MMA on SiriusXM (@MMAonSiriusXM) July 28, 2021