Shinya Aoki
The loudest post of the day came from Aoki, who quoted a @FightsMemory clip of Rukiya Anpo at a weigh-in. Anpo failed only the hydration test on his first attempt. On the second he failed both hydration and the weight limit, and he looked genuinely lost about it: “ほんまに意味わからん。尿比重上がってるってことですよね？水飲んで…” Roughly, he said he really didn’t understand, asked whether that meant his urine specific gravity had gone up, and pointed out that he’d been drinking water.
Aoki’s reply on X was “んなわけないだろ。ヨカタ。” Loosely, he’s telling Anpo there’s no way that’s how it works, then capping it with yokata, old pro wrestling slang for an outsider who doesn’t know the business. He isn’t buying the bewilderment. A hydration test exists to catch fighters who are drying out, and missing it twice in one day is exactly the kind of bad weight cut I have no patience for.
Gaston Reyno
The best news of the day was also the least controversial. Reyno wrote on X that Bruce Buffer has renewed his contract through 2032, and that fans will get to keep enjoying Buffer’s famous call “por mucho tiempo más.” Plenty more years of the spin, then.
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Muhammad Mokaev
This was the day’s sport-versus-entertainment flashpoint. “Dana used to say best vs the best But today it is all about entertainment,” Mokaev wrote on X. He conceded the company is right “From the business side” and wrong “from the sport perspective,” then said they could have at least waited until “their best fighters” took away his unbeaten record. His sharpest line was about letting go of “a guy who beat their number 1 contender not even in the prime.”
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He closed by tagging the PFL: “Now we will see how @pflmma gonna take over day by day!” You can take that as a warning or as a sales pitch. Either way, a flyweight who never lost publicly arguing that the rankings don’t decide who stays is a complaint the division’s diehards will take seriously.
Itsuki Hirata
Hirata kept it short. “I’ll do my best to win,” she posted, tagging @ONEChampionship and @ONECHAMPJP. Nothing about opponent or date in the post itself, so that’s all we’ve got from her.
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Sean Strickland
The funniest thread of the day started with Anthony Hernandez telling @Home_of_Fight and @LynchOnSports how he became friends with Strickland. Hernandez said Strickland was cornering and invited him to go enjoy Canada, and then it got weird: “This fcker is out here getting chased by twekers, we accidentally inhaled cr*ck walking down the street.”
Strickland’s response on X: “Fluffy was keeping me real safe!” I’d love to see the tape on that walk.
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Arnold Allen
The fight IQ debate came from Allen, who asked on X: “Do mma fans appreciate things like fight iq?, would someone like shakur Stevenson or even Mayweather be successful in mma? With that style of hit n not get hit.” Then he undercut his own question, admitting that “Wanderlei Silva head butting people in vale tudo matches was my early introduction to the sport.”
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It’s a fair question, and I think the honest answer is that a lot of fans appreciate fight IQ only when it ends in a knockout. Hit-and-not-get-hit works in MMA right up until someone shoots a double and the conversation moves to whether you can get up. The same crowd that boos a patient striker will scream “lay and pray” at a wrestler running a beautiful chain of reattacks along the fence. They just can’t see what they’re watching.
Georges St-Pierre
GSP checked in from the mats: “Perfecting the “gentle art” of jiu-jitsu… while learning how to break an arm 😂” He signed it “OSU 🥋.” Arm bars are a fine start, Georges. The leg lock instructional can be your next project.
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